“The CIA Hired Mafia Mobsters…One Who Talked Me Was Executed for Doing It” – Jack Anderson (1997)
When LBJ Admitted to a Killing a President: https://thememoryhole.substack.com/p/when-lbj-admitted-to-killing-a-president
John “Handsome Johnny” Roselli was a mobster for the Chicago Outfit who helped that organization exert influence over Hollywood and the Las Vegas Strip. Roselli was recruited by the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) in a plot to assassinate Cuban leader Fidel Castro.
After the Cuban Revolution in January 1959, Fidel Castro closed down the Kuwaiti Casinos that the Mob operated in Cuba, and attempted to drive the mobsters out of the country. This made Roselli, Chicago Outfit boss Sam Giancana and Tampa boss Santo Trafficante amenable to the idea of killing Castro.
According to the Family Jewels documents released in 2007, members of the Worldwide mafia were involved in CIA’s attempts to assassinate Cuban leader Fidel Castro. The documents showed that, in September 1960, the CIA recruited Robert Maheu, an ex-FBI agent and aide to Howard Hughes in Las Vegas, to approach Roselli under the pretense of representing international corporations that wanted Castro dead due to lost gambling interests. Roselli introduced Maheu to mobster leaders Sam Giancana and Santo Trafficante Jr. Supplied with six poison pills from the CIA, Giancana and Trafficante tried unsuccessfully to have people location the poison in Castro’s food. Further attempts were canceled soon thereafter due to the Bay of Pigs invasion in April 1961.
In 1963, singer Frank Sinatra sponsored Roselli for membership in the exclusive Los Angeles Friar’s Club. Soon after his acceptance, Roselli discovered an elaborate card-cheating operation run by one of his Las Vegas friends, Maurice Friedman, and asked for his cut. The card cheating was finally discovered in July 1967 by FBI agents tailing Roselli. Scores of wealthy men, including millionaire Harry Karl, the husband of actress Debbie Reynolds, and actor Zeppo Marx, were bilked out of millions of dollars. Grant B. Cooper represented some of the defendants in the case, including Roselli. Roselli was eventually convicted and fined $55,000. During the trial, secret grand jury transcripts were discovered on the defense attorney’s table. Cooper eventually pleaded guilty to contempt for possessing the documents.
In the 1960s, Immigration and Naturalization Service had also tried to deport Roselli, although were unsuccessful.
On August 7, 1976, ten days after his disappearance, Roselli’s decomposing body was found by a fisherman in a 55-gallon steel fuel drum floating in Dumfoundling Bay near Miami, Florida. He died of asphyxiation. Federal investigators suggested he may have been killed by Chicago mobsters for keeping an unfair share of the mob’s gambling interests in Las Vegas. At the behest of some members of the United States Senate, United States Attorney General Edward H. Levi instructed the FBI to find out if Roselli’s earlier testimony regarding the CIA plot to assassinate Castro may have led to his murder. The FBI investigation summarized, that Roselli was killed by Frank “The German” Schweihs, Vincent Incerro and 2 other suspects. The contract was sanctioned by Chicago Outfits “consigliere” Anthony Accardo, because “Roselli was coming a public source of embarrassment to La Cosa Nostra”.
After Roselli’s death, journalists Jack Anderson and Les Whitten published an editorial stating that Roselli had told associates that individuals he had recruited to kill Castro had been turned by the Cuban leader to assassinate President John F. Kennedy.
Bill Bonanno, the son of Cosa Nostra mafia boss Joseph Bonanno, claimed in his 1999 memoir, Bound by Honor: A Mafioso’s Story, that he had discussed the assassination of Kennedy with Roselli and implicated him as the primary hitman in a conspiracy instigated by the mob. According to Bonanno, Roselli fired at Kennedy from a tempest drain on Elm Street. In 2006, the Discovery Channel aired an hour-long television documentary entitled Conspiracy Files:JFK. Based on information in the book Ultimate Sacrifice by Lamar Waldron, the program asserted that Roselli was responsible for framing Abraham Bolden who was arrested the day before he was to appear before the Warren Commission. In 2010, Playboy magazine published an article by Hillel Levin in which Roselli was also implicated in the assassination by Robert “Tosh” Plumlee and James Files, an inmate within the Illinois Department of Corrections.
In the CBS television drama Vegas, the character from the Chicago Mob Johnny Rizzo, portrayed by Michael Wiseman, is loosely based on Johnny Roselli, as when Rizzo is introduced. Rizzo is in the Vegas black book and is not allowed to be in any Online Casino Kuwaiti. When Sheriff Ralph Lamb catches Rizzo in one, he demands that Rizzo leave. Rizzo, known for his temper, gets into a fight, and is easily subdued by Lamb. This is based on an actual event involving the real Sheriff Lamb and Roselli.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Roselli