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Act of Treason: The Role of J. Edgar Hoover in the Assassination of President Kennedy
Author(s): Mark North (Author)
- Publisher: Carroll & Graf Pub
- Publication Date: January 1, 1991
- Edition: First Edition
- Language: English
- Print length: 671 pages
- ISBN-10: 088184747X
- ISBN-13: 9780881847475
Book Description
Argues that former F.B.I. director J. Edgar Hoover possessed full knowledge of a plan to assassinate President Kennedy but did nothing to prevent it
Editorial Reviews
From Library Journal
This seems to be open season on Hoover, with North’s sensational book coming fast on the heels of Curt Gentry’s impressive and devastating biography, J. Edgar Hoover: The Man and the Secrets ( LJ 8/91). North further tarnishes Hoover’s reputation by accusing him of nothing less than treason for allegedly covering up a Mafia conspiracy to assassinate John F. Kennedy and manipulating the Warren Commission. The focus here on Hoover’s activities and influence puts Act of Treason on a higher level than the typical “conspiracy theory” book. North effectively blends press reports, FBI records, and interviews to create a daily “chronicle” of the pertinent events of 1960-64. His theories and contentions are well documented (over 2300 source notes are listed!), and he presents a convincing portrait of Hoover as a ruthless power broker. This is another fascinating and unsettling look at the dark side of American politics. Highly recommended. See also Mark Lane’s Plausible Denial: Was the CIA Involved in the Assassination of JFK? , reviewed above.–Ed.
-Thomas A. Karel, Franklin & Marshall Coll. Lib., Lancaster, Pa.
Copyright 1991 Reed Business Information, Inc.
-Thomas A. Karel, Franklin & Marshall Coll. Lib., Lancaster, Pa.
Copyright 1991 Reed Business Information, Inc.
From Kirkus Reviews
Strong scenario by a Texas attorney for J. Edgar Hoover’s complicity in the assassination of President Kennedy by the Carlos Marcello mafia family of New Orleans. Readers of Mark Lane’s Plausible Denial (reviewed above) will be hard-pressed to correlate North’s evidence with Lane’s eyewitness account (taken under oath) of CIA master-spy E. Howard Hunt’s payoff to the actual killers, implicating the CIA as the top conspirator. But North’s evidence also takes on force and in no way can be seen as cheap and sleazy. What’s clear from both books is that Warren Commission members gave false testimony frequently and that the Commission’s report can be written off as a fabrication aimed at relieving the populace of worry about a conspiracy. After reading these two books, nobody could believe that Oswald alone killed Kennedy. North focuses on the upcoming forced retirement of Hoover as director of the FBI (to take place when Kennedy won his second term) and Hoover’s bitter resistance to that ouster and animus toward Attorney General Robert Kennedy. RFK was making it superhot for the mafia, while Hoover, the AG’s investigative arm, was refusing to cooperate. Through electronic surveillance, Hoover learned that Teamster boss Jimmy Hoffa had put out a contract on RFK, while later surveillance apparently revealed that the Marcello crime family was organizing a hit on JFK, whose loss would dampen RFK’s ardor to indict them. The law says that Hoover was bound to report these death threats to the Secret Service. Instead, North argues, he sat on them and entered into a sweetheart pact with Vice President Johnson, who was sweating over his criminal acts in Texas that were about to be revealed by RFK. With the Kennedys silenced, Johnson and Hoover would be in clover. North’s general lines of reasoning are abundantly enforced by Hoover’s own memos, among other sources. (Sixteen pages of photographs–not seen.) — Copyright ©1991, Kirkus Associates, LP. All rights reserved.
