Did the Mob Deliver Illinois to Kennedy?

One of the accepted wisdoms of the 1960 presidential election is that Joseph Kennedy delivered Illinois for his son, John, through the former’s close connections to organized crime. We believe that this fable is long overdue for reconsideration.

 

This legend of the 1960 election rests upon the notion that Joseph Kennedy was a rum runner who was consequently in cahoots with the mafia and thus in some way beholden to them. With these close connections to the underworld, Joe pulled a few chits and bribes in Chicago to get the Daly machine, also beholden to organized crime, to deliver the state of Illinois to Kennedy, if by a hair.

 

The problem with the theory is an absence of facts. We have previously reported scholarship which shows that Joe Kennedy was not a rum runner, and we would extend the thesis that connections to organized crime were slender.

 

The Kennedy brothers made a name for themselves in the 1950s as being tough on organized crime, with Bobby involved in Congressional investigations into the matter. This did not sit well with FBI chief J Edgar Hoover who was in fact a pal of the crime lords. Hoover was quite a corrupt of official, even having cheated extensively on his income taxes.

 

If Joe were such a friend of the syndicate, then surely he would have helped his friends by calling off his attack dog sons from their pursuits of the criminals in organized crime – especially Jimmy Hoffa. As Attorney General, Bobby Kennedy was even more ardent in his attempts to retire the corrupt union leaders and to undermine their involvements in crime.

 

In fact Bobby published a book on the subject of organized crime in the 1950s in an attempt to warn Americans of its lethal dangers. The problem is that organized crime has penetrated every element of American society and government, in large measure due to the CIA who uses it for many of its criminal operations.

 

It is a fallacy of history to say that J Edgar Hoover was a foe of crime. He was its patron saint who often looked the other way as it slimed its way through American business. The plutocrats control American business and the CIA of whom the Kennedys ran afoul when they went after organized crime, a transgression which cost both of them their lives.

 

Thus it seems highly unlikely to us that the mob delivered Illinois to Kennedy. It was Nixon, in fact, who had the close ties to labor and crime as his followers included Jack Ruby, George Meany, Bebe Robozo, Robert Vesco and others in and around the crime scene. The establishment was greatly behind Nixon whose loss was something of a shock.

Copyright 2013 Tony Bonn. All rights reserved.

Meet Crime Lord Tom Clark

If there were needed further proof that the American government is one vast criminal enterprise, along comes Tom Clark who proves that high position and crime go together like a horse and carriage. He also proves our long standing thesis that American plutocrats gave the world Nazism and Adolf Hitler.

 

Most Americans would draw a blank if asked who Thomas Campbell Clark (1899-1977) was, perhaps offering that he was popular entertainer Dick Clark’s unknown brother. But he was actually Truman’s Attorney General and a justice of the US Supreme Court, who unlike Abe Fortas, did not get caught in his crimes.

 

While dredging around in the forums of the Education Forum, we discovered substantial information about his ties to organized crime, and how graft was his middle name, making a complete mockery of justice. Now don’t get us wrong - if you see pictures of Clark, you will think that he is the epitome of the fine upstanding pillar of the sanctimonious community. The truth turns out to be otherwise.

 

Testifying before Congress on October 16, 1964, Murray Humphreys, a Chicago Mob bagman, told legislators that "Attorney General Tom Clarke [sic] was, he always was, 100% for doing favors .. .” and it should go without saying that those favors carried a price tag, sometimes quite high.

 

Clark’s first claim to notoriety was The German Report prepared in 1946 by O John Rogge which followed the links of Hitler’s government to high ranking and well placed Americans, a subject which we have covered elsewhere. Truman urged Clark to squash it, which he did with gusto, eventually firing Rogge when he leaked word of the report’s existence and contents in a speech at Swarthmore College.

 

Clark also lent his services to major organized crime figures of the 1940s who were finally busted by squealing dons who did not want to spend time in prison, leading Frank Nitti, the Chicago crime boss, to blow his brains out.

 

When mobster Paul Ricca needed help getting out of jail, he called upon lawyer John Dillion of Missouri who pulled strings through Harry Truman’s mob sponsor Tom Pendergast to send an envoy, Maury Hughes from Dallas, to visit Attorney General Clark in Washington for the purpose of releasing freshly convicted and imprisoned Ricca and 3 other mobsters from jail.

 

In 1945 Clark had the mobsters transferred to Ft Leavenworth, where less than 2 years later they were released amidst scowls and vociferous objections from the public, elements within the Justice Department, and a federal judge. Their paroles were approved so quickly that the Chicago parole office did not even have time to review it. Reports circulated that the parole board members were paid 500,000 USD to vote for parole, charges about which the members were asked to comment and refused to deny.

 

As Supreme Court justice, Clark chose accused mobster Henry Crown’s son John as his law clerk. But Clark’s ties to the mob were long and thick. As one researcher put it, Clark ran Dallas – he was the fixer’s fixer. Numerous crime legends, including Johnny Rosselli, were in debt to Clark for his many interventions into to their criminal justice mishaps. Jurisprudence was an afterthought for Clark – when he had a few moments spare time to break away from servicing organized crime and hiding Nazi atrocities.

 

Clark's son Ramsay became Attorney General in his own right under Lyndon Johnson, who was heavily involved in the murder of John Kennedy. Clark meddled into the investigation of Jim Garrison in order to sabotage Garrison's work. The defendant, Clay Shaw, was knee deep in Nazi CIA operations after World War 2 and was involved in supporting the CIA's efforts to murder the president.

Reference

John Tuohy, “Gone Hollywood”, AmericanMafia.com, May 2002
Various, Education Forum, http://educationforum.ipbhost.com/index.php?showtopic=15323

Copyright 2013 Tony Bonn. All rights reserved.

Did the Mob Murder John F Kennedy?

One of the favorite suspects in the murder of President Kennedy on November 22, 1963 is the Mob. Like all good myths, this one has enough elements of truth to make it plausible; unfortunately it fails the acid test of truth.

Ever since the House Select Committee on Assassinations concluded that a conspiracy operated to kill the president, and that most likely mob members were part of it, organized crime has been a permanent feature of discussions regarding culprits. As we have noted, one can find reasonable evidence to make such a case.

However, the mob theory falls apart when viewing the crime in its entirety. Perhaps the best refutation of the mob theory came in Oliver Stone’s landmark JFK movie where the character Jim Garrison belittles the notion that the mob could operate all of the levers of power needed to execute the crime and cover it up down to the present day.

On the other hand, it would be a huge mistake to deny that the mob was involved. Indeed, they were another arm of the Bush Crime Syndicate’s assault on the presidency. Mob members were certainly involved in the murder of the president, one of them being the illustrious Jack Ruby who murdered Lee Oswald on national television. Jack Ruby, nee Rubenstein, was a small time mobster from Chicago who had ties to political figures. One such figure was Richard Nixon with whom Ruby had relations going back to the 1940s when the future president was a Congressman from California. At the time of Kennedy’s assassination, Ruby was in Dallas carrying assault weapons for the Bush Crime Syndicate’s hit job.

Julia Ann Mercer, stuck in the heavy traffic passing through Dealey Plaza in anticipation of the President’s visit, witnessed Jack Ruby driving the green pick-up truck from which an assistant pulled a rifle case and carried it up the grassy knoll to where one of the sniper teams was positioned. Mercer also witnessed three police officers standing idly on the overpass who disarmed Mercer’s sense of danger – after all, if the police were not stopping these men, then surely Ruby and his assistant must have a legitimate purpose for carrying rifles up the grassy knoll. Mercer did not know at the time what a criminal enterprise the Dallas Police Department was.

Police later caught up with Mercer after they overheard her in a restaurant discussing the incident with her friends. The FBI also questioned her extensively. In January 1968, in conjunction with Jim Garrison’s investigation, Mercer and her husband visited with the District Attorney to share her story. Mercer was shocked to discover that the FBI had completely altered her story, stating, for example, that the green pick-up truck was marked in complete contradiction to her statements.

Even more disturbingly, the FBI claimed that Mercer could not identify Jack Ruby when in fact she correctly chose him from among the photos they presented to her the day before Ruby shot Oswald at the Dallas jail.

The coup de grace was the FBI’s forgery of her signature over a forged notary public’s stamp. Mercer pointed out to Garrison the inconsistencies with the faked and authentic signature.

The master of publicity himself, J Edgar Hoover, used the popular television series about his organization to cover up the underworld criminal activities of his highly vaunted crime busting team who at the very time were piling up lie after damned lie in its archives.

We see from Mercer’s story tangible participation by a well established crime lord, Jack Ruby, in the murder of a president. Other evidence exists for contributions of the mob in the murder, but they were adjuncts to a superbly planned crime – they were not its authors. That ignominious honor belongs to the Wall Street thugs on whose behalf the Bush Crime Syndicate operated.

Reference

JFK and the Unspeakable - Why He Died and Why It Matters, James Douglass

Copyright 2010-12 Tony Bonn. All rights reserved.