Deep Politics Timeline

[Tracy Riddle]

• 4/1973 Ehrlichman chose former Warren Commission staffer Joseph Ball to be his lawyer in the Ellsberg robbery case.
  
• 4/1973 John Dean chose former WC staffer Charles Shaffer as his lawyer shortly before he turned state's evidence against Nixon.
  
• 4/1973 Jack Anderson began a series of columns that included a verbatim account of Watergate grand jury transcripts he had obtained.
  
• 4/1973 The registration requirement for the draft was suspended.
  
• 4/1/1973 Ziyad Al Hilu, a member of the Black September Organization who allegedly helped kill Prime Minister Wasfi Tal of Jordan, was the target of Jordan intelligence assassins in a bombing, according to the BSO.
  
• 4/3/1973 For reasons unknown, George and Jeanne de Mohrenschildt obtained a divorce in Dallas, Texas on April 3, 1973, after nearly fourteen years of marriage. It was not reported in the local newspapers, and the couple continued to present themselves as husband and wife. (Ancestry.com. Texas Divorce Index, 1968-2002 [database on-line]. Provo, UT, USA: The Generations Network, Inc., 2005. Original data: Texas Department of State Health Services. Texas Divorce Index, 19682002. Texas, USA: Texas Department of State Health Services. For example, from the death investigation report by Thomas Neighbors of the Palm Beach County Sheriff's Office: At 2315 hours, on 29 March, 1977, this writer made contact with the victim's wife, MRS. JEANNE deMOHRENSCHILDT, in California … and advised her of her husband's demise; a fact which she had already been made aware of by several newsmen who had telephoned her seeking a story. She stated that she has been married to the victim for the past twenty-one years and noted that over the past several years he has been acting in an "insane manner".)
  
• 4/4/1973 Martha Mitchell told UPI's Helen Thomas: "My first thought was that McCord had been a double agent. In all faith, I never trusted McCord." But she didn't know who he was working for. (Boston Globe)
  
• 4/5/1973 Pioneer 11 is launched toward a December rendezvous with Jupiter.
  
• 4/9/1973 James McCord appeared before the Watergate grand jury.
  
• 4/9/1973 Kamal Adwan, head of Al Fatah, was slain in Beirut by Israelis.
  
• 4/10/1973 Kleindienst shocked Congress by stating that military force could implement the exercise of executive privilege. He said that the President could bar Congress or the courts from any document in the executive branch and direct any administration official not to testify even if criminal acts were involved. He claimed this power could be invoked even during an impeachment hearing, and implied that the military might at the disposal of the President dwarfed the Capitol police and US marshals. Sen. Goldwater was among those who was shocked by this statement. The next day, Rep. John Anderson said that "the Attorney General has thrown down the gauntlet."
  
• 4/12/1973 McCord appeared before the Watergate grand jury.
  
• 4/12/1973 Jeb Magruder pleaded guilty to perjury in the Watergate case.
  
• 4/14/1973 Nixon met with Haig and Kissinger about Cambodia and Vietnam, though officially Haig was no longer in the White House.
  
• 4/16/1973 Woodward talked with Deep Throat by phone.
  
• 4/17/1973 Dean later claims that today Nixon told him he was issuing a statement on Watergate; Dean felt he was being set up and decided to issue a "scapegoat" statement. Nixon told the public that after "serious charges" were brought to his attention 3/21 he had ordered new investigations that had produced "major developments" and "real progress...in finding the truth" about the break-in. Ron Ziegler told the press that all previous administration statements on Watergate were "inoperative." That evening, Nixon concludes that Haldeman and Ehrlichman must resign. SS agent Denny McCarthy recalled that after his television speech, Nixon walked away to be alone and then broke down and cried. (Protecting the President 24)
  
• 4/18/1973 Nixon-Haldeman phone conversation 12:05 to 12:20am; later the White House would state that there were no tapes of this conversation.
  
• 4/27/1973 FBI director Gray resigns after admitting he destroyed Watergate evidence on the advice of Nixon aides.
  
• 4/23/1973 Kissinger said at a luncheon of the American Newspaper Publishers Association: "I have no question that the President will insist on the full disclosure of the facts" relating to Watergate.
  
• 4/25/1973 Haig testified in Los Angeles at the Ellsberg trial; he attacked the credentials of Mort Halperin. Though the court had requested any existing wiretaps on Ellsberg, Haig brought none of them to the court's attention.
  
• 4/25/1973 The Burlington (Vermont) Free Press editorialized: "If the press continues its zealous overkill on this affair [Watergate], it is not likely to destroy either President Nixon or the Nixon Administration but it will gravely injure something more important - the faith of the people in...freedom of the press."
  
• 4/26/1973 Woodward talked with Deep Throat by phone.
  
• 4/29/1973 Nixon suggested that John McCloy (former Warren Commission member) be appointed as Special Prosecutor for Watergate, according to Elliot Richardson in The Atlantic (3/1976)
  
• 4/30/1973 Forced resignations of Haldeman, Erlichman, and Attorney General Richard Kleindienst. Dean was fired. Gerald Ford proclaimed that this was "a first step to clearing the air" and getting beyond Watergate.
  
• 4/30/1973 In his first full-scale TV address on Watergate, Nixon explained that he had always been in direct control of his political campaigns, but in 1972 he was so tied up with foreign policy concerns and other matters that he had to turn the campaign over to others. But the Watergate tapes would later reveal that Nixon was intimately involved in running the '72 campaign. Rep. Gerald Ford (R-Michigan) showed his support for Nixon by saying he was "absolutely positive he had nothing to do with this mess."
  
• 5/1973 After being named CIA chief by President Richard Nixon, William Colby elects to cooperate with lawmakers investigating such misdeeds as assassination plots against foreign leaders, illegal domestic spying and oddball drug experiments. Colby turns over to Congress the so called "family jewels" -- a 693-page, single-spaced list of skeletons in the CIA's closet. His cooperation with Congress infuriates come CIA loyalists who hold that he has betrayed his colleagues. (President Gerald Ford will eventually nudge Colby out of office for refusing to "stonewall" congressional investigators probing CIA wrongdoing.)
  
• 5/1/1973 Nixon meets with Willy Brandt in Washington.
  
• 5/1/1973 White House conversation: Nixon asked Ford to rally support among Republicans to battle against Watergate. Ford replied, "Any time you want me to do anything, under any circumstances, you give me a call." (Los Angeles Times 11/19/1996)
  
• 5/1/1973 Colson wrote to Nixon urging him to appoint Haig as chief of staff. (Born Again)
  
• 5/1/1973 David Atlee Phillips is selected by Director William Colby for chief of the CIA's Western Hemisphere Division, the highest rank not requiring congressional approval. (Fonzi chronology)
  
• 5/2/1973 John Connally switches to the Republican Party.
  
• 5/2/1973 Haldeman quietly slipped into the White House to meet with Nixon and urged him to appoint Haig as chief of staff.
  
• 5/4/1973 Alexander Haig appointed Nixon's new chief of staff.
  
• 5/4/1973 Dean reveals that he locked Watergate-related documents in a safe-deposit box in Alexandria, Virginia, before leaving the White House. He turned the key to the box over to Sirica.
  
• 5/4/1973 New acting FBI director Ruckelshaus began searching for records of the 1969-71 wiretaps and soon found evidence of them.
  
• 5/5/1973 Martha Mitchell publicly called for Nixon's resignation as the only way to "give credibility to the Republican Party and credibility to the United States." John Mitchell told reporters that it was "ridiculous" for anyone to take her comments seriously."
  
• 5/5/1973 Julie Nixon Eisenhower later says that on this day the President suggested to his family that perhaps he should resign as an act of patriotism.
  
• 5/6/1973 Ervin says he will call the president before his committee if it is necessary.'
  
• 5/7/1973 Sirica grants Hunt immunity from further prosecution. Sen. McClellan announces that his appropriations subcommittee on intelligence operations will probe CIA involvement in Watergate.
  
• 5/8/1973 The 120 Indians at Wounded Knee gave themselves up to federal agents; the area had been surrounded by marshals, FBI agents and border police.
  
• 5/9/1973 Kissinger completes four days of talks with Soviet leaders at Brezhnev's estate.
  
• 5/9/1973 The Ervin committee placed Lou Russell under subpoena. They sought his phone records, work diaries, bank statements, and other materials.
  
• 5/9/1973 The Director of Central Intelligence James Schlesinger, infuriated by the recent press disclosures of CIA misconduct of which he had been unaware, orders his covert chief, William Colby, to compile a list of any "questionable activities" by the CIA, past and present. [The resulting 693-page report described Operation Chaos (the domestic spying program), drug experiments, assassination plots, illegal mail-openings, the surveillance and wiretapping of selected American journalists, contacts with Watergate figures, etc., a list that Agency operatives called "the Skeletons" and the press later dubbed "the family jewels".] Bill Colby very clearly emphasises that the CIA had never plotted assassinations domestically. Colby's admission is a brilliant tactical stroke that is not appreciated until much later. First, it puts the focus on the plots against foreign leaders that could be explained as excesses of anti-communist zealotry (which is precisely what the drafters of Church's report did). Second, all probes into the assassinations of JFK, RFK, and MLK are therefore off-limits. The Church Committee will now concentrate on the performance of the intelligence community in investigating the death of JFK; not complicity in the assassination itself. This distinction is crucial. As Colby must certainly understand, the Agency and its allies can ride out exposure of plots against Marxists and villains like Castro, Patrice Lumumba of the Congo and Rafael Trujillo of the Dominican Republic. The exposure of domestic plots against political leaders might have been lethal.
  
• 5/10/1973 Mardian told the FBI that in 7/1971 William Sullivan had come to him to tell him about the wiretapping program; Sullivan was afraid that Hoover would blackmail Nixon as he had previous presidents. (The Director 257)
  
• 5/11/1973 Judge Matthew Byrne dismissed all charges against Ellsberg and Russo in the Pentagon Papers case because of government misconduct (the Liddy-Hunt break-in of his psychiatrist's office).
  
• 5/11/1973 Lou Russell wrote to the Ervin Committee saying he could be of no help to them.
  
• 5/14/1973 NATO begins talks on the reduction of military forces in Central Europe.
  
• 5/14/1973 Supreme Court rules that women in the military were entitled to the same benefits for their spouses as those given to male servicemen.
  
• 5/14/1973 Skylab, the first US space station, was launched into orbit.
  
• 5/16/1973 Woodward met with Deep Throat in an underground parking garage. He warned the reporter that "Everyone's life is in danger."
  
• 5/16/1973 interview with former Dallas Police Chief Jesse Curry. He said it was possible that there could have been a Grassy Knoll gunman: "I don't have a strong feeling that there was someone there, but, on the other hand, it wouldn't surprise me at some time, at some point in history, that more proof will show that there was somebody up there." (Assassination Tapes 7)
  
• 5/16/1973 Army Intelligence declassifies an extraordinary army telegram today. Concerning Lee Harvey Oswald, the telegram had been dispatched late in the evening of November 22, 1963. The cable, from the Fourth Army command in Texas to the U.S. Strike Command at McDill Air Force Base in Florida, links Oswald to Cuba via Cuba's alleged Communist "propaganda vehicle," the Fair Play for Cuba Committee. It also transmits two statements about Oswald, both false, which have come via army intelligence from the Dallas police: "Assistant Chief Don Strongfellow, Intelligence Section, Dallas Police Department, notified 112th Intelligence Group, this Headquarters, that information obtained from Oswald revealed he had defected to Cuba in 1959 and is a card-carrying member of communist Party." Strongfellow was a member of the police intelligence unit headed by Jack Revill, while the Fourth Army's 112th Intelligence Group (with offices in Dallas and New Orleans) was the unit of James Powell (the agent who happened to be taking pictures in Dealey Plaza on Nov. 22, 1963 and was subsequently caught inside the TSBD when it was sealed off by the police soon after the assassination.) The U.S. Strike Command, USSTRICOM, is an extraordinary two-service command (army and air force) set up in 1961 in response to the "Lebanon crisis" of 1958. Designed to provide a swift strike force on short notice, its location in Florida made it singularly appropriate for a surprise attack on Cuba. Since mid-1963 its commander had been General William D. Rosson, a CIA-related general who in 1954 had formed part of General Lansdale's team in Vietnam. Fletcher Prouty, in his book The Secret Team, lists him as one of the six who "made rapid promotions to the grade of brigadier general and higher as a result of the CIA, Special Forces, and Vietnam."
  
• 5/17/1973 Senate Watergate televised hearings, chaired by Sen. Sam Ervin (D-NC), began with the intention "to provide full and open public testimony in order that the nation can proceed toward the healing of the wounds that now afflict the body politic."
  
• 5/17/1973 Also this month, David Atlee Phillips is selected by Director William Colby to become chief of the CIA's Western Hemisphere Division, the highest rank not requiring Congressional approval.
  
• 5/18/1973 Archibald Cox is named Special Prosecutor.
  
• 5/18/1973 UPI quoted Mitchell: "Somebody has tried to make me the fall guy, but it isn't going to work...The only thing I did was try to get the President reelected. I never did anything mentally or morally wrong."
  
• 5/18/1973 McCord began his first day of public testimony before the Ervin committee.
  
• 5/18/1973 One week after declining a committee subpoena for his records, Lou Russell - a former FBI agent who helped Richard Nixon with the Hiss case - suffers his first massive heart attack. He was hospitalized until 6/20.
  
• 5/20/1973 McCord told the Ervin committee of an abandoned 1972 White House plot to steal documents from the safe of Hank Greenspun's Las Vegas Sun. Greenspun was connected to Robert Maheu. McCord testified that he and E.H. Hunt and Liddy were to carry out the operation, and then Howard Hughes' people would fly them to a hideout in Central America. He testified: "Liddy said that Attorney General John Mitchell had told him that Greenspun had in his possession blackmail type information involving a Democratic candidate for President, that Mitchell wanted that material, and Liddy said that this information was in some way racketeer- related, indicating that if this candidate became President, the racketeers or national crime syndicate could have a control or influence over him as President. My inclination at this point in time, speaking as of today, is to disbelieve the allegation against the Democratic candidate referred to above and to believe that there was in reality some other motive for wanting to get into Greenspun's safe."
  
• 5/21/1973 Elliot Richardson promised the Senate Judiciary that Cox would have full authority to investigate Watergate.
  
• 5/22/1973 White House press release admitted to wiretapping, domestic surveillance, attempts to locate press leaks, and obstruction of FBI probe into Watergate, but defended these on the grounds of "national security." Nixon also denied any use of the CIA for political purposes. Buzhardt and Haig helped prepare this statement. The public and congressional response was mild at first.
  
• 5/23/1973 Haig called William Simon to ask about the status of the IRS investigation into the Hughes campaign loan.
  
• 5/24/1973 William Oswald Mills, a Republican Maryland congressman, was found shot to death the day after it was revealed by the Washington Post that he had received $25,000 from Nixon's reelection committee. He had an alleged suicide note pinned to his body. (Nightmare 196, Lukas) Two of his political aides, James Glover and James Webster were killed in a car wreck 2/1972. On the morning of May 24, 1973, Mills was found dead at a stable near his home in Easton, Maryland at the age of 48. There was an apparent self-inflicted gunshot wound to the left side of his chest, and a 12-gauge shotgun and spent casing were found by his side. It was reported that he had been depressed following the death of three of his Congressional aides in a 1972 car accident, and by the fact that his mentor and predecessor, Rogers Morton, was suffering from cancer. However, five days before his death, it was revealed that Mills had received an undisclosed $25,000 gift from the finance committee of President Richard Nixon's re-election campaign during the 1971 special election. Overall, it was part of $900,000 in unaccounted donations made by the committee, according to the Government Accountability Office. If Mills were convicted of conducting illegal activity, he could have faced a $1,000 fine and one year in prison. While Mills initially stated that he had done nothing wrong, he began worrying that the campaign contribution would destroy his political career. In one of his suicide notes, Mills stated that he could not prove his innocence and saw suicide as the only solution. Overall, Mills produced at least seven notes, including one to his son warning him to be honest and another to his constituents. Despite his concern, Maryland authorities claimed soon after his death that he may not have broken the new state campaign finance law, which did not come into full effect until July 1971, two months after his special election. In fact, there were no indications that state authorities were even going to pursue an investigation.
  
• 5/24/1973 Nixon said in a speech that secrecy was necessary for conducting foreign policy, and urged the media to stop "making heroes" out of people who publicized government secrets.
  
• 5/25/1973 Archibald Cox was sworn in as special Watergate prosecutor.
  
• 5/25/1973 Phone call between Nixon and Haig; Nixon asked, "Wouldn't it be better to just check out?" Haig was shocked, and Nixon said, "No, no, seriously, because you see, I'm not at my best. I've got to be at my best and that means fighting this damned battle, fighting it all out." (Los Angeles Times 11/19/1996)
  
• 5/25/1973 Skylab 2 carried three astronauts to rendezvous with Skylab and repair some solar panels.
  
• 5/26/1973 Supreme Court ruled that TV and radio stations were not obligated to sell equal air time for political or controversial issues.
  
• 5/27/1973 Dem. National Chairman Robert Strauss accused Nixon of trying to cover up Watergate using the pretext of 'national security.' Sen. Stuart Symington agreed, but said he said that "based on the evidence I've seen, I certainly would not vote for [impeachment]." Strauss also encouraged Democrats to be responsible in investigating Watergate.
  
• 5/27/1973 Robert Vesco and associate Norman P. LeBlanc offered to talk with Archibald Cox about the "missing link" in the Watergate case; they offered no details, but LeBlanc claimed that the CIA was working secretly in Costa Rica to "get rid of" Vesco and his associates. (Los Angeles Times 5/28/1973)
  
• 5/27/1973 The nonpartisan Fair Campaign Practices Committee found that the 1972 presidential campaign was the sleaziest ever, and called Watergate "not simply more of the same tactics which have made 'politics' a dirty word. It is a conscious conspiracy to violate laws, to manipulate laws, and to make a mockery of the democratic system..."
  
• 5/27/1973 Dean was quoted as saying that if he was indicted he would not testify, implying that he wanted immunity from prosecution; he also said that when all of the facts were revealed there would be grand jury investigations into political espionage beyond Watergate. (Los Angeles Times)
  
• 5/28/1973 Martha Mitchell told a press conference that she was convinced her husband was protecting Nixon. She also said Nixon must bear "all the blame" for Watergate, and should either resign or be impeached.
  
• 5/28/1973 US ambassador to Costa Rica denied charge that US agents were harassing Vesco. Press reported that Nixon's San Clemente estate had received improvements paid for with $100,000 in federal funds. The property was owned by Nixon and NY industrialist Robert M. Apblanalp. Nixon had claimed that the figure was only $39,000, and the improvements were made for security purposes. But some of the renovations appeared to have little to do with security. It was also reported that federal authorities had been impeding D.A. Joseph Busch's investigation into the Ellsberg break-in: "FBI agents have instructed some key witnesses not to discuss the case with Busch's men." (Los Angeles Times 5/29/1973)
  
• 5/29/1973 In a run-off election, Thomas Bradley becomes Los Angeles' first black mayor.
  
• 5/29/1973 Nixon refuses to give oral or written testimony to the grand jury or the Senate select committee investigating Watergate.
  
• 5/29/1973 Joseph Kraft wrote in the Washington Post that Haig "has been spending quite a lot of time recently justifying to newsmen the wiretapping...in the process he has been blackening reputations and disclosing the contents of wiretaps...in the name of national security."