Tidbits from Mailer's "Oswald's Tale"

[Drew Phipps]

Mailer seems convinced, and makes a good case for, Oswald's death being a Mob hit. However, according to Mailer, that doesn't mean that the Mob actually carried out the JFK assassination. He thinks Oswald was a shooter, if not the only shooter. Mailer posits 2 scenarios:

One, that the Mob, or Marcello/Trafficante, may have actually ordered/authorized the assassination without a specific time frame or location. When Oswald is arrested, and is the nephew of Dutz Murret, bookmaker and Marcello associate, the Mob decides it can't risk a trial or a thorough investigation, and orders Ruby to make the hit.

Two, that Marcello/Trafficante take credit for the assassination in an attempt to get Jimmy Hoffa to "loan" them Teamster funds as a payoff for the contract. When Oswald survives arrest and starts talking, he has to be silenced to keep the scamming of Hoffa under wraps, so they order Ruby to make the hit.

I would never read this book.

Now you don't have to.

Of those two scenarios, Two seems less likely, due to the short period of time between the assassination and Oswald's arrest. I would not expect clever mobsters to precipitously claim credit in such a short interval and with all the ensuing confusion.

It certainly seems to me, if Oswald's death was a Mob hit, then there was some obvious (to the Mob) risk that the Mob might be damaged by Oswald talking, which outweighed the risk of murdering Oswald in broad daylight on national TV. I can only think of one thing which would outweigh that one.

The new material in this book appears to me to be the interviewing of Russian witnesses to Oswald and Marina. If you have no interest in that time period, you can safely skip this book.