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Title: The Deaths of the Cold War Kings: The Assassinations of Diem & JFK by Bradley S. O'Leary, Edward Lee ISBN: 1-58767-032-1 Publisher: Cemetery Dance Pubns Pub. Date: December, 2000 Format: Hardcover Volumes: 1 List Price(USD): $25.00 |
Average Customer Rating: 3.25 (8 reviews)
Rating: 4
Summary: A FRESH PERSPECTIVE
Comment: After recently finishing The Assassinations : Probe Magazine On JFK, MLK, RFK, & Malcolm X (DiEugenio & Pease), I was pleased to run across this book in which O'Leary & Lee give us their take on the JFK assassination. In addition to being interesting and easy to read, the authors don't waste time trashing all the other writers or theories (the exception being Gerald Posner for obvious reasons). Do they prove anything and/or have all the answers? No but they put forth a good argument for something that was briefly touched upon in the History Channel's documentary entitled The Men Who Killed Kennedy. This would make a great addition to your library if you're even remotely interested in the Kennedy assassination. A fresh perspective on a well-worn topic.
Rating: 3
Summary: Nothing Earth Shaking Here
Comment: Investigative reporter Bradley O'Leary and horror author Edward Lee teamed up to contribute their own convoluted theory as to who orchestrated and carried out the assassination of President John F. Kennedy with this book, "The Deaths of the Cold War Kings." According to the two authors, recently declassified government documents and recent interviews cast doubt on previous theories implicating the old standbys: the Soviet Union, the military-industrial complex, disgruntled anti-Castroites angered over the Bay of Pigs fiasco, the Cuban government, and rogue American government agents. This book argues that the assassins pulling the triggers on November 22, 1963 had ties to the South Vietnamese regime of the recently deceased Ngo Dinh Diem, his brother Ngo Dinh Nhu, heroin smugglers, and the Marseilles Mafia. The authors track a heroin syndicate operating under the protection of the Diem regime in South Vietnam to Marseilles, France. In short, the argument here is that heroin killed our 35th president.
Central to this theory on the assassination was the role Kennedy played in overthrowing the Diem administration. The authors feel that the South Vietnamese government's repressive policies against the Buddhist population, indirectly assisted with massive U.S. aid packages, threatened to undermine Kennedy's credibility with the American public. With a presidential race coming up in 1964, Kennedy did not want questions about self-immolating monks to throw a cloud on his reelection prospects. Numerous documents in the book attempt to prove Kennedy's complicity in the regime change, a change that O'Leary and Lee argue led to permanent instability in South Vietnam that created problems later in the Vietnam War. Furthermore, the authors charge that the South Vietnamese knew about the planned coup and took their own measures to prevent it. These plans revolved around setting up a plot against Kennedy by using muscle from the French heroin traffickers because these drug smugglers knew that a change in government could be very costly to their lucrative business.
The key name associated with this theory is a shadowy figure named Jean Rene Souetre, a former French military officer who was a member in the OAS. This acronym stands for 'Organisation de l'Armee Secrete,' a group of French military officers who resisted Charles DeGaulle's measures to remove French influence in Algeria. The OAS resorted to covert assassinations, forgery, and outright rebellion in an attempt to overthrow DeGaulle's government, thereby hoping to insure support for the war against Algerian insurgents. An alliance between the French intelligence agency (SDECE) and the French mafia crushed the OAS, sending its members into exile or jail. A document exists, recently declassified, that seems to prove Souetre was in Texas at the time of the assassination. Moreover, the government deported Souetre within days of the killing without interrogating him even though the feds seemed to be aware of his background because of a French request to our government concerning his whereabouts. An American dentist mentioned in the Souetre memo granted an interview to a researcher years later, claiming that he knew Souetre and that the FBI questioned him about this knowledge but never turned the information over to the Warren Commission.
Assassination solved, right? Nope. The two authors claim that the real Souetre may not have committed the crime. Instead, they point the finger at Michel Mertz, a heroin trafficker who possibly traveled under the name of Jean Rene Souetre. The two Frenchman met in prison during the OAS debacle when Mertz was one of the undercover mafia hoods that worked for SDECE. Further evidence of a Souetre/Mertz connection appears in the memo, where one of Souetre's aliases was, *gasp*, Michel Mertz. In an interview conducted in the late 1990s, Souetre claimed he knew Mertz and believed it highly possible that this mafia thug traveled under his name. What a surprise.
I had many problems with this book, the biggest one being the introductory chapter full of laudatory praise for the Kennedy administration. Falling for the bait many others have swallowed about the Kennedy years, the authors present a glowing picture of our esteemed 35th president. Reality is often more painful. Kennedy's civil rights legislation was not an outpouring of warmth for the plight of American blacks, but a political measure Kennedy took because of intense pressure. On their own, the Kennedy brothers would never have proposed serious legislation concerning civil rights. Moreover, Kennedy's failure to follow through on the Bay of Pigs led to the Cuban Missile Crisis and the removal of our missiles from Turkey at a critical moment in our war against world wide communism. The family background, Joseph Kennedy's vote buying scheme in Illinois, and numerous amorous encounters in the White House should also serve as reasons why Kennedy was not a great president. The media, even then, was too busy standing around with stars in their eyes to notice any of these shenanigans. If I cannot trust the authors' claims about the Kennedy presidency, how can I trust their subsequent investigations?
An avid reader of Kennedy conspiracy theories will probably want to read this book. Whether or not the arguments presented here hold water I'll leave to those better informed about the various assassination theories. I do think the authors make some huge leaps of faith with some of their claims, but with the assassination quickly fading into the dim recesses of history this is probably unavoidable. What interests me most about the Kennedy killing is how many sordid characters hovered on the periphery of Dallas at that exact time and date. At the very least, "The Death of the Cold War Kings" adds a few more unsavory souls to the long list.
Rating: 1
Summary: Not worth the time
Comment: The neverending stream of books that purports to tell the tale of the assassination of JFK continues, and I could not get past the first chapter. The quick overview of Kennedy'd life could not be more full of errors, etc...Kennedy "Liberal"? Kennedy criticizing the McCarthy fiasco? Hardly. There were many other erors, including the ongoing myth behind PT 109...Maybe someday somebody will get the biography of Kennedy correct, and perhaps then we will see that his death was nothing more than a senseless act. Kennedy was not the great leader that so many want him to be...He was inspiring and insightful, but still growing when he died. Don't waste your money on this book!
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Title: Blood, Money & Power: How L. B. J. Killed J. F. K. by Barr McClellan ISBN: 0963784625 Publisher: Hanover House (D.D.) Pub. Date: October, 2003 List Price(USD): $24.95 |
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Title: Triangle Of Death: The Shocking Truth About the Role of South Vietnam and the French Mafia in the Assassination of JFK by Bradley S. O'Leary, L. E. Seymour ISBN: 0785261532 Publisher: WND Books Pub. Date: 20 November, 2003 List Price(USD): $24.99 |
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Title: The Great Zapruder Film Hoax: Deceit and Deception in the Death of JFK by James H. Fetzer ISBN: 081269547X Publisher: Open Court Publishing Company Pub. Date: September, 2003 List Price(USD): $27.95 |
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Title: Encyclopedia of the JFK Assasination (Facts on File Library of American History) by Michael Benson ISBN: 0816044775 Publisher: Checkmark Books Pub. Date: November, 2002 List Price(USD): $21.95 |
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Title: Flight from Dallas: New Evidence of CIA Involvement in the Murder of President John F. Kennedy by James P. Johnston, Jon Roe ISBN: 1410755363 Publisher: 1stBooks Library Pub. Date: August, 2003 List Price(USD): $11.45 |
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