RFK Jr. Defends Joe Kennedy

[Don Jeffries]

I watched a recent appearance by Robert F. Kennedy, Jr. on C-SPAN, to promote his new book. I was surprised to see him go against the establishment line not only on the assassinations, but the horrific image of his grandfather, Joseph P. Kennedy, which began being promulgated by the mainstream media and court historians in the mid-1970s or so. 

RFK, Jr. matter-of-factly stated, "No, he was not a bootlegger," and went on to label that allegation as CIA disinformation. He also brought up something I'd never heard before; he said that Joe Kennedy was on a committee (didn't specify what committee) during the 1950s, and had advocated that the clandestine services unit of the CIA be abolished. He then mentioned that during his father's 1968 presidential campaign, he too had promised to end this division. It was unclear if RFK said this publicly (I don't think so), but RFK, Jr. seemed confident about what he was saying. 

RFK, Jr. brought up the lobotomy of his Aunt Rosemary as well. I have said for a long time that this is perhaps the most unfair criticism against Joe Kennedy. As he noted, the family was not ashamed of Rosemary, and in fact included her in everything. She was presented at court along with the other children to Queen Elizabeth. Joe Kennedy was trying to help his daughter, and took a chance on a new, very expensive procedure that he was told was revolutionary and cutting edge. Somehow, this has been distorted into the old "bootlegger" purposefully destroying his daughter's brain, presumably while foaming at the mouth. 

RFK, Jr. is clearly "awake" on a number of issues. It's a real shame that he has the hereditary speech issue that plagued his grandmother Rose Kennedy. Otherwise, he would be a really dynamic politician. 

 

 

[Ron Bulman]

He goes into this in some depth in the book.  If I remember right Joe bought into a liquor company at the end of prohibition, that was the extent of his "bootlegging".  As the behest of Richard Helms, Sam Halpern spent his life besmirching the Kennedy name.

[James DiEugenio]

The committee he is asking about was the forerunner of the FIAB.  It was a civilian oversight of the CIA.

Joe was on it with, among others, Lovett and David Bruce.

From that vantage point, Joe Kennedy was very disenchanted with the leadership of the CIA.  He once said that he would not give those guys a hundred dollars a week.

It was Joe who recommended that RFK talk to Lovett in the wake of the Bay of Pigs disaster.  This is what led to Bobby finding out about the Bruce/ Lovett report, a strong attack on Allen Dulles. JFK called in Lovett and he recommended firing Allen Dulles.  JFK went beyond that and canned not just Dulles but Bissell and Cabell.

When he talked about the covert action of the CIA, that was what RFK told writer Pete Hammill during the 1968 campaign that he was going to do.

[Cliff Varnell]

 

Center for the Study of Intelligence Newsletter

Spring 1995 Issue No. 3

The Elusive ``Bruce-Lovett Report''

Judging by the number of presidential and congressional commissions, panels, boards, and committees formed to study CIA's mission and purpose, one could conclude that the Agency is one of the most studied of all federal agencies. The best known studies are closely identified with their principal authors or sponsors. Hence we have the "Church Committee'' report (1976), the "Schlesinger'' report (1971), and the "Dulles-Jackson-Correa'' report (1949). The final product of the ongoing Presidential Commission to study the future of the intelligence community will undoubtedly be remembered as the "Aspin Commission'' report.

These reports make fascinating reading as well as invaluable sources for the CIA History Staff. The Staff recently ran across a reference to another item, the so-called "Bruce-Lovett'' report, that it would very much like to read -- if we could find it! The report is mentioned in Peter Grose's recent biography Gentleman Spy: The Life of Allen Dulles [excerpts below]. According to Grose, two American elder statesmen, David Bruce and Robert Lovett, prepared a report for President Dwight Eisenhower in the fall of 1956 that criticized CIA's alleged fascination with "kingmaking'' in the Third World and complained that a "horde of CIA representatives'' was mounting foreign political intrigues at the expense of gathering hard intelligence on the Soviet Union.

The History Staff decided to get a copy of the report and see what the two former diplomats had really said. The first place to look was the CIA files on the President's Board of Consultants on Foreign Intelligence Activities (PBCFIA). Bruce and Lovett had been charter members of this blue-ribbon panel. There was no reference to such a report. We then checked with the Eisenhower Library and National Archives, which holds the PBCFIA records, but came up emptyhanded. The Virginia Historical Society, the custodian of David Bruce's papers, did not have a copy either.

Having reached a dead end, we consulted the author of the Dulles biography, Peter Grose. Grose told us that he had not seen the report itself but had used notes made from it by historian Arthur M. Schlesinger for Robert F. Kennedy and His Times (1978) [excerpts below]. Professor Schlesinger informed us that that he had seen the report in Robert Kennedy's papers before they were deposited at the John F. Kennedy Presidential Library in Boston. He had loaned Grose his notes and does not have a copy of these notes or of the report itself.

This raises an interesting question: how did a report on the CIA written for President Eisenhower in 1956 end up in the RFK papers? We think we have the answer. Robert Lovett was asked to testify before Gen. Maxwell Taylor's board of inquiry on the 1961 Bay of Pigs operation. Robert Kennedy was on that board and may have asked Lovett for a copy of the report. But we do not have the answer to another question: where is the "Bruce-Lovett'' report? The JFK Presidential Library has searched the RFK papers without success. Surely the report will turn up some day, even if one government agency and four separate archives so far haven't been able to find it. But this episode helps to prove one of the few Iron Laws of History: the official who keeps the best records gets to tell the story.

 

---

Robert Kennedy and His Times, Arthur M. Schlesinger, Jr., 1978.

[pp.455-458]

Eisenhower, reluctant to commit conventional armed force, used the CIA as the routine instrument of American intervention abroad. Covert-action operators, working on relatively small budgets, helped overthrow governments deemed pro-Communist in Iran (1953) and Guatemala (1954), failed to do so in Indonesia (1958), helped install supposedly prowestern governments in Egypt (1954) and Laos (1959) and planned the overthrow and murder of Castro in 1960.

Congress and the press looked on these activities, insofar as they knew about them, with complacency. Only one group had grave misgivings and informed criticism: expressed, however, in the deepest secrecy. This, improbably, was the President's Board of Consultants on Foreign Intelligence Activities, created by Eisenhower in 1956 and composed of unimpeachably respectable private citizens.

Almost at once the board had appointed a panel, led by Robert Lovett and David Bruce, to take a look at CIA's covert operations. "Bruce was very much disturbed," Lovett told the Cuba board of inquiry in 1961. "He approached it from the standpoint of 'what right have we to go barging around into other countries buying newspapers and handing money to opposition parties or supporting a candidate for this, that or the other office?' He felt this was an outrogeous interference with friendly countries. . . . He got me alarmed, so instead of completing the report in thirty days we look two months or more"³⁸

The 1956 report, written in Bruce's spirited style, condemned

the increased mingling in the internal affairs of other nations of bright, highly graded young men who must be doing something all the time to justify their reason for being. ... Busy, moneyed and privileged, [the CIA] likes its "King Making." responsibility (the intrigue is fascinating -- considerable self-satisfaction, sometimes with applause, derives from "successes" -- no charge is made for "failures" -- and the whole business is very much simpler than collecting covert intelligence on the USSR through the usual CIA methods!).

Bruce and Lovett could discover no reliable system of control. "There are always, of course, on record the twin, well-born purposes of 'frustrating the Soviets' and keeping others 'pro-western' oriented. Under these almost any [covert] action can be and is being justified." Once having been conceived, the final approval given to any project (at informal lunch meetings of the OCB [Operations Coordinating Board] inner group, can, at best, be described as pro forma." One consequence was that "no one, other than those in the CIA immediately concerned with their day to day operation, has any detailed knowledge of what is going on," With "a horde of CIA representatives" swarming around the planet, CIA covert action was exerting "significant, almost unilateral influences . . . on the actual formulation of our foreign policies . . . sometimes completely unknown" to the local American ambassador. "We are sure," the report added, "that the supporters of the 1948 decision to launch this government on a positive [covert] program could not possibly have foreseen the ramifications of the operations which have resulted from it." Bruce and Lovett concluded with an exasperated plea:

Should not sumeone, somewhere in an authoritative position in our government on a continuing basis, be . . . calculating . . . the long-range wisdom of activities which have entailed our virtual abandonment of the international "golden rule," and which, if successful to the degree claimed for them, are responsible in a great measure for stirring up the turmoil and raising the doubts about us that exist in many countries of the world today? . . . Where will we be tomorrow?³⁹

In December 1956 the full board passed on to Eisenhower its concern about "the extremely informal and somewhat exclusive methods" used in the handling of clandestine projects.⁴⁰ (Among those signing this statemem was another board member, Joseph P. Kennedy. "I know that outfit," the ambassador said after the Bay of Pigs, "and I wouldn't pay them a hundred bucks a week. It's a lucky thing they were found out early.")⁴¹ In February 1957 the board pointed out to the White House that clandestine operations absorbed more than 80 percent of the CIA budget and that few or the projects received the formal approval of the so-called 5412 Special Group, the National Security Council's review mechanism. The CIA's Directorate of Plans (i.e., covert action), the board said, "is operating for the most part on an autonomous and free-wheeling basis in highly critical areas." All too often the State Department knew "little or nothing" of what lhe CIA was doing. "In some quarters this leads to situations which are almost unbelievable because the operations being carried out by the Deputy Director of Plans are sometimes in direct conflict with the normal operations being carried out by the Department of State."⁴²

. . .

The board pressed its campaign in 1959 and 1960. Allen Dulles made minor organizational changes. In 1959 the 5412 Special Group began for the first time to meet regularly.⁴⁷ The board was not satisfied, then or later. When Dulles, Bissell and J. D. Esterline briefed the board late in 1960 on the Cuban project, its members, Lovett particularly, registered dismay, especially over the manner in which the planning was being administered.⁴⁸ In its last written report to Eisenhower, in January 1961, the board said grimly: "We have been unable to conclude that, on balance, all of the covert action programs undertaken by CIA up to this time have been worth the risk or the great expenditure of manpower, money and other resources involved. In addition. we believe that CIA's concentration on political, psychological and related covert action activities have tended to detract substantially from the execution of its primary intelligence-gathering mission. We suggest, accordingly, that there should be a total reassessment of our covert action policies."⁴⁹ "I have never felt," Lovett told the Cuba board of inquiry, "that the Congress of the United States ever intended to give the United States Intelligence Agency authority to conduct operations all over the earth."⁵⁰

The Board of Consultants had no visible impact. Allen Dulles ignored its recommendations. Eisenhower gave it no support. But its testimony demolishes the myth that the CIA was a punctilious and docile organization. acting only in response to express instruction from higher authority. Like the FBI, it was a runaway agency. in this case endowed with men professionally trained in deception, a wide choice of weapons, reckless purposes, a global charter, maximum funds and minimum accountability.

[Schlesinger's notes 38-50 not yet available.]

 

---

Gentleman Spy: The Life of Allen Dulles, Peter Grose, 1994.

[pp. 444-48]

Eisenhower, however, did not let Hoover's broader concern drop. One weekend late in 1955 a presidential helicopter flew Allen to Gettysburg, where Eisenhower was recuperating from his heart attack, so the two men could have an uninterrupted -- and unrecorded -- chat as they drove back together to Camp David. The president's latest idea, he informed Allen, was to name a high-level board of distinguished but discreet private citizens to keep an ongoing monitor on intelligence operations. Allen had no choice but to agree, probably assuming that he could manage this group as he had all the others that had looked in upon the unfamiliar plays of the Great Game. The President's Board of Consultants on Foreign Intelligence Activities held its first meeting with Eisenhower on January 24, 1956.³²

__________

32 Diary series, Nov. 1955, folders 1 and 2; DDE personal, 1955-56 folder 2, Eisenhower Library.

Under the persistent leadership of James Killian, president of Massachusetts Institute of Technology, the consultants set upon their charge with unexpected diligence. They tackled the problems still plaguing CIA relations with the military intelligence services and sought to nudge the civilian director into a more forceful role in the bureaucratic confrontations that Allen always sought to avoid. They examined the various directives guiding the work of the intelligence services and the status of CIA representatives in relation to the American ambassadors in foreign capitals. Inevitably they turned to the psychological and political warfare programs, which they found to be consuming much of the agency's resources: more than half of CIA personnel and over 80 percent of the budget were said to be dedicated to clandestine operations. Killian delegated two of his consultants, Robert Lovett and David Bruce, to investigate yet again Allen's covert action programs, the 10/2 operations against vicious communism.

Nothing about Lovett and Bruce could have upset Allen as he assembled his defenses against this latest inquiry into matters he preferred to keep hidden from outsiders. Both men were of the Eastern Establishment and had been privy to the 10/2 concept from the start. Lovett, a partner in the investment banking firm of Brown Brothers Harriman and a protege of Henry Stimson in the War Department during World War II, was a sophisticated Wall Street colleague of Allen's and an old hand at political warfare.

As for David Bruce, he was among Allen's oldest and closest friends. His older brother had been a classmate at Princeton, and as a young diplomat in Paris, Allen had helped the younger Bruce get his first job in diplomacy, as a courier to the Peace Conference. Bruce was not yet part of the elite diplomatic club of Bern and Paris, but in Calvin Coolidge's Washington he and Allen spent countless bachelor weekends together while Clover and the girls were escaping the summer heat. Independently-wealthy, Bruce had remained in the diplomatic profession after Allen went off to make money on Wall Street.* Pressures of time and distance had separated the two friends in recent years, but Allen had little reason to doubt Bruce's reliability in assessing the sensitive matters that had become so central to his, and CIA's, preoccupations.

__________

* To Bruce had gone the post of ambassador in Paris that Allen himself had briefly hoped for in 1948.

Allen could hardly have been more wrong in his nonchalance. Lovett later recalled that Bruce "was very much disturbed" as he started looking into the CIA; he asked, presaging the questions of generations to come, "What right have we to go barging around into other countries, buying newspapers and handing money to opposition parties or supporting a candidate for this, that or the other office?" As Lovett reported:

We felt some alarm that here was an extremely high-powered machine, well endowed with money, and the question was how could any Director of Central Intelligence navigate, fly, drop the bomb, get back and say what he had seen and everything else. . . . The idea of these young, enthusiastic fellows possessed of great funds being sent out in some country, getting themselves involved in local politics, and then backing some local man and from that starting an operation, scared the hell out of us.³³

__________

33 Lovett in the subsequent Taylor Board of Inquiry, May 11, 1961; the transcript of this session remains classified, though the bulk of the ensuing report has been made public. Aurthur M. Schlesinger, Jr., found a copy of the secret manuscript in the Robert Kennedy Papers before they were deposited at the John F. Kennedy Library under restricted access; see his Robert Kennedy, p. 455.

If any living man was capable of measuring how far Allen had drifted from his beginnings as a cautious and judicious diplomat, it was David Bruce. "He got me alarmed," Lovett said, "so instead of completing the report in thirty days we took two months or more."

The 1956 Bruce-Lovett report on covert action stands decades later as the most sweeping official assault on the CIA's propensities to dabble in the politics and social frameworks of other lands. "We are sure that the supporters of the 1948 decision to launch this government on a positive [psychological and political warfare] program could not possibly have foreseen the ramifications of the operations which have resulted from it. No one, other than those in the CIA immediately concerned with their day-to-day operation, has any detailed knowledge of what is going on."³⁴

__________

34 The Bruce-Lovett report is still tightly classified; the reference staff of the Eisenhower Libary told me they have no knowledge of such a document. Once again, it was only because of Professor Schlesinger's unrestricted accesss to the Robert Kennedy Papers that these excepts can be published. I am grateful to him for providing me with the note he took from this rich file of intelligence matters. His own discussion of the report is in Robert Kennedy, pp. 454-57.

Covert actions were in the hands, Bruce and Lovett asserted, of "a horde of CIA representatives (largely under State or Defense cover), . . . bright, highly graded young men who must be doing something all the time to justify their reason for being." In a particularly cruel dig at Allen's penchant for favoring his special proteges, they added that "by the very nature of the personnel situation" many of these CIA men were "politically immature." Mindful of recent experiences in Iran and Guatemala, they concluded:

The CIA, busy, monied and privileged, likes its "kingmaking" responsibility. The intrigue is fascinating -- considerable self-satisfaction, sometimes with applause, derives from "successes" -- no charge is made for "failures" -- and the whole business is very much simpler than collective covert intelligence on the USSR through the usual CIA methods! . . . There are always, of course, on record the twin, well-born purposes of "frustrating the Soviets" and keeping others "pro-Western" oriented. Under these, almost any [psychological and political] action can be, and is being, justified.

As a general salvo, this would have been quite enough to rivet attention. But then Bruce and Lovett plunged without mercy into specifics. For any given project, they said, final pro forma approval from outside the agency came only at informal luncheon meetings. "In most instances, approval of any new project would appear to comprise simply the endorsement of [Allen's] proposal, usually without demurrer, from individuals preoccupied with other important matters of their own." The two intrepid investigators did not hesitate to raise the personal circumstance that even Eisenhower chose to resist, the fact that Allen and Foster were, after all, brothers, in a relationship of unique access and mutual trust. "At times, the Secretary of State/DCI brother relationship may arbitrarily set 'the US position,' . . . whether through personal arrangement between the Secretary of State and the DCI (deciding between them on anyone occasion to use what they regard as the best 'assets' available) or undertaken at the personal discretion of the DCl." They elaborated on the grievance of State Department professionals, frustrated careerists in diplomacy who could seldom get Foster's attention in the office.

The State Department people feel that perhaps the greatest contribution this Board could make would be to bring to the attention of the President the significant, almost unilateral, influences that CIA [covert] activities have on the actual formulation of our foreign policies. . . .

CIA support, and its maneuvering of local news media, labor groups, political figures and parties and other activities, are sometimes completely unknown to or only hazily recognized by [the local ambassadors]. . . . It is somewhat difficult to understand why anyone less than the senior U.S. representative. . . should deal directly with [the head of a foreign government]. . . . One obvious, inevitable result is to divide US foreign policy resources and to incline the foreigner, often the former "opposition" now come to power (and who knows with whom he is dealing) to play one US agency against the other, or to use whichever suits his current purpose.

The report concluded with a call for '''unentanglement' of our involvements, and a more rational application of our activities than is now apparent."

Should not someone, somewhere in an authoritative position in our government, on a continuing basis, be counting the immediate costs of disappointments, . . . calculating the impacts on our international position, and keeping in mind the long range wisdom of activities which have entailed our virtual abandonment of the international "golden rule," and which, if successful to the degree claimed for them, are responsible in a great measure for stirring up the turmoil and raising the doubts about us that exist in many countries of the world today? What of the effects on our present alliances? What will happen tomorrow?

The Bruce-Lovett report was submitted in top secrecy the autumn of 1956, just as the triple crises of Suez, Hungary, and Foster's illness were smothering the agendas of harassed policymakers. Though its immediate effect was thus muffled, its impact endured, anticipating the charges of an "invisible government," the criticisms of irresponsible procedures and inept personnel that would resound against the CIA in the eras of Watergate in the 1970s and the Iran/Contra deception of the 1980s. To be sure, other branches of the agency -- the National Estimates staff, the intelligence collection operations, and such -- emerged relatively unscathed, even praised. But the centerpiece of Allen's CIA, the "Plans" Directorate for Cold War covert action, was mercilessly exposed to the scrutiny of Eisenhower's top policymakers.

Allen's first reaction, at a moment of policy and personal crises, was as muffled as his friends' assault, but when the full board of consultants under Killian adopted the Bruce-Lovett report at the end of the year, he responded with a deft diversionary tactic. He was considering, he told the president in January 1957, hiring one of Eisenhower's trusted military colleagues to manage intelligence administration and collection, so he himself could concentrate on covert action programs. Eisenhower muttered merely that he would prefer it the other way around, and Allen dropped the idea. Goodpaster told historian Michael Beschloss years later that the president realized he had to make a choice; "if he wanted Dulles to stay, he wasn't going to be able to force this upon him. At that point, he decided it would be better to have Dulles stay, and keep the pressure on him."³⁵

__________

35 Memorandum of conversation, Jan. 17, 1957, diary series, Eisenhower Library; Beschloss, Mayday, p. 133.

[Paul Brancato]

Ive been reading the book. I think it’s fantastic.

[James DiEugenio]

I think in a sense this is a continuation of his book on the Skakel case.

There, he got very angry with the shoddy work of Dunne and Furhman and the media's refusal to call them out on it.  And so he first did that long article for Atlantic Monthly, and he then did Framed.  Which was timed quite well.

He then did this one. He is the only member of his family to do this kind of thing.

[W. Niederhut]

       This historical material reminds me of a related first-hand historical narrative, told from the perspective of a USAF briefing officer working with Dulles-- Col. L. Fletcher Prouty's, The Secret Team.

        Prouty was, obviously, concerned about the untold history of Dulles's "secret team," but he was also troubled by the CIA's revisionist history of the Kennedy administration-- the Bay of Pigs, Vietnam, and, of course, 11/22/63.

[Ron Bulman]

7 hours ago, Paul Brancato said:

Ive been reading the book. I think it’s fantastic.

The salamander and rattlesnake put in perspective.  The reveal near the end does as well, his own and why he couldn't pursue things politically if he wanted to. 

[Robert Harper]

21 hours ago, Paul Brancato said:

Ive been reading the book. I think it’s fantastic.

I second that. He writes clearly and is unsentimental in tone. He lets facts speak for themselves. He is particularly good on the family dynamics - activity, loyalty, pursuit of excellence, the gospels. Reading of the routines of family life had a personal impact, because of its specificity.  You cannot be ignorant of the principles involved, when your Mother attends daily Mass and often says the rosary. Any couple that stays together and raises a family of 9 is loved by their children.It is obvious such was the case with the Kennedy family and Robert Jr. captures small gems of that living. As one of nine children myself - whose ancestors also came from Wexford County and who also lived in Massachusetts and New York and Washington DC growing up, I might add that he evokes a sense of the authentic.

On film, when JFK rises a bit from his seat, and tips his hat to his father as he passes him in the stands on Inauguration Day, he's doing what most sons of such fathers would do I imagine. I have not encountered too many depictions of the activity of a busy, interesting family life in modern culture. Off the top of my head, only Susan Minot's book Monkeys or Woody Allen's Hannah and Her Sisters, come to mind.

Once you know how the CIA used the media - and still does - it's not hard to see them orchestrate a diminishment of the father or the son.The recent biography by David Nasaw of Joe Sr. dismissed the bootleg stories, and his grandson echoes that. He was a bright and driven young guy from the family's 3rd generation in America, who became the country's youngest bank president at age 25. He was picked to head the SEC because FDR knew that this newcomer could outfox the foxes on Wall Street. He and his wife stayed together for life and raised 9 children, who were guided to the production of value in all areas of life including public service. The Bush family may have created a longer serving dynasty, but they can't come close to the fabric of the Kennedy dynasty. This son of sons of Ireland, gave value to psychic income as well as to the other kind of income; they understood both sides of Adam Smith  - that the marketplace and the moral sentiments are - or should be - intertwined in any transaction.

[Ron Bulman]

9 hours ago, Robert Harper said:

I second that. He writes clearly and is unsentimental in tone. He lets facts speak for themselves. He is particularly good on the family dynamics - activity, loyalty, pursuit of excellence, the gospels. Reading of the routines of family life had a personal impact, because of its specificity.  You cannot be ignorant of the principles involved, when your Mother attends daily Mass and often says the rosary. Any couple that stays together and raises a family of 9 is loved by their children.It is obvious such was the case with the Kennedy family and Robert Jr. captures small gems of that living. As one of nine children myself - whose ancestors also came from Wexford County and who also lived in Massachusetts and New York and Washington DC growing up, I might add that he evokes a sense of the authentic.

On film, when JFK rises a bit from his seat, and tips his hat to his father as he passes him in the stands on Inauguration Day, he's doing what most sons of such fathers would do I imagine. I have not encountered too many depictions of the activity of a busy, interesting family life in modern culture. Off the top of my head, only Susan Minot's book Monkeys or Woody Allen's Hannah and Her Sisters, come to mind.

Once you know how the CIA used the media - and still does - it's not hard to see them orchestrate a diminishment of the father or the son.The recent biography by David Nasaw of Joe Sr. dismissed the bootleg stories, and his grandson echoes that. He was a bright and driven young guy from the family's 3rd generation in America, who became the country's youngest bank president at age 25. He was picked to head the SEC because FDR knew that this newcomer could outfox the foxes on Wall Street. He and his wife stayed together for life and raised 9 children, who were guided to the production of value in all areas of life including public service. The Bush family may have created a longer serving dynasty, but they can't come close to the fabric of the Kennedy dynasty. This son of sons of Ireland, gave value to psychic income as well as to the other kind of income; they understood both sides of Adam Smith  - that the marketplace and the moral sentiments are - or should be - intertwined in any transaction.

Robert, as you probably know the msm ignored the book.  Your excellent review could help expose it to others.  Have you posted it on amazon if that's where you bought it?