JFK and the Unspeakable: Why He Died and Why It Matters

by James W. Douglass

Once the Chicago plot failed, the Dallas assassination was allowed to happen, unimpeded by the intelligence community’s knowledge of its forerunner. After Dallas, Vallee alone was exposed in Chicago, as if the only precedent were that of another gun-toting malcontent like Lee Harvey Oswald. The real parallels between the two CIA-connected scapegoats, both set up ...

Chicago plot to assassinate John F. Kennedy strongly suggests their having been coordinated in a single, comprehensive scenario. If Kennedy had been murdered in Chicago on the day after Diem’s and Nhu’s murders in Saigon, the juxtaposition of the events would have created the perfect formula to be spoon-fed to the public: “Kennedy murdered Diem, and got what he deserved.” The legend created for the Dallas scenario of the gun-toting malcontent Lee Harvey Oswald followed a similar pattern. From the claims made by a series of CIA officers to the authors of widely disseminated books and articles, John Kennedy has been convicted in his grave of having tried to kill Fidel Castro, whose supposedly deranged surrogate, Lee Harvey Oswald, then

retaliated. As a successful Chicago plot would have done, the Dallas plot ended up blaming the victim: “Kennedy tried to murder Castro, and got what he deserved.”

The Pentagon Papers: The Defense Department History of the United States Decision Making on Vietnam, Senator Gravel

Edition, 5 vols. (Boston: Beacon Press, 1972), vol. 2, p. 724. [54]. David T. Ratcliffe, Understanding Special Operations and Their Impact on the Vietnam War Era: 1989 Interview with L. Fletcher Prouty Colonel USAF (Retired) (Santa Cruz, Calif.: rat haus reality press, 1999), pp. 68-70.

By a symbolic act, Lodge made certain the CIA in Vietnam

agent—Abraham Bolden.

From a letter in Vallee’s Marine Corps medical records dated February 23, 1956, “Subject: Psychiatric evaluation of

VALLEE, Thomas Arthur, Corporal, 111 44 55, United States Marine Corps.” Cited in Leonard Lewis FBI Report. Also FBI notation at the bottom of copy of letter from John Edgar Hoover, FBI Director, to Thomas A. Vallee, February 15, 1968. FBI Files, JFK Record Number 124-10335-10278.

Robert K. Tanenbaum, who was initially in charge of the House Select Committee on Assassinations investigation of JFK’s murder, has described a film he saw (in the HSCA evidence) of Cuban exiles in training near Lake Ponchartrain, with scenes that

included CIA officer David Atlee Phillips, CIA pilot David Ferrie, and Lee Harvey Oswald. Jim DiEugenio, “The Probe Interview: Bob Tanenbaum,” Probe (July-August 1996), p. 24; with reference to the film depicted in Robert Tanenbaum’s fictionalized account of his HSCA experience, Corruption of Blood (New York: Signet Books, 1996), pp. 168-71. When an orchestrated media campaign forced HSCA director Richard Sprague to resign, Tanenbaum also left the HSCA rather than participate in “American history that I knew to be absolutely false.” Tanenbaum Probe interview, p. 16.

Rust, Kennedy in Vietnam, p. 163; with reference to Church Committee, Alleged Assassination Plots Involving Foreign Leaders (Washington: U.S. Government Printing Office, 1975), p. 222. Conein said the CIA money he brought with him was also for “death benefits to the families of those [rebel soldiers] killed in the coup.” Ibid.

Testimony of Abraham Bolden. United States of America vs. Abraham W. Bolden. Appeal from the United States District Court for the Northern District of Illinois, Eastern Division, No. 14907; pages 44-45, 59.

[237]. Bernard Fensterwald, “The Case of Secret Service Agent Abraham W. Bolden—Who Wanted to Tell the Warren Commission about a Chicago Plot to Kill President Kennedy and Was Jailed Six Years for Trying,” Computers and Automation (June 1971), p. 42.

Douglas P. Horne, Inside the Assassination Records Review Board: The U.S. Government’s Final Attempt to Reconcile the Conflicting Medical Evidence in the Assassination of JFK, V (Amazon.com, 2009; also available from Mary Ferrell Foundation website), p. 1451.

The protective survey reports destroyed by the Secret Service covered all of JFK’s trips from September 24 through November 8, 1963, including three folders on his cancelled November 2, 1963, trip to Chicago (ibid., pp. 1453-54). Faced by a legal mandate to produce

specified evidence in the assassination of the president, the Secret Service had instead shredded two boxes of critical documents. On August 7, 1995, the ARRB’s Executive Director David G. Marwell sent a letter to Secret Service officials spelling out the criminal nature of their action: “The President John F. Kennedy Assassination Records Collection Act (JFK Act) forbids the destruction of any documents ‘created or made available for use by, obtained by, or [that] otherwise came into the possession of … the Select Committee on Assassinations … of the House of Representatives.’ It is our understanding that the records in Accession 87-75-0004 that the Secret Service destroyed were examined by the House Select Committee on Assassinations and thus were ‘assassination records’ under the JFK Act and they

apparently were destroyed in viol...

“We see the destruction of these assassination records as particularly ominous in light of the fact that the Secret Service revised its destruction schedule after passage of the JFK Act and that it targeted for destruction records that, at the time the law was passed, were slated to be held ‘permanently’” [emphasis in original]. Cited by Horne, ibid., p. 1456.

Douglas Horne reported that ARRB officials were then “considering holding public hearings in which the Secret Service officials responsible for said destruction would be called to account and castigated, in an open forum, with the media present” (ibid., p. 1451).

promising they would destroy no more records “related to Presidential protection for the years 1958-1969” without ARRB approval and would grant “full access to all Secret Service records upon demand” (ibid., p. 1457). However, the Chicago plot documents and many others were no longer accessible to anyone. They had already been criminally destroyed.

“Nothing is impossible.”[3]

final analysis, our most basic common link is that we all inhabit this small planet. We all breathe the same air. We all cherish our children’s future. And we are all mortal.”[4]

The anti-communist czars of our national security state thought the only way to end the Cold War was to win it.

When JFK went on a speaking tour of western states in September 1963, he discovered to his surprise that whenever he strayed from his theme of conservation to mention the test ban treaty, the crowds responded with ovations. He found that his beginning steps toward peace with Khrushchev had become popular in areas normally identified as bastions of the Cold War. When he spoke at the Mormon Tabernacle in Salt Lake City, usually considered the heart of conservatism, he was greeted by a five-minute standing ovation.[5] Intrigued White House correspondents suggested to Press Secretary Pierre Salinger that the president was suddenly tapping the public’s newfound desire for peace. Salinger agreed. “We’ve found that peace is an issue,” he said.[6] Kennedy realized from his trip west that he could

make peace much more of an election issue than he had thought.

But was it in fact Oswald at the gun shop or instead an impersonator who bore a resemblance to him? Why did the “ex-Marine” seem to deliberately make a scene while buying his ammunition? The Warren Report ignored the incident, thereby avoiding the question of a plant.

have to go back to Russia to buy a car.”[10] The Warren Report dismissed the provocative behavior of the young man at Downtown Lincoln Mercury, saying he couldn’t have been Oswald: Their descriptions didn’t match, Oswald couldn’t drive, and Oswald was apparently elsewhere that afternoon.[11] But the Warren Commission left unmentioned another possibility—that the “returnee from Russia” who “would soon have the cash” to buy a $3000 automobile was indeed not Lee Harvey Oswald but an imposter, planting fake evidence against the man whose name he was using as his own.

With no knowledge of any plots, Thomas Merton had simply understood that if Kennedy were to experience the deep change that was necessary for humanity’s survival, he himself might very well not survive: “such people are before long marked out for assassination.”[13]

JFK biographer Ralph Martin observed: “Kennedy talked a great deal about death, and about the assassination of Lincoln.”[14] Kennedy’s conscious model for struggling truthfully through conflict, and being ready to die as a consequence, was Abraham Lincoln. On the day when Kennedy and Khrushchev resolved the Missile Crisis, JFK told his brother, Robert, referring to the assassination of Lincoln, “This is the night I should go to the theater.”[15]

Evelyn Lincoln’s midnight discovery of the slip of paper JFK had written on, he had adopted Lincoln’s prayer: “I know there is a God—and I see a storm coming. If he has a place

for me, I believe that I am ready.”[16] Kennedy loved that prayer. He cited it at the annual presidential prayer breakfast on March 1, 1962,[17] and again in a speech in Frankfurt, Germany, on June 25, 1963.[18] More important, he made the prayer his own. Ever since his graceful journey on the currents of Ferguson Passage, Kennedy had known there was a God. In his deepening conflicts with the CIA and the military, he saw a storm coming. If God had a place for him, he believed that he, too, would be ready for the storm.

For at least a decade, his favorite poem had been “Rendezvous,” a celebration of death. “Rendezvous” was by Alan Seeger, an American poet killed in World War I. The poem was the author’s affirmation of his own anticipated death. Before the

United States entered the war, Alan Seeger, a recent Harvard graduate, volunteered for the French Foreign Legion. He was killed on July 4, 1916, while attacking a German position in northern France.[20]

On the morning of October 5, 1963, President Kennedy was meeting with his National Security Council in the White House Rose Garden. Caroline suddenly appeared at her father’s side. She said she wanted to tell him something. He tried to divert her

attention while the meeting continued. Caroline persisted. The president smiled and turned his full attention to his daughter. He told her to go ahead. While the members of the National Security Council sat and watched, Caroline looked into her father’s eyes and said:

I have a rendezvous with Death At some disputed barricade, When Spring comes back with rustling shade And apple-blossoms fill the air— I have a rendezvous with Death When Spring brings back...

And lead me into his dark land And close my eyes and quench my breath— It may be I shall pass him still. I have a rendezvous with Death On some scarred slope of battered hill, When Spring comes round again this year And the first meadow-flowers appear. God knows ’twere better to be deep Pillowed in silk and scented down, Where love throbs out in blissful sleep, Pulse nigh to pulse, and breath to breath, Where hushed awakenings are dear . . . But I’ve a rendezvous with Death

At midnight in some flaming town, When Spring trips north again this year, And I to my pledged word am true, I shall not fail that rendezvous.[22]

However, the testimony pointing to an Oswald in training with his rifle carried its own disturbing question as to how Oswald managed to be in two places at the same time. As we have seen, the CIA had already placed Oswald in Mexico City at the end of September, in another choreographed scenario at least equally damaging to his profile. In the end, the “rifle practice Oswald” had to be subtracted from the official biography of Lee Harvey Oswald

that the government composed for the Warren Report. For, according to the Warren Report, on September

then who was the Oswald look-alike suspiciously getting his telescopic sight adjusted at the same time on a Dallas rifle range?

The plane down the runway that Vinson climbed aboard was a propeller-driven C-54, a large cargo plane. Unlike all the other planes Vinson had hitched a ride on, the C-54 bore no military markings or serial numbers. Its only identification was on its tail—a rust-brown graphic of an egg-shaped earth, crossed by

white grid marks.[491]

When Vinson watched the televised events from Dallas later that weekend, he recognized Lee Harvey Oswald as identical to the shorter man he had seen board the plane.[496] Without ever having stopped its engines, the C-54 took off

“You’re at Roswell Air Force Base in New Mexico,” the AP said.[498] “I thought I was going to Denver, Colorado. How can I get downtown and catch a bus?” The Air Policeman told him he couldn’t go anywhere because the base was on alert. No one could come in or go out. Vinson thought that was strange because the C-54 had just

come in. How had their plane managed to enter a base that no one was allowed to enter? It didn’t occur to him that the arrival of their plane could have been the reason for the base’s closure to everyone else. That would explain why Vinson found the runway area deserted. At least one of the C-54 passengers was not supposed to be seen by anyone. But Vinson had seen him and had even flown out of Dallas with him, though he didn’t know the significance of the man whom he had seen.

sergeant, a friend told Robert and Roberta that their neighbors were being questioned by the FBI about what kind of people the Vinsons were and what they talked about. Not long after, Robert was ordered by his commanding officer to sign a new secrecy agreement. Roberta was also asked to fill out a personal history statement and sign a secrecy agreement, the first time she was ever required to do so as an Air Force wife.[501]

Blackbird SR 71 spy plane, at an air base hidden in the Nellis Mountains, forty miles northwest of Las Vegas.[504] In more recent years, after the base was closed especially because of radioactive contamination from the Nevada Test Site, this former CIA testing area was identified as Site 51.[505]

While Robert Vinson was working at Site 51, he saw a C-54 like the one that flew the second Oswald out of Dallas. On its tail was the same rust-brown graphic of an egg-shaped earth, crossed by white grid marks, that he had seen on the C-54 he boarded at Andrews. An Air Force sergeant at Site 51 confirmed the source of the plane he was looking at. “CIA,” he said.[509]