Not in Your Lifetime: The Defining Book on the J.F.K. Assassination

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At the time of his assassination, claims Douglass, Kennedy was growing disillusioned by the growing influence of the military industrial complex in American foreign policy. In fact the author asserts that, had he lived, Kennedy would have likely de-escalated the growing war in Vietnam that came to define the 1960s. (Just imagine, Douglass says, how different America would be today if the Vietnam War had wound down by the mid-Sixties.) Saying Jim Douglass is a liberation theologian and not a journalist is meaningless. Most journalists are coverup artists, and when did journalists become the only writers who could research and write about the JFK assassination. Who is a journalist? What is the ultimate goal of a journalist? I presume the truth. That is Jim Douglass’s goal as well. What is the ultimate goal of a sociologist or historian – the truth. JFK and the Unspeakable is based on rigorous research, and because a key part of Douglass’s thesis is that JFK underwent a spiritual transformation takes away not one jot from its persuasiveness; rather, it explains the deep motivation behind JFK’s decisions and the reasons why others thought he had to die. What does it mean to write that someone’s concern is ultimately spiritual? Is a journalist’s goal ultimately secular? What doe “ultimate” mean? It was originally released in 1989 and puts together all the facts that are there which indicate that there is a lot more about Kennedy’s death than what the general public knows. In the book, the author shows raw photos, documentation, and exclusive interviews that each play a part in solving the puzzle of the president’s assassination. Research Results From a World-Class Reported Summers’s biography of Richard Nixon revealed the tormented president’s efforts to get mental health treatment, a previously unknown and revealing story that was remarkably fair to an easily demonized figure. As a result of his fact-finding skills, “Not In Your Lifetime” is more empirical than theoretical, a rare thing in the literature of JFK’s assassination.

Rush to Judgment by Mark Lane is one of the best-selling Kennedy assassination books of all time, spending 29 weeks on the New York Times’ best-selling list. It was released in 1966, just three years after the events on the 22 nd of November in 1963, making it one of the first John F Kennedy assassination books. This is probably a big reason for its success. Debunking the ShootingSpeculation about Oswald’s activities on his Mexico trip have long fueled one of the most popular JFK-related conspiracy theories, which argues that Cuban dictator Fidel Castro plotted to assassinate Kennedy as revenge for the Bay of Pigs invasion. In the 1970s, revelations that the Kennedy administration made various attempts to assassinate Castro fueled the idea that Castro acted first against Kennedy. Serving as a Chief of Special Operations under the Kennedy administration, L. Fletcher Prouty decided to put pen to paper and give us one of the best-rated Kennedy assassination books in existence. Prouty, a former colonel in the US Army, eventually turned to banking and became a critic of US foreign policy and the existence and practices of the CIA, the very same reasons that many believe JFK was killed for. Full disclosure: I thought “Not In Your Lifetime” was the best introduction to the JFK story before I met its author. Since then I have become a personal friend of Summers. Readers must decide for themselves if I am biased. The best way to do that is to read “Not in Your Lifetime.”

The interior of the Presidential limousine after the Kennedy assassination How Many JFK AssassinationFiles Have Been Declassified? On November 22, 1963, the 35th President of the US was assassinated, thus ending his life at the age of just 46 years old. This tragic event occurred mid-day, at 12:30 PM to be exact. The brutal assassination took place in Dallas, Texas, and was during a presidential motorcade through Dealey Plaza. The detailed analysis of the events prior, during, and after the assassination, as well as the inclusion of some never-before-seen photographs from November 22, 1963, make this one of the best books on Kennedy assassination, and one that is definitely worth a read.As one of the most popular Kennedy assassination books out there, you can expect to learn a lot of new details about the case from Plausible Denial. Mark Lane, who released this book 25 years after the first book he wrote on this topic, continues with his groundbreaking discoveries and reports about the case and uncovers how former CIA operatives either helped the convicted murderer or helped him in his plans to kill the president. Lifton writes about how even the highest levels of the federal government were involved, and that somewhere during his short stint as president, JFK did something or multiple things that would make him a target, eventually leading up to him getting eliminated. Answering Crucial Questions Douglass’s “JFK and the Unspeakable” is better than “Reclaiming History” and “Legacy of the Secrecy” in this regard, but I think it still suffers from the fact that Douglass is a liberation theologian, not a journalist. His concern is ultimately spiritual. Since my spirit is like-minded, I don’t hesitate to recommend Douglass’s book to newcomers to the JFK story. But I have to admit that Douglass’s work is sometimes permissive in its standards of evidence. It does not have the rigor of “Not in Your Lifetime.”

Are persons who would think up Operation Northwoods not capable of planning to kill a President too? Our Man In Mexico: Winston Scott and the Hidden History of the CIA by Jefferson Morley. Though not about the JFK assassination per se this book is unrivaled in how it pursues and presents Lee Harvey Oswald’s undeniably peculiar relationship with intelligence agencies. After reading it I could not help but conclude that James Jesus Angleton - chief of the CIA's counterintelligence staff from 1954 to 1975 – was running an operation in which Oswald was involved and one most likely concerning the President of the United States. What makes Morley’s writing so impressive is how skillfully he avoids speculation, like that which I just expressed (smile). To his credit he has attempted to bring a more rational approach to those within the JFK assassination study community with his ‘JFK Facts’ portaland his efforts to get remaining documents declassified are nothing short of heroic. As for substantiating Colonel Prouty – Mr. Morley told me in 2010, “Fletcher Prouty is eminently credible.” Though I wonder over Talbot’s omission of Col. Prouty, I whole-heartedly share the respect he expresses for Jefferson Morley (“ We need the facts – as Jefferson Morley, one of the few journalists to devote serious effort to the Kennedy case, has demonstrated. Morley has been pursuing a lengthy Freedom of Information battle with the CIA to pry loose more than 1,500 documents that the agency is still concealing in defiance of the 1992 JFK Records Act.”) And we are not alone – Morley’s journalistic career and authorship is widely lauded.On November 22nd, 1963, Bobby Kennedy received a phone call that altered his life forever. The president, his brother, had been shot. JFK would not survive. Lifton's technique in the book is to discuss his personal journey into the world of assassination researchers, and then through to publishing this. He documents his relationship at UCLA with Warren Commission staffer Wesley Liebler, which is a delightful addition to the book. The reason why Lane claims that the CIA eliminated JFK is that he had plans of dissolving the agency. He also goes in on the media, blaming them for not covering the conviction trials of the alleged murderer closely, and for failing to give any sort of credibility to potentially promising conspiracy theories.

The reason why this is one of the best Kennedy assassination books out there is that it goes very in-depth on the topic and explains every detail of what was going on at the time. James explains how the CIA was trying to put JFK in the middle of a full-blown US invasion of Cuba, and how that raised tensions between the agency and the Kennedy administration. Covering More of John’s Life Among the strip mines, one-room schoolhouses, and dilapidated homes, however, Kennedy encountered a strong mistrust and intense resentment of establishment politicians. Once Kennedy started to waver on those Cold Warrior beliefs, the book claims he was marked for death by the military intelligence agencies that held (and still hold) huge influence over every level of government in the U.S. These forces, which Douglass call “the Unspeakable” (after Thomas Meryton), tagged Kennedy as a dangerous traitor, plotted his assassination, and orchestrated the subsequent killing and cover-up in Dallas in 1963. Jim Marrs is a seasoned Texas journalist, and his wealth of experience and ability to create presentable and understandable stories is what made his book – Crossfire one of the best books on Kennedy’s assassination in existence.

I don't like conspiracy theories because they require a machine with thousands of moving parts to operate flawlessly in total secrecy. A successful conspiracy, therefore, requires less than a handful of people to control the primary source of evidence. This is Lifton's premise regarding the Kennedy assassination. Most contributions to the JFK book depository have fingered at least some of the figures in the Garrison-Prouty conspiracy theory. The most recurrent prime suspect has been Cuba, which had been infuriated by the Bay of Pigs operation – Kennedy’s failed attempt to depose the Castro dictatorship through a CIA-run invasion by Cuban exiles. The communist island also features in Oswald’s still-mysterious trip, weeks before the Kennedy shooting, to Mexico City, where he apparently hoped to secure a visa to defect to Cuba. This unique photographic analysis of the events proved crucial in uncovering the truth of what actually happened, and turned many non-believers into believers that there was indeed something shady going on within the government. Most publications have been sceptical of this finding. On the Trail of the Assassins by Jim Garrison (1988), a Louisiana lawyer, and L Fletcher Prouty’s JFK: The CIA, Vietnam, and the Plot to Assassinate John F Kennedy (1992), featured key source material for Oliver Stone’s movie JFK(1991), which suggested that the president was executed by a vast cabal of businessmen, gangsters, politicians, soldiers, Cuban dissidents and spooks.