Product Description

Peter Dale Scott's meticulously documented investigation uncovers the secrets surrounding John F. Kennedy's assassination. Offering a wholly new perspective--that JFK's death was not just an isolated case, but rather a symptom of hidden processes--Scott examines the deep politics of early 1960s American international and domestic policies.
Scott offers a disturbing analysis of the events surrounding Kennedy's death, and of the "structural defects" within the American government that allowed such a crime to occur and to go unpunished. In nuanced readings of both previously examined and newly available materials, he finds ample reason to doubt the prevailing interpretations of the assassination. He questions the lone assassin theory and the investigations undertaken by the House Committee on Assassinations, and unearths new connections between Oswald, Ruby, and corporate and law enforcement forces.
Revisiting the controversy popularized in Oliver Stone's movie JFK, Scott probes the link between Kennedy's assassination and the escalation of the U.S. commitment in Vietnam that followed two days later. He contends that Kennedy's plans to withdraw troops from Vietnam--offensive to a powerful anti-Kennedy military and political coalition--were secretly annulled when Johnson came to power. The split between JFK and his Joint Chiefs of Staff, and the collaboration between Army Intelligence and the Dallas Police in 1963, are two of the several missing pieces Scott adds to the puzzle of who killed Kennedy and why.
Scott presses for a new investigation of the Kennedy assassination, not as an external conspiracy but as a power shift within the subterranean world of American politics. Deep Politics and the Death of JFK shatters our notions of one of the central events of the twentieth century.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #157141 in Books
• Published on: 1996-06-22
• Original language: English
• Number of items: 1
• Binding: Paperback
• 424 pages

From Publishers Weekly
Scott, a poet, an English professor at UC Berkeley and a long-time investigator into the impact of drugs on U.S. foreign policy in Asia and Central America, has been examining the issues surrounding the John Kennedy assassination for many years. His thoughtful, extremely (and sometimes excessively) detailed book promises more than it actually delivers. Scott's thesis is that under the surface of everyday politics is an often sinister mingling of business and criminal interests that sometimes coincide with the national interest as perceived by the military and intelligence communities; and that such a combination lay behind JFK's shooting. This is hardly a new concept, although Scott broadens the scope of the shadowy business villains considerably beyond the usual military-industrial complex to include fruit companies and law firms. His drawing of suggestive links is tireless--he is a great synthesizer--but since the "facts" on which he relies are often the result of other people's not necessarily accurate reporting, the whole structure has a ramshackle feel. The book's most useful feature is a careful discussion of how U.S. Vietnam policy changed abruptly after Kennedy's death.
Copyright 1993 Reed Business Information, Inc.

From Library Journal
Over the past 30 years, more than 2000 books about the Kennedy assassination have been published. While Posner and Scott come to different conclusions, their studies are important additions to the field. Providing a detailed account of Oswald's life from childhood on, Posner shows him to have been a psychologically disturbed malcontent who was unhappy with both the U.S. and Soviet political systems. Posner counters claims of the major conspiracy theorists point by point and backs up his arguments with documentary evidence, recent interviews, and up-to-date computer analysis. Faulting conspiracy theorists for equating coincidence as evidence, Posner concludes that there was no other gunman and no conspiracy. Scott, a Berkeley English professor, approaches the assassination in its sociopolitical context, focusing on why it happened rather than on who did it. The phrase "deep politics" refers to the secret networks operating within and outside government agencies. While they do not constitute a unified shadow government, they comprise a coalition of individuals who cooperate in order to maintain the status quo. Accordingly, Scott examines Ruby's links with organized crime, army intelligence and JFK's planned withdrawal from Vietnam, J. Edgar Hoover's misuse of his authority, and the collusion of international drug traffickers with the CIA and FBI. Scott believes that Oswald and Ruby were part of this convoluted network. Both these titles offer important insights and are highly recommended for most libraries. Case Closed was previewed in Prepub Alert, LJ 5/15/93.
- Gary D. Barber, SUNY at Fredonia Lib.
Copyright 1993 Reed Business Information, Inc.

From Kirkus Reviews
Staggeringly well-researched and intelligent overview not only of the JFK assassination but also of the rise of forces undermining American democracy--of which the assassination, Scott says, is symptomatic. Scott (English/UC at Berkeley; coauthor, Cocaine Politics, 1991, etc.) advances the idea that each decade has produced its own adjustment to prolonging and deepening the cold war but that this adjustment can't be seen merely as an effort of nefarious power grabbers but rather as a synergism emerging from many interrelated political layers reacting to each other. The author is less interested in actual facts than in working toward public control of political life. To do this, he uses a huge magnifying glass he calls ``deep politics''--the study of ``political practices and arrangements that are usually repressed rather than acknowledged.'' The JFK assassination, he contends, is only one of four incapacitating political crises in Washington since WW II: The others are McCarthyism, Watergate, and the Iran-contra scandal, which, along with the JFK killing, have striking continuities in personnel, supranational ties, and outcome. Scott warns: ``I am not suggesting that the four crises were part of some single conspiracy, only that we recognize that in all cases the outcome was roughly the same: a prolongation of a system committed to the Cold War.'' His chief villain is J. Edgar Hoover, the real power behind McCarthyism, McCarthy himself having been a weak arm of systematic governmental violence that increased during Hoover's incumbency and that involved organized crime, assassination of black leaders, CIA assassinations, and much, much more. A kind of Rosetta stone for cracking open the deepest darkness in American politics. Will test the most well-informed. -- Copyright ©1993, Kirkus Associates, LP. All rights reserved.

Customer Reviews

Awesome research documents the killers' network
The exhaustive research and documentation by Peter Dale Scott exposes the "network" of personal and institutional relationships which interconnect the CIA, FBI, Department of Defense, Army Intelligence, the Office of Naval Intelligence, foreign leaders and agencies connected to the CIA and multi-national corporations, organized crime, anti-Castro Cuban organizations [Alpha-66, CDC], exteme Right wing groups and their ties to big business. From theses relationships, a web, network or milieu of individuals and institutions is revealed which is cemented by a set of common interests and beliefs: the continuation of the Cold War, the deisre to remove Castro in Cuba, the goal of escalating the U.S. involvement in Vietnam, enlisting the assistance of foreign governments and their agencies in the war against Communism, enlisting the assistance of organized crime and international narcotics trafficers in the war against Communism, U.S. government's domestic terrorism against dissidents, civil rights activists and anti-Vietnam War protesters. From this web or network of personal and institutional relationships arose the people who committed the assassination of JFK and devised and propagated the "cover story" regarding the lone nut/assassin. These people had common interests, all of which were threatened by the policies and new ideas of the Kennedy administration: a modus vivendi with the Soviet Union, including no further U.S. aggression against Cuba; withdrawal of all U.S. military forces from Vietnam by the end of 1965; crackdown on organized crime and their stranglehold on the American labor unions [prosecution of Jimmy Hoffa, Sam Giancana, Carlos Marcello]; promotion of the civil rights movement; transfer of all covert operations away from the CIA and under the control the Joint Chiefs of Staff in the Pentagon; winding down of the Cold War in favor of detente with the Soviet Union. The exhaustive research conducted by Mr. Scott reveals the personal and institutional relationships which form the cement of the web or network discussed above. I highly recommend this book for scholars and general readers who wish to augment their knowledge and broaden their perspective on the forces/web/network behind the assassination of JFK.

Peter Dale Scott knows his deep political History VERY well
At the very real risk of putting a name with this review, I feel so strongly about this book and the ground that it covers that I will try to say something of value regarding what is now considered either 'crackpot', 'paranoia', or even treasonous. Mr. Scott has written a book of such depth and accuracy that it is hard to follow unless one is prepared by way of knowing something of REAL American history. That is a lot harder than one might think. Mr. Scott proves not only that the Kennedy assassination was a desperate defense of an already badly corrupt system, but goes on to link the players involved in and around it to Watergate, Iran-Contra, and up to the present. He also takes it the other direction - making a great case that the JFK murder had its roots going far, far back. If I had to try to explain in a sentence what I felt the central point would be to take from this book, it would be that the JFK assassination could very well serve as a "Rosetta stone" for deciphering operations involving the U.S. government and its supporting "deep partners" over the course of the entire 20th Century...and now beyond. Not only do the major scandals link, but events like Lockerbie are deeply suspect due to the U.S.' role in drug trafficing and protection thereof by some in its intelligence agencies. Covering of prior misdeeds and scandals seem to serve as the basis for newly perpetuating ones. Scott makes a clear distinction between "conspiracy theory" and "deep political processes", and the point is - now more than ever - very well taken. I believe this to be a must-read for anyone who loves what this country could be and is willing to take the time to consider why we should deeply question what we are.

The Expanded Context of American Politics
Along with Carl Oglesby's "The Yankee Cowboy War" and Michael Piper Collins' "Final Judgment," this is the best book ever written on the JFK Assassination. It may also be the best book ever written on the way the American political process ACTUALLY works. It is certainly the most honest one.

Deep Politics should be required reading for undergraduates in all American college and university Political Science courses. If for no reason other than that, in the course of getting at the bottom of the assassination of JFK, Professor Scott did not hesitate to expand the context of American political life to those unacceptable areas that lay just beneath the American consciousness and at the bottom of the American political undercurrents.

Once one is guided through his process of expanding the context of understanding (or actually "over-understanding") the machinations of the American Political process (its corruption, deceptions, cover-ups, and other pretexts for explaining away its immorality), then the details of the assassination itself, are almost a foregone conclusions - little more than a logical afterthought.

All three authors focus on what is most important -- the big picture - leaving the details to be sorted out by those "eager beaver" researchers that seem so much to relish and are so obsessed with, the minutia such as "who was in the sixth floor window," and with what happen to Senator's Specter's now infamous "Magic bullet," etc. ad infinitum.

Oglesby eschews these nasty details and focuses on the economic war between the old money of the Northeast and the new money of the Southwest. In a reductionist socialist sort of way, he shows that the JFK assassination and Watergate were mere logical conclusions of this economic war. Collins, on the other hand, but like a radar (and like Jim Garrison before him), uses his own "crap detector" to separate the wheat from the shaft and divides the important from the inessential by forging ahead like a bulldog, even against charges of being anti-Semitic, to the only logical conclusion: that Myer Lansky was at the center of the planning of the JFK assassination. Scott, in his own inimical and professorial way, lays out a new political geography of the American political chessboard; one that is expanded to include what is both above and below the political waterline. He then shows that certain roles and circumstances when they cross the lines of morality, limit the men in them to only certain immoral squares on the chessboard.

It turns out that once the links connecting "organized crime" to "disorganized crime" (the criminal minds within the acknowledged and "so-called" legitimate American political process) there is little else that needs explanation. The moves on the American chessboard are all then pre-determined and predictable. It is checkmate for anyone who gets in their way as JFK did, and for the American people and the democratic process -- which they all claim to love so much.

By showing that these unholy connections not only exist but are in symbiotic alliance with each other, and trump the normal American political process, Scott not only exposes, but lays completely bare the underbelly of the utter hypocrisy and corruption of the American political process.

There is one example in the book, above all others, that best summarizes and punctuates the orgy of corruption that existed in the American political process at the time of the JFK assassination and that remains alive as a result of it.

It is the Pre-assassination party (or final coordination meeting, or whatever one wants to call it) called to order in Dallas by J. Edgar Hoover at Clint Murchinson's house on November 21, 1963, the eve of the assassination.

The attendees included, among others:

J. Edgar Hoover (Head of the FBI, next door neighbor of LBJ, racist and Jew hater, and friend of mobster Frank Costello), Clint Murchinson (Texan oil Baron, racist and Jew hater but still a business partner of Myer Lansky, and acknowledged Kennedy hater),
H.L. Hunt (financier of rabid right-wing fanatic causes, racist and Jew hater, Texas Oil Baron, and Kennedy Hater), John J. McCloy (Washington Lobbyist/Fixer and later to be appointed member of the Warren Commission investigating the JFK assassination), Allen Dulles (ex-head of the CIA, fired by JFK in the aftermath of the Bay of Pigs fiasco, and soon to be appointee to the Warren Commission investigating the assassination of JFK), John Connally (ex-Secretary of the Navy, ex-Governor of Texas and close friend and confidant of LBJ), General Charles Cabell (Deputy Director of the CIA fired by JFK after the Bay of Pigs fiasco), and his brother Earle Cabell (the Mayor of Dallas at the time of the assassination), Richard Nixon (defeated by JFK for the U.S. Presidency, and avowed Kennedy hater), LBJ (the sitting Vice President who was days away from going to jail because of a whole series of scandals, and who would be sworn-in on Air Force One minutes after the assassination as JFK's successor)

Would someone please give me an innocent explanation for such a meeting in Dallas of all of these Kennedy haters on the eve before his assassination?

Five stars