Tracy Riddle Wrote:

Peter Lemkin Wrote:

Quote:Thanks, Dawn, I hope everyone finds it useful.

It is amazingly useful! Great work! How much more time periods are coming?!

Basically every year of the last century or so, though the period since WWII is more detailed.

• 11/1961 At a meeting with newspaper executives, Dallas Morning News publisher E.M. Dealey told JFK: "We need a man on horseback to lead this nation, and many people in Texas think that you are riding Caroline's tricycle...We can annihilate Russia and should make that clear to the Soviet government." As the other publishers sat looking embarrassed, JFK blasted back, "I'm just as tough as you are, Mr. Dealey. I have the responsibility for the lives of 180 million Americans, which you have not..." When the News covered the story for the folks back home, it included tributes to Dealey from Bruce Alger and H.L. Hunt and favorable letters from readers. (Portrait of Power 271; Death of a President 49)
  
• 11/1961 The head of the CIA's Counterintelligence Branch from 1954 to 1974 was James Jesus Angleton, known as the " Poet-Spy. " As an undergraduate at Yale in the early forties, Angleton had founded a literary journal, Furioso, which published the poetry of Ezra Pound, e. e. cummings, and Archibald MacLeish. After he went on to Harvard Law School, Angleton was drafted into the U.S. Army. He became a member of the Counterintelligence Branch of the Office of Strategic Services ( OSS), World War II predecessor to the CIA. The OSS and CIA suited Angleton perfectly. Counterintelligence became less a wartime mission than a lifelong obsession. For Angleton, the Cold War was an anti-communist crusade, with his CIA double agents engaged in a battle of light against darkness. Investigative journalist Joseph Trento testified in a 1984 court deposition that, according to CIA sources, James Angleton was the supervisor of a CIA assassination unit in the 1950s. The "small assassination team" was headed by Army Colonel Boris Pash. (June 28, 1984, deposition of Joseph Trento to Mark Lane; in Lane's Plausible Denial: Was the CIA Involved in the Assassination of JFK? ( New York: Thunder's Mouth Press, 1992), p. 164. Cf. Lisa Pease, "James Angleton, " in The Assassinations, edited by James DiEugenio and Lisa Pease ( Los Angeles: Feral House, 2003 ) , p. 164.) At the end of World War II, Army Intelligence Colonel Pash had rounded up Nazi scientists who could contribute their research skills to the development of U.S. nuclear and chemical weapons. (Evan Thomas, The Very Best Men: Four Who Dared: The Early Years o f the CIA (New York: Touchstone, 1995) , p. 85) The CIA's E. Howard Hunt, while imprisoned for the Watergate break-in, told the New York Times that Pash's CIA assassination unit was designed especially for the killing of suspected double agents. (" Hunt Says C.I.A. Had Assassin Unit, " New York Times (December 26, 1975), p . 9, cited by Lisa Pease in Assassinations, p. 164.) That placed Pash's terminators under the authority of counterintelligence chief Angleton. Joseph Trento testified that his sources confirmed, " Pash's assassination unit was assigned to Angleton. " (Trento deposition cited in Lane, Plausible Denial, p. 1 64.) In the 1960s, Angleton retained his authority over assassinations. In November 1961, the CIA's Deputy Director of Plans, Richard Bissell, directed his longtime associate William Harvey to develop an assassination program known as " ZRJRIFLE" and to apply it to Cuba, as the Senate's Church Committee later discovered. (David C. Martin, Wilderness of Mirrors (New York: Ballantine Books, 1980) , p.121.) Among the notes for ZR/RIFLE that Harvey then scribbled to himself were: "planning should include provisions for blaming Sovs or Czechs in case of blow. Should have phony 201 [a CIA file on any person "of active operational interest" j in RG [Central Registry] to backstop this, all documents therein forged and backdated. " (The CIA's Clandestine Services Handbook stated that a 2 0 1 file was one opened on a person " of active operational interest at any given point in time . " Clandestine Services Handbook, 43-1-1, February 15, 1960, Chapter III, Annex B, " PERSONALITIES- 2 0 1 and IDN NUMBERS, " p. 4 3 ; NARA JFK Files, box 13 , folder 29. Cited by John Newman, Oswald and the CIA (New York: Carroll & Graf, 1995) , p. 537 note 2 . William Harvey's notes for " ZRlRIFLE" are cited in Martin, Wilderness of Mirrors, pp. 1 22-24, and in Pease, Assassinations, p. 162) In other words, in order to blame an assassination on the Communists, the patsy should be given Soviet or Czechoslovakian associations. (Oswald's would be Soviet and Cuban. ) An appropriately fraudulent CIA 201 personnel file should be created for any future assassination scapegoat, with " all documents therein forged and updated. " Harvey also reminded himself that the phony 201 " should look like a C E [counterespionage] file," and that he needed to talk with "Jim A. " (Martin, Wilderness of Mirrors, p. 124.) William Harvey headed Staff D, a top-secret CIA department that was responsible for communications intercepts received from the National Security Agency. Assassinations prepared by Harvey were therefore given the same ultimate degree of secrecy as the NSA's intercepts, under the higher jurisdiction of James Angleton. Any access to Staff D could be granted only by "Angleton's men, " according to CIA agent Joseph B. Smith. (Joseph B. Smith, Portrait of a Cold Warrior ( New York: Ballantine Books, 1981), p. 389.) As we shall see in the Oswald project under Angleton's supervision, the CIA's Counterintelligence head blended the powers of assassination and disinformation. Deception was Angleton's paradoxical way toward a victory of the light. In the war against Communism, Angleton thrived on deceiving enemies and friends alike in a milieu he liked to call " the wilderness of mirrors . " His friend e. e. cummings suggested the contradictions in James Angleton in a letter he wrote to Angleton's wife: "What a miracle of momentous complexity is the Poet. " (Martin, Wilderness of Mirrors, p.16)
  
• 11/1/1961 Presidential advisor Richard Goodwin and CIA Deputy Edward Lansdale recommend the creation of Operation Mongoose as a coordinated effort to depose Castro 's government. (Fonzi chronology p 416) A November 1, 1961 memorandum from Goodwin to President Kennedy supported the concept of a "command operation" on Cuba, commanded by Attorney General Robert Kennedy. The reorganization of Cuban operations as described in the memo sets the stage for the decision to launch a new, multifaceted set of anti-Castro activities, codenamed Operation Mongoose.
  
• 11/1/1961 Before the OAS, the US accuses Cuba of trying "to subvert and overthrow the constitutional governments of the Americas."
  
• 11/1/1961 Gen. Taylor, writing from the Philippines, urges JFK to commit a "US military task force" to Vietnam to "reverse the present downward trend of events." Maxwell Taylor sent a top-secret cable to JFK after his fact-finding tour of South Vietnam: "The risks of backing into a major Asian war by way of SVN are present but are not impressive. NVN is extremely vulnerable to conventional bombing, a weakness which should be exploited diplomatically in convincing Hanoi to lay off South Vietnam." (Best and the Brightest, Halberstam)
  
• 11/2/1961 Gen. Walker submits his resignation to the Army and attacks critics in a statement to a Senate Armed Forces subcommittee. He refuses on principle to accept retirement benefits, and says he may enter politics.
  
• 11/2/1961 JFK announces preparations for the resumption of atmospheric testing.
  
• 11/3/1961 "Hollywood's Answer to Communism" aired over a network of 33 TV stations in California and also linked up to WPIX in New York. The three-hour program was broadcast from the Hollywood Bowl with a crowd of 15,000 in attendance and many Hollywood personalities present. C. D. Jackson of Time-Life appeared on the program and strongly allied Life magazine with the Crusade. This was a turnabout for Life which had initially criticized the head of the Crusade in a brief news item which poked fun at Schwarz and his "School of Anti-Communism," saying, "Schwarz preaches doomsday by Communism in 1973 unless every American starts distrusting his neighbor as a possible Communist or 'comsymp.' ...Schwarz . . . landed in this country with $10 in his pocket in 1953, but he has built the 'crusade' into a $500,000 business." The NYT expressed concern that the program was biased towards certain political views and called for networks to allot time for "differing opinions." The Crusade speakers advocated complete overhaul of the United Nations, and claimed it was folly to enter any kind of arms agreement with the Soviets.
  
• 11/3/1961 Taylor returns from Saigon and presents his final report; concludes that US aid will bring victory without America taking over the fighting for the South Vietnamese; advises JFK to send 8000 combat troops to Vietnam.
  
• 11/4/1961 The Army accepts Gen. Walker's resignation.
  
• 11/4/1961 Meeting between Ball, McNamara, Rusk and Gilpatric, Ball argued that sending troops to Vietnam would be a mistake; McNamara and Gilpatric replied, "But how else can the US stop Vietnam from being taken over by the Vietcong?"
  
• 11/7/1961 Judith Campbell called the White House.
  
• 11/7/1961 Cuban State Security reports on counter-revolutionary plan including acts of sabotage and attempt on life of Castro at the welcome for Cuban President Osvaldo Dorticos on his return from a tour of socialist countries.
  
• 11/7/1961 When Undersecretary of State George Ball warned JFK that getting deeper into Vietnam "could lead in five years' time to an involvement of 300,000 men," Ball told JFK that committing US troops "would be a tragic error. Once that process is started, there would be no end to it." JFK replied, "George, you're just crazier than hell. That just isn't going to happen." (Dynasty and Disaster 446-7; The Best and the Brightest)
  
• 11/7/1961 Diem wrote to JFK, "We must have further assistance from the United States if we are to win the war now being waged against us." He also added, "When communism has long ebbed away into the past, my people will still be here..." (Vantage Point 56)
  
• 11/8/1961 JFK told the public, "The Soviet Union prepared to test [nuclear weapons] while we were at the table negotiating with them. If they fooled us once, it is their fault. If they fool us twice, it is our fault."
  
• 11/8/1961 McNamara sent a memo to JFK saying he was "inclined to recommend" committing the US to preventing a communist takeover of South Vietnam and using whatever military means necessary to achieve this. On November 8, Defense Secretary Robert McNamara, his deputy Roswell Gilpatric, and the Joint Chiefs of Staff all recommended to Kennedy in a memorandum that "we do commit the U.S. to the clear objective of preventing the fall of South Vietnam to Communism and that we support this commitment by the necessary military actions, " including Taylor's proposed "U.S. force of the magnitude of an initial 8 ,000 men in a flood relief context" and expanding to as many as six divisions of ground forces, " or about 205,000 men . " (Pentagon Papers) Kennedy rejected the virtually unanimous recommendation of his advisers in the fall of 1961 to send combat troops to Vietnam. Taylor reflected later on the uniqueness of JFK's position: "I don't recall anyone who was strongly against [sending ground troops] , except one man and that was the President. The President just didn't want to be convinced that this was the right thing to do . . . It was really the President's personal conviction that U.S. ground troops shouldn't go in. " (Maxwell Taylor, in recorded interview by L . J. Hackman, November 13 1969, 47; cited by Schlesinger, Robert Kennedy, p. 761)
  
• 11/9/1961 JFK tells Tad Szulc that he is under pressure from unnamed advisors to order Castro's assassination. In November 1961, seven months after the Bay of Pigs invasion, John Kennedy asked journalist Tad Szulc in a private conversation in the Oval Office, "What would you think if I ordered Castro to be assassinated ? " The startled Szulc said he was against political assassination in principle and in any case doubted if it would solve the Cuban problem. The president leaned back in his rocking chair, smiled, and said he had been testing Szulc and agreed with his answer. Kennedy said "he was under great pressure from advisors in the Intelligence Community (whom he did not name) to have Castro killed, but that he himself violently opposed it on the grounds that for moral reasons the United States should never be party to political assassinations." "I'm glad you feel the same way," Kennedy told Szulc. (Tad Szulc, " Cuba on Our Mind, " Esquire (February 1974) , p.90. David Talbot has pointed out that, although " Kennedy critics charge that JFK staged this dialogue with Szulc to give himself cover in case the murder plots [against Castro] were later revealed, " others find this far-fetched. Kennedy adviser Richard Goodwin found it hard to imagine that, if JFK were in fact plotting to kill Castro, he would then bring up the subject to a New York Times reporter, "who the day after Castro was killed would be sitting on the biggest story in the world! " Richard Goodwin interview by David Talbot in David Talbot, Brothers (New York: Free Press, 2007), p. 94. Fidel Castro has assured both Tad Szuic and Ethel Kennedy that he knows John and Robert Kennedy " had nothing to do with the CIA attempts on his life . " Ibid., p. 94.)
  
• 11/9/1961 Khrushchev, in his second secret letter to the president, on November 9, 1961 , regarding Berlin, had hinted that belligerent pressures in Moscow made compromise difficult from his own side. " You have to understand, " he implored Kennedy, "I have no ground to retreat further, there is a precipice behind. "
  
• 11/10/1961 In Khrushchev's November 10, 1961 , letter to Kennedy, he dismissed the infiltration of North Vietnamese troops through Laos and emphasized the weakest link in U.S. policy in Southeast Asia, namely Ngo Dinh Diem: " I think that looking at facts soberly you cannot but agree that the present struggle of the population of South Vietnam against Ngo Dinh Diem cannot be explained by some kind of interference or incitement from outside. The events that are taking place there are of internal nature and are connected with the general indignation of the population at the bankrupt policy of Ngo Dinh Diem and those who surround him. This and only this is the core of the matter. "
  
• 11/10/1961 Judith Campbell called the White House.
  
• 11/11/1961 Venezuela broke relations with Cuba, accusing Castro of attacks on Venezuela's government.
  
• 11/11/1961 After some reflection, McNamara backed away from his 11/8 memo; he and Rusk sent a memo to the president: "If there is a strong South Vietnamese effort, [US troops] may not be needed; if there is not such an effort, US forces could not accomplish their mission in the midst of an apathetic or hostile population." In a meeting later that day, Kennedy "made clear he did not wish to make an unconditional commitment to prevent the loss of South Vietnam and flatly refused to endorse the introduction of US combat forces." (In Retrospect 39)
  
• 11/12/1961 Today's issue of The Worker features headline: "Gen. Walker Bids for Fuehrer Role."
  
• 11/12/1961 The Times expressed concern that the Christian Anti-Communist Crusade program was biased towards certain political views and called for networks to allot time for "differing opinions." The Crusade speakers advocated complete overhaul of the United Nations, and claimed it was folly to enter any kind of arms agreement with the Soviets, such as Kennedy was proposing and that led ultimately to his successful Nuclear Test Ban Treaty of which he would be very proud. While arguing for equal time, the Times concluded that "it was a program that should have been heard. The current growth of conservatism in the country is a matter of news importance and has not been touched on adequately in regular TV news documentaries." [NYT, Nov. 12, 1961, II p. 13]
  
• 11/13/1961 Schlesinger wrote in his journal that President Kennedy told him, "The troops will march in [to Vietnam]; the crowds will cheer; and in four days everyone will have forgotten. Then we will be told we have to send in more troops."
  
• 11/13/1961 William Harvey cables the Mexico City CIA Station to dispatch David S. Morales (Morales, a Mexican-American CIA agent from Phoenix, was well known as the Agency 's top assassin in Latin America. He had served in Cuba from 1958-1960 in the American Consulate in Havana. He had played a supporting role in Mexico City during the Bay of Pigs planning and afterward he openly described what Kennedy had done as traición betrayal. Nicknamed El Indio. Mahoney, p135) to JM-WAVE (the CIA base in south Florida) for permanent posting. (Cable 5816, CIA Station (Scott), 19 Nov 1961 to Base, confirming receipt of Harvey 's cable, AA)
  
• 11/13/1961 Two and a half weeks after the tanks confrontation that threatened a nuclear holocaust, its instigator, Lucius Clay, sent a telegram to Secretary of State Dean Rusk in which he stated: " Today, we have the nuclear strength to assure victory at awful cost. It no longer suffices to consider our strength as a deterrent only and to plan to use it only in retaliation. No ground probes on the highway which would use force should or could be undertaken unless we are prepared instantly to follow them with a nuclear strike. It is certain that within two or more years retaliatory power will be useless as whoever strikes first will strike last. " (Clay-Rusk telegram, November 13, 1 9 6 1 ; in FR US, 1 96 1 - 1 9 63, Volume XIV: Berlin Crisis, 1 96 1 - 1 962 (Washington: U.S. Government Printing Office, 1 994 ) , p. 5 8 6 ) To Lucius Clay's regret, the president had not been prepared instantly to follow Clay'S assault on the Berlin Wall with a nuclear first strike. Like his cohorts in the Pentagon at the height of the missile crisis, Clay wanted to seize the moment, so the United States could " win the Cold War by striking first.
  
• 11/13/1961 Judith Campbell called the White House.
  
• 11/13/1961 Right-wing Hearst newspaper columnist Fulton Lewis Jr. announced, "I wouldn't impeach [Warren]. I'd lynch him." (Boston Globe)
  
• 11/13/1961 US News & World Report stated: "US aid to South Vietnam may be stepped up. But no US combat troops are going into the jungle to engage in shooting war with Communist guerillas."
  
• 11/14-15/1961 South Korea's Park Chunghee meets with JFK in Washington.
  
• 11/14/1961 The Sexton company vacates the 411 Elm St building in Dealey Plaza. (William Weston; date from Ted Leon, former branch manager in Dallas 1961-64; he kept all his pocket calendars from work). According to Thomas Butler, who became the Sexton branch manager in 1964, the building remained vacant for about a year after his company moved out. Months of renovation for new offices would be necessary before the TSBD could move in. A dumb waiter is installed for the first four floors. A passenger elevator for the office floors is built. (Weston)
  
• 11/15/1961 ZR/RIFLE: Bissell orders Cuban Task Force head Harvey to implement the application of ZR/RIFLE assassination plan in Cuba. Harvey reestablishes the Agency contact with Mob liaison Rosselli. (Fonzi chronology p 417)
  
• 11/15/1961 Judith Campbell called the White House.
  
• 11/15/1961 In an NSC meeting, JFK expressed doubts about becoming deeply involved in Vietnam. (In Retrospect 40)
  
• 11/16/1961 JFK delivers speech at the University of Washington (Seattle) commencement: "We must face the fact that the United States is neither omnipotent nor omniscient - that we cannot impose our will upon the other 94 percent of mankind - that we cannot right every wrong or reverse every adversity - and that therefore there cannot be an American solution to every world problem." "We cannot as a free nation, compete with our adversaries in tactics of terror, assassination, false promises, counterfeit mobs and crises." JFK motorcade in Seattle. The program for the day is full. Welcome the President around noon, motorcade up Highway 99 and into downtown Seattle with a speech by Kennedy at Victory Plaza. Following a whirlwind drive-by tour of the 1962 World's Fair site, the motorcade heads back to Highway 99 (Aurora Avenue) and the University of Washington where he gives a speech at Hec Ed pavilion. Finally back downtown to the Olympic Hotel where the President is guest of honor at a dinner honoring Washington State's Senator Warren Magnusen. Kennedy spends the night at the Olympic and hits the air the next morning for a flight to Phoenix. We do not know whether or not President Kennedy saw two groups of "peace walkers" near Edmundsen Pavilion. At 15th Avenue NE and NE Pacific Street about 20 University of Washington students and residents picketed to keep the United States out of Cuba. They held signs that read FAIR PLAY FOR CUBA, NO MORE SUGAR TRUST INVASIONS, and DON'T FIGHT FOR UNITED FRUIT. Another group, about 75 strong, who called themselves Women Marching for Peace also picketed near Edmundson Pavilion. Many of the women marchers pushed baby buggies. They held signs that read END NUCLEAR TESTS NOW, MAN MUST PUT AN END TO WAR, PEACE FOR OUR CHILDREN, and MR. PRESIDENT, PLEASE STOP NUCLEAR TESTING. Both groups handed out leaflets. President Kennedy commented on the failure of the U.S. Congress to approve funding to convert Hanford Atomic Works into an electrical power plant. "All who say that the United States should not commit itself to being the leader in the peacetime use of atomic energy -- those who say we should waste this resource which we have now in the Pacific Northwest and which has been fought for by Senator [Henry] Jackson at Hanford -- those who say 'no' to this country I believe are going to find as time goes on in the next 5, 10, 15, 20, and 25 years that all their predictions of failure and disaster [to nuclear plants] will have been proven wrong as they have been in the last 25 years" (The Seattle Times).
  
• 11/16/1961 Speaker of the House Sam Rayburn died. From here on, JFK's relations with Congress would become even more difficult.
  
• 11/16/1961 NY Times reported that the Nike-Zeus anti-missile missile had had its first successful tests.
  
• 11/16/1961 JFK wrote to Khrushchev about Laos and Vietnam; this letter was not declassified until 1984. He disputed Khrushchev's stand that there was no attempt by the Hanoi regime to take over South Vietnam. Kennedy pointed out that from 1954 to 1959 "the situation in Vietnam was relatively tranquil. The country was effecting a limited recovery from the ravages of the civil war from which it had just emerged. The Government enjoyed the support of the people and the prospects for the future appeared reasonably bright. However, in 1959, the DRV, having failed in the elections which had been held in Vietnam and in the attempt to arouse the people against their legitimate government, turned to a calculated plan of open infiltration, subversion and aggression....Our support for the government of [Diem] we regard as a serious obligation..." Kennedy shrewdly bypassed Khrushchev's critique of Diem to reemphasize the " external interference " of North Vietnam: "I do not wish to argue with you concerning the government structure and policies of President Ngo Dinh Diem, but I would like to cite for your consideration the evidence of external interference or incitement which you dismiss in a phrase. " After drawing on a South Vietnamese government letter to the ICC, Kennedy concluded that " Southern Vietnam is now undergoing a determined attempt from without to overthrow the existing government using for this purpose infiltration, supply of arms, propaganda, terrorization, and all the customary instrumentalities of communist activities in such circumstances, all mounted and developed from North Vietnam. "
  
• 11/18/1961 Sam Rayburn's funeral in Bonham, Texas. JFK, Ike, LBJ, and Truman attended.
  
• 11/18/1961 JFK, in a speech in Los Angeles, said, "Now that we are face to face again with a period of heightened peril...the discordant voices of extremism are heard once again in the land…There have always been those fringes of our society who have sought to escape their own responsibility by finding a simple solution, an appealing slogan or a convenient scapegoat. Men who are unwilling to face up to the danger from without are convinced that the real danger comes from within. They look suspiciously at their neighbors and their leaders. They call for a 'man on horseback' because they do not trust the people. They find treason in our finest churches, in our highest court, and even in the treatment of our water. They equate the Democratic Party with the welfare state, the welfare state with socialism, and socialism with communism. They object quite rightly to politics' intruding on the military -- but they are anxious for the military to engage in politics… In the most critical periods of our nation's history, there have always been those fringes of our society who have sought to escape their own responsibility by finding a simple solution, an appealing slogan, or a convenient scapegoat. Financial crises could be explained by the presence of too many immigrants or too few greenbacks. War could be attributed to munitions makers or international bankers. Peace conferences failed because we were duped by the British or tricked by the French or deceived by the Russians. At times these fanatics have achieved a temporary success among those who lack the will or the vision to face unpleasant tasks or unsolved problems." (NYT 11/19) Two Republican Representatives from the urban districts of Los Angeles, John H. Rousselot and Edgar W. Hiestland, are avowed members of the JBS. Meanwhile, outside the Hollywood Palladium where he spoke, for nearly an hour, 3,000 persons paraded, carrying signs and chanting and singing their protests over a variety of issues. The demonstration, which started rather mildly five hours before the President spoke, was suddenly stepped up by an apparent influx of rightists. Some of the signs carried by men and women wearing red, white, and blue paper hats, read: "Unmuzzle the Military," "Clean Up the State Department," "Veto Tito," "Disarmament is Suicide," and "CommUNism is Our Enemy." The marchers sporadically chanted "Test the Bomb," and, "No Aid to Tito." They sang, among other things, "God Bless America" and "The Battle Hymn of the Republic."
  
• 11/19/1961 US fleet went to the Dominican Republic.
  
• 11/19/1961 New York Times - KENNEDY ASSERTS FAR-RIGHT GROUPS PROVOKE DISUNITY Attacks Birch Society and 'Minutemen' at a Party Dinner in Los Angeles Spread of Fear Scored President Says Real Threat Comes From Without, Not Within by Tom Wicker
  
• 11/19/1961 New York Times - RIGHTISTS PICKET KENNEDY SPEECH 3,000 Parade in Los Angeles in Orderly Demonstration
  
• 11/20/1961 Oswald letter to his brother, Robert (H 16 845-46): "Its allready four months since we put in our request for visas, It gives you an Idea how slow they can be…It'll cost about $800 to fly from Moscow to New York for two people, I don't have that much money, but I'm hoping that the Embassy will help us out…"
  
• 11/21/1961 Memo from McNamara to JFK informing him that the Air Force wanted to focus on developing a nuclear "first-strike capability" against the USSR. (Scheer, With Enough Shovels p216)
  
• 11/21/1961 Atlanta FBI office notified Hoover that they had found nothing on MLK "on which to base a security matter inquiry."
  
• 11/22/1961 NSAM 111 "TO: The Secretary of State. SUBJECT: First Phase of Viet-Nam Program. 1.The US Government is prepared to join the Viet-Nam Government in a sharply increased joint effort to avoid a further deterioration in the situation in South Viet-Nam....the US would immediately undertake the following actions...Provide increased air lift to the GVN forces, manned to the extent necessary by United States uniformed personnel and under United States operational control. Provide such additional equipment and United States military personnel as may be necessary for air reconnaissance, photography, instruction in and execution of air-ground support techniques, and for special intelligence. Provide the GVN with small craft, including such United States uniformed advisers and operating personnel as may be necessary for operations in effecting surveillance and control over coastal waters and inland waterways. Provide expedited training and equipping of the civil guard and the self-defense corps with the objective of relieving the regular Army of static missions and freeing it for mobile offensive operations. Provide such personnel and equipment as may be necessary to improve the military-political intelligence system beginning at the provincial level and extending upward through the Government and the armed forces to the Central Intelligence Organization. Provide such new terms of reference, reorganization and additional personnel for United States military forces as are required for increased United States military assistance...Provide...increased economic aid...Provide individual administrators and advisers for the Governmental machinery of South Viet-Nam...Provide personnel for a joint survey with the GVN of conditions in each of the provinces to assess the social, political, intelligence and military factors bearing on the prosecution of the counter-insurgency program...the GVN would initiate the following actions: Prompt and appropriate legislative and administrative action to put the nation on a wartime footing to mobilize its entire resources. (This would include a decentralization and broadening of the government so as to realize the full potential of all non-Communist elements in the country willing to contribute to the common struggle.)...Overhaul of the military establishment and command structure so as to create an effective military organization for the prosecution of the war and assure a mobile offensive capability for the army. McGeorge Bundy."
  
• 11/22/1961 Kennedy did agree in November 1961 to increase the U.S. commitment to South Vietnam. What he chose to send instead of combat troops were advisers and support units. According to the advice he was being given, Kennedy's military support program for South Vietnam would almost certainly fall far short of anything that could stop the Viet Congo This was what puzzled Daniel Ellsberg so deeply when he analyzed JFK's decision in the Pentagon Papers, as he has written more recently in his memoir, Secrets: " Kennedy had chosen to increase U.S. involvement and investment of prestige in Vietnam and to reaffirm our rhetorical commitment-not as much as his subordinates asked him to, but significantly while rejecting an element, ground forces, that nearly all his own officials described as essential to success. In fact, at the same time he had rejected another element that all his advisers, including [Secretary of State Dean] Rusk, had likewise described as essential: an explicit full commitment to defeating the Communists in South Vietnam. Why ?" While Ellsberg was trying to figure out JFK's odd stand, he had the opportunity to raise the question in a conversation with Robert Kennedy. As a U.S. senator in 1967, Kennedy had invited Ellsberg, a Pentagon analyst, to talk with him in his office about a mutual concern, the escalating war in Vietnam. Ellsberg had boldly seized the chance to question RFK about JFK's decision making in 1961. Why, Ellsberg asked him, had President Kennedy rejected both ground troops and a formal commitment to victory in Vietnam, thereby " rejecting the urgent advice of every one of his top military and civilian officials " ? Robert Kennedy answered that his brother was absolutely determined never to send ground combat units to Vietnam, because if he did, the U.S. would be in the same spot as the French-whites against Asians, in a war against nationalism and self-determination. Ellsberg pressed the question: Was JFK willing to accept defeat rather than send troops ? RFK said that if the president reached the point where the only alternatives to defeat were sending ground troops or withdrawing, he intended to withdraw. "We would have handled it like Laos , " his brother said. Ellsberg was even more intrigued. It was obvious to him that none of President Kennedy's senior advisers had any such conviction about Indochina. Ellsberg kept pushing for more of an explanation for Kennedy's stand. "What made him so smart ? " he asked John Kennedy's brother. Writing more than thirty years after this conversation, Ellsberg could still feel the shock he had experienced from RFK's response: " Whap ! His hand slapped down on the desk. I jumped in my chair. 'Because we were there!' He slammed the desktop again. His face contorted in anger and pain. 'We were there, in 1951. We saw what was happening to the French. We saw it. My brother was determined, determined never to let that happen to US. "' Ellsberg wrote that he believed what Robert Kennedy said, " that his brother was strongly convinced that he should never send ground troops to Indochina and that he was prepared to accept a 'Laotian solution' if necessary to avoid that. " (Daniel Ellsberg, Secrets: A Memoir of Vietnam and the Pentagon Papers (New York: Viking, 2002 ) , p. 193)
  
• 11/23/1961 CBS Reports program broadcast an interview with Eisenhower; Ike commented that it had been a mistake for the US to deny the U-2 spy flight over Russia, but this remark was edited out at the insistence of his son, Lt. Col. John Eisenhower. (Politics of Lying 35)
  
• 11/24/1961 New York Times: Former President Dwight D. Eisenhower last night [in a TV interview] urged officers of the armed services to shun partisan politics. Speaking as a General of the Army, he declared it was "bad practice -- very bad" for an officer, even when testifying under oath before a committee of Congress, to express opinions "on political matters or economic matters that are contrary to the President's." ...The former President was blunt in discussing the recent "rise of extremists" in the country. "I don't think the United States needs super-patriots," he declared. "We need patriotism, honestly practiced by all of us, and we don't need these people that are more patriotic than you or anybody else." His definition of extremists embraced those who would "go back to eliminating the income tax from our laws and the rights of people to unionize... [and those] advocating some form of dictatorship." It also included those who "make radical statements [and] attack people of good repute who are proved patriots." At that point, Walter Cronkite of the C.B.S. news staff, who conducted the interview, asked about the "military man's role in our modern political life." He did not cite, but obviously referred to, the case of Maj. Gen. Edwin A. Walker, who stirred up a controversy that led to his "admonishment" for the political nature of the indoctrination of his troops. General Walker later resigned from the Army. "I believe the Army officer, Navy officer, Air officer," General Eisenhower said, "should not be talking about political matters, particularly domestically, and never in the international field, unless he is asked to do so because of some particular position he might hold." ...The general declared there was hope for disarmament and better East-West relations. As the Russian standard of living improves, the Russian people will begin to understand that there is another way of life, he said...
  
• 11/25/1961 JFK met at Hyannis Port with Georgi Bolshakov, who was identified as "a Soviet editor." Actually, he was a major in Soviet intelligence and Khrushchev's secret envoy to the Kennedys.
  
• 11/25/1961 Carrier USS Enterprise (CVAN 65) commissioned in Newport News, Va.
  
• 11/26/1961 George Ball replaces Chester Bowles as Under-Secretary of State.
  
• 11/26/1961 Cuba: literacy campaign teacher Manuel Ascunce Domenech is brutally tortured to death in Escambray Mountains by anti-Castro guerillas.
  
• 11/27/1961 Soviets proposed a nuclear test ban with no on-site inspections; the US rejected the idea because some nuclear tests were difficult to detect otherwise. But JFK would later sign a no-inspections test-ban treaty. (St Louis Post Dispatch 11/28/1961)
  
• 11/28/1961 McNamara told Adm. Harry Felt and Gen. Lionel McGarr (senior US military man in Saigon) that "we must adjust ourselves to a perennially unclear political framework and to...limits on military action." The next month, McNamara told the two men in Hawaii that US combat troops would not be sent to South Vietnam. (In Retrospect 40)
  
• 11/29/1961 John McCone becomes CIA director.
  
• 11/30/1961 JFK sends memo to Secretary Rusk ordering him to "Use our available assets to help Cuba overthrow the Communist regime." Memo from Kennedy to Rusk. It discussed the idea of using low-level guerilla methods to "help the people of Cuba overthrow the Communist regime." Operation Mongoose is launched by order of JFK. The new program will be directed by Lansdale under the guidance of RFK. A high-level inter-agency group, the Special Group Augmented (SGA) , is created with the sole purpose of overseeing Mongoose. Operation Mongoose: JFK authorizes a major new covert action program aimed at overthrowing the Cuban government. The new program, codenamed Operation Mongoose, will be directed by counterinsurgency specialist Edward G. Lansdale under the guidance of Attorney General Robert Kennedy. A high-level inter-agency group, the Special Group Augmented (SGA), is created with the sole purpose of overseeing Mongoose. (The Cuba Project, 3/2/62; Alleged Assassination Plots Involving Foreign Leaders, 11/20/75, pp. 139, 144)
  
• 11/1961 Bissell is "chewed out" by both JFK and RFK at a meeting in the Cabinet room at the White House. Thereafter RFK pressed constantly for results from Mongoose.
  
• 11/1961 NSAM 115 "TO: The secretary of state; the secretary of defense. SUBJECT: Defoliant Operations in Vietnam. The President has approved the recommendation of the Secretary of State and the Deputy Secretary of Defense to participate in a selective and carefully controlled joint program of defoliant operations in Viet Nam starting with the clearance of key routes and proceeding thereafter to food denial only if the most careful basis of resettlement and alternative food supply has been created. Operations in Zone D and the border areas shall not be undertaken until there are realistic possibilities of immediate military exploitation....McGeorge Bundy."
  
• 12/1961 The Defense Department publishes a 47-page pamphlet for the US public called "Fallout Protection What to Know and Do About Nuclear Attack"
  
• 12/1961 McNamara established the United States Strike Command (STRICOM). Authorized to draw forces when needed from the Strategic Army Corps (STRAC), the Tactical Air Command, and the airlift units of the Military Air Transport Service and the military services, Strike Command had the mission "to respond swiftly and with whatever force necessary to threats against the peace in any part of the world, reinforcing unified commands or… carrying out separate contingency operations." 1961 defense budget was $49.6 billion ($195.2 billion in 1992 dollars); this was a 15% increase.
  
• Late 1961 or Early 1962 - Task Force W : William K. Harvey is put in charge of Task Force W, the CIA unit for Operation Mongoose. Task Force W operates under guidance from the SGA and subsequently will involve approximately four hundred Americans at CIA headquarters and its Miami JMWAVE station, in addition to about two thousand Cubans, a private navy of speedboats, and an annual budget of some $50 million. Task Force W carries out a wide range of activities, mostly against Cuban ships and aircraft outside Cuba (and non-Cuban ships engaged in Cuban trade), such as contaminating shipments of sugar from Cuba and tampering with industrial products imported into the country. (Alleged Assassination Plots Involving Foreign Leaders, 11/20/75)
  
• 12/1961 OSWALD wrote a letter to Texas Sen. John Tower to seek his help; the letter did not reach Tower's office until 1/26/1962. (CD 1119, CE 1058)
  
• 12/1961 Defection of Anatoliy Golitsyn to the West.
  
• 12/1961 Trappist monk Thomas Merton was being blocked from publishing his thoughts on nuclear war by his monastic superiors. Merton, like Kennedy, decided to find another way. The words pouring out of Merton's typewriter were spilling over from unpublished manuscripts into his Cold War letters. As he wrote in one such letter to antinuclear archbishop Thomas Roberts, " At present my feeling is that the most urgent thing is to say what has to be said and say it in any possible way. If it cannot be printed, then let it be mimeographed. If it cannot be mimeographed, then let it be written on the backs of envelopes, as long as it gets said. " Cold War Letter 9, to Archbishop Thomas Roberts, S.J., London, December, 1 9 6 1 ; in Cold War Letters, p . 26 . Merton began a December 1 9 6 1 letter to Ethel Kennedy by noting a parallel between JFK's and his own thinking: "I liked very much the President's speech at Seattle which encouraged me a bit as I had j ust written something along those same lines. " Merton was referring to John Kennedy's rejection, like his own, of the false alternatives " Red or dead " in a speech the president gave at the University of Washington in November 1 9 6 1 . Kennedy had said of this false dilemma and those who chose either side of it: " It is a curious fact that each of these extreme opposites resembles the other. Each believes that we have only two choices: appeasement or war, suicide or surrender, humiliation or holocaust, to be either Red or dead . " Merton made an extended analysis of the same Cold War cliche, " Red or dead, " in the book his monastic superiors blocked from publication, Peace in the Post- Christian Era . There he observed: "We strive to soothe our madness by intoning more and more vacuous cliches. And at such times, far from being as innocuous as they are absurd, empty slogans take on a dreadful power. " The slogan he and Kennedy saw exemplifying such emptiness had begun in Germany in the form, " Better Red than dead . " "It was deftly fielded on the first bounce by the Americans, " Merton said, " and came back in reverse, thus acquiring an air of challenge and defiance. 'Better dead than Red' was a reply to effete and decadent cynicism. It was a condemnation of 'appeasement'. (Anything short of a nuclear attack on Russia rates as 'appeasement' . ) " What the heroic emptiness of " Better dead than Red " ignored was " the real bravery of patient, humble, persevering labor to effect, step by step, through honest negotiation, a gradual understanding that can eventually relieve tensions and bring about some agreement upon which serious disarmament measures can be based" -precisely what he hoped Ethel Kennedy's brother-in-law would do from the White House. In his letter to her, Merton therefore went on to praise John Kennedy, yet did so while encouraging him to break through Cold War propaganda and speak the truth: "I think that the fact that the President works overtime at trying to get people to face the situation as it really is may be the greatest thing he is doing. Certainly our basic need is for truth, and not for 'images' and slogans that 'engineer consent. ' We are living in a dream world. We do not know ourselves or our adversaries. We are myths to ourselves and they are myths to us. And we are secretly persuaded that we can shoot it out like the sheriffs on TV. This is not reality and the President can do a tremendous amount to get people to see the facts, more than any single person. " With inclusive language that did not single out JFK, but again with heavy implications for the president, Merton continued: "We cannot go on indefinitely relying on the kind of provisional framework of a balance of terror. If as Christians we were more certain of our duty, it might put us in a very tight spot politically but it would also merit for us special graces from God, and these we need badly. "
  
• 12/1/1961 Gus Hall and Benjamin Davis, officials of the US Communist Party, were indicted on 12 counts of violating the registration provisions of the McCarran Act. They were released on bail of $5000 each. The Hall-Davis Defense Committee was created 4/1962 on their behalf. The Committee's chief lawyer was John Abt.
  
• 12/1-2/1961 in a midnight speech over government radio and TV, Castro boasts that he has been a Marxist-Leninist for years, and hid those views for the sake of gaining power.
  
• 12/4/1961 Newsweek's cover story is "Thunder on the Right" with a photo of Maj. Gen. Edwin Walker. The story quoted Texas historian and author J. Evetts Haley saying of Earl Warren, "I'm for hanging him."
  
• 12/7/1961 Hoover spoke on NBC-TV: "The communist threat from without must not blind us to the communist threat from within. The latter is reaching into the very heart of America..."
  
• 12/7-8/1961 UN bombs and mortar fire hit hospitals, schools and homes in Katanga.
  
• 12/8/1961 Castro denounces Colombia and Panamanian regimes as governments of "traitors and accomplices of Yankee imperialism."
  
• 12/8/1961 Dean Rusk says that South Vietnam is in "clear and present danger" of going communist.
  
• 12/9, 11, 21/1961 FBI bug picks up Giancana conversation about "donation" to JFK campaign through Frank Sinatra and Joseph P. Kennedy. Hoover tells RFK about it.
  
• 12/9/1961 Colombia severs ties with Cuba.
  
• 12/10/1961 The Worker of this date has this headline: "Walker Defends American Nazis." Walker had said in a TV interview that the American Nazi Party and the Minutemen were basically just misguided patriots driven to extremism because of their concern over communism.
  
• 12/11/1961 US aircraft carrier Core arrives in Saigon with 33 US Army helicopters and 400 air and ground crewmen assigned to operate them for the South Vietnamese army.
  
• 12/11/1961 Work report on Oswald by the director of the radio plant in Minsk; it says that Oswald's work has been "unsatisfactory. He does not display the initiative for increasing his skill…reacts in an oversensitive manner to remarks from the foreman, and is careless in his work…"
  
• 12/12-16/1961 in Montgomery, Alabama, 737 were arrested in a march on city hall protesting the trials of 11 Freedom Riders.
  
• 12/13/1961 Retired Marine Colonel Mitchell Paige told an audience of right-wingers in Los Angeles that Earl Warren "seemed to stand with our enemies" and deserved to be hanged.
  
• 12/13/1961 The National Indignation Convention is held in Dallas. Mayor Cabell honors Gen. Edwin Walker.
  
• 12/14/1961 Panama breaks relations with Cuba.
  
• 12/14/1961 JFK letter to Diem, assuring him of US support and aid in maintaining South Vietnam's independence.
  
• 12/15/1961 Dr. King arrives in Albany, Georgia, in response to a call from Dr. W. G. Anderson, the leader of the Albany Movement to desegregate public facilities, which began in January 1961.
  
• 12/15/1961 JFK restates US commitment to independent South Vietnam. He leaves for a visit to Colombia, Puerto Rico and Venezuela, which lasts until 12/17. (Almanac of American History)
  
• 12/16/1961 The National Review reported that during the 1960 campaign, RFK aide Paul Corbin "was involved in an anonymous mailing of virulently anti-Catholic literature to Catholics from a mail drop across the line in Minnesota, with such success that many of them, with a sort of negative Pavlovian reflex, voted for Kennedy."
  
• 12/16/1961 MLK is arrested at an Albany demonstration. He is charged with obstructing the sidewalk and parading without a permit.
  
• 12/16/1961 US aircraft in Vietnam are authorized to fly combat missions as long as a Vietnamese crew member is aboard. US B-26 and SC-47 bombers are described as "reconnaissance bombers."
  
• 12/16-17/1961 JFK pays a state visit to Venezuela and Colombia, and then to Puerto Rico. He is warmly welcomed everywhere. He participates in a motorcade in Caracas, Venezuela, 9:25am on the 16th.
  
• 12/17/1961 Trip to South America: Bogotá, Colombia, motorcade, 11:17AM 1961 December 17. The photographers (including Cecil Stoughton) are in a car several lengths behind the president's car.
  
• 12/18/1961 In Montgomery, Alabama, the city and black groups reached an agreement to desegregate public facilities in return for ending black boycotts of white businesses.
  
• 12/19/1961 Joseph Kennedy Sr. had a severe stroke that left him paralyzed and unable to speak.
  
• 12/19/1961 St Louis Post Dispatch quoted Dr. Albert Schweitzer, a supporter of the UN and of independence for Katanga, criticizing the UN operation there: "One wonders how a civilized state can undertake such a thing...The mission of the United Nations is not to make war."
  
• 12/20/1961 NY Times reported that about 2000 uniformed US advisers were "operating in battle areas with South Vietnamese forces" and had the authority to fire back if fired upon.
  
• 12/21/1961 JFK met with UK prime minister MacMillan.
  
• 12/21/1961 Billy Graham, writing in Christianity Today, called the advance of communism as "almost surely a sign of the Second Coming."
  
• 12/22/1961 James Davis of Tennessee is first American serviceman killed in Vietnam.
  
• 12/25/1961 LBJ's sister, Josefa Johnson, was found dead in bed at her Fredericksburg, Texas home at 3:15 am. The cause of death was stated to be a brain hemorrhage. Josefa Johnson had returned home at 11:45 pm from a Christmas party at Lyndon Johnson's ranch. There was no autopsy and no inquest; the death certificate was executed by a doctor who was not present to examine the deceased. Ms. Johnson was embalmed on Christmas Day and buried on December 26th (Walt Brown, "The Sordid Story of Mac Wallace," *JFK/Deep Politics Quarterly,* July 1998).
  
• 12/25/1961 Marina was advised by Soviet authorities that she could leave with Oswald.
  
• 12/30/1961 A Board of Immigration Appeals upheld the deportation order against Carlos Marcello.
  
• 12/31/1961 US military personnel in Vietnam total about 3,200. In 1961 there were 14 US personnel killed or wounded in that country. $65 million in US military equipment and $136 million in economic aid have been delivered over the previous year.
  
• 12/31/1961 Trappist monk Thomas Merton wrote a letter anticipating the Cuban Missile Crisis ten months later. It was addressed to Clare Boothe Luce, the wife of Time-Life-Fortune owner Henry Luce, a Cold War media baron whose editorial policies demonized the communist enemy. Clare Boothe Luce, celebrated speaker, writer, and diplomat, shared Henry Luce's Cold War theology. In 1975 Clare Boothe Luce would lead investigators into the JFK assassination, working for the House Select Committee on Assassinations (HSCA), on a time-consuming wild goose chase based on disinformation. HSCA analyst Gaeton Fonzi discovered that Luce at the time was on the board of directors of the CIA-sponsored Association of Former Intelligence Officers. Even in the early sixties, Merton with his extraordinary sensitivity may have suspected Luce's intelligence connections. In any case he knew her as one of the wealthiest, most influential women in the world, with a decidedly anti-communist mind-set. He welcomed her, as he did one and all, into his circle of correspondents. In his New Year's Eve letter to Clare Boothe Luce, Merton said he thought the next year would be momentous. " Though 'all manner of things shall be well,' " he wrote, "we cannot help but be aware, on the threshold of 1962, that we have enormous responsibilities and tasks of which we are perhaps no longer capable. Our sudden, unbalanced, top-heavy rush into technological mastery, " Merton saw, had now made us servants of our own weapons of war. " Our weapons dictate what we are to do. They force us into awful corners. They give us our living, they sustain our economy, they bolster up our politicians, they sell our mass media, in short we live by them. But if they continue to rule us we will also most surely die by them. " Merton was a cloistered monk who watched no television and saw only an occasional newspaper. However, he had far-flung correspondents and spiritual antennae that were always on the alert. He could thus identify in his letter to Clare Boothe Luce the strategic nuclear issue that would bring humanity to the brink in October 1962: " For [our weapons] have now made it plain that they are the friends of the 'preemptive strike'. They are most advantageous to those who use them first. And consequently nobody wants to be too late in using them second. Hence the weapons keep us in a state of fury and desperation, with our fingers poised over the button and our eyes glued on the radar screen. You know what happens when you keep your eye fixed on something. You begin to see things that aren't there. It is very possible that in 1 962 the weapons will tell someone that there has been long enough waiting, and he will obey, and we will all have had it. " "We have to be articulate and sane , " Merton concluded, " and speak wisely on every occasion where we can speak, and to those who are willing to listen. That is why for one I speak to you, " he said hopefully to Luce. "We have to try to some extent to preserve the sanity of this nation, and keep it from going berserk which will be its destruction, and ours, and perhaps also the destruction of Christendom. " (JFK and the Unspeakable, Douglass)
  

• 1962 defense budget was $51.6 billion. JFK allows federal employees right to organize and collective bargaining but not to call strikes.
  
• Fred Cook writes in The Warfare State (MacMillan 1962): "It is a curious phenomenon--and it can hardly be a coincidence--that the election of this Democratic President, sponsoring a mildly liberal program that included aid to education and medical care for the aged, whipped up all the latent forces of reaction in America. The Radical Right had been propagandizing for years, it had had its converts on the lunatic fringe; but, since the wave of McCarthyism receded in 1954, it had shown few signs of becoming a national menace. With the election of Kennedy, all this changed. The Radical Right acquired a new lease on life; millions of dollars, much of it contributed by some of the largest corporations in America, came flying into the coffers of wild-eyed promoters..."
  
• Project 112 was a biological and chemical weapons experimentation project conducted by the US Army from 1962 to 1973. The project started under John F. Kennedy's administration, and was authorized by his Secretary of Defense Robert McNamara, as part of a total review of the US military. The name of the project refers to its number in the review process. Every branch of the armed services contributed funding and staff to the project. Experiments were planned and conducted by the Deseret Test Center and Deseret Chemical Depot at Fort Douglas, Utah. They were designed to test the effects of biological weapons and chemical weapons on service personnel. They involved unknowing test subjects, and took place on land and at sea via tests conducted upon unwitting US Naval vessels. The existence of the project (along with the related Project SHAD) was categorically denied by the military until May 2000, when a CBS Evening News investigative report produced dramatic revelations about the tests. This report caused the Department of Defense and the Department of Veterans Affairs to launch an extensive investigation of the experiments, and reveal to the affected personnel their exposure to toxins. See Deseret Chemical Depot. In a report issued in 2008, the General Accountability Office scolded the military for its lackluster effort to identify and find the victims of Project 112. According to the GAO report, in 2003 the military arbitrarily ended its attempts to find victims, even in the face of some veteran advocates' attempts to find hundreds of other veterans whose illnesses might have been caused or aggravated by their exposure to chemical and biological agent loaded munitions.
  
• Asbestos: Between 1930 and 1960, manufacturers did all they could to prevent the link between asbestos and respiratory diseases, including cancer, becoming known, so they could avoid prosecution. American workers had in fact sued the Johns Manville company as far back as 1932, but it was not until 1962 that epidemiologists finally established beyond any doubt what company bosses had known for a long time asbestos causes cancer.
  
• John George Gessner was an Army soldier who had been stationed at Los Alamos base in New Mexico; 1962 he traveled to Mexico City and met with the Soviets in their embassy and offered them secrets in return for going to the USSR. They sent him to the Cuban Embassy to get a transit visa, but he got the run-around. The CIA taped and photographed him repeatedly as he went back and forth between the two embassies. When he tried to return to the US, he was arrested and tried in federal court in Kansas City, Kansas. June 9 1964 in Federal Court in Kansas City, Kansas, army deserter George John Gessner, 28, is convicted of passing United States secrets to the Soviet Union. His conviction was later overturned. The CIA refused to allow the prosecution to use the photographic and recorded evidence because it would compromise their sources in Mexico City. (Hosty, Assignment Oswald p214)
  
• Author Michael Harrington, who spent two years with the Catholic Worker, wrote a book entitled The Other America: Poverty in the United States (New York: Macmillan, 1962), which had a powerful impact on JFK. Arthur Schlesinger recalled that the book helped crystallize Kennedy's determination in 1963 to enact an anti-poverty program (Thousand Days, p. 1010)
  
• National Strategy Information Center set up in 1962
  
• This Is Not a Test is an American motion picture released in 1962. Produced at the height of the Cold War, the film was one of a number of productions of the late-1950s and early-1960s based upon the premise of the outbreak of nuclear war. Starring a group of mostly unknown actors, This Is Not a Test begins with a lone police officer receiving orders to block a road leading into an unidentified city (dialogue indicates the location is somewhere in central California, however). Soon, he has detained several vehicles with a variety of occupants ranging from an elderly man and his granddaughter, to a man who has recently become rich and his alcoholic wife, to a trucker and a hitchhiker. The motorists and the police officer hear attack warnings over the police radio and begin to prepare for the inevitable bombing. The film focuses on the reactions to the impending attack by the motorists, and the officer's efforts to keep order. Complicating matters is the revelation that the hitchhiker is a psychotic who is wanted for murder. As the countdown to the missile attack continues, the men and women try desperately to convert a supply truck into an impromptu bomb shelter.
  
• 1962: The US government sprays florescent particles of zinc cadmium sulfide over Stillwater, Oklahoma, but reportedly does not monitor how the application affects the population. Leonard Cole, an expert on the Army's development of biological weapons, later explains to an Oklahoma TV news program: "Cadmium itself is known to be one of the most highly toxic materials in small amounts that a human can be exposed to If there were concentrations of it enough to make one sick, you could have serious consequences a person over a period of time could have illnesses that could range from cancer to organ failures." [KFOR, 4/25/03]
  
• In 1962, twenty-two elderly patients at the Jewish Chronic Disease Hospital in Brooklyn, New York were injected with live cancer cells by Chester M. Southam, who in 1952 had done the same to prisoners at the Ohio State Prison, in order to "discover the secret of how healthy bodies fight the invasion of malignant cells". The administration of the hospital attempted to cover the study up, but the New York State medical licensing board ultimately placed Southam on probation for one year. Two years later, the American Cancer Society elected him as their Vice President.
  
• Sometime between 1962 and 1973 the US government performs biological and/or chemical weapons tests in Florida and in Vieques, Puerto Rico, possibly exposing the civilian population to these agents. [Reuters, 10/10/02]
  
• "Too often in the past, we have thought of the artist as an idler and dilettante and of the lover of arts as somehow sissy and effete. We have done both an injustice. The life of the artist is, in relation to his work, stern and lonely. He has labored hard, often amid deprivation, to perfect his skill. He has turned aside from quick success in order to strip his vision of everything secondary or cheapening. His working life is marked by intense application and intense discipline." "The Arts in America," 1962 article by John F. Kennedy
  
• SR-71/A-12 testing begins at Area 51.
  
• 1/1962 The Texas School Book Depository acquires the 411 Elm St location, leasing it from D.H. Byrd (SS report CO-2-34030 12/7/1963) The Polk's criss-cross 1962 business directory shows that the TSBD was still listed as having an address on the first floor of 501 Elm St (Dal-Tex Bldg). The same directory lists the 411 Elm St building as vacant. The 1963 directory lists the book companies at 411 Elm. Also that year the first floor of the Dal-Tex become vacant. (William Weston)
  
• 1/1962 Oswald wrote letters to John Connally, who had recently been Secretary of the Navy, and to the Navy Dept explaining that his defection was "much in the same way E. Hemingway resided in Paris." (Folsom Exhibit 1) In January, Oswald mailed a handwritten letter to United States Senator John Tower. He wrote, "Since July 20, 1960 I have unsuccessfully applied for a Soviet exit visa to leave this country, the Soviets refuse to permit me and my Soviet wife (who applied at the US Embassy Moscow July 8, 1960 for immigration status to the USA) to leave the Soviet Union. I am a citizen of the United States of America (passport No 1733242, 1959) and I beseech you, Senator Tower, to rise to the question of holding by the Soviet Union of a citizen of the US, against his will and expressed desires." NOTE: In December 1963 Vladimir Petrov, head of the Slavic Language Department at Yale, read a copy of Oswald's letter and then wrote to Senator Tower. Petrov said, "I am satisfied that letter was not written by him (Harvey Oswald). It was written by a Russian with an imperfect knowledge of English."
  
• 1/1962 Publication of Irwin Suall's book The American Ultras: The Extreme Right and the Military-Industrial Complex (New America).
  
• Martin Luther King's biographer, David J. Garrow, has demonstrated rather conclusively that the origin of the Bureau's suspicion of King was its discovery in January 1962 that a wealthy New York businessman named Stanley Levison had emerged as King's closest adviser. And Levison, according to the Bureau's most trusted informants in the American Communist Party, code-named 'Solo' (Jack and Morris Childs), had been until about 1954 the American Communist Party's most important financier. Then he had apparently dropped out of the party. Now the Bureau learned that it had been shortly after Levison's supposed separation from the party when he had befriended King. The Bureau's conclusionbased on circumstantial logic rather than hard evidencewas that Levison represented an ambitious and apparently successful Communist plan to gain control over the Civil Rights Movement and its most prominent spokesman, Martin Luther King.
  
• Late 1961 or Early 1962: William K. Harvey is put in charge of Task Force W, the CIA unit for OPERATION MONGOOSE. Task Force W operates under guidance from the SGA and subsequently will involve approximately four hundred Americans at CIA headquarters and its Miami station, in addition to about two thousand Cubans, a private navy of speedboats, and an annual budget of some $50 million. Task Force W carr ies out a wide range of activities, mostly against Cuban ships and aircraft outside Cuba (and non-Cuban ships engaged in Cuban trade), such as contaminating shipments of sugar from Cuba and tampering with industrial products imported into the country. (A lleged Assassination Plots Involving Foreign Leaders, 11/20/75, p. 140; Branch)
  
• Laos: In early 1962 General Phoumi built up the garrison of Nam Tha, only fifteen miles from the Chinese border. Phoumi used his reinforced base to launch provocative probes into nearby Pathet Lao territory. For a time the Pathet Lao ignored Phoumi, aware that he was trying to create an international incident. Eventually they did engage in a series of fire fights with Phoumi forces, but refrained from attacking Nam Tha. However, Phoumi's troops abandoned Nam Tha anyhow, claiming they were under attack, and fled across the Mekong River into Thailand. Then they waited for the United States to intervene in the conflict they had choreographed. As the Times of London reported, " CIA agents had deliberately opposed the official American objective of trying to establish a neutral government, had encouraged Phoumi in his reinforcement of Nam Tha, and had negatived the heavy financial pressure brought by the Kennedy administration upon Phoumi by subventions from its own budget. " Emboldened by his knowledge of his CIA backing, Phoumi was brazen in his defiance of President Kennedy's policy. The Times correspondent stated: "The General apparently was quite outspoken, and made it known that he could disregard the American embassy and the military advisory group because he was in communication with other American agencies. " The CIA's Phoumi ploy failed, however, to create a crisis that would push Kennedy to intervene and kill the developing coalition in Laos. Instead the president did nothing more than make a show of force, first to the Communists by deploying troops to neighboring Thailand, and second to his advisers by having contingency plans drawn up for a Laotian intervention that would never happen. But JFK also authorized Averell Harriman to transfer Jack Hazey, the CIA officer closest to Phoumi. Hazey had been the Agency's counterpart in Laos of David Atlee Phillips in the Caribbean, who would deploy anti-Castro Cubans in raids designed to draw JFK into a war with Cuba. In neither case did the president bite. Walt Haney, "The Pentagon Papers and the United States Involvement in Laos , " in Pentagon Papers, vol. 5 , p. 264. Hugh Toye summarizing the Times' articles of May 24 and 31 , 1962, in his Laos: Buffer State or Battleground ( London: Oxford University Press, 1968), p. 184 . The Times (May 31, 1962), cited by Toye, Laos, pp. 184-85 . Haney, "Pentagon Papers , " p. 264. Stevenson, End of Nowhere, p. 170 .
  
• 1/1/1962 The New Year's Day parade in Cuba provides U.S. intelligence sources with the first reliable intelligence on the extent of Soviet Bloc arms deliveries to Cuba. Aircraft in the possession of the Cuban Revolutionary Air Force are estimated to include around sixty Soviet-built jet fighters, primarily MiG-15 and MiG-17 aircraft with a limited number of somewhat more advanced MiG-19 planes. Small numbers of helicopters and light transport aircraft are also believed to have been provided to Cuba. (CINCLANT Historical Account of Cuban Crisis, 4/29/63, pp. 6-8)
  
• 1/1/1962 more than a year before the assassination, Cubans held a mock funeral for a still very-much-alive JFK, a reflection of tensions between Cuba and the United States. (Miami Herald 3/17/2012)
  
• 1/1/1962 JFK wrote to Diem via a State Dept bulletin, "We have been deeply disturbed by the assault on your country. Our indignation has mounted as the deliberate savagery of the Communist program of assassination, kidnapping and wanton violence became clear."
  
• 1/2/1962 Castro boasts of Cuba's military strength and says, "We reiterate we are Marxist-Leninists and we do not repent it."
  
• 1/3/1962 JFK ordered the activation of two Regular Army divisions.
  
• 1/3/1962 State Dept charges that Cuba "represents a bridgehead of Sino-Soviet imperialism and a base for agitation and subversion within the inner defense of the Western Hemisphere."
  
• 1/3/1962 Portugal announced that it might quit the UN.
  
• 1/3/1962 Vatican announces that Castro and other Cuban officials have been excommunicated for their actions against foreign-born Catholic priests and bishops, 136 of whom had been arrested and deported the previous 9/17.
  
• 1/4/1962 Fred Korth, a Fort Worth lawyer and bank president, is appointed as Navy Secretary by President John F. Kennedy on 4 January 1962 to replace John Connally. According to author Seth Kantor, Korth only got the job after strong lobbying from Lyndon B. Johnson. A few weeks after taking the post, Korth overruled top Navy officers who had proposed that the X-22 contract be given to Douglas Aircraft Corporation. Instead he insisted the contract be granted to the more expensive bid of the Bell Corporation. This was a subsidiary of Bell Aerospace Corporation of Forth Worth, Texas. This created some controversy as Korth was a former director of the company. Korth also became very involved in discussions about the TFX contract. Korth, was the former president of the Continental Bank, which had loaned General Dynamics considerable sums of money during the late 1950s and early 1960s. Korth later told the John McClellan committee that investigated the granting of the TFX contract to General Dynamics "that because of his peculiar position he had deliberately refrained from taking a directing hand in this decision (within the Navy) until the last possible moment." As I. F. Stone pointed out, it was "the last possible moment" which counted. "Three times the Pentagon's Source Selection Board found that Boeing's bid was better and cheaper than that of General Dynamics and three times the bids were sent back for fresh submissions by the two bidders and fresh reviews. On the fourth round, the military still held that Boeing was better but found at last that the General Dynamics bid was also acceptable." Stone goes on to argue: "The only document the McClellan committee investigators were able to find in the Pentagon in favour of that award, according to their testimony, was a five-page memorandum signed by McNamara, Korth, and Eugene Zuckert, then Secretary of the Air Force." Robert McNamara justified his support for General Dynamics because "Boeing had from the very beginning consistently chosen more technically risky tradeoffs in an effort to achieve operational features which exceeded the required performance characteristics." The TFX program involved the building of 1,700 planes for the Navy and the Air Force. The contract was estimated to be worth over $6.5 billion, making it the largest contract for military planes in the nation's history.
  
• 1/4/1962 US and South Vietnam announce that they are cooperating to boost Vietnam's economic and military strength.
  
• 1/5/1962 NBC Vietnam correspondent James Robinson told his colleagues on the program Projections 62: "American troops in battle uniform, fully armed, are being killed [by] and killing Communist-led rebels in South Vietnam. American officers are in full command authority of important military operations there. And our active military participation in this war is on the increase...We are involved in a shooting war in Southeast Asia."
  
• 1/5/1962 Oswald letter to Robert: "I really don't know how I'll feel to be back in the States." (H 16 862)
  
• 1/5/1962 JFK asked the Treasury Dept to look into expensive charity balls to scrutinize whether the participants were taking any unauthorized deductions.
  
• 1/5/1962 US embassy in Moscow wrote Oswald suggesting that he might want to go to the US first, with Marina to follow after her visa difficulties were straightened out. 1/16 he answered saying this was out of the question.
  
• 1/6/1962 US diplomatic ties with the Dominican Republic resumed.
  
• 1/7/1962 JFK met with Gen. Lucius Clay and announced "full agreement" with him on the handling of possible crisis situations in Berlin.
  
• 1/7/1962 A long-secret report was made public that warned JFK that failure to liberalize US trade policies would have serious "political consequences."
  
• 1/8/1962 SCLC released a report criticizing Hoover's FBI for not pursuing police brutality against blacks in Georgia.
  
• 1/8/1962 In a critical, prophetic letter to his friend W. H. Ferry, Trappist monk Thomas Merton wrote: "I have little confidence in Kennedy, I think he cannot fully measure up to the magnitude of his task, and lacks creative imagination and the deeper kind of sensitivity that is needed. Too much the Time and Life mentality, than which I can imagine nothing further, in reality, from, say, Lincoln. What is needed is really not shrewdness or craft, but what the politicians don't have: depth, humanity and a certain totality of self forgetfulness and compassion, not just for individuals but for man as a whole: a deeper kind of dedication. Maybe," Merton speculates in an inspired insight, "Kennedy will break through into that someday by miracle. But such people are before long marked out for assassination. " From Thomas Merton's January 18, 1962, letter to W. H. Ferry, in Letters from Tom: A Selection of Letters from Father Thomas Merton, Monk of Gethsemani, to W. H. Ferry, 1 96 1 - 1 968, edited by W. H. Ferry ( Scarsdale, N.Y. : Fort Hill Press, 1983)
  
• 1/9/1962 Laotian government complained of recent US pressure to form a coalition government as "intolerable."
  
• 1/9/1962 Macmillan and Adenauer ended talks in Bonn with an agreement to support future East-West talks on Berlin.
  
• 1/10/1962 The 87th Congress convened and elected John McCormack as Speaker of the House.
  
• 1/10/1962 USSR denounced US for "gross interference" in South Vietnam and for violating international agreements on Indonchina.
  
• 1/11/1962 JFK's state of the union address called for more presidential authority to cut tariffs, cut taxes during a recession and strengthen welfare programs.
  
• 1/11/1962 Dade County intelligence files: "At approximately 6:30 P.M., January 10, 1962, Detective A. L. TARABOCHIA was contacted at his residence by Secret Service Agent ERNEST ARAGON in reference to alleged plot to assassinate the President of the United States. Agent ARAGON revealed that, according to the information received by his agency, RAFAEL ANSELMO RODRIGUEZ MOLINS, a naturalized U.S. citizen of Dominican ancestry, was en route to Miami from Chicago to attempt to assassinate President KENNEDY next time he arrives in West Palm Beach. The subject also known as RAFAEL MOLINA is a W/M, 39, 5' 10", brown eyes, black receding hair, and wears glasses. RODRIGUEZ is known to disguise himself as a priest and carries a weapon concealed in a camera case. Since the subject has a badly infected foot, there is a possibility that he walks with a limp. Agent ARAGON added that the subject was to contact a Cuban male living in the Miami area before proceeding to West Palm Beach. The Cuban, ARMANDO PABLO LOPEZ ESTRADA QUINTANA, was a member of the forces that attempted the invasion of Cuba on April 17, 1961. LOPEZ is a W/M, DOB 3/15/39, 6ft, 200 lbs., last known address New York City, NY. LOPEZ is married and his wife's name is MERCEDES LOPEZ."
  
• 1/11/1962 US Air Force B-52H bomber set a record by flying halfway around the world without refueling.
  
• 1/12/1962 Merger of the country's two largest railroads - New York Central and Pennsylvania - was approved by their respective directors
  
• 1/12/1962 At the UN, Pakistan called for a Security Council on the dispute with India over Kashmir.
  
• 1/13/1962 The Joint Chiefs gave McNamara a memo to pass on to the President, arguing that US should send combat troops to South Vietnam. He forwarded the memo to JFK on 1/27, adding: "I am not prepared to endorse the views of the Chiefs until we have had more experience with our present program in South Vietnam." (In Retrospect p41)
  
• 1/15/1962 Tom Wicker recalled: "After long and solemn deliberations around [Scotty] Reston's desk on January 15, 1962, I was entrusted with a question for President Kennedy that perhaps ten Times reporters had honed to what we thought was a fine point. Kennedy could not entirely evade it, we were sure. So as soon as he recognized me later that day, I arose…and demanded in my sternest voice: Mr. President, are American troops now in combat in Vietnam?' Kennedy looked at me - six feet away and slightly beneath his elevated lectern - as if he thought I might be crazy. "No," he said crisply - not another word - and pointed at someone else for the next question." (On Press p92)
  
• 1/15/1962 US tanks were withdrawn from the Berlin Wall in an effort to improve relations with the USSR.
  
• 1/15/1962 South Vietnam: the Peoples Revolutionary Party is formed.
  
• 1/17/1962 Pat Eboli arrives in Italy from New York and tells Lucky Luciano that the mob leadership in the US had met and decided that Luciano would have to be killed. Carlo Gambino had already taken Luciano's place as de facto head of the Commission.
  
• 1/17/1962 The Soviets withdrew 12 tanks that had been stationed near the Berlin Wall.
  
• 1/18/1962 JFK sent his budget for FY 1963 to Congress; it emphasized defense and space spending. He forecast a half-billion-dollar surplus, and $92.5 billion in spending. The business community saw his projected surplus as wishful thinking or fiscal slight-of-hand.
  
• 1/18/1962 Edward Lansdale outlines "The Cuba Project," a program under OPERATION MONGOOSE aimed at the overthrow of the Castro government. Thirty-two planning tasks, ranging from sabotage actions to intelligence activities, are assigned to the agencies involved in MONGOOSE. The program is designed to develop a "strongly motivated political action movement" within Cuba capable of generating a revolt eventually leading to the downfall of the Castro government. Lansdale envisioned that the United States would provide overt support in the final stages of an uprising, including, if necessary, using military force. (The Cuba Project, 1/18/62; Alleged Assassination Plots Involving Foreign Leaders, 11/20/75, p. 142)
  
• 1/18/1962 Dominican Republic: deposed Council of State retook control of the country; Rafael Bonnelly was named president.
  
• 1/19/1962 A meeting of the SGA is held in Robert Kennedy 's office. Notes taken by CIA representative George McManus contain the following passages: "Conclusion Overthrow of Castro is Possible...a solution to the Cuban problem today carried top priority in U.S. Gov[ernment]. No time, money, effort--or manpower is to be spared. Yesterday...the president indicated to [ Robert Kennedy ] that the final chapter had not been written--it's got to be done and will be done." McManus attributes the phrase "top priority in the U.S. government--no time, money...to be spared" to Attorney General Kennedy. (Alleged Assassination Plots Involving Foreign Leaders, 11/20/75, p. 141)
  
• 1/20/1962 Lansdale wrote in a memo that he felt RFK had given the signal that "we are in a combat situation - where we have been given full command."
  
• 1/21/1962 Jack Anderson, in Parade magazine, reported, "Organized crime is under attack. For the first time, the full forces of the Federal Government have been thrown into the battle against it."
  
• 1/22-30/1962 A conference of the OAS is held in Punta del Este, Uruguay. At the close of the conference on October 30, the foreign ministers from the twenty-one American republics vote to exclude Cuba "from participation in the inter-American system." The measure is approved fourteen-to-one, with six abstentions. Another resolution is also adopted prohibiting OAS members from selling arms to Cuba and setting measures for collective defense against Cuban activities in the hemisphere.
  
• 1/22/1962 Sylvanus Olympio, president of Togo, was the target of an unsuccessful assassination attempt.
  
• 1/23/1962 Congressional hearings into the "muzzling" of military officers opened, appearing before the Senate Preparedness Subcommittee in 36 days of hearings. Gen. Walker was among the witnesses. He charged that "with this nation's survival at stake, our armed forces are paralyzed by our national policy of no win' and retreat from victory." He blamed Secretary of State Rusk and others in the State Dept.
  
• 1/24/1962 Mahendra, king of Nepal, was the target of an unsuccessful assassination attempt.
  
• 1/25/1962 After returning from a trip to the Congo, Sen. Dodd said, "The UN has brought the chaos and bloodshed of the North Congo into areas where there was complete public order so long as they were administered by the Tshombe government."
  
• 1/26/1962 Lucky Luciano went to Capodichino Airport in Naples to greet the film producer who had flown from the U.S. to meet with him about making a movie of Luciano's life. The mob boss stepped from his limousine and began walking across the runway toward the producer, his arm outstretched for a handshake, a wide smile on his puffy face. His features were suddenly twisted in a painful expression. Luciano grabbed his shirtfront and he then fell to the paved runway, dead of a heart attack.
  
• 1/26/1962 Bishop Burke of the Buffalo, NY Catholic Diocese bans the Twist in schools, parishes and youth events.
  
• 1/27/1962 McNamara sends a memo from the JCS to JFK urging deployment of US forces in Vietnam.
  
• 1/29/1962 Note from the head of the Administrative Regulations Division to the first and second assistants in the Criminal Division stated: "Our primary interest was in Giancana...apparently detective (Maheu) has some connection with Giancana but he claims was because of CIA assignment in connection with Cuba - CIA has objected, may have to drop." Assistant Attorney General Herbert Miller then asked the FBI to again speak with Edwards about the prosecution of Maheu. (Memo from Miller, l/31/62; Assassination Plots, Interim Report: Alleged Assassination Plots Involving Foreign Leaders, pp129)
  
• 1/29/1962 Sen. John Tower said on the Senate floor, "I think it is naive and unrealistic to be preoccupied with the question of disarmament. We know that the communist conspiracy has no intention of co-existing with us."
  
• 1/29/1962 The nuclear test ban conference of the US, USSR and UK in Geneva deadlocked over a monitoring system for international control.
  
• 1/30/1962 Oswald letter to Robert expressing concerns that he may be charged with a crime upon his return to the US.
  
• 1/30/1962 Oswald writes to John Connally, former Secretary of the Navy, appealing his discharge. (CD82) The reader may recall that Fred Korth, an attorney from Fort Worth, represented Edwin Ekdahl in his petition for divorce against Marguerite Oswald in 1948. Also, this letter to John Connally is dated January 30, 1961 (not 1962)-prior to the date that Oswald met Marina. I attempted to verify the date of the letter by looking at the postmark on the envelope in which the letter was mailed from Minsk. The left side of the postmark, which shows the month and day of mailing, is in perfect condition. The right half of the postmark, which shows the year, has been removed. (Armstrong)
  
• 1/31/1962 Gen. Cabell retired as deputy CIA director; replaced by Army Major General Marshall Sylvester Carter.
  
• 1/31/1962 Letter from the INS to State Department denying request to waive the sanctions so that Marina Oswald could come to the US.
  

• 2/1962 On the 20th anniversary of the Voice of America, Kennedy said, "We seek a free flow of information...We are not afraid to entrust the American people with unpleasant facts, foreign ideas, alien philosophies, and competitive values. For a nation that is afraid to let its people judge the truth and falsehood in an open market is a nation that is afraid of its people."
  
• Early in 1962, the editors of Fortune expressed their concern that the Alliance for Progress and other Kennedy administration programs were being heavily influenced by the doctrine of the Economic Commission for Latin America, a group established in 1947 under United Nations auspices. *Fortune* charged that the doctrine favored government *dirigisme*, that is, a type of economic nationalism which included economic planning to achieve rapid growth. *Fortune* advised that it would be 'insane' for the Kennedy administration to embrace this dirigisme and turn its back on those in Latin America who favor 'sound money, higher productivity in exportable goods, and internal free enterprise'."(x Fortune, February 1962, 'The Quality of Foreign Aid', pp. 79-81).
  
• 2/1962 The JCS establishes a "first priority basis" for the completion of all contingency plans for military action against Cuba. (USCONARC Participation in the Cuban Crisis, 10/63, p. 17)
  
• 2/1962 Kerry Wendell Thornley completed The Idle Warriors, which has the historical distinction of being the only book written about Lee Harvey Oswald before Kennedy's assassination in 1963.
  
• 2/1/1962 Ken Kesey's One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest is published. This novel about patients in a mental asylum becomes a counterculture classic.
  
• 2/2/1962 Gen. Walker filed as a candidate in the Texas Democratic gubernatorial primary. ·
  
• 2/2/1962 Pentagon memorandum entitled "Possible Actions to Provoke, Harass or Disrupt Cuba," written by Brig. Gen. William H. Craig and submitted to Brig. Gen. Edward Lansdale, the commander of the Operation Mongoose project. The memorandum outlines Operation Bingo, a plan to, in its words, "create an incident which has the appearance of an attack on U.S. facilities (GMO) in Cuba, thus providing an excuse for use of U.S. military might to overthrow the current government of Cuba." It also includes Operation Dirty Trick, a plot to blame Castro if the 1962 Mercury manned space flight carrying John Glenn crashed, saying: "The objective is to provide irrevocable proof that, should the MERCURY manned orbit flight fail, the fault lies with the Communists et al Cuba [sic]." It continues, "This to be accomplished by manufacturing various pieces of evidence which would prove electronic interference on the part of the Cubans."
  
• 2/3/1962 White House announces near-total embargo on U.S.- Cuba trade. It becomes effective 2/7. The embargo does not include "certain foodstuffs, medicines and medical supplies."
  
• 2/4/1962 Castro speech in Havana before an enthusiastic crowd; perhaps his most famous speech, he outlined his vision of revolution and subversion through the hemisphere and called for support from "persecuted" non-whites everywhere.
  
• 2/4/1962 The first US helicopter is shot down in Vietnam; it was ferrying troops in an attack against the village of Hong My.
  
• 2/5/1962 UN General Assembly's Political Committee begins hearing charges by Cuba that US is planning "direct and unilateral intervention" with its own armed forces.
  
• 2/5/1962 McNamara noted in a report that he was cautiously optimistic about the military situation in Vietnam.
  
• 2/7/1962 Jacques Vallee diary entry: "Through a friend who is doing his military service with the French Air Force headquarters, I have had access to the saucer files they have been quietly maintaining since the early fifties. They are full of well-documented sightings, including a remarkable incident in which an object was tracked on radar over Morocco." (Forbidden Science p60)
  
• 2/7/1962 Radio Havana accused US of preparing for a new invasion of Cuba. Similar charges will be made throughout March.
  
• 2/7/1962 Two US Army air support companies arrive in Saigon; total US troops in-country: 4,000.
  
• 2/7/1962 Initially, Richard Bissell, as Deputy Director for Plans, was to leave office about the same time as Allen Dulles, and for the same reason. However, shortly after McCone took office, his wife died and he asked Bissell to remain on for a while. Ultimately, he decided, with the concurrence of John and Robert Kennedy, to offer Bissell the position of Deputy Director for Research (DD/R). Bissell who had opposed the creation of such a directorate in an earlier memorandum wrote this letter to correct McCone's impression that Bissell was seriously considering taking the position. In it he explains his reservations about the wisdom of transferring some activities (including the Office of Scientific Intelligence) to the new directorate as well as his personal reasons for not wanting to accept the position. On page 3, Bissell notes that there was a possibility the previous August of his serving with the CIA or Defense Department in the area of advanced reconnaissance a reference to the plan, vetoed by DCI Allen Dulles, to have Bissell become the first Director of the NRO. As a result of Bissell's decision, McCone turned to Herbert Scoville to serve as the first (and, as it would turn out, only) Deputy Director for Research.
  
• 2/8/1962 US Military Assistance Command (MACV) is set up in South Vietnam, headed by Paul Harkins; about 4000 US military men are already serving secretly in Vietnam, though publicly the Pentagon implied that the 685-man Geneva agreement ceiling was still in effect. February 8, 1962, by order of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, Adm. Harry D. Felt (who was personally opposed to sending US combat troops into Vietnam) created the U.S. Military Assistance Command Vietnam (MACV) as a sub-unified command headed by General Paul D. Harkins. As Harkins' superior in the chain of command, Felt was criticized for exercising excessive control over MACV field operations. Felt denied many of Harkins' equipment requests, interfered with details of Harkins' tactical planning, forbade Harkins to communicate with the Joint Chiefs of Staff without advance permission from CINCPAC, and actually bypassed Harkins to direct certain tactical operations himself from his headquarters in Hawaii. Many observers argued that reporting to CINCPAC was hindering MACV operations and that MACV should be an independent command under the direct supervision of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, but Felt and his successors as CINCPAC blocked multiple attempts to remove MACV from their control, arguing that allowing MACV to bypass the unified regional commander would violate the principle of unity of command in the region.
  
• 2/8/1962 Charonne, France: a political demonstration against the far right turned ugly as cops charged the unarmed crowd, forcing it to retreat down the stairs of the subway station. The iron gates had been drawn shut, but the policemen, many of whom belonged to neofascist groups, charged and beaten people viciously. The people in the back were forced against the bars, and several men and women were crushed to death. No one was ever charged with any crimes, and to squelch the media uproar, Interior Minister Roger Frey seized leftist newspapers the next day and issued a statement exonerating the police.
  
• 2/10/1962 Francis Gary Powers was released by the Soviets, in exchange for Soviet spy Rudolf Abel.The Soviets also released an American student, Frederic L. Pryor. This was the first spy exchange of the Cold War.
  
• 2/12/1962 State Dept Visa Office told the INS that they preferred to have Oswald in the US rather than in Russia. (WR 764)
  
• 2/14/1962 Jacqueline Kennedy conducted nationally televised tour of the White House.
  
• 2/14/1962 Judith Campbell called the White House.
  
• 2/14/1962 JFK tells a news conference that the US has enlarged its training program and logistics support for the South Vietnamese. US advisers will fire back if fired upon, "but we have not sent combat troops in [the] generally understood sense of the word." The GOP National Committee accused Kennedy of not being honest with the American people about US "advisers" in Vietnam. (New York Times 2/14/1962) JFK shot back that "We have not sent combat troops there - in the generally understood sense of the word. We have increased our training mission and our logistics support..." and cited "our security needs in the area." James Reston responded the same day, "The United States is now involved in an undeclared war in South Vietnam. This is well known to the Russians, the Chinese Communists and everyone else concerned except the American people." (March of Folly p299)
  
• 2/15/1962 Nixon states that he hopes JFK will "step up the buildup [in Vietnam] and under no circumstances curtail it because of possible criticism."
  
• 2/15/1962 The Oswalds' first daughter, June, is born. After the baby was born, Oswald seemed to lose some of his impatience to return to the US; he only wrote one letter to the Embassy in February and March 1962. The process for approving Marina's US immigration visa was still going on. In 1961 the State Dept had run a security check on her through the FBI and CIA. (Case Closed 72) There was a long period of trying to convince the State Dept that she would not become a public charge in the US; the INS was told by State that it "believes it is in the interest of the US to get Lee Harvey Oswald and his family out of the Soviet Union and on their way to this country soon. An unstable character, whose actions are entirely unpredictable, Oswald may well refuse to leave the USSR or subsequently attempt to return there if we should make it impossible for him to be accompanied from Moscow by his wife and child." (Testimony of Virginia James H 11 186) On this day, Oswald writes his brother Robert a letter about the birth; this letter (H 16 870-1) is mostly free of grammatical and spelling errors.
  
• 2/16/1962 Time reported that after the Bay of Pigs, RFK became enraged with Bowles, who advised newsmen that he had been against the invasion: "So you advised against this operation. Well, as of now, your were all for it." When Bowles threatened to resign and speak out, Bobby told him, "We will destroy you." (Time 2/16/1962; It Didn't Start with Watergate 84-85)
  
• 2/16/1962 Date on a mugshot photo of David Ferrie.
  
• 2/16/1962 By late 1961, the CIA's exploitation of science and technology had become a very significant aspect of the agency's activities. James Killian and Edwin Land, who had encouraged Allen Dulles to seek scientific solutions to intelligence problems, thought it was time that the CIA's scientific activities be placed in a separate directorate. As a result of the Bay of Pigs fiasco, Dulles would leave in late November, and be replaced by John McCone, a former Under Secretary of the Air Force and Atomic Energy Commission chairman. Killian and Land pushed McCone to establish a new scientific directorate which resulted in this February 16, 1962 headquarters notice. The only activities whose transfer to the new directorate to be known as the Deputy Directorate for Research (DDR) was guaranteed by this notice were some of those belonging to the Development Projects Division. That division started out as the Development Projects Staff and originally managed a single program the U-2. By 1962 it was also responsible for the planned U-2 follow-on, OXCART, as well as the CORONA and ARGON satellite programs. Those programs would be managed by the new directorate's Office of Special Activities. Before the end of 1962, two other offices would be established in the DDR the Office of ELINT and the Office of Research and Development. Heading the new directorate was Dr. Herbert J. Scoville Jr., who had been with the agency since 1955, as head of the Office of Scientific Intelligence, an office that would remain in the Directorate of Intelligence during Scoville's tenure.
  
• 2/17/1962 Bissell resigned as deputy director for plans of the CIA, replaced by Richard Helms. After President Kennedy fired Bissell from the CIA for his role in the Bay of Pigs, Richard Helms, his successor as Deputy Director of Plans, took up where Bissell had left off in conspiring to kill Castro. Helms testified to the Church Committee that he never informed either the president or his newly appointed CIA director John McCone of the assassination plots. Nor did he inform any other officials in the Kennedy administration. Helms said he sought no approval for the murder attempts because assassination was not a subject that should be aired with higher authority. When he was asked if President Kennedy had been informed, Helms said that " nobody wants to embarrass a President of the United States by discussing the assassination of foreign leaders in his presence. " He also didn't seek the approval of the Special Group Augmented that oversaw the anti-Castro program because, he said, "I didn't see how one would have expected that a thing like killing or murdering or assassination would become a part of a large group of people sitting around a table in the United States Government. " John McCone and the other surviving members of the Kennedy Administration testified that " assassination was outside the parameters of the Administration's anti-Castro program. " Yet Richard Helms and other CIA insiders kept running assassination plots in conflict with the president's wishes.
  
• 2/18/1962 RFK, briefly stopping over in Saigon on his way to Thailand, told the press, "We are going to win in Vietnam. We will remain here until we do win." (NYT 2/19)
  
• 2/19/1962 Richard Helms succeeded Bissell as CIA deputy director of plans. Helms writes memo to Harvey authorizing him to retain the services of "Principal Agent QJWIN" (Jose Mankel, drug smuggler and mercenary from Germany, per Gus Russo) "for the services of ZRRIFLE." According to a later memo he was terminated on Feb 14, 1964 after failing to establish cover for an assignment. "Harvey would later tell the inspector general that the code name QJWIN designated a capability to recruit professional assassins, separate from ZRRIFLE, but that he came to use the terms interchangeably." Harvey 's first meeting with Edwards on the subject of the Castro operation. They plan his takeover details during March.
  
• 2/19/1962 Pravda warned that the United States should leave Third World countries alone (Cuba was not mentioned but it was implied) or risk "the unloosing of a new war."
  
• 2/20/1962 Edward Lansdale presents a six-phase schedule for OPERATION MONGOOSE designed to culminate in October 1962 with an "open revolt and overthrow of the Communist regime." The basic plan includes political, psychological, military, sabotage, and intelligence operations as well as proposed "attacks on the cadre of the regime, including key leaders." Lansdale notes that a "vital decision" has not yet been made regarding possible U.S. military actions in support of plans to overthrow Fidel Castro. (Alleged Assassination Plots Involving Foreign Leaders, 11/20/75, pp. 143-44)
  
• 2/20/1962 Lt. Col. John Glenn Jr., in Mercury 6 mission, became first American in orbit when he circled the earth 3 times in the Mecury capsule Friendship 7. His ship was launched at 9:47am from Cape Canaveral and he landed in the Caribbean that afternoon. At one point, his controls malfunctioned and caused the ship to yaw; he was able to correct this problem manually.
  
• 2/23/1962 Letter to Oswald from John Connally advising that Connally no longer was Secretary of the Navy; Oswald's letter was forwarded to Fred Korth. (CD 82)
  
• 2/23/1962 JFK arrived at Cape Canaveral to praise Glenn's flight.
  
• 2/26/1962 Supreme Court struck down segregation laws in transportation facilities, both interstate and intrastate.
  
• 2/26/1962 Astronaut John Glenn spoke before a joint session of Congress.
  
• 2/26/1962 At a meeting of the SGA , the scale of Lansdale's "Cuba Project" is sharply reduced, and Lansdale is directed to develop a detailed plan for an intelligence-gathering program only. Concerned that General Lansdale's various covert action plans under Operation Mongoose were simply becoming more outrageous and going nowhere, Robert Kennedy told him to drop all anti-Castro efforts. Instead, Lansdale was ordered to concentrate for the next three months strictly on gathering intelligence about Cuba. It was a humiliating defeat for Lansdale, a man more accustomed to praise than to scorn. (Bamford, Body of Secrets)
  
• 2/27/1962 Hoover tells RFK of Judith Campell's calls to White House, and her relations with Giancana and Roselli.
  
• 2/27/1962 Dr. King is tried and convicted for leading the December march in Albany.
  
• 2/27/1962 Two rebel South Vietnamese air force pilots bomb, napalm and strafe Diem's palace, but he escapes unharmed. The pilots were frustrated over the conduct of the war.
  
• 2/27/1962 In a letter to his brother, Oswald mentions listening to Voice of America on his shortwave radio. (H 16 873)
  

• 3/1962 Nixon's Six Crises is published, charging that Kennedy was briefed on the Cuban exile training before the election, and had deliberately endangered it by his campaign statements. The White House denied this, and was supported by Allen Dulles. Salinger said that JFK "was not told before the election of 1960 of the training of troops outside of Cuba or of any plans for 'supporting an invasion of Cuba.'" The campaign briefings had only been general in nature, and Kennedy had only heard of the invasion plans on 11/18/1960. Dulles said that Nixon had misunderstood: "My briefings...did not cover our own government's plans or programs for action, overt or covert." (NY Herald Tribune 3/21)
  
• 3/1962 On two occasions, McNamara said publicly that military force alone would not prevent a communist takeover in Vietnam. John Kenneth Galbraith wrote Kennedy to look for any opportunity for a political settlement in Vietnam. The JCS fought Galbraith's proposals vigorously, and Kennedy continued to muddle along.
  
• 3/1962 JFK told a press conference that if regular combat units were required in Vietnam, that would be "a basic change...which calls for a constitutional decision, of course I would go to the Congress."
  
• 3/1962 Thomas Merton wrote in a March 1962 letter, " the first and greatest of all commandments is that America shall not and must not be beaten in the Cold War, and the second is like unto this, that if a hot war is necessary to prevent defeat in the Cold War, then a hot war must be fought even if civilization is to be destroyed. "
  
• 3/1962 The Mohole was an early 1960s government project to, purely for scientific purposes, drill to the Moho layer deep under the Earth where crust turns to magma. It shows both genuine scientific enthusiasm being overwhelmed by political cronyism: "In the fall of 1958, which was already a year of scientific wonders, plans were announced in the technical and popular press for what promised to be an amazing undertaking. A group of American geophysicists were going to drill a hole several miles beneath the sea floor all the way to the remote interior of the planetthe vast nucleus of dense, compacted rock known as the mantle... an article in Life by John Steinbeck, who had been an amateur oceanographer as well as a prominent novelist. His perfervid accounts of the first exploratory drillings did much to increase public support for the scheme, which reached its peak in 1962, when Congress voted to back it with an appropriation of more than $40 million. And then, abruptly, there was silence... History is full of examples of technological accomplishments that looked impossible when they were started. The 1940s and 1950s abounded with such triumphs, and by 1958 it was reasonable to think that no problem existed that couldn't be solved if enough smart people put their minds to it. However, most of the great advances of that era were made possible by inventions that had not been around a decade or two before: radar, controlled atomic fission, jet engines, lasers, computers. Mohole, by contrast, would have to make do with incremental improvements in existing technology...The basic equipment devised for the experiment surpassed all expectations, and the expedition returned in triumph to be feted by scientific organizations all over the globe...Preliminary grants and corporate donations had paid for CUSS I, but a ship capable of actually drilling the Mohole would require an entirely different level of funding. Estimates of the cost kept going up, but even in the earliest stages it was clear that it would be at least $15 million. By 1962 the price tag had passed $40 million, and when the project was finally abandoned, in 1966, it was more than $110 million. Government financing would obviously be needed. Many Mohole advocates, mindful of the importance of public support, wanted to go right ahead and drill to the mantle, with no more exploratory missions to eat up funds. Others, including Bascom, privately wondered if the available technology was equal to the task. Bascom suggested that the project proceed in stages, like the lunarlanding program. The ostensible reason was to let participants get used to the novel equipment and perhaps improve it, but in fact Bascom doubted that the Mohole would ever be completed and may have wanted to do as much geological research as possible before the money ran out. In a recent interview Bascom said that the entire Mohole venture was misguided and technically unfeasible and that a better goal would have been to drill many shallow holes in the ocean floor and examine the sediment they yieldedwhich was in fact done several years later...Whatever Bascom's motives at the time, his plea for a phased approach failed, and his own bid for a government contract was rejected (and in characteristically reckless Bascomian fashion, he had mortgaged his home to set up a deep-sea drilling company). Instead, in March of 1962 the NSF signed a preliminary contract with Brown & Root, a giant Texas construction firm. From that point on, none of AMSOC's original Mohole committee Ewing, Hess, Munk, and Bascomplayed any significant role in the project except to complain about how everybody else was screwing it up. Brown & Root had very little experience in the construction of oil platforms and none whatever in the field of floating derricks, but it did meet one very important qualification for government funding: It had bankrolled Vice President Lyndon B. Johnson throughout his political career...By 1964 the project had become so bogged down in internecine disputes that it dropped from public attention. Early in 1965 the NSF announced plans to revive Mohole at a new site off the Hawaiian Islands, but as costs kept rising with nothing to show, the public grew weary of tossing money into the ocean. In January 1966 a House subcommittee recommended cutting off funds for Mohole. That spring LBJ, now President and ever loyal to his friends, urged Congress to restore the money. But then it came out that the family of one of Brown & Root's principals had just given $25,000 to Johnson's campaign fund. The ensuing row damaged the President's credibility, and in August Congress voted against any further appropriation. Mohole was dead...
  
• 3/1/1962 The Special Group Augmented confirms that the immediate objective of the program would be intelligence collection and that all other actions would be inconspicuous and consistent with the U.S. overt policy of isolating Castro and neutralizing Cuban influence in the hemisphere. (Document 6, Guidelines for Operation Mongoose, 3/14/62; Alleged Assassination Plots Involving Foreign Leaders, 11/20/75, p. 145)
  
• 3/3/1962 JFK announces decision to resume atmospheric nuclear testing for several months, but makes it clear this is happening only because the Soviets are doing it first.
  
• 3/4/1962 The Sunday Times (London) reported that the US effort in Vietnam "has already passed the point where aid can be distinguished from involvement."
  
• 3/6/1962 Supreme Court justice Whittaker entered the hospital, and soon after retired.
  
• 3/7/1962 Malcolm X said in a speech, "There is no kind of action in this country ever going to bear fruit unless that action is tied in with the overall international struggle."
  
• 3/9/1962 State Dept announces that US pilots are participating in bombing missions against guerrillas in South Vietnam, for training purposes.
  
• 3/9/1962 State Department told US Embassy in Moscow that INS had refused to waive sanctions, and suggested that Marina proceed to a third country where the sanctions issue did not arise, and there she could obtain a US visa.
  
• 3/10/1962 Nicholas Turner of Reuters reported that Americans were piloting air strikes against the Vietcong, flying South Vietnamese Air Force planes.
  
• 3/12/1962 JFK told some Latin American diplomats, "Those who make peaceful revolution impossible make violent revolution inevitable."
  
• 3/13/1962 Operation Northwoods was a false-flag conspiracy plan, proposed within the United States government in 1962. The plan called for CIA or other operatives to commit apparent acts of terrorism in U.S. cities to create public support for a war against Castro-led Cuba. The plan stated: "The desired resultant from the execution of this plan would be to place the United States in the apparent position of suffering defensible grievances from a rash and irresponsible government of Cuba and to develop an international image of a Cuban threat to peace in the Western Hemisphere." The main proposal was presented in a document entitled "Justification for US Military Intervention in Cuba (TS)," a collection of draft memoranda written by the Department of Defense (DoD) and the Joint Chiefs of Staff (JCS) representative to the Caribbean Survey Group. (The parenthetical "TS" in the title of the document is an initialism for "Top Secret.") The document was presented by the Joint Chiefs of Staff to Secretary of Defense Robert McNamara on March 13 as a preliminary submission for planning purposes. The Joint Chiefs of Staff recommended that both the covert and overt aspects of any such operation be assigned to them. There is no record of McNamara 's response. However, according to the record of a March 16 White House meeting, President Kennedy told Lemnitzer and other key advisers that he could not foresee any circumstances " that would justify and make desirable the use of American forces for overt military action" in Cuba. James Bamford wrote on Northwoods: "Operation Northwoods, which had the written approval of the Chairman and every member of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, called for innocent people to be shot on American streets; for boats carrying refugees fleeing Cuba to be sunk on the high seas; for a wave of violent terrorism to be launched in Washington, D.C., Miami, and elsewhere. People would be framed for bombings they did not commit; planes would be hijacked. Using phony evidence, all of it would be blamed on Castro, thus giving Lemnitzer and his cabal the excuse, as well as the public and international backing, they needed to launch their war."
  
• 3/13/1962 JFK asked Congress for $4.8 billion for foreign aid for 1963.
  
• 3/14/1962 Guidelines for OPERATION MONGOOSE are approved by the SGA . Drafted by Maxwell Taylor, they note that the United States would attempt to "make maximum use of indigenous resources" in trying to overthrow Fidel Castro but recognize that "final success will require decisive U.S. military intervention." Indigenous resources would act to "prepare and justify this intervention, and thereafter to facilitate and support it." Kennedy is briefed on the guidelines on March 16. (Alleged Assassination Plots Involving Foreign Leaders, 11/20/75, pp. 145-47, 159)
  
• 3/14/1962 A 17-nation UN disarmament conference opens in Geneva.
  
• 3/15/1962 JFK gave a speech about the need to regulate medicines so their manufacturers must live up to the claims they make for their product: "There is no way of measuring the needless suffering, the money innocently squandered, and the protraction of illnesses resulting from the use of such ineffective drugs."
  
• 3/16/1962 Leavitt, Scott - "The Far-Off War in Vietnam We Have Decided to Win" - Life 3/16/1962
  
• 3/16/1962 It has been shown that President John F. Kennedy personally rejected the Northwoods proposal. A JCS/Pentagon document (Ed Lansdale memo) titled MEETING WITH THE PRESIDENT, 16 MARCH 1962 reads: "General Lemnitzer commented that the military had contingency plans for US intervention. Also it had plans to for creating plausible pretexts to use force, with the pretext either attacks on US aircraft or a Cuban action in Latin America for which we could retaliate. The President said bluntly that we were not discussing the use of military force, that General Lemnitzer might find the U.S so engaged in Berlin or elsewhere that he couldn't use the contemplated 4 divisions in Cuba." The proposal was sent for approval to the Secretary of Defense, Robert McNamara, but was not implemented. Kennedy removed Lemnitzer as Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff shortly afterward, although he became Supreme Allied Commander of NATO in January 1963. Lansdale suggests killing Castro while he visits Ernest Hemmingway's Cuban home.
  
• 3/16/1962 US Embassy in Brussels told Embassy in Moscow that if Marina came there she could get a visa in a few days.
  
• 3/19/1962 Communist Party was sued in New York by Justice Dept, including four of the party's officials: Elizabeth Gurley Flynn, Gus Hall, Benjamin J. Davis and Philip Bart. The suit was filed over income taxes from 1951.
  
• 3/19/1962 official cease fire in Algeria
  
• 3/19/1962 A week-long pro-Castro uprising in Guatemala is crushed after the arrest of 1000 people.
  
• 3/20/1962 Memo from Courtney Evans to Alan Belmont on Judith Campbell's calls to the White House: "the Director may desire to bear this information in connection with his forthcoming appointment with the President...[Informer] advised that he has seen Campbell with John Roselli."
  
• 3/20/1962 Formal press release from the White House denied that Kennedy had been told of any plans for "supporting an invasion of Cuba" before the election. The White House denial was backed up by Dulles, who explained that Nixon's comments were apparently based on a misunderstanding of what was included in the briefings he had given Kennedy.
  
• 3/21/1962 Billy James Hargis called to order a carefully selected group in Washington, D.C. "Dear Fellow Country-Savers," Hargis's invitation had begun. It went on to describe plans for regular briefings "by great conservative statesmen from both political parties on what must be done in the field of education and otherwise to help save our country from internal communism." No press representatives were allowed at the founding session of the Anti-Communist Liaison, which brought together about one hundred delegates representing some seventy-five right-wing groups at the Washington Hotel. Named as its chairman and operating head was Edward Hunter, a National Advisory Board member of Young Americans for Freedom, and the self-professed "brainwashing" expert mentioned earlier. A foreign correspondent since the 1920s for various newspapers, Hunter had taken a two-year "sabbatical" to serve as an OSS "propaganda specialist" in World War II. He remained under contract with the newly established CIA, and worked undercover across Asia as a roving journalist after the war. His September, 1950 article in the Miami News, "Brainwashing Tactics Force Chinese into Ranks of Communist Party" was the first printed use of the term "brainwashing." Gen. Willoughby attended the Washington meetings, of course, and was appointed a member of the Anti-Communist Liaison's five-person Committee of Correspondence. Joining him on the Committee was retired brigadier general Bonner Fellers. Starting out as a military attache in Franco's Spain, Fellers became a member of William Donovan's original OSS "planning group." Joining MacArthur's staff in 1943, Fellers ended up as the general's military secretary through the first year of the occupation of Japan. An advocate of strong air power, like Willoughby he called for a rollback of communism and disdained the CIA, which in Fellers' view harbored "a group of Marxist-Socialist pro-Communists." The Liaison's insider in the U.S. Congress was John Rousselot of California, a John Birch Society spokesman and a Christian Crusade board member.
  
• 3/22/1962 Hoover had lunch with JFK in the White House; no record of their conversation exists, but Hoover may have told Kennedy that he knew about Judith Campbell. By mid-summer his affair with her was over. According to the White House logs, the last telephone contact between the White House and Judith Campbell occurred a few hours after the luncheon.
  
• 3/22/1962 Vietnam: Operation "Sunrise" begun by Diem, in hopes of destroying the Viet Cong. Strategic Hamlet Program begins.
  
• 3/22/1962 Oswald wrote a letter to the Marines' B.G. Tompkins complaining about his downgraded discharge because of his defection; he stated that "I have never taken steps to renounce my US citizenship" and that the real story was known by the "United States Embassy, Moscow, or the US Department of State..." (CD 82)
  
• 3/23/1962 The day immediately following his luncheon with the President, at which Rosselli and Giancana were presumably discussed, Hoover sent a memorandum to Edwards stating: At the request of the Criminal Division of the Department of Justice, this matter was discussed with the CIA Director of Security on February 7, 1962, and we were advised that your agency would object to any prosecution which would necessitate the use of CIA personnel or CIA information. We were also informed that introduction of evidence concerning the CIA operation would be embarrassing to the Government. The Criminal Division has now requested that CIA specifically advise whether it would or would not object to the initiation of criminal prosecution against the subjects, Balletti, Maheu, and the individual known as J. W. Harrison for conspiracy to violate the "Wire Tapping Statute."
  
• 3/24/1962 JFK stays with Bing Crosby in Palm Springs for the weekend; Marilyn Monroe is also staying with Crosby, and tonight will be the only time, according to Monroe, that she ever slept with Kennedy.
  
• 3/24/1962 AP reported, in a story by Malcolm Browne, that US officials in Vietnam were trying to deceive the press about the supposedly non-combat role of US servicemen in that country.
  
• 3/26/1962 Supreme Court, in Baker v. Carr, ruled 6-2 (Harlan and Frankfurter dissenting) that the court had the power to order states to reapportion their congressional seats to meet population changes. Rural areas in many states had held a disproportionately large amount of power in state legislatures and congressional delegations, and conservatives fought to keep it that way. In Vermont, for example, one state legislator only represented 49 people while another served 33,000. In California, the 15,000 residents in three northern rural counties had equal weight in the state senate to the 7 million people in L.A. County. Baker v. Carr, which Warren felt was his most important ruling on the Court, affirmed the one man-one vote' principle.
  
• 3/26/1962 Castro gives a speech on "Bureaucracy and Sectarianism"; the transcript would be published by the Trotskyite Pioneer Press, and it was later found among Oswald's effects.
  
• 3/27/1962 A West German judge, Hermann Markl, resigns due to student protests triggered by a scene in the film Judgement at Nuremberg which exposed his Nazi past.
  
• 3/27/1962 The Saturday Evening Post included an interview with JFK: "In some circumstances we might have to take the initiative...Khrushchev must not be certain that, where its vital interests are threatened, the United States will never strike first."
  
• 3/27/1962 State Dept told the White House that the Soviets had already sent Cuba $100 million in arms.
  
• 3/27/1962 A high official of the State Department wrote to the INS and urged them to waive the sanctions against Marina Oswald. (WR 765-66)
  
• 3/29/1962 In Havana, 1179 Bay of Pigs prisoners go on trial before a five-man military tribunal for "crimes committed against the nation in connivance with a foreign power."
  
• 3/29/1962 Argentina: President Arturo Frondizi, a leftist intellectual and lawyer, is ousted by the military. His alliance with the Peronists led to his ouster by the army. 2/1961 he was visited by US officials Arthur Schlesinger and George McGovern. Frondizi had accepted a $150 million loan from Kennedy's Alliance for Progress at the time he was ousted. The Kennedy administration concluded that Frondizi was ousted because he had not gone far enough with reforms. He had tried to mend fences between Cuba and the US before the Cuban Missile Crisis. In 1961 he held a secret meeting with Che Guevara to encourage him to get Castro and Kennedy talking to each other, but this failed. The military found out about the meeting, though, and this contributed to their decision to oust him. Dr. Jose Maria Guido, President of the Senate, was next in line when Frondizi was ousted and became acting president. The attempted coup by navy units 3/1963 was put down by Gen. Ongania. More military revolts followed.
  

• 4/1962 Helms issues what he termed "explicit orders" that William Harvey contact Rosselli. Harvey feels he is taking over an ongoing operation. Edwards later states he felt it was not active. Note: Harvey complained to McCone about the requirement for advance SGA approval of "major operations going beyond the collection of intelligence" and the fact that applications had to be spelled out in detail. He was delighted when he received orders from Helms to revive the Rosselli project without seeking SGA approval. When questioned by the Senate Intelligence Committee in 1975, Helms conceded that he had not been instructed to do it, but then again he had not been told not to. (Hinckle and Turner p137-138)
  
• 4/1962 Jupiter missiles in Turkey were made fully operational.
  
• Late April 1962: While vacationing in the Crimea, across the Black sea from Turkey, Khrushchev reflects on the Turkish missiles and reportedly conceives the idea of deploying similar weapons in Cuba. Soviet sources have identified three reasons that might have led Khrushchev to pursue the idea seriously. The deployment of missiles in Cuba would: (1) perhaps most important, increase Soviet nuclear striking power, which lagged far behind that of the United States; (2) deter the United States from invading Cuba; and (3) psychologically end the double standard by which the United States stationed missiles on the Soviet perimeter but denied the Soviets a reciprocal right. Upon returning to Moscow, Khrushchev discusses the idea with First Deputy Prime Minister Anastas Mikoyan . Although Mikoyan is opposed, Khrushchev asks a group of his closest advisers, including Frol Kozlov, Commander of the Strategic Rocket Forces (SRF) Sergei Biryuzov, Foreign Minister Andrei Gromyko, and Marshal Malinovsky to evaluate the idea. The group proposes that a mission be sent to Cuba to see if Fidel Castro would agree to the proposed deployment and to determine whether the deployment could be undertaken without being detected by the United States. (Garthoff 1, p. 13)
  
• 4/2/1962 Letter to OSWALD advising USMC has no authority to change status of discharge - recommends Navy Discharge Review Board; this letter was sent to Kalinina St. in Minsk. (CD 82)
  
• 4/3/1962 Defense Dept ordered full racial integration in military reserve units, excluding the National Guard.
  
• 4/3/1962 The President had a Legislative Leaders Breakfast. The President then met with his Committee on Equal Opportunity to receive their report. The President went to Andrews Air Force Base to receive President Joao Goulart of Brazil. The President gave a luncheon in honor of President Joao Goulart of Brazil. After the luncheon the President met with William Porter the US Consul in Algiers. The President ended his day with a meeting with Theodore White.
  
• 4/4/1962 President Kennedy began his day meeting the Representatives of Agricultural Stabilization and Conservation Committee. He then met with Harve Alpand the ambassador of France. The President then met with the Brazilian President and his party. The President next met with Congressman Emanuel Cellar. The President later met the members of the National Export Expansion Council. The President met with Foreign Minister of the Dominican Republic. President Kennedy attended a luncheon given in his honor at the Embassy of Brazil by President Joao Goulart. After the luncheon the President returned to the White House and met with the Brazilian President and his party.
  
• 4/4/1962 Gen. Walker testified before a special Senate sub-committee on the "muzzling" of military officers; Walker claimed that the US government was collaborating with communists, and singled out for blame Eisenhower and Eleanor Roosevelt.
  
• 4/4/1962 "On the night of April 4, 1962, at the western end of Texas, a ranchman came upon the body of George Krutilek in the sandhills near the town of Clint, slumped in his car with a hose from his exhaust stuck in the window. He had been dead for several days, and the El Paso County pathologist, Dr. Frederick Bornstein , held that he certainly did not die from carbon monoxide poisoning (San Angelo *Standard Times,* April 5, 1962; Haley, 137). "Krutilek was a forty-nine-year old certified public accountant who had undergone secret grilling by FBI agents on April 2, the day after Billie Sol Estes' arrest. . . . Krutilek had worked for Estes and had been the recipient of his favors, but he was never seen or heard of again after the FBI grilling until his badly decomposed body was found" (Haley, 137).
  
• 4/4/1962 John Kenneth Galbraith, the ambassador to India, raised a ruckus among JFK's advisers by proposing in a memorandum to the president that the United States explore with North Vietnam a disengagement and mutual withdrawal from the growing war in South Vietnam. Galbraith suggested that either Soviet or Indian diplomats " should be asked to ascertain whether Hanoi can or will call off the Viet Cong activity in return for phased American withdrawal, liberalization in the trade relations between the two parts of the country and general and non-specific agreement to talk about reunification after some period of tranquillity. " If the United States instead increased its military support of Diem, Galbraith wrote Kennedy, " there is consequent danger we shall replace the French as the colonial force in the area and bleed as the French did. " Galbraith's warning echoed what John Kennedy remembered hearing as a congressman from his friend Edmund Gullion in Saigon in 1951. Predictably, the Joint Chiefs were furious at Galbraith's proposal. To McNamara they argued that "any reversal of U.S. policy could have disastrous effects, not only on our relationship with South Vietnam, but with the rest of our Asian and other allies as well. " (Cited by John M. Newman, JFK and Vietnam: Deception, Intrigue, and the Struggle for Power (New York: Warner Books, 1992 ), p. 236) A Defense Department memorandum to the president dismissed Galbraith saying, " His proposal contains the essential elements sought by the Communists for their takeover . . . " But the State Department also opposed Galbraith. Even Averell Harriman, JFK's advocate for a neutral Laos, was against a neutral solution in Vietnam, as he told the president.
  
• 4/6/1962 Steelworkers Union agreed to federal government request to limit its wage demands to a 10-cent an hour increase. In 1962 Kennedy had already profoundly alienated key elements of the military-industrial complex in the steel crisis. The conflict arose from JFK's preoccupation with steel prices, whose rise he believed " quickly drove up the price of everything else. " The president therefore brokered a contract, signed on April 6, 1962, in which the United Steelworkers union accepted a modest settlement from the United States Steel Company, with the understanding that the company would help keep inflation down by not raising steel prices. Kennedy phoned identical statements of appreciation to union headquarters and the company managers, congratulating each for having reached an agreement that was " obviously non-inflationary. " When he finished the calls, he told adviser Ted Sorensen that the union members "cheered and applauded their own sacrifice," whereas the company representatives were " ice-cold" to him. It was a foretaste of the future. (Theodore C. Sorensen, Kennedy (New York: Konecky & Konecky, 1966), p. 447.)
  
• 4/6/1962 All of the Bay of Pigs defendants in Havana are found guilty of treason and sentenced to a minimum of 30 years in prison. Castro leaves the door open for ransoming the prisoners.
  
• 4/6/1962 JFK, Harriman and Forrestal discuss the Galbraith memo; JFK tells them to "be prepared to seize upon any favorable moment to reduce our commitment" in Vietnam. Kennedy considered Galbraith's proposal feasible. He tried unsuccessfully to explore it. In a conversation with Harriman in the Oval Office on April 6, he asked his newly appointed Assistant Secretary of State to follow up Galbraith's memorandum. He told Harriman to send Galbraith instructions to pursue an Indian diplomatic approach to the North Vietnamese about exploring a mutual disengagement with the United States. Harriman resisted, saying they should wait a few days until they received an International Control Commission report on Vietnam. Kennedy agreed but insisted, according to a record of their conversation, " that instructions should nevertheless be sent to Galbraith, and that he would like to see such instructions. " Harriman said he would send the instructions the following week. (The official State Department volume that published the memorandum recording the Kennedy-Harriman conversation on April 6, 1962, states in a footnote: " The instructions referred to here [as ordered by the President] have not been found. " FR US, 1961-1963, vol. II, p. 309) In fact Averell Harriman sabotaged Kennedy's proposal for a mutual deescalation with North Vietnam. In response to the president's order to wire such instructions to Galbraith, Harriman " struck the language on deescalation from the message with a heavy pencil line , " as scholar Gareth Porter discovered by examining Harriman's papers. Harriman dictated instructions to his colleague Edward Rice for a telegram to Galbraith that instead " changed the mutual de-escalation approach into a threat of U.S. escalation of the war if the North Vietnamese refused to accept U.S. terms, " thereby subverting Kennedy's purpose. When Rice tried to re-introduce Kennedy's peaceful initiative into the telegram, Harriman intervened. He again crossed out the de-escalation proposal, then " simply killed the telegram altogether. " (Gareth Porter, Perils of Dominance ( Berkeley: University of California Press, 2005), p. 158.) As a result of Harriman's obstruction, Galbraith never did receive JFK's mutual de-escalation proposal to North Vietnam. (John Kenneth Galbraith confirmed to a Boston Globe reporter in 2005 that he never received President Kennedy's instructions for the mutual de-escalation proposal for North Vietnam. Bryan Bender, " Papers Reveal JFK Efforts on Vietnam, " Boston Globe (June 6, 2005). The president continued to remind his aides of the need to move in the direction Galbraith recommended . He told Harriman and the State Department's Michael Forrestal that, in Forrestal's words, " He wished us to be prepared to seize upon any favorable moment to reduce our involvement [in Vietnam] , recognizing that the moment might yet be some time away. "
  
• 4/8/1962 Roselli, William Harvey and the CIA Support Chief met in NY to set up the next attempt on Castro. (Church report) Apr 8-9, 62 - Harvey and O 'Connell meet Rosselli in New York. (O 'Connell says Maheu was also present.) (CIA Inspector General 's Report May 1967 p6)
  
• 4/9/1962 Two US soldiers are killed in a Vietcong ambush while on a combat operation with Vietnamese troops.
  
• 4/10/1962 Edwards responds in writing to Hoover 's Mar 23 memo that prosecution of Maheu and presumably other Mafia figures for wiretapping "Would result in most damaging embarrassment to the U.S. government." In demanding a written response from the CIA, Hoover effectively cleared himself of any involvement.
  
• 4/10/1962 Although " Operation Northwoods " had been blocked by the president, General Lemnitzer kept pushing on behalf of the Joint Chiefs for a preemptive invasion of Cuba. In an April 10, 1962, memorandum to McNamara, he stated: " The Joint Chiefs of Staff believe that the Cuban problem must be solved in the near future . . . they believe that military intervention by the United States will be required to overthrow the present communist regime . . .They also believe that the intervention can be accomplished rapidly enough to minimize communist opportunities for solicitation of UN action. " (Bamford, Body of Secrets, p87)
  
• 4/10/1962 Roger Blough, chairman of U.S. Steel, asked to meet with Kennedy. At 5:45 P.M., seated next to JFK, Blough said, " Perhaps the easiest way I can explain the purpose of my visit . . . , " and handed Kennedy four mimeographed pages. Blough knew the press release in the president's hands was being passed out simultaneously to the media by other U.S. Steel representatives. It stated that U.S. Steel, " effective at 12:01 A.M. tomorrow, will raise the price of the company's steel products by an average of about 3.5 percent . . . " Kennedy read the statement, recognizing immediately that he and the steelworkers had been double-crossed by U.S. Steel. He looked up at Blough and said, "You've made a terrible mistake. " After Blough departed, Kennedy shared the bad news with a group of his advisers. They had never seen him so angry. He said, "My father always told me that all businessmen were sons-of-bitches, but I never believed it until now. " His explosive remark appeared in the New York Times on April 23, 1962. The corporate world never forgot it. He phoned steelworkers union president David McDonald and said, "Dave, you've been screwed and I've been screwed. " (Richard Reeves, President Kennedy: Profile of Power (New York: Touchstone, 1993) , p. 296. Bradlee, Conversations with Kennedy, p. 76. Arthur M . Schlesinger, Jr. , A Thousand Days (Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1965) p. 635; Roy Hoopes, The Steel Crisis (New York: John Day, 1963) , p. 23, n. 1 . Reeves, President Kennedy: Profile of Power, p . 296.)
  
• 4/11/1962 JFK said in a press conference, "the American people will find it hard, as I do, to accept a situation in which a tiny handful of steel executives whose pursuit of private power and profit exceeds their sense of public responsibility can show such utter contempt for the interests of 185 million Americans." Steel executives suddenly found themselves being treated as if they were enemies of the people. The president then stated that they were precisely that. He opened his April 11 press conference by saying: " Simultaneous and identical actions of United States Steel and other leading steel corporations increasing steel prices by some $6 a ton constitute a wholly unjustifiable and irresponsible defiance of the public interest . . . the American people will find it hard, as I do, to accept a situation in which a tiny handful of steel executives whose pursuit of private power and profit exceeds their sense of public responsibility can show such utter contempt for the interests of 185 million Americans. " Reporters gasped at the intensity of Kennedy's attack on Big Steel. After describing the ways in which steel executives had defied the public interest, JFK concluded with an ironic reference to his inaugural address: " Some time ago I asked each American to consider what he would do for his country and I asked the steel companies. In the last 24 hours we had their answer. " Asked about Vietnam, Kennedy said, "We are attempting to help Vietnam maintain its independence and not fall under the domination of the Communists...We cannot desist in Vietnam."
  
• 4/11/1962 The next morning U.S. Steel was joined in its price increase by Bethlehem Steel, the second largest company, and soon after by four others. In response Kennedy mustered every resource he could to force the steel companies to roll back their prices. He began at the Defense Department. Defense contracts were critical to " Big Steel, " an industry that embodied the intertwined influence with the Pentagon that Eisenhower had warned against. Defense Secretary McNamara told the president that the combined impact in defense costs from the raise in steel prices would be a billion dollars. Kennedy ordered him to start shifting steel purchases at once to the smaller companies that had not yet joined in the raise . McNamara announced that a steel-plate order previously divided between U.S. Steel and Lukens Steel, a tiny steel company that had not raised prices, would now go entirely to Lukens. Walter Heller, who chaired the President's Council of Economic Advisers, "calculated that the government used so much steel that it could shift as much as 9 percent of the industry's total business away from the six companies that had announced price rises to six that were still holding back. " The president even ordered the Defense Department to take its steel business overseas, if that were necessary to keep defense contracts away from U.S. Steel and its cohorts. (Clark Clifford, Counsel to the President: A Memoir (New York: Random House, 1991) , p. 377.) Big Steel executives saw that Kennedy meant business, their business-and that substantial Cold War profits were already being drained away from them. Attorney General Robert Kennedy moved quickly to convene a federal grand jury to investigate price fixing in Big Steel's corporate network. He looked into the steel companies' possible violation of anti-trust laws, an investigation his Anti-Trust Division had actually begun before the steel crisis. He now ordered the FBI to move on the steel executives with speed and thoroughness. As RFK said later in an interview, "We were going to go for broke: their expense accounts and where they'd been and what they were doing. I picked up all their records and I told the FBI to interview them allmarch into their offices the next day. We weren't going to go slowly. I said to have them done all over the country. All of them were hit with meetings the next morning by agents. All of them were subpoenaed for their personal records. All of them were subpoenaed for their company records. " (Robert Kennedy in His Own Words, edited by Edwin O . Guthman and Jeffrey Shulman (New York: Bantam Books, 1988) , pp. 333-34.)
  
• 4/12/1962 Kennedy sent his lawyer, Clark Clifford, to serve as a mediator with U.S. Steel. The steel executives, feeling the heat from the White House, proposed a compromise. Clifford phoned the president to say, " Blough and his people want to know what you would say if they announce a partial rollback of the price increases, say 50 percent ? " " I wouldn't say a damn thing, " Kennedy replied. " It's the whole way. " (Reeves, President Kennedy: Profile of Power, p. 301; Clifford, Counsel to the President, p. 376.) Clifford was instructed to say that " if U.S. Steel persisted, the President would use every tool available to turn the decision around. " That included especially switching more defense contracts away from them to more affordable companies. There was to be no compromise. Clifford reported back to the steel heads that " the President was already setting in motion to use the full power of the Presidency to divert contracts from U.S. Steel and the other companies, " adding that "he still had several actions in reserve, including tax audits, antitrust investigations, and a thorough probe of market practices." (Clifford, Counsel to the President, p. 377.) The president was prepared to wage a domestic war against Big Steel's price increase.
  
• 4/13/1962 Defense Dept awarded a $5 million contract to a small steel company that had not gone along with the price hike.
  
• 4/13/1962 Billy James Hargis wrote in his Weekly Crusader newletter that "From this day forward, my friends, it [Christian Crusade] will equate liberalism and socialism with Communism…"
  
• 4/13/1962 Big Steel's executives surrendered. The first company to yield was Bethlehem Steel, another maj or defense contractor. The reason, reported back to the White House, was that " Bethlehem had gotten wind that it was to be excluded from bidding on the construction of three naval vessels the following week and decided to take quick action. " Bethlehem was followed soon by the giant, U.S. Steel. The president's offensive, backed by overwhelming public support, had been too much for them. All six steel companies rescinded the entire price raise that their point man, Roger Blough, had conveyed to JFK as an accomplished fact three days before. As would be his attitude after the Cuban Missile Crisis, Kennedy, as Sorensen said, "permitted no gloating by any administration spokesman and no talk of retribution. " He was especially gracious toward Roger Blough, whom he subsequently invited often to the White House for consultations. When asked by a reporter at a press conference about his "rather harsh statement about businessmen, " JFK revised his infamous s.o.b. remark. He said that his father, a businessman himself, had meant only " the steel men " with whom he had been " involved when he was a member of the Roosevelt administration in the 1937 strike. " This explanation would not win the hearts of business leaders. As they knew, JFK's father, Joseph P. Kennedy, Sr. , while a businessman himself, had also been President Franklin D. Roosevelt's first chairman of the Securities and Exchange Commission ( SEC ) . As a former Wall Street insider who knew the system, the senior Kennedy had cracked down on Wall Street profiteers. Some of the financial titans of the thirties regarded JFK's father as a class traitor, " the Judas of Wall Street, " for his work on behalf of FDR.3o It was in the light of Joseph Kennedy's fight to initiate government controls over Wall Street, and the opposition he encountered, that he made his allbusinessmen- are-s.o.b.'s remark to JFK. That opinion of his father, President Kennedy told the press, "I found appropriate that evening [when] we had not been treated altogether with frankness. . . But that's past, that's past. Now we're working together, I hope . "
  
• 4/13/1962 Khrushchev rejects a plea from JFK and Macmillan for agreements on a nuclear test ban.
  
• 4/14/1962 Harvey and O 'Connell meet in Washington DC to take delivery of the poison pills from Dr. Gunn of CIA. Mid Apr, 62 - O 'Connell and Rosselli leave for Miami. Harvey and Edwards travel to Miami together. Establishes Harvey 's takeover with Rosselli with O 'Connell carrying over until June 1962 when O 'Connell is reassigned. Giancana and Trafficante are dropped from the new phase.
  
• 4/14/1962 The big steel companies backed down.
  
• 4/15/1962 First Marine air units are sent to Vietnam: 15 Sikorsky UH-34D combat helicopters.
  
• 4/16/1962 Byron White is sworn in as a Supreme Court justice.
  
• 4/18/1962 Four poison pills were given to the CIA Support Chief for use in killing Castro. (Church report).
  
• 4/18/1962 When the Marines changed his discharge to "undesirable" in 1960, Oswald filed an application for review of the matter, appending a "brief" and a four-page statement. The brief and the statement were written by Oswald in Minsk; the brief was dated 4/18/1962. "Yet the documents not only manifest a correct style and surprising familiarity with legal form and substance but cite specific sections of the US Code! Did Oswald memorize a body of law in advance in advance of his defection? Did he carry the US Code around with him...Or did he have expert advice and assistance in writing his legal brief and accompanying statement? Oswald not only appealed for nullification of the unsatisfactory discharge but also requested recommendation of his re-enlistment..." (Accessories After the Fact 340) Oswald wrote, "In accordance with par. 15(e) I request that the Board consider my sincere desire to use my former training at the aviation fundamentals school, Jacksonville, Florida, and radar operators school, Biloxi, Miss., as well as the special knowledge I have accumulated through my experience since my release from active duty in the Naval Service." (CE 2661)
  
• 4/19/1962 Robert Kennedy's Justice Department continued its anti-trust investigation into the steel companies. U.S. Steel and seven other companies were eventually forced to pay maximum fines in 1965 for their price-fixing activities between 1955 and 1961. The steel crisis defined John and Robert Kennedy as Wall Street enemies. The president was seen as a state dictator. As the Wall Street Journal put it in the week after Big Steel surrendered to the Kennedys, " The Government set the price. And it did this by the pressure of fear-by naked power, by threats, by agents of the state security police. " (Wall Street Journal, April 19, 1962, cited by Arthur M. Schlesinger, Jr. , Robert Kennedy and His Times (New York: Ballentine Books, 1978) , p. 437.)
  
• 4/20/1962 The New Orleans Citizens Council began a plan to give free one-way transportation to blacks wishing to move to Northern cities.
  
• 4/21/1962 William Harvey passes poison pills to Rosselli in Miami (2nd attempt). Rosselli passes them to Tony Varona, reporting back that the hit squad had targeted not only Fidel but also Raul and Che Cuevara. (Church report)
  
• 4/23/1962 Kennedy's remarks about businessmen being "sons of bitches" was reported by the NYT
  
• 4/24/1962 The Justice Dept rules on Balletti, agreeing with the CIA no prosecution. "This would not necessarily affect prosecution of Giancana for any other offenses."(Memorandum to the Attorney General from Herbert J. Miller, Assistant Attorney General, Criminal division, Subject: Arthur J. Ballentti Wiretap Case, 24, April 1962, National Archives)
  
• 4/24/1962 US Embassy in Moscow "renewed Oswald's passport for 30 days, stamped it valid for direct return to the United States only and handed it to him." (WR 758)
  
• 4/25/1962 US resumed atmospheric nuclear tests at Christmas Island in the South Pacific in response to resumed Soviet testing. Further explosions follow 4/27 and 5/2. The United States then carried out a series of twenty-four nuclear blasts in the South Pacific from April to November of 1962.
  
• 4/26/1962 Special Group briefing on Ballentti wiretap case and CIA-Mafia plots. This memorandum for the record is prepared at the request of the Attorney General of the United States following a complete oral briefing of him relative to a sensitive CIA operation conducted during the period approximately August 1960 to May 1961. (Central Intelligence Agency, DCI Files: Job 91-00741R, Box 1, Mongoose Papers. Prepared by McCone. The memorandum apparently records a meeting of the Special Group (Augmented); Foreign Relations Of The United States 1961-1963 Volume X Cuba, 1961-1962 Department Of State, Washington, 331. Memorandum for the Record)
  
• Late Apr, 62 - Harvey, along with Ted Shackley, the chief of JMWAVE Station, procured $5000 worth of explosives, detonators, rifles, handguns, radios, and boat radar in Miami for pickup by Tony Varona. O 'Connell and Rosselli observe delivery. Rosselli, given the nominal rank of colonel by the CIA, is now working directly with the Cuban exile community and directly on behalf of the CIA. David Sanchez Morales, Chief of Operations in Miami, is Rosselli 's key contact. (Note: In 1973, during a night of drinking and story swapping with close friend Ruben Carbajal and business associate Bob Walton, Morales flew into a rage at the mention of Jack Kennedy 's name. Walton says Morales ' tirade about Kennedy, fueled by righteous anger and high-proof booze, went on for minutes while he stomped around the room. Suddenly he stopped, sat back down on the bed and remained silent for a moment. Then, as if saying it only to himself, he added: "Well, we took care of that son of a bitch, didn 't we?") (Fonzi pp 389-390; Background on Morales: Twyman p 447-463) Rosseli is one of only two Americans authorized to go into Cuba on clandestine missions. (Mahoney p167)
  
• 4/28/1962 Khrushchev met in Moscow with a Cuban representative for secret talks.
  
• 4/28/1962 "HAVANA, April 28 (AP) Opponents of Premier Fidel Castro's regime staged a demonstration tonight on one of Havana's busiest street corners but it was quickly broken up. Witnesses said that several demonstrators were arrested…The last major riot in Havana erupted last Sept. 10 when a Roman Catholic procession suddenly turned into an anti-Communist demonstration. Before it was broken up, one man was reported killed and a score wounded in clashes with the police."
  
• 4/29/1962 New York Times: "MIAMI, April 25 - The fear that the United States Government is moving toward some form of coexistence with the Fidel Castro regime is growing among Cuban exiles in Miami. Pedro Diaz Lanz, chief of the Cuban Air Force until he defected in 1959 and fled to the United States, declared today that "coexistence is already here." He said not a single supply boat for the Cuban underground had been able to evade the United States authorities and reach Cuba for many months. "The Cuban underground is without any help or support from Cuban exiles here," he said. Senor Diaz Lanz pointed out that recently twenty-seven Cubans on two yachts were halted by a United States Coast Guard vessel several miles off the coast of Florida and ordered back to port despite the fact they had no arms, ammunition or supplies aboard. In this case the officials on the Coast Guard vessel, who included civil authorities, told the Cubans the orders come "directly from Washington," Senor Diaz Lanz said. He also declared that recent reports that Cubans were training in Florida and in one of the Latin-American countries for action against Dr. Castro were untrue. Col. Ramon Barquin, recently depicted in press dispatches as the leader of a group of Cubans who were training for an invasion of Cuba, has little following, according to Senor Diaz Lanz. Various groups of Cubans here have expressed similar views but none of them wishes to be quoted. The warm reception given in Washington to president Joao Goulart of Brazil and the announced visit of president Kennedy to Mexico are cited by exiles as a demonstration of the trend of United States policy towards coexistence with Cuba. A report published in the Miami press that Richard Goodwin, Deputy Assistant Secretary of States for Inter-American Affairs, was in contact with the Castro regime through the Brazilian Government has greatly agitated Cuban exiles. The prompt release by Dr. Castro of seven Americans whose yacht was wrecked on the Cuban coast and the return by Dr. Castro of the Americans who hijacked a plane recently, are regarded by Cuban exiles as a maneuver by Dr. Castro to obtain some form of understanding with the United States in his desperate need for supplies, especially food. One Cuban pointed to reports that Dr. Castro was moving away from the Communists as showing the change in United States policy. The recent purge of Anibal Escalante, a Communist leader in Cuba, was a "party purge" and "meaningless," according to this exile."
  
• 4/30/1962 U. S. News and World Report gave prominence in its April 30, 1962, issue to an anti-Kennedy article on " Planned Economy " that suggested the president was acting like a Soviet commissar. (Michael Calder, JFK vs CIA: Death to Traitors: The Assassination of President John F. Kennedy-An Analysis of the Social, Political, and Economic Factors Which Led to His Assassination by the Central Intelligence Agency (Los Angeles: West LA Publishers, 1998), pp. 106-7) Attorney General Robert Kennedy became a symbol of "ruthless power " to the business titans he treated so brusquely, whose corporations he then found in violation of the law. Media controlled by the same interests adopted the characterization of RFK as ruthless until his murder six years later.
  

• 5/1962: Deliberations regarding the possible installation of missiles in Cuba continue in Moscow. In early May, Khrushchev informs the newly designated ambassador to Cuba, Aleksandr Alekseyev, of the plan. Although Alekseyev expresses concern over the idea (as did Gromyko and Mikoyan at different times), it is decided that Alekseyev and Marshal Biryuzov should secretly travel to Cuba to explore the question with Castro. (See May 30, 1962, entry.) Following further discussions in May and June, Khrushchev authorizes Soviet military officials to decide independently on the exact composition of nuclear forces to be deployed in Cuba. The military proposes a force of twenty-four medium-range ballistic missile ( MRBM ) launchers and sixteen intermediate-range ( IRBM ) launchers; each of the launchers would be equipped with two missiles (one serving as a spare) and a nuclear warhead. Soviet officials also decide that a large contingent of Soviet combat forces should be sent to Cuba. The proposed Soviet contingent includes four elite combat regiments, twenty-four advanced SA-2 surface-to-air missile ( SAM ) batteries, forty-two MiG-21 interceptors, forty-two IL-28 bombers, twelve Komar-class missile boats, and coastal defense cruise missiles. (Garthoff 1, pp. 12-18)
  
• 5/1962 The depth of corporate hostility toward Kennedy after the steel crisis can be seen by an unsigned editorial in Fortune, media czar Henry Luce's magazine for the most fortunate. The editors of Fortune knew the decision to raise steel prices had been made by the executive committee of U.S. Steel's board of directors. It included top-level officers from other huge financial institutions, such as the Morgan Guaranty Trust Company, the First National City Bank of New York, the Prudential Insurance Company, the Ford Foundation, and AT&T. (Hoopes, Steel Crisis, p. 17. Also Donald Gibson, Battling Wall Street: The Kennedy Presidency (New York: Sheridan Square Press, 1994), p. 17. When Roger Blough handed U.S. Steel's provocative press release to the president, he did so on behalf of not only U.S. Steel but also these other financial giants in the United States. The Fortune editorial therefore posed an intriguing question: Why did the financial interests behind U.S. Steel announce the price increase in such a way as to deliberately " provoke the President of the U.S. into a vitriolic and demagogic assault ? " (" Steel: The Ides of April, " Fortune (May 1962), p. 98) With the authority of an insider's knowledge that it denied having, Fortune answered its own question: "There is a theory-unsupported by any direct evidence-that Blough was acting as a 'business statesman' rather than as a businessman judging his market. " According to "this theory, " Kennedy's prior appeal to steel executives not to raise prices, leading to the contract settlement between the company and the union, had "poised over the industry a threat of 'jawbone control' of prices. For the sake of his company, the industry, and the nation, Blough sought a way to break through the bland 'harmony' that has recently prevailed between government and business. " In plainer language, the president was acting too much like a president, rather than just another officeholder beholden to the powers that be. US Steel on behalf of still higher financial interests therefore taunted Kennedy so as to present him with a dilemma: he either had to accept the price hike and lose credibility, or react as he did with power to roll back the increase and thereby unite the business world against him. His unswerving activist response then served to confirm the worst fears of corporate America: "That the threat of 'j awbone control' was no mere bugaboo was borne out by the tone of President Kennedy's reaction and the threats of general business harassment by government that followed the 'affront. "' Fortune gave Kennedy a deadly warning of its own by the title of its editorial: " Steel: The Ides of April. "
  
• 5/2/1962 Gen. Walker gave a speech before the National Indignation Convention in Dallas: "The destruction of our national sovereignty - which continues by United Nations design, with Washington support - must be accomplished from within the United States. It can happen only through dictatorial power, as it did in Russia and Cuba - implemented, as it was done there, by military forces turned upon the people. Now I will tell you of the instructions which have been issued by Kennedy's Defense Department to the Military Forces. The "Octagon," a paper of the Eighth Corps Headquarters at Austin, reports that all Army Reserve Units will receive counterinsurgency training. These orders were issued to Reserver units in every state by the Commanding General of the Army Field Forces, who is responsible for all training of troops in the United States. He defined "counterinsurgency" as - and I quote now- "an action including all military, political, economic, pyschological and sociallogical activities directed toward preventing and suppressing resisitance groups whose actions range in degrees of violence and scope from subversive political activity to violent actions by large querilla elements to overthrow duly established governments. This clearly implies and substantiates the Administration's intent to prepare trrops in every state to put down opposition in any area-social, political, or economic-to the Administration's intent to prepare troops in every state to put down opposition in any area-social, political, or economic-to the Administration's policies. This is the pattern-and a necessity in the development of a police state. This is preparing the Army for its job under UN program 7277, issued September 1961, and as presented to the United nations conference at Geneva by Ambassador Arther Dean in April 1962, which provides-and I quote: "States would retain only those forces for the purpose of maintaining internal order. Some may imagine that "counterinsurgancy" is intended to put down Communism as an internal threat. But nver forget that the Kennedy Adminisration has repeatedly declared that Communism is NOT an internal threat. Therefore "counterinsurgency" must be against something else. The use of the term "resistance groups" shows that what it is against. Resistance forces are always native to a country, and try to preserve its independence. In our country it means native Americans opposed to Communism. When the Army is trained to put down resistance groups, it is trained to crack down on anti-communists in the United States, just as our forces are already cracking down on anti-communists in Katanga. Such an anti-pro blue position reveals why it was necesary for the Administration to get me out of the command in the Army. Not only was it necessary that I be relieved of my command of the 24th Division, but it was also necessary that orders be canceled which would have assigned me to the command of the VIII Reserve Corps Headquarters in Austion-the very same headquarters from which comes the news to put down counter insurgency."
  
• 5/2/1962 Dr. King is invited to join the Birmingham protests.
  
• 5/3/1962 Walt Rostow said in a speech in Minneapolis: "we do no expect this planet to be forever split between a communist bloc and a free world. We expect this planet to organize itself in time on principles of voluntary cooperation among independent nation states dedicated to human freedom. It will not be a victory of United States over Russia."
  
• 5/4/1962 JFK address opening new dockside terminal, New Orleans, Louisiana, 4 May 1962. JFK urged Congress to pass the Trade Expansion Act without amendments that would weaken it. He stated his belief that the US must "trade or fade."
  
• 5/1962 Averell Harriman tells Art Schlesinger that Kennedy's policy of Laotian neutralization was still being "systematically sabotaged" by the US military and CIA. (RFK and His Times 758) Averell Harriman told Arthur Schlesinger in May 1962 that JFK's Laos policy was being "systematically sabotaged " from within the government by the military and the CIA. "They want to prove that a neutral solution is impossible," Harriman said, " and that the only course is to turn Laos into an American bastion. " From the journal of Arthur M. Schlesinger, Jr. , May 14, 1962; cited in Robert Kennedy and His Times, p. 758
  
• 5/4/1962 Venezuela: troops revolt and seize the city of Carupano.
  
• 5/4/1962 The French announced that the Algerian peace accord would be carried out on schedule.
  
• 5/5/1962 "Defence Policy Statement Made on Saturday, 5 May [1962] by Secretary McNamara at the NATO Ministerial Meeting in Athens," Cosmic Top Secret Source: NATO Archives, Brussels A key statement on U.S. nuclear policy, Robert McNamara's "Athens Speech," is one of the first expositions at the NATO-level of the "no cities-counterforce" concept that Pentagon officials and RAND consultants had developed.
  
• 5/5/1962 John Connally wins the Texas Democratic gubernatorial primary; Walker comes in tenth in a field of ten, winning some 200,000 votes.
  
• 5/5/1962 Venezuela: Betancourt's government puts down Castro-inspired revolt of Marines and leftists at naval base of Carupano.
  
• 5/6/1962 Pathet Lao troops in Laos broke the cease-fire by storming the village of Nam Tha.
  
• 5/6/1962 Frigate Bird on May 6, 1962, a UGM-27 Polaris A-2 missile with a live 600 kt W47 warhead was launched from the USS Ethan Allen (SSBN-608); it flew 1900 km, re-entered the atmosphere, and detonated at an altitude of 3.4 km over the South Pacific. The test was part of Operation Dominic I. Planned as a method to dispel doubts about whether the USA's nuclear missiles would actually function in practice, it had less effect than was hoped, as the stockpile warhead was substantially modified prior to testing, and the missile tested was a relatively low-flying SLBM and not a high-flying ICBM.
  
• 5/7/1962 RFK briefed on past CIA-Mafia Plots. He had wanted to know why the CIA was asking the FBI to block the prosecution of Robert Maheu involving a case of an illegal wiretap, which Maheu had done for Sam Giancana. RFK meets with Richard Helms (Helms later denied this meeting took place despite a specific indication on RFK 's calendar), and later that afternoon with Sheffield Edwards and CIA general council Lawrence Houston for a briefing on pre-Bay of Pigs organized crime assassination plots. (Testimony of Lawrence Houston HSCA, p62 National Archives) "Mr. Kennedy stated that upon learning CIA had not cleared its action in hiring Maheu and Giancana with the DOJ he issued orders that the CIA should never again take such steps with first checking with the DOJ." CIA does not tell RFK the organized crime plots will continue. (Memo for IG from Sidney D. Stembridge Acting Director of Security 3.16.76, quoting FBI memo FBI 62-109060-4984 - states May 9, '62 as the date for this briefing.) Houston recalled that Kennedy angrily told him that "if you ever try to do business with organized crime again...you will let the attorney general know." Edwards confirmed this. It was determined that the Kennedys and McCone did not originally know about the anti-Castro plots before this time (Senate Intelligence Committee Report 102,148,154-55, 131-33) Edwards continues the charade by writing a memo stating falsely he told Harvey to "drop any plans for use of subject (Rosselli) for the future and "internal memorandum for the record," asserting that the operation was "terminated." Note: Harvey found out about this memo when questioned by the Senate Intelligence Committee in 1975, and he was furious. He declared that it "was not true, and Col. Edwards knew it was not true"; the falsification was intended to show that Edwards was "no longer chargeable should the operation backfire." (Senate Assassination Plots Report p134) (Laura Myers, Associated Press July 1, 1997): The CIA offered $150,000 to assassinate Fidel Castro in the early 1960s, but the mob insisted on taking the job for free, according to a newly declassified document. "We were at (ideological) war,'' says Robert Maheu, who as a Las Vegas private investigator on the CIA payroll in 1960 hired Chicago crime boss Sam Giancana for the hit. "Would it be folly to go after Saddam Hussein during the Gulf War or to go after Hitler during World War II?'' The underworld murder-for-hire contract was detailed in a summary of a May 1962 CIA briefing for then-Attorney General Robert Kennedy. By then, the Kennedy White House had launched its unsuccessful Bay of Pigs invasion of Cuba and several assassination attempts against Castro had failed. The memo is among 450 documents, nearly all newly declassified, that are included in a soon-to-be released State Department volume, "Cuba, 1960-61.'' Only two copies of the three-page memo were made, one each for the attorney general and CIA headquarters. In the memo, then-CIA director of security Sheffield Edwards writes that senior agency officials approved plots to kill Castro between August 1960 and May 1961. The White House isn't mentioned. "Knowledge of this project ... was kept to a total of six persons,'' Edwards wrote. At least two assassination attempts were made with CIA-supplied lethal pills and organized crime-made muscle in early 1961, according to the memo and congressional hearings in 1975. Lawmakers counted a total of eight CIA tries to kill Castro in the early 1960s; Castro bragged the number was two dozen. The memo said Maheu contacted John Rosselli, a top Giancana lieutenant, to arrange the hits on Castro. "A figure of $150,000 was set by the agency as a payment to be made on completion of the operation,'' the memo said. Rosselli and Giancana "emphatically stated that they wished no part of any payment,'' it added. Still, $11,000 in expenses were paid. Rosselli and Giancana, both later victims of mob hits, weren't told the U.S. government put the contract out on Castro, but they "guessed or assumed that CIA was behind the project,'' the memo concludes. After the Bay of Pigs invasion failed to oust Castro in April 1961, President Kennedy and his brother, the attorney general, tacitly approved a renewed CIA effort to kill the Cuban leader. "They were telling the CIA, `Do whatever it takes to get rid of Castro,''' says Peter Kornbluh, senior analyst at the National Archives. Louis Smith, senior State Department historian for the book, said the Kennedys were obsessed with eliminating their communist nemesis. "Robert Kennedy gave (then-deputy CIA director Richard) Bissell hell for not getting rid of Castro the first time around, so Bissell took this as a green light to go forward again with assassination plots,'' Smith said. At the time, Robert Kennedy was running "Operation Mongoose," which used propaganda to gin up revolt among Cubans. "A measure of the Kennedy administration's renewed determination to eliminate Castro was the reauthorization of assassination attempts on the Cuban premier,'' says a summary of the State Department volume. CIA Bay of Pigs project manager Jacob Esterline, now 79, said he lost heart when he learned of the top-secret plans to kill Castro. "Somebody thought it was some magic cure,'' says Esterline, who paid the assassination attempt bills. "Even after all these years, it's still painful.'' The first plans to oust Castro began before Kennedy took office.
  
• 5/8/1962 A multi-service military exercise designed to test contingency planning for Cuba begins. The operation, codenamed WHIP LASH, concludes on 5/18. Another U.S. military exercise in the Caribbean known as JUPITER SPRINGS is planned for sometime in the spring or summer. Soviet and Cuban sources have suggested that the series of U.S. military exercises conducted in the region throughout the year are perceived as additional evidence of U.S. intentions to invade Cuba. (OPERATION MONGOOSE, 4-10 May, 5/10/62; Reflections on the Cuban Missile Crisis)
  
• 5/8/1962 McNamara's May 8 order to General Harkins to submit a plan for withdrawal from Vietnam was ignored.
  
• 5/8/1962 As John Kennedy became persona non grata to the economic elite of the United States, his popularity increased elsewhere. He said on May 8, 1962, to a warmly welcoming convention of the United Auto Workers: " Last week, after speaking to the Chamber of Commerce and the presidents of the American Medical Association, I began to wonder how I got elected. And now I remember. " I said last week to the Chamber that I thought I was the second choice for President of a majority of the Chamber; anyone else was first choice. " He told the U.A.W. : " Harry Truman once said there are 14 or 1 5 million Americans who have the resources to have representatives in Washington to protect their interests, and that the interests of the great mass of other people, the hundred and fifty or sixty million, is the responsibility of the President of the United States. And I propose to fulfill it." After the steel crisis, President Kennedy felt so much hostility from the leaders of big business that he finally gave up trying to curry their support. He told advisers Sorensen, O'Donnell, and Schlesinger, "I understand better every day why Roosevelt, who started out such a mild fellow, ended up so ferociously anti-business. It is hard as hell to be friendly with people who keep trying to cut your legs off. " If Fortune's editors were right in seeing a deliberate provocation of Kennedy, the instigators had succeeded in alienating the business elite from the president, and vice versa. JFK joked about what his corporate enemies would do to him, if they only had the chance. A year after the steel crisis, he learned before giving a speech in New York that elsewhere in the same hotel " the steel industry was presenting Dwight D. Eisenhower with its annual public service award." "I was their man of the year last year, " said the president to his audience. "They wanted to come down to the White House to give me their award, but the Secret Service wouldn't let them do it. " (Schlesinger, Thousand Days, p. 641.; 42. Kenneth P. O 'Donnell and David F. Powers, "Johnny, We Hardly Knew Ye " (Boston: Little, Brown, 1970), p. 407.)
  
• 5/8/1962 In the spring of 1962, as Kennedy moved steadily toward a Laotian settlement, he instructed Robert McNamara to initiate a plan to withdraw the U.S. military from Vietnam. The first step was taken by McNamara at a Secretary of Defense ( SECDEF) conference on the Vietnam War held in Saigon on May 8, 1962. When the Saigon conference was almost over, McNamara said there would be a special briefing for a few of his top decision makers. Those he asked to remain in the room included Joint Chiefs chairman General Lyman Lemnitzer, Admiral Harry Felt, General Paul Harkins, Ambassador Frederick Nolting, and the Defense Intelligence Agency's top expert on Vietnam, civilian analyst George Allen. It was George Allen who would describe this closed-door meeting in an interview and an unpublished manuscript decades later. (George Allen, interview by John M. Newman, August 10, 1987; cited by Newman, JFK and Vietnam, pp. 254, 264-66 . Also George Allen, The Indochina Wars: 1950-1975 (unpublished manuscript)) When the door had shut, McNamara began examining the men on how each thought the United States should respond to an imminent Communist victory in Laos. The question, not on the conference agenda, took them by surprise. Admiral Felt's response was typical of the group's big-bang attitude that John Kennedy knew all too well. Felt said they could " launch air strikes immediately, and in forty-eight hours, for example, we could wipe the town of Tchepone right off the face of the map. " (Newman, JFK and Vietnam, p . 265) McNamara pointed out that such an assault could easily provoke nearby North Vietnamese and Chinese forces to counterattack. What then? Should U.S. forces strike the North Vietnamese and Chinese bases, too? And what next? The men remained silent. By his quick examination the Secretary of Defense had demonstrated the president's position that the United States had nowhere to go militarily in Laos. The choice they had to make was between the negotiated compromise JFK was seeking (which the military regarded as a sellout to the Communists) and an absurd commitment to wage an ever-escalating war in Laos, North Vietnam, and China. With the necessity of negotiating a neutral Laos as his preamble, McNamara introduced the military leaders to an even more unthinkable policy - withdrawal from Vietnam. He said, " It is not the job of the U.S. to assume responsibility for the war but to develop the South Vietnamese capability to do so. " (Allen interview cited by Newman, JFK and Vietnam, p. 254) He asked the men in the room when they thought the point would be reached when the South Vietnamese army could take over completely. George Allen has described the response to this question by the general in charge of U.S. forces in Vietnam. He said, " Harkins' chin nearly hit the table. " General Harkins told McNamara they " had scarcely thought about that. " They had been much too busy, he said, with plans to expand their military structure in South Vietnam " to think about how it might all be dismantled." But that is what McNamara told them they now had to do. They not only had to think about " how it might all be dismantled, " but to prepare a concrete plan to do so. He ordered Harkins, as the commander of MACV [Military Assistance Command, Vietnam], "to devise a plan for turning full responsibility over to South Vietnam and reducing the size of our military command, and to submit this plan at the next conference. " (Allen, Indochina Wars, p. 192; cited by Newman, JFK and Vietnam, p. 254.) JFK knew the depth of their hostility. The previous fall he had told Galbraith, in reference to the Bay of Pigs and a neutral Laos, " You have to realize that I can only afford so many defeats in one year. " (John Kenneth Galbraith, A Life in Our Times ( Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1981) By McNamara's order to Harkins, Kennedy was telegraphing a punch to the stomach of his military-withdrawal from Vietnam. He was thereby provoking them to launch a preemptive punch at himself.
  
• 5/9/1962 RFK met with Hoover to discuss the illegal phone tap and an electronic "bug" Robert Maheu had installed in Las Vegas for Giancana's private use (to monitor an affair one of his girlfriends was having). Kennedy was upset because it put the CIA in the position where "it could not afford to have any action taken against Giancana or Maheu." (Hoover memo) During an hour long meeting regarding many Justice Dept. issues, RFK tells Hoover the CIA has used organized crime figures in an effort to assassinate Castro (phase one).
  
• 5/9/1962 Attorney General Robert Kennedy was advised by the CIA that Robert Maheu had been hired to approach Sam Giancana regarding an assassination plot against Fidel Castro. "Mr. Kennedy stated that upon learning CIA had not cleared its action in hiring Maheu and Giancana with the DOJ he issued orders that the CIA should never again take such steps with first checking with the DOJ." [FBI 62-109060-4984]
  
• 5/9/1962 Robert H. Robinson of the INS wrote Michael Cieplinski at State that it had approved Marina Oswald's case. (CE 1777) INS agreed to waive a restriction under the law which would have prohibited issuing a visa to Marina until after she had left the USSR. (WC)
  
• 5/10/1962 Southern School News reports that 246,988 or 7.6 per cent of the African American pupils in public schools in seventeen Southern and Border States and the District of Columbia attended integrated classes in 1962.
  
• 5/10/1962 Venezuela bans the activities of the Communist Party and the Movement of the Revolutionary Left.
  
• 5/11/1962 Up to this date large-scale US naval and amphibious maneuvers were staged in the Caribbean.
  
• 5/11/1962 McNamara travels to Saigon to meet with Diem.
  
• 5/12/1962 Gen. MacArthur delivered a speech (commonly known as the "Duty, honor, country" speech) to the cadets of the U.S. Military Academy at West Point on the occasion of his receiving the Sylvanus Thayer Award, during which he once again alluded to the possibility that mankind might someday face an extraterrestrial foe: "We deal now, not with things of this world alone, but with the illimitable distances and as yet unfathomed mysteries of the universe. We are reaching out for a new and boundless frontier. We speak in strange terms of harnessing the cosmic energy, of making winds and tides work for us, of creating unheard of synthetic materials to supplement or even replace our old standard basics; to purify sea water for our drink; of mining ocean floors for new fields of wealth and food; of disease preventatives to expand life into the hundred of years; of controlling the weather for a more equitable distribution of heat and cold, of rain and shine; of spaceships to the moon; of the primary target in war, no longer limited to the armed forces of an enemy, but instead to include his civil populations; of ultimate conflict between a united human race and the sinister forces of some other planetary galaxy; of such dreams and fantasies as to make life the most exciting of all times."
  
• 5/12/1962 An Alpha 66 ship attacked a Cuban gunboat.
  
• 5/12/1962 NY Times reported that McNamara had said that US aid to South Vietnam had reached a peak and would start to level off; he also said he doubted US personnel in that country would be increased. "After 48 hours in South Vietnam Mr. McNamara was tremendously encouraged by developments...'I found nothing but progress and hope for the future,' he said."
  
• 5/12/1962 1800 US marines were sent to Thailand with other naval, air and land forces for defense against possible attack by communist forces from Laos.
  
• 5/14/1962 After the May 7th meeting with RFK, Sheffield Edwards and Houston dispatch a memo for the Attorney General's file that would establish his being "informed" of the plots, and that, to Kennedy 's knowledge, they had been terminated. (Church Committee) Sheffield Edwards prepared a phony memo for CIA files saying that the anti-Castro plots had ended. (Church report)
  
• 5/14/1962 Sukarno, ruler of Indonesia, was the target of a failed assassination attempt.
  
• 5/12 or 5/15 US sends 5000 (or 1500) Marines and 50 jets to Thailand to resist communist aggression in Laos.
  
• 5/16/1962 Robert Amory, deputy director of CIA for intelligence, replaced by Ray S. Cline.
  
• 5/16/1962 The three rival factions in Laos began negotiations.
  
• 5/17/1962 JFK announced that a small military contigent had been ordered to Laos, calling it an "act of diplomacy." 3000 Marines landed in Bangkok; they would be removed by August.
  
• 5/17/1962 In Saigon, Diem decreed that meetings for any purpose would be forbidden unless given prior government approval.
  
• 5/18/1962 Justice Dept obtained its first indictment against Hoffa.
  
• 5/18/1962 FBI agent Fain called Robert Oswald's residence in Fort Worth and asked Vada how Lee's plans for returning to the US were progressing. She wanted Vada to call him when Oswald arrived in the US, but she didn't. (H 4 403)
  
• 5/19/1962 Marilyn Monroe sings a sexy "Happy Birthday" to JFK at Madison Square Garden party.
  
• 5/21/1962 Oswald writes Robert that when he returns to the US, he doesn't want any reporters or newspaper attention when he arrives. (H 16 880-81)
  
• 5/22/1962 After being fully briefed, Hoover sends memo to RFK noting CIA had used Giancana in "clandestine efforts" against Castro. "Colonel Edwards said that since this is 'dirty business' he could not afford to have knowledge of that action of Maheu and Giancana in pursuit of any mission for the CIA Mr. Bissell, in his recent briefings of General Taylor and the attorney general and in connection with their inquiries into CIA activities relating to the Cuban situation told the Attorney General that some of the associated planning included the use of Giancana and the underworld." (FBI 62-109060-4984; Church Committee Interim Report, p127)
  
• 5/22/1962 A Texas medical examiner stated that he believed federal official Henry Marshall had been murdered while investigating Estes' operations.
  
• 5/22/1962 Oswald picks up his Soviet exit visa in Minsk.
  
• 5/22/1962 De Gaulle assassination attempt.
  
• 5/22/1962 Continental Airlines Flight 11, a Boeing 707, becomes the first known commercial airliner to be sabotaged when a bomb explodes onboard in mid-flight killing 45 people aboard.
  
• 5/23/1962 JFK was asked by reporters about growing health concerns about smoking. He replied, "That matter is sensitive enough and the stock market is in sufficient difficulty without my giving you an answer which is not based on complete information, which I don't have."
  
• 5/23/1962 Billy Sol Estes appeared at a bankruptcy hearing in Texas and invoked the Fifth amendment seven times.
  
• 5/23/1962 Paris: former OAS chief Raoul Salan was sentenced to life in prison.
  
• 5/24/1962 Mercury 7 mission: Scott Carpenter made three orbits around the earth, but experienced technical difficulties. The spacecraft lost radio contact after landing two hundred miles further downrange than expected. Carpenter was picked up in the sea by a helicopter from the carrier Intrepid.
  
• 5/24/1962 The Oswalds arrive in Moscow and complete documents at the US embassy. Marina receives a US visa.
  
• 5/27/1962 Bob Dylan's second album, The Freewheelin' Bob Dylan, is released. It features such protests songs as "Blowin' in the Wind," "Masters of War," and "A Hard Rain's a-Gonna Fall."
  
• 5/28/1962 US stock market plunged; biggest one-day loss since the crash of 1929. RFK recalled later that his brother complained, "When the market went down, it's the Kennedy stock market; and when it goes up, it's the free enterprise system."
  
• 5/29/1962 Sharif Rashidov, an alternate member of the Soviet Presidium, arrives in Cuba with a delegation, ostensibly on a ten-day mission to study irrigation problems. The presence of the ambassador-designate in Cuba, Aleksandr Alekseyev , Marshal Biryuzov, and two or three military experts is not known to the United States. Shortly before the departure of the delegation, Premier Khrushchev informs all Presidium members that the Soviet Union plans to deploy nuclear missiles in Cuba and that Biryuzov and Alekseyev will broach the idea with the Cuban government. On the evening of its arrival, the Soviet delegation meets with Fidel Castro and his brother Raul, the Cuban Minister of Defense. Expressing their concern over the possibility of a new U.S. invasion of Cuba, the Soviet officials state that the Soviet Union is prepared to assist Cuba in fortifying its defenses, even to the extent of deploying nuclear missiles on Cuban soil. Castro responds by calling the idea "interesting," but tells the group that he will need to consult with his colleagues before providing a final answer. (Alekseyev, pp. 7-8)
  
• 5/29/1962 More than 5000 US military personnel are in Thailand.
  
• 5/30/1962 After conferring with Raul Castro, Che Guevara, Osvaldo Dorticos and Blas Roca, Fidel Castro informs the visiting Soviet officials that Cuba will accept the deployment of nuclear weapons. Since the crisis, Castro and other Cuban sources have suggested that this decision was made not only because the missiles would serve to deter a U.S. invasion but also because the Cuban government wished to shift the "correlation of forces" in favor of socialism. In addition, Havana felt indebted to the Soviet Union for its support of the Cuban revolution. Before departing Cuba in early June, Marshal Biryuzov seeks to determine whether the deployment could be accomplished without detection by the United States or others. Upon the return of the party to Moscow, Khrushchev is told that Castro has accepted the offer to place missiles in Cuba, and Biryuzov reports that he believes such a deployment could in fact be carried out covertly. (Garthoff 2, p. 66; Allyn, p. 141)
  
• 5/30/1962 Oswald writes his mother that he expects to spend a day or so in NY and Washington DC "for sightseeing." (H 16 578)
  
• 5/31/1962 Chicago Sun-Times quoted Billy Graham as worrying "that some Negro leaders are going too far and too fast."
  
• 5/31/1962 De Gaulle assassination attempt.
  
• 5/31/1962 11:53pm Karl Adolf Eichmann was hanged inside Ramleh Prison, near Tel Aviv.
  

• Summer 1962 Johnny Rosselli goes on two mission attempts to reach Cuba. Both fail, with the second resulting in his boat sinking. (Rosseli to Jack Anderson and Les Whitten, Jimmy Breslin, and his own attorneys; Rappleye and Becker pp 224-25)
  
• Summer 1962 The president's friend Paul Fay, Jr., told of an incident that showed JFK was keenly conscious of the peril of a military coup d'etat. One late summer weekend in 1962 while out sailing with friends, Kennedy was asked what he thought of Seven Days in May, a best-selling novel by Fletcher Knebel and Charles W. Bailey II that described a military takeover in the United States. JFK said he would read the book. He did so that night. The next day Kennedy discussed with his friends the possibility of their seeing such a coup in the United States. Consider that he said these words after the failed Bay of Pigs invasion and before the Cuban Missile Crisis: " It's possible. It could happen in this country, but the conditions would have to be just right. If, for example, the country had a young President, and he had a Bay of Pigs, there would be a certain uneasiness. Maybe the military would do a little criticizing behind his back, but this would be written off as the usual military dissatisfaction with civilian control. Then if there were another Bay of Pigs, the reaction of the country would be, 'Is he too young and inexperienced ? ' The military would almost feel that it was their patriotic obligation to stand ready to preserve the integrity of the nation, and only God knows just what segment of democracy they would be defending if they overthrew the elected establishment. " Pausing a moment, he went on, "Then, if there were a third Bay of Pigs, it could happen. " Waiting again until his listeners absorbed his meaning, he concluded with an old Navy phrase, " But it won't happen on my watch. " (Fay, The Pleasure of His Company 190) According to David Talbot, the book was published in September 1962 and JFK had received an advance copy from Knebel in late summer. (Brothers) Knebel said he got the idea for the book after interviewing Curtis LeMay, who at one point went off the record to fume against Kennedy's "cowardice" at the Bay of Pigs. (NYT 2/28/1993) Kennedy quickly read the book and others in his inner circle did as well. JFK contacted director John Frankenheimer, who had been working on The Manchurian Candidate (another Cold War thriller JFK was a huge fan of) and encouraged him to turn Seven Days into a film. "Kennedy wanted Seven Days in May to be made as a warning to the generals," recalled Arthur Schlesinger. "The president said the first thing I'm going to tell my successor is Don't trust the military men even on military matters." (Talbot interview with Schlesinger, Brothers). Sinatra had gotten Kennedy to intervene with United Artists to get The Manchurian Candidate made, when the studio began to get cold feet. (Sinatra interview, 1988 video release) Kirk Douglas' production company acquired the rights to the novel even before it was published. (Brothers, Talbot)
  
• 6/1962 Economic sanctions were hitting Cuba; protests over shortages grew. This month, Raul Castro and Che Guevara flew secretly to Moscow.
  
• 6/1962 Pentagon spokesman admitted that "several thousand" US military men were in Vietnam on "temporary duty." US forces in Vietnam numbered 8000.
  
• 6/1/1962 In the Weekly Crusader, Billy James Hargis wrote that "This nation today is in the hands of a group of Harvard radicals who have long ago been hooked' by the insidious dope of socialism and view human life from the international standpoint…They are a dangerous scourge - and they are so deeply entrenched in power that they can be removed only by a nationwide upsurge of conservatism - which, please God, will come in the elections of next November. It makes no difference that these Harvard eggheads call themselves Democrats or Republicans. This had now become a distinction without a difference. They are liberals; liberals are socialists; and Khrushchev himself said that socialism is the first phase of communism.'"
  
• 6/1/1962 The US State Dept loaned the Oswalds $435.71 to meet their travel expenses; Oswald signed a promissory note for the money today. He also had $200 he had saved, and this gave him just enough for cheap train and sea travel back to the States. A "lookout card" should have been prepared for him; they are routinely prepared when such loans are made as a guarantee against default by the borrower. But no such card was ever prepared, and the WC fell back on the explanation that there was an error or misunderstanding. (WR 772) Gerald Posner supports this explanation, and says that the loan was approved because of a State Dept clause that covered special situations that are "damaging to the prestige of the United States Government." (Case Closed p73) Before getting this loan, Oswald had tried to obtain funds from non-governmental groups. One was the International Rescue Committee, Inc., which described itself as a "strongly anti-Communist organization." (CE 2766) This day the Oswalds left for Rotterdam by train, where they picked up a ship to the US. (CE 1114-5, CE 1099) Marina's passport was stamped at Helmstedt, West Germany, but Oswald's passport had no stamp. Posner says: "a comparison of the visa stamps at border crossings shows the Oswald entered and exited Poland, Germany and the Netherlands together. They share the same visa stamps, with the exception that his passport is not marked on the entry to the West, at Helmstedt." (Case Closed 74; CE 29, CE 946) Marina said that he was never out of her sight during that time: "We traveled by train to Rotterdam...and he didn't leave...He was present all the time...he was with me all the time." (HSCA 2 288-9) She told the HSCA that they stayed at a cheap boardinghouse in Rotterdam. In her diary, Marina recalled staying in a "private apartment" for three days in Amsterdam, not two days in a hotel as the WC said. (H 18 615)
  
• 6/4/1962 The Oswalds sail for NY aboard the Holland-America liner SS Maasdam. Marina recalled that during their 9-day voyage, they rarely went on deck because she was poorly dressed and Oswald was ashamed of her. Sometimes they argued on the trip. (Marina and Lee p191-2) Probably on the Maasdam, Oswald wrote some notes on ship's stationery (H 16 106-22,441) which included his first mention of Gen. Walker: "The case of Gen. Walker shows that the army, at least, is not fertail enough groun for a far right regime to go a very long way." He believes that the Marine Corps is capable of launching a coup against the government. He also reveals his disillusionment with both capitalism and communism: "as history has shown time again the state remains and grows whereas true democracy can be practiced only at the local level…I have lived under both systems, I have sought the answers and although it would be very easy to dupe myself into believing one system is better than the other, I know they are not."
  
• 6/4/1962 Venezuelan government puts down another Castro-inspired revolt, at the naval base of Puerto Cabello by some 500 Marines supported by students from the University of Caracas. At the height of the fighting 6/3, Radio Havana urged Venezuelans to join the revolt.
  
• 6/7/1962 JFK said he would seek an "across-the-board" tax cut in 1963.
  
• 6/7/1962 Two CIA agents die while trying to enter Cuba through Baracoa, in the island's eastern-most province.
  
• 6/7/1962 French OAS set off bombs and fires in many Algerian buildings, including the University of Algiers.
  
• 6/8/1962 New York News and Fort Worth Star Telegram report that Oswald is on his way home, and says that in Oct 1959, when Oswald visited his family, "he talked optimistically about the future. Some of his plans had included going to college, writing a book, or joining Castro's Cuban army." The Star-Telegram also reports on Oswald's departure from USSR.
  
• 6/8/1962 In mid-1962 the tone of LIFE's examination of Kennedy's domestic policy changed, and he was criticized for treating economic problems as 'technical' problems, thereby giving too little attention to the overall importance of economic 'freedom'. (LIFE, June 8, 1962, 'How to Put More Zing in the Economy', p4) In keeping with its normal rhetoric, LIFE accused Kennedy of interfering with the free flow of international investments with his proposal to increase taxes on purchases by Americans of foreign securities." (Life, August 2, 1963, 'Misery with the Dollar or Happiness?, p.4)
  
• 6/9/1962 Article appeared in the Washington Post on page A7 titled, "Third American in 2 months Leaves Soviet Union." This article described the return of 3 American "defectors" to the United States-Lee Harvey Oswald, Robert Webster and David Johnson.
  
• 6/9/1962 NSAM 161 to the Secretaries of State, Defense, Treasury, Commerce, Attorney General, CIA director, Military Rep. of the President, FAA administrator, AEC chairman. "SUBJECT: US Internal Security Programs. 1.In line with my continuing efforts to give primary responsibility for the initiative on major matters of policy and administration in a given field to a key member of my administration, I will look to the Attorney General to take the initiative in the government in insuring the development of plans, programs and action proposals to protect the internal security of the United States. I will expect him to prepare recommendations in collaboration with other departments and agencies in the government having the responsibility for internal security programs with respect to those matters requiring presidential action. 2.Accordingly, I have directed that the two interdepartmental committees concerned with the internal security - the Interdepartmental Intelligence Conference (IIC) and the Interdepartmental Committee on Internal Security (ICIS) - which have been under the supervision of the National Security Council will be transferred to the supervision of the Attorney General....signed, John F. Kennedy." A copy of this NSAM was sent to J Edgar Hoover.
  
• 6/10/1962 Khrushchev ordered beefing up of Soviet combat forces in Cuba, including the secret transport of missiles to the island.
  
• 6/11/1962 JFK, in a speech at Yale, attacked fiscal conservatives for refusing to see the need for more economic growth. The national debt had grown 8% since WWII, but at the state and local level, government debt had grown 378% and private debt 305% during the same time. He said that deficit spending by the federal government was not necessarily inflationary. He also said, "The great enemy of the truth is very often not the lie-deliberate, contrived and dishonest-but the myth-persistent, persuasive and unrealistic."
  
• 6/11-15/1962 Students for a Democratic Society (SDS) hold their first national convention in Port Huron, Michigan.
  
• 6/11/1962 Laos: a cease-fire and coalition government is agreed to.
  
• 6/12/1962 A United Artists executive, Robert Blumofe, says in a letter to Edward Lewis that he declined to consider making a film of the book Seven Days in May because of the negative image it might project abroad "and the inevitable and implacable opposition of the military." "If…the Executive branch of the Government were to encourage the making of this film, I'd certainly be happy to reconsider it with you at that time," he wrote.
  
• 6/13/1962 Lee Harvey Oswald returned to the United States after his defection to the Soviet Union. He was not met by arrest and prosecution. Nor was he confronted in any way by the government he had betrayed. Instead Oswald was welcomed by order of the U.S. government, as he and his Russian wife Marina disembarked with their infant daughter June from the ocean liner Maasdam in Hoboken, New Jersey. The Warren Report tells us that, on the recommendation of the State Department, the Oswalds were greeted at the dock by Spas T. Raikin, a representative of the Traveler's Aid Society. The Warren Report does not mention, however, that Raikin was at the same time secretary-general of the American Friends of the Anti-Bolshevik Nations, an anti-communist organization with extensive intelligence connections - like the American government, an unlikely source of support for a traitor. The Warren Report does say that, with Spas T. Raikin's help, the Oswald family passed smoothly through immigration and customs. Robert Oswald wired them $200 and the next day flew to Texas. Marina claimed that Oswald had expected many reporters to be present when they arrived in the US, and was disappointed when there were none in either New York or Texas. (Marina and Lee 215-6; HSCA 2 220,280) Robert and his family met them at the Fort Worth airport; he recalled, "He seemed, perhaps the word is, disappointed, when there were no newspaper reporters around...I believe his comment was something, 'What, no photographer or anything?'" (H 1 331) Oswald had wanted to tell the press that the US and USSR were both messed up; he later wrote his own questions and answers, the ones he had hoped to be asked. He wrote two sets, one truthful and one false. (CE 100, H 16 436-39) In notes he had written during the voyage home, he attacked both the US and Soviet Union: "I despise the representatives of both systems weather they be socialist or cristan democrates, weath they be labor or conservative they are all products of the two systems." (CE 25) In a draft of a speech he wrote: "In returning to the US I have done nothing more or less than select the lesser of two evils." (CE 102) He also speculated about the possible effects of anarchy. (CE 25) Gerald Posner concludes, "His rebellious convictions against government and authority were slowly evolving toward violence and revolution."
  
• 6/13/1962 Hoover memo to Asst Directors; he reported that LBJ was worried about rumors about "a tape which purported to be an interview between a newspaper man and Estes' partner in which Estes' partner said Mrs. Lyndon Johnson lent $5,000,000 to Estes, and a lot of stories..."
  
• 6/12-13/1962 Panama's President Roberto Francisco Chiari visited Kennedy 6/12-13/1962 to discuss the Panama Canal, and how Panamanians wanted to have more control over it. 1963 riots between citizens of Panama and Americans living in the canal zone over whose flag should fly there. During four days of street fighting 24 Panamanians and 4 US soldiers died. Secretary of State Dean Rusk announced that Cuba-trained communists were behind the trouble. Panamanian desire for control of the canal was seen as part of a Soviet-inspired plot. The US couldn't understand that this event was stirred by nationalist feelings on the part of the Panamanians; all that Americans could worry about was having "a country with one-third the population of Chicago kick us around. If we crumble in Panama, the reverberations of our actions will be felt around the world." (Sen. Everett Dirksen).
  
• 6/14/1962 The State Dept. writes a memo (partially redacted) regarding Operation Mongoose: "Spontaneous Revolts in Cuba Contingency Planning" stating: The purpose of this plan is to define the courses of action to be pursued by affected agencies of the US Government in the event that a decision is made that the United States undertake military intervention in Cuba. (362. Memorandum From the Chief of Operations, Operation Mongoose (Lansdale) to the Special Group (Augmented,) Foreign Relations Of The United States 1961-1963 Volume X, Cuba, 1961-1962)
  
• 6/14/1962 Oswalds' plane lands at Love Field, Dallas; they are met by Robert and Vada, and brought to Robert's house in Fort Worth. After returning from Russia, they stayed briefly with his brother Robert; the brothers got along well, almost as though Oswald had "not been to Russia." (H 1 312) Robert and his wife, Vada, showed Marina the sights in the Dallas-Fort Worth area. Marguerite Oswald showed up and told Lee that she wanted to write about his defection; Lee complained to Marina: "She thinks that she did it all. She thinks she's the one who got us out." (Marina and Lee p220) Several journalists called on Oswald at Robert's house, but he refused to meet with them, since he was still upset that no one had met him at the airport. The Oswalds were welcomed by a local White Russian community characterized by its pronounced anti-communist view of the world. Lee was befriended by George de Mohrenschildt, the son of a czarist official. "The Baron," as he liked to be called, traveled around the world as a geologist, consulting for Texas oil companies and doubling as an intelligence asset. In 1957 the CIA's Richard Helms wrote a memo saying that de Mohrenschildt, after making a trip as a consultant in Yugoslavia, provided the CIA with " foreign intelligence which was promptly disseminated to other federal agencies in 10 separate reports. " De Mohrenschildt would admit in a 1977 interview that he had been given a go-ahead to meet Oswald by J. Walton Moore, the Dallas CIA Domestic Contacts Service chief. (Epstein, Assassination Chronicles) None of George de Mohrenschildt's extensive U.S. intelligence connections are mentioned in the Warren Report, which describes him vaguely as "a highly individualistic person of varied interests" who befriended Oswald. Relying on U.S. intelligence for its questions and answers, the Report concludes concerning George and his wife, Jeanne de Mohrenschildt: "Neither the FBI, CIA, nor any witness contacted by the Commission has provided any information linking the de Mohrenschildts to subversive or extremist organizations. " New Orleans district attorney Jim Garrison identified de Mohrenschildt as one of Oswald's CIA "baby-sitters," " assigned to protect or otherwise see to the general welfare of a particular individual. " Garrison concluded from his conversations with George and Jeanne de Mohrenschildt that the Baron was in some sense an unwitting baby-sitter, without foreknowledge of what was in store for the "baby" in his custody. Both de Mohrenschildts, Garrison said, were vigorous in their insistence to him that Oswald had been the assassination scapegoat. (On the Trail of the Assassins) Though he had been Oswald's CIA-approved shepherd in Dallas, George de Mohrenschildt had no " need to know, " and thus probably no understanding in advance of the scapegoat role that lay ahead for his young friend. In the years after John Kennedy and Lee Oswald were gunned down, the de Mohrenschildts seemed to grow in remorse for the evil in which they had become enmeshed. Jim Garrison said, "I was particularly affected by the depth of their unhappiness at what had been done not only to John Kennedy but to Lee Oswald as well. "
  
• 6/15/1962 De Gaulle assassination attempt.
  
• 6/16/1962 Two US Army officers were killed in an ambush by guerillas north of Saigon.
  
• 6/17-18/1962 Chicago Tribune's Washington Correspondent Willard Edwards revealed in a two-part article that Rostow's view in the State Department was that the USSR was no longer aggressive and that the US had to show its peaceful intentions.
  
• 6/18/1962 Oswald met with stenographer Pauline Bates; she began typing up his notes on Russia for an article he wanted to publish. Either this afternoon or the next morning, he visits the Texas Employment Agency and/or the Fort Worth Library, where he acquires the name and phone number of Peter Paul Gregory.
  
• 6/19/1962 JFK wrote a memo to the Secretary of State expressing concern about the amount of money being spent on lavish US embassies and official homes in poor countries: "I feel that excessive expenditures for such a residence will make us look ridiculous in the eyes of the people in the countries concerned... I believe that embassy residences should present an image of dignity and charm without being ostentatious or luxurious."
  
• 6/19/1962 Oswald phones Gregory this morning and came to his office at 11am. He gave Oswald a test and found that he had "a good knowledge of the Russian language." (H 16 976) Oswald spends the afternoon with Mrs. Bates.
  
• 6/19/1962 Khrushchev, in Rumania, predicted that "the United States will eventually fly the Communist Red Flag...the American people will hoist it themselves."
  
• 6/20/1962 Mrs. Bates remembered that today Oswald seemed different, "real nervous and excited-like." Oswald halts work on the manuscript, claiming he has no more money. She offered to keep working for free, but he refused.
  
• 6/21/1962 Rosselli reports to William Harvey that Varona had dispatched a "three-man team" to Cuba. Harvey felt they would accomplish little and had no specific plan. (Church report)
  
• 6/21/1962 JFK's farm bill was killed in the House.
  
• 6/21/1962 A federal grand jury in El Paso handed up a new 29-count indictment against Billie Sol Estes.
  
• 6/22/1962 Cartha DeLoach memo to John Mohr; LBJ was upset about "false allegations" made in an editorial in the 7/1962 issue of Farm and Ranch Magazine "and would deeply appreciate the Director having FBI agents interview the editor..." The allegations concerned an alleged meeting he had with Estes 4/28/1962 in Midland, Texas, though Johnson claimed he was at the White House. "The Vice President...could clearly state for the record that neither he nor any member of his family...had ever had any connection whatsoever with Billie Sol Estes..."
  
• 6/24/1962 Oswald supposedly first hit Marina in an argument on this day, and threatened to kill her. Marina then wandered the neighborhood for two hours, shocked and wondering what to do. (Marina and Lee p225-27)
  
• 6/25/1962 Supreme Court handed down Engel vs. Vitale, ruled that reading of an official prayer in the public schools (in this case New York) was unconstitutional. The reaction from conservatives was deafening. Rep. George Grant (D-Alabama) raged, "They put the Negroes in the schools and now they've driven God out of them." Cardinal Francis Spellman, Billy Graham, Herbert Hoover, and liberal Episcopalian bishop James A. Pike condemned it. The case was brought by the families of public school students in New Hyde Park, New York who complained that the voluntary prayer to "Almighty God" contradicted their religious beliefs. They were supported by groups opposed to the school prayer including rabbinical organizations, Ethical Culture, and Judaic organizations. The court also struck down a California law making it a crime to be a drug addict.
  
• 6/26/1962 FBI agents Burnett Tom Carter and John W. Fain contacted Lee Oswald at Robert's house, and said they wanted to see him at their Fort Worth office. When he arrived, "Oswald declined to answer the question as to why he had made the trip to Russia in the first place. In a show of temper, he stated he did not care to relive the past.' During most of the interview, Oswald displayed an impatient and arrogant attitude." He finally claimed that he went to the USSR only because he wanted to see the country, not because he disliked the US. "Oswald denied that he at any time while in Russia had offered to reveal to the Soviets any of the information he had acquired as a radar operator in the US Marines…Oswald stated that in the event he is contacted by Soviet intelligence under suspicious circumstances or otherwise, he will promptly communicate with the FBI. He stated that he holds no brief for the Russians or the Russian system." (H 17 728-29) Oswald was never officially debriefed by the CIA, though CIA document #1004-400 shows that their Domestic Contact Division debriefed an average of 25,000 tourists a year 1959-63. Posner explains why the CIA did not debrief him: the HSCA "discovered that while the CIA's Domestic Contact Division considered interviewing him, it finally decided against it, since he was of 'marginal importance.' Between 1958 and 1963, the CIA did not automatically debrief returning defectors, instead allowing the FBI to report significant results from its interviews. Of the twenty-two American defectors who returned to the US during those five years, the CIA only interviewed four, and all interviews related to particular intelligence matters." (Case Closed 79; he gives no source for this information.) Marguerite announced that she had given up her job and rented a small Fort Worth apartment, where she planned to live with Lee and Marina. Robert recalled that Lee was "not overjoyed" by the idea, "but mother had made up her mind, and when she made up her mind nobody could change it." (Lee p121)
  
• 6/28/1962 House passed Kennedy's foreign trade bill by 298 to 125; it would give the president very broad tariff-cutting powers.
  
• 6/28/1962 Rep. Mendel Rivers (D-South Carolina) fumed about the recent Supreme Court ruling: "I know of nothing in my lifetime that would give more aid and comfort to Moscow than this bold, malicious, atheistic, and sacrilegious twist by this unpredictable group of uncontrolled despots."
  
• 6/28/1962 NYT quoted JFK defending the school prayer ruling; he said a "very easy remedy" for the absence of prayer in the schools was more prayer at home and more church attendance.
  
• 6/29/1962 JFK and Jackie paid a state visit to Mexico. JFK and president Mateos were showered with confetti in a motorcade in Mexico City. They are in Mexico through July 1.
  
• 6/30/1962 US government ended its fiscal year with a deficit of $7 billion; this would be re-adjusted to $6.3 billion in July.
  
• 6/30/1962 The US Chamber of Commerce suddenly dropped its demand for a balanced budget as the primary aim of the federal government and instead recommended an immediate $7.5-$10 billion tax cut to spur the economy. (NY Times)
  
• 6/30/1962 In Mexico, JFK announced a $20 million agricultural loan to that country.
  

• 7/1962 Johnny Rosselli complains to associates of harassment by FBI and Justice Dept.
  
• 7/1962 McNamara declared, "Every quantitative measurement we have shows we are winning this war" in Vietnam.
  
• 7/1/1962 Marina writes to the Russian embassy in Washington, requesting that her Residence Permit (passport) be registered. (H 18 481-5)
  
• 7/1/1962 Algerians voted for independence
  
• 7/2/1962 Raul Castro and a high-level Cuban military delegation arrive in Moscow, where they are met at the airport by Marshal Rodion Malinovsky and Anastas Mikoyan . Nikita Khrushchev subsequently meets with Raúl Castro on July 3 and 8. During these discussions, detailed arrangements are made for the missile deployment. According to the formal agreement, which is renewable every five years, the missiles and their servicing will be completely under the jurisdiction of the Soviet military command. Raul Castro spends a total of two weeks consulting with Soviet officials before returning to Cuba on July 17. (Alekseyev, p. 9; Medvedev, p. 184; Garthoff 2, p.67)
  
• 7/3/1962 France recognizes the independence of Algeria.
  
• 7/3/1962 FBI in Washington created a new file on Oswald under the slug line 105 ("internal security").
  
• 7/4/1962 JFK said in a speech that he looked forward to a "declaration of interdependence" that would strengthen ties between the US and Europe.
  
• 7/4/1962 It is revealed that the government is looking into charges of illegal sale of federal rice-planting allotments in Texas.
  
• 7/4/1962 Raul Castro, Fidel's brother, deputy PM and minister of the armed forces, has secret talks with Khrushchev in Moscow.
  
• 7/4/1962 Algerian army officers loyal to Ben Bella seized the provisional government's embassy in Morocco.
  
• 7/5/1962 The film Panic in Year Zero! is released in the US by AIP. Low-budget but realistic and effective, it stars Ray Milland (who also directed) trying to keep his family alive in California in the aftermath of a limited nuclear exchange.
  
• 7/5/1962 Lansdale told RFK that the organizing of anti-Castro forces in Florida was going well.
  
• Early to mid 7/1962 Marguerite Oswald comes to Fort Worth to visit, and decided to rent an apartment in that city. Lee and Marina moved in with her and Marguerite helped him find a job. Oswald was distant with his mother, and they soon found their own apartment.
  
• 7/6/1962 US lifted severe travel restrictions on Soviet visitors.
  
• 7/9/1962 Starfish Prime was a high-altitude nuclear test conducted by the United States of America on July 9, 1962, a joint effort of the Defense Atomic Support Agency (DASA) and the Atomic Energy Commission (AEC). Launched via a Thor rocket and carrying a W49 thermonuclear warhead (manufactured by Los Alamos Scientific Laboratory) and a Mk. 4 reentry vehicle, the explosion took place 400 kilometers (250 miles) above Johnston Island in the Pacific Ocean. It was one of five tests conducted by the USA in outer space as defined by the FAI. It produced a yield of 1.4 megatons of TNT.
  
• 7/9/1962 N. Reznichenko, chief of consular section at the Russian embassy in Washington, sent a note asking Marina Oswald to forward her passport for registration. (H 18 487-88)
  
• 7/10/1962 US communications satellite Telstar is launched into orbit, allowing direct television between US and Europe. It was a joint government-industry project.
  
• 7/11/1962 Treasury Dept issued new rules giving business a tax cut in the form of greater allowances for depreciation of machinery and equipment.
  
• 7/11/1962 Khrushchev denounced Kennedy's "willingness to 'take the initiative' in a nuclear conflict with the Soviet Union..."
  
• 7/12/1962 NYT first mentions the coming film, The Manchurian Candidate, based on the novel by Richard Condon, is set for fall release. Frank Sinatra will reportedly be instrumental in suppression of the film after 1963 until 1987, at which time it will be re-released. Other accounts say the film was withdrawn over copyright ownerships issues. In any case, the film achieved cult status the 25 years it was not available. Sinatra discussed the film with JFK prior to the end of their friendship in Sept 1962. (Interviews included in Manchurian Candidate video release 1988)
  
• 7/12/1962 The first privately owned satellite, Telstar (AT&T), relayed TV programs across the Atlantic.
  
• 7/12/1962 Abe Ribicoff resigned as Sec. of HEW to run for the Senate.
  
• 7/13/1962 Oswald pays $10.00 (cash) against State Dept travel loan. It was posted 8/14/62 from 270 Mercedes St., Fort Worth (CE 1120)
  
• 7/14/1962 The Oswalds moved into a two-room apartment in Ft Worth.
  
• 7/14/1962 JFK named Anthony Celebrezze as new Sec. of HEW.
  
• 7/15/1962 Around this time, Soviet cargo ships begin moving out of the Black Sea for Cuba with false declarations of their destinations and reporting tonnages well below their capacities. Aerial reconnaissance of the ships in the following months showing them "riding high in the water" would confirm that the vessels carried unusually light cargo, typically a sign that military equipment is being transported.
  
• 7/15/1962 The OAS (Secret Army Organization) formally surrenders to the French government, though rogue elements remain active.
  
• 7/16/1962 Oswald found a job as a sheet-metal worker for the Louv-R-Pak division of the Leslie Welding Co. He lied on his application, saying he had done sheet metal work in the Marines and was honorably discharged. He didn't like the menial work, but did his job in a satisfactory manner. Marina said Oswald would leave his ring at home when he went to work. Relations in the apartment were strained; Marguerite distrusted Marina and suspected that she could really speak English, and thought that perhaps both of them had become Russian spies. She also felt in competition with Marina. (Marina and Lee 229; Case Closed 81)
  
• 7/16/1962 Mary Pinchot Meyer supposedly turned JFK on to cannabis; he joked, "We're having a White House conference on narcotics here in two weeks." After the third joint, he said, "No more. Suppose the Russians did something now." (It Didn't Start with Watergate)
  
• 7/17/1962 Raúl Castro leaves Moscow after two weeks of secret talks with Nikita Khrushchev and other high-ranking Soviet officials on the scheduled deployment of Soviet nuclear missiles in Cuba. Although aware of the military make-up of the Cuban delegation, the fact that no public communiqué is issued after the visit leads the U.S. intelligence community at first to believe that the mission had failed. Upon his return to Cuba, Raúl Castro tells a gathering that neither internal uprisings nor exile landings are a threat, only a U.S. invasion, which, he said, "we can now repel." (Forwarding of and Comments on CIA Memo on Soviet Aid to Cuba, 8/22/62; Allison, p. 48; Garthoff 2, p. 67)
  
• 7/18/1962 Peru: military coup.
  
• 7/19/1962 JFK declared that the military coup in Peru was a "serious setback" for the Alliance for Progress; he suspended nearly all aid to Peru.
  
• 7/19/1962 In the Pacific, the US had its first successful interception of an intercontinental missile by an anti-missile missile.
  
• 7/20/1962 JFK announced that Lauris Norstad would resign as NATO commander and would be replaced by Lyman Lemnitzer. Max Taylor was appointed new Chairman of the JCS.
  
• 7/22/1962 The Miami Herald - Anti-Castro War Camp Ruled Out by Exiles By James BUCHANAN Herald Staff Writer Anti-Castro Cubans and their American supporters have been forced to drop plans for a large guerrilla warfare training camp near New Orleans, The Herald learned Saturday. The site, on the north edge of Lake Pontchartrain 40 miles north of New Orleans, was donated this spring by an anonymous U.S. businessman. The training of anti-Castro Cubans and the camp itself, were to have been commanded by Gerald Patrick Heming, a 25-year-old soldier of fortune well known to Cubans here. The "stop order" came from the Cuban Revolutionary Council's Miami headquarters, which advised its New Orleans associates they could not support any clandestine training sites in the United States. Preparations for activating the guerrilla warfare school were begun last February as New Orleans' Cuban colony began rounding up arms, ammunition and money for the Venture. Reportedly, they were successful in raising large sums of money and acquiring large stocks of late model weapons. Patrick made Innumerable trips between Miami and New Orleans during the past four months preparing the site, which is complete with an airstrip, for July occupancy. Plans had called for the training of 50 to 75 Cubans in classes lasting from six to eight weeks. At the completion of the "courses" the guerrilla fighters would have been ready to infiltrate Cuba where they would work with local underground leaders in sabotage and operations against Castro's army and militia. Louis Rabell, the New Orleans representative of the Cuban Revolutionary Council headed by Dr. Miro Cardona, confirmed the Council had ordered the camp closed before it opened. In Miami it was said that public knowledge of the proposed camp became too widespread and the Council wanted, to dodge any connection with a large scale operation on which the U.S. State Department and Central Intelligence Agency would frown. Hemming who operates under the name Jerry Patrick, has been active in anti-Castro activities here since late 1960. He had been active in Cuba since 1958 with Castro's forces and defected. Leading first one group and then another, Patrick' finally settled upon the name International Penetration Force" for his organization and began guerrilla training of Cuban refugees here with money supplied by the Cuban colony. A 6-foot, 5-inch, 231 pounder, Patrick has abandoned the long hair, pointed beard, and Australian bush hat he wore for more than a year during his early activities here. A veteran of four years with the Marine Corps, he now dresses as unobtrusively as possible and is still considered one of the most ardent and effective Americans working with the anti-Castro forces.
  
• 7/23/1962 Lansdale recommended to McNamara that the US provoke Castro into something rash, like an attack on Guantanamo, and then use it as a pretext to invade.
  
• 7/23/1962 Second Geneva Conference adopts neutrality policy on Laos which theoretically would stop the North Vietnamese from using that country to infiltrate South Vietnam. 14 nations, including the US, USSR, China and North & South Vietnam, signed the pact.
  
• 7/23/1962 Honolulu conference: McNamara sounded more optimistic in a report about the military situation in Vietnam. That day he also asked Harkins how long he thought it would take to neutralize the Vietcong. McNamara decided that three years, including a phased withdrawal of US advisers, would do the job. (In Retrospect p48-49) On July 23, 1962, the day on which the United States joined thirteen other nations at Geneva in signing the "Declaration on the Neutrality of Laos," Robert McNamara convened another Secretary of Defense Conference on the Vietnam War, this one at Camp Smith, Hawaii. McNamara's May 8 order to General Harkins to submit a plan for withdrawal from Vietnam had been ignored. On July 23, the Defense Secretary repeated the order, directing Harkins once again to lay out a long-range program for the completion of training for the South Vietnamese army, so that U.S. advisers could be withdrawn. McNamara specified what he called a "conservative" three year time line for the end of U.S. military assistance. He also indicated an early awareness in John Kennedy of what an antiwar movement would demand if the United States did not withdraw. McNamara said, "We must line up our long range program [for withdrawal] as it may become difficult to retain public support for our operations in Vietnam. The political pressure will build up as U.S. losses continue to occur. In other words, we must assume the worst and make our plans accordingly. "Therefore," he concluded, "planning must be undertaken now and a program devised to phase out U.S. military involvement."
  
• 7/25/1962 Lansdale provides the SGA an assessment of Phase One of OPERATION MONGOOSE. Some successes are reported, such as the infiltration of eleven CIA guerrilla teams into Cuba, including one team in Pinar del Río Province that has grown to as many as 250 men. Nonetheless, Lansdale warns that "time is running out for the U.S. to make a free choice on Cuba."
  
• 7/25/1962 Lyman Lemnitzer memo on Northwoods that is partially redacted.
  
• 7/26/1962 The Pentagon Papers note that on July 26, 1962, the Joint Chiefs of Staff formally directed the commander in chief of the Pacific to develop such a Comprehensive Plan for South Vietnam (CPSVN). The plan's stated objective reads like an elephant trying to tiptoe through a mine field so as to avoid an explosion into the word "withdrawal." The Joint Chiefs said the plan's objective was to " develop a capability within military and paramilitary forces of the GVN [Government of Vietnam] by the end of Calendar Year 65 that will help the GVN to achieve the strength necessary to exercise permanent and continued sovereignty over that part of Vietnam which lies below the demarcation line [of the 1954 Geneva Agreement, which established no separate "South Vietnam"] without the need for continued U.S. special military assistance." Although the Joint Chiefs refused to identify Kennedy's plan for withdrawal as what it was, the plan had at least begun to move through military channels-like molasses.
  
• 7/26/1962 Earl Warren switched from the GOP to the Democratic party "for one reason only - to do everything I could to insure California's future as my father visualized it. Richard Nixon does not have that vision."
  
• 7/26/1962 On the ninth anniversary of the 26th of July Movement, Castro told the Cuban people that "mercenaries" no longer pose a threat to Cuba: President Kennedy had already "made up his mind" to invade Cuba, he asserts, but Cuba has acquired new arms to beat back such a direct attack.
  
• 7/27/1962 MLK and 27 others were arrested on charges of "disorderly conduct" during their desegregation campaign at the city hall in Albany, Georgia.
  
• 7/27/1962 The last US marines were withdrawn from Thailand.
  
• 7/31/1962 Senate Republicans endorsed legislation requiring future FBI directors to be appointed by the President and confirmed by the Senate.
  
• 7/31/1962 Lansdale predicted that an internal revolt in Cuba might soon happen, and the US could take advantage of it.