but Barnes, noticeably more athletic, was the professional spy. During the war he had joined the OSS and been parachuted into enemy-occupied France, on a mission for which he had won a Silver Star. After practising law, the Korean War saw him back in the service and, following an unsatisfactory time spent with the Psychological Strategy Board, he found himself working for his old school-friend as ADD/PA. A handsome, noble-looking man, with Alpine cheekbones, an eagle nose, and wearing amber-framed spectacles and a Yale bow-tie, Barnes looked like the cleverest Indian on the reservation.
Bissell and Barnes were already seated side by side at the table when Bissell's secretary, Doris, ushered Edwards and O'Connell -about whom it was impossible to say more than that they looked like they had been pressed from the same military mould, like a rifle part, a helmet, or a mess-tin - through the door of the office. Edwards and O'Connell were closely followed by two younger men.
Sheff, Jim, sit down,' said Bissell, indicating a choice of seats. You remember Jim Flannery and John Bross, of course. From the last time?'
Edwards and O'Connell nodded quietly. Flannery, a combat veteran from World War Two, was Special Aide to Bissell, but bore more of a resemblance to Edwards. Bross, on the other hand, who was Bissell's old classmate from Groton and now the DD/P's Planning Officer, was very definitely P Source'. Barnes's own secretary, Alice, brought up the rear with a tray of coffee and, after a short exchange of lights for cigarettes, and Georgetown gossip, the meeting commenced in earnest.
Handling a small inhaler which from time to time he would thrust into his nostrils like a tiny rocket, to clear his problematic sinuses, Bissell's patrician, Connecticut tones brought the meeting to order.
Sheff?' he said. For the benefit of John and Jim, why don't you take us through the chain of causation that has caused us to be brought here on this cold and windy morning.'
Edwards nodded, and cleared his throat.
Yes sir, I will. Back in late October, the thirty-first, to be precise, in the Riviera Hotel in Las Vegas, a maid walks into a hotel suite and finds the room filled with a sophisticated array of sound equipment -tape-recorders, amplifiers, tuners, speakers, and boxes of Soundcraft tape. She starts to dust the furniture, and the tape-recorder, and, inadvertently, switches on the machine's play button. At least that was what she said. Anyway, she hears the sound of a man and a woman talking about how much they love each other. It seems like a very intimate conversation, except for the very obvious fact that it has been recorded by the gentleman whose suite she is cleaning, and whose name, according to the housekeeper's guest list, is Mr Arthur Balletti. The man on the tape's name is Dan. The woman is called Phyllis. Her suspicions aroused, the maid calls hotel security who, suspecting that someone might be trying to defraud the hotel casino in some sophisticated, highly technical way, call Sheriff Lamb's office, and Balletti, a private investigator from Miami, Florida, is subsequently arrested. The charges were a little vague, since wiring another man's room and telephone are not in violation of Nevada state law. But when that man is Dan Rowan, and the woman is Phyllis McGuire, then you can bet your sweet bippy that Sheriff Lamb can be forgiven for arresting Balletti first, and then looking around for some kind of crime with which to charge him.'
Dan Rowan was half of the popular Las Vegas comedy duo Rowan & Martin, and Phyllis McGuire was one third of the even more popular close-harmony trio The McGuire Sisters. In 1952 they successfully auditioned for television's Arthur Godfrey's Talent Scouts and a series of hit records soon followed. Sincerely', written by Harvey Fuqua and Alan Freed, was their first million seller, in 1955. That stayed at number one for ten weeks. But the song that everyone remembers them for was, of course, Sugartime', which had been a big, big hit for the McGuires in 1958.
Balletti calls Jimmy Cantillon, a Los Angeles attorney, who telephones Johnny Rosselli, who arranges for a local gambler, one T.W. Richardson, to turn up at the sheriff's office and post the thousand-dollar bail. By now, the sheriff has decided to use Balletti's place of origin and the 1934 Federal Communications Act as sufficient reason to dump the whole matter in the lap of the FBI. And that, more or less, is the official version of the Dan Rowan wiretapping affair. The truth is somewhat different.
Back in 1958, the girls were appearing on The Phil Silvers Show, Red Skelton's Show, and topping the bill at Las Vegas, which was where Phyllis found herself being introduced by Frank Sinatra to Sam Giancana. To quote a couple of McGuire hits, It May Sound Silly but Sam Giancana found his hard old heart going Ding Dong whenever he thought of Phyllis. And to do it a third and last time, that Lonesome Polecat began to lavish her with expensive gifts: jewellery, furs, cars, a ranch in Vegas, an apartment in Manhattan, a condo in Beverly Hills, extensive stock and bond investments, even picking up the tab for her gambling debts.
Sam was almost happy. Except for one thing. He was haunted by the suspicion that Phyllis was continuing to see her former lover, Dan Rowan, to whom she remained, in fact, secretly engaged. So Sam called our old friend Bob Maheu, who promised to fix things in Las Vegas, so that Sam Giancana would know for sure if Phyllis and Rowan were still together. He agreed to install some electronic eavesdropping equipment in Dan Rowan's room and to bring Sam the tapes.
Now this particular pair of star-crossed lovers were both playing the Riviera Hotel in Vegas, which is owned by the Chicago outfit. Nothing happened at the Riviera without the okay from Chicago. But fear of Chicago was just one of the reasons that stopped Maheu from handling the wiretap on Dan Rowan's hotel room himself. Maheu spoke to an ex-FBI man, Edward Dubois, who ran a private detective agency, not in Vegas, which would have made more sense, but in Miami. And for a fee of five thousand dollars, Dubois took the job and dispatched Balletti to Vegas to handle it. Dubois and Balletti were old hands at this kind of wire-work, and they frequently employed Bernie Spindel, who's been something of a pioneer in the field of electronic eavesdropping. During the war Spindel did a lot of work for the OSS. After the war he did a lot of work for Jimmy Hoffa, advising him on how to defend himself against eavesdroppers like the FBI and Bobby Kennedy. Our information was that at first it was just Bobby he was spying on. But then they started to set up fuck recordings involving Jack Kennedy, too.
Of course, by now, Bob Maheu was also involved with our plot to kill Castro.'
The notion of using the mob as a cutout to kill the Cuban Prime Minister had been Bissell's idea. He and his Assistant Deputy Director of Plans for Action, Tracy Barnes, had brought in Colonel Sheffield Edwards of the CIA's Office of Security to set up the contract. Edwards had contacted his Operations Chief, Jim O'Connell, an ex-FBI counter-intelligence expert, who had worked with Maheu. O'Connell had brought Maheu on board to develop the liaison between Rosselli and Colonel Edwards. These men had supported Nixon for the presidency, perceiving Kennedy as being too weak ever to get tough with Cuba. Moreover, plans to invade the island, codenamed JMARC, had been drawn up well in advance of the election, and Dulles and Bissell were of the opinion that the then Vice- president Nixon was best qualified to give the plan the presidential go-ahead after preparations were completed. But when Kennedy looked like winning the election, members of the JMARC group began to look for some insurance.
After Kennedy got the better of Nixon in the first of the television debates,' continued Edwards, the necessity for ensuring JMARC continuity started to look much more urgent. We saw Giancana's asking Maheu's help in establishing the loyalty of his girlfriend as an opportunity, not only to put pressure on Giancana finally to sanction Castro's assassination, but also to use the mob as a cutout in putting pressure on Kennedy himself.
On October thirty-first, it was not Riviera Hotel security that called the sheriff's office, but one of our people. And it was also one of ours who suggested to Sheriff Lamb that he use Balletti's Miami origins and the Federal Communications Act's ban against wiretapping to bring in the FBI, who were themselves already trying, illegally, to bug Giancana in Chicago. The squeeze was almost invisible. We told Giancana we could make anything disappear in the name of national security, even the FBI. It was the same thing we told Bernie Spindel. Help us to get a hand on some of those tapes you have made for your friends Hoffa and Giancana, and we will keep you out of this mess with Dan Rowan you've gotten yourself into. Spindel agreed, and ten days after the Halloween bust, he handed Security Office agents copies of some of the more sensational recordings he had made of Kennedy and a whole series of women.'
The Security Office existed within the CIA's Directorate of Administration which was the largest department, and when most people thought of the CIA - opposing other spy agencies, tapping telephones, organising security clearances for government personnel, handling defectors, and carrying out polygraphic tests - they were usually thinking of the Security Office.
It was two or three weeks before anyone in the Security Office got around to organising transcripts of the honeymooners' tapes,' explained Edwards. And it was another fortnight before we managed to read all the transcripts. Only then did we realise that we had an extra, Ralph-sized problem. I now draw your attention to the transcripts before you. To Kennedy's fuck with one girl in particular. Most girls just fucked the guy. But this little
