Carroll & Graf Publishers, 2005.
Review posted Jan 2017.
Over one hundred books have been written about the assassination of JFK, not to mention hundreds more about other assassinations and hundreds more about JFK. Waldron and Hartmann engaged in 17 years of research, struggling to gain access to government documents which would help to reveal the nature of the conspiracy. Their conclusion is simple enough, and hardly warrants the 900 pages they take to tell it: the U.S. had a number of plans to overthrow the Cuban government, most of which involved the assassination of Castro. The official disclosure of those plans would have risked a nuclear confrontation with the USSR, not to mention the careers of a number of Washington leaders. The Mafia, ever willing to commit unspeakable acts, was naturally attracted to these undercover plots, and correctly figured that the secrecy of the anti-Cuban operations would serve to cover their separate plot against the Kennedys. Lifelong Mafia underling Jack Ruby, ever in debt, was manipulated to kill the patsy Oswald before he could blow the story, and the government (including Bobby Kennedy) obligingly determined that the national interests would not be served by a thorough investigation. At the same time, a number of federal agencies unilaterally destroyed large quantities of relevant records for a variety of reasons. Much of what is said in Ultimate Sacrifice has been told earlier, but the book presents a thorough if ponderous account using the latest declassified documents.