Deep Politics Timeline

[Tracy Riddle]

• This year, Johnny Roselli will say: "No question in my mind ... I think Castro hit Kennedy because of the Bay of Pigs invasion." And yet, Sam Giancana's brother, Chuck Giancana, will later write that this is the year Sam privately confesses to his part in JFK's assassination. Sam says that the entire conspiracy goes "right up to the top of the CIA." He says that fanatical right-wing Texans, Lyndon Johnson, Richard Nixon, and a Bay of Pigs action officer are involved. Sam Giancana then moves to Mexico City, buying a five million dollar estate and goes into virtual seclusion for eight years.
  
• This is also the year that General Charles Willoughby goes to work directly for H.L. Hunt's son, Nelson Bunker Hunt, helping arrange the acquisition of all offshore oil rights in the Portuguese colony of Mozambique.
  
• Jack Wilson and Barbara Story hosted a local ABC-affiliate talk show in Denver. WC critic Mark Lane appeared on the show twice (via telephone) in 1966. When Gerald Ford was asked if he wanted to participate in the debate with Lane, he declined. Ford then later called Wilson from Washington and told him that he should ignore Lane because he had been investigated and found to have a criminal record filled with heinous crimes. Wilson contacted various district attorney's offices in New York and found that Lane had never even been charged with a crime. Lane later wrote, "When he discovered that Ford's accusation was false...he gave me the details and agreed to testify in any defamation action against Ford that may ensue." (Citizen's Dissent p123)
  
• By the fall of this year, dozens of books and articles have been printed which challenge the Warren Commission's findings. J. Edgar Hoover, at LBJ's request, investigates the authors of seven books critical of the Warren Report, turning up the information that one writer has been discharged from the military for mental problems while several others have belonged to leftist organizations. No proof of foreign involvement is found, but the file on one critic contains information of a highly personal nature. It consists of a Queens County, New York, police record of the subject's arrest for committing an unnatural act (the charge was later dropped); the depositions of two prostitutes, attesting to the nature of said act; and photographs of the subject, shown nude, his arms seemingly bound behind his back, his face contorted in a painful grimace, while one of the prostitutes is sticking what appears to be a pin or needle into his erect penis. Blind memorandums containing the results of the investigations (the photographs are among the eleven enclosures), are sent to LBJ, via his aide Marvin Watson on November 8, 1966, and are shown to several of the Warren Commission members, as well as favored press contacts, who promptly nickname the photograph's subject "Pinhead." When shown this material, Hale Boggs is shocked. "If they have all this on some little guy who wrote a book, what about me?"
  
• USA FY 1966 interest on the federal debt was 6.5% of the budget; entitlements and mandatory programs were 20%. Prime rate of interest: 5.6%. Capacity Utilization, Manufacturing: 91.1%. Stock market declined 13%.
  
• US military personnel now in Vietnam: 385,300, with 52,500 Allied troops; 6,644 US troops killed to date. In 1966, there were 79,000 air sorties and 136,000 tons of bombs dropped on the North.
  
• While Ruby is in jail, he writes this undated letter. It reads: "you must believe me that I know what is taking place, so please with all my heart, you must believe me, because I am counting on you to save this country a lot of blood-shed. As soon as you get out you must read Texan looks at Lyndon (A Texan Looks at Lyndon by J. Evetts Haley) , and it may open your eyes to a lot of things. This man is a Nazi in the worst order." Further on in this letter Ruby writes: ... isn't it strange that Oswald who hasn't worked a lick most of his life, should be fortunate enough to get a job at the Book Building two weeks before the president himself didn't know as to when he was to visit Dallas, now where would a jerk like Oswald get the information that the president was coming to Dallas? Only one person could have had that information, and that man was Johnson who knew weeks in advance as to what was going to happen, because he is the one who was going to arrange the trip for the president, this had been planned long before the president himself knew about, so you can figure that one out. The only one who gained by the shooting of the president was Johnson, and he was in a car in the rear and safe when the shooting took place. What would the Russians, Castro or anyone else have to gain by eliminating the president? If Johnson was so heartbroken over Kennedy, why didn't he do something for Robert Kennedy? All he did was snub him."
  
• In 1966, the U.S. Army released the harmless Bacillus globigii into the tunnels of the New York subway system as part of a field study called A Study of the Vulnerability of Subway Passengers in New York City to Covert Attack with Biological Agents. The Chicago subway system was also subject to a similar experiment by the Army. The U.S. Army dispensed a bacillus throughout the New York City subway system. Materials available on the incident noted the Army's justification for the experiment was the fact that there are many subways in the Soviet Union, Europe, and South America. Although there are no harmful effects known for this release, details of the experiment are still classified.
  
• Barbara Garson wrote the play MacBird! which was a parody of Macbeth with JFK in the role of Duncan and LBJ in the role of Macbeth. It insinuated that Johnson was involved in his predecessor's death. She later attempted to revive the idea with a play about Nixon, but it didn't receive much attention.
  
• CIA begins weather modification experiments over Cuba, later used in an attempt to ruin Castro's sugar cane crop.
  
• 1/1966 A dealer auctioned off two letters allegedly written by Jack Ruby and smuggled out of jail; one said, "I walked into a trap the moment I walked down that ramp Sunday morning. They alone planned the killing, by they I mean Johnson and the others." (Forgive my Grief 65) The other letter read, "In all the history of the US never has a president been elected that has the background of Johnson. Believe me, compared to him, I am a saint."
  
• 1/1/1966 John Lindsay is sworn in as the first Republican mayor of NYC in 20 years; hours later, members of the AFL-CIO's Transport Workers Union in NYC went out on strike and crippled the city's bus and subway systems. 1/3 union leader Michael Quill is jailed for refusing to stop the strike, but it continues until 1/13, when the workers win a 15% wage hike.
  
• 1/3/1966 Lady Bird wrote in her diary, "Lyndon slept little...Sometimes I think the greatest bravery of all is simply to get up in the morning and go about your business."
  
• 1/3/1966 Sammy Younge, Jr., 21, was shot to death by a 67 year old white service station attendant. A Tuskegee Institute student and civil rights activist, Younge was shot after using the "Whites only" restroom at the service station where the white attendant was working.
  
• 1/4/1966 Ronald Reagan announces that he will run for governor of California. (SF Chronicle 6/9/02)
  
• 1/5/1966 Lady Bird wrote in her diary, "As Lyndon left this morning he turned to me and said: We've lost the steel fight; we may lose the war.'"
  
• 1/6/1966 McNamara told Arthur Schlesinger that he didn't think a military solution was possible in Vietnam; he was working toward "withdrawal with honor." (RFK and his Times p792)
  
• 1/6/1966 AP: Washington - J. Edgar Hoover says Communist Party has played answer increasing role in generating opposition to the U.S. position in Viet Nam.
  
• 1/6/1966 NYT reported that Washington "is ready to extend indefinitely the pause in the bombings of North Vietnam if Hanoi will respond with a gesture of peace…"
  
• 1/8/1966 Wheeler urged McNamara to resume the bombing, arguing that it was placing US forces in an "increasing military disadvantage," but McNamara couldn't get him to explain exactly how the pause was hurting them. Air strikes along the Ho Chi Minh Trail in Laos were continuing, however. (In Retrospect 227)
  
• 1/9/1966 Senator Everett Dirksen said on Issues and Answers (ABC-TV): "Hold on a little longer [in Vietnam] and pretty soon we will have them on their knees at the bargaining table."
  
• 1/9/1966 Earlene Roberts dies of heart failure. She was Lee Harvey Oswald's last landlady who said that a police car drove by after the assassination, honked its horn and then moved on while Lee Harvey Oswald was in the rooming house. Police say she suffered a heart attack in her home. No autopsy is performed.
  
• 1/10/1966 In a White House meeting, LBJ was inclined to start bombing again soon, but McNamara urged that more time be given.
  
• 1/10/1966 Mississippi: Before dawn, two carloads of Klansmen arrived at Vernon Dahmer's house, shot it up and tossed gasoline bombs through a window. Dahmer held the Klansmen at bay with a shotgun while his family fled. His lungs seared by heat and flames, he died in his wife's arms 12 hours later.
  
• 1/12/1966 LBJ's State of the Union message; he articulately defended involvement in Vietnam, while acknowledging war's "madness." He pledged to "respond if others reduce their use of force." Pledged to maintain spending on both the war and the Great Society. Also called for the creation of a cabinet-level Dept of Transportation. He proposed a four-year term for House members, and pledged US aid to population control efforts around the world.
  
• 1/13/1966 LBJ nominated Robert Weaver to be Secretary of HUD; he was confirmed 1/17, becoming the first black cabinet member in US history.
  
• 1/14/1966 Senator Hickenlooper denounces anonymous letter attacking morals of J. Edgar Hoover and other, unnamed high officials. J. Edgar Hoover says its part of Communist smear campaign which began a year earlier. "The letter contained what Mr. Hickenlooper described as an 'obviously forged' copy of a letter over Mr. Hoover's signature to a former White House aide, Walter Jenkins, who resigned in 10/6464, after two arrests [01/7/64, and in 1059 (AP, The World in 1964, p. 182)] on morals charges were made public." A; New York Times, San Francisco Chronicle next day.
  
• 1/15/1966 Sir Abubakar Tafawa Balewa, prime minister of Nigeria, was assassinated.
  
• 1/17/1966 Joseph Alsop wrote that "a part of the curious espionage system to which members of the White House staff are subjected has been rudely brought into the open. All staff members' telephone calls are noted. All places they visit outside the White House are reported by the government chauffeurs. And these lists of contacts are nightly studied, for symptoms of dangerous associations, by the President's new alter ego, Marvin Watson....the President's attempts at news control are much more aggressive, comprehensive and...repugnant to the American tradition, than any such attempts by other Presidents....no previous President has claimed the right to keep from the country the basic facts of the national situation unless he sees fit to divulge them." (N.Y. Herald Tribune)
  
• 1/17/1966 A US B-52 bomber carrying four hydrogen bombs weapons was attempting a mid-air refueling over eastern Spain but it collided with the KC-135 fuel tanker. The tanker burst into flames and the B-52 broke up and tumbled to earth. Three of the bombs, each measuring 10ft in length and 20ft in diameter, lander near the village of Palomares. The fourth bomb fell into the sea. The US Air Force responded immediately, and over 400 US and Spanish soldiers hunted for the bombs. Within 48 hours the three bombs had been located one by a local farmer, who kicked the smoldering nuclear bomb. 3/15 the fourth bomb was found at a depth of 2550ft on a narrow ledge. 4/7 US engineers succeeded in bringing it to the surface. Villagers in Palomares complained of mysterious illnesses, despite the fact that US authorities had scraped away 1750 tons of the village's topsoil.
  
• 1/17/1966 Martin Luther King Jr. opened a civil rights campaign in Chicago, marking the first time for him to launch an initiative in a northern city.
  
• 1/18/1966 The first black cabinet member, Robert Weaver, is sworn in as Secretary of Housing and Urban Development.
  
• 1/18/1966 JCS urged resumption - and expansion - of bombing against North Vietnam.
  
• 1/21-22/1966 San Francisco Trips Festival is held; this was the first real hippie conclave.
  
• 1/21/1966 The bombing of North Vietnam resumes.
  
• 1/22/1966 Richard Helms reported that the CIA had concluded that US bombing of the North was having no real effect on their ability to move men and supplies south.
  
• 1/23/1966 LBJ presented his budget to Congress; spending $112 billion with a $1.8 billion deficit; this fiscal 1967 budget would end up producing a $9.8 billion deficit.
  
• 1/23/1966 On NBC's Meet the Press,' Rusk said he had not seen a response "direct or indirect" from Hanoi.
  
• 1/24/1966 McNamara told LBJ that he thought the Communists were preparing for a long war, and would wait for the US to get tired and leave. And while he recommended increased troops and air power, he warned that they might have little effect: "the odds are about even that, even with the recommended deployments, we will be faced in early 1967 with a military standoff at a much higher level...and with the requirement for the deployment of still more US forces."
  
• 1/26/1966 Sen. McGovern wrote to RFK: "Your voice is one of the very few that is powerful enough to help steer us away from catastrophe" in Vietnam.
  
• 1/28/1966 Fulbright's Senate Foreign Relations Committee began its "educational" hearings on Vietnam, with Dean Rusk as the first witness. Fulbright stated that he had not expected the Tonkin resolution to be used to so greatly expand the US presence in Vietnam. He asked Rusk if Congress' continuing approval of additional funds implied approval of unlimited expansion of the war; Rusk gave an evasive non-reply. The hearings were televised and watched by many Americans. LBJ sat glowering before the White House TV sets, "bluing the air with a running commentary that could not have gone on the air," recalled a former adviser.
  
• 1/28/1966 LBJ met with Clifford, Arthur Dean, Dulles, McCloy; they endorsed a resumption of bombing and increasing US troops.
  
• 1/28/1966 AP: Washington - J. Edgar Hoover says U.S. college students subjected to "a bewildering and dangerous conspiracy perhaps unlike any social challenge ever before encountered by our youth." Warns Communists and other subversives jubilant over "these new rebellious activities" resulting in "a turbulence built on unrestrained individualism, repulsive dress and speech, outright obscenity, disdain for moral and spiritual values, and disrespect for law and order." Identifies it as the new left and says it has an "anarchistic and seditious ring" with a "feigned concern of the vital rights of free speech, dissent, and petition."
  
• 1/29/1966 When decorated WWII veteran Robert Thompson (an American Communist leader) died and was not allowed to be buried at Arlington, RFK said on the floor of the Senate, "to hate and harry the sinner to his grave is hardly in the American tradition."
  
• 1/29/1966 New York Herald Tribune report from Saigon: "A high military source in Saigon said there were indications that some units of the North Vietnamese Army had pulled back across the South Vietnamese border in Laos and Cambodia. The souce also told United Press International that the Reds have been ordered to scale down their activities and avoid large battles with Americans."
  
• 1/31/1966 New bombing of North Vietnam begins. In a major peace-seeking effort, LBJ has suspended bombing raids to North Vietnam late in 1965. He has sent personal representatives on peace missions to capitals throughout the world. North Vietnam's rejection of these efforts now leads to the resumption of bombing on this date. A Harris poll showed that most Americans would support a full escalation of the war.
  
• 1/31/1966 RFK said in the Senate, "If we regard bombing as the answer in Vietnam, we are headed straight for disaster."
  
• 1/31/1966 Jack Ruby wrote a letter to "John" which was confiscated by one of his guards and later smuggled from jail: "...don't believe the Warren Report, that was only put out to make me look innocent...I'm going to die a horrible death anyway, so what would I have to gain by writing all this. So you must believe me...that is only one kind of people that would do such a thing, that would have to be the Nazi's, and that is who is in power in this country right now...Japan also is in on the deal, but the old war lords are going to come back. South America is also full of these Nazi's...if those people were so determined to frame me then you must be convinced that they had an ulterior motive for doing same."
  
• 2/1966 The 18th annual meeting of the American Academy of Forensic Sciences held a symposium which scored the Warren Commission for its failure to hear enough expert testimony, and for failing to examine the photos and X-rays taken of the President's body during the autopsy.
  
• 2/1/1966 Roger Hilsman told the House of Representatives subcommittee on Far Eastern Affairs that "there is evidence they [North Vietnamese troops] pulled back at least into the mountains during the bombing pause which may be a signal."
  
• 2/1/1966 LBJ places a call today to Sen. Eugene McCarthy during which he complains about the Kennedy crowd and its left-wing allies in the Senate, who supported Kennedy's entrance into the war but not Johnson's continuance of it. "They started on me with Diem, you remember," Johnson tells McCarthy, recalling the words of the coup's proponents. "'He was corrupt and he ought to be killed.' So we killed him. We all got together and got a goddamn bunch of thugs and assassinated him. Now, we've really had no political stability [in South Vietnam] since then." Minutes later, in a call to Gen. Maxwell D. Taylor, until recently America's ambassador to South Vietnam, LBJ expounds on his recollection, and the general echoes it. "They started out and says, We got to kill Diem, because he's no damn good. Let's, let's knock him off.' And we did," Johnson tells Taylor. "Yeah, that's where it all started," the general agrees. "That's exactly where it started!" Johnson replies with obvious anger. "And I just pled with them at the time, Please, don't do it.' But that's where it started. And they knocked him off."
  
• 2/2/1966 James Reston of the NYT commented, "Why did the president choose to start bombing again now when no organized units of the regular North Vietnamese Army have been engaged or seen since mid-December?"
  
• 2/3/1966 New York Herald Tribune reported: "The South Vietnamese High Command said in Saigon yesterday that the Vietcong's main force still has launched no offensive operations since the Christmas ceasefire." The Tribune also reported, "A US military spokesman also confirmed an earlier South Vietnamese report that regular North Vietnamese units believed to have been infiltrated into the South last year have not initiated any battle since November."
  
• 2/4/1966 Senate Foreign Relations Committe began televised hearings on the war.
  
• 2/6/1966 LBJ convened Honolulu conference with leaders of South Vietnam.
  
• 2/7/1966 The first issue of the rock-culture magazine Crawdaddy is published in NYC.
  
• 2/8/1966 LBJ finishes three days of talks in Honolulu with Nguyen Cao Ky, who refuses to participate in negotiations with the Vietcong.
  
• 2/10/1966 George Kennan testified before the Senate about the situation in Vietnam. CBS-TV chose to air a rerun of I Love Lucy instead of showing the testimony live. Kennan said that since the overthrow of Sukarno in Indonesia, China's position in the region had been greatly weakened.
  
• 2/10/1966 Sen. Paul Douglas introduced the Civil Rights Protection Act of 1966.
  
• 2/11/1966 Newsday quoted a CBS network spokesman, "The decision [not to air Kennan's testimony] was reached by management…because we felt that what went on for six hours could be digested and carried on the regular news broadcast. We were not motivated by commercial considerations…Nobody's looking at it, not even housewives."
  
• 2/12/1966 Rock For Peace at the Fillmore Auditorium, San Francisco, with the The Great Society, Quicksilver Messenger Service, and Big Brother & the Holding Company. Benefit for Democratic congressional candidates and the Viet Nam Study Group.
  
• 2/14/1966 Albert Guy Bogard dies, 41 years old. Bogard was an employee at the Downtown Dallas Lincoln-Mercury dealership. Before the assassination, Oswald supposedly went to the dealership and test-drove a car with Bogard as his passenger. It is known that Oswald did not drive and was in fact taking driving "lessons" from Ruth Paine. Bogard passed a lie detector test on the story and his coworkers corroborated it. Found dead in his car in Hallsville, Louisiana cemetery. A hose had been connected to the exhaust and the other end inside the car with windows up. Ruling: suicide. According to one of his fellow salesmen, shortly after testifying before the Commission, Bogard was severely beaten and hospitalized, and then quietly disappeared from Dallas.
  
• 2/14/1966 UPI reports that Jesse Curry turned in his resignation as chief of the Dallas Police Dept. last week -- less than a month after Dallas mayor Erik Johsson visits J. Edgar Hoover in Washington who complains bitterly about Curry. His resignation will be effective March 10. "FBI documents obtained recently detail a vendetta FBI Director J. Edgar Hoover conducted against the Dallas Police Department from the time President John F. Kennedy was assassinated until Police Chief Jesse Curry resigned more than two years later. The documents, obtained under the Freedom of Information Act, show that Dallas Mayor Erik Jonsson met with Hoover in the director's office in early 1966 and assured Hoover he would "immediately instruct the city manager to have a stern talk" with Curry. Less than a month later, in February 1966, Curry resigned, citing an increase in blood pressure resulting from "the continued pressures and tensions of the office." Curry, 66, died of heart problems last June 22. Within months of Curry's resignation, FBI agents returned to their posts as instructors at the Dallas Police Academy after an unofficial boycott of more than two years, and the FBI invited the first Dallas officer in more than two years to attend the FBI National Academy in Washington. Under orders from Hoover in 1964 and 1965, Dallas FBI agent-incharge J. Gordon Shanklin repeatedly rejected Curry's requests for a resumption of FBI training for Dallas policemen. Rather than tell Curry it was Hoover's rage, Shanklin was instructed to keep telling Curry "we (FBI) just don't have the manpower to take on additional training commitments at this time," according to FBI documents. The cessation of FBI training assistance was triggered by a statement....attributed to FBI agent James P. Hosty Jr. by Dallas police Lt. Jack Revill on the day of the assassination, FBI memos show. Revill, now assistant chief and the second most powerful figure on the Dallas police force, claimed at the time that Hosty told him the FBI knew before the assassination that Lee Harvey Oswald was "capable of committing the assassination of President Kennedy." Hosty later denied making such a statement. The problem was compounded when Curry said on television the day- after the assassination the FBI wanted to cover up information that it was aware of Oswald's presence in Dallas and had not notified Dallas police. He retracted the statement after Shanklin challenged him to prove it. Months later in 1964, Curry, under pressure from the FBI, wrote Shanklin a letter stating neither Shanklin nor any other FBI source ''ever asked me to 'cover up' the fact that the FBI knew Lee Harvey Oswald was in Dallas" before the assassination. The next day Hoover wrote a memo instructing an aide to "caution Shanklin that any contacts with Curry and (City Mgr. Elgin) Crull in the future be most circumspect." Earlier, on April 28, 1964, Hoover had written instructions to Shanklin that he "and personnel of your office are to deal at arm's length with Dallas Police Department personnel. We will not extend training assistance, nor will we accept candidates from that department to the (FBI) National Academy."" (DMN 12/30/1980)
  
• 2/15/1966 William Manchester delivered the manuscript for his book on the death of JFK to the Kennedys.
  
• 2/16/1966 McNamara testified before the House. Rep. Minshall: Do you think that the number of troops we presently have in South Vietnam, and our present military commitment, will enable us to cope with a full power, all out North Vietnamese war effort? McNamara: Well, I think that if the North Vietnamese expand their forces by infiltration and by recruitment in the South to a level some 50% greater than their level at the end of last year, we would have to add to the strength we now have in South Vietnam.
  
• 2/16/1966 Sen. Russell B. Long, in a Senate speech, condemned those who criticized US involvement in Vietnam: "We have at stake our national honor. We are committed to resisting Communist aggression."
  
• 2/16/1966 An Air Force van picks up the JFK bronze casket and transports it to Andrews Air Force Base, where it is loaded onto a C-130 airplane. The plane takes off at 8:38 a.m. and flies over a calm ocean to a point approximately 131 nautical miles off the Maryland-Delaware coast. The drop point -- in 9,000 feet of water beyond the continental shelf -- has been chosen because it is away from regularly traveled air and shipping lines in an explosives dumping area. The pilot descends to 500 feet and at 10 a.m., the plane's tail hatch is opened and the casket is pushed out. Leaving nothing to chance, the plane circles the drop point for 20 minutes to ensure that nothing returns to the surface.
  
• 2/18/1966 Rusk returned for more testimony before Fulbright's committee. Rusk now pointed to SEATO, not the Tonkin Resolution, as the basis for US action in Vietnam. Morse declared, "One of the best checks we have is to say we are not going to finance it. If the President can't get the finances, then he has to change his policy." Sen. Long immediately responded that Morse would cut off supplies to our troops while they were surrounded by the enemy.
  
• 2/19/1966 RFK issued a statement saying that a negotiated settlement was the best way to end the war.
  
• 2/19/1966 Marvin Watson wanted the FBI to investigate whether Sen. Fulbright and his hearings "were receiving information from Communists..." (Church committee, hearings vol. 6 p270)
  
• 2/20/1966 Lady Bird wrote, "There has been increasing hostility in the newspaper columns..." (White House Diary p360)
  
• 2/20/1966 On 'Issues and Answers' and 'Meet the Press' George Ball and McGeorge Bundy attacked RFK's position.
  
• 2/21/1966 John Connally told LBJ that he thought RFK had been "the motivating force behind the Senate hearings and the Saturday statement was only his climax."
  
• 2/21/1966 The Chicago Tribune's editorial was titled "Ho Chi Kennedy," an attack on RFK.
  
• 2/22/1966 Humphrey attacked RFK's 2/19 statement.
  
• 2/23/1966 LBJ calls on Congress to enact environmental legislation.
  
• 2/23/1966 LBJ states, "Our men in Vietnam are there...to keep a promise that was made 12 years ago."
  
• 2/25/1966 Hoover memo noted that Marvin Watson said LBJ wanted the FBI to go after Peter Lisagor "and thought we ought to put a surveillance on him to find out what he is doing and where he is getting his information."
  
• 2/26/1966 LBJ press conference. He acknowledged congressional opposition to the war, but said he was "rather pleased…that the differences are as minimal as they are."
  
• 2/27/1966 RFK appeared on 'Face the Nation' and said that we had made it hard for the Communists to believe that we would ask for anything but surrender during negotiations.
  
• 2/28/1966 Harris poll showed that two-thirds of Americans wanted to stay in Vietnam until an honorable peace was won, and opinion was shifting toward a more aggressive military stance to end the stalemate.