I believe that an operation
should never be undertaken
unless it can be done
so in the deepest,
most permanently
impenetrable secrecy.
It's all right if
it isn't disclosed?
Ever.
The same ethos exists for
both the CIA and the Mafia.
You have to keep secrets.
With the Mob, the code is,
you don't talk to
the authorities.
I refuse to answer
on the grounds
it might tend to incriminate me.
I respectfully decline
to answer the question
upon the ground that the answer
may tend to incriminate me.
I will claim the privilege
of the Fifth Amendment
and decline to answer.
There's nothing worse
than someone who flips
and becomes a
government witness.
There's this famous
thing that Tony Accardo,
the head of the
Chicago Mob, said.
A fish doesn't get caught
if he keeps his mouth shut.
But Johnny Roselli has
problems with the feds.
The feds now have
this dark secret
of what his real name
and background was.
His big secret is out.
The authorities
leaned on Roselli
kind of like, you feel
like getting deported?
You feel like going to prison?
Johnny is considering
all the different ways
that he could
avoid both results.
One of the possibilities is,
he reveals the big secret
that the CIA was
involved with the Mafia
to try to k*ll Castro.
And as part of
it, he was helping
the federal government.
To even think about
talking about this
was dangerous and puts
his life at great risk.
The worst thing
that could happen
is to have your secrets spilled.
The Mafia understood this.
CIA understood this.
If you talk, you die.
It's that simple.
But with pressure mounting,
someone is going to cave,
and it will be a
filthy mess from which
the United States
government never recovers.
There's one weekend at Cal Neva
that leads to Sam
Giancana's downfall.
Giancana starts a fistfight
with his girlfriend
Phyllis McGuire's manager.
Giancana wasn't even
supposed to be there.
Giancana is banned from being in
any casino in the
state of Nevada.
It becomes a big tabloid
display in "Life" magazine
and newspapers all
around the country.
So Tony Accardo
reclaims the leadership
of the Chicago Mob.
Giancana's removed as
the operating boss.
He becomes just
another Outfit member.
He's not in any sort of
major leadership role.
After the fiasco at Cal Neva,
the feds start checking out
the finances of this place.
Course, you're not gonna
see Sam Giancana's name
on any of the paperwork,
but he was partners with
Frank Sinatra in the Cal Neva.
Not legally, of course.
The FBI said, we will
give you immunity
if you talked about the Mob.
Roemer later
explains, "If he lied,
"we can get him for perjury.
"If he told the truth,
his associates would get him."
If you talk, you end up dead.
He would not talk.
He would not.
Sam spends the next
year behind bars.
Meanwhile Johnny Roselli
has his own problems
with the feds.
They're building
a case against him
based upon what they found out
about his ill*gal
immigration status.
But then things get
even worse for Johnny
when his name comes up
in yet another scandal.
The Friars Club
is a show business
fraternity-sorority
in Beverly Hills.
It's a bunch of these
alta c*ck comedians
kind of sitting around,
talking to each other.
At the Friars Club,
they had a card room.
Gin rummy was
particularly popular.
That's where the money was.
If you played in that game,
then you could do well,
or you could do really bad.
You're not supposed to gamble
at these games for money.
It's ill*gal in California.
But of course, people did.
You couldn't have
money on the tables,
so it was all done with
little white scraps of paper.
I mean, I'm talking, like,
hundreds of thousands
of dollars changing
hands over gin rummy.
You had to be a member or
you had to be sponsored
by a member to get in.
Now, Roselli was not a member.
Frank Sinatra was
the club abbot.
He had vouched for Roselli.
And that was Roselli's in
to get behind those closed doors
and take part in those
high-stakes gin rummy games.
Eventually one of
the friars thought,
we can cheat, and
nobody's gonna know it.
It's gonna be flawless.
They would have a
device hooked up
to one of the guys at the table,
and there would
be a little code.
The guy in the attic
is basically saying
who's got what cards.
They ended up making a lot
of money with the scam,
and word kind of got out around
that there was a fix in.
And then that's when
Roselli's ears got piqued,
and he kind of muscled in,
and he said, I want a 1/5 cut.
If Johnny Roselli wants
to be in on this scam,
he's gonna be in on the scam.
It's the bully in
the schoolyard.
Nobody is gonna say,
no, we don't want him.
The FBI had been
tailing Johnny Roselli.
They were parked
outside the Friars Club,
so they saw a guy climbing out
of the skylight onto the roof.
And that's how they find out,
hey, there's this
whole scam going on,
and they've been
ripping off celebrities
and members for
five years already.
Johnny's cut was
$400,000 by that point.
People lost a ton of money.
Harry Karl was a
shoe magnate who was,
my mother, Debbie
Reynolds' second husband.
He's one of the wealthiest guys.
He loved playing
cards, and he loved,
more than anything
else, gambling.
Debbie Reynolds told
me about Harry Karl
and how he lost so much money.
Debbie Reynolds lost a
fortune because of that man.
And you had Phil
Silvers, Zeppo Marx,
a couple other biggies
lost a lot of money
in that scandal.
The FBI ended up
indicting Johnny Roselli
with some other people.
He's already got the
immigration battle
that comes to a head when
he's convicted on that charge.
And now, at the same time,
he's got the Friars Club
investigation in which
he's eventually convicted
and facing sentencing.
So he decides, maybe if the
judge knows I'm a patriot,
he'll give me some leniency.
He tells his lawyer
he's been doing
a lot of work for the CIA.
He puts his life at great risk.
His lawyer thinks
it's a good idea
to bring in Robert
Maheu to testify.
They put him on the stand,
and they ask him to verify
that Johnny Roselli
was working for the CIA
and that he was doing
his patriotic duty
by trying to k*ll Fidel Castro.
Maheu testifies,
"I don't know what
you're talking about"
Betraying Roselli.
Even if Roselli's
claim was true,
the judge decides,
"I don't think Mr. Roselli is
entitled to brownie points.
"I am not going to
concede that a court
"should give credit to a person
who attempts the
assassination of anybody."
Johnny's in deep trouble.
If he doesn't do something fast,
he's going to jail.
By the mid-'60s, there are still
anti-Castro operations going on
by people like Tony
Varona and Manuel Artime.
The Cuban exile community
never stopped trying
to retake Cuba,
even after the Bay of Pigs.
But LBJ has decided to get out
of the assassination business
and also stop the
boom-and-bang operations.
I think the Kennedy
administration came to an end,
and the operations that
continued under Lyndon Johnson
quickly unraveled.
It was clear that
Operation Mongoose
had completely failed.
They closed down
Operation Mongoose.
Places like Zenith,
the phony front
that's being run by the
CIA, that's closed down.
The CIA, I think, had
suffered from exile fatigue.
The exile leaders were all
fighting among themselves.
It just was not a
professional group.
You're not backed by CIA or
any organization, are you?
Well, I might I've heard
rumors to that effect,
but nobody can prove it.
The CIA's proposal
was that they would
set up a new base
in Central America
for the Cuban exiles.
They would give the exiles
some g*ns and some Jeeps,
and that's it.
They would not direct them,
and they would be autonomous.
And the United States
could claim a distance.
These autonomous exile militants
mistook a Spanish
freighter for a Cuban boat.
They sank the ship with
CIA-supplied equipment,
causing a huge
international scandal.
And it basically led to
a significant retreat
of the U.S. support
for the exile movement.
Another die-hard CIA
official in Miami
concluded that "the bearded
devil had won the w*r."
Dad was in jail for a year
because of the Fifth
Amendment that he had taken,
and then as soon as he got out,
he did leave for Mexico.
He figured there was a
lot of trouble brewing
around Chicago.
Giancana lived at this castle.
It was in the mountainside
of Mexico City.
I forget what it was called.
It had, like, a
saint's name, right,
the villa that he lived in?
While Sam was away
from everything,
he just calmed down.
He was very wonderful.
He would go into the
garden and start gardening.
I mean, this is the temperament
he was getting into.
I remember going to all
of these restaurants,
and he'd just sit
and enjoy himself.
You're in your 60s or 70s.
You're saying, hey, I could
have romantic relationships.
I could have food.
I could have music.
I could do whatever.
You know, at some point,
you want to just live your life.
He lived like a king, but
he was also invisible.
Nobody knew what Sam was up to.
He was doing a lot of
international business.
He was working with
the shah of Iran
and put a casino in Tehran.
He was doing this on his own.
Roselli later
explained about Sam:
"This guy's having a ball.
"As far as he's concerned,
"he never wants to
go back to Chicago.
"'My investments are
sound, ' he told me.
"'I'm enjoying this new life.
"'Let the c*ck back there
"'knock each other
off all they want.
Who cares?'"
Meanwhile, for Roselli,
things are not going well.
He's broke and facing
five years in jail.
Johnny still has a wild
card up his sleeve.
Hoping to get leniency
from the court,
he's gonna tell his
story to the press.
Roselli promised never to
reveal his life as a spy,
but this situation now
has left him desperate.
He sets up a meeting
with his lawyer
and the columnist Jack Anderson.
Jack Anderson was an
investigative reporter.
He was the Woodward
and Bernstein
of the pre-Watergate era.
Johnny wants to make sure
that he never is caught
specifically speaking
to the press,
so he tells the whole
story to his lawyer.
Anderson sits listening to this.
Roselli's sending out a message
that this isn't me doing this,
that this is me
passing it to someone
who chooses to pass
it to someone else
who chooses to publish it.
This is a lot different than
me being, oh, I'm a baby,
and I'm gonna fold
for the government.
Anderson is writing it all down,
and he puts it all in
his newspaper column.
"The full story
reads like the script
"of a James Bond movie,
complete with secret trysts
at glittering Miami
Beach hotels."
The Anderson column
is a sensation.
And while it doesn't get
Johnny out of jail
It causes problems in
many different places,
and suddenly there are ripples
all about this scandal.
The floodgates started
opening in the early '70s.
All sorts of intelligence abuses
start coming out in the media,
in "The New York Times,"
"Ramparts" magazine, CBS News.
Authorizing CIA
excursions into everything
from simple propaganda
to the overthrow of
unfriendly governments.
They were reporting on
CIA and FBI covert actions
that were sometimes criminal,
sometimes completely unethical.
They included things like
spying on Martin Luther King,
infiltrating domestic
political groups,
student groups around the world.
The CIA was involved in
assassination efforts.
That's when Congress
started digging into this.
In 1973, just as Congress
begins to examine the CIA,
Roselli is released from prison
more than two years early
for, of all things,
good behavior.
Sam lived in Mexico
for eight years.
By that point, he's an old man.
He has some health problems.
And then the Mexican
government in 1974
decides they don't
like him anymore.
The president of Mexico
was trying to reach out
to Castro's government,
hoping that there would
be a visit between them.
But having Sam
Giancana in Mexico
with all of these rumors about
the attempts to k*ll Castro
made it impossible
for Mexico to allow
Giancana to remain there.
One day, the Mexican authorities
suddenly arrive at
Giancana's mansion.
He was in his robe.
He was in his slippers.
He was in his socks.
I mean, my God, they
actually had people
pick him up physically
and put him on a plane
to bring him back to Chicago.
They deport him in that very
in that very abrupt fashion.
In Chicago, he comes
into the airport,
and there to greet him
is his longtime nemesis,
the FBI agent Bill Roemer.
Giancana sighed, "I
should have known
"you were behind all this.
"I'm out of it, so please,
just leave me alone.
If it takes an apology,
then this is it."
Roemer later wrote,
"At that moment,
I realized that I had won."
Following all the revelations
of the abuse of law
enforcement agencies,
like the CIA,
the Church Committee
was created.
Frank Church was a young and
ambitious senator from Idaho
who became chairman of an
investigating committee
in the U.S. Senate that
was aimed at probing
the background of
CIA destabilization
and particularly
assassination plots.
I find it reprehensible
that any agency
of the government
of the United States
should ever have engaged
in an assassination attempt
against any foreign leader
of any country with
which the United States
was in peaceful relations.
Up to then, the
intelligence committees
were usually quite deferential
to the CIA and the FBI.
But after these revelations,
reform-minded members
of Congress said, we
got to get a better grip
on what the intelligence
community is doing.
So this was a
complete sea change.
This was Colby's
third day of testimony
before the Senate committee
on a single subject,
covert operations, including
possible involvement
in assassination plots.
It was through the
Church Committee
that most Americans became aware
of these plots for
the first time.
There's a famous photograph
of Frank Church holding up
one of these gizmo,
James Bond super pistols
that was crafted for some
kind of assassination attempt.
Does this p*stol fire the dart?
Yes, it does, Mr. Chairman.
Church was representing
a genuine desire
on the part of many
Americans to figure out
whether the CIA had gone wild.
Was it a rogue elephant?
There were stories
that were broken
about the Castro assassination
attempts using the Mafia.
Now they wanted to hear from
the mouth of these mobsters.
So the Church Committee in
1975 called Johnny Roselli
and Sam Giancana to testify.
The idea that
Roselli and Giancana
could talk to the
Church Committee,
traditionally, you've
cast your vote to die
when you did that in
the Italian Mafia.
There was a commitment that you
were loyal to the organization
and you would never
sacrifice the organization
for your life.
At this point,
Johnny Roselli and Sam Giancana
have traveled a
long road together.
Johnny tells Sam that he's broke
and that he needs help
with his legal fees.
Sam generously offers him help.
Then the conversation
takes a much darker turn.
Sam gives Johnny a warning.
He's very concerned about
the closeness Johnny
still has with Trafficante.
Sam doesn't trust Trafficante.
But Johnny still has that
loyalty to Trafficante.
He feels that he's
still a friend.
In fact, when
Johnny went to jail,
Trafficante helped
out Johnny's family.
Roselli just has trouble
believing that his friend
could betray him.
In Chicago, Giancana's
still got his house
that he bought in 1945.
There's been a caretaker
family staying there
while he was down in Mexico.
He leaves the caretaker
family in the first floor.
He makes the basement
his living area,
and that's the area that he
uses when he meets with people.
Late one night, Sam decided
to cook himself a meal.
Most Italian friends of mine,
if it comes around
10:00 at night,
they want a snack.
And that snack is gonna be
pasta, sausage, and peppers.
Somebody came to the door.
It would have been
someone that he trusted.
The assassin put six
b*ll*ts into Sam's mouth
to send a message.
If you talk, squeal,
give up our secrets,
you're gonna wind
up just like he did.
You can't escape from that
area in which he was k*lled.
You'd have to run from
the front to the back
to get out of the house.
Sam Giancana, the Chicago
crime syndicate chieftain
recently named in a
reported CIA-Mafia plot
to assassinate Fidel Castro,
has been shot to death.
Giancana's execution,
police said,
was so big it, had to come
from the syndicate dons
in New York, Chicago,
and Los Angeles.
Tony Accardo doesn't like
Giancana, hasn't for years.
And, mm, maybe Sam will go,
show up at that committee,
and not say anything
that'll hurt us.
That's one probability.
Other probability?
Maybe he will go and say
something that'll hurt us.
Even though it seems unlikely
that Giancana would have
spoken, that he would have
betrayed his brethren,
there was enough
concern about it
that it looks to me like
the Chicago Outfit wanted
to put him out of commission.
Johnny bitterly blamed
the Chicago Outfit
for sanctioning such treachery
against one of its own:
"They f*cking k*lled a dead man.
Sam could barely climb a
short flight of stairs."
After Giancana's k*lled,
the Senate investigators
now suspect that Trafficante
or some of his well-armed
Cuban exile friends
carried out the m*rder.
The g*n, which was thrown
out a couple of blocks away
from the m*rder scene, is
traceable to a g*n place
down in Florida.
But it's pretty much
accepted that he's k*lled
because of internal
Outfit politics
and he's k*lled by
someone he knows
that's in the house
with him that night.
By far, the likeliest
suspect was Butch Blasi.
Blasi had been inside
the Outfit for years
Giancana's driver-bodyguard.
And he's the sort of guy
Giancana knew forever
who'd trusts him so much,
he turns his back on him.
Sometimes in organized crime,
that's exactly the guy
they send to k*ll you.
Butch Blasi was a very
dear friend of my father's.
In fact, they were
almost like brothers.
You know, my father
did a lot for Butch.
Butch lived very well
because of my father.
So I don't believe
Butch Blasi would
do anything to my father.
I believe the CIA k*lled
my father that night.
That door to the basement was
open almost 24 hours a day.
They might have been
able to sneak in.
They could have been
hiding down there.
Who has more to lose,
the CIA or the Mob?
They were afraid that
he would squeal on them.
If, in fact, there's any
truth to the CIA involvement,
perhaps his own peers
are afraid that he
might be subpoenaed before
a congressional committee.
And they would not want
him to appear there
for reasons of their own,
principally, not to
engender any more publicity.
Although friends and relatives
of the slain gangster
were on hand to pay
their last respects,
Outfit bigwigs were
conspicuous by their absence
at the services.
Apparently, syndicate majordomos
had passed the word to
their soldiers to stay away.
Roselli is not there.
Maheu's not there.
Trafficante's not there.
Sinatra is not there.
Accardo's not there.
None of the people that
have been in Sam's life
in the last few years are
there except one person.
Phyllis McGuire was on an
airplane to go to Europe,
and she heard of
my father's wake.
So they turned the plane around.
Phyllis came into Chicago
to come to the wake,
and she stayed with us,
which was very, very nice.
You know, you can't
condemn everybody
all the time for certain things.
You've got to find the
goodness in some of them.
Certainly, I think, by
the time of his death,
they had moved on
from each other.
Roemer wrote, "I
give her credit.
She had the guts to be
seen at his funeral."
Giancana was to be buried
next to his wife, Angeline,
in the family mausoleum
in Mount Carmel Cemetery.
Ironically, the
cemetery contains
the remains of Giancana's
one-time boss Al Capone.
Following Giancana's
m*rder, the Senate committee
is concerned about
Roselli's safety.
Investigators decided
to take a statement
from Roselli immediately
and to move up his
scheduled appearance
before the full
committee by a few days.
Roselli doesn't flinch
about testifying:
"They're not gonna
do anything to me.
"If they want to k*ll me,
they're gonna k*ll me.
But they're not
going to scare me."
But this isn't what
he tells the FBI.
In a memo, an FBI
agent recounts,
"It is my recollection that
on at least one occasion,
"in the presence of
Senator Howard Baker, Jr.,
"Roselli told the senator
that he was concerned
"for his safety and his life
"and that he was
risking his well-being
by testifying before
the committee."
Johnny Roselli's not an idiot.
If he wasn't scared, there's
something wrong with him.
Roselli appears before
the Senate investigators.
There is a lot of
security all around.
During his testimony, Johnny
acknowledges what he knows
about the Castro
assassination plot,
but he doesn't go
beyond what he already
has told Jack Anderson.
The senators are very
anxious to find out more.
In fact, Senator Barry Goldwater
starts quizzing
Johnny on specifics
about the Castro plot,
and Johnny sits back and says
"Senator, in my business,
we don't take notes."
When Senator Walter Mondale
asked who in higher office
wants Castro dead, Johnny
wraps himself in the flag.
"I don't ask any
questions how high.
"I was satisfied that I was
doing a duty for my country.
I did it for honor
and dedication."
He's very careful not to
name who's working with him.
He takes a lot of
effort not to implicate
former CIA agent Bill Harvey.
He really does consider
Harvey a friend.
He feels that Harvey
really was down there
to try to do a job.
During his testimony,
Johnny is also asked
about Judy Campbell,
and he tries his best
to protect her by
taking the high road.
"I do not know what
Judith Campbell
"has to do with this thing.
"You know, it's a
little disgusting to me,
"because I really
don't like to talk
"about these things, women.
"You are talking
about the White House
"and Judith Campbell
and all this.
"If it was so, I
was not present,
so it would be hearsay on
my part if I did hear it."
Johnny denies using
Judy as a courier
to send messages
to Sam Giancana.
Roselli jokes, "I would
not give my mother
a message to give to Sam."
The relationship between
Roselli and Judy Campbell
almost parallels
the relationship
with the Cuban exiles.
I think he had the same
sort of sense of loyalty
that he had with
the other people
that he saw were in trouble.
I think his heart goes to
her because she had walked
into a dangerous game,
and he understood
that she was really naive.
Today the Senate
CIA investigators
heard testimony from
underworld figure John Roselli
about an alleged CIA-Mafia plot
to assassinate Fidel Castro.
Camera shy and heavily guarded,
as might be expected after
Sam Giancana's death,
Roselli slipped up and down
back stairs at the Capitol,
trying to avoid the press.
Before the Senate
committee waiving immunity,
Roselli was fully cooperative.
For 2 1/2 hours, he told
of plotting with the CIA,
starting in 1960, to
try to k*ll Castro
by poison, by r*fle,
trying to land hit teams
by powerboat
one of the boats sunk by
a Cuban patrol vessel.
Chairman Frank Church found
Roselli's firsthand account
vivid but not complete.
He did fill out the chronology
and gave us a great
deal of detail.
What Roselli didn't know was
who gave the CIA its orders.
And it's because of this
vagueness of command channels
that the Senate Committee is
fighting with the White House
over National Security
Council and other documents.
Even though publicly,
Johnny Roselli
was saying he wasn't scared,
the Mob knows about
your appearances
before the grand jury.
Sam Giancana has
already been k*lled.
You have to be nervous.
Someone asks if he
worries for his safety.
Roselli replies, "Who'd want
to k*ll an old man like me?"
Johnny doesn't have
much money at this time.
And eventually, he can't
afford his legal bills.
He's forced to give
up his posh lifestyle
in Beverly Hills and Las Vegas
to live with his
sister down in Florida.
He can live a more relaxed life
and not have to
worry whether or not
there's assassins in
the hedgerow there.
I think what happens
in Roselli's later life
is that he says, I'm
gonna live my life
in a certain kind of
peace and equanimity.
Johnny's found out that
his good friend Bill Harvey
has dropped dead
of a heart attack.
Johnny calls Harvey's widow.
Roselli assures her
over a landline,
"Any help you need,
anything, you just tell me."
A sense of mortality and dread
now hangs over Johnny's life.
He starts ruminating on
what his life amounted to.
He thinks of all the sins
he committed as a wiseguy
and how he tried to make
amends for those sins
by being a soldier in a
w*r against communism,
only to be thwarted by someone
he thought was a friend.
One night, Johnny gets
together with Jimmy Fratianno,
his old mobster pal.
Roselli says to his
friend Fratianno,
"Remember when Santo was jailed
"and they grabbed his money
when Castro came into power,
then suddenly he was
released with all his money?"
"Shimon thinks
he's a Castro agent
"spying on Cubans in Florida.
"Sam shared that suspicion.
"That's why Santo sat on his a*s
and did nothing with all
that sh*t we gave him."
"He was probably
reporting everything
to Castro's agents."
According to an FBI memo,
Roselli tells an acquaintance
that he would like to
go back to the church
and would like to make
his peace with God.
At the end of his life,
he returns to something
that meant a great
deal to him early on,
which is Catholicism.
Don't forget, he takes his name
from a Renaissance painter
that did religious figures
in the Sistine Chapel.
I think he was at peace
about what probably
was gonna happen to him.
I remember very well.
His sister called me,
and she said, have you
seen Johnny Roselli?
And I went, no.
He went to the golf
course, and he played golf
and disappeared.
His brother-in-law goes
out looking for him.
And then he remembers a
joke that Johnny made
if I'm ever missing,
check the airports.
And there is the car.
Two weeks after they find
Johnny Roselli's car,
fishermen find a barrel floating
in Dumfoundling Bay in Miami.
When they open it up, they
see a corpse in there.
It's been strangled, chopped up,
and all of the limbs
have been sawed off.
John Roselli, the
second and last known
key underworld figure
in an alleged CIA plot
to k*ll Cuba's Fidel
Castro, has been m*rder*d.
A year ago, mobster Sam Giancana
was gunned down just
before he was supposed
to testify about the plot.
Roselli's body
has now been found
in a bay off Miami Beach.
Fishermen discovered
it wrapped in chains
and stuffed in an oil drum.
Florida authorities say it was
obviously a g*ng-style k*lling
and the body was not
meant to be found.
But gases from decomposition
caused the barrel to float.
At first, it seemed clear
that the Mob had k*lled Roselli.
It had all the trappings
of a classic Mob hit.
But very quickly, people started
to question that assumption.
They wondered if the CIA
might have been involved.
Attorney General Edward
Levi has asked the FBI now
to investigate the m*rder
of mobster John Roselli.
At first, officials assumed
that the one-time
organized crime figure
had been the victim of a
gangland assassination.
However, some people
questioned whether it was
just a gangland m*rder.
Is there any connection
between the m*rder
of Roselli and Giancana
and the assassination
plots against Castro?
Well, that's the kind of
thing that people think about.
But I
when you find out, let me know.
Moreover, Roselli's lawyer
has thrown doubt on the theory
that the m*rder was a
simple underworld k*lling,
insisting that Roselli,
who was 70 years old,
had retired from the rackets
and would not have been
a likely target for
a gangland m*rder.
One thing that is clear
is that the m*rder
was a very professional job,
and no one concerned
holds out much hope
that they'll ever figure
out who did it and why.
The way they k*lled Johnny
was to choke him quick.
Absolutely, absolutely.
But who's to say that the CIA
couldn't emulate a Mob k*lling?
So in the end, no one
knows whether it was
the Mob or the CIA that
k*lled Johnny Roselli.
Rudy Maxa in "The
Washington Post":
"The day after Roselli's
body was scooped
"from its crude coffin,
"his brother-in-law in New
Jersey, Peter Cardillo,
"told me, 'Down deep, in a way,
"'I probably hope
it was connected
"'with the Castro affair.
At least then, Johnny, he
would have died for a cause.'"
Johnny Roselli is a center point
in so many amazing
stories, from Las Vegas
to the plots to k*ll Castro.
He's almost the image of
what you expect to see
if you start to watch
"Casino" or some movie.
He is the smooth,
suave operator,
good-looking, flashy suit.
When he gets involved
not just with the Mob
but then later with the CIA,
he finds a new calling.
I would say that John
Roselli loved America.
I think that John
Roselli loved the idea
of coming from nothing
and making something
of yourself, right?
That's the American dream.
Roselli, I think he
had a deeper character
than a lot of the other people,
and I really do
think it has to do
with an honor code.
And, you know, in
some ways, arguably,
he kind of dies for it.
For the Mob, the great
victory for these people
is to not die in jail
or to not be whacked.
And the only two
that didn't end up
either whacked or in jail
were Accardo and Trafficante.
The fact that Tony
Accardo had a long career
in organized crime and
still died peacefully
shows just how successful he was
at his, shall we say,
chosen profession.
As for Santo Trafficante,
here we are 60 years later,
and we can't answer definitively
whether he was a double agent.
It would be almost
inconceivable to me
that Trafficante was
spying for Castro.
Of all the mobsters who
were involved in Cuba,
Trafficante was the one
that had the most to lose
by the Revolution.
But anything's possible.
The underworld is a
universe based on deception.
And maybe we'll never
know what's true
about Santo Trafficante.
If you were really
conducting an affair
with President Kennedy,
how could it have been
kept a secret for so long?
Well, I think a
tremendous amount
is being revealed right now
that many journalists
turned their heads against.
They had no intention
of writing anything
about Jack Kennedy
and his private life.
They did nothing but
write about, really,
the myth of Camelot.
I was supposed to be on
a show this afternoon,
and Bill Boggs, I
believe his name is,
he would not interview me.
So she was booked on the show,
and the book came through.
Over the weekend,
I'm reading the book,
and, Jesus.
She's introduced
to JFK by Sinatra.
Sinatra's hanging out
with Sam Giancana,
the head of the Chicago Mob.
All manner of salacious
things are happening.
And, you know, Kennedy's dead.
Who is gonna refute these?
These are all allegations.
And I announced to the producer,
no, I'm not interviewing.
Why?
I said, look, we had
Sinatra on this show.
To the birthday party.
This book makes Frank look bad.
I did it out of loyalty to Frank
and, on a second level,
Jacqueline Onassis.
Three days later, a letter
comes from Frank Sinatra.
"Dear Bill, my
sincere thanks to you
"for your refusing to talk to
the hustler with the agent.
"I think you showed great
class and marvelous taste.
"Good luck and take care,
Francis Albert."
Oh, boy.
At that time, in 1977, the
FBI and the Secret Service
were denying Kennedy
had any affairs,
even though it turns out,
a lot of it was true.
But I had no reason
to know it was true.
Judith had been used by
all these powerful men
but then was not believed when
she wanted to tell her story.
The expense of believing in
the myth of these powerful men
is that she was discredited
when at least a lot
of her story was true.
In America, we can be so
susceptible to the mythology
and trying to preserve that.
The Americans had
this self-view,
and I think still do, that
everything we do is good.
This was the mindset.
You know, we were
a grand superpower.
We could play the
game of risk and win.
But the secret w*r against
Castro and Cuba failed,
and Castro survived for decades.
You have to tip your hat,
either admiringly or grudgingly,
to him and his
security services.
They probably survived
more serious attempts
by a more coherent and powerful
foreign intelligence agency
than anybody in human history.
He was inflated by
all these other people
trying to neutralize him.
Left to his own devices, he
might have been forgotten.
But paranoia inflates things.
And then it becomes part
of government policy.
The true last man
standing is Castro.
Today the last historic
political figure
of the Cold w*r is gone.
The front cover of
the "Miami Herald,"
one word, very simple: "Dead."
People here are not protesting.
They are celebrating.
The literacy campaign was
an incredible achievement.
You know, he created
world-class public medicine,
creating a social welfare state.
So the Cuban
Revolution benefited
the lives of many, many
Cubans over generations.
That said, after the
collapse of the Soviet Union,
the Cuban economy
went into a tailspin.
The tragedy for Cuba is
that they have the machines
but no petrol to run them.
And there were immense
food shortages.
Castro's Cuba is a
land of contradictions.
It has free medical care,
but political opposition
is suppressed, and the
economy is a disaster.
Some good things can
be said about him.
Some very bad things can
be said about his regime.
But Fidel Castro, for
better or for worse,
was the longest
significant dictator
in Latin American history.
He put a little
Caribbean island nation
on the world map,
and Cuba has played,
since 1959, 1960,
a world role that is far greater
than its physical size.
I always like to say my
hero is Fidel Castro.
He wore fatigues,
never had a shave,
had the best cigars
in the world,
and owned a Caribbean island.
I mean, how good does it get?
That's Fidel Castro.
The moral of the story is
that it's probably a
lot harder to change
the world than you think.
A superpower that had
all these advantages
believed it could implement
its will, and it couldn't.
They felt, with
Castro's grandiose ego,
that to humiliate him
would be worse than death.
The irony of that is, that
had a boomerang effect,
and it humiliated them.
It became a permanent
state of humiliation
for the forces of power that
were trying to k*ll Castro.
We should not have involved
ourselves with the Mafia.
An organization that
does so is losing control
of the security of
its information.
If I read you
correctly, you're saying
it's the involvement
with the Mafia
that disturbed you
and not the decision
to assassinate a foreign leader?
Correct.
What ended up contouring
a lot of these things
was an individual's
personal demons.
What were their ego demons?
What were their
self-storytelling demons?
What were their
family dynamic demons?
What were their sexual demons?
Whatever that is, there
was an awful lot of that
at the center of this.
When the demons are
in the driver's seat
and they're given power
Time and time again,
we see that the country
isn't able to really
pull ourselves back
from the brink
Of a handful of people.
And to me, that
is what undergirds
a lot of this story.
And so the plot goes forward.
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01x06 - Fallout
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Reveals the startling tale of the CIA's, the mob's, and Sinatra's Rat Pack's connections from Vegas to Miami to Havana, exploring America's most amazing espionage operations ever.
Reveals the startling tale of the CIA's, the mob's, and Sinatra's Rat Pack's connections from Vegas to Miami to Havana, exploring America's most amazing espionage operations ever.