Deep Politics Timeline

[Tracy Riddle]

When Kennedy became chair of the African Subcommittee, he told the Senate in 1959: " Call it nationalism, call it anti-colonialism, call it what you will, Africa is going through a revolution . . . The word is out-and spreading like wildfire in nearly a thousand languages and dialects-that it is no longer necessary to remain forever poor or in bondage . " He therefore advocated " sympathy with the independence movement, programs of economic and educational assistance and, as the goal of American policy, 'a strong Africa. "'

• Secret pact between Turkish armed forces and CIA, putting paramilitary groups in charge of stifling internal unrest.
  
• Antarctic Treaty signed with USSR and 21 other nations, agreeing to make Antarctica nuclear-free.
  
• 1/1959 The Central Committee of the Vietnamese Workers' Party in Hanoi decides on an all-out policy of promoting "armed struggle" in South Vietnam.
  
• 1/1959 J. Edgar Hoover ordered FBI agents to burglarize SCLC offices, mostly to obtain dirt on MLK; there were at least 20 break-ins between 1959 and 1/1964. (The Man and the Secrets 501) Wiretapping of phones was also done. (The Bureau 136)
  
• 1/1/1959 Castro comes to power in Cuba.
  
• 1/3/1959 Alaska becomes the 49th state.
  
• 1/7/1959 In a speech, LBJ chided the administration's lack of action on domestic ills, but also expressed support for "fiscal solvency" and "financial prudence." He also criticized the administration for cutting the defense budget. When corrected for inflation, military spending in 1958 was lower than in 1957.
  
• 1/8/1959 Jack Ruby is believed to have made his first contact with Robert McKeown.
  
• 1/9/1959 U.S. district court judge Frank Hooper declared regulations for segregated seating on Atlanta city busses unconstitutional. The case arose after two Atlanta black ministers -- Samuel Williams and John Porter -- challenged the practice of forcing blacks to sit at the back of the bus.
  
• 1/10/1959 Following Gov. Ernest Vandiver's recommendation, the State Board of Regents ordered state colleges and universities to stop accepting new applications. The move came as way of trying to stop integration. Though not resulting from the Regents' action, on the same day U.S. district court judge Boyd Sloan ordered the Georgia State College of Business Administration (which became Georgia State) to stop turning down black applicants on the basis of their race.
  
• 1/15/1959 Wayne Morse complained to LBJ, "Those of us who do not follow you blindly must expect to travel a rocky political road in the Senate, but I wish to assure you it will not only be our tires which get punctured."
  
• 1/24/1959 Columnist Joe Alsop describes LBJ as "the second most powerful man in the nation," maybe the "most powerful man, because he loves to exercise power and President Eisenhower does not." (Sat. Evening Post)
  
• 1/30/1959 Martin Luther King meets with Walter Reuther, president of the United Auto Workers union, in Detroit.
  
• 1/30/1959 Sen. William Fulbright (D-Arkansas) becomes Chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee.
  
• 2/1/1959 Jack Ruby tells McKeown he represents a source in Las Vegas that wants to get three prisoners out of jail in Cuba. Ruby meets McKeown in Kemah, Texas, and offers $25,000 for a personal introduction to Castro. (Ruby Cover-up 249)
  
• 2/7/1959 Drew Pearson: "This year Ike is really trying to balance the budget - so much so that he's probably going to throw the economy out of kilter...Ike won't tax. Especially he won't plug the loopholes in the oil laws." (Diaries p503)
  
• 2/12/1959 At a NSC meeting, Neil McElroy and Gen. Twining asked for more U-2 flights to fight out about Russian missile strength. Ike reluctantly agreed to a few flights.
  
• 2/25/1959 Eisenhower reported that Pakistan would receive US military aid for defensive purposes. India rejected a comparable offer. (Harper Enc. of Military History)
  
• 2/25/1959 PM Macmillan meets with Khrushchev in Moscow but ended by "toothache insult"
  
• 2/25/1959 Oswald took a Russian-language proficiency exam. (CD 82) Posner says that reports of Oswald being able to speak fluent Russian are wrong; rumors of him having been at the Monterey Language School are untrue. "After investigation, the [WC] was convinced Oswald had never been there. The Monterey School is not an intelligence facility, and its student rosters show Oswald was never enrolled there and never attended a single class." Posner says that Oswald learned Russian in the Marines with the occasional help of an officer in his unit who shared his interest. He admits that Oswald took a Russian language exam in which he scored "poor" in all areas. (H 8 307) "When he took the Russian exam, he also took an extensive aptitude test. He finished in the bottom of the lowest category. Oswald redoubled his efforts at Russian after the dismal test results." Oswald wrote in his diary that he bought two self-teaching Russian language books: "I force myself to study 8 hours a day I sit in my room and read and memorize words." (CE 24) This was the period from mid-November to the end of December 1959.
  
• 3/4/1959 Drew Pearson: "Eisenhower at his press conference indicated for the first time that [John Foster] Dulles may not come back. The fact is that cancer has been found all over his body. The doctors naturally are not revealing this, but Ike knows the truth." (Diaries p509)
  
• 3/11/1959 Jack Ruby became an informant for the Dallas FBI. This month, Ruby phones and meets with Tom Davis, a gun-runner with CIA ties, in Belmont.
  
• 3/19/1959 Oswald applies to Albert Schweitzer College; he said he intended to take a summer course at the University of Turku in Finland, though he never contacted this school. It did give him an excuse to travel to Finland. He lied on other parts of the school application, but was accepted.
  
• 3/24/1959 Carlos Marcello appears before the Senate McClellan Committee, which included JFK and counsel RFK. Marcello repeatedly took the fifth amendment.
  
• 3/26/1959 George Reedy memo to Lyndon Johnson, telling him that his low-key campaign strategy was working, and that he was "the only national Democratic leader who has a record of achievement. You are the only national Democratic leader who has displayed the moral fiber that a President must have."
  
• 4/1959 Ike makes the first public commitment to maintain South Vietnam as separate nation; he spoke at Gettysburg College in Penn.: "Strategically South Vietnam's capture by the Communists would bring their power several hundred miles into a hitherto free region. The remaining countries in Southeast Asia would be menaced by a great flanking movement...The loss of South Vietnam would set in motion a crumbling process that could, as it progressed, have grave consequences for us and for freedom..."
  
• 4/1-2/1959 Kennedy campaign strategy meeting at Palm Beach; present were Joe Kennedy Sr., JFK, RFK, Steve Smith, Lou Harris, Ted Sorense, Bob Wallace, Ken O'Donnell and Larry O'Brien.
  
• 4/2/1959 Dallas police's criminal intelligence division lists Jack Ruby and Lewis McWillie as connected with professional gambling activities.
  
• 4/4/1959 Ike makes the first public commitment to maintain South Vietnam as separate nation; he spoke at Gettysburg College in Penn.: "Strategically South Vietnam's capture by the Communists would bring their power several hundred miles into a hitherto free region. The remaining countries in Southeast Asia would be menaced by a great flanking movement...The loss of South Vietnam would set in motion a crumbling process that could, as it progressed, have grave consequences for us and for freedom..."
  
• 4/4/1959 The Federation of Mali is formed, consisting of Senegal & the territory of Mali in the French Sudan. It will dissolve in 1960.
  
• 4/6/1959 Seven men, including USAF Captains Virgil I. Grissom, Leroy Gordon Cooper, Jr., and Donald K. Slayton, are choosen to be the first Americans in space.
  
• 4/6/1959 Ike approved more U-2 flights into Russia, but changed his mind the next day.
  
• 4/12/1959 James Lindsay Almond, Jr., governor of Virginia, was the target of unsuccessful assassins, possibly segregationists, who attempted to shoot him.
  
• 4/19/1959 Castro appears on Meet the Press
  
• 4/27/1959 Jack Ruby rents a safety deposit box (#448) at Merchants State Bank.
  
• 4/28/1959 Drew Pearson: "Mrs. [Clare Boothe] Luce, after being confirmed overwhelmingly, made a wisecrack about Wayne Morse having been kicked in the head by a horse. When the remark was read on the Senate floor, several Senators got up and said if they had to vote over again, they would now vote against Mrs. Luce." (Diaries 519)
  
• 4/28/1959 Jack Ruby meets with agent Flynn for the first time as an informant.
  
• 5/1959 US advisers are sent to Vietnam to assist Diem's forces.
  
• 5/3/1959 Ismet Inonu, former president and future premier of Turkey, was the target of an unsuccessful assassination attempt.
  
• 5/6/1959 At a Marine base near Los Angeles Oswald was given another test and scored 191 which was one point over the mininum to rank as "marksman." (WR 191). Gerald Posner explains this second test by saying that Oswald was no longer motivated. (Case Closed 20) Of Oswald's lower test score, Marine Eugene Anderson told the WC, "It might well have been a bad day for firing the rifle - windy, rainy, dark." (H 11 304). But the Weather Bureau records show that that day - 5/6/1959 in Los Angeles - was sunny and bright, with no rain, and about 72-79 degrees. (Rush to Judgement)
  
• 5/7/1959 Ruby uses his safety deposit box.
  
• 5/11/1959 Geneva Foreign Ministers Conference
  
• 5/19/1959 Rashid Karami, prime minister of Lebanon, was the target of a failed assassination attempt.
  
• 5/20/1959 Eisenhower awarded John Foster Dulles the Medal of Freedom.
  
• 5/20/1959 Citizenship was returned to 5000 Japanese-Americans who had lost it during WWII.
  
• 5/30-6/14/1959 attempted insurgent invasion of Nicaragua; air-transported rebels defeated by Gen. Anastasio Somoza; dictator Luis Somoza Debayle accused Cuba of being behind it.
  
• 6/5/1959 Jack Ruby meets with agent Flynn.
  
• 6/8/1959 Supreme Court upheld the right of the states and Congress to investigate Communists.
  
• 6/8/1959 Luis A. Somoza Debayle, president of Nicaragua, was the target of an unsuccessful assassination attempt.
  
• 6/8/1959 Sam Giancana appeared before the McClellan Crime Committee, after avoiding its subpoena for some time. During the hearing, he was publicly humiliated by Robert Kennedy, who compared him to "a little girl." The incident is discussed in detail in William Brashler's biography of Giancana, The Don. Footage of the RFK-Giancana exchange also appears in some documentaries.
  
• 6/18/1959 Ruby meets with agent Flynn.
  
• 6/20/1959 Drew Pearson: "Mrs. Omar Bradley...was quite frank...regarding the Eisenhowers. She confirmed the fact that in 1948 her husband had warned the Democrats not to nominate Ike because he couldn't make decisions.'" (Diaries 531)
  
• 6/22/1959 Jack Ruby uses his safety deposit box.
  
• 6/22/1959 Gen. Albert Wedemeyer was asked by HUAC, "how late is it on the communist timetable for world domination?" Wedemeyer first replied, "Sir, my humble, honest judgement is, that it is too late." He was allowed to change his answer for the record, saying, "it is very, very late." (None Dare Call it Treason)
  
• 6/23/1959 Dominican Republic: Cuban invasion of 86 men was crushed by Trujillo's forces.
  
• 6/23/1959 Investigative report of Oswald shooting incident completed. (CD 82)
  
• 6/28/1959 At a Washington party, Earl Warren confronted Earl Mazo, the author of a glowing biography on Nixon. "You are a damned liar," Warren said, calling the book "a dishonest account to promote Nixon." (Chief Justice)
  
• 6/28/1959 Drew Pearson: "Now the Senate has a chance to slap down Wilbur Mills of Arkansas, who is beginning to be another reactionary dictator of taxes as chairman of the Ways and Means Committee - despite the fact that it was only a few years ago that Bob Allen and I helped elect him as a new young liberal congressman." (Diaries 533)
  
• 6/29/1959 Drew Pearson: "Ike flew to New York to welcome Deputy Premier Kozlov who arrived nonstop from Moscow yesterday. Ike made the trip only after Ambassador Menshikov made it clear that Nixon would not be welcomed by Khrushchev unless Eisenhower welcomed Kozlov...Secretary of State Herter had pressured him, mainly because Herter wants Nixon to get the red carpet treatment in Moscow." (Diaries 533)
  
• 7/1959 Ike invited Khrushchev to come to the US. No Russian leader had ever been to the US before.
  
• 7/1/1959 Gen. Lyman Lemnitzer became Chief of Staff of the Army.
  
• 7/1/1959 Jack Ruby uses his safety deposit box.
  
• 7/7/1959 Ruby meets with agent Flynn.
  
• 7/8/1959 First US servicemen (Maj. Dale Bius and Sgt. Chester Ovnard) killed in combat in Vietnam (by a communist attack at Bien Hoa.)
  
• 7/15/1959 During Senate hearings on suits between music-licensing firms ASCAP and BMI, counsel John Schulman of ASCAP cites the Coasters' "Yakety Yak" as an example of the "cheapening of American music"; he wants legislation against rock'n'roll.
  
• 7/15/1959 United Steelworkers union began a nationwide strike, which ended when Ike invoked the Taft-Hartley Act. Labor-Management Reporting and Disclosure Act signed, regulating internal practices of unions.
  
• 7/17/1959 Nixon wrote Robert Cushman a memo forbidding any of his people to use the phrase "peaceful coexistence": "I realize that this is the Acheson line in the State Department and I will not put it out!!! Cushman, tell all of them - it is never to be used again..." (Mayday 178)
  
• 7/18/1959 Drew Pearson: "Eisenhower has just pulled another amazing boner. Herter announced at a press conference that he was trying to persuade Chip Bohlen to remain on at the State Department as a Russia expert. But at this press conference Eisenhower announced, in reply to questions, that his report on Bohlen was negative and he saw no reason why he should be brought back...Doug Dillon came over to the White House and forced the President to cable his apologies to Bohlen and also issue a public statement that he hoped Bohlen would remain." (Diaries 535)
  
• 7/20/1959 Ruby uses safety deposit box.
  
• 7/21/1959 Ruby meets with Flynn.
  
• 7/26/1959 Santa Susana Field Laboratory, California, United States - Partial meltdown. A partial core meltdown may have taken place when the Sodium Reactor Experiment (SRE) experienced a power excursion that caused severe overheating of the reactor core, resulting in the melting of one-third of the nuclear fuel and significant releases of radioactive gases.
  
• 8/1959 US pressure forced Diem to hold elections in South Vietnam, which he rigged.
  
• 8/2/1959 Nixon trip to Poland.
  
• 8/3/1959 Ike told the press that he and Khrushchev had agreed to visit each other's countries. William F. Buckley thought the visit "profanes the nation" and Cardinal Cushing urged Americans to "pray in the streets, pray anyplace" while Khrushchev was in the country.
  
• 8/5/1959 Nixon returned to Washington. Drew Pearson: "His reception in Poland was even greater than some people realize." (Diaries 539)
  
• 8/6/1959 Ruby meets with Flynn.
  
• 8/8/1959 Stanley F. Wesson, a U.S. diplomat in Cuba, is arrested as he is presiding over a meeting of counterrevolutionaries planning a series of sabotages.
  
• 8/12/1959 Drew Pearson: "Ike's housing veto was upheld exactly as Lyndon predicted it. Ten Southern Senators voted for him. Eisenhower needed nine. The coalition is functioning perfectly. As a result there will be no civil rights bill this session. (Diaries 540)
  
• 8/13/1959 Drew Pearson: "Congressman John McCormack has given an ultimatum to Eisenhower that Khrushchev will not be permitted to address a joint session of Congress. I am using this on the radio and attributing it to McCormack as the spokesman for the Catholic Church. I know I will get into a lot of trouble. However, I pointed out that the most prominent Catholic in Congress, Jack Kennedy, does not favor this position." (Diaries 541)
  
• 8/13/1959 Drew Pearson wrote in his diary: "Lunched with [Senator] Tom Hennings…We agreed that…Jack Kennedy won't get anywhere." (Washington Post Magazine 12/26/1982)
  
• 8/13/1959 A C-46 plane bringing ten men and many weapons from the Dominican Republic to Cuba is captured in Trinidad, province of Las Villas.
  
• 8/17/1959 Oswald submitted a request for a dependency discharge, claiming that his mother needed his support. She had been injured at work when a jar fell from a shelf and hit her on the nose; though several doctors told her she was fine, she at last found a doctor who agreed that she was totally disabled. She sent her own affidavit, and affidavits from the doctor and two friends, attesting to her injury. (Folsom Exhibit 1; Lee 94-95; FBI report, 1/17/1964, interview with Saner Davis, CD 329) Life magazine would later say that she had been hit in the head by a box, "was in bed for six months and, very quickly, was destitute." (11/29/1963) His term of service was scheduled to run out 12/7. He also sent a letter to his mother, dated this day: "Received your letter and was very unhappy to hear of your troubles, I contacted the Red Cross on the base here and told them about it. They will send someone out to the house to see you, when they do please tell them everything they want to know, as I am trying to secure an early discharge in order to help you…If they know you are unable to support yourself then they will release me from the USMC…" (H 16 581-82)
  
• 8/18/1959 Though the CIA had failed to find even one operational Soviet ICBM, Allen Dulles told Ike that they could have ten such missiles ready "either in 1959 or in 1960."
  
• 8/19/1959 Drew Pearson talked with LBJ: "He pointed out that the building trades, which were guilty of the greatest graft, had secured an exemption under the Taft-Hartley Act because Taft was a great friend of Maurice Hutchinson and Dick Gray of the Carpenters Union and the Building Trades Council, both Republicans." (Drew Pearson Diaries 543)
  
• 8/20/1959 Document 2: J.C.S. 2056/131, Notes by the Secretaries to the Joint Chiefs of Staff, 20 August 1959, enclosing memorandum from JCS Chairman Nathan Twining to Secretary of Defense, "Target Coordination and Associated Problems," 17 August 1959, Top Secret Source: National Archives, Record Group 218, Records of the Joint Chief of Staff, Decimal Files 1959, 3205 (17 Aug 59) While the NESC prepared the NSC 2009 study, top military leaders worried about endemic problems with U.S. nuclear targeting. With the huge expansion of the nuclear stockpile in the late 1950s and the wider dispersal of nuclear weapons and delivery systems among the services, the unified and specified commanders were playing a greater and greater role in nuclear planning. Thus, unified commanders--that is, the commanders-in-chief (CINCs) of regional, or theater, commands, such as European or Pacific, that included units from all three services--had control of nuclear bombs and missiles, as did, of course, SAC, the first specified command. The proliferation of nuclear weapons inevitably produced duplication of targets. Coordination conferences and special committee failed to solve this problem, much less resolve inter-service conflicts over the weight of a nuclear attack. (Note 11) To get discussion going, JCS Chairman General Nathan Twining, the former Air Force Chief of Staff, sent his colleagues a think piece calling for greater centralization of nuclear war planning; he specifically mentioned the need for a "single integrated operational plan" and a "national strategic target list." By carefully assigning targets, Twining wanted to see "atomic operations … pre-planned for automatic execution to the maximum extent possible and with minimum reliance on post-H-hour communications." Taking issue with arguments for a minimum deterrent, Twining supported a large strategic force that mirrored the Soviet "Principle of Mass"; a "heavy" strategic force was necessary to destroy "the critical components of Soviet long-range nuclear delivery capability." He believed that the "necessity of prevailing in general war is of such vital importance that any error in judgment should be on the safe side." Besides strategic nuclear targets, Twining recommended other target categories: "governmental and military control centers," "war-sustaining resources" (war-related industry), and "population centers." Attacking civilians as such contravened the laws of war, but by positing a wide array of military, industrial, government, and urban targets, Twining was following the Air Force tradition of searching for the "Achilles heel" whose destruction would cause a society to break down and capitulate. (Note 12) Twining addressed other issues--Army/Navy versus Air Force on how much destruction was necessary, the role of naval forces in attack plans, and organizational responsibility for developing the single integrated operational plan. Because the Strategic Air Command operated the "major portion of forces responsible for the strategic mission", its commander-in-chief (CINCSAC) "should be charged with the responsibility for developing such a plan."
  
• 8/21/1959 Hawaii becomes 50th state.
  
• 8/31/1959 Ruby meets with Flynn.
  
• 9/2/1959 Oswald request for dependency discharge approved. (CD 82)
  
• 9/4/1959 Oswald is given a Marine medical exam. Oswald was transferred to the H&H squadron in preparation for his release. Today he also applied for a passport at the superior court in Santa Ana, California, stating that he planned on leaving 9/21 and going to Albert Schweitzer College in Switzerland and University of Turku in Finland, as well as visiting England, France, Germany, the Dominican Republic, Russia and Cuba; it was issued six days later. (H 22 77-79; CE 946; H 18 160-71) The HSCA decided in 1979 that nothing was out of the ordinary about this sequence of events. (R 219)
  
• 9/4/1959 Jack Ruby uses his informant's safety deposit box, and then leaves for Cuba.
  
• 9/7/1959 Gen. John O'Daniel, Official Military Aide to South Vietnam, stated: "The American aid program in Vietnam has proved an enormous success, one of the major victories of American policy." (The Experts Speak)
  
• 9/9/1959 Atlas ICBM becomes operational.
  
• 9/10/1959 Oswald's passport is issued to him.
  
• 9/11/1959 Oswald is discharged from active duty in the Marines. (WC) He signs a "Notice of Obligated Service" advising him of obligation of reserve service until 12/8/62. He also signed a "Security Termination Statement," certifies individual has no classified material in possession and addresses prohibition on revealing classified information in future. (CD 82)
  
• 9/12/1959 Jack Ruby is in Miami, then flies back to Havana.
  
• 9/13/1959 Ruby flies from Havana to New Orleans. (CE 1442, 1443)
  
• 9/14-15/1959 Khrushchev and his family flew to the US. He was greatly impressed by the welcome he received. After being introduced to Democratic Senate Majority Leader LBJ, he sniffed, "Well, I've never been able to see any difference between your two parties." Hoover would later complain to Congress that Khrushchev's presence in the US created an "atmosphere favorable to Communism among Americans." He met JFK, then on the Foreign Relations Committee, and was "impressed" with the Senator. At a dinner at the Soviet Embassy, he toasted the Americans present, saying, "The ice of the Cold War has not only cracked, but has indeed begun to crumble." Henry Cabot Lodge was assigned as Khrushchev's escort around the country. "Khrushchev bragged about sending American defectors back to the United States, where they filched secret information and sent it to Moscow." (Mayday 199) He spoke at the UN about disarmament, visited an IBM plant, ate his first hot dog. Most Americans went out of their way to present a friendly face. Newsweek commented, "We now know that he is no buffoon reeling drunkenly through the Kremlin, but a shrewd, tough and able adversary." (10/5/1959) Khrushchev had been under the impression that the US was about to topple towards Communism at any time; he now learned that wasn't true. Instead, he was awed by America's industrial might.
  
• 9/14/1959 Oswald reaches his mother's house in Fort Worth by bus. (H 16 580)
  
• 9/15/1959 Oswald told his mother he was going to board a ship and go to work for an import-export firm. He withdrew $203 from his only bank account (at West Side State Bank), gave his mother $100, and left for New Orleans 9/16. (H 1 201-2,212) Weisberg: "With but 43 days of his Marine Corps enlistment remaining, or three months if the penalities of the courts martial had been imposed, Oswald received a 'hardship discharge' This was a clear fraud about which neither the Marine Corps nor any other government agency ever did anything." When he shot himself with his pistol, the Marines found that this injury "was incurred in line of duty and not related to misconduct." (Whitewash 123-4) "Oswald's discharge from the Marines was not 'undesirable' but for 'hardship' and was honorable...This placed him in the inactive reserve, and it is from that, not active service, that, in an ex parte proceeding having nothing to do with his military service, he was given an undesirable separation." (Post-Mortem 6) In the year before Oswald's arrival, the Soviets had received four American defectors, compared to none in the previous thirty years. (New York Times 6/20/1959) A solution to the mystery was suggested by former CIA agent Victor Marchetti, who resigned from the Agency in disillusionment after being executive assistant to the Deputy Director. The CIA fought a legal battle to suppress Marchetti's book The CIA and the Cult of Intelligence. In regard to Oswald, Marchetti told author Anthony Summers of a CIA-connected Naval intelligence program in 1 959, the same year Oswald defected to the USSR: "At the time, in 1959, the United States was having real difficulty in acquiring information out of the Soviet Union; the technical systems had, of course, not developed to the point that they are at today, and we were resorting to all sorts of activities . One of these activities was an ONI [Office of Naval Intelligence] program which involved three dozen, maybe forty, young men who were made to appear disenchanted, poor American youths who had become turned off and wanted to see what communism was all about. Some of these people lasted only a few weeks. They were sent into the Soviet Union, or into eastern Europe, with the specific intention the Soviets would pick them up and 'double' them if they suspected them of being U.S. agents, or recruit them as KGB agents. They were trained at various naval installations both here and abroad, but the operation was being run out of Nag's Head, North Carolina. " (Conspiracy, Summers)
  
• 9/17/1959 Oswald arrived in New Orleans and books passage on a freighter.
  
• 9/17/1959 In an address in New York, Khrushchev reminded the US of its post-WWI intervention in Russia, "the time you sent your troops to quell the revolution."
  
• 9/19/1959 Shortly before Khrushchev arrived in Los Angeles on the afternoon of 19 September, he apparently learned that his day's itinerary called for him to tour Los Angeles housing projects while his wife and children visited Disneyland. When Khrushchev said that he wanted to go to Disneyland too, he was told that he could not because security officials could not guarantee his safety. Instead, the disgruntled Premier and his family attended a luncheon at Twentieth-Century Fox studios and were taken on a cavalcade tour of Los Angeles housing. While at the studio luncheon, Khrushchev made an indignant speech criticizing the decision to exclude a trip to Disneyland from his day's activities: "We have come to this town where lives the cream of American art. And just imagine, I a Premier, a Soviet representative, when I came here to this city, I was given a plan -- a program of what I was to be shown and whom I was to meet here. But just now I was told that I could not go to Disneyland. I asked: 'Why not?' What is it, do you have rocket-launching pads there? I do not know. And just listen -- just listen to what I was told -- to what reason I was told. We, which means the American authorities, cannot guarantee your security if you go there. What is it? Is there an epidemic of cholera there or something? Or have gangsters taken over the place that can destroy me? Then what must I do? Commit suicide? This is the situation I am in -- your guest. For me the situation is inconceivable. I cannot find words to explain this to my people."A slightly different version of events is related by the celebrities who sat with Mrs. Khrushchev at the luncheon. Bob Hope claims that he told the premier's wife, "You ought to go to Disneyland. It's wonderful." Mrs. Krushchev then, according to Hope, passed her husband a note telling him that she wanted to go to Disneyland. When Krushchev read the note and asked the Secret Service about visiting Disneyland, he was told it was too dangerous; it was this incident that allegedly led to Krushchev's tirade a few minutes later. Frank Sinatra, who was sitting next to Mrs. Krushchev, supposedly leaned over to David Niven and said, "Tell the old broad you and I will take 'em down there this afternoon." The State Department later said that Mrs. Khrushchev and her daughters were free to attend Disneyland, but that Mrs. Khrushchev decided "at the last minute" to remain with her husband instead. In Hollywood he met Marilyn Monroe; Ronald Reagan refused to meet with him. In California he met more than a few protestors, and was even criticized by Los Angeles' mayor.
  
• 9/19/1959 Oswald letter to his mother: "Well, I have booked passage on a ship to Europe…Just remember above all else that my values are very different from Robert's and your's. It is difficult to tell you how I feel. Just remember this is what I must do." (undated letter, envelope postmarked 9/19/1959, CE 200; H 16 580)
  
• 9/20/1959 NY Times quoted Khrushchev as saying, "Never have any of our soldiers been on American soil, but your soldiers were on Russian soil." This was a reference to the US intervention after WWI.
  
• 9/20/1959 In New Orleans Oswald boarded the freighter SS Marion Lykes, which sailed to Le Havre, France. The freighter was scheduled to leave 9/18, but left 9/20. A document from Garrison's files, uncovered by Gary Schoener and dated 5/27/1969, showed that Oswald bought his ticket to Europe from the Trade Mart and registered as an import-export agent. (Destiny Betrayed 374)
  
• 9/23/1959 Ike signed six-year $650 million urban renewal bill.
  
• 9/25/1959 Solomon West Ridgeway Dias Bandaranaike, prime minister of Ceylon, was killed by a Buddhist monk in Colombo.
  
• 9/25/1959 Khrushchev returned to the White House after his tour of the country. Ike was suffering from a cold. They watched a Navy film about the North Pole. Ike mentioned that he liked Westerns, and Khrushchev said, "You know, when Stalin was alive, we used to watch Westerns all the time. When the movie ended, Stalin always denounced it for its ideological content, but the very next day, we'd be back in the movie theater watching another Western."
  
• 9/26/1959 First day of the summit; at Camp David, they discussed Berlin. Khrushchev was frequently argumentative, and seemed hyper-sensisitive to any perceived slight.
  
• 9/27/1959 The discussion turned to China; Ike privately felt that it was "foolish" not to recognize the Communists as the legitimate government of China. Though Khrushchev wanted to talk about China, Ike for some reason did not. The two men took private walks together at Camp David, and during these times Ike found Khrushchev to be more open and friendly. He finally removed his 6-month deadline for a peace treaty with Germany, but warned that the issue would have to be settled someday. He did ask Ike not to reveal the change of position until he got back to the Kremlin and told his colleagues first. They also agreed on a future Big Four summit. Khrushchev never mentioned the U-2 overflights. Stuart Symington remarked that if Truman had invited Stalin to the White House he probably would have been impeached.
  
• 10/1959 Robert Edward Webster, a young American who defected two weeks before Oswald and returned to the US, also two weeks before Oswald. He had told officials that he planned to defect to the USSR, and did so while in Moscow working at an American trade exhibition. He was a former navy man and had been employed with the Rand Corporation. He was also a plastics expert. While in the USSR, he lived with a Russian woman (though he had a wife in the US) and they had a child. He became disenchanted with the Soviet Union and returned to the US. "Years later in America, Marina told an acquaintance that her husband had defected after working at an American exhibition in Moscow. This, of course, reflects Webster's story, not Oswald's. After the assassination, when American Intelligence was looking into Marina's background, they discovered an address in her address book matching that of Webster's Leningrad apartment." (Crossfire 116-21) Gerald Posner argued that the process of defectors returning to the US "was routine. Records show that within two months of Oswald's return, two other American defectors to Russia also returned. One of the Americans, Robert Webster, was an even more extreme case than Oswald in that Webster had successfully renounced his American citizenship. He was repatriated as a Soviet alien under the USSR's immigration quota for 1962 and his application to return to the US took less time than Oswald's (Washington Post, 6/9/1962 pA7). By 1963, thirty-six defectors to Communist countries had come back to the US." (Case Closed 62) John Newman confirms that Webster, an ex-navy man, defected in Moscow while working for the Rand Development Corp., 7/11/1959. (Oswald and the CIA 22)
  
• 10/2/1959 Jack Ruby meets with Flynn for last time, ending his period as an informant.
  
• 10/8/1959 Oswald arrived at Le Havre.
  
• 10/8/1959 Abdul Karim Kassem, PM of Iraq, was the target of a failed assassination attempt. Saddam Hussein was part of a commando unit that tried to assassinate Kassem; the botched job caused Hussein to be shot in the leg, but he got away and went to Damascus. He then moved to Cairo and became active in Egypt's Ba'ath party.
  
• 10/9/1959 Oswald arrived at Southampton, UK. The official story had him flying from London to Helsinki but there were no commercial flights for that route on that day. (H 26; CE 2676-32: R 211)
  
• 10/9/1959 Cambodia: the editor of the communist front newspaper Pracheachon was attacked and died two days later. Sihanouk condemned the assassination, but the American embassy in Phnom Penh reported to Washington 10/19 that it was likely that Gen. Lon Nol had ordered the murder after Sihanouk had told him the newspaper was causing too much trouble. This report was released through the FOIA.
  
• 10/10/1959 By midnight of this day Oswald was checking into a hotel in Helsinki, Finland. He actually stayed at two hotels (10/10-15/1959); "... he registered at the Torni Hotel; on the following day, he moved to the Klaus Kurki Hotel." [WR, 690] Epstein says that the Klaus Kurki was "less expensive." Oswald was registered there for 5 days. [Legend, 94] The record of the stay is in a CIA report of 9/18/1964 (CE 2676) But that same report says that there was no flight leaving London 10/10/1959; the WC decided that he left London 10/9 (WR 690), though his passport contained a stamp of the London Airport immigration officer and the words "Embarked 10 Oct 1959." (CE 946 7) Gerald Posner did not deal with this problem in Case Closed.
  
• 10/11/1959 A plane drops two incendiary bombs on the Niagara sugar mill in Pinar del Rio province of Cuba.
  
• 10/12/1959 Oswald applied for his tourist visa from the Soviet consulate, and he bought $300 of Intourist vouchers. (Aline Mosby interview, CE 1385) Within two days, the Soviet consul in Helsinki granted him a six-day tourist visa. (CE 946; H 18 163-5) Yuri Nosenko said that this was not unusual, and the consul (Gregory Golub) had the authority to give Americans an instant visa if he was convinced the tourist was "all right." (R 212) Nosenko recalled that Oswald simply described himself as a student traveler: "There was nothing of interest on his visa application." The Helsinki consulate was also not very busy most of the time. (Case Closed 47) Swedish intelligence claims that Oswald visited the Soviet Embassy in Stockholm. The newspaper Dagens Nyheters reported 11/25/1963 that "After an unsuccessful attempt to get a Russian visa in Helsinki, he went to Stockholm, where he rented a room. Two days later he was able to continue his journey to Moscow. That indicates the Russian Embassy gave him a visa." Researcher Jones Harris claimed confirmation of this from a CIA source; nothing is mentioned about this incident in the WR or HSCA Report. Generally, it took 1 to 2 weeks to obtain such a visa (H 26 156,165,158) but the Helsinki consul was a suspected KGB officer who had the authority to grant visas immediately if he so desired.
  
• 10/14/1959 Oswald is issued his tourist visa. It is valid for a trip of not more than 6 days. He buys $300 worth of tourist vouchers.
  
• 10/15/1959 Oswald takes a train for Moscow.
  
• 10/16/1959 Oswald arrived in Moscow, was met by an Intourist representative, Rima Shirokova, and registered in the Hotel Berlin as a student. He also begins keeping a 12-page "Historic Diary." He tells Rima that he wants to apply for Soviet citizenship. Lee Oswald arrived in the Soviet Union on Friday, October 16, 1959. Within hours, he wrote a letter to the Supreme Soviet saying he wanted to renounce his U.S. citizenship and become a Soviet citizen. In that letter--which was unavailable to the Warren Commission and first made available after Russian President Boris Yeltsin turned it over to US President Bill Clinton in August, 1999--Oswald said: "I want citizenship because I am a communist and a worker; I have lived in a decadent capitalist society where the workers are slaves."
  
• 10/16/1959 Petr Popov, the CIA's top defector-in-place in the USSR (code-named ATTIC, and had been giving information to the CIA since 1952). 4/1958 Popov reported that the KGB knew about the U-2 spy plane. (Wedge 155) He was arrested as a spy the day Oswald arrived in Moscow (10/16/1959). Angleton believed that Popov had been betrayed by a mole in the CIA's Soviet Division. Thomas Mangold says that "Popov was actually lost to the Soviets because of a slipshod CIA operation; there was no treachery." (Cold Warrior 250) Popov was later executed.
  
• 10/17/1959 Sam Rayburn and Price Daniels announced the formation of an "unofficial" LBJ for President committee.
  
• 10/17/1959 Rima meets Oswald for sightseeing; he tells her he is a communist.
  
• 10/19/1959 Cuba: Maj. Huber Matos, one of Castro's senior officers, resigned from the army in protest over the growing influence of the Communists. The next day he was arrested at his home.
  
• 10/19/1959 A plane drops two bombs on the Punta Alegre sugar mill in Camaguey province, Cuba.
  
• 10/19/1959 Oswald was interviewed by Lev Setyayev (a KGB informant) of Radio Moscow. (Marina and Lee 81; Case Closed 49, "confidential sources") In his diary he wrote: "Am anxious since my visa is good for five days only and still no word from auth[orities] about my request."
  
• 10/20/1959 Oswald writes in his diary that that the pass & visa department wanted to see him.
  
• 10/21/1959 Oswald was told that his request for citizenship was denied and his visa would not be extended. (Oswald's "historic diary," CE 24, 10/21/1959 entry.) Soviet official tells him that "'USSR only great in Literature wants me to go back home.' I am stunned...Eve. 6.00 Recive word from police official. I must leave country tonight at. 8.00pm as visa expirs. I am shocked!! My dreams! I retire to my room. I have $100 left. I have waited for 2 year to be accepted. My fondes dreams are shattered because of a petty offial; because of bad planning I planned too much! 7:00 PM I decide to end it. Soak rist in cold water to numb the pain. Than slash my left wrist. Than plaug wrist into bathtub of hot water. I think 'when Rimma comes at 8. to find me dead it wil be a great shock. somewhere, a violin plays, as I wacth my life whirl away. I think to myself. 'how easy to die' and 'a sweet death, (to violins)." (CE 24) Oswald's tour guide, Rima, discovered him soon after he had slashed his left wrist. Oswald was rushed by ambulance to Botkinskaya Hospital. He was then sent to the psychiatric ward for three days. Five stiches were put in his wrist. Rima stays by his side as an interpreter ("my Russian is still very bad"). By this time, Oswald has spelled Rima's name three ways in his diary (Rimmea, Rimmer, Rimma). This dramatic act of Oswald changed the entire dynamic, and the Oswald case then went to the top of the Soviet Government. Both the top level KGB then became involved, and, more important, the case was considered by Gromyko, and Mikoyan and Madame Furtseyva, the Minister of Culture, and reportedly Khruschev's girlfriend). The entire matter wasn't resolved until late November, when the USSR granted Oswald permission to remain in Russia (but not in Moscow; rather, he would be sent to Minsk).
  
• 10/22-27/1959 LHO writes in his diary: "Only after prolonged (2 hours) observation of the other pat[ients] do I relize I am in the Insanity ward." The hospital's report reads, "He revealed in English that he graduated from a technical high school, he works in the field of radioelectronics, in three years he saved enough to come to the USSR…His mind is clear. Perception is correct. No hallucination or delirium…He has a firm desire to remain in the Soviet Union." (H 18 461-73)
  
• 10/26/1959 Allen Dulles requested more U-2 flights.
  
• 10/28/1959 Turkey and the US sign an agreement for the deployment of fifteen nuclear-tipped Jupiter missiles in Turkey. 6/1/1961 is tentatively set as a target installation date for the first launch site.
  
• 10/28/1959 At Hyannisport, Mass., JFK, RFK, Teddy, Joe Sr., Ken O'Donnell, Larry O'Brien, Ted Sorensen, Lou Harris, Stephen Smith, Pierre Salinger, and John Bailey (Democratic state chairman of Connecticut) met to make final campaign plans. It was agreed that the party bosses had to be bypassed by entering the primaries.
  
• 10/28/1959 Ruby uses his safety deposit box for last time this year.
  
• 10/28/1959 Oswald was released from the hospital and Rima Shirokova checked him into the cheaper Metropole hotel. (CE 24) He is told that the Soviets will consider his request to stay in the USSR.
  
• 10/28/1959 Consul Synder sent a confidential letter this day to Gene Boster, Officer in Charge of USSR Affairs at the State Dept; Snyer asked for advice on how to handle an attempted renunciation of US citizenship. (CE 914) Snyder told the WC that the letter "wasn't directed at any particular case." (H 5 271) He testified that he had only encountered one other case of renunciation, and that had been resolved before Oswald's case came up. (H 5 279)
  
• 10/30/1959 Oswald writes in his diary that he is tired of waiting for an answer from the officials.
  
• 10/31/1959 Oswald went to the American Embassy, met with Consul Snyder, threw down his passport, and said he was through with the U.S. and capitalism, and wanted to remain in Russia for the rest of his life. In other words, on October 31, 1959, Oswald said to Snyder--verbally, and in person--what he had already stated in writing, to the Soviet Presidium, on the day he arrived in Moscow.
  
• 7:59am (EST) Snyder's confidential cable from US embassy is received at State Dept. (Oswald and the CIA 16)
  
• 9:20am (EST) Aline Mosby's report on Oswald flashed on UPI. (Ibid.)
  
• 10:19am (EST) at the FBI building, Mosby's story was stamped 'RECEIVED DIRECTOR FBI' and handed to E.B. Reddy, who began trying to find out more about Oswald. Agent Paul Kupferschmidt soon located Oswald's Marine records. (Ibid. 17)
  
• 12:30pm Oswald tried to renounce US citizenship in the US Embassy in Moscow. The note he handed to Snyder read: "I, Lee Harey [sic] Oswald, do hereby request that my present citizenship in the United States of America, be revoked. I have entered the Soviet Union for the express purpose of appling [sic] for citizenship in the Soviet Union, through the means of naturalization. My request for citizenship is now pending before the Supreme Soviet of the USSR. I take these steps for political reasons. My request for the revoking of my American citizenship is made only after the longest and most serious considerations." The note was signed by him and is undated. (CE 909, H 18 97) He spent 40 minutes at the Embassy. His performance at the embassy may have been for the benefit of KGB bugs in the building; he wrote in his diary, "I leave Embassy, elated at this showdown...I'm sure Russians will except [sic] me after this sign of my faith in them." (CE 24) He never formally renounced his citizenship, though. He also threatened to turn military secrets over to the Soviets. (H 5 266) The Embassy sent a dispatch to the O.N.I. and State Dept reporting that Oswald had threatened to give the Soviets US military information. (CE 917) The O.N.I. replied that it wanted to be kept informed of "significant developments in view of continuing interest of HQ, Marine Corps, and US intelligence agencies." (CE 918) Sylvia Meagher says that "on these and other cablegrams and dispatches which appear in the Commission's exhibits, lines and parts of lines have been obliterated by strips of what appears to be white paper superimposed before the photocopy was made." (Accessories After the Fact 340) In his diary, Oswald describes Snyder as "Head Consular in Moscow at that time," which indicates that it was written or re-written after Snyder left in late 1961. FBI agent James Hosty says that when Oswald defected, "the United States had years before stopped trying to infiltrate the Soviet Union in such a simplistic manner." (Assignment Oswald 211)
  
• 3:18pm (EST) a memo from Reddy on Oswald arrives at Alan Belmont's office and is time-stamped. (Ibid.)
  
• 10/31/1959 This afternoon, A.I. Goldberg of the AP tries to talk to Oswald and fails; then Aline Mosby of UPI gets him to answer a few quick questions.
  
• 10/31/1959 Telegram from Edward L. Freers, charges d'affairs at US embassy in Moscow, to Secretary of State about LHO's attempt to renounce his citizenship: "Says has offered Soviets any information he has acquired as enlisted radar operator." (H 18 105) Oswald did not mention this officer in his Historic Diary.
  
• 11/1/1959 Fort Worth Star-Telegram story about LHO's defection. Oswald gets phone calls from his brother and mother, and more reporters wanting to talk to him.
  
• 11/2/1959 10:07am (EST) Clyde Tolson examined Reddy's memo on Oswald; he initialed it and sent it on to Cartha De Loach. (Oswald and the CIA 19) 10:36am (EST) De Loach began reading about the Oswald defection. (Ibid. 20) 3:32pm (EST) Reddy memo is back on Belmont's desk. (Ibid. 21)
  
• 4:58pm (EST) Reddy's memo again returned to De Loach. (Ibid.) 6:31pm (EST) Reddy's memo sent back again to Belmont. (Ibid.)
  
• 11/2/1959 Two further cables about Oswald's threat to turn over military secrets, one from Snyder and one from the Navy Liaison. Richard Bissell told Michael Beschloss in the '80s, "I don't think Oswald could have told them much [about the U-2] they didn't already know...Now what that has to do with the Kennedy assassination, God only knows." (Mayday 237) ONI's J.M. Barron sent a memo on Oswald to the FBI stating that the ONI files "contain no record" of Oswald and concluded, "No action contemplated by this office." He did observe that Oswald's Marine Corps file had information; it included the following statement: "He speaks, reads and writes Russian very poorly." (Oswald and the CIA 21,534) Richard Snyder had his secretary, Marie Cheatham, call Oswald about a telegram that had arrived from his brother, but Lee refused to come to the embassy or have the telegram read to him over the phone. (CE 2659, H 26 13)
  
• 11/3/1959 12:04pm (EST) cable from US naval attache in Moscow, Capt John Jarret Munsen, arrived at Navy Dept about Oswald and Robert Webster: "Oswald stated he was radar operator in Marcorps and has offered to furnish Soviets info he possesses on US radar." (Oswald and the CIA 22-3)
  
• 3:37pm (EST) Reddy's memo was date-stamped at the Espionage Section of the FBI's Counterintelligence Branch. (Ibid.) 6:40pm (EST) Belmont got his first look at Snyder's cable from Moscow; the CIA soon did as well. (Ibid. 23)
  
• 11/3/1959 Cablegram from Naval Attache, US Embassy, Moscow to Navy Dept. (CE 917) "Attention invited to amemb Moscow dispatches 234 DTD 2 November and 224 DTD 26 October concerning the renunciation of US citizenship and request for Soviet citizenship by Lee Harvey Oswald former marine and [deleted] Oswald stated he was radar operator in MarCorps and has offered to furnish Soviets info he possesses on US radar." (H 18 115) Reddy's memo is sent to the FBI's Counterintelligence Branch, specifically to the Espionage Section. No one in the FBI, CIA or Navy Dept as of this morning yet knew of Snyder's cable saying that Oswald had threatened to turn over classified info to the Soviets. (Oswald and the CIA)
  
• 11/4/1959 11:59am (EST) Lt. D.E. Sigsworth of ONI drafted a cable for Adm. Arleigh Burke, which was sent to Moscow, requesting that they be kept updated on Oswald. The cable said that "no record" of Oswald's Marine security clearance had been located, but because he was an aviation electronics operator he "may have had access to confidential info." The cable concluded, "Request significant developments in view of continuing interest of HQ, Marine Corps and US Intelligence Agencies - Intelligence Matter." This cable was also sent to army and air force intelligence, the FBI and CIA. At the CIA, this cable seems to have disappeared until it appeared at the Special Investigation Group (SIG) of Angelton's counterintelligence staff 12/6/1959. (Oswald and the CIA 26-7)
  
• 11/4/1959 Probably on this date the CIA recieved (and acknowledged) the first two cables. (Oswald and the CIA 53) Navy Dept sent a copy of the Moscow Naval Attache's cable to the FBI and CIA. (Ibid. 25-6) W.A. Brannigan, an FBI official who worked under Alan Belmont, wrote a memo to Belmont: "On 11/2/1959, it was determined through Liaison with the Navy Department that the files of ONI contained no record of the subject [Oswald.]...Since subject's defection is known to Department of the Navy, and since subject apparently has no knowledge of any strategic information which would be of benefit to the Soviets, it does not appear that any action is warranted by the Bureau in this matter." He recommended that a check be made on Oswald's fingerprints to make sure he didn't try to reenter the country under a different name." (Oswald and the CIA 21,25)
  
• 11/4/1959 Three rebel planes drop bombs on various points in the Cuban province of Oriente.
  
• 11/5/1959 Dep CIA Director Cabell told the Senate Internal Security Subcommittee that "we believe that Castro is not a member of the Communist party, and does not consider himself to be a Communist." He did admit that there were Communists in Castro's government.
  
• 11/5/1959 Office of Chief of Naval Operations answers 11/3 telegram: "Oswald is PFC Inactive Marine Corps Reserve with obligated service until 8 December 1962. Lee Harvey Oswald attended Aircraft Control and Warning Operator course in 1957. Served with Marine Air Control Squadrons in Japan and Taiwan with duties involving ground control intercept. Job description code indicates he is aviation electronics operator. No record of clearance at HQ Marine Corps but possibility exists he may have had CONFIDENTIAL info…" (H 18 116)
  
• 11/6/1959 White House meeting about Castro; Lodge noted that capitalism was seen in Latin America as being counter-revolutionary: "The US can win wars, but the question is can we win revolutions." (Inevitable Revolutions 14)
  
• 11/6/1959 US embassy in Moscow receives a handwritten letter from LHO dated 11/3; he again said he wanted to renounce his citizenship. (H 18 108)
  
• 11/7/1959 Supreme Court, using the Taft-Hartley Act, ordered end to a 116-day steel strike.
  
• 11/8/1959 Oswald wrote his brother Robert that he had been planning his defection for over a year. "I will never return to the United States which is a country I hate." (CE 294; H 16 814)
  
• 11/9/1959 Embassy replied to Oswald that "you may appear at the Embassy at any time during normal business hours and request that the Embassy prepare the necessary documents fo renunciation of citizenship." (H 18 117)
  
• 11/9/1959 The CIA put Oswald on its "Watch List," authorizing the Agency to open his mail. On the notecard someone wrote, "SECRET EYES ONLY." The CIA would later testify to the Senate in 1975 that only a select few people were put on this "Watch List." Because of this lookout card, the 201 file being opened much later was a deliberate act. (Oswald and the CIA 54-5) The notecard contains the typed phrase, "CI/PROJECT/RE," and a handwritten "7-305," and "N/R-RI 20 Nov. 59." The CIA explained these notations to the HSCA 8/15/1978, saying that "CI/PROJECT" was a cover name for CIA staff involved in mail-intercept; "RE" were the initials of the person who put Oswald's name on the Watch List because he was "Recent defector to the USSR - Former Marine." The other notations meant that his mail should be watched, and that a name trace turned up nothing in their central files. John Edward Pic sent a cable to Oswald from Japan, "Please reconsider your intentions. Contact me if possible." McVickar brought the cable to the Metropole but couldn't find Oswald. (Ibid. 77)
  
• 11/13/1959 Most likely on this date the CIA received (and acknowledged) the second Snyder cable, and is signed-off by mole-hunter Birch O'Neal. (Oswald and the CIA 53)
  
• 11/13/1959 Aline Mosby interviewed Oswald for two hours. According to her notes, "He talked almost non-stop like the type of semi-educated person of little experience who clutches what he regards as some sort of unique truth…'I'm a Marxist' and he added that eagerly as if the label gave him pride and importance. I became interested about the age of 15. From an ideological viewpoint. An old lady handed me a pamphlet about saving the Rosenbergs.'" He described reading Das Kapital as though "it was like a very religious man opening the Bible for the first time." But he denied being a Communist or a member of the CP. He said he became disillusioned with American imperialism while in the Marines. (H 22 702-05)
  
• 11/14/1959 On Saturday, November 14, Oswald called UPI's Aline Mosby, and invited her to his hotel for an interview. Her story ran on the UPI wire on Sunday, November 15, and was published --for example--in the Fort Worth Star Telegram. It ran under the headline "Fort Worth Defector Confirms Red Beliefs" (and is Commission Exhibit 2716). Mosby's story begins: Lee Oswald, still sporting the chop-top haircut he wore in the U.S. Marines, said Saturday that when he left America to seek citizenship in Russia, "It was like getting out of prison." But his dream of achieving Soviet citizenship in exchange for U.S. citizenship he renounced went aglimmering. The 20-year-old Texan from Fort Worth said Soviet authorities would not grant him citizenship although they said he could live in Russia freely as a resident alien."
  
• 11/14 or 16/1959 Oswald's diary: "A Russian official comes to my room asks how I am. notifies me I can stay in the USSR till some solution is found with what to do with me."
  
• 11/15/1959 Priscilla Johnson arrives back in Russia.
  
• 11/16/1959 Capt. Joseph W. Kittinger, Jr., makes balloon ascent to 76,000 ft. in an open gondola, Excelsior I, then parachutes to Earth.
  
• 11/16/1959 Priscilla Johnson (later Priscilla McMillan) knocked on Oswald's hotel door, and arranged to interview him that evening. She made notes, and filed a nearly identical story with North American News Alliance (NANA). But NANA was not a wire service, and so McMillan submitted her story by mail, and it was published in a number of newspapers over the the following month.
  
• 11/16/1959 McVickar asks Priscilla Johnson to meet with Oswald: "He might talk to you because you're a woman." Snyder knew nothing about this and was not pleased with McVickar taking matters into his own hands. (Oswald and the CIA 77, based on Newman interviews with Snyder and Johnson-McMillan). Oswald met Johnson at the hotel at about 5:20pm. He agrees to an interview, in her room, that began at 9pm that night and lasted until 1 or 2am. He tells her he did not feel "safe" to tell his side of the story until the Soviets assured him he could stay. Johnson later recalled, "of the three or four defectors I saw, the was the only ideological one...He talked in terms of capitalists and exploiters and he said something about he was sure that if he lived in the US he wouldn't get a job, that he'd be one of the exploited...As I talked to him, I realized that he had a sort of vein in him that was beyond reason, maybe that was fanatic." (11/29/1963 Life)
  
• 11/17/1959 Johnson wrote up her story on Oswald this day, and contacted Snyder "because I wanted to get his version too, because Oswald was so critical of him. I probably talked to Snyder between 12:00 and 1:00pm..." She cabled the story that afternoon. That evening she met with McVickar over dinner. They both disliked Snyder, and felt that he had mishandled the Oswald case. That night, McVickar wrote a file memo in which he claimed that Johnson had talked with Oswald on the 15th, and even specifically stated the day, Sunday. He also wrote, "He told her that his Soviet citizenship was still under consideration, but that the Soviets had already assured him that he could stay here as a resident alien if he so desired. They are also looking into the possibility of getting him into a school." Oswald said he didn't plan to return to the Embassy, though he was upset that he couldn't renounce his citizenship. Though she had already interviewed Oswald, McVickar implied that he had told her the following on the 17th: "I also pointed out to Miss Johnson that there was a thin line somewhere between her duty as a correspondent and as an American." He urged her to try to persuade Oswald not to renounce his citizenship. (Oswald and the CIA 78-82; H 18 106-7).
  
• 11/17-12/30/1959 Oswald writes in his diary that he spends this time teaching himself Russian from two language books. He is almost without money, but is allowed to stay at the hotel.
  
• 11/19/1959 McVickar added a postscript to his file memo, "Priscilla J. told me since: that O. has been told he will be leaving the hotel at the end of this week; that he will be trained in electronics; that she has asked him to keep in touch with her; that he has showed some slight signs of disillusionment with the USSR, but that his 'hate' for the US remains strong although she cannot fathom the reason." John Newman notes that Oswald hadn't met with Johnson since the first interview and nothing had been said about leaving the hotel or signs of disillusionment. Johnson never mentioned anything about Oswald saying he would be trained in electronics. At the time of the interview, Oswald didn't know he would be going to Minsk or working in a radio factory. Snyder told Newman he couldn't figure out how McVickar knew about this. (Oswald and the CIA 83-4)
  
• 11/19/1959 Billy Graham wrote to Nixon that he ought to attend church regularly and to keep "the religiously minded people in America" in mind as he headed into the 1960 campaign.
  
• 11/25/1959 The CFR's "Study No. 7" stated that "building a new international order must be responsive to world aspirations for peace, for social justice and economic change...including states labeling themselves as 'Socialist.'" To achieve this, we must "gradually increase the authority of the UN." (Strategy for the '60s, Jay Cerf and Walter Posen, 1962 Praeger, p95)
  
• 11/26/1959 Oswald wrote his brother Robert: "Ask me and I will tell you I fight for communism…Look at a world map! America is a dieing country, I do not wish to be a part of it, nor do I ever again wish to be used as a tool in its military aggressions...I have been a pro-communist for years and yet I have never met a communist…In the event of war I would kill any american who put a uniform on in defense of the american government any american." He claimed not to care about his family anymore and said he wanted to stay in the USSR for the rest of his life. (CE 295, H 16 816)
  
• 12/1959 Joseph P. Kennedy told Charles Bartlett and Red Fay that he didn't think Jack could become president: "He won't have a chance. I hate to see him and Bobby work themselves to death and lose." (A Hero for Our Time, Ralph Martin) Franklin D. Roosevelt Jr. dined with JFK, and commented later, "How can a guy this politically immature seriously expect to be president?" (A Hero for Our Time, Ralph Martin)
  
• 12/1959 The accumulated death toll on US highways has exceeded the casualty figures for all US wars combined.
  
• 12/1/1959 Snyder cabled the State Dept, telling them that Oswald had apparently left the Metropole "within the last few days." The source for this was McVickar's 11/19 memo postscript. (Oswald and the CIA 86)
  
• 12/4/1959 NYT quoted the Cuban ambassador in London as saying that Cuba would buy fighter planes "wherever they can be purchased." This was after the British turned down a request to sell jets to Cuba.
  
• 12/10/1959 NSC meeting Richard Bissell told Nixon that anti-US feelings in Cuba were being stirred up by the Soviets.
  
• 12/11/1959 Official memo from Colonel J.C. King, to CIA Director Allen Dulles proposes the elimination of Castro. Dulles approves "through consideration be given to the elimination of Castro." (Alleged Assassination Plots Involving Foreign Leaders, 11/20/75) Allen Dulles approved a recommendation from J.C. King (head of the CIA's Western Division) that "thorough consideration be given to the elimination of Fidel Castro." Dulles wanted to replace Castro with a more moderate leader, and recognized the need to appeal to liberals and democrats in Cuba. (Gentleman Spy 494)
  
• 12/16/1959 NSC meeting Nixon stated that he felt Cuba was a serious situation that could not be dealt with using normal diplomatic (State Dept) channels. He felt that the State Dept had been too soft with Cuba; Nixon recommended that "we need to find a few dramatic things to do...in order to indicate that we would not allow ourselves to be kicked around completely." (Oswald and the CIA 115-120)
  
• 12/17/1959 Stanley Kramers powerful film On the Beach, about the aftermath of a nuclear war, premieres in the US. The story is set in a then future 1964, in the months following World War III. The conflict has devastated the northern hemisphere, polluting the atmosphere with nuclear fallout and killing all life. While the bombs were confined to the northern hemisphere, air currents are slowly carrying the fallout to south. The only areas still habitable are in the far southern hemisphere, like Australia. The Eisenhower admistration attacked the film and tried to discredit it.
  
• 12/22/1959 Document 3A: A: JCS 2056/143, Note by the Secretaries to the Joint Chiefs of Staff, 5 October 1959, enclosing Memorandum for the Joint Chiefs of Staff, "Target Coordination and Associated Problems," 22 December 1959 Document 3B: attached memorandum from Chief of Naval Operations, 30 September 1959 attached, Top Secret, Excised Copy With More Details Released on Appeal Source: National Archives, Record Group 218, Records of the Joint Chief of Staff, Decimal Files, 3205 (17 Aug 59) After Twining issued his 17 August memorandum, he distributed to the Joint Chiefs a list of questions on targeting. While the Air Force Chief of Staff solidly supported Twining's call for reform, the other service chiefs rejected his concept of greater centralization of nuclear war planning under the direction of CINCSAC. All agreed with the Chairman's concept of a strategic target system (excised from this version), but the Army, Navy, and Marines plainly saw the concept of a single integrated operational plan as a challenge to organizational prerogatives. For them, the concept of a SIOP implied a "si...