Deep Politics Timeline

[Tracy Riddle]

• 11/1/1963 (Fri) Stars and Stripes reported Gen. Paul Harkins (commander of the Military Assistance Command in Saigon) as saying: "Victory in the sense it would apply to this kind of war is just months away and the reduction of American advisers can begin any time now." There were 16,732 US "advisers" in country at this time.
  
• 11/1/1963 Secretary of the Navy Fred Korth resigned. John McClellan, chairman of the Permanent Investigations Committee, continued looking into the activities of Billie Sol Estes and Bobby Baker. During this investigation evidence emerged that Lyndon B. Johnson was also involved in political corruption. This included the award of a $7 billion contract for a fighter plane, the TFX, to General Dynamics, a company based in Texas. When it was discovered that the Continental National Bank of Fort Worth, was the principal money source for the General Dynamics plant.
  
• Abraham Bolden, first black Secret Service agent on the White House Detail, states that he receives an FBI Teletype in Chicago detailing a plot by four men to shoot the President in Chicago with high-powered rifles.
  
• McGeorge Bundy presides over a staff meeting at the White House, Bundy opens meeting by stating that he has "spent quite a night watching the cables from Vietnam." Forrestal says the coup has been "well executed." Bundy then comments that Diem is still holding out in the palace, adding that no one wants to go in for the kill.
  
• George Senator moves into Jack Ruby's apartment. They have previously been roommates in 1962.
  
• At about noon today, Lee Harvey Oswald walks over to the post office on his lunch-hour break from the TSBD and rents another post office box at the terminal annex of the U.S. post office in Dallas, for a 2-month period. (P.O. Box # 6225 Holmes Exhibit 1) He then mails three letters. One is a change-of-address card to Consul Reznichenko at the Soviet embassy in Washington. Another is a membership application to the ACLU. The third is Oswald's alerting Communist Party, USA headquarters that his September plans had changed about moving to the Philadelphia-Baltimore area. Oswald also cashes a Texas Unemployment check today (Friday) for $33 at a supermarket in Irving.
  
• Jack Ruby calls a number in Chicago today.
  
• This is the date of an FBI airtel that FBI agent James P. Hosty, Jr. receives from San Antonio, to which he will respond fourteen days from now. (Right-wing subversives are Hosty's FBI specialty. The subject of the exchange of airtels is "John Thomas Masen, IS [Internal Security] - Cuba." Hosty is also directed to begin searching for George Perrell. He subsequently goes to Ruth Paine's home, just outside Dallas, where Marina Oswald is staying. Hosty's stated aim is to interview Mrs. Oswald as "a Soviet immigrant in this country who could conceivably be here with [an] intelligence assignment." Hosty speaks briefly to Marina Oswald and to Ruth Paine. When Oswald arrived at the Paine house this night, he was told that Hosty had been there that day. Oswald was nervous and demanded to know everything that was said. (Marina and Lee 496)
  
• A young man draws attention to himself while buying rifle ammunition at Morgan's Gunshop in Fort Worth. He is rude and impertinent and boasts about having been in the Marines. Three witnesses will remember the incident and think the man looks like Oswald. The real Oswald is busily occupied in Dallas where, on this day, he receives his first paycheck from the Texas Book Depository.
  
• After the assassination, Leonard Hutchinson will come forward to say that he had been asked to cash a check for Oswald earlier in November. Hutchinson, who owns Hutch's Market in Irving, Texas, says the man asked him to cash a two-party check made out to "Harvey Oswald" for $189. He refuses to accept the check, but says he sees the man in his store several more times. He says on one occasion the man and a young woman speak in some foreign language. Hutchinson says he recognized both Oswald and Marina when their photographs are broadcast over television after the assassination.
  
• Hearings begin today in a federal courtroom in New Orleans regarding Carlos Marcello and his ten year battle to avoid deportation. The courtroom is packed. David Ferrie joins Marcello in the courtroom.
  
• 11/1-2/1963 military coup in Saigon; Diem and his brother Nhu were killed in the back of a US-built M113 armored personnel carrier. Just before the coup began, Diem had told Lodge to tell JFK that he was willing to cooperate to get US aid. McNamara recalled that when JFK heard about the death of Diem, he was deeply shocked. (In Retrospect 84); Mike Forrestal said in 1971 that the deaths "shook [JFK] personally...shook his confidence...in the kind of advice he was getting about South Vietnam." Taylor recalled that JFK "rushed from the room with a look of shock and dismay on his face which I had never seen before." (Swords and Plowshares)
  
• 11/2/1963 (Sat) Paul Fay becomes Acting Secretary of the Navy, a position he will hold until November 28 1963.
  
• Oswald told Marina that if Hosty came around again, she was to write down the make, color, and license number of his car. (Marina and Lee 497) He also posted three change-of-address cards to the FPCC, The Militant and The Worker.
  
• According to some researchers, this is the day JFK is to be assassinated in Chicago - three weeks prior to the fatal motorcade in Dallas, Texas. Two of four suspects have been detained. Two of the suspects have Hispanic names - "Rodriquez" and "Gonzales." (According to a Tampa newsman, these two names will also surface in the Tampa assassination plot less than a week from now and only four days before the motorcade in Dallas.)
  
• Around 8:30 AM Chicago time, Ngo Dinh Diem's assassination is being announced on the news. Pierre Salinger announces that a special communications facility would be rush constructed under the Soldiers Field bleachers to keep the President informed on up-to-the-minute developments in coup-torn South Vietnam. He reiterates JFK will not cancel the trip.
  
• JFK is scheduled to arrive in Chicago around 11 AM today. At 9:15 AM Chicago time, White House Press Secretary Pierre Salinger calls newsmen in Washington. "The President is not going to the football game," Salinger says. The motorcade, and JFK's trip to Chicago, are suddenly cancelled. Tonight, three men being held in Chicago on suspicion of planning to assassinate JFK today in Chicago are turned over to the police by the Secret Service and are subsequently released.
  
• Around this time, according to Craig Roberts in his book THE KILL ZONE, the three hired French Corsican assassins Sauveur Pironti, Lucien Sarti and Jorge Bocognini -- are transported from Mexico City to Brownsville, Texas, where they cross the border on Italian passports. They are met on the U.S. side by representatives of the American Mafia out of Chicago (Sam Giancana's people) and driven to Dallas. In Dallas, they stay in a CIA provided safe house to preclude any hotel records of their presence. Roberts maintains that the house is provided by CIA operative Roscoe White. While in Dallas, the assassins begin to photograph and study Dealey Plaza.
  
• 11/3/1963 (Sun) Ruth Paine gave Oswald another driving lesson, consisting of parallel parking.
  
• Week of November 3, 1963 Jack Ruby's rate of out-of-state calls rises to 25 times the average rate of January through September.
  
• Either this day or the following day, Oswald, Marina, and children are in Irving shopping. They apparently enter a store displaying a sign indicating guns are sold. Oswald asks where he can get the firing pin on his rifle repaired. The store manager believes that she then directs him to the nearby Irving Sports Shop.
  
• 11/4/1963 (Mon) Secret Service agent Winston Lawson in Washington and Forrest Sorrels, the latter agent in charge of the Secret Service Dallas office, receive their first official notification of the President's coming trip. Lawson is to act as the White House detail's advance man in Dallas. Sorrels is instructed to make a preliminary survey of two possible luncheon sites: the new Trade Mart north of the downtown section on Stemmons Freeway and the Women's Building at Fair Park, east of the business district.
  
• Sometime between Nov. 4 and Nov. 8 - Oswald supposedly takes his rifle to the Irving Sports Shop to have it drilled for a telescopic-sight.
  
• Case officer is told by Desmond Fitzgerald that AM/LASH can be informed that the rifles, telescopic sights, and explosives will be provided.
  
• US and USSR reach agreement in Geneva on the allocation of special radio frequences for communications between the earth and satellites and spaceships.
  
• Dallas Morning News reports that Citizens Council may handle the president's visit to Dallas either 11/21 or 22.
  
• Security Chief Paul Rothermel memo to H.L. Hunt; it talked of JFK's upcoming trip to Dallas and warned of "unconfirmed reports of possible violence during the parade. The FBI and Police Department each have planted an informant in the General Walker group here in Dallas..." "The North Texas informant is reporting information that would indicate that a group may be planning an incident." "There is another report from a left wing group that an incident will occur with the full knowledge of the President, whereby the left wingers will start the incident in hopes of dragging in any of the right wing groups, and individuals nearby, and then withdraw. The talk is that the incident involving Adlai Stevenson made the present administration hopeful in that they could get the same thing to happen to Kennedy, it could reasure his re-election. If an incident of this nature were to occur, the true story of who perpetrated it would never come out." After the assassination, the Hunts went around trying to gather up all copies of this memo to prevent it from leaking. (Texas Rich; The Man Who Knew Too Much p589-90)
  
• FBI agent Hosty phoned the Depository and confirmed that Oswald worked there; their records listed Ruth Paine's house for his address. He then sent an airmail message to the New Orleans FBI to have Oswald's file transferred to Dallas. (H 4 452)
  
• Oswald rides in to work with Frazier, and goes back to his roominghouse that afternoon. Oswald applied to join the ACLU and asked its national office how he could get in touch with "ACLU groups in my area," though he already should have known this information. (H 17 673)
  
• A habeas corpus hearing for Richard Case Nagell takes place at the El Paso district courthouse. Nagell told federal judge R.E. Thomason: "I had a motive for doing what I did. But my motive was not to hold up the bank. I do not intend to disclose my motive at this time."
  
• Radio Havana again accuses CIA of attacking Cuba.
  
• Saigon: Buddhist Nguyen Ngoc Tho, former vice-president, took office as premier. Lodge cabled Washington that he thought the coup would improve the situation in South Vietnam.
  
• Soviet guards halted a US troop convoy at the western border of Berlin.
  
• In a letter, Byron Skelton, a Democratic National Committeeman from Texas, asks RFK to earnestly consider dropping Dallas from the president's upcoming Texas itinerary. Skelton cites a prominent Dallas resident's recent pronouncement that JFK is "a liability to the free world." RFK forwards Skelton's letter to JFK aide Kenny O'Donnell. Skelton feels so passionately about bypassing Dallas that he flies to Washington to plead his case personally.
  
• The night manager of the Dallas central Western Union office observes "Oswald" picking up several money orders. The real Oswald is spending this evening with his wife and child in Irving.
  
• Carlos Marcello goes on trial today in New Orleans on Federal charges of conspiracy in connection with his alleged falsification of a Guatemalan birth certificate.
  
• "Saigon Coup Gives Americans Hope" is the headline of David Halberstam's analysis in today's New York Times.
  
• Pfc. Eugene B. Dinkin, who has written RFK a letter from France warning of a possible assassination attempt on JFK, is absent without leave from his unit, Headquarters Company, U.S. Army General Depot, Metz, France. Dinkin was scheduled for a psychiatric examination this same day. He apparently enters Switzerland using a false army identification card with forged travel orders.
  
• 11/5/1963 (Tue) Defense Dept transferred from the Navy to the Army-Air Force strike command the responsibility for the Middle East, much of Africa and southern Asia.
  
• Another US convoy was stopped at Marienborn checkpoint in Berlin. JFK called an emergency meeting of his advisers to discuss the Soviet challenges to Western access rights. After a two-day war of nerves, US troops entered West Berlin.
  
• Today's date on a police photo of Roscoe White.
  
• FBI agent Hosty and agent Gary S. Wilson briefly visited the Paine home; Ruth hadn't obtained Oswald's rooming-house address. "His intention was to interview Marina to find out what she knew about the purpose behind Lee's phone calls to the Soviet Union's Mexico City embassy." (McKnight)
  
• William Attwood met with Kennedy's National Security Adviser, McGeorge Bundy, and Gordon Chase of the National Security Council staff. He filled them in on Castro's eagerness to facilitate a dialogue with Kennedy. On November 8, at Chase's request, Attwood put all this in a memorandum.
  
• David Ferrie purchases a .38 caliber revolver.
  
• Colonel William Bishop asserts that, on this date, Rolando Masferrer is given $500,000 by Jimmy Hoffa.
  
• This evening at Jack Ruby's Carousel Club in Dallas an individual named Wilbur Waldon Litchfield waits to speak with Ruby. "The next to see Ruby, Litchfield reported, was a man in a V-neck sweater who had been sitting four tables in front of Litchfield. [He] had paid particular attention to that man, he explained, because of his sloppy dress.'" Fifteen or twenty minutes after entering Ruby's office, the man comes out with Ruby. After JFK's assassination, Litchfield will positively identify the man as Oswald.
  
• 11/6/1963 (Wed) Either on this day or the 7th or 8[SUP]th[/SUP] (or sometime between Nov 2 and 9 according to McKnight), Oswald went to the Dallas FBI office to see Hosty, who was out to lunch. He allegedly left a threatening note, which was destroyed after the assassination.
  
• Oswald also went to the library and checked out The Shark and the Sardines,' a book by Juan Jose Arevalo, former left-wing president of Guatemala, a work highly critical of US policy in Latin America. The book was due 11/13 and was never returned. The book was not found among Oswald's belongings. (FBI report 2/28/1964, H 25 901) In the summer of 1966, Albert Newman visited Dallas and discovered that the volume had been mysteriously returned in early 1964. (The Reasons Why p486)
  
• Henry Cabot Lodge sends what will be the last of his private cables to JFK concerning Vietnam. "Eyes only. Now that the revolution has occurred, I assume you will not want my weekly reports . . . I believe prospects of victory are much improved, provided the generals stay united . . . There is no doubt that the coup was a Vietnamese and a popular affair, which we could neither manage nor stop after it got started and which we could only have influenced with great difficulty." "...It is equally certain that the ground in which the coup seed grew into a robust plant was prepared by us, and that the coup would not have happened [as] it did without our preparation."
  
• Canadian prime minister Pearson spoke in NYC of the need to strengthen NATO.
  
• Felipe Vidal Santiago, Cuban exile, is in Dallas Texas today through the 11th, during which time he meets with wealthy Dallas oil men.
  
• (Switzerland) Pfc. Eugene B. Dinkin, who has warned RFK about an impending assassination attempt on JFK, appears in the press room of United Nations Office in Geneva today and tells reporters he is being persecuted. He also tells his story to the editor of the Geneva Diplomat. (The CIA later confirms this in a letter to the Warren Commission. This letter does NOT appear in the Warren Commission Report.) Army reports show that he voluntarily returns to his unit in Metz, France on or about November 11, 1963. He is immediately placed under arrest.
  
• 11/7/1963 (Thu) Pierre Salinger told the press that Jackie would go to Texas with JFK. Dallas Morning News reports that JFK will come to Texas 11/21-22.
  
• At the Kremlin celebration of the forty-sixth anniversary of the Bolshevik Revolution, Khrushchev warns, "If the Americans attack Cuba, we shall attack America's allies who are even closer to the Soviet Union." He accuses Western diplomats of "rejoicing that we are arguing with the Chinese" and warns the Soviet Union has greater disputes with the West: "The Chinese and we have the same future."
  
• Asked to comment on recent exile raids against Cuba, Ricardo L. Santos Pesa, the Cuban Third Secretary to the Hague says: "Just wait, and you will see what we can do. It will happen soon. Just wait. Just wait."
  
• A man who identifies himself as Oswald on a ticket for a rifle he left to be repaired, visits a gun and furniture shop in Dallas.
  
• Jack Ruby places the first of two telephone calls (on this day and the next) to two of Jimmy Hoffa's top henchmen in Chicago and Miami. Ruby also rents P.O. Box # 5475 at the terminal annex of the U.S. post office in Dallas.
  
• A letter from former congressman Charles Kersten warning of Soviet assassins is allegedly received by JFK.
  
• 11/8/1963 (Fri) The United States formally recognizes the new Government of South Vietnam, with General Duong Van Minh as president and former Vice President Nguyen Ngoc Tho as premier.
  
• After undertaking the responsibility for advance preparations for the visit to Dallas, Agent Winston G. Lawson goes to the PRS offices in Washington. A check of the geographic indexes there reveals no listing for any individual deemed to be a potential danger to the President in the territory of the Secret Service regional office which includes Dallas and Fort Worth.
  
• A memo from the White House Secret Service dated Nov. 8 reported: Subject made statement of a plan to assassinate the President in October 1963: Subject stated he will use a gun, and if he couldn't get closer he would find another way. Subject is described as: White, male, 20, slender in build,' etc. Mullins said the Secret Service had been advised of three persons in the area who reportedly had made threats on the President's life. One of the three wasand still isin jail here under heavy bond. Mullins said he did not know if the other two men have followed the Presidential caravan to Dallas. Sarasota County Sheriff Ross E. Boyer also said yesterday that officers who protected Kennedy in Tampa Monday were warned about a young man' who had threatened to kill the President during that trip." (Palamara)
  
• Governor John Connally confirms today that the President will come to Texas on November 21-22, and that he will visit San Antonio, Houston, Fort Worth, Dallas, and Austin.
  
• In Irving, Texas, "Harvey Oswald" cashed a check at a supermarket for $189; he was allegedly in this store several times, accompanied by two women. (H 26 178-9; H 10 327-40) The real Oswald never cashes checks for such large amounts in stores and is not in Irving at this time. A barber near this store said Oswald came into his shop on the 8th with a 14-year-old boy, and they both made leftist remarks.
  
• Jack Ruby places a call to Murray W. (Dusty) Miller at the Eden Roc Hotel in Miami. (Miller is head of the Southern Conference of Teamsters in 1963.) The call lasts four minutes. Miller is another key lieutenant of Teamster President James Hoffa. Thirty-one minutes after he calls Dusty Miller, Ruby places a call to Barney Baker in Chicago. This call lasts 14 minutes.
  
• Life magazine's cover story runs as "The Bobby Baker Bombshell." LBJ refuses to comment on the matter in spite of a full page photograph of Johnson and Bobby Baker together.
  
• During the week of November the 8th - Elizabeth Cole is attending a Foreign Student's conference at Rutgers University, and overhears a student from Fairleigh Dickinson University, representing Cuba, on the payphone talking heatedly in Spanish about Kennedy being killed when he goes to Dallas.
  
• The WR claimed Oswald drove to Irving with Frazier, though Frazier never testified that he did this. Marina stated that he didn't come home on this day, that he came to Irving around 9am on the 9th without explaining how he got there. (H 23 840)
  
• An FBI wiretap was placed on MLK's residence and in the SCLC's headquarters in Atlanta.
  
• New cabinet, headed by Georgios Papandreou, took office in Greece.
  
• UPI reported that Venezuela claimed it found a large cache of foreign arms in a smugglers' cove. The government presumed they came from Cuba.
  
• A letter was written, reportedly by Oswald, to a "Mr. Hunt." This letter surfaced during the HSCA investigation when it was sent to researcher Penn Jones.
  
• The CIA gets the FBI information on Oswald from 10/31.
  
• 11/8-9/1963 Kennedy's first, low profile trip to New York City. (Palamara)
  
• 11/9/1963 (Sat) President Kennedy was in New York, there is no record of what he did on this day. By the evening he was with the family in Atoka Virginia. Palamara: "Thanks to the shift reports for November 9, 1963, we do know that JFK stayed at the Carlyle Hotel during his first New York trip and visited the Steven Smith residence."
  
• US resumed its commodity-import program to South Vietnam, which had been suspended in August.
  
• Around 1:30-2pm A man walks into Downtown Lincoln Mercury car dealership in Dallas, identifies himself as Lee Oswald, says he is soon expecting a lot of money and wants a new car. He takes a demonstration ride, driving at high speeds.
  
• Oswald is at the Sports Drome rifle range in Dallas from this day on; he shoots well but constantly calls attention to himself. The WC decided this couldn't have been the real Oswald, and dismissed the stories. (WR 318)
  
• The real Oswald was taken by Mrs Paine to the nearby Oak Cliff drivers' license examining station to take his driver's test, but the office was closed. (WR 740; H 2 515)
  
• A letter is sent to the Russian embassy in Washington on this date, allegedly from Oswald: "I was unable to remain in Mexico indefinitely because of my Mexican visa restrictions which was for 15 days only. I could not take a chance on requesting a new visa unless I used my real name, so I returned to the United States."
  
• William Augustus Somersett, an informer for the FBI and the Miami Police tape-records, in his own apartment, a threat against JFK made by his boyhood friend, Joseph Milteer -- now a ranking member of several hate groups, including the National States Rights Party, the Ku Klux Klan, the American constitution Party and the White Citizens' Council of Atlanta. Somersett informs his police contact about the conversation.
  
• Press reports: "Senate investigators plan to call Billie Sol Estes next week for a long-awaited inquiry."
  
• On this weekend, Nov. 9 - 10, David Ferrie is at Churchill Farms in New Orleans with Carlos Marcello.
  
• 11/10/1963 (Sun) Dallas Sunday News prints Gallup poll showing JFK's popularity at 59%.
  
• The second check of PRS was done by Roy Kellerman.
  
• PRS SS agent Glen Bennett was "temporarily assigned to the White House Detail" on this date. (18 H 783)
  
• "Oswald" is seen at the Sports Drome rifle range by Garland Slack. Ruth remembered Oswald watching football on TV that day.
  
• "Secret Service agents were disclosed to have found witnesses who saw Oswald at the [Trinity] river rifle range between Nov. 10 and 16...The witnesses were reportedly in awe of Oswald's marksmanship..." (Chicago Sun times 12/7/1963)
  
• Col. Fletcher Prouty is sent to the South Pole by Edward Lansdale.
  
• 11/11/1963 (Mon) An employee of Parrot Jungle in Miami hears an unidentified male make some remarks about a friend of his named Lee who is an American Marxist, speaks Russian and is a crack marksman. The man makes references to Kennedy and "shooting between the eyes" and adds that his friend is now in either Texas or Mexico.
  
• Rene Vallejo phoned Lisa Howard again on behalf of Castro to reiterate their "appreciation of the need for security. " He said Castro would go along with any arrangements Kennedy's representatives might want to make.
  
• Veteran's Day. Oswald was at the Paine house that day.
  
• Jack Ruby called Barney Baker in Chicago and Frank Goldstein (a professional gambler) in San Francisco. He also met with Alexander Philip Gruber. (Ruby Cover-Up 56) Dr. Ulevitch prescribes pills to calm Ruby's nerves.
  
• Brazil's president Goulart in a speech at the opening of the annual conference of the Alliance for Progress in Sao Paulo, challenged the validity of the Alliance as a viable solution to the region's problems.
  
• 11/12/1963 (Tue) Memorandum for the record relates a meeting on Cuban Operations. McCone gave a brief summary of recent developments inside Cuba. FitzGerald reported on Cuban operations.
  
• NSC official Gordon Chase drafted a memorandum in order to present arguments in favor of improved relations. The memo was drafted as the first major meeting between high level Cuban and U.S. officials to discuss better relations was being organized; that meeting was aborted by the assassination of John F. Kennedy. (NSC, "Some Arguments Against Accommodation--A Rebuttal," November 12, 1963; )
  
• NSAM 271 outlined Kennedy's views on his plans for future US-Soviet cooperation in space, "including cooperation in lunar landing programs."
  
• After hearing Attwood's report, McGeorge Bundy said that before a meeting with Castro himself there should be a preliminary talk with Vallejo at the United Nations to find out specifically what Castro wanted to talk about. On November 14, Lisa Howard relayed this information to Rene Vallejo, who said he would discuss it with Castro.
  
• JFK held his only official meeting on the upcoming 1964 campaign; LBJ was not present, though there was apparently no talk of removing him from the ticket. (The Making of the President 1964 p28)
  
• Oswald dropped off his note to Hosty on this date according to Posner. (Case Closed p217) Sometime between the 12th and 15th, Hosty picked up the note, but left it on his desk, unread, until the 22nd.
  
• Michael Paine visited the house in Irving. Ruth showed him Oswald's letter to the Soviet Embassy, but he didn't seem very interested. (H 2 406)
  
• In Moscow, Yale professor Frederick Barghoorn was arrested on charges of being a spy.
  
• Miami police alerted the Secret Service about the Milteer assassination tape.
  
• 11/12-13/1963 Ruby met with Paul Rowland Jones and Alex Gruber; the three hadn't talked since 1947. Gruber told the FBI that he was in Joplin, Missouri in 11/1963 and just decided to drop in on Ruby in Dallas. (Ruby Cover Up 57)
  
• 11/13/1963 (Wed) SS agent Winston Lawson arrived in Dallas and reported to Forrest Sorrels at the Dallas office to prepare for the President's trip. He then met with Jesse Curry and examined the Trade Mart site. Dallas police officially notified of JFK's visit. (Four Days in November)
  
• Ruth Paine filed a petition for a divorce from Michael Paine in Domestic Relations Court.
  
• Oswald was reportedly at Hutchinson's supermarket with Marina.
  
• Army code breaker Eugene Dinkin, who had foreknowledge of a threat and attempted to warn officials, is taken into custody by Army officials and hospitalized (a Secret Service agent even interviews him).
  
• 11/14/1963 (Thu) JFK visit to Elkton, Maryland for the dedication of the MarylandDelaware Turnpike (a non-motorcade, ribbon-cutting affair)
  
• JFK demanded the release of Prof. Barghoorn, saying he was "innocent of any intelligence mission."
  
• Commerce Dept announced that the US balance of payments deficit for the third quarter of '63 was at its lowest level since 1957.
  
• 11/14-15: the second New York trip. "Top city police with many years of experience in guarding Presidents and visiting heads of state said yesterday that President Kennedy took too many chances. On Nov. 14--eight days before the assassin's bullet struck him down--the President rode through New York City without a motorcycle escort and with fewer guards than police and the Secret Service wanted him to have…A frequent visitor to New York City, the President until last week had been heavily guarded, had a motorcycle escort, and traveled heavily-guarded streets which had been cleared of other traffic to make way from him. There were those who spoke disparagingly of the interruption of normal living occasioned by the President's visits, and this disturbed him." (NY Daily News 11/23/1963)
  
• The White House gave its approval of the selection of the Trade Mart as the lunch site. (SS memo to WC, 7/10/1964, CD 1251, CE 1360, H 22 613) The WC determined that Kenny O'Donnell and the SS chose the Trade Mart as the luncheon site, but William Manchester says that Connally pressured advance man Bruno into choosing the Trade Mart. The SS was then directed to chose a motorcade route that would allow 45 minutes for JFK to travel from Love Field to the Trade Mart. (Lawson testimony H 4 325) That day, Sorrels and Lawson drove over a possible route. (Case Closed 218)
  
• Oswald called Marina and she asked him not to come to Irving this weekend. (H 1 63)
  
• Alleged meeting of Ruby, Weissman and Tippit took place today.
  
• JFK said in a press conference: "We do have a new situation there [in Vietnam], and a new government, we hope, an increased effort in the war" and his goal was "to bring Americans home, permit the South Vietnamese to maintain themselves as a free and independent country, and permit democratic forces within the country to operate - which they can, of course, much more freely when the assault from the inside, and which is manipulated from the north, is ended." He talked about the upcoming Honolulu conference: "How we can bring Americans out of there. That is our object, to bring Americans home."
  
• 11/15/1963 (Fri) James Reston wrote in the NY Times that "there is a vague feeling of doubt and disappointment in the country about President Kennedy's first term," mostly because he had not mastered "how to govern," that is, how to work with Congress.
  
• Associated Press story: "The (Secret) Service can overrule even the President where his personal security is involved."
  
• Secret Service's Protection Research Section report (H 17 566) shows that on this date they received word that the FBI had interviewed a subject on 11/14 who "stated that he is a member of the Ku Klux Klan; that during his travels throughout the country, his sources have told him that a militant group of the National States Rights Party plans to assassinate the President and other high-level officials. He stated that he does not believe this is planned for the near future, but he does believe the attempt will be made."
  
• Sorrels and Lawson meet with Dallas police, and review the motorcade route. (Lawson statement, CE 769, H 17 3)
  
• Oswald stayed in Dallas when his wife told him the house would be crowded because of a birthday party for Paine's daughter.
  
• Dallas Times-Herald reported the Trade Mart lunch site for JFK's upcoming visit. The Dallas Morning News reported that a presidential motorcade through the Dallas-Fort Worth area was unlikely due to time and security considerations; the source was Raymond Buck, president of the Ft Worth Chamber of Commerce and a longtime LBJ supporter.
  
• Approx on this date, Ruby began using a safe to keep his money in; he planned to sink it in concrete in his office. (Ruby Cover-Up 60)
  
• "a US military spokesman...promised 1,000 American military men could be withdrawn from Vietnam beginning on December 3." (Hickenlooper Study [done by Congressional Republicans], 5/9/1967)
  
• 11/16/1963 (Sat) New York Times reports "1,000 U.S. Troops to Leave Vietnam."
  
• JFK spent the day at Cape Canaveral where he witnessed a Polaris launch from a sub.
  
• Justice Dept cleared Gilpatric of any "legal or ethical conflict of interest" in the TFX case.
  
• The Dallas Morning News reported that the White House had decided to go ahead with a Dallas motorcade; the decision had been made the day before. The motorcade was expected to travel "west on Main Street at noon next Friday...The change in plans apparently resulted from numerous complaints from Democratic workers" who wanted to see the president. The exact route was not yet firmly established. (CE 1361) The Dallas Times Herald reported that the motorcade "apparently will loop through the downtown area, probably on Main Street." (H 22 613)
  
• Oswald made a second attempt to obtain a driver's license, and even began filling out an application. (WR 740; CE 426) But he arrived just before closing time, and there was a long line ahead of him. (H 2 516-17) Otherwise, his whereabouts from Friday evening to Monday morning are not known.
  
• Laotian leaders of the neutralist and pro-Communist forces agreed to a cease fire in the Plain of Jars.
  
• Moscow releases Barghoorn because of the personal request by JFK, yet still insisting he was a spy.
  
• At the Sports Drome rifle range, "Oswald" shoots at someone's else's target, once again attracting attention to himself; he is using a 6.5mm Italian rifle with a 4x scope.
  
• 11/17/1963 (Sun) Roy Kellerman indicated to the Warren Commission that today he was given the assignment to be the nominal agent in charge of the Dallas trip. (2 H 1056)
  
• Marina and Mrs Paine tried to call Oswald's roominghouse, but there was no one there with the name "Oswald." (WC)
  
• FBI overnight code clerk William S. Walter, in New Orleans, maintains that he receives an Airtel alert from FBI headquarters in Washington about "a threat to assassinate President Kennedy November 22-23" in Dallas "by a militant revolutionary group."
  
• Harold Reynolds, a citizen of Abilene, Texas, two hundred miles west of Dallas, picks up a note left for one of his neighbors. It is an urgent request to call one of two Dallas telephone numbers, and the signature reads "Lee Oswald." The neighbor the note is addressed to is Pedro Gonzalez, president of a local anti-Castro group called the Cuban Liberation Committee.
  
• Ruby made a trip to Las Vegas, which was not mentioned by the WC. (12/3/1963 FBI interviews by agents James Doyle, Arthur Barrett, Donald Holland; Conspiracy 599).
  
• Oswald is reportedly seen at the Sports Drome Rifle Range. He is accompanied by another heavy-set man (reportedly Henry O. Chenyworth).
  
• After leaving the rifle range, Oswald reportedly drives to Jack's Bar on Exposition St. in Dallas. Vern Davis meets Oswald at the club. "... everyone thought he was kind of a pest and could have done without him." Davis sees Jack Ruby enter the bar and acknowledges him. Davis then leaves the bar. When Oswald leaves the bar, he may have driven or may have been driven to Abilene, Texas - where he reportedly makes his next appearance.
  
• Dallas civic leaders publicly ask for no demonstrations during JFK's upcoming visit. One hundred extra police will be on duty on the 22nd to ensure cooperation.
  
• FBI (SOG) has by now learned of Oswald's Nov. 12th letter to the Soviet embassy requesting a return visa to Russia.
  
• Alberto Fowler, a Bay of Pigs veteran, has rented the house next door to the Kennedy estate in Palm Beach. Fowler says that he spends the entire weekend playing loud Cuban music. Fowler will begin working for New Orleans District Attorney Jim Garrison in 1967.
  
• Bobby Kennedy meets today with Harry Williams and Manuel Artime. They are scheduled to meet again on November 21 or 22. Bobby asks for Harry's help with security during the upcoming Florida trip. Bobby seems especially worried about security for JFK while he is in Miami.
  
• Gilberto Policarpo Lopez attends a Tampa chapter meeting of the Fair Play for Cuba Committee. (HSCA)
  
• 11/18/1963 (Mon) In Washington, the Soviet Embassy receives a crudely typed, badly spelled letter dated nine days earlier and signed by " Lee H. Oswald " of Dallas. The letter seems to implicate the Soviet Union in conspiring with Oswald in the assassination of President Kennedy that will occur four days later.
  
• Lee and Marina fought over the phone because she learned that he was living at his roominghouse under an assumed name.
  
• Johnny Rosselli, apparently canceling plans to go to Washington, leaves instead for Las Vegas, where he can make calls and conduct meetings free from FBI surveillance. (Mahoney p284)
  
• Dallas City Council passed an ordance outlawing attacks on visiting speakers.
  
• JFK instructs William Attwood to call a top Castro aide and suggest preliminary negotiations at the UN. (The Fish Is Red) On November 18, Lisa Howard called Rene Vallejo again. This time she passed the phone to Attwood. At the other end of the line Fidel Castro was listening in on the Vallejo-Attwood conversation, as he would tell Attwood many years later. Attwood asked Vallejo if he could come to New York for a preliminary meeting. Vallejo said he could not come at that time but that "we " would send instructions to Lechuga to propose and discuss with Attwood " an agenda " for a later meeting with Castro. Attwood said he would await Lechuga's call. (Attwood, Twilight Struggle)
  
• Police chief Jesse Curry drove SS agents Lawson and Sorrels over the motorcade route in Dallas, stopping where Main Street enters Dealey Plaza.
  
• Jack Ruby returned from Las Vegas and had his lawyer draw up a power of attorney so that his sister, Eva Grant, could look after his business affairs.
  
• Dallas Morning News: "Seating for the President's luncheon Friday - subject to controversy in local Democratic ranks - must be approved by the Secret Service before taking final form....The presidential party will ride in a motorcade through Downtown Dallas prior to the luncheon. Several routes are still under study. Most likely the motorcade will move west on Main Street through the downtown area. Baxton Bryant, a Kennedy supporter, has complained that Kennedy's campaign workers in Dallas have been slighted on the invitation list."
  
• JFK visited Tampa and Miami Beach, Florida. There was a helicopter ride and short motorcade in Miami.
  
• President Kennedy delivered a speech to the Inter-American Press Association in Miami in which he publicly outlined conditions for a peaceful accommodation with Cuba. Ted Sorenson, President Kennedy's top speech writer, said the speech "would open a door to the Cuban leader." (Kennedy, by Michael Beschloss, p 659.)
  
• In the Tampa motorcade, JFK supposedly told SS agent Floyd Boring to keep the other agents off the trunk of the presidential limo. (Death of a President p37) Boring later denied this to Vince Palamara, and photos from the motorcade show agents on the back of the car. The Miami threats against the president were not reported to those involved in planning the Texas trip.
  
• The Dallas route was approved by the local host committee and White House representatives. (WR 2) According to William Manchester, the final route was approved "at a meeting in a private Dallas club. The participants - Secret Service agents and local businessmen - saw no need to consult the Vice President..." (Death of a President 6)
  
• Ruby met with Bertha Cheek about her investing in the nightclub.
  
• The FBI received the CIA photo of the heavy-set man in Mexico City, together with a report on Oswald's visit to the Cuban embassy. Both were forwarded to the Dallas office. (Inquest p75)
  
• FBI office in Dallas has a meeting about the President's upcoming trip to Dallas; according to Hosty, both the FBI in Washington and in Dallas were first informed of the trip when they read about it in the paper over the weekend. Shanklin informed his agents that the SS didn't want the FBI's help in protecting JFK. (Assignment Oswald p3)
  
• 11/19/1963 (Tue) The motorcade began to be publicized. (WR 2) The Dallas Morning News and Times Herald mentioned the turn onto Houston and them Elm. (CD 320, WR 39) The Dallas Morning News gave the same information on both 11/19 and 11/20. (CD 320) But no map was published in either paper.
  
• Dallas Morning News: "Gov. John Connally, luncheon speaker at the Texas Water Convervation Association meeting in Austin Monday, was excused as soon as he finished his speech. Sir, we excuse you, and you may get going and get back to your preparation for the Irish wake to be held here next Friday,' said Guy Jackson Jr. of Anahuac, luncheon master of ceremonies. President Kennedy will be the guest at a Democratic fund-raising dinner here next Friday."
  
• LBJ took a Braniff flight to Dallas and spoke to the American Bottlers of Carbonated Beverages. (Death of a President p6)
  
• Look magazine ran a photo essay by Fletcher Knebel on the making of the film Seven Days in May. The journalist revealed the rampant anxieties that the film's production had set off in Washington. "At the outset of filming, the moviemakers had a call from still another arm of government. The Secret Service was alarmed at a spurious report that the movie involved a President's assassination."
  
• During the final week of Kennedy's life, the Wall St Journal acknowledged that there was general prosperity, but claimed there was an uneasiness about Kennedy attributable to his attempts to control the economy, as well as to excessive spending and the growth of government. (x Wall Street Journal, Nov. 19, 1963, 'The Anti-Business Image', p. 18) In a separate article it said that Kennedy's foreign aid had often fostered 'statist and socialistic institutions.'" (x Wall Street Journal, Nov. 19, 1963, 'Blunt Talk on a Blunt Tool', p. 18)."
  
• FBI report of SA Benjamin Keutzer, dated November 25, 1963 in which he wrote that Mrs. Henrietta Vargas had reported that she and two friends had seen a rifle exchange between two men in cars near the TSBD on November 19, 1963. The matter was investigated. In his report SA William Brookhart wrote that SA Pinkston had learned from Sheriff Bill Decker of the DPD that deer season had officially opened in the State of Texas on Saturday, November 16, 1963 and; "literally thousands of Texans went deerhunting over the weekend of november 16-17, 1963, and many of these hunters still had their high-powered deer rifles in their automobiles during the week beginning November 18, 1963"
  
• RFK calls JFK to see if he can squeeze Richard Helms into his schedule. The CIA claim hard evidence of Castro's attempt to overthrow the government of Venezuela. A half hour later, Helms and RFK walk into the Oval Office with a submachine gun recovered from an arms cache in Venezuela. On the stock was the official seal of Cuba. Knowing JFK 's consideration of a rapprochement with Castro, Helm 's visit was meant to torpedo any such notion. (Mahoney pp285-286)
  
• The evidence challenging Roswell Gilpatric's contention he had resigned from the law firm representing General Dynamics came into the congressional hearings on Nov 19 and 20. "The tragic death of President Kennedy shocked the country and made it impossible to continue the TFX hearings." (Mollenhoff, The Pentagon)
  
• Gordon Chase reported in a memo on the discussions between Attwood and Castro's aide de camp, Dr. Rene Vallejo, on a meeting in Cuba or New York. (White House, Talks with Cuba , November 19, 1963)
  
• Gov. George Wallace appeared in Dallas and announced he would be a candidate for the Democratic presidential race in 1964.
  
• Attwood spoke with Rene Vallejo by phone in Cuba; Castro was sitting by Vallejo's side. He wanted Attwood to find some way to come to Cuba. Then he called McGeorge Bundy and told him about his call to Cuba. (Conspiracy 430)
  
• Jack Ruby told his tax attorney that he had suddenly managed to come up with the money to address his considerable back tax problems. On November 22, Ruby would be seen with $7,000 in cash at his bank and was arrested with $3,000 in cash in his possession. As of November 19th the supposedly cash strapped Ruby had begun talking to a realtor about a new location for his club, had inquired with someone in the travel business about a Caribbean cruise and told a friend that he planned on moving into a new apartment on Turtle Creek, at almost double his then current apartment rental rate. (Someone Would Have Talked) Ruby told his tax attorney that a "friend" would provide him money to settle his long-standing tax debts (then more than $39,000). (Ruby Cover-Up 49; Blakey)
  
• Cambodia renounced US economic and military aid and asked US troops to leave: "By this measure we will be poorer but more indepenent." Norodom Sihanouk charged that US aid was being used against him and that the CIA was trying to oust him.
  
• Communique indicated that Oswald had written to the Soviet Embassy in Washington, reporting that he had been to Mexico City and made contact with Kostikov. (Assignment Oswald 139)
  
• Castro contacts reporter Jean Daniel and spends six hours talking to him about improving U.S.-Cuban relations. (Alleged Assassination Plots Involving Foreign Leaders, 4/23/76; Daniel, "When Castro Heard the News," New Republic, 12/7/63)
  
• 11/20/1963 (Wed) As the hand of the clock in Jean Daniel's hotel room neared 4:00 A.M. on November 20, Castro expressed his hope for Kennedy: "I cannot help hoping that a leader will come to the fore in North America (why not Kennedy, there are things in his favor! ), who will be willing to brave unpopularity, fight the trusts, tell the truth and, most important, let the various nations act as they see fit. Kennedy could still be this man. He still has the possibility of becoming, in the eyes of history, the greatest President of the United States, the leader who may at last understand that there can be coexistence between capitalists and socialists, even in the Americas. He would then be an even greater President than Lincoln. " (Jean Daniel, "When Castro Heard the News, " New Republic (December 7, 1963)
  
• 8:45 AM (EST) JFK had his last breakfast with Congressional leaders.
  
• CIA officer telephones AM/LASH for meeting on Nov 22. As a signal that his request for weapons, specifically, a high-powered rifle with telescopic sights or some other weapon which could be used to assassinate Castro from a distance, will be granted, the officer states this is the meeting AM/LASH requested . This is the first indication that he might receive the specific support that he had requested. (Book V Final Report of the [Senate] Select Committee to Study Governmental Operations with respect to Intelligence Activities, 4/23/76; 1967 Inspector General 's Report, p 90)
  
• In Nashville, Hoffa's lawyer is disbarred for trying to bribe a juror.
  
• Rev. J. Sidlow Baxter tells the Baptist General Convention of Texas that the American people had made "one of the greatest blunders in its history when it put a Roman Catholic President in the White House."
  
• 10:00 AM Mary Dowling saw Oswald come into the Dobbs House restaurant, and JD Tippit was there. Oswald was supposed to be at work all day. Meanwhile, Ruth and Marina and their children go to a dental clinic.
  
• 10:30 AM Ralph Yates was driving on the R. L. Thornton Expressway. He noticed a man hitchhiking in Oak Cliff near the Beckley Avenue entrance to the expressway. Yates stopped to pick up the man. When the hitchhiker got into Yates's pickup truck, he was carrying what Yates described later, in a statement to the FBI, as "a package wrapped in brown wrapping paper about 4 feet to 4 1/2 feet long. " Yates told the man he could put the package in the back of the pickup. The man said the package had curtain rods in it, and he would rather carry it with him in the cab of the truck. (JFK and the Unspeakable)
  
• 8:30 PM (EST) Hickory Hill birthday party for Bobby Kennedy.
  
• At Red Bird Air Field in Dallas, a young man and woman try to charter a plane for Friday afternoon, November 22, from Wayne January, owner of a private airline. From their questions, January suspects they may hijack the plane to Cuba. He rejects their offer. The man he sees waiting for the couple in their car he recognizes two days later from media pictures as Lee Harvey Oswald.
  
• In Eunice, Louisiana, heroin addict Rose Cheramie tells Louisiana State Police lieutenant Francis Fruge that the two men with whom she stopped at the Silver Slipper Lounge that night, on a drive from Miami to Dallas, plan to kill President Kennedy when he comes to Dallas.
  
• Bonnie Ray Williams told the WC that they began laying the new floor on the sixth floor of the TSBD on this day.
  
• JFK had a White House dinner for the members of the Supreme Court. They joked with him about his upcoming trip to Texas: "We told him to watch out for those Texans; they were a wild bunch. All in fun, you know," Earl Warren recalled (Chief Justice p413)
  
• Radio Havana accused JFK of "hypocrisy" in regard to the Alliance for Progress and attacked his 11/18 speech.
  
• Texas oilman George H. W. Bush put an announcement in today's Dallas Morning News that he would be in Dallas to give a speech on the evening of 11/21.
  
• The Morning News left out any mention of the Houston-to-Elm stretch in its description: "...Harwood, Main and Stemmons Freeway." (H 22 616) Morning News published an hour-by-hour itinerary of the President's visit to Texas (The Assassination Story 8).
  
• From Mafia Kingfish by John Davis: "That same morning [Wednesday, November 20, 1963], in the center of Dallas, two police officers on routine patrol entered Dealey Plaza, through which the presidential motorcade would pass on Friday, and noticed several men standing behind a wooden fence on a grassy knoll overlooking the plaza. The men were engaged in mock target practice, aiming rifles over the fence, in the direction of the plaza."
  
• Oswald is present in his boss's office (William Shelley) when a co-worker shows off a Mauser rifle and another rifle. On November 20th, Warren Caster, an employee of Southwestern Publishing Company that occupied part of the second floor in the Depository, brought a Mauser rifle and a .22 calibre rifle for his fellow employees to look at, a fact that was verified by numerous Depository employees. (WR 546-8)
  
• Nixon flew to Dallas; he was then working as an attorney for Pepsi-Cola and was in Dallas to attend a Carbonated Bottlers' convention. During his stay met with with Don Kendall, President of Pepsi Cola Bottling Co.
  
• 11/21/1963 (Thu) A review by Edmond Taylor of Dulles's book The Craft of Intelligence (from The Reporter). Dulles convinces the reviewer that the Soviets are actively plotting to assassinate foreign leaders, and that the Kennedy administration's policy of accommodation with the USSR is wrong-headed because they will always be actively plotting to destroy our way of life.
  
• This morning Oswald ate breakfast at Dobbs House restaurant.
  
• Before leaving on his trip to Texas, President Kennedy, after being given a list of the most recent casualties in Vietnam, says to Assistant Press Secretary Malcolm Kilduff: "After I come back from Texas, that's going to change. Vietnam is not worth another American life. " Kennedy tells Forrestal that when he returned from Cambodia, "I want to start a complete and very profound review of how we got into this country [Vietnam]; what we thought we were doing; and what we now think we can do...I even want to think about whether or not we should be there." (JFK and Vietnam p487)
  
• The "Wanted for Treason" anti-JFK leaflets were distributed in Dallas this morning. The SS originally thought Oswald had ordered these leaflets, since the order had Oswald's typical spelling errors, and the person who ordered them around 11/14 resembled Oswald (except for his hair) (H 25 657). Hosty visited SS headquarters and brought some of the leaflets with him. He didn't yet know there was to be a presidential motorcade. (H 4 460)
  
• Dallas press states: "A weather bureau forecaster said Wednesday that rain appears likely Friday, when President Kennedy will fly into Dallas." (Act of Treason)
  
• DNC advance man Marty Underwood gets "all sorts of rumors", eighteen hours before the assassination, that Kennedy was to be killed in Dallas. Marty even conveys this to JFK, who tells him, "Marty, you worry about me too much." (Palamara interview) Indeed, JFK told San Antonio Congressman Henry Gonzalez, "Henry, the Secret Service told me they took care of everything. There's nothing to worry about." (High Treason)
  
• When Dallas Police communications coordinator Margie Barnes arrives at work this morning, she is surprised to find an unsolicited and unexpected invitation to the President's luncheon at the Dallas Trade Mart. Margie's job is to receive emergency calls and issue information directly to the police dispatch officer in the downtown division headquarters.
  
• November 2122, U.N. Ambassador Adlai Stevenson and Senator William Fulbright warned JFK not to go to Dallas. (Manchester, pp. 3839. Former agent and Chief of the White House Signal Corps Col. George J. McNally wrote on p. 216 of his book A Million Miles of Presidents that there were "many warnings of danger and an antagonistic attitude to be expected in Texas …".)
  
• 10:30 or 11:00 AM Jack Ruby (speaking later to FBI) says he drives a young friend, Connie Trammel, to the office of Lamar Hunt. Ruby says he visits one of two attorneys in the building. He can't remember which one.
  
• This morning, Oswald asks Buell Frazier whether he can ride home with him this afternoon. Frazier, surprised, asks him why he is going to Irving on Thursday night rather than Friday. Oswald replies, "I'm going home to get some curtain rods ... [to] put in an apartment."
  
• 10:30 AM Ruby left his apartment and arrived at AAA Bonding Service to discuss a contract dispute with one of his dancers. (FBI interview with Max Rudberg, CD 86) He then spent two hours with Connie Trammel in her job hunting in Dallas. (FBI interview with Trammel, CD 106)
  
• 10:32 AM A high flying U-2 spy plane, piloted by Captain Joe G. Hyde, Jr., disappears from radar and crashes into the Gulf of Mexico after flying a mission over Cuba. The US Navy locates the wreckage in about 100 feet of water and discovers that both the pilot and the ejector seat are gone. ("Wreckage ofU-2 Plane Found in Gulf of Mexico," New York Times, 11/22/63, p. 2.)
  
• 10:45 AM (EST) the helicopters lifted off the White House lawn for the 12-minute flight to Andrews Air Force Base. Two-year-old John John rode along, begging to go to Texas with his father.
  
• 11:45 or 12:00 PM Jack Ruby is seen in the Records Building by Dallas Police Officer W. F. Dyson. Ruby enters the sixth floor office of Assistant District Attorney Ben Ellis and hands out Carousel Club cards to Dyson and other policemen in the office. Ruby introduces himself to Ellis, telling him, "you probably don't know me now, but you will."
  
• Around this time, Wayne January is working side by side with a Cuban born pilot who is to fly a newly purchased DC-3 out of The Redbird Airfield tomorrow. Since early this morning, January has been helping the pilot complete a preflight inspection in order for the plane. The pilot becomes uneasy and finally turns to January and says: "They are going to kill your president." January will eventually tell researcher Matthew Smith that the Cuban pilots goes on to say: "I was a mercenary pilot, hired by the CIA." The pilot continues: "They are not only going to kill the President. They are going to kill Robert Kennedy and any other Kennedy that gets in their position." When January expresses his skepticism, the pilot replies "You will see." The conversation is dropped for a while, then the pilot breaks the silence: "They want Robert Kennedy real bad." When January asks why, the pilot replies "Never mind. You don't need to know. Let's get this job done, time is running out. My boss wants to return to Florida; he thought we would be through today." (Summers, Conspiracy)
  
• 1:00 PM (Approx) Ruby stopped at the Merchants State Bank and paid the rent for his club. (FBI report, CD 223)
  
• 1:30 PM JFK and his entourage arrive in San Antonio; LBJ was there to greet him. They rode in a motorcade which ended at Brooks Air Force Base. Kennedy gave a speech in San Antonio.
  
• 2:30 - 7:15 PM Ruby is seen on the 400 block of Milan St in Houston between 2:30 and 7:15pm by five witnesses. He was also seen near the Rice Hotel, where JFK stayed. (12/2/1963 SS report; CD 2399)
  
• 3:00 PM Ruby got to the Carousel Club; he was running both the Carousel and the Vegas Clubs at this time, because his sister Eva, who normally ran the Vegas, was in the hospital. (H 15 323) He stayed at the Carousel for over four hours.
  
• 3:52 PM Air Force One leaves Kelly Field, San Antonio.
  
• 4:15 PM (EST) Cabinet plane leaves California. To Secretary of the Treasury Douglas Dillon, JFK has said: "Oh God, how I wish we could change places."
  
• 4:37 PM Air Force One lands in Houston (Manchester)
  
• 5:00 PM Houston motorcade on the Gulf Freeway.
  
• 5:00 PM Lee Harvey Oswald catches a ride from work to Irving with Buell Frazier and arrives at the Paine house unannounced.
  
• 6:05 PM A special cargo plane arrives at Love Field in Dallas with the presidential limo and one other vehicle to be used in tomorrow's Dallas motorcade. Presidential Limousine SS100X: 1961 Lincoln Continental Four-door convertible limousine, VIN # 1Y86H405950.
  
• Four times this evening, Oswald asks Marina to move with him to a nicer apartment in Dallas. Each time, she refuses. He repeatedly tried to make up with Marina, but she gave him the brush-off. (H 1 65-66; Marina and Lee 521,523) Ruth told Lee, "Our President is coming to town" and he replied, "Ah, yes." (H 3 46,49)
  
• 7:30 PM this evening, Jack Ruby drives Larry Crafard to the Vegas Club which Crafard is overseeing because Ruby's sister, Eva Grant, who normally manages the club, is convalescing from a recent illness. After this, Ruby returns to the Carousel Club and reportedly converses with Lawrence Meyers, a Chicago businessman, for an hour. (H 15 626,628)
  
• 8:25 PM "JFK and LBJ have words." (Manchester)
  
• 8:30 PM SS Agents Kinney and Hickey are helping Agents Sorrels and Lawson check, once more, the speaker's stand at the Dallas Trade Mart, the seating arrangements, the kitchen, and the exits. This security check has already been done several times before. It will be done again tomorrow morning.
  
• 8:35 PM (EST) Cabinet plane lands in Honolulu (Manchester).
  
• 8:58 PM JFK in Houston Coliseum. LBJ was seen and photographed in the Houston Coliseum with JFK at a dinner and speech. They flew out around 10pm and arrived at Carswell (Air Force Base in northwest Fort Worth) at 11:07 Thursday night. (Manchester)
  
• 9:00 PM Marina Oswald says this is the time Oswald goes to bed after watching TV. At this same time, however, a young man knocks on the door of apartment #206 at 223 S. Ewing. The apartment is occupied by a SMU professor. The knock is answered by the Professor's friend, Helen McIntosh, who greets an unknown young man. When the man asks for Jack Ruby, the Professor tells Miss McIntosh that Ruby lives in the adjoining apartment, #207. Tomorrow, Miss McIntosh sees photographs of Oswald on television and realizes that he was the young man who appeared at the door of the apatment the previous evening.
  
• 9:45 to 10:45pm (Approx) Ruby had dinner with Dallas businessman Ralph Paul at the Egyptian Lounge. He spoke to Don Campbell of the Dallas Morning News (whom the FBI mistakenly called "Connors"). Then he returned to the club. Ruby reportedly dines at the Egyptian Lounge with his old friend and financial backer Ralph Paul. The Lounge is run by Joseph and Sam Campisi. Joseph acknowledges being very close to Carlos Marcello -- each Christmas he sends Marcello and his associates 260 pounds of Italian sausage. He also makes as many as twenty telephone calls a day to New Orleans.
  
• 10pm Capt. Fritz's WC testimony: "Well, we had taken some precautions but those were changed. We were told in the beginning that we would be in the parade directly behind it, I don't know whether it was the second or third car, but the Vice President's car, that we would be directly behind that, and we did make preparation for that. But at 10 o'clock the night before the parade, Chief Stevenson called me at home and told me that had been changed, and I was assigned with two of my officers to the speakers' stand at the Trade Mart."
  
• Tony Zoppi (Entertainment Editor of The Dallas Morning News) and Don Safran (Entertainment Editor of the Dallas Times Herald) saw Nixon at the Empire Room at the Statler-Hilton. He walked in with Joan Crawford (Movie actress). Robert Clary (of Hogan's Heroes fame) stopped his show to point them out, saying ". . . either you like him or you don't." Zoppi thought that was in poor taste, but Safran said Nixon laughed. Zoppi's deadline was 11pm, so he stayed until 10:30 or 10:45 and Nixon was still there."
  
• 11:07 PM LBJ's plane, Air Force Two, lands at Carswell AFB in Fort Worth and Johnson arrives at the Worth Hotel at midnight. The presidential party landed in Fort Worth and went to the Hotel Texas at 11:50pm. Before arriving in Fort Worth JFK had already been in four motorcades.
  
• Madeleine Duncan Brown, LBJ's mistress later claims that LBJ arrives at Clint Murchinson's home in Dallas around 11 PM.
  
• 11:30 PM Marina Oswald says that this is the time she goes to bed. She notices that LHO is still awake. (Manchester)
  
• 11:50 PM The motorcade to the Hotel Texas arrived about 11:50 and LBJ was again photographed. He stayed in the Will Rogers suite on the 13th floor and William Manchester (The Death of a President) says he was up late. Some accounts say that JFK and LBJ argued about which car Sen. Ralph Yarborough should ride in during the motorcade.
  
• The Dallas afternoon paper Times Herald front-pages a map of the motorcade route. Here the artist, Pat Uthoff, has plainly included the Houston to Elm section.
  
• Richard Nixon speaks to the Pepsi people at the Trade Mart in Dallas, Texas today.
  
• Ambassador Henry Cabot Lodge flies to Honolulu from Vietnam on the first leg of a trip to Washington, where he plans to tell JFK that the situation is much worse than they thought.
  
• In 1963, Rep. Thomas was seriously considering not running for a fifteenth term. Local Democrats organized an appreciation dinner on November 21, 1963 with over 3200 attendees to persuade him to run for another term. JFK joked about talking Congressman Thomas into not resigning, hoping he would stay in office as long as JFK did, though he didn't know how long that might be.
  
• During a visit to the Desert Inn in Las Vegas, Johnny Rosselli visits Guy Banister and drops off the FBI surveillance roster for the past nine days.
  
• Jim Braden, after informing his parole officer of the trip, arrives in Dallas. Braden is a man with a police record stretching back to 1934 for such crimes as burglary, embezzlement, mail fraud, and conspiracy, including several arrests in Dallas. Braden's real name is Eugene Hale Brading. Brading checked in with a Dallas probation officer and "advised that he planned to see Lamar Hunt and other oil speculators while here." Brading stayed at the Cabana Hotel.
  
• Jack Ruby is also at the Hunt offices about this same time. Braden, along with ex-convict Morgan Brown is staying at Suite 301 in the Cabana Motel overlooking Stemmons Freeway, the same motel visited by Jack Ruby later this evening. They have reservations through Nov. 24th. Also staying at The Cabana Motel are two New York businessmen, Lawrence and Edward Meyers. Lawrence Meyers is a personal friend of Jack Ruby. Edward Meyers is in Dallas to attend a bottlers convention -- the same conven