Deep Politics Timeline

[Tracy Riddle]

• 2/1962 On the 20th anniversary of the Voice of America, Kennedy said, "We seek a free flow of information...We are not afraid to entrust the American people with unpleasant facts, foreign ideas, alien philosophies, and competitive values. For a nation that is afraid to let its people judge the truth and falsehood in an open market is a nation that is afraid of its people."
  
• Early in 1962, the editors of Fortune expressed their concern that the Alliance for Progress and other Kennedy administration programs were being heavily influenced by the doctrine of the Economic Commission for Latin America, a group established in 1947 under United Nations auspices. *Fortune* charged that the doctrine favored government *dirigisme*, that is, a type of economic nationalism which included economic planning to achieve rapid growth. *Fortune* advised that it would be 'insane' for the Kennedy administration to embrace this dirigisme and turn its back on those in Latin America who favor 'sound money, higher productivity in exportable goods, and internal free enterprise'."(x Fortune, February 1962, 'The Quality of Foreign Aid', pp. 79-81).
  
• 2/1962 The JCS establishes a "first priority basis" for the completion of all contingency plans for military action against Cuba. (USCONARC Participation in the Cuban Crisis, 10/63, p. 17)
  
• 2/1962 Kerry Wendell Thornley completed The Idle Warriors, which has the historical distinction of being the only book written about Lee Harvey Oswald before Kennedy's assassination in 1963.
  
• 2/1/1962 Ken Kesey's One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest is published. This novel about patients in a mental asylum becomes a counterculture classic.
  
• 2/2/1962 Gen. Walker filed as a candidate in the Texas Democratic gubernatorial primary. ·
  
• 2/2/1962 Pentagon memorandum entitled "Possible Actions to Provoke, Harass or Disrupt Cuba," written by Brig. Gen. William H. Craig and submitted to Brig. Gen. Edward Lansdale, the commander of the Operation Mongoose project. The memorandum outlines Operation Bingo, a plan to, in its words, "create an incident which has the appearance of an attack on U.S. facilities (GMO) in Cuba, thus providing an excuse for use of U.S. military might to overthrow the current government of Cuba." It also includes Operation Dirty Trick, a plot to blame Castro if the 1962 Mercury manned space flight carrying John Glenn crashed, saying: "The objective is to provide irrevocable proof that, should the MERCURY manned orbit flight fail, the fault lies with the Communists et al Cuba [sic]." It continues, "This to be accomplished by manufacturing various pieces of evidence which would prove electronic interference on the part of the Cubans."
  
• 2/3/1962 White House announces near-total embargo on U.S.- Cuba trade. It becomes effective 2/7. The embargo does not include "certain foodstuffs, medicines and medical supplies."
  
• 2/4/1962 Castro speech in Havana before an enthusiastic crowd; perhaps his most famous speech, he outlined his vision of revolution and subversion through the hemisphere and called for support from "persecuted" non-whites everywhere.
  
• 2/4/1962 The first US helicopter is shot down in Vietnam; it was ferrying troops in an attack against the village of Hong My.
  
• 2/5/1962 UN General Assembly's Political Committee begins hearing charges by Cuba that US is planning "direct and unilateral intervention" with its own armed forces.
  
• 2/5/1962 McNamara noted in a report that he was cautiously optimistic about the military situation in Vietnam.
  
• 2/7/1962 Jacques Vallee diary entry: "Through a friend who is doing his military service with the French Air Force headquarters, I have had access to the saucer files they have been quietly maintaining since the early fifties. They are full of well-documented sightings, including a remarkable incident in which an object was tracked on radar over Morocco." (Forbidden Science p60)
  
• 2/7/1962 Radio Havana accused US of preparing for a new invasion of Cuba. Similar charges will be made throughout March.
  
• 2/7/1962 Two US Army air support companies arrive in Saigon; total US troops in-country: 4,000.
  
• 2/7/1962 Initially, Richard Bissell, as Deputy Director for Plans, was to leave office about the same time as Allen Dulles, and for the same reason. However, shortly after McCone took office, his wife died and he asked Bissell to remain on for a while. Ultimately, he decided, with the concurrence of John and Robert Kennedy, to offer Bissell the position of Deputy Director for Research (DD/R). Bissell who had opposed the creation of such a directorate in an earlier memorandum wrote this letter to correct McCone's impression that Bissell was seriously considering taking the position. In it he explains his reservations about the wisdom of transferring some activities (including the Office of Scientific Intelligence) to the new directorate as well as his personal reasons for not wanting to accept the position. On page 3, Bissell notes that there was a possibility the previous August of his serving with the CIA or Defense Department in the area of advanced reconnaissance a reference to the plan, vetoed by DCI Allen Dulles, to have Bissell become the first Director of the NRO. As a result of Bissell's decision, McCone turned to Herbert Scoville to serve as the first (and, as it would turn out, only) Deputy Director for Research.
  
• 2/8/1962 US Military Assistance Command (MACV) is set up in South Vietnam, headed by Paul Harkins; about 4000 US military men are already serving secretly in Vietnam, though publicly the Pentagon implied that the 685-man Geneva agreement ceiling was still in effect. February 8, 1962, by order of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, Adm. Harry D. Felt (who was personally opposed to sending US combat troops into Vietnam) created the U.S. Military Assistance Command Vietnam (MACV) as a sub-unified command headed by General Paul D. Harkins. As Harkins' superior in the chain of command, Felt was criticized for exercising excessive control over MACV field operations. Felt denied many of Harkins' equipment requests, interfered with details of Harkins' tactical planning, forbade Harkins to communicate with the Joint Chiefs of Staff without advance permission from CINCPAC, and actually bypassed Harkins to direct certain tactical operations himself from his headquarters in Hawaii. Many observers argued that reporting to CINCPAC was hindering MACV operations and that MACV should be an independent command under the direct supervision of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, but Felt and his successors as CINCPAC blocked multiple attempts to remove MACV from their control, arguing that allowing MACV to bypass the unified regional commander would violate the principle of unity of command in the region.
  
• 2/8/1962 Charonne, France: a political demonstration against the far right turned ugly as cops charged the unarmed crowd, forcing it to retreat down the stairs of the subway station. The iron gates had been drawn shut, but the policemen, many of whom belonged to neofascist groups, charged and beaten people viciously. The people in the back were forced against the bars, and several men and women were crushed to death. No one was ever charged with any crimes, and to squelch the media uproar, Interior Minister Roger Frey seized leftist newspapers the next day and issued a statement exonerating the police.
  
• 2/10/1962 Francis Gary Powers was released by the Soviets, in exchange for Soviet spy Rudolf Abel.The Soviets also released an American student, Frederic L. Pryor. This was the first spy exchange of the Cold War.
  
• 2/12/1962 State Dept Visa Office told the INS that they preferred to have Oswald in the US rather than in Russia. (WR 764)
  
• 2/14/1962 Jacqueline Kennedy conducted nationally televised tour of the White House.
  
• 2/14/1962 Judith Campbell called the White House.
  
• 2/14/1962 JFK tells a news conference that the US has enlarged its training program and logistics support for the South Vietnamese. US advisers will fire back if fired upon, "but we have not sent combat troops in [the] generally understood sense of the word." The GOP National Committee accused Kennedy of not being honest with the American people about US "advisers" in Vietnam. (New York Times 2/14/1962) JFK shot back that "We have not sent combat troops there - in the generally understood sense of the word. We have increased our training mission and our logistics support..." and cited "our security needs in the area." James Reston responded the same day, "The United States is now involved in an undeclared war in South Vietnam. This is well known to the Russians, the Chinese Communists and everyone else concerned except the American people." (March of Folly p299)
  
• 2/15/1962 Nixon states that he hopes JFK will "step up the buildup [in Vietnam] and under no circumstances curtail it because of possible criticism."
  
• 2/15/1962 The Oswalds' first daughter, June, is born. After the baby was born, Oswald seemed to lose some of his impatience to return to the US; he only wrote one letter to the Embassy in February and March 1962. The process for approving Marina's US immigration visa was still going on. In 1961 the State Dept had run a security check on her through the FBI and CIA. (Case Closed 72) There was a long period of trying to convince the State Dept that she would not become a public charge in the US; the INS was told by State that it "believes it is in the interest of the US to get Lee Harvey Oswald and his family out of the Soviet Union and on their way to this country soon. An unstable character, whose actions are entirely unpredictable, Oswald may well refuse to leave the USSR or subsequently attempt to return there if we should make it impossible for him to be accompanied from Moscow by his wife and child." (Testimony of Virginia James H 11 186) On this day, Oswald writes his brother Robert a letter about the birth; this letter (H 16 870-1) is mostly free of grammatical and spelling errors.
  
• 2/16/1962 Time reported that after the Bay of Pigs, RFK became enraged with Bowles, who advised newsmen that he had been against the invasion: "So you advised against this operation. Well, as of now, your were all for it." When Bowles threatened to resign and speak out, Bobby told him, "We will destroy you." (Time 2/16/1962; It Didn't Start with Watergate 84-85)
  
• 2/16/1962 Date on a mugshot photo of David Ferrie.
  
• 2/16/1962 By late 1961, the CIA's exploitation of science and technology had become a very significant aspect of the agency's activities. James Killian and Edwin Land, who had encouraged Allen Dulles to seek scientific solutions to intelligence problems, thought it was time that the CIA's scientific activities be placed in a separate directorate. As a result of the Bay of Pigs fiasco, Dulles would leave in late November, and be replaced by John McCone, a former Under Secretary of the Air Force and Atomic Energy Commission chairman. Killian and Land pushed McCone to establish a new scientific directorate which resulted in this February 16, 1962 headquarters notice. The only activities whose transfer to the new directorate to be known as the Deputy Directorate for Research (DDR) was guaranteed by this notice were some of those belonging to the Development Projects Division. That division started out as the Development Projects Staff and originally managed a single program the U-2. By 1962 it was also responsible for the planned U-2 follow-on, OXCART, as well as the CORONA and ARGON satellite programs. Those programs would be managed by the new directorate's Office of Special Activities. Before the end of 1962, two other offices would be established in the DDR the Office of ELINT and the Office of Research and Development. Heading the new directorate was Dr. Herbert J. Scoville Jr., who had been with the agency since 1955, as head of the Office of Scientific Intelligence, an office that would remain in the Directorate of Intelligence during Scoville's tenure.
  
• 2/17/1962 Bissell resigned as deputy director for plans of the CIA, replaced by Richard Helms. After President Kennedy fired Bissell from the CIA for his role in the Bay of Pigs, Richard Helms, his successor as Deputy Director of Plans, took up where Bissell had left off in conspiring to kill Castro. Helms testified to the Church Committee that he never informed either the president or his newly appointed CIA director John McCone of the assassination plots. Nor did he inform any other officials in the Kennedy administration. Helms said he sought no approval for the murder attempts because assassination was not a subject that should be aired with higher authority. When he was asked if President Kennedy had been informed, Helms said that " nobody wants to embarrass a President of the United States by discussing the assassination of foreign leaders in his presence. " He also didn't seek the approval of the Special Group Augmented that oversaw the anti-Castro program because, he said, "I didn't see how one would have expected that a thing like killing or murdering or assassination would become a part of a large group of people sitting around a table in the United States Government. " John McCone and the other surviving members of the Kennedy Administration testified that " assassination was outside the parameters of the Administration's anti-Castro program. " Yet Richard Helms and other CIA insiders kept running assassination plots in conflict with the president's wishes.
  
• 2/18/1962 RFK, briefly stopping over in Saigon on his way to Thailand, told the press, "We are going to win in Vietnam. We will remain here until we do win." (NYT 2/19)
  
• 2/19/1962 Richard Helms succeeded Bissell as CIA deputy director of plans. Helms writes memo to Harvey authorizing him to retain the services of "Principal Agent QJWIN" (Jose Mankel, drug smuggler and mercenary from Germany, per Gus Russo) "for the services of ZRRIFLE." According to a later memo he was terminated on Feb 14, 1964 after failing to establish cover for an assignment. "Harvey would later tell the inspector general that the code name QJWIN designated a capability to recruit professional assassins, separate from ZRRIFLE, but that he came to use the terms interchangeably." Harvey 's first meeting with Edwards on the subject of the Castro operation. They plan his takeover details during March.
  
• 2/19/1962 Pravda warned that the United States should leave Third World countries alone (Cuba was not mentioned but it was implied) or risk "the unloosing of a new war."
  
• 2/20/1962 Edward Lansdale presents a six-phase schedule for OPERATION MONGOOSE designed to culminate in October 1962 with an "open revolt and overthrow of the Communist regime." The basic plan includes political, psychological, military, sabotage, and intelligence operations as well as proposed "attacks on the cadre of the regime, including key leaders." Lansdale notes that a "vital decision" has not yet been made regarding possible U.S. military actions in support of plans to overthrow Fidel Castro. (Alleged Assassination Plots Involving Foreign Leaders, 11/20/75, pp. 143-44)
  
• 2/20/1962 Lt. Col. John Glenn Jr., in Mercury 6 mission, became first American in orbit when he circled the earth 3 times in the Mecury capsule Friendship 7. His ship was launched at 9:47am from Cape Canaveral and he landed in the Caribbean that afternoon. At one point, his controls malfunctioned and caused the ship to yaw; he was able to correct this problem manually.
  
• 2/23/1962 Letter to Oswald from John Connally advising that Connally no longer was Secretary of the Navy; Oswald's letter was forwarded to Fred Korth. (CD 82)
  
• 2/23/1962 JFK arrived at Cape Canaveral to praise Glenn's flight.
  
• 2/26/1962 Supreme Court struck down segregation laws in transportation facilities, both interstate and intrastate.
  
• 2/26/1962 Astronaut John Glenn spoke before a joint session of Congress.
  
• 2/26/1962 At a meeting of the SGA , the scale of Lansdale's "Cuba Project" is sharply reduced, and Lansdale is directed to develop a detailed plan for an intelligence-gathering program only. Concerned that General Lansdale's various covert action plans under Operation Mongoose were simply becoming more outrageous and going nowhere, Robert Kennedy told him to drop all anti-Castro efforts. Instead, Lansdale was ordered to concentrate for the next three months strictly on gathering intelligence about Cuba. It was a humiliating defeat for Lansdale, a man more accustomed to praise than to scorn. (Bamford, Body of Secrets)
  
• 2/27/1962 Hoover tells RFK of Judith Campell's calls to White House, and her relations with Giancana and Roselli.
  
• 2/27/1962 Dr. King is tried and convicted for leading the December march in Albany.
  
• 2/27/1962 Two rebel South Vietnamese air force pilots bomb, napalm and strafe Diem's palace, but he escapes unharmed. The pilots were frustrated over the conduct of the war.
  
• 2/27/1962 In a letter to his brother, Oswald mentions listening to Voice of America on his shortwave radio. (H 16 873)