Please don't respond with that stuff about "keeping your enemies closer." Closer for what? Rocco commnads a regime; he's got plenty of guns at his disposal. He can move against Mike at any time. So Mike's going to let him roam, right, on the assumption that Roth might in the future end up walking through an airport and Rocco might volunteer to kill him. Madonne!? I don't think so.
I'm completely with Olivant here. "Friends close, enemies closer" is a strategem for when you know your enemy and you have time and wherewithal to play him--as Sonny did with Paulie, Vito and Michael did with Carlo, and Michael did with Roth. The Tahoe shooting didn't qualify. Unknown and unexpected assassins, who had to either know or strongly suspect that Kay and/or the kids would be in his bedroom, attacked with machineguns. While Kay and the kids weren't targets, the would-be killers had no compunctions about wiping out anyone who got between their bullets and Michael. They were assisted by an unknown person "very close." And they'd almost certainly try again. It was a situation, as Michael told Tom, that was "life and death."
Under those circumstances, if Michael'd had any inkling that Rocco was involved, Rocco would have been dead sooner rather than later.
Olivant & Turnbull: Don Cardi raised this objection already and I tried to address it earlier. Let me add a few things and restate my points in a perhaps more convincing way:
1) When the Tahoe hit fails, Michael vanishes, so another hit that could endanger his family is not a problem. True, Michael orders that Kay and the kids not be allowed to leave the compound, but if this fact does anything, it supports my point. The traitor is someone "close to us, inside," and yet Michael orders his family to stay on the compound -- with the as yet unknown traitor -- when he's away.
2) The "keep your enemies close" strategy is always extremely risky. It is to gloss over the real facts to say that Michael was at liberty to play around with Roth this way as though in a liesurely and low risk fashion. Michael knows Roth tried to kill him, so going to Cuba was extremely dangerous. (Even going to visit Roth in Miami was dangerous, as is clear from Michael's very cautious approach to Roth's front door.) He could be whacked at almost any time from the moment he landed in Havanna -- the plan to do it "neatly" when Michael was in a military car was the least risky move for Roth. Sure, Roth would have liked to have gotten the 2 million first, but a guy who would give 4 million just to take a piss without it hurting would certainly pass up 2 million if it meant getting rid of Michael.
3) Not long after the Havana operation fails, Roth and the Rosatos are "on the run." As I already noted, this changes the whole dynamic of the situation for a would-be traitor. That is, you don't try to kill your boss for another boss, when a) your boss is now back on top ("Michael, you've won") and b) the other boss is on the run and unable to provide you with the same incentive to turn on your own boss as he could previously.
4) If, as I believe, Rocco was the man helping Roth, he would not recruit his own men, with all their "machine guns," to help him kill Mike. Why? If he approaches one of them and makes this proposition, he gives the guy he makes the proposition to an opportunity to replace him as Caporegime. This guy will pretend to go along, and then go straight to Mike with this information. Nothing Rocco could offer him could outweigh what Mike would do for him in return for this information. Machiavelli puts it well when speaking of men who want to recruit others to kill a tyrant: "as soon as you disclose your intent . . .you give him the means with which to become content." [Addition:] This, I presume, is why the two guys who turn up with their throats cut are not men who were part of the compound security detail.
