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.