|
Behind the Gemstone Files |
|
The
Skeleton Key AUTHORSHIP ALPHA-1775 GEMSTONES A B C D E F G H I J K L M N O P R S T U V W Y Z
|
UPDATED
January 01, 2003 02:46 PM
Bruce Roberts' incorrect claim (which Stephanie Caruana continues to insist is correct) that Joe Kennedy suffered a stroke in January 1961 (rather than Dec. 19, 1961 - the correct date) throws much of his reasoning out the window insofar as the noble motives of the younger Kennedys were concerned. The correct timeline shows a quite different set of events and motives. It would seem, according to the Kennedy family tradition, that John and Robert Kennedy were not acting on noble impulse when they betrayed the very mobsters who had gotten them into office. They were simply carrying on the family tradition - get all you can out of someone, then destroy them so there is no evidence of your own criminality. A major Boston liquor distributor said Joe promised a Chicago buddy that if he could get Al Capone's business, he would give him a 25% cut. The man got the business, but then Joe fired him and hounded him so he couldn't find another job. (11:34) It was a double-cross tactic Joe would play again and again and which eventually led directly to the events of November 22, 1963. Correcting Roberts' major gaffe, we now put events in their more correct chronology. The "Arrest" of William H. "Wally" Bird
As for Wally Bird (William H. Bird), he was a CIA legend who ran Bird Air (The Crimes Of Patriots, Jonathan Kwitny). "The Wally Bird Award" in the aviation industry is named for him. It has been difficult to find just what happened to Bird that led to his alleged (according to Roberts) 1961 "split" with the CIA. In 1961, he formed Bird & Sons, a "private" firm that was, in fact, a competitor to Air America. He is said to have built some of the clandestine air bases in Laos and Thailand. There is no reference to any involvement with an "Air Thailand." Did Roberts mean Bird Air? But if so, he seemed to run Bird Air from 1961 to 1965 without any government problems. If I had to speculate, based just on the timeline, I would say something may have happened in September 1965 that led him to cut his CIA ties, then resume them 10 years later. Bird & Sons - 1961-1965, 1975-1980? - Formed by William H. Bird in 1961. Ceased operation September 1965. Assets to Continental Air Services (CASI). Re-established in 1975 as Bird Air. Aircraft flown by Bird and Son, a private airline owned by William H. Bird, arrived in Southeast Asia well ahead of American military personnel and operated a diverse fleet of aircraft throughout the war. Bird and Son regularly competed with Air America for US government flight contracts in Laos and South Vietnam throughout America's involvement in that part of the world. The air division of Bird and Son became Continental Air Service, Inc. (CASI) on 1 September 1965. His name crops up, sparingly, in about eight books dealing with the Southeast Asian drug trafficking and the BCCI scandal. The only legal action reference found to date was a workman's compensation suit filed in 1971 by one of his covert airline pilots, William J. Gould, when the plane crashed and burned in Laos in 1963. At the same time that Air America was trying to develop a rotary-wing capability in Laos, the company also was taking steps to introduce (Short Take-Off & Landing) STOL aircraft into the country. Maj. Harry C. Aderholt, a US Air Force detailee with the CIA, had supervised the development of the Helio Courier while serving with the Agency's air branch. Convinced that the aircraft could survive the short, rugged airstrips often found in remote areas, he became the foremost advocate for Air America's adoption of the Helio Courier. (Leary interview with Aderholt, 28 August 1990) Air America obtained a Helio for trials in Laos in the fall of 1959. The STOL program got off to a poor start. The Helio's engines proved temperamental, frequently developing vapor locks on starting. Mud, rocks, and gravel tended to block the aircraft's crosswind landing gear. The rudder needed modification so that it would not jam. Also, the first pilots who flew the airplane were used to multiengine transports and did not receive adequate training on an airplane that demanded special handling techniques. Air America came close to abandoning the Helio. It was saved by Aderholt, who believed in the aircraft's capability and was determined to see it work, and by Rousselot, who feared that the CIA would give the STOL mission to a rival company--Bird & Son--if Air America proved incapable of doing the job. Early in 1960, Rousselot assigned Ronald J. Sutphin, a talented light-plane pilot, to the project. Both Aderholt and Rousselot agree that it was Sutphin's skillful demonstration of the extraordinary capability of the STOL aircraft that led the CIA to greatly expand the program. Other events, not included in Roberts' story, should have been. Jan. 3, 1961 - Launching a pre-emptive strike that would force Kennedy along the path Nixon would have taken had he been elected instead, President Eisenhower severed diplomatic and consular relations with Cuba after disputes about the "nationalization" of US firms - mostly the interests of organized crime. At the same time, the US dug in its heels at Guantanamo Bay and announced they would never give it up to Castro. These two moves would make it very difficult for Kennedy to then go against the grain of public opinion (manipulation) and reverse this trend toward conflict. He had put Nixon in a tight spot in the debates, with his claims of a "missile gap" that Nixon couldn't counter without revealing information that would truly damage national security. Kennedy had, in effect, called Nixon soft on communism - a charge Nixon had used against his own political opponents from the beginning of his political career - and now it had been turned against him. Kennedy couldn't very well do a 180-degree turn and go "soft on communism" himself. No, he had to hang tough - and Eisenhower's moves just days before Kennedy's inauguration gave him no choice. 1961 - "In 1961, after Nixon had lost the presidential election to JFK the previous year, Clint Murchison (owner of the Dallas Cowboys) sold Nixon a lot in Beverly Hills for only $35,000 - a lot Murchison had financed through a Hoffa loan which Nixon sold two years later for $86,000. [This was a small part of Nixon's "reward" for quietly conceding the 1960 election.] When J. Edgar Hoover visited the (Murchison) Hotel Del Charro, as he did every summer between 1953 and 1959, Murchison picked up his tab. That amounted to about $19,000 of free vacations for the FBI Director over those years. Whether Hoover knew it or not, almost 20 percent of the Murchison Oil Lease Company in Oklahoma was then owned by Gerardo Catena, chief lieutenant to the Genovese crime family. January 1961 - By all indications, Sam Giancana had picked a winner, and his star subsequently began to ascend. He quickly began expanding his own underground network, using his CIA connections, to include dictators, presidents and smuggling czars from Haiti, the Dominican Republic, Iran, Lebanon, Italy, France, Nicaragua, Guatemala, the Phillippines and Laos. The first person to visit Kennedy in the Oval Office was Harry Truman; the second was Chicago Mayor Richard Daley. Daley was concerned about Bobby - and the promises made the year before. He wanted some answers, but he got only reassurance. "These things take time." For Giancana, it wasn't enough. He made his own visit to the White House for a private meeting with John Kennedy. He, too, got assurances, but he went back to Chicago more suspicious than ever. Joe Kennedy had betrayed him, lied to him, and he knew it. "The wiley old bastard" had one of two reasons for putting Bobby in as Attorney General, he decided. Either Bobby would put the clamps on Hoover and get him to lay off the Outfit as promised - or he would use his new position to utilize the full resources of the Justice Department to destroy Giancana and those who had helped his brother get elected. Giancana knew it would have taken very little to get Hoover to back off; appointing Bobby as Attorney General wasn't necessary to get Hoover's cooperation. It had to be the second choice. Bobby was put there to erase all the markers - and Giancana knew his name would be at the top of the list. "It's a brilliant move on Joe's part," he grudgingly conceded. "He'll have Bobby wipe us out to cover their own dirty tracks and it'll all be done in the name of the Kennedy 'war on organized crime.' Brilliant. Just fuckin' brilliant!" (1:409-11) Giancana called on Fred Otash (Hollywood private detective) and Bernard "Bernie" Spindel (master wireman and sometime CIA operative) to wire every square inch of the Kennedys' favorite hangouts. Spindel was regarded both by the government and the Outfit as the best in the business - the "King of Wiremen." Spindel recruited a team of CIA operatives he had worked with before and went to work. (Two years earlier, in 1959, Giancana had ordered the wiretapping of the Washington hangouts of Bobby Kennedy while he was serving on the McClellan committee. The order had been passed down through Jimmy Hoffa.) (1:413) Bob Maheu was chosen as the man to oversee the physical surveillance of the president and his brother, physically following them everywhere they went. Maheu put together the team that included Otash, and later John Danoff. "I told Maheu I wanna know when they go to the water fountain, I wanna know when they take a shit ... and Bob's guys and the CIA can get it done. I said a long time ago I'd never trust a Kennedy." But then, Jack Kennedy did something totally unexpected and it threw Giancana off. Using Judith Campbell as the go-between, as well as Angie Dickinson and Marilyn Monroe, he started sending Giancana confidential FBI memos. Years later, when the Giancana - Campbell - Kennedy link surfaced, journalists would say the communications was two-way, but Chuck Giancana insisted that was bullshit. Mobsters like his brother didn't write memos to the president - they didn't put their names on anything. Sam especially, kept his affairs in his head. The communications, Chuck insisted, was one way - from Kennedy to Giancana. Kennedy was sending Giancana copies of the FBI surveillance reports. The details of those reports stunned Giancana. He'd laughed at the "$10,000-a-year" G-men and figured they were a bunch of incompetents; they weren't. The reports revealed Giancana had an informer in his circle and the FBI was closing in, trying to recruit more. Giancana loosened his distrust of Kennedy and concluded the Hoover team in Chicago was just there "for looks". After all, if Kennedy were sending him confidential FBI surveillance reports, surely he must be keeping his end of the bargain after all, and Hoover was under control.
The 300-lb. loan shark was taken to a Chicago meat-rendering plant and hoisted onto a steel six-inch meat hook. There he hung, slowly twisting, screaming in agony while Buccieri joyfully unveiled an arsenal of tools that would have given the Marquis de Sade goosebumps: ice picks, wrenches, bats, knives, razors - even a blowtorch. They shot him in the knee, rammed an electric cattle prod up his rectum, then poured water on it, slowly plying their trade for two full days until, finally, Jackson hung limp and dead, like all the other carcasses in the plant. (1:419-420) Summarizing the fantastic roulette, John Morgan’s Prince of Crime adds, "Sam Giancana, always active in Cuba and Central America, seems to have been persuaded by rogue elements in the CIA that he could play a heroic role: saving his investments by his exertions and the nation by his example." President Kennedy knew of the conspiracy and sanctioned it; so did FBI Chief J. Edgar Hoover. Mob soldiers and southwest-based mob bosses like Santo Trafficante played their various roles -- inciting Batista loyalists to move against Castro while delivering both arms and propaganda to Cuba from off the Florida coast. One of the gun runners was a man named Jack Ruby, a Texas strip show operator who would perform a much more obtrusive part in climaxing the Kennedy era three years later. In the meantime, more directly domestic events reawakened Momo’s doubts about the family Kennedy. Bobby was up to his old tricks. Named the new Attorney General, he resumed his attacks on the mobs, more vehemently than ever. It all became clear to Momo; he told his Outfit, "The Kennedys are still out to erase all obligation to us." Two incidences then occurred to support his theory. First, Bobby Kennedy’s commission handed to the press their list of the top 30 mobsters in America. The name Sam Giancana headed the list. A second thunderbolt struck over the Castro affair. The plot was about to be hatched. Because the dictator had proven himself unreachable, the CIA spearheaded an invasion of Cuba’s coastline by 1,500 exiles; the success of the thrust hinged on the air support that the President had promised. When the initial ground attack at the Bay of Pigs failed, Kennedy reneged, skittish about possible repercussions. The insurgents. nevertheless, regrouped. Huddled against the bay, they suddenly found themselves seriously outnumbered by Castro’s regulars. Pleading for Kennedy to reconsider, the CIA was again denied. The event became world news and Kennedy was embarrassed. He blamed the CIA for letting things get out of hand and vowed to crush its main players for humiliating his administration. It had been a clumsy episode in American history. The CIA fumed, but not as violently as Momo. He too looked foolish, for he had bit the bullet, ensuring the Outfit of Kennedy’s devotion. Author John Morgan notes that Momo had regarded the Bay of Pigs plan "as a serious effort by the Kennedys to repay their debt to the Outfit that had supported their election to power...Giancana’s opinion was that the Kennedys had let him down." Without giving time for this incident to cool, Bobby ordered FBI surveillance on Momo. He spotted the agents everywhere (for Momo knew a government agent when he saw one). They were behind him at the bank, they were around him at the ballpark, they trailed him when he drove his car. And when he traveled and partied with his new girl friend, Patty McGuire, of the singing McGuire Sisters, they were there, too, at the airports, the restaurants, the hotels. The usually tight-lipped Momo who never revealed what he thought -- about anything -- lost his calm one afternoon. In front of a crowd at a busy airport, he approached one of the bloodhounds and, with a threatening finger in the man’s chest, shouted, "Screw your boss Hoover and his boss, Kennedy! I have the lowdown on all the damn Kennedys and one day I’ll tell everything. Then the whole world will know what hypocritical bastards they really are!" (Sam 'Momo' Giancana: Live and Die by the Sword by ) Jan. 17, 1961 - President Eisenhower warned on several occasions, most notably in his "Farewell Address" of January 17, 1961, that a dangerous elite of power was developing in the United States which was no longer responsive to the cares and desires of ordinary Americans - specifically, that advances in technology combined with the growing defense needs of the country had created an opportunity for elites in the military establishment, "Big Business," and politics to exert an undue and improper influence on the formation and conduct of national policy. The warning was especially striking coming from Eisenhower, a product himself of the military and good friend, as it had been assumed, of "Big Business."A "new" Eisenhower seemed to emerge during 1959 and 1960, when the President, at last in health, and acting without the advisers -- Secretary of the Treasury George M. Humphrey, Secretary of State John Foster Dulles, and Presidential Assistant Sherman Adams -- who had dominated the early years of his administration, began to use the powers of his office to implement his policies and to check the rise of certain influential factions in the government. He described the "complex" as a tri-centered nexus of power which consisted of a corporate center, a political center, and a military center. Each was intertwined with the other, and each fed off the other. The power of this "complex" so concerned Eisenhower that - alone and without the knowledge of his heretofore most trusted advisors (Secretary of the Treasury George M. Humphrey, Secretary of State John Foster Dulles, CIA Chief Allen Dulles and Presidential Assistant Sherman Adams), he took to the air on January 17, 1961 to warn the nation against it. He warned:
April 4, 1961 - Carlos Marcello was suddenly picked up off the street by FBI agents in a brazen daylight kidnapping, then forced onto a plane and hustled to Guatemala, where he was unceremoniously dumped by the side of a road. For Giancana, it was the final proof of a Kennedy double-cross. The CIA apparently wasn't too happy either. They were depending on Marcello for the upcoming Bay of Pigs operation, and were trying to find a way to ship Marcello back into the US, but the Bay of Pigs invasion, in its final hours, was demanding all their attention. There was no turning back now. That same week, Operation Mongoose was activated and the first attempt was made to kill Castro - before the Bay of Pigs. It is also known as Task Force W and JM/WAVE. It was set up on the campus of the University of Miami under William Harvey with 400 employees and more than 2,000 Cuban agents, making it the largest CIA station except for Langley itself. With a budget of $100 million a year, it employed more than 50 CIA business cut-outs or front, and had its own navy and air force - all for the purpose of assassinating Castro and regaining control of Cuba. (36:62) Santos Trafficante wasn't personally involved in Mongoose operations, but often visited the university campus for a tour and briefings of what was happening. Privately, he felt they would never succeed; they were going about it the wrong way - too much firepower, too much visibility and too much chance for leaks. He often thought of a small sign that hung over the private office door of his New Orleans friend, Carlos Marcello: "Three people can keep a secret - if two of them are dead." Kennedy, the Bay of Pigs and the Watergate Team
So much has been written about the Bay of Pigs invasion, its planning, execution and aftermath, that I see no need to re-invent the wheel. A complete account would take up an immense amount of space, and add little new to the record. The summary, as presented in the two paragraphs above, is essentially correct, as are the names of those involved. The only discrepancy I could find concerned sodium morphate. What the CIA apparently tried to use was Black Leaf 40, a deadly derivative of nicotine; there is no mention in the CIA records I've seen - public or classified - of sodium morphate (which would be under another name, since sodium morphate is not the correct name) with one exception.
The first attempt failed when Castro's food taster fell over dead, alerting the Cuban leader to what the CIA was up to. (1:416) Paid assassins kill so that they might collect their fees - and live to kill again. No one wanted a suicide mission, and the only Cubans they could get who might be close to Castro were too weak to carry it out. The plots started before the Bay of Pigs, subsided quickly after it failed, then increased again over the next ten years. All would fail. April 24 - President Kennedy took full blame for the Bay of Pigs disaster. His presidency looked clumsy and foolish to all the world. But he blamed the CIA, firing Allen Dulles, Richard Bissell and Gen. Charles Cabell, and threatened to "splinter the CIA into a thousand pieces." Kennedys don't lose, he raged - and they don't tolerate embarrassing failure in their underlings. It now became a personal vendetta and he would pursue Castro's death until a bullet found its path to his own brain. To Giancana, Kennedy had committed treason. He had deliberately set the mission up to fail, and thus renege on his "promise" to the Outfit. April 1961 - Richard Cain became the Mafia's direct pipeline into the office of Cook County Sheriff Richard Ogilvie. McCain became Ogilvie's chief investigator - Ogilvie never knew his role; Ogilvie later became governor. The Beginning of the End for Jimmy Hoffa
The TWA-Howard Hughes Lawsuit
June 1961 - Carlos Marcello angrily found his way back into the country (courtesy of a Dominican air force jet provided by Trujillo) and hired lawyers to fight the deportation, he was promptly greeted by indictments for fraud, perjury and illegal re-entry. (9:80) June 30, 1961 - TWA filed a civil suit against Howard Hughes, 55, his personal corporation, the Hughes Tool Co., which controlled 78% of TWA's common stock, and Raymond M. Holliday, chief operating officer of Hughes Tool Co. and a TWA director. The Atlas Corp., in which Hughes owned 11% common stock interest through voting trust certificates, was named a "co-conspirator" but not a defendant. The suit, which had been sealed by the court and was disclosed Aug. 8, asked for $115 million in compensation (triple the $35 million in damages allegedly suffered plus $10 million compensatory damages). It asked the court to (1) order the defendants to get rid of their TWA stock and (2) to prevent them from controlling the airline or from threatening to sue it. The suit claimed that (1) Hughes and Holliday had conspired since 1939 to seize control of TWA "for their own purposes"; (b) they restrained commerce by forcing TWA to boycott all aircraft suppliers except Hughes Tool; (c) they prevented TWA from leasing or buying jets "despite [its] repeated requests" during 1956-60, although Hughes Tool itself had ordered jets in February and April 1956; (d) because of Hughes' domination of TWA's financial policies, the airline was being forced to pay 6-1/2% interest on a Dec. 1960 loan to buy jet planes, although other airlines got such loans at rates of 4% to 4-3/4% in 1955 and 1956. The suit also claimed that Atlas Corp., 58% owner of Northeast Airlines stock, had conspired with the defendants to force a merger of TWA and Northeast on "terms advantageous to the defendants" but "disadvantageous to TWA." The proposed merger would increase TWA's requirement for aircraft, which could only be met by increased purchases of aircraft owned by or contracted for by Hughes Tool Co. (Facts on File, 1961). There is no mention anywhere in the suit or any other sources I can find, to date, that even mention $73 million in "forged land liens." The only reference to forgery is this (dates are from the New York Times, 1962): On Feb. 14, 1962, Hughes counter-sued TWA, Equitable and Metropolitan Life Insurance companies, Irving Trust Co., Dillon Read & Co., E R Breech and CC Tillinghast Jr. (TWA president) for $366 million, claiming they illegally acquired control of TWA through voting trust and conspiracy to perpetuate that control. Hughes had been forced to place his 78% control in a voting trust in December 1960 to satisfy creditors. Tillinghast had been told by the TWA plaintiffs to find suitable mergers for TWA (April 5), but reported he had spent thousands of dollars trying, unsuccessfully, to subpoena Hughes in the anti-trust suit. At the hearing on Hughes' counter-suit (April 19), TWA asked the court to take control of Hughes' stock in Hughes Tool Co. Profits, without Hughes' interference, had jumped to $85,182,000 in the first quarter of 1962). (April 20) TWA held its annual meeting April 27 and a few days later, on May 4, entered into merger talks with Pan American airlines. Chester Davis accepted the Hughes' subpoena, saying Hughes had authorized him to do so. TWA claimed that authorization for Davis to accept the subpoena was a forgery. (Sep. 7) The suit appeared to be over a rather simple issue: Hughes was running TWA into the ground and it was losing money ($39 million in 1961) and becoming obsolete, because other airlines were refitting their fleets with the then-new jet aircraft, replacing the old propeller aircraft TWA was still using. They wanted Hughes out. NOTE: Following is the incident mentioned earlier but in much less detail, placed here in its proper place in the timeline. July 11, 1961 - Marcello was once more ordered deported. His appeal would be upheld Dec. 30, 1961 by the US Supreme Court, just 11 days after Joseph Kennedy's stroke. July 12, 1961 - The intense surveillance of Giancana became more than he could handle. He and Phyllis McGuire were returning to New York from one of their many jaunts to Phoenix. Their Pan Am flight had a brief layover in Chicago and as they stepped from the plane, the FBI was there to greet them, like flies that won't get out of your face. Phyllis, several steps ahead, was hustled down the concourse, one FBI agent on each arm. Before he could make a move, two more agents jumped on him, identifying themselves as Bill Roemer and Ralph Hill, and began peppering him with questions, up close, in his face, daring, threatening, insulting. Giancana had had Bob Maheu do some homework on his followers, and he knew quite a bit about Agent Hill, so he decided "to drop a little bombshell on the illustrious Mr. Hill" and give him something to think about. "So I said, 'You're the guy that's been fuckin' around with some of my girlfriends ... well, I've got some affidavits ... and I'm just waitin' for the right time to use 'em." Hill's face dropped to the tarmac in shock. "I had that motherfucker by the balls and he knew it. I shut him up real fast. I bet he can't sleep at night now that he knows that I've got concrete evidence of what kinda guy he really is." Roemer, he said, "wanted to throw a punch ... that's what he wanted, the lousy cocksucker." Was Giancana threatening a federal agent,. Roemer demanded? Giancana returned to the plane and emerged moments later with Phyllis' purse and hat, when Roemer again started goading him. "That bastard started whistlin' and sayin' I was queer ... I wanted to kill him. People gathered around' we were screamin' back and forth. Man oh man, it was fuckin' ridiculous." "I got pissed off and said, 'Fuck your boss and your bosses' boss and his fuckin' boss, too." "Who are you talkin' about?" Roemer demanded. "'Jack Kennedy, that's who. ... Hey, asshole, I've got the lowdown on all the fuckin' Kennedys and someday I'll tell everything. ... Then the whole world will know what hypocritical bastards they are.' I wanted to tell that sonofabitch a few more things ... that I know everything about the lousy FBI, every move they make ... and that I get it all thanks to the President himself. I'd like to have heard what he would've said to that news." (1:423-25) (Sam 'Momo' Giancana: Live and Die by the Sword by ) Jul. 14, 1961 - The very next day, after word got back to Kennedy, surveillance became even worse. Agents hounded his children, his nieces, nephews, following them to school, to church, shopping - always just two or three steps behind them. The intensity of hatred from the White House was beginning to reach a fever pitch, nearing the point of explosion. To his friends and family, Giancana tried to be nonchalant. "Hey, they call this Camelot, remember? So relax ... don't you know who's sittin' at the Round Table? We are." Even though his brother thought Sam was being made the new Camelot court jester, the comment was a cryptic one that perhaps revealed the larger scope of the powers that control us - the Round Table going back to Cecil Rhodes and, before that, into the dark, shivery myths and legends from thousands of years before - of Satan himself [see Alpha Timeline] For Sam Giancana, it appeared an odd choice of words. How much did he really know?. Still, the confidential FBI reports continued to arrive from the White House as always, on the orders of Joseph P. Kennedy who, while trying to destroy any vestiges of his links to organized crime with his right hand, was at the same time throwing them the occasional bone with his left. Time, age, and past betrayals were about to catch up with Joseph P. Kennedy.
|
Castro's assassination was apparently first proposed by E.
Howard Hunt in 1959 or 1960, given the code name Operation 40, a
spin-off of the National Security Agency Group of 40, and then
expanded into one plot after another as each one failed. A
University of Illinois chemist and researcher helped the CIA concoct
their deadly toxins, a list that included poison-laced cigars, a
lethal bacterial powder that would be absorbed through the skin,
toiletries sprinkled with [sodium morphate?] that would induce a
massive heart attack when sprinkled on the body and absorbed into
the skin, yet another poison "one drop and a guy's dead"
to be slipped into food or drink, a cancer-producing injectable
agent, a slow lethal virus, and Black Leaf 40, based on the deadly
properties of nicotine. There was even talk, Giancana said, of
radiation in the form of high-intensity X-rays to induce cancer.
Despite efforts from outside the union to remove
him, he was reelected president by acclamation in 1961. He was not
arrested in 1961, as Roberts claimed. In 1962 a federal
grand jury first indicted him for accepting illegal payments from a
Detroit trucking company; the case ended in a mistrial. Hoffa's
power continued to grow, and by 1964 he was able to effect the
trucking industry's first national contract. In the same year,
however, he was convicted of jury tampering and of fraud in
handling the union benefits fund, and was sentenced to a 13-year
prison term. The Trials of Jimmy Hoffa (1970); W.
Sheridan, The Fall and Rise of Jimmy Hoffa (1972); D.
Moldea, The Hoffa Wars (1978).
Dec.
19, 1961 - Joseph P. Kennedy suffered a stroke and lost his
ability to speak. It was not his stroke that "freed"
Jack and Bobby to go after the Mafia - they had already been
doing it all year. It freed them, they thought, from having to
play both sides at once. They knew their father had been in bed
with the Mob, but they didn't know just how deep their father's
ties to the syndicate went - and he was no longer able to tell
them even if he wanted. He was a skinny, frail old man with
saliva dribbling down his chin and his hands twisted and gnarled
on his lap, unable to communicate at all with the outside world
he had fought a lifetime to control. The kingmaker was now
consigned to irrelevancy. He could neither control his sons -
nor could he protect them with his delicate balancing act. The secrets of his power were locked
away, frozen in his paralyzed vocal cords and sealed forever in
his gnarled, unmoving fingers.