Deep Politics Timeline

[Tracy Riddle]

• 7/1965 Walt Rostow told Daniel Ellsberg, "Dan, it looks very good. The Vietcong are going to collapse within weeks. Not months but weeks." (The Best and the Brightest, Halberstam)
  
• 7/1965 Harold Russell attends a party with a female friend. (Russell was with Warren Reynolds when the J. D. Tippit shooting took place. Both men saw the Tippit killer escape.) He seemingly goes out of his mind at the party and starts telling everyone he is going to be killed. He begs friends to hide him. Someone calls the police. When the policemen arrive, one of them hits Russell on the head with his pistol. Russell is then taken to a hospital where he is pronounced dead a few hours later: cause of death is listed as "heart failure."
  
• 7/1965 The Journal-Lancet contained an article by a psychiatrist, Dr. Donald W. Hastings, characterizing American assassins as having "schizophrenia, in most cases a paranoid type."
  
• 7/1/1965 Dean Rusk wrote LBJ: "The integrity of the US commitment is the principal pillar of peace throughout the world. If that commitment becomes unreliable, the communist world would draw conclusions that would lead to our ruin and almost certainly to a catastrophic war. So long as the South Vietnamese are prepared to fight for themselves, we cannot abandon them without disaster to peace and to our interests throughout the world."
  
• 7/2/1965 LBJ was torn over what to do; he decided to send McNamara to Saigon again, send Averell Harriman to Moscow to explore a Geneva Conference, and told Ball to explore direct contacts with Hanoi's representative in Paris.
  
• 7/4/1965 The Vietcong quickly took over Ba Gia again, after only 90 minutes of battle with the ARVN. US Marines drove the VC out again.
  
• 7/4/1965 Brezhnev demands a rearmanent program to counter US military spending.
  
• 7/5/1965 David Atlee Phillips is made station chief in Dominican Republic following LBJ's decision to send the U.S. Marines to bolster the right-wing government's fight against leftist rebels. Serving as CIA adviser to the Dominican Republic's military is Mitchel Livingston WerBell III, an OSS veteran and CIA supplier of sophisticated assassination devices. (Fonzi chronology)
  
• 7/8/1965 Edward Jay Epstein interviewed WC staffer Francis W.H. Adams.
  
• 78/1965 Bundy met with the "Wise Men" (Omar Bradley, Gilpatric, George Kistiakowsky, Arthur Larson, McCloy, John Cowles, Acheson, Arthur Dean, Paul Hoffman, Lovett) about the war; McCloy and Lovett had serious doubts about the war, though both felt the US had to stick it out and win. Later that evening, LBJ met with them; Acheson told him to stop whining about the criticism he was getting: "I blew my top and told him he was wholly right on Vietnam, that he had no choice except to press on..." (The Wise Men 651-2) According to McNamara, everyone but Larson and Hoffman was committed to doing whatever was necessary to win; Acheson and Arthur Dean were especially against negotiation. McCloy stated, "We are about to get our noses bloodied but you've got to do it. You've got to go in." (In Retrospect 197)
  
• 7/9/1965 RFK spoke about the need to find non-military solutions in Vietnam: "political first, political last, political always. Victory in a revolutionary war is won not by escalation, but by descalation." LBJ was furious, and the press generally accused him of being politically motivated.
  
• 7/12/1965 Le Monde quoted RFK: "If, in response to revolutionary activity, a government can only promise its people ten years of napalm or heavy artillery, there will not be government for long."
  
• 7/12-13/1965 Former Mississippi governor Jim Coleman testified before the Senate Judiciary Committee; LBJ had nominated him to the Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals. Nick Katzenbach defended him: "Some say that Mr. Coleman is a racial extremist. In the context of Mississippi politics, he could not be so classified in any sense of the term." Coleman did a remarkable amount of double-talking, telling Sen. Jacob Javits, "I don't think we have segregation in the true sense of the word in Mississippi or ever had."
  
• 7/13/1965 Thurgood Marshall is appointed US Solicitor General by LBJ.
  
• 7/13/1965 Lady Bird wrote in her diary, "the press has been boiling these last few days with Schlesinger's account in his book of how Lyndon became Vice President. Everybody's got to have his say about that...Everybody but us."
  
• 7/13/1965 LBJ told the press there was no credence to rumors that Dean Rusk might resign.
  
• 7/14/1965 Adlai Stevenson collapsed suddenly while walking in London's Grosvenor Square and died almost immediately. Rumors would circulate that he had somehow been assassinated.
  
• 7/14/1965 LBJ walks into a staff meeting, takes a seat, listens for a while, and then says: "Don't let me interrupt. But there's one thing you ought to know. Vietnam is like being in a plane without a parachute, when all the engines go out. If you jump, you'll probably be killed, and if you stay in, you'll crash and probably burn. That's what it is." Then, without waiting for a response, LBJ walks out of the room. During this period of time, both Bill Moyers and Richard N. Goodwin privately consult with psychiatrists concerning what they perceive to be LBJ's growing irrational behavior.
  
• 7/14/1965 LBJ told Newseek editor James Cannon that his number one goal as President was "to make life better and more enjoyable and more significant" for Americans. "I'm more aware of the problems of more people than before. I am more sensitive to the injustices we have put on the Negro...I'm a little less selfish, a little more selfless..."
  
• 7/14/1965 McNamara and LBJ talk before the Defense Secretary left for Saigon; Johnson agonized that he had never intended to send so many troops to Vietnam when he pushed the Tonkin Resolution through Congress.
  
• 7/16-17/1965 McNamara met with Westmoreland in Saigon; he was told 175,000 troops would be needed by year's end and 100,000 more in 1966. Westy noted that air attacks were having little effect since the communists forces relied on so few supplies to move and fight.
  
• 7/17/1965 De Gaulle assassination attempt.
  
• 7/18/1965 Washington - Disclosure of wiretapping by IRS regarded as great blow to feds' fight against organized crime. Quotes sources as saying drive been getting along on momentum generated during RFK tenure. The decline, it was reported, started on the day of President Kennedy's death. "The next day we stopped getting information from the FBI on the Bobby Baker investigation," said a young Justice Department lawyer, "Within a month the FBI men in the field wouldn't tell us anything. We started running out of gas." New York Times, Fred P. Graham
  
• 7/20/1965 General Maxwell D. Taylor was the target of an attempt on his life in Vietnam.
  
• 7/21/1965 Ho Chi Minh announces that his people "will fight 20 years if necessary"; US ground troops now number 75,000. McNamara reported to LBJ that "The situation in South Vietnam is worse than a year ago (when it was worse than a year before that)...A hard VC push is now on to dismember the nation and to maul the army...There are no signs that we have throttled the inflow of supplies for the VC or can throttle the flow while their material needs are as low as they are..."
  
• 7/22-23/1965 Tom Wicker articles in the NYT about the Bay of Pigs invasion. Richard Bissell was quoted as saying that the Cuban exile invasion force was powerful enough to cause trouble if they had not been allowed to invade Cuba: "…it is entirely possible that they might have tried to seize a base in Nicaragua, Honduras or Guatemala: there is not the slightest doubt that they could have defeated any Guatemalan force." Wicker concluded that the project became a "sort of Frankenstein's monster that once created, went out of control."
  
• 7/22/1965 Washington - J. Edgar Hoover challenges Katzenbach criticism of FBI role in fighting organized crime. Denies any organizational jealousy or lack of cooperation, etc. AP, Mohbat
  
• 7/23/1965 THE STATE OF TEXAS vs. JACK RUBENSTEIN -- Hearing before Judge Holland on defense counsel's petition formally to disqualify Judge Brown. No decision.
  
• 7/27/1965 LBJ signed a law to require health warnings to be printed on cigarette packages and ads.
  
• 7/27/1965 LBJ approved the plan to send more US troops. Sen. Mansfield told LBJ he was opposed to sending troops, and feared growing discontent about the war in the US.
  
• 7/27/1965 Assassination attempt against Castro.
  
• 7/28/1965 LBJ announced he was nominating Abe Fortas to the Supreme Court.
  
• 7/28/1965 US and South Vietnamese bombers mistakenly hit a Buddhist monastery, killing two.
  
• 7/28/1965 LBJ announces he is sending 50,000 more men to South Vietnam -- increasing American troop strength from the present 75,000 to 125, 000. LBJ announced to the public his plan to expand US forces in Vietnam from 75,000 to 125,000, but he tried to publicly downplay its scope by announcing it in a low-key press conference. The monthly draft quota is doubled from 17,000 to 35,000. "We did not choose to be the guardians at the gate, but there is no one else." He gave the example of Munich as the likely result of refusing to fight. "If we are driven from the field in Vietnam, then no nation can ever again have the same confidence in American promises, or in American protection." A reporter asked him if this meant a change in US policy from simply providing backup support for South Vietnamese forces; LBJ replied, "It does not imply any change in policy whatever." Johnson also reiterated that the US would be glad to negotiate with Hanoi: "Fifteen efforts have been made to start these discussions with the help of 40 nations throughout the world but there has been no answer." McNamara advised asking for $10 billion from Congress and a tax hike, but Johnson refused. Polls taken in August reflected that 60%-70% of the American people agreed with LBJ's stance.
  
• 7/29/1965 Hanson Baldwin reported in the NY Times that the Pentagon had been hoping for a full wartime footing (calling up the reserves, etc.)
  
• 7/29/1965 The first 4000 paratroopers of the 101st Airborne Division arrive at Camranh Bay.
  
• 7/29/1965 Washington - ... If Hoover's sense of public relations has deserted him to that extent. He is no longer the phenomenon who erected Washington's only record of infallibility. San Francisco Chronicle, Times Service, Tom Wicker, J. Edgar Hoover as a public relations expert. His record, his reputation, his mistakes.
  
• 7/30/1965 LBJ signed into law Medicare bill, providing health insurance for eldery and disabled. Medicaid also established. He signed the bill in Missouri at the Harry Truman Library, with the ex-president sitting next to him. Mr. and Mrs. Truman would receive the first two Medicare cards in January 1966. Spending on Medicare would rise from $7.1 billion in 1970 to $164.5 billion in 1994.
  
• 7/31/1965 Pravda quoted Ho Chi Minh: "South Vietnam will unquestionably be liberated."
  
• 8/1965 Mona B. Saenz dies, hit by a bus. She is the Texas State Employment clerk who interviewed LHO during his search for work in Dallas.
  
• 8/1965 Early this month at Ft. Bragg, North Carolina, Daniel Marvin is asked by the CIA to kill US Navy Lieutenant Commander William Bruce Pitzer. Marvin is told that Pitzer is a traitor who is about to give States secrets to the enemy. Marvin refuses the offer.
  
• 8/1965 CBS documentary on the war showed US Marines burning villages while old people and children pleaded that their homes be spared. CBS was jammed with angry calls denouncing the program as Communist propaganda. Yet the program for the most part stuck to the government line; numerous officials were invited to participate (and even edit their interviews before broadcast), but no war critics appeared. (The First Casualty p396; Captive Press p134)
  
• 8/1965 Playboy featured an interview with UKA Imperial Wizard Robert Shelton. "There is several Klans, you know," Shelton said. "That is the trouble of throwing every nut in the same bag and saying it's all the same kind of nuts." Shortly after, Shelton told a rally in Alabama that anyone who took the Fifth Amendment before HUAC was probably a Communist. (The Fiery Cross p357)
  
• 8/1/1965 Gerald Ford is charged by LBJ with having accused prominent Democrats of pressuring Johnson into not calling up the reserves; Ford denies making the accusation.
  
• 8/2/1965 Tulsa, Oklahoma. A large wave of UFO sightings occurred in 1965 in the US. From coast to coast strange low flying flying objects were reported almost nightly by people of all ages and walks of life. As the year progressed, the number of reports rose dramatically. On the night of August 2, 1965, thousands of people in 4 midwestern states witnessed spectacular aerial displays by large formations of UFOs.
  
• 8/3/1965 LBJ assured the world that the US did not intend to impose its "ideology" on Vietnam or any other country; it only wanted to make sure that other countries could decide their own future.
  
• 8/4/1965 LBJ asked Congress for $1.7 billion more funding for the war.
  
• 8/4/1965 NYT quoted Dean Rusk: "We would be glad to go to the conference table but thus far Hanoi and Peking say no."
  
• 8/5/1965 Edward Jay Epstein interviewed Melvin Eisenberg of the Warren Commission.
  
• 8/5/1965 NSC meeting on Vietnam; Max Taylor, now back from Saigon as a presidential adviser, predicted that the Communist offensive would be stopped by year's end. The same day, the Pentagon completed a series of war games that showed that a guerilla war would be difficult for the US to win, and that North Vietnam could probably withstand US bombing.
  
• 8/6/1965 LBJ signed Voting Rights Act into law, giving federal government the power to guarantee voting access for all; poll taxes and literacy tests were forbidden. It had passed the Senate 77-19 and the House 333-85.
  
• 8/6/1965 TIME's John Shaw reported that US marines in Vietnam were killing VC prisoners.
  
• 8/8/1965 Congress passed Omnibus Housing Act, with new funds for low-income housing.
  
• 8/11-16/1965 riots in Watts district of Los Angeles; looting and burning by blacks after a black man was mistreated by police. Unemployment among black males in Watts is 30%. 34 people died (mostly blacks), 1,032 were injured, over 200 businesses were destroyed. $40 million in damage was caused. 12,000 National Guardsmen was called out to restore order. Similar riots broke out in Chicago. It lasted 6 days in the Watts neighborhood of Los Angeles, California, in August 1965. By the time the riot subsided, 34 people had been killed, 1,032 injured, and 3,438 arrested. It would stand as the most severe riot in Los Angeles history until the Los Angeles riots of 1992.
  
• 8/17/1965 Even Sen. Strom Thurmond (R-SC), who voted against the immigration bill out of concern for overpopulation, didn't think the new preference system would mean much of a change: "The preferences which would be established by this proposal are based, I believe, on sound reasoning and meritorious considerations, not entirely dissimilar in effect from those which underlie the national origins quotas of existing law." (Congressional Record, Sept. 17, 1965, p. 24237.)"
  
• 8/17-23/1965 a minor controversy erupts when Eisenhower said that his 10/1954 letter to Diem had intended to offer economic, not military aid to Vietnam. The Johnson Administration was to issue a pamphlet 8/23 titled "Why Vietnam?" which would use Ike's letter as justification for US involvement there. Finally, on 8/19 Ike tried to end the dispute by stating, "I support the president."
  
• 8/17/1965 Harold Weisberg's Whitewash, a critique of the Warren Report, is privately published in a limited edition.
  
• 8/18-21/1965 US forces won a major victory against VC forces on the Batangan Peninsula.
  
• 8/19/1965 In entering a New York Times editorial into the Congressional Record, Congressman Donald Rumsfeld said, "I believe the following significant and timely editorial which appeared in today's issue of the New York Times and which discusses our involvement in Vietnam merits wide attention. I concur in the conclusion expressed therein that the people of the United States must know not only how their country became involved but where we are heading." [Congressional Record, 89th Cong. Pg. 21081, 8/19/65; New York Times, 8/19/65]
  
• 8/25/1965 Rep. Philip Burton (D-CA) said in Congress: "Just as we sought to eliminate discrimination in our land through the Civil Rights Act, today we seek by phasing out the national origins quota system to eliminate discrimination in immigration to this nation composed of the descendants of immigrants." (Congressional Record, Aug. 25, 1965, p. 21783.) Rep. Emanuel Celler (D-NY), a sponsor of the bill, told his colleagues: "With the end of discrimination due to place of birth, there will be shifts in countries other than those of northern and western Europe. Immigrants from Asia and Africa will have to compete and qualify in order to get in, quantitatively and qualitatively, which, itself will hold the numbers down. There will not be, comparatively, many Asians or Africans entering this country. .. .Since the people of Africa and Asia have very few relatives here, comparatively few could immigrate from those countries because they have no family ties in the U.S." (Congressional Record, Aug. 25, 1965, p. 21812.)
  
• 8/25/1965 Edward Jay Epstein interviewed Arlen Specter, former staffer on the Warren Commission.
  
• 8/27/1965 Rusk told a press conference that he would welcome De Gaulle's personal efforts to negotiate an end to the war.
  
• 8/27/1965 Harold Weisberg on trying to get his first book, Whitewash, published in the UK: "In addition, an aging but wonderful agent in England made strenuous efforts, without success. One prominent British publisher with a world-wide reputation for "courage" wrote her on August 27, 1965, that the subject "is absolutely no go for us. I'd even go so far as to say the subject is almost dead in England." Another British publisher of like stature wrote "I feel this subject has now been exhausted, at least on this side of the Atlantic.""
  
• 8/30/1965 Washington - Rate of increase of serious crime declines. No comment by J. Edgar Hoover, nor even mention of his name, usually found in crime progress reports of this kind. New York Times, Fred P. Graham
  
• 8/31/1965 LBJ signed into law a bill making it a crime to destroy or mutilate a draft card.