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Family of Secrets

Cover of Family of Secrets
Author	Russ Baker
Original title	'Family of Secrets: the Bush Dynasty, the Powerful Forces That Put It in the White House, and What Their Influence Means for America'
Subject	Political history
Genre	Nonfiction
Publisher	Bloomsbury Press
Publication date	2009
Pages	579
ISBN	978-1-59691-577-2 Parameter error in {{ISBNT}}: checksum

Family of Secrets, by Russ Baker, presents significant previously unpublished information about the Bush family, and about still-unresolved national traumas, from the assassination of John F. Kennedy to the removal of Richard Nixon by means of the Watergate scandal. In this book, Baker documents a longtime association of the Bush family with the Central Intelligence Agency. Keeping this association secret was advantageous particularly when George H.W. Bush was appointed CIA director in 1975, and his supposed lack of prior intelligence experience was seen as better qualifying him for the position because it distanced him from recent scandals such as the Iran-Contra_affair.

Baker lays out the origin of the CIA itself in elite financial circles that included the Bush family and their friends and business associates. He proposes that the political triumph of the Bushes was essentially an outgrowth of interests that continue to constrain political debate and limit the possibility of reform up to the present moment. Almost 600 pages long, the book has more than 1000 footnotes, and Baker states that the five years of research that led to the book includes more than 500 interviews and thousands of documents.

About half of the book concerns secrets in the past of George H.W. Bush, and four chapters provide new information that connects him to the Kennedy assassination. Baker says that this research grew out of his effort to understand Bush's claim not to remember where he was on Nov. 22, 1963. The book includes new accounts of the struggle between President Nixon and intelligence and military cliques prior to the events that brought about his downfall. Baker suggests that the Watergate burglary and other actions ascribed to Nixon were in fact perpetrated by operatives assigned to compromise the President so that he would be removed from office.

The book provides a new account of covert aspects of the relationship between the United States and the Saudi royal family, and how this relationship benefited the Bush family and their circle. It also explores little-known events in George W. Bush's past, includinghis disappearance from mandatory military service, a girlfriend's abortion, and a series of international business ventures in which he participated prior to becoming a politician — oddly unprofitable ventures with connections to foreign dictators and offshore accounts.

Reviews

Family of Secrets has been reviewed by many print and electronic journals. Reviews on the Internet have been largely positive. Jane Hamsher in her popular blog Firedoglake said that "hether Baker ends up convincing you or not, reading this book should make you question much of what you know about the last half century of US history". On Amazon Reader Reviews, the chief archivist of the Nixon tapes writes that "enough of these connections are sufficiently well-documented as to merit serious consideration...". It has met with mixed responses and skepticism from the traditional media. Tim Rutten of the Los Angeles Times dismissed Baker's work on the JFK assassination as "paranoid", while a cautious Time magazine called him "prodigiously industrious". In a Washington Post review, a freelancer combined dubiousness with praise, calling Baker "a capable investigator" but accusing him of overreaching and having "latched onto the Grand Theory of Bushativity". The San Diego Union-Tribune wrote: 'Baker, a solid investigative journalist, works hard to back up his claims... He's a man on a mission, desperate to stop the 'methods of stealth and manipulation that... reflect a deeper ill: the US public's increasingly tenuous hold upon the levers of its own democracy'. The heaviest coverage has come from leftist talk radio, where Baker has been interviewed by figures like Ron Reagan, son of the former president, on the Air America network. No contemporary mainstream media, such as 's Book Review, have interviewed the author.

Paperback edition

The paperback, with the subtitle The Bush Dynasty, America's Invisible Government, and the Hidden History of the Last Fifty Years, contains a new foreword by Texas journalist James Moore, a Bush expert and author of Bush's Brain, the bestselling study of Bush strategist Karl Rove. It has been endorsed by Dan Rather, historian and national security expert Roger Morris, Bill Moyers, and Gore Vidal, who called it as "one of the most important books of the past ten years".

References

1. "'Family of Secrets' by Russ Baker", review by Tim Rutten, Los Angeles Times, January 7, 2009.
2. "Family of Secrets", review by Lev Grossman, Time Magazine, December 17, 2008.
3. "Behind Every Rock a Bush", by Jamie Malanowski, Washington Post, Sunday, January 11, 2009.
4. San Diego Union-Tribune, Sunday, January 25, 2009.
5. Other such reviews include "Baker Blitzes Bush Fam for Bloomsbury, Has Big Bash!", by Leon Neyfakh, The New York Observer, January 6, 2009 and "Dubya biopic in need of conspiracy", by Giovanni Fazio, Japan Times, May 8, 2009.