The Dark Side of Camelot

The Dark Side of Camelot
Seymour Hersh

This edition does not include illustrations.Sex, the Kennedys, Monroe and the Mafia; the controversial American bestseller – ‘Hersh has found more muck in this particular Augean stable than most people want to acknowledge’ Gore Vidal• Jack Kennedy had it all. And he used it all – his father’s fortune, and his own beauty, wit and power – with a heedless, reckless daring. There was no tomorrow, and there was no secret that money and charm could not hide.• In this groundbreaking book, award-winning investigative journalist Seymour Hersh shows us a John F Kennedy we have never seen before, a man insulated from the normal consequences of behaviour long before he entered the White House. Kennedys could do exactly what they wanted, and could evade any charge brought against them. Kennedys wrote their own moral code.• And Kennedys trusted only Kennedys. Jack appointed his brother Bobby keeper of the secrets – the family debt to organized crime, the real state of Jack’s health, the sources of his election victories, the plots to murder foreign leaders, and the President’s intentions in Vietnam. As Jack’s closest confident and chief enforcer, Bobby attacked any potential family enemy with a savagery he was supposed to reserve for the criminals he was sworn to prosecute – the very criminals their father had enlisted.• The brothers prided themselves on another trait inherited from their father – a voracious appetite for women – and indulged it with a daily abandon deeply disturbing to the Secret Service agents who witnessed it. These men speak for the first time about their amazement at what they saw and the powerlessness they felt to protect the leader of their country. Now Seymour Hersh tells us the real story of those risks, in the hands of a crisis-driven president who maintained a facade of cool toughness while negotiating private compromises unknown to even his closest advisers.

SEYMOUR HERSH

The Dark Side of Camelot

DEDICATION (#ulink_b3614f4e-2861-5a48-920e-c61efa259ee3)

For Elizabeth,

Matthew, Melissa,

and Joshua

CONTENTS

Cover (#uf40625b4-dbbb-51a1-acd4-0064a6a36805)

Title Page (#u8e18f231-d535-5aa2-a15a-249c7130215e)

Dedication (#u52f1f730-2d5f-5779-b25a-0e9cc9983053)

1. November 22

2. Jack (#u61c56d2d-7bde-556a-97c6-e64e8c16a323)

3. Honey Fitz (#ucc1df02d-5b58-52ee-bf68-9cda9b81f7d9)

4. Joe (#uf643f879-7398-580e-ae5e-f6f45fcf950d)

5. The Ambassador (#ub4d8e3e7-824b-5571-be89-07c9855c6cdb)

6. Taking on Fdr (#ub87e5b91-3d06-5c75-98e1-1785df169cf5)

7. Nomination for Sale (#u4abef2f4-6392-5fc8-a827-ce6ebe0c8751)

8. Threatened Candidacy (#u6805d864-753f-54d7-b82f-e9c0e5a14fc2)

9. Lyndon (#ud0e04a28-c304-5130-ae04-90b2b0fb951d)

10. The Stolen Election (#litres_trial_promo)

11. Campaign Secret (#litres_trial_promo)

12. Trapping Nixon (#litres_trial_promo)

13. Executive Action (#litres_trial_promo)

14. Bay of Pigs (#litres_trial_promo)

15. Secret Service (#litres_trial_promo)

16. Crisis in Berlin (#litres_trial_promo)

17. Target Castro (#litres_trial_promo)

18. Judy (#litres_trial_promo)

19. First Marriage (#litres_trial_promo)

20. Missile Crisis (#litres_trial_promo)

21. Deceptions (#litres_trial_promo)

22. Ellen (#litres_trial_promo)

23. Vietnam (#litres_trial_promo)

24. Last Days (#litres_trial_promo)

Epilogue (#litres_trial_promo)

Chapter Notes (#litres_trial_promo)

Index (#litres_trial_promo)

Acknowledgments (#litres_trial_promo)

About the Author (#litres_trial_promo)

Author’s Note (#litres_trial_promo)

Also by the Author (#litres_trial_promo)

Copyright (#litres_trial_promo)

About the Publisher (#litres_trial_promo)

1 NOVEMBER 22 (#ulink_e1985bfa-e2d3-5803-81b5-db82c9a6d2f3)

It was America’s blackest Friday.

President John F. Kennedy was gunned down on a Dallas street thirty minutes after noon on November 22, 1963. Vice President Lyndon B. Johnson, who had accompanied the president to Dallas, sped back to Air Force One and was sworn in with the bloodied widow of Jack Kennedy at his side. The presidential airplane soared away from murderous Texas to the safety of Washington.

Once Air Force One was airborne, some of the military and security men on duty were able to emerge from their despair and anger to begin asking necessary questions. Was Jack Kennedy’s death the first move in an international conspiracy? Was Lyndon Johnson now the target? These concerns were shared in Washington, as the bureaucracy began the slow turn from one presidential orbit to another.

But it was the man closest to John F. Kennedy who needed to put aside his grief and begin immediately to hide all evidence of Kennedy’s secret life from the nation—as well as from the new president, who could be sitting in the Oval Office by early evening. When word came of his brother’s shooting, Attorney General Robert F. Kennedy, the second most powerful man in Washington, was at his Hickory Hill estate in suburban Virginia having a casual lunch of clam chowder and tuna fish sandwiches with, among others, Robert Morgenthau, the U.S. attorney for the Southern District of New York.