Family of Secrets: The Bush Dynasty, America's Invisible Government, and the Hidden History of the Last Fifty Years

by Russ Baker

Overview

How did the deeply flawed George W. Bush ascend to the highest office in the nation, what forces abetted his rise, and-perhaps most important-have those forces really been vanquished by Obama's election? Award-winning investigative journalist Russ Baker gives us the answers in Family of Secrets, a compelling and startling new take on the Bush dynasty and the shadowy elite that has quietly steered the American republic for the past half century and more. Baker shows how this network of figures in intelligence, the military, oil, and finance enabled-and in turn benefited handsomely from-the Bushes' perch at the highest levels of government. As Baker reveals, this deeply entrenched elite remains in power regardless of who sits in the Oval Office.
Family of Secrets offers countless disclosures that challenge the conventional accounts of such central events as the JFK assassination and Watergate. It includes an inside account of George W.'s cynical religious conversion and the untold real background to the disastrous response to Hurricane Katrina. Baker's narrative is gripping, sobering, and deeply sourced. It will change the way we understand not just the Bush years, but a half century of postwar history-and the present.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781608190065
Publisher:	Bloomsbury USA
Publication date:	11/10/2009
Pages:	592
Sales rank:	153,812
Product dimensions:	5.40(w) x 8.20(h) x 1.60(d)

About the Author

Russ Baker is an awardwinning investigative journalist. He has written for the New Yorker, Vanity Fair, the New York Times, the Nation, the Los Angeles Times, the Washington Post, the Village Voice, and Esquire, and has served as a contributing editor to the Columbia Journalism Review. He is the founder of WhoWhatWhy/the Real News Project, a nonpartisan, nonprofit news organization, operating at www.whowhatwhy.com.

Table of Contents

Foreword James Moore ix

1 How Did Bush Happen? 1

2 Poppy's Secret 7

3 Viva Zapata 22

4 Where Was Poppy? 44

5 Oswald's Friend 67

6 The Hit 85

7 After Camelot 119

8 Wings for W. 134

9 The Nixonian Bushes 159

10 Downing Nixon, Part I: The Setup 175

11 Downing Nixon, Part II: The Execution 220

12 In from the Cold 253

13 Poppy's Proxy and the Saudis 280

14 Poppy's Web 299

15 The Handoff 319

16 The Quacking Duck 336

17 Playing Hardball 358

18 Meet the Help 370

19 The Conversion 390

20 The Skeleton in W.'s Closet 407

21 Shock and... Oil? 423

22 Deflection for Reelection 441

23 Domestic Disturbance 466

24 Conclusion 491

Afterword 495

Author's Note 497

Acknowledgments 498

Notes 501

Index 561

Editorial Reviews

One of the most important books of the past ten years.” —Gore Vidal

“A tour de force … Family of Secrets has made me rethink even those events I witnessed with my own eyes.” —Dan Rather

“Shocking in its disclosures, elegantly crafted, and faultlessly measured in its judgments, Family of Secrets is nothing less than a first historic portrait in full of the Bush dynasty and the era it shaped. From revelation to revelation, insight to insight—from the Kennedy assassination to Watergate to the oil and financial intrigues that lie behind today's headlines—this is a sweeping drama of money and power, unseen forces, and the emblematic triumph of a lineage that sowed national tragedy. Russ Baker's Family of Secrets is sure to take its place as one of the most startling and influential works of American history and journalism.” —Roger Morris, former senior staff member, National Security Council, and author of Richard Milhous Nixon: The Rise of an American Politician and Partners in Power: The Clintons and Their America

“Left-wing paranoia? Baker, a solid investigative journalist, works hard to back up his claims – a reader could choke on the complex, interwoven details in Family of Secrets. He's a man on a mission, desperate to stop the "methods of stealth and manipulation that ... reflect a deeper ill: the American public's increasingly tenuous hold upon the levers of its own democracy.” —San Diego Union-Tribune

“Prodigiously industrious investigative journalist Russ Baker…. connects the dots between the Bushes and Watergate.” —Lev Grossman, Time Magazine

From the Publisher