In that article, it's claimed that Marcello admitted to an associate his involvement. What specifically is the incident referred to here? Can anyone help?

I find it immensely ironic to see conspiracy theorists arguing with each other about the legitimacy of their claims...when they are both so far off the map that those of us back on the ground can only look up...and laugh.

If the mob was so deeply involved with wacking JFK, why haven't we heard ANY of the mobs guys that ratted on their associates mention a PEEP of this since the Rico laws were passed? I know, because some FBI guy knows some CIA guy, and as a favor, they destroyed those portions of the tapes, right???

See, this junk just continues to perpetuate itself. I bet the next thing you'll say is that Marcello, the Mob, the CIA and Lee Harvey Oswald helped write ALL of Shakespeare's plays 500 years ago....why stop there, maybe they stabbed Julius Caesar too...

Both Carlos Marcello and the head of the Chicago mob (friend of Sinatra - can't remember his name at the moment) WERE taped bragging about and otherwise admitting to their and the mob's involvement. This has been widely reported. Also, Johnny Roselli was set to testify to same before the House Assassinations Committee, but was unable to attend due to being hacked up, stuffed in a barrel and tossed in the Hudson River.

Nope, no conspiracy here. *rolls eyes*

With the caveat that I have not read the Waldron and Hartmann book, I would nonetheless pose a couple of questions and offer an observation or two.

The authors' repeated references to "Kennedy associates" does not convince me of anything. Several named -- Cuban exile leaders and Dean Rusk (of all people) -- were not Kennedy intimates and were unlikely in the extreme to be privy to anything of substance the President might have been thinking or doing with respect to Cuba. Rusk, in fact, was so out of favor that Kennedy planned to replace him after the 1964 election.

There is simply no credible way Rusk and these exiles would be told of anti-Castro coup planning while Robert McNamara was left in the dark. It is also questionable whether the Kennedy's would have revealed anything to Max Taylor at that point, given their deteriorating relationship over Viet Nam and the operation of foreign policy.

Regardless of the authors' logical gymnastics, it still makes no sense that the mob would've developed a plan to kill JFK out of the bones of a Kennedy-sponsored anti-Castro coup operation. Success would stop any purported anti-Castro coup cold; failure would get them killed. Had the mob decided to take the chance, and had there been an anti-Castro plan in operation in the Kennedy administration, Giancana and the others would have waited a couple of weeks, at the very least. It's nonsense to try to argue that they wouldn't have done this.

I ask the authors: why did the Mafia believe it could fix the investigation? Apart from its interconnections with the local cops in Tampa, Chicago, and Dallas, had it also infiltrated the Secret Service? Could it fix the autopsy to obscure the number and source of the shots? Could it frame Oswald? After all, Oswald got the Book Depository job in the first place through Ruth and Michael Paine, who had no known connection to the mob, but were connected to government operations. Could the Mafia get the Paines' income tax records sealed as secret for national security purposes?

The most likely origin of the murders of both John and Robert Kennedy is the CIA/military nexus. This is the place where the key elements of successful murder on that level might be put together and where the necessary elements of a protective cover-up could be handled. This is also where the Kennedys had engendered deep hatred, being that U.S. policies were moving swiftly toward an end to the cold war. Kennedy had agreed to a neutral Laos, the Test Ban Treaty, a secret deal on Cuba which involved dismantling missile bases in Turkey, and the replacement of 'massive deterrence' with counter-insurgency.

The President had fired Allen Dulles and Charles Cabell after the Bay of Pigs because the CIA had lied to him and tried to manipulate him. Researchers and investigators familiar with the internal politics of the country, especially at that time, are aware that the CIA engaged in numerous secret operations which ran against American policies and which in many cases contravened Presidential orders. I ask these authors to explain, if JFK was preparing to move against Castro, why he had the Treasury Department and the FBI raid anti-Castro exile training camps and seize their munitions in late July of 1963?

It is probable that the mob at least knew of the Dallas plot in advance, especially because it was working with the CIA on anti-Castro operations at this time. But the tail could not have wagged the donkey. A Mafia-originated plot would've been exposed and punished, even had it been successful. But it was not a Mafia operation. Charles De Gaulle, President of France and a man who knew a little something about assassination plots, having dodged a few himself, said immediately, upon learning of Dallas, "the police did it, or they allowed it to be done."

What is most troubling to me about the Waldron and Hartmann thesis is the attribution to the Kennedys of a plot to murder Castro. This not only obscures the reality of what that administration was doing but also the very reasons for JFK's murder. Over the past thirty years there have been periodic claims that the Kennedys were involved in, planned, or authorized various black ops and/or political murders. These claims are always supported by -- surprise -- CIA-connected sources. They are always false. Previous such claims have been discredited. This one, too, will be. It's possible that given the trajectory of JFK's presidency he was capable of signing off on a coup plot in 1961 or perhaps 1962, but by 1963 that would never have happened. To claim this is to help obscure the reasons for his murder.

No one can listen to Kennedy's speech at American University in June, 1963, and not recognize that this was an extraordinary man who was moving irrevocably toward peace and an end to the arms race. That, above all other things, is the reason he had to die.