Deep Politics And the Death of JFK

Deep Politics and the ... Scott, Peter Dale Best Price: $4.76 Buy New $26.14 (as of 12:35 UTC - Details)

This is the best book so far on the assassination of President John Kennedy. Peter Dale Scott, the author, is a former Canadian diplomat and professor of English at the University of California, which published this book. Scott makes clear why after over 40 years, the Kennedy assassination still affects our lives.

Scott says that at this point it is not possible to say what specific individuals plotted to kill Kennedy. However, there is publicly available information, easy to obtain, on why a much larger group of individuals was willing to stage an official cover-up to make it appear that the Kennedy assassination was simply a horrible accident without political significance.

Scott is not accusing any of the people involved in the cover-up of being part of the assassination plot, but he does say if we understand why they were so unwilling to do a serious public investigation of the facts around the assassination, we will understand why Kennedy was killed and what social forces the assassination came from.

FBI, CIA, the Mob, and... Stich, Rodney Best Price: $12.00 Buy New $27.99 (as of 11:35 UTC - Details)

To start with, J. Edgar Hoover, the director of the FBI, was in charge of investigations for the commission his friend President Lyndon Johnson set up, supposedly to find the facts about Kennedy’s death. The commission was headed by Earl Warren, Chief Justice of the Supreme Court. The Warren Commission’s report asks – was Jack Ruby, who killed Kennedy’s alleged assassin Lee Harvey Oswald, connected with organized crime? The Commission says no. Its investigation, conducted by Hoover’s FBI, asked Ruby’s long-time friend Dave Yaras if Ruby was connected with the mob. Yaras said no. That was enough for the commission.

The commission’s report does not mention that in 1949 this same Dave Yaras was on trial for an important mob hit when the main witness against him was murdered and Yaras went free.

Yet the word of such a person was enough to keep the commission from investigating the possible role of organized crime in the Kennedy assassination.

To Peter Dale Scott, the question is not what the role of organized crime was. What he asks is why did the director of the FBI and the Chief Justice of the Supreme Court take the word of someone like Dave Yaras seriously? Or pretend to take it seriously?

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For 20 years, up until shortly before John F. Kennedy became president, FBI Director Hoover denied that there was any such thing as organized crime. Although the FBI kept major Mafia figures under surveillance, they were seldom prosecuted at all, usually not by the FBI.

In return for not being prosecuted, the executives of organized crime, as we may call them, gave the FBI tips that led to the capture of small-time crooks who had displeased them. Jack Ruby was a low-level organized crime bureaucrat. According to Ruby’s FBI file, which was not released until 15 years after the Kennedy assassination, he was the one who gave permission for a shipment of heroin to pass through Dallas. Yet the FBI had him down as a potential criminal informant, one who was willing to give them information about illegal activity in Dallas. Ruby was never prosecuted for his role in the heroin deal.

It is not only law enforcement agencies who developed such relationships of mutual benefit with organized crime. During World War II, the Office of Special Services, which became the CIA, got powerful Mafia figures in prison in the US to send messages to Mafia leaders in Sicily asking them to prepare the way for landings by Allied troops. In return these Mafia figures were released from prison and deported to Italy after the war.

The end of the war did not end friendly Mafia contacts with the US government. After Mafia don Vito Genovese was deported to Italy he became an interpreter for the US occupying army and obtained American military trucks which he used for his black marketing activities.

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August 5, 2009