Erasing the Past to Protect a Fairytale

483 FBI Carlos Marcello tapes


Context:
39   G. Wray Gill's November 1963 office phone bill
114 RFK's Marcello-Halfen-Johnson file
194 David Ferrie's original statement to FBI

Professor Robert Blakey, former Chief Counsel of the HSCA, reminded the Review Board of the HSCA’s belief that it would have benefitted from the FBI’s fuller disclosure of its electronic surveillance materials from its organized crime files. As a direct result of Professor Blakey’s suggestion, the Review Board requested from the FBI abroad cross-section of organized crime electronic surveillance files, the most significant of which was certainly the FBI’s electronic surveillance of Carlos Marcello, alleged New Orleans crime boss.

(ARRB Final Report, p. 25)


Carlos Marcello, 1910-1993

Many of the books on the assassination of President Kennedy discuss the possibility that Carlos Marcello, alleged organized crime boss of New Orleans, was involved in the assassination. In the late 1970s, the FBI investigated Marcello on an unrelated matter—the bribery of organized labor. As part of the “BriLab” investigation, the FBI conducted approximately eight months of electronic surveillance on Marcello’s home and on his office at the Town and Country Motel. According to several sources, the “BriLab” tapes contained conversations in which Carlos Marcello or his brother Joseph admitted that they were involved in the Kennedy assassination.

The FBI maintains its tapes and transcripts from the “BriLab” surveillance, but because the FBI’s source of authority for the surveillance was 18 U.S.C. § 2501 et seq. (Title III), the “take” from the surveillance remained under court seal. Thus, the assassination research community was not able to confirm or reject allegations that the tapes or transcripts contain information relevant to the assassination. Once the Review Board obtained a court order allowing it access to the materials, the staff reviewed all of the transcripts from the FBI’s surveillance on Marcello in New Orleans. Although the staff did not locate the specific conversations that the researchers mentioned, it did locate thirteen conversations that it believed to be assassination records. Most of the conversations took place in the summer of 1979 during the period that the HSCA released its report. The conversations primarily focused on Marcello’s reaction to the HSCA’s allegations that he may have been involved in the assassination. With the help of the U. S. Attorney’s Office in the Eastern District of New Orleans, the Review Board obtained a court order to release transcripts of the 13 conversations to the public.

(ARRB Final Report, p. 104)


Between February 1979 and February 1980, the FBI made 1,350 tapes of Marcello's conversations, as part of an FBI sting called BRILAB. The tapes were made by agents Mike Wacks and L arry Montague, along with a man named Joe Hauser, who is described by New York Post columnist Jack Newfield as a "sleazy swindler." The tapes were sealed by Judge Morey Sear at the start of Marcello's bribery and conspiracy trial in 1981. The judge ordered them permanantly sealed, ruling that they would prejudice the jury against Marcello. According to former HSCA Chief Counsel Robert Blakey, Marcello "implicated himself in the assassination on three of those tapes ... On one tape, Marcello asked the other person to leave the room and resume the conversation in the secrecy of his car when the assassination came up. Marcello said something like. 'We don' t talk about that in here."' Author John H. Davis has described the tapes based on interviews with the two FBI agents and the "swindler" who taped them. He says that the tapes amount to a veiled "admission of complicity" by Marcello and his brother Joe. Davis filed a 1988 Freedom of Information Act suit for the release of the tapes. In May 1991, Federal Judge T homas Penfield Jackson ruled in Davis's favor and ordered the tapes released. T he FBI, however, appealed the decision, and the tapes remain sealed at this time.

(Who’s who in the JFK assassination, p. 277)



An FBI report told of a meeting at Carlos Marcello's farm outside of New Orleans in the late summer of 1962. Two biographies of leading mobsters report that Marcello exclaimed "Don't worry about that Bobby son of a bitch. He's going to be taken care of." According to one participant, Marcello told his listeners he would recruit some nut to kill Kennedy so it couldn't be traced to him, "like they do in Sicily." The witness recalled Marcello saying that "the dog {President Kennedy} will keep biting you if you only cut off its tail {the attorney general}," but the biting would end if the dog's head was cut off.

Marcello, who died in 1994, denied saying this. The board should continue its efforts to obtain and make public the so-called Brilab tapes, a half dozen FBI wiretaps of Carlos Marcello. These tapes were not introduced as evidence at Marcello's 1981 racketeering trial in New Orleans, and were sealed by the judge. The FBI has refused to release them. Blakey says that a high-ranking FBI official told him that the tapes include incriminating statements by Marcello pertaining to the assassination.

The review board can clarify this body of evidence by calling the aging and vulnerable Frank Ragano, who has critical evidence never submitted under oath; surviving witnesses who have information about Hoffa's original 1962 plot to kill RFK; the FBI agents who have the Brilab tapes; Trafficante's relatives; Sam Giancana's relatives; associates of Carlos Marcello, and others.

(DID THE MOB KILL JFK?, Washington Post, December 10, 1995)

In their massive war against the Mafia, President Kennedy and his brother Attorney General Robert Kennedy were never able to convict any members of the Marcello crime family. And Marcello didn’t make his admission of guilt until he was serving a long prison sentence as a result of an FBI sting called BRILAB. The FBI also carried on a sting against Marcello with the code name CAMTEX.

The FBI groomed an informant who became Carlos Marcello’s cellmate. These tapes have never been released but they reveal the godfather standing in the prison yard, flying into a rage and cussing the Kennedys.

(JFK ASSASSINATION ‘CONFESSION’, Page Six, 2009)