Deep Politics Timeline

[Tracy Riddle]

• 9/1968 The women's liberation movement gained international recognition when it demonstrated at the annual Miss America beauty pageant. The week-long protest and its disruption of the pageant gained the movement much needed attention in the press.
  
• Farewell America by James Hepburn (a pseudonym) was published in September 1968 in Belgium (it may have been published earlier elsewhere in Europe). Its French title was "America Burns." The book said that "President Kennedy's assassination was the work of magicians. It was a stage trick, complete with accessories and fake mirrors, and when the curtain fell, the actors, and even the scenery disappeared . . . the plotters were correct when they guessed that their crime would be concealed by shadows and silences, that it would be blamed on a 'madman' and negligence.'" "Ghosted by a veteran operative of the French SDECE, Farewell America purported to present then President Charles de Gaulle's views on Kennedy's assassination." Early 1968 the manuscript was offered to Jim Garrison for him to read. "We concluded that the breadth of knowledge the book contained about these varied interests meant that it could not have been the work of a single author." William Turner and Warren Hinckle sent Steve Jaffee to Europe to investigate the book; Herve Lamarr confessed to being its author. He used the name because he was a fan of Audrey Hepburn, and confirmed that the French government, all the way up to De Gaulle, was involved in producing the book. They also discovered that the French managed to steal the Zapruder film from Life for a few days early in 1968 and copy it. Lamarr also confided that the section on the Secret Service was based on information supplied by "a Kennedy insider" (presumably Patrick Moynihan). (Deadly Secrets p434,259) Early this year, according to Richard Lubic, at the time a staffer of Life magazine's sister publication Time, the Zapruder film of the JFK assassination disappears for several days from the vault in the Time-Life headquarters in New York. The FBI and CIA investigate. Although the obvious conclusion is that it was an inside job, no suspects are ever identified. William Turner: "He was slight and fidgety, with a wispy mustache and fingertips yellowed by countless Gitanes. He called himself Herve Lamarr, but in the twilight world of intelligence that may not have been the name on his baptismal certificate. The Frenchman had called the day before, long distance, saying he had to see me. It was September 1968, three months after the assassination of Robert F. Kennedy in Los Angeles. I was familiar with Lamarr's project: a book titled Farewell America, which contended that the assassination of John F. Kennedy at Dallas on Nov. 22 was a conspiracy that robbed America of her future. As we sat in the coffee shop of the Fairmont Hotel on top of San Francisco's Nob Hill, I wondered what the great urgency was. Lamarr chitchatted earnestly, but had no punch line. I introduced Lamarr to Jim Rose, who was driving me to the airport to catch a plane for New York. Rose was a pilot who had flown CIA missions against Fidel Castro and Belgian Congo insurgents in the early 1960s. He had come in from the cold and done some chancy investigative work for New Orleans District Attorney Jim Garrison, whose damn-the-torpedoes-full-speed-ahead probe of the JFK murder had fascinated the world until it grounded on an evidentiary reef. The punch line came that night when Lamarr called Rose and instructed him to pick up a package at the St. Francis Hotel, at the bottom of Nob Hill. Rose approached the bell captain, gave a password, and was handed a sealed can of film. When I returned from New York we screened what turned out to be a motion picture version of Farewell America. As a sonorous narrator chronicled John Kennedy's political career, still photos of the President with kings and kids, pols and the people, rolled along with shots of his grim-faced enemies: Dallas oil croesus H. L. Hunt; the pro-Blue General Edwin A. Walker whom Kennedy had cashiered; the Big Steel executives he had forced to rescind price hikes; FBI Director J. Edgar Hoover, who considered Camelot subversive; Richard Nixon; and on and on. There were digressive interludes, as when Frank Sinatra was heard singing "It's the wrong face" while visuals suggested secret amours. Then the music became dramatically somber as actual footage showed John and Jacqueline Kennedy boarding Air Force I in Fort Worth for the short hop to Dallas. There was the motorcade to downtown, spliced together from the home movies of spectators lining the route. And then -the Zapruder film." Harold Weisberg: "It does not tell the truth. That truth is not known and now cannot be. It is a work of fiction. Even superficial examination by one not addicted to all theories of any conspiracy no matter how impossible on its face discloses that although the author claims to have been in personal contact with the assassins, it has virtually nothing at all about the assassination, only a page or so. It is a diatribe against a vast number of wealthy Americans all of whom, it says, a virtual brigade of them, conspired to have JFK killed, with the oil magnate H.L. Hunt one of the major alleged conspirators. On my previous trip Garrison had given me the chapter that supposedly deals with the assassination to read. I read it on the plane home and immediately wrote him it was a fake, with details. But like Livingstone and a multitude of others, he liked what it said so to him the clear fake was not a fake at all. That they like what it says is all that is necessary for the assassination nuts to love it. It was done professionally and although it was undoubtedly the most libelous book ever written and could not be legally imported into the United States, it got to be popular and is still sold by second-hand stores. But it is a fake. It was originally titled L'Amerique Brule, or American Burns. Garrison suggested the title Farewell America. Lamarre and SDECE adopted it."
  
• 9/1968 "Fortunate J. Edgar Hoover! who in his twilight years experiences the downfall and death, one by one, of his arch-enemies - John Kennedy, Martin Luther King, and Robert Kennedy. He will live to be 150, on the strength of such juices." Minority of One, Sylvia Meagher
  
• 9/1968 Federal Reserve begins raising interest rates, until Sep 1969.
  
• 9/1968 C.W. Burpo's newsletter (The Bible Institute News): "The fact of the matter is, this nation is dying. It is sick unto death…The world hangs over an abyss, fearful to contemplate, and it hangs by a thread that only Divine Grace and Mercy keeps from breaking!" But five pages later, he wrote, "You hear a lot of talk these days about our country being sick. I don't buy it. America is still the greatest country in the world. America hasn't failed."
  
• 9/4/1968 California legislator and professor Samuel Hayakawa, in a speech to the American Psychological Association, explained the youth counter-culture as "an overdue negative reaction to television's message that material possessions are everything, that this headache remedy, this luxurious carpeting, this new model Camaro will bring all kinds of happiness."
  
• 9/4/1968 Cuban exile R.S. Vasudevo is arrested after it was proved that he had introduced a virus harmful to coffee into Cuba. The blight caused enormous damage.
  
• 9/7/1968 New carrier USS John F. Kennedy (CV 67) commissioned at the Norfolk Naval Base. The ship's keel was laid Oct. 22, 1964, at the Newport News Shipbuilding and Drydock Co.
  
• 9/8/1968 Black Panther leader Huey Newton was convicted of manslaughter for killing a policeman in a shoot-out.
  
• 9/9/1968 NYC teachers went on strike after the dismissal of teachers who had protested against the new policies of school decentralization and community control. The strike lasted until 11/19.
  
• 9/13/1968 Nixon said at a campaign stop in Cleveland, "I continue to believe that America's security requires the maintenance of the current oil depletion allowance."
  
• 9/13/1968 The dean of American University School of Law testified before the Senate that Fortas had been paid for a series of speeches that involved a conflict of interest.
  
• 9/17/1968 Rothermel memo to H.L. Hunt: "Jim Garrison made the statement for the news media that Clay Shaw ought to be tried. He said if Clay Shaw were tried, Garrison would show a link of conspiracy between Shaw and oil money in the Southwest."
  
• 9/17/1968 In Texas, the American Party nominates George Wallace for president.
  
• 9/18/1968 J. Edgar Hoover tells a government commission investigating violence in the US that "seemingly limitless excess of sex, sadism, degeneracy and violence is only too apparent in the offerings of the motion picture industry."
  
• 9/19/1968 Charlotte News reported that Billy Graham had said he sensed a significant rightward trend among "a big segment of the population," people who were not seen at protest marches but who were likely "to be heard from loudly at the polls."
  
• 9/24/1968 The first episode of CBS' TV news program, 60 Minutes, is broadcast.
  
• 9/25/1968 Humphrey began distancing himself from LBJ's policies by becoming more dovish on the war.
  
• 9/25/1968 Aristotle Onassis meets Jackie Kennedy's financial adviser, Andre Meyer at the Carlyle Hotel in New York regarding Jackie's proposed prenuptial agreement. Onassis says: "Your client could price herself right out of the market." Ted Kennedy is adamant that the upcoming wedding should not take place in the United States. Yannis Georgakis suggests a chapel on Skorpios. Jackie agrees. Her only proviso is that they find a priest who "understands English and doesn't look like Rasputin."
  
• 9/29/1968 James Reston noted in his column that there was little difference between Humphrey and Nixon, though the voters "are clearly leading the nation toward what they suppose to be - probably quite inaccurately - a quite conservative Nixon administration..."
  
• 9/30/1968 Stewart Alsop commented that Nixon would be a preferable alternative to "the mounting evidence that the election of Hubert H. Humphrey would be a national disaster...Nixon could negotiate without major political damage a Vietnam settlement that might get Humphrey impeached...this is the heart of the case for Nixon."
  
• 9/30/1968 Humphrey pledged to stop bombing North Vietnam if he was elected President.
  
• 10/1968 the Rodney Riots in Kingston, Jamaica, were inspired when the Jamaican government of Hugh Shearer banned Guyanese university lecturer Dr. Walter Rodney from returning to his teaching position at the University of the West Indies. Rodney, a historian of Africa, had been active in the Black power movement, and had been sharply critical of the middle class in many Caribbean countries. Rodney was an avowed socialist who worked with the poor of Jamaica in an attempt to raise their political and cultural consciousness.
  
• 10/1968 Shortly before leaving office, LBJ volunteered a piece of information to the veteran newsman Howard K. Smith, whom he deeply respected. "I'll tell you something [about John Kennedy's murder] that will rock you," he said. "Kennedy was trying to get to Castro, but Castro got to him first." "I was rocked all right," Smith later recalled; he begged for details. But Johnson refused to provide any, saying only, "It will all come out one day." Johnson was so obviously worn down by the bitterness of his years in office that Smith was left wondering if he had just witnessed a last bit of Johnson blarney. (Max Holland)
  
• 10/1/1968 The Senate was unable to stop a filibuster to prevent a vote on Fortas' nomination.
  
• 10/2/1968 LBJ withdraws his nomination of Abe Fortas after the Senate failed by a vote of 45 to 43 to achieve cloture. Warren wanted to withdraw his letter of resignation, but felt if he did so it would look like he was playing politics.
  
• 10/2/1968 Edward Daniels, an auto insurance specialist, told the American Society of Body Engineers that $1 billion of the $5-6 billion spent on auto repairs in the US in 1967 was because the industry had switched from bumpers that were functional to bumpers that were ornamental. 10/14/1969 a GM vice president, Mack Worden, acknowledged to congress that the bumpers met the company's standards of protecting sheet metal in a collision at a speed of 2.8 mph.
  
• 10/2/1968 Mexico City: student demonstrations against one-party government led to a massacre in the Tlatelolco Plaza. One of the protestors was future president Ernesto Zedillo, who was 16 then and photographed confronting police. The government always insisted that the shooting by 8000 soldiers and police was entirely provoked by the students, and the official death toll was between 27 and 30. 2400 protestors were arrested, but not one government official was ever held accountable for the deaths, which actually numbered around 300. For five hours the shooting continued; when it was over Army officials quickly cleared the bodies and blood and began a coverup. But there were too many witnesses, and the public's faith in the government collapsed. Documents that surfaced in 1998 showed that president Diaz Ordaz was behind the plan to crush the student demonstrations, because he didn't want them to interfere with the upcoming Olympic Games. (Sergio Aguayo, 1968: The Archives of Violence (1998); Elena Poniatowska, The Night of Tlatelolco (1971)
  
• 10/2/1968 George Romero's ground-breaking horror film Night of the Living Dead premieres. The movie reflected the darkness, confusion and sense of hopelessness many Americans felt.
  
• 10/5/1968 Northern Ireland: A civil rights march in Derry, which had been organised by members of the Derry Housing Action Committee (DHAC) and supported by the Northern Ireland Civil Rights Association (NICRA), was stopped by the Royal Ulster Constabulary (RUC) before it had properly begun. Present at the march were three British Labour Party Members of Parliament (MP), Gerry Fitt, then Republican Labour MP, several Stormont MPs, and members of the media including a television crew from RTE. The RUC broke-up the march by baton-charging the crowd and leaving many people injured including a number of MPs. The incidents were filmed and there was world-wide television coverage. The incidents in Derry had a profound effect on many people around the world but particularly on the Catholic population of Northern Ireland. Immediately after the march there were two days of serious rioting in Derry between the Catholic residents of the city and the RUC.
  
• 10/6/1968 Walter Lippman wrote in his column, "It has become painfully clear that the Democratic Party is too disorganized to run the country...I do not shrink from the prospect of Nixon as president. He is a very much better man today than he was 10 years ago...Nixon is the only one who may be able to produce a government that can govern... do not reject the notion that there is a new Nixon who has outlived and outgrown the ruthless politics of his early days."
  
• 10/6/1968 Dean Rusk said, "We are not going to abandon Southeast Asia whoever is elected in November and Hanoi should understand that."
  
• 10/7/1968 The movie industry introduces a rating system: G' for general audiences, M' for mature audiences, R' is off limits to those under 16 unless accompanied by an adult, and X' restricted to those 16 and older. Supporters of a rating system were convinced that the public wouldn't want to see films rated R or X, and so the movie industry would only make G or M films. Instead, audiences flocked to see R and X films, and filmmakers were now free to introduce more nudity, violence and language, knowing that it would be restricted to adult audiences.
  
• 10/9/1968 LBJ announced that Warren was staying on through the new court term.
  
• 10/9/1968 New Zealand PM Holyoake visited Washington. He told LBJ, "You have truly know the ordeal of power, Mr. President." (White House Diary)
  
• 10/11/1968 Apollo 7 mission: Schirra, Eisele and Cunningham made 163 orbits in 3 days.
  
• 10/12/1968 LBJ signed a bill in the home of Harry Truman designating 10/24/1968 as UN Day.
  
• 10/12/1968 San Francisco: GI's and Vets marched for peace from Golden Gate Park to Civic Center.
  
• 10/12/1968 Mexico City: Olympic Games open.
  
• 10/15/1968 The Boston Herald-Traveler carries a page-one story: John F. Kennedy's Widow And Aristotle Onassis To Wed Soon. Kennedy son-in-law Steve Smith calls Pierre Salinger in Washington. "We have to figure out some kind of statement for the family to put out," he says. "Have you got any idea of what you want to say?" Salinger asks. Smith replies, "How about Oh shit!'" (Nemesis)
  
• 10/16/1968 Rev. Daniel J. Berrigan is convicted with 8 others of burning draft files.
  
• 10/20/1968 It rains today while Jacqueline Kennedy weds Greek millionaire and shipping tycoon Aristotle Onassis. Jackie has had to leave the Catholic church in order to marry a divorced man. She and Onassis have a prenuptial agreement. She wears a 1.25 million dollar engagement ring. Jackie says: " I hate this country. I despise America and I don't want my children to live here anymore. If they are killing Kennedys, my kids are the number one targets. I want to get out of this country." Lady Bird Johnson, reflecting on her friend and predecessor says: "this complete break with the past might be good for her", " ... as a result of the wedding ... I feel strangely freer. No shadow walks beside me down the halls of the White House ... I wonder what it would have been like if we had entered this life unaccompanied by that shadow?" The public marriage announcement catches the world by surprise, and creates a negative reaction. Jackie's cousin, John Davis, says: "We all knew her mother and father had coached her to marry a very rich man." Gore Vidal says: "I can only give you two words - highly suitable." Senator George Smathers says: "I think she did it just so she'd never have to be beholding to the Kennedys again." Ari will spend 20 million dollars on Jackie during their first year of marriage. Jackie will spend 1.25-million dollars on clothes alone - helping local economies everywhere she shops. If a designer has a blouse she likes, she will order it in every color. It is also reported that Jackie eventually resells these clothes to Encore, an exclusive re-sell store, and pockets the extra cash. Jackie's marriage to Ari will last for seven years - until his death.
  
• 10/22/1968 Gun Control Act signed into law. After three decades of quiescence in the arena of gun control politics, the turmoil of the 1960s unleashed a wave of demand for new gun control legislation. The assassination of President John F. Kennedy in Dallas on November 22, 1963, prompted the country to focus on the regulation of firearms. Then the urban riots beginning in 1964 and the 1968 assassinations of Reverend Martin Luther King, Jr. and Senator Robert F. Kennedy fueled an inferno of outrage that demanded congressional action. In the wake of these acts of violence the U.S. Congress enacted the Gun Control Act (P.L. 90-618, 82 Stat. 1213) which President Lyndon B. Johnson signed in 1968. Although the Gun Control Act did not contain the owner licensing and gun registration provisions that President Johnson desired, the act, along with the Safe Streets and Crime Control Act passed by Congress months earlier, contained the most significant restrictions on firearms since Congress enacted the National Firearms Act (NFA) in 1934.
  
• 10/25/1968 In the Year of the Pig is a 1968 American documentary film about the origins of the Vietnam War, directed by Emile de Antonio. It was nominated for an Academy award for best documentary. The film, which is in black and white, contains much historical footage and many interviews. Those interviewed include Harry S. Ashmore, Daniel Berrigan, Philippe Devillers, David Halberstam, Roger Hilsman, Jean Lacouture, Kenneth P. Landon, Thruston B. Morton, Paul Mus, Charlton Osburn, Harrison Salisbury, Ilya Todd, John Toller, David K. Tuck, David Werfel, and John White. Produced during the Vietnam War, the film was greeted with hostility by many audiences, with bomb threats and vandalism directed at theaters that showed it. De Antonio cites the film as his personal favorite. It features the ironic use of patriotic music, portrays Ho Chi Minh as a patriot to the Vietnamese people, and asserts that Vietnam was always a single country rather than two.
  
• 10/26/1968 Soviet's Soyuz 3 made 60 orbits piloted by Georgi Beregovoi.
  
• 10/28/1968 Czechoslovakia becomes a federal republic, the only major objective of the reform process that came to fruition.
  
• 10/29/1968 Gen. Abrams was called in for a secret consultation on the bombing halt.
  
• 10/29/1968 LA Times on October 29 reported a news story from a Nashville paper: Ray's defense will claim that "Ray played only a small part in a master plot so complex and far-reaching that even Ray does not know who masterminded it...that he was promised $12,000 to $15,000 to lead police away from the real killers and become the lure in the greatest manhunt in history."
  
• 10/28-29/1968 October 28 and 29 were fact-filled days for those who attended the combination speech-question-answer events at San Diego State College and the University of California at San Diego (sponsored by the Assassination Inquiry Committee, the Experimental College at San Diego State, and Tuesday The Ninth Committee,: UCSD), featuring noted Warren Report critic, Harold Weisberg. The attendance each evening was approximately 400. Weisberg also appeared on two local TV shows, both on KFMB-TV (CBS in San Diego),' and participated on extended call-in sessions on radio stations KGB, KFMB, and KPRI. 'These appearances generated great enthusiasm and interest, involving audiences and studio staffs as well. Weisberg was repeatedly requested to revisit these shows on his next sojourn West, to answer numerous questions this time necessarily unasked due to time restrictions. As Weisberg's familiarity with Garrison's investigation became apparent to his audience, one listener at San Diego State was prompted to ask Weisberg about the incident reported above. Relevant exempts from Weisberg's reply are as follows: "On about November 6 or 7,1967, I was in New Orleans: Oswald In New Orleans had just appeared; and, I was with Jim Garrison...He (Garrison) said that man, one Charles Lind (spelled phonetically, ed.), who he knew to have been Bobby Kennedy's roommate in college, was in New Orleans, and while he,did not know if Mr. Lind was going to see him or not, it 'was conceivable that Mr Lind might, and on the chance that he,was an emissary from Bobby, what in my opinion ought Jim to tell him?-And up until this point Jim had had some pretty unkind things to say about Bobby Kennedy. Many of us had an opinion, that was an understatement of Garrisbn's„ hat Bobby was a little bit on the yellow side. I suggested to Jim that in order to accomplishwhat all of us wanted to do, we could use every ally we had, that events could force Bobby to take a position, that he could not conceivably ultimately not agree with us, and that pending that day we should not make his lot more miserable. But the best thing to do was to leave him alone and let him work out himself until such a time as he might conceivably come to us…On April 7 of this year I was investigating, in New Orleans and another man known to me- a friend of mine, a friend of Garrison's-- in New Orleans on entirely other businesss, also a friend of Bobby's, called me. He said he wanted to talk to me. This was right after Bobby's 'speech at San. Fernando Valley- remember the speech? where he said he had seen everything in the National Archives, and that was a complete lie, and that nothing there was inconsistent with the Warren Report, and that is perhaps the most total lie in history, and that he endorsed the Warren Report, and that may have been true, I know, But in any event, Bobby never saw all that trash, trivia, and junk. He didn't try, and he didn't. I know now from Frank Mankiewicz, his press secretary, that he didn't even read any of the books. So had a rather long and pointed, I guess you might call it "discussion",with this man, who I emphasize was not an emissary from Bobby, but was in New Orleans on other business"… The long and the short of it is this. He said that Bobby was buying time. He said that Bobby was afraid that there were already too many CIA guns between him and the Whitehouse. And he agreed with me that if Bobby were elected, his position would be untenable if a single unasked or unanswered question remained about his brother's murder. I'll tell you the rest of it. On-the 9th of June I was asked to go to New York and speak at a rally for Bobby in Central Park, and as you realize, that was four days after Bobby was killed. The next day I called this man who lives in New York, not in California, and we both recalled this New Orleans meeting. He said, 'I have to see you', and...we spent about three hours there (at dinner) and we were both pretty uncomfortable about it because this man knew that I had predicted Bobby's murder in a letter to your Speaker, Mr. Unruh, on January 17 of this year, saying that unless Bobby found his legs and became a man and spoke out, he would be assassinated. I regret that I was right. This man then told me (and the reason I say 'this man' is because he does not want his name used; I have asked him. I can understand his reason for not wanting his name used. I regret very much that the misuse of information has closed the mouths of too many of Bobby's people, some of whom might have helped us, and two of whom I was in touch with, and now they will not talk because they think that everything they say will be blabbed all over radio and television), this man then told me, 'It's worse than you know, because after I saw you I learned more.' Remember, he saw me in April. He said that three weeks before the assassination he had told Bobby's entourage that he had information an attempt would be made on Bobby's life in California and in a crowded environment. Because so much is out and because Bobby is now dead, I think it only right that I give you this much more of the rest of the story."
  
• 10/31/1968 Aristotle Onassis calls Yannis Georgakis and tells him that he has decided against making payments to Mahmoud Hamshari. The Palestinians have attempted to blackmail Onassis by threatening to bomb flights of his airline, Olympic, unless he pays them an initial sum of $200,000. (Nemesis)
  
• 10/31/1968 LBJ announces end of bombing of North Vietnam, starting the next day. He also said that the Paris peace talks would be expanded to include the Viet Cong.
  
• PRESS RELEASE, OCTOBER 31, 1968 (FROM THE DISTRICT ATTORNEY, PARISH OF ORLEANS) A Grand Jury subpoena was issued today in connection with the investigation into the assassination of President Kennedy for the appearance of an out-of-state witness, Mr. Fred Lee Crisman from Tacoma, Washington. Mr. Crisman has been engaged in undercover activity for a part of the industrial warfare complex for years. His cover is that of a "preacher" and a person "engaged in work to help gypsies." Our information. indicates that since the.early 1960's he has made many trips to the New Orleans and Dallas areas in connection with his undercover work.. for that part of the warfare industry engaged in the manufacture of what is termed, in military language, a "hardware" meaning those weapons sold to the U.S. government which are uniquely large and expensive. Mr. Crisman is a "former" employee of the Boeing Aircraft Company in the sense that one defendant in the case is a "former" employee of Lockheed Aircraft Company in Los Angeles. In intelligence terminology this ordinarily means that the connection still exists but that the "former employee" has moved into an underground operation. More often than not a "bad record"or evidence indicating that he has been "fired" is prepared for the parent company to increase the disassociation between the two. Mr. Crisman is being called as a witness because our office has developed evidence indicating a relationship on his part to persons involved in the assassination of President John Kennedy. For the information of the public, we want to reiterate that President Kennedy was murdered by elements of the industrial warfare complex working in concert with individuals in the United States government. At the time of his murder, President Kennedy was working to end the Cold War. By that time, however, the Cold War had become America's biggest business. The annual income of the defense industry was well over twenty billion dollars a year and there were forces in that industry and in the U.S. government which opposed the ending of the Cold War.