"Peter Dale Scott's meticulously documented investigation uncovers the secrets surrounding John F. Kennedy's assassination. Offering a wholly new perspective-that JFK's death was not just an isolated case, but rather a symptom of hidden processes-Scott examines the deep politics of early 1960s American international and domestic policies.
Scott offers a disturbing analysis of the events surrounding Kennedy's death, and of the ""structural defects"" within the American government that allowed such a crime to occur and to go unpunished. In nuanced readings of both previously examined and newly available materials, he finds ample reason to doubt the prevailing interpretations of the assassination. He questions the lone assassin theory and the investigations undertaken by the House Committee on Assassinations, and unearths new connections between Oswald, Ruby, and corporate and law enforcement forces.
Revisiting the controversy popularized in Oliver Stone's movie JFK, Scott probes the link between Kennedy's assassination and the escalation of the U.S. commitment in Vietnam that followed two days later. He contends that Kennedy's plans to withdraw troops from Vietnam-offensive to a powerful anti-Kennedy military and political coalition-were secretly annulled when Johnson came to power. The split between JFK and his Joint Chiefs of Staff, and the collaboration between Army Intelligence and the Dallas Police in 1963, are two of the several missing pieces Scott adds to the puzzle of who killed Kennedy and why.
Scott presses for a new investigation of the Kennedy assassination, not as an external conspiracy but as a power shift within the subterranean world of American politics. Deep Politics and the Death of JFK shatters our notions of one of the central events of the twentieth century."
By:
Peter Dale Scott
Imprint: University of California Press
Country of Publication: United States
Dimensions:
Height: 229mm,
Width: 152mm,
Spine: 25mm
Weight: 590g
ISBN: 9780520205192
ISBN 10: 0520205197
Pages: 424
Publication Date: 22 June 1996
Audience:
General/trade
,
ELT Advanced
Format: Paperback
Publisher's Status: Active
Acknowledgments Abbreviations Preface PART ONE: DEEP POLITICS, VIETNAM, AND THE ASSASSINATION 1. The Kennedy Assassination, Deep Politics, and Denial 2. Kennedy, Johnson, and Vietnam: A Tale of Two NSAMs 3. The Dialectical Cover-Up 4. The Key to the Cover-Up: The FBI, COINTELPROS, and the Case PART TWO: LEE HARVEY OSWALD 5. Oswald, Intelligence, and the Mob in New Orleans 6. Oswald, Intelligence, the Mob, and the Banana Companies 7. Mexico, Somoza, and the Martino- Rosselli Story 8. Ruby and Narcotics: The Heart of What Was Suppressed 9. Ruby's Background: Narcotics, the Teamsters, and the Racing Wire Service 10. The Nationally Protected Drug Traffic and Ruby's Relation to It 11. Blakey and the Politics of Fighting Crime 12. Ruby, Narcotics, and the Establishment PART FOUR: THE PLOT AND THE COVER-UP 13. The Coalitions against the Kennedys 14. Intrigue, Murder, Cover-Up: The Continuity of Manipulation 15. Oswald as an Informant for the Government 16. Oswald as a Double Agent for Hoover 17. Army Intelligence and the Dallas Police 18. The Assassination and the Great Southwest Corporation 19. Who Killed JFK? The Deep Political System Notes Bibliography Index
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.
Reviews for Deep Politics and the Death of JFK
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 Rosette stone for cracking open the deepest darkness in American politics. Will test the most well-informed. (Kirkus Reviews)
