Reviews of DEEP POLITICS AND THE DEATH OF JFK
(Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California Press, 1993)
Kirkus Reviews, August 15, 1993: “Staggeringly well-researched and intelligent overview not only of the JFK assassination but also of the forces undermining American democracy — of which the assassination, Scott says, is symptomatic….A kind of Rosetta stone for cracking open the deepest darkness in American politics. Will test the most well-informed.”
San Francisco Chronicle, November 18, 1993, E6, “the most challenging book of the year.”
Kyle Secor, Baltimore Sun, 9/3/95: “one of the best books on the subject.”
Sally Denton and Roger Morris, The Money and the Power, p. 459:”Peter Dale Scott[‘s] historic book, Deep Politics, has revolutionized the writing of recent American history for us and others.”
Toronto Star, November 20, 1993: “may well be the most thoughtful and serious-minded of the 2,500 titles on the subject published over the years.”
Library Journal, October 15, 1993: “important insights…highly recommended for most libraries”
David Talbot, Salon, November 6,2013: Deep Politics and the Death of JFK, by Peter Dale Scott. A retired University of California, Berkeley, literature scholar, former Canadian diplomat and distinguished poet, Scott is the Wise Man of the Kennedy research movement. Though not trained as a historian or investigative journalist, Scott took up the challenge of the JFK mystery in his spare time over four decades ago, delving assiduously where few reporters or academics dared go. Deep Politics is his Kennedy masterpiece, a meticulously detailed examination of the deep network of power that underlies the events in Dallas. The book is filled with provocative insights about how the upper circles of U.S. power actually operate (often in concert with the criminal underworld). I list Deep Politics last, only because it’s not for beginners — readers should approach this dense and challenging book after getting a basic grounding in the Kennedy case.
In These Times, November 29, 1993, 35-36: “Those with good knowledge of the case will find that Deep Politics, Peter Dale Scott’s newest work, offers perhaps the most useful synthesis yet of this particular skein of history….Scott’s book is one of the rare few on the subject that bridges the gap between events on the surface and what he calls deep politics, that is, the behavior over time of institutions with the power to function beyond the constraints of legality. He doesn’t indict likely culprits; rather, he helps us to comprehend the hidden underside of America’s global political economy, with its huge, ongoing trade in money, militarism, narcotics and state power. Scott’s brilliant, meticulously detailed lesson is, in a way, as much a guide to the current Iraqgate scandal as it is to the assassination.
Jerry D. Rose, The Fourth Decade, I.ii, January 1994, pp. 31-33: “In the hue and cry over recent publication of Gerald Posner’s Case Closed, Scott’s far more significant work appeared quietly on the publication scene….Every sentence in Deep Politics is grounded in facts….This review will not do justice to the richness of detail in this analysis….No one review could adequately describe the remarkable accumulation of information about the grey alliance and the cover-up of the assassination as developed in this book. To remove any doubt on the matter, I consider the appearance of this book as a landmark event in the history of assassination research. That it comes from the pen of a man from whom we have not heard in many years is all the more gratifying.”
Stephen Hartnett, Journal of Communications, 45, 4 (Autumn 1995), 168-69: “I turn to Peter Dale Scott’s stunning study, Deep Politics and the Death of JFK, for Scott demonstrates convincingly that the political economy of drugs and the attendant War on Drugs are both sanctioned by long-standing agreements between U.S. intellience agencies, major U.S. transnational capitalist interests, and Third World contacts (both governmental and otherwise) who play central roles in the continued U.S. assault on `communism.’ Scott’s text is therefore clearly not in the traditional genre of communication studies, yet his work is so thoroughly researched, so painstakingly detailed in its analysis, and so devastating in its debunking of accepted U.S. political myths that it should be of crucial interest to communication scholars….Recounting the details of Scott’s critique of the War on Drugs is almost impossible, as every page of his text is constructed with seemingly endless references….Indeed, Scott’s critique of the War on Drugs…entails a series of shocking analyses of accepted U.S. political myths that, quite simply, require all of the other analyses of the etxt for support….Suffice it to say then that Deep Politics is a remarkably impressive piece of political scholarship that communication scholars concerned with questions of public discourse, democratic practices, organizational communication, and political communication will find relentlessly complex and frustratingly dense, yet invaluable.”
Alan A. Block, Criminology Dept., Pennsylvania State University: “a masterful synthesis…a major contribution to assassination research and, indeed, the social history of modern America. This work sets the standard for all future inquiries into the assassination.”
Oliver Stone, director, JFK: “A book that will become part of our alternate history — to be read and studied by future generations.”
Gaeton Fonzi, former investigator, U.S. House Select Committee on Assassinations: “a trenchant analysis of Government’s failure to solve the murder of President Kennedy….No one provides a broader and more revealing perspective.”
Clyde Spillenger, Radical History Review: “Scott’s book is a wholly absorbing portrayal of the strange and exotic web linking American intelligence agencies, organized crime, local police…Latin-American `strongmen’…, drug-trafficking, gun-running, and anti-Communist espionage….It is previsely because Scott refrains from the punch line, from the focused accusation, that his portrait of American `deep politics’ is so illuminating….a resourceful, imaginative, wide-raging account.”
Los Angeles Free Citizen (August 1996), 53: “…Scott’s superior scholarship and brilliant accumulations and interpretations of evidence. Scott’s well-supported central arguments — that a conspiracy and cover-up did occur, and that proper investigations were not conducted… — are mindblowers.”
Richard Wall, “Conspiracy – Fact or Fiction?:” “For a fascinating study which puts the events in context, none better than Peter Dale Scott’s Deep Politics and the Death of JFK.
John Whalen, Daily Yomiuri, November 28, 1993: “an index of investigative opportunities lost in Washington’s deep political muck.”
(Personal letter of 11/4/93 from Mary McHughes Ferrell, eminent researcher): “the best thing that has ever been written on the Kennedy assassination. I believe it will become the cornerstone of any future investigation.”
Mike Small, “From Parapolitics to Deep Politics,” Lobster (Hull, England), 32, 15-17: “Peter Dale Scott’s new paperback edition of Deep Politics begins to develop conspiracy theory away from its one dimensional past, towards a more authentic understanding of what is wrong with Western political culture. The preface is perhaps more important than the rest of the book which contains the usual immaculate research from Scott….What Scott is beginning to articulate about politics is interesting and new, and may represent the long awaited maturing of conspiracy theory…into a genuinely useful forum for political analysis….Deep Politics and the Death of JFK has the potential to revolutionise both the means and the method of parapolitical research, and should be required reading for anyone interested in democracy.”
Douglas Fetherling, Ottawa Citizen, July 9, 2000: “As nearly as I can determine, about 3,000 English-language books have been published about the John F. Kennedy assassination. Worthwhile ones appear only at irregular intervals: Mark Lane’s groundbreaking Rush to Judgement in 1964, Edward Jay Epstein’s Legend in 1978, Anthony Summers’ Conspiracy in 1980 and again in 1989, and Peter Dale Scott’s Deep Politics and the Death of JFK (the most thoughtful, scholarly and theoretical) in 1993.”
Toronto Star, April 7, 2001: “Scott…is the most scholarly of all the Warren Commission critics.”