JFK and the Unspeakable: Why He Died & Why It Matters
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In this fascinating and disturbing book James Douglass presents a compelling account of why President John F. Kennedy was assassinated and why the unmasking of this truth remains crucial for the future of our country and the world.
Drawing on a vast field of investigation, including many sources available only in recent years, Douglass lays out a sequence of steps by JFK that transformed him, over the course of three years, from a traditional Cold Warrior to someone determined to pull the world back from the edge of apocalypse. Beginning with the fiasco of the Bay of Pigs Invasion (which left him wishing to "splinter the CIA in a thousand pieces"), followed by the Cuban Missile Crisis and his secret back-channel dialogue with Soviet Premier Nikita Khrushchev, JFK pursued a series of actions - right up to the week of his death - that caused members of his own U.S. military-intelligence establishment to regard him as a virtual traitor who had to be eliminated.
Far from being ancient history, the story of Kennedy's turn toward peace, and the price this exacted, bears crucial lessons for today. Those who plotted his death were determined not simply to eliminate one man but to kill a vision. Only by unmasking these forces of the "Unspeakable," Douglass argues, can we free ourselves and our country to pursue that vision of peace.
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Easily the most detailed JFK book I've ever read, and one that focuses on good qualities rather than scandals. It gave me a new perspective on many things, some that can even be applied to the world today. It was rather haunting at times, especially when it comes to witnesses' stories as well as what was going through Kennedy's head before his assassination.
This book is a well-written account of the events and circumstances that are likely at the heart of the JFK assassination. Shocked at how closely the world had come to the disaster of nuclear annihilation during the Cuban missile crisis Kennedy escalated his efforts to reach out to both the Soviet Union and Cuba with the hopes of ratcheting down the cold war tensions and ultimately moving toward world peace. This put him increasingly at odds with his own government, particularly the Joint Chiefs of Staff and the CIA. The author makes a strong case that Oswald went to the Soviet Union in the employ of the CIA and demonstrates how he was set up along with the Soviet Union and Cuba to take the fall for the assassination. The author follows the two narratives to their ultimate collision course, along the way discussing the case of Thomas Arthur Vallee, a troubled Marine who was going to shoot Kennedy in Chicago until the plot was exposed by a whistle blower named Lee, and the legion of Oswalds that were running around Dallas shooting up the rifle ranges, leaving the TSBD alternately by bus or by car, being escorted out both the front and rear of the Texas Theater, and my favorite; driving in to work with different people on different days while in possession of curtain rods. One set was likely German and the other Italian. Check it out; it reads like a thriller so even the coincidence theorists will be entertained.
