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
I made my first plea to Attorney General Pam Bondi for real full disclosure on 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?”
This column is my second appeal to AG Bondi, based on updated published and unpublished excerpts from my body of work.
Jimmy Hoffa’s plan to kill AG Robert Kennedy and his family
In 1977, Baton Rouge Teamsters leader Edward Partin told me about a $500,000 campaign contribution that Jimmy Hoffa and Carlos Marcello, the boss of the New Orleans Mafia, had made in 1960 to then Vice President Richard Nixon who was running for President against Senator John Kennedy during which time Nixon was allegedly the White House liaison in the initial planning of the infamous CIA-Mafia plots to kill Cuban President Fidel Castro.
That transaction was witnessed by I. Irving Davidson, a Hoffa and Marcello associate in Washington, D.C., who had been a major gunrunner for President Fulgencio Batista before Castro overthrew him on January 1, 1959.[1]
In September 1962, Ed Partin revealed to Walter Sheridan, the head of the "Get-Hoffa Squad" at the U.S. Department of Justice, that Hoffa wanted to kill then Attorney General Robert Kennedy. (Walter later became my mentor about all things related to Hoffa.)`
Partin explained to Walter and later to me that Hoffa's first plan was to firebomb Kennedy's home in Virginia with plastic explosives.
According to Partin, Hoffa was careful to note that even if Kennedy somehow survived the explosion, he "and all of his damn kids" would be incinerated, since "the place will burn after it blows up."
Hoffa's backup plan revolved around a sniper shooting Kennedy.
Partin explained, "Hoffa had a .270 rifle leaning in the corner of his office, and Hoffa said, 'I've got something right here which will shoot flat and long."
The "ideal setup," Hoffa went on, would be "to catch [Robert] Kennedy somewhere in the South," where extremist "segregation people" might throw investigators off the track by being blamed for the crime. The "ideal time" to hit Kennedy would be while he was driving his open convertible.
Partin thought that the Kennedy brothers' crusade against Hoffa had driven the union leader to desperation. "Somebody needs to bump that son of a bitch off," Partin remembered Hoffa saying. "Bobby Kennedy [has] got to go."
Soon after giving his story to Sheridan and the Justice Department, Partin took and passed a polygraph test. Then, FBI agents taped a telephone call between Partin and Hoffa—in which Hoffa and Partin had a brief conversation about plastic explosives.
For unknown reasons, Hoffa relented on his plan to kill the Attorney General who, at the time, was prosecuting Hoffa for extortion in Nashville.
The trial ended in a hung jury. . . . And Ed Partin knew why.
Because of Hoffa’s threat to the family of Attorney General Kennedy, Partin, via Walter Sheridan, became the key government witness against Hoffa in his 1964 trial for jury tampering in Chattanooga, which stemmed from the hung jury during the Nashville trial.
Partin was an eyewitness and knew the details about the scheme to fix the jury. As a surprise witness during the trial, Partin’s testimony assured Hoffa’s conviction.
Trafficante tells an FBI informant that Hoffa plans to kill President Kennedy
Meantime, Carlos Marcello and Santo Trafficante, the Mafia boss of Tampa, began shifting their target from RFK to JFK.
In September 1962—the same month that Hoffa approached Partin to kill AG Kennedy and his entire family—Santo Trafficante met with a Florida businessman, Jose Aleman, about a Teamsters pension fund loan they hoped to receive from Hoffa for a construction project.
When their discussion turned to politics and the upcoming 1964 Presidential election, Aleman predicted that Kennedy would win reelection.
Trafficante replied very directly: “No, Jose, he’s going to be hit.”
According to Aleman, already an FBI informant, Trafficante “made it clear” that it was Hoffa who was making the arrangements for the President’s murder.
Then, while riding in an open convertible during a motorcade in Dallas on November 22, 1963, President John Kennedy was shot to death by a sniper.
DA Jim Garrison corruptly ties Ed Partin to Lee Harvey Oswald and Jack Ruby
After the murder, Partin told me that Irv Davidson—on behalf of Marcello—made a ham-fisted attempt to get him to recant his testimony against Hoffa.
Partin explained to me that—during Hoffa's appeal process in the aftermath of his conviction in Chattanooga—mobbed-up New Orleans District Attorney Jim Garrison, as a favor to either Hoffa or Marcello or both, attempted to implicate Partin as a suspect in his already off‑the‑wall investigation of the murder of President Kennedy.
During my 1977 series of interviews with Partin, Walter Sheridan gave me a March 15, 1967, FBI report about Irv Davidson, captioned, "Assassination of President John F. Kennedy," in which the FBI stated:
Edward G. Partin . . . will be subpoenaed by [DA Garrison’s] grand jury in New Orleans, Louisiana, in the near future in connection with his possible involvement in the captioned matter. Davidson stated that he has heard there is a photograph available of Partin in the presence of Jack Ruby (deceased), convicted of killing Lee Harvey Oswald.[2]
Three months later, Garrison issued his own statement to a Baton Rouge radio station during which he set the record straight on what he believed., declaring:
We know that Jack Ruby and Lee Harvey Oswald were in New Orleans several times. . . . [T]here was a third man driving them, and we are checking the possibility it was Partin.[3]
Understandably, Ed Partin was deeply concerned. Not only was he receiving pressure from Hoffa and his allies, like Marcello and Trafficante, to recant his testimony against Hoffa, but now District Attorney Garrison was trying to implicate him in his screwball JFK murder conspiracy investigation.
After Garrison had falsely placed him in a car with Oswald and Ruby, Partin said that Frank Ragano—a Tampa, Florida, attorney who principally worked for Trafficante, as well as occasionally for Hoffa and Marcello—called Partin, who told me:
Ragano said that he could get Garrison off my back. In return, he wanted a signed affidavit saying that I lied in Hoffa’s trial.
Naturally, I didn’t sign. But it later came out that Ragano was in touch with both Trafficante and Marcello during that period of time.
Ed Partin stood strong and refused to be compromised. Hoffa, who went to prison in March 1967, remained behind bars.
In The Hoffa Wars, I wrote about Garrison’s corruption, saying:
[T]here were at the same time other revelations that Garrison had actively protected Marcello’s rackets. Aaron M. Kohn, director of the city’s crime commission, said before a U.S. House subcommittee: “We have been in repeated public conflicts with New Orleans District Attorney Jim Garrison who denies the existence in our city of provable organized crime. He and his staff have blocked our efforts to have grand juries probe the influence of La Cosa Nostra and other syndicate operations.”
To Marcello’s delight, Garrison had declared, “There is no organized crime in New Orleans.” And he insisted that Marcello was simply a “respectable businessman.”[4]
Years later, when asked in one of his final interviews whether he thought Garrison was “just a kook,’’ Jimmy Hoffa replied:
No, siree! Jim Garrison’s a smart man . . . Goddamn smart attorney . . . Anybody thinks he’s a kook is a kook themselves.[5]
Ragano offers me a $250,000 bribe
On September 19, 1978—while in Boston during the national promotional tour for my book, The Hoffa Wars—I returned a phone message from one of my lawyers, Steve Martindale, in Washington, D.C.
Steve said that he had just received a bizarre call from mob attorney Frank Ragano, who had represented Hoffa, Marcello, and Trafficante.
According to Martindale, Ragano offered me $250,000 for all the rights to my book in which, among other things, I was the first to report that Hoffa, Marcello, and Trafficante had arranged and executed the 1963 assassination of President John Kennedy in what I believed was a straight mob hit.
Ragano told Steve that he was involved in a motion-picture project backed and fronted by television talk-show host David Susskind.
Martindale asked what I wanted to do.
I immediately telephoned my trusted friend and mentor, Walter Sheridan, who told me to stay clear of Ragano because he was “bad news.”
I called back Martindale and instructed him to reject Ragano’s $250,000 bribe. However, before doing so, I asked Steve to get Ragano’s opinion of my reporting on the Kennedy murder and, specifically, the possibility of Hoffa's involvement with Marcello and Trafficante.
Later that day, Martindale reported to me that Ragano replied that I was “essentially correct,” but that I had “oversimplified” the scenario.
Ragano would say no more.
The 1979 final report of the HSCA
Notably, a year after The Hoffa Wars was released, the U.S. House Select Committee on Assassinations concluded that Hoffa, Marcello, and Trafficante had the “motive, means, and opportunity” to have the President killed.
And the chief counsel of the committee, the legendary G. Robert Blakey, the world’s expert on the Mafia, declared upon the release of the committee’s 1979 report: “The mob did it. It’s a historical fact.”
Ragano on Garrison and Marcello
On July 7, 1992, several attorneys, academics, and crime reporters did a live, 90-minute, nationally syndicated televised program, directed by Daniel Helfgott, about the murder of President John Kennedy, which was hosted by actor Robert Conrad.
Attached above is a 1:32-minute clip in which Conrad and I interviewed mob attorney-turned-good guy Frank Ragano—who had spent much of his career representing Hoffa, Marcello, and Trafficante.
During the program, Ragano alleged that Hoffa gave him a message for Marcello and Trafficante, asking them to kill President Kennedy in order to stop Attorney General Kennedy’s relentless war against the Mafia.[6]
During our filmed discussion with Conrad, I asked Ragano about New Orleans District Attorney Jim Garrison, the hero of Oliver Stone’s false-fact-filled film fantasy, JFK.
In his response, Ragano confirmed that Garrison’s job was to protect Marcello and to deflect all official and unofficial JFK assassination investigations away from Marcello.
Before he passed away in 1998, Frank threw me a bouquet, saying:
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.[7]
Once again, I appeal to Attorney General Pam Bondi to authorize the release of all sealed documents within the U.S. Department of Justice, including the FBI, about Jimmy Hoffa, Carlos Marcello, and Santo Trafficante.
Also, we want to know who killed Chicago mobster Johnny Rosselli, last seen on a boat owned by Santo Trafficante in August 1976 before his decomposed and dismembered body was found in an oil drum floating in Dumfounding Bay near Miami.
ENDNOTES
1. For details about the relationship between the mobbed-up Irving Davidson and syndicated columnist Jack Anderson, a great man with a bad conflict of interest, see Mark Feldstein’s excellent book, Poisoning the Press: Richard Nixon, Jack Anderson, and the Rise of Washington’s Scandal Culture (New York: Farrar, Straus & Giroux, 2010).
2. When I interviewed Davidson in 1977, he grudgingly admitted to, among many other things, his role in this ludicrous drama to frame Ed Partin as a conspirator in the JFK murder via mobbed-up Jim Garrison.
3. Quote from Jim Garrison, WJBO-AM, Baton Rouge, June 23, 1967.
4. On October 19, 1967, NBC News broadcast a White Paper about Jim Garrison’s investigation of the JFK murder. The program was hosted by Frank McGee. The chief investigator was Walter Sheridan.
5. Jerry Stanecki, Playboy, “Interview with Jimmy Hoffa,” December 1975.
6. Also see: Jack Newfield, New York Post, “Hoffa Had JFK Killed,” January 14, 1992.
Along with Jack Newfield and me, Ragano selected Bob Blakey, the former chief counsel of the U.S. House Select Committee on Assassinations, and author/screenwriter Nick Pileggi, among others, as his advisors.
With our cooperation, Charles Stuart, a respected documentary filmmaker, produced an outstanding episode on PBS’s Frontline about Ragano—JFK, Hoffa, and the Mob—in which all of us appeared.
BTW: Robert Conrad told me that one of his greatest career regrets was that he never had the opportunity to play Jimmy Hoffa in a motion picture.
7. 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 HSCA as one of its top investigators. . . . Sadly, Mike passed away on March 3, 2023.
