Live By the Sword: The Secret War Against Castro and the Death of JFK

by Gus Russo

Overview

Humiliated at the Bay of Pigs, John and Robert Kennedy sought desperately to eliminate Castro. Their strategies for overthrowing the Cuban leader were so elaborate and bizarre, they could only engender paranoia. Castro openly threatened to retaliate.

Pro-Castro agitator Lee Harvey Oswald learned that Robert Kennedy was personally supervising groups plotting against the Cuban leader. Filled with rage and a sense of destiny, Oswald went to the Cuban embassy in Mexico, announcing he would kill America's president in exchange for sanctuary in Havana. Live By the Sword forces the conclusion that members of the Cuban regime accepted the troubled American's offer. Russo shows that Oswald was indeed JFK's lone assailant, but that after the president's murder, a devastated Robert Kennedy and key officials launched a comprehensive coverup to hide its true causes.Gus Russo, based in Baltimore, Maryland, has reported for acclaimed ABC and PBS documentaries on JFK, and done research for authors Gerald Posner, Seymour Hersh, and Anthony Summers. Exhaustively researched, Live by the Sword ends 35 years of public mistrust and confusion over the Kennedy assassination.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781890862985
Publisher:	Bancroft Press
Publication date:	11/25/1998
Sold by:	Barnes & Noble
Format:	eBook
Pages:	512
File size:	6 MB

About the Author

An acclaimed investigative reporter, Gus Russo was a lead reporter and researcher on the three-hour landmark 1993 documentary, "Who Was Lee Harvey Oswald?" Recently, he served as an investigative reporter and senior consultant to the producer for ABC's "Dangerous World: The Kennedy Years," hosted by Peter Jennings. The two-hour program received both critical and popular acclaim, and was based on Seymour Hersh's The Dark Side of Camelot, for which Russo was a research consultant. He has also done research for respected authors Gerald Posner and Anthony Summers. Russo has appeared on all major TV networks as a JFK assassination expert, including "CBS Reports with Dan Rather." He has frequently spoken on NPR as well as on many college campuses.

For over 20 years, Russo has sought to compile a credible account of President Kennedy's assassination and the foreign policy errors that set the stage for it. He is the investigative reporter who has most closely reviewed the files released by the JFK Assassination Records Review Board. Now, using first-time, on-the-record interviews with key players, never-before-seen photographs, U.S. documents recently declassified by the "JFK Act," and other material personally obtained through FOIA requests, he has crafted what will likely become the definitive chronicle of a critical episode in American history.

Editorial Reviews

"Quite a topic. Quite a book. Quite an amazing book!" (CHRIS MATTHEWS IS THE HOST OF MSNBC'S HARDBALL)

Chris Matthews

"This revealing book demonstrates that no other journalist knows more about Robert Kennedy's involvement with anti-Castro Cuban exile forces than Gus Russo." (SEYMOUR M. HERSH IS A PULITZER PRIZE-WINNER, AUTHOR OF THE DARK SIDE OF CAMELOT, AND LONG-RESPECTED INVESTIGATIVE REPORTER)

Seymour M. Hersh

"For me, the most interesting thing in [Live By the Sword] is that Oswald wasn't a conspiratorialist, but was obsessed with the poor way Kennedy was treating Cuba . . . Sword is a very, very good book if you want to learn about Lee Harvey Oswald. [Russo makes] a very compelling case that he could have pulled the assassination off by himself." (BILL O'REILLY IS THE HOST OF FOX NEWS'S THE O'REILLY FACTOR)

Bill O'Reilly

"Highly recommended for most libraries."

Gary Barber, Library Journal

“Compelling, exhaustively researched and even-handed. . . . What is most impressive about Live by the Sword is that Russo is able to explain (though not condone) the actions of many of those in Government, including Lyndon B. Johnson, the C.I.A. and Robert Kennedy, all of whom fought hard to keep what Russo calls ‘the secret war against Castro’ from the public—thereby averting possible American retaliation and, perhaps, another catastrophic world war.”

New York Times Book Review