Deep Politics Timeline

[Tracy Riddle]

• 11/1964 In this month's Harpers magazine was the famous essay, "The Paranoid Style of American Politics," by historian and public intellectual Richard Hofstadter. Appearing in the wake of President John F. Kennedy's assassination and Arizona Senator Barry Goldwater's Republican presidential nomination, the tract remains emblematic of liberal anxiety toward serious and in many cases unresolved questions regarding the forces behind American governance. "The Paranoid Style" overall helped establish the term "conspiracy theory" as perhaps the most powerful epithet in the American political lexicon. "American politics has often been an arena for angry minds," Hofstadter wrote. "In recent years, we have seen angry minds at work, mainly among extreme right-wingers, who have now demonstrated, in the Goldwater movement, how much political leverage can be got out of the animosities and passions of a small minority. But, behind this, I believe, there is a style of mind that is far from new, and that is not necessarily right-wing. I call it the paranoid style, simply because no other word adequately evokes the sense of heated exaggeration, suspiciousness, and conspiratorial fantasy that I have in mind."
  
• 11/1964 This month's issue of Readers Digest, Nixon wrote an article ("Cuba, Castro and John F. Kennedy") about his involvement with the anti-Castro programs. He discussed his meeting with Castro 4/1960: "After 3 1/2 hours of discussion, I summed up my impressions in this way - he looked like a revolutionary, talked like an idealistic college professor and reacted like a communist...At the conclusion of our conference I wrote a four-page secret memorandum, and sent copies to President Eisenhower, Secretary Herter and Allen Dulles...My conclusion was, 'Castro is either incredible naive about communism or is under communist discipline.'" Nixon says that most of the State Dept did not view Castro as a communist. "By early 1960 President Eisenhower reached the conclusion that Castro was an agent of international communism and a menace to peace in this hemisphere. In a top-secret meeting in his office, at which I was present, he authorized the CIA to organize and train Cuban exiles for the eventual purpose of freeing their homeland from Castro's communist rule." Nixon recalled that he had to appear "soft" on Cuba during the presidential debates with JFK to protect the security of the invasion. "...as had happened in the Eisenhower administration, a sharp difference of opinion about Castro developed among President Kennedy's advisers. One group of activists urged him to go forward with the invasion plan. His liberal advisers...advised that the United States should either try to get along with Castro or find some other method of dealing with him...in the end the soft-liners won their point and, by last-minute compromises, doomed the operation to failure." He met with Allen Dulles during the landing, and Dulles told him "Everything is lost. The Cuban invasion is a total failure."
  
• 11/1/1964 The VC attacked Bien Hoa air base outside Saigon with artillery. After inflicting substantial damage and casualties on US forces (4 dead, 12 wounded), they withdrew undetected. JCS chairman Wheeler told McNamara that if LBJ wouldn't escalate in Vietnam, then withdrawal was the only other possibility. Taylor recommended a retaliatory air strike, but LBJ refused.
  
• 11/2/1964 LBJ sets up a working group under Assistant Secretary of State William Bundy to review the Vietnam War policy alternatives. It included Vice Adm. Lloyd M. Mustin, CIA man Harold Ford, and John T. McNaughton. The Working Group will eventually conclude: "We cannot guarantee to maintain a noncommunist South Vietnam short of committing ourselves to whatever military action would be required to defeat North Vietnam and probably Communist China militarily. Such a commitment would involve high risks of a major conflict in Asia, which could not be confined to air and naval action but would almost inevitably involve a Korean-scale ground action and possibly even the use of nuclear weapons at some point."
  
• 11/2/1964 Lawyer Vincent Salandria writes an extensive criticism of the Warren Report in The Legal Intelligencer.
  
• 11/2/1964 A Measure of the Achievement Herbert L. Packer The Nation, 2 November 1964 (an article defending the WC)
  
• 11/3/1964 LBJ elected over Goldwater by 61% to 38.5% margin. The 89th Congress contained 68 Democrats in the Senate and 295 in the House (with 140 Republicans, a loss of 38 for the GOP). The GOP lost 2 Senate seats, but picked up a net gain of one governor's seat. 91 new Democrats were elected to Congress that year; voter turnout was 62%. LBJ got 43 million votes (486 electoral) to Goldwater's 27 million (52 electoral); Eric Hass (Socialist-Labor) got 45,187 votes; Clifton DeBarry (Socialist Workers) got 32,701; Other 258,794. The two parties spent a total of $37.5 million on the presidential race. Newcomers in Congress included Sens. Harry Byrd Jr., former film star George Murphy. In the Georgia House of Representatives, Julian Bond (a black civil rights leader) won a seat but was blocked from taking office because of his opposition to the Vietnam War. The Supreme Court would rule 12/5/1966 that Bond's rights had been violated.
  
• 11/3/1964 Maxwell Taylor told McNamara that he feared the JCS was moving away from the principle of having the South Vietnamese "fight their own war."
  
• 11/3/1964 A high-level committee headed by William Bundy met, and recommended bombing of North Vietnam.
  
• 11/4/1964 James Reston wrote in the NYT: "Barry Goldwater has not only lost the Republican election yesterday, but the conservative cause as well. He has wrecked his party for a long time to come..."
  
• 11/4/1964 Discussing LBJ's choices following election, asks: "Will the attorney general regain control over the communications of the Federal Bureau of Investigation, or will the FBI retain the independent access it has had to the White House for the last ten months?" New York Times, James Reston
  
• 11/4/1964 Louis Farrakhan, known now as Louis X, makes the following statement in an issue of Muhammad Speaks: "The die is set, and Malcolm [X] shall not escape, especially after such evil, foolish talk about his benefactor, Elijah Muhammad, in trying to rob him of the divine glory which Allah had bestowed upon him. Such a man as Malcolm is worthy of death, and would have met with death if it had not been for Muhammad's confidence in Allah for victory over his enemies."
  
• 11/8/1964 The Meridian (Miss.) Star recommended to citizens that they not talk to FBI agents. But numerous Mississippians did talk, including hundreds of Klansmen.
  
• 11/10/1964 Oakland Tribune's Warren Duffee quoted Nixon in an interview as saying that the GOP had "gone too far right" and should move to the center. "I will discourage - I will not tolerate - any activity on behalf of myself by anyone else for 1968."
  
• 11/10/1964 Bundy's working group wrote a draft report that concluded that full military escalation to save Saigon could be very costly, and would require ground troops.
  
• 11/18/1964 DeLoach memo to Hoover, expressing LBJ's concern that some of RFK's people who worked on his Senate campaign were being re-employed at the Justice Department.
  
• 11/18/1964 J. Edgar Hoover summons a contingent of the Women's National Press Club, and, after rambling through chapter and verse to repudiate the notion that the Bureau has done nothing in the civil rights field, refers to Martin Luther King's complaints in 1962 "In view of King's attitude and his continued criticism of the FBI on this point," Hoover says, "I consider King to be the most notorious liar in the country." Off the record, he stated, "He is one of the lowest characters in the country."(Church report) Later this month, LBJ will personally contact Hoover and order him to patch things up with King. Hoover also charges the Warren Commission with "a classic case of Monday morning quarterbacking" for daring to criticize the FBI.
  
• 11/18/1964 AP, Houston - Aaron Henry, NAACP leader, says FBI agents in south general not in sympathy with civil rights. "I'll go farther than that. J. Edgar Hoover himself is not in tune with civil rights."
  
• 11/19/1964 Major media report J. Edgar Hoover calling Martin Luther King, Jr. "most notorious liar in-the country." Washington Post quoted Hoover saying that he didn't like "wet nursing" those "who go down to reform the South."
  
• 11/19/1964 McNamara announced the further closing of 95 military bases and installations which would save $477 million a year.
  
• 11/20/1964 NY Times quoted King's reponse to Hoover: "I cannot conceive of Mr. Hoover making a statement like this without being under extreme pressure. He has apparently faltered under the awesome burden, complexities and responsibilities of his office."
  
• 11/20/1964 UPI Atlanta - Dr. Martin Luther King said yesterday that J. Edgar Hoover "has apparently faltered under the awesome burden, complexities and responsibilities of his office." See also Chronicle editorial same date, also New York Times version of story, same date. Times editorial, calls for J. Edgar Hoover's retirement. San Francisco Chronicle, UPI
  
• 11/20/1964 THE STATE OF TEXAS vs. JACK RUBENSTEIN -- Defense counsel files fourth motion for extension of time to file statement of facts. Judge Brown grants ten-day extension. Judge Brown also signs statement of facts.
  
• 11/20/1964 In San Marcos, Texas, President Johnson makes a speech at Southwest Texas State Teachers College where he once worked his way to a college degree as a student and part-time janitor. He says: "I have traveled a long way from this college to the office I now occupy. In few times -- yes, in few nations, in man's journey, has it been possible for any man to travel such a road."
  
• 11/20/1964 Hoover lashed out in an internal memo to the Bureau's number three man, Deputy Associate Director Alan Belmont: 'I can't understand why we are unable to get the true facts before the public. We can't even get our accomplishments published. We are never taking the aggressive, but above lies [i.e., King's charges against the Bureau and Hoover] remain unanswered.' Later that same dayand it would be reasonable to surmise it was in response to Hoover's outburstSullivan slipped a piece of untraceable unwatermarked paper into an old, also untraceable, typewriter, and composed and crudely typed a letter to King: "King, look into your heart. You know, you are a complete fraud and a greater liability to all of us Negroes. White people in this country have enough frauds of their own but I am sure they don't have one at this time that is anywhere near your equal. You are no clergyman and you know it. I repeat that you are a colossal fraud and an evil, vicious one at that….King, like all frauds your end is approaching. You could have been our greatest leader….But you are done. Your honorary degrees, your Nobel Prize (what a grim farce) and other awards will not save you. King, I repeat you are done….The American public, the church organizations that have been helpingProtestants, Catholics and Jews will know you for what you arean evil beast. So will others who have backed you. You are done. King, there is only one thing left for you to do. You know what it is. You have just 34 days in which to do (this exact number has been selected for a specific reason, it has definite practical significance). You are done. There is but one way out for you. You better take it before your filthy fraudulent self is bared to the nation." When he had finished typing, Sullivan placed the note in a package containing a reel of tape. Earlier that day, Sullivan had had the FBI labs prepare a composite tape of the most salacious episodes recorded by microphones hidden in King's hotel. The tape contained bawdy conversations between King and his friends, sexual conversations between King and several different female sexual partners, and soundsmattress creaking, groans and criesassociated with sexual intercourse. The next morning Sullivan handed the package to an agent, told him to fly to Miami, and mail the package to King at his Atlanta SCLC office. The package was opened, as it happened, by King's wife Coretta. She often received recordings of King's speeches, and assumed that this was another. She listened to part of it, quickly recognizing that this was something different, and then she read the threatening note. She called King. Then she, King, Ralph Abernathy, Andrew Young and Joseph Lowery listened to it all. They immediately realized that the source had to be the FBI. Some of King's friends thought the purpose had been to blackmail King into declining the Nobel Prize. Others thought the tapes were intended to goad Coretta into divorcing King. A third theory, and the most plausible, was that Sullivan was trying to put the thought of suicide in King's mind. 'They are out to break me,' King said. 'They are out to get me, harass me, break my spirit.' He was right. The FBI was trying to destroy him, cruelly using 'the content of his character' against him. And even after King's death, the Bureau continued its assault on his name and memory. Whenever there were calls to honor the fallen civil rights leader, Hoover was sure to counter with an unsolicited missive alluding to King's character flaws and his associations with Communists.
  
• 11/21/1964 Four Days in November debuted today in American theaters. A two-hour, high-quality documentary produced and directed by Mel Stuart for David Wolper productions. Narrated by Richard Basehart, score by Elmer Bernstein, made up mostly of newsreel footage, with some recreations in Dallas to simulate Oswald's movements (the same manner as the film Rise and Fall of the Third Reich). Sylvia Meagher saw the film several times; "On viewing the picture for the first time in 1965, I was impressed by the quality, volume and variety of the sound track: it seemed exactly as if one were hearing the event in person, standing right there or riding in the motorcade. And when the Presidential car turned on to Elm Street in the newsreel, I expected, with rising excitement, to hear the actual 'crack!' of the first shot. Instead, both the film and the sound stopped abruptly, and a still photograph showing the President after he was shot in the head [the Moorman photo] was projected onto the screen...if the original unedited sound track recorded [other sounds]...why couldn't it resolve the problem of how many shots were fired, and of the interval between the shots?" (Accessories After the Fact p24-5) There is no mention of anyone hearing shots from the grassy knoll, and no footage is shown of people running in that direction; Four Days sticks closely to the official story. Film footage of the rifle being discovered is a highlight. (The film had a New York premiere on October 7, 1964, a month-and-a-half prior to its general USA release date.) "Four Days" received a significant amount of attention and was, in fact, nominated for an Academy Award (for "Best Documentary Feature" of 1964). Via several re-creations of the actual Dallas events (using some of the people who were directly involved, such as Buell Wesley Frazier, Linnie Mae Randle, Johnny Brewer, and William Whaley) Assassination footage shown: Orville Nix's films of the motorcade entering Dealey Plaza, the fatal head shot followed by Secret Service Agent Clint Hill climbing on top of the limousine and the post-shooting confusion at the Plaza; Mary Moorman's photo taken just a fraction of a second after the fatal shot. The Zapruder film is not shown.
  
• 11/21/1964 An FBI-drafted, anonymous letter was sent to MLK at the SCLC office in Atlanta, where his wife frequently opened the mail addressed to him: "King, look into your heart. You know you are a complete fraud and a great liability to all of us Negroes...You are no clergyman and you know it...you are a colossal fraud and an evil, vicious one at that. You could not believe in God and act as you do...you end is approaching...you are done. Your 'honorary' degrees, your Nobel Prize (what a grim farce) and other awards will not save you King..." The letter made reference to King's sexual activities and included a tape medley of surveillances from various hotel rooms. "The American public, the church organizations that have been helping...will know you for what you are - an evil, abnormal beast....there is only one thing left for you to do. You know what it is...There is but one way out for you. You better take it before your filthy, abnormal fraudulent self is bared to the nation." The letter stated he should kill himself before he was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize. Belmont and Sullivan later told Curt Gentry that this was done because the FBI was concerned about King's adultery. (The Man and the Secrets 572) Some would later point out that Hoover had been guilty of sending "obscene" materials through the mails. But MLK would not find out about the mail until early January 1965, when his wife opened the box and called him about it.
  
• 11/22/1964 Richard Russell visits LBJ at his Texas ranch. They decide it's best that they don't go deer hunting today.
  
• 11/23/1964 Supreme Court overturned Louisiana District Attorney Jim Garrison's libel conviction on the ground that "speech concerning public affairs is more than self-expression; it is the essence of self-government."
  
• 11/23/1964 The 26 volumes of testimony and exhibits from the Warren Commission are released.
  
• 11/23/1964 LBJ lays a wreath on JFK's grave in Arlington.
  
• 11/24/1964 CIA reported that bombing would have little effect on North Vietnam because most of its economy was pre-industrial.
  
• 11/24/1964 Hoover gave a speech at Loyola and referred to "degenerates" in "pressure groups," a slap at MLK and the civil rights movement.
  
• 11/25/1964 The Senate Intelligence Committee disclosed in the mid-'70s that on this day the Washington bureau chief of a "national news publication" told Nicholas B. Katzenbach that one of his reporters had been approached by the FBI and offered tapes of MLK. Katzenbach and Burke Marshall were so shocked, they flew to LBJ's ranch and told him about it.
  
• 11/25/1964 AP: Washington - The Secret Service investigated 34 Texas-based threats against President John F. Kennedy in the two years before his assassination in Dallas, Warren Commission testimony revealed. Among them:… An informant's claim that a man had told a bridge party he would donate $1,000 toward the assassination of the President.… An alleged statement by an auxiliary deputy sheriff in Houston that Kennedy should be "gotten rid of." ...
  
• 11/25/1964 The NYT Times instant analysis of the more than 10 million words contained in the WC volumes brought the premature observation that their publication by the Warren Commission "brings to a close its inquiry, at once monumental and meticulous." Within a month, again in collaboration with Bantam, the Times published The Witnesses, consisting of "highlights" of the hearings before the Warren Commission, prepared by "a group of editors and reporters of The New York Times." The Witnesses included the affidavit of Arnold Rowland stating that he had observed a man with a rifle on the 6th floor of the Texas School Book Depository before the assassination, but not his testimony in which he stated that he had actually seen two men, and that the FBI had told him to "forget it," and in which he stated his opinion that the source of the shots had been the railroad yards in front of the President. Omitted from the testimony of amateur photographer Abraham Zapruder was his statement that his immediate reaction was that the shots had come from behind him (in front of the President). Similar statements relating an immediate impression that the shots had come from the front were deleted from the excerpted testimony of David F. Powers, a special assistant to the President, and Secret Service Agent Forest V. Sorrels, as it appeared in The Witnesses.
  
• 11/27/1964 NY Times reported Sen. Russell as saying, "We either have to get out or take some action to help the Vietnamese. They won't help themselves. We made a big mistake in going in there, but I can't figure out any way to get out without scaring the rest of the world."
  
• 11/27/1964 DeLoach memo to John Mohr; Roy Wilkins came to see DeLoach today, asking the FBI not to release any damaging information about King's private life. DeLoach told him that "King had organized a bitter crusade against the Director and the FBI" and that Hoover otherwise "sympathized with the civil rights movement...we deeply and bitterly resented the lies and falsehoods told by King and that if King wanted war we certainly would give it to him...Wilkins...will attempt to see King, along with other Negro leaders, and tell King he can't possibly win in any battle with the FBI and that the best thing for him to do is retire from public life." On November 27, Roy Wilkins was told by Cartha DeLoach that if King wanted "war" the FBI was prepared to engage in one, and the two of them discussed the FBI's "derogatory" material. Wilkins told DeLoach that if the FBI made it public, it could ruin the civil rights movement. Obviously Wilkins reported this back to King, and a number of leaders, including King, agreed to take steps to set up a meeting with the director.
  
• 11/27/1964 Washington - J. Edgar Hoover tells Betty Beale of Washington Star he has sworn off press conferences. [Miss Beale is wife of AP chief of bureau William L. Beale]. She also says J. Edgar Hoover explains his sending of flowers to Walter Jenkins was before he knew Jenkins was to be investigated on morals arrest charge. AP
  
• 11/30/1964 AP New York - Newsweek magazine says LBJ decided to replace J. Edgar Hoover. White House promptly denies it. Newsweek, discussing feud between RFK and J. Edgar Hoover, says J. Edgar Hoover never bothered to send note of regret to RFK when JFK assassinated. AP says FBI spokesman in Washington quotes note he claims J. Edgar Hoover did send.
  
• 11/30/1964 An account of J. Edgar Hoover's famous press conference in which he blasted Martin Luther King, Jr. as the most notorious liar in the country. Contains extensive verbatim quotes from reporter's notes. Also reaction from various quarters. Newsweek, Off the Chest and Into the Fire, p. 29 U.S. News &World Report version of J. Edgar Hoover's famous press conference 11/18. All quotes, possibly laundered. U.S. News &World Report, J. Edgar Hoover Speaks Out, p. 56
  
• 12/1964 Castro enlisted the help of Cuban Minister of Industry Ernesto "Che" Guevara, previously an opponent to dialogue, in what had become a Cuban diplomatic offensive for negotiations with the United States. During Guevara's December 1964 visit to the United Nations, he tried to arrange a secret meeting with a White House or State Department representative but was unsuccessful. Finally Guevara met with Senator Eugene McCarthy at Lisa Howard's apartment. The next day McCarthy reported to Under Secretary of State George Ball that Guevara's purpose was " to express Cuban interest in trade with the U.S. and U.S. recognition of the Castro regime. " Ball rewarded McCarthy by admonishing him for even meeting with Guevara, because there was " suspicion throughout Latin America that the U.S. might make a deal with Cuba behind the backs of the other American states. " Ball told McCarthy to say nothing publicly about the meeting. When Lyndon Johnson ignored this Cuban initiative as well, Castro gave up on him. He realized that John Kennedy's successor as president had no interest whatsoever in speaking with Fidel Castro, no matter what he had to say. (Kornbluth, JFK and Castro)
  
• 12/1964 McNamara went ahead with the shutdown of the Brooklyn Navy Yard in the face of protests by Senator-elector Robert Kennedy. (The Pentagon, Mollenhoff)
  
• 12/1964 In the 1970s, Fidel Castro reflected on a peculiar fact of Cold War history that related closely to the story of John Kennedy. Thanks to the decisions made by Khrushchev and Kennedy, "in the final balance Cuba was not invaded and there was no world war. We did not, therefore, have to suffer a war like Vietnam-because many Americans could ask themselves, why a war in Vietnam, thousands of miles away, why millions of tons of bombs dropped on Vietnam and not in Cuba? It was much more logical for the United States to do this to Cuba than to do it ten thousand kilometers away." (Frank Mankiewicz and Kirby Jones, With Fidel: A Portrait of Castro and Cuba (Chicago: Playboy Press, 1975), p. 173)
  
• 12/1964 Joan Baez leads six hundred people in an antiwar demonstration in San Francisco.
  
• 12/1964 In 1964 the US GNP was $622 billion. Prime rate of interest: 4.5%
  
• 12/1964 Who Killed Kennedy, a critical book by American expatriate Thomas Buchanan was already a best-seller in Europe by the end of 1964. In Britain, philosopher Bertrand Russell organized a "Who Killed Kennedy Committee" composed of some of the most influential members of the British intellectual community. In December 1964, Hugh Trevor-Roper, well-known British historian and Regius Professor of Modern History at Oxford University, writing in The Sunday Times of London, accused the Warren Commission of setting up a smokescreen of irrelevant material while failing to ask elementary and essential questions. The WHO KILLED KENNEDY COMMITTEE was founded in 1964 in England; members included Lord Boyd Orr (former director-general of the UN Food Organization), Sir Compton Mackenzie, J.B. Priestley, Hugh Trevor-Roper, Kingsley Martin (former editor of the New Statesman), Michael Foot, Tony Richardson (the movie producer), Kenneth Tynan (writer and critic), and Bertrand Russell. Lord Russell announced that the group believed that "there has never been a more subversive, conspiratorial, unpatriotic or endangering course for the security of the United States and the world than the attempt by the United States Government to hide the murderer of its recent President."
  
• 12/1/1964 Harrisonburg, Virginia: a Mr. Burns saw a huge object cross the road, hover at ground level in a field for less than one minute, then take off vertically. There were other witnesses in the area. Some local college teachers measured strong radioactivity at the site, but Air Force investigators ridicule the witnesses as "nuts" and decided that their own equipment was malfunctioning when they took picked up radioactivity. (Forbidden Science p136)
  
• 12/1/1964 The Working Group met with LBJ, Hubert Humphrey and Max Taylor. Johnson decided to give Taylor one more chance to try to create a stable regime in Saigon; if that didn't work, then bombing would be the next step.
  
• 12/1/1964 FBI memo by Cartha DeLoach said: "Bill Moyers, while I was at the White House today, advised that word had gotten to the President this afternoon that [the newsman] was telling all over town...that the FBI had told him that Martin Luther King was [deleted.] [The newsman] according to Moyers had stated to several people that, 'If the FBI will do this to Martin Luther King, they will undoubtedly do it to anyone for personal reasons.' Moyers stated the President wanted to get this word to us so we would know not to trust [the newsman]." The newsman was later identified as Ben Bradlee. Moyers could later recall nothing of this episode. (It Didn't Start with Watergate 195-201)
  
• 12/1/1964 MLK, Ralph Abernathy, Dr. Andrew Young and Walter Fauntroy met with Hoover and DeLoach at FBI headquarters. LBJ had ordered Hoover to meet with King to patch things up. King was apologetic and conciliatory to Hoover, and expressed his concern about Communists in the civil rights movement; Hoover assured King he was doing all he could to help the movement in the South. (DeLoach memo to John Mohr 12/2/1964) By most accounts the two men were polite to each other, though in 1970 Hoover would create a wholly fictional account of the meeting for a Time reporter, claiming that he had repeatedly called King a liar. Hoover thought he had succeeded in charming King, but soon a wiretap picked up MLK remarking, "the old man talks too much." Sullivan would recall, "there was no hope for [King] after that." (The Man and the Secrets 575)
  
• 12/2/1964 Memo from William Sullivan to Belmont: Hoover ordered the tapes of MLK to be transcribed.
  
• 12/2/1964 Gov. Pat Brown orders police to arrest hundreds of students who took over Sproul Hall in protest of campus ban on political activity. (SF Chronicle 6/9/02)
  
• 12/3/1964 The Catholic Legion of Decency attacks the increasing number of Hollywood's "morally objectionable films."
  
• 12/4/1964 As part of the Free Speech Movement, most of the students at the University of Berkeley went on strike.
  
• 12/4/1964 FBI arrests 20, including the imperial wizard of the White Knights of the Ku Klux Klan, Samuel Bowers Jr., Sheriff Lawrence Rainey and Deputy Sheriff Price for conspiring to violate the civil rights of the three slain workers.
  
• 12/4/1964 Tulsa, OK - ... [Melvin] Belli told reporters here he thought FBI chief J. Edgar Hoover had outlived any usefulness and charged Hoover with attempting to establish a police state.… Belli said he was "scared of this man. … I'm scared this man will knock at my door. The faster we get rid of him the better off we all are, the more securely we'll sleep in our homes …" AP
  
• 12/4/1964 AP - Washington - Interview with J. Edgar Hoover by Don Whitehead, retired, indicating J. Edgar Hoover has no intention of quitting, and why.
  
• 12/4/1964 WC staffer Joseph Ball, ACLU lawyer A.L. Wirin, and Herman Selvin (former president of the Los Angeles County Bar Association) met Mark Lane at the Beverly Hills High School. Though the terms of the debate were patently one-side, Lane agreed to it anyway. A reporter for KPFK-FM radio asked the participants if he could record the debate; everyone agreed, but at the end Ball tried to get the reporter to promise not to broadcast the recording. When the reporter protested, Ball shouted that he would sue his station. This was all caught on tape, and was broadcast on KPFK. Since then, he began avoiding public debates. A.L. Wirin, said, "I say thank God for Earl Warren. He saved us from a pogrom. He saved our nation. God bless him for what he has done in establishing that Oswald was the lone assassin." In response to a question from Lane, Wirin said that even if Oswald were innocent, Warren had done the right thing for the country. (Plausible Denial 52)
  
• 12/4/1964 Robert F. Kennedy and Burke Marshall interviewed by Anthony Lewis Dec 4 and 6.
  
• 12/5/1964 Drew Pearson - Account of J. Edgar Hoover interview with Martin Lather King, Jr., his understanding - and lack of it - of-the Negro and civil rights problem. San Francisco Chronicle
  
• 12/6/1964 In a letter to the editors of the New Haven Register, former Lt. (jg) John W. White of Cheshire, Connecticut wrote: "I maintain that President Johnson, Secretary McNamara and the Joint Chiefs of Staff gave false information to Congress in their report about US destroyers being attacked in the Gulf of Tonkin." He was an officer aboard the USS Pine Island which was the first ship to enter the war zone in response to the attack on the destroyers. "I recall clearly the confusing radio messages sent at that time by the destroyers confusing because the destroyers themselves were not certain they were being attacked. Granted that some North Vietnamese motor torpedo boats were in the area and using harassing maneuvers, the question is this: did they actually fire shells or torpedoes at US warships? The answer is no. I learned this by speaking with the chief sonarman of the Maddox who was in the sonar room during the attack.' He told me that his evaluation of the sonarscope picture was negative, meaning that no torpedoes were fired through the water, at the ship or otherwise. And he also said that he consistently reported this to the commanding officer during the attack.'"
  
• 12/7-9/1964 British PM Harold Wilson is in Washington; he was briefed on LBJ's plans to begin bombing North Vietnam in the near future. (Politics of Lying p48)
  
• 12/7/1964 None too gentle resume of the Bureau's and Hoover's history, pegged on J. Edgar Hoover's blasts at the Warren Commission and Martin Luther King, Jr.... Johnson had decided by last week that he must find a new chief for the FBI … The search is on ...... A friend recently cautioned Hoover not to go too far in his attacks on Martin Luther King, Jr. and other civil rights leaders. "They might get you," said the friend. "They might," said Hoover, "if I were gettable." Newsweek, J. Edgar Hoover and the FBI., p. 21
  
• 12/10/1964 Mark Lane lectured on the JFK assassination at University College, London.
  
• 12/10/1964 Bernard Fall delivered a lecture at the Naval War College on "The Theory and Practice of Insurgency and Counterinsurgency". He believed that the real objective of guerrilla (or small) war methods is to advance "an ideology or a political system". The US government saw fighting as the primary challenge and responded by seeking a military solution. In so doing, it misjudged the depth and extent of political action by the North Vietnamese and Vietcong - the primacy of "political, ideological and administrative" control - and thus the true nature of their "revolutionary warfare". Moreover, in failing to properly assess the political and ideological (nationalistic) forces at work in Vietnam, the Lyndon B Johnson and Richard Nixon administrations tended to mischaracterize (or ignore) the multitudinous economic and social cross-currents that were represented by those committed to the cause of Vietnam unification under Vietnamese leaders.
  
• 12/10/1964 MLK received the Nobel Peace Prize in Oslo, Norway.
  
• 12/11/1964 Soul singer Sam Cooke is shot and beaten to death by a woman who managed a motel in Los Angeles. Cooke allegedly broke into her office trying to find a woman he had fought with earlier that night.
  
• 12/11/1964 MLK said in a speech, "Those who pioneer in the struggle for peace and freedom will still be battered by the storms of persecution, leading them to nagging feelings that they can no longer bear such a heavy burden."
  
• 12/12/1964 Courtney Evans resigned from the FBI to take a job at the Justice Dept.
  
• 12/13/1964 New York Herald Tribune quoted Hoover: "Let me emphasize that the American civil-rights movement is not and has never been dominated by Communists - because the overwhelming majority of civil-rights leaders in this country…have recognized and rejected Communism as a menace to the freedom of all."
  
• 12/13/1964 Reporter Tad Szulc meets in New York City with Che Guevara for "several hours. On Che's eight-day trip to the UN this month, he also has secret meetings with Senator Eugene McCarthy and former ABC reporter Lisa Howard, who has told the White House "Che has something to say to us." Che's relationship to Castro is at a very low ebb.
  
• 12/14 or 4/1964 Hoover memo refers to "Adrian" Zapruder and mentions that the CIA would like to view the film "for training purposes." (Photographic Whitewash, Weisberg) J. Edgar Hoover wrote to J. Lee Rankin, saying the CIA requested the FBI copy of the film be loaned to them "solely for training purposes." Rankin contacted Time, and informed the FBI that Time would contact the CIA to make their own arrangements.(Trask)
  
• 12/14/1964 LBJ phone call with Katzenbach. LBJ wants to see if there is any legal way to get every American registered to vote automatically, and get 100% voter turnout in elections.
  
• 12/18/1964 The New York Herald Tribune reports: "Evidence and investigating reports used by the Warren commission have been stored in a special vault in the National Archives Building and will remain inaccessible to the public for 75 years. As a result, much of what was said off the record by some of the 552 witnesses during the investigation of President Kennedy's assassination may not be known in our lifetime.'" "The Kennedy assassination material will be stored in an inner vault equipped with highly sensitive electronic detection devices to guard against fire and theft ... The combination to the vault will be known by only two or three persons." Robert H. Bahmer, deputy archivist at the National Archives, was quoted in the New York Herald Tribune as saying "75 years was chosen as the declassification figure [for WC documents] because it is considered to be the life span of an individual." Several years after the Warren Commission publishes its Report and disbands, Earl Warren writes his memoirs. In a chapter devoted to the Commission's work, he writes the following: "Practically all the Cabinet members of President Kennedy's administration, along with Director J. Edgar Hoover of the FBI and Chief James Rowley of the Secret Service...testified that to their knowledge there was no sign of any conspiracy. To say now that these people, as well as the Commission, suppressed, neglected to unearth, or overlooked evidence of conspiracy would be an indictment of the entire government of the United States. It would mean the whole structure was absolutely corrupt from top to bottom..."
  
• 12/1964 During this month, LBJ writes to Jacqueline Kennedy concerning their continued correspondence saying: "I find it a selfish motive, but one over which my disciplines have no power: I enjoy reading a letter from you just for the sheer pleasure of hearing you speak on paper." He continues: "Time goes by too swiftly, my dear Jackie. But the day never goes by without some tremor of a memory or some edge of a feeling that reminds me of all that you and I went through together." He concludes: "Please let my young friends, Caroline and John, know they are loved by the Johnsons."
  
• 12/20/1964 Simon Wiesenthal, Nazi hunter, was the target of an unsuccessful assassination attempt in Austria.
  
• 12/21/1964 Aristotle Onassis is driven by his chauffeur onto a runway at Orlay Airport in Paris where an Olympic jet has just landed. There is only one passenger onboard - Jackie Kennedy. She by-passes customs and goes straight to Onassis's apartment for a secluded visit. She will return to the USA three months from now, and the same secret procedures will be followed. It is alleged that the two have seen each other at least 30 times since the death of JFK.
  
• 12/21/1964 US News reported that Goldwater was not going to try to dominate the party or dictate policy for the GOP.
  
• 12/21/1964 Newsweek quoted North Carolina governor Terry Sanford - responding to threats made by the Klan against businessmen who sponsored integrated Christmas parades - "I would urge all members of the KKK to read the Christmas story and the message of goodwill to all men contained in the Bible. In the meantime, I am instructing the State Highway Patrol to provide all aid necessary…If there are illegal acts on the part of the Ku Klux Klan, they will be prosecuted."
  
• 12/22/1964 Robert F. Kennedy and Burke Marshall interviewed by Anthony Lewis
  
• 12/23/1964 Five days after Che Guevara's eight-day trip to the UN, one of Eloy Menoyo's CIA files talks about the "imminent infiltration [into Cuba] of Cuban exiles allegedly involved in [Castro] assassination plots.
  
• 12/24/1964 VC kill two US soldiers in a bomb attack on the Brinks Hotel in Saigon. Max Taylor recommended bombing retaliation, but LBJ refused.
  
• 12/30/1964 LBJ cabled to Taylor that he was irritated with the JCS for constantly pushing a full-scale bombing campaign: "I have never felt that this war will be won from the air...What is much more needed and would be more effective is...appropriate military strength on the ground...I am ready to look with great favor on this kind of increased American effort."
  
• 12/31/1964 US military personnel in Vietnam now at 23,300. Max Taylor cabled that withdrawing support from Saigon, "an unreliable ally" might force the government there "to walk on its own legs and be responsible for its own stumbles."
  
• 12/31/1964 Malcolm X said in a speech, "Never at any time in the history of our people in this country have we made advances or progress in any way based upon the internal goodwill of this country. We have made advancement in this country only when this country was under pressure from forces above and beyond its control."