After that, Douglass contends, Kennedy was a "marked man."
Douglass shows in the book how Lee Harvey Oswald, contrary to the myth spun by the Warren Commission, was actually an intelligence asset, a person manipulated by the CIA and made to look like some kooky pro-communist sympathizer who hated the United States and detested Kennedy. The perfect fall guy.
The author writes that while it is clear Kennedy entered his presidency with a reputation as a Cold War hardliner, his attitudes began to change, especially after the Cuban missile crisis, when the world came perilously close to World War III.
"John Kennedy was no saint. Nor was he an apostle of nonviolence. However, as we are called to do, he was turning. Teshuvah, "turning," the rabbinic word for repentance, is the explanation for Kennedy's short-lived, contradictory journey towards peace. He was turning from what would have been the worst violence in history, toward a new, more peaceful possibility in his and our lives," Douglass wrote.
As his administration progressed, Kennedy knew he was out of step with the views of the military, CIA and national security team. Increasingly, he felt isolated, Douglass writes. The author maintains that Kennedy was aware of the possibility of a coup d'etat, and that his life might be in danger.
Nonetheless, Kennedy was determined to move away from the prevailing Cold War ideology of "defeating the enemy," and towards dialogue. Douglass reports that Kennedy set up back-door channels of communication with both Khrushchev and Fidel Castro, trying to achieve detente.
The secret communication between Kennedy and these leaders was facilitated by different people, including journalists. In fact, at the moment Kennedy was shot in Dallas, French journalist Jean Daniel, who had previously interviewed Kennedy, was interviewing Castro in Havana, and getting his response to Kennedy's openness to improving relations between the two countries.
Douglass raises the possibility that Kennedy willingly put his life on the line for peace.
"Was John F. Kennedy a martyr, one who, in spite of his contradictions, gave his life as witness to a new, more peaceful humanity?" he asks. Douglass doesn't answer that question, instead saying, "let the reader decide."
Douglass intersperses his writing about Kennedy and the plot to kill him with a discussion of the views of the Trappist monk, Thomas Merton. The connection is that Merton, a noted Catholic theologian in the 1950s and 1960s, was writing considerably at the time Kennedy took office about the pressing need for more dialogue between the nuclear superpowers and a move toward disarmament, in order to avoid a nuclear holocaust. He expressed his concerns in letters sent to a number of major public figures of the day, including Kennedy's sister-in-law, Ethel Kennedy.
Merton wrote that while he was sceptical about whether Kennedy had enough character to move away from the Cold War mindset and towards peace, he hoped he would. It's not known whether any of Merton's letters reached JFK himself.
Douglass based part of his book title on a term that Merton coined in the mid-sixties --- "The Unspeakable." Merton came up with the term as the nation was rocked by a string of horrifying events --- the assassinations of Kennedy, his brother Robert and Martin Luther King and the mounting death toll in Vietnam.
"The Unspeakable" referred to a moral depravity on the part of many of the nation's leaders and individuals who are part of the secretive intelligence/national security apparatus. Put in another way, Merton felt there was a moral void on the part of people in power, a void that allows them to perpetrate massive crimes, such as assassinations, wanton bombing of other countries and torture, with no accountability.
But The Unspeakable affects the citizens of this country, as well, Merton said. Lulled to sleep by a media that rarely asks the nation's leaders about what's really going on and always paints a positive picture about the aims of U.S. foreign policy, people live in a "climate of denial" about the possibility that terrible things are being done to maintain American power.
"JFK and the Unspeakable" is a remarkable book that I recommend to everyone. While I have already read quite a bit about the Kennedy assassination, this book gave me even more information and perspective. The book brought home again the power and ruthlessness of our national-security state.
I was particularly moved by Douglass's writing on John Kennedy's transformation from Cold War hardliner to peace advocate.
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