C.I.A. Assassin Admits To Killing Famous Trappist Monk And Influential Vietnam War Protester

The 1968 Assassination of Trappist Monk and Vietnam War Protester Thomas Merton

SOTNEditor’s Note: The following exposé is particularly meaningful for one of the editors because he went to Saint Bonaventure University nestled in the Allegheny foothills of southwestern New York state. Looking out the largest library window, one’e eyes would naturally fall upon a large heart carved out of the forest that blanketed the distant mountainside. Of course, all of us undergrads at that time were well aware that it was Bona’s college teacher Thomas Merton who literally carved out that heart tree by tree, with his own heart and hands, axe and log tongs.

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But the real connection with Thomas Merton stemmed from the historical fact that, after he converted to Roman Catholicism, Merton’s very first teaching assignment at St. Bonaventure U. was taken from 1939 to 1940 under the mentorship of a Franciscan monk—Father Irenaeus Herscher. Thirty-five years later in 1974 this SOTN editor was given the exclusive and great privilege to study alone after hours in the then quite elderly Fr. Herscher’s office and book-bonding shop, which was located in the basement of the university library. To top it all off, the good father generously made available the largest classical music collection one had ever seen to listen to while studying in that monk cave (which was nicely secluded from the typical noisy college life even in the not-so-quiet library).

Then there was the very strong shared mutual interest in all things having to do with the Eastern spiritual traditions and Oriental philosophies. While Merton’s spiritual pursuit in this regard was so intense it brought him to Thailand where he was ultimately murdered in December of 1968, this editor found himself living and working in a Maha Kundalini Yoga ashram later in life eventually becoming a meditation and hatha yoga instructor.

But why was such a humble and loving and world peace-promoting Trappist monk killed with such cold calculation? Because Thomas Merton was a pivotal pioneer in interfaith dialogue between the Western and Eastern civilizations up to that time (Roman Catholic Church did not like this at all). In point of fact, he played an integral role in facilitating East-West monastic exchanges and laid the groundwork for the subsequent religious scholarship right up to his assassination by the C.I.A. The key point is that he had become world famous among the religious intelligentsia and he enjoyed a very large and high international platform to speak from about“The Unspeakable”.

Much more significantly, the gifted and popular writer and speaker Merton wrote things that no high-profile VIP cleric was ever permitted to write…except on pain of death. As follows: