Deep Politics and the Death of JFK [Anglais] [Broché]

Scott, a poet, an English professor at UC Berkeley and a long-time investigator into the impact of drugs on U.S. foreign policy in Asia and Central America, has been examining the issues surrounding the John Kennedy assassination for many years. His thoughtful, extremely (and sometimes excessively) detailed book promises more than it actually delivers. Scott's thesis is that under the surface of everyday politics is an often sinister mingling of business and criminal interests that sometimes coincide with the national interest as perceived by the military and intelligence communities; and that such a combination lay behind JFK's shooting. This is hardly a new concept, although Scott broadens the scope of the shadowy business villains considerably beyond the usual military-industrial complex to include fruit companies and law firms. His drawing of suggestive links is tireless--he is a great synthesizer--but since the "facts" on which he relies are often the result of other people's not necessarily accurate reporting, the whole structure has a ramshackle feel. The book's most useful feature is a careful discussion of how U.S. Vietnam policy changed abruptly after Kennedy's death.
Copyright 1993 Reed Business Information, Inc. --Ce texte fait référence à une édition épuisée ou non disponible de ce titre.

Over the past 30 years, more than 2000 books about the Kennedy assassination have been published. While Posner and Scott come to different conclusions, their studies are important additions to the field. Providing a detailed account of Oswald's life from childhood on, Posner shows him to have been a psychologically disturbed malcontent who was unhappy with both the U.S. and Soviet political systems. Posner counters claims of the major conspiracy theorists point by point and backs up his arguments with documentary evidence, recent interviews, and up-to-date computer analysis. Faulting conspiracy theorists for equating coincidence as evidence, Posner concludes that there was no other gunman and no conspiracy. Scott, a Berkeley English professor, approaches the assassination in its sociopolitical context, focusing on why it happened rather than on who did it. The phrase "deep politics" refers to the secret networks operating within and outside government agencies. While they do not constitute a unified shadow government, they comprise a coalition of individuals who cooperate in order to maintain the status quo. Accordingly, Scott examines Ruby's links with organized crime, army intelligence and JFK's planned withdrawal from Vietnam, J. Edgar Hoover's misuse of his authority, and the collusion of international drug traffickers with the CIA and FBI. Scott believes that Oswald and Ruby were part of this convoluted network. Both these titles offer important insights and are highly recommended for most libraries. Case Closed was previewed in Prepub Alert, LJ 5/15/93.
- Gary D. Barber, SUNY at Fredonia Lib.
Copyright 1993 Reed Business Information, Inc. --Ce texte fait référence à une édition épuisée ou non disponible de ce titre.

Staggeringly well-researched and intelligent overview not only of the JFK assassination but also of the rise of forces undermining American democracy--of which the assassination, Scott says, is symptomatic. Scott (English/UC at Berkeley; coauthor, Cocaine Politics, 1991, etc.) advances the idea that each decade has produced its own adjustment to prolonging and deepening the cold war but that this adjustment can't be seen merely as an effort of nefarious power grabbers but rather as a synergism emerging from many interrelated political layers reacting to each other. The author is less interested in actual facts than in working toward public control of political life. To do this, he uses a huge magnifying glass he calls ``deep politics''--the study of ``political practices and arrangements that are usually repressed rather than acknowledged.'' The JFK assassination, he contends, is only one of four incapacitating political crises in Washington since WW II: The others are McCarthyism, Watergate, and the Iran-contra scandal, which, along with the JFK killing, have striking continuities in personnel, supranational ties, and outcome. Scott warns: ``I am not suggesting that the four crises were part of some single conspiracy, only that we recognize that in all cases the outcome was roughly the same: a prolongation of a system committed to the Cold War.'' His chief villain is J. Edgar Hoover, the real power behind McCarthyism, McCarthy himself having been a weak arm of systematic governmental violence that increased during Hoover's incumbency and that involved organized crime, assassination of black leaders, CIA assassinations, and much, much more. A kind of Rosetta stone for cracking open the deepest darkness in American politics. Will test the most well-informed. -- Copyright ©1993, Kirkus Associates, LP. All rights reserved. --Ce texte fait référence à une édition épuisée ou non disponible de ce titre.

"A serious study by a concerned scholar into the underlying motives of our time. A book that will become part of our alternate history (to be read and studied by future generations. Thank you, Mr. Peter Dale Scott." (Oliver Stone) --Ce texte fait référence à une édition épuisée ou non disponible de ce titre.

Peter Dale Scott is a Lannan Literary Award-winning poet and Professor of English at the University of California, Berkeley. He is also coauthor (with Jonathan Marshall) of Cocaine Politics: Drugs, Armies, and the CIA in Central America (California, 1991), among other books.