Deep Politics Timeline

[Tracy Riddle]

• 7/1963 CIA synthesized many of the findings from its psychological research into what became known as the KUBARK Counterintelligence Interrogation handbook. In 2014 the CIA quietly released a newly declassified version of the infamous 1963 "KUBARK" interrogation manual. (Note: "KUBARK" was the CIA's code name for itself.) The new material adds greatly to our understanding of the CIA's interrogation and torture history. This manual was first released to the Baltimore Sun in 1997 with heavy redactions, and received considerable coverage at the time. In subsequent years, the manual was cited as a harbinger if not model of U.S. torture during the Bush years. The National Security Archive posted the 1997 FOIA version of the manual online.
  
• 7/1/1963 US ousts Soviet diplomat Gennadi Sevastyanov for trying to recruit a CIA agent.
  
• 7/1/1963 Marina Oswald replies to the Russian embassy, telling them that she was having family problems and wanted to go back to the USSR.
  
• 7/5/1963 JFK letter to Israel government expression his objections to their nuclear program.
  
• 7/5-19/1963 Chinese-Russian talks in Moscow reveal further worsening in their relationship.
  
• 7/8/1963 U.S. restricts currency transactions with Cuba, including freezing $33,000,000 of Cuban deposits in U.S. banks.
  
• 7/11/1963 Ruth writes to Marina inviting her to come live with her.
  
• 7/15/1963 Miami News Latin American editor Hal Hendrix breaks story, "Backstage With Bobby," detailing RFK 's role as the architect of the Nicaragua-based front against Castro. James Wechsler of the New York Post wrote that the "debilitated" Communist Party USA is kept alive by the work of FBI agents and informants.
  
• 7/15/1963 US, USSR and UK open talks on nuclear test ban treaty.
  
• 7/16/1963 FBI Courtney Evans memo to Alan Belmont; RFK talked that day with Evans about putting "technical coverage" on MLK and Clarence Jones.
  
• 7/17/1963 JFK stated in a press conference, "We are not going to withdraw from that effort," he said in response to a question about Vietnam.
  
• 7/19/1963 Oswald was fired from his William Reily job for constantly neglecting his duties.
  
• 7/20/1963 US and USSR reach tentative agreement on nuclear test ban.
  
• 7/20/1963 The public learned that Rear Admiral George Burkley was the new official "Physician to the President."
  
• 7/21/1963 Ruth wrote Marina again, offering to pick her up and drive her back to Dallas.
  
• 7/22/1963 Oswald visits Louisiana Division of Employment Security office to seek a job and file interstate claim on Texas for unemployment benefits
  
• 7/23/1963 JFK asked Congress to abolish immigration quotas within the next five years.
  
• 7/23/1963 RFK turns down a bugging request on MLK from the FBI.
  
• 7/24/1963 A group of anti-Castro Cubans arrives in New Orleans from Miami and joins a training camp off Lake Ponchatrain. Members are from the International Anti-Communist Brigade, established by Frank Sturgis and Gerry Hemming.
  
• 7/25/1963 Oswald was told that his 1962 demand for a review of his undesirable Marine discharge was rejected.
  
• 7/26/1963 Tonight, President Kennedy makes a television appeal to the nation for support of the nuclear test ban treaty
  
• 7/271963 Oswald gives a speech about Russia and communism in Mobile, Alabama, before a group of scholars and Jesuit priests at Spring Hill College.
  
• 7/28/1963 The Oswalds and Murrets return to New Orleans.
  
• 7/30/1963 60,000 Buddhists march in protest against Diem's government in South Vietnam.
  
• 7/31/1963 FBI raid of Cuban exile ammo dump seizes more than a ton of dynamite, 20 bomb casings, napalm material, and other devices at William Julius McLaney 's, a well known Havana gambler (and brother of Mike McClaney, former casino owner in Cuba) home at Lacombe, La., in the Lake Ponchatrain, New Orleans area.
  
• 8/1963 Connecticut Democratic Sen. Thomas Dodd introduced the first version of what would eventually become the Gun Control Act.
  
• 8/1963 John Martino's book I Was Castro's Prisoner is published, co-written by Nathaniel Weyl.
  
• 8/1963 Ruth Paine traveled to Baltimore in August 1963. She said, "I was on a big sweep of friends and family that summer, after being separated from husband."
  
• 8/1963 French President de Gaulle proposes a united, neutral Vietnam and plans to visit Kennedy in 2/1964 to talk about it.
  
• 8/1/1963 Oswald wrote to V.T. Lee of the national FPCC about his local chapter and a confrontation with Cuban exiles that hadn't happened yet.
  
• 8/1/1963 Adm. George W. Anderson Jr. succeeded as chief of naval operations by Adm. David L. McDonald
  
• 8/2/1963 US cut off economic aid to Haiti. US told the United Nations that it would halt arms sales to South Africa.
  
• 8/3/1963 Suicide of Philip L. Graham, president and chief executive officer of The Washington Post and chairman of the board of Newsweek
  
• 8/4/1963 Oswald mails the letter to V.T. Lee, though the incident described did not occur until 8/9.
  
• 8/5/1963 In Moscow, the US, USSR and UK sign Test Ban Treaty, banning atmospheric, underwater and outer space testing of nuclear weapons.
  
• 8/5/1963 Oswald first met Cuban exile leader Carlos Bringuier
  
• 8/6/1963 Oswald returns to Casa Roca, leaving his Marine Guidebook with Bringuier's brother-in-law.
  
• 8/7/1963 JFK met with Citizens Committee on Test Ban Treaty, running his campaign to whip up public support for the Test Ban Treaty.
  
• 8/9/1963 After a street scuffle with anti-Castro Cubans led by Carlos Bringuier, Oswald was arrested.
  
• 8/10/1963 Oswald, in jail, asks to speak with a representative of the FBI. Agents Milton Kaack and John Quigley came to interview him. Oswald had no "Hidell" identification on him that day.
  
• 8/11/1963 Marina writes to Ruth, inviting her to New Orleans.
  
• 8/12/1963 court hearing for Oswald and Bringuier. Oswald pleads guilty to "disturbing the peace by creating a scene" and pays a fine of $10. Charges against the Cubans are dismissed.
  
• 8/12/1963 U.S. News and World Report headlined, " If Peace Does Come-What Happens to Business? "
  
• 8/13/1963 Oswald sent a letter to the FPCC about his arrest, who never responded to his letters again. Oswald wrote to Arnold Johnson of the Communist Party abou this arrest.
  
• 8/16/1963 Chicago Sun-Times had an article on CIA dealings with Sam Giancana from 1959 to before the Bay of Pigs. This prompted CIA Director McCone to ask the Deputy Director for Plans, Helms, for a report about the article. Helms then tells McCone of the anti-Castro plots.
  
• 8/16/1963 This morning, Oswald hired two men, for $2 each, from the unemployment office to help him distribute FPCC handbills. For about 20 minutes they passed out leaflets in front of the Trade Mart, and were filmed by cameraman Johann Rush.
  
• 8/17/1963 William Stuckey of WDSU radio goes to Oswald's apartment this morning and asks him to do a broadcast interview. At 5pm, he goes to the studio and does a 37-minute taped interview. This evening, Oswald fires off a letter to V.T. Lee of the national FPCC, informing him of the latest developments.
  
• 8/19/1963 A debate program is agreed to between Oswald and Bringuier and Edward Butler on a public affairs program called 'Conversation Carte Blanche.'
  
• 8/19/1963 Radio Havana reported air attacks on oil storage tanks, the third in four days, blamed on "pirates, organized, armed and directed by the CIA." Landing craft attacked a power plant and sulfuric acid plant in Santa Lucia, Pinar del Rio province.
  
• 8/20/1963 JCS recommended to McNamara that no decision be made to withdraw US forces from Vietnam until the end of October. (In Retrospect p49)
  
• 8/21/1963 The radio debate on August 21 quickly became an expose of Oswald's history with Soviet Communism.
  
• 8/22-9/17/1963 HSCA determined it could not be positive of Oswald's whereabouts during this period. This was the time of the alleged sighting of Oswald in Clinton, Louisiana with Dave Ferrie and either Clay Shaw or Guy Banister.
  
• 8/23/1963 FBI headquarters asked its New Orleans branch for the results of their investigation on Oswald.
  
• 8/23/1963 FBI's William Sullivan had Division Five produce a report on Communist infiltration of the Civil Rights Movement, with particular attention to its likely role in the upcoming March. Sullivan's August 23 report concluded that 'there has been an obvious failure of the Communist Party of the United States to appreciably infiltrate, influence, or control large numbers of American Negroes in this country.'
  
• 8/24/1963 Presidential advisers Roger Hilsman, Averell Harriman, and Michael Forrestal draft a telegram to newly appointed Saigon ambassador Henry Cabot Lodge that conditionally authorizes U.S. support of a coup by rebel South Vietnamese generals. President Kennedy, who is in Hyannis Port, endorses the telegram.
  
• 8/26/1963 Henry Cabot Lodge meets with Diem for the first time; Diem refuses to get rid of the Nhus or discuss reform. Lodge tells him that he faces a sharp reduction in aid if he doesn't get rid of the Nhus.
  
• 8/27/1963 Another White House meeting about the situation in Saigon; William Colby and Victor Krulak told the President that the anti-Buddhist campaign had not stirred up the populace and created further unrest. JFK expressed more reservations about a coup, but Hilsman urged that it be done immediately.
  
• 8/28/1963 Martin Luther King gives his "I have a dream" speech at the civil rights march in Washington
  
• 8/28/1963 Oswald wrote a letter to the US Communist Party's Central Committee
  
• 8/28/1963 In a NSC meeting, Ball, Harriman, Hilsman and Forrestal urged a Saigon coup, but McNamara, Nolting and JFK expressed reluctance. LBJ, Taylor and McCone were strongly opposed. NYT today reports on coup speculation in Saigon
  
• 8/29/1963 Lodge continues to push for a coup in Saigon against Diem
  
• 8/30/1963 The "hot line" with Moscow became operational to provide a quick, direct link with Washington during emergencies.
  
• 8/30/1963 FBI's William Sullivan wrote a memo about MLK: "We must mark him now, if we have not done so before, as the most dangerous Negro of the future in this nation from the standpoint of communism, the Negro, and national security…."
  
• 8/31/1963 Oswald writes to The Worker in New York about getting a job with them as a photographer.
  
• Early Sept Talks between the Cuban delegate to the UN, Lechuga, and a U.S. delegate, William Attwood, are proposed by the Cubans. RFK encourages the effort. Attwood reports regularly to the White House and to Adlai Stevenson, U.S. ambassador to the U.N.
  
• Early Sept Oswald allegedly met CIA agent David Atlee Phillips in Dallas.
  
• Late Fall: The Church Committee only learned late in its term about the fall 1963 preparations to deal with the possible "assassination of American officials," and it asked the agencies in 1976 for all relevant documents about the matter. When the Church Committee's report went to press, it said the Senate was "awaiting a response from these agencies."
  
• 9/1963 FBI allegedly approaches Oswald to become an informant after he moved back to Dallas, according to Joseph Goulden in the Philadelphia Inquirer 12/8/1963. Manuel Rodriguez registers as alien in Dallas, sets up local chapter of Alpha 66. Renewed back-channel talks between Kennedy and Castro. The President's Texas trip was expanded to two days.
  
• 9/1/1963 Oswald wrote to the Communist Party in New York City and the Socialist Workers Party in New York that he would be relocating to the Baltimore-Washington DC area in October.
  
• 9/2/1963 JFK tells Walter Cronkite that the US would continue to help Vietnam, but it was their war to win or lose.
  
• 9/6/1963 In a NSC meeting, RFK urged a fundamental reassessment of what the US was doing in Vietnam and even suggested the idea of withdrawing from Vietnam.
  
• 9/7/1963 AM/LASH: CIA case officers in Brazil have their first meeting with AM/LASH (Rolando Cubela) since prior to Missile Crisis. They cable Fitzgerald that he would perform an "inside job" on Castro's life and is awaiting a U.S. plan of action.
  
• 9/7/1963 Castro appeared at a Brazilian embassy reception in Havana and an impromptu interview to reporter Daniel Harker, where he allegedly threatens Kennedy. Cuban exile planes have been bombing Cuban frequently in recent weeks.
  
• 9/9/1963 JFK says in an interview with Huntley-Brinkley that the US should stay in Vietnam.
  
• 9/10/1963 FBI headquarters asked Dallas office for information on Oswald.
  
• 9/10/1963 When Kennedy sent Gen. Victor Krulak and Joseph Mendenhall on a fact-finding mission to Vietnam, both came back with widely divergent assessments
  
• 9/11/1963 Horace Twiford of Houston, national committeeman at large of the Socialist Labor party for the state of Texas, mails to Oswald's Dallas PO Box a copy of the SLP's "Weekly People."
  
• 9/11/1963 Henry Cabot Lodge cabled Washington that it was time for a coup in Saigon.
  
• 9/12/1963 At a National Security Council meeting, the Joint Chiefs of Staff again present a report evaluating a projected nuclear first strike against the Soviet Union, in a time scheme of 1964 through 1968 . President Kennedy turns the discussion to his conclusion: " Preemption is not possible for us. " He passes over without comment the report's implication that the remaining months of 1963 are still the most advantageous time for the United States to launch a preemptive strike.
  
• 9/12/1963 Considering Castro 's recent statements, the Cuban Coordinating Committee meets to conduct a broad review of U.S. contingency plans. They agree there is a strong likelihood Castro will retaliate in some way against the rash of covert activity in Cuba; however an attack on the U.S. is considered unlikely.
  
• 9/12/1963 Washington Post broke the Bobby Baker scandal story. Baker was Secretary to Senate Majority Leaders LBJ and Mike Mansfield. Post reports on a breach-of-contract suit against Bobby Baker.
  
• 9/13/1963 Mention of a Presidential one-day trip to Dallas, Ft Worth, San Antonio and Houston appeared in the Dallas Times-Herald.
  
• 9/15/1963 Oswald obtained his Mexican transit visa.
  
• 9/15/1963 Bomb explodes in black church in Birmingham, Alabama.
  
• 9/16/1963 At a State Dept meeting, McCone and two CIA agents recently returned from Saigon reported that the Generals who were plotting a coup were not likely to be able to run a viable government once they came to power. (In Retrospect 65)
  
• 9/16/1963 Apparent "Oswald" appearance in Milwaukee, who signed in the guest register at the Fox and Hounds Inn.
  
• 9/16/1963 FBI's Sullivan wrote a memo urging full COINTELPO measures against MLK.
  
• 9/17/1963 Special Adviser to the US delegation at the UN William Attwood was told by Guinea's ambassador to Cuba that Castro was willing to talk to the US about normalizing relations.
  
• 9/17/1963 Richard Case Nagell allegedly sent Hoover a registered letter warning of the president's impending assassination
  
• 9/17/1963 JFK cabled Lodge to talk with Diem, and that a coup was not a good idea right now.
  
• 9/17/1963 Oswald visited the Mexican consulate in New Orleans and got a tourist card.
  
• 9/18/1963 William Attwood, deputy U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations, wrote memo for Adlai Stevenson and other U.S. officials, requesting authorization to make secret contact with Cuba's UN Ambassador Carlos Lechuga.
  
• 9/18/1963 FBI memo: the CIA advised the FBI two days earlier that the "Agency is giving some consideration to countering the activities of [the FPCC] in foreign countries. "
  
• 9/19/1963 Arnold Johnson, Director of Information of the Communist Party, wrote a cautious reply to Oswald, saying he might want to "remain in the background, not underground."
  
• 9/20/1963 JFK appeared before the UN General Assembly and suggested that the US and USSR cooperate on a trip to the moon. He met with Ambassador Stevenson and gave his approval for journalist William Attwood " to make discreet contact" with Dr. Carlos Lechuga, Cuba's UN ambassador, in order to explore a possible dialogue with Castro.
  
• 9/20/1963 Ruth Paine arrived in New Orleans to spend the weekend with the Oswalds.
  
• 9/20/1963 Richard Case Nagell staged a bank robbery at the State National Bank in El Paso to get himself arrested. He claimed he had stumbled onto "a domestic-formulated and domestic-sponsored conspiracy" against JFK.
  
• 9/22/1963 The Oswalds finished packing their possessions in Ruth's station wagon. There is apparently no luggage long enough to contain the Carcano rifle.
  
• 9/23/1963 Journalist William Attwood first met with Carlos Lechuga at a party organized by Lisa Howard.
  
• 9/23/1963 Marina left for Texas with Ruth
  
• 9/23/1963 Joe Alsop, writing in the Washington Post, compared journalists critical of the war in Vietnam to apologists for Castro and Mao, and called Diem "a courageous, quite viable national leader."
  
• 9/24/1963 Attwood flew to Washington and met with RFK, who recommended that an intermediary meet with Castro to keep US involvement secret.
  
• 9/24/1963 The Senate voted to ratify the Test Ban Treaty by a vote of 80 to 19.
  
• 9/24/1963 JFK announced that Marine Corps Commandant Shoup, who is retiring from the military, would be replaced by Greene. (NY Times 9/25) JFK begins a tour of eleven western states.
  
• 9/24/1963 New Orleans FBI informs headquarters that their Oswald investigation is ongoing. The FBI then sends a report to the CIA on Oswald.
  
• 9/24/1963 Hal Hendrix of the Miami News wrote about the coup that ousted liberal President Bosch of the Dominican Republic. Seth Kantor relates that Hendrix reported the coup 24 hours before it happened; he reportedly had a CIA source at Homestead Air Force Base south of Miami. Hendrix would become known as "The Spook" because of his tight relations with US intelligence.
  
• 9/24/1963 Effective date of a change-of-address card signed by Oswald redirecting his mail from New Orleans to Ruth Paine's house. In the early evening, neighbor Eric Rogers sees Oswald leave 4907 Magazine St carrying two cloth bags, one small and one large. He went across the street and caught a bus headed toward the center of the city.
  
• 9/25/1963 JFK is in Ashland, Wisconsin and participates in a motorcade.
  
• 9/25/1963 Oswald apparently stayed in New Orleans until this day, to collect his $33 unemployment check; it is uncertain where he spent the night. At the Lafayette Square substation, he picked up his unemployment check and mailed a change-of-address card, postmarked 11am, listing the Paine address in Irving, Texas. Sometime between 7 and 9pm Oswald called the Houston home of Horace Twiford, national committeeman of the Socialist Labor Party for Texas. The WC claimed Oswald cashed his $33 check at a Winn-Dixie and at 12:20pm he probably boarded a Continental Trailways bus, #5121, headed for Houston, due to arrive at 10:50pm. (WR 731)
  
• 9/25/1963 CBS Reports aired "McNamara and the Pentagon." Harry Reasoner asked McNamara if it was possible that the South Vietnamese "might win the war on the battlefield and lose it in Saigon"; McNamara admitted that the government had to do a better job winning the support of the people, or no amount of US aid would help. "It is important to recognize it's a South Vietnamese war. It will be won or lost depending upon what they do."
  
• 9/25/1963 A man named Harvey Oswald appeared at the Selective Service office in Austin, Texas to get help in having his discharge upgraded.
  9/25/1963 The Soviet Presidium ratified the Test Ban Treaty.
  
• 9/25/1963 President Juan Bosch of the Dominican Republic is ousted in a military coup.
  
• 9/26/1963 JFK is in Salt Lake City. He participates in a motorcade.
  
• 9/26/1963 A White House spokesman made the first public announcement of a trip to Texas, November 21-22, with stops in Dallas, Houston, Ft. Worth and San Antonio.
  
• 9/26/1963 The close-out date written on Oswald's New Orleans P.O. Box form
  
• 9/26/1963 Lee Oswald supposedly boarded bus #516 of the Flecha Roja line at 2:15pm, bound for Mexico City.
  
• 9/25 or 26 or 27/1963 Sylvia Odio incident occurred.
  
• 9/27/1963 Joseph Valachi testified on television before the Senate Investigations Committee that Vito Genovese was the "boss of bosses" of organized crime. He named other top heads of the mafia as Carlo Gambino and Thomas Luchese, and described the organization of la Cosa Nostra.
  
• 9/27/1963 The Coordinator of Cuban Affairs prepared a memo listing assignments for contingency papers relating to a possible retaliatory actions by the Castro regime.
  
• 9/27/1963 William Attwood met Lechuga at the UN Delegates Lounge
  
• 9/27/1963 (Fri) Oswald allegedly in Mexico City.
  • 10am Oswald arrives by bus
    
  • 10:30am Oswald checked in to the Hotel del Commercio.
    
  • 10:37am A man called the Soviet consulate to inquire about getting a visa to travel to Odessa in the USSR.
    
  • 11:00 A.M. visit to the Cuban consulate, Oswald applied for a Cuban transit visa for a trip to the Soviet Union.
    
  • Afternoon: Oswald visits the Soviet embassy
    
  • 4:05pm the Cuban Consulate phoned the Soviet consulate. Silvia Duran said that a male American citizen was asking for a transit visa to pass through Cuba on his way to the Soviet Union.
    
  • 4:26pm Soviet embassy calls Cuban embassy and asks Silvia Duran if American had been at the Cuban embassy. She says, "He is here now." (HSCA Vol. III)
    
  • The CIA photographed a man leaving the Embassy today and initially claimed it was Oswald.
    
  
  
• 9/28/1963 JFK motorcade in Las Vegas.
  
• 9/28/1963 US, British and Soviet foreign ministers met in NY to discuss easing East-West tensions.
  
• 9/28/1963 (Sat) Mexico City
  
• 9:30-10am The man identifying himself as Oswald returns to the Soviet Embassy, renewing his request for a quick visa to the Soviet Union.
  
• 11:51am Silvia Duran calls Soviet embassy. Says Oswald, who had previously been to Cuban embassy, wants to talk. Man speaks broken Russian. (WC Vol. XVIII) Both embassies are actually closed on Saturday.
  
• 9/28/1963 Someone later identified as Oswald arrived after dark at the Sports Drome Rifle Range in Dallas, Texas, for the first of numerous sightings that would be reported of Oswald at the rifle range.
  
• 9/29/1963 (Sun) Gen. Lemnitzer urged the US and NATO to approve installation of medium-range nuclear missiles in Western Europe.
  
• 9/29/1963 President Kennedy rests at the home of singer Bing Crosby in Palm Desert, California before returning to Washington
  
• 9/29/1963 Taylor, McNamara, Lodge and Harkins met with Diem, who refused to soften the repressiveness of his regime. He wouldn't get rid of the Nhus and was in denial about the extent of the unrest in the country.
  
• 9/30/1963 (Mon) President Kennedy reopens a secret channel of communication between himself and Nikita Khrushchev, via Press Secretary Pierre Salinger and a Washington-based Soviet Secret Police agent.
  
• 9/30/1963 Oswald bought a $20.30 ticket at the Chihuahuense travel agency for a Transportes del Norte bus to Nuevo Laredo.