Néstor gunned the car. Spectators ran for cover. That funny-looking bone flopped out at a funny right angle.
DOCUMENT INSERT: 4/19/61. Des Moines Register headline:
FAILED COUP LINKED TO U.S. SPONSORS
DOCUMENT INSERT: 4/19/61. Los Angeles Herald-Express headline:
WORLD LEADERS DECRY “ILLEGAL INTERVENTION”
DOCUMENT INSERT: 4/20/61. Dallas Morning News headline:
KENNEDY BLASTED FOR “HEEDLESS PROVOCATIONS”
DOCUMENT INSERT: 4/20/61. San Francisco Chronicle headline and subhead:
RAY OF PIGS FIASCO REVILED BY U.S. ALLIES
CASTRO GLOATS AS REBEL DEATH TOLL MOUNTS
DOCUMENT INSERT: 4/20/61. Chicago Tribune headline and subhead:
KENNEDY DEFENDS BAY OF PIGS ACTIONS
WORLDWIDE CENSURE CRIPPLES PRESIDENT’S PRESTIGE
DOCUMENT INSERT: 4/21/61. Cleveland Plain Dealer headline and subhead:
CIA BLAMED FOR BAY OF PIGS FIASCO
EXILE LEADERS BLAME “KENNEDY COWARDICE”
DOCUMENT INSERT: 4/22/61. Miami Herald headline and subhead:
KENNEDY: “SECOND AIR STRIKE COULD HAVE SPARKED WORLD WAR III”
EXILE COMMUNITY HONORS LOST AND CAPTURED HEROES
DOCUMENT INSERT: 4/23/61. New York Journal-American headline and subhead:
KENNEDY DEFENDS BAY OF PIGS ACTION
RED LEADERS BLAST “IMPERIALIST AGGRESSION”
DOCUMENT INSERT: 4/24/61. Hush-Hush magazine article. Written by Lenny Sands, under the pseudonym Peerless Politicopundit.
COWARDLY CASTRATO CASTRO OUSTED!
RETREATING REDS WREAK RAT-POISON REVENGE!
His rancorous Red reign ran for a rotten two years. Shout it loud, proud and un-kowtowed: Fidel Castro, the bushy-bearded beatnik bard of bilious bamboozlement, was determinedly and dramatically deposed last week by a heroically homeland-hungering huddle of hopped-up hermanos righteously rankled by the Red Recidivist’s rape of their nation!
Call it D-Day ’61, kats & kittens. Call the Bay of Pigs the Caribbean Carthage; Playa Giron the Patriotic Parthenon. Call Castro debilitated and depilatoried—word has it that he shaved off his beard to dodge the deep and dangerous depths of revenge-seeker recognition!
Fidel Castro: the shabbily-shorn Samson of 1961! His deliriously delighted Delilahs: God-fearing, red, white & blue revering Cuban heroes!!!
Castro and his murderously malignant machinations: trenchantly terminated, 10-4, over-and-out. The Monster’s maliciously maladroit maneuverings: still morally mauling Miami!!!!
Item: Fidel Castro craves cornucopias of cash—getaway gelt to felicitously finance future finaglings!
Item: Fidel Castro has cravenly criticized America’s eminently egalitarian and instantly inclusive racial policies, reproachfully ragging U.S. leaders for their nauseously niggling neglect of Negro citizens.
Item: as previously posited, Fidel Castro and seditious sibling Raul sell homicidally hazardous Heroin in Miami.
Item: as the Bay of Pigs waggled and waxed as Castro’s Waterloo, the mendacious mastiff’s minor miscreant minions mined Miami’s Negro section with rat-poison-riddled Heroinl Scores of Negro drug addicts injected these carcinogenic Commie cocktails and died doomonically draconean deaths!!!
Item: this issue was rushed to press, to insure that Hush-Hush readers would not be left hungrily homesick for our properly protectionist parade of Playa Giron platitudes. Thus we cannot name the aforementioned Negroes or offer specific details on their dastardly deaths. That information will appear in scintillatingly-scheduled subsequent issues, in courageous conjunction with a new ongoing feature: “Banana Republic Boxscore: Who’s Red? Who’s Dead?”
Adios, dear reader—and let’s all meet for a tall Cuba Libre in laceratingly liberated Havana.
DOCUMENT INSERT: 5/1/61. Personal note: J. Edgar Hoover to Howard Hughes.
Dear Howard,
You must not be concerning yourself with Hush-Hush these days. If you’ll glance at the April 24th issue, you’ll see that it went to press at best precipitously and at worst with a certain amount of criminal negligence and/or criminal intent.
Did Mr. L. Sands perhaps possess some spurious foreknowledge of unforetellable events? His piece mentioned a number of Negro heroin overdoses in the Miami area, and my Miami police contacts tell me that no such overdoses occurred.
Nine Cuban teenagers, however, did die from injections of poisonous Heroin. My contact told me that on April 18, two Cuban youths stole an attache case containing a large quantity of toxic Heroin from a car involved in an unsolved shootout that left two Cuban men dead.
My contact mentioned the curiously prophetic (if historically inaccurate) Hush-Hush piece. I told him that it was merely one of life’s odd coincidences, an explanation that seemed to satisfy him.
I would advice you to tell Mr. Sands to get his facts reasonably straight. Hush-Hush should not publish science fiction, unless it’s directly in our best interest.
All best, Edgar
DOCUMENT INSERT: 5/8/61. Miami Herald sidebar:
PRESIDENT CONVENES HIGH-LEVEL GROUP TO ASSESS BAY OF PIGS FAILURE
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 over-zealous CIA men, sloppy pre-invasion security and an egregious miscalculation of in-Cuba 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 effo
rts 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.
JEH
DOCUMENT INSERT: 5/27/61. Orlando Sentinel “Crimewatch” feature.
THE ODD ODYSSEY OF CARLOS MARCELLO
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. Nestor 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 Nestor to keep it that way. Santo tells me that our Italian colleagues will continue to make sizable donations. Playa Qiron 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
70
(Miami/Blessington, 6/61–11/61)
Tiger Kab featured a big indoor dartboard. The drivers tacked up Fidel Castro pix and shredded them into confetti.
Pete had his own private targets.
Like Ward Littell. Carlos Marcello’s boy now—mobbed-up and untouchable.
Like Howard Hughes—his ex-bossman/benefactor.
Hughes fired him. Lenny Sands said the Mormons made him do it. The Hush-Hush fiasco helped.
Boyd was in the hospital then, plowed on morphine. He couldn’t call Lenny and say, “Pull the issue.” Lenny was incommunicado with some bun boy. He didn’t know the invasion crapped out.
Dracula loved his Mormons. Boss Mormon Duane Spurgeon glommed some dope contacts. Drac could now fly Narco Airlines without a Pete Bondurant ticket.
The good news: Spurgeon had cancer. The bad news: Hughes scuttled Hush-Hush.
The Bay of Pigs/OD piece caught some embarrassing flak. Hughes kept Lenny on the payroll to write a private skank sheet.
The sheet would feature skank too skanky for public skank consumption. The sheet would be read by two skank fiends only: Dracula and J. Edgar Hoover.
Drac was paying Lenny five hundred clams a week. Drac was calling Lenny every night. Lenny was fed up with Drac and his “I want Las Vegas!” wet dream.
Hughes and Littell were strictly dartboard prelims. The main event was President John F. Kennedy.
Who:
Waffled, wiggled, weaseled, punked out and pulled out at Pigs.
Who:
Cringed, crawled, crapped his pants, cravenly crybabied and let Cuba stay Commie.
Who:
Shilly-shallied, sashayed, shook and shit his britches while eleven Blessington men got slaughtered.
He handed Jack the Hughes/Nixon loan dirt. He co-signed the cocksucker’s White House mortgage. The Boyd/Bondurant casino percentage deal—about as au courant as Slippery Dick Nixon.
The Agency kept cloning exile hard-ons. Speedboat crews kept popping the Cuban coast. It was all fart-in-a-hurricane kid stuff.
Jack called a second invasion “quite possible.” He wouldn’t give a go date or commit beyond nebulous rhetoric.
Jack’s chickenshit. Jack’s a pouty, panty-waisted, powder puff.
Blessington was still capacity-booked. The Cadre dope biz was still flourishing. Fulo bought off the Boyd shootout witnesses—forty people got fat paydays.
Néstor saved Boyd’s life. Néstor knew no fear. Néstor snuck into Havana once a week on the off chance that he might run into the Beard.
Wilf
redo Delsol ran the cabstand. The kid was behaving solidly now. His pro-Castro dance was no more than a two-second tango.
Jimmy Hoffa bopped by Tiger Kab occasionally. Jimmy was Kennedy Hater Number One—for good fucking cause.
Bobby K. had Jimmy dancing to his beat: the old Nuisance Roust/Grand Jury Blues. Jimmy got a wild bug up his ass—manifested by nostalgia for the Darleen Shoftel shakedown.
Jimmy said, “We could do it again. I could neutralize Bobby by getting at Jack. You got to believe that Jack still likes cooze.”
Jimmy was persistent on the topic. Jimmy echoed the hate that the whole Outfit shared.
Sam G. said, “I rue the day I bought Jack Illinois.” Heshie Ryskind said, “Kemper Boyd liked Jack, so we figured he had to be kosher.”
Boyd was now some triple or quadruple agent. Boyd was a self-proclaimed insomniac. Boyd said rearranging lies kept him up nights.
Boyd was the Cuban Study Group liaison. Boyd was on Cadre sabbatical—a ploy designed to simplify his life.
Boyd fed Bobby pro-CIA distortions. Boyd fed the CIA Study Group secrets.
Boyd pressed Bobby and Jack. Boyd urged them to assassinate Castro and facilitate a second invasion.
The brothers nixed the notion. Boyd called Bobby more pro-Cause than Jack—but only up to some ambiguous point.
Jack said, No second invasion. Jack refused to grant whack-the-Beard approval. The Study Group cooked up an alternative called Operation Mongoose.
It was nifty long-range nomenclature. Let’s recapture Cuba some time this century. Here’s 50 million dollars a year—fetch, CIA, fetch!
Mongoose spawned JM/Wave. JM/Wave was the nifty code name for six buildings on the Miami U campus. JM/Wave featured snazzy graph rooms and the latest in covert study workshops.
JM/Wave was grad school for geeks.
Fetch, CIA, fetch. Monitor your exile groups, but don’t act boldly—it might fuck with Jack the Haircut’s poll standings.
Boyd still loved Jack. He was in too deep to see through him. Boyd said he loved his civil rights work—because there was no subterfuge involved.