For years I have been lazy and uncritically accepted the government fiction that President Kennedy was killed by a “lone gunman” named Lee Harvey Oswald. Professional historians, after all, don’t buy into “conspiracy theories.” But while I have been asleep these last five decades, dozens of witnesses have come forth, sometimes after hiding for 30 years or more for fear of their lives, and finally agreed to tell their stories. Also the government declassified thousands of documents in the 1990s which have shed light on things previously hidden.

I won’t give all the arguments here. I will cite one source at the end which contains much documentation and a far more thorough presentation than I could make. Instead, I will merely state the conclusions. Every one of them will stand serious scrutiny.

JFK was NOT killed by a lone gunman. At least two and possibly more assassins shot at him on November 22, 1963. But none of them was Lee Harvey Oswald. Oswald actually admired Kennedy. He was a CIA asset whose sojourn in Russia was part of his work as a double agent. However, after he returned to America the CIA put him on a watch list of assets whose reliability might be questioned. Thus he was the perfect person to set up as a patsy. And that is exactly what happened, aided by a look-alike whose identity is unknown, but whose presence has been verified by many different witnesses.

The assassination was carried out by the CIA. Some of the conspirators were anti-Castro Cubans (from Alpha 66), along with some complicity by organized crime, or by CIA assets with mafia connections. The FBI and the Dallas Police Department (and possibly others) participated in the cover up. The Warren Commission concluded exactly what it was told to conclude, that there was no conspiracy and that Oswald acted alone. But they refused to ask fundamental questions or follow up promising leads, while the FBI and others actively destroyed evidence, intimidated witnesses, and killed a number of people who knew too much.

While Oswald was set up to take the blame, the Cubans and Russians were also implicated by the conspirators. To his credit, President Johnson refused to follow that trail to its logical conclusion. That is why the Warren Commission had to adopt the “lone gunman” fiction. However, Johnson also failed to follow the evidence leading to the U.S. government itself and thus destroyed both the life and the reputation of an innocent man.

So why did portions of the United States government execute its own President? Put simply, Kennedy had become a liability to certain interests – the CIA, the Joint Chiefs of Staff, the Military-Industrial-Political Complex, and all those for whom the Cold War had become a political religion. Kennedy had failed to be sucked into starting a broader war against Castro’s Cuba during the Bay of Pigs invasion in 1961 and incurred the wrath of the CIA and the Cuban refugee community. But in 1962 he brought the world to the brink of nuclear war during the Cuban Missile Crisis. That action made a profound impression on Kennedy, and started him on the road to giving up his Cold War ideology to pursue peace. In the eyes of the conspirators this was nothing short of treason.

Kennedy carried on a secret correspondence with both Nikita Khrushchev and later Fidel Castro. Ironically, the Soviet Premier faced the same problem with his own generals and arms merchants. Kennedy and Khrushchev became secret partners in trying to prevent nuclear holocaust and end the Cold War, actions deemed intolerable to those committed to victory at all costs and for whom compromise was tantamount to treason. Worse, Kennedy was actually planning a total withdrawal of American forces from Vietnam. So he had to go. Imagine how different modern history would have been had Kennedy lived long enough to put into practice the new ideas he was beginning to embrace.

The best single treatment of all this is a book by James W. Douglass, JFK and the Unspeakable. The subtitle is Why He Died and Why It Matters. I read the 2008 edition which corrected several unsupported statements in the earlier hardbound edition. The book is well-reasoned and heavily documented. The author has avoided speculation and confined himself to statements which can be supported by the evidence. One reason why I recommend this book is that its fairly recent origin has allowed the author to digest information made available only after many eyewitnesses began telling their stories late in life, and after the declassification of thousands of pages of documents by the government. The author is a Catholic theologian who admits his admiration of the monk Thomas Merton, but personal biases are few and handled in a professional and honest manner. I give my highest recommendation to this book despite the fact I may not agree 100% with all the author’s personal beliefs. For example, I am not and never have been a pacifist. Before deciding to recommend this book I checked out many of the footnotes and references, which is why I can state that if you can only read one book about the crime of the century, this should be that book.