How Key West Killed JFK
By David L. Sloan
The title of David Sloan’s book suffers from hyperbole. And the subtitle, “The Island that changed the Course of History,’ even more so. Sloan was born in Texas, and he moved to Key West in 1996. He has written several books, the vast majority of them concentrating in some way on Key West and the Florida Keys.
He begins the book by mentioning some of the presidents who have visited Key West, both in and out of office: Grover Cleveland, U. S. Grant, William Howard Taft, Harry Truman, Dwight Eisenhower, both Roosevelts and, after the Missile Crisis, John Kennedy. In a strophe that then foreshadows the book’s agenda, he then talks about how organized crime grew on the island, originally through the numbers rackets. (p. 27) And also through speakeasies during Prohibition. He then brings in how, geographically, the island and the adjoining ones, became important to men like Meyer Lansky and Santo Trafficante Sr. and Jr. as a connecting point to Cuba, which they were quite interested in as a business matter.
Sloan writes about heroin incoming through the Florida Keys (p. 28). But in another article of his, I found he wrote that this was only suspected of happening. (Keys Weekly, June 11, 2020) He then mentions a man named Sam Hyman who moved to Miami Beach and then started buying hotels, and ended up purchasing land and constructing a dog track in Key West. Sloan says he was backed up by Jimmy Hoffa. (p. 45)
Following in the legendary José Martí’s footsteps, Castro visited the island in December 1955. At that time, he was seeking funds and support for the overthrow of Fulgencio Batista. But the local sheriff was a Batista loyalist, and he cooked up a charge to have him arrested. Castro escaped by jumping bail. (pp. 50-51) Once Castro took power, many Cubans were disappointed with the result. Therefore, they escaped. A dropping off point was Key West, on their way to larger Florida cities like Miami.
As many other authors have noted, Castro’s revolution had a disastrous effect on the Mob. Especially for men like Trafficante Jr. and Lansky who had invested heavily in casinos, resorts, drugs and prostitution. All of which Batista had not just allowed, but from which he was receiving kickbacks. (See Imperial State and Revolution, by Morris Morley, pp. 46-71). After Castro took power, Trafficante’s casinos were overrun, and he was arrested that summer of 1959 and detained at the Triscornia Detention Center.
As Sloan notes, there is credible information that Trafficante paid bribes for special treatment. But, beyond that, he was visited there by Jack Ruby, who—at the least—was attempting to gain his release. (Michael Benson, Who’s Who in the JFK Assassination, pp. 455-56) Ruby was trying to facilitate this release through noted arms smuggler Robert McKeown. And since the offering price went up to $25,000, Ruby had to have third-party backing, which he said came from Las Vegas. (Benson, p. 269) This may have been through Trafficante’s pit manager, Lewis McWillie, whom Ruby idolized and who he visited in Cuba a few weeks before Trafficante was released. (Sloan, p. 61)
Sloan has found an FBI report which states a witness observed that Ruby was operating gun-running operations in the Keys. (Sloan, p. 60) He also observes that Ruby was falsifying the record when he said he visited Cuba only once. The data in FBI files would indicate he was there as many as six times. He even mailed cards to his workers at his clubs from Havana. (ibid)
Continuing in what would seem his Mob-oriented view of the JFK case, Sloan writes that organized crime had an influence in getting JFK elected in both the primaries, through West Virginia, and the general election, in the Chicago area. As I have noted, on the ground inquiries do not back this up. Professor John Binder in Public Choice proved that, in 1960, the voting data in the wards the mob controlled showed Kennedy got less of a turnout than Democrats usually did. Dan Fleming did a book-length examination of West Virginia. He notes in Kennedy vs. Humphrey, West Virginia, 1960, that no subsequent inquiry--of which there were three, one by Barry Goldwater--ever found anything illegal or any mob influence there. And neither could he, even though he interviewed 80 witnesses. (pp. 107-112; 170-71)
In his discussion of the Bay of Pigs invasion, Sloan seems to abide by the mythology that Kennedy canceled the D Day air strike. (pp. 73, 75) As I have been at pains to show, this is not accurate. Declassified materials on that operation reveal that Kennedy determined the strike should only occur from a strip on the island. Since no beachhead was ever secured, this could not be done. (James DiEugenio, Destiny Betrayed, second edition, p. 45) As everyone knows, that operation ended in disaster.
Sloan now comments on how, during the subsequent anti-Castro project, Operation Mongoose--the secret covert campaign against Cuba waged by the CIA--the Keys were often used as staging grounds. (p. 83) He dutifully mentions the No Name Key brigade led by Gerry Patrick Hemming. And the fact the location was only accessible by boat, with no land bridge, made it an ideal training spot for a secret brigade. He also mentions the training camp in the New Orleans area at which Lee Oswald was reportedly seen. He then adds that mob figures in Chicago recruited Cuban exiles for secret military training. (p. 92) I wish he had footnoted this last piece of data since I was not familiar with it.
About halfway through the book, Sloan brings up the name of George Faraldo. Faraldo said that in the summer of 1963, he had seen Jack Ruby and Lee Oswald at the Key West Airport, which he managed at the time. They were part of a group of hippie-looking people who claimed to be with the Fair Play for Cuba Committee and were going to go to Cuba to cut sugar cane. Oswald asked Ruby “Have you heard anything from the Big Bird yet?”(Sloan, p. 107)
As related by investigator Gaeton Fonzi, Faraldo told him that when the Aerovia Q plane arrived, Oswald got on with the group. But he did not see Ruby get on. (The Last Investigation, p. 62)
When Fonzi further checked this story out for the Church Committee, he found out that Aerovia had stopped its regular flights out of Key West in 1961. But Faraldo insisted that a plane could have been chartered just by submitting a flight plan to the FAA. (Fonzi, p. 63) The local newspaper photographer, whom Faraldo said had covered the incident, told Fonzi he could not recall it. Fonzi went to the public library to the Key West historian. She did not recall it and could find no info about it in her files. Though Faraldo said he kept a list of daily flight manifests in storage, again, Fonzi wrote, “I found nothing that resembled manifests.” Fonzi contacted the local TV news director for whom Faraldo had freelanced. He said that Faraldo had brought this up before, about the time of the Jim Garrison inquiry. He checked his files, and found nothing.
It turned out that Faraldo had made many trips into Cuba. He hated Castro and liked Batista. He maintained an expensive photo lab which Fonzi estimated had to contain a hundred thousand dollars worth of sophisticated equipment. This included a large aerial camera. He said he had taken shots of the Russian missiles inside Cuba before President Kennedy discovered them. It turned out that Faraldo had worked for the United States Information Agency when he was doing that assignment. When Fonzi asked him: “Was it possible that he was really working for the CIA?”, he said: “Yes, I think so.” When Fonzi asked who paid for all the equipment, Faraldo said, “No comment.” (ibid, p. 65)
I could not find any of this in Sloan’s book. Either he was not aware of it, or chose not to relate it.
Sloan considers the prior plots to kill JFK as not actual scenarios to do away with him, but as test runs. (p. 129) This is a questionable thesis, especially since the attempt in Chicago so resembled the successful one in Dallas.
The most valuable information in the book is the new data that Sloan has unearthed on Gilberto Lopez. To say the least, Lopez is an interesting character. There is little or no information about him in the Warren Report, or the volumes. But the HSCA did pay some attention to him.
Lopez was born in Havana, in the Cerro district. He played baseball and served as an altar boy. At age 20, in 1960, he left Cuba for Key West. He told immigration officials he planned to stay permanently. He stayed with family who were already here and registered for the Selective Service. He lived with an uncle and worked at a bakery for his cousin. (Sloan, p. 118)
Within two years, Lopez had a change of heart. He requested permission to return to Cuba; he was homesick. That request put him on the FBI radar in March of 1962. According to interviews Sloan did with family survivors, Lopez was a changed man upon his return. Prior to this he was quiet and apparently satisfied; but now he was a complainer about his job and did not get along with the bakery employees. He was terminated. (ibid, p. 119)
In August of 1962, Lopez married Blanche Leon, who was an American woman with family ties in Key West and Tampa. Blanche practiced witchcraft. Lopez now developed epilepsy. Gilberto worked at a restaurant in Tampa under an assumed name. He would disappear for days and sometimes weeks. Blanche’s brother once saw him with a duffel bag stuffed with rifles. Blanche’s sister refused to let him put them in the apartment. (ibid, p. 120)
By September, Lopez and his wife had separated. She left Tampa for Key West. (Sloan, p. 135) On November 17, 1963, Lopez was at the home of Mary Quist—a member of the Tampa FPCC. He was allegedly awaiting a call from Cuba. He was about to leave the USA again. (I should note that there is confusion about this date; some place it earlier, some later.)
Lopez was in receipt of a tourist card in Tampa on November 20th. He left for Mexico after the assassination and crossed by car into that country from Laredo, Texas, to Nuevo Laredo on the 23rd. He then registered at the Roosevelt Hotel on the 25th. He then went to the Cuban embassy in Mexico City. (Benson, p. 256) On the night of the 27th, he boarded Cubana Airlines Flight 465 to Havana. He was the only passenger, amid a crew of nine. The FBI reports say that in the fall of 1964, he was still in Cuba and had only partly paid back the FPCC loan made to him for the flight to Havana. (Sloan, p. 179)
Sloan found a daughter of Gilberto from his third marriage, since he married twice while in Cuba. Her name is Lisbette. She told Sloan that Gilberto faked epilepsy to dodge the draft in America. (Sloan, p. 183) He told her that he was in Dallas on the way to Mexico when Kennedy was shot. But he never said anything about being involved with the plot. (Sloan, p. 185) She concluded that her father had been used as a distraction, he was likely misled. When his new family left Havana, they went from Miami to Hialeah and settled in the exile community there. He developed Parkinson’s Disease, became mentally unstable, and she had him committed. He died on July 15, 2021.
I should add, in addition to this new information, the book contains some rare photos of Lopez I had not seen before.
The author makes a strained attempt to fit Lopez into the Trafficante orbit. He further strains by then saying that Carlos Marcello controlled Lee Oswald, Sam Giancana had John Rosselli and Lansky and Hoffa controlled Ruby. (Sloan p. 127) As many have stated, the HSCA’s attempt to make Oswald into a kind of Mafia pawn has, to say the least, not stood up: especially in light of the work of the late Phil Melanson and John Newman. As Lee Server, Rosselli’s biographer, has noted, Rosselli was on the West Coast at the time of the murder of JFK, navigating between Vegas and Los Angeles. As per Ruby, most students of the case connect Ruby’s killing of Oswald from Lewis McWillie to Trafficante. I could add other faults: Allen Dulles did not retire quietly after his service on the Warren Commission. (Sloan, p. 161) He hired Gordon Novel to infiltrate and disrupt the Jim Garrison probe. (James DiEugenio, Destiny Betrayed, Second edition, pp. 232-35) I also wish the author had elucidated the story attributed to the Tampa Tribune about Vincent Lee, then Director of the FPCC, meeting Oswald in Tampa, Florida, in the fall of 1963. (p. 136)
It’s a spotty book overall, but Sloan deserves credit for his work on attempting to close the circle on Gilberto Lopez.
