Deep Politics Timeline

[Tracy Riddle]

• 1/1978 Ronald Reagan gave a misinformed history of Vietnam on his radio program that "There were two Vietnams, north and south. They had been separate nations for centuries. Both became colonial possessions of France…and both were freed a few years after World War II...Vietnam returned to its pre-colonial status as two nations...The Communist dictator of North Vietnam, Ho Chi Minh, refused to hold the elections and when a million of his people started moving south away from communism...his troops barricaded the frontier and halted the migration."
  
• Jan-Feb 1978 issue of Civil Liberties Review had a scathing review of Mark Lane's Code Name Zorro by Frank Donner called "Why Isn't the Truth Bad Enough?" He complained that too many Americans couldn't accept that deranged individuals were behind assassinations.
  
• THE SABOTAGING OF THE AMERICAN PRESIDENCY by L. Fletcher Prouty - January, 1978 issue of Gallery.
  
• 1/3/1978 Former CIA deputy director Ray Cline was quoted in the Washington Post as saying that the US media were the "only unfettered espionage agencies in this country," meaning that reporters had easier access to intelligence than the CIA did.
  
• 1/4/1978 Jack Anderson revealed that the CIA had recruited "Mafia hit men" for "international murder missions." Anderson reports in his Washington Post column that the CIA has recruited "Mafia hit men" for "international murder missions." The agency, Anderson asserts, has sought to "create its own branch of Murder, Inc.' -- a killer squad that would assassinate undesirable foreign leaders for $1 million each."
  
• 1/6/1978 The Crown of St. Stephen, prime symbol of the Hungarian nation, is returned to Hungary by the U.S. (taken custody in July 1945 at the end of World War II).
  
• 1/10/1978 Pedro Chamorro, Nicaraguan opposition newspaper editor and publisher, was murdered.
  
• 1/11/1978 Carlos Marcello, in a secret executive session, appears as a witness before the House Select Committee on Assassinations. He is called as a witness, not as a suspect. His sworn testimony is given under grant of immunity.
  
• 1/13/1978 Former senator and vice president Hubert Humphrey dies.
  
• 2/1978 Usually given credit for escalating the Roswell incident prominently back into the public eye is a nuclear physicist and UFO lecturer named Stanton Friedman who just happened to be lecturing on UFOs in Baton Rouge, Louisiana in February 1978. Before the lecture a television station manager told him about a man he knew through ham radio contact named Jesse A. Marcel who, according to the station manager, had actually handled wreckage from the crashed object. Intrigued, the very next day Friedman called Marcel, who lived not far away in Houma, Louisiana. Marcel was unable to recall the specific dates and times accurately so Friedman let it go at at that. A year later a man by the name of William L. Moore found clippings of the incident and, somehow comparing notes with Friedman, discovered that the story Marcel told actually paralleled the events. After intensive research and interviews Moore and a man named Charles Berlitz along with Friedman, albeit uncredited, teamed up to write the first book specifically on the subject, titled The Roswell Incident (1980), followed then by an opened floodgate of similar Roswell related tomes. Pappy Henderson confides in his close friend John Kromschroeder that he flew wreckage from a crashed saucer out of Roswell and to Dayton, Ohio. He shows Kromschroeder a fragment of the debris and tells his friend that he saw alien bodies. Jesse Marcel is interviewed by a number of researchers, including Leonard H. Stringfield and Stanton Friedman. Marcel tells them that he is sure the wreckage is nothing from earth. Later, Marcel grants interviews to various news organizations, but those reports do not gain wide dissemination. Friedman shared this information with William Moore, who joined forces with Charles Berlitz, the then "red hot" author of the Bermuda Triangle. The fame of the Roswell Incident, in which an apparent extra-terrestrial spacecraft had crashed, with the event subsequently officially denied and covered up by the US government, had just been born. Since then, the Roswell Incident has become one of the major pillars of the Contact Scenario, and has grown to include elaborate tales of recovered bodies and even, in some accounts, a live alien. None of these elements were part of the 1947 story, which spoke only of wreckage. All later additions to the original account can be shown to originate from the late 1970s onwards, some 30 years after the incident.
  
• 2/2/1978 Learyites leery of Carter's encounter No one recalls 1970 UFO spotting by Tom Tiede (Newspaper Enterprise Association) Mt. Pleasant (Texas) Daily Tribune, Feb. 2, 1978 Leary, Ga (NEA) - Jimmy Carter had a close encounter of a highly suspicious kind here in 1970. He was a political hopeful then, making a speech at the local Lions Club, and he says he spotted an unidentified flying object 30 degrees above the horizon. He also says 10 to 12 others saw it with him. As it happens, however, there is no one in Leary who remembers sighting a UFO in company with the future president. Carter insists that the object's brightness attracted a crowd, but it appears it only attracted him. Not one resident recalls anything unusual about that particular January evening. The townsfolk are mildly amused by the inconsistency of the matter. They have in fact been chuckling ever since last year when the media carried belated news of the Carter encounter. Some think that Carter actually viewed the town's silver water tower; from a distance it can look a bit odd. But whatever Carter saw, he apparently saw it alone. Mayor Stanley Shepard says he has talked with everyone who might have attended the Lions Club meeting on the night in question, "and nobody remembers anything about flying saucers." People recall that Carter's speech was dull - but as for spaceships, no....
  
• 2/3/1978 Frank Sturgis was deposed for the Hunt v. Third Press trial; he testified that while working for Castro, "I was recruited by the station, CIA station chief in Santiago de Cuba, to spy for the United States government." He also said he was involved in CIA plots to kill Castro as well as attempts to overthrow the governments of Guatemala and Panama. He took a leadership role in Operation 40 and "was approached by an agent of the Central Intelligence Agency to do a domestic assassination." (Plausible Denial 3)
  
• 2/8/1978 Release of the film Ruby and Oswald,' directed by Mel Stuart. Michael Lerner plays Jack Ruby and Frederic Forrest plays Oswald. Filmed mostly on location in Dallas. Dallas detective James Leavelle plays himself (handcuffed to LHO while being shot). The film mostly follows the Warren Commission line, though the assassination sequence is curiously ambiguous. Only an empty sixth floor window is shown, along with the stack of cartoons on the sixth floor, and then a shot of the Moorman Polaroid. Oswald is next seen standing in the second floor lunchroom. A pre-assassination scene has been entirely invented: Ruby throwing a patron out of his club for joking about the Kennedys.China announced the end of a 10-year ban on numerous classical and modern Western writers.
  
• 2/17/1978 The US Government formally asked Chile for information about Juan Williams Rose and Alejandro Romeral Jara, and said they were suspects in the Letelier bombing. The Chilean government denied everything.
  
• 2/19/1978 Amidst growing pressure in the United States to investigate Jim Jones, on February 19, 1978, Harvey Milk of San Francisco wrote a letter of support for the Peoples Temple to President Jimmy Carter. Therein, Milk wrote that Jones was known "as a man of the highest character." Regarding the leader of those attempting to extricate relatives from Jonestown, Milk wrote he was "attempting to damage Rev. Jones reputation" with "apparent bold-faced lies."
  
• 3/1978 Astronaut Gordon Cooper addressed a UN committee on somebody else's space vehicles: aliens from space were flying to Earth on exploration voyages of their own. The ex-astronaut declared that since it was a planet-wide problem it demanded international attention. The United Nations maintained a stoic, even embarrassed silence, nonetheless. Part of Cooper's problem might have been that he was visiting under the auspices of the then ruler of Grenada, the madcap "Sir" Eric Gairy. Gairy's excesses and crackpottery, added to his alleged corruption and brutality at home, later led to the New Jewel coup-d'etat led by Maurice Bishop, and indirectly to the US intervention five years later.
  
• 3/1/1978 Alexander Haig endorsed the neutron bomb in testimony before the Senate Armed Services Committee.
  
• 3/2/1978 The House Select Committee on Assassinations officially asks the CIA to check all its files and index references for a Maurice Bishop. (Fonzi)
  
• 3/6/1978 Aldo Moro, former prime minister of Italy, was kidnapped for political ransom. The abductors, the Red Brigade, murdered him about two months later and his body was found in Rome on May 9, 1978. Thirty-three members of the Red Brigade were sent to prison. Later investigators have concluded that the Red Brigades were infilitrated and run by right-wing members of the security services and organized crime, and that Moro was killed because he wanted to bring the Italian Communist Party into the government in a grand coalition.
  
• 3/11/1978 John Ebersole, MD was the attending radiologist at JFK's autopsy. During his suppressed HSCA testimony (released in the 1990s) the doctor said, "The back of the head was missing... ." After he was shown the autopsy photograph with the back of the scalp intact, Ebersole commented, "You know, my recollection is more of a gaping occipital wound than this, but I can certainly not state that this is the way it looked. Again we are relying on a 15 year old recollection. But had you asked me without seeing these or seeing the pictures, you know, I would have put the wound here rather than more forward." Yet Ebersole claimed that "I had the opportunity" (to examine the back of JFK's head, while positioning the head for X-rays). Later Ebersole admitted, "...perhaps about 12:30 (AM) a large fragment of the occipital bone was received from Dallas and at Dr. Finck's request I X-rayed these (sic)... ." If it was an occipital bone fragment that arrived, the defect must indeed have been posterior. The occipital bone is at the base of the rear of the skull. Also from the HSCA's suppressed records:· Autopsy photographer John Stringer: "remembers taking 'at least two exposures of the body cavity." James H. Humes, MD, "...specifically recall(ed photographs) ... were taken of the President's chest ... (these photographs) do not exist." J. Thornton Boswell, MD: "...he (Boswell) thought they photographed ...the exposed thoracic cavity and lung...' but doesn't remember ever seeing those photographs." Robert F. Karnei, MD, (a pathologist who, though not a formal member of the autopsy team, lent a hand with JFK's autopsy: "He (Karnei) recalls them putting the probe in and taking pictures (the body was on the side at the time) (sic)." Assistant autopsy photographer, Floyd Reibe: "[H]e thought he took about six pictures I think it was three film packs' - of internal portions of the body."
  
• 3/16/1978 March 16 and April 18 US Senate approved the Panama Canal treaties.
  
• 3/18/1978 US embassy in Chile reported that the government was ready to turn over Alejandro Romeral and Juan Williams to the US. Investigators expected to meet Townley and Armando Fernandez, but instead met army captains Rene Riveros and Rolando Mosqueira, who had made the trip in August 1976 using Townley and Fernandez' aliases. These two men were not involved in the Letelier assassination, but had been sent to the US to provide an innocent explanation for the visa incident with the US embassy in Paraguay. (Assassination on Embassy Row)
  
• 3/19/1978 Dallas Morning News reported that US Army intelligence had a file on Oswald before the assassination; a colonel in intelligence was supplying the FBI with information on him within an hour of his arrest. The HSCA learned that these records had been destroyed. (memo attached to FBI document 105-82555; R 221)
  
• 3/21/1978 Haig praised the neutron bomb for "its usablity, its credibility...a system more discriminating."
  
• 3/22/1978 James B. Wileott's Testimony before the House Select Committee on Assassinations. Former CIA finance officer Jim Wilcott confirmed the implications of Ann Egerter's deposition. In his own HSCA testimony, Wilcott said Oswald served the CIA specifically as a double agent in the Soviet Union who afterwards came under suspicion by the Agency. Jim Wilcott's straightforward testimony on Oswald was made possible by his and his wife's courageous decision to divorce themselves from the CIA and speak the truth. After nine years working for the CIA as a husband-and wife team, Jim and Elsie Wilcott resigned from the Agency in 1966. "My wife and I both left the CIA, " Wilcott testified before the House Select Committee, " because we became convinced that what CIA was doing couldn't be reconciled to basic principles of democracy or basic principles of humanism."
  
• 3/27/1978 Chief Kapuuo, who was appointed president of Namibia by South African officials, was killed.
  
• 3/31/1978 The CIA informs the HSCA that its Office of the Inspector General, its Office of the General Counsel, its Office of Personnel and the Deputy Directorate of Operations have no records of a Maurice Bishop - and that a search of David Atlee Phillip's files does not indicate he had ever registered the alias of Maurice Bishop.
  
• 3/31/1978 Preliminary HSCA Interview of Ann Egerter by Dan Hardway and Betsy Wolf
  

[Tracy Riddle]

• 4/1978 Israel: anti-missionary law imposed a prison sentence on anyone who offered "material inducement" to change religions; this put a strain on Christian-Jewish relations.
  
• 4/1/1978 NY Times reported "uneasiness and bewilderment" from NATO officials over Carter's wavering over the neutron bomb. Throughout the month the press beat on Carter about the issue, picturing allies and the military as shocked and dismayed over Carter's lack of leadership.
  
• 4/2/1978 USSR delivers MIG-23s, equipped with nuclear bomb delivery systems, to Cuba.
  
• 4/3/1978 HSCA interviewed Castro in Havana about JFK's death. Castro talked non-stop in his usual manner. "You see, it was always very much suspicious to me--that a person who later appeared to be involved in Kennedy's death would have requested a visa from Cuba. Because, I said to myself - what would have happened had by any chance that man come to...visited Cuba - gone back to the States and then appeared involved in Kennedy's death? That would have really been a provocation...Maybe the people thought that the person was a CIA or FBI agent, you know, so it was very difficult for a north American, just from his own wishes, to come to Cuba...because I interpreted it as a deliberate attempt to link Cuba with Kennedy's death...About the possibility of an imposter, in public sources we have read that the possibility exists that there could be a double that carried out some actions that the real Oswald did not on some occasions in 1963...[Azcue] is a trustful man." He called the idea that he was behind the death of JFK "a tremendous insanity" as it could be used as "a pretext for carrying out aggression against our country." He felt that if Nixon had won in 1960, he would have sent in US troops during the Bay of Pigs, but "Kennedy followed the line that had already been traced." About his 9/1963 statement about American leaders not being safe, Castro explained that the plots against him could "become a boomerang against the authors of those actions....I didn't say it as a threat...We were constantly arresting people trained by the CIA and being provided equipment by the CIA that would come to the country with explosives, with the telescopic target rifles, even bazookas -- every kind of weapon. Here they organized, since very early, plots at Grantanamo base...I can tell you that in the period in which Kennedy's assassination took place Kennedy was changing his policy toward Cuba..." He recalled talking to ambassador Attwood. "And, you could see undisputably that a new trend was coming (into) existence in the sense of established contacts...I was of the opinion that the only man who could change that policy was Kennedy himself, because it seemed to me that...maybe after the missile crisis, he had much more influence. I was convinced that Kennedy was the man with enough talent and enough courage to question and change that policy...And I felt that a positive act was that famous speech he made at the American University. It was a speech about the need for peace, the need for prevention of war..." He recalled talking to Jean Daniel at the time of the assassination. "Kennedy was an adversary that we had sort of become used to...I was convinced that Kennedy was starting to change, himself...we were honored in having such a rival. He was not mediocre. He was an outstanding man... We thought that maybe some very reactionary element could have wanted to eliminate Kennedy and just on the way try to eliminate Cuba, you know." Castro suggested that the HSCA investigate whether "Oswald was also a member of any intelligence agency in the United States...I still get the impression that this individual's personality is that of a spy. It is the typical way you recruit a spy and send him to another country. This seems to me very important."
  
• 4/6/1978 The Washington Post 2 of 3 Former CIA Directors Oppose Too Many Restrictions of Covert Acts By George Lardner - Three former directors of the Central Intelligence Agency testified in a cavernous, nearly empty Senate hearing room yesterday about legislation to reform the nation's intelligence community. Only one thought it ought to include a ban on assassinations. The other two, George Bush, who headed the CIA in 1976, and E. Henry Knoche, who served as acting director for several months under President Carter, told the Senate Intelligence Committee that they feared too many restrictions on covert CIA operations. Knoche said he was worried that Congress might enact "a web woven so tight around the average intelligence officer that you're going to deaden his creativity." The bill, introduced by most committee members in February after nearly three years of investigations and staff studies, would punish plots and attempts to assassinate foreign officials with life imprisonment and would prohibit a number of highly controversial activites. The ban would extend to covert operations such as those likely to result in "torture," the "creation of epidemics of diseases," and "creation of food or water shortages or floods." Former CIA director William E. Colby, who guided the CIA through most of the investigations in 1975-76, found himself a minority of one at the witness table in urging that most of the proposed restrictions be adopted, especially since "there's been so much noise made on these subjects." Colby said that he thought Congress should, by law, "make it clear what the limits are" as much as possible so that U.S. intelligence officers and agents at the ends of the world would know immediately when to "say no." Bush, by contrast, found a number of faults with the 263-page bill to reorganize the U.S. intelligence agencies, particularly in the "excessive" number of reports to Congress that it would require. "The congress should be informed, fully informed, but it ought not to micro-manage the intelligence business," Bush protested. He singled out one provision calling on the CIA to tell the Senate and House Intelligence committees in advance of any proposed agreement with a foreign intelligence or internal security service. "I don't believe that kind of intimate disclosure is essential," Bush said. He said he was convinced that "some U.S. sources are drying up because foreign services don't believe the U.S. Congress can keep secrets." Colby said he did not think the danger of leaks ough to be a bar to proper constitutional supervision," but he did propose stronger measures to protect intelligence sources and methods. He suggested that Congress provide for "criminal sanctions against those who are given authorized access to such information and then unconscionably reveal them." The CIA, at present, is limited primarily to civil lawsuitsand what Colby called "tortured constructions of contract law and prior restraint"to prevent publication of unauthorized disclosures. Despite the assassination attempts and other abuses uncovered by congressional and executive branch investigations of the CIA and other intelligence agencies in 1975 and 1976, the testimony yesterday amounted to a strong pitch for strengthening the CIA in contrast to controlling it. All three witnesses urged the senators to drop provisions that would permit a new director of national intelligence to be divorced from the CIA and devote himself full time to overseeing the entire U.S. intelligence community. An intelligence czar attached to the White House and "separated from his CIA troops . . . would be virtually isolated," Bush contended. "He needs the CIA as his principal source of support to be most effective. And the CIA needs its head to be the chief foreign intelligence advisor to the President." Colby said the CIA director not only should retain that dual capacity but also should at the same time remain in Langley, Va., which is "just far enough away from Washington" and its political infighting to maintain the CIA's tradition of "calling the shots as it sees them." He also suggested that the committee explore the idea of "institutionalizing" the release of government intelligence reports to the public by putting them out regularly but anonymously "through intermediaries in Congress, academia and the media."
  
• 4/7/1978 After urging NATO allies to support the neutron bomb (enhanced radiation weapon), Carter then announced he would not build the weapon.
  
• 4/8/1978 Michael Townley was brought to the US from Chile by US officials.
  
• 4/10/1978 Gordon Cooper was on late-night TV's Merv Griffin Show when the question of UFOs came up. Griffin asked Cooper if he thought any extraterrestrial visitors had "ever been here", and Cooper was explicit in his answer: "Yes, I think they have and are here regularly." Griffin pushed into an even more sensational area: "There is a story going around, Gordon, that a spaceship did land in middle America, and that there were occupants and that members of our government were able to keep one alive for a period of time.... Is that a credible story?" Again, Cooper didn't waffle. ~I think it's fairly credible," he replied candidly, "Apparently from everyone who has been abducted or who's had contact with UFOs, they seem to agree that the occupants are really not that different from what we are." "I would like to see the time when all qualified people not trying to make a dollar selling some weird and way-out stories could really work together," Cooper told Griffin, "to really properly investigate these types of stories and either refute them or prove them.... I'm rather interested in maybe eventually in the near future putting together a few people of science and engineering, and so on, to properly investigate this type of thing."
  
• 4/11/1978 C.L. Sulzberger of the NY Times wrote poet Allen Ginsberg: "I fear I owe you an apology. I have been reading a succession of pieces about CIA involvement in the dope trade in Southeast Asia and I remember when you first suggested I look into this I thought you were full of beans. Indeed you were right."
  
• 4/11/1978 The Concerned Relatives group distributed a packet of documents, including letters and affidavits, that they titled an "Accusation of Human Rights Violations by Rev. James Warren Jones" to the Peoples Temple, members of the press and members of Congress.
  
• 4/12/1978 Anna Tarasoff, wife of Boris Tarasoff and part of the CIA team which transcribed the Oswald calls, remembered an extra phone conversation by Oswald. The Lopez Report relates that on April 12, 1978, Anna Tarasoff was shown the extant transcripts of conversations, but that: In addition to these transcripts, Ms. Tarasoff testified that she remembered one more conversation that involved Lee Oswald [Oswald, the CIA, and Mexico City (aka Lopez Report), p. 82]. In her own words: According to my recollection, I myself, have made a transcript, an English transcript, of Lee Oswald talking to the Russian Consulate or whoever he was at that time, asking for financial aid. Now, that particular transcript does not appear here and whatever happened to it, I do not know, but it was a lengthy transcript and I personally did that transcript. It was a lengthy conversation between him and someone at the Russian Embassy [Lopez Report, p. 83]. Ms. Tarasoff remembered specifically another call with content similar to that described by Phillips. Furthermore, she remembered that the conversation was lengthy, unlike the short transcripts which exist now, and in English, not broken Russian or Spanish. But the Lopez Report also notes: Mr. Tarasoff did not confirm his wife's recollection of another conversation including Oswald. He said that he did not remember any other calls involving Lee Oswald or any details of Oswald's conversations that were not reflected in the transcripts [Lopez Report, p. 86].
  
• 4/14/1978 Miami police and FBI arrested Guillermo Novo and Alvin Ross. Ignacio Novo was picked up a few days later.
  
• 4/25/1978 David Atlee Phillips testifies under oath before the Assassinations Committee that he never used the name of Maurice Bishop. He also says he was never introduced to Antionio Veciana by name. Committee staff members urge Chief Counsel Blakey to bring perjury charges against Phillips. He declines.
  
• 4/25/1978 The Post and the NY Times ran stories from anonymous "government sources" that Haig was thinking of resigning over Carter's "handling of several defense issues, including the...neutron bomb." Though publicly he would deny wanting to resign, Carter would leap to assure Haig that he would be reappointed for another term.
  
• 4/27/1978 US notified the IMF that it would "intervene when necessary to counter disorderly conditions in the [currency] exchange markets."
  
• 5/2/1978 Jan Gail Rudnicki was Dr. Boswell's lab assistant on the night of the JFK autopsy. HSCA's Mark Flanagan on 5/2/78 interviewed Rudnicki. In the once-secret memo (released in the 1990s), Flanagan wrote that Rudnicki had said, the "back-right quadrant of the head was missing."
  
• 5/7/1978 David Sanchez Morales, although officially retired from the CIA, returns from a regular trip to Washington to his home near Phoenix, Arizona. He tells friends he began feeling ill shortly before leaving Washington and tonight has a sudden heart attack. The ambulance is late in arriving and reportedly has equipment problems. Morales dies tomorrow morning at the Tucson Medical Center. He had told a friend he feared for his life "from his own people" because he "knows too much."
  
• 5/7/1978 This summer, after scouring Cape Cod and the offshore Massachusetts islands, Jackie Kennedy Onassis pays $1.15 million for 375 acres on the southeastern tip of Martha's Vineyard in order to have a summer residence. The estate will eventually cost an additional $3.1 million.
  
• 5/11/1978 Fort Worth Star-Telegram reports that Jeanne DeMohrenschildt said her husband George was "friendly" with H.L. Hunt. On 11th May, 1978, Jeanne de Mohrenschildt gave an interview to the Fort Worth Star-Telegram, where she said that she did not accept that her husband had committed suicide. She also said that she believed Lee Harvey Oswald was an agent of the United States, possibly of the CIA, and that she was convinced he did not kill John F. Kennedy. She then went onto say: "They may get me too, but I'm not afraid... It's about time somebody looked into this thing."
  
• 5/17/1978 Ann Egerter HSCA Deposition
  
• 6/1978 The HSCA had a folder and one autopsy photo stolen when someone from the CIA broke into their safe. A fingerprint check traced the crime to CIA liaison officer Regis Blahut and was not authorised to open that safe. Blahut first denied having done it, then explained "There's other things involved that are detrimental to other things." The CIA assured the HSCA that it was all quite innocent, but the panel was not so sure. (Washington Post, George Lardner Jr. 6/18, 19 and 28/1979; New York Times 6/18/1979.)
  
• 6/6/1978 By a two-to-one vote, California voters approve Proposition 13, an amendment to the state constitution imposing strict limits on property tax rates.
  
• 6/12/1978 Blakey announces that budget cuts will force a drastic reduction in the HSCA staff.
  
• 6/15/1978 The Dallas Morning News reported OSWALD CAMERA DISAPPEARED DURING FBI INVESTIGATION By EARL GOLZ: "A small German-made spy camera found among Lee Harvey Oswald's possessions by Dallas police disappeared when the FBI obtained the Oswald property less than a week after the assassination, The Dallas News has learned. Detective Gus Rose has told investigators with the House Assassinations Committee that he found the Minox camera, loaded with film, in Oswald's seabag at the Irving home of Mr. and Mrs. Michael Paine on either Nov. 22 or Nov. 23, 1963. President John F. Kennedy was assassinated here Nov. 22. After unsuccessfully trying to pressure Rose into reporting he had found a minox light meter and not a minox camera, the FBI two months later placed into their records a minox camera which they said was not Oswald's.
  
• 6/24/1978 President Ghashmi of North Yemen was assassinated at a conference in Beirut.
  
• 6/26/1978 Ali, president of South Yemen, was killed following a Soviet National Liberation Front coup.
  
• 6/27/1978 According to a memo by former CIA director Richard Helms, de Mohrenschildt "was alleged to be a Nazi espionage agent." ["Oswald Friend Labeled CIA Informant in Memo", Dallas Times Herald, July 27, 1978.]
  
• 6/28/1978 US Supreme Court rules that strict racial quotas in Affirmative Action programs are illegal.
  
• Summer 1978 Facing increasing scrutiny, in the summer of 1978, Jim Jones also hired noted JFK assassination conspiracy theorists Mark Lane and Donald Freed to help make the case of a "grand conspiracy" by intelligence agencies against the Peoples Temple.
  
• 7/1978 One Tuesday in the summer of 1978, in the heat of his unsuccessful race for a House seat from West Texas, George W. Bush went to Midland Country Club to give a campaign speech to local real estate agents and discussed the issue in terms not much different from those he uses now. Social Security "will be bust in 10 years unless there are some changes," he said, according to an account published the next day in The Midland Reporter-Telegram. "The ideal solution would be for Social Security to be made sound and people given the chance to invest the money the way they feel." (NYT 2/27/05)
  
• 7/3/1978 China terminates all economic aid to Vietnam.
  
• 7/9/1978 Abdul Razak Al-Naif, ex-premier of Iraq, was shot dead in London by members of the Iraqi secret service.
  
• 7/10/1978 John D. Rockefeller III was killed in a car accident in New York.
  
• 7/17/1978 Another of the Security Classified depositions is that of Ray Rocca, who was Chief of the Research & Analysis division of Counter Intelligence at CIA. Rocca was shown the October cable traffic which reported on the Oswald calls. He exhibited a fair amount of confusion, referring repeatedly to cables which had been sent earlier than the "first" cable of October 8. Rocca finally threw up his hands and said of the "first" cable: "Well, it seems to me too late, that communication began earlier from Mexico City." [HSCA testimony of Ray Rocca, 7-17-78, p. 84] The HSCA put the Nov 26 Hoover/McCone transcript in front of Ray Rocca, Chief of Research & Analysis in the CIA's Counter Intelligence division. Rocca was a key player in 1963 and had been hired back during the Rockefeller Commission's tenure to pull together materials on Mexico City. When shown this transcript, Rocca immediately recognized the "informant" as LIENVOY, the cryptonym for the tapping operation.
  
• 7/27/1978 Dallas Times Herald reported that "newly released files show the CIA, suspicious the Soviets may have brainwashed Lee Harvey Oswald, sought unsuccessfully to exhume his corpse to see if his reported 1959 suicide attempt was a Russian cover-up. The CIA considered Oswald's alleged suicide attempt four years before he killed John F. Kennedy one of the crucial points in Oswald's experiences in the Soviet Union,' according to an internal Warren Commission memo made public Wednesday under the Freedom of Information Act. The CIA wanted to dig up Oswald's corpse and closely examine a scar on his left wrist, where he supposedly deeply slashed' himself...The CIA felt if the suicide incident is a fabrication, the time supposedly spent by Oswald in recovering in a Moscow hospital could have been spent by him in Russian Secret Police custody being coached, brainwashed, etc., for his appearance at the American embassy' three days later to renounce his U.S. citizenship, the memo said. Oswald never was dug up, and the commission made no final judgment on whether his suicide attempt was authentic.... A copy of the memo from one commission assistant counsel, W. David Slawson, to another, Arlen Specter, was made available to UPI by Michael Levy, a freelance researcher who obtained thousands of assassination documents through an FOI request...the commission memo said that three months later FBI director J. Edgar Hoover was "reluctant to exhume Oswald's body as requested by the CIA.'" The Herald also reported, "George de Mohrenschildt...was a CIA informant, according to once-secret intelligence memos. De Mohrenschildt was considered a key witness by the House Assassinations Committee when he died of a gunshot wound to the head in March 1977 in Manalapan, Fla., in what local authorities said was an apparent suicide. Renewed interest in de Mohrenschildt surfaced because of an interview he gave to a Dutch journalist at Bishop College in Dallas, where he taught French and Russian....the memo said he and his wife became "well acquainted" with the Oswalds. The Russian-born de Mohrenschildt was a Bishop College professor until he left March 1, 1977, on a three-day leave to visit a sick daughter in New Orleans. He never returned to the campus. Nine days later he was found dead in a posh, ocean-front mansion that belonged to his sister-in-law in Manalapan." The new information came from FOIA documents obtained by Michael Levy. "One memo by Richard Helms, then CIA Deputy Director for Plans, said de Mohrenschildt, a Russian-born petroleum geologist, applied for a job with the CIA in 1942 but was rejected because he was alleged to be a Nazi espionage agent.' Helms, who later became CIA director, also said de Mohrenschildt took a 1957 trip to Yugoslavia and provided the CIA with foreign intelligence which was promptly disseminated to other federal agencies in 10 separate reports.' A separate memo indicated de Mohrenschildt also furnished lengthy reports to the CIA on his 1958 travels through Mexico and Panama. A CIA memo, whose author was deleted, described de Mohrenschildt as a dubious character,' citing his alleged Communist sympathies."
  
• 7/30/1978 Secretary of Defense Harold Brown was quoted in US News & World Report: "I think the Soviets are likely to be wise enough to avoid getting bogged down in that kind of situation [intervening militarily in Afghanistan]." 1978: Lewis Dupree, Associate of the American Universities Field Staff in Kabul, wrote in his book Afghanistan: "Outsiders should not assume that…[Afghan Communists and Socialists] will come under the direct control of Moscow or Peking, a mistake frequently made in the past concerning indigenous leftwing elements in Afro-Asia or Latin America."
  
• 8/1978 A group of Sandinistas seized the National Palace in Nicaragua, took the congress hostage and won the release of 59 political prisoners, then flew out of the country to Panama. The group's leader, Eden Pastora, turned and posed for a classic photo as he climbed aboard the plane.
  
• 8/1/1978 A US grand jury returned indictments charging Manuel Contreras, Pedro Espinoza, Armando Fernandez, Guillermo Novo, Alvin Ross, Jose Dionisio Suarez and Virgilio Paz with being involved in the Letelier assassination. Ignacio Novo was charged with lying to a grand jury and covering up the crimes. Michael Townley was allowed to plead guilty to one count of conspiracy in exchange for his testimony.
  
• 8/2/1978 William Coleman, David Slawson's partner on the Warren Commission, told the HSCA just how sensitive he believed the telephone tapping operation in Mexico City to be. In a recorded interview of August 2, 1978, he discussed just how much this had been impressed upon him, and even said he thought it was a "great disservice to the United States" that some of these secret operations were becoming public in the 1970s. He also told the HSCA that if this information had not been public knowledge already, "I would be fudging like hell with you fellows." He apparently went on to do just that, when Ed Lopez asked him directly about the question of the Oswald tapes surviving the assassination: Lopez. Did the agency ever…..explain why it did not have an actual tape recording of Oswald's voice? Coleman (soft): "I haven't the faintest idea whether they did or did not. I mean, I don't know, I'm pretty sure this question was probably asked of them and they probably gave us…if they had-I don't know whether they had or they didn't have, I mean, I really don't know but I do know that there was…but I'm pretty sure that if we asked them "where is it?"….. (trails off) [Taped HSCA interview of William Coleman, 8-2-78]. Coleman went on to explain why even detailed internal Warren Commission memos might not contain the most sensitive information in them. He also explained that this material was so secret that not even members of the Warren Commission could be let in on it: Coleman: By that time…..we were sophisticated with the CIA, and therefore we wrote memoranda…..we tried to use the jargon of the CIA, because we felt it was important not to even indicate to everybody on the Commission some of these sources, because…..Dave Slawson had a special clearance with the CIA and there were some people that didn't [Taped HSCA interview of William Coleman, 8-2-78].
  
• 8/7/1978 Dallas Morning News; Earl Golz story: "Photographs developed from Minox spy camera film found among Lee Harvey Oswald's personal possessions have been released by the FBI after being suppressed almost 15 years. About 25 images shot in foreign countries on two rolls from the miniature German-made camera were made available by the FBI under a Freedom of Information Act request by Alan Weberman, an independent assassination researcher in New York City. More than 20 prints developed from one roll show civilian scenes apparently in Europe. Five shots from the other roll were military scenes either in the Far East or Central America."
  
• 8/8/1978 Carter signs a bill providing for a federal guarantee on $1.6 billion in loans to NYC.
  
• 8/9/1978 The House Select Committee on Assassinations deposes Marina Oswald and questions her about two Minox cameras, not one. Marina can not identify either camera. Of the two Minox cameras presented to her for identification, one has been stored at the National Archives and the other comes from an unidentified location. From the HSCA record, the two cameras are described as follows: Camera #1 Minox I: 3.5 F15 mm, Serial #2339303 which was not part of the material at the NARA and is 1.5 inches longer than the other Minox. (Note the 7 digit serial number). Camera #2 Minox D80 in the NARA which is 1.5 inches shorter than the other, no serial number. [Comment: note that this camera must be the camera marked by FBI Agent Bardwell Odum as a Minox III, Exhibit D80 and hence it would have or should have serial #27259].
  
• 8/9/1978 Richard Helms: I do not know whether it has been made, the Committee has been made of the fact that the reason for the sensitivity of these [Mexico City] telephone taps and the surveillance was not only because it was sensitive from the Agency's standpoint, but the telephone taps were running in conjunction with the [ **************** ] and therefore, if this had become public knowledge, it would have caused very bad feelings between Mexico and the United States, and that was the reason. [HSCA testimony of Richard Helms on 8-9-78, pp. 51-52] Substitute "Mexican DFS" for the redacted text, and things fall into place nicely. The Mexican security service no doubt managed the physical placement of telephone taps within their own country, and probably supplied the people who manned the listening post as well. Hoover, with his extensive contacts in Latin America, no doubt had his own backchannel into what was ostensibly a CIA operation but which was not really fully their show.
  
• 8/14/1978 In The Spotlight, an article by Victor Marchetti appears. The headline reads: CIA To Admit Hunt Involvement in Kennedy Slaying. The article refers to a 1966 memo that has recently surfaced during the HSCA's investigation in which James J. Angleton notified Richard Helms that no cover story had ever been concocted to explain E. Howard Hunt's presence in Dallas on November 22, 1963. The article states that the CIA is planning a "limited hangout" since Hunt has already been so exposed from his Watergate involvement as well as his role in the failed Bay of Pigs operation.
  
• 8/18/1978 Dallas Morning News story: "Jack Ruby's Gunrunning to Castro Claimed"
  
• 8/20/1978 HSCA did an "acoustical reconstruction" of the assassination in Dealey Plaza. "All observers rated the rifle shots as very very loud, and they were unable to understand how they could have been described as a firecracker or backfire. Only the pistol, which was subsonic, produced a moderate loudness. Practically all the rifle shots, whether fired from the knoll or the TSBD, appeared to be diffuse and to occupy a very large acoustic space. For example, the sound did not seem to come from the sixth floor window of the TSBD, but from the right upper side of the building. This apparently large source location may be a result of acoustic scatter of the muzzle blast -either because of the building in the case of the TSBD or because of the trees in the case of the knoll. Only the pistol shot appears to have a reasonably constrained acoustic image and, for that reason, could be localized with some precision. One might consider whether silencers would change the apparent loudness of the size of the image." (HSCA report) Beginning at dawn today, three Dallas Police sharpshooters fire a total of 56 live bullets into three piles of sandbags located along the motorcade route on Elm Street in Dealey Plaza. Rifles are fired from two locations - the southeast corner of the sixth floor of the Texas School Book Depository and from behind the wooden, picket fence on the Grassy Knoll. Interestingly, a .38-caliber pistol also is fired from the Knoll, leading many researchers to speculate that the Committee has received information leading them to believe a pistol may have been used in the assassination. However, no one can explain why the pistol is being test fired. Dallas Police comment that they have been unaware of the Committee's desire to test fire the pistol until the day before the tests. It also should be noted that two of the three piles of sandbags are located in the middle lane of Elm Street, exactly where films show the presidential limousine. However, one pile - apparently representing one of the early shots - is located in the far left lane. Asked why it is in this location, Dallas Police sharpshooter Jerry Compton says he could not get a line of sight on the bags when they were in the center lane due to intervening tree branches. Less than a year before these tests, a film crew worked in Dealey Plaza producing a network movie entitled, "The Trial of Lee Harvey Oswald." The tree which prevented a line of sight between the sixth-floor Depository window and the location of the first shot was pruned back to its 1963 size, based on photographs taken the day of the assassination. Compton's inability to fire at the center lane because of the obstructing tree gives strong support to researchers who have long claimed that a gunman on the Depository's sixth floor would have no line of sight to this location.
  
• 8/20/1978 Dallas Morning News, Earl Golz story: "An off-duty Dallas policeman says he chased the car of a second man he believes could be involved in the assassination of President John F. Kennedy and hopes telling his story publicly for the first time may "help when they re-enact it Sunday" in Dealey Plaza. Tom G. Tilson Jr., now 59 and retired, said his experience seconds after Kennedy was shot could be an indication to the House Assassinations Committee that not all the shots came from a 6th floor window of the Texas School Book Depository....Tippit was covering Tilson's beat that day while Tilson was off work, he said. Three days later, Tilson was a pallbearer at Tippit's funeral."
  
• 8/22/1978 Congress passes constitutional amendment giving District of Columbia full voting rights in Congress.
  
• 8/22/1978 Dallas Morning News Earl Golz story: " Stansfield Turner, director of the Central Intelligence Agency, said here Monday his agency has found no memo stating that E. Howard Hunt was in Dallas when President John F. Kennedy was assassinated on Nov. 22, 1963. The memo allegedly was written in 1966 and initialed by CIA director Richard Helms and CIA counterintelligence chief, James J. Angleton, according to a story in the Wilmington, Del., Sunday News Journal. "
  
• 8/27/1978 Earl Golz of the Dallas Morning News first interviewed Gordon Arnold. The Dallas Morning News: SS 'IMPOSTERS' SPOTTED BY JFK WITNESSES By: Earl Golz "Several men posing as Secret Service agents were in Dealey Plaza shortly before and after President John F. Kennedy was assassinated, The Dallas Morning News has learned. Shortly before the shooting, one of the apparent imposters discouraged a soldier from walking behind a wooden fence atop the grassy knoll from which the House Assassination Committee recently test-fired a rifle and a pistol. The soldier - and at least four other people - say they met men who either showed identification as Secret Service agents or said they were. All but one of the encounters were in the parking lot west of the Texas School Book Depository Building from where Lee Harvey Oswald allegedly shot the president on Nov. 22, 1963. All but one of the counterfeit agents wore business suits. One man was in sportsclothes and "had dirty looking hands or dirty fingernails," according to a Dallas policeman who confronted him." "He said he 'felt' the first shot come from behind him, only inches over his left shoulder. He said he heard two shots 'and then there was a blend. For a single bolt action, he had to have been firing darn good because I don't think anybody could fire that rapid a bolt action.' 'The next thing I knew someone was kicking my butt and telling me to get up,' Arnold said, 'It was a policeman. And I told him to go jump in the river. And then this other guy -- a policeman -- comes up with a shotgun and he was crying and that thing was waving back and forth. I said you can have everything I've got. Just point it someplace else.' Arnold took his film from the canister and threw it to the policeman."
  
• 9/1978 Public hearings of the HSCA begun.
  
• 9/1978 Mark Lane spoke to the residents of Jonestown, providing support for Jones' theories and drawing parallels between Martin Luther King, Jr. and Jim Jones. Lane then held press conferences stating that "none of the charges" against the Temple "are accurate or true" and that there was a "massive conspiracy" against the Temple by "intelligence organizations," naming the CIA, FBI, FCC and even the U.S. Post Office. Though Lane represented himself as disinterested, Jones was actually paying him $6,000 per month to generate such theories. (Reiterman, Tim and John Jacobs. Raven: The Untold Story of Rev. Jim Jones and His People. Dutton, 1982)
  
• 9/1/1978 Mae Brussell, on her radio program, criticizes Mark Lane's grandstanding behavior before the HSCA, and wonders why he doesn't talk about evidence of Ray's innocence. She recalls how Lane had said he wouldn't allow Brussell or Penn Jones who he considered kooks to be involved in the HSCA investigation.
  
• 9/5/1978 An HSCA spokesman told the press: "You may get new insights into old problems. You will not necessarily get new results." (Washington Post 9/6/1978)
  
• 9/6/1978 This morning, the Select Committee on Assassinations begins its public hearings into the death of President John F. Kennedy. The committee has identified three main issues to investigate in order to fulfill its legislative mandate, which is found in House Resolution 222. First: Who assassinated President Kennedy? Second: Did Federal agencies perform adequately in the sharing of information prior to the assassination, in the protection of President Kennedy, and in their investigation of the assassination Third: Did the assassin or assassins have assistance; that is, was there a conspiracy? Governor Connally and his wife, Nellie testify publicly for nearly three hours regarding their memories and impressions of the JFK assassination. The governor again explained how he was hit by a different bullet than JFK. * Opening statement by Representative Richardson Preyer, North Carolina, Chairman, Subcommittee on John F. Kennedy Assassination * Narration by G. Robert Blakey, chief counsel * Testimony of Governor John B. and Mrs. John B. Connally * Narration by G. Robert Blakey, chief counsel * Testimony of Robert Groden
  
• 9/7/1978 According to chief medical examiner for New York City, Michael Baden, in his testimony before the Committee, JFK was hit by two shots fired from above and behind. Humes' public HSCA testimony was telecast live; X-rays and Ida Dox drawings of autopsy photos shown on national TV. Robert Groden testified before the HSCA. Michael Baden testified to the HSCA that Kennedy was hit by two shots that came from above and behind. * Narration by G. Robert Blakey, chief counsel * Testimony of Ida Dox * Narration by G. Robert Blakey, chief counsel * Testimony of Dr. Lowell Levine and Calvin S. McCamy * Testimony of Dr. Michael Baden * Narration by G. Robert Blakey, chief counsel * Testimony of Capt. James J. Humes, M.D * Narration by G. Robert Blakey, chief counsel Testimony of Dr. Cyril H. Wecht
  
• 9/7/1978 Agents of the Bulgarian secret police, assisted by the KGB, had previously made two failed attempts to kill Markov before a third attempt succeeded. On September 7, 1978 (the birthday of Todor Zhivkov), Markov walked across Waterloo Bridge spanning the River Thames, and waited at a bus stop to take a bus to his job at the BBC. He felt a slight sharp pain, as a bug bite or sting, on the back of his right thigh. He looked behind him and saw a man picking up an umbrella off the ground. The man hurriedly crossed to the other side of the street and got in a taxi which then drove away. The event is recalled as the "Umbrella Murder" with the assassin claimed to be Francesco Gullino, codenamed "Piccadilly". When he arrived at work at the BBC World Service offices, Markov noticed a small red pimple had formed at the site of the sting he had felt earlier and the pain had not lessened or stopped. He told at least one of his colleagues at the BBC about this incident. That evening he developed a fever and was admitted to a hospital where he died three days later, on September 11, 1978, at the age of 49. The cause of death was poisoning from a ricin-filled pellet.
  
• 9-10/1978 Iran: political reforms and release of political reforms failed to quell protests. SEP 8 Martial law announced.
  
• 9/8/1978 HSCA testimony continued: * Narration by G. Robert Blakey, chief counsel * Testimony of Dr Charles S. Petty * Narration by G. Robert Blakey, chief counsel * Testimony of Larry Sturdivan * Testimony of John S. Bates, Monty C. Lutz, Andrew Newquist, and Donald E. Champagne * Narration by G. Robert Blakey, chief counsel * Testimony of Dr. Vincent P. Guinn.
  
• 9/9/1978 A bomb explodes at the Cuban mission to the United Nations. Omega 7 assumes responsibility.
  
• 9/11/1978 HSCA testimony: * Narration by G. Robert Blakey, chief counsel * Testimony of Dr. William Hartmann. * Statement of G. Robert Blakey, chief counsel * Testimony of Dr. James E. Barger * Testimony of Paul McCaghren * Testimony of Dr. David Green Acoustical expert James Barger testifies that there is a 50% chance of a shot from the grassy knoll on the police dictabelt.
  
• 9/11/1978 Earl Golz story in the Dallas Morning News reported that Hosty "told the News the House Select Committee on Assassinations fears he will 'drop bombs' if called to testify publicly." Hosty recalled that he had told Golz that the Committee wasn't interested in hearing the real story (Oswald's ties to Soviets and Cuba) but he didn't give Golz any details. (Assignment Oswald 238)
  
• 9/12/1978 HSCA testimony: * Narration by G. Robert Blakey, chief counsel * Testimony of Calvin S. McCamy * Testimony of Thomas Canning.
  
• 9/13/1978 HSCA testimony: * Narration by G. Robert Blakey, chief counsel * Testimony of Marina Oswald Porter.
  
• 9/13/1978 "The Dallas Morning News: "The Dallas police open microphone thought to have picked up the sounds of four shots when President John F. Kennedy was assassinated in 1963 ""was nowhere near Dealey Plaza,"" says an acoustical expert whose Chicago firm made its own analysis of the tape recording. Anthony Pellicano said the sound of sirens heard on the tape after Kennedy was shot was ""the most devastating"" to the finding of the Cambridge, Mass. firm that presented its analysis of the tape Monday to the House Assassinations Committee. The firm of Bolt, Beranek & Newman said the tape revealed four shots may have been fired during the 6-second period in which the president was assassinated in Dealey Plaza. Pellicano was an expert witness in connection with the 18-minute gap in President Richard Nixon's White House tape recordings in the Watergate case. He challenged the Cambridge firm's analysis that the gap was intentional. His firm, Voice Analysis and Interpretation, also has acquired a national reputation for analysis of electronic evidence in plane crashes and wiretap cases. The background noises during the six seconds ""just do not dictate that it (open microphone) was in the motorcade,"" Pellicano said.""
  
• 9/14/1978 HSCA testimony: * Narration by G. Robert Blakey, chief counsel * Testimony of Jack D. White * Testimony of Sergeant Calvin S. McCamy and Cecil W. Kirk * Testimony of Joseph P. McNally
  
• 9/15/1978 HSCA testimony: * Narration by G. Robert Blakey, chief counsel * Testimony of Sergeant Calvin S. McCamy and Cecil W. Kirk (resumed) * Testimony of John Hart
  
• 9/17/1978 Camp David talks between Sadat and Begin end with both sides signing the "Camp David Accords."
  
• 9/18/1978 HSCA testimony: * Narration by G. Robert Blakey, chief counsel * Testimony of Sr. Eusebio Azcue Lopez, former Cuban Consul in Mexico City * Testimony of St. Alfredo Mirabal Diaz
  
• 9/18/1978 Camp David peace agreement between Egypt and Israel.
  
• 9/18/1978 Time magazine reports that the HSCA's hearings had "added credence to the main finding of the Warren Commission: Lee Harvey Oswald alone killed the president..."
  
• 9/19/1978 HSCA: * Narration by G. Robert Blakey, chief counsel * Testimony of Insp. Thomas J. Kelley, assistant director of protective operations in Washington, D.C * Testimony of James J. Rowley
  
• 9/20/1978 HSCA testimony: * Narration by G. Robert Blakey, chief counsel * Testimony of James R. Malley * Narration by G. Robert Blakey, chief counsel * Testimony of James H. Gale
  
• 9/21/1978 HSCA testimony: * Narration by G. Robert Blakey, chief counsel * Testimony of former President Gerald R. Ford * Testimony of John Sherman Cooper and John J. McCloy * Testimony of J. Lee Rankin, former general counsel of the Warren Commission * Testimony of Nicholas Katzenbach, former Attorney General of the United States
  
• 9/22/1978 HSCA testimony: * Narration by G. Robert Blakey, chief counsel * Testimony of Richard Helms, former Director of Central Intelligence
  
• 9/23/1978 Former CIA director Richard Helms testifies before House Assassinations Committee on defector Yuri Nosenko's captivity.
  
• 9/23/1978 The Washington Post's George Lardner is among a group of reporters who chats with ex-CIA director Richard Helms during a recess in his executive-session testimony before the Assassinations Committee. Lardner later writes: Helms told reporters during a break that no one would ever know who or what Lee Harvey Oswald ... represented. Asked whether the CIA knew of any ties Oswald had with either the KGB or the CIA, Helms paused and with a laugh said, I don't remember.' Pressed on the point, he told a reporter, Your questions are almost as dumb as the Committee's.' "
  
• 9/24/1978 The CIA's John Paisley radioed friends that he intended to stay out late aboard his sloop, the Brillig, on Chesapeake Bay. It was the last time anyone ever heard from him. A day later the boat was found abandoned at sea. In the cabin was found an attache case containing numerous classified documents, including a notebook with the names and phone numbers of CIA officers under cover in various parts of the world. David Young, of the Nixon Plumbers, was listed in it. CIA officers removed documents that police considered evidence. Paisley's Washington apartment had been rifled and various objects stolen. Days later, his body was found in the bay, weighted down by two sets of diving belts around his waist. There was a gunshot wound behind his left ear (Paisley was right-handed). No blood, brain tissue, weapon or expended cartridge was found aboard the Brillig. Nonetheless, the official verdict was suicide. The body was four inches shorter than Paisley's known height, the waist four inches smaller, and the weight 25lbs lighter than Paisley. The corpse had no hair on its body, was completely empty of blood. The CIA failed to produce dental and fingerprint records for comparison, but the body was "positively identified" as Paisley, and it was quickly cremated at a CIA-approved funeral home. No members of the family were permitted to see the body. Wife Marianne later saw autopsy photos and was not at all certain that they were her husband. Marianne, a former CIA employee herself, resented how the Agency tried to downplay her husband's career to the press. 6/1979 marina owner Harry Lee Langley and county coroner Dr. George Weems came forward to say that when they saw the body the night the Coast Guard recovered it, there were definite signs of strangulation. (Secret Agenda appendix)
  
• 9/25/1978 HSCA testimony: * Opening remarks by Chairman Stokes. * Further Testimony of Joseph McNally * Further Testimony of Sgt. Cecil Kirk, Metropolitan Police Department, Washington, D.C. * Testimony of Dr. Clyde Collins Snow, physical anthropologist. * Statement of Mr. Blakey * Testimony of Dr. Bob R. Hunt. * Testimony of Louie Steven Witt * Testimony of Jacqueline Hess
  
• 9/26/1978 HSCA testimony: # Narration by G. Robert Blakey, chief counsel and staff director. # Testimony of Earl Ruby # Narration by G. Robert Blakey, chief counsel and staff director # Testimony of Capt. Jack Revill, Dallas Police Department. Jack Ruby's brother, Earl, appears before the House Select Committee on Assassinations. Note: Almost immediately after the assassination, Earl Ruby was subjected to an intensive audit of all his open tax returns. No extra sums of money were ever discovered. Jack Revill, testifying to the Committee concerning Jack Ruby says: "Jack Ruby was a buffoon. He liked the limelight. He was highly volatile. He liked to be recognized with people, and I would say to this committee: If Jack Ruby was a member of organized crime, then the personnel director of organized crime should be replaced."
  
• 9/26/1978 Al Haig was quoted in the NY Times complaining of a "decade of neglect" of NATO by US political leaders.
  
• 9/27/1978 HSCA testimony: * Narration by G. Robert Blakey, chief counsel and staff director * Testimony of Lewis McWillie, Las Vegas, Nev. * Narration by G. Robert Blake, chief counsel and staff director. * Testimony of Jose Aleman
  
• 9/28/1978 Pope John Paul I makes known his intention to remove Archbishop Marcinkus, the head of the Vatican bank, and three other cronies and to replace several high-ranking Vatican officials with questionable involvements in the financial affairs of the Vatican.
  
• 9/28/1978 HSCA testimony: * Testimony of Santos Trafficante * Testimony Ralph Salerno * Testimony of Judge Burt W. Griffin . Santos Trafficante, appearing before the House Select Committee for a second time admits, in his immunized testimony, that he has conspired with the CIA to kill Fidel Castro but denies any foreknowledge of, or participation in, the murder of JFK.
  
• 9/29/1978 Pope John Paul I is found dead in his bed. No autopsy is performed and the cause of death is obscured by contradictory reports and destroyed evidence. John Paul, a recreational mountain climber, has been declared in excellent health just days before. Three years after the death of Pope John Paul, his successor, John Paul II, is the target of an assassination attempt. His assailant, Ali Agca, is a notorious terrorist affiliated with the extreme right-wing Turkish Gray Wolves. A laborious three year investigation by Italian authorities will establish beyond doubt that shots fired by Agca were the workings of "a conspiracy to kill the pontiff."
  
• 9/29/1978 Stokes was quoted by UPI: "I recognize there have been loose ends we hope to be able to tie down in our final report. But frankly, life itself contains loose ends...not every question that can be answered can be answered to the satisfaction of all." Burt Griffin also was quoted as having told Stokes that "you will soon become the target of those who attacked the Warren Commission...The public concern about the assassination of President Kennedy will not end in the lifetime of anyone in this room."