The American Trap Review
The American Trap is interesting and amazing oddity of a
movie. It might be better titled The French-Canadian Connection. The movie’s characters speak in French,
English and sometimes Spanish. The only version I could find had Dutch
Sub-titles.
JFK assassination researchers are well aware of one French
Canadian connection; Montrealer Louis Mortimer Bloomfield who has been linked
to the shadowy corporation Permindex. If you believe sources such as Italian
newspaper Il Pease Sera and the
samizdat publication The Torbit Document,
Permidex was a cover for a crime network
that funded and coordinated assassinations world-wide; a real life version of
Ernst Stavro Blofeld’s SPECTRE. But Bloomfield makes no appearance in The
American Trap.
The main character is Luicien Rivard, a name little known to
American researchers but well known to Canadians for his part in a huge heroin
bust in 1964 and his escape from Bordeaux prison. Rivard was part of the
Montreal Cotroni crime family which itself was an arm of the New York Bonanno
crime organization. The story is told from his perspective.
The other major player in the movie is Paul Mondolini, who in
the both reel life and real life was a Corsican drug trafficker who was an associated
with Michel-Victor Mertz, another French National who, among other things, was
an assassin and a major suspect for second gunman in the JFK assassination.
Before we are five minute into the opening scene, set Club
1956 at El Morocco in Havana, Cuba Mondonlini introduces Rivard to “Jacob
Rubenstein” who tells him “I own clubs in Dallas. I’ve got a job like yours; and
I’m connected. I’ve got friends, cop friends… and they like me.” Ruby is accompanied
by Rose Cheramie, another key character in the movie.
...meanwhile, back in Dallas...
In real life Rosella Renne Cheramie, AKA Melba Christine
Marcades AKA Rozella Clinkscales AKA about 30 other names - was drug runner, prostitute, arsonist, drug addict and maybe dancer for Jack
Ruby. She is known as the source of a now legendary tale of pre-knowledge
of the JFK assassination.
Rose Cheramie and Paul Mondolini share a tender moment outside The Carousel Club
In the movie Cheramie is romantically connected with French connection
Paul Mondolini and a few other people. Jack Ruby is show to be romantically
involved with his dachshund dogs, something that the Warren Commission was
very interested in.
What follows is an interesting tale that ties the Kennedy
assassination in with group of French and French Canadian drug smugglers who
are intertwined with American and French organized crime figures and elements
of the CIA who are all involved in funneling weapons to Cuban anti-Castro
groups. From this mixture of shady characters with different objectives but
common interests the plot to assassinate JFK ferments and pops its cork on Nov.
22, 1963.
Along the way will meet CIA agent Maurice Bishop, a real fictitious
name; and by that I mean a real cover name for a real-life CIA agent who was connected
with anti-Castro operations. He was also seen in the company of Lee Harvey
Oswald. Most researchers believe that “Bishop” was a cover for David Atlee
Phillips.
JFK assassination trading cards, collect them all...
Some of the players and connections are being unraveled by “Jeffery
Cohen,” a New Orleans drug enforcement agent
who I assume is a made up character to help move the story and explain
the plot. Cohen is being monitored by a CIA connected agent, who seems to be
based on E. Howard Hunt. Hunt tells Cohen to lay off some of the drug traffickers
who he has under surveillance. Cohen has figured out that this is because some
his drug suspects are involved in a plan to invade Cuba and assassinate Castro.
“This guy, Oswald, if he’s the one who’s supposed to kill Castro; how come he’s
so exposed everywhere? You’d think he was performing on the Ed Sullivan Show.”
Cohen says to Hunt.
You can't keep track of the players with out a play sheet
You can’t tell one player from another without a program,
and Cohen has a diagram he is working on his trying to tie them all together.
In Dallas the plan to assassinate Kennedy moves on. Spoiler alert! In this version of history
Oswald is in on the plot but does not know an assassination is planned. He is instructed
to shoot at the motorcade but not to hit anyone, just hit a tire or a bumper.
The failed assassination attempt will make Kennedy a hero, Oswald is told. Afterwards he is to meet one of his co-conspirators
at The Texas Theater where he will be given a false passport and tickets out of
the USA. As we all know, things do not work out very well for Oswald.
The best laid plans....
Rose Cheramie almost blows the whole deal when she overhears
the assassination plans when she is shooting heroin in the dressing room of
Ruby’s Carousel Club. Her wrong place, wrong time eavesdropping gets her thrown
from a moving car and left for dead. This same incident is in the opening
minutes of Oliver Stone’s JFK.
Dazed and confused in Dallas
While recovering in a hospital the real life Rose Cheramie is
said to have told people of the assassination plans and stated that a man named Ruby was involved. She also told
people that Ruby and Oswald knew each other.
Left for dead
Kennedy is killed less than an hour into the movie. The real
assassin is Michel Mertz, a long time suspect. In real life CIA agent E. Howard
Hunt gave a death bed tape recorded account of the assassination plot and his
involvement and knowledge of it. He said that a French assassin was involved.
The rest of the movie follows Rivard, who has been
imprisoned by the US after having being betrayed by his co-conspirators, apparently as
away appease any investigation. Cohen interviews Rivard in prison as part of
his private investigation into the links of the drug runners and the JFK assassination,
with disastrous consequences, at least for him.
CIA man Maurice
Bishop continues to direct people like chess pieces, bringing drug runner Paul
Mondolini into Indonesia and arranging the deaths of those who are too
inquisitive or too talkative.
In the end only a few are left alive and a twenty year
prison term seems to have been good luck for Rivard.
Some parts of The American Trap seem to be fictionalized
versions of real events, compressed to help with the movie’s flow, and some
SEEM to fumble facts, most notably a scene of Oswald handing out pro-Cuba
pamphlets in Montreal. Every JFK assassination researcher knows that this
happened in New Orleans, right? Right… and wrong. It seems that there ARE reports of Oswald
doing just this in Montreal, it’s just that not many researchers focus on the
Montreal connections.
Oswald in Montreal
Much of The American Trap seem to parallel, and may be based
on, the research of Québécois Maurice Philipps and his book De Dallas a
Montreal, which covers all of the people and subjects in the movie and more.
Like The American Trap, De Dallas a Montreal has not gotten much notice in the
USA and is available only in French.
There is word that The American Trap was released in the UK
completely in English as a region 2 DVD, so there may hope for Anglophiles yet.
All being said, The American Trap is an incredible movie
that creates the atmosphere of the times it is set in and manages to convey a
lot of factual information while still making for an interesting and
entertaining story. This is something that very few fiction films based on the
JFK assassination have achieved. It
could be one of the best JFK assassination films ever, but then I have not seem
Farewell America, which is based a book by French Intelligence agents.
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