Amy Goodman and ‘Democracy Now’ have long been a source for the kind of information never featured on or by mainstream media, and I’ve been grateful for that, even when I felt turned-off by her relentless, world-class self-promotion. What the hell? Why can’t someone on the left push herself a little bit? As Dr. Laura is well-aware, there’s no scarcity of ego-driven right-wing commentators and columnists, so why shouldn’t we have one or two of our own?

Today, however, in a single shot, Amy Goodman’s credibility with me ran from the mid-nineties to below the Mendoza line. In a ‘special’ program commemorating the fortieth anniversary of Robert Kennedy’s murder, she demonstrated that she is both historically ignorant and evidently unconcerned with learning anything.

Here is how she began:

AMY GOODMAN: Forty years ago today, Robert F. Kennedy was shot at the Ambassador Hotel after the Los Angeles primary, the Democratic primary he won. Today on Democracy Now!, we look back at Kennedy’s life and legacy.

His record as a political figure is a complicated one. To many Americans, he came to embody the hopes of the civil rights and antiwar movements. But while serving in government, he played a major role in actions these movements fought against. As a young lawyer, Robert Kennedy was a key aide to Republican Senator Joe McCarthy on the notorious Senate Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations. As Attorney General under his brother, President John F. Kennedy, Robert Kennedy signed the wiretap order authorizing the FBI’s spying on Martin Luther King, Jr. On foreign policy, Robert Kennedy played a key role in US efforts to overthrow Cuban President Fidel Castro and was part of the inner circle of advisers that backed President Kennedy’s escalation of the bombing and destruction of Vietnam.

Consider the following:

* Kennedy had indeed been a staffer to McCarthy, who’d been a friend of father Joe Kennedy’s. No doubt papa Joe got the kid a job with McCarthy. What Goodman fails to mention is: Kennedy quit, denounced McCarthy, and joined the staff of the Senate Democrats. He had been in his twenties.

* Goodman earns an “F” for her essay on the King wiretaps, principally because she either doesn’t understand what happened or chooses to discard it. I regret having to recite this material but Goodman’s failure increases the burden on anyone who appreciates the truth in these matters. First, Hoover had been using blackmail against both Kennedys from the President’s inauguration, mostly over JFK’s various liaisons with women he was not married to. Hoover also hated Martin Luther King, Jr., calling him “the most notorious liar in America,” which was fairly rich coming from him. Hoover used King to “box-in” the President, thusly: there were rumors that King was associated with communist agents; the Director just wanted to warn the President that becoming too close to King would be dangerous. He pressed Kennedy to approve a wiretap; without it, Hoover said, it might be said that the President was not sufficiently interested in possible Soviet influence over King. Kennedy of course knew King better than that, but he also knew Hoover. Audio tapes in the Kennedy Archives record RFK’s private assessment of Hoover as a very dangerous, very sick man. In order to cover their asses, the Kennedys decided to give Hoover a limited-time wiretap, no more than two weeks in duration. The Attorney General expected that Hoover would apply for another one, but they could then turn him down. But the President was killed in Dallas. When that happened, Hoover was able to wiretap King with impunity, he thought, because even if Kennedy discovered the tap was continuing, Hoover would expose his earlier approval.

That’s how politics works, folks. That Goodman doesn’t know the history and is content to repeat what amounts –– given no background or explanation –– to a lie, is very disturbing. But it’s nothing compared with what what follows: the Kennedy/Cuba history, and Viet Nam.

Here we reach the borders of fantasy so profound as to raise questions about Goodman’s ethics, character, intelligence, and/or associations. Something stinks here.

* Here’s what happened with Cuba. The U.S. had broken with the new Castro government of Cuba in 1959. Secret plans were begun under Eisenhower, using Richard Nixon as the ‘action officer’, to invade Cuba and overthrow Castro. A new Cuban government, selected by the U.S. from among the exile groups, would be installed. Kennedy, once elected, was briefed on the plan –– and he had serious reservations. There could be no overt American assistance, he said; no air cover, no U.S. troops. The invasion group of exiles would be on their own. The CIA, in the person of Director Allen Dulles, assured him they understood. The generals, as Kennedy ordered, put their own signatures on a document advising the action.

But the CIA had been lying. To the exile groups, the Agency, through liaison E. Howard Hunt, said that Kennedy would use U.S. planes to knock out Castro’s air force on the ground. Kennedy was a new President. He could not afford a failure, the CIA believed. Therefore, once the invasion was underway, they could force him to use U.S. force to avert defeat. The exiles were betrayed by the CIA, not by Kennedy as many still believe. With the failure of the invasion, Kennedy took public responsibility. But privately he fired Dulles (who later sat on the Warren Commission) and threatened to “smash the CIA into a thousand pieces and scatter it to the winds.”

The assassination plans had begun under Eisenhower as well, and the Agency had made common cause with the Mafia, which itself looked forward to reopening the casinos after Castro was gone. RFK ordered these plots stopped; he sent Treasury agents to arrest exiles training off Lake Pontchartrain in Lousiana and No Name Key, Florida.

* And then there is Viet Nam. Goodman writes of “Kennedy’s escalation of the bombing and destruction of Vietnam.”

When Kennedy took office, there was already an American presence in Viet Nam, mostly instructors teaching the South Vietnamese to operate the military equipment we were giving them. In November of 1963, just a couple of weeks before his murder, Kennedy issued his last two National Security Action memoranda. One was an executive order withdrawing the first 1,000 troops; only 14,500 would remain. He planned to complete withdrawal following his re-election the following year.

Kennedy did not escalate bombing or destruction. In fact, he did not order ANY bombing of Viet Nam. American troops did not lead any combat missions. How Goodman could get this wrong is mind-blowing. Has she no knowledge of the Tonkin Gulf? The Pentagon Papers? Doesn’t she even know what happened?

To describe JFK and his brother as wiretapping, war-making politicians is so utterly crazy as to discredit Goodman for me, probably permanently. This is not a small error but one central to the issue of who runs America and what has happened to it over the past forty-five years. And to get this so grievously wrong is to obscure the reasons for the deaths of these two great, decent, visionary men.

In the words of someone I know, Amy Goodman is dead to me. A lot deader than Robert Francis Kennedy.