Bobby and J. Edgar by Burton Hersh
A Detailed New Examination of the Kennedys and the FBI
Burton Hersh's book "Bobby and J. Edgar" leads the reader expertly through the tangles and intrigues of the Kennedy years.
In the Foreword to Bobby and J.Edgar, Burton Hersh explains that he had intended merely to work on the “largely unpublished vendetta” between the Attorney-General and the Director of the FBI. As his research progressed, however, this became complicated by Bobby Kennedy’s mission to overthrow the power of organised crime, and the extent to which his father Joseph P. Kennedy had been entangled with what power. The ramifications were obvious in terms of power politics and psychology – as Hersh suggests, “It doesn’t require Carl Jung to conclude that there are archetypes roaming the foliage here, or Freud to identify the Oedipal implications.”
Parallel Lives
Over the course of Hersh’s weighty volume he traces a large part of the Kennedy’s involvement in public power (going back as far as Joseph’s father, P.J. Kennedy) s well as their political and financial connections to organised crime. Parallel to this narrative, and frequently colliding with it, is the story of J. Edgar Hoover, the “obsessively territorial” FBI director who built his own empire within the bureaucracy.
Probing Paradoxes
The most interesting parts of Bobby and J.Edgar are Hersh’s investigations of the contradictions which these narratives involve: how Bobby came at attack the corruption which had put him and his brother into office, how Hoover found himself establishing COINTELPRO operations against the Klu Klux Klan, when his personal views favoured segregation. Hersh refuses the easy option of calling such situations “paradoxes”, or labelling anyone “a contradictory character”, instead explaining why such situations were expedient and even logical. He also examines iconic figures like Joe McCarthy and Martin Luther King without the heavy gloss of hindsight and without assuming that their histories unfolded inevitably.
History and Fate
Hersh is clearly committed to the importance of understanding this era of American history: he states that “we share [these] moments of glory, as well as no small residue of collective guilt” and is anxious to analyse Hoover’s real achievements “before we agree to chisel his name out of the architrave of the FBI Building”. His obvious involvement with the material, as well as his flair for telling a story, can sometimes make it unclear whether he is paraphrasing or narrating – some contentious and provocative statements are left dangling between free indirect style and the voice of the historian. It also causes him to accept uncritically a lot of the mythological weight built up around the era – phrases like “literally tempting Fate” or “For twentieth-century America the Kennedys amounted to the House of Atreus” occasionally appear without any analysis of the terms involved or their application.
Bobby and J.Edgar is the product of a great deal of research, and makes fascinating reading for anyone interested in the Kennedy saga – Burton Hersch’s analysis is salient and illuminating.
