Dark Side Of Camelot, The

Jack Kennedy had it all.

And he used it all--his father's fortune, and his own beauty, wit, and power--with a heedless, reckless daring. There was no tomorrow, and there was no secret that money and charm could not hide.

In this ground breaking book, award-winning investigative journalist Seymour M. Hersh shows us a John F. Kennedy we have never seen before, a man insulated from the normal consequences of behavior long before he entered the White House. His father, Joe, set the pattern with an arrogance and cunning that have never been fully appreciated. Kennedys could do exactly what they wanted, and could evade any charge brought against them. Kennedys wrote their own moral code.

And Kennedys trusted only Kennedys. Jack appointed his brother Bobby keeper of the secrets--the family debt to organized crime, the real state of Jack's health, the sources of his election victories, the plots to murder foreign leaders, and the president's intentions in Vietnam. As Jack's closest confidant and chief enforcer, Bobby attacked any potential family enemy with a savagery he was supposed to reserve for the criminals he was sworn to prosecute--the very criminals their father had enlisted.

The brothers prided themselves on another trait inherited from their father --a voracious appetite for women-- and indulged it with a daily abandon deeply disturbing to the Secret Service agents who witnessed it. These men speak for the first time about their amazement at what they saw and the powerlessness they felt to protect the leader of their country.

By the end of his life, Jack Kennedy's private recklessness was beginning to edge into his public life, putting him--and his nation--at risk. Now Seymour Hersh tells us the real story of those risks, in the hands of a crisis-driven president who maintained a facade of cool toughness while negotiating private compromises unknown to even his closest advisers.