Deep Politics Timeline

[Tracy Riddle]

• 1960-1973 Agent Orange. In Vietnam, the US military uses about 21 million gallons of Agent Orange to defoliate the jungle in order to deny enemy fighters cover. The defoliantmanufactured primarily by Monsanto and Dow Chemicalgets its name from the 55-gallon drums it is shipped in that are marked with an orange stripe. At least 3,181 villages are sprayed with the highly toxic herbicide, which is comprised of a 50:50 mixture of 2,4-D and 2,4,5-T and contaminated with dangerous levels of dioxins. Much of the dioxin is TCDD, which is linked to liver and other cancers, diabetes, spina bifida, immune-deficiency diseases, severe diarrhea, persistent malaria, miscarriages, premature births, and severe birth defects. Between 2.1 and 4.8 million Vietnamese are exposed, as are about 20,000 US soldiers.
  
• Between 1960 and 1971, the Department of Defense funded non-consensual whole body radiation experiments on poor, black cancer patients, who were not told what was being done to them.
  
• 1/1960 Khrushchev told the Supreme Soviet he intended to cut the Soviet military by 1.2 million men, saying that "the clouds of war have begun to disperse." He also argued that large standing armies in the nuclear age were obsolete. He hoped to use the savings to raise the Soviet standard of living.
  
• 1/2/1960 Senator John F. Kennedy announces his candidacy for the Democratic presidential nomination.
  
• 1/4/1960 Oswald's diary: "I am called to passport office and finilly given a Soviet document not the soviet citizenship as I so wanted, only a Residence document, not even for foringners but a paper called for those without citizenship.'
  
• 1/5/1960 In a filmed interview aired on his TV show, Ed Sullivan talks to Castro, who assures the viewers that there will be no dictatorship in Cuba. Sullivan says that Castro is popular with the American people and commands much respect and admiration.
  
• 1/5/1960 Steel industry and US Steelworkers of America sign new contract extending to 6/30/1962.
  
• 1/5/1960 Ohio primary; JFK stayed out of the race and in exchange, Governor Mike DiSalle ran as a favorate son, pledging his delegates to Kennedy at the convention.
  
• 1/5/1960 Oswald's diary: "I go to Red Cross in Moscow for money with Interrupter (a new one) I recive 5000 rubles a huge sum!! Later in Minsk I am to earn 70 rubles a month at the factory."
  
• 1/7/1960 Allen Dulles told Ike that they could find no evidence of a crash missile-building program by the Soviets. Eisenhower revealed to the public that US test ICBM's had landed within two miles of their targets after 5000-mile flights.
  
• 1/7/1960 Ike's state of the union message to Congress. (World Book Enc.)
  
• 1/7/1960 Oswald left Moscow by train and arrived in Minsk. He was met by Roza Kuznetsova, an Intourist worker.
  
• 1/8/1960 Oswald met mayor Shrapov of Minsk, who gave him a rent-free apartment.
  
• 1/9/1960 Egypt begins building the Aswan Dam. (World Book Enc.)
  
• 1/11/1960 Chad declares independence from France
  
• 1/11/1960 Oswald visits the radio factory where he will work; he meets Alexander Zeger, a Polish Jew and engineer who spent time in the US.
  
• 1/13/1960 Allen Dulles presents "Cuban project" for "careful planning of covert actions." The CIA began "Operation 40," which took its name from "the Group of 40" of the National Security Council group. Their job was to formulate a plan for Cuba to provoke a general uprising of the Cuban people with the collaboration of the forces in exile and in this way "legitimize" a U.S. intervention. (Alleged Assassination Plots Involving Foreign Leaders, 11/20/75; Furiati pp 14-15)
  
• 1/13/1960 Oswald was put to work in a large TV and radio factory.
  
• 1/18 or 19/1960 US and Japan signed mutual cooperation and security treaty. Opposition to the treaty in Japan caused Ike's trip there to be canceled. The treaty was ratified in Japan and the US 6/22-23.
  
• 1/19/1960 Defense Sec. Thomas Gates told the Senate that the nuclear arms race "showed a clear balance in our favor."
  
• 1/19/1960 Jack Ruby buys a revolver at Ray's Hardware Store in Dallas.
  
• 1/20/1960 Army Secretary Wilber M. Brucker told the Senate that Russia's military was better and larger than America's.
  
• 1/20/1960 Russia fires a ballistic multi-stage rocket 7,762 miles into the central Pacific ocean. (World Book Enc.)
  
• 1/22/1960 French president De Gaulle escapes assassination attempt by General Massu
  
• 1/23/1960 Bathosphere "Trieste" reached a record depth of 35,800ft in the Mariana Trench in the Pacific Ocean. The vessel was manned by scientist Jacques Piccard and US Navy Lt. Donald Walsh. (World Book Enc.)
  
• 1/24/1960 The MLK family moves to Atlanta. Dr. King becomes copastor, with his father, of the Ebenezer Baptist Church.
  
• 1/28/1960 China and Burma sign a Mutual Non-Aggression Pact in Peking. The McMahon line is recognized as Burma's northern border. (World Book Enc.)
  
• 1/30/1960 CIA OKs Lockheed to produce a new U-2 aircraft.
  
• 1/31/1960 Russia fires a second ballistic multi-stage rocket into the Central Pacific. (World Book Enc.)
  
• 2/1960 Robert F. Kennedy publishes The Enemy Within, which named the little known Organized Crime leaders Salvador "Sam" Giancana and Santos Trafficante as mobsters; soon afterwards, the CIA gives both men protection by involving them in intelligence plots. (Scott p 227)
  
• 2/1960 Henry Cabot Lodge went to the USSR, reassuring Khrushchev that a President Nixon wouldn't be a rigid anti-Communist. Khrushchev looked forward to Ike's visit, even building a golf course and a vacation house for his use. Ike looked forward to serious discussions about arms control (especially a complete nuclear test ban) and closer ties between the US and USSR. (Mayday 227-30) Around this time, James Doolittle urged Ike to use the U-2 to fly over Russia "to the maximum degree possible." But Ike resisted, worrying that it could ruin the upcoming summit.
  
• 2/1/1960 Sit-ins begin when 4 black college students in Greensboro, North Carolina refuse to leave a Woolworth lunch counter when denied service. The "local custom" was that blacks could only be served if they stood at a stand-up snack bar. The sit-in movement spread to 15 cities in 5 Southern states by the end of the month.
  
• 2/7/1960 Judith Campbell Exner met JFK at the Sands Hotel in Las Vegas. She was introduced to him by Frank Sinatra, who was in Vegas filming Ocean's Eleven.
  
• 2/9/1960 US atomic sub Sargo reaches the North Pole after a 2,744-mile voyage under the ice.
  
• 2/9/1960 US space surveillance control center opened at Hanscom Air Force Base, Bedford, Mass., to track earth satellites.
  
• 2/12/1960 Eisenhower presided over a restricted meeting of the National Security Council to consider the NESC study. Before the meeting, Joint Chiefs of Chairman Nathan Twining sent the President a memorandum endorsing the NESC's "optimum mix" target system and recommending that Eisenhower agree to refer the study to the Joint Chiefs as the basis for planning. Some of the Chiefs expressed reservations about the study, for example, General Lemnitzer noted that the problem of "locating and destroying enemy ICBM sites" was a problem that had to be solved and Admiral Burke and Twining were plainly in disagreement over the deterrent value of "forces required only for attack of the urban-industrial system." No minutes were taken of the meeting and, so far, the only account that has surfaced so far appears in Kistiakowsky's diary. Kistiakowsky privately believed that the "overkill" proposed for the attack on the optimum-mix targets was "appalling" and during the meeting Eisenhower showed great concern with this problem (as he had in November 1958). Burke also "fairly strongly objected to overkill." Nevertheless, Eisenhower signed off on Chairman Twining's recommendations.
  
• 2/14 or 17/1960 Marshal Ayub Khan elected president of Pakistan
  
• 2/16/1960 US nuclear submarine USS Triton set off on underwater round-world trip
  
• 2/17/1960 A warrant is issued for Dr. King's arrest on charges that he had falsified his 1956 and 1958 Alabama state income tax returns.
  
• 2/23/1960 Eisenhower begins a trip to Latin America.
  
• 2/25/1960 First test launch of Army's Pershing tactical missile from Cape Canaveral.
  
• 2/28/1960 Indonesia and Russia sign a pact.
  
• 2/29/1960 JFK makes "missile gap" a presidential campaign issue
  
• 3/2-3/1960 Ike ends Latin American tour in Uruguay.
  
• 3/5/1960 Marguerite Oswald, after sending some money to her son at the Hotel Metropole and having it returned as undeliverable, asks Rep. Jim Wright of Fort Worth to get the State Dept to find out her son's whereabouts.
  
• 3/5/1960 Senate filibuster over civil rights ends after 125 hours and 31 minutes
  
• 3/6/1960 President Sukarno disbands Indonesia's parliament
  
• 3/8/1960 JFK won the New Hampshire primary, where none of the other major candidates ran against him. The state was abandoned to him because he came from nearby Massachusetts.
  
• 3/9/1960 At a meeting of the Task Force, Colonel King 's recommendations are presented: create the conditions to prove that Cuban leaders are preparing an attack on the U.S. Naval Base in Guantanamo or "eliminate the leaders [Fidel Castro, Raul Castro, and Che Guevara] with a single blow"; otherwise, the present government can only be brought down through the use of force." (Alleged Assassination Plots Involving Foreign Leaders, 11/20/75; Furiati p 16)
  
• 3/9/1960 President Sukarno of Indonesia was the target of an unsuccessful assassination attempt.
  
• 3/10/1960 USSR agrees to stop nuclear testing
  
• 3/11/1960 PIONEER V, NASA space probe, successfully launched by Thor-Able-4, the start of a historic flight to measure radiation and magnetic fields between Earth and Venus, and to communicate over great distances.
  
• 3/15/1960 East-West Disarmament Conference opens in Geneva; communist delegates attack the Western plan.
  
• 3/15/1960 South Korea: Syngman Rhee is elected to a fifth term as president/dictator.
  
• 3/16/1960 Oswald's diary: "I receive a small flat one-room kicten-bath near the factory (8 min. walk) with splendid view from 2 balconies of the river, almost rent free…it is a Russians dream."
  
• 3/16/1960 Ban on nuclear weapons being placed in orbit around the earth in the future proposed by the representatives of the Western nations at the Geneva Disarmament Conference.
  
• 3/17/1960 Eisenhower signs National Security Council directive on the anti-Cuban covert action program (Operation 40) authorizing the CIA to organize, train, and equip Cuban refugees as a guerilla force to overthrow Castro. (Fonzi chronology p 415)
  
• 3/21/1960 South Africa: race riots in Sharpeville; police kill 72 blacks during protests against pass cards. The ANC is also outlawed. The incident drew world attention to the nation's racial policies.
  
• 3/22/1960 An informant advised the FBI that Confidential magazine was investigating a rumor of "an indiscreet party" at Sinatra's Palm Springs home attended by Sen. John F. Kennedy and actor Peter Lawford, a Kennedy brother-in-law.
  
• 3/24/1960 Ike agrees to stop U.S. atomic tests
  
• 3/24/1960 Stuart Symington announced his candidacy for the Democratic presidential nomination.
  
• 3/25/1960 Bernice Waterman in the Passport Office of the State Dept made up a "refusal sheet" for Oswald. (CE 929) A "lookout card" should have been prepared, but wasn't. (WR 751) The Passport Office explained that there may have been a clerical error or misunderstanding.
  
• 3/26/1960 Italy: Fernando Tambroni is sworn in as PM after a month-long crisis.
  
• 3/28/1960 Arturo Frondizi, president of Argentina, was the target of an unsuccessful assassination attempt.
  
• 4/1960 The Fair Play for Cuba Committee (FPCC) was an activist group set up in New York in April 1960. The FPCC's purpose was to provide grassroots support for the Cuban Revolution against attacks by the United States government
  
• 4/1960 The Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee was founded. Its roots sprang from the sit-in experiences in the South among students from mostly Black colleges.
  
• 4/1960 Increasing non-communist opposition in South Vietnam led to repression; most of the US aid was now going to police and military operations. The American Ambassador began to openly criticize Diem.
  
• 4/1/1960 U Nu elected premier of Burma
  
• 4/1/1960 Malaya: paramount ruler Tuanku Sir Abdul Rahman dies.
  
• 4/1/1960 First known weather observation satellite, TIROS I (Television Infra-Red Observation Satellite), launched into orbit by US.
  
• 4/1/1960 France explodes its second atomic bomb in the Sahara.
  
• 4/4/1960 Colombian president Alberto Lleras Camargo arrives in Washington for a state visit.
  
• 4/4/1960 Senegal declares independence from France
  
• 4/4/1960 Project Ozma initiated to listen for possible signal patterns from outer space other than natural "noise," at the National Radio Astronomy Observatory at Green Bank, W. Va.
  
• 4/5/1960 Wisconsin primary; JFK had been expected to win in a landslide, but the closeness of his victory (56%) shocked the Kennedy team into realizing they would have to slug it out in more primaries.
  
• 4/5-8 De Gaulle makes his first visit to England since WWII.
  
• 4/5/1960 Burma: U Nu becomes prime minister.
  
• 4/8/1960 The Student Non-violent Coordinating Committee (SNCC) was established to guide anti-segregation efforts. Or it was set up 4/15 at Shaw University.
  
• 4/9/1960 Hendrik Frensch Verwoerd, PM of South Africa, was shot by a white farmer opposed to apartheid; though badly wounded, Verwoerd survived.
  
• 4/10/1960 Senate passes landmark Civil Rights Bill
  
• 4/13/1960 France explodes an A-bomb in the Sahara, becoming the fourth nuclear nation.
  
• 4/15/1960 First underwater launch of Polaris missile, from an underwater tube off San Clemente Island, Calif.
  
• 4/15/1960 Malaya elects a new paramount ruler, Sir Hisamuddin Alam Shah.
  
• 4/17/1960 Martin Luther King Jr. did his first of five interviews on "Meet the Press."
  
• 4/18/1960 Martin Luther King went to Nashville for a scheduled speech at the War Memorial Auditorium; the city rescinded his right to use the municipal hall at the last minute. Today, King was also named as a defendant in a half-million dollar libel suit brought by the state of Alabama against the SCLC and NYT for their full-page ad of 3/29.
  
• 4/19/1960 Memo from DeLoach to John Mohr about Kennedy's "extracurricular activites" which were "a standard joke around the Senate Office Building" in the '50s.
  
• 4/19-26 South Korea: student protests against election fraud turn violent as police kill 154.
  
• 4/20/1960 After charging that the sit-in movement was Moscow-directed, Harry Truman had been challenged by MLK to provide proof of this. Today, the NYT quoted Truman as saying, "I know that usually when trouble hits the country, the Kremlin is behind it."
  
• 4/21/1960 Congress approved a voting rights act to prevent intimidation of black voters in the South.
  
• 4/21/1960 Brazil dedicates new capital of Brasilia.
  
• 4/21/1960 Time magazine featured recently elected R.J. Reynolds chairman Bowman Gray Jr. on its cover; he was quoted about the charges that smoking caused cancer: "I just don't believe it. People are hearing the same old story, and the record is getting scratched."
  
• 4/22/1960 De Gaulle arrives in Washington for a state visit.
  
• 4/22/1960 American Lutheran Church created out of a merger of the Evangelical, American, and United Evangelical Lutheran churches.
  
• 4/22/1960 Henry C. Alexander, chairman of the Morgan Guaranty Trust Company, was quoted in the Wall St Journal: "[Business conditions will] stay good for some time to come…We are not about to enter any sharp recession." This month, a US recession begins; economy declined by 1.0%.
  
• 4/25/1960 1st submerged circumnavigation of Earth completed (Triton)
  
• 4/25/1960 A consent judgment in a Memphis federal court ended restrictions barring voters in Fayette County, Tennessee. This was the first voting rights case under the Civil Rights Act.
  
• 4/26/1960 Pennsylvania primary; though the Kennedy forces stood back to let Governor David Lawrence run a favorite-son candidacy, a suprising write-in vote movement JFK 71% of the total vote.
  
• 4/26/1960 NASA announced selection of Douglas Aircraft for construction of second (S-4) stage of initial C-1 Saturn launch vehicle.
  
• 4/26/1960 Japan: students invade the Parliament to protest ratification of a new security pact with the US.
  
• 4/26/1960 South Vietnam: prominent citizens issue the "Manifesto of the Eighteen," demanding that Diem introduce more democracy and reforms, and stop the repression.
  
• 4/27/1960 Nepal's king and queen arrive in the US for a state visit.
  
• 4/27/1960 1st atomic powered electric-drive submarine launched (Tullibee)
  
• 4/27/1960 South Korea: Syngman Rhee resigns as president on demand of the National Assembly.
  
• 4/27/1960 Togo wins its independence from France.
  
• 4/29/1960 All eight engines of the Saturn engine were fired for the first time at Huntsville, Ala.
  
• 5/1960 The Cuban Democratic Revolutionary Front was founded in May 1960 by anti-Castro Cuban exiles and was initially headquartered in Mexico. It was known in Spanish as the Frente Revolucionario Democratico (FRD) and was composed of five major anti-Castro groups.
  
• 5/1/1960 Oswald goes to a May Day party and Alexander Zeger advises him to go back to the US.
  
• 5/1/1960 Francis Gary Powers' U-2 plane goes down over the USSR
  
• 5/3/1960 Indiana primary was won by JFK in a landslide.
  
• 5/3/1960 European Free Trade Association involving seven nations goes into effect.
  
• 5/4/1960 Britain grants independence to Sierra Leone by 4/27/1961.
  
• 5/5/1960 Khrushchev told the Supreme Soviet about the shoot-down ("aggressive actions against the Soviet Union"), but didn't mention the pilot still being alive. In his memoirs, he recalled that this tactic kept the US off-balance by making them issue phony cover stories, while keeping Khrushchev in control of events.
  
• 5/5/1960 In response to Khruschev's speech, Ike wanted to remain silent about the incident. Finally, after pressure from press secretary Hagerty, a statement was released: "At the direction of the President, a complete inquiry is being made. The results of this inquiry, the facts as developed, will be made public" by NASA and the State Dept. Reporters quickly went to NASA for more information, but its spokesman had no idea what was going on.
  
• 5/5/1960 Douglas Dillon and Allen Dulles quickly put together a statement for the State Dept to issue: "The Department has been informed by NASA that...a U-2 weather research plane based at Adana, Turkey, piloted by a civilian, has been missing since May 1. During the flight of this plane, the pilot reported difficulty with his oxygen equipment...accidentally violated Soviet airspace." Bissell gave NASA a new statement to put out, saying that the U-2 was a NASA weather plane and had been over Lake Van, Turkey. Shortly after this statement, a cable from ambassador Thompson arrived, saying he thought the Russians might have captured the pilot alive. Thompson also wrote that Khrushchev did not seem to want to give up on detente with the US.
  
• 5/5/1960 NASA put out a statement: "The instrumentation carried by the U-2 permits obtaining…precise information about clear air turbulence, convective clouds, winds shear, the jet stream and such wide-spread weather patterns as typhoons." (NYT 5/6/1960) NASA held a press conference on high-altitude weather research using Lockheed U-2 aircraft, one of which was reportedly lost on May 1 over Turkey.
  
• 5/6/1960 Ike signed the Civil Rights Act of 1960 into law.
  
• 5/6/1960 US embassy in Moscow named Francis Gary Powers as the missing pilot, and asked the Soviets for information about him. State Dept spokesman Lincoln White stated that the pilot probably blacked out and his plane drifted into Soviet territory: "There was absolutely no - N-O - no deliberate attempt to violate Soviet airspace. There never has been."
  
• 5/7/1960 Leonid I. Brezhnev succeeds Kliment Y. Voroshilov as Soviet President, a ceremonial job.
  
• 5/7/1960 Khrushchev told the Supreme Soviet for the first time that "we also have the pilot, who is quite alive and kicking! We did this quite deliberately, because if we had given out the whole story, the Americans would have thought up still another fable. And now, just look how many silly things they have said: Lake Van, scientific research and so on." He explained that the pilot had had no problems with his oxygen supply. He held up a poison pin Powers had carried to commit suicide with: "The lastest achievement of American technology for killing their own people!" He warned the governments of Turkey, Pakistan and Norway against making their countries available "for launching planes with anti-Soviet intentions." Again he stated that he felt Ike wanted peace but "apparently the Pentagon militarists and their monopolist allies cannot halt their war efforts." Ike saw that Khrushchev was offering him an excuse to disown the U-2 flight, but he realized that he couldn't let the world think he wasn't in control of his own government.
  
• 5/7/1960 At a meeting at CIA headquarters, Dulles offered to resign and allow the President to use him as a scapegoat; Andy Goodpaster said Ike wouldn't accept that. (Mayday 243) Most of those present (including Pearre Cabell, Hugh Cumming, Bohlen, Goodpaster, Dulles) wanted to stonewall the issue. Eisenhower refused to rush back to Washington from his retreat at Gettysburg, fearing it would only make the situation look more chaotic. Finally, the State Dept announced "there was no authorization for any such flight as described by Mr. Khrushchev. Nevertheless, it appears that in endeavoring to obtain information now concealed behind the Iron Curtain, a flight over Soviet territory was probably taken by an unarmed civilian U-2 plane." This was justified by Soviet secrecy of their military capability. No further elaboration was given. For the first time ever, the US government had admitted to committing espionage in peacetime. Reporters were angry over the conflicting stories.
  
• 5/7/1960 The New York Daily Mirror editorialized: "Premier Khrushchev personally ordered the rocket destruction of an unarmed US aircraft which had drifted into Soviet airspace, probably because its pilot became unconscious when its oxygen equipment failed…Khrushchev has revealed himself and his beastly character to the hilt; he is a pig in human form."
  
• 5/8/1960 JFK made a TV address to West Virginia voters, assuring them that he would uphold the separation of church and state.
  
• 5/8/1960 Headlines around the world blared the news of US spying over Russia. James Reston wrote in the NY Times, "The heart of the problem here is that the Presidency has been parcelled out, first to Sherman Adams, then to John Foster Dulles, and in this case to somebody else - probably to Allen Dulles, but we still don't know." Walter Lippman, in the NY Herald Tribune, warned that these same forces could order a nuclear attack without Ike's permission. Privately, Ike worried that his credibility could be lost forever if it was discovered he had lied about authorizing the U-2 flights. He also hated the impression that he was not in control of his own government. After returning from church, he told Herter that a new statement must be issued admitting that he had authorized the U-2 flights, but not specific missions. (Mayday 252-3)
  
• 5/9/1960 Harry Truman wrote Dean Acheson, "It seems to me that the President of the United States ought not to admit that he doesn't know what is going on...We have always been known for honesty and fair dealing as a nation and I really don't know how we are going to recover." Hubert Humphrey said, "Mr. Khrushchev has us on the run in a propaganda battle now, making us look sick."
  
• 5/9/1960 Ike was feeling very depressed; Khrushchev was continuing to give Ike the benefit of the doubt, assuming that reactionary forces in the US were responsible. Finally, at 3:55pm (Washington time), the State Dept made a new statement on the issue; Ike had authorized the U-2 program and took responsibility for them, but had not ordered specific missions.
  
• 5/9/1960 Food and Drug Administration approved use of the first contraceptive pill, Enovid.
  
• 5/9/1960 First production model of Project Mercury spacecraft was successfully launched from NASA Wallops Station.
  
• 5/9/1960 Nigeria becomes a member of British Commonwealth
  
• 5/10/1960 Submarine U.S.S. Triton completed 41,519-mile submerged cruise around the world. US atomic sub Triton surfaced after the first underwater circumnavigation of the globe; it took 84 days.
  
• 5/10/1960 West Virginia primary; though it only had a population of 5% Catholic and 4% black, and polls showed JFK fighting a tough battle with Humphrey, Kennedy won handidly, taking 48 of the 55 counties. Humphrey dropped out of the race. The Nebraska primary was also held this day, and JFK received 89% of the vote.
  
• 5/10/1960 NY Times reported that U-2 designed Kelly Johnson had examined the Russian photos of the downed plane, and concluded the wreckage was not of a U-2. James Reston wrote of how the capital "was depressed and humiliated by the United States having been caught spying over the Soviet Union and trying to cover up its activities in a series of misleading official statements." Many Americans had no problem with the spying, only that the US was caught at it. Khrushchev was irritated that the US seemed to think its actions were right, while spy-flights by the Soviets over the US would have been considered an act of war.
  
• 5/11/1960 The Soviets put the U-2 remains and Powers' belongings on public display at Gorky Park in Moscow. Khrushchev announced that Allen Dulles had probably blackmailed Ike into taking responsibility. At 10:29am Ike gave a press conference on the crisis. He called intelligence gathering "a distasteful but vital necessity." He refused to be apologetic about the U-2 flights.
  
• 5/11/1960 Adolf Eichmann is captured in Argentina by Israeli secret service agents. Nine days later he was smuggled out of the country on board an El Al Britannia plane officially described as a "diplomatic charter flight." The Israeli government was informed of the capture by a cable: "BEAST IN CHAINS."
  
• 5/12/1960 As the HUAC returned to San Francisco for hearings into the alleged communist beliefs of various California schoolteachers, hundreds of students from Berkeley and SF State descended on the City Hall, where the hearings were being held. They were denied entrance to the public hearings.
  
• 5/12/1960 The CIA and Llewellyn Thompson were divided over whether Khrushchev still wanted the summit to go on (the former's view) or whether it meant "the Cold War is on again" (the latter's view).
  
• 5/13/1960 Andrei Gromyko told the envoys of Pakistan, Norway and Turkey that they were risking military attack for their role in the U-2 flights. The US had continued to maintain that those countries knew nothing about the flights.
  
• 5/14/1960 Ike left for Paris. John Eisenhower urged his father to fire Dulles, but Ike refused. But he did tell Goodpaster and Gordon Gray that he never wanted to see Dulles alone again. (Mayday 271)
  
• 5/15/1960 Americans' tax burden reached 25% of earnings, according to a Tax Foundation report that added together federal, state and local taxes.
  
• 5/15/1960 Khrushchev demanded an apology for the U-2 flights before the summit would go on. Ike became convinced that he was just using this as a pretext to call off the summit because of pressure back home. He also wondered why Khrushchev had not made this announcement before everyone came to Paris.
  
• 5/16/1960 US forces around the world were put on code three alert during the early morning hours; Thomas Gates had ordered the move, fearing that the Summit collapse might lead to a crisis. As the summit opened, Khrushchev ranted against the "aggressive" U-2 flight, attacked the "ridiculous" cover stories of the administration and Ike's vow that the flights would `continue. Ike responded that the U-2 flights would not resume. De Gaulle, who was uncharacteristically supportive of Eisenhower's position, was angry that world leaders had been called to Paris just so Khrushchev could make unreasonable demands. Soviet PM continued to insist on an apology, at one point mentioning "that our internal politics requires this." Ike was furious when Khrushchev said he could wait to deal with Ike's successor. When these statements were made public, candidate JFK called it a "clumsy attempt to divide us along partisan lines in an election year." Nixon predicted that the Cold War would go on "for our lifetime, probably for this century." The Soviets began jamming the Voice of America again. PM Macmillan was emotionally distraught that the summit might collapse; he made one last-ditch effort, but Khrushchev insisted on an apology. The summit ended.
  
• 5/17/1960 Maryland primary; Wayne Morse was beaten by JFK 70%-17%.
  
• 5/17/1960 NASA administrator Keith Glennan wrote in his diary, "We have been turned up to the rest of the world as just another ordinary nation mouthing platitudes and moralities but indulging in a variety of activities of doubtful character...If the Russians had wanted to look at the U-2 as an invader, could they not have been justified in launching missiles toward this country?" Sen. Mansfield urged hearings to investigate the U-2. Sen. Goldwater opposed this idea.
  
• 5/20/1960 Oregon primary: JFK won with 51% to Wayne Morse's 32%. Humphrey received 5.7%, Symington 4.4%, LBJ under 4%.
  
• 5/25/1960 Ike gave a televised address to the nation, explaining the U-2 situation. He explained the false stories as necessary "to protect the pilot, his mission and our intelligence processes at a time when the true facts were still undetermined." The flight had been sent so close to the summit because of essential information that needed to be gathered and was "likely to be unavailable at a later date." He showed the country U-2 photos of the North Island naval air station at San Diego to demonstrate its capabilities. "In a nuclear war, there can be no victors - only losers. Even despots understand this."
  
• 5/27/1960 Turkey: Army seizes power; Lt. Gen. Cemal Gursel takes over and President Celal Bayar and PM Adnan Menderes are arrested.
  
• 5/27/1960 Hearings on the crisis, headed by Sen. Fulbright, opened. Herter would testify that the lesson of the U-2 was "not to have accidents," and still claimed that the President did not directly order any U-2 missions. Richard Helms sat in as a censor for the CIA. Dulles testified, but the CIA was treated lightly and was absolved by Fulbright. Fulbright believed that Ike should have admitted nothing at all. The complete testimony of the hearings was locked away for 22 years. (Mayday 314-17) Fulbright would later say, "I have often wondered why...the U-2 incident was allowed to take place. No one will ever know whether it was accidental or intentional." (Saturday Review 1/11/1975; Mayday) Democrats quickly made a campaign issue out of the U-2, and Republicans began to demand a defense buildup. George Kennan believed that the whole affair destroyed Khrushchev, "the only Soviet statesman of the post-Stalin period with whom we might conceivably have worked out a firmer sort of existence." (Memoirs 143) Though Ike later claimed he felt the summit was doomed to failure even if the U-2 incident hadn't happened, contemporary documents show that he actually was quite optimistic about it.
  
• 5/28/1960 Khrushchev denied the rumors that he was facing political opposition within the Party. When he continued to insist that Ike didn't know about the U-2 flights, Pravda responded, "Everything, absolutely everything was known to the President."
  
• 5/28/1960 Dr. King is acquitted of the tax evasion charge by an all-white jury in Montgomery.
  
• 5/28/1960 NYT reported that in San Francisco Judge Axelrod dropped charges against all but one of the 52 demonstrators arrested earlier in May, describing them as "not Commies, but just a bunch of mixed-up kids." At varying times Axelrod would be quoted as saying that the Communists were behind the riots, or that they weren't behind the riots.
  
• 5/29/1960 Syngman Rhee flees South Korea for Hawaii.
  
• Spring 1960 As the 1960 primaries increased his presidential prospects, Kennedy told a journalist visiting his Senate office that the most valuable resource he could bring to the presidency, based on personal experience, was his horror of war. Kennedy said he " had read the books of great military strategists-Carl Von Clausewitz, Alfred Thayer Mahan, and Basil Henry Liddell Hart-and he wondered if their theories of total violence made sense in the nuclear age. He expressed his contempt for the old military minds, exempting the U.S. 's big three, George Marshall, Douglas MacArthur, and Dwight Eisenhower . . . War with all of its modern horror would be his biggest concern if he got to the White House, Kennedy said. " The journalist who had listened to Senator Kennedy's 1960 reflections on war, Hugh Sidey, wrote thirty-five years later in a retrospective essay: " If I had to single out one element in Kennedy's life that more than anything else influenced his later leadership it would be a horror of war, a total revulsion over the terrible toll that modern war had taken on individuals, nations, and societies, and the even worse prospects in the nuclear age as noted earlier. It ran even deeper than his considerable public rhetoric on the issue." Hugh Sidey, introduction to Prelude to Leadership, pp. xxiv-xxv.
  
• In 1960, LBJ ran for the Democratic nomination for President against Kennedy, and had unleashed a series of vicious attacks on Kennedy when it looked as though Kennedy was gonna win. (Adlai Stevenson was later to say that these were the most vitriolic attacks on Kennedy he'd ever heard.) As part of his campaign strategy, Johnson had even tried to cast doubt on Kennedy's fitness for office. To do this, Johnson's campaign manager hired private investigators to uncover the truth about Kennedy's health problems. He then began a rumor campaign designed to make people wonder if Kennedy wasn't too sick to serve out his term. (One source, Kennedy aide Kenny O'Donnell, in a 7-23-69 interview conducted for the Johnson Library, put it a little more bluntly. He claimed that LBJ's campaign manager had put out the word that Kennedy "had Addison's disease and couldn't serve out the term" and that "if he was elected he was going to die.") As the situation grew increasingly desperate in the Johnson camp, moreover, one of his mouthpieces, India Edwards, publicly proclaimed that "Kennedy was so sick from Addison's disease that he looked like a spavined hunchback." This, no surprise, prompted a response from the Kennedy camp. They issued a series of statements claiming that Kennedy's adrenal dysfunction-- which they'd correctly claimed was not what was classically known as Addison's disease--was in fact under control, with only the occasional need for medication.
  
• 6/3/1960 Memo from Hoover to State Dept. "Subject: Lee Harvey Oswald Internal Security - R. Reference is made to Foreign Service Despatch Number 234 dated November 2, 1959, concerning subject's renunciation of his American citizenship at the United States Embassy, Moscow, Russia, on October 31, 1959. It is noted that among other items, subject surrendered his United States Passport Number 1733242 to an American Embassy official. His last known residence as indicated in your despatch was the Metropole Hotel, Moscow, where he was residing in a nontourist status. Your attention is directed to the report of Special Agent John W. Fain, Dallas, Texas, dated May 12, 1960, entitled 'Funds Transmitted to Residents of Russia; Internal Security - R' a copy of which was furnished to the Department of State on May 24, 1960. In that report you will note that subject's mother Mrs Marguerite C. Oswald, Fort Worth, Texas, advised that she recently received a letter addressed to her son from the Albert Schweitzer College in Switzerland indicating that Lee Oswald was expected at the college on April 20, 1960. She stated subject had taken his birth certificate with him when he left home. She was apprehensive about his safety because three letters she had written him since January 22, 1960, had been returned to her undelivered. Since there is a possibility that an imposter is using Oswald's birth certificate, any current information the Department of State may have concerning subject will be appreciated." (CD 294B) This was declassified in 1975.
  
• 6/10/1960 Document 6: Air Force Chief of Staff Thomas White to Secretary of Defense Thomas Gates, 10 June 1960, enclosing "Strategic Targeting Authority"Source: Library of Congress, Manuscript Reading Room, Thomas D. White Papers, box 29, Top Secret General 1960. The Air Force was determined to play a central role in strategic targeting and planning and Chief of Staff Thomas White brought a plan to the Secretary of Defense that would codify such a role. Acknowledging that the Air Force's concept of a unified strategic command, with control over the Navy's Polaris submarines, was unlikely to win top-level support, White supported a "lesser solution" to the target coordination problem by designating CINCSAC the "Strategic Targeting Authority." With "jurisdiction over strategic targeting, strike timing, and force application," the new authority would produce an NSTL and a SIOP. The Joint Chiefs would review and approve both documents. Defining the NSTL as a "list of specific vital enemy targets," the top priority targets was consistent with the optimum-mix concept: "nuclear delivery capability," "governmental and military control centers," and "war sustaining resources, including urban industrial areas."
  
• 6/10/1960 Dr. King and A. Philip Randolph announce plans for picketing both the Republican and Democratic national conventions.
  
• 6/10/1960 Japanese mobs threaten US ambassador and other officials at the Tokyo airport; they are rescued by a marine helicopter.
  
• 6/14-16/1960 Ike visits the Philippines.
  
• 6/16/1960 Ike's visit to Japan is cancelled after continued rioting there.
  
• 6/18-19/1960 Ike visits Taiwan while the Red Chinese bombarded the Quemoy Islands.
  
• 6/19/1960 Ike arrives in South Korea.
  
• 6/22/1960 Senate approves US-Japanese Mutual Security Treaty. It goes into effect 6/23.
  
• 6/24/1960 Dr. King has a conference with JFK about racial matters.
  
• 6/24/1960 Romulo Betancourt, president of Venezuela, was wounded in Caracas in a car-bomb blast that killed an aide.
  
• 6/26/1960 British Somaliland (now Somalia) gains independence from Britain; Italian Somaliland declares independence from Italian-administration
  
• 6/26/1960 Madagascar proclaims the Malagasy Republic, staying within the French Community.
  
• 6/27/1960 Soviets walked out of the test ban talks in Geneva.
  
• 6/28/1960 U.S.S.R. announced that it would conduct new series of long-range missile shots into the Pacific, July 5-31, 1960.
  
• 6/28/1960 Oswald wrote a letter home to his mother from Russia.
  
• 7/1/1960 NASA George C. Marshall Space Flight Center, with Dr. Wernher von Braun as its Director, officially opened with formal transfer to NASA from ABMA, at Redstone Arsenal, Huntsville, Ala.
  
• 7/1/1960 An American RB-47 spy plane was shot down by the Soviets over the Barents Sea, which was just outside Soviet territorial waters. Khrushchev and Ike were both furious.
  
• 7/1/1960 Ghana is proclaimed a republic.
  
• 7/1/1960 Republic of Somalia created by former Italian Somalia and British Somaliland. Italian Somaliland gains independence, unites with Somali Republic
  
• 7/1/1960 First operational version of Titan ICBM failed to launch at Cape Canaveral.
  
• 7/7/1960 CIA wanted to start up the U-2 flights again, since satellites were not yet deployed. (Mayday 322)
  
• 7/11/1960 Ike announces new Latin American aid program to raise living standards and promote democracy.
  
• 7/11/1960 Democratic convention opens in Los Angeles.
  
• 7/11/1960 Khruschchev announces the 7/1 shootdown of the RB-47 plane.
  
• 7/11-13/1960 France grants independence to Central African Republic, Chad, Congo, Dahomey, Gabon, Ivory Coast, Niger and Upper Volta, though they will remain within the French Community.
  
• 7/12/1960 Congo, Chad & Central African Republic declare independence
  
• 7/13/1960 Kennedy wins the Democratic nomination.
  
• 7/13/1960 FBI supervisor Milton Jones memo to Cartha DeLoach: "The Bureau and the Director have enjoyed friendly relations with Senator Kennedy and his family for a number of years...As you are aware, allegations of immoral activities on Senator Kennedy's part have been reported to the FBI over the years...Allegations also have been received concerning hoodlum connections...much of the information being unsubstantiated." A confidential Bureau reported dated today said that JFK "tempers his political liberalism with enough realistic conservatism". Under "miscellaneous," the FBI reported that he and Sinatra had partied together in Palm Springs, Las Vegas and New York, and noted that Confidential magazine "is said to have affidavits from two mulatto prostitutes in New York." Informants said Sinatra was wooing JFK through Peter Lawford "so that Joe Fischetti and other notorious hoodlums could have an entre [sic] to the Senator."
  
• 7/15/1960 Document 8: Memorandum for General Twining et al from Rear Admiral F. J. Blouin, Joint Secretary, JCS, "Target Coordination and Associated Problems," SM-679-60, 15 July 1960, Top Secret, Excised copy with more details released on appeal Source: National Archives, Record Group 218, Records of the Joint Chief of Staff, Decimal Files, 3205 (17 Aug 59) After several meetings in early July it became apparent that the JCS remained completely split over the organization and direction of strategic nuclear planning. The spread sheets produced by the Joint Secretariat illustrate the disagreements. Thus, under the "Objectives and Concepts" category, the Army and Navy were content to see key target systems destroyed or neutralized and supported the idea of prevailing in war, but the Air Force had a more thoroughgoing concept drawing upon older thinking about the utility of bombing to destroy a society's morale; it sought to "destroy the Sino-Soviet bloc's will and ability to wage war." While the Air Force had specific concepts of strike priorities--apparently putting strategic nuclear targets at the top of the list--the other services rejected the idea of priority targets, with the Army holding that all on the target list were "important." The Navy probably rejected putting giving strategic targets top priority because of the problem of striking empty silos. Significantly, the services significantly diverged on the issue of restraints over nuclear weapons use. To limit or even avoid "overkill," both the Army and the Navy supported constraints on surface bursts of nuclear weapons. Both services worried about the lethal impact of downwind fallout, with the Army explicitly concerned about limiting exposure of "friendly forces and people" to radioactive fallout. By contrast, the Air Force saw no need for additional constraints. On organizational responsibilities and methods of organizing attack plans, differences remained profound. Both the Navy and the Marine Corps wanted responsibility for the NSTL and operational plans lodged with the JCS, which would work out attack plans with the CINCs. The Air Force agreed that the JCS should have overall responsibility for targeting policy, but wanted the CINCSAC to have the authority to develop the NSTL and the SIOP. The Army's position leaned toward the Air Force in that it supported designating CINCSAC as the "National Strategic Target Planning Agent," but with less authority than the Air Force envisioned.
  
• 7/16/1960 JFK made his acceptance speech at the Los Angeles Coliseum: "I stand tonight facing west on what was once the last frontier...the problems are not all solved and the battles are not all won, and we stand today on the edge of a new frontier - the frontier of the 1960s, a frontier of unknown opportunities and paths, a frontier of unfulfilled hopes and threats...we stand on this frontier at a turning point in history."
  
• 7/18/1960 Ike sent telegrams to JFK and LBJ inviting them to intelligence briefings.
  
• 7/18/1960 NYT reported the results of Hoover's report on the May student riots in San Francisco. Titled Communist Target: Youth', he stated, "Particularly unfortunate is the fact that many youth and student organizations are totally unaware of the extent to which they can be victimized and exploited by Communists…Looking at the riots and chaos Communists have created in other countries, many Americans point to the strength of our nation and say, it can't happen here.' The Communist success in San Francisco in May 1960 proves it can." HUAC also produced a documentary film on the riots called Operation Abolition, a heavy-handed and laughable bit of propaganda using cleverly-edited news footage; the film at one point called "We Shall Overcome" a Communist song. Right-wingers, on the other hand, lavishly praised the film as "proof" of communist subversion behind all domestic unrest.
  
• 7/19/1960 Marguerite Oswald writes a letter to Khrushchev inquiring about her son, Lee.
  
• 7/20/1960 Two Polaris (A-1X) test missiles successfully launched from submerged submarine, the George Washington, marking a major milestone in the Navy ballistic missile program. Ballistic missile fired for the first time from a submerged sub; off Cape Canaveral, a two-stage Polaris rocket flies 1,150 miles from the USS George Washington in less than 14 minutes.
  
• 7/20/1960 USSR recovered 2 dogs; 1st living organisms to return from space
  
• 7/23/1960 Allen Dulles met with Kennedy in Hyannisport to give him a briefing on foreign policy and intelligence matters; they talked "in detail" about Cuba and Africa.
  
• 7/25/1960 GOP Convention opens in Chicago.
  
• 7/25/1960 LBJ letter to Hoover: "Dear Edgar: I very deeply appreciate your wonderful letter. Just to know that a distinguished public servant and very dear friend like you feels as you do, is richly rewarding to me personally."
  
• 7/27/1960 Dulles gave an intelligence briefing to LBJ in Texas.
  
• 7/27-28/1960 memo from US Embassy in Paris to Hoover saying that the Swiss Federal Police had been told, "in accordance with the bureau's request," to investigate Oswald's actions after he left the US. Declassified 12/1995; another document had the Swiss police reporting to the FBI 10/1/1960 that Oswald had planned to attend Albert Schweitzer College but never showed up. (AP 12/29/1995)
  
• 7/27/1960 Nixon is nominated by the Republicans; at the end of the GOP convention, the Gallup Poll showed JFK ahead 52 to 48%. Barry Goldwater threw his support to Nixon, but also told the crowd, "The Republican Party platform deserves the support of every American over the blueprint for socialism presented by the Democrats. We have been losing elections because conservatives too often fail to vote. Let's grow up, conservatives. If we want to take this party back, and I think we can some day, let's get to work."
  
• 7/28/1960 Dulles gave LBJ an intelligence briefing in Texas. Dulles stayed overnight at Johnson's ranch.
  
• 7/28/1960 FBI memo on Henry Cabot Lodge, "which has been prepared in anticipation of his nomination for the Vice Presidency...We have had cordial relations with Lodge since 1937." The memo outlined a few minor incidents in his past, such as an arrest for intoxication in 1922.
  
• Mid-1960 Oswald bought a TOZ 16-gauge shotgun, joined a hunting club. After a few outings, he sold the gun to a secondhand store for 18 rubles. Gerald Posner: "The KGB file reveals that his fellow workers considered him a poor shot, especially with a pistol he once fired." (Case Closed 67) Life magazine would later claim that while in the USSR, he "joined a rifle club and became an expert marksman. (As a Marine he had made only average scores)." (Life 11/29/1963)
  
• By late summer 1960, when Kennedy became the Democratic nominee for president, the CIA had already begun training fifteen hundred Cuban exile troops at a secret base in Guatemala for an invasion of Cuba. "The Bay of Pigs Invasion: A Comprehensive Chronology of Events, " in Bay of Pigs Declassified, edited by Peter Kornbluh ( New York: New Press, 1998) , pp. 269-70.
  
• 8/1960 CIA Deputy Director of Plans Richard Bissell and CIA Chief of Security Sheffield Edwards have discussions concerning use of underworld figures in organized crime to kill Castro. An unnamed deputy of Edwards' was also involved. They then recruited Robert Maheu, an ex-FBI agent and top consultant to Howard Hughes, to coordinate the actual logistics of the plots. The CIA and Maheu disagree over who was responsible for bringing Johnny Roselli into the plot. Maheu would later testify that he didn't even know Roselli was a mobster, merely that he was a man "who could get things done." The CIA and Maheu claim that Roselli was only told that Maheu represented business interests who wanted Castro eliminated, but Roselli claimed that he was made fully aware that Maheu was working with CIA. Bissell and Edwards claim that the plots were authorized by Allen Dulles and Charles Cabell in late September, but who initially authorized them is not known. (Alleged Assassination Plots Involving Foreign Leaders, 11/20/75)
  
• 8/1960 USAF Atlas squadrons became operational at Warren AFB, Wyo.
  
• 8/1960 JFK was briefed by Allen Dulles, but could not positively tell Kennedy that there was no missile gap. Another briefing later in the month by SAC gave Kennedy little more information on bombers and missiles.
  
• 8/1960 Guatemala opened a CIA airstrip at the Agency's training base at Retalhuleu.
  
• 8/1960 Eisenhower approved the preparation of a National Strategic Target List and Single Integrated Operational Plan (SIOP). It would have resulted in a nuclear war killing perhaps 500 million people.
  
• 8/1/1960 Antonio Veciana, comptroller in Havana's Banco Finaciero, is approved by deep-cover CIA agent "Maurice Bishop" to work with him in anti-Castro activity. (Fonzi chronology p415)
  
• 8/1/1960 Benin (Dahomey) gains independence from France
  
• 8/3/1960 Dominican Republic: president Hector Trujillo Molina resigns and is succeeded by his vice-president, Joaquin Balaguer.
  
• 8/3/1960 Niger gains independence from France
  
• 8/4/1960 Billy Graham wrote to Ike that if JFK & LBJ won the election, Catholic Mike Mansfield would be in line to become Senate majority leader. With Massachusetts congressman John McCormack serving as floor leader in the House, Catholics would hold much power in government, and "the Roman Catholic Church will take advantage of this." (With God on Our Side p50)
  
• 8/5/1960 Burkina (formerly Upper Volta) declares independence from France
  
• 8/6/1960 Bolivia: Victor Paz Estenssoro is inaugurated as president.
  
• 8/11/1960 Chad declares independence from France.
  
• 8/12/1960 Document 9: Admiral Burke's Conversation with Secretary [of Navy] Franke 12 Aug 60 Source: U.S. Navy Operational Archives, Arleigh Burke Papers, SIOP/NSTL Briefing Folder By early August, Secretary of Defense Gates had met with the JCS numerous times to form a consensus on strategic nuclear planning but he was not able to overcome the wide gulf between the services, especially the Air Force and the Navy. While Gates rejected Air Forces ideas for a unified command, he sought Eisenhower's endorsement of the proposals for an NSTL and SIOP to be prepared by a Director of Strategic Target Planning. Apparently, Gates saw SAC's vaunted computer capabilities as a significant reason for lodging strategic planning at Offutt Air Force Base. Strongly dissenting, Burke wanted Eisenhower to hear him out. During a two hour meeting on 11 August, Burke made his plea for JCS "direct control" over nuclear planning; otherwise it would be would be very difficult for the Chiefs to review target lists and operational plans if another agency created them. Burke further objected to the imposition of SAC methods on the unified commands. Eisenhower was sympathetic to some of Burke's concerns but he wanted to "test" the new approach. Troubled by the "schism over the method of conducting the first two hours or so of war", Eisenhower insisted that the war plan be on a "completely integrated basis" with the strikes "firmly laid on." "The initial strike must be simultaneous." Sometimes the discussion was testy; when there was some possibility of putting the planning on a trial basis, Twining argued that if that happened the "Navy would sabotage it." Eisenhower dismissed such charges and said he wanted to think about the "trial run" concept. (Note 15) The day after President Eisenhower made his decision to support Gates and Twining in going ahead with the SIOP and the JSTSP, Burke met with Secretary of the Navy William B. Franke. Recounting the meeting with Eisenhower, Burke went over his misgivings about SAC's role in strategic planning and Gate's acquiescence in the Air Force agenda. Nevertheless, Burke was determined to give the new system a try and send experienced Naval officers to work in the new strategic target planning staff. "We want to make this thing work as well as we possibly can." Burke remained bitter, however, worried that the Air Force was trying to take over all nuclear forces; "smart and ruthless" Air Force leaders were using "exactly the same techniques as the Communists" to win power struggles at the Pentagon. "As a matter of fact [the Air Force's textbooks], originally about ten years ago, were built on the textbooks of the Communists, how to control these things." (Note 16)
  
• 8/15/1960 The Congo (Brazzaville) gains its independence from France
  
• 8/16/1960 The first assassination plot by the United States against Fidel Castro is initiated when a CIA official is given a box of Castro's favorite cigars and told to poison them. It is unknown whether any attempt was later made to pass the cigars on to Castro. (Alleged Assassination Plots Involving Foreign Leaders, 11/20/75, p. 73)
  
• 8/16/1960 Cyprus proclaimed an independent republic after 82 years of British rule.
  
• 8/17/1960 Francis Gary Powers U-2 spy trial opens in Moscow
  
• 8/17/1960 Indonesia ends diplomatic relations with the Netherlands in dispute over Netherlands New Guinea.
  
• 8/17/1960 Gabon gains independence from France (National Day)
  
• 8/17/1960 Memo from FBI supervisor R.O. Allior to Alan Belmont; "[deleted] is a close personal friend of Vice President Nixon...is working hard...to get Mr. Nixon elected and that he is busy contacting wealthy individuals to secure money for the campaign...will start to expose some of Senator Kennedy's top advisors as 'parlor pinks'...If Senator Kennedy is elected, [deleted] believes that the United States will slowly become a Socialist Government..."
  
• 8/18/1960 A group of approximately 25 evangelical leaders met with Billy Graham in Montreux, Switzerland. Also included was Norman Vincent Peale. The main topic of conversation was how to thwart JFK's election. Peale was encouraged to publicly speak out against JFK, but it backfired when he did. Graham would deny having anything to do with encouraging Peale, but would admit years later that he had indeed. (With God on Our Side p52-53; God's Salesman, Carol George, 1993)
  
• 8/19/1960 Gary Powers convicted in Russia of spying on the USSR and sentenced to 10 years.
  
• 8/28/1960 Billy Graham sent a statement to Time and Newsweek denying that he had been referring to JFK when he recently said that "A man's religion cannot be separated from his person: therefore, when religion involves political decision, it becomes a legitimate issue. For example, the people have the right to know the views of a Quaker on pacifism or a Christian Scientist's view on medical aid, or a Catholic's view on the secular influences of the Vatican…some Protestants are hestitant about voting for a Catholic because the Catholic Church is not only a religion, but a secular institution which sends and receives ambassadors from secular states."
  
• 8/29/1960 JFK told reporters that he was firmly committed to raising the minimum wage to $1.25 an hour.
  
• 8/29/1960 Hazza Majali, premier of Jordan, was in his Amman office when he and ten others died in a bomb explosion.
  
• 8-9/1960 Oswald writes in his diary, "As my Russian improves I become increasingly concious of just what sort of a sociaty I live in. Mass gymnastics, compulsory after work meeting, usually political information meeting. Complusary attendance at lectures and the sending of the entire shop collective (except me) to pick potatoes on a Sunday, at a State collective farm. A patroict duty' to bring in the harvest. The opions of the workers (unvoiced) are that it's a great pain in the neck."
  
• 9/1960 When Lee Harvey Oswald arrived in Minsk in the winter of 1960, Ernst Titovetz was a medical student avidly studying English. Through mutual friends from the television factory where Oswald worked, Titovetz met Oswald. Titovetz and Oswald became friends and often went out together in search of female company. Titovetz wanted to learn how to speak English as a native American speaker and one day in the summer or autumn of 1960, invited Oswald to a language lab with reel-to-reel audiotape recorders at the Minsk Foreign Languages Institute. There Titovetz recorded a series of tapes, for the purpose, he says, of studying Oswald's accent and pronunciation.
  
• 9/1960 Ninety-three conservative college students met at William F. Buckley's family estate in Sharon, Connecticut to form a movement on the right to counter the new left' on college campuses. They drafted the "Sharon Statement," the founding document of Young Americans for Freedom. Among those who attended: M. Stanton Evans.
  
• 9/2/1960 CIA Chief of Operational Support James O 'Connell reports assassination operation against Castro has commenced.
  
• 9/2/1960 Ike signed a $3.7 billion Mutual Security Appropriations Bill.
  
• 9/6/1960 LBJ letter to Hoover: "Dear Edgar: Many thanks for your thought on my birthday. It's good to be remembered by your friends - and your neighbors!! With warm regards."
  
• 9/6/1960 US defectors to Moscow, National Security Agency code clerks Bernon F. Mitchell and William H. Martin, say they deserted for moral and political reasons.
  
• 9/12/1960 JFK spoke before a group of Protestant ministers at the Greater Houston Ministerial Association about the "Catholic issue." "I believe in an America that is officially neither Catholic, Protestant, nor Jewish where no public official either requests or accepts instructions on public policy from the pope, the National Council of Churches or any other ecclesiastical source where no religious body seeks to impose its will directly or indirectly upon the general populace or the public acts of officials and where religious liberty is so indivisible that an act against one church is treated as an act against all. For while this year it may be a Catholic against whom the finger of suspicion is pointed, in other years it has been, and may someday be again, a Jew, or a Quaker, or a Unitarian or a Baptist. It was Virginia's harassment of Baptist preachers, for example, that helped lead to Jefferson's Statute of Religious Freedom. Today, I may be the victim, but tomorrow it may be you, until the whole fabric of our harmonious society is ripped at a time of great national peril."
  
• 9/13/1960 Oswald receives undesirable discharge. (CD 82)
  
• 9/14/1960 Johnny Roselli, Robert Maheu and the unnamed CIA Support Chief met at the Plaza Hotel in NY to discuss the anti-Castro plots. Within ten days the three men had a second planning session in Miami. It could never be determined who in the CIA initially authorized the plots. (Church Report p76)
  
• 9/14/1960 Iraq, Iran, Kuwait, Saudi-Arabia & Venezuela form OPEC
  
• 9/17/1960 Mobs attacked US embassy in Panama in dispute over flying of US and Panamanian flags.
  
• 9/19/1960 Dulles gave Kennedy another intelligence briefing. Dulles's memo for the record notes that he discussed Cuba, the Congo, Berlin, Laos, Jordan, Syria, the Sino-Soviet dispute, and the Soviet space program.
  
• 9/21/1960 CIA files released so far don't say why Bernard Barker was first assigned to work E. Howard Hunt on Sept. 21, 1960. It's also interesting that on September 20, Hunt was assigned the aliases of "Eduardo and "Edward." Even though "Eduardo" would be Hunt's best-known alias among Cuban exiles from 1960 through at least 1964, none of his operational files under that name were given to any of the Congressional committees who investigated him. Even when the Senate Watergate Committee specifically requested Hunt's "Mr. Edwards" file, the CIA refused to provide it.
  
• 9/22/1960 President Eisenhower's address to the General Assembly of the United Nations pointed to the importance of international agreement on measures to "enable future generations to find peaceful and scientific progress not another fearful dimension in the arms race, as they explore the universe."
  
• 9/22/1960 Mali (formerly French Sudan) declares independence from France
  
• 9/23/1960 Khrushchev addressed the UN General Assembly, attacking the West and demanding an apology for violation of Soviet airspace. He called America a "disgrace to civilization." At one point he took off his shoe and pounded it on the podium. Ike was so frustrated that he told Herter that if he were a dictator, he would "launch an attack on Russia" while Khrushchev was in NY.
  
• 9/24/1960 Meeting is held between CIA Operational Support Chief James O'Connell, mobster John Rosselli, and Robert Maheu (ex-FBI agent, Howard Hughes employee) in Miami. Rosselli then asks Chicago mob boss Sam Giancana to participate. Giancana agrees and approaches Florida mob boss Santos Trafficante, who agrees to recruit an "asset" to carry out the murder. O'Connell would be introduced to Giancana and Trafficante later. (Davis; Fonzi chronology p 415)
  
• 9/24/1960 First nuclear-powered aircraft carrier, the USS Enterprise, is launched.
  
• 9/24/1960 International Development Assn (UN agency) comes into existence
  
• 9/26/1960 Chicago: first televised presidential debate between JFK and Nixon. In these four debates, JFK looked relaxed and well-tanned, while Nixon looked unshaven and ill-at-ease. Kennedy charged that America was weak and in decline after eight years of Republican rule. He also called for support of the Cuban exiles in their anti-Castro efforts; though this was the very program which Nixon had been supporting for many months, he felt compelled to attack Kennedy's suggestions as irresponsible since "the covert operation (the Bay of Pigs Invasion) had to be protected at all costs." Nixon criticized JFK for having said that the US should have apologized to the USSR for the U-2 incident: "We all remember Pearl Harbor...We cannot afford an intelligence gap...I don't intend to see to it that the United States is ever in a position where, while we are negotiating with the Soviet Union, that we discontinue our intelligence effort, and I don't intend ever to express regrets to Mr. Khrushchev or anybody else...."
  
• 9/29/1960 British PM Macmillan addresses UN General Assembly; he asks Russia to help reduce world tensions and is shouted at by Khrushchev.
  
• 9/1960 Bissell and Edwards brief Dulles and CIA Deputy Director Charles Cabell about operations against Castro.
  
• 10/1960 Early Oct, 60 - Subsequent meeting takes place in Florida (Fountainbleu Hotel) and includes Rosselli, Giancana, Trafficante, Maheu, and O 'Connell. Rosselli (and Maheu) stay at the Kenilworth Hotel keeping his presence from underworld colleagues. At the 1975 Senate hearings on U.S. intelligence operations chaired by Senator Frank Church, CIA officials testified reluctantly on their efforts to kill Fidel Castro. In late 1960, without the knowledge of President Dwight Eisenhower, the CIA had contacted underworld figures John Rosselli, Sam Giancana, and Santos Trafficante, offering them $ 1 5 0,000 for Castro's assassination. The gangsters were happy to be hired by the U.S. government to murder the man who had shut down their gambling casinos in Cuba. If they were successful, they hoped a U.S. -sponsored successor to Castro would allow them to reopen the casinos. (Alleged Assassination Plots Involving Foreign Leaders: An In...