Deep Politics Timeline

[Tracy Riddle]

• 9/1973 Cyril Wecht reports that his examination of the JFK "medical and photographic data" suggests that there were two gunmen, both in the TSBD, "but at points further west [than the SE corner window]...and on two different floors." He felt that the X-rays and photographs "give every indication of being authentic." He found no evidence for a grassy-knoll gunman. (Forensic Science Gazette)
  
• 9/1/1973 New York state implemented the toughest anti-drug law in the country; it imposed mandatory life sentences for drug traffickers and for addicts who commit violent crimes.
  
• 9/4/1973 William Colby becomes CIA Director (until January 1976)
  
• 9/4/1973 Los Angeles County grand jury returned secret indictments against Ehrlichman, Liddy, Krogh and Young for the Ellsberg break-in.
  
• 9/4/1973 One million Popular Unity supporters march through Santiago to support the government.
  
• 9/6/1973 W.A. "Tony" Boyle, the 71-year-old former president of the United Mine Workers, is charged with ordering the murder of Joseph Yablonski, his wife and daughter.
  
• 9/7/1973 US Ambassador Nathaniel Davis told Letelier he was returning to Washington to meet with Kissinger. Meanwhile, Gen. Prats told Allende and Letelier that he had information that a coup would occur on 9/14. Prats thought that Pinochet was loyal to the government.
  
• 9/9/1973 Christian Democrats suggest Allende resign and new elections be held.
  
• 9/10/1973 Martha Mitchell was reported in Newsweek ("How Much Does Martha Know?") as telling a reporter that Nixon "planned the whole goddamn thing [Watergate.]" They reported that she had spoken in "an undertone of desperation." Days later she called UPI reporter Helen Thomas and again directly implicated Nixon in the coverup. She also said, "Nixon is involved with the Mafia. The Mafia was involved in his reelection."
  
• 9/10/1973 Haig and Buzhardt met with Agnew, urging him to resign; again, he refused.
  
• 9/10/1973 Allende's government discussed the growing right-wing violence, much of it by the military, against Popular Unity supporters. That night, rumors of troop movements could not be verified by Allende and Letelier. Allende decided that tomorrow he would force several top generals into retirement.
  
• 9/11/1973 "The Armed Forces violently overthrow the constitutionally elected Popular Unity government of President Salvador Allende, who dies during the military attack on the presidential palace La Moneda. Led by Army Commander-in-Chief General Augusto Pinochet, the coup marks the beginning of 17 years of military rule in Chile. A state of siege throughout all Chilean territory is decreed. This state of exception is renewed every six months in the following years. At dawn Navy troops revolted and began heading toward Santiago. Pinochet was nowhere to be found. Letelier went to the Defense Ministry and was promptly arrested. The Air Force offered to fly Allende and his family out of the country but he refused; he sat in his presidential office, unable to get information about troop movements. Then the radio announced a decree by Pinochet and three other generals that they had formed a junta: "Mr. President Allende must proceed to hand over his office immediately to the members of the armed forces and police. The armed forces and the police are united to begin the historic mission of liberating our fatherland from the yoke of Marxism." Allende and a small group of intimates remained in the presidential palace, which the Air Force now began to bomb. At about 3pm, the burning building was overrun by soldiers, and Allende resisted to the last with an automatic rifle. He either committed suicide (as Pinochet claimed) or was killed by gunfire. During the following weeks, Allende supporters fought running battles with security forces. Pinochet decreed Sept. 11 as a national holiday. This violent coup saw between 5000-15,000 people die and ended 46 years of constitutional rule. Congress was also dissolved. Allende had once told foreign newsmen that the only way he would leave office before the end of his six-year-term was in a pine box. On news of the coup, Anaconda Copper's stock jumped on Wall Street. (Los Angeles Times 9/12/1973) The military junta massacres tens of thousands of workers and students considered leftists. "There is a strong probability that the CIA station in Chile helped supply the assassination lists," according to ex-agent Phillip Agee.
  
• 9/12/1973 Another meeting between Agnew and Haig about the possibility of the VP resigning.
  
• 9/12/1973 Egypt's Sadat, his Minister of War, Gen. Ahmed Ismail Ali, and Syria's president Assad met secretly during an Arab summit meeting in Cairo to select a day to attack Israel. (Dupuy)
  
• 9/12/1973 Allende supporters were rounded up and held in stadiums and other large areas; folksinger Victor Jara, in the Santiago stadium, refused to stop singing to the prisoners, and guards beat him to death. The four commanding officers of the armed forces meet to constitute the governing Junta and designate cabinet ministers. The constitutional act, penned by the Navy auditor general and admiral, lawyer Rodolfo Vio, states that the commanders-in-chief of the different branches of the Armed Forces constitute the Junta for the purposes of ""restoring the ruptured Chilean identity, justice and institutional framework."" The Junta members are General Augusto Pinochet of the Army - designated president of the Junta - Gustavo Leigh of the Air Force, Cesar Mendoza of Carabineros and Jose Toribio Merino of the Navy. The first Cabinet is comprised of 10 military officials and four civilians. A separate article stipulates that the new regime would respect the independence of the judiciary. The National Stadium in Santiago is set up as a temporary prison camp, holding thousands of political prisoners. Red Cross International estimates some 7,000 prisoners were held in the National Stadium as of September 22, 1973. The Chile Stadium was also used for the same purpose after the coup. Between September and the end of 1973, temporary prison camps were set up in stadiums and military regiments throughout Chile. Simultaneously, the military set up several concentration camps in isolated areas to keep prisoners for longer periods, such as Pisagua, Chacabuco, Dawson Island and others."
  
• 9/13/1973 The military junta chose Pinochet as President, and decreed that all power resided in the new military rulers, even the power to change the Constitution. They announced that their task was to uproot and eradicate Marxism from Chile. The Supreme Court declares its support for the coup in a document signed by Supreme Court president Enrique Urrutia Manzano. The judiciary is the only one of the three state powers that is not dissolved after the coup, partly because of the new regime's desire to maintain a semblance of legality. In 1991, the Rettig report's analysis of the role of the courts in the early period of the dictatorship concludes that it did not react energetically enough to defend human rights in this period. The Catholic Church of Chile calls on the governing Junta to respect the rights of its opponents, to proceed with moderation, to maintain the advances made for the working class and a prompt return to institutional rule. The declaration, issued by the Permanent Episcopate Committee, provokes a strong negative reaction in the Junta.
  
• 9/14/1973 The Junta dissolves the National Congress, through Decree Law No. 27, stating that its functionaries should leave their posts immediately. The justification given for this decision is the need for "greater expedition in carrying out the resolutions that the Junta has proposed."
  
• 9/14/1973 Carter Once Saw a UFO on 'Very Sober Occasion' (Atlanta Constitution, Sept. 14, 1973, p. 1D) by Howell Raines, Constitution Staff Writer DUBLIN- Gov. Jimmy Carter doesn't scoff at people who report UFO sightings, because he saw one himself about three years ago. And, Carter quipped, "it was on a very sober occasion." Carter said he saw a blue, disc-shaped object during a campaign stop in Leary, a South Georgia town in the same general area where numerous UFOs have been reported recently.
  
• 9/15/1973 The Appeals Court of Santiago rejects the first protective writ (habeus corpus) since the coup, filed by Christian Democrat Bernardo Leighton on behalf of arrested Popular Unity leaders. This legal instrument proved to be ineffective in adequately protecting the rights of arrested individuals throughout the 1973-90 period.
  
• 9/16/1973 The Washington Post reported: "Jim Garrison, as late as March 1971, was preparing to accuse another person of conspiring to assassinate President John F. Kennedy. Garrison's intended defendant this time was the late Air Force General Charles Cabell..."
  
• 9/16/1973 World renowned folk singer Victor Jara is killed after being tortured at the Chile Stadium.
  
• 9/17/1973 Henry Kissinger said during his confirmation hearings: "The CIA had nothing to do with the [Chilean] coup, to the best of my knowledge and belief, and I only put in that qualification in case some madman appears down there who, without instruction, talked to somebody. I have absolutely no reason to suppose it." (The Experts Speak)
  
• 9/17/1973 The ruling Junta exposes "Plan Z", an alleged plan by the Popular Unity (UP) government for a counter-coup, which included amassing large amounts of weaponry and political assassinations. Claiming to have found secret documents in the UP government's Interior Ministry offices, the Junta publishes these in its Libro Blanco as justification for its persecution of leftists and for the coup itself.
  
• 9/18/1973 "Thirteen people are killed by a civilian squad in Osorno, southern Chile. After curfew, the group of individuals is arrested by the local Carabineros police, who then leave them in the hands of armed civilians. These bring the prisoners to Pilmaiquén River, line them up along the edge of a bridge and shoot them at point blank range. One woman from the group of victims, Blanca Ester Valderas - mayor of Entre Lagos and Socialist Party member - survives and lives in hiding in the area for several years. Years later, she brings her testimony to the regional court. Spanish priest Joan Alsina is killed. Alsina is head of personnel at the San Juan de Dios Hospital in Santiago at the time of the coup and is involved with the Worker's Movement for Catholic Action (MOAC). He is arrested on the hospital grounds and badly beaten before being taken away. Alsina's body is later found on the banks of the Mapocho River with ten bullet wounds in the back. Today, there is a small memorial on the Bulnes bridge, where Alsina died. Two other priests, Miguel Woodward of Valparaiso and Gerardo Poblete of Iquique, are also killed prior to Alsina. Nineteen people from the towns of Laja and San Rosendo near Los Angeles disappear after being arrested by the military. The group, which includes several workers from the pulp and paper company, Compania Manufacturera de Papeles y Cartones (CMPC), is forced into a company vehicle and driven away."
  
• 9/19/1973 Haig told Agnew that "the President will call for your resignation."
  
• 9/20/1973 Agnew met with Nixon to tell him that the charges were false.
  
• 9/20/1973 Jack B. Kubisch, US Assistant Sec of State for Inter-American Affairs, said before a subcommittee of the House Committee on Foreign Affairs: "Either explicitly or implicitly, the US Government has been charged with involvement or complicity in the [Chilean] coup. This is absolutely false. As official spokesmen of the US Government have stated repeatedly, we were not involved in the coup in any way." (NYT 9/21/73)
  
• 9/21/1973 Kissinger is confirmed as Secretary of State by the Senate.
  
• 9/21/1973 The New York Times reported that there might have been bribes made to fix the outcome of Jim Garrison's 1971 trial.
  
• 9/22/1973 Kissinger is sworn in as Secretary of State.
  
• 9/23/1973 "The Nobel prize-winning poet Pablo Neruda dies of a heart attack in his Isla Negra home. A member of the Communist Party, Neruda had left his post as ambassador to France due to poor health and returned to Chile a year before the coup. One popular account of his death says the military is guilty of negligence, delaying the dispatch of an ambulance to the poet's isolated residence, in effect leaving him to die unaided.
  
• 9/23/1973 Army officers conduct a 14-hour raid of the San Borja apartment buildings in downtown Santiago. They arrest dozens of people and burn books and other items considered "seditious."
  
• 9/24/1973 Newsweek reported that Mitchell family associates said Martha had had "a series of unpredictable and sometimes violent outbursts at home." John Mitchell complained, "You think the media would understand and leave Martha alone. It's obvious to anyone who knows her that she's a sick woman."
  
• 9/24/1973 Howard Hunt testified before the Watergate hearings; he said that Colson was part of the overall spy plan. Hunt also admitted to having doctored diplomatic cables to make it look like the Kennedy administration was involved in Diem's assassination in 1963. He explained that this was a bid to hurt the Democrats with Catholic voters in 1972.
  
• 9/24/1973 Chile: Eighteen farm workers from the El Escorial estate in Paine disappear after being rounded up by officials from the San Bernardo Infantry Regiment. Years later, morgue workers confirm some of those bodies arrived at the morgue with bullet wounds, and were later transferred to Patio 29 of the General Cemetery.
  
• 9/25/1973 Soviet Foreign Minister Andrei Gromyko, citing the "diminishing danger" of war with the US, proposed that the five major powers cut their military budgets and use part of the savings for aid to developing countries.
  
• 9/25/1973 E. Howard Hunt testified that most of his clandestine activities were for political, not national security, reasons; he also voiced suspicion that Alfred C. Baldwin III was a double agent. He also admitted that he had interviewed a bed-ridden Dita Davis Beard, while wearing a disguise and using a phony name; opposed a Colson plan to break into Arthur Bremer's apartment.
  
• 9/25/1973 SALT negotiations resume in Geneva.
  
• 9/25/1973 On the night of September 25, King Hussein secretly flew to Tel Aviv to warn Israeli Prime Minister Golda Meir of an impending Syrian attack. "Are they going to war without the Egyptians, asked Mrs. Meir. The king said he didn't think so. 'I think they [Egypt] would cooperate'". Surprisingly, this warning fell on deaf ears. Aman concluded that the king had not told it anything it did not already know. "Eleven warnings of war were received by Israel during September from well placed sources. But [Mossad chief] Zvi Zamir continued to insist that war was not an Arab option. Not even Hussein's warnings succeeded in stirring his doubts". He would later remark that "We simply didn't feel them capable [of War]" (Rabinovich, Jerusalem Post, September 25, 1998)
  
• 9/25/1973 The U.S. government officially recognizes Chile's military Junta.
  
• 9/26/1973 Nixon signs a vocational rehabiliation bill for the handicapped.
  
• 9/26/1973 Egypt and Syria announced concentrations of troops for routine maneuvers. Although Israeli and US intelligence believed there would be no war, a partial Israeli alert was ordered, including deployment of a second armored brigade to the Golan area on Sep 29. (Dupuy)
  
• 9/26/1973 Chile: The military Junta offers a reward of $500,000 escudos to anyone who can provide information as to the whereabouts of members of the former Popular Unity government.
  
• 9/27 or 28/1973 Jim Garrison was found not guilty of the bribery charges, but the incident narrowly cost him his reelection soon after. The government charged him with tax evasion in 1974 but that also fell apart. The trial was presided over by Judge Herbert W. Christenberry, who had presided over Marcello's 11/1963 trial and who had blocked Garrison's perjury charge against Clay Shaw. Garrison soon took over his own defense and charged that the tape recordings were fakes; he called Louis Gerstman to testify that they were doctored, but the government's expert, Lt. Ernest Nash of the Michigan State Police, said they were genuine. Garrison cross-examined Gervais on the stand and got him to admit that he was under the government's witness protection program, and that in a 1972 TV interview he called the case against Garrison a fraud. Now, though, Gervais said the charges were true. Garrison's forceful self-defense led to his acquittal.
  
• 9/30/1973 Former Army Commander-in-Chief Carlos Prats Gonzalez, is killed in Buenos Aires, Argentina by a car bomb alongside his wife Sofia Cuthbert. Prats, who fled to Argentina shortly after the military coup, was Pinochet's predecessor in the Army and had been loyal to Salvador Allende's government. As of April 1998, the Argentine courts investigating the crime have determined that the DINA was responsible for the murders. As of early 1998, only one DINA agent, Enrique Arancibia Clavel, has been apprehended.
  
• 10/1973 in National Review, Miles Copeland (a former CIA official), wrote an editorial warning that, as world disorder and Leftist terrorism increase, the necessity for more police state methods will be necessary to preserve order and Western civilization. "The only answer to the problem [of Left terror] seems to be to keep whole communities under surveillance....sooner rather than later, the public will swing over to sharing the alarm, and will become suddenly unsqueamish about police-state methods or whatever it takes to give them a good night's sleep. The CIA, the FBI and other security agencies had better be prepared."
  
• 10/1973 Peter Noyes' Legacy of Doubt is published, pointing the finger at Carlos Marcello for the JFK assassination.
  
• 10/1973 Nixon puts US forces on worldwide "Precautionary alert." Kissinger announced this was because of "ambiguous" signs that the Soviets might intervene militarily in the Middle East. (Dupuy) Israel reportedly assembles nuclear weapons during the war. (Nat Geographic Aug 05) As Israeli troops pushed into Egypt itself and neared Cairo, Sadat and Brezhnev appealed for joint US-Soviet supervision of the cease-fire. Brezhnev sent a message to Nixon warning that the Soviets were prepared to move into the region unilaterally to maintain the cease-fire. Nixon, bogged down in his own problems, let Kissinger and Haig handle this crisis. Eagleburger would later claim that Nixon was drunk. US forces were put on DefCon 3 and readied for war. But the Soviets quickly accepted a UN peacekeeping force. Critics would claim that Nixon was trying to deflect attention from Watergate and quiet domestic enemies. (General's Progress) The diversion of US resources to help Israel meant a corresponding drop in US aid to Vietnam. The war had seen 3,500 Syrians killed, 15,000 Egyptians killed, 2,569 Israelis killed, 125 Iraqis killed.
  
• 10/1/1973 Department of Defense, U.S. Milgroup, Situation Report #2, October 1, 1973: In a situation report, U.S. Naval attache Patrick Ryan, reports positively on events in Chile during the coup. He characterizes September 11 as "our D-Day," and states that "Chile's coup de etat [sic] was close to perfect." His report provides details on Chilean military operations during and after the coup, as well as glowing commentary on the character of the new regime.
  
• 10/1/1973 Rose Mary Woods reported to Haig about the 18.5 minute gap on the 6/20/1972 tape she was transcribing.
  
• 10/3/1973 Joseph Califano appeared in executive session testimony before the Ervin Committee.
  
• 10/4/1973 Agnew recalled that Al Haig practically threatened his life if he did not resign: "anything may be in the offing. It can and will get nasty and dirty. Don't think that the game cannot be played from here. The President has a lot of power - don't forget that." Agnew took this as an "open-ended threat" from the man "who was the de facto president...I feared for my life. If a decision had been made to eliminate me - through an automobile accident, a fake suicide or whatever, the order would not have been traced back to the White House any more than get-Castro orders were ever traced to their source...Haig did not want me in the line of succession." Haig did imply that if Agnew resigned he would get financial and legal help. (Go Quietly Or Else p186-93)
  
• 10/4-5/1973 The hasty departure of some Soviet advisers and all dependents from Egypt was noted by Israeli and US intelligence agencies, which again informed their governments that there would be no war. (Dupuy)
  
• 10/5/1973 Oregon became the first state to decriminalize the possession of small amounts of marijuana.
  
• 10/6/1973 0400 hours: Israeli Director of Intelligence Gen. Elihau Zeira informed Lt. Gen. David Elazar that the Arabs would attack at 1800 hours. Israeli mobilization was ordered at 0930. (Dupuy) Today is the Israeli holy day of Yom Kippur.
  
• 10/6/1973 1405 hours: A massive Egyptian air strike against Israeli artillery and command positions and a simultaneous intensive artillery bombardment of Bar Lev Line fortifications along the Suez Canal were a tactical surprise. Israeli frontline units had only been partially alerted. (Dupuy)
  
• 10/6/1973 1405 hours: A massive Syrian air attack and artillery bombardment against Israeli positions on the Golan achieved complete tactical surprise. (Dupuy)
  
• 10/6/1973 Egypt declared waters of Israel's coasts as a 'War Zone' and effectively blockaded commerce to Israel. A blockade by destroyers and subs at the Strait of Bab el Mandeb stopped all traffic to Eilat. (Dupuy) Israeli 'Saar' missile boats struck at night at the Syrian seaport of Latakia, and were engaged by a Syrian squadron. The Israelis sank 4 Syrian vessels without loss to themselves. (Dupuy)
  
• 10/6/1973 Syrian commandos, in a ground-helicopter attack, captured the fortified Israeli observation post on Mount Hermon, overlooking the Golan Plateau and the Damascus Plain. (Dupuy)
  
• 10/6-7/1973 Egyptian commandos crossed the canal at 1435, followed by infantry, engineers, and a few tanks. Engineers, opening approaches in the Bar Lev Line's sand embankment by demolitions and water jets, had bridges up in the Second Army area before midnight Oct 7. Bridges were complete in the Third Army area by the night of Oct 7/8. About 500 Egyptian tanks crossed the canal. Two quickly mobilized reserve Israeli armored divisions under Gens. Ariel Sharon and Abraham Adan approached the front, Adan near Romani, Sharon near Tasa. (Dupuy) North of Kuneitra the Syrian 7th Infantry Division was repulsed by the Israeli 7th Armored Brigade; most of the Syrian tanks were destroyed. The 3rd Syrian Tank Division, committed to pass through the 7th Infantry Division, suffered a costly defeat in a renewed major tank battle west of Amadiye (Oct 7). (Dupuy)
  
• 10/6-7/1973 Taking advantage of weaker opposition and better terrain, the Syrian 5th Mechanized Division broke through the defenses of the Israeli 188th Armored Brigade. In 2 days of fighting the brigade was virtually destroyed. The Israeli Golan command post at Khushniye was surrounded. Spearheads of the 5th Mechanized Division, reinforced by the 1st Tank Division, halted near the western escarpment of the Golan. (Dupuy)
  
• 10/6-8/1973 The first Israeli aircraft appeared over the Sinai and Golan fronts about 40 minutes after the Arab attack began. They encountered Soviet-made missiles and by dark the Israelis lost more than 30 aircraft. In the following days the Egyptian mobile SAM-6s claimed many Israeli planes, and the light, hand-held Strela (SAM-7) damaged many more. (Dupuy) Soviet air flights to Middle East accelerate, primarily to return Soviets to the USSR. (Dupuy)
  
• 10/7/1973 Second naval action off Latakia; results were inconclusive and the Syrians withdrew. (Dupuy)
  
• 10/7-8/1973 Scattered Egyptian-Israeli clashes in the Mediterranean and Red Seas. The results were inconclusive, with the Egyptians withdrawing in all instances. (Dupuy)
  
• 10/7/1973 Egyptian ambassador Kamal Rifaat said "We are defending ourselves in our own land."
  
• 10/8/1973 Counterattacks against the Egyptian Second Army by Adan's division and Sharon's division were repulsed with heavy losses. The Israelis dug in and the Egyptians consolidated, linking up all their bridgeheads. Israeli close support aircraft suffered heavy losses from Egyptian anti-aircraft using Soviet missiles and guns. (Dupuy)
  
• 10/8-9/1973 Assisted by units of the 7th Armored Brigade, displaced from the north, newly-arrived Israeli units drove back the Syrian 5th and 1st Divisions, in several places to the original front line. Most of the Syrian tanks were lost, many because they had run out of fuel and ammo. (Dupuy)
  
• 10/8-16/1973 Using hastily devised tactics and utilizing chaff and electronic countermeasures, Israeli aircraft began to make a greater effect in the ground battles. They claimed hits on Egyptian bridges over the Suez and strikes against Arab airfields. (Dupuy)
  
• 10/8-9/1973 Egyptian vessels, coming out to meet Israeli raiding boats off Damietta, suffered severe losses. (Dupuy) Israel begins to fly supplies from the US. The first of a number of flights by El Al aircraft took off from Ocean Naval Air Station, Virginia. (Dupuy) Israeli attempt to retake Mount Hermon is repulsed. (Dupuy)
  
• 10/8/1973 TIME - FRANCE: Objective: De Gaulle: Speeding through the Paris suburb of Petit-Clamart early one evening in August 1962, the French President's black Citroën ran into a barrage of submachine-gun fire. The colonel riding next to the chauffeur yelled to his father-in-law in the back seat: "Father, get down!" The tall, imperial figure budged not an inch. Again the distraught colonel pleaded: "I beg you, Father, get down." This time the President leaned slightly forward. A split second later, a stream of bullets ripped through the limousine. When the firing stopped, Charles de Gaulle flicked fragments of the broken rear window from his coat and declaimed: "What, again?" The Petit-Clamart ambushthe factual starting point of Frederick Forsyth's otherwise fictional The Day of the Jackalwas De Gaulle's closest brush with assassins. It was, however, neither the first nor the last. According to a new book published in Paris, Objectif de Gaulle, there were at least 31 serious plots against the general's life, and dozens of others that never got beyond the talking stage. Indeed, even as the would-be killers of Petit-Clamart went on trial for their lives, police averted a sniper's attempt to shoot De Gaulle with a telescopically fitted carbine while the President was on an inspection tour of Paris' Ecole Militaire. All the assassination attempts documented in the bookwith the lone exception of one by an embittered seaman who blamed De Gaulle for the World War II destruction of the French fleet by the Britishsprang from De Gaulle's decision to grant independence to Algeria. That policy led to the creation of the militant terrorist group known as the Secret Army Organization (O.A.S.), one of whose principal goals was to kill De Gaulle for having betrayed Algérie française. The authors, Pierre Démaret, 31, who once belonged to the O.A.S., and Christian Plume, 48, a journalist, interviewed former O.A.S. leaders and obtained access to the French Interior Ministry's records. The result is an extraordinary tale of mad zeal, abominable planning and incredibly bad luck by what was surely the world's most dedicated and inept gang of assassins. The O.A.S.'s impressive record of failure was racked up with little help from le grand Charles. "You can't keep De Gaulle under glass," he would declare whenever security got too tight. Fortunately for the French President, many of the assassination attempts sound as if they were concocted by Gordon Liddy. One zany plot called for poisoning the Communion Hosts at the village church in Colombey-les-Deux-Eglises, where De Gaulle attended Mass. The idea was discarded after the plotters realized that the first person to receive a Host would keel over dead and give the scheme away. And there was no way to guarantee that De Gaulle would be first at the Communion rail. Equally harebrained was a scheme for a kamikaze pilot to crash a small private plane into the French President's helicopter. While circling over Algeria's Blida Airport in anticipation of De Gaulle's departure, the pilot was dismayed to see that a swarm of helicopters had taken off at once. There was no way of knowing which one De Gaulle was in (French security forces routinely used dummy planes and juggled limousines as a precaution). Then there was the O.A.S. agent who was sent to Athens just prior to De Gaulle's May 1963 visit. The agent's mission: to shoot the general with a special camera that fired bullets. The gunman lost his fake identity papers during a lively evening at a local taverna and refused to take the risk without getaway documents. A new set arrived a day too late, and all he got was a photograph showing how close he had been to De Gaulle. The most determined assassin was the architect of the Petit-Clamart ambush (which the plotters called "Operation Charlotte Corday"*), an air force lieutenant colonel named Jean-Maria Bastien-Thiry. A brilliant engineer known as "the French von Braun" for his invention of the guided SSII missile, he masterminded both Petit-Clamart and an earlier attempt in which a napalm and plastique bomb was planted on the route to Colombey. De Gaulle commuted the death sentences of two other Petit-Clamart conspirators, Jacques Prévost and Alain Bougrenet de la Tocnaye. But he refused to grant clemency to Bastien-Thiry, reportedly because the attempt had been made when Mme. de Gaulle was also in the car. He was executed by a firing squad March 11, 1963. Today the only would-be De Gaulle assassin left in jail is Jean-Jacques Susini, a cofounder of the O.A.S., who once directed its terrorist activities in Algiers. The others convicted of participating in the plots44 in allwere granted either clemency, commutation or amnesty by the man they had tried to kill.
  
• 10/9/1973 Claiming retaliation for Syrian 'Frog' attacks (long-range surface to surface missiles) on the Hula Valley, the IAF began an intensive and effective strategic air bombardment campaign against mostly industrial targets deep inside Syria. The Syrian Defense Ministry in Damascus was also hit. Attacks on Syrian seaports, industrial plants and fuel storage depots continued until the first ceasefire. The attacks severely hurt the Syrian economy. (Dupuy)
  
• 10/9-10/1973 Israeli missile vessels bombarded Latakia, Tartus and Banias in Syria. The Syrian navy did not respond. (Dupuy) Israeli-Egyptian missile boat battle off Port Said: 3 Egyptian vessels were sunk and the others withdrew. (Dupuy) Major Soviet airlift to Egypt and Syria begins, via and/or over Hungary and Yugoslavia. Most of the flights were to Syria. (Dupuy)
  
• 10/10/1973 Senate approves War Powers Act 75-20.
  
• 10/10/1973 Agnew resigns over charges of tax evasion and bribery related to his period as governor of Maryland. He pleaded no contest to a single tax evasion charge, and the government agreed to bring no further criminal charges against him. He was fined and given three years' probation. Agnew will be disbarred in Maryland on May 2, 1974.
  
• 10/10-12/1973 Israeli counteroffensive. In a drive generally north of the Kuneitra-Damascus road, 3 Israeli divisions smashed through the first Syrian defensive zone east of the cease-fire line, and into the second zone, near Saasaa, in front of Damascus. (Dupuy)
  
• 10/11/1973 For several days, Egyptian Gen. Ismail rejected recommendations to attempt a deeper drive into Sinai. But to help the hardpressed Syrians, he reluctantly ordered an offensive to draw Israelis to the Sinai front. (Dupuy)
  
• 10/12/1973 The House overwhelmingly approved the War Powers Resolution, a bill that would limit the President's ability to send troops into combat without Congressional oversight; Nixon vetoed in 10/24.
  
• 10/12/1973 Richard Nixon nominates former Warren Commission member Gerald Ford as Vice President of the United States. Nixon's first choice is John Connally, but Democratic congressional leaders inform him that Connally will never be confirmed by the Senate. Gerald Ford has already violated national security by illegally publishing top secret transcripts which he appropriated from the Warren Commission files, in his ghostwritten PORTRAIT OF THE ASSASSIN. In this book, Ford goes out of his way to make Oswald appear to be the assassin and to bury criticism of the Warren Report.
  
• 10/12/1973 The Business Council, a group of top corporate executives, told Nixon that they wanted an end to wage- and price-controls before they wrecked the economy.
  
• 10/12/1973 US Circuit Court of Appeals ruled that Nixon "is not above the law's commands," and must let Judge Sirica decide whether the Watergate tapes should be turned over to a grand jury.
  
• 10/12/1973 The Israelis halted their Syria offensive and began to shift units to the Sinai front. The Iraqi 3rd Armored Division, on the south side of the Israeli salient, counterattacked by was ambushed and repulsed. (Dupuy)
  
• 10/12-13/1973 Israeli raids on Syrian coast: Tartus and Latakia were again bombarded. There were inconclusive clashes with Syrian missile boats. (Dupuy)
  
• 10/13/1973 Los Angeles Times: Gerald Ford told the press that Haig "had notified him of his nomination. What did Haig say? 'He said, "Gerry, I want you to be my nominee for Vice President of the United States."'
  
• 10/13-14/1973 Nixon and Haig went to Camp David to discuss Watergate.
  
• 10/13/1973 US airlift begins in response to urgent Israeli requests. American planes began to supplement the El Al lift. (Dupuy) In retrospect, Golda Meir's decision not to strike first was a sound one. Operation Nickel Grass, the American airlift of supplies during the war which began on October 13, while it did not immediately replace Israel's losses in equipment, did allow it to expend what it did have more freely (Rabinovich, 491). Had they struck first, according to Henry Kissinger, they would not have received "so much as a nail".
  
• 10/14/1973 The first seven US C5A transport planes arrived in Israel, flying via the Azores. (Dupuy)
  
• 10/14/1973 Egyptian offensive is repulsed; the Israelis inflict heavy casualties, particularly in tanks. (Dupuy)
  
• 10/14-21/1973 Massive Soviet and US airlifts continue. By the time of the ceasefire, the Soviets had airlifted about 15,000 tons, the US more than 20,000. (Dupuy)
  
• 10/15/1973 Supreme Court ruled 7-2 to refuse to review a 1971 Federal Communications directive to censor songs from the airwaves with drug-oriented lyrics. Dissenting justices were Douglas and Brennan.
  
• 10/15/1973 Haig met with Richardson and told him Nixon would fire Cox. Richardson threatened to resign. Haig would later claim he was against the idea of firing Cox, but Richardson felt this wasn't true. (Washington Post 11/28/1973; The Creative Balance 39) Haig then relented and suggested the idea to let Sen. Stennis listen to the tapes. Nixon suggests that J. Lee Rankin (of the Warren Commission) "edit" the tapes.
  
• 10/15/1973 US announces it is supplying Israel with military equipment to support its fight against the Arabs. By now the Israelis were concentrating their forces against the Egyptians; ten days of fighting would be needed to push them out of the Sinai.
  
• 10/15/1973 Another counterattack by the Iraqi 3rd Armored Division was repulsed. (Dupuy)
  
• 10/15-16/1973 Israeli missile boats sank a number of Egyptian landing craft in a raid on the Nile Delta. (Dupuy) Israeli thrust across Suez Canal: Sharon, hitting the boundary between the Egyptian 2nd and 3rd Armies, was abled to establish a bridgehead with a brigade of paratroopers near Deversoir around midnight. (Dupuy)
  
• 10/16/1973 The first black mayor of a major southern city, Maynard Jackson, was elected in Atlanta.
  
• 10/16/1973 Sirica denies bail to five of the original Watergate defendants.
  
• 10/16/1973 Melvin Laird discloses that he had warned Nixon that withholding the tapes might result in an impeachment attempt.
  
• 10/16/1973 Kissinger and Le Duc Tho are awarded the Nobel Peace Prize; Kissinger accepted it, but Le Duc Tho declined it until peace is truly established.
  
• 10/16/1973 The Jordanian 40th Armored Brigade counterattacked beside the Iraqis but was repulsed. (Dupuy)
  
• 10/16-18/1973 Battle of the 'Chinese Farm' (a former Japanese experimental agricultural station; Israeli troops in 1967 assumed the writing was Chinese). The Egyptian 2nd Army closed the corridor behind Sharon, isolating his division in small bridgheads east and west of the Canal. In intensive fighting Adan's division broke through, bringing a bridge to the crossing point. The 2nd Army with some aid from the 3rd Army tried repeatedly to close the corridor leading to the Israeli crossing site. Egyptian tank losses again were heavy. Adan's division then crossed during the night of Oct 17-18. (Dupuy)
  
• 10/16/1973 The Kurds of Iraq, eager to help the Israelis by launching an attack and tying down part of the Iraqi army, were told by Kissinger via a CIA cable: "We do not repeat not consider it advisable for you to undertake the offensive military actions that Israel has suggested to you." The Kurds did not move. (Pike Report)
  
• 10/17/1973 White House proposes to Cox that Sen. John Stennis listen to the tapes.
  
• 10/17/1973 Nixon holds talks with the foreign ministers of Saudi Arabia, Kuwait, Morocco and Algeria at the White House on the fighting in the Middle East.
  
• 10/17/1973 Eleven Arab nations began an oil embargo against the US because of the ammo and weapons sent to Israel when it became apparent that their military was running low.
  
• 10/17/1973 Israel regains air superiority over the Suez Canal. As Gen. Adan's advancing tanks captured a number of Egyptian antiaircraft batteries, a gap was created in the Egyptian air defense network. The Israeli air force quickly exploited this. (Dupuy)
  
• 10/17/1973 Tom Zito, Washington Post: "Ten years after the assassination of John F. Kennedy a semi-fictionalized movie thriller is about to be released, concluding that his murder was planned by a group of powerful industrialists. "Executive Action," scheduled to open at seven theaters here on Nov. 14, is based on a novel of the same name by Donald Freed and Mark Lane. Lane once served as attorney for Lee Harvey Oswald and wrote "Rush to Judgment," a book arguing Oswald's innocence and proposing a conspiracy theory for the assassination. Dalton Trumbo, author of the antiwar novel "Johnny Got His Gun" and imprisoned and blacklisted for his refusal to testify about alleged involvement with the Communist Party, wrote the screenplay. Burt Lancaster, the late Robert Ryan and Will Geer play conspirators. "I really think this film is going to appeal to a young audience," producer Ed Lewis said. Lewis also produced "Seven Days in May," another political thriller…The independent production cost about $600,000, according to Lewis. Shooting was completed three months ago. The film had originally been the idea of actor Donald Sutherland, according to Lewis. "He commissioned Freed and Lane to write the screenplay about three years ago. He tiled to get backing, but then abandoned the project because he felt the script was too sensational to get financing."
  
• 10/18/1973 Krogh pleads not guilty to two counts of perjury.
  
• 10/18/1973 Haig met with Richardson, who once more threatened to resign.
  
• 10/18-19/1973 Expansion of Israeli bridgehead. Adan's division pushed westward from Sharon's bridgehead, overruning Egyptian rear areas. (Dupuy)
  
• 10/18/1973 Cox rejects the Stennis proposal.
  
• 10/18/1973 AP reported that Air Force Chief of Staff George S. Brown said that UFOs "plagued" the US during the Vietnam war; "They could only be seen at night in certain places...I think it's nothing. I think it is atmospherics."
  
• 10/19/1973 Dean pleads guilty to one count of conspiracy to obstruct justice for his role in the coverup. Cox then grants Dean immunity for any other Watergate-related crimes in exchange for his testimony.
  
• 10/19/1973 Haig told Richardson that Nixon wanted no more attempts by Cox to obtain Watergate evidence from the White House. Haig tried to argue with Nixon against this approach, but to no avail.
  
• 10/19/1973 A general Arab counterattack, spearheaded by the Jordanians, was repulsed. The lines stablized on the Damascus Plain. (Dupuy)
  
• 10/19/1973 Ariel Sharon's attempt to seize Ismailia was repulsed. (Dupuy)
  
• 10/20/1973 (Saturday) Repeated thrusts by Sharon to the northwest against Ismailia were contained by paratroop and armored reserves of the 2nd and 3rd Armies, reinforced from Cairo. (Dupuy)
  
• 1:00pm: Cox remained defiant in a press conference.
  
• 2:20pm: Haig ordered Richardson to fire Cox.
  
• 3:30pm: Richardson handed his resignation to Nixon. Nixon explained, "Brezhnev would never understand if I let Cox defy my instructions." Haig ordered Dep. Atty General Ruckelshaus to fire Cox; he refused and resigned as well. Haig then got the third man at Justice, Robert Bork, to do the job. This was the so-called "Saturday Night Massacre."
  
• 8:25pm: Ziegler announced the day's events to the press; quickly, FBI agents, called in by Haig, locked up the offices of Cox, Richardson and Ruckelshaus. Public and congressional reaction was explosivel; Haig was the first to use the term "fire storm" to describe the unexpected protests. Haig also urged Bork that all the key attorneys in the special prosecutor's office be fired as well; Bork refused to take this step. (Stonewall 142)
  
• 10/21/1973 ACLU printed a full-page ad in major newspapers, "Why it is necessary to impeach President Nixon and how it can be done."
  
• 10/21/1973 Major tank and aerial battles between Israelis and Egyptians along the Suez Canal. Kuwait, Bahrain, Qatar and Dubai announce they will join the ban on oil imports to US. Israeli effort to retake Mount Hermon is repulsed. (Dupuy)
  
• 10/21-22/1973 Israeli naval attacks on Aboukir Bay and Alexandria; two Egyptian patrol boats were sunk. (Dupuy)
  
• 10/22/1973 (Monday) Gallup poll shows Nixon's approval rating at 30%.
  
• 10/22/1973 UN Security Council overwhelmingly (with China abstaining) adopted a US-Soviet resolution calling for a Middle East cease-fire. At 1852 hours a cease-fire went into effect. Both sides quickly claimed violations. Israel sent strong reinforcements across the Canal. (Dupuy)
  
• 10/22/1973 Adan's drive south met weaker resistance cutting the main Suez-Cairo road northeast of Suez. (Dupuy)
  
• 10/22/1973 A final Israeli effort to retake Mount Hermon is successful; helicopter-borne paratroops seized the original Syrian observation post, higher up than that of the Israelis, and the "Golani" Infantry Brigade finally retook the position. An uneasy lull came over the Syrian front. (Dupuy)
  
• 10/23-24/1973 in Congress, 22 bills calling for Nixon's impeachment are introduced.
  
• 10/23/1973 Haig told the press that the offices had been sealed by the FBI because "we had reports that members of the staff were leaving rapidly with huge bundles under their arms." But Cox had had his staff remove the most important documents for safe-keeping days earlier.
  
• 10/23-24/1973 Battle of Suez-Adabiya: Despite the cease-fire Adan was ordered to continue his southward drive to the Gulf of Suez, isolating the Third Army. At the same time another Israeli division under Gen. Kalman Magen followed Adan and continued on to reach Adabiya on the Gulf of Suez. The Israelis tried to take Suez, but were repulsed. (Dupuy)
  
• 10/23/1973 Nixon offered to release the tapes that Cox sought and retain the special prosecutor's office.
  
• 10/23 or 11/1/1973 Leon Jaworski named Special Prosecutor.
  
• 10/24/1973 0700 hours: Second cease-fire takes effect. (Dupuy) As Israeli troops pushed into Egypt itself and neared Cairo, Sadat and Brezhnev appealed for joint US-Soviet supervision of the cease-fire. Brezhnev sent a message to Nixon warning that the Soviets were prepared to move into the region unilaterally to maintain the cease-fire. Nixon, bogged down in his own problems, let Kissinger and Haig handle this crisis. Eagleburger would later claim that Nixon was drunk. US forces were put on DefCon 3 and readied for war. But the Soviets quickly accepted a UN peacekeeping force. Critics would claim that Nixon was trying to deflect attention from Watergate and quiet domestic enemies. (General's Progress) The diversion of US resources to help Israel meant a corresponding drop in US aid to Vietnam. The war had seen 3,500 Syrians killed, 15,000 Egyptians killed, 2,569 Israelis killed, 125 Iraqis killed. A force of about 7 divisions of Soviet airborne troops was alerted, presumably for airlift to Egypt if it looked like Israel was going to destroy the Egyptian 3rd Army. (Dupuy)
  
• 10/25/1973 FBI Director Kelley wrote a correspondent that "the investigation of Unidentified Flying Objects is not and never has been a matter that is within the investigative jurisdiction of the FBI." (Above Top Secret 475)
  
• 10/25/1973 Nixon puts US forces on worldwide "Precautionary alert." Kissinger announced this was because of "ambiguous" signs that the Soviets might intervene militarily in the Middle East. (Dupuy) Israel reportedly assembles nuclear weapons during the war. (Nat Geographic Aug 05)
  
• 10/26/1973 Nixon, in a televised press conference, says he will appoint a new special prosecutor. He blamed the media for its "frantic, hysterical reporting" of Watergate, claiming they had made people lose faith in their government. He also congratulated himself for his handling of the middle east crisis, saying, "when I have to face an international crisis I have what it takes."
  
• 10/27/1973 Board of Governors of the American Bar Association urged that Congress establish an office of special Watergate prosecutor, to be appointed by the courts and not Nixon.
  
• 10/30/1973 White House reveals that two of the tapes Cox wanted never existed (Nixon-Mitchell phone call of 6/20/1972 and Nixon-Dean meeting of 4/15/1973). No mention of this had ever been made before, and it was always assumed the tapes did exist.
  
• 10/31/1973 US proposed that American and Soviet troops in Central Europe be cut in size as a first step toward achieving "a more stable military balance at lower levels of force with undiminished security..."
  
• 10/31/1973 Agnew paid a $10,000 federal fine for income tax evasion.
  
• 10/31/1973 Secret Service told Sirica that the two tapes were not recorded because of mechanical problems.
  
• 10/31/1973 Justice Dept announced that Bebe Rebozo did not engage in criminal conduct when he cashed $91,500 worth of stolen stock in 1968.
  
• 10/31/1973 Sen. Howard Cannon (D-Nev.) said that the Ford confirmation hearings would have to be approached as though "we may be confirming a President." He said he had some questions to ask Ford about "the laundering of campaign funds."
  
• 10/31/1973 Haig told Republican congressional leaders that the 3/21/1973 was "exculpatory" of Nixon and that he had learned of the Watergate cover-up for the first time on that date.