Shenon does have a remarkable story to tell about Castro -- and it completely undermines his dark conjecture about the Cuban leader. In the summer of 1964, Castro passed word to Washington that he wanted to tell his story to the Warren Commission. William Coleman -- the commission's only African-American lawyer -- had met Castro back in the early 1950s, when they were both young men enjoying Harlem's nightlife. As the obvious staff member to undertake the mission, Coleman set off for the Caribbean, where he met with his old acquaintance on a yacht anchored off Cuba. For three hours, Coleman fired questions at Castro about a possible Cuban plot against JFK, with Fidel steadfastly insisting that he admired JFK and had nothing to do with his murder. In fact, it would later be revealed that in the months before his death, Kennedy had begun to soften the hostile U.S. stance against Havana and had opened back channels to Castro. After returning from his secret mission, Coleman reported back to Warren that he found no proof Castro was involved in JFK's murder. The Coleman story is not the hot scoop advertised by Shenon -- it was first reported years ago by Irish journalist Anthony Summers, one of the more dogged diggers in the Kennedy field. But it certainly bears repeating.
To give Shenon and Willens their due, both books contain a number of startling facts, some of which are new, at least to me. For example, Shenon spotlights these intriguing bits of information:
- After returning home from his grim duties, Dr. James Humes, the Navy pathologist in charge of the Kennedy autopsy at the Bethesda Naval Hospital, burned his original autopsy report in the fireplace in his family room. Humes' superior officer was so concerned that the pathologist himself might be eliminated by the plotters who killed JFK that he ordered Humes to be escorted home that night.
-
Arlen Specter,
the Warren Commission lawyer (and future U.S. senator), first presented his
soon-to-be infamous single bullet theory to Chief Justice Warren while the two
men were standing at the sixth-floor window 
of the Texas Book Depository where the mediocre marksman Oswald allegedly
committed his historic crime. After listening silently to Specter explain the
magical trajectory of Oswald's bullet, Warren simply turned on his heel and
walked away without saying a word. Warren -- a distinguished chief justice with
a monumental record on civil rights -- had resisted serving on the presidential
commission. He knew that his duty was not to find the truth, but to suppress
dangerous evidence that -- as LBJ had warned him -- might lead to World War III.
Still, it must have dismayed the 73-year-old jurist to see how his historic
report (and his reputation) would be tied to a patently absurd ballistics
theory.
-
In the years
following the Warren Report's release, several of the commissioners and staff
members distanced themselves from their own report and publicly criticized the
manifold deceptions of the agencies on which they had relied, namely the FBI
and CIA. Among those who suffered grave doubts was lawyer David Slawson, the
man who had been the Warren Commission's lead investigator into whether JFK was
the victim of a conspiracy. In 1975 Slawson aired his criticisms to the New
York Times, attacking the CIA for withholding vital information from the
commission and calling for a new JFK investigation. Within days of the story
breaking in the Times, Slawson received a strange and threatening phone
call from James Angleton, the spectral CIA counterintelligence chief. Angleton
-- who had not only closely monitored Oswald for several years before Dallas,
but later took charge of the agency's investigation into the alleged assassin --
adopted a decidedly sinister tone during his call with Slawson, making it clear
to the lawyer that he would be wise to remain "a friend of the CIA." Slawson
and his wife were deeply unnerved by the call. He thought the message was
clear: "Keep your mouth shut."
For his part, Willens, who had been loaned out to the Warren Commission by Robert Kennedy's Justice Department, reveals new information about the attorney general and his troubled relationship with the official investigation into his brother's death. RFK resolutely kept his distance from the proceedings of the Warren Commission -- which was stacked with RFK's political enemies and reported to a new president with whom he had a poisonous relationship. But, as Willens reveals, Kennedy did briefly insert a lawyer on the Warren Commission staff -- in addition to Willens himself. This Kennedy mole used his position on the commission to dig into possible connections between the JFK assassination and the Mafia-connected Teamster leader Jimmy Hoffa, another mortal enemy of RFK.
As soon as he had heard the
devastating news from Dallas on the afternoon of Nov. 22, 1963, Attorney
General Robert Kennedy immediately suspected that his brother had been the
victim of a plot. RFK believed that the shadowy assassination operation against
Fidel Castro -- a dark alliance between the CIA and the Mafia -- had somehow been
turned against President Kennedy. When Dallas nightclub operator Jack Ruby
stunned the nation by shooting Oswald on national TV while he was being
escorted through the basement of the Dallas Police
Department ,
Bobby and his Justice Department investigators quickly turned their attention
to Ruby. Within hours, RFK's men found that Ruby had numerous connections to
organized crime.
According to Shenon, the Warren
Commission lawyers who were assigned to investigate Ruby -- Burt Griffin and
Leon Hubert -- came to the same disturbing conclusion. Equally unnerving, the
commission lawyers also suspected that the Dallas police sergeant who was in
charge of Oswald's security had allowed Ruby to slip into police headquarters
and gun down the alleged assassin. But Griffin and Hubert were shut down before
they could complete
their Ruby investigation. And Griffin was reprimanded for daring to confront
the Dallas police sergeant with his suspicions. Warren even publicly apologized
to the cop when he was called to testify before the commission in Washington.
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