Con­spir­a­cies from Dal­las to Watergate

by Carl Oglesby
1976, Sheed Andrews and McMeel
ISBN 0–8362-0688–6
355 pages

From NameBase.org
Two books in Name­Base, The Yan­kee and Cow­boy War by Carl Oglesby and Power Shift by Kirk­patrick Sale, are based on a sin­gle premise — that there has been a more-or-less con­scious shift in the source of Amer­i­can ruling-class power dur­ing the post­war period. The South­ern Rim (roughly the states or por­tions of states south of a line drawn across the coun­try from North Car­olina to just north of San Fran­cisco) is chal­leng­ing the tra­di­tional con­trol of the East­ern Estab­lish­ment (Chicago, New York, Boston, and points between). Sale uses this hook to ana­lyze eco­nomic and elec­toral changes, while Oglesby devel­ops a rough han­dle to link the JFK assas­si­na­tion and Watergate.

Both books are solid and valu­able, although this pet premise isn’t nec­es­sary to either. Oglesby is per­haps the most capa­ble the­o­rist and prose styl­ist to emerge out of the New Left. Though I agree that Dal­las and Water­gate involved con­spir­acy and cover-up at some level, I’m not con­vinced that the con­spir­a­tors are agents of a con­scious strug­gle between Yan­kees and Cow­boys. The book is essen­tial despite this, and offers excel­lent com­men­tary on Rein­hard Gehlen, the Bay of Pigs, the Howard Hughes con­nec­tion, the plane crash that killed Dorothy Hunt, and James McCord as a prob­a­ble dou­ble agent. — D.Brandt

THIS BOOK IS OUT OF PRINT. Learn more about Carl Oglesby.