The Kennedy Men_ 1901-1963 - Laurence Leamer [393]
The FBI agents spread their great nets wherever the mob hierarchy was likely to venture, periodically pulling in all sorts of unseen creatures from the dark depths of American life. In Los Angeles, the FBI targeted John Rosselli as a second-tier figure, running wiretaps and bugs, interviewing his friends and associates, and observing his daily activities. The FBI had no idea that Rosselli had become the CIA’s agent in attempting to assassinate Castro, and they tried to explore every shadowy corner of his life. In their investigation they came upon the name of Judith Campbell (Exner), who led them to places that they had not expected to go.
FBI special agents noted in September 1961 that Rosselli was calling Exner when he came to Los Angeles, and he was later observed escorting her to Romanoff’s restaurant in Beverly Hills. Her telephone records showed that she was telephoning Giancana in Chicago. She drove a 1961 Ford Thunder-bird that had been driven from Chicago to Las Vegas by the Mafia chieftain’s assistant, Joe Pignatello. Everything the FBI learned about Exner suggested that she had no income or substantial bank accounts, yet she had rented a fancy home in Palm Springs and a place in Malibu. Most surprisingly, Exner’s telephone records showed a number of calls to the desk of Evelyn Lincoln just outside the Oval Office.
By the end of February 1962, Hoover had all this information sitting on his desk. The FBI chief had a brilliantly astute awareness of the wages of power. Two decades before, he did not directly confront President Roosevelt with information making criminal accusations against his son James and Joseph P. Kennedy. He had written a memo so that he would have a legal record of how he had handled this matter and sent it to Roosevelt’s chief of staff by courier. This time he once again wrote a memo, addressed to the president’s assistant, in this case Kenny O’Donnell, and sent it by courier to the White House, as well as a second memo to Bobby. Once again Hoover had proof that the information had been received, but the president could always deny that he had seen the memo.
Hoover knew all about Kennedy’s sexual predilections and had previously passed on part of his knowledge to the attorney general. Hoover’s memo was so bland, however, that reading the words a thousand times would not reveal whether irony, moralizing, or even veiled threats of exposure lay behind them. “The relationship between Campbell [Exner] and Mrs. Lincoln or the purpose of these calls is not known,” Hoover wrote.
When Joe Dolan, serving as Bobby’s acting deputy for an ailing Burke Marshall, walked into his office, Bobby shoved a folder of documents toward him. “What do you think of this?” Bobby asked, his even tone suggesting nothing of the potential importance of the memo. In his office Dolan carefully read documents that included the list of Exner’s telephone calls and other information, then returned to the attorney general’s office.
Dolan knew full well how extraordinary it was that Bobby was even showing him this material. Bobby was secretive about family matters, walling off this world from those who served him and his family. Bobby looked up, and Dolan spoke with the wry wit that was his trademark: “Mrs. Lincoln shouldn’t take calls like that.”
“So what do you think?” Bobby asked. In a normal world Bobby would have gone over to the White House and spoken confidentially to his brother, but Dolan realized that was not what the attorney general wanted to do. “I think I’ll write Mrs. Lincoln a little memo,” Dolan said, having astutely grasped what Bobby wanted. “Do it today,” Bobby said.
Dolan wrote a memo outlining what Hoover had discovered. Sensing the importance of the matter, he hand-delivered the memo to Evelyn Lincoln in the White House. “Joe, I’m shocked,” Lincoln said, recalling the famous line in Casablanca