Robert Dallek Camouflages JFK, Twice

[Jim DiEugenio]

http://www.ctka.net/2014_reviews/dallek.html

Who's worse, Sabato or Dallek?

Or would you rather be bitten by a flea or a louse?

The denial of this country about this case, and who Kennedy was, poses a huge San Andreas Fault of the Jungian national consciousness.

And that PBS chose Dallek to do its 2 part bio says a lot about just how bad they have become.

His book was a put up job.

[Dawn Meredith]

http://www.ctka.net/2014_reviews/dallek.html

Who's worse, Sabato or Dallek?

Or would you rather be bitten by a flea or a louse?

The denial of this country about this case, and who Kennedy was, poses a huge San Andreas Fault of the Jungian national consciousness.

And that PBS chose Dallek to do its 2 part bio says a lot about just how bad they have become.

His book was a put up job.

It was painful trying to read this review. I read most of An Unfinished Life when it first came out and could not finish it. I don't know how you get through all these books Jim, especially when you know that the author has no interest in the truth. But I suppose there will be great reviews on Amazon. Yours is much too long for the general amazon public, but none-the- less it needs to go up there. With one star.
So many so called "historians" are touted by MSM when in fact most would not even recognize true history. I hope Dallek sees your review. My hardbound copy of An Unfinished Life will be going into our spring yard sale. (Or perhaps the trash).
Len should have Dallek on Black ops and get him to deal with some real issues. As to how he can just ignore NSM 263. For starters.

Dawn

[James Norwood]

I find a large number of positives in the scholarship of Robert Dallek:

He is a trenchant researcher in the area of Vietnam; his conclusion is that JFK would never have engaged our nation in the Vietnam War.

He was provided unique access to the medical records of JFK, and he concluded that the president's condition did not impair his performance in office, nor would it have prevented JFK from running for a second term.

He directly addressed the smut of authors who wish to besmirch the character of JFK by focusing on his sexual addiction. While Dallek did not condone the bad behavior, he nonetheless concluded that JFK's private life did not adversely affect his decision-making process as president.

On the negative side, Dallek is completely untutored on the JFK assassination, having failed to study the literature on the case. I too hope he will read Jim's detailed critique.

We can learn a great deal from assessing the profile of a career academician like Dallek and how he is one of the prime examples of the "silence of the historians" on the realities of the assassination of our thirty-fifth president. To borrow the image of James Douglass, this part of JFK research is "unspeakable" for the historians. Consequently, they issue the plea that they are "agnostics" or merely rehash the conclusions of the Warren Report. While this part of Dallek's research is disgraceful, it is important not to throw the baby out with bathwater. He has made important scholarly contributions as a presidential historian.


James

[Marlene Zenker]

I find a large number of positives in the scholarship of Robert Dallek:

He is a trenchant researcher in the area of Vietnam; his conclusion is that JFK would never have engaged our nation in the Vietnam War.

He was provided unique access to the medical records of JFK, and he concluded that the president's condition did not impair his performance in office, nor would it have prevented JFK from running for a second term.

He directly addressed the smut of authors who wish to besmirch the character of JFK by focusing on his sexual addiction. While Dallek did not condone the bad behavior, he nonetheless concluded that JFK's private life did not adversely affect his decision-making process as president.

On the negative side, Dallek is completely untutored on the JFK assassination, having failed to study the literature on the case. I too hope he will read Jim's detailed critique.

We can learn a great deal from assessing the profile of a career academician like Dallek and how he is one of the prime examples of the "silence of the historians" on the realities of the assassination of our thirty-fifth president. To borrow the image of James Douglass, this part of JFK research is "unspeakable" for the historians. Consequently, they issue the plea that they are "agnostics" or merely rehash the conclusions of the Warren Report. While this part of Dallek's research is disgraceful, it is important not to throw the baby out with bathwater. He has made important scholarly contributions as a presidential historian.


James

The problem is, James, that if you can't trust these "historians" on the assassination then how can you trust them on anything else? Obviously, if you are knowledgable about a subject then you know what is fact or fiction but if you are reading to learn how can you trust the author on anything? It's a sad state of affairs because it has made us distrustful of everything we read (and I mean more than a healthy mistrust)...

[Albert Doyle]

No matter how good he is if he doesn't get the assassination right he hasn't met the bar.

[Tracy Riddle]

As Harold Weisberg pointed out, the assassination is a specialized subject that requires a lot of study and a willingness to go outside the mainstream. Most academics don't have the time or motivation. The official story is too well-entrenched, and questioning it won't help their careers.

Once you've spent all that time and energy getting a position within the academic world, you don't want to mess it up. A lot of it is just laziness. Many historians deal with it in just a sentence or two, like Barbara Tuchman in The March of Folly.

[Jim DiEugenio]

Mr. Norwood:

Did you read my whole review, with the click throughs?

Dallek is a trenchant researcher on Vietnam?

Oh really? And he never mentions the Sec Def meeting of May 1963? He never says that it was JFK who actually wrote the Taylor McNamara report? Can't bring himself to type the words NSAM 263? And does not describe the plot behind the sending of the Saturday Night Special?

And to top it all off, he does not name Edmund Gullion in over a thousand pages?

Can you please explain to me how this qualifies as "trenchant"?

To me, John Newman is a trenchant researcher on Vietnam. As is Gordon Goldstein. As is Jamie Galbraith. I would never put Dallek anywhere near that class.

Secondly, unless I missed something, Dallek is never as absolute about Kennedy's intent to withdraw as you make him out to be. He does come down on the side that its most likely he would have not gotten bogged down in a land war. But he specifically based this on conversations Kennedy had. Not on the documents which he ignores. He also attributes any withdrawal intent to McNamara, not Kennedy. And he says this was not really a plan anyway.

As per your other two comments, I mean, if you really mean those as attributes by Dallek to Kennedy, then I think we lost. If that is the best that Dallek can do, then heck, he earned his NY Times paycheck ten fold.

Dallek and Sabato and Reeves have done such yeoman work camouflaging Kennedy, that when I actually presented who JFK really was e.g. in Pittsburgh at the Wecht Conference, people were literally stupefied and gave me a standing ovation. They then asked where i got the information. Because, thanks to hacks like Dallek, they never saw it before.

[Albert Doyle]

All you need to know is Dallek was presented on the mainstream TV programs on the 50th. DiEugenio and Douglass were not. I guess that was an example of the 'trenchant' media.

[Jim DiEugenio]

Actually, all you need to know is that Dallek got on PBS with a two part four hour special.

And PBS is fast becoming maybe the worst of the networks on this case and JFK.

I mean the only biographers who got any time besides him were Sabato and Richard Reeves. Sabato is about as bad as Dallek and Richard Reeves may be even worse.

If it was not for Robert Kennedy Jr. and the Rolling Stone, and my article at Consortium News, no one would have been exposed to the real Kennedy and why he did what he did.

And that is censorship.

[Vasilios Vazakas]

Not only another great review, but a lesson in history. It is a good service to expose people like them who have sold their integrity
to propagate a lie under specific instructions.