Deep Politics Timeline

[Tracy Riddle]

• 2/1976 In an interview with Dick Russell of the Village Voice (published by Argosy magazine 3/1976) Chuck Colson stated, "I've heard one theory that there is no Howard Hughes, that it's really a headquarters of the Mafia's operation; that they owned Bebe Rebozo, they got their hooks into Nixon early, and, of course, that ties into the overlap of the CIA and the Mob...Don't say that's my theory, but I've heard it expounded as a possibility and, of course, it is."
  
• 2/1976 James Jesus Angleton appeared before the Senate Intelligence Committee and claimed he was unaware of the CIA-Mafia anti-Castro plots, but admitted that his colleague William Harvey had meetings with Mafia members at that time. (Report p69)
  
• 2/3/1976 In an attempt to pacify Pike, McClory on 3 February made a motion in committee "that Speaker Carl Albert be asked to submit the final report to President Ford so that it might be sanitized and released." The committee rejected this last effort at compromise by a vote of 7 to 4. Journalist Daniel Schorr then gave a copy of the entire Pike Report to The Village Voice, which published it in full on 16 February 1976 under the title "The Report on the CIA that President Ford Doesn't Want You to Read." When Schorr admitted that he leaked the report to The Village Voice, the House voted to have its Committee on Standards of Official Conduct investigate the leak. After extensive inquiry, it failed to find out who leaked the report. So ended the House investigation of the intelligence community.
  
• 2/4/1976 The swine flu scare began when state health authorities, conducting a routine check on a flu outbreak at the Fort Dix, New Jersey, Army base, found they could not identify the virus in some of the blood samples taken from the sick soldiers. Shortly thereafter, a barrage of conflicting information about swine flu and the mass immunization program was launched in the mass media. Early strong support for the immunization program from the administration and health authorities led to a number of people being inoculated. The widely publicized deaths of some of them, along with contradictory reports by other health authorities, led much of the nation to turn away from the inoculations. One outspoken critic of the flu program was J. Anthony Morris, a microbiologist with the Food and Drug Administration and a longtime critic of flu vaccines. He predicted that inoculation might result in hypersensitivity and trigger neurologic illnesses ranging from persistent headaches to encephalitis to paralysis to Guillain-Barre and to death. He was fired from the FDA by Commissioner Alexander Schmidt for "insubordination." Speculation was offered as to whether there was such a disease; whether it represented a grave threat to life, and whether or not the remedy was a greater danger than the illness. One group which was not confused by the conflicting information was the insurance companies who refused coverage to the four manufacturers of the swine flu serum. Federal Insurance Company, principal underwriter for the drug companies, explained to Business Insurance in May, 1976, that it was not convinced that there has been time enough to test the vaccine for side effects. Unfortunately for those who died or suffered paralysis following swine flu inoculations, the media message was not as clear. The swine flu snafu story is being nominated as a "censored" story of 1976 not because it did not receive enough media coverage, but because it received so much conflicting and inadequately-researched coverage, that the public was in the end left uninformed. SOURCES: (In addition to the following examples of contradictory media coverage, there was countless coverage of the swine flu problem in magazines and newspapers, and on radio and television.) Time, April 26, 1976: "Flap Over Swine Flu." New Times, June 11, 1976: "Sweating Out the Swine Flu Scare." Newsweek, July 12, 1976: "Swine Flu Snafu."
  
• 2/5/1976 Ford signed a railroad aid bill.
  
• 2/7/1976 Labor Department announces the unemployment rate date to 7.8% in January.
  
• 2/10/1976 Ford told the press that Nixon had not told him or anyone else in the government that he was going to China this year.
  
• 2/10/1976 Sen. Lloyd Bentsen drops out of the Presidential race.
  
• 2/11/1976 the Michael Paine phone conversation about Oswald is declassified.
  
• 2/12/1976 The Washington Star: The CIA has officially announced it will no longer hire newsmen working for American publications to serve as its eyes and ears around the world. It also promised, without identifying them, to phase out those newsmen currently maintaining ties to the intelligence agency. But it will continue to accept information from such sources voluntarily. The agency's announcement yesterday was the first time it had acted publicly to close the door on seeking out a specific source of intelligence gathering. The agency order noted that it also would bar recruitment within the clergy, but that, in fact there was no current ""secret or paid contractual relationship with any clergyman or missionary."" The action was taken, senior intelligence officials said, in response to growing criticism of the CIA's use of news media personnel and the buying of information from American newsmen. There also have been complaints from religious groups over reports that the CIA once used missionaries for intelligence gathering. It was the first public action of George Bush, the new CIA director. In 1967, President Lyndon Johnson barred the CIA from secretly funding private American voluntary organizations. The agency was prohibited from recruiting agents from members of the Peace Corps by an executive order. In 1973, then-CIA director William Colby halted the secret retaining of five full-time journalists with major American publications and they were phased out by 1974, Colby publicly confirmed this year. But Bush's order goes far further. ""Effective immediately,"" a statement issued by the director's office said, the ""CIA will not enter into any paid or contractual relationship with any full-time or part-time news correspondent accredited by any U.S. news service, newspaper, periodical, radio or television network or station."" The CIA statement said that the current news reporters with CIA ties would be phased out of the CIA connection ""as soon as feasible.""...A senior intelligence agency official told the New York Times that ""less than 20 persons will be effected by the order."" He said the order also would end the practice of sending CIA employes abroad under ""cover"" of being accredited representatives of American news organizations. The order, another official said, did not bar the CIA from recruiting employes of foreign news organizations. ""It is the agency's policy not to divulge the names of cooperating Americans. In this regard the CIA will not make public, now or in the future, the names of any cooperating journalists or churchmen,"" the statement said....The first strong indication that the CIA had infiltrated the American news media came in 1973 when Colby disclosed details to the Washington Star about use of 'stringers' and five staff reporters. These details were confirmed last month in a report of the House Select Committee on Intelligence, which has not been made public. The CIA has also formally refused to tell the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence the names of individual reporters or news organizations. During the past week, however, it has been charged that one intelligence officer posed as a CBS correspondent, that another CBS correspondent secretly fed information to the CIA and that an ABC correspondent in Hong Kong was recruited to help CIA officers contact a Chinese communist official. Executives for eight other of the nation's leading news organizations say the CIA assured that none of their reporters were among the full-time journalists said to be doubling as agents in 1973. However, most of these executives said they were unable to obtain similar assurances about CIA contacts with part-time journalists or stringers. Executives of the New York Times, the Associated Press, the Wall Street Journal, Time, Newsweek, ABC News, and CBS News said in recent interviews with the AP that they had received assurances from Colby that no one on their staffs was also on the CIA payroll following the November, 1973, story in the Star that revealed the extent of agency contacts with journalists. Colby has since acknowledged that he was the source of the story. The Washington Post said it had received similar assurances early this year. Executives of NBC News could not recall making an inquiry, while editors at United Press International said the CIA refused to respond to its initial request."
  
• 2/13/1976 General Murtala Ramat Mohammad, president of Nigeria, was killed by rebels during a coup attempt.
  
• 2/16-24/1976 Kissinger visits Venezuela, Peru, Brazil, Colombia, Costa Rica and Guatemala to talk with their presidents on trade and other issues.
  
• 2/16/1976 House Intelligence (Pike) Committee's secret Final Report was published by the Village Voice after being leaked by CBS newsman Daniel Schorr. Ford and Kissinger had tried to suppress the report on the grounds of "national security." Rep. Otis Pike was head of the Committee. The report revealed that the CIA (in 1972 alone) "expended some $10 million in contributions to political parties" in Italy. It also disclosed that the CIA had disbursed payments to the Italians in 1972: "A major political party received $3.4 million; a political organization created and supported by CIA, $3.4 million; other organizations and parties, a total of $1.3 million." "It is known that during this period [1972] the President was indirectly approached by prominent international businessmen, who were former nationals of [Italy]. Their communications to the President were not available to the Committee." The Pike group's final report concluded that the foreign intelligence budget was three or four times larger than Congress had been told; that money appropriated for the IC was hidden throughout the entire Federal budget; that the total amount of funds expended on intelligence was extremely difficult to determine; and that Congressional and executive scrutiny of the budget ranged between "cursory and nonexistent." The report described the GAO as the auditing arm of Congress, but, when it came to the intelligence agencies, especially the CIA, "it was no arm at all." The GAO was, the report found, prevented by security constraints from looking carefully into intelligence budgets. The end result, according to the report, was insufficient executive and legislative oversight. The committee also saw a "too cozy, almost inbred" relationship between the Office of Management and Budget officials and the intelligence budget makers. Taking on the issue of secrecy, the report argued that "taxpayers and most of Congress did not know and cannot find out how much they spend on spy activities." The committee saw this as being in direct conflict with the Constitution, which required a regular and public accounting for all funds spent by the Federal Government. The document then addressed Colby's argument that the Soviets would benefit enormously from disclosure. The report claimed that the Soviets probably already had a detailed account of US intelligence spending, far more than just the budget total. It concluded that "in all likelihood, the only people who care to know and do not know these costs are the American taxpayers." In addition, the report found that the DCI, who was nominally in charge of the entire Community budget, controlled only 15 percent of the total intelligence budget. The Secretary of Defense had much greater power and control over a greater portion of the intelligence budget than the DCI. The committee's final report also made it clear that the committee did not believe the CIA was out of control. It stated, "All evidence in hand suggests that the CIA, far from being out of control, has been utterly responsive to the instructions of the President and the Assistant to the President for National Security Affairs."
  
• 2/17/1976 Ford announced a major reorganization of the intelligence community "with a comprehensive set of public guidelines" for all intelligence activities. He also would set up an independent "oversight board."
  
• 2/18/1976 Ford sent to the Senate for ratification a treaty with Spain providing for continuation of U.S. use of military bases in Spain.
  
• 2/19/1976 Ford issued executive order 11905, outlining new regulations on US foreign-intelligence activities. It limited the surveillance of US citizens.
  
• 2/20/1976 SEATO formally disbands.
  
• 2/25/1976 Goldwater, on Good Morning America, commented on ex-President Nixon's recent trip to China: "I don't think Mr. Nixon's visit to China did anything, and if he wanted to do this country a favor he might stay over here. He is violating the law...The Logan Act says no one but the President and the Secretary of State can discuss foreign policy..."
  
• 2/25/1976 Ford sent to Congress a special message proposing legislation to consolidate Medicaid and 15 categorical Federal health programs into a $10 billion block grant to the States.
  
• 2/26/1976 New Hampshire primary: Ford beats Reagan by 1,250 votes.
  
• 2/26/1976 Spain completes its withdrawal from Spanish Sahara, a former colonial territory in northeastern Africa. The next day, the people of the phosphate-rich desert territory proclaim the independent Saharan Arab Democratic Republic with Spanish approval.