JFK files show FBI tracked Ohio mobsters
Agents scoured state looking for ties to assassination.
CLEVELAND — Buried in thousands of pages of newly released files pertaining to the assassination of President John F. Kennedy lie connections to Cleveland and northeast Ohio.
The connections make sense. Cleveland, while still a major city in a large metropolitan area, was even more than twice the size it is now when Kennedy was shot and killed in Dallas on Nov. 22, 1963. In other words, more people, more potential for connections.
Cleveland-based FBI agents, who along with state and federal agents across the country assisted in the investigation, talked to anyone who may have had even a sliver of information related to the president’s assassination. Documents reveal that local agents sought out strippers they thought may have information and examined connections to organized crime and communism.
Ultimately, it appears agents here uncovered little of value.
The documents released to the public on Oct. 26 are the latest to be unclassified through the President John F. Kennedy Assassination Records Collection Act of 1992. The new documents include more investigative files that cover much of the investigations that arose in the wake of Kennedy’s death, as well as memos and documents from investigations from before the assassination that agents thought may be relevant.
The materials gathered by the FBI, CIA and other agencies reveal some of the leads they pursued to identify motives and connections that assassin Lee Harvey Oswald — and Oswald’s killer, Jack Ruby — had leading up to Kennedy’s death.
Cleveland.com combed through the more than 6,000 documents listed in the National Archives that were released in 2017 — up to Oct. 26 — to look for local references. The federal government is still reviewing records related to the assassination and has promised to release more in the coming months. It released more documents on Nov. 3 and on Tuesday.
Cleveland and Northeast Ohio characters mentioned in the documents released up to Oct. 26 can be considered marginal at best. Many of the files with Cleveland references were created before he was killed; some investigations even took place before he ran for president.
But the files are still interesting. They include memos that detail probes into mobsters, sympathizers of Cuban dictator Fidel Castro and groups supporting fascism, all of which were part of the larger investigation into Kennedy’s death.
Here are a few of the notable references.
Sources
In the months after the assassination, FBI agents across the country reached out to as many sources and people as they could. They were looking for Oswald’s motive for killing Kennedy, and Ruby’s motive for killing Oswald. Inevitably, Oswald’s ties to the Soviet Union came up, as did Ruby’s connections to organized crime.
In Cleveland, those leads didn’t appear to turn up much of anything. Documents list several names that agents reached out to, but records say those probes came up with “negative results.”
Notable names included in the files include Peter Lucaci, the editor of the country’s oldest Romanian newspaper the American Rumanian News; and Andrew Hampu, the secretary general of the Union and League of Rumanian Societies in Cleveland.
FBI agents also sought a woman named Eileen Reddon, who once lived in the area and ran the Down Beat Club gay bar in Cleveland. Reddon was sought because of a statement she made to agents in Los Angeles in 1956, though exactly what she said isn’t mentioned.
Communists
Documents also show FBI agents infiltrated the Communist Party.
One memo, dated weeks after the assassination in December 1963, lists what appears to be items discussed by several branches of the Communist Party across the country, including in Cleveland. The information appeared to be supplied from an informant who attended a meeting in Wheeling, West Virginia, on Dec. 8, 1963.
The topics listed under the Cleveland header include Arnold Johnson, who once served as the state chairman of the Ohio Communist Party and later became a spokesman of sorts for the party’s New York City branch. Kennedy, Ruby and Oswald also came up. Only seven people were at the meeting in West Virginia, including Johnson.
“Utmost care should be taken that any information taken from this report is paraphrased to protect informant,” the memo states.
Documents also reveal FBI efforts to monitor the Workers World Party and the Socialist Workers Party, both of which had affiliations with Cleveland.
Strippers
Cleveland-based agents also interviewed strippers, looking for any clues they could find.
Three days after Kennedy’s death, FBI agent John Barrett contacted a source — an unidentified bar owner — and asked if he had any information. It appeared he did not, but the bar owner said he discussed Ruby’s killing of Oswald with his girlfriend, “Taffy Twist,” according to a Nov. 27, 1963, memo.
“Taffy Twist” is described as a former stripper who lived at the Colony Hotel, but “the source knows that Taffy has no info concerning subject,” the memo states.
Barrett wrote in another memo dated Jan. 3, 1964, that the FBI was looking for a stripper known as “Yum Yum.” The woman, whose real name was Stella Kalifa, had reportedly worked for Ruby in Dallas.
By the time Barrett was looking for her, “Yum Yum” was working at Roxy Musical Bar, then an adult entertainment house on East Ninth Street at Chester Avenue.
The documents do not say if Barrett found or spoke with “Yum Yum.”
Dominick Bartone
Dominick Bartone was a Cleveland reprobate who had connections to the Teamsters, including famed official Jimmy Hoffa and local official Nunzio Louis “Babe” Triscaro.
Rick Porrello, the current Lyndhust police chief who has written books about the Cleveland Mafia, described Bartone as a mob associate and a con artist who muscled his way into businesses and ran them dry.
Bartone is referenced multiple times in the JFK files, which reveal the FBI’s knowledge of his importing sugar from Cuba to his business running guns to the Dominican Republic. The schemes appeared to be part of the Mafia’s attempts to appease anyone in power to keep mob-backed Cuban casinos in operation.
The FBI files show the agency had multiple sources as it tracked Bartone’s doings in Cleveland, Miami and outside the U.S. But the majority of references to Bartone were related to events that took place prior to Kennedy’s assassination.
One memo from 1959, documents an FBI source telling an agent that Bartone and a man named Jack La Rue went to Cuba that year to meet William Alexander Morgan, a Toledo man who went to the island country to fight for Castro.
Sources also told agents that Bartone and La Rue — which some have said was an alias for Jack Ruby — tried to sell transport planes to Castro and inquired about selling combat jackets to Cuba.
William Alexander Morgan
Morgan was born in Cleveland, according to the Toledo Blade. and lived in Toledo until he left his wife and children in 1957 to fight for Castro in Cuba, according to a 2014 article in The New Yorker. Castro was not in power at the time, but he and his supporters were seeking to overthrow dictator Fulgencio Batista.
Morgan became close to Castro when he served as a major with the Cuban revolutionary forces. He also worked as a double agent by infiltrating anti-Castro groups.
Morgan lost his U.S. citizenship when he acted as an intermediary of sorts between communist parties in Cuba and the United States. He eventually turned on Castro, though, and was executed by firing squad in 1961.
The FBI documents tracking Morgan and others associated with Castro’s revolution show that Morgan kept in touch with people overseas even after he left the U.S.
Agents talked to sources both in and out of the country, including in Miami and Ohio. One source was Morgan’s own mother, according to a March 1961 memo.
“She requested her identity be concealed,” the memo states.
The FBI tracked Morgan’s movements from the U.S. to Cuba, the Dominican Republic and Panama. The reports show he also entertained guests from the U.S.– including Bartone – as he sought to obtain weapons and equipment for his pro-Castro tactics.
Robert Edward Webster
The files also include information about Robert Edward Webster, a Cleveland man who worked as a plastics technician for the Rand Development Corporation.
The FBI tracked him because he went to Moscow as a demonstrator for a plastic display at the opening of the Sokolniki Fair, according to a 1975 memo posted on the website of the Mary Ferrell Foundation, which stores documents pertaining to Kennedy’s assassination.
Webster disappeared in Moscow in September 1959, and a month later signed a statement to the U.S. consul general renouncing his American citizenship.
Webster’s desire to stay in Moscow didn’t last long. He first wrote to his father in March 1960, asking for help to return to the U.S. He worked at a scientific institution in Leningrad, began dating a woman and had a child with her, according to news articles from the time.
The U.S. allowed him to return to the U.S. in May 1962, and he left behind his girlfriend and child.
H. James Rand
Many of the files in the new batch of released documents show that the FBI turned H. James Rand, the president of Rand Development, into an informant.
Rand, whose company was also used as a contractor by the CIA, told an agent in June 1960 that he instructed an employee to keep in touch with Russian nationals he knew in the U.S. to see if they could provide any intelligence to agents.
In another interview from June 1960, Rand told agents that “he felt that Webster’s chances of leaving the Soviet Union were extremely good, however, it was his opinion that without a doubt Webster would be approached by Russian officials to perform some service for them in this country prior to allowing his release.”
Rand vowed to help Webster find work when the latter returned to the U.S., but not with his company. 937-278-4287 • Locally Owned Since 1913