Hmmm. This is tough.
I was loving the first part of this book. It was maybe my favorite non-fiction read of the year. It almost read like a thriller. It traces the early political careers of Dick Helms and Richard Nixon respectively, along with the trajectory that would lead them to Watergate and the close of their careers.
Then it got to the Kennedy stuff. And I realized Jefferson Morley is a Kennedy conspiracy theorist.
Not a hardcore one. He doesn’t seem to believe anything too ridiculous and — despite the GOP moving conspiracies to the mainstream — he does appear to have decent politics. But it colored the way I read most of this. Was he playing loose with the facts?
The way he outlines them certainly makes sense: Richard Helms had cultivated relationships with a bunch of shady people to do CIA imperialism over the years. Those people needed an outlet at home in the early-70s when Nixon was expanding his domestic espionage program. Enter Watergate, etc.
And in double checking everything, it seems like he got his facts straight, at least as far as I can tell.
But I really try to keep my history reads to academic or pop academic texts. Even if Morley isn’t as bad as most (and he has quite a decorated career at reputable journalistic establishments), I try to slough off those kinds of writers. So I don’t know.
Nevertheless, if I’m basing this off of what I learned and the process of learning it, I enjoyed it immensely.