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Bill O’Reilly and Martin Dugard: Killing Kennedy. The End of Camelot. Henry Holt & Co., 2012. pp336.
Historian Bill O’Reilly and his colleague Martin Dugard have produced another epic dedicated to an iconic American President who was assassinated, following their bestseller The Lincoln Conspiracy.
Killing Kennedy. The End of Camelot deserves more than an honourable mention as a major contribution to historical Americana, as it begins to unravel the offstage complexities of this remarkable family and its very chequered history.
Reilly and Dugard introduce the young John F. Kennedy as a brand new US Navy lieutenant commanding PT-109 during the war in the Pacific and his vivid adventures, acts of bravery and near misses, culminating in a heart-rending post-war speech at the veterans’ Goldstar mother’s tribute involving his late elder brother Joe Jr, lost in action during World War II. Thanks to his trusted aide (and eventually member of the Kennedy White House ‘Irish clan’) David Powell and his entreaties to make the most of his wartime heroics, Kennedy is elected to Congress in 1946.
The book’s narration flows smoothly as the plot thickens and events rapidly crystallise, leading inexorably to the horrifying climax.
O’Reilly and Dugard chronicle JFK’s early flirtation with organised crime, his antagonistic relationship with FBI chief J. Edgar Hoover and then his attempts to stamp out organised crime through his brother Robert F. Kennedy, whom he had appointed Attorney-General. All this is interspersed while JFK is reciting his oath of office as President to Chief Justice Earl Warren on January 20, 1961.
The book’s narration flows smoothly
Not everybody loves JFK. Though he won the popular vote over his Republican rival Richard M. Nixon, this was only by a very narrow majority. After his inauguration, however, JFK’s political ratings were bound to soar and all seems set for him to win a second term in 1964. But a distraught Marine, Lee Harvey Oswald, wants to make earth-shattering headlines after his defection to Russia.
Atop the Texas School Book Depository building in Dallas, he peers into a four-power cope which makes the President’s head look a mere two feet away. He exhales gently, squeezes the trigger of his Carcano rifle – and blam! JFK is shot dead in less than it takes to make the eye blink. It is exactly 5.30pm on a warm and sunny Dallas afternoon, November 22, 1963.
As for his beautiful and tearful widow, Jackie Bouvier Kennedy, in waft those memorable strains of her beloved Camelot: “Don’t let it be forgot/that once there was a spot/for one brief shining moment/that was known as Camelot.”