Intermezzo: On the alleged roles of Hoffa-Marcello-Trafficante in the JFK murder

Attorneys, investigators, and journalists, along with AI, credit "The Hoffa Wars" with reporting it first

Above is a C-Span clip from a symposium at American University on January 22, 1992, about the then-newly released motion picture by Oliver Stone, JFK, dramatizing the murder of President John Kennedy on November 22, 1963.

I have described the film as great cinema but terrible history.

Please note that this Mobology column—my ninth related to the JFK murder, which references the upcoming announced releases of previously withheld JFK-MLK-RFK documents—is based on an updated compilation of published excerpts from my body of work.[1]

On January 23, 2025, Donald Trump issued an executive order that authorized the release of all remaining sealed documents.

At the time he signed the order, Trump declared, “Everything will be revealed.”

The Task Force on the Declassification of Federal Secrets under the U.S. House Oversight Committee has scheduled a hearing about the soon-to-be-released documents on March 26.

On a date to be announced, the new files will be available at the President John F. Kennedy Assassination Records Collection at the National Archives.

To be clear, I have no inside information that the disclosures will confirm what I have alleged.

However, I insist that without the release of the recording in which Carlos Marcello allegedly confessed to his role in the murder, this vaunted release will be both incomplete and a major disappointment.

To me, Marcello’s recorded words are likely “the smoking gun” that will corroborate what I have been saying for the past 47 years.

In short, I still stand by what I wrote in my book about the rise and fall of Jimmy Hoffa, along with my claims about Hoffa’s nefarious associations with Marcello and Santo Trafficante. And, to be sure, many attorneys, investigators, and journalists agree with me.

Here is what reporter John Diamond of the Associated Press wrote on the 30th anniversary of the JFK assassination:

[In 1978,] Dan Moldea published The Hoffa Wars, the first book to lay out the theory that Teamsters boss Jimmy Hoffa recruited mobsters Carlos Marcello and Santo Trafficante to arrange the assassination.

In July 1979—a year after the release of my book—the U.S. House Select Committee on Assassinations (HSCA) released its final report, declaring that Hoffa, Marcello, and Trafficante had the “motive, means, and opportunity” to kill the President.[2]

The legendary federal mob prosecutor, G. Robert Blakey, the committee’s chief counsel, stated: “The mob did it. It’s a historical fact.”[3]

For an excerpt of The Hoffa Wars, see my 1978 article in Playboy:[4]

Here are some other comments about my work:

* “Due to books such as Dan Moldea’s The Hoffa Wars and the House Select Committee’s investigation, the press finally linked Marcello and Trafficante to JFK’s assassination.” —Lamar Waldron: The Hidden History of the JFK Assassination, 2013

* "The murder of President John F. Kennedy was the American crime of the century, and Dan Moldea, in The Hoffa Wars, was the first person to publicly arrive at what now appears to be the correct solution." —Jonathan Kwitny of the Wall Street Journal, 1993

* “Dan Moldea, author of The Hoffa Wars (1978), was the first to suggest that Marcello, Trafficante, and Hoffa had conspired in the assassination of President Kennedy.” —David Kaiser: Author, The Road to Dallas, 2008

* "Author Dan Moldea was the first to publicly assert that the Mafia killed President Kennedy." —The Assassination of John Kennedy, PBS documentary: November 18, 1988

* “Dan Moldea published The Hoffa Wars, the first book to lay out the theory that Teamsters boss Jimmy Hoffa recruited mobsters Carlos Marcello and Santo Trafficante to arrange the assassination.” —John Diamond, Associated Press, November 22, 1993

* "Dan Moldea [was] the reporter who first documented the Hoffa-Marcello-Trafficante theory in 1978." —John Aloysius Farrell: Boston Globe, February 23, 1992

* "Investigative journalist Dan Moldea . . . was the first to draw a link between organized crime and the assassination." —David Talbot: San Francisco Chronicle, March 29, 1992

* "In 1978, Moldea's book, The Hoffa Wars, raised the possibility that Hoffa was involved in a plot to assassinate President John F. Kennedy. The book named two likely co-conspirators with Hoffa: Mafia figures Carlos Marcello and Santos Trafficante. Since then, Moldea has been credited [as] being the first to link the three in the plot." —Abe Zaidan: Cleveland Plain Dealer, December 26, 1992

* “The goal for the mob was to plan the [JFK] assassination using the arms-and-planes deal as a cover. . . . Then the mob would assassinate Castro, coincident with a CIA-backed coup against Castro that would leave a Cuban leader like Menoyo, Varona, or Artime in charge of Cuba.

“The complexity of this four-part arrangement has stymied investigators for decades. It was only through the efforts of Bobby Kennedy’s investigators in 1959—and work by Dan Moldea, whose mentor was Bobby’s top investigator, Walter Sheridan—that the operation can be documented today, despite all of the CIA files that remain classified.” —Lamar Waldron with Tom Hartmann: Authors, Ultimate Sacrifice, 2005

* “You’ve tackled this subject and the greater field of organized crime with more courage than anyone I know. You were the first to bring out the Marcello-Trafficante-Hoffa alliance and machinations as related to this case.” —Note to DEM from David Scheim, author of Contract on America: The Mafia Murder of President John F. Kennedy, March 14, 1988

* "Some believe [Frank] Ragano [an attorney for Hoffa, Marcello, and Trafficante] has the best of all reasons not to lie. Dan E. Moldea, who made the Teamsters-JFK-Ragano link in his 1978 book, The Hoffa Wars, says the mob lawyer has put himself 'at great personal risk.'" —Eloise Salholz: Newsweek, January 27, 1992

—According to Ragano, Hoffa had asked him to pass his murder contract on President Kennedy to Marcello and Trafficante, who allegedly carried it out.

* "In 1978, a Washington journalist released a controversial book that began to unlock the secrets of the brutal murder of President Kennedy. He did it by piecing together the Hoffa-Marcello-Trafficante puzzle for the first time. That journalist was Dan E. Moldea, and his book was The Hoffa Wars." —Frank Ragano: June 1992

I also asked Perplexity AI the question of who was first and received the following response:

And I asked Copilot AI the same question:

ENDNOTES

1. Here are my previous columns for Mobology about the CIA-Mafia plots against Fidel Castro and the murder of JFK:

* July 13, 2025: My 2nd appeal to AG Pam Bondi to release all DOJ/FBI documents about the roles of Hoffa, Marcello, and Trafficante in the JFK murder: Here is what a top mob attorney said about New Orleans DA Jim Garrison and Louisiana crime boss Carlos Marcello

* April 20, 2025: An appeal to AG Pam Bondi to unseal JFK-murder-related DOJ/FBI files about Jimmy Hoffa, Carlos Marcello, and Santo Trafficante: Why hasn't Carlos Marcello's taped confession about his role in the JFK murder been released?

* March 17, 2025: Trump has authorized the release of 80,000 documents in the JFK murder case on Tuesday, March 18: Will Carlos Marcello's recorded confession to Joseph Hauser be included? . . . If not, the release could be fraudulent

* March 16, 2025: Intermezzo: On the alleged roles of Hoffa-Marcello-Trafficante in the JFK murder: Attorneys, investigators, and journalists, along with AI, credit The Hoffa Wars with reporting it first

* March 2, 2025: Mob lawyer Frank Ragano confessed to delivering Hoffa's contract on JFK to Carlos Marcello and Santo Trafficante: In 1978, I rejected Ragano's $250,000 offer to buy the rights to my book, The Hoffa Wars, in which I alleged that Hoffa, Marcello, and Trafficante engineered the President's murder

* February 16, 2025: FBI sting man Joe Hauser taped Mafia boss Carlos Marcello who admitted his complicity in the murder of JFK: Will this recording be part of the upcoming release?

* February 9, 2025: Jimmy Hoffa Jr. told me that his father knew Jack Ruby: Then he denied it during an interview with the staff of the U.S. House Select Committee on Assassinations.

* September 15, 2024: The CIA-Mafia plots against Fidel Castro, Part 3: I revealed the identity of the mysterious Cuban exile leader who was passed the poison pills by the CIA via John Rosselli

* September 1, 2024: The CIA-Mafia plots against Fidel Castro, Part 2: My interviews with Robert Maheu about what he knew and what he did not know

* August 25, 2024: The CIA-Mafia plots against Fidel Castro, Part 1: The pre-Maheu, pre-Rosselli period

* November 22, 2023: On the 60th anniversary of the murder of President John Kennedy: My closing argument

* November 5, 2023: Did Jimmy Hoffa, Carlos Marcello, and Santo Trafficante arrange the killing of President John Kennedy?

2. Please allow me to pay my respects to Michael Ewing, my associate during our 1977 investigations of the CIA-Mafia plots against Fidel Castro and the murder of President Kennedy. The following year, Mike joined the U.S. House Select Committee on Assassinations as one of its top investigators. . . . Sadly, Mike passed away on March 3, 2023.

3. Notably, if Allen Dulles had bothered to mention to his colleagues on the Warren Commission in 1964, “I should probably tell you that while I was director of the CIA, we were working with the Mafia to kill Fidel Castro,” then that stunning piece of essential information would have certainly provoked a new avenue of investigation of the Mafia’s possible role in the murder.

In my opinion, this intentional omission of fact fatally corrupted the CIA, which actively covered up its relationship with the underworld. However, I do not believe that the CIA played any institutional role in the killing of President Kennedy.

4. On page 657 of the third edition of my memoir, Confessions of a Guerrilla Writer, I wrote:

Three fascinating books that advanced the state of evidence were Pulitzer Prize-winner Ed Reid's 1969 book, The Grim Reapers: The Anatomy of Organized Crime in America; Los Angeles television producer Peter Noyes's 1973 book, Legacy of Doubt; and Berkeley professor Peter Dale Scott's 1977 book, Crime and Cover-Up: The CIA, the Mafia, and the Dallas-Watergate Connection. The books by Noyes and Scott were released only in paperback editions; thus, they did not receive as much attention as they should have.

In Reid's book, the author stated that, in 1962, New Orleans Mafia boss Carlos Marcello had blurted out that he was planning to kill President Kennedy in front of three associates.

The principal target of Noyes's book was Jim Braden, a mystery man who was picked up by local law-enforcement officials in Dealey Plaza immediately after the shooting. Braden, whom I later interviewed for my book, The Hoffa Wars, had alleged ties to Hoffa, as well as to Marcello and other mobsters.

The subtitle of Scott's book pretty much described what he believed, but he did a good job of including some of mob material amid his army of alleged conspirators.

[Ed Reid died in 1977. Pete Noyes passed away in 2021. And Peter Dale Scott, at 96, is reportedly still fighting the good fight.]

Also, in the Washington Post's Outlook section on May 16, 1976, journalist George Crile III had written an article, "The Mafia, The CIA, and Castro." For this story, Crile had interviewed a successful Cuban-exile businessman, Jose Aleman, who revealed that Tampa Mafia boss Santo Trafficante had told him that President Kennedy was going to be murdered—over a year before the murder. Crile also referred to a recently released CIA document, stating that an American "gangster-gambler named Santos [who was in a Cuban prison in 1959] . . . was visited by an American gangster type named Ruby."

[George Crile died in 2006.]

Notably, my book, The Hoffa Wars, was released on August 23, 1978. A month later, on September 25, 1978, reporter Seth Kantor of the Detroit News published his excellent work, Who Was Jack Ruby? (Everest House).

Kantor, who had earlier worked for a newspaper in Dallas, was acquainted with Ruby and detailed their relationship in his book. Kantor was also among those reporters in the motorcade in Dealey Plaza when President Kennedy was gunned down.

Seth Kantor died in 1993.

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