Author: James W. Douglass 2008
Orbis Books/ Maryknoll, New York
Kennedy’s Turn Toward Peace
By Sabina Clarke
If you doubt what kind of nefarious crimes our government is capable of …put your doubts aside and read this exhaustively researched and well documented piece of important history by peace activist and writer James Douglass. Douglass’ book, now in its fourth printing, is packed with illuminating details that I have not come across before.
He supplies proof that JFK planned to pull out of Vietnam and gives hard evidence of the obstacles JFK faced daily in his own administration, like the ongoing treachery of the CIA, the Central Intelligence Agency and the constant push of his generals urging the use of military force.
In fact, JFK was almost totally isolated and at odds with his own government during the entire span of his too brief presidency, with the exception of a few trusted advisors.
For Kennedy, the Cuban Missile Crisis was a wake-up call. The CIA and the military tried to ensnare him in a war but Kennedy called their bluff –risking personal criticism by accepting defeat at the Bay of Pigs instead.
When he realized the extent of the deception by the CIA and its Director Allen Dulles, he said that he would like to “splinter the CIA in a thousand pieces and scatter it to the winds.” He immediately fired Richard Bissell, the CIA planner in the Bay of Pigs debacle and replaced him with Richard Helms, who was not much better. Helms went on to orchestrate a clandestine plan to assassinate Fidel Castro without informing the President.
JFK’s attempt to deal with the agency and limit their power was not well received. The CIA was accustomed to operating as an independent agency--accountable to no one--not even the President. When Kennedy tried to put a stop to what had been going on there forever-- he became a marked man.
Surrounded by Cold War advisers, Kennedy tried to end the Cold War. And his independence became a problem for both the CIA and the Pentagon. He initiated the nuclear test ban treaty with Premier Nikita Khrushchev and also initiated unofficial back-channels of communication with both Khrushchev and Fidel Castro and Pope John XXIII. He was deeply influenced by the Pope’s encyclical Pacem in Terris which preceded his famous peace speech at American University.
Kennedy’s 1963 speech to students at American University which mirrored his turn towards peace was ignored by the American media but hailed by Khrushchev who called it “the greatest speech ever given by an American president other than Roosevelt.” It reflected the direction Kennedy intended to take and made him a marked man.
Douglass gives convincing proof that the CIA killed John Kennedy in an elaborately orchestrated plot with the intention of making Cuba and the U.S.S.R. scapegoats through Lee Harvey Oswald. Their plan almost succeeded.
Now, 62 years later, few thinking Americans accept that Oswald was the lone gunmen. Too many questions linger. Too many strange things happened to witnesses such as sudden unexplained deaths and disappearances and witnesses who went silent or into hiding realizing the dangers they faced.
Doctors at Parkland Hospital in Dallas where the President was taken after he was shot were forced to change their statements out of fear for their lives. And doctors who performed the President’s autopsy at Bethesda Naval Hospital did so under extreme duress and the watchful eye of the military. Government intimidation extended to all areas of law enforcement and Douglass gives specific and shocking examples of the ironclad government cover-up.
Douglass sees Kennedy’s intent to withdraw troops from Vietnam as “the final nail in the coffin” for JFK. He provides proof via a signed order that Kennedy gave to his Secretary of Defense, Robert McNamara stating his intention to pull one thousand troops of the U.S. military out of Vietnam by the end of 1963 and all of them by 1965. McNamara relayed this to the generals who were instructed to begin implementing a plan for the withdrawal. They were outraged.
Following a meeting in 1961 with his military advisers General Lemnitzer and General Le May in which they urged him to use nuclear weapons in Berlin and Southeast Asia, Kennedy walked out and said, “These people are crazy.” Kennedy’s desire to negotiate with the enemy and find common ground was viewed by the Generals as treason and at odds with the Cold War mentality. The CIA saw their power eroding.
Besides government adversaries, both John Kennedy and Robert Kennedy were enemies of big business whose interests at the top were tied to the military industrial complex. JFK immediately withdrew a defense contract from U.S. Steel when U.S. Steel raised its prices while Robert Kennedy simultaneously launched an investigation into their corporate echelon making them both targets.
Lee Harvey Oswald emerges as the victim of a conspiracy not the President’s assassin. Douglass investigates his background in detail and concludes that Oswald was set-up to take the blame for the assassination. The CIA created an elaborately fabricated back story about Oswald as a disenchanted malcontent who was pro-Castro. In reality, Douglass says that Oswald was a double agent working in counterintelligence for the CIA.
Oswald was set up to be a patsy. His entire story was fabricated to mislead the American public into thinking he was the disgruntled assassin—the lone gunmen. When Oswald first hit American soil after returning from his assignment in Russia, his handlers, whom Douglass identifies, had connections to higher-ups in our government.
In fact, there was at least one Oswald double—and Douglass gives some pretty convincing facts to substantiate this.
This is a meticulously researched book that should be studied by any serious student of history and by future generations and any citizen interested in finding out how a President in 20th century America can be murdered by his own government without any serious consequences while his murderers, with blood on their hands, remain at loose and in government.
