Deep Politics Timeline

[Tracy Riddle]

• 5/1961 Rusk told Sen. Fulbright that there was a risk that Khrushchev could put missiles in Cuba. (The Crisis Years 147)
  
• 5/1/1961 Earle Cabell, brother of Charles P. Cabell (deputy director of the CIA), becomes mayor of Dallas.
  
• 5/1/1961 A National Airlines plane bound for Miami was hijacked to Havana by an armed man.
  
• 5/1/1961 Oswald's diary: "Inspite of fact I married Marina to hurt Ella I found myself in love with Marina." He has not yet told Marina of his desire to return to the US.
  
• 5/1/1961 Castro declares that there is no longer any need for elections in Cuba.
  
• 5/2/1961 In a meeting of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, Sen. Homer Capehart (R-Indiana) asked CIA and military officers, "Are you gentlemen telling us today that...our high military people who fought in World War I and World War II...approved this [Bay of Pigs], what would appear to me to be a Boy Scout operation?" Allen Dulles said that "most of the states of Central America" were confronted with "the insidious penetration of Cuban communism."
  
• 5/3/1961 President and Mrs. Kennedy motorcade following arrival ceremonies for H. E. Habib Bourguiba, President of Tunisia. Washington, D. C., Blair House.
  
• 5/3/1961 Edwards memoranda to FBI read that Giancana had been recruited "in connection with the CIA's clandestine efforts against the Casto government." No results yet, but "several of the plans are still working and may eventually pay off." Edwards stated, "he had never been furnished with any details of the methods used by Giancana and Maheu because this was 'dirty business' and he could not afford to know the specific actions." He also wrote that Richard Bissell had "told the attorney general that some of the [Bay of Pigs] planning included the use of Giancana and the underworld against Castro." (Rappleye and Becker, p 211-212
  
• 5/4/1961 Departing from Washington, black civil rights activists began their bus ride through the south as "Freedom Riders," testing new laws to see how many public facilities had been desegregated. Angry white mobs brutalized them while FBI agents stood by. In Anniston, Alabama, the first bus was overturned and torched by a crowd screaming "Let's roast em!" Riders barely got out before the bus exploded while newsmen watched in amazement. The second bus was boarded by eight thugs who beat the riders with clubs. "Goddamn niggers!" they screamed. "Why don't you white Communists stay up North?" The second bus continued on, and in Birmingham encountered 25 Klansmen dressed in regular clothes. The local police had told them they had 15 minutes "to beat them, bomb them, burn them, shoot them, do anything [they] wanted to do with absolutely no intervention whatsoever by the police." Among the Klansmen was an FBI informer who had reported all of this to the Bureau three weeks earlier, but the FBI did nothing to stop it. The presence of the informant was not made public until 1975. Finally, the police showed up to stop the beatings. Police Chief "Bull" Connor told reporters that it was Mother's Day and many officers were not on duty when the bus arrived. The Kennedy administration provided the riders with a new bus, and they continued on to Montgomery, where they again met a Klan-led mob swinging clubs and pipes.
  
• 5/4/1961 Robert Kennedy asked for federal injunctions against the leader of the Alabama Klan and the Montgomery police. He also dispatched more than 500 deputy federal marshals to Montgomery. Many Americans were not sympathetic to the Freedom Riders, feeling that they should not have gone South in the first place. Reporter Howard K. Smith was fired by CBS News for his too-accurate account of the Klan beatings. (The Fiery Cross p311-12)
  
• 5/4/1961 JFK revived the President's Board of Consultants on Foreign Intelligence Activities, renaming it the President's Foreign Intelligence Advisory Board. He appointed James R. Killian Jr. to head it. Other members of the board included: Edwin H. Land, Dr. William O. Baker, Lt. Gen. James H. Doolittle, Dr. William L. Langer, Robert D. Murphy, Gordon Gray, and Clark Clifford.
  
• 5/4/1961 Rusk told the press that the Vietcong had grown to 12,000 men; refuses to say whether the US will intervene militarily.
  
• 5/5/1961 The Fair Labor Standards Act, signed by JFK, raises the minimum wage to $1.15 in September of 1961 and to $1.25 by September of 1963. (Almanac of American History) It also expanded coverage to include 3.6 million more workers. This week he also signed into law the Area Redevelopment Act, a program of grants and loans to aid distressed areas such as West Virginia.
  
• 5/5/1961 Alan Shepard Jr. is launched from Cape Canaveral, Florida, via the Mercury 3 rocket in the Freedom 7 capsule; this first manned US sub-orbital space flight lasted 15 minutes. The carrier Lake Champlain recovered Shepard.
  
• 5/5/1961 JFK tells press conference that the dispatch of US troops to Vietnam is "one of the matters Vice President Johnson will deal with" in his "communications with the government of Vietnam as to what further steps could be mostly usefully taken."
  
• 5/6/1961 M. Stanton Evans wrote in National Review: "'Operation Abolition' has become an unexpected best-seller. An estimated 700 copies of it are in circulation around the country, and a grand total of 15 million people are believed to have seen it. By and large, viewers react strongly to what they see; most find the film a startling presentation of what can happen in America under Communist auspices. The net effect is to alert the viewer to the dangers of internal Communism…Such conclusions are distasteful to various elements on the Left, which have long maintained as articles of faith that there is no danger from internal Communism.
  
• 5/8/1961 Task force headed by Roswell Gilpatric issued its report, calling for vastly increased US military personnel in Vietnam.
  
• 5/8/1961 JFK wrote a letter to Diem pledging his support to South Vietnam, and asked LBJ to deliver it in person. (Johnson, Vantage Point p53)
  
• 5/9/1961 Calling television a "vast wasteland," FCC chairman Newton Minow said of network programming, "It is not enough to cater to the nation's whims you must also serve the nation's needs."
  
• 5/9/1961 Lyndon and Lady Bird Johnson depart for Saigon.
  
• 5/10/1961 On May 10, and again on May 18, the Joint Chiefs had recommended that combat troops be sent to Vietnam. (Pentagon Papers)
  
• 5/11/1961 Senate voted 43 to 36 to broaden US aid to Czechoslovakia and other Eastern European nations.
  
• 5/11/1961 JFK ordered 400 Green Berets and 100 military advisors to South Vietnam. The Green Berets (Special Forces) were trained in guerilla warfare at Fort Bragg, North Carolina. Also ordered clandestine warfare to be waged against the North by South Vietnamese agents trained by the CIA and Green Berets; this includes infiltration of Southern forces into Laos to disrupt Communist bases and supply lines.
  
• 5/11/1961 The Johnsons arrived in Saigon.
  
• 5/12/1961 LBJ meets with Diem, and calls him the "Winston Churchill of Southeast Asia."
  
• 5/13/1961 Diem and LBJ issued a joint communique stating that aid would be provided to South Vietnam on a larger scale.
  
• 5/14/1961 Jack Anderson article in Parade based on interview with Frank Fiorini (Sturgis): "We Will Finish the Job."
  
• 5/15/1961 Cuba began its major Literacy Campaign.
  
• 5/15/1961 Trappist monk Thomas Merton saw the Bay of Pigs incident especially through the eyes of one of his Cold War correspondents, Evora Arca de Sardinia in Miami. She wrote to Merton saying that her husband, a leader of the anti-Castro forces in the invasion, had been taken prisoner in Cuba. Merton replied to her on the day he received her letter, May 15, 1961 , expressing his " deep compassion and concern in this moment of anguish. " In their subsequent correspondence, Thomas Merton gave spiritual direction to Evora Arca de Sardinia as she became concerned at the divisions and spirit of revenge in the Cuban exile movement. In January 1962 he wrote to her: "The great error of the aggressive Catholics who want to preserve their power and social status at all costs is that they believe this can be done by force, and thus they prepare the way to lose everything they want to save." While President Kennedy and his brother Attorney General Robert Kennedy were working to raise a ransom to free the Bay of Pigs prisoners, Merton was warning Evora Arca de Sardinia about the militant context in which she was living, which questioned the process of such a ransom. In the Miami Cuba colony, as she had written to Merton, paying a ransom to an evil force (the communist Fidel Castro) , even to free their loved ones, was considered a breach of ethics and loyalty. Merton wrote back: " One thing I have always felt increases the trouble and the sorrow which rack you is the fact that living and working among the Cuban emigres in Miami, and surrounded by the noise of hate and propaganda, you are naturally under a great stress and in a sense you are 'forced' against your will to take an aggressive and belligerent attitude which your conscience, in its depth, tells you is wrong. " Thomas Merton, Witness to Freedom: Letters in Times of Crisis, edited by William H. Shannon (New York: Harcourt Brace, 1994), p. 77.
  
• 5/16/1961 JFK leaves for a three-day trip to Ottawa, Canada. McGeorge Bundy complains to him, "We do have a problem of management. We can't get you to sit still."
  
• 5/16/1961 President Kennedy's Back Pain Flares after Ottawa Lumbar Strain. On May 16, 1961, during a tree-planting ceremony in Ottawa, Canada, President Kennedy "strained his back." "Mr. Kennedy lifted a silver-plated shovel three times digging a hole for a red oak tree outside Government House. Mr. Salinger [the president's press secretary] said the president felt immediate pain' during the ceremonial shoveling. He did nothing about it for several days in the hope that it would go away," said one news article. Two weeks later, the president's back pain worsened and "Dr. Travell went to Hyannis Port [Massachusetts] to treat him….Dr. Travell called the injury a lumbosacral strain….Mr. Salinger said the point of the strain was between the lowest lumbar vertebrae, or section of the spine, and the sacrum." President Kennedy used crutches in private to offload strain from his back.
  
• 5/16/1961 South Korea: military coup led by Maj. Gen. Park Chunghee ousted the government of Chang Myon.
  
• 5/17/1961 President John F. Kennedy's Motorcade En Route to Wreath-laying Ceremony at the National War Memorial, Ottawa, Canada Description: Motorcade along Rideau Street, en route to wreath-laying ceremony at the National War Memorial in Confederation Square, Ottawa, Ontario, Canada. President John F. Kennedy rides in back seat of car at left; White House Secret Service Agent, Gerald "Jerry" Behn, sits in front. Ottawa Union Station is behind crowd at left. [Photograph by Harold Sellers]
  
• 5/17/1961 After numerous appeals to spare their lives, Castro offers to exchange the Bay of Pigs prisoners for 500 US bulldozers.
  
• 5/19/1961 In the Cuba Study Group, Arleigh Burke apologized for the JCS by saying that because of the secrecy involved they were not able to use their staff to prepare their assessment of the invasion plan.
  
• 5/19/1961 The CIA reported on May 19, 1961: "Some extreme rightists believe that the only way that President DeGaulle can now be stopped from surrendering Algeria is to assassinate him...This attitude has reached fanatical proportions and those close to it believe that an assassination attempt against DeGaulle is certain to come in the near future...In May 1961 an attempt was made by two Secret Army Organization members to enlist United States Government (deleted) support in their operations against DeGaulle." [CIA F82-0184/1; Allen v. DOD #09787]
  
• 5/21/1961 Freedom Riders attacked at a bus terminal in Montgomery, Alabama. Presidential aide John Seigenthaler is knocked out and RFK orders in federal marshals.
  
• 5/21/1961 JFK publicly commits the US to sending a man to the moon by the end of the decade.
  
• 5/22/1961 FBI Director Hoover sent the Attorney General a memorandum about the Las Vegas wiretap.
  
• 5/22/19621 Memo from J. Edgar Hoover to Robert Kennedy: "On May 3, 1961, Colonel Sheffield Edwards, Director of Security, Central Intelligence Agency (CIA), furnished the following information. Colonel Edwards advised that in connection with CIA's operation against Castro he personally contacted Robert Maheu during the fall of 1960 for the purpose of using Maheu as a "cut-out" in contacts with Sam Giancana, a known hoodlum in the Chicago area. Colonel Edwards said that since the underworld controlled gambling activities in Cuba under the Batista government, it was assumed that this element would still continue to have sources and contacts in Cuba which perhaps could be utilized successfully in connection with CIA's clandestine efforts against the Castro government. As a result, Maheu's services were solicited as a "cut-out" because of his possible entree into underworld circles. Maheu obtained Sam Giancana's assistance in this regard and according to Edwards, Giancana gave every indication of cooperating through Maheu in attempting to accomplish several clandestine efforts in Cuba. Edwards added that none of Giancana's efforts have materialized to date and that several of the plans still are working and may eventually "pay off." Colonel Edwards related that he had no direct contact with Giancana; that Giancana's activities were completely "back stopped" by Maheu and that Maheu would frequently report Giancana's action and information to Edwards. No details or methods used by Maheu or Giancana in accomplishing their missions were ever reported to Edwards. Colonel Edwards said that since this is "dirty business", he could not afford to have knowledge of the actions of Maheu and Giancana in pursuit of any mission for CIA. Colonel Edwards added that he has neither given Maheu any instruction to use technical installations of any type nor has the subject of technical installations ever come up between Edwards and Maheu in connection with Giancana's activity. Mr. Bissell, in his recent briefings of General Taylor and the Attorney General and in connection with their inquiries into CIA relating to the Cuban situation [the Taylor Board of Inquiry] told the Attorney General that some of the associated planning included the use of Giancana and the underworld against Castro.' An attachment to that memorandum quoted Sheffield Edwards as saying that Bissell in "recent briefings" of Taylor and Kennedy "told the Attorney General that some of the associated planning included the use of Giancana and the underworld against Castro." Bissell told the Church Committee that he did not remember any briefing other than for the review of the Bay of Pigs - The Taylor Report. (Bissell, 7/22/75) Taylor told the Church Committee that no mention was made of an assassination effort against Castro. The summary of Edwards' conversation with the FBI was accompanied by a cover memorandum from Hoover stating that Edwards had acknowledged the "attempted" use of Maheu and 3 "hoodlum elements" by the CIA in "anti-Castro activities" but that the "purpose for placing the wiretap...has not been determined...." (FBI memo to Attorney General, 5/22/61) The memorandum also explained that Maheu had contacted Giancana in connection with the CIA program and CIA had requested that the information be handled on a "need-to-know" basis. RFK writes in the margin of the memo to his aide, Courtney Evans, "I hope this will be followed up vigorously," after being assured the alliance had been discontinued by CIA's Edwards. (Hoover memo to RFK and RFK's notation quoted in Assassination Plots, Interim Report: Alleged Assassination Plots Involving Foreign Leaders, pp127-128) Note: Courtney Evans had worked closely with the then Senator John Kennedy and Robert Kennedy on the McClellan Committee which had investigated the relationship between organized labor and organized crime. During the McClellan Investigation Sam Giancana was one of the major crime figures examined. After becoming Attorney General, Robert Kennedy had singled out Giancana as one of the underworld leaders to be most intensely investigated. Anti-JFK columnist Victor Lasky: "the Kennedy brothers vowed to 'get even' with the Cuban dictator. After the Bay of Pigs the President himself spurred the CIA into an immense covert war against Cuba. It required the services of thousands of men and cost as much as $100 million a year." (It Didn't Start with Watergate 85; "The Kennedy Vendetta") "At the same time, the Kennedys covertly ordered several US agencies to find some sure means of 'eliminating' Castro. The CIA had been thinking along those lines for some time....even under Eisenhower, worked with Mafia leaders Giancana and Roselli in devising plans to bump off Fidel. Bobby Kennedy learned all this himself in the form of a detailed secret memorandum from J Edgar Hoover dated 5/1961...though the Hoover memorandum never mentioned the words 'assassination' or 'elimination'...the director did refer to the CIA's relationship with the mobsters as 'dirty business.' According to sources quoted by The New York Times [5/30/1975], Attorney General Kennedy jotted this note on top of the memorandum: 'Have this followed up vigorously.' The memo also bore his handwritten initials...A year later Kennedy was given a more precise briefing...Lawrence Houston, general counsel for the Agency from its founding in 1947, told the Attorney General about the planned effort to 'dispose' of Castro. More recently Houston disclosed that the briefing did not seem to surprise Kennedy. In fact he 'didn't seem very perturbed' about the plot, only about the CIA's use of organized crime. 'If you are going to have anything to do with the Mafia,' Kennedy said, 'you come see me first.'" (Time 8/4/1975) The meeting took place 5/1962. Hoover then wrote RFK a memo which was later found by the Rockefeller Commission; he voiced concern that Giancana could "blackmail" the government. "It was in the summer of 1962 that Robert Kennedy contacted Maj. Gen. Edward G. Lansdale and ordered him to begin work on a special CIA project to develop various operations for 'getting rid of' Fidel Castro. In an interview with the Washington Star, Lansdale emphasized that the Attorney General had not used the word 'assassination.' However, he added, there could be no doubt that 'the project for disposing of Castro envisioned the whole spectrum of plans from overthrowing the Cuban leader to assassinating him.'" Lansdale said he went to William Harvey to carry out RFK's instructions. (It Didn't Start with Watergate p85-87; 5/31/1975 Washington Star) Shortly after the first meeting of the Special Group Augmented, a memo written by George McManus (recently declassified), stated: "No time, money, effort - or manpower is to be spared. Yesterday...the President had indicated to him...that the final chapter had not been written - it's got to be done and will be done." (The Last Investigation 45) Shortly after the Bay of Pigs, JFK spoke publicly about a "new and deeper struggle" against Castro: "Cuba must not be abandoned to the Communists." Jonathan Kwitny: "There's no public record on whether he specifically ordered the murder of Fidel Castro...Kennedy's closest aides in those years have argued persuasively that he wasn't aware that during one period the CIA hired some Mafia bosses..." (Crimes of Patriots 24)
  
• 5/22/1961 MLK speaks at a mass rally at Ralph Abernathy's First Baptist Church in Montgomery while an angry mob surrounds the church and threatens violence.
  
• 5/22/1961 FBI memo from Rosen to Belmont discussed MLK; the memo noted that "King has not been investigated by the FBI." Hoover then wrote in the margin, "Why not?" (The Man and the Secrets 501)
  
• 5/23/1961 LBJ reports to Kennedy on his Asia trip; urges that US must aid Vietnam and Thailand or "pull back our defenses to San Francisco and a 'Fortress America' concept." JFK tried to reassure Diem by sending Vice President Lyndon Johnson in May 1961 to visit him along with other anti-Communist Asian allies who were dismayed by Kennedy's turn toward neutralism. Johnson's written report back to the president was a rebuke of his policy. Johnson described what he thought was the disastrous impact of the decision to neutralize Laos: "Country to country, the degree differs but Laos has created doubt and concern about intentions of the United States throughout Southeast Asia. No amount of success at Geneva can, of itself, erase this. The independent Asians do not wish to have their own status resolved in like manner in Geneva. "Leaders such as Diem, Chiang [Kai-Shek of Taiwan], Sarit [of Thailand], and Ayub [Khan of Pakistan] more or less accept that we are making 'the best of a bad bargain' at Geneva. Their charity extends no farther . . . "Our [Johnson's] mission arrested the decline of confidence in the United States. It did not-in my judgment-restore any confidence already lost. The leaders were as explicit, as courteous and courtly as men could be in making it clear that deeds must follow words-soon. "We didn't buy time-we were given it. "If these men I saw at your request were bankers, I would know-without bothering to ask-that there would be no further extensions on my note." Johnson then summed up for Kennedy a belligerent Cold War challenge to his policy that came not only from the anti-Communist allies whom LBJ had just visited but also from the Pentagon and from the vice president himself: "The fundamental decision required of the United States-and time is of the greatest importance-is whether we are to attempt to meet the challenge of Communist expansion now in Southeast Asia by a major effort in support of the forces of freedom in the area or throw in the towel. " (Pentagon Papers)
  
• 5/24/1961 LBJ said he arrived back in Washington on this day. (Vantage Point p54)
  
• 5/25/1961 JFK told Congress that "urgent national needs" required more spending for the military and a civil defense program. He also committed the US to "landing a man on the moon and returning him safely to earth" by the end of the decade. (Almanac of American History) Polls showed that most Americans opposed the idea because of the enormous cost involved.
  
• 5/25/1961 US embassy in Moscow receives a letter from Oswald (with nearly perfect grammar and no spelling errors). He again expresses the desire to be guaranteed that he will not be prosecuted upon his return, and also informs the Embassy that he now has a Russian wife. (H 16 705-7)
  
• 5/29/1961 A further measure by which JFK tried to keep the CIA from making foreign policy on the ground was his May 29, 1961, letter to each American ambassador abroad. The president wrote: "You are in charge of the entire U.S. Diplomatic Mission, and I expect you to supervise all its operations. The Mission includes not only the personnel of the Department of State and the Foreign Service, but also representatives of all other United States agencies." (Cited by Timothy N. Castle, At War in the Shadow of Vietnam: U. S. Military Aid to the Royal Lao Government, 1955- 1975 (New York: Columbia University Press, 1993), p. 54) That included, of course, the CIA, which Schlesinger notes was the particular target of JFK's letter. The Agency didn't like it. Its people were therefore pleased whenever Kennedy made a concession to their covert agenda, as he did in Laos to counter the Pathet Lao. That particular concession gave them the opportunity not only to strengthen General Phoumi's hand but also to encourage Phoumi to undercut the president's neutralist policy. Phoumi was happy to oblige.
  
• 5/2/1961 Decided - May 29, 1961 McGowan v. Maryland, 366 U.S. 420 (1961) was a United States Supreme Court case in which the court held that laws with religious origins are not unconstitutional if they have secular purpose. At the time of the case, the State of Maryland maintained laws which only permitted certain items, such as drugs, tobacco, newspapers and some foodstuffs, to be sold on Sundays. Seven employees of a department store in Anne Arundel County, Maryland were indicted for selling items in violation of Md. Ann. Code, Art. 27, § 521, the afore-mentioned law. The Supeme Court was asked to consider whether the presence of such a law would be in violation of the Free Exercise clause of the First Amendment and the Equal Protection Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment.
  
• 5/30/1961 JFK and Jackie left for a trip to Paris.
  
• 5/30/1961 Dominican Republic dictator Trujillo was assassinated by CIA-backed dissidents. His car was overtaken by gunmen in a Chevrolet, who blasted him with their small arms; the guns had been provided by US officials. The attack was led by Pedro Cedeno and Lt. Amado Garcia. Some theorized that the US was behind the killing, wishing to eliminate Trujillo and replace him with someone more acceptable before a revolution created another Castro. It is widely speculated that the CIA has provided weapons for the assassination, in hopes of helping to create a less reactionary government after the assassination. Their fears had arisen after the "revolutionary situation" that occurred in nearby Cuba. After his death, his son, Ramfi Trujillo, took over the dictatorship. He rounded up all those involved in the assassination and killed them all. However, Ramfi was soon exiled from the country.
  
• 5/31/1961 Gen. Walker's anti-Communist program, called "Pro-Blue," is discontinued by the Army.
  
• 5/31/1961 A young James Marshall (Jimi) Hendrix began his basic training at Ford Ord. He would later join the 101st Airborne as a paratrooper.
  
• 5/31-6/3/1961 JFK and Jackie were greetly by wildly enthusiastic Parisians. He met with Charles de Gaulle. The timing of President Kennedy's back strain "unfortunately corresponded with [his] planned first summit meeting with [the Soviet Union's leader, 1953-1964] Nikita Khrushchev," noted Hart. (18) The president's trip to Paris, Vienna, and London occurred between May 31 and June 7, 1961. "Kennedy made arrangements to have Dr. Travell and Dr. [Max] Jacobson travel to Europe as part of the presidential entourage and he was apparently administered one of Dr. Jacobson's injections prior to meeting with Mr. Khrushchev," wrote Hart. (19-21) Who was Dr. Max Jacobson? Dr. Max Jacobson was a New York physician "who had made a reputation for treating celebrities with pep pills,' or amphetamines, that helped combat depression and fatigue. Jacobson, whom patients called Dr. Feelgood,' administered back injections of painkillers and amphetamines that allowed Kennedy to stay off crutches, which he believed essential to project a picture of robust good health. All of this was kept secret," wrote Kennedy biographer Dallek. (22) Apparently, President Kennedy had been receiving injections from Dr. Jacobson as early as September 1960, administered before the Nixon-Kennedy debates. Even Drs. Janet Travell and Burkley during the president's trip to Europe in early June 1961 were unaware that "Jacobson flew on a chartered jet to Paris, where he continued giving the president back injections." (22) Dr. Burkley became increasingly concerned about President Kennedy's reliance on passive treatment (injections) for relief of his back pain. Dr. Burkley asked Dr. Travell to contact a new physician--physical medicine specialist Hans Kraus, M.D.--to evaluate and treat the president's current back problem. (18) She resisted, declared Dr. Burkley in a later interview. He continued, "I said if she did not call him personally I would call him. And at that point he was called, and from then on the President's exercise program was entirely under Dr. Kraus and Dr. Travell was instructed not to have anyto attempt to interfere in any way," averred Dr. Burkley. (18) Who was Dr. Kraus? Austrian native and avid outdoorsman Dr. Kraus (1906-1996) graduated from the University of Vienna Medical School in the 1920s, fled to the United States in 1938 in advance of the Hitler debacle, and became an American citizen in 1945. (23) His medical specialty covered physical medicine, rehabilitation, and physical therapy. Like Dr. Jacobson, Dr. Kraus became a physical therapist to celebrities. Dr. Burkley learned of Dr. Kraus from Dr. Eugene Cohen. (4) Who was Dr. Cohen? Dr. Cohen was an endocrinologist at New York Hospital. He had provided the endocrine care for Mr. Kennedy since January 1956 when then Senator Kennedy's usual endocrinologist, Dr. Ephraim Shorr, chief of the endocrinology service at New York Hospital, died suddenly of a heart attack at age 58 years. (4,24) Indeed, Dr. Shorr in 1955 had urged Dr. Travell to take charge of Senator Kennedy's care following his third failed back surgery and had personally conveyed the Senator, on crutches, to Dr. Travell's office in New York City in May 1955. (4) In November 1961, Dr. Cohen warned President Kennedy in a strongly worded letter about Dr. Max Jacobson's amphetamine-filled injections: You cannot be permitted to receive therapy from irresponsible doctors like M.J. [Dr. Max Jacobson] who by forms of stimulating injections offer some temporary help to neurotic or mentally ill individuals…this therapy conditions one's needs almost like a narcotic, is not for responsible individuals who at any split second may have to decide the fate of the universe. (25) Mrs. Evelyn Lincoln, the president's secretary, kept his files, which contained "a bill [showing] that Jacobson was seeing the president roughly once a week. Beyond that, the doctor gave favored patients doses that they could inject themselves. Many of his patients returned repeatedly delighted at the bounce they had in their steps when they left his office, but others ended up ravaged, emotionally destroyed when they tried to stop the injections," wrote Leamer. (26) Dr. Burkley secured additional space near the White House dispensary for the use of physiotherapy provided to the president by Dr. Kraus. (14) Dr. Burkley said, "It [the space for physiotherapy] was in the West basement at that time. We subsequently, in redoing the swimming pool area and the small area next to the swimming pool which had some gymnasium equipment, we established an area there were President Kennedy on a daily basis was very religious in his physical program [sic]." (14) Dr. Kraus started the president on "a regimen of aerobics, strengthening, and flexibility exercises and reduced Kennedy's reliance on procaine injections," stated Hart. "The exercises were carried out in the area of the White House swimming pool, which was refurbished at the expense of Kennedy's father in order to allow privacy. This shift toward active rehabilitation starting in October 1961 did apparently give Kennedy some pain relief, and he maintained the exercise regimen throughout the remainder of his life. (19)
  
• Summer 1961: There are approximately 1,250 generals and admirals on active duty in all branches of the US military. "In the summer of 1961, irritation arose over irresponsible and unreasonable censorship of public speeches. High-ranking military officers expressed concern over changes made by the censors that did not seem to make sense, and for which they had received no explanation." By the fall of 1961 Sen. Strom Thurmond demanded an investigation. (The Pentagon, Clark Mollenhoff, 1967)
  
• Late 6/1961 Oswald tells Marina that he wants to return to the US. (Historic Diary)
  
• 6/1961 Fortune magazine simultaneously criticized Kennedy for being insufficiently activist in foreign policy (i.e. not fully backing the Bay of Pigs invasion of Cuba) and all too activist in domestic policy. Luce's magazine then accused the President of having 'little understanding of the American political economic system', of pursuing policies that threatened to 'undermine a strong and free economy' and of attempting to implement controls which would 'erode away basic American liberties'. (Fortune, June 1961, 'Activism in the White House', pp. 117-18).
  
• 6/1961 Abraham Bolden joined the White House Secret Service detail in June 1961 . He experienced personally John Kennedy's concern for people. Kennedy never passed Bolden without speaking to him. He asked about him and his family, in such a way that Bolden knew he meant it. He engaged him in small talk about Chicago and its baseball teams. The president often introduced Bolden to his White House visitors. Bolden could also see in Kennedy's eyes a worry, a feeling that something was wrong around him. Abraham Bolden saw increasing evidence of the president's isolation and danger from the standpoint of security. Most of the Secret Service agents seemed to hate John Kennedy. They joked among themselves that if someone shot at him, they'd get out of the way. The agents' drunken after-hours behavior carried over into lax security for the president. Bolden refused to drink or play cards with them. The other agents made remarks about " niggers " in his presence. (Abraham Bolden, interview by James Douglass, June 16, 2001 . Also Fensterwald, " Case of Secret Service, " p. 41) As he had before in his life, Abraham Bolden spoke up. He complained to his superiors about the president's poor security. They did nothing. After forty days as a member of the White House detail, Bolden refused to take part any longer in a charade. He returned voluntarily to the Chicago office. He had demoted himself on principle from the highest position an African American had ever held in the Secret Service.
  
• 6/1961 RFK wrote a personal memo about the Bay of Pigs (RFK and his Times 477, 757): he estimated that it was about 4/12 he was informed about the plans, and he was briefed by Bissell. Bissell, the CIA and the JCS assured them that the chances of success were "extremely good," and RFK worried about what might happen if the Cuban exiles were brought back to the states without going through with the invasion. JFK wanted to use air power to support the invasion once it began to go badly, but Dean Rusk was opposed because the US had already pledged not to do so; RFK wasn't sure if air cover would help or not. He felt that poor communications was a big problem during the invasion. As part of the study team assigned to find out why the invasion failed, RFK decided that he and the President didn't know the people involved well enough to trust their judgment. In particular, he blamed the JCS for not anticipating the various military problems the invasion force would encounter. RFK also noted that "if it hadn't been for Cuba, we would have sent troops to Laos. We probably would have had them destroyed. Jack has said so himself...the only way really that we could win in Laos was drop the atomic bomb..."
  
• 6/3/1961 In 1961, State Agricultural Stabilization and Conservation official Henry Marshall was investigating a broad series of fraudulent government subsidies -- amounting to figures in the seven or eight digit range -- allotted to Billie Sol Estes, a close personal friend of Senate Majority Leader then Vice-President Lyndon B. Johnson. Marshall had uncovered a paper trail that was leading him closer and closer to Johnson himself. Someone (probably Malcolm Wallace) knocked Henry Marshall unconscious with a blunt object, fed the unconscious man carbon monoxide from a hose attached to Wallace's pick-up truck, then shot him five times with a bolt-action .22 caliber rifle and dumped him in a remote corner of Marshall's farm near Franklin, Texas. Justice of the Peace Lee Farmer pronounced the death a suicide and ordered Marshall buried without an autopsy -- over the protests of Marshall's widow. The verdict remained unchanged until 1984, when Billie Sol Estes, under a grant of immunity, told a grand jury that Wallace had been Marshall's killer, and that the order came from Vice-President Lyndon B. Johnson through White House aide Cliff Carter. Based on Estes' testimony and supporting evidence, the grand jury changed the earlier ruling of suicide to murder. Mac Wallace could not be indicted; he died in an automobile accident in Pittsburgh, Texas, on January 7, 1971.
  
• 6/3-4/1961: Summit between JFK and Khruschev at Vienna; little of substance agreed upon. After the summit, US News & World Report stated that Khruschev found JFK to be a "pushover." At one point, he recalled his "kitchen debate" with Nixon, who thought that a Miracle Kitchen would convert Russians to capitalism; Khrushchev said, "only Nixon could have thought of such nonsense." The only point of agreement was a "neutralist" coalition government in Laos; Khrushchev went out of his way to intimidate JFK, who said finally, 'It's going to be a cold winter.'" Khruschev was quoted as saying, "I think that I have taught that young man what fear is."At the June 3-4, 1961, summit meeting in Vienna, John Kennedy succeeded in negotiating with Nikita Khrushchev for their mutual support of a neutral and independent Laos under a government to be chosen by the Laotians themselves . (Stevenson, End of Nowhere, p . 1 54.) It was the only issue they could agree upon. Khrushchev's apparent indifference toward the deepening Cold War threat of nuclear war had shocked Kennedy. Kennedy had had to push Khrushchev at Vienna to get him to agree on Laos. At first Khrushchev taunted his American counterpart with Cold War history, saying Kennedy " knew very well that it had been the US government [under Eisenhower] which had overthrown Souvanna Phouma. " JFK conceded the point. He said, "Speaking frankly, US policy in that region has not always been wise." Nevertheless, he went on, the United States now wanted a Laos that would be as neutral and independent as Cambodia and Burma were. Khrushchev said that was his view as well. He then became as amused by the U.S. policy about-face on Laos as Kennedy's military and CIA advisers were upset by it. He said wryly to Kennedy, "You seem to have stated the Soviet policy and called it your own." Kennedy immediately ordered his representative at the Geneva Conference, Averell Harriman, to seize the time and resolve the Laos crisis peacefully. He phoned Harriman in Geneva and said bluntly, "Did you understand ? I want a negotiated settlement in Laos. I don't want to put troops in. " (Averell Harriman, interview by Charles A. Stevenson; cited in Stevenson, End of Nowhere, p. 154)
  
• 6/4/1961 A full-page ad in the Los Angeles Mirror-News ran, "The summit meeting has failed. What does that mean for you? A fantastic electronics boom. Billions of dollars, a healthy industry in Southern California employing 110,000 people."
  
• 6/5/1961 JFK, in a TV report to the nation, explained about the summit, "No new aims were stated in private that had not been stated in public on either side...Neither of us were there to dictate a settlement...no threats or ultimatums by either side." He had just met with Soviet premier Nikita Khrushchev in Vienna . Late at night on the June 5, 1961, flight back to Washington, the weary president asked his secretary Evelyn Lincoln if she would please file the documents he had been working on. As she started to clear the table, Lincoln noticed a little slip of paper that had fallen on the floor. On it were two lines in Kennedy's handwriting, a favorite saying of his from Abraham Lincoln: "I know there is a God-and I see a storm coming; If he has a place for me, I believe that I am ready. " (Evelyn Lincoln, My Twelve Years with John F. Kennedy (New York: Bantam Books, 1966), p. 230.) The summit meeting with Khrushchev had deeply disturbed Kennedy. The revelation of a storm coming had occurred at the end of the meeting, as the two men faced each other across a table. Kennedy's gift to Khrushchev, a model of the USS Constitution, lay between them. Kennedy pointed out that the ship's cannons had been able to fire half a mile and kill a few people. But if he and Khrushchev failed to negotiate peace, the two of them could kill seventy million people in the opening exchange of a nuclear war. Kennedy looked at Khrushchev. Khrushchev gave him a blank stare, as if to say, "So what?" Kennedy was shocked at what he felt was his counterpart's lack of response. "There was no area of accommodation with him," he said later. (Hugh Sidney, Prelude)
  
• 6/6/1961 A memorandum from Evans to Alan Belmont, Assistant to the Director (FBI) dated June 6, 1961, stated: "We checked with CIA and ascertained that CIA had used Maheu as an intermediary in contacting Sam Giancana, the notorious Chicago hoodlum. This was in connection with anti-Castro activities. CIA, however, did not give any instructions to Maheu to use any technical installations. In connection with this information received from CIA concerning their attempted utilization of the hoodlum element, CIA requested this information be handled on a "need-to-know" basis. We are conducting a full investigation in this wiretap case requested by the Department and the field has been instructed to press this investigation vigorously. Accordingly, 'the Attorney General will be orally assured that we are following up vigorously and the results of our investigation will be furnished to the Department promptly."
  
• 6/9/1961 Life published a Gore Vidal interview with Barry Goldwater; "Well, I've known Bob Welch five, maybe six years...Of course all that stuff of his about Eisenhower being a Communist and so on was silly...Just the other day I sent somebody over to the Library of Congress to get me the bylaws of the Birch Society, and I was disturbed about this dictatorial thing, how he personally can chuck people out any time he pleases." Asked about JFK, Goldwater said, "I like him. Of course we disagree on a lot of things...I told Jack Kennedy: you could be president for life if you'd just lift some of those taxes so that businessmen - and I know hundreds of 'em - would have some incentive...to really start producing....Conservatism is pretty divided. Suppose I started a party. Then somebody would come along and say, 'Well, look here, you're not my kind of conservative'...That's the trouble with the conservatives. They've got this all-or-nothing attitude...A political party can only start around a strong individual."
  
• 6/9/1961 Diem asks for US advisers to increase the ARVN by 100,000 men. Diem sent Kennedy a June 9 letter with a more modest request, for "selected elements of the American Armed Forces to establish training centers for the Vietnamese Armed Forces." As the Pentagon Papers point out in this connection, " the crucial issue, of course, was whether Americans would be sent to Vietnam in the form of organized combat units, capable of, if not explicitly intended for conducting combat operations. " Kennedy would agree to send military support to Diem, such as U.S. advisers and helicopters. However, no matter what pressures were put upon him, he would always refuse to send "American units capable of independent combat against the guerrillas." The author of this section of the Pentagon Papers, Daniel Ellsberg, puzzled over why Kennedy took such a stand. Why wouldn't John F. Kennedy send combat units to Vietnam? The focus of Ellsberg's question in his Pentagon Papers analysis was the fall of 1961, when Kennedy had advisers on all sides urging him to send U.S. troops before it was too late to stop a Viet Cong victory. The pressure on the president began to build in late summer.
  
• 6/12/1961 Gen. Walker was reprimanded by the Army for "taking injudicious actions and for making derogatory public statements about prominent Americans while in command of the 24th Infantry Division in Germany." His planned assignment to command of VIII Corps in Texas is changed to assistant chief of staff for training and operations in Hawaii.
  
• 6/12/1961 California Senate's Fact-Finding Subcommittee on Un-American Activities charges in a report that UC President Kerr "had opened the campus gates to communists." (San Fran Chronicle 6/9/02)
  
• 6/13/1961 The Cuba study group led by Max Taylor delivered its report to JFK. Concluding that there is "no long term living with Castro as a neighbor" and that Cuban subversion "constitutes a real menace" to Latin American nations, Taylor calls for the creation of a new program of action against Cuba, possibly employing the full range of political, military, economic, and psychological tactics.
  
• 6/15/1961 A June 15, 1961 dispatch from the Canadian Embassy in Havana in which the ambassador characterizes the Bay of Pigs invasion as "a decisive point-of-no-return for the Castro regime," that "substantiated the Government's warnings against imperialist aggression from the United States."
  
• 6/16/1961 Discoverer 25 was launched; this satellite carried samples of various minerals to see how they would be affected in space.
  
• 6/16/1961 JFK agrees that US advisers will directly train and supervise Vietnamese troops.
  
• 6/18/1961 NY Times reported, "The Pentagon is having its troubles with rightwingers in uniform. A number of officers of high and middle rank are indoctrinating their commands and the civilian population near their bases with political theories resembling those of the John Birch Society. They are also holding up to criticism and ridicule some official policies of the US Government. The most conspicuous example of some of these officers is Maj. Gen. Edwin A. Walker..."
  
• 6/19/1961Supreme Court rules that illegal evidence cannot be used in prosecuting state court cases. (Almanac of American History)
  
• 6/19/1961 Torcaso v. Watkins, 367 U.S. 488 (1961) was a United States Supreme Court case in which the court reaffirmed that the US Constitution prohibited the states from requiring any kind of religious test for public office.
  
• 6/22/1961 President Kennedy Develops Upper Respiratory Tract Infection. Two weeks after President Kennedy returned from his European tour, Dr. Travell participated in a news conference to report on an upper respiratory infection that kept the president in bed for a day. She told the assembled press corps that she had called Dr. George Burkley to assist her at the White House with the president. He had a temperature of 101 degrees Fahrenheit, which rose to 101.6 degrees five hours later. Dr. Travel obtained a throat culture and blood tests, diagnosed a "one-or-two days virus," and gave the president an intramuscular injection of penicillin and started him on oral tetracycline at about 2 a.m. She also called Dr. Preston Wade, because she "didn't know exactly what was brewing" (so she told the reporters). Who was Dr. Preston Wade? Dr. Preston A. Wade was a surgeon at New York Hospital who irrigated and debrided the soft tissue abscess in Mr. Kennedy's midline operative scar in mid-September 1957. Dr. Travell had diagnosed and hospitalized Mr. Kennedy (Senator John F. Kennedy at that time) for the surgical procedure performed by Dr. Wade. Mr. Kennedy's midline operative scar was the result of a (failed) lumbar spine fusion procedure performed at another hospital in 1954. Drainage of the abscess was accomplished under general anesthesia and bacteriologic studies, directed by Dr. David E. Rogers, grew Staphylococcus aureus bacteria. The search for tuberculosis bacilli (though guinea pig inoculation) was negative. (28x) Dr. Travell subsequently had continued to rely on Dr. Wade's expertise in the management of the president's back. His trip to evaluate the president at the White House during his fever episode on June 22, 1961 was likely to rule out a recurrent abscess as the cause of the president's fever, which indeed was his finding. (14,27) Thus, when Dr. Travell told the press she had asked Dr. Wade to evaluate the president, the press became very interested about her linking the president's fever and his back. The press had not been privy to the president's previously infected back episode. (27) Dr. Travell tried to smooth this over. Another reporter asked if the president was taking corticosteroids. Dr. Travell answered, yes; the president was taking corticosteroids at the present time. The reporter followed up, "Well, how often, doctor?" She answered, "Well, I would like to say that the doses that are given from time to time are minimum, and in the present fever and viral infection, we would step it up a little bit, and I think this is something that is all in the textbooks." Another reporter then asked, "Corticosteroids are used for what, in the President's case?" Dr. Travell answered "mild adrenal insufficiency. There has never been any other statement on this matter." (27) Another reporter asked whether the president had a history of viral infections: "Is he prone to this sort of thing?" Dr. Travell answered, "I don't think he had had themhe was, years back, but he has been very free of them in the last four or five years." (27) The press seemed appreciative of Dr. Travell's candor and published a flurry of stories on Kennedy's June 1961 illness and recovery, but Dr. Travell never participated in another press conference while Kennedy was president. Neither did Dr. Burkley.
  
• 6/27/1961 After a Newsweek story about US planning in Germany, RFK ordered the FBI to investigate where the reporter, Lloyd Norman, got the information. The FBI wiretapped the reporter's phone.
  
• 6/28/1961 Chairman Khrushchev has compared the United States to a worn-out runner living on its past performance and stated that the Soviet Union would out-produce the United States by 1970. Without wishing to trade hyperbole with the chairman, I do suggest that he reminds me of the tiger hunter who picked a place on the wall to hang the tiger's skin long before he has caught the tiger. This tiger has other ideas...." - Presidential news conference Washington, D.C.
  
• 6/28/1961 NSAM 55 Signed by President Kennedy and sent to the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs. Its subject was "Relations of the Joint Chiefs of Staff to the President in Cold War Operations." "I wish to inform the Joint Chiefs of Staff as follows with regard to my views of their relations to me in Cold War Operations: a. I regard the Joint Chiefs of Staff as my principal military advisor responsible both for initiating advice to me and for responding to requests for advice. I expect their advice to come to me direct and unfiltered. b. The Joint Chiefs of Staff have a responsibility for the defense of the nation in the Cold War similar to that which they have in conventional hostilities. They should know the military and paramilitary forces and resources available to the Department of Defense, verify their readiness, report on their adequacy, and make appropriate recommendations for their expansion and improvement. I look to the Chiefs to contribute dynamic and imaginative leadership in contributing to the success of the military and paramilitary aspects of Cold War programs. c. I expect the Joint Chiefs of Staff to present the military viewpoint in governmental councils in such a way as to assure that the military factors are clearly understood before decisions are reached. When only the Chairman or a single Chief is present, that officer must represent the Chiefs as a body, taking such preliminary and subsequent actions as may be necessary to assure that he does in fact represent the corporate judgment of the Joint Chiefs of Staff. d. While I look to the Chiefs to present the military factor without reserve or hesitation, I regard them to be more than military men and expect their help in fitting military requirements into the overall context of any situation, recognizing that the most difficult problem in Government is to combine all assets in a unified, effective pattern. cc. Secretary of Defense General Taylor" Fletcher Prouty would later say that this NSAM infuriated the CIA because it basically stripped away its war-making capability. (Plausible Denial 100)
  
• 6/28/1961 NSAM 56 from McGeorge Bundy to the Secretary of Defense. Subject: "Evaluation of Paramilitary Requirements." "The President has approved the following paragraph: 'It is important that we anticipate now our possible future requirements in the field of unconventional warfare and paramilitary operations. A first step would be to inventory the paramilitary assets we have in the United States Armed Forces, consider various areas in the world where the implementation of our policy may require indigenous paramilitary forces, and thus arrive at a determination of the goals which we should set in this field. Having determined the assets and the possible requirements, it would then become a matter of developing a plan to meet the deficit.' The President requests that the Secretary of Defense, in coordination with the Department of State, and the CIA, make such an estimate of requirements and recommend ways and means to meet these requirements. cc Secretary of State; Director, CIA; General Maxwell Taylor."
  
• 6/28/1961 NSAM 57 "TO: The Secretary of State, The Secretary of Defense, The Director, CIA The President has approved the following recommendation: The Special Group (5412 Committee) will perform the functions assigned in the recommendation to the Strategic Resources Group. - RESPONSIBILITY FOR PARAMILITARY OPERATIONS For the purpose of this study, a paramilitary operation is considered to be one which by its tactics and its requirements in military-type personnel, equipment and training approximates a conventional military operation. It may be undertaken in support of an existing government friendly to the U.S. or in support of a rebel group seeking to overthrow a government hostile to us. The U.S. may render assistance to such operations overtly, covertly or by a combination of both methods. In size these operations may vary from the infiltration of a squad of guerrillas to a military operation such as the Cuban invasion. The small operations will often fall completely within the normal capability of one agency; the large ones may affect State, Defense, CIA, USIA and possibly other departments and agencies. 2. In order to conduct paramilitary operations with maximum effectiveness and flexibility within the context of the Cold War, it is recommended that current directives and procedures be modified to affect the following: a. Any proposed paramilitary operation in the concept stage will be presented to the Strategic Resources Group for initial consideration and for approval as necessary by the President. thereafter, the SRG will assign primary responsibility for planning, for interdepartmental coordination and for execution to the Task Force, department or individual best qualified to carry forward the operation to success, and will indicate supporting responsibilities. Under this principle, the Department of Defense will normally receive responsibility for overt paramilitary operations. Where such an operation is to be wholly covert or disavowable, it may be assigned to CIA, provided that it is within the normal capabilities of the agency. Any large paramilitary operation wholly or partly covert which requires significant numbers of militarily trained personnel, amounts of military equipment which exceed normal CIA-controlled stocks and/or military experience of a kind and level peculiar to the Armed Services is properly the primary responsibility of the Department of Defense with the CIA in a supporting role."" Fletcher Prouty first described this NSAM in his book, The Secret Team, before it had been declassified." He tried to redefine the CIA's mandate and to reduce its power in his National Security Action Memoranda (NSAMs ) 55 and 57, which took military-type operations out of the hands of the CIA. Kennedy's NSAM 55 informed the Joint Chiefs of Staff that it was they (not the CIA) who were his principal military advisers in peacetime as well as wartime. Air Force Colonel L. Fletcher Prouty, who at the time was in charge of providing military support for the CIA's clandestine operations, described the impact of NSAM 55 addressed to General Lyman Lemnitzer, Chairman of the Joint Chiefs: " I can't overemphasize the shock-not simply the words-that procedure caused in Washington: to the Secretary of State, to the Secretary of Defense, and particularly to the Director of Central Intelligence. Because Allen Dulles, who was still the Director, had just lived through the shambles of the Bay of Pigs and now he finds out that what Kennedy does as a result of all this is to say that, 'you, General Lemnitzer, are to be my Advisor'. In other words, I'm not going to depend on Allen Dulles and the CIA. Historians have glossed over that or don't know about it. " JFK also "moved quietly," as Schlesinger put it, "to cut the CIA budget in 1962 and again in 1963, aiming at a 20 per cent reduction by 1966." (Schlesinger, Thousand Days, p . 428)
  
• 6/30/1961 JFK signed the Housing Act of 1961. (Almanac of American History)
  
• 6/30/1961 St Louis Globe Democrat reported that "Security investigations were waived on President Kennedy's orders for appointees to over 200 highly sensitive State Department positions."