Deep Politics Timeline

[Tracy Riddle]

• 7/1964 A WC assistant counsel called Robert Oswald and tried to get his help in determing a motive for Lee's crimes.
  
• 7/1964 Violent race riots in New York City after police killed a black boy in Harlem; hundreds arrested.
  
• 7/1/1964 The Dallas Times Herald carried an article captioned, "Wade Denies Diary Leak"; this is in reference to Oswald's "History Diary."
  
• 7/2/1964 Civil Rights Act of 1964 passed the House 289-126, and LBJ quickly signed it into law. It prohibited legal racial segregation in public accommodations and jobs; MLK attended the signing. LBJ privately remarked to Bill Moyers, "I think we just delivered the South to the Republican Party." Early in 1965, the Supreme Court unanimously upheld the constitutionality of the Civil Rights Act.
  
• 7/2/1964 US announced that Castro's sister had been a CIA informant for four years.
  
• 7/2/1964 Commission No. 1216. Memo for: J. Lee Rankin...Subject: Lee Harvey Oswald. 1. The following remarks have been recently attributed to Soviet Consul Pavel Antonovich Yatskov in Mexico City regarding the subject. 'I met Oswald here. He stormed into my office and wanted me to introduce him to the Cubans. He told me that he had lived in the USSR. I told him that I would have to check before I could recommend him. He was nervous and his hands trembled, and he stormed out of my office. I don't believe that a person as nervous as Oswald, whose hands trembled, could have accurately fired a rifle.' 2...has checked its records for the period Oswald was in Mexico City and has advised it is quite possible that Oswald thought he had talked with Valery Kostikov when he actually had spoken to Yatskov; or that he first spoke to Kostikov who turned him over to his superior Yatskov. 3. The source of the above information is a confidential contact...who is believed to be reliable. Anthony Summers obtained this document through the FOIA and showed it to Col. Nechiporenko in 1993. (NECH p283)
  
• 7/2/1964 Airtel from NY's FBI special agent in charge to Hoover regarding a book to be published linking RFK with Marilyn Monroe's death.
  
• 7/2/1964 Mark Lane testified before the WC again.
  
• 7/4/1964 In The Klan Ledger, Imperial Wizard Sam Bowers published an open letter to the Klan community: "We are now in the midst of the long hot summer' of agitation which was promised to the Innocent People of Mississippi by the savage blacks and their Communist masters…We were NOT involved, and there was NO DISAPPEARANCE. Anyone who is so simple that he cannot recognize a Communist hoax which is as plain as the one they pulled on Kennedy in Dallas (and which Earl Warren is working so hard to cover-up), had better do a little reading in J. Edgar Hoover's primer on communism, Masters of Deceit.' We refuse to be concerned or upset about this fraud…We Knights are working day and night to preserve Law and Order here in Mississippi, in the only way that it can be preserved: by strict segregation of the races, and the control of the social structure in the hands of the Christian, Anglo-Saxon White men, the only race on earth that can build and maintain just and stable governments. We are deadly serious about this business…Take heed, atheists and mongrels, we will not travel your path to a Leninist Hell, but we will buy YOU a ticket to the Eternal if you insist."
  
• 7/6/1964 Chinese Foreign Minister Chen Yi warned that if the US attacked North Vietnam, "the Chinese people naturally cannot be expected to look on with folded arms." The US interpreted the message to mean that only a land invasion of North Vietnam would bring Chinese intervention.
  
• 7/7/1964 Memo to William Sullivan; the Atlanta FBI office requested authority to install "three additional technical surveillances" at the SCLC facilities. Hoover authorized it with an "OK" at the bottom.
  
• 7/7/1964 White House memorandum, Top Secret, "Adlai Stevenson and Lisa Howard," July 7, 1964. Gordon Chase reports to Bundy on his concerns that Howard's role as an intermediary has now escalated through her contact with Stevenson at the United Nations and the fact that a message has been sent back through her to Castro from the White House. Chase recommends trying "to remove Lisa from direct participation in the business of passing messages," and using Cuban Ambassador to the UN, Carlos Lechuga, instead.
  
• 7/7/1964 Rankin letter to Hoover about the James Tague missed bullet. Rankin wanted to know at what point in the Zapruder film the "wild" shot passed over the limo and struck near the Triple Underpass. (McKnight)
  
• 7/8/1964 Hoover warned RFK in a memo that a new book was to be published about Bobby's alleged relations with Marilyn Monroe: "He will indicate in his book that you and Miss Monroe were intimate, and that you were in Miss Monroe's home at the time of her death." Its author, right-winger Frank Capell, also accused RFK of being an agent of international communism, and claimed Marilyn was killed by Bobby's communist friends to keep her from upsetting their plans for taking over the government.
  
• 7/8/1964 Letter from Hoover to Rankin: "As previously reported to the Commission, certain small lead metal fragments uncovered in connection with this matter were analyzed spectrographically to determine whether they could be associated with one or more of the lead bullet fragments and no significant differences were found within the sensitivity of the spectrographic method. Because of the higher sensitivity of the neutron activation analysis, certain of the small lead fragments were then subjected to neutron activation analyses and comparisons with the larger bullet fragments. The items analyzed included the following: C1 - bullet from stretcher; C2 - fragment from front seat cushion; C4 and C5 - metal fragments from President Kennedy's head; C9 - metal fragment from the arm of Governor Connally; C16 - metal fragments from rear floor board carpet of the car. While minor variations in composition were found by this method, these were not considered sufficient to permit positively differentiating among the larger bullet fragments and thus positively determining from which of the larger bullet fragments any given small lead fragment may have come." (Post Mortem 607) This is all the WC got from the FBI on fragment tests; there was not even any attached documentation or data. Weisberg uncovered this memo in 1974.
  
• 7/9/1964 Meeting of Commission Members With Psychiatric Panel on July 9,.1964 (Tad Szulc, The Warren Commission in its Own Words, 9/1975) Allen Dulles advised his colleagues not to worry about the final report being scrutinized: "But nobody reads. Don't believe people read in this country. There will be a few professors that will read the record...the public will read very little."
  
• 7/10/1964 LBJ flies J. Edgar Hoover down to Jackson, Missippi on Air Force One. Received by local politicians as a hero and sympathizer, Hoover emphasizes that the Bureau "does not and will not give protection to civil rights workers" and refuses to repudiate the governor's statement that "the state should refuse to comply with the new Civil Rights Law."
  
• 7/10/1964 LBJ wrote a statement to the WC that gave his recollections on the assassination (H 5 561-4). "As the motorcade proceeded down Elm Street to the point where the assassination occurred, it was traveling at a speed which I should estimate at 12 or 15 miles an hour. After we had proceeded a short way down Elm Street, I heard a sharp report...The Vice-Presidential car was then about three car lengths behind President Kennedy's car, with the Presidential followup car intervening. I was startled by the sharp report or explosion. but I had no time to speculate as to its origin because Agent Youngblood turned in a flash, immediately after the first explosion, hitting me on the shoulder, and shouted to all of us in the back seat to get down...Almost in the same moment in which he hit or pushed me, he vaulted over the back seat and sat on me. I was bent over under the weight of Agent Youngblood's body, toward Mrs. Johnson and Senator Yarborough. I remember attempting to turn my head to make sure that Mrs. Johnson had bent down. Both she and Senator Yarborough had crouched down at Agent Youngblood's command. At some time in this sequence of events. I heard other explosions. It was impossible for me to tell the direction from which the explosions came. I felt the automobile sharply accelerate, and in a moment or so Agent Youngblood released me. I ascertained that Mrs. Johnson and Senator Yarborough were all right. I heard Agent Youngblood speaking over his radio transmitter. I asked him what had happened. He said that he was not sure but that he had learned that the motorcade was going to the hospital. I did not see anything that was going on in and around the President's automobile. When we arrived at the hospital; Agent Youngblood told me to get out of the car, go into the building, not to stop, and to stay close to him and the other agents. When the car came to a stop, a cordon of agents formed around me, and we walked rapidly into the hospital and then we went into a room there...I found it hard to believe that this had happened. The whole thing seemed unreal--unbelievable. A few hours earlier, I had breakfast with John Kennedy; he was alive, strong, vigorous. I could not believe now that he was dead. I was shocked and sickened...When Mr. O'Donnell told us to get on the plane and go back to Washington, I asked about Mrs. Kennedy. O'Donnell told me that Mrs. Kennedy would not leave the hospital without the President's body, and urged again that we go ahead and take Air Force I and return to Washington. I did not want to go and leave Mrs. Kennedy in this situation. I said so, but I agreed that we would board the airplane and wait until Mrs. Kennedy and the President's body were brought aboard the plane." RFK told him he should be sworn in right away.
  
• 7/10/1964 Life magazine featured an article on Oswald's Russian diary, which was discovered by Dallas reporter Hugh Aynesworth, who leaked it to the Dallas Morning News.
  
• 7/11/1964 Lady Bird Johnson diary entry: "This weekend [Lyndon] is going through the throes of what may be the last desperate turning away, the desire to escape being the Democratic candidate this fall. But the trouble is he can't find any honorable escape."
  
• 7/11/1964 Three black army reserve officers were returning home to Washington DC after serving two weeks of reserve duty at Georgia's Fort Benning. At five in the morning they stopped their car near Athens, Georgia and Lt. Lemuel A. Penn, a 49-year-old teacher and combat veteran, took over driving. Near the Broad River Bridge on Highway 172, the car was sighted by Klansmen Howard Sims and Cecil Myers, who were in a station wagon driven by James Lackey. They drove up alongside the other car, Sims and Myers fired their shotguns and killed Penn instantly.
  
• 7/12/1964 Viet Cong troops inflict a major defeat on government troops in the Mekong Delta region.
  
• 7/13/1964 Adm. Arleigh Burke was interviewed by US News & World Report. He stated, "Do we really believe that a nation that's starving can field a more powerful force in South Vietnam than we - the most powerful nation in the world?"
  
• 7/13/1964 Responding to a second written request from the Warren Commission, J. Edgar Hoover again refuses to allow the FBI to administer a polygraph test to Jack Ruby.
  
• 7/14/1964 Lemuel Penn was buried with full honors at Arlington National Cemetery. His body was conveyed on the same military caisson used in JFK's funeral. (The Fiery Cross p345)
  
• 7/14/1964 US sends 600 more troops to Vietnam.
  
• 7/15/1964 Barry Goldwater is nominated for president by the GOP in San Francisco.
  
• 7/15/1964 Liberty Magazine, a Toronto publication, prints an interview with Norman Similas. His story will later be revealed as a fraud. The title of the story is called "THE DALLAS PUZZLE". The reporter who conducted the interview, Kenneth Gamble Armstrong, claims Norman Similas approved its contents. The following excerpts are the words of Norman Similas: "While I attended a national convention of the carbonated beverage bottlers, the following events occurred ... Nov.21 - I interviewed Vice President Lyndon Johnson and photographed him in several informal poses. I spent more than an hour chatting with Jack Ruby in his nightclub. November 22 - I witnessed from a distance of less that seven feet the assassination of President Kennedy, and unwittingly photographed his assassin or assassins as a rifle was leveled at him from a nearby building. I am convinced that if Oswald was the assassin - and this has never been definitely proven - he was not alone when he aimed from the sixth floor window of the depository. One of the pictures I took as the presidential car passed, showed two figures beside the gun barrel in the window. A reporter for the Dallas Times also saw two figures. His newspaper published that story too. (The FBI determined that Similas was referring to photographer Robert H. Jackson of the Dallas Times.) More than seven months have passed since the horrors of Dallas. Never a day passes but what the projector has not flipped in my mind, and the scenes tumble out in sequence after sequence. I can see Lyndon Johnson smiling as he pushed his hand into his coat and says, "Shall I pose like Napoleon?" In the semidarkness of the entrance of his night club, Jack Ruby throws a bear-like arm around my shoulders and ushers me to a table. He is saying, "Save your film. Why shoot the entertainers when you can photograph the President tomorrow. He'll be passing by, just down the street." There is a fade-out and I'm next standing on the curb across from the Texas School Book Depository. I have selected a spot not far from the underpass where the crowd has thinned out. As the crowds cheer and wave the limousine slowly passes the Book Depository."
  
• 7/16/1964 In his acceptance speech, Goldwater said, "failure infest the jungles of Vietnam...Don't try to sweep this under the rug. We are at war in Vietnam. And yet the President...refuses to say...whether or not the objective over there is victory, and his Secretary of Defense continues to mislead and misinform the American people...I needn't remind you, but I will, it has been during Democratic years that a billion persons were cast into Communist captivity and their fates cynically sealed." The Republicans offered voters "a choice, not an echo"; Goldwater wanted to eliminate the welfare state and have a more aggressive anti-communist foreign policy. Some mainstream conservatives felt he was a dangerous revolutionary who wanted to turn the country upside-down. Moderates at the convention in San Francisco were shouted down by Goldwaterites; Goldwater, generally a down-to-earth and conscientious man, reluctantly accepted the nomination with the statement "extremism in the defense of liberty is no vice!" Gore Vidal, who covered the convention for Westinghouse, wrote four years later that "Reagan would some day find himself up there on the platform: as the age of television progresses, the Reagans will be the rule, not the exception." (NY Review of Books 9/12/1968)
  
• 7/18/1964 A polygraph test is finally administered to Jack Ruby. (The House Assassinations Committee will eventually conclude that the results are impossible to interpret because of "numerous procedural errors made during the test.)
  
• 7/18-23/1964 Riots occur in Harlem. One black man is killed.
  
• 7/19/1964 South Vietnamese president Khanh made an impassioned public speech demanding that he be given the equipment to launch an invasion of the North. LBJ fumed, "Can't this man shut up for awhile? If Khanh marches north, Lyndon Johnson isn't marching with him." This week, Air Marshal Nguyen Cao Ky offhandledly revealed to reporters that for three years the South had been sending "combat teams" on hit-and-run raids against the North "by land, air and sea."
  
• 7/19/1964 Mrs. Wilma Tice receives a letter asking her to testify for the Warren Commission.
  
• 7/20/1964 Warren Commission staffer Wesley Liebeler met with Arthur Dooley at CIA. Liebeler had already received affidavits from FBI's James Malley and Bardwell Odum regarding the CIA Mexico City mystery man photograph, but Liebeler also wanted an affidavit from the CIA regarding the date the photo was taken, and indicated that the Commission would publish the photo. [Memorandum of Arthur Dooley of 7-20-64, at RIF #104-10400-10293]
  
• 7/20/1964 Liebeler submitted his WR chapter on Oswald's motives; Redlich and Rankin thought it was "too psychological," and Goldberg was given the task of rewriting it. (Inquest)
  
• 7/20/1964 Mrs. Wilma Tice receives an anonymous call from a man who warns her: "It would pay to keep your mouth shut."
  
• 7/21/1964 President Johnson and Attorney General Robert Kennedy phone conversation, which was recorded:
  

ROBERT KENNEDY: I understand that--you knowhe [Hoover] sends all kinds of reports over to you about me and about the Department of Justice.
PRESIDENT JOHNSON: Not any that I've seen. What are you talking about?
ROBERT KENNEDY: Well, I just understand that--about me planning and plotting things.
PRESIDENT JOHNSON: No, he hasn't sent me a report that I remember. He hasn't sent me any report on you or on the department any time. And I get, I guess, a letter every three or four days that summarize a good deal of stuff. And Walter Jenkins gets eight or ten of em a day on Yugoslavia, various routine things where people are talking. But as far as I know they haven't involved you.
ROBERT KENNEDY: Well, I had understood that he had had some report about me.
PRESIDENT JOHNSON: No, no.
ROBERT KENNEDY: About the overthrow of the government by force and violence.
PRESIDENT JOHNSON: No, no.
ROBERT KENNEDY: Leading a coup.
PRESIDENT JOHNSON: No. That's an error. He never said that or indicated or given any indication of it.

• 7/21/1964 reporter Hugh Aynesworth's name surfaced in the newspapers in Dallas in a column by his friend Holmes Alexander. Alexander implied that Aynesworth did not trust Earl Warren and therefore was conducting his own investigation of the Kennedy murder. He was ready to reveal that the FBI knew Oswald was a potential assassin and blew their assignment. He also had talked to Marina Oswald and she had told him that Oswald had also threatened to kill Richard Nixon. Alexander goes on to say that these kinds of incidents show the mind of a killer at work. That "of a hard-driven, politically radical Leftist which is emerging from the small amount of news put out by the Warren Commission. If the full report follows the expected line, Oswald will be shown as a homicidal maniac." Holmes concludes his piece with a warning: If the Commission's verdict "jibes with that of Aynesworth's independent research, credibility will be added to its findings. If [it] does not there will be some explaining to do." Clearly, Aynesworth contributed mightily to the article, had decided Oswald had done it even before the Commission had revealed its evidence, and was bent on destroying its credibility if it differed from his opinion.
  
• 7/21/1964 Dean Andrews appeared before the WC. He told the WC that Bertrand was 5' 8" with sandy hair, blue eyes, a ruddy complexion, weighing 165 pounds, and said he was bisexual. He told the FBI that he was 6' 1" with brown hair.
  
• 7/22/1964 Memo from Arthur Marmor to Norman Redlich about Deputy Sheriff Buddy Walthers (declassified 1997): "Walthers confirmed Patrolman McDonald's testimony that Oswald said at the time of his arrest, "It's all over." (Ch. 4, p 56) He also alleged that a set of metal file-cabinets were found at Irving containing records that appeared to be names and activities of Cuban sympathizers. He said this evidence was turned over to Captain Fritz and Secret Service Officers."
  
• 7/22/1964 Mr. Emmett Hudson, groundskeeper for Dealey Plaza, testifies that "they have moved some of those signs." Questions still remain today about the true location of the Stemmons freeway sign in Dealey Plaza.
  
• 7/22/1964 Mrs. Wilma Tice calls police because someone has tried to break into her home while her husband is away.
  
• 7/22/1964 Sylvia Odio testified before the WC.
  
• 7/22/1964 McNamara told the Senate Appropriations Committee, "The primary problem in South Vietnam is not a military problem. The primary problem is a political and economic problem."
  
• 7/22/1964 Warren Reynolds told the WC that the man he saw at the Tippit murder scene was Oswald.
  
• 7/23/1964 Richard Helms supplied an affidavit to Chief Counsel Rankin, along with a request that the Warren Commission not publish the CIA Mexico City "Oswald" photograph, giving as reasons that "…it would jeopardize a most confidential and productive operation" and "It could be embarrassing to the individual involved who as far as this Agency is aware, had no connection with Lee Harvey Oswald or the assassination of President Kennedy." [Memo from Helms to Rankin, 7-23-64, at RIF #104-10400-10292] The CIA's concern for this individual's privacy is touching, but the Commission did not back down. Two months later, on September 22, Arthur Dooley and Louis Pucket of CIA visited the Commission, where they met with staffers Goldberg and Liebeler, who insisted that the photo must be published, but deferred the final decision as to cropping and other matters to Chief Counsel Rankin. [Dooley memorandum of 9-25-64, at RIF #104-10400-10279] CIA Headquarters promptly alerted the Mexico City Station the next day regarding publication of the "Oswald" photo. The possibility that publication would "blow" the photo-surveillance operation was on Headquarter's mind, and the cable noted: "OUSLER BEING CALLED TO WASH TO GIVE INFORMED OPINION OF POSSIBLE DAMAGE TO LILYRIC OR LIMITED" [the photo surveillance operations] [DIR 51937 of 9-23-64, at RIF #104-10400-10291]. In a follow-up memo the next day, Headquarters invited the station's comment on possible exposure of the photo surveillance operations, but added "IT IS NOT POSSIBLE HAVE PHOTOS EXCLUDED FROM REPORT." [DIR 52398 of 9-24-64, at RIF #104-10400-10290]
  
• 7/23/1964 The Crescent Firearms Company was the supplier of both rifles of this type and soft-nosed bullets (26H65). The Commission was in touch with this company, from which on July 23, 1964, it obtained an affidavit five brief sentences long. This set forth that the FBI had been in contact with the company November 22, 1963, had learned of the sale of the C2766 rifle to Klein's Sporting Goods in Chicago, had gotten all appropriate records from Crescent, and mentioned not a single word about ammunition (11H205).
  
• 7/23/1964 Gen. Edwin Walker testifies before the WC. When assistant counsel Wesley Liebeler deposed Walker for two hours, he never mentioned CE 573, the mutilated remainder of the bullet recovered from Gen. Walker's home. This seemed odd since Walker held the bullet in his hands after the shooting. Fifteen years later Walker was watching a televised hearing of the House Select Committee on Assassinations. Chief Counsel Robert Blakey held up CE 573 for the camera while discussing the firearms evidence in the JFK case. As McKnight notes: "Walker, a thirty-year career army officer with extensive combat experience in World War II, and with more than a passing familiarity with military weaponry, was stunned. According to Walker, what Blakey represented as the bullet fired into his home bore no resemblance to the piece of lead the police had recovered, which he had held in his own hand and closely examined. (Breach of Trust p. 52)
  
• 7/23/1964 James Tague, whose cheek was cut by a piece of concrete blown off by one of the bullets fired at JFK, is interviewed and finally deposed by the Warren Commission. Deputy Sheriff Eddy Walthers, one of the officers who inspected the curb just after the shooting is also deposed by Wesley Liebeler, an assistant council to the commission. Liebeler has been sent back to Dallas specifically for these depositions. Tague was shocked to find out that Liebeler knew that he had gone back to the area in Dealey Plaza to take pictures of the curb. Tague said that the mark on the curb was no longer visible.
  
• 7/23/1964 Senate passed LBJ's anti-poverty bill.
  
• 7/23/1964 DeGaulle said in a news conference that peace in Indochina would best be achieved by foreign powers keeping out of those countries.
  
• 7/23/1964 NY Times quoted South Vietnam's Vice-Marshall Nguyen Cao Ky, commander of the air force, as saying, "We are ready [to attack the North]. We could go this afternoon. I cannot assure that all of North Vietnam would be destroyed, but Hanoi would certainly be destroyed." NYT reported "Sabotage raids on North [Vietnam] confirmed by Saigon aide."
  
• 7/24/1964 Charlestown, Rhode Island, United States - Criticality Accident * An error by a worker at a United Nuclear Corporation fuel facility led to an accidental criticality. Robert Peabody, believing he was using a diluted uranium solution, accidentally put concentrated solution into an agitation tank containing sodium carbonate. Peabody was exposed to 10,000rad (100Gy) of radiation and died two days later. Ninety minutes after the criticality, a plant manager and another administrator returned to the building and were exposed to 100rad (1Gy), but suffered no ill effects.
  
• 7/24/1964 The Commission called James A. Zahm, a Marine non-commissioned officer in weapons training (11H306ff.) Zahm was willing to call Oswald a good shot. But even he specified a minimum of ten practice shots as prerequisite in the use of the telescopic sight (R192). And this, of course, assumed a good telescopic sight.
  
• 7/24/1964 Jimmy Hoffa was convicted by a federal jury of mail fraud and conspiracy to abuse the Teamsters' pension fund.
  
• 7/24/1964 LBJ met with Goldwater to discuss civil rights and the campaign.
  
• 7/24/1964 Wesley Liebeler today arranges a meeting of Mrs. Edith Whitworth and Mrs. Gertrude Hunter with Marina Oswald and her two children. The meeting takes place in the U.S. attorney's office located in the main Post Office building in Dallas, Texas. Mrs. Whitworth and Mrs. Hunter were in the Furniture Mart at 149 East Irving Boulevard in early November, 1963 when Lee Harvey Oswald, Marina and the two Oswald children supposedly visited the shop. The two women's testimony is troubling the Commission because their account of the visit has Oswald driving a car. He supposedly could not drive and had no license. Also present at the meeting today are: William McKenzie and Henry Baer, attorneys for Mrs. Oswald; Peter Paul Gregory, an interpreter; and Forrest Sorrels and John Joe Howlett, agents for the U.S. Secret Service. Despite tough cross-examination by Mr. McKenzie, both women continue to assert without reservation that Mrs. Oswald and her two children were in the store with her husband on a weekday afternoon during the first week of November. Mrs. Oswald is equally uncompromising in her insistence that she has never met the two women and that she has never set foot in the Furniture Mart. The meeting ends as a complete failure in solving the problem. Ultimately, the Commission will impugn the integrity of Mrs. Whitworth and Mrs. Hunter.
  
• 7/25/1964 The CIA's Mexico City Station was not happy. Replying on September 25, the Station responded that "STATION UNCLEAR AS TO PURPOSE SERVED BY PUBLICATION PHOTO OF PERSON NOT EVEN INVOLVED IN THIS CASE." After complaining that Marguerite Oswald could simply be ignored in this matter (she had been shown the "Oswald" photo months earlier and thought it was Jack Ruby), the cable went on to add a very curious paragraph: "IF AS MEXI PREFERS TO BELIEVE OF ODENVY SHE SHOWN SPREAD OF CROPPED PHOTOS ALL OF WHICH TO APPEAR, NO OBJECTION HERE TO PUBLICATION OF REF PHOTO. IF THIS INCORRECT AND THIS SOLE PHOTO SHOWN HER AND TO BE PUBLISHED AGAINST MEXI WISHES, REQUEST EXACT ACCOUNT OF WHAT ODENVY TOLD HER." [MEXI 1011 of 9-25-64, at RIF #104-10400-10286] This cable is strange in several regards. For one thing, the testimony of Marguerite Oswald is explicit that she was shown a single photograph by FBI Agent Bardwell Odum, "in the cup of his hand." [WH1, p.152-153] And an affidavit signed by Odum on July 10 1964 refers to his cropping and display of a single photo [Affidavit of Bardwell D. Odum, WH11 p.468]. So why does the Mexico City station "prefer to believe" that she was shown a spread of cropped photos. And if this is really true, was it a spread consisting of all of the Mystery Man photos flown up from Mexico City (several were indeed supplied), or was it a spread of other photos which included a single Mystery Man photo? If the latter, why would they all have been cropped? Probably the strangest aspect of the cable is that the Mexico City station did not object to an entire spread of photos being published; the objection was if publication was to be of a single photo. This makes no sense if the real objection had to do with blowing the photo-surveillance operation (i.e., showing backgrounds which would reveal camera placements to the Cubans and Soviets, etc). The more photographs published, the more likely someone would identify the source. What is going on here? The cable ends with the plea: "STATION WOULD APPRECIATE EFFORT TO DELETE PHOTO FROM PUBLICATION." CIA Headquarters replied the same day, confirming that the FBI had indeed shown Marguerite Oswald an entire spread of photos, "BUT SUBJECT PHOTO ONLY ONE WHICH ATTRACTED ATTENTION." [DIR 52774 of 9-25-64, at RIF #104-10400-10287] And again on the same day, Mexico City Station responded, announcing its plans to evacuate the photo-surveillance stations in anticipation of publication of the offending photograph. But the detailed plans for such evacuation were preceded by the most curious statements in all of these cables, reproduced below: 1. REFS OBVIOUSLY CROSSED. IN STATION VIEW DANGERS PARA 3, LARGELY RECOGNIZED IN REF A, STILL APPLY. 2. ONLY REMAINING HOPE WOULD APPEAR BE TO GET ASCHAM PREVAIL ON COMMISSION NOT ONLY RETOUCH BACKGROUND IN PHOTOS BUT ALSO RETOUCH FACE TO DEGREE OBVIOUSLY NOT IDENTIFIABLE WITH RUBY BUT ALSO NOT WITH ACTUAL SUBJECT OF PHOTO. [MEXI 1018 of 9-25-64, at RIF #104-10400-10288] This cable is remarkable. The "dangers para 3" refer to the earlier Mexi cable's assertion that "CANNOT PREDICT SECURITY EFFECT OF PUBLICATION WITHOUT ANSWER PARA 2," where paragraph 2 is the strange assertion previously shown, i.e., that the Mexi station was fine with publication of an entire spread of photos, but not of the single Mystery Man shot. What is yet more remarkable here is the Mexico City Station's request to retouch not only the background but also the face of the unidentified man. The Warren Commission had agreed to strip out every stitch of background at CIA's requestnow the CIA, or at least the Mexico City Station, abruptly urged a photo alteration to avoid revealing (to whom?) the identity of the supposedly unknown Mystery Man. It strains credulity that such a request was made by people who did not know the identity of the man in the photograph. There is at least one albeit cryptic indication in the record that they did.
  
• 7/27/1964 Dulles wrote a memo to Rankin asking him, "Where have we dealt with the evidence as to Oswald's ability to handle a rifle?" (CIA 1647-452B)
  
• 7/27/1964 US plans to send 5000 more advisers to Vietnam.
  
• 7/27-30/1964 Greg Scarpa takes top secret journey from New York to Miami to New Orleans to Philadelphia, Miss., to find out where the slain civil rights workers are buried, and returns to New York.
  
• 7/28/1964 THE STATE OF TEXAS vs. JACK RUBENSTEIN -- Defense counsel files fifteen formal bills of exception.
  
• 7/29/1964 RFK and LBJ met in the Oval Office. LBJ switched on his tape recorder, then told Bobby he wasn't going to be his running-mate; would he be interested in another job? Bobby said he only wanted to be Attorney General. RFK brought up the Baker scandal, and LBJ said he thought the issue was dead because, he implied, he had the goods on various Republicans. (It Didn't Start with Watergate p137-41)
  
• 7/29/1964 Today and 8/1 articles in Le Monde quote South Vietnamese Gen. Nguyen Cao Ky saying that US-trained commandos were parachuted into North Vietnam by US planes on sabotage raids as early as 1957.
  
• 7/30/1964 10:01am in a phone call, Mac Bundy urges LBJ to just announce his choice for VP and get it over with. Johnson worries that "everybody that's left out concentrates their attentions on the fellow's deficiencies and the party men go to hitting at him."
  
• 7/30/1964 This afternoon, Ken O'Donnell tells LBJ in a phone call that however Johnson wants to announce that RFK won't be his running-mate is fine with Kennedy.
  
• 7/30/1964 5:34pm LBJ tells McNamara in a phone call that he had been a serious contender for the position of Johnson's running-mate.
  
• 7/30/1964 5:56pm LBJ calls Humphrey ally James Rowe; he wants to make sure that Humphrey will be a loyal vice-president if he should be chosen. Johnson worries that Humphrey voices his opinions too much in public.
  
• 7/30/1964 6:00pm LBJ tells the press that no members of his cabinet will be chosen as his running-mate.
  
• 7/30/1964 6:10pm LBJ phone call with Dick Russell. Russell: That'll eliminate a whole lot of em. LBJ: [laughs gleefully] I just had to eliminate one."
  
• 7/30/1964 6:46pm Humphrey calls LBJ and assures him that he will be a loyal VP.
  
• 7/30/1964 8:50pm LBJ phone call with Robert Anderson, former Treasury Sec. under Ike. He tells Anderson that he thinks RFK is plotting to stir up the blacks to create a white backlash, so that LBJ will lose in November.
  
• 7/30/1964 A covert-action plan carried out by South Vietnamese patrol boats shelled two North Vietnamese islands in the Tonkin Gulf. This plan (Op Plan 34-A) was approved by LBJ in early 1964. The boats left Da Nang and attacked Hon Me and Hon Ngu shortly after midnight on 7/31. The boats had only 40mm and 20mm guns.
  
• 7/31/1964 The USS Maddox sighted the South Vietnamese boats, and at first thought they were Soviet P-6 vessels. The Maddox began to patrol the area.
  
• Late July 1964 an informant told the FBI where the bodies of the civil rights workers could be found; he was paid $30,000 and his identity was never released. When the FBI offered a $25,000 reward for news of the workers' whereabouts, a break came in the case. After paying at least one participant in the crime for details, the FBI found the men's bodies on August 4. They were buried in an earthen dam on Olen Burrage's Old Jolly Farm, six miles southwest of Philadelphia, Mississippi. Schwerner and Goodman had each been shot once in the heart; Chaney, a black man, had been beaten and shot three times. Known as "Mr. X", the identity of the informant was a closely held secret by the government for 40 years. In the process of studying the case, journalist Jerry Mitchell and teacher Barry Bradford uncovered his identity: Maynard King, a highway patrolman who had been tipped off by Klansman Pete Jordan. In 2007, Linda Schiro testified in an unrelated court case that her late boyfriend, Gregory Scarpa Sr., a capo in the Colombo crime family, had been recruited by the FBI to help find the civil rights workers' bodies. She said that she had been with Scarpa in Mississippi at the time and had witnessed his being given a gun, and later a cash payment, by FBI agents. She testified he told her he had threatened a Klansman by placing a gun in his mouth, forcing him to reveal the location of the bodies. Similar stories of mafia involvement in the case had been circulating for years, and had been previously published in the New York Daily News, but had never before been introduced in court.