American Tabloid - James Ellroy [164]
Have your most trustworthy THP agents accelerate their efforts to install bug/wiretaps in known Organized Crime meeting places. Consider this your top priority. Do not communicate information pertaining to this operation within existing Justice Department channels. Conduit all oral and written reports and bug/tap transcripts to me exclusively. Consider this operation to be self-contained and void of superseding Justice Department sanction.
JEH
DOCUMENT INSERT: 5/27/61. Orlando Sentinel “Crimewatch” feature.
THE ODD ODYSSEY OF CARLOS MARCELLO
Nobody seems to know where the man was born. It is generally conceded that (alleged) Mafia Chief Carlos Marcello was born in either Tunis, North Africa, or somewhere in Guatemala. Marcello’s earliest recollections are not of either location. They are of his adopted homeland, the United States of America, the country that Attorney General Robert F. Kennedy deported him from on April 4th of this year.
Carlos Marcello: Man Without a Country.
As Marcello tells it, the U.S. Border Patrol shanghaied him out of New Orleans and deposited him near Guatemala City, Guatemala. He said that he daringly escaped from the airport and hid out in “various Guatemalan hellholes” with a lawyer companion frantically seeking to legally return him to home, hearth, and his (alleged) three hundred million dollar a year rackets empire. Meanwhile, Robert F. Kennedy was following up on anonymous tips that placed the (alleged) Mob boss in numerous Louisiana locales. The tips did not pan out. Kennedy realized that Marcello had been hiding out in Guatemala, with Guatemalan government protection, since the very moment of his “daring escape.”
Kennedy exerted diplomatic pressure. The Guatemalan Prime Minister bowed to it and ordered the State Police to begin a search for Marcello. The (alleged) Mafia sultan and his lawyer companion were discovered living in a rented apartment near Guatemala City. Both men were immediately deported to El Salvador.
They walked from village to village, ate in greasy spoon cantinas and slept in mud huts. The lawyer attempted to contact a Marcello underling, a pilot who might fly them to more amenable hideouts. The man could not be reached, and Marcello and his lawyer companion, ever fearful of another deportation action, kept walking.
Robert F. Kennedy and his Justice Department lawyers readied legal briefs. Marcello’s lawyer companion wrote briefs and phoned them in to the (alleged) Mafia pasha’s formal legal team in New York City. Marcello’s pilot friend appeared out of nowhere, and (according to this reporter’s confidential source) flew his contraband confreres all the way from El Salvador to Matamoros, Mexico, at treetop level to avoid radar detection.
Marcello and his lawyer companion then walked across the border. The (alleged) Mob maharajah turned himself in at the U.S. Border Patrol Detention Center in McAllen, Texas, confident that a three-judge immigration appeals panel would allow him to be released on bond and remain in America.
His confidence was justified. Marcello walked out of court last week a free man—albeit a man haunted by the awful specter of statelessness.
A Justice Department official told this reporter that the Marcello deportation matter could drag on legally for years. When asked if a suitable compromise might be reached, Attorney General Kennedy said, “It’s possible, if Marcello is willing to give up his U.S. assets and relocate to Russia or Lower Mozambique.”
Carlos Marcello’s odd odyssey continues.…
DOCUMENT INSERT: 5/30/61. Personal note: Kemper Boyd to John Stanton.
John,
Thanks for the gin and smoked salmon. It beat the hospital fare hands down and was greatly appreciated.
I’ve been back in Anniston since the 12th. Little Brother does not respect the concept of convalescence, so I’ve been bird-dogging freedom riders and collecting statements for his Cuban Study Group. (We can thank N. Chasco for getting me into the hospital sans police notification. Nestor is excellent at bribing bilingual doctors).
The Study Group assignment