Into the unspeakable
People of a certain age remember what they were doing when President John F. Kennedy was assassinated in Dallas on November 22, 1963. My husband recalls a classroom in New York where a boy cried out loud when he heard the news from the public-address system before everyone was sent home.
I was in Havana, Cuba and, having survived the dark days of the Bay of Pigs and the Missile Crisis, hearing the news that the President of the United States was dead was another in a series of calamities. I had just turned six, but we children in families that didn’t support the Revolution had to grow up quickly. We learned to resist the counsel in school to inform on the “anti-revolutionaries” who were usually our parents and we learned how to keep our mouths shut when talk turned to the glories of Fidel Castro.
I remember the shocked expression on my aunt’s face as we heard the news of Kennedy’s assassination on the old cathedral radio. There was a hush in the streets–even in Havana. (That being said, former CIA director George H.W. Bush claims he doesn’t remember where he was, although sources place him in Dallas on the day of JFK’s death. It’s not known if he was reading The Pet Goat at the time.)
JFK’s assassination is the subject of the magisterial JFK and the Unspeakable: Why He Died and Why It Matters by James W. Douglass. I read the book in August 2008 and, on February 8, my husband and I had the privilege of hearing Douglass speak on the subject in St. Petersburg, FL. As Douglass announced, his JFK book is the first in a trilogy that will also explore the assassinations of Malcolm X and Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. in one volume and the death of Robert F. Kennedy in the final book. All of these shameless murders are related and can be traced to the “unspeakable,” monk and spiritual writer Thomas Merton’s term for the evil loose in the world. (Here, you can watch Douglass lecture on the book.)
Through well documented research, Douglass pieces together what we’ve always known was the lie perpetrated on the public by the Warren Commission. His contention is that the powers within the military and CIA fiefdoms orchestrated JFK’s assassination after a series of “turnings” on the President’s part that made him a marked man. Please read this marvelous book to gather all the nuances in Douglass’ argument, but suffice it to say that a landmark speech that JKF made at American University on June 10, 1963 is one of those turnings. (When Caroline Kennedy and her uncle Ted Kennedy declared their support for President Barack Obama, they did so at American University as an obvious tribute to their father and brother’s stand for world peace at that same location.)
Douglass spells out the Chicago plot that was a virtual rehearsal for Dallas, including a carbon copy of Lee Harvey Oswald’s ex-military patsy in the form of a disturbed stooge named Thomas Vallee. The story I found most compelling in Douglass’ book is the pilloring of Abraham Bolden, the first African-American member of the Secret Service. In exchange for speaking out, this courageous man was slandered and punished. Bolden’s story and Douglass’ compelling case for JFK’s stand against the unspeakable are reasons enough to read this marvelous book.
“Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it,” as George Santayana observed. It’s within us to remember the past and to continue to speak out against the unspeakable.
