American tabloid

PRESIDENT CONVENES HIGH-LEVEL GROUP TO

Calling the aborted Cuban exile invasion at the Bay of Pigs a “bitter lesson,” President Kennedy today stated that it was also a lesson he intended to learn from.

The President told an informal gathering of reporters that he has organized a study group to delve into precisely why the Bay of Pigs invasion failed and to also assess U.S.-Cuban policy in the wake of what he called a “catastrophically embarrassing episode.”

The group will interview evacuated Bay of Pigs survivors, Central Intelligence Agency personnel involved in high-level invasion planning and Cuban exile spokesmen from the numerous anti-Castro organizations currently flourishing in Florida.

The study group will include Admiral Arleigh Burke and General Maxwell Taylor. The chairman will be Attorney General Robert F. Kennedy.

DOCUMENT INSERT: 5/10/61. Personal note: Robert F. Kennedy to Kemper Boyd.

Dear Kemper,

I hate to trouble a wounded man with work, but I know you’re resilient, healing nicely and looking forward to getting back to your Justice Department duties. I feel bad about sending you into harm’s way, so thank God you’re recovering.

I’ve got a second assignment for you, one that geographically suits your work in Anniston and your occasional Miami excursions for Mr. Hoover. The President has formed a group to study the Bay of Pigs mess and the Cuban question in general. We’ll be meeting with CIA administrators, action-level case officers, Bay of Pigs survivors and representatives from many CIA-sponsored and non-CIA-sponsored exile factions. I’m chairing the group, and I want you to serve as my point man and liaison to the Miami-based CIA. contingent and their Cuban charges.

I think you’ll be good at the job, even though your pre-invasion appraisal of exile readiness turned out to be quite inaccurate. You should know that the President and I do not blame you in any way for the ultimate failure of the invasion. At this stage of assessment, I think the blame should be leveled at overzealous CIA men, sloppy pre-invasion security and an egregious miscalculation of inCuba discontent.

Enjoy another week’s rest in Miami. The President sends his best, and we both think it’s ironic that a forty-five-year-old man who has courted danger all his adult life should be hit by a stray bullet fired by an unknown assailant at a riot scene.

Get well and call me next week.

Bob

DOCUMENT INSERT: 5/11/61. Identical airtel memorandums: FBI Director J. Edgar Hoover to the New York City, Los Angeles, Miami, Boston, Dallas, Tampa, Chicago and Cleveland Special Agents-in-Charge. All marked: CONFIDENTIAL 1-A/DESTROY UPON RECEIPT.

Sir-

Your name has been deleted from this airtel for security purposes. Consider this communique top secret and report back to me personally upon implementation of the following order.

Have your most trustworthy THP agents accelerate their efforts to install bug/wiretaps in known Organized Crime meeting places. Consider this your top priority. Do not communicate information pertaining to this operation within existing Justice Department channels. Conduit all oral and written reports and bug/tap transcripts to me exclusively. Consider this operation to be self-contained and void of superseding Justice Department sanction.

DOCUMENT INSERT: 5/27/61. Orlando Sentinel “Crimewatch” feature.

Nobody seems to know where the man was born. it is generally conceded that (alleged) Mafia Chief Carlos Marcello was born in either Tunis, North Africa, or somewhere in Guatemala. Marcello’s earliest recollections are not of either location. They are of his adopted homeland, the United States of America, the country that Attorney General Robert F. Kennedy deported him from on April 4th of this year.

Carlos Marcello: Man Without a Country.

As Marcello tells it, the U.S. Border Patrol shanghaied him out of New Orleans and deposited him near Guatemala City, Guatemala. He said that he daringly escaped from the airport and hid out in “various Guatemalan hellholes” with a lawyer companion frantically seeking to legally return him to home, hearth, and his (alleged) three hundred million dollar a year rackets empire. Meanwhile, Robert F. Kennedy was following up on anonymous tips that placed the (alleged) Mob boss in numerous Louisiana locales. The tips did not pan out. Kennedy realized that Marcello had been hiding out in Guatemala, with Guatemalan government protection, since the very moment of his “daring escape.”

Kennedy exerted diplomatic pressure. The Guatemalan Prime Minister bowed to it and ordered the State Police to begin a search for Marcello. The (alleged) Mafia sultan and his lawyer companion were discovered living in a rented apartment near Guatemala City. Both men were Immediately deported to El Salvador.

They walked from village to village, ate in greasy spoon cantinas and slept in mud huts. The lawyer attempted to contact a Marcello underling, a pilot who might fly them to more amenable hideouts. The man could not be reached, and Marcello and his lawyer companion, ever fearful of another deportation action, kept walking.

Robert F. Kennedy and his Justice Department lawyers readied legal briefs. Marcello’s lawyer companion wrote briefs and phoned them in to the (alleged) Mafia pasha’s formal legal team in New York City. Marcello’s pilot friend appeared out of nowhere, and (according to this reporter’s confidential source) flew his contraband confreres all the way from El Salvador to Matamoros, Mexico, at treetop level to avoid radar detection.

Marcello and his lawyer companion then walked across the border. The (alleged) Mob maharajah turned himself In at the U.S. Border Patrol Detention Center in McAllen, Texas, confident that a three-judge immigration appeals panel would allow him to be released on bond and remain In America.

His confidence was justified. Marcello walked out of court last week a free man-albeit a man haunted by the awful specter of statelessness.

A Justice Department official told this reporter that the Marcello deportation matter could drag on legally for years. When asked if a suitable compromise might be reached, Attorney General Kennedy said, “It’s possible, if Marcello is willing to give up his U.S. assets and relocate to Russia or Lower Mozambique.”

Carlos Marcello’s odd odyssey continues…

DOCUMENT INSERT: 5/30/61. Personal note: Kemper Boyd to John Stanton.

John,

Thanks for the gin and smoked salmon. It beat the hospital fare hands down and was greatly appreciated.

I’ve been back in Anniston since the 12th. Little Brother does not respect the concept of convalescence, so I’ve been bird-dogging freedom riders and collecting statements for his Cuban Study Group. (We can thank N. Chasco for getting me into the hospital sans police notification. Nйstor is excellent at bribing bilingual doctors.)

The Study Group assignment troubles me. I’ve been around the Cause since its inception, and one loose word to Little Brother will destroy me with both brothers, get me disbarred as a lawyer and prevent me from ever obtaining any kind of police/intelligence agency work ever again. That said, you should know that I have deliberately sought out exile interviewees that I have not met before and that do not know that I am covertly Agency-employed. I am editing their statements to show the Agency’s pre-invasion planning in as positive a light as possible. As you know, Big Brother has become virulently anti-Agency. Little Brother shares his fervor, but is also evincing a true enthusiasm for the Cause. This heartens me, but I must once again stress the absolute necessity of obfuscating all Outfit-exile-Agency links to Little Brother, which now becomes more problematic, given his new proximity to the Cause.

I’m going to absent myself from my Agency contract work and concentrate solely on my two Justice Department assignments. I feel that I can best serve the Agency by working as a direct conduit between them and Little Brother. With the Cuban issue undergoing profound policy reassessment, the closer I remain to the policy shapers the better I can serve the Agency and the Cause.

Our Cadre business remains solidly lucrative. I trust the ability of Fulo and Nйstor to keep it that way. Santo tells me that our Italian colleagues will continue to make sizable donations. Playa Giron gave everyone a taste of what could be. Nobody wants to stop now. Wouldn’t our lives be a lot easier if Little Brother didn’t hate Italians so much?

Yours,

Kemper