Author | Russ Baker |
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Original title | Family of Secrets: The Bush Dynasty, the Powerful Forces That Put It in the White House, and What Their Influence Means for America |
Language | English |
Subject | Political history |
Genre | Nonfiction |
Publisher | Bloomsbury Press |
Publication date | 2008 |
Publication place | United States |
Pages | viii, 577 |
ISBN | 978-1-5012-6397-2 |
973.931092 | |
LC Class | E904 .B35 2009 |
Family of Secrets is a book by Russ Baker. Published by Bloomsbury Press in 2008, it describes alleged connections between the Bush family and the Central Intelligence Agency. The book asserts that President George H.W. Bush was linked to the Watergate scandal and the assassination of John F. Kennedy. Family of Secrets was poorly received by critics. [1] [2]
Baker was reportedly drawn to John F. Kennedy assassination conspiracy theories after discovering a report that George H. W. Bush could not remember where he was on November 22, 1963. [2]
In the book he levels various charges of corruption at the Bush family, whom he ties into the entry of the United States into World War II, the formation of the CIA, the assassination of John F. Kennedy and the Watergate scandal. [3]
According to Baker, the first President Bush became an intelligence agent in his teenage years and was later at the center of a plot to assassinate Kennedy that included his father, Prescott Bush, Vice President Lyndon B. Johnson, CIA Director Allen Dulles, Cuban and Russian exiles and emigrants, and various Texas oilmen. [3] He also names Bob Woodward of The Washington Post as an intelligence agent who conspired with John Dean to remove President Richard Nixon from office for opposing the oil depletion allowance. [3]
The book observes that when George H.W. Bush was at Phillips Academy his roommate was the nephew of George de Mohrenschildt, and that in later years, Bush and De Mohrenschildt fraternized in Dallas. In 1962, de Mohrenschildt befriended Lee Harvey Oswald. Baker also makes a connection between the Bushes and the Watergate scandal. He describes Watergate "not as a ham-handed act of political espionage but as a carefully orchestrated farce designed to take down President Richard Nixon". [1]
In his 2015 profile of Baker, Schreckinger observed that the book was "trounced by the mainstream media". [4] Lev Grossman of Time magazine said that Baker "connects the dots between the Bushes and Watergate, which he far-fetchedly describes not as a ham-handed act of political espionage but as a carefully orchestrated farce designed to take down President Richard Nixon." [5] Washington Post reviewer Jamie Malanowski contended that Baker "overplayed his hand" and "stretches evidence," using rhetorical devices to do so. Malanowski opined that "there are more crutches in these pages than in the grotto at Lourdes. [6] In a Los Angeles Times review, Rutten called the book "preposterous" and said that it was "singularly offensive" because it "recklessly impugns, in the most disgusting possible way," the reputations of living and dead people. [7] Salon published excerpts from the book in 2018 upon the occasion of Bush's death. [8] [9]
In The Washington Post , reviewer Jamie Malanowski said that "by trying to explain everything, to create a unified field theory of American tragedy that has the Bushes as the key actors and beneficiaries, Baker exceeds his grasp." He said that "Baker is not content merely to raise uncomfortable questions; he has latched onto the Grand Theory of Bushativity, and he insists on pressing his case with evidence that will not bear the weight." [10]
Malanowski said that every time Baker "reaches a gap in someone's means or motivation, he hops, skips and jumps across it as nimbly as a mountain goat. Such words as 'appears,' 'apparently,' 'likely,' 'seems,' 'seemingly' and 'in all likelihood' appear at many crucial junctures; there are more crutches in these pages than in the grotto at Lourdes." [10]
Time magazine reviewer Lev Grossman called Baker "prodigiously industrious" but said the effort to frame Watergate as an effort to take down Nixon was "far-fetched". [1]
In a Los Angeles Times review, Tim Rutten, a former media critic for the newspaper, excoriated the book as an example of paranoid literature described by Richard Hofstadter. He said that "if the paranoid style can be said to have a canon, his preposterous new book. ... surely deserves a place among its classics." Rutten called the book a "dispiriting tome" and said that the Kennedy assassination conspiracy, as recounted in the book, had "about as many people involved in the plot as there were on Omaha Beach." He said that "what makes Baker's book singularly offensive is the way he recklessly impugns, in the most disgusting possible way, the reputations not simply of men and women now dead, but of the living." Rutten said that the elder Bush is probably "libel proof" but "using the tissue of innuendo, illogical inference, circumstance and guilt by tenuous association -- as Baker does in this book -- to indict rhetorically anyone, let alone a former chief executive, of an infamous murder is a reprehensible calumny." [3]
Investigative journalist Tim Weiner, winner of the Pulitzer Prize and author of CIA and FBI histories, said the book is "a carnival of conspiracy theory". He told Boston magazine in 2015 that Baker is "driven by the search for truth that drives reporters everywhere, but conspiracy theory in which there's a giant octopus that connects disparate events and provides a unified field theory explanation of otherwise disparate events is not either journalism or history." [2]
In the 2019 anthology Conspiracies and Conspiracy Theories in American History, the authors observe that a CIA memo indicates that a "George Bush" was briefed on the Kennedy assassination. But the book describes as "tenuous at best" Baker's claim that George H.W. Bush was connected to supposed CIA involvement in the assassination. [11]
Lee Harvey Oswald was a U.S. Marine veteran who assassinated John F. Kennedy, the 35th president of the United States, on November 22, 1963.
Harry Robbins "Bob" Haldeman was an American political aide and businessman, best known for his service as White House Chief of Staff to President Richard Nixon and his consequent involvement in the Watergate scandal.
Frank Anthony Sturgis, born Frank Angelo Fiorini, was one of the five Watergate burglars whose capture led to the end of the presidency of Richard Nixon.
Everette Howard Hunt Jr. was an American intelligence officer and author. From 1949 to 1970, Hunt served as an officer in the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA), where he was a central figure in U.S. regime change in Latin America including the 1954 Guatemalan coup d'état and the 1961 Bay of Pigs Invasion in Cuba. Along with G. Gordon Liddy, Frank Sturgis, and others, Hunt was one of the Nixon administration's so-called White House Plumbers, a team of operatives charged with identifying government leaks to outside parties.
Vincent T. Bugliosi Jr. was an American prosecutor and author who served as Deputy District Attorney for the Los Angeles County District Attorney's Office between 1964 and 1972. He became best known for successfully prosecuting Charles Manson and other defendants accused of the Tate–LaBianca murders that took place between August 9 and August 10, 1969.
Deep Throat is the pseudonym given to the secret informant who provided information in 1972 to Bob Woodward, who shared it with Carl Bernstein. Woodward and Bernstein were reporters for The Washington Post, and Deep Throat provided key details about the involvement of U.S. president Richard Nixon's administration in what came to be known as the Watergate scandal. In 2005, 31 years after Nixon's resignation and 11 years after Nixon's death, a family attorney stated that former Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) Associate Director Mark Felt was Deep Throat. By then, Felt was suffering from dementia and had previously denied being Deep Throat, but Woodward and Bernstein then confirmed the attorney's claim.
The Spotlight was a weekly newspaper in the United States, published in Washington, D.C. from September 1975 to July 2001 by the now-defunct antisemitic Liberty Lobby. The Spotlight ran articles and editorials professing a "populist and nationalist" political orientation. Some observers have described the publication as promoting a right-wing, or conservative, politics.
Jack Northman Anderson was an American newspaper columnist, syndicated by United Features Syndicate, considered one of the founders of modern investigative journalism. Anderson won the 1972 Pulitzer Prize for National Reporting for his investigation on secret U.S. policy decision-making between the United States and Pakistan during the Indo-Pakistani War of 1971. In addition to his newspaper career, Anderson also had a national radio show on the Mutual Broadcasting System, acted as Washington bureau chief of Parade magazine, and was a commentator on ABC-TV's Good Morning America for nine years.
Willem Leonard Oltmans was a Dutch investigative journalist and author active in international politics.
George Sergius de Mohrenschildt was an American petroleum geologist, anti-communist political refugee, professor, and occasional CIA field agent. De Mohrenschildt, who moved to the Dallas area in October 1961, is best known for having befriended Lee Harvey Oswald in the summer of 1962.
David Sánchez Morales was a Central Intelligence Agency operative who worked in Cuba and Chile.
Plausible Denial: Was the CIA Involved in the Assassination of JFK? is a 1991 book by American attorney Mark Lane that outlines his theory that former Watergate figure E. Howard Hunt was involved with the Central Intelligence Agency in the assassination of United States President John F. Kennedy. Published by Thunder's Mouth Press, the book chronicles Lane's legal defense of Liberty Lobby, a right-wing political group that was sued for libel by Hunt after it published an article in its weekly paper, The Spotlight, linking Hunt — a former CIA operative — to the assassination. According to Lane, Thunder's Mouth Press agreed to publish it "after every other publisher in the United States had refused to do so".
John H. Meier is an American financier and business consultant now living in Vancouver, Canada. He is noted for his involvement with Howard Hughes, for his behind-the-scenes involvement in events that precipitated President of the United States Richard M. Nixon's resignation, and for his knowledge related to the Assassination of Robert F. Kennedy.
Russ Baker is an American author and investigative journalist. Baker is the editor-in-chief and founder of the nonprofit news website WhoWhatWhy. Earlier in his career he wrote for a variety of publications, including The New York Times Magazine,The New Yorker, The Washington Post, Esquire,Vanity Fair, The Christian Science Monitor, The Nation, The Guardian, Wired, and The Village Voice.
The CIA Kennedy assassination is a prominent John F. Kennedy assassination conspiracy theory. According to ABC News, the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) is represented in nearly every theory that involves American conspirators. The secretive nature of the CIA, and the conjecture surrounding the high-profile political assassinations in the United States during the 1960s, has made the CIA a plausible suspect for some who believe in a conspiracy. Conspiracy theorists have ascribed various motives for CIA involvement in the assassination of President Kennedy, including Kennedy's firing of CIA director Allen Dulles, Kennedy's refusal to provide air support to the Bay of Pigs invasion, Kennedy's plan to cut the agency's budget by 20 percent, and the belief that the president was weak on communism. In 1979, the House Select Committee on Assassinations (HSCA) concluded that the CIA was not involved in the assassination of Kennedy.
Wedge: The Secret War Between the FBI and CIA, a nonfiction book by American historian and policy analyst Mark Riebling, explores the conflict between U.S. domestic law enforcement and foreign intelligence. The book presents FBI–CIA rivalry through the prism of national traumas—including the Kennedy assassination, Watergate, and 9/11—and argues that the agencies' failure to cooperate has seriously endangered U.S. national security.
11/22/63 is a novel by American author Stephen King about a time traveler who attempts to prevent the assassination of United States President John F. Kennedy, which occurred on November 22, 1963. It is the 60th book published by Stephen King, his 49th novel and the 42nd under his own name. The novel required considerable research to accurately portray the late 1950s and early 1960s. King commented on the amount of research it required, saying "I've never tried to write anything like this before. It was really strange at first, like breaking in a new pair of shoes."
The assassination of John F. Kennedy on November 22, 1963, has spawned numerous conspiracy theories. These theories allege the involvement of the CIA, the Mafia, Vice President Lyndon B. Johnson, Cuban Prime Minister Fidel Castro, the KGB, or some combination of these individuals and entities. Some conspiracy theories have alleged a coverup by parts of the federal government, such as the original FBI investigators, the Warren Commission, or the CIA. Former Los Angeles District Attorney Vincent Bugliosi estimated that a total of 42 groups, 82 assassins, and 214 people had been accused at one time or another in various conspiracy scenarios.
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External videos | |
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Presentation by Baker on Family of Secrets, March 24, 2009, C-SPAN |