WHY JFK Was Assassinated....

[Peter Lemkin]

the heart of the matter:

Why President Kennedy Was Assassinated
Hidden History Center News, 22 November 2017
by David T. Ratcliffe

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Jamie Wyeth: Portrait of John F. Kennedy (1967)

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55 years ago today the world had just made it through its closestbrush to date of nuclear annihilation and extinction of all Lifeon Earth with the peaceful resolution to the Cuban MissileCrisis.
With all the bread and circuses being dished up concerning thecurrent release dump of withheld government files on theassassination of the 35th President of the United States, it isexceedingly relevant to highlight a nonpareil exposition of thisseminal event of our post-World War II world for those who wantto understand what happened on November 22, 1963.
JFK and the UnspeakableWhy He Died and Why It Matters,written by Jim Douglass, was first published 9 years ago. Ibegan reading about John Kennedy's life and death in 1977. When I read Jim's book in the summer of 2012 I thought,This is the book I've waiting for for 35 years.
Robert F. Kennedy Jr.'s endorsement is presented on thecover of the 2013 50th Anniversary edition:

In JFK and the Unspeakable Jim Douglass has distilled all thebest available research into a very well-documented andconvincing portrait of President Kennedy's transformingturn to peace, at the cost of his life. Personally, it has made avery big impact on me. After reading it in Dallas, I was movedfor the first time to visit Dealey Plaza. I urge all American toread this book and come to their own conclusions about why hedied and whyafter fifty yearsit still maters.

Since the fall of 2012 I've been working with Jim topresent a collection of his writings inside the Topics on the National Security State of America section.
Regarding this extra-constitutional firing of the 35th President,the following is proffered as an antidote to the specific set ofillusions andbeginning with the Warren Commission's Reportconspiracytheories presented by state actors, universities, and the media whichpromote a fabricated representation of reality through omission, distortion, falsehood, lack of contextual analysis, and disinforming opinion stated as obvious, incontestable fact.
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Presidents Kennedy and Sukarno, 24 Apr 1961

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First is an annotated transcript with 81 endnotes of Jim's2009 Keynote Address at the Coalition on Political Assassinations Conference, held on 20 November 2009 in Dallas, Texas. This is arich summary, in the author's own words, of JFK and theUnspeakable for those not up for reading the whole book:

Jim Douglass on The Hope in Confronting the Unspeakable in the Assassination of President John Fitzgerald Kennedy

The second is a highly incisive review of the book by EdwardCurtin, Professor of Sociology at the Massachusetts College ofLiberal Arts:

JFK and the Unspeakable: Why He Died and Why It Matters
Review of James Douglass' Book by Prof. Edward Curtin

The WHY of the assassination is the key to the crime and itscover-up. As Ed writes,

This "unspeakable," this hypnotic "collectivedenial of the obvious," is sustained by a mass-media whoserepeated message is that the truth about such significant eventsis beyond our grasp, that we will have to drink the waters of uncertainty forever. As for those who don't, they arerelegated to the status of conspiracy nuts.
Fear and uncertainty block a true appraisal of theassassinationthat plus the thought that it no longermatters.
It matters. For we know that no president since JFK has dared tobuck the military-intelligence-industrial complex. We know a PaxAmericana has spread its tentacles across the globe with U.S. military in over 130 countries on 750 plus bases. We know that the amount of blood and money spent on wars and war preparationshas risen astronomically.
There is a great deal we knowand even more that we don't want to know, or at the very least, investigate.

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Allen Dulles, Richard Bissell, President Kennedy, and John McCone, April 1962

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Jim distills the why near the conclusion of his 2009 Keynote:

Because John Kennedy chose peace on earth at the height of theCold War, he was executed. But because he turned toward peace, inspite of the consequences to himself, humanity is still alive andstruggling. That is hopeful. Especially if we understand what hewent through and what he has given to us as his vision.
At a certain point in his presidency, John Kennedy turned acorner and he didn't look back. I believe that decisiveturn toward his final purpose in life, resulting in his death,happened in the darkness of the Cuban Missile Crisis. AlthoughKennedy was already in conflict with his national securitymanagers, the missile crisis was the breaking point.
At that most critical moment for us all, he turned from anyremaining control that his security managers had over him towarda deeper ethic, a deeper vision in which the fate of the earthbecame his priority. Without losing sight of our own best hopesin this country, he began to home in, with his new partner,Nikita Khrushchev, on the hope of peace for everyone on thisearthRussians, Americans, Cubans, Vietnamese, Indonesians,everyone on this earthno exceptions. He made thatcommitment to life at the cost of his own. What a transformingstory that is.
And what a propaganda campaign has been waged to keep usAmericans from understanding that story, from telling it, andfrom re-telling it to our children and grandchildren. Becausethat's a story whose telling can transform a nation.
But when a nation is under the continuing domination of an idol,namely war, it is a story that will be covered up. When the storycan liberate us from our idolatry of war, then the worshippers of the idol are going to do everything they can to keep the story from being told.
>From the standpoint of a belief that war is the ultimate power,that's too dangerous a story. It's a subversivestory. It shows a different kind of security than always beingready to go to war.
It's unbelievableor we're supposed to think itisthat a president was murdered by our own governmentagencies because he was seeking a more stable peace than relyingon nuclear weapons.
It's unspeakable. For the sake of a nation that must alwaysbe preparing for war, that story must not be told. If it were, wemight learn that peace is possible without making war. We mighteven learn there is a force more powerful than war. Howunthinkable! But how necessary if life on earth is to continue.
That is why it is so hopeful for us to confront the unspeakableand to tell the transforming story of a man of courage, PresidentJohn F. Kennedy. It is a story ultimately not of death but oflifeall our lives. In the end, it is not so much a storyof one man as it is a story of peacemaking when the chips aredown. That story is our story, a story of hope.

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James W. Douglass

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[TD="class: letters11, bgcolor: #FFFFFF, align: justify"]"It's that everything [in the Cold War in 1962-1963] wastotally out of control and then, through a kind ofincredible process where these two men were communicatingsecretly with each other over the year previous [Sep 1962-63],and smuggling letters back and forth to eachother, in the midst of this conflict, they were beginningto trust each other.... It's a remarkable process. And it'sall beneath the surface. But so are all the things thatcount as Merton understood.... And that's why I have somehopes that if we are willing to go deeply enough into thedarkness and Kennedy was, and Khrushchev was anything can happen for the good. But if we don't go intothe darkness it doesn't happen."

Jim Douglass at Elliot Bay Books,
Seattle, 6 May 2008

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Jim concludes his remarkable talk by evoking the liberation truthgifts us with:

I believe it is a providential fact that the anniversary ofPresident Kennedy's assassination always falls aroundThanksgiving, and periodically on that very day. This year theanniversary of his death, two days from now, will beginThanksgiving week.
Thanksgiving is a beautiful time of year, with autumn leavesfalling to create new life. Creation is alive, as the seasonturns. The earth is alive. It is not a radioactive wasteland. Wecan give special thanks for that. The fact that we are stilllivingthat the human family is still alive with a fightingchance for survival, and for much more than thatis reason forgratitude for a peacemaking president, and to the unlikelyalliance he forged with his enemy.
So let us give thanks this Thanksgiving for John F. Kennedy, andfor his partner in peacemaking, Nikita Khrushchev.
Their story is our story, a story of the courage to turn towardthe truth. Remember what Gandhi said that turned theology on itshead. He said truth is God. That is the truth: Truth is God. Wecan discover the truth and live it out. There is nothing, nothingmore powerful than the truth. The truth will set us free.

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JFK learns of Patrice Lumumba's assassination, 13 Feb 1961

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We can know why President Kennedy was assassinated. With thisunderstanding we can navigate the turbulent waters surrounding ustoday with a profoundly informed and deeply rooted sense of themeaning and purpose of our own lives in this, irreducible presentmomentthe only moment we ever have. As my brother Bruceis fond of reminding me:

Yesterday is history.
Tomorrow is a mystery.
Today is a gift.
That's why they call it the present.
Eleanor Roosevelt

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[TD]As articulated both in his [2009 Keynote] talkand with much more detail in JFK and The Unspeakable, there were many more than justthree "Bay of Pigs" comprising the escalating list of conflicts between President Kennedy and his national security state before he was assassinated. A list ofthese conflicts includes the following:

1. 1961: negotiated peace with the Communists for a neutralist government in Laos;
   
2. April 1961: Bay of Pigs and JFK's response: "[I want] to splinter the CIA in a thousand pieces and scatter it to the winds."
   
3. 1961-63: Kennedy-Hammarskjöld-UN vision kept the Congo together and independent;
   
4. April 1962: conflict with big steel industrialists;
   
5. October 1962: Cuban Missile Crisis;
   
6. 1961-63: Diplomatic opening to Third World leadership of President Sukarno;
   
7. May 6, 1963: Presidential order NSAM #239 to pursue both a nuclear test ban and a policy of general and complete disarmament;
   
8. June 10, 1963: American University Address the Real JFK Jubilee not Nov 22;
   
9. Summer 1963: Nuclear Test Ban Treaty;
   
10. Fall 1963: beginning of back-channel dialogue with Fidel Castro;
    
11. Fall 1963: JFK's decision to sell wheat to the Russians;
    
12. October 11, 1963: Presidential order NSAM #263 to withdraw U.S. troops from Vietnam by 1965;
    
13. November 1963: Khrushchev decides to accept JFK's invitation for a joint expedition to the moon.
    

In his American University Address President John Kennedy proposed nothing less than an end to the Cold War. As Douglasswrites in JFK and The Unspeakable, "It had becomeclear to America's power brokers that the president of their national security state was struggling with his Communist opponent not so much over who would win the Cold War as on how to end it." (p. 175)

from Transformational Journey: John F. Kennedy's Turning Toward Peace, 2 Sep 2013

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So we have to ask ourselves, "Who can murder the President,frame a CIA agent, and command this kind of cover?" I amnot going to reiterate what Vince Salandria has presented to you.As we knew at the time, Kennedy had begun a process of rapprochement with the USSR and had been making clear moves away from the Cold War.The very simple and obvious question is, Who had the means and motive to organize a conspiracy to assassinate President Kennedy, frame in advance a CIA agent for the murder, use immediately all media channels to spill the frame-up of Oswald to the world, have the White House radioing Air Force One on the way back from Dallas that Oswald was it before the Dallas police had anything on him? Who can do all this and command a complete cover-up by all our society's institutions? Only one institution had the means and motive to accomplish all this, an element of the United States government that is so necessary to the "defense" of the nation that to expose it would be unthinkablethe answer is obvioushigh US military intelligence.

E. Martin Schotz, "[URL="https://hiddenhistorycenter.us15.list-manage.com/track/click?u=60021fd4e91036b838898d14b&id=f00bde8f3d&e=cb91141cf3"]The Waters of Knowledge versus the Waters of Uncertainty:
Mass Denial in the Assassination of President Kennedy[/URL],"
Coalition on Political Assassinations Conference, Dallas, 20 Nov 1998

https://ratical.org/ratitorsCorner/11.04.17.html

[Jim DiEugenio]

The Douglass book was a leap forward in our understanding of both Kennedy and the assassination.

Jim explained Kennedy's Cuba policy and Vietnam policy better than any author had before him between the covers of one book.

If you have not read it, then you are missing something important.

Beyond that, his book inspired other people to explore other areas of Kennedy's foreign policy that were seemingly out of bounds before him e.g. Congo and Indonesia. By showing what happened before and then after his death, a pattern emerged that was pretty much unmistakable.

First, with Johnson, and then with Nixon/Kissinger, Kennedy's foreign policy was wrenched so far from its moorings that it was rendered unrecognizable. And not just in the above places, but also in ignored areas like the Middle East and in Pakistan. And then, under cover up artist Ford, the birth of the neocons took place. And that was it, kaput for Kennedy.

Of course, what happened to Senator Kennedy at the Ambassador Hotel did not help.

[Peter Lemkin]

A great collection of Douglass' writings here: https://ratical.org/ratville/JFK/Unspeakable/index.html
Amazingly, his FANTASTIC book JFK and the Unspeakable was done without a computer - the old way. I well remember typewriters and HAVING to do to a good library to look things up. People now are spoiled in some ways by computers and the internet. By the way, I was just horrified moments ago when I entered into a search engine 'why JFK as assassinated Douglass'. The first few pages were all negative bullshit on 'conspiracy theories of the insane'...so search engines are programmed to provide searchers the government / intelligence /secret government / deep government line....keep that in mind! That is ANOTHER kind of the internet not being 'neutral'.

[Peter Lemkin]

Great excerpts from Douglass' book - the part on Pitzer and his murder, along with the murder of American Democracy 54 years ago today, just about this time of day......

https://ratical.org/ratville/JFK/Unspeak...itzer.html