Family of Secrets: The Bush Dynasty, the Powerful Forces That Put It in the White House, and What Their Influence Means for America »

Award-winning investigative journalist Russ Baker has written for the New Yorker, Vanity Fair, the New York Times, the Nation, the Los Angeles Times, the Washington Post, and Esquire, and served as Columbia Journalism Review contributing editor. Baker’s appearances include NPR, Fox News, and Air America. In 2005, he founded the Real News Project, a nonprofit investigative news organization. His exclusive reporting on George W. Bush’s military record received a 2005 Deadline Club award.

The long-hidden story of a family we thought we knew—and of a power-making apparatus that we have barely begun to comprehend.

After eight disastrous years, George W. Bush leaves office as one of the most unpopular presidents in American history. Russ Baker asks the question that lingers even as this benighted administration winds down: Who really wanted this man at the helm of the country, and why did his backers promote him despite his obvious liabilities and limitations? This book goes deep behind the scenes to deliver an arresting new look at George W. Bush, his father George H. W. Bush, their family, and the network of figures in intelligence, the military, finance, and oil who enabled the family’s rise to power.

Baker’s exhaustive investigation reveals a remarkable clan whose hermetic secrecy and code of absolute loyalty have concealed a far-reaching role in recent history that transcends the Bush presidencies. Baker offers new insights into lingering mysteries—from the death of John F. Kennedy to Richard Nixon’s downfall in Watergate. Here, too, are insider accounts of the backroom strategizing, and outright deception, that resulted in George W. Bush’s electoral success.

Throughout, Baker helps us understand why we have not known these things before. Family of Secrets combines compelling narrative with eye-opening revelations. It offers the untold history of the machinations that have shaped American politics over much of the last century.

1 How Did Bush Happen? 1

2 Poppy's Secret 7

3 Viva Zapata 22

4 Where Was Poppy? 44

5 Oswald's Friend 67

6 The Hit 85

7 After Camelot 119

8 Wings for W. 134

9 The Nixonian Bushes 159

10 Downing Nixon, Part I: The Setup 175

11 Downing Nixon, Part II: The Execution 220

12 In from the Cold 253

13 Poppy's Proxy and the Saudis 280

14 Poppy's Web 299

15 The Handoff 319

16 The Quacking Duck 336

17 Playing Hardball 358

18 Meet the Help 370

19 The Conversion 390

20 The Skeleton in W.'s Closet 407

21 Shock and ... Oil? 423

22 Deflection for Reelection 441

23 Domestic Disturbance 466

24 Conclusion 491

Author's Note 495

Acknowledgments 496

Notes 499

Index 559