KILLING KENNEDY: Exposing the Plot, the Cover-up, and the Consequences by Jack Roth lives up to the great praise I so quickly saw for it when it seemed to burst on the scene.
I saw Jack speak at a conference a few weeks before I read this book - in just 3 or 4 helpings. I’ll say it. I couldn’t put it down.
The heart and soul of JFK are in it, matched by those of the people Jack interviewed. I am moved by people who give their lives to and for others. “There is no greater love than this: that a man gives his life for his brother.”
Kennedy gave his life for us. The people in Jack’s book have, too, with their years of work and/or reflection about JFK’s assassination, so we may know more about what happened and more about what we face as people who would self-govern.
Far may this book spread. More must discover, and be inspired by, Kennedy and his greatness. He confronted forces who kill to win so we might know freedom and dignity. We will have freedom and dignity when more of us do the same.
I s'pose my cherished collection of "JFK" books counts out to about 350. Add a 4-drawer filing cabinet of documents and photos and back issues of magazines, which consist of books about the JFK assassination, Bobby's, MLK's; picture books, political books and novels (Brave New World, 1984, Johnny Got His Gun, Catch 22 Etc.) Been doin' "the work" since 2 days after I met Senator Bobby, shook his hand, looked into his soulful eyes and felt his pain, drive and humanity. Yes, 2-days because I met him on June 2, 1968 and on the 4th ...Bobby was felled. AND many of us knew it to have been another Coup d' Etat when the "lone nut," Sirhan, was apprehended in a hypnotic stupor, from which he is yet to emerge-if he is allowed to breathe much longer. (not while Govern Newsom rules the People's Republic of California).
Jack Roth has gathered-up and beautifully packaged a flyover, above the landscape of concerned people, who fail to swallow the milquetoast reports from on-high, which cover up real truths. Better, yet, "Killing Kennedy" deals much more with the human experience of surviving the toxic reverberations of the coups. "Killing Kennedy" touches on the real tragedies which are the gang rape and murder of our political innocence and the destruction of the illusion of "Camelot."
I have been working for years on a photo book which, in pictures, attempts to visually tell the kind of story Roth does in his excellent book. Humanity continues to writhe and gag from the oppressive silencing of truth; from the garroting of evidence and those who carry it. We continue to long for that cool breeze of satisfaction which comes when one knows the real facts, knows where the dangers were and feels safe from most villainous abuse.
Alas--- truth, liberty, security and community do not come from feelings. They are earned by actions, vigilance, insistence on truth and by having the courage to be real with one another.
Books such as Jack Roth's "Killing Kennedy" are rare in a world dripping with excitement, special effects and deadly force-where people are given to feel stuff. Killing Kennedy begins to morph feelings of spite and aggression into the desire to amplify our emotions into constructive actions, leading to the creation of a context of progress such that we will no longer accept data and bullshit which disrupt our natural and preferred human condition of peace and community.
This position of mine has come after 54 years of research---before Google and electronic resources. I have this position after meeting the likes of, now deceased, Penn Jones Jr., Jack White, Mark Lane, Edmund C. Berkeley, Robert B. Cutler, and a long line of erudite presenters at conferences.
Thank you, Jack Roth and those real humans in "Killing Kennedy" for a line of expose's which warm the heart from feelings of compassion, admiration and the urge to commune for a purpose--to reveal truth and live well in its light.