ONE HISTORIAN'S VIEW: SHODDY WORK

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Efforts to expose what Seymour Hersh calls the dark side of Camelot began even before the idea of an American Camelot was born. On the day John Kennedy died, the best-selling nonfiction book in the U.S. was, as it had been for several months, Victor Lasky's J.F.K.: The Man and the Myth, a withering attack on the character and competence of the President. The attacks have continued, and escalated, ever since--in books by historians; in memoirs of friends, associates and acquaintances of Kennedy and his family; in gossip columns and tabloids; and at times in official documents belatedly released. Together, these revelations form a tawdry counterpoint to the much brighter images that continue to dominate Kennedy's popular reputation. Against the heroic, romantic vision of Kennedy as a brilliant young superman stands the picture of an irresponsible libertine who bought his way into the presidency and then shamelessly abused it.

Somewhere between these two images lies the truth. But no one should expect to find it in Hersh's embarrassing book, which recycles virtually every accusation ever leveled at Kennedy, adds very little of consequence to what we already know, and presents it all with a heavy-handed sensationalism that the contents of the book fail to justify. From beginning to end Hersh makes dramatic claims ("They have kept their silence--until now"; "Until this book it has not been known..."), only to present either modestly amplified versions of familiar stories or inflammatory disclosures for which he has no adequate evidence.

Much has been written about Kennedy's squalid covert sex life, his reckless association with men and women tied to organized crime, his father's uninhibited use of family money to oil Jack's political career, his family's extraordinary efforts to hide the truth about themselves and manipulate the press into cooperating with them in that effort. Hersh adds some significant new detail to all these stories and many others. But he also offers a larger justification for returning to this sordid and oft-trod ground: "Kennedy's private life and personal obsessions--his character--affected the affairs of the nation and its foreign policy far more than has ever been known." Hersh's book fails most conspicuously on that point.

In describing the disastrous Bay of Pigs invasion of 1961, Hersh attempts to explain Kennedy's cancellation of a planned air strike in support of the landing by claiming the President expected Mafia figures recruited by the CIA to have assassinated Castro before the invasion began, and pulled back when he discovered they had not done so. But he has no direct evidence that Kennedy ordered, or even knew of, a plan to assassinate Castro in 1961, and even less evidence that the failure of such a plan had anything to do with the bombing decision.