Deep Politics Timeline

[Tracy Riddle]

• 3/1977 More than 53 million persons (over 25 percent of the U.S. population) will develop some form of cancer in their lifetimes, and approximately 20 percent will die from it. The rate of increases in cancer deaths is more rapid than the rate of increases in population. Chemical carcinogens that have been shown to be health hazards to the workers employed by industry have been publicized by the media. However, each of these incidents has been treated as an isolated accident instead of as a part of a long-term chronic threat to the nation's health. The consensus in the scientific community is that most human cancers are environmental in origin and therefore preventable. Also, that the U.S. population has been -- and is being -- continuously exposed to countless known and unknown chemical carcinogens in their air, water, and food. The 100 billion dollar a year U.S. chemical industry produces 1,000 new chemical compounds a year. This is in addition to the 34,000 chemical substances and 2 million chemical mixtures already on the market. Very few of these mixtures, and almost none of the chemicals, have been tested -- the potential toxicity risks could be substantial. Potent new chemical agents are being synthesized and introduced into commerce and the workplace, generally without prior adequate testing for carcinogenicity or for other adverse public health and ecological effects. The failure of the media to see the chemical carcinogen problem as a serious health threat to the entire U.S. population instead of as isolated incidents, qualifies this story for nomination as one of the "best censored" stories of 1977. SOURCES: The Progressive, February,1977, p. 15, "Chemical Catastrophes," by Daniel Zwerdling. The Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists, March, 1977, p. 22, "Cancer and the Environment," by Samuel S. Epstein, M.D.
  
• 3/1/1977 President Jimmy Carter appoints a Naval Academy classmate, Admiral Stansfield Turner, as CIA director. Turner begins a reorganization of the Agency, fires 820 employees, most in covert operations.
  
• 3/1/1977 De Mohrenschildt took a three-day leave of absence from his college job and flew to Holland with Oltmans. Oltmans recalled that De Mohrenschildt disappeared for awhile in Brussels.
  
• 3/1/1977 Gonzalez angrily resigned from HSCA, calling Sprague "an unconscionable scoundrel." Louis Stokes of Ohio was now appointed as the new chairman of the House Select Committee on Assassinations.
  
• 3/2/1977 House adopts a stringent new ethics code governing the finances of its members; income and gifts over $100 must be reported and a representative's outside income cannot exceed 15% of his salary.
  
• 3/3/1977 David Burnham - "Gonzalez, Assailing His Committee, Quits as Assassination Inquiry Head" - New York Times
  
• 3/6/1977 Henry Gonzalez leaves the Assassinations Committee. He criticizes committee members for trying to usurp his powers, attacking the Democratic leadership for failing to come to his rescue and for the last time hacking away at Richard Sprague.
  
• 3/8/1977 Louis Stokes becomes chairman of the HSCA.
  
• 3/8/1977 Between The Lines, 3/8/77: In an exclusive interview granted to Valley Publications, former undercover operative for the FBI, Harry Dean, has stated that the John Birch Society had a heavily armed network of citizen soldiers ready to take to the streets in late 1963 and early 1964, if President Johnson and Chief Justice Warren did not quickly find Lee Harvey Oswald (a supposed communist sympathizer) guilty of the murder of President Kennedy. The threat was delivered to Johnson and Warren, within a few days after the assassination, by intelligence sources and by agents of the power structure that eliminated the President. LBJ had the choice - nation-wide internal strife or knuckling under to the threat and thereby giving this minority force a position of recognition. Johnson opted for the second choice. Dean, an undercover operative for the FBI from 1960 to 1965, had been assigned by the FBI to infiltrate the Birch Society. In that role, he was active in the Covina, (Calif.) chapter of the JBS from 1962 through 1964. During Dean's tour with the Society he states they planned three major activities against John Kennedy: a planned assassination in Mexico City in 1962 that was called off: the assassination in Dallas; and the threat against a thorough investigation. In each case, according to Harry Dean, Congressman John Rousselot (R-San Marino) was involved in the planning. Rousselot was Western Director of the John Birch Society during the first half of the '60's. During the years when Harry Dean had been acting as an active member of the Covina Birch Society, the main meeting place for all the anti-Kennedy activities was at a residence on San Pierre Street in El Monte. The Birchers were connected with anti-Castro Cubans, often mentioned as assassination suspects, through the Drive Against Communist Aggression (DACA). The DACA was an anti-Communist organization directed by members of the JBS, which had attracted certain Cubans who were in the Los Angeles area during 1962-63, trying to enlist support for another invasion of Castro controlled Cuba. The DACA operated in Mexico as well as the U.S. According to Dean, World War II hero Guy (Gabby) Gabaldon was the Mexican Director, while Ray Flieshman of Whittier was the U.S. Director. Another active member of DACA and the Covina JBS, who had a close relationship with Gabaldon, was Dave Robbins, who at the time ('62-63), was a high ranking employee of the Fluor Corporation. (J. Robert Fluor and John Rousselot had been known to be close political allies.) In a number of different circumstances, Dean was able to determine that Gabaldon, Robbins, Flieshman, and Rousselot had been involved in planning the aborted assassination of JFK in Mexico City, June 1962. Harry Dean had many occasions to observe and relate with much publicized Cuban-American Loran Eugene Hall-aka Lorenzo Pacillo-aka Ship Hall and Laurence Howard-aka Alonzo Escuirdo. Hall and Howard had a close association with former General Edwin Walker, of Texas, whenever Walker visited the Covina JBS. Dean recalls specific meetings where Walker, Rousselot, Hall, Howard, Gabaldon and himself (Dean) laid the plans to frame Lee Harvey Oswald, who they thought was a communist, as the assassin. Per Dean, Hall and Howard left the San Pierre Street house in October 1963, with arms and medicines, and the plans to implicate Oswald. The subject of eliminating President Kennedy was never discussed as a subject of the Society's meetings, but Harry Dean claims the plans for the assassination were conceived in small group meetings. At one time or another Harry Dean was witness to the plans of the assassination of JFK by different combinations of John Rousselot, Loran Hall, Laurance Howard, Guy Gabaldon, Edwin Walker, Dave Robbins, Ray Fleishman, and not previously mentioned Covina JBS members Ed Peters and Ed Butler. According to Dean, the directions taken by John Kennedy were directly in opposition to the John Birch Society's ultimate goals and they, in conjunction with DACA, took matters into their own hands. To protect exposure through an investigation, the Society sent threats of nation-wide street warfare, to the administration via secret agents, who they were sure had infiltrated the various radical and reactionary organizations throughout the U.S., if a speedy and simple verdict was not the action.
  
• 3/9/1977 Carter announced plan to beginning withdrawing all forces from South Korea; much controversy erupted over this, but the plan was cancelled when the Soviets invaded Afghanistan.
  
• 3/9/1977 HSCA executive sessions.
  
• 3/11/1977 Cesar Chavez's United Farm Workers sign an agreement with the Teamsters.
  
• 3/14/1977 De Mohrenschildt arrived in NY.
  
• 3/15/1977 Oltmans told the HSCA that De Mohrenschildt had told him that Oswald had acted with his knowledge when he killed JFK.
  
• 3/15/1977 de Mohrenschildt had a meeting with Edward Jay Epstein that had been arranged by the Reader's Digest magazine. Epstein offered him $4,000 for a four-day interview.
  
• 3/16/1977 Santos Trafficante appears before the House Assassinations Committee. Asked if he knew or discussed information that JFK would be assassinated, Trafficante declines to answer, citing his constitutional right to avoid self-incrimination.
  
• 3/16/1977 George de Mohrenschildt shows up at the door of Nancy Tilton, the sister of one of his earlier wives, asking to be let in. de Mohrenschildt's daughter, Alexandra, who regards this close aunt as her mother, lives in the Florida house. Her father, arriving with the clothes on his back and his briefcase, is invited to stay on as a house guest by Mrs. Tilton. Alexandra is shocked and saddened to find her father a "totally different" person. His daughter talked with him at length and found him to be deeply disturbed about certain matters and had expressed a desire to commit suicide. Earlier in the year, Dutch journalist Willem Oltmans went to Texas and brought de Morenschildt to Holland. After de Mohrenschildt arrived in Holland, Oltmans invited him out with some Russian friends. They went to Brussels and had plans to go to Liege, a city in the French speaking part of Belgium. The Oltmans owned a house not far from Liege in the countryside. Upon returning to Brussels, de Mohrenschildt went for a short walk from which he failed to return. He had earlier agreed to meet Oltmans and his friends for lunch. Oltmans waited for him but he didn't come back.
  
• 3/16/1977 Sprague offered to resign from HSCA if it would help the Committee's cause in Congress, but the Committee members refused.
  
• 3/17/1977 A letter written by George de Mohrenschildt, dated 3/17, was found in his room; TV reporters who saw it said that the letter told of Oltmans trying to bully him into admitting things he hadn't done. Oltmans may have been involved with Soviet intelligence, according to Michael Eddowes. (Oswald File 185-6)
  
• 3/18/1977 The following memo was suppressed until the 1990s:
  

AGENCY: HSCA
ORIGINATOR: HSCA
FROM: RICHARD SPRAGUE
TO: FILE
MEMORANDUM
March 18, 1977
TO : FILE
FROM : RICHARD A. SPRAGUE
William F. Illig, an attorney from Erie, Pa., contacted me in Philadelphia this
date, advising me that he represents Dr. George G. Burkley, Vice Admiral, U.S.
Navy retired, who had been the personal physician for presidents Kennedy and
Johnson.
Mr. Illig stated that he had a luncheon meeting with his client, Dr. Burkley,
this date to take up some tax matters. Dr. Burkley advised him that although he,
Burkley, had signed the death certificate of President Kennedy in Dallas, he had
never been interviewed and that he has information in the Kennedy
assassination indicating that others besides Oswald must have participated.
Illig advised me that his client is a very quiet, unassuming person, not wanting
any publicity whatsoever, but he, Illig, was calling me with his client's
consent and that his client would talk to me in Washington.

• 3/18/1977 Marien Ngouabi, Congo president, was shot to death in Brazzaville.
  
• 3/20/1977 New York Times reported a woman claiming her husband, a retired police officer, was offered half a million dollars to assassinate MLK. The man had written Rep. M.G. Snyder of Kentucky that FBI agents and several police officers were involved in the assassination.
  
• 3/20/1977 Dallas Morning News reported, "George de Mohrenschildt was having mental problems shortly before he told a Dutch journalist last month he knew in advance Lee Harvey Oswald was going to assassinate President John F. Kennedy, The Dallas News has learned. The 65-year-old Bishop College French professor agreed to commit himself to the psychiatric unit of Parkland Memorial Hospital last Nov. 9 after his wife filed court papers to force commitment, Dallas County Mental Illness Department records show. The hospital said De Mohrenschildt was released from the psychiatric unit about eight weeks later on Dec. 30, but declined to give information about his examination. The hospital did not refer De Mohrenschildt to the County Evaluation Center for further examination, which indicated he was not considered harmful to himself or others. The House Assassinations Committee last Tuesday quizzed a Dutch journalist and longtime De Mohrenschildt friend, Willem Oltmans, who said he had interviewed De Mohrenschildt last month at Bishop College. Oltmans did not say whether he had known of De Mohrenschildt's previous mental problems... He said to me, 'How do you think the media would react if I came out and said that I feel responsible for Oswald's behavior?' Oltmans said. The Oltmans interview developed into a national news story and sent investigators from the congressional committee scurrying to Dallas in search of De Mohrenschildt and his acquaintances. As of Friday, however, the probers had not inquired about his records with the Dallas County Mental Illness Department. In response to a request from The Dallas News, which asked that court records regarding De Mohrenschildt's mental illness proceedings be made accessible because such action is in the public interest,' Probate Judge Joseph E. Ashmore Jr. did so. Congressional committee investigators have been working on the De Mohrenschildt case under the impression he disappeared after he left Bishop College March 1. Oltmans told the probers he accompanied De Mohrenschildt to Europe after he left the college on a leave of absence of several days and then lost contact with him. Bishop College officials said while De Mohrenschildt had not been heard from, they still expect him to return after the school's spring vacation ends Monday."
  
• 3/27/1977 George de Mohrenschildt arrived at the Breakers Hotel in Palm Beach and spent the day being interviewed by Epstein. According to Epstein, they spent the day talking about his life and career up until the late 1950s.
  
• 3/28/1977 Charles Niccoletti dies of multiple gunshot wounds in Chicago. Niccoletti was a hitman and enforcer for Sam Giancana. He was also the Mafia's replacement for Johnny Roselli in the area of anti-Castro activities. Niccoletti left the mob after Giancana's murder saying that the CIA "was taking over the operation." Just as the House Assassinations Committee is trying to find him for questioning about a possible link between the Castro assassination attempts and JFK's murder, he is shot three times in the head while sitting in his car. The car is then set on fire to destroy the evidence.
  
• 3/29/1977 After a few days of interviews, Edward Jay Epstein asked de Mohrenschildt about Lee Harvey Oswald. As he wrote in his diary: "Then, this morning, I asked him about why he, a socialite in Dallas, sought out Oswald, a defector. His explanation, if believed, put the assassination in a new and unnerving context. He said that although he had never been a paid employee of the CIA, he had "on occasion done favors" for CIA connected officials. In turn, they had helped in his business contacts overseas. By way of example, he pointed to the contract for a survey of the Yugoslavian coast awarded to him in 1957. He assumed his "CIA connections" had arranged it for him and he provided them with reports on the Yugoslav officials in whom they had expressed interest."
  
• 3/29/1977 Epstein and de Mohrenschildt, broke for lunch and decided to meet again at 3 p.m. George De Mohrenschildt returned to his room where he found a card from Gaeton Fonzi, an investigator working for the House Select Committee on Assassinations.
  
• 3/29/1977 Just hours before his death, George de Mohrenschildt told Edward J. Epstein that the CIA asked him to keep tabs on Oswald in Dallas during 1962. Epstein interviewed George in the spring of '76 in Dallas, and today in a Palm Beach hotel room. He also interviewed numerous relatives and associates of his. George told Epstein in 1977 that he would have stopped associating with Oswald if Walter Moore hadn't told him Oswald was "harmless." Moore has refused to comment since then about his involvement with De Mohrenschildt. George suspected the FBI and possibly others of breaking into his premises at other times, as well. (Legend 185-87,315) Posner says that de Mohrenschildt "was quite mad by the time he gave his final interview. For nearly a year before his death, he was paranoid, fearful that the 'FBI and Jewish mafia' were out to kill him. He twice tried to kill himself with drug overdoses, and another time cut his wrists and submerged himself in a bathtub. After he began waking in the middle of every night, screaming and beating himself, he wife finally committed him to the Parkland Hospital psychiatric unit, where he was diagnosed as pyschotic and given two months of intensive shock therapy. After his treatment he said he had been with Oswald on the day of the assassination, though he was actually with dozens of guests at the Bulgarian embassy in Haiti the day JFK was killed." (Case Closed 119; no source given for this information) At the time of George's suicide, someone had left a tape recorder running to record a TV program; the tape picked up the sound of someone walking across a room, opening a drawer (where there was a 20-gauge shotgun) and then someone walking away. Then there is a single shot, and later Alexandra's screams as she discovers her father's body. (The Oswald File 184-5) In that March 29, 1977, interview, the last he would ever give, George de Mohrenschildt told author Edward Jay Epstein he had "on occasion done favors " since the early 1950s for government officials connected with the CIA. It was a mutually beneficial relationship. The CIA contacts then helped de Mohrenschildt arrange profitable business connections overseas. De Mohrenschildt said that in late 1961 he had met in Dallas with the CIA's J. Walton Moore, who began to tell him a bout "an ex-American Marine who had worked in an electronics factory in Minsk for the past year and in whom there was 'interest. "' The Baron had grown up in Minsk, as Moore seemed to know before being told. The ex-Marine, Moore said, would be returning to the Dallas area . De Mohrenschildt felt he was being primed. In the summer of 1 962, de Mohrenschildt said, he was handed Lee Harvey Oswald's address in Fort Worth by " one of Moore's associates, " who suggested that de Mohrenschildt meet Oswald. De Mohrenschildt then phoned Moore to confirm such a mission and set up another mutually beneficial relationship. He told Moore he would appreciate help from the U.S. embassy in Haiti in arranging approval by Haitian dictator " Papa Doc " Duvalier for an oil exploration deal. Moore then gave de Mohrenschildt the go-ahead to befriend the Oswalds, which de Mohrenschildt promptly didwith the firm understanding that he was carrying out the CIA's wishes. " I would never have contacted Oswald in a million years i f Moore had not sanctioned it, " de Mohrenschildt said in his final interview. " Too much was at stake . " (Epstein, Assassination Chronicles)
  
• 3/29/1977 Three hours after his revelation of the CIA's sanctioning his contact with Oswald, George de Mohrenschildt was found shot to death in the house where he was staying in Manalapan, Florida. His death also occurred on the day Gaeton Fonzi, an investigator for the House Select Committee on Assassinations, left his card with de Mohrenschildt's daughter and told her he would be calling her father that evening for an appointment to question him. Soon after de Mohrenschildt took the card and put it in his pocket, he went upstairs, then apparently put the barrel of a .20-gauge shotgun in his mouth and pulled the trigger. On the day of de Mohrenschildt's death, Edward Jay Epstein, the author who had interviewed him that day, wrote the following diary entry (29 March 1977): David Bludworth, The State's Attorney, was a folksy, charming and savvy interrogator. He began by telling me that de Mohrenschildt had put a shotgun in his mouth and killed himself at 3:45 p.m. There were no witnesses and no one home at the time of the shooting. The precise time of his death was established by a tape-recorder, left running that afternoon to record the soap operas for the absent Mrs. Tilton, and which recorded a single set of footfalls in the room and the blast of the shotgun, which was found on the Persian carpet next to him. No suicide note or other clue was found. He said I was probably the last person to talk to him. Then, he asked whether I had in my possession De Mohrenschildt's black address book. I replied "No." He politely rephrased the question, and asked me again about a half-dozen times, whether I had the black book.
  
• 3/29/1977 After a meeting with Stokes on 29th March, Sprague agreed to resign and he was replaced by G. Robert Blakey. But the next morning, after the news of George de Mohrenschildt's death the previous day, Congress approved $2.5 million for a year. Sprague later told Gaeton Fonzi that the real reason he was removed as chief counsel was because he insisted on asking questions about the CIA operations in Mexico. Fonzi argued that "Sprague... wanted complete information about the CIA's operation in Mexico City and total access to all its employees who may have had anything to do with the photographs, tape recordings and transcripts. The Agency balked. Sprague pushed harder. Finally the Agency agreed that Sprague could have access to the information if he agreed to sign a CIA Secrecy Agreement. Sprague refused.... "How," he asked, "can I possible sign an agreement with an agency I'm supposed to be investigating?" Two subcommittees were created - a subcommittee on the assassination of President John F. Kennedy, with Richardson Preyer of North Carolina as its chairman, and a subcommittee on the assassination of Martin Luther King, with Walter E. Fauntroy, Delegate of the District of Columbia, as its chairman. The staff was divided into two task forces designated to assist each of the subcommittees.
  
• 3/30/1977 The Assassinations Committee is revived today by the passage of House Resolution 433, reconstituting the Committee until Jan. 3, 1979, and assigning it a pared-down budget of $2.5 million. The House votes 230 to 181. The trade off: Richard Sprague has to go. Congressman Louis Stokes of Ohio becomes the new committee chairman and a search for Sprague's successor begins. The House approved House Resolution 433 which constituted the HSCA until January 3, 1979, the duration of the 95th Congress.
  
• 3/31/1977 HSCA director Richard Sprague resigned. Rep. Louis Stokes was then named chairman.
  
• 3/31/1977 Edward Jay Epstein diary: March 31, 1977 Palm Beach Two FBI agents arrived at my hotel. They were both polite and precise in their questions. They asked me how I had located De Mohrenschildt in Florida. They explained that Just two weeks before he had turned up in Florida, De Mohrenschildt had literally "vanished" from the Hotel Metropole in Brussels, leaving his luggage, raincoat and pipe behind in his room-- just minutes before he had been scheduled to meet with a Soviet diplomat. After he was reported missing in Belgium, he had reportedly flown from London and New York. They wanted to know if De Mohrenschildt had not given me any of his personal papers. When I said "No," they thanked me for my time and left. There was a phone message from Nancy, who had gone back to New York. The lawyer, Pat Russell, had sent the photograph. It was, as De Mohrenschildt had described it, a copy of the celebrated backyard photograph of Oswald with the rifle that appeared in the Warren Report. But on the back it had a date and handwriting. A handwriting expert who had been working with me, Thea Hall, immediately identified both the dating and the inscription as Oswald's writing concluded the Russian printing on reverse side was consistent with Marina's handwriting. So now I knew De Mohrenschildt had been given this incriminating photograph before the assassination but it did not answer the real issue of whether he had passed it on to the CIA.