Deep Politics Timeline

[Tracy Riddle]

• 3/1964 Dorothy Kilgallen gets an exclusive private interview with Jack Ruby during a break in his trial. That the meeting ever took place has been disputed by some, because she never published a word of it before her death, though her biographer Lee Israel is certain the meeting took place. (Praise from a Future Generation, Kelin)
  
• 3-4/1964 Sometime during this period, Felipe Vidal Santiago is executed in Cuba. Before his execution, he reportedly tells his interrogators that in early November 1963 Colonel William Bishop picked him up in a car in Miami and drove him to Dallas where he gave him a room in a second-class hotel. While in Dallas, he said he attended a meeting with a few wealthy people in the Dallas Petroleum Club. One of the men present at this meeting, according to Bishop, was General Edwin Walker. The assassination of John Kennedy was a topic of conversation during this meeting. Santiago said he returned to Miami four days later.
  
• 3/1964 Bill Chesher dies of heart attack. Little is known about Chesher other than that he allegedly had information linking Lee Harvey Oswald with his murderer, Jack Ruby. Chesher never shared this information with anyone.
  
• 3/1964 "The Oswald Affair" by Leo Sauvage published in Commentary magazine.
  
• 3/1964 Researcher Thomas Buchanan interviewed Nicholas Katzenbach 3/1964, who stood by the description of JFK's wounds at that time (that the back wound was a separate shot and the throat wound was related to the head shot): "he said that it was based on an exhaustive study of the President's autopsy, and that there could be no doubt about it...He felt certain any person who had studied this autopsy would have reached the same conclusions. I asked him if I could see a copy of it, but he said that he could not release it...when the President's Commission issued its report, the explanation of the wounds had changed completely..." (Who Killed Kennedy p91-92)
  
• 3/1964 Assassination and Its Aftermath Congressman Martin Dies American Opinion, Volume VII, Number 3, March 1964, pp. 1-10.
  
• 3/1964 Marxmanship in Dallas [Part II] Revilo P. Oliver, American Opinion, Volume VII, No. 3, March 1964, pp. 65-78.
  
• 3/1964 Karl Meyer, writing in the New Statesman: "In a sense, the US seems to be drifting in a Gaullist direction of heightened nationalism. But, under Johnson it would be a Gaullism without grandeur...The White House has gone from Camelot to Johnson City...In turning off the lights at the White House, Mr. Johnson has signaled the end of a brief era in more ways than one."
  
• 3/1964 This issue of Gerald L.K. Smith's Christian Nationalist Crusade magazine blamed Zionist Jews for the assassination.
  
• Early 1964 William H. Carr publishes his revised edition of 1962's JFK: A Complete Biography. It ends with a brief chapter on the assassination added to the paperback edition that predates the Warren Commission report. It does not deal with conspiracy but does describe a bullet that "had smashed through the skin just above his necktie, tearing its way down through his chest."
  
• 3/1964 This issue of Saga featured an article by ex-FBI agent William W. Turner criticizing the FBI for not seeing Oswald as a threat to the president: "Lee Harvey Oswald should have been under the strictest surveillance if not locked up." Turner believes that Oswald was the lone gunman but he was not solely responsible. Much of the responsibility, according to Turner, goes to the FBI. They were well aware of Oswald, his actions and background yet did nothing to prevent him from shooting Kennedy.
  
• 3/1/1964 The press openly asserts that J. Edgar Hoover has given FBI reports to LBJ for use against political foes, including those testifying against him in the Bobby Baker case. In only a few days from now, LBJ is publicly stating that he intends to waive Hoover's retirement.
  
• 3/1, 4/13, 4/30 and 5/14/1964 RFK, in a series recorded interviews with John Bartlow Martin, recalled that JFK had been strongly assured by the CIA and military that the Bay of Pigs plan would succeed: "If he hadn't gone ahead with it, everybody would have said it showed he had no courage because...it was Eisenhower's plan, Eisenhower's people all said it would succeed...We found out later that, despite the President's orders that no American forces would be used, the first two people who landed on the Bay of Pigs were Americans - CIA sent them in....It was clearly understood in all the instructions that there weren't going to be any military forces of the United States." They had been repeatedly assured that even if the invasion went badly, the Cubans could disappear into the mountains and become guerillas. "It turned out that, when they talked about this guerilla territory, it was guerilla territory back in 1890. Now it was a swamp...After Cuba [JFK] continuously prodded and probed to bring out all the facts...he made an effort to find out himself...I then became involved on every major and all the international questions...the President spoke to me about becoming head of the CIA. I said I didn't want to...I don't know who suggested John McCone originally. Maybe Scoop Jackson did...The President was never very enthusiastic about the [nuclear] testing...Most of the testing was aimed at developing smaller bombs with bigger punch. He wasn't convinced that was so necessary...There was a strong feeling by the scientific community that we should test...He reached the conclusion that probably it was worthwhile [staying in Vietnam] for psychological, [world] political reasons more than anything else." He was asked if JFK was "concerned about the rightist upsurge" in the country; RFK replied, "Not really, no....He thought it was silly, that [Gen.] Walker was crazy...But it was more humorous than anything else." He recalled that JFK's policy in Latin America was to do more than just side with anti-Communist dictatorships. He denied that the administration was behind the Trujillo assassination, then added, "To my knowledge, this isn't true. I got into that planning, and I expect I probably would have known...Lyndon Johnson said to Pierre Salinger that he wasn't sure but that the assassination of President Kennedy didn't take place in retribution for his participation in the assassinations of Trujillo and President Diem...divine retribution...There was never any intention of dropping [LBJ from the ticket]. There was never even any discussion about dropping him...After the missiles [crisis], Dean Rusk said that Castro would collapse or be replaced within two months." RFK confirmed that Kennedy was trying to improve relations with Castro in 1963, but only if Castro cut off military ties with the Soviets and stopped trying to export revolution. He said that there were no assassination attempts on Castro, not even any planning for it. He commented that when JFK visited Venezuela "we had a real check on whether all the Communists and fellow travelers were picked up and the guards were adequate...I often think that's the kind of arrangement when you were going into a crazy city like Dallas, Texas. It should have been done." He emphasized that JFK thought Vietnam was very important to the security of the whole region, had no intention of completely pulling out, but also was not going to go in with combat troops: "because everybody, including General MacArthur, felt that land conflict between our troops - white troops and Asian - would only end in disaster. So we went in as advisers to try to get the Vietnamese to fight, themselves, because we couldn't win the war for them." He was asked, "And if the Vietnamese were about to lose it, would he propose to go in on land if he had to?" RFK replied, "We'd face that when we came to it...we were winning the war in 1962 and 1963. Up until May or so of 1963, the situation was getting progressively better." He recalled that on the question of supporting a coup in Saigon, "the government split in two," with JFK, Taylor, McNamara and McCone opposed to it. RFK didn't want to discuss the assassination of his brother: "No, I don't think I need to go into that...There were four or five matters that arose during the period of November 22 to November 27 or so which made me bitter - unhappy at least - with Lyndon Johnson. Events involving the treatment of Jackie on the plane trip back...And then he came to the White House on Saturday and started moving all my brother's things out Saturday morning at nine o'clock. I went over and asked him to wait, at least until Sunday or Monday." Later, LBJ accused him of sending Paul Corbin to New Hampshire to plot against him. "Since January [1964], I haven't had any dealings with Johnson....When the President was going down to Texas, trying to get the political situation settled in Texas, Lyndon Johnson would be no help...And he said to Jackie...that Lyndon Johnson was incapable of telling the truth...he doesn't think anything of a lot of people. And he yells at his staff. He treats them just terribly. Very mean. He's a very mean, mean figure...The one thing Lyndon Johnson doesn't want is me as Vice President...Johnson has explained quite clearly that it's not the Democratic party anymore; it's an all-American party. The businessmen like it. All the people who were opposed to the President like it. I don't like it much....The fact is that he's able to eat people up, even people who are considered rather strong figures. I mean, as I say, Mac Bundy or Bob McNamara: There's nothing left of them...He's mean, bitter, vicious - an animal in many ways...unless you want to kiss his behind all the time." (RFK In His Own Words)
  
• Early March 1964: Arlen Specter met informally with Drs. Humes and Boswell to discuss the problem of JFK's wounds; Humes suggested that it was medically possible that JFK and Connally were both hit by the same bullet and that Connally had had a delayed reaction. (Inquest 93)
  
• 3/2/1964 Joint Chiefs' memo to McNamara; they advocated US air attacks on the Ho Chi Minh trail and military/industrial targets in the North.
  
• 3/3/1964 Washington Post reported on the Bobby Baker hearings, and allegations that "Baker set up appointments for Levison for obtaining gambling concession in…the Dominican Republic…"
  
• 3/3/1964 Date of fake McCone/Rowley CIA/SS memo
  
• 3/4/1964 Mark Lane testified before the WC (Warren, Cooper, Ford).
  
• 3/4/1964 Hoover sends a gushing thank-you letter to LBJ for "the photographs which you sent me this morning."
  
• 3/4/1964 Washington Post reports that "A cabinet member in the government of former Dominican president Juan Bosch testified that he was a close personal friend of Baker…" and may have been involved in arranging gambling concessions.
  
• 3/4/1964 Ruby's trial began. March 4 - 14, 1964 THE STATE OF TEXAS vs. JACK RUBENSTEIN -- Verdict in the trial of Jack Ruby. The decision of the jury after less than an hour of deliberation: 1.) Jack Ruby is sane. 2.) Jack Ruby is guilty of murder with malice. 3.) Jack Ruby should die for his crime. Judge Brown confirms the death sentence. Belli fired.
  
• 3/4/1964 Joachim Joesten, the German writer, wrote a book on the Kennedy assassination in early 1964. The Commission's general counsel, under date of March 4, wrote to him and asked for copies in German and English. His wife was visited by two FBI agents in New York. And the Assistant Legal Attache of the United States Embassy in Bonn located the surprised Joesten in Hamburg and flew there to interview him, declining to discuss his business by phone for reasons of national security. All wanted the same thing, Joesten's information. Joesten said he supplied it. Mr. Rankin's promise to Joesten was only too well kept. He had said, "You may rest assured that the material you furnish us will not be circulated beyond the files of the Commission." On page 32 of the book, Joesten said, "With a ground floor window front running the full length of his room and opening out on the neighbor's driveway, Oswald was indeed living, as his landlady herself said in the course of a 45-minute talk I had with her, in 'the most public room' of the house. A goldfish has more privacy in his glass bowl than Oswald had behind this unbroken window front, especially at night, when his room was glaringly lighted by an unshaded bulb dangling from the ceiling." The Report has an entire section of perhaps 15,000 words devoted to what the Commission entitled "Speculations and Rumors" (Appendix 12). If there were any the Commission had assured itself of knowing, they came from Joesten. There is no reference to this in that entire Appendix. (Weisberg, Whitewash)
  
• 3/5/1964 The FBI and INS personnel in Texas begins looking for any evidence of a Jean Rene Souetre, Michel Roux, or Michel Mertz being in Dallas on or near the assassination date, as well as any evidence of individuals by these names being deported. All three of these names initially come up blank.
  
• 3/6/1964 Hoover states in a letter to Sen. McClellan regarding Valachi's testimony, "Public opinion has moved against the forces of evil." (HSCA vol. 5)
  
• 3/6/1964 Washington Post reports that Jordan believes the Baker investigation is nearing its end, but Sen. Hugh Scott believes that more witnesses should be called.
  
• 3/6/1964 CD 451, FBI report to Rankin of interview with Nosenko, long suppressed by the WC. "Following President Kennedy's assassination, Noskeno ascertained from Oswald's file that he had had access to a gun which he used to hunt game with fellow employees in the USSR. He could not describe the gun used by Oswald but did remember that it was used to shoot rabbits. Nosenko stated that Western newspaper reports describe Oswald as an expert shot; however, Oswald's file contained statements from fellow hunters that Oswald was an extremely poor shot and that it was necessary for persons who accompanied him on hunts to provide him with game."
  
• 3/6/1964 The Spectator (London) featured an article, "The Riddle of Dallas," that questioned the evidence against Oswald. Cover story by Mordecai Brienberg. Very early critical examination and the probable innocence of Oswald. The report of a 7.65 mm Mauser, the location of the President's wounds, the eyewitness reports of shots from the front, negative results from the paraffin tests, timing of the shots and many other discrepancies.
  
• 3/6/1964 New York Journal-American reporter Bob Considine, in an editorial, attacked Europeans for "still clutching to the long discredited notion that there was a dark conspiracy involving JFK's death."
  
• 3/6/1964 McNamara expressed his "complete support" for Saigon's new leader, Khanh.
  
• 3/6/1964 DeLoach memo to Hoover about his lunch that day with Ed Guthman of the Justice Department; "Guthman told me that a number of individuals close to the Attorney General felt that the President's body had not even become cold before you started circumventing the Attorney General and dealing directly with the President...Jenkins told me later on...that the Attorney General was extremely shaken by the dismissals of Corbin and Bellino...He became so mad with the President that he walked out of the President's office. He also told Ken O'Donnell, who sided with the President, that he would never speak to him again."
  
• 3/7/1964 A memo Melvin Eisenberg wrote said: "...a mass of evidence has been collected concerning the aural observation of bystanders....very little weight can be assigned to this category of evidence [because of] the difficulty of accurate perception of the sound of gunshots, and the acoustics of the gunshots. The sound of a shot comes upon a witness suddenly and often unexpectedly...A loud noise may appear to have been produced nearby, while a weak sound may seem to have been transmitted from some distance."
  
• 3/8/1964 Malcolm X established two new organizations, the Muslim Mosque Inc. and the Organization of Afro-American Unity.
  
• 3/9/1964 David Slawson memo to Jenner-Liebeler Ball-Belin SUBJECT: Testimony of Yuri Ivanovich Nosenko, recent Soviet Defector The testimony of Nosenko is contained in documents carrying Commission Nos. 434 and 451, insofar as we have received information to date. Of special interest to your sections are the following statements by Nosenko in regard to Oswald's marksmanship: "Following President Kennedy is assassination Nosenko ascertained from Oswald's file that he had had access to a gun which he used to hunt game with fellow employees in the U.S.S.R. He could not describe the gun used by Oswald but did remember that it was used to shoot rabbits. Nosenko stated that Western newspaper reports describe Oswald as an expert shot; however, Oswald's file contained a statement from fellow hunters that Oswald was an extremely poor shot and that it was necessary for persons who accompanied him on hunts to provide him with game." Nosenko purports to have been a high official in the counter-intelligence division of the KGB, the Russian Secret Police. He also purports to have been the person who supervised the examination and treatment of Lee Harvey Oswald for the KGB, both when Oswald first entered Russia in 1959 and after the assassination of President Kennedy, when Oswald's file was reexamined by the KGB to determine whether he had ever been used as an agent by that organization. Nosenko states that the KGB at no time used Oswald as an agent. (Liebeler later showed this memo to Edward J. Epstein).
  
• 3/9/1964 Secret Service agents Roy Kellerman, Will Greer, Rufus Youngblood, Clint Hill testify before the WC (Warren, Cooper, Boggs, Ford). Agent Roy Kellerman testifies that "While the President is in the morgue, he is lying flat. And with part of the skull removed, and the hole in the throat, nobody was aware until they lifted him up that there was a hole in his shoulder. That was the first concrete evidence that they knew that the man was hit in the back first." Clint Hill revealed that it was Floyd Boring who told him JFK didn't want agents on the back of the car.
  
• 3/9/1964 J. Evetts Haley's book A Texan Looks at Lyndon is published. It was a best seller and it is claimed that in Texas only the Bible outsold Haley's book in 1964. In the book Haley attempted to expose Johnson's corrupt political activities. This included a detailed look at the relationship between Johnson and Billy Sol Estes. Haley pointed out that three men who could have provided evidence in court against Estes, George Krutilek, Harold Orr and Howard Pratt, all died of carbon monoxide poisoning from car engines. Haley also suggested that Johnson might have been responsible for the death of John F. Kennedy: "Johnson wanted power and with all his knowledge of political strategy and his proven control of Congress, he could see wider horizons of power as Vice-President than as Senate Majority Leader. In effect, by presiding over the Senate, he could now conceive himself as virtually filling both high and important positions - and he was not far from wrong. Finally, as Victor Lasky pointed out, Johnson had nursed a lifetime dream to be President. As Majority leader he never could have made it. But as Vice-president fate could always intervene."
  
• 3/9/1964 Supreme Court unanimous ruling in New York Times vs Sullivan expands protection of the press by limiting libel suits. The case stemmed from Alabama authorities suing the NYT for negative coverage of their handling of civil rights protests.
  
• 3/9/1964 McNamara told the press that the situation in South Vietnam was "serious."
  
• 3/9/1964 LBJ spends time at the pool and lunch with Hoover, DeLoach, and Walter Jenkins. Hoover and LBJ talk on the phone this afternoon. (Act of Treason) LBJ met with Hoover and DeLoach for a lengthy talk about MLK; Hoover apparently left some of the tapes with Johnson. Around this time the FBI squashed a planned honorary degree for King from Marquette University. (The Man and the Secrets 570)
  
• 3/9/1964 Newsweek revealed a plan by Walt Rostow to escalate the war by (quoting from his plan): "PT boat raids on North Vietnamese coastal installations and then by strategic bombing raids flown by US pilots under either the US or South Vietnamese flags…"
  
• 3/10/1964 The following testify before the WC today (Warren, Cooper, Ford): Arnold Rowland, James Worrell, Robert Hill Jackson, Amos Euins.
  
• 3/10/1964 Press discloses the fact that Johnson has made the decision to issue an Executive Order waiving Hoover's retirement.
  
• 3/10/1964 Washington Post reports that at least three of the Democratic members of the Bobby Baker committee have said publicly that they consider the inquiry to be at an end. Another has let it be known that he is "bored" and considers the Baker case a "second-rate scandal." Still another has regularly failed to show up for public hearings. The GOP members want to call Walter Jenkins as a witness.
  
• 3/10/1964 A U.S. RB-57 is shot down by the Soviets while on a reconnaissance mission. Its crew of 3 is recovered.
  
• 3/10/1964 New Hampshire primary. In the GOP primary, both Rockefeller and Goldwater were considered to be the favorites, but the voters instead gave a surprising victory to the U.S. ambassador to South Vietnam, Henry Cabot Lodge, Jr., Nixon's running mate in 1960 and a former Massachusetts senator. Lodge was a write-in candidate. Lodge went on to win the Massachusetts and New Jersey primaries before finally deciding that he didn't want the Republican nomination, he then withdrew his candidacy. Despite his defeat in New Hampshire, Goldwater pressed on, winning the Illinois, Texas, and Indiana primaries with little opposition, and Nebraska's primary after a stiff challenge from a draft-Nixon movement. Goldwater also won a number of state caucuses and gathered even more delegates. Meanwhile, Nelson Rockefeller won the West Virginia and Oregon primaries against Goldwater, and William Scranton won in his home state of Pennsylvania. Both Rockefeller and Scranton also won several state caucuses, mostly in the Northeast.
  
• 3/10/1964 Letter from Hoover to Rankin: "Reference is made to my letter dated January 10, 1964, advising that arrangements were made with the Atomic Energy Commission to process by nuclear analytical techniques items relating to the assassination of President Kennedy. The paraffin casts from Lee Harvey Oswald were examined by neutron activation analyses at the Oak Ridge National Laboratories, Research Reactor Site, Oak Ridge, Tennessee. These analyses were made to determine if the paraffin casts from Oswald which were made, chemically treated and washed by the Dallas law enforcement authorities, bear any primer deposits from the rifle cartridge cases found in the Texas School Book Depository Building following the President's assassination. As a result of these examinations; the deposits found on the paraffin casts from the hands and cheek of Oswald could not be specifically associated with the rifle cartridges. Elements (barium and antimony) were found on the casts; however, these same elements were found in residues both from the above rifle cartridge cases and from the revolver cartridge cases which were fired from Oswald's revolver reportedly between the time of the assassination and the time of apprehension. No characteristic elements were found by neutron activation analyses which could be used to distinguish the rifle from the revolver cartridges. In view of the fact that the paraffin casts were not made until after the reported firing and handling of the revolver, no significance could be attached to the residues found on the casts other than the conclusion that barium and antimony in these residues are present in amounts greater than would be expected to be found on the hands of an individual who has not recently fired a weapon or handled a fired weapon." (Post Mortem 625; CE 2455)
  
• 3/10/1964 Sen. Ernest Gruening attacked US involvement in Vietnam as "seeking vainly...to shore up self-serving corrupt dynasties or their self-imposed successors...all Vietnam is not worth life of a single American boy."
  
• 3/11/1964 The following testify before the WC today (Warren, Cooper, Ford): Buell Wesley Frazier, Linnie Mae Randle, Cortlandt Cunningham.
  
• 3/11/1964 Bobby Baker hearings: Baker and Levison associate Sigelbaum appears before the committee. Asked basically the same questions as Levison, he takes the Fifth 136 times. Senator Cooper asks two questions of substance. Cooper: Did you visit the offices of the North American Aviation Corp. and the Northrop Corp. seeking a vending contract for Serve-U? Did you talk to Mr. Attwood, president of North American, about a vending contract for Serve-U?
  
• 3/11/1964 FBI firearms expert Cortlandt Cunningham appears before the WC.
  
• 3/11/1964 A FBI teletype from Dallas to Washington on this dates confirms that a Frenchman named Michel Roux was in Texas on November 22nd. Roux, a hotel clerk and restaurant-management student from Paris, was visiting American friends in Fort Worth, Texas.
  
• 3/12/1964 The following testified before the WC today (Warren, Cooper, Ford): William Whaley, Cecil McWatters.
  
• 3/12/1964 Jimmy Hoffa was fined $10,000 and sentenced to eight years in prison for jury tampering.
  
• 3/12/1964 WC meeting with Richard Helms; he told Rankin that "the Commission would have to take his word for the fact that Oswald had not been an agent" of the CIA. The minutes also noted, "a considerable part of the meeting from this point forward consisted of a review by Mr. Rankin and his staff of the gaps in the investigation to date. They noted that the most significant gap appeared in the Mexican phase." The WC staffers "questioned the sanitized extracts which they had been shown and wondered if there were not more...Mr Helms then explained that as a matter of practice we did not release actual copies of our messages because they contained code words..." The WC members wondered why nothing was done to keep an eye on Oswald after his Mexican trip. "At the conclusion of his remarks on the subject, Mr. Helms specified that the information he had given Mr. Rankin was extremely sensitive [2 words censored]." Rankin worried that the CIA had not provided any evidence that Oswald had traveled by bus. (Plausible Denial 57,66) They also discussed with Helms a memo ('Jack Ruby - Background, Friends and Other Pertinent Information'; CE 2980, possibly the same one above) requesting CIA investigative assistance into Ruby's background.
  
• 3/12/1964 CIA "Memorandum for the Record" declassified 6/1976; portions of it still withheld. It related to the CIA-WC meeting of that day regarding Ruby's background. The memo reveals that Helms, his aides and the WC staff discussed various phases of the investigation, with emphasis on the activities of Oswald and Ruby. The CIA felt little obligation to respond to the WC's desire to establish whether Oswald worked for US intelligence. "Willens noted that Mrs Oswald had introduced a statement to the effect that she suspected her son to be a CIA agent. Mr Willens asked whether in fact Oswald had been a CIA agent. Mr Helms replied that he had not been. Mr Willens then asked if there were any way of proving this. Mr Helms first remarked that in him and [deleted] the Commission had the two Clandestine Services officers who certainly would know whether or not Oswald had been an agent for CIA in the Soviet Union. He then said that the Commission would have to take his word for the fact Oswald had not been an agent. Mr Rankin interjected the view that the Commission had not adopted this procedure with other agencies and wondered whether there was not some way to clarify this point more effectively for the Commission." (Coincidence or Conspiracy 196) Rankin also told Helms that the WC had information that Ruby had gone to Havana in the summer of 1963, presumably using a phony passport by way of Mexico. (Ruby Cover-up 268)
  
• 3/12/1964 Arlen Specter interviewed FBI agents Sibert and O'Neill, who were present at the autopsy, and Specter drew up a memo of the event; Sibert and O'Neill confirmed that Kennedy's back wound only penetrated a few inches. (12/1963-3/1964 Administrative records, in Six Seconds in Dallas 45). Neither man was even deposed by the WC.
  
• 3/12/1964 3:05pm Hoover calls LBJ; 5:32pm DeLoach calls LBJ. (Act of Treason 525)
  
• 3/13/1964 "Pike Event", an underground nuclear test at the Nevada Test Site causes major fallout as far south as Las Vegas.
  
• 3/13/1964 At 9:10am Hoover calls LBJ. (Act of Treason)
  
• 3/13/1964 Kathrine and Warren Ford and Peter Paul Gregory testify before the WC (Earl Warren, Gerald Ford).
  
• 3/13/1964 In a Warren Commission memorandum (not declassified until 1975) staff member W. David Slawson writes about letter from J. Edgar Hoover concerning reluctance to exhume Oswald's body as requested by the CIA. Slawson continues: "This whole aspect of Oswald's life and especially our attempt to authenticate it are highly secret at this point ..." Slawson mentions the reported suicide attempt by Oswald shortly after arriving in Russia. Therefore, if Lee Harvey Oswald's suicide incident is a fabrication, the time spent by Oswald recovering from the suicide [attempt] in a Moscow hospital could conceivably have been spent by him in Russian secret police custody, being coached, brainwashed, etc. Around Easter in 1964, Marina Oswald says she receives a telephone call from government officials asking her to sign papers authorizing the installation of an electronic alarm system at Oswald's grave site. As far as in known, no alarm system was ever installed.
  
• 3/13/1964 Jean Hill is today grilled by Special Agents E. J. Robertson and Thomas T. Trettis, Jr. to whom she repeats her description of the running figure she saw in Dealey Plaza immediately following the assassination. Again, she recalls the figure as being a white man wearing a brown raincoat and a hat, whom she had seen running west, away from the school book depository, toward the wooden fence and the railroad tracks beyond. Subsequently, Agent Robertson is assigned to conduct an investigation aimed at establishing the identity of this person.
  
• 3/13/1964 The FBI discontinues its investigation of Michel Roux today.
  
• 3/13/1964 An artist makes sketches depicting Kennedy's wounds, based on the recollections of the autopsy doctors. He had no photos to work from. (H 2 349-50) Harold "Skip" Rydberg, medical illustrator at Bethesda Hospital today receives "secret verbal orders" from Navy Cmdr. John Stover to complete the drawings to help Naval doctors' testimony before the Warren Commission. The order says the illustrations need to be ready to present to the commission on Monday, March 16, 1964. He prepared them Mar 14-15th. In February 2006, this article will appear in the Sun-Herald: "I was only given two days to draw three life-size drawings," he said. "As a normal medical illustrator, you need as much medical evidence to do the drawings. That includes the autopsy report, the photos and X-rays to do the best possible job. "I asked if it would be possible to see the X-rays and photographs, and the answer was the doctors did not have them available for their testimony," Rydberg recalls. He remembers being told the FBI and Secret Service took the undeveloped film and X-rays. Rydberg spent two days in a 10-by-10-foot room, with an armed Marine guarding the door. There was no artist's table, and he was told to bring only his watercolor set, some sketch paper, and nothing more. "At the end of each day I would call to have Lt. Cmdr. Lynde D. McCormick walk with me, the drawings covered, and put them in a large safe in the administration office," Rydberg recalls. "The only things which went on in the small room were Dr. (James) Humes and Dr. (Thornton) Boswell, who would come in the room and check on the drawings. They requested they be done in color and life-size on 20-inch-by-30-inch illustration board," he said. While drawing, Rydberg said he had nothing to go by except verbal anatomical landmarks and imagination about how the president was shot. "During the drawings, Humes specifically asked me to make the right eye black, like a large hemorrhage had happened," Rydberg said. "So I drew what I thought was the right positions at the times of each shot." The doctors continued to come in the room through the weekend. "This was the only two days I had to complete these imaginary positions and then on Monday they were turned over to Adm. Calvin Galloway, Commanding Officer of the National Naval Medical Center," Rydberg said. When Rydberg finished the drawings, the watercolor set and the sketches were destroyed. "They wanted no one to know by guessing the colors used what I was doing," Rydberg said. "A little paranoid, I think, but they did it and after the drawings were done on Monday. I went back to my normal duties, noting that I only had secret verbal orders to discuss with no one what I was doing or did," he said.
  
• 3/14/1964 Ruby's trial ended and he was found guilty of murder with malice after the jury deliberated less than an hour; he was also found sane and was sentenced to death. The Ruby family immediately fired Melvin Belli. Rankin had delayed the Commission's own investigative work until the trial was over so as not to prejudice it in any way. (Inquest) Ruby's lawyers appeared before TV camaras after the verdict. Belli characterized it as a kangeroo court decision. His other lawyer announced that he felt like he was going to throw up.
  
• 3/14/1964 Richard Helms phones RFK to congratulate him on the Jimmy Hoffa conviction and making an appointment to see him the following week, without specifying the reason.
  
• 3/14/1964 Dallas was having a St. Patrick's Day parade; Asst District Attorney Bill Alexander commented, "Don't you think we're pushing our luck a little having another parade for an Irishman around here?"
  
• 3/15/1964 During a TV interview, LBJ said he hadn't seen or talked to Baker since he left the Senate, and denied that Baker was his protege, "no protege of anyone; he was there before I came to the Senate for ten years...he was elected by all the Senators...including the Republican Senators..." Actually, Baker was selected by the Democratic caucus at Majority Leader Johnson's recommendation.
  
• 3/15/1964 LBJ requests $962 million from Congress for a "war on poverty."
  
• 3/15/1964 Christian Crusade's newsletter: "Oswald was an active Castro agent merely obeying orders..." Billy James Hargis wrote that JFK was assassinated to discredit conservatives: "It is 'do or die' in 1964. If we don't break this liberal yoke in '64, forget about freedom and liberty." He declared that the facts about the assassination were being covered up to protect "men in high places in Washington, D.C."
  
• 3/16/1964 McNamara reported to LBJ that things had worsened in South Vietnam, and Gen. Khanh had no popular support.
  
• 3/16/1964 The FBI conducts a second series of tests on the alleged Kennedy murder weapon. Only the best one of the previous 3 marksmen is used. His name is Robert Frazier. He fails to match Oswald's shooting time and again, all of the shots are high and to the right of the intended target. Further FBI rifle tests at Quantico, Virginia; Frazier fired four series of three shots at targets 100 yards away; his times ranged from 5.6 to 6.5 seconds. (Frazier testimony)
  
• 3/16/1964 A request for calculations regarding the size and height of the Stemmons freeway sign that blocked Zapruder's view in his film is requested on this date by Special Agent John Howlett of the U.S. Secret Service, Dallas office.
  
• 3/16/1964 In a very brief meeting, the WC formally accepted a resolution regarding the procedures for handling testimony and affidavits.
  
• 3/16/1964 The three JFK autopsy doctors Finck, Humes and Boswell testify before the WC (Warren, Cooper, Ford, McCloy, Dulles) It was on March 16, 1964 during James Humes' testimony before the WC that bullet CE-399 was first introduced into evidence. Arlen Specter related on the record that CE-399's bone fides were "subject to later proof," but would be introduced with the proviso that the bullet was the same "missile which [had] been taken from the stretcher which the evidence now indicates was the stretcher occupied by Governor Connally." The fact that Humes was the first witness to testify about CE-399, yet had played no part whatsoever its chain of custody, forced Specter to introduce CE-399 "subject to later proof." An undated autopsy report is introduced in evidence. Commander Humes testifies that this autopsy report was prepared immediately after the autopsy examination and submitted to "higher authority" on November 24, 1963. He also submits an affidavit to the Commission purportedly written on November 24, 1963, stating that he "destroyed by burning certain preliminary notes relating to" the autopsy. Commander Humes further testifies that, although no bullet path was found through the President's body, it was deductively concluded that the bullet did indeed pass through the body and exit at the throat. Humes explains: "I see that Governor Connally is sitting directly in front of the late President, and suggest the possibility that this missile, having traversed the low neck of the late President, in fact traversed the chest of Governor Connally." When Arlen Specter asked Dr. Humes, "could that missile [Warren Exhibit #399] have made the wound on Governor Connally's right wrist?" Humes answered, "I think that most unlikely … The reason I believe it most unlikely that this missile could have inflicted either of these wounds [Connally's wrist wound or JFK's head wound] is that this missile is basically intact; its jacket appears to me to be intact, and I do not understand how it could possibly have left fragments in either of these locations [JFK's head or Connally's wrist]." Humes also said, " I think that extremely unlikely" that it was CE 399 that had lodged in Connally's thigh, which was the seventh of the seven wounds required of CE 399 by the Commission's theory. Humes' forensic consultant, Pierre Finck, MD, backed him up. Specter asked Pierre Finck, "[C]ould [399] have been the bullet which inflicted the wound on Governor Connally's right wrist?" "No," Finck replied, "for the reason that there are too many fragments described in that wrist," the problem being, as Finck put it, "there was practically no loss of this bullet." Specter first advances his single-bullet theory to the Commission members, telling Dulles that there was evidence that the bullet had been found on Connally's stretcher; as yet, there was no evidence of this, though. Subsequent evidence develops which will all but preclude the possibility that the bullet has come from John Connally's stretcher. Arlen Specter began his field investigation, leaving for Dallas this night, with a specific order from Warren to "clear up the confusion" over JFK's throat wound. (Inquest 61) The question of where the pristine bullet came from had arisen that day during Dr. Humes' testimony.
  
• 3/16/1964 Rankin sent a letter to Hoover saying that he wanted the FBI to "obtain a signed statement from each person known to have been in the...Depository Building...reflecting the following information:" - personal information, location at the time of the shooting, names of any companions nearby, and did the person "see Lee Harvey Oswald at that time [12:30]?" (National Archives). These statements became CE 1381; the witnesses were not asked whether they had seen Oswald after 11:55 or before the shooting.
  
• 3/16/1964 Melvin Eisenberg discussed the NAA process with FBI agent John Gallagher. He was interested in using the testing method on the clothes of Kennedy and Connally.
  
• 3/17/1964 Michael Paine testifies before the WC today (Liebeler, Redlich).
  
• 3/17/1964 Memo from Dulles to Rankin, discussing how the CIA could demonstrate to the WC that Oswald had not worked for them. (Whitewash IV 164)
  
• 3/17/1964 Hank Killam is found dead, his throat cut, amid the shattered glass of a department store window in Pensacola, Florida. Hank is husband of Wanda Joyce Killam, who has known Jack Ruby since shortly after he moved to Dallas in 1947. Two days earlier, Hank had told his brother: "I'm a dead man. I've run as far as I'm going to run." His death is ruled a "suicide." His brother, Earl, remarks: "Did you ever hear of a man committing suicide by jumping through a plate glass window."
  
• 3/17/1964 NSAM 288 from Bundy to Secretaries of State, Defense, Treasury, Atty General, Joint Chiefs Chairman, CIA Director, Budget Director, USIA Director, Administrator of Agency for International Development. "SUBJECT: Implementation of South Vietnam Programs. 1.The report of Secretary McNamara dated March 16, 1964 was considered and approved by the President in a meeting of the National Security Council on March 17. All agencies concerned are directed to proceed energetically with the execution of the recommendations of that report. 2.The President, in consultation with the Secretary of State and the Secretary of Defense, has designated the Assistant Secretary of State for Far Eastern Affairs to coordinate the execution of the recommendations in the report." This document was declassified 12/4/1987; parts of it were in the Pentagon Papers.
  
• 3/18/1964 Michael and Ruth Paine testify before the WC (Warren, Cooper, Ford, McCloy, Dulles).
  
• 3/18/1964 Thomas Mann, in a speech to US officials working in Latin America, made no reference to the Alliance for Progress or to the need for reform. Instead, he said that the US' main interests were economic growth, protection of US investments, non-intervention and anti-communism. He admitted that the US had to support existing military regimes. (Inevitable Revolutions p157)
  
• 3/18/1964 According to the Ft. Worth Star-Telegram on this date, Dallas D.A. Henry Wade's "big decision" during Jack Ruby's trial was NOT to call witnesses "who insisted they had seen Ruby and Oswald together at various times."
  
• 3/18/1964 J Edgar Hoover wrote the WC, "It is not felt that the increased sensitivity of neutron activation analysis would contribute substantially to the understanding of the origin of this hole and frayed area." (H 20 2) The Commission did as Hoover wished.
  
• 3/18/1964 Willens, Ball and Belin flew to Dallas to begin their field investigation. (Inquest)
  
• 3/18/1964 The FBI interviewed Carolyn Arnold again.
  
• 3/19/1964 Ruth Paine testifies before the WC again (Warren, Cooper, Boggs, Ford, McCloy, Dulles)
  
• 3/19/1964 A General Services Administration truck picks up the JFK bronze coffin and, loading it on a helicopter, drops in into the Atlantic ocean at a depth of 9000 feet. This information will not be revealed to the general public until May 29, 1999. Before this, the fate of the bronze coffin will remain a mystery. WASHINGTON (5/31/99 AP) -- A bronze casket used to transport President Kennedy's body from Dallas to Washington was dropped from a military plane into the ocean two years after he was killed, according to assassination documents. ``Apparently the casket is in 9,000 feet of water in the Atlantic Ocean,'' Kermit L. Hall, a member of the now-defunct Assassination Records Review Board, told The Associated Press in a telephone interview Friday night. Hall said that documents to be released Tuesday by the National Archives show that the casket was flown several miles off the Maryland-Delaware coast in early 1965 and dumped in an area where the military discards unstable and outdated weapons and ammunition. ``There's actually a map in the documents that pinpoints the coordinates where it was dropped,'' Hall said. The revelation -- on the eve of what would have been President Kennedy's 82nd birthday --that the casket was deep-sixed resolves a lingering mystery about its whereabouts. But it also fuels speculation among assassination researchers that it was discarded to hide foul play. What happened to the bronze casket has been a lingering question over the past three decades. Last year a document released by the archives showed that a General Services Administration truck picked up the bronze casket on March 19, 1964. The review panel asked the GSA where the casket was. The agency said in the summer of 1998 that it didn't know. The documents from GSA and the Justice and Defense departments being released describe the disposition in detail, Hall said. ``Essentially what was going on was an effort to make sure the casket didn't turn into a historic relic for the marketplace,'' he said. Kennedy was buried at Arlington National Cemetery in a mahogany coffin that had been purchased in Washington to replace the bronze one, which was missing a handle and had been damaged. Some had lobbied to have the discarded bronze casket destroyed to keep it from becoming an object of morbid curiosity. Earle Cabell, a then Texas congressman, wrote to Attorney General Nicholas Katzenbach in 1965 and recommended that ``in keeping with the best interest of the country,'' the casket be destroyed. Katzenbach said in an interview Friday that he doesn't recall details about the disposition of the casket. If anyone had asked him if the casket should be disposed of, ``I'd have said that's a good idea,'' Katzenbach said. Kennedy's caskets have long been a subject of controversy. And some assassination researchers see a dark motive. ``That coffin is evidence,'' David Lifton, who wrote a book about medical evidence in the November 1963 assassination, said Friday. ``You don't go drop evidence into the sea.'' In the 1970s, a Navy medical technician told congressional investigators that Kennedy's body arrived at Bethesda Naval Hospital in a body bag inside a gray metal shipping casket -- not a bronze one. Douglas Horne, who was the chief analyst for military records at congressionally created review board, speculated that the bronze casket was destroyed to end the two-coffin controversy. ``I think the way to get rid of the problem is you get rid of the casket. You throw it out of an airplane,'' said Horne. ``Then it's just a bunch of stories.''
  
• 3/19/1964 Pierre Salinger told LBJ that he was going to resign and run for the Senate. This move was a surprise to Johnson. (White House Diary p96)
  
• 3/19/1964 LBJ called Cartha DeLoach at 12:15pm. (Act of Treason)
  
• 3/19/1964 Letter from Hoover to Rankin. "Reference is made to your letter dated March 11, 1964 and subsequent conversation with Mr Burt W. Griffin of your staff, regarding the video tape furnished to this Bureau by Mr. Eddie Barker. In accordance with Mr. Griffin's request, the 16mm copy of the above video tape will be projected for members of your staff, at the Commission Office beginning at 9:00am on Saturday, March 21, 1964."
  
• 3/19/1964 Hubert/Griffin memo talked about the need to find out more about a man named "Davis" who was involved with Ruby selling jeeps to Castro. This was Thomas Eli Davis III.
  
• 3/19/1964 De Gaulle assassination attempt.
  
• 3/20/1964 Hoover wrote a memo expressing irritation when the WC wanted to have its ballistics tests submitted to an outside lab for "reexamination." He wrote, "It is obvious the Commission does not have confidence in our laboratory." (Reasonable Doubt 84)
  
• 3/20/1964 Ruby's defense counsel files a motion for a new trial.
  
• 3/20/1964 Cable from LBJ to Lodge: Johnson said that the focus for the present would be on strengthening South Vietnam, with attacks on the North put off for now. Also, "I think that nothing is more important than to stop neutralist talk wherever we can by whatever means we can."
  
• 3/20/1964 Richard Case Nagell writes the Warren Commission from the El Paso jail concerning his attempt to alert authorities about the JFK assassination. "Has the commission been advised that I informed the Federal Bureau of Investigation in September 1963 that an attempt might be made to assassinate President Kennedy? Was the commission advised that the day before Mr. Kennedy visited Dallas I initiated a request through jail authority to the FBI, asking them to contact the Secret Service Division in order to inform such agency of the same information, when it became apparent to me that the FBI believed my revelation to be mendacious?" (in National Archives; Rankin apparently never replied). Nagell's name does not appear either in the Warren Report or in the accompanying 26 volumes.
  
• 3/20/1964 Jane Wester, Doris Nelson and Darrell Tomlinson testified before the WC (Specter). Ruth Paine testified again (Warren, Cooper, Ford, McCloy). The WC took Parkland Hospital orderly, Darrell Tomlinson's testimony. That was a mere four days after CE-399 was introduced during Humes' testimony. Incredibly, Tomlinson, whose testimony was taken in Dallas, was queried extensively about where he found a bullet (which stretcher), but was never shown CE-399 or asked to identify it as the bullet he found the day Kennedy was assassinated. Having Tomlinson ID the bullet is the "proof" that would have established that the bullet's bone fides were in order. But that didn't happen. What did happen was that the day after Tomlinson testified, Robert Frazier delivered CE-399 to the WC.
  
• 3/20/1964 Joseph Ball and David Belin reconstructed Oswald's assumed movements in the TSBD. Howard Brennan assumed his position in front of the TSBD, and Ball noticed that Brennan had difficulty in even seeing a figure in the 6th floor window. (Inquest) Harold Norman, Junior Jarman and Bonnie Ray Williams were part of a WC experiment done in Dealey Plaza 3/20/1964. The men took up the same positions they had that day, while a man stood above them in the "sniper's nest," working the bolt of a rifle and dropping shells on the ground. The experiment was repeated for WC Commissioners 5/9/1964, 6/7/1964 and 9/6/1964, and all reported hearing the same sounds. (WR 71)
  
• 3/20/1964 FBI teletype sent to Houston, New Orleans, and San Antonio (in the National Archives): "President's Commission by letter 3/18/64 requested Bureau to conduct further inquiries concerning the mailing, the arrival, and the cashing of Oswald's check dated 9/23/63 from the Texas Unemployment Commission which was addressed to him at Post Office Box 30061, New Orleans, Louisiana. New Orleans and San Antonio conducted previous inquiry in this matter and have established that according to normal mail procedures, it would have been impossible for Oswald to have taken his check from his Post Office Box prior to 5am on the morning of September 25. We have determined that the check was included in the Winn-Dixie store deposit received at the bank September 26. All funds in this deposit were from the Winn-Dixie store receipts from 4pm 9/24 through 4pm 9/25. The store closes at 7pm. In essence, the Commission wants us to go further to see if Oswald could have cashed his check between the hours of 4 and 7pm on 9/24. We regard this as impossible because of our findings concerning the mailing procedures."
  
• 3/20/1964 THE STATE OF TEXAS vs. JACK RUBENSTEIN -- Defense counsel files a motion for a new trial.
  
• 3/20/1964 Assistant counsels to the Warren Commission Burt Griffin and Leon Hubert today write, in a memo to the Warren Commission members, that "the most promising links between Jack Ruby and the assassination of President Kennedy are established through underworld figures and anti-Castro Cubans, and extreme right-wing Americans." Two months from now, Griffin and Hubert will write another memo to the Commission, significantly titled "Adequacy of the Ruby Investigation" in which they will state: "We believe that a reasonable possibility exists that Ruby has maintained a close interest in Cuban affairs to the extent necessary to participate in gun sales or smuggling." Ruby talks about it himself while in jail, reportedly telling a friend, "They're going to find out about Cuba. They're going to find out about the guns, find out about New Orleans, find out about everything."
  
• 3/21/1964 Jean Hill receives a curt letter from the Warren Commission today, informing her that, since she has refused to keep her Washington interview/appointment, she will be interrogated instead at Parkland Memorial Hospital in Dallas at 2:30 P.M. on March 24th. Jean had decided to defy the Warren Commission's original subpoena at the urging of her boyfriend, J. B. Marshall. He tells her he is worried for her safety.
  
• 3/21/1964 The following testify before the WC today (Specter, Jenner, Redlich): Dr. Robert McClelland, Ruth Paine, Dr. William Kemp Clark, Ruth J. Standridge, Margaret Henchcliffe, R. Jimison
  
• 3/22/1964 Griffin and Hubert went to Dallas to investigate Ruby's actions.
  
• 3/23/1964 The following testified before the WC today (Specter, Liebeler, Jenner, Hubert, Griffin): Ilya Mamantov, George Bouhe, Dr Charles Gregory, Dr. George Shires, Dr. Robert Shaw, M.W. Stevenson, Ruth Paine, John Joe Howlett, Charles Batchelor
  
• 3/23 and 3/24/1964 the Wall Street Journal published articles by Louis M. Kohlmeier on the Johnson fortune and how it was made in the government-regulated communications industry. This series won a Pulitzer Prize and set off a debate on LBJ's finances.
  
• 3/23/1964 WC counsel went to the Paine house to recreate how Marina could have seen Hosty's license plate from the house. After Ruth Paine testifies that she recalls a paper-wrapped bundle of curtain rods in her garage, the space is searched again today. A bundle of curtains rods is found. Later, however, it is discovered that a bundle of curtain rods also found in the Paine garage has already been turned over to the Dallas Police by the Secret Service on March 15th.
  
• 3/23/1964 US joins 115 nations at Geneva for a UN conference on Trade and Development.
  
• 3/23/1964 Letter from Hoover to Rankin. "Reference is made to your letter dated March 18, 1964, concerning the reasons for the opinion that the holes in the clothing of President Kennedy were either 'entrance holes' or 'exit holes.' The hole in the back of the coat and the hole in the back of the shirt were in general, circular in shape and the ends of the torn threads around the holes were bent inward. These characteristics are typical of bullet entrance holes. The hole in the front of the shirt was a raggled slitlike hole and the ends of the torn threads around the hole were bent outward. These characteristics are typical of an exit hole for a projectile. A small elongated nick was present in the left side of the knot of the tie. This nick may have been caused by the projectile after it passed through the front of the shirt. No additional observations relative to the nick could be made due to the characteristics of the nick." (Post Mortem 600)
  
• 3/24/1964 The Joint Chiefs of Staff propose OPERATION SQUARE DANCE, which calls for the total destruction of Cuba's sugar crop. The predicted result will be not only the collapse of the Castro regime, but untold hardship on the general Cuban population. LBJ refuses to back the proposal.
  
• 3/24/1964 Memo (CD 674) from Richard Helms to the WC: "On 22 and 23 November [1963] three cabled reports were received from [deleted] in Mexico City relative to photographs of an unidentified man who visited the Cuban and Soviet Embassies in that city during October and November 1963."
  
• 3/24/1964 Many witnesses appeared before the WC today: Lt. Rio Pierce, Howard Brennan, Bonnie Ray Williams, Raymond Krystinik, O.A. Jones, Dr. Don Tell Curtis, Dr. Ronald Jones, L.C. Graves, Everett Glover, Dr Charles Baxter, Harold Norman, James Jarman, Roy Truly, Dr Jackie Hunt, Frank M. Martin, Diana Bowron, Samuel Ballen, Jean Hill, Barnard Clardy, Louis D. Miller, Dr Paul Peters, L.D. Montgomery, John Raymond Hall, Elena Hall, Cecil Talbert, Patrick Dean, James Putnam, Woodrow Wiggins
  
• 3/24/1964 Parkland doctor Charles Baxter testified for the WC. Specter asked him to assume the factors of the single-bullet theory.
  
• 3/24/1964 Jean Hill is interrogated at Parkland Memorial Hospital in Dallas by Arlen Specter, an assistant counsel for the Warren Commission. Hill says that Specter accuses her of engaging in a "shabby extramarital affair" with J.B. Marshall, thirsting for publicity and notoriety, refusing to cooperate with federal authorities and proving herself "totally unreliable" as a witness. She is told that, once the official interrogation begins, she is to give "proper answers" based on fact, not on her overactive imagination or "what some talkative cop told you while you were in bed together." Jean later describes her published testimony as a "total travesty" -- heavily edited, completely distorted and shamelessly fabricated.
  
• 3/24/1964 Bonnie Ray Williams testifies today that he has been misquoted in written accounts attributed to him by the FBI. The FBI report says Williams used the stairs to go from the sixth floor of the TSBD to the fifth floor. Williams says he used the elevator. The FBI report says that Williams stayed only about three minutes on the sixth floor in order to eat his lunch. Williams says he told the FBI it could have taken as long as fifteen minutes to eat his lunch. He says he thinks he finished eating around 12:20 PM. (Ten minutes before the motorcade passed the TSBD) The FBI report says that Williams and his two companions (Hank Norman and Junior Jarman) on the fifth floor could have seen anyone coming down the stairs from the sixth floor of the TSBD after the shots were fired. Williams says "I could not possibly have told him that, because you cannot see anything coming down from that position...An elephant could walk by there, and you could not see him."
  
• 3/24/1964 Harold Norman also testifying on this date, says that he has been misquoted in the FBI report attributed to him. The FBI report states that Norman heard a shot and stuck his head from the fifth floor window of the TSBD and looked toward the roof of the building. Norman says "I don't recall telling him that...I don't remember ever putting my head out the window." The FBI report states that Norman said he heard two more shots after pulling his head inside the window. When asked if he remembers making that statement to the FBI, Norman replies: "No, sir; I don't."
  
• 3/24/1964 A letter written by T.G. Womack, Jr., a Hammond, Louisiana, insurance agent, is sent to Clay L. Shaw, 1313 Dauphine Street, New Orleans, Louisiana. The letter is in reference to Marquette no. 105628, and "Marquette Casualty Company" is the imprint on the bottom of the Womack Insurance Agency letterhead "Dear Clay: Your dad was in my office this morning and returned the above policy covering liability on the 1962 Rambler Station Wagon. I agreed to hold up cancellation of this policy until I had word from you that you had arranged for coverage with your New Orleans agent. Just for your records the automobile is described as being a 1962 Rambler Ambassador M#H171787 (4-Dr. Sta. Wagon)." A Rambler station wagon was seen near the TSBD on the day of the assassination. Walt Brown suggests that "Clay Shaw' was the dad. He purchased the car in question and then insured it through an out-of-town agency, and allowed his "son," a person possibly known to us, or, equally possible, someone not known to us. But it was his vehicle and it was insured in his name. When, by March 24, 1964, it had served its purpose, most likely on the 22nd of November the previous year, "Shaw" himself went to the Womack Agency and informed them he was canceling the policy on his "son's" automobile -- especially since he would not have wanted it tied to him on the odd chance that someone would believe Roger Craig, Price, or anyone else who might have come forward and provided reports about a suspicious Rambler at the time -- and place -- of the assassination."
  
• 3/25/1964 Congress brought an end to the Bobby Baker hearings.
  
• 3/25/1964 Assistant US Attorney Lester R. Irvin of Hammond, Indiana, asked the FBI to determine if "Louie Louie" violated US Code Section 1465, Title 18 (interstate transporting of obscenity).
  
• 3/25/1964 Steven F. Wilson, vice president of the Southwest division of Allyn & Bacon, a publishing company with offices in the Texas School Book Depository Building, tells FBI agents that the shots sounded as if they came from the "west end of the building," the direction of the Grassy Knoll. He then says they "did not sound like they came from above my head." Frequent and annoying visits from the FBI will fail to persuade Wilson to alter his statement. Despite the fact that he tells the FBI he has no objection to testifying before the Warren Commission, he is never called.
  
• 3/25/1964 Letter from SS chief James Rowley to the WC: "Reference is made to your letter of March 18, 1964, requesting certain documents for the examination of the Commission. The video tape and transcript of November 22, 1963, of the television interview of Doctor Malcolm Perry mentioned in your letter has not been located. After a review of the material and information available at the Dallas television and radio news stations, and the records of the NBC, ABC and CBS networks in New York City, no video tape or transcript could be found of a television interview with Doctor Malcolm Perry. CBS located in its New York office a television news clip on video tape of broadcast by Walter Cronkite on November 22, 1963, in which he comments upon an interview with Doctor Perry by newsmen in Dallas. This, however, was not a television interview of the doctor. They also located a news clip covering an interview with Doctor Shaw at Parkland Hospital, in which Doctor Shaw comments upon the wounds received by Governor Connally, but in which no mention was made of the President's wounds." (CD 678)(Citizen's Dissent 79)
  
• 3/25/1964 Gene Coleman Akin and Charles Carrico, Parkland doctors, testified for the WC about JFK's wounds; Arlen Specter asked them to assume the factors of the single-bullet theory.
  
• 3/25/1964 Sen. Fulbright spoke of the need for the US to maintain its commitments in South Vietnam, but warned against committing US troops. He also recommends that US push for relaxation of Cold War tensions and normalize relations with Cuba.
  
• 3/25/1964 De Gaulle assassination attempt.
  
• 3/26/1964 WC letter to FBI: the Commission asked the FBI for replies to some 30 questions, including: "When and for what reason were pages 279 through 283 of the report of SA Gemberling of February 11, 1964, prepared?" This had to do with the discrepancies between the original 12/23/1963 FBI account of Oswald's address book and the entries about Hosty that had been left out. According to Davis in The Kennedys': Rankin "requests the FBI respond to [written interrogatories, fifty-two in all]."
  
• 3/26/1964 FBI memo to the WC: Jack Ruby associate "McWillie solidified his syndicate connections through his association in Havana, Cuba with Santos Trafficante;...Meyer and Jake Lansky; Dino Cellini and others who were members of or associates of 'the syndicate.'"
  
• 3/26/1964 The contract stipulation that William Manchester should write the true story of the assassination was signed with the Kennedy family. When Jacqueline heard that another author, Jim Bishop, was working on a book to be entitled "The Day Kennedy Was Shot," she went so far as to write a personal letter to him asking him to halt the project. She explained that in doing so she was motivated by a desire to "protect President Kennedy and the truth." In a subsequent letter she informed Mr. Bishop dryly that "none of the people connected with Nov, 22 will speak to anyone but Mr. Manchester -- that is my wish and it is theirs also."
  
• 3/26/1964 McNamara made a speech at an awards dinner in D.C.; he acknowledged that things were worsening in Vietnam, but argued that the US had to stick it out to stop world-wide communism and prevent a collapse of faith in the US. He warned that accepting neutralization in Vietnam "would in reality be an interim device to permit Communist consolidation and eventual take-over." He also said that "there can be no such thing as a purely military' solution to the war in South Viet-Nam. The road ahead in Viet-Nam is going to be long, difficult and frustrating...it has not been