Friday, March 21, 2008

Wall Street Journal: Morley "brilliantly explores" CIA reticence around JFK's assassination.

Ed Epstein's welcome review in the Wall Street Journal highlights one theme that runs throughout the JFK assassination chapters in "Our Man in Mexico:" the CIA's odd reticence to investigate the possibility that the hated Fidel Castro was behind the murder of the American president.

While I don't credit Epstein's implication that Castro may have actually had a role in the assassination--in my view, it is a virtual historical certainty that he did not--he is right to pick up on this theme. Others have noted this reticence but this book, I believe, is the first to trace it to its sources: David Phillips, James Angleton, and Thomas Karamessines. 

In the review, entitled "What the Warren Commission May Have Missed," writes:
Jefferson Morley's "Our Man in Mexico" brilliantly explores the mystery of this reticence. Though Mr. Morley is a dogged investigative reporter, he has not discovered any jaw-dropping evidence that will change forever the way we think about the Kennedy assassination, but he uncovers enough new material, and theorizes with such verve, that "Our Man in Mexico" will go down as one of the more provocative titles in the ever-growing library of Kennedy-assassination studies.
Epstein also captures the personal side of the story. This isn't a book about conspiracies. This is the story of a man, a spy, a father, and a husband

The book . . . . is an enthralling account of Scott's career as one of America's most accomplished spy masters. Mr. Morley memorably depicts not only Scott's espionage exploits, from London in World War II to Mexico City at the height of the Cold War, but also his complicated love life and his ambitions as a poet.
.

No comments: