Live By the Sword: The Secret War Against Castro & the Death of JFK - Hardcover

Russo, Gus

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 1890862010 ISBN 13: 9781890862015

Publisher: Bancroft Press, 1998

Synopsis

"Humiliated at the Bay of Pigs, John and Robert Kennedy sought desperately to eliminate Castro. Their strategies for overthrowing the Cuban leader were so elaborate and bizarre, they could only engender paranoia. Castro openly threatened to retaliate.Pro-Castro agitator Lee Harvey Oswald learned that Robert Kennedy was personally supervising groups plotting against the Cuban leader. Filled with rage and a sense of destiny, Oswald went to the Cuban embassy in Mexico, announcing he would kill America s president in exchange for sanctuary in Havana. Live By the Sword forces the conclusion that members of the Cuban regime accepted the troubled American s offer. Russo shows that Oswald was indeed JFK s lone assailant, but that after the president s murder, a devastated Robert Kennedy and key officials launched a comprehensive coverup to hide its true causes.Gus Russo, based in Baltimore, Maryland, has reported for acclaimed ABC and PBS documentaries on JFK, and done research for authors Gerald Posner, Seymour Hersh, and Anthony Summers. Exhaustively researched, Live by the Sword ends 35 years of public mistrust and confusion over the Kennedy assassination."

About this title

From the Publisher:

A comprehensive examination of the Kennedy assassination
For over 20 years, Russo has sought to compile a credible account of President Kennedy's assassination, and the foreign policy errors that set the stage for it. He is the investigative reporter who has most closely reviewed the files released by the JFK Assassination Records Review Board. Now, using first-time, on-the-record interviews with key players, never-before-seen photographs, U.S. documents recently declassified by the "JFK Act," and other materials personally obtained through FOIA requests, he has crafted what will likely become the definitive chronicle of a critical episode in American history.

From the Author:

I Had Exclusive on Oswald Docs from Yeltsin
1) I've seen some of the documents and talked to the U.S. and soviet intelligence officers who dealt with Oswald in the then-Soviet Union and also who translated the documents. I did so in connection with my Frontline investigations, then included the material in a chapter of my recent book, Live by the Sword.

2) Nothing I've seen in these documents or heard provides any evidence of Oswald plotting against Kennedy during that period of September 1959 (JFK wasn't president yet, nor had he even begun running for president) through May 1962. My research demonstrates that Oswald first began to hatch his plot in New Orleans, where he learned of the Kennedy Administration's secret plans to reinvade Cuba in 1964, and there is evidence to indicate that he may have learned of the Administration's continuing efforts to assassinate Castro. On August 9, 1963, Oswald was arrested after distributing Fair Play for Cuba leaflets. On August 17, 1963, Oswald took part in radio debate, espousing Castro's cause, but his Russian defection revealed on-air. On August 25, 1963, Fair Play for Cuba people told Oswald to stay out of sight. During August-September, 1963, Oswald told Marina he wanted to go to Cuba somehow, and planned, rehearsed, and eventually abandoned a plane hijacking to Cuba, deciding instead to go to Cuba by way of Mexico City.

3) The Moscow period is significant for entirely other reasons. Soviet intelligence definitively rejected Oswald as a recruit/volunteer, moved him out of Moscow after the rejection and his show suicide, and extensively monitored and bugged his activities. He was of no use to them and they were happy to see him leave when he asked to go back to the U.S. The period also demonstrates that Oswald was happiest when he was the center of attention, which he was briefly. And, finally, the documents will show that, after the assassination, there was enough known about Oswald's pro-Castro connections that the Soviets feared that they could trigger U.S. retaliation against Cuba, its ally, and perhaps draw it in to a nuclear conflict. It went out of its way to state the truth - that it had had no involvement in the assassination.

4) I believe the Soviets released the documents now because they knew Clinton himself had interest in the subject - JFK was Clinton's boyhood hero, and the first thing President Clinton did as president was to ask then Deputy Associate Attorney General Webb Hubbell to pass along anything new about the Kennedy assassination - presumably from the FBI/CIA. (Hubbell found nothing from his cursory look, but there was much to be learned, and the new information is found in "Live by the Sword.")

5) The more important documents not yet released are right here in the United States. They are the papers of Robert F. Kennedy. They reside at the Kennedy Presidential Library. And it is simply outrageous that the family has resisted an act of Congress in not parting with the papers.

6) Finally, it's nice to get the documents, but they don't solve the mystery of why Oswald murdered JFK. The answers to that mystery, supported by all the documents released to date, are in my book, "Live by the Sword," and they all point to Castro and Cuba as Oswald's political (as opposed to personal) motivation for murder. Let's finally understand and acknowledge that this WAS a political murder. There is no reason for the mystery of the assassination to go on any further.

About this edition

• Publisher: Bancroft Press
• Publication date: 1998
• ISBN 10: 1890862010
• ISBN 13: 9781890862015
• Binding: Hardcover
• Number of pages: 618