Letter: Kennedy legacy

Sir: I am often amused by the unsupported self-confidence of your leading articles; never more so than today (19 July).

As a biographer of John F Kennedy I would like to be told exactly how "We know that, had he lived, John F Kennedy would not have been particularly well-regarded as a US president." I would like to know the evidence for "reckless adventurism" in Vietnam, and why you think the same phrase covers completely Kennedy's policy towards Cuba. Where is the evidence that his civil rights programme was a failure?

For that matter, where is the evidence that his father was a bootlegger? I have often seen that stated, but never demonstrated.

HUGH BROGAN

Department of History

University of Essex

Colchester