Bibliograpy of JFK assassination books - Updated

[Guest Robert Morrow]

Here is my latest update of my Bibliography of JFK Assassination Books. I have roughly grouped them by 1) the best books to read - top thirty 2) by author 3) by subject matter. If you have any suggestion for other books or know some I overlooked, please tell me.

I have almost 1,000 listed. The top 30 books are some of the best relating to the JFK assassination. The bottom 20 are some of the worst. Everything else is mostly grouped by author or topic (LBJ, Kennedys, Cuba, CIA, elite politics, some books on Watergate, a few books trashing conspiracy theories). I think there is a lot of value to reading books and sources that are peripheral to the JFK assassination, but tell a lot about it.

One can learn a lot by reading books that are peripheral to the JFK assassination such as books on Lyndon Johnson, the CIA, military intelligence, foreign policy of the 1960's, Texas oil men, books on the personal lives of key players, and books about elites in government, intelligence, and the media.

Here is link to my blog post: http://lyndonjohnson...tion-books.html

Also google "Chip Tatum Pegasus" which I think is extremely important. Read former counter intelligence agent Chip Tatum and you will understand the massive corruption at the highest levels of the Republican & Democratic parties in the 1980's with regards to massive CIA drug running, the Bushes, the Clintons, assassinations, the operation of a "Secret Team."

This is quite instructive when put next to the JFK assassination which was the Democratic Vice President Lyndon Johnson engaging in a conspiracy with far rightists in Texas oil and far rightists in US military intelligence to murder John Kennedy for many reasons both personal & ideological.

Once one understands that the deep politics and that the biggest scandals by nature are bipartisan and at the highest levels, then one understands both the JFK assassination & Iran-contra.

Edited October 2, 2012 by Robert Morrow

[John Simkin]

I see you have Larry Hancock's Someone Would Have Talked in 81st place. Is that because Larry does not state that LBJ was behind the assassination? Also, some of the books, have very little to do with the assassination, for example, Seymour Hersh's The Dark Side of Camelot (listed in 5th place).

[Guest Robert Morrow]

John, my bibliography is a list of books that relate to the JFK assassination. As Jim DiEugenio often points out, you can learn a lot from the peripheral books touching on the root causes of the JFK assassination. DiEugenio likes to recomment "JFK: Ordeal in Africa" by Richard Mahoney because it is a good example of JFK's dovishness.

Any book that is about US/Cuba relations from the takeover of Castro to just past the JFK assassination is a book that is about the JFK assassination whether the book is classified as a "JFK assassination" book or not. "Someone Would Have Talked" by Hancock is a good book and a worthy effort. Hancock does have expertise in the anti-Castro Cubans and their conflicts with Fidel Castro and JFK, who some of them and other CIA operatives murdered.

I think Vincent Salandria, a peasant with a feeble mind, has been right all along. It is obvious that U.S. military intellligence murdered JFK. It was not low level operatives or "renegades" who did this. The order - obviously - came from the top of U.S. military intelligence (and the outside shadow government of the Texas oil men and perhaps Rockefellers [more certain on the oil men] - both of whom had such influence in government).

I contend that it is equally obvious that Lyndon Johnson was a key player in the JFK assassination, especially after what has been revealed about him by Madeleine Brown, Barr McClellan, Billie Sol Estes, Charles Crenshaw, E. Howard Hunt and the Russians themselves.

The Russian media has been saying from day One that Texas oil men were behind the JFK assassination. By 1965 the KGB had concluded that Lyndon Johnson personally was behind the JFK assassination. I don't see why there is even a debate about these matters anymore. The Kennedys sent the Russians an emissarry William Walton in December, 1963.

Of course the "Dark Side of Camelot" by Sy Hersh is about the JFK assassination - even though both the author and a good portion of the JFK groupies have not figured it out. "Dark Side" has critical information from Hy Raskin on the toxic relationship of the Kennedys and LBJ - namely how LBJ blackmailed and strongarmed his way onto the 1960 Demo ticket. That was a fatal and weak move by JFK; it is embarrassing to the legacies of both JFK and Lyndon Johnson - JFK because it shows his weakness; LBJ because it shows his utter ruthlessness and power lust.

John Kennedy to Clark Clifford on July 13, 1960: “We’ve talked it out – me, dad, Bobby – and we’ve selected Symington as the vice president.” Kennedy asked Clark Clifford to relay that message to Symington “and find out if he’d run.” …”I and Stuart went to bed believing that we had a solid, unequivocal deal with Jack.” [Hersh, p.125]

Hy Raskin: “It was obvious to them that something extraordinary had taken place, as it was to me,” Raskin wrote. “During my entire association with the Kennedys, I could not recall any situation where a decision of major significance had been reversed in such a short period of time…. Bob [Kennedy] had always been involved in every major decision; why not this one, I pondered… I slept little that night.” [Hersh, p. 125]

John Kennedy to Clark Clifford in the morning of July 14, 1960: “I must do something that I have never done before. I made a serious deal and now I have to go back on it. I have no alternative.” Symington was out and Johnson was in. Clifford recalled observing that Kennedy looked as if he’d been up all night.” [Hersh, p. 126]

John Kennedy to Hy Raskin: “You know we had never considered Lyndon, but I was left with no choice. He and Sam Rayburn made it damn clear to me that Lyndon had to be the candidate. Those bastards were trying to frame me. They threatened me with problems and I don’t need more problems. I’m going to have enough problems with Nixon.” [Hersh, p. 126]

Raskin “The substance of this revelation was so astonishing that if it had been revealed to me by another other than Jack or Bob, I would have had trouble accepting it. Why he decided to tell me was still very mysterious, but flattering nonetheless.” [Hersh, p. 126]

The "Dark Side of Camelot" has chapters on Lyndon, Trapping Nixon (by using Cuba policy in the 1960 campaign), Executive Action, Secret Service (appalled at JFK's ridiculous sexual escapades), Missile Crisis, Vietnam. I just checked in the Epilogue it even has the story the Kennedys sending William Walton to Russia! That is over 10 years before Talbot's "Brothers."

The "Dark Side of Camelot" also shows just close Lyndon Johnson was to political execution on 11/22/63.

There were two brutal ironies on November 22.

From 'The Dark Side of Camelot' (1997) by Seymour Hersh

"That Friday started as a great day for Bobby Kennedy, and a potentially ruinous one for Vice President Lyndon Johnson. At ten o'clock in the morning, Donald Reynolds, a Washington insurance broker, walked with his lawyer into a small hearing room on Capitol Hill and began providing Burkett Van Kirk, the minority counsel of the Senate Rules Committee, with eagerly awaited evidence of unreported gift-giving to Johnson. Van Kirk had learned about Reynolds independently, but he and Bobby Kennedy had been secretly working together for weeks, through intermediaries, to accumulate evidence of payola against Johnson and Bobby Baker, Johnson's former Senate aide. Reynolds told Van Kirk and a Democratic staff member of the Rules Committee how he had listed Bobby Baker as a vice president of his insurance agency, and he claimed to have funneled off-the books cash to Baker - subsequently written off as a "business expense:' Reynolds told of making payoffs to Democratic Party officials, arranged through Baker's office in the Senate, in return for being allowed to handle the insurance on a large federal construction project. He told what little he knew of Ellen Rometsch and her associations at Baker's Quorum Club, the private club on Capitol Hill where senators and lobbyists shared drinks and other pleasures. And, finally, he told of selling life insurance to the vice president and being pressured in return to buy unnecessary advertisements on Johnson's television station in Austin, Texas - no one in Texas would be interested in buying insurance from a broker in suburban Maryland, 1,500 miles away. Reynolds also told of being compelled to provide Johnson with a stereo record player, as a kind of bonus. Bobby Baker had given the Johnson family a catalog, Reynolds testified, and Lady Bird Johnson had picked out the stereo she wanted. Reynolds was still being questioned at 2:30 P.m. when a secretary burst into the hearing room with the news from Dallas. Lyndon Johnson was now president of the United States, and no one was going to challenge his legitimacy because of a stereo set and a few thousand dollars' worth of television ads.

Burkett Van Kirk remains convinced that Johnson would have been fighting for political survival had he remained vice president. “There’s no doubt in my mind,” Van Kirk told me in an interview, “that Reynold’s testimony would have gotten Johnson out of the vice presidency.”

Burkett Van Kirk remains convinced that Johnson would have been fighting for political survival had he remained vice president. "There's no doubt in my mind," Van Kirk told me in an interview, "that Reynolds's testimony would have gotten Johnson out of the vice presidency."

Burkett Van Kirk remains convinced that Johnson would have been fighting for political survival had he remained vice president. "There's no doubt in my mind," Van Kirk told me in an interview, "that Reynolds's testimony would have gotten Johnson out of the vice presidency."

Longtime and well respected JFK researcher Ed Tatro has a 1,200 page manuscript on the JFK assassination and its title is "Urgency to Kill." As in Lyndon Johnson and his fellow conspirators had an urgency to murder JFK because soon Lyndon Johnson was going to be politically destroyed.

There are a couple of other books that are not formally JFK assassination books, yet give more insight into the JFK than all but a handful of JFK books. "Power Beyond Reason: The Mental Collapse of Lyndon Johnson" - that is all about the JFK assassination because once you read that, you will clearly understand what a psychopath Lyndon Johnson was. Ditto Lyndon B. Johnson: A Memoir by George Reedy. Reedy, a 15 year aide to LBJ, wrote that book as a way of exorcising Lyndon Johnson from his spirit. That is pretty strong stuff from someone who knew LBJ so well. In the words of Reedy, LBJ was a bully, a lout, a sadist. I think Reedy was the one to say Lyndon Johnson had the mindset of a Turkish satrap. (Maybe it was McGeorge Bundy who said this; I do know Bundy compared LBJ to Joseph Stalin!).

My list of 1,000 thousand books to read relating to the JFK assassination is not necessarily a ranking from 1-1,000 in order of worthy or unworthiness. The top 30 are some of the best. The bottom 20 are some of the worst. Everything in the middle I tried to group by author or subject matter.