Rating: 
Summary: They'll Never Believe it Anyway . . .
Review: It wouldn't matter who wrote this book. The mindless Kennedy lovers will never accept anything but their tired old cherished myths about their hero. If Republicans loathed Kennedy and his legacy, it was because he got away with in spades what they could only hope to do. Nixon was a sloppy schoolboy compared to the capers of JFK. Being ugly and uncharismatic, he could never get away with the things Jack Kennedy did. JFK's assassination protected his legacy forever, putting him in the martyred "beyond reproach" category of a sacred being. Hersh's sloppy journalist style doesn't wipe away the dark truths of Kennedy, his family (Joe Kennedy, the corrupt, money-grubbing, Hitler loving, gangster power-broker)and the people around them. Someday a real historian will write a professional work about the real "Camelot." Until then, we can only wait. The post baby-boomers are not so enamoured of JFK because they have learned the truth about politicians the hard way. Kennedy never gave a real damn about civil rights, the underclass (a rich kid who read about the Great depression "in books" while at Harvard--even as it was going on) or social progress. He wouldn't have handled the mess in Vietnam any better than Johnson or Nixon. The champagne socialists and limousine liberals who so mindlessly worship JFK are enthralled by his memory just the way JFK's contemporaries were enthralled by his overwhelming charisma. Adolf Hitler also exerted a powerful thrall over many people who met him. Are looks, charisma, money and a will to power all that are required to be a leader? Apparently so. Jack Kennedey was a cold, calloused, ruthless risk taker who played with fire and lost. He used the mob to get what he wanted and then turned on them, so they paid him back by putting a "hit" on him. Its that simple. This is why the truths of his assasination will never be revealed in our lifetime, because the WHOLE truth would have to come out, and it wouldn't be pretty for old Jack's legacy, or make his sheep-like admirers look very good. Until this current generation of gutless, sychophantic, baby-boom Kennedy lovers dies off, the truth--a well written and documented history (if all the pertinent documents haven't been destoyed by then) will have to wait.
Rating: 
Summary: Some people will believe anything
Review: It saddens me to see books like this being published. We have the Jerry Springer show, WWF wrestling and the National Enquirer, and books like this. PT Barnum said it best, "There is a sucker born every minute" and this book proves it! If books like "Elvis is Alive" can be published, and have people actually buy it, Then people will believe anything! The author of this book obviously knows that.
Rating:
Summary: Prove it!
Review: It is a sad commentary that anyone can take a collection of unproven allegations and present it to the public like this without any evidence backing it, and some people still defend it by citing the book's own flawed and unsupported arguments. Two words; prove it. With all of the supposed orgies going on where are all the women who can now cash-in with their own stories? In a post-Clinton world what is to stop them, if it's true? 180 degrees from this piece of effluvia is The Kennedy Tapes, where they back up statements with transcripts from tapes made at the time. Yes, unlike the world that the tabloid historians live in, real historians have to (and do) back up their writing with research and documentation from credible sources. They prove it. This book isn't The Dark Side of Camelot, it's the Dark Side of Trash for Cash Journalism. I hope Mr. Hersh made enough money to justify the prostitution of his credibility.
Rating:
Summary: have read the book, it is still trash
Review: Responding to the criticism of my last comments about this book. Yes I have read this book, and as an historian the comment that it is easy to scream trash , just is not accurate. The supposed shared mistress Exner is not a proven fact, just by stating what she claimed (passing money from the White House to Giancana) doesn't make it true. Where is the absolute imperical evidence? Just her well paid word?! The Kennedy administration attacked organized crime like no other in our history, so why in Gods' name did the Mafia want to elect him President?! How do you buy votes? It is a SECRET ballot, no one knows who anyone votes for!What kind of written receipt do you get? Not a very smart way to spend money! The supposed stolen election is another falsehood, if people would actually read real history, they would know that Illinois, and Chicago , were NOT pivotal to the election, Michigan was! If Nixon had won Illinois and all of its' electoral votes, he STILL would have lost the election. AND there are accusations(also not proven) that the Republicans were stealing votes to! Just by alleging that JFK had ghostwriters for his book PROFILES IN COURAGE, again, doesn't make it so..again where is the imperical proof?...same for the alleged "orgies" etc..just by making the claim , doesn't PROVE the claim..that is the basic tenent to all historical authenticity. People should not be so gullible. The Late Carl Sagan once said, "Big claims require Big PROOF" Hersh provides little if ANY proof. Only accusations from 3rd and 4th hand sources (and some interviewees have denied their quotes totally!!)Accusations which NEED proving! And the chances for that are like a snowball on the equator in August!
Rating:
Summary: It is so easy to scream "tabloid trash" !
Review: I think Seymour Hersh, in the book "The dark side of Camelot", has given more than just hints that the Kennedy presidency came about as the result of vote fraud. And it continued in cooperation with the Mafia to be involved in almost all sorts of illegal activity. But more than that, it once again gives an insight into the Kennedy family morales, or more precisely, lack of morales. How Jack Kennedy could ever become president strikes me as odd to say the least. Below I have collected some issues raised in the Hersh book. It should be rather easy for the Kennedy family to put out there own true story of what went on -- If not there was some truth in all of this. At least Nigel Hamiltons "JFK, reckless youth" hinted in the same disturbing direction. It is just so easy to scream "tabloid trash" without having read the book. Read the book !!! ------------ 1. Jack Kennedys grandfather: Honey Fitz of Boston - was unseated by the house of Representatives for vote fraud in 1919. He offered no defense other than the OJ stand "I've been framed". His opponent was sworn in instead. --- 2. Joseph Kennedy left nothing to chance in his drive to have his son elected to high office. In Jacks first campaign in 1946 hundred of thousands was poured into the campign for a congressional seat. The platform was extremely vague: "The next generation offers a leader" instead primary rivals were paid $7500 to stay out of the race, others were paid to join to split votes in key districts. --- 3. During prohibition Joe Kennedy had made a fortune in the bootlegging industri. Working hand in hand with organized crime, if not being a made member of the mafia. According to Frank Costello, the most powerful mafia boss of the 40s and 50s, he and Joe kennedy had been partners in the bootleg industri during prohibition. --- 4. Joe Kennedy was appointed ambassadour to Britain and had hoped to become american president himself. Unfortunately for him he didnt understood morale issues at all. So he had assumed that people would not fight Nazism, if it did cost them anything. He surely wouldnt. Besides, he had anti semitic feelings himself and could sympathize with much of the goings ons in Germany. --- 5. In the 1960 presidential election there were vote fraud in 11 states. Here Kennedy had bought the election with the help of the mafia. Afterwards official investigations either never got under way, or was stopped by grossly partisan democratic judges. The planning of the fraud was carried out after meetings between Joe Kennedy and Sam Giancana, head of the illinois mafia. Interestingly enough they felt most secure when meeting in couthouses belonging to judges owing favours. --- 6. For a period in the JFK presidency communication between the Kennedys and Sam Giancana (Chicago mafia) was done through a shared mistress, Judith Cambell Exner. --- 7. In the public Kennedy was portrayed as working hard and long hours for his country. In reality a good deal of his presidency was spend in various orgies. On an ordinary day Jack Kennedy would take lunch in the White House pool with "secretaries" Fiddle and Faddle. And have sex with prostitutes or starlettes in the evening. --- 8. Jack won the pulitzer prize for the book "profiles in courage". It is certain that Joe helped it make the bestseller list by buying up large numbers himself. Probably the book wasnt even written by Kennedy, but by a ghostwriter. Even though Kennedy knew its content.
Rating:
Summary: tabloid trash, fantasy
Review: If I could have given it 0 stars I would have...Seymour Hersh's book, has been roundly condemned by scholars and with good reason. Any journalist who would accept the now proven , faked Marilyn Monore papers, and reluctantly remove them from being published only days before going to press. Is someone who is wreckless with history,didn't check or care for authenticity (it was some one else who did at the last minute) and incredibly gullible (the other Kennedy papers were also faked, using typewriting equipment that hadn't been invented until many years after JFKs death!) And of course out to make a quick buck,the facts be damned. In the tabloid era, Hersh was hoping to score a hit...and instead, as Gary Wills said, " completely destroyed his own career and reputation." The book was a flop,collapsing under it's own incredulity and is already verging on obscurity and we can hope to God that other such sensational books will follow the same path.
Rating:
Summary: One more tome in a "Literature of Deception"
Review: I'm now more suspicious that the Clinton scandals of the '90s have their origins in a battle going on over the revealed history surrounding Dealey Plaza and Watergate. I picked up two books at the bookstore last week -- Seymour Hersh's "Dark Side of Camelot," and Summers' "Arrogance of Power: The Secret World of Richard Nixon." Summers' book was published this year, and refers to material from the Hersh book -- refers to it critically. Hersh was identified by journalists in the late '70s as being a "CIA media 'asset'." That is, someone acting in the media on behalf of interests or elements connected to that agency. "Dark Side" was published in 1997 -- the same year that the Assassinations Records Review Board under Clinton released the files and papers of the House Select Committee on Assassinations of 1976-1978. Those document releases support Gaeton Fonzi's book "the Last Investigation" (1993), in which he explains the evidence he turned up as an HSCA investigator and how Chief Counsel Richard Blakey and the CIA suppressed that evidence. Hersh says his book is "not about the assassination." Instead, it dredges up all that stuff about Marilyn Monroe and Judith Exner and JFK's "chronic venereal disease," etc. etc. etc. But the fact is, if you have read what I have about the JFK and Watergate histories, Hersh's book IS about the assassination. It is part of a coverup. At the end of the book, he "explains" the Diem "assassination" as Kennedy's doing (it wasn't), and implies or describes Kennedy trying to enlist Maj. Gen. Ed Lansdale in getting Diem killed. He says that Lansdale was "scrupulous," and that Lansdale begs off Kennedy's request because Diem was his friend. This is a patent falsehood and a lie. L. Fletcher Prouty, who worked for Lansdale something like ten years, describes the man as someone who laughed about throwing VC out of helicopters in Vietnam, and someone who is at the core of the assassination conspiracy. "Why does Hersh beatify Lansdale?" is only a rhetorical question when you look at this literature and history over a longer time period. And when you have two conflicting stories, which one are you going to believe? That of a journalist who never knew Lansdale firsthand, or that of a career CIA official who knew Lansdale and worked for him over as much as a decade? If Hersh's book contains one falsehood or, at a minimum, a serious distortion of fact, how much more of the book is also suspect? We've all applied that litmus test, in one way or another, to the sitting President's prevarications. Apparently Summers' book responds to Hersh's, and presents new evidence about the Nixon connections to organized crime and the CIA's Caribbean assassination projects. And guess where Summers gets that "evidence?" From the document releases by the Assassination Records Review Board under the Clinton administration. There is a quiet war in progress at this moment, and the spoils will be the "hearts and minds" of the American people. I don't think most people know about it. My own suspicion is that the scandals of the last seven years are viciously intertwined with this quiet war. My fellow travelers in the historical research business are correct in recent correspondence regarding the disfunctional roots of Bill Clinton's weaknesses. And also true, Bill could have backed away from Monica as most of us probably would have, knowing the potential implications of such a liaison to the Starr investigation. So in one sense, to answer one person's question "What's the point?" -- there is none -- Bill did let us all down. But in a larger sense, Bill's weakness just plays into the hands of something that goes deeper. From the publications that seem to be "hot off the presses" -- no more than three years old -- I get the impression that there is a war going on with a battleline drawn over the field of history, separating truth from fiction. People who embrace Hersh's book as the ultimate revelation about Kennedy and the Kennedy years will be misled. It doesn't matter who was "doing" whom, or what sort of salacious things occurred between Kennedy, Monroe, Exner, or the legendary interns "Fiddle and Faddle." It doesn't matter whether JFK had ties to the "mafia," or anything else. If there had been wrongdoing, the Constitution supposedly provided mechanisms to deal with it. The real questions are these: Who subverted the Constitution in 1963? Who hijacked American democracy through a coup-d'Etat in 1963? Who is really responsible for the butchering of 59,000 young Americans in Vietnam? Who burglarized the Chilean embassy in Washington, D.C., stealing a list of names supporting the Allende regime? Who replaced a constitutional democracy in Chile with a fascist dictatorship, and then caused thousands of people -- including those on the stolen list -- to be "disappeared?" Who looked the other way when a former Chilean ambassador and his American assistants were blown up with a car bomb in Washington, D.C., on September 21, 1976? Who covered that murder up for three years? Who failed to investigate any further in the JFK matter when there was enough evidence from the House Select Committee on Assassinations for indictments and prosecutions? Who is really responsible for the constant feed of spin and scandal during the Clinton administration and why? And finally, who is writing books to confuse the American people about their own history and the threat to their own Constitution?
Rating:
Summary: WARTS & ALL
Review: Author Hersh has done a good job of presenting an objective thesis. During the Camelot years, the public was fed a bill of goods. The mythical Camelot of musical fame had a mythical counterpart during the JFK administration. This book covers the president's position on issues and, unfortunately some of the more questionable decisions he made regarding his private life. Robert Kennedy, on the other hand was the man who worked behind the scenes. From all accounts, the young lawyer and later Attorney General sublimated his own interests, needs and identity so as to push his brother forward. Robert Kennedy was the clean up man, the one who from many accounts shielded his brother to the best of his ability. When President Kennedy was assassinated in 1963, people mourned the loss of Camelot. Sadly, what I think people during that era were really mourning was the loss of the illusion of the "picture perfect" White House world. Robert Kennedy literally came into his own following his brother's tragic death and, it is he who inadvertently "left the lights on" in Camelot. He was the man who, in his own inimitable fashion exposed the myth of Camelot to the light of day during the LBJ White House years. It was Robert Kennedy who actively campaigned for Civil Rights issues and who, along with Johnson (interestingly, these men were at sword's points) forced the world at large to confront some harsh societal ills that the illusion of Camelot omitted.
Rating:
Summary: A more truthful account of American royalty?
Review: Hersh admitted that some of the allegations in this book were false but also that he underwent enormous pressure from the family and its supporters. One chapter in the Kennedy family history not addressed however, is how it dealt with the NASA proposal in Woburn,Mass in the 1960s, a precursor to events depicted in the book "A Civil Action" by Jonathan Harr.JFK was involved with the NASA deal in Woburn before his assassination. Also, one must balance the alleged scandals in this book with the good things the Kennedys have tried to do over the years.One of the most disturbing things about this family however, is that it appears that it is not truly a family except in name only. They seem to maintain a veneer of 'family' but in fact seem to be more of a managed political entity with individual members representing different factions. One might wonder how much control the Kennedy family has over itself and whether they are merely pawns by the real power behind them, those underneath them that ensure their position.
Rating:
Summary: Very good, in fact I recommend it highly!
Review: I enjoyed this book by Seymour Hersh. It is a page turner and very well written. The author depicts Kennedy in his times of triumph, as a human being, and in his times of defeat, also as a human being. Hersh does a fine job of not deifying or vilifying Kennedy. This is a well balanced text on the Kennedy Presidency. It is good history, well researched and well written.
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