Former Special Agent with the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) George B. Mettler's “Secrets and Lies: Memoir of the Kennedy Years” is a gripping tell-all tale that reads like a spy novel. He provides new information about the corruption and deceit at the highest levels of American government during the life, times and assassination of President John F. Kennedy in the early 60s. Because Mettler knew many of the people associated with the assassination of Kennedy, including Mafia godfathers Santo Trafficante and Carlos Marcello, CIA renegade agent Philip Agee, Lee Harvey Oswald, Jack Ruby and others he calls himself a “reluctant witness.” Growing up in an Italian-American neighborhood in Tampa, FL Mettler unknowingly became friends with the mafia higher-ups who lived nearby.
While assigned to the FBI organized crime undercover operation Mettler learned from associates and informants that assassination was a core tactic of certain covert operators of the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA). Mafia hit men were recruited and paid to assassinate Fidel Castro and later the Kennedy brothers. Their father Joe Kennedy's relationship with Mafia pals Giancana and Costello went back to Prohibition days when he was a prominent bootlegger. Giancana and Costello helped raise campaign funds for John's election. The Kennedy brothers became a threat to the power brokers and a target for assassination when Bobby, as Attorney General, vowed to destroy the mob and John pledged to disband the CIA and bring all combat troops home from Vietnam after his reelection.
Mettler says the book is not an academic history, it's based on first-hand life experience, recovered memory and later assiduous research.
He says that according to his research and investigative experience the Kennedy assassin was not Lee Harvey Oswald or a handful of exile fanatics, Mafiosi, or a gang or right-wing Super Patriots operating on their own. John Kennedy was a threat to all the power brokers, corporate and government, the warmongers, the briefcase gangsters and their easy-money cronies. John and Bobby Kennedy were zeroing in and they were all scared to death.
An undercover friend in another department told Mettler about an elite one-world government community called the “Counsel on Foreign Relations” (CFR) that formed after World War I. They planned for future wars in the furtherance of international trade. To this day they disagree with President Dwight Eisenhower's warning in his presidential farewell speech to get control of America's Military Industrial complex to prevent it from becoming a major contributor to the economy. The membership in the U.S. Branch of the CFR consists of the most powerful and distinguished families in finance, commerce, communications, academia, covert intelligence operations, government and some presidents. Like the Mafia, the organization is super-secret and few American citizens are aware of its existence.
Mettler says the Warren Commission, President Johnson, the Secret Service, Hoover and the FBI lied about Kennedy's assassination including evidence that there were previous assassination plans to kill him in Chicago and Tampa. The designated patsies for the Chicago and Tampa plots were in Dallas when Kennedy was assassinated.
Mettler became disillusioned with the FBI and left several months before Kennedy's assassination. He said he couldn't trust anyone inside the bureau anymore. He later became a practicing attorney of civil and criminal law, co-owned two newspapers and served as a financial advisor in America and abroad. He is the author of seven best selling novels and a text book on criminal investigation.
Mettler's late wife, Darlene, asked him to write his story on her deathbed in 2008. He says he now has a clear heart and conscience for he has kept his promise to her.
I was also facinated by a fact brought out recently by the biographer Robert Caro who has written extensively on LBJ that blows even more fog over Dallas: LBJ when running in the primary against Kennedy, through a private detective had been made aware of Kennedy's chronic ailments; this may be the reason why he took the office of VP (a surprise from a power monger who was the most powerful senator in America). He was stepping down in a way, but only one step from the most powerful job that he craved. Perhaps Kennedy's ability to handle his illness caused LBJ to be impatient. LBJ also launched wholeheartedly the reforms Kennedy wanted upon his death - reforms he himself had no feeling for before his death. These reforms, of course, made him a historical figure. He had motive...just like the Mafia, Castro, and the CIA.