Deep Politics Timeline

[Tracy Riddle]

Posting an expanded version of 1968.

• This year Richard Nixon institutes Operation Integrity, the main purpose of which is to keep an eye on Illinois' voting practices. Nixon puts H. Louis Nichols in charge of this operation. Nixon is convinced that he was cheated out of the 1960 election by Mayor Daley, who allegedly tampered with the ballot boxes in Chicago, thus throwing Illinois' electoral votes, and the election, to JFK.
  
• Journalist Willem Oltmans films an interview with George de Mohrenschildt, in which the latter says Oswald "was an admirer of President Kennedy. We raised that question several times."
  
• Also this year, RFK will remark: "I have ... wondered at times if we did not pay a very great price for being more energetic than wise about a lot of things, especially Cuba."
  
• Pine Gap, a massive US intelligence base in the center of the Australian outback, designed to read data from spy satellites stationed over the Communist world, is set up in 1968. It also relays information to the nuclear submarine fleet. It was founded ostensibly to aid in the US' moonshot program. But many Australians were skeptical of its real usage, and PM Gough Whitlam was one of those opposed to the base. It was run by Richard Stallings of the CIA 1968-69, operating under cover of a Defense Dept job. The treaty creating the base was signed 12/9/1966.
  
• The "Roush Hearings", a strongly pro-UFO seminar, is held in Washington, D.C. This is James. E. McDonald's high point, and the nearest thing to a Congressional investigation of UFOs that has ever taken place.
  
• The NSA launches the first of seven satellites, code-named "Canyon," that can pick up various types of voice and data traffic from Earth orbit. Canyon will lead to a more sophisticated satellite intelligence system, code-named "Rhyolite" (later "Aquacade"see Early 1970s). [Federation of American Scientists, 7/17/1997]
  
• US Army Paper Details Plans for Rounding Up Militants' and American Negroes' Around the time of race riots in 1968, a paper is drawn up at the US Army War College detailing plans for rounding up millions of American citizens referred to as "militants" and "American negroes." The paper envisages holding these people at "assembly centers or relocation camps." At this time, or perhaps afterwards, the US maintains a list of suspected enemies of the state that are to be rounded up in the event of a nuclear strike by the Soviet Union (see 1980s or Before). [Radar, 5/2008]
  
• The US government sprays two types of bacteria, one of which is E. coli, on a Hawaiian rainforest hoping to determine how long the bacteria will remain on the vegetation. The project is known as "Blue Tango." [Associated Press, 7/1/03] The US government sprays bacillus globigii from a submarine "over part of Oahu, Hawaii, and over several boats off the coast to gauge how Venezuelan equine encephalitis would be carried by wind." The project is called, "Folded Arrow." [Associated Press, 7/1/03]
  
• An anonymous author at the NSA wrote a document about UFOs around 1968. It was released via the FOIA in 1984. " It is the purpose of this monograph to consider briefly some of the human survival implications suggested by the various principal hypotheses concerning the nature of the phenomena loosely categorized as UFO."
  
• 1/1968 police used clubs on 400 anti-war protestors outside of a dinner for U.S. Secretary of State Rusk.
  
• 1/2/1968 Hoover requested wiretapping of SCLC headquarters in Atlanta because of MLK's planned march on the capitol in the spring.
  
• 1/3/19687 Ramsey Clark declined Hoover's wiretapping request because "there has not been an adequate demonstration of a direct threat to national security."
  
• 1/4/19687 Lady Bird wrote in her diary: "Lyndon spoke of the simple fact that he feels older and more tired than he did ten years ago, or five years ago. And what of the next five years? Suppose he runs and wins? Would he be able to carry the load?...."
  
• 1/4/1968 the Literary Supplement of the London Times published one of those remarkable documents which quite inadvertently cast a glaring beam of light into the murky background of a well-concealed event of capital importance. This was a letter, written on White House stationery, by Mr. John P. Roche, Special Consultant to the President, commending the Editor of the Supplement for having published, on December 14, 1967 the "superb analysis" by John Sparrow of a number of books about the assassination of President John F. Kennedy, including several by this author. Faithfully transmitting his master's voice, Mr. Roche heaped fulsome praise on the Oxford scholar who had crushed the "Dallas demonologists" and had restored the Warren Report to the historic pedestal from which it had been swept by a tempest of criticism. "Every one of the plot theories must necessarily rely on the inconceivable connivance of one key man: Robert F. Kennedy, then Attorney General of the United States " wrote Mr. Roche, President Johnson's "intellectual-in-residence" since September 1966. Then the former Brandeis University professor, a subdued egghead among the Texas hicks who crowd the White house, went on to say: "Those of us who have any knowedge of the relationship between President Kennedy and his brother have assumed from the outset that had there been the slightest trace of a conspiracy, the Attorney General would not have slept or eaten until he had reached the bottom of the matter. "And any fair analysis of Senator Robert Kennedy's abilities, his character, and of the resources at his is disposal as Attorney General, would indicate that if there was a conspiracy, he would have pursued its protagonists to the ends of the earth …"
  
• 1/5/1968 Czechoslovakia: Alexander Dubcek replaces Antonin Novotny as Party leader and declares his intention to press ahead with extensive reforms. Novotny was criticized by party liberals and intellectuals for his government's poor economic performance and his anti-Slovak prejudice. Dubcek is seen as the perfect compromise candidate, acceptable to both the orthodox party members and reform wing.
  
• 1/5/1968 Dr. Spock was indicted for his anti-war activitites.
  
• 1/7/1968 Israeli PM Levi Eshkol visited Washington.
  
• 1/8/1968 Newsweek magazine runs an article entitled: "A Law Unto Himself" - an article critical of Jim Garrison.
  
• 1/8/1968 A secret Council on Foreign Relations meeting between Douglas Dillon, Richard Bissell and other intelligence figures; Bissell told the group (which included Allen Dulles, Robert Amory, Jr., Thomas Hughes, Ted Sorensen, columnist Joseph Kraft) that he supported "covert action - attempting to influence the internal affairs of other nations...by covert means." He stressed the need for covert operatives, posing as businessmen, students, journalists, etc., inside the target country. "His aim is to penetrate the host government, to learn its inner workings, to manipulate it for the agency's purposes," he continued. These covert-action assets need to be safely in place long before they are needed. Bissell described eight different types of covert actions that the CIA uses: political advice; subsidies to an individual; support of political parties; support of private firms, unions, groups, etc.; covert propaganda; training of individuals and exchange of persons; economic operations; paramilitary or political action operations. (The Cult of Intelligence 30-35,38) In 1971 student radicals occupied the building in Cambridge that houses files for Harvard's Center for International Affairs, where they found the minutes to this meeting. Though the most sensitive parts of the meeting had been deleted, it still provided an intimate look at the inner workings of the CIA. The US news media paid little attention to it, though.
  
• 1/8-12/1968 Chester Bowles visits Cambodia to explore restoration of relations with US.
  
• 1/9/1968 NYT reported that Israeli jets had knocked out Jordanian artillery positions on the east bank of the Jordan River. LBJ was quoted as promising visiting PM Eshkol that the US would sell Israel "planes and other weapons." The Israelis wanted 50 Phantom jet fighter-bombers. In a related article, about a speech RFK made before at Manhattan Community College, Richard Witkin wrote: "Mr. Kennedy said he thought the United States should supply Israel with whatever weapons it needed to offset whatever Russia was supplying the Arabs so that Israel can protect itself. He specifically included the 50 supersonic jets the Israelis have been seeking."
  
• 1/10/1968 NYT reported that RFK had met privately with Eshkol at the PM's suite in the Plaza Hotel to assure him that "he favored supplying Israel with whatever assistance is necessary to preserve Israel's borders and protect the integrity of its people.'"
  
• 1/15/1968 Paris Flammonde writes that on this date, "Court Clerk Max Gonzalez asserted he had observed meetings at New Orleans's Lakefront Airport in either June or July 1963 between ... (Eugene) Bradley of North Hollywood and the late David W. Ferrie.'"
  
• 1/16/1968 San Francisco police, with a warrant, raid the home of Eldridge Cleaver; no arrests made.
  
• 1/16/1968 Colonel John D. Webber, Jr., commander of a U.S. squad in Guatemala, and Lieutenant Commander Ernest A. Munro were shot to death in Guatemala.
  
• 1/17/1968 In his State of the Union speech, LBJ calls for a 10% surcharge on income taxes to raise revenue; the cost of the war is now at $25 billion a year. The deficit for fiscal year 1968 would come in at $27 billion. John Connally recommended that LBJ announce in this speech that he wouldn't run again. (White House Diary 617) This speech was greeted with greater applause than last year's, especially when he said, "The American people have had enough of rising crime and lawlessness."
  
• 1/17/1968 Assassination researcher Harold Weisberg writes a letter to California Speaker of the Assembly Jesse Unruh, an ally of RFK, attacking him for supporting the Warren Commission. "The "dearly beloved brother", in the felicitous phrase of your President and mine (and he is mine, for I voted for him; I cannot disown him - yet), has begun to learn about turned backs and straight faces. Our President last March said that the former Attorney General, "dearly beloved brother", was in charge of the investigation, hence how could it be wrong? When he said this, he knew it was a lie. Then he again reappointed as head of the FBI the man really responsible, the government's only indispensable man and its only important one past the age of mandatory retirement. Ever since your government and mine has been responding to concerned citizens with the same false propaganda, pretending Goebbels-like repetition makes it true. Dutifully, the papers repeat it. And thus Robert Kennedy's bank is stripped…Instead, I suggest that, if you want to survive, you had best be the man you like to think yourself. If you are not, you and all like you will be out down, one by one."
  
• 1/19/1968 James Earl Ray enrolls in a bartenders school in Los Angeles.
  
• 1/21/1968 North Vietnamese army begins siege of Khe Sanh, which would turn out to be a diversionary move.
  
• 1/21/1968 A Strategic Air Command B-52 crashes off the coast of Greenland; it was carrying four unarmed hydrogen bombs, which leaked radiation over a large area. The incident outraged Denmark, which controls Greenland, and led to massive anti-US demonstrations.
  
• 1/22/1968 Westmoreland said he felt that the Communists were looking to stage a decisive battle at Khe Sanh.
  
• 1/22/1968 The Israeli submarine Dakar (ex-HMS Totem) disappears in the eastern Mediterranean while on its maiden voyage from the British shipyard where she had been refurbished after being purchased by the Israeli Navy. An extensive search is made by Israeli and American vessels, but the submarine is never found. The only trace ever found of Dakar was her Emergency Beacon, which was found washed up on a beach near Gaza. The Israeli government has gone so far as to offer a reward for her discovery. All 69 men were lost.
  
• 1/22/1968 NYT: Cambodia said today that equipment was abandoned on the battlefield by the "American-South Vietnamese" force that, Cambodia maintains, crossed into her territory Thursday....He said that the abandoned items included red scarves worn by paratroop commandos, a United States officer's helmet, weapons, and radio sets.
  
• 1/23/1968 North Korea seized US intelligence ship Pueblo in the Sea of Japan.
  
• 1/24/1968 NY Times: "More than 5000 United States marines have been concentrated at Khe Sanh amid indications that one of the major battles of the Vietnam war may be in the offing."
  
• 1/24/1968 Asked by Spann why Robert Kennedy and the Kennedy family had not asked for the JFK investigation to be reopened, said, "In politics as in war, a successful politician or warrior does not move until he knows he will be victorious, that he will win his point, and it maybe the case that Senator Kennedy has not moved because it has not been apparent to him that this issue has outstanding public support." Josiah Thompson, interviewed by Owen Spann, KGO, Tape No. 66
  
• 1/25/1968 Aircraft carrier Forrestal arrives in the Sea of Japan as a response to the Pueblo incident.
  
• 1/26/1968 Paul Rothermel memo to H.L. Hunt read, "The source of the information reports that Garrison is convinced that the assassination was carried out by Gen. Edwin Walker with the financial support and backing of Herman and George Brown of Houston and H.L. Hunt of Dallas. He said that Garrison is a heavy drinker and lives extravagantly...We have extended our cooperation to Garrison in his probe hoping to help guide his investigation. I think everyone would like the assassination solved, and certainly there is no member of the Hunt family or organization who has the least thing to hide. In spite of the above, there have been persistent stories to the effect that Garrison either suspects or is antagonistic toward the Hunts. We have no proof that this is the case. It is reported that Garrison is a most vindictive left winger, that he is bisexual and a clever blackmailer. Garrison understands public opinion, and can without introducing evidence of proof, harass, intimidate, and smear whomever he wishes."
  
• 1/26/1968 Letter from JFK autopsy Dr. J. Thornton Boswell to Ramsey Clark. "As you are aware, the autopsy findings in the case of the late President John F Kennedy, including x-rays and photographs, have been the subject of continuing controversy and speculation. Dr Humes and I, as the Pathologists concerned, have felt for some time that an impartial board of experts including pathologists and radiologists should examine the available material....in an attempt to resolve many of the allegations concerning the autopsy report...question the autopsy participants before more time elapses and memory fades...Dr Humes and I would make ourselves available at the request of such a board." (Post Mortem p574) The New York Times reported that Boswell's plea had worked; it led directly to the establishment of the Clark Panel. Though Boswell's signature is affixed to the request, behind him one again finds the Justice Department in motion. Under oath in 1996, Boswell told the Assassinations Records Review Board [ARRB], "I was asked by … one of the attorneys for the Justice Department that I write them a letter and request a civilian group be appointed by the Justice Department, I believe, or the President or somebody. And I did write a letter to him, Carl Eardley." (As we will see, Justice's Eardley was to play a recurring role in the Kennedy case, and a related role in the death of Martin Luther King.) Noted Warren skeptic Harold Weisberg saw the signs of Boswell's having been nudged more than thirty years ago. Commenting on Boswell's letter, which he reproduced in his 1969 book Post Mortem, Weisberg wrote, "I am suggesting that Boswell's letter was both inspired and prepared by the federal government." "Strangely for a man with an office and a profession," Weisberg reasoned, "[the letter] is typed and signed but on no letterhead, with no return address and, even more intriguing, on government-size paper, which is a half-inch smaller than standard." [It appears that after this episode Boswell became a Justice Department favorite. In JAMA, Boswell admitted that, "the US Justice Department … summoned me to New Orleans to refute Finck's testimony, if necessary. It turned out it wasn't necessary." The man at Justice who was pulling Boswell's strings was apparently no less than the Attorney General. Skeptic Milicent Cranor has pointed out[167] that shortly after Justice had quietly completed reinvestigating and reaffirming JFK's original autopsy findings in 1966 and 1967, Clark was still so fretful that he orchestrated yet another autopsy-related project in anticipation of what he feared was about to be published. Clark's continuing concern was revealed by one of the individuals who Clark selected to sit on what later came to be called the "Clark Panel": Russell Fisher, MD, the Chief Medical Examiner of the State of Maryland. In a March 1977 Maryland State Medical Journal interview, Fisher reported that Ramsey Clark, "became concerned about some statements he'd seen in the proofs of" the not yet published book by Josiah Thompson, Six Seconds in Dallas. "[Clark] decided to get a panel of people together to look at [the autopsy evidence], independently of all other investigations … The result of this panel review was that we found some minor errors in [JFK's autopsy] protocol, such as the site of the entrance wound as being just above the external occipital protuberance … ."[168] The Clark Panel Report was released "partly to refute some of the junk that was in [Thompson's] book," Fisher said.[169]
  
• 1/29/1968 LBJ presents his $186 billion budget to Congress.
  
• 1/30/1968 Tet Offensive begins in Vietnam; this massive, well-coordinated attack saw communist forces strike dozens of objectives through the South simultaneously. The capital city of Kien Hoa province, Ben Tre, was captured. It was retaken by US/ARVN forces using massive artillery fire and air strikes; this practically destroyed the town, killing 550 people and wounding 1200. An American major told journalist Peter Arnett, "It became necessary to destroy the town in order to save it." The Communist offensive was pushed back after 26 days of hard fighting. Though a military defeat for the communists, it was a psychological victory. It wasn't until this point that most of the mainstream media began to break with the government over support of the war. "What the hell is going on? I thought we were winning the war," Cronkite asked when the first bulletins came in. (Tet! 158) Now, reporters who felt betrayed and deceived by the administration began to react bitterly.
  
• 1/30/1968 300 student protesters from the University of Warsaw and the National Theater School were beaten with clubs by state arranged anti-protestors.
  
• 1/30/1968 Clark Clifford is confirmed as Defense Secretary.
  
• 1/31/1968 VC and NVA capture Hue. NY Times: "Vietcong commando units wearing South Vietnamese Army uniforms smashed into the grounds of the Presidential Palace and the United States Embassy here today behind a barrage of mortar fire and rockets. At the same time the United States mission reported that assaults had been made on the Bienhoa air base and the headquarters of the American II Field Force at Longbinh...Danang...came under heavy attack...The whereabouts of President Thieu and Vice President Ky could not be immediately determined."
  
• 1/31/1968 On Johnny Carson's show Jim Garrison said that the CIA "was deeply involved in the assassination" He produced grainy photos of five men talking to police in Dealey Plaza after the assassination: "Here are the pictures of five of them being arrested ...Several of these men...have been connected by our office with the Central Intelligence Agency." The people were only bystanders, had not been arrested, and had not been identified by Garrison's investigators. (Posner, Case Closed 447) "When Carson asked Garrison to reveal the new evidence that he claimed he had, Garrison reached into a black leather portfolio he held in his lap and pulled out some photographs, which, he said, showed suspects being arrested immediately after the assassination. 'Here are the pictures of five of them being arrested, and they've never been shown before... Several of these men arrested have been connected by our office with the Central Intelligence Agency.' The new evidence...had been found by Allan Chapman some weeks before, in the photographic department of the Dallas Times Herald. Robert Hollingsworth, managing editor of the Times Herald, has told me that he personally inspected with a magnifying glass the photographs...and that they showed nothing more than some bystanders, two of whom were employed in the building in which Oswald worked, being routinely questioned by policemen." (Epstein, Counterplot 74-5)
  
• 1/31/1968 Sirhan scrawled in his diary: "RFK RFK RFK RFK RFK Robert F Kennedy Robert F Kennedy RFK RFK RFK RFK RFK must die RFK must die…Who killed Kennedy? I don't know I don't know I don't know yes yes yes yes yes yes yes yes no no no girl the girl the girl no no no no practice practice practice practice practice Mind Control mind control mind control 1234 1234 1234 1234 give me a Tom Collins were you drunk yes yes yes where is the [girl or gun] I don't know go home go hom home car car car car car I want coffee cofee cofee at the party at the party Kathleen Kathleen Kathleen Kathleen NO [illegible] NO Kathleen She did not tell me her name NO NO I don't know she wanted she wanted coffee NO NO NO NO"
  
• 1-2/1968 Gold-outflow crisis in US. In January 1968 Johnson imposed a series of measures designed to end gold outflow, and to increase U.S. exports. This was unsuccessful, however, as in mid-March 1968 a run on gold ensued, the London Gold Pool was dissolved, and a series of meetings attempted to rescue or reform the existing system. But, as long as the U.S. commitments to foreign deployment continued, particularly to Western Europe, there was little that could be done to maintain the gold peg.
  
• 2/1968 This month's issue of Playboy reviewed Sylvia Meagher's Accessories After the Fact, and called it "the best of the new crop of books--and the most chilling in its implications...the failure of the Warren Commission to investigate, evaluate--or even acknowledge--the huge body of evidence in its possession indicating the possible presence of more than one gunman...These new books lend weight to widening appeals by Congressmen and the press for an independent new investigation..."
  
• 2/1968 protests by professors at the German University of Bonn demanded the resignation of the university's president because of his involvement in the building of concentration camps during the war.
  
• 2/1968 students from Harvard, Radcliffe, and Boston University held a four-day hunger strike to protest the war.
  
• 2/1968 Czech Communist Party leadership approves enlargement of the economic reform program started in 1967. Journalists, students, and writers call for the repeal of the 1966 Press censorship law.
  
• 2/1968 News Clipping on Louisiana v. Clay Shaw MARINA IS ORDERED TO TESTIFY IN ORLEANS: A Dallas judge ruled today that the widow of Lee Harvey Oswald must come to New Orleans next week to testify in District Attorney Jim Garrison's Kennedy assassination probe. Texas District Court Judge John Mead told Mrs. Marina Oswald Porter at Dallas she is a "material and neccessary witness" in the New Orleans investigation of the slaying of President John F. Kennedy. Meanwhile, Thomas Edward Beckham, another out-of-town state witness sought by Garrison, appeared at Criminal District Court here today, but his grand jury appearance was delayed until Feb. 15. MRS. PORTER IS NOW SCHEDULED to appear before the jury Feb. 8 and 9. She appeared at the Dallas court with her husband, and would make no comment after the judge's decision. She had previously said she would return to New Orleans "if I have to." The court action today was a hearing on Garrison's subpena [sic] under the interstate agreement for return of witnesses. Judge Mead presented Marina with a check from Garrison's office to cover her traveling expenses to New Orleans. IN THE NEW ORLEANS COURT action, Beckham, 27, asked that his grand jury appearance be put off until he had a chance to confer with his local attorney, newly elected state Rep. Edward H. Booker. Assitant DA James L. Alcock agreed to the request and Judge Matthew S. Braniff told Beckham to appear before the jury at 9 a.m. Feb. 15 "without further notice." Beckham arrived in town shortly after midnight from Omaha, where a court had ordered him to return as a material witness at Garrison's request. The witness will remain in town at his own expense because the delay was at his own request. BECKHAM WAS accompanied to court this morning by three men with pistols. One was James Hauger, 32, who said he resigned from the OMaha police force two days ago to act as Beckham's bodyguard. The other two were an unidentified brother of Beckham's and Herman Henning, who carried credentials as an auxiliary sheriff here. Two other brothers of Beckham's were also with him....IN HIS ROLE as a cowboy singer, Beckham said he has an album coming out entitled "Material Witness." He first described it as a "kinda party record on Garrison," but later said it was "just a bunch of songs I've done and doesn't have anything to do with Garrison." Beckham said he needed the bodyguards because he has been threatened both in Omaha and here. He said his mother, who lives here, has had telephone calls from persons who warned Beckham would be harmed if he appeared before the jury....Garrison's original subpena [sic] for Beckham alleged that the singer was an associate of the late David William Ferrie, a key figure in the DA's probe of the slaying of President John F. Kennedy. THE SUBPENA [sic] SAID Beckman [sic] and Ferrie were both ordained priests in the "Old Orthodox Catholic Church of North America." The document also said that Beckham was reported to be in Dallas in November of 1963, the month the President was killed.
  
• 2/1/1968 In Saigon, Thieu declares martial law. Westmoreland gave a press conference in Saigon and told reporters that there was some evidence that the VC offensive was "about to run out of steam."
  
• 2/1/1968 A suspected NLF officer was summarily executed by General Nguyen Ngoc Loan, a South Vietnamese National Police Chief. Loan shot the suspect in the head on a public street in front of journalists. South Vietnamese reports provided as justification after the fact claimed that the suspect was captured near the site of a ditch holding as many as thirty-four bound and shot bodies of police and their relatives, some of whom were the families of General Loan's deputy and close friend. The execution was filmed and photographed and provided another iconic image that helped sway public opinion in the United States against the war.
  
• 2/1/1968 A NYT editorial on Tet remarked that "these were not the deeds of an enemy whose fighting efficiency has progressively declined' and whose morale is sinking fast,' as United States military officials put it in November."
  
• 2/1/1968 McNamara reports that the Soviets doubled their ICBM force in 1967.
  
• 2/1/1968 Nixon announces his presidential candidacy.
  
• 2/1/1968 Billy James Hargis addressed an audience of loyal followers from Oklahoma City. He announced, "We have lost the war in Vietnam….All we need is the funeral." After a long, uncomfortable silence, he slammed his hand down on the pulpit and yelled, "We patriots will never stand for this defeat! Never!" Wham! "Never!" Wham! "Never!"
  
• 2/2/1968 LBJ press conference: "We have known for several months now that the Communists planned a massive winter-spring offensive." Today, Westmoreland asserted: "The enemy is about to run out of steam."
  
• 2/4/1968 Rusk said on NBC-TV's Meet the Press that the communist offensive contained "North Vietnamese regiments..."
  
• 2/5/1968 In central South Carolina is the small city of Orangeburg, home to South Carolina State University, a predominantly Black public college. Today, students protested against an all-white bowling alley. The students organized another protest when white city officials refused to meet their demands.
  
• 2/7/1968 The students at South Carolina State began to rebel in the streets by attacking police cars. The rebellion lasted until the next day. The police along with the National Guard were called in to occupy the campus. The Guard began to fire upon the unarmed students as they sat around a bonfire seeking warmth. Three students were killed and 28 or 33 wounded. Many of them were shot in the balls of their feet as they were trying to run away and throw themselves on the ground to avoid gunfire. To justify the shootings, news accounts circulated the falsehood that a student had fired on a police officer. No gun was ever produced. The FBI falsified information about the students to help the troopers in their defense. After a federal investigation, nine members of the state police were indicted. But they were later acquitted on the federal charge of depriving demonstrators of their constitutional rights.
  
• 2/8/1968 RFK says that U.S. cannot win Vietnam War.
  
• 2/8/1968 Orangeburg massacre - On February 8, a civil rights protest in Orangeburg, South Carolina, turned deadly with the death of three college students.
  
• 2/8/1968 Marina Oswald testifies before Jim Garrison's grand jury in New Orleans
  
• 2/8/1968 George Wallace enters the presidential race on the American Independent party ticket; he pledged to keep order if it required "30,000 troops with 2-foot-long bayonets" and repeal "so-called civil rights laws."
  
• 2/8/1968 Eldridge Cleaver's book Soul on Ice is published.
  
• 2/12/1968 Memphis: the more than a thousand garbage men, nearly all blacks, went out on strike to protest the city's refusal to recognize their union. Mayor Henry Loeb refused their demands and began hiring white strikebreakers.
  
• 2/13/1968 US sends 10,500 more combat troops to Vietnam.
  
• 2/16/1968 The nation's first 911 emergency telephone system was inaugurated, in Haleyville, Ala.
  
• 2/16/1968 LBJ curbs draft deferments for graduate students.
  
• 2/16/1968 In New Orleans, Jim Garrison subpoenas former CIA Director and Warren Commission member Allen Dulles. Dulles refuses to appear.
  
• 2/16/1968 John Lennon, George Harrison and their wives fly to Rishikesh, India, for an extended study of transcendental meditation with the Maharishi. Paul, Ringo and their wives arrive four days later.
  
• 2/17/1968 New Republic editorialized about Tet: "A year before, President Johnson had said that the enemy was losing his grip on South Vietnam. With Tet, that prophecy seemed as broken as the policy it served."
  
• 2/18/1968 Boston Globe published a survey it had done of 38 or 39 major US newspapers; it found that not a single one had editorialized in favor of U.S. withdrawal from Vietnam. While millions of Americans were demanding an immediate pullout, such a concept was still viewed as extremely unrealistic by the editorial boards of big daily papers including the liberal New York Times and Washington Post.
  
• 2/19/1968 Dean Rusk in a State Dept Bulletin: "I get no comfort out of the fact that the defense budget of the United States this year is roughly equal to the gross national product of all of Latin America."
  
• 2/19/1968 Cesar Chavez, the trade union leader, began a hunger strike in protest against the violence being used against his members in California. Robert F. Kennedy went to the San Joaquin Valley to give Chavez his support and told waiting reporters: "I am here out of respect for one of the heroic figures of our time Cesar Chavez. I congratulate all of you who are locked with Cesar in the struggle for justice for the farm worker and in the struggle for justice for Spanish-speaking Americans." Chavez was also a strong opponent of the Vietnam War. Kennedy had begun to link the campaign against the war with the plight of the disadvantaged. Martin Luther King was following a similar path with his involvement in the Poor People's Campaign. As William F. Pepper has pointed out: "If the wealthy, powerful interests across the nation would find Dr King's escalating activity against the war intolerable, his planned mobilization of half a million poor people with the intention of laying siege to Congress could only engender outrage - and fear."
  
• 2/20/1968 During the Senate hearings on the Gulf of Tonkin incident, it is revealed that the navy's records of "extensive interrogation of all potentially knowledgeable [North Vietnamese] sources reveals that they have no info concerning a NVN attack on US ships on 4 August 1964. They state definitely and emphatically that no PTs could have been involved." Another cooperative source "who obviously has traveled in higher circles and has proved himself exceptionally knowledgeable on almost every naval subject and event of interest…specifically and strongly denied that any attack took place." McNamara testified today: "I must address the suggestion that, in some way, the government of the United States induced the incident on August 4 [1964] with the intent of providing an excuse to take the retaliatory action which we in fact took. I can only characterize such insinuations as monstrous." Looking at Sen. Fulbright, he continued: "I find it inconceivable that anyone even remotely familiar with our society and system of government could suspect the existence of a conspiracy which would include almost, if not all, the entire chain of military command in the Pacific, the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, the Joint Chiefs, the Secretary of Defense, and his chief civilian assistants, the Secretary of State, and the President of the United States."
  
• 2/21/1968 NY Times reported, "An enemy force of about 300 today seized a village within easy mortar range of Tansonnut Airport and Gen. William C. Westmoreland's quarters."
  
• 2/21/1968 Jim Garrison described the CIA's executive action program and made comparisons to Nazism on a Dutch TV show: "The press has now reached the point of subsequent control by the Central Intelligence Agency that we literally can't get the truth out." (Counterplot 116-7) In February 1968, he unveiled what would be his final and enduring explanation during a Dutch television show hosted by a left-wing, anti-American journalist named Willem Oltmans.[50] According to Garrison, it was no longer the case that the CIA was an unwitting accomplice to the murder and then an accessory after the fact. No, the truth had turned out to be much worse. Garrison now averred that the Agency had consciously plotted the assassination, executing the plan in concert with the "military-industrial complex." Both had a vested interest in the continuation of the Cold War and the escalation of the hot war in Vietnam. President Kennedy wanted to end both conflicts; that was why he had to be assassinated. The shift in Garrison's line went largely unnoticed at firstexcept at the CIA, which was monitoring the DA's every utterance. As Rocca observed in a March 1968 memo, "Garrison has now reached the ultimate point in the logic of his public statements…. This is by and large the Moscow line." For a fleeting moment, Rocca, one of the Agency's most esteemed counterintelligence experts, seemed to be musing about the possibility of a Soviet hand in all that had happened, given that the statement fit so neatly with Moscow's known goals. But Rocca's insight never went further than this brief speculation. (Max Holland)
  
• 2/22/1968 Memphis garbage men on strike marched to the city council to make their protests heard, but they were dispersed with police using truncheons and tear gas.
  
• 2/22/1968 AP from Amsterdam: "District Attorney Jim Garrison New Orleans yesterday charged the CIA with killing President Kennedy and gagging the U.S. press. He also said "the next U.S. President who tries to put brakes on the war machine and bring peace to this country will also be murdered." "Garrison told his interviewer, Willem Oltmans, for the Dutch TV program' Panorama': President Kennedy was murdered by CIA elements. Those who were involved in the murder worked laboriously to give such a presentation that the suspicion would rest on others. This manner of organizing a murder is standard procedure with the CIA. "He said that he assumed that President Johnson know that the CIA killed Kennedy because he appointed an investigation committee of mainly pro-CIA persons."
  
• 2/13/1968 Memphis strikers held their first protest march. Police used mace and nightsticks to disperse the crowd. The city went to court and obtained an injunction against further marches.
  
• 2/24/1968 CBS-TV permits folk singer Pete Seeger to perform all the verses of his "Waist Deep in the Big Muddy" on the Smothers Brothers Comedy Hour. The song had been censored from the show the previous September because of its strong anti-war message.
  
• 2/24/1968 The government-censored transcripts of the 1964 Tonkin hearings was released, and published in newspapers Feb 25.
  
• 2/24/1968 Gen. James M. Gavin wrote an article in the Saturday Evening Post: "There has been much speculation about what President Kennedy would or would not have done in Vietnam had he lived. Having discussed military affairs with him often and in detail for 15 years, I know he was totally opposed to the introduction of combat troops in Southeast Asia. His public statements just before his murder support this view. Let us not lay on the dead the blame for our own failures."
  
• 2/25/1968 US and ARVN recapture Hue. Today, Westmoreland said in Saigon, "I do not believe the enemy can hold up under a long war." (The Experts Speak)
  
• 2/25/1968 Bobby and Artie Seale are arrested in their home by Oakland police without a warrant. Charges of "conspiracy to murder" against Bobby are later dropped.
  
• 2/26-27/1968: Ramsey Clark Panel convenes in Washington D.C. to examine JFK X-rays and autopsy photographs. Doctors on the panel include: William H. Carnes, MD, professor of pathology, University of Utah, Russell S. Fisher, MD, the famed Baltimore medical examiner, Russell H. Morgan, MD, the head of the radiology department at Johns Hopkins University, and Alan R. Moritz, MD, professor of pathology at Case Western Reserve University. Appointed by Attorney General Clark to study the autopsy material in 1968, mostly in response to Jim Garrison's investigation. Bruce Bromley acted as the panel's legal counsel, was present during the examination and collaborated on the final report. The report was released to the public 1/1969, and was published in Post-Mortem (p580). The following comes from that report, written Feb 27. "The panel's inventory disclosed x-ray films of the entire body except for the lower arms, wrists and hands and the lower legs, ankles and feet." Of the photographs, there were 10 of the "head viewed from above"; 9 of the "head viewed from right and above to include part of face, neck, shoulder and upper chest"; 7 of the "head and neck viewed from left side"; 4 of the "head viewed from behind"; 4 "cranial cavity with brain removed viewed from above and in front"; 4 of "back of body including neck"; 3 of "brain viewed from above"; 4 of "brain viewed from below." "The black and white and color negatives corresponding to the above were present and there were also seven black and white negatives of the brain without corresponding prints. These were numbered 19 through 25 (JTB)...All of the above were listed in a memorandum of transfer, located in the National Archives, and dated April 25, 1965." As for the X-rays, there was one of the "skull, A-P view"; 2 of "skull, left lateral"; 3 "skull, fragments of"; 2 "thoraco-lumbar region, A-P view"; 1 of the "chest, A-P view"; 1 of "right hemithorax, shoulder and upper arm, A-P view"; 1 of "left hemithorax, shoulder and upper arm, A-P view"; 1 "pelvis, A-P view"; 1 "lower femurs and knees, A-P view"; 1 "upper legs, A-P view." The panel inventoried "CE 399 - a whole bullet; CE 567 - portion of nose of a bullet; CE 569 - portion of base segment of a bullet; CE 840 - three fragments of lead." Concerning the photos of the back of the head, they reported that "the contours...have been grossly distorted by extensive fragmentation of the underlying calvarium. There is an elliptical penetrating wound of the scalp situated near the midline and high above the hairline...judged to be approximately six millimeters wide and fifteen millimeters long. The margin of this wound shows an ill-defined zone of abrasion." The top of the head had "multiple gaping irregularly stellate lacerations of the scalp over the right parietal, temporal and frontal regions....there was no exiting bullet defect in the supra-orbital region of the skull...extensive deformation with laceration and fragmentation of the right cerebral hemisphere. Irregularly shaped areas of contusion with minor loss of cortex are seen on the inferior surface of the first left temporal convolution. The orbital gyri on the left show contusion with some underlying loss of cortex. The sylvian fissure on the right side has been opened revealing a rolled-up mass of arachnoid and blood clot which is dark brown to black in color. The mid-temporal region is depressed and its surface lacerated....the left cerebral hemisphere is covered by a generally intact arachnoid with evidence of subarachnoid hemorrhage especially over the parietal and frontal gyri and in the sulei. The right cerebral hemisphere is extensively lacerated. It is transected by a broad canal running generally in a postero-anterior direction and to the right of the midline. Much of the roof of this canal is missing as are most of the underlying frontal and parietal gyri...the corpus callosum is widely torn in the midline...the back of the head was struck by a single bullet travelling at high velocity, the major portion of which passed forward through the right cerebral hemisphere, and which produced an explosive type of fragmentation of the skull and laceration of the scalp. The appearance of the entrance wound in the scalp is consistent with its having been produced by a bullet similar to that of exhibit CE 399. The photographs do not disclose where this bullet emerged from the head although those showing the interior of the cranium with the brain removed indicate that it did not emerge from the supra-orbital region...There is an elliptical penetrating wound of the skin of the back located approximately 15 cm medial to the right acromial process, 5cm lateral to the mid-dorsal line and 14 cm below the right mastoid process. This wound lies approximately 5.5cm below a transverse fold in the skin of the neck...A well defined zone of discoloration of the edge of the back wound, most pronounced on its upper and outer margins, identifies it as having the characteristics of the entrance wound of a bullet...measures approximately 7mm in width by 10mm in length...consistent with those of a wound produced by a [Carcano] bullet...At the site of and above the tracheotomy incision in the front of the neck, there can be identified the upper half of the circumference of a circular cutaneous wound the appearance of which is characteristic of that of the exit wound of a bullet. The lower half of this circular wound is obscured by the surgically produced tracheotomy in- ciscion which transects it. The center of the circular wound is situated approximately 9cm below the transverse fold in the skin of the neck described in a preceding paragraph...followed a downward course and to the left in its passage through the body." As for the X-rays, "there are multiple fractures of the bones of the calvarium bilaterally. These fractures extend into the base of the skull and involve the floor of the anterior fossa on the right side as well as the middle fossa in the midline. With respect to the right fronto-parietal region of the skull, the traumatic damage is particularly severe wiht extensive fragmentation of the bony structures from the midline of the frontal bone anteriorly to the vicinity of the posterior margin of the parietal bone behind. Above, the fragmentation extends approximately 25mm across the midline to involve adjacent portions of the left parietal bone; below, the changes extend into the right temporal bone. Throughout this region, many of the bony pieces have been displaced outward; several pieces are missing. Distributed through the right cerebral hemisphere are numerous small, irregular metallic fragments, most of which are less than 1mm in maximum dimension. The majority of these fragments lie anteriorly and superiorly. None can be visualized on the left side of the brain and none below a horizontal plane through the floor of the anterior fossa of the skull. On one of the lateral films of the skull, a hole measuring approximately 8mm in diameter on the outer surface of the skull and as much as 20mm on the internal surface can be seen in profile approximately 100m above the external occipital protuber- ance. The bone of the lower edge of the hole is depressed. Also there is, embedded in the outer table of the skull close to the lower edge of the hole, a large metallic fragment which on the anterior-posterior film lies 25mm to the right of the midline. This fragment as seen in the latter film is round and measures 6.5mm in diameter...The metallic fragments visualized within the right cerebral hemisphere fall into two groups. One group consists of relatively large fragments, more or less randomly distributed. The second group consists of finely divided fragments, distributed in a postero-anterior direction in a region 45mm long and 8mm wide...its long axis if extended posteriorly passes through the above-mentioned hole. It appears to end anteriorly immediately below the badly fragmented frontal and parietal bones just anterior to the region of the coronal suture...The projectile fragmented on entering the skull, one major section leaving a trail of fine metallic debris as it passed forward and laterally to explosively fracture the right frontal and parietal bones as it emerged...Subcutaneous emphysema is present just to the right of the cervical spine immediately above the apex of the right lung. Also several small metallic fragments are present in this region [These would have been deposited by the "pristine bullet"]. There is no evidence of fracture of either scapula or of the clavicles, or of the ribs or of any of the cervical and thoracic vertebrae...No bullets or fragments of bullets are demonstrated in X-rayed portions of the body other than those described above." They also examined JFK's clothing: "A ragged oval hole about 15mm long (vertically) is located 5cm to the right of the midline in the back of the coat at a point about 12cm below the upper edge of the coat collar...A ragged hole about 10cm long vertically and corresponding to the first one described in the coat, is located 2.5cm to the right of the mid-line in the back of the shirt at a point 14cm below the upper edge of the collar. Two linear holes 15mm long are found in the overlapping hems of the front of the shirt in a position corresponding to the place where the knot of the neck tie would normally be. In the front component of the knot of the tie in the outer layer of frabic a ragged tear about 5mm in maximum diameter is located 2.5cm below the upper edge of the knot and to the left of the midline." In conclusion, the panel concurred with the findings of the WC. They decided that dissection of the bullet track through JFK's neck would probably not "alter significantly the conclusions expressed in this report." The report was signed by the four doctors between March and April 1968. Howard Roffman commented that the fragment embedded in the skull could not have been produced by a bullet covered "with a hard metal jacket such as copper alloy. Such a fragment is, in fact, a not infrequent occurence from a lead bullet...or soft-nosed bullet." (Presumed Guilty) Dr Humes had testified that there were no metallic fragments in the neck region. (H 2 361) All of the Clark Panel doctors are now deceased. Posner's only mention of the Clark Panel is that it "reaffirmed the original autopsy report." (Case Closed 304,450) The panel found that the tracheotomy wound did not obscure the original throat wound, not even to the naked eye.
  
• 2/26/1968 RFK met with Larry O'Brien and told him he was seriously considering running against LBJ: "I don't want to do it, but I may have to. Johnson's Vietnam policy is a debacle...I don't understand Johnson. He scares me. I wonder if he will ever listen to reason." RFK did not have a high opinion of Eugene McCarthy. (No Final Victories 219)
  
• 2/27/1968 Walter Cronkite came back from Saigon and told the American people that it seemed the "the bloody experience in Vietnam is to end in stalemate." He said that the wise course of action was to admit we "did the best we could" and to begin a process of negotiation and withdrawal. LBJ felt that if he had lost Cronkite's support, he had lost the average American as well.
  
• 2/27/1968 Westmoreland requests 206,000 more troops. This was McNamara's last official day on the job; his last act was to oppose Westmoreland's troop request.
  
• 2/27/1968 Jim Garrison subpoenas the original print of the Zapruder film from Time, Inc. as evidence in the Clay Shaw trial.
  
• 2/28/1968 LBJ awarded McNamara the Medal of Freedom.
  
• 2/28/1968 The JFK conspiracy books Accessories After the Fact and Six Seconds in Dallas were reviewed by Fred Graham in the NY Times Book Review. Graham found it astonishing that there was such a degree of disbelief "in a document that has the endorsement of some of the highest officials in the Government." He contended that inconsistencies notwithstanding, "None of the critics have been able to suggest any other explanation that fits the known facts better than the Warren Commission's." Graham found Ms. Meagher's book "a bore," and he found that Thompson's scientific approach ignored "the larger logic of the Warren Report. Although it has seemed that the flow of anti-Warren Report books would never end," he continued, "these two may represent a sweet climax."
  
• 2/28/1968 Sen. Wayne Morse floor speech: "The time has come for a thorough study by objective civilians of the operations of the military establishment in the United States the military establishment of which we were warned by General Eisenhower as he left the Presidency."
  
• 2/29/1968 Appointed by Johnson to serve as the commission's executive director, David Ginsburg played a pivotal role in writing the Kerner Commission's findings. The Commission's final report, the Report of the National Advisory Commission on Civil Disorders or Kerner Report was released on February 29, 1968 after seven months of investigation. The report became an instant best-seller, and over two million Americans bought copies of the 426-page document. Its finding was that the riots resulted from black frustration at lack of economic opportunity. Reverend Martin Luther King Jr., pronounced the report a "physician's warning of approaching death, with a prescription for life."[4] The report berated federal and state governments for failed housing, education and social-service policies. The report also aimed some of its sharpest criticism at the mainstream media. "The press has too long basked in a white world looking out of it, if at all, with white men's eyes and white perspective." The report's most infamous passage warned, "Our nation is moving toward two societies, one black, one white-separate and unequal." Its results suggested that one main cause of urban violence was white racism and suggested that white America bore much of the responsibility for black rioting and rebellion. It called to create new jobs, construct new housing, and put a stop to de-facto segregation in order to wipe out the destructive ghetto environment. In order to do so, the report recommended for government programs to provide needed services, to hire more diverse and sensitive police forces and, most notably, to invest billions in housing programs aimed at breaking up residential segregation. The Commission's suggestions included, but were not limited to: "Unless there are sharp changes in the factors influencing Negro settlement patterns within metropolitan areas, there is little doubt that the trend toward Negro majorities will continue." "Providing employment for the swelling Negro ghetto population will require ...opening suburban residential areas to Negroes and encouraging them to move closer to industrial centers..." "...cities will have Negro majorities by 1985 and the suburbs ringing them will remain largely all white unless there are major changes in Negro fertility rates, in migration settlement patterns or public policy." "...we believe that the emphasis of the program should be changed from traditional publicly built slum based high rise projects to smaller units on scattered sites." One often overlooked recommendation of the report was for an expansion of police surveillance in order to better deal with further unrest. The Commission recommended that: "police departments...develop means to obtain adequate intelligence for planning purposes...An intelligence unit staffed with full-time personnel should be established to gather, evaluate, analyze, and disseminate information on potential as well as actual civil disorders...It should use undercover police personnel and informants." The Law Enforcement Assistance Administration released federal funding for local police forces in response. President Lyndon B. Johnson, who had already pushed through the Civil Rights Act and the Voting Rights Act, ignored the report and rejected the Kerner Commission's recommendations. In April 1968, one month after the release of the Kerner report, rioting broke out in more than 100 cities following the assassination of civil rights leader Martin Luther King, Jr. To mark the thirtieth anniversary of the Kerner Report, the Eisenhower Foundation sponsored two complementary reports, The Millennium Breach and Locked in the Poorhouse. The Millennium Breach, co-authored by former Senator and Commission member Fred R. Harris, found the racial divide had grown in the subsequent years with inner-city unemployment at crisis levels. The Millennium Breach found that most of the decade that followed the Kerner Report, America made progress on the principal fronts the report dealt with: race, poverty, and inner cities. Then progress stopped and in some ways reversed by a series of economic shocks and trends and the government's action and inaction. Harris reported, "Today, thirty years after the Kerner Report, there is more poverty in America, it is deeper, blacker and browner than before, and it is more concentrated in the cities, which have become America's poorhouses." Conservative critics of the Kerner Report argue that the basis and findings of the report are deeply flawed. They contend that the report exonerates rioters for their behavior and places the blame for their actions on the larger society. The notion that racism created pathological social conditions that lead to the eruption of racial riots, as the Kerner Commission argued, was not supported by the findings of many uncited sociologists. The major riots took place in cities where blacks experienced the least racism; although Los Angeles, Newark, and Detroit were certainly not without racism, it did not compare with that in the deep South. This last point, however, that it is in the South where "true racism" existed (in past tense) is a myth itself, created to absolve the North of its subtle and continuing racism. Abraham H. Miller, who won a Pi Sigma Alpha Award from the Western Political Science Association for his statistical refutation of some of the Commission's data analysis, stated, "There is considerable reason for rejecting the sociological and popular cliché that absolute or relative deprivation and the ensuing frustration or despair is the root cause of rebellion." At a 1998 lecture commemorating the 30th anniversary of the report, Stephan Thernstrom, a history professor at Harvard University, stated, "Because the commission took for granted that the riots were the fault of white racism, it would have been awkward to have had to confront the question of why liberal Detroit blew up while Birmingham and other Southern cities where conditions for blacks were infinitely worse did not. Likewise, if the problem was white racism, why didn't the riots occur in the 1930s, when prevailing white racial attitudes were far more barbaric than they were in the 1960s?" Critics of the report also attribute the cause of the riots to the size of the black community where the eruption occurred and the failure of the police force to respond swiftly and adequately.