government’s efforts, beginning in late 1959 under President Eisenhower and persisting until 1965, to rid Cuba of Fidel Castro. Undoubtedly, this was a formative moment in Talbot’s life unfortunately, he shows little evidence of having moved on from a 16-year-old’s starry-eyed view of the Kennedys.Īn inextricable sub-theme of Brothers involves the U.S. Talbot was a teen-age volunteer in that campaign in which RFK won the California primary, only to be mortally wounded minutes after his victory speech. This quest, in turn, helped fuel his 1968 presidential run, which ended tragically with his own assassination in June of that year. While publicly endorsing the Warren Commission’s findings of a lone gunman, RFK believed the assassination was a conspiracy and quietly dedicated himself to identifying those responsible. Kennedy began hunting for the responsible party within this trio of possible culprits, according to Talbot.Ī central thesis of Brothers is that Bobby Kennedy only gave lip service to the U.S. The CIA had formed a sinister alliance with underworld bosses to assassinate Fidel Castro, working with mob-connected Cuban exile leaders.” Consequently, immediately after the assassination of his brother the president, Attorney General Robert F.

Talbot’s prime suspects are identified in Brothers’ opening pages: “The CIA, Mafia and Cuba-Bobby knew they were intertwined. Kennedy’s assassination was not the deranged act of a lone gunman, but the result of a much larger conspiracy. Click here to read an exchange between David Talbot and Don Bohning about this review.ĭavid Talbot believes John F.

The hidden history of the kennedy years