Flawed Patriot by Bayard Stockton

Author:Bayard Stockton
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9781597974035
Publisher: Potomac Books, Inc.

ROSSELLI’S NEW CASE OFFICER

When Harvey learned that he was to take on the Castro assassination assignment in November 1961, he had to digest many new matters quickly.

He needed a principal agent who was used to the ways of the covert world. He could not use an Agency employee because the risks for blowback were too great. And he could hardly trust a foreigner with this one. Rosselli was already on the books. In March 1961, well before Harvey was involved in Caribbean matters, Rosselli went to the Dominican Republic, accompanied by Howard Hunt of the CIA. Rafael Trujillo, the Republic’s dictator, was ambushed and killed on May 30, 1961, but the CIA was cleared of involvement in the assassination.

Bill probably got in touch with one or more of his former colleagues at the Bureau, met them somewhere for a drink or two, and pumped them discreetly. The FBI man or men would have told Harvey, completely off the record, that Hoover had a tap on Giancana and that he was notoriously garrulous. They would have given Rosselli a good recommendation as an operator: his criminal record wasn’t all that egregious, and where Giancana spouted constantly, Johnny knew not to talk, except to the right people. What better solution to Harvey’s problem than a man who had lived his whole adult life as a member of a secret organization with very, very strict rules, enforced by the discipline of omerta?

Another of Johnny’s advantages was that he was sincerely, almost touchingly, grateful to the country that had given him so much, even if the acquisitions had been illegal. And he needed brownie points in case his citizenship was questioned, which it subsequently was and, indeed, if the Feds got onto him for other malefactions.

All these factors contributed to another sine qua non of clandestine operation: control. It looked as if Rosselli could be controlled by his case officer, Harvey. Still, Bill must have thought that the operation was sticky from the outset. He was sensitive to the potential for eruption; he was also cynically savvy to the ways of Washington and to the scavenger ethic of the media, even in those relatively innocent days. What if it became public that Jack Kennedy’s CIA had recruited elements of the Mafia to carry out an assassination contract on Castro?

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