JFK and the Unspeakable: Why He Died and Why It Matters | James W. Douglass

JFK and the Unspeakable: Why He Died and Why It Matters | James W. Douglass | Big Picture analysis of the JFK murder

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JFK and the Unspea...

	JFK and the Unspeakable: Why He Died and Why It Matters James W. Douglass Orbis Books, 2008 - 510 pages average customer review:based on 31 reviews view larger image
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highly recommended

A Much Needed Nuanced rewriting of the History of the Nuclear Arms race

Introduction

Exquisitely written and drawing heavily on the underground works of the renegade Monk and advocate of peace, Thomas Merton, James Douglas uses Merton's Catholic peace philosophy as his spiritual guide to unfold a theory of the JFK assassination that has many good features to recommend it, but also has a few very definite drawbacks as well.

Using recent archival releases from the FOIA collections on the JFK assassination, and exclusive interviews with previously reluctant witnesses, the author posits his own version of the "CIA as the shadow government of systemic evil" theory of who killed JFK. And while much of his theory retraces well-trod ground, offering some interesting refinements, and placing the assassination into a wider more universal frame with a more human message and appeal, it too still does not completely "close the deal." There is nothing here that is startlingly new, or that changes the actual shape of the Jim Garrison Investigation, who in my view had his hands around the throat of the JFK conspiracy. And who, but for the open opposition, contempt and hostility of the very government he was trying to assist, would have indeed closed the deal. As the author notes, there can be no innocent explanation for why the USG failed to assist rather then oppose the Garrison investigation.

The author sees, exposes, interprets and then tries to give existential meaning to the broader human connections between the unspeakable cabal that Killed JFK, American political culture, and Merton's Catholic theology of peace. As he puts it so nicely, "reality is a lot bigger than we think." The reasons we should care about the JFK assassination, in Douglas' mind are undoubtedly due to this larger frame and to advance the larger message it contains, a message of peace and hope. However, romanticized prose is one thing, hardnosed investigation of Cold War reality is quite another. That aside, it must be said, because it is true: that Douglas' rewriting of Cold War history (with its religious and peacenik twist to it) is a message that on its own merit, and aside from the assassination itself, is worthy of serious reflection and independent consideration. If nothing else it is a heartfelt rendition of how JFK tried to work his way out of the twisted "unreality" of the Cold War.

The Good News

On the good side, the book adds to, but does not completely "fill in" the missing pieces and twisted motives of those who "did JFK in." For instance, rather convincingly he exposes the roles of some of the more shadowy but central "behind-the-scene players" from the intelligence game, long reputed to have been involved in the assassination: players such as Allen Dulles, James Cabell, David Atlee Phillips, and James Jesus Angleton, among others. Departing from the format of other theorists who have linked the JFK, Malcolm X, RFK and MLK murders, the author goes one step further in building a larger moral and political framework in which to situate this rash of political related assassinations. In doing so, Douglas' version, in the same vein as Peter Dale Scott's "JFK and the Deep Structure of American Politics," ceases to be just another more complicated conspiracy theory, but develops, as an important corollary, a full ontology of non-violence.

The centerpiece of the author's narrative is the allegation that what got JFK in trouble was his secret "back channel" communication with Khrushchev -- a channel seen as treasonous by key leaders in the military and intelligence community (who in any case, were obviously monitoring it throughout). It was JFK's attempt to fight the Cold War as a lone warrior and on his own peace-oriented terms that set the wheels of the cabal turning and churning, until they inexorably reached their final destination in Dealey's Plaza on November 22, 1963.

As it did the rest of us, the Cuban Missile crisis jolted JFK's consciousness with an abruptness that made it difficult for even the most rigid of minds to ignore, and JFK's was a supple and attentive mind. Yet, most Americans were not only captured by the Cold War reality, but were so deeply immerged in it that its false existential appeal had become our "only reality." Never was this truer than with Kennedy's military generals. However, in fairness to those generals, it must be said that mistrust in the world was so deep at the height of the "Cold war" that it would have been a qualitative leap of monumental proportions to get from a doctrine of MAD to the other side of the road to JFK's doctrine of peace. There simply was no way to connect the dots from one reality to another. Only JFK's brilliance, his American U speech, coupled with a keen love for his country and for mankind allowed him and Khruschev to make this huge leap into the unknown. And once they made the leap, and began to move beyond the orbit of the "false consciousness" of the Cold War, the problem they had then was how to reach back into the old MAD reality, and lead their respective populations -- and most of all their rigid generals -- to a new promise land of peace and tranquility? Neither succeeded in doing so. What they did instead was stir up a hornet's nest that ended in JFK's assassination and Khruschev being deposed.

Another good aspect of the book is that it gave a graphic picture of the "Rosetta Stone" of the JFK assassination -- the machinations of Jack Rubinstein, aka, Jack Ruby. Even a casual investigator could readily see that after the assassination, every finger that got close to Jack Ruby was scorched as if it had just touched a hot stove. This clearly is what happened to Dorothy Kilgallen, who interviewed Ruby and was (as she put it) about to blow the lid off the assassination conspiracy before she was suddenly force into suicide. But the same happened to all of those close enough to Ruby to have guilty knowledge about the assassination: They too started dropping like flies until none of them were left. But the direct evidence of Ruby's key role is even more compelling than this indirect evidence. Ruby was so ubiquitous in the run up to, during, and after the assassination that there are no innocent explanations left to explain his movements? Ruby's phone records showed that up until a month before the assassination, he made hundreds of calls to key mob connected figures in Chicago and New Orleans. Then in the last two weeks before the assassination, the calls all abruptly stopped. And although a lot has been made about Oswald being seen with David Ferry and Clay Shaw in New Orleans during the spring and summer of 1963, Ruby was also seen at least once in New Orleans with Oswald during the same period. As well, more than one person testified that Ruby and Oswald were seen together in his nightclub just weeks before the assassination. Rose Cheramie, who had foreknowledge of the assassination claimed that Ruby and Oswald were bed partners. And this is only the beginning:

On the morning of the assassination at least one witness saw Ruby handing a dismantled gun in a brown paper to a man who then proceeded to position himself behind the fence on the grassy knoll. Shortly thereafter, Ruby was seen by several people driving Ruth Paine's green Nash; and then dropping off a dark-complexed man and a young thin white man in front of the Texas Book Depositary building.
After the assassination he was seen at the rear of the same building picking up two individuals. Then only minutes later, a reporter (Seth Kantor) encountered him in Parkland hospital as doctors were trying to save JFK's life. Later still, as Oswald was being arrested in the movie theater, Ruby was reported by one officer as sitting in the back watching the whole process and was asked to move, as shots were about to be fired. Around 4:30 when Oswald had already been taken to the Sheriff's office, Ruby barged into the office, only to be turned away. Later that night, he was in the audience at the press conference in which reporters put questions to Oswald, one of which Ruby himself answered for Oswald. Then of course, he showed up on Sunday morning just in the nick of time to kill Oswald as he was being transferred from the City to the County jail. As this book is the first to note, it is impossible for their to be an innocent explanation that explains all of Ruby's phone calls and movements better than that he was probably the CIA's Operations Manager on the ground running the assassination.

Equally, the book gives dramatic new details that trace the second Oswald much further than has been done before. All point to an "over-determined" intelligence operation as being in the driver's seat of the assassination.

The Bad News

Finally, on the down side, it must be said that as compelling as it is, Douglas' theory is just that: another theory in search of plausibility and confirmation. And as usual, the confirmation needed to separate the "weakly plausible" from the more "robustly plausible," lies in the details, and in how those details are woven together into a compelling and confirmable narrative -- which is not so much a criticism as a statement of fact for any JFK theories.

My first difference with the author lies in his decision to take the moral high road, and to ride it a bit too far into the clouds of abstractions and metaphysical divination. Affixing spiritual and metaphysical meaning to both JFK's life and death is the kind of romanticization and enlargement of the facts that we have come to expect of artists, such as was the case with Oliver Stone's movie JFK. Stone's reinterpretation of Jim Garrison's "facts" did not bother me at all since there is such a thing called "artistic license." However, here, we expect, not art (although the prose here is very high art indeed) but the kind of cold-blooded analysis more common to a sleuth, than a spiritual analysis of JFK's life and death. Compelling as it is in its allegorical neatness and cleverness, this Romanticization and dichotomized sentimentality, subtracts from the plausibility and does little to confirm the theory. Instead, in a reductive sort of way, it becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy as we reflects back to ourselves, the best vision of our own goodness and define all else as "systemic evil." However, the fact is that evil cannot be systemic without being a part of the whole universal human condition. The "systemic evil" that Douglas finds unspeakable, has evolved from an embryo whose seed was incubated in our society, our culture, our very way of life. The systemic evil that Douglas attributes only to the cabal that killed JFK, reside within us all. The evil that killed JFK inheres in any political and cultural system that demeans the human being and plays tricks with its moral and human values. Since political cabals are organic outgrowths of a sick society, systemic evil is by definition a cultural problem. It is the sickness that "fathers the evil." That is the problem; that is what is systemic, rather than the evil, per se. Evil inheres in the structures and the walls of any society that loses its moral integrity by slow normalized dehumanization, such as racism, classism, sexism and perverse religiosity.

No matter what else is said about this book, and despite my own criticisms, I like it a lot. It is obviously a five star effort.

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Big Picture analysis of the JFK murder

What an excellent book! Does not get bogged down in the relatively irrelevant details of the players on the ground in Dealy Plaza that awful day. By that I mean to say that Douglass is using a more "macro-view", if you will, regarding the Why of JFK's assassination. He is a committed pacifist and peace activist, as well as a Catholic theologian.
The book is meticulously researched and I found many excellent insights regarding the context of times in which these events transpired. It was well before my time, so I found that this book offered me a more complete picture of the political currents swirling around the US and the world at that time - while at the same time providing a balanced and insightful picture of JFK. Many writers, in my opinion, seem to want to deify or demonize the man. This book really humanized the historical character for me.
I have read many books on this subject, but found this one to be more satisfying and unique. "Satisfying" in the sense that the larger questions in my own mind were answered, at least as much as they are ever going to be. I'm sure that all of the really damning evidence is long destroyed and/or silenced. ( I hope that I am wrong....) "Unique" in that Douglass brings a fresh moral perspective to his political and historical analysis - whether one accepts all of his conlusions or not. Subsequent history bears out some of his conclusions, but dealing with and confronting totalitarian regimes and systems cannot always be wished away by hopes of peace - see the "Peace in our time" debacle in Munich in the late 1930's . Still it is a shame that Kennedy never got the chance to bring to fruition a number of his initiatives.
Finally, it offers the most credible answer to my mind about how and why so many people and gov't agencies particpated in the cover-up.
"Treason doth never prosper, for if it prosper who dare call it treason?", wrote William Shakespeare. How true. How many died in Indochina and elswhere because of that? How sad.

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JFK and the Unspeakable: Why He Died and Why It Matters

The best book on both Kennedy's presidency and assasination. It Reads very easy and is understandable considering the many characters involved. A must read...

Could it have happened this way?

James Douglass presents a strong case that John Kennedy was assassinated by a CIA-controlled plot, and Lee Harvey Oswald was a 'patsy' that was set up to take the fall, aided by a CIA double. These are not new ideas, yet Douglass has careful references to document his thesis. This reader is not convinced. The contention that the shots came from the 'grassy knoll' rather than from the Book Depository are claimed by Douglass to be supported by the piece of JFK's skull that was dislodged by the fatal bullet. But, evidence shows that this bone particle came from the parietal portion of the head, and not the occipital as suggested by Douglass. As such, there is no way the bullet could have entered from any angle other than from the rear. Furthermore, the contention that the bullet entered the throat and exited the head would require a shot from the front and below, not from above as Douglass' conspiracy theory contends. There are other obvious flaws in the conspiracy argument, including eye witnesses with very shaky psychological pasts. Above all, how could it be that such a wide-ranging conspiracy involving even field agents of the CIA could have been kept a secret all these years? It is not a compelling rehash of the old evidence.

What is compelling, however, is the evil Douglass chronicles in his book that existed in the country in the early 60s. There was a deep hatred of JFK in the South and in Texas in particular. War mongering was at its height, and there is no doubt there was great rejoicing in the Pentagon and the CIA when his death was announced. This was the unspeakable that Douglass discusses in his book. In this matter he is right on. In that sense, as was discussed in the Dallas newspapers in those dark days in 1963 (I was living there at the time), we were all responsible in some way for his death by tolerating the intolerance, the outright hatred, and the talk of his demise. Furthermore, his book has the chilling effect of reminding us that we have learned nothing, absolutely nothing from that history. We have recreated over and over wars and insurgencies via the CIA or the Pentagon, and the ideals that Douglass' Kennedy represented have not found a place in the heart of the nation. For that reason, the book is well worth a read. Take in this reading, and whether or not you agree about the conspiracy, be prepared to be chilled by the animosity between JFK and the military-CIA leaders of his time.

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JFK and the Unspeakable

I cannot give this book five stars because it is so uneven. Long sections are somewhat hysterical hymns to the wonderfulness and saintliness of JFK (I believe the author is a Catholic priest)that also connect JFK to the late Thomas Merton. ? I tended to skip these parts. (They are also prayers-for-world-peace and can't-we-all-just-get-along and we should not study war no more, etc. etc. I flipped pages very fast here. HOWEVER, the sections with specific details about the JFK assassination are absolutely fascinating and sort of ring true (although how can you really tell) and raise all kinds of interesting questions in your mind. There is also a third part to this book (three parts written by different people? reads like it) dealing in detail with JFK's behind-the-scenes efforts to reach rapprochement with Krushchev and Castro. This could explain the need for "some people" to take him out of the picture. Draws interesting links in one's mind (okay, my mind) between Lee Harvey Oswald and Francis Gary Powers, the U2 pilot who crashed his airplane in the Soviet Union, and thus wrecked a "summit meeting" between Eisenhower and Kruschev. One recalls that Oswald was in Minsk at the time. One also recalls that Eisenhower, upon leaving office a few months later, warned about the threat to the nation of the "military industrial complex." Hmm. Oswald-CIA-KGB. The mind spins. Anyway, read the book, if this is a topic that fascinates you, as it does me, this one makes a good addition to the collection. Just be prepared to skip sections.

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reviews: 1, 2, page 3, 4, 5, 6, 7

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