Deep Politics Timeline

[Tracy Riddle]

• 4/1962 Helms issues what he termed "explicit orders" that William Harvey contact Rosselli. Harvey feels he is taking over an ongoing operation. Edwards later states he felt it was not active. Note: Harvey complained to McCone about the requirement for advance SGA approval of "major operations going beyond the collection of intelligence" and the fact that applications had to be spelled out in detail. He was delighted when he received orders from Helms to revive the Rosselli project without seeking SGA approval. When questioned by the Senate Intelligence Committee in 1975, Helms conceded that he had not been instructed to do it, but then again he had not been told not to. (Hinckle and Turner p137-138)
  
• 4/1962 Jupiter missiles in Turkey were made fully operational.
  
• Late April 1962: While vacationing in the Crimea, across the Black sea from Turkey, Khrushchev reflects on the Turkish missiles and reportedly conceives the idea of deploying similar weapons in Cuba. Soviet sources have identified three reasons that might have led Khrushchev to pursue the idea seriously. The deployment of missiles in Cuba would: (1) perhaps most important, increase Soviet nuclear striking power, which lagged far behind that of the United States; (2) deter the United States from invading Cuba; and (3) psychologically end the double standard by which the United States stationed missiles on the Soviet perimeter but denied the Soviets a reciprocal right. Upon returning to Moscow, Khrushchev discusses the idea with First Deputy Prime Minister Anastas Mikoyan . Although Mikoyan is opposed, Khrushchev asks a group of his closest advisers, including Frol Kozlov, Commander of the Strategic Rocket Forces (SRF) Sergei Biryuzov, Foreign Minister Andrei Gromyko, and Marshal Malinovsky to evaluate the idea. The group proposes that a mission be sent to Cuba to see if Fidel Castro would agree to the proposed deployment and to determine whether the deployment could be undertaken without being detected by the United States. (Garthoff 1, p. 13)
  
• 4/2/1962 Letter to OSWALD advising USMC has no authority to change status of discharge - recommends Navy Discharge Review Board; this letter was sent to Kalinina St. in Minsk. (CD 82)
  
• 4/3/1962 Defense Dept ordered full racial integration in military reserve units, excluding the National Guard.
  
• 4/3/1962 The President had a Legislative Leaders Breakfast. The President then met with his Committee on Equal Opportunity to receive their report. The President went to Andrews Air Force Base to receive President Joao Goulart of Brazil. The President gave a luncheon in honor of President Joao Goulart of Brazil. After the luncheon the President met with William Porter the US Consul in Algiers. The President ended his day with a meeting with Theodore White.
  
• 4/4/1962 President Kennedy began his day meeting the Representatives of Agricultural Stabilization and Conservation Committee. He then met with Harve Alpand the ambassador of France. The President then met with the Brazilian President and his party. The President next met with Congressman Emanuel Cellar. The President later met the members of the National Export Expansion Council. The President met with Foreign Minister of the Dominican Republic. President Kennedy attended a luncheon given in his honor at the Embassy of Brazil by President Joao Goulart. After the luncheon the President returned to the White House and met with the Brazilian President and his party.
  
• 4/4/1962 Gen. Walker testified before a special Senate sub-committee on the "muzzling" of military officers; Walker claimed that the US government was collaborating with communists, and singled out for blame Eisenhower and Eleanor Roosevelt.
  
• 4/4/1962 "On the night of April 4, 1962, at the western end of Texas, a ranchman came upon the body of George Krutilek in the sandhills near the town of Clint, slumped in his car with a hose from his exhaust stuck in the window. He had been dead for several days, and the El Paso County pathologist, Dr. Frederick Bornstein , held that he certainly did not die from carbon monoxide poisoning (San Angelo *Standard Times,* April 5, 1962; Haley, 137). "Krutilek was a forty-nine-year old certified public accountant who had undergone secret grilling by FBI agents on April 2, the day after Billie Sol Estes' arrest. . . . Krutilek had worked for Estes and had been the recipient of his favors, but he was never seen or heard of again after the FBI grilling until his badly decomposed body was found" (Haley, 137).
  
• 4/4/1962 John Kenneth Galbraith, the ambassador to India, raised a ruckus among JFK's advisers by proposing in a memorandum to the president that the United States explore with North Vietnam a disengagement and mutual withdrawal from the growing war in South Vietnam. Galbraith suggested that either Soviet or Indian diplomats " should be asked to ascertain whether Hanoi can or will call off the Viet Cong activity in return for phased American withdrawal, liberalization in the trade relations between the two parts of the country and general and non-specific agreement to talk about reunification after some period of tranquillity. " If the United States instead increased its military support of Diem, Galbraith wrote Kennedy, " there is consequent danger we shall replace the French as the colonial force in the area and bleed as the French did. " Galbraith's warning echoed what John Kennedy remembered hearing as a congressman from his friend Edmund Gullion in Saigon in 1951. Predictably, the Joint Chiefs were furious at Galbraith's proposal. To McNamara they argued that "any reversal of U.S. policy could have disastrous effects, not only on our relationship with South Vietnam, but with the rest of our Asian and other allies as well. " (Cited by John M. Newman, JFK and Vietnam: Deception, Intrigue, and the Struggle for Power (New York: Warner Books, 1992 ), p. 236) A Defense Department memorandum to the president dismissed Galbraith saying, " His proposal contains the essential elements sought by the Communists for their takeover . . . " But the State Department also opposed Galbraith. Even Averell Harriman, JFK's advocate for a neutral Laos, was against a neutral solution in Vietnam, as he told the president.
  
• 4/6/1962 Steelworkers Union agreed to federal government request to limit its wage demands to a 10-cent an hour increase. In 1962 Kennedy had already profoundly alienated key elements of the military-industrial complex in the steel crisis. The conflict arose from JFK's preoccupation with steel prices, whose rise he believed " quickly drove up the price of everything else. " The president therefore brokered a contract, signed on April 6, 1962, in which the United Steelworkers union accepted a modest settlement from the United States Steel Company, with the understanding that the company would help keep inflation down by not raising steel prices. Kennedy phoned identical statements of appreciation to union headquarters and the company managers, congratulating each for having reached an agreement that was " obviously non-inflationary. " When he finished the calls, he told adviser Ted Sorensen that the union members "cheered and applauded their own sacrifice," whereas the company representatives were " ice-cold" to him. It was a foretaste of the future. (Theodore C. Sorensen, Kennedy (New York: Konecky & Konecky, 1966), p. 447.)
  
• 4/6/1962 All of the Bay of Pigs defendants in Havana are found guilty of treason and sentenced to a minimum of 30 years in prison. Castro leaves the door open for ransoming the prisoners.
  
• 4/6/1962 JFK, Harriman and Forrestal discuss the Galbraith memo; JFK tells them to "be prepared to seize upon any favorable moment to reduce our commitment" in Vietnam. Kennedy considered Galbraith's proposal feasible. He tried unsuccessfully to explore it. In a conversation with Harriman in the Oval Office on April 6, he asked his newly appointed Assistant Secretary of State to follow up Galbraith's memorandum. He told Harriman to send Galbraith instructions to pursue an Indian diplomatic approach to the North Vietnamese about exploring a mutual disengagement with the United States. Harriman resisted, saying they should wait a few days until they received an International Control Commission report on Vietnam. Kennedy agreed but insisted, according to a record of their conversation, " that instructions should nevertheless be sent to Galbraith, and that he would like to see such instructions. " Harriman said he would send the instructions the following week. (The official State Department volume that published the memorandum recording the Kennedy-Harriman conversation on April 6, 1962, states in a footnote: " The instructions referred to here [as ordered by the President] have not been found. " FR US, 1961-1963, vol. II, p. 309) In fact Averell Harriman sabotaged Kennedy's proposal for a mutual deescalation with North Vietnam. In response to the president's order to wire such instructions to Galbraith, Harriman " struck the language on deescalation from the message with a heavy pencil line , " as scholar Gareth Porter discovered by examining Harriman's papers. Harriman dictated instructions to his colleague Edward Rice for a telegram to Galbraith that instead " changed the mutual de-escalation approach into a threat of U.S. escalation of the war if the North Vietnamese refused to accept U.S. terms, " thereby subverting Kennedy's purpose. When Rice tried to re-introduce Kennedy's peaceful initiative into the telegram, Harriman intervened. He again crossed out the de-escalation proposal, then " simply killed the telegram altogether. " (Gareth Porter, Perils of Dominance ( Berkeley: University of California Press, 2005), p. 158.) As a result of Harriman's obstruction, Galbraith never did receive JFK's mutual de-escalation proposal to North Vietnam. (John Kenneth Galbraith confirmed to a Boston Globe reporter in 2005 that he never received President Kennedy's instructions for the mutual de-escalation proposal for North Vietnam. Bryan Bender, " Papers Reveal JFK Efforts on Vietnam, " Boston Globe (June 6, 2005). The president continued to remind his aides of the need to move in the direction Galbraith recommended . He told Harriman and the State Department's Michael Forrestal that, in Forrestal's words, " He wished us to be prepared to seize upon any favorable moment to reduce our involvement [in Vietnam] , recognizing that the moment might yet be some time away. "
  
• 4/8/1962 Roselli, William Harvey and the CIA Support Chief met in NY to set up the next attempt on Castro. (Church report) Apr 8-9, 62 - Harvey and O 'Connell meet Rosselli in New York. (O 'Connell says Maheu was also present.) (CIA Inspector General 's Report May 1967 p6)
  
• 4/9/1962 Two US soldiers are killed in a Vietcong ambush while on a combat operation with Vietnamese troops.
  
• 4/10/1962 Edwards responds in writing to Hoover 's Mar 23 memo that prosecution of Maheu and presumably other Mafia figures for wiretapping "Would result in most damaging embarrassment to the U.S. government." In demanding a written response from the CIA, Hoover effectively cleared himself of any involvement.
  
• 4/10/1962 Although " Operation Northwoods " had been blocked by the president, General Lemnitzer kept pushing on behalf of the Joint Chiefs for a preemptive invasion of Cuba. In an April 10, 1962, memorandum to McNamara, he stated: " The Joint Chiefs of Staff believe that the Cuban problem must be solved in the near future . . . they believe that military intervention by the United States will be required to overthrow the present communist regime . . .They also believe that the intervention can be accomplished rapidly enough to minimize communist opportunities for solicitation of UN action. " (Bamford, Body of Secrets, p87)
  
• 4/10/1962 Roger Blough, chairman of U.S. Steel, asked to meet with Kennedy. At 5:45 P.M., seated next to JFK, Blough said, " Perhaps the easiest way I can explain the purpose of my visit . . . , " and handed Kennedy four mimeographed pages. Blough knew the press release in the president's hands was being passed out simultaneously to the media by other U.S. Steel representatives. It stated that U.S. Steel, " effective at 12:01 A.M. tomorrow, will raise the price of the company's steel products by an average of about 3.5 percent . . . " Kennedy read the statement, recognizing immediately that he and the steelworkers had been double-crossed by U.S. Steel. He looked up at Blough and said, "You've made a terrible mistake. " After Blough departed, Kennedy shared the bad news with a group of his advisers. They had never seen him so angry. He said, "My father always told me that all businessmen were sons-of-bitches, but I never believed it until now. " His explosive remark appeared in the New York Times on April 23, 1962. The corporate world never forgot it. He phoned steelworkers union president David McDonald and said, "Dave, you've been screwed and I've been screwed. " (Richard Reeves, President Kennedy: Profile of Power (New York: Touchstone, 1993) , p. 296. Bradlee, Conversations with Kennedy, p. 76. Arthur M . Schlesinger, Jr. , A Thousand Days (Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1965) p. 635; Roy Hoopes, The Steel Crisis (New York: John Day, 1963) , p. 23, n. 1 . Reeves, President Kennedy: Profile of Power, p . 296.)
  
• 4/11/1962 JFK said in a press conference, "the American people will find it hard, as I do, to accept a situation in which a tiny handful of steel executives whose pursuit of private power and profit exceeds their sense of public responsibility can show such utter contempt for the interests of 185 million Americans." Steel executives suddenly found themselves being treated as if they were enemies of the people. The president then stated that they were precisely that. He opened his April 11 press conference by saying: " Simultaneous and identical actions of United States Steel and other leading steel corporations increasing steel prices by some $6 a ton constitute a wholly unjustifiable and irresponsible defiance of the public interest . . . the American people will find it hard, as I do, to accept a situation in which a tiny handful of steel executives whose pursuit of private power and profit exceeds their sense of public responsibility can show such utter contempt for the interests of 185 million Americans. " Reporters gasped at the intensity of Kennedy's attack on Big Steel. After describing the ways in which steel executives had defied the public interest, JFK concluded with an ironic reference to his inaugural address: " Some time ago I asked each American to consider what he would do for his country and I asked the steel companies. In the last 24 hours we had their answer. " Asked about Vietnam, Kennedy said, "We are attempting to help Vietnam maintain its independence and not fall under the domination of the Communists...We cannot desist in Vietnam."
  
• 4/11/1962 The next morning U.S. Steel was joined in its price increase by Bethlehem Steel, the second largest company, and soon after by four others. In response Kennedy mustered every resource he could to force the steel companies to roll back their prices. He began at the Defense Department. Defense contracts were critical to " Big Steel, " an industry that embodied the intertwined influence with the Pentagon that Eisenhower had warned against. Defense Secretary McNamara told the president that the combined impact in defense costs from the raise in steel prices would be a billion dollars. Kennedy ordered him to start shifting steel purchases at once to the smaller companies that had not yet joined in the raise . McNamara announced that a steel-plate order previously divided between U.S. Steel and Lukens Steel, a tiny steel company that had not raised prices, would now go entirely to Lukens. Walter Heller, who chaired the President's Council of Economic Advisers, "calculated that the government used so much steel that it could shift as much as 9 percent of the industry's total business away from the six companies that had announced price rises to six that were still holding back. " The president even ordered the Defense Department to take its steel business overseas, if that were necessary to keep defense contracts away from U.S. Steel and its cohorts. (Clark Clifford, Counsel to the President: A Memoir (New York: Random House, 1991) , p. 377.) Big Steel executives saw that Kennedy meant business, their business-and that substantial Cold War profits were already being drained away from them. Attorney General Robert Kennedy moved quickly to convene a federal grand jury to investigate price fixing in Big Steel's corporate network. He looked into the steel companies' possible violation of anti-trust laws, an investigation his Anti-Trust Division had actually begun before the steel crisis. He now ordered the FBI to move on the steel executives with speed and thoroughness. As RFK said later in an interview, "We were going to go for broke: their expense accounts and where they'd been and what they were doing. I picked up all their records and I told the FBI to interview them allmarch into their offices the next day. We weren't going to go slowly. I said to have them done all over the country. All of them were hit with meetings the next morning by agents. All of them were subpoenaed for their personal records. All of them were subpoenaed for their company records. " (Robert Kennedy in His Own Words, edited by Edwin O . Guthman and Jeffrey Shulman (New York: Bantam Books, 1988) , pp. 333-34.)
  
• 4/12/1962 Kennedy sent his lawyer, Clark Clifford, to serve as a mediator with U.S. Steel. The steel executives, feeling the heat from the White House, proposed a compromise. Clifford phoned the president to say, " Blough and his people want to know what you would say if they announce a partial rollback of the price increases, say 50 percent ? " " I wouldn't say a damn thing, " Kennedy replied. " It's the whole way. " (Reeves, President Kennedy: Profile of Power, p. 301; Clifford, Counsel to the President, p. 376.) Clifford was instructed to say that " if U.S. Steel persisted, the President would use every tool available to turn the decision around. " That included especially switching more defense contracts away from them to more affordable companies. There was to be no compromise. Clifford reported back to the steel heads that " the President was already setting in motion to use the full power of the Presidency to divert contracts from U.S. Steel and the other companies, " adding that "he still had several actions in reserve, including tax audits, antitrust investigations, and a thorough probe of market practices." (Clifford, Counsel to the President, p. 377.) The president was prepared to wage a domestic war against Big Steel's price increase.
  
• 4/13/1962 Defense Dept awarded a $5 million contract to a small steel company that had not gone along with the price hike.
  
• 4/13/1962 Billy James Hargis wrote in his Weekly Crusader newletter that "From this day forward, my friends, it [Christian Crusade] will equate liberalism and socialism with Communism…"
  
• 4/13/1962 Big Steel's executives surrendered. The first company to yield was Bethlehem Steel, another maj or defense contractor. The reason, reported back to the White House, was that " Bethlehem had gotten wind that it was to be excluded from bidding on the construction of three naval vessels the following week and decided to take quick action. " Bethlehem was followed soon by the giant, U.S. Steel. The president's offensive, backed by overwhelming public support, had been too much for them. All six steel companies rescinded the entire price raise that their point man, Roger Blough, had conveyed to JFK as an accomplished fact three days before. As would be his attitude after the Cuban Missile Crisis, Kennedy, as Sorensen said, "permitted no gloating by any administration spokesman and no talk of retribution. " He was especially gracious toward Roger Blough, whom he subsequently invited often to the White House for consultations. When asked by a reporter at a press conference about his "rather harsh statement about businessmen, " JFK revised his infamous s.o.b. remark. He said that his father, a businessman himself, had meant only " the steel men " with whom he had been " involved when he was a member of the Roosevelt administration in the 1937 strike. " This explanation would not win the hearts of business leaders. As they knew, JFK's father, Joseph P. Kennedy, Sr. , while a businessman himself, had also been President Franklin D. Roosevelt's first chairman of the Securities and Exchange Commission ( SEC ) . As a former Wall Street insider who knew the system, the senior Kennedy had cracked down on Wall Street profiteers. Some of the financial titans of the thirties regarded JFK's father as a class traitor, " the Judas of Wall Street, " for his work on behalf of FDR.3o It was in the light of Joseph Kennedy's fight to initiate government controls over Wall Street, and the opposition he encountered, that he made his allbusinessmen- are-s.o.b.'s remark to JFK. That opinion of his father, President Kennedy told the press, "I found appropriate that evening [when] we had not been treated altogether with frankness. . . But that's past, that's past. Now we're working together, I hope . "
  
• 4/13/1962 Khrushchev rejects a plea from JFK and Macmillan for agreements on a nuclear test ban.
  
• 4/14/1962 Harvey and O 'Connell meet in Washington DC to take delivery of the poison pills from Dr. Gunn of CIA. Mid Apr, 62 - O 'Connell and Rosselli leave for Miami. Harvey and Edwards travel to Miami together. Establishes Harvey 's takeover with Rosselli with O 'Connell carrying over until June 1962 when O 'Connell is reassigned. Giancana and Trafficante are dropped from the new phase.
  
• 4/14/1962 The big steel companies backed down.
  
• 4/15/1962 First Marine air units are sent to Vietnam: 15 Sikorsky UH-34D combat helicopters.
  
• 4/16/1962 Byron White is sworn in as a Supreme Court justice.
  
• 4/18/1962 Four poison pills were given to the CIA Support Chief for use in killing Castro. (Church report).
  
• 4/18/1962 When the Marines changed his discharge to "undesirable" in 1960, Oswald filed an application for review of the matter, appending a "brief" and a four-page statement. The brief and the statement were written by Oswald in Minsk; the brief was dated 4/18/1962. "Yet the documents not only manifest a correct style and surprising familiarity with legal form and substance but cite specific sections of the US Code! Did Oswald memorize a body of law in advance in advance of his defection? Did he carry the US Code around with him...Or did he have expert advice and assistance in writing his legal brief and accompanying statement? Oswald not only appealed for nullification of the unsatisfactory discharge but also requested recommendation of his re-enlistment..." (Accessories After the Fact 340) Oswald wrote, "In accordance with par. 15(e) I request that the Board consider my sincere desire to use my former training at the aviation fundamentals school, Jacksonville, Florida, and radar operators school, Biloxi, Miss., as well as the special knowledge I have accumulated through my experience since my release from active duty in the Naval Service." (CE 2661)
  
• 4/19/1962 Robert Kennedy's Justice Department continued its anti-trust investigation into the steel companies. U.S. Steel and seven other companies were eventually forced to pay maximum fines in 1965 for their price-fixing activities between 1955 and 1961. The steel crisis defined John and Robert Kennedy as Wall Street enemies. The president was seen as a state dictator. As the Wall Street Journal put it in the week after Big Steel surrendered to the Kennedys, " The Government set the price. And it did this by the pressure of fear-by naked power, by threats, by agents of the state security police. " (Wall Street Journal, April 19, 1962, cited by Arthur M. Schlesinger, Jr. , Robert Kennedy and His Times (New York: Ballentine Books, 1978) , p. 437.)
  
• 4/20/1962 The New Orleans Citizens Council began a plan to give free one-way transportation to blacks wishing to move to Northern cities.
  
• 4/21/1962 William Harvey passes poison pills to Rosselli in Miami (2nd attempt). Rosselli passes them to Tony Varona, reporting back that the hit squad had targeted not only Fidel but also Raul and Che Cuevara. (Church report)
  
• 4/23/1962 Kennedy's remarks about businessmen being "sons of bitches" was reported by the NYT
  
• 4/24/1962 The Justice Dept rules on Balletti, agreeing with the CIA no prosecution. "This would not necessarily affect prosecution of Giancana for any other offenses."(Memorandum to the Attorney General from Herbert J. Miller, Assistant Attorney General, Criminal division, Subject: Arthur J. Ballentti Wiretap Case, 24, April 1962, National Archives)
  
• 4/24/1962 US Embassy in Moscow "renewed Oswald's passport for 30 days, stamped it valid for direct return to the United States only and handed it to him." (WR 758)
  
• 4/25/1962 US resumed atmospheric nuclear tests at Christmas Island in the South Pacific in response to resumed Soviet testing. Further explosions follow 4/27 and 5/2. The United States then carried out a series of twenty-four nuclear blasts in the South Pacific from April to November of 1962.
  
• 4/26/1962 Special Group briefing on Ballentti wiretap case and CIA-Mafia plots. This memorandum for the record is prepared at the request of the Attorney General of the United States following a complete oral briefing of him relative to a sensitive CIA operation conducted during the period approximately August 1960 to May 1961. (Central Intelligence Agency, DCI Files: Job 91-00741R, Box 1, Mongoose Papers. Prepared by McCone. The memorandum apparently records a meeting of the Special Group (Augmented); Foreign Relations Of The United States 1961-1963 Volume X Cuba, 1961-1962 Department Of State, Washington, 331. Memorandum for the Record)
  
• Late Apr, 62 - Harvey, along with Ted Shackley, the chief of JMWAVE Station, procured $5000 worth of explosives, detonators, rifles, handguns, radios, and boat radar in Miami for pickup by Tony Varona. O 'Connell and Rosselli observe delivery. Rosselli, given the nominal rank of colonel by the CIA, is now working directly with the Cuban exile community and directly on behalf of the CIA. David Sanchez Morales, Chief of Operations in Miami, is Rosselli 's key contact. (Note: In 1973, during a night of drinking and story swapping with close friend Ruben Carbajal and business associate Bob Walton, Morales flew into a rage at the mention of Jack Kennedy 's name. Walton says Morales ' tirade about Kennedy, fueled by righteous anger and high-proof booze, went on for minutes while he stomped around the room. Suddenly he stopped, sat back down on the bed and remained silent for a moment. Then, as if saying it only to himself, he added: "Well, we took care of that son of a bitch, didn 't we?") (Fonzi pp 389-390; Background on Morales: Twyman p 447-463) Rosseli is one of only two Americans authorized to go into Cuba on clandestine missions. (Mahoney p167)
  
• 4/28/1962 Khrushchev met in Moscow with a Cuban representative for secret talks.
  
• 4/28/1962 "HAVANA, April 28 (AP) Opponents of Premier Fidel Castro's regime staged a demonstration tonight on one of Havana's busiest street corners but it was quickly broken up. Witnesses said that several demonstrators were arrested…The last major riot in Havana erupted last Sept. 10 when a Roman Catholic procession suddenly turned into an anti-Communist demonstration. Before it was broken up, one man was reported killed and a score wounded in clashes with the police."
  
• 4/29/1962 New York Times: "MIAMI, April 25 - The fear that the United States Government is moving toward some form of coexistence with the Fidel Castro regime is growing among Cuban exiles in Miami. Pedro Diaz Lanz, chief of the Cuban Air Force until he defected in 1959 and fled to the United States, declared today that "coexistence is already here." He said not a single supply boat for the Cuban underground had been able to evade the United States authorities and reach Cuba for many months. "The Cuban underground is without any help or support from Cuban exiles here," he said. Senor Diaz Lanz pointed out that recently twenty-seven Cubans on two yachts were halted by a United States Coast Guard vessel several miles off the coast of Florida and ordered back to port despite the fact they had no arms, ammunition or supplies aboard. In this case the officials on the Coast Guard vessel, who included civil authorities, told the Cubans the orders come "directly from Washington," Senor Diaz Lanz said. He also declared that recent reports that Cubans were training in Florida and in one of the Latin-American countries for action against Dr. Castro were untrue. Col. Ramon Barquin, recently depicted in press dispatches as the leader of a group of Cubans who were training for an invasion of Cuba, has little following, according to Senor Diaz Lanz. Various groups of Cubans here have expressed similar views but none of them wishes to be quoted. The warm reception given in Washington to president Joao Goulart of Brazil and the announced visit of president Kennedy to Mexico are cited by exiles as a demonstration of the trend of United States policy towards coexistence with Cuba. A report published in the Miami press that Richard Goodwin, Deputy Assistant Secretary of States for Inter-American Affairs, was in contact with the Castro regime through the Brazilian Government has greatly agitated Cuban exiles. The prompt release by Dr. Castro of seven Americans whose yacht was wrecked on the Cuban coast and the return by Dr. Castro of the Americans who hijacked a plane recently, are regarded by Cuban exiles as a maneuver by Dr. Castro to obtain some form of understanding with the United States in his desperate need for supplies, especially food. One Cuban pointed to reports that Dr. Castro was moving away from the Communists as showing the change in United States policy. The recent purge of Anibal Escalante, a Communist leader in Cuba, was a "party purge" and "meaningless," according to this exile."
  
• 4/30/1962 U. S. News and World Report gave prominence in its April 30, 1962, issue to an anti-Kennedy article on " Planned Economy " that suggested the president was acting like a Soviet commissar. (Michael Calder, JFK vs CIA: Death to Traitors: The Assassination of President John F. Kennedy-An Analysis of the Social, Political, and Economic Factors Which Led to His Assassination by the Central Intelligence Agency (Los Angeles: West LA Publishers, 1998), pp. 106-7) Attorney General Robert Kennedy became a symbol of "ruthless power " to the business titans he treated so brusquely, whose corporations he then found in violation of the law. Media controlled by the same interests adopted the characterization of RFK as ruthless until his murder six years later.