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

By Russ Baker

Book Overview

"Shocking in its disclosures, elegantly crafted, & faultlessly measured in its judgments." -Roger Morris, author of Richard Milhous Nixon & Partners in Power

Was the rise of the disastrous George W. Bush just a matter of family connections and sly, cynical operatives such as Karl Rove? Or was something more at work-something that endures beyond Bush's departure from Washington?

Award-winning investigative journalist Russ Baker provides astonishing 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. Family of Secrets changes the way we comprehend postwar history and compels us to take a new look at events now unfolding.

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 1608190064
• ISBN13: 9781608190065
• Release Date: November 2009
• Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing
• Length: 592 Pages
• Weight: 1.28 lbs.
• Dimensions: 1.6" x 5.6" x 8.2"

Customer Reviews

Right is still right, even when nobody's doing it. Wrong is still wrong, even when everybody's doin

"All great accomplishments are the products of discipline and the force of will. To write a lasting and important book, a journalist must be relentless in pursuing detail that others have misunderstood or even ignored. The commitment to discerning the facts can never waver, regardless of the obstacles placed before the reporter. We see such non-fiction narratives too infrequently in American publishing but we have a great one before us now in Russ Baker's phenomenal `Family of Secrets.' As an investigator and as a writer of compelling narrative, Baker has created, in my estimation, an almost unequalled standard in political reportage. He has refused to accept conventional wisdom regarding the Bush family and the failed son they made president. There is no way any reasonable person can reject what Baker reports and the conclusions are profoundly disturbing. The reader becomes convinced, page after page, footnote after footnote, quote after quote, that everything we thought we knew about American history in the past 50 years was wrong. I confess that I was prepared to be dismissive. When Baker first approached me about an interview and to offer what little insight I had on years of covering the Bushes in Texas, my reaction was that he was too late and that the public had been worn out by the publishing deluge prompted by George W's incompetence and lying. Why did we need another book on the Bushes? After reading `Family of Secrets' that answer is abundantly obvious: we did not know the truth. I think we do now and Russ Baker has given it to us in a brilliant book that that will be impossible for any sensible American to ignore. I considered myself well informed on both Presidents Bush but Baker has proved that even those of us close to the subject need to reconsider the facts and to do otherwise is to jeopardize the value and purpose of our democracy. As Karl Rove, Joe Allbaugh, Karen Hughes, Mark McKinnon, Dan Bartlett, Condoleeza Rice and the rest of the outgoing administration go about their immoral task of trying to spin a more positive Bush legacy, let them confront the truths as revealed in `Family of Secrets." History will not abide any further distortions of the Bush record and when researchers seek to understand what happened to our country under the Bush family regime, let's hope they find their way to the epic work of Russ Baker. `Family of Secrets' is much more than a non-fiction narrative of political history; Baker has created an historical document that is an act of patriotism for a nation in need of self-examination and the truth." James C. Moore - Author: "Bush's Brain," "Bush's War for Reelection," and "The Architect."

A courageous book

Russ Baker is one of America's finest investigative journalists. In Family of Secrets, Baker tackles the complex story surrounding the rise of the Bush family in American politics. The result is nothing less than a complete and disturbing re-evaluation of American history during the last half-century. Family of Secrets is a must read for anyone who cares about modern American history or politics. The sections on the Watergate and the assassination of President Kennedy are especially startling and intriguing. This is the work of a bona fide independent journalist, and it puts to shame so much of what passes as journalism these days. No doubt, the Bush family will strive to discredit this book. But it will be hard to do, because Family of Secrets is so richly documented, with more than 1,000 footnotes. Family of Secrets is a compelling read, and remarkably so given the complicated story it tells. The plot has so many fascinating twists and turns that some sections read like "The Count of Monte Cristo." Baker also has lively senses of irony and humor that add a touch of levity to the book. Inevitably, Family of Secrets asks many more questions than it can possibly answer. Many of them are quite troubling. Readers will be left wondering what really has happened to our democracy, and our country, during the last fifty years, and what we ought to do about it.

From the Dashboard to the Engine-- of Power.

We are living in a time when there is so very little exploration of worlds between nominal power-- the three branches, lobbyists-- and structural power as in corporations and intelligence causalities. The words conspiracy theory are everywhere because there is no mediated "between" world that connects the dashboard and the engine of real power. In other words journalists are worse than ever, and we are living in a time of propaganda that is arguabley worse than that experienced during the Soviet Union. Unmediated trash is a more efficient brainwash than a party line ever was. This book is so great because it is about just that "between" world-- between the H.W. Bush the pol, and the sub rosa Bush that was the divng board onto the Bay of Pigs, between the Senate Candidate, and an organizer of The Faceless behind the crime of the century. I cannot recommend this book highly enough. It along with James W. Douglass JFK and the Unspeakable are far and away the two most important publications of 2008.JFK and the Unspeakable: Why He Died and Why It Matters. Case Closed>CIA just dont look for a review on the cover of Newsweek. Its up to us to let citizens know, if we want citizens to still exist.

treasure trove of conspiracies

Russ Baker has done a marvelous job of tracking the connections. The connections - CIA - big money - oil money - with the Bushes sitting on one big fat strand of the web. He leaves little doubt that Bush the Elder was CIA all the way, from the fifties on. He goes far to unraveling the mystery of Little Bush's business failures, and how he could move from failure to failure and continue to profit. If you have doubts about the Kennedy Assassination or the "real story" of Watergate, Baker has tracked down all the facts and the anomalies and lays them out for you. For anyone seriously interested in alternative narratives to the official version of recent American history, this book is a must. The Librarian: A Novel Wag the Dog: A Novel Salvation Boulevard: A Novel

An Essential Book

Family of Secrets: The Bush Dynasty, the Powerful Forces That Put It in the White House, and What Their Influence Means for America French philosopher Jean Paul Sartre said that "words are loaded pistols." In the hands of Russ Baker, they are hydrogen bombs. On each and every page of his masterpiece, "Family of Secrets," he exploses the myths and lies that powerful forces have perpetratred on the American consciousness. He digs beneath the surface in a form of journalistic archeology to reveal the hidden history of one of America's most powerful families, leaving no stone unturned. Moreover, he names all of his sources and documents the materials he relies on to unmask the hypocrisy behind the myth. From Prescott Bush's ties to Nazi Germany to Poppy Bush's secret role in the Watergate scandal that ousted Richard Nixon, which was, in fact, a "silent coup," to George W. Bush's deceit in launching the war in Iraq, Russ Baker unmasks the truth with a relentless brilliance unmatched by his peers. His publisher, Bloomsberry, is to be congratulated for its confidence in Russ Baker at a time when most publishers are hedging their bets and looking over their shoulders in acts of self-censorship. Baker's revelations about George W. Bush's private life is worth the price of the book alone. Here is Bush, forcing himself on a Danish beauty, stripping to the nude, while getting another girl friend he knocks up an abortion, and then later, as president, opposing abortion and cutting funding for organizations that provide information about birth control. How he managed to get the Danish beauty to go on record, as he does with other key players in Watergate and the Kennedy assassination, is nothing short of astonishing. He traces the true history of Poppy Bush's career, from his early ties to the CIA he pretended never existed while declaring himself "out of the loop," to his strange phone call from Dallas to the FBI on the day of Kennedy's assassination, pointing a finger at a suspect who was in fact totally innocent, to his manipulation of Watergate to get rid of Nixon, is a secret story forced out of the shadows by the powerful documentation by Baker in this tour de force that keeps you turning the pages in asonishment. What he discloses is America's War of the Roses, as powerful families fight to the death for ultimate power. The history of Lee Harvey Osward in the world of wealth, power and intelligence that was Dallas, Texas at the time, is amazing. The anodyne courses in political science and history at American colleges and universities need very much to inject Family of Secrets into the curriculum so that young Americans can be more able to understand what America is truly about as a new president strives to change and reform it. It puts the dots together in a way that makes any further naivety amongst Americans impossible. What he tells us simply cannot be ignored. One can fully expect the Establishment media to go after this book in typi