Anyone looking for the smoking gun on Ronald Reagan and organized crime will be disappointed. The future president emerges from these pages as the affably forgetful frontman for big business that the knowledgable public has long known him to be. Moldea traces the actor's well-known forgetfulness back to 1952 and investigations into sweetheart deals between Reagan's Screen Actor's Guild and Jules Stein's sinister conglomerate, MCA. What emerges from this is an apprenticeship period in which the future president hones his frontman skills and practices selective memory, while big business comes to appreciate certain show business talents. Not exactly news bulletin material.

On a more newsworthy note, Moldea documents a series of protracted associations between such mob frontmen as Sidney Korshak, Hollywood tycoons like Lew Wasserman, union leaders of many stripes, and political insiders such as Reagan's William French Smith and Paul Laxalt, the Democrat's Paul Ziffren, and even the political left's Jerry Brown who seems peculiarly proud of Korshak's friendship and support. This is not a pretty picture, and while no criminal disclosures are made, there appears no doubt that such high echelon representatives of big business, the mob, and politics intersect at critical junctures far from public knowledge and scrutiny. This is not conspiracy theory, as some apologists would have it. Rather, it's a picture of high-level business conducting itself as business, and only a hopeless naif would believe that no mutual benefit from these associations is involved, as when master fixer Korshak steps in to protect hotel owners from a potntially damaging food-handlers strike. After all, Korshak's juice in these matters certainly doesn't come from a law school diploma, even an Ivy League one.

The implications here go far beyond Ronald Reagan's questionable career to reach into the very bowels of the democracy and what government by the people means. For this reason alone, Moldea's book should be read.

Moldea's book definitely has a tone. There's a point early on where he states fairly flatly that the best thing Hoffa ever did for the Teamsters was disappear. Clearly, this isn't the place if you're looking for a psychological profile of Hoffa.

However, it *is* the place to look if what you're looking for is a history of the relationships between the Teamsters, organized crime, Robert Kennedy and Castro. A fascinating look at the web of power that bound these players together.

Moldea has a reputation for dedication and honesty, and the work here bears that reputation out. The writing is detailed and passionate. What I liked best was how clearly it communicated issues internal to the Teamsters. It's a very complicated subject, and to understand it you have to understand things like the role of owner-operators. Moldea reduced that complexity for the uninitiated, a formidible task.

There are such strange circumstances around the death of Foster that no unprejudiced person who has done serious research can conclude it was suicide. But Moldea does. Draw your own conclusion.

Don't let his detractors on labor's loony left or the hard right fool you. Dan Moldea calls them as he sees them -- and his years of investigative and journalistic experience propel "A Washington Tragedy" at the top of the pile of books about the high-profile suicide of Vincent Foster. Moldea's critical eye, rigorous thinking and fair, balanced analysis of the facts make this book the essential read for anyone seeking the truth surrounding the most tragic sideshow stemming from the Whitewater business scandal.

Dan Moldea does an outstanding job of presenting the entire record of the Vince Foster tragedy in context. Unanswered questions posed by the conspiracists are answered, with significant referencing to the forensic record.

But this book does much more. It reviews the various articles written by Scaife funded activists, like Chris Ruddy and Reed Irvine, and demonstrates how the conspiracists twist the story to suit their agenda. This book is a must read to anyone studying the vast right wing conspiracy.

My first adventure in investigative journalism, I was immediately captivated by the beginning: cast of characters, general overviews, and the excitement that, based on the overview of how the book was to go, it was worth reading. The material was well written in that Mr. Moldea went into fine and captivating detail asto what the investigators were thinking, what EVERYONE was thinking. I was a little suspicious of the passage where he describes visiting with Sirhan Sirhan, and given the result of the encounter, maybe made the author a little biased asto how his investigation would lead to. The ending left me in a completely different place, where I believe the author's evidence lead me to. His conclusions were not anything I had agreed with. I feel he made the evidence ultimately fit the official version of the tragic downfall of RFK that fateful June evening in 1968.

If you're interested in the almost minute-by-minute details of the RFK assasination and the subsequent investigation (along with all the conspiracy theories) than this is for you...I personally was happy to see Moldea go exclusively from a conspiracy mind-set to the correct (in my opinion...I can't imagine another shooter in such a crowded/cramped Ambassador Hotel kitchen) conclusion that Sirhan was the lone gunman. He seems to offer logical conclusions to most of the evidence, however, I do see what some of the other reviewers' point is...he sets about proving conspiracy, than reverses his opinion without re-evaluating some of his earlier conclusions. Overall, an excellent account of one of our darkest days, Moldea succeeds in putting you at the Ambassador on that fateful night and that alone would be enough to make me read this book.

As a 10 year student of the RFK assassination,I was eager to get ahold of Dan Moldea`s work on the case.A prior magazine article of his had been primarily responsible for the release of the long witheld LAPD files on the case.
The book does not dissapoint.Moldea carefully and articulately moves through the entire case and looks under every stone in the search for answers.NO other researcher has interviewed so many personnel connected with the case.He is not biased to any side,as the reader can easily see in Moldea`s scathing comments on LAPD,and in his meetings with Sirhan.
Moldea`s thoroughness had me enthralled and by the time the dramatic end arrived I realised that I simply had to read it again...it was that good...and most of all,it closed the door on my research into the case.This account of the RFK case cannot be bettered,in my opinion.