Julian Dorey Podcast - #283 - Ex-Mafia Member: BOMBSHELL JFK Claims Link Shadowy Figure to Assassination | Lou Ferrante

Episode Date: March 14, 2025

SPONSOR: 1) Get 15% off with code JULIAN at oneskin.co WATCH LOU'S OTHER EPISODE #185: https://youtu.be/QJQ43u_2pPY (***TIMESTAMPS in description below) ~ Louis Ferrante is a former Gambino Crime Family Mobster, historian, author, and TV Host. PATREON: https://www.patreon.com/JulianDorey FOLLOW JULIAN DOREY: INSTAGRAM (Podcast): https://www.instagram.com/juliandoreypodcast/ INSTAGRAM (Personal): https://www.instagram.com/julianddorey/ X: https://twitter.com/julianddorey LOU'S LINKS: BOOK/WEBSITE: https://louisferrante.com/ X: https://x.com/LOUFERRANTE ****TIMESTAMPS**** 00:00 - Lou’s New Book & History of Mafia, Did They Wack JFK 09:03 - Jack vs RFK Comparisons, Jordan Belfort (Almost Clipped), Jail Time & Getting Out in 8 Years 20:02 - Joe Kennedy & Mafia During Prohibition, Frank Costello Buys Kennedy’s Liquor Company 33:00 - JFK Wins Election (Barely) & How, Lawyers Lou Used & Terrible Holes in Justice System 43:49 - 2 Mafia Members Responsible for JFK (Marcello & Traficante) 55:06 - Hoover Evidence of Being Gay, Bobby Kennedy Gets Joseph Valachi to Testifies (Rat isn’t only Italians can be on anyone) 01:07:21 - Hoover’s Cross Dressing Pictures Debunked 01:14:26 - Mafia’s Ties with the Navy Exposed (Luciano Deported) 01:21:34 - Tommy Bitrizo Supplied World Trade Center, Louie Dubono Clipped, Story of Kevin Ratting 01:27:31 - Why Did Hoover Ignore the Mob, Bobby Kennedy Wanted to Get Rid of Hoover 01:38:30 - Dulles Planning for Castro & Cuban Exiles, Bay of Pigs Disaster 01:40:00 - Why Kennedy Backed Out on Cuba, Ramifications of Bay of Pigs 01:55:00 - Cuban Missile Crisis, Private Convo’s with Krushev & Build Up to Assassination 02:01:45 - Kennedy’s Upcoming Re-election Possibility, LBJ Making Deals & Opposite of Kennedy’s Policies 02:12:51 - LBJ Behind the Scenes & Rise to Power (Mafia Ties) OTHER JDP EPISODES MENTIONED IN THIS EPISODE: - Episode 124 - Paul Rosolie: https://youtu.be/eytcGavv5ck - Episode 130 - Salvatore Bonanno: https://youtu.be/ETuE3h7_48o CREDITS: - Host & Producer: Julian D. Dorey - In-Studio Producer & Editor: Alessi Allaman - https://www.youtube.com/@alessiallaman Julian Dorey Podcast Episode 283 - Louis Ferrante Music by Artlist.io Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

And now the missile crisis comes along. McCone tells Kennedy, hey, listen, we got nuclear warheads 90 miles off the coast of Florida. What are we going to do about it? So the hawks in the administration and the joint chiefs are going, go in. You have no choice. Don't worry about the Bay of Pigs, that's passed.

If you were on the fence, these are missiles that have a range, not only, as Khrushchev famously said, we could have took out every city in the United States, not to mention a little village like Washington. And they went all the way up to Canada. So they could have literally hit any city in the United States, not to mention a little village like Washington. And they went all the way up to Canada. So they could have literally hit any city in the United States. So they're going to Kennedy, take them out, send in the Marines. Let's go in. And Kennedy's wavering. He's going, I don't know. Bobby goes, it's going to give us like a black mark, a smirch. We don't want that. Don't do it, Jack. Are you out of your mind? We got to go in. So now after

this back and forth for a number of days, the two options that are available to Kennedy are. Hey, guys, if you're not following me on Spotify, please hit that follow button and leave a five star review. They're both a huge, you know what's funny i'm a writer and i don't even know what a pronoun is so i'm like what the fuck is pronouns right i taught myself how to write so i never pronoun adjective i don't know what the fuck those things are on that note that's a perfect way to open this one up. Lou Ferrante, it is great to have you back, my friend. Thanks. How are you? Great to be with you, brother. Dude, it's been what? You were here like 15 months ago, something like that? Well, give or take, I think a year, because it was when the first volume came out and it's about a year. So yeah, maybe no, a little over a year actually. First one came out

in November of last year year that was this one right yeah the red one yeah yeah yeah we're gonna explain what this is in a minute people cool and then second one's out now and the third one we're still waiting for third one will be out end of this year or beginning of next dude i'm impressed you've written you've written a fuck ton doing this yeah and obviously it's something close to home because of your own backstory and where you initially came up a long time ago. But the history of all this stuff is intertwined with American history. Of course, when we're talking about the mafia and the Jewish mob and the Irish mob and all that, like it's always been a fascinating topic to me.

So I remember when you were in here last, we were saying we got to do one where we really run through this. So, you know, you know where I'm going to start off with this, obviously, right? I have no idea what you. No clue. You could go anywhere. Did they whack JFK? They had a part in it, a big part in it. Definitely.

They had a big part in it, and I would say they did the groundwork. They were the laborers on the project. The mob. Yeah, the mob. Definitely. So, I mean, we're jumping right in then. Wow. Okay. Fuck yeah. Yeah, let's do it. Down and dirty, baby. Let's do it. Let's do it. So it dates back. Let me start at the start. Robert F. Kennedy joins what was the McClellan Committee. McClellan was a senator out of Arkansas. He forms this committee. Bobby becomes chief counsel for the committee, Bobby Kennedy.

And he's going after the mob and Teamsters. And this is the McClellan Committee, you said? McClellan Committee. Let's pull that up a little bit just so we have it. Go ahead. So the McClellan Committee, Bobby's chief counsel, and he talks John into coming on to the committee too. John's a Senator at the time, John Kennedy and Joe Kennedy senior, the patriarch of the family. He said, I don't want you doing this. I don't want you going after labor. And he didn't want them going after the mob either.

He just felt like, okay, he had connections to the mob, Joe Kennedy Sr., and that's established. And I make it, I don't just shoot from the hip. I don't just go with rumors. I source everything in my books. And not only did- Yeah, I looked at that. Yeah. And not only did mobsters say, like Maya Lansky, Frank Costello, Oney the Killer Madden, not only did mobsters say Joe Kennedy worked with us during prohibition, during bootlegging, and also too with Hollywood relations, labor relations. When he had a Hollywood company, Joe Kennedy did. But this also came from testimony from family members, Klan members, Kennedy Klan members, people who appointed judges by Jack Kennedy later said that Joe was with the mob.

So this came from an array of different people, not just mobsters. So Joe Kennedy's in with the mob. So this came from an array of different people, not just mobsters. So Joe Kennedy's in with the mob. I was going to ask you about that though, because I'd had my guy Stu in here for episode 160, where he does all the research on JFK and MLK. He's written books on it. It's really amazing stuff. And the one place where he lost me a little bit is when he was trying to say that there's really no evidence to point to Joe being involved with the mob. And so I went and dug on this more, and there was one biographer. I forget his name, but I remember because he went to Bucknell, Alessi. Maybe we can look that up.

But there was one Kennedy biographer who I think lives in New York as well. I should probably get him in here, who had also made the same claim going through all this. But you and everyone else I've ever talked with and everything that I've ever known in studying it is like, of course, you know that he was involved. So what, like we have direct evidence, meaning like some of these guys said exactly what he did. Yeah. So, so David Nassau, N-A-S-A-W, I think is the guy, most recent biographer that I read who said, no, there's no evidence. And they tried to give him a clean slate. That was one of them. Yeah, that's the guy. That's him. I got it right, David Nassar. That's the guy. That's right. So if you, there are certain Kennedy biographers and historians

who like to preserve the idea of Camelot, this grand image of the Kennedy family and Kennedy himself. And they'll go to any length to deny things that are blatant in your face to preserve that image of Camelot. But if you do a deep dive, as I said, not only Joe Bonanno, Frank Costello, Maya Lansky, Oney the Killer Madden, but also Kennedy clan members. Gore Vidal was a family member, the great author, Gore Vidal. Oh, Gore Vidal? Yeah, yeah. Gore Vidal, yeah.

So, I mean, this is- Gore Vidal, I love it. Yeah, he's related in my accent. He's related through the Kennedy's true marriage. Also to John H. Davis related on the Bouvier side. Yes, so Jackie's. Jackie's side. These people, they understand from the inside.

They're Kennedy clan family members. And also to, as I said, Chicago judge who was appointed by Jack Kennedy to the federal bench. He said there's no way Joe could have ever did the things he did during bootlegging without the mob. 100%. 100%. There's people that try to say he didn't bootleg though. I'm like, what the fuck is that? On top of that, he's got a part interest in the Cal Neva Lodge.

The Cal Neva was a gambling casino slash hotel lodge that sits on the border of California and Nevada because gambling was legal on the Nevada side. Right. So he's got an interest there. Frank Sinatra's got an interest there. Sam Giancana's got an interest there. The Genoves So he's got an interest there. Frank Sinatra's got an interest there. Sam Giancana's got an interest there. The Genovese family's got an interest there. And at one point, I think Dean Martin, who was part of the Rat Pack, Sinatra's little clique, he said, I'm the only guy in Hollywood who's partners with four gangsters or something,

and don't even know who they are. I'm not allowed to talk about it. Something like that. So, you know, so there's overwhelming evidence also to post-prohibition when Joe Kennedy's got a liquor distribution company. At some point or another, all of that distribution of liquor following prohibition when it was repealed was controlled by mainly Frank Costello who owned a lot of the distribution networks. But all the mob across the country. For people who don't know who Frank Costello is, can you just? Yeah. Frank Costello was the acting boss. Lucky Luciano started a Borgata. And when he created the five families, Lucky Luciano, Charles Lucky Luciano was the boss of one of those Borgatas. And when he went to prison, Vito Genovese was his underboss, but Vito had to flee a murder rap and he went to Europe. In his absence, Frank

Costello took over the family and was acting boss. And he controlled Tammany Hall for many, many years. The New York Democratic machine was in his pocket. He put judges in. And to give you an idea of his power, at one point, Frank Hogan, who was a prosecutor in New York, he had bugged Costello's telephone line. and he's looking to grab some evidence with regard to a murder that was ordered by Genovese, who was in Europe at the time, of a newspaper editor in New York. Is this like the 50s, you think? Yeah. So it was 40s. Okay, 40s. Yep. So at that time, he listens to the phone conversations. Supreme Court judge calls Frank Costello.

Hey, Frank, thanks for getting me the appointment to the bench. Anytime you need a hand, you know where it comes from. Anytime you need it. I need it right now. Exactly. So incredible, right? So Hogan says, wow, this guy's appointing judges. I'm going to go to Tammany Hall and start fishing around.

So Hogan goes there and he starts questioning all the ward leaders. So what happens is if you control enough ward leaders, you control the head of the hall. That's right. You put the guy in. So they questioned them all. And it was the guy, they all go, we don't know who you're talking about. Frank Costello who? Who's Frank Costello?

Then they go to this guy named Kennedy, who's the head of Tammany Hall at the time. And they ask him, he goes, I never heard of Frank Costello. So, and meanwhile, Costello put him in. So this is how deep the connections went. Right. So now Kennedy, when John, when Jack Kennedy, I'll call him Jack, interchangeably John or Jack. My man Jack. Exactly. Jack Kennedy, by the way, all the research I did, I walked away despising Bobby and loving Jack as people. Forget about politics and all that other stuff as people, as characters, guys you could grab a beer with, guys you can hang out with. Bobby was just a despicable human being, I felt. I felt like, I'm sorry to say that, but- No, that's okay.

Testimony came from people in his own family. Joe Kennedy senior says, Bobby hates like me. He's vengeful like me. He would have been a great Gestapo during, during the Nazi era. Well, it's interesting you say that too, because obviously we, and we'll get to it, but we know what happened when Jack got into office and RFK became AG and, you know, you talk about biting the hand that feeds you that's right so uh and jack kennedy was like the kind of guy where you know people attack him now he was a philanderer and etc um a little pussy what are you gonna do right i mean look that was it was a different time yeah i mean unless he's fucking praying over here he was he was over the top he was definitely over the top

but as a person, he didn't hold grudges. He was easy to get along with. He felt like, you know, everything was water under the bridge to Jack. He didn't like hate people for the rest of his life. He just took life, you know, in stride and he suffered a lot with all the things, the physical disabilities he had, real disabilities. So, you know, and he got through that and still had a good outlook on life. A lot of people become miserable. He didn't. So you walk away from all of the research and the Bobby, the people who hated and couldn't stand Bobby, it's bipartisan, by the way, members of his own democratic party and members of the Republican party,

people in his own family said this was his character. These were his character flaws. You know, I mean, he had issues, Bobby. He was always looking for somebody to fight. He was looking for someone to fight. Yeah. Evan Thomas said it best. He's a good author too. Evan Thomas wrote a book about Bobby where he said something like he needed somebody to brawl with all the time. I forget how he phrased it, but it was so accurate. And that was Bobby. So now, just to rewind. You were talking about the McClellan hearings. That's how we got initially started the tangent.

Joe Kennedy goes, I don't want you to be involved with this. Bobby fights, pushed back a little. Joe Kennedy's word was law. But there was a little room for argument. Bobby convinced Joe that, look, it'll give us a national name, me and Jack. Jack wants to be president, maybe me next after him. We're going to give ourselves a national name. Now, don't forget Thomas Dewey, who I go deep into in volume one of my book.

Governor of New York. Exactly. Now, before he became governor, he went after the mob. He went after Luciano. That's right. Yep. Lepke Bocalta, Lucky Luciano, Dutch Schultz, Mad Dog Cole. So he went after all these different guys, Dewey, and he becomes governor of New York and then he forgets about the mob. He's got the name. And then he becomes a Republican candidate for president. He wanted to make a name for himself.

Senator Estes Kefalva, volume one of the book, I go deep into Kefalva out of Tennessee. Kefalva hearings. Exactly. So after the Kefalva hearings, he makes a big name for himself, a national name. And he says, I'm going to move on. And he goes for the Democratic national nomination for president. So he moves away. All right. So I was at my dermatologist the other day getting a full body scan checkup. I'd had some mark removed two years ago. So they wanted to make sure that didn't pop back up or anything else in my body was going to have any risk. Checked out. I was all good. But at the end of my visit, the dermatologist asked me if I was using anything for my skincare routine.

And I mentioned that I used the One Skin Face Topical Supplement, which is famous for its OS1 peptide. And she was pretty pumped when I said that. She talked about all the research that she was aware of behind this particular peptide, OS1, and how it was studied in some other countries. And the people who used it had some serious anti-aging effects from it over time,

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at oneskin.co and start looking biologically younger today. So they felt like the the mob, felt like as hard as Bobby came after them, and Bobby must have convinced Joe, look, we're going to go after them, but then we're just going to, we just want to get national names and go into the White House. How was that okay with Joe, though, who ran the family like an iron fist? It wasn't really, and he wasn't happy about it, but he gave in after being like, you know, normally, and he was, you're so right, an iron fist.

Time and time again, I come across family and friends who said Joe's word was law. That's it. So there must have been a little room, a little bit of a gray area where they convinced him, or at least Bobby did, that, look, we'll make national names for ourselves. We're not going to really go after them again. All you could do is recommend them for either deportation or prosecution. He wasn't locking them up during the McClellan Committee. Yeah, they could get him on like tax evasion or something.

There was no RICO. And he wasn't the FBI. All you could do was recommend. So let's take a step back for one second because we started to go deep into Joe Kennedy. But just to paint the full picture of where he is at this point in the 50s, can you just explain what the claims are with him with Prohibition and then how that, after Prohibition ended in 1933, I want to say, how he then translated that career of working with the mob to still working with the mob, if you will? Sure. So Joe Kennedy was, for the most part, too. And David Nassar, the guy you mentioned,

I don't know if I'm pronouncing it correctly, his last name, but he even admits that Joe was thought of as a stock swindler. So he had other issues too. He was a crook in many ways. Okay. So we know that. Whether he was doing pump and dump schemes or buying and selling at the right time with some inside information. Exactly. Unless he's laughing. He was the original Jordan Belfort, bro. Really? Yeah. I was, I was, I got to tell you. So when he was making all his money, Jordan Belfort, I said, yeah, I was from, he was from my neighborhood originally. So I said, I'm going

to grab him and stick a gun in his mouth. I was going to grab, I said, look, you know what? I'm going to tell him, look, cough up or die. And it turned out that I was talked out of it because a friend of mine said, and a friend of mine high up that you would know his name. I'm not going to mention it on the podcast, but he's a very, very well-known name in the mafia. Okay. And the mob. That narrows it down. Yeah. It narrows it down really. He goes, Lou, you got to be willing to kill him then because he's probably going to snitch at some point for either the shit he's doing, or even just in that situation. And then we're stuck killing this guy. Lou, were you ready to kill Jordan Belfort?

Well, I'll be honest with you. There was a little pushback from my end. Having said that, I was talked out of it. And then he eventually got pinched. And as far as I understand it, he did cooperate. And, you know, I mean, look, he's done well with his life. I'm not knocking the guy. And he wasn't in the mob where he swore secrecy and silence, you know, I mean, look, he's done well with his life. I'm not knocking the guy. And he wasn't in the mob where he swore secrecy and silence. You know, he's a paper guy. He's doing paper stuff. That's right. But whatever the case is, there was at one point I said, I'm sticking a gun in this guy's mouth. And, you know. I'm going to get Jordan Belfort in that chair with you next time. And you can make it come true. I probably, yeah, I probably like him now

because I've seen him on TV. He's a great guy. Yeah. And I would, you know, I'm different now. I'm different now. I know. I know. If people didn't see episode 185 when I had Lew in here last, we went through his whole life as the preeminent truck jacker for the Gambinos.

To be clear, I'd still clip him if I had to. I mean, let's be real. That fraud might still, no, I'm joking. I'm joking. You left the life, what, like 30 years ago? Oh, I'm done. I got locked up in 1994. I've been different ever since. Yeah. So, just if anybody's watching this- You found God, became a Jew. I got to be honest with you. I believe in living correctly. Yeah.

Yeah. So, I believe you live your life right. And I believe in something called karma. So, you know, I'm not looking to kill him now for real. No, but seriously, like you converted to Judaism. You take it very seriously. Yeah. I mean, I believe there's a higher power. I did convert to Judaism. I believe that there's a creator and I believe our actions, you know, there's rewards and punishments for our actions. Hell yeah. Yeah. And I suffered the punishments. So I felt it. Real.

It's real. What did you do? Like eight years? I did eight and a half years, but I faced life. So a lot of people always face life. What are you talking about? You must have rat. I didn't rat.

I never ratted on nobody. I faced life. No rat. No rat. Never happened. So I faced life. And at some point or another, they offered me and my eight co-defendants, they offered us all a global plea. None of us ratted.

The original guys who got locked up with me, other than the first guy went into the witness protection program. He's gone. So that guy's gone. That guy's a rat. Then one other guy became what we think was a dry snitch. We weren't sure. But the core of us, there was eight of us on the indictment. Nobody flipped out of the eight.

And we all, the global plea was, if I took 13 years, when we're all facing life at the time, at least the top four of us were facing life. The other four had lower stuff. But they said, if you guys, we didn't know the guy violated the witness protection program. So we didn't know he was thrown out.

Oh, he was thrown out of it? No, he was thrown out. We didn't know. We didn't learn that. How do you get thrown out of the witness protection program. So we didn't know he was thrown out. Oh, he was thrown out of it? No, he was thrown out. We didn't know. We didn't learn that. How do you get thrown out of the witness protection program? Probably committing more crimes. Nice. Yeah.

So when I reverse- They don't protect that, apparently. Yeah. I reversed my case on a technicality six and a half years later. That's how I got out in eight and a half. Then I had to do another deuce in the state. But when I reversed my case, yeah, when I reversed my case and came back down, that's when I learned the guy violated the program because I go, let's go to trial. So they had no real evidence on me other than his word.

And he's gone. So like once you did a hijacking or a heist, it's done. So unless somebody's talking, that's the only evidence they really had on us. There's no like, we're done. You dump the truck and you're out of here or you leave the scene and it's over. So without him, I knew there was no case. That's why they ended up dismissing the federal case after I reversed it on a technicality. But anyway, so we all copped out and the global plea was offered. If I took 13, then my co-defendants would get all less down the line.

And I said to them, what do you guys want to do? And they said, Lou, let's take it. It's a good deal for us. They were going to get 10, nine, eight down the line. So I said, fine, I'll take the 13. Let's go. And we copped. So that's just that said. But while I was in there, I became an avid reader. I changed my life around. I studied law, history, science. I loved education. So it shows you the power of education that if somebody maybe took me by the hand when I was a kid, maybe I would have had a different trajectory in life. Oh, for sure. You're a very smart guy.

That comes across a lot. And obviously, like, we see it now coming through in the things you do and writing things. And I agree with you, man. It's like so much of what happens in life is based on this crapshoot of your environment and where you're from and, and the people around you and what your parents are doing at the time. You know, if they got jobs trying to put food on the table and they're not there all the time, you know, it can kind of go that way. But right if people want to hear the full story it was really compelling stuff we did that last time around but and i had a great time with you by the way i don't think i've gotten emails from people telling me you've never opened up as much as you

have with julian dory and i and i have to credit you i appreciate that yeah yeah really really just got an easy way about you and uh keep up with the show. Subscribe. Subscribe to Julian Dory. Thanks, man. So anyway. I get to talk with cool people like you and go back and forth for hours on end. I think it's a cool job. Good work, brother. Thank you.

All right. So we were talking about Joe Kennedy, though. And you had said that he was bootlegging in the 20s into the early 30s. And what I had been asking about was after he did that and the swindling ahead of the stock market crash in 1929, how did he keep ties to the mob after that? Yeah, so they come out of prohibition. So first, let's talk about how the mob comes out of prohibition. They made all the—prior to prohibition, the mob is thought of as like these barbarians. You know, now and then a guy gets found cut in half, stuffed in a barrel, you know, floating beneath the South Street wharf. Masseria.

Yeah. You know, guys are getting clipped and nobody really thinks of the mob as like romantic and sexy. Now Prohibition comes around and people are told by their government, you're not allowed to drink. Like children, you're not allowed. Shame on you. You can't drink anymore. So all these ethnicities, the Italians, the Germans, the Irish, they're like, what are you kidding me? How are you going to tell us we're not allowed to drink? And it's as Theodore Roosevelt's daughter, Alice Roosevelt famously said, she goes, they're all a bunch of effing hypocrites because they all got liquor cabinets at home,

the whole Congress and Oh, right. And the president. So they're going to vote to ban alcohol. Rules for me, not rules for thee, not for me. Exactly. So everybody's disgusted and the mob comes along and they control, for the most part across the country, the distribution of alcohol. Immediately. Immediately. And they're really thought of now for the first time as, gee, maybe they're not so bad.

You know, now they're supplying a public demand. They're giving us what we want. So that's not really evil. A few bodies drop. They give us a little liquor. Who cares? That's their own internal wars, though, right? And the other thing, too, is they start opening thousands and thousands of speakeasies. And a speakeasy, like, at that time, right?

Not only is it cool for, like, men, because you go there, you give a code, they look through the hole, they let you in. It's like, wow, I belong to something over here. But women who were chained to domestic roles for centuries, for millenniums, are totally like, can't wait to get out and smoke a cigarette, smoke a cigar, have a drink. They're cursing like men. They're at the speakeasies too, dancing it up, lifting their leg. The skirt comes up. They're like for the first time in their lives. So between the men and the women, they're like, wow, maybe the mob isn't so bad. So it's the first time they kind of like get a new, like kind of like some new makeup, a makeover. Now coming out of prohibition when it's repealed, all of the corrupt police and politicians who didn't feel like it was really like a really big sin to be

corrupted by the mob to allow people to drink, you know, so what? I drink, why can't my constituents drink? So they're all kind of in bed with the mob. So coming out of prohibition, all those relationships were established during prohibition and they all still had a handout. What's the next bribe? So the mob's opening up casinos, they're doing other stuff now. They're still controlling distribution of liquor to some extent. Is Joe Kennedy involved in any of that? Exactly. So now Kennedy still has one of the premier liquor distribution companies in the country. And who does he eventually sell his company to when Jack's going to run for president? He sells it to a friend of Frank Costello. And now Costello could

have obviously controlled the real distribution network, Costello does, not Joe Kennedy. And then he gets a sweetheart deal on the liquor company. So they were still working together after prohibition. They're still working together in more of a legitimate capacity because it was legitimate. You know, Joe Kennedy's got exclusive rights to certain scotch and so did Frank Costello. So, you know, these guys now have worked together during prohibition and post prohibition. Also, too, Joe Kennedy had a movie company. Oh, he did? Yeah, he had a movie company, not like an A-list movie company, but he made B movies and he needed labor relations. They could stop a movie and admit the mob. So they're controlling all of the unions. So Joe Kennedy had to deal with the mob when he wants to make a movie. They tell you you're not making a movie, you're not making a movie. Bobby Kennedy wrote The Enemy Within after the McClellan

Committee hearings and Hollywood wanted to make a movie about it. You you're not making a movie. You're not making a movie. Bobby Kennedy wrote The Enemy Within after the McClellan committee hearings, and Hollywood wanted to make a movie about it. You know what the mob said? Fuck you. Not happening. Yeah. And that's why Bobby even hated them even more. He's like, oh, I was going to be a superstar. Paul Newman was going to play me. And now it's done. So, you know, because the mob is going to, you're not making a movie, buddy. It's not happening. That's our territory. They had that sway. So Joe Kennedy's in bed with them. Now, after the McClellan committee. In the 50s.

In the 50s now. Right, late 50s. So Bobby promised Joe that him and Jack were going to move on and not go after the mob anymore. It's just to make a national name for themselves. So now it's all done, the committee hearings. And Joe Kennedy now wants his kids in the White House. He wants Jack in the White House, the Oval Office. Just to rewind a little, Joe Kennedy pushed his kids into politics.

First, he pushed Joe Jr. Joe Jr. was the senior Kennedy sibling. He got killed, though. Got killed in disguise over Suffolk. In World War II. World War II on a very dangerous mission. He was very heroic, a little daring. And Jack was a hero too. I point that out in the book. Jack's PT boat was slashed in half by a Japanese destroyer, I think it was, with a big steel hull. and the PT boat's just a mahogany hull. Split in half, Jack swam around a burning sea, collecting all of his mates and dragging them onto a flotsam. Incredible story.

And I go through it a little in the book because I want people to understand before I get on top of Kennedy for the mistakes he made, that he was a patriotic American and he was extremely heroic. I wanted to make sure that Kennedy comes across right, both sides of him, the mistakes and the heroism. And I'm glad you make that distinction too, because history and the present is so gray and people want everything to be black and white. And Jack is probably the greatest example in pop culture history of America of the gray. Like we can all point to the philandering ways. We can point to the fact he was a Kennedy, his dad propped him in there. We can point to some of the relationships he had with people he shouldn't have relationships with. But on top of it, there was something about him that was so obviously iconic. And I think what drove that was the spirit of hope that he had.

He represented that, you know, as we headed into the awakening generation, 15 to 20 years removed from World War II, he represented that new frontier. And like, let's kind of like Lewis and Clark went out there and found land. He's like, let's go to the moon. Let's figure out how to be the best in science. Let's try to make friends with Russia or deescalate at the very least. Let's look at a world that can be interconnected in beautiful ways. And so much of his hopes, you know, were kind of like admirable, what a little boy might say. When I grow up one day, I want to dream to do this. And this motherfucker was saying it out loud to the public as the most powerful man in the world.

And there's something about that that was beautiful, but there's also something about that that made him a threat. It made him a threat. And I also feel that he dropped the ball, and we'll get to that, with two major incidents involving the Cuban exiles to America. Yeah, involving Cuba. But I did want to make sure that the reader knows that this man was a patriotic hero. And I mean, not only did he swim around collecting everybody, but he ended up swimming one guy in his teeth, dragging him in his teeth. Wow. Oh, he's incredible. Then he swam to islands alone trying to find food. He said swimming one guy in his teeth, you know, dragging him in his teeth. Oh, he's incredible.

Then he swam to islands alone trying to find food. He said to one guy, and he didn't say this maliciously. There was one guy who was thrashing around in the water. It's shark-infested waters. And he's thrashing around in the water. And Kennedy says to him, you know, for a guy from Boston, he goes, you're making a real show out here. He said, you know, like, you know, like, and Kennedy, I pointed out that Kennedy wasn't doing it to, like, belittle him. He wanted the guy to get his strength up and make it, and he saved the guy. So real, real heroism. So first Joe Kennedy, you get back on track. First Joe Kennedy is Joe Senior's prize,

and he wants him in the White House. Joe Kennedy dies, Junior. Now Jack he wants in the Oval Office. Now they're focusing their attention on Jack. So now they promise sort of like Joe Kennedy knows he needs everything he could pull out of the hat, and he needs the mob's help for Jack to get into the White House. Now, to be very clear, the Kennedys, Drew Joe, had a relationship with the mob, but so did Richard Nixon, who eventually went. Oh, he did. Absolutely. So first, Lyndon Johnson. Kennedy runs against, in the Democratic primary, Johnson was involved in the Democratic primary.

He wanted to be president, too. Yeah, he was a real son of a bitch, too. Yeah. So he wants to be president. And Johnson was, and I'll get into this later, too. Johnson was dirty in Texas. They called him Landslide Linden. He was always used to stealing votes. And this comes from Robert Caro, his premier biography.

I read the multi-volume work that Caro wrote on Johnson, which by the way, was incredible. Caro did a lot of mob work too, I think, right? Oh, no. Well, Robert Caro, they barely touched on it. You're talking about somebody else, I think. Robert Caro barely touched on the mob when he did, what's his name? The guy from, the big baron guy, the guy from New York. What the heck was the name of it? It was a great book too. You're not talking about a mobster. Look up Robert Caro. No, no, he's an author. He did the multi-volume work on Lyndon Johnson. I'm seeing, okay. So he did, yeah. Lyndon Johnson, Lyndon Johnson, Lyndon Johnson. He is in the Senate, master of the Senate. He did all that.

Oh yeah. He did a ton of them. Robert Moses in the fall in New York. That's it. So he touched on the mob in a couple of pages in there because Robert Moses- Yeah, there's another guy I'm thinking of. Yeah. That was a great book too. I think that won the Pulitzer Prize. So I hope I win the Pulitzer Prize. They owe me a Pulitzer Prize. I came out of a prison. A prison cell and wrote these books.

I don't have an education from Ivy League colleges. I nominate you. Thank you. I'm nominating you. Thank you. Get a hold of one of these guys. We'll talk to Joe. We'll see if we can put in a good word.

Come on, right? They don't want to give me any credit? Give me the Pulitzer. So P.S. P.S. So now it's up to Jack. Jack's going to go into the White House, right? So he's going, first he's running the Democratic primary. He needs the mob's help. Joe Kennedy does. Okay. So he gets, they get a ton of money dumped into the West Virginia primary where Kennedy just pulls it out against Hubert Humphrey. How many votes was that

even for? West Virginia's small, right? Well, it was the primary. Yeah, but for a primary, it doesn't carry as much weight. It was still crucial, though, because it was coming down towards the wire. And if Kennedy lost West Virginia, he's in trouble. So he pulls it out. Now, I list all of the sources. I went deep into newspaper archives.

There was huge investigations into the West Virginia primary. Millions of dollars were dispersed through the Kennedy clan. And supposedly that came from Chicago and New York. I'm sorry, Chicago, New York, and Vegas. A lot of the mob money was coming, being poured into the West Virginia primary because Joe Kennedy convinced the mob himself and through his liaison, Frank Sinatra, who was very close not only with the Kennedy family, but also with the mob chieftains across the country. He convinced the mob, look, Bobby's going to move on. Don't worry about Bobby and Jack. They're both moving on.

So the mob buys it for the most part. The New York and Chicago mob, which are the two titans involved, they kind of like they bought into this. They figured, oh, Sinatra wouldn't lie to us. Joe Kennedy, we've dealt with him before. His word is law. If he tells those boys to back off, they will. And we believe his word when he tells us that. So we're going to back them. And they're expecting at least four years, if not eight, of just like run wild. Yeah. And that's what they want.

Yeah. And this was so, and I've always talked about this story here, but you did the in-depth research on it, I would imagine. Where it ended up playing out in the final presidential election was Kennedy won by a razor thin margin. Can we pull up the 1960 election, Alessi, just so we can tell people how tight that was mathematically? But he was able to win Illinois and Texas because allegedly in the city centers, particularly Dallas and Chicago, a lot of dead people voted. That's exactly right. Okay. That's exactly right. So we do have good evidence to back that. A hundred percent. Yeah. And there's overwhelming evidence for both of those cases. And so now, and that leads into why Bobby was put in as AG. So that's lesser known. So at some point or another, Johnson loses to Kennedy, becomes his VP, right?

So now there's the general election. They're going against Republican Richard Nixon. Yeah. And that's where they— That's where I'm talking about, yes. Exactly what you're talking about. Overwhelming evidence in both cases. No, no, but I'm glad you did because the evidence that I found in both cases, such an abundance.

It could have been—there could have been multiple convictions if a justice department pursued it. But what is, what is the evidence like, like testimony? Okay. So there's no physical evidence. So there's, there was,

there was several, there was several investigative teams for major newspapers and magazines that dove into the corruption. And they, they were either told to back down, stand down by the editors of their newspapers or magazines, or once Bobby was appointed AG. Now, even J. Edgar Hoover at the FBI, he's getting phone calls from across the country and promises of all kinds of evidence, and it's coming across his desk. Once Bobby goes in his AG and Joe Kennedy, the Kennedy family even said this, they said Joe wanted Bobby in to make sure that none

of those accusations slash allegations went anywhere. He's the only one we could trust, Joe said, to make sure that all of these accusations of voter fraud and all this other stuff, they were terrified that the election could be reversed or they could even end up in jail. So, Joe, and I source everything in these books. I don't shoot from the head. I literally, like I tell people this all the time, when I look at books, especially people who are going to come in here, I go to the sourcing in the back just to see how in-depth it is. And it is really in-depth.

Big time. I'm impressed. Not only, Jules, not only do I source things, but I want to go find the original source. Yeah. So if somebody, let's say it's 1965, and somebody mentioned something about the 1960 election, I want to find where the 1965 publication got it from. Maybe I find 1963. Then I want to find where the 63 got it from,

a newspaper clipping in 1961. I go back all the way to find the original source because I want to test the original source. You should have been an FBI agent. Oh, I would have pinched everybody. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, I think like that. You know what I'm saying? I never got caught doing the crimes I did. I never knew that a snitch could just talk and put you away. You never got caught. You did eight and a half in prison. No, but I never got caught in the process of a crime, in the commission of a crime. We got away. I was home smoking a cigar. Right. 10 minutes later, every time, going, I'm done. Always a step ahead, Lou Ferrante. Well, no, I didn't know the laws. I didn't know that. And that's the RICO laws. And I'm going to

tell you, the RICO laws are despicable. They're despicable. Even though I got, look. G. Robert Blakely is not going to be happy to hear that. G. Robert Blakely should have worked for the Gestapo. Seriously, that law is, it's basically, okay, so let's say I'm a criminal and I just came here after a heist and I got my stuff out in the back in the truck and I'm hanging out with you guys. According to G. Robert Blakely, you guys could get just dragged in on the RICO too. If I talk about it with you and say, look, don't worry about the truck outside. I'll take care of that later, Jules. I know it's in your parking spot.

Is it that simple? It is. And they try to tell you it's not, but if they want it to be, if a prosecutor wants to drag you in on it, they can. They can. And it could be a weak case. I spent 36 months in a holdover fighting my cases. I went through seven attorneys, William Kunstler, the great- Oh, yeah. Yeah, yeah. Incredible attorney. And my- Wait, you had- Oh, that's right. You did. And friend.

Yeah. You talked to me about that. And he became my friend too. It was William Kunstler. I went through, I had very briefly Barry Slotnick. Very briefly. Another one? He had to come off the case for a reason. For a reason? What was the reason?

Yeah, well, he took a nice chunk of money from me. And then he said that he had briefly represented somebody who was on the other side of the case. Oh. And he had to come off, right. After the money, of course. I interviewed Bruce Cutler. Another one? Yeah.

The guys up in the jail talked me out of using him. That was Gotti's guy. Well, Pete Gotti sent him up to see me and I liked him. I liked the things that he said on the visit, but they said, look, if you're going to try to go in there and say, you don't have anything to do with the Gottis, but you have Bruce Cutler as your mouthpiece, you know what that looks like, Lou? And I said, yeah, you're right. I can't use this guy. You know, like this isn't, if I had gone to trial. Yeah. That's a good point. Yeah. So, but anyway, so to get back on track, their promise through Frank Sinatra and Joe Kennedy, look, you don't have to worry about it. Get us in the White House. Now, out of all the mob bosses that participated in getting Jack in, there were a couple of holdouts, and these names are crucial.

These names are crucial because they play a true assassin. Traficante and Marcello. Ah, yes. Crucial. God, I'm good. Yeah, yeah. Those are the two. Those are the two who said, I don't care what that guy promises us.

We were dragged in front of that SOB during the Rackets Committee. McCullen Committee was nicknamed the Rackets Committee. During the Rackets Committee, we were dragged in front of that SOB, and we don't trust them. They don't trust Bobby. So first they backed Johnson during the Democratic primary. Why did they back Johnson? Johnson, as we said, was dirty in Texas.

And Marcello, his satellite state, Marcello controlled Louisiana. Jason, he controlled Texas too. Drew the Savillo-Campisi-Borgata. Interesting. Savillo-Campisi. He underwrote, he underwrote Johnson's campaigns. And in return, and this is coming from later on, members of government who were involved said Marcello would underwrite Johnson's campaigns. And in return, Johnson would kill anti-gambling legislation in committee.

It would never even make it to the floor. So Johnson would do that in return, knowing that if I keep Marcello's gambling empire intact and he keeps shoveling money into my campaigns. Kind of a quid pro quo I like. Now, is some of that happening after January 1959 when Cuba gets taken? Oh, way before. No, no. So this is way before because Traficante was like the man in Cuba. Yes. And Marcelo had a big role there, I believe as well. And that was going to be the gambling haven. And then it was taken away when Castro took over. Yep. Yep. But they're back in Johnson way before that.

Okay. Yep. So they backed Johnson during the way before that. Okay. Yep. So they backed Johnson during the primary, Santo Traficante and Carlos Marcelo, and also Jimmy Hoffa. Oh, yeah. Bobby went after Hoffa saying, look, your Teamsters are completely infiltrated by the mob. Now, to Hoffa's credit, he was a true union man.

He loved his union. I don't believe that Hoffa was as much of a devil as some people make him out to be. I believe he had to compromise. And he understood that, look, I want to be the head of the Teamsters, the president of Teamsters, but I can't do it without the mob's help. They control all the locals. And by controlling all the locals, they control the votes. And you can't become president without doing something with

them. Now, there's eavesdropping devices that Hoover had set up across the country that at times the mob would curse Hoffa because Hoffa did an investment if it was good. So for example, let's say you're Sam Giancana and you say, look, I need 30 million for my charge in Chicago. Yeah. And you guys got a big footprint in Vegas, right? You guys are the premier guys in Vegas, even more than New York. So let's say you say, look, I need $30 million for a couple of hotels in Vegas. Sure, here's the money. Hoffa would invest it because he knew that it's a good investment for the Teamsters.

Who wouldn't want to invest in that? Oh, Hoffa would invest directly in that. The Teamster Pension Fund. Hoffa controlled. There was a board, but it was basically a rubber stamp. It was like the Politburo. Whatever Stalin said, the Politburo agreed with. Whatever Hoffa did, the board of trustees or whoever controlled the pension fund would agree with.

So Hoffa, if the deal was good and it was good for his Teamsters, he worked with the mob. Now, can you accuse him of being corrupt? Yeah. He might have got a kickback for it. He was shaking hands with mobsters to do these deals. Okay. I get it. He was a nice corrupt guy. Exactly. And I'll tell you why he cared about the Teamsters though. If the deal was bad, and let's say you said, look, there's this crappy suburb outside of Chicago. It's this swamp. And it's like, I'm going to do this real estate deal. I need 5 million, but we'll make a few

bucks on it. And Hoffa would look into it and go, it's not a good deal, I'm going to do this real estate deal. I need $5 million, but we'll make a few bucks on it. And Hoffa would look into it and go, it's not a good deal. I'm not doing it. And the mob would get mad and they'd start cursing him. That SOB, you don't want to give us the money. Because Hoffa knew how to say no. And that goes into, we'll talk about it later on, that goes into Hoffa's problems with the mob later.

Hoffa was a tough guy. He gave them multi-millions, multi-millions. He was in bed with all of them, but only if the deal was good for his Teamsters. And the Teamster pension fund kept growing because he made good deals. Now you could say, well, he shouldn't have been making them with mobsters. Okay. I get it. But who else is there? At the time they controlled the Teamsters. You got to make friends with them. They control the Teamsters. You ain't going to be president if you're not in bed with them.

Bobby Kennedy himself said that. He goes, Hoffa can't just say get out. He'd be dead tomorrow. Bobby said that, and Bobby's the one who went after him for it. So, P.S., Bobby goes after, in the Rackets committee, also Hoffa. What was Bobby? So, when Bobby's going after these people, this is prior to him being AG you're talking about, right? Oh, this is, yeah, we just rewound to back to the Rackets committee also half up what what was so when bobby's going after these people this is prior to him being ag you're talking about right oh this is yeah we just rewound to back to the rackets committee still right and during the rackets committee what what is his title at that

time he was chief counsel for the rackets committee okay chief counsel so he's the bulldog he's the bulldog he's got carmine avalino who's a forensic accountant another that's bobby's bulldog carmine avalino oh no not avalino carmine Avellino's a gangster from the Casey family. I was going to say, I didn't think they let Italians in that kind of role back then. I'm glad you're correcting me. Carmine Bellino. That's not changing it too much. That also sounds like he's in the law. I was close with Sal Avellino. Sal Avellino controlled the garbage on Long Island. Got it.

Sal Avellino's brother was Carmine. I love the garbage guys. Allegedly controlled. Allegedly. Of course they controlled it. I love the garbage guys. Allegedly controlled. Allegedly. Of course they controlled it. I love the garbage guys. They're great. Well, Sal was a gem.

Sal was a gem. I loved Sal. I never got really close with Carmine. I loved Sal, but I mistook his name. The Carmine Bellino, not Avellino, Carmine Bellino. Again, can't believe they let a guy name that on that team. Oh, yeah. So that was Bobby's forensic accountant.

And boy, let me tell you, he looks at your records. He's getting you. He was a pit bull. So Bellino's working with Bobby. Bobby's the chief counsel. He's the pit bull. And he talks Jack into being one of the senators who sits on it, one of the Democratic senators. Got it.

Okay. So now, to bring it back up to speed, Hoffa. Mm-hmm. Teamsters. Despises Bobby. Marcello and Traficante. Those are the three guys that say, when the rest of the mob in Chicago and New York

and around the country goes, okay, Frank Sinatra, we'll back the Kennedys. Okay, Joe, we'll back your sons. They said, no, we don't trust them. So they're the holdouts. And they refuse to give in a bit. So they first back Johnson in the primary, then they back Nixon in the general, and they tried to desperately knock Kennedy out of the box. Quick question though, while I'm not disputing that Traficante and Marcello were powerful,

of course they were, they held seats on the commission. These are, I guess, like legendary gangsters, you would say. Neither of them are Capitulo Di Capi. No. Okay? They're not the head of the commission or anything at the time and never were, I believe. So why – when I look at this history, I don't want to jump too far ahead here, but just on a general basis, why were two guys like that who weren't even from New York or Chicago able to override, you know, I guess what were some thoughts? I'm not just talking about Kennedy right now. I'm talking about other things as well. No, I know. And never get retribution for it. Okay. So I'm going to tell you why. That's a great question. I'm going to tell you exactly why.

So they're not necessarily overriding and reversing a decision by the commission. What they're doing is refraining. So in other words- And tell people what the commissionilians would later imitate and call the cupola, like the head of a building. But he called it the commission. They would be a ruling body. Each boss would have a seat at a round table. Nobody sits at the head of the table. It's thought of as a round table. We all have an equal vote. There might be some who are more equal than others, as George Orwell said, right? But for the most part, they're supposed to sit there, each guy gets a vote. Now, as time went by, other guys like the Chicago mob, known as the outfit, they had a seat on the commission. The Detroit mob had a seat on the

commission. The Florida mob, Traficante, and the Louisiana mob, Marcello, had seats on the commission. Now, the commission could say, they didn't make it a commission vote. We're going to vote and we're going to back Kennedy. It's not a commission vote. The guys in Chicago, they have their own little powwow where Joe Batters, Tony, Anthony Joe Batters, Ricardo, is the real boss, not Sam Giancana. Giancana's an acting boss. And Joey Dove's Iupa, there's another genius. He was a Welshman. What the hell is his name? You would know.

Murray to Camel Humphreys. Okay. Okay. These guys sit, and Humphreys was the only one who held out. He goes, I don't trust these little runs i'm not i'm not involved in this and his wife knowing he was the only non-italian says he always gets aggravated when he tries to teach them and tell them and they rule against them and he always goes home and says the spaghetti eat is one another vote that's what that's what marie de camel humphries would say and he was like he was a consul yeah like you never like yeah he's tom hagan yes okay that's a good way to put it he's robert duval exactly yeah and the genius of the chicago you're not a wartime consul yerry tom he's a genius and he would see we get aggravated because

when they had to vote internally but it was never like brought to as a commission vote so now marcello and trafficante are free to do what they want. And don't forget, these guys got independent Borgatas that are just as powerful. They're no slouches. You got five families vying for one territory in New York and they have their own Borgata. It's his, Florida. It belongs to Santo Traficante. It's his, Louisiana. It belongs to Santo Traficante. It's his Louisiana. It belongs to Carlos Marcello, and so does Texas. Texas was a guy by the name of Joe Campisi and Joe Savillo. They were sent there, Savillo was, by Marcello, and he took over the mob in Dallas, in Texas, and then he still kind of answered to Marcello. It was like a satellite of his empire. You're saying it's basically victory by geography in a way. Because they have full boat down there and the families in New York who could have influence in places like this,

they're not fully set up in those places, so to speak. They're just cells. You're a visitor. If you go to Louisiana, you're a visitor. I mean, look, I went to different places when I was involved. And you checked in with the guy who was like, if you go to Louisiana. You're a visitor. I mean, look, I went to different places when I was involved and you know, you check in with the guy who's like, you know, if you're doing something. Oh, you check in? If you're doing something. You have like name tags and everything? Believe it or not, I didn't even know there was a mob in Arizona. I went to Arizona once. That's where the bananas were. What do you mean?

This guy picks me up in a Cadillac. All I was missing was the horns. I go, what the frick is this? We called him, I was with a friend of mine. We called him Don Zawarro. We made that behind his back. Don Zawarro. We made that behind his back. Don Zawarro, the Zawarro cactus. So we started calling, well, Don Zawarro's over here. But meanwhile, if you're doing something, the proper way is you put it on record, right? So back then it was even more so, back in their time. So these guys said, we don't trust Kennedy. And they were big enough. Marcello is estimated to be doing at the time over a billion dollars a year. In the 50s?

Would it be a billion? That's right. Think about that. Okay. A billion dollars a year. And he's doing that all by himself. He ain't splitting that up like the New Yorkers. So we're bigger than U.S. Steel. Okay, there you go. Billion dollars a year. Not only that, how about this? Marcello controls the entire state machinery where he would back, he would underwrite

the campaigns of in a gubernatorial race, he would underwrite the campaigns of both candidates. I can't put like in a state like Louisiana, where they'd be like these goddamn Italians coming down here, he's going to tell a shit to do. No, he's dishing out the money. They don't care. And they're like- Green, green, green. Don't ever forget that. They're like, but we like you, Carlos.

Exactly. They could go Italians all they want, but if you got the money, that's it. So now he's dishing out the money. He's backing all the campaigns. He's got the mayor. He's got the money, that's it. So now he's dishing out the money. He's backing all the campaigns. He's got the mayor. He's got the police commissioner. He's got the prosecutors. He's got the governor, the whole state machineries. He had such control of Louisiana that years later during the house assassinations committee in 1978, which we'll get to later, they asked Regis Kennedy, who was the FBI field agent in charge of Louisiana, who was supposed to be out to lock up Marcello. They go, do you know Marcello's the boss of the mafia in Louisiana? He goes, no. He goes, well, what is he to you?

A tomato salesman. Off with his head. Okay. Yeah. Now he had not only really was a tomato salesman, he owned a tomato canning company. One of his biggest clients. That's how canning company. One of his biggest clients- That's always accurate. One of his biggest clients was the United States Navy.

It was accurate. Of course it was. Right? Think about that. You're supplying tomatoes for the US Navy. Jenko olive oil, Marcello tomatoes. Exactly. It's a different world.

Yeah. Different time, right? So they hold out. They go, we ain't buying in. Traficante, remember these guys. Traficante, Marce guys, Traficante, Marcel, you said it, and Hoffa. Those three are the holdouts, right? The holy trinity. Okay. So they get into the White House. They squeak it out in Illinois and Texas. And that was, we had it on

the screen. That was 51 electoral votes effectively, which swung the election because Kennedy won 303 to 219 at the time. If Nixon wins those two states, he wins. There you go. Okay. So now they're thankful to the mob and Gene Conn is going, look, I put Kennedy in. He's telling everybody. He's on eavesdropping devices. He's getting heard saying this.

Hoover has these illegal eavesdropping devices all across the country. FBI director, J. Edgar Hoover. How about that guy? Yeah. Incredible. What a son of a bitch. Oh, yeah. We could go deep into him, too.

Yeah. Let's not get off it right now. No, no, no. Bring me back to that. Sure. So at some point, they're in the White House. They put Bobby in as AG.

Joe Kennedy tells Jack, you're appointing your brother. This is unprecedented. Unprecedented. They're like, the press is united, practically. Nepo. Go when you can. Nepotism. Exactly. What is this? We've never seen this before. Has this ever been

done before? No, but it will be now. That's what Jack says. So, okay. Bobby goes in his AG, and that's because Joe said, Joe's law is word. Bobby said he didn't even want it. Joe's law is word. He says, Bobby's going in. We need somebody in there in case there's any talk about voter fraud. Where was... Oh, that's interesting. Do you... From your research, do you think Jack and Bobby were really close? I think that they were and weren't. The Kennedys all were close. They really knew how to bind together if there was an outside threat to them. They were a family first. So in other words, you could be 100% in the right. Let's say they're all hanging out in Hyannis Port and they're all killing each other on the front

lawn. If you as a neighbor walk over there and say, hey, your dog just ran through the fence and you better get him on a leash, the whole Kennedy clan will turn and beat the crap out of you and throw the dog in the water. I'm sorry, it's their dog, but you know what I'm saying. Yeah. You know what I'm saying. In other words, they know how to- They'll throw them in the water. Exactly. They know how to bind together. They're a family first. It's the Kennedy clan. I got it. I got it. So, well, they're close now. Yeah. I had a buddy who used to go up to those parties.

Yeah, it's the Kennedys, right? I heard it was a good time. Yeah. But having said that, they were very competitive and they competed with each other. So how close can you be when you're taught to compete with your brothers your whole life? You know, whether it be on touch football, on a test, we're sailing, I got to win the race. There's a competitive atmosphere then. But then again, too, if two Kennedys are trying to win a sailboat race against each other, when the third one comes around, they'll both

sideswipe you and rip your sails down. They team up. So that's how, that's, you know, I'm being very hypothetical, but that's, I'm trying to explain, that's how they were. So Jack puts Bobby in, knowing he has flaws too. So now Bobby immediately starts going after the mob and he's destroying the mob. He's taking them apart. He wants to deport whoever's not naturalized. He wants to lock up whoever may have committed a crime. Doesn't matter. He's going after them. But he has a special vengeance for three people, Marcelo Traficante and Hoffa.

He's going after- It was just them? No, it was all of them. I was going to say. No, the whole mob across the country. He's going after all of them. He's going after Gene Conner, who helped him. He's going after Johnny Roselli, who's working with the CIA to kill Castro, which we need to get into too. Yep. I did a really in-depth podcast with Tom Meyer. Oh, Meyer. Yeah. I read his book. Very good. Yep. Yep. Credit to him again. Very good author. So far, every author we mentioned, even though I disagree with NASA, he wrote an excellent book. All of these authors are excellent, done phenomenal work. And I use these

sources. I mean, as some of the sources I will use, I turn to these people. But I went deep, deep into my research. And I think I have to admit, I think I have to say rather immodestly, I think I even went deeper than all of them into research. Robert Caro, maybe not. Robert Caro's incredible. Yeah. But anyway, bring it back up to date. Bobby's going after every mobster. Doesn't care. And this is like when he has Joe Vellacci testify and all that, right? Oh, yeah.

So I debunked the myth, by the way, about Vellacci in this book for the first time. Tell people who Vellacci is and then what the myth is. So Vellacci was the first. Okay, Bobby knows the mob exists. He's trying to prod Hoover into going after them. Hoover didn't want to go after the mob for a number of reasons we should speak about. Well, they had pictures of him. No, no, I don't believe that.

I did it really, really. You don't think the mob had pictures of him cross-dressing and shit? No, I think they would have came out, and I think they would have got more out of him if they did. Interesting. Yeah, I wanted to know where that more out of him if they did. Interesting. Yeah. I wanted to know where that rumor came from or if it was true. I wanted to either prove or deny it. But he did do that. I would say so. I think he was, personally speaking, if I had to say, I wouldn't put this in my book because you have to stay factual. But in a podcast, me and you chilling,

I would think that he had a strange relationship or not so strange nowadays, right? It's acceptable to be gay, but then it was considered strange. Yeah, no, he was a hundred percent gay. He was with Clyde Tolson. I think, I think, you know, they were both, they vacationed together. That's true. Yes. They vacationed together. They took very, very, they have pictures of them together where it looks like a man and wife on his honeymoon and Yep. And it's a man and man. So there's probably Bobby was trying to prove that he was gay.

Because back then, gays did not have the rights they have today. That's right. It was institutionally and societal unacceptable by society's standards. So Hoover was going to be tarnished as gay by Bobby. That's a whole other thing we could get into. And this is, I found all evidence of this thing we could get into. And this is, I found all evidence of this coming directly from the FBI. So this is interesting. So right now, so we have, we have Hoover who doesn't really want to go after the mob, but for other reasons,

we could get back to that. Yeah. And you're, hold on. We were talking about Valachi though. Right. That's why I want to go back to Valachi before I jump to Hoover. Okay. Let's go to Valachi. Yep. Yep. And somebody accused me of having ADD. I go, it's Julian. He brings it out of me. So to go back to Valachi, to go back to Valachi, you got skills. That's good.

You get everything out. I'm trying. You get everything out. Yeah. So go back to Valachi. Valachi is the first guy that Bobby's able to put on the stand as the embodiment of a real, this is a real, this is not some dream I had. He was a soldier for the mob. And he's going to testify all those guys that took the fifth during the McClellan committee.

Yeah. The rackets committee. Forget about those guys. I got a guy right now who's going to tell you everything. But they tried to blow him up as than he was though, right? Like he was a lower level soldier. He was a soldier. He couldn't put nobody away. But he could describe him making ceremonies like, so I burn these bones in my hand. He took on 30-something murders too. I mean, the guy was a killer. No, he's deep.

I mean, he's a soldier, but he's deep. Yes, but he wasn't like a boss. He wasn't a captain. No, no, no. So he gets, they put him on the stand and he's this is how la cause an old show works and this is what we do when you cut the finger and you do this and you do that and you make them another plate of monogoth you know this is like and they loved it everybody's eating it up right so so like okay so they got him up there, what I was able to debunk, this is interesting. Let's rewind when all the books I'm reading says, well, Valachi Genovese was in jail when I'm in Atlanta Penitentiary. And he realized that he was a snitch or he called him a snitch, labeled him a snitch. Valachi tried to check in. They put him back in population. And then he killed this guy. He thought it was Joe Bechti Palermo, another mob guy he thought was going to hit him on Genovese's

orders. And that's how he becomes now an informant. It's all bullshit. And I'll tell you why. Just stop for a moment. Rewind. First of all, when he was labeled a rat, historians like to say, but he wasn't a rat then. He was a rat. And like to say, but he wasn't a rat then. He was a rat. And the reason why they say he wasn't a rat is because he never ratted on Italians. But if you were in jail like I was, in a penitentiary like I was, I don't care if you're a fellow Italian and you only rat, you did drug, some drug dealing and you only ratted on blacks and Spanish, you're still a rat to us, guys who stood up, because these blacks and Spanish are our goombadas.

These guys are friendly with us. They're our fellow inmates. You can't rat on them either. A rat's a rat. So, Valachi historians will say, well, you never ratted on the Italians. But apparently Genovese found out that on his drug beef, on his drug case, he figured I'm not going to rat on the Italians. But apparently Genovese found out that on his drug beef, on his drug case,

he figured I'm not going to rat on the Italians in the mob, but I'm going to give up some Spanish guys and black guys I was dealing with. Okay. That's still a rat to us. You can't rat on anybody. Right. So I was, you know, look, if a black, if Italian goes sour and a black guy stands up, he's my buddy, the black guy. We're standing up doing our time. When I'm in Lewisburg, that's the guy I rely on. And he relies on me. We don't rely on a guy, black or Italian, who rats. We don't want nothing to do with them. So that's a lie. That's the first lie. Valachi was a rat. He just wasn't ratting on Italians. When Genovese finds out, Genovese, very strict, he's like, a rat's a rat. kill him. So now, Valachi goes and checks in and says, I need help. Get me out of here. They don't get the, he's asking for the narcotics bureau to come speak with him. He's asking for the FBI. Nobody comes. They toss him back into the population. He knows he's a dead man. Because a check-in, he checked in. If you check in, a check-in is a rat move in jail. You don't check in. After the murders in Lewisburg, I told

you about on the first podcast. Yeah, what do you mean check-in? A check-in is, let's say, okay, after the murders, I landed in Lewisburg. There's a double homicide. The Aryan Brotherhood murders two black Muslims. The blacks want to kill now somebody who's white. They're going to get revenge. They have to make a move. So as an Italian, I'm really not thought of as white by the Aryans. And really, blacks know I'm not an Aryan. But if there's no Aryans around, because most of them are shipped out, maybe I'm close enough. So they ask me, when they take me to a meeting, they go, you know anything about the murders? I go, no, of course not. I just landed here. Do you want to check in? Hell no. Are you afraid for your life? Hell no. So a check-in is if, let's say I'm on a compound and I go, okay, so let me explain to you.

I went to a prison one time. They asked me where, when I got taken out of the Max, Lewisburg Penitentiary, they're sending me, they go, you're going to go to a medium now because my security level finally dropped. I didn't have any problems in the pen, right? So now I'm going to a medium. Where do you want to go? The only place I picked is, they go, oh no, the only places I picked, they didn't send me. They sent me to the only place I didn't pick. So when I get there, I go, why couldn't I go to the places I picked? I wanted to be close to my family, this and that. I have relatives here or there. They go, you got seps against you.

I go, seps? I'm not a rat. Why do I have seps? Separations. People who put themselves on seps. So I go, I'm not a rat. I got no seps. I never put myself on seps from nobody.

Not a rat. Right. So they go, no. These guys are afraid of you. They put themselves on seps my body. Not a rat. Right. So they go, no, these guys afraid of you. They put themselves on set from you. So I go, you got to be kidding me. So all these guys who put themselves on set from me, whether they were scared of me from a beef on the street, whether they were scared of me over something in jail or maybe on my case somehow, I don't know. Whatever the case is, they go, you got steps on you. That's why you couldn't go there. So, okay. So it was check-in, getting back

to a check-in. I never checked in all those years because a check-in is thought of as a rat move. So let's say I'm on a compound. I got a longstanding beef with you. Maybe God forbid, I killed your brother when I was on the street. And now I know when you land on the compound, you're going to want to kill me. So I got two choices. I could try to kill you first, or I could check in and say, look, they just, Julian Dory just landed on the compound. I got to beef with him on the street.

You got to check in. You're going to check in on me? This is what guys tell you. You're not checking in on me. Yeah, exactly. Right? So you could do that. I'm going to fuck you up.

You got to get to the hole now. You got to get a God in the hole who lets you in, or you got to do something. I'll get there. They'll find you smattered. Not a rat. Not a rat. All right, I got the check in.

You got it, right? So Valachi checked in. Checks in. So now Genovese knows he's a rat. He's like, he just did a check in. He's a non-fucking rat. He's like, he just did a check. A heathen, a non-fucking rat. He says when he comes out, kill him. He tells Joe Bechti Palermo, who's a wise guy.

Sounds like a real straight shooter. Lower guy. He tells him, look, clip him when he's, hack him to death when he gets out of the hole. That's a good way to go. He gets out again. Now Valachi knows. Now they said, Valachi claimed, oh, I piped some guy over the head. This is what I debunked.

Part two. First, that heed some guy over the head. This is what I debunked, part two. First, that he was a rat to start with. Part two is he comes out of the hole and he pipes to death a guy who he claims he thought was Joe Beck de Palermo. And he says, oh, I thought it was Joe Beck. I didn't realize realize it wasn't him bullshit bullshit I was in the pen and we knew if I'm in the yard I would be sitting let's say I'm walking the yard with Jimmy Coonan and a new guy walks in Westies head Jimmy Jimmy Coonan head of the Westies let's say I'm in Lewisburg I'm walking the yard with Jimmy new guy comes in a newbie the whole place including me and Jimmy would look at him I go Jimmy you know this guy like you know who's in there with you.

You live in a very small, confined, congested world. Yeah, I'm just picturing that. You're not going to mistake Joe Beck, a guy that Veloci knew for decades. Well, how good was his eyesight? Exactly. Give me a break. If I pipe you over the head in jail,

I'm piping the right guy. You've got to be careful saying pipe. Yeah, well. You're in jail. Seriously. piping the right guy. You've got to be careful saying pipe. Yeah. Wow. Seriously. Yeah. There used to be these, there used to, there was a guy in the pen who used to draw these cards for Christmas.

This was hilarious. There was a guy who used to draw these cards. It was a convict giving him like a present to another convict and he opens it up and it's a machete, which was hilarious. Yeah. And another guy had a pipe. Another guy had another weapon. So he used to make these cards for people and you would send them home to your family to let you know you're in a nice place. I didn't, but people do. So, so anyway, he pipes this other guy. What he did was I've seen people when they want to do a check-in,

but they don't want to check in. Okay. So you want to do a check-in, but you don't want to be known as doing a check-in. Right. This is what they do. A little end a check-in, but you don't want to be known as doing a check-in. Right. This is what they do. A little end around check-in. A little end around. So what they do is they look for the weakest animal in the herd and they go punch him in his face or stab him, cut him, and they get taken out of the compound. So you could go, oh, I didn't check in, but it's a check-in. So I've seen it done. I saw a guy one time get released

onto the tier block with us. And he was terrified of being on a tier block. I don't know who he was afraid of. He goes, who's the smallest guy in here? And they go, why? He goes, I'm just curious. They go, probably that guy. Miracle I wasn't. A miracle I wasn't. He walks over and cracks this guy. And he just, that's a check-in. And he gets taken out. So that's the fastest way to get off the compound. I got it. So Valachi knew.

He picked a nonviolent forger. And he pipes the guy over the head with a lead pipe. The guy lives a few days and then drops dead. And now Valachi gets the attention he wants. Now he's on a murder rap and he says, oh, I got a lot to say if you want to listen. And now they're listening. He knew he wasn't hitting Joe Beck. He knew Joe Beck DePalermo for decades and he dealt drugs with Joe Beck DePalermo. You know it's not Joe Beck that you hit. You know. So the government couldn't say, oh, we just killed some weak link

and now he's going to be our star witness. They had to say, oh, he had to defend himself. So he tried to, Joe Beck was going to kill him. So he killed Joe Beck first. Either they fed Valachi the story or Valachi told them and they nodded along. I got it. One or the other.

If you've been in the- The government doesn't feed people stories, Lou. Never happened. They would never do that. No, never happened. Never happened. They would never do that. No, never happened. Never happened. They're just, they want the real story. Their nose could go to Saturn and back if they were Pinocchio.

Yeah. So, but anyway. And punctuous Saturn. We'd see it, we'd just see it to a puff of smoke from Pinocchio's nose. So, P.S., P.S., Valachi, that's the story of Valachi. That's, and so he never, but he's basically now just Bobby Kennedy's showpiece.

Yeah. And Bobby tries to stick it up Hoover's ass because Hoover's denying the existence of the model. That's pause. Let's pause, and let's pause for that

because that's important. So you said that they had pictures. I couldn't find any evidence that they had compromising pictures of him other than the ones that we know they have. I think a guy, Kurt Gentry, might have wrote a book on Hoover, a couple of other people. There's a woman who wrote a Pulitzer Prize winning biography on Hoover more recently, a few years ago. They might have the pictures. They might be floating online. They look like him in Tulsa on a honeymoon, but there was no compromising. He's not in drag. He's not naked. There's no sexual escapades involved in these pictures that we're familiar with. So I wanted to know where it came from. And it seems to trace back to a couple of rumors at a couple of parties where people said, oh, the mob have pictures. That's why Hoover doesn't go after them. My deep dive into Hoover

led me to believe, and I explain all the sources in my book. I urge people to read it. It led me to believe that Hoover, he was ultra concerned with threats to the United States government, its institutions, and democracy. So for example, he focused entirely on communism because he felt that the communist threat was real. And the Soviets are flexing their muscles. They have all of Eastern Europe at some point. And he's very concerned about that. And there are communists infiltrated into the US labor movement. And he's extremely concerned with communist infiltration of the American government, and those were his real enemies. Now, why didn't he want to go after the mob? So these he feared, the communists are a threat to the United States, he feels, Hoover.

And even though maybe it was a little more overblown than people think it was, maybe it wasn't, maybe he was accurate, whatever the case is, he feels those are the threat. Why isn't the mob a threat? The mob loves capitalism and they love democracy. We love that in America. Love it. They like manipulating ballot boxes. They like underwriting campaigns for politicians. They like bribing police commissioners. They like the American system. That's democracy. They like the preservation of human rights, of individual rights. They like this. They could beat people in court. They could hire, they could lawyer up. They could win trials. They like the American system. They are never,

have the mob has never been a threat. 10 hippies with anti-war protest signs are more of a threat to Hoover than an entire mafia across the country, because those hippies are against what he believed, Hoover. Okay, you're protesting the war? That's a decision that was made in Washington. You have no right. You're a threat to the United States security, threat to the United States government. I believe, and we shouldn't get too far into this, but I believe that Martin Luther King, the Reverend Dr. Martin Luther King became a severe target of Hoover. Oh, he was. When? Not only for his civil rights activities, but when he won the Nobel Prize, the Peace Prize, and then he started to

talk, speak out against the Vietnam War. Whoa, now you're causing a lot of uncomfortable situations for me as the FBI director in the country. And now you're also speaking on an international level. He's a threat to Hoover. So anybody like that threatens Hoover. But the mob, as we covered in volume one of Borgata Trilogy, the mob helped naval intelligence during World War II to secure the eastern seaboard.

The Navy said, look, make sure there are no U-boats up and down the coast and make sure that there's no any of these transport ships that are going shipping supplies and ammunitions to Europe. We don't need them getting sabotaged over here by any German infiltrators. So make sure that the eastern seaboard is secure. No problem, said DeMond. And that was the way that story has been reported to go. I just want to check this with your research. Is that after Dewey went and got Luciano

and got him on a bunch of tax evasion charges, gets him sent up to Siberia, the Anamora prison. I've been there. I served time there. Oh, you did? Yeah, Clinton. I was at Clinton. Yeah, yeah.

So kind of nasty place. And – Horrible. Horrible. The war breaks out. The government goes through intermediaries to Luciano and says, we need the ports protected for U-boats, as you just laid out. And also, we may need some help from the guys on the ground who are

underground right now, who supposedly control Sicily. Correct. That's the two part. And those, that happened. Yes. So those are the two asks.

Those are the two requests. The first part is, so do we put Luciano away on a kind of a fire? I covered this thoroughly in volume one of the Borgata trilogy. He puts Luciano away on a kind of a fire covetous thoroughly in volume one of the Borgata trilogy. He puts Luciano away on a phony rap, uh, kind of like there's a little something to it. Guys in Luciano's Borgata wanted to control. They wanted to organize and control the bordellos across New York and, and probably the tri-state area. They wanted to control. The bordellos?

Yeah. Uh, uh, hooker housesah houses, whatever they called them back then. The madams were sort of organized into what they said like a supermarket chain. And it was two guys under Luciano that came to Luciano. Now, Luciano was a good boss in the sense that he's earning. He doesn't need this. But you can't deny people in your Borgata the opportunity to earn. So, for example, let's say when Castellano got killed, Castellano doesn't have to sell drugs. He's monopolized the chicken market, the meat market, the unions, the garment industry, construction.

So he's telling a little crew like John Gotti and his guys, you guys aren't allowed to sell drugs. Oh, that's nice of you to say as you're raking a million dollars a day. Yeah. What do we do? You see that fucking thing's for sale right now, by the way? Yeah. I saw that. It's beautiful. Dude. Yeah. It's beautiful. What a fucking place. Yeah. It's absolutely beautiful. Yeah. It's beautiful. So he had a lot of hubris too. I don't want to talk, that's volume three. We'll get into that. Yeah, yeah. I'll be back for that. We'll talk about volume three.

We just went to the 80s. Yeah. No, no. We're going to talk about it. We jumped like 50 years. Yeah. We don't want to go that far. So Luciano, to get back to the base, Luciano says, look, if you just want to do this, go

ahead. You got my blessing. He's smart enough not to say to them, look, you just can't do that. I don't want this Borgata looking like that. You know, like this is bad. It looks bad. It's like disgracia. Like a disgraceful thing that we look like.

We don't want that. It's an infirmity. Exactly. So he says, no, go ahead, earn. Now they, in the midst of putting them together, they mentioned Luciano's name once in a while. So I don't know how much really like hands-on. He really wasn't hands-on.

The evidence bears that out. Dewey pretty much railroads him. He gets a bunch of people on the stand to admit later they lied, but he puts them away from 30 to 50 years. He sent up to Clinton. And Clinton, I got to tell you, so I mentioned Lewisburg. Clinton's a shithole, maybe even worse, not as, could be as violent, but not as many murders as Lewisburg used to be when Lewisburg was the Lewisburg I knew. I think this might've changed a little now because they did things differently, the federal system. But Clinton was as nasty as far as like knife, knifings, as far as like cockroaches. It's in the middle of the tundra all the way up north.

It was disgusting. So I spent some time there before I got transferred over to Adirondack, which was a medium, which was a lot nicer. Adirondack was pretty much a cakewalk. Good amenities there. Not bad. I'll tell you. Not bad. I didn't mind it. I didn't mind Adirondack.

But Clinton was disgusting. Yeah. So when I was in Clinton, I was there the same time Vinny Asaro was there. I used to call Vinny Asaro Uncle Vin. So I was close with Ronnie, who's the gem of a man, Ronnie G. Alonzo, who definitely should be home already. He's doing way more time than he deserved, and he never complains about it. Never a peep out of Ronnie, nothing.

But anyway, at the time I was there, I came through there when Uncle Vin was there, Vinny Saro, and we were trying to send messages to each other. And we eventually got through in the prison because we were in two different parts. But anyway, P.S., to rewind, I don't think that Hoover thought of the mob because of all they did. So Luciano goes away really quick, this Navy thing you asked me. They did a lot for the Navy. And what you said, the two things was,

do we put Luciano away? Then in U.S. Naval Intelligence, there's a ship burnt in the harbor. And they go, look, we need help. We want to make sure the Eastern Sea border is secure. We want to make sure there's no Nazi U-boats. They picked up two, one off the coast of Long Island. They're going to want to make sure they're not in U.S. waters They picked up two, one off the coast of Long Island. They're going to want to make sure they're not in US waters.

So they said, not only do we control the waterfront, the mob does at the time, but we have all these fishing boats and transport ships coming in and out. We'll tell them anything you spot at sea, report to us immediately and we'll tell you. So the Navy's like, this is great. We've got a roving lighthouses all over the Eastern seaboard. They're an intelligence unit. It was incredible. And the second thing was, look, when we invade Sicily, ask your cousins. You got like Calo Vizzini to like lead the tanks across? Exactly. And he was like entrenched in the mob there. But also too, the Italian, the Sicilian immigrants in America were reporting to naval intelligence

because they were patriotic Americans. They were going, look, and they didn't like Mussolini and Hitler. So they're going, look, these are more deep water ports. This is where you could bring in shipments. This is where the roads are more easy to traverse. They're giving them postcards, pictures, anything they could do to help them figure out when we land in what Churchill termed as the soft underbelly of Europe. Yes. Right? Churchill wants to get in, but he wants to get in. He doesn't want to do the direct Normandy invasion yet. He wants to come in from the bottom. That's why they first went to North

Africa. Now he wants to land troops in Sicily and then make their way over onto the European continent. So they're getting all of this information from Sicilian immigrants who would tell them this is where it was led by, I think, Patton and Montgomery, where they landed and they made a race and they wanted to try to take Sicily and then cross over. But a lot of help came from the mob who brought in all of the Sicilians they knew. Go, my cousin's got this. My sister's got that. My brother's got this. My other cousin's got that.

And it's all with the okay of Luciano. Luciano was in prison. They went to Majelanski first. They understood Sox Lanza controlled the waterfront. Sox Lanza they went to, and he goes, look, I can only speak so much because my boss is in Dannemora, Luciano, and there's only one guy who speaks with Luciano's tongue, and that's Mylansky. They grew up together.

Yep, Mylansky, a Jew who was Luciano's right-hand man and his off-the-record consul, yeah. Yes. His chief advisor. So Lansky says, look, Luciano's a patriotic American. I'll talk to him. I'm going to go up there with our lawyer, Pollock, and we're going to talk to him. I'll get back to you. But you can guarantee it.

It's going to be good. Lansky talks with Luciano's tongue. He goes up to see him. And they make a deal right then. When they do this, the deal is, hey, yeah, you're going to get out of here, but you're going to be deported. Well, Luciano wanted a full pardon at first. He was hoping for a full pardon. When the push came to shove, Dewey felt like it might be a political quagmire to give him a full pardon.

And he felt like they're going to look at him. And they did anyway, even for deporting him. Because they said, whoa, how much money did you get in the campaigns? What's going on with the gubernatorial race in New York? And Tammany, right? He's a Republican. Tammany was controlled by Democrats, but still people are asking questions. So there were so many questions, even though he just deported him. There were so many questions that Dewey ordered something called the Herland's Report. And that Herland's Report was basically, he wanted to prove that, hey, look, I'm deporting him and letting him out of jail after convicting him

only because of the work he did for the Navy. Don't look at me, because this was all top secret what he did for the Navy. It was not out. The Herland's Report that Dewey conducts on the sly through one of his chief lieutenants, they put together this report and they prove that all of naval intelligence relied so heavily on Luciano that that's why Dewey's making the decision. But then the chiefs, the heads of the Navy come to Dewey and they go, please don't release this. You can't let it out. And Dewey wants to be Republican president. So he goes, fine. He makes a deal with the Navy that he's not going to let it out. But years later, it came out. And that's how we know what we know today about the relationship between the mob and the Navy because of the Navy asked them, look, it's embarrassing for us. We had to work with people we don't like to win that war,

but don't put that out to people. The American public won't buy it. But the mob goes on record with that, showing like, hey, we're patriotic too. So they get some out of it. Luciano's bitching and moaning in court. You got to let me out. I worked with the Navy. He doesn't care.

And they're trying to figure out what are they going to do with Luciano? And they figure out deport him. Deport him, get him out, let him out of jail, shut him up, give him something. He gets deported. And then he only gets deported and he accepts it. He thinks he's going to work his way back. And he's never able to do it. He was able to get into Cuba a couple of times, I think, but never America. And he had effectively, because he had come to America when he was a very little boy, I think, but never America. Yeah, yeah. And he had effectively like, because he had come to America when he was a very little boy, that's what he knew. He had a New York accent. He loved America and he was fucking miserable

living in Italy the rest of his life. Miserable, miserable. I get into it a little in volume one and you just so nailed it because he took over. He took over America, the underworld at a young age. He's in his thirties when he takes over the underworld in America. And he rose to such heights. And they're putting politicians in.

They own the police. Dude, look at this skyline. How many times? I say this on different podcasts in different contexts. But whenever I look at this thing, if I'm driving up 78, which is right over there in the corner, you can't really see it on this wallpaper. But whenever I look at this thing, I go, whether you like it or not, the Italian American Mafia has built a lot of it. To this day. To this day. To this day.

Look, I was away with Tommy Patrizzo. He died now. I think I can mention him. R.I.P. Tom. Yeah. Rest in peace. He was all right with me. Tommy Patrizzo supplied the rebar for the trade center. I mean, in other buildings

across New York, the West side highway. Did a shit job, but thanks. Well, actually there was a guy, Louis Debono, Louis Debono, who got clipped inside the trade center. I'll never forget. I remember the day it happened. He got clipped inside the trade center. Oh, not on 9-11. No, no, no. But he got killed. No, this is a true story. That would have been such a way to put it. Yeah, he got clipped that day. Well, let me tell you something. Now, this is interesting.

Not a lot of people know about this. Louis de Bono got clipped inside the Trade Center. But Louis de Bono did all of the fireproofing for the Trade Center, his company. And that's what failed. He did a real bad job. Right. But the problem was and why he didn't get shit on for it, and nobody, it never came out really. The New York Times covered it very lightly. And I did this in my

research too for volume three. New York Times covered it a little, but what happened was the Bono, it's obviously flawed fireproofing. Excuse me, we know that, right? That it's flawed fireproofing. But he did it in conjunction with Port Authority. They give out contracts. They controlled a lot of that. And that goes back to Power Broker by Caro, how Port Authority worked with Robert Moses

and they controlled New York to a big extent. But anyway, because there were other people involved, not just De Bono, maybe it's better we don't really get too far into the fireproofing. Yeah. So that's something you could probably look into that deeper yourself. Interesting. I touch upon it in volume three of my book. The De Bono fireproofing.

The De Bono fireproofing, right, which was... Yeah, and then the irony is he got clipped in the basement. In the basement? In the basement. What happened? Well, supposedly the guy who got convicted of it was this guy, Charles. And it was this guy, Kevin, who was on the hit, supposedly. And so I bumped into... When I left the feds, I went through the state.

So I got to go, before I'm going up North, I went through county jail and I'm in a county jail and these guys go, Hey, this guy, Kevin's here. He looks, he looks like an Italian. You might know him Louie's a mob guy. So there was a bunch of African-Americans who came to myself. An Italian named Kevin? Yeah. They go, no Louie, there's an Italian here. Yeah, so, I mean, you know, there's half Irish, half Italian, who knows, right? But they knew he was a mob guy. They thought he was Italian. And he could have been.

He's been around Italians his whole life. I never met a Kevin who wasn't like the nicest kid, you know? I got to tell you, he was a nice guy. I liked him. I always got along with him. I knew you were going to say that. Well, I liked him. I got along with everybody. I did. I really did. You know you were going to say that. I got along with everybody.

I did. I really did. I wasn't one of these guys looking to kill everybody. You just liked the guys who did. That's all. I liked everybody. I liked them. Yeah.

Well, anyway. So I go to greet him. And it's a friend of mine who was supposedly on a De Bono hit. So we go in the cell. And he's Irish, as you rightfully picked out. But he's an Italian. Okay, so he is actually. But he's a mob guy. He's a legitimate mob guy.

I understand. He was as mob as mob gets. You know, I mean, look, Joe Watts, they call him Joe the German. Really, he was half Welsh. But Joe walked in here, you'd think he was an Italian guy. Sure. Joe's around Italians his whole life. And Joe's as big a mob guy as you're ever going to German. Really, he was half Welsh. But Joe walked in here. You'd think he was an Italian guy. Joe's been around Italians his whole life. And Joe's as big a mob guy as you're ever going to meet. And another gem of a guy. I love Joe. I got to tell you, I love Joe like a father. Joe was a sweetheart. But anyway, so I bring Kevin in my cell. This is really an aside, but I bring

Kevin in my cell. I give him whatever he needs. He just landed here. And he's telling me about murders. And I go, Kev, don't tell me. I don't want to know. And he's asking me, what about this? And I go, Kev, I'm not listening to you. You shouldn't even be telling your lawyers these things.

So at some point, I said to myself, either he's really nervous and he's just looking to talk to somebody. A lot of times you're cooped up. He's been in transit. Or you're going sour. And it doesn't matter who you talk to anymore because you're planning to cooperate. And very unfortunately, he cooperated. But I called that that day in my cell in my head. I couldn't tell anybody because I don't know for sure.

You can't label a guy a rat just on a hunch. But I'm saying to myself, I'm going, it's really strange. He's opening up about murders that I don't want to hear about. And I'm shutting my ears. I'm going, Kev, I'm not listening to you. You shouldn't be talking about, don't ask me advice. Say, if I was charged, don't say you did it. You know, you don't even tell your lawyer.

I don't know if this cell's bugged. Who knows who lived in here before me? I don't know. Exactly. So I'm trying to tell him and sure enough, he goes bad. Fucking Kevin. Yeah. So, and I still, you know, I just like, I felt bad because I liked him. It's sad when you like a guy and then he flips because, you know, it's like, okay, I lost another friend. But whatever the case is, get back. Where were we? Where were we? Well, we had been talking about Luciano and how he got deported after that was the deal they made after he gives all the intelligence, gets deported to Italy.

That goes back to Hoover. So Hoover never felt the mob was a threat to the American way of life. Yes, they're patriotic. Right. Now, so why did Hoover ignore the mob was a threat to the American way of life. Yes, they're patriotic. Right. Now, so why did Hoover ignore the mob? This is the crucial question. And I make a great outline for it in both books because I talk about it briefly in volume one, and I got into it much more deeply in volume two because Bobby went after him for it. Hoover felt—

Bobby Kennedy. Kennedy Hoover felt that look if we do a deep dive into the mob it's gonna lead one place and that's Washington DC yeah okay was he relating that to the naval intelligence from no no no forget about no forget this is naval intelligence and World War two's done that was in the 40s right okay now we're going up to 1960 Bobby's AG Bobby's attorney yeah I'm saying what is what is the context of hoover saying it's coming it's going to come back to dc well so so bobby's hounding hoover to go after the mob and hoover's dragging his feet he don't want to do it even after appalachian he don't want 57 right because hoover put in all of these eavesdropping devices. They're called black bag jobs. And he puts all of these illegal eavesdropping devices in mob social clubs throughout the country. And he's listening to them talk and they're going, that mayor owes us. The governor owes us. We got that congressman. And he's going, Bobby he knows this because he's getting it from different sources and he's got top echelon informants telling him who's on the take.

They're putting judges in. They got politicians. They got who knows who's next. Maybe now the president, John F. Kennedy. Hoover's aware. Hoover's aware of what happened in West Virginia with mob money. Oh, he knew about that? Oh, 100%.

All that was allegations came past Hoover's desk. And I talk about it in the book. Well, allegations. Did he think he felt he had the proof it happened? 100%. But Hoover knew he couldn't get anywhere with Bobby as AG. So Hoover just bends the knee. Hoover's like, what am I going to do?

Where's this going? What am I going to do? Tell Bobby, oh, I have all these cases. Are you ready to bring them, Bobby? Yeah, your brother who's in office. They happen to be against you, your brother, and your father. So Hoover's like, okay, here's a mounted FBI badge. You're an honorary agent. I'm your buddy. So this is how Washington works. So PS, as it goes, Bobby's pissed at Hoover for not jumping into the fight against the mob. Now, Bobby is AG, harnesses all of the agencies under his control.

So you got INS, IRS, FBI. You could keep going. I don't care if it's environmental agency. He's got them all working to take down the mob. 26 agencies, I think it was, all harnessed. And one of his aides in the Justice Department said he became like the chairman, like sort of like a, almost like a, how do you, like not an official chairman, but almost like a covert chairman of like an illegal crusade. You know, that's like what the insinuation was. Yeah. Because it really

wasn't like you can't tell the IRS. The IRS would say, look, we go after people for tax reasons. You can't tell us target Julian and find something because you're going to lose faith in the tax system as Americans. That's right. It's supposed to be completely on its own. Right. Not political, no agenda. So they're pushed back and pushed back and pushed back even within the IRS. And those people who are pushing back are slowly getting removed. And then Bobby goes to his old professor. I think his name was Mortimer Kaplan. And he says, look, he was an old professor from college. He goes, look, if you want to be head of the IRS, but you have to do what I'm doing, you got to go with me on this one. I'm going after the mob. And he goes, sounds good to me. Let's do it. And he gets appointed head of the IRS. So Bobby's kind of like getting all

this concentrated attack on the mob. And the mob is scratching their own. He's trying to get Hoover before I go to the mob, how they're pissed. Hoover is not dragging his feet. He don't want his agents involved in this. So there's several reasons. Let's go back to that. One is he's picking up all of this stuff. He knows that it goes all the way to Washington. And what is he supposed to do? Have his agents surround the Capitol rotunda, tell everybody to come out with their hands up? Where's he going with this? If it all goes up to Washington, if they got mayors, they got congressmen, they got governors, they got senators, where are you going with an investigation? Even Hoover infers at times with Bobby, okay, how about I do a deep

dive into those mobsters that run the Cal Neville Lodge? Oh, the ones who are always seen there with your father. Conveniently. Yeah. Okay. You want me to do a deep dive into them? How about we do a deep dive into the mob money that went from Chicago, New York, and Las Vegas into West Virginia and Chicago, just as your brother pulls out the election? Yeah. How about that? You want a deep dive into that? So he's trying to teach them through example. come on, Bobby, don't you get it? This is how Washington works. We kind of like know where we got to walk here, right? But Bobby don't get it. Bobby don't get it. But it all comes back to, according to you,

Bobby is pissed at Traficante, Marcello and Hoffa, but he's now putting it towards all the mob, even though he knows that the other guys fucking put him in there. Kind of the reverse. So he's going after the whole mob because he doesn't care. He hates them all. But he had a little bit of a special vengeance for those three. Okay. Yeah. So it wasn't like I'm going to go after three and then because I'm going after these three, I'll grab the whole bunch of them. I'm going after the mob. I don't care. I'm the attorney general. You don't mess with me. And he tells Hoover now, you can't see, you can't just

walk into the Oval Office anymore. You go to the attorney general. There's a chain of command here. Hoover never had to deal with that. Hoover always went to Pennsylvania Avenue himself. He never had to go, Mr. AG, I would like to speak to the president. Not only that, when there's an FBI press release, Bobby says, you got to give it to me first. I'll edit it and let you know what you could do and say. Hoover's like, who's this guy? This guy's first teeth came in when I was already director. And he's telling me this little whippersnapper. So Hoover's livid over this. Now Bobby at some point says, look, we're going to get rid of Hoover. If Jack gets a second term, we'll either ease him out or force him out, one or the other. He's gone. Good luck with that. Well, now there's an assistant director of the FBI that says not only Bobby was promising to a lot of people, and it was getting back to Hoover, that he was going to get rid of Hoover, but also Bobby wanted to smear him as a homosexual, which as we said, was unacceptable in the 1960s. So now it'd be like,

oh, I'm going to smear this guy as a homosexual. The guy could go, I'll tell everybody myself, but not then. You couldn't do that. That wasn't an option. Right. It wasn't an option. So Hoover's going to be disgraced, retired, and doomed. So he's got nothing ahead of him with Bobby Kennedy. And I'm only saying that, I'm going to jump ahead just a little bit. I'm saying that because later on when the mob is threatening to murder Kennedy, and all of those threats are coming past Hoover's desk, Hoover mysteriously does nothing about them. Right. Why isn't Hoover reporting it to the Secret Service,

to the Kennedys? Because it wouldn't be the worst thing in the world, Tim. I didn't see it. I didn't hear anything. You know, I mean, you could just be inactive and be a conspirator to an extent, and he's basically inactive. I'm not, I'm not, I didn't see and hear anything. Don't care. So maybe because of want of it to happen, he wasn't acting on him. So, you know,

because he really wants the Kennedys out. So now this is a complicated story and I put, it's hard in a podcast. It's easier with a book. So I'm desperately trying to put all the pieces together. Keep putting them together. I like it. Okay, good. So now at some point, the CIA decides, look, we want to get rid of Castro. We want to murder him. The CIA is, during the Eisenhower administration, before Kennedy, the CIA has decided that it's okay to murder international leaders that we don't alan dulles yeah alan dulles the whole narrative whose brother was john foster dulles yeah also not a great guy yeah so you know you have the state fucking guy

got an airport though how about that oh you the worse you are the faster you get something yeah it's crazy yeah if you the worst people just go around the country and look for who's, who gets all the names and, you know, a lot of times We should name it Lucky Luciano International.

Is that what you're saying? I think that's the airport in Naples. So anyway. But you were saying with Cuba, so the CIA decides they can whack leaders they don't like. Right. So now it's the Kennedy.

Dulles has, he has, he's planning for when Castro got in, all of the Cuban exiles who left and landed in Miami, 200,000 of them. Yep. They come here and they want their country back. They want their homeland back. And a small number of them, and very few of those are military trained. Most of them weren't, but they're going to train to take back the country, to take back the island. The Cuban revolutionaries, if you will. Exactly. And they're being trained by CIA handlers.

And now this is happening, I believe, like a lot of this is in Florida and Louisiana. Correct. Correct. Those are the two. And this is odd because nobody makes a connection. Why those two places? They're underwritten by two people for the most part. Traficante and Marcello.

Exactly. And that's where all the camps are, the majority of them. And why are those the two places where they're, I mean, that's everywhere. And they also have a big training camp in Guatemala, but eventually the Guatemalan president says, look, you got to get them out of here. One way or the other, they need to get out of here soon because there was a lot of press that they were training there. And there was political reasons the Guatemalan president wanted them out as soon as possible. And they were forced to like push up, you know, not push up, but go ahead with the Bay of Pigs, which is the Bahena Cochinas.

Bay of Pigs is what the beach was called. And they were going to hit this beach and through their CIA handlers, they were trained to go in and the CIA handlers promised them, look- They would have air cover, right? You're going to have air cover

and we'll back you if you need us. We got the whole Navy off the coast. We'll back you with air cover, and we could fire, we could lob bombs in from the water. We could even send in troops. Whatever we're going to do to help you, we'll be there. And also too, they were going to link up with another revolutionary force inland a little after they get through the Zapata swamps and then march toward Havana. At the same time, the mob was supposed to clip Castro and how they were going to do it was the CIA approached first, Johnny Roselli. Yeah. Stay with the mic. I'm saying when I do this, I'm so sorry. I'm sorry.

So they approached Johnny Roselli. yeah stay with the mic i'm saying when i do this i'm so sorry with the mic you're good i'm sorry so they approach johnny roselli and tell people who johnny roselli is who didn't see episode 236 okay johnny roselli is he's a real uh how do you describe him he likes the limelight he enjoys himself with with women and wine uh has a ball. He originally flees Boston and he ends up in Chicago. He gets in with the Capone mob. Then the Chicago outfit sends him to Los Angeles to work with Jack Dragner and his crew because he becomes like a Hollywood guy. And Jack Dragner was like, just like there were smaller Borgattas that sort of answered to New York. Yeah. This is the Los Angeles Borgatta sort of answered to Chicago. Like if you pushed up on, if New York pushed up on the Los Angeles Borgatta,

they'd go to Chicago and say, look, get them off our backs. So Roselli's there kind of running the show with Dragner. And then at some point they redirect him to Vegas as they get more and more of a bigger footprint in Vegas. So Johnny Roselli is kind of in with Hollywood directors and producers, make sure they have labor peace. The skim and everything involved in Las Vegas, he makes sure that it's going to the right pockets. It's being directed into the right pockets. Roselli does. So they approach Roselli and they tell Roselli, look, we want to kill Castro. We know all you guys lost your casinos in Havana.

You guys want to kill him too, right? And he says, I do. So they goes, how do we get this done? And he says, well, I got to talk to my boss, Sam Giancana, who's the acting boss of Chicago. So Roselli brings in Giancana into the conspiracy, introduces him to the FBI. Then Giancana says, well, look, if we're running this out of Miami, because that's where all the Cuban exiles were, and that's where the CIA had a sprawling headquarters down in Miami. If we're running it out of Miami, then we got to bring in Santo Traficante too. So now Santo's brought into the picture. So now it's Gene Conner, Roselli, and Traficante. And those are the three guys that are meeting with the CIA,

and they're trying to figure out how to clip Castro. They met him at the Fountain Blue Hotel. There was a famous meeting there, I believe. That's right. Yeah, that's right. And now at that hotel meeting, which is I'm glad you brought it up because Traficante was like Roselli did a lot of talking. Giancana did a lot of talking, and the CIA agents did a lot of talking. But Traficante was really, really quiet. He listened and he never really said too much. And he's, don't forget, he's also

the Spanish interpreter when they got to talk to the exiles, the ones who don't speak English, because he spoke fluent Spanish, Traficante and Italian. So he's very quiet. And I connected that later on. There's allegations that Traficante was working close with Castro for many, many years after Castro took power. Castro was- Double agent kind of deal. Kind of a double agent. So Traficante really doesn't want to kill Castro because he's making like how many millions

a month trafficking drugs that Castro's sending in to Miami to boost up his revolutionary economy that really hasn't picked up speed yet. And Traficante's now, he's making a ton of money and he's embedded in the exile communities. He's working with all these Cubans. And he realizes that I speak fluent Spanish. The Cubans are great to work with. Half his Borgata is like, you know,

he's got his own Borgata and then probably double the size of that is the Cubans he's working with. And he's doing development deals with them. Don't forget the Cuban exile community, unlike the Southern Italian immigrant wave that was like when my grandparents came, they were the poorest of the poor in Italy that got on a ship and landed here. The Cuban immigrant wave, you had laborers, you had doctors, you had laborers you had doctors you had teachers you had lawyers you had everything yeah they were all wiped away in one night a lot of these people were geniuses you know they're well educated the cuban the cuban immigrant wave was probably one

of the best waves in terms of um uh so a wide variety of people, including intellectuals, that the United States ever got. All right, don't get Alessio's ego going too much over here. Well, yeah, it's true. Yeah. I think he came on it, right? His great-grandparents or something. Yeah. Yeah.

So, yeah, it's true. So, you know, hats off to them. And they picked up speed right away. I mean, look at how far the Cuban community has gone in the United States. It is actually pretty amazing. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah, it's incredible. With is actually pretty amazing. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.

It's incredible. With rocket speed, they picked up right here. But having said that, they always wanted their country back and they were willing to fight for it. And they felt like they're going to be sent in. All we're asking for is you back us up like you told us. Kennedy pledges on the eve of the invasion. He says, no, the United States, he publicly says, will not be

involved in any type of forceful take back of Cuba. We're not going to do it. Because he viewed it as an encroachment on the Soviet Union, right? Yes. He viewed it as an encroachment on the rights of a small nation slash, I don't want to mess with the Soviets. And if I mess with the Soviets, they might flex their muscle in East Berlin. They might fool around in Southeast Asia. I got other places. I got to worry about what Premier Nikita Khrushchev of the Soviet Union will do to me if I do that.

So he's got a lot. He's got the international chessboard on his mind, just as you said. So he kind of makes this pledge, but the CIA goes, don't listen to him. They tell the exiles, push comes to shove, we'll twist his arm. You're going in. Yeah. They figured, look, you know what? We're going to put him, we're going to sit him down. You can't leave these guys. And we have good evidence. I just want to make sure here, because it'll come up in a couple of minutes. We have good evidence of this pregame that occurred where Kennedy, where of course Kennedy said that, but also that the CIA said, sources I had to choose from that I might choose two or three where I could have probably had 20 or 30 if I wanted to just keep going. So now and then, okay, I made my point. It's there and I move on. But there's such an abundance of sources

from the CIA community, the intelligence community, and from Kennedy's cabinet. So basically, that's why Dulles gets sacked after, afterwards. So they go in, they hit the beaches, and very heroically. And there's no backup though. No backup. So they're on the beaches, they're trying to move inland, and they're literally, there's radio, a ham radio operator in New Jersey. In New Jersey? In Jersey? In Jersey.

Why Jersey? You think about it. From Cuba. It's amazing, right? That's a long way. Got good equipment in his garage. You sure it wasn't one of your relatives? Hey, listen.

I'm not saying nothing. This ham radio operator is in his garage, and he picks up Pepe San Roman, one of the leaders of the Cuban exile brigade. And he says, calling the free world, we are bogged down on the beach. Help us. Do not quit on us. We are fighting. Help us. Nobody's coming. So now people in the Kennedy administration and the CIA are racing around trying to twist Kennedy's arm. They're going, look, we promised them air cover. We promised them help. They're stranded on the

beaches. We can't leave them there. We trained them for how many months? You can't just say to hell with them. And Kennedy goes, no, I won't do it. But if he put, here's, this is the ultimate quandary because it already looks bad when you have CIA-backed revolutionaries. It's very clear that that's what it is in the Bay. But you can at least have deniability with that. If you bring in fucking air cover or shit like that, it is now a full-blown, unquestioned, internationally recognized act of war. Yes and no. So I'm going to say the defenders of Kennedy's decision say exactly that. And they say, well, Kennedy had every reason to step away because you can't cross that

line in the sand. And there is some truth to that. It makes sense. However, this is the flip side of it. So the first mission that kicks off the Bay of Pigs invasion is they had like these eight leftover bombers from World War II, American bombers, that they repainted with some Cuban Air Force markings. And they were like, anybody like it. And they, they, on the way, okay, seven of them bomb a few planes on the ground,

while the eighth flies to Miami. And the guy gets out and says, there were eight of us that defected from Cuba. And I'm here and I'm so happy to be an American. And meanwhile, though, on the way out, seven of my brothers knocked out a little of the Air Force on our way out. So everybody's like, nah, this don't make sense. That's an American plane with some paint on it. This is an American. America's hand is behind this. That's when Kennedy says the second airstrike, which was supposed to take out the Soviet MiGs, he goes, no, we can't do it now. Now we look like idiots.

But the other guys are going, they know it's us already, Jack. It's American planes. It's out. We can't look like fools any more than we do. So they're kind of twisting his arm. Then the other things they're saying is, if Castro's got Soviet migs, why do we care if we're using our planes to help the exiles? Why could the Soviets help him, but we can't help them? So this is the counter argument

that the defenders of Kennedy never bring up. But also Kennedy, this is one of those situations. It kind of reminds me of Obama's comments in 2013 about Syria, the red line, where he said, or in 2012, whenever he actually said it before the chemical weapons went off with Assad, he said that would be if Assad and his regime chose to use chemical weapons in off with Assad, he said that would be if, if Assad and his regime chose to use chemical weapons in any fashion, that would be a red line, meaning like we'd have to come in. And then he felt like a bitch afterwards. Cause he's like, fuck, now I want to go in there because Assad did that. And then they didn't end up going in. So Kennedy's like, well, if I say I'm not going to do this and then I do it, do I, am I? This is the Jordan Belfort story.

If you're not, if you're going to stick a gun in his mouth and tell him you got to come up with the money or I'm going to kill you, you got to be willing to kill him then. Yeah. Right. Or don't do it. So it's the same thing on a very small level. That's a big level and you just nailed it. It's a perfect geopolitical example of later on.

So, you know, so Kennedy's totally blowing it now in the eyes of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, in the eyes of the CIA, and they're starting to despise him now. Yeah. When you talk to guys who are still around from that era or the guys who came up underneath them, especially the ones who are of Cuban heritage, the way they talk about John Kennedy is, especially when you consider the CIA's floated as being behind his murder. These are not ways that I would ever talk about him, but they are, they disparage him like crazy. They call him a traitor. They call him all these things. They felt his inaction was tantamount to treason. Yeah. I know Felix Rodriguez said that.

You know them all. Directly, yeah. So, I mean, that's how they felt. Now, the Cuban exile community, following the missile crisis, too, which we could talk about, but they've never really gone back. They've gone red at the polls. They became Republicans. And that stems back to the Kennedy days. They felt like they were betrayed twice. Now, I'm going to tell you, the second betrayal was even worse. So after the first, they do this postmortem. Jack says to Bobby,'s got like X amount of months to resign. Dulles is out.

Now, originally when Jack became president, he was having this like little powwow, I think in like Cape Cod or maybe Palm Beach, one of the Kennedy estates. And he had some friends going, who are you going to get rid of first, Jack, Hoover or Dulles? I think you should get rid of both of them. And he wanted to get rid of both, but he goes, you know what? You know, the election was thin. I don't have a full, like a mandate to rule. Let's keep the old guard in place for the moment. We'll deal with them at some point in the future, but I don't want to get rid of them right away. So he kept Dulles in place. He kept Hoover in place. And now he's getting rid of Dulles. Dulles is getting the boot in the ass and Hoover's going, I must be next. Don't forget that.

Have you ever read Devil's Chessboard by David Chalmers? Yeah, it's excellent. Some good writers. Amazing stuff, but like effectively, Dulles was still running the CIA from his Georgetown fucking town. Oh, yeah. If you told me he's still running it today,

I might believe it. I mean, Alan Dulles. Never in the history of politics did we have a brother controlling the State Department and another brother controlling the intelligence agency where everything could be done at mom's table. Yeah. Think about that. Someone, that's not my own quote, by the way. That comes from somebody who wrote that. While one brother's president and the other one's AG. Well, that too. Very interesting world to live in.

That too. So first you had the Dulles brothers, John Foster and Allen, making decisions at mommy's table. The under-lovers of the government. And then you got the Kennedy brothers. And then the elected over-lovers. Exactly. 100%. So now the Bay of Pigs the Cuban exile community they're taken captive they're humiliated in Castro's prisons the only reason Castro doesn't kill them all is because he doesn't want to give Kennedy

a reason to send the Marines in so he backs off I think he shoots 4 or 5 guys just as like because Castro used to love show trials when he took over but shoots a couple but for the most part, he lets them live. And then he basically ransoms them for farm equipment, pharmaceutical stuff, and he sends them back.

When they get back, the Cuban Missile Crisis, by the way, happens. This is a big deal too. So they're pissed at Kennedy, first of all, the Cuban exile community, and the CIA guys, and the mob. The mob, don't forget, the mob still wants back their Havana casinos, too. Oh, yeah. Okay, so just keep that in the back of your head. Yeah, they all are.

So now, and Marcello, too. Marcello, big investments there. And Traficante. All of them. Yeah. So now, missile crisis comes along. So Dulles resigns, quote unquote, really resigns, but he's sacked. John McCone comes along. So Dulles resigns, quote unquote, really resigned, but he's sacked. John McCone comes in. He's like a leftover from the Eisenhower administration. He was

head of like energy or something. And they put him in as the head of the CIA. But John McCone's kind of in the dark. Later on, like I think either Richard Helms or William Harvey testified that we didn't tell McCone too much. It was advisable not to advise him. That's the problem. Yeah. We didn't really think it was advisable to bring him into the mix on what we were doing with the mob, how we were trying to kill Castro. So McCone's completely in the dark. Side note here, this is exactly why cynically, I don't have a ton of hope for someone

who seems pretty good, like a Tulsi Gabbard going into DNI right now. Because if she's someone who's kind of fought back against a lot of the bad things that seem to happen in the underbelly of the agency world, why the fuck are these people who are in control of those levers going to read her in on shit? It would have to be a radical purge of the department. And it would have to happen so quickly before the, before the adversaries are able to muster a defense. And, and so I don't know what's going to happen. If that's going to work, if it's not, time will tell, but it has to be so radical and so quick and so pervasive that that's the only way it's going to pull off. But you're saying Helms is brought in there and he's not read in. Well, Helms is not.

McCone. Or McCone's brought in, sorry. Yeah, so they're not bringing McCone into the loop, so he's kind of like on the outside. But they keep working with the mob, And now the missile crisis comes along. And McCone tells Kennedy, hey, listen, we got nuclear warheads 90 miles off the coast of Florida, Soviet missiles. What are we going to do about it? So they show him the aerial photographs and stuff. And Kennedy summons Bobby in the cabinet. And this is known as the 12 or 13 days, right? So he goes through options. And most of the quote unquote hawks in the administration,

I think the terms doves and hawks came from this period actually. So the hawks in the administration and the joint chiefs are going, go in. You have no choice. Don't worry about the Bay of Pigs. That's passed. You were iffy. You were on the fence. These are missiles that have a range, not only, as Khrushchev famously said, he goes, we could have took out every city in the United States, not to mention a little village like Washington. He goes, it was nothing for us. And I show a picture in volume two where there's the range of the missiles and they went all the way up to Canada. So they could literally hit any city in the United States. So they're going to Kennedy, take them out,

send in the Marines. It's a perfect excuse. And we won't look like the imperialist mercenaries that Castro keeps telling the world we are will just look like defenders of democracy, defenders of our country. Let's go in. And Kennedy's wavering. He's going, I don't know. And guess who's saying no? Bobby goes, it's going to give us like a black mark, a smirch. We don't want that. And I quote that. That's what Bobby's words were. Don't do it, Jack. We can't do it. We'll look like bullies. And the rest of them are going, are you out of your mind? We got to go in. Send them in. So now after this back and forth for a number of days, the two options that are available

to Kennedy are sending the military in and overthrowing Castro, getting the missiles out, which everybody, pretty much everybody wants except Kennedy and Bobby, Jack and Bobby, and a couple of other people come around to that. But originally, even members of NATO, de Gaulle, I think it was Macmillan in England, going, go in, go in, we got you back. Oh, they were telling him. Oh, in the very beginning. Later on, McMillan, the guy from England, changed his tune. The man from France still was pissed. And I'll tell you why, De Gaulle. Yeah. So-

That's interesting De Gaulle would say that. Oh, go in, go in, go in. They don't want this. So now Kennedy has two options. That, go in, or quarantine the island, a naval quarantine. Completely block off the island. Any Soviet ships, tell them to turn around. Any Soviet subs, tell them to surface and get back.

Those are the two options. In, invasion. That kind of is effectively the same thing, though. No, because a quarantine. It's different, meaning it's not like the boots are going on the ground and taking over, but you are shutting them off from the world completely. The quarantine allows at least some wiggle room for Khrushchev to then counter, right? So the Soviet, he, Kennedy's afraid the people who defend Kennedy's decision say that Kennedy's afraid of an invasion

because of what you said earlier. What happens if the Soviets get a little aggressive now in other places? Or what happens if it ends in a nuclear war? What happens if Khrushchev goes, let's push the button? So this is a lunatic. He slams his shoe on the microphone, Khrushchev, right? He's doing a phony act. He's doing a nut act. He's like Chin Jaganty on a world stage. But Kennedy don't know that at the time. So Kennedy's a little afraid of a nuclear war.

Maybe he flexes his muscles elsewhere. Again, he's got the national, the international chessboard in mind, but the hawks are all telling him, go for it. And the joint chiefs, go in, go in. And the other option is to quarantine where at least there's wiggle room to talk now. So that's what happens. So he does the quarantine. And then he does a back channel to Khrushchev. The red line.

And he says, look, let's figure this out quick. And Bobby even said, the generals may mutiny if you don't pull pull this off fast we figure this out imagine saying that was there also did you come across this in your research about how Kennedy allegedly also had conversations with Khrushchev on when I said the red line there was like a red phone allegedly that like they had a direct line to each other to yeah whatever but it was true it was true correspondence part of the part of the conversations morphed into let's both denuclearize. Yes. And the generals got wind of this and thought, oh my God.

And the CIA. Yeah, off with his head. That's crazy. Yes. There's a lot of truth to that. So Kennedy starts getting, he gets his back channel set up to Khrushchev. And it's Bobby and a Soviet ambassador or a foreign guy, foreign department of the Soviets or ambassador. I can't remember the guy's name. Chemnchenkov, whatever.

They all sound the same, the Russian names, including every gangster of Russian descent I was in jail with. They all sound the same. So he goes, look, I'll take down the missiles in Turkey. We had US missiles in Turkey facing the Soviet Union. I'll take those down if you take away these. And this was a side deal that Kennedy made that didn't come out for 25, 26 years. Nobody knew. Everybody thought Kennedy got Khrushchev to back down. But the back channel side deal was, I'll take down those missiles pointing at the Soviet Union, which had NATO up in arms. De Gaulle is now twisted. De Gaulle's, what are you doing? What are you doing? You're taking the missiles away that are pointing this. What about us? Don't we have a say in this?

Yeah. So now everybody's pissed at Kennedy, including, as you said, the CIA, the generals. They're going, what's this guy got a little love affair with a red czar? Yeah, that was like the last straw for them. This is like out of control. And he's got this correspondence going back and forth with Khrushchev. And I've read a lot of the correspondence. And, you know, it's not going through the proper channels. It's not being screened by intelligence agencies. Yeah, yeah, yeah. They can't have that. You can't, you just

didn't want it. So now that's a problem now too. So now here's, here's a decisive thing that contributes to Kennedy's assassination. And this is big, which we're starting to get, we're starting to creep closer and closer to Dealey Plaza. When he decides to quarantine the island and makes a side deal with Khrushchev, he also tells Khrushchev, Kennedy does, we won't have a hand in any invasion of Cuba. We won't back it. It will not happen again. And Khrushchev wanted that guarantee because that's now the Bay of Pigs that you botched up and the missile crisis you botched up. What are the odds you're going to botch up a third time? Doesn't want it, Khrushchev. He wants

Kennedy to give him a promise. So Kennedy says it's not going to happen. The exiles who were biting their nails in Miami going, we're going to get our homeland back. The missile crisis was a godsend for us. We're getting our homeland back. The Marines are going to take it back for us. What they botched up in the Bay of Pigs, don't worry about it. We're going to have it back right now. They're all biting, chewing their nails in Miami going, we're this close to getting our homeland back.

And then Kennedy blows it, they felt. Whether he did or didn't, whether historians paint them as a- But blows it, they felt. Whether he did or didn't, whether historians paint them as- But that's what they thought. Exactly. Exactly. So now they're livid, but it gets worse. It gets worse. The exiles, the militant exiles who want to take back their homeland, who were running sabotage missions into Cuba, whether through air or sea. They got private planes. They got boats. These guys, Kennedy now, they've been the mascots of liberty since Castro kicked them out. They've been billed as literally the mascots of liberty, the mascots of democracy. We've been like coddling them. And now Kennedy says to keep the promise

to Khrushchev, any of these guys get caught training or doing anything against Cuba, they get locked up. And exactly. And that's very, very often overlooked in a lot of the books I read. Alessi, is this lining up with your family tree lineage, his storytelling? Sounds like it. This is better than i do i want to meet your grandfather so so now now they're enemies of the kennedy administration from being the mascots of liberty from depending on kennedy who made campaign pledges oh yeah that's a no-no now this is now we're getting locked up. And are they locking them up? You bet your ass they are. They're being pulled over by Coast Guard cutters. They got locked up in the

Bahamas by a US joint British force that locked them up. Exactly. Anywhere they're training, they're getting locked up, these guys. And they're going, whoa, we're never getting the homeland back with Kennedy in. It's over.'s over now what well here's the here's a question i don't know if you ever found anything that could really really kind of get anywhere on this but i feel like this is never discussed kennedy's killed november 22nd 1963 the election was a year away was there did they look at any possibility of like well let's just get a fucking great the election was a year away. Did they look at any possibility of like,

well, let's just get a fucking great candidate to run against him and like, I don't know, like fuck with the election or something? I think there were other forces at work and I think that they doubted very much. Even let's just take Dealey Plaza. When Kennedy goes to Texas, he's told that it's very dangerous. Don't go by a number of people around him. Don't go to Texas. There's a lot of radicals. They beat up Adelaide Stevenson. They beat him over the head with sticks. Why'd they do that? He went there before Kennedy. He was part of the Kennedy. He was ambassador to the UN or something. And they just didn't want any Democrats or anybody from Kennedy's administration in Texas.

Oh, Texas didn't like Democrats. Right. And they were getting more and more. They were like a Lyndon Johnson Democrat. He was okay. Yeah. But Kennedy was now going more and more left and they were unhappy with it. Okay.

They liked more Democrats who were more towards center-right at the time. They used to be. It's not the same polarization we have today. There used to be Democrats who like Lyndon Johnson. Lyndon Johnson was H.L. Hunt, was as right-wing as you could get, the oil baron, H.L. Hunt. And he backed Johnson. He liked Johnson. He felt Johnson was a right- Johnson was a dealmaker. And he felt like he was exactly, asked you to Senate. Yeah. Johnson was a right- Johnson was a dealmaker. And he felt like he was, exactly, asked you to send it. Yeah, Johnson was a nastier, more like radical personality version

of Bill Clinton before Bill Clinton. I would agree with that. He was very much a guy that was like, where's the wind blowing? All right, let's go there. Yeah, yeah, I would agree with that. That's right. And I mean, the Caro multi-volume biography just lays that out time and again. So where's the wind blowing? All right, let's go there. better with Johnson. The mob had backed Johnson during all of his campaigns as a politician.

They felt they'd be better with Johnson. J. Edgar Hoover had lunch with Johnson once a week. He felt he'd be better with Johnson. Everybody pretty much felt like, the CIA felt like they'd be better with Johnson. So they wanted Johnson and getting him on there would be tough because he's intra-party and literally the VP to this guy. Yeah. And what do you think Johnson wanted during the missile crisis? Well, he wanted the opposite of Kennedy. Exactly. He wanted them to go in. Yeah.

And he said, we should show our strength. What are you doing? He couldn't believe they weren't going in. So, I mean, that tells them what they get out of Johnson. Sure. So now everybody's starting to like Johnson. And I found no evidence as some people claim Johnson was involved in the conspiracy. You took the question out of my mouth. Oh, boy's starting to like Johnson. And I found no evidence as some people claim Johnson was involved in the conspiracy. Oh, you took the question out of my mouth.

Oh boy. Let me tell you, there's a lot of circumstantial evidence, but there wasn't enough for me to commit it to paper because I couldn't find anything solid. And if without anything solid, I just had to- Good for you. Yeah, I can. I can't do it. I love that. Yeah. Time and again. And it's easy to talk on a podcast with you, which means I could say what I was thinking behind the pen. Right. That's why we do it. Yeah. And I felt exactly, this is great. So I felt like there was a lot of circumstantial evidence pointing towards Johnson. For example, when they came around the turn on Elm Street, before Kennedy's hit, there's pictures that show Johnson hit the floor

before the first shot. You know, he's in a backup limo. He's in a couple of cars back, but, and... Almost like he knew what they were coming for. Well, that's the argument, you know? And then there's something, somebody said, Johnson's longtime girlfriend, he wasn't faithful to Lady Bird.

His longtime girlfriend, what a surprise. She wasn't a looker. His longtime girlfriend said there was a meeting where Johnson attended and he knew something, but I couldn't get anything concrete. So I had to stay away from it. But the most biggest piece of circumstantial evidence is this. And this is interesting. We'll go back to where we were, but this is important to get it out. And I make a really clear cut case about this in the book because I do have the evidence for this. Although I don't have evidence that this means he participated.

I have evidence that this happened. That's it. Because we know it did. Bobby wants Johnson off the ticket in 64. He hates Johnson. Bobby does. Bobby holds grudges. Remember that? Well, Johnson called Joe an old Nazi or something when he campaigned against Jack and Bobby never forgave him. And the things that were said in a campaign, they go at each other's

throats. So whatever Bobby said about Johnson, he's not asking for forgiveness, but whatever Johnson said about Bobby, or Jack rather, Bobby never lets it go. He hates him, despises Johnson. And he got everybody in Washington to hate Johnson to the point where everybody in Washington, he went from master of the Senate to an inactive VP role where they don't let him do anything. And he's being abused. He goes to a party one day and there's these two mid--level government employees. And they're like, they're bad-mouthed in Johnson. And one of them goes, I think the vice president just heard us. And the other one goes, fuck him. And Johnson heard. And Johnson was like at a loss, like, what do I say? I'm the vice president. I don't know how to react to that. And he just walks away with his head down.

Then when- Johnson did. Johnson didn't know how to act. And then at times, Bobby and Ethel Kennedy, when they invited Johnson to Hickory Hill, the state in McLean, Virginia, they would sit Johnson and his wife, Lady Bird, at the quote unquote loser's table. This is an insult to Johnson. He knows he's sitting at the loser's table. It got back to him. So, you know, all these things like, and then Bobby takes the final step leading up to the, as the campaign is building and the 64 elections coming up, Bobby says, I want him off the ticket.

Jack says it. There's a lot of evidence. People go, oh, he really was going to keep him. Jack's own secretary, Evelyn Lincoln, who was with him from soup to nuts, start to finish, said he was definitely getting rid of Johnson. And other people said it too. Richard Nixon, other people said he was getting rid of johnson bobby goes after people around johnson so bobby's the attorney general this is how oh my god he's going legally after them legally uses the attorney general's position

he locks up a guy named billy soules, who was doing his agricultural frauds and using Johnson as his Washington guy to back them. And he's doing them in Texas. And Johnson's directly connected to these. You know, they're government funded. It's government deals. But he's working hand in hand. Johnson is with Billy Sol Estes. And Bobby goes after Billy Solestes. Now, the guy

investigating Billy Solestes, and this is proven, this isn't hypothetical, this isn't circumstantial, he gets killed. The agricultural agent who's investigating Billy Solestes and how it connects to Johnson, he gets killed. So they rule it a suicide. Nobody ever explained how a suicide occurred with five bolt action rifle shots to the chest. Kind of hard to kill yourself like that. Years later, they reversed the coroner's report and Billy Solestes said, look, there were a lot of people who were killed and Johnson had something to do with it. That came from Billy Solestes. That I mentioned in the book because it came directly from him. But Bobby's targeting Billy Solestes to get to Johnson. And he wants this to go to Johnson. And he offers Billy Solestes a deal if he flips on Johnson. Then he goes to Bobby Baker. Bobby Baker is another close associate of Johnson.

When Johnson was master of the Senate, Bobby Baker was the Senate secretary, who basically is the guy in the know, who handles everything for the chief. And he knows who to talk to, who to bribe, who to corrupt, what deals to make. He's got all the dirt. Bobby goes after Bobby Baker. Bobby Kennedy goes after Bobby Baker and he's locking up Bobby Baker now, telling Bobby Baker to flip on Johnson. Literally the day of Dealey Plaza, fast forward, literally the day of Dealey Plaza, they get a witness into a Senate committee, closed door Senate committee. Conveniently.

Investigative committee. And they're investigating Bobby Baker and Johnson. And the guy throws a ton of evidence on the table that's literally going to not only knock Johnson off the ticket, but put him in jail. And literally that meeting is happening and the evidence is being sifted through as the shots ring out in Dealey Plaza. And you're saying Lyndon had nothing to do with this? I'm saying I couldn't get direct evidence, a lot of circumstantial, and I put in all the circumstantial, but I could never commit and say Johnson did it too. Sure. But all the circumstantials in there, a lot of circumstantial, let the reader decide, let the reader decide. But I couldn't make that jump. And I was dying to, I was dying to say, look on the mob on the street. If we went to a sit down, I'd say he's got to go.

He did it, you know, but that's different rules, right? So this is, is you know we're playing by different i'm a historian as you would never do that yeah so i i painted the picture but i couldn't say he had something to do with it when people i know had something to do with it i say it you know where the evidence is hard evidence and it's overwhelming understood david ferry calls marcello these guys definitely had something to do with it dullisulles, I couldn't directly connect. I connect the Secret Service to it. We should talk about that at some point. Okay. Yeah.

So Johnson, literally the guy with all the evidence as a Senate committee, they get word that Kennedy was just killed and Johnson's top dog. And the Senate committee literally goes like this and pulls all the evidence. And the guy goes, no, give me all that back. And they go, no, this is ours now. They didn't want it now to use against Johnson. They wanted to bury it. They know he's top dog. And that's exactly what happened.

Now, there were editors who were covering this of Time or Life magazine that said, we had him. We had him by the balls. He was gone. And if we would have, if that, if Kennedy, the shots didn't ring out in Dealey Plaza. We would have been able to take him out. Johnson was going to jail. I quoted in the book. not only he was off the ticket he's going to jail so that said um that's johnson yeah so that might be johnson's look i think what happened what might have happened my best if johnson didn't have an active role because i couldn't

prove that he did everybody knows knows that Johnson will be better than Jack. So maybe he got a wink at some point saying something like, look, if something happens to Jack, just don't worry about it. You know, like you could tell, like, let's say you're in the mob, right? And let's say you're beefing with Alessi and you guys are going back and forth for years and over everything you could think of. And at some point I go to you, I can't, I can't bring you in on what I'm going to do, but I want to kind of give you, I go, look, if something one day happens to Alessi, just don't get nervous. If somebody knocks on your door, seriously, but I don't want to tell

you what's going to happen. And then maybe when you come to me and then something happens to him and you come to me and go, was that you? I go, no, I just said, don't get nervous. But that wasn't me. You know, like it's like- Deniability. Deniability. So maybe something like that. I don't know. I don't know. But Johnson knew that when he was being sworn in, first of all, it was unnecessary to be sworn in. You automatically become the president. But you don't have to be, but you still have to be sworn in. Nicholas Katzenbach,

who was the standing attorney general for Bobby when he was incapacitated after his brother's death and became, I think, the fill-in later. Katzenbach said they were calling all around to say, how does this work? We need a judge. Johnson was. And they said something like,

it's not a rush. It's not a rush. It's automatic. But Johnson wanted it immediately on Air Force One. And he wanted Jacqueline Kennedy present in her blood soaked dress, which he refused to take off. They wanted to take it off. What a picture that is. Incredible. She goes, let them see what they did. Yep. Not let him, Oswald, see what he did. Let them see what they did. Yeah, that was a very telling line. Interesting. In a blood-soaked dress, caked with blood. And they wanted her to change.

Lady Bird said, please, go change. And she said, no, they're going to see what they did. But why is Johnson, and he's calling around, he gets a judge, Sarah Hughes. By the way, Sarah Hughes is a judge that Johnson wanted to become, he wanted to get her on the bench. And guess who knocked it down? He had to fight with Bobby. He said, she's too old. I don't want her. And he went back and forth. And finally, Johnson got her the nomination and got her on the bench. And that's who he calls to swear him in on Air Force One. So Sarauz even hated Bobby. I mean, you could keep going. I even point the finger slightly without any evidence, so I don't say for sure, but I make an insinuation, an inference,

that Mayor Cabell, the mayor of Dallas during's assassination, happens to be the brother of General Charles Cabell, who was of the CIA, trying to get Kennedy to do the airstrike. And Kennedy refused. Conveniently. Conveniently. So conveniently, it happens in Dallas where Cabell, but there's other interesting coincidences too. So leading up to, this is interesting. Nobody ever, the geographics, the geography involved is interesting if you look at it. There were three places where it was planned that Kennedy was going to buy it.

And a lot of people don't know this part. First, there was an informant in Florida. And it was so Marcello's floating around the idea at the time, I got a million dollars on Kennedy's head. And then he gets- Oh, he was saying this. Well, there was a guy named Eugene de la Para, who was a government informant, who said, I was with this other guy, Tannenbaum, who's a government informant who said i was with this other guy tannenbaum who's a marcello gangster and marcello's brother but it's coming from marcello marcello's brother put a million dollars on kennedy's head when he comes down south anybody who takes him out and a million dollars is like a dollar for marcello he's doing a billion a year remember that

a million dollars to somebody making a billion years like that's like me it's like a sign of disrespect on this can i borrow like 10 on my head oh marcello may have gone for more than 10 Remember that. A million dollars to somebody making a billion years. That's like me saying- It's like a sign of disrespect almost. Can I borrow- At least put like 10 on my head. Oh, Marcello may have gone for more than 10 at the end. And he could have easily. We need to get into, by the way, the hatred of Marcello and what Bobby did to him

and how that hatred was, that's important too. But so there's an informant in Florida and he's talking to some other guy and he goes, is Kennedy really going to buy it? The informant says to the other guys, Kennedy really going to buy it when he comes down South? And he goes, oh yeah, it's already planned. It's happening here. And he goes, really? Cause Kennedy was planned to go to Florida, Chicago, and Texas. Those were the three upcoming events. So first they got them, who's Florida, Chicago, and Texas? Traficante, Giancana, and Marcello.

Is that a little coincidental? I'm the first person who ever wrote that. You're the first person who ever said it. The only thing I would say that could be less than coincidental there, because technically Marcello is Louisiana, but as you said, he basically runs Texas. The only thing that could be a little coincidental, and I'd have to go check some electoral map stuff at this point, but you're a year out from an election and you're going to do events in three states with a good amount of electoral votes, two of which, Illinois and Texas, just delivered you the last election. And you could be going there to, you know.

And even regardless of why the administration planned that route, which could have been nefarious, the reasons, depending on who's planning the motorcade routes. And we could get into that with the Secret Service later. But even aside from that, it just so just so happens though that these are the three places that and i'm going to tell you about what's happening in these three places that they didn't just bank on texas texas was option number three and i'm the first person to to point that out okay why are you the first person with your evidence? Okay. So, well, the evidence comes from other people who have pointed out that these things happen.

I shouldn't take all the credit for discovering this evidence. Only discovering that they had three shots at getting Kennedy, and they happened to be three places controlled by Gene Conner, Traficante, and Marcello. And those are three main conspirators besides Jimmy Hoffa Jimmy Hoffa was more of we're going to make Jimmy believe

this was a favor for him which I'll explain we're going to make Jimmy believe this is a favor for him just to make sure we always have access to that team's

pension fund because Hoffa wanted him dead but they kind of like led Jimmy Hoffa to believe not that it's just for us Jimmy

but we're doing you a little bit of a favor here too because Bobby's going to destroy your life. We'll figure this out. And I'll tell you why they focused on Jack instead of Bobby too. That goes back to Marcello. I'm counting on you to remind me of these things. I'm just, it's your world. I'm listening. These are interesting things. It's just hard to get it all out in one string. Oh, yeah. So first Miami, the informant goes, how are you going to get him when he comes down here? And he goes, it's all in the works already. It's going to be a high-powered rifle from a building.

That's how we're going to kill him when he comes to Florida. Like a book repository. That gets better in Chicago. So he goes, we're going to get him with a high-powered rifle from a building. And we're going to get him with a high powered rifle from a building and we're going to pick up. It's all planned that they're going to pick up some nut job within an hour of the thing and we're going to dump it on him. So the informant runs back to the Miami Police Department and he says, look, I got something. And they go and they report it to the Secret Service and they defuse it in Miami. The police, for the most part,

diffuse the assassination attempt in Miami. The guy runs and later he's mysteriously found dead after the assassination. This guy Miltier was his name. Okay. So that's out of the picture. The next place Kennedy's going is Chicago. On the eve of his trip to Chicago, he's going there for the Army-Navy game or something and he's going there for like the army Navy game or something. And he's going to do a big thing, you know, presidential campaign thing. So he's going to Chicago and on the eve of his visit there, a guy by the name of Lee Lee calls up the secret service in Chicago and says, look, they're going to kill Kennedy on the motorcade route. It's going to be four guys with high powered rifles. They're going to trap them

off and they're going to be dumping it on this other guy, Thomas Arthur Valley. Okay. So they go out and they grab, first they grab two out of the four guys whose apartments they had high-powered rifles. They had pictures of Kennedy, of the route, of this. And they go, what the hell is going on here? We have no record of what happened with those guys, who they were, nothing. Why is that? I have no idea, but we may get it in the document dump. So let's say, no idea.

Now they pick up this guy, Thomas Arthur Valley. Now Thomas Arthur Valley is an interesting character. Could kind of pass for Lee Harvey Oswald's cousin. He's an ex-Marine. He worked with intelligence agencies. He was close with the Cuban exiles. And he was thought of as maybe they painted him as a little nutty. He's a little nutty. Well, he lands in Chicago just before Kennedy's motorcade, like Oswald lands in Dallas. And just as Oswald got a job at the book depository in Dallas, he got a job at a printing building and his window would have been three stories lower than Oswald's and even closer to the limousine as it turns in front of Thomas Arthur Valley's building, right in front of his building and goes to a slow crawl. And there's other four shooters,

don't forget. So the four shooters are going to take out Kennedy when he gets into this kill zone in Chicago, and Thomas Arthur Valley's going to be up there looking at it, and shooters are going to take out Kennedy when he gets into this kill zone in Chicago and Thomas off the valley is going to be up there looking at it and they're going to grab him and they arrest him though prior to because this guy named Lee ratted on him who's Lee I don't know could be could be could be Lee the only Lee we know right so and you said that two the two of the four we don't even know whatever happened to them? We don't know. The guys who were picked up and interrogated will let go. I couldn't find anything as to who they were, what they said.

I looked and looked and looked. If there's a historian out there that knows something I don't, please email Julian Dory. Please. Yeah. Or email me through my website. But you first. Email me first. Yeah, email Julian. And we'll come back. I need the content. Please. Yeah. Or email me through my website. But you first. Email me first. Yeah, email Julian.

And we'll come back. I need the content. Yeah, yeah, you do. Get to Julian. And I'll be happy to watch it. So basically, this guy now, he's pulled in. But that's not canceled, that trip. What happens is Diem in Vietnam is killed in a CIA-backed coup, which Kennedy is distraught about. He thought the CIA was just going to take him out of power.

He didn't know they were going to kill him. Oh, they don't kill people. Kennedy pretended he didn't know. Jesus Christ. Whatever the case is, I know. That's some naivete. I know. Well, defenders of Kennedy have sworn that he had no idea.

Yeah, okay. Right. So he cancels the trip last minute. He's got issues with Vietnam, cancels Chicago. And now there's one place where it's got to happen. It's got to happen in Dallas. And who controls Dallas? Carlos Marcelo through his Texas Borgata run by Joe Savillo and Joe Campisi. And who's one of the closest guys to Joe Campisi, the underboss of the Savillo Borgata? Jack Ruby. What's up, guys? I haven't decided yet if we're putting out the second episode of this sit down with Lou on YouTube and Spotify, or if

we're going to put it on Patreon. Frankly, we didn't expect this to be two episodes, but it ran way too long for one. So I'm dropping this one on a Friday. If you do not see the second episode on my YouTube and Spotify channel this coming Tuesday after this one drops, that means it is on Patreon and you can join our Patreon by using the link in the description below. Thank you.