Deep Politics Timeline

[Tracy Riddle]

• How did the late Arthur Schlesinger view the matter of conspiracy in the JFK assassination? In 1967 Raymond Marcus, one of the earliest Warren Report critics, had an opportunity to meet Schlesinger in Los Angeles. Schlesinger was in town for an appearance on a local TV talk show. The program's host, whom Marcus had gotten to know, called Marcus to invite him down to the studio. Marcus had analyzed both the Zapruder film and the Moorman photograph, and believed he could use them to demonstrate there had in fact been a conspiracy. The talk show host, he recalled, "suggested that I bring my photo materials... "When I arrived I was ushered into a waiting area, and there I spread out some of the Zapruder and Moorman photos on a table." Schlesinger arrived a short time later and the two men were introduced. "Schlesinger glanced at the photos and immediately paled, turned away and said, 'I can't look and I won't look.' That was the end of our meeting." Thirteen years later, Marcus went on, Schlesinger provided an endorsement for Anthony Summers' book Conspiracy: One does not have to accept Mr. Summers' conclusions to recognize the significance of the questions raised in this careful and disquieting analysis of the mysteries of Dallas. (The above account is derived from Addendum B, by Raymond Marcus, p. 64.)
  
• This year, pressures are building within the CIA to resolve, in one way or another, the fate of Yuri Nosenko. The CIA has had no precedent for incarcerating a person inside the United States, but in this case the suspect could not be turned over to the Department of Justice for prosecution without precipitating an international crisis. If Nosenko is brought to trial by the United States government, he will be accused of having been sent over by the Soviet government to misinform the Warren Commission about Oswald's relationship with Soviet intelligence agencies. The collapse of Nosenko's story could, moreover, force a reopening of the investigation into Oswald's relations with Soviet intelligence prior to the assassination. J. Edgar Hoover knows that the FBI is vulnerable to criticism for not having fully investigated Oswald when he returned from Russia, especially since, as Assistant Director J. H. Gale of the Inspection Division puts it, "we did not know definitely whether or not he had any intelligence assignment at that time."
  
• In 1967, the U.S. Army paid Kligman to apply skin-blistering chemicals to the faces and backs of inmates at Holmesburg to, in Kligman's words, "learn how the skin protects itself against chronic assault from toxic chemicals, the so-called hardening process."
  
• In a 1967 study that was published in the Journal of Clinical Investigation, pregnant women were injected with radioactive cortisol to see if it would cross the placental barrier and affect the fetuses.
  
• Science magazine reports that at Fort Detrick, Maryland, where the United States' offensive biological program is headquartered, dengue fever is among those diseases that are "objects of considerable research and that appear to be among those regarded as potential BW [biological warfare] agents." [Blum, 1995] The biological warfare program is overseen by the US Army's Chemical Warfare Service. [Fort Detrick website, n.d.]
  
• Operation CHAOS, signed by President Lyndon B. Johnson allowed CIA agents go undercover as student radicals to spy on and disrupt campus organizations protesting the Vietnam War. Supposedly searching for Russian instigators (never found) CHAOS will eventually spy on 7,000 individuals and 1,000 organizations, utilizing the information for later experiments in domestic mind control and harassment programs.
  
• 1967-1975: Project MINARET Illegally Monitors American Subversives' - US intelligence agencies, including the NSA, the CIA, and the FBI, run a clandestine and highly illegal surveillance operation called Project MINARET that uses "watch lists" to electronically and physically spy on "subversive" activities by civil rights and antiwar leaders such as Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr, Jane Fonda, Malcolm X, Dr. Benjamin Spock, and Joan Baezall members of Richard Nixon's infamous "enemies list." [Patrick S. Poole, 8/15/2000; Pensito Review, 5/13/2006] MINARET operates in tandem with a much more extensive electronic surveillance operation, SHAMROCK, run by the NSA (see 1945-1975). Almost 6,000 foreigners and nearly 1,700 organizations and US citizens are monitored as part of MINARET. In August 1975, NSA director Lew Allen testifies before the Senate's investigative commission on US intelligence activities, the Church Committee (see April, 1976), that the NSA has issued over 3,900 reports on the US citizens on MINARET's watch lists, and the NSA's Office of Security Services has maintained reports on at least 75,000 citizens between 1952 and 1975, reports that later became part of MINARET's operations. MINARET, like SHAMROCK, will be terminated shortly after the Church Committee goes public with its information about the illegal surveillance program. [Bamford, 1983; Pensito Review, 5/13/2006]
  
• The Phoenix Program was a military, intelligence, and internal security program designed by the United States Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) and coordinated and executed by Republic of Vietnam's (South Vietnam) security apparatus and US Special Operations Forces such as the Navy SEALs, United States Army Special Forces and MACV-SOG (now Special Operations Group in the CIA's Special Activities Division) during the Vietnam War. It was in operation between 1967 and 1972, but similar efforts existed both before and after this. The program was designed to identify and "neutralize" (via infiltration, capture, terrorism, or assassination) the civilian infrastructure supporting the National Liberation Front of South Vietnam (NLF or Viet Cong) insurgency.
  
• 1/1967 The Wall Street law firms of John Mitchell and Richard Nixon merged to form Nixon, Mudge, Rose, Guthrie, Alexander and Mitchell.
  
• 1/1967 This month, Dr. Pierre Finck is ordered back to Washington from Vietnam and shown the autopsy photographs and X-rays of JFK. The Department of Justice prepares a statement for the doctors to sign which says: "The photographs and X-rays corroborate our visual observations during the autopsy and conclusively support our medical opinion as set forth in the summary of our autopsy report. It was then and is now our opinion that the two missiles which struck the President causing the neck wound and the head wound were fired from a point behind and somewhat above the level of the deceased. Our examination of the photographs and X-rays lasted approximately five hours, and at its conclusion the photographs and X-rays were returned to the Archivist of the United States." The person who asks the doctors to sign this document is Barefoot Sanders, a close friend of President Lyndon Johnson.
  
• 1/1967 As the year progresses, LBJ is having difficulty sleeping. Late at night he has his aide Marvin Watson telephone the FBI's Cartha DeLoach at home. LBJ has suddenly become convinced that the murder of JFK has been a conspiracy and wants more information from the FBI. J. Edgar Hoover isn't about to reopen this can of worms. DeLoach quickly replies that the White House already has all of the FBI information on Maheu, Sam Giancana, and the CIA's plots. In 1975, DeLoach will tell the Church Committee that "The President was obsessed with fear concerning possible assassination." This year, LBJ will also tell his aide Marvin Watson that he feels "the CIA had something to do with this plot [to assassinate JFK.]" (Official and Confidential)
  
• 1/1967 Justice Dept requests Secret Service establish chain of evidence on possession of JFK autopsy X-rays & photos.
  
• 1/1967 April Terrorist intrusions into northern Israel from Syria across the armistice line increase. Retaliation and counter-retaliation escalates from fire fights to tank and artillery duels. [Eban, My Country; UN Office of Public Information, Yearbook of the United Nations 1967]
  
• 1/1/1967 Miami Joseph Milteer tape is played for a group of newsmen in the Miami police headquarters. (See Richard E. Sprague, Computers and Automation, May 70, p. 31-32)
  
• 1/2/1967 Doctors, suspecting that blood clots are forming, administer oxygen to Jack Ruby. He seems to be recovering.
  
• 1/3/1967 Jack Ruby died at 10:00am. Sylvia Meagher wrote that his death "fulfilled a common prophecy" of many people "that Ruby would not leave the custody of the Dallas authorities alive." He was soon being described as a "misguided patriot." Sol Dann, a former lawyer, remarked, "Ruby did not want to live. His death was a merciful release." The Philadelphia Bulletin reported 1/3/1967 that Ruby had charged that he was being poisoned with mustard gas in his cell (when he had pneumonia) and that he had been injected with cancer cells. Ruby was taped at Parkland two weeks before he died, once again giving the explanation that the killing of Oswald was a spontaneous act, and he had acted alone." The tape was released on an album after his death. Posner says that it is "medically impossible" to inject someone with cancer cells. "Ruby was deranged at the end of his life and believed not only that he was being killed by injections, but also that 25 million Jews were being slaughtered on the jail floor below him." (Case Closed p487) Charles Roberts says that Ruby's death was not sudden: "He was removed from the Dallas County Jail to the hospital a month before his death....Ruby died of a massive blood clot in his lungs; he had advanced cancer of the lungs and eight small previously-undiscovered brain tumors." (The Truth About the Assassination p92)
  
• 1/3/1967 John McNaughton reported that a Soviet representative told him that there were elements in Hanoi that wanted to negotiate, but they could not advocate this while bombs were falling on Hanoi; LBJ had refused to stop the bombing because he was afraid it would be interpreted as "weakness."
  
• 1/3/1967 Richard Case Nagell letter to Sen. Richard Russell: "Mr. Oswald and his activities came under my scrutiny during 1962 and 1963...Mr. Oswald had no significant connection with the Fair Play for Cuba Committee. He had no significant contact or relationship with so-called pro-Casto elements, though he was led to believe he had such." He went on to say that Oswald was not a member of any Left or Right-wing group, was not an intelligence agent or informant "in the generally accepted sense of the words" and "was involved in a conspiracy to murder the former Chief Executive during the latter part of September, 1963." This conspiracy was neither foreign nor communist. (The letter is in the Sen. Russell Memorial Library, Atlanta).
  
• 1/3/1967 Former WC staffer Joseph Ball gave a published address (broadcast on KRHM-FM, Los Angeles) in which he insisted that the WC members and staffers were men of honesty and integrity. "I'd like to compare the integrity of the men of the Commission and staff with the integrity of the men that are now writing: Mark Lane; Epstein; Weisberg, the chicken farmer from Maryland; Leo Sauvage, the Frenchman. It seems to me that we must start out with a presumption in our favor because the integrity of the men of the Commission must count for something....Weisberg, the chicken farmer, isn't really dishonest; he reasons within the limits of his very limited ability...Sauvage has no scruples, and he reasons from a record which he himself considers adequate - I don't....Epstein quotes me as saying we [staffers] did all the work; the Commission did nothing. This is a gross libel....Do rifles give off puffs of smoke which can be seen rising in the air? No, not with modern smokeless powder. This is impossible....Never in my life have I been so scurrilously attacked as by Mr. Lane in his 'Rush to Judgement.' When Mr. Lane says I am a fraud, a cheat, I say Mr. Lane is my enemy; and I say, Mr. Lane, you're the biggest fraud of all." But Ball's name does not appear even once in that book. (Citizen's Dissent p123-7)
  
• 1/4/1967 Two of Jack Ruby's lawyers charge negligence on the part of the Dallas authorities who had custody of their client.
  
• 1/5/1967 Ronald Reagan was sworn in as California's governor.
  
• 1/5/1967 Lady Bird: "A miasma of trouble hangs over everything...It is unbearably hard to fight a limited war." (White House Diary)
  
• 1/6/1967 Memo from Hoover to Tolson and DeLoach, indicating that he would no longer approve of 'black bag' jobs.
  
• 1/7/1967 Reporter Peter Kihss, a member of the NYT team to look into the Kennedy assassination, wrote Ms. Sylvia Meagher on January 7, 1967, "Regrettably the project has broken off without any windup story, at least until Harrison Salisbury, who was in charge, gets back from North Vietnam." Another member of the team, Gene Robertsthen Atlanta bureau chief and at the time I spoke with him National Editor of the Times (he recently left to become Executive Editor of The Philadelphia Enquirer)told me that "There was no real connection between Salisbury going to Hanoi and the decision not to publish, or to disband the inquiry. It just kind of happened that way. Presumably if he had been here he might have knocked it off even sooner or he might have continued it a week or two. I just don't know." Roberts told me that the team was unable to find evidence supporting the contentions of the critics. "We found no evidence that the Warren Report was wrong," he said, "which is not to say that the Warren Report was right. We are not in the business of printing opinion, and that is why nothing was printed in the end." (Jerry Policoff, 1972)
  
• 1/9/1967 The Georgia House of Representatives finally seated Julian Bond. Two years earlier, he had been elected to the legislature. However, because of Bond's public statements opposing the Vietnam War and the draft, the House refused to seat him based on the state constitution's provision that each house shall be the judge of the elections and qualifications of its own members. Bond challenged the action in federal court. In 1966, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled that Georgia lawmakers had deprived him of his constitutional rights to freedom of speech, so on the opening day of the 1967 session, Bond was given the oath of office and his seat in the House.
  
• 1/9/1967 US-USSR consular treaty, signed in 6/64 but never brought up for Senate ratification, largely because of opposition from J. Edgar Hoover [New York Times, 1/24/67] The fate of the consular treaty, in the opinion of both Congressional and Administration officials, depends largely on the willingness of the White House to take public issue with J. Edgar Hoover ... New York Times
  
• 1/9/1967 LBJ met with Senate Democratic leaders about the war; Fulbright wanted to get out immediately, but Smathers, Richard Russell, Symington, Magnuson, Lister Hill wanted to escalate and thought domestic dissent was harmful to the war effort. (No Final Victories p216)
  
• 1/10/1967 LBJ gives his State of the Union message; asks for a 6% surcharge on income and corporate taxes, a 20% increase in Social Security, a law barring the use of wiretapping and electronic eavesdropping, and more anti-pollution measures. Also calls for a slowdown in the arms race. Johnson picked up on the law and order' issue, saying, "Let us fight crime." Lady Bird: "Robert Kennedy was stony-faced. He applauded once...It was a cold audience." (White House Diary)
  
• 1/10/1967 Black congressman Adam Clayton Powell was barred from taking his House seat and stripped of his chairmanship of the Education and Labor Committee because he allegedly misused congressional travel funds, and was under indictment for contempt-of-court in NY.
  
• 1/10/1967 Josiah Thompson interviews Dr. Boswell for his book Six Seconds in Dallas.
  
• 1/10/1967 From an internal CBS MEMORANDUM dated 10 January 1967 written from Bob Richter to Les Midgley, reproduced in: Hearing Before the Legislation and National Security Subcommittee of the Committee on Government Operations House of Representatives, One Hundred Third Congress, First Session, November 17, 1993, p. 233. Also reproduced in ARRB Medical Document #16. In a mid-sixties conversation with a personal friend, a Mr. Jim Snyder, JFK autopsy Dr. Humes gave much the same version he'd originally given Specter. A buzz started about Humes' revelations because Jim Snyder just happened to be with the Washington bureau of CBS. Based on Snyder's private discussions with Humes, an internal CBS memo dated 10 January 1967 detailed that, "Humes' explanation for burning his autopsy notes was that they were essentially irrelevant details dealing with routine body measurements, and that he never thought any controversy would develop from his having done this." Here again, no mawkish mention of Lincoln or ugly blood. Specter's "discovery" of Humes' touching rationale suggests that Specter's passion for truth exceeds his passion for fact checking. Humes' "Lincoln-blood spots" story appeared in JAMA in the controversial May 27, 1992 issue.
  
• 1/11/1967 a 13½ minute recorded phone conversation between President Johnson and Justice Abe Fortas on January 11, 1967the day after LBJ had delivered his third State of the Union address to Congressunderscores one of the most striking insights ever to come from the once-secret tapes. Lyndon Johnson blamed Robert F. Kennedy for fomenting the disbelief in the Warren Report that was widespread by late 1966. Indeed, both Johnson and Fortas viewed RFK's reach and influence with such suspicion that to them, it seemed conceivable that The New York Times had aborted its 1966 investigation into the Warren Commission because the Times's findings had turned out to be too "favorable." Publication of a single story, much less a series, that put the commission in a positive light would supposedly run counter to Kennedy's interests and might incur his displeasure, or so Johnson and Fortas mistakenly thought. Johnson's toxic notions about RFK, to be sure, were not entirely unwarranted. A prima facie case could be made that Robert Kennedy was bent on putting the Warren Commission into disrepute. By the fall of 1966, despite a growing chorus of criticism of the Report, Kennedy, then the junior senator from New York, resolutely persisted in his policy of "no comment" with respect to all the controversies that had arisen in the assassination's wake.
  
• 1/14/1967 On Saturday, January 14, Dr. King flew to Jamaica, where he had planned to work on a book about one of his most ardently held beliefs -- the idea of a guaranteed income for each adult citizen. He was accompanied by his friend and associate Bernard Lee. While having breakfast he began to read the January issue of Ramparts. According to Lee, and also recorded by David Garrow in his historical account, Bearing the Cross Dr. King was galvanized by Pepper's account of atrocities against civilians and the accompanying photographs. Although he had spoken out against the war before, he decided then and there to do everything in his power to stop it.
  
• 1/14/1967 Richard Whalen in the Saturday Evening Post wrote: "According to an official of the Treasury Department, the Secret Service did not turn over the autopsy material to the [Kennedy] family until April 26, 1965. Hence, at the time when the pictures might have proved enormously useful, they were still in Government hands, and therefore within reach of the Warren Commission if it had pressed the matter urgently." He quoted a "high FBI official" as having stated that "the autopsy pictures were sequestered by the written order of Attorney General Kennedy, directing the Secret Service not to release any information or material pertaining to the autopsy without his permission." Also, "It was Warren who vetoed a long list of questions Specter had prepared for the President's widow, who refused to allow him to be present at her brief questioning, and who directed the deletion from the record of her description of the President's wounds." Whalen felt that all of this was an innocent mistake, not a coverup.
  
• 1/14/1967 Saturday Evening Post also carried a cover story challenging the Warren Report, and it also ran an editorial calling for a new inquiry. Others who publicly expressed doubts about the conclusions of the Warren Commission included Senators Russell Long, Eugene McCarthy, Strom Thurmond, William Fulbright, and Thomas Dodd; Congressmen Ogden Reid, John W. Wydler, and William F. Ryan; Arthur Schlesinger Jr., William Buckley, Norman Mailer, Murray Kempton, Max Lerner, Pete Hammill, Walter Lippman, Dwight MacDonald, Richard H. Rovere, Cardinal Cushing and many others.
  
• 1/16/1967 Just five days after the conversation with Fortas, Washington columnist Drew Pearson would approach Johnson privately and tell him about an astonishing rumor: that the CIA had attempted to assassinate Castro numerous times in the early 1960s, and that most of these attempts had occurred at RFK's direction, when the then-attorney general was "riding herd" on the agency for his brother. Johnson, though so embittered that he was inclined to believe the worst about RFK, still found Pearson's story incredible. Later he would liken it to someone "tellin' me that Lady Bird was taking dope." But as the rumor continued to gather force, the president would turn to CIA Director Richard Helms and ask for a full report. On May 10, five months after LBJ's conversation with Fortas, the president would learn directly from Helms that the rumor was true, save for one aspect: there was no evidence that Castro had retaliated by ordering the assassination of President Kennedy. Helms's caveat would fall on unreceptive ears. Confirmation of the efforts to assassinate Castro astounded Johnson. That, together with the president's innate proclivity to relate things that were not connected, meant that LBJ would go to his grave believing that "Kennedy was trying to get to Castro, but Castro got to him first." (Max Holland, The Kennedy Assassination Tapes: The White House Conversations of Lyndon B. Johnson regarding the Assassination, the Warren Commission, and the Aftermath (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 2004), 392. "Johnson Is Quoted on Kennedy Death," New York Times, 25 June 1976.)
  
• 1/17/1967 DeLoach memo to Tolson: "Request for name checks by President...Watson told me that the President wanted a complete rundown on the listed names...should be made as discreetly as possible and that we should specifically point out whether any of these individuals were close to Bobby Kennedy. The President does not want any record made of this request."
  
• 1/20/1967 After shortcomings with the first review of JFK autopsy materials, Justice Dept arranged for JFK's team to take a second, again unpublicized, look at the same material on January 20, 1967. But using the original autopsy team to validate its own work was apparently not deemed entirely satisfactory, even at Justice. Ultimately, in 1968, an outside panel, the so-called Clark Panel. Humes and Boswell were brought back; Ebersole and Stringer were not. And this time Pierre Finck was recalled from duty in Vietnam for the re-examination. Not unexpectedly, the autopsists signed the second affidavit that declared that, "The photographs and x-rays [sic] corroborate … our autopsy report." n their 26 January, 1967 affidavit, which was based on an analysis of the photographs and X-rays, JFK's autopsists reported, "Due to the fractures of the underlying bone and the elevation of the scalp by manual lifting (done to permit the wound to be photographed), the photographs show the wound to be slightly higher than its actually measured site." Also averred was that, "The x-ray films established that there were small metallic fragments in the head."[177] This account contrasts markedly with the findings of all subsequent investigators. Based on evaluations of presumably the same pictures and X-rays, the Clark Panel, the Rockefeller Commission and the HSCA later concluded that "the wound" the entrance site of the fatal bullet in JFK's head was not just "slightly higher" in the images, but 4 & ½ inches higher. This is scarcely a negligible discrepancy, given that the area of the back of the head in which it was concluded there had been a 4 & ½ inch error only measures, top-to-bottom about 5 &1/2 inches. Nowhere in either of the 1966 or 1967 reviews did JFK's pathologists acknowledge there was a huge disparity between the wounds in their autopsy report and those in "their" pictures and X-rays. Moreover, on the question of the fragments in the X-ray, the pathologists failed to mention that the antero-posterior trail of fragments in the lateral X-ray are in an entirely different location than specified in their autopsy report. That report describes the fragment trail as, "along a line corresponding with a line joining the above described small occipital wound and the right supra-orbital ridge - very near the bottom of the skull."[178] The autopsy X-rays, which were examined by author Aguilar, radiologist Randall Robertson, coroner Cyril Wecht, and physician-physicist David Mantik at the National Archives, reveal that the line of fragments is at least 12-cm higher than the line described in the autopsy report. In fact, the trail is even significantly above the 4 &1/2 inch higher location accepted by the Clark Panel, the Rockefeller Commission and HSCA as the true wound of entrance. There was another significant and unmentioned, perhaps even unrecognized, discrepancy in the pathologists' review: the X-rays and photographs show that the skull damage extended well into the frontal bone. The frontal bone, however, was not reported damaged in the original autopsy report. That report described JFK's skull and scalp defect as "a large irregular defect of chiefly the parietal bone but extending somewhat into the temporal and occipital regions. In this region there is an actual absence of scalp and bone..."[179] Nevertheless, a simple comparison between the wounds described in the autopsy report, and those visible in the X-rays and photographs, would have shown a conflict that a proper review could not have failed to have taken note of.
  
• 1/20/1967 At Reagan's first meeting of the UC Board of Regents, he votes to fire Kerr as UC president. (SF Chronicle 6/9/02)
  
• 1/21/1967 Japanese and American press stories claim that political statements made by folksinger Joan Baez during a recent Tokyo TV appearance were softened by an interpreter under pressure from CIA agent "H. Cooper." The US Embassy denied the story. 1/22 the Japanese interpreter denied he was under any CIA pressure. 2/24 Baez will state that she knew her remarks were inaccurately translated on Tokyo TV.
  
• 1/27/1967 A phone call on January 21, 1967, 10 weeks after the inventory was signed, reveals the importance of Ramsey Clark's private proceedings. Clark had LBJ on the line. In the declassified, tape-recorded call, Clark reported, "Ah, we had the three pathologists that performed the autopsy on the evening of November 22nd come in. We had to bring Finck from Vietnam … They went into archives last night [sic, January 20, 1967] … Now, we've run into one problem last night [sic] that we didn't know of. That is, there may be a photo missing. Dr. Humes … testified before the Warren Commission that this one photo [was] made of the highest portion of the right lung. The other two doctors don't recall if such a photo was made. They do recall discussing the desired ability of making such a photo. But there is no such photo in these exhibits." Thus, 10 weeks after Humes and Boswell had signed an affidavit that said that none of JFK's autopsy photographs were missing, Humes was apparently grousing about a missing autopsy photograph. LBJ took the matter seriously. In the President's own, once-secret, memo he memorialized Clark's comments, quoting Clark to say that, "On the other matter, I [Ramsey Clark] think we have the three pathologists and the photographer signed up now on the autopsy review and their conclusion is that the autopsy photos and x-rays [sic] conclusively support the autopsy report rendered by them to the Warren Commission though we were not able to tie down the question of the missing photo entirely but we feel much better about it and we have three of the four sign an affidavit that says these are all the photos that they took and they do not believe anybody else took any others. There is this unfortunate reference in the Warren Commission report by Dr. Hinn to a picture that just does not exist as far as we know." Since the name "Hinn" appears nowhere else in the JFK saga, LBJ was certainly referring to Dr. Humes, who, in any case, was properly named by Clark himself. (From a memo titled "President Johnson's Notes on Conversation with Acting Attorney General Ramsey Clark - January 26, 1967 - 6:29 P.M.," obtained from the Lyndon B. Johnson Library. Reproduced in ARRB Medical Document #68.)
  
• 1/22/1967 Richard Warren Lewis wrote an article called "The Scavengers" for the World Journal Tribune about those critics "obsessed by the assassination."
  
• 1/23/1967 Wheeler and McNamara testified before the Senate Armed Services Commitee; the former said he thought bombing had reduced the rate of infiltration, while McNamara disagreed.
  
• 1/23/1967 Editorial - Even after publication of the curious correspondence between Secretary of State Rusk and J. Edgar Hoover, it is far from certain that the Administration will be able to override the veto Mr. Hoover has hitherto exercised against the long-stalled Soviet American consular treaty. [The correspondence] is a reminder of the magnitude of Mr. Hoover's power, with implications that go far beyond the immediate issue. New York Times
  
• 1/24/1967 Look magazine editorialized that the GOP party professionals felt it didn't matter who they nominated in 1964, since no one could beat LBJ; they had "decided to let the conservatives fall on their faces" by nominating Goldwater.
  
• 1/25/1967 Mr. Burke Marshall, to whom the letter from Rep. Kupferman had been referred by the Archivist, replied on January 25, 1967, as follows: "… The wishes of the Kennedy family, as reflected in the agreement by which the material was given to the United State's, are that there be no examination of the material for at least five years, except by a properly authorized federal government agency. Thereafter inspection will be limited to persons professionally qualified to evaluate medical evidence, for serious historical purposes. The reasons for these restrictions are obvious (to whom - J.J.). "While the first of these provisions could be waived, I have concluded that I should not do so. I have given careful consideration, because of your official position, to the question whether an exception should be made in your case, and I have decided that there is no basis for that, particularly in the light of the second restriction referred to. It would then be at least very difficult to refuse other requests, and the consequences would be very painful for Mrs. Kennedy and the family ..."
  
• 1/25/1967 Edward Condon, known for his breezy, anecdotal style, spoke before a chapter of Sigma Xi, the honorary scientific fraternity in Corning, New York. The Elmira, N.Y., Star-Gazette reported the next day: "Unidentified flying objects are not the business of the Air Force,"... Dr. Edward U. Condon said here Wednesday night.... Dr. Condon left no doubt as to his personal sentiments on the matter: "It is my inclination right now to recommend that the Government get out of this business. My attitude right now is that there's nothing to it." With a smile, he added, "but I'm not supposed to reach a conclusion for another year..." The story also quoted Condon as saying: "What we're always reduced to is interviewing persons who claim they've had some kind of experience....I don't know of any cases where the phenomenon was still there after the person reports it... and it seems odd, but these people always seem to wait until they get home before they report what they saw."
  
• 1/26/1967 The JFK pathologists signed a second Justice Department affidavit after they were shown the same autopsy materials for the second time. In the second affidavit, they admitted that they "first saw the photographs on November 1, 1966, when requested by the Department of Justice to examine, identify, and inventory them at the National Archives." Curiously, the signed inventory is not the only inventory bearing the names Humes, Boswell, Ebersole and Stringer names. A second, unsigned inventory turned up that listed three names that were apparently deleted from the signed version: James B. Rhodes, Deputy Archivist of the United States (sic), Marion Johnson of the National Archives, and, oddly, Carl Belcher, U. S. Department of Justice (sic).[143] (Belcher's pivotal role in this process only became evident later.) But the longer list of names in the unsigned version is not the most important difference between the two inventories. Following a 5-hour examination conducted on the evening of January 20, 1967, the pathologists signed the second affidavit declaring, inter alia, "The undersigned physicians have been requested by the Department of Justice to examine the x-rays and the photographs for the purpose of determining whether they are consistent with the autopsy report." Again, the Justice Department's fingerprints were left on this affidavit as well. In a once-secret memo written by Pierre Finck entitled, "PRIVLEGED COMMUNICATION" [sic], Finck reported on this document, observing that, "The statement had been prepared by Justice Dept. [sic] We signed the statement.
  
• 1/26/1967 Dr. J. Thornton Boswell - letter, under this date, written by Dr. Boswell to Atty. Gen. Ramsey Clark, suggesting review of autopsy findings by an "impartial board of experts."
  
• 1/27/1967 LBJ signed a treaty to prohibit nuclear weapons in space; the treaty was signed by the USSR and 78 other nations. It also pledged only peaceful use of the moon. During the ceremony, word came that a fire in the Apollo I spacecraft, sitting on the launchpad at Cape Kennedy, had killed astronauts Virgil Grissom, Ed White and Roger Chaffee. The crew was going through routine tests and the fire broke out during a mock countdown. They couldn't get the hatch open and the astronauts died of carbon monoxide poisoning. The combustible materials on board had never been tested under high pressure; it turned out that they burned five times faster than expected. NASA director James Webb tried to blame Congress for giving him an "austere budget," but NASA's own investigation criticized NASA and North American Aviation for poor management, carelessness, negligence and bad designs. The space program was halted for 21 months while the Apollo project was redesigned.
  
• 1/29/1967 Pope Paul VI and Soviet President Nikolai Podgorny conferred at the Vatican in the first meeting in history between a Roman Catholic pontiff and the head of a Communist state.
  
• 1/29/1967 "The Death of Kennedy" documentary (BBC-2, 29th January 1967) We are perhaps fortunate that the documentary survives: in the 1970s, many old BBC programmes were wiped, or were shovelled into furnaces or land-fill rubbish sites: this afflicted many shows, such as Hancock, Z-Cars, Doctor Who etc. (of course the BBC are now seeking recordings of these shows since there is a huge market for vintage TV shows). One casualty seems to be a show broadcast on November 22, 1973 with the intriguing title, "Did 3 Assassins Kill Kennedy?" Nothing of this programme, not a script, not even researcher's notes survive; it has been suggested that the show was junked because it featured a lot of bought-in footage (from Davidson Dalling Associates). Apart from this one example, the archival situation with regard to JFK Assassination programmes is rather good. The documentary was a live discussion of issues surrounding the Warren Report and the death of JFK and includes the British premiere of the "Rush to Judgement" film, split into sections with guests debating what they had just seen. Kenneth Harris was the presenter, studio guests were Mark Lane, David Belin (introduced by Harris as "Felix Belin"!) , Arlen Specter and two law experts, Lord Develyn and Yale Professor Alexander Bickle. Cliff Michelmore presented video taped and filmed location inserts. The producer and director was Richard Francis. The show was spilt into two segments, with a news update separating the sections; the first segment was nearly 3 hours and 8 minutes long, the second segment being an hour and a half. Apart from "Rush to Judgement", the documentary is visually bland. The show opens with footage of the funeral of John Kennedy, and includes a very brief excerpt from the Muchmore film (as Clint Hill leaps from the SS car); of course, there is no moving footage from the Zapruder Film, due to copyright reasons - a point mentioned in the film. Stills from the Warren Report Volumes are shown on screen though. The majority of the programme is simply one of "talking heads", though one highlight is a perfect scale model of Dealey Plaza, created by BBC Visual Effects legends Bernard Wilkie and Jack Kine. Michelmore describes the various areas of the plaza and shows where the shots are alledged to have hit their mark with the help of a miniature model of the Presidential limousine. At one point, the Hertz "rent-a-car" sign is removed from the top of the model TSBD and a rather portly Royal Marine with a Mannlicher Carcano (which Specter pronounces "Carsano") fires blanks at the model car on Elm Street over the top of the TSBD model. Obviously, no attempt was made to reproduce aiming problems, just to illustrate how fast the rifle could be fired. The Marine managed to fire the rifle suprisingly fast, but on the second attempt, the rifle misfired and as he lost his hold on the bolt, muttering a very audible "S**t!" Strangely, this whole section was pre-recorded so why this blunder was left in is a mystery! Also in abundance in the studio were copies of the Warren Report itself and the accompanying volumes, often been seen hurridely searched by Specter and Belin in the brief sections were Mark Lane was allowed to speak. There was only one filmed interview, despite a fair amount of Dallas location footage, between Michelmore and Jack Ruby's lawyer, Phil Burleson who describes Oswald's slayer as a poor choice for a conspiracy's hit-man due to his mental state etc. A second interview was filmed but never used (see below). The programme is frustrating to watch, as it seems to be biased towards the Warren Commission; Mark Lane barely managed to conceal his frustration as he is barely allowed to speak and looks bored most of the time; as Harris reminds him sternly on many occasions, Lane is simply there to defend himself, as his film is supposed to make a case against the Warren Report; Specter and Belin are to refute the evidence in the "Rush to Judgement" film. On the one occasion that Lane corrects Belin regarding the origin of the puff of smoke seen on the Knoll, the programme actually stops while Harris receives a telephone call from the production gallery. What was said is not audible to the viewer but when the call is over, Harris continues with his frosty attitude towards Lane. Earlier in the show, even Arlen Specter briefly walks off, for reasons unknown.
  
• 1/30/1967 Manchester's original draft was edited almost out of recognition by several teams of censors working on behalf of the Kennedy family. The first of these teams consisted of the Robert Kennedy advisers John Siegenthaler and Edwin Guthman who spent almost four months, with editor Evan Thomas expurgating the Lancer version. Latter, after Look magazine had acquired the serial rights, one of Robert Kennedy's closest aides, Richard Goodwin, went over the galleys with a fine comb, assisted by the historian Arthur Schlesinger, Jr. In Manchester's on words (in an interview published by Newsweek on January 30, 1967), "Goodwin was made responsible by Jackie for everything that would be in the manuscript. Dick tried to emasculate the Lancer galleys. His editing of the Look galleys was fantastic. At one point nearly 50 percent of the third installment was edited. It would have been unprintable. He was editing largely for political reasons material about Bobby and Johnson."
  
• 1/30/1967 Press reports that RFK "originally had seen the book as "being put away for perhaps as much as'' 25 or 50 years," acquiesced, but ruled out 1968 as an election year and 1970 because "it would look like something turned out just to help me, with all the talk of running for the Presidency in 1972." So the decision was for 1967.
  
• 1/31/1967 Secret Service head James Rowley meets with Earl Warren; Rowley is told of the allegation that Castro was behind JFK's death.
  
• 1/31/1967 Editorial - ... The real motivation for opposition to the consular convention is, to an important degree, the desire to sabotage President Johnson's essential policy of improving relations with the Soviet Union. New York Times
  
• 2/1967 I.F. Stone wrote that "it is the prestige of the Machine that is at stake in Vietnam. It is Boeing and General Electric and Goodyear and General Dynamics. It is the electronic range finder and the amphibious truck and the night-piercing radar. It is the defoliant, and the herbicide, and the deodorant, and the depilatory. It is the products and the brand names we have been conditioned since childhood to revere. Down there in the jungles, unregenerate, ingenius, tricky...emerged a strange creature whose potency we had almost forgotten - Man."
  
• 2/1967 In the February, 1967 issue of the UK 'Beatles Monthly' magazine, an article was printed in the News section denying rumors that Paul McCartney was dead. This is the first time that the Paul is Dead legend was mentioned in print, more than two years before the paranoia that swept America in 1969 after that fateful phone-in on the Russ Gibb show.
  
• 2/1967 In The Realist, Eric Norden reveals that in April 1965, a highly placed North African diplomat told him that his country's intelligence apparatus "had been quietly informed by the French Department of Alien Documentation and Counter-Espionage that the CIA planned Malcolm's murder, and France feared he might be liquidated on its soil." This was the reason France had denied Malcolm X entry into the country on Feb 9 1965. France had passed on its knowledge of the CIA plot to the diplomat's country because Malcolm had also visited it. The French were warning them that the CIA might kill him within their borders, scapegoating them. The North African diplomat who gave Norden this information then said, "Your CIA is beginning to murder its own citizens now."
  
• 2/2/1967 The 11/9/1963 taped conversation between Milteer and Somersett was released by the Miami Police early in 1967, and reported by the Miami News on this day: "police intelligence took extraordinary steps to guard the President's life [in Miami]. They insisted that he abandon the plan to take a motorcade from the airport to downtown. They put him on a helicopter instead." ("Assassination Idea Taped Two Weeks Before JFK Was Killed," Bill Barry)
  
• 2/3/1967 Miami police make public (2 Feb) (Sprague says tape was played for a group of newsmen Jan 67; says Garrison had contacted Miami police "late" in 1966, before his investigation became public Feb 67.) tape recording of conversation, 9 Nov 63, between informer cooperating with police and man described by Miami News as an organizer of the National States Rights Party. Conversation gives details of a planned assassination of JFK; details similar to those in assassination but place not named. (Man in question said to have followed Dr. Martin Luther King "for miles and miles" in effort to kill him.) Miami police say they turned information over to Secret Service before the assassination and again called their attention to it after the assassination. AP reports that story by Bill Barry in Miami News says the man in question was picked up by the FBI five days after the assassination and questioned. Barry says man has since disappeared and that the Secret Service file on him has been marked Closed.
  
• 2/6/1967 Today marks a final confrontation between RFK and LBJ in the Oval Office of the White House. LBJ begins by blaming RFK for press leaks. RFK denies the rumor, telling LBJ that the leaks have come "from your State Department." LBJ bellows: "It's not my State Department, goddamnit. It's your State Department!" Concerning RFK's views on Vietnam, LBJ bellows: "I'll destroy you and everyone of your dove friends in six months. You'll be dead politically in six months." LBJ says that RFK's views on Vietnam are prolonging the war. "The blood of American boys will be on your hands. I never want to hear your views on Vietnam again. I never want to see you again!" After an hour and twenty minutes of confrontation, RFK storms out of the room, saying, "I don't have to sit here and take that shit."
  
• 2/6/1967 New York J. Edgar Hoover, after earlier telephone conversation with RFK in which had promised to pass on any news he received. He called Kennedy at his country home later and reported: "The President's dead" and hung up, author William Manchester wrote. [Quoting serialized version of Manchester's Death of a President.] San Francisco Examiner, UPI
  
• 2/10/1967 Dr. Pierre Finck makes notes dated this day in which he says: "My conclusion is that the photos and X-rays of the autopsy of President Kennedy do not modify our conclusions stated in the autopsy report."
  
• 2/10/1967 Twenty-fifth Amendment to the Constitution is ratified, clarifying rules of presidential succession. It allowed the President to appoint a new VP if that office became vacant. Finally settles questions that were unresolved when LBJ succeeded JFK. It clarifies the role of a vice-president in the event of a president's death or disability and that of a president in filling a vice-presidential vacancy. Section 3 of the 25th Amendment provides for the temporary or permanent transfer of presidential power in case the president is unable to fulfill the duties of the office. In July 1985, President Reagan has colon cancer surgery and turns over power to his vice president, George H.W. Bush. During the George Bush's colorectal screening on July 29, 2002, Bush relinquished powers to Dick Cheney for more than two hours and again in 2007.
  
• 2/11/1967 Heated debate on KTTV-TV (Los Angeles) between WC critic Mark Lane and Louis Nizer and others about the JFK assassination.
  
• 2/12/1967 New Orleans reporter Rosemary James discovered while checking vouchers filed by the D.A.'s office that Jim Garrison had spent more than $8000 on his own investigation of the assassination of JFK (Kennedy Conspiracy 4).
  
• 2/13/1967 News & World Report dismissed speculation that "trouble in Vietnam and a slump in popularity" might convince LBJ to not seek reelection: "It will be a Johnson-Humphrey ticket again in '68."
  
• 2/13/1967 Rowley tells the FBI that Earl Warren wants allegations of Castro involvement in JFK assassination looked into.
  
• 2/14/1967 Sen. Strom Thurmond is quoted as saying he thought JFK was killed by a Communist conspiracy. (NY Times)
  
• 2/15/1967 Hanoi rejects direct talks. Ho Chi Minh sent a letter to LBJ: "The Vietnamese people will never submit to force, they will never accept talks under the threat of bombs."
  
• 2/15/1967 Hoover tells Rowley that the Bureau "is not conducting any investigation" but would accept volunteered information on the JFK assassination.
  
• 2/16/1967 Rosemary James of the New Orleans States-Item went to Garrison with the story she was about to publish on his investigation; he expressed little interest in it. (American Grotesque 141)
  
• 2/17/1967 The New Orleans States-Item broke the story of the Garrison investigation (article written by Rosemary James), and that it was being done with public money. The paper's editorial read, "Has the District Attorney discovered valuable additional evidence or is he merely saving some interesting new information that will gain him exposure in a national magazine?" The headline reads: "DA Here Launches Full JFK Death Plot Probe." James maintains that she had shown the story to Garrison before publication and he had read part of it before responding with a "No comment." Garrison says: "Anyone who says I saw that story in advance is a liar."
  
• 2/17/1967 Dave Ferrie contacted local newsman Dave Snyder this evening, telling him he'd been harassed and followed by Garrison's men.
  
• 2/1967 Also this month, Harold Russell dies. He had seen a man leaving the scene of J.D. Tippit's murder and believed his life was in danger because of what he had seen. At a party this month, Russell becomes extremely agitated, thinking that he will be killed at any moment. His friends call the police, who try to reason with him. One of the officers strikes Russell, who dies soon afterward.
  
• 2/1967 Bob Scott, reporter with WNAC radio in Boston, called Dean Andrews for an interview twice in 2/1967: "On the first call, Andrews was almost uninhibited but predicted his memory might fail. On the second call, Andrews made good his prediction. What he could not avoid, he said he did not recall." (Oswald in New Orleans 138) The interview was broadcast Aug 18 1967 on Harve Morgan show, KCBS San Francisco. (Transcript filed Garrison 18 Aug. 1967.) Dean Adams Andrews, Jr. - taped interview by Bob Scott, Boston, broadcast 18 Aug. 1967 on Harvé Morgan Show, KCBS San Francisco. (Transcript filed Garrison 18 Aug. 1967.) Andrews repeats what he said in Warren Commission testimony about Clay Bertrand, does not go beyond that; says he is "too smart to talk," has not been threatened but says four times in interview that he wants to live. Indicates he knows a good deal about the assassination but does not know who pulled the trigger; does not believe Oswald killed JFK, that he was only a patsy, a decoy; believes there were two assassins; does not think "this thing was plotted, I think the whole thing happened within 36 or 72 hours at the most;" does not believe Oswald had any connection with CIA or FBI. Hal Weisberg (on program by phone) in comment on the Andrews interview, says he thinks Andrews is an honest man who wants the truth to come out, believes Andrews when he says he "wants to live." Transcript of interview filed Garrison 18 Aug. 1967. Weisberg obtained a tape of the interview: Andrews: ...I just don't want to get involved in it. Besides that, I like to live. If a guy can put a hole in the President, he can just step on me like an ant. It's not my fight... Scott: Has the government shown any further interest in you? Andrews: Yeah, they watch me. Got a tap on the phone you're talking on now... Scott: You said there were three things you were going to do. One of them was find Clay Bertrand and the other was find the guy who really killed the President. Do you still feel that way? Andrews: I know, daddy-o. I'm too smart to talk, like I told you; I like to live. Most of the answers I know, but I mean, what the hell, it doesn't make any difference. I've done two of the three. Let's put it that way. Scott: Would you care to say which two? Andrews: No, uh-uh....I just can't see anything will come out of it. What difference does it make? The guy's dead. Start a lot of...and, uh, mess up a bunch of people, and I'm just kind of conservative. I believe in letting sleeping dogs lie. All I can get out of publicity is a hole in my head and my creditors will find me and think I'm famous and want me to pay my bills...[Asked about Oswald] Oh, he never killed him. All the people know that. He ain't nothing but a decoy. Everybody knows that...You can't win for losing in this game...He's just a patsy. Scott: Do you think it was Lee that was in your office? Andrews: I don't think; I know that... Scott: How about any influence...or pressure brought to bear on you... Andrews: Well, let's put it this way. I practiced international law a long time. I know my way around. I know what I have to do and I do what I have to do when I have to do it. I think if there is a plot...with the passage of time the people involved in it grow old and when you grow old you lose nerve. When you lose nerve, you become conservative and you just fade and you pass. It would be my guess as to whoever did what was done over in Dallas. Scott: Do you think in your little dealing that you had with Lee Oswald at all that he had any connection with the CIA or the FBI? Andrews: No. He personally? No...I wish I could go the route with you, but I ain't got nothing to win and everything to lose. You know, like my life, and I just enjoy breathing...These people down here [Garrison's investigation] I think if what just listening to them and everything else is true, they'll have a lot of fun and they probably come close and j-u-u-u-u-st miss, you know. Scott: Do you think you really know the answer, you yourself? Andrews: Well, let me put it this way. I can come closer than close. But I ain't even gonna get that close. I'm agonna - if the action's north, I'm going west, you know...let me put it to you this way. It's a very fantastic, strange set of circumstances. I don't think this thing was plotted. I think the whole thing happened within 36 or 72 hours at the most. Probably 36 hours... Scott:...will you testify before a new investigation committee? Andrews: Well, I got the shortest memory in the world. Round about a minute That - that's not what's agonna do it. They done did what they had to do and the only people not satisified are the people...Now all you get is conjecture. The real answers to tell you personally yes, I know the guy that pulled the trigger, man, nobody could tell you that...Nobody'll go deep enough, far enough and strong enough to take the entire concept and nobody is intelligent enough or clever enough to start from, say Point A to Point C with the varyin' factors that go in and out of it...they do not possess the necessary instincts and training to take all of the pieces and put it together...Actually, I have reason to believe there were three places [shooting positions] and that there were two assassins and a dummy and all they caught was what they were supposed to catch - the dumbell...you can't lay three shots, you know, the way they say they did but you can figure Assassin A, pow. You can figure Assassin B, pow, and Assassin A, pow, and you got three shots. Nobody can tell me the directions the shots come from and all you got to do is plant something in a person's mind and if he's an alleged witness he'll seize on it and go up and say it's true...But what they can't get away from, no matter how they look at it, is how they caught a patsy so quick. Who leaked the information? (Oswald in New Orleans 140-2)
  
• 2/18/1967 Garrison held a press conference and revealed that "we have been investigating the role of the city of New Orleans in the assassination...and we have made some progress - I think substantial progress...What's more, there will be arrests...Let justice be done, though the heavens fall." He also expressed anger at the media for possibly jeapordizing his case. (Kennedy Conspiracy 4) Jim Garrison confirms he is investigating assassination, says his office has jurisdiction because of Louisiana law "which forbids conspiracy of any kind." (See also 19 Feb 67, Interview by Ron Hunter, CBS, New Orleans)
  
• 2/1967 LBJ informs Ramsey Clark of the Drew Pearson / Roselli story and orders him to investigate it. LBJ tells John Connally: "It's pretty hard to see how we would know exactly what Castro did ... We will look into it ... I think it's something we have to be aware of."
  
• 2/18/1967 Dave Ferrie told the AP that he didn't understand what Garrison was up to, that he was an innocent patriot with nothing to hide, and that he felt "it would be fruitless to look for an accomplice" to Oswald. David Ferrie says questioned by District Attorney's office, Nov. 1966, about his trip to Texas 22 Nov 63. Former Pilot. (Says he and two friends flew to Texas, visiting Houston, Galveston, returned to Alexandria, LA. Says he never knew Oswald. (From AP report, 628pcs, of story in New Orleans States-Item.)
  
• 2/18/1967 Oswald acquaintances in New Orleans, say they were questioned by District Attorney's office. Mrs. J. J. Garner, Oswald's landlady, says she has not been questioned "recently."
  
• 2/18/1967 Bernardo Torres (Miami, one of 10 Cubans who helped protect JFK there 4 days before assassination) - working with Garrison. Miguel Torres transferred from Louisiana state prison, Jan 30, to Orleans parish jail.
  
• 2/19-21/1967 When the New Orleans States-Item publicized Garrison's investigation, Ferrie called Lou Ivon and told him "I'm a dead man." He was put in a hotel for two days under protective custody while Garrison debated whether to bring him before a grand jury. 2/21 he was released and went back home.
  
• 2/20/1967 Retired Gen. David M. Shoup, former Marine Corps Commandant, told the Senate, "You read, you're televised to, you're radioed to, you're preached to, that it is necessary that we have our armed forces fight, get killed and maimed, and kill and maim other human beings including women and children because now is the time we must stop some kind of unwanted ideology from creeping up on this nation. The place we chose to do this is 8000 miles away...I don't think the whole of South East Asia, as related to the present and future safety and freedom of the people of this country, is worth the life or limb of a single American. I believe that if we had and would keep our dirty, bloody, dollar-crooked fingers out of the business of these nations so full of depressed, exploited people, they will arrive at a solution of their own."
  
• 2/20/1967 David Ferrie has a long meeting with Carlos Bringuier.
  
• 2/20/1967 "This is one of the saddest times that our government has had, in reference to public policy…I'm not at all happy about what the CIA has been doing and I'm sure that out of this…will come a reformation of that agency, with closer supervision of its activities." Vice President Humphrey on CIA subsidies of student organizations.
  
• 2/20/1967 LBJ calls Ramsey Clark today to discuss a story published in the New Orleans States-Item regarding Jim Garrison who, according to the article, has "launched an intensive investigation into the circumstances surrounding the assassination of President John F. Kennedy." On Monday, February 20, Johnson called Ramsey Clark, the acting Attorney General, because of an astonishing news story published on Friday afternoon in the New Orleans States-Item. The Orleans Parish district attorney, Jim Garrison, had "launched an intensive investigation into the circumstances surrounding the assassination of President John F. Kennedy," alleging that there had been a conspiracy. Although his legal reach was limited, Garrison had subpoena power over the jurisdiction in which, he claimed, the conspiracy had been hatched. Garrison, then forty-five, was considered a responsible, reform-minded prosecutor, albeit one with a decided flair for publicity. Like most district attorneys, he was politically ambitious. There was little on the record to suggest that he was, as it turned out, a cunning demagogue the likes of which had not been seen since the days of Senator Joseph McCarthy. Thus the almost universal response to Garrison's action was He must have something. By the time the President called Clark, New Orleans was at the center of a media maelstrom. Clark was especially discomfited by one "nutty" aspect of the storya rumor that Garrison was linking Johnson to the conspiracy. As fantastic as it sounded, the rumor seemed to have a credible source: the Democratic representative Hale Boggs, whose district encompassed much of New Orleans, and who had served on the Warren Commission. Perhaps to Clark's surprise, Johnson responded to the story with equanimity, without swearing or even muttering to himself when he heard what Garrison was reported to be saying. As it happened, the rumor from New Orleans was far from the wildest one making the rounds. Johnson asked Clark if he had heard an even more fantastic rumorone that had been personally conveyed to the President on January 16 by Drew Pearson, a syndicated columnist who was considered something of a renegade by his peers. The story was that the CIA had sent men into Cuba on a mission to assassinate Fidel Castro after the 1961 Bay of Pigs debacle. Pearson also said that Robert Kennedy had been directly involved. Little wonder that Johnson received the news from New Orleans with such restraint. He professed to Clark that he found Pearson's story "incredible," but he could hardly have done otherwise. It would have been political suicide for Johnson to spread, or be associated with spreading, a rumor so potentially damaging to Kennedy. Johnson probably believed that if Garrison was on to anything, it might be strands from Pearson's storywhich, after all, led back to Washington. Garrison might simply have been mistaken about which Washington doorstep the scandal led to. Johnson was not worried about being personally implicated by either story. As he always did when faced with a ticklish political-legal problem, Johnson had consulted at length with his longtime counsel, Abe Fortas, even though Fortas was by then on the Supreme Court. Johnson's idea of what to do about the Garrison and Pearson developments was essentially the advice Fortas had given him: watch them both carefully; start a file; don't interfere; see how they play out.
  
• 2/20/1967 Senator Thomas Dodd said before the Senate: Mr. President, according to press dispatches of the past few days, the office of District Attorney Jim Garrison in New Orleans has been conducting an independent investigation into the Kennedy assassination and his staff has apparently come up with information pointing to the conclusion that the assassination was the work of a conspiracy. Mr. Garrison is quoted as saying that other people besides Lee Harvey Oswald were involved; that the office has the names of people who participated in the initial planning in New Orleans; and that arrests will be made. Mr. Garrison has an enviable reputation as a district attorney and I am impressed by the fact that he feels confident enough to speak in such positive terms about his findings. The Warren Report has frequently been cited as finding that Oswald acted alone and that there was no conspiracy. What the Commission actually said was that it had been unable to find evidence of a conspiracy. The Commission, of course, made its findings on the evidence available at the time its hearings were held. Certainly the members of the Commission would be prepared to review any new evidence bearing on the assassination. In any estimate of Oswald's motivations, it is important to determine the strength of his pro-Castro sympathies and the extent of his associations with Castro Cuba and pro-Castro Cubans in this country. It is important to learn whether he was simply a Marxist sympathizer or a hardened Communist acting in concert with others. In that conjunction, I want to call the attention of the Senate to a remarkable record captioned "Oswald : Self-Portrait in Red," which is a debate with certain commentaries between Lee Harvey Oswald and Edward Scannell Butler, which took place over a New Orleans radio station on August 21, 1963, just about 3 months before the assassination of the President. Mr. Butler, who was known to me prior to the assassination, called my office immediately after it to inform me of the debate with Oswald. At my request, he came to Washington to tes