My book tour, which took me all over the U.S. and the U.K., turned into a raucous debate over the JFK assassination (low point: "Hardball"; high point: "Fresh Air"). But the publication of "Brothers" also became the occasion for a sort of cultural referendum on the Kennedy presidency. Was JFK a Cold Warrior -- or a "warrior for peace," as I argue in the book.

That's the title that Time magazine puts on my lead essay in the current issue, which focuses on Kennedy's legacy. I was surprised and honored that Time asked me to write the piece, instead of choosing a predictable presidential historian. (I was also asked to write a shorter piece on RFK's suspicions about Dallas, as a counterpoint to the inevitable Vincent Bugliosi.) I'd like to think Time's JFK package is part of a broader reevaluation of his beleaguered and heroic presidency.

Pick up a copy of the magazine -- the photos and layout look better in print than online -- and let me know what you think.

The CIA is coming clean. That's the message the agency is trying to send with the release of its "family jewels" this week. The jewels are contained in a 693-page file that documents many of the clandestine service's darkest deeds, from its post-World War II origins to the Watergate period. Among the past criminal activities to which the CIA is finally confessing are: assassination plots against foreign leaders, surveillance and wiretapping of American journalists, kidnapping of foreign citizens, opening domestic mail, and spying on U.S.dissidents. None of this is really news, since Seymour Hersh first broke the family jewels story back in 1974. But the CIA is now trying to market its new candor by declassifying these past sins.

CIA director Gen. Michael Hayden underlined the point, saying the file offers "a glimpse of a very different time and very different Agency." But has the CIA really changed its ways? As Thomas Blanton of the National Security Archive commented, the agency still dips into its "black bag" these days, pulling out some of the very same "dirty tricks" to prosecute George W. Bush's war on terror. Kidnapping and detention of foreign citizens? Check. Illegal surveillance of U.S. citizens? Check. Assassination plots against foreign leaders? Who knows? Hugo Chavez certainly has his suspicions.

The CIA's new honesty is also far from complete. There is nothing in the family jewels about agency officials long suspected by congressional investigators and researchers of ties to the Kennedy assassination, including deceased agents such as William Harvey, David Phillips, David Morales and George Joannides. The agency continues to keep these records under wraps, in brazen defiance of the law.

In fact, the agency could not help taking another whack at the Kennedys with the release of its family jewels. Press reports about the declassified CIA secrets laid the blame for the assassination efforts against Fidel Castro directly on then-Attorney General Robert Kennedy. What's the original source for this anti-Kennedy smear? None other than Richard Helms, the No. 2 man at the CIA during the Kennedy presidency and a bitter enemy of the two brothers.

Helms, desperately trying to head off congressional investigations into CIA abuses in the post-Watergate period, warned that he would drag RFK -- by then conveniently dead -- into the Castro controversy. By doing this, the wily Helms was clearly trying to intimidate the Democratic-controlled Congress. At a lunch meeting in January 1975, Helms told his friend Secretary of State Henry Kissinger that "Robert Kennedy personally managed the operation on the assassination of Castro" -- confident that Kissinger would spread this around Washington, as he quickly did. Helms knew his accusation against RFK was a lie, and when later pressed by the Church Committee to provide proof, he could not, admitting that the CIA had misled Bobby about its plots. In truth, RFK was appalled when he learned that the agency was collaborating with the Mafia to kill Castro -- and Kennedy believed that he shut down this sinister operation. But he did not succeed -- the CIA continued to conspire against Castro for years after the Kennedys were removed from power.

Spreading poisonous disinformation about the Kennedys has long been one of the CIA's oldest family jewels. Helms' loyal aide Sam Halpern was a master at disseminating these lies to the press for years. But don't expect the agency to come clean about this any time soon.

I have a Chris Matthews problem. I want to like the guy, and in fact, in person I do. Years ago, I met Chris at the San Francisco Examiner, where he broke into journalism after serving as a congressional aide for Tip O'Neill. He was the Washington columnist for the Examiner, where I worked as the editor of the Sunday magazine, and I occasionally assigned him political features. Chris is an utterly charming guy to hang out with, a voluble and genial political junkie, in that Irish-American way, who can babble away forever on the ins and outs of the great electoral game. The problem with Chris, I found out, is that when you try to edit this babble, you quickly discover there is not much there, except for the fleeting Beltway wisdom of the moment. I discovered you don't go to Chris for deep thoughts -- he's a skitter-across-the surface, ADD kind of guy, with a knack for channeling the insta-commentary of the bars on Capitol Hill.

This sort of Washington chatter is fine when it comes to jawing about polls and campaign personalities and other ephemera. But when it comes to the major issues of our day, Beltway pundits like Matthews -- and the guests he stocks his show with -- have been consistently wrong, again and again and again.

When lynching Bill Clinton for a consensual sex act was all the rage in Beltway circles, Chris was among those baying the loudest for his blood. When Iraq seemed like a cakewalk, Matthews got all weak in the knees over Bush in his flight suit. (Of course, when the war didn't look like such a slam dunk, he shifted with the political winds.)

Matthews revealed more of his bone-headed Beltway-think on Sunday, when he devoted a segment of his CNBC talk show to the book by his "friend David Talbot." (Note to Chris: "friends" don't blackjack friends on national television without giving their pals a chance to respond.) Turning to his panel -- which included the inevitable Howard Fineman and Gloria Borger -- Matthews puzzled aloud how any journalist in his right mind could question the Warren Report. He suggested that I just couldn't accept the fact that "a loser like Oswald can kill a Kennedy." This prompted equally inane musings from Fineman about how assassination is the "price we pay for living in the chaos of democracy." And Borger offered something about the American need to believe in "grand conspiracies" rather than accepting the fact that JFK was "felled by a confederacy of dunces." Whatever that meant. But the most idiotic remark was offered up by another of my "friends" (in the way that word is loosely used in Washington) -- Andrew Sullivan. He revealed that he was only 3 months old when JFK was killed, and his generation just doesn't really give a damn about the assassination.

The show's only voice of reason was that of Josephine Hearn, a 20-something reporter for The Politico, who sharply disagreed with Sullivan, saying that she has been fascinated with the mystery of Kennnedy's death ever since she saw the film, JFK, at age 13. Perhaps Sullivan's 40-something generation (or more likely, jaded representatives like Sullivan) find the subject a dreary bore, but it's reassuring to hear that young people like Hearn find something such as, well, a violent regime change in an advanced democracy of some interest. Hearn also set Matthews and his nit-witted duo, Fineman and Borger, straight. Americans are not obsessed with Dallas because they are prone to dark, primordial thoughts. It's because we still "don't really know" what happened in Dealey Plaza, since Oswald was conveniently silenced before he "had his day in court." This clear and bright thought lingered briefly in the air, before being promptly ignored.

It was the confederacy of dunces who had the last word. Matthews let fly another blast of conventional Washington wisdom. JFK was a Cold War hawk, he insisted, so Brothers must be wrong to suggest that Kennedy was the victim of a conspiracy that came out of hard-line national security circles. (This militant version of JFK is held with religious-like conviction inside the Beltway -- including among conservative Democrats like Matthews -- which is one reason the book is causing so much consternation in these circles.) Fineman, for his part, scratched his head over the fact that most Americans reject the lone-nut theory of Dallas, and lamented the loss of public faith in "the powers that be." (And, he left unsaid, in media windbags like him.)

When Chris says, as he did on his show, that Vincent Bugliosi has settled the case and journalists like me should just pack it in, that's just the old Matthews I know -- winging it, not knowing really what he is talking about. He just picked up this bit of wisdom in a couple book reviews he read somewhere, and believe me these critics were just as conventional in their wisdom as he is. Matthews hasn't read Bugliosi's gargantuan masterpiece of sophistry. Even journalists with infinite more patience than Chris haven't accomplished this Herculean feat. He hasn't read my book either, which he also demonstrated on his show. The fact is, pundits like Matthews and Fineman and Borger keep playing their endless loop -- Americans like conspiracies, Oswald was a lone nut, the conspiracy would have been revealed long ago if it existed (by aggressive journalists such as these three bloodhounds, no doubt) -- because it's easy and safe to do so. They can play the part of the wise, level-headed commentator, without doing any real investigation into the crime. An investigation that would soon disturb their deep complacency.

In the ad for his talk show, a gritty Matthews promises "not to let anything get by me." But the Beltway press has let EVERYTHING of importance get by it -- from assassinations to wars to assaults on the Constitution. Plagues of locusts could befall us, outbreaks of boils, black rains of toads falling from the skies, the dead could rise from their graves -- and still, Chris and his panel would be jabbering away about Hillary's poll numbers in Iowa and John Edwards' haircut. While these "watchdogs" of democracy have been busy congratulating themselves on their vigilance, the henhouse has been reduced to a whirl of bloody feathers.

Lone nut ideologues (and yes, there are still a few around besides Bugliosi) like to dismiss all JFK conspiracy researchers as whack jobs. And yes, it must be said that the field does draw its share of impassioned partisans, some of whose thinking definitely tilts in unsound directions. The other day, when I was a guest on Pete Wilson's KGO radio talk show in San Francisco, one caller wanted to share his conviction that both Kennedy brothers were suicide victims -- certainly one of the more novel theories floated about the Kennedy assassinations. But in my experience, most JFK conspiracy researchers are sober-minded people who stick to the facts as they sort through the mountains of information about these crimes.

In my opinion, the two best Web sites for information and discussion about the JFK assassination are the Mary Ferrell Foundation and the Education Forum. The Mary Ferrell site, named after the late JFK research pioneer, is run by a talented Massachusetts software expert-turned-Kennedy archivist named Rex Bradford. The site is an oasis of calm and orderly rationality whose deep well of resources appeals to everyone from student novices to hardcore buffs. Bradford has amassed more than 400,000 documents on the site, including many invaluable declassified government papers. And his video archive -- including not only the infamous Zapruder film but a number of other more obscure home movies taken in Dealey Plaza -- vividly bring that day to life. Other videos -- including TV interviews with JFK and the stunning live broadcast of Lee Harvey Oswald being gunned down by Jack Ruby -- also make this history seem powerful and immediate.

The Education Forum, a sprawling complex of chat rooms covering a broad spectrum of history subjects, was created by an enterprising British scholar named John Simkin. Its many discussion threads on the Kennedy presidency and its violent end are provocative and refreshingly free of the obsessive nuttiness and flame-throwing that characterize many online Kennedy circles. Simkin's forum has attracted respected JFK researchers like Anthony Summers and Larry Hancock, as well as dozens of serious amateur historians well worth talking with, and even the occasional aging source with some firsthand information about the case.

The Mary Ferrell Foundation and Education Forum sites are both shining examples of communal learning and research -- exactly what the Internet was intended to do, in all its democratic glory.

Since Los Angeles celebrity attorney Vincent Bugliosi's book on the JFK assassination was published on the heels of mine, the two books are naturally being pitted against each other in the media. There will be cheek-by-cheek reviews of the two books in this Sunday's New York Times. I haven't had the chance to read much of Bugliosi's book, "Reclaiming History," which -- following in the footsteps of Gerald Posner's bestseller, "Case Closed" -- attempts to debunk for all time conspiratorial views of Dallas. Frankly, the book, which weighs in at over 2,700 pages, including end notes, presents a formidable challenge. It's Posner on steroids. Simply picking up the book risks physical injury. Perhaps Bugliosi is bypassing the general public and hoping to impress -- or intimidate -- critics and opinion-makers, who, wilting under the weight of the task and their looming deadlines, will simply conclude he must be right and call it a day.

I do plan to read the book in its entirety (although it might have to wait until I do a long prison stretch). In the meantime, I felt it my duty to at least read Bugliosi's introduction and sections of the book related to Robert Kennedy's views of the assassination, since that is central to my own book. What I read did not inspire confidence. "Reclaiming History" is clearly the result of exhaustive labors. But Bugliosi is a courtroom lawyer, not a historian or investigative journalist. He is clearly more interested in arguing his case than in sorting with an open mind through the piles of evidence that have been amassed over the years. His tone is hectoring and tendentious. Conspiracy theorists are "kooks" and "hucksters" who "knowingly mislead" the public. His claims for himself are filled with courtroom bombast: "My only master and my only mistress are the facts and objectivity." Trying to claim the anti-conspiracy corner as his own, he attempts to muscle Posner off his turf, attacking his fellow conspiracy critic for his distortions and omissions. But Bugliosi is equally guilty of cooking the facts to make his case.

Let's look at his passages on Robert Kennedy, which underscore the superficiality of Bugliosi's approach. The attorney uses RFK's public support for the Warren Report to bolster his case for the widely discredited blue-ribbon investigation. "Perhaps one thing speaks louder than any words, however, with respect to RFK's feelings," Bugliosi writes. "During the entire Warren Commission period, he was the nation's attorney general, the chief law enforcement officer in the land with jurisdiction over the FBI, the main investigative arm for the Commission. If at any time he had sensed that the Warren Commission and the FBI weren't doing enough or the right things, wouldn't he have automatically put pressure on them to do so? But he never did." The ignorance and naivete on display in this statement are stunning. Bugliosi apparently spent more than 20 years looking into the case, but he has no understanding of RFK's true feelings about the Warren Commission probe or Bobby's poisoned relationship with the FBI. Bobby's power to "pressure" the FBI -- under the control of his hated enemy J. Edgar Hoover -- evaporated the minute his brother died in Dallas. RFK immediately concluded, on the afternoon of Nov. 22, 1963, that any real investigation into the terrible crime would have to wait until his family again had the power of the presidency.

Despite Robert Kennedy's routine statements of support for the Warren Commission in public, in private he dismissed the investigation as a public relations exercise. This has been known for years, reported in the major biographies of Bobby Kennedy, including those by Arthur Schlesinger Jr. and Evan Thomas. And, indeed, any conversations with still-living Kennedy intimates like Dick Goodwin and Frank Mankiewicz (whom Bugliosi interviewed) quickly give a researcher a clear picture of Bobby's grave doubts about the official version of his brother's death.

Bugliosi acknowledges that Bobby did suspect a conspiracy immediately after the assassination. But "after the coffee cooled" and the FBI and Warren Commission had completed their "distinguished" work, according to Bugliosi, RFK was reassured, serenely accepting the fact that lone gunman Lee Harvey Oswald had killed his brother. Again, the skin-deep nature of Bugliosi's research is striking. The reality, as my book documents, is that Bobby Kennedy spent the rest of his life exploring leads on his brother's murder -- sometimes tracking down information himself, as far away as Mexico City, and sometimes dispatching trusted surrogates like former FBI agent Walter Sheridan. He was determined to reopen the case if he became president, as he told those close to him.

Bugliosi seems generally aware of some of this information about Bobby, but he spins it or minimizes it. This is not history, it's courtroom trickery. The attorney belabors his argument for more than 2,500 pages. But, if his insights into Robert Kennedy and the Warren Report are representative of his book, he still can't close the case.

I was shamelessly happy to read the review of "Brothers" in People magazine, which gave the book four stars and its "Critic's Choice" button. I know that I'm going to get roughed up in some quarters for my unconventional interpretation of the Kennedy saga. Hey, "writing is fighting," as Ishmael Reed says. But it's nice to get some bouquets.