JFK and the unspeakable
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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What Hacker News says
- I haven't read Lifton's book, and I don't want to imply agreement with any particular claim, but he is certainly correct that there were lots of implausible details about the autopsy, and especially with the official summary of the autopsy. It wasn't a physician who came up with the "magic bullet" theory, it was Arlen Specter, a cipher whose later continuing political success is inexplicable except in reference to his role on the Warren Commission.
The best book to read now is JFK and the Unspeakable, by James Douglass. If a book like that doesn't fit into your life right now, either of the recent Oliver Stone documentaries are great. I believe that "JFK: Destiny Betrayed", which I watched through tears, is a longer version of "JFK Revisited: Through the Looking Glass".
- Some US history books that are relatively unknown in the US:
-Ann Douglas "Terrible Honesty" (Study of artists, Black and nonblack in New York/Manhattan in the 20s)
-James W. Douglass "JFK & the Unspeakable"
-Walter Johnson "River of Dark Dreams"
-Gerald Horne "The Counterrevolution of 1776"
-J. Sakai, Settlers (readsettlers.org)
-Ida Wells "Lynch Law in America"
- Trump was about to release all the files and then the CIA recommended he not do that.
The CIA also wrote this nice memo for Trump:
> "I am ordering today that the veil finally be lifted" on the records, the memo said. "At the same time, executive departments and agencies have proposed to me that certain information should continue to be redacted because of national security, law enforcement, and foreign affairs concerns. I have no choice -- today -- but to accept those redactions rather than allow potentially irreversible harm to our nation's security."
You've gotta love the "I have no choice" wording...
From the best book on this topic, JFK and the Unspeakable:
> The book's central thesis is that Kennedy was a cold warrior who turned to peace-making, and that as a result he was killed by his own security apparatus
> The book highlights the Bay of Pigs Invasion as the Central Intelligence Agency's attempt to entrap Kennedy into a full-scale US invasion of Cuba. Citing Daniel Schorr's conclusion that "In effect, President Kennedy was the target of a CIA covert operation that collapsed when the invasion collapsed", the book argues that the result of this operation was Kennedy's avowed intention "to splinter the CIA in a thousand pieces and scatter it to the winds."
> The forced resignation of CIA Director Allen Dulles and several deputies served notice that this statement might be followed through. The book describes Kennedy's conflict with the military, including over the Cuban Missile Crisis (1962), the Partial Nuclear Test Ban Treaty (ratified by the Senate in September 1963), and a back-channel to Fidel Castro in September 1963, via William Atwood, aimed at normalising relations, and National Security Action Memorandum 263 (beginning withdrawal from Vietnam).
> The book also cites an April 1962 confrontation with the US steel industry, led by U.S. Steel, which together with five other steel companies declared a price increase shortly after an agreement had been brokered to avoid them, in order to control inflation. The Kennedy administration raided corporate offices, issued subpoenas, and tasked the Defense Department with overseas marketing of its steel. Shortly after the steel industry backed down, Henry Luce's Fortune published an editorial, headlined "Steel: The Ides of April", stating that the price rise had been conceived in political terms as a means to either damage the President's credibility, or to unite the business world against him.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/JFK_and_the_Unspeakable
Curtis LeMay called JFK an appeaser to his face, and accused him of endangering America's safety. https://jfk14thday.com/bad-appeasement-munich/
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Curtis_LeMay#Cuban_Missile_Cri...
- "JFK and the Unspeakable" suggests that JFK had signaled his intentions to scale down the Cold War, withdraw from Vietnam, and reign in or disband the CIA after the Bay of Pigs disaster, and was killed by rogue elements in the CIA, probably in concert with military-industrial business interests and organized crime organizations who didn't like the Kennedys shining a light on their own misdeeds either.
There's a reference to this in Scorcese's recent movie "The Irishman": "if they can get a president, they can get a president of a union."
