North - Betrayal in Dallas: LBJ, the Pearl Street Mafia, and the Murder of President Kennedy

BETRAYAL IN DALLAS

BETRAYAL IN DALLAS

LBJ, THE PEARL STREET MAFIA, AND
THE MURDER OF PRESIDENT KENNEDY

MARK NORTH

AUTHOR OF ACT OF TREASON

A Herman Graf Book
Skyhorse Publishing

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For Wendy,
une vie d'amour magique

In memory of Staff Sergeant Richard North, USMC
Battle of Iwo Jima, February 19March 16, 1945
Courage

T HIS BOOK IS about justice, restoring governmental credibility, and closure for the American people in the death of President John F. Kennedy. We the people have long known that JFK died a victim of conspiracy and that our government knows more than it has been willing to reveal. What compels the government to continue to withhold the truth?

Betrayal in Dallas proves that President Lyndon Johnson and U.S. Attorney General Robert F. Kennedy knew from the beginning who the perpetrators of the crime were but prevented the Justice Department from pursuing prosecutions. Johnson did this to protect himself from disgrace and prosecution. RFK went along to protect his brother's secrets.

Johnson's and Kennedy's interests overrode the public's right to the truth in a time of national crisis. The Justice Department served their interest, as it does today, in preventing resolution of this matter.

But with the recent death of Senator Ted Kennedy (whom I made aware of the contents of this book) and the death of Johnson's protective widow, Claudia Lady Bird Johnson, the time has come for truth.

Betrayal in Dallas offers reconciliation between a people and its government and an opportunity for renewal of country and sense of purpose. In these troubled times, nothing less than the truth can clear the way forward.

Mark North

October 2010

20 The Dawn of Truth

Index

D ALLAS, TEXAS: NOVEMBER 22, 1963. President Kennedy lay dead. Vice President Lyndon Johnson, saved from imminent political ruin and imprisonment by the gangland-style execution, was both relieved and empowered. His close alliance with Dallas district attorney Henry Wade and the local Civello mob had paid off.

Within hours of JFK's death, Johnson would move to neutralize JFK's brother, U.S. Attorney General Robert Kennedy, nemesis of Civello's Pearl Street Mafia. As soon as Johnson was on board Air Force One at the Dallas airport, he ordered that U.S. District Court Judge Sarah Hughes (whom LBJ had placed on the federal bench) be brought to the plane for the swearing-in ceremony.

1. The first federal narcotics raids on the Dallas Mafia originated in the Pearl Street Market District. I coined the name Pearl Street Mafia to refer to the Civello crime family throughout this book.

At that moment, Hughes was the presiding judge in RFK's investigation and prosecution of the Dallas Mafia's illegal and highly lucrative bookmaking operation, U.S. v. John Eli Stone, et al. The U.S. attorney to Dallas, Harold Barefoot Sanders (handpicked by Johnson), like Hughes, had been bitterly opposed to Kennedy's attempt to destroy Stone's multimillion dollar gambling operation. But their hands had been tied by Kennedy's Organized Crime Task Force, which controlled the prosecution. Kennedy's people knew it would destroy the Civello mob by depriving it of most of its income.

The swearing-in ceremony, with a blood-splattered Jackie Kennedy standing at Johnson's side and Judge Hughes administering the oath of office, was a masterful demonstration of power. After the ceremony, to the relief of the Civello mob, LBJ had Sanders and Hughes stop RFK's prosecution of the Stone defendants. With Johnson's cronies now in control, the Justice Department knew their efforts would not succeed. LBJ had fulfilled his part of the bargain.

The Stone prosecution, temporarily halted by Hughes and Sanders until the lone nut cover story could be sold to the public, would have to be hidden from the American people over the long term, and local mobsters like Joe Ianni and Jack Ruby would have to be protected. But with the fanatically loyal Henry Wade in LBJ's pocket, there was little chance of failure. Over the years, Wade had worked closely with Johnson to help him obtain the presidency. His dream had now been realized. Judge Sarah Hughes was a longtime ally of the local Italian community and, like Wade, had turned a blind eye to the criminal activities of the Pearl Street Mafia.

There was little to fear from federal investigation. The most powerful agency in Washington DC, the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI), was controlled by Johnson's longtime confidant and neighbor, John Edgar Hoover. Like the Dallas Mafia, Hoover had been saved from ruin by Kennedy's murder. The Kennedy brothers had been planning his removal from the FBI directorship for years, and it would have been accomplished before the end of JFK's first term in office. With Johnson's executive order, Hoover would maintain his grip on power for another decade. His agency would prevent any effort to get at the truth behind JFK's execution.

Why another book on President Kennedy's assassination? Because the new evidence revealed in this book proves to a legal certainty everything you have just read. It is too late to prosecute JFK's murderers, but it is never too late for the truth. History has caught up with Lyndon Johnson, J. Edgar Hoover, and the Dallas Mafia.

When you know the truth, the truth makes you a soldier.

Gandhi

I BEGAN MY INVESTIGATION into the mystery surrounding the murder of President Kennedy thirty years ago, after viewing the then-suppressed Zapruder film, which graphically details his death. As a historian and former Texas attorney, I came to realize that the Warren Report was mere subterfuge, designed to confuse the American people while allowing the Justice Department to avoid investigation and prosecution of those responsible.

To what purpose? Why allow the conspirators to go unpunished? And in the face of obvious conspiracy, why sacrifice governmental credibility to such an extreme degree?

Only after the deaths of President Lyndon Johnson, FBI Director J. Edgar Hoover, and U.S. Attorney General Robert Kennedy was Congress able to reexamine JFK's death. In 1979, the U.S. House Select Committee on Assassinations (HSCA) formally reversed the conclusion of the Warren Commission by admitting that Kennedy had been killed by conspiracy. Chief counsel to the HSCA Robert Blakey (a former U.S. attorney in the Organized Crime Division) stated publicly that organized crime was behind the plot to kill John F. Kennedy.