Deep Politics Timeline

[Tracy Riddle]

• 5/1962: Deliberations regarding the possible installation of missiles in Cuba continue in Moscow. In early May, Khrushchev informs the newly designated ambassador to Cuba, Aleksandr Alekseyev, of the plan. Although Alekseyev expresses concern over the idea (as did Gromyko and Mikoyan at different times), it is decided that Alekseyev and Marshal Biryuzov should secretly travel to Cuba to explore the question with Castro. (See May 30, 1962, entry.) Following further discussions in May and June, Khrushchev authorizes Soviet military officials to decide independently on the exact composition of nuclear forces to be deployed in Cuba. The military proposes a force of twenty-four medium-range ballistic missile ( MRBM ) launchers and sixteen intermediate-range ( IRBM ) launchers; each of the launchers would be equipped with two missiles (one serving as a spare) and a nuclear warhead. Soviet officials also decide that a large contingent of Soviet combat forces should be sent to Cuba. The proposed Soviet contingent includes four elite combat regiments, twenty-four advanced SA-2 surface-to-air missile ( SAM ) batteries, forty-two MiG-21 interceptors, forty-two IL-28 bombers, twelve Komar-class missile boats, and coastal defense cruise missiles. (Garthoff 1, pp. 12-18)
  
• 5/1962 The depth of corporate hostility toward Kennedy after the steel crisis can be seen by an unsigned editorial in Fortune, media czar Henry Luce's magazine for the most fortunate. The editors of Fortune knew the decision to raise steel prices had been made by the executive committee of U.S. Steel's board of directors. It included top-level officers from other huge financial institutions, such as the Morgan Guaranty Trust Company, the First National City Bank of New York, the Prudential Insurance Company, the Ford Foundation, and AT&T. (Hoopes, Steel Crisis, p. 17. Also Donald Gibson, Battling Wall Street: The Kennedy Presidency (New York: Sheridan Square Press, 1994), p. 17. When Roger Blough handed U.S. Steel's provocative press release to the president, he did so on behalf of not only U.S. Steel but also these other financial giants in the United States. The Fortune editorial therefore posed an intriguing question: Why did the financial interests behind U.S. Steel announce the price increase in such a way as to deliberately " provoke the President of the U.S. into a vitriolic and demagogic assault ? " (" Steel: The Ides of April, " Fortune (May 1962), p. 98) With the authority of an insider's knowledge that it denied having, Fortune answered its own question: "There is a theory-unsupported by any direct evidence-that Blough was acting as a 'business statesman' rather than as a businessman judging his market. " According to "this theory, " Kennedy's prior appeal to steel executives not to raise prices, leading to the contract settlement between the company and the union, had "poised over the industry a threat of 'jawbone control' of prices. For the sake of his company, the industry, and the nation, Blough sought a way to break through the bland 'harmony' that has recently prevailed between government and business. " In plainer language, the president was acting too much like a president, rather than just another officeholder beholden to the powers that be. US Steel on behalf of still higher financial interests therefore taunted Kennedy so as to present him with a dilemma: he either had to accept the price hike and lose credibility, or react as he did with power to roll back the increase and thereby unite the business world against him. His unswerving activist response then served to confirm the worst fears of corporate America: "That the threat of 'j awbone control' was no mere bugaboo was borne out by the tone of President Kennedy's reaction and the threats of general business harassment by government that followed the 'affront. "' Fortune gave Kennedy a deadly warning of its own by the title of its editorial: " Steel: The Ides of April. "
  
• 5/2/1962 Gen. Walker gave a speech before the National Indignation Convention in Dallas: "The destruction of our national sovereignty - which continues by United Nations design, with Washington support - must be accomplished from within the United States. It can happen only through dictatorial power, as it did in Russia and Cuba - implemented, as it was done there, by military forces turned upon the people. Now I will tell you of the instructions which have been issued by Kennedy's Defense Department to the Military Forces. The "Octagon," a paper of the Eighth Corps Headquarters at Austin, reports that all Army Reserve Units will receive counterinsurgency training. These orders were issued to Reserver units in every state by the Commanding General of the Army Field Forces, who is responsible for all training of troops in the United States. He defined "counterinsurgency" as - and I quote now- "an action including all military, political, economic, pyschological and sociallogical activities directed toward preventing and suppressing resisitance groups whose actions range in degrees of violence and scope from subversive political activity to violent actions by large querilla elements to overthrow duly established governments. This clearly implies and substantiates the Administration's intent to prepare trrops in every state to put down opposition in any area-social, political, or economic-to the Administration's intent to prepare troops in every state to put down opposition in any area-social, political, or economic-to the Administration's policies. This is the pattern-and a necessity in the development of a police state. This is preparing the Army for its job under UN program 7277, issued September 1961, and as presented to the United nations conference at Geneva by Ambassador Arther Dean in April 1962, which provides-and I quote: "States would retain only those forces for the purpose of maintaining internal order. Some may imagine that "counterinsurgancy" is intended to put down Communism as an internal threat. But nver forget that the Kennedy Adminisration has repeatedly declared that Communism is NOT an internal threat. Therefore "counterinsurgency" must be against something else. The use of the term "resistance groups" shows that what it is against. Resistance forces are always native to a country, and try to preserve its independence. In our country it means native Americans opposed to Communism. When the Army is trained to put down resistance groups, it is trained to crack down on anti-communists in the United States, just as our forces are already cracking down on anti-communists in Katanga. Such an anti-pro blue position reveals why it was necesary for the Administration to get me out of the command in the Army. Not only was it necessary that I be relieved of my command of the 24th Division, but it was also necessary that orders be canceled which would have assigned me to the command of the VIII Reserve Corps Headquarters in Austion-the very same headquarters from which comes the news to put down counter insurgency."
  
• 5/2/1962 Dr. King is invited to join the Birmingham protests.
  
• 5/3/1962 Walt Rostow said in a speech in Minneapolis: "we do no expect this planet to be forever split between a communist bloc and a free world. We expect this planet to organize itself in time on principles of voluntary cooperation among independent nation states dedicated to human freedom. It will not be a victory of United States over Russia."
  
• 5/4/1962 JFK address opening new dockside terminal, New Orleans, Louisiana, 4 May 1962. JFK urged Congress to pass the Trade Expansion Act without amendments that would weaken it. He stated his belief that the US must "trade or fade."
  
• 5/1962 Averell Harriman tells Art Schlesinger that Kennedy's policy of Laotian neutralization was still being "systematically sabotaged" by the US military and CIA. (RFK and His Times 758) Averell Harriman told Arthur Schlesinger in May 1962 that JFK's Laos policy was being "systematically sabotaged " from within the government by the military and the CIA. "They want to prove that a neutral solution is impossible," Harriman said, " and that the only course is to turn Laos into an American bastion. " From the journal of Arthur M. Schlesinger, Jr. , May 14, 1962; cited in Robert Kennedy and His Times, p. 758
  
• 5/4/1962 Venezuela: troops revolt and seize the city of Carupano.
  
• 5/4/1962 The French announced that the Algerian peace accord would be carried out on schedule.
  
• 5/5/1962 "Defence Policy Statement Made on Saturday, 5 May [1962] by Secretary McNamara at the NATO Ministerial Meeting in Athens," Cosmic Top Secret Source: NATO Archives, Brussels A key statement on U.S. nuclear policy, Robert McNamara's "Athens Speech," is one of the first expositions at the NATO-level of the "no cities-counterforce" concept that Pentagon officials and RAND consultants had developed.
  
• 5/5/1962 John Connally wins the Texas Democratic gubernatorial primary; Walker comes in tenth in a field of ten, winning some 200,000 votes.
  
• 5/5/1962 Venezuela: Betancourt's government puts down Castro-inspired revolt of Marines and leftists at naval base of Carupano.
  
• 5/6/1962 Pathet Lao troops in Laos broke the cease-fire by storming the village of Nam Tha.
  
• 5/6/1962 Frigate Bird on May 6, 1962, a UGM-27 Polaris A-2 missile with a live 600 kt W47 warhead was launched from the USS Ethan Allen (SSBN-608); it flew 1900 km, re-entered the atmosphere, and detonated at an altitude of 3.4 km over the South Pacific. The test was part of Operation Dominic I. Planned as a method to dispel doubts about whether the USA's nuclear missiles would actually function in practice, it had less effect than was hoped, as the stockpile warhead was substantially modified prior to testing, and the missile tested was a relatively low-flying SLBM and not a high-flying ICBM.
  
• 5/7/1962 RFK briefed on past CIA-Mafia Plots. He had wanted to know why the CIA was asking the FBI to block the prosecution of Robert Maheu involving a case of an illegal wiretap, which Maheu had done for Sam Giancana. RFK meets with Richard Helms (Helms later denied this meeting took place despite a specific indication on RFK 's calendar), and later that afternoon with Sheffield Edwards and CIA general council Lawrence Houston for a briefing on pre-Bay of Pigs organized crime assassination plots. (Testimony of Lawrence Houston HSCA, p62 National Archives) "Mr. Kennedy stated that upon learning CIA had not cleared its action in hiring Maheu and Giancana with the DOJ he issued orders that the CIA should never again take such steps with first checking with the DOJ." CIA does not tell RFK the organized crime plots will continue. (Memo for IG from Sidney D. Stembridge Acting Director of Security 3.16.76, quoting FBI memo FBI 62-109060-4984 - states May 9, '62 as the date for this briefing.) Houston recalled that Kennedy angrily told him that "if you ever try to do business with organized crime again...you will let the attorney general know." Edwards confirmed this. It was determined that the Kennedys and McCone did not originally know about the anti-Castro plots before this time (Senate Intelligence Committee Report 102,148,154-55, 131-33) Edwards continues the charade by writing a memo stating falsely he told Harvey to "drop any plans for use of subject (Rosselli) for the future and "internal memorandum for the record," asserting that the operation was "terminated." Note: Harvey found out about this memo when questioned by the Senate Intelligence Committee in 1975, and he was furious. He declared that it "was not true, and Col. Edwards knew it was not true"; the falsification was intended to show that Edwards was "no longer chargeable should the operation backfire." (Senate Assassination Plots Report p134) (Laura Myers, Associated Press July 1, 1997): The CIA offered $150,000 to assassinate Fidel Castro in the early 1960s, but the mob insisted on taking the job for free, according to a newly declassified document. "We were at (ideological) war,'' says Robert Maheu, who as a Las Vegas private investigator on the CIA payroll in 1960 hired Chicago crime boss Sam Giancana for the hit. "Would it be folly to go after Saddam Hussein during the Gulf War or to go after Hitler during World War II?'' The underworld murder-for-hire contract was detailed in a summary of a May 1962 CIA briefing for then-Attorney General Robert Kennedy. By then, the Kennedy White House had launched its unsuccessful Bay of Pigs invasion of Cuba and several assassination attempts against Castro had failed. The memo is among 450 documents, nearly all newly declassified, that are included in a soon-to-be released State Department volume, "Cuba, 1960-61.'' Only two copies of the three-page memo were made, one each for the attorney general and CIA headquarters. In the memo, then-CIA director of security Sheffield Edwards writes that senior agency officials approved plots to kill Castro between August 1960 and May 1961. The White House isn't mentioned. "Knowledge of this project ... was kept to a total of six persons,'' Edwards wrote. At least two assassination attempts were made with CIA-supplied lethal pills and organized crime-made muscle in early 1961, according to the memo and congressional hearings in 1975. Lawmakers counted a total of eight CIA tries to kill Castro in the early 1960s; Castro bragged the number was two dozen. The memo said Maheu contacted John Rosselli, a top Giancana lieutenant, to arrange the hits on Castro. "A figure of $150,000 was set by the agency as a payment to be made on completion of the operation,'' the memo said. Rosselli and Giancana "emphatically stated that they wished no part of any payment,'' it added. Still, $11,000 in expenses were paid. Rosselli and Giancana, both later victims of mob hits, weren't told the U.S. government put the contract out on Castro, but they "guessed or assumed that CIA was behind the project,'' the memo concludes. After the Bay of Pigs invasion failed to oust Castro in April 1961, President Kennedy and his brother, the attorney general, tacitly approved a renewed CIA effort to kill the Cuban leader. "They were telling the CIA, `Do whatever it takes to get rid of Castro,''' says Peter Kornbluh, senior analyst at the National Archives. Louis Smith, senior State Department historian for the book, said the Kennedys were obsessed with eliminating their communist nemesis. "Robert Kennedy gave (then-deputy CIA director Richard) Bissell hell for not getting rid of Castro the first time around, so Bissell took this as a green light to go forward again with assassination plots,'' Smith said. At the time, Robert Kennedy was running "Operation Mongoose," which used propaganda to gin up revolt among Cubans. "A measure of the Kennedy administration's renewed determination to eliminate Castro was the reauthorization of assassination attempts on the Cuban premier,'' says a summary of the State Department volume. CIA Bay of Pigs project manager Jacob Esterline, now 79, said he lost heart when he learned of the top-secret plans to kill Castro. "Somebody thought it was some magic cure,'' says Esterline, who paid the assassination attempt bills. "Even after all these years, it's still painful.'' The first plans to oust Castro began before Kennedy took office.
  
• 5/8/1962 A multi-service military exercise designed to test contingency planning for Cuba begins. The operation, codenamed WHIP LASH, concludes on 5/18. Another U.S. military exercise in the Caribbean known as JUPITER SPRINGS is planned for sometime in the spring or summer. Soviet and Cuban sources have suggested that the series of U.S. military exercises conducted in the region throughout the year are perceived as additional evidence of U.S. intentions to invade Cuba. (OPERATION MONGOOSE, 4-10 May, 5/10/62; Reflections on the Cuban Missile Crisis)
  
• 5/8/1962 McNamara's May 8 order to General Harkins to submit a plan for withdrawal from Vietnam was ignored.
  
• 5/8/1962 As John Kennedy became persona non grata to the economic elite of the United States, his popularity increased elsewhere. He said on May 8, 1962, to a warmly welcoming convention of the United Auto Workers: " Last week, after speaking to the Chamber of Commerce and the presidents of the American Medical Association, I began to wonder how I got elected. And now I remember. " I said last week to the Chamber that I thought I was the second choice for President of a majority of the Chamber; anyone else was first choice. " He told the U.A.W. : " Harry Truman once said there are 14 or 1 5 million Americans who have the resources to have representatives in Washington to protect their interests, and that the interests of the great mass of other people, the hundred and fifty or sixty million, is the responsibility of the President of the United States. And I propose to fulfill it." After the steel crisis, President Kennedy felt so much hostility from the leaders of big business that he finally gave up trying to curry their support. He told advisers Sorensen, O'Donnell, and Schlesinger, "I understand better every day why Roosevelt, who started out such a mild fellow, ended up so ferociously anti-business. It is hard as hell to be friendly with people who keep trying to cut your legs off. " If Fortune's editors were right in seeing a deliberate provocation of Kennedy, the instigators had succeeded in alienating the business elite from the president, and vice versa. JFK joked about what his corporate enemies would do to him, if they only had the chance. A year after the steel crisis, he learned before giving a speech in New York that elsewhere in the same hotel " the steel industry was presenting Dwight D. Eisenhower with its annual public service award." "I was their man of the year last year, " said the president to his audience. "They wanted to come down to the White House to give me their award, but the Secret Service wouldn't let them do it. " (Schlesinger, Thousand Days, p. 641.; 42. Kenneth P. O 'Donnell and David F. Powers, "Johnny, We Hardly Knew Ye " (Boston: Little, Brown, 1970), p. 407.)
  
• 5/8/1962 In the spring of 1962, as Kennedy moved steadily toward a Laotian settlement, he instructed Robert McNamara to initiate a plan to withdraw the U.S. military from Vietnam. The first step was taken by McNamara at a Secretary of Defense ( SECDEF) conference on the Vietnam War held in Saigon on May 8, 1962. When the Saigon conference was almost over, McNamara said there would be a special briefing for a few of his top decision makers. Those he asked to remain in the room included Joint Chiefs chairman General Lyman Lemnitzer, Admiral Harry Felt, General Paul Harkins, Ambassador Frederick Nolting, and the Defense Intelligence Agency's top expert on Vietnam, civilian analyst George Allen. It was George Allen who would describe this closed-door meeting in an interview and an unpublished manuscript decades later. (George Allen, interview by John M. Newman, August 10, 1987; cited by Newman, JFK and Vietnam, pp. 254, 264-66 . Also George Allen, The Indochina Wars: 1950-1975 (unpublished manuscript)) When the door had shut, McNamara began examining the men on how each thought the United States should respond to an imminent Communist victory in Laos. The question, not on the conference agenda, took them by surprise. Admiral Felt's response was typical of the group's big-bang attitude that John Kennedy knew all too well. Felt said they could " launch air strikes immediately, and in forty-eight hours, for example, we could wipe the town of Tchepone right off the face of the map. " (Newman, JFK and Vietnam, p . 265) McNamara pointed out that such an assault could easily provoke nearby North Vietnamese and Chinese forces to counterattack. What then? Should U.S. forces strike the North Vietnamese and Chinese bases, too? And what next? The men remained silent. By his quick examination the Secretary of Defense had demonstrated the president's position that the United States had nowhere to go militarily in Laos. The choice they had to make was between the negotiated compromise JFK was seeking (which the military regarded as a sellout to the Communists) and an absurd commitment to wage an ever-escalating war in Laos, North Vietnam, and China. With the necessity of negotiating a neutral Laos as his preamble, McNamara introduced the military leaders to an even more unthinkable policy - withdrawal from Vietnam. He said, " It is not the job of the U.S. to assume responsibility for the war but to develop the South Vietnamese capability to do so. " (Allen interview cited by Newman, JFK and Vietnam, p. 254) He asked the men in the room when they thought the point would be reached when the South Vietnamese army could take over completely. George Allen has described the response to this question by the general in charge of U.S. forces in Vietnam. He said, " Harkins' chin nearly hit the table. " General Harkins told McNamara they " had scarcely thought about that. " They had been much too busy, he said, with plans to expand their military structure in South Vietnam " to think about how it might all be dismantled." But that is what McNamara told them they now had to do. They not only had to think about " how it might all be dismantled, " but to prepare a concrete plan to do so. He ordered Harkins, as the commander of MACV [Military Assistance Command, Vietnam], "to devise a plan for turning full responsibility over to South Vietnam and reducing the size of our military command, and to submit this plan at the next conference. " (Allen, Indochina Wars, p. 192; cited by Newman, JFK and Vietnam, p. 254.) JFK knew the depth of their hostility. The previous fall he had told Galbraith, in reference to the Bay of Pigs and a neutral Laos, " You have to realize that I can only afford so many defeats in one year. " (John Kenneth Galbraith, A Life in Our Times ( Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1981) By McNamara's order to Harkins, Kennedy was telegraphing a punch to the stomach of his military-withdrawal from Vietnam. He was thereby provoking them to launch a preemptive punch at himself.
  
• 5/9/1962 RFK met with Hoover to discuss the illegal phone tap and an electronic "bug" Robert Maheu had installed in Las Vegas for Giancana's private use (to monitor an affair one of his girlfriends was having). Kennedy was upset because it put the CIA in the position where "it could not afford to have any action taken against Giancana or Maheu." (Hoover memo) During an hour long meeting regarding many Justice Dept. issues, RFK tells Hoover the CIA has used organized crime figures in an effort to assassinate Castro (phase one).
  
• 5/9/1962 Attorney General Robert Kennedy was advised by the CIA that Robert Maheu had been hired to approach Sam Giancana regarding an assassination plot against Fidel Castro. "Mr. Kennedy stated that upon learning CIA had not cleared its action in hiring Maheu and Giancana with the DOJ he issued orders that the CIA should never again take such steps with first checking with the DOJ." [FBI 62-109060-4984]
  
• 5/9/1962 Robert H. Robinson of the INS wrote Michael Cieplinski at State that it had approved Marina Oswald's case. (CE 1777) INS agreed to waive a restriction under the law which would have prohibited issuing a visa to Marina until after she had left the USSR. (WC)
  
• 5/10/1962 Southern School News reports that 246,988 or 7.6 per cent of the African American pupils in public schools in seventeen Southern and Border States and the District of Columbia attended integrated classes in 1962.
  
• 5/10/1962 Venezuela bans the activities of the Communist Party and the Movement of the Revolutionary Left.
  
• 5/11/1962 Up to this date large-scale US naval and amphibious maneuvers were staged in the Caribbean.
  
• 5/11/1962 McNamara travels to Saigon to meet with Diem.
  
• 5/12/1962 Gen. MacArthur delivered a speech (commonly known as the "Duty, honor, country" speech) to the cadets of the U.S. Military Academy at West Point on the occasion of his receiving the Sylvanus Thayer Award, during which he once again alluded to the possibility that mankind might someday face an extraterrestrial foe: "We deal now, not with things of this world alone, but with the illimitable distances and as yet unfathomed mysteries of the universe. We are reaching out for a new and boundless frontier. We speak in strange terms of harnessing the cosmic energy, of making winds and tides work for us, of creating unheard of synthetic materials to supplement or even replace our old standard basics; to purify sea water for our drink; of mining ocean floors for new fields of wealth and food; of disease preventatives to expand life into the hundred of years; of controlling the weather for a more equitable distribution of heat and cold, of rain and shine; of spaceships to the moon; of the primary target in war, no longer limited to the armed forces of an enemy, but instead to include his civil populations; of ultimate conflict between a united human race and the sinister forces of some other planetary galaxy; of such dreams and fantasies as to make life the most exciting of all times."
  
• 5/12/1962 An Alpha 66 ship attacked a Cuban gunboat.
  
• 5/12/1962 NY Times reported that McNamara had said that US aid to South Vietnam had reached a peak and would start to level off; he also said he doubted US personnel in that country would be increased. "After 48 hours in South Vietnam Mr. McNamara was tremendously encouraged by developments...'I found nothing but progress and hope for the future,' he said."
  
• 5/12/1962 1800 US marines were sent to Thailand with other naval, air and land forces for defense against possible attack by communist forces from Laos.
  
• 5/14/1962 After the May 7th meeting with RFK, Sheffield Edwards and Houston dispatch a memo for the Attorney General's file that would establish his being "informed" of the plots, and that, to Kennedy 's knowledge, they had been terminated. (Church Committee) Sheffield Edwards prepared a phony memo for CIA files saying that the anti-Castro plots had ended. (Church report)
  
• 5/14/1962 Sukarno, ruler of Indonesia, was the target of a failed assassination attempt.
  
• 5/12 or 5/15 US sends 5000 (or 1500) Marines and 50 jets to Thailand to resist communist aggression in Laos.
  
• 5/16/1962 Robert Amory, deputy director of CIA for intelligence, replaced by Ray S. Cline.
  
• 5/16/1962 The three rival factions in Laos began negotiations.
  
• 5/17/1962 JFK announced that a small military contigent had been ordered to Laos, calling it an "act of diplomacy." 3000 Marines landed in Bangkok; they would be removed by August.
  
• 5/17/1962 In Saigon, Diem decreed that meetings for any purpose would be forbidden unless given prior government approval.
  
• 5/18/1962 Justice Dept obtained its first indictment against Hoffa.
  
• 5/18/1962 FBI agent Fain called Robert Oswald's residence in Fort Worth and asked Vada how Lee's plans for returning to the US were progressing. She wanted Vada to call him when Oswald arrived in the US, but she didn't. (H 4 403)
  
• 5/19/1962 Marilyn Monroe sings a sexy "Happy Birthday" to JFK at Madison Square Garden party.
  
• 5/21/1962 Oswald writes Robert that when he returns to the US, he doesn't want any reporters or newspaper attention when he arrives. (H 16 880-81)
  
• 5/22/1962 After being fully briefed, Hoover sends memo to RFK noting CIA had used Giancana in "clandestine efforts" against Castro. "Colonel Edwards said that since this is 'dirty business' he could not afford to have knowledge of that action of Maheu and Giancana in pursuit of any mission for the CIA Mr. Bissell, in his recent briefings of General Taylor and the attorney general and in connection with their inquiries into CIA activities relating to the Cuban situation told the Attorney General that some of the associated planning included the use of Giancana and the underworld." (FBI 62-109060-4984; Church Committee Interim Report, p127)
  
• 5/22/1962 A Texas medical examiner stated that he believed federal official Henry Marshall had been murdered while investigating Estes' operations.
  
• 5/22/1962 Oswald picks up his Soviet exit visa in Minsk.
  
• 5/22/1962 De Gaulle assassination attempt.
  
• 5/22/1962 Continental Airlines Flight 11, a Boeing 707, becomes the first known commercial airliner to be sabotaged when a bomb explodes onboard in mid-flight killing 45 people aboard.
  
• 5/23/1962 JFK was asked by reporters about growing health concerns about smoking. He replied, "That matter is sensitive enough and the stock market is in sufficient difficulty without my giving you an answer which is not based on complete information, which I don't have."
  
• 5/23/1962 Billy Sol Estes appeared at a bankruptcy hearing in Texas and invoked the Fifth amendment seven times.
  
• 5/23/1962 Paris: former OAS chief Raoul Salan was sentenced to life in prison.
  
• 5/24/1962 Mercury 7 mission: Scott Carpenter made three orbits around the earth, but experienced technical difficulties. The spacecraft lost radio contact after landing two hundred miles further downrange than expected. Carpenter was picked up in the sea by a helicopter from the carrier Intrepid.
  
• 5/24/1962 The Oswalds arrive in Moscow and complete documents at the US embassy. Marina receives a US visa.
  
• 5/27/1962 Bob Dylan's second album, The Freewheelin' Bob Dylan, is released. It features such protests songs as "Blowin' in the Wind," "Masters of War," and "A Hard Rain's a-Gonna Fall."
  
• 5/28/1962 US stock market plunged; biggest one-day loss since the crash of 1929. RFK recalled later that his brother complained, "When the market went down, it's the Kennedy stock market; and when it goes up, it's the free enterprise system."
  
• 5/29/1962 Sharif Rashidov, an alternate member of the Soviet Presidium, arrives in Cuba with a delegation, ostensibly on a ten-day mission to study irrigation problems. The presence of the ambassador-designate in Cuba, Aleksandr Alekseyev , Marshal Biryuzov, and two or three military experts is not known to the United States. Shortly before the departure of the delegation, Premier Khrushchev informs all Presidium members that the Soviet Union plans to deploy nuclear missiles in Cuba and that Biryuzov and Alekseyev will broach the idea with the Cuban government. On the evening of its arrival, the Soviet delegation meets with Fidel Castro and his brother Raul, the Cuban Minister of Defense. Expressing their concern over the possibility of a new U.S. invasion of Cuba, the Soviet officials state that the Soviet Union is prepared to assist Cuba in fortifying its defenses, even to the extent of deploying nuclear missiles on Cuban soil. Castro responds by calling the idea "interesting," but tells the group that he will need to consult with his colleagues before providing a final answer. (Alekseyev, pp. 7-8)
  
• 5/29/1962 More than 5000 US military personnel are in Thailand.
  
• 5/30/1962 After conferring with Raul Castro, Che Guevara, Osvaldo Dorticos and Blas Roca, Fidel Castro informs the visiting Soviet officials that Cuba will accept the deployment of nuclear weapons. Since the crisis, Castro and other Cuban sources have suggested that this decision was made not only because the missiles would serve to deter a U.S. invasion but also because the Cuban government wished to shift the "correlation of forces" in favor of socialism. In addition, Havana felt indebted to the Soviet Union for its support of the Cuban revolution. Before departing Cuba in early June, Marshal Biryuzov seeks to determine whether the deployment could be accomplished without detection by the United States or others. Upon the return of the party to Moscow, Khrushchev is told that Castro has accepted the offer to place missiles in Cuba, and Biryuzov reports that he believes such a deployment could in fact be carried out covertly. (Garthoff 2, p. 66; Allyn, p. 141)
  
• 5/30/1962 Oswald writes his mother that he expects to spend a day or so in NY and Washington DC "for sightseeing." (H 16 578)
  
• 5/31/1962 Chicago Sun-Times quoted Billy Graham as worrying "that some Negro leaders are going too far and too fast."
  
• 5/31/1962 De Gaulle assassination attempt.
  
• 5/31/1962 11:53pm Karl Adolf Eichmann was hanged inside Ramleh Prison, near Tel Aviv.