Customer Reviews

Brothers in Arms: The Kennedys, the Castros, and the Politics of Murder

5 star:		(8)
4 star:		(2)
3 star:		(1)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(4)

 

 

This book is a jaw dropper.

From Cuban intelligence agent Maria Luisa Calderon's intercepted telephone conversation (tape recorded just ninety minutes after the shots in Dallas and best appreciated in its original audio form) to multiple reports of Cuban agents stationed at the Cuban Embassy in Mexico City packing up and blowing town shortly after the Kennedy murder, "Brothers In Arms" doesn't just light a powder keg under the question of Cuban complicity in the Kennedy assassination, it sets off a nuclear explosion.

If anyone else had authored this book, I might have had considerable doubts about the veracity of the remarkable new information presented. The material presented in "Brothers In Arms," however, comes largely from the work of investigative journalist Gus Russo, who I've known and admired for many years and who has had far more face-to-face time with officers of the Dallas Police, FBI, CIA, and Secret Service, as well as presidential advisers, U.S. congressional investigators, and numerous foreign intelligence service officers than anyone I know.

In some paranoid corners of the so-called "JFK assassination research community," Russo's contacts and connections make him the enemy. The reality, of course, is that Russo's connections give him unprecedented access to perhaps the only people who can still shed light on the questions surrounding Oswald's horrific deed.

One person who proved central to Russo's research was German documentary filmmaker and investigative reporter Wilfried "Willi" Huismann, who persuaded the German television network WDR (Westdeutscher Rundfunk Köln) to underwrite new research into the labyrinth of foreign intrigue surrounding the Kennedy case. The result was the 2006 German television documentary "Rendezvous with Death" which received rave reviews in Europe but was never broadcast in the United States.

Huismann, Russo, and their collaborators assembled a treasure trove of documentation from KGB, Cuban, Mexican Secret Police, and recently unredacted U.S. government files to support the film's thesis. The essence of that documentation is presented in "Brothers In Arms" - all of it intriguing and delivered in a richly readable form.

There will no doubt be cynics and others who will point to the inconsistencies in the various accounts presented in "Brothers in Arms;" eager to dismiss Russo and Molton's work as too fantastic to believe, or worse, an effort by "the enemy" to once again blame Kennedy's death on the Fidel Castro. That would be a mistake.

The conspiracy zanies are already out in force condemning Russo and Molton's work as preposterous poppy-cock because it dares to cross their own zealous agenda - Oswald was used (wittingly or unwittingly) by rogue elements of the CIA to assassinate Kennedy and blame the crime on the Castro regime.

This has been a common theme in conspiracy literature since first suggested, oddly enough, by Soviet Radio TASS in the hours after the assassination, and later embraced by a legion of left-leaning conspiracy authors and theorists.

I don't profess to have an answer to the why behind Oswald's deed. But, I'm always fascinated by well-researched and impeccably realized works like "Brothers In Arms."

Consider the comment made by Jeremy Gunn, the Assassination Record Review Board's (ARRB) chief intelligence analyst, regarding a lead on Fabian Escalante Font, an intelligence officer in Castro's secret service, provided to the board by Gus Russo. Gunn told Russo, "The single most interesting part of the story is Mexico City, and the single most tantalizing lead we received was your report on Escalante, which we followed up aggressively. I went to CIA and saw their file on him [Escalante], which I can't discuss because it's classified. All I will say is that I saw some things there that made my jaw drop. Bottom line; follow Escalante, especially where he was before the assassination."

As a result of Gunn's comments and Russo's work on the Cuban question, a swell of new interest in declassifying the files on Escalante and other Cuban agents has been taking place behind the scenes for the last two years at the National Archives as official new demands are made for foreign governments to come clean with what they know. That is hardly the kind of action that results from fantasy-based conspiracy theories without teeth.

Of course, there will always be those who hope to dissuade the public from reading books like "Brothers In Arms" by stuffing book review forums like this with "reviews" filled with ad hominem attacks and supposed "facts" culled from conspiracy forums, books, conferences, and clubs. Those who post such tripe have so little faith in their fellow man that they don't believe you to be capable of deciding for yourself what is real, believable, or truthful. They've made up their own mind and now they hope to decide for you too.

Is "Brothers In Arms" the final chapter to the story of Lee Harvey Oswald? The authors believe it is. For myself, I am always a bit skeptical of any final solution to the Kennedy assassination. I've read plenty of so-called final solutions over the past three and a-half decades, and no doubt so have you.

However, after forty-five years, the passing of many of the principal players, and access to millions of pages of documentary evidence, one eventually gets to the point of asking: How much evidence constitutes enough proof?

Russo and Molton are convinced that the conclusions presented in "Brothers In Arms" finally explain the disparate actions of all the key players before, during, and after the events of Dallas given human memory, the propensity to exaggerate, and the woeful incompleteness of the written record.

I believe they've come as close as anyone to explaining why Oswald might have pulled the trigger in Dallas. Moreover, their book represents the first believable, unified conspiracy theory written about the Kennedy assassination to date.

Anyway you cut it, Gus Russo and Stephen Molton's "Brothers In Arms" is a rare, sobering, valuable contribution to factual literature on the Kennedy case and a must read book no matter what you now believe about November, 1963.

Wading through so much detail almost made this a four star for me but the crux of the matter was so valuable that I gave it a five anyway. Having just read Lies My Teacher Told Me this made a great supplemental text.
I was especially struck by the complexities of the characters and how different aspects of their personalities came out, especially RFK, LBJ, and Raul Castro. As Lies... points out, our heroes are not without fault and neither are our demons without good qualities.

It's the oldest JFK conspiracy theory in the book: The Kennedy brothers tried to assassinate Castro but, in retaliation, Castro got the President instead. For those who reject the findings of the Warren Commission but don't wish to believe that there was a domestic conspiracy it certainly is a neat little theory. If you reject the Oswald-did-it-alone scenario but just can't bring yourself to go the extra step of accepting the notion that a coup d'etat could take place in America, then you might find some comfort in blaming an enemy overseas. However, if you find yourself more interested in the truth than in a particular theory's psychological appeal, you might ask yourself, "what are the facts?"

In 1975, a Senate Committee headed by Frank Church uncovered the fact that the CIA had made repeated attempts on the life of Fidel Castro. Although evidence suggests that these attempted assassinations began in 1959, the Church Committee "found concrete evidence of at least eight plots involving the CIA to assassinate Fidel Castro from 1960 to 1965." (Church Committee: Interim Report - Alleged Assassination plots involving Foreign Leaders, p71) The committee further reported that "the proposed assassination devices ran the gamut from high-powered rifles to poison pills, poison pens, deadly bacterial powders, and other devices which strain the imagination." (Ibid) Perhaps worst of all, the CIA even went as far as hiring members of organized crime to do its dirty work.

President Kennedy did not enter the White House until January 1961. Therefore, it cannot be claimed that the President or his brother were the instigators of plans to remove the Cuban leader that had begun at least a year previously. However, in November of 1961, Kennedy revealed to New York Times reporter Tad Szulc that he was under pressure to order Castro's assassination but felt that for "moral reasons" the United States should not be involved in such activity. (Ibid p138) A few days later, when speechwriter Dick Goodwin asked JFK about his comments to Szulc, he replied "We can't get into that kind of thing, or we would all be targets." (Ibid p139) Robert Kennedy, apparently felt the same way for he was furious when he discovered the CIA's Mafia plots in May of 1962. He summoned two top CIA officials to the Justice Department and sarcastically remarked, "I trust that if you ever do business again with organized crime...you will let the attorney general know." (Brothers: The Hidden History of the Kennedy Years by David Talbot p86)

The likes of Gus Russo and other proponents of the Castro-did-it scenario would have it that the Kennedy brothers were acting, that their comments were staged to hide their own involvement in the murderous plots. But the Church Committee's exhaustive investigation uncovered no evidence that either Kennedy brother took any part in planning Castro's assassination. White House officials in abundance testified that they "had no knowledge of any assassination plan...and that they did not believe that President Kennedy's character or style of operating would be consistent with approving assassination." (Church Committee report p119) Theodore Sorensen, for example, swore that "such an act [as assassination] was totally foreign to his character and conscience, foreign to his fundamental reverence for human life." (Ibid p120) The testimony of top CIA officials revealed that no one in the agency had personal knowledge of official authorization from the President or the Attorney General. CIA Deputy Director of Plans Richard Helms was fond of hinting that Bobby Kennedy was behind the plots, but would claim no such thing under oath. In fact Helms admitted that he was never told by his superiors to Kill Castro but weakly offered that "No member of the Kennedy administration ever told me that [assassination] was proscribed, [or] even referred to it in that fashion." (Ibid p149) When asked specifically if Robert Kennedy had ever told him to kill Castro, Helms' one-word answer was "No." (Ibid p151) Helms also explained that he did not seek approval "because assassination was not a subject which should be aired with higher authority." (Ibid)

But let us put all of this evidence aside for the moment and ask the most important question of all: Did Castro believe that JFK was responsible for the attempts on his life? For if we are to accept that Castro killed the President in revenge, then it is crucial to know if Castro believed that Kennedy was behind the CIA's plots. Unfortunately for followers of this theory, Castro believed nothing of the sort. In 1984, Tad Szulc had the opportunity to disclose with Castro the details of his remarkable conversation with Kennedy in 1961. Castro listened with interest to Szulc's extraordinary story and told him that it confirmed what he had always believed: That Kennedy had nothing to do with the CIA's murderous scheme. (Talbot p94) Ethal Kennedy, Bobby's widow, also had the chance to set the record straight with the Cuban premier. "I want you know something," She told him, "Jack and Bobby had nothing to do with the plots to kill you." "I know." he replied. (Ibid) And it is here that the Castro theory falls apart. Because if Castro knew that the Kennedy's were not behind the assassination attempts, that the CIA was acting on its own, then there would have been no reason for him to risk the nuclear annihilation of Cuba that would inevitably have followed.

By depending on unreliable and obviously biased sources like the CIA's Sam Helpern, Russo gets it all wrong. In fact, by accepting the Warren commission's non-existent case against Lee Oswald, Russo starts from a false premise. The fact is, the statements and testimonies of six witnesses, Bill Shelley (7H390), Charles Givens (CD5: 329), Eddie Piper (19H499), Carolyn Arnold (CD5:41), Harold Norman (3H189) and Junior Jarman (3H201-2), all corroborate what Oswald told Police and place him on the first floor of the depository building shortly before the assassination and at the time the real gunman was in the sixth floor window.

To be honest, I think the fact that Dale Myers - the Walt Disney of JFK research - gave this book a ringing endorsement is reason enough all by itself to avoid this particular work of fiction.

I can highly recommend this book to be of compelling interest to any researcher on JFK. It's thesis is well-laid out and even though well-documented, you still have to take a certain amount of it on faith, as the story it reveals was meant to stay covered-up so we dont see a smoking gun, just as lot of things that are meant to dove-tail. Nevertheless, taken as gospel, or just to take a different angle, this is one of the most interesting and well-written books on the assassination. You will not be disappointed if you have an open mind. The authors write with great style and and grab your attention all the way through. Now if only we could verify every last morsel of "evidence." No, it will not be the last book on the assassination no matter what other reviewers may say. By the way, the logic for this type of conspiracy via Cuba "is that it is so outrageous as to be all the more unbelievable and therefore feasible" to paraphrase one conversation in the book. Was Castro so desperate to defend himself against CIA plots that he would use someone who had FPCC advertized all over himself and would lead right back to Havana? That is why people look for a conspiracy over on the right.
Would a real conspiracy have so many witnesses? But go ahead, feed your head with a good read and reach your own conclusions. No book I have read over the past thirty years has been free of loose ends. This one
definitely, has a fresh perspective and will be worth your time.

This may or may not be "the last word" on the Kennedy Assassination (is it possible to have "the last word" on such a subject?). But it is a deeply convincing look at connections between Oswald and the Cuban government and how those connections may have led to the assassination.

The authors contend that Oswald was a "self-generating agent" -- in other words, a person who was not recruited or trained by Cuba, but who sympathized deeply with the Cuban cause and brought himself to the attention of Cuban authorities. The Cubans, recognizing that he was a) sincere and b) not entirely sane, gave him some money, some encouragement, even some sex with young women working at the Cuban embassy in Mexico City. And what do you know, he actually *did* manage to kill JFK. I'm sure the first reaction was something pretty close to "Wow, who woulda thunk it!"

It was a strange time. Ten thousands of criminals, fanatics, fantasists, and peculiar characters were engaged on all sides of the Cuban issue. The U.S. was both trying to sponsor further invasions of Cuba and to have Fidel murdered. The Castros saw themselves as revolutionary heroes who would soon spread violent upheaval throughout Latin America, fulfilling the promise of communism in a way that their Soviet sponsors had not. On to this stage walked Lee Harvey Oswald, a half crazy malcontent who wanted to do something consequential, but lacked the education, the connections, and for the most part the ability.

The intelligence world is not an easy one for researchers (or anyone else) to navigate, but I felt the authors did a good job of making their case -- with the caution that they base a lot of their story on interviews with surviving players in that drama, who may have their own agendas, and that definitive documented truth is hard to come by.

While not an assassination buff, I've certainly read the major theories, and this one strikes me as the best fit in terms of accounting for every aspect of the strange story, including why the U.S. government would have moved so energetically to cover up the truth (to prevent World War III). The book is also notable for the number of questions it opens up, including the degree to which the American left of the 1960s was influenced by Soviet disinformation about the assassination.

This book makes for a compelling argument that Fidel and Raul
Castro may have been behind--or at least did nothing to stop--
the assassination of John F. Kennedy. Covering a period from
1961-63, the book follows the activities of John and Robert Kennedy,
the Castro brothers, and particularly Lee Harvey Oswald, as well as
a cast of characters connected to the Castros or working at the Cuban
embassy in Mexico City, where Oswald went in the early fall of 1963
to try to return to the USSR, to which he had defected (and met his
wife Marina) in the late '50s before returning to the U.S. It is
reasonably clear that Oswald sympathized with the Cuban cause, however,
and it is also clear that Oswald was not simply a loser envious of the
glamorous Kennedys. While we will probably never know the whole truth
of what happened on November 22, 1963, this book may help unlock some
of the mystery. Read and decide.

This review is for the unabridged audio version. This book is a must read for no other reason than to follow the reasoning of why the authors believe the Castros were responsible for JFK's assassination. I still find it highly inplausible because I don't believe Fidel could have kept his mouth shut about the event without crowing about it to someone. Raul seems much better at keeping secrets, but there would be little retribution at this late date. Who would we punish? Most of the participants are either extremely old or dead by now. Still, the authors put together a very good book. If you are a serious JFK conspiracy follower, you know most of the facts by now. There is some information that was new to me, and some I had forgotten. The book contains photos that can't be included in the audio version. The reader for the audio version is good. I recommend this book for the well written point of view and how it is presented.

With Brothers In Arms, Russo and Molton have taken the principle of Occam's Razor and deftly applied it to the chimera of Kennedy assassination theory. Presented is the thesis of the lone gunman, rifle in hand, in an era of hyper-political anxiety, global ideological battlegrounds, and the reality of revolution and nuclear war. The Castro brothers and the Kennedy brothers become the primary players in this political drama, as well as the embodiments of the forces that work to pull Oswald apart and fashion him an assassin. The prose of the book is nimble, the scope and the research is expansive. Oswald's erratic behavior in the years leading up to the assassination; his army record, his defection to the U.S.S.R., his time in Dallas and New Orleans, and his flirtation with Castro's intelligence service is thoroughly analyzed. The psychology of the killer is described as not that of an adept agent of greater powers maneuvering through various intelligence apparatus, or a mere pawn of the same entities, but more so a man hollowed out by his personal history, the anxieties of the age, and an overwhelming need for recognition and inclusion in the selective club of those who make history. With such limited skill and power at his disposal, Oswald turns to murder; the "wannabe" seeks to be initiated, and the president dies.

Meanwhile the Kennedys and the Castros; whose very names have become iconic, are revealed as mere men, at times stumbling through history, trudging along in their own self-made morass, and caught up in a 20th century Hatfield and McCoy blood feud that would be the Kennedys undoing. The popular myths of the Castros as revolutionary heroes and leaders of a quasi utopian, socialist Cuba, and the Kennedys as liberal demigods of a fallen Camelot, become the tattered backdrop as the book navigates through the underbelly of global politics and the Machiavellian darkness of the times.

With Brothers In Arms, political history is made personal history, and our understanding of the assassination and the turmoil of the era is more vivid from it.

Following his equally worthless "Live By the Sword," Gus Russo with co-author Stephen Molton has unleashed another salvo of devious disinformation that has the grimy paw prints of the Central Intelligence Agency all over it. "Brothers in Arms" is another contemptible attempt to label President John F. Kennedy and his brother Robert F. Kennedy as dangerous warmongers. According to this imaginary tome, JFK's assassination was the direct result of his and Bobby's "secret war" against Cuba and their determination to kill Fidel Castro. Russo not only again identifies Lee Harvey Oswald as the lone assassin of JFK but now implies that this act may have prevented World War III. The authors of this garbage should be ashamed of themselves but they're probably not capable of shame.

It is irrelevant to Russo and Molton that honest researchers have proven that JFK was morally opposed to political assassinations, that Bobby was always in tandem with his brother's policies and that the attempts to kill Castro originated with the CIA. It is of no importance to the authors that JFK had initiated plans for rapproachement with Castro and with the Soviet Union's Nikita Khruschchev and that both foreign leaders were amenable to establishing peaceful relations, which the Agency vehemently opposed. Not mentioned is the fact that the fingerpprints of Lyndon Johnson's buddy, convicted killer Mac Wallace, were found at Oswald's alleged roost or that JFK was shot at least twice from the front. The writers do not let truth intefere with their agenda, which is to refute any domestic conspiracy and to portray the Kennedys as murderous thugs just like the Castro brothers, whom the CIA hated as much as it hated the Kennedys.

Incidentally, in past years, Russo spoke at assassination conferences in Dallas and zealously expressed his belief in a high-level conspiracy. It appears that either he was an infiltrator or he couldn't take the heat unleashed upon the research community. So, despite the fact that the only people who still believe the lone-nut baloney are those with their heads in the sand, he changed sides. (Or, he pretended to change sides; at a 1993 conference, many attendees doubted his sincerity.) Thus, he wriote "Live By the Sword" and received endorsements from the usual mass-media flunkies, including a favorable review in "The New York Times." And JFK-hater Seymour Hersh - who was identified by Carl Bernstein as a CIA media asset - praised it. Not surprisingly, in Hersh's sleazy "Dark Side of Camelot," he thanks Russo for his assistance. Incidentally, Bernstein's celebrated article in "Rolling Stone" exposed the close relationship of the CIA with many journalists as well as with innumerable media outlets, including "CBS," "Time, Inc." and "The New York Times."

Such relationships, which indicate the degree to which the fourth estate has become a government tool, are responsible for the prejudice of the etablishment media against proof of a conspiracy. As confirmation of this, in 2003 Dr. Cyril Wecht hosted a symposium on the JFK assassination at Duquesne University that was attended by thousands of people from 49 states and 13 foreign countries. Numerous speakers proved the validity of a domestic conspiracy and government cover-up, despite futile attempts by detractors. One of the detractors was Arlen Specter whose single-bullet theory - upon which the entire Warren Report is based - was so methodically demolished that he left the conference early. Though all of the major newspapers and television networks were invited to this historical symposium, not a single media representative attended.

This is the same media that will provide praise for "Brothers in Arms" (while they will contuinue to routinely denigrate authors whose impeccably-researched books verify a domestic conspiracy.) They will approve of this book because, despite the alleged Cuban connection, it follows the path travelled by such Agency stooges as Vincent Bugliosi, Gerald Posner, Patricia Lambert, Max Holland and Priscilla Johnson MacMillan. It belongs with such stalwarts of lurid smear tactics as Robert Slatzer, Kitty Kelley and Judith Exner, whose story mutated every time she gave an interview - for money. It is so bogus that it will probably get a rave review from gossip-monger and ersatz authority Liz Smith. Basically, this hatchet-job is only one more piece of a deliberate and long-range attempt to re-write history the way it was done in George Orwell's "1984," in which "the past was erased, the erasure was forgotten, the lie becomes truth."

Significantly, an advance laudatory blurb for this book was written by Joseph Califano, a crony of Lyndon Johnson who was the most squalid rogue to ever inhabit the White House. Prior to the assassination, Johnson was facing investigative charges and probable imprisonment regarding his involvement in the Billie Sol Estes and Bobby Baker scandals. Not coincidentally, JFK's murder squelched those investigations and Johnson got the job he had always craved. (In 1984, a Grand Jury implicated Johnson and Mac Wallace in at least eight murders but Johnson had already escaped prosecution by dying a tormented recluse in 1973.) Yet readers of "Brothers in Arms" are asked to believe that this corrupt scoundrel, who would do anything to please the CIA, nobly concealed Oswald's alleged Cuban connection to "keep America's national grief and rage from dragging the world to extinction." This,according to Russo and Molton, was Johnson's "finest hour." Actually, this is the authors' finest drivel. In reality, Johnson used nuclear scare tactics to terrorize crucial people into covering up the domestic origin of the crime and his own involvement.

"Brothers in Arms" is filled with suppositions, speculations and fallacious theories disguised as fact just like the Warren Report which it endorses. Russo and Molton discount the fact that the Warren Commissioners began their "investigation" with the predetermined judgement, per order of Johnson and his ally J. Edgar Hoover, that "Oswald did it alone" and then rejected all evidence that conflicted with that judgement. And the authors absolve the Warren Commissioners of any guilt because "they were forcibly misled in a deliberate campaign orchestrated by Bobby Kennedy and Lyndon Johnson." Predictably, the authors paint Bobby as the deceitful villain and Johnson as the patriotic hero: Bobby's motives were selfish since he concealed the Cuban connection to protect his brother's legacy as opposed to the altruistic motives of Johnson, whose browbeating of the Commissioners to convict Oswald "fended off war." Of all the ridiculous claims in this book, the ones glorifying the bloody-handed Johnson are the most laughable.

The authors ignore monumental evidence proving a domestic conspiracy and dismiss substantiation of Oswald's ties to the CIA. Totally disregarding unimpeachable proof to the contrary, they amazingly write that, "According to all credible forensic evidence, JFK was shot by one man from one perch." This is just one of the many nonsensical falsehoods within this gibberish of a book. They also proclaim that there was a conspiracy but only in the sense that others - Cuban and Russian, of course - knew of Oswald's plans. Oswald supposedly plotted the assassination "on his own initiative" but consulted with Cuban agents in Mexico who informed Castro of the plan. In an equally imaginary theory, Oswald killed the President because he wanted to stop the Kennedy brothers from waging their terrorist war against Castro, an objective which he achieved. The authors even have the temerity to resurrect the old fable that Jack Ruby killed Oswald because he "loved JFK." This book is pure rubbish peddled by Agency lap-dogs to rationalize JFK's murder.

To fully comprehend the motivation behind "Brothers in Arms," it is obligatory to read "The Assassinations," edited by James DiEugenio and Lisa Pease (whose CTKA website is one of the most invaluable resources for truthful knowledge of the JFK assassination.) Included in this book is an article by Jim entitled "The Posthumous Assassination of John F. Kennedy" which explains the purpose of Russo's book(s). The article meticulously documents the continuing attempts by right-wing reactionaries -as well as Eastern establishment liberals who hated the Kennedys - to destroy the reputation and legacy of President Kennedy and his brother, to make the public believe that they got what they deserved. Such claims, echoed by Russo and Molton, are part of an insidious attempt to distort history and obscure the reality of the coup d'etat that occurred on November 22, 1963.

Anyone interested in knowing the truth about JFK's assassination has a choice of innumerable books. Recent ones include "JFK and the Unspeakable" by James Douglas, "Brothers" by David Talbot, "The Guns of Texas are Upon You" by Walt Brown, "Praise from a Future Generation" by John Kelin, "Breach of Trust" by Gerald McKnight and "Harvey and Lee" by John Armstrong. There also new editions of "Oswald and the CIA" by John Newman and "The Last Investigation" by Gaeton Fonzi. Then there are books by Jim Marrs, Dick Russell, Harrison Livngstone, Paris Flammonde, Stewart Galanor, Matthew Smith, Robert Groden, Ian Griggs, Henry Hurt, E. Martin Shotz, Peter Dale Scott, George Michael Evica, Syvia Meagher, Anthony Summers, Mark North, Fletcher Prouty, William Davy, David Lifton, James Fetzer, Mark Lane and others. These are the books that will survive the test of time, long after "Brothers in Arms" has been exposed as a sham.

How disappointing to discover that a Pultizer Prize winner has the same standards as a British tabloid journalist when it comes to backing up a story with evidence.

I really was looking forward to this but I can't recall a book that proved to be so bad. Whatever the merits of the case - that Cuban Intelligence had a relationship with Oswald - Russo provides no hard evidence of any kind to support his case. Far too much speculation, supposition and, dare one say it, fantasy.Detailed notes - forget it.

Having been responsible for one story - Comer Clark/Nina Gadd - I am shocked that the material is slanted so clearly in one direction - Fidel knew - when it obviously points in another - pure disinformation.

As an admirer of American journalism and a lecturer on the subject, it is sad to discover such a bland disinterest in the truth.