Part of the Casswiki article series Books
JFK and the Unspeakable: Why He Died and Why It Matters is a book by Christian theologian James W. Douglass, first published in 2008, which is the most comprehensive and shocking treatment of the forces behind the death of President John F. Kennedy. This book analyzes Kennedy’s presidency as well as the events and the machinations of psychopathy behind the assassination.
The blurb on Amazon gives a good overview of the book:
The acclaimed book Oliver Stone called “the best account I have read of this tragedy and its significance,” JFK and the Unspeakable details not just how the conspiracy to assassinate President John F. Kennedy was carried out, but WHY it was done…and why it still matters today.
At the height of the Cold War, JFK risked committing the greatest crime in human history: starting a nuclear war. Horrified by the specter of nuclear annihilation, Kennedy gradually turned away from his long-held Cold Warrior beliefs and toward a policy of lasting peace. But to the military and intelligence agencies in the United States, who were committed to winning the Cold War at any cost, Kennedy’s change of heart was a direct threat to their power and influence. Once these dark “Unspeakable” forces recognized that Kennedy’s interests were in direct opposition to their own, they tagged him as a dangerous traitor, plotted his assassination, and orchestrated the subsequent cover-up.
Douglass takes readers into the Oval Office during the tense days of the Cuban Missile Crisis, along on the strange journey of Lee Harvey Oswald and his shadowy handlers, and to the winding road in Dallas where an ambush awaited the President’s motorcade. As Douglass convincingly documents, at every step along the way these forces of the “Unspeakable” were present, moving people like pawns on a chessboard to promote a dangerous and deadly agenda.
JFK and the Unspeakable shot up to the top of the bestseller charts when Oliver Stone first brought it to the world’s attention on Bill Maher’s show. Since then, it has been lauded by Mark Lane (author of Rush to Judgment, who calls it “an exciting work with the drama of a first-rate thriller”), John Perkins (author of Confessions of an Economic Hit Man, who proclaims it is “arguably the most important book yet written about an American president”), and Robert F. Kennedy, Jr., who calls it “a very well-documented and convincing portrait…I urge all Americans to read this book and come to their own conclusions.”
While Fletcher Prouty’s JFK: The CIA, Vietnam, and the Plot to Assassinate John F. Kennedy is a mind-opening overview of what happened on the day of assassination, JFK and the Unspeakable is a much more precise view, with an incredible amount of organization of detail. If one were to pick just one book to read on JFK assassination, this book would be chosen with no hesitation.
External links
- Cassiopaea Forum: JFK and the Unspeakable: Why He Died and Why It Matters
- Joe Quinn’s Blog: JFK and the “F**king Crazies”
- SotT: JFK and the Unspeakable: Why He Died and Why It Matters
- SotT: Who killed Kennedy: CIA, LBJ, or the Truly “Unspeakable”?
- YouTube: Jim Douglass, JFK and the Unspeakable, COPA Dallas 2009