Fourth Reich Archaeology - The Warren Commission Decided 13, Pt. 1 - Side B: You Don't Know Jack (Ruby)

Episode Date: May 30, 2025

The Warren Commission Decided Series is back with another installment of our ongoing series within a series within a series on Jack Ruby. The great Max Arvo joins us in the excavation once again. Max is a writer, researcher, musician, poet, and more, and you can find all of his work at his website here: https://maxarvo.com. We all have Max to thank for one of the most substantial original contributions to JFK research in a generation - namely, the degree to which CIA psychiatrist and MKULTRA heavyweight Louis Jolyon West became involved in the “treatment” and handling of Jack Ruby. Max has been in the Jolly West archives, he has stared into the abyss, and he has agreed to guide us like Dante’s Virgil through the hellscape of Jack Ruby’s life. His series of articles is brilliant; they’re all available for free, and you really should read them here: https://www.kennedysandking.com/content/author/415-maxarvo.In Side B of Part 1, we pick up where we left off, laying the foundation for this epic excavation into the Ruby mines. We begin with another excerpt from Jack’s Warren Commission testimony as it keeps getting weirder and weirder. Then, we follow Jack from his unremarkable service as a mechanic stateside in WWII, to his riding a southerly wave of mafia migration to Dallas, to his neurotic struggle to stay afloat in Dallas’s club scene. Most people don't know that Ruby played host to music legends like The Band, Hank Williams, and more, besides just strippers. And we end off with his “Cuban exploits" of the late 50s bringing him smack-dab in the middle of the CIA-Mafia war on Castro. You will not want to miss it.Hear the whole Part 1 by signing up for our Patreon here: Patreon.com/fourthreicharchaeology.

When we last left off, Jack Ruby was in the middle of his testimony before the Warren Commission on June 7, 1964. The interrogation took place in Ruby's jail cell at the Dallas County Jail, located right on Daly Plaza, in the very same building, where Ruby had killed Lee Harvey Oswald just over his jail. six months earlier. The cell was packed to the bars, present where Chief Justice Earl Warren, who served as Ruby's primary interlocutor, as well as Commissioner Gerald Ford, Commission Council J. Lee Rankin, Junior Council Arlen Spector, Secret Service Agent Elmer Moore, and a handful of other lawyers and lawmen. Jack had scarcely been able to gather his thoughts enough to set forth a cogent narrative of his activities that culminated in his murder of Oswald

on November 24, 1963, just two days after Oswald had been taken into custody in connection with the assassination of President Kennedy and Officer Jefferson Davis Tippett. The reason for Ruby's distractibility was his expressed concern over his safety and that of his family. Ruby begged Chief Justice Warren to transfer him from Dallas, where he was under constant observation by the Dallas police to Washington, D.C., where he believed he'd be freer to tell his story to the commission without fear of reprisal. Boys, I am in a tough spot, I tell you that. Agent Moore interjects.

You recall when I talk to you, there were certain things I asked you not to tell me at the time for certain reasons that you were probably going in trial at that time, and I respected your position on that and asked you not to tell me certain things. but this isn't the place for me to tell you what I want to tell. The commission is looking into the entire matter, and you're part of it, should be. Chief Warren, your life is in danger in this city. Do you know that? No, I don't know that. If that is the thing that you don't want to talk about, you can tell me, if you wish, when this is all over, just be.

between you and me. No, I would like to talk to you in private. You may do that when you finish your story. You may tell me that phase of it. I bet you haven't had a witness like me and your whole investigation. Is that correct? There are many witnesses whose memory has not been as good as yours. I tell you that honestly.

My reluctance to talk, you haven't had any witness. and telling the story and finding so many problems. You have a greater problem than any witness we have had. I have a lot of reasons for having those problems. I know that, and we want to respect your rights, whatever they may be, and I only want to hear what you are willing to tell us because I realize that you still have a great problem before you, and I am not trying to press you.

I came here because I thought you wanted to tell us the story, and I think the story should be told for the public, and it will eventually be made public. If you want to do that, you are entitled to do that, and if you want to have it verified as the thing can be verified by a polygraph test, you may have that too. I will undertake to do that for you, But at all events, we must first have the story that we are going to check against it.

When are you going back to Washington? I'm going back very shortly after we finish this hearing. I'm going to have some lunch. Can I make a statement? Yes. If you request me to go to Washington with you right now, that couldn't be done, could it? No, it could not be done.

It could not be done. done, there are good many things involved in that, Mr. Ruby. What are they? Well, the public attention that it would attract and the people who would be around. We have no place there for you to be safe when we take you out, and we are not law enforcement officers, and it isn't our responsibility to go into anything of that kind. And certainly, it couldn't be done on a moment's notice this way. From what I read in the paper, it made certain precautions for you coming here, but you got here.

There are no precautions taken at all. There were some remarks in the paper about some crackpots. I don't believe everything I read in the paper. In that respect, the Chief Justice is in public life. People in public life are well aware they don't please everyone and they get these threats. threats. Incidentally, if it is the part about George Senator talking about the Earl Warren Society, Chief Justice is aware of that phase, and I'm sure he would like to hear anything that you have to say if it affects the security. Before you finish the rest of your statement, may I ask you a

question? And this is one of the questions we came here to ask you. Did you know Lee Harvey Oswald prior to the shooting. That is why I want to take the lie detector test. Just saying no isn't sufficient. I will afford you that opportunity. All right. I will afford you that opportunity. You can't do both of them at one time.

Gentlemen, my life is in danger here. Not with my guilty plea of execution. Do I sound sober enough to you as I say this? You do. You sound entirely sober. From the moment I started my testimony, have I sounded as though, with the exception of becoming emotional, have I sounded as though I made sense what I was speaking about? You have indeed. I understood everything you have said. If I haven't, it's my fault. Then I follow this up. I may not live tomorrow to give any further testimony. The reason that is that I may not live tomorrow to give any further testimony. The reason why I add to this, since you assure me that I have been speaking since by then,

I might be speaking sense by following what I have said. The only thing I want to get out to the public, and I can't say it here, is with authenticity, with sincerity of the truth of everything, and why my act was committed, but it can't be said here. It can be said, it's got to be said amongst people of the highest authority that would give me the benefit of the doubt. And following that, immediately give me the lie detector test after I do make the statement. Chairman Warren, if you felt that your life was in danger at the moment, how would you feel? Wouldn't you be reluctant to go on speaking even though you request me to do so? I think I might have some reluctance if I was in your position.

Yes, I think I would. I think I would figure it out very carefully as to whether it would endanger me or not. If you think that anything that I am doing or anything I am asking you is endangering you in any way, shape, or form, I want you to feel absolutely free to say that the interview is over. What happens then? I didn't accomplish anything. No, nothing has been accomplished. Well, then you wouldn't follow up with anything further? There wouldn't be anything to follow up if you hadn't completed your state.

You said you have the power to do what you want to do, is that correct? Exactly. Without any limitations. Within the purview of the executive order which established the commission, we have the right to take testimony of anyone we want in this whole situation, and we have the right if we start. So choose to do it to verify that statement in any way that we wish to do it. But then you don't have a right to take a prisoner back with you when you want to.

No, we have the power to subpoena witnesses to Washington if we want to do it. But we have taken the testimony of 200 or 300 people, I would imagine, right here in Dallas without going to Washington. Yes, but those people aren't Jack Ruby. No, they weren't. They weren't. Colonialism or imperialism, as the slave system of the West is called, is not something that's just confined to England or France or the United States. Every nation, in every region.

now has a decision to make. It's one huge complex or combine. Either you are with us or you are with the terrorists. And this international power structure is used to suppress the masses of dark-skinned people all over the world and exploit them of their natural resources. We found no evidence of concern. of a conspiracy, foreign or domestic, the Warren Commission, the science. I'll never apologize for the United States of America, ever.

I don't care what the facts are. In 1945, we began to require information, which showed that there were two wars going. His job, he said, was to protect the Western way of life. The primitive simplicity of their minds renders the more easy victims of a big lie than a small, For example, we're the CIA. Now here's a mile. It usually takes a national crisis. It usually takes a national crisis.

Freedom can never be secure. Pearl Harbor. A lot of killers. We've got a lot of killers. Why you think our country's so innocent? A example of the CIA. Now he has a marvel. This is Fourth Reich Archaeology.

I'm Dick. And I'm Don. Welcome back for Side B of our first installment of our series within a series within a series. That's right, it's You Don't Know Jack, Ruby. Our deep dive into the mysterious assassin of Lee Harvey Oswald. Joining us once again for this excavation is reigning Ruby researcher Max Arvo. Now, if you're listening to this, it means that you are probably not a Patreon subscriber because the entirety of part one is up as a unified whole over there on patreon.com

and if you would like to take that in and support us, please do so. But we won't hold it against you if you don't. And we kindly ask that you rate, review, subscribe, and spread the word about our pod so that we can reach other listeners out there with a similar yen for that sweet, sweet knowledge. Now, we won't do any recaps. If you haven't listened to the first part yet, please do so. But otherwise, we will just pick it right up where we left off

right around the time of World War II, after Jack Ruby has already gotten his life off to a rocky start. The fifth of ten children born to poor Jewish immigrant parents in the Chicago streets dominated by Al Capone's outfit, Ruby was just getting started on a life of crime. All right, Dick, maybe you can take us to the next step in Ruby's life trajectory after war breaks out. Yeah, so during World War II, he's actually drafted and he serves in the Army Air Force as a mechanic at U.S. bases until the 1946. By all accounts, he has sort of an honorable record and is discharged in 1946 where he returns to Chicago land.

And I think he stayed there and ultimately left to Dallas because of some failed business ventures. And he went to Dallas to help operate this nightclub, right? it was his sister's nightclub that he sort of goes down to Dallas to sort of help out. And this is his sister who, I think Ruby affectionately referred to as his wife. Right. Yeah, Eva, her marital name ended up being Grant, who is, yeah, she's, there's a couple of the siblings that are in his life in a big way throughout, and well, I have some, doubts as to what extent they've really worked in his best interests further down the line.

But yeah, and I can fill in some of that move to Dallas side of the story, if you like. Yeah, yeah, why don't you tell us what happens when, I think, by 1947, he moves down to Dallas to sort of help out his sister. Yeah, so this is, there's a whole other side of this. story that, again, I'll try not to take too long over, but it's again related to national syndicate manoeuvres and power games. And what happened in 46 was, the very, very quick context is up to that point, Benny Binion, whose name you might know from some of the syndicate stories, ran the, what was initially bootlegging and then gambling, and the whole

basically the underworld in Texas, in Dallas, in El Paso and places like that. And then he leaves and heads over to Nevada by 1946 and becoming a big guy in Vegas. And he actually founded the World Series of Poker. And there's sort of clips of him at all those events hanging out, being thought of as kind of a charming, interesting, kind of uncle who will tell you some lots of wild stories if you ask him the right question kind of thing. But it wasn't, a seriously brutal, lethal mob guy, but so he moves to Vegas and in 46 there's so that there's room there or someone else need to take over and it's the the national syndicate particularly the Chicago crowd make moves to take it over after billions left and that crowd includes people

like Paul Roland Jones who is another mob figure who Ruby ends up seeing in the week before the Kennedy assassination and is a fairly big figure in the National Syndicate for a long time. And he, along with others, go to Dallas to set it all up, set up the move in and to take it all over. And there's a sheriff who was briefly, I think only in for two years, and then after he basically tries to not just be in the pocket of the mob, unlike. the one before and then unlike the one who follows him very shortly after. So he sets up a, a kind of a sting, uh, wired up to, because they actually just go straight to him, uh, that the mob guys from Chicago to, um, negotiate just what they would, how much they'd pay

and, and discuss their plans for taking over, um, taking over the entire underworld in Dallas, which is, that's the level of kind of, I guess, confidence they had that, that the sheriff would be on his side. So they were actually wired up and Jones and a couple of these others get charged and convicted for all that. And supposedly in those tapes, so all that we have is the kind of accounts of them that were made after the fact. But the sheriff who very shortly after was kicked out, called Steve Guthrie, the way I see it is that he was just a guy who unlike all the rest, just figured he wouldn't play ball and then very shortly after was replaced it again with someone who would

but he said always that Ruby Ruby's name came up loads in those discussions even though the records after the fact don't mention Ruby but it tracks in loads of ways and he says that they were always there I think he said something like if you can look at the actual tapes you'll hear it, that Ruby's name came up a lot as they were talking about

how they would set things up in Dallas and it would basically be Ruby as at least in this account he would be there as a kind of the front man for the businesses that would have the gambling and everything else the drugs and booze

and prostitution and things like that and that he would be yeah, well anyway I believe it but it comes down to the actual tapes and it tracks with everything so there's this mob move of Chicago mob guys into Dallas as part of the national you know syndicate but the Chicago guys leading the lead in the charge into Dallas to take over and yeah I believe that he was a part of that crowd again if that's true it's interesting that as with the Reagan thing um the other

guys got charged and Ruby nothing ever nothing happened to him so then he moves in very, very shortly after that, even though there's the sting, it basically comes to nothing and that sheriff's kicked out. And yeah, and so that's the context, as I understand it, for Ruby moving to Dallas. And I also do not think it's, there's some evidence, I think that Eva Grant and some of the siblings

were also involved in kind of smuggling things, through their businesses and things like that but the bottom line as quickly is the way I see it is that Ruby moved there as part of the at least at the very same time as the National Syndicate moved into Dallas to take over operations there and and it yeah it tracks with everything so that's kind of how I that's at least the context as I understand it. Yeah, that's really interesting and I think not surprising that his sister would be involved in the rackets given that they emerged from the same context and had really the same upbringing

after all on these streets of Chicago. Right. yeah and it sounds like she was also a pretty um tough cookie um and um one of the lawyers who the one who he was a percy foreman was a guy who was on the case where i think he lasted a day between melvin berlis and then the guy who followed hubert winston smith and one of the reasons he said was particularly um eva grant he just couldn't uh he knew he couldn't bear it um that she was extremely yeah she was demanding and and and uh hard-headed and yeah one of those personalities that you know you could see being someone able to um swim in those kind of those kind of

waters i think that ruby and eva would even come to blows with each other like there's stories of them getting into fist fights and not speaking to each other for extended periods of time I think for a period preceding the assassination, they were not even on speaking terms for some time because Ruby had roughed her up so badly, or so the story goes. Right. Yeah. Yeah, I am, yeah, I'm not, I hadn't heard that, but I've, yeah, it tracks with, just a lot I've read of, yeah, it's sounds like, I mean, as you can expect from what we've said about the upbringing, you know, probably not wired to handle conflict in a healthy way. But in the end, it seems like, I mean, literally in the end, after he died and around that time, seems like she was, you know, ultimately kind of there for him to some extent.

But definitely not. Yeah, I mean, it's a mess. And then there's the other brother, well, there's a few, but one of them, Earl Ruby shows up again, and he seems like the way I read it is that the three of them had some associations with all those kind of underworld stuff. But Ruby, Jack, the brother, seems to have been the guy with the most connections and, yeah.

Yeah, and it's good that you mentioned. Earl as well because he was also relocating to Dallas eventually and they had also connections in California during this time and both Jack and Earl changed their name around this post-war period from Rubenstein to Ruby kind of signifying washing out of the ethnicity of their identity and at least from Jack's point of view I don't think that the official narrative gets it wrong when it incorporates the testimony

from many acquaintances of Jack Ruby that he did have aspirations to be, somehow famous or well-known and Jack Ruby was a name that rolled off the tongue much more easily than Jacob Rubenstein. Right. Yeah. And there were definitely quite a lot of mob figures who, I mean, there were some, the ones who tended to last longest by the looks of it, were some who, there were some who,

wanted to stay in the shadows and just be ruthless, efficient operators and others. I think you could probably put Pugsy Siegel in that camp, maybe Mickey Cohen, West Coast people, you know, the ones around Hollywood, who were drawn to being kind of famous figures in their own right. And it seems that Ruby was in that kind of mindset. But also, as you said earlier, we're talking about him kind of hanging on coattails and, you know, sticking around the right kind of people i think there's also that he uh he if he wanted to be someone famous like that it was i think in actual fact he ended up more being attached to people who were actually um the bigger names yeah yeah and not just bigger names in the underworld of organized crime

but also in the overworld of celebrity and of spectacle, Jack Ruby had ambitions of his own, not so much as an on-stage guy, but as a promoter. So some anecdotes from his travails in the 1950s include one of my favorites. He managed a young pre-teen black. boy performer who performed under the name of Little Daddy for

a period of time doing song and dance stuff that ended up not going anywhere and he also this is a point of distinction to make again from sort of the

simplified official narrative that clocks Jack Ruby as a mere strip club owner or operator. He also had clubs that were not strip clubs. So one of the biggest ones was actually a country western bar with popular country music performers coming through there. And one of the acts that came through was the Hawks, which the true heads might know was the name of the band before they became the band, as the late great Robbie Robertson himself described.

When we played Jack Ruby's Club in Fort Worth, Texas, and the Jack Ruby in this place, and this place was, you could smell danger in the air in this thing. And this club had been caught on fire, and it, so many stories. The stories went down in this place, and it half burnt down. And rather than tearing it down, he just took off the rest of the roof and called it the Skyline Lounge. We had to stay there overnight in this club to guard our equipment. Because they said, we can't guarantee that somebody won't break into this place. It wasn't that secure and steal your equipment.

And we had to do this with it. this with guns sitting there because if somebody was going to come into, what are you going to do? He did this. And one night, we heard this strange sound. Two of us, Rick Danco and me were sitting there. We're playing cards. And we heard this weird scratching and this sound. And Rick picked up the gun and said, I don't know what that is, but I'm going to shoot somebody if they come in here. And it was dogs like police dogs. And it was dogs. And and they were scratching at the floor, and these cops were coming in.

Rick was pointing a gun at them when they came around the corner. That's not the place to point a gun at a cop, at any place. And they said, boy, you boys are lucky, we didn't let these dogs go, because they would have, they would have eat up your ass, I'll tell you right? And Rick said, no, they wouldn't. And another was one of my all-time favorite artists, Hank Williams,

senior during the 1950s at a point in Hank's life when he was really hitting the bottle quite hard and legend has it that Jack Ruby would actually charge patrons a couple of bucks to go backstage and take a picture of themselves next to a passed out Hank Williams in the green room. So, you know, you talk about Jack Ruby and his relationship with the spotlight. Whether he sought the spotlight or whether he sought to be the man behind the scenes, it was something that was never too far away from his mind. But of course, that relationship wasn't something that he could really control. There's some confusion, I think, as to whether he was always a nightclub owner

that he's frequently described as, but a lot of times he was not holding the keys to the business, but he was managing it on behalf of the money guys behind the scenes. Yeah, like he wasn't the guy. I mean, he definitely was involved on a kind of day-to-day basis with arranging events and finding dancers and paying them and dealing with their troubles and things like that. So he was a guy who was a guy on the ground doing the day-to-day kind of grunt work. And not wealthy, none of them were, not the guy with his name on all the leases, I think, or with all the big money. but a kind of day-to-day worker in the trenches kind of thing right and it becomes relevant again

when we get to 1963 and some of the economic strife that ruby was undergoing right in proximity to the assassination which i think has its relevance to perhaps his motivations for doing what he did. But that gets started way back in this period of the 40s, the late 40s and the 50s, when he, you know, at some points in time, he will be the owner of a club. And then if it goes underwater, if it goes into debt, he'll give the papers, he'll give the ownership of the club to some of these mobbed up money guys. And he'll keep on running. the club for them as their employee, but won't have the actual ownership rights. It's kind of like a mafia mortgage, if you will.

Right. Like at any given time, they can repossess it. And that, to me, points to a pretty interesting dynamic in these mob businesses where you've got a fall guy or kind of a stool pigeon, an idiot like Ruby, who is standing by to do his best, to make money for the club as its owner, and then if he doesn't, then the bigger fish behind him can take the ownership, they can write off the losses, they can commingle the assets with whatever other scams they've got going on and then cycle it back to the Jack Ruby figures at another convenient time all the while like you said keeping them

at a low economic status and often indebted such that the Jack Ruby types while they may have some pretense for advancing up the ladder, they're pretty easy to keep in place in a very exploitable and manipulable position of economic dependency vis-a-vis the higher-ups in the organizational structure. Right, yeah. And I think probably also a dynamic of maybe. either keeping as a kind of a carrot on the stick the possibility that they would become a bigger player

or being happy with them thinking that they were bigger than they were and I mean as you're saying all that it reminded me of Oswald because I at least the way I see him at the moment of course this might all change as soon as I read one other thing or something but it seems to me that

You know, he was a figure who probably was one of several folk that someone like Angleton was, you know, had in mind as a full guy who may have thought of himself as in the know on things and on the inside, but wasn't quite and could always be, yeah, used and disposed of when it was, when it was to the benefit um yeah any other things to cover before moving on to cuba i don't think so um just to say again that some of these names we mentioned um mob figures and including that paul roland jones i just mentioned with the kind of spearheading that dallas move they will show up again you know um and it's a It's a small world, and maybe you can say it's coincidence, but it's verified absolutely that Paul Roland Jones, who led that Dallas move, was also a friend of Ruby. And I think, yeah, they met in person something like three days before the assassination,

along with a couple of other mob figures in Dallas. So just to say all these things that even if they're maybe 15 or even 20 years before everything that happened in November 63, they're um it's it's kind of uh well in some ways it makes it easier when you're looking into it all because the names don't really change that much overall that time you know the same that these small you know these cliques of people um yeah that they just show up again and again so yeah in the 1950s like many members of the mafia jack ruby starts to dip his toes in that warm Caribbean sea

looking at the island of Cuba. All right. So the context with Cuba is, you can't really overstate its importance to the national syndicate. And it's that same crowd of, I mean, it's particularly run by Lansky, but it's that whole milieu. so when you're saying that people going to Cuba and working in the casinos at that time there um I mean you know Lansky I think spent at that point practically half his time in the casinos there and and there were huge mob meetings of all the all the leaders of the mob in Havana in the in the casinos and it's not just there was some mob stuff there it was it was kind of the epicenter of it and so the stakes were pretty high and they had a lot

incentive to prevent Castro taking over. And at that point, quite a lot of them lost a hell of a lot of money when Castro took over. And that was, yeah, that was 59. And that's the same year that there's a verified trip that Ruby took to Cuba. And I think, if I'm remembering, right, that's even, I think it's even acknowledged in the Warren Commission. report. Yeah, it is. Yeah, the summer of 59, I think he returned to the United States on a special day, September 11th of 1959. Right, right. Okay, yeah, so even the Warren Commission acknowledges that. And that's a very interesting time to be going there. I mean, Castro's just taken over, the mobs just getting kicked out, or trying to save what it can.

but it was still all up in the air and some of those things I mean, you know, some mob figures were in jail after that and, you know, Lanski and other folk they last went there a few months after Castro took power so there was still

there was a lot to play for even after yeah, they first you know, took power and I don't know, I wouldn't see it as a time to take a little vacation there, but I can get into what we know at least, or some of what's known about that trip. It's another one of those things where the crucial details are, the really damning

ones are kind of brushed aside or ignored or excuses are made or statements are discounted in the official account. But when he went there, he also went with a guy called Lewis McWillie, who is a, I'm realizing even more important than I'd thought before. Oh, yeah. Yeah, and absolutely a figure in the mob, a big, big figure, and they were close friends, and it was often said that Ruby idolized McWilli, that's sort of said about a few people in Ruby's life, but that's a clear case where, at least what we've been told,

and the understanding is that he was definitely on his coattails, kind of following him. And that's someone where, I don't know that you can, I mean, if you're going to Cuba in 59 with a guy who is absolutely as mob as you can get, the idea that they're just going as friends seems pushing it a bit. And, yeah, McWillie was, I think if I'm remembering, right,

he was running, or in a senior role in the mob Havana casinos. The Tropicana, I think. Right, okay. Yeah, it was. Yeah, and so they go there and supposedly McWilli visits, I think it's Traficanti in jail in Cuba. Yeah.

Santa's Traficanti. This one's amazing. Yeah, maybe just give the short back of the envelope intro on Traficanti. because he's a big figure in all of this drama, of course, but not one that I'm sure we've covered in great depth here. Right, yeah, so, I mean, again, you're saying McWillie is a significant figure in the mob world. Traficanti is almost, you know, right up there,

almost the most senior kind of level of it all. And Traficancy was handling the mob, I guess, regional branch in Florida, and closely involved in the drug trafficking and everything like that. And so he was a huge figure in the Lanski-Luciano infrastructure, and he's imprisoned. So that's after Castro gets in a bunch of figures were put in jail. traffic ante was one of them and it's during that time they visit and the stories are I think it's this side of the stories

that are kind of disregarded in the official accounts because I think they're the most damning but the evidence is credible that McWillie went and it would make sense as a kind of why would you be visiting there at that time if not

I mean it's the way I see it's it's got to be mob related activities and traffic only was in jail So the story is that McWilli visited him and I'd see no reason why Ruby wouldn't have also, or at least that's the kind of

activities that were going on while they were there. And McWillie will show up again later but he's, well in later years Sam Giancana himself assigns him to the Calneva Lodge that Sinatra was running

to kind of keep an eye on Sinatra, and he ends up as a very senior figure in, I think, the Thunderbird Casino in Vegas. So he's kind of a guy that was turned to, that the most senior, absolute senior figures of the mob would turn to as someone known to them who they could count on. And it's this guy that Ruby is visiting Cuba with in 59. As I understand it, correct me if I'm wrong, but he kind of talk about Hollywood stories started out as a blackjack dealer or some other kind of a floor manager in the mob casinos and did such a good job winning for the house and obviously those

roles as anybody who's seen casino from Scorsese or you know I'll shout out another Brit friend of the pod ghost stories for the end of the world and Matt over there who's done a lot of work on really illustrating the way that these mob operations

run and he worked his way up to the point where like you said he's a go-to guy for the likes of Traficante, for the likes of Johnny Raselli and I think Traficante

was released from prison shortly after this visit from McWillie and potentially Ruby in tow, right? Yeah, yes, that's my understanding. And, I mean, it's another one of those things where I kind of don't know how you can look at that and not. I mean, it's a pretty clear picture. And, yeah, and this is the one. Cuba trip by Ruby that nobody could argue, so they had to deal with it, basically. So this is the one thing that is in the Warren Commission and everything like that. Now, I think there were other trips, but this is the one that, actually something I do in my

research when I'm digging into someone is just, I go on ancestry sites and just see what records there are, and this is one where, yeah, you can see Ruby on the flights in and out of Cuba. Some others that I have my suspicions about if a certain name is not in fact him, but the point is this is one that couldn't be argued and was known. And so they had to deal with it. And it's something that the stories go that Ruby was very, very worried about once he was arrested, specifically thinking of McWilley and Cuba. And then there are other things he mentioned about trying to arranging smuggling jeeps to Cuba through people in Houston and things like that. So he definitely was very worried about the McWillie connection and his Cuba

trips, or at least trip, as soon as he was in jail that kind of they would find out about it. And this is way leaping ahead. But one of the edits Jolly West makes to another psychiatrist's reports on Ruby, a psychiatrist he'd got involved in the case, is very few edits on the report, but he, in this case, just puts a neat line through the doctor's psychiatrist account of Ruby discussing his trips to Cuba to help smuggle, I think, guns and things like that. So Wes cuts that out from the report. But it's just to say that these Cuba trips end up kind of more than perhaps anything else in his life being something that Ruby was really worried about and I think that others around him would have been very worried about too because it's I mean it's

as far as I'm concerned pretty damning like that ties him to the mob in a way that it's hard to well they try to I guess pass it off as that that same old story with Ruby that it was just a friend and he was just following him around and just the guy couldn't shake him just the hanger on and he just happened to be there. But anyway, yeah, that's the, I want to emphasize that.

Just these Cuba trips are a big deal and hang over him and his story for the rest of his life and to this day. Yeah. And, you know, something that we'll talk about in the next part of this, series of Ruby episodes, but want to point out now on the subject of Cuba, is that

Jack Ruby did, it's also part of the documentary record, acknowledged by the Warren Commission staff, that as early as, you know, the beginning of 1959, even before the trip that Ruby took to Cuba that he was apparently negotiating for the sale of jeeps to Castro

right that was it when I yeah that's that's reminding me when I was mentioning that he was expressed worries about Cuba stuff coming out something he apparently told his lawyer I think it was Tonnehill one of them was he specifically

cited that and it was supposed something like it was a kind of network of well it was individuals in Houston I think he mentioned and it was to smuggle through Houston smuggling jeeps and yeah to Castro and I think that was also the other thing because there's a few cases of that

where mob figures or people who you wouldn't think would be working with Castro in any way or trying to help him did and I think it was partly hedging their bets not sure how things were going to shake out or and we don't have documentation of this being the case with Jack Ruby in particular but we do have awareness of other CIA agents or fronts like for example Viola June Cobb is a name that comes to mind and Catherine Taffy is another name that comes up

in that context of a person who was working as a front for this CIA acting as a person who was friendly to Castro and in some instances arranging sales of weapons or aircraft to Castro in order to suss out his military capabilities in order to even sabotage his military capabilities by either not delivering the promised good, and collecting payment nevertheless, or maybe selling defective goods. Yeah, various motivations. But yeah, so, and again, that's another thing where it's, like,

Ruby himself was worried about that. And if you don't just believe the official story discounting it, just because they said it should be discounted, then I think that's as compelling evidence as you're going to find that the guy was, you know, operationally a mob guy at the national level and not just... I mean, again, just to go back the official story,

I don't know how you square any of that with him just being a nightclub manager in Dallas. Yeah. And I'd point out that among those motivations, I agree with you that the mob did want to hedge in order to be early on on good paper with Castro in hopes that perhaps they could salvage some of their rackets and not get thrown out of the country entirely, as would eventually end up happening.

But as I understand it from what Ruby and others told the Warren Commission and the FBI, on the other side of the arrangement for sending jeeps to Castro, they were also trying to get people, quote unquote, refugees out of Cuba at the same time. Right. Okay. Yeah, I mean, that tracks. Some of this Cuba stuff, the details I, uh, blow in my head, honestly. Oh, yeah.

Well, it's confusing, too, because it's like, on the one hand, maybe those refugees fall into the larger bucket of the sort of Bay of Pig soldiers or the contingent that would later become the, what are broadly known as the anti-Castro Cubans that would take up arms on behalf of the CIA against Castro. but maybe it was also this sort of prisoner exchange type activity that would come to fruition later in the fall of 59 when Traficante is sprung from Cuban jail. Right. Yeah, no, that, I mean, it tracks absolutely.

And, and of course, again, I mean, I'm sure no one needs reminding of this, but the connections, all of the Cuban operations were obviously not just anti-Castro exiles or Cubans handled by CIA figures, all of those operations were, at least once Bill Harvey got involved in, I think, 61 or so, the mob got involved, and that's Mayhew and Rosselli, and ultimately fuck like Jyn Kana and the whole thing, who were, you know, part of the crowd that Ruby was a part of. And traffic ante as well was involved in those CIA things. So it's, and then from there you've got the whole mob network that overlaps with the CIA training camps and arms caches and stuff like that in Louisiana and then Texas and then the underworld connections between. like Louisiana and Texas and like the likes of Carlos Marcello are just so um and then New Orleans

which is so important to this whole not so much with Ruby but to the whole Kennedy story um yeah it's there's just a straight through line between it all um and um yeah yeah and i think this might be close to a good place to wrap up the first installment in this series and move from the background of Jack Ruby and then pick up next time with the events immediately preceding and following the assassination of JFK and the subsequent murder of Lee Oswald and well first I'll ask are there any other kind of on the same topic facts or or angles that either if you want to get out well off the top of my head those are covered the main the main things there are with the whole ruby cuba relationship there's

there are other things that don't crop up in the official story so much but i think are credible there's a guy called and i would need to refresh my memory on the details um but a guy called thomas mityaun who was a kind of soldier of fortune gunrunner who supposedly ruby was negotiating with for all these these kind of deals with trafficking stuff to cuba and um the way i see it is that yeah ruby was a part of a part of that whole the mob cuba connection uh in a way that i'm not sure how you can deny and again these same names will all recur i think that's why this background is helpful because so many of these names recur in the months weeks and, I mean, literally just days right before the assassination. So, yeah, it's another thing where you really don't have to be making things up to find this story where all these threads converge in, I think, pretty damning and revealing way, well, before the assassination, which is another thing.

get to later is just sort of implies some foreknowledge of something or other um and uh but yeah right i'll stop myself but yeah yeah that's a great point dick anything from you no i think for this half i i just want to say thank you so much max for your time and looking forward to the next step thank you until next time time. I'm Dick. I'm Don. Saying farewell. And keep digging. Boys, if you will, a little tune called The Lost Highway. I'm a rolling stone. I'm a rolling stone all alone and long. Or a life of sin. I have paid the call When I passed by

All the people say There goes another boy Down the lost highway