Killing Kennedy

the topic of Camelot, as does Sally Bedell Smith’s May 2004 Vanity Fair piece, “Private Camelot.” Randy J. Taraborrelli’s The Secret Life of Marilyn Monroe ; The Sinatra Files , by Tom and Phil Kuntz; and the FBI’s dossier on Sinatra add compelling detail to the goings-on in Palm Springs. Evan Thomas’s Robert Kennedy provides insight into RFK. Hersh’s Dark Side of Camelot was also invaluable. JFK’s comments about the chase came from the U.S. News and World Report (May 9, 2004) interview with Sally Bedell Smith. The Gallup Poll’s website offered information on approval ratings, while Sam and Chuck Giancana’s Double Cross provided background on the various potential Mafia plots against Marilyn and the Kennedy brothers.
    Chapter 6 : The Kennedy Library’s website has a feature that allows you to browse the New York Times by date. This provides much of the background information on the travels of the president, the atrocities in East Berlin, and the world’s interest in matters such as Soviet cosmonauts and the revolutionary radio telephone. Robert Caro’s Passage of Power was a treasure trove of information about the habits of Lyndon Johnson, particularly his travails as vice president. Details about life in the Deep South come from FBI reports documenting that period, while the story of Emmett Till came directly from his killers’ Look magazine article, along with other sources that add more dimension, and from the Ebony magazine photograph showing his battered and flattened head. Dave Garrow’s Atlantic Monthly piece of July/August 2002 documents the FBI’s fascination with Martin Luther King Jr. FBI special agent Fain’s recollection of Lee Harvey Oswald comes from Fain’s Warren Commission testimony.
    Chapter 7 : Photographs of JFK’s bedroom can be seen at www.whitehousemuseum.org , and further detail can be found in Manchester’s Brief Shining Moment . More White House history can be found at www.whitehouse.gov ; Jackie Kennedy speaks a great deal about their life there in Historic Conversations on Life with John F. Kennedy . Specific conversations during the Cuban missile crisis can be found in The Kennedy Tapes , by Ernest May and Philip Zelikow, and in Ted Kennedy’s True Compass. Also of note: Stern’s The Week the World Stood Still ; the archive file of Dean Rusk’s meeting with Soviet foreign minister Gromyko; Charles Tustin Kamps’s The Cuban Missile Crisis ; Jackie, Ethel, and Joan , by Randy J. Taraborrelli; The Mind of Oswald , by Diane Holloway; Khrushchev , by William Taubman; and The Memoirs of Nikita Khrushchev , by the late Soviet dictator. Robert Dallek’s Atlantic story about Kennedy’s medical woes (December 2002) was also very helpful.
    Chapter 8 : Believe it or not, the Mona Lisa ’s unveiling can be found on YouTube. Fascinating stuff. Mona Lisa in Camelot , by Margaret Leslie Davis, sheds light on this improbable chapter in our nation’s history. The glossary of Manchester’s Death of a President provides the Secret Service code names, while the Warren Commission Report includes a solid summary on the history of presidential assassination and the need for a Secret Service. The Secret Service’s own website shows this, too. Much of the behind-the-scenes information about the various agents and their details can be found in Clint Hill’s Mrs. Kennedy and Me , and in Gerald Blaine’s The Kennedy Detail . Edward Klein’s All Too Human was also very helpful.
    Chapter 9 : Caro provides more great detail on LBJ in Passage to Power . The Giancanas’ Double Cross goes further into the Mafia conspiracies. These conspiracies are not presented as facts in this book, but as theories—and Double Cross lays out these possibilities very nicely. Also of note in this chapter: Evan Thomas’s Bobby Kennedy , Burton Hersh’s Bobby and J. Edgar , Edward Klein’s All Too Human , Jim Marrs’s Crossfire , and the LBJ Library’s website.
    Chapter 10 : The Winston Churchill website has a fine overview of this special day, while Rethinking Camelot , by Noam Chomsky, deals with the early days of Vietnam in graphic detail.
    Chapter 11 : Many details about the marchers came from Washington Post coverage the following day. Glenn Eskew’s But for Birmingham and Diane McWhorter’s Carry Me Home provide additional awesome detail. Shelley Tougas’s Birmingham 1963 speaks of how a single photograph changed so many minds. Seth Jacobs’s Cold War Mandarin provides gruesome