We really need to clarify the myth of JFK and Giancana:
The myth starts with Joseph P. Kennedy, JFK’s father, who supposedly had ties with organized crime going back to Prohibition, when he was a major (illegal) importer and distributor of Scotch whiskey. He contacted Sam Giancana, or worked through Frank Sinatra, a friend of both Giancana’s and JFK’s, to solicit Mob money and union support to help his son win the West Virginia presidential primary, and to carry Illinois in the general election. In return, Kennedy promised that his son’s administration would keep hands off organized crime. Giancana agreed to help—and the Kennedy Administration, led by Attorney General Robert F. Kennedy, declared war on the Mob. Another wrinkle: Giancana and JFK shared a mistress: Judith Campbell Exner, whom Sinatra had introduced to JKF before he became president. Later, Exner, terminally ill with cancer, alleged that JFK had impregnated her, and Giancana arranged for her to have an abortion. Therefore, Giancana ordered the assassination as revenge on the president.
This myth is full of holes:
Joe Kennedy was not a rumrunner during Prohibition, nor was he Mob-connected. His father, Patrick J. Kennedy, operated saloons before Prohibition. At the beginning of the Franklin D. Roosevelt administration in 1933, Joe Kennedy and Jimmy Roosevelt, FDR’s son, formed Somerset Importers and acted as exclusive agents for several brands of Scotch whiskey and gin. They started business after Prohibition was repealed.
Sam Giancana had no motivation to help John F. Kennedy. In 1959, Giancana was humiliated by Robert Kennedy when he was subpoenaed to appear before a Senate subcommittee investigating labor racketeering. JFK was a ranking Democratic member and Robert Kennedy was chief counsel. After taking the Fifth Amendment in response to several of RFK’s questions, Giancana smiled and laughed. “I thought only little girls giggle, Mr. Giancana,” RFK taunted--not exactly the kind of remark aimed at getting Giancana's support for his brother's presidential campaign. That same hearing marked the beginning of a long-running feud between the Kennedy brothers and Jimmy Hoffa, whom JFK excoriated for “hiding behind the Fifth Amendment.” The Teamsters, one of the Chicago Outfit’s major allies and sources of income, endorsed Richard Nixon in the 1960 election. And, JFK didn’t need either Giancana’s or the Teamsters’ help in carrying Illinois because he’d been promised the state’s electoral votes by one of his strongest allies: Richard Daley, Chicago’s all-powerful mayor, who delivered Chicago’s vote late in the evening, allowing JFK to squeak by Nixon with a margin of fewer than 9,000 votes.
As for Exner: Despite her late-life claims, there is no hard evidence that JFK had any relationship with Giancana through her, or that he even knew that he was sharing her with Giancana—until J. Edgar Hoover warned him that the FBI was aware that he had spoken to her by phone 70 times in two weeks, and that one of the calls had been made from Giancana’s home. Kennedy immediately dropped her.
