Leon Berger's Blog - Posts Tagged "johnfkennedy"
AMERICAN AFTERMATH
LEON BERGER
Leon Berger is the award-winning author of 10 books, including his iconic new thriller series "The Kennedy Trilogy".
www.lberger.ca
Fifty years on and the shaky, fleeting images still haunt us...
The downtown canyons, the lunchtime crowds, the sun glinting from the motorcade. The staccato shots, the panic, the screams when the man's head explodes, splattering gore over the lady in pink. The melee and the confusion as an army of bystanders chase a disappearing ghost up the grassy knoll.
The scene is now so familiar that it's become a cultural cliché. Yet those of us of a certain age will always recall the debilitating shock we felt when we first heard the news.
Obviously, our most immediate question was who could have perpetrated such an abomination – and over the decades we've been handed a thousand versions of the truth. Commission acolytes filtering evidence. Tabloid pundits arguing forensics. Hollywood directors explaining ballistics. Aging mobsters volunteering confessions. Even today, the search for new evidence is a thriving industry, with chat rooms abuzz and conventions galore.
However, for all the obsessive focus on the crime itself, the more fundamental issue is why our collective psyche was so shaken by the loss and why it still has the power to affect us half a century later? What was it about the 35th president that drives both us and the media we consume to such heights of nostalgia – especially when we recall how badly he began.
Yes, technically, John Fitzgerald Kennedy won that 1960 election but his mandate was dubious at best. The heavy-handed manipulation by his father was enough for many to question his right to be in the White House at all. Worse, the young scion's political naiveté was all too evident. Some said he was a dilettante, others just a playboy, and his unexpected arrival in the highest office became a catharsis for the old-guard establishment.
As if to prove the doubts, his initial few months were little short of disastrous. His emigré proxies suffered a crushing defeat at the Bay of Pigs. He endured a humiliating summit with Soviet chairman Khrushchev. Then there was the embarrassment of Moscow sending the first ever astronaut aloft.
To cap it all in late summer, the East Germans, under direct Kremlin supervision, began to erect their ominous Wall around the democratic enclave of West Berlin.
Only in late October did JFK begin to redeem himself with that infamous armored standoff at Checkpoint Charlie, when the youthful David at last managed to face down his nemesis Goliath. After a tense couple of days, he forced the Soviet column to withdraw – and the heroic legend was born.
The following year, a similar threat was issued but this time the Cold War brought us frighteningly close to the chill of nuclear winter.
In Cuba, it was not a squadron of tanks on a distant continent but a phalanx of missile silos just ninety miles from the Florida coast. Armageddon was now just four minutes away for Miami, thirty minutes for D.C. And because such projectiles, once launched, were unstoppable, it was estimated that under any first strike scenario as many as eighty million citizens would perish, with descendants maimed for generations by the radioactive fallout.
However by 1962, the Kennedy boys, Jack and Bobby, had managed to aggravate most of the people on whom they had to depend: the joint chiefs, the security agencies, the oil interests, the southern governors, the unions and even the mafiosi who'd helped get them elected.
Finding a solution to the missile crisis was therefore exacerbated by the administration's own internal wars. Indeed, it's no exaggeration to say that the planet's very survival seemed against the odds but in a startling reprise, the young commander in chief again obliged the Kremlin to retreat from its belligerent position.
Twice in twelve months, JFK had beaten back the apocalyptic challenge and emerged with his toothy grin intact. He was no longer just "the leader of the free world", he'd become our savior, our lucky charm and our brother-in-arms all rolled into one. We felt like we'd been to hell and back with him, so when he was taken from us on that fateful day in 1963, shot to death right in front of our disbelieving eyes, we felt we'd lost a piece of ourselves.
This, I believe, is the crux of our lament. We'd come to believe so much in Camelot that when it was destroyed in such an unjust and untimely manner, our optimism turned to anguish. Then, when our public officials seemed to compound the felony with their half-truths and non-answers, any remaining goodwill was transformed into an ever-growing cynicism, to the extent that we now trust hardly any public figures at all.
That's why, in the final analysis, the saga of JFK cannot just be classified as either a murder mystery or a policy debate. Far more incisive would be to regard it as a fulcrum of our own history, a three-year span as iconic as any we've experienced – and this is the reason I chose to write a trilogy. One book just didn't seem enough for the volume of drama.
In tems of an approach, I didn't want to churn out a dry academic tract but nor did I feel like dashing out some sensationalist pulp, of which there's already been too much. Instead, I deliberately selected the genre of political thriller as a way to offer an intelligent, substantial read which would both inform and entertain in equal measure.
As such, the structure is built on two levels, combining factual events with an interwoven thread of fiction.
At the high end, we're inside the Kennedy White House with realistic portraits of Jack, Bobby and their deeply divided administration. At ground level, we're entwined in the espionage intrigue of our ongoing protagonist, the young CIA agent Philip Marsden, a low-level analyst thrust into the geopolitical vortex, first in Berlin, then Cuba, and finally, inevitably, in Dallas.
As a final note, I can attest that this was my most absorbing project to date. Along the way, I must have read just about every volume, watched every video, considered every theory, so when I'm asked how long it took to complete, I simply reply: "Fifty years to research and one year to write".
LEON BERGER is the award-winning author of "The Kennedy Trilogy", a new series of iconic thrillers now available at major online retailers.
Book 1 Berlin: THE KENNEDY IMPERATIVE
Book 2 Cuba: THE KENNEDY MOMENTUM
Book 3 Dallas: THE KENNEDY REVELATION
www.lberger.ca
Leon Berger is the award-winning author of 10 books, including his iconic new thriller series "The Kennedy Trilogy".
www.lberger.ca
Fifty years on and the shaky, fleeting images still haunt us...
The downtown canyons, the lunchtime crowds, the sun glinting from the motorcade. The staccato shots, the panic, the screams when the man's head explodes, splattering gore over the lady in pink. The melee and the confusion as an army of bystanders chase a disappearing ghost up the grassy knoll.
The scene is now so familiar that it's become a cultural cliché. Yet those of us of a certain age will always recall the debilitating shock we felt when we first heard the news.
Obviously, our most immediate question was who could have perpetrated such an abomination – and over the decades we've been handed a thousand versions of the truth. Commission acolytes filtering evidence. Tabloid pundits arguing forensics. Hollywood directors explaining ballistics. Aging mobsters volunteering confessions. Even today, the search for new evidence is a thriving industry, with chat rooms abuzz and conventions galore.
However, for all the obsessive focus on the crime itself, the more fundamental issue is why our collective psyche was so shaken by the loss and why it still has the power to affect us half a century later? What was it about the 35th president that drives both us and the media we consume to such heights of nostalgia – especially when we recall how badly he began.
Yes, technically, John Fitzgerald Kennedy won that 1960 election but his mandate was dubious at best. The heavy-handed manipulation by his father was enough for many to question his right to be in the White House at all. Worse, the young scion's political naiveté was all too evident. Some said he was a dilettante, others just a playboy, and his unexpected arrival in the highest office became a catharsis for the old-guard establishment.
As if to prove the doubts, his initial few months were little short of disastrous. His emigré proxies suffered a crushing defeat at the Bay of Pigs. He endured a humiliating summit with Soviet chairman Khrushchev. Then there was the embarrassment of Moscow sending the first ever astronaut aloft.
To cap it all in late summer, the East Germans, under direct Kremlin supervision, began to erect their ominous Wall around the democratic enclave of West Berlin.
Only in late October did JFK begin to redeem himself with that infamous armored standoff at Checkpoint Charlie, when the youthful David at last managed to face down his nemesis Goliath. After a tense couple of days, he forced the Soviet column to withdraw – and the heroic legend was born.
The following year, a similar threat was issued but this time the Cold War brought us frighteningly close to the chill of nuclear winter.
In Cuba, it was not a squadron of tanks on a distant continent but a phalanx of missile silos just ninety miles from the Florida coast. Armageddon was now just four minutes away for Miami, thirty minutes for D.C. And because such projectiles, once launched, were unstoppable, it was estimated that under any first strike scenario as many as eighty million citizens would perish, with descendants maimed for generations by the radioactive fallout.
However by 1962, the Kennedy boys, Jack and Bobby, had managed to aggravate most of the people on whom they had to depend: the joint chiefs, the security agencies, the oil interests, the southern governors, the unions and even the mafiosi who'd helped get them elected.
Finding a solution to the missile crisis was therefore exacerbated by the administration's own internal wars. Indeed, it's no exaggeration to say that the planet's very survival seemed against the odds but in a startling reprise, the young commander in chief again obliged the Kremlin to retreat from its belligerent position.
Twice in twelve months, JFK had beaten back the apocalyptic challenge and emerged with his toothy grin intact. He was no longer just "the leader of the free world", he'd become our savior, our lucky charm and our brother-in-arms all rolled into one. We felt like we'd been to hell and back with him, so when he was taken from us on that fateful day in 1963, shot to death right in front of our disbelieving eyes, we felt we'd lost a piece of ourselves.
This, I believe, is the crux of our lament. We'd come to believe so much in Camelot that when it was destroyed in such an unjust and untimely manner, our optimism turned to anguish. Then, when our public officials seemed to compound the felony with their half-truths and non-answers, any remaining goodwill was transformed into an ever-growing cynicism, to the extent that we now trust hardly any public figures at all.
That's why, in the final analysis, the saga of JFK cannot just be classified as either a murder mystery or a policy debate. Far more incisive would be to regard it as a fulcrum of our own history, a three-year span as iconic as any we've experienced – and this is the reason I chose to write a trilogy. One book just didn't seem enough for the volume of drama.
In tems of an approach, I didn't want to churn out a dry academic tract but nor did I feel like dashing out some sensationalist pulp, of which there's already been too much. Instead, I deliberately selected the genre of political thriller as a way to offer an intelligent, substantial read which would both inform and entertain in equal measure.
As such, the structure is built on two levels, combining factual events with an interwoven thread of fiction.
At the high end, we're inside the Kennedy White House with realistic portraits of Jack, Bobby and their deeply divided administration. At ground level, we're entwined in the espionage intrigue of our ongoing protagonist, the young CIA agent Philip Marsden, a low-level analyst thrust into the geopolitical vortex, first in Berlin, then Cuba, and finally, inevitably, in Dallas.
As a final note, I can attest that this was my most absorbing project to date. Along the way, I must have read just about every volume, watched every video, considered every theory, so when I'm asked how long it took to complete, I simply reply: "Fifty years to research and one year to write".
LEON BERGER is the award-winning author of "The Kennedy Trilogy", a new series of iconic thrillers now available at major online retailers.
Book 1 Berlin: THE KENNEDY IMPERATIVE
Book 2 Cuba: THE KENNEDY MOMENTUM
Book 3 Dallas: THE KENNEDY REVELATION
www.lberger.ca
