UK – Wilshire Gazette – Dirty deals link JFK shooting with Mafia
Title: Dirty deals link JFK shooting with Mafia
Newspaper: UK – Wilshire Gazette
Date: 21-5-92
By Steve McLean
In the year of Oliver Stone’s conspiracy theory magnum opus, JFK, the debate that surrounds the death of President Kennedy still seeks to tarnish what has become the USA’s one brief shining moment.
Almost three decades later, the real reasons and the real way John Fitzgerald Kennedy was gunned down on Dealey Plaza in Dallas are still not fully known.
And it may yet be another 50 years before they are – if at all then.
It has long been believed that Kennedy snatched the presidency from Richard Nixon with the aid of the Mafia.
The method of winning the race to the White House may not have been with JFK’s full backing – but it almost certainly was the scheming, hustling pack of darkness between the Mob and his former bootlegger father, Joseph.
And there can be no denial that Kennedy was aware of the link between the votes cast in the crucial states of Texas and Illinois and the persuasive powers of the Mafia. He was even sharing a girlfriend – Judith Campbell – with the most powerful gangster in the USA, Sam “Mooney” Giancana.
But what happened after the great race was probably the cause of Kennedy’s death. The appointment of brother Bobby as Attorney General and chief Mob baiter meant JFK was trying to distance himself between his administration and the reality.
His actions robbed the Mafia and Giancana of their greatest dream – to hold control over the president. And for that, he had to pay the ultimate penance.
If nothing else, Double Cross – written by Giancana’s stepbrother Chuck and nephew Sam – is a revealing, sometimes incredible insight into the world of the mafiosa.
It is inconsistent. Chuck obviously reveled in his bloodlink to the man who ruled Chicago with an iron fist. Yet a few sentences later, he often reveals how sickened, frightened and repulsed he was, though still adoring of Mooney. But he is able to detail how Giancana’s illegally-garnered riches gave him what it always gives in American- power.
It was the ticket to buy anything – even the friendship of the ultra right-wingers behind the CIA.
Kennedy’s double-crossing of the Mafia and his backdown after the disastrous Bay of Pigs invasion of Cuba earned him enemies on both sides of the fence and the plot to assassinate him was born.
Double Cross has everything – power, politics, sex, violence, blackmail, intrigue, and glamor. If it’s at all true – and it has credibility – it only proves one truth. Only in America…
