The Dark Side of Camelot [Hardcover]

Seymour M. Hersh (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: November 1997

With its meticulously documented and compulsively readable portrait of JFK as a man whose reckless personal behavior imperiled his presidency, this monumental work of investigative journalism reveals the Kennedy White House as never before. The book argues that President Kennedy's private life and personal obsessions -- his character -- affected the affairs of the U.S. and its foreign policy far more than has ever been known.

Editorial Reviews

Amazon.com Review

If the Kennedys are America's royal family, then John F. Kennedy was the nation's crown prince. Magnetic, handsome, and charismatic, his perfectly coifed image overshadowed the successes and failures of his presidency, and his assassination cemented his near-mythological status in American culture and politics. Struck down in his prime, he represented the best and the brightest of America's future, and when he died, part of the nation's promise and innocence went with him. That, at least, is the public version of the story.

The private version, according to Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist Seymour M. Hersh, is quite different. His meticulous investigation of Kennedy has revealed a wealth of indiscretions and malfeasance, ranging from frequent liaisons with prostitutes and mistresses to the attempted assassination of Fidel Castro to involvement in organized crime. Though scandals in the White House are nothing new, Hersh maintains that Kennedy's activities went beyond minor abuses of power and personal indulgences: they threatened the security of the nation--particularly in the realm of foreign policy--and the integrity of the office. Hersh believes it was only a matter of time before Kennedy's dealings were exposed, and only his popularity and charm, compounded by his premature death, spared such an investigation for so long. Exposure was further stalled by Bobby Kennedy's involvement in nefarious dealings, enabling him to bury any investigation of his brother and--by extension--himself.

Based on interviews with former Kennedy administration officials, former Secret Service agents, and hundreds of Kennedy's personal friends and associates, The Dark Side of Camelot rewrites the history of John F. Kennedy and his presidency.

Review

The big casualty in the Marilyn-papers fiasco is the five years of hard work Hersh put into his book. One may quarrel with his judgments but the man is a great investigative reporter, no lie, and when he says somebody told him something he makes it easy for doubters to check it out. Nothing in The Dark Side of Camelot gives off even a whiff of the dead-fish aroma of the trust fund from Marilyn's Mom, but Kennedy loyalists, joined by others who just don't want to know, are using Hersh's terrible misstep to dismiss what he has dug up as trifling gossip and unsupported heresay. -- The New York Times Book Review, Thomas Powers

This warts-and-more-warts bio is so determined to kill off the Kennedy mystique it should be subtitled The Second JFK Assassination.... Hersh packs so much sleaze and scandal between the covers, he makes Kitty Kelley look like a pussycat. Much of it is old news, of course, even if Hersh does document the allegations more assiduously than ever before. -- Entertainment Weekly

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Product Details

• Hardcover: 498 pages
• Publisher: Little Brown & Co (T); 1st edition (November 1997)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0316359556
• ISBN-13: 978-0316359559
• Product Dimensions: 9.3 x 6.1 x 1.7 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.9 pounds
• Average Customer Review: 3.7 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (121 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #78,946 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
  • #8 in Books > Biographies & Memoirs > People, A-Z > ( K ) > Kennedy, Robert
  • #34 in Books > Biographies & Memoirs > People, A-Z > ( K ) > Kennedy, John F.

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

84 of 94 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars The Dark Side of JFK revealed with all its warts., December 30, 2003

By 

Roger J. Buffington (Huntington Beach, CA United States) - See all my reviews
(TOP 500 REVIEWER)    (VINE VOICE)    (REAL NAME)   

This review is from: The Dark Side of Camelot (Paperback)

First, the disclaimer: although I am a conservative, I like and admire much of what JFK did as president, and I admire the man. Few readers will begin reading this book without a pre-existing opinion of Kennedy. That is/was mine.

Hersh does a workmanlike job illustrating the apparently undeniable fact that Kennedy had medical problems, integrity issues, and personal problems that the country would probably not tolerate in a president today. This book appears to be well-researched and well-documented. It does not present a flattering portrayal of Kennedy and it does not intend to.

First, the infidelity. Hersh goes into depressing detail as to his theme that JFK's marriage was a sham. According to Hersh, JFK never missed an opportunity to philander whenever Jackie Kennedy was away, and sometimes when she wasn't away. Much of JFK's inner circle conspired with him in this regards (according to Hersh) to a degree that is hard to imagine. Hersh speculates that part of Kennedy's abnormal libedo was induced by various drugs he took for his Addison's condition. Hersh develops this theme further in his discussion of the Cuban Missile Crisis and speculates that the cocktail of steroids and other drugs that Kennedy evidently needed to get through the day affected his judgment and his willingness to take risks. This in turn may have caused him to be more prone to the kind of brinksmanship that Hersh claims characterized Kennedy's handling of the Missile Crisis.

Personally I'm not so sure. Despite the fact that the US had an overwhelming nuclear and overall military superiority over Soviets in 1962, Kennedy did not bomb the missiles out but instead negotiated. Here I felt Hersh was unfair to Kennedy.

On the other hand, it seems clear that Kennedy's marriage was a sham and his image of youthful vigor was even more of a sham. Hersh is convincing that Kennedy could not get through the day without a battery of probably illegal drugs. Kennedy was suffering from Addison's disease, which is a very serious condition, and had many other health issues, including the famous back problem, which put him in constant pain.

Personally I found this book convincing as regards the infidelity, drug, and health claims that it made about Kennedy. Hersh is on thinner ice when he theorizes that these issues caused Kennedy to endanger the country. While this book or one like it is probably needed to balance the fluff pieces about Kennedy (and all the Kennedys) that abound, it is not itself a balanced analysis of JFK. To its credit, the book more or less admits this, in its title if nowhere else.

34 of 42 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Long Twilight Struggle, January 28, 2006

By 

sandalista - See all my reviews

This review is from: The Dark Side of Camelot (Paperback)

"This warts-and-more-warts bio is so determined to kill off the Kennedy mystique it should be subtitled The Second JFK Assassination.... Hersh packs so much sleaze and scandal between the covers, he makes Kitty Kelley look like a pussycat." (Editorial Review from Entertainment Weekly, a respected journal of political & historical analysis.)

The Kennedys were entertainment, daily, for a nation becoming addicted to the drug of television. Jack, Jackie, Bobby, Teddy, and even strange Robert McNamara were stars, mainlining glitz to the masses in a perpetual party where the best & brightest women, wearing Casini gowns, pushed each other into Georgetown swimming pools and where their men fiddled with Faddle in John Kennedy's hide-away pool at the White House.

Seymour Hersh, respected and sometimes venerated for his expose' journalism about My Lai, Cointelpro, and Abu Ghraib, was reviled by the eastern liberal priesthood for exposing in this book a naked liberal icon. Spit and vituperation flew about Hersh's sloppiness, his near miss in almost going to print with some bad intel about Marilyn Monroe. That single slip-up became the firestorm focus of a mainstream media seduced by John Kennedy in 1960 and 1961 (JFK said in January '61 that it was our "moment of maximum danger" ... and indeed it was; we had entrusted the free world to an amphetamine kid and to the kid's kid brother) and that's seduced by him now.

Historian Michael Beschloss said that while the public is still enamored of the Kennedy phantom, most historians now know better. But historical honesty and accuracy are hampered by the priesthood I mentioned. 42 years after Dallas, the Kennedys and their protectors -- who bought absolution for Teddy at Chappaquiddick -- are still buying cover for the darkest corners of Camelot. There's a priesthood or palace guard blocking access to information, and it's reminiscent of Florence Harding, widow of another randy president, burning his papers before historians could see them.

(Anyone disputing my assertion about media seduction should review the media's failure to question or challenge Kennedy's failure at the Bay of Pigs in 1961. For a fumigation of smelly liberal pieties about the Missile Crisis of 1962, read liberal Eric Alterman's excellent discussion in When Presidents Lie. For perceptive analyses of assassination plots against Castro, go to Gus Russo and Ronald Steele. I'm astonished, though, that even now there is more concern about inept attempts to kill a tyrant than about the assassination in 1962 of America's ally Ngo Dinh Diem. That assassination, which locked us into a decade of no-win war, must have been approved by Kennedy or by someone close to him.)

19 of 23 people found the following review helpful:

3.0 out of 5 stars After I finished this book I felt like I needed a shower ..., November 23, 2003

By 

S. Hinchcliff (Saint Louis, MO) - See all my reviews

This review is from: The Dark Side of Camelot (Paperback)

. . . I felt just plain dirty.

The title gives you an obvious clue that this isn't going to be your average work about Kennedy. And, it's not. If you're looking for a book that portrays Kennedy and his supporting cast in the worst possible light in every case, then I can wholeheartedly recommend this book to you. If you "never liked the Kennedys" and believe "they always got away with everything," then, again, this is the book for you.

Mr. Hersh has run into problems in the past with people questioning his sources and "facts." It seems that his sourcing is good here (and, in fact, this book is even cited in Robert Dallek's JFK work, "An Unfinished Life.")

My problem with the book was more one of perspective. Every story, every anecdote, every whispered secret is clearly told to impart the most sinister and devious motives to Kennedy and his clan. Where there are conceivably other interpretations (even when they are well-known), they are not mentioned.

The bottom-line is that this book is a hatchet job. I don't know whether most of it is true or not. My guess is that much of it is. I know that I couldn't put the book down once I started it - though not from a sense of satisfaction in what I was reading, but more because, as I turned each page, there was a sense of wonderment as to how the next page could be more outrageous than the one I just read.

If you're a Kennedy basher, you'll love it. If you're a Kennedy can do no wrong type, you'll hate it. If you're like me, and somewhere in the middle, you'll learn a few things you probably didn't know before, but you'll find the experience a lot like taking castor oil.