Thanks to the pioneer investigators into President Kennedy's murder, the truth-telling of many witnesses, and a recent flood of documents through the JFK Records Act, the truth is available. Not only can the conspiracy that most Americans have thought was likely now be seen in detail. Not only can we know what happened in Dallas. More important than filling in the crime scene, we can know the larger historical context of the assassination-why

President Kennedy was murdered.

In brief that story is:

On our behalf, at the height of the Cold War, John F. Kennedy

risked committing the greatestcrime in history, starting a nuclear war.

Before we knew it, he turned toward peace with the enemy who almost committed that crime with him. For turning to peace with his enemy (and ours ) , Kennedy was murdered by a power we cannot easily describe. Its unspeakable reality can be traced, suggested, recognized, and pondered. That is one purpose of this book.

The other is to describe Kennedy's turning.

I hope that, by following the story of JFK's encounter with the unspeakable, we will be willing to encounter it, too. John Kennedy's story is our story, although a titanic effort has been made to keep it from us. That story, like the struggle it embodies, is as current today as it was in 1963. The theology of redemptive violence still reigns. The Cold War has been followed by its twin, the War on Terror. We are engaged in another apocalyptic struggle against an enemy seen as absolute evil. Terrorism has replaced Communism as the enemy. We are told we can be safe only through the threat of escalating violence. Once again, anything goes in a fight against evil: preemptive attacks, torture, undermining governments, assassinations, whatever it takes to gain the end of victory over an enemy portrayed as irredeemably evil. Yet the redemptive means John Kennedy turned to, in a similar struggle,

was dialogue with the enemy.

When the enemy is seen as human, everything changes.