Jack Anderson 1975 - John Rosseli - the Patriot

From the Roselli: Chronology of Events

http://documents.theblackvault.com/documents/jfk/NARA-July2017/JFK-July_2017_Release-Formerly_released_in_part/DOCID-32423624.PDF

157-10014-10236

Church Committee 1976  43 pages. That includes:

1975: Jack Anderson Press Release

Four and a half years ago, I broke a story that now is belatedly rocking Washington. I reported that the Central Intelligence Agency had recruited two Mafia figures, John Rosselli and Sam Giancana, to assassinate Cuban Premier Fidel Castro.

I tracked down Roselli and questioned him about the story. He had nothing to say. He promised me, however, that he would give me his exclusive story if he should ever be free to talk.

Yesterday, John Roselli told his story - - first, to the Senate Intelligence Committee in secret sessions, then to me as he had promised four and a half years ago.

Roselli is a dapper, hawk-faced man with a thatch of white hair. He has been disciplined all his life to keep his mouth shut. His Mafia partner, Sam Giancana, was slain before Senate investigators could serve him with a subpoena.

So it was obviously painful for Roselli to talk. I promised I would make clear that he revealed no names, except for the CIA contacts whose identities the Senate already knew. 

So here is Roselli’s own account of a real-life “Mission Impossible:” - - the attempt to kill Castro. It is a story of cash payments, poison pellets, high-powered rifles and powerboat dashes to Cuba.

The plot against Castro, Roselli said, began in 1960 - - when Dwight Eisenhower was President, Richard Nixon was Vice President and Allen Dulles was the CIA chief.

Roselli was recruited in Los Angeles, he said, by Robert Maheu, then an aide to billionaire Howard Hughes. Previously, Maheu had operated a CIA front in Washington.

According to Roselli, the murdered mobster, Sam Giancana, never became involved in the assassination plot. He knew about it; he may even have suggested a Cuban contact; nothing more.

Roselli identified the CIA project officer, in charge of the Castro assassination, as “Big Jim” O’Connell. Maheu put Roselli in contact with O’Connell, as Roselli remembers it, in New York City on September 14, 1960.

Thereafter, Roselli flew to Miami and recruited the assassination squads. At first, they plotted to poison Castro. Poison pellets were supplied by the CIA. They were delivered to the plotters in a Miami hotel room, according to Roselli, by Maheu. He dramatically opened his briefcase, revealing $10,000 in cash and the fatal pellets.

The money was distributed to the Cuban plotters. Roselli swore he never took any money from the CIA, except for some incidental expenses. He paid his expenses, he said, out of his own pocket.

The poison pills were supposed to take three days to work. Supposedly this would give the poison time to work its way out of Castro’s system before he died, and his death would be attributed to natural causes.

Roselli never found out what happened to the plotters or the pellets. But they tried again later with a stronger dose of poison. Not long afterward, reports reached them that Castro was desperately ill. Roselli doesn’t know whether the illness was caused by the poison or a virus. But Castro  survived, and the plotters apparently did not.

Rosselli said he also picked up intelligence, which he submitted to the CIA both during the Bay of Pigs planning and the later Cuban missile crisis. After the Bay of Pigs, Roselli said, Maheu was cut out of the plot. Thereafter, Roselli reported to a CIA agent named William Harvey.

There were four more assassination attempts, the plotters were smuggled into Cuba with high-powered rifles. The last assassination squad, Roselli heard, made it a Havana rooftop before they were caught.

This was around March 1, 1963. Then the project was abandoned. Roselli saw Harvey for the last time in June, 1963.

Five months later, Lee Harvey Oswald gunned down President Kennedy in Dallas. Oswald had been active in the pro-Castro movement. Shortly before that dreadful day in Dallas, Oswald had made a mysterious trip to Mexico where he visited the Cuban embassy. The Warren Commission found no evidence, however, that Oswald was in the hire of Havana.

Yesterday, Roselli made no apology for his CIA role. U.S. authorities call him a mobster. He regards himself as a patriot.