Deadly secrets.

Many conspiracy buffs have long searched for their own Holy Grail, a secret cabal that can be blamed for all the scandals and evils of modern America. To some right-wing extremists, it is the Trilateral Commission; to some left-wingers, it is a "secret team" directed by the military-industrial complex. Still others look to those old standbys, the Jews. But Warren Hinckle, formerly a co-editor of Ramparts, and William Turner, a former FBI agent, have claimed to find their own mother lode in Deadly Secrets. They contend that a me1ange of anti-Castro Cubans, CIA operatives, Mafiosi, and fanatical anti-communists played a major role in everything from the Bay of Pigs on: the Kennedy assassinations, Watergate, the Iran-Contra scandal, and more. By the time we're done with this loosely argued book, we've been shown the purported connections between ex-CIA director George Bush, Latin American drug traffickers, and the killers of Orlando Leteljer. It would seem, based on their book, that much of what has gone wrong in American life can be laid at the feet of... Frank Sturgis, one of the hapless Watergate burglars with a shady anti-Castro past.

As a moderate believer in conspiracy theories (I think JFK was killed as part of a Mafia plot, but I draw the line at ex-Nazis and alien space beings), I was disappointed to find that the book doesn't provide the definitive solutions its title promises. Along the way, though, tantalizing hints of a grand conspiracy are unveiled. For instance, George Bush's name was found in the telephone book of a mysterious, wealthy White Russian with CIA ties, George de Mohrenschildt, who had befriended Lee and Marina Oswald! Just coincidence-or something sinister?

Ultimately, the authors' argument that the "Secret War" against Castro is the Mother of All Conspiracies comes off not as a solidly reasoned case but as an exercise in flinging an assortment of names, incidents, and scandals against a wall with the hope that they'll stick. We're expected to see a clear-cut connection between all the nefarious doings, but weak arguments and sometimes dubious documentation undermine their particular conspiracy theory. At the same time, the authors provide a useful overview of some of the more colorful debacles of the last 30 years, plus an entertaining peek inside perhaps the stupidest one of all: the decades-long effort to overthrow and, occasionally, kill Castro.

The authors mix grade-B melodramatic prose with investigative assertions in telling the story of the covert attacks on Castro's Cuba and its consequences. Their breathless journalese adds spice, but it also requires the readers to remember an intricate procession of unsavory characters: "In the Bahamas on Invasion Eve, Lansky lieutenant Joe Rivers waited with a satchel stuffed with gold for the word to rush in and take charge of the dark casinos. Off the north Cuban coast two gambling pals of Frank Sturgis [emphasis added], Georgie Levine, and Sally Burns, along with Pennsylvania Mafia boss Russell Bufalino and henchman James Plumeri, bobbed on the seas in a syndicate-owned boat with a CIA man aboard .... "After more than 400 pages of such details, even the most skeptical reader is expected to crumble and say, "Yes, there is an evil anti-Castro/Mafia/CIA conspiracy to rule the world!" Unfortunately, the mere piling-on of details doesn't prove that the conspiracy exerts the powerful influence the authors claim.

As the authors tell it, the efforts to topple Castro that began just prior to the Cuban revolution of 1959 had nasty and enduring repercussions. They're on firm ground documenting the Secret War, but their arguments become more tenuous the farther they drift from well-documented anti-Castro attacks. They do a serviceable job describing the various assassination attempts of mobster John Rosselli, including the sending of sniper teams to Cuba, the 1961 Bay of Pigs Invasion, the CIA's funding of Operation Mongoose, anti-Castro guerillas, and all the bungled sorties against Cuba, many launched even after the Cuban Missile crisis in October 1962. In doing so, they show just how widespread and expensive these anti-Castro activities were (at least $500 million a year), how extensive press cooperation was (Life purchased ship-to-shore radios for commandos) and how dangerously close we came to provoking a war with Russia. All that began to change when a CIA-linked anti-Castro group tried to provoke Russia by shelling a Russian merchant ship. Kennedy responded by ordering a crackdown on Cuban exile activities, and that angered some militants enough to want to kill him, the authors say. The Mob, in turn, was outraged at Bobby Kennedy's increasing pressure on organized crime.

But when it comes to tying it all together, the book simply fails. The key chapter reads like a rejected script for Oliver Stone's JFK. There are quick cuts from one suspicious incident to another--why was the supposedly pro-Castro Oswald meeting with the anti-Castro Guy Bannister (played by Ed Asner)?--but there's no coherent argument linking the events. There's a strong reliance, for instance, on Jim Garnson's mix of speculation and hearsay, On The Trail of the Assassins, based in part on the statements of pathological liars and the clinically insane. Yes, it is curious that a Dallas lawyer thought he saw someone who looked an awful lot like Oswald meeting with Jack Ruby or that Oswald wrote down the espionage word "microdots" in his notebook. But that's a long way from documenting that Oswald was a CIA agent, let alone proving there was an active conspiracy involving the CIA, the Mafia, and anti-Castroites to kill Kennedy. There's no real attempt made by the authors even to say who planned and executed the assassination.

Similarly, their efforts to tar George Bush as connected to drug dealing and assassinations is conspiracy-mongering at its worst. Their argument goes like this: as CIA chief in the mid-seventies, Bush tried to block the prosecution of about 70 spies for assorted overseas dirty tricks; the CIA has been associated with drug dealers and murderers; and when Vice President Bush headed up President Reagan's War on Drugs and War on Terrorism, contra leaders and Manuel Noriega escaped prosecution for drug dealing. Moreover, since the seventies, some far-right terrorists trained by the CIA have killed civilians. Ergo, what was Bush really doing in Texas back in 1963?

These shards of fact and guesswork all raise intriguing questions, but Deadly Secrets falls far short of providing definitive answers. Until I see a photo of George Bush on Dealey Plaza with a gun in his hand---and you can be sure that someone is touting a fuzzy picture showing just that--I'll have to wait for a clearer, better-documented case for a one-size-fits-all conspiracy.