Brothers: The Hidden History Of The Kennedy Years (2007) - Plot & Excerpts
I didn’t pay attention to the sub-title. Hidden histories are almost always conspiracy books written by folks who can’t let go of something dear to them, whether it’s the thought that Elvis can’t really be dead or that only a Conspiracy—large C—directly involving the highest reaches of American power could be responsible for a Kennedy's murder. I’m talking CIA. I’m talking FBI. I’m talking the Joint Chiefs of Staff. I’m talking Right Wing Men of Privilege and Wealth, I’m talking the Mafia. I’m talking CBS, NBC, ABC, The New York Times, The Washington Post, and probably the Boy Scouts of America. Maybe Lyndon Johnson too. Maybe anybody but definitely not Nikita Khrushchev or Fidel Castro. Why, you may wonder should such diverse forces unite to kill two brothers? Well, they were going to change the world, that’s why. And that couldn’t be allowed. You see JFK was really, well, Gandhi with a libido. He was a man of peace, intent of ending the Cold War (with Khrushchev), making a kind of peace with Castro, and getting us out of Vietnam. The rest of the American power structure was maniacally bent on a nuclear showdown with the Soviets. (Then again maybe it was just a conspiracy of a two or three renegades recruited from unreliable CIA operatives, pissed off anti-Castro Cubans, and frustrated Mafia wiseguys. Or maybe folks who traveled on the overlapping fringes of these groups. Nah, it was the CIA.) Anyway, Bobby was going to solve this mystery as soon as he won the Presidency in 1968. We know Bobby knew it was a Conspiracy because like Jackie his first response on learning of his brother’s being shot was to use the third person plural. That’s right, he said they, not he or she. “I thought they’d get one of us…” Kennedy is reported to have said to an aide who remembered it in an interview with the author decades later. (The footnote helpfully says: “He distinctly said, ‘they’.) To be fair, there is much more evidence than this. Some of it comes from informed gossip, some from unreliable second or third person sources, some of it is inferred from what or how people said certain things, and some of it is mind read. But it’s all here in such a repetitive, unsubstantiated, uncritically evaluated accumulation of smoke you’d think a match was a forest fire. Talbot is relentless and, if you ignore the implications of his thesis and forgive the absence of much evidence that rises to the level of fact, he is a capable storyteller (alas, in at least two senses of the word). Part of his relentlessness allows you to glimpse behind the curtain of his interviews, particularly with inner circle survivors. Ted Sorensen gets it right (pages 292-293)“…if I can know that my friend of eleven years died as a martyr to a cause, that there was some reason, some purpose why he was killed—and not just totally senseless, lucky sharpshooter—then I think the whole world would feel better. That brave John F. Kennedy, with all these courageous positions, went into Texas knowing that it was hostile territory, and he ended up dead. But I just think that’s a fanciful theory as of now, and comforting it as it may be, I’m not going to embrace it, because there’s no evidence of it.” How does Talbot rebut this? He doesn’t. Instead he stresses Sorensen’s melancholy, his awkward reluctance to confront the subject. When Talbot tries to get Don Hewitt to confess to a kind of complicity of silence for not covering the story on “60 Minutes,” Talbot assures us that Hewitt is vexed, perhaps guilty, that he doesn’t have a good answer. And when Hewitt says goodbye to him with “Well, go, man. Big story,” he is not, Talbot tells us, brushing him off but passing a torch. I’d bet on the brush off, myself. Because Talbot is a competent writer there are moments when he describes the Kennedys and their aides in action that are a moving reminder that flawed individuals can still represent greatness in action. But these moments are rare and brief and we are quickly back to innuendo, bullshit, and vague deathbed testimony of potential witnesses and suspects, relayed to us by surviving wives or children who can’t be more specific because the deceased stopped short of more to protect them. From? You know. This is a dreadful book, malicious in its need to think worse of the world in order to manufacture a bigger cause of death for JFK and RFK. The Kennedys themselves were better than that and as one former aide said, “Look, the entire time I worked for Robert Kennedy, I never heard him say, ‘If only President Kennedy had lived, this would be different.’ …The question for him was not ‘what if?’ It was ‘what now?’” The whole quote by Adam Walinsky, from an author interview, is the book’s only redeeming value. It’s on page 376. Read that and put the book back on whatever shelf you removed it from.
This book is both a biography of the Kennedy brothers, John and Robert, from 1961 until 1968, and a review of their assassinations and the controversies surrounding them. Along the way the author, a believer in a conspiracy linking both murders, documents how RFK himself subscribed to such beliefs as regards the events of 22 November, 1963.Author David Talbot is also a believer in the Kennedy brothers themselves. Although he deals briefly with the promiscuity of the elder, even mentioning rumors of his use of psychoactives, he fails to address how this behavior could, if revealed by those in the know in the FBI, CIA and the press, have led to his downfall in the intended 1964 campaign. As regards potential sexual scandals involving the younger brother there is not a word. Instead, he focuses on claims that one or both of them were involved in the assassination attempts against Castro, discounting all of them. There's no question that the CIA, domestic mobsters and disaffected Cubans were gunning for Fidel, the question for Talbot is instead to identify precisely which spooks, crook and terrorists had included the brother Kennedys in their hit list—and why.The answer to the question of motive and the identification of the murderers is not precisely given in this book. Motives abound, the virtues of the Kennedys being their crimes in the eyes of the many suspects considered. These virtues included, in Talbot's eyes, the courageous attempts for reconciliation with the Communists, the rejection of policies of military and economic aggression against third world nations, the prosecution of organized crime and the promotion of civil rights—all of which set teeth on edge in certain circles.While I, like Reeves in his A Question of Character, would emphasize such concerns more than Talbot does, the idea that both Kennedys matured positively towards the end of their careers, an idea shared by both authors, is an attractive one. One would like to think that their deaths, and the grief of millions, meant something.
What do You think about Brothers: The Hidden History Of The Kennedy Years (2007)?
This book will convince most skeptical readers that there was a conspiracy behind the assassination of President Kennedy. Different readers might come to different conclusions about who was behind the assassination (other than Oswald), but the author lays out a complex web of things that are too many and too connected to be coincidence. Adding credence to the author's claims is the fact that reputable mainstream researchers have recently exposed the gaping holes and unexamined areas in the Warren Commission's findings. Also backing up his thesis is the fact that the House Subcommittee on Assassinations concluded that there was a conspiracy (a fact most reporters chose to ignore and one that silently disappeared). Far too many news reporters and laypersons today choose to ignore the all-important question of who killed JFK and why. This is sad not just for the sake of history, but for the fact that the issue has immense implications concerning who really runs the U.S. Government. The book was well written, dense with facts and research, and balanced in its approach.
—Jww
Fascinating stuff. I've read much about JFK and his assassination, this is the first I've read that went into some depth about RFK , his life and assassination. The author was a sympathetic biographer and had access to sources not quoted in other books. It gave a good inside view of John and Bobby's relationships with each other and the world. I was extremely surprised to learn that the official report on the RFK assassination was as flawed and disputed as the JFK event. Specifically, there were more bullet holes in the room than could have come from Sirhan's revolver and the fatal bullet entered from behind. Sirhan Sirhan was never in a position to have fired that shot, though a 'security guard' seems to have been. Long story short, conspiracy. Again, as if we need another but the author implies that it may have been a continuation of the first. I was also unaware of the degree of hostility JFK faced from within his own government; the CIA and the Military. The drumbeat for war in the early 60s was a powerful force. A well written and compelling book.
—Randy
Read this for my JFK class I took in the fall (I miss college!). A moving book, tells you what happened behind the scenes with the Kennedy administration, the assassinations, and the strong bond between the two brothers. The brothers are remembered in history as remaining firm to their ideals and working as a team at a time where the dark forces within the government (CIA, Joint Chiefs, FBI) and their hawkish world views ruled the country. This book really made me fall in love with Bobby Kennedy, it's basically written from his point of view of what he went through after John's death. I love his aggressive personality, Bobby was persistent on bringing down whoever could be toxic to the president and the nation.His hot-tempered personality was a good match with John’s calm and collected attitude. Was really moved by how loyal and protective he was to the people he loved.
—Nida
