Lamar Waldron - The Hidden History of the JFK Assassination

THE HIDDEN HISTORY OF THE JFK ASSASSINATION

Copyright 2013 Lamar Waldron

All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. No part of this book may be used or reproduced in any manner whatsoever without written permission from the publisher, except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles and reviews.

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Waldron, Lamar, 1954-

The hidden history of the JFK Assassination : the definitive account of the most controversial crime of the twentieth century / Lamar Waldron.

Includes bibliographical references and index.

1. Kennedy, John F. (John Fitzgerald), 1917-1963--Assassination. 2. Mafia--United States. 3. Conspiracies--United States--History--20th century. I. Title.

E842.9.W274 2013

973.922092--dc23

2013035745

ISBN 978-1-61902-261-4

Cover design by Charles Brock, Faceout Studios

Interior design by meganjonesdesign.com

COUNTERPOINT

1919 Fifth Street

Berkeley, CA 94710

www.counterpointpress.com

Distributed by Publishers Group West

10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1

To Abraham Bolden, selected by JFK as the first black presidential Secret Service agent. Bolden is still fighting to clear his name after being framed by the Mafia almost fifty years ago.

Table of Contents

F IFTY YEARS HAVE passed since the murder of President John F. Kennedy, yet even with millions of words written about the case, The Hidden History of the JFK Assassination provides the final pieces to that puzzle for the first time. While several hundred books about President Kennedys assassination have been published over the past five decades, fewer than two dozen have seriously dealt with the tidal wave of new information and evidence that has emerged in recent years. Many of those new revelations resulted from the 4.5 million pages of JFK assassination files released throughout the 1990s as a result of the 1992 JFK Act.

Even fewer books have presented that information in a clear, concise way accessible to readers not already steeped in the sometimes arcane and always complex terminology of JFK assassination research. Previous books that provided ample, credible documentation to prove their claims had the additional problem of extreme length. I have personal experience with that, since my first two books on JFKs murder Ultimate Sacrifice and Legacy of Secrecy were each more than nine hundred pages. They had a combined total of almost four thousand endnotes documenting sources, hardly the type of book that most readers can easily digest.

New revelations about the case continue to emerge, both from previously released government files and from participants in operations for which the files are still mostly withheld. For example, in 2008 Legacy of Secrecy first revealed and named the FBIs daring undercover CAMTEX operation, which lasted from 1985 to 1986. On December 15, 1985, that operation obtained godfather Carlos Marcellos confession that he had ordered JFKs murder. More information about the CAMTEX operation, including the name of the FBIs undercover informant, Jack Van Laningham, appeared for the first time in the updated trade paperback of Legacy of Secrecy in 2009.

Most of that books information came from uncensored FBI files I uncovered from officials involved in the operation. However, since that time, I have had dozens of interviews and conversations with Van Laningham. His observations illuminated many aspects of Marcellos involvement with JFKs murderas well as with Lee Oswald and Jack Rubythat werent completely clear from the files alone. In addition, I uncovered independent corroboration for many of Van Laninghams observations, originally made when he was Marcellos cellmate and confidante for many months in 1985 and 1986.

For the first time, that documented information allows the full story of JFKs assassination to be told in a clear, concise manner, one backed up by the most important earlier discoveries about JFKs murder.

The story of Carlos Marcello, Jack Van Laningham, and JFKs assassination will be told in the upcoming film Legacy of Secrecy , currently being produced byand starringLeonard DiCaprio, with Robert De Niro slated to play Marcello. However, that film can tell only a small portion of the whole story of JFKs murder. This book provides a much fuller account and provides the supporting documentation backing it up.

Credibility is always important in evaluating information about JFKs murder and in deciding which books or revelations to believe. Because I have presented documented information from credible sources, buttressed by independent corroboration, my work has received more mainstream press coverage than most books documenting a conspiracy in JFKs murder. This includes appearing numerous times on CNN and in television documentaries about my work produced by a division of NBC News for the Discovery Channel and by German Public Television. Those organizations have been able both to verify the authenticity of the declassified files I showed on those programs and to interview some of my key sources. Other coverage has come from hundreds of newspapers, magazines, radio stations, and television stations, in this country and others. Moreover, I aided the staff of the Presidentially appointed JFK Assassination Records Review Board in the 1990s, identifying important government files that were not being turned over to the Board by US agencies as the law required.

Many of the key disclosures in this book came from more than two dozen key associates of John and Robert Kennedy, interviewed by me and by my original research collaborator, radio and television commentator Thom Hartmann. I then found or helped get declassified files that verified their accounts. In addition, my research was aided by many of the best writers, historians, and former government investigators in the field, many of whom are cited throughout the book and all of whom are named in this books extensive Acknowledgments.

For twenty-five years, I have been building on their work and advancing the findings of the five government investigating committees that came after the Warren Commission. I spent most of that time working full-time on the case, and this book is the first compact culmination of all that research.

In response to requests from readers, this book features an Annotated Bibliography, making it easy for readers to refer to the books, articles, and documents used as source material. The Bibliography identifies books with additional well-documented information about certain aspects of JFKs assassination and specifies which websites have major document collections, where readers can view online many of the important files cited in the text. In my previous books, bibliographic information lay instead in thousands of endnotes. Though The Hidden History of the JFK Assassination has the same high level of documentation as my earlier works, we have dispensed with endnotes for this book. Now, its easy to simply Google most quotations to find more information about their source. Also, because of its shorter length, this book focuses on only the most important people involved in these eventsin contrast to my earlier works, which contained hundreds of names of officials, witnesses, participants, journalists, and sources, often dozens in a single chapter. Those wanting more in-depth information about any of the topics dealt with in this book can find it in the updated trade paperbacks of Ultimate Sacrifice (2006) and Legacy of Secrecy (2009) and in my 2013 edition of Watergate: The Hidden History , which devotes almost two hundred pages to JFKs assassination.

When I began researching the case in 1988, I started with no preconceived conclusions and looked at the evidence against all the individuals and organizations that some considered suspects. Focusing on credible sources, information, and documentation for which there is independent corroborationand that have stood the test of timeled me to new discoveries and to a cohesive story of what really happened to President Kennedy. The final result of that research is in this book.