Scott, Peter Dale. Deep Politics and the Death of JFK. Berkeley: University
of California Press, 1993. 413 pages.
This book is similar to Scott's "Crime and Cover-Up: The CIA, the Mafia,
and the Dallas-Watergate Connection" (1977), a slim volume that was packed
full of names. His method is to connect the dots between the major scandals
and tragedies of U.S. history since World War II by tracking those under-
world operators and politicians who seem to reappear in them. Scott rejects
"parapolitics" as too narrow, and prefers "deep politics" -- a recognition
that the infrastructure of U.S. politics is based essentially on organized
crime and corruption. Most of the scandals and tragedies are linked through
common actors, or by enterprises such as drug-running. By emphasizing these
links rather than dealing with each separately, we begin to understand the
depths of "the collective shadow, or shadows, of America."
In graduating from "parapolitics" to "deep politics," Scott is intensive
with names and footnotes illustrating microconnections between actors. In the
end, however, he offers only as much macroanalysis as one might expect from a
"Who's Who." He makes his case that the problem is larger than just the JFK
assassination, or Vietnam hawks, or just Watergate or Iran-contra, and admits
that he is optimistic that "healing can come from an enlargement of insight."
But for many readers this book is best used as a reference text. To digest
it all at once is akin to an overdose with no prescribed remedy.
ISBN 0-520-08410-1
Extract the names from this source
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