Word: hersh
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...president, particularly a martyred one like John F. Kennedy, deserves a modicum of respect. The measure of any leader ought to be his stewardship in office and his ability to put the public good ahead of private gain. But, sadly, every President since Washington has had "debunkers," like Seymour Hersh in his new book about Kennedy, The Dark Side of Camelot [NATION, Nov. 17]. Such authors are all too willing to embellish the facts to besmirch the personal life of the individuals who have held America's highest elective office. JOHN T. BERNSTEIN SR. Bloomington...
...Seymour Hersh is an investigative journalist only as long as his inquiries fit the prior conclusions he has reached. His recipe for writing: boil down some quotes from murky sources, add a few references to obscure documents, smother with one's own exalted theories and half bake. PHIL LEVY Danvers, Mass...
...matter what Hersh throws out, I choose to remember Kennedy as a hero in war, as a person living a full life despite chronic pain, as a wise and thoughtful leader who understood the forces of history and as a voice of hope for the young, minorities and the underprivileged. I will remember Kennedy as a man who could have lived the life of an idle rich person but chose instead the path of public service. And I will remember him as a President who died in the service of his country. RUTH MELHEIM BRUBAKKEN Jamestown...
...Hersh claims to present a "new history" of the Cuban missile crisis that contradicts previously accepted versions. But he offers almost nothing substantively new, other than an unsupported claim that Kennedy allowed himself to be deceived about Soviet intentions by a private, back-channel Kremlin source and hence delayed sending critical reconnaissance missions over Cuba in the fall of 1962. Hersh's clumsy effort to portray Kennedy's handling of the crisis as reckless and politically motivated is a much inferior version of an intelligent, if controversial, argument Garry Wills presented 15 years ago in The Kennedy Imprisonment: A Meditation...
...Hersh's account of Kennedy's policies in Vietnam is perhaps the flimsiest part of this book. Much of what he says is well known: that Kennedy was deeply complicit in the 1963 coup that toppled Ngo Dinh Diem. But Hersh insists that Kennedy not only approved the coup but also knew about and at least acquiesced in plans to murder Diem and his brother. His evidence for this is almost nonexistent: a cryptic, secondhand account of a conversation between Kennedy and CIA agent Edward Lansdale, a vague thirdhand account of a secret visit to Diem...