Word: roselli
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...bottom indefinitely-except that the gases caused by the decomposing body gave the drum buoyancy and floated it to the surface. Three fishermen found it in Dumfoundling Bay near North Miami Beach. Police checked out the fingerprints of the victim with the FBI and made the identification: John Roselli, 71, a Mafia soldier of fortune who had been involved in some amazing capers-and made the mistake of telling about them...
Someone had asphyxiated the old man, which should not have been hard, since he was suffering from emphysema. Suspicion quickly centered on the Mafia itself. During the final years of his life, Roselli made two cardinal errors. He called public attention to the operations of the Mafia and, much worse, he betrayed one of its members...
...June 1975, Roselli was called to testify before a special Senate Intelligence Committee that was looking into the excesses of the CIA. Customarily, members of the Mafia clam up when they get within 100 miles of a Senate committee. Roselli not only talked-he provided the details of a startling story...
...Roselli described how he and his longtime mentor, onetime Chicago Mafia Chief Momo Salvatore ("Sam") Giancana, had been recruited by the CIA in the early '60s to assassinate Fidel Castro. It made a kind of amoral sense for the agency to turn to the Mob: when the Cuban leader took power, he closed down the Mafia's big moneymaking operations in Havana; Roselli had been running the swank Sans Souci gambling casino there. Roselli told the Senators that he also saw the killing of Castro as a "patriotic" endeavor, something he could do for his country. Both poisoned...
Five days before Roselli's testimony, Giancana had been murdered in his Oak Park, III., home by seven .22 bullets fired at close range into his face and neck. As it happened, Giancana was due to be called before the same Senate committee. The FBI now believes that Giancana was killed not because of his CIA-Castro connection but as a result of a bitter feud over dividing the Mob's spoils in Chicago...