If you ever happen to get your own presidential library, here's the kind of scene you won't want in the archives:
April 6, 1960. Senator John F. Kennedy, the wealthy and magnetic sex machine whom the Democrats will soon make their candidate for the presidency, is at home in Georgetown having dinner with his friend Bill Thompson and the delectable Judith Campbell, later to be known as Judith Campbell Exner. Kennedy's wife Jacqueline, pregnant with John Jr., is out of town.
After dinner Kennedy turns to Campbell and asks her to help him set up a meeting with an acquaintance of hers, "Sam Flood," who is actually the Mafia boss Sam Giancana. "I'd be happy to," she tells him. "Why?" Kennedy's reply is wonderfully straightforward. "Well, I think he can help me with the campaign." Next he asks if she would mind conveying a little package to Giancana in Chicago. It turns out to be a satchel full of cash, maybe $250,000, in hundred-dollar bills. Would it be safe to transport so much money? asks the awestruck young woman. The next President of the United States of America is both cryptic and to the point: "You're better off without knowing."
Toto, I don't think we're in Camelot anymore. Where we are is in The Dark Side of Camelot, a warts-and-more-warts portrait of Kennedy by Pulitzer-prizewinning investigative reporter Seymour Hersh. This time Hersh has tackled a Kennedy mystique that for years has been subject to intense demystification. One after another, the books have grown nastier and dug deeper into J.F.K.'s extramarital affairs, his concealed health history, his suspected dealings with mobsters and the ways in which his father's money and connections smoothed his path to the top. All the same, The Dark Side of Camelot is the most unrelenting compendium of accusations against him ever assembled by a prominent writer.
Hersh opens the book with a description of Robert Kennedy, his brother's keeper, in the first hours after the President's assassination, ordering someone to scour the White House for incriminating files and secret tape recordings before they fall into the hands of Lyndon Johnson. What does he want to keep secret? In Hersh's book, it's Jack's long-rumored first marriage, the Mob contacts that helped him steal the 1960 election, and his history of health problems, including years of venereal disease. Then there was his real role in the murder of South Vietnamese leader Ngo Dinh Diem and in CIA attempts to kill Fidel Castro--there's the Mob again--as well as his inflated victory over Nikita Khrushchev in the Cuban missile crisis. Mob leader Giancana was Bobby's first suspect in his brother's assassination, says Hersh. He knew the Mafia felt betrayed because Bobby's Justice Department had targeted them even after they had done favors for the government.