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How did the deeply flawed George W. Bush ascend to the highest office in the nation, what forces abetted his rise, and-perhaps most important-have those forces really been vanquished by Obama's election? Award-winning investigative journalist Russ Baker gives us the answers in Family of Secrets, a compelling and startling new take on the Bush dynasty and the shadowy elite that has quietly steered the American republic for the past half century and more. Baker shows how this network of figures in intelligence, the military, oil, and finance enabled-and in turn benefited handsomely from-the Bushes' perch at the highest levels of government. As Baker reveals, this deeply entrenched elite remains in power regardless of who sits in the Oval Office.
Family of Secrets offers countless disclosures that challenge the conventional accounts of such central events as the JFK assassination and Watergate. It includes an inside account of George W.'s cynical religious conversion and the untold real background to the disastrous response to Hurricane Katrina. Baker's narrative is gripping, sobering, and deeply sourced. It will change the way we understand not just the Bush years, but a half century of postwar history-and the present.
- Sales Rank: #25261 in Books
- Published on: 2009-11-17
- Released on: 2009-11-10
- Original language: English
- Number of items: 1
- Dimensions: 8.29" h x 1.60" w x 5.52" l, 1.21 pounds
- Binding: Paperback
- 592 pages
Review
“One of the most important books of the past ten years.” ―Gore Vidal
“A tour de force … Family of Secrets has made me rethink even those events I witnessed with my own eyes.” ―Dan Rather
“Shocking in its disclosures, elegantly crafted, and faultlessly measured in its judgments, Family of Secrets is nothing less than a first historic portrait in full of the Bush dynasty and the era it shaped. From revelation to revelation, insight to insight--from the Kennedy assassination to Watergate to the oil and financial intrigues that lie behind today's headlines--this is a sweeping drama of money and power, unseen forces, and the emblematic triumph of a lineage that sowed national tragedy. Russ Baker's Family of Secrets is sure to take its place as one of the most startling and influential works of American history and journalism.” ―Roger Morris, former senior staff member, National Security Council, and author of Richard Milhous Nixon: The Rise of an American Politician and Partners in Power: The Clintons and Their America
“Left-wing paranoia? Baker, a solid investigative journalist, works hard to back up his claims – a reader could choke on the complex, interwoven details in Family of Secrets. He's a man on a mission, desperate to stop the "methods of stealth and manipulation that ... reflect a deeper ill: the American public's increasingly tenuous hold upon the levers of its own democracy.” ―San Diego Union-Tribune
“Prodigiously industrious investigative journalist Russ Baker…. connects the dots between the Bushes and Watergate.” ―Lev Grossman, Time Magazine
About the Author
Russ Baker is an awardwinning investigative journalist. He has written for the New Yorker, Vanity Fair, the New York Times, the Nation, the Los Angeles Times, the Washington Post, the Village Voice, and Esquire, and has served as a contributing editor to the Columbia Journalism Review. He is the founder of WhoWhatWhy/the Real News Project, a nonpartisan, nonprofit news organization, operating at www.whowhatwhy.com.
From The Washington Post
From The Washington Post's Book World/washingtonpost.com Reviewed by Jamie Malanowski Halfway through the concluding chapter of Family of Secrets, Russ Baker mentions, not entirely modestly, that when a colleague heard some of the things he would be disclosing in his almost 600-page book about the Bush family and its connections to John F. Kennedy's assassination, Watergate and many other pivotal events, the colleague "suggested, only half in jest, that the book be called 'Everything You Thought You Knew Is Wrong.' " Well, any investigative journalist whose credo isn't "Everything You Thought Is Wrong" should probably pack it in. No quality, not even doggedness, is more important than the ability to embrace the belief that, despite what everyone else thinks, only the reporter really knows the truth. But with this big challenge comes a big burden of proof. As history's tide rolls out, we may eventually discover that everything we think we know about the George Bushes, père et fils, is wrong and that everything Baker alleges about them in his book -- their secrets, their labors on behalf of powerful, self-serving interests -- is right on the money. Despite strenuous efforts, however, Baker doesn't prove it here. A softer sell would have served him better. A capable investigator who has written for the New Yorker and Vanity Fair, Baker is skillful at taking bits of information and placing them in contexts that make the Bush family's behavior and decisions look unusual and, frequently, nefarious. Had he been satisfied to raise suspicions, he would have been provocative and, on some counts, persuasive. But by trying to explain everything, to create a unified field theory of American tragedy that has the Bushes as the key actors and beneficiaries, Baker exceeds his grasp. Take, for example, the many details Baker has collected about George H.W. Bush and his activities in Texas in the 1950s and early '60s. Baker's cornerstone is a memo, reported by the Nation magazine in 1988, in which J. Edgar Hoover says the FBI spoke to "Mr. George Bush of the Central Intelligence Agency" after John F. Kennedy's assassination. To that Baker adds suggestive pieces of information about the Bush family-Yale-Skull & Bones-CIA-oil industry nexus. All this, taken together, advances the possibility that the elder Bush was at least a minor asset to the CIA, and maybe more, when he was doing business in Latin America and the Caribbean early in the Cold War. As everyone knows, Bush became the CIA's director in 1976. But Family of Secrets posits that his connections to the agency go back much earlier. Baker then scrutinizes the elder Bush's movements on Nov. 22, 1963. On the morning of the assassination, he was in Dallas, then flew to Tyler, Tex., to speak at a luncheon (the speech was cancelled when the shooting was reported; Baker notes that Bush remained "supremely well composed''), then flew back to Dallas and on to Houston, but not before phoning the FBI from Tyler to report his suspicions that a Republican Party activist might have been involved in the killing. Add in a handful of Bush associates who had interesting (and in one case downright bizarre) connections to the event, the author's general distrust of right-wing oilmen, an argument that the CIA had its own reasons for hating Kennedy, and suddenly you have a scenario that starts to sound like a conspiracy. Baker never explains how Bush might have been involved in the assassination; he only suggests that having apparently developed ties to the CIA and having had these weird friends and having done this odd informer thing -- possibly to establish an alibi -- well, he must be up to his neck in something. And who knows? But the Nation asked George H.W. Bush in 1988 if he were the person Hoover was referring to, and a spokesman for the then-vice president said no. The CIA produced another George Bush who had been on its staff at the time of the assassination, although that guy also denied having dealt with the FBI. Baker suggests that this was some kind of cover story to protect Bush 41, but what kind of cover story is it when the coverer doesn't stick to the story? The point is, Baker is not content merely to raise uncomfortable questions; he has latched onto the Grand Theory of Bushativity, and he insists on pressing his case with evidence that will not bear the weight. Every time he reaches a gap in someone's means or motivation, he hops, skips and jumps across it as nimbly as a mountain goat. Such words as "appears,'' "apparently,'' "likely,'' "seems,'' "seemingly'' and "in all likelihood" appear at many crucial junctures; there are more crutches in these pages than in the grotto at Lourdes. Baker also hurts himself by consistently thinking the worst of his subjects, even on matters only tangentially related to his central argument. He makes a big deal, for example, out of inconsistencies in the elder Bush's accounts of being shot down during World War II. Smith suggests that Bush changed his story to seem more courageous and to diminish his responsibility for the lives of his crew. Never mind studies that point to the unreliability of eyewitness testimony, and set aside all we know about how the passing of time messes with memory. Just think: Bush was flying an airplane and trying to bomb a target while people were trying to kill him, and they very nearly succeeded. I've never been in that position, so I can't say how well I would have recollected events. I can say I have gone into a supermarket with two small children and come out having forgotten to buy the very item I went to the store to get. Baker's Javert-like pursuit makes him seem unreasonable. This is just one of many places where the author overplays his hand. In a particularly weak section, he argues that Bush was complicit in a plot to undermine Richard Nixon. Here Baker relies on revisionist accounts of Watergate that point to John Dean as the one who ordered the break-in, or to the CIA as conspiring to oust Nixon. Bush is linked to these fuzzy schemes primarily by having, like the Watergate burglars, a CIA connection. In addition, Baker finds it suspicious that Bush advised Nixon to come clean about the break-in. But such advice was highly conventional and could be considered anti-Nixon only if you buy the idea that Bush prodded an innocent president to admit to something that didn't involve him. Baker doesn't convincingly cast Bush as anything beyond a sycophantic, Zelig-like presence in the Nixon years. The later chapters of the book, about George W. Bush, are more plausible, if only because Baker breaks less ground in his coverage of the family's connections to Saudi Arabia and the younger Bush's record in the National Guard. But having seen Baker stretch his evidence in the early chapters, a reader cannot be entirely sure that he isn't doing the same thing again. The next time this intrepid investigator takes aim at a subject, he might remember that it is wiser to underpromise and overdeliver than vice versa.
Copyright 2009, The Washington Post. All Rights Reserved.
Most helpful customer reviews
264 of 281 people found the following review helpful.
Tantalizing clues of covert operations, oil and America's position in the world
By Christopher K. Halbower
Russ Baker's book "Family of Secrets" takes the reader on a tantalizing journey into the Bush family. Baker's unabashed goal was to answer the question "How did Bush happen?"
As Baker began his intensive research into George W Bush, he found that in order to understand George Jr., one must first look at George Sr. This led him to inquire about the Bush clan in general, raising the blinds on this most secretive of families.
The book is comprised of 23 chapters. Of these, Baker spends the first 16 discussing George H W Bush (called Poppy by those close to him). The remaining 7 chapters are about George W Bush and those in his specific orbit.
Russ Baker makes a strong circumstantial case that George H W Bush was involved in intelligence work long before his 1974 CIA stint appointment. The actual evidence that would verify this is unavailable to the public in general as the CIA does not like inquiries.
Those who surround Poppy Bush seemed to be tinged by covert, intelligence operations. A few examples are: his father Prescott Bush, Neil Mallon and George DeMohrenschildt. The intelligence apparatus that evolved from WWII (the OSS) would become known as the CIA. And many in Bush's orbit were somehow connected to the OSS, the CIA or to covert missions in WWII.
Building upon this, Baker argues that the world of covert operations, including propaganda and psyops, is able and willing to suppress information and diseminate disinformation. The gatekeepers of knowledge tend to have ties to the CIA--including the Watergate journalist Bob Woodward.
The world of covert operations goes hand in hand with the oil industry and the world of international finance. The oil industry has acted as a kind of vanguard for US covert operations. This includes Poppy's oil rigs in the Caribbean that would be the training grounds for Cuban exiles before the Bay of Pigs. To fund covert operations, an intelligence agency needs funding. This is where international financial institutions play a role. The motivation: when a covert operation topples a regime, the financial institute gets first crack at exploiting the resources of the country.
Baker discusses the forces that brought Poppy Bush into the Nixon White House. Prescott Bush, he suggests, was the one who arranged for Nixon to first run for the open Republican Congressional seat in California in 1946. And George and Prescott are visible in the shadows during Nixon's rise to power--Prescott as a US Senator from Connecticut and George as a covert operative in several strategic regions around the world.
During his two terms as VP under Eisenhower, Nixon was in charge of several covert operations. And those in George Bush's close knit circle left their fingerprints all over these operations.
When Nixon became president, the name George H W Bush was considered for the VP slot. Nixon went with his own choice instead. Then Nixon wanted Helms at the CIA to give him all the materials regarding the covert actions Nixon had taken during the 50's. Helms balked. The result: Watergate.
The Watergate scandal, which undid the Nixon presidency, was perpetrated by CIA agents. All the major books on Watergate to come out in the past two decades confirm that Nixon was set up. And Baker concurs. But Baker goes on to implicate Bush as being complicit in this. Bush, along with Kissinger and Haig, was one of the few to survive the scandal. And with Nixon gone, the US got a new president: Gerald Ford.
The Ford adminstration saw the commission of what was to be called the "Halloween Massacre"--the elimination of several staffers and cabinet members who were loyal to Nixon. And Dick Cheney and Donald Rumsfeld oversaw and coordinated this "massacre".
How do you explain many strange events in American history without resorting to covert/intelligence operations? Bush's fingerprints can be found on the Iran/Contra scandal: a covert operation if ever there was one. Bush support for 3rd world dictators (Noriega, Hussein, Marcos) can easily be explained if you look for the web of intelligence.
And riding on his dad's coattails is young George W Bush. Where Poppy went wrong, George W seemed to correct: managing the media to spin all inquiries; politicizing every government agency; handing out juicy contracts to cronies.
Baker's book is filled with innuendos and suggestions. This is its greatest failing. The circumstantial evidence in many cases is compeling. However, in some cases it is lacking. The true value of Baker's research will be seen in the years to come. Future researchers can use his book and fill in the gaps where he was only able to provide circumstantial evidence.
Baker's narrative is fun but difficult to read. His prose is strong but this is not a book to be taken lightly. It weighs in at over 500 pages but reads like a book twice that length. If you are interested in American history, the Bush clan or the power of covert/intelligence operations, Baker's "Family of Secrets" receives my firm recommendation.
303 of 332 people found the following review helpful.
Right is still right, even when nobody's doing it. Wrong is still wrong, even when everybody's doing it.
By James C. Moore
"All great accomplishments are the products of discipline and the force of will. To write a lasting and important book, a journalist must be relentless in pursuing detail that others have misunderstood or even ignored. The commitment to discerning the facts can never waver, regardless of the obstacles placed before the reporter. We see such non-fiction narratives too infrequently in American publishing but we have a great one before us now in Russ Baker's phenomenal `Family of Secrets.' As an investigator and as a writer of compelling narrative, Baker has created, in my estimation, an almost unequalled standard in political reportage. He has refused to accept conventional wisdom regarding the Bush family and the failed son they made president. There is no way any reasonable person can reject what Baker reports and the conclusions are profoundly disturbing. The reader becomes convinced, page after page, footnote after footnote, quote after quote, that everything we thought we knew about American history in the past 50 years was wrong. I confess that I was prepared to be dismissive. When Baker first approached me about an interview and to offer what little insight I had on years of covering the Bushes in Texas, my reaction was that he was too late and that the public had been worn out by the publishing deluge prompted by George W's incompetence and lying. Why did we need another book on the Bushes? After reading `Family of Secrets' that answer is abundantly obvious: we did not know the truth. I think we do now and Russ Baker has given it to us in a brilliant book that that will be impossible for any sensible American to ignore. I considered myself well informed on both Presidents Bush but Baker has proved that even those of us close to the subject need to reconsider the facts and to do otherwise is to jeopardize the value and purpose of our democracy. As Karl Rove, Joe Allbaugh, Karen Hughes, Mark McKinnon, Dan Bartlett, Condoleeza Rice and the rest of the outgoing administration go about their immoral task of trying to spin a more positive Bush legacy, let them confront the truths as revealed in `Family of Secrets." History will not abide any further distortions of the Bush record and when researchers seek to understand what happened to our country under the Bush family regime, let's hope they find their way to the epic work of Russ Baker. `Family of Secrets' is much more than a non-fiction narrative of political history; Baker has created an historical document that is an act of patriotism for a nation in need of self-examination and the truth."
James C. Moore - Author: "Bush's Brain," "Bush's War for Reelection," and "The Architect."
101 of 110 people found the following review helpful.
treasure trove of conspiracies
By Larry Beinhart
Russ Baker has done a marvelous job of tracking the connections. The connections - CIA - big money - oil money - with the Bushes sitting on one big fat strand of the web. He leaves little doubt that Bush the Elder was CIA all the way, from the fifties on. He goes far to unraveling the mystery of Little Bush's business failures, and how he could move from failure to failure and continue to profit.
If you have doubts about the Kennedy Assassination or the "real story" of Watergate, Baker has tracked down all the facts and the anomalies and lays them out for you.
For anyone seriously interested in alternative narratives to the official version of recent American history, this book is a must.
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