The Dark Side of Camelot

by Seymour Hersh

  J. Edgar Hoover's lunch in March 1962 with Jack Kennedy had not left the FBI director reassured enough to stop the Los Angeles field office from continuing its round-the-clock surveillance of Exner's apartment from a nearby undercover observation post. Hoover's hunch paid off in an unexpected way late on August 7, 1962, when the FBI's William Carter watched as two young men climbed onto a balcony at Exner's apartment on Fontaine Avenue, in west Los Angeles; one man watched as the other slid open a glass door and entered. After fifteen minutes or so---more than enough time to sort through records or install a wiretap---the pair fled. Carter and his FBI colleagues had been patiently watching the apartment since Exner had moved there in early March, before the Hoover meeting with Kennedy, and had not seen any disturbances. "We were absolutely stunned," Carter told me. But his supervisors decided not to report the illegal entry to the Los Angeles Police Department, as would have been routine procedure when FBI agents observed illegal behavior. To be collegial in this instance, Carter was told, "would have jeopardized our operation."

  Carter's role in the Exner break-in ended at that point. His supervisors did not tell him that within three days they tracked the break-in team to a getaway car rented by a former FBI special agent named I. B. Hale, of Fort Worth, Texas. The two men who entered Exner's apartment were identified by the FBI as Hale's twin sons, Bobby and Billy, twenty-one years old. I. B. Hale, who died in 1971, was in charge of security for General Dynamics.

  At the time of the break-in, the company's chances of winning the immensely lucrative TFX contract were precarious, as the men running General Dynamics were only too aware. To improve the company's odds, nothing could be ruled out in the summer of 1962, including the utilization of a high-priced former FBI agent who might be in a position to accumulate information on the Kennedy administration. The Hale family's criminal entry into Judith Campbell Exner's apartment, which has never been reported before, raises an obvious question: Was Jack Kennedy blackmailed by a desperate corporation?

  General Dynamics was in bad shape in 1962. The company had lost more than $400 million in the previous two years, and the $6.5 billion TFX contract was essential for its survival. The prospects were not favorable. Its main competitor, the Boeing aircraft company, of Seattle, was without question the favorite of the military men who ran the air force and navy. "When we got to the endgame," George A. Spangenberg, who was then chief of the navy's technical evaluation division, said in a 1997 interview for this book, "Boeing was always better than General Dynamics." The navy was desperate to deny the contract to General Dynamics, Spangenberg said. "You couldn't get there from here" with the General Dynamics design. "Our game was how do we keep from getting a useless aircraft."

  The bidding process was complicated by Defense Secretary McNamara's insistence, for economic reasons, that the new fighter have "commonality"---that is, be capable of simultaneously meeting the needs of both the air force and the navy. The navy bitterly resisted his approach, arguing that its requirement for a fighter light enough to land on an aircraft carrier was incompatible with the air force's need for long-range flight capability. At the time, the Pentagon's unwieldy procurement process called for six levels of review, with the final recommendation---before going to McNamara---being the responsibility of the secretaries of the navy and the air force. The procedure to decide who would build the new jet fighter was repeated four times in 1961 and 1962, with untold thousands of man-hours spent evaluating the competing proposals. Boeing was recommended every time.

  Thus, the Pentagon and the military committees in the Congress were flabbergasted in November 1962 when McNamara chose General Dynamics. Contentious Senate hearings the next year about the last-minute change, headed by Senator John McClellan of Arkansas, shed little light on the decision. The issue was seen then and is still seen today as a dispute over McNamara's right to impose his standards on military procurement. President Kennedy's public role was limited to repeatedly endorsing McNamara's decisions, while at the same time distancing himself from them. "My judgment is that the decision reached by Secretary McNamara," Kennedy told a press conference during the McClellan hearings, "was the right one, sound one, and any fair and objective hearing will bring that out ... Everything I have read about the TFX and seen about it confirms my impression that Mr. McNamara was right."

  But McNamara was not right. And the president, as Senate investigators discovered almost immediately, had been involved in the decision, despite McNamara's denials. The committee's high-powered chief investigator, Jerome S. Alderman, who worked on the Senate Rackets Committee with Bobby Kennedy, learned in an early meeting with Roswell Gilpatric, the deputy secretary of defense, that the president knew in advance that the award would go to General Dynamics. Gilpatric's admission troubled David McGiffert, a McNamara aide who sat in, as a lawyer, on the committee's interview with Gilpatric. Gilpatric, McGiffert knew, had violated the first commandment of dealing with congressional investigators: to protect the president. McGiffert later told the journalist Deborah Shapley, author of Promise and Power, a 1993 biography of McNamara, that Gilpatric, known for his loyalty to the White House, undoubtedly thought "dropping the bombshell" of presidential involvement would help Kennedy. McClellan, a fellow Democrat, might look the other way if he knew the president was involved. McGiffert had the feeling, he told Shapley, that Gilpatric's admission "would only make things worse."

  The Senate hearings were suspended by Kennedy's death, and never resumed. The TFX, later renamed the F-111, became one of the most criticized defense projects in modern history, and a bellwether for those military men who complained about unnecessary civilian interference. After Kennedy's assassination, McNamara continued to insist that the F-111 go forward, although the costs per plane had tripled by mid-1966. In the end, the navy, which had once planned to buy 1,700 F-111s, took delivery of seven prototype models, none of which saw combat use. By that time, the navy's version of the F-111 was 1,600 pounds overweight, far too heavy to land on an aircraft carrier. The navy canceled its contract with General Dynamics in 1968. The air force, which had planned to buy 2,400 F-111s, took delivery on fewer than 600. The average cost per plane had climbed from the $2.8 million estimated in 1962 to more than $22 million by 1970.

  The uncensored FBI reports and cables on the August break-in at Exner's Los Angeles apartment, made available for this book under the Freedom of Information Act, were urgently forwarded, in code, to J. Edgar Hoover. An FBI summary from the Los Angeles bureau, dated August 17, 1962, told Hoover something he already knew, even if some of his California agents didn't realize it. The summary described Exner as being in contact with Giancana and Rosselli and with Evelyn Lincoln. It also told Hoover something he didn't know: the Hale family and General Dynamics were linked to the break-in. "A man answering the description of the individual who entered [Exner's] apartment was observed leaving the area in an automobile registered to former Special Agent I. B. Hale who resides in Fort Worth, Texas," the summary said. "Our Dallas office has advised that ... Hale is employed by General Dynamics ... in charge of security." The summary noted that the crime its agents witnessed "is not being disseminated to the Los Angeles Police Department at this time."

  One FBI cable to Hoover, dated August 14 and marked "urgent," summarized I. B. Hale's association with the FBI and depicted him as "cooperative" in the past with Dallas agents. Hale, a prewar football star at Texas Christian University, was described as "well known in Fort Worth and ... active in many community affairs. It is the opinion of [the FBI bureau in] Dallas [that] any additional inquiry" by the FBI into the Los Angeles break-in "would come to Hale's attention. It is also the opinion of Dallas that Hale would be completely cooperative in any interview. However, in view of the sensitive nature of Los Angeles investigation, no additional action [is] being taken by Dallas." In other words, the FBI bureau in Los Angeles was more interested in keeping up its surveillance on Judith Exner's apartment than in prosecuting a crime or trying to find out what I. B. Hale and hi
s sons were doing there.

  William Carter, in his interview for this book, said he and his FBI colleagues assumed at the time that the entry into Exner's apartment was "to install a bug" or a wiretap. According to available documents, no one in the FBI even considered alerting Exner to the break-in. If a bug was installed, the FBI did nothing to prevent I. B. Hale and his superiors at General Dynamics from eavesdropping on Exner. A warning to Exner also might have prevented the FBI from continuing its own electronic surveillance of her apartment.

  The trail ended in Fort Worth three decades ago. During the five years of research for this book, I tried unsuccessfully to find out how General Dynamics learned of Judith Exner's ties to Jack Kennedy. I was unable to make contact with Billy or Bobby Hale despite repeated efforts. Billy, trained as a veterinarian, left his Fort Worth practice and his family in the early 1990s and disappeared into the Central Plains states. The twins' younger brother, Tommy Hale, of Fort Worth, said in a series of telephone interviews that Billy "told us he was going to live his life for Jesus. He gave it up for Jesus."* Bobby Hale, as of mid-1997, was living in isolation with his family on a commune in rural Mora County, New Mexico; he is in constant trouble with authorities there, according to the Moro County sheriff.

  I. B. Hale and his wife divorced in 1960, Tommy Hale told me. Tommy stayed with his mother, and his older brothers moved in with their father. His father, Tommy said, was "a good secret keeper" who maintained a respect for J. Edgar Hoover "all through his life. He admired Hoover."

  The break-in at Exner's apartment was never investigated by the FBI, nor did it evoke a sudden rush of curiosity that fall, when the Kennedy administration's surprise selection of General Dynamics to build the TFX triggered outcries in the press and the Congress. What happened was not a cover-up, but something much more mundane. I. B. Hale, as a prominent college football star, had been one of Hoover's favorites while he was in the FBI; it would be almost reflexive for his former colleagues to find some reason not to investigate him. Most important, Judith Exner's relationship with the president and the FBI's surveillance of her were deemed state secrets that had to be kept, even if crimes were ignored in the process.

  Judith Exner did not learn about the break-in at her apartment until fifteen years later, when she won a Freedom of Information Act lawsuit and obtained her heavily censored FBI files. The documents, as released and still censored, said nothing about I. B. Hale, nor did they mention General Dynamics. By August 1962 her involvement with Kennedy and his brother had ended. Bobby Kennedy had replaced Exner with Charles Ford as a liaison to organized crime, and for Jack Kennedy there were dozens of women who would replace her in other ways.

  By that fall, Exner said in My Story, she was deeply involved with Sam Giancana. "Love with Sam was not as exciting as it had been with Jack," she wrote, "but ... it left me with a comfortable feeling instead of a gnawing emptiness. I felt like I really knew how to handle Sam. Once we became intimate, Sam did not change with me, he didn't revert to some unreasonably possessive creature." In an interview for this book, Exner acknowledged what she had not in her memoir: Sam Giancana had his own reasons for maintaining the relationship with her. "I'm not so naive that I don't think that his friendship with me and continued friendship wasn't very beneficial," she told me. "He could use it to his advantage if need be."

  Jack Kennedy, she said, also used "Sam for his own purpose. And Sam would naturally expect something for it. I don't like to think of friendship being used that way." But, Exner added, "Jack didn't play by our rules; Jack had his own rules. I believe that all of the Kennedys play by their own rules. I don't think they conduct themselves the way we do. I think that's very sad."

  In the late summer of 1962, Exner said, "I was very troubled, again, about the FBI surveillance and [Kennedy's] treating it lightly. He did say a couple of times that he would talk to Bobby and see what they could do about it. But it never seemed to me that anything was done. We had been having difficulties because I wouldn't move back to Washington. After we more or less broke up, he convinced me to go back and see him one more time."

  In recent years, Judith Exner has been waging a furious battle against a pervasive cancer; she was told ten years ago that she had only a few more years to live. In interviews for this book and for a 1996 profile in Vanity Fair magazine, she has added another new element to her story---Jack Kennedy made her pregnant on their last visit. It was that pregnancy, she now says, that drove her into the arms of Sam Giancana.

  Exner, in her interview for this book, said that she and Kennedy agreed in late summer 1962, after she told him about the pregnancy, that she could not keep the baby. "In our next conversation," Exner said, "he asked, 'Would Sam help us?' I spoke to Sam and he said yes. Sam was angry at Jack, but it took the two of us for me to be in that position." In Sam's eyes, Exner insisted, "he was helping me. You know, a lot of people can say, 'Oh boy, this is just something else he [Giancana] could hold over Jack's head.' I don't care what they say, I know what he did for me." She wasn't angry at Kennedy, she said. "I was heartbroken."

  It was at this point, Exner told me, that she became intimate with Sam Giancana. He had responded to news of her pregnancy by asking her to marry him. "I told him, 'Sam, you don't want to marry me.' I knew he was in love with Phyllis [McGuire]. And he just said, 'You deserve to be asked.' It was the one time with Sam and it was an emotional response to his loving-kindness and caring for what I was going through. But I would hardly say that that was having a simultaneous affair with two men."

  Exner's most recent account of her faithfulness to Jack Kennedy conflicts with the chronology in My Story. She may have indeed been faithful to Jack Kennedy for much of their time together, as she has steadfastly insisted, or she may have been making love to both men at the same time. The issue of when she became intimate with Sam Giancana, however important to Exner today, does not affect the importance of her story.

  Exner, in her interviews for this book, told me that despite all, she remains convinced that "Jack loved me, to the extent that he could love someone. A lot of people think that I'm kidding myself, but I knew him. I was the one who was with him. He had a place for everything in his life, and he gave only so much of himself to whatever that was---whether it be love, work, or play." In that regard, she said, "he emulated his father. I think all the boys in the family have emulated their father. He had to have great trust and faith in me," she said, to permit her to serve as a conduit for the mob.

  Judith Exner was out of Jack Kennedy's personal life by the fall of 1962, but the FBI was keeping up its pressure on her. There was talk of compelling her to appear before a Los Angeles federal grand jury that was looking into organized crime. Exner's attorney, who had been recommended by Johnny Rosselli, "had me going from hotel to hotel so the FBI couldn't subpoena me. I sensed I was in terrible danger" from organized crime or the U.S. government. In her view, they were moral equivalents: "There is no good and bad," she told me. "No black hats, no white hats. They were all out for themselves."

  During this panicky period, Exner ran into Johnny Grant, the former press agent who befriended her as a teenager, while in Palm Springs in March of 1963. Grant was now a reporter for the NBC television and radio affiliates in Los Angeles. The two began talking and, Exner told me, "I did tell him what had been going on. Johnny just happened to be there, luckily for me---not lucky for Johnny, because I think I scared him to death---but it was good to have a friend to confide in."

  Grant, when interviewed for this book, clearly recalled the meeting. "I hardly recognized her," he told me. "Her happy eyes were dull---like she'd been abused. I knew something was very wrong." They agreed to meet again that evening. Over a drink, Grant recalled, "she told me that she'd been seeing Jack Kennedy and Sam Giancana. I called the waiter over and got the check." He assumed, he said, that she was sleeping with both men.

  They drove out into the desert, and parked. Exner told him of carrying a satchel of money from Jack Kennedy to Sam Gia
ncana in Chicago. She told of carrying messages between organized crime and the White House. She told of her love for Jack Kennedy. She told of taking documents after the election that dealt with Castro's elimination. "I asked her," Grant said, '"What do you mean, assassination or elimination?' And she said, 'Jack's word was elimination.' By then I was ready to leave. 'My God, here you are,'" he told her, "'talking about the great symbol of justice and freedom---the office of the president of the United States. On the other hand, you're talking about the most negative thing in America at the time---the underworld. And they are communicating, and passing money."'

  "I did not ever think she was bullshitting me," Grant said. "I just thought to myself, 'You son of a bitch. You fell into something you didn't want to know.' I was overwhelmed and frightened---in terror. In those times, if they didn't want somebody around, they could disappear you quick." His last words to Exner, Grant recalled, were, "Please don't tell anybody you talked to me."

  He never thought of writing the story. Instead, he told me, he returned to his home in Los Angeles and told his business manager, "'If anything ever happens to me, it'll be the Mafia or the CIA.' I didn't talk to a lawyer. I got drunk." For years afterward, he said, "if an acorn fell on the roof, I got up fast."