Deep Politics Timeline

[Tracy Riddle]

• Early April 1961 Second Attempt: Rosselli passes poison pills in second attempt to kill Castro to Cuban associate of Trafficante in Miami, Manuel Atonio de Varona. Giancana is with him. Assassination attempt is "an auxiliary operation" (per Bissell) of the Bay of Pigs. De Varona is a prominent Cuban exile member of the "Revolutionary Democratic Front" put together by E. Howard Hunt. De Varona is also the former president of the Cuban Senate under President Carlos Prio. He is to be paid $150,000 if he succeeds in his role to pass the poison pills to Cuban official Juan Orta, Castro's personal secretary. Orta is later exposed and jailed.
  
• 4/1961 Allen Dulles told JFK before the Bay of Pigs: "I stood right here at Ike's desk and told him I was certain our Guatemalan operation [against Arbenz in 1954] would succeed, and, Mr. President, the prospects for this plan are even better than they were for that one." (The Bay of Pigs, Wyden)
  
• 4/1961 When a skeptical Kennedy finally approved the CIA's revised plan for the Bay of Pigs landing in April, he reemphasized that he would not intervene by introducing U.S. troops, even if the exile brigade faced defeat on the beachhead. The CIA's covert-action chief, Richard Bissell, reassured him there would be only a minimum need for air strikes and that Cubans on the island would join the brigade in a successful revolt against Castro. "The Bay of Pigs Invasion: A Comprehensive Chronology of Events, " in Bay of Pigs Declassified, edited by Peter Kornbluh ( New York: New Press, 1998)
  
• 4/1/1961 Hoover, in an FBI Law Enforcement Bulletin, wrote: "Attributing every adversity to communism is not only irrational, but contributes to hysteria and fosters groundless fears...The way to fight it is to study it, understand it, and discover what can be done about it."
  
• 4/1-30/1961 Oswald's Diary: Apr: 1st-30 We are going steady and I decide I must have her [Marina], she puts me off so on April 15 I propose, she accepts.
  
• 4/3-6/1961 The right-wing Manchester Union-Leader published a series of editorials defending the HUAC and attacking the students involved in San Francisco's May 1960 riots.
  
• 4/3/1961 State Dept White Paper called Castro's regime a Soviet satellite, urge him to "sever its links with the international Communist movement," admitted "omissions and errors" in relations with pre-Castro Cuba, and promised support for a democratic Cuba.
  
• 4/4/1961 INS agents abducted mob boss Carlos Marcello from the INS office in New Orleans, whisked him to the airport, and flew him to Guatemala. His attorneys complained that he was not allowed to call them or see his wife.
  
• 4/4/1961 This month, Life magazine calls JFK "the most accessible American President in memory" -- and runs a series of photographs documenting "the President's expressions and moods during a working day in the White House."
  
• 4/4/1961 JFK returned to Washington from a visit with his father; McGeorge Bundy recalled that before the visit, he had been dubious about the invasion plan, but after talking with Joe Kennedy, he "really wanted to do this...he had made up his mind and told us." (The Crisis Years 107)
  
• 4/4/1961 On this day, a key meeting on Cuba is held by JFK during which he asks everyone present whether they approve of the planned invasion. Senator Fulbright denounces the entire idea on the ground that it is inherently immoral. Everyone else in the room, including Rusk; McNamara, Adolf Berle, Thomas Mann, Bissell and Dulles appear to approve. Berle, in fact, is highly enthusiastic: "I say, let er rip!"
  
• 4/4/1961 Dean Rusk reassured Under-Secretary of State Chester Bowles, who opposed the Cuban invasion proposal: "Don't worry about this. It isn't going to amount to anything." (Bay of Pigs, Wyden)
  
• 4/5/1961 NYT reported RFK saying that Marcello's "deportation was in strict accordance with the law."
  
• 4/5/1961 On orders from RFK, Carlos Marcello, without luggage, and with little cash, is now temporarily stranded in Central America. He quickly regains his composure and soon, is installed in a plush suite at the Biltmore Hotel, as his brothers fly in cash and clothes.
  
• 4/5/1961 Cuban foreign minister Raul Roa claimed at the UN that the US was waging an "undeclared war" on Cuba.
  
• 4/7/1961 St Louis Globe Democrat reported that "fingerprinting of alien nationals entering the US was abolished. The State Department explained that the procedure had been 'an affront to communist newsmen and UN employees.'"
  
• 4/7/1961 Richard Bissell approves shipping weapons to Dominican conspirators who plan to kill Rafael Trujillo in the apartment of his mistress. The weapons are shipped via diplomatic pouch. (The Bay of Pigs disaster will change everything. The CIA will not want to risk another failure. The agency will eventually prevail upon Henry Dearborn, the U.S. consul in Ciudad Trujillo, to try to dissuade the conspirators, but the plot will have picked up momentum and will not be stopped.)
  
• 4/7/1961 Time magazine had a report from General Electric challenging the president's decision to cancel development of a nuclear-powered aircraft; they claimed they could build a nuclear engine for a test flight by 1963 "for less than one-fifth of the additional billion dollars mentioned by Kennedy."
  
• 4/7/1961 LBJ returned from his trip abroad.
  
• 4/7/1961 NY Times article ("Invasion Reported Near") was followed that night by a CBS story claiming that the invasion plans against Cuba were in "their final stages." JFK was very angry.
  
• 4/8/1961 Washington Post reported Marcello as saying "he wanted to go back to the United States…Local newspapers published reports from the tiny village of San Jose Pinula labeling as false' the birth registration produced with Marcello's name there. Guatemalan newsmen in the interior said the birth registration had been planted' in the records a few weeks ago by a young North American who arrived at San Jose Pinula in a sports car.'"
  
• 4/8/1961 Washington Post reported that "Kohei Hanami, the man who sank President Kennedy's torpedo boat in WWII, has received a bronze medal commemorating the Presidential Inauguration. When Mr. Kennedy was elected, Mr. Hanami and surviving members of his crew sent congratulations."
  
• 4/8/1961 Jose Miro Cardona called on all foes of Castro to rise up against him.
  
• 4/9/1961 Gore Vidal wrote in the London Sunday Telegraph of his relationship with JFK; he noted that the President's face "is heavily lined for his age...He is withdrawn, observant, icily objective in crisis, aware of the precise value of every card dealt him. Intellectually, he is dogged rather than brilliant...Yet the job [of the Presidency] today is literally killing, and despite his youth, Kennedy may very well not survive....He is fatalistic about himself...he is a pragmatist with a profound sense of history, working within a generally liberal context...He is restless; he wants to know everything...he reads continuously...he is capable of growth. He intends to be great."
  
• 4/9/1961 Fidel Castro appears on Havana TV warning, "the extremely vigilant and highly-prepared Cuban people would repel any invasion attempt by the counterrevolutionaries now massing in Florida and Guatemala who are sponsored and financed by the United States."
  
• 4/9/1961 William Shannon, in the New York Post, reported that Ike in late '59 had given the green light to the CIA to organize Cuban exiles to plan an invasion of Cuba.
  
• 4/9/1961 British PM Macmillan wrote to Eisenhower: "President Kennedy is under considerable pressure about 'appeasement' in Laos...I should however be very sorry if our two countries became involved in an open-ended commitment on this dangerous and unprofitable terrain. So I would hope...you would not encourage those who think that a military solution in Laos is the only way of stopping the Communists..."
  
• 4/10/1961 The Internal Revenue Service files an $835,396 tax lien against Carlos Marcello and his wife.
  
• 4/11/1961 Lee Harvey Oswald is discharged from the hospital in Minsk. NOTE: Oswald's brother, Robert, will eventually tell Jay Edward Epstein that his brother's hair texture had changed when he returned from the USSR, something he attributed to the possibility of electro-shock or other medical treatment. WWC
  
• 4/11/1961 NBC-TV broadcasts a 3/24 interview with JFK in the Oval Office; he was asked, "Why have there been no National Security Council meetings?" He answered, "These general meetings are a waste of time."
  
• 4/11/1961 Adolf Eichmann goes on trial in Jerusalem for crimes against the Jewish people, crimes against humanity and war crimes.
  
• 4/12/1961 Walt Rostow, in a memo to JFK, says that the time has come for "gearing up the whole Vietnam operation" with increased aid to Diem and more US Special Forces.
  
• 4/12/1961 McGeorge Bundy wrote a memo to Roswell Gilpatric: "Your account of the General Electric fudging on the ANP is conclusive, and the President asked that someone in your Department, perhaps Arthur Sylvester, write a letter promptly to Time Magazine straightening out General Electric. He feels very strongly about this..." (JFK Wants to Know 57-58)
  
• 4/12/1961 At 9:07am 27-year-old Soviet cosmonaut Yuri A. Gagarin left the Soviet launching pad at Baykonur, West Siberia, inside the 10,416-lb spaceship Vostok 1 on the world's first successful manned space flight. His words after launch: "I am in good spirits. The machine works perfectly." The spaceship completed a single orbit of the earth in 89.34 minutes and landed in a field near the village of Smelovka in the Saratov region of the USSR. As he walked across the field, Gagarin met a young woman caring for a calf who screamed when she saw the strange monster approaching her. He took off his space helmet and told her he was "a friend, a friend."
  
• 4/12/1961 JFK said in a press conference that "there will not be, under any conditions, any intervention in Cuba by United States armed forces. This government will do everything it possibly can…to make sure that there are no Americans involved in any actions inside Cuba."
  
• 4/13/1961 The State Dept decided to return Oswald's passport if he appeared at the embassy. (CE 971, H 18 368) The State Department instructs its embassy in Moscow that because of security reasons, Oswald's "passport may be delivered to him on a personal basis only" at the embassy, so identity can be confirmed.
  
• 4/13/1961 In Portugal, an attempted coup against António de Oliveira Salazar failed. Salazar made himself Minister of Defense in response.
  
• 4/13/1961 CIA agents set on fire and destroy El Encanto department store in Havana, Cuba.
  
• 4/13/1961 Radio Moscow actually broadcast an English-language newscast on April 13, 1961 predicting the invasion "in a plot hatched by the CIA" using paid "criminals" within a week.
  
• 4/14/1961 Wire services and newspapers throughout the world carried a story quoting the independent Overseas Weekly to the effect that Gen. Walker had been indoctrinating his troops in West Germany with John Birch Society literature since last fall. The Weekly also reported that Walker had called Truman, Eleanor Roosevelt and Dean Acheson "definitely pink." Walker denied the charges.
  
• 4/14/1961 JFK summons Dr. William P. Herbst, Jr., a prominent Washington urologist, to the White House for advice and treatment of "burning" and "occasional mucus" while urinating. The president had suffered a similar flare-up [of chlymydia] three weeks earlier, according to Herbst's notes, and "responded rapidly" to penicillin. Six days after JFK's death, Janet Travell telephones and asks Herbst to turn over his Kennedy medical file to her for safekeeping. Herbst sends his notes to Bobby Kennedy instead. RFK decides that these medical records are to be regarded as "privileged communication" and are not to be kept in a federal archive.
  
• 4/14/1961 JFK today addresses the Council of the Organization of American States, declaring that the body "represents a great dream of those who believe that the people of this hemisphere must be bound more closely together."
  
• 4/14/1961 Just prior to the Bay of Pigs invasion, Senator George Smathers walks with JFK on the White House South Lawn. JFK discloses to Smathers what is about to happen. According to Smathers, JFK says: "There is a plot to murder Castro. Castro is to be dead at the time the thousand Cuban exiles trained by the CIA hit the beaches."
  
• 4/14/1961 A Chicago-based attorney, Constantine "Gus" Kangles - who is a friend of the Kennedys AND Castro says: "I told Bobby [that] Castro knew everything - he was waiting for them. Not only did Castro know, but he enjoyed huge popularity. As far as an uprising, I told Bobby, It ain't gonna happen.' But Bobby didn't care. He wanted him [Castro] out."
  
• 4/14/1961 The Cuban Brigade embarked at Puerto Cabezas, Nicaragua, for the Bay of Pigs. Patrolling Cuban troops and a rocky shoreline caused the cancellation of an early-morning attack 30 miles east of Guantanamo by 164 soldiers aboard a CIA freighter.
  
• 4/15/1961 Lee Harvey Oswald proposes to Marina Prusakova. Marina will later testify that when she agreed to marry Oswald, she believed - based upon his statements to her - that he did NOT intend to return to the United States. This would have to mean that nothing was ever said to Marina by the Russian authorities when she applied for permission to marry an alien whom they knew was planning to leave the country.
  
• 4/15/1961 JFK flies to his Virginia retreat at Glen Ora.
  
• 4/15/1961 At dawn on April 15, 1961, eight B-26 bombers of the Cuban Expeditionary Force, launched from Nicaragua, carried out air strikes to destroy the Cuban Air Force on the ground, achieving only partial success. The planes carry Cuban Air Force insignia and are piloted by exiles and US civilians. It was meant to take out Castro's air force, but it did little damage. Two other exile bombers land in Florida as part of a plan to make it look as though disgruntled members of Castro's Air Force were defecting. Reporters soon noticed discrepancies in this story. Premier Castro then ordered his pilots "to sleep under the wings of the planes," ready to take off immediately. Castro rounds up 100,000 potential counterrevolutionaries, including nearly all CIA sources. Shortly after the attack started, Ambassador Adlai Stevenson at the UN flatly rejected Cuba's report of the attack to the Assembly, saying that the planes were from the Cuban Air Force and presenting a copy of the photograph published in the newspapers. In the photo, the plane shown has an opaque nose, whereas the model of the B-26 planes used by the Cubans had a Plexiglas nose. He derided the allegations as being "without foundation," and said that the planes "to the best of our knowledge were Castro's own air force planes and, according to the pilots, they took off from Castro's own air force fields." As David Atlee Phillips, the CIA's propaganda chief, monitored the events at the U.N., he was shocked by Stevenson's statements. As he later wrote: "As I watched Stevenson defend the deceitful scheme a chill moved through my body. What had we done? Adlai Stevenson had been taken in by the hoax! Had no one bothered to tell our Ambassador at the United Nations of the deception involved in the air strike?" In fact, Stevenson had not been briefed on the plans, and was later enraged to find that he had repeated the CIA cover story before the international community. Stevenson was extremely embarrassed a few hours later when the truth was revealed and he learned that Kennedy had referred to him as "my official liar." UN representative Conor Cruise O'Brien recalled, "Adlai himself was clearly conscious that this was not his finest hour...a dreadful speech, full of the kind of official lies that stick out in an unappetizing fashion. And Adlai read this stuff as if he had never seen it before, frequently stumbling over words, as he never stumbled over words of his own." (The Siege)
  
• 4/15/1961 David Ferrie is taking a three week vacation from Eastern Airlines. It is believed he is playing some role in the Bay of Pigs invasion -- perhaps as a pilot.
  
• 4/15/1961 Allen Dulles goes to Puerto Rico to speak at a meeting of the Young Presidents Organization -- a group closely affiliated with Harvard Business School and with the CIA. It is made up of men who are presidents of their own companies and under forty years of age. The CIA arranges meeting for them with young leaders in foreign countries for the purpose of opening export-import talks and franchising discussions. Why he has accepted and keeps this appointment at such a crucial time has never been properly explained. Because of the absence of its director, the CIA's secondary leaders -- officials with no combat or command experience -- made "the operational decision which they felt within their authority." For decisions above them, they were supposed to go to the President. Cabell and Bissell, in Dulles's absence, are inherently unqualified to carry the issue back to the President to "explain to him with proper force the probable military consequences of a last-minute cancellation."
  
• 4/16/1961 This night, General Edwin Walker leaves his command in West Germany -- he is in disfavor with the administration for indoctrinating his troops with right-wing propaganda. Says Walker: "My career has been destroyed. I must find another means of serving my country in time of her great need. To do this I must be free from the power of the little men who, in the name of my country, punish loyal service to it."
  
• 4/16/1961 1:45 P.M. After a bout of indecision on a local golf course, JFK approves a dawn air strike of Cuba.
  
• 4/16/1961 A ship named Seagull leaves from Key West to stage a fake invasion off the northwestern coast; Castro is fooled and sends in a large number of troops.
  
• 4/16/1961 Whiting Willauer was dismissed from the State Department after two months of being "frozen out" of the Bay of Pigs planning. (None Dare Call it Treason)
  
• 4/16/1961 During a lull in the fighting, Castro attends a funeral for victims of an air attack. Castro rails at the United States and announces, for the first time, that Cuba is a socialist state.
  
• 4/16/1961 This evening, John Kennedy, at his country house in Virginia for the weekend, cancels follow-up air raids on Cuban airfields. At least one CIA official immediately grasps the implications: "The Cuban Brigade was doomed."
  
• 4/16/1961 9:30 P.M. As the exile brigade prepared for its overnight landing at the Bay of Pigs, Kennedy's National Security Adviser, McGeorge Bundy, phoned CIA deputy director General Charles P. Cabell to say that " the dawn air strikes the following morning should not be launched until planes can conduct them from a strip within the beachhead. " Since no such opportunity came, this order in effect canceled the air strikes. Castro's army surrounded the invading force in the following days. "The Bay of Pigs Invasion: A Comprehensive Chronology of Events, " in Bay of Pigs Declassified, edited by Peter Kornbluh ( New York: New Press, 1998) This constitutes a total misreading and a complete reversal of the approved tactical plan. For years afterward, it will be believed that JFK canceled the air cover for the Bay of Pigs invasion. The man who actually does this is McGeorge Bundy. Dean Rusk gives Cabell and Richard Bissell an opportunity to speak directly to JFK by telephone in order to convince him to provide the needed air strikes. The CIA men see no point in speaking personally to the President and so inform the Secretary of State. The order to cancel the D-Day strikes is then dispatched to the departure field in Nicaragua, arriving when the pilots are in their cockpits ready for take-off. The Joint Chiefs of Staff learn of the cancellation at varying hours the following morning.
  
• 4/17/1961 On the night of 16-17 April 1961, when the relatively young President needed the advice of the armed forces as the Bay of Pigs invasion was turning into an unmitigated fiasco, the tension between President Kennedy and Admiral Burke was palpable. As told by Admiral Burke's biographer, the late E.B. Potter, in the early-morning hours of 17 April, President Kennedy, Vice President Lyndon Johnson, Secretary of State Dean Rusk, and Secretary of Defense Robert McNamara, in white tie and tails, along with the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, General Lyman Lemnitzer and Admiral Burke, in dress uniforms with medals, left the East Room, where the annual Congressional Reception had just concluded, headed for the Oval Office. There, Richard M. Bissell of the CIA informed President Kennedy that although the situation was bad, it "could still take a favorable turn if the President would authorize sending in aircraft from the carrier." "Burke concurred," wrote Potter. "Let me take two jets and shoot down the enemy aircraft," he urged. But President Kennedy said "No," and reminded them that he had said "over and over again" that he would not commit U.S. forces to combat. Apparently, he did not want the world to find out what it already knew, that the whole expedition had been conceived, planned, and armed by the United States. According to Potter, "Burke suggested sending in a destroyer. Whereupon Kennedy explodes. Burke.' He snapped, I don't want the United States involved in this.' All in all, Mr. President,' Burke snapped back, but we are involved."' Admiral Burke continued as Chief of Naval Operations for three-and-a-half more months. On 1 August 1961, having completed an unprecedented third term, he relinquished his office to Admiral George W. Anderson. The change of command took place at the U.S. Naval Academy, where Admiral Burke had begun his naval service 42 years earlier.
  
• 4/17/1961 Cuban exile Brigade 2506 landed at Bahia de Cochinos (the Bay of Pigs) in Cuba. Castro had about 20,000 troops, with tanks, artillery and aircraft; the exiles numbered 1,300 (with 5 transport freighters, 12 landing craft, 5 tanks, 18 mortars, 15 recoilless rifles, 4 flamethrowers, 12 rocket launchers). Of the five freighters, 2 (the Houston and Rio Escondido) were sunk by Cuban planes. The exiles had been supplied with obsolete and poorly equipped B-26s by the CIA. The invasion went badly from the start; the invasion force barely got to the beaches before it was pinned down by government forces. The B-26s were supposed to be escorted to Cuba by unmarked US Navy jets, but the CIA's failure to coordinate this properly led to the B-26s going in an hour early: "...the B-26s were soon downed or gone, the jet mission was invalidated before it started, and without ammunition the exiles were quickly rounded up." (Ted Sorensen) The CIA had made numerous mistakes: the landing site was not suitable for guerilla warfare, most of the invasion force had not been given guerilla training, and the proposed escape route to the Escambray Mountains was an impassable swamp. Of the 1600 men, 114 are killed, 1,189 are captured by Castro's forces, and 150 either never land or make their way back to safety. It is a humiliating defeat for the CIA planned invasion. JFK is blamed for not coming to their aid. Head of the CIA, Allen Dulles, is out of the country during the invasion. Gen. Charles Cabell acts as CIA coordinator during this time. In the CIA and some military circles the President is accused of vacillation at the moment of crisis. The CIA's reaction following the Bay of Pigs fiasco suggests strongly that the Agency knew in advance the operation could not succeed without U.S. military support, and had banked on being able to pressure the President into direct intervention. Dulles had encouraged the President to believe the landing would be followed by a mass popular uprising -- a prospect CIA intelligence reports indicated was wholly improbable. CIA agents had earlier told their Cuban proteges that they should go ahead with the invasion even if the President called off the landing at the last moment.
  
• 4/17/1961 Dean Rusk told a press conference: "The American people are entitled to know whether we are intervening in Cuba or intend to do so in the future. The answer to that question is no." (NYT 4/18)
  
• 4/17/1961 US State dept spokesman Joseph W. Reap stated, "The State Department is unaware of any invasion."
  
• 4/17/1961 Pierre Salinger was quoted by the AP: "All we know about Cuba is what we read on the wire services."
  
• 4/17/1961 4:30 AM Gen. Charles Cabell, deputy director of the CIA, calls the White House, has Dean Rusk awaken JFK with a request for new air cover for Bay of Pigs invasion. The request is for U. S. planes -- which are not "deniable." Cabell is told no. (Despite the cancellation of the dawn air strikes, the B-26s actually did fly in from Nicaragua to cover the landing beach throughout the rest of D-Day. A total of 13 combat sorties were flown on D-Day, in the course of which 4 B-26s were lost to Cuban T-33 action.)
  
• 4/17/1961 JFK, LBJ, Rusk, McNamara, Lemnitzer, Burke, Bundy, Bissell, Walt Roston and Authur Schlesinger, Jr. meet today in the President's office. The reports are bad. Bissell and Burke propose a concealed U.S. air strike from the carrier Essex lying off Cuba. Arthur Schlesinger, Jr. and James Reston lunch with JFK. Schlesinger remembers him as being "free, calm, and candid; I had rarely seen him more effectively in control." JFK says: "I probably made a mistake in keeping Allen Dulles on. It's not that Dulles in not a man of great ability. He is. But I have never worked with him, and therefore I can't estimate his meaning when he tells me things . . . Dulles is a legendary figure, and it's hard to operate with legendary figures . . . I made a mistake in putting Bobby in the Justice Department. He is wasted there . . . Bobby should be in CIA . . . It is a hell of a way to learn things, but I have learned one thing from this business -- that is, we'll have to deal with the CIA." RFK says: "The shit has hit the fan. The thing has turned sour in a way you wouldn't believe." Kenny O'Donnell remembers JFK being "as close to crying" as I've ever seen him. RFK privately tells JFK: "They can't do this to you. Those black -bearded communists can't do this to you." RFK remembers JFK as being "more upset at this time than he was at any other." To summarize the Bay of Pigs invasion: 1. The crucial D-Day dawn strikes are canceled, supposedly by the President, without the CIA attempting to consult him directly, because there would be "no point" in it. 2. The same strikes are made on D-Day evening, when it is too late, again without consulting the President. 3. The crucial D+2 ammunition resupply convoy is stopped, without consulting the President, because it would be "futile." 4. The resupply is attempted by air on D+2, when it is too late, this time consulting the President.
  
• 4/17/1961 Immediately following the Bay of Pigs disaster, the CIA begins to plan a second invasion, training Cuban exiles and soldiers of fortune, on No Name Key in Florida, in Guatemala, and on the north shore of Lake Pontchartrain in Louisiana. The CIA, theoretically more tightly controlled under the eye of RFK, also sets up an extraordinary new center of operations. Code-named "JM/WAVE", and situated in Miami, it is, in effect, the headquarters for a very public "secret war" against Cuba. This is the most ambitious CIA project ever, and comes to involve seven hundred CIA and coopted Army officers recruiting, training, and supplying thousands of Cuban exiles. The nerve center of the new struggle is set up in Miami, where the vast majority of the exiles are concentrated. There, in woods on the campus of the University of Miami, the CIA establishes a front operation in the shape of an electronics company called Zenith Technological Services. In 1962, at the height of its activity, the "JM/WAVE" station controls as many as 600 Americans, mostly CIA case officers, and up to 3000 contract agents. Internally, the JM/WAVE station is also a logistical giant. It leases more than a hundred staff cars and maintains its own gas depot. It keeps warehouses loaded with everything from machine guns to coffins. It has its own airplanes and what one former CIA officer calls "the third largest navy in the Western Hemisphere," including hundreds of small boats and huge yachts donated by friendly millionaires. One of the more active sites, used by a variety of anti-Castro groups, is a small, remote island north of Key West called, appropriately enough, No Name Key. It is home to a group called the International anti-Communist Brigade (IAB), a collection of soldiers of fortune, mostly Americans, who are recruited by Frank Fiorini Sturgis and a giant ex-Marine named Gerry Patrick Hemming. (Like Oswald, Hemming has been trained as a radar operator in California. Hemming will later claim that OSWALD once even tried to join his IAB group.)
  
• 4/17/1961 Also at this time it is worth noting that Carlos Bringuier is the chief New Orleans delegate of the Directorio Revolucionario Estudiantil, known simply as the DRE or the Directorio. The Directorio is headquartered in Miami under the wing of the CIA's JM/WAVE station. Bringuier and OSWALD will have several public encounters in the future. Also, following the disaster of the Bay of Pigs, McGeorge Bundy's status as national security adviser is sharply upgraded. He is moved from the relatively humble Executive Office Building, on the other side of West Executive Avenue, to the West Wing. There, much closer to the President's oval office, Bundy begins presiding over regular morning meetings of his National Security Council staff. In addition he extends his sway over the White House war room, with its huge maps and brightly colored telephones.
  
• 4/18/1961 Proposed Studies on the Implications of Peaceful Space Activities for Human Affairs, often referred to as "the Brookings Report", was commissioned by NASA and created by the Brookings Institution in collaboration with NASA's Committee on Long Range Studies in 1960. It was submitted to the Committee on Science and Astronautics of the United States House of Representatives in the 87th United States Congress on April 18, 1961. It was entered into the Congressional Record and can be found in any library possessing the Congressional Record for that year. The report has become famous for one short section, titled, "Implications of a discovery of extraterrestrial life," which examines the potential implications of such a discovery for public attitudes and values. The section briefly considers possible public reactions to some possible scenarios for the discovery of extraterrestrial life, stressing a need for further research in this area. It recommends continuing studies to determine the likely social impact of such a discovery and its effects on public attitudes, including study of the question of how leadership should handle information about such a discovery and under what circumstances leaders might or might not find it advisable to withhold such information from the public. The significance of this section of the report is a matter of controversy. Persons who believe that extraterrestrial life has already been confirmed and that this information is being withheld by government from the public sometimes turn to this section of the report as support for their view. Frequently cited passages from this section of the report are drawn both from its main body and from its endnotes.
  
• 4/18/1961 FBI records indicate that Robert Maheu informed the FBI that the Ballenti tap involved the CIA and suggested Edwards be contacted, Maheu informed the FBI that the tap had played a part in a project "on behalf of the CIA relative to anti-Castro activities," a fact which could be verified by Sheffield Edwards, CIA Director of Security. (FBI Memo Apr 20, 61; Alleged Assassination Plots Involving Foreign Leaders, 11/20/75 p79)
  
• 4/18/1961 This morning, Castro headed to the battlefield to take personal command of the defenses.
  
• 4/18/1961 Art Schlesinger recorded in his journal that Kennedy complained, "I made a mistake in putting Bobby in the Justice Department. He is wasted there...Bobby should be in CIA...I have learned one thing from this business - that is, that we will have to deal with CIA." (RFK and His Times 486)
  
• 4/18/1961 JFK returns to Washington from Glen-Ora, the family Virginia home, where he has been able to exercise "plausible denial" concerning the invasion of Cuba. He attends a scheduled cabinet meeting. He is extremely upset and spends twenty-five minutes telling the cabinet what he feels went wrong with the invasion -- and why. Both Richard Bissell and Allen Dulles are visibly shaken.
  
• 4/18/1961 Andrew St. George writes: "Within a year of the Bay of Pigs, the CIA curiously and inexplicably began to grow, to branch out, to gather more and more responsibility for the Cuban problem.' The Company was given authority to help monitor Cuba's wireless traffic; to observe its weather; to publish some of its best short stories (by Cuban authors in exile) through its wholly owned CIA printing company; to follow the Castro government's purchases abroad and its currency transactions; to move extraordinary numbers of clandestine field operatives in and out of Cuba; to acquire a support fleet of ships and aircraft in order to facilitate these secret agent movements; to advise, train, and help reorganize the police and security establishments of Latin countries which felt threatened by Castro's guerrilla politics; to pump such vast sums into political operations thought to be helpful in containing Castro that by the time of the 1965 U.S. military intervention in the Dominican Republic both the bad guys and the good guys -- i.e., the radical' civilian politicos and the conservative' generals -- turned out to have been financed by La Compania. Owing largely to the Bay of Pigs, the CIA ceased being an invisible government: it became an empire."
  
• 4/18/1961 Kennedy wrote to Khrushchev about Cuba, assuring him that "the United States intends no military intervention in Cuba" but urged him to understand that the Cuban exiles wanted to oust the dictator Castro: "recourse to such struggle is the only means of achieving their liberties....While refraining from military intervention...the United States government can take no action to stifle the spirit of liberty." He also asked Khruschev not to let the Bay of Pigs worsen relations between the US and USSR, and expressed his desire for a "treaty for the banning of nuclear tests." (JFK Wants to Know 59-60)
  
• 4/19/1961 NSAM 149 "TO: The Secretary of State; the Secretary of Defense; The Director of CIA. SUBJECT: Withdrawal of certain military units from forward positions in Laos. 1.The President has authorized the Secretary of Defense to play for the withdrawal of those MAAG White Star teams in Laos which are located in forward field positions. Approximately seven or eight White Star teams would be withdrawn to the rear echelon and would remain in Laos until their normal tour of duty expired. Their replacement will be decided upon subsequently. 2.The withdrawal will take place at such time as the Secretary of State deems appropriate. It is not presently contemplated that this would occur before May 7, 1962. 3.The Secretary of State will prepare an appropriate public announcement of the action at the time the withdrawal takes place. Prior to such time every effort should be made to keep this matter confidential. McGeorge Bundy."
  
• 4/19/1961 Cuban rebels surrendered their beachhead at Las Villas and fled to join guerillas in the hills. The forces of Brigade 2506 lost 114 men on the beaches; 1,189 were captured. Castro had about 4000 casualties. Commander "Pepe" Perez San Roman sent a final message at 2:30pm: "We have nothing left to fight with. How can you people do this to us, our people, our country? Over and out."
  
• 4/19/1961 Nixon was invited to the White House for advice; he told JFK to "find a proper legal cover and go in."
  
• 4/19/1961 In a memo for the president, RFK warns, "if we don't want Russia to set up missile bases in Cuba, we had better decide now what we are willing to do to stop it." Robert Kennedy identifies three possible courses of action: (1) sending American troops into Cuba, a proposal "you [President Kennedy] have rejected...for good and sufficient reasons (although this might have to be reconsidered)"; (2) placing a strict blockade around Cuba; or (3) calling on the Organization of American States (OAS) to prohibit the shipment to Cuba of arms from any outside source. He concludes that "something forceful and determined must be done...The time has come for a showdown for in a year or two years the situation will be vastly worse." (RFK and his Times)
  
• 4/19/1961 RFK dictates a letter to JFK today: "Our long-range policy objectives in Cuba are tied to survival far more than what is happening in Laos or in the Congo or any other place in the world...The time has come for a showdown, for in a year or two years the situation will be vastly worse." RFK adds: "If we don't want Russia to set up missile bases in Cuba, we had better decide now what we are willing to do to stop it."
  
• 4/19/1961 Khrushchev writes to JFK, assuring him that the Soviet Union "does not seek any advantages or privileges in Cuba. We do not have any bases in Cuba, and we do not intend to establish any." Khrushchev, however, also warns against arming Cuban emigrés for future attacks on Cuba. Such a policy of "unreasonable actions," he writes, "is a slippery and dangerous road which can lead the world to a new global war." (Soviet Public Statements with respect to Cuban Security, 9/10/62)
  
• 4/19/1961 While visiting Richard Nixon's home, Allen Dulles is asked by Nixon if he would like a drink. He replies: "I certainly would -- I really need one. This is the worst day of my life." Dulles blames the invasion's failure on JFK's last-minute cancellation of air strikes.
  
• 4/19/1961 JFK's depression about the Bay of Pigs reaches such depths that he tells his friend LeMoyne Billings, "Lyndon [Johnson] can have it [the presidency] in 1964." JFK refers to the presidency as being "the most unpleasant job in the world." How else, he asked his friends Dave Powers and Ken O'Donnell, could the Joint Chiefs have approved such a plan? "They were sure I'd give in to them and send the go-ahead order to the [Navy's aircraft carrier] Essex," he said. "They couldn't believe that a new President like me wouldn't panic and try to save his own face. Well, they had me figured all wrong." (O'Donnell and Powers, "Johnny, We Hardly Knew Ye, " p. 274.) At his death Allen Dulles left the unpublished drafts of an article that scholar Lucien S. Vandenbroucke has titled "The 'Confessions' of Allen Dulles." In these handwritten, coffee-stained notes, Dulles explained how CIA advisers who knew better drew John Kennedy into a plan whose prerequisites for success contradicted the president's own rules for engagement that precluded any combat action by U.S. military forces. Although Dulles and his associates knew this condition conflicted with the plan they were foisting on Kennedy, they discreetly kept silent in the belief, Dulles wrote, that "the realities of the situation" would force the president to carry through to the end they wished: "[We] did not want to raise these issues-in an [undecipherable word] discussion-which might only harden the decision against the type of action we required. We felt that when the chips were down-when the crisis arose in reality, any action required for success would be authorized rather than permit the enterprise to fail." Lucien S . Vandenbroucke, "The 'Confessions' of Allen Dulles: New Evidence on the Bay of Pigs," Diplomatic History 8, no. 4 (Fall 1984) : p. 369; citing Allen W. Dulles Papers, handwritten notes, Seeley G. Mudd Manuscript Library, Princeton University . Four decades after the Bay of Pigs, we have learned that the CIA scenario to trap Kennedy was more concrete than Dulles admitted in his handwritten notes. A conference on the Bay of Pigs was held in Cuba March 23-25, 2001, which included "ex-CIA operatives, retired military commanders, scholars, and journalists." News analyst Daniel Schorr reported on National Public Radio that "from the many hours of talk and the heaps of declassified secret documents" he had gained one new perception of the Bay of Pigs: "It was that the CIA overlords of the invasion, director Allen Dulles and deputy Richard Bissell, had their own plan of how to bring the United States into the conflict. It appears that they never really expected an uprising against Castro when the liberators landed as described in their memos to the White House. What they did expect was that the invaders would establish and secure a beachhead, announce the creation of a counterrevolutionary government and appeal for aid from the United States and the Organization of American States. The assumption was that President Kennedy, who had emphatically banned direct American involvement, would be forced by public opinion to come to the aid of the returning patriots. American forces, probably Marines, would come in to expand the beachhead. "In effect, President Kennedy was the target of a CIA covert operation that collapsed when the invasion collapsed." Noah Adams, All Things Considered, March 26, 200 1, hour I, National Public Radio. Even if President Kennedy had said no at the eleventh hour to the whole Bay of Pigs idea (as he was contemplating doing), the CIA, as it turned out, had a plan to supersede his decision. When the four anti-Castro brigade leaders told their story to writer Haynes Johnson, they revealed how the Agency was prepared to circumvent a presidential veto. The Cubans' chief CIA military adviser, whom they knew only as " Frank, " told them what to do if he secretly informed them that the entire project had been blocked by the administration: " If this happens you come here and make some kind of show, as if you were putting us, the advisers, in prison, and you go ahead with the program as we have talked about it, and we will give you the whole plan, even if we are your prisoners." Haynes Johnson with Manuel Artime, Jose Perez San Roman, Emeido Oliva, and Enrique Ruiz-Williams, The Bay of Pigs (New York: Dell, 1964), p . 74. The brigade leaders said "Frank" was quite specific in his instructions to them for " capturing" their CIA advisers if the administration should attempt to stop the plan: " they were to place an armed Brigade soldier at each American's door, cut communications with the outside, and continue the training until he told them when, and how, to leave for Trampoline base [their assembly point in Nicaragua]." (Ibid.) When Robert Kennedy learned of this contingency plan to override the president, he called it " virtually treason. " (Robert Kennedy in His Own Words, edited by Edwin O. Guthman and Jeffrey Shulman (New York: Bantam, 1988), p. 245. RFK also said, "In fact, we found out later that, despite the President's orders that no American forces would be used, the first two people who landed in the Bay of Pigs were Americans. The CIA sent them in." (Ibid.) John Kennedy reacted to the CIA's plotting with a vehemence that went unreported until after his death and has been little noted since then. In a 1966 New York Times feature article on the CIA, this statement by JFK appeared without further comment: " President Kennedy, as the enormity of the Bay of Pigs disaster came home to him, said to one of the highest officials of his Administration that he wanted 'to splinter the C.I.A. in a thousand pieces and scatter it to the winds. "' Tom Wicker, John W. Finney, Max Frankel, E. W. Kenworthy, " C.I.A.: Maker of Policy, or Tool?" New York Times (April 25, 1966) Presidential adviser Arthur M. Schlesinger, Jr., said the president told him, while the Bay of Pigs battle was still going on, " It's a hell of a way to learn things, but I have learned one thing from this business-that is, that we will have to deal with CIA . . . no one has dealt with CIA. " (Schlesinger, Robert Kennedy, p. 486) The Bay of Pigs awakened President Kennedy to internal forces he feared he might never control. Supreme Court Justice William O. Douglas recalled Kennedy saying what the Bay of Pigs taught him about the CIA and the Pentagon: " This episode seared him. He had experienced the extreme power that these groups had, these various insidious influences of the CIA and the Pentagon on civilian policy, and I think it raised in his own mind the specter: Can Jack Kennedy, President of the United States, ever be strong enough to really rule these two powerful agencies ? " Cited by L. Fletcher Prouty, The Secret Team (New York: Ballantine, 1974), p.472.
  
• 4/20/1961 Kennedy unveiled his investment incentive plan, featuring a tax credit for new investment rather than accelerated depreciation allowances. He also asked Congress for a variety of tax reforms as a first step toward a projected broad revision of the income-tax laws. "A majority of the changes suggested by Kennedy directly affected the interests of business." (JFK and the Business Community p43) Liberal and labor groups opposed the tax credit; they argued that tax relief for the middle class would do more for the economy. Not until 10/1962 did an investment tax credit and modified tax reforms become law.
  
• 4/20/1961 The Senate passed JFK's minimum wage bill.
  
• 4/20/1961 Former Turkish PM Menderes was sentenced to death for violating the constitution.
  
• 4/20/1961 Radio Havana declares victory for Cuba.
  
• 4/20/1961 JFK told the American Society of Newspaper Editors that, concerning the Bay of Pigs, "We intend to profit from this lesson. We intend to reexamine and reorient our forces of all kinds..." He then said, "The complacent, the self-indulgent, the soft societies are about to be swept away with the debris of history. Only the strong, only the industrious, only the determined...can possibly survive."
  
• 4/20/1961 Carlos Marcello associate, David Ferrie, admits to the FBI that following the Bay of Pigs invasion he has severely criticized President JFK both in public and private. Ferrie also admits that he has said anyone could hide in the bushes and shoot the President. AOT
  
• 4/20/1961 Also on this day, JFK adopts the concept of counterinsurgency as the accepted program for Vietnam and directs Deputy Secretary of Defense Roswell Gilpatric to make recommendations for a series of actions to prevent the Communist domination of the government of Vietnam. Gilpatric and Lansdale head a task force established to carry out these instructions from the President.
  
• 4/20/1961 Angus McNair is executed on this date in Cuba as a suspected CIA agent. McNair is a close friend of Frank Sturgis, who will admit that McNair was part of the espionage network Sturgis is running in Cuba. McNair was captured while trying to create a diversionary action during the Bay of Pigs invasion.
  
• 4/20/1961 Cabinet Meeting on Cuba. Notes by Chester Bowles: "The President was really quite shattered, and understandably so. Almost without exception, his public career had been a long series of successes, without any noteworthy setbacks. Those disappointments which had come his way, such as his failure to get the nomination for Vice President in 1956 were clearly attributable to religion. Here for the first time he faced a situation where his judgment had been mistaken, in spite of the fact that week after week of conferences had taken place before he gave the green light. It was not a pleasant experience. Reactions around the table were almost savage, as everyone appeared to be jumping on everyone else. The only really coherent statement was by Arthur Goldberg, who said that while it was doubtful that the expedition was wise in the first place, the Administration should not have undertaken it unless it was prepared to see it through with United States troops if necessary. At least his remarks had an inherent logic to them, although I could not agree under any circumstances to sending troops into Cuba--violating every treaty obligation we have. The most angry response of all came from Bob Kennedy and also, strangely enough, from Dave Bell, who I had always assumed was a very reasonable individual. The discussion simply rambled in circles with no real coherent thought. Finally after three-quarters of an hour the President got up and walked toward his office. I was so distressed at what I felt was a dangerous mood that I walked after him, stopped him, and told him I would like an opportunity to come into his office and talk the whole thing out. Lyndon Johnson, Bob McNamara, and Bob Kennedy joined us. Bobby continued his tough, savage comments, most of them directed against the Department of State for reasons which are difficult for me to understand. When I took exception to some of the more extreme things he said by suggesting that the way to get out of our present jam was not to simply double up on everything we had done, he turned on me savagely. What worries me is that two of the most powerful people in this administration--Lyndon Johnson and Bob Kennedy--have no experience in foreign affairs, and they both realize that this is the central question of this period and are determined to be experts at it. The problems of foreign affairs are complex, involving politics, economics and social questions that require both understanding of history and various world cultures. When a newcomer enters the field and finds himself confronted by the nuances of international questions, he becomes an easy target for the military-CIA-paramilitary type answers which are often in specific logistical terms which can be added, subtracted, multiplied, or divided. This kind of thinking was almost dominant in the conference and I found it most alarming. The President appeared the most calm, yet it was clear to see that he had been suffering an acute shock and it was an open question in my mind as to what his reaction would be. All through the meeting which took place in the President's office and which lasted almost a half hour, there was an almost frantic reaction for an action program which people would grab onto."
  
• 4/21/1961 The Algiers putsch (French: Putsch d'Alger or Coup d'État d'Alger), also known as the Generals' putsch (Putsch des Généraux), was a failed coup d'état to overthrow French President Charles de Gaulle (70) and establish an anti-communist military junta. Organised in French Algeria by retired French army generals Maurice Challe (55, former Commander-in-chief in French Algeria), Edmond Jouhaud (56, former Inspector General of the French Air Force), André Zeller (63, former Chief of staff of the French Ground Army) and Raoul Salan (61, former Commander-in-chief in French Algeria), it took place from the afternoon of 21 April to 26 April 1961 in the midst of the Algerian War (19541962). The organisers of the putsch were opposed to the secret negotiations that French Prime Minister Michel Debré's government had started with the anti-colonialist National Liberation Front (FLN). General Raoul Salan argued that he joined the coup without concerning himself with its technical planning; however, it has always been considered a four-man coup d'état, or as De Gaulle famously put it, "un quarteron de généraux en retraite" (a quartet of retired generals). The coup was to come in two phases: an assertion of control in French Algeria's major cities Algiers, Oran and Constantine, followed by the seizure of Paris. The metropolitan operation would be led by Colonel Antoine Argoud, with French paratroopers descending on strategic airfields. The commanders in Oran and Constantine, however, refused to follow Challe's demand that they join the coup. At the same time, information about the metropolitan phase came to Prime Minister Debré's attention through the intelligence service. On 4/21 all flights and landings were forbidden in Parisian airfields, and an order was given to the army to resist the coup "by all means".[2] The following day, President Charles De Gaulle made a famous speech on television, dressed with his 1940s-vintage general's uniform (he was 71 and long retired from the army) ordering the French people and army to help him.
  
• 4/21/1961 JFK took full responsibility for the Bay of Pigs disaster. His popularity reached its highest ever point, 83%. He remarked: "My God, it's as bad as Eisenhower. The worse I do, the more popular I get."
  
• 4/21/1961 JFK opens a breakfast meeting that precedes a scheduled press conference by remarking: "The happiest people in government today are the ones who can say they didn't know anything about it" (the Bay of Pigs invasion). According to notes taken by Richard N. Goodwin, JFK is "concerned that the entire blame for this not be placed on the CIA." JFK continues: "In my experience, things like this go along for a while, but memory is short, and if we just sit tight for about three weeks, things will cool off and we can proceed from there." Still, JFK's popularity goes to an all-time high of over 80 percent. "The worse you do, the better they like you," JFK remarks on seeing the poll results. Less than a week following the Bay of Pigs debacle, a meeting is held with JFK's Cuban advisors. Undersecretary of State Chester Bowles advises that nothing can be done about Castro - as he is now entrenched. Other aides such as Richard Goodwin agree. RFK simply explodes. "That's the most meaningless, worthless thing I've ever heard," he replies angrily. "You people are so anxious to protect your own asses that you're afraid to do anything ... We'd be better off if you just quit and left foreign policy to someone else."
  
• 4/21/1961 A Fair Play for Cuba rally is held at Union Square in New York and draws three thousand people.
  
• 4/22/1961 JFK had a private conversation with Eisenhower at Camp David. After conferring with Kennedy, Eisenhower announced publicly that he stood behind the president.
  
• 4/22/1961 JFK directs Gen. Maxwell Taylor, in association with Attorney General Robert Kennedy, Admiral Arleigh Burke, and Allen Dulles, to give him a report on the "Immediate Causes of Failure of Operation Zapata." "How did I ever let it happen?" JFK asks rhetorically, "I know better than to listen to experts. They always have their own agenda. All my life I've known it, and yet I still barreled ahead." Taylor will finish his report on June 13, 1961.
  
• 4/22/1961 St. Louis Post Dispatch reported: "The [Cuban] underground was never advised of the landing date and did not know whether the Bay of Pigs operation was a real or diversionary invasion. Radio SWAN, the CIA's mysterious short wave broadcast station which blankets the Caribbean, failed to broadcast the pre-arranged signals to trigger the underground into action."
  
• 4/22/1961 Retired French Generals Maurice Challe, André Zeller, Edmond Jouhaud, and Raoul Salan, helped by colonels Antoine Argoud, Jean Gardes, and the civilians Joseph Ortiz and Jean-Jacques Susini (who would form the OAS terrorist group), carried out a coup and took power in Algiers. This danger was so serious that de Gaulle ordered tanks to patrol the streets of Paris, to pre-empt a paratroopers' coup in the capital city, threatening to take over the French government buildings. This was the punctum saliens for Algeria as well as for the future of France and the leadership of President de Gaulle. During the night, the 1st Foreign Parachute Regiment (1e REP), composed of a thousand men (3% of the military present in Algeria) and headed by Hélie de Saint Marc took control of all of Algiers' strategic points in three hours. The head of the Parisian police, Maurice Papon, and the director of the Sûreté nationale, formed a crisis cell in a room of the Comédie-Française, where Charles De Gaulle was attending a presentation of Racine's Britannicus. The president was informed during the entracte of the coup by Jacques Foccart, his general secretary to African and Malagasy Affairs and closest collaborator, in charge of covert operations. Algiers' population was awakened on 22 April at 7 am to a message read on the radio: "The army has seized control of Algeria and of the Sahara". The three rebel generals, Challe, Jouhaud and Zeller, had the government's general delegate, Jean Morin, arrested, as well as the National Minister of Public Transport, Robert Buron, who was visiting, and several civil and military authorities. Several regiments put themselves under the command of the insurrectionary generals. General Jacques Faure, six other officers and several civilians were simultaneously arrested in Paris. At 5 pm, during the ministers' council, Charles De Gaulle declared: "Gentlemen, what is serious about this affair, is that it isn't serious".[5] He then proclaimed a state of emergency in Algeria, while left wing parties, communist trade union CGT and the socialist supporter[6] NGO Ligue des droits de l'homme (LDH, Human Rights League) called to demonstrate against the military's coup d'état.
  
• 4/22/1961 C. Wright Mills wires a Fair Play for Cuba rally in San Francisco: "Kennedy and company have returned us to barbarism. Schlesinger and company have disgraced us intellectually and morally. I feel a desperate shame for my country. Sorry I cannot be with you. Were I physically able to do so, I would at this moment be fighting alongside Fidel Castro."
  
• 4/23/1961 New reports today disclose that Carlos Marcello is being held in custody by Guatemalan authorities in connection with what are reported to be false citizenship papers he presented upon his arrival there on April 6th.
  
• 4/23/1961 "Dan Carswell" -- released from a Cuban prison in a prisoner exchange -- lands at Homestead Air Force Base in Florida, where he receives a hero's welcome. Carswell will later testify that he is at work in CIA headquarters in Langley on Nov. 22, 1963. Some researchers, however, believe Carswell was in Dallas that day and could well have been one of the tramps arrested near Dealey Plaza.
  
• 4/23/1961 Interior Secretary Udall pointed out that the Bay of Pigs operation had been planned under the Eisenhower administration; Republicans attacked him for his partisanship.
  
• 4/23/1961 President Charles de Gaulle went on French national television and did something that had never been done before. He resorted to Article 16 of the French Constitution, which gave him full emergency powers. De Gaulle presented himself before the nation in full military dress, stating in a dramatic and stern voice: "An insurrectional power has been established by military pronouncement. That power has an appearance. It has a reality: a quartet of retired generals and ambitious and fanatical officers. Now the nation is challenged, it has been humiliated, our position in Africa is compromised, and by whom? Alas, alas, alas, by the very men whose duty and whose honor it was, and whose reason for being it was, to serve and obey. In the name of France, I order that all the means, I repeat, all the means be taken to block the way to these men, until we reduce them. I forbid every French citizen, and most of all, every soldier to execute any of those orders.... Men and women of France, think of the risk for the nation. Men and women of France, help me." The following day, on Sunday 23 April, General Salan arrived from Spain and refused to arm civilian activists. At 8 pm, General De Gaulle appeared in his uniform on television, calling on French military personnel and civilians, in the metropole or in Algeria, to oppose the putsch: An insurrectionary power has established itself in Algeria by a military pronunciamento... This power has an appearance: a quartet of retired generals. It has a reality: a group of officers, partisan, ambitious and fanatic. This group and this quartet possess an expeditive and limited know-how. But they see and understand the Nation and the world only deformed through their frenzy. Their enterprise lead directly towards a national disaster ... I forbid any Frenchman, and, first of all, any soldier, to execute a single one of their orders ... Before the misfortune which hangs over the fatherland and the threat on the Republic, having taken advice from the Constitutional Council, the Prime Minister, the president of the Senate, the president of the National Assembly, I have decided to invoke article 16 of the Constitution [on the state of emergency and full special powers given to the head of state in case of a crisis]. Starting from this day, I will take, directly if needs arise, the measures which seems to me demanded by circumstances ... Frenchwomen, Frenchmen! Help me! Due to the popularity of a recent invention, transistor radio, De Gaulle's call was heard by the conscript soldiers, who refused en masse to follow the professional soldiers' call for insurgency. Trade unions decided for the next day a one hour general strike against the putsch, which met with widespread opposition, largely in the form of civil resistance.
  
• 4/25/1961 the French authorities in Paris ordered the explosion of the atomic bomb Gerboise Verte (lit. "green jerboa") in the Sahara to prevent it from falling into the putschists hands. Gerboise Verte exploded at 6:05 AM. The few troops which had followed the generals progressively surrendered. General Challe also gave himself up to the authorities on 26 April, and was immediately transferred to the metropole. The putsch had been successfully opposed, but the article 16 on full and extraordinary powers given to De Gaulle was maintained for five months. "The Battle of the Transistors"as it was called by the presswas quickly and definitely won by De Gaulle.
  
• 4/25/1961 Robert Noyce granted a patent for the integrated circuit.
  
• 4/25/1961 NSAM 42 "TO: The Secretary of Health, Education and Welfare; The Director of the Central Intelligence Agency. SUBJECT: Assistance to Cuban refugees....The President directed that levels of support for Cuban refugees should be reported to him for recommendations for their improvement (NSC Action 2406C). The President also expressed his desire that such support should be open and overt...the adjustment of Cubans to life in the United States should be given particular attention by the Department of Health, Education and Welfare....McGeorge Bundy."
  
• 4/25/1961 NSAM 45 "TO: The Attorney General; The Director of CIA. SUBJECT: Coverage of Castro activities in the United States...The President noted that the Department of Justice and the Central Intelligence Agency would examine the possibility of stepping up coverage of Castro activities in the United States...McGeorge Bundy."
  
• 4/27/1961 A day of crisis meetings; JFK's advisers gave him conflicting advice, with the JCS advocating a massive intervention in Laos to block China. Burke argued for intervention regardless of the circumstances: "...if we do not fight in Laos, will we fight in Thailand where the situation will be the same sometime in the future...Will we fight in Vietnam? Where will we fight? Where do we hold? Where do we draw the line?" Many others were adamantly opposed to intervention; LBJ supported Burke. (The End of Nowhere p152) Rostow said it was the worst White House meeting of the entire Kennedy administration. (A Thousand Days 315) Kennedy had already decided privately not to intervene.
  
• 4/27/1961 In a speech to the press, JFK mildly criticized the media for uncovering the US role in the Bay of Pigs. He attacked the idea of secret societies and closed societies.
  
• 4/27-28/1961 While at a Central Treaty Organization (CENTO) meeting in Ankara, Turkey, Dean Rusk privately raises the possibility of withdrawing the U.S. Jupiter missiles from Turkey with Turkish Foreign Minister Salim Sarper. Sarper objects to Rusk's suggestion, pointing out that the Turkish Parliament has just approved appropriations for the missiles and that it would be embarrassing for the Turkish government to inform Parliament that the Jupiters now are to be withd