Parting the Waters: America in the King Years 1954-63

by Taylor Branch

The first of the bad news was that Maheu and Giancana claimed immunity from prosecution on the grounds that their wiretap was sanctioned by the CIA. Officials from the CIA, in turn, had confirmed through gritted teeth that Maheu and Giancana indeed had been working for them in a series of top-secret attempts to assassinate Cuban premier Fidel Castro by means of Giancana’s gangster connections. Giancana, while plotting these missions, had asked Maheu and the CIA to make sure that his mistress, Phyllis McGuire, was not two-timing him while he was away, and the agency officials had decided that they were in no position to refuse. All this was only the beginning. Further investigation, plus the wiretaps themselves, had revealed that Phyllis McGuire nursed her own complaints about the relationship, including the fact that Giancana maintained a second mistress, in California, named Judith Campbell.