James W. Douglass

The acclaimed book Oliver Stone called “the best account I have read of this tragedy and its significance,” JFK and the Unspeakable details not just how the conspiracy to assassinate President John F. Kennedy was carried out, but WHY it was done…and why it still matters today.At the height of the Cold War, JFK risked committing the greatest crime in human history: starting a nuclear war. Horrified by the specter of nuclear annihilation, Kennedy gradually turned away from his long-held Cold Warrior beliefs and toward a policy of lasting peace. But to the military and intelligence agencies in the United States, who were committed to winning the Cold War at any cost, Kennedy’s change of heart was a direct threat to their power and influence. Once these dark “Unspeakable” forces recognized that Kennedy’s interests were in direct opposition to their own, they tagged him as a dangerous traitor, plotted his assassination, and orchestrated the subsequent cover-up.Douglass takes readers into the Oval Office during the tense days of the Cuban Missile Crisis, along on the strange journey of Lee Harvey Oswald and his shadowy handlers, and to the winding road in Dallas where an ambush awaited the President’s motorcade. As Douglass convincingly documents, at every step along the way these forces of the Unspeakable were present, moving people like pawns on a chessboard to promote a dangerous and deadly agenda.JFK and the Unspeakable shot up to the top of the bestseller charts when Oliver Stone first brought it to the world’s attention on Bill Maher’s show. Since then, it has been lauded by Mark Lane (author of Rush to Judgment , who calls it “an exciting work with the drama of a first-rate thriller”), John Perkins (author of Confessions of an Economic Hit Man , who proclaims it is “arguably the most important book yet written about an American president), and Robert F. Kennedy, Jr., who calls it “a very well-documented and convincing portrait…I urge all Americans to read this book and come to their own conclusions.”

In 1948, at the dawn of his country s independence, Mohandas Gandhi, father of the Indian independence movement and a beloved prophet of nonviolence, was assassinated by Hindu nationalists. In riveting detail, author James W. Douglass shows as he previously did with the story of JFK how police and security forces were complicit in the assassination and how in killing one man, they hoped to destroy his vision of peace, nonviolence, and reconciliation. Gandhi had long anticipated and prepared for this fate. In reviewing the little-known story of his early experiments in truth in South Africa the laboratory for Gandhi s philosophy of satyagraha, or truth force Douglass shows how early he confronted and overcame the fear of death. And, as with his account of JFK s death, he shows why this story matters: what we can learn from Gandhi s truth in the struggle for peace and reconciliation today.

One of the ten best religious books of 1968 . . . a fascinating proposal of revolutionary action through non-violence from the Judeo-Christian faith and the experiments in truth of Gandhi. 'New Book Review' 'The Non-Violent Cross' was a crucial text to push me into becoming a pacifist. It remains as relevant today as it was when first published in 1966. Douglass was in conversation not only with Catholic perspectives but also John Howard Yoder. Indeed he was among the first to show us how the most orthodox Christian claims committed the church to the practice of non-violence. We are in Wipf & Stock's debt for bringing the book back into print. Stanley Hauerwas, Duke University It will be Jim's reflections on nonviolence and just war theory for which he will be remembered best. And it is here that his language stretches, bends, and breaks under the strain of the inexplicable. For he is not just settling arguments. He is trying to convey the meaning of the kingdom of Reality which will be the final victory of Truth in history. If that kingdom is ever to come, it will be people like Jim who blazed the way. Walter Wink Not only is this book the most thoroughgoing treatment to date of non-violence...but in its analyses of the current scene it is also a 'tract for the times.' The Christian Century

I rejoice in this day and in this book becoming available once again. At Jonah House, the place I've called home for 33 years, we've had numerous copies of it in the years since it was first published. One copy remains - dog-eared, read, reread, studied. It was a book that we reflected on together in community - the backbone, if you will, next to the Scriptures - of our on-going resistance out of community. Elizabeth McAlister, Jonah House (from the foreword) This book has been of extraordinary significance to large numbers of young people, resisters, prisoners, searchers, many who have been increasingly perplexed and anguished by the course of American life in the world. My brother Philip and I have used it in numerous sessions with students and others, who found in it the sustenance necessary to allow them to take the next step in their struggle on behalf of life. It seems to me that this book will continue, in its own quiet and persistent way, to reach those Americans who are capable of inviting us into any future worth speaking about. Daniel Berrigan From perspectives of truth, nonviolence and resistance to personal and cultural violence, this book is among the few important books of the last decade. Neutrality to this book is impossible -- people will view it as a gift, or they will reject it as a threat....enlightening, strengthening, liberating. Philip Berrigan Jim Douglass is a writer and a Catholic Worker. He and his wife Shelley are co-founders of the Ground Zero Center for Nonviolent Action in Poulsbo, WA, and Mary's House, a Catholic Worker house of hospitality in Birmingham, AL. He is currently writing three books on the assassinations of the Kennedys, Malcom X and King in the 1960's (with Orbis Books). The James Douglass Reprint The Non-Violent Cross Resistance and Contemplation Lightning East to West The Nonviolent Coming of God

In this, his most eloquent and far-reaching book, James Douglass explores the haunting parallels between the situation of Jesus and our situation today. Jesus, who lived in anticipation of the impending destruction of Jerusalem by the Romans and suffered from this vision, called urgently for a radical conversion to avert the tragedy. The choice then - as now - was between nonviolence and nonexistence. This choice is even more stark in the nuclear age. Whether describing the visions of Gandhi, Martin Luther King, Jr, Archbishop Romero, or the witness of his own community against the White Train carrying warheads across the country, Douglass can discern the sights of a second coming, a nonviolent coming of God. The possibility for a different future depends on a different kind of humanity, renewed and transformed by the nonviolent cross of Christ.

"The exact opposite of the H-bomb's destructive purpose, but psychic equivalent of its energy, is the kingdom of Reality which would be the final victory of Truth in history-a force of truth and love powerful enough to fuse billions of individual psyches into a global realization of essential oneness..."

At the height of the Cold War, JFK risked committing the greatest crime in human starting a nuclear war. Horrified by the specter of nuclear annihilation, Kennedy gradually turned away from his long-held Cold Warrior beliefs and toward a policy of lasting peace. But to the military and intelligence agencies in the United States, who were committed to winning the Cold War at any cost, Kennedy's change of heart was a direct threat to their power and influence. Once these dark "Unspeakable" forces recognized that Kennedy's interests were in direct opposition to their own, they tagged him as a dangerous traitor, plotted his assassination, and orchestrated the subsequent cover-up.Douglass takes listeners into the Oval Office during the tense days of the Cuban Missile Crisis, along on the strange journey of Lee Harvey Oswald and his shadowy handlers, and to the winding road in Dallas where an ambush awaited the president's motorcade. As Douglass convincingly documents, at every step along the way, these forces of the Unspeakable were present, moving people like pawns on a chessboard to promote a dangerous and deadly agenda.

Here at last is the long-awaited sequel to James Douglass's bestselling work, JFK and the Why He Died and Why It Matters. That book, unlike most books that posit a conspiracy in JFK's assassination, focuses less on "who dunnit" as on "why they dunnit." Douglas's answer was to trace the steps by which JFK moved from being a traditional Cold Warrior to a prophetic commitment to peace, willing to risk his own life in order to avoid nuclear war. In particular JFK's partnership in pursuit of peace with ostensible adversary, Nikita Khrushchev, caused him to be regarded as a traitor by elements of the military-industrial-intelligence complex who deployed the mechanisms of the National Security State--which had previously targeted foreign "threats"--to neutralize the President of the United States.This new volume necessarily returns to the story of JFK, and demonstrates how the same story was enacted again and again in the deaths of his brother, Bobby Kennedy, as well as the killings of Malcolm X and Martin Luther King, Jr. In each case, American figures who made a prophetic commitment to peace and social transformation were regarded as enemies of the state who had to be eliminated. Douglass believes that this hidden history holds a key to recovering and advancing their mission, and setting our country and the world on a path to peace.