Chapter 2

Hersh Does Not have To Be "Objective" — And He Isn't

This is a strange book by a strange man.

While profanity is not unknown to reporters the excessive resort to it in public is not commonplace among them. Most do not, as Hersh did, scream at those they want to interview and threaten their sources, reminding them who he is, which is to say what he might write that could appear in print. But for him it worked.

We will never know if Little, Brown would have accepted and published this book in this form if it had not already put out, among other costs, that million-dollar advance and gotten that half-million from the Book-of-the-Month Club. Most major publishers would have wanted in the book what is not there and is the norm of serious nonfiction and of authentic scholarship.

This is a book that is based on a prejudicial preconception. The internal are indications in the book itself are that Hersh began intending to do what he wound up doing. It does not reflect that he made any effort, before beginning the book, to learn whether his beginning belief was valid. Although once in a while, quite infrequently, he has some to something to say about a Kennedy that is not poisonous, he does write venomously about them all. The writing does not disclose whether Hersh's beginning hatred of President John F. Kennedy was sincere; whether he decided in advance of writing the book that a hate-Kennedy book would sell, make him rich, give him that "score," the "retirement" he wanted; or whether both are true.

Hersh's problem was that the actual facts do not support his preconception or justify his obvious hatred. It is because the facts do not that the departures from the norm in serious, scholarly nonfiction was necessary in this book.

This gave him no real alternative if he was to have his book but to present suspicion or conjecture as fact when it was not, then repeat it over and over again and in the repetition, treat the suspicion or conjecture as established fact, his Hersh-it technique.

The book has no foreword, no introduction, no bibliography or, in the usual sense, any source notes. It has no big-name endorsement on the dust jacket and, with no foreword or introduction, none there. When the promised full-page ads appeared, on Sunday, November 24, 1997, they were all tabloid-paper size, a half a page in a regular-sized newspaper. It was nonetheless a major investment. Those are costly ads.

There was not a single endorsement of any kind in it. It was, in fact, a fairly simple ad. From top to bottom about half was taken up with a picture of the back of the dust jacket. Above that it says "A Book That Will Forever Change the Way You See The Kennedys." The Bottom fourth is mostly in black, with the printing in white. It says "America's #1 investigative journalist confirms what we have always suspected. And More." About a fifth of that part, its right end, has a picture of the front of the dust jacket and nothing else.

In this Little, Brown adopted that Hersh-it technique in using the words, "confirms what we have always suspected" without saying what it was that the "we" of the ad, which clearly does not refer to most of the people of the country, "have always suspected." This is dirty stuff, as the book is dirty stuff, with that dirty stuff indispensable if there was to be this book or anything like it.

Without the ad saying what it was that the "we" allegedly "always suspected," the proof rather than the suspicion is that most Americans believed that Kennedy was a great president, some the greatest president ever, according to the Gallup poll. John Kifner, writing in The Nation section of the November 16, 1987 Sunday New York Times wrote,

The periodic Gallup poll of whom Americans consider their greatest President found President Kennedy way ahead of all others in 1975 with 52 percent. After a period of debunking, he still led in 1985, with 24 percent. By 1991, Abraham Lincoln managed to edge him out, 40 percent to 39 percent, but the percentage had actually increased in the meantime.

There is nothing in fact to give any support of any kind to the Hersh-it technique Little, Brown adopted for its ad that went to so many important papers, for which it spent so much money.

As Hersh does in the book, Little, Brown made up a suspicion and then treated that suspicion as established fact when the established fact was the exact opposite.

This kind of ad when most Americans regarded Kennedy as a greater President than George Washington and Franklin Delano Roosevelt and as great or greater than Abraham Lincoln is infamous. It is unprincipled and deliberately dishonest, which is being Hersh again.

Little, Brown apparently decided only after writing and manufacturing the dust jacket what it says in the ad, that Hersh is "America's #1 investigative journalist" because the dust jacket is more modest. It refers to him not as alone, the top, the #1" but as "one of America's premier investigative reporters."

With this ad saying that the book "confirms what we've [sic] always suspected," it is not immediately apparent why Little, Brown also said, and said so conspicuously, what in their book "will forever change the way you see the Kennedys."

At one and the same time it will do both? "change forever" what the potential book buyer believes while at the same time it "confirms what we've [sic again!] always suspected."

That it does neither is not the point. The point is that if it "confirms" what Little, Brown says has always been suspected, there is no basis for believing that it will "forever" change how the Kennedys are thought of. Hersh-like, the opposite is the truth.

And with this conflict the possible appeal for sales by the ad could be greatly reduced for those who give thought to advertising copy.

There are people who buy almost any book supposedly about the Kennedys.

There are those who hate them diligently and sincerely and who are also prospective purchasers.

Perhaps each of these is the reason Little, Brown has as the center of its ad the rather unusual back of its dust jacket, a picture of the face of the late President with what seems to be a reflection of his face but isn't. The upright picture is a normal picture of the President as on the occasion of the taking of picture he looked. But the bottom, the pretended reflection is a made- up picture with his head flattened and contorted considerably to give it the appearance of radiating hatred.

This is the entire back of the dust jacket. Not on a word on it.

The front, with letters raised , is simply the title and Hersh's name. It is all black on white. No color.

The seeming contradiction between the short text at the top of the ad and that at the bottom exists with the Little, Brown description of Hersh. In the ad he is "#1", all alone, the first, in a class by himself. But on the dust jacket he is not this unique, He is merely "one of" those outstanding investigative reporters.

The dust jacket allows for the Bob Woodwards of investigative reporting the thinking of whom makes Hersh, in Hersh's own word. "Pathological."

The ad does not.

Yet as we have seen Hersh himself says he is not in Woodward's class and that is what makes his merely thinking of Woodward "pathological."

If the ad is designed to appeal to those who stop and think when they read something, it intend telling them there is what is new in this book, what will :forever change" what people think of the Kennedys, particularly the former President. However, as we see in detail, there is nothing at all really new in this book and what is pretended to be is not true, as we also see and as to a degree we have seen in what was quoted from the learned opinion of the respected professional historian (which Hersh is not), Alan Brinkley.

With its cover telling a lie and its ad also telling lies perhaps Little, Brown decided against seeking big-name pre-publication endorsements, the norm, because of those lies, because it might get what it did not want and that could be embarrassing. Perhaps the Hersh ego is such that he believed he needed no help from any endorsements of his book. But the fact is that when these endorsements are from those who are respected or thought well of, they do help sell books and they help that very much.

With this being written two weeks after the book's publication date and much longer after the initial controversy over it, only a few who are respected thought well of the book said anything that would encourage sales. All these appeals were to people who hated Kennedy.

This is not what publishers normally want and it is not what helps authors sell their books or with Hersh, make his "score."

This strange book by this strange man had this also strange introduction to those who buy books.

The ad is not so strange. Little, Brown could not tell the truth about that book which, from the controversy and subject-matter, alone could become a best-seller, and did. But the ad was a blatant appeal to those who hate Kennedy. But not to others. If others examine the book when considering purchasing it and look through it they will find pictures that, with a single exception, are not at all unusual and for a book that is supposed to be an exposé; no documents — not a single document — and no appendix for them. This alone tells the thinking person considering buying the book that believing it will require believing Hersh's word.

That single exception is the picture that is the back of the dust jacket. There is no credit on the dust jacket but as it appears in the book facing page 245 it is credited to "UPI/CORBIS- BETTMAN."

It is a made-up picture, as described above. It is obviously made up because the normal part, the normal view of the President speaking, shows him and his hair is particularly neat, with people visible behind him, and with all else, including what is above his head, dark, solidly dark, perhaps black. But there is deliberate distortion in what cannot be what it is made to appear to be a reflection of his face from something reflective and in the position of a table top. His entire face, including even his ears and his mouth are distorted to give the appearance of intense hatred. And above, his head it is pale, like the sky is daytime, with his hair in disarray.

While perhaps most people will not stop to examine this picture on the back of the dust jacket, which has not a word on it to hold their interest or attention, or the same photograph as it appears in the book, of the many thousands of pictures of the President that were available, and the book has six besides this one, it is obvious that there was a purpose in using this seventh picture of him in the picture section and on the dust jacket when the only purpose could be to attract attention to or interest in the contorted part and have it taken suggestively.

This is an abnormality in normal publishing. The presenting of a faked picture as a natural one itself raises questions about intent and whether the idea was Hersh's or that of Little, Brown.

Why use so contorted a picture at all other than because of the contortion and what, Hersh-like, it suggests? To provoke hatred, as Hersh's words do.

All books supposed to be nonfiction do not have an appendix, but this one is presented as a documented exposé of the Kennedy record. That does suggest that an appendix of documents should be available and should be appropriate.

But there is none.

Hersh draws heavily on other books but his book lacks any bibliography. Going along with the absence of any appendix or bibliography is the total absence of normal source notes. There is a small section titled "Chapter Notes" (pages 457-73), but they are not the normal notes. And they do include what belongs in a bibliography, citation of the books that are used.

But in not a single instance is a page given!

It is impossible to use these "chapter notes" as source notes are intended to be used, so people can confirm the use made by the author. To do that the reader of this book — and this is the Hersh design — would have to read every word of every book on which Hersh drew until the reader came to what he or she might believe is what Hersh was drawing on or had in mind.

Hersh designed this so he could not be checked out. And what Hersh does require is that checking out, as we see in more than enough instances.

When he says he quotes his interviews (of which he never stops boasting excessively) there is no way of checking that, either.

And as we see, this is also a need with Hersh. In plain English he is a liar and he lies in various ways, as in saying other than the person supposedly quoted says he said; in ignoring what those he interviewed told him that is contrary to what Hersh wanted to say and did say (remember those five interviews with the Washington editor, Peters, whose name is not mentioned in the book and at whom, when he said what Hersh did not want, Hersh shouted "Bullshit" at him repeatedly); and in other selective uses and misuses, including of documents of which he had copies.

Also missing in this political book is the necessary identifications, political identifications in particular. Where Hersh quotes people about John Kennedy, for example, he avoids mention of whether they were political opponents, anti-Kennedy Democrats or Republicans; or of whether their relationship with the President ever changed, particularly if it changed after what is said to be quoted about him.

Was a Hersh source a political enemy of the President?

Hersh does not say.

Most of his sources are two dimensional in this book, as they would not be in newspaper reporting, for example. That Little, Brown was satisfied with this abnormal presentation of live people, if it is satisfied that Little, Brown was, in itself is unusual. It is not the kind of writing publishers usually want, not the kind that is appealing to readers. Or informative.

The exceptions in this book are rare and few.

Those who hold different political beliefs need not be regarded as undependable sources and they may be among the most dependable. But honest writing by an honest writer who has honest intentions does require that this information be provided, not eliminated, usually with completeness.

For example, Richard Whalen wrote the first and the basic book about Joe Kennedy, The Founding Father. It was published by The New American Library in 1964. Writing about Joe Kennedy without using Whalen's book is impossible. Moreover, because his was the first, it has considerable influence on the writers who followed him and used the information he brought to light. But for all Hersh tells his readers about this basic source Whalen could be from down under, from New Zealand or Australia or a Londoner. Or a carpenter or a plumber. Hersh says nothing at all about him that can reflect partiality or impartiality.

In fact, and this need not mean and should not be taken to mean that Whalen is not a dependable source, he is a political adversary of the Kennedys. He is, or at least was thirty years before this writing, when we had a friendly relationship, an authentic conservative. He and his wife were also devout and Catholics. Our relationship was such they had their little children refer to me as "uncle." Richard was anti-Kennedy, but that does not mean he was not an honest writer or that what he wrote could not be trusted. Rather is the point that readers should be informed so they can decide for themselves. Then, too, there is always the question of possible bias.

With the uses made of his work Hersh, had he intended honesty, would also have told the reader that Richard also worked in the Nixon White House.

There is not a single one of his many sources Hersh identifies as a Kennedy opponent or enemy, as many were.

This is not normal and is not honest.

Although Hersh includes all the Kennedys, his real targets are the Kennedys who were the President and his brother, who was his attorney general. There today is little interest in their father or their maternal grandfather but including them lets Hersh blacken them all and at the same time start getting the sex stuff in. He does that regardless of a need or of any concern for the reputations of those about whom he includes sex, prominent men of their period. It is with regard to this kind of writing that the total, the intended and designed reader inability to check Hersh out, is significant. This gets to his professional integrity in his seeing to it that the reader has no way of checking him out, of consulting his sources to decide whether what Hersh uses is a fair interpretation or whether the original source is dependable or not. Certainly those Hersh says Joe Kennedy provided with women if still alive, did not boast of that to Hersh!

With each of the three older and respected men whose sexual interests and activities are not really germane to this book, it is on the first mention of their names that Hersh sneaks in this titillating information. With one, a very prominent and important man of his era and then well along in years, there is but that one mention of him. With another there are four mentions and with the third — all prominent men — there are nine references.

With regard to the first of these three Hersh has occasion to mention Frank Waldrop as a source of information on a woman, Hersh, in context, has to say something about Waldrop because that woman was a reporter who worked for him. Hersh's total identification is, "Frank Waldrop, the editor of the isolationist Washington Times-Herald" (page 82). This is far from the proper and the honest identification. There were millions of Democrats who at that time were also "isolationist." This was also true of countless Democratic newspapers. Those papers Waldrop edited were violently anti-Democrat and anti-administration. Those papers strongly opposed the administration of which Joe Kennedy was a part.

This does not mean that Waldrop did not tell Hersh the truth but what it does mean is that Hersh, as he is consistently, is not fully honest and informative to his reader. He hides prejudices and reasons to suspect prejudice.

This underwriting is characteristic of Hersh's entire book. But he also depends on various forms of over-writing that includes exaggerations and careful and intendedly misleading selections from what is quoted to impart a meaning that is the opposite of the actual meaning.

This is a remarkably dishonest book and it begins being that at the outset.

The over-writing begins on the first page. There Hersh writes that the "presidential airplane soared away from murderous Texas to the safety of Washington. Texas was not "murderous" and there have been presidents for whom there was no "safety" in Washington, most recently Harry Truman and Ronald Reagan. He missed death from a bullet by a fraction of an inch and his press secretary, also almost fatally wounded, was permanently disabled when they were shot within an easy walk of the White House. And how about the attempted bombing of the Capitol? Does that, too, too, make Washington "safe?" It is both unfair and amateurish to refer to Texas as "murderous" to the President.

On the very next page the inherent dirtiness, the intended dishonesty of this writing, the Hersh's intention, becomes obvious.

What follows is most of Hersh's page 2:

In those first hours of horror, the president's remarkable younger brother lived up to his reputation for pragmatism and toughness, notifying members of the family, worrying about the return of his brother's body, answering legal inquiries from the new president, and it seems, losing himself, in appropriate action. There would be time for mourning later. Now there was a state funeral to arrange and the president's widow and children to console. Among his many telephone calls early that afternoon was one to McGeorge Bundy, the dead president's national security adviser, who was told to protect Jack Kennedy's papers. Bundy, after checking with the State Department, ordered that the combinations to the president's locked files be changed at once — before Lyndon Johnson's men could begin rummaging through them.

Bobby Kennedy understood that public revelation of the materials in his brother's White House files would forever destroy Jack Kennedy's reputation as president, and his own as attorney general. He had spent nearly three years in a confounding situation — as guardian of the nation's laws, as his brother's secret operative in foreign crises, and as personal watchdog for an older brother who reveled in personal excess and recklessness.

The two brothers had lied in their denials to newspapermen and the public about Jack Kennedy's long-rumored first marriage to a Palm Beach socialite named Durie Malcolm. In 1947 Kennedy, then a first-term congressman, and Malcolm were married by a justice of the peace in an early-morning ceremony at Palm Beach.

According to Durie Malcom, and not her alone, Hersh is the liar.

He is also a proven liar, meaning a deliberate liar, in his second paragraph quoted above in saying that "public revelation of the material in his brother's White House files would destroy Jack Kennedy reputation as president." Those "materials" are and have been publicly available in the Kennedy Library, which is part of the National Archives, other than what is national-security classified, and even Hersh used available Kennedy papers.

He knew the truth in writing this lie.

It is not an accidental lie.

In this formulation, in this writing, Hersh certainly suggests the unusual and that there were dirty Kennedy secrets to be protected by the immediate removal of "Jack Kennedy's papers." It says further that if this were not done immediately the material in the President's files would "forever destroy" his "reputation." It does not give us a word about what is in those "secret" files, or how Hersh could know what is in them, and it is written to make this appear to be real dirty stuff and so unusual. Especially when it is followed by that story about which in this account of it there can be no question about it, of John Kennedy's disproven Palm Beach marriage.

Hersh has no idea what was in those papers, and he certainly does not know that they held a word about that or any other secret JFK marriage. But, what he does know, is that every President has secret papers that are properly secret for a wide variety of reasons, not infrequently to protect the privacy of innocent people, as well as national security.

It is more than twenty years after Nixon was forced to resign to avoid being impeached and the matter of his papers is not yet settled. Nor is the litigation over them completed. Yet there is a whole large and public library of John Kennedy's available papers, including a great volume of those that were declassified at the time at the time he was assassinated. They are under the administration of The National Archives and it decides what can be disclosed of what had been classified and what little must be withheld.

Nixon followed Johnson, whose papers are also available in his library, but it is not Kennedy records that are being litigated. Or Johnson's. Nixon's are in litigation.

The difference and the only difference, regardless of his sneakiness, this deliberate dirtiness by Hersh who, I repeat, knew not a word about what was in those papers, is that normally Presidents have from the first part of November, the time of the election, until past the middle of January to have their papers gone over and removed.

As without exceptions, all do if they are alive.

As Hersh knows.

It is normal, except when "America's #1 investigative journalist" has his "score" to make and that "score" is to be at the cost of the Kennedys.

What is the norm with every president, for Hersh's book becomes dirty with the Kennedys, and that without the slightest knowledge of what was or could have been in those papers or what if anything made them any different than the papers of other presidents. But having no knowledge, and for his kind of writing what is also referred to as by "one of America's premier investigative reporters," needing no knowledge, and having a willing publisher, he can get away with this most deliberate of conscious dishonesties and misrepresentations.

Lies, the grossest lies!

There is not a word of truth in what Hersh wrote. It is all made up, and that is what is true of much of this book, it is not true and it is made up.

There is no difference, other than in the extraordinary time limitation, between the removal of John Kennedy's papers and those of Dwight Eisenhower, who preceded him, or of those of Lyndon Johnson who followed him.

Despite this writing, Hersh, who had been a Washington reporter, knew there was not a thing unusual in the protection of the Kennedy White House papers. So also did Little, Brown know this in so willingly publishing Hersh's deliberate and intendedly prejudicial lie. Had Little, Brown had the norm with even the most scholarly of books and had a peer review, it could not have dared publish this and much if not most of the book. So, it had no peer review. But the average person is not aware of those things that are and always have been the norm in Washington and with all presidents. So to take advantage of the trust of the average person, which means to deceive and mislead that average person for money and to serve personal political objectives, Hersh lies, knowingly and deliberately, and Little, Brown, goes along with those lies.

Because this is so outrageous, so blatantly dishonest, it is not inappropriate to recall again Hersh's acknowledgment of his debt to some of the Little, Brown people:

This book owes its being to Jim Silberman, senior editor at Little, Brown and Company, who began urging me a decade ago to write about the presidency and the Cold War. His sense of what may be out there is uncanny, and his constant support and encouragement were essential to getting it done. My editor, Curby Kummer, of Boston, has his fingerprints on every page, every paragraph, every comma. His unyielding standards and sense of how to tell a story, and how to tell it grammatically, were crucial to this book. Peggy Leith Anderson, developmental editor at Little, Brown, was relentless in the search for facts and readability; her sensible queries were a delight (usually). Sarah Crichton, the publisher of Little, Brown, was formidable in her enthusiasm and support for this project.

What this book "owes its being to" is greed, Little, Brown's as well as Hersh's, and to hatred, and to the willingness of both writer and publisher to do what was necessary to serve that greed and that hatred.

Based on what had become public before the book was out I wrote Little, Brown with illustrations, informing it that the book certainly contained deliberate lies, and I included a CIA record disclosed by it to me years ago that proves the lies to which I referred. I also referred to the fact that if there had been any competent peer review these deliberate lies by Hersh would have been caught,.

I was not ignored. Not entirely. Three weeks after the book was out I got a completely non-responsive form letter from publisher and Little, Brown vice president Sarah Crichton. Along with boasting about the success, the financial success of their dishonesties, along with Hersh's, of their misrepresentations, it says that the publisher "has an obligation to publish information without repressing details." It was proof that those "details" I documented had to be "repressed" in the book that I sent her. We come to them later in the Hersh rewriting of the history of the attempts to kill Castro and what relates to that writing. Here is her letter, in full:

Pulitzer Prize winning journalist Seymour Hersh's DARK SIDE OF CAMELOT, we are told, has hit #2 on a forthcoming New York Times bestseller list, and we are understandably proud.

We understand the risk involved in publishing reports on what might be considered unpleasant facts and events. Nevertheless, we believe that, as a publisher, Little, Brown and Company has an obligation to publish information without repressing details because they may offend individuals' sensitivities.

We are grateful for your having taken the time to write us regarding your views on our decision to publish it.

Sincerely,

(Signed)

Sarah Crichton

She knew the truth about the lying she published. They all did.

That business of that alleged secret marriage is placed here to make it appear that records relating to it and to what is like it are what Robert Kennedy had to get rid of in a great hurry. But if the reader jumps ahead, past three-quarters of the text, and gets to page 328, there it is admitted that the woman JFK allegedly married, Durie Malcom, denies it vehemently, in very pointed language.

Hersh wrote:

Malcolm, now over eighty years of age and a widow -- her fourth husband, Frank Appleton, died in 1996 - has consistently denied the story. "I wouldn't have married Jack Kennedy for all the tea in China," she told London's Sunday Times in 1996. "I'll tell you why, if you want to know the truth. I didn't care for those Irish micks, and old Joe was a terrible man." Malcolm has issued similar denials since the story first became public, in 1961. Her only child, a daughter also named Durie Malcolm, who lives in London, has never spoken publicly about her mother.

Durie Malcolm, contacted in the fall of 1997 by a close friend on behalf of the author, was categorical in refusing to be interviewed. "Tell him one thing," she told her friend. "I've never been married to John Kennedy and there's nothing to discuss. Just call him up and say we were never married" (pages 328-9).

Hersh also has a glib reason for there being no record of this marriage in the Palm Beach records: they were stolen for Kennedy, Palm Beach is that careless with its records. The Palm Beach that required blood tests before licenses were issued and a waiting period to boot and also has no pre-marriage blood-test records.

Hersh is long on what J. Edgar Hoover could do to the Kennedys and in one version we come to Hersh actually alleges he actually did — what Hersh says made it possible for Lyndon Johnson to be vice president, which also meant presidential successor. But Hersh does not cite any FBI's records on this.

In the third of a million pages I obtained from the government, mostly from the FBI, by a dozen or so lawsuits under the Freedom of Information act (FOIA), there is the results of the FBI's investigation of that rumored Palm Beach marriage. However, there is no index disclosed with them and retrieval of that investigation is a physical impossibility for me now. But I have a clear recollection of the fact that the FBI investigated it and stated that it did not happen.

Hersh has one source for his claim that Kennedy married Malcolm fifty years earlier, a man who he says has a bad short memory but remembers it after fifty years, Charles Spalding. What does Hersh, this experienced reporter, this "#1 investigative journalist," tell us about Spaulding? Only that he was "one of Kennedy's oldest friends" (page 2). Not another word about him here, other than this reflection of his claimed memory.

When he was questioned about this, Kennedy told the reporter for Look magazine, according to an oral history at the JFK library, he denied the marriage and said, "I knew her and took her to a football game, and that was about it" (page 333). Hersh saved this and other denials for the end of the book, after the opening venom was injected.

On the preceding page Hersh admits that when Kennedy was asked about that alleged marriage by Clark Clifford, the prominent lawyer who was so important and valuable to so many presidents, Kennedy told him that "I think I had two dates with her. One may have been a dinner date in which we went dancing. The other, to my recollection was a football game."

Clifford also quotes Malcolm, this was separate and separated by years (and these are Hersh's words so much later in the book, so long after his poisoning) as "saying, 'that we had two dates. We may have had dinner in New York, and the other time we went to a football game'" (page 333).

Spaulding is finally identified (after most of the book) on page 327 as a "stockbroker." He says he stole the Palm Beach records of the alleged marriage.

Hersh knew that the FBI had records on this but he fudges that over (page 334), pretending those records were only newspaper stories on, his quotation marks, "'rumors' of an early Kennedy marriage" (page 334).

First the poison, at the very beginning, and then, more than three hundred pages later, what can be taken as and in fact is, despite the manner in which he writes it, the disproof, the antidote for his poison that he pretends is not that.

This is a standard Hersh technique.

This book begins with a fair sample of the calculated dishonesty of both the concept and the book, with the dishonesty and unprofessionalism of the writing, which is by a justly honored professional writer; and with the demonstration of the technique Hersh uses throughout in his quest for his "score,"

He undertakes to do with the writing what cannot be done with the fact.

That Little, Brown published this with all that is so very wrong with it, and what we have seen of the criticism and this illustration is but a minor part of what is so very wrong with this book, gives added meaning, as we saw, to Hersh's "Acknowledgments" (pages 475-6).

Hersh says, "This book owes its being to Jim Silverman senior editor at Little, Brown and Company, who began urging me a decade ago to write about the presidency and the Cold War."

(Now this is a point where Hersh could have used some of that "relentless search" for facts but alas where there is no indication of the editor's "fingerprints on every page, every paragraph, every comma" (page 475) because the earlier announcements were of an entirely different book. As Time reported in its October 6, 1997 issue, "In August 1993 Hersh signed a million dollar contract with Little, Brown, to do a book on the assassination of John F. Kennedy. The focus of the book shifted, however, when he found Lex Cusack, a New York paralegal, who had a cache of explosive papers," those that exploded in Hersh's face. Or, as Newsday, reported November 18, "using a collaborator, he had planned to write a book determining whether there had been a conspiracy to kill Kennedy. Little, Brown gave the pair a $1 million contract and without a word written, another $500,000 was paid by the Book-of-the-Month Club. This is not what Hersh thanks Jim Silberman for so effusively, for the book that finally appeared "owes its being" to Silberman and his "urging" on Hersh a "Book about the presidency and the Cold War." Not the same, any of this, but for Hersh it is what is to be expected. Consistency is no more one of his vices than is truthfulness.)

For all of this is not factual in his book of which we have seen but a glimpse, Hersh had "Peggy Leith Anderson, developmental editor at Little, Brown, relentless in the search for facts." He also says, "I was blessed with the services of Max Friedman, now a graduate student at the University of California. Max is a brilliant researcher, fact checker . . ." Hersh also thanks "Jock Friedly, of Washington [who], also did inspired research for this book." (With this authentic atrocity the result of "inspired research," we can only wonder what would have emerged without such "inspiration.")

We see some of what the "research" did not include and what is represented as fact and isn't.

When we have examined the entire book, most of which we do examine, there is meaning Hersh did not intend in, "My editor, Corby Kummer, of Boston, has his fingerprints on every page, every paragraph, every comma." Hersh also credits him with "how to tell as story" that was crucial to this book."

As an example of how the facts were checked here is what followed the Hersh poisoning of the reader's minds with the Palm Beach marriage business. It begins with an obviously false assumption, fact checking being what it is and considering the importance of all those "fingerprints" on every "paragraph," Hersh's account of what allegedly is in those White House files he has already so grossly misrepresented — what he said Robert Kennedy dropped every thing to hide — which was a separate lie. Hersh had no knowledge of any of those records and no means of getting that knowledge.

He just made it up with his customary nastiness and, as we see, he passed that off as fact when it isn't. Indispensable fact at that. He gets into some of it later in the book and we examine it there. What follows ranges from fabrication and exaggeration to outright lies:

The president's files would reveal that Jack and Bobby Kennedy were more than merely informed about the CIA's assassination plotting against Prime Minister Fidel Castro of Cuba: they were its strongest advocates. The necessity of Castro's death became a presidential obsession after the disastrous failure of the Bay of Pigs invasion of April 1961, and remained an obsession to the end. White House files also dealt with three foreign leaders who were murdered during Kennedy's thousand days in the presidency — Patrice Lumumba, of the Congo; Rafael Trujillo, of the Dominican Republic; and Ngo Dinh Diem, of South Vietnam. Jack Kennedy knew of and endorsed the CIA's assassination plotting against Lumumba and Trujillo before his inauguration on January 20, 1961. He was much more active in the fall of 1963, when a brutal coup d'état in Saigon resulted in Diem's murder. Two months before the coup, Kennedy summoned air force general Edward G. Lansdale, a former CIA operative who had been involved in the administration's assassination plotting against Fidel Castro, and asked whether he would return to Saigon and help if the president decided he had to "get rid" of Diem. "Mr. President," Lansdale responded, "I couldn't do that." The plot went forward. None of it was shared with Lyndon Johnson, then vice president.

The vice president also did not know that Jack Kennedy's acclaimed triumph in the Cuban missile crisis of October 1962 was far from a victory. The world would emerge from the fearful days of pending nuclear holocaust and be told that the president had stood firm before a Soviet threat and forced Premier Nikita Khruschev to back down. Little of this was true, as Bobby Kennedy knew. Knowing that their political futures were at stake, the brothers had been forced to negotiate a secret last-minute compromise with the Soviets. The real settlement — and the true import of the missile crisis — remained a state secret for more than twenty-five years.

There was more secrets for Bobby Kennedy to hide (page 3)

That is real journalist in slime in the first Hersh sentence quoted above. He says that the files about which he knows nothing at all "would reveal that Jack and Bobby Kennedy were more than merely informed about the CIA's plotting against" Castro. While when he gets to this later, and we do with him, it is clear that he has no such "fact,"the point here is that all Hersh alleges, vile as it is, is his conjecture comes from his total ignorance of those files, that "would" reveal what they did not and could not and, in fact, "would" not, one of the reasons for adding emphasis to what Hersh says.

That Castro's death became a Kennedy "obsession" is another Hersh fabrication. It and those above, like all of them, begin as conjectures Hersh makes up and, as he repeats them more and more, more and more he writes about them, those things he made up, as established fact. This is Hersh-it "journalism."

Without this method, this manufacturing of the book's contents, he has no book, no crack at that "score".

Criticism like this got to him the very day his book was published. As Newsday reported November 11, Hersh told Scripps-Howard in an interview that "he was upset by criticism that he did not have the hard evidence to support his claims. He said he had 'no videotape' for his "Mai Lai story" for which he won a Pulitzer Prize." Hersh protested further "that he did not have an obligation to be objective."

The Oxford dictionary defines objective as "having real existence outside a person's mind, not subjective; not influenced by personal feelings or opinions."

So Hersh claims he has no obligation to report what has a real existence outside of his mind or, no obligation not to report what he just makes up.

If the reader jumps ahead to the first page of the Hersh chapter, titled in spook terms, "Executive Action", he finds that Hersh says that "In fact the last few months of the Eisenhower administration three foreign leaders — Fidel Castro, Patrice Lumumba and Rafael Trujillo, of the Dominican Republic — had already been selected as potential targets of political assassination" (page 185).

Naturally, all these Eisenhower administration assassination ploys are properly, in Hersh's concept of being the "#1 investigative journalist," attributed to the Kennedys he hates. (On the Castro part, Hersh had, lied about and in major part suppressed a CIA document that it disclosed to me under FOIA. He had and he uses it, which is to say, with his Hersh-it method, he misuses it. We come to that. This, however, serves to give point to that form letter boasting in Crichton's non-response when I notified her in advance of publication, and she said that "Little, Brown and Company has an obligation to publish information without repressing details." This is exactly what they did with regard to Hersh's plots against Castro and not with regard to that alone. Little, Brown also "repressed" what it, above all others, knew to be true about the settlement of the Cuba missile crisis to protect that most sensational of Hersh's misrepresentations.

Hersh's "#1 investigative journalist's" use of Kennedy being allegedly "active" in the Diem assassination is typical of the dirty tricks of his writing. The word has no meaning as he uses it but it certainly is suggestive, and what it suggests, as we see, is a lie and Hersh knows it is a lie. Until we get to our fuller account, the fact is, and Hersh knew it, that Kennedy did not want Diem assassinated and took steps to see to it that he wasn't. This is what Hersh is really talking about when he says that Kennedy was "active" in that assassination.

That General Edward Lansdale was "involved in the" Kennedy "administration's assassination plotting against Fidel Castro" is another lie that is not easily detected as the lie it is because of Hersh's constant repetition of it without any proof of it at all. That the CIA plotted to kill Castro does not mean that it was told to do that by Kennedy and the record is clear, it was not. The CIA's record Hersh shuns and misrepresents — and had!

A bigger lie, as history records, is not easy for this "#1" in the lie department, than that "Kennedy's acclaimed triumph in the Cuba missile crisis of October 1962 was far from a victory."

It saved the world from nuclear incineration and it ended the prospect of the war our CIA and military were leading the world into war over Cuba.

We get to Hersh's fairy tale about this, his ludicrous and false pretenses, and his customary ignoring of all that is not consistent with what he makes up and wants believed, merely because he, "#1" Hersh, made it up. Hersh's rewriting of that crisis and how it was resolved would have qualified him for a high position under Joseph Goebbels. As Little, Brown, of all publishers knew.

Not being addicted to the Hersh-it method of writing yet not wanting to take the edge off of it when we get to what he did make up for his dishonest, his evil purposes, we do report in part here on about the truth of his lie that Little, Brown publishes this about that Cuba missile crisis:

Knowing that their political futures were at stake, the brothers had been forced to negotiate a secret last-minute compromise with the Soviets. The real settlement — and the true import of the missile crisis — remained a state secret for more than twenty-five years (page 3).

What Hersh is talking about and misrepresents was not any state secret for any twenty-five years. It was published not later than 1970, and that was less than ten years, about eight years. It was published by Little, Brown, which then published Khrushchev Remembers — and that includes a full and accurate account of why part of the deal that ended that, the world's most dangerous crisis, was not made public immediately.

It was public in a matter of a few months, but not as part of that settlement.

Little, Brown had a short "Publisher's Note" in Khrushchev Remembers. It concludes:

The publisher takes full responsibility for the manner in which Nikita Khrushchev is represented here. Moreover, he does so with the confidence that the genuineness as well as the significance of these reminiscences speak for themselves.

Or Little, Brown knew the truth in publishing Hersh's untruth.

(If Khrushchev Remembers went through five hardback printings before paperback reprinting by Bantam.)

(I use this illustration of the great editing and fact-checking Hersh had, those fingerprints of it on every page, every paragraph, every comma and all that "relentlessness" in "search of facts" to which Hersh endlessly boasts of all the originality in his book when what is really original is what he made up and what he boasts about is lacking. Twenty-five years a state secret prates this supposed expert, this supposed "#1 investigative journalist", because it also involved Little, Brown. But that was not the first disclosure by far of what Hersh says was a "state secret." Without going farther than my bookshelf and consulting nothing other than my own failing memory I found that there were several other standard sources, known to and used in the Hersh-it rewriting of history. People he does not like went public with this. We save the details for later but this close to the outset, to give a fuller understanding of what had become of Hersh, what can be expected of him and how to regard his book, I record the fact that Robert Kennedy himself went public with this and with much more detail than Hersh manipulates, in 1968 and 1969, which was less than twenty-five years, only five years; and Arthur Schlesinger, Jr. did in 1978, which was also much less the self-touting Hersh says required twenty five years. He also had needed and factual details lacking in Hersh.

Insofar as reviewers are concerned, including professional historians, I have not seen any writing that trips Hersh up over his own misrepresentations that are his representations of his scholarship and of fact.

The truth is that in these public accounts so public so long before Hersh's great ambition hit him there are essential details Hersh knew and had to "repress" in order to make up the monstrous lie that is so important to his book and to his efforts to defame and malign the dead Kennedys who could not defend themselves from his "#1" literary and journalistic dishonesties.

That Hersh could sink to this and so much more like it is tragic, pathetic for a man of his legitimate accomplishments of the past.

It is tragic too, that he deceives so many about their history.

But as we see, this inherent dishonesty was required for him to have his book, to make his "score."

It also means that he cannot be "objective" so he protests that he does not have the obligation to be and, as we see throughout, he isn't.