Deep Politics Timeline

[Tracy Riddle]

• 1964-1968 chemical experiments in US military As part of Project Shipboard Hazard and Defense (SHAD), the US military sprays nerve or chemical agents "on a variety of ships and their crews to gauge how quickly the poisons can be detected and how rapidly they would disperse, as well as to test the effectiveness of protective gear and decontamination procedures...." According to documents released in 2002, there is no evidence that the servicemen had given the military consent to be part of the experiment. [New York Times, 5/24/02] The US military later claims the experiments were conducted "out of concern for [the United States'] ability to protect and defend against these potential threats." [US Department of Defense, 10/31/2002; Reuters, 10/10/02]
  
• This year, the SVCP (Special Virus Cancer Program) begins as a government-funded program of the National Cancer Institute (NCI) in Bethesda, Maryland. The program studies all forms of cancer. Research includes collecting various human and animal cancers from around the world and growing large amounts of cancer-causing viruses. Thousands of liters of man-made viruses are eventually adapted to human cells and subsequently shipped around the world to various laboratories.
  
• In 1964, the World Medical Association passed the Declaration of Helsinki, a set of ethical principles for the medical community regarding human experimentation.
  
• From 1964 to 1968, the U.S. Army paid $386,486 to professors Albert Kligman and Herbert W. Copelan to perform experiments with mind-altering drugs on 320 inmates of Holmesburg Prison. The goal of the study was to determine the minimum effective dose of each drug needed to disable 50 percent of any given population. Kligman and Copelan initially claimed that they were unaware of any long-term health effects the drugs could have on prisoners, however, documents later revealed that this was not the case.
  
• CIA program MKULTRA became MKSEARCH. Many sub-projects stayed under MKULTRA while the most sensitive behavioral experiments went to MKSEARCH. These experiments were conducted on prisoners, terminal cancer patients and people who were described as mental "defectives." They also used radar waves on monkeys' brains (which risked "cooking" their brains) and one scientist took the head of one monkey and tried to attach it to the body of another. Other experiments involved studying telepathy, radio frequencies and memory.
  
• In the Collier's Encyclopedia Yearbook 1964, Tom Wicker writes an essay on the "Death of a President." He describes JFK's wounds: "There was a wound in his throat. The right rear part of his head was blown away."
  
• 1/1964 This month, Richard Nixon calls together his veteran strategists, Bob Finch, Bob Haldeman, and Steve Hess, for a meeting at the Waldorf Towers. They agree that Nixon's best stance, for the time being, is to lay low. The consensus is that their man is not in a position to run openly for president but that he might turn out to be an acceptable compromise between the party's left and right should this summer's convention in San Francisco reach a deadlock.
  
• 1/1964 LBJ submitted a $97.9 billion budget to Congress; it included some cuts in the budgets of the Defense Dept and the Atomic Energy Commission. (The Making of the President 1964)
  
• 1/1964 "... Not the least fantastic aspect of this whole fantastic nightmare is the ease with which respectable opinion in America has arrived at the conclusion that such a possibility [a political conspiracy] is absurd; in most other countries, what is regarded as absurd is the idea that the assassination could have been anything but a political murder. ..." "... The Warren Commission ought to know that anything less [than the fullest investigation] would only reinforce the ugly suspicions circulating through the air, and would only compound the same and disgust that all of us should be feeling - still." Commentary, Editorial by Norman Podhoretz warns Warren Commission against merely sifting FBI reports.
  
• 1/1964 "The Death of a President" (A review of the many inconsistencies and mysteries involved in the investigation of the assassination of President John F. Kennedy. The reaction of a stunned world: Was it a conspiracy?) by Eric Norden in The Minority of One (Jan 1964) The Minority of One (January, 1964): "William M. Kline, chief of the U.S. Customs Bureau investigative services in Laredo, Texas, stated on November 25 that Oswald's movements were watched at the request of "a federal agency at Washington." (New York Post, November 25.) Eugene Pugh, U.S. agent in charge of the Customs office on the American side of the bridge at Laredo, Texas, said that Oswald had been checked by American immigration officials on entering and leaving Mexico. Mr. Pugh admitted to the New York Herald Tribune that this was "not the usual" procedure. He said Americans were not required to check in with Immigration when crossing the border, "but U.S. immigration has a folder on Oswald's trip."
  
• 1/1964 Cuba and the Kennedy Assassination by John Martino [Human Events. Jan, 1964]: "During the three years that I was incarcerated in Cuban prisons, former intimates told me of the Red dictator's irrational hatred of President Kennedy. One Red publication, I remember, displayed a fake photograph showing the President and the First Lady careening drunk through the streets of Mexico City during their official visit in 1962. Another-the magazine Mella, featured a cartoon in which John F. Kennedy was depicted as a dope pusher injecting narcotics into the arm of a child…If Castro needed an assassin, he would have had to search among the Maoists, the Stalinists and the neo-Trotskyites-in another words, among people as disturbed, warped, hate-saturated and wicked as Oswald. The fact that the crime was committed in Dallas, a center of American conservative and nationalist movements, was probably not accidental. Had Oswald managed to escape to Cuba, the liberal press and the Establishment could have placed the entire blame for the murder of the President, not on America's Communist enemies, but on those who love this country and wish to preserve its institutions and its heritage."
  
• 1/1964 Shirley Martin, an early critic of the lone-gunman story, wrote that in January 1964 she talked to Jean Hill. Hill told her that she and Mary Moorman "had received many threatening phone calls urging them to keep quiet' and when they reported these to the Dallas police, they received an official brush-off. Mrs. Hill said Miss Moorman would not talk to me as she was much more frightened and upset over the whole thing than Mrs. Hill was."
  
• 1/1964 Who Killed Whom and Why? Dark Thoughts About Dark Events - M.S. Arnoni, The Minority of One, January 1964
  
• 1/1/1964 Lonnie Hudkins story in Houston Post about Oswald being an FBI informant. "'He had Hosty's home phone, office phone and car license number,' said Bill Alexander...Mrs Marguerite Oswald....had a terse 'no comment' when asked if her son had told her he was or had at least been asked to be an informant in antisubversive work. She did not deny it. However, she was quoted in the Philadelphia Inquirer as saying her son had been approached by a government agent to be an informant and then had informed her about it...the contact, if made, would have been before she went to work for a Fort Worth matron in the same month and indicated to her employer that 'Lee was doing important work.' The social matron said she got the impression from Mrs Oswald...that Lee Oswald was doing some sort of work for the federal government...'They [meaning the FBI] asked me where he worked and I told them,' said Mrs Ruth Paine...Mrs Paine recalled that FBI agents came to her home on two occasions to inform Oswald's wife that it was the FBI's custom, or policy, to contact immigrants from behind the Iron Curtain after they had been in this country for a year and that they (the immigrants) could, if they wanted to do so, disclose any pressure that might be on them from relatives or governments left behind...Reporters on hand to interview...Jesse Curry on Nov. 22 recall that he first revealed that the FBI knew that Oswald was in Dallas but had not given his name to check to police or other law enforcement agencies involved in the President's protection. Chief Curry later retracted the statement...It is this point that has led to speculation by police and sheriff's deputies in Dallas that Oswald might have been an informant because, as one put it, 'you just wouldn't think to check out one of your own stoolies.'...District Atty Henry Wade...does not discount the possibility that Oswald may have been an informant. 'It may be true,' he said, 'but I don't think it will ever be made public if it is.'...sources in Dallas say he passed through Houston on Sept 26 en route to Mexico. One agency in Washington has leaked that Oswald was accompanied by two women and a man..."
  
• 1/1/1964 "[William] Alexander…and two local reporters concocted a story that Oswald had been FBI informer S-179 and had been paid $200 a month. Lonnie Hudkins...printed the story...'I never much liked the federals,' Alexander says. 'I figured it was as good a way as any to keep them out of my way having to run down that phony story.'" (Posner, Case Closed 348)
  
• 1/1/1964 LBJ warned that neutralization of Vietnam "would only be another name for a Communist take-over."
  
• 1/2/1964 FBI and Secret Service visited Richard Case Nagell in jail.
  
• 1/2/1964 LBJ assured South Vietnam's Gen. Duong Van Minh that the US "will continue to furnish you and your people with the fullest measure of support in this bitter fight..."
  
• 1/2/1964 "Oswald in Dallas: A Few Loose Ends" by Leo Sauvage, The Reporter. He recalled wiring his home office at Le Figaro, the Paris newspaper, saying that one of the few certainties in Dallas was that Kennedy was dead.
  
• 1/3/1964 Barry Goldwater announced his candidacy for the GOP presidential nomination.
  
• 1/3/1964 Broadcast by KPFA, Radio interview of Mark Lane, by Chris Koch and Robert Potts, WBAI, New York, no date; broadcast by KPFA, Berkeley, 1/3/64.
  
• 1/3/1964 Paul Rothermel memo to H.L. Hunt: "The FBI has instructed its agents not to discuss the Oswald-Ruby case, even among themselves, as there has been a leak of some information which has caused embarrassment to the Bureau." (Man Who Knew Too Much 590)
  
• 1/3/1964 Time magazine, dated this day, names Martin Luther King its Man of the Year for 1963, and featured him on the cover.
  
• 1/3/1964 CD 320: report of a Secret Service interview with reporter Lonnie Hudkins. It was found by Paul Hoch in the National Archives 7/1966 (it was not included in the published WC material.) "On December 17, [1963] Mr. Hudkins advised that he had just returned from a weekend in Dallas, during which time he talked to Allan Sweatt, Chief Criminal Division, Sheriff's Office, Dallas; Chief Sweat mentioned that it was his opinion that Lee Harvey Oswald was being paid $200 a month by the FBI as an informant in connection with their subversive investigations. He furnished the alleged informant number assigned to Oswald by the FBI as 'S172.'"
  
• 1/4/1964 The Journal of the American Medical Association (JAMA) published what it called the "unofficial finding of a team of pathologists who peformed" the JFK autopsy. It said that the first bullet "did not go through the shoulder and was recovered during the autopsy."
  
• 1/5/1964 The Johnsons visited with the Connallys, and then with Sen. Yarborough, on their way back to the White House. (White House Diary 30)
  
• 1/5/1964 FBI agents in Washington installed a microphone in the hotel room assigned to MLK. Though the FBI was often able to record King's sexual liaisons, MLK also began turning his TV up full blast "after a personal warning from the president of the United States that he was being watched all the time." (The Man and the Secrets 568)
  
• 1/5/1964 Pope Paul VI and Greek Orthodox Patriarch Athenagoras met in Jerusalem, the first meeting of a pope and a patriarch in more than five centuries.
  
• 1/6/1964 Sen. Mansfield told LBJ he thought the US should push for a neutralist solution in Southeast Asia.
  
• 1/6/1964 Texas District Attorney Henry Wade says today that an intensive investigation shows no evidence whatsoever of any collusion between Jack Ruby and Dallas police officers in the slaying of LHO.
  
• 1/6/1964 U.S. News & World Report, Why a Plot was Feared when Kennedy Was Shot, p. 7. "For a short while after President Kennedy's assassination in Dallas, there was fear of a plot to kill others in line for the Presidency. That was why, it is now revealed, news of Mr. Kennedy's death was momentarily held up, until Lyndon Johnson, then vice president, was safely away from the hospital where Mr. Kennedy died. ... Malcolm Kilduff, assistant White House press secretary ... in a television interview ... quoted Mr. Johnson as saying: "We don't know whether this is a worldwide conspiracy, whether they are after me as well as they were after President Kennedy, or whether they are after Speaker McCormack, or Senator Hayden …" Mr. Kilduff asked Mr. Johnson if he should release to the press the news that Mr. Kennedy was dead. "No," he said Johnson told him. "I think we had better wait for a few minutes. ... I think I had better get out of here and get back to the plane before you announce it." …... There is historical precedent for Mr. Johnson's suspicion. On the night that President Lincoln was killed, other plotters wounded Secretary of State William Seward in an attempt to kill him. "
  
• 1/6/1964 James Rowley sends a memorandum to Rankin today regarding JFK's presidential limo. Rowley states that Secret Service Agent Morgan Geis of the White House Garage detail requested permission to clean the blood from the back seat of the presidential limo on November 23, 1963 because the odor was becoming bothersome. According to Rowley, permission was given to remove bloodstains on Sunday evening, November 24, 1963. Questions regarding the current whereabouts and condition of the limo - particularly in terms of evidence - are beginning to create some concern. MIDP Secret Service director James Rowley states: "Special Agent Gies, who was responsible for the care and maintenance of this vehicle, believes that this damage was on the car prior to November 22nd, 1963, and it is his recollection that this damage was in New York at the Empire Garage (Lincoln-Mercury dealer) on November 1961. Gies thinks the damage was done while he and employees of the garage were removing the header on the leatherette top...If this was the case, no effort was made to repair the dent prior to the assassination." Paul Michel, service director of the Empire Garage, was present and assisted with the November 1, 1961 repairs. Michel does not remember any damage occurring at that time, though he states that it was possible that some damage did occur, since a crank had broken off near the top of the windshield. By this point in time, repairs to the limousine are underway and the windshield trim has probably already been lost. From this point on, it is evident that the Secret Service, the FBI, and the Warren Commission ignore the damage to the windshield trim and downplay its evidentiary value whenever they can not avoid mentioning it. Repairs to the limousine include: a permanent, nonremovable top; bulletproof glass; titanium body armor; a steel plate in the rear floor to protect against bombs; bullet-resistant tires; an explosion-proof gas take; a supplemental air-conditioning unit for the passenger compartment; and a new high-compression engine.
  
• 1/6/1964 "[This] was a long day for Martin Luther King Jr. He spent the morning seated in the reserved section of the Supreme Court, listening as lawyers argued New York Times Co. v. Sullivan, a landmark case rising out of King's crusade against segregation in Alabama. The minister was something of an honored guest: Justice Arthur Goldberg quietly sent down a copy of King's account of the Montgomery bus boycott, Stride Toward Freedom, asking for an autograph. That night King retired to his room at the Willard Hotel. There FBI bugs reportedly picked up 14 hours of party chatter, the clinking of glasses and the sounds of illicit sex--including King's cries of "I'm f---ing for God" and "I'm not a Negro tonight!" (Newsweek 1/19/1998) After a long and harrowing morning spent working with their D.C. lawyers preparing a defense against trumped-up libel charges by the State of Alabama for alleged misstatements in a 1960 money-raising ad Dr. Martin Luther King and several of his staff and a few women of assorted hues repair to the Willard Hotel near the White House. The FBI has bugged the hotel room and, after eleven reels of tape of nondescript, informal chatter and glasses chinking and heavy-duty ethnic jokes, just as the festivities are reaching their height, auditors for the Bureau catch King ripping loose, his rich voice unmistakable above the soft, wet sounds of fatigue and abandonment. "I'm fucking for God!" he breaks forth. "I'm not a Negro tonight!" J. Edgar Hoover, upon hearing the tapes, exclaims: "This will destroy the burrhead!" Deke DeLoach comments: "The fact that King and twelve acquaintances of his went to a hotel and hired a hundred-dollar-a-night call girls and most of them had something to do with her while they were drinking Black Russians - that was the subject of that tape...None of us ever played that tape to any reporters, I only heard fifteen to twenty minutes of that tape when [William] Sullivan brought it to my office. I told him to shut it off; I wanted to hear no more. But Sullivan had a fetish for doing things against Dr. King. He got Lish Whitson, the retired head of the old espionage section, to fly to Miami and mail it to Coretta King. Mr. Hoover was horrified when he found out about it." Sullivan will later insist Hoover was behind the whole travesty. According to Sullivan, Hoover, "who had always been fascinated by pornography," arranged through Alan Belmont to have a box dropped off which contained a compilation of Martin Luther King's remarks as well as a letter intended for Coretta King. The letter urges King to "look into your heart. You area complete fraud and a great liability to all of us Negroes...a dissolute, abnormal moral imbecile...King, there is only one thing left for you to do. You know what it is. You have just 34 days...There is but one way out for you. You better take it before your filthy, abnormal fraudulent self is bared to the nation..." The package is opened in Atlanta, days after King has returned from Oslo, where he has just received the Nobel Peace Prize.
  
• 1/7/1964 McNamara, Rusk and Bundy warned LBJ that a neutralist solution would result in a Communist Vietnam and collapse of US credibility.
  
• 1/7/1964 In an interview with FBI agents, assassination eyewitness Howard L. Brennan reverts to his earlier inability to make a positive identification of Lee Harvey Oswald as the gunman who fired from the window in the Book Depository.
  
• 1/7/1964 In a letter to Allen Dulles, RFK today writes: "Allen, as you know, much of the important material of the Kennedy administration does not exist in written form."
  
• 1/8/1964 Secret Service issued its final report on the JFK assassination. (CD87) It agrees with the FBI's three hits, no misses scenario.
  
• 1/8/1964 LBJ gave his State of the Union address: "This administration today, here and now, declares unconditional war on poverty in America." He also announced a $97.9 billion budget ($4 billion less than the previous year) and discussed the tax cut proposal.
  
• 1/8/1964 Press reports on the return of RFK to work at the Justice Dept. The FBI ceases to send an official car to pick up Kennedy during his travels.
  
• 1/8/1964 William Sullivan, memorandum to John Edgar Hoover (8th January, 1964) "It should be clear to all of us that Martin Luther King must, at some propitious point in the future, be revealed to the people of this country and to his Negro followers as being what he actually is - a fraud, demagogue and scoundrel. When the true facts concerning his activities are presented, such should be enough, if handled properly, to take him off his pedestal and to reduce him completely in influence. When this is done, and it can be and will be done, obviously much confusion will reign, particularly among the Negro people... The Negroes will be left without a national leader of sufficiently compelling personality to steer them in the proper direction. This is what could happen, but need not happen if the right kind of a national Negro leader could at this time be gradually developed so as to overshadow Dr. King and be in the position to assume the role of the leadership of the Negro people when King has been completely discredited. For some months I have been thinking about this matter. One day I had an opportunity to explore this from a philosophical and sociological standpoint with an acquaintance whom I have known for some years.... I asked him to give the matter some attention and if he knew any Negro of outstanding intelligence and ability to let me know and we would have a discussion. He has submitted to me the name of the above-captioned person. Enclosed with this memorandum is an outline of (the person's) biography which is truly remarkable for a man so young. On scanning this biography, it will be seen that (Samuel Pierce) does have all the qualifications of the kind of a Negro I have in mind to advance to positions of national leadership.... If this thing can be set up properly without the Bureau in any way becoming directly involved, I think it would be not only a great help to the FBI but would be a fine thing for the country at large. While I am not specifying at this moment, there are various ways in which the FBI could give this entire matter the proper direction and development. There are highly placed contacts of the FBI who might be very helpful to further such a step. These can be discussed in detail later when I have probed more fully into the possibilities."
  
• 1/9/1964 Panama suspended relations with US after riots between American students and Panamanians over which flag should fly over the canal zone.
  
• 1/9/1964 Roswell Gilpatric left his post as Deputy Secretary of Defense and returned to the law firm of Cravath, Swaine & Moore as a senior partner. In September LBJ would appoint him to a high-level Committee on Nuclear Proliferation. (Mollenhoff, The Pentagon)
  
• 1/10/1964 THE STATE OF TEXAS vs. JACK RUBENSTEIN -- Date set for second bail hearing. Postponed.
  
• 1/10/1964 Cover story of LIFE features the memoirs of Gen. Douglas MacArthur
  
• 1/10/1964 Hoover heard the tapes of MLK at the Willard Hotel, and he commented, "They will destroy the burrhead." He called Walter Jenkins at the White House about the material. (The Man and the Secrets 569)
  
• 1/10/1964 One of TV's first attempts at political satire, the U.S. version of "That Was the Week That Was" premieres on NBC with a mixture of fake news, skits and musical numbers. Cast members include David Frost, Buck Henry, Bob Dishy, Alan Alda, Sandy Baron and Tom Bosley.
  
• 1/11/1964 Surgeon General Luther Terry released a report to the press that found that smoking might cause cancer and other ailments. This was the first government report that linked cigarette smoking with cancer.
  
• 1/11/1964 LBJ publicly thanks RFK for waging so successful a campaign against the Mafia.
  
• 1/11/1964 J. Lee Rankin explained the purpose of the Warren Commission to the press: "We think it would be wise to reassure this country and the world not only that we can protect our President but that accused criminals can be treated fairly." He also described how they intended to rely on the police agencies to do the investigative work, while at the same time there would be "no shying away from intensive scrutiny of these same agencies' performance."
  
• 1/11/1964 Memo from Rankin and Warren to the other WC members: the subject was the "tentative" organization of the Commission's work. Warren wrote: "This outline divides the work into the following six areas: (1) Assassination of President Kennedy on November 22, 1963; (2) Lee Harvey Oswald as the Assassin of President Kennedy; (3) Lee Harvey Oswald: Background and Possible Motive; (4) Oswald's foreign activity (military excluded); (5) Murder of Lee Harvey Oswald by Jack L. Ruby; and (6) Security Precautions to Protect the President....of couse, high priority is being given to preparation for taking the testimony of Mrs [Marina] Oswald...The FBI has been requested to conduct a complete background investigation of the Paines. Similar investigations will be requested of other people in Dallas and Fort Worth who associated closely with Oswald and his family." Attached to this progress report was the following "Tentative Outline": I Assassination of President Kennedy; A. Trip to Texas; B. Assassination; C. Events Immediately Following the Shooting; D. Nature and Extent of Wounds Received by President Kennedy (4.Evaluation of medical treatment received in Dallas); II Lee Harvey Oswald as the Assassin of President Kennedy; A. Brief Identification of Oswald; B. Movements on November 22, 1963, Prior to Assassination; C. Movements After Assassination until Murder of Tippit; D. Murder of Tippit (1. Encounter of Oswald and Tippit; 2.Evidence Demonstrating Oswald's Guilt); E. Flight and Apprehension in Texas Theatre; F. Oswald at Dallas Police Station; G. Evidence Identifying Oswald as the Assassin of President Kennedy (2.Oswald placed in Depository (and specific room?)); H. Evidence Implicating Others in Assassination or Suggesting Accomplices (5.Refutation of Allegations); III. Lee Harvey Oswald: Background and Possible Motive; A. Birth and Pre-school days; B.Education; C. Military Service (4. Report and document study of Russian language: a. where and when, b.books used, c.instruction or self-taught, d.any indication of degree of accomplishment.) (Post Mortem 467)
  
• 1/11/1964 Memo from Charles Shaffer to Howard Willens. "Subject: Information Failure." "Today, I was at the Justice Department and Assistant Attorney General Miller furnished me with the two attached letter-head memoranda dated December 19 and December 30,1963, which were received from the Bureau in due course and which obviously are pertinent to the work of this commission. At the moment we are in no position to finally evaluate the content of either. I am morally certain that neither of the above had been transmitted to Mr Rankin as they properly should have been. Accordingly, I am disturbed that the Bureau is conducting investigation and not furnishing us with the results. Knowing the Bureau as we do, I suggest the matter be informally discussed with their representative in contact with the Commission. In this way, the matter can be corrected with the least amount of friction." (Post Mortem 473)
  
• 1/11/1964 Texas Atty General submitted reports to the WC on the wounding of Dealey Plaza witness James Tague. (Inquest)
  
• 1/12/1964 New York Times printed an outline of the WC's planned investigation.
  
• 1/13/1964 Federal Trade Commission announces it will require statements on cigarette packages warning of the dangers of smoking.
  
• 1/13/1964 Lady Bird Johnson diary entry: "...every time I pass that portrait of President Woodrow Wilson - painted when the strains of office lay heavily upon him - it says to me: Have his [LBJ's] portrait painted soon.'" (White House Diary 45)
  
• 1/13/1964 Supplemental Report issued by FBI. It was not published by the WC, and was released 5/1966 due to the efforts of Vincent Salandria and Paul Hoch. It contained a photo of Kennedy's shirt that clearly depicted the location of the rear bullet hole; this photo was not published by the WC; instead, they chose to publish a less-clear photo that renders the hole not visible. (H 17 23-26) This report described the hole as being "approximately six inches below the top of the collar and two inches to the right of the middle seam of the coat." It still described the back wound being "less than a finger length." The report also said that the backyard photo of Oswald did not contain enough detail for the FBI to positively identify the rifle as the Carcano. The WC apparently never tried to clear up the inconsistencies between its conclusions and the FBI report.
  
• 1/13/1964 Hoover scribbled on a memo from Sullivan to Belmont: "A copy need not be given A.G. [Robert Kennedy]." This concerned the tape recordings of MLK made by the FBI, which LBJ and Walter Jenkins had been shown transcripts of. Jenkins had suggested that leaks to the press might be a good idea. Hoover and others in the FBI worried that RFK might warn King if he knew about it. (The Man and the Secrets 569)
  
• 1/14/1964 Jacqueline Kennedy made her first public appearance on TV since the assassination. She thanked the 800,000 people who had sent her messages of sympathy.
  
• 1/14/1964 Fort Worth - Mrs. Marguerite Oswald said today she has retained New York lawyer Mark Lane to represent her late son before the special Washington commission. AP, Mike Cochran
  
• 1/14/1964 J. Edgar Hoover writes the Warren Commission admitting that the original description of JFK's assassin broadcast by the police was "initiated on the basis of a description furnished by an unidentified citizen who had observed an individual approximating Oswald's description running from the TSBD immediately after the assassination."
  
• 1/15/1964 Memo from D. J. Brennan to William Sullivan, re CIA Operations in the US. Hoover's own reaction to the CIA's Mexico City subterfuge was recorded when he scribbled at the bottom of an FBI memorandum about keeping up with CIA operations in the United States: " O.K., but I hope you are not being taken in. I can't forget the CIA withholding the French espionage activities in the USA nor the false story re Oswald's trip to Mexico, only to mention two instances of their double-dealing. " (A copy of the FBI memorandum with Hoover's written comment on it is on p. 5 of John Newman's article, " Oswald, the CIA and Mexico City: Fingerprints of Conspiracy," Probe (September-October 1999). James Douglass: "Lyndon Johnson's CIA and FBI briefings left him with two unpalatable interpretations of Mexico City. According to the CIA, Oswald was part of a Cuban-Soviet assassination plot that was revealed by the audio-visual materials garnered by its surveillance techniques. According to Hoover, Oswald had been impersonated in Mexico City, as shown by a more critical examination of the same CIA materials . Hoover left it to Johnson to draw his own conclusions as to who was responsible for that impersonation. The CIA's case scapegoated Cuba and the U.S.S.R. through Oswald for the president's assassination and steered the United States toward an invasion of Cuba and a nuclear attack on the U.S.S.R. However, LBJ did not want to begin and end his presidency with a global war. One must give the CIA (and the assassination sponsors that were even further in the shadows) their due for having devised and executed a brilliant setup. They had played out a scenario to Kennedy's death in Dallas that pressured other government authorities to choose among three major options: a war of vengeance against Cuba and the Soviet Union based on the CIA's false Mexico City documentation of a Communist assassination plot; a domestic political war based on the same documents seen truly, but a war the CIA would fight with every covert weapon at its command; or a complete coverup of any conspiracy evidence and a silent coup d'etat that would reverse Kennedy's efforts to end the Cold War. Lyndon Johnson, for his part, took little time to choose the only option he felt would leave him with a country to govern. He chose to cover up everything and surrender to Cold War prerogatives. However, he was not about to attack Cuba and the U.S.S.R. His quick personal acceptance of what had to be would only emerge more gradually in public. Rather than end it all quickly and heroically against Castro and Khrushchev, he would ride gently, through the 1964 election, into the full fury of Vietnam. Once the CIA realized its Mexico City scenario was being questioned and could implicate not the Communists but the CIA itself in the assassination, the Mexico City Station back-pedaled to cover up the false evidence. It began to say that its audiotapes of the "Oswald" phone calls to the Soviet Embassy had been routinely destroyed, and therefore no voice comparisons were possible to determine if the speaker really was Oswald. (This bogus CIA claim was being made at the same time that Hoover and the FBI were listening to their own copies of the tapes, then making voice comparisons, and reporting their provocative conclusions to President Lyndon Johnson.) The CIA also claimed in retrospect that its surveillance cameras had failed to photograph Oswald on any of his five trips to the Cuban and Soviet Embassies. HSCA investigators were blocked by the CIA from access to its surveillance photos (Lopez Report, pp. 90-91). Yet even CIA witnesses were skeptical of the agency's claim: "CIA officers who were in Mexico in 1963 and their Headquarters counterparts generally agreed that it would have been unlikely for the photosurveillance operations to have missed ten opportunities to have photographed Oswald" (ibid. , p. 91). Also arguing against the CIA's claim was its surveillance cameras' success in taking pictures at the Soviet Embassy in October 1963 of the mystery man who was not Oswald, yet who corresponded to the October 8 CIA cable's wrong description of Oswald as " apparent age 35, athletic build, circa 6 feet, receding hairline, balding top. " Freedom of Information lawsuits have forced the CIA to surrender twelve photographs of this man. These photos provide further evidence of an Oswald impostor. The CIA has never identified the man. Bernard Fensterwald, Jr. , Coincidence or Conspiracy? (New York: Zebra Books, 1977), p. 400.
  
• 1/15/1964 Ted Sorensen resigned from the administration.
  
• 1/15/1964 Background feature on Mark Lane. AP, Raleigh H. Allbrook - New York - Mark Lane, the attorney retained to try to clear the name of accused presidential assassin Lee Oswald, said tonight he will form a committee, including newsmen, to dig into the Oswald case. Lane said he could not reveal the names of the newspapermen yet, but hoped "all four would be free to start their investigation into the case within the next 10 days." Lane said two of the newsmen are employed in the Dallas area and the other two are working in other parts of the country as a public relations counsel and a management consultant. [Mark] Lane ... claimed that many witnesses are willing to testify that the sound of firing at the time of the assassination came not from the rear of the Presidential car, but from an overpass directly in front. AP, Raleigh R. Allsbrook
  
• 1/15/1964 Cartha DeLoach memo to Hoover; Jenkins and LBJ were expressing concern about Paul Corbin, a Kennedy man, working at the DNC headquarters. "The President was not yet quite ready to take on Bobby, however, Corbin would definitely be eased out in the near future when the time was ripe..."
  
• 1/15/1964 At a gathering of senior citizens, LBJ stated, "We are going to take all of the money that we think is unnecessarily being spent, and take it from the 'haves,' and give it to the 'have nots' that need it so much." This statement would often be quoted by conservatives as proof of his socialist leanings.
  
• 1/15/1964 Memo from Howard Willens to Rankin: "Subject: Conversation with Mr. Malley. I called Mr. Malley this morning to ascertain whether or not the copies of the two supplemental reports received yesterday had been distributed by the FBI to members of the Commission. The answer was negative and I have taken steps to distribute the reports. Subsequently Mr. Malley called me to discuss his conversation with you yesterday regarding the FBI report dated December 17, 1963 regarding the allegation by Mr. White regarding a meeting with Oswald in San Francisco on or about September 1, 1963. Mr. Malley asked me whether you intended to write a letter to the Bureau asking that all such reports be submitted to this Commission. He went on to say that the report was not really as important as it might appear upon an initial showing. He said that the only reason this report was distributed to the Department was that it mentioned the Nazi Party. He suggested that prior to the writing of any such letter to the Bureau he would like to sit down with you and discuss the matter in greater detail. For example, he stated that the Bureau's Dallas office alone has compiled a report of 300 pages listing threatening remarks, complaints, etc., which the Bureau considers insignificant. He suggests that if any general request is made there will be no convenient stopping point and all these matters will be referred to the Commission. He suggests that this course of action would only serve to divert the Bureau's investigative manpower and the staff of the Commission. He also suggested that many of the requests that we have been making of the Bureau could be handled informally by telephone from members of the staff to him rather than by correspondence. He suggests that the correspondence route only serves to complicate the matter. I suggest that you, Mr. Shaffer and I discuss this matter and then have a further discussion with Mr. Malley." (6WEISBERG 474) Weisberg notes that the request to cut back on correspondence would keep much of their discussions off the written record.
  
• 1/16/1964 LBJ met with John McCone, McNamara, Rusk and Kermit Gordon.
  
• 1/16/1964 4:15pm (EST) LBJ called Sen. Russell. (Act of Treason 503)
  
• 1/17/1964 Senate Rules Committee published testimony in its Bobby Baker investigation from Don B. Reynolds, an insurance salesman from Silver Spring, Maryland, who said he had hired Baker in the late '50s because of his political contacts. Baker suggested to Reynolds in 1957 that he sell LBJ a life insurance policy; he did this and received a handsome commission. This was followed by a suggestion from Walter Jenkins that Reynolds buy advertising time on Johnson's TV station in Austin, KTBC. Reynolds did so. 1959 Reynolds, at Baker's suggestion, sent an expensive stereo set to the Johnsons' home in Washington. 1961 LBJ bought another life insurance policy from Reynolds.
  
• 1/17/1964 Jack Ruby's attorneys charged that "a hostile press of much power and influence in Dallas" wanted him to die in the electric chair, and requested that the trial be moved.
  
• 1/17/1964 Panama breaks relations with the US.
  
• 1/17/1964 J. Lee Rankin requests access to photographic evidence of the assassination from J. Edgar Hoover, who complies.
  
• 1/18/1964 LBJ and Sen. Russell meet for a private lunch. (Act of Treason 504)
  
• 1/18/1964 Marina Oswald is questioned by a SS agent for two hours about Richard Case Nagell.
  
• 1/18/1964 Izvestia printed a recent Khrushchev speech in Kalinin delivered before Castro, he thundered against the "imperialists," urged them to clear out of Panama "before they were kicked out," and swore that the USSR would defend Cuba. "We are building communism in our country; but that does not mean that we are building it only within the framework of the Soviet borders…we are pointing the road to the rest of humanity…Some comrades abroad claim that Khrushchev is making a mess of things, and is afraid of war. Let me say once again that I should like to see the kind of bloody fool who is genuinely not afraid of war." He recalled that his son, an airman, was killed in WWII. The audience of textile workers cheered loudest at his talk of fools who were not afraid of war. (Russia at War pxii)
  
• 1/18/1964 De Gaulle assassination attempt.
  
• 1/19/1964 Anthony Lewis, NYT's Supreme Court correspondent, reported that when Earl Warren was first approached to serve on the commission, he flatly turned it down. He only changed his mind after a personal appeal by LBJ.
  
• 1/19/1964 LBJ calls Sen. Russell. (Act of Treason 504)
  
• 1/20/1964 DeLoach memo to Hoover: "Walter Jenkins...would appreciate very much the FBI interviewing [A.G.] Young [head of Mid-Atlantic Steel] to ascertain what knowledge he has of the Bobby Baker case...Bureau files reflect no connection of Mr. Young with the Bobby Baker case..."
  
• 1/20/1964 NY Times reported that Ruby's attorneys would base their defense "on a psychiatrist's report that he suffers from organic brain damage...a form of epilepsy."
  
• 1/20/1964 Second bail hearing for Ruby; Judge Brown orders that neurological tests be conducted on him. Melvin Belli withdraws motion for bail.
  
• 1/20/1964 Yuri Nosenko, the KGB agent who has contacted the CIA initially in June of 1963, defects to the US after landing in Geneva as part of a Soviet disarmament delegation. He claims to have been the KGB official who had personally handled the case of Lee Harvey Oswald during his stay in Russia. He claims that the KGB found Oswald not very bright and even mentally unstable and that the KGB had never debriefed Oswald about his military background nor ever considered recruiting him as an agent. Nosenko undergoes hostile interrogation at the hands of the CIA and is kept in solitary confinement for 1,277 days. He is given two lie detector tests and fails them both, but sticks, in the end, to his story. He is believed by the CIA's Richard Helms and J. Edgar Hoover. It is still believed, in some counterintelligence circles, that Nosenko's defection was contrived by the KGB for two purposes: to allay suspicions that the Soviets had anything to do with the JFK assassination and to cover for Soviet "moles", or agents deep within U.S. intelligence. Eventually released by the CIA and given a new identity, he is relocated to North Carolina. As part of Nosenko's interrogation, a list of forty-four questions concerning Lee Harvey Oswald are drawn up to be presented to Nosenko. William Sullivan informs J. Edgar Hoover that the CIA plans to ask Nosenko about Oswald. Hoover blows his top and protests directly to the CIA director. He states that the FBI is the agency charged with investigating the Kennedy assassination. Nosenko is never presented the questions on Lee Harvey Oswald.
  
• 1/20/1964 Warren Commission lawyer Melvin Eisenberg, quoting Chief Justice Earl Warren speaking about his meeting with LBJ prior to chairing the W.C., says: "The President stated that rumors of the most exaggerated kind were circulating in this country and overseas. Some rumors went as far as attributing the assassination to a faction within the government wishing the Presidency assumed by President Johnson. Others, if not quenched, could conceivably lead the country into a war which would cost forty million lives. No one could refuse to do something which might prevent such a possibility. The President (LBJ) convinced him (Earl Warren) that this was an occasion on which actual conditions had to override general principles."
  
• 1/20/1964 THE STATE OF TEXAS vs. JACK RUBENSTEIN -- Second bail hearing. Judge Brown orders that neurological tests be conducted on Jack Ruby. Melvin Belli withdraws motion for bail.
  
• 1/20/1964 The government's case against Jimmy Hoffa for jury tampering is tried beginning today before federal judge Frank W. Wilson in Chattanooga.
  
• 1/21/1964 Canadian PM Pearson gave a dinner for the Johnsons at the Canadian Embassy in Washington.
  
• 1/21/1964 In a secret executive session today, the Warren Commission has to deal with the problem of Marina Oswald giving evidence that LHO was a Soviet agent. Senator Richard Russell says: "That will blow the lid if she testifies to that." Isaac Don Levine is helping Marina Oswald write a story for Life Magazine (which never gets published.) Allen Dulles decides to see Levine. Dulles says simply: "I can get him in and have a friendly talk. I have known him." WC executive session. Dulles discussed how important it was to determine Oswald's motive: "Just on the question of motive I found a dozen or more statements of the various people as to why they thought he did it....Or what his character was, what his aim, and so forth..."; Warren agreed that Rankin would handle that. Dulles suggest that the Commission study "previous cases of assassination attempts...particularly in the United States...There is a [lone-nut] pattern that runs through that, you know. It is rather interesting, I have been studying that a good bit myself..." McCloy: Let me ask you about this raw material business that is here. What does it consist of? Does it consist of the raw material of the autopsy? They talk about the colored photographs of the President's body - do we have those? Rankin: Yes, it is part of it, a small part of it. McCloy: Are they here? Rankin: Yes. But we don't have the minutes of the autopsy, and we asked for that... This session began with discussion of staff hiring and the presentation by Rankin of an outline for six areas of investigation, with Bertrand Russell said was missing an important one: "who killed President Kennedy?" A discussion of what turned out to be an overly optimistic timeframe also noted the huge mass of reports pouring in, with Dulles noting that the staff would need to do the bulk of the work because he doubted that the Commissioners "could ever read all that stuff."
  
• 1/21/1964 Tippit murder witness Warren Reynolds is first interviewed by authorities (the FBI).
  
• 1/22/1964 Secret WC meeting held at 5:30pm-7pm. This tense discussion centered around whether Oswald had been an FBI operative (a rumor brought to their attention by Texas authorities.) The transcript was not prepared until 1975 when notes of the session were discovered in the National Archives; it had been thought that all copies had been destroyed. The Pentagon transcriber was not familiar with the WC and made several errors (Rankin is referred to as Rawkin). Several words are still redacted. This session was called specifically to address the allegation that Oswald was a paid "FBI Undercover Agent," number 179, paid $200 per month from September 1962 until the assassination. Waggoner Carr, the Texas Attorney General, had called Rankin that morning with allegations which had come from a member of the press (Lonnie Hudkins, though not named in the transcript). Rankin noted that "I am confident that the FBI would never admit it, and I presume their records will never show it...," and noted that Oswald's use of postal boxes "would be an ideal way to get money to anyone that you wanted as an undercover agent." Rankin also noted that if the allegation were true "then you would have people think that there was a conspiracy to accomplish this assassination that nothing the Commission did or anybody could dissipate." Rankin expressed puzzlement that the normally conservative FBI was so insistent the Oswald was the sole assassin, saying "They would like to have us fold up and quit." After more such discussion, Dulles said the transcript of the meeting itself "ought to be destroyed." This was indeed done, but an original court reporter's tape was later recovered and the transcript re-made from it after a long legal battle brought by Harold Weisberg.
  
• 1/22/1964 The CIA leaks to Commission members that Lee Harvey Oswald had contact with a KGB officer, Valery Kostikov, while in the Soviet embassy. The Agency says Kostikov's responsibilities include "assassination and sabotage." (Reports of this meeting are not made public until 1975.)
  
• 1/22/1964 Richard Helms writes RFK a warm note, attaching a tribute to JFK that has been written by an editor of the London Sunday Telegraph. (Brothers)
  
• 1/22/1964 Maxwell Taylor wrote Robert McNamara: the JCS warned that if South Vietnam fell, the rest of the region would fall too; there would also be a collapse of US prestige all over the world. The JCS warned that suppressing the VC could take many years. They recommended "whatever level of activity" necessary for the US to prevail, and decried "self-imposed restrictions." They felt confident that military escalation would not bring in China or Russia. In summary, the JCS urged that the US take over the war effort, mine North Vietnamese harbors, bomb the North, "commit additional US forces, as necessary, in support of the combat action within South Vietnam....[and] in direct actions against North Vietnam."
  
• 1/23/1964 Twenty-fourth amendment ratified, prohibiting poll taxes in federal elections.
  
• 1/23/1964 LBJ replied to Don B. Reynolds' charges in a press conference; he described the stereo set as a gift from "the Baker family." He said nothing about Reynolds' purchase of advertising time on his station. LBJ was deeply concerned that RFK would try to use the Baker scandal against him in some way. (Exercise of Power 414)
  
• 1/23/1964 The CIA designates a subordinate to Chief of Counterintelligence James Angleton as the "point of record" for all matters relating to the JFK assassination and the WC. (Fonzi chronology)
  
• 1/23/1964 Report of Bob Carroll, Criminal Intelligence Section, 23 Jan 1964. Hubert Morrow of Albright Parking System on Commerce Street remembered Oswald looking for a job six or seven days prior to the assassination, inquiring about the height of the parking lot and whether it afforded a "good view of Dallas."
  
• 1/23/1964 Carr and Wade flew to Washington and met with Warren and Rankin.
  
• 1/23/1964 FBI Washington learned from a Secret Service memo dated today that Hosty had let slip to Forrest Sorrels and a few other SS agents in Fritz's office that Oswald had "contacted two known subversive agents about fifteen days before the shooting of President Kennedy." (McKnight)
  
• 1/23/1964 Letter from Belin to Rankin pertaining to the "interrogation of Oswald by Dallas Police Department." In 1976 the National Archives announced that this letter was missing from its records.
  
• 1/23/1964 Warren Reynolds is shot. On November 22, 1963, he had been situated at a car lot a block west of the place where Dallas police officer J.D. Tippit was shot. Reynolds observed Tippit's assailant run by. (Two days earlier [Jan. 21, 1964] Reynolds had had an initial interview with the FBI.) At 9:15 PM, Reynolds walks down to the basement of the auto dealership at which he is employed. He flips on the light switch, but the basement remains dark; the bulb has been removed. Thinking the bulb is burned out, he proceeds downstairs to the basement fuse box and, as he reaches for the fuse box, is shot in the head with a .22 caliber weapon. He survives but is finally frightened into identifying Oswald as Tippit's killer. Since the Dallas police determine that Reynolds was not robbed of anything, the motive of his assailant becomes most relevant. Darrell Wayne Garner is arrested by the Dallas police after stating publicly while drunk that "Warren Reynolds had received what he deserved." Garner, the "prime suspect" according to the FBI, later admits that he was on the scene the evening Reynolds was shot. He also admits that he called his sister-in-law and "advised her he had shot Warren Reynolds." Garner is held on a charge of assault to murder, but an alibi witness, Nancy Jane Mooney, also known as Betty MacDonald comes forward on February 5, 1964. Miss Mooney is a former striptease artist who one once employed at Jack Ruby's Carousel Club.
  
• 1/23/1964 Letter from Rankin to Mark Lane: "On behalf of the Commission I wish to acknowledge receipt of your recent telegram informing the Commission that you have been retained by Mrs. Marguerite C. Oswald to represent her deceased son....The Commission does not believe that it would be useful or desirable to permit an attorney representing Lee Harvey Oswald to have access to the investigative materials within the possession of the Commission or to participate in any hearings to be conducted by the Commission. I can assure you that every effort will be made to ascertain the facts regarding Lee Harvey Oswald's implication in the assassination of President Kennedy as accurately and fairly as possible." (Citizen's Dissent 257)
  
• 1/23/1964 Letter from Rankin to Howard Chapnick: "The Commission is advised that your photographer, Mr. Shel Hershorn, who was in Dallas on November 22 1963, took some pictures in the environs of the Parkland Hospital the day the President was assassinated. It would be helpful to the work of this Commission if you would supply it with copies of the photographs taken at your earliest convenience." (Photographic Whitewash 286)
  
• 1/24/1964 Secret Service submitted 30 investigative reports to the WC (CD 320); one contained an interview with Alonzo Hudkins, who related that his source for the Oswald information was Dallas deputy sheriff Allan Sweatt: "Oswald was being paid two hundred dollars per month by the FBI in connection with their subversive investigation [and] that Oswald had informant number S-172." This SS interview was left out of the National Archives for a time. (Inquest)
  
• 1/24/1964 Darrell Wayne "Dago" Garner arrested in Dallas as a suspect in the Warren Reynolds shooting. He was questioned and released.
  
• 1/24/1964 The Nation published Harold Feldman's "Oswald and the FBI." He theorized that Oswald was an FBI informant.
  
• 1/24/1964 Attorney general for the state of Texas, Waggoner Carr and other Texas officials who claim they have learned that Oswald had been FBI undercover agent #179 are summoned to Washington to give their testimony in a top-secret session. On the basis of denials by J. Edgar Hoover and other FBI officials, the Warren Commission will conclude that Oswald had not been in the FBI's employ.
  
• 1/25/1964 Echo 2, US communications satellite is launched to relay radio signals worldwide.
  
• 1/25/1964 LBJ called Sen. Russell. (Act of Treason 512)
  
• 1/25/1964 FBI Memo: "…another bitter attack on the Bureau." (Regarding Harold Feldman's article in The Nation, "Oswald and the FBI")
  
• 1/25/1964 Ruby wrote in his personal notes: "Tom Howard evidently feels that he has a chance to gain his recognition back by taking a strong lead in my case which I feel he is not worthy of. I've lost all my confidence in him - caught him in a few lies." (Ruby-Oswald Affair 84) Newsweek, in its March 27, 1967 edition, revealed a note that Ruby had passed to his attorney Joe Tonahill during his murder trial in 1964. As remembered by Tonahill, the note read: "Joe, you should know this. Tom Howard told me to say that I shot Oswald so that Caroline and Mrs. Kennedy wouldn't have to come to Dallas to testify, OK?" From Melvin Belli's book Dallas Justice, p. 39: With a weary gesture, Ruby slapped his hands down on the metal table between us and shook his head impatiently. "What are we doing, Mel, kidding ourselves?" he asked. I was tired too. "What do you mean, Jack?" I snapped. "We know what happened," he said. "We know I did it for Jackie and the kids. I just went and shot him. They've got us anyway. Maybe I ought to forget this silly story that I'm telling, and get on the stand and tell the truth." He was absolutely sincere. At that point, with his mental examination behind him and the outline of our defense clearly established, he was suddenly ready to admit that he had shot Lee Harvey Oswald deliberately and that our contention that the shooting had occurred during a blackout in which he was incompetent to know what he was doing was a fraud.
  
• 1/26/1964 LBJ called Sen. Russell. (Act of Treason 512)
  
• 1/26/1964 NY Times reported that the bullet that struck JFK in the back-shoulder area had "lodged in his shoulder." They also reported the FBI's conclusions that Oswald "had no known motive....The only explanation now offered is that Oswald was insane."
  
• 1/26/1964 Marina Oswald is interviewed by Dallas KLRD-TV television station. Journalist Eddie Barker asks her if her husband, Lee Oswald, shot President John Kennedy. Marina, with a good command of English, answers : "I don't want to believe it, but I must look at the facts, and the facts tell me that Lee shot Kennedy".
  
• 1/27/1964 McNamara told the House Armed Services Committee, "The survival of an independent government in South Vietnam is so important to the security of all Southeast Asia and to the free world that I can conceive of no alternative other than to take all necessary measures within our capability to prevent a Communist victory."
  
• 1/27/1964 NYT quoted South Vietnamese PM Nguyen Ngoc Tho as complaining that pressures to accept a negotiated settlement are "sabotaging us, killing us, drowning us in difficulties."
  
• 1/27/1964 William Sullivan memo to Belmont about "authority given to the Milwaukee Office for a microphone surveillance (misur) to cover the activities" of MLK. The memo noted that with police occuping the room next to King's, the opportunity for womanizing would be "greatly minimized." Hoover wrote on the memo, "I don't share the conjecture. King is a 'tom cat' with obsessive degenerate sexual urges."
  
• 1/27/1964 Also, around the end of this month, RFK returns from a trip to the Far East. Since he has been sent there by LBJ, he enters the Oval Office to report. After a brief discussion on the trip, LBJ abruptly tells him, "I want you to get rid of that Paul Corbin (one of Kennedy's political staff whose loyalties Johnson distrusts). "I don't think I should," RFK replies, "he was appointed by President Kennedy, who thought he was good." "Do it," LBJ snaps. "President Kennedy isn't president anymore. I am." RFK bristles: "I know you're president, and don't you ever talk to me like that again."
  
• 1/27/1964 Letter from Hoover to Rankin. He reiterated that Oswald was never an informant or agent for the FBI. (Reproduced in Whitewash IV 149)
  
• 1/27/1964 Criminal Intelligence Section report, 27 Jan 1964. This followup interview of Morrow noted that Albright employee Viola Sapp was also aware of the Oswald visit.
  
• 1/27/1964 The Zapruder film was first viewed by WC staffers, FBI and SS agents. (H 5 141) Redlich, Eisenberg, Specter, Lyndal Shaneyfelt, SS inspector Thomas Kelley and Leo Gauthier made a frame-by-frame analysis. It had been assumed that the shots were evenly spaced, but the film showed that JFK and Connally were wounded within a short period of time.
  
• 1/27/1964 El Paso Times reported that Richard Case Nagell had been questioned by the FBI and SS in connection with Oswald; also, asst. US District Attorney Fred Morton made a motion to put Nagell in a federal institution in Springfield, Missouri for psychiatric examination.
  
• 1/27/1964 Warren Commission Top Secret Executive Session; all of the Commissioners but Ford were present. This was a follow-up to the 1/22 meeting, and focused on what steps could be taken to deal with the allegations that Oswald worked for US intelligence. The meeting reflected the members' concerns over how to approach Hoover about the matter, and also demonstrated that the members had serious problems with many elements of the case against Oswald. Hoover had sent a letter to the WC saying, "Lee Harvey Oswald was never used by this Bureau in an informant capacity. He was never paid any money for furnishing information and he most certainly never was an informant of the Federal Bureau of Investigation. In the event you have any further questions...we would appreciate being contacted directly." (H 11 41) Hoover had obviously heard about the WC's previous meeting. Ford would later write about the concern of the WC members that this rumor could damage the image of the government and the intelligence communities. (Portrait of the Assassin) Rankin wanted to let the FBI investigate itself, but Sens. Cooper and Russell thought the WC should investigate the matter. (Ibid.) Harold Weisberg obtained the transcript of the session through the FOIA in 1974. Discussion of the allegation that Oswald was an FBI informant continued. According to Rankin, the Justice Department did not want to confront FBI Director Hoover with the allegation, so he suggested that perhaps "I should go over and see Edgar Hoover myself, and if that produced unsatisfactory results, that ""the Commission would have to feel free to make such other investigations and take testimony if it found it necessary." He added: "We do have a dirty rumor that is very bad for the Commission...and it must be wiped out so insofar as it is possible to do so by this Commission." Warren disliked the idea of going to the FBI "until we have at least looked into it." Dulles noted that the Bureau had already categorically denied the allegation in the press. Boggs: "Of course, we get ourselves into a real box. You have got to do everything on earth to establish the facts one way or the other." Commissioners discussed putting FBI agents under oath and questioning them, since according to Dulles "The record might not be on paper." Boggs: "The man who recruited him would know, wouldn't he?" Dulles: "Yes, but he wouldn't tell." After much discussion, in which the fear of J. Edgar Hoover is readily apparent, the consensus was that the allegation had to be investigated independently by the Commission. It never did. A fascinating section of the Jan 27 session includes a discussion of the medical evidence. Rankin opened by discussing the confusion around the bullet wounds, and noting that "we have an explanation there in the autopsy that probably a fragment came out the front of the neck," something definitely not present in the autopsy report in evidence. Rankin said "we have the picture where the bullet entered in the back, that the bullet entered below the shoulder blade to the right of the backbone," showing two things: the Commission did have possession of the autopsy photos, and the Commission knew that CE 386, entered into evidence later on March 16, was a false representation of the location of this wound. After a discussion of the confusion over where the pristine bullet was found at Parkland Hospital, Russell commented: "This isn't going to be something that would run you stark mad," one of the more prescient comments made in all these sessions.
  
• 1/27/1964 W. Slawson wrote a memo suggesting that: "In figuring the timing of the rifle shots, we should take into account the distance travelled by the Presidential car between the first and third shots. This tends to shorten the time slightly during which Oswald would have had to pull the trigger three times on his rifle."
  
• 1/28 or 29/1964 Stanley Kubrick's satirical anti-nuclear, anti-Cold War film, Dr. Strangelove: Or How I Stopped Worrying and Learned to Love the Bomb, premiered. The NYT fears that it shows "contempt for our whole military establishment" and the Washington Post calls it "anti-American." It concerns a mad general who is convinced that the Communists are polluting his 'precious bodily fluids' and decides to launch a nuclear strike. The President tries to recall the bombers, while battling with his hawkish advisers. Directed by Stanley Kubrick it starred Peter Sellers (who plays the President, an ex-Nazi scientist, and a British officer), George C. Scott, and Sterling Hayden. The film's London release date (12-12-63) was pushed backed until 1964 due to the assassination. The screening for the critics was to be shown on 11/22/63, but was cancelled when word of the President's death was announced. Also, the line "A fella could have a pretty good weekend in Vegas" was originally "A fella could have a pretty good weekend in Dallas," but was changed after the assassination. Columbia executives felt that the public would find Peter Seller's comical portrayal of the U.S. President in poor taste, but Kubrick was totally against delaying the movie's release. Reportedly, when Ronald Reagan became president he asked to see the War Room in the White House. When his Chief of Staff said that the War Room did not exist, Reagan assured him that he'd seen it in that movie, Dr. Strangelove.
  
• 1/28/1964 Memo from Belin to Rankin stating that Agent Shaneyfelt believed that a clearer print of the Zapruder film (such as the original) would be more precise in determining speed and time-frame of the shooting, and could be studied without damaging the film. (Photographic Whitewash) Ly