Final_Judgment

[266] Final Judgment 327
1964, had a hand in setting what became the alleged Castro-sponsored
assassination plot in motion.
Pearson and Anderson claimed that: "President Johnson is sitting on a
political H-bomb, an unconfirmed report that Sen. Robert Kennedy may
have approved an assassination plot which then possibly backfired against
his late brother." The assassination plot alleged was one of those hatched
between the CIA and "the Mafia." 714
According to what can most charitably be described as the fanciful
account by Pearson and Anderson, Castro had captured a number of CIA-
Mafia hit men who were gunning for him and then "turned" them; in short,
that the anti-Castro hit men then had a change of heart and returned to the
United States and killed Kennedy.
It was some years later that Anderson revealed that Mafia figure Johnny
Rosselli had, in fact, been the alleged initial source of the story which
Anderson said had been told to CIA-linked Washington lawyer, Edward P.
Morgan.
(In Chapter 11 we reviewed Rosselli's involvement in the Castro
assassination plots upon which the Pearson/Anderson story relied, in part,
as a basis for its theory.)
WHY THE COVER STORY DOESN'T WASH . . .
With good reasons which they cite, Rosselli's biographers, Charles
Rappleye and Ed Becker, don't believe the Pearson/Anderson story in the
least. They write:
"Not mentioned in the column was the simple, powerful argument
against Cuban sponsorship of the Kennedy assassination—the powerful risk
Castro would run if a plot against the American president was discovered.
As the [U.S. Senate's] Church Committee [investigating CIA assassination
plots] noted, such a blunder would have 'exposed Cuba to invasion and
destruction.'
"Later, it was learned that Castro had opened new channels of
diplomacy, at the time of the shooting in Dallas, showing himself, in the
words of one diplomat, 'anxious to establish communications with the
United States.' Finally, with the benefit of hindsight, Rosselli's story of
CIA marksmen being 'turned' seems highly implausible, a product of
Korean War recruiting films.
"Nor did Anderson note his own close relationship to his source; that
Morgan had no evidence, beyond Rosselli's statements, to back up the
Castro retaliation theory; nor that Rosselli may have been pursuing his
own, independent agenda." 715
Mafia enforcer and one-time "acting boss" of the Mafia families in
California, Jimmy Fratianno, told of a meeting with Rosselli in 1976,
around the time that Rosselli was providing congressional investigators
with details of CIA-Organized Crime assassination plots aimed at Fidel
Castro.