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By Root 1125 0

the phone in my apartment wasn’t safe. He was furious. You could feel his anger. He said that, at their meeting, Hoover had more or less tried to intimidate him with the information he had. He’d made it clear that he knew about my relationship with Jack, even that I’d been to the White House, that I was a friend of Sam and Johnny Roselli, and that Jack knew Sam, too. Jack knew exactly what Hoover was doing. Knowing that Jack wanted him out of office, he was in a way ensuring his job – by letting Jack know he had this leverage over him.’

According to Campbell, there was something even more damaging to hide. Early in the presidency, Kennedy had repeated his folly of the election period – by meeting again with Giancana. The new contacts, Campbell said the President told her, ‘had to do with the elimination of Fidel Castro.’ Kennedy also used Campbell as a courier, on some twenty occasions, to carry sealed envelopes to Giancana.

Campbell’s account cannot be dismissed. It is specific in dates and details and is supported by travel documents, her annotated appointment book and official logs recording three of her visits to the White House. Giancana’s brother Chuck has also spoken of contacts between the Mafia boss and Kennedy during the presidency and of Campbell’s delivering envelopes.

Most historians now accept that the Kennedy brothers were involved in the Castro plots. After the Bay of Pigs debacle, we know, they no longer trusted the CIA. It is therefore conceivable that, given his existing relationship with Giancana, the President may have chosen to deal directly with the mobster about Castro murder plans. To have done so would have been foolhardy, but it would fit with Kennedy’s love of intrigue.

According to Campbell, the President said the envelopes he sent to Giancana contained ‘intelligence material’ to do with the plots. The envelopes were sealed, however, and she never saw the contents for herself.1 Whatever they contained, John Kennedy was playing a horrendously dangerous game. Giancana had hoped that his help – first in getting the President elected and then with the Castro operation – would be rewarded with federal leniency. Yet Robert Kennedy’s onslaught on organized crime not only included Giancana among its targets; he was singled out for especially intensive harassment.

According to his half brother Chuck, the mobster felt that the President had reneged on a bargain. To a mafioso, to break a bargain is a sin commonly punished by death, and Giancana was a murderer by profession. Again according to his half brother, he was to play a key role in planning Kennedy’s assassination in Dallas.

It is not clear how fully Edgar understood the Giancana scenario in March 1962, only that he knew plenty and told the President so. ‘My impression from Jack,’ Judith Campbell has said, ‘was that Hoover had intimated to him that he knew I had been passing material from Jack to Sam.’ According to Cartha DeLoach, Edgar returned from the meeting saying he had told the President he knew ‘a great deal’ of what was going on.

Even so, records suggest, the brothers soon made themselves even more dependent on Edgar. Unless his brother had been keeping the Castro plot a secret from him, which seems highly unlikely, Robert had long known about Giancana’s involvement. Yet it was vital for Robert, as it was for his brother as President, to protect himself from being linked to the plots. A paper record was therefore concocted, including a memo by Edgar claiming that he and Robert had learned of the CIA’s use of Giancana with ‘great astonishment.’ The writing of that memo alone left the Attorney General indebted to Edgar.

Contrary to previous assumptions, the President did not sever his connection with Judith Campbell after the March meeting with Edgar. White House phone logs show that contacts between him and Judith Campbell continued at least through the late summer of 1962. According to Campbell, she and the President simply used other telephones to evade FBI wiretaps. Kennedy, his secretary Mrs Lincoln recalled, suspected Edgar of