Record
Hearing
1975-11-20
U.S. Senate Select Committee to Study Governmental Operations with Respect to Intelligence Activities (Church Committee), interim report
Church Committee report, PDF pp. 89-91: the October 1960 Las Vegas wiretap and the Hoover memorandum on Giancana
The report describes the arrest of Arthur Balletti in Las Vegas on 31 October 1960 over a wiretap, the conflicting accounts of why it was placed, a Hoover memorandum of 18 October 1960 relaying a source on Giancana and Castro, and the 1962 decision not to prosecute.
- Date
- 1975-11-20
- Kind
- hearing
- Retrieved
- 2026-10-12
- Docket
- S. Rep. No. 94-465, 94th Cong., 1st Sess. (1975)
- Rights
- A report of the United States Senate. A work of the United States Congress, public domain under 17 U.S.C. § 105.
At PDF pages 89 to 91, Senate Report No. 94-465 states that on 31 October 1960 Arthur Balletti, an employee of a private investigator, was arrested in Las Vegas after a maid found wiretap equipment he had left in an apartment, and that Rosselli paid his bail.
The report sets out conflicting explanations of why the tap was placed. Maheu and the CIA’s Support Chief said Giancana wanted a girl friend’s room bugged; other evidence suggested a concern that Giancana was leaking word of the Castro plot. The report quotes a memorandum of 18 October 1960 from J. Edgar Hoover to the CIA relaying an untested source who said Giancana was telling friends that Castro “was to be done away with very shortly.” It records that Rosselli testified he told Giancana the CIA was involved “in order to have him keep his mouth shut,” and that in April 1962 the Criminal Division advised that the national interest precluded prosecution over the tap.
The report presents these as differing accounts and does not resolve them; this archive adopts none of them. The FBI’s own 1961 file on the Balletti case is at Roselli Part 12. The report spells the name “Rosselli.” The date of this page is the report’s date.
