The CIA’s plausible deniability for crimes of state, as exemplified by JFK’s murder, corresponds in our politics to what Thomas Merton called “the Unspeakable.” For Merton, the unspeakable was ultimately a void, an emptiness of any meaning, an abyss of lies and deception. He wrote the following description of the unspeakable shortly after the publication of The Warren Report, which he could have been describing: “[The Unspeakable]
