Why The CIA Hired The Mob To Do Their Dirty Work (The Castro Plot) HT

June 6th, 1959, Havana. Cuban authorities kick down the door of San. Trafocante Jr.’s apartment. They tear apart furniture, rip open mattresses, smash through walls. They drag him to a Cuban prison, a former US Navy coing station converted into a detention facility. Concrete walls, steel bars, the sound of waves crashing against the seaw wall.

Jake Lansky is there. for Meyer’s brother released after 10 days. Charles the Blade Tin released after 2 weeks. Trafficante stays for 73 days. Harry Anslinger, head of the US Bureau of Narcotics, had sent Castro a list of American narcotics suspects. Trafocanti’s name was on it. Cuban guards took him into the woods at night demanding to know where he had hidden his money.

Then on August 18th, without explanation,  Castro released him. Not deported, just released. Within weeks, rumors circulated in Miami. Trafocante had made a deal. He was feeding intelligence to Castro  spy master. The whole detention had been theater, which makes what happened 14 months later completely insane.

September 1960. The Fontinblow Hotel, Miami Beach. A CIA operative hands Trafocante a briefcase containing six poison pills, bottlene toxin. The contract was $150,000 uh to kill Fidel Castro. The CIA had just hired a man who might have been Castro’s agent um to assassinate [music] Castro.

To understand why this happened, you you need to understand what Trafocante had lost. He had lost a kingdom. New Year’s Eve 1958. Trafocante stood in the sun’s susi, his flagship casino in the hills outside Havana, watching roulette wheels spin in champagne flow. The sprawling tropical nightclub featured outdoor gaming tables beneath palm trees strung with lights.

Outside the gates, Batista’s army was collapsing. Inside, Americans and evening wear lost fortunes under crystal chandeliers while a 12-piece orchestra [music] played. Nobody wanted to believe it was ending. Havana had become a 24-hour money machine 90 m from Florida. 10 major casinos operated across the city.

the Tropicana, the Sans Susi, the Riviera, the Hotel [music] National Combined, they generated approximately $5,000 [music] daily in profits. The Havana Riviera alone, Meer Lansky’s masterpiece, [music] pulled in 25 million annually. The equation was perfect. Casinos paid 50% of slot profits [music] directly to Batista.

In return, the Cuban government waved taxes [music] for 10 years, canceled customs duties. The Minister of Labor ruled that casino dealers were technicians, [music] which meant Lansky could import handpicked staff from Las Vegas. Trafocante controlled the Sansusi and Casino International. He had pieces of five other casinos.

He’d also set up International Amusements Corporation, an entertainment booking company that controlled who performed, who worked, who got paid. By 1958, his annual take likely exceeded several million, [music] and he had something nobody else did. He spoke Spanish fluently, rare for Italian mobsters, which made him indispensable.

Sam Jin Kana couldn’t negotiate with Cuban officials. Johnny Roselli [music] couldn’t navigate Batista’s bureaucracy. They needed Trafocante. [music] He was the translator for the entire American mob’s Cuban operation. On January 1st, 1959, Castro’s forces marched into Havana. Slot [music] machines were smashed and thrown into the streets.

At the Riviera, Lansky’s gleaming modern hotel with its 21story tower overlooking the Malacon. [music] Revolutionaries brought in a truckload of pigs and set them loose in the marble lobby. >> [music] >> Squealing animals tracked mud across Lansky’s polished floors, defiling his [music] pride. And Joy Castro briefly reopened the casinos in February, then shut them permanently.

Uh, most mobsters fled immediately. Trafocante stayed. He thought whoever ran Cuba would need the casinos [music] running. He was wrong. Trafocante had been building toward this [music] moment his entire life. He was born in Tampa, Florida on November 15th, 1914. He grew up in Ibore City, Tampa’s cigar manufacturing [music] district, where brick factories churned out millions of handrolled cigars and where three languages mixed [music] on the streets.

It was a neighborhood where Italians, Cubans, and Spaniards lived side by side. He dropped out of high school before 10th grade. He spoke Spanish as fluently as English. He was bilingual. His father, Santos Senior, had survived the era of blood, a 10-year gang war in Tampa, where rival factions [music] killed each other for control of Bolita, the numbers racket, and prohibition era nightclubs.

By 1940, Santo senior controlled most of Tampa, and he taught his son the business, not with violence. Trafocante senior only spent time in prison once. Uh, and that conviction was overturned. He taught him with silence, with patience, with the understanding that the boss [music] power is the kind nobody sees.

In 1946, Santo Senior dispatched his son to Havana to help operate mob owned casinos. The timing was perfect. Cuba was opening up and um Batista wanted American investment. Unlike most mobsters, young Santo spoke the language. He could negotiate directly with Cuban officials without a translator, and he could move between the American mob and Cuban power brokers seamlessly.

He relied on his Spanish to bridge those worlds. By 1954, when Santo [music] Senior died of natural causes, Junior had become indispensable. He was the liaison, [music] the translator, the man who made the equation work. Meer Lansky ran the money. Santo Trafocante  ran the relationships and when Castro took it all away, those relationships became his most valuable asset.

After his mysterious release from the Cuban prison in August 1959, Trafocante relocated to the Fontaine Hotel on Miami Beach. Not as a guest, as a regular. The 14-story tower designed by Morris Lapidus dominated the beachfront. All curves and glass and dramatic lighting with a sweeping staircase that curved like a frozen waterfall.

It was where Frank Sinatra performed in the Laonda supper club, where the Rat Pack gambled, where mobsters conducted business while maintaining the appearance of legitimacy. Trafficante worked from a lounge inside the hotel. Crystal glasses, leather booths, dim lighting, everything verbal, no offices, no paper trail.

Unlike Gotti who craved attention, or Gianana who dated movie stars, Trafocante stayed invisible, expensive suits, soft voice, rarely used phones. Miami in 1960 had become a hotbed of Cuban exiles. Thousands flooding the city after Castro took power. Waiters who had worked at the Sansu Sea, chefs from the hotel national, managers from the Tropicana.

Some resented Castro for destroying their livelihoods. Some were willing to help for money. And Trafocante still spoke their language. He sat in the lounge meeting with anti-Castro activists maintaining his network, which is exactly what the CIA needed. The CIA had a problem. Castro had purged Batista’s government and installed the G2 intelligence service.

Fanatically loyal, American agents could not get close. They needed the mobs networks, waiters, chefs,  workers who had lost jobs when Castro closed the casinos. People with access. In September 1960, the CIA recruited Robert Mayu, former FBI agent, now working for Howard Hughes.

Mayheu approached Johnny Rosselli who brought in Sam Gian Kana. Jen Kana had lost millions in Cuba on shrimp boats, tourist boat plans [music] and gambling operations. He was motivated. But Junkana needed someone with contacts on the ground, someone who spoke  Spanish, someone who still had waiters and chefs willing to work inside Cuba. He needed Trafocante.

March 1961, Floyd Patterson and Ingamar Johansson were fighting their third heavyweight championship bout in Miami. The Fontine Blow was packed with high rollers in tuxedos, [music] celebrities, mobsters from every major city. Boxing fans  crowded the bars watching closed circuit television.

Perfect cover. In a suite upstairs, CIA operative Jim Okonnell met with Gian Connor Rosselli and Trafocante. On the table, he placed six capsules of botulinum toxin manufactured by the CIA technical services division. [music] Lethal in 30 seconds. Also on the table, $10,000 in cash down payment [music] on a $150,000 contract. The plan was simple.

Castro loved dairy products. He ordered a chocolate milkshake from [music] the Havana Libre Hotel daily. According to Gabriel Garcia Marquez, Castro once ate between 18 and 28 scoops of ice cream after a single meal. A chef would slip a capsule into Castro’s [music] drink. 30 seconds later, heart attack.

Natural causes, except [music] the assassin hid the pill in the kitchen freezer. When he tried to retrieve it, the capsule had frozen to the side. He tried to pry it loose. It broke. The poison spilled. The plot failed. The CIA tried again in  1962. More pills went through Trafocante to Anthony [music] Verona, leader of the Cuban exile Juna.

Same plan, different restaurant. The chef placed the pills in the freezer for safekeeping. When the time came, they had frozen [music] to the coils. unusable. Two attempts, two freezers, two failures. The Bay of Pigs invasion in April 1961  effectively ended the poison plots. President Kennedy withdrew support, dooming the anti-Castro forces.

The CIA’s relationship with the mob began to cool, but the damage was done. The government had partnered with organized crime and the consequences would haunt them for decades. Because here’s what the CIA ignored. Trafocante might have been playing both sides the entire time. During his 73 days in Cuban prison, something happened.

Federal reports later noted unconfirmed rumors that Castro kept  Trafocante in jail to make it appear he had a personal dislike when in fact Trafocante was an agent of Castro.  The detention was theater. It was a way to give Trafocante credibility with American intelligence agencies who might want help against Castro.

Uh consider the evidence. Every CIA attempt failed. Not just poison pills, everything. Exploding cigars, contaminated diving suits, booby trapped seashells. [music] Over 634 documented assassination schemes. According to Cuban intelligence, none succeeded. Castro’s G2 seemed to know [music] every move.

Which exiles were recruited? Which plots were planned? When and where operations would occur. Trafocante was the common thread. He introduced the CIA to Cuban contacts. He vouched for assets. Uh he facilitated communications between Miami and Havana. Declassified CIA files suggest he might have been feeding information to Manuel Panero, head of Cuban intelligence to protect his own drug trafficking routes through Cuba. The genius of it was this.

Trafficante could take CIA money and protection while ensuring  Castro stayed alive. He maintained relationships with both sides and he kept operating in the Caribbean while his competitors rotted in prison or fled [music] to South America. When Trafocante testified before the House Select Committee on Assassinations in 1978, he played the patriot perfectly.

It was like World War II, he said. They told me to go to the draft  board and sign up. But his testimony was evasive. He claimed he was merely an interpreter between CIA officials and Cuban exiles. He never admitted to planning Castro’s death. He said he was [music] just translating conversations.

Nobody could prove he had betrayed the CIA. Nobody could prove  he was a double agent. But the suspicion remained, and it might explain what happened next. June 19th, 1975, Oak Park, Illinois. A quiet suburb just west of Chicago. Sam Gianana is preparing supper in his basement kitchen, frying sausages and peppers, when someone he trusts walks in.

A person he’d invited to share the meal. Seven shots from a 22 caliber handgun with a silencer, [music] one in the back of the head, six more in a circle around his mouth. The message was unmistakable. He talked and this is what happens. Jana was scheduled to testify [music] before the church committee investigating CIA assassination plots.

The next day, he never made it. One year later, July 28th, 1976, uh Johnny Rosselli leaves his home in Miami to play golf. He never arrives at the course. 12 days later, August 7th, his body is found floating in Dumbfoundling Bay inside a 55gallon steel [music] drum. His body had been strangled and stabbed.

His legs were sawed off and stuffed [music] in the drum with his torso. Roselli had testified twice before the church committee. first about the Castro plots, then in April 1976 [music] about possible connections between the mob and President Kennedy’s  assassination. Three months after that second testimony, >> [music] >> um the committee wanted to recall him.

2 days before Roselli disappeared, he had dinner with Santo Trafocanto at the Landings restaurant in Fort Lauderdale. They were old friends. They had worked together [] on the Castro plots. They shared secrets that could destroy reputation, end careers, topple governments.

Many investigators believe Trafocanti ordered the hit. The theory was simple. [music] Roselli was talking too much, hinting at connections between the Castro plots and Kennedy’s assassination. If Rosselli testified again under immunity, those secrets might come out. By 1978, when Trafocante finally testified before the House Select Committee on Assassinations, he was the [music] last man standing.

John Conana was dead. Roselli [music] was dead. The secrets died with them. Trafocant’s testimony was careful, evasive. He admitted to working with the CIA, but minimized his role. [music] When asked about predicting Kennedy’s assassination, he denied it. When asked about meeting Jack Ruby in prison, he denied it.

When pressed on his real involvement in [music] the Castro plots, he hid behind patriotic rhetoric. And it worked. Santo Trafocante Jr. died on March 17th, [music] 1987 in Houston, Texas of heart disease, [music] natural causes, in a hospital bed, age 72. He never spent a single night in an American prison. The poison pills froze [music] in freezers.

The elaborate plots failed one after another. Castro lived [music] another 47 years, dying peacefully in November 2016 at age 90. Meanwhile, everyone involved in trying to kill him died violently except the one man who might have ensured the plots would fail. Sam Gianana was shot in [music] his basement.

bullets arranged in a circle around his mouth the night before he was scheduled to [music] testify about government secrets. Johnny Roselli was strangled, dismembered, stuffed in an oil drum and found floating in Miami waters months after testifying about Kennedy. Santo Trafocante died peacefully in a hospital bed, um a free man, um his secrets intact.

The CIA learned an expensive lesson about hiring criminals. You cannot control people who whose entire profession is betrayal. The mob learned that working for the government does not [music] grant immunity. It creates liability. And Santo Trafocante learned nothing he did not already know.

He had understood from the beginning that the best way to win the game is to make sure everyone else is playing by rules you have already broken. The CIA thought they had hired a translator. The mob thought they had recruited a patriot. Castro might have known he had cultivated a source. Trafocante [music] was probably none of those things or all of them.

We will never know. Unlike everyone else in this story, Santa Trafocante never [music] talked. He just survived. And sometimes in the world he inhabited, survival is the only victory [music] that matters.