by Jesse Ventura
with Dick
Russell
Hardback, 228 pp.
Skyhorse Publishing $24.95
ISBN
978-1-60239-802-3
Reviewed by Daniel Bruno Sanz
"I've not written this book because I get off on talking about
conspiracies. I've written it because,
governmental drug dealing and the stolen elections and the rest...until
we look at how, slowly and insipidly, the most venal of men took control
of our nation, we don't stand a chance of putting things back on
track."
I for one have never believed in conspiracy theories but be
forewarned: Ventura will knock the wind
out of you with a body
slam. The straight talking ex-Minnesota governor and gung-ho Navy SEAL
has
produced an extremely troubling account of recent American
history guaranteed to make you ponder
the unthinkable.
In clear conversational style free of
New World Order quackery, UFO cover-up theories, Flat Earth
Society
cretinism and Lou Dobb's birther nonsense, Ventura throws a brutally
harsh spotlight on the
damning inconsistencies with the official line on September 11, TARP,
the War on Drugs and the
assassinations of the Kennedy brothers and
Dr. King, to name a few. But he doesn't stop there. He
relates
being queried by the Central Intelligence Agency in the basement of the
Minnesota Capital upon winning the race for governor in 1999 and creepy
occurrences with his wife's computer and telephone.
In facile prose Ventura narrates the untimely deaths of Michael
Connel, a Bush and Rove confidante who knew too much about Global
Election Systems and the disputed presidential elections of 2000 and
2004, and Gary Webb, the journalist responsible for the CIA cocaine
connection expose in the San Jose Mercury News. He laments the
government intimidation of journalists like Daniel Estulin and the use
of the no-fly list as a tool to harass people who have no connection to
terrorism.
Ventura is troubled by the incest between the CIA, AIG, Goldman
Sachs and the Treasury
Department and is convinced the timing of the
Elliot Spitzer prostitution scandal is no happenstance; it broke only
when Spitzer the Wall Street crusader pushed too hard against AIG, the
firm with deep
historical ties to the CIA. Ventura goes on to ask whether he has put
his own life in jeopardy by writing
such things. He is not being
melodramatic.
Approach the book as a skeptic, but Ventura's
accurate account of the Gulf of Tonkin (non) incident,
Operation Northwoods and MK-ULTRA will force you to consider whether the
recent Shazad/Times
Square Bomber case is a just a hoax to pressure
the Pakistani government to send troops to Waziristan and the Korean
boat torpedoing incident an inside job to keep U.S. troops on Okinawa
indefinitely. In any event, you will never listen to the news the same
way again.
The book contains no less than twenty pages of information
source notes and four pages of
supportive further reading. However,
some of the sources have low standards of journalistic accuracy
and
probably had an ax to grind.
Two thumbs up and five stars for American Conspiracies.
Jesse, watch your back.
3
2
1
