WASHINGTON — The money, muscle and influence of organized crime helped John F. Kennedy win the closely contested 1960 election, investigative journalist Seymour M. Hersh contends in a new book on the Kennedy presidency.
And once Kennedy was inaugurated, Robert F. Kennedy, his brother and attorney general, refused to pursue FBI evidence into widespread voting fraud, Hersh alleges.
In "The Dark Side of Camelot," Hersh claims that the Mafia was brought into the Kennedy presidential campaign--and helped the Democrat carry the key state of Illinois--mainly at the instigation of Joseph P. Kennedy Sr., founder of the family political dynasty.
Onetime Kennedy pal Frank Sinatra also played a part in enlisting the aid of organized crime chieftain Sam Giancana in the struggle for the White House against Republican Richard Nixon, Tina Sinatra, the entertainer's daughter, told Hersh.
Hersh's assertions, some of which rely on secondhand accounts and are laced with conjecture, are bound to be hotly disputed by Kennedy partisans and presidential scholars. But the book seems likely to gain attention because of its author's stature, based on his exposure of the 1968 My Lai massacre during the Vietnam War.
Moreover, it is the most ambitious attempt yet to debunk the most romanticized presidency of modern times and the legend it spawned, which has had an enduring impact on how Americans view their chief executives.
The book, an advance copy of which was made available to The Times, goes on sale Monday. It stirred controversy a few weeks ago when it became known that Hersh, for a time, had been taken in by a collection of papers that appeared to cast light on John Kennedy's long-rumored affair with actress Marilyn Monroe.
Although he discarded the documents after concluding they were faked, Hersh included abundant other material dealing with Kennedy's sex life to support his central theme: that flaws in the president's character undermined his administration and warped his stewardship of the nation.
Hersh writes that because Kennedy was "obsessed with sex, and willing to take enormous risks to gratify that obsession," he made himself vulnerable to blackmail.
