- WASHINGTON (AP) -- Nearly 16 years after the assassination of President
Kennedy, a New Orleans organized-crime figure suspected by some researchers
said on a tapped telephone that he "used to love John Kennedy"
-- that he "woulda made the best president if he'd a-lived."
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- FBI agents eavesdropping on another conversation
in July 1979 heard Carlos Marcello deny allegations that he was affiliated
with Jack Ruby, who killed Kennedy assassin Lee Harvey Oswald. "He
never talked to me in his li... . I don't even know him," Marcello
said of Ruby.
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- Transcripts of the conversations were
released today by the Assassination Records Review Board, created to identify,
secure and release all records related to the Kennedy assassination in
Dallas on Nov. 22, 1963.
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- The FBI conducted electronic surveillance
on Marcello's home and office for about eight months as part of an investigation
code-named "BriLab," which stood for bribery of organized labor.
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- Some historians and researchers probing
the Kennedy assassination have suggested the BriLab tapes might contain
conversations in which Marcello or his brother, Joseph, acknowledged that
they were involved in the Kennedy assassination.
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- The tapes and transcripts from the BriLab
surveillance, long sealed, were obtained with a federal court order.
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- The transcripts provided no direct links
between Marcello and Kennedy's death, but the review board found 13 conversations
relevant to the slaying.
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- Most occurred during the summer of 1979
when the House Select Committee on Assassinations released a report that
named Marcello and Santos Trafficante of Miami as "the most likely
family bosses of organized crime to have participated in such a unilateral
assassintion plan."
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- The committee's report, however, conceded
that it could find no evidence to prove that Marcello had conspired to
assassinate the president. Marcello told the committee he was not involved.
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- In one taped conversation on June 21,
1979, Marcello is overheard talking on the phone with Irving Davidson,
a Washington lobbyist and apparent contact of organized-labor officials.
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- The lobbyist tells Marcello that one
of Marcello's lawyers wrote a letter to The Washington Post and to columnist
Jack Anderson stating that "regardless of what the assassinations
committee report's gonna say, you had nothing to do with it."
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- On July 18, 1979, Marcello and Joe Campisi
of Dallas discuss a newspaper story about the assassination and possible
links to the underworld.
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- "They said Jack Ruby had all the,
all the connections. You wouldn't know Jack Ruby if the ... (expletive)
was uh crawl in your room," Campisi said.
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- "He never talked to me in his li...
. I don't even know him," Marcello replied.
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- Twenty-two minutes later, Marcello is
on the phone again -- this time with an unknown man. Marcello says he told
Congress that he used to love Kennedy and that he was "really hurt
when they, when they killed him."
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- Marcello also said that he didn't like,
but "didn't hate" Bobby Kennedy. As attorney general, Robert
F. Kennedy worked to have Marcello deported. Marcello says on the phone
that the government once had him picked up and taken to Guatemala.
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- Marcello says he might have an argument
with somebody, but "ain't never hate nobody."
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- "I don't hate you, but I make up,
maybe tomorrow, next week or next month ... but ain't hatin' ya to kill
ya. I'm a kill somebody?(Expletive). President or (laugh) (expletive) Attorney
General?"
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