Deep Politics Timeline

[Tracy Riddle]

• 9/1962 Johnny Rosselli informs William Harvey the poison pills are still with "asset" in Cuba. Verona is ready to send in another team but it doesn't appear that they ever go.
  
• First week of September 1962: Soviet troops belonging to four elite armored brigades are believed to have begun arriving in Cuba at this time. Troops belonging to the combat groups continue to embark through the second week of October. However, U.S. intelligence does not recognize the existence of the organized combat units until the middle of the missile crisis, on October 25. (The Soviet Bloc Armed Forces and the Cuban Crisis: A Chronology July-November 1962, 6/18/63, p.13)
  
• 9/1962 Alleged meeting at the Scott Byron Hotel, Miami Beach, where mob leader Santos Trafficante talked of Kennedy being killed. Cuban exile Jose Aleman later insisted that he told the FBI about Santos Trafficante's threatening remarks to have Kennedy killed. But a review of FBI reports could find no record of this. (HSCA p174-5) Curt Gentry remarked that he wouldn't be surprised if this record, along with others, had been destroyed at Hoover's orders. (The Man and the Secrets p547) Aleman told the HSCA 3/12/1977 that Trafficante said 'He's not going to be reelected, he's going to be hit.' He told the HSCA that it was his "impression" that Trafficante meant JFK was going to be hit. (HSCA 5 301-14) After the assassination, he said, two agents rushed to see him, interviewed him, and asked him to keep the conversation confidential. One agent whom he claimed to have talked to before the assassination, Paul Scranton, has refused to confirm or deny the claim: "I wouldn't want to say anything to embarrass the Bureau," he told the Washington Post in 1976. 9/1/1962 US press reports that a US Navy aircraft on a training mission 15 miles off Cuba's north coast was shot at by two Cuban patrol vessels.
  
• 9/2/1962 Cuba denies firing at the US plane and charges the US with numerous violations of Cuban airspace.
  
• 9/2/1962 Moscow announces that they will help defend Cuba from "imperialist" threats.
  
• 9/3/1962 At Kennedy 's request, Walt Rostow submits his assessment of the Soviet military build-up. According to Rostow, while the SAMs do not pose a threat to U.S national security, a "line should be drawn at the installation in Cuba or in Cuban waters of nuclear weapons or delivery vehicles..." Senior State Department official Walt Rostow recommends that current OPERATION MONGOOSE activities be intensified but also suggests studying the possibility of having independent anti-Castro groups oust Castro with minimal U.S. assistance. (Document 14, W. W. Rostow's Memorandum to the President, Assessing Soviet Military Aid to Cuba, 9/3/62)
  
• 9/4/1962 RFK met with Soviet Ambassador Anatoly Dorbynin, who assured him that only "defense" weapons were being supplied to Cuba, and that Russian missiles would never be placed there.
  
• 9/4/1962 JFK told the press that the Soviets had troops and surface-to-air missiles in Cuba, but "there is no evidence of...the presence of offensive ground-to-ground missiles, or of other significant offensive capability...Were it otherwise the gravest issues would arise."
  
• 9/5/1962 Oswald pays $9.71 (money order) to State Dept against travel loan. Posted 9/6/62 from 270 Mercedes St, Fort Worth (CE1120)
  
• 9/5/1962 A U-2 photographed a Soviet MiG on a Cuban airstrip.
  
• 9/6/1962 Rod Serling letter to Kirk Douglas: "I very much share your enthusiasm for the Seven Days in May' project. I also count myself extremely luck to finally get this opportunity to work with you. The project has not only great import, but is the most eminently dramatizeable story I've seen in many a moon."
  
• 9/6/1962 The Russian embassy returns Marina's passport. (H 18 493-4)
  
• 9/7/1962 A government study on birth control that had been suppressed was ordered to be made public by the Dept. of HEW.
  
• 9/7/1962 JFK asked Congress for the authority to call 150,000 members of the reserves to active duty for a year.
  
• 9/7/1962 French announced arrest of five people accused of having tried to kill De Gaulle 8/21.
  
• 9/7/1962 Dobrynin assures Adlai Stevenson that "only defensive weapons are being supplied" to Cuba.
  
• 9/7/1962 Harvey met with Roselli about the anti-Castro plots. (Church Report)
  
• 9/7/1962 The U.S. Tactical Air Command (TAC) establishes a working group to begin developing plans for a coordinated air attack against Cuba to be launched well before an airborne assault and amphibious landing. Joint Chiefs of Staff (JCS) military planners have, until then, made no provision for such an operation.
  
• 9/8/1962 Around this date, some members of the Russian community notice that Marina Oswald has a black eye.
  
• 9/8/1962 A very large Soviet freighter, the Omsk, steamed into the Cuban port of Casilda.
  
• 9/9/1962 The Worker's headlined story is "Kennedy Renews Threats Against Cuba's Freedom."
  
• 9/10/1962 Robert Frost, after interviewing Khrushchev, said that the Soviet leader had remarked that "American liberals were too soft to fight." (St Louis Post Dispatch)
  
• 9/10/1962 This night, Alpha 66 attacked two Cuban vessels and a British freighter in the harbor of Caibarien.
  
• 9/10/1962 Supreme Court justice Hugo Black issued an order requiring Ole Miss to admit James Meredith in time for him to begin the fall semester.
  
• 9/10/1962 The AEC and the DOD announced that the test had produced an unexpected 'radiation belt' that made satellite communications inoperable.
  
• 9/11/1962 The same month as Trafficante's alleged threat against JFK, Carlos Marcello is supposed to have uttered a similar threat. During a business meeting in New Orleans with a close relative, and a man named Edward Becker, Marcello who has been drinking is asked about his war with the Kennedys. "It was then that Carlos' voice lost its softness, and his words were bitten off and spit out when mention was made of U.S. Attorney General Robert Kennedy…'Livarsi na petra di la scarpa!' Carlos shrilled the mafia cry of revenge: Take the stone out of my shoe!' Don't worry about that little Bobby son of a bitch,' he shouted. He's going to be taken care of!' He realized that he had to eliminate the President to eliminate the Attorney General. Simply getting rid of RFK would bring the whole federal government down on him. He was thinking of using a "nut" to do the job. (Ed Reid, The Grim Reapers: The Anatomy of Organized Crime in America, 1969, Regnery) Becker is in fact an informant, working an ex-FBI agent named Julian Blodgett, who works for a private investigative agency in Los Angeles doing contract work with the L.A. FBI office. He had arranged the meeting through a nephew of Marcello's named Carl Roppolo to obtain investment capital from Marcello for an oil venture. Within a week Becker will meet with his ex-FBI contact. Ed Reid will interview Becker in 1967. The FBI will show intense interest in Becker during the fall of 1962. Becker meets with Blodgett on Sep 18 in Brownwood, Texas. They return together to Shreveport, Louisiana. Becker will meet again with Marcello. (HSCA Vol. 9)
  
• 9/11/1962 TASS releases an authorized Soviet government statement condemning U.S. overseas bases and denying any intention of introducing offensive weapons into Cuba. The statement declares: "The arms and military equipment sent to Cuba are intended solely for defensive purposes....there is no need for the Soviet Union to set up in any other country--Cuba for instance--the weapons it has for repelling aggression, for a retaliatory blow."
  
• 9/11/1962 Castro declared that the US was "playing with fire and with war." Moscow warns that any attack by the US on Cuba will be met with nuclear retaliation.
  
• 9/11/1962 William Harvey met with Roselli again about the anti-Castro plots. (Church report)
  
• 9/11/1962 "A…Brooklyn salesman who has served as a Government informant within the Communist Party pointed out William Albertson today as one who had a big voice in party affairs in New York. The Justice Department…contends he is a member of the party's national committee. At a meeting in October 1961, Mr. Prince said, Mr. Albertson advised party members to invoke the Fifth Amendment's privilege against self-incrimination if arrested by the FBI." (NYT 9/12/62)
  
• 9/12/1962 Cuban papers and officials boasted publicly that if the US invaded, the US would be attacked in kind.
  
• 9/13/1962 JFK told reporters that there was no plan for invading Cuba, and accused Castro of a "frantic effort to bolster his regime" by scaring his people. The president reiterates that new movements of Soviet technical and military personnel to Cuba do not constitute a serious threat and that "unilateral military intervention on the part of the United States cannot currently be either required or justified." Nevertheless, he again warns that if Cuba "should ever attempt to export its aggressive purposes by force...or become an offensive military base of significant capacity for the Soviet Union, then this country will do whatever must be done to protect its own security and that of its allies."
  
• 9/13/1962 "The French police announced the arrest today of a sixth person accused of participating in the attempt to kill President de Gaulle Aug. 22." (NYT 9/14/62)
  
• 9/13/1962 The Senate unanimously approves presidential standby authority to call up reservists.
  
• 9/14/1962 Fort Worth Star-Telegram quotes Gen. Walker saying that the US Army should use Castro's Cuba for holding maneuvers, not Texas farm and ranch land. This afternoon, the Dallas Times-Herald reports, "Walker charged both the Kennedy and Eisenhower administrations with selling out' to Communism…Walker claimed that it was no secret' that the US armed forces are to be placed under United Nations control."
  
• 9/15/1962 Letter from JFK to Khruschev, declassified 12/1989. "SECRET - EYES ONLY. I am happy to note your suggestion that you are prepared to negotiate a treaty banning nuclear tests in the atmosphere, in outer space and under water in the immediate future...we should at the same be negotiating towards a treaty for banning nuclear weapons tests in all environments...A test ban agreement, together with an agreement on the nondissemination of nuclear weapons...would have a powerful effect in detering the spread of nuclear weapons capabilities to other countries."
  
• 9/15/1962 photograph of the Soviet large-hatch ship Poltava on its way to Cuba. 9/15-17/1962 medium-range ballistic missiles were unloaded from the Soviet freighter Poltava at the port of Mariel. GOP Senators and Richard Nixon began calling for JFK to "quarantine" Cuba from the import of Soviet arms.
  
• 9/15/1962 Columnist Edith Roosevelt claimed that the CIA had supplied weapons to the underground in Cuba in such a way that they could never be used; some groups had 30.06 ammo and .45 caliber rifles, while others were provided with .45 ammo and 30.06 rifles. (Shreveport Journal)
  
• 9/16/1962 The Worker editorializes, "In Washington the dogs of war are straining at their leash."
  
• 9/17/1962 US News and World Report, reviewing the Bay of Pigs invasion, blamed its failure entirely on JFK's failure to provide air support.
  
• 9/18/1962 JFK arrives in Boston with Jackie from Newport, Rhode Island, to vote in the Massachusetts primary. After voting, they return to Newport. Edward M. Kennedy wins the special Democratic primary for Senator by a margin of 311,900 votes, against Edward J. McCormack. (Rachlin, Chronology)
  
• 9/19/1962 The United States Intelligence Board (USIB) approves a report on the Soviet arms buildup in Cuba. Its assessment, Special National Intelligence Estimate (SNIE) 85-3-62, states that some intelligence indicates the ongoing deployment of nuclear missiles to Cuba. In particular, the report notes: (1) two large-hatch Soviet lumber ships, the Omsk and the Poltava, had been sighted riding high in the water suggesting that they carried military cargo; (2) intelligence accounts of sightings of missiles and a report that Fidel Castro 's private pilot, after a night of drinking in Havana, had boasted, "We will fight to the death and perhaps we can win because we have everything, including atomic weapons"; and (3) evidence of the ongoing construction of elaborate SA-2 air defense systems. The report asserts that the Soviet Union "could derive considerable military advantage from the establishment of Soviet medium and intermediate range ballistic missiles in Cuba..." However, it concludes that "the establishment on Cuban soil of Soviet nuclear striking forces which could be used against the U.S. would be incompatible with Soviet policy as we presently estimate it...[and the Soviets] would almost certainly estimate that this could not be done without provoking a dangerous U.S. reaction."
  
• 9/19/1962 JFK confers with President Gregoire Kavibanda of Rwanda, which became independent July 1. (Rachlin, Chronology)
  
• 9/20/1962 A reliable eyewitness report of an offensive missile - made by a CIA sub-agent 9/12 - reached Ray Cline.
  
• 9/20/1962 A Senate resolution on Cuba sanctioning the use of force, if necessary, to curb Cuban aggression and subversion in the western hemisphere, passes the Senate by a vote of eighty-six to one. The resolution states that the US is determined "to prevent the creation or use of an externally supported offensive military capability endangering the security of the U.S." and to "support the aspirations of the Cuban people for a return to self-determination." In the House, a foreign aid appropriations bill is approved with three amendments designed to cut off aid to any country permitting the use of its merchant ships to transport arms or goods of any kind to Cuba. The House ratified the resolution Sep 26 by 384 to 7.
  
• 9/20/1962 Kennedy signs a bill to establish the Delaware River and Bay Authority. In an address before a joint session of the Governors of the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund at the Sheraton-Park Hotel, JFK appeals to other nations to share the economic burden of foreign aid. (Rachlin, Chronology)
  
• 9/20/1962 Harrisburg, Penn: JFK speaks at a Democratic fund-raising dinner. (Rachlin)
  
• 9/20-21/1962 boasts by Cuban officials seemed to indicate that nuclear weapons were being set up in Cuba.
  
• 9/21/1962 Becker and Blodgett travel to Shreveport, La where the former meets again with Roppolo, arranging a second meeting with Marcello. (HSCA 9 80)
  
• 9/21/1962 In a speech to the U.N. General Assembly, Andrei Gromyko charges the US with whipping up "war hysteria" and threatening to invade Cuba. Gromyko states that "any sober-minded man knows that Cuba is not...building up her forces to such a degree that she can pose a threat to the United States or...to any state of the Western Hemisphere." Gromyko further warns that any U.S. attack on Cuba or on Cuba-bound shipping would mean war.
  
• 9/22/1962 Lyman Lemnitzer to the President, "SIOP 63 Briefing," 22 September 1962, Top Secret Source: National Archives, Record Group 218, Records of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, Chairman's Files, Records of Lyman L. Lemnitzer, Box 2, CM 1962, 950-62- to 995-62 This may be the only surviving evidence that President Kennedy received a SIOP-63 briefing on 14 September 1962. The editor has made requests for the briefing text, but if it still exists, no one in the U.S. government has been able to locate it.
  
• 9/22/1962 NYT reports that according to the French press, "President de Gaulle refused to duck when assassins fired on his car last month. After the first round of shots I shouted, Get down,' but General de Gaulle and his wife remained upright.'"
  
• 9/22/1962 US planes spotted a convoy of Soviet freighters, a tanker and two subs heading for Cuba.
  
• 9/24/1962 Arthur K. Watson of IBM (later ambassador to France) told a conference of accountants in NYC: "The disk memory unit, the heart of today's random access computer, is not the logical outcome of a decision made by IBM management. It was developed in one of our laboratories as a bootleg project over the stern warning from management that the project had to be dropped because of budget difficulties. A handful of men ignored the warning. They broke the rules. They risked their jobs to work on a project they believed in."
  
• 9/24/1962 Marines at Guantanamo began adding to the fortifications around the base.
  
• 9/24/1962 The House passes standby reserve call-up authority for the President 342-13.
  
• 9/25/1962 Gov. Barnett, in a physical confrontation with James Meredith, US Attorney John Doar, and Chief US Marshal James J.P. McShane, bars entrance to university trustees' office in Jackson, Miss. He refuses to accept the court order, and this night Barnett is cited for contempt.
  
• 9/26/1962 McCone returned to Washington.
  
• 9/26/1962 U-2 photograph showing surface-to-surface cruise missile (named "Kennel" by the U.S., FKR in Soviet plans) launch area at Banes.
  
• 9/27/1962 The plan for a coordinated tactical air attack on Cuba in advance of an airborne assault and amphibious landing is presented to Curtis LeMay, the Air Force chief of staff. The concept is approved and October 20, is set as the date when all preparations needed to implement such an attack should be completed.
  
• 9/27/1962 Justice Dept masses 25 federal marshals for another try at registering Meredith but, confronted with 200 police deployed around the campus plus a mob of 2500, they postpone the attempt.
  
• 9/28/1962 Navy air reconnaissance aircraft observing Cuba-bound ships photograph ten large shipping crates on the decks of the Soviet vessel Kasimov. After studying the size and configuration of the crates, photoanalysts determine that the containers hold Soviet IL-28 light bomber aircraft. The IL-28s are over twelve years old and have been removed almost entirely from the Soviet Air Force in 1960. Although technically capable of carrying nuclear payloads, the aircraft have never been given a nuclear delivery role.
  
• 9/28/1962 photograph of Soviet ship Kasimov with IL-28 bomber fuselages in crates.
  
• 9/28/1962 "On September 28, 1962 Dallas confidential informant T-1 advised that Lee H. Oswald, who at that time resided at 2703 Mercedes Street, Fort Worth, Texas, was a subscriber to The Worker, an East Coast communist newspaper." (FBI Hosty Report of 10 Sep 1963 re: Oswald/Russia)
  
• 9/28/1962 Press quotes Gen. Walker calling for 10,000 civilians to help block James Meredith from entering the university. Walker's battle cry is, "Barnett yes, Castro no."
  
• 9/28/1962 NSAM 189 to Secretaries of state, defense, Joint Chiefs Chairman, DCI. "SUBJECT: Presidential meeting on Laos, September 28, 1962....the President took the following action: 1.Authorized the withdrawal by October 7, 1962, of the remaining elements of MAAG Laos in accordance with the Geneva Agreements; 2.Authorized a special US contribution to the Royal Lao Government for the month of September not to exceed two million....4. Accepted the retention of US combat forces in Thailand pending a further review of developments in Laos. Carl Kaysen."
  
• 9/28/1962 Muhammad Al-Badr, imam (ruler) of Yemen, was the target of an unsuccessful assassination attempt.
  
• 9/29/1962 Teamster official Edward G. Partin tells Justice Dept that Jimmy Hoffa is planning to kill RFK.
  
• 9/29/1962 U-2 flight over western Cuba photographed a surface-to-air missile site and a cruise missile installation.
  
• 9/29/1962 Kwame Nkrumah, president of Ghana, was the target of a failed assassination attempt.
  
• 9/30/1962 A Dallas police car stopped a vehicle driven by 22-year-old Ashland F. Burchwell of Roseville, Michigan for a routine traffic violation. The car contained a .357 Magnum pistol, three .22 rifles, a larger rifle, three thousand rounds of ammo, blankets, change of clothes, two or three hundred file cards, and a switchblade knife. Burchwell was a protégé of Gen. Walker, had served in the "special warfare" section of the 24th Division in Germany, and was helping Walker with his political activities. He denied being en route to Oxford to join the general. He was placed in jail for a week until he raised bail. (10/2/1962 Dallas Morning News)
  
• 9/30/1962 US News & World Report wrote of 5000-10,000 Soviet troops present in Cuba.
  
• 9/30/1962 The US Attorney General Robert F. Kennedy consulted with Governor Barnett, who agreed to have James Meredith enroll in the university. After being barred from entering on September 20, on October 1, 1962, he became the first African-American student at the University of Mississippi. White students and anti-desegregation supporters protested his enrollment by rioting on the Oxford campus. Robert Kennedy called in 500 U.S. Marshals to take control, who were supported by the 70th Army Engineer Combat Battalion from Ft Campbell, Kentucky. They created a tent camp and kitchen for the US Marshals. To bolster law enforcement, President John F. Kennedy sent in U.S. Army military police from the 503rd Military Police Battalion, and called in troops from the Mississippi Army National Guard and the U.S. Border Patrol as well. In the violent clash, two people died, including the French journalist Paul Guihard, on assignment for the London Daily Sketch. He was found dead behind the Lyceum building with a gunshot wound to the back. One hundred-sixty US Marshals, one-third of the group, were injured in the melee, and 40 soldiers and National Guardsmen were wounded. The US government fined Barnett $10,000 and sentenced him to jail for contempt, but the charges were later dismissed by the 5th Circuit Court of Appeals. Meredith's entry is regarded as a pivotal moment in the history of civil rights in the United States. He graduated on August 18, 1963 with a degree in political science. William Doyle, author of Inside the Oval Office, calls the forced integration of the University of Mississippi in 1962 "the biggest domestic military crisis of the twentieth century." In An American Insurrection, he delivers a blow-by-blow account of how the school, popularly known as Ole Miss, was opened to black students for the first time. At the center of the tale is James Meredith, a determined but unusual hero gripped by what Doyle calls "an almost messianic vision of destroying the system of white supremacy in Mississippi." Meredith was one of the first black men to serve in the armed forces following its integration, enlisting right out of high school in 1951. He later decided to seek a college education and resolved to get his degree from the all-white precincts of Ole Miss. Through clever plotting and the assistance of a beleaguered civil rights movement, Meredith won admittance to the school, but his troubles had only just begun. Thousands of segregationists descended upon Oxford, Mississippi, to block Meredith from attending class. Their numbers included students, state police, governor Ross Barnett, and an assortment of troublemakers with no real ties to the university. Through it all, Meredith "succeeded in forcing three new allies to his side: the president of the United States, the U.S. Justice Department, and the most powerful military machine in history." The president ordered the deputies to escort Meredith onto campus September 30th in preparation for his registration the next morning in the Lyceum, the central administration building. It was inside the Lyceum that Deputy Attorney General Nicholas Katzenbach, the senior federal official present, held fort. He manned a bank of telephones in a makeshift newsroom, staying in contact with the president and Attorney General Robert F. Kennedy. As dusk fell on the 30th, angry students gathered outside the building. Their numbers quickly grew. The contingent of deputy marshals spaced themselves on the sidewalk outside of the building and held guard. They stood at 15-foot intervals, facing the street, and later closed ranks when other federal officers arrived. The deputies concealed loaded side arms under their suit coats, but they were ordered not to use them. About every third man had a teargas launcher with blast dispersion ammunition rather than projectile ammunition. They were outfitted in makeshift military gear. Gas masks and vests, riot batons and old helmets newly painted white with U S MARSHAL stenciled across the front were the order of the day. Tensions mounted, battle lines were drawn and sides were chosen. And the crowd grew loud and agitated with each passing minute. The verbal insults and threats stung. "Most of the harassing, jeering language was so foul I refuse to reiterate it," said retired Southern California Deputy Bud Staple, one of the 127 who stood tall for the agency that night and held their ground. Officers from the Mississippi Highway Patrol were aligned on the opposite side of the street from the deputies. However, they were given conflicting orders by their superiors and they did not quell the impending storm of hatred that was brewing. The student protesters formed into angry mobs, but they tailed off as the evening wore on. However, taking up ranks alongside of them and even replacing them were rioters and assorted troublemakers from as far away as California. "We were successful early on, but as the night wore on, there were fewer and fewer students and more and more people from other places," said Duncan Gray, an Episcopal bishop who confronted the mobs with calls for peace only to be beaten for his efforts by reactionary hoodlums.
  
• 9/30/1962 At 10:30pm, JFK goes on national television to talk about the events in Mississippi: "Americans are free to disagree with the law but not to disobey it. For a government of laws and not of men, no man, however prominent and powerful, and no mob, however, unruly or boisterous, is entitled to defy a court of law. If this country should ever reach the point where any man or group of men, by force or threat of force, could long defy the commands of our courts and our Constitution, then no law would stand free from doubt, no judge would be sure of his writ and no citizen would be safe from his neighbors."
  
• Fall 1962 French Navy is withdrawn from NATO.