Louise's Reviews > JFK and the Unspeakable: Why He Died & Why It Matters

James Douglass establishes Kennedy’s character through his PT109 experience and shows JFK remaining a hero by giving all and more in public life. As president, his growing views about the dangers of the cold war put him at odds with the “military industrial complex” which Eisenhower had warned about and with the CIA which had a vested interest in maintaining both cold and hot wars. With this as a starting point, Douglass goes deeper into the motivation and methods of JFK's assassins.

At the time of his assassination, Kennedy was working on an arms ban treaty with the Soviet Union, a visit to Indonesia to help Sukarno fend off a military coup, a negotiated settlement with Vietnam and other world peace initiatives. Support for these measures came from the general public, not from “Washington”, including lack of support from JFK’s own appointees.

Hit List: An In-Depth Investigation into the Mysterious Deaths of Witnesses to the JFK Assassination profiles 50 of an estimated 1400 people who had information on the assassins and their enablers who died under suspicious circumstances. The authors show the odds of only 15 deaths of material witnesses within 1 year of the assassination are 1 in 167 trillion.

With key witnesses either out of the way or intimidated, it is no surprise that a significant amount of information was held back from the Warren Commission and later from the House Select Committee on Assassinations (1978-9). Dogged investigations have found witnesses to come forward 40+ years later. Only recently, with all or most perpetrators gone, can we get a more accurate picture of the right-wing conspiracy that killed both Kennedy brothers and perhaps politically damaged another and may have downed the flight of JFK’s son.

For me, Douglass has documented, confirmed and/or clarified:
• Lee Harvey Oswald was a CIA agent. He prepared for this work as a marine. He returned to the US from Russia on the CIA payroll. This information was not available to the Warren Commission or the House Select Committee on Assassinations.
• George de Mohrensen’s Haiti contract was via the CIA, most likely payment for “minding” Oswald and handing him off to the Paine’s. (His death was an alleged suicide days before his scheduled testimony before the HSCA.)
• The mystery of the Paine’s taking the Oswald’s into their home as they did was solved: both Ruth and Michael had ties to Allen Dulles.
• Jim Garrison, the only prosecutor who brought a case against any of the alleged conspirators, was on to a lot, but important info was not available at that time.

These items were new to me:
• A Chicago assassination attempt for November 2, 1963 was foiled by a tip to the FBI from someone named Lee. Its plan (a fake shot from on a high window at a turn in a motorcade) and its scapegoat (like Oswald, a former marine with CIA ties) resembled the November 22 event.
• Oswald most likely had a double. It was the double that went to the Russian Embassy in Mexico (Oswald was fluent in Russian; the man who resembled Oswald at the embassy was not). The visit’s purpose was to tie Oswald, the scapegoat, to Russia and Cuba.
• Jack Ruby was seen delivering the Oswald double (the actual assassin) to the grassy knoll. He was also seen as an early visitor to Parkland Hospital and then the movie theater where Oswald (and maybe the double) was (were) apprehended. What are the odds that he would just happen to be at any of thee three locations?
• Richard Case Nagel was the CIA officer tasked with assassinating Oswald after the deed. He couldn’t do it and got himself arrested sensing that he would be safest in jail.
• Ruth Paine not only got Oswald the Book Depository job, she saw that he was not aware of a call about a higher paying job. Her car was seen at the grassy knoll – picking up Oswald (most likely the double). Her cover story is widely accepted, but the facts say that she or her husband, or both, were setting Oswald up.
• The story of Abraham Bolden shows the breadth of the cover up. Bolden tried to contact the Warren Commission about the Chicago attempt. His reward was a counterfeiting rap. The judge tried to sway the jury to a guilty verdict but failed. A second trial convicted him. In a separate trial a so called witness to Bolden’s alleged counterfeiting testified that he had perjured himself at the Bolden trial. The conviction was never overturned. In prison Bolden was given mind altering drugs. The day after a visit from Jim Garrison Bolden was put in solitary confinement. While in prison his home was vandalized and later set on fire. A brick was thrown at his wife.
• The story of Ralph Yates shows more cruelty in the cover up. For his testimony of having picked up a hitchhiker who looked like Oswald carrying a package of “curtain rods” and letting him off at the Book Depository, Yates lived 11 years in a mental institution where he died. While there, he received electric shock treatments. The most likely explanation for Yates's treatment is that he picked up the double who was tasked with planting evidence to make it look like Osward took a gun to the book depository. When the real Oswald was documented at other locations, Yates and his inconvenient knowledge had to be suppressed.

While we use the term CIA as the assassin, to re-purpose the NRA expression “people (not government agencies) kill people”. The Devil's Chessboard: Allen Dulles, the CIA, and the Rise of America's Secret Government shows the life of Allen Dulles and how he had the motive (policy differences and his dismissal from the CIA) and means (ties to the agency with long experience in assassination) to carry this out. Douglass shows how Dulles got himself appointed to the Warren Commission and was its most diligent member; the only member to attend all its meetings. Douglass often documents how what witnesses reported differs from their testimony in the Commission’s minutes.

Here are some of my observations that I have never seen anywhere in print:

• Conspiracy debunkers use police and autopsy reports with no skepticism. Douglass shows how some police work was co-opted and the autopsy was not allowed to progress according to accepted practice. Police and physicians as well as witnesses were silenced, severely altering the record.

• Arlen Specter who as a staff member of the Warren Commission co-authored the single bullet theory, was a rising star in Democratic politics. In 1965 he became a Republican. Local politics are the official reason, but there are official stories for too many involved with this assassination and its cover up. Specter changed parties again – in 2010.

• There are YouTube clips of Judyth Baker ( Me & Lee: How I Came to Know, Love and Lose Lee Harvey Oswald) that chronicle her 1963 romance with Oswald. While her story is not accepted as mainstream, could her romance have been with the Oswald double? Some of the pictures she has posted show Oswald with beefier face; the Oswald at the Russian Embassy in Mexico was said to be a bit bigger than the real Oswald.

• I personally know someone who may have had prior knowledge of the JFK assassination. In the 1960's he was sent to Attica Prison for a murder and may still be there. He did not seem to be the kind of guy who would kill a woman in her kitchen. He as a driver for an important mob figure. Was he set up to get him off the stage like so many others with foreknowledge?

Douglass quotes and references Thomas Merton at the beginning and end and at places in the middle of this is a cautionary tale. He writes not only of moral values, but also Merton’s prescience about Kennedy's fate. Similarly Kennedy's Commencement Speech at American University (which appears in the Appendix) is frequently cited.

Here is a very real “deep state” of “unelected” bureaucrats. It is not a deep state not of liberals, as envisioned by the people who use these terms; but a “deep state” of "unelected" conservatives.

This is an important book. Its contents should be taught in American history classes.