Brothers: The Hidden History of the Kennedy Years
by David Talbot
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Book Summary Information
Author: David TalbotEdition: Paperback
Audio: English (Unknown); English (Original Language); English (Published)
Published: 2008-06-03
ISBN: 0743269195
Number of pages: 496
Publisher: Free Press
Book Reviews of Brothers: The Hidden History of the Kennedy Years
Book Review: Too important not to read
Summary: 5 Stars
This is an important book, and it is not to be taken lightly or summarized easily. Robert Kennedy's reaction to the assassination, until this book, had been a source of confusion for researchers trying to understand the relation between the assassination and cover up. Waldman and Hartman's Ultimate Sacrifice claimed that Robert's anti-Castro activities led him to participate in the cover-up for the reason that the Soviets would have pushed for war if the RFK's Cuba plans became known. Waldon and Hartman's assertion created a hurdle, and allowed claims of an assassination cover-up to rest solidly on the shoulders of RFK. This book demolishes that claim. And it demolishes it in a way that no one else has been able to do to date. Unless someone can conclusively debunk Talbot's characterization of RFK's contact with Krushchev after the assassination, Waldron and Hartman's claim of RFK's complicitiy in the cover-up can now be considereed a dead issue! Talbot also destroys the claim that RFK through Dr Burkley was secretly orchestrating JFK's autopsy either to hide medical problems or to hide the assassination itself.
Many have shown us the detail, Talbot asks us to see the scope, context, and breadth. The constellation of forces coming out of WWII leading to McCarthy, and radical military assertiveness that pushed for war (even nuclear) against Cuba, Russia, and Vietnam, is here laid bare. The author demonstrates an unusual sensitivity to the political background inherited by the new Democratic administration. What we find at the time of JFK's election is a politically assertive military and CIA that even Eisenhower would not accept. Conspiracy theorists will find vindication of their suspicions and more. Here it seems to me that an even wider net is cast. An assassination attempt on De Gaulle. Did this mean the U.S. military would try it too? The list of bad characters is not limited to the mafia and not limited to the CIA. In the early 60's, in Washington, there were not many people to be admired or trusted. Into this, the new administration was thrust. There is a wealth of material describing the many who were involved in the assassination. But the knowledge and silence of insiders was little known. The author has in a real sense opened Pandora's box.
The discussion of the murder of Mary Meyer (Pinchot) is brought in as well. Meyer was an outlier because she was not caught up in the Cuban, or right wing, or Mafia nexus. Her murder points more to CIA or military involvement (see the Wikipedia article on Mary Meyer: esp, Cord Meyer's later statements about the murder). Dismissive of Waldron and Hartmann's lenghthy Ultimate Sacrifice, he reminds us of the important information that Waldron and Hartmann presented: there were 2 other assassination attempts in Chicago and Miami that involved similarly constituted teams, including a unique patsy, in each case, set up to take the fall. Assuming that Waldron and Hartmann's information is correct, this was an assassination planned and implemented on a huge scale. Unfortunately (my view), even where commendable, Waldron and Hartman's attempt to blame these assassinations on the mafia rests on their own naive, anticommunistic, world view (they believe that RFK was heroic in organizing a coup in Cuba, while Talbot depicts RFK as deliberately obstructing an attempted overthrow. Either way, today, we are left with a conspiracy that those in power have continued to cover up (in the media, e.g. W. Cronkite and P. Jennings).
I am reminded of an outstanding pictorial history of the Lincoln assassination (Lincoln's Assassins, by Swanson and Weinberg). Our country went after that conspiracy aggressively and many of the conspirators were hung. This time we are left with the perpetrators in power and the lies taught to generations, including our own. Post WWII, we are still seeking out conspirators (NAZI collaborators). Hopefully, we will not count this investigation over.
This book is not uncritical. It is not an ode to Camelot. It is a history that any future academic will have to wrestle with. Most assassination research has importantly and rightly focused on the details of the assassination. Talbot has taken us to the Kennedys and those immediately surrounding them. Who would have guessed that history from the top could reveal so much. Sometimes we must go to the mountain to see the word below in its full significance. This history, as most readers will see, is here re-written for the next generation! If this assassination was just a matter of mafia involvement, we would have been to the bottom of it many many years ago.
One weakness: a minor mention of LBJ's possible involvement. The Democratic Party has moved to quash speculation of LBJ's involvement by forcing the History Channel to retract the 4th of the 4 part Nigel Turner documentary (the History Channel obliged without a fight). Significantly, something that is equally troubling (my opinion and not extensively addressed in this story) is that this one event re-cast the Democratic Party and left it floundering, marginalized, and afraid of change to the present.
Noam Chomsky has stated that even if JFK was assassinated by someone other than Oswald, it doesn't matter because it distracts from what matters today. Chomsky's unusually superficial and now trivialized critique(see Douglas Horne's Inside the ARRB) has alienated many on the left who have been trying to make sense of what happened during JFK's brief presidency. We can either accept Chomsky's incredulousness, or right this weary ship and find a new path. For years I dismissed the Kennedy presidency for it's Vietnam taint. Many historians seemed to concur(e.g. David Marr's incomparable and empathetic history -Vietnam 1945: The Quest for Power (A Philip E. Lilienthal book) embraced the notion that with regard to policy there was a seemless thread from JFK to the naked agression of the LBJ years). I am still puzzling through this problematic. Yet Chomsky's refusal to contemplate the importance of the assassination can be countered by JFK's address before the American Newpaper Publishers Association on 4/27/61 (the speech on secrect societies and freedom of the press -Youtube: JFK Secret Society speech). In this speech we can see the beginnings of Kennedy's deconstruction of the CIA. Chomsky would probably cling to the ambiguity in its meaning (i.e. JFK as anti-communist). But today, despite Kennedy's disire to counter this run-amuk agency, we live with and even accept an intelligence community that is responsible and answerable to no one. Whether Chomsky likes it or not, this investigation will drag on.
Undoubtedly, one of the strenghs of the book is also a weakness. It is still difficult to understand RFK's thoughts and motivations immediately after JFK was murdered. RFK, according to Talbot, refused various entreaties to publicly examine his brother's assassination, yet he seemed to know that there were many possible conspirators. And then RFK was himself assassinated. This is not a weakness of Talbot's. It's a weakness in what is known. But if you believe these two events to be unrelated, I offer the following point of consideration.
In Trauma Room One: The JFK Medical Coverup Exposed we learn that one of JFK's autopsists (Boswell) was sent by the government to New Orleans during the Clay Shaw trial to testify against the damaging characterization of government's own Pierre Finck. Boswell is also quoted (in Traum Room One - in an appended essay by Cyril Wecht MD and Gary Aguilar MD) as saying that he was also asked to go to Memphis to deal with the autopsy of Martin Luther King - p.219).
Did a single person go to jail as a result? Should we abide assassinations because the forces behind them are strong? We are left with a present that has its roots in McCarthy, Vietnam, the use of the mafia to conduct policy, and an intelligence agency that is unchecked and still hidden - answering to no one. We all know what a coup is, but what happened in 1963? Until we know with certainty, history will continue to matter.
I believe Talbot's book will stand the test of time.
Summary of Brothers: The Hidden History of the Kennedy Years
From acclaimed journalist David Talbot comes a groundbreaking narrative account of one of the most tumultuous periods in our history: the Kennedy Administration and its dramatic aftermath.
Though countless books have been written about the Kennedy men and their brief, tumultuous time in the White House, few have offered as many explosive revelations as this one. David Talbot describes a JFK administration more besieged by domestic enemies than has been previously realized, from within the Pentagon, the CIA, the FBI, and the mob. It is against this dark backdrop that he charts the emotionally charged journey of Robert Kennedy, whose soul-scouring quest to find the origins of his brother?s murder led him, to his horror, back to the dark corners of American power that had been part of his portfolio: U.S. intelligence, Cuba, and organized crime.
From the Kennedy ?band of brothers? to RFK?s hope of using executive power to solve Jack?s death once and for all, this probing work of history draws on more than 150 exclusive interviews to produce a bold look at power and vengeance. A topic of perennial interest, Brothers is a multilayered, complex tale of gut-wrenching history.
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