Customer Reviews

My story

5 star:		(3)
4 star:		(0)
3 star:		(1)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

This book was written about a year after the Church Committee concluded its investigation of the CIA's involvement with organized crime in its effort to have Fidel Castro assassinated. At the time, President Kennedy's involvement it the plot was unknown and no attempt was made to investigate it. Judith Campbell (Exner), however, was called to testify at that hearing and, as a result, was later identified as President Kennedy's "close friend," although she was actually Kennedy's part-time lover and his go between with Chicago's syndicate boss, Sam Giancana. Since she was a somewhat mysterious figure, while President Kennedy was still viewed as Prince Charming and the myth of Camelot still persisted, she was cast by the liberal media as the villain of the piece, a prostitute, a party girl, etc. and felt the need to tell her side of the story; thus this book.

The book is essentially Judy's life story as told from a woman's perspective but seems to have been aimed at presenting JFK, Sam Giancana, and Judy, herself, in the best possible light. Disappointingly, it sheds no light on the criminal aspects of Kennedy's activities in promoting the assassination attempt and fails to address her activities in that regard in any meaningful way. As a consequence, although the book is extremely interesting from a prurient viewpoint, it tells little about what really went on between Kennedy and Sam Giancana's criminal outfit.

It should be kept in mind, however, that when this book was written most of the principals involved in the plot, President Kennedy, Robert Kennedy, John Roselli, and Sam Giancana had already been murdered (Giancana shortly before he was to testify); and Judy, as she said much later in life, was afraid to tell the whole story. So, although this book makes truly fascinating reading -- especially if you want to really see how the rich, famous, powerful, and ruthless live -- time and more recent revelations have passed it by.

For the complete story, I suggest you read "Joseph P. Kennedy: The Mogul, the Mob, the Statesman, and the Making of an American Myth" by Ted Schwarz and "The Dark Side of Camelot" by Seymour M. Hersh, but by all means read this one too. You'll really be amazed at how the other half lives.

Judith Exner: My Story:
Exner insisted that her relationship with Kennedy was entirely personal and she was not in any way an intermediary between Giancana and Kennedy. Exner's book brought to light many stories about JFK which have been widely related since: his alleged affair with a Danish woman who might have been a spy during World War II and his alleged affair with Marilyn Monroe.
Exner had said that Kennedy brought prostitutes to the White House swimming pool, however, 11 years later, in an interview with People magazine; Exner told a completely different story about Giancana and Kennedy.
She stated that during the 1960 presidential election she took messages from Giancana to Kennedy and later claimed these messages concerned plans to murder the Cuban leader Fidel Castro.
In 1997, she added more shocking allegations to her story, including abortion. Although many believe aspects of her stories, some believe that her post-1977 stories are improbable.

I guess we will never really know what happened, Ms. Exner passed away in September 1999.

I wanted to read this book for a long time. It did not disappoint me.

I remember the days when voters worried about Kennedy's consorting with the Pope in running the country and when it was a shock that Marilyn Monroe was nude when found dead. At that time, the public thought the president was a charming, upstanding rich boy with an elegant wife and two cute children. This book sticks another pin in that balloon.

After reading Judith's book, several Mafia tell-alls that give a different version of the assassination than what has been given to the public, and a couple of Kennedy family biographies, all I can say is that we were as gullible as Judith was as she ferried papers and payoffs back and forth between Kennedy and Giancana.

Judith Exner seemed very naive and sought love and attention in all the wrong places. I would call her not much more than a moll, an object, used and passed around from powerful man to powerful man. Now that Kennedy's seemingly unending womanizing is public knowledge, this book is not as shocking as it might have been if published right after his death. Even so, a very interesting read.

Judith Campbell Exner's naivete, and one can follow in her story the gradual extinction of her naivete at the hands of extremely ruthless men, seems entirely credible to me. She was searching for love and thought she found it. It took her a long time to understand the differences between male and female biological programming. It took her a long time to understand that there was no difference between the Mafia and the Government. She wanted love; the men were after sex and control. At the end of the book Judith finally seems to have found a man in Dan Exner whom she could trust, but could she? The Evildoers keep a nationwide stable of small men like Exner whose only job is to romance naive women like Judith who are labeled keepers of nonexistent secrets. She, to borrow a phrase from Sam Sloan's "Mafia Moll: The Judith Exner Story," was a sort of "Forrest Gump" -- an unwitting participant in all the intrigues between Kennedy, Giancana, and Sinatra. The men used her for her beauty and her naivete. To those with ears to hear, it is a tale of immense suffering and crushed innocence.