Dear Jim, 12/31/96 I've been sent and read. z Smith Exner rjOry in Vanity Fair. Did you do any checking at all? Or ari. you so wedded to assassination nuttiness and exploitation that nothing else in real to you, or has or can have any meaning. I do not know what the truth is but I do know enough about what is not and cannot possibly be true to wcnder what in the world you got yourself in- volved in that for, of all the trines yr.0 could do oilid all for which yr..0 find no time. If yon have not d 'rated yourself to anti-Kermed icui, whjch puts you on the side of theme who killed him und trose for whom they did, ybu know ei ough about the established and readily available fact to know that Exner is a very big agInd apparently very persuasive liar. ''ome of thilit you /mew you could chock with me. Some common sense should have told you is not possible. You had time for this but not for coning up to get what I have that you could use for a cliont get :uu;. aTparently arc helping Hersh with the axe job on which he is started. Of all the things he could do iii he really cared about this opuntry. It is too late now for anything other tluui telling you I'm asilaitod of you! THE EXNER ALES Judith Exner may go down in history as the Scarlet Woman of Camelot—the girl who tied J.F.K. to the Mob—but, with death staring her in the face, she sets the record straight and ,v$ reveals the shocking end to her affair with President Kennedy BY LIZ SMITH udy Campbell of Palm Springs and Bevhills is Topic No. 1 in Romantic Political Circles," wrote Walter Winchell in his column May 9, 1962. Of such mysterious little gos- sip items is history made. I've written thousands of them myself as a columnist over the years. As a child in Fort Worth, Texas, I used to lie on the floor of my parents' modest house studying Walter Winchell's column as if it were the Bible. I wanted more than anything to un- derstand life at the top, to enter Winchell's fascinating world of the Depression 30s and Walter Winchell OF NEW 4L:ReK Judith Campbell in .6er-techer. d 1:::1-4:ersergill\N Eve, 1960, the year Frank martini (once the Eve7D Sinatra invited her to Awl, the .11 Gieason show) became-We-Gol Las Vegas, where she George flormeh or chicago met her future lover the 13v1211.18Judy Campbell is of Palln Springsbride Senator John F. Kennedy. Right, cal Topic No. in 8Unda,y . Campbell's enigmatic entrance into SOnaantic and r tabloid journalism, in Walter Winchell's "KhoW what *" 'wo aspirin and.../e Quip doctor sweeping advised the nation: May 9, 1962, column. vs!' Stay OM of bed Liz! 'ake tor UP"' Irom LOS Alma's the war-torn 40s. I could just imagine Hoover himself had strong ties to the presidents, shouldn't b the polished parquet at El Morocco, Mob, and his position as head of the philanderers and liars though I didn't know what parquet was. F.B.I. had become uncomfortable ever Only with Chappaqu 1 did know, however, that not just any- since Robert Kennedy had been made when a lot of reporter body could pass the golden chain at the attorney general, with power over him. sitting on drinking-and- Stork Club, but that if owner Sherman Hoover despised the Kennedys and all about Teddy Kenneth Billingsley liked you, you not only got they stood for, and he was obviously senses, did the press I in. but might get a free bottle of Sor- throwing down a gauntlet to the presi- Then came Watergate tilage perfume as well. dent, of the 1-know-everything-so-you- that all bets were off. Although 1 became an amateur ex- can't-fire-me variety. Only now, with mos pert on such things as Edward VIII's Records show that after Hoover left nists dead—many of tI romance with Wallis Simpson, and the White House on the afternoon of and Judith Campbell F J. Edgar Hoover's strange passion for March 22 he made a call to Richard few witnesses left alive Shirley Temple, I never imagined that I Berlin, a top executive at the Hearst understand the 1962 V would find myself in New York in the newspaper chain. When the blind item you were an insider an 50s writing press-agent gossip items ran May 9, it was easy enough to put then, well and good. If for Winchell. Eventually I graduated two and two together. Berlin had obvi- Q. Public and his mi to working on Hearst's long-running ously passed the information to Walter lingo), it didn't matter society column, "Cholly Knickerbock- Winchell, and there had probably been understand it. The per er."1 even found myself in the soon-to- a lot of backstage maneuvering and knew and were deligh expire Stork Club, being treated well rewriting at Winchell's paper between chell and Hoover, twc by the rather creepy Mr. Billingsley, March 22 and May 9. and scandalmongers and at El Morocco, where Winchell Clearly, Hoover had fired a shot that they were more i himself would sometimes pass by and across Kennedy's bow, and the gun he any mere president. The say, "Hi, kid, your copy is great!" in many ways they wei Praise from Caesar. country. And in man) And so, back in 1962, a year before they were. John F. Kennedy was assassinated, The old saying naturally noticed the Winchell item "I was 26 and in love. stranger than fiction c quoted above, but it was what we in the better applied than to business called "blind as a bat." Who Was I supposed to have dith Campbell Exner was Judy Campbell, and what did that woman who made ui cryptic little 15-word message mean? It more judgment than story? Or is she tht was just a fragment, a note in a bottle derstood and malig thrown into the sea of scandal. Or was the president all of this nation's r it more—a code, a signal, a red alert, of the United States?" Through the 70s, 80s possibly even a threat? has been routinely and Little did I dream then that Judy rided by publications a Campbell would play a large part in as Newsweek and Time a my coming years, when I was writing nists as respected as VI. under my own byline for the New York of The New York Times. Daily News, Newsday, and the New York had used was Winchell's widely syndi- mored to have been sleep' Post, where I am now a syndicated cated column. But in those days even F. Kennedy, Sam Giancal columnist for 60 newspapers. Only re- the dreaded, all-powerful Winchell ny Roselli at the same t cently, when I was in Newport Beach, couldn't come right out and say that been called a hustler, a California, with the aforesaid woman, "Topic No. 1" involved the U.S. presi- bad girl of Camelot, Ma who is now better known as Judith dent. The scandalous doings of V.I.P.'s Mata Hari, a bimbo, a He Campbell Exner, did she finally explain were still treated very delicately in the ty girl, and a prevaricat what the 1962 Winchell item meant, and press. Today sensationalism is epidemic, appellations, only the last how it had come about. She said she and we are all infected, but in 1962 ly to apply. herself had read it that May day in the columnists had to be more discreet. And Exner had good rc has Angeles Herald-Examiner. In 1975 the gossip column Her lover of two years, President oung people today are amazed to son wrote: "Sources inforr John F. Kennedy, had called her one af- learn that during the time Kennedy practices seriously claim ternoon in March to tell her that he had y was in office there was only "private Campbell Exner's revelatio just lunched with J. Edgar Hoover. The talk" about his sexual carryings-on, sequent developments—col F.B.I. director had warned Kennedy that only gossip and speculation—which sel- several murders—including 1 the agency was onto his romantic dom made it into print—that he might For 30 years Exner has liaison with Judith Campbell, and had have used the Mob to win elections. Or from the Kennedy era wipe told him that the agency felt he needed that he might have been involved in a Kennedy himself in Dui to know that she was a friend to Mafia C.I.A. plot to have the Mafia assassi- Kennedy in Los Angeles. boss Sam Giancana of Chicago and nate Fidel Castro. Oswald in Dallas while he Giancana's associate Johnny Roselli of Back then there was a gentlemen's police protection. Oswald' Las Vegas, Nevada. agreement that politicians, especially Mob-related Jack Ruby, die 32 \ANITY FAIR, Her Inn his Amyles reportedly overdosed while pursuing cana. 1 remember wonde an inside story on J.F.K.'s assassina- was just bragging. It was tion. The story was so secret, accord- ball's famous play: Tinker ing to her intimate friend the singer Chance. Johnnie Ray, that she had to read In June 1977, I received the file by flashlight standing under Washington.