Deep Politics Timeline

[Tracy Riddle]

• 11/1965 Supreme Court unanimously struck down a 1950 law requiring members of the Communist party to register with the Attorney General.
  
• 11/1965 At a background briefing, Westmoreland told reporters in Vietnam that he was angry about their critical coverage of the battle of the Ia Drang Valley, and told them that he had not intention of letting the press jeopardize the war.
  
• 11/1965 Tom Wicker article ("Lyndon Johnson vs. the Ghost of Jack Kennedy") in Esquire. He reported that well before the Gulf of Tonkin incident, LBJ was carrying the resolution in his pocket waiting for a good occasion to use it.
  
• 11/1/1965 The War Game is a 1965 television drama documentary depicting the effects of nuclear war on Britain. Written, directed, and produced by Peter Watkins for the BBC's The Wednesday Play anthology series, it caused dismay within the BBC and in government but was withdrawn from transmission on 6 August 1965 (the twentieth anniversary of the Hiroshima bombing). The corporation publicly stated that "the effect of the film has been judged by the BBC to be too horrifying for the medium of broadcasting". The film was not completely suppressed, it had limited distribution and won the Academy Award for Best Documentary Feature in 1966 but it remained unshown in full on British television until 1985.
  
• 11/2/1965 A young Quaker man, Norman Morrison, immolated himself outside McNamara's Pentagon office window in protest against the war. McNamara was deeply disturbed by the event for quite some time. (In Retrospect 216) A young Quaker named Norman R. Morrison, father of three and an officer of the Stoney Run Friends Meeting in Baltimore, burns himself to death within 40 feel of Robert McNamara's Pentagon window, protesting the Vietnam War. When he sets himself on fire, he is holding his one-year-old daughter in his arms. Bystanders scream, "Save the child!" and he flings her out of his arms. She survives.
  
• 11/22/1965 Public Law 89-318 is enacted. Among other provisions, the law makes it clear that the Kennedy autopsy materials are evidence and that they rightfully belong to the U.S. government. Further, the materials have to be returned within one year of the law's enactment. At this point, Attorney General Ramsey Clark initiates discussions with the Kennedy family attorneys.
  
• 11/3/1965 Larry O'Brien was sworn in as Postmaster General.
  
• 11/3/1965 LBJ privately told some reporters, "The truth of the business is that this country is in trouble because we cannot any longer make things bigger and better than other countries. We have put Germany and Japan back in business and they are selling their heads off." (White House Diary p336)
  
• 11/4/1965 Wall St Journal commented, "Both the Army's spending plans and those of the other services promise added zip for the nation's peppy economy."
  
• 11/4/1965 457 Americans of the US 7th Cavalry were dropped by helicopter in Vietnam's Ia Drang valley, expecting that the area was clear of the enemy. Actually, more than 3000 NVA regulars were around them. The battle would rage for three days and two nights. Eventually, the enemy retreated with more than 2000 dead (the Americans lost 234). Policy makers decided that this indicated that air cavalry's search-and-destroy tactics could be used to win the war. UPI correspondent Joseph L. Galloway was there with the Americans, and helped rescue some wounded men; for this he was later awarded the Bronze Star Medal with "V" by the Army.
  
• 11/5/1965 RFK told the press that he supported the right of Americans to dissent against the war, and even supported donating blood to the North Vietnamese.
  
• 11/7/1965 McNamara sent LBJ a memo warning that China was an aggressive power that needed to be contained. Today, McNamara looks back at that analysis as "totally incorrect," and that it did not take into account the centuries-old animosity between China and Southeast Asia. In that memo, he also urged a further increase in ground troops in Vietnam, though he couldn't guarantee it would win the war. He also recommended a bombing pause to encourage negotiations, though most everyone else in the administration disagreed with this.
  
• 11/8/1965 The Nation publishes William W. Turner's "Crime is Too Big For the FBI."
  
• 11/8/1965 Reporter and columnist, Dorothy Kilgallen, is found dead in her home. It is initially reported she has died of a heart attack, but this is quickly changed to an overdose of alcohol and pills. Kilgallen is only reporter to have been granted an unsupervised interview with Jack Ruby and has stated she has evidence that will blow the case wide open. No notes are ever found. Dr. Charles Umber of the New York Medical Examiner's Office discovered three types of barbiturates in Dorothy's glass but kept his findings secret due to the politics and internecine rivalry in the NYMEO. No vial was ever found or recorded by the NYPD. Seconal had been the only barbiturate prescribed for her according to the NYPD report.
  
• 11/8/1965 Autobiography of Malcolm X is published.
  
• 11/9-10/1965 power failure caused a "great blackout" from Pennsylvania to southern Canada, affecting over 30 million people and stranding 800,000 in NYC subways. A bright moon kept the night from being pitch black. The Northeast Blackout of 1965 was a significant disruption in the supply of electricity on November 9, 1965, affecting Ontario, Canada and Connecticut, Massachusetts, New Hampshire, Rhode Island, Vermont, New York, and New Jersey in the United States. Around 25 million people and 80,000 square miles (207,000 km²) were left without electricity for up to twelve hours. The cause of the failure originated at the Niagara generating station Sir Adam Beck Station No. 2 in Ontario. At 5:16 p.m. Eastern Time a single line of the power plant tripped. Within seconds other lines out of the plant overloaded and also tripped, shutting down the plant generators. Within five minutes the power distribution system in the northeast was in chaos as the effects cascaded through the network, breaking it up into "islands"; plant after plant experienced load imbalances and automatically shut down. The affected power areas were the Ontario Hydro System, St Lawrence-Oswego, Western New York and Eastern New York-New England. Maine, with only limited electrical connection southwards, was not affected. Power resupply was uneven. New York City was dark by 5:27. Parts of Brooklyn were repowered by 11:00, the rest of the borough by midnight. However, the entire city was not returned to normal power supply until nearly 7:00 a.m., November 10. The blackout was not universal in the city. Some neighborhoods never lost power. Following the blackout, measures were undertaken to try to prevent a repetition. Reliability councils were formed to establish standards, share information, and improve coordination between electricity providers. Ten councils were created covering the four networks of the North American Interconnected Systems. The Northeast Reliability Council covered the area affected by the 1965 blackout. The blackout also helped inspire the episode of the American television series Bewitched. The episode, titled "The Short Happy Circuit of Aunt Clara", featured Aunt Clara attempting a spell to put out some lighted candles which inadvertently put out all the lights on the Eastern Seaboard. The episode was first broadcast on November 10, 1966. The myth of the blackout baby boom A thriving urban legend arose in the wake of the Northeast blackout of 1965, in which it is told that a peak in the birthrate of the blackout areas was observed nine months after the incident. The origin of the myth is a series of three articles published in August 1966 in the New York Times, in which interviewed doctors told that they had noticed an increased number of births. The story was debunked in 1970 by J. Richard Udry, a demographer from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, who did a careful statistical study which found no increase in the birthrate of the affected areas.
  
• 11/10/1965 Mrs. Earl Smith dies. Close friend of Dorothy Kilgallen. (It is suggested that Mrs. Smith may have kept Kilgallen's notes.)
  
• 11/10/1965 A New York Daily News editorial suggested that RFK join the North Vietnamese army.
  
• 11/11/1965 Pirate motor crafts attack Havana's seafront section. Anti-Castro exiles in Miami take credit for action.
  
• 11/1965 Battle of the Ia Drang Valley. Two NVA regiments fought US Cavalry divisions, leaving 1300 communists and 300 Americans dead. B-52 bombers provided air cover. This was the first time US and NVA troops fought each other face to face.
  
• 11/15/1965 Supreme Court rules that individuals do not have to register with the government as members of the Communist Party.
  
• 11/15/1965 Eric Sevareid reported in Look a conversation he had with Adlai Stevenson, who told him that the North Vietnamese in 1964 had contacted U Thant about having talks with the Americans. "Someone in Washington insisted that this attempt be postponed until after the presidential election. When the election was over, U Thant again pursued the matter. Hanoi was still willing to send its man. But Defense Secretary Robert McNamara, Adlai went on, flatly opposed the attempt."
  
• 11/16/1965 The State Dept confirmed Look's story of the previous day; the US had received many offers of talks from third parties who had spoken with Hanoi, but Washington did not believe the offers were serious.
  
• 11/18/1965 The Catholic Church reaffirmed that God was the originator of the Bible, that all parts of the Bible are sacred, that it was composed under the influence of the Holy Ghost, and that what is written in the Bible is accurate, true and without error.
  
• 11/20/1965 RFK's fortieth birthday. Ethel Kennedy throws him a party in Sao Paulo. Some of the guests begin to pop party favors. Hearing the loud pops, RFK sinks his head into his hands and says, "Oh no, please don't."
  
• 11/22/1965 The Warren Commission's Case Against Oswald By Leo Sauvage The New Leader, 22 November 1965, pages 1621
  
• 11/23/1965 As NVA units rapidly increased their infiltration into the South, Westmoreland asked for 200,000 more troops for 1966. The request shocked Washington.
  
• 11/24/1965 Soviet ambassador Anatoly Dobrynin told Mac Bundy that if the US would pause its bombing, Moscow would try to get Hanoi to negotiate.
  
• 11/24/1965 Congo/Zaire: Mobutu, with US support, ousts president Kasavubu in a coup.
  
• 11/27/1965 Approx. 30,000 antiwar protestors marched on the White House. The march was sponsored by SANE (the Committee for a Safe Nuclear Policy). McNamara was not bothered by the dissent, seeing it as a healthy example of the democratic process. Among the protestors was Carl Oglesby, who gave a speech: "Think of the men who now engineer that war...They are not moral monsters. They are all honorable men. They are all liberals...This country, with its thirty-some years of liberalism, can send two hundred thousand young men to Vietnam to kill and die in the most dubious of wars, but it cannot get a hundred voter registrars to go into Mississippi...others will make of it that I sound mighty anti-American...Blame those who mouthed my liberal values and broke my American heart..."
  
• 11/28-29/1965 McNamara went to Saigon and found that the regime was even more unstable than before, defections from the Southern army had skyrocketed, and 200 tons of supplies were moving down the Ho Chi Minh Trail each day despite heavy bombing. 11/29 he told the press that while the US was no longer losing the war, the fight was only growing more difficult, and "it will be a long war."
  
• 11/30/1965 McNamara told LBJ that he was concerned about escalating US involvement without having fully exhausted every negotiating alternative.
  
• 11/30/1965 Sam Castan, senior editor of Life, wrote in an editorial: "For the first time since we spun into the Vietnam mess, there his hope for the United States…The credit justly belongs to President Lyndon B. Johnson. He has made the war 'unloseable.'"
  
• 12/1965 Fed Chairman William Martin cast the decisive vote in the Fed's move to raise the discount rate to a postwar high of 4.5%.
  
• 12/1/1965 Hoover memo to Katzenbach; "This Bureau's investigation of the communist influence in racial matters has developed considerable information indicating the influence upon Martin Luther King Jr...by individuals with subversive backgrounds such as Stanley David Levison, Harry Wachtel, Bayard Rustin and others." Hoover informed Katzenbach that they had bugged MLK while he was in New York in late November.
  
• 12/3/1965 Justice Dept won convictions against Collie Leroy Wilkins and two other Klansmen for the killing of Viola Liuzzo; they were sentenced to ten years in federal prison for violating her civil rights.
  
• 12/7/1965 Rusk, McNamara and Bundy talked with LBJ in Texas; Johnson was worried about escalating, but more worried about being seen as "weak" if he didn't. "What is the best course? We're getting deeper and deeper in," he complained. "Where we were when I came in - I'd trade back to where we were." McNamara was pushing harder for a bombing pause and a diplomatic solution.
  
• 12/8/1965 McNamara announces the closing of 149 military bases and installations, for a savings of $410 million a year.
  
• 12/9/1965 Larry O'Brien sent a memo to LBJ telling him that serious reform of the outdated, inefficient postal service was badly needed. (No Final Victories)
  
• 12/10/1965 Council of Economic Advisers suggested to LBJ that he raise taxes. McNamara began drawing up the military budget for fiscal year 1967, and made his assumptions based on the idea that the war would be over by 6/30/1967. (Best and the Brightest 736)
  
• 12/11/1965 Press reported that a full-scale review of the CIA's covert operations had been planned by Kennedy before he was assassinated. ("Containing Central Intelligence," Harry Rowe Ransom, New Republic)
  
• 12/13/1965 In an interview, Ike's former budget director Maurice Stans warned that the New Economics (Keynesian deficit spending) might be producing short-term prosperity at long-term cost. (US News)
  
• 12/13/1965 NYT's Charles Mohr, reporting from Saigon, said that US officials there had not expected North Vietnam to intervene in the South when the US began bombing.
  
• 12/14/1965 Hoover responded to a letter by researchers Ray Marcus and David Lifton (writing under a false name) about the transposed Zapruder film frames in the WC's volumes: "You are correct in the observation that the frames labeled 314 and 315 of the Commission Exhibit 885 are transposed in volume 18, as noted in your letter. This is a printing error and does not exist in the actual Commission Exhibit."
  
• 12/14/1965 A U.S. RB-57 is shot down by the Soviets while on a reconnaissance mission for the U.S. The fate of its crew of 2 is not known.
  
• 12/15/1965 LBJ ordered the bombing of Haiphong.
  
• 12/15/1965 AFL-CIO declared its "unstinting support" for "measures the Administration might deem necessary to halt Communist aggression and secure a just and lasting peace" in Vietnam.
  
• 12/7/1965 McNamara tells LBJ that the chances for a military victory are not at all guaranteed: "We've been too optimistic...we may not find a military solution. We need to explore other means...This seems a contradiction. I come to you for a huge increase in Vietnam - 400,000 men [Westmoreland's request]. But at the same time it may lead to escalation and undesirable results. I suggest we now look at other alternatives."
  
• 12/18/1965 LBJ agreed to try a bombing pause.
  
• 12/18/1965 William Whaley is killed in an automobile collision. He was cab driver who allegedly picked up Lee Harvey Oswald on the day of the assassination at the Greyhound Bus Station at Lamar and Jackson Streets. Whaley was the Oswald cabbie, one of the few who had the opportunity to talk alone with the accused killer of Kennedy between the assassination and Oswald's arrest. He testified that Oswald hailed his cab at the Greyhound bus station, then graciously offered the cab to a waiting lady, who declined his offer. Whaley said he drove Oswald to the intersection of Beckley and Neches---half a block from the rooming house---and collected a dollar. Later he identified Oswald as his fare in a questionable police lineup, although police records are confusing and he may have picked out another man. Whaley was killed in a head-on collision on a bridge over the Trinity River, December 18, 1965; his passenger was critically injured. The 83-year-old driver of the other vehicle was also killed. Whaley had been with the City Transportation Co. since 1936 and had a perfect accident record. He was the first Dallas cabbie to be killed on duty since 1937. When Penn Jones went to interview the general manager of the cab company about Whaley's death, he was literally pushed out of the office. "If you're smart," said the manager, "you won't be coming around here asking questions."
  
• 12/19/1965 Kansas City Star reported that in Nov 1965, the president of the UN General Assembly, Fanfani of Italy, reported to LBJ that on 11/11 in Hanoi, Ho Chi Minh and PM Phan Van Dong "expressed to two persons (known to me) the strong desire to find a peaceful solution to the conflict in Vietnam [and offered] to negotiate for peace."
  
• 12/20/1965 Oswald's Case Against the Warren Commission By Leo Sauvage The New Leader, 20 December 1965, pages 510
  
• 12/21/1965 Arthur Krock reported that after the US received the Fanfani letter, Dean Rusk stalled on responding until US bombing of North Vietnam began. (NYT)
  
• 12/21/1965 AP - Detroit - Letters accusing former vice-president Nixon and FBI director J. Edgar Hoover of responsibility in death of JFK under investigation by FBI agents. Letters bore typewritten signature of "AFL-CIO" and local AFL-CIO council return address, addressed to "Atty. Gen. Katzman" said Oswald is innocent and slaying done by two brothers who are part of a gang of 10 men. Letters gave "Katzman" 30 days to do something about it" and if you do not we will bury you with the Warren Commission." How Nixon and J. Edgar Hoover supposed to be involved not explained in story. Union officials denied strenuously, turned over all copies to FBI, and said letter appeared to be the work of a mentally deranged person.
  
• 12/22/1965 White House announced a 30-hour ceasefire, including a bombing halt over North Vietnam beginning Christmas Eve.
  
• 12/23/1965 The Kansas City Star commented that the war in Vietnam had come at the right time: "It was a close call. Little by little it has become clear that the longest peacetime expansion in the nation's history was in danger of petering out until the escalation of the war in Vietnam gave it a new lease on life."
  
• 12/25/1965 LBJ extended the bombing pause.
  
• 12/27/1965 McNamara convinced Johnson to extend the bombing pause and go on a major "peace offensive." Important administration figures were sent around the world trying to put together peace talks. (In Retrospect 226)
  
• 12/28-31/1965 Writer John Bullion says he goes hunting with LBJ at his Texas ranch. "I went hunting with him at the ranch Dec. 28 to Dec. 31, 1965. We hunted out of a Lincoln Continental. I had a Neiman Marcus suit on. There's the 21-year-old John Bullion and the president of the United States," recalled Bullion. John's father, Waddy, was LBJ's tax attorney. "I have found nothing that would lead me to believe that Lyndon Johnson was directly or indirectly involved with the assassination of John Kennedy," said Bullion. His father, Waddy, was with Johnson right after Kennedy's death. "Dad was impressed with him after the assassination. Lyndon was getting control of the situation," added Bullion.
  
• 12/29/1965 Stanley Kubrick begins filming his epic 2001: A Space Odyssey.
  
• 12/31/1965 US military personnel in Vietnam now at 184,300, with 22,420 Allied troops; 636 killed to date. In 1965, there were 25,000 air sorties against the North and 63,000 tons of bombs dropped on the North.