David Talbot - Brothers: The Hidden History of the Kennedy Years

Free Press
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New York, NY 10020

Copyright 2007 by David Talbot

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Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication
Data Control No. 2007005119

ISBN-13: 978-1-4165-5643-5
ISBN-10: 1-4165-5643-5

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To Camille
And to our sons, Joseph and Nathaniel,
as they seek their own newer world

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

I must first express my gratitude to Karen Croft, who urged me to write this book and who worked with skill and dedication as my research associate. Her belief in the importance of this endeavor was a constant source of encouragement, through the dark days and the light.

I must also give special thanks to Jefferson Morley and Peter Dale Scott, two men whose research in the Kennedy assassination field long preceded my own. They generously agreed to read and comment on my manuscript and always made themselves available for enlightening discussions. Morley and Scott are owed a debt of gratitude from the nation for their long years of investigation, despite the many obstacles put in their way by government agencies and the discouraging attitudes of many of their press and academic colleagues.

I would also like to thank other experts in the Kennedy assassination field for their generous assistance, including James Lesar, Anthony Summers, Robbyn Swan, Malcolm Blunt, Ray Marcus, Vincent Salandria, Gaeton Fonzi, William Turner, Josiah Thompson, Dr. Gary Aguilar, John Simkin, Paul Hoch, Lisa Pease, Rex Bradford, Gus Russo, Eric Hamburg, and Andy Winiarczyk. They always put the higher goal of fully understanding the case above any private claims on their expertise in my dealings with them, selflessly sharing documents, sources, insights, and their time. They, too, should be heralded for their pioneering, and continuing, work in the field.

Cliff Callahan, an astute explorer of government catacombs, provided invaluable research assistance, tracking down important documents in the National Archives.

Stephen Plotkin, Allan Goodrich, Maryrose Grossman and Megan Desnoyers were helpful guides at the John F. Kennedy Presidential Library, although the continuing restrictions on Kennedy-era material remain a source of puzzlement and frustration for researchers.

Gary Mack and the staff of the Sixth Floor Museum in Dallas also provided assistance, as did the staffs of the Lyndon Baines Johnson Library, the U.S. Naval Institute, the American Heritage Center in Laramie, Wyoming, the Palm Beach Historical Society, the Museum of Television and Radio in Beverly Hills, and the State Historical Society of Wisconsin, whose archives were plumbed on my behalf by Scott Feiner.

My brother-in-law, Don Periwhose youth was as lit up with the Kennedy flame as my ownfunneled a constant stream of Kennedy artifacts from his personal archives to me.

Celia Canfield, Karla Spormann, and the staff of Tendo Communications provided shelter from the storm, and I will always be grateful.

Kelly Frankeny graciously put her bounteous design skills at the service of this project.

I was fortunate to have Martin Beiser of Free Press as my editor and sounding board. His wise judgment and instincts could always be relied upon. In an era when the art of line editing has been all but lost, Martys deft, pen-wielding skills seem all the more miraculous.

Sloan Harris, my agent, was also a source of sharp-eyedsometimes, painfully sharpwisdom.

Few writers are as blessed with in-house editorial counsel as I am. My wife, Camille Peri, is not just a source of inspiration, but my guiding light. She tells me where I have gone wrong, and where I have gone right. And I believe her.

Finally, I am deeply grateful to the dozens of Kennedy colleagues, friends, and family members who shared with me their memories of the lives and deaths of John and Robert Kennedy. Some found it exhilarating to explore these hidden chambers from the past in a new light. Some found it excruciating. I hope this book does honor to their commitment to the truth.

CONTENTS

AUTHORS NOTE

T here are many fine books about the Kennedy presidency and its violent conclusion and I have learned from all of them. But this book does not seek to retrace the familiar steps of Kennedy memoirs, histories, and biographies, or to thrash out old arguments about the JFK assassination. Instead, it looks at this brief, but operatic, swath of American history through the eyes of Robert Kennedy, and the men around the Kennedy brothers, whom they also considered brothers. Bobby Kennedy was the presidents devoted partner, as well as the nations top lawman. It has long been a mystery why he apparently did nothing to investigate his brothers shocking death on November 22, 1963. I have sought to understand this enduring mystery by not only immersing myself in the deep well of Kennedy scholarship, but by poring over newly released government documentsand most important, by reliving these years with the Kennedys band of brothers, as Bobby called themthe living links to the New Frontierbefore this political generation disappears entirely.

What I discovered is that Robert Kennedy did not resign himself to the lone gunman theory, the official version of his brothers death. On the contrary, he immediately suspected that President Kennedy was the victim of a powerful conspiracy. And he spent the rest of his life secretly searching for the truth about his brothers murder. This book will not only shine a light on Robert Kennedys hidden quest, it will seek to explain why he came to such a dark understanding of JFKs death.

Few men of Robert Kennedys generation knew as much about the dark side of American power as he did. Looking at the tumultuous Kennedy presidency, and its shattering conclusion, through his eyes is an enlightening exercise. As I was completing this book, I unearthed new evidence about President Kennedys assassination that suggested Bobby Kennedys suspicions about Dallas were correct. These final revelations brought the books narrative to a dramatic close.

Robert Kennedy understood that justice was an endless battle. The Kennedy brothers murders never received the full investigative scrutiny they deserved. But following RFKs own trail is a useful place to begin.

I was a sixteen-year-old campaign volunteer for Robert Kennedy the night he was shot down in Los Angeles. It struck me then that his murder, following those of his brother and Martin Luther King Jr., had irreparably wounded America. And this feeling has never left me in all the years that have followed. For me, aggressively pursuing the hidden history of the Kennedy years was an attempt to find out where my country had lost its way, and perhaps to restore the hope and faith that I myself had lost as a young American growing up in the 1960s.

BROTHERS

NOVEMBER 22, 1963

L ike all Americans who lived through that day, Robert F. Kennedy never forgot how he heard his brother had been shot. The attorney general, who had just turned thirty-eight, was eating lunchclam chowder and tuna sandwicheswith United States Attorney Robert Morgenthau and his assistant by the pool at Hickory Hill, his Civil Warera mansion in McLean, Virginia, outside the capital. It was a perfect fall daythe kind of bright, crisp Friday afternoon that makes a weekend seem full of promiseand the grounds of the rolling green estate were aflame with gold and red leaves from the shedding hickories, maples, and oaks that stood sentry over the property. Kennedy had just emerged from a mid-day swim, and as he talked and ate with the visiting lawmen, his trunks were still dripping.