Deep Politics Timeline

[Tracy Riddle]

• This year, according to Gerry Patrick Hemming, a plan was put together regarding the possible assassination of Richard Nixon. "The only contact Hargraves had with federal agents [in Miami during 1970] was when I took him with me to brief Secret Service Special Agent Joseph Gasquez ["Protective Research"]. The briefing involved an "Op/Northwoods" type scheme, wherein Alpha-66 affiliated Cubans, operating together with previously corrupted skippers of Castro's PT Boat crews, were about to execute a preemptive strike! The plan involved using one or more of the Soviet supplied Cuban P-6 "Komar" PT Boats. The Cuban skippers would dupe the crews into multiple "shots over the horizon" [usually 10 to 15 nautical miles]. Said "Shots" would consist of "hot-launching" several "Styx" [NATO designation] missiles against the oceanfront Nixon "Presidential Compound" [located on Key Biscayne, Miami]. The Cuban PT skippers were promised asylum and monetary rewards."
  
• Lady Bird Johnson publishes White House Diary, an account of her years as First Lady. It reveals LBJ's unhappiness as president almost from the beginning, and the likelihood that he would not run for reelection in 1968.
  
• Personality-altering Prolexin administered to 1,093 inmates at Vacaville. Special Programs Unit behavior mod program begins at Joliet, Illinois, under Dr. Martin Groder. Bureau of Prisons requests funds for Federal Center for Correctional Research in Butner, North Carolina.
  
• Korean CIA undertakes a massive influence peddling campaign, eventually 50 congressmen accept bribes and links are make between the Nixon Administration and the Unification Church.
  
• 1970 Col. James A. Donovan (USMC, retired) publishes the book Militarism, USA: "Then there have been a large ration of war comic books devoured for years by the young and simple-minded. They have been generally violent, bloody, and concerned with the militant destruction of "Commies," "Reds," "Nazis," and all the other "bad guys" who threaten the "good guys" on our side. The images and attitudes created by the steady diet of this form of entertainment and the resulting beliefs formed in the immature minds of young generations are hard to define. The influence has probably been considerable." "Chauvinism is a proud and bellicose form of patriotism...which identifies numerous enemies who can only be dealt with through military power and which equates the national honor with military victory." "It has not been the uniformed military chieftains alone who have sponsored the new militarism. There is a new breed of civilian militants, creatures in part of a cold war and of the new technology, who figure prominently in national-security decision-making." "For the past 22 years, the nation's and the militarists' enemy has been 'aggressive communism', the product of the world-wide Communist conspiracy.... The military, for its part, always has to focus upon a potential enemy. Communist aggressors are the most convenient, current, and identifiable enemy. If there were no Communist bloc and no such enemy threat, the defense establishment would have to invent one." He says that the military-industrial complex is a conjunction of the immense defense establishment and the vast permanent arms industry. There is an additional complex of related interests which include reserves, veterans, scientists, university research centers, congressmen, local businesses, labor, professional publications, and even news media. As for the vast network of overseas bases: "Over the years, the real purposes of many of these overseas bases has changed from tactical and strategic locations of military value to elaborate American housing and logistic installations away from home. They provide locations and facilities for some units that would have no reason for existence if based in the United States, and they furnish justification for interesting and attractive overseas travel and adventure for the troops and their families."
  
• Early 1970s: NSA Develops Rhyolite' Satellite Surveillance System The NSA, following up on its successful pilot program of satellite-based intelligence gathering called "Canyon" (see 1968), develops a much more sophisticated satellite surveillance program called "Rhyolite." Rhyolite, later renamed "Aquacade," is a breakthrough in the world of signal intelligence (sigint). Most importantly, it can monitor microwave transmissions, used extensively by the Soviet Union for its most secure transmissions. Its possibilities, says one insider, are "mind-blowing." Britain's own security agency, GCHQ, is a full party to Rhyolite/Aquacade. Former Army sigint officer Owen Lewis recalls in 1997, "When Rhyolite came in, the take was so enormous that there was no way of handling it. Years of development and billions of dollars then went into developing systems capable of handling it." The NSA will pass much of the information it gathers to the GCHQ for transcription and analysis. Subsequently, the NSA will deploy new and even more sophisticated surveillance systems, code-named "Chalet" and "Vortex." In doing so, it constructs numerous listening stations on friendly foreign soil, including the Menwith Hill facility that will later become a linchpin of the satellite surveillance program known as Echelon (see February 27, 2000). The new programs will revitalize the lapsed sigint alliance between the US, Britain, Canada, Australia, and New Zealand (see July 11, 2001). [Federation of American Scientists, 7/17/1997]
  

• 1/1-2/1970 Spiro Agnew visits Vietnam while on a tour of Asia.
  
• 1/5/1970 Joseph Yablonski, the defeated reform candidate for head of the United Mine Workers, and his wife and daughter were found murdered in their Pennsylvania home. 4 years later, UMW President Tony Boyle was convicted of ordering the killing. Joseph A. Yablonski, unsuccessful reform candidate to unseat "Tough Tony" Boyle as President of the United Mine Workers, was murdered, along with his wife and daughter, in their Clarksville, Pennsylvania home by assassins acting on Boyle's orders. Boyle was later convicted of the killing. West Virginia miners went on strike the following day in protest. On December 31, 1969, three hitmen shot Yablonski, his wife Margaret, and his 25-year-old daughter Charlotte, as they slept in the Yablonski home in Clarksville, Pennsylvania. The bodies were discovered on January 5, 1970, by Yablonski's son, Kenneth. The killings had been ordered by Boyle, who had demanded Yablonski's death on June 23, 1969, after a meeting with Yablonski at UMWA headquarters degenerated into a screaming match. In September 1969, UMWA executive council member Albert Pass received $20,000 from Boyle (who had embezzled the money from union funds) to hire gunmen to kill Yablonski. Paul Gilly, an out-of-work house painter and son-in-law of a minor UMWA official, and two drifters, Aubran Martin and Claude Vealey, agreed to do the job. The murder was postponed until after the election, however, to avoid suspicion falling on Boyle. After three aborted attempts to murder Yablonski, the killers did their job. But they left so many fingerprints behind, it took police only three days to catch them. A few hours after Yablonski's funeral, several of the miners who had supported Yablonski met in the basement of the church where the memorial service was held. They met with attorney Joseph Rauh and drew up plans to establish a reform caucus within the United Mine Workers. The day after the killing, 20,000 miners in West Virginia walked off the job in a one-day strike, convinced Boyle was responsible for the murders.
  
• 1/6/1970 Nixon announces a major diplomatic agreement with France that will curb heroin traffic.
  
• 1/9/1970 Memo from Nixon to Haldeman about the need to "sanitize the White House staff. You will recall my concern with regard to one of the offices where big pictures of Kennedy were in the office..."
  
• 1/11/1970 H. Ross Perot said on ABC's Issues and Answers, "I don't have any ambitions at all to run for office."
  
• 1/14/1970 Supreme Court sets deadline of 2/1 for desegregation of public schools.
  
• 1/14/1970 In his State of the Nation address to the Bundestag (similar to the U.S. presidents' State of the Union speech), Willy Brandt outlines his government's views on the Special Status of Berlin, and supports the Four-Power talks on improving conditions for West Berlin.
  
• 1/15/1970 Martin Luther King's birthday, not yet an official holiday, is honored by many across the nation.
  
• 1/19/1970 Nixon nominated G. Harrold Carswell of Florida to the Supreme Court.
  
• 1/19/1970 Agnew finishes his tour of Asia and the Pacific.
  
• 1/19/1970 Washington Post article: Sen. Richard Russell (former member of the Warren Commission) said he believed JFK was killed by a criminal conspiracy, and joined forces with researcher Harold Weisberg to have files declassified. Russell stated in the article "I think someone else worked with him [Oswald.] There were too many things - the fact that he was at Minsk and that was the principal center for educating Cuban students...some of the trips he made to Mexico City and a number of discrepancies in the evidence, or as to means of transportation, the luggage he had and whether or not anyone was with him - caused me to doubt that he planned it all by himself." Although professing to have not "the slightest doubt" that Oswald fired the fatal shots, Russell went beyond his 1966 remarks and stated flatly that he "never believed that Lee Harvey Oswald assassinated President Kennedy without at least some encouragement from others." Russell added: "I think someone else worked with him."
  
• 1/20/1970 Iraq: Attempted coup by rebel forces supported by Iran was put down.
  
• 1/20/1970 MEMORANDUM ADMINISTRATIVELY CONFIDENTIAL MEMORANDUM FOR: MR. HALDEMAN FROM: ALEXANDER P. BUTTERFIELD RE: A. Ernest Fitzgerald I may be "beating a dead horse" at this late date ... but it was only a few days ago that Alan Woods called to ask if we had arrived at any particular Administration line regarding Mr. A. E. Fitzgerald. And someone else (I can't remember who) asked the same question at about the same time. You'll recall that I relayed to you my personal comments while you were at San Clemente, but let me cite them once again -- partly for the record -- and partly because some of you with more political horse sense than I will probably want to review the matter prior to next Monday's press conference. * Fitzgerald is no doubt a top-notch cost expert, but he must be given very low marks in loyalty; and after all, loyalty is the name of the game. * Last May he slipped off alone to a meeting of the National Democratic Coalition and while there revealed to a senior AFL-CIO official (who happened to be unsympathetic) that he planned to "blow the whistle on the Air Force" by exposing to full public view that Service's "shoddy purchasing practices". Only a basic no-goodnik would take his official business grievances so far from normal channels. As imperfect as the Air Force and other military Services are, they very definitely do not go out of their way to waste government funds; in fact, quite to the contrary, they strive continuously (at least in spirit) to find new ways to economize. If McNamara did nothing else he made the Services more cost-conscious and introspective -- so I think it is safe to say that none of their bungling is malicious ... or even preconceived. * Upon leaving the Pentagon -- on his last official day -- he announced to the press that "contrary to recent newspaper reports" he was not going to work for the Federal Government, but instead, was going to "work on the outside" as a private consultant. * We should let him bleed, for a while at least. Any rush to pick him up and put him back on the Federal payroll would be tantamount to an admission of earlier wrong-doing on our part. * We owe "first choice on Fitzgerald" to Proxmire and others who tried so hard to make him a hero.
  
• 1/21/1970 Three men are arrested in connection with the Yablonski murder.
  
• 1/22/1970 Nixon, in his State of the Union message, calls for equality of opportunity, a responsive government, enviromental legislation, a guaranteed minimum income to replace welfare, and "an end to the war in Vietnam."
  
• 1/22/1970 US rejects Soviet proposals for Middle East peace.
  
• 1/24/1970 Human Events magazine, which had strongly supported Nixon in 1968, criticized him for offering more of the same Democratic big-government.
  
• 1/24/1970 Look magazine featured a cover story called "Billionaire Ross Perot: Can one Texan save the USA?"
  
• 1/30/1970 Seven Black Panthers are indicted for attempted murder by a Chicago grand jury.
  
• 1/30/1970 Guatemala: A state of siege was declared following the attempted assassination of a presidential candidate and the murder of a newspaper editor who opposed Communism.
  
• 1/31/1970 Arthur Burns becomes chairman of the Federal Reserve board. He is the first Jewish chairman in a post long held by Protestant bankers.
  
• 2/2/1970 Agnew, in a speech in St. Paul, Minnesota, accused the Democrats of "a weird desire to suck up the political support of organized dissidents."
  
• 2/2/1970 Pre-trial hearing for 13 Black Panthers in NYC opens.
  
• 2/2/1970 In a TV interview Sen. Richard Russell once again stated that he never believed Oswald acted alone, but a majority of the commissioners wanted to show that he had. (WSB-TV, Atlanta)
  
• 2/9/1970 Letter from Colson to David Bradshaw: "We are...prepared to go ahead with...a No. 2 man, Howard Hunt, if you approve."
  
• 2/10/1970 US, UK and France accept a Soviet proposal for four-power talks on Berlin.
  
• 2/12-17/1970 US and Soviet delegates discuss the peaceful use of nuclear explosions.
  
• 2/17/1970 Pat Buchanan memo about a meeting with Nixon; the president stated, in Buchanan's words, "The interest of the US policy in the Middle East is designed to advance the interests of the United States primarily. Those interests involve vital stakes in the Mediterranean and Iran; they involve oil interests in the Arab world..."
  
• 2/18/1970 The Chicago Seven - Abbie Hoffman, Jerry Rubin, Tom Hayden, Rennie Davis, David Dellinger, Lee Weiner, and John Froines - were acquitted of conspiring to incite a riot at the 1968 convention. Hoffman, Hayden, Davis, Rubin and Dellinger are found guilty of a lesser charge of crossing state lines with the intent to incite a riot.
  
• 2/19/1970 Memo from John R. Brown to Ehrlichman: "The President noted that he thinks interest in this issue [concern about the environment] will recede."
  
• 2/20/1970 Kissinger opens secret peace talks in Paris.
  
• 2/23/1970 Nixon "action memo" to Colson instructed him to get moving on the "president's request that you develop a list of rich people with strong religious interest to be invited to the White House church services."
  
• 2/25 or 26/1970 anti-war demonstrators set fire to a Bank of America in Santa Barbara, California.
  
• 2/27/1970 Clay Shaw sues Jim Garrison and others for $5 million in damages.
  
• 3/1970 A U.S. intelligence officer passes a vial of African swine fever virus to a terrorist group. The vial is taken by fishing trawler to Navassa Island, which has been used in the past by the CIA as an advance base, and is smuggled into Cuba. Six weeks from now, Cuba suffers the first outbreak of swine fever in the Western Hemisphere; pig herds are decimated, causing a serious shortage of pork, the nation's dietary staple. The United Nations Food and Agricultural Organization will call it the "most alarming event" of the year and futilely tries to tack down "how the disease had been transmitted."
  
• 3/1970 Fortune magazine reported that during the 1968 campaign, the GOP spent $25 million, the Democrats spent $10.6 million, and Wallace $6.9 million. Big business, which had gone over to LBJ in '64, went back to the GOP in '68.
  
• 3/1970 Charles Maechling Jr. wrote in Foreign Service Journal: "President Kennedy and his brother regarded Vietnam...only as a counter in a larger game...they were totally devoid of the obsessive attitudes that characterized President Johnson under the influence of the 'hard-liners.'"
  
• 3/2/1970 Lockheed Aircraft Corp. appeals to the Defense Dept for interim funding.
  
• 3/4/1970 Nixon signs legislation delaying a nationwide railroad strike.
  
• 3/4/1970 SAN ANTONIO EXPRESS Army's Civilian Spying Said Ended - Army intelligence officers in San Antonio and elsewhere throughout the nation apparently were back conducting only military business Tuesday with the task of destroying computerized files on the political activities of civilians reportedly completed. The army last week ordered the information it collected in a computer the past three years on persons and organizations considered political activists, potential activists and potential participants in riots, destroyed. A Pentagon spokesman said Tuesday the army had completed destroying the files. "Now that the civil disturbance operation has been discontinued, it will give them (Army Intelligence) more time for conducting security clearances on military personnel," the spokesman reported. The order to destroy the information, fed into a computer, known as the "Databank of Domestic Political Activities," at Fort Holabird, Md., and supplied from seven Army intelligence units, including one located at Fort Sam Houston and downtown San Antonio, came after U.S. Rep. Cornelius Gallagher, D-N.J., informed the Army he would hold public hearings on the "validity and legality of such a program." The 112th Military Intelligence Group is located here and was the operation which relayed information to the Data Bank for the 112th Army area although it is not part of the 4th Army. The fact the San Antonio-based 112th was among those units feeding information on the political activities o f civilians from San Antonio was confirmed by Army General Counsel Robert E. Jordan III*, at the pentagon. Officers in the 112th at Fort Sam Houston and at their downtown offices at the 301 Building, at 301 Broadway (formerly the Manion Building), were unwilling to discuss their operation. They also refused to discuss why the 112th maintained downtown offices as well as a building at Fort Sam Houston, and newsmen were not allowed inside their second-floor downtown office. Meanwhile, San Antonio Chief of Police George Bichsel said there was no doubt in his mind same police information had been fed into the Data Bank files. "From time to time Military Intelligence has checked with the Department on various groups and we always have given them what we had," Bichsel said. "We share information with the FBI and if they wished they could have given the 112th this information," Bichsel added. He added that the Police Department did not "go around making reports" for the military, but just released information they asked for. Asked if photographs taken of protestors of multi-family housing in the Edgewood Independent School District outside the Lulac anniversary banquet last Saturday at the Gunter Hotel by policemen were taken for Military Intelligence, Bichsel said he was positive they were not. He said his department occasionally photographs individuals and groups involved in protests or demonstrations so the department would have a photo file available for its officers, if ever needed. "This does not imply they (demonstrators) are doing anything unlawful," Bichsel said.
  
• 3/5/1970 Lawrence F. O'Brien is elected Democratic national chairman.
  
• 3/6/1970 A Weathermen bomb factory explodes in a Greenwich Village townhouse.
  
• 3/8/1970 Makarios III, president of Cyprus, was the target of an unsuccessful assassination attempt in Nicosia. Polycarpos Georghadjis, ex-minister of interior, was thought to be involved.
  
• 3/9/1970 Haldeman memo to Nofziger: "In moving ahead on Operation O'Brien, we should push hard to get demands made that he disclose his clients and the nature of his affiliation with each. We should look for every opportunity to keep the heat on the DNC and O'Brien."
  
• 3/13/1970 Bobby Seale of the Black Panthers is extradicted from San Francisco to Connecticut.
  
• 3/16/1970 Lyn Nofziger memo to Haldeman: "It is obvious some of our appointees are collecting memos for use when: 1. they are fired. 2. they quit. 3. they want to embarass the President or members of his administration...Use the phone more and memos less...Fire the people in this administration who are opposed to the President. If this leaks, it proves my point."
  
• 3/16-22/1970 the New Mobilization Committee to End the War in Vietnam sponsors a national "anti-draft week."
  
• 3/18/1970 Postal workers in NYC go out on strike for higher wages; it soon spreads to other cities and eventually involves 200,000 post office employees. The first mass work stoppage in the 195-year history of the Post Office Department began with a walkout of letter carriers in Brooklyn and Manhattan, soon involving 210,000 of the nation's 750,000 postal employees. With mail service virtually paralzyed in New York, Detroit, and Philadelphia, President Nixon declared a state of national emergency and assigned military units to New York City post offices. The stand-off culminated two weeks later.
  
• 3/18/1970 United Farm Workers forced California grape growers to sign an agreement after a five-year strike.
  
• 3/19/1970 First meeting of the heads of state of the two Germanies-- Willy Brandt for West Germany and Willi Stoph for East Germany, in the East German city of Erfurt.
  
• 3/21/1970 On or about this day, in response to Haldeman's instructions, Clark Mollenhoff sends Haldeman IRS tax information on George Wallace's brother, Gerald; Mollenhoff later stated that the request for this information originated with Nixon.
  
• 3/23/1970 Nixon orders troops to help move the mail in NYC because of a postal strike.
  
• 3/23/1970 A memo from Hoover to Asst Attorney General Richard McLaren; 3/19/1970 a representative of Howard Hughes told owners of the Dunes Hotel in Las Vegas that he had been given the go-ahead by the Antitrust Division of the Justice Dept to purchase the hotel. (Secret Files 110)
  
• 3/26/1970 Nixon signs a bill increasing G.I. educational monthly allowances.
  
• 3/26/1970 Ambassadors of the Four Powers meet in the Allied Control Authority Building (former German Supreme Court Building) for the first time since the start of the Berlin Blockade in 1948. As the building is in the American Sector of the divided city, they are guarded by U.S. Military Police, who in turn are guarded by the West Berlin city police. The symbolism is deep. The victorious Allied powers might actually be getting back on track to resolving issues left frozen two decades earlier. The U.S. Army's bomb squad searching the building found a forgotten collection of books, documents, maps that were gathered for the Allied staff who thought they might have to administer a broken, defeated Germany for years.
  
• 3/29/1970 Haynes Johnson of the Washington Post reported that Agnew "thinks the prospects for the Republican Party are tantalizing. America, he believes, is now witnessing the emergence of a new Republican majority."
  
• 3/29/1970 Northern Ireland: there were serious disturbances in Derry following a march to commemorate the Easter Rising. The British Army later established a cordon around parts of the Bogside.
  
• 4/2/1970 Mass. governor Francis Sargent signs a bill that challenges the legality of the Vietnam war.
  
• 4/7/1970 The drowning case of Mary Jo Kopechne is closed with no indictments.
  
• 4/9/1970 Nixon told the press that the Senate was discriminating against the South by refusing to confirm any nominee he chose from that region.
  
• 4/11/1970 Willy Brandt ends a week-long visit to the US.
  
• 4/11/1970 1:13pm (Houston time) Apollo 13 mission launched with James Lovell, John Swigert and FredHaise to land on the moon and collect samples of lunar soil. 3:48pm Translunar injection
  
• 4/12/1970 7:53 P.M. Mid-course correction burn to leave free-return trajectory
  
• 4/13/1970 Apollo 13, now a quarter million miles from Earth, suffers an explosion in one of the three oxygen tanks; the mission was aborted and the spacecraft headed back home. They had to use the engines of the lunar landing craft to provide propulsion.
  
• 8:24 P.M. Beginning of last TV transmission
  
• 9:07 P.M. Oxygen tank two explodes
  
• 10:50 P.M. Crew abandons Odyssey
  
• 4/13/1970 Jack Anderson article reveals the IRS investigation of the Wallaces; IRS Commissioner Randolph Towner later said that an IRS probe revealed that neither the IRS nor the Treasury Dept had leaked the information.
  
• 4/15/1970 Gerry Ford introduced a resolution in the House calling for William O. Douglas' impeachment. He cited a story Douglas had published in a "hard-core pornography" magazine, Evergreen Review. Actually, the article was an excerpt from Douglas's book Points of Rebellion. Ford also accused Douglas of having ties to the underworld. 12/1970 the House Judiciary Committee ruled that there was no evidence for impeachment, Ford charged that the investigation was a "whitewash."
  
• 4/16/1970 SALT talks resume in Vienna after a recess.
  
• 4/17/1970 Apollo 13 splashes down with the crew safe and sound.
  
• 4/17/1970 Asst Sec of State Joseph Sisco cancels his trip to Jordan after anti-US riots there.
  
• 4/17/1970 A group of Cuban exiles from the U.S. lands in Cuba in a failed raid.
  
• 4/20/1970 TIME: Nation: Another Death Plot? That conspiratorial army of would-be historians who specialize in the assassination of John Kennedy may have a brand-new plot to play with. In Chicago last week, Legal Researcher Sherman H. Skolnick filed suit in federal district court against the National Archives and Records Service to release certain documents. He contended that the archives had unlawfully squirreled away the details of a hitherto unknown plot or plots to kill J.F.K. at the Nov. 2, 1963, Army-Air Force game in Chicago, 20 days before his assassination by Lee Harvey Oswald. Quixotic as his quest may sound, Skolnick, who is a paraplegic, is not a man to be taken lightly. He is a well-known courtroom gadfly with a penchant for legal battles, and he played a key role in getting two Illinois Supreme Court judges to resign amid charges of conflict of interest brought by him (TIME, Aug. 29). Thus it was not surprising that people with information about the alleged plot sought him out to help make their case; among the informants is a former Secret Service agent. As Skolnick tells it, the Chicago assassination plot involved a supposed accomplice of Oswald's by the name of Thomas Arthur Vallee and three or four other men whose identities are uncertain. Their plan to kill the President had to be abandoned when Vallee, a lithographer, was picked up by Chicago police on a minor traffic violation on the day of the game. After spotting a hunting knife on the front seat of his car, the cops looked further and found a rifle. Vallee was put on probation for concealing a weapon; for the traffic violation he drew a $5 fine, which was suspended. He has since disappeared, as has the photograph that should be attached to his arrest card. Skolnick firmly believes that Oswald was somehow involved in Vallee's alleged plot. In an effort to prove it, he wants to see certain documents that the Warren Commission considered in making its report and then turned over to the archives, where they are to be kept secret for 75 years. Skolnick argues that the archives can prove that the 1962 Ford Falcon driven by Vallee was as he believeslinked to Oswald in some way or even registered in his name. Skolnick also maintains that the archives have Government documents showing that Klein's Sporting Goods Co. of Chicago had no receipt for the gun allegedly sent to Oswaldan allegation that raises the possibility that the weapon actually came from some other source. The Justice Department, however, has responded to Skolnick's suit with a "No comment," and National Archivist Marion Johnson claims that he has "seen no evidence in the records connecting Vallee to an assassination attempt." The Government has 60 days in which to answer the suit.
  
• 4/24/1970 Invited by Tricia Nixon to a White House tea party for alumni of Finch College, Grace Slick of the Jefferson Airplane shows up with her escort, Abbie Hoffman, who is not allowed on the premises by security. Slick later recalls that she was fully prepared to dose Nixon's tea with LSD.
  
• 4/30/1970 US invasion of Cambodia. Nixon gives a speech to the nation about his Cambodia policy.
  
• 4/30/1970 Howard Hunt officially retired from the CIA. He had pretended to leave the Agency twice before (in 1960 and 1965), though both times he was still on the CIA payroll. After this third departure, Richard Helms saw to it that Hunt received large no-interest personal "loans" from a special CIA fund, and wrote a personal recommendation for him that he be hired by the Washington-based Robert B. Mullen Company, itself a CIA front. The firm hired Hunt in May. (Secret Agenda p6) E. Howard Hunt "retires" from the CIA. He goes to work for Mullen & Company the next day. Mullen & Co., a Washington based "public relations" firm with offices across the street from the White House is headed by Robert Mullen, a one-time press aide to President Eisenhower who ran the Marshall Plan's propaganda arm. It has been asserted that Mullen & Co. works like an "arm" of the CIA.
  
• 4/1970 Aubrey Mayhew from Nashville, Tennessee, buys the Texas School Book Depository in Dallas, Texas for $650,000.00. The original owner of the property, D. Harold Byrd, wishes him "luck" and hopes he will make a lot of money. In his statement to news reporters, Byrd says he does not want to profit from the tragedy and that he has turned down a million dollar offer to turn the building into a lucrative attraction. Two years from now, in late July of 1972, Mayhew loses the building when the Republican National Bank forecloses on him. D. H. Byrd eventually buys the property back and finally sells it to the county.