Deep Politics Timeline

[Tracy Riddle]

• According to a later French press article, Valéry Giscard d'Estaing says that Gerald Ford told him in 1976 that the Warren Commission was certain about the fact that the JFK assassination was organized but they could not find out which organization was behind the crime. Giscard was in the Ministry of Finance in the De Gaulle government at the time of the assassination.
  
• Sometime this year, four Dallas deputy constables tell the Dallas Morning News that shortly after the JFK assassination they examined a box full of handwritten notes and other papers in the Dallas County Courthouse that linked Jack Ruby and Lee Harvey Oswald together. Deputy Billy Preston says he and Constable Robie Lov handed the box of documents over to Dallas D.A. Henry Wade in late 1963 or early 1964. Wade tells the paper he doesn't recall receiving the papers. The box of papers reportedly comes from the apartment of a Dallas woman. Preston cannot recall the woman's name other than "Mary," but then and now he believes she had some connection with Oswald because most of the box's contents appeared to have been written by him. Among the papers in the box, according to the deputies, were newspaper clippings from Mexico, a photocopy of a press card with the words "Daily Worker" issued to Ruby, a receipt from a motel near New Orleans dated several weeks before the assassination with both the names Ruby and Oswald on it and references to calls to Mexico City, papers pinpointing a landing strip somewhere in Mexico, and references to meetings with "agents" in the border towns of McAllen and Laredo. There was also a church brochure with markings indicating something about going to Cuba. Preston says one handwritten note referred to a plan to assassinate JFK during the dedication of a lake or dam in Wisconsin. (Law officials in Wisconsin had speculated in December 1963 about the existence of just such a plan after discovering what appeared to be Lee Harvey Oswald's signature on the registry of a restaurant in Hubertus, Wisconsin, dated September 16, 1963. Kennedy indeed had made a speech on September 24, 1963 in Ashland, Wisconsin, as part of a nationwide conservation tour. The FBI rejected the signature as Oswald's and this subject received little attention outside Wisconsin.) Wade finally admits that the incident with the box of documents "might well have happened," but added, "but I know that whatever they had didn't amount to nothing."
  
• Kissinger, the CIA, and SALT: Because the dangers and threats of a nuclear war is the concern of every citizen, the Strategic Arms Limitation Talks (SALT) are of both domestic and international importance. While the conferences, accords, and summit meetings are given substantial coverage in the mass media, the public is little aware of what is really taking place. For example, in 1976, then Secretary of State Henry Kissinger, with the collusion of the Central Intelligence Agency, was accused of manipulating intelligence estimates for use in SALT talk negotiations. According to Aviation Week, the integrity of the US-USSR weapons' pacts was left in doubt when Kissinger directed the CIA to slant range estimates for the Soviet Union's Tupolev Backfire variable geometry bomber. The CIA was ordered to provide McDonnell Douglas, the aerospace firm, with just enough intelligence data to formulate a 3,500 nautical mile range capability. A similar study by the Pentagon, using all available intelligence information, computed the bomber's range at 6,000 nautical miles. This clearly puts the aircraft in the heavy bomber category that would be counted in the 2,400 strategic delivery vehicle limit set in the Ford-Breznhev Vladivostok agreement. Kissinger already had made a separate agreement with the Russians, conceding that the Backfire would not be considered in the heavy bomber category. The directive to the CIA was an attempt to fulfill his commitment. In response to Kissinger's denial and request for a retraction and full apology, Aviation Week's editor and publisher, Robert B. Hotz, responded: "Aviation Week and Space Technology is a responsible publication; verified the facts contained in the original story (AW&ST Sept. 13, p. 13); offers no apology and no retraction.-- (R.B.H.)." The lack of coverage revealing the real negotiations being conducted qualifies this story for nomination as one of the "best censored" stories of 1976. (Robert B. Hotz, Editor and Publisher, Aviation Week and Space Technology, 9/13/76, p 13. Aviation Week and Space Technology, 9/27/76, P 70.)
  
• Penn Jones Jr. was the first to reference what he termed an "unreported party" under the heading "The Head Man Was In Dallas" on pages 84 to 86 of his self published Forgive My Grief III (Revised). At first Jones' information was so sketchy that he thought the party was held in Sikes, Louisiana. Later Jones enigmatically decided the event was held at the home of Clint Murchison Sr. Jones then managed to circumvent the need to provide factual evidence by claiming on page 86 that, "Admittedly our information about (J. Edgar) Hoover's presence was learned second hand, but it is reliable. We will never tell how we got the information." In the end we were left with another of Jones' Kennedy assassination fabrications. An exaggerated version of the story would surface in later years through allegations made by Madeleine Brown. It would appear Brown used Penn Jones' report in Forgive My Grief III as a basis for some of her pronouncements. However, it would seem she either misread or misunderstood what Jones reported on page 84 of his book. Brown spoke of a lavish party held on the evening of November 21, 1963. She believed Val Imm, the Society Editor of the Dallas Times Herald, attended and reviewed the gala in one of her columns. The reality was Brown was confused and failed to realize that Jones was actually describing a party held almost 6 years later on October 19, 1969 at One Main Place Plaza in Dallas. Brown went so far as to beg Imm to find the story. Imm could never produce the requisite documentation because the event never occurred.
  
• While most Americans believe the increase in oil prices was due to the Arab oil embargo, few are aware that their elected representatives collaborated with the Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries (OPEC) and Persian oil producing nations to deliberately inflate the price of oil. The motives behind this costly (to American consumers) collaboration were revealed by author/researcher Vivian H. Oppenheim in a 1976 article in Foreign Policy. As early as 1971, the U.S. State Department established oil policy priorities during international negotiations, emphasizing the "stability, orderliness, and durability" of supply with no intention of maintaining price limits. Only two years later, the Arab oil embargo disrupted both the cost and continuity of foreign oil. While the gasoline prices were skyrocketing and supplies diminishing at the consumer level, the White House Council on International Economic Policy was reporting economic benefits that the increases were generating in the United States. OPEC surplus revenue started recycling back into the American economy; foreign oil-producers began investing in American enterprises -- corporate stocks, real property, and advanced weaponry. Foreign increases in oil prices meant more money for domestic oil-producers as well. Competition with OPEC encouraged domestic production which subsequently spurred increases in domestic oil prices and profits. While the increases contributed to a world-wide recession, U.S. industries, as the government had speculated, suffered less than their competitors in Europe and Japan. The extent of the pay-off due to the collaboration was revealed by Jack Anderson in 1977. According to a secret Central Intelligence Agency survey of the flood of petrodollars into the United States, the oil-producing countries have invested an astounding $34 billion in U.S. holdings over the past three years. Specifically benefiting from this flow is America's bankers. The OPEC nations have entrusted their portfolios to the nation's largest banks, particularly Chase Manhattan, Morgan Guaranty, Bank of America, and New York's First National City Bank. Since, to this day, most Americans are unaware of their own government's prime role in raising oil prices, this story qualifies for consideration as on of the "best censored" stories of 1976. (Foreign Policy, Winter Quarter, 1976, "Why Oil Prices Go Up -- The Past: We Pushed Them," by Vivian H. Oppenheim. "The flood of Arab money into the U.S." by Jack Anderson and Les Whitten, Santa Rosa Press Democrat, March 25, 1977.)
  
• This year, Coretta King, Martin Luther King, Jr.'s widow, pays a visit to the Democratic Speaker of the House, Thomas P. "Tip" O'Neal and tells him: "I have to know what really happened to Martin." The Congressional Black Caucus then begins to put its considerable weight behind a proposed investigation of King's assassination.
  
• 1976 Tennessee journalist James Moore reveals he was given Top Secret documents by former CIA officials describing military mind control methods involving Radio-Hypnotic Intra-Cerebral Control and Electronic Dissolution of Memory.
  
• 1976 Walter Bowert publishes "Operation Mind Control". The public begins to be aware of government activities in this area.
  
• Larry McDonald, the 2nd president of the John Birch Society and a conservative Democratic member of the United States House of Representatives who represented the 7th congressional district of Georgia, wrote a forward for Allen's 1976 book The Rockefeller File, wherein he stated: "The drive of the Rockefellers and their allies is to create a one-world government, combining super-capitalism and Communism under the same tent, all under their control ... Do I mean conspiracy? Yes I do. I am convinced there is such a plot, international in scope, generations old in planning, and incredibly evil in intent."
  
• While coffee prices were tripling in 1976, most Americans were led to believe it was due to a severe 1975 frost in Brazil. However, Congressman Frank Annunzio and others have suggested different causes of the coffee price spiral. "... the frost is significant," Annunzio said, "but is not, in my opinion, the factor pushing our prices toward four dollars a pound." (At this writing, coffee prices have exceeded $4.25 per pound.) Annunzio explains later that the Brazilian economy is in a shambles because its standard of living has risen remarkably in the past ten years, causing a demand for higher technology. Thus, Brazil now has a 28 billion dollar national debt and an import-export deficit of 2.3 billion in 1976. By withholding coffee and increasing prices, the Brazilian's debt can be paid off by the American consumer. Although other countries, such as Colombia, the Ivory Coast, and Nicaragua did not experience the frost damage in 1975, their prices are equally high. In addition, Brazil has bought coffee from some of these other countries to keep it off the market until prices have gone up. While it is not known how much of Brazil's stockpile has been depleted, there is as yet no evidence that there actually is a coffee shortage. Meanwhile, in January, 1977, the Coffee Association appropriated 18 million dollars for a worldwide promotional budget to add to their 45 million dollar advertising budget. Thus millions of dollars are being spent to persuade the American public to buy coffee at exorbitant prices due to an artificially created scarcity. The early media promulgation of the "frost" cause for high prices qualifies this story for consideration as one of the "best censored" stories of 1976. (Congressman Frank Annunzio Congressional Record - House February 24, 1977, p H-1469,1470.)
  
• In "The Natural Gas Swindle," author/researcher Robert Sherrill reports illegal and unthical activities of gas companies, company connections with government agencies, and motives for creating a natural gas shortage. Illegalities mentioned include the evasion of seven major companies to produce natural gas supply information subpoenaed by the Federal Trade Commission (FTC), the 100% increase in prices for new gas from 1972 to 1974, and the ownership of gas stock by nineteen key officials of the Federal Power Commission (FPC). Also noted is the failure of the FPC to issue injunctions against companies "sitting on" federal land leases, to report that gas companies greatly underestimated gas reserves, and to abide by its own mandate. The author contends that current shortages are "scare tactics" the companies are using to force deregulation of interstate gas supplies -- a legislative act which would produce windfall profits for the natural gas producing companies. Sherrill's article, suggesting the "gas shortage" was a hoax, appeared in January, 1976. In April, 1977, following one of the coldest winters in history which saw the public suffer unemployment, closed schools, and exorbitantly high heating costs, author/researcher Bethany Weidner repeated much of what Sherrill had said. Weidner also concluded the primary motive was the gas industry's goal of price deregulation. The lack of general public knowledge of how it was being "swindled" by the natural gas industry qualifies this story for nomination as one of the "best censored" stories of 1976. (The Nation, January 24, 1976, p 70, "The Natural Gas Swindle," by Robert Sherrill; The Progressive, April, 1977, p 19, "What Natural Gas Shortage?" by Bethany Weidner.)
  
• Inefficiencies of nuclear safeguarding techniques and ambiguities concerning the accountability of nuclear materials poses a real threat to the safety of the American public ... and one of which they are little aware. Citing findings from a General Accounting Office report, the author/researcher, Barbara Newman, pointed out in the Nation several cases of inadequate safeguarding at nuclear plants -- including the use of employee honor systems in lieu of posted guards, the lack of effective security screening for new employees, and the strategic "outmanning" of perimeter sentry guards. Also noted is the lack of a credible inventory system to accurately tabulate amounts of uranium and plutonium.being processed. So lax is the current method that the government cannot account for 150,000 pounds of nuclear materials; 11,000 pounds of which is weapon-grade quality. For comparison, 4.4 pounds of plutonium is sufficient to make a bomb large enough to level a city of 100,000 people. Furthermore, any quantity of plutonium is a carcinogen and a lethal poison. In short, poor government management has allowed the security situation to degenerate to the point that nuclear supplies can be pilfered by employees, plants can be seized by terrorists, and private organizations involved with atomic energy go virtually unregulated. Corroborating Barbara Newman's 1976 warning is Jack Anderson's recent revelation of a secret inch-thick congressional study titled "Nuclear Proliferation and Safeguards." Prepared by the Congressional Office of Technology Assessment, it warns that mankind itself is threatened by an appalling lack of nuclear safeguards. The sparse coverage given our "missing plutonium" in 1976 qualifies this story for nomination as one of the "best censored" stories. ("Some of Our Plutonium is Missing" by Barbara P. Newman. Nation, Oct. 23, 1976. "Report warns nuclear theft danger real" by Jack Anderson and Les Whitten, Santa Rosa Press Democrat, March 27, 1977.)
  
• According to a conservative World Health Organization estimate, 500,000 people, the majority of them in Third World countries, are poisoned yearly by banned pesticides and drugs. Besides poisonings, a rash of miscarriages and birth defects have been attributed to certain banned herbicides. Although these chemicals are banned for use in the United States, domestic drug manufacturing corporations continue to produce and export them to foreign countries. Drugs never approved by the Food and Drug Administration, and even some never tested, are marketed and sold in some Third World countries. Moreover, they are shipped to countries that have minimal or no drug controls or regulations despite the fact the dangers of the products are known. What the peoples of those countries are being subjected to, and what the U.S. drug manufacturers are doing, goes virtually unnoticed and unreported in this country. The tragic impact of U.S. profit-motivated firms on the people of Third World nations qualifies this story for nomination as one of the "best censored" stories of 1976. ("Banned Chemicals Shipped Abroad" by David Weir, Rolling Stone Magazine, February 10, 1977, No. 232.)
  
• Unemployment continued at high levels throughout the United States during 1976. Reasons given the public for the high unemployment rate ranged from a "soft economy" to the weather to increasing automation to lack of consumer demand. However, little attention was devoted to the impact of multinational corporations, MNC, on the work force within the nation. In early 1976, author/researcher Robert Cox reported that organized labor movements are seeking government controls over MNC's so as to stop the "export of jobs." While the MNC's reply to organized labor was that they were in fact creating more jobs at home, many of these "new Jobs" are unlikely to be available to displaced workers. Openings for systems analysts are not very helpful to auto assembly workers. Jobs lost and jobs created cannot be neatly balanced but have to be looked at in the more personal terms of the transferability of individuals with particular skills and habits. Authors Barnet and Muller had earlier exposed the fallacy of the MNC claim to creating new jobs. Between 1966 and 1970, according to a Department of Commerce study, the 298 U.S. based global firms had a 5.3% annual growth rate in employment overseas. During the same period, they had a growth rate in domestic employment of only 2.7%. By the end of 1970, more than 25% of all the employees of these U.S. based multinational corporations were employed outside the territory of the United States. The impact of MNC production in foreign countries on the unemployment picture in the U.S. qualifies this story for nomination as one of the "best censored" stories of 1976. ("Labor and the Multinationals" by Robert Cox; Foreign Affairs, January 1976. Global Reach by Richard J. Barnet and Ronald E. Muller, Simon Schuster, New York, 1974.)
  
• Artificially created life is a scientific reality. Since 1973, scientists at university laboratories across the country have been creating new life forms from the gene-carrying DNA of other organisms. The organisms thus created are called DNA Recombinants because they are literally recombined from the DNA of other simple bacteria or viruses. DNA researchers maintain that their work may lead to the creation of new, life-saving drugs, new food sources, and cures for cancer and other diseases. A number of prominent scientists do not agree. They say that DNA research amounts to dangerous tampering with the evolutionary balance, tampering that could result in the release of hordes of lethal new viruses which could not be detected until it was too late. Although the National Institute of Health has published guidelines for DNA research, opponents of DNA work state the NIH guidelines are hopelessly unenforceable and do not apply at all to private industry. The federal government appears willing to allow industry a free hand in creating new viruses, bacteria, and enzymes. A small-interagency committee was formed in November 1976 to look into the government's role in DNA research. Although that committee met privately, with no press coverage, sources inside the committee say that the government will probably adopt a set of lax, voluntary standards for industry, and will allow these firms to carry out their research secretly, in order to protect "trade information." And private industry is deeply involved in DNA research. At least six major pharmaceutical firms are at present engaging in Recombinant DNA work. General Electric has already applied for a patent on a new life form that will eat up oil spills. Although the debate over DNA reached a fever pitch in scientific circles in 1976, there was little if any media coverage on corporate DNA involvement and no public announcement by the government as to its policy on the matter. The lack of mass media coverage on this potentially catastrophic scientific endeavor qualifies the DNA story for nomination as one of the "best censored stories" of 1976. (Mother Jones Magazine, Feb/Mar, 1977, "DNA: Have the corporations already grabbed control of new life forms?" by Jeremy Rifkin. OTHER DNA SOURCES: Science Magazine, Oct. 15, 1976, "Recombinant DNA: A critic asks the right to free inquiry." See also Science Magazine -- July 23, 1976; Sept. 3, 1976; Sept. 24, 1976; Oct. 15, 1976; and Nov. 12, 1976 The Progressive Magazine, March 1977,"Life from the Labs: Who will control the new technology?" see also The Progressive Magazine, March 1977, "One small step beyond mankind.")
  
• CSICOP - The Committee for the Scientific Investigation of Claims of the Paranormal was formed in 1976 by Professor Paul Kurtz as a breakaway group from the American Humanist Association. Paul Kurtz, born in 1925, is now retired as a philosophy lecturer at New York University. Politically, he is a Social Democrat, part of the American Non-Communist Left through which the CIA channeled funding from large American foundations such as Ford and Rockefeller, to promote liberalism in Europe during the Cold War. Kurtz was concerned about the revival of Astrology in the US, and circulated a letter to leading scientists and academics collecting 186 signatures, including those of 18 Nobel Prize winners, to a manifesto called "Objections to Astrology", the publication of which brought about the formation of CSICOP. Soon afterwards, Kurtz held a press conference in New York to announce "a campaign to purge the media of occultist leanings" and to ensure "no TV programs dealing with parascience would go out unvetted by the appropriate authorities", i.e. CSICOP. Among its first members were science fiction writer Isaac Isimov, magician and showman James Randi, and astronomer and writer Professor Carl Sagan.
  

• 1/1976 Radical lawyer William Kunstler said that JFK and RFK had been "two of the most dangerous leaders in the country" and that he was "not entirely upset" by their deaths. This statement was prompted by recent revelations of wiretapping and assassination plots against Castro.
  
• 1/1976 Reagan and Ford were tied in the polls for the GOP nomination.
  
• 1/2/1976 Ford announced he would veto the common-situs picketing bill he had previously indicated he would sign.
  
• 1/3/1976 Ford vetoes common situs picketing bill.
  
• 1/4/1976 Flight attendants at National Airlines end a 127-day strike after signing a new contract.
  
• 1/7/1976 A Court of Appeals panel ruled that Congress' seizure of Nixon's tapes and papers was not unconstitutional.
  
• 1/7/1976 Richard Welch's funeral in Washington; great pomp to promote fallen CIA hero.
  
• 1/8/1976 China: Premier Zhou Enlai dies.
  
• 1/9/1976 Sen. Robert Byrd joined the presidential race.
  
• 1/11/1976 E. Howard Hunt testified before the Senate Intelligence Committee about the charge that he had intended to kill Jack Anderson; Hunt testified that he had received orders from Colson to "get" Anderson, but only to drug him - not murder him. Hunt testified that he thought Colson's orders had originated with Nixon.
  
• 1/15/1976 Sara Jane Moore is sentenced to life in prison for attempting to assassinate Ford.
  
• 1/19/1976 Ford, in his State of the Union address, said, "in all that we do, we must be more honest with the American people..." He also proposed a "new realism" - giving more power to the states and local governments, and a larger defense budget. He also urged Congress to practice fiscal restraint to control inflation.
  
• 1/19/1976 Carter won the Iowa caucuses, a victory that was credited with starting him on the road to his near-sweep of the 1976 primaries. Tom Whitney, Iowa Democratic State Chairman, had told Hamilton Jordan to "forget about Iowa. It's not your kind of state." (Marathon, Witcover)
  
• 1/19/1976 Determined to finish his work by 31 January 1976, Pike pushed his committee for a final report. Searle Field at first hired Stanley Bach, a political scientist with some Hill experience, to write a draft report. Working primarily from the transcripts of the committee's hearings, Bach produced a rather balanced report not uncritical of the IC. The report called for the establishment of a joint intelligence oversight committee using the Joint Atomic Energy Committee as a model. Pike rejected the draft and assigned the responsibility for producing a satisfactory final report to Field and Aaron Donner. By early January, they had a draft. On 19 January, Field turned over a copy of the 338-page report for Agency review. He wanted it back by the close of business on 20 January. Rogovin responded with a scalding attack on the report. He criticized the extreme time constraints placed on the Agency in making its response and pictured the report as an "unrelenting indictment couched in biased, pejorative and factually erroneous terms." For Rogovin and most of the Agency, the report focused almost exclusively on negative matters and totally lacked balance. It gave the American public a distorted view of US intelligence, thereby "severely limiting its impact, credibility, and the important work of your committee." Despite Rogovin's protest, on 23 January 1976 the committee voted 9 to 7 along party lines to release its report with no substantial changes. The Republicans on the committee, strongly supported by the Agency and the White House, now led the fight to suppress the report. At the same time, Colby, fearing that the report would be released, called a press conference to denounce the committee and called the committee report "totally biased and a disservice to our nation." Colby claimed the report gave a thoroughly wrong impression of American intelligence.
  
• 1/21-23/1976 Kissinger meets with Brezhnev, Gromyko and other Soviet officials in Moscow over SALT.
  
• 1/26/1976 TIME magazine devoted four pages to MLK's assassination, drawing heavily from the soon-to-be published book by George McMillan, The Making of an Assassin: The Life of James Earl Ray (Little, Brown). In 1977 his wife, Priscilla McMillan, will publish Marina and Lee. Both books support the official version of the JFK and MLK assassinations. McMillan is the primary source for the widespread belief that Ray was a major drug dealer in Jeff City; that he smuggled large sums of money out of prison; that he used that money to finance his travels after his escape. McMillan's false scenarios portray Ray as a rabid racist in prison. "In 1963 and 1964 Martin Luther King was on TV almost every day, talking defiantly about how black people were going to get their rights, insisting that they would accept with nonviolence all the terrible violence that white people were inflicting on them, until the day of victory arrived, until they did overcome. Ray watched it all on the cell-block TV at Jeff City. He reacted as if King's remarks were directed at him personally. He boiled when King came on the tube. He began to call him Martin "Lucifer" King and Martin Luther "Coon." It got so that the very sight of King would galvanize Ray. "Somebody's gotta get him," Ray would say, his face drawn with tension, his fists clenched. "Somebody's gotta get him."" A fellow prisoner with Ray at Jefferson City, J.J. Maloney, later wrote: "Unfortunately, the scene described by McMillan could not have happened. There were no cellblock TVs in Jefferson City in 1963 and 1964. It wasn't until November 9, 1970--years after Ray escaped from Jefferson City--that inmates were allowed to purchase small black-and-white television sets, which they could keep in their cells. McMillan, and through him Time magazine, are also the primary sources for the general belief that Ray financed his after-escape activities with money earned in Jeff City."
  
• 1/26/1976 US vetoes a UN resolution on the Middle East.
  
• 1/26/1976 Unofficially supported by the CIA and the White House, McClory and the other Republicans took the fight to suppress the Pike Committee report to the House floor on 26 January 1976. McClory argued that the release of the report would endanger the national security of the United States. On the same day, The New York Times printed large sections of the draft report.
  
• 1/27/1976 Congress overrides Ford's veto of a $45 billion health and welfare bill.
  
• 1/29/1976 the House voted 246 to 124 to direct the Pike Committee not to release its report until it "has been certified by the President as not containing information which would adversely affect the intelligence activities of the CIA." Democratic Representative Wayne Hays seemed to reflect the basic feelings of the majority in the House when he commented just before the vote: "I will probably vote not to release it, because I do not know what is in it. On the other hand, let me say it has been leaked page by page, sentence by sentence, paragraph by paragraph to The New York Times, but I suspect, and I do not know and this is what disturbs me, that when this report comes out it is going to be the biggest non-event since Brigitte Bardot, after 40 years and four husbands and numerous lovers, held a press conference to announce that she was no longer a virgin." Pike was bitter over the vote. He announced to the House, "The House just voted not to release a document it had not read. Our committee voted to release a document it had read." Pike was so upset that he threatened not to file a report at all with the House because "a report on the CIA in which the CIA would do the final rewrite would be a lie." Later, Pike reflected that "They, the White House, wanted to precensor our final report. This was unacceptable."
  
• 1/30/1976 Supreme Court rules that government financing of presidential campaigns and disclosure requirements are constitutional, but federally imposed limits on campaign spending are not.
  
• 1/30/1976 George H.W. Bush becomes CIA Director. Colby had been pushed out by Ford for being too cooperative with congressional investigators.
  
• 1/31/1976 Supreme Court rules that limits on political campaign spending are unconstitutional.
  
• 1/31/1976 According to Wayne Phillips, a former Times reporter, the CIA invoked Arthur Hays Sulzberger's name when it tried to recruit him as an undercover operative in 1952 while he was studying at Columbia University's Russian Institute. Phillips said an Agency official told him that the CIA had "a working arrangement" with the publisher in which other reporters abroad had been placed on the Agency's payroll. Phillips, who remained at the Times until 1961, later obtained CIA documents under the Freedom of Information Act which show that the Agency intended to develop him as a clandestine "asset" for use abroad. On January 31st, 1976, the Times carried a brief story describing the ClAs attempt to recruit Phillips. It quoted Arthur Ochs Sulzberger, the present publisher, as follows: "I never heard of the Times being approached, either in my capacity as publisher or as the son of the late Mr. Sulzberger." The Times story, written by John M. Crewdson, also reported that Arthur Hays Sulzberger told an unnamed former correspondent that he might he approached by the CIA after arriving at a new post abroad. Sulzberger told him that he was not "under any obligation to agree," the story said and that the publisher himself would be "happier" if he refused to cooperate. "But he left it sort of up to me," the Times quoted its former reporter as saying. "The message was if I really wanted to do that, okay, but he didn't think it appropriate for a Times correspondent" (Carl Bernstein)