David Talbot's New Book Brothers

[John Simkin]

Review of "Brothers":

http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=206...&refer=muse

Robert Kennedy Hunts for JFK's Killer in Stirring "Brothers"

By Celestine Bohlen

June 13 (Bloomberg) -- Hours after John F. Kennedy was shot dead in Dallas on Nov. 22, 1963, Robert Kennedy, then U.S. Attorney General, launched a quiet investigation into what he believed was a conspiracy. In "Brothers,'' David Talbot provides new details of that bitter, poignant quest, which ended with RFK's own shooting in Los Angeles on June 5, 1968.

Talbot, founder and former editor of online magazine Salon, doesn't attempt to solve the two assassinations. In fact, his 478-page book is mercifully free of ballistic analyses and ``second- or third-gunmen'' theories.

Subtitled "The Hidden History of the Kennedy Years,'' this account transports the reader back to another America -- to a time when the Cold War fed paranoia and racial injustice stoked political passions. The failed Bay of Pigs invasion in 1961 added another toxic element, as CIA operatives and Cuban exiles continued plotting against Castro and, Talbot hints, perhaps against the Kennedys, too.

``Cuba was the Iraq of its day, no more than a swath of sugar cane afloat in the Caribbean, but to the national security elite who determine such things, it was where the forces of good and evil were arrayed against each other,'' Talbot writes.

Talbot focuses on the why of the two assassinations, instead of fixating on the who and the how. Why, he asks, were the Kennedys so hated by so many powerful people, from Teamsters leader Jimmy Hoffa to FBI director J. Edgar Hoover, from U.S. generals to CIA agents, from segregationists to anti-Castro Cubans? The clues to their murders undoubtedly lie at the intersection of these tangled agendas, Talbot argues.

Warren Commission

Publicly, Bobby Kennedy chose not to question the findings of the Warren Commission, which concluded that Lee Harvey Oswald acted alone in the killing, a view upheld in Vincent Bugliosi's new 1,632-page account, "Reclaiming History: The Assassination of President John F. Kennedy.''

Privately, RFK and his associates followed up leads, and kept track of independent investigations, Talbot shows: In February 1967, Kennedy himself placed a call to the home of a New Orleans coroner to check on the autopsy of a key suspect in the conspiracy case built by prosecutor Jim Garrison.

Many Kennedy associates interviewed by Talbot are quoted as saying JFK was the victim of a conspiracy. Kenny O'Donnell, a witness to the assassination, says he thinks the presidential cavalcade drove into an ambush. Richard Goodwin, later a speechwriter for Lyndon Johnson, still believes it was a plot.

"We know the CIA was involved, and the Mafia,'' he tells Talbot. "We all know that.''

It isn't clear who Bobby Kennedy thought the assassins were. His plan, according to friends quoted by Talbot, was to wait until he became president, which would have empowered him to order the kind of investigation he thought was needed.

"There's nothing I can do about it,'' he told Goodwin in 1966, according to Talbot. "Not now.''

Talbot, who volunteered at age 16 to work on Bobby Kennedy's presidential campaign, doesn't hide his admiration for the two brothers. This is perhaps the book's biggest flaw. In Talbot's view, the Kennedys could do no wrong. Bobby's ties to the Cuban plotters and JFK's links to the Mafia during the 1960 election are all somehow above suspicion.

Where Talbot succeeds is in casting key episodes and players in the Kennedy drama in a new light. He provides a vivid account of JFK's fury against members of the national security establishment after the Bay of Pigs fiasco -- and of their equally virulent distrust of him and his brother.

The 1960s, a decade of strong emotions, ended in shattered dreams. Since JFK's assassination, Talbot argues, the U.S. has lost its way.

"From Dallas to Vietnam to Iraq, the truth has been consistently avoided,'' he concludes. "If a president can be shot down with impunity at high noon in the sunny streets of an American city, then any kind of deceit is possible.''

(Celestine Bohlen writes for Bloomberg News. The opinions expressed are her own.)

To contact the writer of this review: Celestine Bohlen in Paris at Cbohlen1@bloomberg.net .

[John Simkin]

David's book has been reviewed by Matthew Dallek for the Washington Post (Sunday, June 17, 2007)

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/conte...7061401634.html

In June 1964, Robert Kennedy was in Poland when a student asked him who was responsible for John F. Kennedy's assassination. "There is no question that [Lee Harvey Oswald] did it on his own and by himself," Kennedy unequivocally replied. Privately, however, he had his doubts. Confiding his suspicions to a few confidantes, Kennedy became "one of the first -- and among the staunchest -- believers in a conspiracy," David Talbot writes. He instructed aides to investigate the killing and, had he lived and won the White House in 1968, he would have pursued these suspicions more vigorously.

Talbot, the founder and former editor-in-chief of Salon, has written a fast-paced narrative of Kennedy's search for his brother's killers. Talbot is careful to sidestep the question of who was actually responsible for the assassination. He dismisses the lone gunman theory as a crock and wonders about the CIA, Cuba and Mafia involvement. He bases his conclusions on more than 150 interviews he did with aides to the Kennedys, relatives of ex-CIA agents and anti-Castro exiles. His sources believe for the most part that Oswald didn't work alone, and their suppositions form the heart of Talbot's Manichean chronicle of two brothers who battled forces of darkness for the soul of modern America.

By 1963, Talbot says, President Kennedy "was determined to demilitarize relations between the nuclear powers before catastrophe could strike" and "was no longer a Cold War liberal." What's more, Kennedy had confronted America's "war establishment." In Talbot's view, the president wanted peace with communists across the globe, enraging the CIA and the Joint Chiefs of Staff. Some Cubans had also come to loathe Kennedy for refusing to liberate Cuba, and the Mafia scorned his brother, who led a crackdown on organized crime as attorney general.

Although his claims of Kennedy's dovish intentions are exaggerated, Talbot does several things well in this book. First, he offers a solid overview of the conspiracy theories surrounding Kennedy's 1963 assassination. Second, he reveals that some trusted Kennedy aides believed in a conspiracy; that a few Congressional investigators felt that the CIA and other government institutions stonewalled the inquiry; and that right-wing criticism of Kennedy on such issues as communism and civil rights was such a staple of early '60s politics that the Kennedys began to fear for their lives at the hands of home-grown extremists. Finally, Talbot reveals that Robert Kennedy had his doubts, hidden from public view, about the Warren Report. He ably recounts the more progressive impulses of both brothers -- detailing President Kennedy's admirable restraint during the 1962 Cuban Missile Crisis and Robert's stirring worldwide crusade against the twin evils of racial injustice and economic deprivation -- a campaign waged from Johannesburg to Indianapolis.

Yet the evidence of a conspiracy in Dallas is circumstantial and thin. Talbot interviews friends and relatives of CIA operatives, who were possibly involved in the plot to kill the president. He depicts higher-ups in the "national security bureaucracy" who said nasty things about Kennedy and presumably had murderous intentions, and he quotes from Kennedy loyalists who want to get to the bottom of the crime. But none of this adds up to a conspiracy. Because Robert and some of his aides doubted that Oswald acted alone doesn't mean that a plot existed. Nor does it follow that verbal sniping by CIA agents or the Joint Chiefs is evidence of government involvement in the murder or a cover-up.

Talbot is convinced that the Kennedy brothers were assassinated because of what they believed and what they did. They sought to usher in an era of nuclear arms control, advance social justice, and attack the criminal underworld. They confronted the most sinister impulses in American politics -- and were cut down. Thus, the assassination of each man is infused with meaning. But history doesn't normally unfold in such compellingly moral patterns.

Conspiracy buffs and Warren Commission critics are likely to praise Brothers as a courageous book -- a stiff challenge to the mainstream media and complacent political establishment. Indeed, Talbot's book is among the more engaging works in the JFK-conspiracy literature. But there is little here to establish a convincing link between Kennedy's 1963 murder and his brother's assassination five years later, and it is hard to trace the convoluted motivations, connections and whereabouts of the various possible plotters who allegedly were pulling the strings in Dallas. In the end, then, it is unlikely that Brothers will alter the terms of the assassination debate: A majority of Americans will continue to believe that there was a conspiracy in Dallas. But the historical evidence -- as Vincent Bugliosi's newly released Reclaiming History: The Assassination of President John F. Kennedy shows -- will continue to point to a lone gunman. ·

[Pat Speer]

The Washington Post review is maddening and incredibly insulting. Talbot can't write a book about RFK's suspicions of a conspiracy without some nimrod assuring us that RFK was wrong and that Bugliosi has solved the case? What a bunch of bs!!! While I still have my doubts about Mockingbird, stuff like this really makes me wonder.

If someone wrote a book about Nixon's suspicions that the CIA set him up in Watergate, should the reviewer go out of his way to assure the readers that Bob Woodward says it isn't true? Review a book on its merits, not on whether the characters in the book agree with your world view.

I mean, c'mon, should a review of a book about the Civil War go out of its way to tell the reader that Lincoln's belief that God was on his side was misguided, because there really is no God?

Dallek's insistence that this book is part of the conspiracy literature demands a response from David. (P.S. Dallek wouldn't be related to conspiracy-nay-sayer Robert Dallek, would he? If so, then he had a far-greater conflict of interest than Jeff Morley ever had.)

[Dawn Meredith]

David's book has been reviewed by Matthew Dallek for the Washington Post (Sunday, June 17, 2007)

/color]

I'm sure Matthew Dallek has not ever read Bugliosi's book. So much for his "historical evidence".

Note the name. No doubt he's a relative (son?) of anti-conspiracy historian Robert Dallek.

Then what did we expect from Operation Mockingbird Washington Post? He likely did not read Brothers either.

Dawn

[William Kelly]

David's book has been reviewed by Matthew Dallek for the Washington Post (Sunday, June 17, 2007)

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/conte...7061401634.html

BK: I MUST RESPOND TO MATTHEW DALLEK'S REVIEW, AS I MUST TO BUGLIOSI AND ALL CONTRARIANS, JUST TO MAKE SURE I'M ON SOLID LOGICAL FOOTING.

In June 1964, Robert Kennedy was in Poland when a student asked him who was responsible for John F. Kennedy's assassination. "There is no question that [Lee Harvey Oswald] did it on his own and by himself," Kennedy unequivocally replied. Privately, however, he had his doubts. Confiding his suspicions to a few confidantes, Kennedy became "one of the first -- and among the staunchest -- believers in a conspiracy," David Talbot writes. He instructed aides to investigate the killing and, had he lived and won the White House in 1968, he would have pursued these suspicions more vigorously.

Talbot, the founder and former editor-in-chief of Salon, has written a fast-paced narrative of Kennedy's search for his brother's killers. Talbot is careful to sidestep the question of who was actually responsible for the assassination. He dismisses the lone gunman theory as a crock

BK: I DON'T THINK DT JUST DISMISSES THE LONE GUNMAN THEORY AS A CROCK THOUGH CERTAINLY HE BELIEVES IT IS ONE. THE WAY I READ BROTHERS, DT SAYS THAT REGARDLESS OF WHAT HAPPENED IN DALLAS, THOSE IN DC IMMEDIATELY SUSPECTED A CONSPRACY/COUP, EVEN IF IT WAS ONLY ONE GUNMAN. THE CASE FOR CONSPIRACY DOESN'T NECESSATE MORE THAN ONE GUNMAN. HIS POSITION IS THAT THERE IS "MORE TO OSWALD" THAN WE KNOW.

and wonders about the CIA, Cuba and Mafia involvement. He bases his conclusions on more than 150 interviews he did with aides to the Kennedys, relatives of ex-CIA agents and anti-Castro exiles. His sources believe for the most part that Oswald didn't work alone, and their suppositions form the heart of Talbot's Manichean chronicle of two brothers who battled forces of darkness for the soul of modern America.

By 1963, Talbot says, President Kennedy "was determined to demilitarize relations between the nuclear powers before catastrophe could strike" and "was no longer a Cold War liberal." What's more, Kennedy had confronted America's "war establishment." In Talbot's view, the president wanted peace with communists across the globe, enraging the CIA and the Joint Chiefs of Staff. Some Cubans had also come to loathe Kennedy for refusing to liberate Cuba, and the Mafia scorned his brother, who led a crackdown on organized crime as attorney general.

Although his claims of Kennedy's dovish intentions are exaggerated,

PLEASE READ JUNE 10 AU SPEECH FOR EXAGERATION OF DOVISH INTENTIONS.

Talbot does several things well in this book. First, he offers a solid overview of the conspiracy theories surrounding Kennedy's 1963 assassination. Second, he reveals that some trusted Kennedy aides believed in a conspiracy; that a few Congressional investigators felt that the CIA and other government institutions stonewalled the inquiry; and that right-wing criticism of Kennedy on such issues as communism and civil rights was such a staple of early '60s politics that the Kennedys began to fear for their lives at the hands of home-grown extremists. Finally, Talbot reveals that Robert Kennedy had his doubts, hidden from public view, about the Warren Report. He ably recounts the more progressive impulses of both brothers -- detailing President Kennedy's admirable restraint during the 1962 Cuban Missile Crisis and Robert's stirring worldwide crusade against the twin evils of racial injustice and economic deprivation -- a campaign waged from Johannesburg to Indianapolis.

Yet the evidence of a conspiracy in Dallas is circumstantial and thin.

TALBOT DOES NOT DEAL WITH ANY OF THE EVIDENCE OF CONSPIRACY IN DALLAS, BUT ONLY PRESENTS THE CIRCUMSTANCES ON A WIDER SCALE AND SHOWS HOW A CONSPIRACY FITS IN WITH THE BIG PICTURE.

Talbot interviews friends and relatives of CIA operatives, who were possibly involved in the plot to kill the president. He depicts higher-ups in the "national security bureaucracy" who said nasty things about Kennedy and presumably had murderous intentions, and he quotes from Kennedy loyalists who want to get to the bottom of the crime. But none of this adds up to a conspiracy. Because Robert and some of his aides doubted that Oswald acted alone doesn't mean that a plot existed. Nor does it follow that verbal sniping by CIA agents or the Joint Chiefs is evidence of government involvement in the murder or a cover-up.

Talbot is convinced that the Kennedy brothers were assassinated because of what they believed and what they did. They sought to usher in an era of nuclear arms control, advance social justice, and attack the criminal underworld. They confronted the most sinister impulses in American politics -- and were cut down. Thus, the assassination of each man is infused with meaning. But history doesn't normally unfold in such compellingly moral patterns.

THE ALTERNATIVE IS THAT THE ASSASSIN WAS A HOMICIDAL MANIAC/REAL NUT CASE AND KILLED THE PRESIDENT FOR HIS OWN PSYCO MOTIVES THAT HAVE NO BASIS IN REALITY AND THUS THE MURDER WAS AN ACCIDENT OF HISTORY, AN ANONOMALLY THAT DOESN'T FIT IN THE WITH THE POLITICAL-HISTORICAL CONTEXT OF THE DAY.

IT IS NOT CTS BUT THE LNTS WHO REFUSE TO RECOGNIZE THE REAL MEANING OF JFK'S MURDER -THAT IT WAS INFUSED WITH MEANING - THAT THOSE WITH THE POWER CAN KILL THE PRESIDENT AND NOT ONLY GET AWAY WITH IT BUT TELL US THAT THERE'S NOTHING WE CAN DO ABOUT IT. THAT'S MEANING.

Conspiracy buffs and Warren Commission critics are likely to praise Brothers as a courageous book -- a stiff challenge to the mainstream media and complacent political establishment. Indeed, Talbot's book is among the more engaging works in the JFK-conspiracy literature. But there is little here to establish a convincing link between Kennedy's 1963 murder and his brother's assassination five years later,

I TOO ONCE FELT WAS NO CONNECTION, AND REFUSED TO LEARN THE DETAILS OF RFK'S DEATH, CONCENTRATING ON SOLVING ONE MURDER AT A TIME, BUT OTHERS - NOTEABLY PHIL MELANSON, JOHN JUDGE, GERALD POSNER, LISA PEASE, SHANE O'SULLIVAN AND LARRY HANCOCK THOUGHT OTHERWISE, AND NOW I TOO AM CONVINCED THAT THE RESOLUTION OF ONE WILL LEAD DIRECTLY TO THE RESOLUTION OF THE OTHER.

and it is hard to trace the convoluted motivations, connections and whereabouts of the various possible plotters who allegedly were pulling the strings in Dallas.

HARD TO TRACE AND CONVOLUTED INDEED, BUT THAT DOESN'T MEAN THAT WE, OR MORE IMPORTANTLY THOSE RESPONSIBLE FOR INVESTIGATING SUCH CRIMES

DON'T HAVE AN OBLIGATION TO DETERMINE THE WHEREABOUTS, CONNECTIONS AND MOTIVES OF THOSE RESPONSIBLE. IF IT WASN'T SO HARD IT WOULD BE EASY AND DONE, AND I'M SURE THE WASHINGTON POST WOULD HELP OUT.

ONE OF DT'S BEST BROADSIDE SALVOS IS RESERVED DESERVINGLY FOR BEN BRADLEE, WHO HE GETS TO ADMIT THAT HE WASN'T IN A POSITION TO DIRECT THE RESOURCES OF THE WASHINGTON POST TO INVESTIGATE HIS BEST FRIEND'S MURDER BECAUSE OF POLITICS, AND TO ADMIT THAT "IT WOULD HAVE BEEN FANTASTIC" IF HIS PAPER COULD HAVE SOLVED THE CRIME, BUT ALAS, THEY DIDN'T EVEN TRY.

In the end, then, it is unlikely that Brothers will alter the terms of the assassination debate: A majority of Americans will continue to believe that there was a conspiracy in Dallas.

DAVID TALBOT'S BOOK IS EXTREMELY IMPORTANT FOR A NUMBER OF REASONS - LAYING OUT THE BIG PICTURE IN WHICH THE CONSPRIACY AND COUP TOOK PLACE, EXPLAINING THE ACTIONS OF RFK AND THE KENNEDY INSIDERS AFTER THE MURDER, DISMISSING THE DETAILS OF THE CRIME BY CONCLUDING THAT WHATEVER HAPPENED IN DALLAS WAS A COUP, SETTING THE PROPER PERSPECTIVE IN WHICH TO VIEW WHAT OCCURRED IN DALLAS, DC AND THE WORLD AT THE TIME, AND FOR SETTING THE STAGE FOR THE LEGAL NECESSITY TO REVIEW AND RESOLVE THE ASSASSINATIONS OF BOTH MEN.

THAT CERTAINLY IS ALTERING THE TERMS OF THE ASSASSINATION DEBATE.

But the historical evidence -- as Vincent Bugliosi's newly released Reclaiming History ......

THE HISTORICAL EVIDENCE WON'T BE IN UNTIL ALL THE CRIMINAL EVIDENCE IS IN, COMPILED AND REVIEWED, AND NOW THAT MOST OF THE CARDS ARE FINALLY ON THE TABLE, THAT SHOULDN'T TAKE A VERY LONG TIME.

BK

[William Kelly]

David's book has been reviewed by Matthew Dallek for the Washington Post (Sunday, June 17, 2007)

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/conte...7061401634.html

I MUST RESPOND TO MATTHEW DALLEK'S REVIEW, AS I MUST TO BUGLIOSI AND , JUST TO MAKE SURE I'M ON SOLID LOGICAL FOOTING.

I must respond to Matthew Dallek's review of David Talbot's Brothers, just as I must to Vincent Bugliosi's Reclaiming History, in order to make sure I'm on solid logical footing and am correct in my assessment and they are wrong in their's.

I don't think Talbot just dismisses the lone-gunman theory as a crock, even though he certainly believes it is one. The way I read Brothers, DT says that regardless of what happened it Dallas, even if it only was accomplished by lone gunman, those in DC immediately, especially the victim's brother, the Attorney General, suspected a conspiracy, specifically those anti-Castro Cubans connected to the JM/WAVE station. The case for conspiracy doesn't necessate a multible gunman scenario. Talbot merely says that there is more to the accused lone gunman - Lee Harvey Oswald, than the Warren Commission reported.

As for an exageration of JFK's dovish intentions, please read the transcript of his June 10 American University speech.

In Brothers, David Talbot does not deal with any of the evidence of conspiracy in Dallas, but presents the circumstances on a wider scale, and clearly shows how a conspiracy and coup fits in with the Big Picture.

The alternative is that the assassin was a homicidal maniac and real lone-nut case who killed the President for his own, perverted psycholgical motives that had no basis in reality, and thus the assassination was an accident of history and an anonomally that doesn't fit in with the political-historical context of the day.

It is not the Conspiracy Theorists who refuse to recognize the real meaning of the President's murder, as the filmed public execution was infused with meaning - that those with the power can kill the Presient and not only get away with it - but tell us that there's nothing we can do about it. That's meaning.

I too once felt that there was no connection between the murders of John and Robert Kennedy, and refused to learn the details of RFK's death, concentrating on solving one homicide at a time, but others - most noteably Phil Melanson, John Judge, Lisa Pease, Shane O'Sullivan and Larry Hancock thought otherwise, and now I too am convinced that the legal resolution of one will lead directly to the resolution of the other.

"Hard to trace" and "convoluted" indeed, but that doesn't mean that we, citizens, the media, or more importantly those law enforcement officers responsible for investgating such crimes, don't have an obligation to determine "the whereabouts, connections and motives" of those responsible for the crimes. If it wasn't so hard it would be easy and done, and I'm sure the Washington Post will somehow contribute to that resolution.

One of David Talbot's best broadside salvos is reserved deservingly for Ben Bradlee, the former WP Ex Editor credited with exposing Watergate, who DT gets to admist that he wasn't in a position to direct the resources of the WP to investigate the murder of his best friend, the President, because of politics. But if his paper had solved the crime, "it would have been fantastic," but alas, they didn't even try.

David Talbot's book Brothers is extemely important for a number of reasons, most especially for laying out the Big Picture in which the conspiracy and coup took place, explaining the actions of RFK and the Kennedy insiders after the murder, dismissing the details of Dallas by concluding that whatever happened in Texas was a coup, and for setting the stage for the moral necessity to throughly review and legally resolve the assassinations of both men.

That, I think, is certainly altering the terms of the assassination debate.

The historical evidence won't be in until all the criminal evidence is in, compiled and legally reviewed, and now that most of the cards are finally on the table, that shouldn't take very long.

While the truth will eventually be exposed to all, and the most guilty may escape justice, revenge will be extracted from those who inherited and defend the missappropriated powers of the presidency.

BK

Edited June 19, 2007 by William Kelly

[John Simkin]

Go to site to open links that are attached to this article.........N

J.F.K.

Published: June 17, 2007

To the Editor:

Bryan Burrough’s laudatory review of Vincent Bugliosi’s book on the Kennedy assassination (May 20) is superficial and gratuitously insulting. “Conspiracy theorists” — blithe generalization — should according to Burroughs be “ridiculed, even shunned ... marginalized the way we’ve marginalized smokers.” Let’s see now. The following people to one degree or another suspected that President Kennedy was killed as the result of a conspiracy, and said so either publicly or privately: Presidents Lyndon Johnson and Richard Nixon; Attorney General Robert Kennedy; John Kennedy’s widow, Jackie; his special adviser dealing with Cuba at the United Nations, William Attwood; F.B.I. director J. Edgar Hoover (!); Senators Richard Russell (a Warren Commission member), and Richard Schweiker and Gary Hart (both of the Senate Intelligence Committee); seven of the eight congressmen on the House Assassinations Committee and its chief counsel, G. Robert Blakey; the Kennedy associates Joe Dolan, Fred Dutton, Richard Goodwin, Pete Hamill, Frank Mankiewicz, Larry O’Brien, Kenneth O’Donnell and Walter Sheridan; the Secret Service agent Roy Kellerman, who rode with the president in the limousine; the presidential physician, Dr. George Burkley; Mayor Richard Daley of Chicago; Frank Sinatra; and the “60 Minutes” producer Don Hewitt. All of the above, à la Burrough, were idiots.

Not so, of course. Most of them were close to the events and people concerned, and some had privileged access to evidence and intelligence that threw doubt on the “lone assassin” version. That doubt remains today. Bugliosi himself this year joined us, Don DeLillo, Gerald Posner, Robert Blakey and two dozen other writers on the assassination in signing an open letter that appeared in the March 15 issue of The New York Review of Books. The letter focused on a specific unresolved lead, the discovery that a highly regarded C.I.A. officer named George Joannides was in 1963 running an anti-Castro exile group that had a series of encounters with Oswald shortly before the assassination.

This is obviously pertinent, yet the C.I.A. hid the fact from four J.F.K. investigations. Since 1998, when the agency did reluctantly disclose the merest outline of what Joannides was up to, it has energetically stonewalled a Freedom of Information suit to obtain the details of its officer’s activities. Here we are in 2007, 15 years after Congress unanimously approved the J.F.K. Assassination Records Act mandating the “immediate” release of all assassination-related records, and the C.I.A. is claiming in federal court that it has the right not to do so.

And now your reviewer, Burrough, seems to lump together all those who question the official story as marginal fools. Burrough’s close-minded stance should be unacceptable to every historian and journalist worthy of the name — especially at a time when a federal agency is striving vigorously to suppress very relevant information.

Jefferson Morley

Washington

Norman Mailer

Provincetown, Mass.

Anthony Summers

Waterford, Ireland

David Talbot

San Francisco

http://www.nytimes.com/2007/06/17/books/re...ters-t-1-1.html

Thank you for posting this letter. I hope they send a copy to the Washington Post and other newspapers that have criticised David Talbot's book. Not that the Washington Post would publish it as they are still smarting about the quotes from Ben Bradlee in David Talbot's book. On page 391 David quotes an article by Robert B. Kaiser in the Rolling Stone when he remarked that it was "extremely puzzling" that Bradlee had failed to invest in an Washington Post investigation into the death of JFK. David interviewed Ben Bradlee in 2004. He admits that there were good grounds for Robert Kennedy to believe that JFK "had been assassinated by his own government". When he was asked why as managing editor of the Washington Post he did not commission his journalists to investigate the assassination, he replied that he was concerned about his career and "that I would be descredited for taking the efforts (of the Washington Post newsroom) down that path." (page 393) In fact, chapter 9 of David's book is an excellent account of how Operation Mockingbird worked.

[Sid Walker]

It is interesting to see the debate over David Talbot's book in the USA - and the comparisons with Bugliosi's ecological disaster.

I imagine David's journey to England generated some media there as well. I'm not aware this latest round in the JFK debate has sparked much interest in the Australian media (although I don't read the print media any longer as I already know what Mr Murdoch wants me to think).

While the condescension to David Talbot's book is not unexpected, I rather think he has a hot film script on his hands - one that Hollywood may gobble up with glee.

The ugly truth, IMO - and this comment is not intended to reflect personally on David Talbot - is that the debate currently underway, comparing and contrasting Talbot and Bugliosi - would not be in the mainstream media at all unless it was regarded as a safe and acceptable debate.

If a book about this topic - or others of comparable import - is not part of a permissible debate, the Washington Post, New York Times and the all the rest of our fearless, independent mass media simply don't cover it at all. Example? The obvious one, of course, is Michael Collins Piper's book Final Judgment. Not a single review in six editions. Silence. Not a single major book distributor will take it.

For me, that speaks volumes about what's at the cutting and uncomfortable edge and what's not.

I should confess that I have not, yet, read Brothers (although I have read reviews). Nor have I seen the movie. In the fullness of time, I intend to remedy both of these omissions.

Edited June 19, 2007 by Sid Walker

[John Simkin]

While the condescension to David Talbot's book is not unexpected, I rather think he has a rather hot film script on his hands - one that Hollywood may gobble up with glee.

As the masses don't appear to read books anymore (unless they are written by some sort of celebrity) it would seem that the way forward is to turn David's book into a film or TV series.

[Sid Walker]

While the condescension to David Talbot's book is not unexpected, I rather think he has a hot film script on his hands - one that Hollywood may gobble up with glee.

As the masses don't appear to read books anymore (unless they are written by some sort of celebrity) it would seem that the way forward is to turn David's book into a film or TV series.

Movies are high-brow - and a mini-series puts unrealistic demands on attention span.

Computer games are the way to reach the youthful masses.

Help RFK track down his brother's killers while he scores political popularity points and dodges bullets.

Edited June 19, 2007 by Sid Walker

[Sterling Seagrave]

I'm sure Matthew Dallek has not ever read Bugliosi's book. So much for his "historical evidence".

Note the name. No doubt he's a relative (son?) of anti-conspiracy historian Robert Dallek.

Then what did we expect from Operation Mockingbird Washington Post? He likely did not read Brothers either.

Dawn

There may have been a time, long ago, when The Washington Post was something like its mythic image from all the hype surrounding its role in Watergate. But this was achieved by the hard work and tenacity of many individuals who passed through its editorial turnstile. It was never the achievement of the Washington Post corporation -- as any honest reporter or editor who worked there would affirm. Today, especially since Donald Graham has taken over from his late mother, The Washington Post is barely a mere shadow of that myth. Instead, it is a Trojan horse posing as what it used to be, while actually being one of the leading elements in Mockingbird. During the years I worked at The Washington Post, I directly observed (more than once) the collusion of its senior-most editors with LBJ, J. Edgar Hoover and others. Specifically I will cite the instance of Hoover’s aide and joyboy Walter Jenkins being caught by vice squad cops for the umpteenth time soliciting in a men’s room. I sat at my desk three or four feet from the telephone on which LBJ (at a banquet in New York) told Russell Wiggins and Alfred Friendly how LBJ wanted them to play the story. Both senior editors (the editor in chief and the managing editor) literally groveled. Whatever illusions I had about the paper died at that instant. It was only among the first of many similar instances I observed directly. Any critique the Post makes of David Talbot’s book and to boost Bugliosi should go straight into the trash.

Sterling Seagrave

[William Kelly]

I'm sure Matthew Dallek has not ever read Bugliosi's book. So much for his "historical evidence".

Note the name. No doubt he's a relative (son?) of anti-conspiracy historian Robert Dallek.

Then what did we expect from Operation Mockingbird Washington Post? He likely did not read Brothers either.

Dawn

There may have been a time, long ago, when The Washington Post was something like its mythic image from all the hype surrounding its role in Watergate. But this was achieved by the hard work and tenacity of many individuals who passed through its editorial turnstile. It was never the achievement of the Washington Post corporation -- as any honest reporter or editor who worked there would affirm.

Today, especially since Donald Graham has taken over from his late mother, The Washington Post is barely a mere shadow of that myth.

Instead, it is a Trojan horse posing as what it used to be, while actually being one of the leading elements in Mockingbird. During the years I worked at The Washington Post, I directly observed (more than once) the collusion of its senior-most editors with LBJ, J. Edgar Hoover and others. Specifically I will cite the instance of Hoover's aide and joyboy Walter Jenkins being caught by vice squad cops for the umpteenth time soliciting in a men's room. I sat at my desk three or four feet from the telephone on which LBJ (at a banquet in New York) told Russell Wiggins and Alfred Friendly how LBJ wanted them to play the story. Both senior editors (the editor in chief and the managing editor) literally groveled. Whatever illusions I had about the paper died at that instant. It was only among the first of many similar instances I observed directly. Any critique the Post makes of David Talbot's book and to boost Bugliosi should go straight into the trash.

Sterling Seagrave

Speaking of Donald Graham, here's one of the most forgable speeches of all time.

From Greatness to mediocracy. -BK

http://www.american.edu/media/speeches/graham.htm

2006 Commencement

American University

School of Communication/School of International Service

Commencement Address

Donald Graham, Chairman and CEO, The Washington Post Company

May 14, 2006

Well, I got my doctorate a lot more easily than this faculty got theirs, I’ll say that. [applause]

Dr. Broder thank you for that marvelous introduction. I was actually once actually introduced by someone who said Graham you’re entire career has been an inspiration to little boys and girls everywhere whose mother owns a Fortune 500 communications company.

President Kerwin, distinguished faculty, Provost Broder, deans, families of graduates. And above all, graduates. Or, you will be graduates as soon as I quiet down.

Over every college graduation in the year 2006, there hangs a weighty question: how in the world did you guys pay for this place. [applause]

It is fitting as Ben and Kyle both noted in absolutely wonderful speeches that graduation day is also Mother’s Day. I suggest your graduation speaker, a graduation speech of your own for later today: Mom, Dad… Thanks a lot. [applause] This is good advice, but I do not recall making that speech myself.

Dr. Broder noted that I went to Harvard and there are key links between American University and Harvard that stretch back many, many years. And, I do not refer to the fact that both institutions have rather publicly changed presidents recently. The most famous AU and Harvard story is one that all the students knows, but many of you AU parents do not, so I get tell it.

It was early in the 20th century, but Harvard already had a rapacious fundraising department. A great, great grandson of General Artemas Ward was willing to leave a millions dollars to Harvard, but on one condition: that the university would see to it that a statue of General Ward was erected in Washington. Now, General Ward was a pretty obscure Revolutionary War leader, but the truth is her really didn’t do much of anything at all, but Harvard’s lobbyists were up to the task. They won the right to put a statue at Massachusetts and Nebraska Avenues. As I said, this was the early 20th century and the equivalent today would be to be told to put your statue on the other side of the Blue Ridge Mountains.

Now, all Harvard had to do was build the statue, but the sharp-eyed finance types at my university were watching. They had taken the money, they had agreed to put up a statue of the general, but they had not agreed to pay for a horse. Every other 18th or 19th century general in who got a statue in Washington is mounted, but thanks to Harvard General Ward stands among all the traffic on Ward Circle looking as if he desperately need a ride. [laugh and applause]

This why Harvard has a $26 billion endowment today.

Harvard also provided AU’s most famous graduation speaker, and we have all been in his shadow since. President John F. Kennedy used this occasion to propose a nuclear test-ban treaty with Russia. I do not think I can top that. But I have read his speech and mine will be much shorter. [applause] Thank you.

So, since I cannot propose any test-ban treaties, I will tell one story from my own life, suggest one thing for yours, and sit down.

Students, graduates, I admire you so much. I know enough contemporary college students to know how much struggle and how much scholarship is represented by your graduation. May of your parents preceeded you to college, but there are many first-generation college graduates among you. The stories of your lives are more interesting than the story of mine. But you are stuck with me for a speaker, so I venture this quick story.

The most important moment in my own college education came two months after I graduated from college. When I had an experience I sincerely hope none of you will have to undergo—I was drafted.

Having lived most of my life in elite a setting, I was now in the ultimate non-elite place. Without asking for it, I then got sent for a year to pretty much a rear-echelon role in Vietnam.

My own service added absolutely nothing to the American military effort. I was sort of a 20th century Artemas Ward, if you will. [laugh] It added quite a lot to me, though. I served with young men who never had a hope of going to a college like this. Some were as undistinguished as soldiers as I was. Some were born leaders; others were level heads, loyal friends or incredibly brave.

Emboldened by my military service and self-consciously seeking a little more education, I then spent a year and a half as a police officer in Washington, D.C. I believe I can say I did not arrest any of the people sitting on the platform with me today. I aced all the tests in the police academy. But, in my platoon at Number 9 Precinct, if someone had needed a police officer who could handle a difficult emergency, I wouldn’t have ranked in my own Top 10. Common sense, experience and street smarts trumped formal education. One of the cops I’d have given high marks to now the chief of a big-city police department today. Two of the very best never got promoted above private.

Education is great—none of you will ever regret for a moment that you studied at this wonderful place. That is for those of you who studied. But, a lot of the most important qualities in life don’t get handed out with college degrees.

My suggestion is primarily aimed at you who want to go as quickly as possible as straight as possible from this wonderful place to other top institutions: law school, business school, medical school, consulting firms, think tanks, university faculties. All great places that will bring you great benefits. But, the rarified of theme will expose you to only a pretty narrow slice of life.

My humble suggestion would be: since you’re not going to be drafted…and no, I don’t think you should be…at some point in your life draft yourself. Send yourself for a year or two to a setting where you’re asked to do something utterly different. This country has enough work to do—this city alone has enough work to that there is plenty of challenge for us all.

Those of you joining the U.S. military through ROTC or through your own choice immediately after graduation, I cannot tell you how much I admire you. [applause] Those of you joining Teach for America, or the Peace Corps, you should already consider yourself drafted. Those of you going on from the School of International Service to international service, when you come back to the reunion, you can tell them you gave something back, but you will also be able to tell them how much you learned from it and how much it meant to you.

Enough, and thanks for your patience.

Today, I do not care about the cloud—the sun is shining brightly. Today, we graduate a class of geniuses and clowns, of teachers and learners, of future leaders and future average Joes and Janes. But, you know what—to hell with the future. It’s a great day, you all deserve it. Students, parents and teachers enjoy it.

And, by the powers vested in me as the chairman of the Washington Post Company, I hereby declare that there will be no bad news this morning. [applause, cheers] In the old days I could say, for one thing we don’t have to publish until tomorrow.

I part with a last word of useful and pointed advice suggested to me by several AU students I met with a month ago planning these remarks: Out in the real world, it is considered very bad form to ring the fire alarm at 2 in the morning. [laugh] Thank you.

[Myra Bronstein]

I finished Talbot's book a while back and thought, overall, it was excellent. In particular I feel I gained a lot of insight into Bobby and his state of mind, and into the fact that this pacifist president was, in fact, at war--but it was with his own government. I didn't realize how hostile his chiefs of staff were until I read this book, and I certainly didn't realize what a thundering loony Curtis LeMay was.

I am really mystified though at its depiction of LBJ as just another victim of the assassination, some poor soul caught in the cross hairs of history. Frankly I don't understand how Talbot could characterize Johnson, one of the most ruthless and corrupt politicians in history, so benignly.

If nothing else it seems inescapable that the timing of the assassination was dictated by the Bobby Baker scandal which was being investigated by congress on the day of the assassination. After a couple more days of testimony it would probably have been too late to save LBJ's career, and possibly too late to save him from prison. There's also the fact that President Kennedy told his secretary on November 19 that LBJ would not be his running mate in '64. So he was toast, unless...

If this book just ignored LBJ that would be more understandable; Johnson's true nature could then be considered outside the scope of the book. But it didn't ignore him; it portrayed him as a frightened shocked & befuddled man overtaken by the forces of history and thrown into the white house. Er, humbug.

Johnson's background is littered with bodies, including his own sister's, murdered by LBJ's own hit man Mac Wallace. Mac Wallace's fingerprint was found inside the Texas School Book Depository.

Bobby Baker friend Don B. Reynolds told the FBI that Baker said the "SOB" Kennedy would never live out his term & would "die a violent death." LBJ told Clare Booth Luce that one in four presidents die in office--"I’m a gamblin’ man, darlin’, & this is the only chance I got.” Look at who his backers were: Brown & Root (war profiteers) & HL Hunt (racist commie-hating John Birch Society loon who wanted that oil depletion allowance). Then there's The Wink...

The real LBJ is not the man described in the book "Brothers."

[John Simkin]

I am really mystified though at its depiction of LBJ as just another victim of the assassination, some poor soul caught in the cross hairs of history. Frankly I don't understand how Talbot could characterize Johnson, one of the most ruthless and corrupt politicians in history, so benignly.

I agree. This was the first question that I asked at our meeting in London. David argued that LBJ's response to the assassination suggested that he was unaware that it was going to take place. I will start a new thread on this topic and try to get David to answer questions on LBJ and the assassination.

[Guest Gary Loughran]

I am really mystified though at its depiction of LBJ as just another victim of the assassination, some poor soul caught in the cross hairs of history. Frankly I don't understand how Talbot could characterize Johnson, one of the most ruthless and corrupt politicians in history, so benignly.

I agree. This was the first question that I asked at our meeting in London. David argued that LBJ's response to the assassination suggested that he was unaware that it was going to take place. I will start a new thread on this topic and try to get David to answer questions on LBJ and the assassination.

I have been impressed by what I would describe as the balance of the book. All pertinent views are represented and David goes to great pains to avoid expressions of personal judgement.

This, IMO, has lead to what I would consider a less explosive book overall (I thoroughly enjoyed it though, very well written and enlightening) in that every reader can have their point of view reinforced.

If you are a right wing nut, you can read that Kennedy was a weak, Commie loving, black (though thats not what the right winger I had in mind would say) loving president. You could side with Le May and the JCS very easily. You could understand why Kennedy 'had to go' and if you were so inclined actually rejoice.

I was struck by the absolute naiveté of JFK and his brother. In a lot of places they move too soon without preparing their constinuency for the moves. I loved their vision and embraced their direction.

The point I'm trying to make is, for the most part, this book allows reader's own biases prior to reading the book to be reinforced whilst at the same time permits re-evaluation, if one was inclined. Two stools which are notoriously hard to straddle for any writer.