American Notes THE PRESIDENCY

When a 1975 Senate report on the CIA's assassination attempts on Cuban Premier Fidel Castro cited an unnamed woman as a "close friend" of John F. Kennedy as well as of Mafia Chieftains Sam Giancana and Johnny Roselli, Judith Campbell Exner held a press conference in which she denied knowledge of any link between the slain President and the two mobsters.

This week, however, in a PEOPLE magazine story written by Celebrity Biographer Kitty Kelley (His Way: The Unauthorized Biography of Frank Sinatra), Exner claims that during 18 months in 1960 and 1961 she carried envelopes between Kennedy and Giancana, who was then the head of the Chicago Mafia. Exner, 54, claims that she arranged some ten meetings between Kennedy and Giancana, one of which, she speculates, was an attempt to win votes for J.F.K. in the 1960 West Virginia presidential primary. Exner suggests that Kennedy's later dealings with Giancana may have concerned the CIA's collaboration with the Mafia to kill Castro. Why has Exner, who says she has terminal cancer, come forward now with fresh details? "I want to put my life in order so that I can die peacefully," she explains.