House Select Committee on Assassinations report (1979), p. 114: organized crime and 'the old Havana territory'

Page 114 of the committee’s report, in Findings I.C, read on the National Archives’ HTML copy between the markers for pages 113 and 115. Turning to the CIA-Mafia plots, the committee “found in its investigation that organized crime probably was active in attempts to assassinate Castro, independent of any activity it engaged in with the CIA, as the 1977 Task Force Report had suggested.” It found that organized crime joined the CIA operation for two reasons: official sanction and logistical support, and a relationship that “could be used by organized crime as leverage to prevent prosecution for unrelated offenses.”

On the later stages, from early 1962 to early 1963, the report says organized crime “may no longer have been interested in assassinating Castro,” because “The Soviet influence in Cuba had rendered the prospect of regaining the old Havana territory less likely, and there were fortunes to be made in the Bahamas and elsewhere.” It adds, in its own words, that “There is reason to speculate” that the Mafia kept up the appearance of taking part to keep the CIA interested. The page goes on to Robert Maheu and John Roselli.

“Probably,” “may” and “reason to speculate” are the committee’s qualifications, and this page keeps them. The same report’s pages on McWillie, the Tropicana and Trafficante’s detention at Trescornia are filed separately.