I've been listening to a book on audible called JFK and the Unspeakable: Why He Died and Why It Matters. The author makes mention of Thomas Merton, who was a pacifist, and his answer to "why" Kennedy was marked for assassination- because he chose peace over war. Kennedy resisted using nuclear weapons, and he was planning to draw down all the troops from Vietnam by the end of 1963.
At the height of the Cold War, JFK risked committing the greatest crime in human history: starting a nuclear war. Horrified by the specter of nuclear annihilation, Kennedy gradually turned away from his long-held Cold Warrior beliefs and toward a policy of lasting peace. But to the military and intelligence agencies in the United States, who were committed to winning the Cold War at any cost, Kennedy's change of heart was a direct threat to their power and influence. Once these dark "Unspeakable" forces recognized that Kennedy's interests were in direct opposition to their own, they tagged him as a dangerous traitor, plotted his assassination, and orchestrated the subsequent cover-up.
Douglass takes listeners into the Oval Office during the tense days of the Cuban Missile Crisis, along on the strange journey of Lee Harvey Oswald and his shadowy handlers, and to the winding road in Dallas where an ambush awaited the president's motorcade. As Douglass convincingly documents, at every step along the way, these forces of the Unspeakable were present, moving people like pawns on a chessboard to promote a dangerous and deadly agenda.
It made me want to learn more about Merton. I think I will start with the Seven Storey Mountain and keep going.
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