Federal Bureau of Investigation

The Federal Bureau of Investigation enters the manhunt as an overseas investigative partner whose value lies in rapid cooperation and access to criminal intelligence. Its homicide chief responds to an urgent request from Paris, and the Bureau later offers two possible political assassins for Claude Lebel to assess. These leads widen the search without resolving the central uncertainty: neither candidate is established as the killer.

Emergency cooperation

During the night, Lucien Caron telephones crime chiefs in several countries on behalf of the French investigation. Reaching the Federal Bureau of Investigation’s chief of Homicide takes three attempts: the official is at a dinner party in Washington, with guests talking and glasses clinking nearby. Once Caron delivers the message, the chief agrees to report to the Bureau’s communications room at two in the morning, Washington time, to receive a call from Claude Lebel through the International Criminal Police Organization at eight in the morning, Paris time.

The exchange places the Bureau inside an improvised international communications network assembled before the investigation can be treated as a conventional formal inquiry between police forces. Lebel presents the request as a preliminary tip-off: the police have no name, only a poor description, and are not yet certain that an offence has reached the stage of preparation. The Bureau’s participation therefore begins under conditions of incomplete information, with the purpose of finding a political contract killer through professional and criminal records rather than pursuing an already identified suspect.

Two American possibilities

The Bureau supplies two possible names. The first is Charles Arnold, an American and former United States Marine who later worked for the Central Intelligence Agency in the Caribbean. He was dismissed after killing a Cuban anti-Castroist in a fight just before the Bay of Pigs affair. The Cuban had been expected to command a section of the operation, and Arnold was subsequently employed by an international arms dealer who had been among those unofficially used by the Central Intelligence Agency to supply arms to the invading force.

The Bureau’s information also associates Arnold with two unexplained accidents involving rivals of his employer in the arms business. The account presents this as a possibility, not as a proven record of contract killings: the deaths are unexplained, and the competitive setting is described as exceptionally cut-throat. At the time the candidate is reported, the Federal Bureau of Investigation is still checking Arnold’s whereabouts. The lead offers a combination of military, intelligence, and arms-trade experience, but the evidence does not confirm that he is the man Lebel seeks.

The second possibility is Marco Vitellino, formerly a personal bodyguard to New York gangland boss Albert Anastasia. Anastasia was shot dead in a barber’s chair in October 1957, after which Vitellino fled the United States for fear of his own life. He settled in Caracas, Venezuela, and attempted to enter the local rackets on his own account, but the effort went poorly and the local underworld shut him out.

The Bureau’s suggestion is explicitly conditional: if Vitellino had become completely broke, he might be willing to accept a contract killing for a foreign organization if the payment were sufficient. His history supplies a possible motive and a potential route into political violence, not proof of either. The distinction matters to Lebel’s search, which is still comparing possibilities rather than naming a confirmed assassin.

Role and limits in the investigation

The Federal Bureau of Investigation’s contribution combines rapid liaison with candidate assessment. Its homicide chief makes himself available across a difficult time-zone gap, and the Bureau returns information that gives the French team concrete biographies to test. Arnold and Vitellino are not interchangeable profiles: one is linked to the Marine Corps, Central Intelligence Agency service, and an arms dealer; the other to organized crime, flight from the United States, and a failed attempt to establish himself in Caracas.

Yet the leads remain provisional. Arnold’s whereabouts are still being checked, while the case against Vitellino rests on a possibility about financial desperation and willingness to work for a foreign client. The Bureau thus enlarges the field of inquiry but does not, in the evidence presented, identify the killer or end the dependence on further investigation. Its place in the story is that of a distant institution whose records and cooperation can sharpen a search, while the gaps in those records preserve the danger that the assassin remains unknown.