Final_Judgment

238 The Errand Boy [177]
The Lansky connection to Ruby's role in the JFK assassination
conspiracy and cover-up goes much deeper than we have explored thus far.
LANSKY'S COURIER IN DALLAS
One day prior to the JFK assassination one of Meyer Lansky's
longtime personal couriers, one Jim Braden, was visiting in Dallas. He was
also on the scene in Dealey Plaza when JFK was assassinated, actually
being taken into custody by the Dallas police, and then released. Standard
accounts of the role of organized crime in the JFK assassination conspiracy
have frequently pointed out Braden's strange doings in Dallas. What has
been ignored, however, is his close relationship to Meyer Lansky.
David Scheim, writing in Contract on America, provides his readers a
lengthy discussion of Braden, but never once mentions his connection with
Lansky. Scheim prefers to leave the reader with the impression that Braden
was a "Mafia" courier—not a Lansky courier. 480
Even G. Robert Blakey and Richard Billings (Scheim's chief source)
acknowledge in their own book that Braden was, reportedly, a "personal
courier" for Lansky. "In the end," say Blakey and Billings, "we reached no
firm judgment on Braden's mob connections or on whether his activities in
Dallas were in any way related to the assassination." 481
What Blakey does not mention, however, is that Braden was so much a key
figure in the Lansky Organized Crime Syndicate that he was a charter
member of the Lansky Syndicate-financed La Costa Country Club. In
Chapter 10, as we have seen, it was Blakey who was on the payroll of
Lansky associate, Morris Dalitzone of the founders of La Costa, after Dalitz
and his partners sued Penthouse magazine for publicizing the mob links of
the Carlsbad, California resort. Blakey, in fact, served, in effect, as a
character reference for the Lansky Syndicate defending the resort against the
accusations—something Blakey, for obvious reasons, would not be inclined
to brag about when proclaiming himself a crime-buster.
BRADEN, RUBY & FERRIE
The late Bernard Fensterwald supplies us some of the interesting details
about the activities of Lansky's courier: "Braden also had some other
startling connections which were also never discovered by the Warren
Commission. Jim Braden had visited the same Dallas office of the H. L.
Hunt Oil Company that Jack Ruby visited on November 21, 1963—the
afternoon before the assassination—and at approximately the same time.
"Braden was also staying at the Cabana Motel in Dallas—a reported
"mob hang-out" that was frequented by Jack Ruby and various Ruby
associates. Ruby visited the Cabana Motel sometime around midnight on
the night before the assassination—November 21, 1963—while Jim Braden
was a guest there. Braden also has a possible connection to the late David
Ferrie. According to information documented by Peter Noyes, Braden worked
out of an office suite—Room 1701—in the Pere Marquette Building in New