Washington Decoded

Articles by Title

 

 

 

Advancing POTUS,   ’60s Style

After Thirty Years: Making Sense of the Assassination

Agee's Archive: The Truth Unredacted?

All the President’s Editors

Anatomy of a Malignant Narcissist

Arthur J. Goldberg and the Reds in the OSS

The Assassin as Political Pilgrim

Assassination Chronicle

The Assassination Tapes

Bashing, Bullying, Blaming Japan
US Deals with a Deficit

Big D

Birthers, Truthers, and Buffs: The Paranoid Style

Bradlee’s ‘Especially Privileged Seat at the Parade’

Buyouts: The LBO Lobby Makes Its Move on Washington  

Camelot and Cuba

Castros and Kennedys

Citizen McCloy   

Civics Lesson

Clay Shaw: The Man Jim Garrison Tormented

A Cold War Odyssey: The Oswald File

Cold War Origins

Commission Confidential

Commission the Truth

Commissions Shed Light on Darkest Days

Concocting the Dots

A Conspiracy of Dunces

Conspiracy Theories Keep Coming, But the Plot Gets Thinner

Credit Where Credit Is Due

The Cuban Missile Crisis 45 Years Later:
A Personal and Professional Remembrance 

The Cuban Missile Crisis, Harvard-Style

Dealing with Dealey Plaza

The Death of Conservatism-and Other Vital Center Illusions

Deep Throat 3.0

A Defection in the Family

Defending CHAOS

In Defense of Skeptics and Conspiracy Theorists (Sort Of)

The Demon in Jim Garrison

The DeRonja-Holland Report (Final)

The DeRonja-Holland Report (Interim)

The Docudrama That Is JFK

Don’t Blame the Japanese: The Rise and Fall of Burgmaster

Doubt and Disbelief in the Warren Report

Dreamland Fantasies

Drone Wars

Drugs, Corruption, and Justice in Vietnam and Afghanistan: A Cautionary Tale

11 Seconds in Dallas, Not Six

11 Seconds in Dallas Redux: Filmed Evidence

Erasing History at the National Archives

Fantasy v. Reality in the Federal Budget

The FBI According to Weiner

Fidel Catastrophes

The Final DeRonja-Holland Report

Five Best Books on the Conspiracy Mindset

The Ford Files

Four Decades of Speculation on the Kennedy Assassination 

The Girl in the Red Skirt: A Micro-Study of the Zapruder Film

“Grassy Knoll” Sid: Hillary’s Personal Conspiracy Theorist

Greed Is All Right

A.C. Greene on the Texas School Book Depository

Harvard Does Dallas

Havana’s Cold War

The Historian as Hustler

How the 1 Percent Got That Way

How to Kill a Company: Anatomy of a Leveraged Buyout

How Moscow Undermined the Warren Commission

In Denial: Round 11

Indoctrination U

In Search of the Third Man

Inside Casino Capitalism

Inside KKR’s Buyout Boutique

I. F. Stone: Encounters with Soviet Intelligence

Jane Fonda and Her Friendly North Vietnamese Intelligence Officer

Jerry Ford Was No Accidental President

The JFK Files: Cuba, Kennedy, and the Cold War

The JFK Lawyers’ Conspiracy

JFK’s Death, Re-Framed

J. Robert Oppenheimer: A Spy? No. But a Communist Once? Yes.

Junkman in DC

Just a Shot Away

The Kennedy Assassination Tapes

The Key to the Warren Report

KGB vs. the Papacy

Kill or Capture, Torture or Deceive

King Henry

King Oil

LBOs: Enough Already!

Libby Indicted, But the Press Still Needs a Federal Shield Law

A Luce Connection:
Senator Keating, William Pawley, and the Cuban Missile Crisis

Luce Falls Short: Andrew Bacevich on the End of the American Century

Mailer Tracks Down the Lone Assassin

The Making of a Washington Expert

Mark Lane: The Original Shyster

McCarthy, According to Evans (and Novak)

McCone’s Telcon Gaffe

The Mind of Somoza

A Miss

The Missile Crisis, Harvard-Style

A Most Unlikely Agent: Robert S. Allen

Mr. Young Goes to Washington

The Myths of Kim Philby

New Light on a Lingering Forensic Controversy

The New McCarthyism

Naftali Reconsidered

Nixon Reiterated

Nixon’s Overreach—and an Author’s

November 22, 1963: Conspiracy or No, One Day Has Stretched to Fill a Writer ’s Years

Nut Country: From A(lger) to (Cru)Z

Odyssey of a Recovering Conspiracist

An Old Schism Haunts the 9/11 Commission

Oliver Stone on Jim Garrison, the KGB, and the CIA

Oliver Stone on Garrison’s Demon

One Year After  a Major Realignment,
the Intelligence Community Is in Disarray

Operation PBHISTORY: The Aftermath of SUCCESS

Outing Deep Throat

Paranoia Unbound

Politics and Intelligence:
The ‘Photo Gap’ That Delayed Discovery of Missiles in Cuba

The Politics of Association: Ayers v. Kravis

The Politics of Postmortems: Cuba 1962-1963

The Politics (and Profits) of Information: The 9/11 Commission

The Power of Disinformation:
The Lie That Linked CIA to the Kennedy Assassination

Presidential Tapes and Historical Interpretation

Presidential Tapes and Transcripts:
Crafting a New Historical Genre

Private Sources of US Foreign Policy:
William Pawley and the 1954 Coup d’Etat in Guatemala

Procuring Inaction

The Propagation and Power of Communist Dezinformatsiya

The Quiet Vietnamese

Reel History: Should ABC Have Yanked The Path to 9/11?

RFK OK'd Sabotage Against Cuba in November 1963

RFK: The Man Who Really Brought Down LBJ

Richard Nixon’s Own Deep Throat

Road to Nowhere

Roger and the NYSE

The Russell (and Warren) Commission

Sabato’s Folly

The Secret Assassination Records and the Story They Tell

The Secret That Wasn’t: Deep Throat Exposed in 1973

Seeing Red in the Caribbean

Senators Beat the Market with Insider Information

Shame on the History Channel

Silence of the Corporate Lambs: Where was Vernon Jordan?

Sins of Omission and Commission

The Spy Who Never Came In from the Cold

Still Guilty After All These Years: Sirhan B. Sirhan

Tales from the LBJ Tapes: History with the Bark Off

Tapes: Hearing a Wrong Leaning, er, Meaning

The Tapping of ‘Tommy the Cork’

A Technical Investigation Pertaining to the First Shot Fired in the JFK Assassination

Three Decades’ Doubt About the JFK Assassination
Will Now Get Three Years’ Scrutiny

Truth in A Lie: Forty Years After the 18½ Minute Gap

The Underwood Hoax

Unspeakably Awful

The Vanity of Vanity Fair

Was Jim Garrison Duped by the KGB?

Washing White

Watergate: The Director’s Cut

What Did LBJ Know About the Cuban Missile Crisis?
And When Did He Know It?

What Oswald Wrought: Lament of a Generation

When Burgmaster Lost Its Edge 

Who Interrogated American Electronic Warfare Specialists in North Vietnam During the War?

Who Needs Soviet Propaganda?

Who's Bankrolling the Buyout Artist?

Why Did I. F. Stone Sidestep the Hiss Case?

Why RFK Shunned the Inquiry into His Brother’s Assassination

A Word About Lee Harvey Oswald

The Vanity of Vanity Fair

 Print

By Max Holland

    Under the editorship of Graydon Carter, Vanity Fair has become the most reliable purveyor of Camelot nostalgia.

    Over the last decade, either the glossy magazine or vanityfair.com has published 19 articles, book excerpts, or photo spreads about the Kennedys. In the last three years alone, Kennedys (Jack, Bobby, Jackie, or some combination thereof) have three times graced  Vanity Fair’s cover, one of the most sought-after pieces of magazine real estate in the business. Single-handedly, Graydon Carter seems bent on extending what Garry Wills once called “the Kennedy time in our national life.”[1]

    The latest cover story in the October 2009 issue is unlike its predecessors though. It’s neither a  syrupy excerpt from a fawning book, nor an amply-illustrated puff piece. Instead, Sam Kashner’s “A Clash of Camelots” purports to be a serious, original piece of journalism about the 1966-67 “Manchester affair,” the first episode to tarnish the Kennedys’ escutcheon following the 1963 assassination of JFK. As the table of contents states, “[VF contributing editor] Sam Kashner unearths the story behind [William Manchester’s The Death of a President,] a best-seller that captivated the nation, divided the Kennedys, and nearly destroyed the author.”

    Far from unearthing the story, or even shedding new light on it, the article mostly recycles what has long been known. Newspapers, especially The New York Times, covered the so-called “battle of the book” in agonizing detail for months. Afterwards, the heavily publicized struggle was the subject of three books, two of them authored by Times-men. Eventually, even Manchester had his unabridged say, publishing a 60-page chapter about the controversy in a compilation of his essays.[2]

    Still, there wouldn’t be much to criticize—and it would be churlish to do so—if this boast were only the issue. The genuine problem is the article’s many errors of commission and omission, including Kashner’s uncritical acceptance of clichés and untruths in Manchester’s own narrative that have been circulating for 42 years. Some of these issues have long been points of dispute, while the truth about others has only become known recently, through the release of such sources as the once-secret Lyndon Johnson tape recordings.

    The VF editors’ note says Kashner’s interest in the Manchester story was first aroused in 1984, when John F. Kennedy, Jr. told Kashner that The Death of a President was the “only book he would ever read about his father’s assassination. This revelation piqued Kashner’s obsession with the controversial history . . . ” If so, Kashner’s obsessiveness is strictly limited to sources that conform to a flattering portrayal of William Manchester and his book, which Kashner considers a “masterpiece.”

    Here are some of the outstanding errors of fact, interpretation, and history in “A Clash of Camelots.”