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The Kennedy Administration’s War on Organized Crime & Big Oil

As if the Kennedy Administration didn’t have enough enemies on the foreign policy and military fronts, its domestic and economic policies also angered a lot of other very powerful people.

As amazing as it sounds, even though there had been many Mafia killings during Prohibition, FBI Director J. Edgar Hoover refused to even acknowledge the existence of organized crime.⁵⁴⁵ Hoover flatly denied that the Mafia operated in the United States. It was not until a big mob meeting in upstate New York made national headlines in 1957, proving that the mob had actually flourished in the U.S.—largely due to the total lack of the FBI’s attention and resources—that the Bureau finally directed some attention toward organized crime. Hoover was also a “closet” homosexual which apparently led to his being blackmailed by the mob.⁵⁴⁶

Robert Kennedy—Attorney General of the United States in his brother’s administration—was the exact opposite of that. He launched open war against the Mafia in the United States after his brother took office.

The Enemy Within, a book by Robert Kennedy, had exposed the extent of Mafia influence throughout American culture and its dangers and insidious effects.⁵⁴⁷

Then, under his directorship as Attorney General, for the first time in history, the Department of Justice launched a serious offensive against organized crime, using every legal device in the book (and a few that weren’t) to get them off the streets and limit their abilities to conduct what had been “business as usual.” It was a very organized and effective assault, putting dozens of high-level mobsters in federal prisons.

But there were persistent rumors that the mob was now being doublecrossed by John and Robert Kennedy because it was Mafia help that had given them political victory. It has been reported that Joseph Kennedy cut the deal that got his son elected. According to author Seymour Hersh:

In the 1960 presidential election, Joe Kennedy made a deal with Sam Giancana. This former Al Capone hit man was the most influential gangster in the powerful organized crime syndicate in Chicago. The deal was for Giancana to get out the JFK vote among the rank and file in the mob controlled unions and siphon campaign funds from the corrupt Teamsters union fund. What Giancana would get in return is unknown. JFK’s stolen win in Illinois was crucial to his narrow general election victory of less than one tenth of one percent of the popular vote.⁵⁴⁸

Frank Sinatra—closely linked to Sam Giancana and organized crime in Chicago—and many of his Hollywood pals, had also played a major support role in helping to get Kennedy elected.

So the mob in general—and “the boys in Chicago” in particular who had “brokered” the deal with Joe Kennedy and reportedly held up their end of the deal—felt that they should have, at the very least, received some preferential treatment from the Kennedy Administration’s Department of Justice. Instead, they got the heat turned up on them higher than it had ever been in history, and they perceived it as a betrayal and a ruthless double-cross.⁵⁴⁹

Add to all that, the fact that—in a highly controversial deportation proceeding—U.S. Marshals practically kidnapped the sophisticated Carlos Marcello and then dumped him in a Guatemalan jungle; and you can see how there were some very upset gangsters running around and wishing nasty things on the Kennedy brothers.⁵⁵⁰

On the afternoon of April 4, 1961, eight years after he was ordered deported, Carlos Marcello was finally ejected from the United States. As he walked into the INS office in New Orleans for his regular appointment to report as an alien, he was arrested and handcuffed by INS officials. He was then rushed to the New Orleans airport and flown to Guatemala. Marcello’s attorneys denounced the deportation later that day, terming it “cruel and uncivilized,” and noted that their client had not been allowed to telephone his attorney or see his wife.⁵⁵¹

Marcello was livid and always referred to the incident as his “kidnapping”:

Marcello referred to his 1961 deportation as an illegal ‘kidnapping’ . . . he testified that ‘two marshals put the handcuffs on me and they told me that I was being kidnapped and being brought to Guatemala, which they did, and in thirty minutes time I was in the plane.’ He further testified that ‘they dumped me off in Guatemala, and I asked them, let me use the phone to call my wife, let me get my clothes, something they wouldn’t hear about. They just snatched me and that is it, actually kidnapped me.’⁵⁵²

So the Kennedys were not very popular with Mr. Marcello.

Similarly, the Kennedy Administration was also going after a prize of the oil and gas industry: their favored tax treatment known as the depletion allowance. The issue about changes in the oil depletion allowance sounds complicated but it was simply this; oil millionaires were receiving gigantic tax breaks, and JFK decided that the pigs had been feeding at the trough at public expense for too long and decided to put an end to it. President Kennedy was said to be disturbed by the fact that a man like Texas oil baron H. L. Hunt had an annual income of thirty million dollars and hardly paid any taxes on it.⁵⁵³

Just before John F. Kennedy was assassinated he upset people like Clint Murchison and Haroldson L. Hunt when he talked about plans to submit to Congress a tax reform plan designed to produce about $185,000,000 in additional revenues by changes in the favorable tax treatment until then accorded the gas-oil industry.⁵⁵⁴

Those Texas oil barons already had huge differences with the “Kennedy liberals from Massachusetts”—in the form of dramatic differences in “fighting communism” and “treatment of Negroes,” among many others. Moving publicly to eliminate their highly prized oil depletion allowance made Kennedy about as popular in Texas as a thief at a bridal shower.

So, when you add it all up, you can see that there was some extremely high-octane hatred that was targeted on JFK; and much of it was centered right in Texas.

⁵⁴⁵ Carl Sifakis, The Mafia Encyclopedia (Facts on File: 1999), 127.

⁵⁴⁶ Anthony Summers, Official and Confidential: The Secret Life of J. Edgar Hoover (Ebury: 2012)

⁵⁴⁷ Robert F. Kennedy, The Enemy Within: The McClellan Committee’s Crusade Against Jimmy Hoffa and Corrupt Labor Unions (De Capo Press: 1994)

⁵⁴⁸ Seymour M. Hersh, The DarSide of Camelot (Back Bay Books: 1998): bztv.typepad.com/ Winter/DarkSideSummary.pdfx

⁵⁴⁹ Sam Giancana & Chuck Giancana, Double Cross: The Explosive Inside Story of the Mobster Who Controlled America (Skyhorse Publishing: 2010).

⁵⁵⁰ G. Robert Blakey, Chief Counsel and Staff Director, Gary T. Cornwell, Deputy Chief Counsel & Michael Ewing, Researcher, “Appendices to Final Report of Select Committee on Assassinations, U.S. House of Representatives, 95^th Congress, Second Session,” January 2, 1979: jfkassassination.net/russ/jfkinfo/jfk9/hscv9e.htm#threat

⁵⁵¹ Ibid.

⁵⁵² Ibid.

⁵⁵³ John Simkin, “Theory: Texas Oil Men,” Spartacus Educational, retrieved 20 May 2013: spartacus.schoolnet.co.uk/JFKSinvestOil.htm

⁵⁵⁴ Ibid.