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From: RoadsEnd [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Date: September 6, 2007 9:07:58 PM PDT
To: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Subject: [CTRL] Bobby and J. Edgar: The Historic Face-Off Between
The Kennedys And J. Edgar Hoover That Transformed America
Reply-To: Conspiracy Theory Research List [EMAIL PROTECTED]
-Caveat Lector-
http://intellibriefs.blogspot.com/2007/08/bobby-and-j-edgar-
historic-face-off.html
August 27, 2007
Bobby and J. Edgar: The Historic Face-Off Between The Kennedys And
J. Edgar Hoover That Transformed America
Book Review By Don Pesci
Source: http://donpesci.blogspot.com/2007/07/bobby-and-j-edgar.html
Bobby and J. Edgar: The Historic Face-Off Between The Kennedys And
J. Edgar Hoover That Transformed America
Burton Hersh, the author of two books on the Kennedys and an
authoritative book on the founders of the CIA, “The Old Boys”, was
ambivalent about writing Bobby and J. Edgar: The Historic Face-Off
between the Kennedys and J. Edgar Hoover That Transformned America.
At first, Hersh wanted to keep the book narrowly focused, “though
honest.” Too wide an historical orbit, he thought, “was likely to
scorch out sources and friends whom I have cherished since the
middle sixties.” But he had become privy through his contacts to
new information, and the book flowered under his hand. Hersh’s
scorched friends and sources are not likely to be indifferent to
the book. Nor is anyone else who reads it.
The face page at the beginning of Bobby and J. Edgar carries a
quote from Ralph Martin’s Seeds of Destruction: “John F. Kennedy
‘told his good friend John Sharon that if he had his life to live
over again, he would have a different father, a different wife, and
a different religion.” Sometimes in the face of brute reality, one
prefers to sink into the plush arms of one’s illusions. The
mythology surrounding the Kennedy family is more soothing, more
edifying even, that the naked truths explored in Bobby and J. Edgar.
J. Edgar of the title was, of course, Director of the Federal
Bureau of Investigation J. Edgar Hoover, and Bobby was former
President John F. Kennedy’s Attorney General Bobby Kennedy. As a
senator, when Bobby decided to rout the mob, little did he realize
that the neighborhood he intended to sanitize had connections with
his sometime too solicitous father, the resourceful Joe Kennedy,
entrepreneur, financier, former Court of Saint James Ambassador to
Great Britain in the Roosevelt administration, confident of Sam
Giancana and his opposite number J. Edgar.
Hersh is a masterful wordsmith. Consider the following caricature
of Bobby working the floor at the Democrat National Convention that
was instrumental in sending his brother to the White House:
“A scrawny, tousled bird, his rubbery lips writing with impatience
around the assertive front teeth, those pale assessing eyes beneath
their sweeping folds aglitter beside his harsh chopped beak of a
nose. Sleeves rolled up, by midmorning the shirttail would be
blousing out and the knot on his necktie worked halfway down the
front. Perspiration stood in dark blotches. All business every
minute, running down the delegate count.”
The trick in writing books of this kind lies in providing the
reader an aperture though which may be seen a historical period and
its principal characters, while at the same time being faithful to
the public and private record. The peg upon which Hersh hangs his
narrative is the clash -- not always public, for Hoover rarely
showed his hand; he was an equal opportunity manipulator -- between
a hopelessly idealist Bobby Kennedy and a worldly wise, sometime
world weary triumvirate that included his ambitious father, Hoover
and his brother the president, whose relationship with Sam
Giancana, a mobster and one of the principal actors in the Cuban
Bay of Pigs fiasco, is examined closely in “Bobby and J.Edgar.”
Bobby and the FBI chief were bound to bang heads after JFK
appointed his brother Attorney General and the energetic Bobby
decided to go after the Mob. Little did Bobby realize that his
father’s own personal orbit intersected with some shady characters
that included many politicians, organized crime figures and the
white knight of crime fighting, Hoover himself, keeper-in-chief of
the secret files he used to manipulate many of the characters
occupying the political stage in which Bobby and JFK and their
father moved and operated.
Here is Bobby dilating on Hoover: When Clyde Tolson, Hoover’s close
associate, was in the hospital Bobby asked, “What was it? A
hysterectomy? … Any day now, I expect him to show up at work
wearing one of Jackie Dior’s creations.” Very likely these bon
motes may have been netted by Hoover in one of his frequent
wiretaps. Secretly, Hoover was providing to the ambitious Attorney
General the information on Giancana he needed to bust up the Mob.
But that
