part of the effort to
quadruple gasoline prices through their oil companies; David
Rockefeller took part in the effort to get the American
government to intervene in Chile in 1973; the Trilateral
Commission, which the Rockefellers sponsored, funneled many of
its members into the Carter administration; in 1979, Henry
Kissinger and David Rockefeller convinced Carter to let the Shah
of Iran into the country for medical treatment. The reaction in
Iran helped give us Reagan-Bush. The rest, as they say, is
history.

In comparing the two books, one is immediately struck by a
difference in approach. Whatever the shortcomings of the
Rockefeller book, there is a minimal reliance on questionable
sources. And the concentration on individual lives very seldom
extends into a pervasive search for sex and scandal. This
difference extends to even the photos chosen for the two books.
The Rockefeller book is fairly conventional with wide or half
page group shots or portraits. In the Kennedy book, even the one
page of group shots are tiny prints. The rest are wallet-sized
head shots that when leafed through, give the impression of mug
shots.

The accompanying text is suitable to the photo layout. There

to
be such a friend to the Post. Related to that, in his 1991
reflections on the 1976 article, and in the article itself, he
tries to insinuate that these people - Bradlee, the Truitts, the
Angletons - are actually friends of Kennedy. In addition,
Rosenbaum and others never seemed to ask why those involved all
seemed so eager to violate Mary's privacy by reading the diary.

In no version I have read was that ever part of Mary's
instructions. And Angleton, the man who the Truitts seem to side
with against Bradlee, supposedly went through them like an
archivist.

The Truitts' trust for and seeming loyalty to the Angletons is
particularly interesting. In Rosenbaum's 1976 piece, the
following passage appears:
The Truitts were still in Tokyo when they received word of
the towpath murder, and the responsibility for the diary was
communicated to their mutual friend James Angleton through
still uncertain channels.

With the quiet skill of a cardsharp, Rosenbaum avoids an
important detail. Namely, how the Truitts found out about Mary's
death in the middle of the night halfway around the world.

Someone must have either called or wired them. Why is this matter
never addressed in any version? The logical choice as contacts
wo

she had been with no one
else during the whole time, "not ever" she assures us. Trying to
remain a gentleman, I will only refer the reader to approximately
the second half of the book, which details a rather active social
life on her part.

Finally, what raises this latest revelation to a jocular level is
Exner's description of Kennedy's reaction to her pregnancy when
she informs him of the news. Again, let us use Exner's own words
as quoted by Smith:
So Jack said, "Do you think Sam would help us? Would you ask
Sam? Would you mind asking?" I was surprised, but said I'd
ask. So I called Sam and we had dinner. I told him what I
needed. He blew sky-high. "Damn him! Damn that Kennedy." He
loved to be theatrical, and he always enjoyed picking on
Jack.

Smith/Herodotus was so carried away by that cute, cuddly Italian
mobster that she never bothered to ponder the fact that
zillionaires in America have always had quiet, discreet ways to
solve such personal problems. How about a private jet to a
secretive Swiss clinic? They don't need Mafia chieftains to help
them. Especially one with six FBI agents following him around
ready to squeal on Kennedy the minute Hoover wants them to.

Say That Again Please

There is one revelation in the article that does not come off
tongue-in-cheek.

After talking to Smith's pal Hersh, Exner calls Smith back. She
states that the Kennedy-Giancana talks could be released under
the JFK Act. She then adds: "I hope they will. The government
wants me to talk again." [Emphasis add

and sympathies are contra
to those of America. The problem with this is dual. First, it is
the typical "like father, like son" blanket which reeks of guilt,
not just by association, but by birth. Second, the blatant ploy
does not stand scrutiny because what makes John and Robert
Kennedy so fascinating is how different their politics and
economics were from Joe Kennedy's and how fast the difference was
exhibited. To use just two examples from JFK's first term in the
House, Kennedy rejected his father's isolationist Republican type
of foreign policy and opted for a more internationalist approach
when he voted for the Truman Doctrine and Marshall Plan. Second,
Kennedy voted to sustain Truman's veto of Taft-Hartley which
would weaken unions and strengthen American big
businessmen-people like his father. From there on in, the splits
got wider and wider. It is this father-son dichotomy that none of
these books cares to acknowledge let alone explore-which reveals
their intent. (An exception is the Blairs' book, which does
acknowledge the split on pp. 608-623.)

In their approach to JFK, Collier and Horowitz take up where the
Blairs left off. In fact, they play up the playboy angle even
more strongly than the Blairs. When Kennedy gets to Washington in
1947, this note is immediately struck with "women's underthings
stuffed into the crevices of the sofa" (p

category forever
by reducing it to tabloid standards. Significantly, the article
was entitled "The Dark Side of Camelot," a phrase used by Ron
Rosenbaum (who will be discussed later) and the title of the
upcoming book by Sy Hersh, of whom Kelley is a great admirer. In
this new version, Exner now said that she was seeing Sam Giancana
at Kennedy's bidding. She even helped arrange meetings between
JFK and Giancana and JFK and Roselli. Some of the meetings took
place at 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue. Why would Kennedy need
personal consultation with gangsters like Sam and John? To cinch
elections on his ruthless way to the White House and later to
arrange the liquidation of Castro. Kelley adds that the latter
meetings were done for operation MONGOOSE. But Exner's time
sequence does not jibe with the lifespan of that operation and,
as the record shows, Castro's assassination was not on the
MONGOOSE agenda. In spite of that explicit record, Kelley adds
that historians have never been able to pinpoint Kennedy's role
in those plots, thereby ignoring the abundant evidence unearthed
by the Church Committee which says he had none. Nevertheless,
Kelley and Exner will now exhume the hidden history of those
times for People. Let's examine their excavation.

Exner says that Kennedy needed help in West Virg

builds another scaffolding: he now postulates that Exner
was Kennedy's conduit to the CIA-Mafia plots to kill Castro (Ibid
p. 324). What is breathtaking about this is that this is
something that not even Exner had uttered yet, at least not for
dissemination. And she won't until her get-together with Kitty
Kelley in the February 1988 cover story for People. This curious
passage leads one to think that Davis may have planted the seed
from which the Kelley story sprouted.

To go through the entire Davis book and correct all the errors of
fact, logic, and commentary would literally take another book.
But, in line with my original argument about anti-Kennedy
biography, I must point out just two parts of Davis' discussion
of JFK's Vietnam policy. The author devotes a small chapter to
this subject. In his hands, Kennedy turns into a hawk on Vietnam.

Davis writes that on July 17, 1963, Kennedy made "his last public
utterance" on Vietnam, saying that the U.S. was going to stay
there and win (p.374). But on September 2, 1963, in his interview
with Walter Cronkite, Kennedy states that the war is the
responsibility of "the people of Vietnam, against the
Communists." In other words, they have to win the war, not
Americans. Davis makes no mention of this. Davis similarly
ignores NSAM 111 in which Kennedy refused to admit combat troops
into the war, integral to any escalation plan, and NSAM 263,
which ordered a withdrawal to be completed in 1965. This last was
published in the New York Times (11/16/63), so Davis could have
easily found it had he been looking.

In light of this selective presentation of the recor

is apparently off limits for Ron. If
he drew attention to his lack of curiosity on this matter, it
would hint that something is being papered over in order to
conceal a point.

If that were so, then a previous occurrence in Jim Truitt's
career would bear mentioning, since it quite closely resembles
what he did later in 1976. In August of 1961, Truitt had called
Bradlee and said he had evidence that Kennedy had been previously
married before his wedding to Jackie, and that this fact had been
covered up. Both Bradlee and Truitt pursued the story. But before
they printed it they asked Kennedy about it. He referred them to
Pierre Salinger, his press secretary. Salinger had already heard
the charge from rightwing commentator Fulton Lewis. He had all
his points lined up and proved the story false. Bradlee's account
in Conversations With Kennedy (pp. 43-49) seems to suggest that
Truitt and Bradlee still worked on the story after they were
shown it was wrong.

Also intriguing is a flourish added in Rosenbaum's version, which
appears heavily reliant on the Truitts and Angletons as sources.
Rosenbaum writes that Mary's diary, although usually laid upon
her bedroom bookcase, was found in a locked steel box in her
studio. Rosenbaum doesn't probe as to why it was not found in its
usary&resting place. The locked steel box is not a part of any
other version of the story I know, including Tony Bradlee's, and,
in all versions, she supposedly found the diary. Of course, a
locked box suggests intrigue, but it strains reality. Are we to
believe that every time Mary wanted to make

in the Senate was headed by Idaho's Frank Church.
Other leading lights on that committee were Minnesota's Walter
Mondale, Colorado's Gary Hart, Tennessee's Howard Baker, and
Pennsylvania's Richard Schweiker.

As writers Kate Olmsted and Loch Johnson have shown, the Church
Committee was obstructed by two of the CIA's most potent allies:
the major media and friendly public figures. In the latter
category, Olmsted especially highlights the deadly role of Henry
Kissinger. But as Victor Marchetti revealed to me, there was also
something else at work behind the scenes. In an interview in his
son's office in 1993, Marchetti told me that he never really
thought the Agency was in danger at that time. He stated that
first, the CIA had infiltrated the staff of Church's committee
and, second, the Agency was intent on giving up documents only in
certain areas. In Watergate terminology, it was a "limited-
hangout" solution to the problem of controlling the damage.

The Escape Route

The issue that had ignited so

than fiction will sell
better in a market already jaded by exotic overexposure."

Demaris' book on Hoover can only be called sympathetic. This is
immediately indicated by his choice of interviewees. They include
high level FBI administrators like Robert E. Wick, John P. Mohr,
and Mark Felt; former Attorney General Richard Kleindienst;
Hoover publicity flack Louis Nichols who named one of his sons
after his boss; and actor Efrem Zimbalist who starred in ABC's
glamorized series on the Bureau. In the entire book, there are
eight pages on Hoover's infamous COINTELPRO operations, i.e. the
infiltration, disruption, and occasional destruction of domestic
political movements.

In Hoover's disputes with the Kennedys, there can be no doubt
where Demaris stands. Speaking of Hoover's reputed blackmailing
of presidents, he writes: "It is possible that one or two were
intimidated by their own guilty conscience...." He sums up Hoover
by saying, "He was, whatever his failings, an extraordinary man,
truly one of a kind." The above gives

"John Goller, k9uwa" wrote in message
news:MBhtd.151223$V41.46914@attbi_s52...

resistors in quantity are maybe 2 cents each.

John k9uwa


I wish I could find carbon comps (decent values) for two cents
each! Those days are long gone around these parts.

Pete