Chapter 6

"Learn To Live In His Own Slop"

What publisher Sarah Crichton of Little, Brown really told me is that anything done to make money is legitimate.

I sent her the official proof her author had from the disclosed CIA files that proved him to be a liar in his besmirching of the assassinated President and her reply was that they are so proud the book was, on release, an immediate best seller.

She did not intend this honesty but that is the clear meaning of the kind of letter she wrote in presumed response to the specifics of the documented letter I sent Little, Brown.

"We are understandably proud," she said when I proved the book they were going to publish had at least the fraudulent contents the fraud of which, the deliberateness of the fraud of which, is proven by the official CIA memo I'd sent.

That was not by any means all the fraud, all the dishonesty in that book.

But if crookedness to make money from a book is right and proper by that standard, is there any kind of crookedness that is not right and proper?

If it is legitimate to rip off the mind, which is what Hersh and Little, Brown combined to do; is it less legitimate to rip off the pocket or the pocketbook? Which is what the sale of a fraud does.

Hersh knew exactly what he was doing. He was doing what he set out to do.

Actually, what he set out to change what he what he had contracted to do.

He had contracted a book on the assassination of President Kennedy, with, as we have seen, an advance against royalties of a million dollars. Little, Brown was, of course, serious in the venture with that kind of money front, before Hersh put a word of paper. Hersh was serious enough to get Mike Ewing in on the deal. Mike had been a researcher on the staff of the House assassins committee of the 1970s. Ewing, like the man who ran that committee, G. Robert Blakey, believed the Mafia assassinated the President.

From what is public it appears that it took some time for Hersh to lose his interest in doing the book he had contracted, on the assassination. From what was public before the book appeared it was when Hersh first saw those attractive forgeries about President Kennedy that he decided to switch the book to them. He is quoted as having said that he spent a year and a half on what turned out to be forgeries and would have been recognized as forgeries to begin with almost immediately with any impartial inquiry. It was over them, over Ewing's refusal to have anything to do with them, that he and Hersh spilt and Hersh went his own way.

Hersh has given different accounts of the degree to which he was taken in by those forgeries. These range from not having been taken in at all, to not having written a word about them, to his having written only a chapter and then having dropped that chapter.

But, as does everything with Hersh and his book, that also changed when change appeared to Hersh to be in his interest.

The first conspicuous attention to Hersh's book was over those fakes. He then said what on each occasion appeared to be in his interest to say, meaning in the interest of the book, too. That he then said what appeared to serve his interest and that of the book, without regard for fact or to truth, did not make him unique. It is not an uncommon position for writers of what can be taken as controversial to be in, and his inconsistencies in his responses — well, his lack of honesty in some of his responses — also was not unique. By the time a book is out or is about to appear the publisher and the author have a considerable investment in it and the temptation to serve its interests above all others is omnipresent and dominating.

What Hersh said one day in response to questions from a reporter in one city need not have been what he told a different reporter in a different city on another day.

He is an experienced reporter, was one of the very best, particularly when that reporting required an inquiring mind. Hersh's specialty, what earned him his Pulitzer, was investigative reporting. He knows the business and he knows how to handle reporters. He knew how to size up what may have the greatest appeal to a reporter and what has least possibility of asserting the appeal that encourages the reporter to do a story that will see books.

He knew what he could pull off and get away with, too.

But even when the reporter has questions, it can sell books.

Hersh was interviewed by Lynda Hurst of the Toronto Star. Her story, of well more than a full-sized newspaper page, was the main story in its Context section of December 7. It appeared under the headline, "The Image Killer." The subhead said that "Seymour Hersh knew there'd be trouble if he attacked the Kennedy myth. He was right."

But a week later, the story in the Toronto Globe and Mail by Andrew Cohen identified Cohen as a likely customer for anyone with a spare Brooklyn Bridge to sell. That December 15 story, of most of a standard-size newspaper page, had as its headline the title of a book written by two of the former President's closest friends and associates, "Johnnie, we hardly knew ye." The subhead is straight Hersh, without a single question, and in this is completely faithful to the story Cohen wrote despite the great amount of controversy about the book and its content long before then, especially in Washington, where Cohen was based:

Forget President John F. Kennedy's image of youth, family, elegance, civil rights and the moon shot. A new book tells about the dark side of the House of Kennedy — a story of stolen elections, blackmail, sexual improprieties, cynicism and irresponsibility.

Which is to say that Cohen bought at least one Brooklyn Bridge.

It is also to say that the paper's policy is anti-Kennedy. Otherwise, with all that had come to light from authentic experts, like Columbia's Alan Brinkley, for all that had been published in major publications refuting Hersh, it would not have accepted Hersh's every word without question, as it did. (There is, of course, the alternative, that the paper is edited by dumdums.)

In her second paragraph Hurst reflects that Hersh gave her a still different real reason for not writing the book of the original contract, a book on the assassination. It had nothing to do with those attractive fakes that Hersh suckered himself over. The first words Hurst used, which have to be what Hersh said or at the least what he led her to believe, are an obvious lie. He also led her to believe and to report that he had had no interest in the assassination — although he had contracted a book on it and that contract provided for a million dollar advance against royalties — before a word was written:

Seymour Hersh didn't want to write a book on John F. Kennedy. He was asked to, okay? It was the money, he will tell you straight out, the $1 million up front that hooked him.

But when the veteran investigative journalist got to thanking:: Without going one more time into the assassination, something he definitely did not want to do, why couldn't he take a look at how Jack Kennedy lived, and see if it told him something about how he died?

What Hersh, did want to do is write a book about the President. That is why he suckered himself with those obvious fakes when with ordinary common sense he would have immediately have recognized at least some of them as fakes from their content alone and others as likely to be fakes.

Those fakes said what Hersh believed or wanted to believe and wanted to stay and the book he did is consistent with them without any of those forged documents being used in it. Only forged history is used in it.

Forging documents is a criminal offense.

Forging history makes a million. It also is immune under the law.

Cohen, his paper's Washington correspondent, had no questions. From his story Hersh wrote only the gospel truth. Hurst, identified as a feature writer, did have questions, did raise what could have embarrassed some people but Hersh has experience in handling such questions. Meaning, he got away without answering, as he did with his crack about the noted historian, Alan Brinkley who expressed a low opinion of Hersh's book in Time magazine.

Hersh did not make any defense of his book or of his book or of what be said in it. He got away with no response to Brinkley's description of the book as "shoddy and careless arguments" of "self-serving credulity!" All Hersh said, and all he had to say, is "Who's that guy?"

Generally, reporters do not argue with those they interview. They usually understand what their editors do and do not want. When they get wise cracks that are not very wise they usually let it go so that and avoid any problems.

Of course it is possible that Hurst did not know that Hersh was not truthful in telling her that "he was asked to" write the book he told her he did not want to write, "on John F. Kennedy." His contract was for the book to be on the assassination. He switched when he saw the anti-Kennedy book in those fakes and he stayed with the anti-Kennedy line of those fakes after he had to admit to himself that they are fakes.

He also told her — and remember, his contract and that million dollar advance were for a book on the assassination — were that "going one more time into the assassination" was "something he definitely did not want to do."

"Once more into the assassination" when he had done nothing about it other than accept that generous advance for the book supposed to be on or about it?

Hurst did remind Hersh of some of the published criticisms of his book:

But Hersh dismisses these critics, saying they're as bedazzled as the Kennedy apologists by the still-golden, if slightly tarnished, JFK mystique.

She also wrote that

With JFK, he's being "ravaged, roasted, pilloried" because everybody is playing follow-the-leader, in this case a kick-off trashing review by Wills.

"C'mon," he snaps, "you get one starling in a tree and then all the other starlings join him."

Hurst's comment, legitimate in a signed article in which opinion is professionally acceptable, was professional and rather understated:

All of which makes it tricky to discuss with the 60-year old Hersh . . . the weaker — seeming spots in his arguments. Indeed, its like darting back and forth through the looking glass because what Hersh says in the book and what he seems to be saying, at breakneck speed in person, are sometimes different things.

As we have seen so often and see again, also often!

Politely, lady-like, Hurst was calling Hersh a liar.

Her saying "darting back and forth through the looking glass" was to invoke Alice in Wonderland. That was particularly appropriate following her quoted reference to the "trashing" review by Garry Wills. His was a devastating review in the December 18, issue of The New York Review of Books. It is titled, "A Second Assassination" and of all that has been written about Hersh and his book that I have seen this really is the "assassination" of them both!

Garry Wills is not pro-Kennedy, as Hersh made out in evading all Wills said about him and his book. (Wills has a record of being critical of the President. He is not a Kennedy partisan.)

The first sentence in his first paragraph also, without citing it, drew on Alice in Wonderland:

I am ready to believe nine bad things about John Kennedy before breakfast — until Mr. Hersh adds a tenth, and that makes me begin wondering about the first nine. The more charges he adds to the score, the more I feel I should be subtracting from it. He tells us so many unbelievable things he says we never knew that we begin to doubt all the things we thought we knew. If Hersh will just write two more books about Kennedy, I could end up as starry-eyed about the man as any Sorenson or Schlesinger.

Wills then proceeds to make his case, as he does powerfully.

And all Hersh could say is,

"C'mon," he snaps. "You get one starling in a tree and then all the other starlings join him."

Hersh made an exception of the Thomas Powers leading review in the November 30 Sunday New York Times Book Review section. Of that he said, "It says there is something here that you can't walk away from."

There are those who did more than merely "walk away from" that Powers review.

There is also the question, should Power have been selected, of all of those from whom the Times could select to review the Hersh book, the man who from his past has to be regarded as a partisan. Power's wrote The Man Who Kept the Secrets: Richard Helms and the CIA (Alfred A, Knopf, Inc, 1979 and Pocket Books, 1981). Powers' is a laudatory biography of the former CIA Director and Hersh is the CIA's defender in his book, attributing to the Kennedy's what the CIA did and sought to do. What the CIA or those who worked for it told Hersh, he accepted as without question, no matter how much in question it was or should have been, no matter how tricky the formulation. Powers did not question what Hersh did not question.

In the Hersh book the a people who worked for the CIA are a major basis for the case Hersh contrives against Kennedy and against his Presidency. For one example, Samuel Halpern, who was involved in the CIA's endless anti-Castro activities. Hersh used Halpern as a major source and authority — an unquestioned authority — on twenty-one pages, according to the Hersh index. Thirteen times Hersh uses Halpern with regard to those CIA efforts to assassinate Castro, the CIA's efforts Hersh attributes to the Kennedys. Hersh, again according to his index, used Helms in that same role half that many times, half being quite a few in the importance of that matter of the CIA assassination plots to the Hersh effort to indict Kennedy as a bad President.

What also makes use of Powers to review the Hersh book at best a poor selection because of his known prejudices and partisanship is the doctrine of the Hersh book that we saw in the second paragraph quoted by Hurst, that Hersh claimed he decided to "take a look at how Jack Kennedy lived to see if it told him something about how he died." This is the hoary hoax of the of the Castro-kickback theory of the assassination that has no basis in fact or even in reason.

But, when without question at all, the CIA having made so many efforts to assassinate Castro, for Hersh to believe that "how Kennedy lived," which in his book is trying to get Castro killed, is how Kennedy died, that alone should have been more than enough for the Times not to have selected Powers to write the kind of review on the basis of what should have disqualified him from it.

That Powers review alone should have placed the Hersh book higher on the Times' weekly best-seller list than on other papers, like The Washington Post.

Wills and Powers are the extremes, although there was no partisanship in the New York Review's selection of Wills to do its review. Powers among reviewers and Cohen of the Toronto Globe and Mail among interviewers are the minority. Most reviewers were not favorable to Hersh or to his book and most reporters at the least had some questions.

The Wills concluding comment is close to unique and it is pertinent:

It is an astonishing spectacle, this book. In his zeal to destroy Camelot, to raze it down, to dance on the rubble, and sow salt on the ground where it stood, Hersh has with precision and method disassembled and obliterated his own career and reputation.

Time will tell.

What is clear is that with regard to this book Hersh and truth are strangers.

We have seen that he began the project that resulted in this book with it to be a book on the assassination and yet he told Hurst of the Toronto Star that "going one more time into the assassination" was "something he definitely did not want to do." Her first words are "Seymour Hersh did not want to write a book about John F. Kennedy" [which is precisely what he did do]. He was asked to do it, okay?"

"Asked to do it" about Kennedy when he had a million dollar advance for the contracted book to be on the assassination, not the man? Not on Camelot?"

Hersh, the Hersh who is without source notes, is not to be automatically believed, not without the most probative confirmation. (Which is what source notes are generally used to cite.)

Because he is and has been so extensively self-contradictory it may be worth the time to explore the possibilities that led to this book, the actualities of the situation with regard to books on the assassination which, despite all of Hersh's many before breakfast versions, so to speak, and what could have led to the radically different book than the one Hersh contracted. Which does mean contracted to do, to produce, and for which he was paid so generously.

If he did work on it, as he said, for five years, that means he began at the latest in 1992 and possibly earlier, in 1991. The commercially-promising and commercially-attractive thirtieth anniversary of the assassination was in 1993. Whether or not Hersh began with the belief he could have his book done in time for that anniversary, it was an event that would refocus interest on the assassination and could be expected to keep up the unflagged interest in it up.

In 1992 there was the sensational and exceptionally successful Oliver Stone assassination movie, JFK. That could have been expected to cream the market for what did not agree with the official assassination explanation.

Not that there is any reason to believe that Harsh considered not agreeing with the official explanation. Or that Little, Brown would offer a million dollars in front money for a book not in accord with the official version.

Or would even consider one.

It was known in the trade in 1992 that Random House had contracted a book in support of the official assassination solution and would make a big thing of it. Which it did when Gerald Posner's mistitled Case Closed appeared. Attention to it began with the cover and a major part of an edition of U.S. News and World Report being given over to it. Random house could have been expected to and did make major efforts to promote and sell the book. There was every prospect that aside from all the other hooks planned to commercialize and exploit the assassination this Random House book would get maximum attention.

As it did.

The Stone movie and the Random House book alone could have discouraged the Hersh entry into the assassination industry.

But if by any chance Hersh's assassination interest had not cooled, in addition to other books there loomed the Norman Mailer book on which Random House could have been expected to and in time did devote great attention to, really extraordinary attention to it.

Which did not prevent its being, after a delay in appearance, the super-spectacular literary bomb of 1995.

It was the flop of flops.

So, and there is more like this, aside from those fakes that were so attractive to Hersh there was much that could have discouraged him from doing a book on the assassination. Among these other factors was the Ewing hangup that the Mafia did it, of which there is no proof at all, and doing that was assurance to Hersh that he would get nowhere with it. He is an experienced and justifiably honored investigative reporter.

Meanwhile, he had and had spent his share of the advance and, according to the previously cited news accounts, had already hit Ewing for his share of the advance.

When the Ewing angle did not pan out, and Hersh had no other use for or need of Ewing, Hersh had to deliver something that would satisfy Little, Brown which had come up with that generous advance and had accepted $50 thousand from the Book-of-the-Month Club for the unwritten book.

Despite his contract, Hersh could not have satisfied Little, Brown with the assassination.

Even if he had wanted to.

To get the contract, Hersh had his name and reputation, particularly his Pulitzer, and the promise of the nitty-gritty from inside the House assassins committee via Ewing. When the Mafia theory did not stack, Hersh had nothing on the assassination.

He also knew that the media would kill any book that did not conclude pretty much as the Warren Commission concluded.

That is what Posner did so there was no ready market for any rehash of it.

Besides which, the sales of the Posner book, with all the attention lavished on it, were not all that good.

If Hersh had ever had any interest, no matter how slight, in any information about the assassination other than what is in the Warren Report, it is probable he would have looked me up because it is well known in the field that I obtained about a third of a million pages of once-withheld official assassination records and make them freely accessible to all writing in the field.

Most of those who have come to look at those records agree with the official assassination explanation. Those records include the alleged backstopping of the official story. If Hersh intended support of the official story he would have found those records useful to him and he would have found in them what is not in the Warren Commission's files. He would have had easier and faster access to the FBI's records it disclosed to me if he examined them here than if he had used the FBI's public reading room for access to them. This is to say that by means of what has been a dependable indication of assassination interest Hersh manifested no such interest at all.

Two things are certain: Hersh does not tell us how the book he did came to be; and, if he did, we could not accept his unsupported word.

So, we do not know why the formula for his contracted book changed and changed so radically or why it became what it did other than the possible profitability of condemning Kennedys.

Hersh could have excited Little, Brown over those fakes that he did not believe were fakes, those anti-Kennedy fakes, and that anti-Kennedy line could have carried over and became the book that appeared.

The book that one columnist called, literally, "Slop."

In the October 23, 1997 Newsday there is the headline on the Robert Reno column that says, "Seymour Hersh Must Learn to Live In His Own Slop." The, first sentence of that column is, "People who wallow in third-hand muck and purloined drain cleanings must accept that they will come up smelling, even to their friends."

This is not inconsistent with what we have seen in the relatively small peek at the Hersh Book. But much of it is not worth taking any time for.

Reno and others who noted the "third-hand" source dependence hit one of the major weaknesses of the book. It is not usual for established writers to go for undependable sources yet without totally undependable sources Hersh had no book. Of this we have as yet seen only a little but we have seen that it is the fact.

It is also the fact that Hersh depends on thirty-five year old memories.

It was his objective to eviscerate "Camelot" and to get rich doing that.

He did this with a rehash of what was well known to which he gave his own twists, his unwarranted interpretations.

The Toronto Star's Lynda Hurst's is a fair summary of what is really the dark side of Sy Hersh. She wrote that his book is the

portrait of a corrupt, sex-crazed, calculating, lying, murderous cynic who was enthralled with covert action and who ordered hits on everyone from Cuban President Fidel Castro (JFK was obsessed with revenge after the humiliating Bay of Pigs invasion fiasco) to Ngo Dinh Diem. The South Vietnamese president's assassination in November, 1963, three weeks before Kennedy's own, escalated America's participation in the disastrous Vietnam War — to Hersh, the most grievous crime of all.

According to the book, JFK did all this after stealing the 1960 election with bribes and bought votes and getting mobster Sam Giancana, not mayor Richard Daley, to deliver the union vote in Chicago.

She could have included what Hersh argues, that in what caused Kennedy, in Hersh's view, to be a bad President, he endangered the country.

On this the truth is the opposite of what Hersh argues.