Deep Politics Timeline

[Tracy Riddle]

• 8/1964 McGeorge Bundy wrote a memo to LBJ outlining how to get "Backing from the Establishment...I think the key to these people is McCloy. He is for us, but he is under very heavy pressure from Eisenhower and others to keep quiet" during the campaign. John McCloy was finally persuaded to join LBJ's "Peace Panel" of Establishment figures (including Acheson and Lovett) for a photo-opportunity 9/10/1964. (The Wise Men p644)
  
• 8/1964 Another trademark of Aynseworth's Kennedy career appeared: his penchant to attack and ridicule anyone who disagreed with him. Aynesworth published a review of Joachim Joesten's early book on the case entitled Oswald: Assassin or Fall Guy. The review is not really a review at all, it is just a string of invective directed at the author for believing such silly notions that Oswald could have been innocent and that he could have been an agent of the FBI and/or CIA. When rumors circulated that Oswald had been an FBI informant, which he apparently was, Aynesworth went to work discrediting them saying that it was all a joke he had made up --- even though he was not the source of the quite specific information.
  
• 8/1/1964 Hanoi protested the attacks on its territory by Laotian aircraft and South Vietnamese gunboats. (NYT 8/2)
  
• 8/1/1964 Maddox in the vicinity of North Vietnamese islands, around 7 miles from the mainland. Maddox picked up radio traffic from North Vietnam, which was placing a defensive ring of PT boats to prevent a repetition of the South Vietnamese attack. The North Vietnamese also monitored the Maddox's movements.
  
• 8/1/1964 FBI scouts out earthen dam six miles southwest of Philadelphia, Mississippi.
  
• 8/2/1964 At 3:40pm (3:40am Washington time), Maddox attacked in Gulf of Tonkin. A North Vietnamese commander in the area ordered three PT boats to attack the destroyer to test the destroyer's reaction. Officially, three North Vietnamese PT boats fired torpedoes and shells at the Maddox while it was on patrol 30 miles off the coast; the destroyer fired back and drove them off. Actually, the Maddox was between 4 and 10 miles from the coast during the first attack, not in international waters; the destroyer was providing cover for South Vietnamese gunboats, "manned with CIA crew" according to former CIA station chief John Stockwell, who had long been raiding the North Vietnamese coast. The Maddox's log also showed that it fired the first shot while the PT boats were still 6 miles away. Robert McNamara says that Hanoi had never made a claim on the size of its territorial waters, so the administration assumed three miles; only after the Gulf of Tonkin did Hanoi claim a 12-mile territorial limit. As it was, he says that the Maddox was more than 25 miles off the coast. (In Retrospect p130-1) The Maddox was actually the first to open fire, and some of the crew (and the ship's log) said they were not "warning shots." The PT boats continued coming and returned fire with torpedoes and machine guns. Capt Herrick: "They came at us with blood in their eyes." Planes from the nearby Ticonderoga came to their assistance. The Maddox was going to finish off the PT boats when one of the planes thought it was experiencing a malfunction, and the destroyer pulled away in case the pilot had to ditch. Only one North Vietnamese bullet struck the Maddox; this bullet would be produced by the administration to prove to Congress that the attack happened. (Truth is the First Casualty p132, 202) The admiral in charge of the US fleet in the gulf was George Stephen Morrison, father of Doors singer Jim Morrison. (LA Times 12/8/2008, NYT 12/9/2008; Adm. Morrison died Nov 17 2008 at the age of 89)
  
• 8/2/1964 Before dawn in Washington, Mac Bundy heard the first reports of the attack, but decided not to wake LBJ until more information was available.
  
• 8/2/1964 10:15am the Pentagon announced, "While on routine patrol in international waters at 020808 GCT (1608 local time) the US destroyer Maddox underwent an unprovoked attack by three PT type boats in latitude 19-40 North; longitude 106-34 East, in the Tonkin Gulf. The attacking boats launched three torpedoes and used 37mm gunfire. The Maddox answered with 5in gunfire. Shortly thereafter four F-8 (Crusader) aircraft joined in the defense of the Maddox, using Zuni rockets and 20mm strafing attacks. The PT boats were driven off, with one seen to be badly damaged and not moving, and the other two damaged and retreating slowly. No casualties or damage were sustained by Maddox or the aircraft."
  
• 8/2/1964 11:30am (Washington time), LBJ met with his advisers, decided to overlook the incident and not retaliate because the Maddox had hit the PT boats hard; Max Taylor urged retaliation. Johnson did want the destroyer to go back into the area to demonstrate that the US had a right to be there. The meeting lasted 45 minutes; they mostly wondered why the North Vietnamese would attack the US Navy. A note of protest was sent to Hanoi and another destroyer was sent into the Gulf. General Nguyen Dinh Voc, director of the Institute of Military History in Hanoi, confirmed LBJ's belief that this attack was ordered by a local commander acting on his own, not Hanoi. (NYT Magazine 8/10/1997) Johnson also decided to draft a personal message to Khrushchev and sent it over the "hot line," assuring him that the US did not want a wider war in Vietnam.
  
• 8/2/1964 Barry Goldwater declined to comment to the press, claiming a lack of information.
  
• 8/3/1964 On August 3 Roy Truly supplied the Warren Commission with an affidavit (7H591) attesting that the door in the vestibule outside the employees' lunchroom was usually closed because it was controlled by an automatic mechanism.
  
• 8/3/1964 Washington Post reported North Vietnamese claims (made on Hanoi radio shortly before the Tonkin incident) that the South had raided two islands on the night of 7/30-31. "Administration officials denied there was any shelling of North Vietnamese islands…"
  
• 8/3/1964 9:46am Robert Anderson phone conversation with LBJ. LBJ: There have been some covert operations in that area that we have been carrying on - blowing up some bridges and things of that kind, roads and so forth. So I imagine they wanted to put a stop to it. So they...fired and we responded immediately with five-inch [shells] from the destroyer and with planes overhead. And we...knock one of em out and cripple the other two. Anderson: You're going to be running against a man who's a wild man on this subject. Any lack of firmness he'll make up...You've got to do what's right for the country...we're not soft...I haven't heard any adverse criticism from anybody. But I just know that this fellow's [Goldwater] going to play all the angles."
  
• 8/3/1964 10:20am Phone call between LBJ and McNamara.
  
• 8/3/1964 11:30am LBJ gave a statement to the press that the Navy would continue patrolling the Gulf of Tonkin and was under orders to destroy any enemy craft that attacked them. No questions from reporters were permitted.
  
• 8/3/1964 Noon: the Pentagon releases to the public a chronology of the attack. Again it is stated by spokesman Robert McCloskey that the US ships were on routine patrol in international waters, but he would not give more details. He rejected as "without foundation" charges by the North Vietnamese that their islands had been attacked. Privately, in background briefings with reporters, administration officials theorized that the Communists were testing US resolve.
  
• 8/3/1964 Noon: The Maddox, joined by the destroyer C. Turner Joy, began patrolling the Tonkin Gulf again. Maddox radarman James Stankevitz recalled, "We didn't even know this South Vietnamese deal had taken place. We thought it was kind of a shady deal to be pulling on us, setting us up as ducks. The crew was very resentful of it." (Truth is the First Casualty p139)
  
• 8/3/1964 NY Times reported Defense Dept officials saying that they had no idea why the North Vietnamese patrol boats would attack the US fleet. At this time, the North Vietnamese navy consisted of 4 wooden PT boats, 12 aluminum PT boats, three subchaser patrol craft and three small gunboats.
  
• 8/3/1964 Goldwater told the press: "Does the presence of American destroyers in the area signify the possible landing of larger American ground forces? Does it mean medium bombers are going to be used to intercept supply lines?"
  
• 8/3/1964 3pm Rusk and McNamara briefed members of the Senate Foreign Relations and Armed Services committee secretly about the events of the previous days.
  
• 8/3/1964 4pm: a group of South Vietnamese patrol boats left Da Nang, and by midnight were attacking North Vietnamese island installations at Cua Ron and Cape Vinh Son. Washington was not made aware of these attacks until sometime after 8/6. Why local US commanders did not inform Washington is not known. (Truth p139)
  
• 8/4/1964 FBI supervisor Lyndal L. Shaneyfelt arrived in Dallas to collect "the desired portion of the curb" containing the "chip marks."
  
• 8/4/1964 The FBI dug up a new earthen dam on a farm southwest of Philadelphia, Miss. Just as the informant had said, the bodies of the three slain civil rights workers were found under it. The FBI soon named 21 Klansmen responsible for the crime, including Sheriff Lawrence Rainey and Deputy Cecil Price. Schwerner's family wanted to bury Mickey next to his friend James Chaney in Meridian, but the state law forbid blacks and whites to be buried in the same cemetery. At Chaney's funeral, his friend Dave Dennis (Mickey Schwerner's supervisor in COFU/CORE) spoke, originally planning to talk about nonviolence. But when he saw Chaney's younger brother Ben, rage built up inside him and he thundered, "I'm sick and tired of going to the funerals of black men who have been murdered by white men! I've got vengeance in my heart tonight...The white men who murdered James Chaney are never going to be punished...if you take it and don't do something about it, then God damn your souls! Don't bow down anymore! We want our freedom now!"
  
• 8/4/1964 7:40pm (Vietnamese time) The Maddox reported radar contact with unidentified surface vessels who were paralleling its course. The Maddox's sonar equipment and the IFF device to identify friendly ships were giving them trouble.
  
• 8/4/1964 8:36pm (Vietnamese time) Maddox established two new radar contacts with two unidentified surface and three unidentified aircraft. Fighter aircraft were launched from the Ticonderoga to rendezvous with the Maddox and Turner Joy.
  
• 8/4/1964 9:08pm (Vietnamese time) the unidentified aircraft disappeared from radar and the surface vessels remained at a distance.
  
• 8/4/1964 9:30pm (Vietnamese time) attack occurred; additional vessels appeared on the Maddox's radar and were observed to close very rapidly on the destroyers from the west and south. The night was pitch black and the weather was very bad; numerous confusing signals were picked up, and were assumed to be enemy boats. The main sonarman/gun director on the Maddox, Patrick Park, was certain that they never picked up any real evidence of enemy craft. Capt. Herrick was certain that at least one torpedo was fired. Meanwhile, the Turner Joy fired away at various "targets."
  
• 8/4/1964 9:20am (EST) the war room in the Pentagon received the first flash message that another attack was thought to be under way. Admiral Sharp requested and was granted permission to ready carrier planes for a possible retaliatory strike.
  
• 8/4/1964 9:52pm (Vietnamese time) Maddox and Turner Joy reported they were under continuous torpedo attack.
  
• 8/4/1964 10:15pm (Vietnamese time) destroyers reported they were avoiding torpedoes and had sunk one attacking patrol craft.
  
• 8/4/1964 10:42pm (Vietnamese time) destroyers reported they had sunk a second patrol craft.
  
• 8/4/1964 10:52pm (Vietnamese time) Maddox reported the destroyers were again under attack.
  
• Midnight (Vietnamese time) destroyers reported they had suffered no hits, no casualties, and that the aircraft from the Ticonderoga were illuminating the area and attacking enemy boats. Patrick N. Park, fire-control radar operator aboard the Maddox, is told by the bridge to fire at a large target spotted on radar. "Just before I pushed the trigger I realized, That's the Turner Joy. This came right with the order to open fire. I shouted back, Where is the Turner Joy?' There was a lot of yelling of Goddamn' back and forth, with the bridge telling me to fire before we lose the contact' and me yelling right back at them…I finally told them, I'm not opening fire until I know where the Turner Joy is.' The bridge got on the phone and said, Turn on your lights, Turner Joy.' Sure enough, there she was, right in the crosshairs. I had six five-inch guns right at the Turner Joy, 1500 yards away. If I had fired, it would have blown it clean out of the water." (12/2/1968 interview with Park by Joseph Goulden; Truth is the First Casualty p11)
  
• 8/4/1964 12:32am (Vietnamese time) they reported that an additional PT boat was believed to have been sunk, but poor weather was making it difficult for planes to operate.
  
• 8/4/1964 12:54am (Vietnamese time) Turner Joy reported that during the attack they had been fired upon by automatic weapons while being illuminated by search lights.
  
• 8/4/1964 1:30am (Vietnamese time) destroyers reported that attacking craft had broken off the engagement.
  
• 8/4/1964 During a meeting with Rusk, McNamara, Bundy and McCone, LBJ insisted that Hanoi had to be punished with a retaliatory strike. Targets would be shore installations associated with the PT boat attacks.
  
• 8/4/1964 12:03pm: (EST) the second attack had occurred 3 hours before, but Adm. William Mack, in a press conference, did not mention it to the press.
  
• 8/4/1964 At 1:30pm (EST) a cable from Commodore John Herrick aboard the Maddox reached the Pentagon: "Review of action makes many recorded contacts and torpedoes fired appear doubtful. Freak weather effects and overeager sonarman may have accounted for many reports. No actual visual sightings by Maddox. Suggest complete evaluation before any further action." This cable was made public during the 1968 Senate hearings.
  
• 8/4/1964 6:00pm (EST) Defense Dept issued a public statement: "A second deliberate attack was made during darkness by an undetermined number of North Vietnamese PT boats on the USS Maddox and USS C. Turner Joy while the two destroyers were cruising in company on routine patrol in the Tonkin Gulf in international waters about 65 miles from the nearest land. The attack came at 10:3pm local time (10:30am, August 4, Washington time). The PT boats were taken under fire by the destroyers and thereafter by attack aircraft from the Ticonderoga and the Constellation. The attackers were driven off with no US casualties, no hits and no damage to either destroyer. It is believed that at least two of the PT boats were sunk and two others damaged."
  
• 8/4/1964 6:45pm key congressmen were assembled at the White House for a briefing. LBJ informed them that the US would retaliate. The congressmen were briefed by McCone, Wheeler and McNamara until 8:15pm. They were admonished to keep quiet about it for the time being.
  
• 8/4/1964 8:00pm (EST) Herrick cabled: "Maddox scored no known hits and never positively identified a boat as such...Weather was overcast with limited visibility...almost total darkness throughout action...it is supposed that sonarman was hearing ship's own propeller beat." Herrick would later tell the L.A. Times (4/28/1985) he thought no torpedo was fired.
  
• 8/4/1964 8:25pm (EST) George Reedy told reporters there would be a presidential statement on national TV later that night.
  
• 8/4/1964 10:07pm (EST) the White House briefed Goldwater on the impending bombing raid.
  
• 8/4/1964 11:00pm: (EST) bombers were already on their way to bomb North Vietnam and LBJ was preparing to go on television; Vice Admiral Roy L. Johnson sent an urgent cable to the Turner Joy: "Who were witnesses, what is witness reliability? Most important that present evidence substantiating type and number of attacking forces be gathered and disseminated."
  
• 8/4/1964 11:37pm: (EST) LBJ went on national TV and told the public about the two attacks, and said that US planes were already on their way to bomb targets in the North as a retaliatory measure. Actually, the attack would not begin for another hour and 40 minutes, but if Johnson had waited any longer, the news networks would have gone off the air for the night. "Aggression by terror against the peaceful villages of South Vietnam has now been joined by open aggession on the high seas against the United States of America…We still seek no wider war." The North Vietnamese denied any involvement in the second "attack."
  
• 8/5/1964 12:02-12:30am McNamara spoke to reporters in the Pentagon, telling them that planes from the Ticonderoga and Constellation had conducted air strikes against the PT boat bases. He also said that the US was moving "substantial military reinforcements to Southeast Asia from our Pacific bases…" He repeatedly emphasized that they were on "routine patrol…between 30 and 60 miles of the North Vietnamese coast." He estimated there were between 3 and 6 PT boats. McNamara claimed not to know of any South Vietnamese raids against Northern islands, and said that US ships do not participate in any of the South Vietnamese naval operations.
  
• 8/5/1964 1:15pm (Vietnamese time) the first air attack began; another strike happened at 4:45pm.
  
• 8/5/1964 9am (EST) McNamara televised press conference: he announced that 64 US air attack sorties had been launched at four patrol-boat bases (in Hon Gay, Loc Chao, Phuc Loi and Quang Khe) and at the oil storage depot at Vinh. Two planes were lost; one pilot, Richard Sather, was killed, and the other, Everett Alvarez Jr., was captured. He was the first US pilot shot down by the North Vietnamese; he was released 8 years later.
  
• 8/5/1964 Dean Rusk did TV interviews for CBS and NBC. He said he had "no satisfactory explanation" for the attacks because the Communists "see the world in wholly different terms" from the US. On NBC, he denied that the US was involved in South Vietnamese raids: "Hanoi knows just as well as we do that our destroyers were not involved in any mission other than that was publicly announced."
  
• 8/5/1964 This morning, Sen. Morse received a telephone call from a civilian bureaucrat at the Pentagon. He suggested that Morse get hold of the logbooks of the Maddox and find out that ship's exact location in the Gulf of Tonkin. The caller told him that the ship was absolutely not on routine patrol, but was actually a spy ship connected with the South Vietnamese raids. Morse soon found out from McNamara that the logs would not be available for days; he began warning his collegaues that LBJ would try to rush the resolution through as soon as possible. Morse found most of his colleagues willing to trust Johnson. (Truth is the First Casualty 48)
  
• 8/5/1964 The President, proclaimed the New York Times, "went to the American people last night with the somber facts." The Los Angeles Times urged Americans to "face the fact that the Communists, by their attack on American vessels in international waters, have themselves escalated the hostilities."
  
• 8/5/1964 Washington Post analysis by Chalmers Roberts: "The United States turned loose its military might on North Vietnam last night to prevent the Communist leaders in Hanoi and Peking from making the mistaken decision that they could attack American ships with impunity...not a decision to escalate the war in Southeast Asia. These views came last night from official American sources who would not let themselves be otherwise identified. But there was no doubt they reflected the views of President Johnson...It was said by American sources that the attacks, clearly not accidental, could be part of some over-all plan." In 1966, professors Franz Schurmann, Peter Dale Scott and Reginald Zelnik would advance the thesis (in The Politics of Escalation) that the Gulf of Tonkin incident was created to quash a Geneva-style conference on ending the war in Vietnam, which had been agreed to by the UN, France, the USSR, North Vietnam and China.
  
• 8/5/1964 Noon: a presidential messenger brought the Tonkin Gulf Resolution to the Senate. It read, "Whereas naval units of the Communist regime in Vietnam, in violation of the Charter of the United Nations and of international law, have deliberately and repeatedly attacked United States naval vessels lawfully present in international waters, and have thereby created a serious threat to international peace; and whereas these attacks are part of a deliberate and systematic campaign of aggression that the Communist regime in North Vietnam has been waging against its neighbors and the nations joined with them in the collective defense of their freedom; and whereas the United States is assisting the peoples of Southeast Asia to protect their freedom and has no territorial, military, or political ambitions in that area, but desires only that these people should be left in peace to work out their own destinies in their own way: Now, therefore, be it resolved by the Senate and House of Representatives of the United States of America in Congress assembled, That the Congress approves and supports the determination of the President, as Commander in Chief, to take all necessary measures to repel any armed attack against the forces of the United States and to prevent further aggression. Section 2. The United States regards as vital to its national interest and to world peace the maintenance of international peace and security in southeast Asia. Consonant with the Constitution of the United States and the Charter of the United Nations and in accordance with its obligations under the Southeast Asia Collective Defense Treaty, the United States is, therefore, prepared, as the President determines, to take all necessary steps, including the use of armed force, to assist any member or protocol state of the Southeast Asia Collective Defense Treaty requesting assistance in defense of its freedom. Section 3. This resolution shall expire when the President shall determine that the peace and security of the area is reasonably assured by international conditions created by action of the United Nations or otherwise, except that it may be terminated earlier by concurrent resolution of the Congress." The final 13 words were added at the suggestion of Sen. Russell, who wanted to give Congress a way of withdrawing its endorsement of the resolution in needed.
  
• 8/5/1964 Sen. Morse told the Senate, that bombing mainland North Vietnam required a declaration of war from Congress, and suggested that South Vietnamese raids may have provoked the attack. "I have been briefed many times, as have the other members of the Foreign Relations Committee, and all this time witness after witness from the State Department and from the Pentagon have admitted under examination that they had no evidence of any foreign troops in South Vietnam from North Vietnam, Red China, Cambodia or anywhere else." Sen. Fulbright disagreed, saying that the administration had been forthcoming about the incident: "I do not believe there has been any tendency to withhold anything." Morse received hundreds of telegrams that day in response to his speech, nearly all of them favorable.
  
• 8/5/1964 After the first US air strikes on North Vietnam, LBJ bragged to reporters, "I didn't just screw Ho Chi Minh. I cut his pecker off." (The Best and the Brightest, Halberstam)
  
• 8/5/1964 A piece of curb from Dealey Plaza with a bullet mark in it, near where James Tague stood, is removed by the FBI under the direction of Lyndal Shaneyfelt.
  
• 8/6/1964 LBJ met with Mayor Daley about the possibility of race riots breaking out in Chicago. (White House Diary 189)
  
• 8/6/1964 "McNamara, Rusk and Wheeler testified before the Senate Foreign Relations and Armed Services Committees. Several Senators disputed the administration's version of the events of the previous days. McNamara said that 8/3 had been an "uneventful" day. Rusk emphasized that the SEATO treaty "does not cover any action to resist aggression that is not Communist in origin…it is directed solely against Communist' aggression…" He assured the Committee that the administration would continue to be forthcoming about all future events in Southeast Asia. Fulbright asked no questions, only praised the administration for its handling of the situation. Sen. Morse again accused the US destroyers of being involved in the South Vietnamese raids. Rusk grew somewhat angry, insisting that the Communists were the aggressors around the world, while the US was just trying to help other countries: "We have none of them in any American empire." McNamara: "Our Navy played absolutely no part in, was not associated with, was not aware of any South Vietnamese actions, if there were any. I want to make that very clear." This reponse and Morse's comments about it were censored by the Pentagon in its published report of the hearings 11/1966. McNamara admitted that their was still confusion about the night attack. Rusk told Sen. Ervin that the US was helping Vietnam because the Saigon government had asked us for help, not because of obligations under the SEATO treaty. But by 1966 Rusk would be using the SEATO treaty as a former obligation of the US to be in Vietnam. McNamara told Sen. Thurmond, "It is our objective to move our forces as rapidly out of Vietnam as that government can maintain its independence and as rapidly as the North Vietnamese stop their attempts to subvert it." Morse and Rusk argued about Rusk's off-the-record statement 8/2, and whether he had said then that the US ships were within 11 miles of the North Vietnam. Finally, the hearing ended, and with only Morse dissenting, the Resolution was sent to the floor for a vote. The administration was pressing hard for immediate approval, without delay or amendments.
  
• 8/6/1964 In Senate debate, Morse and Sen. Lausche argued over whether administration officials had actually admitted to knowing about South Vietnamese raids against North Vietnamese islands. Lausche: There is no testimony to that effect whatsoever. That is an inference made by the Senator from Oregon as to the… Morse: Get permission from the State Dept or the Pentagon to publicly release the whole of the transcript without a single word deleted, and let the country know what they said. Senator Daniel Brewster of Maryland expressed concern that the Resolution might be used to introduce US combat troops into Vietnam. Sen. Fulbright replied, "There is nothing in the resolution, as I read it, that contemplates it. I agree with the Senator that that is the last thing we would want to do. However, the language of the resolution would not prevent it.""
  
• 8/6/1964 Chinese government announced, "Should US imperialism at any moment invade the DRV's territory or its territorial waters and air space, the Chinese people will be honor bound to give resolute support to the Vietnamese people."
  
• 8/6/1964 McNamara said in a press conference, "I think it probable that the Communist Chinese will introduce some combat aircraft into North Vietnam in support of them; North Vietnam does not possess any combat aircraft of its own…"
  
• 8/6/1964 THE STATE OF TEXAS vs. JACK RUBENSTEIN -- Judge Brown refuses to approve fifteen bills of exception.
  
• 8/7/1964 Richard Helms wrote an affidavit for the WC.
  
• 8/7/1964 Further debate in the Senate: Sen. Gruening denounced the resolution as "a predated declaration of war." Sen. Morse predicted "that history will record that we have made a great mistake…we are in effect giving the President…warmaking powers in the absence of a declaration of war." Altogether, the Senate debated the resolution for a total of 8 hours.
  
• 8/7/1964 Congress passed Gulf of Tonkin Resolution. It was approved by the Senate 88-2 (with only Morse and Gruening dissenting), by the House unanimously. "Even while he was blasting Goldwater as a warmonger, LBJ had made up his mind to escalate the conflict by bombing North Vietnam - a fact he later confided to Charles W. Roberts of Newsweek...he ordered his national security adviser, McGeorge Bundy, to draw up a resolution which would give him a free hand in Vietnam. The idea was to send it to Congress for approval at the proper time. Bundy later confirmed there was such a draft, explaining, 'We had always anticipated...the possibility that things might take a more drastic turn at any time.'" (It Didn't Start with Watergate p183) McNamara says that the reason why the resolution was prepared a couple of months in advance was because of the deteriorating situation in Vietnam, and because they had briefly considered escalating the war effort in June 1964, but then decided against it. (In Retrospect p121-22) George Ball told the BBC in 1977 that "Many of the people who were associated with the war...were looking for any excuse to initiate bombing...The DESOTO [covert action] patrol [raids] was primarily for provocation...There was a feeling that if the destroyer got into some trouble, that would provide the provocation we needed." William Bundy said in the same interview that the crisis had not been "engineered"; he believed that both Hanoi and Washington miscalculated.
  
• 8/27/1964 In the New York Times today, of the 27 editorials excerpted fully 24 endorsed the bombing without reservation, 2 expressed minor reservations, and one was noncommittal.
  
• 8/8/1964 House passed LBJ's anti-poverty bill 226-184.
  
• 8/8/1964 French paper Le Monde commented that the US was ignoring the influence of its covert raids in provoking the North Vietnamese attacks.
  
• 8/10/1964 Lou Harris poll found that 85% of the country approved of the reprisal attacks on North Vietnam. In July, 58% of the public had criticized LBJ's handling of the war. That changed to 72% favorable after the Gulf of Tonkin. All year, polls had showed the public felt LBJ would handle the war better than Goldwater.
  
• 8/11/1964 Hoover memo to NY office, granting authority to bug MLK while he was at the Democratic Convention.
  
• 8/11/1964 After drinking an unknown amount of beer and vodka, John Franklin Elrod winds up at the Shelby County sheriff's Office in downtown Memphis. While there he volunteers information that he had been a cell mate of LHO's on November 22, 1963. The FBI sends two agents -- Norman L. Casey and Francil B. Cole, to interview Elrod. The agents dictate a two-page report summarizing Elrod's story. Dallas Police Department files discovered in 1992 will confirm that Elrod was in the Dallas City Jail on the day of the assassination.
  
• 8/12/1964 LBJ made a speech to the American Bar Association in NYC in which he argued that the US had a moral duty to help weaker nations resist aggression. He also attacked "others" who wanted to enlarge the war in Vietnam and "to supply American boys to do the job that Asian boys should do...Such action would offer no solution at all to the real problem of Vietnam."
  
• 8/12/1964 The CIA reports: "American citizen Waldemar Boris Karapatnitsky last known address West Berlin, visited relatives USSR 1959, and believed hospitalized Botkina Hospital Moscow in bed next to OSWALD October 21, 1959, to October 28, 1959. Subject a retired machinery importer-exporter born January 14, 1886, Ukraine ... Subject denounced 1950 by neighbor as communist based on conversations between informant and SAC. No further derog. traces." From 1958 to 1962, Counter-Intelligence HT-LINGUAL will intercept 15 letters mailed either to the Soviet Union from the United States by Boris Karapatnitsky, or mailed from the Soviet Union and received by him in the United States. The CIA is reluctant to take the testimony of Boris Karapatnitsky because of "complications that would later arise," and discusses the problem with David Slawson. David Slawson tells the CIA he will get the State Department to take Boris Karapatnitsky's statement. From the State Department report: "A Mission Officer called on Boris Karapatnitsky on August 14, 1964, under pretext of checking residences of older U.S. citizens residing in Berlin. Karapatnitsky said he thought he knew why the officer had come and stated he had intended to visit consular section for advice concerning problem. He described problem as follows: He had been informed by a friend in New York that a Secret Service agent, representing the Warren Commission, had inquired about him asking Kara had been in USSR certain time and if he had known OSWALD. Showed Consular Officer letter from friend dated August 10, 1964, surmising that Sovs had furnished names of all patients in hospital at time of OSWALD'S hospitalization and that he had been traced from there. Kara said he had never heard of OSWALD until after assassination of President Kennedy. He volunteered there had been only one American in Karapatnitsky's room in hospital but he was 69 year old industrialist. In response to repeated he had heard nothing about OSWALD in the USSR and could recall no reason to believe their paths have crossed."
  
• 8/13/1964 Mac Bundy sent a memo to LBJ admitting that "South Vietnam is not going well." He worried about Saigon's possible collapse, but wouldn't recommend anything specific other than refusing to negotiate with Hanoi.
  
• 8/14/1964 Time and LIFE magazines had blatantly inaccurate stories about the second Gulf of Tonkin "attack." From Life, a story "pieced together by Life correspondent Bill Wise with the help of US Navy Intelligence and the Department of Defense": "A few of [the PT boats] amazed those aboard the Maddox by brazenly using searchlights to light up the destroyers thus making ideal targets of themselves. They also peppered the ships with more 37mm fire, keeping heads on the US craft low but causing no real damage." From Time: "The night glowed eerily with the nightmarish glare of air-dropped flares and boats' searchlights. For 3 ½ hours the small boats attacked in pass after pass. Ten enemy torpedoes sizzled through the water…Two of the enemy boats went down. Then, at 1:30am, the remaining PTs ended the fight, roared off through the black night to the north." Maddox radarman James Stankevitz recalled four years later, "I couldn't believe it, the way they blew that story out of proportion. It was something out of Male Magazine, the way they described that battle.' All we needed were naked women running up and down the deck. We were disgusted, because it just wasn't true. It didn't happen that way…" (Truth is the First Casualty p158)
  
• 8/14/1964 Vice Adm. Roy L. Johnson and Adm. Thomas Moorer wrote a report on the Tonkin incident, and agreed that the night attack definitely occurred. Only the conclusions were made public, not the report itself.
  
• 8/14/1964 JCS told McNamara that plans for air strikes on North Vietnam and the Ho Chi Minh Trail should be prepared.
  
• 8/17/1964 Marina Oswald discovers bus tickets for Mexican bus company in brown suitcase for trip from Mexico City to Laredo, Texas on 10/30/63.
  
• 8/18/1964 Max Taylor cabled from Saigon to propose "a carefully orchestrated bombing attack" on North Vietnam beginning 1/1/1965.
  
• 8/20/1964 J. Edgar Hoover writes to J. Lee Rankin: "... it should be noted that the firing pin of this rifle has been used extensively as shown by wear on the nose or striking portion of the firing pin and, further, the presence of rust on the firing pin and its spring may be an indication that the firing pin had not been recently changed prior to November 22, 1963. This rust would have been disturbed had the firing pin been changed subsequent to the formation of the rust. In this regard, the firing pin and spring of this weapon are well oiled and the rust present necessarily must have been formed prior to the oiling of these parts. No oil has been applied to the weapon by the FBI; however, it is not known whether it was oiled by any other person having this rifle in his possession. It was noted during the examination of the firing pin that numerous shots have been fired with the weapon in its present well-oiled condition as shown by the presence of residues on the interior surfaces of the bolt and on the firing pin. The Laboratory has no record of any outlet where spare parts, including firing pins, can be obtained for rifles such as Commission Number 139. In accordance with Mr. Redlich's telephonic request and in the absence of any indication that the firing pin of the rifle was changed, no investigative survey was conducted to ascertain whether any such outlets exist in the United States."
  
• 8/20/1964 AFFIDAVIT IN ANY FACT My name is J.L. Popplewell. I entered the Dallas Police Department January 11th, 1957. I have worked the fifth floor jail most of this time. The 23rd day of November, 1963, at 3PM, I was assigned to guard the area in front of Lee Harvey Oswald's cell, watching all of his movements to see that he didn't hurt himself. At about 4PM Lt. Lord called on the jail phone and instructed me to put Oswald on the phone. Oswald asked the operator for two telephone numbers - then asked me for pencil and paper while in the telephone booth. I tore a small piece of plain paper, about two by three inches from the telephone record sheet that hung outside the telephone booth; then handed this piece of paper and my pencil to him. Oswald wrote a number on this paper and then returned my pencil to me. Then he asked if he could call later. Oswald did not get his call through at this time. I called Lt. Lord and informed him that Oswald did not get his party and wanted to call again later. About 8PM Lt. Lord came up to the jail and told me to let Oswald use the phone. I was instructed to step back away from the booth so the phone call could be private. From this location I watched the prisoner talking to someone. He used the phone about thirty minutes. I asked Oswald if he got his call through and he answered, yes. I then returned him to his cell. About four months ago on a Monday, I received a call from an FBI agent who wanted to know about a slip of paper with a phone number on it. This was supposed to have been in Oswald's pocket when he died. The agent asked if we allowed prisoners to keep phone numbers on their person. I said that if a call wasn't completed the first time, we could let them write the number down and keep it for a later call. The agent asked me the size of the paper I might have given Oswald to write on. I told him it was probably torn off of a telephone record sheet hanging outside the telephone booth; that the paper was plain, unmarked, about two by three inches. The telephone sheet is usually used for writing names of prisoners who use the phone, but due to the large volume of prisoners that weekend, it was possible I missed writing Oswald's name down on it. I have been unable to locate a sheet with his name on it.
  
• 8/20/1964 LBJ signs Economic Opportunity Act into law.
  
• 8/21/1964 Sen. Wayne Morse complained in a Senate speech that the US had sent gunboats to attack two North Vietnamese islands before the Gulf of Tonkin.
  
• 8/21/1964 THE STATE OF TEXAS vs. JACK RUBENSTEIN -- Defense counsel files bystander bills of exception -- a "bystander" filing being necessary when the presiding judge has denied approval of the initial filing of the bills of exception.
  
• 8/22/1964 RFK announces his candidacy for the United States Senate today in New York. LBJ, now headed for a landslide against Barry Goldwater, performs on platforms with RFK. In public, LBJ hugs RFK and calls him "ma boy." RFK will win by a little over 700,000 votes, although Johnson carries New York by 2.7 million. LBJ's participation has probably secured his Senate seat for RFK, but Kennedy refrains from mentioning LBJ in his victory statement.
  
• 8/24/1964 St. Louis, Missouri: the first Catholic Mass ever performed in English was done by Rev. Frederick R. McManus of Catholic University.
  
• 8/24/1964 Attorney General Robert Kennedy told House immigration subcommittee members, "I would say for the Asia-Pacific Triangle it [immigration] would be approximately 5,000, Mr. Chairman, after which immigration from that source would virtually disappear; 5,000 immigrants would come the first year, but we do not expect that there would be any great influx after that." (U.S. Congress, House, 1964 hearings, p. 418.) And in a letter to The New York Times, he called for repeal of the national origins system: "The time has come for us to insist that the quota system be replaced by the merit system...It deprives us of able immigrants whose contributions we need...It would increase the amount of authorized immigration by only a fraction." (The New York Times, Aug. 24, 1964, p. 26.)
  
• 8/26/1964 LBJ and Humphrey are nominated at the Democratic convention. Sen. Fulbright seconded LBJ's nomination, praising his "sense of responsibility" in foreign affairs and citing the Tonkin Gulf incident as evidence of his "restraint." A top official of one of the news networks got a call from LBJ telling him to "get your goddamn cameras off the niggers out front and back on the speaker's stand inside, goddamn it!" (Accidental President p19)
  
• 8/26/1964 L.J. Lewis, an eyewitness at the scene of Tippit's murder, who was interviewed by two FBI agents on January 21, 1964 submits an affidavit to the Warren Commission in which he states that the FBI report submitted by the two agents is incorrect.
  
• 8/26/1964 The FBI files a report on this date concerning assassination suspect Gilberto Policarpo Lopez who is now in Cuba. It contains an interview with Lopez's cousin, Guillermo Serpa Rodriguez, conducted in Key West, Florida. Rodriguez says that Lopez had come to the United States after Castro took over in Cuba, had returned to Cuba after about a year because he was homesick, then returned to the U.S.A. in 1960 or 1961 to avoid the Cuban draft. According to the report, Lopez told Rodriguez of his plans to return to Cuba in November 1963, saying he was afraid of getting drafted into the U.S. military. This report also contains an interview with Lopez's wife, also conducted in Key West. She says that Lopez was hospitalized at Jackson Memorial Hospital in early 1963 in Miami because he had begun to suffer from epileptic attacks. He was also treated for the condition by doctors in Key West and Coral Gables. In the opinion of Lopez's wife, his seizures were brought on by worry for his family in Cuba. She says that Lopez has written her since his return to Cuba, telling her that his trip had been made with financial assistance from "an organization in Tampa."
  
• 8/27/1964 FBI agents submit a second report to the Warren Commission regarding the testimony of L.J. Lewis in which they say Lewis wishes to make certain "clarifications" regarding his original statement. The timing of the events, as Lewis says he saw them occur, is STILL incorrect. Thus after Lewis has submitted an affidavit correcting the original FBI report, agents submit a second report -- similarly incorrect -- which also conforms to the Warren Commission's accepted narrative.
  
• 8/28/1964 CE 3045: letter from Rankin to Hoover, requesting an investigation of Sylvia Odio's story. "It is a matter of some importance to the Commission that Mrs Odio's allegations either be proved or disproved...We are also concerned about the possibility that Oswald may have left New Orleans on September 24, 1963, instead of September 25, 1963 as has been previously thought. In that connection, Marina Oswald has recently advised us that her husband told her he intended to leave New Orleans the very next day following her departure on September 23, 1963. She has also indicated that he told her an unemployment check would be forwarded to Mrs Ruth Paine's address in Irving from his post office box in New Orleans. We also have testimony that Oswald left his apartment on the evening of September 24, 1963, carrying two suitcases. It also seems impossible to us that Oswald would have gone all the way back to the Winn-Dixie Store at 4303 Magazine Street to cash the unemployment check which he supposedly picked up at the Lafayette Branch of the Post Office when he could have cashed it at Martin's Restaurant, where he had previously cashed many of his Reily checks and one unemployment check. That is particularly true if he received the check on September 25, 1963, as previously thought, and had left his apartment with his suitcases the evening before." (H 26 595) No new information was turned up about this by the FBI, but the WR stated as a fact that Oswald had left on 9/25/1963.
  
• 8/28/1964 Internal FBI memo from Rosen to Belmont: "Rankin advised because of the circumstances that now exist there was a serious question in the minds of the Commission as to whether or not the palm print impression that has been obtained from the Dallas Police Department is a legitimate latent palm print impression removed from the rifle barrel or whether it was obtained from some other source and that for this reason this matter needs to be resolved." This was declassified in 1978.
  
• 8/28/1964 Federal government passed a law making it a federal crime to kill, assault or kidnap the President, Vice-President and certain officials.
  
• 8/29/1964 In a speech in Stonewall, Texas, LBJ attacked the idea of bombing North Vietnam and escalating the war, "and result in our committing a good many American boys to fighting a war that I think ought to be fought by the boys of Asia..."
  
• 8/29/1964 Cartha DeLoach wrote a report about LBJ's use of the FBI to infiltrate and monitor the various elements of the Democratic Party during the 1964 convention. "...we utilized a highly successful cover through cooperation of the [deleted] furnished us credentials. I selected several members of this squad to use this cover. As an example, one of our 'reporters' was able to gain the confidence [deleted]....One of our [deleted] successfully established contact with [deleted] Saturday night, August 22nd, and maintained this relationship throughout the course of the entire Convention...proved to be a highly valuable source of information since [deleted] was constantly trying to incite racial groups to violence...we established a secondary command post at the Convention Hall Rotunda operated by an Agent using his 'reporter' cover...the boardwalk was the center of agitation by dissident elements...We necessarily kept these people under close observation." They wiretapped MLK to keep track of "plans" to "disrupt the orderly progress of the Convention." Bill Moyers and Walter Jenkins worked closely with the FBI on these operations. All of these things went on without the knowledge of Bobby Kennedy, the Secret Service and the local police, indicating that these groups were more of a political risk than a true security risk.
  
• 8/30/1964 Congress passed a law making it a federal offense to knowingly "destroy or mutilate a Selective Service registration card."
  
• 8/31/1964 Almost as the Report was going to press and more than nine months following the assassination, the Commission wrote the FBI Dallas office asking that Roy S. Truly, manager of the Depository, "be interviewed to ascertain if he knows of any curtain rods having been found in the TSBD building after November 22, 1963." The FBI reported, ". . . He stated that it would be customary for any discovery of curtain rods to immediately be called to his attention and that he has received no information to the effect that any curtain rods were found . . ." (Exhibit 2640, 25H899). (Weisberg, Whitewash)
  
• 8/31/1964 The New York Post reported: "Investigative agencies have spent many hours and interviewed hundreds of witnesses since the Nov. 22 assassination trying to trace Oswald's steps on the Mexico trip. It is known, for instance, that he was seen in a Dallas bus station at 6pm Sept. 25 and that he crossed the border at Nuevo Laredo next day." ('Bus Stub Traces Oswald in Mexico') The WC never refuted this claim. Posner says that Oswald was very talkative on the bus ride to Mexico since "he felt he had no reason to be secretive any longer since he would soon be in Cuba..."