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Deep Politics Timeline - Tracy Riddle - 26-05-2014

  • 11/1965 Supreme Court unanimously struck down a 1950 law requiring members of the Communist party to register with the Attorney General.
  • 11/1965 At a background briefing, Westmoreland told reporters in Vietnam that he was angry about their critical coverage of the battle of the Ia Drang Valley, and told them that he had not intention of letting the press jeopardize the war.
  • 11/1965 Tom Wicker article ("Lyndon Johnson vs. the Ghost of Jack Kennedy") in Esquire. He reported that well before the Gulf of Tonkin incident, LBJ was carrying the resolution in his pocket waiting for a good occasion to use it.
  • 11/1/1965 The War Game is a 1965 television drama documentary depicting the effects of nuclear war on Britain. Written, directed, and produced by Peter Watkins for the BBC's The Wednesday Play anthology series, it caused dismay within the BBC and in government but was withdrawn from transmission on 6 August 1965 (the twentieth anniversary of the Hiroshima bombing). The corporation publicly stated that "the effect of the film has been judged by the BBC to be too horrifying for the medium of broadcasting". The film was not completely suppressed, it had limited distribution and won the Academy Award for Best Documentary Feature in 1966 but it remained unshown in full on British television until 1985.
  • 11/2/1965 A young Quaker man, Norman Morrison, immolated himself outside McNamara's Pentagon office window in protest against the war. McNamara was deeply disturbed by the event for quite some time. (In Retrospect 216) A young Quaker named Norman R. Morrison, father of three and an officer of the Stoney Run Friends Meeting in Baltimore, burns himself to death within 40 feel of Robert McNamara's Pentagon window, protesting the Vietnam War. When he sets himself on fire, he is holding his one-year-old daughter in his arms. Bystanders scream, "Save the child!" and he flings her out of his arms. She survives.
  • 11/22/1965 Public Law 89-318 is enacted. Among other provisions, the law makes it clear that the Kennedy autopsy materials are evidence and that they rightfully belong to the U.S. government. Further, the materials have to be returned within one year of the law's enactment. At this point, Attorney General Ramsey Clark initiates discussions with the Kennedy family attorneys.
  • 11/3/1965 Larry O'Brien was sworn in as Postmaster General.
  • 11/3/1965 LBJ privately told some reporters, "The truth of the business is that this country is in trouble because we cannot any longer make things bigger and better than other countries. We have put Germany and Japan back in business and they are selling their heads off." (White House Diary p336)
  • 11/4/1965 Wall St Journal commented, "Both the Army's spending plans and those of the other services promise added zip for the nation's peppy economy."
  • 11/4/1965 457 Americans of the US 7th Cavalry were dropped by helicopter in Vietnam's Ia Drang valley, expecting that the area was clear of the enemy. Actually, more than 3000 NVA regulars were around them. The battle would rage for three days and two nights. Eventually, the enemy retreated with more than 2000 dead (the Americans lost 234). Policy makers decided that this indicated that air cavalry's search-and-destroy tactics could be used to win the war. UPI correspondent Joseph L. Galloway was there with the Americans, and helped rescue some wounded men; for this he was later awarded the Bronze Star Medal with "V" by the Army.
  • 11/5/1965 RFK told the press that he supported the right of Americans to dissent against the war, and even supported donating blood to the North Vietnamese.
  • 11/7/1965 McNamara sent LBJ a memo warning that China was an aggressive power that needed to be contained. Today, McNamara looks back at that analysis as "totally incorrect," and that it did not take into account the centuries-old animosity between China and Southeast Asia. In that memo, he also urged a further increase in ground troops in Vietnam, though he couldn't guarantee it would win the war. He also recommended a bombing pause to encourage negotiations, though most everyone else in the administration disagreed with this.
  • 11/8/1965 The Nation publishes William W. Turner's "Crime is Too Big For the FBI."
  • 11/8/1965 Reporter and columnist, Dorothy Kilgallen, is found dead in her home. It is initially reported she has died of a heart attack, but this is quickly changed to an overdose of alcohol and pills. Kilgallen is only reporter to have been granted an unsupervised interview with Jack Ruby and has stated she has evidence that will blow the case wide open. No notes are ever found. Dr. Charles Umber of the New York Medical Examiner's Office discovered three types of barbiturates in Dorothy's glass but kept his findings secret due to the politics and internecine rivalry in the NYMEO. No vial was ever found or recorded by the NYPD. Seconal had been the only barbiturate prescribed for her according to the NYPD report.
  • 11/8/1965 Autobiography of Malcolm X is published.
  • 11/9-10/1965 power failure caused a "great blackout" from Pennsylvania to southern Canada, affecting over 30 million people and stranding 800,000 in NYC subways. A bright moon kept the night from being pitch black. The Northeast Blackout of 1965 was a significant disruption in the supply of electricity on November 9, 1965, affecting Ontario, Canada and Connecticut, Massachusetts, New Hampshire, Rhode Island, Vermont, New York, and New Jersey in the United States. Around 25 million people and 80,000 square miles (207,000 km²) were left without electricity for up to twelve hours. The cause of the failure originated at the Niagara generating station Sir Adam Beck Station No. 2 in Ontario. At 5:16 p.m. Eastern Time a single line of the power plant tripped. Within seconds other lines out of the plant overloaded and also tripped, shutting down the plant generators. Within five minutes the power distribution system in the northeast was in chaos as the effects cascaded through the network, breaking it up into "islands"; plant after plant experienced load imbalances and automatically shut down. The affected power areas were the Ontario Hydro System, St Lawrence-Oswego, Western New York and Eastern New York-New England. Maine, with only limited electrical connection southwards, was not affected. Power resupply was uneven. New York City was dark by 5:27. Parts of Brooklyn were repowered by 11:00, the rest of the borough by midnight. However, the entire city was not returned to normal power supply until nearly 7:00 a.m., November 10. The blackout was not universal in the city. Some neighborhoods never lost power. Following the blackout, measures were undertaken to try to prevent a repetition. Reliability councils were formed to establish standards, share information, and improve coordination between electricity providers. Ten councils were created covering the four networks of the North American Interconnected Systems. The Northeast Reliability Council covered the area affected by the 1965 blackout. The blackout also helped inspire the episode of the American television series Bewitched. The episode, titled "The Short Happy Circuit of Aunt Clara", featured Aunt Clara attempting a spell to put out some lighted candles which inadvertently put out all the lights on the Eastern Seaboard. The episode was first broadcast on November 10, 1966. The myth of the blackout baby boom A thriving urban legend arose in the wake of the Northeast blackout of 1965, in which it is told that a peak in the birthrate of the blackout areas was observed nine months after the incident. The origin of the myth is a series of three articles published in August 1966 in the New York Times, in which interviewed doctors told that they had noticed an increased number of births. The story was debunked in 1970 by J. Richard Udry, a demographer from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, who did a careful statistical study which found no increase in the birthrate of the affected areas.
  • 11/10/1965 Mrs. Earl Smith dies. Close friend of Dorothy Kilgallen. (It is suggested that Mrs. Smith may have kept Kilgallen's notes.)
  • 11/10/1965 A New York Daily News editorial suggested that RFK join the North Vietnamese army.
  • 11/11/1965 Pirate motor crafts attack Havana's seafront section. Anti-Castro exiles in Miami take credit for action.
  • 11/1965 Battle of the Ia Drang Valley. Two NVA regiments fought US Cavalry divisions, leaving 1300 communists and 300 Americans dead. B-52 bombers provided air cover. This was the first time US and NVA troops fought each other face to face.
  • 11/15/1965 Supreme Court rules that individuals do not have to register with the government as members of the Communist Party.
  • 11/15/1965 Eric Sevareid reported in Look a conversation he had with Adlai Stevenson, who told him that the North Vietnamese in 1964 had contacted U Thant about having talks with the Americans. "Someone in Washington insisted that this attempt be postponed until after the presidential election. When the election was over, U Thant again pursued the matter. Hanoi was still willing to send its man. But Defense Secretary Robert McNamara, Adlai went on, flatly opposed the attempt."
  • 11/16/1965 The State Dept confirmed Look's story of the previous day; the US had received many offers of talks from third parties who had spoken with Hanoi, but Washington did not believe the offers were serious.
  • 11/18/1965 The Catholic Church reaffirmed that God was the originator of the Bible, that all parts of the Bible are sacred, that it was composed under the influence of the Holy Ghost, and that what is written in the Bible is accurate, true and without error.
  • 11/20/1965 RFK's fortieth birthday. Ethel Kennedy throws him a party in Sao Paulo. Some of the guests begin to pop party favors. Hearing the loud pops, RFK sinks his head into his hands and says, "Oh no, please don't."
  • 11/22/1965 The Warren Commission's Case Against Oswald By Leo Sauvage The New Leader, 22 November 1965, pages 1621
  • 11/23/1965 As NVA units rapidly increased their infiltration into the South, Westmoreland asked for 200,000 more troops for 1966. The request shocked Washington.
  • 11/24/1965 Soviet ambassador Anatoly Dobrynin told Mac Bundy that if the US would pause its bombing, Moscow would try to get Hanoi to negotiate.
  • 11/24/1965 Congo/Zaire: Mobutu, with US support, ousts president Kasavubu in a coup.
  • 11/27/1965 Approx. 30,000 antiwar protestors marched on the White House. The march was sponsored by SANE (the Committee for a Safe Nuclear Policy). McNamara was not bothered by the dissent, seeing it as a healthy example of the democratic process. Among the protestors was Carl Oglesby, who gave a speech: "Think of the men who now engineer that war...They are not moral monsters. They are all honorable men. They are all liberals...This country, with its thirty-some years of liberalism, can send two hundred thousand young men to Vietnam to kill and die in the most dubious of wars, but it cannot get a hundred voter registrars to go into Mississippi...others will make of it that I sound mighty anti-American...Blame those who mouthed my liberal values and broke my American heart..."
  • 11/28-29/1965 McNamara went to Saigon and found that the regime was even more unstable than before, defections from the Southern army had skyrocketed, and 200 tons of supplies were moving down the Ho Chi Minh Trail each day despite heavy bombing. 11/29 he told the press that while the US was no longer losing the war, the fight was only growing more difficult, and "it will be a long war."
  • 11/30/1965 McNamara told LBJ that he was concerned about escalating US involvement without having fully exhausted every negotiating alternative.
  • 11/30/1965 Sam Castan, senior editor of Life, wrote in an editorial: "For the first time since we spun into the Vietnam mess, there his hope for the United States…The credit justly belongs to President Lyndon B. Johnson. He has made the war 'unloseable.'"
  • 12/1965 Fed Chairman William Martin cast the decisive vote in the Fed's move to raise the discount rate to a postwar high of 4.5%.
  • 12/1/1965 Hoover memo to Katzenbach; "This Bureau's investigation of the communist influence in racial matters has developed considerable information indicating the influence upon Martin Luther King Jr...by individuals with subversive backgrounds such as Stanley David Levison, Harry Wachtel, Bayard Rustin and others." Hoover informed Katzenbach that they had bugged MLK while he was in New York in late November.
  • 12/3/1965 Justice Dept won convictions against Collie Leroy Wilkins and two other Klansmen for the killing of Viola Liuzzo; they were sentenced to ten years in federal prison for violating her civil rights.
  • 12/7/1965 Rusk, McNamara and Bundy talked with LBJ in Texas; Johnson was worried about escalating, but more worried about being seen as "weak" if he didn't. "What is the best course? We're getting deeper and deeper in," he complained. "Where we were when I came in - I'd trade back to where we were." McNamara was pushing harder for a bombing pause and a diplomatic solution.
  • 12/8/1965 McNamara announces the closing of 149 military bases and installations, for a savings of $410 million a year.
  • 12/9/1965 Larry O'Brien sent a memo to LBJ telling him that serious reform of the outdated, inefficient postal service was badly needed. (No Final Victories)
  • 12/10/1965 Council of Economic Advisers suggested to LBJ that he raise taxes. McNamara began drawing up the military budget for fiscal year 1967, and made his assumptions based on the idea that the war would be over by 6/30/1967. (Best and the Brightest 736)
  • 12/11/1965 Press reported that a full-scale review of the CIA's covert operations had been planned by Kennedy before he was assassinated. ("Containing Central Intelligence," Harry Rowe Ransom, New Republic)
  • 12/13/1965 In an interview, Ike's former budget director Maurice Stans warned that the New Economics (Keynesian deficit spending) might be producing short-term prosperity at long-term cost. (US News)
  • 12/13/1965 NYT's Charles Mohr, reporting from Saigon, said that US officials there had not expected North Vietnam to intervene in the South when the US began bombing.
  • 12/14/1965 Hoover responded to a letter by researchers Ray Marcus and David Lifton (writing under a false name) about the transposed Zapruder film frames in the WC's volumes: "You are correct in the observation that the frames labeled 314 and 315 of the Commission Exhibit 885 are transposed in volume 18, as noted in your letter. This is a printing error and does not exist in the actual Commission Exhibit."
  • 12/14/1965 A U.S. RB-57 is shot down by the Soviets while on a reconnaissance mission for the U.S. The fate of its crew of 2 is not known.
  • 12/15/1965 LBJ ordered the bombing of Haiphong.
  • 12/15/1965 AFL-CIO declared its "unstinting support" for "measures the Administration might deem necessary to halt Communist aggression and secure a just and lasting peace" in Vietnam.
  • 12/7/1965 McNamara tells LBJ that the chances for a military victory are not at all guaranteed: "We've been too optimistic...we may not find a military solution. We need to explore other means...This seems a contradiction. I come to you for a huge increase in Vietnam - 400,000 men [Westmoreland's request]. But at the same time it may lead to escalation and undesirable results. I suggest we now look at other alternatives."
  • 12/18/1965 LBJ agreed to try a bombing pause.
  • 12/18/1965 William Whaley is killed in an automobile collision. He was cab driver who allegedly picked up Lee Harvey Oswald on the day of the assassination at the Greyhound Bus Station at Lamar and Jackson Streets. Whaley was the Oswald cabbie, one of the few who had the opportunity to talk alone with the accused killer of Kennedy between the assassination and Oswald's arrest. He testified that Oswald hailed his cab at the Greyhound bus station, then graciously offered the cab to a waiting lady, who declined his offer. Whaley said he drove Oswald to the intersection of Beckley and Neches---half a block from the rooming house---and collected a dollar. Later he identified Oswald as his fare in a questionable police lineup, although police records are confusing and he may have picked out another man. Whaley was killed in a head-on collision on a bridge over the Trinity River, December 18, 1965; his passenger was critically injured. The 83-year-old driver of the other vehicle was also killed. Whaley had been with the City Transportation Co. since 1936 and had a perfect accident record. He was the first Dallas cabbie to be killed on duty since 1937. When Penn Jones went to interview the general manager of the cab company about Whaley's death, he was literally pushed out of the office. "If you're smart," said the manager, "you won't be coming around here asking questions."
  • 12/19/1965 Kansas City Star reported that in Nov 1965, the president of the UN General Assembly, Fanfani of Italy, reported to LBJ that on 11/11 in Hanoi, Ho Chi Minh and PM Phan Van Dong "expressed to two persons (known to me) the strong desire to find a peaceful solution to the conflict in Vietnam [and offered] to negotiate for peace."
  • 12/20/1965 Oswald's Case Against the Warren Commission By Leo Sauvage The New Leader, 20 December 1965, pages 510
  • 12/21/1965 Arthur Krock reported that after the US received the Fanfani letter, Dean Rusk stalled on responding until US bombing of North Vietnam began. (NYT)
  • 12/21/1965 AP - Detroit - Letters accusing former vice-president Nixon and FBI director J. Edgar Hoover of responsibility in death of JFK under investigation by FBI agents. Letters bore typewritten signature of "AFL-CIO" and local AFL-CIO council return address, addressed to "Atty. Gen. Katzman" said Oswald is innocent and slaying done by two brothers who are part of a gang of 10 men. Letters gave "Katzman" 30 days to do something about it" and if you do not we will bury you with the Warren Commission." How Nixon and J. Edgar Hoover supposed to be involved not explained in story. Union officials denied strenuously, turned over all copies to FBI, and said letter appeared to be the work of a mentally deranged person.
  • 12/22/1965 White House announced a 30-hour ceasefire, including a bombing halt over North Vietnam beginning Christmas Eve.
  • 12/23/1965 The Kansas City Star commented that the war in Vietnam had come at the right time: "It was a close call. Little by little it has become clear that the longest peacetime expansion in the nation's history was in danger of petering out until the escalation of the war in Vietnam gave it a new lease on life."
  • 12/25/1965 LBJ extended the bombing pause.
  • 12/27/1965 McNamara convinced Johnson to extend the bombing pause and go on a major "peace offensive." Important administration figures were sent around the world trying to put together peace talks. (In Retrospect 226)
  • 12/28-31/1965 Writer John Bullion says he goes hunting with LBJ at his Texas ranch. "I went hunting with him at the ranch Dec. 28 to Dec. 31, 1965. We hunted out of a Lincoln Continental. I had a Neiman Marcus suit on. There's the 21-year-old John Bullion and the president of the United States," recalled Bullion. John's father, Waddy, was LBJ's tax attorney. "I have found nothing that would lead me to believe that Lyndon Johnson was directly or indirectly involved with the assassination of John Kennedy," said Bullion. His father, Waddy, was with Johnson right after Kennedy's death. "Dad was impressed with him after the assassination. Lyndon was getting control of the situation," added Bullion.
  • 12/29/1965 Stanley Kubrick begins filming his epic 2001: A Space Odyssey.
  • 12/31/1965 US military personnel in Vietnam now at 184,300, with 22,420 Allied troops; 636 killed to date. In 1965, there were 25,000 air sorties against the North and 63,000 tons of bombs dropped on the North.


Deep Politics Timeline - Tracy Riddle - 28-05-2014

  • This year, Johnny Roselli will say: "No question in my mind ... I think Castro hit Kennedy because of the Bay of Pigs invasion." And yet, Sam Giancana's brother, Chuck Giancana, will later write that this is the year Sam privately confesses to his part in JFK's assassination. Sam says that the entire conspiracy goes "right up to the top of the CIA." He says that fanatical right-wing Texans, Lyndon Johnson, Richard Nixon, and a Bay of Pigs action officer are involved. Sam Giancana then moves to Mexico City, buying a five million dollar estate and goes into virtual seclusion for eight years.
  • This is also the year that General Charles Willoughby goes to work directly for H.L. Hunt's son, Nelson Bunker Hunt, helping arrange the acquisition of all offshore oil rights in the Portuguese colony of Mozambique.
  • Jack Wilson and Barbara Story hosted a local ABC-affiliate talk show in Denver. WC critic Mark Lane appeared on the show twice (via telephone) in 1966. When Gerald Ford was asked if he wanted to participate in the debate with Lane, he declined. Ford then later called Wilson from Washington and told him that he should ignore Lane because he had been investigated and found to have a criminal record filled with heinous crimes. Wilson contacted various district attorney's offices in New York and found that Lane had never even been charged with a crime. Lane later wrote, "When he discovered that Ford's accusation was false...he gave me the details and agreed to testify in any defamation action against Ford that may ensue." (Citizen's Dissent p123)
  • By the fall of this year, dozens of books and articles have been printed which challenge the Warren Commission's findings. J. Edgar Hoover, at LBJ's request, investigates the authors of seven books critical of the Warren Report, turning up the information that one writer has been discharged from the military for mental problems while several others have belonged to leftist organizations. No proof of foreign involvement is found, but the file on one critic contains information of a highly personal nature. It consists of a Queens County, New York, police record of the subject's arrest for committing an unnatural act (the charge was later dropped); the depositions of two prostitutes, attesting to the nature of said act; and photographs of the subject, shown nude, his arms seemingly bound behind his back, his face contorted in a painful grimace, while one of the prostitutes is sticking what appears to be a pin or needle into his erect penis. Blind memorandums containing the results of the investigations (the photographs are among the eleven enclosures), are sent to LBJ, via his aide Marvin Watson on November 8, 1966, and are shown to several of the Warren Commission members, as well as favored press contacts, who promptly nickname the photograph's subject "Pinhead." When shown this material, Hale Boggs is shocked. "If they have all this on some little guy who wrote a book, what about me?"
  • USA FY 1966 interest on the federal debt was 6.5% of the budget; entitlements and mandatory programs were 20%. Prime rate of interest: 5.6%. Capacity Utilization, Manufacturing: 91.1%. Stock market declined 13%.
  • US military personnel now in Vietnam: 385,300, with 52,500 Allied troops; 6,644 US troops killed to date. In 1966, there were 79,000 air sorties and 136,000 tons of bombs dropped on the North.
  • While Ruby is in jail, he writes this undated letter. It reads: "you must believe me that I know what is taking place, so please with all my heart, you must believe me, because I am counting on you to save this country a lot of blood-shed. As soon as you get out you must read Texan looks at Lyndon (A Texan Looks at Lyndon by J. Evetts Haley) , and it may open your eyes to a lot of things. This man is a Nazi in the worst order." Further on in this letter Ruby writes: ... isn't it strange that Oswald who hasn't worked a lick most of his life, should be fortunate enough to get a job at the Book Building two weeks before the president himself didn't know as to when he was to visit Dallas, now where would a jerk like Oswald get the information that the president was coming to Dallas? Only one person could have had that information, and that man was Johnson who knew weeks in advance as to what was going to happen, because he is the one who was going to arrange the trip for the president, this had been planned long before the president himself knew about, so you can figure that one out. The only one who gained by the shooting of the president was Johnson, and he was in a car in the rear and safe when the shooting took place. What would the Russians, Castro or anyone else have to gain by eliminating the president? If Johnson was so heartbroken over Kennedy, why didn't he do something for Robert Kennedy? All he did was snub him."
  • In 1966, the U.S. Army released the harmless Bacillus globigii into the tunnels of the New York subway system as part of a field study called A Study of the Vulnerability of Subway Passengers in New York City to Covert Attack with Biological Agents. The Chicago subway system was also subject to a similar experiment by the Army. The U.S. Army dispensed a bacillus throughout the New York City subway system. Materials available on the incident noted the Army's justification for the experiment was the fact that there are many subways in the Soviet Union, Europe, and South America. Although there are no harmful effects known for this release, details of the experiment are still classified.
  • Barbara Garson wrote the play MacBird! which was a parody of Macbeth with JFK in the role of Duncan and LBJ in the role of Macbeth. It insinuated that Johnson was involved in his predecessor's death. She later attempted to revive the idea with a play about Nixon, but it didn't receive much attention.
  • CIA begins weather modification experiments over Cuba, later used in an attempt to ruin Castro's sugar cane crop.
  • 1/1966 A dealer auctioned off two letters allegedly written by Jack Ruby and smuggled out of jail; one said, "I walked into a trap the moment I walked down that ramp Sunday morning. They alone planned the killing, by they I mean Johnson and the others." (Forgive my Grief 65) The other letter read, "In all the history of the US never has a president been elected that has the background of Johnson. Believe me, compared to him, I am a saint."
  • 1/1/1966 John Lindsay is sworn in as the first Republican mayor of NYC in 20 years; hours later, members of the AFL-CIO's Transport Workers Union in NYC went out on strike and crippled the city's bus and subway systems. 1/3 union leader Michael Quill is jailed for refusing to stop the strike, but it continues until 1/13, when the workers win a 15% wage hike.
  • 1/3/1966 Lady Bird wrote in her diary, "Lyndon slept little...Sometimes I think the greatest bravery of all is simply to get up in the morning and go about your business."
  • 1/3/1966 Sammy Younge, Jr., 21, was shot to death by a 67 year old white service station attendant. A Tuskegee Institute student and civil rights activist, Younge was shot after using the "Whites only" restroom at the service station where the white attendant was working.
  • 1/4/1966 Ronald Reagan announces that he will run for governor of California. (SF Chronicle 6/9/02)
  • 1/5/1966 Lady Bird wrote in her diary, "As Lyndon left this morning he turned to me and said: We've lost the steel fight; we may lose the war.'"
  • 1/6/1966 McNamara told Arthur Schlesinger that he didn't think a military solution was possible in Vietnam; he was working toward "withdrawal with honor." (RFK and his Times p792)
  • 1/6/1966 AP: Washington - J. Edgar Hoover says Communist Party has played answer increasing role in generating opposition to the U.S. position in Viet Nam.
  • 1/6/1966 NYT reported that Washington "is ready to extend indefinitely the pause in the bombings of North Vietnam if Hanoi will respond with a gesture of peace…"
  • 1/8/1966 Wheeler urged McNamara to resume the bombing, arguing that it was placing US forces in an "increasing military disadvantage," but McNamara couldn't get him to explain exactly how the pause was hurting them. Air strikes along the Ho Chi Minh Trail in Laos were continuing, however. (In Retrospect 227)
  • 1/9/1966 Senator Everett Dirksen said on Issues and Answers (ABC-TV): "Hold on a little longer [in Vietnam] and pretty soon we will have them on their knees at the bargaining table."
  • 1/9/1966 Earlene Roberts dies of heart failure. She was Lee Harvey Oswald's last landlady who said that a police car drove by after the assassination, honked its horn and then moved on while Lee Harvey Oswald was in the rooming house. Police say she suffered a heart attack in her home. No autopsy is performed.
  • 1/10/1966 In a White House meeting, LBJ was inclined to start bombing again soon, but McNamara urged that more time be given.
  • 1/10/1966 Mississippi: Before dawn, two carloads of Klansmen arrived at Vernon Dahmer's house, shot it up and tossed gasoline bombs through a window. Dahmer held the Klansmen at bay with a shotgun while his family fled. His lungs seared by heat and flames, he died in his wife's arms 12 hours later.
  • 1/12/1966 LBJ's State of the Union message; he articulately defended involvement in Vietnam, while acknowledging war's "madness." He pledged to "respond if others reduce their use of force." Pledged to maintain spending on both the war and the Great Society. Also called for the creation of a cabinet-level Dept of Transportation. He proposed a four-year term for House members, and pledged US aid to population control efforts around the world.
  • 1/13/1966 LBJ nominated Robert Weaver to be Secretary of HUD; he was confirmed 1/17, becoming the first black cabinet member in US history.
  • 1/14/1966 Senator Hickenlooper denounces anonymous letter attacking morals of J. Edgar Hoover and other, unnamed high officials. J. Edgar Hoover says its part of Communist smear campaign which began a year earlier. "The letter contained what Mr. Hickenlooper described as an 'obviously forged' copy of a letter over Mr. Hoover's signature to a former White House aide, Walter Jenkins, who resigned in 10/6464, after two arrests [01/7/64, and in 1059 (AP, The World in 1964, p. 182)] on morals charges were made public." A; New York Times, San Francisco Chronicle next day.
  • 1/15/1966 Sir Abubakar Tafawa Balewa, prime minister of Nigeria, was assassinated.
  • 1/17/1966 Joseph Alsop wrote that "a part of the curious espionage system to which members of the White House staff are subjected has been rudely brought into the open. All staff members' telephone calls are noted. All places they visit outside the White House are reported by the government chauffeurs. And these lists of contacts are nightly studied, for symptoms of dangerous associations, by the President's new alter ego, Marvin Watson....the President's attempts at news control are much more aggressive, comprehensive and...repugnant to the American tradition, than any such attempts by other Presidents....no previous President has claimed the right to keep from the country the basic facts of the national situation unless he sees fit to divulge them." (N.Y. Herald Tribune)
  • 1/17/1966 A US B-52 bomber carrying four hydrogen bombs weapons was attempting a mid-air refueling over eastern Spain but it collided with the KC-135 fuel tanker. The tanker burst into flames and the B-52 broke up and tumbled to earth. Three of the bombs, each measuring 10ft in length and 20ft in diameter, lander near the village of Palomares. The fourth bomb fell into the sea. The US Air Force responded immediately, and over 400 US and Spanish soldiers hunted for the bombs. Within 48 hours the three bombs had been located one by a local farmer, who kicked the smoldering nuclear bomb. 3/15 the fourth bomb was found at a depth of 2550ft on a narrow ledge. 4/7 US engineers succeeded in bringing it to the surface. Villagers in Palomares complained of mysterious illnesses, despite the fact that US authorities had scraped away 1750 tons of the village's topsoil.
  • 1/17/1966 Martin Luther King Jr. opened a civil rights campaign in Chicago, marking the first time for him to launch an initiative in a northern city.
  • 1/18/1966 The first black cabinet member, Robert Weaver, is sworn in as Secretary of Housing and Urban Development.
  • 1/18/1966 JCS urged resumption - and expansion - of bombing against North Vietnam.
  • 1/21-22/1966 San Francisco Trips Festival is held; this was the first real hippie conclave.
  • 1/21/1966 The bombing of North Vietnam resumes.
  • 1/22/1966 Richard Helms reported that the CIA had concluded that US bombing of the North was having no real effect on their ability to move men and supplies south.
  • 1/23/1966 LBJ presented his budget to Congress; spending $112 billion with a $1.8 billion deficit; this fiscal 1967 budget would end up producing a $9.8 billion deficit.
  • 1/23/1966 On NBC's Meet the Press,' Rusk said he had not seen a response "direct or indirect" from Hanoi.
  • 1/24/1966 McNamara told LBJ that he thought the Communists were preparing for a long war, and would wait for the US to get tired and leave. And while he recommended increased troops and air power, he warned that they might have little effect: "the odds are about even that, even with the recommended deployments, we will be faced in early 1967 with a military standoff at a much higher level...and with the requirement for the deployment of still more US forces."
  • 1/26/1966 Sen. McGovern wrote to RFK: "Your voice is one of the very few that is powerful enough to help steer us away from catastrophe" in Vietnam.
  • 1/28/1966 Fulbright's Senate Foreign Relations Committee began its "educational" hearings on Vietnam, with Dean Rusk as the first witness. Fulbright stated that he had not expected the Tonkin resolution to be used to so greatly expand the US presence in Vietnam. He asked Rusk if Congress' continuing approval of additional funds implied approval of unlimited expansion of the war; Rusk gave an evasive non-reply. The hearings were televised and watched by many Americans. LBJ sat glowering before the White House TV sets, "bluing the air with a running commentary that could not have gone on the air," recalled a former adviser.
  • 1/28/1966 LBJ met with Clifford, Arthur Dean, Dulles, McCloy; they endorsed a resumption of bombing and increasing US troops.
  • 1/28/1966 AP: Washington - J. Edgar Hoover says U.S. college students subjected to "a bewildering and dangerous conspiracy perhaps unlike any social challenge ever before encountered by our youth." Warns Communists and other subversives jubilant over "these new rebellious activities" resulting in "a turbulence built on unrestrained individualism, repulsive dress and speech, outright obscenity, disdain for moral and spiritual values, and disrespect for law and order." Identifies it as the new left and says it has an "anarchistic and seditious ring" with a "feigned concern of the vital rights of free speech, dissent, and petition."
  • 1/29/1966 When decorated WWII veteran Robert Thompson (an American Communist leader) died and was not allowed to be buried at Arlington, RFK said on the floor of the Senate, "to hate and harry the sinner to his grave is hardly in the American tradition."
  • 1/29/1966 New York Herald Tribune report from Saigon: "A high military source in Saigon said there were indications that some units of the North Vietnamese Army had pulled back across the South Vietnamese border in Laos and Cambodia. The souce also told United Press International that the Reds have been ordered to scale down their activities and avoid large battles with Americans."
  • 1/31/1966 New bombing of North Vietnam begins. In a major peace-seeking effort, LBJ has suspended bombing raids to North Vietnam late in 1965. He has sent personal representatives on peace missions to capitals throughout the world. North Vietnam's rejection of these efforts now leads to the resumption of bombing on this date. A Harris poll showed that most Americans would support a full escalation of the war.
  • 1/31/1966 RFK said in the Senate, "If we regard bombing as the answer in Vietnam, we are headed straight for disaster."
  • 1/31/1966 Jack Ruby wrote a letter to "John" which was confiscated by one of his guards and later smuggled from jail: "...don't believe the Warren Report, that was only put out to make me look innocent...I'm going to die a horrible death anyway, so what would I have to gain by writing all this. So you must believe me...that is only one kind of people that would do such a thing, that would have to be the Nazi's, and that is who is in power in this country right now...Japan also is in on the deal, but the old war lords are going to come back. South America is also full of these Nazi's...if those people were so determined to frame me then you must be convinced that they had an ulterior motive for doing same."
  • 2/1966 The 18th annual meeting of the American Academy of Forensic Sciences held a symposium which scored the Warren Commission for its failure to hear enough expert testimony, and for failing to examine the photos and X-rays taken of the President's body during the autopsy.
  • 2/1/1966 Roger Hilsman told the House of Representatives subcommittee on Far Eastern Affairs that "there is evidence they [North Vietnamese troops] pulled back at least into the mountains during the bombing pause which may be a signal."
  • 2/1/1966 LBJ places a call today to Sen. Eugene McCarthy during which he complains about the Kennedy crowd and its left-wing allies in the Senate, who supported Kennedy's entrance into the war but not Johnson's continuance of it. "They started on me with Diem, you remember," Johnson tells McCarthy, recalling the words of the coup's proponents. "'He was corrupt and he ought to be killed.' So we killed him. We all got together and got a goddamn bunch of thugs and assassinated him. Now, we've really had no political stability [in South Vietnam] since then." Minutes later, in a call to Gen. Maxwell D. Taylor, until recently America's ambassador to South Vietnam, LBJ expounds on his recollection, and the general echoes it. "They started out and says, We got to kill Diem, because he's no damn good. Let's, let's knock him off.' And we did," Johnson tells Taylor. "Yeah, that's where it all started," the general agrees. "That's exactly where it started!" Johnson replies with obvious anger. "And I just pled with them at the time, Please, don't do it.' But that's where it started. And they knocked him off."
  • 2/2/1966 James Reston of the NYT commented, "Why did the president choose to start bombing again now when no organized units of the regular North Vietnamese Army have been engaged or seen since mid-December?"
  • 2/3/1966 New York Herald Tribune reported: "The South Vietnamese High Command said in Saigon yesterday that the Vietcong's main force still has launched no offensive operations since the Christmas ceasefire." The Tribune also reported, "A US military spokesman also confirmed an earlier South Vietnamese report that regular North Vietnamese units believed to have been infiltrated into the South last year have not initiated any battle since November."
  • 2/4/1966 Senate Foreign Relations Committe began televised hearings on the war.
  • 2/6/1966 LBJ convened Honolulu conference with leaders of South Vietnam.
  • 2/7/1966 The first issue of the rock-culture magazine Crawdaddy is published in NYC.
  • 2/8/1966 LBJ finishes three days of talks in Honolulu with Nguyen Cao Ky, who refuses to participate in negotiations with the Vietcong.
  • 2/10/1966 George Kennan testified before the Senate about the situation in Vietnam. CBS-TV chose to air a rerun of I Love Lucy instead of showing the testimony live. Kennan said that since the overthrow of Sukarno in Indonesia, China's position in the region had been greatly weakened.
  • 2/10/1966 Sen. Paul Douglas introduced the Civil Rights Protection Act of 1966.
  • 2/11/1966 Newsday quoted a CBS network spokesman, "The decision [not to air Kennan's testimony] was reached by management…because we felt that what went on for six hours could be digested and carried on the regular news broadcast. We were not motivated by commercial considerations…Nobody's looking at it, not even housewives."
  • 2/12/1966 Rock For Peace at the Fillmore Auditorium, San Francisco, with the The Great Society, Quicksilver Messenger Service, and Big Brother & the Holding Company. Benefit for Democratic congressional candidates and the Viet Nam Study Group.
  • 2/14/1966 Albert Guy Bogard dies, 41 years old. Bogard was an employee at the Downtown Dallas Lincoln-Mercury dealership. Before the assassination, Oswald supposedly went to the dealership and test-drove a car with Bogard as his passenger. It is known that Oswald did not drive and was in fact taking driving "lessons" from Ruth Paine. Bogard passed a lie detector test on the story and his coworkers corroborated it. Found dead in his car in Hallsville, Louisiana cemetery. A hose had been connected to the exhaust and the other end inside the car with windows up. Ruling: suicide. According to one of his fellow salesmen, shortly after testifying before the Commission, Bogard was severely beaten and hospitalized, and then quietly disappeared from Dallas.
  • 2/14/1966 UPI reports that Jesse Curry turned in his resignation as chief of the Dallas Police Dept. last week -- less than a month after Dallas mayor Erik Johsson visits J. Edgar Hoover in Washington who complains bitterly about Curry. His resignation will be effective March 10. "FBI documents obtained recently detail a vendetta FBI Director J. Edgar Hoover conducted against the Dallas Police Department from the time President John F. Kennedy was assassinated until Police Chief Jesse Curry resigned more than two years later. The documents, obtained under the Freedom of Information Act, show that Dallas Mayor Erik Jonsson met with Hoover in the director's office in early 1966 and assured Hoover he would "immediately instruct the city manager to have a stern talk" with Curry. Less than a month later, in February 1966, Curry resigned, citing an increase in blood pressure resulting from "the continued pressures and tensions of the office." Curry, 66, died of heart problems last June 22. Within months of Curry's resignation, FBI agents returned to their posts as instructors at the Dallas Police Academy after an unofficial boycott of more than two years, and the FBI invited the first Dallas officer in more than two years to attend the FBI National Academy in Washington. Under orders from Hoover in 1964 and 1965, Dallas FBI agent-incharge J. Gordon Shanklin repeatedly rejected Curry's requests for a resumption of FBI training for Dallas policemen. Rather than tell Curry it was Hoover's rage, Shanklin was instructed to keep telling Curry "we (FBI) just don't have the manpower to take on additional training commitments at this time," according to FBI documents. The cessation of FBI training assistance was triggered by a statement....attributed to FBI agent James P. Hosty Jr. by Dallas police Lt. Jack Revill on the day of the assassination, FBI memos show. Revill, now assistant chief and the second most powerful figure on the Dallas police force, claimed at the time that Hosty told him the FBI knew before the assassination that Lee Harvey Oswald was "capable of committing the assassination of President Kennedy." Hosty later denied making such a statement. The problem was compounded when Curry said on television the day- after the assassination the FBI wanted to cover up information that it was aware of Oswald's presence in Dallas and had not notified Dallas police. He retracted the statement after Shanklin challenged him to prove it. Months later in 1964, Curry, under pressure from the FBI, wrote Shanklin a letter stating neither Shanklin nor any other FBI source ''ever asked me to 'cover up' the fact that the FBI knew Lee Harvey Oswald was in Dallas" before the assassination. The next day Hoover wrote a memo instructing an aide to "caution Shanklin that any contacts with Curry and (City Mgr. Elgin) Crull in the future be most circumspect." Earlier, on April 28, 1964, Hoover had written instructions to Shanklin that he "and personnel of your office are to deal at arm's length with Dallas Police Department personnel. We will not extend training assistance, nor will we accept candidates from that department to the (FBI) National Academy."" (DMN 12/30/1980)
  • 2/15/1966 William Manchester delivered the manuscript for his book on the death of JFK to the Kennedys.
  • 2/16/1966 McNamara testified before the House. Rep. Minshall: Do you think that the number of troops we presently have in South Vietnam, and our present military commitment, will enable us to cope with a full power, all out North Vietnamese war effort? McNamara: Well, I think that if the North Vietnamese expand their forces by infiltration and by recruitment in the South to a level some 50% greater than their level at the end of last year, we would have to add to the strength we now have in South Vietnam.
  • 2/16/1966 Sen. Russell B. Long, in a Senate speech, condemned those who criticized US involvement in Vietnam: "We have at stake our national honor. We are committed to resisting Communist aggression."
  • 2/16/1966 An Air Force van picks up the JFK bronze casket and transports it to Andrews Air Force Base, where it is loaded onto a C-130 airplane. The plane takes off at 8:38 a.m. and flies over a calm ocean to a point approximately 131 nautical miles off the Maryland-Delaware coast. The drop point -- in 9,000 feet of water beyond the continental shelf -- has been chosen because it is away from regularly traveled air and shipping lines in an explosives dumping area. The pilot descends to 500 feet and at 10 a.m., the plane's tail hatch is opened and the casket is pushed out. Leaving nothing to chance, the plane circles the drop point for 20 minutes to ensure that nothing returns to the surface.
  • 2/18/1966 Rusk returned for more testimony before Fulbright's committee. Rusk now pointed to SEATO, not the Tonkin Resolution, as the basis for US action in Vietnam. Morse declared, "One of the best checks we have is to say we are not going to finance it. If the President can't get the finances, then he has to change his policy." Sen. Long immediately responded that Morse would cut off supplies to our troops while they were surrounded by the enemy.
  • 2/19/1966 RFK issued a statement saying that a negotiated settlement was the best way to end the war.
  • 2/19/1966 Marvin Watson wanted the FBI to investigate whether Sen. Fulbright and his hearings "were receiving information from Communists..." (Church committee, hearings vol. 6 p270)
  • 2/20/1966 Lady Bird wrote, "There has been increasing hostility in the newspaper columns..." (White House Diary p360)
  • 2/20/1966 On 'Issues and Answers' and 'Meet the Press' George Ball and McGeorge Bundy attacked RFK's position.
  • 2/21/1966 John Connally told LBJ that he thought RFK had been "the motivating force behind the Senate hearings and the Saturday statement was only his climax."
  • 2/21/1966 The Chicago Tribune's editorial was titled "Ho Chi Kennedy," an attack on RFK.
  • 2/22/1966 Humphrey attacked RFK's 2/19 statement.
  • 2/23/1966 LBJ calls on Congress to enact environmental legislation.
  • 2/23/1966 LBJ states, "Our men in Vietnam are there...to keep a promise that was made 12 years ago."
  • 2/25/1966 Hoover memo noted that Marvin Watson said LBJ wanted the FBI to go after Peter Lisagor "and thought we ought to put a surveillance on him to find out what he is doing and where he is getting his information."
  • 2/26/1966 LBJ press conference. He acknowledged congressional opposition to the war, but said he was "rather pleased…that the differences are as minimal as they are."
  • 2/27/1966 RFK appeared on 'Face the Nation' and said that we had made it hard for the Communists to believe that we would ask for anything but surrender during negotiations.
  • 2/28/1966 Harris poll showed that two-thirds of Americans wanted to stay in Vietnam until an honorable peace was won, and opinion was shifting toward a more aggressive military stance to end the stalemate.


Deep Politics Timeline - Tracy Riddle - 28-05-2014

  • 3/1966 LBJ talked with Congressional leaders about the possibility of a small tax increase, but still wasn't honest with them about the full costs of the war. The congressional leaders said they opposed a tax hike. (Best and the Brightest 737-8)
  • 3/1966 William Manchester turned in the manuscript of his book on the JFK assassination to his editor at Harper & Row, Evan Thomas, and to the Kennedy family for review in March 1966. He received an offer of $665,000 from Look magazine for serial rights; his agent had obtained an agreement that payments for a serial would go to the author. Both Jacqueline and Robert F. Kennedy had refused to read the manuscript, delegating the review to former Kennedy administration members John Seigenthaler, Ed Guthman, and Richard N. Goodwin. They believed that passages in the book "unflattering" to Johnson might damage Robert Kennedy's political plans for 1968, and requested changes. Pam Turnure, Jacqueline Kennedy's secretary, also read the manuscript; alarmed by many "personal revelations" from Kennedy's interviews with Manchester, such as the fact that she smoked (something Jacqueline Kennedy had successfully hidden in the White House), she also provided lists of changes. In addition, Jacqueline Kennedy believed that the proceeds from the Look offer should go to the Kennedy Library. She claimed that her interviews with Manchester had been intended for the library, threatened to block publication of the book unless the changes were made, unsuccessfully offered Look $1 million to cancel the serialization, and in late 1966 filed an injunction to stop the book's publication. Newspaper articles about her decision speculated on the contents of the book. Through an out-of-court settlement in January 1967, Manchester agreed to cut 1,600 words from the serialization and seven out of 654 pages from the published book. Although headlines called Jacqueline Kennedy the victor Manchester called the cuts "harmless", and retained the serialization fee.
  • 3/1966 Dean Rusk spoke before a congressional committee about US policy toward China. He was perplexed that "At times the Communist Chinese leaders seem to be obsessed with the notion that they are being threatened and encircled." He spoke of China's "imaginary, almost pathological, notion that the United States and other countries around its borders are seeking an opportunity to invade mainland China and destroy the Peiping regime." (Dept of State bulletin 5/2/1966)
  • 3/1/1966 Rolando Cubela and another ex-Cuban Army major are arrested in Havana, Cuba by state security agents, for plotting to assassinate Fidel Castro. A government communiqué charges that the plot was hatched in Spain with the help of Manuel Artime and the CIA. Nine days from now, Cubela will go before a revolutionary tribunal. No mention will be made of his pre-1964 involvement with the CIA. He will be convicted but not executed, serving some eighteen years in prison before being released. Cubela eventually resides in Madrid, Spain.
  • 3/1/1966 LBJ calls for commitment to education that will permit everyone schooling "to the limits of his capacity to absorb it" as well as more emphasis on improved health care.
  • 3/1/1966 Senate rejects attempt to repeal Gulf of Tonkin Resolution.
  • 3/1/1966 DeLoach memo to Tolson noting that LBJ and Marvin Watson wanted information about Sens. Stephen Young and Fulbright, but "should not respond in writing by formal memorandum. Watson stated that what the President actually wanted was a blind-type memorandum which bore no government watermarks or no letterhead..."
  • 3/2/1966 McNamara speech: "…how was it possible to carry through such a major military operation without invoking the usual emergency measures. The answer is that during the last five years we have greatly strengthened our military establishment for precisely this kind of a contingency…And, at the same time we were increasing our non-nuclear forces, we also increased our nuclear forces. For example, the number of nuclear warheads in our strategic alert forces will have increased from 386 in June 1961 to about 2600 in June 1966 and the total megatonnage of these weapons more than tripled. Moreover, by June 30, 1966 we will have doubled the number of tactical nuclear warheads on the soil of Western Europe, and large numbers of tactical nuclear weapons are available for use in other areas of the world, if required."
  • 3/3/1966 LBJ signed the Cold War GI Bill of Rights, giving job training, health and education benefits to veterans who have served since 1955.
  • 3/4/1966 London's Evening Standard published an interview with John Lennon in which he said, "Christianity will go. It will vanish and shrink. I needn't argue with that; I'm right and I will be proved right. We're more popular than Jesus now; I don't know which will go first - rock 'n' roll or Christianity. Jesus was all right but his disciples were thick and ordinary. It's them twisting it that ruins it for me."
  • 3/5/1966 CIA plot to assassinate Castro discovered by the Cubans.
  • 3/7/1966 DeLoach memo to Tolson; Sen. Dirksen told DeLoach that he felt Sens. Fulbright and Morse "were deeply involved and very much obligated to communist interests. He stated the information he had been furnished by me, if known to the American public, could obviously ruin Senator Morse..."
  • 3/7/1966 Supreme Court upheld the constitutionality of the Voting Rights Act.
  • 3/7/1966 One of the most astute and discerning of political observers in America,, Emmet John Hughes, in a remarkable essay on "The U.S. Government-in-Exile," published in Newsweek, March 7, 1966, thus appraised the relationship between Johnson and the Kennedy Clan: "There now has come to pass something stunningly new in the old story of America as a haven for men and governments shorn of power and banished from homeland ... But the politics of the 1960s has fashioned the most spectacular of anomalies, an American Government-in-exile: the Kennedys … Dynasty of ambition, cabal of power, challenge of the Presidency: these feeble or spiteful suggestions of the full historical fact. For this has now emerged as a movement a political design -- fitted with all the power and 'pomp and purpose of a government-in-exile. Quite literally, nothing is missing. It has its cherished heroes and its appointed heirs. It has its shining myths and its tragic memories. It has its historians to popularize its tale as poetically as Camelot, and its agents to recruit its forces as efficiently as Selective Service. It has its battles to plan and its scores to settle. And with discipline and discernment, it views the present as a menial pause between power wrecked and power reconquered …" Nothing that the first of the "Kennedy men" had already been "assigned their stations for the battle of 1972" [l968, as it turned out to be], Mr. Hughes, further on in his column, offers this exceptionally revealing and significant piece of comment: "… For here ( in the great cities and the liberal campuses) it is crucial that the opinion-leaders finally renounce their onetime hero, Vice President Hubert Humphrey, as a collaborationist with the usurping regime…"
  • 3/8/1966 LBJ, through a State Dept memo, told Congress: "since the Constitution was adopted there have been at least 125 instances in which the President has ordered the armed forces to take action or maintain positions abroad without obtaining prior Congressional authorization..."
  • 3/8/1966 McNamara told the House Armed Services Committee that "the Department of Defense supports nearly half of all the academic research in the physical sciences and engineering now being done in American universities and colleges."
  • 3/11/1966 LBJ told dinner guests Oveta and Jim Hobby that he wanted to help the Vietnamese with health, education and agriculture. "I want to get out of there more than anybody, including the Marines...I'm like a prize fighter in the ring. The right fist is the military, the left fist is aid - medical, agricultural, educational." (White House Diary)
  • 3/13/1966 LBJ met with Nixon at the White House. "Lyndon mentioned three names that some of his best people thought were the three outstanding military men in the country, capable of leading our forces anywhere - Westmoreland, Goodpaster, and Abrams. Everything he has to say of Westmoreland is filled with respect and pride." Nixon "said that opponents say we are risking World War III in Vietnam, that we are risking war with China in Vietnam, but that is not so, we are avoiding a big war. He said that the Chinese are cautious, and the Communists are cautious. If we are going to have any discussion with China, it should come now, rather than later, three or four years from now." Nixon also told LBJ not to take his campaigning for GOP candidates in the fall as a personal attack on the White House. (White House Diary)
  • 3/13/1966 Washington - Senator Fulbright predicts consular treaty with USSR won't be brought up for ratification this session. Blames statement by J. Edgar Hoover during election year when senators "... would rather not have to defend it in an election year ..." J. Edgar Hoover had said mainstay of Soviet intelligence is their network of consular and diplomatic officials. AP
  • 3/15/1966 Thomas C. Lynch, Attorney General of California, condemned the use of LSD and other drugs in a statement to the State Senate Judiciary Committee in Sacramento.
  • 3/15/196 Congressman Rumsfeld entered into the Congressional Record an article from the Chicago Sun-Times entitled "Why U.S. Viet Policy Lacks FriendsOur Credibility Destroyed" Rumsfeld stated: "I do, however, believe it is important to the future of our Nation to recognize that there is a problem of credibility today." [Congressional Record, 89th Cong. Pg. A1454, 3/15/66; Chicago Sun-Times, 12/5/65]
  • 3/16/1966 Gemini 8, with astronauts Neil Armstrong and David Scott, was the first US spacecraft to link up with another in flight (an Agena rocket). Problems soon developed as a thruster rocket turned on by itself and the mission had to be aborted. Armstrong and Scott docked with target rocket Agena (the first time this was ever done), but mission was aborted due to technical problems after only 7 of its 44 scheduled orbits.
  • 3/16/1966 To the Shores of Hell, a film about Marines in Vietnam, is released by Crown International. It stars Marshall Thompson.
  • 3/17/1966 In a telephone conversation today, LBJ tells Nicholas Katzenbach: "I have no objections to Bobby [Kennedy] becomin' president of this country. I just, by God, want to be a president myself. And I think it ill behooves the Kennedys, after all I've done for the Kennedys, to not reciprocate the treatment that I've given them. Everything they've ever asked - the father, the president, Bobby, and Teddy - I've done except put Bobby on the ticket for vice president! That's all."
  • 3/20/1966 LBJ convenes Guam conference.
  • 3/20/1966 Near Dexter, Michigan, farmer Frank Mannor and his son watched a car-sized, football-shaped object with a central porthole and pulsating lights at each end of its brown quilted surface rise from a swampy area on his farm, hover several minutes at a thousand feet, then depart. The following day eighty-seven women students at Hillsdale College in Hillsdale, Michigan, their dean, and a civil defence director all claimed to have watched for four hours a glowing football-shaped object hovering above a swampy area several hundred yards from the women's dormitory. At one point the object flew directly toward the dormitory, then retreated. On another occasion the object appeared to "dodge an airport beacon light". Its glow would diminish when police cars approached, and it "brightened when the cars left". The Michigan sightings made nearly every newspaper. Even "The New York Times" which normally declined to run a "flying saucer" story - gave it several inches. Major Quintanilla sent Dr. Hynek to Michigan to investigate. By the time I arrived, Hynek later wrote, "the situation was so charged with emotion that it was impossible to do any serious investigating. I had to fight my way through reporters to interview witnesses. Police were madly chasing stars they thought to be flying saucers. People believed space ships were all over the area" Hynek spent a week interviewing witnesses; he even pulled on a pair of hip boots to wade through farmer Frank Mannor's swamp. Pressure mounted for an explanation, and on March 27, Hynek held the largest press conference in the Detroit Press Club's history. Hynek later described the gathering of television reporters, newspapermen, photographers, and others, all "clamouring for a single, spectacular explanation of the sightings," as "a circus." Hynek said he provided "what I thought at the time to be the only explanation possible.....I made the statement it was 'swamp gas'," the phenomenon caused by decaying vegetation that has spontaneously ignited, creating a faint glow. "And even though I went on to emphasise I couldn't prove it in a court of law, that there was a full explanation...."Well," Hynek later said, "the press picked up the words 'swamp gas' even before I had finished the conference and that was all you heard or read about in the media for weeks." Hynek's 'swamp gas' explanation was met with ridicule, hostility, and increased suspicion that the government was engaged in a cover-up.
  • 3/22/1966 LBJ tells the press, "If I get real depressed when I read how everything has gone bad here, I just ask for the letters from Vietnam so I can cheer up."
  • 3/23/1966 The Medical Tribune (the journal of the American Academy of Forensic Scientists) reported on its recent annual meeting in Chicago. Many of the pathologists in attendance criticized the way JFK's autopsy was conducted. "Errors in judgement" and "lack of understanding of forensic problems" by Humes, Boswell and Finck were cited.
  • 3/25-26/1966 nationwide demonstrations against the war in S.F., Chicago, Boston, Philadelphia and Washington.
  • 3/25/1966 Dr. J. Allen Hynek, longtime consulting astronomer on the government's study of UFOs, gave a press conference in Detroit. He explained two recent sightings in Ann Arbor as being caused by "marsh gas." The public and media ridicule the explanation, and Congressman Gerald Ford expresses outrage with the suggestion that so many people in Michigan are being fooled by marsh gas.
  • 3/27/1966 Attempted hijacking of Cubana Airlines plane foiled. Pilot and guard killed and copilot seriously wounded.
  • 3/28/1966 Indian PM Indira Gandhi visited Washington.
  • 3/28/1966 13 members of the White Knights of Ku Klux Klan of Mississippi were arrested by the FB in connection with the death of Vernon Dahmer, a black civil rights leader. Attackers had forced him by gunfire to stay in his house after they had set it on fire. Imperial Wizard Sam Bowers was arrested later.
  • 3/28/1966 After the UFO "flap" in Michigan, retired Marine Corps major Donald Keyhoe again accused the Air Force of covering up its investigations of UFOs and ridiculing reports of their sightings.
  • 3/30/1966 Air Force spokesmen called a press conference to refute Keyhoe, denying any "hushing" of saucer reports. They explained the recent Michigan sightings as "marsh gas." Secretary of Defense, Robert S. McNamara, had been well briefed by the Air Force before the subject was interjected into a hearing of the House Foreign Affairs Committee on March 30, 1966. Representative Cornelius E. Gallagher of New Jersey, a state where scores of UFO sightings had been reported that month, asked Secretary McNamara if he thought there was "anything at all" to the flying saucer mystery. "I think not," McNamara replied. "I have talked to the Secretary of the Air Force and the Air Force Director of Research and Engineering, and neither of them places any credence in the reports we have received to date."
  • 3/31/1966 Four young protestors publicly set fire to their draft cards on the steps of the South Boston courthouse. The Supreme Court would later rule that this was not protected free speech.
  • 3/31/1966 In a filmed interview with Mark Lane in Arlington, Texas, JFK assassination witness Lee Bowers said: "At the time of the shooting, in the vicinity of where the two men I have described were, there was a flash of light or...something I could not identify." On the afternoon of the assassination Bowers was "taken in a squad car to police headquarters" and placed alone in a small room. "Someone must have gotten slightly excited over it [his story], at least for a moment, because, after talking to others, I find that I was the only one accorded this treatment." He told them that the second and third shots were "almost on top of each other." When he said he didn't believe that the second and third shots came from the same rifle, "they reminded me that I wasn't an expert, and I had to agree."
  • 3/31/1966 Sirhan Sirhan quits his job as a stable boy.
  • 3/31/1966 Jack Ruby's lawyer, Sam Houston Clinton, say that on this day (he believes the date is correct) he is seated beside Ruby during a routine hearing. A reporter sticks a mike in front of Ruby, whereupon Ruby says that people just don't understand that if he ever gets a chance to tell his story, they will know that "if Adlai Stevenson had been vice president, Kennedy would still be alive today." There exists video footage of Ruby walking through a courthouse hallway, trailed by reporters. Ruby says to one of them, "When I mentioned about Adlai Stevenson, if he was vice president there would never have been an assassination of our beloved President Kennedy" Asked if he would explain further, Ruby continued, "Well the answer is the man in office now."
  • 4/1966 William F. Buckley's televised political debate program, Firing Line, sponsored by RKO, makes its premiere.
  • 4/1/1966 LBJ increased funding for family-planning programs (contraceptives for low-income families.)
  • 4/2/1966 LBJ in a meeting remarked offhandedly that he might be "ready to make a terrible choice - perhaps take a stand in Thailand."
  • 4/4/1966 In a State Dept bulletin, U. Alexis Johnson stated, "it is a travesty on the truth to allege that the present situation was brought about by the failure of the South [Vietnam] to carry out the 1954 accords. In fact, it was the North that was not willing to submit itself to the test of free elections under international control."
  • 4/5/1966 Look article featured an interview with Gen. Matthew Ridgway: "We live in a world very unlike the one we were raised in. We have a potential for wholesale destruction so indescribably vast that many words, including victory,' lose their meaning. With no clear-cut limit upon our immediate military objective, we commit ourselves to an upward-spiraling course that may approach annihilation."
  • 4/7/1966 LBJ speech at Johns Hopkins.
  • 4/8/1966 Time magazine's cover story: "Is God Dead?" A previous article, from October 1965, had investigated a trend among 1960s theologians to write God out of the field of theology. The 1966 article looked in greater depth at the problems facing modern theologians, in making God relevant to an increasingly secular society. Modern science had eliminated the need for religion to explain the natural world, and God took up less and less space in people's daily lives. The ideas of various scholars were brought in, including the application of contemporary philosophy to the field of theology, and a more personal, individual approach to religion. The issue drew heavy criticism, both from the broader public and from clergymen. Much of the criticism was directed at the provocative magazine cover, rather than the content of the article. The cover all black with the words "Is God Dead?" in large red text marked the first time in the magazine's history that text with no accompanying image was used. In 2008, the Los Angeles Times named the "Is God Dead?" issue among "10 magazine covers that shook the world".
  • 4/11/1966 Klan leader Samuel Bowers was quoted in Newsweek: "As Christians were are disposed to kindness, generosity, affection and humility in our dealings with others. As militants we are disposed to the use of physical force against our enemies."
  • 4/13/1966 A 1966 article in the Chicago Tribune quoted young Congressman Donald Rumsfeld (R-Illinois) as saying the following: "The administration should clarify its intent in Viet Nam,' he said. People lack confidence in the credibility of our government.' Even our allies are beginning to suspect what we say, he charged. It's a difficult thing today to be informed about our government even without all the secrecy,' he said. With the secrecy, it's impossible. The American people will do what's right when they have the information they need." [Chicago Tribune, 4/13/66]
  • 4/18/1966 Supreme Court ruled 5-4 in favor of two Tucson junior high school teachers who refused to sign a loyalty oath.
  • 4/21/1966 Sen. Fulbright spoke before the Senate on "the arrogance of power...power tends to confuse itself with virtue and a great nation is peculiarly susceptible to the idea that its power is a sign of God's favor...My question is whether American can overcome the fatal arrogance of power..." He defended the right of Americans to protest against the war: "At the very least the student protest movement of the sixties is a moral and intellectual improvement on the panty raids of the fifties...it is an expression of the national conscience and a manifestation of traditional American idealism." Fulbright warned young people that in the US peaceful and sober dissent is more effective in reaching the public than violence and radical action. He urged that Congress assert itself more in foreign policy. "Past experience provides little basis for confidence that reason can prevail in an atmosphere of mounting war fever."
  • 4/21/1966 Ethiopian emperor Haile Selassie visited Jamaica. This event resulted in two profound developments within the Rastafarian movement, which worshipped the emperor as a god. First, Selassie convinced the Rastafarian brothers that they "should not seek to immigrate to Ethiopia until they had liberated the people of Jamaica." Second, from that time forth, April 21 has been celebrated as a "special holy day" among Rastafarians.
  • 4/25/1966 The New York Times reported that after the Bay of Pigs JFK "said to one of the highest officials of his administration that he wanted 'to splinter the Agency in a thousand pieces and scatter it to the winds.'" The NYT reported on the CIA's past efforts to build up a Nationalist Chinese army in Burma, how the Burmese government complained about it, and how the CIA had hoped that the Chinese Communists would be provoked into attacking Burma (thus forcing the neutral country to seek salvation in the Western camp).
  • 4/25/1966 LBJ aide Jack Valenti becomes head of the Motion Picture Association of America.
  • 4/27/1966 Interstate Commerce Commission allows merger of Pennsylvania and NY Central Railroads, the largest merger in US history.
  • 4/27/1966 RFK spoke in the Senate against escalating the war. "We must face the fact that there is no quick or easy answer to Vietnam."
  • 4/28/1966 Sen. Fulbright said in a speech before the American Newspaper Publishers Association: "America is showing some signs of that fatal presumption, that overextension of power and mission, which brought ruin to ancient Greece, to Napoleonic France, and to Nazi Germany." He feared that the US was succumbing to an "arrogance of power."


Deep Politics Timeline - Tracy Riddle - 28-05-2014

  • 5/1966 Nixon said in a speech that "a retreat of the United States from Vietnam would be a Communist victory of massive proportions and would lead to World War III."
  • 5/3/1966 Look magazine article quoted Sen. Fulbright: "But this Gulf of Tonkin incident, if I may say so, was a very vague one. We were briefed on it, but we have no way of knowing, even to this day, what actually happened...I have been told that there was no physical damage. They weren't hit by anything."
  • 5/6/1966 State Senate's Burns committee releases another report calling the Berkeley campus a haven for communists. (SF Chronicle 6/9/02)
  • 5/7/1966 Harold Weisberg's Whitewash is published in a widespread paperback edition by Dell.
  • 5/10/1966 NYT quoted RFK: "These people [of Latin America] will not accept this kind of existence for the next generation. We would not; they will not...So a revolution is coming - a revolution which will be peaceful if we are wise enough; compassionate if we care enough; successful if we are fortunate enough...We can affect its character; we cannot alter its inevitability."
  • 5/10/1966 CBS-TV featured a documentary on UFOs sponsored by IBM. It featured debunker Dr. Donald Menzel pouring benzene over a bath of acetone to explain how mirages caused UFOs. Carl Sagan explained that aliens might have visited the earth centuries ago, but not in modern times. An officer from NORAD calmly explained that there were no unidentified echoes on the radar screens scanning America's skies. An astronomer from the Smithsonian also assured the audience that there were no unidentified objects on astronomical photos, either.
  • 5/12/1966 Hoover memo to Asst Atty Gen. Mitchell Rogovin about the Fred Black case; "to disclose our coverage on Black to the [Supreme] Court at this time would be extremely poor timing...such a disclosure would result in widespread publicity and would undoubtedly trigger a great deal of unwarranted criticism against the Bureau and the Department..."
  • 5/12/1966 On the campaign trail, Ronald Reagan calls for the dismissal of those who contributed to the "degradation" of UC. (SF Chronicle 6/9/02)
  • 5/13/1966 Federal education funding is denied to 12 school districts in the South because of violations of the 1964 Civil Rights Act.
  • 5/16/1966 Stokely Carmichael was elected chairman of the SNCC.
  • 5/17/1966 "There will be some Nervous Nellies," LBJ said in a speech, "and some who will become frustrated and bothered and break ranks under the strain. And some will turn on their leaders and on their country and on our fighting men."
  • 5/18/1966 In a speech in Montreal, McNamara warned that military might alone could not solve the instability of developing nations: "A nation can reach the point at which it does not buy more security for itself simply by buying more military hardware, and we are at that point." This speech resulted in intense criticism from hawks in Congress and elsewhere.
  • 5/18/1966 THE STATE OF TEXAS vs. JACK RUBENSTEIN -- Texas Court of Criminal Appeals directs Judge Holland to proceed with sanity hearing, allowing Joe Tonahill to be one of defense counsel, and remands Jack Ruby to the custody of the sheriff of Dallas County.
  • 5/20/1966 Hoover memo to Katzenbach about the Fred Black case: "the attorneys in the Tax Division [of the Justice Dept] are attempting to make themselves look good with the Supreme Court at the expense of the FBI when they avoid mentioning that the Department had knowledge of our confidential coverage as early as August 24, 1965."
  • 5/22/1966 At Chatham College, McNamara spoke about the war and defended the students' right to protest against it.
  • 5/23/1966 James Gale memo to DeLoach on the Fred Black case: "Senator Long...reiterated that he had no desire to hurt the FBI or hold hearings on the FBI and he would figure out something with respect to handling his critics..."
  • 5/23/1966 Harold Weisberg wrote Hoover about releasing the FBI's spectrographic analyses test data on the JFK assassination. He never received a response.
  • 5/24/1966 Milton Jones memo to FBI asst director Robert Wick: "Attached is a blank, undated statement by 'an FBI spokesman' which clearly shows that Robert Kennedy, as Attorney General, had knowledge of and gave his approval to the FBI's use of electronic devices in crime and racketeering cases. Recommendation: That the attached blank, undated statement be approved and be returned to your office for possible future use. Specific approval will be needed at the time it is given out."
  • 5/24/1966 Harold Weisberg sent Drs. Humes and Boswell a copy of his book Whitewash and asked for an opportunity to discuss the medical evidence with them. Neither ever replied.
  • 5/27/1966 James Gale memo to DeLoach; Gale wondered "what, if any, notice should be given to the [Justice] Department concerning the extent of our microphone coverage. A review of our microphone coverage from 1960 to the present revealed that the three investigative divisions operated a total of 738 such units...The Department and/or United States Attorneys were notified of 158 of these sources...We know that the Department completely lacks security, leaks confidential information to the press...we should take not action toward advising the Department at this time of the extent of our microphone coverage during the past six years."
  • 5/27/1966 Mark Lane interview with Dealey Plaza witness Orville Nix for the film Rush To Judgment
  • 5/28/1966 Exile launch lands two CIA agents in Cuba, then engages in combat with and is sunk by Cuban Navy torpedo boat.
  • 5/29/1966 Hermino Diaz, a Cuban agent of the CIA, dies in a gun fight with a Cuban militia patrol while trying to infiltrate the area around the Hotel Comodoro in Havana, Cuba. He undertook the mission, directed by Jorge Mas Canosa, in order to carry out a new attempt to assassinate Fidel Castro. The criminal record of Hermino Diaz is extensive. A paid assassin for the dictator Trujillo, in 1948 he murdered in Mexico a Cuban named Rogelio Hernandez, from whom he took the victim's surname as a pseudonym. In 1957, again under the orders of Trujillo, he attempted to murder the president of Costa Rica, Jose Figueres. He was subsequently detained in that country. Diaz is an expert shooter. Hermino is also a mulatto with an unmistakable bald patch. (Some researchers suggest that Diaz was a participant in JFK's assassination and could have possibly been one of the Latino men seen in and around Deadly Plaza on Nov. 22.)
  • 5/29/1966 The Washington Post ran an 8-column banner headline on Page One, "An Inquest: Skeptical Postscript to Warren Group's Report on Assassination," dealing with Harold Weisberg's Whitewash and Edward J. Epstein's Inquest. The lengthy article reported, "on December 18, 1963, the Washington Post and other newspapers reported on the basis of rumors from Dallas that the first bullet to strike the President 'was found deep in his shoulder.' This report was confirmed prior to publication by the FBI." The Post concluded that the two books raised "grave doubts about the Commission's work." The article covered a sizeable portion of page 1 and nearly all of page 3, and concluded that the two books raised "grave doubts about the Commission's work." Epstein had obtained interviews from several members of the Warren Commission and its staff and was given access to a number of internal Commission memoranda (the book began as an intended Masters thesis). Concentrating on the internal workings of the Commission, Epstein argued that bureaucratic pressures from within and time pressures imposed from without had severely handicapped the Commission with the result that the investigation was superficial rather than exhaustive. He cited the discrepancies pertaining to the location of the President's back wound, noting that the holes in the President's shirt and jacket, the report on the autopsy filed by FBI agents Siebert and O'Neill, and the testimony of three Secret Service agents all placed the location in the back below the shoulder while the official autopsy report located the wound significantly higher at the base of the neck. The higher location was essential to the Warren Commission's theory that the wound in the President's throat was one of exit for a bullet that had traversed his neck from the rear. Epstein contended that the Warren Commission was more interested in dispelling rumors than in exposing facts and that it preferred not to consider the possibility that there had been a second assassin. He implied the belief that the Warren Commission had deliberately altered the autopsy report, adding that if this were the case the Warren Report would have to be viewed as an expression of "political truth." Weisberg approached the issue on a much broader level by carefully dissecting the mass of evidence purported by the Warren Commission to prove that Oswald was the lone assassin. In addition to the back wound discrepancy, Weisberg went into such matters as Oswald's marksmanship; the lack of tangible evidence linking Oswald with the shooting or the 6th floor window with the actual source of the shots; the shooting of officer Tippit, etc. Weisberg strongly implied that more than one gunman had been involved and that it was by no means certain that Oswald had been one of them.
  • 5/30/1966 US Surveyor I, an unmanned probe, lands on the moon.
  • 6/1966 Robert Kennedy undertook a 1966 tour of South Africa in which he championed the cause of the anti-apartheid movement. The tour was greeted with international praise at a time when few politicians dared to entangle themselves in the politics of South Africa. Kennedy spoke out against the oppression of the native population and was welcomed by the black population as though a visiting head of state. In an interview with Look Magazine he had this to say: "At the University of Natal in Durban, I was told the church to which most of the white population belongs teaches apartheid as a moral necessity. A questioner declared that few churches allow black Africans to pray with the white because the Bible says that is the way it should be, because God created Negroes to serve. 'But suppose God is black', I replied. 'What if we go to Heaven and we, all our lives, have treated the Negro as an inferior, and God is there, and we look up and He is not white? What then is our response?' There was no answer. Only silence." In South Africa, a group of foreign press representatives chartered an aircraft, after the National Union of South African Students failed to make sufficient travel arrangements. Kennedy not only accommodated a suspected Special Branch policeman on board, but took with good grace the discovery that the aircraft had once belonged to Fidel Castro.
  • 6/1966 issue of The Realist featured an editorial by Eric Norden criticizing fake establishment liberals for being more interested in power and status, justifying American military and economic imperialism, and preserving their delusional view of how America works, than looking for the hard truth about issues like the JFK assassination. "Liberals, however, do not even possess the one virtue of most fanatics: loyalty. Libs pursue their vendettas with vicious vigor, but they are equally prepared to jettison the ostensible object of their devotion when the transcendent interests of the power structure are threatened, as in the case of the Kennedy assassination. The grief of the libs at the loss of their young champion did not extend to a dedication to uncover the truth about his death; as soon as the indicators pointed, not to a lone assassin, but a well-organized conspiracy within agencies of the federal government, including the FBI and the CIA, the liberals looked the other way. JFK could be mourned, but not avenged; too many apple-carts would be upset in the process. At the upper-level of the Liberal Establishment there was a desperate effort, conscious and cynical, to cover up all traces of conspiracy and reassure the American people that all was still for the best in the best of all possible worlds…To even entertain the suspicion that elements of this most wondrous of all governments, whether in the intelligence networks or the political police, could band together to liquidate the presiding High Brahmin, and then coolly cover up their deeds, would shake the average liberal's neat and soothing assumptions about his world to their very roots. Such things could and do happen with depressing regularity in many other countries but never, never, of course, in America. Thus, those who challenged the Establishment's version of events were extremists' with one or another different axes to grind, perhaps paranoid and at the very least victims of a conspiratorial view of history.' History is not, of course, a succession of conspiracies; what liberals conveniently forgot was that there are conspiracies in history. The world, much less America, is not the tidy design of the League of Women Voters; it can happen here. But the blood of John Kennedy was a small price to pay for the preservation of liberal delusions."
  • 6/1966 Captain Frank Martin dies this month. He was a Dallas police captain who witnessed the slaying of LHO by Jack Ruby. When he testified to the Warren Commission, he stated: "There's a lot to be said but probably be better if I don't say it." Cause of death: cancer.
  • 6/1966 Edward Jay Epstein's Inquest is published.
  • 6/1/1966 LBJ appoints Richard Helms as CIA Director.
  • 6/3/1966 Hoover memo to Katzenbach: "there could be no possible doubt but that the Bureau was operating in this field [bugging] with the authorization of former Attornery General Robert F. Kennedy.."
  • 6/3/1966 Gemini 9 mission with Stafford and Cernan (who made a two-hour space walk) took off; docking mission failed. Astronaut Eugene Cernan took a walk in space but his visor fogged up so badly he could barely see. The flight ended 6/6.
  • 6/4/1966 LBJ's secretary Mildred Stegall told DeLoach that Johnson was disturbed about Katzenbach seeming to protect RFK in the Fred Black case. (6/6/1966 memo to Tolson)
  • 6/5/1966 Sunday Times (London) reporter Nicholas Tomalin quoted Gen. James F. Hollingsworth, "There's no better way to fight than goin' out to shoot VCs. An' there's nothing I love better than killin' Cong. No sir."
  • 6/5/1966 James Meredith, civil rights activist, was the target of a failed assassination attempt in Mississippi while on a march to register black voters. He was wounded by a sniper. One angry NYC young man, upon hearing the news, burned an American flag in protest; the Supreme Court would later rule 6-3 that this was protected free speech (Warren, Hugo Black and Byron White dissented).
  • 6/5/1966 Following the May 29, 1966 Washington Post headline, a NY Times reporter was assigned to do a story on the emerging controversy. His story appeared on June 5not on page 1, but on page 42. The author of the piece, Peter Kihss, wrote one of the critics (Harold Weisberg): "With space limitations and national desk instructions, I am sorry that everything but the single-bullet hypothesis got forced out of the story."
  • 6/6/1966 Cartha DeLoach talked with Marvin Watson, who shared in the desire to "put Katzenbach in his place...Watson told me that he had tried a number of times to make Ramsey Clark understand the fact that the Kennedys were poison...Clark has failed to find anything wrong with Bobby Kennedy. On occasions he has defended Kennedy.." (6/6 memo to Tolson)
  • 6/6/1966 Robert F. Kennedy's most famous speech, delivered exactly two years before his death, at University of Capetown, Capetown, South Africa: "I came here because of my deep interest and affection for a land settled by the Dutch in the mid-seventeenth century, then taken over by the British, and at last independent; a land in which the native inhabitants were at first subdued, but relations with whom remain a problem to this day; a land which defined itself on a hostile frontier; a land which has tamed rich natural resources through the energetic application of modern technology; a land which once imported slaves, and now must struggle to wipe out the last traces of that former bondage. I refer, of course, to the United States of America."
  • 6/7/1966 Hoover letter to Marvin Watson: "I personally deplore that this situation has arisen and has degenerated into an effort upon the part of the Attorney General to absolve...Kennedy from the responsibility of having knowledge of and having given authorization for the use of wire taps and microphones with trespass."
  • 6/11/1966 McNamara announces that US troops in Vietnam now number 285,000. LBJ's approval rating in the Gallup Poll has dropped to 46% from 54% in May.
  • 6/13/1966 Supreme Court ruled 5-4 in Miranda vs. Arizona case that criminal suspects must be read their rights before interrogation. Harlan, Stewart, White and Clark dissented. Police departments predictably were enraged: Garland, Texas police chief said, "We might as well close up shop." Los Angeles Mayor Sam Yorty called it "another set of handcuffs on the police department." J. Edgar Hoover provided notes to Sen. Robert Byrd for a speech condemning the decision. North Carolina Democrat Sam Ervin predicted that many guilty suspects would escape prosecution.
  • 6/13/1966 A Texas state court, in a sanity hearing, found Jack Ruby to be sane.
  • 6/13/1966 Some Unanswered Questions The Warren Commission Report: I Fred J. Cook The Nation, 13 June 1966, pages 705715
  • 6/14/1966 DeLoach memo to Tolson on DeLoach's talk with Abe Fortas the previous day over the Black case; "Fortas stated that the entire matter boiled down to a continuing fight for the Presidency...He added that if facts, as possessed by the FBI, concerning Kennedy's approval of wiretapping were made known to the general public that it would serve to completely destroy Kennedy."
  • 6/15/1966 DeLoach talked to Mildred Stegall, who told him that LBJ was glad the Black case had turned out this way: "This puts the finger on Bobby Kennedy where it belongs. Edgar certainly has the goods on Bobby." (6/15 memo to Tolson)
  • 6/17/1966 James Cameron wrote in The New Statesman, "Nobody but the Americans could have invented a President who poses as a peasant to conceal the expert ruthlessness that conceals the fact that he is a peasant all the time."
  • 6/19/1966 Australia: Arthur Calwell, head of the Labor party, was the target of an unsuccessful assassination attempt by Peter R. Kocan.
  • 6/20/1966 Washington Post: "Repeated recommendations of the Joint Chiefs of Staff for a callup of reserves and declaration of a national emergency were rejected by the White House, Gen. Harold R. Johnson states, because of the "shivers and tremors" this would create around the world. Johnson, Army Chief of Staff, disclosed in testimony released by the Senate Preparedness Subcommittee yesterday, -that the JCS had recommended unanimously, last spring, last fall and again early this year, some recall of reserves and the declaration of an emergency permitting troops to be kept in uniform."
  • 6/20/1966 Bell Telephone Laboratories demonstrates computer-animated movies.
  • 6/20/1966 Testimony of the Eyewitnesses The Warren Commission Report: II Fred J. Cook The Nation, 20 June 1966, pages 737746
  • 6/21/1966 NYT dispatch from Saigon: "The United States Air Force turned its attention yesterday to a column of 10 water buffalos sighted along a road just north of the Mugia Pass on the Laotian-North Vietnamese border. The spokesman said the buffalos were heavily laden with what was suspected to be enemy ammunition. The animals died under fire from F105 Thunderchief jets…United States Marine pilots also strafed a column of 11 pack elephants in the mountains 35 miles southwest of Danang…"
  • 6/21/1966 The FBI wiretap on the SCLC headquarters in Atlanta was ended at Katzenbach's request.
  • 6/22/1966 DeLoach memo to Tolson; Sen. Long had warned Katzenbach that unless the whole Black affair was straightened out, he might have to call everyone before Congress for hearings. Katzenbach was upset at this idea; "Senator Long...got quite a chuckle out of [this]...He of course had no intention of calling the Director or the Attorney General, however, he felt that his conversation this morning and his letter would put the 'fear of God' in the Attorney General. He...would follow this matter closely."
  • 6/23/1966 McNamara told Harriman that a military solution was impossible and negotiation was the only way out.
  • 6/24/1966 Briefs on the appeal of Jack Ruby's death sentence are filed by defense counsel and the State of Texas.
  • 6/24/1966 DeLoach memo to Tolson revealed that LBJ wanted to get the facts of the Black case public in such a way so that "Kennedy will be seriously injured, as far as the left wing is concerned...Watson stated the President was most anxious to see that the Director not get hurt in connection with this matter..."
  • 6/25/1966 Rostow wrote LBJ: "Mr. President, you can smell it all over: Hanoi's operation, backed by the Chicoms, is no longer being regarded as the wave of the future...We're not in, but we're moving."
  • 6/28/1966 Dean Rusk wrote in a memo that "the situation has reached the point where North Vietnam cannot succeed."
  • 6/28/1966 Argentina: President Arturo Umberto Illia was ousted by the military.
  • 6/29/1966 Richard Helms is sworn in as Director of CIA, and is highly praised by LBJ. He was the first career intelligence man to head the agency. Supporters praised Helms for being a non-political, professional, non-ideological technocrat. (Wise, Espionage Establishment)
  • 6/29/1966 US begins bombing oil facilities in Hanoi and Haiphong. Lodge cabled that "the military side of this war is going well...This means that the real danger - and the only real danger - would be in the American people were to lose heart and chose to 'bring the boys home.' This would indeed be the first domino to fall." Forty-six planes from USS Constellation and USS Rangerstrike oil storage plants on the outskirts of Hanoi and Haiphong.
  • 6/30/1966 Earl Warren told James Feron of the NY Times: "We wrote our [Warren Commission] report - it was the best we could do after ten months of intensive research - and we delivered to the National Archives every document that we had, every working paper and the differences of opinion in staff and ourselves as we went along...that was our conclusion, it was unanimous, it was the best work we could do in ten months."


Deep Politics Timeline - Tracy Riddle - 28-05-2014

  • 7/1966 Britain: a six-month wage freeze was begun and the pound devalued.
  • 7/1/1966 Medicare federal health program went into effect.
  • 7/1/1966 Last known attempt on de Gaulle's life: he was being driven to Orly Airport to fly to the USSR. A group of students, formerly of the National Resistance Council, planted a car filled with almost a ton of dynamite in the Boulevard Montparnasse within inches of where the President actually passed. The dynamite never was detonated because the students were arrested the night before after a robbery attempt they had staged to raise money for their escape.
  • 7/3/1966 Whitewash and Inquest were reviewed in the July 3 New York Times Book Review by the Times' Supreme Court correspondent, Fred Graham. The Times apparently saw no conflict in assigning Graham to review two books severely critical, implicitly if not explicitly, of the then Chief Justice of the Supreme Court. The review was largely a defense of the methods utilized by the Warren Commission under the direction of "the nation's most distinguished jurist." Graham called Weisberg a "painstaking investigator," but added that he "questions so many points made by the report that the effect is bluntedit is difficult to believe that any institution could be as inept, careless, wrong, or venal as he implies. Rather, the reader is impressed with the elusiveness of truth. . . ." Graham called Inquest superficial, and he criticized Epstein's use of the words "political truth," claiming that Epstein was actually charging deliberate fraud. Graham admitted: "Of course the single bullet' theory is porous, but no other explanation makes any sense" because if another assassin had fired from the Book Depository it would have been unlikely that he and his rifle could disappear without a trace. Graham avoided alternatives that did make sense, e.g., that an assassin or assassins had fired from the grassy knoll. He concluded that "a major scholarly study is not feasible now because the crucial papers in the archives . . . have not yet been de-classified." On the one hand he was ignoring the fact that the Times had lauded the Warren Report before any evidence was available, and on the other hand he was passing judgment in advance on any subsequent critical works, a fact that should have disqualified him as a reviewer of future books on the subject.
  • 7/4/1966 LBJ signed the Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) into law, praising it for making government more open and accessible to the people. Congress had passed FOIA unanimously; it was designed to facilitate the declassification and public release of government documents. Congressman John Moss (D-Calif.) was the main force behind pushing the bill through Congress. Bill Moyers recalled: "…what few people knew at the time is that LBJ had to be dragged kicking and screaming to the signing ceremony. He hated the very idea of the Freedom of Information Act; hated the thought of journalists rummaging in government closets; hated them challenging the official view of reality. He dug in his heels and even threatened to pocket veto the bill after it reached the White House. Only the courage and political skill of a Congressman named John Moss got the bill passed at all, and that was after a twelve-year battle against his elders in Congress who blinked every time the sun shined in the dark corridors of power." (PBS, 4/5/2002) The bill contained numerous exemptions, and did not work well at all until after Watergate, in 1974, when Congress strengthened the power of the FOIA considerably.
  • 7/4/1966 Harry Truman made his last appearance as a speaker at the eighth annual 4 July celebration on the Truman Library grounds. His worsening health forced him to stop coming to his office at the library.
  • 7/7/1966 Jimmy Hoffa was reelected to a five-year term as Teamsters president.
  • 7/8/1966 After a 7/6 Syracuse, NY concert in which the Rolling Stones allegedly dragged a US flag across the stage, the group is accused by local authorities of desecrating the American flag.
  • 7/10/1966 MLK began his campaign to make Chicago an "open city" by ending housing and job discrimination; a rally saw 40,000 people attend.
  • 7/11/1966 The Vital Documents What the Warren Report Omits Jacob Cohen The Nation, 11 July 1966, pages 4349
  • 7/11/1966 The Nation editorial: Juxtaposes stained glass window in Washington church dedicated to J. Edgar Hoover with newest charges of FBI bugging.... His annual budget is about as large as the State Department's and more than twice the size of that available to the Attorney General. Hoover commands the equivalent of an oversize army division - 16,000. No one, right up to the President, can deal with him as an equal, much less a subordinate. Attorney General Nicholas Katzenbach once joked in private: "Sure I could fire him on Monday. The only thing is that I'd be looking for a new job on Tuesday." Newsweek once pointed out that J. Edgar Hoover is an "authentic folk hero." If any doubt remained on that score, it has been removed by the installation in the Capitol Hill Methodist Church in Washington of a stained glass window, 22 feet high and 33 feet wide … dedicated to the great G-man with the inscription, Statesmanship Through The Christian Virtues. When one contemplates the honors showered upon Mr. Hoover during his illustrious career and the lamentable fact that he resembles other men in one respect - mortality - one wonders what there will be left to say when he finally shuffles off this mortal coil. The Nation, The Christian Virtues, Editorial, p. 37
  • 7/12-15/1966 black riots in Chicago's West Side; Mayor Daley calls in National Guard.
  • 7/12/1966 In Look magazine ("A New Wave of Doubt") Fletcher Knebel provided further confirmation that the autopsy doctors changed their minds about Kennedy's wounds the next day. He cited "three Commission lawyers and one of the autopsy doctors" as his source, and said that "the Bethesda physicians then reconstructed and reanalyzed their autopsy work and came to the conclusion that the bullet passed through Kennedy, exiting at his neck." Fletcher Knebel published a spirited response to Epstein's challenge in this issue of Look, taking a swipe at Mark Lane along the way. Allen Dulles is also quoted, challenging assassination critics: "If they've found another assassin, let them name names and produce the evidence."
  • 7/13/1966 Richard Speck murdered 8 student nurses at the South Chicago Community Hospital.
  • 7/14/1966 A Democratic New Jersey Congressman charged yesterday in Washington that national Communist Party leaders had conducted a summer youth leadership school at a camp in Ringwood, NJ, in northern Passaic County. The lawmaker, Representative Charles S. Joelson, said he had been given his information by J. Edgar Hoover, director of the Federal Bureau of Investigation. Mr. Joelson quoted Mr. Hoover as having said that students at the school, Camp Midvale, were given instruction last year from top Communist Party officials. They were said to have spent the rest of the summer working full time for the Party.... In making public the information given him by Mr. Hoover, Representative Joelson quoted the FBI director as having said that the Communist Party leader, Gus Hall, had been "extremely pleased" with the accomplishments of the school. Last night, Arnold Johnson, a spokesman for the Communist Party, said that "if they [the camp leaders] denied it, they are more truthful than J. Edgar Hoover ever was."
  • 7/17/1966 Lady Bird wrote, "There's a sort of conspiracy by the press, by one's friends, I'm sure. For years they pitted Lyndon against Speaker Rayburn but that never worked. Now increasly, as John Connally is reaching a summit of prominence, they are trying to stir up a fight between him and Lyndon." (White House Diary)
  • 7/18/1966 Gemini 10 mission: rendezvous and docking achieved by Young and Collins.
  • 7/18/1966 Rocker Bobby Fuller's body was found laying across the front seat of his mother's 1962 Oldsmobile - parked in front of of his apartment near Grauman's Chinese Theatre - dead, apparently from swallowing gasoline. The fact that he had been beaten up and had ingested gasoline was not released to the public. Although police ruled his death a suicide, friends speculated that he was murdered, possibly by mobsters. Bobby Fuller, singer/songwriter/guitarist for the Bobby Fuller Four, was found dead in his car near Grauman's Chinese Theater on July 18, 1966, after being lured away from his home by a mysterious 2:00-3:00 AM phone call of unknown origin. Fuller is best known for penning the hit song "I Fought the Law," which had just hit the charts when he supposedly committed suicide at the age of twenty-three. There were multiple cuts and bruises on his face, chest and shoulders, dried blood around his mouth, and a hairline fracture to his right hand. He had been thoroughly doused with gasoline, including in his mouth and throat. The inside of the car was doused as well, and an open book of matches lay on the seat. It was perfectly obvious that Fuller's killer (or killers) had planned to torch the car, destroying all evidence, but likely got scared away. The LAPD, nevertheless, ruled Fuller's death a suicide despite the coroner's conclusion that the gas had been poured after Bobby's death. Police later decided that it wasn't a suicide after all, but rather an accident. They didn't bother to explain how Fuller had accidentally doused himself with gasoline after accidentally killing himself. At the time of his death, one of Fuller's closest confidants was a prostitute named Melody who worked at PJ's nightclub, where Bobby frequently played. The club was co-owned by Eddie Nash, who would, many years later, orchestrate the Wonderland massacre. A few years after Bobby's death, his brother and bass player, Randy Fuller, teamed up with drummer Dewey Martin, formerly of Buffalo Springfield.
  • 7/19/1966 William Sullivan memo to DeLoach: "The following is set forth in regard to your request concerning what authority we have for 'black bag' job and for the background of our policy and procedures in such matters...'black bag' jobs have been used because they represent an invaluable technique in combating subversive activities of a clandestine nature aimed at undermining and destroying our nation..."
  • 7/23/1966 In Kentucky, LBJ awarded medals to 22 vets of the 101st Division returned from Vietnam. He went to Jeffersonville, Indiana, for a motorcade, where he told a crowd, "It may be old-fashioned, but I still believe that my country does most things right."
  • 7/24/1966 Meeting between Schlesinger, Galbraith and McGovern; they discussed the possibility of RFK running against LBJ in the '68 primaries. (RFK and His Times p798)
  • 7/24/1966 In July 1966 Richard Goodwin, a former advisor and close associate of President Kennedy, reviewed Inquest for Book Week. He called the book "impressive" and called for the convening of a panel to evaluate the findings of the Warren Commission and determine if a completely new investigation was warranted. He later added that there were other associates of the late President "who feel as I do." (Book Week, July 24, 1966, p.1 20. New York Times, July 24, 1966) Arthur Schlesinger Jr. also called for a new investigation around this time.
  • 7/28/1966 The Second Oswald: The Case for a Conspiracy Theory Richard H. Popkin The New York Review of Books, 28 July 1966, pages 1122
  • 7/29/1966 Bob Dylan crashes his motorcycle while riding near Woodstock, NY; he is seriously injured.
  • 7/31/1966 Washington - J. Edgar Hoover says Communists behind the "non-partisan" and "independent" candidates in the 1966 elections, infiltrating labor unions, college campuses, anti Viet Nam war demonstrations and civil rights organizations, and the new left, AP New York Times version, 8/1
  • 8/1966 Secretary of Defense Robert McNamara and his family are in the Seattle airport waiting to board a plane. A man approaches, shouting "Murderer!" and spits on McNamara. Years later, he will still remember the event vividly.
  • 8/1/1966 During Senate Foreign Relations Committee hearings, William Fulbright mused, "It is very interesting that so many of our prominent newspapers have become almost agents or adjuncts of the government; that they do not contest or even raise questions about government policy."
  • 8/1966 Sen. Stennis, a conservative hawk, conducted hearings of his Preparedness Investigating Subcommittee. Dean Rusk testified, and Stennis expressed his doubts about having supported the Tonkin Resolution: "I think it is a bad precedent…when we get into a war like this, now approaching the size of the Korean War, as far as our men are concerned, and it is a great mistake to fail to be just frank about it…"
  • 8/1/1966 President LBJ halts all congressional trips to Vietnam.
  • 8/1/1966 Ted Kennedy strongly reiterated his faith in the Warren Report which he, too, acknowledged he had never read on August 1st, 1966, when asked to comment on the various books critical of the report which came out that year. He felt the findings of the Warren Commission were "correct," the Senator told an interviewer from UPI.
  • 8/1/1966 24-year-old ex-Marine Charles Whitman occupied a clock tower at the University of Texas in Austin and shot at passerby with an arsenal of weapons; he shot 44 people, and killed 14 before police killed him. He had complained of compulsive violent thoughts and headaches. An autopsy determined that he had a brain tumor, but it could not conclusively be linked to his violent behavior.
  • 8/1/1966 The Warren Commission, The Truth, and Arlen Specter By Gaeton Fonzi Greater Philadelphia Magazine, 1 August 1966
  • 8/2/1966 The CIA had obtained a printer's copy of Mark Lane's book Rush to Judgement and a report on it from this day expressed concern about Lane's statements on the photo taken by the CIA in Mexico City. (Plausible Denial p74)
  • 8/3/1966 Comedian Lenny Bruce dies of a heroin overdose.
  • 8/4/1966 Drew Pearson - quotes in full letter from Frances Knight to J. Edgar Hoover expressing fear that Rusk may be about to put an end to embassies getting information on Americans abroad at FBI request. Asks to see J. Edgar Hoover because of "extreme urgency" of the situation and "I do not wish to commit too many details to paper, for reasons that will be obvious to you." San Francisco Chronicle
  • 8/5/1966 After he and 600 black marchers were attacked by 4000 whites, MLK said he had "never seen such hate - not in Mississippi or Alabama - as I see here in Chicago."
  • 8/9/1966 JFK assassination witness Lee Bowers is killed in a single-car crash. He was in the railroad control tower behind the Grassy Knoll and saw two men behind the fence and a lot of activity. He is killed at the age of 41 in a one-car crash near Midlothian, Texas. This particular morning, Bowers, now vice president of a construction firm, is driving south of Dallas on business. He is two miles south of Midlothian, Texas when his brand new company car veers from the road and hits a bridge abutment. A farmer who sees it, says the car was going about 50 miles an hour, a slow speed for that road. Bowers dies in a Dallas hospital. There is no autopsy and he is cremated. A doctor from Midlothian who rides to Dallas in the ambulance with Bowers notices something peculiar about the victim. "He was in some strange sort of shock." The doctor says, "A different kind of shock than the accident victim experiences. I can't explain it. I've never seen anything like it."
  • 8/9/1966 An official University of Colorado memo by Robert Low discussed the research proposal they were getting ready to submit to the Air Force's Condon Committee on UFOs: "The trick would be to describe the project so that, to the public, it would appear a totally objective study but, to the scientific community, it would present the image of a group of nonbelievers trying their best to be objective but having an almost zero expectation of finding a saucer."
  • 8/12/1966 Jack Ruby's lawyers file petition with the US Supreme Court to review Ruby's case.
  • 8/15/1966 Newsweek magazine writes of the frustration of journalists and researchers concerning the JFK autopsy evidence.
  • 8/15/1966 Mark Lane's Rush to Judgement is published. Arthur A. Cohen, editor-in-chief of Holt, Rinehart and Winston, agreed to publish the book even though the FBI had pressured him not to. (Plausible Denial p25) "... Of course, Mr. Hoover admitted, there would always be some extremists who would not yield to ... reasoning, but the Commission must not be misled by them. For instance, there was Mrs. Marguerite Oswald, Oswald's mother. She was 'emotionally unstable': she believed her son to be innocent and had gone about saying so 'for money': i.e. she had given public lectures. Mr. Hoover believed that she had made 'a substantial sum'. For these reasons Marguerite Oswald must not be heeded. On the contrary, Marina Oswald, Oswald's widow, was 'a far more reliable person': she believed that her husband was guilty. Mr. Hoover did not mention that she had made ten times as much money by insisting on Oswald's guilt as her mother-in-law had made by protesting his innocence. He preferred to rely on a knock-out proof of Marguerite Oswald's unreliability: 'the first indication of her emotional instability', he said, 'was the retaining of a lawyer that anyone would not have retained if they really were serious in trying to get down to the facts'. This lawyer was the author of this-book, Mr. Mark Lane. Rush to Judgment, Hugh Trevor-Roper, Introduction, Hugh Trevor-Roper, p. 8
  • 8/16/1966 Senator McClellan announced a new intensified investigation into the TFX contract, which by now had produced enormous problems and cost overruns in the production of the F111.
  • 8/19/66 Richard Stark and Paul-Michel Mielche said they were harassed and threatened in Dallas while working on documentary film Rush to Judgment. Police warned them "it might be dangerous" if they didn't get out of town. They said their impression was that the police "were more concerned about our footage on the death of Tippit .. than in the Kennedy shooting." San Francisco Chronicle
  • 8/20/1966 LBJ said in a speech at Rhode Island University that violence and militance would achieve no positive end, and that stopping racism and poverty would take time. At a speech in Manchester, New Hampshire, he said, "Perhaps it reflects poorly on our world that men must fight limited wars in order to keep from fighting larger wars; but that may be the condition that exists today."
  • 8/22/1966 In anticipation of William Manchester's book on the JFK assassination (and the reported unflattering statements made about LBJ in the manuscript) LBJ asks his secretary, Juanita Roberts, to collect everything in the files about his contacts with Jacqueline Kennedy following the assassination.
  • 8/24/1966 Intrusion at Minot Air Force Base, 1966. A large UFO wave took place across the U.S. during the mid-1960s. This caused a good deal of publicity, congressional interest, and the eventual study of UFOs by the University of Colorado in the hopes of settling the matter once and for all. Although the Colorado Committee was supposed to have full access to classified UFO reports, in practice it received very little to go on, and instead conducted a number of ad hoc investigations of sightings as they became known. One of many classified reports that slipped through the cracks occurred at Minot Air Force Base, in North Dakota, on August 24, 1966. That night, an airman radioed to the base about a multicolored light, very high in the sky. A team went to the location, confirmed the original unknown, then saw a second, white object pass in front of clouds. The base radar tracked the object, which was as high as 100,000 feet (almost twenty miles). The object rose and descended several times; each time it descended, an air force officer in charge of a missile crew found his radio transmission interrupted by static, even though he was sixty feet below the ground. The object eventually descended to ground level ten to fifteen miles south of the area. The Air Force sent a strike team to check. Apparently, they saw the object either on the ground or hovering very low.
  • 8/26/1966 Civil rights groups reached an accord with Chicago authorities for "open occupancy" in Chicago neighborhoods, though more militant black saws it as a sell-out.
  • 8/28/1966 Mark Lane's Rush to Judgment and Leo Sauvage's The Oswald Affair were reviewed in The New York Times Book Review by Fred Graham. His review gave the false impression that both books relied mainly on eyewitness testimony rather than more tangible hard evidence. "Eyewitness testimony," noted Graham, "is far less reliable than it seems to be." He made the incredible observation that the main source of the Warren Commission's dilemma lay in the fact that it had to issue a report. The broad proof against Oswald and the lack of evidence pointing to any other possible assassin, according to Graham, gave the Commission no choice "but to smooth over the inconsistencies to the extent possible and brand Oswald the lone assassin." Graham concluded with the unsubstantiable claim that Oswald would easily have been convicted of murder by any jury faced with the material before the Warren Commission and in these books.
  • 8/29/1966 LBJ, who is at his Texas ranch to celebrate his fifty-eighth birthday, organizes an extended group conversation over the telephone in an effort to find out what happened to the "missing" Kennedy Bible he supposedly used aboard Air Force One during his swearing-in ceremony. This action is undertaken due to reports of stories included in William Manchester's upcoming book on the assassination - that the Bible was stolen. It is eventually determined that the book was NOT a Bible, but a prayer book. Lady Bird Johnson had taken the book with her as a memento when she got off of the plane in Washington on the evening of Nov. 22, 1963. LBJ has refused to be interviewed for Manchester's book.


Deep Politics Timeline - Tracy Riddle - 28-05-2014

  • 9/1966 A Harris Poll found that 54% of the American public doubted that the Warren Commission had told the full story. The same month Mark Lane's Rush to Judgment made the Best Seller List of The New York Times (by November 1966 it was the Number One Best Seller, a position it maintained for several months).
  • 9/1966 The Times of London called for a new investigation toward the end of September 1966, a call that was echoed in The London Observer by Lord Devlin, one of England's most respected legal figures.
  • 9/1/1966 Marilyn Moore Walle, also known as "Delilah" -- a dancer employed by Jack Ruby on the day JFK was killed, is shot to death by her husband. She is planning to write book about the assassination.
  • 9/1/1966 A letter from Dr. George G. Burkley to Dr. John Nichols states that the medical files of President Kennedy are being held in the same condition as his private papers. Records dealing with the private affairs of the President, as opposed to records dealing with the official constitutional or statutory duties, have always been treated as personal to the President by the Government.
  • 9/1/1966 Headlines announced that the Democratic Policy Committee recommended moving US troops out of Europe.
  • 9/1/1966 Lady Bird: "Then there was also a story in the New York Times with details about a proposed tax measure, including removal of the 7% tax credit for plant expansion. All these details were known to only two or three people. How did they get in the paper?" (White House Diary)
  • 9/6-8/1966 militant black youths rioted in Atlanta, after police shot a black suspect. Moderate civil rights groups condemned the violence; there were increasing splits between them and more militant "Black Power" groups emerging through frustration with Martin Luther King's non-violent methods.
  • 9/6/1966 Hendrik Verwoerd, PM of South Africa, was stabbed to death in parliament at Capetown by an itinerant, Dimitri Stifanos, who was later judged insane. He complained the PM was helping blacks at the expense of whites.
  • 9/8/1966 The short-lived sci-fi TV series Star Trek makes its debut. A commercial flop that never climbed above 50 in the ratings, the original 79 episodes in syndication would become one of the most popular and influential shows ever.
  • 9/9/1966 LBJ signed the Highway Safety Act and the Traffic Safety Act.
  • 9/9/1966 Reagan announces that if elected governor, he will appoint former CIA Director John McCone to investigate the campus unrest at UC Berkeley. (SF Chronicle 6/9/02)
  • 9/9/1966 William F. Buckley, in his column, called for a panel of investigators to study whether the WC's investigation should be re-opened.
  • 9/10-13/1966 more rioting in Atlanta breaks out after another black teen is killed.
  • 9/10/1966 Letter from Sen. Robert Kennedy: "Dear Mrs. Epple, Thank you for your thoughtful letter on "unidentified flying objects". Many reputable scientists also believe that there must be other beings in the universe. Dr. Harlow Shapley, for one, has stated that there is a high probability that there is other life in the universe. To believe that there is other life in the universe is not, however, to believe that "UFO's" are manned vehicles. One explanation of this phenomenon, in addition to those you mentioned, connects the lights that are seen with the gaseous tails of comets. A careful analysis of sighting to date has not given us any indication that "UFO's" are manned. I appreciate hearing from you on this matter and look forward to hearing from you again."
  • 9/11/1966 NY Times Magazine article by English commentator Henry Fairlie: "No Conspiracy, But--Two Assassins, Perhaps?" He seemed to imply that there may have been two "fanatics or nuts" operating independently. The article concluded that it was not the proper time for a new investigation, for "to set up another independent body with no promise that it would succeed, would be to agitate public doubt without being certain that it could in the end, settle it. Popular fear and hysteria are dangerous weirds to excite..." Fairlie acknowledged that it was hard to dispute the contention that the Warren Commission "did a hurried and slovenly job," and he conceded that there might well have been more than one assassin; "available evidence seems to me confusing." But he contended that even if this supposition were made, "it still does not justify making the long leap to a conspiracy theory," because even if two or more people were involved, he argued, "it is possible to regard such people as fanatics or nuts and nothing more." Of course, if there were two or more people involved it was, by definition, a conspiracy. The article concluded that it was not the proper time for a new investigation, for "to set up another independent body with no promise that it would succeed, would be to agitate public doubt without being certain that it could in the end, settle it. Popular fear and hysteria are dangerous weirds to excite..." Thus it would appear that to Henry Fairlie and The New York Times it was more important to support the official findings of the Warren Commissioneven though questionablethan to look further into the President's assassination and risk adding to the already existing doubt and scepticism about those findings, warranted or not.
  • 9/12/1966 DeLoach memo to Tolson; "A reliable source has advised that the Supreme Court, in its opening session, October, 1966, plans to call Solicitor General Thurgood Marshall and really 'put him on the griddle' in connection with the answers he has given the Supreme Court in the case involving Fred Black...the Court thinks that Marshall is being evasive and is failing to put some individuals on the spot." His source was apparently Abe Fortas.
  • 9/12/1966 Gen. S.L.A. Marshall, a respected military historian, wrote in Newsweek: "The North Vietnamese cannot take the punishment anymore in the South. I think we can bring the war to a conclusion within the next year, possibly within the next six months."
  • 9/12-13/1966 a white mob in Grenada, Miss., attacks black students attempting to integrate two local schools; reporters are also attacked, and eventually Grenada officials will be charged with willfully neglecting to protect the blacks' civil rights from the mob.
  • 9/12/1966 Gemini 11 mission: Conrad and Gordon docked with target and Gordon spacewalked. Gordon got so hot while working in space that his vision was obscured.
  • 9/13/1966 Harold Weisberg appeared on a Washington radio station talking about the JFK assassination, and the FBI monitored the program. Weisberg pointed out Hoover's incorrect WC testimony that Oswald's view of the car on Houston Street was blocked by trees. An internal FBI memo written this day, and initialed by all of Hoover's lieutenants, said, "Weisberg is completely off-base on this point. The motorcade as it turned left off of Houston Street entered a park, [where there were trees] that did block the view of the motorcade prior to entering the park. The Director's testimony is accurate." (Never Again p12)
  • 9/20/1966 In a major revision of the Production Code, the movie industry drops several specific prohibitions and will label certain films "recommended for mature audiences."
  • 9/20/1966 William Bundy testified before the Senate that a draft of what came to be the Gulf of Tonkin resolution had been readied earlier in the year as "a matter of normal contingency planning…I am not sure that my drafts were even known to others." He said that "no serious thought" was given to submitting his resolution to Congress at the time he wrote it.
  • 9/21/1966 LBJ stated about Vietnam: "I believe there is a light at the end of what has been a long and bloody tunnel."
  • 9/21/1966 Dr. Benjamin Spock wrote to RFK urging him to lead the fight for a negotiated settlement in Vietnam. (RFK and His Times 798)
  • 9/22/1966 Arthur Goldberg spoke before the UN, promising a US bombing halt if the North Vietnamese would stop their offensive.
  • 9/25/1966 Sirhan Sirhan's dream of becoming a jockey ends when he has a bad fall from a horse.
  • 9/25/1966 Cuban exile light plane drops three bombs on thermoelectric power plant construction site and other work sites on the north coast of Camaguey province of Cuba.
  • 9/25/1966 Tom Wicker wrote in his column that a number of impressive books had opened to question the Warren Commission's "procedures, its objectivity and its members diligence. The damaging fear has been planted, here as well as abroad, that the commissioneven if subconsciouslywas more concerned to quiet public fears of conspiracy and treachery than it was to establish the unvarnished truth, and thus made the facts fit a convenient thesis." Wicker endorsed the call for a Congressional review that had been made by Congressman Kupferman.
  • 9/27/1966 In the Georgia Democratic gubernatorial primary, racist Atlanta restaurant owner Lester Maddox was victorious. MLK told newsmen that the election results left him "ashamed to be a Georgian" and showed that Georgia was a "sick state." He also remarked, "I am afraid of what lies ahead of us. We could end up with a full scale race war in this country. It is frightening."
  • 9/28/1966 Manhattan Congressman Theodore Kupferman asked Congress to conduct its own investigation into the adequacy of the Warren Report.
  • 9/30/1966 Former WC staffer Wesley Liebeler admitted in a public debate, "The fact that the Report says that all the evidence supports the one-bullet theory is simply not correct. The Report is wrong in that respect, and there is no doubt about it." Burt Griffin, in the same debate, was asked how hard it would be to detect forgery if the FBI or Dallas police had fabricated evidence. He answered, "It would be very, very difficult." He also admitted that the evidence that Oswald was in the sixth-floor window is supported by "the least direct evidence of all, because there isn't any eyewitness...to rely on...The fact that Oswald's fingerprints were on the cartons has no probative value whatsoever on the issue of whether he was in the window or not, because he worked at the Depository, he could have put his prints there at any time." Griffin gave as evidence of Oswald's guilt the "fact that he had shot Tippit." Liebeler also discussed the single bullet theory: "Well, that was the bullet - that was the bullet that came into the President's back, and then - and then, came out his throat. [Pause] Well, that raises a problem, doesn't it?" [Audience laughter.] (Broadcast 12/30/1966 on WBAI-New York radio)
  • 10/1966 I.F. Stone wrote, "Johnson has ruined morally all who deal with him at home and he will ruin all who deal with him abroad."
  • 10/1966 Gerald Ford stated, "We have strayed from the rule of law. Our government leaders, by dealing in half-truths and misinformation, led us to believe that honor and justice are just words. The measure is that the end justifies the means."
  • 10/1966 The Black Panther Party, a militant black revolutionary group, is formed to push for black self-determination.
  • 10/1966 October issue of "Commentary" had Alexander Bickel, Chancellor Kent of Yale University, calling for a new investigation observing that "the findings of the Warren Commission, and the fatuous praise with which all of the voices of the great majority greeted them two years ago, were in some measure a matter of wish fulfillment."
  • 10/3/1966 Lou Harris poll revealed that "the American people have deep and abiding doubts about the official explanation of the assassination of John F. Kennedy..."
  • 10/3/1966 On a White House tape recording today, LBJ states that he believes Sen. Robert Kennedy has authorized polls questioning the credibility of the Warren Commission findings on the assassination of his predecessor, President Kennedy. "He's got Lou Harris running a poll, and the majority of them doubt that this is the whole story on Kennedy," LBJ says. "... And 2 percent of them think that I did it."
  • 10/3/1966 Lodge and Westmoreland told LBJ that they were optimistic about the conduct of the war.
  • 10/5/1966 The Texas Court of Criminal Appeals overturned Ruby's conviction and granted him a new trial outside of Dallas County, based on the conflicts in Patrick Dean's testimony.It was also based on the grounds that the statements he made to Dallas police immediately after his arrest should not have been allowed in court.
  • 10/5/1966 Monroe, Michigan, United States - Partial meltdown * A sodium cooling system malfunction caused a partial meltdown at the Enrico Fermi demonstration nuclear breeder reactor (Enrico Fermi-1 fast breeder reactor). The accident was attributed to a zirconium fragment that obstructed a flow-guide in the sodium cooling system. Two of the 105 fuel assemblies melted during the incident, but no contamination was recorded outside the containment vessel. The story is recounted in the book "WE ALMOST LOST DETROIT."
  • 10/6/1966 California Legislature outlaws sale and possession of LSD.
  • 10/6/1966 LBJ announced appointment of Sol Linowitz as Ambassador to the Organization of American States, Llewellyn Thompson as ambassador to USSR, and Ellsworth Bunker as ambassador to Vietnam.
  • 10/6/1966 Gerald Ford was quoted in the Mercury (San Jose, CA.) as saying that no "new evidence" about the JFK assassination had emerged, and dismissed conspiracy theories as having been "triggered by a student's thesis and by the writings of an attorney whose services were rejected by the mother of Lee Harvey Oswald at the time of the...hearings." Mark Lane pointed out (Citizen's Dissent 122) that this statement was false; it was the WC that had refused to allow him to represent Oswald. Ford also stated that criticism of the WR was "a disservice to all of the American people and to the memory of the late President Kennedy."
  • 10/6/1966 AP Washington -- The Washington Post today quoted Senator Robert F. Kennedy as saying he would not run for president or vice-president in 1968 "under any foreseeable circumstances." Kennedy "made it clear that he would not be interested in being President Johnson's running mate even if the President asked him to," the Post article said. ... "The Senator said he contemplated taking much of the same political role in 1968 as he has assumed during this year's congressional campaign. Kennedy would thus travel outside his adopted state of New York to aid the national ticket as well as like-minded incumbents and challengers. "Kennedy also reaffirmed his plans to run for re-election in 1970 as senator from New York. But he declined to discuss 1972 -- a year in which virtually all observers now regard him as a potential presidential candidate."
  • 10/8/1966 US government officially declares the drug LSD to be a dangerous and illegal substance.
  • 10/9/1966 US reports Vietnam War now costing $2 billion per month.
  • 10/9/1966 John Lennon meets Yoko Ono at an art gallery in London.
  • 10/9/1966 The Sunday Times Magazine (London) published articles criticizing the Warren Commission
  • 10/9/1966 AP Washington -- Senator Robert F. Kennedy … said today he will run for reelection in 1970. He said again he will not be a candidate for president or vice-president in 1968. ... On MBS Reporters Roundup indicated would not favor use of atomic weapons in Viet Nam. ...... Kennedy said just getting to the negotiating table "is hardly the answer to Viet Nam, that's just the beginning." He said negotiations would require answering, what are we prepared to give up? What do we want from them? What are the vital interests of each side?
  • 10/10/1966 Arlen Specter is interviewed by U.S. News & World report during which he says that "the complete set of pictures taken at the autopsy was not made available to me or to the Commission. To the best of my knowledge, the Commission did not see any photographs or X-rays." He tried to reason that the single-bullet theory wasn't crucial to the lone-gunman scenario. He dismissed the idea of a grassy knoll gunman because witnesses "on the overpass...had a good view of the grassy knoll, and they saw no shooting from the knoll." But it is impossible to see the area behind the fence from the overpass. US News also reported that "Robert F. Kennedy...took charge immediately, and refused to let anyone else see the X rays and pictures....[They] remained under lock and key at Bethesda Naval Hospital until sometime in 1964. Then they were sent to the Secret Service, and turned over to Mrs. Evelyn Lincoln...[who] at the time was working on the Kennedy archives." Specter explained, "Because the Commission decided that it would not press for those photographs, as a matter of deference to the memory of the late President and because the Commission concluded that the photographs and x-rays were not indispensible...because they would have only served to corroborate what the autopsy surgeons had testified to under oath...The fiber on the front of the shirt [Kennedy's] was inconclusive - it was a slit. You could not determine in which direction the fiber was pushed, nor could the nick on the tie be used to determine what was the direction of the shot."
  • 10/11/1966 LBJ signed Child Nutrition Act, funding programs to feed poor children in school. Defense budget for 1966 was $64.5 billion ($301 billion in 1992 dollars.)
  • 10/14/1966 After visiting Vietnam, McNamara reported to Johnson that despite heavy loss of life, the Communists' morale was still high and Hanoi had adopted a strategy of waiting for the US to grow weary and withdraw. The CIA's analysts agreed with McNamara, but the JCS did not. (In Retrospect 263-4)
  • 10/14/1966 New York Post quoted Allen Dulles: "If they [WC critics] have found another assassin, let them name names and produce evidence."
  • 10/15/1966 Cabinet-level Department of Transportation created; takes effect 4/1/1967.
  • 10/15/1966 Mark Lane ... displayed a letter from FBI Director J. Edgar Hoover confirming that two key frames in motion pictures of the assassination were transposed before publication by the Warren Commission. As published, these show Mr. Kennedy slumping forward, but the correct sequence as determined by photographic experts, Lane said, shows the late President was pushed back by the impact of one bullet, which could only have been fired from in front of his limousine. San Francisco Examiner [Account of Lane speech at Stanford, 10/14]
  • 10/16/1966 A "well qualified source" was quoted in the London Observer: "We always understood that the trouble with the [autopsy] photographs was that they simply didn't prove anything conclusively one way or the other - it simply wasn't possible after the surgeon's work at Dallas to show from them the passage of the bullet that was supposed to have gone through the President."
  • 10/17/1966 LBJ began a trip to Asia that would include New Zealand, Australia, the Philippines, Thailand, Malaysia, and South Korea.
  • 10/18/1966 Stanford Daily reported that Wesley Liebeler told Stanford University's student body that rejection of the Warren Report was due to "the madness of crowds and popular delusion today that there was at the time of the crusades, alchemists, and witchcraft."
  • 10/20/1966 Congress approves funds for rebuilding ghetto areas.
  • 10/21/1966 Life Magazine was not the only publication caught in the act of phonying up the moving picture of the Kennedy assassination. The Report of the Warren Commission did it too and did it first. J. Edgar Hoover has confirmed the fact that two frames of the movie are transposed as they appear in the Warren Report. These are the most critical frames of the shooting sequence [and] by transposing the pictures, the Report makes it appear that his head was knocked forward by the impact. When they are seen in the correct time sequence, they show that his head was snapped back and to the left. This was revealed in Berkeley 10/15 by Mark Lane [who exhibited] a letter written by Hoover to another investigator of the Kennedy killing. The letter attributes the transposition to a "printing error." Hoover would have us believe that after ten months' work ... the two pictures constituting the most critical evidence were transposed by mistake - and the mistake just happens to result in supporting the official theory of-one assassin, shooting from behind the President's car. Berkeley Barb, Hal Verb
  • 10/24/1966 Researcher David Lifton showed Wesley Liebeler the 11/26/1963 FBI report mentioning "surgery of the head area"; Liebeler was shocked, and quickly fired off memos to Warren, Ramsey Clark and Burke Marshall.
  • 10/25/1966 LBJ ends a conference in Manila; US, Australia, Philippines, Thailand, New Zealand, South Korea and South Vietnam issue a four-point declaration of peace. This includes an offer to withdraw allied troops six months after Hanoi withdraws its forces.
  • 10/26 or 29/1966 On this date, the Kennedy family transfers the photographs, X-rays, and all other autopsy material in their possession to the National Archives by deed of gift dated this day under special conditions restricting access for five years. Burke Marshall, a lawyer representing the Kennedy estate, orders the transfer. Marshall states: "the family of the late President John F. Kennedy shares the concern of the government of the United States that the personal effects of the late President which were gathered as Evidence by the President's Commission on the Assassination of President Kennedy, as well as certain other materials relating to the assassination, should be deposited, safeguarded and preserved in the Archives of the United States as materials of historical importance. The family desires to prevent the undignified or sensational use of these materials (such as public display) or any other use which would tend in any way to dishonor the memory of the late President or cause unnecessary grief or suffering to the members of his family and those closely associated with him. We know the government respects these desires." The actual transfer of the material is made several days later. It is at this point, according to the HSCA, that the steel container containing JFK's preserved brain and certain other materials are found to be missing.
  • 10/26/1966 LBJ visits troops in Vietnam.
  • 10/26/1966 Fire broke out on the hangar of US carrier Oriskany as the ship operated in the South China Sea off Vietnam. The fire was caused by a parachute flare igniting. Forty-four officers and men were lost, but the crew prevented even greater damage and loss of life.
  • 10/29/1966 Lt. Cmdr. William Bruce Pitzer -- works at Bethesda Hospital, trained as an x-ray technician -- found shot to death in his Bethesda office. Ruled a suicide. Shot with a .45 caliber pistol. Dennis David, a medical corpsman present at the JFK autopsy said that Pitzer "filmed in detail the Kennedy autopsy." The government refuses to give up a copy of his autopsy report.
  • 10/30/1966 RFK talked to Arthur Schlesinger about the WC: "he wondered how long he could continue to avoid comment on the report. It is evident that he believes that it was a poor job and will not endorse it, but that he was unwilling to criticize it and thereby re-open the whole tragic business." (RFK and His Times)
  • 10/30/1966 Los Angeles Times quoted Episcopal Bishop James A. Pike as saying he believed there was a conspiracy in the JFK assassination.
  • 10/31/1966 Atty Gen. Ramsey Clark ordered everything the WC had examined to be placed in the National Archives. Weisberg later commented on this: "Is it possible that Marina Oswald's nail file and sewing basket are essential to the national heritage but the [Zapruder] camera that recorded the entire assassination is not?"
  • 10/31/1966 The 65 X-rays, color and B&W photos taken during the autopsy were turned over to the National Archives by the Kennedy family. (New York Times 11/2/1966)


Deep Politics Timeline - Tracy Riddle - 28-05-2014

  • 11/1966 Life Magazine published a series of photographs from the film that Abraham Zapruder took of the Kennedy assassination. Luis Walter Alvarez, an expert in optics and photoanalysis, became intrigued by the pictures and began to delve deeply into what could be learned from the film. The result of this was that Alvarez believed he had proved conclusively both in theory and experiment that the backward snap of the President's head was completely consistent with his being shot from behind, which would have been the case if Lee Harvey Oswald were the assassin. He also investigated the timing of the gun shots and the shockwave which disturbed the camera, the speed of the camera, and pointed out a number of things which the FBI photoanalysts either overlooked or got wrong.
  • 11/1966 issue of The Progressive: Harrison Salisbury radically revised his early praise of the Warren Report. While reiterating his belief that Oswald acted alone, Salisbury wrote that his reading of "Inquest" and "Rush to Judgment," both of which he called "serious, thoughtful examinations," had convinced him that questions of major importance remained unanswered. He called for a new investigation. Like Wicker, he endorsed the Kupferman resolution, adding the principal areas of doubt. The nation no longer lives in the trauma which persisted for months after the President's death. The Warren Commission had good reason to concern itself for the national interest, to worry about national morale, to take upon itself the task of damping down rumors. But today and tomorrow the sole criteria of an inquiry should be the truthevery element of it that can be obtainedand a frank facing of unresolved and unresolvable dilemmas.
  • 11/1966 NY Times editorial admitted that there were "Unanswered Questions" about the assassination. The NY Times quietly undertook, in early November 1966, a new investigation of the assassination under the direction of Harrison Salisbury. "We will go over all the areas of doubt." Salisbury told Newsweek (Dec 12), "and hope to eliminate them."
  • 11/1966 New Orleans District Attorney Jim Garrison was on a plane trip to NY with Governor McKeithen and Sen. Russell Long when Long expressed his doubts about the Warren Commission's conclusions. This intrigued Garrison, who began to study the subject in detail.
  • 11/1966 The Warren Commission Report and Its Critics by Jacob Cohen Frontier, November 1966, pages 520
  • 11/1/1966 Humes, Boswell, Stringer, and Ebersole examine and create inventory of JFK collection at Archives. This was the first time they had seen the developed photos and X-rays. This examination was not made public for many years. The signatories pathologists James Humes, MD and J. Thornton Boswell, MD, radiologist John Ebersole, MD, and autopsy photographer John Stringer signed off on their review in an affidavit entitled the "Report of Inspection by Naval Medical Staff on November 1, 1966 at National Archives of X-Rays and Photographs of Autopsy of President John F. Kennedy." The affidavit, really more of an inventory of the autopsy materials, is the first known catalog of Kennedy's extant autopsy photographs and X-rays.
  • 11/1/1966 Autopsy photos and X-rays, JFK's coat and shirt, turned over to National Archives.
  • 11/2/1966 Larry O'Brien wrote LBJ in a memo that the Democrats would probably lose over 30 House seats in the upcoming election. (No Final Victories)
  • 11/2/1966 The New York Times reported that the Justice Department "disclosed that photographs and X-Rays taken of President Kennedy's body at the autopsy after the assassination were turned over to the National Archives ... by the Kennedy family."
  • 11/2/1966 LBJ spoke before the South Korean National Assembly; he pointed to the "modern miracle" of South Korea as an example of what could be done in Vietnam.
  • 11/3/1966 LBJ signed truth-in-packaging bill, requiring standards in product labeling. Also signed Demonstration Cities and Metropolitan Redevelopment Act (Model Cities Act), providing aid to inner cities; and he signed the Clean Waters Restoration Act to clean up the nation's lakes and rivers.
  • 11/3/1966 The NY Times reported that, concerning the JFK autopsy materials, "Mr. [Burke] Marshall said he would grant no requests from journalists, historians, biographers and researchers for at least five years...After the five-year period, selected scholars and researchers will be given access to the pictures and X-rays, he said, but the news media will probably still be excluded. These restrictions will continue as long as any member of President Kennedy's immediate family lives." No law states that this material was at any time ever owned by the Kennedy family; in fact, it is clearly the property of the Federal Government. Any limitations on the family wished to place on it were also not legal.
  • 11/3/1966 Washington, [11/2] - ... The 65 X-rays, color transparencies and black and white negatives were placed in the National Archives by the Kennedy family on Monday [10/31]. New York Times, Fred P. Graham [No dateline - New York'?] - Senator Robert F. Kennedy when asked Tuesday night [11/1] why the executors of his brother's estate had placed the restrictions on the pictures and X-rays, said that "the reason is so obvious it shouldn't need spelling out." He said the items turned over to the Archives were things the general public would not be concerned about, that they would be of interest only to medical persons, Federal police officers and federally appointed investigators. New York Times
  • 11/4/1966 LBJ is asked at a press conference about the "alleged mysterious disappearance of [the autopsy] photos [and] X-rays." Johnson replied, "I think that every American can understand the reasons why we wouldn't want to have the garments and the records and everything paraded out in every sewing circle in the country to be exploited and used without serving any good or official purpose." He said that the material had been available to the WC, and was available to the "the Government, the Justice Department, the FBI." "I know of no evidence that would in any way cause any reasonable person to have a doubt about the Warren Commission, but if there is any evidence that's brought forth, I'm sure that the Commission and the appropriate authorities will take action that may be justified." (New York Times 11/5/1966)
  • 11/4/1966 Richard Levine article in the Baltimore Sun featured an interview with Dr. Boswell.
  • 11/8/1966 Mid-term elections saw 48% voter turnout. Republicans won 47 House seats and 3 Senate seats (according to Roll Call 9/24/2001); Democrats still have margins of 65 in the House and 30 in the Senate, but conservatives in both parties are now emboldened to oppose LBJ's domestic policies. Many House freshmen were among those defeated. GOP also picked up 8 governors' seats, leaving them in control of half the state capitols (57% of the population). Edward Booke of Massachusetts is first black Senator since Reconstruction. Ronald Reagan is elected governor of California, defeating Gov. Brown by more than 1 million votes. Other Senate newcomers: Mark Hatfield, Howard Baker.
  • 11/8/1966 Los Angeles Times reported that Hoover had addressed a graduation ceremony at the FBI academy and encouraged the new agents to "emulate" Efrem Zimbalist Jr., the star of the TV show The FBI Story.
  • 11/8/1966 Memo by Hoover to the White House (response to a Marvin Watson request for dirt on WC critics): "[Mark] Lane has a long history of affiliation with Communist Party front groups and organizations which have been cited as subversive." It was alleged that Harold Weisberg had Communist sympathies. Sen. Richard Schweiker later reported, "Seven individuals listed, some of their files...not only included derogatory information, but sex pictures to boot." (Church Report 47,53,181) Hale Boggs remarked to his son, "If they have all this on some little guy who wrote a book, what about me?" (The Man and the Secrets 585)
  • 11/9/1966 James R. Worrell, dies in a car-motorcycle accident, He is 23 years old. Said he saw the assassin run from the School Book Depository. The man did not fit Oswald's description.
  • 11/9/1966 Paul McCartney is believed by some to have died in a car accident.
  • 11/10/1966 Official sources have told U.S. News & World Report that the complete set of pictures and X rays was never made available to the Warren Commission, or its staff. Here is what these sources report: Robert F. Kennedy ... took charge immediately, and refused to let anyone else see the X rays and pictures.… Official sources say the X-rays and photographs remained under lock and key at Bethesda Naval Hospital until sometime in 1964. Then they were sent to the Secret Service, and turned over to Mrs. Evelyn Lincoln, the late President's longtime secretary. Mrs. Lincoln, at the time, was working on the Kennedy archives. The X-rays and pictures are said to be in this collection, located in the National Archives, but under direct control of the Kennedy family. U.S. News & World Report, Truth About Kennedy Assassination
  • 11/10/1966 Carl W. Belcher of the U.S. Justice Department signs a document which reads: "On the afternoon of November 10, 1966, I took the original and one carbon copy of the document entitled Report of Inspection by Naval Medical Staff on November 1, 1966 at National Archives of X-Rays and Photographs of Autopsy of President John F. Kennedy' to the Naval Medical Center, Bethesda, M.D., where it was read and signed by Captain Humes, Dr. Boswell, Captain Ebersole and Mr. John T. Stringer. Certain ink corrections were made in the document before they signed it." Boswell, at the urging of the Justice Dept., will eventually ask for an independent reexamination of JFK's autopsy evidence. Humes will also say that there are two photos missing from the autopsy evidence. Thus although they affixed their signatures attesting to the completeness of the photo file in 1966, powerful evidence suggests that Humes, Boswell and Stringer are now fully aware the declaration is not true. The concluding sentence reads, "The X-rays and photographs described and listed above include all the X-rays and photographs taken by us during the autopsy, and we have no reason to believe that any other photographs or X-rays were made during the autopsy." This key sentence, which was apparently added, is absent in the unsigned inventory. Moreover, it is very probably untrue. Although the 11/10/66 affidavit attested to completeness of the inventory, it did not address the key question of whether the photographs and X-rays supported the Warren Commission's autopsy conclusions. Apparently to correct this deficiency, Justice moved again. It arranged for the second examination of the same material on January 20, 1967, "for the purpose," the autopsy team formally declared, "of determining whether they (the photographs and X-rays) are consistent with the autopsy report." In a once-secret memo, HSCA counsel, D. Andy Purdy, JD, reported that during an interview, chief autopsy photographer, "(John) STRINGER (sic) said it was his recollection that all the photographs he had taken were not present in 1966 (when Stringer saw the photographs for the first time.) [150] Among the missing pictures are those taken of the interior of JFK's chest. None survive in the current inventory. Yet every autopsy participant who was asked recalled that photographs were taken of the interior of JFK's body, as indeed they should have been to document the passage of the non-fatal bullet through JFK's chest: John Stringer told the HSCA he recalled taking "at least two exposures of the body cavity." A. Purdy.[151] James Humes, MD was reported in an HSCA memo to have, "... specifically recall(ed photographs) ... were taken of the President's chest ... (these photographs ) do not exist."[152] As already discussed, Humes had told the Warren Commission in 1964 that he had taken pictures of the interior of Kennedy's chest.[153] J. Thornton Boswell, MD, the second in command, backed up Stringer and Humes. The HSCA recorded that, "... he (Boswell) thought they photographed '... the exposed thoracic cavity and lung ...' but (he) doesn't remember ever seeing those photographs."[154] Robert Karnei, MD, a Navy pathologist who assisted but was not a member of the official autopsy team, told the HSCA, "He (Karnei) recalls them putting the probe in and taking pictures (the body was on the side at the time) (sic)."
  • 11/11/1966 Gemini 12: docking maneuvers by Aldrin and Lovell; spacewalk by Aldrin. The craft's radar failed, and the primary propulsion system on the Agena rocket malfunctioned.
  • 11/13/1966 U.S. plane drops three bombs on Raul Cepero Bonilla (former CUBANITRO) plant, in Matanzas, Cuba.
  • 11/13/1966 ZANESVILLE, OHIO local barber and amateur astronomer Ralph Ditter took two spectacular UFO photos. Beyond their detailwhich to some skeptics is evidence itself of fraudthe importance of the photos lies in their similarity to the craft reported during a series of sightings that occurred throughout the year. At least two of these sightings were made by law enforcement officials, credible witnesses on everyone's list. In Toledo, on March 25, two Lucas County deputies, Robert Schultz and Stanley Nelepa, reported seeing a huge object floating at treetop level. Four days later, a glowing orange object was seen floating over the Ohio Turnpike administration building in Berea. Three days later it was spotted a second time, by Berea patrolmen Clarence T. Janowick and John R. Galik Jr. Because Ditter took his photos with a Polaroid camera, there are no negatives to investigate for signs of tampering. The jury remains outand perhaps may never be able to return a verdict on whether the Zanesville photos are spectacular evidence or spectacular frauds.
  • 11/14/1966 US News reported that Robert Kennedy's office had stated that the WC "had not insisted on viewing the [autopsy] pictures." "Some of the government's legal authorities raise a question about the legal right to treat X rays and photographs related to the assassination of the late President as under the control of the Kennedy family, subject to conditions imposed by them, inasmuch as these pictures were taken when the late -President no longer was President and were part of the record of a government-controlled autopsy. Actually, it is said, the government itself is imposing these conditions." U.S. News & World Report, p34, Washington Whispers An account of how "those controversial X-rays and pictures of the Kennedy autopsy are now in government hands. But they're still under control of the Kennedy's …" Details on National Archives custody. U.S. News & World Report, Now U. S Gets JFK Autopsy Photos, p. 81 Last week ... three years after the fact, the 65 X-rays, color slides and black and white negatives were at last delivered to the National Archives. If the pictures still remained off limits to all but federal investigators for the next five years, the mystery within a mystery at least was soused: the pictures, in effect if not in fact, had been in the possession of the Kennedy family all along. … Newsweek -- Assassination: Missing Link
  • 11/15/1966 THE STATE OF TEXAS vs. JACK RUBENSTEIN -- Texas Court of Criminal Appeals turns down the State of Texas' motion for a rehearing on court's October 5 decision.
  • 11/15/1966 The first Apollo flight had been scheduled for this date, but numerous problems pushed the date back.
  • 11/16/1966 LBJ was operated on at Bethesda for a benign polyp in his throat and a scar from his gall bladder operation.
  • 11/16/1966 Clifton Daniel, then Managing Editor of the NYT, in addressing a public symposium on "The Role of the Mass Media in Achieving and Preserving a Free Society," defended the Warren Report and accused its critics of "dragging red herrings all over the place."
  • 11/17/1966 Ronald Reagan, just days after being elected governor, decides to make a run for the White House in 1968. (America in Search of Itself p244)
  • 11/17/1966 Ike came to visit LBJ at Bethesda.
  • 11/18/1966 This was the last required meatless Friday for American Roman Catholics, in accordance with a decree made by Pope Paul VI earlier this year.
  • 11/18/1966 US press quoted South Vietnamese foreign minister as saying, "the entire Vietnamese Army will switch to a pacification role in 1967 and leave major fighting to American troops."
  • 11/20/1966 Sen. Russell did not criticize the Commission in public until November 20, 1966 in The Atlanta Constitution. There he said he harbored a lingering dissatisfaction with the Commission's work and that he disagreed with the Single Bullet Theory. In 1968, he went further and told Weisberg that the Commission had been deceived by the CIA and FBI in two key areas: 1.) Oswald's background, and 2.) the ballistics evidence. He publicly announced his "lingering dissatisfaction" with parts of the Report. Russell explicitly stated he could not agree that Oswald acted alone. He could accept the conclusion that Oswald fired the shots that killed JFK, but he could not rule out the possibility that Oswald was part of a conspiracy.
  • 11/21/1966 Henry Cabot Lodge was quoted by US News & World Report: "Yes, we have reached a turning point…it is clear to all that the Viet Cong cannot possibly win and that we cannot possibly be defeated."
  • 11/21/1966 Mark Lane [in taped interview over WABC-TV? said], "I know Robert Kennedy sent a message to Professor [Hugh] Trevor-Roper, who wrote the introduction to my book, in which he said to keep up the good work." Professor Trevor Roper ... reached last night in Oxford, England, said, "No such message from Robert Kennedy has ever been received by me." Mr. Lane could not be reached for further comment, nor could Senator Kennedy or spokesmen for him. New York Times, Peter Kihss
  • 11/21/1966 Harris survey shows 5 Americans to 1 think JFK will go down in history as greater President that LBJ, and that 39 would choose RFK over LBJ as democratic nominee in 1968, with 37% choosing LBJ and 24% undecided. San Francisco Examiner
  • 11/21/1966 Joe Dolan, commenting on assassination on his call-in program (KNEW Oakland) - "According to information I receive - I cannot vouch for its authenticity, it seems as if it might be reliable - but according to information I receive, there could be a sensational break in this case within a year, maybe within six or eight months, and it's possible that some of the highest people in our country might be implicated. But of course this is purely conjectural. We'll have to wait and see."
  • 11/21/1966 Sen. Russell B. Long, D-LA. - AP 22 Nov 66: "Sen. [Long] said yesterday in New Orleans he has always thought a second person was involved in the assassination who was 'a much better shot than Oswald.' Long said he thinks there should be further investigation."
  • 11/22/1966 Los Angeles Times quoted Sen. Richard Russell as saying he wanted his dissenting view included in the WR: "Warren was determined he was going to have a unanimous report. I said it wouldn't be any trouble just to put a little asterisk up here and then down at the bottom of the page saying: 'Senator Russell dissents to this finding as follows,' but Warren wouldn't hear of it. He finally took that part and rewrote it himself."
  • 11/22/1966 NYT quoted Earl Warren: "If I were still a district attorney and the Oswald case came into my jurisdiction, given the same amount of evidence I could have gotten a conviction in two days and never heard about the case again."
  • 11/22/1966 AP Washington - … The office of Senator Robert F. Kennedy … said he has no comment on the suggestions for a new investigation.
  • 11/22/1966 AP Algiers -- Several hundred cheering Algerians broke through police cordons today to applaud Senator Edward M. Kennedy, D-MA, at a ceremony marking the third anniversary of the assassination of President John F. Kennedy.... Some of the crowd had waited for several hours in biting cold to watch him lay a wreath in memory of his brother on Kennedy Square in suburban El Biar. The enthusiasm was in contrast to the official coolness toward the United States, described almost daily in Algeria's state-run press and radio as an "imperialist aggressor."
  • 11/23/1966 NY Times quotes Sen. Russell Long saying that there must have been more than one gunman in the JFK assassination: "whoever fired that second shot was a better shot than Oswald and he was using a better weapon."
  • 11/23/1966 AP New York - Democrats could do nothing "more stupid and self-defeating" than to run Senator Robert F. Kennedy, D-NY against President Johnson or vice-president Hubert Humphrey in 1968, Theodore C. Sorensen, former special counsel to President John F. Kennedy, said today, called for party unity and end to feuds within the party.
  • 11/24/1966 The New York Herald tribune (Paris edition) remarked in an editorial entitled "Protecting Privacy:" "It is altogether unlikely, of course, that J. Edgar leaver, in the closing years of a long, honorable and exceedingly useful career of public service will be prosecuted for a crime. But the awkward truth in that, as director of the Federal Bureau of Investigation, he has been responsible for conduct by agents of that bureau which, according to a Justice Department stipulation in federal district court the other day, violated the constitutional rights of Robert G. Baker. It is a crime punishable by ten years in prison and a $5,000 fine, for two or more persons to conspire to injure the constitutional rights of a citizen."
  • 11/25/1966 Files reveal that Justice Dept had already discreetly completed two autopsy probes of its own. The first occurred in late 1966, the second in early 1967, the timing suggesting a possible link to published concerns. Perhaps predictably, the probes concluded the Warren Commission, and the Justice Department, had been right the first time. The bases for this determination were the findings of Department-selected reviewers whose own interests just happened to neatly coincide with the Justice Department's: JFK's original autopsy team. The Justice Department's agitation about unwanted public skepticism is apparent in a flurry of now-declassified memos that flew between former Commission staffers David Slawson and Wesley Liebeler, and then-Attorney General Ramsey Clark. In a once-secret memo dated 11/25/66, Clark laid out a plan: "We should carefully examine," he ordered, "all the criticisms, hypotheses and suggestions contained in the existing body of literature concerning the President's assassination and the work of the Warren Commission. The purpose is to inventory the contentions so we can evaluate their validity. I would like the task described above to be undertaken by a small group of lawyers within the (Justice) Department on an unpublicized basis ... ." (Obtained by Kathy Cunningham. Memo from AAG Ramsey Clark to "Vinson, Sanders and Rogovin," dated Nov. 25, 1966. Titled: "Warren Commission -- Re-evaluation of evidence". Obtained at the LBJ Library by Randy Robertso) Clark's directive didn't narrow the focus to JFK's autopsy. It is apparent, however, that he was responding to a memo written just three days earlier by David Slawson who had advised a strategy of keeping the focus narrowed to the autopsy evidence. Slawson, then working under Clark at Justice, was worried about questions that were being raised about the autopsy at the New York Times, questions that he got wind of through Liebeler. The Times' Harrison Salisbury apparently wanted non-government pathologists to review the autopsy photographs and X-rays, a request that Slawson said the Kennedy attorney, Burke Marshall, had resisted. Salisbury's ultimate goal, Slawson fretted in his memo, might be to have the Times endorse a wide-ranging reinvestigation. "There is still a reasonable chance of spiking this thing," Slawson added hopefully, "by a re-investigation limited to aspects of the autopsy. But if public opinion continues to develop as it has over the past few months we may soon be faced with a politically unstoppable demand for a free-wheeling re-investigation of all aspects." (Although the "Liebeler memorandum" has not been published, author David Lifton discusses the memo in detail in Best Evidence, New York, Carroll and Graff, 1980, 1988 & 1992. While Slawson refers to the memo's having been dated 11/16/66, Lifton claims it was written on 11/8/66.) When Clark wrote back three days later ordering an unpublicized examination of all the criticisms, he might already have grasped how a narrow reinvestigation might succeed in "spiking" calls for a wider reexamination. For the record discloses that the Department's, and so therefore Clark's, private pursuit of JFK's autopsy had not commenced with Slawson's appeal to the Attorney General, but sometime earlier. Before Slawson had written his memo on November 22, 1966, but well after Weisberg, Lane and Epstein had published, Justice, assuredly with Clark's approval, had already quietly arranged for the original autopsy team to conduct the first formal examination ever of JFK's autopsy photographs and X-rays. That examination took place on November 1, 1966. Thus, despite published attention given to numerous Warren Commission flat tires, it was apparently only the squeaking wheels of Kennedy's autopsy that the Justice Department felt the need to grease.
  • 11/25/1966 FBI press release: "On November 21, 1966, J Edgar Hoover...received a letter from a newsman expressing concern over the rash of books, articles and statements which are 'creating confusion and doubts about the validity of the findings of the Warren Commission regarding the assassination of President Kennedy.' The newsman said that one of the 'conflicts' concerned the alleged variations of the results of the medical examination of the President's body...in FBI reports dated December 9, 1963 and January 13, 1964, and the official autopsy report. The newsman said he would appreciate any comment Mr Hoover would make concerning these matters....By letter dated November 23, 1966, to the newsman, Mr Hoover said he shared the concern of the newsman regarding the criticisms of the Warren Commission's findings. He pointed out that while the critics had every right to state their views, they 'should show more regard for the facts on record. They have ignored certain facts, misinterpreted others, and expressed pure speculation as truth.'...While there is a difference in the information reported by the FBI and the information contained in the autopsy report concerning the wounds, there is no conflict. The FBI reports record oral statements made by autopsy physicians while the examination was being conducted and before all the facts were known...Unknown to the Agents, the physicians eventually were able to trace the path of the bullet through the body. On the morning of November 23, 1963, Dr Humes contacted doctors who treated the President at Parkland...and confirmed his assumption that a tracheotomy had been performed using a bullet hole in the front of the neck...Recently the charge has been made that the FBI altered the film of the assassination taken by Abraham Zapruder. This is totally false. The FBI never had the original Zapruder film in its possession - it was purchased by a national magazine...Not one shred of evidence has been developed to link any other person in a conspiracy with Oswald..." (Post Mortem p541-5) Hoover implies that the doctors were able to "trace" the wound through Kennedy's body once they found out about the tracheotomy, but by that time they no longer had access to the body.
  • 11/25/1966 Life magazine called for a new investigation into the assassination: "Did Oswald Act Alone? A Matter of Reasonable Doubt." Connally examined the Z-film frames for Life. He had never read the Warren Report. He said, "They talk about the 'one-bullet' theory and the 'two-bullet theory,' but as far as I'm concerned, there is no 'theory.' There is my absolute knowledge, and my wife's too, that one bullet caused the President's first wound, and that an entirely separate shot struck me." The magazine also featured an interview with Arlen Specter, who explained that the bullet that left JFK's neck had to hit Connally, since it didn't hit anything else. He claimed he could see Connally wincing in frame 230, but "Life's photo interpreters think he looks unharmed. Nor is there any medical evidence, despite Specter's claim, that Connally's right hand was in his lap when he was hit." Life pointed out that the position of his wrist was not important since the bullet could have been deflected after hitting the rib.
  • 11/25/1966 Richard Billings, Life magazine's associate editor in charge of investigative reporting had been looking into certain aspects of the JFK assassination, particularly the "single-bullet" theory. Billings' staff had concluded after analyzing the Zapruder film that the one-bullet theory is untenable and, in today's issue "Life" magazine calls for a new investigation. However, in its November 25, 1966, issue, "Time" magazine - also a part of Time-Life Corporation - today editorializes against the "phantasmagoria" of Warren Commission critics and concludes: "...there seems little valid excuse for so dramatic a development as another full-scale inquiry." Asked about these conflicting editorial postures, Hedley Donovan, editor in chief of both "Time" and "Life," responds: "We would like to see our magazines arrive at consistent positions on major issues, and I am sure in due course we will on this one." This reconciliation occurs two months from now when Billings says he is told by a superior: "It is not "Life's" function to investigate the Kennedy assassination." The 11/25/1966 issue of Life quoted Specter as saying that "it looks like to me as if his face [Connally's] is wincing [in frame 230], indicating a probability he's been hit." The magazine responded, "Life's photo interpreters think he looks unharmed [in frame 230], as does Connally himself." Specter told Life, "We're pretty sure from the medical evidence that when Connally was hit, his right wrist was down in his lap...frame 230 the wrist is too high to be hit and throughout the rest of the sequence - all the way until Connally collapses - that wrist stays raised." But Life responded, "Nor is there any medical evidence, despite Specter's claim, that Connally's right hand was in his lap when he was hit."
  • 11/25/1966 With their unpublicized investigation of the assassination already underway, the NY Times ran a carefully worded editorial, "Unanswered Questions," which maintained that there were enough solid doubts of thoughtful citizens to require official answers. "Further dignified silence, or merely more denials by the commission or its staff, are no longer enough." About a month into the investigation Salisbury received permission from the government of North Vietnam to visit Hanoi, and he quickly departed for Paris to complete final preparations for the trip. Shortly after his departure the Times investigation was ended.
  • 11/25/1966 Arlen Specter was quoted by the Philadelphia Inquirer, "I don't think people are going to believe this [single-bullet theory]...this year, next year, or a hundred years from now...this thing will be challenged today, tomorrow and forever."
  • 11/26/1966 J. Edgar Hoover issues an official statement saying: "While there is a difference in the information reported by the FBI and the information contained in the autopsy report concerning the wounds, there is no conflict ... The FBI and the Warren Commission each received a copy of the official autopsy report of December 23, 1963 ... Its contents were not repeated in an FBI report" (of January 13, 1964)
  • 11/27/1966 Howard Hughes arrived in Las Vegas, Nevada by railroad car, and moved into the Desert Inn Hotel. Refusing to leave the hotel and to avoid further conflicts with the owners of the hotel, Hughes bought the Desert Inn in early 1967. The hotel's eighth floor became the nerve center of his empire, and the ninth floor penthouse became Hughes' personal residence. Between 1966 and 1968, Hughes bought several other hotels/casinos (Castaways, New Frontier, The Landmark Hotel and Casino, Sands and Silver Slipper) from the Mafia, transactions which ultimately ended mob control of the city's hotels and casinos. Hughes wanted to change the image of Las Vegas from its mobsters in gaudy silk suits and thousand-dollar-a-night call girls to a more glamourous image. As Hughes wrote in a memo to an aide: "I like to think of Las Vegas in terms of a well-dressed man in a dinner jacket and a beautifully jeweled and furred female getting out of an expensive car". A chronic insomniac, Hughes bought several local television stations (including KLAS-TV) so that there would always be something for him to watch in the early hours of the morning.
  • 11/28/1966 US News & World Report quoted Gen. Westmoreland as saying, "Early in 1965 we knew that the enemy hoped to deliver the coup de grace by launching a major summer offensive to cut the Republic of Vietnam in two with a drive across the central highlands to the sea. I had to make a decision, and I did. I chose a rapid build-up of combat forces, in the full knowledge that we should not have a very fully developed logistic base to support those forces."
  • 11/28/1966 The Paris edition of the New York Herald Tribune had a story called 'The Ghouls,' which charged that "the merchants of morbidity keep setting new highs in output and new lows in taste by refusing to let go of the horror of Nov. 22, 1963 - and refusing to let the memory of John F. Kennedy rest decently in peace." Many of the critics "seem motivated by a hunger for a buck, a thirst for publicity, a drive for circulation at all costs....We think it is time to ask the ghouls, the buckchasers, the sensation-mongers and the character assassins to desist - to shut up until or unless they can put up, as so far they have notoriously failed to do."
  • 11/28/1966 NY Times quoted NY Congressmen Ogden Reid, John Wydler and William Ryan calling for a new investigation into the JFK assassination.
  • 12/1966 Hoover, working through conservative Republican Rep. H.R. Gross, managed to publicize his claim that RFK had authorized FBI bugging as attorney general.
  • 12/1966 Warren Commission critic Harold Weisberg's book Whitewash II is published.
  • 12/1966 Clay Shaw was summoned to New Orleans D.A. Jim Garrison's office and asked where he was on the day of the assassination; he said he was en route to San Francisco and had never met Oswald. A few days prior to Christmas '66, Jim Garrison enlisted the services of private investigator William Gurvich, who seemed enthusiastic about the conspiracy probe at first, but would walk out six months later, denouncing the entire thing as a farce.
  • 12/1966 Life editor Richard Billings, "the Time-Life journalist who actively worked to undermine Garrison's case, and who had strong ties to the CIA," as DiEugenio and Davy describe him, came aboard the investigation in early December 1966. (Jim DiEugenio and Bill Davy, "False Witness: Aptly Titled," Probe, Vol. 6, No.4, May-June, 1999. Garrison treats Billings quite sympathetically in his own memoirs, portraying him as a victim of Time-Life treachery rather than an infiltrator into the probe. (Garrison, pp. 132, 189-90.) "Dick Billings's personal notes on consultations and interviews with Garrison," p. 1. See also Patricia Lambert, False Witness (New York: M. Evans and Co., 1998), pp. 45-46.)
  • 12/1966 WHO'S AFRAID OF THE WARREN REPORT? by Edward Jay Epstein (With annotations by K. A. Rahn) Esquire, December 1966, pp. 204 ff.
  • 12/1966 Notes for a new investigation by Sylvia Meagher Esquire, December 1966, pp. 211 ff. The woman who indexed the entire twenty-six volumes of The Warren Report emerges from her task with this advice: reopen the hearings and finish the job.
  • 12/1/1966 Mark Lane is a guest on William F. Buckley's "Firing Line," where they debate whether the Warren Report was correct. Lane easily holds his own against Buckley, who is only minimally informed about the subject. In 1951, like some of his classmates in the Ivy League, Buckley was recruited into the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA); he served for two years including one year in Mexico City working as a political action specialist in the elite Special Activities Division for E. Howard Hunt. These two officers remained lifelong friends. (William F. Buckley, Jr. (January 26, 2007), "Howard Hunt, RIP"; Tad Szulc, Compulsive Spy: The Strange Career of E. Howard Hunt (New York: Viking, 1974)) In a November 1, 2005, column for National Review, Buckley recounted that while he worked for the CIA, the only employee of the organization that he knew was his immediate boss E. Howard Hunt.
  • 12/5/1966 THE STATE OF TEXAS vs. JACK RUBENSTEIN -- Judge Holland selects Wichita Falls, Kansas, as the site for the retrial of Jack Ruby.
  • 12/7/1966 Bell & Howell transfers Abraham Zapruder's camera and leather carrying case to the National Archives.
  • 12/9/1966 Jack Ruby is moved from the Dallas County Jail to Parkland Hospital after complaining of persistent cough and nausea. Doctors diagnose his problem as "pneumonia."
  • 12/10/1966 Ruby's illness is identified as cancer. It was soon established that the cancer was far-advanced and fatal.
  • 12/10/1966 Bill Moyers has just read the Look galleys of The Death of A President. He writes: "the book is permeated by a malignancy I find dishonest, disgraceful, and distorted ... I would sue the magazine to prevent publication of the serialization, and I would withhold publication of the book for many years to come ... I believe both of these proposals are feasible."
  • 12/11/1966 AP Washington -- details of the Hoover-RFK controversy over FBI bugging was authorized.
  • 12/12/1966 Newsweek quoted Harrison Salisbury of the NYT about the Times' new investigation of the assassination under his direction: "We will go over all the areas of doubt, and hope to eliminate them." About a month into the investigation Salisbury received permission from the government of North Vietnam to visit Hanoi, and he quickly departed for Paris to complete final preparations for the trip. Shortly after his departure the investigation ended.
  • 12/12/1966 Daily Express: "AUTHORISED book about President Kennedy's assassination, by William Manchester, is being held back for a month while some last-minute revisions are made. Mrs. Jacqueline Kennedy is said to be dismayed by what he has writtenpersonal material he obtained from her in 10 hours of taped interviews. Someone who read the manuscript is quoted as saying Mrs. Kennedy " now regrets having poured out her soul to Manchester as if he were a psychiatrist."
  • 12/13/1966 Gallup Poll #738 Field Date: 12/08/1966-12/13/1966 Question 22: Do you think one man was responsible for the assassination of President Kennedy, or do you think there were others involved? Options: One Man, Others, No Opinion 36% selected 'One Man' 50% selected 'Others'
  • 12/14/1966 Jacqueline Kennedy petitions a state supreme court justice in New York to block publication of The Death of a President and its serialization.
  • 12/15/1966 LBJ and Abe Fortas discuss the advisability of sending Jacqueline Kennedy a brief note regarding the controversy surrounding the publishing of The Death of A President.
  • 12/15/1966 Post magazine publishes an editorial stating that it "is impossible to agree with the legal steps [Mrs. Kennedy] has taken" against William Manchester and his publishers.
  • 12/15/1966 Bill Moyers announced he would be leaving the White House.
  • 12/15/1966 Walt Disney died of acute circulatory collapse, caused by lung cancer, at age 65. Eric Sevareid commented on CBS Evening News, "He was an original; not just an American original…He probably did more to heal or at least to soothe troubled human spirits than all the psychiatrists in the world…what Walt Disney seemed to know was that…there is a lot of child in every grown-up…People are saying we'll never see his like again." Roy O. Disney, president of Walt Disney Productions, is named chairman. FBI director Hoover orders Walt Disney's name removed from the FBI's records as an active SAC contact.
  • 12/15/1966 FBI memo from Charles Brennan to Sullivan summarizing all the wiretap and bugging efforts against King and the SCLC over the past three years.
  • 12/15/1966 Harold Weisberg: "At one o'clock in the early morning of December 15 1966, in the Oakland, California, studios of Radio Station KNEW, I had just finished appearing on Harvard-educated lawyer Joe Dolan's lengthy phone-in radio program...There was a man on the line who had called toward the end of the program. He wanted to speak to me but not on the air. Further, he wanted the assurance that our conversation would be private....I took the call. The caller was disturbed by the 'beep' on the line. He associated that with the required signal for recording. I assured him that that the engineer was not on it, that it was not being taped, and that he could talk to the engineer to learn these things. Overhearing this, the engineer explained to me and I to the caller that, with phone-in programs, the beep is automatically built into the line so there can be no possibility of listeners not knowing the conversation is being broadcast. The stranger on the other end of the line was partly satisfied...This man had been in the Marine Corps with Oswald. From his personal experience, he did not believe a single word about the Oswald of this period that became public with the Report. He had agonized in silence for the three years between the issuance of the Report and our conversation because he knew things, he said, that had not been made public and were not in accord with what had been publicized - and he was certain what he knew was correct....He feared he or his business might be hurt or his family might suffer...he would talk only in anonymity. I respect his desires and will not reveal the few unintended clues to his identity that slipped out. I have made and will make no effort to trace him. Briefly, it is his story that Oswald was bright, not a kook of any kind, not a blantant or proselytizing Marxist, and really a quiet, serious guy. They knew each other socially and engaged in certain recreational activities together. He never heard Oswald say anything about Communism, for or against, in all this time...the unit in which both served...was one of three similar ones of which one was always in Japan and the others in the United States. Their function was classified. Every man in the outfit carried security clearance. They had a security designation of which I had never heard...Of all the men in the outfit, five had special 'top' security approvals. The entire complement carried a minimum of 'confidential'...above this there were 'secret,' 'top secret,' and a special one, 'crypto.'....only five were 'crypto.' One of these was Lee Harvey Oswald!...he was positive. He went farther when I questioned him about 'crypto,' which he indicated was 'black box' stuff. I took it to mean a connection with nuclear weapons....the caller specified that Oswald spent his last two or three weeks in the service 'with CID.'...Of the things he mentioned, 'Crypto' security clearance bothered me; I had never heard of it. From time to time I asked reporters about it. In February 1967, when I was in Boston, I mentioned this strange post-midnight telephone call to Bob Scott, newsman at WNAC, who has connections with people who had been in military intelligence. He soon phoned to report that there had been such a security designation." Certain parts of the man's story (whom he didn't hear from again) reminded him of Kerry Thornley's testimony. (Oswald in New Orleans 85-90)
  • 12/16/1966 Jackie petitioned the court to enjoin the book's publication. Hours after Jacqueline Kennedy's lawsuit against Manchester is actually filed today, LBJ confers with Abe Fortas. Fortas is dubious about the likelihood of the Kennedys' winning a permanent injunction against publication.
  • 12/16/1966 Word of Jacqueline Kennedy's being upset about negative passages in William Manchester's upcoming book The Death Of A President, regarding the Lyndon Johnsons, appears in newspapers. LBJ writes to her, as per his discussion with Abe Fortas: "Lady Bird and I have been distressed to read the press accounts of your unhappiness about the Manchester book. Some of these accounts attribute your concern to passages in the book which are critical or defamatory of us. If this is so, I want you to know while we deeply appreciate your characteristic kindness and sensitivity, we hope you will no subject yourself to any discomfort or distress on your account ... your own tranquility is important to both of us, and ... We are both grateful to you for your constant and unfailing thoughtfulness and friendship."
  • 12/16/1966 Lady Bird: "The Manchester book and ugly stories about it are dominating the newspapers. Mrs. Kennedy is filing suit to block publication of the book." (White House Diary)
  • 12/16/1966 New York - Rumor of rift between RFK and Jackie over publication of Manchester book. San Francisco Chronicle AP
  • 12/16/1966 Sun Valley RFK and family arrive with party of 16 to spend Christmas. AP
  • 12/18/1966 AP, Washington, [12/18] - Senator Joseph S. Clark, D-PA, today described the "military-industrial complex, the FBI and the CIA as major threats to American democracy. Clark charged the Federal Bureau of Investigation with posing a threat of ["blackmail, direct or indirect, on anybody who has the effrontery to say anything unkind about Mr. J. Edgar Hoover."]
  • 12/21/1966 Jacqueline Kennedy drops her suit against Look magazine. The publication, in turn, agrees to excise a few pages from a serialization of "The Death Of A President." In William Manchester's original version Mrs. Kennedy is described as wrestling with a nurse to gain entry to her husband's hospital room after he had been shot.
  • 12/23/1966 Clay Shaw got a call from Detective Ortillo in the New Orleans' D.A.'s office asking him to come down to answer a few questions. Shaw talked with Moo Moo Sciambra, "who told me they'd come across the fact that Lee Harvey Oswald had known someone named Clem Bertrand when he was in New Orleans...I'd almost met him when he'd come to distribute Fair Play for Cuba leaflets in front of the Trade Mart, but...my assistant had dealt with him...They wanted to know more about the Cuban consulate - it was the presence of the consulate in the building that drew Oswald to that point to distribute the leaflets..." He denied knowing Dave Ferrie. (American Grotesque p20)
  • 12/23/1966 On WNYC-TV, New York City, former WC staffer Albert Jenner was asked if he would do anything differently if he could redo the Warren Commission investigation. "You know, I can't think of a single thing I can do. I had a responsibility for three major segments of this investigation, and I had a fine staff of very able lawyers. I had available to me any FBI agent in the entire United States, the CIA, the intelligence services of the Army, Air Corps, Marines and the Navy, and I used them, the State Department, the Secret Service, the Immigration and Naturalization Service - any request we made, never did we have a single demurrer." He also stated "...some members of the Commission saw both the film and the colored pictures [of the autopsy], and the X-rays. We did not, as staff members, introduce those before the Commission at any formal hearing. We of the staff saw them ourselves." Others on the WC had stated that they never saw the autopsy materials. Mark Lane later asked Jenner on TV about this contradiction, and he refused to answer the question. Jenner continued, "And the policeman [Marrion Baker] took him [Truly] by the arm and they rushed into that building to go where? The policeman wanted to get up to the sixth floor, to that corner, where he had--had reached the conclusion, as a trained man, that these shots, at least, had come from that window. Oswald, as we subsequently find, had jimmied the elevator door on the sixth floor by sticking a stick in it, to hold it back so as to disengage the electrical impulses, and that held the elevator up there on the sixth floor. Roy Truly and the policeman with his gun drawn rushed up, they were going to go all, right up those six floors, and they reached the second floor, who was the first man this policeman saw, was Oswald with a bottle of Coke. And he rushed over to him with his pistol. And held him. Roy Truly said that's one of our men, Mr. Oswald, there's nothing wrong with him. But these men, intent on getting to the sixth floor, where they thought the person--whoever he was--who had discharged this rifle." Jenner's story about Oswald jamming the elevators appears nowhere in the evidence, and Baker said he was heading to the roof of the TSBD because he thought the shots came from there, not the sixth floor. Jenner also made other statements totally unsupported by the WC's own evidence: "We found that on the Mannlicher-Carcano rifle were threads from the jacket that he wore that particular day," and that the pistol allegedly used in the Tippit murder "had his fingerprints on it in generous proportions." Jenner concluded by complaining that "none of these affirmative things are called to the attention of the public when they read these books." Therefore, their authors are "irresponsible." (Citizen's Dissent 127-32)
  • 12/23/1966 John Connally issued a statement: "Simply because I disagree with the Warren Commission on this one detail [the single-bullet theory] does NOT mean that I disagree with the substance of their overall findings."
  • 12/24/1966 A detailed explanation of the RFK-FBI feud over wiretapping, its background and political implications. The New Republic, The Wiretap War, Robert M. Cipes, p. 16
  • 12/27/1966 After a flood of bad publicity regarding the Manchester book, it was announced that the Kennedys were conducting amicable negotiations with the author.
  • 12/27/1966 Representative Theodore R. Kupferman of New York, who had previously expressed serious doubts about the accuracy of the Warren Report and who, three months earlier, had introduced in the House a Resolution calling for a new investigation of the Kennedy murder, wrote to Robert H. Bahmer, Chief Archivist of the United States, asking for permission to examine the autopsy photos and X-rays. "In order to have an informed judgment on the subject," Mr. Kupferman added, he would like to take Dr. Halpern and Dr. Wecht along with him to the viewing, as well as author Sylvia Meagher, a recognized authority on the contents of the Warren Report which she has indexed.


Deep Politics Timeline - Tracy Riddle - 29-05-2014

  • How did the late Arthur Schlesinger view the matter of conspiracy in the JFK assassination? In 1967 Raymond Marcus, one of the earliest Warren Report critics, had an opportunity to meet Schlesinger in Los Angeles. Schlesinger was in town for an appearance on a local TV talk show. The program's host, whom Marcus had gotten to know, called Marcus to invite him down to the studio. Marcus had analyzed both the Zapruder film and the Moorman photograph, and believed he could use them to demonstrate there had in fact been a conspiracy. The talk show host, he recalled, "suggested that I bring my photo materials... "When I arrived I was ushered into a waiting area, and there I spread out some of the Zapruder and Moorman photos on a table." Schlesinger arrived a short time later and the two men were introduced. "Schlesinger glanced at the photos and immediately paled, turned away and said, 'I can't look and I won't look.' That was the end of our meeting." Thirteen years later, Marcus went on, Schlesinger provided an endorsement for Anthony Summers' book Conspiracy: One does not have to accept Mr. Summers' conclusions to recognize the significance of the questions raised in this careful and disquieting analysis of the mysteries of Dallas. (The above account is derived from Addendum B, by Raymond Marcus, p. 64.)
  • This year, pressures are building within the CIA to resolve, in one way or another, the fate of Yuri Nosenko. The CIA has had no precedent for incarcerating a person inside the United States, but in this case the suspect could not be turned over to the Department of Justice for prosecution without precipitating an international crisis. If Nosenko is brought to trial by the United States government, he will be accused of having been sent over by the Soviet government to misinform the Warren Commission about Oswald's relationship with Soviet intelligence agencies. The collapse of Nosenko's story could, moreover, force a reopening of the investigation into Oswald's relations with Soviet intelligence prior to the assassination. J. Edgar Hoover knows that the FBI is vulnerable to criticism for not having fully investigated Oswald when he returned from Russia, especially since, as Assistant Director J. H. Gale of the Inspection Division puts it, "we did not know definitely whether or not he had any intelligence assignment at that time."
  • In 1967, the U.S. Army paid Kligman to apply skin-blistering chemicals to the faces and backs of inmates at Holmesburg to, in Kligman's words, "learn how the skin protects itself against chronic assault from toxic chemicals, the so-called hardening process."
  • In a 1967 study that was published in the Journal of Clinical Investigation, pregnant women were injected with radioactive cortisol to see if it would cross the placental barrier and affect the fetuses.
  • Science magazine reports that at Fort Detrick, Maryland, where the United States' offensive biological program is headquartered, dengue fever is among those diseases that are "objects of considerable research and that appear to be among those regarded as potential BW [biological warfare] agents." [Blum, 1995] The biological warfare program is overseen by the US Army's Chemical Warfare Service. [Fort Detrick website, n.d.]
  • Operation CHAOS, signed by President Lyndon B. Johnson allowed CIA agents go undercover as student radicals to spy on and disrupt campus organizations protesting the Vietnam War. Supposedly searching for Russian instigators (never found) CHAOS will eventually spy on 7,000 individuals and 1,000 organizations, utilizing the information for later experiments in domestic mind control and harassment programs.
  • 1967-1975: Project MINARET Illegally Monitors American Subversives' - US intelligence agencies, including the NSA, the CIA, and the FBI, run a clandestine and highly illegal surveillance operation called Project MINARET that uses "watch lists" to electronically and physically spy on "subversive" activities by civil rights and antiwar leaders such as Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr, Jane Fonda, Malcolm X, Dr. Benjamin Spock, and Joan Baezall members of Richard Nixon's infamous "enemies list." [Patrick S. Poole, 8/15/2000; Pensito Review, 5/13/2006] MINARET operates in tandem with a much more extensive electronic surveillance operation, SHAMROCK, run by the NSA (see 1945-1975). Almost 6,000 foreigners and nearly 1,700 organizations and US citizens are monitored as part of MINARET. In August 1975, NSA director Lew Allen testifies before the Senate's investigative commission on US intelligence activities, the Church Committee (see April, 1976), that the NSA has issued over 3,900 reports on the US citizens on MINARET's watch lists, and the NSA's Office of Security Services has maintained reports on at least 75,000 citizens between 1952 and 1975, reports that later became part of MINARET's operations. MINARET, like SHAMROCK, will be terminated shortly after the Church Committee goes public with its information about the illegal surveillance program. [Bamford, 1983; Pensito Review, 5/13/2006]
  • The Phoenix Program was a military, intelligence, and internal security program designed by the United States Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) and coordinated and executed by Republic of Vietnam's (South Vietnam) security apparatus and US Special Operations Forces such as the Navy SEALs, United States Army Special Forces and MACV-SOG (now Special Operations Group in the CIA's Special Activities Division) during the Vietnam War. It was in operation between 1967 and 1972, but similar efforts existed both before and after this. The program was designed to identify and "neutralize" (via infiltration, capture, terrorism, or assassination) the civilian infrastructure supporting the National Liberation Front of South Vietnam (NLF or Viet Cong) insurgency.
  • 1/1967 The Wall Street law firms of John Mitchell and Richard Nixon merged to form Nixon, Mudge, Rose, Guthrie, Alexander and Mitchell.
  • 1/1967 This month, Dr. Pierre Finck is ordered back to Washington from Vietnam and shown the autopsy photographs and X-rays of JFK. The Department of Justice prepares a statement for the doctors to sign which says: "The photographs and X-rays corroborate our visual observations during the autopsy and conclusively support our medical opinion as set forth in the summary of our autopsy report. It was then and is now our opinion that the two missiles which struck the President causing the neck wound and the head wound were fired from a point behind and somewhat above the level of the deceased. Our examination of the photographs and X-rays lasted approximately five hours, and at its conclusion the photographs and X-rays were returned to the Archivist of the United States." The person who asks the doctors to sign this document is Barefoot Sanders, a close friend of President Lyndon Johnson.
  • 1/1967 As the year progresses, LBJ is having difficulty sleeping. Late at night he has his aide Marvin Watson telephone the FBI's Cartha DeLoach at home. LBJ has suddenly become convinced that the murder of JFK has been a conspiracy and wants more information from the FBI. J. Edgar Hoover isn't about to reopen this can of worms. DeLoach quickly replies that the White House already has all of the FBI information on Maheu, Sam Giancana, and the CIA's plots. In 1975, DeLoach will tell the Church Committee that "The President was obsessed with fear concerning possible assassination." This year, LBJ will also tell his aide Marvin Watson that he feels "the CIA had something to do with this plot [to assassinate JFK.]" (Official and Confidential)
  • 1/1967 Justice Dept requests Secret Service establish chain of evidence on possession of JFK autopsy X-rays & photos.
  • 1/1967 April Terrorist intrusions into northern Israel from Syria across the armistice line increase. Retaliation and counter-retaliation escalates from fire fights to tank and artillery duels. [Eban, My Country; UN Office of Public Information, Yearbook of the United Nations 1967]
  • 1/1/1967 Miami Joseph Milteer tape is played for a group of newsmen in the Miami police headquarters. (See Richard E. Sprague, Computers and Automation, May 70, p. 31-32)
  • 1/2/1967 Doctors, suspecting that blood clots are forming, administer oxygen to Jack Ruby. He seems to be recovering.
  • 1/3/1967 Jack Ruby died at 10:00am. Sylvia Meagher wrote that his death "fulfilled a common prophecy" of many people "that Ruby would not leave the custody of the Dallas authorities alive." He was soon being described as a "misguided patriot." Sol Dann, a former lawyer, remarked, "Ruby did not want to live. His death was a merciful release." The Philadelphia Bulletin reported 1/3/1967 that Ruby had charged that he was being poisoned with mustard gas in his cell (when he had pneumonia) and that he had been injected with cancer cells. Ruby was taped at Parkland two weeks before he died, once again giving the explanation that the killing of Oswald was a spontaneous act, and he had acted alone." The tape was released on an album after his death. Posner says that it is "medically impossible" to inject someone with cancer cells. "Ruby was deranged at the end of his life and believed not only that he was being killed by injections, but also that 25 million Jews were being slaughtered on the jail floor below him." (Case Closed p487) Charles Roberts says that Ruby's death was not sudden: "He was removed from the Dallas County Jail to the hospital a month before his death....Ruby died of a massive blood clot in his lungs; he had advanced cancer of the lungs and eight small previously-undiscovered brain tumors." (The Truth About the Assassination p92)
  • 1/3/1967 John McNaughton reported that a Soviet representative told him that there were elements in Hanoi that wanted to negotiate, but they could not advocate this while bombs were falling on Hanoi; LBJ had refused to stop the bombing because he was afraid it would be interpreted as "weakness."
  • 1/3/1967 Richard Case Nagell letter to Sen. Richard Russell: "Mr. Oswald and his activities came under my scrutiny during 1962 and 1963...Mr. Oswald had no significant connection with the Fair Play for Cuba Committee. He had no significant contact or relationship with so-called pro-Casto elements, though he was led to believe he had such." He went on to say that Oswald was not a member of any Left or Right-wing group, was not an intelligence agent or informant "in the generally accepted sense of the words" and "was involved in a conspiracy to murder the former Chief Executive during the latter part of September, 1963." This conspiracy was neither foreign nor communist. (The letter is in the Sen. Russell Memorial Library, Atlanta).
  • 1/3/1967 Former WC staffer Joseph Ball gave a published address (broadcast on KRHM-FM, Los Angeles) in which he insisted that the WC members and staffers were men of honesty and integrity. "I'd like to compare the integrity of the men of the Commission and staff with the integrity of the men that are now writing: Mark Lane; Epstein; Weisberg, the chicken farmer from Maryland; Leo Sauvage, the Frenchman. It seems to me that we must start out with a presumption in our favor because the integrity of the men of the Commission must count for something....Weisberg, the chicken farmer, isn't really dishonest; he reasons within the limits of his very limited ability...Sauvage has no scruples, and he reasons from a record which he himself considers adequate - I don't....Epstein quotes me as saying we [staffers] did all the work; the Commission did nothing. This is a gross libel....Do rifles give off puffs of smoke which can be seen rising in the air? No, not with modern smokeless powder. This is impossible....Never in my life have I been so scurrilously attacked as by Mr. Lane in his 'Rush to Judgement.' When Mr. Lane says I am a fraud, a cheat, I say Mr. Lane is my enemy; and I say, Mr. Lane, you're the biggest fraud of all." But Ball's name does not appear even once in that book. (Citizen's Dissent p123-7)
  • 1/4/1967 Two of Jack Ruby's lawyers charge negligence on the part of the Dallas authorities who had custody of their client.
  • 1/5/1967 Ronald Reagan was sworn in as California's governor.
  • 1/5/1967 Lady Bird: "A miasma of trouble hangs over everything...It is unbearably hard to fight a limited war." (White House Diary)
  • 1/6/1967 Memo from Hoover to Tolson and DeLoach, indicating that he would no longer approve of 'black bag' jobs.
  • 1/7/1967 Reporter Peter Kihss, a member of the NYT team to look into the Kennedy assassination, wrote Ms. Sylvia Meagher on January 7, 1967, "Regrettably the project has broken off without any windup story, at least until Harrison Salisbury, who was in charge, gets back from North Vietnam." Another member of the team, Gene Robertsthen Atlanta bureau chief and at the time I spoke with him National Editor of the Times (he recently left to become Executive Editor of The Philadelphia Enquirer)told me that "There was no real connection between Salisbury going to Hanoi and the decision not to publish, or to disband the inquiry. It just kind of happened that way. Presumably if he had been here he might have knocked it off even sooner or he might have continued it a week or two. I just don't know." Roberts told me that the team was unable to find evidence supporting the contentions of the critics. "We found no evidence that the Warren Report was wrong," he said, "which is not to say that the Warren Report was right. We are not in the business of printing opinion, and that is why nothing was printed in the end." (Jerry Policoff, 1972)
  • 1/9/1967 The Georgia House of Representatives finally seated Julian Bond. Two years earlier, he had been elected to the legislature. However, because of Bond's public statements opposing the Vietnam War and the draft, the House refused to seat him based on the state constitution's provision that each house shall be the judge of the elections and qualifications of its own members. Bond challenged the action in federal court. In 1966, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled that Georgia lawmakers had deprived him of his constitutional rights to freedom of speech, so on the opening day of the 1967 session, Bond was given the oath of office and his seat in the House.
  • 1/9/1967 US-USSR consular treaty, signed in 6/64 but never brought up for Senate ratification, largely because of opposition from J. Edgar Hoover [New York Times, 1/24/67] The fate of the consular treaty, in the opinion of both Congressional and Administration officials, depends largely on the willingness of the White House to take public issue with J. Edgar Hoover ... New York Times
  • 1/9/1967 LBJ met with Senate Democratic leaders about the war; Fulbright wanted to get out immediately, but Smathers, Richard Russell, Symington, Magnuson, Lister Hill wanted to escalate and thought domestic dissent was harmful to the war effort. (No Final Victories p216)
  • 1/10/1967 LBJ gives his State of the Union message; asks for a 6% surcharge on income and corporate taxes, a 20% increase in Social Security, a law barring the use of wiretapping and electronic eavesdropping, and more anti-pollution measures. Also calls for a slowdown in the arms race. Johnson picked up on the law and order' issue, saying, "Let us fight crime." Lady Bird: "Robert Kennedy was stony-faced. He applauded once...It was a cold audience." (White House Diary)
  • 1/10/1967 Black congressman Adam Clayton Powell was barred from taking his House seat and stripped of his chairmanship of the Education and Labor Committee because he allegedly misused congressional travel funds, and was under indictment for contempt-of-court in NY.
  • 1/10/1967 Josiah Thompson interviews Dr. Boswell for his book Six Seconds in Dallas.
  • 1/10/1967 From an internal CBS MEMORANDUM dated 10 January 1967 written from Bob Richter to Les Midgley, reproduced in: Hearing Before the Legislation and National Security Subcommittee of the Committee on Government Operations House of Representatives, One Hundred Third Congress, First Session, November 17, 1993, p. 233. Also reproduced in ARRB Medical Document #16. In a mid-sixties conversation with a personal friend, a Mr. Jim Snyder, JFK autopsy Dr. Humes gave much the same version he'd originally given Specter. A buzz started about Humes' revelations because Jim Snyder just happened to be with the Washington bureau of CBS. Based on Snyder's private discussions with Humes, an internal CBS memo dated 10 January 1967 detailed that, "Humes' explanation for burning his autopsy notes was that they were essentially irrelevant details dealing with routine body measurements, and that he never thought any controversy would develop from his having done this." Here again, no mawkish mention of Lincoln or ugly blood. Specter's "discovery" of Humes' touching rationale suggests that Specter's passion for truth exceeds his passion for fact checking. Humes' "Lincoln-blood spots" story appeared in JAMA in the controversial May 27, 1992 issue.
  • 1/11/1967 a 13½ minute recorded phone conversation between President Johnson and Justice Abe Fortas on January 11, 1967the day after LBJ had delivered his third State of the Union address to Congressunderscores one of the most striking insights ever to come from the once-secret tapes. Lyndon Johnson blamed Robert F. Kennedy for fomenting the disbelief in the Warren Report that was widespread by late 1966. Indeed, both Johnson and Fortas viewed RFK's reach and influence with such suspicion that to them, it seemed conceivable that The New York Times had aborted its 1966 investigation into the Warren Commission because the Times's findings had turned out to be too "favorable." Publication of a single story, much less a series, that put the commission in a positive light would supposedly run counter to Kennedy's interests and might incur his displeasure, or so Johnson and Fortas mistakenly thought. Johnson's toxic notions about RFK, to be sure, were not entirely unwarranted. A prima facie case could be made that Robert Kennedy was bent on putting the Warren Commission into disrepute. By the fall of 1966, despite a growing chorus of criticism of the Report, Kennedy, then the junior senator from New York, resolutely persisted in his policy of "no comment" with respect to all the controversies that had arisen in the assassination's wake.
  • 1/14/1967 On Saturday, January 14, Dr. King flew to Jamaica, where he had planned to work on a book about one of his most ardently held beliefs -- the idea of a guaranteed income for each adult citizen. He was accompanied by his friend and associate Bernard Lee. While having breakfast he began to read the January issue of Ramparts. According to Lee, and also recorded by David Garrow in his historical account, Bearing the Cross Dr. King was galvanized by Pepper's account of atrocities against civilians and the accompanying photographs. Although he had spoken out against the war before, he decided then and there to do everything in his power to stop it.
  • 1/14/1967 Richard Whalen in the Saturday Evening Post wrote: "According to an official of the Treasury Department, the Secret Service did not turn over the autopsy material to the [Kennedy] family until April 26, 1965. Hence, at the time when the pictures might have proved enormously useful, they were still in Government hands, and therefore within reach of the Warren Commission if it had pressed the matter urgently." He quoted a "high FBI official" as having stated that "the autopsy pictures were sequestered by the written order of Attorney General Kennedy, directing the Secret Service not to release any information or material pertaining to the autopsy without his permission." Also, "It was Warren who vetoed a long list of questions Specter had prepared for the President's widow, who refused to allow him to be present at her brief questioning, and who directed the deletion from the record of her description of the President's wounds." Whalen felt that all of this was an innocent mistake, not a coverup.
  • 1/14/1967 Saturday Evening Post also carried a cover story challenging the Warren Report, and it also ran an editorial calling for a new inquiry. Others who publicly expressed doubts about the conclusions of the Warren Commission included Senators Russell Long, Eugene McCarthy, Strom Thurmond, William Fulbright, and Thomas Dodd; Congressmen Ogden Reid, John W. Wydler, and William F. Ryan; Arthur Schlesinger Jr., William Buckley, Norman Mailer, Murray Kempton, Max Lerner, Pete Hammill, Walter Lippman, Dwight MacDonald, Richard H. Rovere, Cardinal Cushing and many others.
  • 1/16/1967 Just five days after the conversation with Fortas, Washington columnist Drew Pearson would approach Johnson privately and tell him about an astonishing rumor: that the CIA had attempted to assassinate Castro numerous times in the early 1960s, and that most of these attempts had occurred at RFK's direction, when the then-attorney general was "riding herd" on the agency for his brother. Johnson, though so embittered that he was inclined to believe the worst about RFK, still found Pearson's story incredible. Later he would liken it to someone "tellin' me that Lady Bird was taking dope." But as the rumor continued to gather force, the president would turn to CIA Director Richard Helms and ask for a full report. On May 10, five months after LBJ's conversation with Fortas, the president would learn directly from Helms that the rumor was true, save for one aspect: there was no evidence that Castro had retaliated by ordering the assassination of President Kennedy. Helms's caveat would fall on unreceptive ears. Confirmation of the efforts to assassinate Castro astounded Johnson. That, together with the president's innate proclivity to relate things that were not connected, meant that LBJ would go to his grave believing that "Kennedy was trying to get to Castro, but Castro got to him first." (Max Holland, The Kennedy Assassination Tapes: The White House Conversations of Lyndon B. Johnson regarding the Assassination, the Warren Commission, and the Aftermath (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 2004), 392. "Johnson Is Quoted on Kennedy Death," New York Times, 25 June 1976.)
  • 1/17/1967 DeLoach memo to Tolson: "Request for name checks by President...Watson told me that the President wanted a complete rundown on the listed names...should be made as discreetly as possible and that we should specifically point out whether any of these individuals were close to Bobby Kennedy. The President does not want any record made of this request."
  • 1/20/1967 After shortcomings with the first review of JFK autopsy materials, Justice Dept arranged for JFK's team to take a second, again unpublicized, look at the same material on January 20, 1967. But using the original autopsy team to validate its own work was apparently not deemed entirely satisfactory, even at Justice. Ultimately, in 1968, an outside panel, the so-called Clark Panel. Humes and Boswell were brought back; Ebersole and Stringer were not. And this time Pierre Finck was recalled from duty in Vietnam for the re-examination. Not unexpectedly, the autopsists signed the second affidavit that declared that, "The photographs and x-rays [sic] corroborate … our autopsy report." n their 26 January, 1967 affidavit, which was based on an analysis of the photographs and X-rays, JFK's autopsists reported, "Due to the fractures of the underlying bone and the elevation of the scalp by manual lifting (done to permit the wound to be photographed), the photographs show the wound to be slightly higher than its actually measured site." Also averred was that, "The x-ray films established that there were small metallic fragments in the head."[177] This account contrasts markedly with the findings of all subsequent investigators. Based on evaluations of presumably the same pictures and X-rays, the Clark Panel, the Rockefeller Commission and the HSCA later concluded that "the wound" the entrance site of the fatal bullet in JFK's head was not just "slightly higher" in the images, but 4 & ½ inches higher. This is scarcely a negligible discrepancy, given that the area of the back of the head in which it was concluded there had been a 4 & ½ inch error only measures, top-to-bottom about 5 &1/2 inches. Nowhere in either of the 1966 or 1967 reviews did JFK's pathologists acknowledge there was a huge disparity between the wounds in their autopsy report and those in "their" pictures and X-rays. Moreover, on the question of the fragments in the X-ray, the pathologists failed to mention that the antero-posterior trail of fragments in the lateral X-ray are in an entirely different location than specified in their autopsy report. That report describes the fragment trail as, "along a line corresponding with a line joining the above described small occipital wound and the right supra-orbital ridge - very near the bottom of the skull."[178] The autopsy X-rays, which were examined by author Aguilar, radiologist Randall Robertson, coroner Cyril Wecht, and physician-physicist David Mantik at the National Archives, reveal that the line of fragments is at least 12-cm higher than the line described in the autopsy report. In fact, the trail is even significantly above the 4 &1/2 inch higher location accepted by the Clark Panel, the Rockefeller Commission and HSCA as the true wound of entrance. There was another significant and unmentioned, perhaps even unrecognized, discrepancy in the pathologists' review: the X-rays and photographs show that the skull damage extended well into the frontal bone. The frontal bone, however, was not reported damaged in the original autopsy report. That report described JFK's skull and scalp defect as "a large irregular defect of chiefly the parietal bone but extending somewhat into the temporal and occipital regions. In this region there is an actual absence of scalp and bone..."[179] Nevertheless, a simple comparison between the wounds described in the autopsy report, and those visible in the X-rays and photographs, would have shown a conflict that a proper review could not have failed to have taken note of.
  • 1/20/1967 At Reagan's first meeting of the UC Board of Regents, he votes to fire Kerr as UC president. (SF Chronicle 6/9/02)
  • 1/21/1967 Japanese and American press stories claim that political statements made by folksinger Joan Baez during a recent Tokyo TV appearance were softened by an interpreter under pressure from CIA agent "H. Cooper." The US Embassy denied the story. 1/22 the Japanese interpreter denied he was under any CIA pressure. 2/24 Baez will state that she knew her remarks were inaccurately translated on Tokyo TV.
  • 1/27/1967 A phone call on January 21, 1967, 10 weeks after the inventory was signed, reveals the importance of Ramsey Clark's private proceedings. Clark had LBJ on the line. In the declassified, tape-recorded call, Clark reported, "Ah, we had the three pathologists that performed the autopsy on the evening of November 22nd come in. We had to bring Finck from Vietnam … They went into archives last night [sic, January 20, 1967] … Now, we've run into one problem last night [sic] that we didn't know of. That is, there may be a photo missing. Dr. Humes … testified before the Warren Commission that this one photo [was] made of the highest portion of the right lung. The other two doctors don't recall if such a photo was made. They do recall discussing the desired ability of making such a photo. But there is no such photo in these exhibits." Thus, 10 weeks after Humes and Boswell had signed an affidavit that said that none of JFK's autopsy photographs were missing, Humes was apparently grousing about a missing autopsy photograph. LBJ took the matter seriously. In the President's own, once-secret, memo he memorialized Clark's comments, quoting Clark to say that, "On the other matter, I [Ramsey Clark] think we have the three pathologists and the photographer signed up now on the autopsy review and their conclusion is that the autopsy photos and x-rays [sic] conclusively support the autopsy report rendered by them to the Warren Commission though we were not able to tie down the question of the missing photo entirely but we feel much better about it and we have three of the four sign an affidavit that says these are all the photos that they took and they do not believe anybody else took any others. There is this unfortunate reference in the Warren Commission report by Dr. Hinn to a picture that just does not exist as far as we know." Since the name "Hinn" appears nowhere else in the JFK saga, LBJ was certainly referring to Dr. Humes, who, in any case, was properly named by Clark himself. (From a memo titled "President Johnson's Notes on Conversation with Acting Attorney General Ramsey Clark - January 26, 1967 - 6:29 P.M.," obtained from the Lyndon B. Johnson Library. Reproduced in ARRB Medical Document #68.)
  • 1/22/1967 Richard Warren Lewis wrote an article called "The Scavengers" for the World Journal Tribune about those critics "obsessed by the assassination."
  • 1/23/1967 Wheeler and McNamara testified before the Senate Armed Services Commitee; the former said he thought bombing had reduced the rate of infiltration, while McNamara disagreed.
  • 1/23/1967 Editorial - Even after publication of the curious correspondence between Secretary of State Rusk and J. Edgar Hoover, it is far from certain that the Administration will be able to override the veto Mr. Hoover has hitherto exercised against the long-stalled Soviet American consular treaty. [The correspondence] is a reminder of the magnitude of Mr. Hoover's power, with implications that go far beyond the immediate issue. New York Times
  • 1/24/1967 Look magazine editorialized that the GOP party professionals felt it didn't matter who they nominated in 1964, since no one could beat LBJ; they had "decided to let the conservatives fall on their faces" by nominating Goldwater.
  • 1/25/1967 Mr. Burke Marshall, to whom the letter from Rep. Kupferman had been referred by the Archivist, replied on January 25, 1967, as follows: "… The wishes of the Kennedy family, as reflected in the agreement by which the material was given to the United State's, are that there be no examination of the material for at least five years, except by a properly authorized federal government agency. Thereafter inspection will be limited to persons professionally qualified to evaluate medical evidence, for serious historical purposes. The reasons for these restrictions are obvious (to whom - J.J.). "While the first of these provisions could be waived, I have concluded that I should not do so. I have given careful consideration, because of your official position, to the question whether an exception should be made in your case, and I have decided that there is no basis for that, particularly in the light of the second restriction referred to. It would then be at least very difficult to refuse other requests, and the consequences would be very painful for Mrs. Kennedy and the family ..."
  • 1/25/1967 Edward Condon, known for his breezy, anecdotal style, spoke before a chapter of Sigma Xi, the honorary scientific fraternity in Corning, New York. The Elmira, N.Y., Star-Gazette reported the next day: "Unidentified flying objects are not the business of the Air Force,"... Dr. Edward U. Condon said here Wednesday night.... Dr. Condon left no doubt as to his personal sentiments on the matter: "It is my inclination right now to recommend that the Government get out of this business. My attitude right now is that there's nothing to it." With a smile, he added, "but I'm not supposed to reach a conclusion for another year..." The story also quoted Condon as saying: "What we're always reduced to is interviewing persons who claim they've had some kind of experience....I don't know of any cases where the phenomenon was still there after the person reports it... and it seems odd, but these people always seem to wait until they get home before they report what they saw."
  • 1/26/1967 The JFK pathologists signed a second Justice Department affidavit after they were shown the same autopsy materials for the second time. In the second affidavit, they admitted that they "first saw the photographs on November 1, 1966, when requested by the Department of Justice to examine, identify, and inventory them at the National Archives." Curiously, the signed inventory is not the only inventory bearing the names Humes, Boswell, Ebersole and Stringer names. A second, unsigned inventory turned up that listed three names that were apparently deleted from the signed version: James B. Rhodes, Deputy Archivist of the United States (sic), Marion Johnson of the National Archives, and, oddly, Carl Belcher, U. S. Department of Justice (sic).[143] (Belcher's pivotal role in this process only became evident later.) But the longer list of names in the unsigned version is not the most important difference between the two inventories. Following a 5-hour examination conducted on the evening of January 20, 1967, the pathologists signed the second affidavit declaring, inter alia, "The undersigned physicians have been requested by the Department of Justice to examine the x-rays and the photographs for the purpose of determining whether they are consistent with the autopsy report." Again, the Justice Department's fingerprints were left on this affidavit as well. In a once-secret memo written by Pierre Finck entitled, "PRIVLEGED COMMUNICATION" [sic], Finck reported on this document, observing that, "The statement had been prepared by Justice Dept. [sic] We signed the statement.
  • 1/26/1967 Dr. J. Thornton Boswell - letter, under this date, written by Dr. Boswell to Atty. Gen. Ramsey Clark, suggesting review of autopsy findings by an "impartial board of experts."
  • 1/27/1967 LBJ signed a treaty to prohibit nuclear weapons in space; the treaty was signed by the USSR and 78 other nations. It also pledged only peaceful use of the moon. During the ceremony, word came that a fire in the Apollo I spacecraft, sitting on the launchpad at Cape Kennedy, had killed astronauts Virgil Grissom, Ed White and Roger Chaffee. The crew was going through routine tests and the fire broke out during a mock countdown. They couldn't get the hatch open and the astronauts died of carbon monoxide poisoning. The combustible materials on board had never been tested under high pressure; it turned out that they burned five times faster than expected. NASA director James Webb tried to blame Congress for giving him an "austere budget," but NASA's own investigation criticized NASA and North American Aviation for poor management, carelessness, negligence and bad designs. The space program was halted for 21 months while the Apollo project was redesigned.
  • 1/29/1967 Pope Paul VI and Soviet President Nikolai Podgorny conferred at the Vatican in the first meeting in history between a Roman Catholic pontiff and the head of a Communist state.
  • 1/29/1967 "The Death of Kennedy" documentary (BBC-2, 29th January 1967) We are perhaps fortunate that the documentary survives: in the 1970s, many old BBC programmes were wiped, or were shovelled into furnaces or land-fill rubbish sites: this afflicted many shows, such as Hancock, Z-Cars, Doctor Who etc. (of course the BBC are now seeking recordings of these shows since there is a huge market for vintage TV shows). One casualty seems to be a show broadcast on November 22, 1973 with the intriguing title, "Did 3 Assassins Kill Kennedy?" Nothing of this programme, not a script, not even researcher's notes survive; it has been suggested that the show was junked because it featured a lot of bought-in footage (from Davidson Dalling Associates). Apart from this one example, the archival situation with regard to JFK Assassination programmes is rather good. The documentary was a live discussion of issues surrounding the Warren Report and the death of JFK and includes the British premiere of the "Rush to Judgement" film, split into sections with guests debating what they had just seen. Kenneth Harris was the presenter, studio guests were Mark Lane, David Belin (introduced by Harris as "Felix Belin"!) , Arlen Specter and two law experts, Lord Develyn and Yale Professor Alexander Bickle. Cliff Michelmore presented video taped and filmed location inserts. The producer and director was Richard Francis. The show was spilt into two segments, with a news update separating the sections; the first segment was nearly 3 hours and 8 minutes long, the second segment being an hour and a half. Apart from "Rush to Judgement", the documentary is visually bland. The show opens with footage of the funeral of John Kennedy, and includes a very brief excerpt from the Muchmore film (as Clint Hill leaps from the SS car); of course, there is no moving footage from the Zapruder Film, due to copyright reasons - a point mentioned in the film. Stills from the Warren Report Volumes are shown on screen though. The majority of the programme is simply one of "talking heads", though one highlight is a perfect scale model of Dealey Plaza, created by BBC Visual Effects legends Bernard Wilkie and Jack Kine. Michelmore describes the various areas of the plaza and shows where the shots are alledged to have hit their mark with the help of a miniature model of the Presidential limousine. At one point, the Hertz "rent-a-car" sign is removed from the top of the model TSBD and a rather portly Royal Marine with a Mannlicher Carcano (which Specter pronounces "Carsano") fires blanks at the model car on Elm Street over the top of the TSBD model. Obviously, no attempt was made to reproduce aiming problems, just to illustrate how fast the rifle could be fired. The Marine managed to fire the rifle suprisingly fast, but on the second attempt, the rifle misfired and as he lost his hold on the bolt, muttering a very audible "S**t!" Strangely, this whole section was pre-recorded so why this blunder was left in is a mystery! Also in abundance in the studio were copies of the Warren Report itself and the accompanying volumes, often been seen hurridely searched by Specter and Belin in the brief sections were Mark Lane was allowed to speak. There was only one filmed interview, despite a fair amount of Dallas location footage, between Michelmore and Jack Ruby's lawyer, Phil Burleson who describes Oswald's slayer as a poor choice for a conspiracy's hit-man due to his mental state etc. A second interview was filmed but never used (see below). The programme is frustrating to watch, as it seems to be biased towards the Warren Commission; Mark Lane barely managed to conceal his frustration as he is barely allowed to speak and looks bored most of the time; as Harris reminds him sternly on many occasions, Lane is simply there to defend himself, as his film is supposed to make a case against the Warren Report; Specter and Belin are to refute the evidence in the "Rush to Judgement" film. On the one occasion that Lane corrects Belin regarding the origin of the puff of smoke seen on the Knoll, the programme actually stops while Harris receives a telephone call from the production gallery. What was said is not audible to the viewer but when the call is over, Harris continues with his frosty attitude towards Lane. Earlier in the show, even Arlen Specter briefly walks off, for reasons unknown.
  • 1/30/1967 Manchester's original draft was edited almost out of recognition by several teams of censors working on behalf of the Kennedy family. The first of these teams consisted of the Robert Kennedy advisers John Siegenthaler and Edwin Guthman who spent almost four months, with editor Evan Thomas expurgating the Lancer version. Latter, after Look magazine had acquired the serial rights, one of Robert Kennedy's closest aides, Richard Goodwin, went over the galleys with a fine comb, assisted by the historian Arthur Schlesinger, Jr. In Manchester's on words (in an interview published by Newsweek on January 30, 1967), "Goodwin was made responsible by Jackie for everything that would be in the manuscript. Dick tried to emasculate the Lancer galleys. His editing of the Look galleys was fantastic. At one point nearly 50 percent of the third installment was edited. It would have been unprintable. He was editing largely for political reasons material about Bobby and Johnson."
  • 1/30/1967 Press reports that RFK "originally had seen the book as "being put away for perhaps as much as'' 25 or 50 years," acquiesced, but ruled out 1968 as an election year and 1970 because "it would look like something turned out just to help me, with all the talk of running for the Presidency in 1972." So the decision was for 1967.
  • 1/31/1967 Secret Service head James Rowley meets with Earl Warren; Rowley is told of the allegation that Castro was behind JFK's death.
  • 1/31/1967 Editorial - ... The real motivation for opposition to the consular convention is, to an important degree, the desire to sabotage President Johnson's essential policy of improving relations with the Soviet Union. New York Times
  • 2/1967 I.F. Stone wrote that "it is the prestige of the Machine that is at stake in Vietnam. It is Boeing and General Electric and Goodyear and General Dynamics. It is the electronic range finder and the amphibious truck and the night-piercing radar. It is the defoliant, and the herbicide, and the deodorant, and the depilatory. It is the products and the brand names we have been conditioned since childhood to revere. Down there in the jungles, unregenerate, ingenius, tricky...emerged a strange creature whose potency we had almost forgotten - Man."
  • 2/1967 In the February, 1967 issue of the UK 'Beatles Monthly' magazine, an article was printed in the News section denying rumors that Paul McCartney was dead. This is the first time that the Paul is Dead legend was mentioned in print, more than two years before the paranoia that swept America in 1969 after that fateful phone-in on the Russ Gibb show.
  • 2/1967 In The Realist, Eric Norden reveals that in April 1965, a highly placed North African diplomat told him that his country's intelligence apparatus "had been quietly informed by the French Department of Alien Documentation and Counter-Espionage that the CIA planned Malcolm's murder, and France feared he might be liquidated on its soil." This was the reason France had denied Malcolm X entry into the country on Feb 9 1965. France had passed on its knowledge of the CIA plot to the diplomat's country because Malcolm had also visited it. The French were warning them that the CIA might kill him within their borders, scapegoating them. The North African diplomat who gave Norden this information then said, "Your CIA is beginning to murder its own citizens now."
  • 2/2/1967 The 11/9/1963 taped conversation between Milteer and Somersett was released by the Miami Police early in 1967, and reported by the Miami News on this day: "police intelligence took extraordinary steps to guard the President's life [in Miami]. They insisted that he abandon the plan to take a motorcade from the airport to downtown. They put him on a helicopter instead." ("Assassination Idea Taped Two Weeks Before JFK Was Killed," Bill Barry)
  • 2/3/1967 Miami police make public (2 Feb) (Sprague says tape was played for a group of newsmen Jan 67; says Garrison had contacted Miami police "late" in 1966, before his investigation became public Feb 67.) tape recording of conversation, 9 Nov 63, between informer cooperating with police and man described by Miami News as an organizer of the National States Rights Party. Conversation gives details of a planned assassination of JFK; details similar to those in assassination but place not named. (Man in question said to have followed Dr. Martin Luther King "for miles and miles" in effort to kill him.) Miami police say they turned information over to Secret Service before the assassination and again called their attention to it after the assassination. AP reports that story by Bill Barry in Miami News says the man in question was picked up by the FBI five days after the assassination and questioned. Barry says man has since disappeared and that the Secret Service file on him has been marked Closed.
  • 2/6/1967 Today marks a final confrontation between RFK and LBJ in the Oval Office of the White House. LBJ begins by blaming RFK for press leaks. RFK denies the rumor, telling LBJ that the leaks have come "from your State Department." LBJ bellows: "It's not my State Department, goddamnit. It's your State Department!" Concerning RFK's views on Vietnam, LBJ bellows: "I'll destroy you and everyone of your dove friends in six months. You'll be dead politically in six months." LBJ says that RFK's views on Vietnam are prolonging the war. "The blood of American boys will be on your hands. I never want to hear your views on Vietnam again. I never want to see you again!" After an hour and twenty minutes of confrontation, RFK storms out of the room, saying, "I don't have to sit here and take that shit."
  • 2/6/1967 New York J. Edgar Hoover, after earlier telephone conversation with RFK in which had promised to pass on any news he received. He called Kennedy at his country home later and reported: "The President's dead" and hung up, author William Manchester wrote. [Quoting serialized version of Manchester's Death of a President.] San Francisco Examiner, UPI
  • 2/10/1967 Dr. Pierre Finck makes notes dated this day in which he says: "My conclusion is that the photos and X-rays of the autopsy of President Kennedy do not modify our conclusions stated in the autopsy report."
  • 2/10/1967 Twenty-fifth Amendment to the Constitution is ratified, clarifying rules of presidential succession. It allowed the President to appoint a new VP if that office became vacant. Finally settles questions that were unresolved when LBJ succeeded JFK. It clarifies the role of a vice-president in the event of a president's death or disability and that of a president in filling a vice-presidential vacancy. Section 3 of the 25th Amendment provides for the temporary or permanent transfer of presidential power in case the president is unable to fulfill the duties of the office. In July 1985, President Reagan has colon cancer surgery and turns over power to his vice president, George H.W. Bush. During the George Bush's colorectal screening on July 29, 2002, Bush relinquished powers to Dick Cheney for more than two hours and again in 2007.
  • 2/11/1967 Heated debate on KTTV-TV (Los Angeles) between WC critic Mark Lane and Louis Nizer and others about the JFK assassination.
  • 2/12/1967 New Orleans reporter Rosemary James discovered while checking vouchers filed by the D.A.'s office that Jim Garrison had spent more than $8000 on his own investigation of the assassination of JFK (Kennedy Conspiracy 4).
  • 2/13/1967 News & World Report dismissed speculation that "trouble in Vietnam and a slump in popularity" might convince LBJ to not seek reelection: "It will be a Johnson-Humphrey ticket again in '68."
  • 2/13/1967 Rowley tells the FBI that Earl Warren wants allegations of Castro involvement in JFK assassination looked into.
  • 2/14/1967 Sen. Strom Thurmond is quoted as saying he thought JFK was killed by a Communist conspiracy. (NY Times)
  • 2/15/1967 Hanoi rejects direct talks. Ho Chi Minh sent a letter to LBJ: "The Vietnamese people will never submit to force, they will never accept talks under the threat of bombs."
  • 2/15/1967 Hoover tells Rowley that the Bureau "is not conducting any investigation" but would accept volunteered information on the JFK assassination.
  • 2/16/1967 Rosemary James of the New Orleans States-Item went to Garrison with the story she was about to publish on his investigation; he expressed little interest in it. (American Grotesque 141)
  • 2/17/1967 The New Orleans States-Item broke the story of the Garrison investigation (article written by Rosemary James), and that it was being done with public money. The paper's editorial read, "Has the District Attorney discovered valuable additional evidence or is he merely saving some interesting new information that will gain him exposure in a national magazine?" The headline reads: "DA Here Launches Full JFK Death Plot Probe." James maintains that she had shown the story to Garrison before publication and he had read part of it before responding with a "No comment." Garrison says: "Anyone who says I saw that story in advance is a liar."
  • 2/17/1967 Dave Ferrie contacted local newsman Dave Snyder this evening, telling him he'd been harassed and followed by Garrison's men.
  • 2/1967 Also this month, Harold Russell dies. He had seen a man leaving the scene of J.D. Tippit's murder and believed his life was in danger because of what he had seen. At a party this month, Russell becomes extremely agitated, thinking that he will be killed at any moment. His friends call the police, who try to reason with him. One of the officers strikes Russell, who dies soon afterward.
  • 2/1967 Bob Scott, reporter with WNAC radio in Boston, called Dean Andrews for an interview twice in 2/1967: "On the first call, Andrews was almost uninhibited but predicted his memory might fail. On the second call, Andrews made good his prediction. What he could not avoid, he said he did not recall." (Oswald in New Orleans 138) The interview was broadcast Aug 18 1967 on Harve Morgan show, KCBS San Francisco. (Transcript filed Garrison 18 Aug. 1967.) Dean Adams Andrews, Jr. - taped interview by Bob Scott, Boston, broadcast 18 Aug. 1967 on Harvé Morgan Show, KCBS San Francisco. (Transcript filed Garrison 18 Aug. 1967.) Andrews repeats what he said in Warren Commission testimony about Clay Bertrand, does not go beyond that; says he is "too smart to talk," has not been threatened but says four times in interview that he wants to live. Indicates he knows a good deal about the assassination but does not know who pulled the trigger; does not believe Oswald killed JFK, that he was only a patsy, a decoy; believes there were two assassins; does not think "this thing was plotted, I think the whole thing happened within 36 or 72 hours at the most;" does not believe Oswald had any connection with CIA or FBI. Hal Weisberg (on program by phone) in comment on the Andrews interview, says he thinks Andrews is an honest man who wants the truth to come out, believes Andrews when he says he "wants to live." Transcript of interview filed Garrison 18 Aug. 1967. Weisberg obtained a tape of the interview: Andrews: ...I just don't want to get involved in it. Besides that, I like to live. If a guy can put a hole in the President, he can just step on me like an ant. It's not my fight... Scott: Has the government shown any further interest in you? Andrews: Yeah, they watch me. Got a tap on the phone you're talking on now... Scott: You said there were three things you were going to do. One of them was find Clay Bertrand and the other was find the guy who really killed the President. Do you still feel that way? Andrews: I know, daddy-o. I'm too smart to talk, like I told you; I like to live. Most of the answers I know, but I mean, what the hell, it doesn't make any difference. I've done two of the three. Let's put it that way. Scott: Would you care to say which two? Andrews: No, uh-uh....I just can't see anything will come out of it. What difference does it make? The guy's dead. Start a lot of...and, uh, mess up a bunch of people, and I'm just kind of conservative. I believe in letting sleeping dogs lie. All I can get out of publicity is a hole in my head and my creditors will find me and think I'm famous and want me to pay my bills...[Asked about Oswald] Oh, he never killed him. All the people know that. He ain't nothing but a decoy. Everybody knows that...You can't win for losing in this game...He's just a patsy. Scott: Do you think it was Lee that was in your office? Andrews: I don't think; I know that... Scott: How about any influence...or pressure brought to bear on you... Andrews: Well, let's put it this way. I practiced international law a long time. I know my way around. I know what I have to do and I do what I have to do when I have to do it. I think if there is a plot...with the passage of time the people involved in it grow old and when you grow old you lose nerve. When you lose nerve, you become conservative and you just fade and you pass. It would be my guess as to whoever did what was done over in Dallas. Scott: Do you think in your little dealing that you had with Lee Oswald at all that he had any connection with the CIA or the FBI? Andrews: No. He personally? No...I wish I could go the route with you, but I ain't got nothing to win and everything to lose. You know, like my life, and I just enjoy breathing...These people down here [Garrison's investigation] I think if what just listening to them and everything else is true, they'll have a lot of fun and they probably come close and j-u-u-u-u-st miss, you know. Scott: Do you think you really know the answer, you yourself? Andrews: Well, let me put it this way. I can come closer than close. But I ain't even gonna get that close. I'm agonna - if the action's north, I'm going west, you know...let me put it to you this way. It's a very fantastic, strange set of circumstances. I don't think this thing was plotted. I think the whole thing happened within 36 or 72 hours at the most. Probably 36 hours... Scott:...will you testify before a new investigation committee? Andrews: Well, I got the shortest memory in the world. Round about a minute That - that's not what's agonna do it. They done did what they had to do and the only people not satisified are the people...Now all you get is conjecture. The real answers to tell you personally yes, I know the guy that pulled the trigger, man, nobody could tell you that...Nobody'll go deep enough, far enough and strong enough to take the entire concept and nobody is intelligent enough or clever enough to start from, say Point A to Point C with the varyin' factors that go in and out of it...they do not possess the necessary instincts and training to take all of the pieces and put it together...Actually, I have reason to believe there were three places [shooting positions] and that there were two assassins and a dummy and all they caught was what they were supposed to catch - the dumbell...you can't lay three shots, you know, the way they say they did but you can figure Assassin A, pow. You can figure Assassin B, pow, and Assassin A, pow, and you got three shots. Nobody can tell me the directions the shots come from and all you got to do is plant something in a person's mind and if he's an alleged witness he'll seize on it and go up and say it's true...But what they can't get away from, no matter how they look at it, is how they caught a patsy so quick. Who leaked the information? (Oswald in New Orleans 140-2)
  • 2/18/1967 Garrison held a press conference and revealed that "we have been investigating the role of the city of New Orleans in the assassination...and we have made some progress - I think substantial progress...What's more, there will be arrests...Let justice be done, though the heavens fall." He also expressed anger at the media for possibly jeapordizing his case. (Kennedy Conspiracy 4) Jim Garrison confirms he is investigating assassination, says his office has jurisdiction because of Louisiana law "which forbids conspiracy of any kind." (See also 19 Feb 67, Interview by Ron Hunter, CBS, New Orleans)
  • 2/1967 LBJ informs Ramsey Clark of the Drew Pearson / Roselli story and orders him to investigate it. LBJ tells John Connally: "It's pretty hard to see how we would know exactly what Castro did ... We will look into it ... I think it's something we have to be aware of."
  • 2/18/1967 Dave Ferrie told the AP that he didn't understand what Garrison was up to, that he was an innocent patriot with nothing to hide, and that he felt "it would be fruitless to look for an accomplice" to Oswald. David Ferrie says questioned by District Attorney's office, Nov. 1966, about his trip to Texas 22 Nov 63. Former Pilot. (Says he and two friends flew to Texas, visiting Houston, Galveston, returned to Alexandria, LA. Says he never knew Oswald. (From AP report, 628pcs, of story in New Orleans States-Item.)
  • 2/18/1967 Oswald acquaintances in New Orleans, say they were questioned by District Attorney's office. Mrs. J. J. Garner, Oswald's landlady, says she has not been questioned "recently."
  • 2/18/1967 Bernardo Torres (Miami, one of 10 Cubans who helped protect JFK there 4 days before assassination) - working with Garrison. Miguel Torres transferred from Louisiana state prison, Jan 30, to Orleans parish jail.
  • 2/19-21/1967 When the New Orleans States-Item publicized Garrison's investigation, Ferrie called Lou Ivon and told him "I'm a dead man." He was put in a hotel for two days under protective custody while Garrison debated whether to bring him before a grand jury. 2/21 he was released and went back home.
  • 2/20/1967 Retired Gen. David M. Shoup, former Marine Corps Commandant, told the Senate, "You read, you're televised to, you're radioed to, you're preached to, that it is necessary that we have our armed forces fight, get killed and maimed, and kill and maim other human beings including women and children because now is the time we must stop some kind of unwanted ideology from creeping up on this nation. The place we chose to do this is 8000 miles away...I don't think the whole of South East Asia, as related to the present and future safety and freedom of the people of this country, is worth the life or limb of a single American. I believe that if we had and would keep our dirty, bloody, dollar-crooked fingers out of the business of these nations so full of depressed, exploited people, they will arrive at a solution of their own."
  • 2/20/1967 David Ferrie has a long meeting with Carlos Bringuier.
  • 2/20/1967 "This is one of the saddest times that our government has had, in reference to public policy…I'm not at all happy about what the CIA has been doing and I'm sure that out of this…will come a reformation of that agency, with closer supervision of its activities." Vice President Humphrey on CIA subsidies of student organizations.
  • 2/20/1967 LBJ calls Ramsey Clark today to discuss a story published in the New Orleans States-Item regarding Jim Garrison who, according to the article, has "launched an intensive investigation into the circumstances surrounding the assassination of President John F. Kennedy." On Monday, February 20, Johnson called Ramsey Clark, the acting Attorney General, because of an astonishing news story published on Friday afternoon in the New Orleans States-Item. The Orleans Parish district attorney, Jim Garrison, had "launched an intensive investigation into the circumstances surrounding the assassination of President John F. Kennedy," alleging that there had been a conspiracy. Although his legal reach was limited, Garrison had subpoena power over the jurisdiction in which, he claimed, the conspiracy had been hatched. Garrison, then forty-five, was considered a responsible, reform-minded prosecutor, albeit one with a decided flair for publicity. Like most district attorneys, he was politically ambitious. There was little on the record to suggest that he was, as it turned out, a cunning demagogue the likes of which had not been seen since the days of Senator Joseph McCarthy. Thus the almost universal response to Garrison's action was He must have something. By the time the President called Clark, New Orleans was at the center of a media maelstrom. Clark was especially discomfited by one "nutty" aspect of the storya rumor that Garrison was linking Johnson to the conspiracy. As fantastic as it sounded, the rumor seemed to have a credible source: the Democratic representative Hale Boggs, whose district encompassed much of New Orleans, and who had served on the Warren Commission. Perhaps to Clark's surprise, Johnson responded to the story with equanimity, without swearing or even muttering to himself when he heard what Garrison was reported to be saying. As it happened, the rumor from New Orleans was far from the wildest one making the rounds. Johnson asked Clark if he had heard an even more fantastic rumorone that had been personally conveyed to the President on January 16 by Drew Pearson, a syndicated columnist who was considered something of a renegade by his peers. The story was that the CIA had sent men into Cuba on a mission to assassinate Fidel Castro after the 1961 Bay of Pigs debacle. Pearson also said that Robert Kennedy had been directly involved. Little wonder that Johnson received the news from New Orleans with such restraint. He professed to Clark that he found Pearson's story "incredible," but he could hardly have done otherwise. It would have been political suicide for Johnson to spread, or be associated with spreading, a rumor so potentially damaging to Kennedy. Johnson probably believed that if Garrison was on to anything, it might be strands from Pearson's storywhich, after all, led back to Washington. Garrison might simply have been mistaken about which Washington doorstep the scandal led to. Johnson was not worried about being personally implicated by either story. As he always did when faced with a ticklish political-legal problem, Johnson had consulted at length with his longtime counsel, Abe Fortas, even though Fortas was by then on the Supreme Court. Johnson's idea of what to do about the Garrison and Pearson developments was essentially the advice Fortas had given him: watch them both carefully; start a file; don't interfere; see how they play out.
  • 2/20/1967 Senator Thomas Dodd said before the Senate: Mr. President, according to press dispatches of the past few days, the office of District Attorney Jim Garrison in New Orleans has been conducting an independent investigation into the Kennedy assassination and his staff has apparently come up with information pointing to the conclusion that the assassination was the work of a conspiracy. Mr. Garrison is quoted as saying that other people besides Lee Harvey Oswald were involved; that the office has the names of people who participated in the initial planning in New Orleans; and that arrests will be made. Mr. Garrison has an enviable reputation as a district attorney and I am impressed by the fact that he feels confident enough to speak in such positive terms about his findings. The Warren Report has frequently been cited as finding that Oswald acted alone and that there was no conspiracy. What the Commission actually said was that it had been unable to find evidence of a conspiracy. The Commission, of course, made its findings on the evidence available at the time its hearings were held. Certainly the members of the Commission would be prepared to review any new evidence bearing on the assassination. In any estimate of Oswald's motivations, it is important to determine the strength of his pro-Castro sympathies and the extent of his associations with Castro Cuba and pro-Castro Cubans in this country. It is important to learn whether he was simply a Marxist sympathizer or a hardened Communist acting in concert with others. In that conjunction, I want to call the attention of the Senate to a remarkable record captioned "Oswald : Self-Portrait in Red," which is a debate with certain commentaries between Lee Harvey Oswald and Edward Scannell Butler, which took place over a New Orleans radio station on August 21, 1963, just about 3 months before the assassination of the President. Mr. Butler, who was known to me prior to the assassination, called my office immediately after it to inform me of the debate with Oswald. At my request, he came to Washington to tes


Deep Politics Timeline - Tracy Riddle - 01-06-2014

  • 3/1967 The official list of secret Warren Commission documents in the National Archives contained seven files on Mark Lane, which were classified because of "national security." They included 'Mark Lane, Buffalo appearances' (CD 489), 'Various Mark Lane Appearances' (CD 694), 'Mark Lane Appearances' (CD 763), 'Mark Lane and his trip to Europe' (CD 1457).
  • 3/1/1967 David Sanchez Morales joins former JM/WAVE station chief Ted Shackley to implement the Phoenix Program in Vietnam. It is a plan devised by future CIA director William Colby to eliminate the Vietcong infrastructure. It results in the assassination of 40,000 individuals. Morales works under cover of the Agency for International Development's Vientiene area community development administration. (Fonzi chronology)
  • 3/1/1967 David William Ferrie is buried. A low requiem mass is said for him at St. Matthas' Church. Only two mourners attend. Interment follows in near solitude at St. Bernard's Memorial Cemetery. His body is claimed by Parmalee T. Ferrie of Rockford, New York, understood to be a brother.
  • 3/1/1967 The Supreme Court turns down Jimmy Hoffa's last appeal of his conviction for jury tampering in Tennessee. This same day, Frank Chavez, one of Hoffa's goons and the head of the Teamsters Union in Puerto Rico, boards a plane for Washington to kill RFK. Kennedy is warned and given armed guards. Hickory Hill is placed under surveillance. It is Hoffa himself who talks Chavez out of shooting RFK. Fearful that we will never get out of jail if the Teamsters are caught trying to kill RFK, Hoffa demands that Chavez turn over his gun. (A few months from now, Chavez will be murdered by his own bodyguard.)
  • 3/1/1967 A March 1, 1967 memo directed to all USAF divisions, from USAF Lt. General Hewitt Wheless, Assistant Vice Chief of Staff, stated that unverified information indicated that unknown individuals, impersonating USAF officers and other military personnel, had been harassing civilian UFO witnesses, warning them not to talk, and also confiscating film, referring specifically to the Heflin incident. AFOSI was to be notified if any personnel were to become aware of any other incidents. (Document in Fawcett & Greenwood, 236)
  • 3/1/1967 The House voted 307 to 116 to exclude Rep. Adam Clayton Powell from the 90th Congress; he was accused of using government money for personal business. Powell called it "lynching Northern style."
  • 3/1/1967 At 5:30 PM, Jim Garrison issues an arrest warrant for Clay L. Shaw, a prominent New Orleans business and social figure. He intends to implicate Shaw in the JFK assassination. Only seventeen months earlier, the city of New Orleans bestowed upon Shaw its highest honor, a medal for the International Order of Merit. Clay Shaw is subpoenaed by the DA's office; Garrison tells his lawyer, Salvatore Panzeca, that Shaw has to take a lie detector test "right now or we'll arrest him." Shaw was then arrested and was interrogated by Garrison for 2.5 hours; he denied having anything to do with the Kennedy assassination. He also insisted he didn't know Ferrie or Oswald. William Gurvich told the press that Shaw was charged with "participation in the conspiracy to murder John F. Kennedy" under an alias - Clay Bertrand. Shaw exclaimed, "You've got to be kidding." (New York Times 3/14/1967) Garrison then applied for a warrant to search Shaw's premises; he based this on a "confidential informant" that told of Shaw's involvement in a plot. (Counterplot 51-2) Russo was also permitted to watch Shaw being questioned via a two-way mirror. (American Grotesque 145)
  • 3/1/1967 CIA "Memo for Deputy Director for Support": "The CI [counter-intelligence] staff, in a detailed staff study of the Garrison investigations, has noted past CIA contact with only two figures named in the inquiry, Clay L. Shaw and Carlos Bringuier, in both cases the contact was limited to domestic contact service activities." This was declassified in 1976, though substantial portions of it were withheld.
  • 3/1/1967 Russo was hypnotized by Dr. Esmond Fatter, though he had no background in using hypnosis to elicit criminal testimony. The transcript showed that Fatter, using a Garrison memo, planted the idea of a Clay Shaw conspiracy in Russo's head while he was hypnotized: "Picture that television screen again, Perry, and it is a picture of Ferrie's apartment and there are several people there and there is a white-haired man. Tell me about it....There will be a Bertrand, Ferrie and Oswald and they are going to discuss a very important matter and there is another man and girl there and they are talking about assassinating somebody. Look at it and describe it to me." Then Russo gave the details of the plot. (PHELAN 153)
  • 3/1/1967 Dean Andrews appeared before the grand jury in New Orleans; he had just told the press, when asked if Shaw and Bertrand were the same man, "I don't know if he is and I don't know if he isn't." Oswald had become "just a vague memory." (Oswald In New Orleans 139) Andrews told the grand jury, in response to a question about Shaw's height: "I see him on TV. He is a tall cat - I don't believe the person I know as Clay Bertrand is as tall as him. I don't know. I can't say yes, and I can't say no. As God is my judge I have to go back to the same thing I am telling you - I go to a fag wedding reception - and he is standing up and he is well dressed - I don't measure the guy...the voice I recall is somewhat similar to this cat's voice...deep, cultured, well educated voice - he don't talk like me..." When asked if Shaw was Bertrand, "I can't say that he is and I can't say that he ain't." Andrews admitted knowing Ferrie and having handled Marcello's deportation defense. (Oswald In New Orleans 140)
  • 3/1/1967 Ramsey Clark was quoted in the New York World-Journal Tribune as saying he didn't think Garrison had any evidence that would indicate a conspiracy, that Garrison should turn over any evidence to the federal government, and seemed to be under the impression that Garrison was postulating a pro-Castro conspiracy. The story also reported that "the FBI has scrutinized all aspects of Garrison's probe very carefully."
  • 3/2/1967 In a dramatic address on the Senate floor, Robert Kennedy had made his break with the Administration's policy on Vietnam official.
  • 3/2/1967 Perry Russo is hypnotized by Garrison's people.
  • 3/2/1967 Gerald Ford stated, "Any analysis of today's political picture in America of necessity revolves about a single phrase...'a crisis of confidence'...the credibility gap continues..."
  • 3/2/1967 Acting Atty General Ramsey Clark left his confirmation hearings in Washington and was besieged by reporters asking him about Shaw. The AP press reported, "Atty. Gen. designate Ramsey Clark said today the Federal Bureau of Investigation already has investigated and cleared Clay L. Shaw...of any part in the assassination... Clark said the Justice Department knows what Garrison's case involves, and does not consider it valid...Clark said Shaw 'was included in an investigation of November and December of 1963. We have the evidence and we can assume what their conclusions are,' Clark said. 'On the evidence that the FBI has, there was no connection found' between Shaw and the assassination...'He was checked out and found cleared?' Clark was asked. 'That's right,' Clark replied." The story also reported that J. Lee Rankin said, "as far as I know, we've never heard of this person [Shaw]." (New York Post 3/2/1967). But no such investigation of Shaw had ever taken place, and some (particularly Shaw's lawyer Edward F. Wegmann) began to ask why, if Shaw never had any connection to the assassination, was he supposedly investigated? Nowhere in the WR or in Andrews' testimony did the WC reveal that it knew the identity of Clay Bertrand. These statements were widely reported, but the media didn't seem to notice the discrepancy. NY Times reporter Robert Semple wrote that the Justice Dept was convinced that "Mr. Bertrand and Mr. Shaw were the same man." (New Orleans Times-Picayune 5/6/1967) Semple then went to the National Archives seeking WC references to Shaw; when he found none, he was told that the Justice Dept believed that Bertrand and Shaw were the same person, and this was the basis for the AG's statement. (Destiny Betrayed, 1[SUP]st[/SUP] ed 171-2)
  • 3/2/1967 Shaw was released on $10,000 bond. Garrison told the press that Shaw "was none other than Clay Bertrand." That afternoon, in a press conference, Shaw read from a prepared statement; he labeled the charges as "fantastic." He said he "had only the highest and utmost respect and admiration" for JFK. "I do not know Harvey Lee Oswald (sic) nor, to the best of my knowledge, do I know anyone who knew him...I am incapable of being involved in a plot like this." He was unaware of, and did not know why the FBI had already investigated him previously, but suggested that it was "because of the distribution of pro-Castro leaflets outside the International Trade Mart." (Oswald in New Orleans)
  • 3/2/1967 Call From Texas Governor John Connally (who is in New York) to LBJ:
CONNALLY: I'm sorry to bother you. Can you listen to me for about five minutes?
JOHNSON: Sure.
CONNALLY: All day today I have been interviewed up here ... they're continually breaking stories on this conspiracy thing ... based on what this fella, this DA in New Orleans talks about, [this DA] named Garrison.
I have just been interviewed again. And of course, I just simply say that I know nothing about it. But a newsman named Paul Smith has just been here to interview me again. They have a long story on the radio tonight, over WINS, a news radio station here in New York. Charley Payne is the [WINS] general manager, and [has] talked to me off and on all day [trying to keep] me posted on it. They [WINS] supposedly have a story from a man who saw the files in Garrison's office ... he is the DA in New Orleans. I don't have the whole story, but here's what they say.
That Garrison has information that would prove that there were four assassination [teams] ... assassins in the United States, sent here by [Fidel] Castro, or Castro's people. [Sent] not by Castro himself, but one of his lieutenants. One team was picked up in New York ... but did not ... was picked up and interviewed by the FBI and the Secret Service, but did not reveal a great deal of information which was available.
One of the teams was composed of Lee Harvey Oswald; this fella [Clay] Shaw, that has just been arrested in New Orleans yesterday; and the [deceased] man [David] Ferrie; plus one other man. They were teams of four. And there were two other teams that I know nothing about.
WINS Radio has had some reporters, according to the media here, in Cuba ... working on various angles of this thing for the past [few] days. They also have a team of reporters in New Orleans with Garrison. In Cuba they found, according[and] this is very confidential, and all of this is not goin' on the air ... at all.15 But in Cuba ... and the two reporters that they had there were working from different angles and came together with exactly the same story.
The storythat they're not going to publishis that after the [1962] missile crisis, President Kennedy and [Nikita] Khrushchev had made a deal to leave Castro in power. But about six months after the missile crisis was over, the CIA was instructed to assassinate Castro ... and sent teams into Cuba. Some of 'em were captured and tortured, and Castro and his peopleand I assume Che Guevaraheard the whole story.16 The information they have here, which they're not gonna run, is that President Kennedy did not [issue] the order to the CIA, but that some other person extremely close to President Kennedy did. They did not name the man ... but the inference was very clear. The inference was ... that it was his brother [who] ordered the CIA to send a team into Cuba to assassinate Castro. Then one of Castro's lieutenants, as a reprisal measure, sent four teams in[to] the United States to assassinate President Kennedy. [And] that Lee Harvey Oswald was [one of the] members of the team operating out of New Orleans.
Now this is the story that they think they have. This is the information that was given to me tonight, less than an hour ago, by a reporter named Paul Smith who came here to [indistinct] Charley Payne, whom I knew in Texas. [Payne was] a radio man down there and he's now the general manager of WINS.
I thought this would be of interest to you. I know nothing more about it than that, but I thought you oughta know that.
JOHNSON: Good. This is confidential too. We've had that story on about three occasions, and the people here say that there's no basis for it.
CONNALLY: Hmm.
JOHNSON: I have had some ... I've given a lot of thought to it. First, one of [Jimmy] Hoffa's lawyers went to one of our mutual friends
CONNALLY: Yeah.
JOHNSON: and asked him to come and relay that to us ... just about like you have related it.17 [A] week or two passed, and then Pearson came to me, Drew Pearson
CONNALLY: Yeah.
JOHNSON: [and he] told me that the lawyer, Edward Morgan here [in Washington], had told him the same thing and said that they would plead ... they would tell all the story after November when the [statute of] limitation[s] ran out. I don't know ... our lawyer [Ramsey Clark] said they couldn't believe that there's any [statute of] limitation[s] on a [concealed] conspiracy, but ... [Then] I talked to another one or two of our good lawyers that I have recognized
CONNALLY: Yes, sir.
JOHNSON: [who's] pretty high-placed, a few months ago
CONNALLY: Yes, sir.18
JOHNSON: He evaluated [it] pretty carefully and said that it was ridiculous.
With this CIA thing breaking and the thing turning, as it did, in reconstructing the requests that were made of me back there, at the [beginning], right after I became President, I have talked to some more [people] about it, and I've got the A[ttorney] G[eneral] coming down to see me tomorrow night ... to spend a weekend with me.19 I thought I'd go over it with him again just so that they could ... so [the FBI director J. Edgar] Hoover and 'em could watch it very carefully.
They say that ... there's not anything to the Garrison story, [at] least Hoover says so, as near as he can tell. He says that they interviewed Ferrie, and they interviewed this other fella [Dean Andrews], very carefully and closely.20 And the fella [Andrews] claims that he got a call from Oswald, but they [the FBI] can't find any record of it. And the doctor that had him [Andrews] under surveillance said that he wasn't in a position to talk on November the twenty-third, and [that] he [was] under very heavy sedation.
And that the [Clay] Shaw thing is a phony, and that Ferrie died of natural causes, and that that was a phony. But thatsome of these same sources that were preventin' ... tryin' to involve this jail thing ... have been feeding stuff to Garrison as they did here.21
I don't know whether there's any basis for it or not. I noticed even LarryLarry Blackmon, yesterday, was in to see me on another matterand he started makin' a big pitch about this other situation.22 So I don't know how much of it is being fed out through their network and through their channels, and how much of it anybody would know. It's pretty hard to see how ... we would know directly ... what Castro did.
CONNALLY: Yeah.
JOHNSON: The story varies a good deal. If you go to lookin' at it [hard], as Abe said, who is it that's seen Castro? Or heard from Castro? Or knows Castro ... that's [in a position to] ... [who] could be ... confirming all this? [Fortas said] that we just hear that this is what he did, but nobody points to how we hear it.
CONNALLY: Yeah.
JOHNSON: So we will look into it, and I appreciate very much your callin' me, and I'll try to bear this in mind. I may have you talk to the other fella when you get back home, just for a minute, because I think that it's somethin' we have to be aware of and watch, without gettin'
CONNALLY: Caught either way. He [Payne] made me promise
JOHNSON: caught either way.
[Brief discussion about Robert Kennedy's call for a pause in the bombing of North Vietnam.]
CONNALLY: I just thought [that] since this was out in the communications
JOHNSON: Yeah ... yeah, I think that's right. I think that's good ... and I think it's right. I think
CONNALLY: I don't know how ... I don't know what either. I thought it might tie in with somethin' you knew, and I don't want to know anything. I don't need to know it, but I just wanted [you] to know
JOHNSON: Well ... no ... I've told you all I know. That's all we know. And the FBI thinks that both Ferrie and Shaw are fraudsI mean, that Garrison is usin' 'em as a fraud, that they have interviewed both of 'em at great length.
CONNALLY: Yeah.
JOHNSON: They have heard these things, and they interviewed 'em back in [1963-1964], for the Warren Commission.23 They do not give any credit to it, but we can't ever be sure, and we just want to keep watchin' and so on [and] so forth.
CONNALLY: Okay, sir. I'm sorry to disturb you.
JOHNSON: Thank you, Johnny.

  • 3/3/1967 Jack Anderson (Drew Pearson's associate) column makes first public mention of CIA-Mafia plots against Castro: "an unconfirmed report that Sen. Robert Kennedy may have approved an assassination plot which then possibly backfired against his late brother." Castro, "with characteristic fury...is reported to have cooked up a counterplot against President Kennedy...This report may have started...Jim Garrison on his investigation of the Kennedy assassination, but insiders believe he is following the wrong trails." Anderson's source for this was Johnny Roselli. The column began, "President Johnson is sitting on a political H-bomb, an unconfirmed report that Senator Robert Kennedy may have approved an assassination plot [against Castro] which then possibly backfired against his late brother." The column was so thinly sourcedit admitted that the story was a rumorthat The Washington Post and the New York Post refused to publish it. But hundreds of other newspapers went ahead. Anderson had rushed into print almost certainly because he feared being scooped by Jim Garrison. The column observed that the allegation it described "may have started New Orleans' flamboyant District Attorney Jim Garrison on his investigation of the Kennedy assassination," but that insiders "believe he is following the wrong trails."
  • 3/3/1967 Washington Post article by George Lardner Jr: "Jim Garrison accused businessman Clay Shaw yesterday of plotting President Kennedy's assassination with David W. Ferrie and Lee Harvey Oswald in the flat where Ferrie died last week...Released on $10,000 bond, Shaw called the arrest "fantastic." At a news conference in his attorney's office, he protested that he was "completely innocent" and said he never knew Oswald or Ferrie. Shaw also denied using the name 'Clay Bertrand.'...Attorney General Ramsey Clark told newsmen here that the FBI had already investigated and cleared Shaw in the weeks following the assassination on Nov 22, 1963. 'He was checked out and found clear?' Clark was asked after a hearing on his nomination to become attorney general. 'That's right,' Clark replied. The FBI, however, neither investigated nor cleared anyone named Shaw. It did check briefly into allegations surrounding a 'Clay Bertrand' and decided they were without substance...The Attorney General's remarks consequently amounted to an acceptance of Garrison's charge that Clay Shaw and "Clay Bertrand" are one and the same. 'It's the same guy,' said one source in the Justice Department. The FBI, it was understood, pursued some leads on "Bertrand," but abandoned them as fruitless before he could located."
  • 3/3/1967 Time magazine runs an article entitled "Bourbon Street Rococo" -- a critical review of Jim Garrison and his investigation.
  • 3/3/1967 Washington Post reported on conspiracy researcher Harold Weisberg and the influence he was having on the Garrison investigation. "Weinsberg [sic] had a hard time getting "Whitewash" printed at all. He sent it to 63 US publishers, finally put it out in a limited edition at his own expense, calling it "The Book That Couldn't Be Printed." He darkly suggested that the publishers were afraid to risk government wrath. Dell Publishing Co. subsequently picked it up last fall as a paperback."
  • 3/3/1967 George Lardner Jr. wrote in the Post about Ramsey Clark's remarks about Clay Shaw: "The Attorney General's remarks consequently amounted to an acceptance of Garrison's charges that Clay Shaw and 'Clay Bertrand' are one and the same. 'It's the same guy,' said one source in the Justice Department." Lardner also reported that the "broad outlines" of Garrison's investigation came from Harold Weisberg's Whitewash.
  • 3/3/1967 The New York Times' Gene Roberts reported, "Wesley J. Liebelor [sic]...said that a 'very substantial' investigation by the Federal Bureau of Investigation had shown that Mr. Ferrie was not a part of any assassination plot."
  • 3/3/1967 WINS radio (New York) reported that newsman Doug Edelson said a "responsible, unimpeachable source who had access to Garrison's files" told him that Garrison "believes President Kennedy was murdered by a group of plotters directed from Cuba."
  • 3/3/1967 Preliminary hearing on Shaw began.
  • 3/4/1967 Earl Warren, in Peru, is quoted as saying, "I have not heard anything which would change the Report in any way, shape or form."
  • 3/4/1967 Robert Kennedy's secretary phones the CIA Director's office and asks for a copy of the Edwards memorandum on the May 7, 1962 meeting with Kennedy when he was Attorney General, at which time he was briefed on the Castro assassination operation. (RFK also calls J. Edgar Hoover for his copy of the memorandum.) RFK knows of the Drew Pearson article of March 3, 1967 and wants to check his recollection of what he had been told by Edwards and Houston on May 7, 1962. The Attorney General's copy of the memorandum for the record of that briefing is in the archives of the Attorney General's office. Richard Helms subsequently has lunch with Senator Kennedy. He takes a copy of the memorandum with him and allows RFK to read it. He does not leave a copy with RFK. RFK arranged to have lunch on March 4 with Richard Helms, who probably told him that the President hadn't yet asked anything about it.
  • 3/5/1967 Warren Hinckle III, editor of Ramparts Magazine, hosted a "rockdance-environment happening" benefit in honor of the CIA (Citizens for Interplanetary Activity) at California Hall, San Francisco.
  • 3/5/1967 Garrison first announced that there were two assassins (New York World Journal Tribune; Counterplot p78)
  • 3/6/1967 Letter and attached memo from Hoover to Attorney General Clark titled 'Central Intelligence Agency's Intentions to Send Hoodlums to Cuba to Assassinate Castro.' The FBI "checked matter with CIA on 5/3/61 and learned CIA was using Robert Maheu as intermediary with Sam Giancana relative to CIA's "dirty business" anti-Castro activities. By letter 5/22/61 we furnished former Attorney General Kennedy a memorandum containing a rundown on CIA's involvement in this. The originals of the letter and memorandum were returned to us for filing purposes. A copy of that memorandum is being attached to instant letter being sent to Attorney General. On 5/9/62 Kennedy discussed with the Director a number of matters, including admission by CIA that Robert Maheu had been hired by that Agency to approach Sam Giancana to have Castro assassinated at a cost of $150,000. Kennedy stated he had issued orders that CIA should never undertake such steps again without first checking with the Department of Justice and stated because of this matter it would be difficult to prosecute Giancana or Robert Maheu then or in the future." The FBI learned 6/20/1963 that the CIA-Mafia contacts had "continued up until that time when they were reportedly cut off." The memo also stated that one Mafia member was "using his prior connections with the CIA to his best advantage." (Final Disclosure 110) Another memo from the same day (3/6/1967) stated that Robert Kennedy had made the FBI aware of the plots 5/9/1962, and that Giancana couldn't be prosecuted by the Justice Department because he would blow the whistle on the CIA-Mafia plots. (Final Disclosure 111)
  • 3/6/1967 The ACLU of Louisiana criticized Garrison for his method of release evidence to the press, calling the investigation "a Roman circus."
  • 3/61967 Newsweek magazine runs an article entitled: "Carnival in New Orleans" - a critical review of Jim Garrison and his investigation.
  • 3/6/1967 The New York Times quoted Warren saying at various press conferences that he was "personally satisfied with the conclusions of the Warren Report."
  • 3/7/1967 The ACLU of Louisiana criticized Garrison's investigation for being financed by private sources.
  • 3/7/1967 Jack Anderson/Drew Pearson's column discussed the possibility of Castro being behind the JFK assassination. The CIA's Inspector General Report was the result of an investigation ordered in 1967 by President Johnson, after a Drew Pearson-Jack Anderson column of March 7, 1967, had published for the first time details of "a reported CIA plan in 1963 to assassinate Cuba's Fidel Castro." However Johnson never got to see the actual report: Helms merely spoke to him from a set of notes which excluded the key events of late 1963. President Nixon never got to see it either, although it would appear that he had his aide John Ehrlichman try over many months to pry it out of CIA Director Richard Helms.
  • 3/7/1967 Jimmy Hoffa begins an eight-year jail term.
  • 3/8/1967 Waggoner Carr, former Texas AG, was quoted as saying that "as far as I'm concerned [Garrison's] way out on a limb...due to my complete confidence in the Warren Commission, he is going to have to show me..."
  • 3/8/1967 The biggest UFO sighting flap in March, 1967 occurred on a WednesdayMarch 8. There were numerous sightings in Minnesota, Oklahoma, Arkansas, Maryland, Montana, Missouri, Illinois, Iowa, Kansas. John Keel, Operation Trojan Horse: "These twenty-two reports are a mere sampling, but they provide an idea of what happened on a single Wednesday night in March, 1967. This was not an exceptional flap. It was, in fact, a rather ordinary one, and none of these incidents is of special interest. There were seventy-four flap dates in 1966, many of them much larger than that of March 8, 1967. The flap of March 8 seemed to be largely concentrated in the states of Kansas and Illinois. In fact, much of the UFO activity in recent years has been focused on the Midwestern states. Until the fall of 1967, a simple pattern seems to have emerged: Less densely populated areas had a higher ratio of sightings than heavily populated sections. The Air Force discovered this odd fact back in the late 1940's. If this were a purely psychological phenomenon, then there should be more reports in the more densely populated areas. Instead, the reverse has been true. The objects still apparently prefer remote sectors such as hill country, deserts, forested areas, swamplands, and places where the risk of being observed is the least. As you will note from the sample cases mentioned previously, the majority of the sightings were made between 7:30 and 9:30 P.M. But throughout rural America, most of the population is at home and planted in front of the TV sets at that hour, particularly on weekday nights. In other studies we have determined that the majority of the reported landings occur very late at night in very isolated locales, where the chances of being observed are very slight. In most farming areas, the people are early risers, and therefore most of the population is in bed before 10 P.M. It is after 10 P.M. that the unidentified flying objects cut loose. When they do happen to be observed on the ground, it is either by accident or design. And usually they take off the moment they have been discovered, or they inexplicably disappear into thin air!"
  • 3/9/1967 JCS Chairman Wheeler responded to a report to him by Westmoreland that the communists were growing in offensive strength. Wheeler told Westmoreland to withhold this information from everyone except those with "an absolute need to know." Otherwise, "they would, literally, blow the lid off of Washington." (The Captive Press p146)
  • 3/9/1967 NY Times reported that the Vatican's newspaper, L'Osservatore della Domenica, expressed doubts about the Warren Report.
  • 3/11/1967 Barry Goldwater, who previously said he supported the ... consular treaty, came out today for an amendment the pact's supporters say would kill it. New York Times [AP]
  • 3/12/1967 Attorney General Ramsey Clark, on CBS' Face the Nation, declined to talk about his remarks concerning Shaw, but demanded that Garrison turn over all evidence he had on the JFK assassination to the federal government. He said he "will be very much surprised if any [new evidence] exists." When asked about the possibility of Castro being behind the assassination, he replied, "There have been studies of these matters. We have nothing that indicates any evidence of a conspiracy...I am much disturbed and saddened that so much publicity, so much agitation, so much doubt is created." He was then asked by CBS correspondent George Herman about the FBI's classified files on Dave Ferrie, and why they were still being withheld even though Ferrie was dead. Clark replied, "...those documents are under the general jurisdiction of the General Services Administration at this time." This was also untrue, since these documents had been specifically classified under orders from J Edgar Hoover and his aides. A few days later, Clark retracted his previous statement through a subordinate: "The Attorney General has since determined that this was erroneous. Nothing arose indicating a need to investigate Mr. Shaw." (New York Times 6/3/1967)
  • 3/13/1967 After a Ramparts article, the National Student Association admitted it had received over $3 million from the CIA through dummy foundations.
  • 3/13/1967 Max Holland: "In the early evening of March 13 Johnson met privately with Earl Warren for forty minutes, with only Marvin Watson, the White House staffer who served as liaison with the FBI, in attendance. Little is known about this meeting. Since January, Warren had been aware of the story that the CIA had utilized the Mafia to try to assassinate Castro; Pearson had told him three days after telling Johnson. But until he stepped into the Oval Office that evening, he did not know that the story was true. Warren's rock-solid belief in the report that bears his name must have been weakened, at least momentarily. The meeting had two consequences. The Chief Justice was, of course, thoroughly conversant with the evidence against Oswald, and he probably renewed Johnson's confidence in that part of the Warren Report. But the finding that Oswald was responsible for all the shots fired in Dealey Plaza didn't rule out a conspiracy. And now there was more reason than ever to believe that Fidel Castro had instigated a counterplot in retaliation for attempts on his life. So Johnson, perhaps with Warren's encouragement, became determined to get the rest of the story from the CIA."'
  • 3/13/1967 Newsweek article ("Sideshow") concluded that Garrison was "still making headlines, rather than history."
  • 3/14/1967 Preliminary hearing for Clay Shaw. Russo testified that he had known Ferrie since 1960 and had an "open-book invitation" to visit any time he wanted. 9/1963, at Ferrie's apartment, he met a young bearded man with an "old-fashion bolt-action rifle" who was introduced by Ferrie as "Leon Oswald." A few days later he attended a party at Ferrie's place which eventually "narrowed down to three persons besides myself" - Ferrie, Oswald, and Clem Bertrand. Russo identified Shaw as Bertrand in the courtroom. Russo then said that the three men planned the murder of JFK while he was there. "Ferrie took the initiative in the talk, pacing back and forth...discussing diversionary tactics." They talked about "triangulation of cross fire," the choosing of a "scapegoat" and the "availability of exits." (Counterplot 54) Shaw's lawyer asked why the trio would so openly talk about killing the President in front of Russo; he replied that Ferrie had told the others that "he is all right." Russo said that he had heard of "Leon Oswald," not "Lee Harvey Oswald." He denied waiting until after Ferrie was dead before coming forward with his story so that Ferrie could not contradict him. Vernon Bundy also told his story about seeing Shaw pass money to Oswald.
  • 3/14/1967 A New York Post columnist ridiculed the Garrison investigation, refering to "Big Jim," "Ferrie the Wig" and "Torpedo," a mysterious Cuban.
  • 3/14/1967 On this date, work crews are making preparations to excavate JFK's grave at Arlington Cemetery. The body is to be moved to a new site. Permanent landscaping has been completed, including new stonework quarried on Cape Cod in the early 19th century, and a plaque in the walk declares the dates of JOHN FITZGERALD KENNEDY (1917 - 1963). JFK's body will be moved - along with the bodies of his two infant children. Before the workmen begin their excavation of the grave, some 300 military personnel arrive and close Arlington National Cemetery to the public, clearing it of all unauthorized persons. An Army roadblock shuts down Arlington Memorial Bridge. The Military District of Washington establishes a command post at the guard house near the grave sites. A 50-man reserve troop stands by for summoning on short notice. Meanwhile, troops ring the area, which is screened by canvas and open to only "key personnel" with "a specific job." At approximately 6:10 PM, Senator Robert F. Kennedy and Secretary of Defense Robert McNamara arrive. The ground breaking immediately begins. At 7:00 pm, Senator Ted Kennedy arrives, accompanied by Richard Cardinal Cushing of Boston and another priest named McGuire - both of whom are scheduled to bless the graves of the President and his two children the next day. At 8:45 pm, the mourners depart the property. By 11:00 pm, they return - this time, RFK is accompanied by his wife, his brother Ted, Warren Billings and Jacqueline Kennedy. They remain at the site until just before midnight. They will return in the morning for the actual re-interment proceedings. In 1976, RFK's former press aide, Frank Mankiewicz, tells HSCA Counsel Robert Blakey that he thinks that the "President's brain is in the grave. LBJ, Ted, Bobby, and maybe McNamara buried it when the body was transferred. Ted seemed to confirm it later." Asked about JFK's brain in 1992, Evelyn Lincoln becomes upset and finally replies: "It's where it belongs." John Mezler is superintendent of Arlington National Cemetery from 1951 to 1972. His contact report (HSCA Agency File 008148) includes this statement: "At the time of the [initial] burial, Mr. Mezler watched the coffin being placed in a Wilbur' [Wilbur Vault Company] vault. He saw the lid lowered and the vault sealed. The lid and vault had a tongue and groove' system, which permitted a tight fit. There was tar present at the points of contact of the tongues and grooves, making the seals a permanent one. Mr. Mezler said the only way the vault could be opened subsequently would be by breaking open' the lid or main part of the vault." The Military District of Washington also keeps a detailed log of activites during the reinterment. In this very detailed listing there is no record of a brain, or of a brain container, ever being placed into the vault. Mr. Mezler supervises the reinterment. He is present at all times, both during the opening of the old site and during preparations for the new site, including the transfer [by crante] of the vault through a distance of 30 feet.
  • 3/15/1967 Russo was cross-examined at the preliminary hearing. He admitted that he had not been able to identify Oswald positively until an artist in the DA's office had spent six hours drawing different beards on photos of Oswald. He was asked about his 2/24 TV statements. "I knew Leon Oswald, who was slightly whiskered...I did not, myself, honestly, know a Lee Harvey Oswald." He explained that the picture in his mind of Lee Harvey Oswald "was not identical" with that of "Leon Oswald." Russo claimed that Ferrie didn't worry about Russo being present, saying, "Forget him, he is all right, he don't know anything, and it don't make any difference with him." When asked why he hadn't told his story back in 1963, he answered, "At the time, right after the assassination, I had an involvement with school that was more pressing to me. If they wanted [to] ask me anything, they could...I had no reason to disagree with these people. They are professionals...Dave Ferrie was never implicated as far as I knew." When he read about Garrison's investigation in the paper, he claimed that he didn't know it was the same Ferrie he had known (the paper had refered to him as "David W. Ferrie"). He admitted to having been hypnotized three times, and had been under psychiatric treatment for 18 months, ending in late 1960. (Counterplot 55-7)
  • 3/16/1967 NY Times reported that at a preliminary court hearing three presiding judges rejected a motion to admit the Warren Report into evidence, on the grounds that it was a compound of hearsay and error. Richard Cardinal Cushing of Boston said, "I think they should follow it through...I never believed the assassination of President Kennedy was the work of one man." (NYT)
  • 3/16/1967 Gordon Novel, perhaps the primary CIA contact for the New Orleans part of the anti-Castro efforts, discusses some general matters before the Grand Jury in New Orleans. He is scheduled to return on March 22 for more detailed questioning. Some researchers believe Gordon Novel was on the grassy knoll at the time of the assassination. Novel's specialty is electronics. He has been connected to David Ferrie and Guy Banister.
  • 3/16/1967 Marina Oswald was quoted as saying she had never met Dave Ferrie or Clay Shaw. (NYT)
  • 3/16/1967 Dean Andrews was indicted for perjury.
  • 3/16/1967 Early in the morning on the March 16, 1967 at Malmstrom AFB in Montana, occurred one of the most extraordinary events in the history of military-UFO encounters. Under a clear and dark Montana sky, an airman with the Oscar Flight Launch Control Center (LCC) saw a star-like object zigzagging high above him. Soon, a larger and closer light also appeared, and acted in similar fashion. The airman called his NCO, and the two men watched the lights streak through the sky, maneuvering in impossible ways. The NCO phoned his commander, Lieutenant Robert Salas, who was below ground in the launch control center. "Great," Salas said. "You just keep watching them and let me know if they get any closer." A few minutes later, the NCO called again, shouting that a red, glowing UFO was hovering outside the front gate. "What do you want us to do?" asked the NCO. Salas told him to make sure the site was secure while he phoned the command post. "Sir," replied the NCO, "I have to go now, one of the guys just got injured." Before Salas could ask about the injury, the NCO was off the line. The man, who was not seriously injured, was evacuated by helicopter to the base. Salas woke his commander, Lieutenant Fred Meiwald. As he briefed Meiwald, an alarm went off in the small capsule, and both men saw a "No-Go" light turn on for one of the missiles. Within seconds, several more missiles went down in succession. Twenty miles away, at the Echo-Flight Launch Facilities, the same scenario was taking place. First Lieutenant Walter Figel, the Deputy Crew Commander of the Missile Combat Crew, was at his station when one of the Minuteman missiles went into "No-Go" status. He called the missile site and learned that a UFO had been hovering over the site. Like Salas, Figel doubted the story. But just then, ten more ICBMs in rapid succession reported a "No-Go" condition. Within seconds, the entire flight was down. Strike teams were dispatched to two launch facilities, where maintenance crews were already at work. Figel had not told the strike teams about the UFO report. Upon their arrival, however, the teams reported back to him that all of the maintenance and security personnel had been watching UFOs hover over each of the sites. The missiles were down for most of the day. Neither the Air Force investigation, nor the laboratory tests at Boeing's Seattle plant found any cause for the shutdown. According to the Boeing engineering chief, "there was no technical explanation that could explain the event." UFOs were not part of this analysis.
  • 3/17/1967 Senate approves consular treaty, 66 to 28.
  • 3/17/1967 The three-judge panel presiding over Shaw's preliminary hearing ruled that "sufficient evidence has been presented to establish probable cause that a crime has been committed...to justify bringing into play the further steps of the criminal process against the arrestee, Clay L. Shaw." Shaw remained free on $10,000 bail.
  • 3/17/1967 Memo from Cartha DeLoach to Clyde Tolson: "Watson stated that the President still desired that the FBI conduct the interview in question. I told Watson that, under the circumstances, we had no alternative but to make this attempt; however, I hoped he and the President realized that this might be putting the FBI into a situation with District Attorney Garrison, who was nothing more than a publicity seeker."
  • 3/17/1967 The London Daily Mail reported that Shaw had recently been in London, where he intended to move.
  • 3/18/1967 Westmoreland requested 200,000 more troops, expanded bombing of the North and ground operations into Laos and Cambodia.
  • 3/18/1967 National Guardian quoted the Italian paper Paesa Sera as saying that Shaw had links with various right-wing groups and possibly the CIA. It reported that he was a member of the board of directors of the Centro Mondiale Commerciale from 1961 until around the time he retired from the Trade Mart. The Italian paper charged that CMC was a CIA front for funneling money into Italy. The Guardian also added, "Shaw reportedly played a part in arranging for Kennedy to speak at the Dallas Trade Mart on Nov. 22, 1963..." though no source was given for this.
  • 3/18/1967 New York Post attacked Garrison's investigation ("A Morbid Frolic in New Orleans"), saying that Warren and Rankin should conduct their own new investigation, because until "such responsible exercise is begun, fools and charlatans - and well-intentioned amateur detectives - will run wild."
  • 3/20/1967 Newsweek: "In Europe, where thousands still cling to the conspiracy theory in spite of the Warren Commission's conclusion...Garrison and his investigation have been the stuff of page-one headlines."
  • 3/20/1967 The lawyer interviewed by the FBI field office in Washington will not identify his source of the information that Castro plotted JFK's death.
  • 3/21/1967 NY Post quoted Mark Lane as saying that Garrison knew the identities of the real assassins.
  • 3/22/1967 Grand jury formally indicted Shaw, charging him with "willfully and unlawfully conspiring with David W. Ferrie and Lee Harvey Oswald to murder John F. Kennedy."
  • 3/22/1967 Rep. Roman C. Pucinski of Illinois stated, "I'm very surprised more attention hasn't been paid to the ruling that Clay Shaw go on trial...These aren't nuts but three judges talking. It's a new ball game."
  • 3/22/1967 LBJ asked Richard Helms, who had been the CIA liaison to the Warren Commission in 1964 and the director of the Agency since June of 1966, to prepare a full report on the allegations in Anderson's column. It is not known whether the President divulged to Helms what he already knew from the FBI memorandum, or whether he pretended to find the claim outlandish in order to test Helms's candor about such a sensitive matter. In either case, Johnson asked "[not] idly or in passing ... but asked directly, formally, and explicitly, in a tone and manner which did not admit of evasion," as the historian Thomas Powers has written. The President is the one person whose requests for information the CIA must honor in full, and Helms had no alternative but to come back with a specific and complete answer.
  • 3/22/1967 Leopold Sedar Senghor, president of Senegal, was the target of an unsuccessful assassination attempt.
  • 3/22/1967 Gordon Novel, scheduled to appear before a New Orleans Grand Jury, disappears. He has sold his interest in a restaurant and has cleared out his apartment. He begins a national and international junket denouncing Jim Garrison from Columbus, Ohio, McLean, Virginia, and Montreal, Canada - sidestepping Garrison's efforts to extradite him.
  • 3/23/1967 Richard Helms assigns the CIA inspector general to report on assassination attempts against Castro.
  • 3/23/1967 MLK joined Benjamin Spock (a proposed running mate in his possible third-party candidacy) in his first anti-war march, through downtown Chicago
  • 3/23/1967 Bob Considine criticized "the outrageous coverage which the European press is giving to Jim Garrison's politically-oriented investigation' in New Orleans." (New York Post)
  • 3/24/1967 Max Lerner wrote in his New York Post column, "Some have suggested that we call off the current New Orleans investigation...because it may further hurt the American image abroad. But this kind of defensiveness is self-defeating. Tocqueville noted one trait of American society as the most hopeful of all - its self-corrective capacity. What we need to tell our friends and enemies is not that America has no faults - it has plenty of them - but that over the years it has found ways of dealing with its social and psychic wounds...the probing, however painful, will go - whatever the world may think about it."
  • 3/25/1967 States-Item story by Neil Sanders: "New Orleanians who knew Lee Harvey Oswald when he last lived here are mystified by the ill-kempt, unshaven picture drawn of him by witnesses in the Garrison investigation. They remember the accused assassin...as a neat dresser who was always clean shaven."
  • 3/25/1967 Right-wing columnist Victor Lasky wrote a glowing review of Charles Roberts' book The Truth About the Assassination, which defends the WC.
  • 3/27/1967 Newsweek article reported that "In 1964, Ruby, who feared that his cell was bugged, signaled lawyer Joe Tonahill for a sheet of notebook paper and a pencil. He scribbled a note that Tonahill only now has revealed. It read, 'Joe you should know this. Tom Howard told me to say that I shot Oswald so that Caroline and Mrs Kennedy wouldn't have to come to Dallas to testify. OK?'" Posner says that Ruby was just trying to get revenge on his lawyers because he "was furious with...their handling of his case and actually thought they were part of a conspiracy to frame him." Bill Alexander told Posner, "I saw Ruby at the jail before Tom Howard ever arrived, and he was telling people then that he had shot Oswald because he was so upset about Mrs. Kennedy. No one told Jack to say that." (Case Closed 398)
  • 3/27/1967 Washington Post reported that in August 1962 the CIA managed to contaminate some sugar bound for Russia from Cuba, hoping that the now bad-tasting sugar would cause the Soviets to stop buying the Cuban product. When JFK found out, he was furious; he warned the Russians about the tainted sugar and warned the Agency not to do it again.
  • 3/28/1967 FBI memo reported that "Garrison plans to indict Carlos Marcello in the Kennedy assassination conspiracy because Garrison believes Marcello is tied up in some way with Jack Ruby."
  • Spring 1967 "The Assassins" by John Kaplan The American Scholar, Volume 36, No. 2 (Spring 1967), pp. 271306 John Kaplan is a professor of law at Stanford University.
  • 4/1967 In 1967 as a federal prisoner in Springfield, Missouri, Richard Case Nagell contacted New Orleans District Attorney Jim Garrison. For Garrison's investigation of the Kennedy assassination, Nagell offered to turn over the tape recording he had made containing evidence of a conspiracy. Nagell said he had secretly taped a meeting he attended in late August 1 963 with three other low-level participants in the plot to kill Kennedy. He identified the three voices on the tape beside his own as those of Oswald, Angel, and "Arcacha "-very likely Sergio Arcacha Smith, a Cuban exile leader who had worked closely with Guy Banister before moving from New Orleans to Texas in 1962. (Jim Garrison's CIA-connected staff member William R. Martin reported back to Garrison on his prison interview of Nagell: "When questioned as to the identity of the persons speaking on the tape the subject stated openly that one of them was 'Arcacha' and another individual whom the subject would only identify as ' Q . ' The subject did not wish to go into more detail concerning the tape at that time since he, all during our previous conversations, had indicated that our conversation could possibly be bugged. " William R. Martin Memorandum to Jim Garrison, April 18 , 1967. Cited by James DiEugenio in Assassinations, p. 2 3 7 . In Nagell's own written comments on another Martin memorandum to Garrison, he described further the four persons on the audiotape as: ( 1 ) Oswald; (2) Nagell himself, who served as Oswald's interpreter for the predominately Spanish conversation; ( 3 ) an unidentified person; (4) Angel. Cited by Russell in Man Who Knew Too Much, p. 425.) Nagell withdrew the offer of the tape, however, when Garrison's staff member and intermediary, William R. Martin, told him he had been a CIA officer. Nagell suspected Martin's association with the CIA had not ended, as Garrison himself would later conclude.
  • 4/1967 Gore Vidal: "JFK is already the subject of a cult that may persist, through the machinery of publicity, long after all memory of his administration has been absorbed by the golden myth now being created in a thousand books to the single end of maintaining in power our extraordinary holy family...if it is true that in a rough way nations deserve the leadership they get, then a frivolous and apathetic electorate combined with a vain and greedy intellectual establishment will most certainly restore to power the illusion-making Kennedys." (4/1967 Esquire)
  • 4/1967 Weisberg's book Photographic Whitewash is published.
  • 4/1967 In Harper's, Tom Wicker interviewed George Wallace, who told him why he welcomed support from the KKK: "At least a Klansman will fight for his country. He don't tear up his draft card."
  • 4/1/1967 The CIA memo to station chiefs "Concerning Criticism of the Warren Report" caused quite a stir when it was discovered in 1977. Dated 4/1/67, and marked "DESTROY WHEN NO LONGER NEEDED", this document is a stunning testimony to how concerned the CIA was over investigations into the Kennedy assassination. Emphasis has been added to facilitate scanning. CIA Document #1035-960, marked "PSYCH" for presumably Psychological Warfare Operations, in the division "CS", the Clandestine Services, sometimes known as the "dirty tricks" department.
RE: Concerning Criticism of the Warren Report
1. Our Concern. From the day of President Kennedy's assassination on, there has been speculation about the responsibility for his murder. Although this was stemmed for a time by the Warren Commission report, (which appeared at the end of September 1964), various writers have now had time to scan the Commission's published report and documents for new pretexts for questioning, and there has been a new wave of books and articles criticizing the Commission's findings. In most cases the critics have speculated as to the existence of some kind of conspiracy, and often they have implied that the Commission itself was involved. Presumably as a result of the increasing challenge to the Warren Commission's report, a public opinion poll recently indicated that 46% of the American public did not think that Oswald acted alone, while more than half of those polled thought that the Commission had left some questions unresolved. Doubtless polls abroad would show similar, or possibly more adverse results.
2. This trend of opinion is a matter of concern to the U.S. government, including our organization. The members of the Warren Commission were naturally chosen for their integrity, experience and prominence. They represented both major parties, and they and their staff were deliberately drawn from all sections of the country. Just because of the standing of the Commissioners, efforts to impugn their rectitude and wisdom tend to cast doubt on the whole leadership of American society. Moreover, there seems to be an increasing tendency to hint that President Johnson himself, as the one person who might be said to have benefited, was in some way responsible for the assassination. Innuendo of such seriousness affects not only the individual concerned, but also the whole reputation of the American government. Our organization itself is directly involved: among other facts, we contributed information to the investigation. Conspiracy theories have frequently thrown suspicion on our organization, for example by falsely alleging that Lee Harvey Oswald worked for us. The aim of this dispatch is to provide material countering and discrediting the claims of the conspiracy theorists, so as to inhibit the circulation of such claims in other countries. Background information is supplied in a classified section and in a number of unclassified attachments.
3. Action. We do not recommend that discussion of the assassination question be initiated where it is not already taking place. Where discussion is active [business] addresses are requested:
a. To discuss the publicity problem with [?] and friendly elite contacts (especially politicians and editors), pointing out that the Warren Commission made as thorough an investigation as humanly possible, that the charges of the critics are without serious foundation, and that further speculative discussion only plays into the hands of the opposition. Point out also that parts of the conspiracy talk appear to be deliberately generated by Communist propagandists. Urge them to use their influence to discourage unfounded and irresponsible speculation.
b. To employ propaganda assets to [negate] and refute the attacks of the critics. Book reviews and feature articles are particularly appropriate for this purpose. The unclassified attachments to this guidance should provide useful background material for passing to assets. Our ploy should point out, as applicable, that the critics are (I) wedded to theories adopted before the evidence was in, (II) politically interested, (III) financially interested, (IV) hasty and inaccurate in their research, or (V) infatuated with their own theories. In the course of discussions of the whole phenomenon of criticism, a useful strategy may be to single out Epstein's theory for attack, using the attached Fletcher [?] article and Spectator piece for background. (Although Mark Lane's book is much less convincing that Epstein's and comes off badly where confronted by knowledgeable critics, it is also much more difficult to answer as a whole, as one becomes lost in a morass of unrelated details.)
4. In private to media discussions not directed at any particular writer, or in attacking publications which may be yet forthcoming, the following arguments should be useful:
a. No significant new evidence has emerged which the Commission did not consider. The assassination is sometimes compared (e.g., by Joachim Joesten and Bertrand Russell) with the Dreyfus case; however, unlike that case, the attack on the Warren Commission have produced no new evidence, no new culprits have been convincingly identified, and there is no agreement among the critics. (A better parallel, though an imperfect one, might be with the Reichstag fire of 1933, which some competent historians (Fritz Tobias, AJ.P. Taylor, D.C. Watt) now believe was set by Vander Lubbe on his own initiative, without acting for either Nazis or Communists; the Nazis tried to pin the blame on the Communists, but the latter have been more successful in convincing the world that the Nazis were to blame.)
b. Critics usually overvalue particular items and ignore others. They tend to place more emphasis on the recollections of individual witnesses (which are less reliable and more divergent--and hence offer more hand-holds for criticism) and less on ballistics, autopsy, and photographic evidence. A close examination of the Commission's records will usually show that the conflicting eyewitness accounts are quoted out of context, or were discarded by the Commission for good and sufficient reason.
c. Conspiracy on the large scale often suggested would be impossible to conceal in the United States, esp. since informants could expect to receive large royalties, etc. Note that Robert Kennedy, Attorney General at the time and John F. Kennedy's brother, would be the last man to overlook or conceal any conspiracy. And as one reviewer pointed out, Congressman Gerald R. Ford would hardly have held his tongue for the sake of the Democratic administration, and Senator Russell would have had every political interest in exposing any misdeeds on the part of Chief Justice Warren. A conspirator moreover would hardly choose a location for a shooting where so much depended on conditions beyond his control: the route, the speed of the cars, the moving target, the risk that the assassin would be discovered. A group of wealthy conspirators could have arranged much more secure conditions.
d. Critics have often been enticed by a form of intellectual pride: they light on some theory and fall in love with it; they also scoff at the Commission because it did not always answer every question with a flat decision one way or the other. Actually, the make-up of the Commission and its staff was an excellent safeguard against over-commitment to any one theory, or against the illicit transformation of probabilities into certainties.
e. Oswald would not have been any sensible person's choice for a co-conspirator. He was a "loner," mixed up, of questionable reliability and an unknown quantity to any professional intelligence service. [Archivist's note: This claim is demonstrably untrue with the latest file releases. The CIA had an operational interest in Oswald less than a month before the assassination. Source: Oswald and the CIA, John Newman and newly released files from the National Archives.]
f. As to charges that the Commission's report was a rush job, it emerged three months after the deadline originally set. But to the degree that the Commission tried to speed up its reporting, this was largely due to the pressure of irresponsible speculation already appearing, in some cases coming from the same critics who, refusing to admit their errors, are now putting out new criticisms.
g. Such vague accusations as that "more than ten people have died mysteriously" can always be explained in some natural way e.g.: the individuals concerned have for the most part died of natural causes; the Commission staff questioned 418 witnesses (the FBI interviewed far more people, conduction 25,000 interviews and re interviews), and in such a large group, a certain number of deaths are to be expected. (When Penn Jones, one of the originators of the "ten mysterious deaths" line, appeared on television, it emerged that two of the deaths on his list were from heart attacks, one from cancer, one was from a head-on collision on a bridge, and one occurred when a driver drifted into a bridge abutment.)
5. Where possible, counter speculation by encouraging reference to the Commission's Report itself. Open-minded foreign readers should still be impressed by the care, thoroughness, objectivity and speed with which the Commission worked. Reviewers of other books might be encouraged to add to their account the idea that, checking back with the report itself, they found it far superior to the work of its critics.

There was also an "Attachment 1: Background Survey of Books Concerning the Assassination of President Kennedy." It outlined strategies for arguing against the claims of critics. "Some writers appear to have been predisposed to criticism by anti-American, far-left or Communist sympathies. The British 'Who Killed Kennedy Committee' includes some of the most persistent and vocal English critics of the United States, eg., Michael Foot, Kingsley Martin, Kenneth Tynan, and Bertrand Russell. Joachim Joesten has been publicly revealed as a onetime member of the German Communist Party (KDP)...Joesten's American publisher, Carl Marzani, was once sentenced to jail by a federal jury for concealing his Communist Party (CPUSA) membership in order to hold a government job....Mark Lane was elected Vice Chairman of the New York Council to Abolish the House Un-American Activities Committee on 28 May 1963; he also attended the 8th Congress of the International Association of Democratic Lawyers (an international Communist front organization) in Budapest from 31 March to 5 April 1964, where he expounded his (pre-Report) views on the Kennedy assassination...Some newspapermen (eg., Sylvan Fox...Leo Sauvage...) have published accounts cashing in on their journalistic expertise...some people have apparently published accounts simply because they were burning to give the world their theory, eg., Harold Weisberg, in his Whitewash II, Penn Jones,....and George C. Thompson...The impact of these books will probably be relatively slight, since their writers will appear to readers to be hysterical or paranoid...Epstein adopts a scholarly tone...Here it should be pointed out that Epstein's competence in research has been greatly exaggerated....the FBI flew the photo [the CIA photo of "Oswald"] directly from Mexico City to Dallas immediately after Oswald's arrest, before Oswald's picture had been published, on the chance it might be Oswald. The reason the photo was cropped was that the background revealed the place where it was taken....The likelihood of further criticism is enhanced by the circumstance that Communist propagandists seem recently to have stepped up their own campaign to discredit the Warren Commission...there seems reason to suspect that Joesten's book and its exploitation are part of a planned Soviet propaganda operation..." "Attachment 2: The Theories of Mr. Epstein" outlined arguments to be used to counter Epstein's criticisms. (Killing of a President; Destiny Betrayed 313-20)

  • 4/1/1967 New York Daily News quoted former Ruby lawyer Joe Tonahill: "Garrison's case is basically grounded in political expediency. He is dealing with Warren Commission rejects, witnesses that the government knows all about. I am calling this a phony investigation."
  • 4/2/1967 Armed communist revolt broke out in Cambodia's Battambang province.
  • 4/3/1967 President Johnson tells staff aide Marvin Watson he is convinced there was a conspiracy to assassinate JFK, including CIA involvement.
  • 4/3/1967 Sergio Arcacha Smith of the Cuban Revolutionary Council (CRC) - and manager of an air conditioner firm in Dallas - is arrested at home, in front of his family, by officers sent from Jim Garrison's office. Arcacha refuses to speak with them. They continue to insist that Arcacha speak with them alone, without his attorney present. After posting $1,500 bail, Arcacha is released. This touches off a five-month battle in which Garrison seeks to extradite Arcacha from Texas to Louisiana. However, Texas Governor John Connally befriends Arcacha and refuses to sign extradition papers within the required 90 days.
  • 4/3/1967 Jim Garrison calls a press conference to announce that he has identified the men involved in the conspiracy to assassinate JFK. Garrison says that most of the participants "are in Texas and Dallas particularly where they are protected - one, by the Dallas law enforcement establishment and two, by the federal government."
  • 4/3/1967 Larry O'Brien announced his idea to turn the Post Office into a privately-run corporation.
  • 4/4/1967 William Manchester is


Deep Politics Timeline - Tracy Riddle - 01-06-2014

  • 5/1967 Dumfries and Galloway, Scotland, United Kingdom - Partial meltdown - Graphite debris partially blocked a fuel channel causing a fuel element to melt and catch fire at the Chapelcross nuclear power station. Contamination was confined to the reactor core. The core was repaired and restarted in 1969, operating until the plant's shutdown in 2004.
  • 5/1967 Joachim Joesten: "The way Jackie snubbed the President at the launching of the carrier "John F. Kennedy" at Newport News in May 1967 speaks volumes and if the American Press failed to assess this performance correctly, foreign reporters keenly sensed its implications."
  • 5/1967 The US military tests the "effectiveness of artillery shells using sarin in the jungle." The tests, code-named "Red Oak, Phase 1," are conducted in the Upper Waiakae Forest Reserve on Hawaii and near Fort Sherman in the Panama Canal Zone. According to reports released in late October 2002, there was "no indication of harm to troops or civilians." [Reuters, 11/1/02]
  • 5/1967 Professor Monroe Freedman wrote in the Georgetown Law Journal: "From the day that James Hoffa told Robert Kennedy that he was nothing but a rich man's kid who never had to earn a nickel in his life, Hoffa was a marked man...satisfying this grudge became the public policy of the United States, and Hoffa, along with Roy Cohn and perhaps other enemies from Kennedy's past, was singled out for special attention..."
  • 5/1967 Ralph Lazarus, president of the Federated Department stores and a member of the Business Council, held a press conference to criticize LBJ's budget for underestimating the cost of the war. Abe Fortas called Lazarus and told him to keep quiet, though Lazarus' numbers turned out to be right. (Best and the Brightest 739)
  • 5/1967 William Wood joins the Jim Garrison investigation.
  • 5/1/1967 New Orleans Asst D.A.s James Alcock, Andrew Sciambra and Richard Burnes filed exceptions to a petition by Shaw's lawyers requesting the appearance of James Phelan as a material witness.
  • 5/2/1967 USS Liberty (AGTR-5), a high-tech spy ship, departs Norfolk, VA for a scheduled four-month "technical research operations" deployment to the west African region. [Naval Historical Center file - USS Liberty 1967 Command History Report.]
  • 5/2/1967 Melvin Belli was quoted as saying that he thought the Garrison probe "is unfair. I believe the Warren Commission was right." But then he stated that he thought there would be convictions "on peripheral charges."
  • 5/2/1967 McNamara advised LBJ to reject the JCS' desire to expand the bombing. He also advocated pulling back on the bombing, limiting it to the area below the twentieth parallel. Vance, Katzenbach, Richard Helms, Rostow, Bill Bundy and the CIA agreed with McNamara. (In Retrospect 265)
  • 5/3/1967 Black students seize the finance building at Northwestern University and demand that African American oriented curriculum and campus reforms be implemented.
  • 5/3/1967 Fragmentation bomb explodes inside the car of Cuban ambassador in Mexico.
  • 5/5/1967 "UFOs sighted in Indonesia are identical with those sighted in other countries. Sometimes they pose a problem for our air defense and once we were obliged to open fire on them." Air Marshall Roesmin Nurjadin, Commander-in-Chief of the Indonesian Air Force, future Minister of Communications, in a letter to Yusuke J. Matsumura dated May 5, 1967.
  • 5/6/1967 James Phelan publishes an article in the Saturday Evening Post entitled: "Rush to Judgment in New Orleans." The article is a one-sided attack on almost every aspect of Jim Garrison's probe. He questioned whether Perry Russo's testimony may have been influenced by his being hypnotized. Phelan did not mention that he had talked with Russo himself, and Russo told him that he and Sciambra had talked of the conspiracy plot during their initial interview.
  • 5/6/1967 Four hundred students seize the administration building at Cheyney State College.
  • 5/71967 The New York Times reported Syria had shelled the Israeli village of Ein Gev.
  • 5/7/1967 NY Times reported that Soviet youth openly defied police recently when they danced the Twist in Red Square during May Day celebrations.
  • 5/81/967 Muhammad Ali is indicted for refusing induction in the U.S. Army.
  • 5/9/1967 Garrison accused the CIA of concealing evidence (NY Times 5/10)
  • 5/10/1967 After an anti-war vigil that lasted longer than 29 hours, 18 young men and women are carried by government policemen from the inside of the Pentagon building. The protestors were singing "We Shall Overcome" as they were arrested for violating regulations that ban "unwarranted loitering" and "unwarranted sleeping or assembly" in a government building.
  • 5/10/1967 Max Holland: In early May Richard Helms requested a private meeting with Johnson in order to present the results of an investigation conducted by the CIA's inspector general. The meeting, on May 10, began at 5:55 P.M. and lasted close to an hour. The gist of what Helms disclosed would become known only eight years later, when he testified before a Senate committee. In that meeting, long before the fact became public knowledge, the President learned that CIA plots to assassinate Fidel Castro dated back to August of 1960to the Eisenhower Administration, when plans for what became the Bay of Pigs invasion were reaching their final stage. In fact, Castro was supposed to be dead before the exiles landed. At the time, the idea of using members of the Cosa Nostra, which had its own interests in Cuba to protect, must have seemed clever. The more interesting part, at least to Johnson, was what Helms told him next. After the Bay of Pigs debacle, rather than draw back, the Kennedy Administration redoubled its efforts. The injunction to the CIA was simple: get rid of Castro and his regime by any means possible, short of another invasion. The alliance with the Cosa Nostra persisted until 1962, and came to an end only because the mob bosses were never able to deliver. Efforts to remove Castro continued well into 1963. One of them was coming to a head at the time Kennedy was assassinated. It is not known whether Johnson asked Helms under whose direction the CIA had acted. If he did, Helms presumably said that Robert Kennedy "personally managed the operation on the assassination of Castro." (This quotation is taken from what Helms told Secretary of State Henry Kissinger in 1975, after allegations of CIA wrongdoing began to surface in the press.) Then again, Johnson may not have bothered to ask. Edward Morgan had already told Drew Pearson about the former Attorney General's central role; in addition, it was common knowledge within the Administration that after the Bay of Pigs, President Kennedy had made his brother the driving force behind the effort to overthrow Castro. Knowing the President's conspiratorial turn of mind, Helms probably hastened to reassure Johnson that the CIA, the FBI, and the Warren Commission had all looked long and hard for a connection between Oswald and Cuba but had come up empty-handed. Persuading Johnson of that now, however, was a futile exercise (as later testimony by Helms suggests). The President was utterly convinced that something other than Oswald was behind Kennedy's assassination, and that that something involved Cuba. One tantalizing but unanswerable question is what effect, if any, Johnson's knowledge had on Robert Kennedy's Hamlet-like indecisiveness in 1967 and early 1968 over whether to challenge Johnson for the Democratic nomination. Kennedy probably considered the March 3 column a shot across his bow, because Pearson was known to be on very friendly terms with the President. For all Kennedy knew, Johnson was the source of the story, and the column was a harbinger of things to come should Kennedy decide to challenge him. (Kennedy finally did enter the race, in March of 1968.) Kennedy's response to the column, insofar as it is known, was to hurriedly search his files for any pertinent information. He also arranged to have lunch on March 4 with Richard Helms, who probably told him that the President hadn't yet asked anything about it. Still, the threat of disclosure loomedand perhaps it motivated Kennedy's seemingly premature announcement that he fully intended to back Johnson's presumed bid for re-election. On March 2, in a dramatic address on the Senate floor, Kennedy had made his break with the Administration's policy on Vietnam official. Anderson's column appeared the next day. Two weeks later Kennedy pledged to support Johnson in 1968, calling him "an outstanding President."
  • 5/11/1967 Fifteen anti-war demonstrators who were camping outside the office of the Joint Chiefs of Staff in the Pentagon are arrested.
  • 5/11/1967 Nine caravans of poor people arrived in Washington for first phase of Poor People's Campaign. Caravans started from different sections of country on May 2 and picked up demonstrators along the way. In Washington, demonstrators erected camp called Resurrection City on sixteen-acre site near Lincoln Monument.
  • 5/11/1967 UN Secretary General U Thant speaks of the grave situation in the Middle East as a result of the cross-border raids coming from Syria. Israeli Prime Minister Eshkol and other Israeli officials warn of possible drastic actions if the raids don't cease. [Yost, "The Arab-Israeli War: How It Began," Foreign Affairs, January 1968.] Israeli military intelligence briefed foreign military attache's in Tel Aviv. [Eban, My Country, p.199.]
  • 5/12/1967 Twenty-three young protestors are arrested after they attempt to force their way into the War Room inside the Pentagon.
  • 5/12/1967 The Councilor, a right-wing Shreveport, Louisiana publication, published two photos of Clay Shaw and Dave Ferrie at a party together (their purpose in aiding Garrison was to "make America safe from political assassination and that Hale Boggs and other left-wing imposters on the Warren Commission can be exposed as the liars they are.") Researcher Edgar Tatro first saw the photos in the parking lot outside the Criminal Courts Building during a recess in the Shaw trial. "We all assumed Garrison has seen them too," he remarked, but Garrison hadn't. (JFK: Book of the Film p81)
  • 5/12/1967 H. Rap Brown replaces Stokely Carmichael as chairman of the Student Non-Violent Coordinating Committee.
  • 5/13/1967 The Soviet ambassador told Nasser that the Israelis were planning to attack Syria on May 17, and had concentrated brigades on the Syrian frontier for this purpose. The Soviets wanted to lure Egypt into siding with Syria against Israel. Nasser, who badly wanted to restore his prestige in the Arab world, put his armed forces on a maximum alert MAY 15. Combat troops began to pour into the Sinai, toward the Israeli border. (O'Brien) The Soviets pass inaccurate information, for reasons still not clear, to the Egyptians regarding a massing of some 11 to 13 Israeli brigades for an invasion of Syria. [Parker, The Politics of Miscalculation, pp. 3-35.]
  • 5/13/1967 Lady Bird: "Many months ago I set March 1968 in my own mind as the time when Lyndon can make a statement that he will not be a candidate for reelection." (White House Diary)
  • 5/13/1967 70,000 demonstrators supporting the troops in Vietnam marched in NYC.
  • 5/14/1967 Egyptian armed forces put on full alert. Former Secretary of State Dean Rusk states the forces were mobilized and moved into the Sinai on the 14th. [Rusk, As I Saw It, p. 384; Parker, The Politics of Miscalculation, p. 43.] Nasser sent 80,000 troops to the Sinai desert; he had been told by the Soviets that the Israelis had massed 11 to 13 brigades on the border with Syria and were planning to invade. The Israelis denied this, and Nasser too had his doubts, but he decided to build-up anyway. The Israeli government debated what to do; Yitzhak Rabin was advised by the general staff to attack Egypt, but old David Ben-Gurion urged him not to.
  • 5/15/1967 Egyptian armed forces begin moving en mass into the Sinai. 30,000 troops, 200 tanks. [Neff, Warriors for Jerusalem, p. 63.] Israel celebrates Independence Day (Yom Ha'atzmaut). [Eban, My Country, p. 195.]
  • 5/15/1967 CIA Record 104-10013-10143 Record Series: JFK Agency File Number: 201-289248 News Clipping on Louisiana v. Clay Shaw (Conspiracy Case): Source: "World News" (this is the only title I can find on my xerox of the clipping) SOLON CALLS GARRISON'S EVIDENCE 'IMPORTANT' WASHINGTON, May 14. (UPI). -- Sen. Russel B. Long, D-La., said today that New Orleans District Attorney Jim Garrison had turned up "some very important evidence" which might prove President Kennedy was murdered by conspirators. Long, acknowledging he had encouraged Garrison's controversial investigation into the Kennedy assassination, said if Garrison can verify that Jack Ruby's telephone number was written down in code in the papers of Lee Harvey Oswald and Clay Shaw, it would "prove that there definitely was a conspiracy." Garrison contends that Oswald, who was killed by Ruby after he shot Kennedy [Ed. Note: I wonder how UPI knew that. J.B.], and Shaw a New Orleans businessman, were part of an assassination conspiracy. Long said he had "started up" Garrison's interest in the assassination. "I don't think he's violated anybody's civil rights," Long told a television interviewer (Face the Nation--CBS). "He's done what a district attorney should do if he has reason to think that a very heinous crime has been committed in his jurisdiction."
  • 5/15/1967 Supreme Court expanded protection of juvenile suspects' civil rights.
  • 5/15/1967 Newsweek publishes "JFK Conspiracy" by Hugh Aynesworth, the most violent attack on Jim Garrison's investigation thus far. Garrison claimed that Havana had sent an assassin to kill him, and began talking in code over the phone. (Aynesworth, Newsweek; Rogers, Look magazine) Aynesworth commented, "Jim Garrison is right. There has been a conspiracy in New Orleans - but it is a plot of Garrison's own making. It is a scheme to concoct a fantastic 'solution' to the death of John F. Kennedy and to make it stick..." Aynesworth accused Garrison of offering money and a job with an airline to Alan Beauboeuf to testify that he had overheard the planning of the assassination. "I also know that when the D.A.'s office learned this entire bribery attempt had been tape-recorded, two of Garrison's men returned to the 'witness', and he says, threatened him with physical harm. Another man who spent many hours with the District Attorney in a vain attempt to dissuade him from his assassination-conspiracy theory had twice been threatened - once by the D.A.'s own 'witnesses,' the second time by Garrison himself." Aynesworth claimed that Russo had been hypnotized "just hours before he testified."
  • 5/16/1967 Egypt declared a state of emergency, and accused Israel of threatening Syria. Nasser pledged to come to Syria's aid. (Dupuy) General Rikhye, UNEF commanding general at Gaza, receives a note from the Egyptian Chief of Staff, requesting immediate withdrawal of the UNEF from Sinai. [Eban, Ibid., p. 201.]
  • 5/17/1967 The New York Times reported that the Palestine Liberation Organization, headed by Arafat, pledged to "keep sending commandos" into Israel. Egypt and Syria announced "combat readiness," and Jordan announced mobilization. (Dupuy) Egyptian forces reach the UNEF posts at El Sabha and El Kuntilla, located near the Sinai/Israeli armistice line. [UN Office of Public Information, Yearbook of the United Nations 1967, p. 163.] Egyptian UN representative is informed by UNSG U Thant, in writing, that there is no indications of any recent buildup of Israeli armed forces. [Parker, The Six-Day War: A Retrospective, p. xviii.]
  • 5/18/1967 Jim Garrison labeled Ruby and Oswald as CIA employees (Times-Picayune).
  • 5/18/1967 Egypt demanded removal of UN peace-keeping forces from border with Israel. Egypt notified U Thant that it wanted the UN peacekeeping force removed from the Sinai and Gaza. U Thant quickly complied. Syria and Egypt placed troops on maximum alert; Iraq and Kuwait announced mobilization. (Dupuy) "Egypt requests complete withdrawal of the UNEF. [Parker, The Six-Day War: A Retrospective, p. xviii.] Iraq announced mobilization. (Harper Enc.)
  • 5/18/1967 British aircraft carrier HMS Hermes(R-12) departs Aden for Singapore. [Howe, Multicrises, p.149.]
  • 5/19/1967 NYT reported Egypt had deployed its forces along the Israeli border.
  • 5/19/1967 US planes bomb power plant in Hanoi.
  • 5/19/1967 Robert S. McNamara proposes a politico-military strategy to LBJ that raises the possibility of compromise in Vietnam: restricting the bombing to interdiction of the infiltration "funnel" below the twentieth parallel; limiting additional deployments to 30,000, after which a firm ceiling would be imposed; and adopting a more flexible bargaining position while actively seeking a political settlement. McNamara tells LBJ: "the war in Vietnam is acquiring a momentum of its own that must be stopped." McNamara wrote a memo to LBJ saying that he might benefit politically by replacing himself and Dean Rusk. He noted that Hanoi would probably wait until the 1968 elections to see if the US public still supported the war. He noted that China was now mostly preoccupied with its own internal problems. Any move to escalate the war would only further inflame public and congressional opinion on both sides; hawks would push to keep expand the fighting (including nuclear and bio-chemical weapons at some point), while doves would see it as a sign that the war would never end. "There may be a limit beyond which many Americans and much of the world will not permit the United States to go. The picture of the world's greatest superpower killing or seriously injuring 1000 noncombatants a week, while trying to pound a tiny backward nation into submission on an issue whose merits are hotly disputed, is not a pretty one...the war in Vietnam is acquiring a momentum of its own that must be stopped." He worried that the doves "will get out of hand massive refusals to serve, or to fight, or to cooperate, or worse?" This memo set off a furious debate within the government, and a sharp reaction from the JCS.
  • 5/19/1967 A UPI story in The New York Times stated: "An analysis by one of the nation's top photographic laboratories has demolished a widely circulated theory that a second gunman was involved in the assassination of President Kennedy. The Itek Corporation disclosed today that a months-long study of an amateur movie [Nix film] of the shooting had disproved the existence of a rifleman pointing a weapon from the grassy knoll at the Kennedy car in Dallas on Nov. 22, 1963. Itek made the study as a public service."
  • 5/19/1967 The Los Angeles Times reported Egypt stood accused of using poison gas in Yemen.
  • 5/19/1967 UNEF ordered withdrawn. Israel advised. Israel orders large-scale mobilization. [Neff, Warriors for Jerusalem, pp. 72-73.] UN Emergency Force (UNEF) withdrew from the Sinai. (Harper Enc of Military History) "(May 18th in Washington) U Thant cables Cairo. UNEF will be withdrawn. [Neff, Warriors for Jerusalem, p.71., Rusk, As I Saw It, p.384.] Rusk states the withdrawal was on May 18, 1967 which is correct from his perspective in Washington. It was already May 19 in the Sinai when U Thant ordered the withdrawal."
  • 5/20/1967 Israel completed partial mobilization. (Dupuy) The NYT reported Egypt forced U.N. peacekeeping troops to leave the Sinai Desert in anticipation of its attack on Israel.
  • 5/20/1967 Fourteen out of the twenty Vietnam War demonstrators arrested at the Pentagon are found guilty of loitering and sentenced to six months probation in addition to a suspended sentence of thirty days in jail.
  • 5/20/1967 Syrian Defense Minister, Hafez Assad speaks of "a disciplinary blow to Israel." [Neff, Ibid., p. 88.] US Joint Chiefs of Staff (JCS) issues orders restricting the movements of the US Sixth Fleet, commanded by Vice Admiral Martin, in the Mediterranean. [LBJ Library: NSC "Middle East Chronology Guide, May 12-June 20", Appendix H, DTG 201910Z May 1967, JCS to USCINCEUR.]
  • 5/20/1967 The JCS told McNamara in a memo that they felt invasions of Laos, Cambodia and North Vietnam might be necessary, plus deployment of troops in Thailand, and possibly even the use of nuclear weapons in southern China.
  • 5/20/1967 William "Bill" Waters dies today of what police describe as a "drug overdose" (Demerol). No autopsy is performed. His mother says that LHO and Hank Killam came to her house prior to the assassination and her son attempted to talk Oswald and Killam out of being involved. Waters called FBI agents following the assassination. The FBI told him he knew too much and to keep his mouth shut. He was subsequently arrested and kept in Memphis in a county jail for eight months on a misdemeanor charge.
  • 5/20/1967 Researcher Shirley Martin of Oklahoma letter to Jim Garrison.
Dear Mr. Garrison:
I am so sorry that Newsweek chose Hugh Aynesworth to use in its rebuttal of you. In the summer of '64, I had a long talk with Mr. Aynesworth, introducing myself to him as a friend of a relative to General Clyde Watts, ex-Major General Edwin A. Walker's close friend and attorney (Oxford). Mr. Aynesworth mistakenly assumed that I was a political conservative and immediately deluged me with disgusting anti-Kennedy stories. ("Kennedy needed a trip to Dallas like a hole in the head," etc.) At the same time Mr. Aynesworth heaped what seemed to me to be inordinate praise on the city of Dallas, the Dallas police (Lt. George Butler, Captain Fritz, Chief Curry, etc.), and the Dallas Morning News (for which newspaper Aynesworth was working at the time). He confided, too, that Tom Buchanan (Paris)
was a "fairy" and detailed for me a number of extremely slanderous alleged incidents in the life of Mark Lane. In addition, Mr. Aynesworth definitively labeiled Mr. Lane a "communist."
Aynesworth was extremely bitter that Merriman Smith had won the Pulitzer for his coverage of the assassination. Aynesworth sarcastically remarked that Smith "did nothing and saw less" on the day in question, whereas he, Aynisworth was "...the only reporter in America to make all four big scenes."
In addition, Aynesworth boasted that a Commission attorney had already confided to him (in July) what the Commission verdict was to be (in September). Oswald would be named, but according to Aynesworth it was in reality "...a communist plot. Warren will do a cover-up for Moscow."
Aynesworth insisted that Marina had had an affair with him after the assassination, and that during this period she had revealed to him that she and Ruth Paine had shared a Lesbian relationship prior to November 22, 1963. Aynesworth also declared that he had been on 10th Street "looking down on he Tippit murder scene at 1:05pm, not later than 1:10..." on November 22nd. Needless to say, the "only reporter in America"to be in on all four "big scenes" was NOT called to testify before the Warren Commission, which did, however, call Thayer Waldo, Fort Worth reporter, because he had been in the police basement when Ruby shot Oswald. Finally, I have the statement by an employee of the Dallas Morning News that Aynesworth was deliberately and ILLEGALLY given the allegedly stolen Oswald diary story by a Commission attorney who was in Dallas on business at that time. Earl Warren later put the FBI on the trail of this illegal "leak", but as was to be expected no discoveries were made. This, then, is the man chosen by Newsweek to rebut you. What a pity Newsweek's taste is so concentrated in its tail."
  • 5/21/1967 An anonymous NYT review of Newsweek White House correspondent Charles Roberts' The Truth About the Assassination', which supports the Warren Commission: "Publish 10,400,000 words of research and what do you get? In the case of the Warren Commission and the book business, you get a fabulously successful spin-off called the assassination industry, whose products would never stand the scrutiny of Consumers Union. Consumers buy it as they buy most trash: the packaging promises satisfaction but the innards are mostly distortions, unsupported theories and gaping omissions" that are "neatly debunked by Charles Roberts...By selecting the incredible and the contradictory, scavengers like Mark Lane sowed confusion. By writing an honest guide for the perplexed, Roberts performs a public service." In fact, Roberts' book was extremely superficial, its text consuming a mere 118 pages. It glossed over the crucial evidence, substituting personal invective against the critics for answers to their criticisms.
  • 5/21/1967 In an interview on WWL-TV, New Orleans, Garrison claimed that the CIA knew the names of the other assassins, but "we can't find out [their names] with the CIA keeping its vaults locked...If the director of the CIA and the top officials of the CIA were in the jurisdiction of Louisiana, I would charge them without hesitation." That day he also stated that the CIA knew "the name of every man involved and the name of the individuals who pulled the triggers" (NY Times 5/23)
  • 5/21/1967 Yitzhak Rabin meets with former PM David Ben-Gurion, who fears that Israel is being forced into war.
  • 5/21/1967 The New York Times reported Egyptian soldiers were massing in the Sinai.
  • 5/21/1967 Egypt occupies Sharem El Sheik and announces total mobilization. Iraq offers to send troops. [Neff, Warriors for Jerusalem, p. 88.] Israeli Chief of Staff General Rabin informs the cabinet that the Egyptian troop buildup is now at 70,000. Israeli internal crisis relating to a lack of confidence in the Eshkol government surfaces. [Brecher, Decisions in Crisis, p. 113-114.]
  • 5/22/1967 Nasser announced the closing of the Gulf of Aqaba to Israeli shipping: "They, the Jews, threaten war; we tell them: welcome. We are ready for war." (O'Brien)
  • 5/22/1967 Richard Helms returns his copy of the report on the anti-Castro plots to the Inspector General after showing it to LBJ.
  • 5/22/1967 Levi Eshkol disclaimed any aggressive intentions on Israel's part and called for withdrawal of both countries' armies to their previous positions. (O'Brien) Nasser announced the blockade of the Strait of Tiran, effectively closing the Israeli port of Eilat. (Dupuy) The New York Times reported that the PLO would be stepping up its attacks in Israel, that Cairo was calling up 10,000 reserves and that Iraq would be sending aid to battle Israel.
  • 5/22/1967 USS Liberty arrived Abidjan, Ivory Coast for a planned four-day port call. [Naval Historical Center: USS Liberty 1967 Command History Report.] Egypt declared the Gulf of Aqaba closed to Israeli shipping. [Churchill and Churchill, The Six Day War, p. 38] Nasser accepts an offer of Iraqi forces. Prime Minister Eshkol proposes a withdrawal of both Israeli and Egyptian forces from the border area. [O'Ballance, The Third Arab-Israeli War, p.27.]
  • 5/23/1967 While Westmoreland reported that the enemy's troop strength had peaked, the CIA concluded that the Communists were continuing to expand their forces.
  • 5/23/1967 Egypt began blockade of Strait of Tiran and Gulf of Aqaba. As war pressure built up, Chief of Israeli Defense Forces Yitzhak Rabin suffered a nervous breakdown. At a governmental meeting, it was decided that efforts would be made to get America's support before going to war. Abba Eban visited France (no longer sympathetic to Israel), Britain (sympathetic but non-commital) and the US (supportive).
  • 5/23-6/4/1967 The period of waiting ("Hamtana") as the mood of the Israeli people came close to despair; fears of a new Holocaust were widespread. Eshkol's government wanted to wait until the US signaled that it would support Israel's attack so that they did not end up isolated as had happened after the Suez Crisis. (O'Brien)
  • 5/23/1967 Saudi Arabian forces prepare to participate in war against Israel. (Dupuy)
  • 5/23/1967 "National Security Agency (NSA) requests of the JCS diversion of the Liberty to a position off Port Said, Egypt due to the mid-east crisis. [NSA: "USS Liberty, Chronology of Events", 23 May-8 June 1967: DTG 231729Z May 1967, DIRNSA to JCS/JRC.] PM Eshkol states before the Israeli Knesset (parliament) that interference with Israeli shipping would be regarded as an act of war. President Johnson declares the Egyptian blockade of an international waterway as an illegal act. US and British nationals are advised to evacuate. [Churchill and Churchill, The Six Day War, p. 38; O'Ballance, The Third Arab-Israeli War, p. 28.]"
  • 5/24/1967 Jim Garrison quoted by the Times-Picayune as saying that the CIA knew the killers' present whereabouts.
  • 5/24/1967 Jordanian mobilization completed. (Dupuy)
  • 5/24/1967 Newspapers reported that the U.S. declared Egypt's military blockade of the gulf "illegal."
  • 5/24/1967 The USS Liberty was in the port of Abidjan, Ivory Coast, when she received orders to get under way immediately to Rota, Spain, whence she was to proceed to the vicinity of Port Said, Egypt. The rest of her African cruise was cancelled. USS Liberty departs Abidjan under orders to make "best speed" for the 3,000 nautical mile trip to Rota, Spain. [US Naval Court of Inquiry/Document 109 of Exhibit 48: DTG 241732Z May 1967, USS Liberty to COMSERVRON EIGHT.]
  • 5/24/1967 Israeli Foreign Minister, Abba Eban, leaves for Paris. Meets with President de Gaulle. Goes on to London. Meets with Prime Minister Wilson. [Neff, Warriors for Jerusalem, p. 120-121.]
  • 5/24/1967 UNSG U Thant, UNEF commander General Rikhye and President Nasser meet in Cairo. [Ibid., p. 124.]
  • 5/24/1967 Egyptian Minister of War, Shams Badran, leaves for Moscow. [Parker, The Six-Day War: A Retrospective, p. xviii.]
  • 5/24/1967 UN Security Council convenes in emergency session in New York at the request of Canada and Denmark.
  • 5/24/1967 British aircraft carrier HMS Victorious(R-38), homeward bound, is ordered to standby at Malta.
  • 5/24/1967 Jordan announces that Iraqi and Saudi forces have been given permission to enter the country. [Churchill and Churchill, The Six Day War, pp. 43-44.]
  • 5/25/1967 The New York Times reported that Jordan would admit Saudi and Iraqi forces into its country to do battle with Israel.
  • 5/25/1967 Iraqi troops arrive in Syria. [Eban, My Country, p. 211.] Cairo Radio announces: "The Arab people is firmly resolved to wipe Israel off the map." [From Eban's speech on June 19, 1967 to the UNGA.] "Egyptian Minister of War Badran meets with Soviet leaders in Moscow. [Parker, The Six-Day War: A Retrospective, p. xviii.] JCS orders the Sixth Fleet Marines amphibious forces to continue towards Malta for a scheduled port call. [LBJ Library: NSC "Middle East Chronology Guide May 12-June 20"", Appendix H, DTG 251524Z May 1967.] USNS Private Jose F. Valdez(T-AG-169), a civilian-crewed US Naval Ship configured as a signal intelligence-gathering ship returning to New York, docks for three hours at the US Naval Base, Rota, Spain. She unloads "all available ME tech support" material collected the previous month while she had been in the eastern Mediterranean. [NSA: "USS Liberty, Chronology of Events, 23 May-8 June 1967"": DTG 231729Z May 1967, DIRNSA to JCS/JRC; USNS Private Jose F. Valdez Deck Log, 25 May 1967.] Hermes is ordered to return to Aden. [Howe, Multicrises, p.84.]"
  • 5/25-26/1967 Lyndon Johnson warned Israel not to take pre-emptive action, and said Israel would not be alone "unless it decides to go alone."
  • 5/26/1967 FM Eban meets President Johnson at the White House. [Eban, My Country, p. 210.] France proposes four-power action to end crisis. [Marshall, Swift Sword.]
  • 5/27/1967 Newpapers around the world reported Egypt's fiery threats to destroy Israel.
  • 5/27/1967 Sixth Fleet operating area is further defined in the eastern Mediterranean. No air operations are to take place within 100 miles of the UAR. [JCS Fact Finding Team Report, June 1967: DTG 271052Z May 1967, CINCUSNAVEUR to COMSIXTHFLT.]
  • 5/28/1967 On "Issues and Answers," (ABC-TV) Garrison said, "Of course the Central Intelligence Agency had no role in the planning or intending the assassination of President Kennedy. I think that would be a ridiculous position for anyone to take." Edward J. Epstein: "He has, however, taken precisely that position on several occasions." (Counterplot 116)
  • 5/28/1967 Egypt warned that it might close the Suez Canal. The Israeli cabinet split over a decision to go to war. Eshkol went on the radio and gave a badly-delivered speech. It is said that Israeli soldiers, listen to it, broke their transistors and wept. (O'Brien)
  • 5/28/1967 Sudan mobilized its military. (Harper Enc. of Military History)
  • 5/28/1967 Secretary Rusk advises Israel that the US and Britain were working on a naval escort plan and Holland and Canada have promised to join.
  • 5/28/1967 Israeli cabinet votes in favor of a further short wait. PM Eshkol makes "stumbling" speech to the nation. [Eban, My Country, pp. 212-213.] Radio Damascus announces: "The elimination of Israel is the imperative goal." [Soustelle, Long March of Israel, p. 241.] Syria and Iraqi sign a military assistance pact. [New York Times, May 30, 1967, p. 2.]
  • 5/29/1967 The New York Times reported new Syrian attacks on Israel.
  • 5/29/1967 Nasser, sure the Jews would not fight, confidentally told the National Assembly that he was fighting for the rights of Palestinians. The Arab world responded to Nasser's call; Hussein put his troops under Egyptian command and radio stations began focusing their ire on Israel instead of each other.
  • 5/29/1967 Harris poll showed that 66% of the American public believed there was a conspiracy in the JFK assassination.
  • 5/29/1967 The Washington Post reported that Israel was still reluctant to have a showdown with its enemies. In Israel, pressures for immediate war were mounting; public anger was growing at Eshkol's seeming reluctance to go to war. (O'Brien)
  • 5/29/1967 Algerian units moved to Egypt to take part in the attack on Israel. (Dupuy)
  • 5/29/1967 The New York Times reported the Egyptian buildup of military forces in the Sinai was continuing.
  • 5/29/1967 JCS instructs Commander in Chief, Atlantic (Admiral Moorer) to pass operational control of Liberty to US Commander in Chief, Europe (General Lemnitzer) when she reaches Rota, Spain. [US Naval Court of Inquiry/Document 104 of Exhibit 48: DTG 291602Z May 1967, JCS to CINCLANT and USCINCEUR.] NSA transmits to Liberty's intelligence-gathering detachment interim collection tasking instructions for her transit to the eastern Mediterranean. [NSA: "USS Liberty, Chronology of Events, 23 May-8 June 1967": DTG 292201Z May 1967, DIRNSA to USN-855 (sanitized).]
  • 5/29/1967 President Nasser tells the National Assembly he has a promise of support from the Soviet Union. [Eban, My Country, p. 232; Parker, The Six-Day War: A Retrospective, p. xix.] UN Security Council convenes in emergency session. The session lasts four and a half hours. [UN document S/PV.1343: 1343rd UNSC meeting.]
  • 5/30/1967 Capital Times quoted from a Memorial Day speech by Brig. Gen. Robert L. Hughes, USAR, in Wisconsin: "We are prosecuting an immoral war in support of a government that is a dictatorship by design....morally corrupt leaders who adhere to a warlord philosophy. This is one hell of a war to be fighting. We must disengage from this tragic war. It is the only one in which we have committed troops without first being aggressed against."
  • 5/30/1967 Jordan's King Hussein flew to Cairo and signed a defense pact with Nasser. Hussein knew that his people could not be held back if a war broke out. Egypt sent Gen. Abdul Moneim Riadh to take command of allied Arab forces on the Jordan front. (Dupuy)
  • 5/30/1967 USCINCEUR instructs Commander in Chief, US Naval Forces, Europe (Admiral McCain) to take operational control of Liberty when she reaches Rota, Spain. [US Naval Court of Inquiry/Document 101 of Exhibit 48: DTG 300932Z May 1967, USCINCEUR to CINCUSNAVEUR.] US Defense Department issues repeat instructions that there are to be no public comments on US military activities or the delicate ME crisis without clearance from Washington. [NARA: DTG 302008Z May 1967, SECDEF to USCINCEUR.]
  • 5/30/1967 President Nasser declares, "The armies of Egypt, Jordan, Syria and Lebanon are poised on the borders of Israel." King Hussein of Jordan flies to Cairo. Egypt and Jordan sign a mutual defense pact. Jordanian troops are placed under Egyptian command. [Soustelle, Long March of Israel, p. 241; Brecher, Decisions in Crisis, p. 154.] PM Eshkol assured President Johnson that Israel would wait as much as two weeks for international action to open the Gulf of Aqaba. [Rusk, As I Saw It, p. 386.] Mossad chief, Meir Amir, travels to Washington to seek further clarification of the US position. He returns to Israel on 3 June. [Parker, The Six-Day War: A Retrospective, p. xix.] USSR announces augmentation of her Mediterranean fleet. [Howe, Multicrises, p. 149.] UN Security Council convenes in emergency session. The session lasts two and a half hours. [UN document S/PV.1344: 1344th UNSC meeting.]
  • 5/31/1967 Dean Rusk told a Congressional committee that the US would not be involved in multinational efforts to reopen the Straits of Tiran. Rusk also told a reporter that, "I don't think it is our business to restrain anyone."
  • 5/31/1967 Iraqi troops began moving into Jordan. Israel had earlier announced it would go to war under any of the following conditions: closing of the Strait of Tiran, sending Iraqi troops to Jordan, an Egyptian-Jordanian defense pact; withdrawal of UNEF forces. All those conditions now existed. (Dupuy)
  • 5/31/1967 Abba Eban informed Chief of Staff Rabin that the waiting period had ended, and Israel could now strike. (O'Brien)
  • 5/31/1967 President Nasser announced that his Vice President, Zakarya Mohieddin would visit Washington on June 7, 1967. [Rusk, As I Saw It, p. 386.] Soviets are reported to be sending additional naval units to the Mediterranean. [Washington Post, June 1, 1967; Howe, Multicrises, p. 71.] CINCUSNAVEUR transmits Movement Orders (MOVORD) 7-67 to Liberty. [US Naval Court of Inquiry/Document 111 of Exhibit 48: DTG 311752Z May 1967, CINCUSNAVEUR to USS Liberty.] UN Security Council convenes in emergency session. The session lasts three hours. [UN document S/PV.1345: 1345th UNSC meeting.]
  • 5-6/1967 The Warren Commission and the Legal Process By Richard M. Mosk Case and Comment, MayJune 1967
  • 6/1967 For the fiscal year ending this month, the war bill has been $21 billion. (World Almanac of Vietnam War)
  • 6/1967 This month, Fatah's intelligence chief, Abu Iyad, Arafat, Ali Hassan, Kamal Adwan, and Mahmoud Hamshari meet in Damascus. Following the humiliating defeat of the Six-Day War, Fatah is in disarray and its leadership split. Hamshari proposes that the Palestinians "kill a high-profile American on American soil" in order to make Washington "think twice about backing the Jews." The group does not embrace his plan. Later, David Karr indicates that he wishes to arrange a meeting between Hamshari and Aristotle Onassis. (Nemesis)
  • 6/11967 One set of Sirhan Sirhan's writings, most probably done in June of 1967, contain a well written "Declaration of war against American humanity", in revenge for its inhuman actions against him. He planned to begin the war when he had raised sufficient money and acquired firearms. The writings discuss acting against the president and other senior leaders of the United States and he believed that there were others who supported such thoughts. Specifically, he wished to be recorded by history as the man who triggered the last war. (Kaiser, RFK Must Die)
  • 6/1967 J. Edgar Hoover had a meeting with fellow gambler, close friend, and Texas oil billionaire, H. L. Hunt in Chicago. Hunt was very concerned that the activities of King might unseat Lyndon B. Johnson. This could be an expensive defeat as Johnson doing a good job protecting the oil depletion allowance. According to William Pepper: " Hoover said he thought a final solution was necessary. Only that action would stop King."
  • 6/1/1967 Moshe Dayan took the Minister of Defense post (previously held by PM Eshkol), and Menachem Begin was brought into the government. (O'Brien) A national unity government is formed in Israel. Moshe Dayan is appointed Minister of Defense, with M. Begin and Y. Saphir joining as ministers-without-portfolio. [Brecher, Decisions in Crisis, p. 158; Eban, My Country, p. 213.]
  • 6/1/1967 The US and British propose a maritime nations declaration on freedom of shipping which omits any backing for Israeli-flag ships in the Gulf of Aqaba. [Washington Post, June 2, 1967.] The often-heard plan of an international naval escort fleet to open the Gulf of Aqaba is no more.
  • 6/1/1967 "USS Liberty reaches Rota, Spain at which time she CHOPS from CINCLANT to USCINCEUR then immediately to CINCUSNAVEUR. [US Naval Court of Inquiry/Document 97 of Exhibit 48: DTG 010712Z June 1967, USS Liberty to COMSERVRON EIGHT.] She receives Change One to MOVORD 7-67. [US Naval Court of Inquiry/Document 95 of Exhibit 48: DTG 011305Z June 1967, CINCUSNAVEUR to USS Liberty.] Aircraft carrier USS Intrepid(CVS-11), having been held off the western end of Egypt for several days, passes through the Suez Canal on her way to Vietnam. [Washington Post, June 2, 1967, p. A19; Howe, Multicrises, p. 70-71.]"
  • 6/1/1967 Richard Helms told McNamara that his analysts didn't see any way to militarily stop the infiltration from the North or deter Hanoi from prosecuting the war.
  • 6/1/1967 CIA memo says that then-NBC correspondent Walter Sheridan was "coaching [witness] Gordon Novel to get maximum publicity before picturing him on a TV program intended to destroy Garrison's act." (Oliver Stone, 12/1991, NY Times)
  • 6/2/1967 "Following refueling, some temporary repairs and taking aboard additional personnel, Liberty departs Rota "at best speed" for operations in the eastern Mediterranean; scheduled to arrive on station 080300Z June. [US Naval Court of Inquiry/Document 92 of Exhibit 48: DTG 022108Z June 1967, USS Liberty to CINCUSNAVEUR.] NSA transmits further tasking instructions to Liberty's intelligence-gathering detachment for her up-coming period in the Mediterranean. [NSA: "USS Liberty, Chronology of Events, 23 May-8 June 1967"": DTGs 022333Z and 022335Z June 1967, DIRNSA to USN-855 (sanitized).]" France suspends shipment of arms to the Middle East. [Brecher, Decisions in Crisis, p. 162.]
  • 6/2/1967 US attack against the Russian freighter Turkestan in the North Vietnamese harbor of Cam Pha. According to the Soviet Captain of the vessel: "We were bearing all the markings of the Soviet government, a Soviet flag was flying from the stern mast. The stack was painted with a red stripe and a hammer and sickle... The visibility was excellent. There is no possibility of talking about an accidental attack ...( Cristol, p 158) Secretary of Defense McNamara mentioned this incident in testimony to the Senate Foreign Relations Committee in 1967: Secretary McNamara: ...In the case of the attack on the Liberty, it was the conclusion of the investigatory body headed by an Admiral of the Navy in whom we have great confidence that the attack was not intentional. I read the record of the investigation, and support that conclusion, ....It was not a conscious decision on the part of either the Government of Israel...And an inexcusable error of professional tactics. I would simply point out to you that, at the same time, I was denying that we had struck a Russian ship in Haiphong Harbor [sic] and I proved to be in error. These errors do occur. We had no more intention of attacking a Russian ship than Israel apparently did of attacking an American ship. (Cristol, p 95-96)
  • 6/2/1967 Sirhan Sirhan, sitting in his room, wrote in his diary: "A declaration of war against American Humanity when in the course of human events it has become necessary for me to equalize and seek revenge for all the inhuman treatments committed against me by the American people. The manifestation of this Declaration will be executed by its supporter(s) as soon as he is able to command a sum of money ($2000) and to acquire some firearms the specifications of which have not been established yet. The victims of the party in favor of this declaration will be or are now the President, vice, etc. down the ladder. The time will be chosen by the author at the convience of the accused…The conflict and violence in the world subsequent to the enforcement of the decree, shall not be considered lightly by the author of this memoranda, rather he hopes that the initiatory military steps for WWIII the author expresses his wishes very bluntly that he wants to be recorded by historians as the man who triggered off the last war life is ambivalence life is a struggle life is wicked if life is in anyway otherwise, I have honestly never seen it I always seem to be on the losing end, always the one exploited to the fullest."
  • 6/2/1967 The Liberty left the US Navy Base at Rota, Spain and headed toward Israel. Washington suspected that Israel was preparing for a preemptive strike. UK PM Harold Wilson met with LBJ; the main topic of discussion was the CIA's prediction of a looming war between Israel and Egypt. Everyone in the meeting agreed that Israel would win the war in a very short period of time. (In Retrospect 278)
  • 6/3-4/1967 The Iraelis made a show of moving four landing craft by road to Eilat; they sent then back by night to repeat the movement the next day. The Egyptians assumed the Israelis were planning operations in the Gulf of Aqaba, and responded by moving several vessels from the Mediterranean to the Red Sea during the night of June 4/5. (Dupuy)
  • 6/3/1967 The New York Times reported that Britain declared the Egyptian blockade could lead to war. It also reported that four Syrian commandos were intercepted in Israel.
  • 6/3/1967 Soviet Ambassador in Cairo tells President Nasser that Israel's non-resistance is assured. Iraqi armored division enters Jordan. [Eban, My Country, pp. 215, 232, 239; Brecher, Decisions in Crisis, p. 163.] UN Security Council convenes in emergency session. The session lasts almost four and a half hours. The Israeli representative declares "Israel is determined to make its stand on the Gulf of Aqaba." [UN document S/PV.1346: 1346th UNSC meeting.]
  • 6/4/1967 Iraq joined the Egypt-Jordan-Syria Defense Pact. Moshe Dayan talked peace while planning a massive premptive invasion. Meanwhile, the Israeli cabinet voted to go to war.
  • 6/4-6/1967 in a radio conversation monitored by the Israelis, Jordan's King Hussein agreed with Nasser to accuse the US of collaborating with Israel, but quickly stopped the accusations after Israel released the taped conversation publicly. Most Arab nations, except for Jordan, broke diplomatic relations with the US. (Dupuy)
  • 6/4/1967 Israeli Cabinet votes unanimously to go to war. Iraqi delegation signs mutual defense pact with Egypt in Cairo and with Jordan in Amman. Iraqi troops placed under Egyptian command. Two Egyptian commando battalions flown to Jordan [Eban, My Country, p. 211.]
  • 6/5/1967 7am PM Kosygin called on the 'hot line,' the first time it was used for real since it was installed. During the course of the Six-Day War, Kosygin and LBJ kept in touch on the hot line; at one point, as Syrian forces were reeling from Israeli attacks, Kosygin said, "If you want war, you will get war." (In Retrospect p279-80) 7:30am Six Day War began as Israel launched preemptive air strikes. PM Eshkol, Defense Minister Moshe Dayan and Chief of Staff Yitzhak Rabin decided that war was inevitable. Early in the morning the Israeli planes flew west over the Mediterranean, then south into Egypt. They hit nearly every Egyptian airfield, wiping out nearly their entire air force on the ground. Later in the day airstrikes took out the air forces of Jordan and Syria, and struck Iraqi air units in the Mosul area. (Harper Enc. of Military History) The Liberty informed Washington of the Israeli planes in flight before they reached their targets. The Israeli northern command, under Maj. Gen. David Elazar, contained roughly 2.5 divisions. Elazar was ordered to seize Jenin and Nablus. (Harper Enc of Military History)
  • 6/5/1967 Lady Bird: "This day began with that most dread and frightening sound that can happen in this house - the sudden ringing of the telephone in the middle of the night. It can never be good news." Lyndon answered the phone, then told her, "We have a war on our hands - in the Middle East." (White House Diary)
  • 6/5/1967 The Liberty was steaming off the south coast of Sicily this morning. Sporadic firing by Jordanian troops led the Israelis to attack Jerusalem. Brig. Gen. Uzi Narkiss led the offensive with 3 brigades, and a parachute brigade under Col. Mordechai Gur. Jerusalem's garrison consisted of one brigade commanded by Jordanian Brigadier Ata Ali. (Harper Enc. of Military History) Israeli forces comprised a reinforced mechanized brigade under Col. Yehuda Resheff, a mechanized division under Maj. Gen. Israel Tal, an armored division led by Maj. Gen. Avraham Yoffe, a mechanized division under Maj. Gen. Ariel Sharon; other smaller units were deployed along the frontier down to Eilat. Tal's division started the offensive by driving into the Khan Yunis-Rafah-El Arish area. Resheff's brigade drove into the Gaza Strip, while Sharon's division hit the fortifications in the Abu Ageila-Kusseima area. Later in the day Yoffe struck south into the heart of the Sinai to cut off the Egyptian retreat. (Dupuy) An Israeli destroyer and several torpedo boats approached Port Said after dark; they were met by two Egyptian missile boats. After an inconclusive exchange of fire, the Egyptians withdrew into the harbor. Israeli frogmen also entered the harbors of Port Said and Alexandria. Some damage was done to Egyptian vessels in Alexandria, but all of the frogmen there were captured. (Harper Enc of Military History)
  • 6/5/1967 Six Day War began as Israel launched preemptive air strikes. Later in the day airstrikes took out the air forces of Jordan and Syria, and struck Iraqi air units in the Mosul area. (Harper Enc. of Military History) At an Arab League meeting in Baghdad, representatives of Iraq, Saudi Arabia, Qatar, Bahrain, Kuwait, Libya, Algeria, Abu Dhabi, Egypt, Syria and Lebanon agreed to stop the flow of oil to all nations they believed had attacked any Arab states. Only Kuwait, Iraq and Algeria took any serious measures to carry out this embargo. (Harper Enc)
  • 6/5/1967 The Liberty hears news of the outbreak of fighting in the Middle East. the ship's captain Commander William L. McGonagle requests of Vice Admiral William I. Martin, commander of the Sixth Fleet, a destroyer escort that could both protect the Liberty and serve as an auxiliary communications station. Martins' reply: "Liberty is a clearly marked United States ship in international waters, not a participant in the conflict and not a reasonable subject for attack by any nation." In the unlikely event of an attack he promised to launch jets that could be over the Liberty in 10 minutes. He denied the request. The Liberty had been ordered to patrol within 12 1/2 nautical miles of Egypt and within 6 1/2 miles of Israel-- a half mile out from the distances each country claimed for its territorial waters. Several attempts were made by the Navy to move her station further out to sea but these messages mysteriously never reached the Liberty.
  • 6/5/1967 Ambassador Michael Hadow in a telegram to the British Foreign Office: "It looks as if the Israelis started it. We have been led up the garden path…"
  • 6/5-8-/1967 the Golan Heights, held by 6 Syrian brigades (and 6 in reserve), were pounded by Elazar's artillery. The Syrians showed no desire to seize the initiative. (Dupuy)
  • 6/5/1967 In a broadcast on KZSU, Stanford, California, WC staffer Wesley Liebeler stated that the staff lawyers had "almost unlimited power" both "in directing the FBI, for example, and conducting the investigation." He also explained Officer Weitzman's misidentification of the Carcano as a Mauser by saying that he had only glanced at it, "And, of course, Mr. Weitzman is Jewish." He reasoned that since "the Germans have been picking" on the Jewish people "for the last 50 years," he "got one back at them." Liebeler referred to the Report as "a good second draft." He was asked about the Moorman photo that might have shown the sixth-floor of the Depository. Liebeler replied that Lane had seen the photograph and he knew it was irrelevant; "And Mr. Lane also knows that, because he was down in Dallas and interviewed Mrs. Moorman about this. And, she said that all he was interested in was the possibility that she had been detained or - or kept - uh - under wraps by some secret - uh - mysterious agency of the government that's - uh - going around thwarting this investigation. Well, the photograph, the reason, the reason the photograph isn't - isn't in the Report or the 26 volumes is that it doesn't even show the sixth floor of the School Book Depository Building. It shows about the bottom two floors." But Lane had never talked to Moorman, and, he later wrote, "Liebeler's fanciful and detailed description...replete with allusions to a 'secret mysterious agency,' must raise questions regarding his credibility." Liebeler also claimed that the WC "didn't really pay any attention to the President's head movement [in the Zapruder film.]" "I don't know whether two-thirds of the witnesses said that they thought that the shots came from that area [grassy knoll.] I know Mr. Lane says that, but I haven't taken the trouble to check that out." He felt there was no value to that testimony because of the "echo chamber effect" in the Plaza. When asked why they didn't conduct acoustics tests in the Plaza, he replied, "...we just didn't think it was worth our time to do it." He stated that "The men who did the bulk of the work in drafting the Report and in conducting the investigation were fellows who were five or six years out of law school, like myself."
  • 6/6/1967 Converging Israeli columns took Jenin in hard fighting. (Harper Enc of Military History)
  • 6/6/1967 Gaza surrendered to Resheff in the afternoon. General Tal, having secured Rafah and El Arish, sent a task force down the El Arish-Romani road toward the Suez Canal, turned inland with the rest of his division and joined Yoffe. Sharon, having quickly captured Abu Ageila, sent part of his force to assist in the mopping up of Rafah and El Arish; with the remainder he struck southward toward Nakhl and Mitla Pass. Yoffe, after a brief engagement east of Bir Lahfan, hit the main Egyptian force in central Sinai at Jebel Libni in a night assault. Field Marshal Abdel Hakim Amer, the Egyptian commander in chief, had already ordered all the Sinai units to withdraw behind the Sinai Canal; this turned a defeat into a disastrous rout. (Harper Enc. of Military History)
  • 6/6/1967 The Israeli advance against the Old City of Jerusalem slowed down in the face of stubborn resistance. Other units tightened a wider ring around the city. The ridge to the east was seized, and attempts to relieve the Jordanian forces were smashed. Elements of a tank brigade seized Ramallah to the north, while another brigade captured Latrun. (Harper Enc. of Military History)
  • 6/6-7/1967 Three Egyptian subs briefly shelled the Egyptian coast near Ashdod, and north and south of Haifa. They withdrew when the Israelis attacked by air and sea. (Harper Enc. of Military History)
  • 6/6/1967 Due to Israeli air attacks and the threat of General Tal's advance along the northern Sinai coast, the Egyptians moved all their vessels from Port Said to Alexandria. (Harper Enc. of Military History)
  • 6/6/1967 The litigation of Jack Ruby's wills begins.
  • 6/7/1967 Despite repeated Jordanian counterattacks, the Israelis pressed on to Nablus. They seized the city just before dark. The mauled Jordanian forces managed an orderly withdrawal across the Jordan River. (Harper Enc of Military History)
  • 6/7/1967 A task force of three Israeli torpedo boats seized the Egyptian fortifications at Sharm el-Sheikh. After Israeli paratroops arrived, the naval vessels proceeded through the Strait of Tiran to the Red Sea without interference. (Harper Enc of Military History)
  • 6/7/1967 Tal's main body approached Bir Gifgafa; his northern task force moved past Romani. Yoffe's leading brigade reached the eastern end of the Mitla Pass, out of fuel and low on ammo, and was quickly surrounded by withdrawing Egyptian units. Yoffe's other brigade was en route to relieve this unit. Sharon approached Nakhl. Other units cleared the north-eastern Sinai, and airborne and amphibious forces seized Sharm el-Sheikh. (Harper Enc. of Military History)
  • 6/7/1967 Col. Gur stormed into the Old City of Jerusalem as the Jordanian garrison withdrew. Bethlehem was taken early in the afternoon, Hebron and Etzion soon afterward. (Harper Enc. of Military History)
  • 6/7/1967 The Jordanians and Israelis accept a UN Security Council call for a ceasefire on the Jordanian front.
  • 6/8/1967 Egyptian armored units from Ismailia tried to cover the Egyptian retreat but were easily repulsed by Gen. Tal, who then pressed on to the Suez Canal between Kantara and Ismailia. Yoffe's division reached the Canal opposite Port Suez. After a grueling march through the desert Sharon's division took Nakhl, then followed Yoffe through the Mitla Pass. (Harper Enc. of Military History)
  • 6/8/1967 Historian Gabby Bron later wrote in the Yediot Ahronot in Israel that he witnessed Israeli troops executing Egyptian prisoners on this morning in the Sinai town of El Arish. The prisoners were forced to dig their own graves.
  • 6/8/1967 Israeli attack on the USS Liberty fourteen miles north of El Arish. Jet aircraft and motor torpedo boats attacked the intelligence ship for 75 minutes in international waters in the Mediterranean. 35 Americans died and 171 were wounded; the ship was so badly damaged it had to be scrapped. Controversy continues to rage over the reasons for the attack. The Israelis claimed it was an accident, a misidentification of the ship as an Egyptian vessel.
  • 6/8/1967 Syria accepted a UN cease-fire on the morning of June 8, but began shelling northern Israel again five hours later. Radio Damascus then announced that it was not bound by any cease-fire. Israel responded by attacking Syrian gun positions in the Golan Heights on the morning of June 9, and soon overran the Syrian positions (Arab-Israeli Wars, A. J. Barker).
  • 6/9/1967 The UN Security Council reached a ceasefire which provided for Israeli control of the Sinai east of the Suez. Israel accepted immediately, Egypt later the next day. (Dupuy) 0320 0120 2120 The Syrian Government, over Radio Damascus, announced it accepted a cease-fire, contingent on Israel's observation of the truce. [State Department Liberty file: Arab-Israel Situation Report, 2400, June 8, 1967.] The record is not clear if Syrian artillery continued to shell northern Israel following this announcement. Given the decision by DM Dayan at 0700, it is probably a moot point. [Oren, Six Days of War, p. 278; Brecher and Geist, Decisions in Crisis, pp.279-281; Bregman and El Tahri, The Fifty Year' War, pp.110-112.] "Inconceivable that it was an accident 3 strafing passes, 3 torpedo boats. Set forth facts. Punish Israelis responsible" -- Clark Clifford in Minutes of NSC Special Committee Meeting, 9 June 1967 The UN passed another cease-fire resolution on June 9 (UNSC Resolution 235), which was accepted by Israel and later by Syria; the cease-fire went into effect on June 10 at 1630 GMT, at which point the Six Day War ended.
  • 6/9/1967 Chip Bohlen, ambassador to Paris, was the target of an assassination attempt in France.
  • 6/10/1967 By now, all parties have accepted the Security Council cease-fire.
  • 6/10/1967 FBI memo: "Garrison believes that organized crime was responsible for the assassination."
  • 6/11/1967 Communications Technician Seaman Kenneth P. Ecker, 18, a wounded Liberty crewman, answered questions and described his experience to embarked members of the national press during an interview aboard America. Of interest is the following passage: "After a torpedo struck the ship, Liberty's crew prepared to abandon ship. Coming above decks to report to his abandon ship station, Ecker observed three torpedo boats steaming approximately 100 yards off the Liberty's stern. He could not recognize the nationality of the craft. They were too far off. They were real small and you couldn't make out any marks on them or anything,' he said." [American Spirit, July 1967, V.3 N.6, p. 8. (USS America(CVA-66) newsletter.)] (Ecker's story regarding being saved by wearing his helmet was carried by a UPI dispatch in the Washington Post of June 13, 1967.)"
  • 6/12/1967 Supreme Court's case Curtis Publishing Co. vs Butts gave the press greater protection from libel suits.
  • 6/12/1967 The Court also ruled today unanimously in Loving v. Virginia that states cannot ban interracial marriages; this case was based on the 1958 marriage of a white man and a woman was part black, part Indian. Virginia's law against this had been on the books since 1691, and the couple was ordered to leave the state for 25 years. They appealed to then-Atty General Robert Kennedy for help, who got the ACLU to provide counsel for the couple
  • 6/12/1967 LBJ named Thurgood Marshall to the Supreme Court.
  • 6/12/1967 General Rabin orders an Inquiry Commission of one individual to investigate the IDF attack on the USS Liberty. Colonel Ram Ron is appointed. [IDF Inquiry Commission Report (AKA "Ram The Liberty Incident Time Line Page 47 of 56 Ron Report"); Naval Historical Center: DTG 131335Z June 1967, USDAO Tel Aviv 0886.] Via Diplomatic Note Israel strongly rejected the charges in the 10 June US Note and again offered to make amends. [State Department Liberty file.]
  • 6/12-13/1967 McNamara and Cyrus Vance warned Johnson again of the dangers of greatly escalating the Vietnam war; LBJ agreed.
  • 6/13/1967 CIA Intelligence Memorandum SC No. 01415/67, "The Israeli Attack on the USS Liberty" is prepared at the request of President Johnson. On p. 2 it states that Liberty, despite the size difference, could be mistaken for the smaller El Quseir by an overzealous pilot.(See 13 August 1977, 27 February 1978 and 12 January 2004.) [Foreign Relations, 1964-1968: Vol. XIX, Document 284.] DIA memo to the JCS Chairman states, in part: "[T]he best interpretation we can make of the available facts is that Israeli command and control in this instance was defective." [Foreign Relations, 1964-1968: Vol. XIX, Document 317/FN 2]
  • 6/13/1967 A CIA report by Winston Scott, chief of station, Mexico City dated today states: "Headquarters attention is called to paragraphs 3 through 5 of report dated 26 May. The fact that Silvia Duran had sexual intercourse with Lee Harvey Oswald on several occasions when the latter was in Mexico City is probably new, but adds little to the Oswald case. The Mexican police did not report the extend of the Duran-Oswald relationship to this Station."
  • 6/14/1967 Liberty and her escorts arrive in Malta. The US Naval Court of Inquiry reconvenes aboard Liberty. [US Naval Court of Inquiry/Record of Proceedings, p. 12.] Defense Department announces that a naval court of inquiry is in session at Malta. [Naval Historical Center: DTG 141747Z June 1967, SECDEF to multiple commands.]
  • 6/14/1967 "There've been a lot of attacks on J. Edgar Hoover, but we have to concede this: He's been the finest director the Bureau has ever had." Attributed to Jim Garrison by Mark Lane, speech at UCLA to Citizens Committee of Inquiry.
  • 6/15/1967 "Israel expresses regret over deaths and wounding of Indian UNEF troops on 5 June 1967 by the IDF and offers humanitarian compensation. [UN Documents S/7957, 8 June 1967 and S/7989, 15 June 1967.]
  • 6/15/1967 US Naval Court of Inquiry adjourns in Malta after taking two days of testimony from nine officers and five enlisted men of the Liberty. [US Naval Court of Inquiry/Record of Proceedings, p. 138.]"
  • 6/15/1967 Former Ruby lawyer Joe Tonahill was indicted for income tax evasion. (New Orleans States-Item)
  • 6/16/1967 "US Naval Court of Inquiry reconvened in London at CINCUSNAVEUR HQ for the final set of witnesses. Testimony ended