The Dark Side of Camelot

I think I need to put this disclaimer in first. I am a fan of John F. Kennedy. I do have my own strong opinions about his career and his life. However, I do see myself still able to review books without a huge amount of bias. Mainly because I am aware of this potential bias from the outset.

The reason why I did not like this book is because most of the accusations the author spews is unsubstaintiated. He gives many "unnamed sources" which completely dissolves his argument in my view. If you are going to make controversial statements or conclusions, you need to back them up.

This book reads more like a tabloid story than a biography or a monograph. It is scandalous and interesting but I don't believe there is a lot of fact behind it. But show more you can judge for yourself.
That said, I did not like this book. And it was not because it could be classified as an "anti-Kennedy" book. Actually, that was why I bought the book in the first place because I want to learn all possible aspects of a story or a history and obviously not everything Kennedy did was good or in the best interests of the country or his family. show less

Seymour Hersh's THE DARK SIDE OF CAMELOT came out almost 20 years ago now and was quite a sensation with its tabloid tales of lying, manipulating, and infidelity by John F. Kennedy during his rise to power and in the White House. I remember the book being a bestseller around the time of the Clinton-Lewinsky scandal and it was cited with glee by many on the right wing as documented proof that all Democrats were immoral and sexually degenerate. When I recently picked up Hersh's book, I wondered how well it had stood the test of time, while curious to see what all the fuss was about originally.

I can say that as a work of history, THE DARK SIDE OF CAMELOT falls short simply because Hersh never gives us the full picture-we get anecdote after show more anecdote of bad behavior by JFK, usually of a sexual nature, with nary a hint at what this man was doing on the world stage-the Berlin Crisis, the Bay of Pigs, the Civil Rights movement and its clashes with the segregationist South, an across the board tax cut, the showdown with the steel industry are all given short shrift.

What we are given are tales of Kennedy's epic sexual misadventures with a very wide variety of women, ranging from Marilyn Monroe to mobster's moll, Judith Campbell Exner, to party girl and possible East German spy, Ellen Romestch. These dalliances, along with the regular skinny dips in the White House swimming pool with "bimbos," paint a portrait of a man saddled with one hell of a sex addiction. If anything, the years since the publication of THE DARK SIDE OF CAMELOT have given us even more stories of JFK's sexual conquests as more women have come forward with tales of being bedded by the President. Here Hersh paints a portrait of a dangerously reckless man with no personal moral compass and seemingly incapable of grasping the possible consequences of his actions. And in this, he was doing neither himself or his country any good.

Hersh uncovers revelations about JFK's health that shows up his well crafted image of vigor as nothing but a lie, as the man battles Addison's disease, a very bad back, Crohn's disease and quite possibly VD; and gives us the lowdown on how Max Jacobsen, the original Dr. Feelgood, injected the President with pain reducing drugs of dubious quality.

But what Hersh fails to do is make a definitive case that John F. Kennedy's sex life and exotic medical care had a detrimental effect on his performance as President; while he may have had the sex drive of a rabbit and gotten daily "boosts" by way of a needle, neither of these facts have any bearing on the policies JFK pursued as President-which is his real legacy.

The Cuban Missile Crisis does get some space. Hersh depicts Kennedy and his brother, Robert's, secret war against Fidel Castro as being motivated by purely personal animus. From it came Operation Mongoose and a dozen or more failed assassination attempts on Castro by a CIA in league with the Mafia, all at the direction of Robert Kennedy. According to Hersh, this secret war was responsible for driving Castro into the arms of the Soviets and precipitating the Missile Crisis which was resolved when Kennedy cut a back door deal with Khrushchev to pull US missiles out of Turkey in return for the Russians withdrawing theirs from Cuba-something quite different from "the eyeball to eyeball and the other guy blinked" final act Kennedy admirers have pointed to all these years. Only problem: there are plenty of serious historians who have done extensive research, the most recent being Robert Caro in his LBJ bio, who give a far more objective view of the event.

Papa Joe Kennedy is made out to be a manipulating monster, one who cuts deals with Sam Giancana to win the state of Illinois for his son and spends a fortune to win the West Virginia primary for him. These stories have been around since 1960, and in the age of Koch brothers and their ilk, have lost much of their potency. These days, Joe Kennedy just looks like a man ahead of his time.

Seymour Hersh is an investigative reporter and no right wing hatchet man who turns out hate screeds against liberals and Democrats, his reporting on George W. Bush's war in Iraq is more than enough proof of that. But one does question his methods in writing THE DARK SIDE OF CAMELOT with its many hearsay sources, many of whom had stories other journalists were aware of for years and would not go near for lack of proof. There is the case of the long dead Florence Kater, a Maryland landlord whose story is recounted Hersh's book, yet the documentation cited does not exist; Judith Exner's story changed over the years and was embellished considerably in the 90's when she was ill with cancer and had fallen on hard times financially. Many reviewers at the time chided Hersh for being gullible in his quest to write a book he knew would be a bestseller because of its sensationalism.

Yet Hersh is a good writer and presents his facts well, even if they are dubious; THE DARK SIDE OF CAMELOT is never dull and for the serious reader of history like myself, quite the contrast to all the puff pieces and worshipful books written by the many Kennedy acolytes over the years.

Looking back, there really was something about John F. Kennedy and his family that was a true break with the past in America, and not just because of their Irish Catholic heritage. The Kennedy's were brash and crass in the way they wore their ambitions openly and went after what they wanted without false humility. While many responded to this new style of leadership, it rubbed an equal number the wrong way and it still does.

Perhaps it was generational; John F. Kennedy was like many men who had seen what the Depression had done to America and then had gone to war and now had no intention of waiting his turn like the men of previous generations. It can be said that Richard Nixon was just as ruthless and pushy as JFK, but the man could mask it in public with a pious resentment that appealed to just as many as those who were drawn to Kennedy's charisma.

THE DARK SIDE OF CAMELOT paints John F. Kennedy as a shallow man, all style and fake substance, a real life version of the Kennedy who appeared in James Ellroy's AMERICAN TABLOID; it's interesting that detractors said the same of Ronald Reagan and Bill Clinton, yet long after they were gone, many Americans would look back at the years of these three Presidents with great fondness and miss them terribly. Something for historians to consider. show less

Hersh says that JFK was wearing a half body cast when he was shot in the Dallas limousine due to a groin injury he suffered earlier. Hersh says this is why when he was hit with first shot in the back, his head was still erect making him vulnerable to the second head shot. He also says that a Cuban double agent working with the Helms' CIA in Paris, Cubela, was supposed to Kill Castro, with a syringe full of poison designed to look like a fountain pen. This was ultimately not done supposedly because JFK was shot and he got spooked. The CIA has lots of excuses for everything and Hersh isn't the most reliable source for info.

The most interesting piece of information in this book: John F. Kennedy won at least one state in the famously close 1960 presidential election--Illinois-- because the Mafia stuffed the ballot box(es) for him. I can't remember whether the book claims Illinois actually put Kennedy over the top, but it seems to me that that was the point.

This book wasn't nearly as interesting as I expected it to be. It seemed really repetitive at times. It doesn't paint President Kennedy in a good light and I have lost a little respect for him. Some things are better left not knowing.

A detailed controversial account of the Kennedy years with the spin and deference removed

This is one of the most disappointing books I've ever read, and not because Hersh is critical of the Kennedys. Mr. Hersh seems completely uncritical of his hearsay source material, and draws facile, sophmoric conclusions from what may or may not be "facts". I sometimes wondered if Mr. Hersh were not engaged in a CIA/Joint Chiefs of Staff smear of a president who was often critical of both agencies.

Professor Gary Wills reviewed this book in the "New York Review of Books" (Dec. 18, 1997). His review, titled "A Second Assassination," demolishes Hersh's major claims with more insight and authority than I can muster. His review is available online at www.nybooks.com.

The scholarly apparatus in this book are a disgrace. There is no Foreword, show more no Introduction, no explanation as to why Hersh chose to write this book at this particular time. The author acknowledges funding by a private television company at the end of the book. There is no Bibliography. "Notes" for each chapter are collected in a single run-on paragraph for each chapter at the end of the book, making it impossible to correlete the notes with references in the text. This is a dismal failure. show less