JFK and the Unspeakable

Last updated
JFK and the Unspeakable: Why He Died and Why It Matters
JFK and the Unspeakable.jpg
First edition
Author James W. Douglass
LanguageEnglish
Subject True crime, John F. Kennedy assassination, Lee Harvey Oswald, United States conspiracies
Published2008, 2010 (Orbis Books hardcover, Touchstone Books paperback)
Publication placeUnited States
Media typePrint (hardcover, paperback)
Pages544 pp
ISBN 978-1-57075-755-6
OCLC 163707261
973.922092

JFK and the Unspeakable: Why He Died and Why It Matters is a book by Catholic Worker theologian James W. Douglass that analyzes the presidency of John F. Kennedy, as well as the events surrounding his assassination. The book's central thesis is that Kennedy was a Cold Warrior who turned to peacemaking, and that he was killed by his own security apparatus as a result. [1]

Contents

JFK and the Unspeakable was first issued in hardback by Orbis, the publishing arm of Maryknoll, in 2008. The book received an award from the Catholic Press Association and coverage in the religious press. Sales shot up after Oliver Stone went on TV and recommended the book, which then found itself featured in Amazon.com's Top 100 for a week. [2] Touchstone published the paperback edition in 2010.

Background

JFK and the Unspeakable is drawn from many sources, ranging from the Warren Report to works strongly critical of the Warren Report. In his research, Douglass conducted dozens of interviews, synthesized information from the vast assassination literature, and also made use of little-known writings on JFK's presidency and death. [3] The book took Douglass twelve years to write. [4] It was rejected by Orbis three times before it was accepted. Publisher Robert Ellsberg said that besides the daunting 500-page length, the content was "outside the realm of usual subjects for Orbis", and that he was reluctant to enter the "dark thicket" of Kennedy conspiracy theories but that "after sending the book to a wide range of historians and analysts, Mr. Ellsberg was persuaded of the book's significance". [1]

Contents

The title is a reference to Thomas Merton's 1966 book Raids on the Unspeakable, regarding according to Douglass "a kind of systemic evil that defies speech". [5] In a 2013 interview with The Georgia Straight newsletter, Douglass said that Merton's notion of the "Unspeakable" included "such realities as the Holocaust, the Vietnam War, the nuclear arms race, and these assassinations. When he gets to the point where he’s actually describing it, he describes it as a 'void,' an emptiness, a lack of compassion and responsibility, and when I was reading that description, I thought, 'Warren Report.'" [4] As Merton writes in Raids on the Unspeakable, the void "gets into the language of public and official declarations ... and makes them ring dead with the hollowness of the abyss. It is the void out of which Eichmann drew the punctilious exactitude of his obedience." [6]

Douglass links this description of the void to the bleakest hours of the Cuban Missile Crisis, with both Kennedy and Nikita Khrushchev "encounter[ing] that void simultaneously". Citing Khrushchev's memoirs, Douglass tells how Kennedy reached out privately, via his brother, to warn the Soviet Premier that Kennedy was losing power to his generals, who favored nuclear war, and that he needed Khrushchev's help to avoid a dire scenario. [4] Douglass concludes that as a consequence of the harrowing Cuban Missile Crisis, Kennedy "turned from global war to a strategy of peace. That's the why of his assassination." [4]

As compared with other books in the genre, Douglass dwells less on the "how" of the assassination. For instance, the single bullet theory is not mentioned, and he includes no photographs or maps. In his review of the book, James DiEugenio estimates that it's "2/3 about Kennedy's presidency and 1/3 about his assassination". [3] Only in the long last chapter, "Washington and Dallas", Douglass chronicles events on November 22. Other than that, he follows the intelligence links around Kennedy, and profiles the key people involved in the post-assassination investigation. He also asks why an apparent Soviet defector like Lee Harvey Oswald was "so tolerated and supported by the government he betrayed". [7]

Douglass spends a good portion of JFK and the Unspeakable recounting how Kennedy ended up in conflict with powerful forces in the intelligence, military, and corporate worlds. The book begins by examining the Bay of Pigs Invasion as the Central Intelligence Agency's attempt to entrap the new president into a full-scale U.S. military assault on Cuba. Citing Daniel Schorr's conclusion that "[i]n effect, President Kennedy was the target of a CIA covert operation that collapsed when the invasion collapsed", Douglass observes how in the aftermath of the failed operation Kennedy threatened "to splinter the CIA in a thousand pieces and scatter it to the winds". [8] The forced resignation of CIA Director Allen Dulles, along with several of his deputies, served notice that this threat might be followed through. The book also revisits Kennedy's clashes with his military advisers, including over the Cuban Missile Crisis (1962), the Partial Nuclear Test Ban Treaty (ratified by the Senate in September 1963), his back-channel to Fidel Castro in 1963 via William Attwood in an attempt to normalize relations between the U.S. and Cuba, and his National Security Action Memorandum 263 (initiating withdrawal from Vietnam). [8]

Douglass cites Kennedy's April 1962 confrontation with the domestic steel industry, led by U.S. Steel, which together with five other steel companies announced a price increase shortly after an agreement had been brokered with the Kennedy administration to hold steel prices flat to control inflation. In retaliation, the Kennedy administration raided corporate offices, issued subpoenas, and tasked the Defense Department with overseas marketing of its steel. [8] After the steel industry finally backed down, Henry Luce's Fortune published an editorial headlined, "Steel: The Ides of April", stating that the price increase had been conceived in political terms as a means to either damage the President's credibility or to unite the business world against him. [8]

One of the techniques Douglass employs is to interleave multiple stories to provide a "textured effect". [3] For example, in his "Saigon and Chicago" chapter, he "cinematically" cuts between two concurrent sequences of events leading up to and culminating on the weekend of November 2, 1963: (1) the coup in Saigon that killed South Vietnamese President Ngô Đình Diệm and his brother Ngô Đình Nhu, and (2) a Chicago-based assassination plot against Kennedy that bore a striking resemblance to what transpired in Dallas three weeks later and was only thwarted at the last minute when the White House cancelled the President’s Chicago visit due to security concerns. [9] [10]

Douglass singles out Kennedy's June 1963 commencement address at American University as both the high point of his presidency and an act that sealed his fate. He observed:

[T]he American University address was a profile in courage with lethal consequences. President Kennedy's June 10, 1963, call for an end to the Cold War, five and one-half months before his assassination, anticipates Dr. King's courage in his April 4, 1967, Riverside Church address calling for an end to the Vietnam War, exactly one year before his assassination. Each of those transforming speeches was a prophetic statement provoking the reward a prophet traditionally receives. [11]

Critical and commercial reception

Promotional reviews of Douglass's book were provided by Richard A. Falk, Gaeton Fonzi, and Daniel Ellsberg. [12] JFK's nephew Robert F. Kennedy Jr. wrote a blurb saying the book had moved him to visit Dealey Plaza for the first time. [12] The book was well-received by researchers of JFK assassination conspiracy theories, with The Georgia Straight describing it in 2013 as "achiev[ing] a rare consensus inside the assassination research community for its wise and lucid organization of the known data." [4] In 2009, Oliver Stone labeled it "an extraordinary new book [which] offers the best account I have read of this tragedy and its significance." [13] He also gave the book a valuable bit of publicity during an appearance on Real Time with Bill Maher , which led to a sharp increase in sales. [4] In a review in Human Rights Quarterly , David Lempert called Douglass's book "a gem". [14] In 2011, James DiEugenio praised JFK and the Unspeakable as "a well organized, thoroughly documented, and felicitously composed piece of workmanship that is both comprehensible and easy to read." [3] In 2013, David Talbot included it in his list of the seven best books on the JFK assassination. [15]

Several religious publications praised JFK and the Unspeakable. Ched Myers in Tikkun recommended it to his readers, saying the book "could not matter more". [16] The Jesuit magazine America called it "a compelling book, a thoroughly researched account of Kennedy’s turn toward peace, the consequent assassination and its aftermath". [17] Tom Roberts of National Catholic Reporter wrote in his review that Douglass postulates two theses at variance with conventional wisdom:

The first is that John F. Kennedy, that quintessential cold warrior who seemingly couldn't wait to invade Cuba, who went to the brink of nuclear annihilation over missiles in our hemisphere and who rolled tanks to the Berlin Wall to face off with communist tanks on the other side, was actually undergoing a deep conversion to peacemaker during his brief tenure as president. The second is that that conversion -- documented by Mr. Douglass from secret communications between Kennedy and his archrival Soviet Premier Nikita Khrushchev; between Kennedy and Cuba's Fidel Castro; from memos and executive orders, some released as a result of a federal law enacted in 1992 -- so angered the U.S. intelligence and military communities that they got rid of him. [1]

Publishers Weekly said in 2012 that the book was "now recommended reading for those seriously investigating political assassinations." [18] The New York Observer said of the book that it included "a selective rehashing of such conspiracy chestnuts as the Ike Altgens photo, which allegedly shows Oswald standing in the doorway of the Texas Book Depository at the exact moment he should have been firing away on the sixth floor. The book's real interest lies in its portrait of J.F.K. ... [and] does make a convincing case that J.F.K. was becoming deeply disillusioned with the bellicosity of American foreign policy and the inordinate power of the military–industrial complex. Whether this got him killed remains, like just about everything else that happened in Dallas, the stuff of myth." [19]

In the Washington Decoded newsletter, John C. McAdams harshly reviewed the book, declaring: "As bad as Douglass's account of Kennedy's foreign policy is, his depiction of a plot to murder JFK is worse—unspeakably bad, in fact. To paraphrase Thomas Merton, Douglass's muse and inspiration, the bunk and nonsense Douglass recycles goes beyond the capacity of words to describe. He is utterly uncritical of any theory, any witness, and any factoid, as long as it implies conspiracy." [20]

Editions

Seth Jacobson and Oliver Hine were given permission by Douglass to create a graphic novel version, which they posted on Kickstarter. [21] A play based on the book, called Noah's Ark, was staged in November 2013 in Birmingham, Alabama. [22]

See also

Related Research Articles

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Cuban Missile Crisis</span> 1962 confrontation between the US and USSR

The Cuban Missile Crisis, also known as the October Crisis in Cuba, or the Caribbean Crisis, was a 13-day confrontation between the governments of the United States and the Soviet Union, when American deployments of nuclear missiles in Italy and Turkey were matched by Soviet deployments of nuclear missiles in Cuba. The crisis lasted from 16 to 28 October 1962. This confrontation is widely considered the closest the Cold War came to escalating into full-scale nuclear war.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Jack Ruby</span> Murderer of Lee Harvey Oswald (1911–1967)

Jack Leon Ruby was an American nightclub owner who killed Lee Harvey Oswald on November 24, 1963, two days after Oswald was accused of assassinating President John F. Kennedy. Ruby shot and mortally wounded Oswald on live television in the basement of Dallas Police Headquarters and was immediately arrested.

<i>JFK</i> (film) 1991 American thriller film directed by Oliver Stone

JFK is a 1991 American epic political thriller film written and directed by Oliver Stone. It examines the investigation into the assassination of John F. Kennedy by New Orleans district attorney Jim Garrison, who came to believe there was a conspiracy to assassinate President Kennedy and that Lee Harvey Oswald was a scapegoat.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Assassination of John F. Kennedy</span> 1963 murder in Dallas, Texas, U.S.

On November 22, 1963, John F. Kennedy, the 35th president of the United States, was assassinated while riding in a presidential motorcade through Dealey Plaza in Dallas, Texas. Kennedy was in the vehicle with his wife Jacqueline, Texas governor John Connally, and Connally's wife Nellie, when he was fatally shot from the nearby Texas School Book Depository by Lee Harvey Oswald, a former U.S. Marine. The motorcade rushed to Parkland Memorial Hospital, where Kennedy was pronounced dead about 30 minutes after the shooting; Connally was also wounded in the attack but recovered. Vice President Lyndon B. Johnson was hastily sworn in as president two hours and eight minutes later aboard Air Force One at Dallas Love Field.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">E. Howard Hunt</span> American intelligence officer and author (1918–2007)

Everette Howard Hunt Jr. was an American intelligence officer and author. From 1949 to 1970, Hunt served as an officer in the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA), where he was a central figure in U.S. regime change in Latin America including the 1954 Guatemalan coup d'état and the 1961 Bay of Pigs Invasion in Cuba. Along with G. Gordon Liddy, Frank Sturgis, and others, Hunt was one of the Nixon administration's so-called White House Plumbers, a team of operatives charged with identifying government leaks to outside parties.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Texas School Book Depository</span> Historic building in Dallas, Texas

The Texas School Book Depository, now known as the Dallas County Administration Building, is a seven-floor building facing Dealey Plaza in Dallas, Texas. The building was Lee Harvey Oswald's vantage point during the assassination of United States President John F. Kennedy on November 22, 1963. The Warren Commission concluded that Oswald, an employee at the depository, shot and mortally wounded President Kennedy from a sixth floor window on the building's southeastern corner. Kennedy was pronounced dead at Parkland Memorial Hospital.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Richard M. Bissell Jr.</span> Central Intelligence Agency officer (1909–1994)

Richard Mervin Bissell Jr. was an American Central Intelligence Agency officer responsible for major projects such as the U-2 spy plane and the Bay of Pigs Invasion. He is seen as one of the most important spymasters in CIA history.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">John F. Kennedy</span> President of the United States from 1961 to 1963

John Fitzgerald Kennedy, also known as JFK, was the 35th president of the United States, serving from 1961 until his assassination in 1963. He was the youngest person elected president. Kennedy served at the height of the Cold War, and the majority of his foreign policy concerned relations with the Soviet Union and Cuba. A Democrat, Kennedy represented Massachusetts in both houses of the United States Congress prior to his presidency.

James W. "Jim" Douglass is an American author, activist, Christian theologian, and investigative journalist. He is a graduate of Santa Clara University. He and his wife, Shelley Douglass, founded the Ground Zero Center for Nonviolent Action in Poulsbo, Washington, and Mary’s House, a Catholic Worker house in Birmingham, Alabama. In 1997 the Douglasses received the Pacem in Terris Award.

Robert Aime Maheu was an American businessman and lawyer, who worked for the FBI and CIA, and as the chief executive of Nevada operations for the industrialist Howard Hughes.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Presidency of John F. Kennedy</span> U.S. presidential administration from 1961 to 1963

John F. Kennedy's tenure as the 35th president of the United States began with his inauguration on January 20, 1961, and ended with his assassination on November 22, 1963. Kennedy, a Democrat from Massachusetts, took office following his narrow victory over Republican incumbent vice president Richard Nixon in the 1960 presidential election. He was succeeded by Vice President Lyndon B. Johnson.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">William Bruce Pitzer</span>

William Bruce Pitzer was an officer of the United States Navy whose death is speculated to have had some connection with the assassination of John F. Kennedy.

The CIA Kennedy assassination is a prominent John F. Kennedy assassination conspiracy theory. According to ABC News, the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) is represented in nearly every theory that involves American conspirators. The secretive nature of the CIA, and the conjecture surrounding the high-profile political assassinations in the United States during the 1960s, has made the CIA a plausible suspect for some who believe in a conspiracy. Conspiracy theorists have ascribed various motives for CIA involvement in the assassination of President Kennedy, including Kennedy's firing of CIA director Allen Dulles, Kennedy's refusal to provide air support to the Bay of Pigs invasion, Kennedy's plan to cut the agency's budget by 20 percent, and the belief that the president was weak on communism. In 1979, the House Select Committee on Assassinations (HSCA) concluded that the CIA was not involved in the assassination of Kennedy.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">American University speech</span> 1963 speech given by John F. Kennedy

The American University speech, titled "A Strategy of Peace", was a commencement address delivered by United States President John F. Kennedy at the American University in Washington, D.C., on Monday, June 10, 1963. Widely considered one of the most powerful speeches Kennedy delivered, he not only outlined a plan to curb nuclear arms, but also "laid out a hopeful, yet realistic route for world peace at a time when the U.S. and Soviet Union faced the potential for an escalating nuclear arms race." In the speech, Kennedy announced his agreement to negotiations "toward early agreement on a comprehensive test ban treaty" and also announced, for the purpose of showing "good faith and solemn convictions", his decision to unilaterally suspend all U.S. atmospheric testing of nuclear weapons as long as all other nations would do the same. Noteworthy are his comments that the United States was seeking a goal of "complete disarmament" of nuclear weapons and his vow that America "will never start a war".

Thomas C. Cornell was an American journalist and a peace activist against the Vietnam War and the Iraq War. He was an associate editor of the Catholic Worker and a deacon in the Catholic Church.

The United States foreign policy during the presidency of John F. Kennedy from 1961 to 1963 included diplomatic and military initiatives in Western Europe, Southeast Asia, and Latin America, all conducted amid considerable Cold War tensions with the Soviet Union and its satellite states in Eastern Europe. Kennedy deployed a new generation of foreign policy experts, dubbed "the best and the brightest". In his inaugural address Kennedy encapsulated his Cold War stance: "Let us never negotiate out of fear. But let us never fear to negotiate".

Abraham W. Bolden is a former United States Secret Service agent. He was the first African American assigned to the presidential security detail, appointed in 1961 by John F. Kennedy. In 1964, Bolden was fired from the Secret Service after he was charged with accepting a bribe in relation to a counterfeiting case he had been investigating. Convicted by a jury, he was sentenced to six years in federal prison. Bolden always alleged that he had been framed by members of the government in order to intimidate and silence him. He was pardoned by President Joe Biden in April 2022.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">John F. Kennedy assassination conspiracy theories</span> Conspiracy theories regarding the assassination of JFK

The assassination of John F. Kennedy on November 22, 1963, has spawned numerous conspiracy theories. These theories allege the involvement of the CIA, the Mafia, Vice President Lyndon B. Johnson, Cuban Prime Minister Fidel Castro, the KGB, or some combination of these individuals and entities. Some conspiracy theories have alleged a coverup by parts of the federal government, such as the original FBI investigators, the Warren Commission, or the CIA. Former Los Angeles District Attorney Vincent Bugliosi estimated that a total of 42 groups, 82 assassins, and 214 people had been accused at one time or another in various conspiracy scenarios.

Wes Wise was an American journalist and politician who served from 1971 to 1976 as a three-term mayor of Dallas, Texas.

This bibliography of John F. Kennedy is a list of published works about John F. Kennedy, the 35th president of the United States.

References

  1. 1 2 3 Tom Roberts (October 31, 2008). "Another view of JFK". National Catholic Reporter .
  2. ↑ James Martin, S. J. (July 29, 2009). "A Surprise Catholic Bestseller". America .
  3. 1 2 3 4 DiEugenio, James (September 1, 2011). "James W. Douglass, JFK and the Unspeakable". Kennedys and King.
  4. 1 2 3 4 5 6 Mack, Adrian (March 7, 2013). "Vancouver-bound author James Douglass on JFK and the Unspeakable". The Georgia Straight.
  5. ↑ Douglass, James W. (2010) [2008]. "Introduction". JFK and the Unspeakable. p. xv. ISBN   9781439193884.
  6. ↑ Merton, Thomas (1966). Raids on the Unspeakable. New Directions. p. 4. ISBN   9780811201018.
  7. ↑ Douglass, James W. (2010) [2008]. JFK and the Unspeakable. Touchstone. p. 37. ISBN   9781439193884.
  8. 1 2 3 4 James W. Douglass (November 2010). "JFK, Obama, and the Unspeakable". Tikkun 25(6): 20. Archived from the original on February 10, 2011.
  9. ↑ Douglass, James W. (2010) [2008]. "Saigon and Chicago". JFK and the Unspeakable. Touchstone. pp. 174–219. ISBN   9781439193884.
  10. ↑ Black, Edwin (November 1975). "The plot to kill JFK in Chicago Nov. 2, 1963". Chicago Independent. Retrieved July 24, 2024– via Internet Archive.
  11. ↑ Douglass, James W. (2010) [2008]. JFK and the Unspeakable. Touchstone. p. 46. ISBN   9781439193884.
  12. 1 2 Orbis Books, JFK and the Unspeakable
  13. ↑ Oliver Stone, HuffPost , 23 July 2009, JFK and the Unspeakable
  14. ↑ David Lempert (2010). "The Prosecution of George W. Bush for Murder, and: JFK and the Unspeakable: Why He Died and Why It Matters" (review). Human Rights Quarterly. pp. 773–776.
  15. ↑ David Talbot (November 6, 2013). "JFK assassination: CIA and New York Times are still lying to us". Salon.
  16. ↑ Ched Myers (November 2010). "Prophetic Contingency: Why Jim Douglass's JFK Book Matters". Tikkun 25(6): 20. Archived from the original on December 13, 2013.
  17. ↑ George M. Anderson (November 17, 2008). "Unmasking the Truth". America.
  18. ↑ Publishers Weekly , 9 January 2012, Gandhi and the Unspeakable: His Final Experiment with Truth
  19. ↑ Stephen Amidon, New York Observer , 17 December 2008, The Unsolved Mystery
  20. ↑ John C. McAdams (December 11, 2009). "Unspeakably Awful". Washington Decoded .
  21. ↑ Jerry Ashton (November 26, 2013). "JFK and the Unspeakable as a 'Comic' Book -- A Good Thing?". HuffPost .
  22. ↑ Downing, Jared (November 13, 2013). "Birmingham historian Jim Douglass' book on JFK assassination inspiration for new play". AL.com . Retrieved December 10, 2024.
This page is based on this Wikipedia article
Text is available under the CC BY-SA 4.0 license; additional terms may apply.
Images, videos and audio are available under their respective licenses.