Final_Judgment

[276] Final Judgment 337
Hoffa told him to order "the Mafia" to assassinate President John F.
Kennedy.
According to Ragano's unlikely story, Ragano took the message to New
Orleans rackets boss Carlos Marcello and to Tampa mob chieftain Santos
Trafficante, both of whom, we have seen, were immediate underlings of Meyer
Lansky.
Presumably they complied with Hoffa's order, in Ragano's version of
the story, because, after all, Kennedy was indeed shot dead. 745 However, as
Mark Lane has commented, "Hoffa didn't give orders to the Mafia. The
Mafia gave orders to Hoffa." 746
WHY THE HOFFA STORY DOESN'T WASH
Ragano's primary "evidence" that Trafficante was involved in JFK's
murder was a comment made by Trafficante to the effect that "We should
have killed Bobby," referring to then-Attorney General Robert F. Kennedy.
Not that Trafficante admitted that "we" killed JFK—only that "we should have
killed Bobby."
Now all of this is most peculiar in that Ragano says that he—a toplevel
criminal lawyer with high-ranking connections—managed to
"suppress" these memories until just recently.
Ragano said he was "guilty and ashamed" because of his association
with organized crime; according to Ragano, his guilt feelings caused him to
suppress those memories. However, he might also have been interested in
adding some spice to his memoirs which were later published.
What's more, Ragano, who was appealing a second federal income tax
evasion conviction, might also have had something else in mind by telling
this story which clears the CIA and any other federal agencies that may have
been involved in the assassination and its cover-up.
WHO KILLED HOFFA?
Hoffa biographer Dan Moldea shed some interesting "inside"
information regarding the truth about Hoffa—and his murder. Moldea
reports: "Ironically enough, attorney William Bufalino . . . may have
inadvertently pointed a finger in the right direction. He was attempting to
suggest that the mob had nothing to do with Hoffa's murder, preferring to
shift the blame on the government, but he put it this way:
`Tell the FBI to look into the CIA. And tell the CIA to look into the
FBI. Then you'll have the answer [to the Hoffa case.]' And he added that it
was his belief that Hoffa's murder was related to those of [Sam] Giancana
747
and Johnny] Rosselli.
(In Chapter 11, of course, we examined the strange deaths of Sam
Giancana and Johnny Rosselli and concluded, contrary to popular myth, that
the two Mafia figures were not, in fact, the victims of "Mafia" hits at all—
but were, instead, snuffed out if not by the CIA itself, certainly at its behest.)