Exner Prologue

The name of Judith Immoor Campbell Exner (1934-1999) would probably
never be known today had it not been for the investigations of the
Church Committee, named after Senator Frank Church, a United States
Senator from Idaho. The Church Committee is the common term referring
to the United States Senate Select Committee to Study Governmental
Operations with Respect to Intelligence Activities, chaired by Senator
Frank Church in 1975. The Church Committee was investigating reports
that the CIA had tried to assassinate Cuban President Fidel Castro and
Congo President Patrice Lumumba. Both assassination attempts had been
unsuccessful. Lumumba had been killed on January 17, 1961, three days
before Kennedy took office as president, but not by the CIA, rather by
other Congolese. Fidel Castro is, of course, still alive.

In hindsight, the investigations by the Church Committee must be
considered one of the bright and shining moments of US History.
Nowadays, such an investigation would be unthinkable. Everything would
be covered up. If there were an investigation at all, it would be why
the assassination attempts failed. What kind of incompetents do we
have at the CIA anyway? An additional factor is that the investigation
was bi-partisan. Nowadays, you have only the Democrats investigating
the Republicans or the Republicans investigating the Democrats.
However, the Church Committee was investigating both the Republican
Administration of President Eisenhower and the Democratic
Administration of President Kennedy. It was clear that both
assassination plans originated under Eisenhower. By the time Kennedy
took office on January 20, 1961, Lumumba was already dead, and the
attempts to kill Castro involving a wide variety of devices including
poison pills and exploding cigars, had all failed. The plan to kill
Castro was said to havec been abandoned after the Bay of Pigs fiasco
on April 17-20, 1961. However, Kennedy continued to attempt to
overthrow Castro, but not necessarily to kill him, until Kennedy
himself was killed on December 22, 1963. For this reason, one of the
leading theories as to why Kennedy was killed continues to be
retaliation by Castro.

The Mafia had their own reasons for wanting to kill Castro. The Mafia
controlled casino operations in Cuba. John Roselli, who later became
involved with Judith Immoor Campbell Exner, was for many years the
manager of a casino in Cuba. Casino operations were closed down and
Roselli was thrown out when Castro took over the Government of Cuba on
December 19, 1959.

Thus, the idea that the CIA would hire and pay the Mafia to kill
Castro is not as ridiculous as it might seem today. It was a natural
fit. The Mafia wanted to get their casinos back, and the CIA of course
wanted to restore Democracy plus Truth, Justice and the American Way
by killing Castro.

The Church Committee found that Sam Giancana and John Roselli had been
offered $150,000 by the CIA to kill Castro. But how did the CIA and
the Mafia communicate with each other. Does the CIA just pick up a
telephone, dial a number, and call the Mafia? "Hello, Mr. Mafia. This
is the CIA calling. We would like for you to kill Castro and for this
service we will pay you $150,000." Did it work like that?

No. It could not have been like that. There must have been an
intermediary. Perhaps a woman. Yes, that's the ticket! Some completely
undistinguished woman, an unknown person, a high school dropout, a
person nobody would ever suspect.

But who was that woman? Who was the mystery woman?

That was indeed the question being asked all around the world, when
the story finally broke: WHO WAS THE MYSTERY WOMAN?

I know this because I was staying in Reykjavik, Iceland at the time
with my lady friend Inga Brandsdottir. Inga came home with a newspaper
one night with a big newspaper headline saying in Icelandic "Who Is
the Mystery Woman?". The entire world wanted to know.

The first mention of her name came from the Washington Post on
November 16, 1975 in an article on page 6A entitled "Probers Doubt
Kennedy Knew of Poison Plot Against Castro". However, this story got
the sequence of events backwards, suggesting that the Mystery Woman
might have told Kennedy about the Mafia's plans to kill Castro. The
real situation proved to be the other way around.

One month later, on December 18, 1975, headlines in the Los Angeles
Times blared, "John Kennedy's Mystery Woman Tells Her Story". The
Story of Judith Immoor Campbell Exner, a previously unknown person, a
person whose name had never appeared in any print publication, nor in
any radio, TV or news broadcast, was suddenly the focus of the
attention of the entire world.

Sam Sloan