about Exner.
Altogether, those two establishment bastions kept her name in the
papers for six months. William Safire of the New York Times, a
former Nixon speechwriter, screamed there could be no "whitewash"
of this matter and made it his personal agenda to use Exner as
JFK's connection to the plots. He himself wrote five columns on
the subject. Time magazine did a feature on her. Newsweek, the
Post's sister publication did two. Exner - via the Times and Post
- became a media sensation.
Riding the wave, Exner now took advantage of the publicity and
decided to write a book. Big-time literary mogul Scott Meredith
was her agent. Meredith reportedly sold serialization rights to
the book, sight unseen, to the National Enquirer for $150,000.
The book outline was prepared by Meredith's office and was
approved by Exner's attorney. A co-author was arranged for.
The co-author turned out to be Ovid Demaris. This is significant.
Demaris is usually described as a veteran crime writer of such
books as Captive City and The Green Felt Jungle . This is true as
far as it goes, but it does not go far