Deep Politics Timeline

[Tracy Riddle]

• 9/1966 A Harris Poll found that 54% of the American public doubted that the Warren Commission had told the full story. The same month Mark Lane's Rush to Judgment made the Best Seller List of The New York Times (by November 1966 it was the Number One Best Seller, a position it maintained for several months).
  
• 9/1966 The Times of London called for a new investigation toward the end of September 1966, a call that was echoed in The London Observer by Lord Devlin, one of England's most respected legal figures.
  
• 9/1/1966 Marilyn Moore Walle, also known as "Delilah" -- a dancer employed by Jack Ruby on the day JFK was killed, is shot to death by her husband. She is planning to write book about the assassination.
  
• 9/1/1966 A letter from Dr. George G. Burkley to Dr. John Nichols states that the medical files of President Kennedy are being held in the same condition as his private papers. Records dealing with the private affairs of the President, as opposed to records dealing with the official constitutional or statutory duties, have always been treated as personal to the President by the Government.
  
• 9/1/1966 Headlines announced that the Democratic Policy Committee recommended moving US troops out of Europe.
  
• 9/1/1966 Lady Bird: "Then there was also a story in the New York Times with details about a proposed tax measure, including removal of the 7% tax credit for plant expansion. All these details were known to only two or three people. How did they get in the paper?" (White House Diary)
  
• 9/6-8/1966 militant black youths rioted in Atlanta, after police shot a black suspect. Moderate civil rights groups condemned the violence; there were increasing splits between them and more militant "Black Power" groups emerging through frustration with Martin Luther King's non-violent methods.
  
• 9/6/1966 Hendrik Verwoerd, PM of South Africa, was stabbed to death in parliament at Capetown by an itinerant, Dimitri Stifanos, who was later judged insane. He complained the PM was helping blacks at the expense of whites.
  
• 9/8/1966 The short-lived sci-fi TV series Star Trek makes its debut. A commercial flop that never climbed above 50 in the ratings, the original 79 episodes in syndication would become one of the most popular and influential shows ever.
  
• 9/9/1966 LBJ signed the Highway Safety Act and the Traffic Safety Act.
  
• 9/9/1966 Reagan announces that if elected governor, he will appoint former CIA Director John McCone to investigate the campus unrest at UC Berkeley. (SF Chronicle 6/9/02)
  
• 9/9/1966 William F. Buckley, in his column, called for a panel of investigators to study whether the WC's investigation should be re-opened.
  
• 9/10-13/1966 more rioting in Atlanta breaks out after another black teen is killed.
  
• 9/10/1966 Letter from Sen. Robert Kennedy: "Dear Mrs. Epple, Thank you for your thoughtful letter on "unidentified flying objects". Many reputable scientists also believe that there must be other beings in the universe. Dr. Harlow Shapley, for one, has stated that there is a high probability that there is other life in the universe. To believe that there is other life in the universe is not, however, to believe that "UFO's" are manned vehicles. One explanation of this phenomenon, in addition to those you mentioned, connects the lights that are seen with the gaseous tails of comets. A careful analysis of sighting to date has not given us any indication that "UFO's" are manned. I appreciate hearing from you on this matter and look forward to hearing from you again."
  
• 9/11/1966 NY Times Magazine article by English commentator Henry Fairlie: "No Conspiracy, But--Two Assassins, Perhaps?" He seemed to imply that there may have been two "fanatics or nuts" operating independently. The article concluded that it was not the proper time for a new investigation, for "to set up another independent body with no promise that it would succeed, would be to agitate public doubt without being certain that it could in the end, settle it. Popular fear and hysteria are dangerous weirds to excite..." Fairlie acknowledged that it was hard to dispute the contention that the Warren Commission "did a hurried and slovenly job," and he conceded that there might well have been more than one assassin; "available evidence seems to me confusing." But he contended that even if this supposition were made, "it still does not justify making the long leap to a conspiracy theory," because even if two or more people were involved, he argued, "it is possible to regard such people as fanatics or nuts and nothing more." Of course, if there were two or more people involved it was, by definition, a conspiracy. The article concluded that it was not the proper time for a new investigation, for "to set up another independent body with no promise that it would succeed, would be to agitate public doubt without being certain that it could in the end, settle it. Popular fear and hysteria are dangerous weirds to excite..." Thus it would appear that to Henry Fairlie and The New York Times it was more important to support the official findings of the Warren Commissioneven though questionablethan to look further into the President's assassination and risk adding to the already existing doubt and scepticism about those findings, warranted or not.
  
• 9/12/1966 DeLoach memo to Tolson; "A reliable source has advised that the Supreme Court, in its opening session, October, 1966, plans to call Solicitor General Thurgood Marshall and really 'put him on the griddle' in connection with the answers he has given the Supreme Court in the case involving Fred Black...the Court thinks that Marshall is being evasive and is failing to put some individuals on the spot." His source was apparently Abe Fortas.
  
• 9/12/1966 Gen. S.L.A. Marshall, a respected military historian, wrote in Newsweek: "The North Vietnamese cannot take the punishment anymore in the South. I think we can bring the war to a conclusion within the next year, possibly within the next six months."
  
• 9/12-13/1966 a white mob in Grenada, Miss., attacks black students attempting to integrate two local schools; reporters are also attacked, and eventually Grenada officials will be charged with willfully neglecting to protect the blacks' civil rights from the mob.
  
• 9/12/1966 Gemini 11 mission: Conrad and Gordon docked with target and Gordon spacewalked. Gordon got so hot while working in space that his vision was obscured.
  
• 9/13/1966 Harold Weisberg appeared on a Washington radio station talking about the JFK assassination, and the FBI monitored the program. Weisberg pointed out Hoover's incorrect WC testimony that Oswald's view of the car on Houston Street was blocked by trees. An internal FBI memo written this day, and initialed by all of Hoover's lieutenants, said, "Weisberg is completely off-base on this point. The motorcade as it turned left off of Houston Street entered a park, [where there were trees] that did block the view of the motorcade prior to entering the park. The Director's testimony is accurate." (Never Again p12)
  
• 9/20/1966 In a major revision of the Production Code, the movie industry drops several specific prohibitions and will label certain films "recommended for mature audiences."
  
• 9/20/1966 William Bundy testified before the Senate that a draft of what came to be the Gulf of Tonkin resolution had been readied earlier in the year as "a matter of normal contingency planning…I am not sure that my drafts were even known to others." He said that "no serious thought" was given to submitting his resolution to Congress at the time he wrote it.
  
• 9/21/1966 LBJ stated about Vietnam: "I believe there is a light at the end of what has been a long and bloody tunnel."
  
• 9/21/1966 Dr. Benjamin Spock wrote to RFK urging him to lead the fight for a negotiated settlement in Vietnam. (RFK and His Times 798)
  
• 9/22/1966 Arthur Goldberg spoke before the UN, promising a US bombing halt if the North Vietnamese would stop their offensive.
  
• 9/25/1966 Sirhan Sirhan's dream of becoming a jockey ends when he has a bad fall from a horse.
  
• 9/25/1966 Cuban exile light plane drops three bombs on thermoelectric power plant construction site and other work sites on the north coast of Camaguey province of Cuba.
  
• 9/25/1966 Tom Wicker wrote in his column that a number of impressive books had opened to question the Warren Commission's "procedures, its objectivity and its members diligence. The damaging fear has been planted, here as well as abroad, that the commissioneven if subconsciouslywas more concerned to quiet public fears of conspiracy and treachery than it was to establish the unvarnished truth, and thus made the facts fit a convenient thesis." Wicker endorsed the call for a Congressional review that had been made by Congressman Kupferman.
  
• 9/27/1966 In the Georgia Democratic gubernatorial primary, racist Atlanta restaurant owner Lester Maddox was victorious. MLK told newsmen that the election results left him "ashamed to be a Georgian" and showed that Georgia was a "sick state." He also remarked, "I am afraid of what lies ahead of us. We could end up with a full scale race war in this country. It is frightening."
  
• 9/28/1966 Manhattan Congressman Theodore Kupferman asked Congress to conduct its own investigation into the adequacy of the Warren Report.
  
• 9/30/1966 Former WC staffer Wesley Liebeler admitted in a public debate, "The fact that the Report says that all the evidence supports the one-bullet theory is simply not correct. The Report is wrong in that respect, and there is no doubt about it." Burt Griffin, in the same debate, was asked how hard it would be to detect forgery if the FBI or Dallas police had fabricated evidence. He answered, "It would be very, very difficult." He also admitted that the evidence that Oswald was in the sixth-floor window is supported by "the least direct evidence of all, because there isn't any eyewitness...to rely on...The fact that Oswald's fingerprints were on the cartons has no probative value whatsoever on the issue of whether he was in the window or not, because he worked at the Depository, he could have put his prints there at any time." Griffin gave as evidence of Oswald's guilt the "fact that he had shot Tippit." Liebeler also discussed the single bullet theory: "Well, that was the bullet - that was the bullet that came into the President's back, and then - and then, came out his throat. [Pause] Well, that raises a problem, doesn't it?" [Audience laughter.] (Broadcast 12/30/1966 on WBAI-New York radio)
  
• 10/1966 I.F. Stone wrote, "Johnson has ruined morally all who deal with him at home and he will ruin all who deal with him abroad."
  
• 10/1966 Gerald Ford stated, "We have strayed from the rule of law. Our government leaders, by dealing in half-truths and misinformation, led us to believe that honor and justice are just words. The measure is that the end justifies the means."
  
• 10/1966 The Black Panther Party, a militant black revolutionary group, is formed to push for black self-determination.
  
• 10/1966 October issue of "Commentary" had Alexander Bickel, Chancellor Kent of Yale University, calling for a new investigation observing that "the findings of the Warren Commission, and the fatuous praise with which all of the voices of the great majority greeted them two years ago, were in some measure a matter of wish fulfillment."
  
• 10/3/1966 Lou Harris poll revealed that "the American people have deep and abiding doubts about the official explanation of the assassination of John F. Kennedy..."
  
• 10/3/1966 On a White House tape recording today, LBJ states that he believes Sen. Robert Kennedy has authorized polls questioning the credibility of the Warren Commission findings on the assassination of his predecessor, President Kennedy. "He's got Lou Harris running a poll, and the majority of them doubt that this is the whole story on Kennedy," LBJ says. "... And 2 percent of them think that I did it."
  
• 10/3/1966 Lodge and Westmoreland told LBJ that they were optimistic about the conduct of the war.
  
• 10/5/1966 The Texas Court of Criminal Appeals overturned Ruby's conviction and granted him a new trial outside of Dallas County, based on the conflicts in Patrick Dean's testimony.It was also based on the grounds that the statements he made to Dallas police immediately after his arrest should not have been allowed in court.
  
• 10/5/1966 Monroe, Michigan, United States - Partial meltdown * A sodium cooling system malfunction caused a partial meltdown at the Enrico Fermi demonstration nuclear breeder reactor (Enrico Fermi-1 fast breeder reactor). The accident was attributed to a zirconium fragment that obstructed a flow-guide in the sodium cooling system. Two of the 105 fuel assemblies melted during the incident, but no contamination was recorded outside the containment vessel. The story is recounted in the book "WE ALMOST LOST DETROIT."
  
• 10/6/1966 California Legislature outlaws sale and possession of LSD.
  
• 10/6/1966 LBJ announced appointment of Sol Linowitz as Ambassador to the Organization of American States, Llewellyn Thompson as ambassador to USSR, and Ellsworth Bunker as ambassador to Vietnam.
  
• 10/6/1966 Gerald Ford was quoted in the Mercury (San Jose, CA.) as saying that no "new evidence" about the JFK assassination had emerged, and dismissed conspiracy theories as having been "triggered by a student's thesis and by the writings of an attorney whose services were rejected by the mother of Lee Harvey Oswald at the time of the...hearings." Mark Lane pointed out (Citizen's Dissent 122) that this statement was false; it was the WC that had refused to allow him to represent Oswald. Ford also stated that criticism of the WR was "a disservice to all of the American people and to the memory of the late President Kennedy."
  
• 10/6/1966 AP Washington -- The Washington Post today quoted Senator Robert F. Kennedy as saying he would not run for president or vice-president in 1968 "under any foreseeable circumstances." Kennedy "made it clear that he would not be interested in being President Johnson's running mate even if the President asked him to," the Post article said. ... "The Senator said he contemplated taking much of the same political role in 1968 as he has assumed during this year's congressional campaign. Kennedy would thus travel outside his adopted state of New York to aid the national ticket as well as like-minded incumbents and challengers. "Kennedy also reaffirmed his plans to run for re-election in 1970 as senator from New York. But he declined to discuss 1972 -- a year in which virtually all observers now regard him as a potential presidential candidate."
  
• 10/8/1966 US government officially declares the drug LSD to be a dangerous and illegal substance.
  
• 10/9/1966 US reports Vietnam War now costing $2 billion per month.
  
• 10/9/1966 John Lennon meets Yoko Ono at an art gallery in London.
  
• 10/9/1966 The Sunday Times Magazine (London) published articles criticizing the Warren Commission
  
• 10/9/1966 AP Washington -- Senator Robert F. Kennedy … said today he will run for reelection in 1970. He said again he will not be a candidate for president or vice-president in 1968. ... On MBS Reporters Roundup indicated would not favor use of atomic weapons in Viet Nam. ...... Kennedy said just getting to the negotiating table "is hardly the answer to Viet Nam, that's just the beginning." He said negotiations would require answering, what are we prepared to give up? What do we want from them? What are the vital interests of each side?
  
• 10/10/1966 Arlen Specter is interviewed by U.S. News & World report during which he says that "the complete set of pictures taken at the autopsy was not made available to me or to the Commission. To the best of my knowledge, the Commission did not see any photographs or X-rays." He tried to reason that the single-bullet theory wasn't crucial to the lone-gunman scenario. He dismissed the idea of a grassy knoll gunman because witnesses "on the overpass...had a good view of the grassy knoll, and they saw no shooting from the knoll." But it is impossible to see the area behind the fence from the overpass. US News also reported that "Robert F. Kennedy...took charge immediately, and refused to let anyone else see the X rays and pictures....[They] remained under lock and key at Bethesda Naval Hospital until sometime in 1964. Then they were sent to the Secret Service, and turned over to Mrs. Evelyn Lincoln...[who] at the time was working on the Kennedy archives." Specter explained, "Because the Commission decided that it would not press for those photographs, as a matter of deference to the memory of the late President and because the Commission concluded that the photographs and x-rays were not indispensible...because they would have only served to corroborate what the autopsy surgeons had testified to under oath...The fiber on the front of the shirt [Kennedy's] was inconclusive - it was a slit. You could not determine in which direction the fiber was pushed, nor could the nick on the tie be used to determine what was the direction of the shot."
  
• 10/11/1966 LBJ signed Child Nutrition Act, funding programs to feed poor children in school. Defense budget for 1966 was $64.5 billion ($301 billion in 1992 dollars.)
  
• 10/14/1966 After visiting Vietnam, McNamara reported to Johnson that despite heavy loss of life, the Communists' morale was still high and Hanoi had adopted a strategy of waiting for the US to grow weary and withdraw. The CIA's analysts agreed with McNamara, but the JCS did not. (In Retrospect 263-4)
  
• 10/14/1966 New York Post quoted Allen Dulles: "If they [WC critics] have found another assassin, let them name names and produce evidence."
  
• 10/15/1966 Cabinet-level Department of Transportation created; takes effect 4/1/1967.
  
• 10/15/1966 Mark Lane ... displayed a letter from FBI Director J. Edgar Hoover confirming that two key frames in motion pictures of the assassination were transposed before publication by the Warren Commission. As published, these show Mr. Kennedy slumping forward, but the correct sequence as determined by photographic experts, Lane said, shows the late President was pushed back by the impact of one bullet, which could only have been fired from in front of his limousine. San Francisco Examiner [Account of Lane speech at Stanford, 10/14]
  
• 10/16/1966 A "well qualified source" was quoted in the London Observer: "We always understood that the trouble with the [autopsy] photographs was that they simply didn't prove anything conclusively one way or the other - it simply wasn't possible after the surgeon's work at Dallas to show from them the passage of the bullet that was supposed to have gone through the President."
  
• 10/17/1966 LBJ began a trip to Asia that would include New Zealand, Australia, the Philippines, Thailand, Malaysia, and South Korea.
  
• 10/18/1966 Stanford Daily reported that Wesley Liebeler told Stanford University's student body that rejection of the Warren Report was due to "the madness of crowds and popular delusion today that there was at the time of the crusades, alchemists, and witchcraft."
  
• 10/20/1966 Congress approves funds for rebuilding ghetto areas.
  
• 10/21/1966 Life Magazine was not the only publication caught in the act of phonying up the moving picture of the Kennedy assassination. The Report of the Warren Commission did it too and did it first. J. Edgar Hoover has confirmed the fact that two frames of the movie are transposed as they appear in the Warren Report. These are the most critical frames of the shooting sequence [and] by transposing the pictures, the Report makes it appear that his head was knocked forward by the impact. When they are seen in the correct time sequence, they show that his head was snapped back and to the left. This was revealed in Berkeley 10/15 by Mark Lane [who exhibited] a letter written by Hoover to another investigator of the Kennedy killing. The letter attributes the transposition to a "printing error." Hoover would have us believe that after ten months' work ... the two pictures constituting the most critical evidence were transposed by mistake - and the mistake just happens to result in supporting the official theory of-one assassin, shooting from behind the President's car. Berkeley Barb, Hal Verb
  
• 10/24/1966 Researcher David Lifton showed Wesley Liebeler the 11/26/1963 FBI report mentioning "surgery of the head area"; Liebeler was shocked, and quickly fired off memos to Warren, Ramsey Clark and Burke Marshall.
  
• 10/25/1966 LBJ ends a conference in Manila; US, Australia, Philippines, Thailand, New Zealand, South Korea and South Vietnam issue a four-point declaration of peace. This includes an offer to withdraw allied troops six months after Hanoi withdraws its forces.
  
• 10/26 or 29/1966 On this date, the Kennedy family transfers the photographs, X-rays, and all other autopsy material in their possession to the National Archives by deed of gift dated this day under special conditions restricting access for five years. Burke Marshall, a lawyer representing the Kennedy estate, orders the transfer. Marshall states: "the family of the late President John F. Kennedy shares the concern of the government of the United States that the personal effects of the late President which were gathered as Evidence by the President's Commission on the Assassination of President Kennedy, as well as certain other materials relating to the assassination, should be deposited, safeguarded and preserved in the Archives of the United States as materials of historical importance. The family desires to prevent the undignified or sensational use of these materials (such as public display) or any other use which would tend in any way to dishonor the memory of the late President or cause unnecessary grief or suffering to the members of his family and those closely associated with him. We know the government respects these desires." The actual transfer of the material is made several days later. It is at this point, according to the HSCA, that the steel container containing JFK's preserved brain and certain other materials are found to be missing.
  
• 10/26/1966 LBJ visits troops in Vietnam.
  
• 10/26/1966 Fire broke out on the hangar of US carrier Oriskany as the ship operated in the South China Sea off Vietnam. The fire was caused by a parachute flare igniting. Forty-four officers and men were lost, but the crew prevented even greater damage and loss of life.
  
• 10/29/1966 Lt. Cmdr. William Bruce Pitzer -- works at Bethesda Hospital, trained as an x-ray technician -- found shot to death in his Bethesda office. Ruled a suicide. Shot with a .45 caliber pistol. Dennis David, a medical corpsman present at the JFK autopsy said that Pitzer "filmed in detail the Kennedy autopsy." The government refuses to give up a copy of his autopsy report.
  
• 10/30/1966 RFK talked to Arthur Schlesinger about the WC: "he wondered how long he could continue to avoid comment on the report. It is evident that he believes that it was a poor job and will not endorse it, but that he was unwilling to criticize it and thereby re-open the whole tragic business." (RFK and His Times)
  
• 10/30/1966 Los Angeles Times quoted Episcopal Bishop James A. Pike as saying he believed there was a conspiracy in the JFK assassination.
  
• 10/31/1966 Atty Gen. Ramsey Clark ordered everything the WC had examined to be placed in the National Archives. Weisberg later commented on this: "Is it possible that Marina Oswald's nail file and sewing basket are essential to the national heritage but the [Zapruder] camera that recorded the entire assassination is not?"
  
• 10/31/1966 The 65 X-rays, color and B&W photos taken during the autopsy were turned over to the National Archives by the Kennedy family. (New York Times 11/2/1966)