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Tracy Riddle · 14-03-2014, 02:13 AM

11/1/1963 (Fri) Stars and Stripes reported Gen. Paul Harkins (commander of the Military Assistance Command in Saigon) as saying: "Victory in the sense it would apply to this kind of war is just months away and the reduction of American advisers can begin any time now." There were 16,732 US "advisers" in country at this time.
11/1/1963 Secretary of the Navy Fred Korth resigned. John McClellan, chairman of the Permanent Investigations Committee, continued looking into the activities of Billie Sol Estes and Bobby Baker. During this investigation evidence emerged that Lyndon B. Johnson was also involved in political corruption. This included the award of a $7 billion contract for a fighter plane, the TFX, to General Dynamics, a company based in Texas. When it was discovered that the Continental National Bank of Fort Worth, was the principal money source for the General Dynamics plant.
Abraham Bolden, first black Secret Service agent on the White House Detail, states that he receives an FBI Teletype in Chicago detailing a plot by four men to shoot the President in Chicago with high-powered rifles.
McGeorge Bundy presides over a staff meeting at the White House, Bundy opens meeting by stating that he has "spent quite a night watching the cables from Vietnam." Forrestal says the coup has been "well executed." Bundy then comments that Diem is still holding out in the palace, adding that no one wants to go in for the kill.
George Senator moves into Jack Ruby's apartment. They have previously been roommates in 1962.
At about noon today, Lee Harvey Oswald walks over to the post office on his lunch-hour break from the TSBD and rents another post office box at the terminal annex of the U.S. post office in Dallas, for a 2-month period. (P.O. Box # 6225 Holmes Exhibit 1) He then mails three letters. One is a change-of-address card to Consul Reznichenko at the Soviet embassy in Washington. Another is a membership application to the ACLU. The third is Oswald's alerting Communist Party, USA headquarters that his September plans had changed about moving to the Philadelphia-Baltimore area. Oswald also cashes a Texas Unemployment check today (Friday) for $33 at a supermarket in Irving.
Jack Ruby calls a number in Chicago today.
This is the date of an FBI airtel that FBI agent James P. Hosty, Jr. receives from San Antonio, to which he will respond fourteen days from now. (Right-wing subversives are Hosty's FBI specialty. The subject of the exchange of airtels is "John Thomas Masen, IS [Internal Security] - Cuba." Hosty is also directed to begin searching for George Perrell. He subsequently goes to Ruth Paine's home, just outside Dallas, where Marina Oswald is staying. Hosty's stated aim is to interview Mrs. Oswald as "a Soviet immigrant in this country who could conceivably be here with [an] intelligence assignment." Hosty speaks briefly to Marina Oswald and to Ruth Paine. When Oswald arrived at the Paine house this night, he was told that Hosty had been there that day. Oswald was nervous and demanded to know everything that was said. (Marina and Lee 496)
A young man draws attention to himself while buying rifle ammunition at Morgan's Gunshop in Fort Worth. He is rude and impertinent and boasts about having been in the Marines. Three witnesses will remember the incident and think the man looks like Oswald. The real Oswald is busily occupied in Dallas where, on this day, he receives his first paycheck from the Texas Book Depository.
After the assassination, Leonard Hutchinson will come forward to say that he had been asked to cash a check for Oswald earlier in November. Hutchinson, who owns Hutch's Market in Irving, Texas, says the man asked him to cash a two-party check made out to "Harvey Oswald" for $189. He refuses to accept the check, but says he sees the man in his store several more times. He says on one occasion the man and a young woman speak in some foreign language. Hutchinson says he recognized both Oswald and Marina when their photographs are broadcast over television after the assassination.
Hearings begin today in a federal courtroom in New Orleans regarding Carlos Marcello and his ten year battle to avoid deportation. The courtroom is packed. David Ferrie joins Marcello in the courtroom.
11/1-2/1963 military coup in Saigon; Diem and his brother Nhu were killed in the back of a US-built M113 armored personnel carrier. Just before the coup began, Diem had told Lodge to tell JFK that he was willing to cooperate to get US aid. McNamara recalled that when JFK heard about the death of Diem, he was deeply shocked. (In Retrospect 84); Mike Forrestal said in 1971 that the deaths "shook [JFK] personally...shook his confidence...in the kind of advice he was getting about South Vietnam." Taylor recalled that JFK "rushed from the room with a look of shock and dismay on his face which I had never seen before." (Swords and Plowshares)
11/2/1963 (Sat) Paul Fay becomes Acting Secretary of the Navy, a position he will hold until November 28 1963.
Oswald told Marina that if Hosty came around again, she was to write down the make, color, and license number of his car. (Marina and Lee 497) He also posted three change-of-address cards to the FPCC, The Militant and The Worker.
According to some researchers, this is the day JFK is to be assassinated in Chicago - three weeks prior to the fatal motorcade in Dallas, Texas. Two of four suspects have been detained. Two of the suspects have Hispanic names - "Rodriquez" and "Gonzales." (According to a Tampa newsman, these two names will also surface in the Tampa assassination plot less than a week from now and only four days before the motorcade in Dallas.)
Around 8:30 AM Chicago time, Ngo Dinh Diem's assassination is being announced on the news. Pierre Salinger announces that a special communications facility would be rush constructed under the Soldiers Field bleachers to keep the President informed on up-to-the-minute developments in coup-torn South Vietnam. He reiterates JFK will not cancel the trip.
JFK is scheduled to arrive in Chicago around 11 AM today. At 9:15 AM Chicago time, White House Press Secretary Pierre Salinger calls newsmen in Washington. "The President is not going to the football game," Salinger says. The motorcade, and JFK's trip to Chicago, are suddenly cancelled. Tonight, three men being held in Chicago on suspicion of planning to assassinate JFK today in Chicago are turned over to the police by the Secret Service and are subsequently released.
Around this time, according to Craig Roberts in his book THE KILL ZONE, the three hired French Corsican assassins Sauveur Pironti, Lucien Sarti and Jorge Bocognini -- are transported from Mexico City to Brownsville, Texas, where they cross the border on Italian passports. They are met on the U.S. side by representatives of the American Mafia out of Chicago (Sam Giancana's people) and driven to Dallas. In Dallas, they stay in a CIA provided safe house to preclude any hotel records of their presence. Roberts maintains that the house is provided by CIA operative Roscoe White. While in Dallas, the assassins begin to photograph and study Dealey Plaza.
11/3/1963 (Sun) Ruth Paine gave Oswald another driving lesson, consisting of parallel parking.
Week of November 3, 1963 Jack Ruby's rate of out-of-state calls rises to 25 times the average rate of January through September.
Either this day or the following day, Oswald, Marina, and children are in Irving shopping. They apparently enter a store displaying a sign indicating guns are sold. Oswald asks where he can get the firing pin on his rifle repaired. The store manager believes that she then directs him to the nearby Irving Sports Shop.
11/4/1963 (Mon) Secret Service agent Winston Lawson in Washington and Forrest Sorrels, the latter agent in charge of the Secret Service Dallas office, receive their first official notification of the President's coming trip. Lawson is to act as the White House detail's advance man in Dallas. Sorrels is instructed to make a preliminary survey of two possible luncheon sites: the new Trade Mart north of the downtown section on Stemmons Freeway and the Women's Building at Fair Park, east of the business district.
Sometime between Nov. 4 and Nov. 8 - Oswald supposedly takes his rifle to the Irving Sports Shop to have it drilled for a telescopic-sight.
Case officer is told by Desmond Fitzgerald that AM/LASH can be informed that the rifles, telescopic sights, and explosives will be provided.
US and USSR reach agreement in Geneva on the allocation of special radio frequences for communications between the earth and satellites and spaceships.
Dallas Morning News reports that Citizens Council may handle the president's visit to Dallas either 11/21 or 22.
Security Chief Paul Rothermel memo to H.L. Hunt; it talked of JFK's upcoming trip to Dallas and warned of "unconfirmed reports of possible violence during the parade. The FBI and Police Department each have planted an informant in the General Walker group here in Dallas..." "The North Texas informant is reporting information that would indicate that a group may be planning an incident." "There is another report from a left wing group that an incident will occur with the full knowledge of the President, whereby the left wingers will start the incident in hopes of dragging in any of the right wing groups, and individuals nearby, and then withdraw. The talk is that the incident involving Adlai Stevenson made the present administration hopeful in that they could get the same thing to happen to Kennedy, it could reasure his re-election. If an incident of this nature were to occur, the true story of who perpetrated it would never come out." After the assassination, the Hunts went around trying to gather up all copies of this memo to prevent it from leaking. (Texas Rich; The Man Who Knew Too Much p589-90)
FBI agent Hosty phoned the Depository and confirmed that Oswald worked there; their records listed Ruth Paine's house for his address. He then sent an airmail message to the New Orleans FBI to have Oswald's file transferred to Dallas. (H 4 452)
Oswald rides in to work with Frazier, and goes back to his roominghouse that afternoon. Oswald applied to join the ACLU and asked its national office how he could get in touch with "ACLU groups in my area," though he already should have known this information. (H 17 673)
A habeas corpus hearing for Richard Case Nagell takes place at the El Paso district courthouse. Nagell told federal judge R.E. Thomason: "I had a motive for doing what I did. But my motive was not to hold up the bank. I do not intend to disclose my motive at this time."
Radio Havana again accuses CIA of attacking Cuba.
Saigon: Buddhist Nguyen Ngoc Tho, former vice-president, took office as premier. Lodge cabled Washington that he thought the coup would improve the situation in South Vietnam.
Soviet guards halted a US troop convoy at the western border of Berlin.
In a letter, Byron Skelton, a Democratic National Committeeman from Texas, asks RFK to earnestly consider dropping Dallas from the president's upcoming Texas itinerary. Skelton cites a prominent Dallas resident's recent pronouncement that JFK is "a liability to the free world." RFK forwards Skelton's letter to JFK aide Kenny O'Donnell. Skelton feels so passionately about bypassing Dallas that he flies to Washington to plead his case personally.
The night manager of the Dallas central Western Union office observes "Oswald" picking up several money orders. The real Oswald is spending this evening with his wife and child in Irving.
Carlos Marcello goes on trial today in New Orleans on Federal charges of conspiracy in connection with his alleged falsification of a Guatemalan birth certificate.
"Saigon Coup Gives Americans Hope" is the headline of David Halberstam's analysis in today's New York Times.
Pfc. Eugene B. Dinkin, who has written RFK a letter from France warning of a possible assassination attempt on JFK, is absent without leave from his unit, Headquarters Company, U.S. Army General Depot, Metz, France. Dinkin was scheduled for a psychiatric examination this same day. He apparently enters Switzerland using a false army identification card with forged travel orders.
11/5/1963 (Tue) Defense Dept transferred from the Navy to the Army-Air Force strike command the responsibility for the Middle East, much of Africa and southern Asia.
Another US convoy was stopped at Marienborn checkpoint in Berlin. JFK called an emergency meeting of his advisers to discuss the Soviet challenges to Western access rights. After a two-day war of nerves, US troops entered West Berlin.
Today's date on a police photo of Roscoe White.
FBI agent Hosty and agent Gary S. Wilson briefly visited the Paine home; Ruth hadn't obtained Oswald's rooming-house address. "His intention was to interview Marina to find out what she knew about the purpose behind Lee's phone calls to the Soviet Union's Mexico City embassy." (McKnight)
William Attwood met with Kennedy's National Security Adviser, McGeorge Bundy, and Gordon Chase of the National Security Council staff. He filled them in on Castro's eagerness to facilitate a dialogue with Kennedy. On November 8, at Chase's request, Attwood put all this in a memorandum.
David Ferrie purchases a .38 caliber revolver.
Colonel William Bishop asserts that, on this date, Rolando Masferrer is given $500,000 by Jimmy Hoffa.
This evening at Jack Ruby's Carousel Club in Dallas an individual named Wilbur Waldon Litchfield waits to speak with Ruby. "The next to see Ruby, Litchfield reported, was a man in a V-neck sweater who had been sitting four tables in front of Litchfield. [He] had paid particular attention to that man, he explained, because of his sloppy dress.'" Fifteen or twenty minutes after entering Ruby's office, the man comes out with Ruby. After JFK's assassination, Litchfield will positively identify the man as Oswald.
11/6/1963 (Wed) Either on this day or the 7th or 8[SUP]th[/SUP] (or sometime between Nov 2 and 9 according to McKnight), Oswald went to the Dallas FBI office to see Hosty, who was out to lunch. He allegedly left a threatening note, which was destroyed after the assassination.
Oswald also went to the library and checked out The Shark and the Sardines,' a book by Juan Jose Arevalo, former left-wing president of Guatemala, a work highly critical of US policy in Latin America. The book was due 11/13 and was never returned. The book was not found among Oswald's belongings. (FBI report 2/28/1964, H 25 901) In the summer of 1966, Albert Newman visited Dallas and discovered that the volume had been mysteriously returned in early 1964. (The Reasons Why p486)
Henry Cabot Lodge sends what will be the last of his private cables to JFK concerning Vietnam. "Eyes only. Now that the revolution has occurred, I assume you will not want my weekly reports . . . I believe prospects of victory are much improved, provided the generals stay united . . . There is no doubt that the coup was a Vietnamese and a popular affair, which we could neither manage nor stop after it got started and which we could only have influenced with great difficulty." "...It is equally certain that the ground in which the coup seed grew into a robust plant was prepared by us, and that the coup would not have happened [as] it did without our preparation."
Canadian prime minister Pearson spoke in NYC of the need to strengthen NATO.
Felipe Vidal Santiago, Cuban exile, is in Dallas Texas today through the 11th, during which time he meets with wealthy Dallas oil men.
(Switzerland) Pfc. Eugene B. Dinkin, who has warned RFK about an impending assassination attempt on JFK, appears in the press room of United Nations Office in Geneva today and tells reporters he is being persecuted. He also tells his story to the editor of the Geneva Diplomat. (The CIA later confirms this in a letter to the Warren Commission. This letter does NOT appear in the Warren Commission Report.) Army reports show that he voluntarily returns to his unit in Metz, France on or about November 11, 1963. He is immediately placed under arrest.
11/7/1963 (Thu) Pierre Salinger told the press that Jackie would go to Texas with JFK. Dallas Morning News reports that JFK will come to Texas 11/21-22.
At the Kremlin celebration of the forty-sixth anniversary of the Bolshevik Revolution, Khrushchev warns, "If the Americans attack Cuba, we shall attack America's allies who are even closer to the Soviet Union." He accuses Western diplomats of "rejoicing that we are arguing with the Chinese" and warns the Soviet Union has greater disputes with the West: "The Chinese and we have the same future."
Asked to comment on recent exile raids against Cuba, Ricardo L. Santos Pesa, the Cuban Third Secretary to the Hague says: "Just wait, and you will see what we can do. It will happen soon. Just wait. Just wait."
A man who identifies himself as Oswald on a ticket for a rifle he left to be repaired, visits a gun and furniture shop in Dallas.
Jack Ruby places the first of two telephone calls (on this day and the next) to two of Jimmy Hoffa's top henchmen in Chicago and Miami. Ruby also rents P.O. Box # 5475 at the terminal annex of the U.S. post office in Dallas.
A letter from former congressman Charles Kersten warning of Soviet assassins is allegedly received by JFK.
11/8/1963 (Fri) The United States formally recognizes the new Government of South Vietnam, with General Duong Van Minh as president and former Vice President Nguyen Ngoc Tho as premier.
After undertaking the responsibility for advance preparations for the visit to Dallas, Agent Winston G. Lawson goes to the PRS offices in Washington. A check of the geographic indexes there reveals no listing for any individual deemed to be a potential danger to the President in the territory of the Secret Service regional office which includes Dallas and Fort Worth.
A memo from the White House Secret Service dated Nov. 8 reported: Subject made statement of a plan to assassinate the President in October 1963: Subject stated he will use a gun, and if he couldn't get closer he would find another way. Subject is described as: White, male, 20, slender in build,' etc. Mullins said the Secret Service had been advised of three persons in the area who reportedly had made threats on the President's life. One of the three wasand still isin jail here under heavy bond. Mullins said he did not know if the other two men have followed the Presidential caravan to Dallas. Sarasota County Sheriff Ross E. Boyer also said yesterday that officers who protected Kennedy in Tampa Monday were warned about a young man' who had threatened to kill the President during that trip." (Palamara)
Governor John Connally confirms today that the President will come to Texas on November 21-22, and that he will visit San Antonio, Houston, Fort Worth, Dallas, and Austin.
In Irving, Texas, "Harvey Oswald" cashed a check at a supermarket for $189; he was allegedly in this store several times, accompanied by two women. (H 26 178-9; H 10 327-40) The real Oswald never cashes checks for such large amounts in stores and is not in Irving at this time. A barber near this store said Oswald came into his shop on the 8th with a 14-year-old boy, and they both made leftist remarks.
Jack Ruby places a call to Murray W. (Dusty) Miller at the Eden Roc Hotel in Miami. (Miller is head of the Southern Conference of Teamsters in 1963.) The call lasts four minutes. Miller is another key lieutenant of Teamster President James Hoffa. Thirty-one minutes after he calls Dusty Miller, Ruby places a call to Barney Baker in Chicago. This call lasts 14 minutes.
Life magazine's cover story runs as "The Bobby Baker Bombshell." LBJ refuses to comment on the matter in spite of a full page photograph of Johnson and Bobby Baker together.
During the week of November the 8th - Elizabeth Cole is attending a Foreign Student's conference at Rutgers University, and overhears a student from Fairleigh Dickinson University, representing Cuba, on the payphone talking heatedly in Spanish about Kennedy being killed when he goes to Dallas.
The WR claimed Oswald drove to Irving with Frazier, though Frazier never testified that he did this. Marina stated that he didn't come home on this day, that he came to Irving around 9am on the 9th without explaining how he got there. (H 23 840)
An FBI wiretap was placed on MLK's residence and in the SCLC's headquarters in Atlanta.
New cabinet, headed by Georgios Papandreou, took office in Greece.
UPI reported that Venezuela claimed it found a large cache of foreign arms in a smugglers' cove. The government presumed they came from Cuba.
A letter was written, reportedly by Oswald, to a "Mr. Hunt." This letter surfaced during the HSCA investigation when it was sent to researcher Penn Jones.
The CIA gets the FBI information on Oswald from 10/31.
11/8-9/1963 Kennedy's first, low profile trip to New York City. (Palamara)
11/9/1963 (Sat) President Kennedy was in New York, there is no record of what he did on this day. By the evening he was with the family in Atoka Virginia. Palamara: "Thanks to the shift reports for November 9, 1963, we do know that JFK stayed at the Carlyle Hotel during his first New York trip and visited the Steven Smith residence."
US resumed its commodity-import program to South Vietnam, which had been suspended in August.
Around 1:30-2pm A man walks into Downtown Lincoln Mercury car dealership in Dallas, identifies himself as Lee Oswald, says he is soon expecting a lot of money and wants a new car. He takes a demonstration ride, driving at high speeds.
Oswald is at the Sports Drome rifle range in Dallas from this day on; he shoots well but constantly calls attention to himself. The WC decided this couldn't have been the real Oswald, and dismissed the stories. (WR 318)
The real Oswald was taken by Mrs Paine to the nearby Oak Cliff drivers' license examining station to take his driver's test, but the office was closed. (WR 740; H 2 515)
A letter is sent to the Russian embassy in Washington on this date, allegedly from Oswald: "I was unable to remain in Mexico indefinitely because of my Mexican visa restrictions which was for 15 days only. I could not take a chance on requesting a new visa unless I used my real name, so I returned to the United States."
William Augustus Somersett, an informer for the FBI and the Miami Police tape-records, in his own apartment, a threat against JFK made by his boyhood friend, Joseph Milteer -- now a ranking member of several hate groups, including the National States Rights Party, the Ku Klux Klan, the American constitution Party and the White Citizens' Council of Atlanta. Somersett informs his police contact about the conversation.
Press reports: "Senate investigators plan to call Billie Sol Estes next week for a long-awaited inquiry."
On this weekend, Nov. 9 - 10, David Ferrie is at Churchill Farms in New Orleans with Carlos Marcello.
11/10/1963 (Sun) Dallas Sunday News prints Gallup poll showing JFK's popularity at 59%.
The second check of PRS was done by Roy Kellerman.
PRS SS agent Glen Bennett was "temporarily assigned to the White House Detail" on this date. (18 H 783)
"Oswald" is seen at the Sports Drome rifle range by Garland Slack. Ruth remembered Oswald watching football on TV that day.
"Secret Service agents were disclosed to have found witnesses who saw Oswald at the [Trinity] river rifle range between Nov. 10 and 16...The witnesses were reportedly in awe of Oswald's marksmanship..." (Chicago Sun times 12/7/1963)
Col. Fletcher Prouty is sent to the South Pole by Edward Lansdale.
11/11/1963 (Mon) An employee of Parrot Jungle in Miami hears an unidentified male make some remarks about a friend of his named Lee who is an American Marxist, speaks Russian and is a crack marksman. The man makes references to Kennedy and "shooting between the eyes" and adds that his friend is now in either Texas or Mexico.
Rene Vallejo phoned Lisa Howard again on behalf of Castro to reiterate their "appreciation of the need for security. " He said Castro would go along with any arrangements Kennedy's representatives might want to make.
Veteran's Day. Oswald was at the Paine house that day.
Jack Ruby called Barney Baker in Chicago and Frank Goldstein (a professional gambler) in San Francisco. He also met with Alexander Philip Gruber. (Ruby Cover-Up 56) Dr. Ulevitch prescribes pills to calm Ruby's nerves.
Brazil's president Goulart in a speech at the opening of the annual conference of the Alliance for Progress in Sao Paulo, challenged the validity of the Alliance as a viable solution to the region's problems.
11/12/1963 (Tue) Memorandum for the record relates a meeting on Cuban Operations. McCone gave a brief summary of recent developments inside Cuba. FitzGerald reported on Cuban operations.
NSC official Gordon Chase drafted a memorandum in order to present arguments in favor of improved relations. The memo was drafted as the first major meeting between high level Cuban and U.S. officials to discuss better relations was being organized; that meeting was aborted by the assassination of John F. Kennedy. (NSC, "Some Arguments Against Accommodation--A Rebuttal," November 12, 1963; )
NSAM 271 outlined Kennedy's views on his plans for future US-Soviet cooperation in space, "including cooperation in lunar landing programs."
After hearing Attwood's report, McGeorge Bundy said that before a meeting with Castro himself there should be a preliminary talk with Vallejo at the United Nations to find out specifically what Castro wanted to talk about. On November 14, Lisa Howard relayed this information to Rene Vallejo, who said he would discuss it with Castro.
JFK held his only official meeting on the upcoming 1964 campaign; LBJ was not present, though there was apparently no talk of removing him from the ticket. (The Making of the President 1964 p28)
Oswald dropped off his note to Hosty on this date according to Posner. (Case Closed p217) Sometime between the 12th and 15th, Hosty picked up the note, but left it on his desk, unread, until the 22nd.
Michael Paine visited the house in Irving. Ruth showed him Oswald's letter to the Soviet Embassy, but he didn't seem very interested. (H 2 406)
In Moscow, Yale professor Frederick Barghoorn was arrested on charges of being a spy.
Miami police alerted the Secret Service about the Milteer assassination tape.
11/12-13/1963 Ruby met with Paul Rowland Jones and Alex Gruber; the three hadn't talked since 1947. Gruber told the FBI that he was in Joplin, Missouri in 11/1963 and just decided to drop in on Ruby in Dallas. (Ruby Cover Up 57)
11/13/1963 (Wed) SS agent Winston Lawson arrived in Dallas and reported to Forrest Sorrels at the Dallas office to prepare for the President's trip. He then met with Jesse Curry and examined the Trade Mart site. Dallas police officially notified of JFK's visit. (Four Days in November)
Ruth Paine filed a petition for a divorce from Michael Paine in Domestic Relations Court.
Oswald was reportedly at Hutchinson's supermarket with Marina.
Army code breaker Eugene Dinkin, who had foreknowledge of a threat and attempted to warn officials, is taken into custody by Army officials and hospitalized (a Secret Service agent even interviews him).
11/14/1963 (Thu) JFK visit to Elkton, Maryland for the dedication of the MarylandDelaware Turnpike (a non-motorcade, ribbon-cutting affair)
JFK demanded the release of Prof. Barghoorn, saying he was "innocent of any intelligence mission."
Commerce Dept announced that the US balance of payments deficit for the third quarter of '63 was at its lowest level since 1957.
11/14-15: the second New York trip. "Top city police with many years of experience in guarding Presidents and visiting heads of state said yesterday that President Kennedy took too many chances. On Nov. 14--eight days before the assassin's bullet struck him down--the President rode through New York City without a motorcycle escort and with fewer guards than police and the Secret Service wanted him to haveâ€¦A frequent visitor to New York City, the President until last week had been heavily guarded, had a motorcycle escort, and traveled heavily-guarded streets which had been cleared of other traffic to make way from him. There were those who spoke disparagingly of the interruption of normal living occasioned by the President's visits, and this disturbed him." (NY Daily News 11/23/1963)
The White House gave its approval of the selection of the Trade Mart as the lunch site. (SS memo to WC, 7/10/1964, CD 1251, CE 1360, H 22 613) The WC determined that Kenny O'Donnell and the SS chose the Trade Mart as the luncheon site, but William Manchester says that Connally pressured advance man Bruno into choosing the Trade Mart. The SS was then directed to chose a motorcade route that would allow 45 minutes for JFK to travel from Love Field to the Trade Mart. (Lawson testimony H 4 325) That day, Sorrels and Lawson drove over a possible route. (Case Closed 218)
Oswald called Marina and she asked him not to come to Irving this weekend. (H 1 63)
Alleged meeting of Ruby, Weissman and Tippit took place today.
JFK said in a press conference: "We do have a new situation there [in Vietnam], and a new government, we hope, an increased effort in the war" and his goal was "to bring Americans home, permit the South Vietnamese to maintain themselves as a free and independent country, and permit democratic forces within the country to operate - which they can, of course, much more freely when the assault from the inside, and which is manipulated from the north, is ended." He talked about the upcoming Honolulu conference: "How we can bring Americans out of there. That is our object, to bring Americans home."
11/15/1963 (Fri) James Reston wrote in the NY Times that "there is a vague feeling of doubt and disappointment in the country about President Kennedy's first term," mostly because he had not mastered "how to govern," that is, how to work with Congress.
Associated Press story: "The (Secret) Service can overrule even the President where his personal security is involved."
Secret Service's Protection Research Section report (H 17 566) shows that on this date they received word that the FBI had interviewed a subject on 11/14 who "stated that he is a member of the Ku Klux Klan; that during his travels throughout the country, his sources have told him that a militant group of the National States Rights Party plans to assassinate the President and other high-level officials. He stated that he does not believe this is planned for the near future, but he does believe the attempt will be made."
Sorrels and Lawson meet with Dallas police, and review the motorcade route. (Lawson statement, CE 769, H 17 3)
Oswald stayed in Dallas when his wife told him the house would be crowded because of a birthday party for Paine's daughter.
Dallas Times-Herald reported the Trade Mart lunch site for JFK's upcoming visit. The Dallas Morning News reported that a presidential motorcade through the Dallas-Fort Worth area was unlikely due to time and security considerations; the source was Raymond Buck, president of the Ft Worth Chamber of Commerce and a longtime LBJ supporter.
Approx on this date, Ruby began using a safe to keep his money in; he planned to sink it in concrete in his office. (Ruby Cover-Up 60)
"a US military spokesman...promised 1,000 American military men could be withdrawn from Vietnam beginning on December 3." (Hickenlooper Study [done by Congressional Republicans], 5/9/1967)
11/16/1963 (Sat) New York Times reports "1,000 U.S. Troops to Leave Vietnam."
JFK spent the day at Cape Canaveral where he witnessed a Polaris launch from a sub.
Justice Dept cleared Gilpatric of any "legal or ethical conflict of interest" in the TFX case.
The Dallas Morning News reported that the White House had decided to go ahead with a Dallas motorcade; the decision had been made the day before. The motorcade was expected to travel "west on Main Street at noon next Friday...The change in plans apparently resulted from numerous complaints from Democratic workers" who wanted to see the president. The exact route was not yet firmly established. (CE 1361) The Dallas Times Herald reported that the motorcade "apparently will loop through the downtown area, probably on Main Street." (H 22 613)
Oswald made a second attempt to obtain a driver's license, and even began filling out an application. (WR 740; CE 426) But he arrived just before closing time, and there was a long line ahead of him. (H 2 516-17) Otherwise, his whereabouts from Friday evening to Monday morning are not known.
Laotian leaders of the neutralist and pro-Communist forces agreed to a cease fire in the Plain of Jars.
Moscow releases Barghoorn because of the personal request by JFK, yet still insisting he was a spy.
At the Sports Drome rifle range, "Oswald" shoots at someone's else's target, once again attracting attention to himself; he is using a 6.5mm Italian rifle with a 4x scope.
11/17/1963 (Sun) Roy Kellerman indicated to the Warren Commission that today he was given the assignment to be the nominal agent in charge of the Dallas trip. (2 H 1056)
Marina and Mrs Paine tried to call Oswald's roominghouse, but there was no one there with the name "Oswald." (WC)
FBI overnight code clerk William S. Walter, in New Orleans, maintains that he receives an Airtel alert from FBI headquarters in Washington about "a threat to assassinate President Kennedy November 22-23" in Dallas "by a militant revolutionary group."
Harold Reynolds, a citizen of Abilene, Texas, two hundred miles west of Dallas, picks up a note left for one of his neighbors. It is an urgent request to call one of two Dallas telephone numbers, and the signature reads "Lee Oswald." The neighbor the note is addressed to is Pedro Gonzalez, president of a local anti-Castro group called the Cuban Liberation Committee.
Ruby made a trip to Las Vegas, which was not mentioned by the WC. (12/3/1963 FBI interviews by agents James Doyle, Arthur Barrett, Donald Holland; Conspiracy 599).
Oswald is reportedly seen at the Sports Drome Rifle Range. He is accompanied by another heavy-set man (reportedly Henry O. Chenyworth).
After leaving the rifle range, Oswald reportedly drives to Jack's Bar on Exposition St. in Dallas. Vern Davis meets Oswald at the club. "... everyone thought he was kind of a pest and could have done without him." Davis sees Jack Ruby enter the bar and acknowledges him. Davis then leaves the bar. When Oswald leaves the bar, he may have driven or may have been driven to Abilene, Texas - where he reportedly makes his next appearance.
Dallas civic leaders publicly ask for no demonstrations during JFK's upcoming visit. One hundred extra police will be on duty on the 22nd to ensure cooperation.
FBI (SOG) has by now learned of Oswald's Nov. 12th letter to the Soviet embassy requesting a return visa to Russia.
Alberto Fowler, a Bay of Pigs veteran, has rented the house next door to the Kennedy estate in Palm Beach. Fowler says that he spends the entire weekend playing loud Cuban music. Fowler will begin working for New Orleans District Attorney Jim Garrison in 1967.
Bobby Kennedy meets today with Harry Williams and Manuel Artime. They are scheduled to meet again on November 21 or 22. Bobby asks for Harry's help with security during the upcoming Florida trip. Bobby seems especially worried about security for JFK while he is in Miami.
Gilberto Policarpo Lopez attends a Tampa chapter meeting of the Fair Play for Cuba Committee. (HSCA)
11/18/1963 (Mon) In Washington, the Soviet Embassy receives a crudely typed, badly spelled letter dated nine days earlier and signed by " Lee H. Oswald " of Dallas. The letter seems to implicate the Soviet Union in conspiring with Oswald in the assassination of President Kennedy that will occur four days later.
Lee and Marina fought over the phone because she learned that he was living at his roominghouse under an assumed name.
Johnny Rosselli, apparently canceling plans to go to Washington, leaves instead for Las Vegas, where he can make calls and conduct meetings free from FBI surveillance. (Mahoney p284)
Dallas City Council passed an ordance outlawing attacks on visiting speakers.
JFK instructs William Attwood to call a top Castro aide and suggest preliminary negotiations at the UN. (The Fish Is Red) On November 18, Lisa Howard called Rene Vallejo again. This time she passed the phone to Attwood. At the other end of the line Fidel Castro was listening in on the Vallejo-Attwood conversation, as he would tell Attwood many years later. Attwood asked Vallejo if he could come to New York for a preliminary meeting. Vallejo said he could not come at that time but that "we " would send instructions to Lechuga to propose and discuss with Attwood " an agenda " for a later meeting with Castro. Attwood said he would await Lechuga's call. (Attwood, Twilight Struggle)
Police chief Jesse Curry drove SS agents Lawson and Sorrels over the motorcade route in Dallas, stopping where Main Street enters Dealey Plaza.
Jack Ruby returned from Las Vegas and had his lawyer draw up a power of attorney so that his sister, Eva Grant, could look after his business affairs.
Dallas Morning News: "Seating for the President's luncheon Friday - subject to controversy in local Democratic ranks - must be approved by the Secret Service before taking final form....The presidential party will ride in a motorcade through Downtown Dallas prior to the luncheon. Several routes are still under study. Most likely the motorcade will move west on Main Street through the downtown area. Baxton Bryant, a Kennedy supporter, has complained that Kennedy's campaign workers in Dallas have been slighted on the invitation list."
JFK visited Tampa and Miami Beach, Florida. There was a helicopter ride and short motorcade in Miami.
President Kennedy delivered a speech to the Inter-American Press Association in Miami in which he publicly outlined conditions for a peaceful accommodation with Cuba. Ted Sorenson, President Kennedy's top speech writer, said the speech "would open a door to the Cuban leader." (Kennedy, by Michael Beschloss, p 659.)
In the Tampa motorcade, JFK supposedly told SS agent Floyd Boring to keep the other agents off the trunk of the presidential limo. (Death of a President p37) Boring later denied this to Vince Palamara, and photos from the motorcade show agents on the back of the car. The Miami threats against the president were not reported to those involved in planning the Texas trip.
The Dallas route was approved by the local host committee and White House representatives. (WR 2) According to William Manchester, the final route was approved "at a meeting in a private Dallas club. The participants - Secret Service agents and local businessmen - saw no need to consult the Vice President..." (Death of a President 6)
Ruby met with Bertha Cheek about her investing in the nightclub.
The FBI received the CIA photo of the heavy-set man in Mexico City, together with a report on Oswald's visit to the Cuban embassy. Both were forwarded to the Dallas office. (Inquest p75)
FBI office in Dallas has a meeting about the President's upcoming trip to Dallas; according to Hosty, both the FBI in Washington and in Dallas were first informed of the trip when they read about it in the paper over the weekend. Shanklin informed his agents that the SS didn't want the FBI's help in protecting JFK. (Assignment Oswald p3)
11/19/1963 (Tue) The motorcade began to be publicized. (WR 2) The Dallas Morning News and Times Herald mentioned the turn onto Houston and them Elm. (CD 320, WR 39) The Dallas Morning News gave the same information on both 11/19 and 11/20. (CD 320) But no map was published in either paper.
Dallas Morning News: "Gov. John Connally, luncheon speaker at the Texas Water Convervation Association meeting in Austin Monday, was excused as soon as he finished his speech. Sir, we excuse you, and you may get going and get back to your preparation for the Irish wake to be held here next Friday,' said Guy Jackson Jr. of Anahuac, luncheon master of ceremonies. President Kennedy will be the guest at a Democratic fund-raising dinner here next Friday."
LBJ took a Braniff flight to Dallas and spoke to the American Bottlers of Carbonated Beverages. (Death of a President p6)
Look magazine ran a photo essay by Fletcher Knebel on the making of the film Seven Days in May. The journalist revealed the rampant anxieties that the film's production had set off in Washington. "At the outset of filming, the moviemakers had a call from still another arm of government. The Secret Service was alarmed at a spurious report that the movie involved a President's assassination."
During the final week of Kennedy's life, the Wall St Journal acknowledged that there was general prosperity, but claimed there was an uneasiness about Kennedy attributable to his attempts to control the economy, as well as to excessive spending and the growth of government. (x Wall Street Journal, Nov. 19, 1963, 'The Anti-Business Image', p. 18) In a separate article it said that Kennedy's foreign aid had often fostered 'statist and socialistic institutions.'" (x Wall Street Journal, Nov. 19, 1963, 'Blunt Talk on a Blunt Tool', p. 18)."
FBI report of SA Benjamin Keutzer, dated November 25, 1963 in which he wrote that Mrs. Henrietta Vargas had reported that she and two friends had seen a rifle exchange between two men in cars near the TSBD on November 19, 1963. The matter was investigated. In his report SA William Brookhart wrote that SA Pinkston had learned from Sheriff Bill Decker of the DPD that deer season had officially opened in the State of Texas on Saturday, November 16, 1963 and; "literally thousands of Texans went deerhunting over the weekend of november 16-17, 1963, and many of these hunters still had their high-powered deer rifles in their automobiles during the week beginning November 18, 1963"
RFK calls JFK to see if he can squeeze Richard Helms into his schedule. The CIA claim hard evidence of Castro's attempt to overthrow the government of Venezuela. A half hour later, Helms and RFK walk into the Oval Office with a submachine gun recovered from an arms cache in Venezuela. On the stock was the official seal of Cuba. Knowing JFK 's consideration of a rapprochement with Castro, Helm 's visit was meant to torpedo any such notion. (Mahoney pp285-286)
The evidence challenging Roswell Gilpatric's contention he had resigned from the law firm representing General Dynamics came into the congressional hearings on Nov 19 and 20. "The tragic death of President Kennedy shocked the country and made it impossible to continue the TFX hearings." (Mollenhoff, The Pentagon)
Gordon Chase reported in a memo on the discussions between Attwood and Castro's aide de camp, Dr. Rene Vallejo, on a meeting in Cuba or New York. (White House, Talks with Cuba , November 19, 1963)
Gov. George Wallace appeared in Dallas and announced he would be a candidate for the Democratic presidential race in 1964.
Attwood spoke with Rene Vallejo by phone in Cuba; Castro was sitting by Vallejo's side. He wanted Attwood to find some way to come to Cuba. Then he called McGeorge Bundy and told him about his call to Cuba. (Conspiracy 430)
Jack Ruby told his tax attorney that he had suddenly managed to come up with the money to address his considerable back tax problems. On November 22, Ruby would be seen with $7,000 in cash at his bank and was arrested with $3,000 in cash in his possession. As of November 19th the supposedly cash strapped Ruby had begun talking to a realtor about a new location for his club, had inquired with someone in the travel business about a Caribbean cruise and told a friend that he planned on moving into a new apartment on Turtle Creek, at almost double his then current apartment rental rate. (Someone Would Have Talked) Ruby told his tax attorney that a "friend" would provide him money to settle his long-standing tax debts (then more than $39,000). (Ruby Cover-Up 49; Blakey)
Cambodia renounced US economic and military aid and asked US troops to leave: "By this measure we will be poorer but more indepenent." Norodom Sihanouk charged that US aid was being used against him and that the CIA was trying to oust him.
Communique indicated that Oswald had written to the Soviet Embassy in Washington, reporting that he had been to Mexico City and made contact with Kostikov. (Assignment Oswald 139)
Castro contacts reporter Jean Daniel and spends six hours talking to him about improving U.S.-Cuban relations. (Alleged Assassination Plots Involving Foreign Leaders, 4/23/76; Daniel, "When Castro Heard the News," New Republic, 12/7/63)
11/20/1963 (Wed) As the hand of the clock in Jean Daniel's hotel room neared 4:00 A.M. on November 20, Castro expressed his hope for Kennedy: "I cannot help hoping that a leader will come to the fore in North America (why not Kennedy, there are things in his favor! ), who will be willing to brave unpopularity, fight the trusts, tell the truth and, most important, let the various nations act as they see fit. Kennedy could still be this man. He still has the possibility of becoming, in the eyes of history, the greatest President of the United States, the leader who may at last understand that there can be coexistence between capitalists and socialists, even in the Americas. He would then be an even greater President than Lincoln. " (Jean Daniel, "When Castro Heard the News, " New Republic (December 7, 1963)
8:45 AM (EST) JFK had his last breakfast with Congressional leaders.
CIA officer telephones AM/LASH for meeting on Nov 22. As a signal that his request for weapons, specifically, a high-powered rifle with telescopic sights or some other weapon which could be used to assassinate Castro from a distance, will be granted, the officer states this is the meeting AM/LASH requested . This is the first indication that he might receive the specific support that he had requested. (Book V Final Report of the [Senate] Select Committee to Study Governmental Operations with respect to Intelligence Activities, 4/23/76; 1967 Inspector General 's Report, p 90)
In Nashville, Hoffa's lawyer is disbarred for trying to bribe a juror.
Rev. J. Sidlow Baxter tells the Baptist General Convention of Texas that the American people had made "one of the greatest blunders in its history when it put a Roman Catholic President in the White House."
10:00 AM Mary Dowling saw Oswald come into the Dobbs House restaurant, and JD Tippit was there. Oswald was supposed to be at work all day. Meanwhile, Ruth and Marina and their children go to a dental clinic.
10:30 AM Ralph Yates was driving on the R. L. Thornton Expressway. He noticed a man hitchhiking in Oak Cliff near the Beckley Avenue entrance to the expressway. Yates stopped to pick up the man. When the hitchhiker got into Yates's pickup truck, he was carrying what Yates described later, in a statement to the FBI, as "a package wrapped in brown wrapping paper about 4 feet to 4 1/2 feet long. " Yates told the man he could put the package in the back of the pickup. The man said the package had curtain rods in it, and he would rather carry it with him in the cab of the truck. (JFK and the Unspeakable)
8:30 PM (EST) Hickory Hill birthday party for Bobby Kennedy.
At Red Bird Air Field in Dallas, a young man and woman try to charter a plane for Friday afternoon, November 22, from Wayne January, owner of a private airline. From their questions, January suspects they may hijack the plane to Cuba. He rejects their offer. The man he sees waiting for the couple in their car he recognizes two days later from media pictures as Lee Harvey Oswald.
In Eunice, Louisiana, heroin addict Rose Cheramie tells Louisiana State Police lieutenant Francis Fruge that the two men with whom she stopped at the Silver Slipper Lounge that night, on a drive from Miami to Dallas, plan to kill President Kennedy when he comes to Dallas.
Bonnie Ray Williams told the WC that they began laying the new floor on the sixth floor of the TSBD on this day.
JFK had a White House dinner for the members of the Supreme Court. They joked with him about his upcoming trip to Texas: "We told him to watch out for those Texans; they were a wild bunch. All in fun, you know," Earl Warren recalled (Chief Justice p413)
Radio Havana accused JFK of "hypocrisy" in regard to the Alliance for Progress and attacked his 11/18 speech.
Texas oilman George H. W. Bush put an announcement in today's Dallas Morning News that he would be in Dallas to give a speech on the evening of 11/21.
The Morning News left out any mention of the Houston-to-Elm stretch in its description: "...Harwood, Main and Stemmons Freeway." (H 22 616) Morning News published an hour-by-hour itinerary of the President's visit to Texas (The Assassination Story 8).
From Mafia Kingfish by John Davis: "That same morning [Wednesday, November 20, 1963], in the center of Dallas, two police officers on routine patrol entered Dealey Plaza, through which the presidential motorcade would pass on Friday, and noticed several men standing behind a wooden fence on a grassy knoll overlooking the plaza. The men were engaged in mock target practice, aiming rifles over the fence, in the direction of the plaza."
Oswald is present in his boss's office (William Shelley) when a co-worker shows off a Mauser rifle and another rifle. On November 20th, Warren Caster, an employee of Southwestern Publishing Company that occupied part of the second floor in the Depository, brought a Mauser rifle and a .22 calibre rifle for his fellow employees to look at, a fact that was verified by numerous Depository employees. (WR 546-8)
Nixon flew to Dallas; he was then working as an attorney for Pepsi-Cola and was in Dallas to attend a Carbonated Bottlers' convention. During his stay met with with Don Kendall, President of Pepsi Cola Bottling Co.
11/21/1963 (Thu) A review by Edmond Taylor of Dulles's book The Craft of Intelligence (from The Reporter). Dulles convinces the reviewer that the Soviets are actively plotting to assassinate foreign leaders, and that the Kennedy administration's policy of accommodation with the USSR is wrong-headed because they will always be actively plotting to destroy our way of life.
This morning Oswald ate breakfast at Dobbs House restaurant.
Before leaving on his trip to Texas, President Kennedy, after being given a list of the most recent casualties in Vietnam, says to Assistant Press Secretary Malcolm Kilduff: "After I come back from Texas, that's going to change. Vietnam is not worth another American life. " Kennedy tells Forrestal that when he returned from Cambodia, "I want to start a complete and very profound review of how we got into this country [Vietnam]; what we thought we were doing; and what we now think we can do...I even want to think about whether or not we should be there." (JFK and Vietnam p487)
The "Wanted for Treason" anti-JFK leaflets were distributed in Dallas this morning. The SS originally thought Oswald had ordered these leaflets, since the order had Oswald's typical spelling errors, and the person who ordered them around 11/14 resembled Oswald (except for his hair) (H 25 657). Hosty visited SS headquarters and brought some of the leaflets with him. He didn't yet know there was to be a presidential motorcade. (H 4 460)
Dallas press states: "A weather bureau forecaster said Wednesday that rain appears likely Friday, when President Kennedy will fly into Dallas." (Act of Treason)
DNC advance man Marty Underwood gets "all sorts of rumors", eighteen hours before the assassination, that Kennedy was to be killed in Dallas. Marty even conveys this to JFK, who tells him, "Marty, you worry about me too much." (Palamara interview) Indeed, JFK told San Antonio Congressman Henry Gonzalez, "Henry, the Secret Service told me they took care of everything. There's nothing to worry about." (High Treason)
When Dallas Police communications coordinator Margie Barnes arrives at work this morning, she is surprised to find an unsolicited and unexpected invitation to the President's luncheon at the Dallas Trade Mart. Margie's job is to receive emergency calls and issue information directly to the police dispatch officer in the downtown division headquarters.
November 2122, U.N. Ambassador Adlai Stevenson and Senator William Fulbright warned JFK not to go to Dallas. (Manchester, pp. 3839. Former agent and Chief of the White House Signal Corps Col. George J. McNally wrote on p. 216 of his book A Million Miles of Presidents that there were "many warnings of danger and an antagonistic attitude to be expected in Texas â€¦".)
10:30 or 11:00 AM Jack Ruby (speaking later to FBI) says he drives a young friend, Connie Trammel, to the office of Lamar Hunt. Ruby says he visits one of two attorneys in the building. He can't remember which one.
This morning, Oswald asks Buell Frazier whether he can ride home with him this afternoon. Frazier, surprised, asks him why he is going to Irving on Thursday night rather than Friday. Oswald replies, "I'm going home to get some curtain rods ... [to] put in an apartment."
10:30 AM Ruby left his apartment and arrived at AAA Bonding Service to discuss a contract dispute with one of his dancers. (FBI interview with Max Rudberg, CD 86) He then spent two hours with Connie Trammel in her job hunting in Dallas. (FBI interview with Trammel, CD 106)
10:32 AM A high flying U-2 spy plane, piloted by Captain Joe G. Hyde, Jr., disappears from radar and crashes into the Gulf of Mexico after flying a mission over Cuba. The US Navy locates the wreckage in about 100 feet of water and discovers that both the pilot and the ejector seat are gone. ("Wreckage ofU-2 Plane Found in Gulf of Mexico," New York Times, 11/22/63, p. 2.)
10:45 AM (EST) the helicopters lifted off the White House lawn for the 12-minute flight to Andrews Air Force Base. Two-year-old John John rode along, begging to go to Texas with his father.
11:45 or 12:00 PM Jack Ruby is seen in the Records Building by Dallas Police Officer W. F. Dyson. Ruby enters the sixth floor office of Assistant District Attorney Ben Ellis and hands out Carousel Club cards to Dyson and other policemen in the office. Ruby introduces himself to Ellis, telling him, "you probably don't know me now, but you will."
Around this time, Wayne January is working side by side with a Cuban born pilot who is to fly a newly purchased DC-3 out of The Redbird Airfield tomorrow. Since early this morning, January has been helping the pilot complete a preflight inspection in order for the plane. The pilot becomes uneasy and finally turns to January and says: "They are going to kill your president." January will eventually tell researcher Matthew Smith that the Cuban pilots goes on to say: "I was a mercenary pilot, hired by the CIA." The pilot continues: "They are not only going to kill the President. They are going to kill Robert Kennedy and any other Kennedy that gets in their position." When January expresses his skepticism, the pilot replies "You will see." The conversation is dropped for a while, then the pilot breaks the silence: "They want Robert Kennedy real bad." When January asks why, the pilot replies "Never mind. You don't need to know. Let's get this job done, time is running out. My boss wants to return to Florida; he thought we would be through today." (Summers, Conspiracy)
1:00 PM (Approx) Ruby stopped at the Merchants State Bank and paid the rent for his club. (FBI report, CD 223)
1:30 PM JFK and his entourage arrive in San Antonio; LBJ was there to greet him. They rode in a motorcade which ended at Brooks Air Force Base. Kennedy gave a speech in San Antonio.
2:30 - 7:15 PM Ruby is seen on the 400 block of Milan St in Houston between 2:30 and 7:15pm by five witnesses. He was also seen near the Rice Hotel, where JFK stayed. (12/2/1963 SS report; CD 2399)
3:00 PM Ruby got to the Carousel Club; he was running both the Carousel and the Vegas Clubs at this time, because his sister Eva, who normally ran the Vegas, was in the hospital. (H 15 323) He stayed at the Carousel for over four hours.
3:52 PM Air Force One leaves Kelly Field, San Antonio.
4:15 PM (EST) Cabinet plane leaves California. To Secretary of the Treasury Douglas Dillon, JFK has said: "Oh God, how I wish we could change places."
4:37 PM Air Force One lands in Houston (Manchester)
5:00 PM Houston motorcade on the Gulf Freeway.
5:00 PM Lee Harvey Oswald catches a ride from work to Irving with Buell Frazier and arrives at the Paine house unannounced.
6:05 PM A special cargo plane arrives at Love Field in Dallas with the presidential limo and one other vehicle to be used in tomorrow's Dallas motorcade. Presidential Limousine SS100X: 1961 Lincoln Continental Four-door convertible limousine, VIN # 1Y86H405950.
Four times this evening, Oswald asks Marina to move with him to a nicer apartment in Dallas. Each time, she refuses. He repeatedly tried to make up with Marina, but she gave him the brush-off. (H 1 65-66; Marina and Lee 521,523) Ruth told Lee, "Our President is coming to town" and he replied, "Ah, yes." (H 3 46,49)
7:30 PM this evening, Jack Ruby drives Larry Crafard to the Vegas Club which Crafard is overseeing because Ruby's sister, Eva Grant, who normally manages the club, is convalescing from a recent illness. After this, Ruby returns to the Carousel Club and reportedly converses with Lawrence Meyers, a Chicago businessman, for an hour. (H 15 626,628)
8:25 PM "JFK and LBJ have words." (Manchester)
8:30 PM SS Agents Kinney and Hickey are helping Agents Sorrels and Lawson check, once more, the speaker's stand at the Dallas Trade Mart, the seating arrangements, the kitchen, and the exits. This security check has already been done several times before. It will be done again tomorrow morning.
8:35 PM (EST) Cabinet plane lands in Honolulu (Manchester).
8:58 PM JFK in Houston Coliseum. LBJ was seen and photographed in the Houston Coliseum with JFK at a dinner and speech. They flew out around 10pm and arrived at Carswell (Air Force Base in northwest Fort Worth) at 11:07 Thursday night. (Manchester)
9:00 PM Marina Oswald says this is the time Oswald goes to bed after watching TV. At this same time, however, a young man knocks on the door of apartment #206 at 223 S. Ewing. The apartment is occupied by a SMU professor. The knock is answered by the Professor's friend, Helen McIntosh, who greets an unknown young man. When the man asks for Jack Ruby, the Professor tells Miss McIntosh that Ruby lives in the adjoining apartment, #207. Tomorrow, Miss McIntosh sees photographs of Oswald on television and realizes that he was the young man who appeared at the door of the apatment the previous evening.
9:45 to 10:45pm (Approx) Ruby had dinner with Dallas businessman Ralph Paul at the Egyptian Lounge. He spoke to Don Campbell of the Dallas Morning News (whom the FBI mistakenly called "Connors"). Then he returned to the club. Ruby reportedly dines at the Egyptian Lounge with his old friend and financial backer Ralph Paul. The Lounge is run by Joseph and Sam Campisi. Joseph acknowledges being very close to Carlos Marcello -- each Christmas he sends Marcello and his associates 260 pounds of Italian sausage. He also makes as many as twenty telephone calls a day to New Orleans.
10pm Capt. Fritz's WC testimony: "Well, we had taken some precautions but those were changed. We were told in the beginning that we would be in the parade directly behind it, I don't know whether it was the second or third car, but the Vice President's car, that we would be directly behind that, and we did make preparation for that. But at 10 o'clock the night before the parade, Chief Stevenson called me at home and told me that had been changed, and I was assigned with two of my officers to the speakers' stand at the Trade Mart."
Tony Zoppi (Entertainment Editor of The Dallas Morning News) and Don Safran (Entertainment Editor of the Dallas Times Herald) saw Nixon at the Empire Room at the Statler-Hilton. He walked in with Joan Crawford (Movie actress). Robert Clary (of Hogan's Heroes fame) stopped his show to point them out, saying ". . . either you like him or you don't." Zoppi thought that was in poor taste, but Safran said Nixon laughed. Zoppi's deadline was 11pm, so he stayed until 10:30 or 10:45 and Nixon was still there."
11:07 PM LBJ's plane, Air Force Two, lands at Carswell AFB in Fort Worth and Johnson arrives at the Worth Hotel at midnight. The presidential party landed in Fort Worth and went to the Hotel Texas at 11:50pm. Before arriving in Fort Worth JFK had already been in four motorcades.
Madeleine Duncan Brown, LBJ's mistress later claims that LBJ arrives at Clint Murchinson's home in Dallas around 11 PM.
11:30 PM Marina Oswald says that this is the time she goes to bed. She notices that LHO is still awake. (Manchester)
11:50 PM The motorcade to the Hotel Texas arrived about 11:50 and LBJ was again photographed. He stayed in the Will Rogers suite on the 13th floor and William Manchester (The Death of a President) says he was up late. Some accounts say that JFK and LBJ argued about which car Sen. Ralph Yarborough should ride in during the motorcade.
The Dallas afternoon paper Times Herald front-pages a map of the motorcade route. Here the artist, Pat Uthoff, has plainly included the Houston to Elm section.
Richard Nixon speaks to the Pepsi people at the Trade Mart in Dallas, Texas today.
Ambassador Henry Cabot Lodge flies to Honolulu from Vietnam on the first leg of a trip to Washington, where he plans to tell JFK that the situation is much worse than they thought.
In 1963, Rep. Thomas was seriously considering not running for a fifteenth term. Local Democrats organized an appreciation dinner on November 21, 1963 with over 3200 attendees to persuade him to run for another term. JFK joked about talking Congressman Thomas into not resigning, hoping he would stay in office as long as JFK did, though he didn't know how long that might be.
During a visit to the Desert Inn in Las Vegas, Johnny Rosselli visits Guy Banister and drops off the FBI surveillance roster for the past nine days.
Jim Braden, after informing his parole officer of the trip, arrives in Dallas. Braden is a man with a police record stretching back to 1934 for such crimes as burglary, embezzlement, mail fraud, and conspiracy, including several arrests in Dallas. Braden's real name is Eugene Hale Brading. Brading checked in with a Dallas probation officer and "advised that he planned to see Lamar Hunt and other oil speculators while here." Brading stayed at the Cabana Hotel.
Jack Ruby is also at the Hunt offices about this same time. Braden, along with ex-convict Morgan Brown is staying at Suite 301 in the Cabana Motel overlooking Stemmons Freeway, the same motel visited by Jack Ruby later this evening. They have reservations through Nov. 24th. Also staying at The Cabana Motel are two New York businessmen, Lawrence and Edward Meyers. Lawrence Meyers is a personal friend of Jack Ruby. Edward Meyers is in Dallas to attend a bottlers convention -- the same conven

Tracy Riddle · 14-03-2014, 03:04 AM

1995 - Mexico bankruptcy and bailout, Japanese banking crisis, Owning the Weather Air Force paper

Pellegrino Commission in Italy to investigate Gladio
Documents from Federico Umberto D'Amato (former Mussolini chief of police) discovered, outlining secret state
For the first time, though not the last, the government of Sudan offers the US all of their files about bin Laden and al-Qaeda. The US turns down the offer.
Omnibus Counterterrorism Act of 1995 in US
1/1995 Philippine police investigating a possible attack on the Pope uncover plans for Operation Bojinka, an al-Qaeda operation connected to 1993 WTC bomber Ramzi Yousef. Parts of the plan call for crashing up to 12 hijacked airliners simultaneously into civilian targets. The WTC, CIA headquarters, Pentagon and the Sears Tower are mentioned as specific targets
1/4/1995 Newt Gingrich becomes Speaker of the House
1/25/1995 Russian military radar misinterpreted a weather rocket launched from Norway as a possible attack on Russia.
1/31/1995 a member of Reagan's National Security Council and co-author of his National Security Directives, Howard Teicher, signed a sworn affidavit describing Reagan's secret arming of Iraq.
2/9/1995 Mexico: the federal government suddenly announces arrest warrants for those it accuses of being the "top Zapatista leadership", unilaterally breaking the cease-fire, and launches a vast military offensive against the EZLN
3/15/1995 In unpublicized sessions before the President's Committee on Radiation, New Orleans therapist Valerie Wolf introduces two of her patients who have uncovered memories of being part of extensive CIA brainwashing programs as young children
4/17/1995 Former Defense Secretary Robert McNamara reveals his early doubts about Vietnam War in upcoming memoirs
4/17/1995 Clinton signs an executive order today overhauling government secrecy rules and requiring
4/19/1995 Oklahoma City bombing at Alfred P. Murrah Federal Building
4/21/1995 Timothy McVeigh arrested
5/18/1995 GOP House approved a budget resolution that would balance the budget by 2002; the vote was 238-193.
5/22/1955 Supreme Court ruled 5-4 that term-limit laws passed by the states, affecting federal representatives, were unconstitutional.
5/23/1995 remains of Murrah Federal Building are demolished
6/7/1995 The Assassination Records Review Board (ARRB) makes its first decision today regarding JFK assassination documents cited for postponed release.
6/23/1995 Wall St Journal reported that Republican Congressional leaders were targeting the Assassination Records Review Board for elimination to save money.
6/28/1995 Webster Hubbell sentenced to 21 months for fraud and evasion charges.
6/29/1995 New Orleans Parish District Attorney Harry Connick tells a federal board that most of the files compiled by Jim Garrison in his JFK investigation have been "pilfered."
7/1995 Monica Lewinsky began her White House internship
7/1995 Francois Reyskens, on his way to present evidence against Marc Dutroux, fell under a train.
7/11/1995 Clinton announced his decision to restore relations with Vietnam
8/4/1995 Under the supervision of Rep. Thomas Bliley, House passes major overhaul of telecommunications laws, relaxing ownership rules and deregulating cable rates.
8/1995 Guy Goebels, police inspector investigating Dutroux matter, supposedly shot himself.
8/10/1995 The House Banking Committee, chaired by Republican Jim Leach of Iowa, finishes its Whitewater examination, finding no illegalities.
8/16/1995 Perry Raymond Russo, star witness in former New Orleans District Attorney Jim Garrison's failed effort to prosecute Clay Shaw for conspiring to assassinate JFK, is found dead at his home in New Orleans.
8/18/1995 A grand jury charges James and Susan McDougal and Arkansas Gov. Jim Guy Tucker with bank fraud in conjunction with questionable loans.
8/21/1995 Kenneth Trentadue tortured and murdered in jail in connection with Oklahoma City bombing
9/15/1995 NYT reported that Frederic Whitehurst, a special agent assigned to the FBI crime lab, charged that the FBI altered, tampered with or falsified evidence in a number of important cases.
9/20/1995 The ARRB discloses the possible existence of a long-sought CIA tape recording made of a caller who identified himself as LHO to the Soviet Embassy in Mexico City on October 1, 1963.
9/24/1995 OKC first responder Dr. Don Chumley killed in small plane crash
9/28/1995 Israel and PLO sign agreement at the White House extending Palestinian rule to most of West Bank.
10/1/1995 Rep. Mel Reynolds (D-Ill.) resigns after he's convicted for having sex with a 16-year-old girl.
10/3/1995 O.J. Simpson acquitted
10/19/1995 House votes to overhaul Medicare, encouraging seniors to enroll in private health plans. Plan stalls in Senate.
late 1995: King Fahd of Saudi Arabia suffers a severe stroke.
10/21/1995 Unocal signs a contract with Turkmenistan to export $8 billion worth of natural gas through a $3 billion pipeline which would go from Turkmenistan through Afghanistan to Pakistan.
10/31/1995 ARRB mailed Richard Case Nagell a letter seeking access to documents he claimed to have about a conspiracy to kill President Kennedy. The ARRB had also decided to get a sworn deposition from Nagell.
11/1/1995 The day after the ARRB's letter was mailed from Washington, D.C., Richard Case Nagell was found dead in the bathroom of his Los Angeles house. The autopsy's conclusion was that he died from a heart attack.
11/2/1995 Israel begins handing over police stations to Palestinians in West Bank. Shortly before the assassination of Yitzhak Rabin, Clinton was arguing with Congress about moving the US embassy from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem, which the Republican leadership favored and the President opposed.
11/4/1995 Yitzhak Rabin assassination
11/9/1995 In Vietnam, Robert McNamara met with Gen. Vo Nguyen Giap. Giap, who was chief strategist for the communist forces, said there was no Tonkin Gulf attack on 8/4/1964; he admitted his navy attacked a US vessel on 8/2/1964.
11/13/1995 Clinton vetoes two funding bills he calls "extreme proposals," forcing a six-day shutdown of the federal government. Newt later says he placed a number of troublesome measures in one of the vetoed bills because he felt snubbed by Clinton on the flight back from Rabin's funeral.
11/19/1995 Poland: Lech Walesa is narrowly defeated for reelection.
11/29/1995 Following reporting by Mother Jones and others, the FEC charges GOPAC, Newt Gingrich's fundraising machine, with campaign finance violations.
11/1995 Bruno Tagliaferro found dead after claiming he had a list of people connected to Marc Dutroux
12/14/1995 Clinton-brokered peace agreement to end the war in Bosnia signed in Paris.
12/22/1995 Oliver Stone's film Nixon premieres, starring Anthony Hopkins.

Marlene Zenker · 14-03-2014, 03:48 AM

Truly incredible work, thank you so much Tracy.

***Magda Hassan*** · 14-03-2014, 04:03 AM

Marlene Zenker Wrote:Truly incredible work, thank you so much Tracy.

Incredible indeed! Good work Tracy and thank you!

***David Guyatt*** · 14-03-2014, 09:15 AM

I'll add my thanks too, Tracy. That must've taken a heck of a lot of time.

R.K. Locke · 14-03-2014, 08:39 PM

This is excellent. I've been working on something similar for a while but it has been slow going. Great work, Tracy.

Tracy Riddle · 15-03-2014, 12:46 AM

Thanks, everyone.

"Well, it's 1969 okay - war across the USA" - Iggy and the Stooges

1/1/1969 The Omnibus Crime Act of 1968 went into effect, making wiretapping a federal offense.
1/1/1969 Approximately 40 members of People's Democracy (PD) began a four-day march from Belfast across Northern Ireland to Derry. The Northern Ireland Civil Rights Association (NICRA) and some nationalists in Derry had advised against the march. The march was modelled on Martin Luther King's Selma to Montgomery march. The first day involved a walk from Belfast to Antrim.
1/4/1969 A series of interviews with Truman in 1961 and '62 were publicized; at the time, Truman remarked that Nixon couldn't be elected "because Nixon is a shifty-eyed, goddamn liar, and people know it...I can't figure out how he came so close to getting elected president in 1960...I can't see how the son of a bitch even carried one state."
1/4/1969 Northern Ireland: the fourth and final day of the People's Democracy (PD) march took the marchers from Claudy to Derry. Seven miles from its destination, the march was ambushed by a loyalist mob at Burntollet Bridge.
1/5/1969 Nixon appoints Henry Cabot Lodge as negotiator at Paris peace talks.
1/7/1969 Sirhan's trial opens in Los Angeles.
1/10/1969 Dallas Police Deputy Buddy Walthers, a JFK assassination witness, is killed in a hotel room while trying to arrest a wanted criminal without a warrant.
1/11/1969 NYT reported that the National Commission on the Causes and Prevention of Violence found that J. Edgar Hoover "helped spread the view among the police ranks that any kind of mass protest is due to a conspiracy promulgated by agitators, often Communists, 'who misdirected otherwise contented people'."
1/11/1969 Northern Ireland: a Civil Rights march held in Newry ended in violence and there were also disturbances in Derry. In Newry youths attacked the Royal Ulster Constabulary (RUC) and overturned and burnt several of their vehicles.
1/13/1969 Nixon was quoted as saying, "if we are not worthy of support from the intellectual community we are not going to get it...I consider myself an intellectual...we want to have a continuing relationship with the best brains in this country, with the colleges, universities, foundations and business organizations." (Los Angeles Times)
1/13/1969 Memo from James Jesus Angleton to J. Edgar Hoover ("Subject: Garrison and the Kennedy Assassination: Bernard Fensterwald et al."): "Fensterwald, who said he was setting up an office which would open in a week, left the Senate earlier this week after twelve years as counsel for several committees." Angleton recommended checking into the backgrounds of Fensterwald and three other Warren Commission critics. Segments of the memo were deleted before its release.
1/15/1969 The Pentagon Papers study is officially completed.
1/15/1969 The first Soviet space station is put into orbit.
1/16/1969 Hearings were held in January of 1969 in New Orleans to determine if the U.S. Archivist should be compelled to produce autopsy materials for the Clay Shaw Trial. During this legal battle, the Justice Department made public the Clark Panel report, which had been completed and signed nearly a year earlier but kept hidden.
1/16/1969 Czechoslovak student Jan Palach sets himself afire in protest.
1/17/1969 Roy Cohn is indicted for bribery, conspiracy and extortion.
1/17/1969 Government accuses IBM of monopolizing the computer market.
1/17/1969 Clark Panel report on the JFK autopsy materials is released; the existence of the Panel was not made public until this day. The New York Times announced: "Inquiry Upholds Warren Report - Finds Autopsy Photos Show 2 Shots Killed President"; story by Fred Graham, later of CBS News. Garrison's assistant, James Alcock, called the move by Ramsey Clark a deliberate attempt to interfere with the picking of a jury in the Shaw trial.
1/17/1969 FBI memo recommending that "the extensive communist influence on King and King's highly immoral personal behavior" be made known to Nixon and John Mitchell so they could head off any attempts to make MLK's birthday a national holiday. A memo to this effect was sent to Mitchell by Hoover 1/23.
1/20/1969 Richard M. Nixon inaugurated as President. His speech sounded very similar in spots to JFK's inaugural address. "Peace does not come through wishing for it. There is no substitute for days and even years of patient and prolonged diplomacy." During his parade down Pennsylvania Avenue to the White House, the limousine bearing the Nixon family is pelted with sticks, stones, empty beer cans, and homemade smoke bombs.
1/20/1969 LBJ retires to his Texas ranch, where he devotes himself to writing his version of the presidential years, "The Vantage Point" (1971) and to the establishment of both a library to house his presidential papers and the Lyndon Baines Johnson School of Public Affairs at the University of Texas in Austin. He sees a psychiatrist and continues to have heart problems.
1/20/1969 On his last day as Atty General, Ramsey Clark ordered the Justice Dept to withhold from Jim Garrison the JFK autopsy photos and X-rays. (New York Times 1/20, 21/1969)
1/21/1969 Nuclear reactor accident at Lucens, Canton of Vaud, Switzerland
1/21/1969 Jury selection in the Clay Shaw trial began. The first prospective juror examined is promptly excused. His name: John Kennedy. This trial will last 39 days and will be one of the best publicized in American history.
1/23/1969 James Kirkwood appeared on WDSU's Midday talk show, and indicated that he thought Shaw was innocent. He quickly regretted making this comment during the jury selection process.
1/25/1969 Nixon memo proposing that the "peaceful uses of atomic explosives" be explored further. (Secret Files p12)
1/25/1969 Four-party peace talks open in Paris. Henry Cabot Lodge urges a demilitarized zone as the first "practical move toward peace" and a mutual withdrawal of "external" military forces.
1/26/1969 Dr. Henry Delaune murdered. Brother-in-law and sometimes assistant to Nicholas Chetta, Corner of New Orleans and a key witness in Jim Garrison's case against Clay Shaw.
1/28/1969 Herb Kalmbach opened a bank account in Newport Beach, Calif. Over the next year or so, he kept up to half a million in this account. Earlier this month, Kalmbach received the GOP 1968 campaign surplus, estimated at $1.2 to $1.7 million.
1/28/1969 Carlos Bringuier wrote to H.L. Hunt looking for financial aid in getting his book, Red Friday, published. (Man Who Knew Too Much 592)
2/2/1969 Israeli occupation forces wielded nightsticks in Gaza to herd some 2000 rioting Arab high school girls back into classrooms. Over 90 students were injured.
2/3/1969 Eduardo Mondlane, leader of Frelimo independence movement, assassinated in Dar-es-Salaam.
2/3/1969 Rev. Carl McIntire began a "vigorous campaign" over his broadcast network for 24 straight days. He ranted against the ecumenical movement, attacked Existentialism, and talked about the upcoming 1970 census in frightening terms: "The citizens of the United States are confronted with one of the most direct challenges to their liberty and constitutional rights that they have ever faced."
2/4/1969 Memo from Houston CIA office to the CIA Director of Domestic Contact Service titled 'H.L. Hunt Interest in Garrison Investigation of Kennedy Assassination.' Part of the memo, written by CIA officer J. Walter Moore, is deleted. "Mr. H.L. Hunt has been very concerned that District Attorney Garrison will try to involve him in the Kennedy assassination. He asked his Security Director [Paul Rothermel], a former FBI agent, to keep up with developments in the case. Since [deleted] has been fired by Garrison, he has approached [deleted] for a job with the H.L. Hunt Company. He is interested in writing a book about the assassination and wants Mr. Hunt to sponsor him...[deleted] said he would relay any information he might receive that Garrison planned to involve the Central Intelligence Agency or subpoena any of its representatives in the trial against Clay Shaw."
2/5/1969 An all-male jury is seated for the Shaw trial.
2/5/1969 Nixon memo to Haldeman: "I would like to get Eugene McCarthy down for a visit...I think it would be well to worry Teddy a bit in renewing my acquaintance with McCarthy." (Secret Files 14)
2/6/1969 Nixon announces that reduction of US troops is contingent on progress at the peace talks.
2/6/1969 Jim Garrison's opening statement in the Shaw trial. He charged that Shaw had conspired with Dave Ferrie, Lee Harvey Oswald and others to murder JFK. "The murder had been planned during the summer and fall of 1963 at two parties held in New Orleans."
2/9/1969 Gen. Creighton Adams requests B-52 bombing of a Communist base camp inside Cambodia.
2/12/1969 Rothermel to Hunt memo discovered by Bud Fensterwald in the HSCA's files stated, "[William] Wood said that Garrison had on four or five occasions ordered him to come to Dallas to reassure the Hunts that Garrison was not after them. Wood said it got to be embarrassing to do this, and he questioned Garrison's motives." Wood was afraid that Garrison was out to get him and thought that "Harold Weisberg and Gary Shoener are behind his being dismissed, and thinks they have complete control of the Clay Shaw trial and Garrison."
2/12/1969 After six weeks of preliminaries and jury selection, Sirhan Bishara Sirhan stands trial in the Los Angeles County Superior Court.
2/13/1969 Abraham Zapruder appears as a prosecution witness in the Clay Shaw trial in New Orleans. He identifies the film shown at the trial as identical to the film he shot in Dallas, as the film was shown for the first time in public. It is shown 5 times today, altogether. By the end of the case, it will have been shown 5 more times, once frame by frame. While the film is in Jim Garrison's possession, many copies are covertly made. Garrison lets Mark Lane make 100 copies for distribution "to colleges and universities." Copies begin surfacing all over the country; some are 9th or 10th generation copies.
2/13/1969 An Evans and Novak column remarked how many Republicans were angry that Nixon was leaving so many Democrats in power in the executive branch.
2/14/1969 CIA memo: H.L. Hunt was so concerned about Jim Garrison's snooping around that he "Asked his security director, a former FBI agent, to keep up with developments in the case." "Mr. H.L. Hunt has been very concerned that District Attorney Garrison will try to involve him in the Kennedy Assassination." The memo was written by J. Walter Moore, the Dallas CIA Domestic Contacts man. (Killing the Truth 491)
2/16/1969 Columnist Carl Rowan wrote, "Nixon is clearly not what he said he was, not what Democrats feared he was, nor even what Republicans hoped he was during the presidential campaign." (Washington Star)
2/18/1969 Clyde Johnson, a former Kentwood, Louisiana Preacher is scheduled to testify against Clay Shaw regarding the personal relationship between Clay Shaw and Oswald. He never testifies because he is severely beaten. Previously he told Jim Garrison that on September 2, 1963, from 2:00 to 9:00 PM, he had spoken with Ruby, Clay Shaw, and Oswald at the Jack Tar Capital House in Baton Rouge, Louisiana.
2/22/1969 Robert Frazier of the FBI testified at the Shaw trial. He testified that the "almost intact bullet, two bullet fragments, one a nose and the other a base fragment, three small fragments found in the limousine, and a lead smear taken from the interior of the limousine windshieldâ€¦allâ€¦had the same metallic composition." Frazier said that the hole in the back of Connally's shirt was "slightly elongated, not a regular round holeâ€¦an irregular tear accompanied by an egg-shaped hole." (Times-Picayune 2/23)
2/23/1969 Haig, Haldeman and Kissinger, in Brussels with Nixon on a European trip, agreed that a secret bombing of Cambodia should begin. (General's Progress 138) Though the bombing would be no secret to the Cambodians or the Communists, it would be kept secret from the American people and Congress. Nixon would later write, "We wanted to avoid the domestic uproar that might result from a publicized strike." (No More Vietnams 108)
2/24/1969 Stewart Alsop wrote in Newsweek, "a great many people who supposed or at least suspected that Mr. Nixon was a sort of human monster have discovered that he isn't." At this point many liberals were surprised (and many conservatives disappointed) at how Nixon was not moving to abandon Democratic programs and ideals.
2/24/1969 Dr. Finck testifies at Shaw trial.
2/27 or 28/1969 Clay Shaw took the stand at his trial, and denied ever knowing Oswald or Ferrie; using an alias; any association with the CIA; the Clinton trip; and said that he liked President Kennedy. (Times-Picayune 2/28/1969)
2/28/1969 Los Angeles court refuses Sirhan's request to be executed.
2/28/1969 The Clay Shaw trial lasted about three weeks, and went to the jury on the evening of February 28, 1969. Jury deliberates 54 minutes; returns unanimous verdict (reached on first ballot) at 1:02 a.m.: not guilty. Uproar in court, applause, cheers, cries of No! No! Judge Haggerty asks prosecution if it wishes the jury polled; Alcock, slumped in his chair, shakes his head. Alcock has no comment on leaving court. Garrison not present when verdict is read, having left after making closing argument, 11:30 p.m.; says on leaving, "No matter how this thing ends, I will not hold a news conference."
2/1969 Reader's Digest published an interview with Admiral John S. McCain, C-in-C of the Pacific Theater. He said, "We have the enemy licked now. He is beaten. We have the initiative in all areas. The enemy cannot achieve a military victory; he cannot even mount another major offensive. We are in the process of eliminating his remaining capability to threaten the security of South Vietnam...My optimism is based on hard military realism." Reader's Digest quoted Hanson Baldwin, the NYT military correspondent: "The enemy has lost the war militarily. The signs of deterioration are plain."
3/1/1969 The New York Times followed the acquittal of Clay L. Shaw with a renewed offensive against previous criticism of the Warren Report.
3/1-7/1969 Soviet and East German (GDR) troops hold maneuvers in the central and western parts of the GDR. On those grounds, traffic is disrupted between West Berlin and West Germany.
3/2/1969 Nixon returns from 8-day trip to Europe, visiting leaders of Belgium, Britain, Italy, France and West Germany.
3/2/1969 NY Times editorial referred to Garrison's "obsessional conviction about the fraudulent character of the Warren Commission" as a "fantasy." The "News of the Week in Review" this day carried a piece by Sidney Zion, "Garrison Flops on the Conspiracy Theory," which maintained, in essence, that Garrison had "restored the credibility of the Warren Report." The Times ignored the fact that the jury had been charged solely with the duty of determining the guilt or innocence of Mr. Shaw, not with determining the validity of the Warren Report.
3/2-15/1969 Soviet and Chinese troops fight in border skirmishes. This results in personnel movements in the Soviet Army in Germany, and eventually becomes a source of pressure on Soviet leaders to reduce their commitments in Europe.
3/6/1969 Sirhan testifies that he doesn't remember killing RFK.
3/7/1969 Nixon addressed the top personnel at the CIA: "It has been truly said that the CIA is a professional organization. That is one of the reasons that when the new administration came in and many changes were made, as they should be made in our American political system after an election, and a change of parties, as far as the executive branch is concerned, I did not make a change...I concluded that Dick Helms was the best man in the country to be Director of the CIA-and that is why we have him here...Going back during the 8 years I was Vice President, I sat on the National Security Council and there learned to respect the organization, its Director, and its reports that were made to the Council...I look upon this organization as not one that is necessary for the conduct of conflict or war, or call it what you may, but in the final analysis is one of the great instruments of our Government for the preservation of peace, for the avoidance of war..."
3/9/1969 The Smothers Brothers Comedy Hour is canceled by CBS-TV for its controversial, anti-Establishment content.
3/10/1969 Supreme Court ruled on three cases involving secretly recorded conversations of criminal suspects. The Court turned the cases over to the trial judge to decided on their legality.
3/10/1969 James Earl Ray pleads guilty to murder of MLK, is sentenced to 99 years in prison. The "mini-trial" before Judge W. Preston Battle lasted less than 2.5 hours. He stated that he could not agree with Clark and Hoover that there had been no conspiracy. Within three days he would repudiate his admission of guilt, saying he'd been misled and coerced by his lawyers and the federal government.
3/11/1969 In a declassified memo dated March 11, 1969, JFK autopsy doctor Pierre Finck meticulously recounted that on February 16, 1969 he had received a telephone call from "E. F. Wegmann, a defense attorney for Clay Shaw," who "defends the conclusions of the Warren Commission and wanted me to come to New Orleans to testify." After advising his superiors of the request, and after (inexplicably) notifying the Deputy Assistant Attorney General, Carl Eardley, Finck's memo recounts that he then went to Eardley's office and reviewed numerous documents pertaining to JFK's autopsy. After that, Finck reports, "Eardley called me â€¦ at home notifying me that he had a check and a D. C. Court Order for me to appear in the New Orleans court." Finck then flew to New Orleans and met privately with Shaw's defense team prior to taking the stand. Finck also said that the Assistant U. S. Attorney in New Orleans "called me at the hotel to offer his help."[171] However, Finck's damaging testimony was not exactly what Justice had hoped for when it had directed the elaborate choreography between the feds and Shaw's defense team. Justice then rushed to the rescue. To refute Finck, it called Boswell in. Both in JAMA and under oath to the ARRB, Boswell explained the rest of the story. He said that the Justice Department was "really upset" when Pierre Finck had testified that a general, and not chief pathologist Humes, was in charge of JFK's autopsy. "So," Boswell testified, "(Justice) put me on a plane that day to New Orleans." "They (the Justice Department) â€¦ talked to me and tried to get me to agree that (Finck) was very strange â€¦." Then, Boswell explained, "They showed me the transcript of Pierre (Finck's) testimony for the past couple of days, and I spent all night reviewing that testimony." The Justice Department's obvious purpose, Boswell admitted, was to prepare him "to refute Finck's testimony." Ultimately, however, Boswell was never called to the stand.
3/14/1969 Nixon announces his plans to proceed with a revised anti-ballistic missile (ABM) defense plan. It is called the "Safeguard" system to replace LBJ's proposed "Sentinel" plan and is designed to protect US missile sites rather than US cities.
3/15/1969 Nixon orders bombing of Viet Cong sanctuaries in neutral Cambodia; three days later US B-52s strike, and continued through 4/1970. The bombing was not revealed to the public until later.
3/17/1969 Operation Menu was the codename for secret US bombing of alleged North Vietnamese strongholds and supply lines in Cambodia during the Vietnam War in 1969. The bombing of a nation the US was not at war with, began with Operation Breakfast on March 17, 1969 and was conducted in secret until the New York Times broke the story on May 8, 1969.
3/25/1969 Pakistan: Ayub Khan resigns as a result of increasing violence and unrest. He turned over the government to Gen. Agha Mohammed Yahya Khan, Army commander-in-chief.
3/28/1969 Former president Dwight D. Eisenhower dies.
3/29/1969 US combat deaths in Vietnam reach 33,641, exceeding those of the Korean war.
3/29/1969 An ex-serviceman named Ron Ridenhour (a helicopter gunner) wrote a letter concerning what had been told him about the My Lai massacre by 4 men of C Company. He sent copies to President Nixon; 23 members of Congress; The Secretaries of State, Army and Defense; and the present chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, William Westmoreland, who initiated an army investigation.
3/31/1969 The judge in the James Earl Ray case, W. Preston Battle, died suddenly in his office of natural causes.
3/1969 Mario Puzo's novel, The Godfather, is published.
3/1969 Clay Blair's book The Strange Case of James Earl Ray is published.
4/1969 Patrick Buchanan urged Nixon in a memo not to visit "the Widow King" on the first anniversary of Martin Luther King's assassination, warning that a visit would "outrage many, many people who believe Dr. King was a fraud and a demagogue and perhaps worse.... Others consider him the Devil incarnate. Dr. King is one of the most divisive men in contemporary history." (New York Daily News, 10/1/90)
4/1969 "Civilians can scarcely understand or even believe that many ambitious military professionals truly yearn for wars and the opportunities for glory and distinction afforded only in combat. A career of peacetime duty is a dull and frustrating prospect for the normal regular officer to contemplate.... Wars and emergencies put the military and their leaders on the front pages and give status and prestige to the professionals. Wars add to the military traditions, the self-nourishment of heroic deeds, and provide a new crop of military leaders who become the rededicated disciples of the code of service and military action. Being recognized public figures in a nation always seeking folk heroes, the military leaders have been largely exempt from the criticism experienced by the more plebeian politician. Flag officers are considered 'experts,' and their views are often accepted by the press and Congress as the gospel.... Standing closely behind these leaders, encouraging and prompting them, are the rich and powerful defense industries. Standing in front, adorned with service caps, ribbons, and lapel emblems, is a nation of veterans -- patriotic, belligerent, romantic, and well intentioned, finding a certain sublimation and excitement in their country's latest military venture." --David Shoup, former Commandant of the Marine Corps and member of the Joints Chiefs of Staff under President Kennedy, "The New American Militarism," The Atlantic, April 1969
4/7/1969 Supreme Court rules unanimously laws that prohibit the viewing or reading of obscene materials in one's own home are unconstitutional.
4/9/1969 300 students, mostly members of SDS, take over Harvard's administration building to protest the university's close ties to the military-industrial complex.
4/10/1969 A police assault forced students out of University Hall at Harvard.
4/15/1969 A U.S. EC-121 is shot down by the Soviets while on a reconnaissance mission in Korea. It has a crew of 30. Twenty-eight are not found. Their fate is still unknown. A US Navy intelligence plane is shot down over North Korean air space.
4/15/1969 John M. Crawford, 46, dies in a mysterious plane crash near Huntsville, Texas. It appears from witnesses that Crawford has left in a rush. Crawford is a homosexual and a close friend of Jack Ruby's. Ruby supposedly carried Crawford's phone number in his pocket at all times. Crawford was also a friend of Buell Wesley Frazier's, the neighbor who took Lee Harvey Oswald to work on that fatal morning of Nov. 22, 1963.
4/15/1969 Huie's third Look article on Ray: "Conspiracy or Not? Why Ray Killed King." The article was co-written by Ray lawyers Arthur Hanes and Percy Foreman, and it backs away from the conspiracy theorizing in the first two articles. Huie wrote, "I now believe he killed Dr. King to achieve...status."
4/17/1969 After sixty-four sequestered days and nights, sixteen hours and forty-two minutes of deliberation, a jury finds Sirhan Bishara Sirhan, "alone and not in concert with anyone else," guilty of the murder of Bobby Kennedy. He is sentenced to death in the gas chamber.
4/17/1969 Dubcek removed as party first secretary, after disturbances that follow Czechoslovak hockey team's victory over a Soviet team in Stockholm. Dubcek replaced by Gustav Husak with full support of the Soviet Union.
4/18/1969 CIA memo from a CIA SRS/OS official, Sarah K. Hall, to the Chief of the CIA's LEOB/SRS and Deputy Chief of SRS. Titled 'Hunt, H.L. - Interest in Investigation of the Kennedy Assassination.' The memo made references to recent developments in the Garrison case, and to the book Farewell America, which mentioned Hunt. "A copy of the book is held by undersigned if you desire to review the portions referring to Hunt."
4/20/1969 The New York Times Magazine carried an article, "The Final Chapter in the Assassination Controversy?" by Edward J. Epstein, onetime critic of the Warren Report. It attacked critics by impugning their motives and integrity, and implied that they had a political agenda to push. He suggested that many of the critics were "demonologists" with "books as well as conspiracy theories to advertise." Epstein questioned the necessity of the single-bullet theory for Oswald to have been the lone gunman; he also referred to the Clark Panel report to support the Warren Commission.
4/20/1969 A weekend of street fighting among Catholics, Protestants and police in Belfast ended with British troops en route to the city.
4/23/1969 The Army began a full-scale investigation into the My Lai massacre.
4/23/1969 A Los Angeles jury sentences Sirhan Bishara Sirhan to death in the gas chamber for the murder of RFK, despite a written plea for mercy from Ted Kennedy.
4/27/1969 Bolivian president Rene Barrientos died as his helicopter became tangled in power lines near his hometown of Cochabamba.
4/28/1969 Israel paid $3,556,457 in compensation to those men of the Liberty who were wounded. This was obtained only after the claimants retained private legal counsel, the latter taking a substantial part of the award. Although the US submitted a claim of $7,644,146 for the material damage inflicted upon the Liberty, the government of Israel has refused to pay it.
4/28/1969 French president Charles de Gaulle resigned.
5/1969 Secretary of State Henry Kissinger, determined to prove to President Nixon that news stories about the secret Cambodian bombings are not being leaked to the press by liberals in the National Security Council offices, urges FBI director J. Edgar Hoover to wiretap several of Nixon's top aides, as well as a selection of reporters. Kissinger will later deny making the request. [Werth, 2006, pp. 169]
5/3/1969 Several CIA agents led by Amancio Mosquera ("Yarey") infiltrate Cuba and are captured.
5/5/1969 Kissinger met secretly with Hoover to discuss the leaks. (General's Progress p152)
5/6/1969 Navy Sec. John Chafee overrules a naval court of inquiry and announces that none of the crew of the Pueblo will be disciplined for failing to defend their ship or destroy intelligence material.
5/9-10/1969 The New York Times reveals the secret bombings of Cambodia, dubbed "Operation Menu".
The story had been published two days earlier in London when a British correspondent flying over Cambodia saw bomb craters. National Security Adviser Henry Kissinger is apoplectic in his anger: shouting to President Nixon, "We must do something! We must crush those people! We must destroy them!" Kissinger is not only referring to the Times, but Defense Secretary Melvin Laird and Secretary of State William Rogers, whom he believes leaked the information to the Times in order to discredit him. (Nixon has an unproductive phone conversation with Laird before his meeting with Kissinger; Nixon opened the phone call by calling Laird a "son of a b_tch," and Laird hung up on the president.) Nixon suggests Kissinger's own staff may be the source of the leaks. He is most suspicious of Kissinger's aide Morton Halperin. By lunch, Kissinger has talked to the FBI about wiretapping suspected leakers. By dinner, Halperin's phone is tapped. The next day, Kissinger's military aide Alexander Haig has the FBI tap three more men "just for a few days," warning the FBI not to keep any records of the wiretaps.
5/9/1969 5:05pm Hoover wrote another memo, telling Kissinger that the leak probably came from "arrogant Harvard-type Kennedy men" who "express a very definite Kennedy philosophy" and anti-Nixon elements in the government.
5/10/1969 Haig tells the FBI that continued leaks will "destroy Kissinger's foreign policy." After an Oval Office meeting with Hoover, Kissinger and Mitchell, Nixon authorized a wiretap program to discover the source of the leak. By Haig's request, the wiretaps were not entered in the FBI indices, and no copies were made of the files and logs, which were kept in Sullivan's office. (The Director 254-5)
5/12/1969 The first Kissinger-Haig list of wiretap targets is sent to FBI; on the list is Air Force Lt. Gen. Robert E. Pursley, who was considered a dove on foreign policy. On this date, a wiretap is placed on Morton Halperin, and was removed 2/10/1971 (though he had left the NSC 9/1969); summary reports were sent to Nixon, Kissinger and Haldeman by the FBI. A wiretap is placed on Daniel Davidson, removed 9/15/1969. Wiretap placed on Pursley, removed 5/27/1969. Two wiretaps placed on Helmut Sonnenfeldt; removed 2/2/1971.
5/14/1969 Abe Fortas resigns from the Supreme Court under pressure. President Nixon intended to fill the Court with as many of his choices as possible, and he, along with conservative Republicans and Democrats who do not agree with Fortas's liberal stance on civil rights, targeted Fortas for a smear campaign designed to force him off the bench. Nixon used what White House counsel John Dean will later call "an ugly bluff" against Fortas: He has Attorney General John Mitchell inform Fortas that he intends to open a special probe into Fortas's dealingswhile on the benchwith a financier already under investigation. Mitchell insinuates that he will put Fortas's wife, herself an attorney and partner at Fortas's former law firm, and other former partners of Fortas's on the witness stand. Whether Fortas actually had any direct illegal dealings with this financier is unclearcertainly his dealings had such an appearancebut the bluff worked; Fortas agreed to retire early, thus clearing a position on the Court for Nixon to fill.
5/14/1969 Nixon announces 8-point peace plan, including phased US withdrawal, internationally supervised cease-fire and free elections. April-May: US troop strength in Vietnam peaks at 543,300.
5/15/1969 Squatters are forcibly evicted by police from 'Peoples Park' in Berkeley. After a university-owned lot in Berkeley is turned into a park in April, UC officials have it fenced, prompting some 3,000 protesters to try to seize it back. Reagan calls in the National Guard, hundreds of protesters are arrested and one person is killed. The city is placed under a "state of extreme emergency." (SF Chronicle 6/9/02)
5/18/1969 12:49pm Apollo 10 mission launched from Cape Kennedy. Carrying astronauts Thomas P. Stafford, Eugene A. Cernan, and John W. Young, Jr., it headed for lunar orbit and a dress rehearsal of man's first Moon landing.
5/20/1969 White House Orders NSC Aides Wiretapped Two National Security Council assistants, Richard Moose and Richard Sneider, are wiretapped by the FBI as part of President Nixon and Henry Kissinger's attempt to seal media leaks. [Reeves, 2001, pp. 86]
5/21/1969 Nixon nominated Warren Burger as chief justice of the Supreme Court.
5/21/1969 Memo from Haldeman discussed a Nixon request to assemble a file on Drew Pearson. (Secret Files 30)
5/23/1969 Sirhan began his residence on Death Row at San Quentin.
5/28 or 29/1969 Wiretap placed on Henry Brandon of the London Sunday Times; this was ordered by Haig. Numerous FBI summary reports are sent to Nixon, Kissinger and Haldeman before it is removed 2/10/1971. Haig would later testify that he could not recall the wiretap. (General's Progress 158)
6/1969 Nixon made a speech at the Air Force Academy defending the US military from "unprecedented attack" by critics.
6/1969 The British satirical film The Bed-Sitting Room premieres in Berlin. It will be released in the UK in 1970. Directed by Richard Lester, it is an absurdist look at the aftermath of a nuclear war in the UK.
6/4/1969 Hoover and Sullivan met with Haig and Kissinger about the taps. Haig would later say that the taps yielded nothing but "an awful lot of garbage..." (Washington Post 12/20/1980)
6/5/1969 The New York Times breaks the story of secret negotiations with Japan for the return of Okinawa to Japanese control. The story, by Times reporter Hedrick Smith, reveals details from a secret National Security Council memo that includes plans to announce the turnover as well as the plans to remove all US nuclear weapons from Okinawa. National Security Adviser Henry Kissinger orders the FBI to wiretap Smith's telephone. [Reeves, 2001, pp. 86]
6/6/1969 Attorney General John Mitchell said in a speech that over the previous two years the number of corporate mergers "more than doubled" and "involved an increasing number of large firmsâ€¦In 1948, the nation's 200 largest industrial corporations controlled 48% of the manufacturing assets. Today, these firms control 58%, while the top 500 firms control 75% of these assets. The danger that this super-concentration poses to our economic, political and social structure cannot be over-estimated."
6/6/1969 Vice President Agnew made a speech at Ohio State University graduation ceremonies: "A society which comes to fear its children is effete. A sniveling, hand-wringing power structure deserves the violent rebellion it encourages. If my generation doesn't stop cringing, yours will inherit a lawless society where emotion and muscle displace reason."
6/7/1969 The Florida legislature asked Nixon to restore the name "Cape Canaveral" from Cape Kennedy. Nixon agreed, and renamed instead only the launching complex for the Apollo-Saturn rockets the Kennedy Space Center, Florida.
6/8/1969 Nixon announces first US troop withdrawal of 25,000 soldiers from Vietnam. He meets with Thieu on Midway Island to inform him of the withdrawal. They agree that these forces will be replaced with South Vietnamese troops.
6/9/1969 Warren Burger is confirmed as Chief Justice of the Supreme Court by the Senate 74-3.
6/9/1969 Dr. Donald MacArthur, a high-level defense department biological research administrator appears at a meeting today of a House committee on military appropriations requesting financial support for research and experimentation. "Within five to ten years," say MacArthur, "it would probably be possible to make a new infective microorganism which would differ in certain important aspects from any known disease-causing organisms. Most important of these is that it might be refractory to the immunological and therapeutic processes upon which we depend to maintain our relative freedom from infectious disease." In short, this proposed "manufactured" disease would destroy the body's immune system. MacArthur goes on to justify his request by adding: "Should an enemy develop it there is little doubt that this is an important area of potential military technological inferiority in which there is no adequate research program." MacArthur receives the funding. In 1977 and 1978, at the tail end of Dr. MacArthur's time frame, the first cases of Acquired Immune Deficiency Syndrome (AIDS) will emerge in Africa. In 1978 more than a thousand non monogamous homosexual adult males will receive experimental vaccinations against hepatitis B, courtesy of the National Institutes of Health and the Centers for Disease Control. Within six year, 64 percent of those men had AIDS.
6/9/1969 President Thieu, on Saigon television, attempts to counter the gloom produced by his meeting with Nixon by saying that "this is a replacement, not a withdrawal. Withdrawal is a defeatist and misleading term."
6/11/1969 Rep. H.R. Gross responded to Nixon's foreign aid proposals: "With the federal debt at around $375 billion...with inflation chewing up the dollar, I am utterly amazed that demands should be made for another multi-billion dollar foreign giveaway program."
6/11/1969 Prince Sihanouk announces that Cambodia will restore relations with the US.
6/13/1969 Washington discloses that it used wiretapping devices to eavesdrop on the Chicago Eight' without court approval. John Mitchell states that Presidential powers permit wiretapping of any domestic group "which seeks to attack and subvert the Government by unlawful means."
6/13/1969 PM Souvanna Phouma of Laos acknowledges publicly that US planes regularly carry out bombing raids in Laos to stop the North Vietnamese from using the country for bases and supply routes.
6/13/1969 Pentagon reports that B-52 bombing missions over the Ho Chi Minh trail in southern Laos rose to 5567 in 1969, up from 3377 in 1968. Nearly 160,000 tons of bombs were dropped on the Ho Chi Minh trail in 1969, a 60% increase from 1968.
6/15/1969 Nixon signed the papers approving Howard Hughes' purchase of Air West.
6/16/1969 Memo from Nixon to Haldeman discussing budget cuts, especially the CIA ("the latter in particular must be cut)." (Secret Files 32)
6/20/1969 Clint Murchison Sr. dies in Athens, Texas.
6/23/1969 Warren Burger is sworn in as Chief Justice of the Supreme Court as the era of the Warren Court ends. Former appellate judge Warren Burger begins his term as Chief Justice of the Supreme Court. Burger was named months before by newly elected president Richard Nixon after two earlier candidates, former Eisenhower attorney general Herbert Brownell and former GOP presidential candidate Thomas Dewey, turned down the job. Supreme Court Associate Justice Abe Fortas was to be Chief Justice as one of then-president Lyndon Johnson's last acts, but Senate Republicans, supported by conservative Senate Democrats who oppose Fortas's civil rights rulings, successfully filibustered Fortas's nomination and actually forced Fortas's premature resignation (see May 14, 1969). The blocking of Fortas has an additional element: in June 1968, Chief Justice Earl Warren announced that he would step down, giving Johnson ample time to place Fortas in the position. However, Republican presidential candidate Richard Nixon wanted to name the Chief Justice himself, if he won the national election. To that end, Nixon sent word to Congressional Republicans to block Johnson's naming of a replacement for Warren. Senate Republicans launched the filibuster after being given information that intimated Fortas had received an inordinately large honorarium for teaching a course at American University, a sum said to have been raised by one of his former law partners. [Dean, 2007, pp. 127-128]
6/24/1969 Haldeman memo to Buchanan stating that Nixon wanted to set up an operation to send phony "Letters to the Editor" and "Calls to Broadcasters" supporting the President's policies.
6/27/1969 Crucial crime-scene evidence relating to a second gun in RFK's assassination -- wood from the pantry door frame and several ceiling tiles -- is destroyed by LAPD while Sirhan's case is still being appealed.
6/30/1969 Walter Trohan, Chicago Tribune correspondent who had close ties to LBJ and Hoover, wrote that RFK "set up an extensive wiretap group under his own command in the Department of Justice. The group was headed by three men. One of these was given a job in the Justice Department, a second was placed on the White House payroll of his brother...and the third was put on the payroll of the Immigration and Naturalization Service."
7/1/1969 The CIA station in Santiago, Chile receives approval from headquarters for a covert program to establish intelligence agents in the Chilean armed services.
7/8/1969 William Sullivan recommends to Hoover that the Halperin tap be removed.
7/8/1969 First US forces left Vietnam, in Nixon's plan to turn the fighting over to the South Vietnamese.
7/10/1969 Rothermel memo to H.L. Hunt: "James Braden was arrested on the day of the assassination. He was on parole from the State of California. He had been in both prior to and after the assassination to see us on an oil deal...It may be that Fensterwald is going to write a new book, pointing the finger at the Hunts." (The Man Who Knew Too Much p593)
7/14/1969 Francis Reitemeyer is granted Conscientious Objector status on the basis of a petition his attorney has filed which explicitly details the training and instruction he has just received in assassination and torture techniques in conjunction with his assignment to the Phoenix Program. The horrors of the war are beginning to emerge.
7/14-19/1969 Armed clashes between the forces of El Salvador and Honduras leave over 1000 dead. The undeclared war was sparked by June riots which had erupted during a playoff between the two nations for the World Soccer Cup. Salvadoran troops had occupied considerable Honduran territory when both sides accepted a cease fire arranged by the OAS. About 2000 people, mostly civilians, died in the fighting.
7/15/1969 Melvin Laird told the Senate Foreign Relations Committee: "I think we've certainly turned the corner" in the war.
7/18/1969 In the Chappaquiddick incident, a car driven by Ted Kennedy accidentally goes off a bridge in Chappaquiddick Island, killing his passenger Mary Jo Kopechne. In his July 25 televised statement, Kennedy stated that on the night of the incident he wondered "whether some awful curse did actually hang over all the Kennedys."
7/18/1969 Nixon speechwriter William Safire recommends contingency planning and writes a draft speech in case something went wrong and the astronauts couldn't get home from the moon.
7/20/1969 10:56pm (EDT): Neil Armstrong is first man to step on the surface of the moon as he exited the Eagle lunar module. China prefers to pretend the moon landing didn't happen. Renmin Ribao of Beijing along with virtually all other newspapers in communist China fails to mention on its front page the first landing of humans on the moon. In Science Digest, the respected monthly popular science journal, astronomer-author James Mullaney (a former contributing editor to Astronomy magazine) wrote in July 1977 that "the crew of Apollo 11, during the first moon landing, reporting that their capsule was paced by what appeared to be a mass of intelligent energy.... NASA recently released a number of very striking Gemini, Apollo, and Skylab photos of true unidentifieds."
7/20/1969 Sen. Edward M. Kennedy is charged with leaving the scene of an accident for driving his car into a Chappaquiddick pond and killing 28-year-old Mary Jo Kopechne.
7/22/1969 Pentagon reveals that the US has shipped lethal nerve gas to overseas troops.
7/25/1969 President announces 'Nixon Doctrine'; calls for sending more aid to Saigon and a policy of "Vietnamization" to gradually turn the war over to them.
7/25/1969 Edward Kennedy speech on television about the Chappaquiddick incident.
7/26-8/3/1969 Nixon tour of eight countries in Asia and Europe. He made an unannounced visit to Romania, the first president to visit a communist country since WWII. Nixon told the Romanians that "nations can have widely different internal orders and live in peace." He pledged his willinginess to negotiate with Communist countries in an atmosphere of "mutual respect."
8/2/1969 LAPD memo by Sgt. D.O. Varney: "â€¦Robert Buek (of the Jet Set)â€¦just returned from Washington with a story that his wife is a friend of Ted Kennedy's wife, and he learned that Ted Kennedy thinks there is a plot against all the Kennedys." (Melanson, The Robert F. Kennedy Assassination, 1994)
8/4/1969 Wiretap placed on phone of William Safire; removed 9/15/1969.
8/4/1969 Kissinger and North Vietnamese hold first secret meeting in Paris.
8/8/1969 Nixon unveiled his welfare reform plan (Family Assistance Plan) to the nation. His TV speech emphasized the "workfare" elements over the guaranteed annual income. He also introduced his "new federalism," the sharing of federal dollars with the states, though Washington would still control them. Conservatives, led by Ronald Reagan, balked at the cost and told Nixon he had no obligation trying to help the poor and minorities at the expense of the middle class. (The Palace Guard 112) Nixon spent little time pushing the plan. 4/1970 the House passed the plan virtually intact, but it died that year in the Senate.
8/9/1969 Around midnight, members of the Manson family invaded the Sharon Tate/Roman Polanski household, killing all who were present. Voityck Frykowsky was stabbed over 50 times, struck 13 times in the head with a blunt instrument, and shot. Abigail Folger, the coffee heiress, was killed. The now 8 month pregnant Tate finished the evening for the Manson family, stabbing her repeatedly in the back, breast, neck, and womb.
8/11/1969 Columnist Scotty Reston congratulated Nixon for moving to the Left on so many issues: "He has cloaked a remarkably progressive welfare policy in conservative language...he has obviously concluded that the American people are for peace abroad and for a more decent distribution of wealth at home..." (NY Times)
8/12/1969 Tom Charles Huston memo to Haldeman: he urged that Nixon develop a policy to address the concerns of young people or else risk further unrest.
8/12/1969 Northern Ireland: As the Apprentice Boys parade passed close to the Bogside area serious rioting erupted. The Royal Ulster Constabulary (RUC), using armoured cars and water cannons, entered the Bogside, in an attempt to end the rioting. The RUC were closely followed by a loyalist crowd. The residents of the Bogside forced the police and the loyalists back out of the area. The RUC used CS gas to again enter the Bogside area. [What was to become known as the 'Battle of the Bogside' lasted for two days.]
8/13/1969 Serious rioting spread across Northern Ireland from Derry to other Catholic areas stretching the Royal Ulster Constabulary (RUC). The rioting deteriorated into sectarian conflict between Catholics and Protestants and many people, the majority being Catholics, were forced from their homes. Jack Lynch, then Taoiseach (Irish Prime Minister), made a television address in which he announced that 'field hospitals' would be set up in border areas. He went on to say that: "... the present situation is the inevitable outcome of the policies pursued for decades by successive Stormont governments. It is clear also that the Irish government can no longer stand by and see innocent people injured and perhaps worse."
8/14/1969 After two days of fighting, and with the Royal Ulster Constabulary (RUC) exhausted, the Stormont government asked Britain for permission to allow British troops to be deployed on the streets of Northern Ireland. Late in the afternoon troops entered the centre of Derry. [At this stage British Troops did not enter the area of the Bogside and the Creggan. There was a tacit understanding between the British Army and the Derry Citizens Defence Association (DCDA) that if the RUC and the army remained outside these areas there would be an end to the rioting. This effectively saw the setting up of the 'no-go areas' where the normal rule of law did not operate.] John Gallagher, a Catholic civilian, was shot dead by the Ulster Special Constabulary ('B-Specials') during street disturbances on the Cathedral Road in Armagh. [John Gallagher was recorded, by the Royal Ulster Constabulary (RUC), as the first 'official' victim of 'the Troubles'.] In Belfast vicious sectarian riots erupted and continued the following day. Many people were killed and injured, and many families were forced to move from their homes. British troops took up duties on the streets of west Belfast.
8/15-17/1969 Woodstock music Festival
8/18/1969 Nixon nominated Clement Haynsworth, a conservative from South Carolina, to the Supreme Court.
8/19/1969 Northern Ireland: British army assumed responsibility for Ulster security.
8/27/1969 Haskel Wexler's film Medium Cool, shot on the streets of Chicago during the 1968 Democratic Convention, is released.
8/29/1969 Charges of Jim Garrison's involvement with New Orleans mob leader Carlos Marcello were first made by Warren Rogers in Look magazine on this date. It reported that Garrison had bought a big house at low cost from a Marcello lieutenant ("The Persecution of Clay Shaw"). Garrison denied ever gambling, and challenged anyone to prove that he had. (Destiny Betrayed 364) Blakey: "It was also suspicious that on a salary of less than $18,000 a year he lived with his wife and five children in a big white brick-front home in a prosperous neighborhood. The story got around that he had bought the house for less than it was worth because the contractor, Frank Occhipinti, was a good friend of Garrison's...It was less widely known that Occhipinti was also a friend and business partner of Carlos Marcello's..." "Sandy Smith, a reporter for Life with superb sources in the FBI" learned that Garrison had three times stayed at the Sands Hotel in Vegas (where the casino manager was Marcello henchman Mario Marino) for free and was given $5000 in gambling credits. When Smith confronted him with this information 8/16/1967 Garrison replied "I don't have to worry about things like that. I've cleaned up the rackets in this town." He later stated: "I have never been a guest of mobsters anywhere in my life." Frank Ragano claims that Garrison called Marcello "good people." David Chandler wrote in Life that from 1965 to 1969 Garrison had opted not to prosecute 84 cases against Marcello's men (including 22 on gambling, 1 for attempted murder, three for kidnapping, and one for manslaughter.) An anti-mafia strike force led by Justice Dept attorney John Wall began building a case against Garrison in an effort to get at Marcello; supposedly their evidence included marked money, tape recordings, and Gervais, who was willing to testify that since 1962 Garrison had received payoffs from mob-controlled pinball gambling. Garrison replied that if he was tied to Marcello, he would hardly target David Ferrie, who was Marcello's own former investigator. Playboy described his efforts against organized crime: "...his toughest fight...came in 1962, when he announced that the refusal of the city's eight criminal court judges to approve funds for his investigations of organized crime 'raised interesting questions about racketeer influences.' The judges promptly charged Garrison with defamation of character and criminal libel -- and a State court fined him $1,000.00. Garrison appealed the Court all the way to the Supreme Court, and on November 23, 1964, in a landmark decision on the right to criticize public officials, the nation's highest tribunal reversed his convietion, contending that 'speech concerning public affairs is more than self-expression; it is the essence of self-government.' Never the one to turn the other cheek, Garrison subsequently employed his political influence to unseat a number of the judges when they came up for re-election." (10/1967)
8/1969 Joseph Goulden's book about the Gulf of Tonkin affair, Truth is the First Casualty, is published.
8/1969 A North Korean plane shot down an American EC-121 surveillance plane, killing 31.
9/1969 West Germany: Federal elections bring a coalition government of the SDP/FDP (Socialists/Liberals) under Federal Chancellor Willy Brandt, with FDP leader Walter Scheel as Foreign Minister. This launches a period in German politics sometimes known as the Social Liberal Era (1969-1982). In foreign affairs, this was the period of Ostpolitik, with various negotiations involving West Germany, East Germany and the parties to unresolved World War II boundary issues involving the Germanies. During this time, Brandt also coped with his party's Young Socialists, who wanted to take a more militant line in the domestic economy and against the capitalist United States.
9/1969 In a CBS-TV interview, LBJ told Cronkite: "I can't honestly say I've been completely relieved of the fact that there might have been international connections...I don't think they [the Warren Commission], or me, or anyone else, is always absolutely sure of everything that might have motivated Oswald or others that could have been involved...I don't think we ought to discuss suspicions because there's not any hard evidence...But he was quite a mysterious fellow, and he did have a connection that bore examination, and the extent of the influence of those connections on him I think history will deal with more than we're able to now." Then he felt he had said too much, and asked CBS to delete that part on "national security" grounds. CBS suppressed his remarks until 1975. (4/25/1975 CBS Evening News; CBS Reports, The American Assassins pt.2, 11/26/1975).
9/1/1969 Kenneth Crawford reported, "Mr. Nixon is reported to be explaining himself...to his inner circle as a sort of latter-day Disraeli...As Disraeli could do things the Liberals couldn't, so Mr. Nixon can do things Humphrey couldn't." (Newsweek)
9/1/1969 Muammar Qadhafi seizes power in Libya
9/3/1969 Ho Chi Minh died.
9/5/1969 Today, an issue of LIFE magazine reports that J. Edgar Hoover punished three of his FBI agents in New York for cooperating with the United States District Attorney in New York, Robert Morgenthau, in his prosecution against Roy M. Cohn on a number of felony charges.
9/12/1969 President Nixon orders resumption in bombing of North Vietnam.
9/12/1969 Agent Jose A. Quesada infiltrates Cuban territory and is captured along with weapons and equipment for espionage.
9/15/1969 Haig called off all the White House staff wiretaps except for Halperin's (though he had already left his job). (General's Progress 161)
9/16/1969 Nixon announced withdrawal of another 35,000 Americans from Vietnam.
9/18/1969 Nixon addresses the UN General Assembly, urging UN members to aid in finding a peace settlement in Vietnam.
9/22/1969 Memo from Nixon to Ehrlichman, Mitchell, Kissinger: "I feel very strongly that we have to tackle the heroin problem regardless of the foreign policy consequences. I understand the major problem is with Turkey and to a lesser extent with France and with Italy." (Secret Files 51)
9/24/1969 The Chicago 8 conspiracy trial begins under Judge Julius Hoffman in Chicago.
9/29/1969 Supermarket tabloid The National Bulletin published a tale claiming that Apollo 11 astronauts saw alien spacecraft on the moon during the first landing on July 16. NASA censored the radio transmissions, but a transcript later revealed to be phony was leaked to the Bulletin. The story would be recycled by later authors.
10/3/1969 Nixon blocks a rail strike by imposing a 60-day Railway Labor Act freeze in a dispute between seven railroads and four shopcraft unions.
10/3/1969 The International Monetary Fund began issuing Special Drawing Rights,' the first international currency other than gold, as legal tender among IMF members.
10/8/1969 In an oral history interview, Nick Katzenbach recalls that after the JFK assassination, Robert Kennedy "never really wanted any investigation" because it would only prolong the grief.
10/8-11/1969 four violent "Days of Rage" by the Weathermen take place in Chicago.
10/10/1969 Dep. Commandant of the Marine Corps. Gen Lewis W. Walt spoke at Daytona Beach, Florida: "Without [domestic] dissent, I believe the war would have been over a year ago. It would be history...Those who dissent may not have fired a rifle...but they must bear a part of the responsibility for the loss of those gallant Americans."
10/13-30/1969 Determined to settle the Vietnam War--their "number one problem", irritated by Soviet assistance to North Vietnam, and frustrated by the stalemated Paris peace talks, President Richard Nixon and Henry Kissinger had pressed Moscow and threatened North Vietnam in order to make progress in the negotiations. In early October 1969, Nixon decided to test the "madman theory" by ratcheting up the readiness level of nuclear forces. If his military moves jarred the Soviets sufficiently, Nixon apparently believed, Moscow might use its leverage to induce Hanoi to meet U.S. terms. Under Nixon's orders, in mid-October 1969, the Pentagon undertook secretly a series of military measures designed to put U.S. nuclear forces on a higher state of readiness. The JCS Readiness Test was executed secretly so that the public in the United States and allies would not notice it, but Nixon wanted the measures to be detectable, but not alarming, to the leadership of the Soviet Union and its intelligence services The CINCs--the commanders-in-chief--did not know, and could not find out why, "higher authority" had ordered them to implement the secret readiness measures. Nevertheless, between 13 and 30 October 1969, they put U.S. nuclear bombers on higher alert, and raised the combat readiness of U.S. tactical aircraft and air defense forces and sent more nuclear missile submarines to sea. Moreover, U.S. destroyers, cruisers, and aircraft carriers engaged in a variety of maneuvers in the Atlantic, the Mediterranean, the Gulf of Aden, and the Sea of Japan. At the end of October, the Strategic Air Command conducted a nuclear-armed airborne alert exercise over eastern Alaska. The Pentagon searched for evidence that Moscow had noticed the worldwide readiness measures but little declassified evidence is available showing that the Soviets paid attention. The Soviets may have seen Nixon's moves as a bluff; Moscow made no change in its Vietnam policy.
10/15/1969 Columnist Walter Trohan wrote, "Conservatives should be realistic enough to recognize that this country is going deeper into socialism and will see expansion of federal power, whether Republicans or Democrats are in power."
10/15/1969 Massive anti-war demonstrations (National Moratorium Day) by millions across US. 100,000 gathered in Boston Common. Some 250,000 protestors (by police estimates) marched peacefully on Washington.
10/15/1969 Gen. Wheeler, in a public speech, attacked the "academic-journalistic" complex for being soft on the Vietnam war.
10/17/1969 Abdi Rashid Ali Shermarke, president of Somalia, was assassinated.
10/19/1969 Agnew spoke at a GOP fund-raiser in New Orleans and blasted the media and "a spirit of national masochism...encouraged by an effete corps of impudent snobs who characterize themselves as intellectuals."
10/20/1969 Brig. Gen. Carroll H. Bolender, the Air Force Deputy Director of Development, wrote a classified memo recommending the termination of Project Blue Book.
10/21/1969 Gen. Lewis Walt said in Pensacola, "There was a time in this country when a person who opposed our institutions and duly constituted authority was called an anarchist - now he is a dissenter."
10/21/1969 Columnist Roscoe Drummond noted that on Vietnam, Nixon was outdoing the Democratic doves in his moves to end the war.
10/29/1969 Supreme Court orders immediate end to all school segregation (Alexander v. Holmes). Nixon had sought to delay desegregation in 33 Mississippi school districts.
10 or 11/1969 The National Commission on the Causes and Prevention of Violence issued its report. Headed by Milton S. Eisenhower, the commission included Archbishop Terence Cooke, Albert E. Jenner, Patricia Harris, Eric Hoffer, Sens. Philip A Hart (D-Mich.), Roman Hruska (R-Neb.), Reps. Hale Boggs, William M. McCulloch (R-Ohio), A. Leon Higgenbotham Jr. (US District Judge). It presented a psychological profile of assassins emphasizing their alienation and sexual dysfunction. It stressed the "critical importance" of maintaining an "overwhelming sense of the legitimacy of our government and institutions." It suggested that doubts about the lone gunman scenario were "a product of the primal anxieties created by the archetypal crime of parricide - not the inadequacy of the evidence of the lone assassin." The Commission published The Report of the President's Commission on the Causes and Prevention of Violence, plus six staff reports: The History of Violence in America; Rights in Conflict (The Walker Report: Chicago Police Riot); Shoot-Out in Cleveland; To Establish Justice, To Insure Domestic Tranquility; Law and Order Reconsidered; Assassination and Political Violence.
11/1/1969 Mitchell, on or about this day, asked the FBI about spying on Joseph Kraft; they recommended spot surveillance and a wiretap.
11/3/1969 Nixon made a televised speech to the nation: "I believe that one of the reasons for the deep division about Vietnam is that many Americans have lost confidence in what their Government has told them about our policy. The American people cannot and should not be asked to support a policy which involves the overriding issues of war and peace unless they know the truth about that policy...In January I could only conclude that the precipitate withdrawal of American forces from Vietnam would be a disaster not only for South Vietnam but for the United States and for the cause of peace...For the United States, this first defeat in our Nation's history would result in a collapse of confidence in American leadership, not only in Asia but throughout the world...It would not bring peace; it would bring more war...Hanoi has refused even to discuss our proposals. They demand our unconditional acceptance of their terms...I did not wait for my inauguration to begin my quest for peace." He spoke of seeking peace through numerous back-channels, but to no avail. "In the previous administration, we Americanized the war in Vietnam. In this administration, we are Vietnamizing the search for peace." He stressed the importance of the South Vietnamese doing the fighting for themselves. "The South Vietnamese have continued to gain in strength. As a result they have been able to take over combat responsibilities from our American troops....Enemy infiltration, infiltration which is essential if they are to launch a major attack, over the last 3 months is less than 20 percent of what it was over the same period last year....as South Vietnamese forces become stronger, the rate of American withdrawal can become greater...Hanoi could make no greater mistake than to assume that an increase in violence will be to its advantage. If I conclude that increased enemy action jeopardizes our remaining forces in Vietnam, I shall not hesitate to take strong and effective measures to deal with that situation....If a vocal minority, however fervent its cause, prevails over reason and the will of the majority, this Nation has no future as a free society...And so tonightto you, the great silent majority of my fellow AmericansI ask for your support...for the more divided we are at home, the less likely the enemy is to negotiate at Paris...North Vietnam cannot defeat or humiliate the United States. Only Americans can do that."
11/7/1969 Gerald Ford threatened to bring impeachment precedings against William O. Douglas if the Senate rejected Haynsworth on ethical grounds.
11/12/1969 Lt. William Calley charged with the murder of civilians at Song My, South Vietnam.
11/13/1969 In a Des Moines speech, Spiro Agnew attacked the news networks for their critical commentary disguised as news and "instant rebuttal to every Presidential address..." by liberal newsmen. The mainstream media counterattacked; Frank Stanton of CBS accused Agnew of practicing censorship through intimidation. Cronkite heard "an implied threat to freedom of speech in this country." Frank Mankiewicz and Tom Braden thought Agnew was implying "that America's press and television is controlled and dominated by a

Tracy Riddle · 15-03-2014, 09:51 PM

1960-1973 Agent Orange. In Vietnam, the US military uses about 21 million gallons of Agent Orange to defoliate the jungle in order to deny enemy fighters cover. The defoliantmanufactured primarily by Monsanto and Dow Chemicalgets its name from the 55-gallon drums it is shipped in that are marked with an orange stripe. At least 3,181 villages are sprayed with the highly toxic herbicide, which is comprised of a 50:50 mixture of 2,4-D and 2,4,5-T and contaminated with dangerous levels of dioxins. Much of the dioxin is TCDD, which is linked to liver and other cancers, diabetes, spina bifida, immune-deficiency diseases, severe diarrhea, persistent malaria, miscarriages, premature births, and severe birth defects. Between 2.1 and 4.8 million Vietnamese are exposed, as are about 20,000 US soldiers.
Between 1960 and 1971, the Department of Defense funded non-consensual whole body radiation experiments on poor, black cancer patients, who were not told what was being done to them.
1/1960 Khrushchev told the Supreme Soviet he intended to cut the Soviet military by 1.2 million men, saying that "the clouds of war have begun to disperse." He also argued that large standing armies in the nuclear age were obsolete. He hoped to use the savings to raise the Soviet standard of living.
1/2/1960 Senator John F. Kennedy announces his candidacy for the Democratic presidential nomination.
1/4/1960 Oswald's diary: "I am called to passport office and finilly given a Soviet document not the soviet citizenship as I so wanted, only a Residence document, not even for foringners but a paper called for those without citizenship.'
1/5/1960 In a filmed interview aired on his TV show, Ed Sullivan talks to Castro, who assures the viewers that there will be no dictatorship in Cuba. Sullivan says that Castro is popular with the American people and commands much respect and admiration.
1/5/1960 Steel industry and US Steelworkers of America sign new contract extending to 6/30/1962.
1/5/1960 Ohio primary; JFK stayed out of the race and in exchange, Governor Mike DiSalle ran as a favorate son, pledging his delegates to Kennedy at the convention.
1/5/1960 Oswald's diary: "I go to Red Cross in Moscow for money with Interrupter (a new one) I recive 5000 rubles a huge sum!! Later in Minsk I am to earn 70 rubles a month at the factory."
1/7/1960 Allen Dulles told Ike that they could find no evidence of a crash missile-building program by the Soviets. Eisenhower revealed to the public that US test ICBM's had landed within two miles of their targets after 5000-mile flights.
1/7/1960 Ike's state of the union message to Congress. (World Book Enc.)
1/7/1960 Oswald left Moscow by train and arrived in Minsk. He was met by Roza Kuznetsova, an Intourist worker.
1/8/1960 Oswald met mayor Shrapov of Minsk, who gave him a rent-free apartment.
1/9/1960 Egypt begins building the Aswan Dam. (World Book Enc.)
1/11/1960 Chad declares independence from France
1/11/1960 Oswald visits the radio factory where he will work; he meets Alexander Zeger, a Polish Jew and engineer who spent time in the US.
1/13/1960 Allen Dulles presents "Cuban project" for "careful planning of covert actions." The CIA began "Operation 40," which took its name from "the Group of 40" of the National Security Council group. Their job was to formulate a plan for Cuba to provoke a general uprising of the Cuban people with the collaboration of the forces in exile and in this way "legitimize" a U.S. intervention. (Alleged Assassination Plots Involving Foreign Leaders, 11/20/75; Furiati pp 14-15)
1/13/1960 Oswald was put to work in a large TV and radio factory.
1/18 or 19/1960 US and Japan signed mutual cooperation and security treaty. Opposition to the treaty in Japan caused Ike's trip there to be canceled. The treaty was ratified in Japan and the US 6/22-23.
1/19/1960 Defense Sec. Thomas Gates told the Senate that the nuclear arms race "showed a clear balance in our favor."
1/19/1960 Jack Ruby buys a revolver at Ray's Hardware Store in Dallas.
1/20/1960 Army Secretary Wilber M. Brucker told the Senate that Russia's military was better and larger than America's.
1/20/1960 Russia fires a ballistic multi-stage rocket 7,762 miles into the central Pacific ocean. (World Book Enc.)
1/22/1960 French president De Gaulle escapes assassination attempt by General Massu
1/23/1960 Bathosphere "Trieste" reached a record depth of 35,800ft in the Mariana Trench in the Pacific Ocean. The vessel was manned by scientist Jacques Piccard and US Navy Lt. Donald Walsh. (World Book Enc.)
1/24/1960 The MLK family moves to Atlanta. Dr. King becomes copastor, with his father, of the Ebenezer Baptist Church.
1/28/1960 China and Burma sign a Mutual Non-Aggression Pact in Peking. The McMahon line is recognized as Burma's northern border. (World Book Enc.)
1/30/1960 CIA OKs Lockheed to produce a new U-2 aircraft.
1/31/1960 Russia fires a second ballistic multi-stage rocket into the Central Pacific. (World Book Enc.)
2/1960 Robert F. Kennedy publishes The Enemy Within, which named the little known Organized Crime leaders Salvador "Sam" Giancana and Santos Trafficante as mobsters; soon afterwards, the CIA gives both men protection by involving them in intelligence plots. (Scott p 227)
2/1960 Henry Cabot Lodge went to the USSR, reassuring Khrushchev that a President Nixon wouldn't be a rigid anti-Communist. Khrushchev looked forward to Ike's visit, even building a golf course and a vacation house for his use. Ike looked forward to serious discussions about arms control (especially a complete nuclear test ban) and closer ties between the US and USSR. (Mayday 227-30) Around this time, James Doolittle urged Ike to use the U-2 to fly over Russia "to the maximum degree possible." But Ike resisted, worrying that it could ruin the upcoming summit.
2/1/1960 Sit-ins begin when 4 black college students in Greensboro, North Carolina refuse to leave a Woolworth lunch counter when denied service. The "local custom" was that blacks could only be served if they stood at a stand-up snack bar. The sit-in movement spread to 15 cities in 5 Southern states by the end of the month.
2/7/1960 Judith Campbell Exner met JFK at the Sands Hotel in Las Vegas. She was introduced to him by Frank Sinatra, who was in Vegas filming Ocean's Eleven.
2/9/1960 US atomic sub Sargo reaches the North Pole after a 2,744-mile voyage under the ice.
2/9/1960 US space surveillance control center opened at Hanscom Air Force Base, Bedford, Mass., to track earth satellites.
2/12/1960 Eisenhower presided over a restricted meeting of the National Security Council to consider the NESC study. Before the meeting, Joint Chiefs of Chairman Nathan Twining sent the President a memorandum endorsing the NESC's "optimum mix" target system and recommending that Eisenhower agree to refer the study to the Joint Chiefs as the basis for planning. Some of the Chiefs expressed reservations about the study, for example, General Lemnitzer noted that the problem of "locating and destroying enemy ICBM sites" was a problem that had to be solved and Admiral Burke and Twining were plainly in disagreement over the deterrent value of "forces required only for attack of the urban-industrial system." No minutes were taken of the meeting and, so far, the only account that has surfaced so far appears in Kistiakowsky's diary. Kistiakowsky privately believed that the "overkill" proposed for the attack on the optimum-mix targets was "appalling" and during the meeting Eisenhower showed great concern with this problem (as he had in November 1958). Burke also "fairly strongly objected to overkill." Nevertheless, Eisenhower signed off on Chairman Twining's recommendations.
2/14 or 17/1960 Marshal Ayub Khan elected president of Pakistan
2/16/1960 US nuclear submarine USS Triton set off on underwater round-world trip
2/17/1960 A warrant is issued for Dr. King's arrest on charges that he had falsified his 1956 and 1958 Alabama state income tax returns.
2/23/1960 Eisenhower begins a trip to Latin America.
2/25/1960 First test launch of Army's Pershing tactical missile from Cape Canaveral.
2/28/1960 Indonesia and Russia sign a pact.
2/29/1960 JFK makes "missile gap" a presidential campaign issue
3/2-3/1960 Ike ends Latin American tour in Uruguay.
3/5/1960 Marguerite Oswald, after sending some money to her son at the Hotel Metropole and having it returned as undeliverable, asks Rep. Jim Wright of Fort Worth to get the State Dept to find out her son's whereabouts.
3/5/1960 Senate filibuster over civil rights ends after 125 hours and 31 minutes
3/6/1960 President Sukarno disbands Indonesia's parliament
3/8/1960 JFK won the New Hampshire primary, where none of the other major candidates ran against him. The state was abandoned to him because he came from nearby Massachusetts.
3/9/1960 At a meeting of the Task Force, Colonel King 's recommendations are presented: create the conditions to prove that Cuban leaders are preparing an attack on the U.S. Naval Base in Guantanamo or "eliminate the leaders [Fidel Castro, Raul Castro, and Che Guevara] with a single blow"; otherwise, the present government can only be brought down through the use of force." (Alleged Assassination Plots Involving Foreign Leaders, 11/20/75; Furiati p 16)
3/9/1960 President Sukarno of Indonesia was the target of an unsuccessful assassination attempt.
3/10/1960 USSR agrees to stop nuclear testing
3/11/1960 PIONEER V, NASA space probe, successfully launched by Thor-Able-4, the start of a historic flight to measure radiation and magnetic fields between Earth and Venus, and to communicate over great distances.
3/15/1960 East-West Disarmament Conference opens in Geneva; communist delegates attack the Western plan.
3/15/1960 South Korea: Syngman Rhee is elected to a fifth term as president/dictator.
3/16/1960 Oswald's diary: "I receive a small flat one-room kicten-bath near the factory (8 min. walk) with splendid view from 2 balconies of the river, almost rent freeâ€¦it is a Russians dream."
3/16/1960 Ban on nuclear weapons being placed in orbit around the earth in the future proposed by the representatives of the Western nations at the Geneva Disarmament Conference.
3/17/1960 Eisenhower signs National Security Council directive on the anti-Cuban covert action program (Operation 40) authorizing the CIA to organize, train, and equip Cuban refugees as a guerilla force to overthrow Castro. (Fonzi chronology p 415)
3/21/1960 South Africa: race riots in Sharpeville; police kill 72 blacks during protests against pass cards. The ANC is also outlawed. The incident drew world attention to the nation's racial policies.
3/22/1960 An informant advised the FBI that Confidential magazine was investigating a rumor of "an indiscreet party" at Sinatra's Palm Springs home attended by Sen. John F. Kennedy and actor Peter Lawford, a Kennedy brother-in-law.
3/24/1960 Ike agrees to stop U.S. atomic tests
3/24/1960 Stuart Symington announced his candidacy for the Democratic presidential nomination.
3/25/1960 Bernice Waterman in the Passport Office of the State Dept made up a "refusal sheet" for Oswald. (CE 929) A "lookout card" should have been prepared, but wasn't. (WR 751) The Passport Office explained that there may have been a clerical error or misunderstanding.
3/26/1960 Italy: Fernando Tambroni is sworn in as PM after a month-long crisis.
3/28/1960 Arturo Frondizi, president of Argentina, was the target of an unsuccessful assassination attempt.
4/1960 The Fair Play for Cuba Committee (FPCC) was an activist group set up in New York in April 1960. The FPCC's purpose was to provide grassroots support for the Cuban Revolution against attacks by the United States government
4/1960 The Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee was founded. Its roots sprang from the sit-in experiences in the South among students from mostly Black colleges.
4/1960 Increasing non-communist opposition in South Vietnam led to repression; most of the US aid was now going to police and military operations. The American Ambassador began to openly criticize Diem.
4/1/1960 U Nu elected premier of Burma
4/1/1960 Malaya: paramount ruler Tuanku Sir Abdul Rahman dies.
4/1/1960 First known weather observation satellite, TIROS I (Television Infra-Red Observation Satellite), launched into orbit by US.
4/1/1960 France explodes its second atomic bomb in the Sahara.
4/4/1960 Colombian president Alberto Lleras Camargo arrives in Washington for a state visit.
4/4/1960 Senegal declares independence from France
4/4/1960 Project Ozma initiated to listen for possible signal patterns from outer space other than natural "noise," at the National Radio Astronomy Observatory at Green Bank, W. Va.
4/5/1960 Wisconsin primary; JFK had been expected to win in a landslide, but the closeness of his victory (56%) shocked the Kennedy team into realizing they would have to slug it out in more primaries.
4/5-8 De Gaulle makes his first visit to England since WWII.
4/5/1960 Burma: U Nu becomes prime minister.
4/8/1960 The Student Non-violent Coordinating Committee (SNCC) was established to guide anti-segregation efforts. Or it was set up 4/15 at Shaw University.
4/9/1960 Hendrik Frensch Verwoerd, PM of South Africa, was shot by a white farmer opposed to apartheid; though badly wounded, Verwoerd survived.
4/10/1960 Senate passes landmark Civil Rights Bill
4/13/1960 France explodes an A-bomb in the Sahara, becoming the fourth nuclear nation.
4/15/1960 First underwater launch of Polaris missile, from an underwater tube off San Clemente Island, Calif.
4/15/1960 Malaya elects a new paramount ruler, Sir Hisamuddin Alam Shah.
4/17/1960 Martin Luther King Jr. did his first of five interviews on "Meet the Press."
4/18/1960 Martin Luther King went to Nashville for a scheduled speech at the War Memorial Auditorium; the city rescinded his right to use the municipal hall at the last minute. Today, King was also named as a defendant in a half-million dollar libel suit brought by the state of Alabama against the SCLC and NYT for their full-page ad of 3/29.
4/19/1960 Memo from DeLoach to John Mohr about Kennedy's "extracurricular activites" which were "a standard joke around the Senate Office Building" in the '50s.
4/19-26 South Korea: student protests against election fraud turn violent as police kill 154.
4/20/1960 After charging that the sit-in movement was Moscow-directed, Harry Truman had been challenged by MLK to provide proof of this. Today, the NYT quoted Truman as saying, "I know that usually when trouble hits the country, the Kremlin is behind it."
4/21/1960 Congress approved a voting rights act to prevent intimidation of black voters in the South.
4/21/1960 Brazil dedicates new capital of Brasilia.
4/21/1960 Time magazine featured recently elected R.J. Reynolds chairman Bowman Gray Jr. on its cover; he was quoted about the charges that smoking caused cancer: "I just don't believe it. People are hearing the same old story, and the record is getting scratched."
4/22/1960 De Gaulle arrives in Washington for a state visit.
4/22/1960 American Lutheran Church created out of a merger of the Evangelical, American, and United Evangelical Lutheran churches.
4/22/1960 Henry C. Alexander, chairman of the Morgan Guaranty Trust Company, was quoted in the Wall St Journal: "[Business conditions will] stay good for some time to comeâ€¦We are not about to enter any sharp recession." This month, a US recession begins; economy declined by 1.0%.
4/25/1960 1st submerged circumnavigation of Earth completed (Triton)
4/25/1960 A consent judgment in a Memphis federal court ended restrictions barring voters in Fayette County, Tennessee. This was the first voting rights case under the Civil Rights Act.
4/26/1960 Pennsylvania primary; though the Kennedy forces stood back to let Governor David Lawrence run a favorite-son candidacy, a suprising write-in vote movement JFK 71% of the total vote.
4/26/1960 NASA announced selection of Douglas Aircraft for construction of second (S-4) stage of initial C-1 Saturn launch vehicle.
4/26/1960 Japan: students invade the Parliament to protest ratification of a new security pact with the US.
4/26/1960 South Vietnam: prominent citizens issue the "Manifesto of the Eighteen," demanding that Diem introduce more democracy and reforms, and stop the repression.
4/27/1960 Nepal's king and queen arrive in the US for a state visit.
4/27/1960 1st atomic powered electric-drive submarine launched (Tullibee)
4/27/1960 South Korea: Syngman Rhee resigns as president on demand of the National Assembly.
4/27/1960 Togo wins its independence from France.
4/29/1960 All eight engines of the Saturn engine were fired for the first time at Huntsville, Ala.
5/1960 The Cuban Democratic Revolutionary Front was founded in May 1960 by anti-Castro Cuban exiles and was initially headquartered in Mexico. It was known in Spanish as the Frente Revolucionario Democratico (FRD) and was composed of five major anti-Castro groups.
5/1/1960 Oswald goes to a May Day party and Alexander Zeger advises him to go back to the US.
5/1/1960 Francis Gary Powers' U-2 plane goes down over the USSR
5/3/1960 Indiana primary was won by JFK in a landslide.
5/3/1960 European Free Trade Association involving seven nations goes into effect.
5/4/1960 Britain grants independence to Sierra Leone by 4/27/1961.
5/5/1960 Khrushchev told the Supreme Soviet about the shoot-down ("aggressive actions against the Soviet Union"), but didn't mention the pilot still being alive. In his memoirs, he recalled that this tactic kept the US off-balance by making them issue phony cover stories, while keeping Khrushchev in control of events.
5/5/1960 In response to Khruschev's speech, Ike wanted to remain silent about the incident. Finally, after pressure from press secretary Hagerty, a statement was released: "At the direction of the President, a complete inquiry is being made. The results of this inquiry, the facts as developed, will be made public" by NASA and the State Dept. Reporters quickly went to NASA for more information, but its spokesman had no idea what was going on.
5/5/1960 Douglas Dillon and Allen Dulles quickly put together a statement for the State Dept to issue: "The Department has been informed by NASA that...a U-2 weather research plane based at Adana, Turkey, piloted by a civilian, has been missing since May 1. During the flight of this plane, the pilot reported difficulty with his oxygen equipment...accidentally violated Soviet airspace." Bissell gave NASA a new statement to put out, saying that the U-2 was a NASA weather plane and had been over Lake Van, Turkey. Shortly after this statement, a cable from ambassador Thompson arrived, saying he thought the Russians might have captured the pilot alive. Thompson also wrote that Khrushchev did not seem to want to give up on detente with the US.
5/5/1960 NASA put out a statement: "The instrumentation carried by the U-2 permits obtainingâ€¦precise information about clear air turbulence, convective clouds, winds shear, the jet stream and such wide-spread weather patterns as typhoons." (NYT 5/6/1960) NASA held a press conference on high-altitude weather research using Lockheed U-2 aircraft, one of which was reportedly lost on May 1 over Turkey.
5/6/1960 Ike signed the Civil Rights Act of 1960 into law.
5/6/1960 US embassy in Moscow named Francis Gary Powers as the missing pilot, and asked the Soviets for information about him. State Dept spokesman Lincoln White stated that the pilot probably blacked out and his plane drifted into Soviet territory: "There was absolutely no - N-O - no deliberate attempt to violate Soviet airspace. There never has been."
5/7/1960 Leonid I. Brezhnev succeeds Kliment Y. Voroshilov as Soviet President, a ceremonial job.
5/7/1960 Khrushchev told the Supreme Soviet for the first time that "we also have the pilot, who is quite alive and kicking! We did this quite deliberately, because if we had given out the whole story, the Americans would have thought up still another fable. And now, just look how many silly things they have said: Lake Van, scientific research and so on." He explained that the pilot had had no problems with his oxygen supply. He held up a poison pin Powers had carried to commit suicide with: "The lastest achievement of American technology for killing their own people!" He warned the governments of Turkey, Pakistan and Norway against making their countries available "for launching planes with anti-Soviet intentions." Again he stated that he felt Ike wanted peace but "apparently the Pentagon militarists and their monopolist allies cannot halt their war efforts." Ike saw that Khrushchev was offering him an excuse to disown the U-2 flight, but he realized that he couldn't let the world think he wasn't in control of his own government.
5/7/1960 At a meeting at CIA headquarters, Dulles offered to resign and allow the President to use him as a scapegoat; Andy Goodpaster said Ike wouldn't accept that. (Mayday 243) Most of those present (including Pearre Cabell, Hugh Cumming, Bohlen, Goodpaster, Dulles) wanted to stonewall the issue. Eisenhower refused to rush back to Washington from his retreat at Gettysburg, fearing it would only make the situation look more chaotic. Finally, the State Dept announced "there was no authorization for any such flight as described by Mr. Khrushchev. Nevertheless, it appears that in endeavoring to obtain information now concealed behind the Iron Curtain, a flight over Soviet territory was probably taken by an unarmed civilian U-2 plane." This was justified by Soviet secrecy of their military capability. No further elaboration was given. For the first time ever, the US government had admitted to committing espionage in peacetime. Reporters were angry over the conflicting stories.
5/7/1960 The New York Daily Mirror editorialized: "Premier Khrushchev personally ordered the rocket destruction of an unarmed US aircraft which had drifted into Soviet airspace, probably because its pilot became unconscious when its oxygen equipment failedâ€¦Khrushchev has revealed himself and his beastly character to the hilt; he is a pig in human form."
5/8/1960 JFK made a TV address to West Virginia voters, assuring them that he would uphold the separation of church and state.
5/8/1960 Headlines around the world blared the news of US spying over Russia. James Reston wrote in the NY Times, "The heart of the problem here is that the Presidency has been parcelled out, first to Sherman Adams, then to John Foster Dulles, and in this case to somebody else - probably to Allen Dulles, but we still don't know." Walter Lippman, in the NY Herald Tribune, warned that these same forces could order a nuclear attack without Ike's permission. Privately, Ike worried that his credibility could be lost forever if it was discovered he had lied about authorizing the U-2 flights. He also hated the impression that he was not in control of his own government. After returning from church, he told Herter that a new statement must be issued admitting that he had authorized the U-2 flights, but not specific missions. (Mayday 252-3)
5/9/1960 Harry Truman wrote Dean Acheson, "It seems to me that the President of the United States ought not to admit that he doesn't know what is going on...We have always been known for honesty and fair dealing as a nation and I really don't know how we are going to recover." Hubert Humphrey said, "Mr. Khrushchev has us on the run in a propaganda battle now, making us look sick."
5/9/1960 Ike was feeling very depressed; Khrushchev was continuing to give Ike the benefit of the doubt, assuming that reactionary forces in the US were responsible. Finally, at 3:55pm (Washington time), the State Dept made a new statement on the issue; Ike had authorized the U-2 program and took responsibility for them, but had not ordered specific missions.
5/9/1960 Food and Drug Administration approved use of the first contraceptive pill, Enovid.
5/9/1960 First production model of Project Mercury spacecraft was successfully launched from NASA Wallops Station.
5/9/1960 Nigeria becomes a member of British Commonwealth
5/10/1960 Submarine U.S.S. Triton completed 41,519-mile submerged cruise around the world. US atomic sub Triton surfaced after the first underwater circumnavigation of the globe; it took 84 days.
5/10/1960 West Virginia primary; though it only had a population of 5% Catholic and 4% black, and polls showed JFK fighting a tough battle with Humphrey, Kennedy won handidly, taking 48 of the 55 counties. Humphrey dropped out of the race. The Nebraska primary was also held this day, and JFK received 89% of the vote.
5/10/1960 NY Times reported that U-2 designed Kelly Johnson had examined the Russian photos of the downed plane, and concluded the wreckage was not of a U-2. James Reston wrote of how the capital "was depressed and humiliated by the United States having been caught spying over the Soviet Union and trying to cover up its activities in a series of misleading official statements." Many Americans had no problem with the spying, only that the US was caught at it. Khrushchev was irritated that the US seemed to think its actions were right, while spy-flights by the Soviets over the US would have been considered an act of war.
5/11/1960 The Soviets put the U-2 remains and Powers' belongings on public display at Gorky Park in Moscow. Khrushchev announced that Allen Dulles had probably blackmailed Ike into taking responsibility. At 10:29am Ike gave a press conference on the crisis. He called intelligence gathering "a distasteful but vital necessity." He refused to be apologetic about the U-2 flights.
5/11/1960 Adolf Eichmann is captured in Argentina by Israeli secret service agents. Nine days later he was smuggled out of the country on board an El Al Britannia plane officially described as a "diplomatic charter flight." The Israeli government was informed of the capture by a cable: "BEAST IN CHAINS."
5/12/1960 As the HUAC returned to San Francisco for hearings into the alleged communist beliefs of various California schoolteachers, hundreds of students from Berkeley and SF State descended on the City Hall, where the hearings were being held. They were denied entrance to the public hearings.
5/12/1960 The CIA and Llewellyn Thompson were divided over whether Khrushchev still wanted the summit to go on (the former's view) or whether it meant "the Cold War is on again" (the latter's view).
5/13/1960 Andrei Gromyko told the envoys of Pakistan, Norway and Turkey that they were risking military attack for their role in the U-2 flights. The US had continued to maintain that those countries knew nothing about the flights.
5/14/1960 Ike left for Paris. John Eisenhower urged his father to fire Dulles, but Ike refused. But he did tell Goodpaster and Gordon Gray that he never wanted to see Dulles alone again. (Mayday 271)
5/15/1960 Americans' tax burden reached 25% of earnings, according to a Tax Foundation report that added together federal, state and local taxes.
5/15/1960 Khrushchev demanded an apology for the U-2 flights before the summit would go on. Ike became convinced that he was just using this as a pretext to call off the summit because of pressure back home. He also wondered why Khrushchev had not made this announcement before everyone came to Paris.
5/16/1960 US forces around the world were put on code three alert during the early morning hours; Thomas Gates had ordered the move, fearing that the Summit collapse might lead to a crisis. As the summit opened, Khrushchev ranted against the "aggressive" U-2 flight, attacked the "ridiculous" cover stories of the administration and Ike's vow that the flights would `continue. Ike responded that the U-2 flights would not resume. De Gaulle, who was uncharacteristically supportive of Eisenhower's position, was angry that world leaders had been called to Paris just so Khrushchev could make unreasonable demands. Soviet PM continued to insist on an apology, at one point mentioning "that our internal politics requires this." Ike was furious when Khrushchev said he could wait to deal with Ike's successor. When these statements were made public, candidate JFK called it a "clumsy attempt to divide us along partisan lines in an election year." Nixon predicted that the Cold War would go on "for our lifetime, probably for this century." The Soviets began jamming the Voice of America again. PM Macmillan was emotionally distraught that the summit might collapse; he made one last-ditch effort, but Khrushchev insisted on an apology. The summit ended.
5/17/1960 Maryland primary; Wayne Morse was beaten by JFK 70%-17%.
5/17/1960 NASA administrator Keith Glennan wrote in his diary, "We have been turned up to the rest of the world as just another ordinary nation mouthing platitudes and moralities but indulging in a variety of activities of doubtful character...If the Russians had wanted to look at the U-2 as an invader, could they not have been justified in launching missiles toward this country?" Sen. Mansfield urged hearings to investigate the U-2. Sen. Goldwater opposed this idea.
5/20/1960 Oregon primary: JFK won with 51% to Wayne Morse's 32%. Humphrey received 5.7%, Symington 4.4%, LBJ under 4%.
5/25/1960 Ike gave a televised address to the nation, explaining the U-2 situation. He explained the false stories as necessary "to protect the pilot, his mission and our intelligence processes at a time when the true facts were still undetermined." The flight had been sent so close to the summit because of essential information that needed to be gathered and was "likely to be unavailable at a later date." He showed the country U-2 photos of the North Island naval air station at San Diego to demonstrate its capabilities. "In a nuclear war, there can be no victors - only losers. Even despots understand this."
5/27/1960 Turkey: Army seizes power; Lt. Gen. Cemal Gursel takes over and President Celal Bayar and PM Adnan Menderes are arrested.
5/27/1960 Hearings on the crisis, headed by Sen. Fulbright, opened. Herter would testify that the lesson of the U-2 was "not to have accidents," and still claimed that the President did not directly order any U-2 missions. Richard Helms sat in as a censor for the CIA. Dulles testified, but the CIA was treated lightly and was absolved by Fulbright. Fulbright believed that Ike should have admitted nothing at all. The complete testimony of the hearings was locked away for 22 years. (Mayday 314-17) Fulbright would later say, "I have often wondered why...the U-2 incident was allowed to take place. No one will ever know whether it was accidental or intentional." (Saturday Review 1/11/1975; Mayday) Democrats quickly made a campaign issue out of the U-2, and Republicans began to demand a defense buildup. George Kennan believed that the whole affair destroyed Khrushchev, "the only Soviet statesman of the post-Stalin period with whom we might conceivably have worked out a firmer sort of existence." (Memoirs 143) Though Ike later claimed he felt the summit was doomed to failure even if the U-2 incident hadn't happened, contemporary documents show that he actually was quite optimistic about it.
5/28/1960 Khrushchev denied the rumors that he was facing political opposition within the Party. When he continued to insist that Ike didn't know about the U-2 flights, Pravda responded, "Everything, absolutely everything was known to the President."
5/28/1960 Dr. King is acquitted of the tax evasion charge by an all-white jury in Montgomery.
5/28/1960 NYT reported that in San Francisco Judge Axelrod dropped charges against all but one of the 52 demonstrators arrested earlier in May, describing them as "not Commies, but just a bunch of mixed-up kids." At varying times Axelrod would be quoted as saying that the Communists were behind the riots, or that they weren't behind the riots.
5/29/1960 Syngman Rhee flees South Korea for Hawaii.
Spring 1960 As the 1960 primaries increased his presidential prospects, Kennedy told a journalist visiting his Senate office that the most valuable resource he could bring to the presidency, based on personal experience, was his horror of war. Kennedy said he " had read the books of great military strategists-Carl Von Clausewitz, Alfred Thayer Mahan, and Basil Henry Liddell Hart-and he wondered if their theories of total violence made sense in the nuclear age. He expressed his contempt for the old military minds, exempting the U.S. 's big three, George Marshall, Douglas MacArthur, and Dwight Eisenhower . . . War with all of its modern horror would be his biggest concern if he got to the White House, Kennedy said. " The journalist who had listened to Senator Kennedy's 1960 reflections on war, Hugh Sidey, wrote thirty-five years later in a retrospective essay: " If I had to single out one element in Kennedy's life that more than anything else influenced his later leadership it would be a horror of war, a total revulsion over the terrible toll that modern war had taken on individuals, nations, and societies, and the even worse prospects in the nuclear age as noted earlier. It ran even deeper than his considerable public rhetoric on the issue." Hugh Sidey, introduction to Prelude to Leadership, pp. xxiv-xxv.
In 1960, LBJ ran for the Democratic nomination for President against Kennedy, and had unleashed a series of vicious attacks on Kennedy when it looked as though Kennedy was gonna win. (Adlai Stevenson was later to say that these were the most vitriolic attacks on Kennedy he'd ever heard.) As part of his campaign strategy, Johnson had even tried to cast doubt on Kennedy's fitness for office. To do this, Johnson's campaign manager hired private investigators to uncover the truth about Kennedy's health problems. He then began a rumor campaign designed to make people wonder if Kennedy wasn't too sick to serve out his term. (One source, Kennedy aide Kenny O'Donnell, in a 7-23-69 interview conducted for the Johnson Library, put it a little more bluntly. He claimed that LBJ's campaign manager had put out the word that Kennedy "had Addison's disease and couldn't serve out the term" and that "if he was elected he was going to die.") As the situation grew increasingly desperate in the Johnson camp, moreover, one of his mouthpieces, India Edwards, publicly proclaimed that "Kennedy was so sick from Addison's disease that he looked like a spavined hunchback." This, no surprise, prompted a response from the Kennedy camp. They issued a series of statements claiming that Kennedy's adrenal dysfunction-- which they'd correctly claimed was not what was classically known as Addison's disease--was in fact under control, with only the occasional need for medication.
6/3/1960 Memo from Hoover to State Dept. "Subject: Lee Harvey Oswald Internal Security - R. Reference is made to Foreign Service Despatch Number 234 dated November 2, 1959, concerning subject's renunciation of his American citizenship at the United States Embassy, Moscow, Russia, on October 31, 1959. It is noted that among other items, subject surrendered his United States Passport Number 1733242 to an American Embassy official. His last known residence as indicated in your despatch was the Metropole Hotel, Moscow, where he was residing in a nontourist status. Your attention is directed to the report of Special Agent John W. Fain, Dallas, Texas, dated May 12, 1960, entitled 'Funds Transmitted to Residents of Russia; Internal Security - R' a copy of which was furnished to the Department of State on May 24, 1960. In that report you will note that subject's mother Mrs Marguerite C. Oswald, Fort Worth, Texas, advised that she recently received a letter addressed to her son from the Albert Schweitzer College in Switzerland indicating that Lee Oswald was expected at the college on April 20, 1960. She stated subject had taken his birth certificate with him when he left home. She was apprehensive about his safety because three letters she had written him since January 22, 1960, had been returned to her undelivered. Since there is a possibility that an imposter is using Oswald's birth certificate, any current information the Department of State may have concerning subject will be appreciated." (CD 294B) This was declassified in 1975.
6/10/1960 Document 6: Air Force Chief of Staff Thomas White to Secretary of Defense Thomas Gates, 10 June 1960, enclosing "Strategic Targeting Authority"Source: Library of Congress, Manuscript Reading Room, Thomas D. White Papers, box 29, Top Secret General 1960. The Air Force was determined to play a central role in strategic targeting and planning and Chief of Staff Thomas White brought a plan to the Secretary of Defense that would codify such a role. Acknowledging that the Air Force's concept of a unified strategic command, with control over the Navy's Polaris submarines, was unlikely to win top-level support, White supported a "lesser solution" to the target coordination problem by designating CINCSAC the "Strategic Targeting Authority." With "jurisdiction over strategic targeting, strike timing, and force application," the new authority would produce an NSTL and a SIOP. The Joint Chiefs would review and approve both documents. Defining the NSTL as a "list of specific vital enemy targets," the top priority targets was consistent with the optimum-mix concept: "nuclear delivery capability," "governmental and military control centers," and "war sustaining resources, including urban industrial areas."
6/10/1960 Dr. King and A. Philip Randolph announce plans for picketing both the Republican and Democratic national conventions.
6/10/1960 Japanese mobs threaten US ambassador and other officials at the Tokyo airport; they are rescued by a marine helicopter.
6/14-16/1960 Ike visits the Philippines.
6/16/1960 Ike's visit to Japan is cancelled after continued rioting there.
6/18-19/1960 Ike visits Taiwan while the Red Chinese bombarded the Quemoy Islands.
6/19/1960 Ike arrives in South Korea.
6/22/1960 Senate approves US-Japanese Mutual Security Treaty. It goes into effect 6/23.
6/24/1960 Dr. King has a conference with JFK about racial matters.
6/24/1960 Romulo Betancourt, president of Venezuela, was wounded in Caracas in a car-bomb blast that killed an aide.
6/26/1960 British Somaliland (now Somalia) gains independence from Britain; Italian Somaliland declares independence from Italian-administration
6/26/1960 Madagascar proclaims the Malagasy Republic, staying within the French Community.
6/27/1960 Soviets walked out of the test ban talks in Geneva.
6/28/1960 U.S.S.R. announced that it would conduct new series of long-range missile shots into the Pacific, July 5-31, 1960.
6/28/1960 Oswald wrote a letter home to his mother from Russia.
7/1/1960 NASA George C. Marshall Space Flight Center, with Dr. Wernher von Braun as its Director, officially opened with formal transfer to NASA from ABMA, at Redstone Arsenal, Huntsville, Ala.
7/1/1960 An American RB-47 spy plane was shot down by the Soviets over the Barents Sea, which was just outside Soviet territorial waters. Khrushchev and Ike were both furious.
7/1/1960 Ghana is proclaimed a republic.
7/1/1960 Republic of Somalia created by former Italian Somalia and British Somaliland. Italian Somaliland gains independence, unites with Somali Republic
7/1/1960 First operational version of Titan ICBM failed to launch at Cape Canaveral.
7/7/1960 CIA wanted to start up the U-2 flights again, since satellites were not yet deployed. (Mayday 322)
7/11/1960 Ike announces new Latin American aid program to raise living standards and promote democracy.
7/11/1960 Democratic convention opens in Los Angeles.
7/11/1960 Khruschchev announces the 7/1 shootdown of the RB-47 plane.
7/11-13/1960 France grants independence to Central African Republic, Chad, Congo, Dahomey, Gabon, Ivory Coast, Niger and Upper Volta, though they will remain within the French Community.
7/12/1960 Congo, Chad & Central African Republic declare independence
7/13/1960 Kennedy wins the Democratic nomination.
7/13/1960 FBI supervisor Milton Jones memo to Cartha DeLoach: "The Bureau and the Director have enjoyed friendly relations with Senator Kennedy and his family for a number of years...As you are aware, allegations of immoral activities on Senator Kennedy's part have been reported to the FBI over the years...Allegations also have been received concerning hoodlum connections...much of the information being unsubstantiated." A confidential Bureau reported dated today said that JFK "tempers his political liberalism with enough realistic conservatism". Under "miscellaneous," the FBI reported that he and Sinatra had partied together in Palm Springs, Las Vegas and New York, and noted that Confidential magazine "is said to have affidavits from two mulatto prostitutes in New York." Informants said Sinatra was wooing JFK through Peter Lawford "so that Joe Fischetti and other notorious hoodlums could have an entre [sic] to the Senator."
7/15/1960 Document 8: Memorandum for General Twining et al from Rear Admiral F. J. Blouin, Joint Secretary, JCS, "Target Coordination and Associated Problems," SM-679-60, 15 July 1960, Top Secret, Excised copy with more details released on appeal Source: National Archives, Record Group 218, Records of the Joint Chief of Staff, Decimal Files, 3205 (17 Aug 59) After several meetings in early July it became apparent that the JCS remained completely split over the organization and direction of strategic nuclear planning. The spread sheets produced by the Joint Secretariat illustrate the disagreements. Thus, under the "Objectives and Concepts" category, the Army and Navy were content to see key target systems destroyed or neutralized and supported the idea of prevailing in war, but the Air Force had a more thoroughgoing concept drawing upon older thinking about the utility of bombing to destroy a society's morale; it sought to "destroy the Sino-Soviet bloc's will and ability to wage war." While the Air Force had specific concepts of strike priorities--apparently putting strategic nuclear targets at the top of the list--the other services rejected the idea of priority targets, with the Army holding that all on the target list were "important." The Navy probably rejected putting giving strategic targets top priority because of the problem of striking empty silos. Significantly, the services significantly diverged on the issue of restraints over nuclear weapons use. To limit or even avoid "overkill," both the Army and the Navy supported constraints on surface bursts of nuclear weapons. Both services worried about the lethal impact of downwind fallout, with the Army explicitly concerned about limiting exposure of "friendly forces and people" to radioactive fallout. By contrast, the Air Force saw no need for additional constraints. On organizational responsibilities and methods of organizing attack plans, differences remained profound. Both the Navy and the Marine Corps wanted responsibility for the NSTL and operational plans lodged with the JCS, which would work out attack plans with the CINCs. The Air Force agreed that the JCS should have overall responsibility for targeting policy, but wanted the CINCSAC to have the authority to develop the NSTL and the SIOP. The Army's position leaned toward the Air Force in that it supported designating CINCSAC as the "National Strategic Target Planning Agent," but with less authority than the Air Force envisioned.
7/16/1960 JFK made his acceptance speech at the Los Angeles Coliseum: "I stand tonight facing west on what was once the last frontier...the problems are not all solved and the battles are not all won, and we stand today on the edge of a new frontier - the frontier of the 1960s, a frontier of unknown opportunities and paths, a frontier of unfulfilled hopes and threats...we stand on this frontier at a turning point in history."
7/18/1960 Ike sent telegrams to JFK and LBJ inviting them to intelligence briefings.
7/18/1960 NYT reported the results of Hoover's report on the May student riots in San Francisco. Titled Communist Target: Youth', he stated, "Particularly unfortunate is the fact that many youth and student organizations are totally unaware of the extent to which they can be victimized and exploited by Communistsâ€¦Looking at the riots and chaos Communists have created in other countries, many Americans point to the strength of our nation and say, it can't happen here.' The Communist success in San Francisco in May 1960 proves it can." HUAC also produced a documentary film on the riots called Operation Abolition, a heavy-handed and laughable bit of propaganda using cleverly-edited news footage; the film at one point called "We Shall Overcome" a Communist song. Right-wingers, on the other hand, lavishly praised the film as "proof" of communist subversion behind all domestic unrest.
7/19/1960 Marguerite Oswald writes a letter to Khrushchev inquiring about her son, Lee.
7/20/1960 Two Polaris (A-1X) test missiles successfully launched from submerged submarine, the George Washington, marking a major milestone in the Navy ballistic missile program. Ballistic missile fired for the first time from a submerged sub; off Cape Canaveral, a two-stage Polaris rocket flies 1,150 miles from the USS George Washington in less than 14 minutes.
7/20/1960 USSR recovered 2 dogs; 1st living organisms to return from space
7/23/1960 Allen Dulles met with Kennedy in Hyannisport to give him a briefing on foreign policy and intelligence matters; they talked "in detail" about Cuba and Africa.
7/25/1960 GOP Convention opens in Chicago.
7/25/1960 LBJ letter to Hoover: "Dear Edgar: I very deeply appreciate your wonderful letter. Just to know that a distinguished public servant and very dear friend like you feels as you do, is richly rewarding to me personally."
7/27/1960 Dulles gave an intelligence briefing to LBJ in Texas.
7/27-28/1960 memo from US Embassy in Paris to Hoover saying that the Swiss Federal Police had been told, "in accordance with the bureau's request," to investigate Oswald's actions after he left the US. Declassified 12/1995; another document had the Swiss police reporting to the FBI 10/1/1960 that Oswald had planned to attend Albert Schweitzer College but never showed up. (AP 12/29/1995)
7/27/1960 Nixon is nominated by the Republicans; at the end of the GOP convention, the Gallup Poll showed JFK ahead 52 to 48%. Barry Goldwater threw his support to Nixon, but also told the crowd, "The Republican Party platform deserves the support of every American over the blueprint for socialism presented by the Democrats. We have been losing elections because conservatives too often fail to vote. Let's grow up, conservatives. If we want to take this party back, and I think we can some day, let's get to work."
7/28/1960 Dulles gave LBJ an intelligence briefing in Texas. Dulles stayed overnight at Johnson's ranch.
7/28/1960 FBI memo on Henry Cabot Lodge, "which has been prepared in anticipation of his nomination for the Vice Presidency...We have had cordial relations with Lodge since 1937." The memo outlined a few minor incidents in his past, such as an arrest for intoxication in 1922.
Mid-1960 Oswald bought a TOZ 16-gauge shotgun, joined a hunting club. After a few outings, he sold the gun to a secondhand store for 18 rubles. Gerald Posner: "The KGB file reveals that his fellow workers considered him a poor shot, especially with a pistol he once fired." (Case Closed 67) Life magazine would later claim that while in the USSR, he "joined a rifle club and became an expert marksman. (As a Marine he had made only average scores)." (Life 11/29/1963)
By late summer 1960, when Kennedy became the Democratic nominee for president, the CIA had already begun training fifteen hundred Cuban exile troops at a secret base in Guatemala for an invasion of Cuba. "The Bay of Pigs Invasion: A Comprehensive Chronology of Events, " in Bay of Pigs Declassified, edited by Peter Kornbluh ( New York: New Press, 1998) , pp. 269-70.
8/1960 CIA Deputy Director of Plans Richard Bissell and CIA Chief of Security Sheffield Edwards have discussions concerning use of underworld figures in organized crime to kill Castro. An unnamed deputy of Edwards' was also involved. They then recruited Robert Maheu, an ex-FBI agent and top consultant to Howard Hughes, to coordinate the actual logistics of the plots. The CIA and Maheu disagree over who was responsible for bringing Johnny Roselli into the plot. Maheu would later testify that he didn't even know Roselli was a mobster, merely that he was a man "who could get things done." The CIA and Maheu claim that Roselli was only told that Maheu represented business interests who wanted Castro eliminated, but Roselli claimed that he was made fully aware that Maheu was working with CIA. Bissell and Edwards claim that the plots were authorized by Allen Dulles and Charles Cabell in late September, but who initially authorized them is not known. (Alleged Assassination Plots Involving Foreign Leaders, 11/20/75)
8/1960 USAF Atlas squadrons became operational at Warren AFB, Wyo.
8/1960 JFK was briefed by Allen Dulles, but could not positively tell Kennedy that there was no missile gap. Another briefing later in the month by SAC gave Kennedy little more information on bombers and missiles.
8/1960 Guatemala opened a CIA airstrip at the Agency's training base at Retalhuleu.
8/1960 Eisenhower approved the preparation of a National Strategic Target List and Single Integrated Operational Plan (SIOP). It would have resulted in a nuclear war killing perhaps 500 million people.
8/1/1960 Antonio Veciana, comptroller in Havana's Banco Finaciero, is approved by deep-cover CIA agent "Maurice Bishop" to work with him in anti-Castro activity. (Fonzi chronology p415)
8/1/1960 Benin (Dahomey) gains independence from France
8/3/1960 Dominican Republic: president Hector Trujillo Molina resigns and is succeeded by his vice-president, Joaquin Balaguer.
8/3/1960 Niger gains independence from France
8/4/1960 Billy Graham wrote to Ike that if JFK & LBJ won the election, Catholic Mike Mansfield would be in line to become Senate majority leader. With Massachusetts congressman John McCormack serving as floor leader in the House, Catholics would hold much power in government, and "the Roman Catholic Church will take advantage of this." (With God on Our Side p50)
8/5/1960 Burkina (formerly Upper Volta) declares independence from France
8/6/1960 Bolivia: Victor Paz Estenssoro is inaugurated as president.
8/11/1960 Chad declares independence from France.
8/12/1960 Document 9: Admiral Burke's Conversation with Secretary [of Navy] Franke 12 Aug 60 Source: U.S. Navy Operational Archives, Arleigh Burke Papers, SIOP/NSTL Briefing Folder By early August, Secretary of Defense Gates had met with the JCS numerous times to form a consensus on strategic nuclear planning but he was not able to overcome the wide gulf between the services, especially the Air Force and the Navy. While Gates rejected Air Forces ideas for a unified command, he sought Eisenhower's endorsement of the proposals for an NSTL and SIOP to be prepared by a Director of Strategic Target Planning. Apparently, Gates saw SAC's vaunted computer capabilities as a significant reason for lodging strategic planning at Offutt Air Force Base. Strongly dissenting, Burke wanted Eisenhower to hear him out. During a two hour meeting on 11 August, Burke made his plea for JCS "direct control" over nuclear planning; otherwise it would be would be very difficult for the Chiefs to review target lists and operational plans if another agency created them. Burke further objected to the imposition of SAC methods on the unified commands. Eisenhower was sympathetic to some of Burke's concerns but he wanted to "test" the new approach. Troubled by the "schism over the method of conducting the first two hours or so of war", Eisenhower insisted that the war plan be on a "completely integrated basis" with the strikes "firmly laid on." "The initial strike must be simultaneous." Sometimes the discussion was testy; when there was some possibility of putting the planning on a trial basis, Twining argued that if that happened the "Navy would sabotage it." Eisenhower dismissed such charges and said he wanted to think about the "trial run" concept. (Note 15) The day after President Eisenhower made his decision to support Gates and Twining in going ahead with the SIOP and the JSTSP, Burke met with Secretary of the Navy William B. Franke. Recounting the meeting with Eisenhower, Burke went over his misgivings about SAC's role in strategic planning and Gate's acquiescence in the Air Force agenda. Nevertheless, Burke was determined to give the new system a try and send experienced Naval officers to work in the new strategic target planning staff. "We want to make this thing work as well as we possibly can." Burke remained bitter, however, worried that the Air Force was trying to take over all nuclear forces; "smart and ruthless" Air Force leaders were using "exactly the same techniques as the Communists" to win power struggles at the Pentagon. "As a matter of fact [the Air Force's textbooks], originally about ten years ago, were built on the textbooks of the Communists, how to control these things." (Note 16)
8/15/1960 The Congo (Brazzaville) gains its independence from France
8/16/1960 The first assassination plot by the United States against Fidel Castro is initiated when a CIA official is given a box of Castro's favorite cigars and told to poison them. It is unknown whether any attempt was later made to pass the cigars on to Castro. (Alleged Assassination Plots Involving Foreign Leaders, 11/20/75, p. 73)
8/16/1960 Cyprus proclaimed an independent republic after 82 years of British rule.
8/17/1960 Francis Gary Powers U-2 spy trial opens in Moscow
8/17/1960 Indonesia ends diplomatic relations with the Netherlands in dispute over Netherlands New Guinea.
8/17/1960 Gabon gains independence from France (National Day)
8/17/1960 Memo from FBI supervisor R.O. Allior to Alan Belmont; "[deleted] is a close personal friend of Vice President Nixon...is working hard...to get Mr. Nixon elected and that he is busy contacting wealthy individuals to secure money for the campaign...will start to expose some of Senator Kennedy's top advisors as 'parlor pinks'...If Senator Kennedy is elected, [deleted] believes that the United States will slowly become a Socialist Government..."
8/18/1960 A group of approximately 25 evangelical leaders met with Billy Graham in Montreux, Switzerland. Also included was Norman Vincent Peale. The main topic of conversation was how to thwart JFK's election. Peale was encouraged to publicly speak out against JFK, but it backfired when he did. Graham would deny having anything to do with encouraging Peale, but would admit years later that he had indeed. (With God on Our Side p52-53; God's Salesman, Carol George, 1993)
8/19/1960 Gary Powers convicted in Russia of spying on the USSR and sentenced to 10 years.
8/28/1960 Billy Graham sent a statement to Time and Newsweek denying that he had been referring to JFK when he recently said that "A man's religion cannot be separated from his person: therefore, when religion involves political decision, it becomes a legitimate issue. For example, the people have the right to know the views of a Quaker on pacifism or a Christian Scientist's view on medical aid, or a Catholic's view on the secular influences of the Vaticanâ€¦some Protestants are hestitant about voting for a Catholic because the Catholic Church is not only a religion, but a secular institution which sends and receives ambassadors from secular states."
8/29/1960 JFK told reporters that he was firmly committed to raising the minimum wage to $1.25 an hour.
8/29/1960 Hazza Majali, premier of Jordan, was in his Amman office when he and ten others died in a bomb explosion.
8-9/1960 Oswald writes in his diary, "As my Russian improves I become increasingly concious of just what sort of a sociaty I live in. Mass gymnastics, compulsory after work meeting, usually political information meeting. Complusary attendance at lectures and the sending of the entire shop collective (except me) to pick potatoes on a Sunday, at a State collective farm. A patroict duty' to bring in the harvest. The opions of the workers (unvoiced) are that it's a great pain in the neck."
9/1960 When Lee Harvey Oswald arrived in Minsk in the winter of 1960, Ernst Titovetz was a medical student avidly studying English. Through mutual friends from the television factory where Oswald worked, Titovetz met Oswald. Titovetz and Oswald became friends and often went out together in search of female company. Titovetz wanted to learn how to speak English as a native American speaker and one day in the summer or autumn of 1960, invited Oswald to a language lab with reel-to-reel audiotape recorders at the Minsk Foreign Languages Institute. There Titovetz recorded a series of tapes, for the purpose, he says, of studying Oswald's accent and pronunciation.
9/1960 Ninety-three conservative college students met at William F. Buckley's family estate in Sharon, Connecticut to form a movement on the right to counter the new left' on college campuses. They drafted the "Sharon Statement," the founding document of Young Americans for Freedom. Among those who attended: M. Stanton Evans.
9/2/1960 CIA Chief of Operational Support James O 'Connell reports assassination operation against Castro has commenced.
9/2/1960 Ike signed a $3.7 billion Mutual Security Appropriations Bill.
9/6/1960 LBJ letter to Hoover: "Dear Edgar: Many thanks for your thought on my birthday. It's good to be remembered by your friends - and your neighbors!! With warm regards."
9/6/1960 US defectors to Moscow, National Security Agency code clerks Bernon F. Mitchell and William H. Martin, say they deserted for moral and political reasons.
9/12/1960 JFK spoke before a group of Protestant ministers at the Greater Houston Ministerial Association about the "Catholic issue." "I believe in an America that is officially neither Catholic, Protestant, nor Jewish where no public official either requests or accepts instructions on public policy from the pope, the National Council of Churches or any other ecclesiastical source where no religious body seeks to impose its will directly or indirectly upon the general populace or the public acts of officials and where religious liberty is so indivisible that an act against one church is treated as an act against all. For while this year it may be a Catholic against whom the finger of suspicion is pointed, in other years it has been, and may someday be again, a Jew, or a Quaker, or a Unitarian or a Baptist. It was Virginia's harassment of Baptist preachers, for example, that helped lead to Jefferson's Statute of Religious Freedom. Today, I may be the victim, but tomorrow it may be you, until the whole fabric of our harmonious society is ripped at a time of great national peril."
9/13/1960 Oswald receives undesirable discharge. (CD 82)
9/14/1960 Johnny Roselli, Robert Maheu and the unnamed CIA Support Chief met at the Plaza Hotel in NY to discuss the anti-Castro plots. Within ten days the three men had a second planning session in Miami. It could never be determined who in the CIA initially authorized the plots. (Church Report p76)
9/14/1960 Iraq, Iran, Kuwait, Saudi-Arabia & Venezuela form OPEC
9/17/1960 Mobs attacked US embassy in Panama in dispute over flying of US and Panamanian flags.
9/19/1960 Dulles gave Kennedy another intelligence briefing. Dulles's memo for the record notes that he discussed Cuba, the Congo, Berlin, Laos, Jordan, Syria, the Sino-Soviet dispute, and the Soviet space program.
9/21/1960 CIA files released so far don't say why Bernard Barker was first assigned to work E. Howard Hunt on Sept. 21, 1960. It's also interesting that on September 20, Hunt was assigned the aliases of "Eduardo and "Edward." Even though "Eduardo" would be Hunt's best-known alias among Cuban exiles from 1960 through at least 1964, none of his operational files under that name were given to any of the Congressional committees who investigated him. Even when the Senate Watergate Committee specifically requested Hunt's "Mr. Edwards" file, the CIA refused to provide it.
9/22/1960 President Eisenhower's address to the General Assembly of the United Nations pointed to the importance of international agreement on measures to "enable future generations to find peaceful and scientific progress not another fearful dimension in the arms race, as they explore the universe."
9/22/1960 Mali (formerly French Sudan) declares independence from France
9/23/1960 Khrushchev addressed the UN General Assembly, attacking the West and demanding an apology for violation of Soviet airspace. He called America a "disgrace to civilization." At one point he took off his shoe and pounded it on the podium. Ike was so frustrated that he told Herter that if he were a dictator, he would "launch an attack on Russia" while Khrushchev was in NY.
9/24/1960 Meeting is held between CIA Operational Support Chief James O'Connell, mobster John Rosselli, and Robert Maheu (ex-FBI agent, Howard Hughes employee) in Miami. Rosselli then asks Chicago mob boss Sam Giancana to participate. Giancana agrees and approaches Florida mob boss Santos Trafficante, who agrees to recruit an "asset" to carry out the murder. O'Connell would be introduced to Giancana and Trafficante later. (Davis; Fonzi chronology p 415)
9/24/1960 First nuclear-powered aircraft carrier, the USS Enterprise, is launched.
9/24/1960 International Development Assn (UN agency) comes into existence
9/26/1960 Chicago: first televised presidential debate between JFK and Nixon. In these four debates, JFK looked relaxed and well-tanned, while Nixon looked unshaven and ill-at-ease. Kennedy charged that America was weak and in decline after eight years of Republican rule. He also called for support of the Cuban exiles in their anti-Castro efforts; though this was the very program which Nixon had been supporting for many months, he felt compelled to attack Kennedy's suggestions as irresponsible since "the covert operation (the Bay of Pigs Invasion) had to be protected at all costs." Nixon criticized JFK for having said that the US should have apologized to the USSR for the U-2 incident: "We all remember Pearl Harbor...We cannot afford an intelligence gap...I don't intend to see to it that the United States is ever in a position where, while we are negotiating with the Soviet Union, that we discontinue our intelligence effort, and I don't intend ever to express regrets to Mr. Khrushchev or anybody else...."
9/29/1960 British PM Macmillan addresses UN General Assembly; he asks Russia to help reduce world tensions and is shouted at by Khrushchev.
9/1960 Bissell and Edwards brief Dulles and CIA Deputy Director Charles Cabell about operations against Castro.
10/1960 Early Oct, 60 - Subsequent meeting takes place in Florida (Fountainbleu Hotel) and includes Rosselli, Giancana, Trafficante, Maheu, and O 'Connell. Rosselli (and Maheu) stay at the Kenilworth Hotel keeping his presence from underworld colleagues. At the 1975 Senate hearings on U.S. intelligence operations chaired by Senator Frank Church, CIA officials testified reluctantly on their efforts to kill Fidel Castro. In late 1960, without the knowledge of President Dwight Eisenhower, the CIA had contacted underworld figures John Rosselli, Sam Giancana, and Santos Trafficante, offering them $ 1 5 0,000 for Castro's assassination. The gangsters were happy to be hired by the U.S. government to murder the man who had shut down their gambling casinos in Cuba. If they were successful, they hoped a U.S. -sponsored successor to Castro would allow them to reopen the casinos. (Alleged Assassination Plots Involving Foreign Leaders: An In...

Tracy Riddle · 15-03-2014, 11:44 PM

When Kennedy became chair of the African Subcommittee, he told the Senate in 1959: " Call it nationalism, call it anti-colonialism, call it what you will, Africa is going through a revolution . . . The word is out-and spreading like wildfire in nearly a thousand languages and dialects-that it is no longer necessary to remain forever poor or in bondage . " He therefore advocated " sympathy with the independence movement, programs of economic and educational assistance and, as the goal of American policy, 'a strong Africa. "'

Secret pact between Turkish armed forces and CIA, putting paramilitary groups in charge of stifling internal unrest.
Antarctic Treaty signed with USSR and 21 other nations, agreeing to make Antarctica nuclear-free.
1/1959 The Central Committee of the Vietnamese Workers' Party in Hanoi decides on an all-out policy of promoting "armed struggle" in South Vietnam.
1/1959 J. Edgar Hoover ordered FBI agents to burglarize SCLC offices, mostly to obtain dirt on MLK; there were at least 20 break-ins between 1959 and 1/1964. (The Man and the Secrets 501) Wiretapping of phones was also done. (The Bureau 136)
1/1/1959 Castro comes to power in Cuba.
1/3/1959 Alaska becomes the 49th state.
1/7/1959 In a speech, LBJ chided the administration's lack of action on domestic ills, but also expressed support for "fiscal solvency" and "financial prudence." He also criticized the administration for cutting the defense budget. When corrected for inflation, military spending in 1958 was lower than in 1957.
1/8/1959 Jack Ruby is believed to have made his first contact with Robert McKeown.
1/9/1959 U.S. district court judge Frank Hooper declared regulations for segregated seating on Atlanta city busses unconstitutional. The case arose after two Atlanta black ministers -- Samuel Williams and John Porter -- challenged the practice of forcing blacks to sit at the back of the bus.
1/10/1959 Following Gov. Ernest Vandiver's recommendation, the State Board of Regents ordered state colleges and universities to stop accepting new applications. The move came as way of trying to stop integration. Though not resulting from the Regents' action, on the same day U.S. district court judge Boyd Sloan ordered the Georgia State College of Business Administration (which became Georgia State) to stop turning down black applicants on the basis of their race.
1/15/1959 Wayne Morse complained to LBJ, "Those of us who do not follow you blindly must expect to travel a rocky political road in the Senate, but I wish to assure you it will not only be our tires which get punctured."
1/24/1959 Columnist Joe Alsop describes LBJ as "the second most powerful man in the nation," maybe the "most powerful man, because he loves to exercise power and President Eisenhower does not." (Sat. Evening Post)
1/30/1959 Martin Luther King meets with Walter Reuther, president of the United Auto Workers union, in Detroit.
1/30/1959 Sen. William Fulbright (D-Arkansas) becomes Chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee.
2/1/1959 Jack Ruby tells McKeown he represents a source in Las Vegas that wants to get three prisoners out of jail in Cuba. Ruby meets McKeown in Kemah, Texas, and offers $25,000 for a personal introduction to Castro. (Ruby Cover-up 249)
2/7/1959 Drew Pearson: "This year Ike is really trying to balance the budget - so much so that he's probably going to throw the economy out of kilter...Ike won't tax. Especially he won't plug the loopholes in the oil laws." (Diaries p503)
2/12/1959 At a NSC meeting, Neil McElroy and Gen. Twining asked for more U-2 flights to fight out about Russian missile strength. Ike reluctantly agreed to a few flights.
2/25/1959 Eisenhower reported that Pakistan would receive US military aid for defensive purposes. India rejected a comparable offer. (Harper Enc. of Military History)
2/25/1959 PM Macmillan meets with Khrushchev in Moscow but ended by "toothache insult"
2/25/1959 Oswald took a Russian-language proficiency exam. (CD 82) Posner says that reports of Oswald being able to speak fluent Russian are wrong; rumors of him having been at the Monterey Language School are untrue. "After investigation, the [WC] was convinced Oswald had never been there. The Monterey School is not an intelligence facility, and its student rosters show Oswald was never enrolled there and never attended a single class." Posner says that Oswald learned Russian in the Marines with the occasional help of an officer in his unit who shared his interest. He admits that Oswald took a Russian language exam in which he scored "poor" in all areas. (H 8 307) "When he took the Russian exam, he also took an extensive aptitude test. He finished in the bottom of the lowest category. Oswald redoubled his efforts at Russian after the dismal test results." Oswald wrote in his diary that he bought two self-teaching Russian language books: "I force myself to study 8 hours a day I sit in my room and read and memorize words." (CE 24) This was the period from mid-November to the end of December 1959.
3/4/1959 Drew Pearson: "Eisenhower at his press conference indicated for the first time that [John Foster] Dulles may not come back. The fact is that cancer has been found all over his body. The doctors naturally are not revealing this, but Ike knows the truth." (Diaries p509)
3/11/1959 Jack Ruby became an informant for the Dallas FBI. This month, Ruby phones and meets with Tom Davis, a gun-runner with CIA ties, in Belmont.
3/19/1959 Oswald applies to Albert Schweitzer College; he said he intended to take a summer course at the University of Turku in Finland, though he never contacted this school. It did give him an excuse to travel to Finland. He lied on other parts of the school application, but was accepted.
3/24/1959 Carlos Marcello appears before the Senate McClellan Committee, which included JFK and counsel RFK. Marcello repeatedly took the fifth amendment.
3/26/1959 George Reedy memo to Lyndon Johnson, telling him that his low-key campaign strategy was working, and that he was "the only national Democratic leader who has a record of achievement. You are the only national Democratic leader who has displayed the moral fiber that a President must have."
4/1959 Ike makes the first public commitment to maintain South Vietnam as separate nation; he spoke at Gettysburg College in Penn.: "Strategically South Vietnam's capture by the Communists would bring their power several hundred miles into a hitherto free region. The remaining countries in Southeast Asia would be menaced by a great flanking movement...The loss of South Vietnam would set in motion a crumbling process that could, as it progressed, have grave consequences for us and for freedom..."
4/1-2/1959 Kennedy campaign strategy meeting at Palm Beach; present were Joe Kennedy Sr., JFK, RFK, Steve Smith, Lou Harris, Ted Sorense, Bob Wallace, Ken O'Donnell and Larry O'Brien.
4/2/1959 Dallas police's criminal intelligence division lists Jack Ruby and Lewis McWillie as connected with professional gambling activities.
4/4/1959 Ike makes the first public commitment to maintain South Vietnam as separate nation; he spoke at Gettysburg College in Penn.: "Strategically South Vietnam's capture by the Communists would bring their power several hundred miles into a hitherto free region. The remaining countries in Southeast Asia would be menaced by a great flanking movement...The loss of South Vietnam would set in motion a crumbling process that could, as it progressed, have grave consequences for us and for freedom..."
4/4/1959 The Federation of Mali is formed, consisting of Senegal & the territory of Mali in the French Sudan. It will dissolve in 1960.
4/6/1959 Seven men, including USAF Captains Virgil I. Grissom, Leroy Gordon Cooper, Jr., and Donald K. Slayton, are choosen to be the first Americans in space.
4/6/1959 Ike approved more U-2 flights into Russia, but changed his mind the next day.
4/12/1959 James Lindsay Almond, Jr., governor of Virginia, was the target of unsuccessful assassins, possibly segregationists, who attempted to shoot him.
4/19/1959 Castro appears on Meet the Press
4/27/1959 Jack Ruby rents a safety deposit box (#448) at Merchants State Bank.
4/28/1959 Drew Pearson: "Mrs. [Clare Boothe] Luce, after being confirmed overwhelmingly, made a wisecrack about Wayne Morse having been kicked in the head by a horse. When the remark was read on the Senate floor, several Senators got up and said if they had to vote over again, they would now vote against Mrs. Luce." (Diaries 519)
4/28/1959 Jack Ruby meets with agent Flynn for the first time as an informant.
5/1959 US advisers are sent to Vietnam to assist Diem's forces.
5/3/1959 Ismet Inonu, former president and future premier of Turkey, was the target of an unsuccessful assassination attempt.
5/6/1959 At a Marine base near Los Angeles Oswald was given another test and scored 191 which was one point over the mininum to rank as "marksman." (WR 191). Gerald Posner explains this second test by saying that Oswald was no longer motivated. (Case Closed 20) Of Oswald's lower test score, Marine Eugene Anderson told the WC, "It might well have been a bad day for firing the rifle - windy, rainy, dark." (H 11 304). But the Weather Bureau records show that that day - 5/6/1959 in Los Angeles - was sunny and bright, with no rain, and about 72-79 degrees. (Rush to Judgement)
5/7/1959 Ruby uses his safety deposit box.
5/11/1959 Geneva Foreign Ministers Conference
5/19/1959 Rashid Karami, prime minister of Lebanon, was the target of a failed assassination attempt.
5/20/1959 Eisenhower awarded John Foster Dulles the Medal of Freedom.
5/20/1959 Citizenship was returned to 5000 Japanese-Americans who had lost it during WWII.
5/30-6/14/1959 attempted insurgent invasion of Nicaragua; air-transported rebels defeated by Gen. Anastasio Somoza; dictator Luis Somoza Debayle accused Cuba of being behind it.
6/5/1959 Jack Ruby meets with agent Flynn.
6/8/1959 Supreme Court upheld the right of the states and Congress to investigate Communists.
6/8/1959 Luis A. Somoza Debayle, president of Nicaragua, was the target of an unsuccessful assassination attempt.
6/8/1959 Sam Giancana appeared before the McClellan Crime Committee, after avoiding its subpoena for some time. During the hearing, he was publicly humiliated by Robert Kennedy, who compared him to "a little girl." The incident is discussed in detail in William Brashler's biography of Giancana, The Don. Footage of the RFK-Giancana exchange also appears in some documentaries.
6/18/1959 Ruby meets with agent Flynn.
6/20/1959 Drew Pearson: "Mrs. Omar Bradley...was quite frank...regarding the Eisenhowers. She confirmed the fact that in 1948 her husband had warned the Democrats not to nominate Ike because he couldn't make decisions.'" (Diaries 531)
6/22/1959 Jack Ruby uses his safety deposit box.
6/22/1959 Gen. Albert Wedemeyer was asked by HUAC, "how late is it on the communist timetable for world domination?" Wedemeyer first replied, "Sir, my humble, honest judgement is, that it is too late." He was allowed to change his answer for the record, saying, "it is very, very late." (None Dare Call it Treason)
6/23/1959 Dominican Republic: Cuban invasion of 86 men was crushed by Trujillo's forces.
6/23/1959 Investigative report of Oswald shooting incident completed. (CD 82)
6/28/1959 At a Washington party, Earl Warren confronted Earl Mazo, the author of a glowing biography on Nixon. "You are a damned liar," Warren said, calling the book "a dishonest account to promote Nixon." (Chief Justice)
6/28/1959 Drew Pearson: "Now the Senate has a chance to slap down Wilbur Mills of Arkansas, who is beginning to be another reactionary dictator of taxes as chairman of the Ways and Means Committee - despite the fact that it was only a few years ago that Bob Allen and I helped elect him as a new young liberal congressman." (Diaries 533)
6/29/1959 Drew Pearson: "Ike flew to New York to welcome Deputy Premier Kozlov who arrived nonstop from Moscow yesterday. Ike made the trip only after Ambassador Menshikov made it clear that Nixon would not be welcomed by Khrushchev unless Eisenhower welcomed Kozlov...Secretary of State Herter had pressured him, mainly because Herter wants Nixon to get the red carpet treatment in Moscow." (Diaries 533)
7/1959 Ike invited Khrushchev to come to the US. No Russian leader had ever been to the US before.
7/1/1959 Gen. Lyman Lemnitzer became Chief of Staff of the Army.
7/1/1959 Jack Ruby uses his safety deposit box.
7/7/1959 Ruby meets with agent Flynn.
7/8/1959 First US servicemen (Maj. Dale Bius and Sgt. Chester Ovnard) killed in combat in Vietnam (by a communist attack at Bien Hoa.)
7/15/1959 During Senate hearings on suits between music-licensing firms ASCAP and BMI, counsel John Schulman of ASCAP cites the Coasters' "Yakety Yak" as an example of the "cheapening of American music"; he wants legislation against rock'n'roll.
7/15/1959 United Steelworkers union began a nationwide strike, which ended when Ike invoked the Taft-Hartley Act. Labor-Management Reporting and Disclosure Act signed, regulating internal practices of unions.
7/17/1959 Nixon wrote Robert Cushman a memo forbidding any of his people to use the phrase "peaceful coexistence": "I realize that this is the Acheson line in the State Department and I will not put it out!!! Cushman, tell all of them - it is never to be used again..." (Mayday 178)
7/18/1959 Drew Pearson: "Eisenhower has just pulled another amazing boner. Herter announced at a press conference that he was trying to persuade Chip Bohlen to remain on at the State Department as a Russia expert. But at this press conference Eisenhower announced, in reply to questions, that his report on Bohlen was negative and he saw no reason why he should be brought back...Doug Dillon came over to the White House and forced the President to cable his apologies to Bohlen and also issue a public statement that he hoped Bohlen would remain." (Diaries 535)
7/20/1959 Ruby uses safety deposit box.
7/21/1959 Ruby meets with Flynn.
7/26/1959 Santa Susana Field Laboratory, California, United States - Partial meltdown. A partial core meltdown may have taken place when the Sodium Reactor Experiment (SRE) experienced a power excursion that caused severe overheating of the reactor core, resulting in the melting of one-third of the nuclear fuel and significant releases of radioactive gases.
8/1959 US pressure forced Diem to hold elections in South Vietnam, which he rigged.
8/2/1959 Nixon trip to Poland.
8/3/1959 Ike told the press that he and Khrushchev had agreed to visit each other's countries. William F. Buckley thought the visit "profanes the nation" and Cardinal Cushing urged Americans to "pray in the streets, pray anyplace" while Khrushchev was in the country.
8/5/1959 Nixon returned to Washington. Drew Pearson: "His reception in Poland was even greater than some people realize." (Diaries 539)
8/6/1959 Ruby meets with Flynn.
8/8/1959 Stanley F. Wesson, a U.S. diplomat in Cuba, is arrested as he is presiding over a meeting of counterrevolutionaries planning a series of sabotages.
8/12/1959 Drew Pearson: "Ike's housing veto was upheld exactly as Lyndon predicted it. Ten Southern Senators voted for him. Eisenhower needed nine. The coalition is functioning perfectly. As a result there will be no civil rights bill this session. (Diaries 540)
8/13/1959 Drew Pearson: "Congressman John McCormack has given an ultimatum to Eisenhower that Khrushchev will not be permitted to address a joint session of Congress. I am using this on the radio and attributing it to McCormack as the spokesman for the Catholic Church. I know I will get into a lot of trouble. However, I pointed out that the most prominent Catholic in Congress, Jack Kennedy, does not favor this position." (Diaries 541)
8/13/1959 Drew Pearson wrote in his diary: "Lunched with [Senator] Tom Henningsâ€¦We agreed thatâ€¦Jack Kennedy won't get anywhere." (Washington Post Magazine 12/26/1982)
8/13/1959 A C-46 plane bringing ten men and many weapons from the Dominican Republic to Cuba is captured in Trinidad, province of Las Villas.
8/17/1959 Oswald submitted a request for a dependency discharge, claiming that his mother needed his support. She had been injured at work when a jar fell from a shelf and hit her on the nose; though several doctors told her she was fine, she at last found a doctor who agreed that she was totally disabled. She sent her own affidavit, and affidavits from the doctor and two friends, attesting to her injury. (Folsom Exhibit 1; Lee 94-95; FBI report, 1/17/1964, interview with Saner Davis, CD 329) Life magazine would later say that she had been hit in the head by a box, "was in bed for six months and, very quickly, was destitute." (11/29/1963) His term of service was scheduled to run out 12/7. He also sent a letter to his mother, dated this day: "Received your letter and was very unhappy to hear of your troubles, I contacted the Red Cross on the base here and told them about it. They will send someone out to the house to see you, when they do please tell them everything they want to know, as I am trying to secure an early discharge in order to help youâ€¦If they know you are unable to support yourself then they will release me from the USMCâ€¦" (H 16 581-82)
8/18/1959 Though the CIA had failed to find even one operational Soviet ICBM, Allen Dulles told Ike that they could have ten such missiles ready "either in 1959 or in 1960."
8/19/1959 Drew Pearson talked with LBJ: "He pointed out that the building trades, which were guilty of the greatest graft, had secured an exemption under the Taft-Hartley Act because Taft was a great friend of Maurice Hutchinson and Dick Gray of the Carpenters Union and the Building Trades Council, both Republicans." (Drew Pearson Diaries 543)
8/20/1959 Document 2: J.C.S. 2056/131, Notes by the Secretaries to the Joint Chiefs of Staff, 20 August 1959, enclosing memorandum from JCS Chairman Nathan Twining to Secretary of Defense, "Target Coordination and Associated Problems," 17 August 1959, Top Secret Source: National Archives, Record Group 218, Records of the Joint Chief of Staff, Decimal Files 1959, 3205 (17 Aug 59) While the NESC prepared the NSC 2009 study, top military leaders worried about endemic problems with U.S. nuclear targeting. With the huge expansion of the nuclear stockpile in the late 1950s and the wider dispersal of nuclear weapons and delivery systems among the services, the unified and specified commanders were playing a greater and greater role in nuclear planning. Thus, unified commanders--that is, the commanders-in-chief (CINCs) of regional, or theater, commands, such as European or Pacific, that included units from all three services--had control of nuclear bombs and missiles, as did, of course, SAC, the first specified command. The proliferation of nuclear weapons inevitably produced duplication of targets. Coordination conferences and special committee failed to solve this problem, much less resolve inter-service conflicts over the weight of a nuclear attack. (Note 11) To get discussion going, JCS Chairman General Nathan Twining, the former Air Force Chief of Staff, sent his colleagues a think piece calling for greater centralization of nuclear war planning; he specifically mentioned the need for a "single integrated operational plan" and a "national strategic target list." By carefully assigning targets, Twining wanted to see "atomic operations â€¦ pre-planned for automatic execution to the maximum extent possible and with minimum reliance on post-H-hour communications." Taking issue with arguments for a minimum deterrent, Twining supported a large strategic force that mirrored the Soviet "Principle of Mass"; a "heavy" strategic force was necessary to destroy "the critical components of Soviet long-range nuclear delivery capability." He believed that the "necessity of prevailing in general war is of such vital importance that any error in judgment should be on the safe side." Besides strategic nuclear targets, Twining recommended other target categories: "governmental and military control centers," "war-sustaining resources" (war-related industry), and "population centers." Attacking civilians as such contravened the laws of war, but by positing a wide array of military, industrial, government, and urban targets, Twining was following the Air Force tradition of searching for the "Achilles heel" whose destruction would cause a society to break down and capitulate. (Note 12) Twining addressed other issues--Army/Navy versus Air Force on how much destruction was necessary, the role of naval forces in attack plans, and organizational responsibility for developing the single integrated operational plan. Because the Strategic Air Command operated the "major portion of forces responsible for the strategic mission", its commander-in-chief (CINCSAC) "should be charged with the responsibility for developing such a plan."
8/21/1959 Hawaii becomes 50th state.
8/31/1959 Ruby meets with Flynn.
9/2/1959 Oswald request for dependency discharge approved. (CD 82)
9/4/1959 Oswald is given a Marine medical exam. Oswald was transferred to the H&H squadron in preparation for his release. Today he also applied for a passport at the superior court in Santa Ana, California, stating that he planned on leaving 9/21 and going to Albert Schweitzer College in Switzerland and University of Turku in Finland, as well as visiting England, France, Germany, the Dominican Republic, Russia and Cuba; it was issued six days later. (H 22 77-79; CE 946; H 18 160-71) The HSCA decided in 1979 that nothing was out of the ordinary about this sequence of events. (R 219)
9/4/1959 Jack Ruby uses his informant's safety deposit box, and then leaves for Cuba.
9/7/1959 Gen. John O'Daniel, Official Military Aide to South Vietnam, stated: "The American aid program in Vietnam has proved an enormous success, one of the major victories of American policy." (The Experts Speak)
9/9/1959 Atlas ICBM becomes operational.
9/10/1959 Oswald's passport is issued to him.
9/11/1959 Oswald is discharged from active duty in the Marines. (WC) He signs a "Notice of Obligated Service" advising him of obligation of reserve service until 12/8/62. He also signed a "Security Termination Statement," certifies individual has no classified material in possession and addresses prohibition on revealing classified information in future. (CD 82)
9/12/1959 Jack Ruby is in Miami, then flies back to Havana.
9/13/1959 Ruby flies from Havana to New Orleans. (CE 1442, 1443)
9/14-15/1959 Khrushchev and his family flew to the US. He was greatly impressed by the welcome he received. After being introduced to Democratic Senate Majority Leader LBJ, he sniffed, "Well, I've never been able to see any difference between your two parties." Hoover would later complain to Congress that Khrushchev's presence in the US created an "atmosphere favorable to Communism among Americans." He met JFK, then on the Foreign Relations Committee, and was "impressed" with the Senator. At a dinner at the Soviet Embassy, he toasted the Americans present, saying, "The ice of the Cold War has not only cracked, but has indeed begun to crumble." Henry Cabot Lodge was assigned as Khrushchev's escort around the country. "Khrushchev bragged about sending American defectors back to the United States, where they filched secret information and sent it to Moscow." (Mayday 199) He spoke at the UN about disarmament, visited an IBM plant, ate his first hot dog. Most Americans went out of their way to present a friendly face. Newsweek commented, "We now know that he is no buffoon reeling drunkenly through the Kremlin, but a shrewd, tough and able adversary." (10/5/1959) Khrushchev had been under the impression that the US was about to topple towards Communism at any time; he now learned that wasn't true. Instead, he was awed by America's industrial might.
9/14/1959 Oswald reaches his mother's house in Fort Worth by bus. (H 16 580)
9/15/1959 Oswald told his mother he was going to board a ship and go to work for an import-export firm. He withdrew $203 from his only bank account (at West Side State Bank), gave his mother $100, and left for New Orleans 9/16. (H 1 201-2,212) Weisberg: "With but 43 days of his Marine Corps enlistment remaining, or three months if the penalities of the courts martial had been imposed, Oswald received a 'hardship discharge' This was a clear fraud about which neither the Marine Corps nor any other government agency ever did anything." When he shot himself with his pistol, the Marines found that this injury "was incurred in line of duty and not related to misconduct." (Whitewash 123-4) "Oswald's discharge from the Marines was not 'undesirable' but for 'hardship' and was honorable...This placed him in the inactive reserve, and it is from that, not active service, that, in an ex parte proceeding having nothing to do with his military service, he was given an undesirable separation." (Post-Mortem 6) In the year before Oswald's arrival, the Soviets had received four American defectors, compared to none in the previous thirty years. (New York Times 6/20/1959) A solution to the mystery was suggested by former CIA agent Victor Marchetti, who resigned from the Agency in disillusionment after being executive assistant to the Deputy Director. The CIA fought a legal battle to suppress Marchetti's book The CIA and the Cult of Intelligence. In regard to Oswald, Marchetti told author Anthony Summers of a CIA-connected Naval intelligence program in 1 959, the same year Oswald defected to the USSR: "At the time, in 1959, the United States was having real difficulty in acquiring information out of the Soviet Union; the technical systems had, of course, not developed to the point that they are at today, and we were resorting to all sorts of activities . One of these activities was an ONI [Office of Naval Intelligence] program which involved three dozen, maybe forty, young men who were made to appear disenchanted, poor American youths who had become turned off and wanted to see what communism was all about. Some of these people lasted only a few weeks. They were sent into the Soviet Union, or into eastern Europe, with the specific intention the Soviets would pick them up and 'double' them if they suspected them of being U.S. agents, or recruit them as KGB agents. They were trained at various naval installations both here and abroad, but the operation was being run out of Nag's Head, North Carolina. " (Conspiracy, Summers)
9/17/1959 Oswald arrived in New Orleans and books passage on a freighter.
9/17/1959 In an address in New York, Khrushchev reminded the US of its post-WWI intervention in Russia, "the time you sent your troops to quell the revolution."
9/19/1959 Shortly before Khrushchev arrived in Los Angeles on the afternoon of 19 September, he apparently learned that his day's itinerary called for him to tour Los Angeles housing projects while his wife and children visited Disneyland. When Khrushchev said that he wanted to go to Disneyland too, he was told that he could not because security officials could not guarantee his safety. Instead, the disgruntled Premier and his family attended a luncheon at Twentieth-Century Fox studios and were taken on a cavalcade tour of Los Angeles housing. While at the studio luncheon, Khrushchev made an indignant speech criticizing the decision to exclude a trip to Disneyland from his day's activities: "We have come to this town where lives the cream of American art. And just imagine, I a Premier, a Soviet representative, when I came here to this city, I was given a plan -- a program of what I was to be shown and whom I was to meet here. But just now I was told that I could not go to Disneyland. I asked: 'Why not?' What is it, do you have rocket-launching pads there? I do not know. And just listen -- just listen to what I was told -- to what reason I was told. We, which means the American authorities, cannot guarantee your security if you go there. What is it? Is there an epidemic of cholera there or something? Or have gangsters taken over the place that can destroy me? Then what must I do? Commit suicide? This is the situation I am in -- your guest. For me the situation is inconceivable. I cannot find words to explain this to my people."A slightly different version of events is related by the celebrities who sat with Mrs. Khrushchev at the luncheon. Bob Hope claims that he told the premier's wife, "You ought to go to Disneyland. It's wonderful." Mrs. Krushchev then, according to Hope, passed her husband a note telling him that she wanted to go to Disneyland. When Krushchev read the note and asked the Secret Service about visiting Disneyland, he was told it was too dangerous; it was this incident that allegedly led to Krushchev's tirade a few minutes later. Frank Sinatra, who was sitting next to Mrs. Krushchev, supposedly leaned over to David Niven and said, "Tell the old broad you and I will take 'em down there this afternoon." The State Department later said that Mrs. Khrushchev and her daughters were free to attend Disneyland, but that Mrs. Khrushchev decided "at the last minute" to remain with her husband instead. In Hollywood he met Marilyn Monroe; Ronald Reagan refused to meet with him. In California he met more than a few protestors, and was even criticized by Los Angeles' mayor.
9/19/1959 Oswald letter to his mother: "Well, I have booked passage on a ship to Europeâ€¦Just remember above all else that my values are very different from Robert's and your's. It is difficult to tell you how I feel. Just remember this is what I must do." (undated letter, envelope postmarked 9/19/1959, CE 200; H 16 580)
9/20/1959 NY Times quoted Khrushchev as saying, "Never have any of our soldiers been on American soil, but your soldiers were on Russian soil." This was a reference to the US intervention after WWI.
9/20/1959 In New Orleans Oswald boarded the freighter SS Marion Lykes, which sailed to Le Havre, France. The freighter was scheduled to leave 9/18, but left 9/20. A document from Garrison's files, uncovered by Gary Schoener and dated 5/27/1969, showed that Oswald bought his ticket to Europe from the Trade Mart and registered as an import-export agent. (Destiny Betrayed 374)
9/23/1959 Ike signed six-year $650 million urban renewal bill.
9/25/1959 Solomon West Ridgeway Dias Bandaranaike, prime minister of Ceylon, was killed by a Buddhist monk in Colombo.
9/25/1959 Khrushchev returned to the White House after his tour of the country. Ike was suffering from a cold. They watched a Navy film about the North Pole. Ike mentioned that he liked Westerns, and Khrushchev said, "You know, when Stalin was alive, we used to watch Westerns all the time. When the movie ended, Stalin always denounced it for its ideological content, but the very next day, we'd be back in the movie theater watching another Western."
9/26/1959 First day of the summit; at Camp David, they discussed Berlin. Khrushchev was frequently argumentative, and seemed hyper-sensisitive to any perceived slight.
9/27/1959 The discussion turned to China; Ike privately felt that it was "foolish" not to recognize the Communists as the legitimate government of China. Though Khrushchev wanted to talk about China, Ike for some reason did not. The two men took private walks together at Camp David, and during these times Ike found Khrushchev to be more open and friendly. He finally removed his 6-month deadline for a peace treaty with Germany, but warned that the issue would have to be settled someday. He did ask Ike not to reveal the change of position until he got back to the Kremlin and told his colleagues first. They also agreed on a future Big Four summit. Khrushchev never mentioned the U-2 overflights. Stuart Symington remarked that if Truman had invited Stalin to the White House he probably would have been impeached.
10/1959 Robert Edward Webster, a young American who defected two weeks before Oswald and returned to the US, also two weeks before Oswald. He had told officials that he planned to defect to the USSR, and did so while in Moscow working at an American trade exhibition. He was a former navy man and had been employed with the Rand Corporation. He was also a plastics expert. While in the USSR, he lived with a Russian woman (though he had a wife in the US) and they had a child. He became disenchanted with the Soviet Union and returned to the US. "Years later in America, Marina told an acquaintance that her husband had defected after working at an American exhibition in Moscow. This, of course, reflects Webster's story, not Oswald's. After the assassination, when American Intelligence was looking into Marina's background, they discovered an address in her address book matching that of Webster's Leningrad apartment." (Crossfire 116-21) Gerald Posner argued that the process of defectors returning to the US "was routine. Records show that within two months of Oswald's return, two other American defectors to Russia also returned. One of the Americans, Robert Webster, was an even more extreme case than Oswald in that Webster had successfully renounced his American citizenship. He was repatriated as a Soviet alien under the USSR's immigration quota for 1962 and his application to return to the US took less time than Oswald's (Washington Post, 6/9/1962 pA7). By 1963, thirty-six defectors to Communist countries had come back to the US." (Case Closed 62) John Newman confirms that Webster, an ex-navy man, defected in Moscow while working for the Rand Development Corp., 7/11/1959. (Oswald and the CIA 22)
10/2/1959 Jack Ruby meets with Flynn for last time, ending his period as an informant.
10/8/1959 Oswald arrived at Le Havre.
10/8/1959 Abdul Karim Kassem, PM of Iraq, was the target of a failed assassination attempt. Saddam Hussein was part of a commando unit that tried to assassinate Kassem; the botched job caused Hussein to be shot in the leg, but he got away and went to Damascus. He then moved to Cairo and became active in Egypt's Ba'ath party.
10/9/1959 Oswald arrived at Southampton, UK. The official story had him flying from London to Helsinki but there were no commercial flights for that route on that day. (H 26; CE 2676-32: R 211)
10/9/1959 Cambodia: the editor of the communist front newspaper Pracheachon was attacked and died two days later. Sihanouk condemned the assassination, but the American embassy in Phnom Penh reported to Washington 10/19 that it was likely that Gen. Lon Nol had ordered the murder after Sihanouk had told him the newspaper was causing too much trouble. This report was released through the FOIA.
10/10/1959 By midnight of this day Oswald was checking into a hotel in Helsinki, Finland. He actually stayed at two hotels (10/10-15/1959); "... he registered at the Torni Hotel; on the following day, he moved to the Klaus Kurki Hotel." [WR, 690] Epstein says that the Klaus Kurki was "less expensive." Oswald was registered there for 5 days. [Legend, 94] The record of the stay is in a CIA report of 9/18/1964 (CE 2676) But that same report says that there was no flight leaving London 10/10/1959; the WC decided that he left London 10/9 (WR 690), though his passport contained a stamp of the London Airport immigration officer and the words "Embarked 10 Oct 1959." (CE 946 7) Gerald Posner did not deal with this problem in Case Closed.
10/11/1959 A plane drops two incendiary bombs on the Niagara sugar mill in Pinar del Rio province of Cuba.
10/12/1959 Oswald applied for his tourist visa from the Soviet consulate, and he bought $300 of Intourist vouchers. (Aline Mosby interview, CE 1385) Within two days, the Soviet consul in Helsinki granted him a six-day tourist visa. (CE 946; H 18 163-5) Yuri Nosenko said that this was not unusual, and the consul (Gregory Golub) had the authority to give Americans an instant visa if he was convinced the tourist was "all right." (R 212) Nosenko recalled that Oswald simply described himself as a student traveler: "There was nothing of interest on his visa application." The Helsinki consulate was also not very busy most of the time. (Case Closed 47) Swedish intelligence claims that Oswald visited the Soviet Embassy in Stockholm. The newspaper Dagens Nyheters reported 11/25/1963 that "After an unsuccessful attempt to get a Russian visa in Helsinki, he went to Stockholm, where he rented a room. Two days later he was able to continue his journey to Moscow. That indicates the Russian Embassy gave him a visa." Researcher Jones Harris claimed confirmation of this from a CIA source; nothing is mentioned about this incident in the WR or HSCA Report. Generally, it took 1 to 2 weeks to obtain such a visa (H 26 156,165,158) but the Helsinki consul was a suspected KGB officer who had the authority to grant visas immediately if he so desired.
10/14/1959 Oswald is issued his tourist visa. It is valid for a trip of not more than 6 days. He buys $300 worth of tourist vouchers.
10/15/1959 Oswald takes a train for Moscow.
10/16/1959 Oswald arrived in Moscow, was met by an Intourist representative, Rima Shirokova, and registered in the Hotel Berlin as a student. He also begins keeping a 12-page "Historic Diary." He tells Rima that he wants to apply for Soviet citizenship. Lee Oswald arrived in the Soviet Union on Friday, October 16, 1959. Within hours, he wrote a letter to the Supreme Soviet saying he wanted to renounce his U.S. citizenship and become a Soviet citizen. In that letter--which was unavailable to the Warren Commission and first made available after Russian President Boris Yeltsin turned it over to US President Bill Clinton in August, 1999--Oswald said: "I want citizenship because I am a communist and a worker; I have lived in a decadent capitalist society where the workers are slaves."
10/16/1959 Petr Popov, the CIA's top defector-in-place in the USSR (code-named ATTIC, and had been giving information to the CIA since 1952). 4/1958 Popov reported that the KGB knew about the U-2 spy plane. (Wedge 155) He was arrested as a spy the day Oswald arrived in Moscow (10/16/1959). Angleton believed that Popov had been betrayed by a mole in the CIA's Soviet Division. Thomas Mangold says that "Popov was actually lost to the Soviets because of a slipshod CIA operation; there was no treachery." (Cold Warrior 250) Popov was later executed.
10/17/1959 Sam Rayburn and Price Daniels announced the formation of an "unofficial" LBJ for President committee.
10/17/1959 Rima meets Oswald for sightseeing; he tells her he is a communist.
10/19/1959 Cuba: Maj. Huber Matos, one of Castro's senior officers, resigned from the army in protest over the growing influence of the Communists. The next day he was arrested at his home.
10/19/1959 A plane drops two bombs on the Punta Alegre sugar mill in Camaguey province, Cuba.
10/19/1959 Oswald was interviewed by Lev Setyayev (a KGB informant) of Radio Moscow. (Marina and Lee 81; Case Closed 49, "confidential sources") In his diary he wrote: "Am anxious since my visa is good for five days only and still no word from auth[orities] about my request."
10/20/1959 Oswald writes in his diary that that the pass & visa department wanted to see him.
10/21/1959 Oswald was told that his request for citizenship was denied and his visa would not be extended. (Oswald's "historic diary," CE 24, 10/21/1959 entry.) Soviet official tells him that "'USSR only great in Literature wants me to go back home.' I am stunned...Eve. 6.00 Recive word from police official. I must leave country tonight at. 8.00pm as visa expirs. I am shocked!! My dreams! I retire to my room. I have $100 left. I have waited for 2 year to be accepted. My fondes dreams are shattered because of a petty offial; because of bad planning I planned too much! 7:00 PM I decide to end it. Soak rist in cold water to numb the pain. Than slash my left wrist. Than plaug wrist into bathtub of hot water. I think 'when Rimma comes at 8. to find me dead it wil be a great shock. somewhere, a violin plays, as I wacth my life whirl away. I think to myself. 'how easy to die' and 'a sweet death, (to violins)." (CE 24) Oswald's tour guide, Rima, discovered him soon after he had slashed his left wrist. Oswald was rushed by ambulance to Botkinskaya Hospital. He was then sent to the psychiatric ward for three days. Five stiches were put in his wrist. Rima stays by his side as an interpreter ("my Russian is still very bad"). By this time, Oswald has spelled Rima's name three ways in his diary (Rimmea, Rimmer, Rimma). This dramatic act of Oswald changed the entire dynamic, and the Oswald case then went to the top of the Soviet Government. Both the top level KGB then became involved, and, more important, the case was considered by Gromyko, and Mikoyan and Madame Furtseyva, the Minister of Culture, and reportedly Khruschev's girlfriend). The entire matter wasn't resolved until late November, when the USSR granted Oswald permission to remain in Russia (but not in Moscow; rather, he would be sent to Minsk).
10/22-27/1959 LHO writes in his diary: "Only after prolonged (2 hours) observation of the other pat[ients] do I relize I am in the Insanity ward." The hospital's report reads, "He revealed in English that he graduated from a technical high school, he works in the field of radioelectronics, in three years he saved enough to come to the USSRâ€¦His mind is clear. Perception is correct. No hallucination or deliriumâ€¦He has a firm desire to remain in the Soviet Union." (H 18 461-73)
10/26/1959 Allen Dulles requested more U-2 flights.
10/28/1959 Turkey and the US sign an agreement for the deployment of fifteen nuclear-tipped Jupiter missiles in Turkey. 6/1/1961 is tentatively set as a target installation date for the first launch site.
10/28/1959 At Hyannisport, Mass., JFK, RFK, Teddy, Joe Sr., Ken O'Donnell, Larry O'Brien, Ted Sorensen, Lou Harris, Stephen Smith, Pierre Salinger, and John Bailey (Democratic state chairman of Connecticut) met to make final campaign plans. It was agreed that the party bosses had to be bypassed by entering the primaries.
10/28/1959 Ruby uses his safety deposit box for last time this year.
10/28/1959 Oswald was released from the hospital and Rima Shirokova checked him into the cheaper Metropole hotel. (CE 24) He is told that the Soviets will consider his request to stay in the USSR.
10/28/1959 Consul Synder sent a confidential letter this day to Gene Boster, Officer in Charge of USSR Affairs at the State Dept; Snyer asked for advice on how to handle an attempted renunciation of US citizenship. (CE 914) Snyder told the WC that the letter "wasn't directed at any particular case." (H 5 271) He testified that he had only encountered one other case of renunciation, and that had been resolved before Oswald's case came up. (H 5 279)
10/30/1959 Oswald writes in his diary that he is tired of waiting for an answer from the officials.
10/31/1959 Oswald went to the American Embassy, met with Consul Snyder, threw down his passport, and said he was through with the U.S. and capitalism, and wanted to remain in Russia for the rest of his life. In other words, on October 31, 1959, Oswald said to Snyder--verbally, and in person--what he had already stated in writing, to the Soviet Presidium, on the day he arrived in Moscow.
7:59am (EST) Snyder's confidential cable from US embassy is received at State Dept. (Oswald and the CIA 16)
9:20am (EST) Aline Mosby's report on Oswald flashed on UPI. (Ibid.)
10:19am (EST) at the FBI building, Mosby's story was stamped 'RECEIVED DIRECTOR FBI' and handed to E.B. Reddy, who began trying to find out more about Oswald. Agent Paul Kupferschmidt soon located Oswald's Marine records. (Ibid. 17)
12:30pm Oswald tried to renounce US citizenship in the US Embassy in Moscow. The note he handed to Snyder read: "I, Lee Harey [sic] Oswald, do hereby request that my present citizenship in the United States of America, be revoked. I have entered the Soviet Union for the express purpose of appling [sic] for citizenship in the Soviet Union, through the means of naturalization. My request for citizenship is now pending before the Supreme Soviet of the USSR. I take these steps for political reasons. My request for the revoking of my American citizenship is made only after the longest and most serious considerations." The note was signed by him and is undated. (CE 909, H 18 97) He spent 40 minutes at the Embassy. His performance at the embassy may have been for the benefit of KGB bugs in the building; he wrote in his diary, "I leave Embassy, elated at this showdown...I'm sure Russians will except [sic] me after this sign of my faith in them." (CE 24) He never formally renounced his citizenship, though. He also threatened to turn military secrets over to the Soviets. (H 5 266) The Embassy sent a dispatch to the O.N.I. and State Dept reporting that Oswald had threatened to give the Soviets US military information. (CE 917) The O.N.I. replied that it wanted to be kept informed of "significant developments in view of continuing interest of HQ, Marine Corps, and US intelligence agencies." (CE 918) Sylvia Meagher says that "on these and other cablegrams and dispatches which appear in the Commission's exhibits, lines and parts of lines have been obliterated by strips of what appears to be white paper superimposed before the photocopy was made." (Accessories After the Fact 340) In his diary, Oswald describes Snyder as "Head Consular in Moscow at that time," which indicates that it was written or re-written after Snyder left in late 1961. FBI agent James Hosty says that when Oswald defected, "the United States had years before stopped trying to infiltrate the Soviet Union in such a simplistic manner." (Assignment Oswald 211)
3:18pm (EST) a memo from Reddy on Oswald arrives at Alan Belmont's office and is time-stamped. (Ibid.)
10/31/1959 This afternoon, A.I. Goldberg of the AP tries to talk to Oswald and fails; then Aline Mosby of UPI gets him to answer a few quick questions.
10/31/1959 Telegram from Edward L. Freers, charges d'affairs at US embassy in Moscow, to Secretary of State about LHO's attempt to renounce his citizenship: "Says has offered Soviets any information he has acquired as enlisted radar operator." (H 18 105) Oswald did not mention this officer in his Historic Diary.
11/1/1959 Fort Worth Star-Telegram story about LHO's defection. Oswald gets phone calls from his brother and mother, and more reporters wanting to talk to him.
11/2/1959 10:07am (EST) Clyde Tolson examined Reddy's memo on Oswald; he initialed it and sent it on to Cartha De Loach. (Oswald and the CIA 19) 10:36am (EST) De Loach began reading about the Oswald defection. (Ibid. 20) 3:32pm (EST) Reddy memo is back on Belmont's desk. (Ibid. 21)
4:58pm (EST) Reddy's memo again returned to De Loach. (Ibid.) 6:31pm (EST) Reddy's memo sent back again to Belmont. (Ibid.)
11/2/1959 Two further cables about Oswald's threat to turn over military secrets, one from Snyder and one from the Navy Liaison. Richard Bissell told Michael Beschloss in the '80s, "I don't think Oswald could have told them much [about the U-2] they didn't already know...Now what that has to do with the Kennedy assassination, God only knows." (Mayday 237) ONI's J.M. Barron sent a memo on Oswald to the FBI stating that the ONI files "contain no record" of Oswald and concluded, "No action contemplated by this office." He did observe that Oswald's Marine Corps file had information; it included the following statement: "He speaks, reads and writes Russian very poorly." (Oswald and the CIA 21,534) Richard Snyder had his secretary, Marie Cheatham, call Oswald about a telegram that had arrived from his brother, but Lee refused to come to the embassy or have the telegram read to him over the phone. (CE 2659, H 26 13)
11/3/1959 12:04pm (EST) cable from US naval attache in Moscow, Capt John Jarret Munsen, arrived at Navy Dept about Oswald and Robert Webster: "Oswald stated he was radar operator in Marcorps and has offered to furnish Soviets info he possesses on US radar." (Oswald and the CIA 22-3)
3:37pm (EST) Reddy's memo was date-stamped at the Espionage Section of the FBI's Counterintelligence Branch. (Ibid.) 6:40pm (EST) Belmont got his first look at Snyder's cable from Moscow; the CIA soon did as well. (Ibid. 23)
11/3/1959 Cablegram from Naval Attache, US Embassy, Moscow to Navy Dept. (CE 917) "Attention invited to amemb Moscow dispatches 234 DTD 2 November and 224 DTD 26 October concerning the renunciation of US citizenship and request for Soviet citizenship by Lee Harvey Oswald former marine and [deleted] Oswald stated he was radar operator in MarCorps and has offered to furnish Soviets info he possesses on US radar." (H 18 115) Reddy's memo is sent to the FBI's Counterintelligence Branch, specifically to the Espionage Section. No one in the FBI, CIA or Navy Dept as of this morning yet knew of Snyder's cable saying that Oswald had threatened to turn over classified info to the Soviets. (Oswald and the CIA)
11/4/1959 11:59am (EST) Lt. D.E. Sigsworth of ONI drafted a cable for Adm. Arleigh Burke, which was sent to Moscow, requesting that they be kept updated on Oswald. The cable said that "no record" of Oswald's Marine security clearance had been located, but because he was an aviation electronics operator he "may have had access to confidential info." The cable concluded, "Request significant developments in view of continuing interest of HQ, Marine Corps and US Intelligence Agencies - Intelligence Matter." This cable was also sent to army and air force intelligence, the FBI and CIA. At the CIA, this cable seems to have disappeared until it appeared at the Special Investigation Group (SIG) of Angelton's counterintelligence staff 12/6/1959. (Oswald and the CIA 26-7)
11/4/1959 Probably on this date the CIA recieved (and acknowledged) the first two cables. (Oswald and the CIA 53) Navy Dept sent a copy of the Moscow Naval Attache's cable to the FBI and CIA. (Ibid. 25-6) W.A. Brannigan, an FBI official who worked under Alan Belmont, wrote a memo to Belmont: "On 11/2/1959, it was determined through Liaison with the Navy Department that the files of ONI contained no record of the subject [Oswald.]...Since subject's defection is known to Department of the Navy, and since subject apparently has no knowledge of any strategic information which would be of benefit to the Soviets, it does not appear that any action is warranted by the Bureau in this matter." He recommended that a check be made on Oswald's fingerprints to make sure he didn't try to reenter the country under a different name." (Oswald and the CIA 21,25)
11/4/1959 Three rebel planes drop bombs on various points in the Cuban province of Oriente.
11/5/1959 Dep CIA Director Cabell told the Senate Internal Security Subcommittee that "we believe that Castro is not a member of the Communist party, and does not consider himself to be a Communist." He did admit that there were Communists in Castro's government.
11/5/1959 Office of Chief of Naval Operations answers 11/3 telegram: "Oswald is PFC Inactive Marine Corps Reserve with obligated service until 8 December 1962. Lee Harvey Oswald attended Aircraft Control and Warning Operator course in 1957. Served with Marine Air Control Squadrons in Japan and Taiwan with duties involving ground control intercept. Job description code indicates he is aviation electronics operator. No record of clearance at HQ Marine Corps but possibility exists he may have had CONFIDENTIAL infoâ€¦" (H 18 116)
11/6/1959 White House meeting about Castro; Lodge noted that capitalism was seen in Latin America as being counter-revolutionary: "The US can win wars, but the question is can we win revolutions." (Inevitable Revolutions 14)
11/6/1959 US embassy in Moscow receives a handwritten letter from LHO dated 11/3; he again said he wanted to renounce his citizenship. (H 18 108)
11/7/1959 Supreme Court, using the Taft-Hartley Act, ordered end to a 116-day steel strike.
11/8/1959 Oswald wrote his brother Robert that he had been planning his defection for over a year. "I will never return to the United States which is a country I hate." (CE 294; H 16 814)
11/9/1959 Embassy replied to Oswald that "you may appear at the Embassy at any time during normal business hours and request that the Embassy prepare the necessary documents fo renunciation of citizenship." (H 18 117)
11/9/1959 The CIA put Oswald on its "Watch List," authorizing the Agency to open his mail. On the notecard someone wrote, "SECRET EYES ONLY." The CIA would later testify to the Senate in 1975 that only a select few people were put on this "Watch List." Because of this lookout card, the 201 file being opened much later was a deliberate act. (Oswald and the CIA 54-5) The notecard contains the typed phrase, "CI/PROJECT/RE," and a handwritten "7-305," and "N/R-RI 20 Nov. 59." The CIA explained these notations to the HSCA 8/15/1978, saying that "CI/PROJECT" was a cover name for CIA staff involved in mail-intercept; "RE" were the initials of the person who put Oswald's name on the Watch List because he was "Recent defector to the USSR - Former Marine." The other notations meant that his mail should be watched, and that a name trace turned up nothing in their central files. John Edward Pic sent a cable to Oswald from Japan, "Please reconsider your intentions. Contact me if possible." McVickar brought the cable to the Metropole but couldn't find Oswald. (Ibid. 77)
11/13/1959 Most likely on this date the CIA received (and acknowledged) the second Snyder cable, and is signed-off by mole-hunter Birch O'Neal. (Oswald and the CIA 53)
11/13/1959 Aline Mosby interviewed Oswald for two hours. According to her notes, "He talked almost non-stop like the type of semi-educated person of little experience who clutches what he regards as some sort of unique truthâ€¦'I'm a Marxist' and he added that eagerly as if the label gave him pride and importance. I became interested about the age of 15. From an ideological viewpoint. An old lady handed me a pamphlet about saving the Rosenbergs.'" He described reading Das Kapital as though "it was like a very religious man opening the Bible for the first time." But he denied being a Communist or a member of the CP. He said he became disillusioned with American imperialism while in the Marines. (H 22 702-05)
11/14/1959 On Saturday, November 14, Oswald called UPI's Aline Mosby, and invited her to his hotel for an interview. Her story ran on the UPI wire on Sunday, November 15, and was published --for example--in the Fort Worth Star Telegram. It ran under the headline "Fort Worth Defector Confirms Red Beliefs" (and is Commission Exhibit 2716). Mosby's story begins: Lee Oswald, still sporting the chop-top haircut he wore in the U.S. Marines, said Saturday that when he left America to seek citizenship in Russia, "It was like getting out of prison." But his dream of achieving Soviet citizenship in exchange for U.S. citizenship he renounced went aglimmering. The 20-year-old Texan from Fort Worth said Soviet authorities would not grant him citizenship although they said he could live in Russia freely as a resident alien."
11/14 or 16/1959 Oswald's diary: "A Russian official comes to my room asks how I am. notifies me I can stay in the USSR till some solution is found with what to do with me."
11/15/1959 Priscilla Johnson arrives back in Russia.
11/16/1959 Capt. Joseph W. Kittinger, Jr., makes balloon ascent to 76,000 ft. in an open gondola, Excelsior I, then parachutes to Earth.
11/16/1959 Priscilla Johnson (later Priscilla McMillan) knocked on Oswald's hotel door, and arranged to interview him that evening. She made notes, and filed a nearly identical story with North American News Alliance (NANA). But NANA was not a wire service, and so McMillan submitted her story by mail, and it was published in a number of newspapers over the the following month.
11/16/1959 McVickar asks Priscilla Johnson to meet with Oswald: "He might talk to you because you're a woman." Snyder knew nothing about this and was not pleased with McVickar taking matters into his own hands. (Oswald and the CIA 77, based on Newman interviews with Snyder and Johnson-McMillan). Oswald met Johnson at the hotel at about 5:20pm. He agrees to an interview, in her room, that began at 9pm that night and lasted until 1 or 2am. He tells her he did not feel "safe" to tell his side of the story until the Soviets assured him he could stay. Johnson later recalled, "of the three or four defectors I saw, the was the only ideological one...He talked in terms of capitalists and exploiters and he said something about he was sure that if he lived in the US he wouldn't get a job, that he'd be one of the exploited...As I talked to him, I realized that he had a sort of vein in him that was beyond reason, maybe that was fanatic." (11/29/1963 Life)
11/17/1959 Johnson wrote up her story on Oswald this day, and contacted Snyder "because I wanted to get his version too, because Oswald was so critical of him. I probably talked to Snyder between 12:00 and 1:00pm..." She cabled the story that afternoon. That evening she met with McVickar over dinner. They both disliked Snyder, and felt that he had mishandled the Oswald case. That night, McVickar wrote a file memo in which he claimed that Johnson had talked with Oswald on the 15th, and even specifically stated the day, Sunday. He also wrote, "He told her that his Soviet citizenship was still under consideration, but that the Soviets had already assured him that he could stay here as a resident alien if he so desired. They are also looking into the possibility of getting him into a school." Oswald said he didn't plan to return to the Embassy, though he was upset that he couldn't renounce his citizenship. Though she had already interviewed Oswald, McVickar implied that he had told her the following on the 17th: "I also pointed out to Miss Johnson that there was a thin line somewhere between her duty as a correspondent and as an American." He urged her to try to persuade Oswald not to renounce his citizenship. (Oswald and the CIA 78-82; H 18 106-7).
11/17-12/30/1959 Oswald writes in his diary that he spends this time teaching himself Russian from two language books. He is almost without money, but is allowed to stay at the hotel.
11/19/1959 McVickar added a postscript to his file memo, "Priscilla J. told me since: that O. has been told he will be leaving the hotel at the end of this week; that he will be trained in electronics; that she has asked him to keep in touch with her; that he has showed some slight signs of disillusionment with the USSR, but that his 'hate' for the US remains strong although she cannot fathom the reason." John Newman notes that Oswald hadn't met with Johnson since the first interview and nothing had been said about leaving the hotel or signs of disillusionment. Johnson never mentioned anything about Oswald saying he would be trained in electronics. At the time of the interview, Oswald didn't know he would be going to Minsk or working in a radio factory. Snyder told Newman he couldn't figure out how McVickar knew about this. (Oswald and the CIA 83-4)
11/19/1959 Billy Graham wrote to Nixon that he ought to attend church regularly and to keep "the religiously minded people in America" in mind as he headed into the 1960 campaign.
11/25/1959 The CFR's "Study No. 7" stated that "building a new international order must be responsive to world aspirations for peace, for social justice and economic change...including states labeling themselves as 'Socialist.'" To achieve this, we must "gradually increase the authority of the UN." (Strategy for the '60s, Jay Cerf and Walter Posen, 1962 Praeger, p95)
11/26/1959 Oswald wrote his brother Robert: "Ask me and I will tell you I fight for communismâ€¦Look at a world map! America is a dieing country, I do not wish to be a part of it, nor do I ever again wish to be used as a tool in its military aggressions...I have been a pro-communist for years and yet I have never met a communistâ€¦In the event of war I would kill any american who put a uniform on in defense of the american government any american." He claimed not to care about his family anymore and said he wanted to stay in the USSR for the rest of his life. (CE 295, H 16 816)
12/1959 Joseph P. Kennedy told Charles Bartlett and Red Fay that he didn't think Jack could become president: "He won't have a chance. I hate to see him and Bobby work themselves to death and lose." (A Hero for Our Time, Ralph Martin) Franklin D. Roosevelt Jr. dined with JFK, and commented later, "How can a guy this politically immature seriously expect to be president?" (A Hero for Our Time, Ralph Martin)
12/1959 The accumulated death toll on US highways has exceeded the casualty figures for all US wars combined.
12/1/1959 Snyder cabled the State Dept, telling them that Oswald had apparently left the Metropole "within the last few days." The source for this was McVickar's 11/19 memo postscript. (Oswald and the CIA 86)
12/4/1959 NYT quoted the Cuban ambassador in London as saying that Cuba would buy fighter planes "wherever they can be purchased." This was after the British turned down a request to sell jets to Cuba.
12/10/1959 NSC meeting Richard Bissell told Nixon that anti-US feelings in Cuba were being stirred up by the Soviets.
12/11/1959 Official memo from Colonel J.C. King, to CIA Director Allen Dulles proposes the elimination of Castro. Dulles approves "through consideration be given to the elimination of Castro." (Alleged Assassination Plots Involving Foreign Leaders, 11/20/75) Allen Dulles approved a recommendation from J.C. King (head of the CIA's Western Division) that "thorough consideration be given to the elimination of Fidel Castro." Dulles wanted to replace Castro with a more moderate leader, and recognized the need to appeal to liberals and democrats in Cuba. (Gentleman Spy 494)
12/16/1959 NSC meeting Nixon stated that he felt Cuba was a serious situation that could not be dealt with using normal diplomatic (State Dept) channels. He felt that the State Dept had been too soft with Cuba; Nixon recommended that "we need to find a few dramatic things to do...in order to indicate that we would not allow ourselves to be kicked around completely." (Oswald and the CIA 115-120)
12/17/1959 Stanley Kramers powerful film On the Beach, about the aftermath of a nuclear war, premieres in the US. The story is set in a then future 1964, in the months following World War III. The conflict has devastated the northern hemisphere, polluting the atmosphere with nuclear fallout and killing all life. While the bombs were confined to the northern hemisphere, air currents are slowly carrying the fallout to south. The only areas still habitable are in the far southern hemisphere, like Australia. The Eisenhower admistration attacked the film and tried to discredit it.
12/22/1959 Document 3A: A: JCS 2056/143, Note by the Secretaries to the Joint Chiefs of Staff, 5 October 1959, enclosing Memorandum for the Joint Chiefs of Staff, "Target Coordination and Associated Problems," 22 December 1959 Document 3B: attached memorandum from Chief of Naval Operations, 30 September 1959 attached, Top Secret, Excised Copy With More Details Released on Appeal Source: National Archives, Record Group 218, Records of the Joint Chief of Staff, Decimal Files, 3205 (17 Aug 59) After Twining issued his 17 August memorandum, he distributed to the Joint Chiefs a list of questions on targeting. While the Air Force Chief of Staff solidly supported Twining's call for reform, the other service chiefs rejected his concept of greater centralization of nuclear war planning under the direction of CINCSAC. All agreed with the Chairman's concept of a strategic target system (excised from this version), but the Army, Navy, and Marines plainly saw the concept of a single integrated operational plan as a challenge to organizational prerogatives. For them, the concept of a SIOP implied a "si...

***David Guyatt*** · 16-03-2014, 09:45 AM

Blimey Tracy, you must be working flat out 24/7 on this...

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