After more than a half century, the historical truth of the assassination of President John F. Kennedy has been finally established beyond rational dispute. The Kennedy assassination is a false mystery. It was conceived by the conspirators to be a false mystery which was designed to cause interminable debate. The purpose of the protracted debate was to obscure what was quite clearly and plainly a coup d’état. Simply stated, President Kennedy was assassinated by our U.S. national security state in order to abort his efforts to bring the Cold War to a peaceful conclusion.

—Vincent Salandria, 2016

Released on the 100th anniversary of the birth of John Fitzgerald Kennedy, this an expanded 2017 digital edition.

MAY 29, 2017 – rat haus reality press, ratical.org (PDF format) — Released today: a greatly expanded digital edition of the book John Kelin first created in 1999.

This archival treasury contains the essays by Philadelphia lawyer Vincent J. Salandria from 1964 into 2016 presenting his evolving understanding of the assassination of President Kennedy.

Beginning with authoring the first critical analysis of the contradictions between the Warren Report and the 26 volumes of Hearings and Exhibits, showing in extensive detail how the conclusions did not match the evidence the government published, Salandria went on to study the crux of the matter: the why of the assassination.

John Fitzgerald Kennedy was born 100 years ago today. This book celebrates and is dedicated to the courageous stand he took on behalf of all people everywhere to choose peace over war. As author Jim Douglass distills this:

Because John Kennedy chose peace on earth at the height of the Cold War, he was executed. But because he turned toward peace, in spite of the consequences to himself, humanity is still alive and struggling. That is hopeful. Especially if we understand what he went through and what he has given to us as his vision.

At a certain point in his presidency, John Kennedy turned a corner and he didn’t look back. I believe that decisive turn toward his final purpose in life, resulting in his death, happened in the darkness of the Cuban Missile Crisis. Although Kennedy was already in conflict with his national security managers, the missile crisis was the breaking point. At that most critical moment for us all, he turned from any remaining control that his security managers had over him toward a deeper ethic, a deeper vision in which the fate of the earth became his priority. Without losing sight of our own best hopes in this country, he began to home in, with his new partner, Nikita Khrushchev, on the hope of peace for everyone on this earth—Russians, Americans, Cubans, Vietnamese, Indonesians, everyone on this earth—no exceptions. He made that commitment to life at the cost of his own. What a transforming story that is. And what a propaganda campaign has been waged to keep us Americans from understanding that story, from telling it, and from re-telling it to our children and grandchildren. Because that’s a story whose telling can transform a nation. But when a nation is under the continuing domination of an idol, namely war, it is a story that will be covered up. When the story can liberate us from our idolatry of war, then the worshippers of the idol are going to do everything they can to keep the story from being told. From the standpoint of a belief that war is the ultimate power, that’s too dangerous a story. It’s a subversive story. It shows a different kind of security than always being ready to go to war. It’s unbelievable—or we’re supposed to think it is—that a president was murdered by our own government agencies because he was seeking a more stable peace than relying on nuclear weapons. It’s unspeakable. For the sake of a nation that must always be preparing for war, that story must not be told. If it were, we might learn that peace is possible without making war. We might even learn there is a force more powerful than war. How unthinkable! But how necessary if life on earth is to continue. That is why it is so hopeful for us to confront the unspeakable and to tell the transforming story of a man of courage, President John F. Kennedy. It is a story ultimately not of death but of life—all our lives. In the end, it is not so much a story of one man as it is a story of peacemaking when the chips are down. That story is our story, a story of hope.

Concerning Jim’s landmark book, JFK and the Unspeakable – Why He Died and Why It Matters, mutual friend and author Marty Schotz has observed:

“What Jim did was to resurrect the JFK in each of us, and thus to set before us the task of carrying on the work he was doing. Jim was able to do this because he saw and was able to render JFK’s story as a gospel tale.”

Vincent Salandria’s dedication of bearing witness to and following the polestar of historical truth emits a light we can all likewise be guided by. In doing so, we can join in the sacred work of supporting the exquisite eons of Life exploring itself on Earth for the seventh generation yet unborn and beyond.