JFK and the Unspeakable: Why He Died and Why It Matters Paperback – 19 Oct. 2010

This is a real tour de force in collating the various threads of the Kennedy Assassination but without too much sensationalism. Rather than focus on the immediate circumstances and period around the murder of Kennedy, Mr Douglass builds a compelling view of the pre-history that guided Kennedy to his fate in Dallas and the motives and barbaric purposes of those who were charged with the protection of democracy, yet failed in pursuing their own agenda which evil continues to contaminate the world we know today.Hindsight should be a powerful analytical tool and the threads that are pulled together here are quite convincing even without overt evidence to support the conclusions - the motives and the way history itself has developed in the past 50 years speak louder than anything. I wanted something that spread wider than just the murder itself (I read this in tandem with Gaeton Fonzi's book, The Last Investigation, which covers a lot of that material in more depth) and this book fulfilled that by drawing on much more circumstantial evidence for the apparent threat that Kennedy was evolving into for his own military-industrial establishment. And while the motives may have been circumstantial, the actions are there for all to see who are prepared to look and reason with an open mind. The great scandal of what happened in 1963 and the few years after Kennedy's untimely end, is the complete lack of authoritative and bold action by successive administrations in addressing the effective coup d'état that took place at that time, and bringing those responsible to justice and to account for their crimes.Douglass' style is sometimes a little unstructured and repetitive, but he gets there in the end, and with a mass of evidence in one place that clearly brings the various threads together in a clear, but very scary, conclusion.There seems to me a great parallel and connection in the events that took place back then with those that occurred during the first years of this century in that same bastion of the 'free' world - and I hope it's not another 50 years before the truth is exposed fully on both Kennedy's demise, the extremism of the state mechanisms that are implicated in that crime, and the further horrors of the past 15 years in bringing the world to further unrest. This book should be read with an open mind and one eye on current affairs - we lost a great man and a swathe of history has been the worse for his absence.

If you are fascinated by the conspiracy and coalition of interests which played its part in the greatest act of treason in the 20th century and then subsequently made every effort to cover it up for the next 50 years, then this is a book for you.This book is absolutely faultless in its research, every source is meticulously referenced and the author pieces together more or less all the answers to the questions of why and by whom. So much so, that it can explain why there is a refusal to release all the papers relevant to the Kennedy assassination 50 years on. If it was Oswald then why not release every classified document? Why was Oswald on the payroll of the CIA and the FBI? If Oswald was a communist, Dallas would seem the least obvious place to be the assassin. So many questions: How did Oswald allow himself to become the patsy just as Thomas Arthur Vallee was in place in Chicago only several weeks earlier? Whatever happened to the other Chicago gunmen? In Tampa just a few days prior to Dallas there are reports of assassination plans there.By November 1963, John F Kennedy had become deeply concerned at the prospect of a Lyndon Johnson presidency, so much so that there is possibly some evidence that Kennedy was considering Governor Terry Sanford of North Carolina to be his VP running mate in 1964. Another obvious motive for LBJ in spite of Texas being a key state for Kennedy. Would he have gone to Dallas if he had plans to drop LBJ? Hoover's position as Director of the FBI was under threat from both Kennedys, so it became clear that with less than twelve months to the 64 Election that something had to happen fast. Nothing was left to chance when establishing the route of the motorcade in Dallas, the reduced protection, the destruction of evidence by the FBI, the speed of the limousine as it crawled into Dealey Plaza, up to eleven shots fired, the bogus x ray photos and the repeated murder and incarceration of key witnesses. And of course, the re-writing of evidence provided by the Warren Commission.Why did President Kennedy die? JFK was the ultimate outsider in his own US Government. The Chiefs of Staff thought a nuclear war could be won by the US. The October 1962 crisis had a profound impact on him and just before his death it was clear that any US presence in Vietnam would have been withdrawn should he have secured a second term. JFK was not just turning towards peace himself, it was clear that he was tapping into the American people's desire for peace. The national security state was acutely aware that Kennedy had also been reaching out to both Castro and Kruschev behind the scenes, totally unacceptable to the CIA and thus marking Kennedy out for assassination. RFK's success in closing down the narcotics trade was becoming a huge concern to the Mafia. The Unspeakable.Only now can we see how much of a visionary JFK was. The CIA and LBJ will forever have the blood of 58,000 young soldiers on their hands. Why does it matter? Kennedy was not allowed to work towards what was only achieved in arms reduction 25 to 30 years and trillions of dollars later.In terms of must reads on the JFK assassination, this is by far the best I have read. I recommend the work of Lamar Waldron and his Hidden History series, Joseph P Farrell's book LBJ and The Conspiracy to Kill Kennedy. Others in this category are the works of Anthony Summers, Jim Marrs, Joseph Farrell, Robert Groden and Peter Dale Scott also. The website maryferrell.org is a must see too.A wonderful book and a terrific read, thank you James W Douglass. There are several lectures by the author on his book which can be found on Youtube.