Live by the Sword

Rating:
Summary: Don't trust this book!
Review: " Take the red pill, and you continue the virtual life you had, without any memory of this meeting. Take the green pill, and I'll show you how deep the rabbit-hole goes . . ." [From the 1999 film "MATRIX"]

Contrary to the editor's claim, this is not the last book you will want to read on Dealey Plaza. And if one only wants to explore secondary materials, the Truth is scattered around in bits and pieces. Some of it is in the histories and files of foreign and domestic intelligence agencies. Some of it surfaces in new document releases. Some of it emerges in memoirs and biographies written by those close to the several decades of investigations. But you won't find all of it in a single book. Here, I only insinuate why that state of affairs persists.

The dawn of the 1990s. Stone previews "JFK" to Congress. Congress passes the 1992 JFK Records Collection Act. The lame-duck president stonewalls implementing the Act within its 90-day mandate for appointing an Assassination Records Review Board. Clinton is inaugurated. The original candidate list is "missing", and Clinton solicits another, appointing the ARRB about the time that Starr replaces Fiske as independent prosecutor.

The American news machine spins up to high revs, with headlines about Whitewater, Travelgate and Vince Foster. Starr is grasping at straws, hoping to find charges that stick. His closest advisors ask him to drop it, but he doesn't. By 1996, Starr looks foolish, and Richard Scaife, who supposedly has intelligence connections from the early 1960s, finds Starr a job-offer at Pepperdine University. Starr decides to stay on to pick at presidential scandal-scabs.

All along, ARRB is quietly holding hearings. A continuous flow of documents accumulating to 3 million in number pass through the ARRB process. They are declassified from CIA, State, FBI, NSA, and Pentagon, then transferred to National Archives. Small items appear in the papers, buried by the Clinton scandal headlines: ZR/RIFLE-- a collaborative assassination project between CIA and Mafia against Castro; Gerald Ford altering Warren Report evidence fixing the location of JFK's back-wound; a tug-of-war over possession of the Zapruder film.

The Act absolves key figures in assassination research from CIA non-disclosure agreements, and other witnesses come forward: Col. L. Fletcher Prouty -- Stone's "Mr. X"; Gaeton Fonzi, former investigator for the House Select Committee on Assassinations; Marita Lorenz, friend of Watergate burglar and caribbean assassin Frank Sturgis. Prouty publishes "JFK", pointing a finger at "General Y" -- Maj. Gen. E.G. Lansdale. Fonzi's "The Last Investigation" goes to press, opening a floodgate of leads, as he reveals the connection between Lee Oswald, Antonio Veciana, and David Atlee Phillips, CIA Director of the Western Hemisphere before the Watergate aftermath precipitated his retirement. Even Marita, who had been Castro's girlfriend at CIA's behest, publishes her book with the help of a collaborator. ARRB is releasing many documents; the puzzle-pieces are falling together, but the public allows a moral microscope of scandalous headlines to deflect its chronically deficit attention.

Starr's investigation falters. Something else is needed, because nobody anticipates a certainty of finding a news-gem like Monica Lewinsky. The ARRB is about to release the long-suppressed files of the HSCA, substantiating Fonzi's book -- the keystone puzzle-piece. Someone must act fast.

Seymour Hersh says he took five years to put together "Dark Side of Camelot", but he gathers most of his interviews during 1996 and 1997, when the book appears in print. Star witnesses in Hersh's book? Clare Luce for one, asserting that Joe Kennedy Sr. and Henry Luce were as chummy as Abbott and Costello. That story-line spotlights unlikely political bedfellows, and the Luces are one of two families highly suspect at a level above Lansdale and Phillips. Another Hersh witness? J Edgar Hoover, definitely a kingpin in the coverup conspiracy -- a man who had been in Meyer Lansky's pocket, because photos in Lansky's possession depicted Hoover and Tolson in flagrante delicto. Hersh's smear of Kennedy is substantial, and Generation X conservatives become dupes of a new era, conditioned by decades of reflex pre-propaganda associating "conspiracy" with "nut" and "dupe" with "communist".

So here comes Gus Russo -- surfing the document declassification waves, carrying the weighty tome "Live By the Sword". He renews the original Roselli-Martino-Phillips onion-peel cover-story of "culprit: Castro". But the new documents are a proverbial cat-out-of-bag: Russo needs to explain ZR/RIFLE, so he augments the old story, concluding that Castro made ZR/RIFLE backfire. Splendid! Russo has littered the publishing landscape with conspiracy-theory casualties; the Clinton declassifications are discredited, now that thirty years' collective work looks like a wild goose chase.

Whoops! Russo didn't mention the NSA declassifications highlighted in Bamford's "Body of Secrets" -- released in 2001. The NSA transcriptions of intercepted cable traffic among all Castro officialdom throughout the hemisphere point in another direction. It wasn't El Barbudo.

Here's the cake's icing, folks! Carl Bernstein identified Hersh as a CIA media asset in the late 1970s. If you wax skeptical, take a look at Hersh's many publications, and ask yourself if you detect a tintinnabular ring --"intel, intel, intel". Now, savor this pretty cherry on that icing, from Hersh's "Acknowledgements" at the end of "Dark Side" -- a section easily ignored by casual book-readers:

"Gus Russo did an outstanding job as a researcher, especially on organized crime issues. . . . . "

If you fancy yourself a serious student of propaganda and psy-war -- read this book. Read Hersh's book. Read both. But if you read one book on a subject and suddenly imagine yourself an expert, take a look at books by Chomsky or Simpson, so you have some idea what the barrage of media information -- print and broadcast -- may have quietly done to your unwitting psyche from the time you started watching cartoons.

Mr. Russo is preparing another book on the Chicago "outfit". Watch for insinuations he provides in that book to buttress this one . . .

Rating:
Summary: Falters on the assassination, but consists of much more
Review: A more recent book by Leary and Seymour holds updated information that punches a hole in Russo's "Oswald did it alone" thesis. If that were all (or primarily) the content of this book, one might dispense with it. But it isn't. The main focus is on the terrorist campaign waged against Cuba by the Kennedys. Here the book contains a great deal of concisely documented material. This is then plausibly raised as something which could have motivated Oswald. When going through the actual evidence of the assassination, Russo points out relevant evidence which discredits the "grassy knoll" thesis. This has been further supplemented by Leary and Seymour, who likewise reject the popular "grassy knoll" thesis. Yet having come up with enough motives for why someone might be compelled to carry out assassination, and having discredited one very popular thesis, Russo seems satisfied in letting a question go. There is a point when, in discussing the assassination, he simply says that it would take too long to explain right here how he became convinced of the "single bullet theory" and so he is giving a "thumbnail sketch" in Appendix A. At this point, one can detect some logical incompleteness, although he does discredit some of the more popular myths about the assassination, but it isn't surprising to see Leary & Seymour producing newly released evidence supporting a wider "assassination plot" view. What is more to the point about this book is that it is centrally focused on the Kennedy role in the terrorist campaign against Cuba. On this matter, it corrects a number of errors in the earlier (still worthwhile) book by Hinkle and Turner, such as the point where RFK feigns surprise at the CIA being involved with the Mafia against Cuba. As documents have been released since the Stone film, the Camelot myth has become more and more what used to be called "an old wives' tale." This book sheds much light on why, but more complete information is needed if one is specifically looking at the assassination.

Rating:
Summary: Falters on the assassination, but consists of much more
Review: A more recent book by Leary and Seymour holds updated information that punches a hole in Russo's "Oswald did it alone" thesis. If that were all (or primarily) the content of this book, one might dispense with it. But it isn't. The main focus is on the terrorist campaign waged against Cuba by the Kennedys. Here the book contains a great deal of concisely documented material. This is then plausibly raised as something which could have motivated Oswald. When going through the actual evidence of the assassination, Russo points out relevant evidence which discredits the "grassy knoll" thesis. This has been further supplemented by Leary and Seymour, who likewise reject the popular "grassy knoll" thesis. Yet having come up with enough motives for why someone might be compelled to carry out assassination, and having discredited one very popular thesis, Russo seems satisfied in letting a question go. There is a point when, in discussing the assassination, he simply says that it would take too long to explain right here how he became convinced of the "single bullet theory" and so he is giving a "thumbnail sketch" in Appendix A. At this point, one can detect some logical incompleteness, although he does discredit some of the more popular myths about the assassination, but it isn't surprising to see Leary & Seymour producing newly released evidence supporting a wider "assassination plot" view. What is more to the point about this book is that it is centrally focused on the Kennedy role in the terrorist campaign against Cuba. On this matter, it corrects a number of errors in the earlier (still worthwhile) book by Hinkle and Turner, such as the point where RFK feigns surprise at the CIA being involved with the Mafia against Cuba. As documents have been released since the Stone film, the Camelot myth has become more and more what used to be called "an old wives' tale." This book sheds much light on why, but more complete information is needed if one is specifically looking at the assassination.

Rating:
Summary: A Flawed Book But Still Important
Review: As a believer in the guilt of Lee Harvey Oswald, I was intrigued by the thesis of Live By the Sword: The Secret War Against Castro and the Death of JFK (Bancroft Press, Baltimore-ISBN 1-890862-01-0). That thesis, stated simply, is that the Kennedy brothers' "secret war" on Castro (during which they tried to remove him from power through invasion, counterinsurgency, and even assassination) backfired resulting in JFK's death at the hand of Oswald. This concept, while not new, does go a long way toward providing the long sought motive for Oswald's actions and at the same time reinforces his guilt.

The author, Gus Russo, is a long time JFK assassination researcher who worked on the highly regarded 1993 PBS Frontline documentary on the life of the enigmatic "Marxist Marine" (Who Was Lee Harvey Oswald). Russo admits to being schooled in the assassination by early Warren Commission critics such as Mark Lane. This could explain his disturbing tendency to lend legitimacy to otherwise unsupported observations by a few of the "thousands" of persons whose interviews he accessed (and conducted) for this book. One has the sensation when reading certain passages that it could be authored by Jim Marrs after undergoing a conversion at the hands of Gerald Posner. This certainly does not destroy the value of the book but it does diminish it. In fact, for most serious researchers, Live By the Sword is bound to be something of a mixed bag.

The book's prose is generally very well-written. However, I did notice several typos that may be more the fault of the editors at Bancroft Press than Russo. There is a 32-page photo section near the center of the book that includes some never before published items. Live By the Sword features an "Additional Materials" section that includes three appendices, a bibliography, and 70 pages of endnotes which contain citations and the type of supplemental information sometimes found in footnotes. Russo divides his work into five "Books". These are Kennedy, Oswald, New Orleans, The Fall of Camelot, and A Coverup.

Supporters of the Warren Commission defend its work by saying that despite flawed methodology and other gaffes, they were correct in their basic conclusions. This statement is analogous to my feelings for Gus Russo and Live By the Sword. He makes some excellent arguments over the course of the book's 617 pages, but has failed to tie everything together - an admittedly difficult if not impossible task. Russo may have hurt his work by trying to "throw in everything but the kitchen sink" in an effort to prove his thesis. The sad thing is, he probably didn't have to. He certainly seems to have had enough legitimate material (his bibliography covers eleven and a half pages) to make his case without using some of the more questionable data - especially certain interviews. This "information overload" may be partly explained by Russo's frustration at the failure of the Kennedys to release RFK's private papers.

As one who believes Oswald acted alone, I was certainly ready to embrace Russo's book with open arms. It is definitely an appealing hypothesis. If the central thesis were more factually grounded, you could even think of it as Case Closed with a greater emphasis on motive. The truth is, history may ultimately prove Russo to be at least partly correct. However, wanting something to be fact doesn't make it so - at least not yet. Gus Russo has not proven his case with Live By the Sword. He comes very close in some areas but more often than not he leads the reader in a tantalizing dance only to stop the music. Having said that, I still recommend the book to any serious assassination researcher. There is plenty of food for thought and enough twists and turns to offer something for everyone. In fact, Live By the Sword may be remembered as being the first book on the JFK assassination that tried to be all things to all people.

Russo will win no new friends among believers in the myth of Camelot. His book shatters that myth and shows John and Robert Kennedy to be what they were -human beings. They were no more or less heroic or villainous than many leaders before or since. They made mistakes (some more serious than others) and enjoyed victories as well. They suffered from vices of the flesh and spirit as well as petty jealousies and burning ambition. This pragmatic interpretation of Camelot is likely to be Russo's literary gift to the body of JFK assassination research.

Rating:
Summary: Definitely offers some new and worthwhile material
Review: Eight years ago, thirty years after President Kennedy was shot down in Dallas, the Oliver Stone movie rendition of the assassination of JFK inspired the declassification of virtually all the files on the case.

Gus Russo had already been involved in investigative reporting on the assassination. This book is the result of his prior knowledge or beliefs, and from his access to the new material. No doubt Russo had strong leanings as a result of his prior involvement. Who wouldn't?

Over the years I wavered between the conspiracy and the lone-gunman theories, never really settling on either. Russo's arguments in this book are sufficiently convincing that I believe Oswald could have killed Kennedy single-handed. I must say I found a different Oswald in this book than the inept Marine deserter I had envisioned all these years.

It is not all that important to me now, however, who killed JFK or how. While Russo has me believing that Oswald was the single assassin, I do not cringe from the certain belief that a conspiracy could just as well have been employed, for there are people in this country and inside the U.S. Government as capable of pulling off a coup as usurpers regularly do all over the world.

What I found interesting about this book, as I labored through its mountains of irrevelance and redundant arguments, were the more human aspects of JFK. It was no secret that JFK was a relentless womanizer, but I was unaware that he was one so determined that he had what seemed to be incurable venereal disease. Russo writes:

"JFK suffered from severe and persistent venereal disease -- gonorrhea, specifically. Long-rumored, this fact became conclusive when the notes of JFK's physician, Dr. William Herbst, were made available at the Kennedy Library in Boston in 1992 [following the gov't mandated declassification of all files]. Those notes clearly reveal his treatent of Kennedy's massive 'gonoccal infections.'

"Herbst was originally called in 1950, after the renowned Lahey Clinic of Boston had failed to halt Kennedy's VD infection. Not only did the clinic admit failure, but so did Herbst, who treated Kennedy for ten years before passing the baton to Dr. Janet Travell, the new President's personal physician. The available medical record shows that Kennedy continued to receive massive doses of penicillin (600,000 units at a time) throughout his presidency."

Massive? Yes, 600,000-unit doses of penicillin are massive. One tenth of that would cure a common case of gonorrhea in a patient who had no built-up resistance to penicillin.

The theme laid down by the book's title, "Live By the Sword", is that John and Robert Kennedy were obsessed with ridding the world of Fidel Castro. Perhaps Robert more than John, considering what we now know of the private social demands on JFK. Both RFK and JFK were publicly humiliated by the consequences of the incredibly reckless Bay of Pigs fiasco, yet still they passionately pursued a vendetta against Castro. It was that vendetta, Russo believes, that inspired Oswald to doggedly pursue his plans to assassinate John F. Kennedy. Russo builds a quite reasonable argument that Oswald did what he set out to do.

One thing is hardly arguable. The general belief by official USA at the time was that Cuba was somehow accountable for JFK's death -- perhaps justifiably so considering the endless attempts by RFK and JFK to assassinate Castro -- and if a lid wasn't kept on the pot we could find ourselves in WW III.

Russo builds a strong foundation for his theory, one shared by many other credible researchers. This book is significantly marred, however, by a large infustion of trivia that is not needed to make the arguments advanced, and which in many cases is so easy to disbelieve that it tends to undermine the rest of the book. For instance, much space was given to intrigue surrounding Dallas's Redbird Airport -- ingrigue that simply fizzled out after being thrashed from every conceivable perspective. At one point in the detour Russo wites, "According to CIA documents released in 1977, two Cuban men (on the night of JFK's murder) arrived at the Mexico City airport from Dallas, via Tijuana, on a twin-engine aircraft."

A writer must avoid parroting reports of virtually impossible occurrences, even if they came from the CIA (maybe especially if they were CIA), and even if they were important to his argument (in this case they were not) -- arguments must be founded on credible matter. This material was injurious to Russo's narrative, not to mention that it was an unnecessary diversion. Such a flight would have made no sense even if it was possible. It is about 900 miles from Dallas to Mexico City. Tijuana is 1200 miles in the wrong direction, and it is another 1450 miles from Tijuana to MEX. A twin-engine plane of 1963 vintage (like the 200 mph Beechcraft Baron I was sitting in at the Abilene arport when the first reports of the shooting came over the ADF) could not have departed from Dallas after Kennedy's murder and flown to Tijuana and arrive in Mexico City before the next morning.

I got a world of new information from Russo's book, but at an awful price. It was uphill all the way.

Rating:
Summary: Don't trust this book!
Review: Gus Russo is a man of many views, all of them contradictory. In the early 1990's, he embraced every conspiracy theory known to man, and was even listed as a "consultant" on Oliver Stone's JFK. He was a firm believer in the Stone school of conspiracy theories. He also endorsed Robert Morrow's dubious book "First Hand Knowledge" with a cover blurb. Then, came his conversion. After Gerald Posner's "Case Closed", Russo realized there was more money to be made in endorsing the opposite, i.e. "official", point of view espoused by the Warren Commission. Russo reversed himself 180 degrees and began hanging around with former CIA types who had been involved in the assassination plots against Fidel Castro (and possibly JFK as well). He was flattered by their attention and bought into their propaganda and disinformation. Hence this book. The book contains several theories, all contradictory: 1) Oswald did it, acting alone, 2) Castro was behind the assassination, and 3) It was all Bobby Kennedy's fault!! Russo also tried to persuade Seymour Hersh, and the Assassination Review Board, that the real assassin was a Cuban intelligence agent, but failed to convince either. Russo is being used, and is not to be trusted. His sources are dubious at best and have their own agenda. Don't believe everything you read.

Rating:
Summary: Gus Russo knows when to push and when to back off
Review: The earth is flat, the sun revolves around the earth, the lone assassin of JFK is Lee Harvey Oswald, and the single, magic bullet entered JFK's back, exited through his throat, entered Connally's back, exited through Connally's right breast, entered and smashed his right wrist and was then embedded in his left thigh. If you believe this, there is a bridge in Brooklyn that I'd like to sell you. The absurdity of the author's thesis, that Oswald acted as an agent of Castro, is not made more believable simply by virtue of the number of footnotes located at the end of the book. The author, in effect, puts forth the CIA cover story that Oswald, the lone gunman, acted upon his Communist, pro-Castro beliefs. Wasn't the lone gunman theory decimated by the accoustical analysis conducted by the House Select Committee on Assassinations which found at least 4 shots, one emanating from behind the grassy knoll? Didn't Alpha-66 leader Anthony Veciana observe his CIA handler [David Atlee Phillips]in Dallas in the company of Lee Harvey Oswald? Didn't Syvia Odio observe Lee Harvey Oswald attempt to solicit funds from her in the presence of two anti-Castro Cubans in order to support the anti-Castro cause? I refer intelligent readers to "The Last Investigation" by Gaeton Fonzi for an incisive analysis of the CIA's extraordinary efforts to block the House Select Committee on Assassinations investigation of the intelligence communities links with extreme anti- Castro Cubans and Lee Harvey Oswald, who was involved with them. Russo also takes as fact that Oswald was present in Mexico City, at the Cuban Consulate and Soviet Embassy, without any proof to back his assumptions up. The author is a talented spin doctor for the CIA. I suspect the CIA was involved in funding his research for the book. His reliance on numerous anonymous CIA and ONI sources is indicative of the partisan brief he is arguing. His subtle whitewash on behalf of the CIA may fool readers who long for simple closure in this matter. His pro-CIA spin and his propogation of what I believe is the classic CIA cover story in this matter made me nauseous.

Rating:
Summary: This is THE book on the Assassination--the NYT agrees!
Review: The New York Times Book Review, May 23, 1999, NONFICTION

In December 1991, Oliver Stone released his movie "JFK," about the murder of John F. Kennedy, and as a result of a public outcry, Congress passed the President John F. Kennedy Assassination Records Collection Act of 1992, which called for total disclosure by all Federal agencies and private individuals who might be in possession of relevant material. These three million-plus pages proved to be a treasure-trove of information for those interested in the assassination, and Gus Russo has based much of his compelling, exhaustively researched and evenhanded book, "Live by the Sword," on it. Russo has had a longstanding interest in the assassination; he was one of the lead reporters on "Frontline"'s 1993 documentary "Who Was Lee Harvey Oswald?" and served as the chief investigative reporter for ABC's news special "Dangerous World: The Kennedy Years." After sifting through mountains of evidence and conducting interviews, Russo comes to a simple conclusion: Lee Harvey Oswald killed Kennedy. Russo also maintains that it was Kennedy's obsession with ridding the world of Fidel Castro by any means necessary, including assassination, that resulted in his own death. Was Oswald a Cuban agent? Russo stops just short of saying this, but he does argue persuasively that the emotionally disturbed Oswald acted out of admiration for Castro and could well have been encouraged by pro-Castro agents. What is most impressive about "Live by the Sword," however, is that he is able to explain (though not condone) the activities of many of those in Government, including Lyndon B. Johnson, the C.I.A. and Robert Kennedy, all of whom fought hard to keep what Russo calls "the secret war against Castro" from the public - thereby averting possible American retaliation and, perhaps, another catastrophic world war.

CHARLES SALZBERG

I'm awestruck by this review--it says that the "simple" conclusions of this daring, groundbreaking book are in fact right, and must be taken seriously. Basically, the most prestigious--and critical--newspaper in the world has itself concluded that Gus Russo cracked the case, correctly demonstrating what the Kennedy assassination was all about. I've read tons of these "assassination books"--and it's a field full of writers offering vastly different opinions about who did what, to whom, and why. Lots of us layman, I think, have a tough time accepting new angles or "new spins" on this old, old story. Some of us are instantly put off by a large, persuasive book whose contents are tough to evaluate. That's why I was so struck by the NYT review--and why it's so important. It represents a clarion call to the uncertain media that it's safe to regard "Live by the Sword" in the same terms that the Book of the Month Club used--"a definitive chronicle."

Rating:
Summary: Finally Oswald's Motivation is Revealed
Review: When the Warren Commission did its investigation of the murder of President Kennedy, much information was withheld from the investigators, primarily the underground war being conducted by the Kennedy Administration against Fidel Castro and Communist Cuba. This led to the Commission (whose findings have been repeatedly proven to be correct regarding Oswald's and Ruby's roles) failing to provide any motive for Oswald's murderous act. People were left with the impression that Oswald did it because "he was a loser and was jealous of the rich, successful President". Russo, in this book, conclusively shows that this is not the case at all. Oswald was what today would be considered an "international terrorist" and his motivation was to do "favor" for Castro in striking back at the President who was trying to kill Castro, something that was no secret at the time. This, he felt would make him a hero in the eyes of Communist Cuba and he would receive the recognition he had long wanted. Russo has performed a great service for those people looking for the truth about the murder of JFK, because this war of the Kennedy's against Castro is viewed as a black mark on the record of "saintliness" backers of the Kennedy's have been trying to create since 1963. Even Gerald Posner in his book "Case Closed" is afraid to look the facts in the eye and repeats the old "frustrated loser" Oswald myth. By the way, I think the attempts by the Kennedys to eradicate Castro are understandable, given the fact the the deaths of Stalin and Hitler ended the mass-murder machines they had created, but Castro, in the end was different and the regime probably would have survived his liquidation.