Deep Politics Timeline

[Tracy Riddle]

• CIA synthesized many of the findings from its psychological research into what became known as the KUBARK Counterintelligence Interrogation handbook
  
• 1963-69 Project Shipboard Hazard and Defense (SHAD), the U.S. Army performed tests which involved spraying several U.S. ships with various biological and chemical warfare agents, while thousands of U.S. military personnel were aboard the ships.
  
• 1/1963 New York lawyer James Donovan makes another trip to Cuba. Castro's aide Rene Vallejo raises the subject of normalizing relations with US
  
• 1/1/1963 The Special Group Augmented is replaced by a different oversight organization, the Special Group, chaired by McGeorge Bundy. Although Mongoose is abolished, the CIA arm, Task Force W, continues to exist as the Special Affairs Staff, located at the CIA's Miami station. William Harvey, formerly the head of Task Force W, is replaced by Desmond FitzGerald as head of the Special Affairs Staff.
  
• 1/2/1963 Gen. Lyman Lemnitzer becomes head of NATO, replacing Gen. Lauris Norstad.
  
• 1/2-3/1963 Battle of Ap Bac (a village in the Mekong Delta) saw 2000 ARVN troops, well-equipped with US arms, pinned down by 200 Viet Cong.
  
• 1/4/1963 McGeorge Bundy memo to JFK proposed that they find some way to hold talks with Castro.
  
• 1/10/1963 Juan Bosch of the Dominican Republic met with JFK in Washington.
  
• 1/14/1963 JFK's state of the union address, proposed a tax cut to spur the economy.
  
• 1/14/1963 George Wallace is sworn in as governor of Alabama, pledging to support segregation.
  
• 1/15/1963 John Connally becomes governor of Texas
  
• 1/17/1963 JFK proposes ending oil depletion allowance
  
• 1/23/1963 Drew Pearson in his Washington Merry-Co-Round column: "Kennedy Has Chance to End the Cold War."
  
• 1/23/1963 Kim Philby fled to Russia
  
• 1/25/1963 JFK puts restrictions on Pentagon brass visiting South Vietnam.
  
• 1/27-28/1963 Oswald fills out an order for a .38 revolver.
  
• 1/29/1963 Sen. Thomas Dodd hearings on mail-order weapons began
  
• 1/29/1963 Dallas News and Texas Observer publish articles examining LBJ's TV and cable interests.
  
• 1/29/1963 Charles De Gaulle assassination attempt.
  
• 1/30/1963 McNamara testified to Congress that 11,000 US troops were in Vietnam.
  
• 2/1963 William Harvey removed from Operation Mongoose, sent to Rome as chief of station. CIA sets up Domestic Operations Division run by Tracy Barnes and E. Howard Hunt. David Atlee Phillips becomes more involved with Cuban operations
  
• 2/1963 US Rep. Paul Rodgers (D-Florida) called for congressional oversight of the CIA
  
• 2/1963 RFK works to get many Bay of Pigs veterans special military training at Fort Benning and Fort Jackson
  
• 2/5/1963 Canadian PM Diefenbaker loses a vote of confidence in parliament.
  
• 2/13/1963 The Oswalds went to the De Mohrenschildts for dinner. Lee spent the night talking to a young German geologist, Volkmar Schmidt, a right-winger
  
• 2/15/1963 a plot in Paris to shoot De Gaulle with a sniper rifle was uncovered
  
• 2/21/1963 The Carcano rifle is shipped from Crescent Firearms of NYC to Klein's Sporting Goods of Chicago.
  
• 2/22/1963 Oswalds met Ruth Paine at a dinner party given by Volkmar Schmidt (or Everett Glover). The De Mohrenschilts are also present.
  
• 2/25/1963 House bill introduced to give Attorney General responsibility for Presidential protection
  
• 2/26/1963 Senate hearings on TFX scandal begin
  
• 2/27/1963 Juan Bosch is inaugurated as President of the Dominican Republic, after decades of dictatorship.
  
• 3/1963 New Orleans FBI informant Eugene De Lapparra overhears three individuals in a Marcello-controlled restaurant talking of killing Kennedy.
  
• 3/3/1963 Oswalds move to Neely St address in Dallas.
  
• 3/3/1963 Ruth Paine sends her first letter to Marina, asking if she can come visit. Marina agrees. FBI agent James Hosty conducts neighborhood check and discovers Marina Oswald speaks no English.
  
• 3/4/1963 FBI agent James Hosty reopens Marina Oswald's case file in Dallas.
  
• 3/4/1963 JFK indicates in memo his support for a flexible dialogue with Castro.
  
• 3/5/1963 Ngo Dinh Nhu complained about Sen. Mansfield's pessimistic report on Vietnam.
  
• Early March Oswald supposedly took photos of Gen. Edwin Walker's house. Marina is writing to Soviet embassy about returning to USSR.
  
• 3/6/1963 JFK told the press that the fall of Southeast Asia would affect "the security of India" and "begin to run perhaps all the way toward the Middle East." Privately tells Mansfield he plans to withdraw after being reelected.
  
• 3/11/1963 A letter Oswald wrote (signed "L.H.") published in the The Militant. Hosty applied for a reopening of the Oswald case after checking at the Elsbeth St residence.
  
• 3/11/1963 Jean-Marie Bastien-Thiry executed in France for being involved in plots to kill De Gaulle.
  
• 3/11/1963 Billy Sol Estes went on trial in Federal Court today.
  
• 3/12/1963 Envelope containing rifle order form mailed from Dallas while Oswald is at work all day at Jaggars-Chiles-Stovall
  
• 3/13/1963 Klein's in Chicago receives order for Carcano rifle
  
• 3/14/1963 Tulsa Daily World reports that many leftists had made trips to Cuba via Mexico with no record of the trip being recorded.
  
• 3/14/1963 In a memo to his brother, RFK unsuccessfully urged the president to move against Castro
  
• 3/18/1963 Supreme Court, in Gideon vs. Wainwright, ruled that all defendants are entitled court-appointed legal counsel if they cannot afford their own.
  
• 3/18/1963 CIA-connected Cuban exile group Alpha 66 attacks Soviet freighter off the coast of Cuba.
  
• 3/20/1963 The rifle and revolver were both shipped to Oswald on this day.
  
• 3/21/1963 JFK tells the press that there might be 15 to 25 nations with nuclear weapons by the 1970s.
  
• 3/23/1963 Oswald is given two weeks' notice at Jaggars-Chiles-Stovall
  
• 3/25/1963 Oswald supposedly picked up the rifle at his PO Box, then the revolver at the offices of REA Express, while he is at work all day.
  
• 3/26/1963 Anti-Castro group L-66 attacks and sinks the Soviet ship Baku. Kennedy administration begins cracking down on exile raids
  
• 3/29/1963 Billie Sol Estes is convicted in Texas of mail fraud and conspiracy.
  
• 3/30/1963 McNamara decided to close 52 military installations in 25 different states, plus 21 bases overseas.
  
• 3/30/1963 The Kennedy administration restricted prominent Cuban exile leaders to Dade County, and announced efforts to shut down all exile raids against Cuba.
  
• 3/31/1963 President Jose Miguel Ydigoras Fuentes of Guatemala is overthrown in a coup.
  
• 3/31/1963 FBI agent Hosty recommended that Oswald's file be reopened. Marina supposedly takes the photos of Oswald with his weapons in the backyard of the Neely house.
  
• 3/31/1963 Robert Kennedy's Justice Dept took its first steps against Cuban exile raids against Cuba.