JB: Well, that's certainly a teaser, Russ. What are you referring to? Can you give us something more concrete to sink our teeth into, to mix a metaphor? It could ultimately cause a groundswell of interest in your book, you know!
RB: Well, what I found is difficult to sum up in just a few sentences, because the facts are so incredibly disturbing, and run so counter to what we've been told up to this point. There's a fantasy in this country that our politicians, as occasionally criticized as they are, fundamentally are gentlemen and gentlewomen. We treat them like celebrities or royalty. But power accrual and wielding is an ugly business, more akin to other lines of work that are about ruthlessness. Anyway, handicapped by not being able to present my thousand-plus footnotes here, I'll just present a few particulars on the Bush clan:
-Bush 41, HW Bush, was in the secret employ of the intelligence services decades before he was appointed as a supposed newcomer, to the CIA directorship. Among other things, he was part of a group, inside and outside CIA, that felt threatened by JFK and furious at him. He hid the fact that he was in Dallas the day Kennedy was shot. He was a good friend of Lee Oswald's mentor. He was mentioned in FBI documents related to the assassination and to Cuban exiles who were enraged at Kennedy.
-He and his family were, secretly principal sponsors of Richard Nixon's career. But when Nixon tried to buck his handlers, they turned on him. The real story of Watergate is the framing of Nixon by others in the Republican camp.
JB: Hold on a second, Russ. Why did Bush and Co. want to get rid of Nixon? Didn't they like him initially?
RB: I devote three chapters of Family of Secrets to unraveling the mystery of the relationship between Nixon and George H.W. Bush. I spent a long time investigating--discovered they anointed him to be the pawn of banking interests, but over the years he chafed at being dominated. Then he began seriously challenging the corporate folks. And then he was out.
JB: I had no idea. That's quite a backstory. Sorry for the interruption. I was just curious. Nixon was such a nemesis in American history.
RB: No problem. Also:
-The Bushes, including George W., were up to their elbows in bizarre massive money movements and odd companies that never seemed to be about actually turning a profit--populated by the Shah of Iran, the Saudis, Ferdinand Marcos, Harvard University, and other rogues and mainstays.
Much more on this in Family of Secrets--about 600 pages of this kind of stuff. Enjoy!
JB: Yikes! 600 pages of "this kind of stuff"? I'm not sure that "enjoy" is the operative word here. What happens with all these explosive revelations? The Bushes seem pretty impervious to major scandal or outrage which this might have engendered in years past. How has your blockbuster been received? Has the corporate media just ignored you? Does everything just get swept under the rug?
RB: The corporate media--and so-called "progressive" and "alternative" news sources as well--have almost completely ignored these discoveries. Why? Laziness and discomfiture with major openings that could fundamentally shift our understanding of how things work. Everyone's in on the game of "left-right" that keeps members of the public at each other's throats while the one percent of one percent of one percent keep on driving the train. The good news is that Family of Secrets has sold close to 100,000 copies, is in libraries across America, and likely has been read by half a million people.
JB: Good news, indeed. I had no idea!
RB: The web and some radio outlets have made it possible to go around the gatekeepers. And more and more people get that there is a giant con being perpetrated year after year, with elections the "bread and circuses" we all demand as a substitute for real introspection. More wikileaks, more Snowdens, more of the kind of work being done by "renegade" journalists and a growing army of activists, and we'll get to critical mass.
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