Deep Politics Timeline

[Tracy Riddle]

• In 1961, in response to the Nuremberg Trials, the Yale psychologist Stanley Milgram performed his study "Obedience to Authority Study", also known as the Milgram Experiment, in order to determine if it was possible that the Nazi genocide could have resulted from millions of people who were "just following orders". The Milgram Experiment raised questions about the ethics of scientific experimentation because of the extreme emotional stress suffered by the participants, who were told, as part of the experiment, to apply electric shocks to test subjects (who were actually actors not really receiving electric shocks).
  
• 1/1961 Covert (ELSUR) FBI surveillance of Detroit Teamsters reveals close ties between Hoffa and the Mob; Hoover does not brief RFK about this intelligence. (RFK and His Times) In New Orleans, Miami and Newport, the FBI and IRS begin surveillance of mob gamblers Sam di Piazza, Eugene Nolan, Louis Bagneris, Charles Perez, Harold Brouphy, and Anthony Glorioso of Louisiana; Gilbert Beckley and Alfred Mones of Miami Beach; Benjamin & Robert Lassoff and Myron Deckelbaum of Newport; Alfred Reyn of NY; Peter J. Martino of Biloxi, Miss. All are members of Carlos Marcello's network. (NY Times 6/28/1961; Mafia Kingfish; Lansky)
  
• 1/1961 In the last few months of the administration of Dwight Eisenhower, the Air Force began to argue that it needed a successor to its F-105 tactical fighter. This became known as the TFX/F-111 project. In January, 1961, McNamara, changed the TFX from an Air Force program to a joint Air Force-Navy under-taking. On 1st October, the two services sent the aircraft industry the request for proposals on the TFX and the accompanying work statement, with instructions to submit the bids by 1st December, 1961. Three of the bids were submitted by individual companies: the Lockheed Aircraft Corporation, the North American Aviation Corporation and the Boeing Company. The other three bids represented team efforts: Republic Aviation & Chance Vought; General Dynamics Corporation & Grumman Aircraft; and McDonnell Aircraft & Douglas Aircraft. It soon became clear that Boeing was expected to get the contract. Its main competitor was the General Dynamics/Grumman bid. General Dynamics had been America's leading military contractors during the early stages of the Cold War. For example, in 1958 it obtained $2,239,000,000 worth of government business. This was a higher figure than those obtained by its competitors, such as Lockheed, Boeing, McDonnell and North American. More than 80 percent of the firm's business came from the government. However, the company lost $27 million in 1960 and $143 million in 1961. According to an article by Richard Austin Smith in Fortune Magazine, General Dynamics was close to bankruptcy. Smith claimed that "unless it gets the contract for the joint Navy-Air Force fighter (TFX)… the company was down the road to receivership". General Dynamics had several factors in its favour. The president of the company was Frank Pace, the Secretary of the Army (April, 1950-January, 1953). The Deputy Secretary of Defense in 1962 was Roswell Gilpatric, who before he took up the post, was chief counsel for General Dynamics. The Secretary of the Navy was John Connally, a politician from Texas, the state where General Dynamics had its main plant.
  
• 1/1961 Supreme Court ruled 6-3 in the Dixon-Yates case that a private power company was not entitled to damages when the government canceled a contract (7/11/1955) fashioned by a government employee who had an indirect financial interest in the enterprise. This all stemmed from an Eisenhower-era attempt to curb the TVA's authority in favor of private power companies. Ike had been personally involved in this deal which involved favoritism and insider trading.
  
• 1/1961 The Chinese Communists and the Burmese government cooperate to overwhelm the Chinese Nationalists' main military base in Burma (which had been created and backed by the CIA). Burma subsequently renounced US aid and moved closer to Peking. Many of the Chinese Nationalist troops signed up to help the CIA in Laos. (David Wise and Thomas Ross, The Invisible Government; Joseph Burkholder Smith, 'Portrait of a Cold Warrior')
  
• 1/1/1961 US called for an immediate SEATO meeting to deal with the Laotian crisis.
  
• 1/1/1961 Oswald writes in his diary that he spent New Years at the home of Ella Germain, a co-worker he has fallen in love with. He decides to propose to her.
  
• 1/1/1961 Indonesia: Sukarno launched an ambitious eight-year development program.
  
• 1/2/1961 Oswald proposes to Ella Germain, but she turns him down. "I am misarable!" he writes in his diary.
  
• 1/3/1961 The United States and Cuba sever diplomatic and consular relations.
  
• 1/3/1961 The idea to fabricate a pretext for war with Cuba may actually have originated with President Eisenhower in the last days of his administration. With the Cold War hotter than ever and the recent U-2 scandal fresh in the public's memory, the old general wanted to go out with a win. He wanted desperately to invade Cuba in the weeks leading up to Kennedy's inauguration; indeed, on January 3 he told Lemnitzer and other aides in his Cabinet Room that he would move against Castro before the inauguration if only the Cubans gave him a really good excuse. Then, with time growing short, Eisenhower floated an idea. If Castro failed to provide that excuse, perhaps, he said, the United States "could think of manufacturing something that would be generally acceptable." What he was suggesting was a pretext a bombing, an attack, an act of sabotage carried out secretly against the United States by the United States. Its purpose would be to justify the launching of a war. It was a dangerous suggestion by a desperate president. (Bamford, Body of Secrets)
  
• 1/4/1961 A memo titled Policy Decisions Required for Conduct of Strike Operations Against Government of Cuba concerning "Branch 4 of the Western Hemisphere Division was an internal task force created within the CIA in January 1960 to direct the Cuban project. J.D. Esterline became task force director on January 18, 1960. Esterline reported on the project to the Deputy Director for Plans, Richard M. Bissell, although Bissell's principal aide, Tracy Barnes, who acted for Bissell about 50 percent of the time. Branch 4 began with a staff of 20 and grew by April 1961 to a staff of more than 500 with its own communications, propaganda, and military sections. Marine Corps Colonel Jack Hawkins was assigned to Branch 4 in September 1960, with direct responsibility for military training operations." The memo stated: The purpose of this memorandum is to outline the current status of our preparations for the conduct of amphibious/airborne and tactical air operations against the Government of Cuba and to set forth certain requirements for policy decisions which must be reached and implemented if these operations are to be carried out. (Memorandum From the Chief of WH/4/PM, Central Intelligence Agency (Hawkins) to the Chief of WH/4 of the Directorate for Plans (Esterline), Washington, January 4, 1961. Source: U.S., Department of State, Foreign Relations Of The United States,1961-1963, Volume X, Cuba, 1961-1962)
  
• 1/4/1961 Minsk visa authorities asked Oswald if he still wanted to become a Soviet citizen, and he said no; he did ask that his temporary papers be extended a year. For January, Oswald wrote in his diary, "The work is drab the money I get has nowhere to be spent. No nightclubs or bowling allys no places of recreation acept the trade union dances I have had enough." Oswald's stay was extended for another year. Later Oswald would say that he never actually applied for Soviet citizenship, but a spokesman for the Soviet government informed the WC that his application had been submitted but rejected by the Presidium. (H 5 311) His KGB file shows that he was code-named Likhoy and kept under constant surveillance. He was put in contact with people who pretended to have secret information; this was to determine if he was a foreign spy. (Case Closed 59, based on Mostovshchikov article) Soon, though, his celebrity status began to wear off and he became "increasingly concious of just what sort of a sociaty" he lived in. (CE 24) Initially a good worker at the factory, he became less and less motivated. (Mostovshchikov article) In his diary he complained about the trade-union meetings, compulsory mass gymnastics, political lectures, and weekend crop work. (CE 24) In later writings, he would attack the regimented, bureaucratized Soviet system as savagely as any anti-Communist. (CE 92, H 16; CE 25, H 16 113-4) But he concluded that the Soviets were simply not practicing 'pure Marxism.'
  
• 1/4 or 1/5/1961 OAS voted to impose economic sanctions on the Dominican Republic for aggression against Venezuela.
  
• 1/6/1961 The electoral votes were counted in Congress and JFK was declared the winner.
  
• The FRIENDS OF DEMOCRATIC CUBA was formed on January 6, 1961, a mere two weeks prior to the Bolton Ford Dealership incident where not only the name "Oswald" was being used, but in fact Oswald was being impersonated, and, W. Guy Banister, ex-FBI man who was once recommended by Hoover while he headed the Chicago FBI Office, was on the Board of Directors for this newly-formed organization.
  
• 1/6/1961 A federal court ordered the University of Georgia to admit two black students, Hamilton Holmes and future PBS reporter Charlayne Hunter.
  
• 1/6/1961 Khrushchev gave a speech on USSR support for "wars of national liberation" which included Vietnam.
  
• 1/6/1961 Nigeria breaks relations with France over continued nuclear testing in the Sahara.
  
• 1/7/1961 Hamilton Holmes drove from Atlanta to Athens to begin registration at the University of Georgia. His enrollment proceeds without incident, and a group of student leaders pledges to try to assist in the peaceful desegregation of the University.
  
• 1/8/1961 Georgia Gov. Ernest Vandiver called a special meeting of the State Board of Regents, University of Georgia president O.C. Aderhold, and other state officials. They met at the governor's mansion to discuss the federal court order directing immediate desegregation of the University. They also debate where to house Charlayne Hunter and decide to place her by herself in a Myers Hall dorm room.
  
• 1/8/1961 France: a national referendum overwhelmingly endorsed De Gaulle's Algerian policy.
  
• 1/9/1961 Hamilton Holmes and Charlayne Hunter arrived at the University of Georgia campus to complete the registration process. A special edition of the campus newspaper, the Red and Black, calls for calm and urges students not to attempt to interfere with the federal court order. While things were relatively peaceful in Athens, it was quite different in Atlanta. There, federal judge William Bootle had scheduled a hearing on the state's appeal of his integration order. At the state capitol, Gov. Ernest Vandiver announced that if the state's appeal for a stay of the federal desegregation order is turned down, he may close the University pursuant to a 1956 state law forbidding the co-education of black and white students. By chance, the 1961 session of the General Assembly had convened on this day, and what to do to keep the University of Georgia segregated occupied everyone's attention. Suddenly word reached the state capitol that judge Bootle had granted a stay, prompting tremendous cheering in each chamber. The celebration didn't last long, for two hours later, federal circuit court judge Elbert Tuttle overrode Bottle's stay. Georgia Attorney General Eugene Cook caught a plane to Washington D.C. to appeal to Supreme Court Justice Hugo Black to reinstate judge Bootle's stay. Back in Athens, the rumor had spread throughout campus that Gov. Vandiver was going to close the University the next day. That night after a basketball game, a crowd of about 1,000 students gathered in the streets to protest court-ordered desegregation scheduled to take place the next day. Two students were arrested, but there was no violence. A little after midnight, University president Aderhold announced that he had received no official order to close, so classes would proceed on schedule on Jan. 11.
  
• 1/10/1961 Hoover sends a memo to RFK warning him of the "menace" Communism poses to the nation.
  
• 1/10/1961 Charlayne Hunter and Hamilton Holmes become the first black students to enroll at the University of Georgia. Following registration, Hunter moved into her room in Myers Hall, while Holmes moved in with a black family in Athens. By night, various groups of white students shouting anti-integration messages had assembled outside Hunter's dorm window -- but there was no violence.
  
• 1/11/1961 Black students Charlayne Hunter and Hamilton Holmes attended their first day of classes at the University of Georgia without any serious incidents. That evening, however, the situation changed. After a Georgia-Georgia Tech basketball game on campus, a large group of students left the coliseum and marched on Myers Hall, where Hunter was staying. By the time they arrived, known Klan members had joined the group. Now, they were an angry mob shouting racial epithets and defiance to integration. Several students displayed a large banner saying "Nigger go home," while other students started fires or threw bricks at the dorm. Athens and University police tried to break up the demonstration, finally having to resort to tear gas and water hoses. Hunter was not injured, but Myers Hall received extensive damage. Fearing for their safety, University officials decided to temporarily withdraw Hunter and Holmes from school. That night, Georgia state troopers carried the two back to Atlanta.
  
• 1/12/1961 New Orleans FBI agent-in-charge sends message to Hoover that a source reported New Orleans mob boss Carlos Marcello being very "apprehensive and upset" about RFK's intentions. (HSCA 9 70)
  
• 1/12/1961 The University of Georgia chapter of the American Association of University Professors called for a faculty meeting to protest the suspension of Charlayne Hunter and Hamilton Holmes the night before. A petition calling for their reinstatement was signed by 340 University faculty. One member of the University System Board of Regents -- ardent segregationist Roy Harris -- then demanded to see a list of which faculty had signed the petition. Governor Ernest Vandiver condemned the violence, and though he continued to oppose integration he now conceded that Georgia would have to accept some integration of its public schools.
  
• 1/13/1961 Federal judge William Bootle again ordered the University of Georgia to admit Charlayne Hunter and Hamilton Holmes after they were temporarily suspended following a nighttime riot outside Hunter's dorm. Governor Vandiver announced that additional violence would not be tolerated, and that he would provide whatever protection was necessary to insure their safety.
  
• 1/16/1961 JFK met with Billy Graham to talk and have lunch in Key Biscayne. That evening, Graham told the press that he felt positive about the new president, and that his election had promoted a better understanding between Protestants and Catholics. (NYT 1/17)
  
• 1/16/1961 Their suspension lifted, Charlayne Hunter and Hamilton Holmes returned to Athens and attended classes at the University of Georgia. Various incidents continued, but there was no more violence or riots. They would continue their education, she obtaining a degree in journalism and he a degree in liberal arts.
  
• 1/16/1961 British intelligence uncovers the biggest Soviet spy network since the war.
  
• 1/17/1961 In his farewell address to the nation, Ike said, "We face a hostile ideology global in scope, atheistic in character, ruthless in purpose, and insidious in method. Unhappily the danger it poses promises to be of indefinite duration...Our arms must be mighty, ready for instant action, so that no potential aggressor may be tempted to risk his own destruction." But then he issued a surprising warning: "Our military establishment today bears little relation to that known by any of my predecessors in peacetime...we have been compelled to create a permanent armaments industry of vast proportions...We annually spend on military security more than the net income of all United States corporations. This conjunction of an immense military establishment and a large arms industry is new in the American experience. The total influence - economical, political, even spiritual - is felt in every city, every State House, every office of the Federal government...we must guard against the acquisition of unwarranted influence, whether sought or unsought, by the military-industrial complex...We must never let the weight of this combination endanger our liberties or democratic processes...Only an alert and knowledgeable citizenry can compel the proper meshing of the huge industrial and military machinery of defense with our peaceful methods and goals, so that security and liberty may prosper together...The prospect of domination of the nation's scholars by Federal employment, project allocations, and the power of money is ever present--and is gravely to be regarded...we must also be alert to the equal and opposite danger that public policy could itself become the captive of a scientific-technological elite...you and I, and our government--must avoid the impulse to live only for today, plundering for our own ease and convenience, the precious resources of tomorrow."
  
• 1/17/1961 Patrice Hemery Lumumba, prime minister of the Congo (now Zaire), was arrested by agents of President Joseph Kasavubu, and slain, with the complicity of the CIA in the Congo's secessionist province of Katanga
  
• 1/18/1961 Billy Sol Estes goes to Washington to attend the inauguration and meet with LBJ; while there, he manages to get the Agriculture Dept to freeze his bond requirements at 1960 levels. (NYT 7/18/1962)
  
• 1/18-20/1961 LBJ aide Bobby Baker and North American Aviation lobbyist Fred Black (a next-door neighbor of Johnson's) meet Mafia functionary Ed Levinson at a party in Washington. (Green Felt Jungle)
  
• 1/18/1961 Miami FBI agent George E. Davis sends a report to Hoover on a Cuban exile group called MIRR; Davis and agent Paul Scranton deal regularly with informants in the local Cuban population. Hoover believes Castro is fomenting unrest among blacks in the South. (Washington Post 5/16/1976)
  
• 1/18/1961 Moscow: Central Committee approves Khrushchev's plan to decentralize agriculture.
  
• 1/19/1961 JFK met with Eisenhower again; also present were McNamara, Herter, Gates, Robert Anderson, Ike's staff aide Gen. Wilton Persons, Rusk, Dillon, and Clifford. Most of the discussion was about Indochina (particularly Laos). Rusk and Clifford recalled that Ike advocated US military intervention in Laos if absolutely necessary, but McNamara and Dillon remembered Ike sending mixed signals about that. (In Retrospect 35-6) Eisenhower warned him that if Laos fell, the US could "write off the whole area [Southeast Asia]." He also warned against a neutralist government that would permit Communists to share power. (Pentagon Papers) But JFK had long felt that neutralization was the only answer. (Promises to Keep p394) Ike also told him to support guerrilla operations against Cuba "to the utmost." Treasury Sec. Robert Anderson added, "Large amounts of United States capital now planned for investment in Latin America are waiting to see whether or not we can cope with the Cuban situation." (Portrait of Power 32) Ike also told JFK that there was no missile gap working against the US, and warned that he would publicly oppose him if he tried to recognize China and allow it a seat in the UN. (Ibid. 33) Ike and Herter told JFK that Laos was the key to the whole of Southeast Asia, and that if necessary, the US must be willing "to intervene unilaterally." He also warned against a coalition government there. (A Thousand Days 156) Eisenhower tells JFK that he must assume responsibility for the overthrow of Fidel Castro and his dangerous government, and recommends the acceleration of the proposed Cuban invasion. Says Eisenhower: " . . . we cannot let the present government there go on." (A Question of Character) When he was given a transitional briefing by President Eisenhower on January 19, 1961, the president-elect asked an unexpected question. It pertained to the rising conflict with Communist forces in Laos, Vietnam's western neighbor. Which option would Eisenhower prefer, Kennedy asked, a "coalition with the Communists to form a government in Laos or intervening [militarily] through SEATO [the Southeast Asia Treaty Organization, to which the U.S. belonged]?" Eisenhower was taken aback by his successor's gall in raising the possibility of a coalition with Communists. He said it would be "far better" to intervene militarily. As his Secretary of State, Christian Herter had already said, any coalition with the Communists would end up with the Communists in control. Even unilateral intervention by U.S. troops was preferable to that. It would be "a last desperate effort to save Laos." Kennedy listened skeptically. He thought he was hearing a prescription for disaster, from a man who in a few hours would no longer have to bear any responsibility for it. "There he sat, "he told friends later, "telling me to get ready to put ground forces into Asia, the thing he himself had been carefully avoiding for the last eight years." (Foreign Relations of the United States (FR US), 1961-1963, Volume XXIV, Laos Crisis (Washington: U.S. Government Printing Office, 1994), p. 21; Kenneth P. O'Donnell and David F. Powers, "Johnny, We Hardly Knew Ye " (Boston: Little, Brown, 1970), p. 244) As The Pentagon Papers note, Vietnam was of relatively minor importance in 1961, compared to Laos: "Vietnam in 1961 was a peripheral crisis. Even within Southeast Asia it received far less of the Administration's and the world's attention than did Laos. " For example, The New York Times Index for 1961 lists twenty-six columns of items on Laos, but only eight on Vietnam. For Kennedy, Laos was a crisis from the beginning, whose settlement would raise the question of Vietnam.
  
• 1/19/1961 Eight inches of snow falls in Washington, D.C. tonight. Traffic is snarled all over the city. After a reception, a party, and a concert at Constitution Hall, the Kennedys attend a star-studded gala at the National Guard Armory planned by Frank Sinatra. Boxes cost ten thousand dollars apiece, while individual seats go for one hundred dollars. JFK gets to bed about 4:00 A.M. (A Question of Character)
  
• 1/19/1961 One day before he left the White House, Eisenhower signed a procedural instruction on the importation of residual oil that required all importers to move over and sacrifice 15 percent of their quotas to newcomers who wanted a share of the action. One of the major beneficiaries of this last-minute executive order happened to be Cities Service, which had had no residual quota till that time but which under Ike's new order was allotted about 3,000 barrels a day. The chief executive of Cities Service was W. Alton Jones, one of the three faithful contributors to the upkeep of the Eisenhower farm. Three months later, Jones was flying to Palm Springs to visit the retired President of the United States when his plane crashed and Jones was killed. In his briefcase was found $61,000 in cash and travelers' checks. No explanation was ever offered - in fact none was ever asked for by the complacent American press - as to why the head of one of the leading oil companies of America was flying to see the ex-President of the United States with $61,000 in his briefcase. (Drew Pearson & Jack Anderson, The Case Against Congress (1968))
  
• 1/20/1961 JFK was inaugurated as president, sworn in by Chief Justice Earl Warren. Despite the frigid temperature, he refused to wear an overcoat. In Washington, Admiral Arthur Radford, former chairman of the Joint Chiefs, arrives early for an F Street Club luncheon being given for Eisenhower after the inauguration. Watching JFK deliver his speech on television, Radford notices that, although JFK is standing without coat or hat in frigid weather, heavy beads of perspiration are rolling down his forehead. "He's all hopped up!" calls out General Howard Snyder, the retiring White House physician. Privy to FBI and Secret Service information, Snyder tells Radford that JFK is "prescribed a shot of cortisone every morning to keep him in good operating condition. Obviously this morning he was given two because of the unusual rigors he must endure, and the brow sweating is the result of the extra dose." Snyder adds that people dependent on cortisone move from a high to a low when the medicine's effect wears off: "I hate to think of what might happen to the country if Kennedy is required at three A.M. to make a decision affecting the national security." President Kennedy delivers his Inaugural Address, balancing Cold War statements with the hope "that both sides begin anew the quest for peace, before the dark powers of destruction unleashed by science engulf all humanity in planned or accidental self-destruction." "To those new states whom we welcome to the ranks of the free, we pledge our word that one form of colonial control shall not have passed away merely to be replaced by a far more iron tyranny. We shall not always expect to find them supporting our view. But we shall always hope to find them strongly supporting their own freedom-and to remember that, in the past, those who foolishly sought power by riding the back of the tiger ended up inside." "To those peoples in the huts and villages of half the globe struggling to break the bonds of mass misery, we pledge our best efforts to help them help themselves, for whatever period is required-not because the communists may be doing it, not because we seek their votes, but because it is right. " At the heart of his inaugural, Kennedy turned to the enemy and his own deepest preoccupation, peace: " Finally, to those nations who would make themselves our adversary, we offer not a pledge but a request: that both sides begin anew the quest for peace, before the dark powers of destruction unleashed by science engulf all humanity in planned or accidental self destruction." Again there was the warning: "We dare not tempt them with weakness. For only when our arms are sufficient beyond doubt can we be certain beyond doubt that they will never be employed. " And the hope: " Let both sides explore what problems unite us instead of belaboring those problems which divide us . . . " Let both sides unite to heed in all corners of the earth the command of Isaiah-to 'undo the heavy burdens . . . ( and) let the oppressed go free.'"
  
• 1/20/1961 During the inauguration, Cecil Stoughton, using his own initiative, works his way up to a good spot on the inaugural stand and manages to make a photo of JFK. General Clifton is impressed with Stoughton's photos and shows them to JFK, who is also impressed. Clifton suggests to JFK that it might be a good idea to have this photographer available to the White House. Prior to this time, there has never been an "in-house" photographer specifically assigned to the President. (POTP)
  
• 1/20/1961 "Oswald" visits a Ford dealership in New Orleans to buy trucks for Friends of Democratic Cuba. Two salesmen at the Bolton Ford dealership in New Orleans are visited by a "Lee Oswald" in the company of a powerfully built Latino. "Oswald" is looking for a deal on ten pickup trucks needed by the Friends of Democratic Cuba. The real Oswald is in the Soviet Union.
  
• 1/20/1961 JFK commented, "This is the worst one we've got, isn't it? You know, Eisenhower never mentioned it. He talked at length about Laos, but never uttered the word Vietnam." (The Diffusion of Power 265) Or: "This is going to be the worst one yet...Eisenhower never mentioned the word Vietnam to me." (The Diffusion of Power 264) Walt Rostow had just shown him a report written by Edward Lansdale showing the deteriorating situation in that country. (Rostow would later recall incorrectly the date Kennedy received the report as being 2/2/1961)
  
• 1/20/1961 Khrushchev and Brezhnev sent a message to JFK, expressing hope that "by our own joint efforts we shall succeed in achieving a fundamental improvement in relations between our countries and a normalization of the whole international situation."
  
• 1/20/1961 JFK is the wealthiest president in American history. His private income, before taxes, is estimated at about five hundred thousand a year. On his forty-fifth birthday, his personal fortune goes up an estimated $2.5 million, in 1962, when he receives another fourth of his share in three trust funds established by his father for his children. As President, JFK usually rises at 8:00 AM, and each day he enjoys a hot bath, a midday swim in the White House pool that sometimes lasts an hour (Joseph Kennedy commissions artist Banard Lamotte to paint a ninety-seven-foot mural around the pool), directs exercises in the gymnasium, and a nap or private time with Jackie that lasts at least an hour. Evenings are usually private and very often feature small dinners with friends that might be followed by a film. AQOC
  
• 1/20/1961 After the ceremonies the new president and his wife, the Lyndon Johnsons, and members of the cabinet go into the Capitol for a luncheon given by the joint congressional inaugural committee. Joseph and Rose Kennedy head for the Mayflower Hotel and a lavish luncheon for the Kennedys, Fitzgeralds, Bouviers, Lees, and Auchinclosses. AQOC Clare Boothe Luce and Lyndon Johnson sit together on a bus which will take them to one of the many inaugural balls during the evening. Luce asks Johnson why he ever took the Vice-Presidency. Johnson answers: "Clare, I looked it up; One out of every four presidents has died in office. I'm a gamblin' man, darlin', and this is the only chance I got."
  
• 1/20/1961 Vice President Richard Nixon, forced to surrender his official car and driver at midnight, goes for one last ride through the nation's capital. He takes a walk through the empty Capitol building. He is struck by the thought that "this was not the end, that someday I would be back here. I walked as fast as I could back to the car."
  
• 1/20/1961 At the inauguration parties that night, an old friend from PT-109 days, Paul Fay, escorted actress Angie Dickinson to the ceremonies; several times, Dickinson and JFK slipped away to a private room. The night of JFK's inauguration, JFK attends a ball at the Statler-Hilton. JFK slips out of the presidential box and goes upstairs to a private party given by Frank Sinatra. Angie Dickinson is there, along with actresses Janet Leigh and Kim Novak. (AQOC) Peter Lawford arranges a lineup of six Hollywood starlets to entertain the new President. JFK chooses two. "This menage a trois brought his first day in office to a resounding close," Lawford says later. When JFK returns to the ball he has a copy of the Washington Post under his arm, as if he has just stepped outside to buy a newspaper. Kenny O'Donnell later recalls, "His knowing wife gave him a rather chilly look." JFK finally attends the largest ball of the evening at the Armory. The president and first lady give the impression of being close and happy. AQOC
  
• 1/20/1961 Soon after JFK's inauguration, Castro moved to appease the new administration by demobilizing his militia. Khrushchev also cut back on censorship of Voice of America and released two captured US flyers. JFK responded by stopping US Post Office censorship of Soviet magazines, inviting the Kremlin to engage in civil aviation talks, and ordering Arleigh Burke to tone down his anti-Soviet speeches. Conservatives quickly attacked Kennedy.
  
• 1/21/1961 JFK ordered the secretary of agriculture to expedite and improve the distribution of surplus food to poor people.
  
• 1/21/1961 "The day after John Kennedy's inauguration in 1961, Lee's mother arrived at the White House to ask for help in locating her son. She was not the only one asking questions. No one had heard from Oswald for over a year. Recently released documents show that several government agencies began tracking Oswald in Russia." (Frontline, 1993)
  
• 1/21/1961 Robert McNamara becomes Secretary of Defense, head of an organization that has 2.5 million military personnel and 1.5 million civilians. He pulled enormous power into his office and away from the Service Secretaries, who bitterly resented what they considered an unlawful usurpation of power by the Defense Secretary. In January, Eisenhower had submitted a proposed Defense Dept budget for FY 1962 of $41.8 billion. Within two months, Kennedy and McNamara had added nearly $2 billion to the requests to provide more money for Polaris-armed subs, increase research in non-nuclear weapons and boost Army personnel. McNamara also wanted to cut funding for the B-70. (Mollenhoff, The Pentagon)
  
• 1/21/1961 Khrushchev, as a good-will gesture to the newly inaugurated JFK, releases Bruce Olmstead and John McKone (two RB-47 pilots shot down by the Russians in 1960) from their cells in the Lubyanka prison, where they have been held by the KGB for seven months. Besides Francis Gary Powers, these two men will be the only American fliers to get out of Moscow's infamous Lubyanka prison alive.
  
• 1/21/1961 Sekou Toure elected president of Guinea.
  
• 1/22/1961 Beginning today, calls begin between Judith Campbell and the White House. Seventy calls will be logged in during the next two months. Campbell is also seeing Chicago mafioso Sam Giancana on a regular basis. AOT
  
• 1/22/1961 ABC airs "The Red and the Black," a documentary on Soviet influence in Africa.
  
• 1/23/1961 Supreme Court rules that cities and states can censor a film before it is shown to the public.
  
• 1/24/1961 At a breakfast meeting with Democratic congressional leaders, Rayburn told JFK that he didn't think they had the votes to expand the Rules Committee. Kennedy and Larry O'Brien were stunned; they had assumed that Rayburn was going to be able to work it out somehow. Kennedy then asked Rayburn to postpone the vote. JFK told O'Brien, "We can't lose this one, Larry. The ball game is over if we do." Conservatives in the South were portraying the expansion of the Rules Committee as tearing down the last barrier to socialism and civil rights. (No Final Victories)
  
• 1/24/1961 A US B-52 fell apart in mid-air over North Carolina, killing three crew members; its payload of two 24-megaton nuclear bombs was dropped. One bomb parachuted to the ground and was recovered, but the other fell in waterlogged farmland and was never recovered.
  
• 1/24/1961 Clark Clifford memo about JFK's meeting with Ike; he recalled that Ike had said that the training of anti-Castro Cubans "be continued and accelerated."
  
• 1/25/1961 Kennedy's first press conference (the first-ever televised live) finds him in favor of an "independent" Laos, free of foreign domination by either side. He also requested legislation from Congress to focus on redevelopment of areas around the country suffering from unemployment; his proposal would increase job training and loans. JFK would do 64 televised news conferences. As Kennedy began to turn toward a neutral Laos, the Joint Chiefs of Staff stepped up their pressure for military intervention in support of General Phoumi. Their point was that the Communist Pathet Lao army, supported by the Soviet Union, China, and North Vietnam, would achieve complete control over Laos unless the United States intervened quickly. Pushed by Cold War dynamics and Pathet Lao advances, Kennedy was tempted yet skeptical.
  
• 1/25/1961 The CIA's William Harvey meets with Dr. Sidney Gottlieb. Harvey says "I've been asked to form this group to assassinate people and I need to know what you can do for me." The two men specifically discuss Castro, Lumumba and Trujillo as potential targets. Harvey's notes of the meeting show that he and Gottlieb talk of assassination as a "last resort" and as "a confession of weakness."
  
• 1/25/1961 Dept of Agriculture employee Henry Marshall rules at a meeting of Southwest farm aid officials that Billy Sol Estes' existing transfers of federal cotton allotments are permissible. (NYT 7/12/1962)
  
• 1/26/1961 Richard Starnes editorialized, "For all I know, Hoffa may be guilty of wholesale mopery. But is the Attorney General entitled to dedicate the immense power of the federal government to chucking him in jail? I've followed Hoffa's career with some passing interests, and all I can swear to of my own knowledge is that he makes lousy speeches. He may set fire to orphan asylums for kicks, but does this deprive him of the right to due process?" (New York World-Telegram and Sun)
  
• 1/26/1961 Deputy Chief of the Secret Service, Russell Daniel, retires from the number-two position after a thirty-two-year career. "Maybe it's time for me to retire. Maybe I'm getting old and soft." AOT
  
• 1/26/1961 State Dept memo reported that Marguerite Oswald thought her son might have defected on behalf of some US intelligence agency; a government official told her to "dismiss such an idea." (Plausible Denial preface) or this was 2/1961. CE 2681 "communications" between State Department and American Embassy, Moscow concerning Lee Oswald (H 26 39-40) "Mrs Oswald came in to discuss the situation with regard to her son, Lee Oswald, who had gone to the Soviet Union and attempted to renounced his citizenship in a visit to the Embassy on October 31, 1959. Mrs Oswald said she had come to Washington to see what further could be done to help her son, indicating that she did not feel that the Department had done as much as it should in his case. She also said she thought there was some possibility that her son had in fact gone to the Soviet Union as a US secret agent, and if this were true she wished the appropriate authorities to know that she was destitute and should receive some compensation. Mrs Oswald was assured that there was no evidence to suggest that her son had gone to the Soviet Union as an 'agent,' and that she should dismiss any such idea. With respect to her son's citizenship status, Mr. Hickey explained that he had not yet taken the necessary steps in order legally to renounce his citizenship. At the same time, we did not know whether he had taken any action which would deprive him of his American citizenship under our laws. Mrs Oswald conceded that there was a good possibility that her son was acting in full knowledge of what he was doing and preferred the Soviet way of life. If this were the case, she would respect his right to do so."
  
• 1/27/1961 Hoover receives the Vigilant Patriot Award' from the All-American Conference to Combat Communism.
  
• 1/28/1961 State Dept makes public plans for a Peace Corps project.
  
• 1/28/1961 In a letter to LBJ, Kennedy asked Johnson to "preside over meetings of the National Security Council in my absence and to maintain close liaison with the Council and all other departments and agencies affected with a national security interest...I am hereby requesting you to review policies relating to the national security, consulting with me in order that I might have the full benefit of your endeavors and your judgment."
  
• 1/28/1961 Hoover and Tolson were at the Bowie race track for the Burch Handicap. (Wash. Post 1/29/1961)
  
• 1/28/1961 First White House meeting on Vietnam; US aid linked to South Vietnamese reforms. A report from Lansdale recommended, "The US should recognize that Vietnam is in critical condition and should treat it as a combat area of the Cold War, as an area requiring emergency treatment." Kennedy decides to replace Ambassador Durbrow with Lansdale.
  
• 1/28/1961 JFK orders the Joint Chiefs of Staff to review the military aspects of an American-supported invasion. He also authorizes continued U-2 flights over Cuba and the continuation of the CIA operations already underway.
  
• 1/28/1961 Also in a meeting today -- six days after moving into the White House -- JFK and his National Security Adviser McGeorge Bundy receive the first general instruction on Project Pluto from the Chiefs of Staff of the Armed Forces and the CIA. But the Kennedy team will only become fully aware of Operation Pluto at the end of February.
  
• 1/29/1961 White House reception for subcabinet-level officers, attended by JFK, LBJ and Hoover. For the first time, a bar was present in the State Dining Room, and guests were permitted to smoke. (Post 1/30/61)
  
• 1/29/1961 Rwanda declares independence from Belgium.
  
• 1/30/1961 JFK telephones his father to remind him to watch his first State of the Union address on television. Then he and Jackie ride to the Capitol. Evelyn Lincoln thinks JFK is in a particularly good mood. AQOC
  
• 1/30/1961 JFK's first State of the Union message to Congress. He painted a grim picture of the foreign policy and economic situation. In January, the unemployment rate was 7.7%, and in February it was 8.1%. Congress did little to respond to the economic situation, though administration officials prodded them to act to forestall a "real depression." But by the spring of '61, the economy began to improve.
  
• 1/30/1961 FBI's Rome LEGAT sent Hoover an article in an Italian weekly about a woman named Alicia Purdon who claimed to have had a relationship with JFK in 1951. Hoover forwarded the story to RFK. (The Boss 341) An Italian magazine publishes comments by Alicia Purdom, wife of British actor Edmund Purdom. She claims that in 1951, before either of them was married, she and JFK had had an affair. Had Joseph Kennedy not stepped in to end it, they would have been married. This story is not picked up in the American press. J. Edgar Hoover promptly informs Robert Kennedy. Allegations reach Hoover that the affair involved a pregnancy and that the Kennedy family had paid a vast sum of money to hush the matter up. As an FBI agent at headquarters, Gordon Liddy sees files on JFK. From mid-1961, while on a headquarters assignment that includes research on politicians, Liddy peruses numerous 5" x 7" cards packed with file references to JFK's past and present. "There was a lot," he recalls. "It grew while I was there, and kept growing."
  
• 1/30/1961 Lyndon Johnson writes a letter to the Secretary of Agriculture supporting Billy Sol Estes' practices with respect to his cotton land allotments. Estes is in the middle of a federal fraud scandal - by building grain warehouses and buying up federal cotton allotments to grow cotton on submerged lands. Johnson's letter eventually becomes the impetus for an Agriculture Department investigation involving both Estes and Johnson. (TTC)
  
• 1/30/1961 Dexter Scott King, third child of Martin Luther King Jr. and Coretta Scott King, was born in Atlanta.
  
• 1/31/1961 Robert F. Kennedy becomes Attorney General.
  
• 1/31/1961 The House votes to expand the Rules Committee from twelve members to fifteen, thanks mostly to the efforts of Sam Rayburn. The vote was a close one: 217 to 212; a number of Republicans and Southern Democrats gave Kennedy their support. Rep. Overton Brooks (D-Louisiana) paid the price for his support by getting threatening phone calls and a cross burned on his lawn. (No Final Victories)
  
• 1/31/1961 LBJ wrote to Sec of Agriculture Orville Freeman on behalf of Estes. (A Texas Looks at Lyndon 117)
  
• 1/31/1961 Paul-Henri Spaak resigns as secretary general of NATO.
  
• 1/31/1961 In a Project Mercury suborbital test flight, the US shot a 37-lb chimpanzee, Ham, into space and recovered him successfully.