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Summary: I'm the publisher and this is the book's introduction
Review: This excerpt is the introduction to Live By The Sword: The Secret War That Killed JFK, by Gus Russo. On November 22, 1963, the day President John F. Kennedy was assasinated, I was a 13-year-old freshman attending Mount St. Joseph's High School, a Catholic school in Baltimore, Maryland. I remember exactly where I was when I heard the first whispered rumor--in the hallway on my way to a sixth period biology class. I recollect just as distinctly what I heard: "Some Cuban guy working for Castro shot the President!" It wasn't long before I heard a new explanation for the president's murder: "It was a Russian agent working for Khrushchev!" None of us knew which was the more shocking or potentially dangerous rumor. In the blur of that first horrible day came yet another news report, this one stating that the President had been shot by a former Marine hiding in a book warehouse and using a German Mauser-type rifle. Hours later, the Dallas police took such a man into custody five miles away, in a Dallas movie theater. Two days later, by the end of that paralyzingly sad weekend, the story of JFK's assassination had turned 180 degrees: Now, according to most of the reports, the President had been shot in the back of the head by a Castro sympathizer using an Italian rifle. I couldn't help but be intrigued. After the suspect, Lee Harvey Oswald, was gunned down on the way from one Dallas jail to another, President Lyndon Johnson put together an august body, headed by Supreme Court Chief Justice Earl Warren, to find out definitively (or so it was thought) who had killed the president and why. Ten months later, without any equivocation, it concluded that Oswald, an American and a former Marine, had acted alone with no clear motive, and certainly without evidence of any involvement by Cuba, the Soviet Union, or any other foreign nation. My own initial skepticism over the 1964 Warren Commission findings was fueled by the naivete (perhaps it was the arrogance) of a seasoned teenager who had read all the James Bond novels. I knew about spies, and fake defectors, and sharpshooters, and patsies. The government couldn't fool me! My suspicions were heightened by the obvious government secrecy over the investigation, especially the sealing of the Warren Commission records for 75 years. Thus, I, like many of my age group, became an amateur investigator pursuing the ultimate truth--what exactly happened on November 22, 1963. ... Throughout many of my years of research, I was convinced that all the truths surrounding the Kennedy assassination would never be known--that a complete story could never be told. After the House Committee's work of 1979, I was more convinced than ever of Oswald's complicity. But there were huge gaps in the case that left me with the pervasive feeling that all was not being told. My inquiries were purely personal; I never intended to write a book on this case. In fact, I never thought anyone could write a good book on this subject because all the secrets were well beyond the grasp of anyone without subpoena power. To my complete surprise, and when I least expected it, two key events forced me to change my mind. It was while in New Orleans for Frontline that I had my first inkling of the "ultimate truth," the one explanation that resolved everything for me: Oswald's apparent lack of a motive; the Kennedy family's reluctance to say anything about Jack's death; Robert Kennedy's unrelenting grief; the secrecy surrounding the two key cities in Oswald's life (New Orleans and Mexico City). More important by far was the release of the JFK documents required by the JFK Act. Measured in man-hours, I spent practically a full year combing the files. They enabled me to see that the big question wasn't WHO done it, but WHY. Aided by the decision of RFK intimates to tell me their stories, and the Review Board's release of over three million pages of previously classified documents, I am able, for the first time, to speak the unspeakable. My research has convinced me that John and Robert Kennedy's secret war against Cuba backfired on them--that it precipitated President Kennedy's assassination. ... In the ensuing years, not only have Jack and Jackie been turned into caricatures, but so have Oswald, Jack Ruby (the man who killed Oswald), the FBI, and the CIA, to name a few. There certainly are one-dimensional individuals in this world--people who are either pure good or pure evil. Those "types," I have learned, had nothing to do with JFK's murder. I learned that the Bobby Kennedy I so admired in 1968 had been a polar opposite as his brother's Attorney General: dangerously inexperienced, and, worst of all, reckless. In the time it took for a hyper-velocity rifle bullet to traverse 100 yards, Bobby was converted to an introspective man of peace. He and other members of the Kennedy clan went on to give much to the country. Their contributions to the impoverished, the handicapped, and the racially excluded have been legendary and heroic. After the 1968 assassination of Martin Luther King, Jr., when Bobby pleaded to enraged blacks "Make gentle the life of this world," he truly meant it, and many listened. But a different Bobby Kennedy, five years earlier, had berated government officers 20 years his senior for their slow pace in eliminating Cuban dictator Fidel Castro. More than most, Bobby himself appreciated the importance of his personal transformation following the assassination. Toward the end of his life, he mused, "I have wondered at times if we did not pay a very great price for being more energetic than wise about a lot of things, especially Cuba." He was right. Gus Russo Baltimore, MD July 1998
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Summary: A groundbreaking work that is hard to ignore!
Review: This is one JFK assassination book you can't ignore! Russo has the credentials and the contacts to finally unravel "who" the government thought killed JFK. Critics who hammer Russo for the minutiae he doesn't discuss are missing the big picture - and the point! Russo gets those close to JFK and RFK to talk about who was really behind the Castro assassination plots - and the answer will floor you! If those pointing fingers had been enemies of the accused, you might dismiss it. But, when close friends and associates sheepishly admit what mountains of documents support, well, let's just say you'll find yourself nodding agreement. The irony of why the government covered up the truth may be lost on assassination buffs, who likely will kick and scream over Russo's documented accomplishment. But for most Americans, this book provides the first real chance to find closure on a subject that has disturbed many for over 35 years. Gripping, suspenseful, and above all - believable. Congratulations to Gus Russo for cutting through three decades of cynicism and stonewalling to get to the heart of the truth about the crime of the century!
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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.
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Summary: This book bursts the Kennedy bubble.
Review: You would have to be suffering from a severe intellectual hernia to dismiss this book. Camelot will die hard but I think here is more evidence that we were duped and nearly blown to bits by these hotheads.
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