The book,
JFK and the Unspeakable: Why He Died and Why It Matters was published by the Maryknoll Society. They are universally recognized for quality and scholarship.
Here's what a few who've read the book say:
Prophetic Contingency: Why Jim Douglass’s JFK Book Mattersby Ched Myers
Tikkun Magazine, November/December 2010
EXCERPT...
Douglass is no conspiracy geek. Part of the Catholic theological renaissance that emerged from Vatican II, his incisive interpretations of both politics and religion through the lens of Gandhian satyagraha have for more than forty years inspired and resourced many faith-based peace activists, myself included. His critique of the totalitarian logic of nuclear militarism led Douglass to leave a promising academic and ecclesial career to cofound the Ground Zero Center for Nonviolent Action (www.gzcenter.org) right next to the Trident submarine base in Bangor, Washington.
In the 1990s I admired Douglass's peacemaking efforts in the Balkans but was frankly puzzled (like many in the movement) at his growing preoccupation with researching and writing about the assassinations of Jack and Bobby, Martin and Malcolm. But when I read JFK and the Unspeakable (originally published by Orbis Books in 2008), the first fruits of a decade of labor, I began to fathom the profound depths this mentor is probing on our behalf.
Last year my wife and I visited Jim and Shelley at the Catholic Worker center in Birmingham, Alabama. We toured the ramshackle little house where Jim researches and writes, located beside railroad tracks where, in a previous nonviolent campaign, they tracked the nuclear "White Train." Sitting at one of the many desks overflowing with books and papers, Jim patiently yet passionately explained (yet again) why JFK's life and death matter.
The book argues that Merton's Unspeakable is pre-eminently incarnated in the CIA's doctrine of "plausible deniability," which lies behind half a century of covert operations (not least JFK's murder), and which remains a lethal threat to our democracy. Douglass's greatest contribution to the formidable corpus of JFK literature is his persuasive account of how the president, shaken by the apocalyptic implications of the Cuban Missile Crisis, slowly abandoned his Cold War worldview. Because he subsequently dared to try to end the de facto rule of bipolar politics, endgame militarism, and the National Security establishment, this "peacemaking president could not survive the warmaking State."
CONTINUED...
http://www.tikkun.org/article.php/november2010myers/print And info from a Jesuit, himself an authority on Scripture:
James W. DOUGLASS, JFK and the Unspeakable: Why He Died and Why It Matters. Maryknoll, NY: Orbis Books, 2008. pp. 544. $30.00. ISBN 978-57075-755-6.
Reviewed by Dennis HAMM, S.J., Creighton University, Omaha, NE 68178
If the title of this book makes you suspect that it is another in a long line of mind-numbing conspiracy scenarios regarding the events of November 22nd 1963 in Dallas, go to your nearest vendor of Orbis books and read the six-page introduction and the 10-page chronology in the early pages of this hefty volume. That will be enough to hook you into reading the rest.
The author is, after all, the James Douglass who gave us The Nonviolent Cross in 1968 and several more thoughtful books since. Douglass’ interest is not first of all the immediate scenario of the events of JFK’s death but Kennedy’s remarkable “turn to peace” during his final months, a turn that made likely, if not inevitable, his being “marked for assassination” (to use Thomas Merton’s phrase). Douglass’ meticulous research illuminates JFK’s remarkable—and little noted—transition from Cold Warrior to proponent of “complete and general disarmament,” a phrase he used in several public addresses to describe his ultimate goal as President.
Drawing upon the research of others, upon recently declassified federal records, and upon his own interviews of witnesses, Douglass provides a detailed narrative of the key events that occasioned Kennedy’s turn to active peacemaking—his refusal to provide military support for the CIA-initiated Bay of Pigs invasion, the Cuban missile crisis, and the growing alienation with his military advisors as he proceeded to secretly explore peacemaking initiatives with both Castro and Khrushchev.
Following the Cuban missile crisis, both JFK and Khrushchev admitted to one another that they were terrified by the prospect of nuclear war. Kennedy began to resist further U.S. military involvement in Vietnam. In July of 1963 U.S. and Soviet negotiators agree on the Limited Test Ban Treaty, outlawing nuclear tests “in the atmosphere, beyond its limits, including outer space, or under water, including territorial waters or high seas.” The Senate approves the treaty, 80 to 19, September 24th.
Having begun his research mainly focused on Kennedy’s turn to peacemaking, and discovering the enormous resistance to those efforts on the part of JFK’s military advisors, and all of this in the light of new information and his own interviews, when Douglass comes to the events immediately surrounding the president’s death, he understands them with fresh eyes. He lays out the results of that research by giving the back-story of a number of eye-witnesses—some familiar, others relatively unknown (in some cases because their stories were official discounted, in other cases because it took years for them to overcome governmental intimidation).
Douglass’ narrative is full of surprises:
* The extent to which both Khrushchev and JFK had to work against their own generals
* The fact the Khruschev studied and was moved by Pope John XXIII’s encyclical Pacem in Terris
* The key role of Norman Cousins in all this
* The (foiled) attempt on JFK’s life in Chicago just three weeks before the Dallas assassination, entailing a pattern remarkably similar to that of the Dallas event—a set of assassins, a carefully cultivated patsy positioned in a window overlooking the presidential motorcade moving through a dogleg in the route.
* Strong evidence for the presence and activities of a Lee Oswald look-alike, which accounts for the phenomenon of “too many Oswalds” sighted at certain stages of the narrative
* The significance of a crucial speech—little noted at the time and less remembered since—that JFK gave as a commencement address at American University in Washington, five months before his death. In it he issues an urgent call for peace— “Not, he insisted, “a Pax Americana enforced on the world by American weapons of war.” He commits himself to work for “complete and general disarmament.”
CONTINUED...
http://catholicbooksreview.org/2008/douglass.htm And a bit on James Douglass from a professional filmmaker:
JFK and the UnspeakableOliver Stone
Huffington Post
Posted: July 23, 2009 05:05 PM
EXCERPT...
Today, more than 45 years later, profound doubts persist about how President Kennedy was killed and why. My film JFK was a metaphor for all those doubts, suspicions and unanswered questions. Now an extraordinary new book offers the best account I have read of this tragedy and its significance. That book is James Douglass's JFK and the Unspeakable: Why He Died and Why It Matters. It is a book that deserves the attention of all Americans; it is one of those rare books that, by helping us understand our history, has the power to change it.
The subtitle sums up Douglass's purpose: Why He Died and Why it Matters. In his beautifully written and exhaustively researched treatment, Douglass lays out the "motive" for Kennedy's assassination. Simply, he traces a process of steady conversion by Kennedy from his origins as a traditional Cold Warrior to his determination to pull the world back from the edge of destruction.
Many of these steps are well known, such as Kennedy's disillusionment with the CIA after the disastrous Bay of Pigs Invasion, and his refusal to follow the reckless recommendations of the Joint Chiefs of Staff in resolving the Cuban Missile Crisis. (This in itself was truly JFK's shining moment in the sun. It is likely that any other president from LBJ on would have followed the path to a general nuclear war.) Then there was the Test Ban Treaty and JFK's remarkable American University Speech where he spoke with empathy and compassion about the Soviet people, recognizing our common humanity, the fact that we all "inhabit this small planet. We all breathe the same air. We all cherish our children's futures. And we are all mortal."
But many of his steps remain unfamiliar: Kennedy's back-channel dialogue with Khrushchev and their shared pursuit of common ground; his secret opening to dialogue with Fidel Castro (ongoing the very week of his assassination); and his determination to pull out of Vietnam after his probable re-election in 1964.
All of these steps caused him to be regarded as a virtual traitor by elements of the military-intelligence community. These were the forces that planned and carried out his assassination. Kennedy himself said, in 1962, after he read Seven Days in May, which is about a military coup in the United States, that if he had another Bay of Pigs, the same thing could happen to him. Well, he did have another "Bay of Pigs"; he had several. And I think Kennedy prophesied his own death with those words.
CONTINUED...
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/oliver-stone/jfk-and-the-unspeakable_b_243924.html No offense, but I'll take their word over yours.
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