Deep Politics Timeline

[Tracy Riddle]

• 1975: Los Angeles: Special Counsel Thomas Kranz reinvestigates the RFK assassination for the D.A.'s office, and issues the Kranz Report, which confirms the original police findings.
  
• This year, FBI surveillance of Santo Trafficante and Carlos Marcello allegedly records Trafficante saying: "Now only two people are alive who know who killed Kennedy." (Official and Confidential, Summers)
  
• This year, three years following the death of J. Edgar Hoover, a congressional committee orders a detailed check on the domestic security files of the ten largest FBI offices. This check indicates that no less that 19 percent of the Bureau's total effort is still devoted to hunting "subversives." Yet criminal conduct is discovered in only four out of 19,700 investigations - and none of those involve national security, espionage or terrorism. (Summers)
  
• During the mid-seventies, two American multinationals collaborate with the Defense Advanced [Research] Projects Agency (DARPA) on a project designed to facilitate the remote recovery of hijacked American aircraft. [This technology] ... allows specialist ground controllers to ... take absolute control of [a hijacked plane's] computerized flight control system by remote means. From that point onwards, regardless of the wishes of the hijackers or flight deck crew, the hijacked aircraft can be recovered and landed automatically at an airport of choice, with no more difficulty than flying a radio-controlled model plane.
  
• 1975 Lt.Colonel Michael Aquino breaks with the Satanic Church of Anton LeVey and founds the Temple of Set, a group which grew to operate on a national level and involved with US agencies in ritual abuse, sacrifice and mind control.
  
• 1975 Stockholm International Peace Research Institute publishes a paper on the "Delayed Toxic Effects of Chemical Warfare Agents", specifically organophosphates. (See 1989 and Los Angeles malathion spraying.)
  
• 1975 US Viking probe goes to Mars to seek signs of life.
  
• A 1975 military manual predicts the development of "ethnic chemical weapons which would be designed to exploit naturally occurring differences in vulnerability among specific population groups." Ref: "Biological Weapons and Third World Targets," Science for the People, July-Aug 1981, pp 16-20.
  
• 1975 A General Accounting Office (GAO) study of the FDA reveals that 150 FDA officials owned stock in the companies they were supposed to regulate.
  
• 1975 The British medical journal Lancet reports on a study which compared the effect on cancer patients of chemotherapy or no treatment at all. No treatment proved significantly better policy for patient survival and quality of life.
  
• 1975 N.M. Rothschild and Sons open operations in Hong Kong to take advantage of liberal gold trading laws.
  
• Gemstone: a conspiracy theory which first surfaced in 1975. Originally a precis by American journalist Stephania Caruana of allegations made in letters by American chemist Bruce Roberts, now deceased, Gemstone attributes much of post-war America's ills to the power of Aristotle Onassis, who had the Kennedys and Dr King assassinated, seized the Howard Hughes empire, did a deal with the Mafia, etc. The subject of a couple of book-length studies to date, Gemstone has appeared in five or six different versions, each one containing new material. Most striking is the `Kiwi Gemstone' in which specifically New Zealand incidents have been embedded in the original American narrative. Authorless, floating round the world in samizdat form, Gemstone is a perfect, small-scale disinformation vehicle for anyone who cares to use it. The Gemstone File is a series of documents by the American writer Bruce Porter Roberts (19191976). The best-known document is probably the 23-page "A Skeleton Key to the Gemstone File", written by Stephanie Caruana in 1975, which presents a brief, undocumented series of claims that conspiracies and suppressed information played a major role in shaping world events since the 1950s. In particular, this document named three individuals as the shooters of President John F. Kennedy, and suggested connections between a number of political assassinations which occurred within a relatively short time frame. Factsheet Five publisher Mike Gunderloy collected and distributed several versions of the Gemstone File. Gunderloy has explained that the original Gemstone File was simply a list of contributors to Committee to Re-elect the President (CREEP), while the subsequent versions gradually linked various figures of the Watergate and Kennedy eras. Roberts says in his Gemstone File letters that he began sending out copies of what had been a private journal to selected people, including journalists, politicians, and heads of foreign states, in 1968. He claimed to have written letters to 27 heads of state which influenced the vote in the United Nations which ousted Taiwan from the United Nations and admitted China instead. "The Gemstone File: A Memoir," by Stephanie Caruana, includes the text of two letters addressed to President Josip Broz Tito of Yugoslavia and Anwar Sadat of Egypt in 1975. The Gemstone File proposes that Aristotle Onassis, Joseph P. Kennedy, and other prominent figures were involved in various schemes to forward a vast global conspiracy, involving the Mafia and corrupt politicians, brutal oil and drug cartels, rogue military operations, and more. It also posits that early in 1957, Aristotle Onassis had Howard Hughes kidnapped from his Beverly Hills Hotel bungalow; that Hughes suffered a massive brain injury during the forcible kidnapping, and that Hughes was subsequently a virtual prisoner of Onassis on Skorpios and injected regularly with morphine, while Onassis took over the operation of Hughes's considerable financial affairs, including airlines and U.S. defense contracting. (At the time, Onassis had a permanent suite rented at the same hotel, along with his many other residences around the globe. Thus he was a "neighbor" of Howard Hughes, and in a position to conceive of, plan, and have the kidnap executed more readily.) In order to cover up Howard Hughes's sudden disappearance from public view, including his career as a ladies' man among Hollywood's leading ladies, a phony "marriage" to actress Jean Peters in Tonopah, Nevada was arranged, with the help of Paul Laxalt. Laxalt later rode this assistance to a career as Governor of Nevada, and later, a U.S. Senate seat. A series of doubles played "Hughes" whenever necessary. "Hughes" (i.e., Onassis acting as "Hughes") suddenly became a major purchaser of Las Vegas casinos, in line with Onassis's previous gambling operations in pre-Castro Cuba and in Monaco. The Howard Hughes Medical Institute was created to serve as a major money-laundering money funnel (tax-free, private, not subject to any monitoring by anyone.) Its true purpose was covered up by generous donations to medical research and also to cultural institutions, but only a small percentage of the amount of money drained from the U.S. economy. One controversial aspect of the Gemstone File is its portrayal of Onassis as the main force behind the election of John F. Kennedy as President, and subsequently, Kennedy's assassination in 1963. According to Bruce Roberts' Gemstone papers, Lee Harvey Oswald was a participant in the JFK assassination plan. He was linked to the Central Intelligence Agency, and to Mafia connections in New Orleans. However, the role he was destined to play in the assassination was as the patsy. The Gemstone File names Jimmy Fratianno, Johnny Roselli, and Eugene Brading as the real shooters. When Robert F. Kennedy decided to run for the Presidency, Aristotle Onassis ordered that he be assassinated. A hypnotized Sirhan Sirhan was allegedly set up to be the ostensible shooter. His wild shots peppered the room, but none of them hit Kennedy. According to the documents, the real shooter was Thane Cesar, a security guard at General Motors, which was secretly owned by Onassis, who was "lent" for the occasion to act as Robert Kennedy's bodyguard. Cesar was walking right behind Kennedy as they entered the Pantry area. While Sirhan Sirhan's shots flew around the room, Cesar lifted a small palm gun and shot Kennedy behind the ear. "The Second Gun," a documentary by Ted Chirach, covers this scenario. Roberts' Gemstone papers also detail the involvement of Joseph P. Kennedy with the Mafia, and with Onassis. John F. Kennedy and Robert F. Kennedy attempted to break away from Onassis and the Mafia, and the CIA, and that is the basic reason they were shot. The entire document is of unknown length, probably over 1,000 pages. A complete copy is not known to exist, but over 400 pages from the original handwritten file are in existence and available. 220 edited pages from Roberts' original hand-written letters and papers from the period of 1970-1975 are included in the book, The Gemstone File: a Memoir, by Stephanie Caruana.
  
• "Target de Gaulle" by Pierre Demaret and Christian Plume published in 1975. It is largely an account of the 31 assassination attempts on de Gaulle's life, most which were made by the OAS (Secret Army Organization). Some of the similarities between de Gaulle and JFK are quite interesting. - In 1960, when de Gaulle declared Algeria would become independent of France, powerful elements of French society opposed this decision to include elements of the military, intelligence services, cabinet members, big business, and the financial industry. De Gaulle and his loyal security elements correctly assessed that a conspiracy existed to eliminate him as leader of France because they believed he had become a threat to French national security as the loss of Algeria would terminally weaken France as a nation, strengthen the USSR in the Cold War, and spread the influence of Muslims across North Africa. - Various assassination attempts included attacks by snipers, IEDs, and complex urban ambushes with small arms. At one point, a lone sniper was hired to assassinate de Gaulle. The book and movie "Day of the Jackal" by Frederick Forsythe was based on this event and the efforts of the OAS. - Other intelligence services knew that de Gaulle was targeted by various clandestine organizations for death and his security elements were warned at various times to this fact, one time being when the Mossad warned of a planned attack in Algeria. - "The Directorate" and "The Old General Staff" were anonymous French organizations with power at the highest levels (cabinet level) who threw their weight behind various assassination attempts when the opportunity suited them. They were equivalent to what has been described in the U.S. as a "cabal" or "power elite". - The U.S. government, through the CIA, contacted General Salan of the OAS and explored the possibility of arming 50,000 soldiers for the OAS if an independent Algeria under OAS control would provide U.S. business with preferential treatment, allow U.S. military bases in the Sahara, and allow U.S. ballistic missiles be placed in Algeria. - A Captain Mertz aka (Jean Rene Souetre) is described as being an informant for the French SDECE although supposedly supported the OAS as well (pages 100-101). - Suspected conspirators who were captured faced a rigged judicial process, evidence was suppressed, witnesses ignored, and pre-determined outcomes carried through. - When de Gaulle returned from attending JFK's funeral he said, "His story is the same as mine. What happened to Kennedy very nearly happened to me. That was like a cowboy story, but this is merely an OAS story." (Page 240)
  
• Itek Corporation, a photographic analysis firm that "did much of its specialized photo interpretation work as contractors for the federal government, and it was widely held that much of its sensitive work included that performed on CIA-related projects." (Trask, Pictures of the Pain 272) This year CBS had Itek do a thorough study of the Zapruder film. They issued a 94-page report titled, "John Kennedy Assassination Film Analysis": "There is no indication from the Zapruder film that the President was struck by a bullet before he was blocked from Zapruder's view by the Stemmons Freeway sign...One noticeable fluctuation was found on both sets of plots for the car and JFK. It was centered at about frame 190 and lasted for about 4-5 frames...The positions of President Kennedy and Governor Connally in the car at about...frame 186 vicinity..and the locations of their wounds are consistent with the hypothesis that both were struck by a single bullet traveling on a trajectory from the sixth floor corner window of the [TSBD]...the explosion from the bullet impact [on JFK's head] radiates matter in all directions. However, the major, or large particles which are actually measurable on the film, and have contiguous boundaries which hold together during flight, all radiate in a forward direction...The particles traveling upward and forward are traveling very rapidly at velocities on the order of 80mph...At 312-313 the head goes forward approximately 2.3 inches, his shoulder about 1.1 inches. Immediately prior to the impact at frames 312-313 he was moving very slightly in a forward direction...JFK's shoulder and elbow lag the back- ward movement of his head. The shoulder reverses in a smooth turn at frame 315-316, followed by the elbow at 316-317...His backward motion after 313...is significantly different than the forward motion. Mrs Kennedy's motion after 312-313 indicate she caused her own movements and strongly influenced or caused JFK's backward motions...There is an object present in a few frames [around 414] which looks like the head of a man in the bush...It is our belief that the object is a head probably that of one of the bystanders seen in the Nix film standing on the steps." (Trask 123-6)
  

• 1/1975 Ford's popularity rating was around 38%.
  
• 1/1/1975 Erlichman, Haldeman, Mitchell and Mardian are found guilty in the Watergate cover-up. Haldeman, Mitchell and Ehrlichman were also found guilty of obstruction of justice, and Haldeman was found guilty on three counts of perjury. Mitchell was found guilty of lying twice to a grand jury and once to the Watergate Committee, Ehrlichman of two counts of lying to a grand jury.
  
• 1/2/1975 U.S. District Court Judge Richard Owen rules in New York that John Lennon and his lawyers will have access to Department of Immigration files pertaining to his deportation case. Its allows the former Beatles to look into whether the government's case against him is from his 1968 British drug conviction or from his anti-establishment comments during the years of the Nixon administration.
  
• 1/3/1975 Ford signed the Trade Reform Act.
  
• 1/4/1975 US unemployment reached 7.1%, its highest level in 13 years.
  
• 1/4/1975 Ford signed a bill extending community action programs for the poor.
  
• 1/4/1975 In Christianity Today, Billy Graham was quoted as saying that Watergate was "not only unethical but criminal. I can make no excuses for Watergate. I condemn it and I deplore it. It has hurt America."
  
• 1/4/1975 Ford announced he would appoint a presidential commission to investigate possible illegal domestic surveillance activity by the CIA, but assured Americans that "in the world in which we live, beset by continuing threats to our national security, it is vital that we maintain an effective intelligence and counter-intelligence capability.
  
• 1/4/1975 NYT story by Seymour Hersh: "President Ford plans to meet with Richard Helms within the next few days, White House officials said today, as part of his promised review into allegations of illegal domestic spying by the Central Intelligence Agency. Mr. Helms, the former Director of Central Intelligence, whom well-placed government sources have called a key figure in domestic spying, returned to Washington today on what State Department officials said was a prearranged home leave from his post as Ambassador to Iran. There's going to be no whitewash of this,' one White House aide said. He's (President Ford) going to see all the principals.' The President, who has made no substantial public statement on the alleged spying since the first reports two weeks ago, met separately today with Secretary of State Kissinger, Secretary of Defense James R. Schlesinger, and William E. Colby, the Director of Central Intelligence. After his meeting with the President, Mr. Kissinger told newsmen that he planned to meet at the State Department tomorrow with Mr. Helms, who has been quoted as denying any involvement in "illegal" domestic activities....In a related development, Senator William Proxmire, Democrat of Wisconsin, who announced last Sunday that he had received independent confirmation of the spying allegations, told newsmen today that he knew of no foreign intelligence factors behind the CIA's decision to begin compiling dossiers on nearly 10,000 antiwar leaders and other dissidents. Ron Nessen, the White House press secretary, refused to say after today's series of Presidential meetings whether any specific action would be taken. But he did say the President planned to have his own investigation of the CIA's domestic activities completed by the middle of next week. That investigation, he said, will establish the facts.' The seeming thrust of Mr. Nessen's remarks was that the President was not planning to accept at face value a CIA report on the spying, prepared and submitted 10 days ago by Mr. Colby. I think the Colby report did contain facts,' Mr. Nessen said in response to questions, but obviously the President wants to pursue the matter further.'...Mr. Colby's report, however, did not include specific details about he nature of the crimes committed and dossiers maintained...Reliable sources have said that it was Mr. Schlesinger who first ordered an end to domestic spying and the domestic file-keeping inside the agency. Mr. Schlesinger is also credited with ordering an end to all other illegal domestic activities. He has refused to comment on the current dispute. Since the disclosure of the alleged domestic spying, at least four top aides in the CIA's Counterintelligence Division have resigned."
  
• 1/4/1975 NYT reported: "The Justice Department has decided not to prosecute anyone in connection with the Federal Bureau of Investigation's 15-year-campaign to disrupt the activities of suspected subversive organizations. The decision was reached after Assistant Attorney General J. Stanley Pottinger, head of the Civil Rights Division, reported to Attorney General William B. Saxbe that he had found no basis for criminal charges against any particular individual involving particular incidents.' But Mr. Pottinger also told Mr. Saxbe, according to a Justice spokesman, that he had not reviewed the entire 60,000 pages of records of the so-called Cointelpro (for counterintelligence program) and that any allegations of specific violations that might come in later could still lead to criminal charges. The operation was reviewed earlier by a team headed by Henry E. Petersen, who retired Dec. 31 as Assistant Attorney General in charge of the Criminal Division. He concluded that no charges were justified, but he also sent Mr. Saxbe two reports that have not been made public. One argued against prosecution of present or former FBI officials; the other said that prosecution of some criminal offenses might be called for. Mr. Saxbe then asked Mr. Pottinger to review the bureau's actions to see if there had been violations of the civil rights laws. If there had, two sections of the criminal code making it an offense to deprive citizens of their civil rights seemed most likely to have been violated. Mt. Pottinger replied that he had found no basis for criminal charges. Then Mr. Saxbe asked him to make a more thorough study, which resulted in the same conclusion. A report on Cointelpro released by Mr. Saxbe and the FBI director, Clarence M. Kelly, Nov. 18 said that some of the bureau's practices under the program were abhorrent in a free society.' Mr. Kelly said, however, that he did not think use of the word abhorrent' was justified."
  
• 1/4/1975 President Ford meets with his Secretary of State, Henry Kissinger, who reports to Ford on a recent conversation with friend and former CIA Director Richard Helms. As he would with no one else, Helms has pulled no punches regarding "The Family Jewels." "These stories are just the tip of the iceberg," he tells Kissinger. "If they come out, blood will flow." Helms adds: "Robert Kennedy personally managed the operation on the assassination of Castro." Kissinger passes this information along to President Ford in a memo of his conversation with Helms. This memo was kept secret for twenty-three years.
  
• 1/5/1975 (Sunday) Rugaber, Walter - "Ford Sets Up Commission on CIA's Domestic Role" - New York Times 1/5/1975
  
• 1/5/1975 G. Gordon Liddy, in a 60 Minutes interview with Mike Wallace, defended the Watergate break-in: "Power exists to be used...I think [Nixon] has demonstrated towards the end of his presidency that he was insufficiently ruthless..." Liddy felt Nixon should have destroyed the tapes, and he compared Dean to Judas. He called Magruder "an accomplished, skillful liar."
  
• 1/5/1975 President Ford creates the Rockefeller Commission to investigate the illegal domestic intelligence activities of the CIA, appointing Vice President Nelson Rockefeller as Chairman and former Warren commission assistant counsel David Belin as Director. Tom Wicker of the N.Y. Times writes: "The blue ribbon commission appointed by President Ford to protect the public against domestic spying by the CIA looks suspiciously like a goat sent to guard a cabbage patch. Having the CIA investigated by such a group is like having the Mafia audited by its own accountants." Some of the members include: C. Douglas Dillon, as an Eisenhower undersecretary of state, had participated in deliberations over the fate of Cuba's Fidel Castro and the Congo's Patrice Lumumba, both marked for assassination by the CIA. He was a director of the Institute of International Education, a recipient of CIA funds. General Lyman Leminitzer, former chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, had been active in planning the Bay of Pigs invasion and supported the CIA's desire for direct U.S. military intervention, only to be overruled by Kennedy. Erwin Griswold, former Harvard Law School dean, argued in 1971 on behalf of the Nixon administration to block the New York Times from publishing the Pentagon Papers. In 1972, he argued before the Supreme Court that the U.S. Army's surveillance of citizens opposing the Vietnam War violated neither federal law nor those citizens' First Amendment rights to freedom of assembly or speech. He lost both cases. John T. Connor was director of David Rockefeller's Chase Manhattan Bank. He had also been president of Allied Chemical, in which the Rockefellers held $52 million in stock. Ronald Reagan, former actor and California governor. Reagan, who would soon be President, had no experience with the CIA. He attended few of the Commission's sessions. Ford makes a serious fumble when he tells a group of newspaper editors that he needs people on the commission who can be trusted lest they stumble upon evidence of assassinations. If the commission is investigating illegal DOMESTIC CIA activities, what assassinations could Ford possibly be referring to? Former Secretary of Defense, Robert McNamara, will testify to the Commission that his work on the Vietnam War was so consuming that he has "lost virtually all memory of what took place in the Kennedy administration." When pressed on this issue, McNamara says, "I have no notes - I did not take any notes of any meeting I attended with rare exception, and I have no other basis for refreshing my memory, and my memory of those years is very bad." McGeorge Bundy's testimony is also full of "I can't recall" and "I don't remember" responses. "Since I had served as assistant counsel with the Warren Commission," Belin later reported, "I removed myself from the direct responsibility for any investigation pertaining to the assassination." The Kennedy work was thus delegated to Senior Counsel Robert B. Olsen. Belin did not keep completely hands off, however. In 1988 he admitted that when Rockefeller's medical experts convened to review JFK's autopsy evidence, the irrepressible Belin personally attended that meeting, examining the autopsy photographs and X-rays right alongside his consultants. One year from now, Robert McNamara will testify before a Congressional committee saying he knew the plots against Fidel Castro had not originated with the CIA, but can't say why or how he knew it. In 1988, Richard Helms will say: "A lot of people probably lied about what had happened in the effort to get rid of Castro ....There are two things you have to understand: Kennedy wanted to get rid of Castro, and the agency was not about to undertake anything like that on its own."
  
• 1/5/1975 Timothy Crouse, of the Village Voice, writes: "A subtle pattern begins to emerge. One suspects that the Agency may be trying to peddle certain crimes of its own choice, trying to guide the Church Committee toward certain items and away from .... God knows what."
  
• 1/5/1975 The CIA's retired Western Hemisphere Chief J. C. King believes he can put to rest, once and for all, the question of White House authorization. King has an office at CIA headquarters which has been provided for him since his retirement. In this office is a safe in which King has kept a document showing that RFK had authorized the plots against Castro. King goes to retrieve the document with the intention of providing it to The Church Committee. He finds that the document is missing.
  
• 1/7/1975 David Belin, who had been involved with the Warren Commission, chosen as executive director of the Rockefeller Commission by Ford. Tom Wicker commented that the Commission "looks suspiciously like a goat set to guard a cabbage patch. Having the CIA investigated by such a group is like having the Mafia audited by its own accountants."
  
• 1/7/1975 US embassy in Phnom Penh cabled Washington: "Khmer Communist troops blasted their way into the New Year with major attacks all around Phnom Penh…[they] have gotten 81-millimeter mortars, rockets and possibly 105mm howitzer rounds periously close to Pochentong Airport. More serious are Khmer communist gains along the Mekong…"
  
• 1/9/1975 Ford signed an executive order establishing a National Commission on the Observance of International Women's Year, 1975.
  
• 1/9/1975 Rabbi Baruch Korff, a Nixon friend, visited the former President on his 62nd birthday and found him to be underweight.
  
• 1/10/1975 More than a decade after JFK's assassination, on January 10, 1975, William Attwood testified at a top-secret executive session of Senator Frank Church's Committee on Intelligence Activities. There the question was posed to Attwood: "Were you asked by President Kennedy to explore the possibility of a rapprochement with Fidel Castro and Cuba ? " Attwood answered: "Yes . . . yes, approaches were made and contact was established and this was done with the knowledge, approval, and encouragement of the White House. " William Attwood was well qualified for such a role. As a distinguished journalist, Attwood had interviewed Fidel Castro in 1959 soon after the Cuban revolution for two articles in Look magazine .
  
• 1/11/1975 Former Sen. Fred R. Harris joins the race for the Democratic presidential nomination.
  
• 1/12/1975 Eugene McCarthy announces he will campaign as an independent for the presidency.
  
• 1/13/1975 Ford proposed a $16 billion tax cut.
  
• 1/13/1975 Rockefeller Commission meeting: Belin claims he recommended having as many public meetings as possible to allay public suspicions, and also to have every word said by Commission members taken down in the record. His ideas were not adopted. (Final Disclosure)
  
• 1/13/1975 Time reported that "FBI agents once discovered that a Manhattan-based CIA man was in close touch with a Pittsburgh Mafia Chief [John LaRocca] who was being probed by the FBI. The FBI protested so vehemently that the CIA operative was sent to Italy until FBI tempers cooled."
  
• 1/14/1975 The 94th Congress convenes.
  
• 1/14/1975 Ford announced his intention to nominate Edward H. Levi as Attorney General and William T. Coleman, Jr. to be Secretary of Transportation. Coleman was assistant counsel on the Warren Commission.
  
• 1/15/1975 Ford gave his State of the Union address; it was a downbeat speech ("I must say to you the state of the union is not good"), focusing on the nation's ills. He urged the building of many new power plants and the stockpiling of oil reserves; a $16 billion income tax cut; a ceiling on federal pay raises and government spending; a windfall profits tax to guard against oil industry profiteering; discourage energy consumption by raising the price of oil and gas. Critics on both the right and left charged that Ford was abandoning the fight against inflation and allowing the deficit to rise. His administration also announced that it foresaw a combined deficit of $75 billion for the next two years. Ford also asked Congress not to tie his hands on foreign policy.
  
• 1/15/1975 The new reformist members of Congress abandoned the seniority system and dumped Rep. Wright Patman (D-Tex) as chairman of the House Banking, Currency and Housing Committee, and Rep. Wayne L. Hays (D-Ohio) as chairman of the Administration Committee. Patman, age 81, though a fierce populist, was considered too old to continue in his post.
  
• 1/15/1975 William Saxbe told the press that the Nixon White House pressured him to interfere in Jaworski's investigation, but he refused. (Los Angeles Times)
  
• 1/15/1975 Colby admitted that the CIA had spied on US political dissidents, opened peoples' mail, infiltrated political groups and had files on more than 100,000 Americans. Colby made assurances that such abuses were all in the past.
  
• 1/16/1975 US District Court in D.C. awarded $12 million in damages to 1,200 prisoners who had been jailed in the May Day demonstrations of 1971; the suit had been filed by the ACLU against the District of Columbia. The court found that their rights under the 1st and 8th amendments had been violated.
  
• 1/16/1975 Ford held a White House luncheon for the editors of the NY Times. Someone asked why Ford had picked such a conservative and defense minded panel to make up the Rockefeller Commission. The president said he needed people who would not stray from the straight and narrow. If they did, they could stumble upon matters that might hurt the national interest. The editor asked "Like what?" Ford replied with, "Like assassinations!" (Schorr, p. 144) Ford added that this was off the record. But reporter Daniel Schorr deduced that since the Rockefeller Commission was investigating domestic matters, Ford must have meant American assassinations. (ibid) But later CIA Director William Colby effectively spun Ford's comment . He told Schorr that the CIA had run assassination plots abroad, but not in America. (ibid) This deftly neutralized Ford's slip. The committees would now look at CIA assassination plots against foreign leaders. From Schorr's book Staying Tuned': "A few days later President Ford held a long-scheduled luncheon for New York Times publisher Arthur O. Sulzberger and several of his editors. Toward the end the subject of the newly named Rockefeller commission came up. Executive Editor A. M. Rosenthal observed that, dominated by establishment figures, the panel might not have much credibility with critics of the CIA. Ford nodded and explained that he had to he cautious in his choices because, with complete access to files, the commission might learn of matters, under presidents dating back to Truman, far more serious than the domestic surveillance they had been instructed to look into. The ensuing hush was broken by Rosenthal. "Like what?" "Like assassinations," the president shot back. Prompted by an alarmed news secretary Ron Nessen, the president asked that his remark about assassinations be kept off the record. The Times group returned to their bureau for a spirited argument about whether they could pass up a story potentially so explosive. Managing Editor E. C. Daniel called the White House in the hope of getting Nessen to ease the restriction from "off-the-record" to "deep background." Nessen was more adamant than ever that the national interest dictated that the president's unfortunate slip be forgotten. Finally, Sulzberger cut short the debate, saying that, as the publisher, he would decide, and he had decided against the use of the incendiary information. This left several of the editors feeling quite frustrated, with the inevitable result that word of the episode began to get around, eventually reaching me. Under no off-the-record restriction myself, I enlisted CBS colleagues in figuring out how to pursue the story. Since Ford had used the word assassinations, we assumed we were looking for persons who had been murdered - possibly persons who had died under suspicious circumstances. We developed a hypothesis, but no facts." The House of Representatives in 1975 established a special committee to investigate the activities of the intelligence community. On 16 January 1975, Democratic Representative Michael Harrington introduced a resolution in the House to create a select committee to conduct such an investigation. Even Democratic Representative Lucien Nedzi, Chairman of the Armed Services Subcommittee on Intelligence and a strong supporter of the Agency, concurred in the need for such a broadly representative committee. Republican Minority Leader John J. Rhodes also endorsed the proposal. Only a few members of the House questioned whether it was necessary to create such a committee in light of the Church Committee investigations in the Senate and the Rockefeller Commission investigation in the executive branch.
  
• 1/20/1975 The Washington Post confirmed long-standing rumors that the FBI had secret dossiers on members of Congress.
  
• 1/21/1975 Ron Kessler in the Washington Post wrote: "...the son of the late House Majority Leader Boggs has told The Post that the FBI leaked to his father damaging material on the personal lives of critics of its investigation into John F. Kennedy's assassination. Thomas Hale Boggs, Jr. said his father...was given the material in an apparent attempt to discredit the critics. The material, which Thomas Boggs made available, includes photographs of sexual activity and reports on alleged communist affiliations of some authors of articles and books on the assassination....the experience played a large role in his father's decision to publicly charge the FBI with Gestapo tactics in a 1971 speech..."
  
• 1/22/1975 Ford signed two international agreements banning chemical and biological warfare.
  
• 1/26/1975 US Geological Survey announces discovery of oldest-known rock, scientifically dated as 3.8 billion years old.
  
• 1/27/1975 US Senate establishes Select Committee to Study Governmental Operations with Respect to Intelligence Activities (the Church Committee) headed by Sen. Frank Church (D-Idaho) to look into wrongdoing in the intelligence community. Headed by Sen. Frank Church, the Committee made headlines right away with revelations about FBI/CIA/NSA/Army Intelligence wrongdoing, particularly domestic spying and assassinations of foreign leaders. They appointed Sens. Gary Hart (D-Col.) and Richard Schweiker (R-Penn.) to do a special study of the CIA and FBI responses to the assassination; they did not actually reopen the assassination case itself. Members: Frank Church, Robert Morgan, Barry Goldwater, Phillip A. Hart, Gary Hart, Charles McC. Mathias, Walter F. Mondale, John G. Tower, Richard Schweiker, Walter D. Huddleston, Howard H. Baker. Staffers: Paul Wallach, Mike Epstein. "The Committee investigated the intelligence agencies' activities [by] doing a paper investigation of documents provided by the agencies themselves. No one was leaving Washington, no one was doing any original probing...the [CIA] officer assigned to guide the Senate probers through the Agency's files was the very one who had performed the same chore for the Warren Commission....Kennedy was murdered in Dallas, but within hours of the assassination a rush of leads and tips related to Miami suddenly popped up. And now, as word of Schweiker's interest in the assassination spread, he was flooded with suggestions of a Miami connection." (The Last Investigation 33-4) Their 1976 report found that while investigating the assassination in 1963-64 "top FBI officials were continually concerned with protecting the Bureau's reputation." Its first hearings began 9/16/1975, and wrapped up 6/1976. Its final sub-report dealt specifically with the JFK assassination. While they found no evidence of a conspiracy, they were sharply critical of the CIA and FBI handling of the case. The Committee reported that an anonymous Immigration and Naturalization Service (INS) Inspector disclosed evidence Oswald had been using a second identity as a "Cuban alien" in New Orleans. "[H]e is absolutely certain that he interviewed Lee Harvey Oswald in a New Orleans jail cell sometime shortly before his [the Inspector's] April 1 1963 transfer out of New Orleans." He was uncertain about the name Oswald had been using, but he claimed to be "a Cuban alien." After interviewing Oswald, the Inspector was certain that he was not really a Cuban. The Inspector said there was little else to tell about the incident; the Committee found his testimony highly credible. The WC had concluded that Oswald was living in Texas during that time (Feb or March 1963). The Committee could find no other information or reports about the incident. (Report p91) The Committee could find no one to definitively put the blame on for the anti-Castro plots, since little in the way of a paper trail had been left. Senator Robert Morgan, Democrat of North Carolina and a member of this Committee, will eventually state: "There is no doubt in my mind that John Fitzgerald Kennedy was assassinated by Fidel Castro, or someone under his influence, in retaliation for our efforts to assassinate him."
  
• 1/28/1975 Ford asked Congress for $522 million more in aid to Saigon and Cambodia. Ford reveals that North Vietnam has 289,000 troops in the South, with massive tank and artillery support.
  
• 1/31/1975 SALT II talks resume in Geneva.
  
• 1/31/1975 Charles Colson released from prison after seven months. Federal judge Charles R. Richey in Washington ruled that millions of Nixon's documents, including the Watergate tapes, were the property of the government, not the former president.