Deep Politics Timeline

[Tracy Riddle]

• 12/1962 Following the death of Herman Brown, Halliburton Energy Services acquired Brown & Root (a Texas construction company) in December 1962. According to Dan Briody, who wrote a book on the subject, the company became part of a consortium of four companies that built about 85 percent of the infrastructure needed by the Navy during the Vietnam War. At the height of the anti-war movement of the 1960s, Brown & Root was derided as "Burn & Loot" by protesters.
  
• 12/1962 JUAN EMILIO BOSCH GAVINO elected President of Dominican Republic in a landslide, first freely elected president since 1924. His party and government, weak and inexperienced, was accused by the CIA of suffering from leftist infiltration. After nine months in office he was ousted by right-wing officers September 1963 and he went into exile. With pressure from Kennedy, the junta placed a civilian in charge. Kennedy sent aid to the new regime but it proved corrupt and repressive.
  
• 12/1962 Special Group "Cuba Coordinating Committee" takes over covert operations against Cuba.
  
• 12/1962 After the missile crisis, Cuban exile groups were refused time on Florida radio stations to make anti-Castro speeches, and remarks attacking Castro were deleted from Spanish language newscasts on Miami radio stations WGBS, WCKR, and WMIE. (News & Courier, Charleston, 12/10/1962; St. Louis Globe Democrat 12/13/1962; St. Louis Post Dispatch 4/3/1963)
  
• 12/1/1962 New Orleans businessman Clay Shaw told Who's Who in the South and Southwest that he was a director for the Swiss corporation Permindex, widely suspected of being a dirty-tricks CIA front company.
  
• 12/1/1962 Carlos Todd, editor of the Cuban Information Service, released maps showing dozens of locations where Soviet missiles were hidden in underground caves.
  
• 12/2/1962 Sen. Mansfield comes back from Vietnam and is publicly pessimistic.
  
• 12/3/1962 Hilsman memo to Rusk warns that the VC are capable of a long struggle, is firmly entrenched in the South, and that a non-Communist coup against Diem "could occur at any time."
  
• 12/3/1962 11:00A.M.: John McCloy meets with Soviet negotiators at the Waldorf Suite in New York City. Earlier, in one of the final sessions between the U.S. and Soviet negotiators, Vasily Kuznetsov met with McCloy at the McCloy's home in Connecticut. As their talk ended, Kuznetsov reportedly said, "all right, Mr. McCloy, we will get the IL-28 's out as we have taken the missiles out. But I want to tell you something, Mr. McCloy. The Soviet Union is not going to find itself in a position like this ever again." (Chronology of Negotiations Re: Cuban Crisis, 12/6/62; Bohlen, pp. 495-96)
  
• 12/4/1962 5:30P.M.: ExComm members discuss future policy toward Cuba at a working meeting held without President Kennedy . The group reviews U.S. planning for future overflights of Cuba, apparently agreeing that continued aerial reconnaissance is necessary to verify the removal of the IL-28 s and to ensure offensive weapons are not reintroduced into Cuba. When John McCone raises the possibility that another U-2 might be shot down, the ExComm decides that the United States should respond by attacking one or more SAM sites. Troubled by the potential for a new crisis arising over another attack on U.S. reconnaissance, McCone writes to McGeorge Bundy the following morning to recommend that "diplomatic measures be taken" to assure that the United States does not find itself in the position of having to attack Soviet-controlled bases in Cuba. (Warning That the United States May Soon Face the Contingency of Responding to a Shootdown of Another U-2, 12/5/62; Guidelines for Planning of Cuban Overflights, 11/30/62)
  
• 12/4/1962 U.S. Customs officers capture twelve anti-Castro guerillas, mostly American soldiers of fortune trained by the CIA, at a secret training base called No Name Key, north of Key West, as they are about to embark on a raid to Cuba. They are charged with violation of the Neutrality Act. Among those arrested is Gerry Patrick Hemming, founder with Frank Sturgis of the International Anti-Communist Brigade. (FBI Memorandum 105-1198, Miami Field Office, Jan 20, 1963, National Archives; Hinckle and Turner, pp154-157; Fonzi chronology p 418)
  
• 12/5/1962 JFK met with McNamara, Max Taylor, Jerome Wiesner. JFK wonders why they are building so many nuclear weapons, and wonders if they have enough right now to deter the USSR. McNamara warns that the Pentagon will give them trouble if they try to reduce the number of nukes. Taylor is also opposed to the idea. 27 seconds of the recording of this meeting have been censored for "national security" reasons. (The War State, Michael Swanson; "Camelot's Nuclear Conscience," The Bulletin of Atomic Scientists 2006)
  
• 12/5/1962 Sen. Richard Russell, in a TV interview in Atlanta, lamented that the US was now "babysitting for Castro and guaranteeing the integrity of the communist regime in Cuba."
  
• 12/5/1962 Stevenson and McCloy send an eyes-only cable to Secretary Rusk and the president protesting their instructions to achieve and agreement on onsite verification even though all the missiles and planes have already been removed from Cuba. The cable states that they have the growing impression that effects of victory in public mind are being gradually effaced by prolonged and inconclusive negotiation which gives impression we are still seeking vital objective we have not achieved. If public presumes this objective is on-site verification, more and more importance will be attached to such inspection as negotiation continues. If and when we emerge from negotiation without achieving that objective, even though it may have been otherwise successful, we will risk seeming to have failed rather than to have succeeded.(Bird, p. 538)
  
• 12/5/1962 McNamara was quoted as telling Congress that he planned to eliminate eight National Guard divisions and 750 units of the organized reserves. (St. Louis Globe Democrat)
  
• 12/6/1962 Gen. Edwin Walker spoke before the Miss. House of Representatives, and warned that a planned reorganization of the National Guard and Reserves was part of a "State Department plan to put our armed forces under the control of the United Nations." (UPI 12/7)
  
• 12/6/1962 Jimmy Hoffa was the target of a failed assassination attempt in Tennessee.
  
• 12/6/1962 Arthur Sylvester, Asst. Sec of Defense for Public Affairs, was asked by a reporter about JFK's "cold" during the beginning of the missile crisis; Sylvester explained, "it's inherent in government's right, if necessary, to lie to save itself when it's going up into a nuclear war. That seems to me basic." (12/7 NYT)
  
• 12/7/1962 Oswald takes out a Dallas Public Library card, which was found on him 11/22/1963. He put down 602 Elsbeth as his address rather than the correct 604 for his flat.
  
• 12/7/1962 JFK went to Offutt Air Force Base, Nebraska, was briefed by Curtis LeMay and Thomas Power about their secret underground SAC base.
  
• 12/8/1962 Typographers struck all 9 major NYC newspapers, putting them out of business until 4/1/1963.
  
• 12/9/1962 Letter to Oswald from Bob Chester of the SWP's New York headquarters. He thanked Lee for his offer to do photographic work for the party: "It is clear from your work that you are skilled at blow-ups, reversals and reproduction work generally." But he explained that they had people in NY who could do that work for them. (H 19 579)
  
• 12/10/1962 Khrushchev sends a nine-page letter to Kennedy on the situation in both Cuba and Berlin. He indicates that the United States and the Soviet Union have come to the final stage of the Cuban affair. The Soviet premier then raises the issue of Berlin and attempts to drive a wedge between the U.S. and German leader Konrad Adenauer. "Should really you and we--two great states--submit, willingly or unwillingly, to the old-aged man who both morally and physically is with one foot in [the] grave? Should we really become toys in his hands?" (Premier Khrushchev 's Letter to President Kennedy , 12/10/62)
  
• 12/10/1962 DJ Alan Freed begins his payola trial in New York; later in the month he would admit to taking bribes from record companies to play certain records, and would be fined $300 and sentenced to probation.
  
• 12/10/1962 Newsweek's new correspondent in Vietnam, Kenneth Crawford, did a cover story praising Diem and calling Madame Nhu a "beautiful and strong-willed woman."
  
• 12/11/1962 OSWALD pays $190.00 (two postal money orders) to State Dept against travel loan. Posted 12/12/62 from Box 2915, Dallas, TX. (CE 1120)
  
• 12/11/1962 CIA Memo from Donald Jameson, Chief SR/CA, dated December 11, 1962: "Priscilla Johnson was selected as a likely candidate to write an article on Yevtushenko in a major U. S. magazine for our campaign...I think that Miss Johnson can be encouraged to write pretty much the articles we want." Johnson had interviewed Oswald in the USSR and would later write a book with Marina Oswald.
  
• 12/12/1962 In a major two and one-half hour speech to the Supreme Soviet--his first major address since the Cuban crisis--Premier Khrushchev asserts that a U.S. "pledge" not to invade Cuba exists. He warns, however, that if the United States carries out an invasion, Cuba would not be left "defenseless." (The Soviet Bloc Armed Forces and the Cuban Crisis: A Chronology, 6/18/63, pp. 115, 121-22) He replies to China's criticisms of him by saying that the paper tiger (the US) "has nuclear teeth."
  
• 12/12/1962 At a press conference, President Kennedy tells reporters that, in the best judgment of the United States, all strategic missiles and IL-28 bombers have been removed from Cuba. JFK was cautiously optimistic about Vietnam.
  
• 12/12/1962 On 12th December, Lyndon B. Johnson visited Forth Worth to join in the festivities at the General Dynamics plant. Congressman James Wright, the Texas Democrat representing the Fort Worth district introduced Johnson as the "greatest Texan of them all". He pointed out that Johnson had played an important role in obtaining the TFX contract. Wright added "you have to have friends and they have to stick with you through thick and thin even if you do have merit on your side." During the McClellan's Permanent Investigations Committee hearings into the contract, Senator Sam Ervin asked Robert McNamara "whether or not there was any connection whatever between your selection of General Dynamics, and the fact that the Vice President of the United States happens to be a resident of the state in which that company has one of its principal, if not its principal office." At this point McNamara was close to tears and commented that: "Last night when I got home at midnight, after preparing for today's hearing, my wife told me that my own 12-year-old son had asked how long it would take for his father to prove his honesty." McNamara rejected the idea that Lyndon B. Johnson was involved in the decision but evidence was to emerge that he did play an important role in the awarding of the TFX project to General Dynamics. For example, William Proxmire found some interesting information on the TFX project while investigating the role played by Richard Russell in the granting of the C-5A contract to Lockheed. The C-5A was built in Marietta, Georgia, the state that Russell represented. The Air Force Contract Selection Board originally selected Boeing that was located in the states of Washington and Kansas. However, Proxmire claimed that Russell was able to persuade the board to change its mind and give the C-5A contract to Lockheed. Proxmire quotes Howard Atherton, the mayor of Marietta, as saying that "Russell was key to landing the contract". Atherton added that Russell believed that Robert McNamara was going ahead with the C-5A in order to "give the plane to Boeing because Boeing got left out on the TFX fighter." According to Atherton, Russell got the contract after talking to Lyndon Johnson. Atherton added, "without Russell, we wouldn't have gotten the contract".
  
• 12/13/1962 James J. Tormey replies to Oswald's offer of photographic work for Hall-Davis Defense Committee. (CD 366) He thanked Oswald for the offer, and said they would keep him in mind "in the event that such need arises."
  
• 12/14/1962 President Kennedy writes to Premier Khrushchev in response to Khrushchev's December 11 message. The letter thanks Khrushchev "for [his] expression of appreciation of the understanding and flexibility we have tried to display" and expresses hope that a final settlement to the "Cuban question" could be found quickly. Kennedy also discusses communications between the two leaders during the missile crisis: he suggests that the use of reporters such as John Scali is not a satisfactory method of transmitting messages and expresses disappointment that Georgi Bolshakov, the channel for many exchanges between Kennedy and Khrushchev , is being called back to the Soviet Union. (President Kennedy 's Response to Khrushchev 's December 11 Letter, 12/14/62)
  
• 12/14/1962 JFK: "It is increasingly clear that no matter what party is in power, so long as our national security needs keep rising, an economy hampered by restrictive tax rates will never produce enough jobs or enough profits." Address to Economic Club of New York, 12/14/62 "If the economy of today were operating close to capacity levels with little unemployment, or if a sudden change in our military requirements should cause a scramble for men and resources, then I would oppose tax reductions as irresponsible and inflationary; and I would not hesitate to recommend a tax increase if that were necessary." Address to Economic Club of New York, 12/14/62
  
• 12/17/1962 In a television and radio interview, President Kennedy offers some of his thoughts on the crisis. He observes that "if we had to act on Wednesday [October 17] in the first twenty-four hours, I don't think we would have chosen as prudently as we finally did." He characterizes the Soviet attempt to install missiles in Cuba as "an effort to materially change the balance of power...It would have appeared to, and appearances contribute to reality." Kennedy compares the miscalculations leading to the Cuban missile crisis with those misjudgments that had led to World Wars I and II. When "you see the Soviet Union and the United States, so far separated in their beliefs...and you put the nuclear equation into that struggle; that is what makes this...such a dangerous time...One mistake can make this whole thing blow up." (Television and Radio Interview: "After Two Years--A Conversation with the President," 12/17/62) He also discussed the proposed Skybolt missile, a joint use missile to be developed by the US and UK. The missile had performed disappointingly in tests, and Kennedy expressed doubts about the project.
  
• 12/17/1962 Federal jury in Washington convicts US Communist Party of failure to register as agent of the USSR, and Judge Alexander Holtzoff fines the party $120,000. During the trial, defense attorney John Abt argued that the act of registration was self-incriminatory. The Supreme Court would later overturn the decision of the federal court.
  
• 12/17/1962 Oswald subscribes to The Militant.
  
• 12/18/1962 Sen. Mike Mansfield was in a unique position to advise Kennedy on Vietnam. When Lyndon Johnson became Vice President, Mansfield succeeded him as Senate Majority Leader, thereby becoming one of the most influential people in Washington. Like John Kennedy, Mansfield had for years taken a special interest in Southeast Asia. He had visited Vietnam three times in the 1 950s. He was known as the Senate's authority on Indochina. Moreover, he had been singularly responsible for convincing the Eisenhower administration to support the rise to power of Ngo Dinh Diem. Mansfield had endorsed Diem as a Vietnamese nationalist independent of both the French and the Viet Minh. The Senator's support proved so critical to the survival of Diem's government in the late fifties that Mansfield was known popularly as "Diem's godfather. " (Gregory Allen Olson, Mansfield and Vietnam: A Study in Rhetorical Adaptation ( East Lansing: Michigan State University Press, 1995) , p. 2 . Nevertheless, by the fall of 1962, Mansfield had become opposed to the increasing U.S. commitment to a war in support of that same government. His reversal moved JFK to ask him to investigate the situation firsthand. Mansfield's December 18, 1962, report was uncomfortable reading for the president. Mansfield wrote that Vietnam, outside its cities, was "run at least at night largely by the Vietcong. The government in Saigon is still seeking acceptance by the ordinary people in large areas of the countryside. Out of fear or indifference or hostility the peasants still withhold acquiescence, let alone approval of that government. In short, it would be well to face the fact that we are once again at the beginning of the beginning. " While continuing to praise Ngo Dinh Diem, Mansfield questioned the capacity of the Saigon government-under the increasing dominance of Diem's manipulative brother, Ngo Dinh Nhu-to gain any popular support. Mansfield cautioned Kennedy against trying to win a war in support of an unpopular government by "a truly massive commitment of American military personnel and other resources-in short going to war fully ourselves against the guerrillas-and the establishment of some form of neocolonial rule in South Vietnam . " To continue the president's policy, Mansfield warned, may " draw us inexorably into some variation of the unenviable position in Vietnam which was formerly occupied by the French. " Kennedy was stunned by his friend's critique. He was again confronted by his own first understanding of Vietnam, shared first by Edmund Gullion, repeated by John Kenneth Galbraith, and now punched back into his consciousness by Mike Mansfield. The Senate Majority Leader's comparison between the French rule and JFK's policy stung the president. But the more Kennedy thought about Mansfield's challenging words, the more they struck him as the truth-a truth he didn't want to accept but had to. He summed up his reaction to the Mansfield report by a razor-sharp comment on himself, made to aide Kenny O'Donnell: "I got angry with Mike for disagreeing with our policy so completely, and I got angry with myself because I found myself agreeing with him. " (O'Donnell and Powers, "johnny, We Hardly Knew Ye, " p. 1 5 ) Isaiah Berlin, the British philosopher, once observed of Kennedy: " I've never known a man who listened to every single word that one uttered more attentively. And he replied always very relevantly. He didn't obviously have ideas in his own mind which he wanted to expound, or for which he simply used one's own talk as an occasion, as a sort of launching pad. He really listened to what one said and answered that. " (Isaiah Berlin oral history, John F. Kennedy Library. Cited b y David Kaiser, American Tragedy: Kennedy, johnson, and the Origins of the Vietnam War ( Cambridge: Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, 2000 ) , p. 4 1 ) Mike Mansfield said of Kennedy's response to his critique: " President Kennedy didn't waste words. He was pretty sparse with his language. But it was not unusual for him to shift position. There is no doubt that he had shifted definitely and unequivocally on Vietnam but he never had the chance to put the plan into effect. " (Cited by Roberts, First Rough Draft, p . 22 1 .)
  
• 12/18/1962 Fletcher Knebel wrote in Look that in 10/1961 JFK, "still bearing his scars from the [Bay of Pigs] disaster, secretly ordered the Joint Chiefs of Staff to prepare an invasion plan for Cuba - to be used if and when needed."
  
• 12/18-19/1962 St Louis Globe Democrat reported that the Administration had stopped all production of long range manned bombers and cancelled production of the Skybolt missile.
  
• 12/19/1962 Premier Khrushchev sends a letter to President Kennedy suggesting that the "time has come now to put an end once and for all to nuclear tests." He writes, "with the elimination of the Cuban crisis we relieved mankind of the direct menace of combat use of lethal nuclear weapons that impended over the world. Can't we solve a far simpler question--that of cessation of experimental explosions of nuclear weapons in the peaceful conditions?" Kennedy responds to Khrushchev 's letter on December 28. Continued negotiations subsequently lead to the eventual signing of a limited test-ban treaty on August 5, 1963.( Khrushchev 's Letter, 12/19/62; Garthoff 1, pp. 131, 134)
  
• 12/19/1962 Letter from Louis Weinstock, General Manager of The Worker, to Oswald thanking him for his photographic samples and saying that they might call on him for his services. (H 21 721)
  
• 12/21/1962 Lawyer James B. Donovan finally manages to negotiate with Castro a deal for the release of the Bay of Pigs prisoners. Castro will get $53 million in medicine, tractors and baby food, plus $2.9 million for the sick and wounded prisoners already released last April. This amount had been agreed upon after long negotiations involving a bipartisan US committee (which included Milton Eisenhower and Eleanor Roosevelt.) The administration's man in the negotiations, Donovan, was unknowingly involved in a CIA plot (conceived in "early 1963" by Desmond Fitzgerald and William Harvey) to present a contaminated diving-suit to Castro, but the plan fell through. (Senate Intelligence Committee Report 85-86)
  
• 12/21/1962 Kennedy and Macmillan announced at Nassau that both governments had agreed that in place of Skybolt the US would make available to Britain Polaris missiles without warheads, that the UK would build more submarines.
  
• 12/22/1962-1/6/1963 William Harvey is in Miami. Details of activity unknown.
  
• 12/23/1962 Washington Post published a David Kraslow interview with Ike. Ike made the statement (which may or may not have ended up in the article) that his greatest mistake was "the lie we told about the U-2. I didn't realize how high a price we were going to have to pay for that lie. And if I had to do it all over again, we would have kept our mouths shut." (Politics of Lying 35)
  
• 12/23-24/1962 1,113 Cuban exiles are airlifted to Miami. Castro also agrees to release 923 relatives of the prisoners.
  
• 12/25/1962 John and Elena Hall of Fort Worth visit the Oswalds for Christmas. They notice they have no Christmas tree, and Lee explains that he doesn't believe in religion or commercialized Christmas. (H 8 409)
  
• 12/27/1962 In Palm Beach for a working vacation, JFK receives officers of Brigade 2506.
  
• 12/28/1962 De Mohrenschildt had the Oswalds over to a Russian New Year party at the Fords' house; he basically crashed the party. Oswald spent most of the night talking to Yaeko Okui, a Japanese woman and date of Lev Aronson. She later told the FBI that she never saw Oswald again, and they did not discuss politics. (H 23 641)
  
• 12/28/1962 Hoover memo authorized the D.C. office to bug the residence of Fred Black, a Washington lobbyist with ties to gambling and influence peddling. Black would be convicted of income tax evasion, and then later successfully appeal his conviction on the grounds that the FBI had violated his rights by bugging him.
  
• 12/29/1962 Saigon announces that its strategic hamlets now house 39% of the Southern population, though these figures are questionable.
  
• 12/29/1962 JFK went to Miami's Orange Bowl to greet the freed Bay of Pigs veterans. Pepe San Roman gave Kennedy the flag of Brigade 2506, and the President said, "I can assure you that this flag will be returned to this Brigade in a free Havana….The Cuban people were promised by the Revolution political liberty, social justice, intellectual freedom, land for the peasants, and an end to economic exploitation. They have received a police state, the elimination of the dignity of land ownership, the destruction of free speech and of free press, and the complete subjugation of individual human welfare to the service of the state and of foreign states…" Jackie spoke in Spanish to the crowd. Howard Hunt later wrote, "Artime told me the flag was a replica, and that the Brigade feeling against Kennedy was so great that the presentation nearly did not take place." A Cuban man identified only as 'Chino' was taken into custody and questioned concerning an assassination plot planned against Kennedy while at the Orange Bowl engagement. At RFK 's insistence and over Kenny O 'Donnell 's objections, JFK attends welcoming ceremony for exiled prisoners at the Orange Bowl saying the exiles would return their flag to a free Cuba. Schlesinger observed later that "both the Brigade and Castro received the wrong message." (Schlesinger p580) Note: O 'Donnell told JFK that it would "look as if you 're planning to back them in another invasion of Cuba." The president concurred, "You 're absolutely right. I shouldn 't do it." (O"Donnell and Powers, pp312-313) JFK spends an hour in Palm Beach with brigade leaders Manuel Artime, Pepe San Roman, Enrique Ruiz-Williams, and a half-dozen others. They personally invite the president to the rally so he changes his mind and attends. (Mahoney p220) A scheduled [exile] plot against JFK does not proceed. Note: The Secret Service and the Miami Police are tipped off about his presence. "A Cuban male, 25 yrs. 5 '4", 135-155 lbs., strong muscular build, known only as CHINO" for questioning. (Mahoney p220, endnote 231, p407)
  
• 12/31/1962 On New Year's Eve, Marina wrote a letter to a former boyfriend in Russia, complaining about how lonely she was; it was returned within a week due to insufficient postage and Lee discovered it. He beat her and told her, "I'll never trust you again." (H 1 33) At that time, Oswald sent a holiday greetings card to the staff of the Soviet embassy in Washington, wishing them "health, success and all of the best" and signed "Marina and Lee Oswald." (CE 986) On this day, Marina also wrote to the Russian embassy to register her new Dallas address as PO Box 2915.
  
• 12/31/1962 JFK's crusade against the Mafia "went on to convict 101 in 1962." (Davis, Dynasty and Disaster) Hundreds more are on trial.
  
• 12/31/1962 The joint US-UK Skybolt missile project is canceled.
  
• 12/31/1962 Red Cross reported that in Katanga, UN soldiers "moved into the hospital after being fired on from the building and machine-gunned patients in their beds." (St. Louis Post Dispatch)
  
• 12/31/1962 There are 11,300 US military personnel in Vietnam, with 109 dead or wounded this year. China claims to have armed the VC with more than 90,000 rifles and machine guns this year.
  

[Tracy Riddle]

Here is December 1963. I still have to post 11/22/1963 through the end of November, but I have a lot more cleaning up to do on that.

• 12/1963 North Vietnamese leaders decided to begin sending NVA troops into the South to shore up the Vietcong.
  
• Seven Days in May was originally scheduled for release in December 1963 but Burt Lancaster insisted the release date be postponed as it was too soon after the assassination. The same fate befell Dr. Strangelove or: How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Bomb, which was also scheduled for a December 1963 opening.
  
• U.E. Baughman, Chief of the Secret Service who retired seven months into Kennedy's administration after 34 years in the agency (13 as chief), said in a December 1963 interview, "there are a lot of things to be explained" about the actions of JFK's protection detail in Dallas. He wondered why the Depository had not been searched and how Oswald could have escaped the scene.
  
• While the nation mourned, the FBI held a conference at the beginning of December to plan its campaign to destroy King and the civil rights movement. At that all-day meeting FBI officials put forward proposals that make G. Gordon Liddy's Watergate plan seem pale by comparison. Officials of the nation's number-one law enforcement agency agreed to use "all available investigative techniques" to develop information for use "to discredit" King. Proposals discussed included using ministers, "disgruntled" acquaintances, "aggressive" newsmen, "colored" agents, Dr. King's housekeeper, and even Dr. King's wife or "placing a good looking female plant in King's office" to develop discrediting information and to take action that would lead to his disgrace.
  
• Military contracts awarded to Texas companies climbed from $1.2 billion in FY 1963 to $1.3 billion in FY 1964 and $1.4 billion in FY 1965. (Mollenhoff, The Pentagon)
  

• 12/1/1963 This is the date that had been reportedly designated as the day there was to be a coup in Cuba. This secret plan known as the "Plan for a Coup in Cuba" was fully authorized by JFK and personally run by Robert Kennedy. (The Ultimate Sacrifice, Waldron; Legacy of Secrecy, Waldon & Hartmann) Other scholars believe the documents are merely contingency plans and not an actual plot that was set in motion.
  
• Venezuela: Dr. Raul Leoni was elected president.
  
• Today, Rolando Cubela returns to Cuba from Prague.
  
• U.S. Naval Forces, Eastern Atlantic and Mediterranean (CINCNELM) disestablished on December 1, 1963.
  
• Malcolm X was asked by a reporter about the assassination; he replied, "Chickens coming home to roost never make me sad, they make me glad."
  
• Letter From Jacqueline Kennedy to Chairman Khrushchev: "I send it only because I know how much my husband cared about peace, and how the relation between you and him was central to this care in his mind. He used to quote your words in some of his speeches-"In the next war the survivors will envy the dead." You and he were adversaries, but you were allied in a determination that the world should not be blown up."
  
• Orville Nix voluntarily turns over his film to FBI agent Joe B. Abernathy, requesting it to be returned immediately. Upon receipt of the film, the FBI field office has a copy of the film made at Jamison Film in Dallas. This copy is forwarded to the FBI laboratory in Washington, D.C.
  
• A replica bag - like the one Oswald used when he said he was carrying curtain rods - is made today from materials found on this date in the shipping room of the TSBD. This is done as an investigation aid since the original bag has now been discolored during various laboratory examinations and can not be used for valid identification by witnesses.
  
• On December 1, 1963, Buell Wesley Frazier showed FBI agents the space he recalled the bag occupying on the back seat of his car. By the FBI measurement, 27 inches was the maximum possible length.
  
• Jack Ruby told DPD lieutenants Jack Revill, F.E. Cornwall and inspector J.H. Sawyer that he didn't want to get any police officers in trouble.
  
• Secret Service interview with Marina; transcript in the National Archives stated that the rifle she saw in New Orleans apartment had no telescopic sight on it; she said she had never seen a rifle with a scope before until the day the Mannlicher-Carcano was shown on TV. Marina's English was still poor, and she spoke through an interpreter. The transcript stated "This recording is being made at the Inn of the Six Flags in Texas where Mrs Oswald is being held by [Secret Service] agents." She said that Lee had never owned a pistol and she had never seen him with one. (Commission #344 Basic Source Materials.)
  
• CIA received information that a 11/22/1963 Cubana Airlines flight from Mexico City to Cuba had been delayed 6-11pm (EST) awaiting an unidentified passenger, who arrived at the airport in a twin-engined plane at 10:30pm and boarded the airliner without passing through customs. The man travelled to Cuba inside the cockpit of the plane. One "source" told the CIA that the man might have been "involved in the assassination" and had reportedly been involved with the Tampa branch of the FPCC. (Church Committee Report)
  

• 12/2/1963 Ruth Paine turned over to the police some of the Oswalds' belongings, including a Russian book containing an undated note written in Russian, allegedly from Lee to Marina, before he allegedly shot at Gen. Walker
  
• Supreme Court ruled 8-0 that state courts were empowered to enjoin any labor-management agreement that violated right-to-work laws.
  
• LBJ presented the Enrico Fermi Award to atomic physicist J. Robert Oppenheimer, who had been smeared during the McCarthy era. Congressional GOP leaders were not present for the ceremony. JFK had signed the citation for the award shortly before his death.
  
• New government in Saigon decides to temporarily halt the strategic hamlet program because of widespread resentment and non-cooperation by peasants.
  
• At 10:00 AM today, CIA Director McCone meets with LBJ and McGeorge Bundy. McCone's calendar reveals that, at 3 p.m., he has a secret meeting to discuss Cuba in the CIA's conference room.
  
• Edward Grant Stockdale died on 2nd December, 1963 when he fell (or was pushed) from his office on the thirteenth story of the Dupont Building in Miami. Stockdale did not leave a suicide note but his friend, George Smathers, claimed that he had become depressed as a result of the death of John F. Kennedy. At some point during his presidency, JFK was sailing off Palm Beach with Stockdale, an old friend and fundraiser whom he had appointed as ambassador to Ireland. JFK began shooting off rounds from a .22 rifle over the empty ocean, and urged his friend to join in. Stockdale was not willing to take a gun in his hands with all the Secret Service agents around. JFK then turned to him and asked, "Stock, do you think I'll be assassinated?" Stockdale said, "Chief, don't even think about such a thing. Of course you won't." (Talbot, Brothers; based on interview with Stockdale's widow)
  
• Warren Commission later states that Frankie Kaiser, an employee of the Book Depository, finds a clipboard hidden by book cartons in the northwest corner of the sixth floor at the west wall a few feet from where the Lee Harvey Oswald rifle had been found.
  
• Chester Boyers today prepares eight sections and six paraffin blocks of tissue from JFK's brain. Boyers will state that all of these materials were filed under Bethesda Naval Hospital number A63-272. He speculates that they could still be there or are possibly at the AFIP.
  
• Pedro Gutierrez Valencia story wrote a letter on December 2, 1963, to President Johnson, which caused him to then be interviewed multiple times by FBI agents during early 1964. He claimed he saw Oswald in Mexico City meeting with Cuban agents.
  
• Marguerite Oswald was quoted as complaining, "Why would Jack Ruby be allowed within a few feet of a prisoner - any prisoner - when I could not see my own son?"
  
• On December 2, 1963, Mrs. Ruth Paine turned over to the police some of the Oswalds' belongings, including a Russian volume entitled "Book of Useful Advice." In this book was an undated note written in Russian, supposedly written by Oswald before the Walker shooting. (WR)
  
• FBI carries out tests on the rifle to determine its muzzle velocity.
  
• An FBI envelope (FBI Field Office Dallas 89-43-1A-122) dated 12/2/1963 that was released in 1995 by the Assassinations Record Review Board had a cover that detailed the contents of the envelope as being a 7.65 mm rifle shell. The shell was allegedly found in Dealey Plaza after the shooting, though nothing was known about this envelope or rifle shell until the release of the 1995 records. The whereabouts of the 7.65 mm rifle shell is unknown. Researcher Anna Marie Kuhns-Walko first reported the envelope. The envelope had the following label: "7.65 shell found in Dealey Plaza on 12/02/1963 ... determined of no value and destroyed."
  
• FBI memo from Jevons to Conrad; it concerned the manufacture by Western Cartridge Co. of 6.5-caliber Mannlicher-Carcano ammo for the Marines in 1954. The memo pointed out that such ammo "does not fit and cannot be fired in any of the [Marine Corps] weapons. This gives rise to the obvious speculation that it is a contract for ammunition placed by the CIA with Western under a [Marine Corps] cover for concealment purposes." (Reasonable Doubt 106)
  
• Dallas Morning News (the Early City Edition): "The Communist party organ Pravda hinted Sunday that Lee Harvey Oswald...was an American spy during his 2 1/2 years in the Soviet Union. The following was only in the Early City Edition and was later dropped: "Soviet organs have been claiming all along that Kennedy was assassinated as a result of an "ultra-conservative" plot and that Oswald was murdered to "cover the traces."
  
• Aline Mosby, United Press International correspondent in Paris, who interviewed Oswald in Moscow in 1959 when she was stationed there, quoted him as saying, "I'm a Marxist... I affirm that my allegiance is to the Soviet Socialist Republic..."
  
• Dan Smoot's right-wing Dan Smoot Report theorizes about a communist conspiracy behind the assassination.
  
• Dallas Morning News: "Mexico City-The death of President John F. Kennedy put a serious crimp in what was to have been one of Fidel Castro's biggest propaganda circuses. The event was the military trial of a Canadian pilot, Ronald Lippert, who was allegedly in the employ of the CIA while flying to Cuba with explosives..."
  

• 12/3/1963 UPI reported: "An exhaustive FBI report now nearly ready for the White House will indicate that Lee Harvey Oswald was the lone and unaided assassin of President Kennedy, government sources said today." AP quoted "government sources" about the FBI report; JFK and Connally were hit by separate bullets. When informed of these news articles, J. Edgar Hoover writes: "I thought no one knew this outside the FBI." Asst FBI Director William Sullivan told the Church Committee in the mid-70s that Hoover had leaked the secret FBI report to the press about ten days after the assassination to "blunt the drive for an independent investigation of the assassination."
  
• FBI interview of Douglas Jones, 3 Dec 1963. Douglas Jones of Jones Printing Company told the FBI he did not believe it was Oswald who had ordered the handbills.
  
• Marina Oswald says today that Oswald tried to kill General Edwin Walker. This is the first time this subject has been mentioned by Marina. FBI report of interview with Marina: "Marina said she had never seen Oswald practice with his rifle or any other firearm and he had never told her that he was going to practice." (H 22 763) Her statement comes about a week after a West German newspaper reports there might be a connection between the Walker shooting and the assassination.
  
• At a ceremony at the Treasury Department with his family and Mrs. Jacqueline Kennedy present, Agent Clint Hill is given the Exceptional Service Award by Treasury Secretary Dillon.
  
• On December 3, 1963, an article appeared in the Chicago American on Thomas Vallee's November 2 arrest, " Cops Seize Gun-Toting Kennedy Foe. " The unnamed detectives who disclosed Vallee's month-old arrest characterized him as "a gun-collecting malcontent who expressed violent anti Kennedy views before the assassination of the late President. " A similar article on Vallee's arrest, drawing on unidentified federal agents, appeared in the Chicago Daily News on the same day.
  
• The New York World-Telegram & Sun, Tuesday, December 3, 1963, p.25 - Truth Won't Out By Richard Starnes
  
• LBJ met with Martin Luther King. Johnson started having John McCormack attend important meetings since he was next in line for the presidency.
  
• OAS council voted 16 to 0 to investigate charges that Cuba had smuggled arms into Venezuela to promote terrorism.
  
• Sen. Stephen Young (D-Ohio) criticized the SS agents who were alleged to be out late drinking the night before the assassination. (AP)
  
• Sen. Kenneth Keating (R-NY) introduced legislation to give the WC broad subpoena powers. (AP 12/4)
  
• Letter from Belmont to Tolson, saying that the FBI was not going to send a liaison to the WC's meeting with Katzenbach present. "That would be very undesirable because there was really only one answer, that is, the question raised as to what the FBI is doing. There is a very simple answer, namely, we are pressing the investigation in the writing of the report. This is our major goal. Until that is completed there is nothing we can contribute."
  
• FBI report of interview: "Marina stated that when Oswald visited the Paine house on Thursday evening, November 21, 1963, he did not bring anything with him when he arrived at the house...She further advised that she does not know of anything that Oswald took with him from the Paine house to work the next morning...She examined this sack and said she had never seen anything like it and that she had not seen such a sack or such paper in the possession of Oswald on November 21, 1963, or at any time prior thereto." She also said that Oswald was right-handed. (CE 1401 pgs 272,297)
  

• 12/4/1963 After the death of JFK, Lyndon Johnson put on permanent hold any dialogue between the White House and Fidel Castro, who kept seeking it. On December 4, William Attwood was told by Carlos Lechuga at the United Nations that "he now had a letter from Fidel himself, instructing him to talk with me about a specific agenda. " Attwood asked the White House for its response to Castro. Gordon Chase said all policies were in the course of being reviewed by the new administration and advised patience. Attwood did not know that, with the lightning change of presidents, former rapprochement proponent Chase had felt a corresponding change in the political climate and was now among those who were already turning Kennedy's policy around.
  
• FBI interview of Myra Silver, 4 Dec 1963. Ms. Silver supplied additional details about the handbill order placed by "Osborne." She was shown a photo of Oswald and "stated she could not recognize the person represented in the picture as the person who placed the order for the handbills."
  
• Secret Service special agent William N. Carter receives testimony from Harold D. Norman, a Texas School Book Depository Building employee who was on the fifth floor of the building when the assassination took place. Carter's report quotes Norman as saying the shots came from directly above him and that he saw "dust falling from the ceiling" below the window where Oswald allegedly stood when he fired at the president. When questioned about this by the Warren Commission, Norman will deny making either of these statements.
  
• Orville Nix's film of the assassination is returned to him by the FBI. They have made a copy of it. Nix does not get his camera back until June 2, 1964. Nix is never called as a witness by the Warren Commission. Additionally, in Nix's film, JFK's limo is measured as traveling at 8.5 mph - as opposed to the Zapruder film - in which the limo is measured as traveling 11 mph. The Nix film shows JFK's limo traveling 22 percent slower than the Zapruder film.
  
• In a major change in the Roman Catholic Mass, the use of English in place of Latin for parts of the mass and sacraments was approved by the Ecumenical Council.
  
• FBI leaked to the press the results of its supposedly secret report ("No Oswald-Ruby Link, FBI Believes," Chicago Tribune) DeLoach memo to John Mohr, dated today, hinted that Ed Guthman of the information office was leaking to the press about the FBI report; Hoover wrote on the memo, "Again a leak somewhere...I thought no one knew outside the FBI...Certainly someone is doing too much talking." (Never Again 254)
  
• LBJ met with James Farmer of CORE.
  
• RFK returned to work after resting with his family. (NY Times) Early this month RFK told Arthur Schlesinger that the FBI was once again operating without any control from the executive branch. (RFK and His Times 657)
  
• Rep. Walter Rogers (D-Texas) called for an ongoing investigation "until every splinter of truth is revealed" about the assassination. "I cannot accept the theory that one single man, one solitary twisted extremist...could contrive by himself to bring death to President Kennedy..." He demanded to know "why security precautions failed so shockingly."
  
• FBI collected all remaining property of the Oswalds at the Paine house in Irving. (CE 1403) But the Imperial Reflex, a gray, box-type camera was not among these items.
  
• The Dallas FBI obtained Zapruder's camera and sent it to the FBI lab.
  
• 12/4/63, Secret Service report of interview with Marina: "The reporting agent interviewed Marina Oswald as to whether she knew of any place or of a rifle range where her husband could do some practicing with a rifle, and whether she ever saw her husband taking the rifle out of the house. She said that she never saw Lee going out or coming in to the house with a rifle and that he never mentioned to her doing any practice with a rifle." (23H393)
  
• An undeliverable package addressed to "Lee Oswald" was found in the dead letter section of the Irving post office on this day, where it has rested for an unknown length of time. It had been wrongly addressed to 601 W. Nassaus Street and had no postage; it contained a "brown paper bag made of fairly heavy brown paper which bag was open at both ends."
  
• FBI report of interview with Marina: "She cannot recall ever hearing Oswald state that he was going to fire the rifle in practice or that he had fired it in practice." (H 22 785) In four FBI/Secret Service interviews done 12/4-16/1963, Marina repeatedly said that she had never seen Oswald with a rifle or heard him talk about practicing with it. (CE 1785; CE 1401 286; CE 1790; CE 1403 735)
  
• Waggoner Carr arrives in D.C. to meet with Katzenbach.
  
• Jim Buchanan reports (Florida Sun Sentinel) that Frank Sturgis had claimed to have been in contact with Oswald once, when he tried to infiltrate Sturgis' organization in Miami. But Oswald was rejected because they couldn't determine enough about his background. (CD 395)
  
• AP reported that the Treasury Dept said that the SS agents drinking in a club before the assassination were all off duty. "White House aides and newsmen also were in the group."
  
• Dallas Times Herald editorial assured the reader that the truth about the assassination would be found: "If a nation cannot believe the findings of this investigation, then there is little it can believe."
  

• 12/5/1963 Senate-House conference committee agreed on a compromise foreign aid plan of nearly $3.6 billion.
  
• Dallas Secret Service ask FBI for copy of the Zapruder film for Dallas Police Dept.
  
• Surveyor Robert West creates a plat of Dealey Plaza for the Secret Service. Federal agents staged a filmed reenactment in Dealey Plaza again (New York Times 12/6/1963) to determine how Oswald could have caused an entry wound in Kennedy's throat. The Secret Service photographed a re-enactment of the assassination on December 5, 1963. A pair of cameras was used, one providing a wide field of view and the other a narrow "scope view." The photographs are in Commission Document 88. But the autopsy on Kennedy's body had already been done, and the Parkland doctors had already told the Bethesda physicians about the tracheotomy wound; according to the WC it was firmly established right away that Kennedy "was first struck by a bullet which entered at the back of his neck and exited through the lower front portion of his neck."
  
• The FBI's report on the assassination was delivered to the Justice Dept.
  
• Dean Andrews is interviewed by FBI agent Regis Kennedy.
  
• First Warren Commission meeting. Nicholas Katzenbach appears at the Commission's first executive session today and tells the Commission that although the FBI claims to be moving heaven and earth to discover who is leaking information from the FBI's forthcoming report, only the FBI could have done it since no one else has any copies of the report at the time of the leak. (These leaks, Assistant Director William Sullivan later says, have actually been ordered by J. Edgar Hoover.) Senator Russell then asks Katzenbach, "...how much of their findings does the FBI propose to release to the press before they present their findings to this Commission?"
  
• Sen. Richard Russell wrote a memo for his own records (which later surfaced in his Memorial Library in Georgia): "Warren asked about C.I.A. 'Did they have anything.' When I told of Mexico and Nicaragua NOT mentioning sums - He mention 5G as McCone had told me. He [Warren] knew all I did and more about CIA. Something strange is happening - W. [Warren] and Katzenbach know all about FBI and they are apparently through psychiatrists and others planning to show Oswald only one who even considered - This to me is untenable position - I must insist on outside counsel - 'Remember Warren's blanket endictment of South'" (The Man Who Knew Too Much 500)
  
• NYT editorialized that though the motorcade route "was not made firm until November 19...anyone with a knowledge of Dallas could have determined from previously published information that the logical route would take the President past the [TSBD]..."
  
• NYT quoted Earl Warren as saying, "We are deliberating somewhat in the dark...because we have no report as yet from any agency of the Government. The information we have now is little more than what we have learned through the news media."
  
• The New York Times reports: "Most private citizens who had cooperated with newsmen reporting the crime have refused to give further help after being interviewed by agents of the Federal Bureau of Investigation."
  

• 12/6/1963 The supplementary autopsy report was signed by Humes and was dated this day. (CE 391, WR 544-45)
  
• FBI's preliminary biographical study on Lee Harvey Oswald, dated December 6, 1963 (NARA Document #104-10017-10037, declassified February 9th, 1996).
  
• J. Lee Rankin was tentatively selected over Warren Olney as Chief Counsel. There was also discussion of a letter from the Texas Attorney General regarding the Texas Board of Inquiry, as well as a proposed reply asking Texas officials to stop their investigation ("a public inquiry in Texas might be more harmful than helpful..."). Hale Boggs brought up the leaking of the FBI report to the press and described it as the "most outrageous leak I have ever seen."
  
• Rusk cabled Lodge that "The President has expressed his deep concern that our effort in Viet-Nam be stepped up to highest pitch." (RFK and His Times 783)
  
• In the Senate, Richard Russell and John Sherman Cooper introduced a resolution to give the WC "sweeping" powers to grant immunity to witnesses. Identical legislation would be offered in the House on Monday by Gerald Ford and Hale Boggs. (AP 12/7)
  
• FBI interview of Dean Andrews, 6 Dec 1963. This interview as recorded is a meandering review by Andrews of his story, not really a retraction in its details but is summarized by Andrews himself as "a figment of his imagination." FBI report finds Dean Andrews stating that the call from Bertrand was "a dream." (Andrews was a patient at Hotel Dieu Hospital when he received the call.)
  
• FBI interview of Eva Springer, 6 Dec 1963. Andrews' secretary confirmed the major aspects of Andrews' story, saying he had called her on the 23rd and said that Bertrand had contacted him about representing Oswald.
  
• A Gallup poll showed that 52% of Americans believed that others besides Oswald were involved in the assassination; hardly anyone seemed to be able to pinpoint which group might be responsible. Only about one in a hundred blamed Russia or Cuba or any other foreign communist conspiracy. Almost no one blamed the far-right, either. (Dallas Morning News)
  
• Jackie Kennedy and her two children move out of the White House today. She leaves Lady Bird and LBJ a vase of her favorite lilies of the valley.
  
• The American Civil Liberties Union comments: "It is our opinion that Lee Harvey Oswald, had he lived, would have been deprived of all opportunity to receive a fair trial by the conduct of the police and prosecuting officials in Dallas, under pressure from the public and news media. From the moment of his arrest until his murder two days later, Oswald was tried and convicted many times over in the newspapers, on the radio, and over television by the public statements of the Dallas law enforcement officials. Time and again high-ranking police and prosecution officials state their complete satisfaction that Oswald was the assassin. As their investigation uncovered one piece of evidence after another, the results were broadcast to the public... . . Oswald's trial would ... have been nothing but a hollow formality."
  
• On this date, JFK's brain receives a supplemental examination. Dr. Pierre Finck registers the brain as weighing 1,500 grams. It is eventually reported that the doctors do not section JFK's brain. It is suggested that they merely "cut some pieces from the brain"
  
• A onetime employee of Jack Ruby, William Abadie repairs jukeboxes and slot machines for Ruby's gambling operations. He also briefly doubles as a bookmaker in one of Ruby's clubs. On this date, Abadie tells FBI agents that Ruby was well connected with local racketeers and corrupt police officials in both Dallas and Fort Worth. He also claims to have seen local police officers hanging out in one of Ruby's bars while patrons were engaging in illegal gambling activities.
  
• Richard Helms today removes a veteran covert operations agent, John Whitten, from the CIA's investigation of the JFK assassination because Whitten has complained that information about OSWALD - on whom the CIA has maintained files for at least three years - and his Cuba-related activities is being withheld from him. (Brothers)
  
• Dallas Times Herald reported that Marina supposedly said that Oswald had boasted to her of trying to kill Walker. "M.W. Stevenson, chief of detectives for Dallas police, was asked whether Mrs Oswald had made such a statement. 'Not to my knowledge,' he said. Then he added, 'No comment.' A reporter asked to see the Dallas police report on the investigation of the Walker incident and was told the FBI had picked it up 'three or four days ago.'" Investigation continued into possible Oswald target practice at the Trinity River. "No mention was made of finding unfired ammunition in Oswald's Oak Cliff room or his Irving home after his arrest...in disclosing Oswald bought the rifle from the firm, investigators omitted reference to the scope and ammunition."
  
• NYT reported that Marguerite Oswald felt her son had been made a "scapegoat" for a plot to kill JFK.
  
• LIFE magazine ("End to Nagging Rumors: The Six Critical Seconds," by Paul Mandel) this day reported: "The doctor said one bullet passed from back to front on the right side of the President's head. But the other, the doctor reported, entered the President's throat from the front and then lodged in his body. Since by this time the limousine was 50 yards past Oswald and the President's back was turned almost directly to the sniper, it has been hard to understand how the bullet could have entered the front of his throat. Hence the recurring guess that there was a second sniper somewhere else. But the 8mm [Zapruder] film shows the President turning his body far around to the right as he waves to someone in the crowd. His throat is exposed - toward's the sniper's nest - just before he clutches it." The article also said, "Three shots were fired. Two struck the President, one Governor Connally. All three bullets have been recovered - one, deformed, from the floor of the limousine; one from the stretcher that carried the President; one that entered the President's body."
  
• NY Times reported that on 12/5, the Secret Service had done assassination reenactments in Dealey Plaza. "Thirteen days after the assassination of President Kennedy, Federal investigators were still reconstructing the crime on film today..." They put a film camera in the "sniper's nest" and placed a surveyor's transit on Elm, pointing up at the window. They were trying to find out "how the President could have received a bullet in the front of the throat from a rifle in the Texas School Book Depository Building after his car had passed the building...." "One explanation from a competent source was that the President had turned to his right to wave and was struck at that moment. The best authority presumably on the exact angle of entry of the bullet is the man who conducted the autopsy...Dr. Humes said he had been forbidden to talk. Most private citizens who had cooperated with newsmen reporting the crime have refused to give further help after being interviewed by agents of the Federal Bureau of Investigation. Dallas city and county police withdrew their help the same way. One high officer said he wished he could answer questions 'because it would save us a lot of work'". (Story by Joseph Loftus)
  

• 12/7/1963 LBJ held his first press conference; he stated, "I feel like I have already been here a year."
  
• The administration announced that there would be savings in the Pentagon budget of $1.5 billion in the current fiscal year and $4 billion by fiscal 1967.
  
• The Johnsons moved into the White House. (White House Diary 14) LBJ and Lady Bird quarrel about the move. Lady Bird wants to delay; LBJ wants to move today. Jackie Kennedy and her children have only just moved out of the White House the previous morning. (LB)
  
• After J. Edgar Hoover has been overruled in his proposal to close off the murder investigation with a brief FBI report, the press publishes six of the Lee Harvey Oswald - V. T. Lee (national director of the FPCC) letters, apparently from copies given by Lee himself to the FBI, after the assassination.
  
• There is a rumor that Secret Service agents have a "burn party" today, at which many of the autopsy materials are consigned to the flames.
  
• LBJ talks with Sen. Russell three times today.
  
• GOP Representatives Melvin Laird (Wisconsin), Katherine St. George (NY) and John Rhodes (Arizona) issued a statement saying that "if it was hatred that moved the assassin, that hatred was bred by the teachings of communism" and urged Americans not to blame each other or doubt their institutions.
  
• The Chicago Sun-Times reported that "government sources said in Washington" on 12/6 that "a document found by FBI agents...a few days after Oswald was slain" implicated him in the Walker shooting. "Federal officials refused to disclose what Oswald had written about his attempt to shoot Walker...or where agents had come upon the document...It was pointed out...that the shot was fired at Walker only a month after Walker urged President Kennedy to invade Cuba with airborne troops." The slug found in the wall was too deformed to be conclusively identified: "The search for ballistics evidence...turned Friday to target ranges along Texas' Trinity River. On these ranges, Dallas police disclosed, Oswald perfected his marksmanship less than week before the murder of President Kennedy. Federal agents and police scoured the ranges in the hope of finding a bullet fired by Oswald...Secret Service agents were disclosed to have found witnesses who saw Oswald at the river rifle range between Nov. 10 and 16...The witnesses were reportedly in awe of Oswald's marksmanship..."
  
• AP (Bernard Gavzer): Floyd Davis, owner of gun range, said three of his customers had told of seeing Oswald practice firing there at three different times.
  
• Ruth Paine was quoted as saying that the FBI had known Oswald was working at the Depository; she had told agents this, but, "They did not seem particularly interested in Lee. They seemed to want to help Marina if any of her family was threatened after she came to this country." (AP)
  
• Marina's "friend said Secret Service agents had suggested to her that it might be safer and easier for her to return to the Soviet Union than to try to live in the United States. This distressed her...Mrs Oswald spends most of her time in her rooms, where the Federal Bureau of Investigation still occasionally questions her through an interpreter...She is now secluded from Oswald's relatives as well as the public." (NY Times 12/8)
  
• Jean Daniel reported in the New Republic that Castro, upon hearing of JFK's death, said, "This is bad news for Cuba." He asked of LBJ, "What authority does he exercise over the CIA?"
  
• The Nation reported that in 1963 the Russians arrested a Yale history professor and charged him with being a spy; JFK appealed personally to Khruschev to release the man, assuring him he was "clean"; when the professor was returned and met with Kennedy, the President was furious to find out that he had indeed been spying for the CIA. (This was also reported by Time 6/12/1964).
  

• 12/8/1963 Earl Warren called J. Lee Rankin in NYC and asked him to be general counsel for the WC.
  
• Joe Amsler, a 23-year-old former high school classmate and friend of Frank Sinatra's daughter Nancy, joined Barry Keenan, 23, and John Irwin, 42, in abducting Sinatra's son Frank Jr. from his hotel room in Lake Tahoe.
  
• Robert Oswald goes to the Paine residence to search for any remaining items belonging to his brother Lee Harvey Oswald. He finds an Imperial Reflex Duo Lens camera. He doesn't think this discovery is important enough to bring to the attention of the authorities.
  
• The New York Times today reports that "Secret Service agents suggested to her [Marina Oswald] that it might be safer and easier for her to return to the Soviet Union than to try to live in the United States. This distressed her ... She is now secluded from Oswald's relatives as well as from the public."
  
• NY Times reported that Ike had encouraged Henry Cabot Lodge to run for president.
  
• The Dallas Times Herald reported that an unidentified man arrested 11/22 in the railroad yards remained in jail, though he had been cleared of any involvement in the assassination: "The suspect was unarmed when arrested but booked, along with others arrested in the hectic hours following the assassination, on charges of 'investigation of conspiracy to commit murder.'" He continued to be held on "city charges." At least three people in the Dal-Tex building were detained. Another young man was led from the building wearing a black leather jacket and gloves, according to witnesses. There is no record of anything he might have said to police. (Six Seconds 132, 139; Cover-Up 84)
  
• Joseph Goulden wrote an article for the Philadelphia Inquirer, claiming that "a law enforcement officer in Dallas whom he declined to identify" had told him that Oswald "had been contacted by the Federal Bureau of Investigation to become an informant." He also noted that "witnesses had seen Lee Harvey Oswald in the [TSBD] 15 minutes before the shots were fired at the President. He stated he had received this information from the Dallas Sheriff's office." (CD 226, reproduced in Whitewash IV 142). How far these contacts went is indicated in "the revelation that the Federal Bureau of Investigation tried to recruit Oswald as an undercover informant in Castro groups two months before Mr. Kennedy's death." This report, which appeared in a Philadelphia Inquirer dispatch from Dallas December 8, went on: The FBI attempt to recruit Oswald as an informant, an informed law enforcement source said, was made in September just after he had moved to Dallas from New Orleans. Oswald's mother said an "agent named Hosty" came to the Irving house and talked to the young man at length in his car. An FBI agent named Joseph [sic] Hosty handles investigations of subversives for the Dallas field office. The source said he did not know if the FBI succeeded in hiring Oswald; and the federal agency would not discuss the matter.
  

• 12/9/1963 9:55am LBJ called former Gov. David Lawrence of Pennsylvania. He informed Lawrence that McNamara had decided that the Navy yards in Philadelphia, Boston, NY, and San Francisco would have to be closed due to budget cuts.
  
• Seventeen days after JFK's assassination, the FBI receives correspondence from an anonymous source in the Netherlands that asserts that Madame Nhu and the government of South Vietnam are responsible for JFK's assassination.
  
• DPD Lt. George Butler told fellow officers involved in an internal investigation into Ruby's background that 1) he had information that Oswald was Ruby's illegitimate son and 2) that he had information that Ruby had applied for a visa to Mexico at about the time of Oswald's visit to Mexico City. (CE 2249 p41)
  
• Arthur Schlesinger talked with RFK: "I asked him, perhaps tactlessly, about Oswald. He said that there could be no serious doubt that Oswald was guilty, but there was still argument if he had done it by himself or as part of a larger plot, whether organized by Castro or by gangsters...McCone thought there were two people involved in the shooting." (RFK and His Times)
  
• Secret Service report: the Cuban Revolutionary Council maintained an office in New Orleans at 544 Camp Street from 10/1961 to 2/1962. (Oswald in New Orleans)
  
• DeLoach memo to John Mohr, saying that the FBI's report "will be delivered today"; up to this time no one outside the FBI had a copy of the report. (Never Again 253)
  
• A five-volume report of the FBI's investigation of the assassination was submitted to LBJ and the WC; it would become Warren Commission Document 1 (CD1). It concluded that there was no evidence of anyone other than Oswald involved. Although the report is supposedly confidential, details are leaked to the press and made public. It stated, "Two bullets struck President Kennedy, and one wounded Governor Connally. Immediately after President Kennedy and Governor Connally were admitted to Parkland...a bullet was found on one of the stretchers. Medical examination of the President's body revealed that one of the bullets had entered just below his shoulder to the right of the spinal column at an angle of 45 to 60 degrees downward, that there was no point of exit, and that the bullet was not in the body." It also said that Tippit was shot three times. McWatters was reported as saying that when he commented to the passenger he thought was Oswald, "I wonder where they shot the president," the passenger replied, "They shot him in the temple." The Commission did not publish the report, instead relegating it to the National Archives (Commission #1, Vol #1, p18). It was publicly released in 5/1966, due to the efforts of Vincent Salandria and Paul Hoch. It was felt that bullet CE 399 had fallen out of the back wound. When this and the Supplemental Report were released to the public, FBI spokesmen fumbled to explain the discrepancy in the back wound, saying that it represented the "medical findings at that time." (Washington Post 5/29/1966) This three-hits-no-misses theory was also adopted by the Secret Service, and Weisberg has "seen no record of either agency changing its adherence to this theory. Both agencies just ignored the wounding of Jim Tague." (Never Again p3)
  
• Acting Atty General Nicholas Katzenbach wrote each member of the WC asking them to issue a press release stating that the FBI report said Oswald was the lone assassin. (Church Committee report)
  
• Fred Powledge, reporting from Dallas, said in the NYT (12/10) that the operator of the Irving rifle range, Mr. Davis, "said Mr. Slack and the other customers did not notify the [FBI] until it became known that investigators were looking for sites where Oswald might have practiced…" A thirty-four-year-old machinist named Malcolm Howard Price said he had looked through the telescopic sight of Oswald's rifle on a rifle range in suburban Dallas --- but "Mr. Price declined to answer further questions because, he said, the FBI had asked him not to talk. The FBI here [Dallas] denied this."...Mr. Slack said that Oswald was accompanied by another man on his first visit to the range. The two men brought three rifles with them, and, when they left, Oswald handed them over a wire fence to the other man in the parking lot, Mr. Slack recalled. He said one of the weapons was wrapped in a canvas or old quilt...The customers recalled that on the first visit the man resembling Oswald came alone in a battered automobile. On the second visit they said he came with another man." Federal authorities "have said privately that they believe Oswald was the sniper" who shot at Walker.
  
• Washington Post: "It now appears that Lee Harvey Oswald, the accused assassin, attended not only a rally addressed by Gen. Edwin Walker Oct. 23, but also one addressed by United Nations Ambassador Adlai Stevenson Oct. 24.
  
• NYT reported that FBI had given SS a "risk lisk" of individuals in Dallas that might be dangerous to the President, but Oswald was not on the list because there was nothing to indicate he was violent.
  
• Washington Post: "The FBI has obtained a series of letters written by the late Lee Harvey Oswald, accused assassin of President Kennedy, the Fair Play for Cuba Committee, two New York newspapers reported today.
  
• Newsweek reports that one day last June, Oswald applied for a passport and --- despite his record --- got it in a single day. He called himself a "photographer"; he said he planned to take a long trip abroad --- perhaps including Russia --- late this year. (Newseek, 12/9/63)
  

• 12/10/1963 Senate approved a $1 billion college-aid bill.
  
• At 10 AM, CIA Director McCone meets secretly in the CIA's conference room - subject: CUBA. There have been reports that Oswald actually visited Havana during his stay in Mexico City. These reports are being suppressed.
  
• President Johnson calls on Congress to pass Civil Rights legislation without delay, "the issue cannot be ignored for another 100 years or even another 100 days".
  
• Hoover wrote an angry memo to Tolson complaining about how FBI agents failed to keep a close eye on Oswald. It argues that based on Oswald's background, he should have been on the FBI's Security Index. (AP 11/10/98) Seventeen FBI employees were censured or placed on probation for "short-comings in connection with the investigation of Oswald prior to the assassination."
  
• Statement of David Ferrie, 10 Dec 1963. Ferrie with some equivocation denied knowing Oswald: ".....I have no records, or recollection, to my knowledge, to show that Lee Harvey Oswald was, or was not, a member of this particular unit of the Civil Air Patrol. To my best knowledge and belief I do not know Lee Harvey Oswald, and have no personal recollection of ever having met him. If I did ever meet him it was very casual and to my best recollection have definitely not seen him in recent years."
  
• Secret Service report: Marina again said she never saw Oswald practice with his rifle. (H 23 402) She said that to her knowledge he had never used the name Hidell. (CE 1789)
  
• Che Guevara is alleged to be under house arrest in Cuba for plotting to overthrow Fidel Castro, "according to "a Western diplomat." A formerly secret cable sent to the CIA director on December 10, 1963 - just nine days after the original date for the C-Day coup - reports "Che Guevara was alleged to be under house arrest for plotting to overthrow Castro," according to "a Western diplomat." Newly declassified documents and other research cast Che's growing disenchantment with Fidel Castro in a new light. These revelations include Che's secret meetings with three people close to the Kennedys, followed by yet another house arrest after a C-Day exile leader was captured in Cuba.
  
• Hoover sent a memo to Belmont about how to protect the FBI's image during the WC investigation. (Secrecy and Power 385, 574)
  
• NY Times reported, "Oswald Assassin Beyond a Doubt, FBI Concludes."
  
• Rankin told the press that Warren had hoped to get the report out by February: "The President and the Chief Justice want to get it resolved as soon as possible..." (NY Times)
  
• The Dallas Times Herald's editorial praised Waggoner Carr for dropping the state investigation of JFK's death: "Although it happened in Texas, it is proper that the investigation be conducted by a federal committee because the case involves the death of a president. There must not be any hint or question of whitewash or cover-up in the findings...It will be almost impossible to keep some people forevermore from reporting or believing that they have some super-secret 'inside' truth that is being suppressed about the President's death. But the wide majority of intelligent, open-minded American citizens will accept what the presidential fact finders record."
  
• Richard Dudman, in the St. Louis Post-Dispatch, reported that the Parkland doctors had not been questioned by the FBI or any other investigative agency.
  
• The Federal Bureau of Investigation gave the Secret Service a "risk" list of Dallas individuals in advance of President Kennedy's fatal trip, but the list did not include the name of Lee H. Oswald. An official source explained today that Oswald's name, like many others in the Dallas file, had been omitted because the F.B.I. found nothing in Oswald's background to mark him as a potential assassin...Oswald was not under surveillance by the F.B.I. at the time of President Kennedy's visit to Dallas Nov. 21, the F.B.I. noted. Months of checking by the F.B.I. had indicated that Oswald was neither a spy nor a saboteur. That, it was said, covered the statutory area of F.B.I. responsibility. (The New York Times, 12/10/63.)
  
• 12/11/1963 Apparently on this date, the Secret Service visited Parkland and showed the autopsy report to the doctors, and got them to agree that all the shots came from the rear. (Richard Dudman article)
  
• Frank Sinatra Jr. was released by kidnappers after $240,000 ransom is paid.
  
• Mrs. Alma Cole writes LBJ about her son knowing Oswald in North Dakota.
  
• A memo signed today by Dallas Police Department Detective W.S. Biggio cites a report that Lee Harvey Oswald had driven Jack Ruby's car several times prior to the assassination. Even though the original source is an unidentified auto mechanic of Ruby, no one in an official capacity ever asks Donnell Whitter, who is known to be a mechanic of Ruby's, about this. A 14-page report on Donnell Whitter is still classified. This document was reviewed as recently as June 1993.
  
• Perhaps the strongest indication of deeper FBI knowledge is a CIA memo of December 11; this argued against the public release of the first FBI report on the case, "because the Soviets would see that the FBI had advance information on the reason for Oswald's visit to the Soviet Embassy." [Scelso memo of 11 December 1963 to Deputy Director (Plans), "Plans for the GPFLOOR Investigation;" NARA #104-10018-10103; PS #62-167. Cf. Newman, 406.]
  
• Paul C. Aebersold of the AEC wrote a letter to Herbert J. Miller at the Justice Department and explained how Neutron Activation Analysis (NAA) testing could be useful in investigating the assassination.
  
• DeLoach memo to John Mohr: "Since copies of the [FBI] report have been made available to members of the Commission, there is every indication leaks are coming from the Commission itself." (Never Again 254)
  
• A teletype from the New York FBI office to Hoover indicated that NBC had agreed not to report anything on the assassination that hadn't been cleared by the Bureau. The 8-page message detailed the substance of NBC's research, including the leads they had developed. The teletype also states: "NBC has movie film taken at some one hundred and fifty feet showing a Dallas Police Dept. officer rushing into book depository building while most of police and Secret Service were rushing up an incline towards railroad trestle." (Village Voice, 3/31/1992)
  

• 12/12/1963 NYT reports that GOP believes Baker scandal is being covered up by the Democrats. Sen. John Sherman Cooper was one of the Republicans on the committee investigating Baker.
  
• Stanley Kubrick's film Dr. Strangelove: Or, How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Bomb, was originally supposed to be released today. John F. Kennedy's assassination in Dallas occurred on November 22, making it inappropriate to release such a film so soon afterward. The release was pushed out to late January '64. Watch Major Kong's lips during his quip that "a fella could have a pretty good weekend in Vegas with all that stuff," referring to the survival kit. The word "Vegas" was overdubbed to replace the original "Dallas."
  
• The Presidential limo used in the Dallas motorcade is sent to Ohio to be taken apart and rebuilt.
  
• McNamara announced plans to cut 33 military bases that would save $100 million a year.
  
• Frank Sinatra Jr. was returned after being kidnapped.
  
• FBI visits Nagell in jail.
  
• 5:06pm LBJ meets with Gerald Ford. (Act of Treason 480)
  
• Kenya gains its independence.
  
• Internal FBI memo from Hoover aide Cartha DeLoach said: "[Gerald] Ford indicated he would keep me thoroughly advised as to the activities of the commission. He stated this would be done on a confidential basis, however, he thought it had to be done. He also asked if he could call me from time to time and straighten out questions in his mind concerning our investigation."
  
• DeLoach memo to Mohr: Gerald Ford complained to the FBI that Warren was "attempting to establish a one-man commission'" by appointing Warren Olney as his chief counsel.
  
• 11:35am Hoover memo to Tolson and other assistant directors: " I said I personally believe Oswald was the assassin; that the second aspect as to whether he was the only man gives me great concern; that we have several letters, not in the report because we were not able to prove it, written to him from Cuba referring to the job he was going to do, his good marksmanship, and stating when it was all over he would be brought back to Cuba and presented to the chief; but we do not know if the chief was Castro and cannot make an investigation because we have no intelligence operation in Cuba; that I did not put this into the report because we did not have proof of it and didn't want to put speculation in the report; that this was the reason I urged strongly that we not reach conclusion Oswald was the only man. As to Rubenstein, I said I did not want a statement about Rubenstein and Oswald; that we have no proof they were ever together. I stated Rubenstein is a shady character from the hoodlum element of Chicago, has a poor background, runs a nightclub in Dallas, and is what would be called a police buff; that the police officers in the precinct have been able to get food and liquor from him at any time they drop in; that while I think there was no connection between him and Oswald, I did not want the report to be 100% sure on that."
  

• 12/13/1963 Congress, in a Joint Resolution, empowered the Warren Commission to subpoena witnesses and to compel their testimony by granting them immunity if they pleaded the Fifth Amendment. The latter power was never used.
  
• 7:15pm Phone call between LBJ and McNamara. Johnson wants to replace the four White House military aides with one Gen. Chester Clifton. He uses this opportunity to get rid of Godfrey McHugh, who hadn't obeyed LBJ's orders on Air Force One on 11/22/1963.
  
• FBI Agent Hosty was placed on 90 days probation by Hoover; a letter he sent Hosty called his "recent handling of a security-type case...grossly inadequate...your judgement in connection with this aspect of the case was exceedingly poor." Hosty still wondered why he should have been expected to make Oswald a higher-priority case. (Assignment Oswald 102)
  
• CIA summary report on Oswald; in October the CIA guessed that the Lee Oswald who visited Mexico City was probably the same person as the marine defector. "As chance would have it, none of our several photo observation points in Mexico City had ever taken an identifiable picture of Lee Oswald." The Mexico City station had erased many of the tape recordings of Oswald's phone conversations "after the normal two weeks wait...To date there is no credible information in CIA files which would appear to link Lee Oswald with the Cuban government or the Cuban intelligence services...The very openess of his visits and the phone calls speak against any secret role...A particularly sinister aspect of Oswald's dealings with the Soviets in Mexico City arises from the liklihood that he met with...Kostikov...it is believed that he works for Department 13 of the KGB, the Department charged with sabotage and assassinations." But the report decided it was a "grim coincidence" that Oswald had talked to him. (Declassified 1995; Assignment Oswald 296)
  
• TIME reported that the FBI report showed that "Oswald, acting in his own lunatic loneliness, was indeed the President's assassin."
  
• Dallas Morning News carries a story with the following headline: "QUESTIONS RAISED ON MURDER BULLETS." The story's first sentence is "Did a bullet from Lee Harvey Oswald's rifle chip the curb on Min Street near the triple underpass." James T. Tague, who was struck and slightly wounded by slivers of concrete when a bullet hit the street curb near the triple underpass where he was standing, is not named in the story but there is mention of a shot that possibly "missed" the motorcade and hit the street curb. Two FBI agents will be sent to interview Tague tomorrow. (The investigation is currently proceeding under the premise that there were no missed shots.)
  

• 12/14/1963 USA Ambassador to Mexico Thomas Mann is recalled by LBJ and appointed to a high State Department post. (Mann has been investigating a possible Cuban connection to the assassination.) Thomas Mann, a conservative Texan who helped plan the Bay of Pigs, was named by LBJ as Assistant for Latin American Affairs. He replaced Edwin M. Martin in this position. Art Schlesinger and Averell Harriman noisily complain about the appointment.
  
• Eisenhower met with Gov. Scranton of Pennsylvania and seemed to encourage him to run for president.
  
• US recognized the military regimes of Honduras and the Dominican Republic after they promised to hold elections by 1966.
  
• FBI agents interviewed James Tague.
  
• Rex Basinger, forty-five years old, is arrested at Parkland Hospital in Dallas on a charge of vagrancy. On January 21, Rex will show up at his brother's house in Arkansas . There, Rex will tell his brother of being put in the same jail block with Jack Ruby. Ruby tells Basinger about "an invasion of Cuba which would take place on May 1, 1964. The invasion groups were to meet at Key West, Florida, and others were to meet in Mexico, place unknown."
  
• Larry Huff, serving as navigator, departs Kaneohe Base in Hawaii in a C-54-T aircraft, serial number 50855, for Wake Island, with Chief Warrant Officer Morgan as pilot. Huff states there are ten to twelve CID military investigators on this flight. They go to Atsugi to research Lee Harvey Oswald. This report disappears from Marine Corps files.
  
• Jean Daniel, "Unofficial Envoy: An Historic Report from Two Capitals, " New Republic (December 14, 1963) described his role in the back-channel talks between JFK and Castro.
  
• POST magazine has a series of photographs on the assassination. This photograph appears on page 22. The caption reads,"From the same building where Oswald lay in ambush, a telescopic lens reconstructs an approximation of what the killer saw at the moment of tragedy". The photograph, however, was taken from the Dal-Tex Building.
  
• Saturday Evening Post story about Dr. Perry: "The wound in the [front] throat was small and neat. Blood was running out of it. It was running out too fast. The occipitoparietal, which is a part of the back of the head, had a huge flap. The damage a rifle bullet does as it comes out of a person's body is unbelievable."
  
• Drew Pearson, in his column, called it a "shocking oversight" for the FBI to have not reported Oswald to the Secret Service when the president was going to Dallas.
  

• 12/15/1963 Art Schlesinger wrote to RFK about the appointment of Thomas Mann: "Johnson has won the first round. He has shown his power to move in a field of special concern to the Kennedys without consulting the Kennedys. This will lead people all over the government to conclude that their future lies with Johnson…" (RFK papers, Kennedy Library)
  
• Mrs. Ruth Paine, the woman with whom Marina was staying, said: "He seemed in exceptionally high spirits." [When he visited his wife the weekend prior to President Kennedy's arrival in Dallas.] Oswald told his wife "things are looking up" and that soon they would have enough to look for an apartment, buy furniture. (Sunday Bulletin, Philadelphia, 12/15/63.)
  

• 12/16/1963 The House passed a foreign aid bill with a restriction designed to prohibit the Export-Import Bank from financing loans for trade with any Communist country. The Senate later voted it down.
  
• LBJ signed into law the Foreign Assistance Act of 1963 (amounting to $3.6 billion).
  
• A file is opened on Gilberto Policarpo Lopez at CIA headquarters today.
  
• Alonzo W. Hudkins, a reporter for the Houston Post, called the Houston Secret Service office and told them he thought Jack Ruby's roommate, George Senator, may have had a connection to Oswald's murder, though he didn't elaborate except to say Ruby had a brother and a nephew who worked for Jimmy Hoffa in Detroit.
  
• FBI report: "[Marina] cannot recall that [Oswald] ever practiced firing the rifle either in New Orleans or in Dallas." "She never saw him clean it nor did he hold it in her presence [in New Orleans] as best as she can recall." (H 22 778)
  
• A Dallas police panel of eight officials cleared the DPD of any collusion with Ruby; they said they talked to 20 patrolmen, 21 reservists, 30 detectives, 19 supervisors. The 8 panel members included Jack Revill, who insisted on giving Blackie Harrison a lie-detector test. (Ruby Cover-up 146)
  
• Second Warren Commission Meeting
  
• Newsweek said "the [FBI] report holds to the central conclusion that Federal and local probers had long since reached: that Oswald was the assassin."
  
• Newsweek: ... And had he [Oswald] really acted alone? Only 29 per cent of the American people thought so, according to pollster George Gallup, while 52 per cent thought "some-group or element" shared the blame. The suspicion was formless. Few singled out a specific group; despite Oswald's eccentric left politics, only one person in 100 thought Russia, Cuba, or "the Communists" were involved.
  

• 12/17/1963 LBJ addressed the UN General Assembly; he called for an end to the Cold War and the need to address basic issues of human welfare. After being put off by Chase for two weeks, William Attwood finally had a chance to hear from President Johnson himself, when Johnson visited the U.S. delegation to the United Nations in New York on December 1 7. Attwood was simply told by Johnson at lunch that " he'd read my chronological account of our Cuban initiative 'with interest. "' "And that was it, " Attwood wrote two decades later in describing the end of "the Cuban connection. "
  
• Hudkins told the Secret Service he had just returned from a weekend in Dallas, where he had met with Chief Deputy Criminal Division Allen Sweat of the Sheriff's office. Sweatt had told him that Oswald was an FBI informant, paid $200 a month and assigned a code "S172" in connection with the FBI's subversive organizations investigations.
  
• Clean Air Act of 1963 signed into law by LBJ.
  
• Howard L. Brennan, assassination eyewitness, states he is sure that the person firing the rifle from the Book Depository Building window was Oswald.
  
• Letter from New York lawyer Mark Lane to Earl Warren recommending that Oswald have defense counsel to represent his interest.
  
• FBI agent Lansing Logan interviewed Lamar Hunt, who denied knowing Ruby and couldn't think of why his name was in Ruby's notebook.
  
• CIA saboteurs use underwater demolition equipment to sink a Cuban navy launch off the Isle of Pines.
  
• Alex Rosen FBI memo to Alan Belmont; Sam Papich had heard from the CIA, which had heard from Allen Dulles, that "Rankin is considering an investigative staff to conduct additional investigations [and] will consider relations between various federal agencies to see if there are defects..." The memo also put the onus on the Kennedy family as the reason why the FBI did not get the autopsy photos and X-rays "inasmuch as the President's family had indicated a desire the report be kept confidential." (Never Again 32, 252)
  
• An internal FBI memo listed the WC items Gerald Ford had passed to Cartha DeLoach. (Plausible Denial 43) DeLoach met with Ford that day; his memo said, "I again went over very carefully with Congressman Ford the fact the FBI had not had any 'leaks' whatsoever. I told him that we were well aware that the department had done considerable talking..." (Never Again 254)
  

• 12/18/1963 Treasury Secretary C. Douglas Dillon's Memorandum for Chief Justice Warren dated December 18, 1963 (which, by the way, predates the April 1964 SS reports): "… the President had frequently stated that he did not wish to have the agents riding on these steps [on rear of limousine] during a motorcade and had repeated this wish only a few days previously to agents assigned to him in Tampa [Florida, November 18, 1963].
  
• The FBI interviewed Sylvia Odio, but was not called to testify before the Warren Commission until the end of July 1964. Silvia Odio is visited at work by the FBI regarding her statements to her friend, Lucille Connell on November 28 regarding OSWALD. Odio tells the agents her story of a single encounter in her apartment hallways with an American named "Leon" who was in the company of two JURE Cubans.
  
• On this date, all FBI investigative work in New Orleans ceases completely. A team of agents has been in New Orleans since five days after the assassination. No mention of David Ferrie or Carlos Marcello is made in the FBI's supplemental report of January 13, 1964.
  
• Richard Dudman, correspondent for the St. Louis Post-Dispatch, reports that two Secret Service agents visit the Parkland surgeons with a copy of the autopsy report from Bethesda Naval Hospital. Following this visit, the Dallas doctors change their opinion of the wound to "conform" to the Bethesda autopsy report. "Two Secret Service agents called last week on Dallas surgeons who attended President John F. Kennedy and obtained a reversal of their original view that the bullet in the neck entered from the front. The investigators did so by showing the surgeons a document described as an autopsy report from the United States Naval Hospital at Bethesda. The surgeons changed their original view to conform with the report they were shown. "There was no coercion at all," Dr. Robert N. McClelland told the Post-Dispatch. "They didn't say anything like, 'This is what you think, isn't it?'"
  
• The AP reported that the surgeons now support the official view that both bullets that struck the President were fired from behind, from the direction of the six...

[Tracy Riddle]

• 1964-1968 chemical experiments in US military As part of Project Shipboard Hazard and Defense (SHAD), the US military sprays nerve or chemical agents "on a variety of ships and their crews to gauge how quickly the poisons can be detected and how rapidly they would disperse, as well as to test the effectiveness of protective gear and decontamination procedures...." According to documents released in 2002, there is no evidence that the servicemen had given the military consent to be part of the experiment. [New York Times, 5/24/02] The US military later claims the experiments were conducted "out of concern for [the United States'] ability to protect and defend against these potential threats." [US Department of Defense, 10/31/2002; Reuters, 10/10/02]
  
• This year, the SVCP (Special Virus Cancer Program) begins as a government-funded program of the National Cancer Institute (NCI) in Bethesda, Maryland. The program studies all forms of cancer. Research includes collecting various human and animal cancers from around the world and growing large amounts of cancer-causing viruses. Thousands of liters of man-made viruses are eventually adapted to human cells and subsequently shipped around the world to various laboratories.
  
• In 1964, the World Medical Association passed the Declaration of Helsinki, a set of ethical principles for the medical community regarding human experimentation.
  
• From 1964 to 1968, the U.S. Army paid $386,486 to professors Albert Kligman and Herbert W. Copelan to perform experiments with mind-altering drugs on 320 inmates of Holmesburg Prison. The goal of the study was to determine the minimum effective dose of each drug needed to disable 50 percent of any given population. Kligman and Copelan initially claimed that they were unaware of any long-term health effects the drugs could have on prisoners, however, documents later revealed that this was not the case.
  
• CIA program MKULTRA became MKSEARCH. Many sub-projects stayed under MKULTRA while the most sensitive behavioral experiments went to MKSEARCH. These experiments were conducted on prisoners, terminal cancer patients and people who were described as mental "defectives." They also used radar waves on monkeys' brains (which risked "cooking" their brains) and one scientist took the head of one monkey and tried to attach it to the body of another. Other experiments involved studying telepathy, radio frequencies and memory.
  
• In the Collier's Encyclopedia Yearbook 1964, Tom Wicker writes an essay on the "Death of a President." He describes JFK's wounds: "There was a wound in his throat. The right rear part of his head was blown away."
  
• 1/1964 This month, Richard Nixon calls together his veteran strategists, Bob Finch, Bob Haldeman, and Steve Hess, for a meeting at the Waldorf Towers. They agree that Nixon's best stance, for the time being, is to lay low. The consensus is that their man is not in a position to run openly for president but that he might turn out to be an acceptable compromise between the party's left and right should this summer's convention in San Francisco reach a deadlock.
  
• 1/1964 LBJ submitted a $97.9 billion budget to Congress; it included some cuts in the budgets of the Defense Dept and the Atomic Energy Commission. (The Making of the President 1964)
  
• 1/1964 "... Not the least fantastic aspect of this whole fantastic nightmare is the ease with which respectable opinion in America has arrived at the conclusion that such a possibility [a political conspiracy] is absurd; in most other countries, what is regarded as absurd is the idea that the assassination could have been anything but a political murder. ..." "... The Warren Commission ought to know that anything less [than the fullest investigation] would only reinforce the ugly suspicions circulating through the air, and would only compound the same and disgust that all of us should be feeling - still." Commentary, Editorial by Norman Podhoretz warns Warren Commission against merely sifting FBI reports.
  
• 1/1964 "The Death of a President" (A review of the many inconsistencies and mysteries involved in the investigation of the assassination of President John F. Kennedy. The reaction of a stunned world: Was it a conspiracy?) by Eric Norden in The Minority of One (Jan 1964) The Minority of One (January, 1964): "William M. Kline, chief of the U.S. Customs Bureau investigative services in Laredo, Texas, stated on November 25 that Oswald's movements were watched at the request of "a federal agency at Washington." (New York Post, November 25.) Eugene Pugh, U.S. agent in charge of the Customs office on the American side of the bridge at Laredo, Texas, said that Oswald had been checked by American immigration officials on entering and leaving Mexico. Mr. Pugh admitted to the New York Herald Tribune that this was "not the usual" procedure. He said Americans were not required to check in with Immigration when crossing the border, "but U.S. immigration has a folder on Oswald's trip."
  
• 1/1964 Cuba and the Kennedy Assassination by John Martino [Human Events. Jan, 1964]: "During the three years that I was incarcerated in Cuban prisons, former intimates told me of the Red dictator's irrational hatred of President Kennedy. One Red publication, I remember, displayed a fake photograph showing the President and the First Lady careening drunk through the streets of Mexico City during their official visit in 1962. Another-the magazine Mella, featured a cartoon in which John F. Kennedy was depicted as a dope pusher injecting narcotics into the arm of a child…If Castro needed an assassin, he would have had to search among the Maoists, the Stalinists and the neo-Trotskyites-in another words, among people as disturbed, warped, hate-saturated and wicked as Oswald. The fact that the crime was committed in Dallas, a center of American conservative and nationalist movements, was probably not accidental. Had Oswald managed to escape to Cuba, the liberal press and the Establishment could have placed the entire blame for the murder of the President, not on America's Communist enemies, but on those who love this country and wish to preserve its institutions and its heritage."
  
• 1/1964 Shirley Martin, an early critic of the lone-gunman story, wrote that in January 1964 she talked to Jean Hill. Hill told her that she and Mary Moorman "had received many threatening phone calls urging them to keep quiet' and when they reported these to the Dallas police, they received an official brush-off. Mrs. Hill said Miss Moorman would not talk to me as she was much more frightened and upset over the whole thing than Mrs. Hill was."
  
• 1/1964 Who Killed Whom and Why? Dark Thoughts About Dark Events - M.S. Arnoni, The Minority of One, January 1964
  
• 1/1/1964 Lonnie Hudkins story in Houston Post about Oswald being an FBI informant. "'He had Hosty's home phone, office phone and car license number,' said Bill Alexander...Mrs Marguerite Oswald....had a terse 'no comment' when asked if her son had told her he was or had at least been asked to be an informant in antisubversive work. She did not deny it. However, she was quoted in the Philadelphia Inquirer as saying her son had been approached by a government agent to be an informant and then had informed her about it...the contact, if made, would have been before she went to work for a Fort Worth matron in the same month and indicated to her employer that 'Lee was doing important work.' The social matron said she got the impression from Mrs Oswald...that Lee Oswald was doing some sort of work for the federal government...'They [meaning the FBI] asked me where he worked and I told them,' said Mrs Ruth Paine...Mrs Paine recalled that FBI agents came to her home on two occasions to inform Oswald's wife that it was the FBI's custom, or policy, to contact immigrants from behind the Iron Curtain after they had been in this country for a year and that they (the immigrants) could, if they wanted to do so, disclose any pressure that might be on them from relatives or governments left behind...Reporters on hand to interview...Jesse Curry on Nov. 22 recall that he first revealed that the FBI knew that Oswald was in Dallas but had not given his name to check to police or other law enforcement agencies involved in the President's protection. Chief Curry later retracted the statement...It is this point that has led to speculation by police and sheriff's deputies in Dallas that Oswald might have been an informant because, as one put it, 'you just wouldn't think to check out one of your own stoolies.'...District Atty Henry Wade...does not discount the possibility that Oswald may have been an informant. 'It may be true,' he said, 'but I don't think it will ever be made public if it is.'...sources in Dallas say he passed through Houston on Sept 26 en route to Mexico. One agency in Washington has leaked that Oswald was accompanied by two women and a man..."
  
• 1/1/1964 "[William] Alexander…and two local reporters concocted a story that Oswald had been FBI informer S-179 and had been paid $200 a month. Lonnie Hudkins...printed the story...'I never much liked the federals,' Alexander says. 'I figured it was as good a way as any to keep them out of my way having to run down that phony story.'" (Posner, Case Closed 348)
  
• 1/1/1964 LBJ warned that neutralization of Vietnam "would only be another name for a Communist take-over."
  
• 1/2/1964 FBI and Secret Service visited Richard Case Nagell in jail.
  
• 1/2/1964 LBJ assured South Vietnam's Gen. Duong Van Minh that the US "will continue to furnish you and your people with the fullest measure of support in this bitter fight..."
  
• 1/2/1964 "Oswald in Dallas: A Few Loose Ends" by Leo Sauvage, The Reporter. He recalled wiring his home office at Le Figaro, the Paris newspaper, saying that one of the few certainties in Dallas was that Kennedy was dead.
  
• 1/3/1964 Barry Goldwater announced his candidacy for the GOP presidential nomination.
  
• 1/3/1964 Broadcast by KPFA, Radio interview of Mark Lane, by Chris Koch and Robert Potts, WBAI, New York, no date; broadcast by KPFA, Berkeley, 1/3/64.
  
• 1/3/1964 Paul Rothermel memo to H.L. Hunt: "The FBI has instructed its agents not to discuss the Oswald-Ruby case, even among themselves, as there has been a leak of some information which has caused embarrassment to the Bureau." (Man Who Knew Too Much 590)
  
• 1/3/1964 Time magazine, dated this day, names Martin Luther King its Man of the Year for 1963, and featured him on the cover.
  
• 1/3/1964 CD 320: report of a Secret Service interview with reporter Lonnie Hudkins. It was found by Paul Hoch in the National Archives 7/1966 (it was not included in the published WC material.) "On December 17, [1963] Mr. Hudkins advised that he had just returned from a weekend in Dallas, during which time he talked to Allan Sweatt, Chief Criminal Division, Sheriff's Office, Dallas; Chief Sweat mentioned that it was his opinion that Lee Harvey Oswald was being paid $200 a month by the FBI as an informant in connection with their subversive investigations. He furnished the alleged informant number assigned to Oswald by the FBI as 'S172.'"
  
• 1/4/1964 The Journal of the American Medical Association (JAMA) published what it called the "unofficial finding of a team of pathologists who peformed" the JFK autopsy. It said that the first bullet "did not go through the shoulder and was recovered during the autopsy."
  
• 1/5/1964 The Johnsons visited with the Connallys, and then with Sen. Yarborough, on their way back to the White House. (White House Diary 30)
  
• 1/5/1964 FBI agents in Washington installed a microphone in the hotel room assigned to MLK. Though the FBI was often able to record King's sexual liaisons, MLK also began turning his TV up full blast "after a personal warning from the president of the United States that he was being watched all the time." (The Man and the Secrets 568)
  
• 1/5/1964 Pope Paul VI and Greek Orthodox Patriarch Athenagoras met in Jerusalem, the first meeting of a pope and a patriarch in more than five centuries.
  
• 1/6/1964 Sen. Mansfield told LBJ he thought the US should push for a neutralist solution in Southeast Asia.
  
• 1/6/1964 Texas District Attorney Henry Wade says today that an intensive investigation shows no evidence whatsoever of any collusion between Jack Ruby and Dallas police officers in the slaying of LHO.
  
• 1/6/1964 U.S. News & World Report, Why a Plot was Feared when Kennedy Was Shot, p. 7. "For a short while after President Kennedy's assassination in Dallas, there was fear of a plot to kill others in line for the Presidency. That was why, it is now revealed, news of Mr. Kennedy's death was momentarily held up, until Lyndon Johnson, then vice president, was safely away from the hospital where Mr. Kennedy died. ... Malcolm Kilduff, assistant White House press secretary ... in a television interview ... quoted Mr. Johnson as saying: "We don't know whether this is a worldwide conspiracy, whether they are after me as well as they were after President Kennedy, or whether they are after Speaker McCormack, or Senator Hayden …" Mr. Kilduff asked Mr. Johnson if he should release to the press the news that Mr. Kennedy was dead. "No," he said Johnson told him. "I think we had better wait for a few minutes. ... I think I had better get out of here and get back to the plane before you announce it." …... There is historical precedent for Mr. Johnson's suspicion. On the night that President Lincoln was killed, other plotters wounded Secretary of State William Seward in an attempt to kill him. "
  
• 1/6/1964 James Rowley sends a memorandum to Rankin today regarding JFK's presidential limo. Rowley states that Secret Service Agent Morgan Geis of the White House Garage detail requested permission to clean the blood from the back seat of the presidential limo on November 23, 1963 because the odor was becoming bothersome. According to Rowley, permission was given to remove bloodstains on Sunday evening, November 24, 1963. Questions regarding the current whereabouts and condition of the limo - particularly in terms of evidence - are beginning to create some concern. MIDP Secret Service director James Rowley states: "Special Agent Gies, who was responsible for the care and maintenance of this vehicle, believes that this damage was on the car prior to November 22nd, 1963, and it is his recollection that this damage was in New York at the Empire Garage (Lincoln-Mercury dealer) on November 1961. Gies thinks the damage was done while he and employees of the garage were removing the header on the leatherette top...If this was the case, no effort was made to repair the dent prior to the assassination." Paul Michel, service director of the Empire Garage, was present and assisted with the November 1, 1961 repairs. Michel does not remember any damage occurring at that time, though he states that it was possible that some damage did occur, since a crank had broken off near the top of the windshield. By this point in time, repairs to the limousine are underway and the windshield trim has probably already been lost. From this point on, it is evident that the Secret Service, the FBI, and the Warren Commission ignore the damage to the windshield trim and downplay its evidentiary value whenever they can not avoid mentioning it. Repairs to the limousine include: a permanent, nonremovable top; bulletproof glass; titanium body armor; a steel plate in the rear floor to protect against bombs; bullet-resistant tires; an explosion-proof gas take; a supplemental air-conditioning unit for the passenger compartment; and a new high-compression engine.
  
• 1/6/1964 "[This] was a long day for Martin Luther King Jr. He spent the morning seated in the reserved section of the Supreme Court, listening as lawyers argued New York Times Co. v. Sullivan, a landmark case rising out of King's crusade against segregation in Alabama. The minister was something of an honored guest: Justice Arthur Goldberg quietly sent down a copy of King's account of the Montgomery bus boycott, Stride Toward Freedom, asking for an autograph. That night King retired to his room at the Willard Hotel. There FBI bugs reportedly picked up 14 hours of party chatter, the clinking of glasses and the sounds of illicit sex--including King's cries of "I'm f---ing for God" and "I'm not a Negro tonight!" (Newsweek 1/19/1998) After a long and harrowing morning spent working with their D.C. lawyers preparing a defense against trumped-up libel charges by the State of Alabama for alleged misstatements in a 1960 money-raising ad Dr. Martin Luther King and several of his staff and a few women of assorted hues repair to the Willard Hotel near the White House. The FBI has bugged the hotel room and, after eleven reels of tape of nondescript, informal chatter and glasses chinking and heavy-duty ethnic jokes, just as the festivities are reaching their height, auditors for the Bureau catch King ripping loose, his rich voice unmistakable above the soft, wet sounds of fatigue and abandonment. "I'm fucking for God!" he breaks forth. "I'm not a Negro tonight!" J. Edgar Hoover, upon hearing the tapes, exclaims: "This will destroy the burrhead!" Deke DeLoach comments: "The fact that King and twelve acquaintances of his went to a hotel and hired a hundred-dollar-a-night call girls and most of them had something to do with her while they were drinking Black Russians - that was the subject of that tape...None of us ever played that tape to any reporters, I only heard fifteen to twenty minutes of that tape when [William] Sullivan brought it to my office. I told him to shut it off; I wanted to hear no more. But Sullivan had a fetish for doing things against Dr. King. He got Lish Whitson, the retired head of the old espionage section, to fly to Miami and mail it to Coretta King. Mr. Hoover was horrified when he found out about it." Sullivan will later insist Hoover was behind the whole travesty. According to Sullivan, Hoover, "who had always been fascinated by pornography," arranged through Alan Belmont to have a box dropped off which contained a compilation of Martin Luther King's remarks as well as a letter intended for Coretta King. The letter urges King to "look into your heart. You area complete fraud and a great liability to all of us Negroes...a dissolute, abnormal moral imbecile...King, there is only one thing left for you to do. You know what it is. You have just 34 days...There is but one way out for you. You better take it before your filthy, abnormal fraudulent self is bared to the nation..." The package is opened in Atlanta, days after King has returned from Oslo, where he has just received the Nobel Peace Prize.
  
• 1/7/1964 McNamara, Rusk and Bundy warned LBJ that a neutralist solution would result in a Communist Vietnam and collapse of US credibility.
  
• 1/7/1964 In an interview with FBI agents, assassination eyewitness Howard L. Brennan reverts to his earlier inability to make a positive identification of Lee Harvey Oswald as the gunman who fired from the window in the Book Depository.
  
• 1/7/1964 In a letter to Allen Dulles, RFK today writes: "Allen, as you know, much of the important material of the Kennedy administration does not exist in written form."
  
• 1/8/1964 Secret Service issued its final report on the JFK assassination. (CD87) It agrees with the FBI's three hits, no misses scenario.
  
• 1/8/1964 LBJ gave his State of the Union address: "This administration today, here and now, declares unconditional war on poverty in America." He also announced a $97.9 billion budget ($4 billion less than the previous year) and discussed the tax cut proposal.
  
• 1/8/1964 Press reports on the return of RFK to work at the Justice Dept. The FBI ceases to send an official car to pick up Kennedy during his travels.
  
• 1/8/1964 William Sullivan, memorandum to John Edgar Hoover (8th January, 1964) "It should be clear to all of us that Martin Luther King must, at some propitious point in the future, be revealed to the people of this country and to his Negro followers as being what he actually is - a fraud, demagogue and scoundrel. When the true facts concerning his activities are presented, such should be enough, if handled properly, to take him off his pedestal and to reduce him completely in influence. When this is done, and it can be and will be done, obviously much confusion will reign, particularly among the Negro people... The Negroes will be left without a national leader of sufficiently compelling personality to steer them in the proper direction. This is what could happen, but need not happen if the right kind of a national Negro leader could at this time be gradually developed so as to overshadow Dr. King and be in the position to assume the role of the leadership of the Negro people when King has been completely discredited. For some months I have been thinking about this matter. One day I had an opportunity to explore this from a philosophical and sociological standpoint with an acquaintance whom I have known for some years.... I asked him to give the matter some attention and if he knew any Negro of outstanding intelligence and ability to let me know and we would have a discussion. He has submitted to me the name of the above-captioned person. Enclosed with this memorandum is an outline of (the person's) biography which is truly remarkable for a man so young. On scanning this biography, it will be seen that (Samuel Pierce) does have all the qualifications of the kind of a Negro I have in mind to advance to positions of national leadership.... If this thing can be set up properly without the Bureau in any way becoming directly involved, I think it would be not only a great help to the FBI but would be a fine thing for the country at large. While I am not specifying at this moment, there are various ways in which the FBI could give this entire matter the proper direction and development. There are highly placed contacts of the FBI who might be very helpful to further such a step. These can be discussed in detail later when I have probed more fully into the possibilities."
  
• 1/9/1964 Panama suspended relations with US after riots between American students and Panamanians over which flag should fly over the canal zone.
  
• 1/9/1964 Roswell Gilpatric left his post as Deputy Secretary of Defense and returned to the law firm of Cravath, Swaine & Moore as a senior partner. In September LBJ would appoint him to a high-level Committee on Nuclear Proliferation. (Mollenhoff, The Pentagon)
  
• 1/10/1964 THE STATE OF TEXAS vs. JACK RUBENSTEIN -- Date set for second bail hearing. Postponed.
  
• 1/10/1964 Cover story of LIFE features the memoirs of Gen. Douglas MacArthur
  
• 1/10/1964 Hoover heard the tapes of MLK at the Willard Hotel, and he commented, "They will destroy the burrhead." He called Walter Jenkins at the White House about the material. (The Man and the Secrets 569)
  
• 1/10/1964 One of TV's first attempts at political satire, the U.S. version of "That Was the Week That Was" premieres on NBC with a mixture of fake news, skits and musical numbers. Cast members include David Frost, Buck Henry, Bob Dishy, Alan Alda, Sandy Baron and Tom Bosley.
  
• 1/11/1964 Surgeon General Luther Terry released a report to the press that found that smoking might cause cancer and other ailments. This was the first government report that linked cigarette smoking with cancer.
  
• 1/11/1964 LBJ publicly thanks RFK for waging so successful a campaign against the Mafia.
  
• 1/11/1964 J. Lee Rankin explained the purpose of the Warren Commission to the press: "We think it would be wise to reassure this country and the world not only that we can protect our President but that accused criminals can be treated fairly." He also described how they intended to rely on the police agencies to do the investigative work, while at the same time there would be "no shying away from intensive scrutiny of these same agencies' performance."
  
• 1/11/1964 Memo from Rankin and Warren to the other WC members: the subject was the "tentative" organization of the Commission's work. Warren wrote: "This outline divides the work into the following six areas: (1) Assassination of President Kennedy on November 22, 1963; (2) Lee Harvey Oswald as the Assassin of President Kennedy; (3) Lee Harvey Oswald: Background and Possible Motive; (4) Oswald's foreign activity (military excluded); (5) Murder of Lee Harvey Oswald by Jack L. Ruby; and (6) Security Precautions to Protect the President....of couse, high priority is being given to preparation for taking the testimony of Mrs [Marina] Oswald...The FBI has been requested to conduct a complete background investigation of the Paines. Similar investigations will be requested of other people in Dallas and Fort Worth who associated closely with Oswald and his family." Attached to this progress report was the following "Tentative Outline": I Assassination of President Kennedy; A. Trip to Texas; B. Assassination; C. Events Immediately Following the Shooting; D. Nature and Extent of Wounds Received by President Kennedy (4.Evaluation of medical treatment received in Dallas); II Lee Harvey Oswald as the Assassin of President Kennedy; A. Brief Identification of Oswald; B. Movements on November 22, 1963, Prior to Assassination; C. Movements After Assassination until Murder of Tippit; D. Murder of Tippit (1. Encounter of Oswald and Tippit; 2.Evidence Demonstrating Oswald's Guilt); E. Flight and Apprehension in Texas Theatre; F. Oswald at Dallas Police Station; G. Evidence Identifying Oswald as the Assassin of President Kennedy (2.Oswald placed in Depository (and specific room?)); H. Evidence Implicating Others in Assassination or Suggesting Accomplices (5.Refutation of Allegations); III. Lee Harvey Oswald: Background and Possible Motive; A. Birth and Pre-school days; B.Education; C. Military Service (4. Report and document study of Russian language: a. where and when, b.books used, c.instruction or self-taught, d.any indication of degree of accomplishment.) (Post Mortem 467)
  
• 1/11/1964 Memo from Charles Shaffer to Howard Willens. "Subject: Information Failure." "Today, I was at the Justice Department and Assistant Attorney General Miller furnished me with the two attached letter-head memoranda dated December 19 and December 30,1963, which were received from the Bureau in due course and which obviously are pertinent to the work of this commission. At the moment we are in no position to finally evaluate the content of either. I am morally certain that neither of the above had been transmitted to Mr Rankin as they properly should have been. Accordingly, I am disturbed that the Bureau is conducting investigation and not furnishing us with the results. Knowing the Bureau as we do, I suggest the matter be informally discussed with their representative in contact with the Commission. In this way, the matter can be corrected with the least amount of friction." (Post Mortem 473)
  
• 1/11/1964 Texas Atty General submitted reports to the WC on the wounding of Dealey Plaza witness James Tague. (Inquest)
  
• 1/12/1964 New York Times printed an outline of the WC's planned investigation.
  
• 1/13/1964 Federal Trade Commission announces it will require statements on cigarette packages warning of the dangers of smoking.
  
• 1/13/1964 Lady Bird Johnson diary entry: "...every time I pass that portrait of President Woodrow Wilson - painted when the strains of office lay heavily upon him - it says to me: Have his [LBJ's] portrait painted soon.'" (White House Diary 45)
  
• 1/13/1964 Supplemental Report issued by FBI. It was not published by the WC, and was released 5/1966 due to the efforts of Vincent Salandria and Paul Hoch. It contained a photo of Kennedy's shirt that clearly depicted the location of the rear bullet hole; this photo was not published by the WC; instead, they chose to publish a less-clear photo that renders the hole not visible. (H 17 23-26) This report described the hole as being "approximately six inches below the top of the collar and two inches to the right of the middle seam of the coat." It still described the back wound being "less than a finger length." The report also said that the backyard photo of Oswald did not contain enough detail for the FBI to positively identify the rifle as the Carcano. The WC apparently never tried to clear up the inconsistencies between its conclusions and the FBI report.
  
• 1/13/1964 Hoover scribbled on a memo from Sullivan to Belmont: "A copy need not be given A.G. [Robert Kennedy]." This concerned the tape recordings of MLK made by the FBI, which LBJ and Walter Jenkins had been shown transcripts of. Jenkins had suggested that leaks to the press might be a good idea. Hoover and others in the FBI worried that RFK might warn King if he knew about it. (The Man and the Secrets 569)
  
• 1/14/1964 Jacqueline Kennedy made her first public appearance on TV since the assassination. She thanked the 800,000 people who had sent her messages of sympathy.
  
• 1/14/1964 Fort Worth - Mrs. Marguerite Oswald said today she has retained New York lawyer Mark Lane to represent her late son before the special Washington commission. AP, Mike Cochran
  
• 1/14/1964 J. Edgar Hoover writes the Warren Commission admitting that the original description of JFK's assassin broadcast by the police was "initiated on the basis of a description furnished by an unidentified citizen who had observed an individual approximating Oswald's description running from the TSBD immediately after the assassination."
  
• 1/15/1964 Memo from D. J. Brennan to William Sullivan, re CIA Operations in the US. Hoover's own reaction to the CIA's Mexico City subterfuge was recorded when he scribbled at the bottom of an FBI memorandum about keeping up with CIA operations in the United States: " O.K., but I hope you are not being taken in. I can't forget the CIA withholding the French espionage activities in the USA nor the false story re Oswald's trip to Mexico, only to mention two instances of their double-dealing. " (A copy of the FBI memorandum with Hoover's written comment on it is on p. 5 of John Newman's article, " Oswald, the CIA and Mexico City: Fingerprints of Conspiracy," Probe (September-October 1999). James Douglass: "Lyndon Johnson's CIA and FBI briefings left him with two unpalatable interpretations of Mexico City. According to the CIA, Oswald was part of a Cuban-Soviet assassination plot that was revealed by the audio-visual materials garnered by its surveillance techniques. According to Hoover, Oswald had been impersonated in Mexico City, as shown by a more critical examination of the same CIA materials . Hoover left it to Johnson to draw his own conclusions as to who was responsible for that impersonation. The CIA's case scapegoated Cuba and the U.S.S.R. through Oswald for the president's assassination and steered the United States toward an invasion of Cuba and a nuclear attack on the U.S.S.R. However, LBJ did not want to begin and end his presidency with a global war. One must give the CIA (and the assassination sponsors that were even further in the shadows) their due for having devised and executed a brilliant setup. They had played out a scenario to Kennedy's death in Dallas that pressured other government authorities to choose among three major options: a war of vengeance against Cuba and the Soviet Union based on the CIA's false Mexico City documentation of a Communist assassination plot; a domestic political war based on the same documents seen truly, but a war the CIA would fight with every covert weapon at its command; or a complete coverup of any conspiracy evidence and a silent coup d'etat that would reverse Kennedy's efforts to end the Cold War. Lyndon Johnson, for his part, took little time to choose the only option he felt would leave him with a country to govern. He chose to cover up everything and surrender to Cold War prerogatives. However, he was not about to attack Cuba and the U.S.S.R. His quick personal acceptance of what had to be would only emerge more gradually in public. Rather than end it all quickly and heroically against Castro and Khrushchev, he would ride gently, through the 1964 election, into the full fury of Vietnam. Once the CIA realized its Mexico City scenario was being questioned and could implicate not the Communists but the CIA itself in the assassination, the Mexico City Station back-pedaled to cover up the false evidence. It began to say that its audiotapes of the "Oswald" phone calls to the Soviet Embassy had been routinely destroyed, and therefore no voice comparisons were possible to determine if the speaker really was Oswald. (This bogus CIA claim was being made at the same time that Hoover and the FBI were listening to their own copies of the tapes, then making voice comparisons, and reporting their provocative conclusions to President Lyndon Johnson.) The CIA also claimed in retrospect that its surveillance cameras had failed to photograph Oswald on any of his five trips to the Cuban and Soviet Embassies. HSCA investigators were blocked by the CIA from access to its surveillance photos (Lopez Report, pp. 90-91). Yet even CIA witnesses were skeptical of the agency's claim: "CIA officers who were in Mexico in 1963 and their Headquarters counterparts generally agreed that it would have been unlikely for the photosurveillance operations to have missed ten opportunities to have photographed Oswald" (ibid. , p. 91). Also arguing against the CIA's claim was its surveillance cameras' success in taking pictures at the Soviet Embassy in October 1963 of the mystery man who was not Oswald, yet who corresponded to the October 8 CIA cable's wrong description of Oswald as " apparent age 35, athletic build, circa 6 feet, receding hairline, balding top. " Freedom of Information lawsuits have forced the CIA to surrender twelve photographs of this man. These photos provide further evidence of an Oswald impostor. The CIA has never identified the man. Bernard Fensterwald, Jr. , Coincidence or Conspiracy? (New York: Zebra Books, 1977), p. 400.
  
• 1/15/1964 Ted Sorensen resigned from the administration.
  
• 1/15/1964 Background feature on Mark Lane. AP, Raleigh H. Allbrook - New York - Mark Lane, the attorney retained to try to clear the name of accused presidential assassin Lee Oswald, said tonight he will form a committee, including newsmen, to dig into the Oswald case. Lane said he could not reveal the names of the newspapermen yet, but hoped "all four would be free to start their investigation into the case within the next 10 days." Lane said two of the newsmen are employed in the Dallas area and the other two are working in other parts of the country as a public relations counsel and a management consultant. [Mark] Lane ... claimed that many witnesses are willing to testify that the sound of firing at the time of the assassination came not from the rear of the Presidential car, but from an overpass directly in front. AP, Raleigh R. Allsbrook
  
• 1/15/1964 Cartha DeLoach memo to Hoover; Jenkins and LBJ were expressing concern about Paul Corbin, a Kennedy man, working at the DNC headquarters. "The President was not yet quite ready to take on Bobby, however, Corbin would definitely be eased out in the near future when the time was ripe..."
  
• 1/15/1964 At a gathering of senior citizens, LBJ stated, "We are going to take all of the money that we think is unnecessarily being spent, and take it from the 'haves,' and give it to the 'have nots' that need it so much." This statement would often be quoted by conservatives as proof of his socialist leanings.
  
• 1/15/1964 Memo from Howard Willens to Rankin: "Subject: Conversation with Mr. Malley. I called Mr. Malley this morning to ascertain whether or not the copies of the two supplemental reports received yesterday had been distributed by the FBI to members of the Commission. The answer was negative and I have taken steps to distribute the reports. Subsequently Mr. Malley called me to discuss his conversation with you yesterday regarding the FBI report dated December 17, 1963 regarding the allegation by Mr. White regarding a meeting with Oswald in San Francisco on or about September 1, 1963. Mr. Malley asked me whether you intended to write a letter to the Bureau asking that all such reports be submitted to this Commission. He went on to say that the report was not really as important as it might appear upon an initial showing. He said that the only reason this report was distributed to the Department was that it mentioned the Nazi Party. He suggested that prior to the writing of any such letter to the Bureau he would like to sit down with you and discuss the matter in greater detail. For example, he stated that the Bureau's Dallas office alone has compiled a report of 300 pages listing threatening remarks, complaints, etc., which the Bureau considers insignificant. He suggests that if any general request is made there will be no convenient stopping point and all these matters will be referred to the Commission. He suggests that this course of action would only serve to divert the Bureau's investigative manpower and the staff of the Commission. He also suggested that many of the requests that we have been making of the Bureau could be handled informally by telephone from members of the staff to him rather than by correspondence. He suggests that the correspondence route only serves to complicate the matter. I suggest that you, Mr. Shaffer and I discuss this matter and then have a further discussion with Mr. Malley." (6WEISBERG 474) Weisberg notes that the request to cut back on correspondence would keep much of their discussions off the written record.
  
• 1/16/1964 LBJ met with John McCone, McNamara, Rusk and Kermit Gordon.
  
• 1/16/1964 4:15pm (EST) LBJ called Sen. Russell. (Act of Treason 503)
  
• 1/17/1964 Senate Rules Committee published testimony in its Bobby Baker investigation from Don B. Reynolds, an insurance salesman from Silver Spring, Maryland, who said he had hired Baker in the late '50s because of his political contacts. Baker suggested to Reynolds in 1957 that he sell LBJ a life insurance policy; he did this and received a handsome commission. This was followed by a suggestion from Walter Jenkins that Reynolds buy advertising time on Johnson's TV station in Austin, KTBC. Reynolds did so. 1959 Reynolds, at Baker's suggestion, sent an expensive stereo set to the Johnsons' home in Washington. 1961 LBJ bought another life insurance policy from Reynolds.
  
• 1/17/1964 Jack Ruby's attorneys charged that "a hostile press of much power and influence in Dallas" wanted him to die in the electric chair, and requested that the trial be moved.
  
• 1/17/1964 Panama breaks relations with the US.
  
• 1/17/1964 J. Lee Rankin requests access to photographic evidence of the assassination from J. Edgar Hoover, who complies.
  
• 1/18/1964 LBJ and Sen. Russell meet for a private lunch. (Act of Treason 504)
  
• 1/18/1964 Marina Oswald is questioned by a SS agent for two hours about Richard Case Nagell.
  
• 1/18/1964 Izvestia printed a recent Khrushchev speech in Kalinin delivered before Castro, he thundered against the "imperialists," urged them to clear out of Panama "before they were kicked out," and swore that the USSR would defend Cuba. "We are building communism in our country; but that does not mean that we are building it only within the framework of the Soviet borders…we are pointing the road to the rest of humanity…Some comrades abroad claim that Khrushchev is making a mess of things, and is afraid of war. Let me say once again that I should like to see the kind of bloody fool who is genuinely not afraid of war." He recalled that his son, an airman, was killed in WWII. The audience of textile workers cheered loudest at his talk of fools who were not afraid of war. (Russia at War pxii)
  
• 1/18/1964 De Gaulle assassination attempt.
  
• 1/19/1964 Anthony Lewis, NYT's Supreme Court correspondent, reported that when Earl Warren was first approached to serve on the commission, he flatly turned it down. He only changed his mind after a personal appeal by LBJ.
  
• 1/19/1964 LBJ calls Sen. Russell. (Act of Treason 504)
  
• 1/20/1964 DeLoach memo to Hoover: "Walter Jenkins...would appreciate very much the FBI interviewing [A.G.] Young [head of Mid-Atlantic Steel] to ascertain what knowledge he has of the Bobby Baker case...Bureau files reflect no connection of Mr. Young with the Bobby Baker case..."
  
• 1/20/1964 NY Times reported that Ruby's attorneys would base their defense "on a psychiatrist's report that he suffers from organic brain damage...a form of epilepsy."
  
• 1/20/1964 Second bail hearing for Ruby; Judge Brown orders that neurological tests be conducted on him. Melvin Belli withdraws motion for bail.
  
• 1/20/1964 Yuri Nosenko, the KGB agent who has contacted the CIA initially in June of 1963, defects to the US after landing in Geneva as part of a Soviet disarmament delegation. He claims to have been the KGB official who had personally handled the case of Lee Harvey Oswald during his stay in Russia. He claims that the KGB found Oswald not very bright and even mentally unstable and that the KGB had never debriefed Oswald about his military background nor ever considered recruiting him as an agent. Nosenko undergoes hostile interrogation at the hands of the CIA and is kept in solitary confinement for 1,277 days. He is given two lie detector tests and fails them both, but sticks, in the end, to his story. He is believed by the CIA's Richard Helms and J. Edgar Hoover. It is still believed, in some counterintelligence circles, that Nosenko's defection was contrived by the KGB for two purposes: to allay suspicions that the Soviets had anything to do with the JFK assassination and to cover for Soviet "moles", or agents deep within U.S. intelligence. Eventually released by the CIA and given a new identity, he is relocated to North Carolina. As part of Nosenko's interrogation, a list of forty-four questions concerning Lee Harvey Oswald are drawn up to be presented to Nosenko. William Sullivan informs J. Edgar Hoover that the CIA plans to ask Nosenko about Oswald. Hoover blows his top and protests directly to the CIA director. He states that the FBI is the agency charged with investigating the Kennedy assassination. Nosenko is never presented the questions on Lee Harvey Oswald.
  
• 1/20/1964 Warren Commission lawyer Melvin Eisenberg, quoting Chief Justice Earl Warren speaking about his meeting with LBJ prior to chairing the W.C., says: "The President stated that rumors of the most exaggerated kind were circulating in this country and overseas. Some rumors went as far as attributing the assassination to a faction within the government wishing the Presidency assumed by President Johnson. Others, if not quenched, could conceivably lead the country into a war which would cost forty million lives. No one could refuse to do something which might prevent such a possibility. The President (LBJ) convinced him (Earl Warren) that this was an occasion on which actual conditions had to override general principles."
  
• 1/20/1964 THE STATE OF TEXAS vs. JACK RUBENSTEIN -- Second bail hearing. Judge Brown orders that neurological tests be conducted on Jack Ruby. Melvin Belli withdraws motion for bail.
  
• 1/20/1964 The government's case against Jimmy Hoffa for jury tampering is tried beginning today before federal judge Frank W. Wilson in Chattanooga.
  
• 1/21/1964 Canadian PM Pearson gave a dinner for the Johnsons at the Canadian Embassy in Washington.
  
• 1/21/1964 In a secret executive session today, the Warren Commission has to deal with the problem of Marina Oswald giving evidence that LHO was a Soviet agent. Senator Richard Russell says: "That will blow the lid if she testifies to that." Isaac Don Levine is helping Marina Oswald write a story for Life Magazine (which never gets published.) Allen Dulles decides to see Levine. Dulles says simply: "I can get him in and have a friendly talk. I have known him." WC executive session. Dulles discussed how important it was to determine Oswald's motive: "Just on the question of motive I found a dozen or more statements of the various people as to why they thought he did it....Or what his character was, what his aim, and so forth..."; Warren agreed that Rankin would handle that. Dulles suggest that the Commission study "previous cases of assassination attempts...particularly in the United States...There is a [lone-nut] pattern that runs through that, you know. It is rather interesting, I have been studying that a good bit myself..." McCloy: Let me ask you about this raw material business that is here. What does it consist of? Does it consist of the raw material of the autopsy? They talk about the colored photographs of the President's body - do we have those? Rankin: Yes, it is part of it, a small part of it. McCloy: Are they here? Rankin: Yes. But we don't have the minutes of the autopsy, and we asked for that... This session began with discussion of staff hiring and the presentation by Rankin of an outline for six areas of investigation, with Bertrand Russell said was missing an important one: "who killed President Kennedy?" A discussion of what turned out to be an overly optimistic timeframe also noted the huge mass of reports pouring in, with Dulles noting that the staff would need to do the bulk of the work because he doubted that the Commissioners "could ever read all that stuff."
  
• 1/21/1964 Tippit murder witness Warren Reynolds is first interviewed by authorities (the FBI).
  
• 1/22/1964 Secret WC meeting held at 5:30pm-7pm. This tense discussion centered around whether Oswald had been an FBI operative (a rumor brought to their attention by Texas authorities.) The transcript was not prepared until 1975 when notes of the session were discovered in the National Archives; it had been thought that all copies had been destroyed. The Pentagon transcriber was not familiar with the WC and made several errors (Rankin is referred to as Rawkin). Several words are still redacted. This session was called specifically to address the allegation that Oswald was a paid "FBI Undercover Agent," number 179, paid $200 per month from September 1962 until the assassination. Waggoner Carr, the Texas Attorney General, had called Rankin that morning with allegations which had come from a member of the press (Lonnie Hudkins, though not named in the transcript). Rankin noted that "I am confident that the FBI would never admit it, and I presume their records will never show it...," and noted that Oswald's use of postal boxes "would be an ideal way to get money to anyone that you wanted as an undercover agent." Rankin also noted that if the allegation were true "then you would have people think that there was a conspiracy to accomplish this assassination that nothing the Commission did or anybody could dissipate." Rankin expressed puzzlement that the normally conservative FBI was so insistent the Oswald was the sole assassin, saying "They would like to have us fold up and quit." After more such discussion, Dulles said the transcript of the meeting itself "ought to be destroyed." This was indeed done, but an original court reporter's tape was later recovered and the transcript re-made from it after a long legal battle brought by Harold Weisberg.
  
• 1/22/1964 The CIA leaks to Commission members that Lee Harvey Oswald had contact with a KGB officer, Valery Kostikov, while in the Soviet embassy. The Agency says Kostikov's responsibilities include "assassination and sabotage." (Reports of this meeting are not made public until 1975.)
  
• 1/22/1964 Richard Helms writes RFK a warm note, attaching a tribute to JFK that has been written by an editor of the London Sunday Telegraph. (Brothers)
  
• 1/22/1964 Maxwell Taylor wrote Robert McNamara: the JCS warned that if South Vietnam fell, the rest of the region would fall too; there would also be a collapse of US prestige all over the world. The JCS warned that suppressing the VC could take many years. They recommended "whatever level of activity" necessary for the US to prevail, and decried "self-imposed restrictions." They felt confident that military escalation would not bring in China or Russia. In summary, the JCS urged that the US take over the war effort, mine North Vietnamese harbors, bomb the North, "commit additional US forces, as necessary, in support of the combat action within South Vietnam....[and] in direct actions against North Vietnam."
  
• 1/23/1964 Twenty-fourth amendment ratified, prohibiting poll taxes in federal elections.
  
• 1/23/1964 LBJ replied to Don B. Reynolds' charges in a press conference; he described the stereo set as a gift from "the Baker family." He said nothing about Reynolds' purchase of advertising time on his station. LBJ was deeply concerned that RFK would try to use the Baker scandal against him in some way. (Exercise of Power 414)
  
• 1/23/1964 The CIA designates a subordinate to Chief of Counterintelligence James Angleton as the "point of record" for all matters relating to the JFK assassination and the WC. (Fonzi chronology)
  
• 1/23/1964 Report of Bob Carroll, Criminal Intelligence Section, 23 Jan 1964. Hubert Morrow of Albright Parking System on Commerce Street remembered Oswald looking for a job six or seven days prior to the assassination, inquiring about the height of the parking lot and whether it afforded a "good view of Dallas."
  
• 1/23/1964 Carr and Wade flew to Washington and met with Warren and Rankin.
  
• 1/23/1964 FBI Washington learned from a Secret Service memo dated today that Hosty had let slip to Forrest Sorrels and a few other SS agents in Fritz's office that Oswald had "contacted two known subversive agents about fifteen days before the shooting of President Kennedy." (McKnight)
  
• 1/23/1964 Letter from Belin to Rankin pertaining to the "interrogation of Oswald by Dallas Police Department." In 1976 the National Archives announced that this letter was missing from its records.
  
• 1/23/1964 Warren Reynolds is shot. On November 22, 1963, he had been situated at a car lot a block west of the place where Dallas police officer J.D. Tippit was shot. Reynolds observed Tippit's assailant run by. (Two days earlier [Jan. 21, 1964] Reynolds had had an initial interview with the FBI.) At 9:15 PM, Reynolds walks down to the basement of the auto dealership at which he is employed. He flips on the light switch, but the basement remains dark; the bulb has been removed. Thinking the bulb is burned out, he proceeds downstairs to the basement fuse box and, as he reaches for the fuse box, is shot in the head with a .22 caliber weapon. He survives but is finally frightened into identifying Oswald as Tippit's killer. Since the Dallas police determine that Reynolds was not robbed of anything, the motive of his assailant becomes most relevant. Darrell Wayne Garner is arrested by the Dallas police after stating publicly while drunk that "Warren Reynolds had received what he deserved." Garner, the "prime suspect" according to the FBI, later admits that he was on the scene the evening Reynolds was shot. He also admits that he called his sister-in-law and "advised her he had shot Warren Reynolds." Garner is held on a charge of assault to murder, but an alibi witness, Nancy Jane Mooney, also known as Betty MacDonald comes forward on February 5, 1964. Miss Mooney is a former striptease artist who one once employed at Jack Ruby's Carousel Club.
  
• 1/23/1964 Letter from Rankin to Mark Lane: "On behalf of the Commission I wish to acknowledge receipt of your recent telegram informing the Commission that you have been retained by Mrs. Marguerite C. Oswald to represent her deceased son....The Commission does not believe that it would be useful or desirable to permit an attorney representing Lee Harvey Oswald to have access to the investigative materials within the possession of the Commission or to participate in any hearings to be conducted by the Commission. I can assure you that every effort will be made to ascertain the facts regarding Lee Harvey Oswald's implication in the assassination of President Kennedy as accurately and fairly as possible." (Citizen's Dissent 257)
  
• 1/23/1964 Letter from Rankin to Howard Chapnick: "The Commission is advised that your photographer, Mr. Shel Hershorn, who was in Dallas on November 22 1963, took some pictures in the environs of the Parkland Hospital the day the President was assassinated. It would be helpful to the work of this Commission if you would supply it with copies of the photographs taken at your earliest convenience." (Photographic Whitewash 286)
  
• 1/24/1964 Secret Service submitted 30 investigative reports to the WC (CD 320); one contained an interview with Alonzo Hudkins, who related that his source for the Oswald information was Dallas deputy sheriff Allan Sweatt: "Oswald was being paid two hundred dollars per month by the FBI in connection with their subversive investigation [and] that Oswald had informant number S-172." This SS interview was left out of the National Archives for a time. (Inquest)
  
• 1/24/1964 Darrell Wayne "Dago" Garner arrested in Dallas as a suspect in the Warren Reynolds shooting. He was questioned and released.
  
• 1/24/1964 The Nation published Harold Feldman's "Oswald and the FBI." He theorized that Oswald was an FBI informant.
  
• 1/24/1964 Attorney general for the state of Texas, Waggoner Carr and other Texas officials who claim they have learned that Oswald had been FBI undercover agent #179 are summoned to Washington to give their testimony in a top-secret session. On the basis of denials by J. Edgar Hoover and other FBI officials, the Warren Commission will conclude that Oswald had not been in the FBI's employ.
  
• 1/25/1964 Echo 2, US communications satellite is launched to relay radio signals worldwide.
  
• 1/25/1964 LBJ called Sen. Russell. (Act of Treason 512)
  
• 1/25/1964 FBI Memo: "…another bitter attack on the Bureau." (Regarding Harold Feldman's article in The Nation, "Oswald and the FBI")
  
• 1/25/1964 Ruby wrote in his personal notes: "Tom Howard evidently feels that he has a chance to gain his recognition back by taking a strong lead in my case which I feel he is not worthy of. I've lost all my confidence in him - caught him in a few lies." (Ruby-Oswald Affair 84) Newsweek, in its March 27, 1967 edition, revealed a note that Ruby had passed to his attorney Joe Tonahill during his murder trial in 1964. As remembered by Tonahill, the note read: "Joe, you should know this. Tom Howard told me to say that I shot Oswald so that Caroline and Mrs. Kennedy wouldn't have to come to Dallas to testify, OK?" From Melvin Belli's book Dallas Justice, p. 39: With a weary gesture, Ruby slapped his hands down on the metal table between us and shook his head impatiently. "What are we doing, Mel, kidding ourselves?" he asked. I was tired too. "What do you mean, Jack?" I snapped. "We know what happened," he said. "We know I did it for Jackie and the kids. I just went and shot him. They've got us anyway. Maybe I ought to forget this silly story that I'm telling, and get on the stand and tell the truth." He was absolutely sincere. At that point, with his mental examination behind him and the outline of our defense clearly established, he was suddenly ready to admit that he had shot Lee Harvey Oswald deliberately and that our contention that the shooting had occurred during a blackout in which he was incompetent to know what he was doing was a fraud.
  
• 1/26/1964 LBJ called Sen. Russell. (Act of Treason 512)
  
• 1/26/1964 NY Times reported that the bullet that struck JFK in the back-shoulder area had "lodged in his shoulder." They also reported the FBI's conclusions that Oswald "had no known motive....The only explanation now offered is that Oswald was insane."
  
• 1/26/1964 Marina Oswald is interviewed by Dallas KLRD-TV television station. Journalist Eddie Barker asks her if her husband, Lee Oswald, shot President John Kennedy. Marina, with a good command of English, answers : "I don't want to believe it, but I must look at the facts, and the facts tell me that Lee shot Kennedy".
  
• 1/27/1964 McNamara told the House Armed Services Committee, "The survival of an independent government in South Vietnam is so important to the security of all Southeast Asia and to the free world that I can conceive of no alternative other than to take all necessary measures within our capability to prevent a Communist victory."
  
• 1/27/1964 NYT quoted South Vietnamese PM Nguyen Ngoc Tho as complaining that pressures to accept a negotiated settlement are "sabotaging us, killing us, drowning us in difficulties."
  
• 1/27/1964 William Sullivan memo to Belmont about "authority given to the Milwaukee Office for a microphone surveillance (misur) to cover the activities" of MLK. The memo noted that with police occuping the room next to King's, the opportunity for womanizing would be "greatly minimized." Hoover wrote on the memo, "I don't share the conjecture. King is a 'tom cat' with obsessive degenerate sexual urges."
  
• 1/27/1964 Also, around the end of this month, RFK returns from a trip to the Far East. Since he has been sent there by LBJ, he enters the Oval Office to report. After a brief discussion on the trip, LBJ abruptly tells him, "I want you to get rid of that Paul Corbin (one of Kennedy's political staff whose loyalties Johnson distrusts). "I don't think I should," RFK replies, "he was appointed by President Kennedy, who thought he was good." "Do it," LBJ snaps. "President Kennedy isn't president anymore. I am." RFK bristles: "I know you're president, and don't you ever talk to me like that again."
  
• 1/27/1964 Letter from Hoover to Rankin. He reiterated that Oswald was never an informant or agent for the FBI. (Reproduced in Whitewash IV 149)
  
• 1/27/1964 Criminal Intelligence Section report, 27 Jan 1964. This followup interview of Morrow noted that Albright employee Viola Sapp was also aware of the Oswald visit.
  
• 1/27/1964 The Zapruder film was first viewed by WC staffers, FBI and SS agents. (H 5 141) Redlich, Eisenberg, Specter, Lyndal Shaneyfelt, SS inspector Thomas Kelley and Leo Gauthier made a frame-by-frame analysis. It had been assumed that the shots were evenly spaced, but the film showed that JFK and Connally were wounded within a short period of time.
  
• 1/27/1964 El Paso Times reported that Richard Case Nagell had been questioned by the FBI and SS in connection with Oswald; also, asst. US District Attorney Fred Morton made a motion to put Nagell in a federal institution in Springfield, Missouri for psychiatric examination.
  
• 1/27/1964 Warren Commission Top Secret Executive Session; all of the Commissioners but Ford were present. This was a follow-up to the 1/22 meeting, and focused on what steps could be taken to deal with the allegations that Oswald worked for US intelligence. The meeting reflected the members' concerns over how to approach Hoover about the matter, and also demonstrated that the members had serious problems with many elements of the case against Oswald. Hoover had sent a letter to the WC saying, "Lee Harvey Oswald was never used by this Bureau in an informant capacity. He was never paid any money for furnishing information and he most certainly never was an informant of the Federal Bureau of Investigation. In the event you have any further questions...we would appreciate being contacted directly." (H 11 41) Hoover had obviously heard about the WC's previous meeting. Ford would later write about the concern of the WC members that this rumor could damage the image of the government and the intelligence communities. (Portrait of the Assassin) Rankin wanted to let the FBI investigate itself, but Sens. Cooper and Russell thought the WC should investigate the matter. (Ibid.) Harold Weisberg obtained the transcript of the session through the FOIA in 1974. Discussion of the allegation that Oswald was an FBI informant continued. According to Rankin, the Justice Department did not want to confront FBI Director Hoover with the allegation, so he suggested that perhaps "I should go over and see Edgar Hoover myself, and if that produced unsatisfactory results, that ""the Commission would have to feel free to make such other investigations and take testimony if it found it necessary." He added: "We do have a dirty rumor that is very bad for the Commission...and it must be wiped out so insofar as it is possible to do so by this Commission." Warren disliked the idea of going to the FBI "until we have at least looked into it." Dulles noted that the Bureau had already categorically denied the allegation in the press. Boggs: "Of course, we get ourselves into a real box. You have got to do everything on earth to establish the facts one way or the other." Commissioners discussed putting FBI agents under oath and questioning them, since according to Dulles "The record might not be on paper." Boggs: "The man who recruited him would know, wouldn't he?" Dulles: "Yes, but he wouldn't tell." After much discussion, in which the fear of J. Edgar Hoover is readily apparent, the consensus was that the allegation had to be investigated independently by the Commission. It never did. A fascinating section of the Jan 27 session includes a discussion of the medical evidence. Rankin opened by discussing the confusion around the bullet wounds, and noting that "we have an explanation there in the autopsy that probably a fragment came out the front of the neck," something definitely not present in the autopsy report in evidence. Rankin said "we have the picture where the bullet entered in the back, that the bullet entered below the shoulder blade to the right of the backbone," showing two things: the Commission did have possession of the autopsy photos, and the Commission knew that CE 386, entered into evidence later on March 16, was a false representation of the location of this wound. After a discussion of the confusion over where the pristine bullet was found at Parkland Hospital, Russell commented: "This isn't going to be something that would run you stark mad," one of the more prescient comments made in all these sessions.
  
• 1/27/1964 W. Slawson wrote a memo suggesting that: "In figuring the timing of the rifle shots, we should take into account the distance travelled by the Presidential car between the first and third shots. This tends to shorten the time slightly during which Oswald would have had to pull the trigger three times on his rifle."
  
• 1/28 or 29/1964 Stanley Kubrick's satirical anti-nuclear, anti-Cold War film, Dr. Strangelove: Or How I Stopped Worrying and Learned to Love the Bomb, premiered. The NYT fears that it shows "contempt for our whole military establishment" and the Washington Post calls it "anti-American." It concerns a mad general who is convinced that the Communists are polluting his 'precious bodily fluids' and decides to launch a nuclear strike. The President tries to recall the bombers, while battling with his hawkish advisers. Directed by Stanley Kubrick it starred Peter Sellers (who plays the President, an ex-Nazi scientist, and a British officer), George C. Scott, and Sterling Hayden. The film's London release date (12-12-63) was pushed backed until 1964 due to the assassination. The screening for the critics was to be shown on 11/22/63, but was cancelled when word of the President's death was announced. Also, the line "A fella could have a pretty good weekend in Vegas" was originally "A fella could have a pretty good weekend in Dallas," but was changed after the assassination. Columbia executives felt that the public would find Peter Seller's comical portrayal of the U.S. President in poor taste, but Kubrick was totally against delaying the movie's release. Reportedly, when Ronald Reagan became president he asked to see the War Room in the White House. When his Chief of Staff said that the War Room did not exist, Reagan assured him that he'd seen it in that movie, Dr. Strangelove.
  
• 1/28/1964 Memo from Belin to Rankin stating that Agent Shaneyfelt believed that a clearer print of the Zapruder film (such as the original) would be more precise in determining speed and time-frame of the shooting, and could be studied without damaging the film. (Photographic Whitewash) Ly

[Tracy Riddle]

• 2/1964 Edward Benavides, brother of Domingo Benavides (who witnessed Dallas police officer J.D. Tippit's killing), is murdered, the victim of a gunshot to the back of the head. Some assassination researchers believe Edward so closely resembles his brother that his unknown assailant killed him in a case of mistaken identity. Benavides' father-in-law J.W. Jackson is not impressed by the investigation. He begins his own inquiry. Two weeks later, J.W. Jackson is shot at in his home. As the gunman escapes, a police car comes around the block. It makes no attempt to follow the speeding car with the gunman. The police advise that Jackson should "lay off this business." "Don't go around asking questions; that's our job." Jackson and Benavides are both convinced that Eddy's murder is a case of mistaken identity and that Domingo Benavides, the Tippit witness, was the intended victim.
  
• 2/1964 This month, RFK personally authorizes the FBI to place bugs and wiretaps on Marina Oswald's residence. No conspiratorial contact is ever overheard.
  
• 2/1964 John Stormer's None Dare Call it Treason is published. Also, the first hardcover book on the JFK assassination, Red Roses from Texas, by Nerin Gun, is published by Frederick Miller.
  
• 2/1964 Vincent Gaddis' article "The Deadly Bermuda Triangle" in Argosy coined the phrase and started the explosion of interest in the subject.
  
• 2/1964 RFK's phone logs show that in February 1964, he discusses taking possession of JFK's death limousine, which has been sent to a Detroit repair shop where, Evelyn Lincoln informs him, the limo is to be "done over" for President Johnson. Perhaps the repair process - which will eliminate forensic evidence - "could be stopped," Lincoln tells RFK, if he declares that he wants the limousine to be "given to the [Kennedy] library." (Brothers)
  
• 2/1964 Lisa Howard returned from another news assignment in Cuba carrying an unusual memorandum, a "verbal message" addressed to Lyndon Johnson from Fidel Castro. In his message Castro went to extraordinary lengths to encourage Johnson to emulate Kennedy's courage in attempting a dialogue with their number one enemy, himself. That enemy had been won over to the dialogue, first, by the counsel of Kennedy's other enemy Khrushchev, then by the courage of Kennedy himself. Now Castro was using the example of Kennedy to encourage Johnson simply to talk with the enemy. He was also speaking much less like an enemy than a potentially helpful friend. It was as if Kennedy, in crossing a divide, had taken Castro with him. Castro said to Howard: " Tell the President that I understand quite well how much political courage it took for President Kennedy to instruct you [Lisa Howard] and Ambassador Attwood to phone my aide in Havana for the purpose of commencing a dialogue toward a settlement of our differences . . . I hope that we can soon continue where Ambassador Attwood's phone conversation to Havana left off . . . though I'm aware that pre-electoral political considerations may delay this approach until after November. " Tell the President ( and I cannot stress this too strongly) that I seriously hope that Cuba and the United States can eventually sit down in an atmosphere of good will and of mutual respect and negotiate our differences. I believe that there are no areas of contention between us that cannot be discussed and settled in a climate of mutual understanding. But first, of course, it is necessary to discuss our differences. I now believe that this hostility between Cuba and the United States is both unnatural and unnecessary and it can be eliminated . . ."Tell the President I realize fully the need for absolute secrecy, if he should decide to continue the Kennedy approach. I revealed nothing at that time . . . I have revealed nothing since . . . I would reveal nothing now. " " If the President feels it necessary during the campaign to make bellicose statements about Cuba or even to take some hostile action-if he will inform me, unofficially, that a specific action is required because of domestic political considerations, I shall understand and not take any serious retaliatory action. " Although Johnson as usual made no reply to this message, Castro kept trying to communicate with him through Lisa Howard and UN ambassador Adlai Stevenson. (William Attwood was no longer in the loop, having been appointed U.S. ambassador to Kenya in January 1964.) (Kornbluth, JFK and Castro)
  
• 2/1964 Marxmanship in Dallas Revilo P. Oliver, American Opinion, Volume VII, No. 2, February 1964, pp. 13-28
  
• 2/1/1964 LBJ picks Sargent Shriver to head his anti-poverty crusade, though his exact role was vaguely defined. He was also to remain as head of the Peace Corps.
  
• 2/1/1964 Maurice Bishop asks Antonio Veciana to contact his cousin, a Cuban intelligence officer in Mexico City, and offer him money to tell the press that he had met with Oswald. Veciana does not contact his cousin before he is recalled to Cuba. (Last Investigation 424)
  
• 2/1/1964 LBJ approved Operation Plan 34A, drawn up by the CIA, to engage in covert warfare against North Vietnam. LBJ rejected De Gaulle's plan for a neutral Vietnam.
  
• 2/1/1964 Billboard reports that Indiana Governor Matthew Welsh declare the song "Louie Louie" to be "pornographic" and asks the state Broadcasters Association to ban the record. Welsh claims his "ears tingled" when he first heard the song, though most people can't understand the lyrics. Welsh wrote to the president of the Indiana Broadcasters Association, requesting that the song be banned from all radio stations in the state. The Marion County, Indiana, prosecutor's chief trial deputy, Leroy K. New, commented about the song: "The record is an abomination of out-of-tune guitars, and overbearing jungle rhythm and clanging cymbals," but he couldn't find anything obscene in the words.
  
• 2/3/1964 Marina Oswald is the first witness to testify before the Warren Commission. Commissioners present were Warren, Cooper, Boggs, Ford and Dulles. She has been coached for one week prior to her testimony by the Secret Service on what to say. She testifies, among other things, that she saw a box of ammunition "in New Orleans and on Neely Street." But two months earlier she told law enforcement officers that her husband did not have any ammunition in his possession. Mr. Rankin: Did you learn at any time that he had been practicing with the rifle? Mrs. Oswald: I think he went once or twice. I didn't actually see him take the rifle, but I knew he was practicing. Mr. Rankin: Could you give us a little help on how you knew? Mrs. Oswald: He told me. And he would mention that in passing . . . he would say, "Well, today I will take the rifle along for practice." (1H14-15)
  
• 2/3/1964 Darrell Wayne Garner was arrested again.
  
• 2/3/1964 Jury selection begins in Ruby trial; it will last until 3/3. 168 prospective jurors are questioned. A change of venue is not granted. THE STATE OF TEXAS vs. JACK RUBENSTEIN -- (Feb. 3 - Mar. 3) Jury selection. 168 prospective jurors, 58 by the defense, 1 for illness, 18 peremptory challenges made by the defense, 11 peremptory challenges made by the prosecution.
  
• 2/3/1964 464,000 students stayed home from school in NYC to protest de facto segregation.
  
• 2/4/1964 A reporter asked Earl Warren if the WC's work would be fully disclosed to the public; Warren replied, "Yes, there will come a time. But it might not be in your lifetime. I am not referring to anything especially, but there may be some things that would involve security. This would be preserved but not made public." (New York Times 2/5) Warren would later greatly regret making this statement. (Chief Justice 426)
  
• 2/4/1964 Darrell Wayne Garner explained he was drunk when he bragged to his sister-in-law that he shot at Warren Reynolds.
  
• 2/4/1964 Lobbyist Robert Winter-Berger and House Speaker John McCormack are in McCormack's Washington office discussing public relations when LBJ barges in and begins ranting hysterically about Bobby Baker. LBJ says: "John, that son of a bitch [Bobby Baker] is going to ruin me. If that cocksucker talks, I'm gonna land in jail ... I practically raised that motherfucker, and no he's gonna make me the first President of the United States to spend the last days of his life behind bars."
  
• 2/4/1964 Marina Oswald second day of testimony before the Warren Commission (present are Warren, Cooper, Boggs, Ford, McCloy and Dulles); "In the police station there was a routine regular questioning, as always happens. And then after I was with the agents of the Secret Service and the FBI, they asked me many questions which had no bearing or relationship, and if I didn't want to answer they told me that if I wanted to live in this country, I would have to help in this matter, even though they were often irrelevant. That is the FBI ..."
  
• 2/4/1964 Hassan II, king of Morocco, was the target of an unsuccessful assassination attempt in Morocco.
  
• 2/4-6/1964 Viet Cong launches offensive in Tay Ninh Province and Mekong Delta.
  
• 2/4/1964 One of the first motion pictures about the Vietnam war, A Yank in Viet-Nam, was released in the US. It starred and was directed by Marshall Thompson and released by Allied Artists. Filmed entirely in South Vietnam, it is fully supportive of the US role in the war.
  
• 2/5/1964 Marina Oswald's third day of testimony before the WC (Warren, Russell, Cooper, Boggs, Ford, Dulles).
  
• 2/5/1964 Nancy Jane Mooney, formerly a striptease artist who has been employed by Jack Ruby, gives an affidavit to authorities which substantiates Darrell Wayne Garner's alibi for the night of January 23, 1964, when the shooting of witness Warren Reynolds occurred. The Dallas police drop all charges against their chief suspect, Garner, on Miss Mooney's assurance.
  
• 2/5/1964 Jackie Kennedy suggested to William Manchester that he write an account of the assasination. She and the Kennedy family wanted a definitive telling of the events to preempt other books, including Jim Bishop's forthcoming The Day Kennedy Was Shot. Kennedy was familiar with Manchester's work through Portrait of a President: John F. Kennedy in Profile, his account of the president's first year and a half in the White House. Manchester had met and grown to admire her husband when both were recovering from war wounds in Boston. The book agreement stipulated that Kennedy and the president's brother, Robert F. Kennedy, then Attorney General, would approve the manuscript. As part of the agreement, Mr. Manchester would receive an advance of $36,000 but only against the income from the first printing. All other earnings would go the John F. Kennedy Library. Kennedy promised Manchester exclusive interviews with members of the family, and sat for 10 hours of interviews with him. Manchester interviewed 1,000 people for the book, including Robert F. Kennedy; only Marina Oswald refused. Working 100 hours a week for two years to meet an accelerated 1967 publishing deadline, the stress of focusing on the assassination sent Manchester to a hospital due to nervous exhaustion for more than two months, where he completed a manuscript of 1,201 pages and 380,000 words.
  
• 2/6/1964 Marina Oswald's fourth day of testimony before the WC (Warren, Cooper, Boggs, Ford, Dulles).
  
• 2/6/1964 On about this date a WC staff meeting was held, and some of the staffers wanted to have further questioning of Marina; Rankin said there would be no further questioning. (Inquest)
  
• 2/6/1964 The Washington Evening Star found the initial statement and another by Warren a few days ago intended to clarify the first "astounding" and "unfortunate." It described Warren's explanatory statement as characterizing the initial statement as "a mixture of facetiousness and fact." Editorially, the Star demanded, "What conceivable kind of security' would require this Commission to play the role of censor?"
  
• 2/6/1964 Letter from Hoover to Rankin. Again Hoover denied that Oswald was an informant, and assured Rankin that he was aware of all persons hired by the Bureau. (Reproduced in Whitewash IV p152)
  
• 2/6-7/1964 NSC meetings discussed the recent VC attack on Americans; everyone except Sen. Mansfield supported a retaliatory air strike on the North. Mansfield warned, "The local populace in South Vietnam is not behind us, [or] else the Viet Cong could not have carried out their surprise attack."
  
• 2/6/1964 Cuba blocks water supply to Guantanamo Naval Base in rebuke for US seizure of four Cuban fishing boats.
  
• 2/6/1964 Paul Rothermel memo to H.L. Hunt: "Lyndon B. Johnson is mortally afraid of being assassinated and does not trust the Secret Service to protect him. He has ordered the FBI to be present everywhere he goes with no less than two men and more where there is any possibility that he will be exposed. Johnson has confidentially placed a direct telephone line from his office to J. Edgar Hoover's desk." (Texas Rich p237)
  
• 2/7/1964 A Gallup Poll shows that 48% of Americans said they attend church regularly, 20% not at all.
  
• 2/7/1964 At 1:35pm ET, 10,000 screaming fans welcomed the Beatles upon their arrival at New York's John F. Kennedy International Airport as the "Fab Four" began their first U.S. tour and for their first appearance on "The Ed Sullivan Show." The police are overwhelmed by the fans and are paralyized for hours. Fans surround the Plaza Hotel, where the Beatles are staying. The 'Fab Four' controlled the top spot on the pop music charts for the next 15 weeks and owned the top of the album charts for 10 weeks.
  
• 2/7/1964 Letter from Howard Chapnick of Black Star Publishing to Rankin: "In reply to your letter of January 23 we are pleased to send you enclosed a set of contacts of the pictures taken by Shel Hershorn of the events related to the Kennedy assassination. Mr. Hershorn was not too closely related to the early events, but as you will see did pick up on the story late on the day of the assassination." 8 contacts (prints the size of the negative) were enclosed. (Photographic Whitewash 287)
  
• 2/7/1964 LBJ contacts Sen. Russell four separate times today.
  
• 2/7/1964 LBJ removes US dependents from South Vietnam.
  
• 2/7/1964 FBI memo about a letter from an angry parent to Attorney General Kennedy about the song "Louie Louie": "My daughter brought home a record of Louie Louie' and I, after reading that the record had been banned from being played on the air because it was obscene, proceeded to try to decipher the jumble of words. The lyrics are so filthy that I can-not enclose them in this letter…I would like to see these people, the artists,' the record company and the promoters prosecuted to the full extent of the law…This land of ours is headed for an extreme state of moral degradation what with this record, the biggest hit movies and the sex and violence exploited on TV. How can we stamp out this menace???"
  
• 2/8/1964 An FBI memo quotes judge Joe Brown telling agent Vincent Drain that Asst Dallas D.A. Bill Alexander was "a mental case" and that Brown "never could understand District Attorney Wade keeping him as a prosecutor..."
  
• 2/8/1964 A speech by U.S. Representative Martha Griffiths in Congress on sex discrimination resulted in civil rights protection for women being added to the 1964 Civil Rights Act.
  
• 2/8/1964 Marina Oswald leaves Washington, DC and returns to her manager's home in Dallas (Jim Martin).
  
• 2/8/1964 The case against the man accused of assassinating President Kennedy is "extremely weak," said Mark Lane, a Harlem civil tights attorney and former New York state assemblyman. "And at the time he [Oswald] was killed, there was no case at all."... His own investigation, he said, has led him to be "certain that he [Oswald] could not have been involved alone ... and I have very serious doubts he was involved in terms of actually pulling the trigger." San Francisco Chronicle
  
• 2/8/1964 Memorandum From Senator Mike Mansfield to President Johnson 11. Source: Johnson Library, National Security File, Name File, VietnamMansfield Memo and Reply. No classification marking. Mansfield was Majority Leader of the Senate. "On the basis of the meetings of the National Security Council on Saturday night and Sunday morning,22. February 6 and 7; see Documents 77 and 80. both of which I attended at your request, I endeavored to make my position clear on the situation as it has developed and may develop in Vietnam. I raised questions concerning the advisability of the action which you and your advisors proposed to undertake, not so much on the basis of the attack made on our installation but in view of the future possibilities which might be incurred by the retaliatory action. Contrary to Ambassador Thompson's analysis of the situation, it appears to me that what has happened in North Vietnam will, in a sense, force Kosygin's hand for a number of reasons: (1) Kosygin was there when it happened and he had just made a speech in which he said that the Soviet Union would supply assistance to North Vietnam in its struggle against the United States. (2) A closer degree of cooperation by the Soviet Union and the Chinese will be brought about because in view of what developed, Kosygin will have little choice to do otherwise. It may well express itself in this situation by a resumption of major Russian military aid to China and transference through China of Soviet aid to North Vietnam. This would be most unfortunate because one of the hopes of Western policy was to encourage the split between the two great communist powers, a hope which will now, I believe, lessen to a considerable degree. I raised questions about possible Chinese intervention and pointed out that the Communist Chinese had recently completed roads into Laos which could be used for troop and supply movements; that they had recently completed an air-field infrastructure in North Vietnam and that they had airfields and naval bases on the Island of Hainan, off the coast of the northern part of North Vietnam and South China. Whether or not the Chinese will intervene is a factor which only the future holds the answer to, but an increase in at least indirect Chinese intervention is to be anticipated. I pointed out also that South Vietnam has a very unstable government and that we could not depend upon it or the great majority of the population therein. That is proved by news stories from reliable American officials in today's press which state that there was plenty of opportunity for advance warnings on the Pleiku attack but that the attack when it came was, in effect, a complete surprise. It is especially hard to understand why we were caught off-guard ourselves, in view of the attack of November 1st on our force at Bien Hoa, 12 miles outside of Saigon. Our own security arrangements were certainly lax there and despite the explanation given at our meeting on Saturday night, it appears to me they were lax at Pleiku. It is my understanding that the American base at Pleiku is situated on a high plain, dotted with brush here and there but certainly not the kind of jungle area which surrounded Bien Hoa. While McNamara and Wheeler said that it would be extremely difficult to provide security two miles out, this is, nevertheless, a matter which should be looked into especially in view of the fact that aside from the more distant mortar shelling of the base, rifle fire and hand grenades were used right inside the American compound and explosives were placed against the barracks. This makes it clear that the Viet Cong were in the compound as has been stated in the press and proves that the security which was supposed to be furnished by both the United States forces and the Vietnamese military was lax. It is my understanding that more than half of the 23,000 U.S. personnel in South Vietnam are stationed in Saigon. Certainly some of them could be used to guard U.S. compounds. The explanations given this morning by General Goodpaster and others, in my opinion, were not convincing. At the recent meeting, I also pointed out that General Giap had an army of 350,000 men, well-trained, and that he was and is one of the best military tacticians in Asia. It is disturbing to me, though understandable, that the retaliatory move was essentially unilateral, initiated by us and then we had to wait until the South Vietnamese government was informed in order that the protocol of the situation might be maintained at least on the surface. In other words we had decided on what our moves would be without any request from the government of South Vietnam but only in anticipation of such a request. I have grave doubts about the ability of General Khanh's government. I have no doubt but that the great majority of the population of South Vietnam are tired of the war and will give us no significant assistance. I have a full awareness of your feelings, which I share, because of the attack on Pleiku. I appreciate, too, your repeated statements that it is not your desire to spread the war. However, the prospect for enlargement now looms larger and I think it is only fair that I give you my honest opinions, as I did on Saturday and Sunday, because to do otherwise would be a disservice to you and to the Nation. In this connection you will recall that I also stated at the meetings that before we make any moves that we understand their full implications, in terms of the costs involved, and the fact, as I see it, that if we went too far in North Vietnam we would be in a far worse position than we were in Korea. For, in a larger sense, not only can we not depend on the South Vietnamese population, but we can also place very little reliability on the Laotians and the Thais and none whatever on Cambodia. Moreover, beyond Indochina, we could well be squeezed in a nutcracker by developing events throughout Southeast Asia over which the Chinese cast an ominous shadow. Events in Malaysia could under certain circumstances bring into force the Anzus Treaty which would call for our giving assistance to Australia and New Zealand. Finally, as you know we have approximately 42 mutual security agreements of one kind or another with countries or groups of countries scattered over the face of the globe. Short of nuclear war, we have not got the resources or the power to honor those agreements if the demand-payments on them multiply. We are stretched too thin as it is and even with total mobilization there would be little hope of fulfilling simultaneously any large proportion of these commitments. What the answer to the situation is at the moment I do not know nor does anyone else. But I am persuaded that the trend toward enlargement of the conflict and a continuous deepening of our military commitment on the Asian mainland, despite your desire to the contrary, is not going to provide one. I did suggest on Sunday, therefore, that the matter be referred to the United Nations and I am glad that Ambassador Stevenson has brought it up at the Security Council.33. For text of Ambassador Stevenson's letter of February 7 to the President of the U.N. Security Council, see Department of State Bulletin, February 22, 1965, pp. 240241. I did suggest further that the Geneva powers be convened again for the purpose of seeing what if anything honorably could be done. I did suggest that any other forum might be considered in a search for acceptable ways to contract and to end the fighting in South Vietnam. I further suggested that Ambassador Kohler in Moscow could carry any or all of the above suggestions to Brezhnev in Moscow and that our Ambassador in Warsaw, who already has had in excess of 125 conferences with his Chinese Communist counterpart, follow the same procedure. The purpose of this memorandum is to furnish you with a brief analysis of my views in writing on this most difficult subject as I have expressed them in large part in the meetings at the White House over the past three days. Finally, you will recall that I stated to you that the burden of decision was yours but that, regardless of my individual views, I would do whatever I could to support you in the exercise of your grave responsibility."
  
• 2/9/1964 After conferring with Robert Oswald, Marina Oswald moves into Robert's home at 1009 Sierra Drive in Denton, Texas. She stays for only two days before moving out.
  
• 2/10/1964 Lee Oswald's mother, Marguerite, testifies before the WC (Warren, Russell, Boggs, Ford, Dulles).
  
• 2/10-14/1964 THE STATE OF TEXAS vs. JACK RUBENSTEIN -- Change of Venue Hearing. Judge Brown postpones decision until after an attempt has been made to select a jury. (Change of venue not granted)
  
• 2/10/1964 Memo from Minneapolis SAC Richard Held to Hoover: "United States Attorney Miles Lord of Minneapolis has always been a very good friend of the FBI, and an ardent admirer of you...he dropped in to see me, and...stated that during a recent trip to Washington, he had occasion to visit...with a group of individuals in the Justice Department whom he described as the 'Kennedy crowd.' Lord stated that these individuals openly discussed how they were doing everything they could to stir up the 'Bobby Baker mess', with the avowed purpose of trying to embarass the President in every way possible...whereby the President would be forced to pick...Robert Kennedy as his running-mate in order to assure his re-election. He further stated that...prior to the assassination...they had intended to use the Bobby Baker issue as a means of freezing Mr. Johnson out as Vice President...He claimed that this same group openly criticized you and the FBI..."
  
• 2/10/1964 Letter from Hoover to Rankin. He mentioned an FBI interview with Henry Wade, who stated that informants would not have been hired without the knowledge of the Bureau's leadership. (Reproduced in Whitewash IV 153)
  
• 2/10/1964 Memo from Charles Shaffer to Howard Willens. He mentioned the need to "facilitate independent analysis of the Bureau's ballistics conclusions...you might recall errors which occured in the placement of the 3 shots not only by the Bureau but by the Secret Service as well." (Post-Mortem 488)
  
• 2/10/1964 Memo from Samuel Stern to Rankin, outlining complaints about the FBI's handling of Oswald before the assassination: "an FBI agent told two Secret Service agents on November 22 that Oswald had, within the past 15 days, contacted two known subversive agents." Stern advocated more thorough questioning of the FBI on its relations with Oswald. (Whitewash IV 155)
  
• 2/10/1964 Paul Rothermel memo to H.L. Hunt: "There is information that the CIA and the State Department are currently planning a second invasion of Cuba. A very reliable source reports that the Manuel Ray group, which is extremely left-wing, has been in touch with the CIA and has agreed to a second invasion. The right-wing Cubans are being pressured to join the invasion. The second invasion is being closely scrutinized by John Martino, leader of the right-wing groups, for fear it will be a second Bay of Pigs fiasco." (Texas Rich p238)
  
• 2/11/1964 Marguerite Oswald's second day of testimony before the WC (Warren, Boggs, Ford, Dulles).
  
• 2/11 or 14/1964 Yuri Nosenko arrived in the US by Air Force jet and was taken to a CIA safehouse in Virginia. A news clipping about Nosenko was scribbled on by Hoover: "Do we know anything about this?"
  
• 2/11/1964 "Chief Justice Warren said Mrs. Oswald had telephoned Mr. Rankin last week, requesting that she be permitted to testify and that the commission name counsel for her. Mr. Rankin suggested, Mr. Warren said, that she bring her own lawyer but she replied that her lawyer was unable to be in Washington because he was engaged in other matters. Mrs. Oswald has said that Mark Lane of New York had agreed to represent her son before the Presidential commission without fee." [Warren Commission appointed John F. Doyle, a former United States Attorney.] New York Times, William M. Blair
  
• 2/11/1964 Washington - … Chief Justice Warren told reporters that [Marguerite Oswald] appeared today "with two lawyers," [John F.] Doyle and [Mark] Lane. Warren said he asked Lane if he was representing Mrs. Oswald in the proceeding; that Lane looked at Mrs. Oswald and she stated that he would be in the city only a few hours and asked if he could remain beside her. Doyle at that point said he had been appointed to represent her in the absence of her own counsel and that if she now had a lawyer he would have to ask to be excused. Warren then asked the witness which lawyer she wanted. She left the hearing room for a talk with Lane and returned to say that Doyle would represent her. Lane still said he would like to remain just to hear the testimony and not to participate. This, the commission refused. AP, 7:44 p.m. CST, Sterling F. Green
  
• 2/11/1964 Memo by Howard Willens about staff meeting of that day; Rankin briefed the staff about the allegations of Oswald's being an FBI informant. "Most of the members of the staff...thought that the omission of the Hosty information was of considerable importance and could not be ignored by the Commission." (Whitewash IV 157)
  
• 2/11/1964 New York Times reported that Professor Revilo P. Oliver of the University of Illinois believed that Kennedy had been a Communist puppet, but was falling behind in a schedule for the "effective capture of the United States in 1963" and was "rapidly becoming a political liabilty." This was the reason, Oliver argued, that he was shot.
  
• 2/12/1964 Marguerite Oswald's third day of testimony before the WC (Warren, Boggs, Ford).
  
• 2/12/1964 Message from Fidel Castro to Lyndon Johnson, "Verbal Message given to Miss Lisa Howard of ABC News on February 12, 1964, in Havana, Cuba." A private message carried by Howard to the White House in which Castro states that he would like the talks started with Kennedy to continue: "I seriously hope (and I cannot stress this too strongly) that Cuba and the United States can eventually sit down in an atmosphere of good will and of mutual respect and negotiate our differences." A verbal message is sent to LBJ from Fidel Castro - delivered first to Adlai Stevenson by Lisa Howard of ABC News in Havana - then to LBJ. Castro has asked Howard to tell LBJ "that I earnestly desire his election to the presidency in November... though that appears assured ... Seriously, I have observed how Republicans use Cuba as a weapon against the Democrats. So tell President Johnson to let me know what I can do." Castro even invites LBJ to take "hostile action" against Cuba if it will be to his political benefit. He also urges LBJ to continue the U.S.-Cuban dialogue that JFK had initiated in the months before his assassination. How LBJ responds to this message is so far unknown, but U.S. efforts to normalize relations with Cuba fade as the year progresses. This incident remains a secret until August, 1999.
  
• 2/12/1964 The John Frankenheimer film Seven Days in May premieres. It was filmed apparently in spring-summer 1963. Originally a bestselling political thriller by Charles Waldo Bailey II and Fletcher Knebel (published 1962 by Harper and Row). It concerns a liberal President who makes a disarmament treaty with the Soviets, only to find his hard-line Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff plotting to oust him in a coup. The film's script was written by Rod Serling; it starred Fredric March, Burt Lancaster, Kirk Douglas. It was filmed with the cooperation of the Kennedy administration. Ted Sorensen recalled that JFK joked darkly about how "I know a couple [of Joint Chiefs] who wish they could" overthrow him. (Kennedy 684). Arthur Schlesinger related how Kennedy saw the book as "a warning to the republic." (RFK and his Times 485) Frankenheimer recalled, "President Kennedy wanted Seven Days in May made. Pierre Salinger conveyed this to us. The Pentagon didn't want it done. Kennedy said that when we wanted to shoot at the White House he would conveniently go to Hyannis Port that weekend." (The Celluloid Muse: Hollywood Directors Speak, Charles Higham and Joel Greenberg, 1972 Signet, p92) The president's friend Paul Fay, Jr., told of an incident that showed JFK was keenly conscious of the peril of a military coup d'etat. One summer weekend in 1962 while out sailing with friends, Kennedy was asked what he thought of Seven Days in May, a best-selling novel that described a military takeover in the United States. JFK said he would read the book. He did so that night. The next day Kennedy discussed with his friends the possibility of their seeing such a coup in the United States. Consider that he said these words after the failed Bay of Pigs invasion and before the Cuban Missile Crisis: " It's possible. It could happen in this country, but the conditions would have to be just right. If, for example, the country had a young President, and he had a Bay of Pigs, there would be a certain uneasiness. Maybe the military would do a little criticizing behind his back, but this would be written off as the usual military dissatisfaction with civilian control. Then if there were another Bay of Pigs, the reaction of the country would be, 'Is he too young and inexperienced ? ' The military would almost feel that it was their patriotic obligation to stand ready to preserve the integrity of the nation, and only God knows j ust what segment of democracy they would be defending if they overthrew the elected establishment. " Pausing a moment, he went on, "Then, if there were a third Bay of Pigs, it could happen. " Waiting again until his listeners absorbed his meaning, he concluded with an old Navy phrase, " But it won't happen on my watch. " (Fay, The Pleasure of His Company 190) "A voice next to me said, "do you intend to make a movie out of Seven Days in May?" I turned. President Kennedy! "Yes, Mr. President." "Good." He spent the next twenty minutes, while our dinner got cold, telling me that he thought it would make an excellent movie." (Kirk Douglas, Ragman's Son, p349) History caught up with Kirk Douglas's production of Seven Days in May. Based on a 1962 best-selling novel by Charles V. Bailey and Fletcher Knebel, it revealed a plot to overthrow US President Jordan Lyman (Frederic March) by members of his own administration, led by conspirators Gen. James Mattoon Scott (Burt Lancaster) and narrowly foiled by Col. Martin "Jiggs" Casey, played by Douglas. Set in the then-distant future of 1974, it seemed to reflect the real-life clash between General Curtis Le May and President John F. Kennedy over the Cuban missile crisis. A United Artists executive declined to consider it because of the negative image it might project abroad. "If…the Executive branch of the Government were to encourage the making of this film, I'd certainly be happy to reconsider it with you at that time," he wrote. Apparently Douglas got the go-ahead he needed directly from the President himself. Rod Serling adapted the novel to the screen and John Frankenheimer not only directed but took a co-production interest. A letter to Douglas from Leon Kaplan, his business/legal advisor, demonstrates the complex partnership and financing arrangements that underlay independent production in the early 1960s. Promotion began long before production even started. In an early example of product placement, special arrangements were made with Bulova for the provision of its state of the art Accutron wristwatches for the picture. Douglas sent the screenplay out for comment to various interested and influential figures. Authors Bailey and Knebel suggested a long list of improvements and Douglas's former director Stanley Kubrick also made suggestions. The care that Douglas himself took in shaping the film's message can be seen in a long memo to Bryna head producer Edward Lewis reacting to one of the first cuts of the film. However, by the time the film was released in February 1964, the assassination of President Kennedy in Dallas the preceding November made it seem strangely prescient. Douglas watched the reviews carefully, with particular attention to reactions in Europe, where it proved a considerable success. In the end, Douglas and his company successfully negotiated the pitfalls inherent in such controversial and timely subject matter. The film received a Blue Ribbon Award from the National Screen Council and was nominated for 2 Academy Awards. Edmond O'Brian won a Golden Globe for his supporting role as Senator Raymond Clark. Serling received a nomination from the Writers Guild of America for his screenplay. An opinion writer in the Los Angeles Herald-Examiner (3/5/1964) questioned whether films like Seven Days should be made: "The world is on too short a fuse" and pictures like this damaged "the American image abroad." A Los Angeles Times columnist (2/6/1964) felt compelled to reassure his readers that a military coup couldn't happen in America, quoting none other than retired admiral Arleigh Burke to support his case. Congressman Melvin Laird called for the movie to be clearly labeled fiction before it was shown overseas. (Variety 5/13/1964) John Frankenheimer years later pointed out, "Paranoia only exists if the circumstances are totally untrue." As for The Manchurian Candidate, he said history has "vividly demonstrated that there are lots and lots of plots to assassinate presidents and high-ranking figures for political gain…There's a certain grotesque reality about The Manchurian Candidate. And as far as Seven Days in May is concerned, we know that there was a very definite group in the military that would have, at one point, liked to have taken over the government…The extreme right has been very, very effective in undermining quite a few things that could've changed the destiny of this country." (HBO Website interview) Frankenheimer's widow recalled that her husband never believed the lone gunman theory of JFK's killing. She said that John would discuss his ideas about the assassination with Bobby Kennedy, with whom he drew close in 1968 while filming his presidential campaign ads. Both men agreed there were other forces at work in Dallas beside Oswald. (Brothers, Talbot)
  
• 2/12/1964 UPI reported: "The government has dropped investigations it had been conducting into complaints that a popular rock-and-roll record has obscene lyrics…Investigations of the record ["Louie Louie"] were started by the Federal Communications Commissions, the Post Office, and Justice Department…All three governmental agencies dropped their investigations because they were unable to determine what the lyrics of the song were," no matter what speed the song was played at. Actually, the FBI and FCC investigations would continue.
  
• 2/12/1964 The WC requested that Life send the original Zapruder film to Washington.
  
• 2/13/1964 LBJ asked Congress to appropriate partial funding for the John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts in Washington. Half of the cost of $34 million will be picked up by the government.
  
• 2/13/1964 De Gaulle assassination attempt.
  
• 2/13/1964 "The Secret Service checked the area where a bullet reportedly struck near the Triple Underpass but could find no indication that a bullet had struck near the street in that area." (from a June 1964 draft of the WC report; McKnight)
  
• 2/13/1964 Washington, Feb. 13 - .... The Dallas News reported on Tuesday [2/11/] that one of the witnesses who might soon be called was a janitor in the Texas School Book Depository …… The News said the janitor has reported that Oswald spoke to him on the fourth-floor stairway landing, saying he was going upstairs to eat lunch. … When advised of the Dallas report, the chief justice paused and smiled before replying: "Well, maybe they know - I don't." AP, 131 aes, Sterling Green [See National Guardian, 5/9/64]
  
• 2/13/1964 Nancy Jane Mooney is arrested by the Dallas police for "disturbing the peace," the charge being that she has had a fight with her roommate. She had provided Darrell Wayne Garner with an alibi in the Reynolds shooting. Less than two hours after being placed in a jail cell, according to the Dallas police, Nancy Jane Mooney hangs herself.
  
• 2/13/1964 On this day, according to witness Richard Giesbrecht, he overhears a meeting between two men at the Winnipeg International Airport. He identifies one of the men as David Ferrie. According to author Paris Flammonde: "Ferrie indicated that he was concerned over how much Oswald had told his wife about the plot to kill Kennedy. Additionally, they discussed a man named Isaacs, his relationship with Oswald, and how curious it was that he would have gotten himself involved with a "psycho" like Oswald ... Isaacs seemed to have allowed himself to be caught on television film near the President when JFK arrived in Dallas, and, at the time the conversation was taking place, was under the surveillance of a man named Hoffman, or Hochman, who was to "relieve" him and destroy a 1958 model automobile in Isaac's possession ...[Ferrie said,] "We have more money at our disposal now than at any other time."... The conversation moved to another area and the two began speaking of a meeting to take place at the Townhouse Motor Hotel in Kansas City, Missouri, on March 18. They mentioned that the rendezvous would be registered under the name of the textile firm. It was noted that no meeting had been held since November 1963 ... Ferrie mentioned that an "aunt" (or "auntie" -- gay slang for an older homosexual) would be flying in from California. A name which Giesbrecht thought sounded like "Romeniuk" was mentioned several times; Ferrie inquired about some paper, or merchandise, coming out of Nevada and the other man replied that things had gotten too risky and that the house, or shop, at a place called Mercury had been closed down, but that a "good shipment" had reached Caracas from Newport. It was also agreed that the Warren Commission would not stop its investigation, even if it did decide that Oswald was guilty."
  
• 2/13/1964 Each of the ten FBI agents who had contact with Oswald filed affidavits with the WC, and each denied that he had been an informant.
  
• 2/14/1964 A memorandum dated this date from Secret Service Agent Sorrels in Dallas referring to the assassination site states, "This concrete slab and manhole cover is located on the south side of Elm Street almost opposite to where the President's car was located when the last shot that killed President Kennedy was fired." The concrete manhole cover is located over seventy feet from the limousine's position at Z frame 313.
  
• 2/17/1964 Jury selection begins in the trial of Jack Ruby for the murder of Lee Harvey Oswald.
  
• 2/17/1964 New York - At an airport news conference, [Mark] Lane said he had documents to indicate that several persons were involved in the assassination plot. He described them as "persons very different in political philosophy" from Oswald, who called himself a Marxist. AP, 9:37 p.m. CST
  
• 2/17/1964 Marina is interviewed by the FBI. Marina Oswald is shown a photograph of a Russian camera and an American camera with a Realist trademark. She says the Realist camera is not Oswald's and that to her knowledge she has never seen that camera. She also testifies that sometime after the attempt on General Walker's life, Oswald told her that he had gone out to a nearby field to practice shooting his rifle. Yet during the month of December in four separate interviews, she said that he never mentioned any occasions when he went out to practice. She claims that she saw Oswald clean his rifle in January 1963. Yet in one December interview, she stated that she never saw him clean his rifle. (To say she saw him clean his rifle in Jan. 1963 does not conform well with the official chronology which maintains that Oswald did not have a rifle until March of that year. The January rifle cleaning episode is therefore a major discrepancy that must be resolved. When Marina testifies tomorrow, she will move the time period of this reported episode to the month of April, and thus saves the Warren Commission a great deal of trouble.)
  
• 2/17/1964 Supreme Court ruled in Wesberry v. Sanders (a followup to Baker v. Carr) that congressional districts must have roughly equal populations (the "one-man, one-vote" principle).
  
• 2/17/1964 Memo from Melvin Eisenberg gave Earl Warren's description (at a 1/20/1964 meeting) of the pressure Johnson put on him to chair the WC: "The President stated that rumors of the most exaggerated kind were circulating in this country and overseas...Some rumors went as far as attributing the assassination to a faction within the government wishing the presidency assumed by President Johnson. Others, if not quenched, could conceivably lead the country into a war which could cost forty million lives. No one could refuse to do something which might help prevent such a possibility..."
  
• 2/17/1964 McNamara testified about Vietnam before the House Defense Appropriations Subcommittee. He said that the Saigon regime had to be stable and popular with the people in order for it to effectively fight the communists, or else the US could do little.
  
• 2/18/1964 Marina Oswald is interviewed by the FBI. She says that the American camera with which she took the photographs of Oswald with the rifle is grayish in color, a box-type camera, but that she does not know where the camera is now.
  
• 2/18/1964 FBI report DL 100-10461 dated February 18, 1964 (CE 1156) page 5 on Marina Oswald: "She said she had not told the interviewing agents about the trip and had, in fact, stated that she did not know about the trip whereas in truth she had known because she did not like the FBI and she had wanted to save something to tell the Commission…"
  
• 2/18/1964 An obscure article in a French newspaper causes a brief flurry of investigative activity in Europe and America, directed at Jean Souetre, Michel Roux, and Michel Mertz.
  
• 2/18/1964 1500 people packed the Town Hall in New York City to hear both Marguerite Oswald and lawyer Mark Lane speak. As reported in the Feb. 19 edition of the NYT (p.30): "Lane played a tape recording he said he made yesterday of a conversation he had with a woman Dallas school teacher [Jean Hill] whom he called 'the closest spectator' to the President's assassination. The woman said she heard 'four to six shots' and these came from a grassy knoll near an overpass in front of the President's car ... She also said she saw a man run from the knoll."
  
• 2/18/1964 The FBI provided the WC with the dental records of Ruby's mother, including the important information that she wore false teeth.
  
• 2/18/1964 US cuts military aid to five countries for refusing to abide by trade embargo on Cuba.
  
• 2/19/1964 The U.S. still hopes to withdraw most of its troops from South Vietnam before the end of 1965, Secretary of Defense Robert McNamara said.
  
• 2/19/1964 New York -- Mark Lane, attorney for the mother of Lee Harvey Oswald, claimed last night that he has a "mystery witness" who heard four to six shots fired at the late President Kennedy from a different direction than the Texas Book Depository Building. The New York attorney said the witness who heard the shots said they came from the left (?) of the Presidential car and from the direction of the grassy plot opposite the Texas Book Depository. Lane also said he had information that a meeting involving several principals in the case was held in Jack Ruby's night club in Dallas two weeks before Mr. Kennedy was slain last November 22. Lane said among those at the Dallas meeting were Bernard Weisman, author of an anti-Kennedy advertisement that appeared in a Dallas newspaper the day of the shooting, and patrolman J. D. Tippit, the policeman slain while pursuing Oswald. Lane said a third person prominent in the case also was in attendance but he would not reveal the name until later. San Francisco Chronicle, New York Times Service
  
• 2/19/1964 Town Hall acknowledged yesterday that it had sought to cancel a public meeting involving Mrs. Marguerite Oswald on the ground that her appearance "could be incendiary." The hall, a part of New York University since 1958, allowed the meeting to go on last night only after the National Guardian weekly, sponsor of the meeting, deposited $25,000 in cash to cover any damages to Town Hall premises.… Fifteen hundred persons were reported to have bought all available tickets for last night's meeting …… [Town Hall's slogan, "You Shall Know the Truth and the Truth Shall Make You Free," appears on the front of the building. [James Aronson, the weekly's editor] said National Guardian's $600 rental had been confirmed by a letter and check on 1/14 ... Town Hall confirmed that its director, Ormond J. Drake ... wrote in a letter on 1/28 that the understanding had been Mr. Mark Lane would speak, but that an article in The New York Journal-American had then announced Mrs. Oswald would appear ... "The terms of the proposed lease have been materially altered," Mr. Drake wrote. … Mr. Drake insisted on a bond The National Guardian ... submitted a one-day $25,000 insurance policy on 2/12, but this was rejected. After rejections from bonding companies, Mr. Aronson reported, $25,000 in negotiable bonds and cashier's checks was raised from four persons he preferred to leave unnamed …Queries to the Police Department, Town Hall and The National Guardian yesterday afternoon brought disclaimers from all quarters on knowledge of any threats to disturb the meeting. New York Times, Peter Kihss
  
• 2/19/1964 San Antonio, Texas: Larry Buchanan's exploitation film, Naughty Dallas, premieres. Shooting began in 1959 and the film was finally released in 1964. This film was made at the Colony Club, a strip joint owned by Abe Weinstein. Jack Ruby owned the Carousel Club, a few blocks down on Commerce Street in downtown Dallas. This film shows only a brief exterior of the Carousel.
  
• 2/20/1964 Lee Oswald's brother, Robert, testifies before the WC (Warren, Cooper, Boggs, Ford, Dulles)
  
• 2/20/1964 Warren Reynolds, the Tippit murder scene witness now recovering from a gunshot wound to his head, is released from the hospital. Three weeks from now, someone will try to abduct his ten year old daughter. At about the same time someone will unscrew the light bulb on the front porch of his home. Last month, Reynolds told the authorities that he could not identify the man fleeing the Tippit murder scene as Lee Harvey Oswald. By July of this year, Reynolds will have changed his testimony and be able to absolutely identify Lee Harvey Oswald as the man fleeing the scene of Tippit murder.
  
• 2/20/1964 Letter from Rankin to Hoover: "Your letter of January 27, 1964, advised the Commission that Special Agent James P. Hosty's name, office telephone number and automobile license number, one digit off, appeared in Oswald's address book. In so informing the Commission, your letter supplied information which appears to have been omitted from an earlier report of the FBI submitted to this Commission...the Commission would like to be informed of the circumstances surrounding this omission." (Whitewash IV 159)
  
• 2/21/1964 Life magazine had the famous photo of Oswald and his weapons on the magazine's cover along with the caption: "Lee Oswald with the weapons he used to kill President Kennedy and Officer Tippit," and an article titled "The Evolution of an Assassin." This photograph, the Warren Report later admitted, was "retouched...in various ways...for clarifying purposes."
  
• 2/21/1964 Robert Oswald's second day of WC testimony (Warren, Dulles).
  
• 2/21/1964 Memo from Redlich to Rankin: "The areas in which Mr. Eisenberg is working are as follows: 1. Cataloging the evidence in the FBI's possession and the exhibits introduced into evidence in connection with the Marina Oswald deposition....2. Working with me on the problem of studying assassination films to locate car position when bullets hit President Kennedy and Governor Connally. 3. Developing expert knowledge in certain areas of criminal investigation with a view toward assisting Messrs. Ball and Belin in the evaluation of the evidence concerning the assassination and related events. These areas, in the following order of priority, are: weapon identification; ballistics; paraffin tests; fingerprint and palm print evidence; handwriting identifications. 4. Mr. Eisenberg also considers it his responsibility to review the major underlying materials....PS: The difficulty of assigning priorities to our areas of work is best evidenced by the fact that since this memo was written I have been assigned the job of preparing the questions for James Martin which has assumed top priority over everything else." (Post-Mortem 606)
  
• 2/21/1964 LBJ told Lodge that "Rusk and McNamara, with my approval, have already begun preparing specific plans for pressure against North Vietnam, both in the diplomatic and military fields." McNamara requested that the JCS come up with ideas on how to encourage the North to stop supporting the communists in the South. (In Retrospect 111)
  
• 2/21/1964 Rothermel memo to H.L. Hunt: it reported that Bill Decker had "cooperatively indicated that there was nothing to the story that any prisoners had seen the Kennedy assassin or assassins" from the County jail during the shooting. (Man Who Knew Too Much 590)
  
• 2/22/1964 Robert Oswald's third day of testimony before the WC (only Allen Dulles is present).
  
• 2/22/1964 MLK and his entourage checked into the Hyatt House Motel; the FBI taped King's sexual activities and a joke he made about Jackie Kennedy kissing the middle of her husband's coffin: "That's what she's going to miss the most." This crack caused Hoover to bring RFK into the loop; Robert Kennedy began to distance himself from King. (The Man and the Secrets 570)
  
• 2/22/1964 Ismet Inonu, premier of Turkey, was the target of a failed assassination attempt.
  
• 2/24/1964 Robert Oswald turns an Imperial Reflex Duo Lens camera over to the FBI. Robert identifies the camera as having belonged to Lee Harvey Oswald. Robert states that he obtained it from the Paine residence in December 1963, several weeks after the assassination.
  
• 2/24/1964 Sen. Russell actually composed a letter of resignation from the Warren Commission. Dated February 24, 1964, it was never sent to President Johnson. In it, he complains that the Commission "has been scheduling, holding, and canceling meetings without notifying him." (Flagpole Magazine, 11/19/03, "Sen. Richard Russell and the Great American Murder Mystery") Russell's plan to resign from the Warren Commission is reflected in an entry on his desk calendar for Feb. 22/23, 1964: "write Pres J & Resign from Commission." In a 2-page letter of resignation addressed to President Johnson dated Feb. 24, 1964, but never mailed. Why Russell changed his mind about resigning is unexplained.
  
• 2/24/1964 A brief WC meeting began with the decision to depose Marina Oswald's manager James Martin because of Mrs. Oswald's testimony of her husband's attempt to shoot Richard Nixon (which she implausibly said she stopped by locking Lee in the bathroom). Rankin then reported on the Commission having received affidavits from the FBI denying the Oswald informant allegation and noted that Lonnie Hudkins had been contacted but "he refused to disclose his source."
  
• 2/24/1964 Memo from Howard Willens to Rankin: it mentioned that FBI agents were keeping tabs on Mark Lane's lectures and whereabouts, and these reports were being forwarded to the WC.
  
• 2/24/1964 Memo from Hubert to Rankin (2/14 or 24; cannot read it clearly), stating that the FBI's explanation of Oswald's non-involvement with the Bureau was not really complete enough for the record. (Whitewash IV 158)
  
• 2/24/1964 Hubert/Griffin memo to Richard Helms (called 'Jack Ruby - Background, Friends and other Pertinent Information'). Requested any CIA information on possible Ruby connections to Lamar Hunt or H.L. Hunt. "Name Lamar Hunt found in notebook of Ruby. Ruby visited his office on November 21. Hunt denies knowing Ruby. Ruby gives innocent explanation. Ruby found with literature of H.L. Hunt [in his apartment] after shooting Oswald." It also stated: "1. He is known to have brutally beaten at least 25 different persons. 2. To generalize, it can be said that, while living in Dallas, Ruby had very carefully cultivated friendships with police officers and other public officials. 3. At the same time, he was, peripherally, if not directly connected with members of the underwold. 4. Ruby is also rumored to have been the tip-off man between the Dallas police and the Dallas underworld. 5. Ruby operated his business on a cash basis, keeping no record whatsoever - a strong indication that Ruby himself was involved in illicit operations of some sort. 6. When it suited his own purposes, he did not hesitate to call on underworld characters for assistance. 7. In about 1959, Ruby became interested in the possibility of selling war materials to Cubans and in the possibility of opening a gambling casino in Havana. 8. Ruby is also rumored to have met in Dallas with an American Army Colonel (LNU) and some Cubans concerning the sale of arms. 9. A Government informant in Chicago connected with the sale of arms to anti-Castro Cubans has reported that such Cubans were behind the Kennedy assassination. 10. His primary technique in avoiding prosecution was the maintenance of friendship with police officers, public officials, and other influential persons in the Dallas community." The report suggested that the CIA look into "ties between Ruby and others who might have been interested in the assassination of President Kennedy" including "the Las Vegas gambling community" and "the Dallas Police Department." It went on to say "the most promising sources of contact between Ruby and politically motivated groups" included two Dallas oil millionaires and a John Birch Society official, plus Ruby's known personal contacts....Ruby is considered to be a highly emotional person. He speaks with a lisp, has been described as soft-spoken, is generally well mannered and well-dressed, but is given to sudden and extreme displays of temper and violence. He is known to have brutally beaten at least 25 different persons either as a result of a personal encounter or because they were causing disturbances in his club. He is said to have effiminate mannerisms and is alleged by some to be homosexual. However, there is no direct evidence of any homosexual behavior. Although he has never been married, he is known to have dated and at one time was known as a 'ladies' man.' In recent years, some of the women toward whom he has shown interest have indicated that he has perverted attitudes toward sex. One male witness describes an occasion when he [engaged in a sexual act] with one of his dogs and apparently derived great pleasure from it...To generalize, it can be said that, while living in Dallas, Ruby has very carefully cultivated friendships with police officers and other public officials. At the same time, he was peripherally, if not directly connected with members of the underworld. Ruby is also rumored to have been the tip-off man between the Dallas police and the Dallas underworld, especially in regard to enforcement of the local liquor laws...His associations with strip teasers and cheap entertainers brought him into constant contact with people of questionable reputations. Ruby operated his businesses on a cash basis, keeping no record whatsoever - a strong indication that Ruby himself was involved in illicit operations of some sort. When it suited his own purposes, he did not hesitate to call on underworld characters for assistance...In about 1959, Ruby became interested in the possibility of opening a gambling casino in Havana. He was in contact at that time with a friend, Lewis J. McWillie. Insufficient evidence is available on that episode to evaluate Ruby's connection with any Cuban (anti-Castro or pro-Castro) groups. Ruby is also rumored to have met in Dallas with an American Army colonel (LNU) and some Cubans concerning the sale of arms. A Government informant in Chicago connected with the sale of arms to anti-Castro Cubans has reported that such Cubans were behind the Kennedy assassination...On balance, it may be said that Ruby's primary interest in life was making money. He does not seem to have had any great scruples concerning the manner in which he might do so. However, he has usually been careful to avoid prosecution by law enforcement authorities...His primary technique in avoiding prosecution, was the maintenance of friendship with police officers, public officials, and other influential persons in the Dallas community. It is possible that Ruby could have been utilized by a politically motivated group either upon the promise of money or because of the influential character of the individual approaching Ruby. If he is a sex deviate, blackmail is also possible....the following groups and places seem significant in looking for ties between Ruby and others who might have been interested in the assassination of President Kennedy...The Las Vegas Gambling Community...Teamsters Union...The Dallas Police Department." The WC waited for Helms' response for two months; finally Rankin wrote to Helms: "At that time we requested that you review this memorandum and submit to the Commission any information contained in your files regarding the matters covered in the memorandum...We would appreciate hearing from you as soon as possible whether you are in a position to comply with this request in the near future." (H 26 466-73, CE 2980).
  
• 2/25/1964 Herbert Orth, Assistant Chief of Life's photographic lab, brought the original Zapruder film to the WC for viewing, but refused to stop to view individual frames out of fear of causing burn damage. He offered to have color slides made up for the WC. The WC had been using a second-generation copy up til this time. This more detailed film showed that Connally was hit well before frame 249.
  
• 2/25/1964 Marina is interviewed by the FBI. She is shown the Imperial Reflex Duo Lens camera turned over to the FBI by Robert Oswald. CE 2083 Letter from Hoover to Rankin: "On February 24, 1964, Robert Lee Oswald, brother of Lee, furnished to a Special Agent of the Dallas Office of this Bureau a Duo-lens Imperial Reflex camera which he stated was the property of Lee...Robert advised that he obtained this camera from the residence of Mrs Ruth Paine, Irving, Texas, in December 1963...On February 25, 1964, this camera was displayed to Marina Oswald and she immediately identified it as the American camera which belonged to her husband and the one which she used to take the photograph of him with the rifle and the pistol."
  
• 2/25/1964 WC asked Walter Craig, president of the American Bar Association, to sit in on hearings to make sure that "the proceedings conformed to the basic principles of American justice."
  
• 2/25/1964 Joseph Ball and David Belin issued a report in which they stated "At no time have we assumed that Lee Harvey Oswald was the assassin of President Kennedy. Rather, our entire study has been based on an independent examination of all the evidence in an effort to determine who was the assassin..." They acknowledged that Charles Givens originally admitted seeing Oswald on the first floor.'
  
• 2/26/1964 LBJ signed Kennedy's bill that cut taxes by $11.5 billion. The bill had passed by 74 to 19 in the Senate, with GOP support. LBJ argued that the tax cut would stimulate the economy.
  
• 2/26/1964 J. Edgar Hoover, in letter to staff member W. David Slawson, writes: "The CIA is interested in the scar on Oswald's left wrist ... The FBI is reluctant to exhume Oswald's body as requested by the CIA."
  
• 2/27/1964 James H. Martin, Marina Oswald's lawyer, testifies before the WC (Warren, Cooper, Boggs, Ford, Dulles).
  
• 2/27/1964 Marina Oswald is questioned by the FBI about the type of camera that she allegedly used to take the backyard photographs of LHO.
  
• 2/27/1964 J. Edgar Hoover informs J. Lee Rankin that Jack Ruby had been an FBI potential criminal informant in 1959. Hoover demands, however, that the chief counsel conceal the fact from the public, raising the specter of "national security." Letter from Hoover to Rankin: "For your information, Ruby was contacted by an Agent of the Dallas Office on March 11,

[Magda Hassan]

I love this thread Tracey ::rockon::

[Tracy Riddle]

I love this thread Tracey ::rockon::

Glad you're enjoying it, Magda.

[Tracy Riddle]

• 3/1964 Dorothy Kilgallen gets an exclusive private interview with Jack Ruby during a break in his trial. That the meeting ever took place has been disputed by some, because she never published a word of it before her death, though her biographer Lee Israel is certain the meeting took place. (Praise from a Future Generation, Kelin)
  
• 3-4/1964 Sometime during this period, Felipe Vidal Santiago is executed in Cuba. Before his execution, he reportedly tells his interrogators that in early November 1963 Colonel William Bishop picked him up in a car in Miami and drove him to Dallas where he gave him a room in a second-class hotel. While in Dallas, he said he attended a meeting with a few wealthy people in the Dallas Petroleum Club. One of the men present at this meeting, according to Bishop, was General Edwin Walker. The assassination of John Kennedy was a topic of conversation during this meeting. Santiago said he returned to Miami four days later.
  
• 3/1964 Bill Chesher dies of heart attack. Little is known about Chesher other than that he allegedly had information linking Lee Harvey Oswald with his murderer, Jack Ruby. Chesher never shared this information with anyone.
  
• 3/1964 "The Oswald Affair" by Leo Sauvage published in Commentary magazine.
  
• 3/1964 Researcher Thomas Buchanan interviewed Nicholas Katzenbach 3/1964, who stood by the description of JFK's wounds at that time (that the back wound was a separate shot and the throat wound was related to the head shot): "he said that it was based on an exhaustive study of the President's autopsy, and that there could be no doubt about it...He felt certain any person who had studied this autopsy would have reached the same conclusions. I asked him if I could see a copy of it, but he said that he could not release it...when the President's Commission issued its report, the explanation of the wounds had changed completely..." (Who Killed Kennedy p91-92)
  
• 3/1964 Assassination and Its Aftermath Congressman Martin Dies American Opinion, Volume VII, Number 3, March 1964, pp. 1-10.
  
• 3/1964 Marxmanship in Dallas [Part II] Revilo P. Oliver, American Opinion, Volume VII, No. 3, March 1964, pp. 65-78.
  
• 3/1964 Karl Meyer, writing in the New Statesman: "In a sense, the US seems to be drifting in a Gaullist direction of heightened nationalism. But, under Johnson it would be a Gaullism without grandeur...The White House has gone from Camelot to Johnson City...In turning off the lights at the White House, Mr. Johnson has signaled the end of a brief era in more ways than one."
  
• 3/1964 This issue of Gerald L.K. Smith's Christian Nationalist Crusade magazine blamed Zionist Jews for the assassination.
  
• Early 1964 William H. Carr publishes his revised edition of 1962's JFK: A Complete Biography. It ends with a brief chapter on the assassination added to the paperback edition that predates the Warren Commission report. It does not deal with conspiracy but does describe a bullet that "had smashed through the skin just above his necktie, tearing its way down through his chest."
  
• 3/1964 This issue of Saga featured an article by ex-FBI agent William W. Turner criticizing the FBI for not seeing Oswald as a threat to the president: "Lee Harvey Oswald should have been under the strictest surveillance if not locked up." Turner believes that Oswald was the lone gunman but he was not solely responsible. Much of the responsibility, according to Turner, goes to the FBI. They were well aware of Oswald, his actions and background yet did nothing to prevent him from shooting Kennedy.
  
• 3/1/1964 The press openly asserts that J. Edgar Hoover has given FBI reports to LBJ for use against political foes, including those testifying against him in the Bobby Baker case. In only a few days from now, LBJ is publicly stating that he intends to waive Hoover's retirement.
  
• 3/1, 4/13, 4/30 and 5/14/1964 RFK, in a series recorded interviews with John Bartlow Martin, recalled that JFK had been strongly assured by the CIA and military that the Bay of Pigs plan would succeed: "If he hadn't gone ahead with it, everybody would have said it showed he had no courage because...it was Eisenhower's plan, Eisenhower's people all said it would succeed...We found out later that, despite the President's orders that no American forces would be used, the first two people who landed on the Bay of Pigs were Americans - CIA sent them in....It was clearly understood in all the instructions that there weren't going to be any military forces of the United States." They had been repeatedly assured that even if the invasion went badly, the Cubans could disappear into the mountains and become guerillas. "It turned out that, when they talked about this guerilla territory, it was guerilla territory back in 1890. Now it was a swamp...After Cuba [JFK] continuously prodded and probed to bring out all the facts...he made an effort to find out himself...I then became involved on every major and all the international questions...the President spoke to me about becoming head of the CIA. I said I didn't want to...I don't know who suggested John McCone originally. Maybe Scoop Jackson did...The President was never very enthusiastic about the [nuclear] testing...Most of the testing was aimed at developing smaller bombs with bigger punch. He wasn't convinced that was so necessary...There was a strong feeling by the scientific community that we should test...He reached the conclusion that probably it was worthwhile [staying in Vietnam] for psychological, [world] political reasons more than anything else." He was asked if JFK was "concerned about the rightist upsurge" in the country; RFK replied, "Not really, no....He thought it was silly, that [Gen.] Walker was crazy...But it was more humorous than anything else." He recalled that JFK's policy in Latin America was to do more than just side with anti-Communist dictatorships. He denied that the administration was behind the Trujillo assassination, then added, "To my knowledge, this isn't true. I got into that planning, and I expect I probably would have known...Lyndon Johnson said to Pierre Salinger that he wasn't sure but that the assassination of President Kennedy didn't take place in retribution for his participation in the assassinations of Trujillo and President Diem...divine retribution...There was never any intention of dropping [LBJ from the ticket]. There was never even any discussion about dropping him...After the missiles [crisis], Dean Rusk said that Castro would collapse or be replaced within two months." RFK confirmed that Kennedy was trying to improve relations with Castro in 1963, but only if Castro cut off military ties with the Soviets and stopped trying to export revolution. He said that there were no assassination attempts on Castro, not even any planning for it. He commented that when JFK visited Venezuela "we had a real check on whether all the Communists and fellow travelers were picked up and the guards were adequate...I often think that's the kind of arrangement when you were going into a crazy city like Dallas, Texas. It should have been done." He emphasized that JFK thought Vietnam was very important to the security of the whole region, had no intention of completely pulling out, but also was not going to go in with combat troops: "because everybody, including General MacArthur, felt that land conflict between our troops - white troops and Asian - would only end in disaster. So we went in as advisers to try to get the Vietnamese to fight, themselves, because we couldn't win the war for them." He was asked, "And if the Vietnamese were about to lose it, would he propose to go in on land if he had to?" RFK replied, "We'd face that when we came to it...we were winning the war in 1962 and 1963. Up until May or so of 1963, the situation was getting progressively better." He recalled that on the question of supporting a coup in Saigon, "the government split in two," with JFK, Taylor, McNamara and McCone opposed to it. RFK didn't want to discuss the assassination of his brother: "No, I don't think I need to go into that...There were four or five matters that arose during the period of November 22 to November 27 or so which made me bitter - unhappy at least - with Lyndon Johnson. Events involving the treatment of Jackie on the plane trip back...And then he came to the White House on Saturday and started moving all my brother's things out Saturday morning at nine o'clock. I went over and asked him to wait, at least until Sunday or Monday." Later, LBJ accused him of sending Paul Corbin to New Hampshire to plot against him. "Since January [1964], I haven't had any dealings with Johnson....When the President was going down to Texas, trying to get the political situation settled in Texas, Lyndon Johnson would be no help...And he said to Jackie...that Lyndon Johnson was incapable of telling the truth...he doesn't think anything of a lot of people. And he yells at his staff. He treats them just terribly. Very mean. He's a very mean, mean figure...The one thing Lyndon Johnson doesn't want is me as Vice President...Johnson has explained quite clearly that it's not the Democratic party anymore; it's an all-American party. The businessmen like it. All the people who were opposed to the President like it. I don't like it much....The fact is that he's able to eat people up, even people who are considered rather strong figures. I mean, as I say, Mac Bundy or Bob McNamara: There's nothing left of them...He's mean, bitter, vicious - an animal in many ways...unless you want to kiss his behind all the time." (RFK In His Own Words)
  
• Early March 1964: Arlen Specter met informally with Drs. Humes and Boswell to discuss the problem of JFK's wounds; Humes suggested that it was medically possible that JFK and Connally were both hit by the same bullet and that Connally had had a delayed reaction. (Inquest 93)
  
• 3/2/1964 Joint Chiefs' memo to McNamara; they advocated US air attacks on the Ho Chi Minh trail and military/industrial targets in the North.
  
• 3/3/1964 Washington Post reported on the Bobby Baker hearings, and allegations that "Baker set up appointments for Levison for obtaining gambling concession in…the Dominican Republic…"
  
• 3/3/1964 Date of fake McCone/Rowley CIA/SS memo
  
• 3/4/1964 Mark Lane testified before the WC (Warren, Cooper, Ford).
  
• 3/4/1964 Hoover sends a gushing thank-you letter to LBJ for "the photographs which you sent me this morning."
  
• 3/4/1964 Washington Post reports that "A cabinet member in the government of former Dominican president Juan Bosch testified that he was a close personal friend of Baker…" and may have been involved in arranging gambling concessions.
  
• 3/4/1964 Ruby's trial began. March 4 - 14, 1964 THE STATE OF TEXAS vs. JACK RUBENSTEIN -- Verdict in the trial of Jack Ruby. The decision of the jury after less than an hour of deliberation: 1.) Jack Ruby is sane. 2.) Jack Ruby is guilty of murder with malice. 3.) Jack Ruby should die for his crime. Judge Brown confirms the death sentence. Belli fired.
  
• 3/4/1964 Joachim Joesten, the German writer, wrote a book on the Kennedy assassination in early 1964. The Commission's general counsel, under date of March 4, wrote to him and asked for copies in German and English. His wife was visited by two FBI agents in New York. And the Assistant Legal Attache of the United States Embassy in Bonn located the surprised Joesten in Hamburg and flew there to interview him, declining to discuss his business by phone for reasons of national security. All wanted the same thing, Joesten's information. Joesten said he supplied it. Mr. Rankin's promise to Joesten was only too well kept. He had said, "You may rest assured that the material you furnish us will not be circulated beyond the files of the Commission." On page 32 of the book, Joesten said, "With a ground floor window front running the full length of his room and opening out on the neighbor's driveway, Oswald was indeed living, as his landlady herself said in the course of a 45-minute talk I had with her, in 'the most public room' of the house. A goldfish has more privacy in his glass bowl than Oswald had behind this unbroken window front, especially at night, when his room was glaringly lighted by an unshaded bulb dangling from the ceiling." The Report has an entire section of perhaps 15,000 words devoted to what the Commission entitled "Speculations and Rumors" (Appendix 12). If there were any the Commission had assured itself of knowing, they came from Joesten. There is no reference to this in that entire Appendix. (Weisberg, Whitewash)
  
• 3/5/1964 The FBI and INS personnel in Texas begins looking for any evidence of a Jean Rene Souetre, Michel Roux, or Michel Mertz being in Dallas on or near the assassination date, as well as any evidence of individuals by these names being deported. All three of these names initially come up blank.
  
• 3/6/1964 Hoover states in a letter to Sen. McClellan regarding Valachi's testimony, "Public opinion has moved against the forces of evil." (HSCA vol. 5)
  
• 3/6/1964 Washington Post reports that Jordan believes the Baker investigation is nearing its end, but Sen. Hugh Scott believes that more witnesses should be called.
  
• 3/6/1964 CD 451, FBI report to Rankin of interview with Nosenko, long suppressed by the WC. "Following President Kennedy's assassination, Noskeno ascertained from Oswald's file that he had had access to a gun which he used to hunt game with fellow employees in the USSR. He could not describe the gun used by Oswald but did remember that it was used to shoot rabbits. Nosenko stated that Western newspaper reports describe Oswald as an expert shot; however, Oswald's file contained statements from fellow hunters that Oswald was an extremely poor shot and that it was necessary for persons who accompanied him on hunts to provide him with game."
  
• 3/6/1964 The Spectator (London) featured an article, "The Riddle of Dallas," that questioned the evidence against Oswald. Cover story by Mordecai Brienberg. Very early critical examination and the probable innocence of Oswald. The report of a 7.65 mm Mauser, the location of the President's wounds, the eyewitness reports of shots from the front, negative results from the paraffin tests, timing of the shots and many other discrepancies.
  
• 3/6/1964 New York Journal-American reporter Bob Considine, in an editorial, attacked Europeans for "still clutching to the long discredited notion that there was a dark conspiracy involving JFK's death."
  
• 3/6/1964 McNamara expressed his "complete support" for Saigon's new leader, Khanh.
  
• 3/6/1964 DeLoach memo to Hoover about his lunch that day with Ed Guthman of the Justice Department; "Guthman told me that a number of individuals close to the Attorney General felt that the President's body had not even become cold before you started circumventing the Attorney General and dealing directly with the President...Jenkins told me later on...that the Attorney General was extremely shaken by the dismissals of Corbin and Bellino...He became so mad with the President that he walked out of the President's office. He also told Ken O'Donnell, who sided with the President, that he would never speak to him again."
  
• 3/7/1964 A memo Melvin Eisenberg wrote said: "...a mass of evidence has been collected concerning the aural observation of bystanders....very little weight can be assigned to this category of evidence [because of] the difficulty of accurate perception of the sound of gunshots, and the acoustics of the gunshots. The sound of a shot comes upon a witness suddenly and often unexpectedly...A loud noise may appear to have been produced nearby, while a weak sound may seem to have been transmitted from some distance."
  
• 3/8/1964 Malcolm X established two new organizations, the Muslim Mosque Inc. and the Organization of Afro-American Unity.
  
• 3/9/1964 David Slawson memo to Jenner-Liebeler Ball-Belin SUBJECT: Testimony of Yuri Ivanovich Nosenko, recent Soviet Defector The testimony of Nosenko is contained in documents carrying Commission Nos. 434 and 451, insofar as we have received information to date. Of special interest to your sections are the following statements by Nosenko in regard to Oswald's marksmanship: "Following President Kennedy is assassination Nosenko ascertained from Oswald's file that he had had access to a gun which he used to hunt game with fellow employees in the U.S.S.R. He could not describe the gun used by Oswald but did remember that it was used to shoot rabbits. Nosenko stated that Western newspaper reports describe Oswald as an expert shot; however, Oswald's file contained a statement from fellow hunters that Oswald was an extremely poor shot and that it was necessary for persons who accompanied him on hunts to provide him with game." Nosenko purports to have been a high official in the counter-intelligence division of the KGB, the Russian Secret Police. He also purports to have been the person who supervised the examination and treatment of Lee Harvey Oswald for the KGB, both when Oswald first entered Russia in 1959 and after the assassination of President Kennedy, when Oswald's file was reexamined by the KGB to determine whether he had ever been used as an agent by that organization. Nosenko states that the KGB at no time used Oswald as an agent. (Liebeler later showed this memo to Edward J. Epstein).
  
• 3/9/1964 Secret Service agents Roy Kellerman, Will Greer, Rufus Youngblood, Clint Hill testify before the WC (Warren, Cooper, Boggs, Ford). Agent Roy Kellerman testifies that "While the President is in the morgue, he is lying flat. And with part of the skull removed, and the hole in the throat, nobody was aware until they lifted him up that there was a hole in his shoulder. That was the first concrete evidence that they knew that the man was hit in the back first." Clint Hill revealed that it was Floyd Boring who told him JFK didn't want agents on the back of the car.
  
• 3/9/1964 J. Evetts Haley's book A Texan Looks at Lyndon is published. It was a best seller and it is claimed that in Texas only the Bible outsold Haley's book in 1964. In the book Haley attempted to expose Johnson's corrupt political activities. This included a detailed look at the relationship between Johnson and Billy Sol Estes. Haley pointed out that three men who could have provided evidence in court against Estes, George Krutilek, Harold Orr and Howard Pratt, all died of carbon monoxide poisoning from car engines. Haley also suggested that Johnson might have been responsible for the death of John F. Kennedy: "Johnson wanted power and with all his knowledge of political strategy and his proven control of Congress, he could see wider horizons of power as Vice-President than as Senate Majority Leader. In effect, by presiding over the Senate, he could now conceive himself as virtually filling both high and important positions - and he was not far from wrong. Finally, as Victor Lasky pointed out, Johnson had nursed a lifetime dream to be President. As Majority leader he never could have made it. But as Vice-president fate could always intervene."
  
• 3/9/1964 Supreme Court unanimous ruling in New York Times vs Sullivan expands protection of the press by limiting libel suits. The case stemmed from Alabama authorities suing the NYT for negative coverage of their handling of civil rights protests.
  
• 3/9/1964 McNamara told the press that the situation in South Vietnam was "serious."
  
• 3/9/1964 LBJ spends time at the pool and lunch with Hoover, DeLoach, and Walter Jenkins. Hoover and LBJ talk on the phone this afternoon. (Act of Treason) LBJ met with Hoover and DeLoach for a lengthy talk about MLK; Hoover apparently left some of the tapes with Johnson. Around this time the FBI squashed a planned honorary degree for King from Marquette University. (The Man and the Secrets 570)
  
• 3/9/1964 Newsweek revealed a plan by Walt Rostow to escalate the war by (quoting from his plan): "PT boat raids on North Vietnamese coastal installations and then by strategic bombing raids flown by US pilots under either the US or South Vietnamese flags…"
  
• 3/10/1964 The following testify before the WC today (Warren, Cooper, Ford): Arnold Rowland, James Worrell, Robert Hill Jackson, Amos Euins.
  
• 3/10/1964 Press discloses the fact that Johnson has made the decision to issue an Executive Order waiving Hoover's retirement.
  
• 3/10/1964 Washington Post reports that at least three of the Democratic members of the Bobby Baker committee have said publicly that they consider the inquiry to be at an end. Another has let it be known that he is "bored" and considers the Baker case a "second-rate scandal." Still another has regularly failed to show up for public hearings. The GOP members want to call Walter Jenkins as a witness.
  
• 3/10/1964 A U.S. RB-57 is shot down by the Soviets while on a reconnaissance mission. Its crew of 3 is recovered.
  
• 3/10/1964 New Hampshire primary. In the GOP primary, both Rockefeller and Goldwater were considered to be the favorites, but the voters instead gave a surprising victory to the U.S. ambassador to South Vietnam, Henry Cabot Lodge, Jr., Nixon's running mate in 1960 and a former Massachusetts senator. Lodge was a write-in candidate. Lodge went on to win the Massachusetts and New Jersey primaries before finally deciding that he didn't want the Republican nomination, he then withdrew his candidacy. Despite his defeat in New Hampshire, Goldwater pressed on, winning the Illinois, Texas, and Indiana primaries with little opposition, and Nebraska's primary after a stiff challenge from a draft-Nixon movement. Goldwater also won a number of state caucuses and gathered even more delegates. Meanwhile, Nelson Rockefeller won the West Virginia and Oregon primaries against Goldwater, and William Scranton won in his home state of Pennsylvania. Both Rockefeller and Scranton also won several state caucuses, mostly in the Northeast.
  
• 3/10/1964 Letter from Hoover to Rankin: "Reference is made to my letter dated January 10, 1964, advising that arrangements were made with the Atomic Energy Commission to process by nuclear analytical techniques items relating to the assassination of President Kennedy. The paraffin casts from Lee Harvey Oswald were examined by neutron activation analyses at the Oak Ridge National Laboratories, Research Reactor Site, Oak Ridge, Tennessee. These analyses were made to determine if the paraffin casts from Oswald which were made, chemically treated and washed by the Dallas law enforcement authorities, bear any primer deposits from the rifle cartridge cases found in the Texas School Book Depository Building following the President's assassination. As a result of these examinations; the deposits found on the paraffin casts from the hands and cheek of Oswald could not be specifically associated with the rifle cartridges. Elements (barium and antimony) were found on the casts; however, these same elements were found in residues both from the above rifle cartridge cases and from the revolver cartridge cases which were fired from Oswald's revolver reportedly between the time of the assassination and the time of apprehension. No characteristic elements were found by neutron activation analyses which could be used to distinguish the rifle from the revolver cartridges. In view of the fact that the paraffin casts were not made until after the reported firing and handling of the revolver, no significance could be attached to the residues found on the casts other than the conclusion that barium and antimony in these residues are present in amounts greater than would be expected to be found on the hands of an individual who has not recently fired a weapon or handled a fired weapon." (Post Mortem 625; CE 2455)
  
• 3/10/1964 Sen. Ernest Gruening attacked US involvement in Vietnam as "seeking vainly...to shore up self-serving corrupt dynasties or their self-imposed successors...all Vietnam is not worth life of a single American boy."
  
• 3/11/1964 The following testify before the WC today (Warren, Cooper, Ford): Buell Wesley Frazier, Linnie Mae Randle, Cortlandt Cunningham.
  
• 3/11/1964 Bobby Baker hearings: Baker and Levison associate Sigelbaum appears before the committee. Asked basically the same questions as Levison, he takes the Fifth 136 times. Senator Cooper asks two questions of substance. Cooper: Did you visit the offices of the North American Aviation Corp. and the Northrop Corp. seeking a vending contract for Serve-U? Did you talk to Mr. Attwood, president of North American, about a vending contract for Serve-U?
  
• 3/11/1964 FBI firearms expert Cortlandt Cunningham appears before the WC.
  
• 3/11/1964 A FBI teletype from Dallas to Washington on this dates confirms that a Frenchman named Michel Roux was in Texas on November 22nd. Roux, a hotel clerk and restaurant-management student from Paris, was visiting American friends in Fort Worth, Texas.
  
• 3/12/1964 The following testified before the WC today (Warren, Cooper, Ford): William Whaley, Cecil McWatters.
  
• 3/12/1964 Jimmy Hoffa was fined $10,000 and sentenced to eight years in prison for jury tampering.
  
• 3/12/1964 WC meeting with Richard Helms; he told Rankin that "the Commission would have to take his word for the fact that Oswald had not been an agent" of the CIA. The minutes also noted, "a considerable part of the meeting from this point forward consisted of a review by Mr. Rankin and his staff of the gaps in the investigation to date. They noted that the most significant gap appeared in the Mexican phase." The WC staffers "questioned the sanitized extracts which they had been shown and wondered if there were not more...Mr Helms then explained that as a matter of practice we did not release actual copies of our messages because they contained code words..." The WC members wondered why nothing was done to keep an eye on Oswald after his Mexican trip. "At the conclusion of his remarks on the subject, Mr. Helms specified that the information he had given Mr. Rankin was extremely sensitive [2 words censored]." Rankin worried that the CIA had not provided any evidence that Oswald had traveled by bus. (Plausible Denial 57,66) They also discussed with Helms a memo ('Jack Ruby - Background, Friends and Other Pertinent Information'; CE 2980, possibly the same one above) requesting CIA investigative assistance into Ruby's background.
  
• 3/12/1964 CIA "Memorandum for the Record" declassified 6/1976; portions of it still withheld. It related to the CIA-WC meeting of that day regarding Ruby's background. The memo reveals that Helms, his aides and the WC staff discussed various phases of the investigation, with emphasis on the activities of Oswald and Ruby. The CIA felt little obligation to respond to the WC's desire to establish whether Oswald worked for US intelligence. "Willens noted that Mrs Oswald had introduced a statement to the effect that she suspected her son to be a CIA agent. Mr Willens asked whether in fact Oswald had been a CIA agent. Mr Helms replied that he had not been. Mr Willens then asked if there were any way of proving this. Mr Helms first remarked that in him and [deleted] the Commission had the two Clandestine Services officers who certainly would know whether or not Oswald had been an agent for CIA in the Soviet Union. He then said that the Commission would have to take his word for the fact Oswald had not been an agent. Mr Rankin interjected the view that the Commission had not adopted this procedure with other agencies and wondered whether there was not some way to clarify this point more effectively for the Commission." (Coincidence or Conspiracy 196) Rankin also told Helms that the WC had information that Ruby had gone to Havana in the summer of 1963, presumably using a phony passport by way of Mexico. (Ruby Cover-up 268)
  
• 3/12/1964 Arlen Specter interviewed FBI agents Sibert and O'Neill, who were present at the autopsy, and Specter drew up a memo of the event; Sibert and O'Neill confirmed that Kennedy's back wound only penetrated a few inches. (12/1963-3/1964 Administrative records, in Six Seconds in Dallas 45). Neither man was even deposed by the WC.
  
• 3/12/1964 3:05pm Hoover calls LBJ; 5:32pm DeLoach calls LBJ. (Act of Treason 525)
  
• 3/13/1964 "Pike Event", an underground nuclear test at the Nevada Test Site causes major fallout as far south as Las Vegas.
  
• 3/13/1964 At 9:10am Hoover calls LBJ. (Act of Treason)
  
• 3/13/1964 Kathrine and Warren Ford and Peter Paul Gregory testify before the WC (Earl Warren, Gerald Ford).
  
• 3/13/1964 In a Warren Commission memorandum (not declassified until 1975) staff member W. David Slawson writes about letter from J. Edgar Hoover concerning reluctance to exhume Oswald's body as requested by the CIA. Slawson continues: "This whole aspect of Oswald's life and especially our attempt to authenticate it are highly secret at this point ..." Slawson mentions the reported suicide attempt by Oswald shortly after arriving in Russia. Therefore, if Lee Harvey Oswald's suicide incident is a fabrication, the time spent by Oswald recovering from the suicide [attempt] in a Moscow hospital could conceivably have been spent by him in Russian secret police custody, being coached, brainwashed, etc. Around Easter in 1964, Marina Oswald says she receives a telephone call from government officials asking her to sign papers authorizing the installation of an electronic alarm system at Oswald's grave site. As far as in known, no alarm system was ever installed.
  
• 3/13/1964 Jean Hill is today grilled by Special Agents E. J. Robertson and Thomas T. Trettis, Jr. to whom she repeats her description of the running figure she saw in Dealey Plaza immediately following the assassination. Again, she recalls the figure as being a white man wearing a brown raincoat and a hat, whom she had seen running west, away from the school book depository, toward the wooden fence and the railroad tracks beyond. Subsequently, Agent Robertson is assigned to conduct an investigation aimed at establishing the identity of this person.
  
• 3/13/1964 The FBI discontinues its investigation of Michel Roux today.
  
• 3/13/1964 An artist makes sketches depicting Kennedy's wounds, based on the recollections of the autopsy doctors. He had no photos to work from. (H 2 349-50) Harold "Skip" Rydberg, medical illustrator at Bethesda Hospital today receives "secret verbal orders" from Navy Cmdr. John Stover to complete the drawings to help Naval doctors' testimony before the Warren Commission. The order says the illustrations need to be ready to present to the commission on Monday, March 16, 1964. He prepared them Mar 14-15th. In February 2006, this article will appear in the Sun-Herald: "I was only given two days to draw three life-size drawings," he said. "As a normal medical illustrator, you need as much medical evidence to do the drawings. That includes the autopsy report, the photos and X-rays to do the best possible job. "I asked if it would be possible to see the X-rays and photographs, and the answer was the doctors did not have them available for their testimony," Rydberg recalls. He remembers being told the FBI and Secret Service took the undeveloped film and X-rays. Rydberg spent two days in a 10-by-10-foot room, with an armed Marine guarding the door. There was no artist's table, and he was told to bring only his watercolor set, some sketch paper, and nothing more. "At the end of each day I would call to have Lt. Cmdr. Lynde D. McCormick walk with me, the drawings covered, and put them in a large safe in the administration office," Rydberg recalls. "The only things which went on in the small room were Dr. (James) Humes and Dr. (Thornton) Boswell, who would come in the room and check on the drawings. They requested they be done in color and life-size on 20-inch-by-30-inch illustration board," he said. While drawing, Rydberg said he had nothing to go by except verbal anatomical landmarks and imagination about how the president was shot. "During the drawings, Humes specifically asked me to make the right eye black, like a large hemorrhage had happened," Rydberg said. "So I drew what I thought was the right positions at the times of each shot." The doctors continued to come in the room through the weekend. "This was the only two days I had to complete these imaginary positions and then on Monday they were turned over to Adm. Calvin Galloway, Commanding Officer of the National Naval Medical Center," Rydberg said. When Rydberg finished the drawings, the watercolor set and the sketches were destroyed. "They wanted no one to know by guessing the colors used what I was doing," Rydberg said. "A little paranoid, I think, but they did it and after the drawings were done on Monday. I went back to my normal duties, noting that I only had secret verbal orders to discuss with no one what I was doing or did," he said.
  
• 3/14/1964 Ruby's trial ended and he was found guilty of murder with malice after the jury deliberated less than an hour; he was also found sane and was sentenced to death. The Ruby family immediately fired Melvin Belli. Rankin had delayed the Commission's own investigative work until the trial was over so as not to prejudice it in any way. (Inquest) Ruby's lawyers appeared before TV camaras after the verdict. Belli characterized it as a kangeroo court decision. His other lawyer announced that he felt like he was going to throw up.
  
• 3/14/1964 Richard Helms phones RFK to congratulate him on the Jimmy Hoffa conviction and making an appointment to see him the following week, without specifying the reason.
  
• 3/14/1964 Dallas was having a St. Patrick's Day parade; Asst District Attorney Bill Alexander commented, "Don't you think we're pushing our luck a little having another parade for an Irishman around here?"
  
• 3/15/1964 During a TV interview, LBJ said he hadn't seen or talked to Baker since he left the Senate, and denied that Baker was his protege, "no protege of anyone; he was there before I came to the Senate for ten years...he was elected by all the Senators...including the Republican Senators..." Actually, Baker was selected by the Democratic caucus at Majority Leader Johnson's recommendation.
  
• 3/15/1964 LBJ requests $962 million from Congress for a "war on poverty."
  
• 3/15/1964 Christian Crusade's newsletter: "Oswald was an active Castro agent merely obeying orders..." Billy James Hargis wrote that JFK was assassinated to discredit conservatives: "It is 'do or die' in 1964. If we don't break this liberal yoke in '64, forget about freedom and liberty." He declared that the facts about the assassination were being covered up to protect "men in high places in Washington, D.C."
  
• 3/16/1964 McNamara reported to LBJ that things had worsened in South Vietnam, and Gen. Khanh had no popular support.
  
• 3/16/1964 The FBI conducts a second series of tests on the alleged Kennedy murder weapon. Only the best one of the previous 3 marksmen is used. His name is Robert Frazier. He fails to match Oswald's shooting time and again, all of the shots are high and to the right of the intended target. Further FBI rifle tests at Quantico, Virginia; Frazier fired four series of three shots at targets 100 yards away; his times ranged from 5.6 to 6.5 seconds. (Frazier testimony)
  
• 3/16/1964 A request for calculations regarding the size and height of the Stemmons freeway sign that blocked Zapruder's view in his film is requested on this date by Special Agent John Howlett of the U.S. Secret Service, Dallas office.
  
• 3/16/1964 In a very brief meeting, the WC formally accepted a resolution regarding the procedures for handling testimony and affidavits.
  
• 3/16/1964 The three JFK autopsy doctors Finck, Humes and Boswell testify before the WC (Warren, Cooper, Ford, McCloy, Dulles) It was on March 16, 1964 during James Humes' testimony before the WC that bullet CE-399 was first introduced into evidence. Arlen Specter related on the record that CE-399's bone fides were "subject to later proof," but would be introduced with the proviso that the bullet was the same "missile which [had] been taken from the stretcher which the evidence now indicates was the stretcher occupied by Governor Connally." The fact that Humes was the first witness to testify about CE-399, yet had played no part whatsoever its chain of custody, forced Specter to introduce CE-399 "subject to later proof." An undated autopsy report is introduced in evidence. Commander Humes testifies that this autopsy report was prepared immediately after the autopsy examination and submitted to "higher authority" on November 24, 1963. He also submits an affidavit to the Commission purportedly written on November 24, 1963, stating that he "destroyed by burning certain preliminary notes relating to" the autopsy. Commander Humes further testifies that, although no bullet path was found through the President's body, it was deductively concluded that the bullet did indeed pass through the body and exit at the throat. Humes explains: "I see that Governor Connally is sitting directly in front of the late President, and suggest the possibility that this missile, having traversed the low neck of the late President, in fact traversed the chest of Governor Connally." When Arlen Specter asked Dr. Humes, "could that missile [Warren Exhibit #399] have made the wound on Governor Connally's right wrist?" Humes answered, "I think that most unlikely … The reason I believe it most unlikely that this missile could have inflicted either of these wounds [Connally's wrist wound or JFK's head wound] is that this missile is basically intact; its jacket appears to me to be intact, and I do not understand how it could possibly have left fragments in either of these locations [JFK's head or Connally's wrist]." Humes also said, " I think that extremely unlikely" that it was CE 399 that had lodged in Connally's thigh, which was the seventh of the seven wounds required of CE 399 by the Commission's theory. Humes' forensic consultant, Pierre Finck, MD, backed him up. Specter asked Pierre Finck, "[C]ould [399] have been the bullet which inflicted the wound on Governor Connally's right wrist?" "No," Finck replied, "for the reason that there are too many fragments described in that wrist," the problem being, as Finck put it, "there was practically no loss of this bullet." Specter first advances his single-bullet theory to the Commission members, telling Dulles that there was evidence that the bullet had been found on Connally's stretcher; as yet, there was no evidence of this, though. Subsequent evidence develops which will all but preclude the possibility that the bullet has come from John Connally's stretcher. Arlen Specter began his field investigation, leaving for Dallas this night, with a specific order from Warren to "clear up the confusion" over JFK's throat wound. (Inquest 61) The question of where the pristine bullet came from had arisen that day during Dr. Humes' testimony.
  
• 3/16/1964 Rankin sent a letter to Hoover saying that he wanted the FBI to "obtain a signed statement from each person known to have been in the...Depository Building...reflecting the following information:" - personal information, location at the time of the shooting, names of any companions nearby, and did the person "see Lee Harvey Oswald at that time [12:30]?" (National Archives). These statements became CE 1381; the witnesses were not asked whether they had seen Oswald after 11:55 or before the shooting.
  
• 3/16/1964 Melvin Eisenberg discussed the NAA process with FBI agent John Gallagher. He was interested in using the testing method on the clothes of Kennedy and Connally.
  
• 3/17/1964 Michael Paine testifies before the WC today (Liebeler, Redlich).
  
• 3/17/1964 Memo from Dulles to Rankin, discussing how the CIA could demonstrate to the WC that Oswald had not worked for them. (Whitewash IV 164)
  
• 3/17/1964 Hank Killam is found dead, his throat cut, amid the shattered glass of a department store window in Pensacola, Florida. Hank is husband of Wanda Joyce Killam, who has known Jack Ruby since shortly after he moved to Dallas in 1947. Two days earlier, Hank had told his brother: "I'm a dead man. I've run as far as I'm going to run." His death is ruled a "suicide." His brother, Earl, remarks: "Did you ever hear of a man committing suicide by jumping through a plate glass window."
  
• 3/17/1964 NSAM 288 from Bundy to Secretaries of State, Defense, Treasury, Atty General, Joint Chiefs Chairman, CIA Director, Budget Director, USIA Director, Administrator of Agency for International Development. "SUBJECT: Implementation of South Vietnam Programs. 1.The report of Secretary McNamara dated March 16, 1964 was considered and approved by the President in a meeting of the National Security Council on March 17. All agencies concerned are directed to proceed energetically with the execution of the recommendations of that report. 2.The President, in consultation with the Secretary of State and the Secretary of Defense, has designated the Assistant Secretary of State for Far Eastern Affairs to coordinate the execution of the recommendations in the report." This document was declassified 12/4/1987; parts of it were in the Pentagon Papers.
  
• 3/18/1964 Michael and Ruth Paine testify before the WC (Warren, Cooper, Ford, McCloy, Dulles).
  
• 3/18/1964 Thomas Mann, in a speech to US officials working in Latin America, made no reference to the Alliance for Progress or to the need for reform. Instead, he said that the US' main interests were economic growth, protection of US investments, non-intervention and anti-communism. He admitted that the US had to support existing military regimes. (Inevitable Revolutions p157)
  
• 3/18/1964 According to the Ft. Worth Star-Telegram on this date, Dallas D.A. Henry Wade's "big decision" during Jack Ruby's trial was NOT to call witnesses "who insisted they had seen Ruby and Oswald together at various times."
  
• 3/18/1964 J Edgar Hoover wrote the WC, "It is not felt that the increased sensitivity of neutron activation analysis would contribute substantially to the understanding of the origin of this hole and frayed area." (H 20 2) The Commission did as Hoover wished.
  
• 3/18/1964 Willens, Ball and Belin flew to Dallas to begin their field investigation. (Inquest)
  
• 3/18/1964 The FBI interviewed Carolyn Arnold again.
  
• 3/19/1964 Ruth Paine testifies before the WC again (Warren, Cooper, Boggs, Ford, McCloy, Dulles)
  
• 3/19/1964 A General Services Administration truck picks up the JFK bronze coffin and, loading it on a helicopter, drops in into the Atlantic ocean at a depth of 9000 feet. This information will not be revealed to the general public until May 29, 1999. Before this, the fate of the bronze coffin will remain a mystery. WASHINGTON (5/31/99 AP) -- A bronze casket used to transport President Kennedy's body from Dallas to Washington was dropped from a military plane into the ocean two years after he was killed, according to assassination documents. ``Apparently the casket is in 9,000 feet of water in the Atlantic Ocean,'' Kermit L. Hall, a member of the now-defunct Assassination Records Review Board, told The Associated Press in a telephone interview Friday night. Hall said that documents to be released Tuesday by the National Archives show that the casket was flown several miles off the Maryland-Delaware coast in early 1965 and dumped in an area where the military discards unstable and outdated weapons and ammunition. ``There's actually a map in the documents that pinpoints the coordinates where it was dropped,'' Hall said. The revelation -- on the eve of what would have been President Kennedy's 82nd birthday --that the casket was deep-sixed resolves a lingering mystery about its whereabouts. But it also fuels speculation among assassination researchers that it was discarded to hide foul play. What happened to the bronze casket has been a lingering question over the past three decades. Last year a document released by the archives showed that a General Services Administration truck picked up the bronze casket on March 19, 1964. The review panel asked the GSA where the casket was. The agency said in the summer of 1998 that it didn't know. The documents from GSA and the Justice and Defense departments being released describe the disposition in detail, Hall said. ``Essentially what was going on was an effort to make sure the casket didn't turn into a historic relic for the marketplace,'' he said. Kennedy was buried at Arlington National Cemetery in a mahogany coffin that had been purchased in Washington to replace the bronze one, which was missing a handle and had been damaged. Some had lobbied to have the discarded bronze casket destroyed to keep it from becoming an object of morbid curiosity. Earle Cabell, a then Texas congressman, wrote to Attorney General Nicholas Katzenbach in 1965 and recommended that ``in keeping with the best interest of the country,'' the casket be destroyed. Katzenbach said in an interview Friday that he doesn't recall details about the disposition of the casket. If anyone had asked him if the casket should be disposed of, ``I'd have said that's a good idea,'' Katzenbach said. Kennedy's caskets have long been a subject of controversy. And some assassination researchers see a dark motive. ``That coffin is evidence,'' David Lifton, who wrote a book about medical evidence in the November 1963 assassination, said Friday. ``You don't go drop evidence into the sea.'' In the 1970s, a Navy medical technician told congressional investigators that Kennedy's body arrived at Bethesda Naval Hospital in a body bag inside a gray metal shipping casket -- not a bronze one. Douglas Horne, who was the chief analyst for military records at congressionally created review board, speculated that the bronze casket was destroyed to end the two-coffin controversy. ``I think the way to get rid of the problem is you get rid of the casket. You throw it out of an airplane,'' said Horne. ``Then it's just a bunch of stories.''
  
• 3/19/1964 Pierre Salinger told LBJ that he was going to resign and run for the Senate. This move was a surprise to Johnson. (White House Diary p96)
  
• 3/19/1964 LBJ called Cartha DeLoach at 12:15pm. (Act of Treason)
  
• 3/19/1964 Letter from Hoover to Rankin. "Reference is made to your letter dated March 11, 1964 and subsequent conversation with Mr Burt W. Griffin of your staff, regarding the video tape furnished to this Bureau by Mr. Eddie Barker. In accordance with Mr. Griffin's request, the 16mm copy of the above video tape will be projected for members of your staff, at the Commission Office beginning at 9:00am on Saturday, March 21, 1964."
  
• 3/19/1964 Hubert/Griffin memo talked about the need to find out more about a man named "Davis" who was involved with Ruby selling jeeps to Castro. This was Thomas Eli Davis III.
  
• 3/19/1964 De Gaulle assassination attempt.
  
• 3/20/1964 Hoover wrote a memo expressing irritation when the WC wanted to have its ballistics tests submitted to an outside lab for "reexamination." He wrote, "It is obvious the Commission does not have confidence in our laboratory." (Reasonable Doubt 84)
  
• 3/20/1964 Ruby's defense counsel files a motion for a new trial.
  
• 3/20/1964 Cable from LBJ to Lodge: Johnson said that the focus for the present would be on strengthening South Vietnam, with attacks on the North put off for now. Also, "I think that nothing is more important than to stop neutralist talk wherever we can by whatever means we can."
  
• 3/20/1964 Richard Case Nagell writes the Warren Commission from the El Paso jail concerning his attempt to alert authorities about the JFK assassination. "Has the commission been advised that I informed the Federal Bureau of Investigation in September 1963 that an attempt might be made to assassinate President Kennedy? Was the commission advised that the day before Mr. Kennedy visited Dallas I initiated a request through jail authority to the FBI, asking them to contact the Secret Service Division in order to inform such agency of the same information, when it became apparent to me that the FBI believed my revelation to be mendacious?" (in National Archives; Rankin apparently never replied). Nagell's name does not appear either in the Warren Report or in the accompanying 26 volumes.
  
• 3/20/1964 Jane Wester, Doris Nelson and Darrell Tomlinson testified before the WC (Specter). Ruth Paine testified again (Warren, Cooper, Ford, McCloy). The WC took Parkland Hospital orderly, Darrell Tomlinson's testimony. That was a mere four days after CE-399 was introduced during Humes' testimony. Incredibly, Tomlinson, whose testimony was taken in Dallas, was queried extensively about where he found a bullet (which stretcher), but was never shown CE-399 or asked to identify it as the bullet he found the day Kennedy was assassinated. Having Tomlinson ID the bullet is the "proof" that would have established that the bullet's bone fides were in order. But that didn't happen. What did happen was that the day after Tomlinson testified, Robert Frazier delivered CE-399 to the WC.
  
• 3/20/1964 Joseph Ball and David Belin reconstructed Oswald's assumed movements in the TSBD. Howard Brennan assumed his position in front of the TSBD, and Ball noticed that Brennan had difficulty in even seeing a figure in the 6th floor window. (Inquest) Harold Norman, Junior Jarman and Bonnie Ray Williams were part of a WC experiment done in Dealey Plaza 3/20/1964. The men took up the same positions they had that day, while a man stood above them in the "sniper's nest," working the bolt of a rifle and dropping shells on the ground. The experiment was repeated for WC Commissioners 5/9/1964, 6/7/1964 and 9/6/1964, and all reported hearing the same sounds. (WR 71)
  
• 3/20/1964 FBI teletype sent to Houston, New Orleans, and San Antonio (in the National Archives): "President's Commission by letter 3/18/64 requested Bureau to conduct further inquiries concerning the mailing, the arrival, and the cashing of Oswald's check dated 9/23/63 from the Texas Unemployment Commission which was addressed to him at Post Office Box 30061, New Orleans, Louisiana. New Orleans and San Antonio conducted previous inquiry in this matter and have established that according to normal mail procedures, it would have been impossible for Oswald to have taken his check from his Post Office Box prior to 5am on the morning of September 25. We have determined that the check was included in the Winn-Dixie store deposit received at the bank September 26. All funds in this deposit were from the Winn-Dixie store receipts from 4pm 9/24 through 4pm 9/25. The store closes at 7pm. In essence, the Commission wants us to go further to see if Oswald could have cashed his check between the hours of 4 and 7pm on 9/24. We regard this as impossible because of our findings concerning the mailing procedures."
  
• 3/20/1964 THE STATE OF TEXAS vs. JACK RUBENSTEIN -- Defense counsel files a motion for a new trial.
  
• 3/20/1964 Assistant counsels to the Warren Commission Burt Griffin and Leon Hubert today write, in a memo to the Warren Commission members, that "the most promising links between Jack Ruby and the assassination of President Kennedy are established through underworld figures and anti-Castro Cubans, and extreme right-wing Americans." Two months from now, Griffin and Hubert will write another memo to the Commission, significantly titled "Adequacy of the Ruby Investigation" in which they will state: "We believe that a reasonable possibility exists that Ruby has maintained a close interest in Cuban affairs to the extent necessary to participate in gun sales or smuggling." Ruby talks about it himself while in jail, reportedly telling a friend, "They're going to find out about Cuba. They're going to find out about the guns, find out about New Orleans, find out about everything."
  
• 3/21/1964 Jean Hill receives a curt letter from the Warren Commission today, informing her that, since she has refused to keep her Washington interview/appointment, she will be interrogated instead at Parkland Memorial Hospital in Dallas at 2:30 P.M. on March 24th. Jean had decided to defy the Warren Commission's original subpoena at the urging of her boyfriend, J. B. Marshall. He tells her he is worried for her safety.
  
• 3/21/1964 The following testify before the WC today (Specter, Jenner, Redlich): Dr. Robert McClelland, Ruth Paine, Dr. William Kemp Clark, Ruth J. Standridge, Margaret Henchcliffe, R. Jimison
  
• 3/22/1964 Griffin and Hubert went to Dallas to investigate Ruby's actions.
  
• 3/23/1964 The following testified before the WC today (Specter, Liebeler, Jenner, Hubert, Griffin): Ilya Mamantov, George Bouhe, Dr Charles Gregory, Dr. George Shires, Dr. Robert Shaw, M.W. Stevenson, Ruth Paine, John Joe Howlett, Charles Batchelor
  
• 3/23 and 3/24/1964 the Wall Street Journal published articles by Louis M. Kohlmeier on the Johnson fortune and how it was made in the government-regulated communications industry. This series won a Pulitzer Prize and set off a debate on LBJ's finances.
  
• 3/23/1964 WC counsel went to the Paine house to recreate how Marina could have seen Hosty's license plate from the house. After Ruth Paine testifies that she recalls a paper-wrapped bundle of curtain rods in her garage, the space is searched again today. A bundle of curtains rods is found. Later, however, it is discovered that a bundle of curtain rods also found in the Paine garage has already been turned over to the Dallas Police by the Secret Service on March 15th.
  
• 3/23/1964 US joins 115 nations at Geneva for a UN conference on Trade and Development.
  
• 3/23/1964 Letter from Hoover to Rankin. "Reference is made to your letter dated March 18, 1964, concerning the reasons for the opinion that the holes in the clothing of President Kennedy were either 'entrance holes' or 'exit holes.' The hole in the back of the coat and the hole in the back of the shirt were in general, circular in shape and the ends of the torn threads around the holes were bent inward. These characteristics are typical of bullet entrance holes. The hole in the front of the shirt was a raggled slitlike hole and the ends of the torn threads around the hole were bent outward. These characteristics are typical of an exit hole for a projectile. A small elongated nick was present in the left side of the knot of the tie. This nick may have been caused by the projectile after it passed through the front of the shirt. No additional observations relative to the nick could be made due to the characteristics of the nick." (Post Mortem 600)
  
• 3/24/1964 The Joint Chiefs of Staff propose OPERATION SQUARE DANCE, which calls for the total destruction of Cuba's sugar crop. The predicted result will be not only the collapse of the Castro regime, but untold hardship on the general Cuban population. LBJ refuses to back the proposal.
  
• 3/24/1964 Memo (CD 674) from Richard Helms to the WC: "On 22 and 23 November [1963] three cabled reports were received from [deleted] in Mexico City relative to photographs of an unidentified man who visited the Cuban and Soviet Embassies in that city during October and November 1963."
  
• 3/24/1964 Many witnesses appeared before the WC today: Lt. Rio Pierce, Howard Brennan, Bonnie Ray Williams, Raymond Krystinik, O.A. Jones, Dr. Don Tell Curtis, Dr. Ronald Jones, L.C. Graves, Everett Glover, Dr Charles Baxter, Harold Norman, James Jarman, Roy Truly, Dr Jackie Hunt, Frank M. Martin, Diana Bowron, Samuel Ballen, Jean Hill, Barnard Clardy, Louis D. Miller, Dr Paul Peters, L.D. Montgomery, John Raymond Hall, Elena Hall, Cecil Talbert, Patrick Dean, James Putnam, Woodrow Wiggins
  
• 3/24/1964 Parkland doctor Charles Baxter testified for the WC. Specter asked him to assume the factors of the single-bullet theory.
  
• 3/24/1964 Jean Hill is interrogated at Parkland Memorial Hospital in Dallas by Arlen Specter, an assistant counsel for the Warren Commission. Hill says that Specter accuses her of engaging in a "shabby extramarital affair" with J.B. Marshall, thirsting for publicity and notoriety, refusing to cooperate with federal authorities and proving herself "totally unreliable" as a witness. She is told that, once the official interrogation begins, she is to give "proper answers" based on fact, not on her overactive imagination or "what some talkative cop told you while you were in bed together." Jean later describes her published testimony as a "total travesty" -- heavily edited, completely distorted and shamelessly fabricated.
  
• 3/24/1964 Bonnie Ray Williams testifies today that he has been misquoted in written accounts attributed to him by the FBI. The FBI report says Williams used the stairs to go from the sixth floor of the TSBD to the fifth floor. Williams says he used the elevator. The FBI report says that Williams stayed only about three minutes on the sixth floor in order to eat his lunch. Williams says he told the FBI it could have taken as long as fifteen minutes to eat his lunch. He says he thinks he finished eating around 12:20 PM. (Ten minutes before the motorcade passed the TSBD) The FBI report says that Williams and his two companions (Hank Norman and Junior Jarman) on the fifth floor could have seen anyone coming down the stairs from the sixth floor of the TSBD after the shots were fired. Williams says "I could not possibly have told him that, because you cannot see anything coming down from that position...An elephant could walk by there, and you could not see him."
  
• 3/24/1964 Harold Norman also testifying on this date, says that he has been misquoted in the FBI report attributed to him. The FBI report states that Norman heard a shot and stuck his head from the fifth floor window of the TSBD and looked toward the roof of the building. Norman says "I don't recall telling him that...I don't remember ever putting my head out the window." The FBI report states that Norman said he heard two more shots after pulling his head inside the window. When asked if he remembers making that statement to the FBI, Norman replies: "No, sir; I don't."
  
• 3/24/1964 A letter written by T.G. Womack, Jr., a Hammond, Louisiana, insurance agent, is sent to Clay L. Shaw, 1313 Dauphine Street, New Orleans, Louisiana. The letter is in reference to Marquette no. 105628, and "Marquette Casualty Company" is the imprint on the bottom of the Womack Insurance Agency letterhead "Dear Clay: Your dad was in my office this morning and returned the above policy covering liability on the 1962 Rambler Station Wagon. I agreed to hold up cancellation of this policy until I had word from you that you had arranged for coverage with your New Orleans agent. Just for your records the automobile is described as being a 1962 Rambler Ambassador M#H171787 (4-Dr. Sta. Wagon)." A Rambler station wagon was seen near the TSBD on the day of the assassination. Walt Brown suggests that "Clay Shaw' was the dad. He purchased the car in question and then insured it through an out-of-town agency, and allowed his "son," a person possibly known to us, or, equally possible, someone not known to us. But it was his vehicle and it was insured in his name. When, by March 24, 1964, it had served its purpose, most likely on the 22nd of November the previous year, "Shaw" himself went to the Womack Agency and informed them he was canceling the policy on his "son's" automobile -- especially since he would not have wanted it tied to him on the odd chance that someone would believe Roger Craig, Price, or anyone else who might have come forward and provided reports about a suspicious Rambler at the time -- and place -- of the assassination."
  
• 3/25/1964 Congress brought an end to the Bobby Baker hearings.
  
• 3/25/1964 Assistant US Attorney Lester R. Irvin of Hammond, Indiana, asked the FBI to determine if "Louie Louie" violated US Code Section 1465, Title 18 (interstate transporting of obscenity).
  
• 3/25/1964 Steven F. Wilson, vice president of the Southwest division of Allyn & Bacon, a publishing company with offices in the Texas School Book Depository Building, tells FBI agents that the shots sounded as if they came from the "west end of the building," the direction of the Grassy Knoll. He then says they "did not sound like they came from above my head." Frequent and annoying visits from the FBI will fail to persuade Wilson to alter his statement. Despite the fact that he tells the FBI he has no objection to testifying before the Warren Commission, he is never called.
  
• 3/25/1964 Letter from SS chief James Rowley to the WC: "Reference is made to your letter of March 18, 1964, requesting certain documents for the examination of the Commission. The video tape and transcript of November 22, 1963, of the television interview of Doctor Malcolm Perry mentioned in your letter has not been located. After a review of the material and information available at the Dallas television and radio news stations, and the records of the NBC, ABC and CBS networks in New York City, no video tape or transcript could be found of a television interview with Doctor Malcolm Perry. CBS located in its New York office a television news clip on video tape of broadcast by Walter Cronkite on November 22, 1963, in which he comments upon an interview with Doctor Perry by newsmen in Dallas. This, however, was not a television interview of the doctor. They also located a news clip covering an interview with Doctor Shaw at Parkland Hospital, in which Doctor Shaw comments upon the wounds received by Governor Connally, but in which no mention was made of the President's wounds." (CD 678)(Citizen's Dissent 79)
  
• 3/25/1964 Gene Coleman Akin and Charles Carrico, Parkland doctors, testified for the WC about JFK's wounds; Arlen Specter asked them to assume the factors of the single-bullet theory.
  
• 3/25/1964 Sen. Fulbright spoke of the need for the US to maintain its commitments in South Vietnam, but warned against committing US troops. He also recommends that US push for relaxation of Cold War tensions and normalize relations with Cuba.
  
• 3/25/1964 De Gaulle assassination attempt.
  
• 3/26/1964 WC letter to FBI: the Commission asked the FBI for replies to some 30 questions, including: "When and for what reason were pages 279 through 283 of the report of SA Gemberling of February 11, 1964, prepared?" This had to do with the discrepancies between the original 12/23/1963 FBI account of Oswald's address book and the entries about Hosty that had been left out. According to Davis in The Kennedys': Rankin "requests the FBI respond to [written interrogatories, fifty-two in all]."
  
• 3/26/1964 FBI memo to the WC: Jack Ruby associate "McWillie solidified his syndicate connections through his association in Havana, Cuba with Santos Trafficante;...Meyer and Jake Lansky; Dino Cellini and others who were members of or associates of 'the syndicate.'"
  
• 3/26/1964 The contract stipulation that William Manchester should write the true story of the assassination was signed with the Kennedy family. When Jacqueline heard that another author, Jim Bishop, was working on a book to be entitled "The Day Kennedy Was Shot," she went so far as to write a personal letter to him asking him to halt the project. She explained that in doing so she was motivated by a desire to "protect President Kennedy and the truth." In a subsequent letter she informed Mr. Bishop dryly that "none of the people connected with Nov, 22 will speak to anyone but Mr. Manchester -- that is my wish and it is theirs also."
  
• 3/26/1964 McNamara made a speech at an awards dinner in D.C.; he acknowledged that things were worsening in Vietnam, but argued that the US had to stick it out to stop world-wide communism and prevent a collapse of faith in the US. He warned that accepting neutralization in Vietnam "would in reality be an interim device to permit Communist consolidation and eventual take-over." He also said that "there can be no such thing as a purely military' solution to the war in South Viet-Nam. The road ahead in Viet-Nam is going to be long, difficult and frustrating...it has not been

[Tracy Riddle]

• 4/1964 Hearings on Bobby Baker are permanently discontinued. (Rowe, Bobby Baker Story)
  
• 4/1964 Tippit murder witness Helen Markham's son is taken back into custody for parole violation and arrested for alleged involvement in two burglaries.
  
• 4/1964 Hoover was quoted in the press as having testified that "Communist influence does exist in the civil rights movement." Dr. King reacted sharply: "It is very unfortunate that Mr. J. Edgar Hoover, in his claims of alleged Communist infiltration in the civil rights movement, has allowed himself to aid and abet the salacious claims of Southern racists and the extreme right-wing elements. We challenge all who raise the "red" issue, whether they be newspaper columnists or the head of the FBI himself-to come forward and provide real evidence which contradicts this stand of the SCLC. We are confident that this cannot be done." Going further, King repeated the charge of FBI inaction in the South that had provoked the anti-King campaign: "It is difficult to accept the word of the FBI on Communist infiltration in the civil rights movement, when they have been so completely ineffectual in resolving the continued mayhem and brutality inflicted upon the Negro in the deep south."
  
• 4/1964 The FBI told Dean Andrews they could find no Bertrand in New Orleans, and he told them he made the whole story up. Andrews was given a formal subpoena from the WC to appear; they "commanded" him to bring "all records, papers, notes and other documents in your possession or under your control pertaining to any possible representation of Lee Harvey Oswald by you during the period April 1, 1963, through December 31, 1963; including any such writings indicating that Oswald called in your office, either alone or in the company of others, or any such writings indicating any attempt which may have been made by any person including one Clay Bertrand, to retain your services on behalf of Lee Harvey Oswald..."
  
• 4/1964 The administration's Operation Farmhand (permitting US pilots to fly combat missions in Vietnam) was revealed when an Air Force captain complained of the duplicity in letters to his wife. She made the letters public via Dirksen and Charles Halleck after her husband died in a crash.
  
• Spring 1964 Jackie Kennedy sits down for lengthy taped interviews with Arthur Schlesinger Jr. They were to be kept secret until 50 years after her death, but Caroline released them in 2011.
  
• 4/1/1964 CIA report on the Alliance for Progress; it was sent to Mac Bundy 4/17. It explained that political movements in Latin America were making unrealistic promises to people: "In part because of the Latin American paternalistic tradition, the public blames governments for most evils and failures, while both governments and peoples look abroad for convenient scapegoats." The CIA also worried that Cuban-influenced statist economies were becoming popular in the region.
  
• 4/1/1964 LBJ calls Sen. Russell, and Hale Boggs calls LBJ. (Act of Treason)
  
• 4/1/1964 FBI firearms expert Cortlandt Cunningham again appears before the WC.
  
• 4/1/1964 De Gaulle assassination attempt.
  
• 4/1/1964 Dallas Sheriff constable Seymour Weitzman gave a deposition to the Commission staff in Dallas on April 1, 1964 (7H105ï·“9). Under questioning, he described "three distinct shots," with the second and third seeming almost simultaneous. He heard some one say the shots "come from the wall" west of the Depository and "I immediately scaled that wall." He and the police and "Secret Service as well" noticed "numerous kinds of foot prints that did not make sense because they were going in different directions." This testimony seems to have been ignored. He also turned a piece of the President's skull over to the Secret Service. He got it after being told by a railroad employee that "he thought he saw somebody throw something through a bush." Then he went to the sixth floor where he worked with Boone on the search. With Weitzman on the floor looking under the flats of boxes and Boone looking over the top, they found the rifle, "I would say simultaneously . . . It was covered with boxes. It was well protected . . . I would say eight or nine of us stumbled over that gun a couple of times . . . We made a man-tight barricade until the crime lab came up . . ." (7H106). When shown three unidentified photographs that seem to be those the police took, Weitzman said of the one with the hidden rifle, "it was more hidden than there" (7H108). If it had not been so securely hidden, he said, "we couldn't help but see it" from the stairway (Ibid).
  
• 4//1964 CIA Document 632-796 reports that the French intelligence service wants help in locating one Jean Souetre, a French OAS terrorist considered a threat to the safety of French President Charles de Gaulle. The document further asserts that Souetre was in Fort Worth, Texas on the morning of November 22, 1963. Souetre was also in Dallas during the afternoon of the assassination where he was picked up by U.S. authorities and immediately expelled from the United States. It further states that Souetre also uses the names Michel Roux and Michel Mertz. The document also states that the FBI has told the CIA that it has nothing in its files on the subject.
  
• 4/2/1964 In a meeting with his security advisers, LBJ agrees to increase military and economic aid to South Vietnam.
  
• 4/2/1964 Dealey Plaza witness Lee Bowers testifies before the WC.
  
• 4/3/1964 Hoover memo to Sullivan: "Their [the WC's] so-called compliments of the Bureau's work are empty and have no sincerity...The questions are those of a cross-examination of the FBI..." (Who Was Jack Ruby? p87)
  
• 4/3/1964 WC counsel Burt Griffin memo raised questions the Commission would not address: "Is there any significance in the fact that Helen Markham…who witnessed the killing of Officer Tippit by Lee Harvey Oswald, has known Jack Ruby for the past two years or more? Ruby is a customer at the Eat Well Café where Miss Markham is employed as a waitress…Does the connection between Markham and Ruby suggest any reason for Oswald's being at the corner of 10th and Patton when he shot Tippit? Does Miss Markham's explanation of why she was at 10th and Patton give any clue as to why Oswald might also have been there?" (McBride, Into the Nightmare)
  
• 4/3/1964 FBI questioned-documents expert James Cadigan appears before the WC.
  
• 4/3/1964 Malcolm X speaks at a CORE-sponsored meeting on "The Negro Revolt-What Comes Next?" In his speech "The Ballot or Bullet," Malcolm warns of a growing black nationalism that will no longer tolerate patronizing white political action.
  
• 4/3/1964 DPD Detective John P. Adamcik testifies for the WC about his search of the Paine home and his questioning of Oswald.
  
• 4/3/1964 FBI document specialist James Cadigan testified before the WC today. Mr. Eisenberg. Do you know why Exhibit No. 820 was not reprocessed or desilvered? Mr. Cadigan. No, this is a latent fingerprint matter. [WCH7, 418] But as recently released WC transcripts have shown, this is not at all what Mr. Cadigan said in answer to Eisenberg's question. Here is his real answer: Mr. Eisenberg: Do you know why 820 was not reprocessed or desilvered? Mr. Cadigan: I could only speculate. Mr. Eisenberg: Yes? Mr. Cadigan: It may be that there was a very large volume of evidence being examined at the time. Time was of the essence, and the material, I believe, was returned to the Dallas Police within two or three days, and it was merely in my opinion a question of time. We have a very large volume of evidence. There was insufficient time to deliver it. And I think in many instances where latent fingerprints are developed they do not deliver it.
  
• 4/4/1964 At a press conference, Johnson was asked about reports that he had driven reporters around his ranch at speeds of up to 90 mph, creating "concern that you are putting yourself in danger." LBJ denied ever having driven past 70 mph.
  
• 4/4/1964 Panama resumed diplomatic relations with the US.
  
• 4/4/1964 Memo to Kirk Douglas about the universally favorable reaction in Europe, especially in France, to the film Seven Days in May.
  
• 4/4/1964 WC assistant counsel Leon D. Hubert wrote an April 4, 1964 memo to Howard P. Willens, another assistant counsel who, according to the WCR, "acted as liason between the Commission and the Department of Justice. The memo was cc'd to chief counsel J. Lee Rankin. In his memo, Hubert wrote: "1. At the staff meeting on Friday, I raised objections to 'editing' of the transcripts of depositions; but I did not make one objection which I thought of later and what perhaps is stronger than any else I made." Later in the memo, Hubert added: "4. With regard to unsigned depositions, the foregoing is also applicable. A waiver of signature certainly does not include permission to alter ['alter' is crossed out and 'change' handwritten in] meaning...."
  
• 4/5/1964 Gen. Douglas MacArthur dies at age 84.
  
• 4/5/1964 The Best Man, a film about two rivals for the presidency blackmailing each other to try to win their party's nomination, makes its premiere. Based on a Gore Vidal play, it stars Henry Fonda and Cliff Robertson.
  
• 4/5/1964 Jim Lehrer of the Dallas Times Herald reported that an unnamed WC investigator (Burt Griffin) had been quietly removed from the Dallas phase of the investigation after arguing with a witness.
  
• 4/6/1964 Time magazine reported on Johnson's driving spree at the ranch with reporters; he drank beer from a paper cup as he drove recklessly across Texas roads at 90mph. LBJ impressed them with his knowledge of cattle, and reporter Marianne Means, who was present, cooed, "Mr. President, you're fun." This provoked a mini-crisis for Johnson, who was criticized for risking his life and setting a bad moral example. The country also has no Vice-President in place yet.
  
• 4/6/1964 Letter from Hoover to Rankin stated, "A file concerning Oswald was opened at the time newspapers reported his defection to Russia in 1959, for the purpose of correlating information inasmuch as he was considered a possible security risk in the event he returned to this country." (CE 833, H 17 787)
  
• 4/6/1964 CE 833 15 Letter from Hoover to WC: "Pages 279 through 283 of the report of SA Gemberling dated February 11, 1964, were prepared at the time such report was being typed by the Dallas Office during a few-day period immediately preceding submission of such report to FBI headquarters by the Dallas Office. In this connection, your attention is also directed to this Bureau's letter to the Commission dated February 27, 1964, enclosing an affidavit executed by SA Robert P. Gemberling explaining in detail his handling and reporting of data in Lee Harvey Oswald's address book. You will note that in his affidavit, SA Gemberling explains why certain data in Oswald's address book was reported in his December 23, 1963, report, whereas the remaining data ... was reported in SA Gemberling's February 11, 1964, report." Gemberling's affidavit was not among the published Exhibits.
  
• 4/6/1964 CE 2718 FBI reply to a series of WC questions: "8.QUESTION: The report of SA Hosty of September 10, 1963 contains the following item: 'On April 21 1963 Dallas confidential informant T-2 advised that Lee H. Oswald of Dallas, Texas, was in contact with the Fair Play for Cuba Committee in New York City at which time he advised that he passed out pamphlets for the [FPCC]. According to T-2, Oswald had a placard around his neck reading, "Hands off Cuba Viva Fidel."' Is this information correct as of the date indicated, and does it describe activities which occured before Oswald's move to New Orleans? ANSWER: Information from our informant, furnished to us on April 21, 1963, was based upon Oswald's own statement contained in an undated letter to the [FPCC] headquarters in New York City. A copy of this letter is included as Exhibit 61 in our Supplemental Report...Our informant did not know Oswald personally and could furnish no further information. Our investigation had not disclosed such activity on Oswald's part prior to this type of activity in New Orleans." The FBI also stated that it was determined 11/2/1959 that "no derogatory information was contained in the USMC files concerning Oswald" and that "ONI advised that no action against him was contemplated in this matter." (Question 1)
  
• 4/7/1964 Letter of Gerald Ford concerning expediting the FBI investigation. 1976 the National Archives reported that this document was missing from their files.
  
• 4/7/1964 Victoria Elizabeth Adams testifies for the WC. Depository employee William Shelley testifies to the Warren Commission that he saw Oswald when he (Shelley) "came down to eat lunch about ten to twelve." TSBD employee Joe Molina, who was in the DPD subversive files, testified today.
  
• 4/7/1964 Sergeant W. E. Barnes of the Dallas police laboratory -- the man who photographed the J.D. Tippit murder scene on Nov. 22, 1963 -- gives testimony to the Warren Commission regarding a dashboard clipboard in Tippit's patrol car which is clearly visible in one of the photographs. He tells the Commission that, as far as he knows, no one ever bothered to read whatever notes may have been written on Tippit's clipboard the day he was killed. There might have been, as some researchers have surmised, notations on that clipboard which might have cast light on Tippit's activities before he was shot -- notations which might have strengthened the basis for the Commission's speculations, or shown them to be mistaken.
  
• 4/7/1964 Johnson announces that US is willing to participate in "unconditional" talks with Hanoi.
  
• 4/7/1964 LBJ speaks with Hale Boggs three times today. (Act of Treason)
  
• 4/7/1964 LBJ discontinues all sabotage and raids against Cuba. One CIA officer who is present at the Special Group meeting remembers LBJ saying: "Enough is enough."
  
• 4/8/1964 Massive state funeral for Douglas MacArthur. RFK told Lady Bird Johnson, "We seem always to be meeting at funerals." (White House Diary)
  
• 4/8/1964 Railroad unions struck the Illinois Central line. The railroads had demanded new contracts in 1959, to eliminate redundant and unnecessary workers. Walter Heller urged LBJ to intervene to avoid economic catastrophe. He got the union and railroad negotiators to come to the White House, gave them the "Johnson treatment," and they agreed to a 15-day delay.
  
• 4/8/1964 Assistant Special Agent In Charge (ASAIC) Floyd M. Boring, also not on the Texas trip, dealt primarily with the November 18, 1963 Tampa, Florida trip in his report (dated April 8, 1964, the first report to Rowley), while also mentioning the July 2, 1963 Italy trip, alleging that President Kennedy made the request for agents to stay off the car for both stops. Boring made the Florida trip in place of Mr. Behn.
  
• 4/8/1964 FBI agent James Bookout is deposed by the WC.
  
• 4/8/1964 Eddie Piper testifies in an appearance before the Warren Commission that he saw and spoke to Oswald "just at twelve o'clock, down on the first floor" of the TSBD. Charles Givens testifies before the WC today. Jack Dougherty, a TSBD employee, testifies today before the WC that he has been misquoted in the FBI report attributed to him. The FBI report states that Dougherty says the shot sounded like it came from the floor above him. When asked if that is what he told the FBI, Dougherty replies, "No." (Meagher)
  
• 4/8/1964 Three Warren Commission attorneys travel to Mexico City, where they will spend four days. They meet with the U.S. Embassy's CIA and FBI staff, and retrace LHO's movements. They interview none of the witnesses or possible suspects. In their memo, summing up the trip, staffers write, "We did not want any appointments made at this time ... We wanted to leave the entire problem open."
  
• 4/9/1964 LBJ makes a phone call to Sen. Russell. (Act of Treason)
  
• 4/9/1964 THE STATE OF TEXAS vs. JACK RUBENSTEIN -- Defense counsel files first amended motion for a new trial. Defense also files a motion for an extension of time to file a second amended motion for a new trial. Judge Brown overrules motion
  
• 4/9/1964 Rome Daily reports on Mark Lane's recent speeches in Italy on the assassination.
  
• 4/9/1964 The Neshoba (Miss.) Democrat warned Northern civil rights activists, "Outsiders who come in here and try to stir up trouble should be dealt with in a manner they won't forget."
  
• 4/10/1964 John Hart Ely, a staff attorney for the Warren Commission, was responsible for gathering biographical information on Marguerite and Lee Oswald for Warren Commission counselors Albert Jenner and Wesley J. Liebeler, who were in charge of the area of Oswald's background. Ely forwarded Palmer McBride and William Wulf's FBI interviews to Senior Counselor Jenner and Junior Counselor Liebeler on March 30, 1964. From the FBI interview of McBride, Liebeler would have known of Oswald's employment at Pfisterer's in 1957 and 1958. From Oswald's Marine records he knew Oswald was supposed to have been in Japan at the same time, at the air base in Atsugi where Oswald was a radar operator. Oswald in New Orleans and Japan at the same time for nearly a year posed a serious problem. It could not be explained, so it had to be neutralized. On April 10, 1964, Albert Jenner wrote a memorandum to J. Lee Rankin, General Counsel for the Warren Commission. He said, "our depositions and examination of records and other data disclose there are details in Mr. Ely's memoranda which will require material alteration and, in some cases, omission." When you read the *Warren Report,* you can now understand why they are careful to state that Oswald worked at J. R Michels in 1956 and then at Pfisterer's for "several months thereafter," without giving any specific dates. The FBI would produce fake W-2 forms that have numbers actually dating to January 1964 for Oswald's employers in the 1950s.
  
• 4/10/1964 Assistant to the Special Agent in Charge (ATSAIC) Emory P. Roberts (on the Florida and Texas trips), the commander of the Secret Service follow-up car: The late Mr. Roberts dealt exclusively with the November 18, 1963 Tampa, Florida trip in his report (dated April 10, 1964, number 2): Boring was Roberts' sole source, via radio transmission from the limousine ahead of his follow-up vehicle, for JFK's alleged request that agents stay off the car.
  
• 4/11/1964 Special Agent (SA) John David "Jack" Ready (on the Texas trip): Ready's very brief report (dated April 11, 1964, number 3) deals exclusively with the November 18, 1963 Tampa, Florida trip. However, Mr. Ready was not on this specific trip: Mr. Boring was, once again, his source for JFK's alleged request that agents stay off the cars. SA Clinton J. "Clint" Hill (on the Texas trip): Hill also deals with the November 18, 1963 Tampa, Florida trip and Boring second-hand in his (strangely un-dated and, presumably, the last) report: Mr. Hill was not on this trip, either. Behn's, Boring's, and Hill's reports are not even on any Secret Service or Treasury Dept. stationary, just blank sheets of paper. In fact, as noted above, Hill's report is undated, a bizarre error to make in an official government report written by request of the head of the Secret Service. All are supposedly evidence of JFK expressing his desire to keep Secret Service agents off the limousine, particularly in Tampa, Florida on November 18, 1963. Still, thanks to the Secret Service reports above (and, in large measure, to Agent Boring himself), three massive best-sellers still in printthe Warren Report, Manchester's The Death of a President, and Bishop's The Day Kennedy Was Shothave created the myth that JFK was difficult to protect and had ordered the agents off his car and the like, a dangerous myth that endures to this day in classrooms and in the media, thus doing great damage to the true historical record. The House Select Committee on Assassinations (HSCA) Final Report continued the Secret Service myth of "blaming the victim" in the late 1970s in this fashion: "… [JFK] almost recklessly resisted the protective measures the Secret Service urged him to adopt … He [allegedly] told the Special Agent in Charge of the White House Detail [Behn] that he did not want agents to ride on the rear of his car." Also, the Committee wrote, "He scoffed at many of the measures designed to protect him …." Finally, in the coup de grace, the Report states: "Had the agents assigned to the motorcade been alert to the possibility of sniper fire [?], they possibly could have convinced the President to allow them to maintain protective positions on the rear bumper of the Presidential limousine ... the Committee recognized, however, that President Kennedy consistently rejected the Secret Service's suggestions that he permit agents to ride on the rear bumper of the Presidential limousine." (Vincent Palamara)
  
• 4/12/1964 Mrs. Wilma Tice, who testified she saw Jack Ruby at Parkland Hospital, receives a call from a man claiming to be a newspaper reporter. He asks her about the Parkland encounter with Ruby, then advises her not to talk about the incident.
  
• 4/13/1964 THE STATE OF TEXAS vs. JACK RUBENSTEIN -- Defense counsel files a supplemental motion for an extension of time to file second amended motion for a new trial. Judge Brown again overrules the motion.
  
• 4/13/1964 Robert F. Kennedy interviewed by John Bartlow Martin. RFK told him that Hoover was 'rather a psycho'...the FBI was 'a very dangerous organization...and I think he's...become senile and rather frightening.'" (RFK and His Times p 279; Richard Powers, Secrecy and Power p397) Later in the year he told Anthony Lewis that "I think [Hoover] he's dangerous."
  
• 4/14/1964 The Journal American runs a column by Dorothy Kilgallen which opens up many embarrassing questions for the Dallas Police concerning the JFK assassination.
  
• 4/14/1964 King Hussein of Jordan came to Washington to meet with LBJ.
  
• 4/14/1964 The autopsy doctors and government ballistics experts view the Zapruder film.
  
• 4/14/1964 Waggoner Carr meets with LBJ at the White House. (Act of Treason)
  
• 4/16/1964 Letter from Hoover to Rankin. "Reference is made to your letter dated 4/9/1964, covering transmittal to the FBI Laboratory of Governor John Connally's coat, shirt, trousers and tie and requesting an examination of these items. The results of the examinations are set forth below. For your information the coat has been designated C311, the trousers C312, the shirt C313 and the tie C314. Nothing was found to indicate which holes were entrances and which were exits. The coat, shirt and trousers were cleaned prior to their receipt in the Laboratory, which might account for the fact that no foreign deposits of metal or other substances were found on the cloth surrounding the holes. Further, no characteristic position of the fibers of the cloth around the holes, which is one of the factors considered in determining whether a hole is an entrance or an exit hole, was found. The sizes of the holes in the clothing do not necessarily aid in this determination since a hole can be enlarged if a bullet strikes at an angle, sideways or partially sideways, or if it passes through a fold in the cloth. Also, if a bullet is irregularly mutilated, an entrance hole could be larger than an exit hole. It was not possible from an examination of the clothing to determine whether or not all of the holes were made by the same projectile or projectile fragments." (Post Mortem 605)
  
• 4/16/1964 Griffin memo to Slawson: RE: Interview with Dr. Burton C. Einspruch, Dallas, Texas: "Secret Service Agent William Patterson and I spoke with Dr. Einspruch at Parkland Hospital. Dr. Einspruch, a psychiatrist, stated that he has treated Miss Odio since approximately April 1963 and that he saw her on the average of once a week from the beginning of that period until the President was assassinated. Dr. Einspruch described Miss Odio as coming from a very high social position in Cuba. He stated that she had been educated for 5 years in Philadelphia, that she had written some stories which had been published in Latin American journals, and that she composes poetry. He described her as a beautiful brilliant, well-spoken, charming woman. Dr. Einspruch confirmed the stories Mrs. Connell had given us concerning the anti-Castro activities of Miss Odio's Father. He stated that Miss Odio's father had organized an anti-Castro group while he was in prison in Cuba. Dr. Einspruch further stated that Miss Odio has two brothers, two sisters and four children with her in Dallas. She also has a brother, Cesare Odio in Miami. Miss Odio's ex-husband, Guillermo Hemera, is believed to be living in Ponce, Puerto Rico. In describing Miss Odio's relationships with Dallas Cubans, Dr. Einspruch stated that she was never really part of the Cuban community but that her real place was at the very top of the social ladder among American Dallas socialites. He stated that her social position in Dallas results from having exploited her father's business contacts in the United States. He confirmed Mrs. Connell's statement that Miss Odio had worked for a while at Niemann-Marcus. In describing Miss Odio's personality, Dr. Einspruch stated she is given to exaggeration but that all the basic facts which she provides are true. He stated that her tendency to exaggerate is an emotional type, characteristic of many Latin-American people, being one of degree rather than basic fact. He stated that Miss Odio is friendly with two Cuban psychiatrists. He said that, in general, Cuban activities in Dallas center around the church, but he did not describe the extent of Miss Odio's participation. Dr. Einspruch stated that he had great faith in Miss Odio's story of having met Lee Harvey Oswald. He stated that, in the course of psychotherapy, Miss Odio told him that she had seen Oswald at more than one anti-Castro Cuban meeting. One of these meetings was apparently at her house, he believed, and Miss Odio's sister also saw Oswald at the house. Dr. Einspruch says that Miss Odio reported to him that Oswald made inflammatory comments about Cuba. The term "inflammatory" is Dr. Einspruch's and he could not clearly indicate what it was that Oswald had said. In fact, I got the impression these comments were pro-Castro."
  
• 4/16/1964 Specter memo on the remaining work in his area of the investigation; it included "Obtain further medical evidence" and "Photographs and X-rays of the autopsy should be examined..."
  
• 4/16/1964 SS agent in charge of the White House Detail Gerald A. "Jerry" Behn report (dated April 16, 1964, the fourth report to Rowley) stated unequivocally that JFK "told me that he did not want agents riding on the back of his car." "As late as November 18 [1963] … he [JFK] told ASAIC Boring the same thing."
  
• 4/17/1964 LBJ met with the American Society of Newspaper Editors at the White House.
  
• 4/17/1964 Time magazine quoted an anonymous railroad president as saying that LBJ "was practically on his knees...really demeaned himself with his begging and pleading" of the union leaders to postpone a strike.
  
• 4/17/1964 A declassified letter from Lewis F. Powell (president of the American Bar Association and future Supreme Court justice) to Rankin revealed that the former inquired: "There ought to be some way for the bar to discipline people like [Mark] Lane, as he is certainly bringing serious discredit to the legal processes of this country." (They've Killed the President 73; Plausible Denial 24)
  
• 4/17/1964 Letter from Hoover to Rankin: "Carlos Prio Socarras and a number of others including McKeown, was involved in a conspiracy to ship arms, munitions, and other war materials to Fidel Castro to assist him in his efforts to overthrow the Batista regime..." (Coincidence or Conspiracy 513)
  
• 4/18/1964 LBJ orders study to assess the need for a military draft.
  
• 4/18/1964 10:42 AM Johnson makes a phone call to Sen. Russell. (Act of Treason)
  
• 4/19/1964 As the railroad negotiators continued to struggle over an agreement to prevent a strike, LBJ continually pushed both sides to work out their differences.
  
• 4/20/1964 The Warren Commission's J. Lee Rankin, Howard Willens and Norman Redlich send a letter to Hoover asking him point-blank if the FBI has supplied all available information regarding the possibility of Oswald being linked to any foreign or domestic criminal group. (H 17 857)
  
• 4/20/1964 An affidavit from Dallas police detective V.J. "Jackie" Brian about his and Lt. Revill's encounter with FBI agent Hosty in the police basement. He recalled that Hosty said the FBI had known that Oswald was a communist and that he worked at the TSBD. But Brian said he missed parts of their conversation because of "excitement and commotion" in the basement.
  
• 4/21/1964 LBJ tells an group of out-of-town editors and reporters that the WC had no particular deadline for its final report. But privately the White House had begun to pressure Warren to wind up everything by June 1. (Kantor, Who Was Jack Ruby?)
  
• 4/21/1964 Memo from J Edgar Hoover to Rankin says that Life magazine supplied the authorities with 169 frames of the Zapruder film (though only 164 were published by the WC.). (Photographic Whitewash)
  
• 4/21/1964 Dr. Joseph R. Dolce and Dr. Frederick W. Light Jr, associated with the Biophysics Division at Edgewood Arsenal in Maryland, along with Dr. Alfred G. Olivier (a veterinarian and chief of the division) appeared at a Warren Commission conference, along with Parkland doctors Shaw and Gregory, several FBI agents, Rankin, McCloy, Norman Redlich, Specter, Belin and Eisenberg. (Eisenberg memo 4/22/1964; McKnight, Breach of Trust) They viewed the Z-film. Dolce believed that Connally was hit by two separate bullets, and that CE399 was too pristine to have broken bones. Olivier withheld his view until he could make some tests on animal tissue and bone with the Carcano rifle.
  
• 4/21/1964 The Parkland doctors view the Zapruder film. During his second Commission interview on 4/21/64, Dr. Shaw said, "I feel that there would be some difficulty in explaining all of the wounds [both Kennedy and Connally had sustained] being inflicted by bullet Exhibit 399 without causing more in the way of loss of substance to the bullet or deformation of the bullet." Appearing with Dr. Shaw, and next to be questioned before the Commission, Dr. Gregory was treated to Specter's famous begged question about the throat wound that asked him to assume one bullet had done all the damage. Despite Specter's clear signals, Gregory, who, like Shaw, had also seen the additional evidence, remained skeptical. He answered, "I am not persuaded that this [the Single Bullet Theory] is very probable ...."
  
• 4/21/1964 Gov. John Connally testified before the WC today that he was hit by a different bullet than the one that hit JFK.
  
• 422/1964 LBJ announced that the railroad negotiators had reached a compromise to avoid a strike.
  
• 4/22/1964 Ruby's lawyers file a motion to have Ruby hospitalized; Judge Brown overrules the motion. THE STATE OF TEXAS vs. JACK RUBENSTEIN -- Defense counsel files motion for the hospitalization of Jack Ruby. Judge Brown overrules motion.
  
• 4/22/1964 Trip to Mexico City (Slawson memo for the record)
  
• 4/22/1964 Melvin A. Eisenberg memo for the record (Conference of April 14, 1964, to determine which frames in the Zapruder movies show the impact of the first and second bullets): "In a discussion after the conference, Drs. Light and Dolce expressed themselves as being very strongly of the opinion that Connally had been hit by two different bullets, principally on the ground that the bullet recovered from Connally's stretcher could not have broken his radius without having suffered more distortion. Dr. Oliver withheld a conclusion until he has had the opportunity to make tests on animal tissue and bone with the actual rifle."
  
• 4/22/1964 The Warren Commission got a lot of vague runaround regarding how the CIA knew what it was telling them during the early months of 1964, until finally in April three staffers were sent by the Commission to Mexico City to try and get some harder information. But even the seventy-page internal report of this trip, written by David Slawson in April 1964 but not released until 1996, never directly says that the tapes had been listened to, instead referring to transcripts: "Mr. Scott's narrative of course took a rather long time to complete, and we interrupted him at many points with specific questions. During the course of the narrative we were shown the actual transcripts, plus the translations, of all the telephone intercepts involved, and we were also shown the reels of photographs for all the days in question that had been taken secretly outside the Cuban and Soviet Embassy entrances" [David Slawson Warren Commission report entitled "Trip to Mexico City", 4-22-64, RIF #104-10011-10097].
  
• 4/22/1964 CE 864,868: Rankin letters to FBI and CIA asking for "any information hitherto not disclosed to this Commission concerning the association of Lee Harvey Oswald with any Communist or subversive organization or individual either in the United States or abroad, or with any criminal or criminal groups either in the United States or abroad." No mention was made of Cuban exile groups. (H 17 857,864)
  
• 4/23/1964 Bill Hunter is killed in a Police Station in Long Beach, California. He was one of five men who met in Jack Ruby's apartment after visiting him in jail a few hours after he shot LHO. Of the five men, (Jim Martin, George Senator, Tom Howard, Jim Koethe & Bill Hunter) three are murdered within a year. Hunter dies in an "accidental shooting" when a police officer claims he drops his gun and it goes off when it hits the floor. This statement is later changed when the trajectory of the bullet shows that it did not come from the floor. The incident is quietly covered up and forgotten. Hunter covered the Kennedy assassination more or less on a lark. He was a police reporter for the Long Beach paper and a good one, with a knack for getting along with cops. He drank with them, played cards with them in the press room---he was a sharp and lucky player---and they would often call him at home when a story broke. Hunter was a big man, described by friends as rough, jovial, "very physical," with an attractive wife and three children. There was no real need for the Long Beach paper to send a reporter to Dallas, but Hunter, who grew up there, managed to promote a free trip for himself with the city desk. In Dallas he ran into Jim Koethe, with whom he had worked in Wichita Falls, Texas. Koethe asked him to come along to the meeting in Ruby's apartment; they arrived to find Senator and Tom Howard having a drink. Bill Hunter was killed just after midnight on the morning of April 23, 1964---only a few hours after George Senator testified before Warren Commission counsel that he "could not recall" the meeting in Ruby's apartment. Hunter was seated at his desk in the press room of the Long Beach public safety building when detective Creighton Wiggins Jr. and his partner burst into the room. A single bullet fired from Wiggins' gun struck Hunter in the heart, killing him almost instantly. The mystery novel he was reading, entitled Stop This Man!, slipped blood-spattered from his fingers. Wiggins' story underwent several changes. His final version was that he and his partner had been playing cops and robbers with guns drawn when his gun started to slip from his hand and went off. The two officers were convicted of involuntary manslaughter. Sentence was suspended. There were so many contradictions in Wiggins' testimony that Bill Shelton, Hunter's city editor and old friend from Texas, is "still not satisfied" with the official verdict. He declines to comment about any possible connection between Hunter's death and the Kennedy assassination. "But I'd believe anything," he says. It is a curious footnote that Shelton's brother Keith was among the majority of Dallas newspapermen who found it expedient to leave their jobs after covering the assassination. Keith was president of the Dallas Press Club and gave up a promising career as political columnist for the Times-Herald to settle in a small north Texas town. One reporter who was asked to resign put it this way: "It looks like a studied effort to remove all the knowledgeable newsmen who covered the assassination." (Penn Jones)
  
• 4/24/1964 McNamara was asked by reporters what he thought about the war being called "McNamara's War" by Sen. Wayne Morse. He replied, "I must say, I don't object to its being called McNamara's War. I think it is a very important war and I am pleased to be identified with it and do whatever I can to win it."
  
• 4/24/1964 McNamara announced the closing of another 63 military bases/installations, which would save $68 million a year.
  
• 4/24/1964 Socorro, New Mexico: a highway patrolman, Lonnie Zamora, witnesses a flying saucer land nearby; it rested on tripod legs, leaving traces on the ground. Zamora was reluctant to tell anyone about it; he first talked to a priest because he thought he might have seen something diabolical. The craft carries an insignia on its side; Zamora's description of it prompts Jacques Vallee to think that it "looks very much like the logo of Astropower, a subsidiary of the Douglas Aircraft Corporation. I found the logo in an ad they recently published in an engineering journal…To my knowledge there has never been a genuine report of a saucer with an insignia painted on the side. Could the Socorro object be a military prototype?" (Forbidden Science p118)
  
• 4/24/1964 Cuba claimed U-2 flights had violated its airspace 546 times since 1/1/1963.
  
• 4/24/1964 Story by Hugh Aynesworth in the Dallas Morning News claimed that FBI Agent Hosty knew before the assassination that Oswald was a communist and "was capable of assassinating the president, but we didn't dream he would do it." The source for this was Jack Revill. The story quoted Curry as saying that if the police had known about Oswald "we would have been sitting on his lap." Detective Sgt. H.M. Hart later told Hosty that the police didn't have anyone - Right or Left - under surveillance when the President came to town. (Assignment Oswald p119) The FBI tried to respond by using FBI-friendly Felix McKnight at the Dallas Times Herald. Meanwhile, Hosty took a UPI reporter's call and said Aynesworth's story was completely false. Hoover was livid that Hosty kept stepping into the media spotlight.
  
• 4/24/1964 memo from Eisenberg to Redlich, Specter, Belin: 1. My memos of the conferences of April 14, 1964, and April 21, 1964, designate the frames in the Zapruder film which portray or may portray the impact of the first and second bullets. My memo of earlier conferences designated the frames in the Zapruder, Nix, and Muchmore films which portray the impact of the third shot. In order to translate these determinations into actual distances, it appears to me to be necessary to go to Dallas. 2. The first step to take in Dallas is to place viewfinders on the spots at which Zapruder, Nix and Muchmore were standing, and place a replica car, bearing six occupants on Elm Street. The replica car should then be positioned so that, viewed through the viewfinders, the relationship between the actual car and the landmarks on November 22, as shown in the designated frames. 3. Pictures should be made showing the car (positioned under paragraph 2) from the following vantage points: (a) the spots at which the photographers were standing; (b) a point in the TSBD approximating the point at which the muzzle of the rifle was located; and © several point on the overpass. Still pictures, and moving pictures taken through the cameras actually used by Zapruder, Nix, and Muchmore should be taken from vantage point (a). Two sets of still pictures, one through a 4x telescopic sight, should be taken from vantage points (b) and ©. 4. Tapes should then be laid on Elm Street over the points or ranges at which the President and Governor were located when the three shots struck. Each tape should be marked to show every designated frame, and at the first tape should also be marked at the point where the President first became visible from vantage point (b) after emerging from behind the tree. On-the-street measurements should then be taken of the distances (i) from the marked points on each tape to the marked points on every other tape and (ii) from the marked points on each tape to the mid-point of a line connecting the southeast and southwest curbs of Elm street. 5. The position of the tapes and all marked points thereon should then be mapped on a survey, and the lengths of the various possible trajectories should be measured by the surveyor on a trigonometric basis, measuring from the point at which the muzzle was probably located to the beginning, end, and marked points of each tape. The surveyor should also determine the angle each trajectory makes with the horizontal. Copies of the surveyor's work-sheets and calculations should be sent to us. 6. The steps outlined herein are not to be deemed as exclusive. In particular, an attempt should be made to photograph various relative positions of the persons simulating the President and Governor Connally with a view to determining whether the first bullet probably did or did not hit the Governor as well as the President.
  
• 4/25/1964 Jack Ruby tried to electrocute himself with the light fixture in his cell.
  
• 4/25/1964 At a news conference after his appointment, Commander William Westmoreland stated: "It is inconceivable that the Viet Cong could ever defeat the armed forces of South Vietnam."
  
• 4/27/1964 LBJ told the US Chamber of Commerce in Washington that it was essential to combat poverty.
  
• 4/27/1964 Hoover letter to Rankin enclosing an affidavit from Hosty denying that he had ever said to Revill that Oswald was capable of killing JFK. (CE 831)
  
• 4/27/1964 US Army Wound Ballistics did further tests on the Carcano rifle. Specter recalled that their purpose was to determine if the rifle had enough penetrating power to fire a bullet through two objects, but they found this "too complicated" and so bullets were not fired through more than one object at a time. (Inquest 97) United States Army wound ballistics experts conduct further tests on the 6th floor rifle. Arlen Specter, who supervises these tests, says that their primary purpose is to determine the penetrating power of the bullets, and specifically whether or not the bullets would penetrate a second object after exiting from the initial object.
  
• 4/27/1964 THE STATE OF TEXAS vs. JACK RUBENSTEIN -- Defense counsel files a request for a sanity hearing.
  
• 4/27/1964 Jimmy Hoffa goes on trial in Chicago beginning today. By this year, employers are shoveling $6 million a month into Hoffa's Teamster pension fund, the assets of which now exceed $200 million. Hoffa so dominates the pension fund's board of directors that he alone decides where to put out capital, normally at below-market interrest to guarantee a maximum of political and commercial leverage. Over 60 percent is in real estate, most of it speculative. From this fund, there are sizable loans to Clint Murchison Sr. and Junior. I. Irving Davidson borrows $5 million for a D.C. hotel. (Davidson and Murray Chotiner, the mob lawyer who will eventually mastermind Richard Nixon into the presidency and wind up with a White House office, are linked by longstanding bonds to Carlos Marcello.) In July, Hoffa will be convicted on four counts for conspiring to defraud and doliciting kickbacks while granting fourteen loans. Hoffa will receive a five-year sentence, to run consecutively with the eight years awaiting him for jury tampering. RFK later remarks: "If I get to be president, Jimmy Hoffa will never get out of jail and there will be a lot more of them in jail."
  
• 4/27/1964 United Republic of Tanganyika and Zanzibar formed.
  
• 4/27/1964 Memo from Norman Redlich to J. Lee Rankin said "Our report presumably will state that the President was hit by the first bullet, Governor Connally by the second, and the President by the third and fatal bullet. The report will also conclude that the bullets were fired by one person located in the sixth floor southeast corner window of the TSBD building. As our investigation now stands, however, we have not shown that these events could possibly have occurred in the manner suggested above. All we have is a reasonable hypothesis which appears to be supported by the medical testimony but which has not been checked out against the physical facts at the scene of the assassination. Our intention is not to establish the point with complete accuracy, but merely to substantiate the hypothesis which underlies the conclusions that Oswald was the sole assassin." He expressed concern about proving the physical possibility of the shooting: "Our failure to do this will, in my opinion, place this Report in jeopardy since it is a certainty that others will examine the Zapruder films [sic] and raise the same questions which have been raised by our examination of the films....I should add that the facts which we now have in our possession, submitted to us in separate reports from the FBI and Secret Service, are totally incorrect and, if left uncorrected, will present a completely misleading picture." (Photographic Whitewash)
  
• 4/28/1964 LBJ had business leaders over for a black-tie dinner. They included William Battens of J.C. Penney, Roger Blough of US Steel, Gussie Busch of Anheuser-Busch, Henry Ford II, Crawford Greenewalt of E.I. duPont, Frederick Kappels of AT&T, Tom McCabe of Scott Paper, David Rockefeller, James S. Rockefeller, Bob Stevens (formerly in the Ike administration), Walter Touhy of C&O Railway. (White House Diary p127)
  
• 4/29/1964 THE STATE OF TEXAS vs. JACK RUBENSTEIN -- Judge Brown refuses to allow the defense's second amended motion for a new trial to stand and refuses to hear witnesses on the motion for a new trial. Defense's motion for a new trial is overruled and notice of appeal is filed with the Court of Criminal Appeals.
  
• 4/29/1964 6:26PM LBJ makes a phone call to Abe Fortas. (Act of Treason 527)
  
• 4/30/1964 Letter from Hoover to WC, enclosing a 22-page report on the tracing of all documents relating to the Carcano C2766 rifle. "...the Mannlicher-Carcano rifle was manufactured in Italy from 1891 until 1941; however, in the 1930s Mussolini ordered all arms factories to manufacture the Mannlicher-Carcano rifle. Since many concerns were manufacturing the same weapon, the same serial number appears on weapons manufactured by more than one concern. Some bear a letter prefix and some do not." (CE 2562)
  
• 4/30/1964 Letter from Hoover to Rankin, assuring him that the FBI has already provided all material on Oswald's possible ties "with any...criminals or criminal groups either in the United States or abroad." (H 17 858)
  
• 4/30/1964 FBI document specialist James Cadigan testified again today.
  
• 4/30/1964 Arlen Specter memo - he wrote, "It is indispensable that we obtain the photographs and x-rays" from the autopsy. Rankin didn't tell Specter that he already had possession of the autopsy materials. (Never Again, Weisberg p64)
  
• 4/30/1964 In an oral history recording, RFK told John Bartlow Martin that JFK had felt "we should win the war" and there had been no consideration of pulling out of Vietnam. Arthur Schlesinger says that RFK was barely kept informed of JFK's real feelings about the war. Of the 8/24/1963 cable authorizing anti-Diem actions in Saigon, RFK said that his brother thought the cable "had been approved by McNamara and Maxwell Taylor and everybody else, which it had not...I became much more intimately involved in it then." He recalled that "the government was split in two" over whether to oust Diem. He said that his brother didn't want to remove Diem unless they could be sure that the government that replaced him would be better. (RFK and his Times 748, 768) In 1964, RFK did an oral history interview where he recalled that in late 1963, "there were a lot of stories that my brother and I were interested in dumping Lyndon Johnson and that I'd started the Bobby Baker case in order to give us a handle to dump Lyndon Johnson...there was no plan to dump Lyndon Johnson. That didn't make any sense...I hadn't gotten really involved in the Bobby Baker case until after a good number of newspaper stories had appeared about it...Abe Fortas was his lawyer." In an oral history this year, RFK recalled that reporter William Lambert found out that Hoover stayed in a hundred-dollar-a-day suite in Florida every year and it was paid for by Clint Murchison.
  
• 4/30/1964 Castro says that his forces will shoot at US reconnaissance planes flying over Cuba.
  
• 4/30/1964 WC executive session. The Commissioners were surprised that LHO was not on the Secret Service's PRS alert list. Rankin and Dulles discussed how much biographical material on Oswald to include in the Report; Rankin said, "Some of it will be necessary to tell the story and to show why it is reasonable to assume that he did what the Commission concludes that he did." Because of ongoing controversy regarding the allegations of Oswald's informant status and intelligence connections, the Commission decided to take testimony on the matter from senior officials of the FBI and CIA. The Commission also discussed preparations for a visit to Dallas to see the assassination site. Commissioners also discussed the voluminous testimony taken by staff and the upcoming early portions of the report being drafted. There was also discussion of conspiracy allegations by Thomas Buchanan and Mark Lane, as well as all of Europe, and the need to "search these out and attack them." Regarding publishing Commission exhibits to accompany the Report, Dulles said "I don't think anybody would pay any attention to it to begin with." A discussion of the need to obtain the autopsy photographs included Rankin's statement that "I think that the Attorney General would make them available now -- although they were denied to us before because he said that he didn't think that there was a sufficient showing of our need." The Commission already had possession of the autopsy photos, what was at issue was the desire, as Rankin put it, "to avoid those pictures being a part of our record."
  

[Tracy Riddle]

• Early May 1964 Rankin told the staffers to "wrap up" their work and submit their final reports by 6/1; the deadline for release of the Report was 6/30. (Inquest)
  
• 5/1964 China publishes the compilation of Quotations from Chairman Mao (Mao zhuxi yulu, the 'Little Red Book').
  
• 5/1964 Some excerpts from the National Enquirer article by John Henshaw, Enquirer Washington Bureau Chief: Washington--The hottest story making the rounds here is that the U.S. Justice Department prevented the arrest of Lee Harvey Oswald and Jack Ruby BEFORE the assassination of President John F. Kennedy. Oswald and the man who killed him, Ruby, were suspect of being partners in crime seven months before the President's death. The incredible details of the story are so explosive that officials won't even answer "no comment" when queried about it But the story being discussed by top-level government officials reveals: 1. That the Justice Department deliberately kept Oswald and Ruby out of jail before the assassination. 2. That Dallas cops suspected Oswald of being the gunman and Ruby the paymaster in a plot to murder former Major General A. Walker--seven months before the President was assassinated. 3. That the U.S. Central Intelligence Agency was using Ruby to recruit commandos for raids against Castro's Cuba. To prevent this explosive information from being disclosed, the CIA asked the Justice Dept. to step in and stop the Dallas police from arresting Jack Ruby, as well as Oswald. A top-secret document--a letter signed by a high official of the Justice Dept.--was sent in April 1963 from the Justice Dept. to Dallas Chief of Police Jesse E. Curry requesting the Dallas police NOT to arrest Oswald and Ruby in connection with the attempted slaying of General Walker. After a snipter shot at, but missed, General Walker in Dallas, April 10, 1963, Dallas police suspected that Oswald was the sniper and Ruby the payoff man. The cops were set to arrest the pair. But they never got the chance because of the heavy pressure brought to bear by the Justice Dept. And so Oswald and Ruby were allowed to remain free. An seven months later, on last November 22 in Dallas, Oswald was able to kill the President of the United States. The top-secret document--a copy of it is reportedly in the hands of the Presidential commission investigating the assassination--bares a web of intrigue that involves the Federal Bureau of Investigation, along with the Justice Dept. and the Central Intelligence Agency. It is so politically explosive that the Presidential commission, headed by Supreme Court Chief Justice Earl Warrent, has even withheld it from one of its own members, Senator Richard Russell (D., Ga.). It is feared that Senator Russell, who leads the South in the fight against the civil rights bill, might use the document against the Justice Dept. and its chief, Attorney General Robert F. Kennedy, a leader in the fight for civil rights. The document--requesting the cops not to arrest Ruby and Oswald--contradicts the FBI report on the assassination and the subsequent murder of Oswald.
  
• 5/1964 Haynes Johnson's book The Bay of Pigs is published by WW Norton, written with help from Cuban exile leaders. RFK, in a 1964 oral history interview, called it "a pretty accurate account."
  
• 5/1964 This month, RFK writes to J. Edgar Hoover on the occasion of his fortieth anniversary in the job, lamenting that "In the past few months I have not had the pleasure of associating with you as closely as formerly. I regret this but would not want this occasion to pass without congratulating you on this milestone and wishing you well in the future." Privately, Hoover will announce to friends: "I didn't speak to Bobby Kennedy that last six months he was in office."
  
• 5/1964 Thomas Buchanan's book Who Killed Kennedy? is published. Buchanan became very interested in the JFK assassination and took copious notes on it. A friend, formerly of the French Communist party, showed them to a coeditor of L'Express, which then turned them into a series of six articles during February and March of 1964. It was published in May in book form. A revised American edition late in 1964 also discussed the findings of the WC.
  
• 5/1/1964 CE 2766 letter from the program director of the International Rescue Committee, Inc., to Rankin. He stated that his group first heard of Oswald's request for a travel loan in a phone call from the State Department's Special Consular Service, recommending assistance to Oswald. "A few days later we received a letter from Mrs. Harwell of the Wilberger County Chapter, Vernon, Texas [Red Cross], dated January 14, 1962, to which, to the best of my recollection were attached copies of a letter written by Consul Norbury, American Embassy, Moscow, to Lee Harvey Oswald, dated December 14, 1961, and of a letter addressed to the International Rescue Committee, dated January 13, 1961 [sic; should be 1962], and ostensibly written by Oswald...To a layman's eye it would appear that both copies were typed on the same typewriter. I do not know who added the handwritten words, 'Mrs Helen Harwell, Executive Secretary, American Red Cross,' to the Norbury copy. What is most puzzling, although it did not then attract my attention, is that the letter from Oswald, dated January 13, could have reached the United States by January 14, and that it reached us via Texas....On or about February 5, 1962, we did receive a handwritten letter directly from Oswald, dated January 26, which makes no reference to a previous communication of his..."
  
• 5/2/1964 The New Republic commented, "LBJ has been hurling himself about Washington like an elemental force. To be plain about it, he has won our admiration in the last fortnight."
  
• 5/2/1964 In the first major student demonstration against the war, hundreds of students march through Times Square in New York City, while another 700 march in San Francisco. Smaller numbers also protest in New York; Seattle; and Madison, Wisconsin.
  
• 5/3/1964 Imperial Wizard Sam Bowers issued an "Imperial Executive Order" to the Klan: "The military and political situation as regards the enemy has now reached the crisis stage. Our best students of enemy strategy and technique are in almost complete agreement that the events which will occur in Mississippi this summer may well determine the fate of Christian Civilization for centuries to come….This summer, within a very few days, the enemy will lauch his final push for victory here in Mississippi…[using] Agitation, Force by Federal Troops, and Communist Propaganda." He recommended using secretive, hit and run guerilla tactics against individuals rather than trying to oppose federal troops.
  
• 5/4/1964 CE 869 CIA replied to Rankin's 4/22/1964 letter saying that it knew of no ties Oswald had with communist or criminal conspirators.
  
• 5/4/1964 South Vietnam: Gen. Khanh met with Lodge; he changed his mind about attacking the North and called for warning Hanoi that further support of communists in the South would lead to reprisals. Lodge agreed.
  
• 5/5/1964 J. Edgar Hoover leaks derogatory information on Warren Commission staff assistant Norman Redlich to the press. Hoover's supporters immediately call for suspension of the Commission's proceedings until all staff members can be subjected to "full security investigations" by the Bureau. The ferocity of Hoover's attack stuns the Commission, which in turn apparently makes the decision to force J. Lee Rankin to abandon his plan of confronting the Director under oath with both his April 30 denial and Bureau reports suggesting Mafia complicity in the JFK assassination. (Act of Treason) Hoover launches a covert attack on Rankin and his assistants "by seeing to it that derogatory information on…Redlich reached a group of reactionary Congressmen." "[Senator] Mundt demanded that the Warren Commission suspend the taking of all further testimony and hold up on all writing of its report to the American public until Redlich and others on the Commission staff faced the challenge of obtaining complete security clearances.' (Seth Kantor, Who Was Jack Ruby?; Act of Treason) Far-right GOP Congressman Ralph F. Beermann (Nebraska) said on the floor of the House that communists were trying to distort the evidence to place the blame for the assassination on anti-communists. He cited Norman Redlich as an example of the kind of subversives being used by the WC, "despite his known Communist-front affiliations."
  
• 5/5/1964 Secret Service report of 5 May 1964. Miami inquiries regarding several people associated with the Odio story, including Father Walter Machann, turned up blank. Weisberg notes that Machann had been in New Orleans and interviewed by the Secret Service during this period.
  
• 5/5/1964 Secret Service memo to Commission of 5 May 1964. This memo is a report on the interview of Father Machann, who provided information about Sylvia Odio and various other Cubans in Dallas.
  
• 5/5/1964 Nearly a month after their Mexico City trip, these Warren Commission staffers had apparently kept every single Commissioner in the dark about the CIA's sources and methods. Besides the three staffers (Slawson, Coleman, and Willens), apparently only Commission Counsel J. Lee Rankin had been told. A Memo for the Record written by CIA's Thomas Hall of a May 5, 1964 meeting with Slawson notes that: According to Mr. Slawson, only Messrs. Rankin, Willens, Coleman (?) and he presently know of the telephone taps in Mexico City. Slawson, Willens and Coleman were briefed on the taps during their visit to Mexico City.…According to Mr. Slawson, no member of the Commission now knows of the telephone taps in Mexico City (he did not mention Mr. Dulles). Mr. [******** ] carefully briefed Mr. Slawson (probably rebriefed him) on the importance of these telephone taps to U.S. security and the grave damage that would be done to U.S. - Mexican relations if knowledge of their existence became public. Mr. Slawson quite clearly was a bit unhappy that certain information could not be used, since the taps were the only source. Oswald's very bad Russian was the example he used. I asked what opinion Mrs. Oswald had of her husband's Russian. She thought that he spoke it very well [MFR of Thomas Hall of meeting with David Slawson, 5-5-64, at RIF #104-10404-10115].
  
• 5/5/1964 Richard Case Nagell testified at his trial and was vague about his background; he said that 1958 he had been "loaned" by Military Intelligence to "another intelligence agency" for assignments in Hong Kong, Formosa, Korea and Japan. He said the robbery attempt had been a "temporary solution" to an "unbearable problem." (The Man Who Knew Too Much p62-63).
  
• 5/5/1964 Rankin writes to Hoover asking him about allegations that Oswald and Ruby were involved in the Walker shooting. There was a recent National Enquirer article alleging the same. (H 17 855)
  
• 5/5/1964 At 5:22pm LBJ tapes a message for Hoover. (Act of Treason 528)
  
• 5/6/1964 FBI Asst. director Alan Belmont appeared before the WC. Warren refuses to accept Belmont's offer of Oswald's FBI file because he didn't want to have to make it available to the public. Rankin wanted to obtain the file, but not allow the staff to view it. (Epstein, Inquest)
  
• 5/6/1964 David Belin told Earl Warren 5/6/1964 (H 5 1), "We have a report from an FBI document that states Roy Truly when interviewed on November 22, advised that "it is possible Oswald did see him with a rifle in his hands within the past few days," that is as of November 22, "as a Mr. Warren Caster, employed by Southwestern Publishing Co., which company has an office in the same building, had come to his office with two rifles, one was a .22 caliber rifle which Caster said he had purchased for his son, and the other a larger more high-powered rifle which Caster said he had purchased with which to go deer hunting if he got a chance," and Truly said that he examined the high-powered rifle and raised it to his shoulder and sighted over it and then returned it to Caster and Caster left with both rifles. Then Truly went on to state that he does not own a rifle and has had no other rifle in his hands or in his possession for a long-period of time. Now because of the problem that did arise, I believe the staff will promptly go down to Dallas to take the deposition of both Mr. Truly and Mr. Caster to fully get this in deposition form and find out where these rifles were as of November 22."
  
• 5/6/1964 A letter to the Warren commission from J. Edgar Hoover states: "Reference is made to my letter dated April 2, 1964, which enclosed copies of a memorandum revealing the results of a reinterview with Mrs. Jean Lollis Hill. Mrs. Hill commented she observed a white man, wearing a brown raincoat and a hat, running west away from the Texas School Book Depository Building following the shooting. Mrs. Hill did not closely observe this individual; did not know who he was; and never saw him again. Mrs. Hill described this man as "average height and heavy build." Additional investigation has been conducted by this Bureau endeavoring to identify this individual. This investigation included a review of all available film taken near the Texas School Book Depository Building following the shooting; a reexamination of the results of all interviews with individuals who were in the vicinity of the shooting; a review of an additional film taken by Mr. Thomas P. Alyea, WFAA-TV newsman; and interviews with Dallas Police Department and Dallas County Sheriff's Office personnel, none of which revealed the identity of the man described by Mrs. Hill. Investigative results appear on pages 43 through 49 in the report of Special Agent Robert P. Gemberling dated April 15, 1964. This report was furnished to you by letter dated May 4, 1964, and no further action is being taken in this matter."
  
• 5/6/1964 Hale Boggs makes a phone call to LBJ at 6:44pm. (Act of Treason 528)
  
• 5/6/1964 Nagell is found guilty by a jury of intent to rob a bank. In early June he is sentenced by Judge Homer Thornberry to ten years "with the provision that he may be released at any time the US Bureau of Paroles decides."
  
• 5/6/1964 Agent Hosty met with Hoover; he told Hosty that he liked LBJ and had liked JFK, but was "disgusted" by RFK. Hoover gleefully told Hosty that at lunch that day LBJ had said he would waive the mandatory retirement rule for the FBI director. Hosty recalled later that he was sure Kennedy wanted Hoover to retire at 70. Hoover also explained that his sources on the WC said that only Warren and McCloy wanted to blame the FBI for its mishandling of Oswald, though it would turn out that Cooper and Dulles would join in on the criticism. The Director rambled on, telling Hosty about "all his good friends in the Texas oil business"; he also said that Hosty should not talk to the press before the WR was released. (Assignment Oswald p153-6)
  
• 5/7/1964 J. Lee Rankin letter to Hoover: "This commission has been making a careful study of the various motion picture films taken at the scene of the assassination. In this project we have had the valuable assistance of members your Bureau, particularly Inspector James Malley, Inspector Leo Gauthier and Special Agent Lyndal A. Shaneyfelt. As a result of the information obtained from these films, the Commission would like the cooperation of your Bureau in the performance of certain additional investigation at the scene of the assassination. I will personally be available to supervise this work and will have such other staff members present as may be deemed necessary. We would hope to be able to perform this work in Dallas on May 18 and May 19. The purpose of this letter is to set forth the steps which we feel are necessary to properly complete this project."
  
• 5/8/1964 Johnson unveiled Executive Order 10682 in a Rose Garden ceremony at the White House; it waived the compulsory retirement rule for civil servants, due to take effect when Hoover turned 70 in January 1965. He promised Hoover he could stay in office "for an indefinite period of time...a hero to millions of citizens and an anathema to evil men." There was also a ceremony in the Rose Garden honoring his 40th anniversary as Director. Johnson said he signed the order because the nation needed Hoover. "I know you wouldn't think of breaking the law," LBJ told him, describing him as a "household word, a hero to millions of citizens and an anathema to evil men." (NYT 5/9/64) Later that day Hoover wrote LBJ a gushing thank-you letter. In early May '64, Bill Moyers told Ben Bradlee that Hoover was going to be replaced: "We finally got the bastard. Lyndon told me to find his replacement." The leak became widely known, and Bradlee openly began preparing a Newsweek cover story. When LBJ reappointed Hoover, Johnson told Moyers, "You call up Ben Bradlee and tell him, 'Fuck you.'" Bradlee would later recall that people would blame him for Hoover's reappointment. (All the President's Men p289; The Man and the Secrets p560-1)
  
• 5/8/1964 Gary Underhill dies of a gunshot wound to the head. He is found shot in the left side of his head. Underhill is right handed. Ruled a suicide. He is a CIA agent who has claimed the agency was involved in JFK's death.
  
• 5/8/1964 Leon Jaworski writes letter to J. Lee Rankin. In 1976, this letter is missing from National Archives.
  
• 5/8/1964 Hoover responded to Rankin's May 5th letter: "[Dallas Police Chief] Curry was interviewed on May 7…at which time [the National Enquirer] article was exhibited to him…Curry read the entire article after which he advised as follows: Prior to the assassination of President Kennedy neither he nor his Department had ever heard of…Oswald…Curry had no information linking Oswald and Ruby to the plot to shoot General Walker…Curry emphatically stated he…had never been requested by any official of the FBI not to arrest Oswald or Ruby…The files of this Bureau do not contain any reference that an FBI official was asked to request the Dallas Police not to arrest Oswald or Ruby." (H 17 855)
  
• 5/8/1964 Miami FBI agent James J. O'Connor's summary of his investigation into Oswald's ties to Cubans: "Title: Lee Harvey Oswald. Character: Internal Security - R - Cuba. Synopsis: Newspaper articles and investigation set forth concerning Fernando Fernandez, mentioned by Carlos Bringuier...Also set forth is article from magazine Bohemia Internacional, issue of 2/2/64 wherein allegation is made that Fidel Castro, during a speech on 11/27/63, committed a slip of the tongue in stating 'The first time Oswald was in Cuba...' Employee of USIA, Miami, stated that although all public speeches of Castro are monitored, no such slip of the tongue has been detected. He furnished a translation of Castro's speech 11/27/63; however no remark was noted implying that Oswald visited Cuba." (Oswald in New Orleans p150)
  
• 5/12/1964 Twelve young men in New York publicly burn their draft cards to protest the Vietnam war.
  
• 5/12/1964 Arlen Specter memo listing the things that should be done "when the autopsy photographs and X-rays are examined..." But they never were examined by the WC staff. (Never Again p64)
  
• 5/12/1964 J. Edgar Hoover raises the possibility to the Warren Commission that Oswald was a Soviet "sleeper" agent.
  
• 5/13/1964 McNamara and Khanh met in Saigon; Khanh equivocated on attacking the North.
  
• 5/13/1964 When the testimony from Robert Frazier turned to positive scientific identifications of the bullet and fragments in the Commission's possession on Wednesday, May 13, 1964 (5H58ff.), all he said of them was that they were of lead.
  
• 5/13/1964 CIA Counterintelligence Chief James Jesus Angleton calls FBI Domestic Intelligence chief William C. Sullivan to suggest that the FBI, like the CIA, carefully rehearse the testimony of its top officials before the Warren Commission. Angleton says that "it would be well for both McCone and Hoover to be aware that the Commission might ask the same questions, wondering whether they would get different replies from the heads of the two agencies."
  
• 5/13/1964 Recorded telephone conversation between Richard Russell, Lyndon B. Johnson and B. Everett Jordan (13th May, 1964)
  

Richard Russell: I'm mighty sorry I couldn't go to Georgia with you but you had a fine reception down there.
Lyndon B. Johnson: Aw, couldn't have been better. I missed you. That was the only thing wrong with the trip.
Richard Russell: I had to talk to the junior chamber of commerce.. I'm all right with the old ones. I'll never get back in with the young women, but I'm trying to get back in with the young men...
Richard Russell: Now listen, I'm down here with Everett Jordan and he's sweating blood about this danged Bobby Baker thing. They had a hell of a big revival of it up here today. ... It looks to me like they're just trying to keep the damned thing open. . . . Everett is greatly bothered about it. ... He asked me to come down here, said he had to have some help. I don't know how to help him.
B. Everett Jordan: I'm worried. They made a hell of a fight on this thing on the floor today.... They've already said they're going to drag Walter Jenkins down here. Of course, I know they can't, but you'd have to stop it. That'd be embarrassing... They want to get into campaign expenses. Baker putting out money to Senators, controlling who was going on committees.... It's the damnedest mess you ever saw. The press just eats it up. ... I need some help and I need it bad... If you'd call Mike...
Lyndon B. Johnson: I'm not the one to call Mike. ... If I had any influence with Mike, he never would have fired Bobby.
B. Everett Jordan: What about Hubert?
Lyndon B. Johnson: I'm afraid to say I'll talk to anybody 'cause they'll say the White House is calling. . . . But I'll do what I can.
Richard Russell: Dirksen... of course, if it looks like there's going to be an investigation, he's going to run like hell 'cause he's one of the last fellows up here that wants an investigation.
Lyndon B. Johnson: You ought to tell Dirksen that too, Dick. . . .
Richard Russell: I'm doing the best I can, Mr. President, but God knows, I've got a hell of a lot to do. I sat up last night till eleven-thirty reading the FBI reports on some son of a bitch - this fellow Rankin on the Warren Commission. Everybody's raising hell about him being a Communist and all, a left-winger. The FBI was investigating. Eight thousand pages of raw material. There ain't but twenty-four hours a day. 'Course, I know I'm talking to a man that's got a hell of a lot more to do than I have. You's the only man in Washington that does.

• 5/14/1964 The full Senate voted against further hearings on Baker; among those Senators who voted not to investigate further were Sam Ervin, Herman Talmadge, Dan Inouye, Birch Bayh, Robert Byrd, Frank Church, George McGovern, Howard Cannon, Mike Mansfield, and Ed Muskie.
  
• 5/14/1964 Robert F. Kennedy interviewed by John Bartlow Martin
  
• 5/14/1964 J. Edgar Hoover, John McCone and Richard Helms testify before the WC. The FBI would re-write much of Hoover's testimony to make it sound better and correct mistakes; in a 5/19 memo Belmont told Tolson that it was all the court reporter's fault: "...apparently the court reporter did not record the Director's testimony accurately in some instances." Hoover is asked (and answers) a mere one hundred questions - and reportedly commits at least three acts of perjury.
  
• 5/14/1964 TSBD employee Eddie Piper testifies to the WC again.
  
• 5/14/1964 Hubert/Griffin memo to Rankin imploring the WC to explore further the possibility of a conspiracy involving Ruby's killing of Oswald. They also urged that people like Tom Howard and Seth Kantor be deposed by the WC. It mentioned that Ed Bruner, Ruby's attorney, was reported to have met with Ruby three times in 1961 to discuss arms sales to Cuba. (Ruby Cover-up, Kantor p306) Assistant counsels to the Warren Commission Burt Griffin and Leon Hubert write in a memo to Rankin that "we believe that the possibility exists, based on evidence already available, that Ruby was involved in illegal dealings with Cuban elements who might have had contact with Oswald. The existence of such dealings can only be surmised since the present investigation has not focused on that area." They express concern that "Ruby had time to engage in substantial activities in addition to the management of his Clubs" and that "Ruby has always been a person who looked for moneymaking sidelines'." They suggest that since the Fort Worth manufacturer of the famous "Twist Board" Ruby was demonstrating the night after the assassination had no known sales, and was manufactured by an oil field equipment company, that "[t]he possibility remains that the twist board' was a front for some other illegal enterprise." But what Griffin and Hubert keep coming back to is that there is "much evidence" that Ruby "was interested in Cuban matters, citing his relationship to Louis McWillie; his attempted sale of jeeps to Castro, his reported attendance of meetings "in connection with the sale of arms to Cubans and the smuggling out of refugees"; and Ruby's quick correction of Wade's remark that Oswald was a member of the Free Cuba Committee, a group populated with such notables as Clare Booth Luce, Admiral Arleigh Burke, and Hal Hendrix. "Bits of evidence link Ruby to others who may have been interested in Cuban affairs." They recommend: "We suggest that these matters cannot be left hanging in the air.' They must either be explored further or a firm decision must be made not to do so supported by stated reasons for the decision." History has given us the commission's decision on this, but a clue to the motivation shows up in this same memo, in regards to Seth Kantor, who claimed to have seen Ruby at Parkland hospital around the time of Kennedy's death. "We must decide who is telling the truth, for there would be considerable significance if it would be concluded that Ruby is lying." The concern appears to be not what the truth is, but what the truth might mean if it is uncomfortably discovered. (Gunrunner Ruby and the CIA by Lisa Pease)
  
• 5/15/1964 Belin wrote in a memo about John McCloy complaining "that we did not point up enough arguments to show why Oswald was the assassin...we should be rather complete in developing reasons and affirmative statements why Oswald was the assassin - he did not believe that it should just merely be a factual restatement of what we had found."
  
• 5/15/1964 The CIA submitted a special report to the President calling the situation in Vietnam "extremely fragile" with continued deterioration of the South.
  
• 5/16/1964 Writing to LBJ about JFK and the Kennedy Library, Jacqueline Kennedy says: "It is so important to me that we build the finest memorial -- so no one will ever forget him -- and I shall always remember that you have helped the cause closest to my heart."
  
• 5/18/1964 In a sworn statement, CIA Director John McCone states that the CIA had never heard of Lee Harvey Oswald.
  
• 5/18/1964 Paul Rothermel memo to H.L. Hunt; it noted that Nelson Bunker Hunt had been interviewed by the FBI about the black-bordered anti-JFK ad. (Man Who Knew Too Much p590)
  
• 5/18/1964 LBJ requested from Congress $125 million more in aid for Vietnam.
  
• 5/19/1964 Letter from Rankin to Helms asking for a response to Ruby's background check. "At a meeting on March 12, 1964, between representatives of your Agency and this Commission a memorandum prepared by members of the Commission staff was handed to you which related to the background of Jack L. Ruby and alleged associates and/or activities with Cuba. At that time we requested that you review this information and submit to the Commission any information contained in your files regarding the matters covered in the memorandum, as well as any other analyses by your representatives which you believed might be useful to the Commission. As you know, this Commission is nearing the end of its investigation. We would appreciate hearing from you as soon as possible whether you are in a position to comply with this request in the near future." (part of CE 2980)
  
• 5/19/1964 A short affidavit signed by John Rene Heindel of New Orleans (dated today) reads: "I served in the United States Marine Corps from July 15, 1957 until July 15, 1961. I was stationed at Atsugi, Japan, with Lee Harvey Oswald ... While in the Marine Corps, I was often referred to as "Hidell" -- pronounced so as to rhyme with "Rydell." ... This was a nickname and not merely an inadvertent mispronunciation. It is possible that Oswald might have heard me being called by this name; indeed he may himself have called me "Hidell."
  
• 5/19/1964 WC meeting. The Commissioners discussed field reports on their staff, which included questions regarding the loyalty of Norman Redlich and Joseph Ball. Redlich was member of the Emergency Civil Liberties Council (ECLC), which was opposed to the House Un-American Activities Committee, which cited the ECLC as a Communist front organization. Joseph Ball had joined in a resolution denouncing the House Un-American Activities Committee. Rankin endorsed Ball, but said of Redlich: "He, apparently, is a born crusader." Ford, after praising Redlich, noted that the controversy "casts some shadow on what the Commission is doing" and recommended dismissal. In the lengthy discussion of Redlich that followed, Warren in an eloquent statement said the man deserved a trial "where he can defend himself" before action was taken to dismiss him. In the end, the Commission voted security clearances for all staff and kept Ball and Redlich on.
  
• 5/19/1964 US Department of Commerce prohibits shipping of medicines to Cuba.
  
• 5/20/1964 Jack Revill wrote Capt Gannaway (DPD Criminal Intelligence) the following memo: "On November 22, 1963, J.E. Curry...appeared on a television broadcast and made a statement to the effect that agents of the Federal Bureau of Investigation had prior information and knowledge regarding the subject, and that the subject was a communist. The source reportedly said that shortly after this appearance, Gordon Shanklin...received instructions from his superior in Washington DC to obtain a retraction of the above statement from Chief J.E. Curry. Gordon Shanklin was told that if he did not obtain this retraction, he would be terminated from the Bureau. Mr Shanklin visited Chief J.E. Curry and the following news release was made: Chief Curry stated that to 'his own personal knowledge, the FBI did not have any previous information regarding Lee Harvey Oswald nor about Oswald being a communist.'" (Killing the Truth p510-11)
  
• 5/20/1964 Rankin wrote Hoover complaining that Marina's testimony on the Walker case "was riddled with contradictions". FBI agent Gordon Shanklin then assigned two agents to Marina because he agreed that "her statements just don't jibe." (Breach of Trust p. 57)
  
• 5/20/1964 Texas Atty General Waggoner Carr wrote J. Lee Rankin, "May I also suggest that every effort be made to determine why Oswald was headed in the general direction of Ruby's house at the time he was intercepted by officer Tippit." (McBride, Into the Nightmare)
  
• 5/21/1964 World's first nuclear-powered lighthouse goes into operation in Baltimore, Maryland.
  
• 5/22/1964 LBJ, in a speech at the University of Michigan, articulated to the graduating students his vision of a "Great Society" of hope and opportunity for all Americans.
  
• 5/22/1964 J. Lee Rankin, Norman Redlich and Arlen Specter go to Dallas to conduct the reconstruction of the assassination.
  
• 5/24/1964 FBI/Secret Service reenactment in Dealey Plaza. They used the SS follow-up car instead of the presidential limo. Among those present were Shaneyfelt, Frazier, Rankin, Redlich and Specter. Color photos by Malcolm E. Barker have recently surfaced. A 21-minute film Assassination of President John F. Kennedy was produced, narrated by Jim Underwood and directed by John Joe Howlett and Talmadge Bailey. It was photographed by Eddie Barker, Jim Underwood, Henk Dewit, and KRLD-TV. It is doubtful this film was shown to the public at the time, since it features the unedited Zapruder film (in B&W). Specter had personally requested this reenactment, but the Commissioners agreed only if Rankin supervised it. (Epstein, Inquest) Stand-ins for JFK and Connally were used, and photos were taken through a telescopic sight from the "sniper's nest." It established that an oak tree blocked the view from the sixth-floor window between Zapruder frames 166 and 209, with a brief opening at frame 186. Later that afternoon, Specter did experiments in a local garage to try to recreate the trajectory of JFK's and Connally's wounds. Specter told Epstein that the main purpose of the whole recreation was to test the single-bullet theory. (Inquest) A photo from this re-enactment (in the NYT version of the WR) shows the location of JFK's back wound to be well below the shoulder and exiting from his chest. The FBI reenacts the assassination in Dealey Plaza for the purposes of establishing measurements and timing of events in comparison to the Zapruder film. They fail, however, to conduct any measurements between frames 255 and 313. After measuring in small increments by Zapruder frames down Elm Street, they jump 58 frames from 255 to 313. This is precisely the sequence where, when viewing the Zapruder film, the limousine reduced its speed significantly. At this point in the motorcade, it might be expected that the limo would have speeded up. The overall average speed is calculated, however, to be only 11.2 miles per hour. After making a slow turn onto Elm Street one suspect that the limo would have naturally picked up speed well beyond the average of 11.2 miles per hour. After all, the motorcade was essentially over, the crowds had thinned out, the freeway access was straight ahead, and the heavy vehicle was going down a three degree decline on Elm Street. It is important to also note that FBI agent Lyndal Shaneyfelt provides the Warren Commission with the limo's average speed as calculated only between frames 161 through 313. He will not provide any further information about speed between other frames. Measurements between frames 255 and 313 would have also included landmarks such as the street light by which comparisons could have been made for more accurate speed calculations. Also, the groundskeeper for Dealey Plaza, Emmett Hudson, testifies to the Warren Commission that "they have moved some of those signs" after the assassination. If the Stemmons freeway sign was moved, the question remains as to whether or not it was accurately repositioned before this date's reenactment by the FBI. The Secret Service vehicle, dubbed the Queen Mary, is used in all subsequent reenactments due to its continuous bench style seat that allows a wide latitude for the Connally stand-in to be positioned. The jump seats in the Presidential limousine were not bench style seats and would make the Connally positioning more difficult. This reenactment is later used as source material for the Warren Commission to make several critical determinations: 1) when JFK as well as Governor Connally were hit by bullets, 2) the exact location of the limousine when the occupants were struck, 3) the trajectories from the sixth floor window, 4) the Zapruder frames in which the oak tree obstructed the view of the motorcade from the sixth floor window, and 5) the speed of the limousine as it traveled down Elm Street. This reenactment is orchestrated by Arlen Specter to insure his single bullet theory will not be contradicted. It is important to remember that when the first Secret Service survey was made on December 5, 1963, the Warren Commission was meeting for their first time. As of that date Arlen Specter, the Commission lawyer handling this area of the investigation, had not yet developed the "single bullet theory" necessary for any lone gunman explanation. The introduction of this May 1964 survey plat comes wrapped and sealed in a container -- one which is never opened and to date has never been released to the public. It is Commission Counsel Arlen Specter who asks Chairman Earl Warren that the seal not be broken and the plat not be taken out of its container. Mr. Specter instead introduces what is represented as a cardboard reproduction of Mr. Robert West's survey as CE 883. Mr. West has since expressed astonishment that his May 1964 survey plat was introduced in a sealed container and commented on the altered data block that "whoever changed my numbers didn't even use a Leroy pen (a lettering guide) but did it freehand."
  
• 5/24/1964 In a once-secret, May 24, 1964 memo, Specter wrote Commission chief counsel J. Lee Rankin, advising that, "The films and X-rays should be viewed in conjunction with Commission Exhibit 389 (a photo of the frame of the Zapruder frame 312, taken immediately before the frame showing the head wound) (sic) and Commission exhibit 390 (the frame of the Zapruder film showing the head wound) (sic) to determine for certain whether the angle of declination is accurately depicted in Commission Exhibit 388 [Rydberg's image]."
  
• 5/24/1964 Clifton Daniel, assistant managing editor of the NY Times, wrote a letter to Rankin: "We would certainly print in the international edition an extensive report of the Warren Commission findings, and substantial excerpts from the report...We would also publish...a substantial advertisement, advising readers that they could order copies of the complete report from the Paris office of the New York Times for a modest fee...It happens to be in our interest, as well as the interest of the Commission and the country, to obtain as wide a distribution of this document as we can." (Policoff, New Times, 8/8/1975; Village Voice 3/31/92)
  
• 5/24/1964 A group under George Ball submitted a draft congressional resolution to the NSC; it would give the president to use all necessary measures in Vietnam. (In Retrospect p120)
  
• 5/25/1964 CD 678: a two-page letter from the head of the Secret Service to the WC general counsel. It stated that the tapes of Dr. Malcolm Perry's press interview on 11/22/1963 could not be found.
  
• 5/25/1964 Maggie Daly, a columnist for the Chicago American asks in an article published today: "Isn't it odd that J. W. Altgens, a veteran Associated Press photographer in Dallas, who took a picture of the Kennedy Assassination - one of the witnesses close enough to see the President shot and able to describe second-by-second what happened - has been questioned neither by the FBI nor the Warren Commission?" (Trask)
  
• 5/25/1964 A draft resolution for Congress on actions in Southeast Asia was prepared; Laos and South Vietnam are deemed "vital to [US] national interest and to world peace" and if necessary the President must be able to "use all measures" to prevent a Communist takeover.
  
• 5/26/1964 Supreme Court rules that county public schools on Prince Edward Island, Virginia, which were shut to avoid integration, must re-open and integrate.
  
• 5/26/1964 FBI letter to J. Lee Rankin, 26 May 1964. This letter and enclosures, part of CD 984, includes Weisberg's comments on the FBI's failure to investigate anti-Castro connections to the JFK assassination.
  
• 5/27/1964 Lady Bird Johnson diary entry: "News of Nehru's death was the word that woke us up about 6 this morning, and great repercussions it will have in the world."
  
• 5/27/1964 Ireland's president, Eamon de Valera, arrives in Washington for a visit.
  
• 5/27/1964 Psychiatrist William Beavers recommended a formal sanity hearing for Ruby.
  
• Late May 1964 Warren announced that the volumes of hearings and evidence would not be published due to the expense involved; the Congressional members of the WC disagreed, saying the expense was justified. (Inquest)
  
• 5/27/1964 LBJ phone call to McGeorge Bundy (the recording was released in 1997): "I stayed awake last night thinking about this thing [Southeast Asia] and the more I think of it, I don't know what in the hell...It looks to me like we're getting into another Korea, it just worries the hell out of me, I don't see what we can ever hope to get out of there with once we're committed....I don't think it's worth fighting for and I don't think we can get out, and it's just the biggest damn mess."
  

PRESIDENT JOHNSON: I'll tell you, the more that I stayed awake last night thinking of this thing, the more I think of it, I don't know what in the hell--it looks like to me we're getting into another Korea. It just worries the hell out of me. I don't see what we can ever hope to get out of with once we're committed. I believe the Chinese Communists are coming in to it. I don't think that we can fight em ten thousand miles away from home and ever get anywhere in that area. I don't think it's worth fighting for, and I don't think we can get out, and it's just the biggest damn mess that I ever saw.
McGEORGE BUNDY: It's an awful mess.
PRESIDENT JOHNSON: And we've just got to think about it. I was looking at this sergeant of mine this morning--got six little old kids over there--and he's getting out my things and bringing me in my night reading, and all that kind of stuff, and I just thought if I'd ordered all those kids in there and what in hell am I ordering them out there for. What the hell is Vietnam worth to me? What is Laos worth to me? What is it worth to this country? We've got a treaty but, hell, everybody else has got a treaty out there, and they're not doing anything about it. Now, of course, if you start running from the Communists, they may just chase you right into your own kitchen.
McGEORGE BUNDY: That's the trouble. And that is what the rest of the-- about half of the world is going to think if anything comes apart on us. That's the dilemma.
PRESIDENT JOHNSON: But everybody I talk to that's got any sense and the other, just says, oh, God, please give this thought. Of course, I was reading Mansfield's stuff this morning, and it's just Milquetoast as it can be, it's not fine at all, but this is a terrible thing we're getting ready to do.

• 5/27/1964 US announces that aircraft have been sent to Laos to aid in fight against Communists.
  
• 5/28/1964 An obscure FBI memo titled, "Lee Harvey Oswald, Internal Security - R - Cuba" revealed that "Detective John Caulfield, Bureau of Special Services, York City Police Department" had investigated anti-Castro Cubans in New York during the WC investigation. He provided information on the Cuban Student Directorate, which Oswald had reputedly had contact with. (Coincidence or Conspiracy p519-21)
  
• 5/29/1964 Cubans claim balloons of various sizes carrying bacteriological agents are dropped over the region of Las Villas.
  

[Tracy Riddle]

• 6/1964 Harold Wilson narrowly elected new Labour Party PM of Britain
  
• 6/1964 Barry Goldwater described Nixon as "another [Harold] Stassen" with his persistent ambition to be President. (Evans & Novak, Esquire, 11/1964)
  
• 6/1964 Dr. King's book Why We Can`t Wait is published by Harper & Row.
  
• In late June of 1964, Oswald's alleged "historic diary" from his Russian days appeared in Hugh Aynesworth's newspaper with a commentary by the reporter. Two weeks later it also appeared in U. S. News and World Report. An FBI investigation followed to see how this material leaked into the press. In declassified documents, it appears that the diary was pilfered from the Dallas Police archives by the notorious assistant DA Bill Alexander and then given to his friend Aynesworth. Aynesworth then put it on the market to other magazines including Newsweek. It eventually ended up in Life magazine also. Alexander, Aynesworth and the reporter's wife Paula split thousands of dollars. Oswald's widow was paid later by Life since, originally, Aynesworth had illegally cut her out of the deal. In another FBI report of July 7th, it also appears that Aynesworth was using the so-called diary for career advancement purposes. A source told the Bureau that part of the deal with Newsweek was that Aynesworth was to become their Dallas correspondent. As the Bureau noted, Aynesworth did become their Dallas stringer afterward. (It is interesting to note here that the "diary" has been shown to have been not a real diary at all. That is, it was not recorded on a daily basis but rather in two or three sittings.)
  
• 6/1/1964 By this deadline, only Specter had turned in his final report (the source of the shots); Warren was furious that the deadline would not be reached. (Inquest)
  
• 6/1/1964 Rankin pressured Leon Hubert to resign from an active role in the Ruby investigation, though he had been led to believe that he would be allowed to attend Ruby's WC interview. Ruby was interviewed in Dallas 6/7 and Patrick Dean on 6/8 and Hubert wasn't advised. (Ruby Cover-Up p18)
  
• 6/1/1964 Meeting in Honolulu about Vietnam; everyone was gloomy except Lodge. There was no agreement over how to proceed with the war.
  
• 6/1/1964 The NYT ran a Page One exclusive, "Panel to Reject Theories of Plot in Kennedy's Death," which amounted to an extensive preview of the Warren Report nearly four months prior to its official release. It depicts the SS photo showing two agents with JFK's wound location drawn far down on agent's back. Anthony Lewis (NY Times) wrote an exclusive on the Warren Commission, based on inside sources: "...it has no credible evidence of any conspiracy...A spokesman for the Commission said that none of these critical works, both foreign and domestic, had come up with any factual information. He said the Commission had found 'just a rehash of the same material, the same questions which each man had presented before'...In some cases, the skeptics have raised questions about the number of shots fired. The Commission's data has shown that there were three, one that hit Mr Kennedy in the back, wounding him, probably not fatally. The fatal shot followed. A third bullet, fired either before or after these two went wild. A Commission spokesman expressed conviction that the Report when issued would rebut such theories as presented by [author] Mr Buchanan. He said that 'not even the authors of the theories will stand by them. We'll knock them out of their positions,' he said."
  
• 6/2/1964 JCS sent a memo to McNamara urging that steps be taken to neutralize North Vietnam; no specific plan to do this was mentioned, however.
  
• 6/2/1964 In Havana, three men are executed for allegedly being CIA spies.
  
• 6/2/1964 LBJ stated, "America keeps her word. We are steadfast in a policy which has been followed for 10 years in three administrations. In the case of Viet-Nam, our commitment today is just the same as the commitment made by President Eisenhower to President Diem in 1954 - a commitment to help these people help themselves."
  
• 6/2/1964 The pristine bullet - CE-399 - is sent from Washington to Dallas in order for it to be identified by those who handled it on Nov. 22, 1963. Darrell Tomlinson, the Parkland Hospital orderly who originally found the bullet cannot identify it. The bullet is returned to Washington on June 22.
  
• 6/4/1964 WC meeting; its transcript was first reported by Tad Szulc 9/17/1975 (Washington Star.) It revealed that "Ford provoked a near uproar in the panel when, on June 4, 1964, he charged that outside forces were trying to pressure the Commission to decide in advance that Oswald was the solitary assassin." Ford told the HSCA in 1978 that he couldn't remember anything about this meeting, but recalled that "there was no pressure."
  
• 6/4/1964 This short meeting was called to discuss statements in various news media that a spokesman for the Commission had indicated that "Commission members have come to the conclusion that President Kennedy's assassination was the act of a lone individual." McCloy suggested making a statement that the Commission's "taking of testimony is nearing an end, that the Commission....has made no final conclusions as yet." This statement was approved.
  
• 6/4/1964 The federal agents who participated in the assassination reconstruction in Dallas testify before the Warren Commission. FBI Agent Lyndal Shaneyfelt testifies to the W.C. that the limo in which JFK was assassinated was traveling on Elm Street at an overall average speed of 11.2 miles per hour. This determination is based upon the May 24th reenactment conducted by the FBI that measured how far the limo traveled between frames of the Zapruder film. It was calculated the vehicle traveled a distance of 136.1 feet between frames 161 and 313. The Zapruder camera operated at 18.3 frames per second.
  
• 6/4/1964 William Manchester interviewed Hoover in his office at 10:10am. An internal FBI memo by DeLoach revealed that three times Hoover told Manchester he had entered the JFK case on 11/22/1963 without any legal authority to do so.
  
• 6/5/1964 Dallas Times Herald story reported about an unnamed victim of a missed shot in Dealey Plaza (this would turn out to be James Tague). UPI picked up the story and ran it the same day. Tague was motivated to contact the paper because a week earlier Dallas' KRLD-TV had carried an extensive story from "a source close to the Warren Commission" saying that their report would conclude that JFK and Connally had been hit by the first shot and the second shot had hit JFK in the head. There was no mention of a missed shot; Tague had reported to the FBI about the mark on the curbstone 6 months earlier. The WC did its best to ignore Tague for as long as possible. (McKnight)
  
• 6/5/1964 Barney Ross (Rasofsky), a friend of Ruby's, told the FBI that he and Ruby had delivered sealed envelopes at $1 per for Al Capone in Chicago. (BLAKEY 185,283; HSCA 9 199; FBI telex, SAC San Francisco to SAC Dallas and Las Vegas, 11/26/1963; Las Vegas Sun, 10/9/1978; CD 4 p13-18,160-63)
  
• 6/5/1964 Maxwell Taylor, after reading JCS memo of 6/2, warned McNamara that it "raised considerably the risks of escalation."
  
• 6/5/1964 The Cuban Revolutionary Council, which launched the abortive Bay of Pigs invasion of Cuba in 1961, disbands today and passes the torch of anti-Castro leadership to a new, referendum-backed group -- the Cuban Representation in Exile (RCE), led by a five man board.
  
• 6/5/1964 By this date, Arlen Specter has submitted a draft of his chapter for the Warren Commission's report dealing with the basic facts of the assassination. The facts and premises set forth in the chapter are selected and organized so as to support the single-bullet hypothesis. The chapter is eventually toned down by the Commission, but still asserts (by quoting Robert Frazier) that: "[the bullet which first hit Kennedy] probably struck Governor Connally." And on this basis, the single-bullet hypothesis continues to be advanced.
  
• 6/6/1964 4:30am McGeorge Bundy woke LBJ to report that a US recon plane had been shot down over Laos. LBJ remarked, "We've got our planes ready to go in if absolutely necessary. Everybody's in agreement that we can't turn and run." (White House Diary p157) The plane had been launched from the carrier Kitty Hawk.
  
• 6/6/1964 Guy Banister is found dead at his apartment in New Orleans. He is pronounced dead at 8:00 PM by Orleans Parish Coroner Dr. Nicholas Chetta. Banister officially died of coronary thrombosis just prior to the closing of the Warren Commission investigation. Investigators had intended to question him regarding the following topics: "CIA", "Ammunition and Arms", "Civil rights program of JFK", "Fair Play for Cuba Committee" and "The International Trade Mart". Banister's files went missing after his death. Later, New Orleans Assistant District Attorney Andrew Sciambra interviewed Banister's widow. She told him that she saw some Fair Play for Cuba leaflets in Banister's office when she went there after his death. (Summers, Not in Your Lifetime)
  
• 6/6/1964 Texas oilman George Herbert Walker Bush wins the Texas Senate Primary in a landslide triumph over veteran campaigner Jack Cox. The victory sends Bush into the general election against Democratic Sen. Ralph Yarborough in November.
  
• 6/7/1964 A US plane over Laos is hit and damaged by anti-aircraft fire.
  
• 6/7/1964 Earl Warren went to Dallas for a first-hand look at Dealey Plaza, and Arlen Specter explained his single-bullet theory to him. Then they interviewed Jack Ruby in his jail cell. The two WC staffers assigned to investigating Ruby, Hubert and Griffin, are not brought along. Warren later recalled, "the fellow was clearly delusional when I talked to him. He took me aside and he said, Hear those voices? Hear those voices?' He thought they were Jewish children and Jewish women who were being put to death in the building there." (Chief Justice p424) Jack Ruby begs that be be taken to Washington to get the truth of his testimony. Representing the Commission is Chief Justice Earl Warren and Representative Gerald R. Ford along with general counsel J. Lee Rankin, staff attorneys Arlen Specter and Joseph Ball. Also present are attorneys Leon Jaworski and Robert G. Storey, who are acting as liaison between the Commission and Texas authorities: Secret Service agent Elmer W. Moore; Dallas assistant district attorney Jim Bowie; Sheriff Bill Decker; Ruby attorney Joe Tonahill; and several Dallas police officers. Ruby: "Gentlemen, my life is in danger here ... Do I sound sober enough to you as I say this? ... Then follow this up. I may not live tomorrow to give any further testimony... the only thing I want to get out to the public, and I can't say it here, is with authenticity, with sincerity of the truth of everything and why my act was committed, but it can't be said here... . Well, you won't ever see me again. I tell you that ... A whole new form of government is going to take over the country, and I know I won't live to see you another time."
  
• 6/8/1964 Memo from Helms to Rankin responding to questions about Ruby. It was classified for 12 years though it contained no startling revelations.
  
• 6/8/1964 When interviewed by the Warren Commission on 8th June, 1964, Waggoner Carr, Texas State Attorney, claimed the following: As I recall, it was around 8 or 9 o'clock at night on November 22, 1963, when I received a long-distance telephone call from Washington from someone in the White House. I can't for the life of me remember who it was. A rumor had been heard here that there was going to be an allegation in the indictment against Oswald connecting the assassination with an international conspiracy, and the inquiry was made whether I had any knowledge of it, and I told him I had no knowledge of it. As a matter of fact, I hadn't been in Dallas since the assassination and was not there at the time of the assassination. So the request was made of me to contact Mr. Wade to find out if that allegation was in the indictment. I received the definite impression that the concern of the caller was that because of the emotion or the high tension that existed at that time that someone might thoughtlessly place in the indictment such an allegation without having the proof of such a conspiracy. So I did call Mr. Wade from my home, when I received the call, and he told me very much what he repeated to you today, as I recall, that he had no knowledge of anyone desiring to have that or planning to have that in the indictment…
  
• 6/8/1964 Henry Wade, Dallas D.A., testified before the WC. I talked to Jim Bowie, my first assistant who had talked to, somebody had called him, my phone had been busy and Barefoot Sanders, I talked to him, and he they all told that they were concerned about their having received calls from Washington and somewhere else, and I told them that there wasn't any such crime in Texas, I didn't know where it came from, and that is what prompted me to go down and take the complaint, otherwise I never would have gone down to the police station. J. Lee Rankin: Did you say anything about whether you had evidence to support such a complaint of a conspiracy? Mr. Wade: Mr. Rankin, I don't know what evidence we have, we had at that time and actually don't know yet what all the evidence was I never did see, I was told they had a lot of Fair Play for Cuba propaganda or correspondence on Oswald, and letters from the Communist Party, and it was probably exaggerated to me, was told this. I have never seen any of that personally. Never saw any of it that night. But whether he was a Communist or whether he wasn't, had nothing to do with solving the problem at hand, the filing of the charge.
  
• 6/8/1964 The Commission asked the Marine Corps for information "relative to Marksmanship capabilities of Lee Harvey Oswald." From the Headquarters of the Marine Corps came a response dated June 8, 1964, by Lieutenant-Colonel A. G. Folsom, Jr., head of the Records Branch of the Personnel Branch, "by direction of the Commandant of the Marine Corps" (19H16-8). Colonel Folsom also correlated proficiency with practice. He stated, "The Marine Corps considers that any reasonable application of the instructions given to Marines should permit them to be qualified as at least a marksman. To become qualified as a sharpshooter, the Marine Corps is of the opinion that most Marines with a reasonable amount of adaptability to weapons firing so become qualified. Consequently a low marksman qualification indicates a rather poor 'shot' and a sharpshooter qualification is a fairly good 'shot'."
  
• 6/8/1964 LBJ ordered strikes on Pathet Lao anti-aircraft positions near Phongsavang, Laos. Radio Hanoi announced the attack to the world, and the next day the administration was forced to admit it.
  
• 6/9/1964 Nixon flew to Cleveland for the national Governor's Conference, and attacked Goldwater's positions: "It would be a tragedy for the Republican Party in the event that Senator Goldwater's views...were not challenged and repudiated." Nixon hoped to produce a convention deadlock which would turn to him as a consensus candidate. But within a week he began to look to 1968 instead, and decided to back Goldwater all the way. (The Republican Establishment p168-9)
  
• 6/9/1964 Capt. Fritz writes a letter to the Warren Commission regarding spent shells found in the Texas School Book Depository. This letter is later found to be missing from the National Archives. In an affidavit dated June 9, 1964, Fritz said of the third shell, "I told Detective Dhority that after these hulls were checked for prints to leave two of them to be delivered to the FBI and to bring one of them to my office to be used for comparison tests here in the office, as we were trying to find where the cartridges had been bought. When Detective Dhority returned from the Identification Bureau, he returned the one empty hull which I kept in my possession. Several days later, I believe on the night of November 27, Vince Drain of the FBI called me at home about one o'clock in the morning and said that the Commission wanted the other empty hull and a notebook that belonged to Oswald. [Hardly possible because the Commission was not appointed until two days later.] I came to the office and delivered these things to the FBI." (7H404)
  
• 6/9/1964 J. Edgar Hoover, in a letter to Rankin dated today, notifies the Warren Commission that Jack Ruby had been a confidential FBI informant in 1959. The letter will not be published in the Commission's report. Ruby had "expressed a willingness to furnish information" to the FBI in 1959. This memo was not declassified until 1971.
  
• 6/9/1964 Barefoot Sanders wrote to Rankin about the bullet mark on the curb in Dealey Plaza.
  
• 6/9/1964 The CIA's Board of National Estimates reported that the loss of South Vietnam to the Communists would seriously damage US prestige and advance the cause of Asian Communism. (In Retrospect p124) But the CIA felt that an immediate domino effect would not take place.
  
• 6/9/1964 Sen. Mansfield wrote a memo to LBJ warning him that he had better persuade the country before planning a major war in Vietnam.
  
• 6/9/1964 St. Augustine, Florida: Klansman Connie Lynch addressed a white mob: "Martin Lucifer Coon! That nigger says it's gonna be a hot summer. If he thinks the niggers can make it a hot summer, I will tell him that one-hundred-forty-million white people know how to make it a hotter summer!…Now I grant you that some niggers are gonna get killed in the process, but when war's on that's what happens." After the speech, a screaming white mob attacked 400 blacks as they peacefully marched through the city's plaza.
  
• 6/10/1964 Sen. Dirksen threw his support behind the Civil Rights bill as "an idea whose time has come," and cloture was achieved.
  
• 6/10/1964 Arlen Specter wrote a draft of his section of the Warren Report. (McKnight)
  
• 6/10/1964 Dean Rusk testifies before the Warren Commission: "I have seen no evidence that would indicate to me that the Soviet Union considered that it had any interest in the removal of President Kennedy ... I can't see how it could be to the interest of the Soviet Union to make any such effort."
  
• 6/11/1964 memo from Specter to Rankin: "If additional depositions are taken in Dallas, I suggest that Jim Tague, 2424 Inwood, Apartment 253, and Virgie Rackley, 405 Wood Street be deposed to determine the knowledge of each on where the missing bullet struck. These two witnesses were mentioned in the early FBI reports, but they have never been deposed."
  
• 6/11/1964 Earl Warren wrote RFK asking if there was "any additional information relating to the assassination...which has not been sent to the Commission" and "any information suggesting that the assassination...was caused by a domestic or foreign conspiracy." RFK did not respond until 8/4 when he denied that there was any more information in the possession of the Justice Department. (The Nation 11/29/1993)
  
• 6/11/1964 Marina testified before the WC.
  
• 6/11/1964 RFK wrote LBJ that he was willing to go to Vietnam "in any capacity" to help the administration there. Jack Valenti later recalled that LBJ didn't want him to go out of fear that he might be assassinated by Vietnamese seeking revenge for Diem's death. (A Very Human President p141)
  
• 6/11/1964 Two black students enroll at the University of Alabama despite opposition from Gov. Wallace and local protest.
  
• 6/11/1964 J. Edgar Hoover sends a letter to the Warren Commission denying its request to have the FBI administer a polygraph test to Jack Ruby. Hoover claims the test is unreliable.
  
• 6/12/1964 As conspiracy rumors swirled in Europe, Time published an article called 'JFK: The Murder and the Myths': it blamed any conspiracy speculation on "leftist" writers and those seeking a "rightist conspiracy."
  
• 6/12/1964 Gen. Khanh and Air Marshall Nguyen Cao Ky call for air strikes against North Vietnam.
  
• 6/12/1964 In a memo to J. Edgar Hoover from the special agent in charge of the New York office information from an informant maintains that Fidel Castro has conducted his own ballistics tests based on the "official" scenario of the JFK assassination and has decided "it took about three people" to assassinate JFK. Castro, who considers himself a sharpshooter, has attempted to recreate the shooting, using a high powered rifle with a telescopic sight. "Conducting the tests was Castro's own personal idea to prove to himself that it could not be done and that when Castro and his men could not do it, Castro concluded Oswald must have had help." Castro, based on his findings, speculated that the assassination was probably the work of three people. "Castro is said to have expressed the conclusion that Oswald could not have fired three times in succession and hit the target with the telescopic sight in the available time, that he would have needed two other men in order for the three shots to have been fired in the time interval. The source commented that on the basis of Castro's remarks, it was clear that his beliefs were based on theory as a result of Cuban experiments and not on any firsthand information in Castro's possession." Hoover passes this information along in a confidential letter to J. Lee Rankin 6/17, general counsel for the Warren Commission. According to Hoover, Castro also said that when Oswald was refused a visa at the Cuban Embassy in Mexico City several weeks before the assassination, he left saying, "I'm going to kill Kennedy for this." Existence of the Hoover letter and some of its contents won't become generally known until the mid-1970s. The letter itself won't be made public until March 30, 1995.
  
• 6/12/1964 RFK receives a letter from Earl Warren informing him that the Commission wishes to hear directly from the attorney general. "In view of the widely circulated allegations on this subject, the Commission would like to be informed in particular whether you have any information suggesting that the assassination of President Kennedy was caused by a domestic or foreign conspiracy. Needless to say, if you have any suggestions to make regarding the investigation of these allegations or any other phase of the Commission's work, we stand ready to act upon them." RFK writes the words "Nick, what do I do?" on the letter and forwards it to Nicholas Katzenbach. Katzenbach works out a deal for RFK with Warren and the commission's chief counsel, Lee Rankin. In return for being excused from testifying before the commission, RFK is required to sign a letter written by Warren Commission attorney Howard Willens: "I would like to state definitely that I know of no credible evidence to support the allegations that the assassination of President Kennedy was caused by a domestic or foreign conspiracy." The signed letter is not received by the Commission until August 4th.
  
• 6/14/1964 Henry Cabot Lodge told the White House he wanted to resign.
  
• 6/14/1964 COFO volunteers attended an orientation sponsored by the National Council of Churches at the Western College for Women in Oxford, Ohio. They were given crash courses in how to survive in Mississippi. Students were taught what to do if attacked or arrested. It was made clear to them that they might get killed. One of the volunteers was a 20-year-old NYC student named Andrew Goodman. Also present were James Chaney and Mickey and Rita Schwerner.
  
• 6/14/1964 Chinese government news agency announced that US planes and pilots were fighting in the Congo. 6/15 the State Dept denied it. 6/16 the Chinese provided specific details, and 6/17 the administration admitted that it had furnished "contract fliers" and transports to the Congo. The Washington Post around this time attacked the administration for its secrecy: "The country has come to a sad pass when it must turn to Communist China's New China News Agency for reports on covert military operations being conducted by the United States. Yet this incredible inversion has taken place twice within the last week. What in heaven's name does the United States think it is doing by trying to keep these air strikes secret?"
  
• 6/15/1964 Supreme Court ruled that both houses of state legislatures had to be apportioned by population, again reflecting one-man, one-vote (Reynolds v. Sims). Conservative outcry was again loud and angry. Goldwater tried to make the Supreme Court an issue in the campaign. Reynolds had an enormous impact in creating new districts represented by minorities, and in helping the Republicans to break the one-party system in the South.
  
• 6/15/1964 Joseph Alsop came to the White House and told LBJ that if he didn't commit troops to Vietnam, he'd be presiding over the first real defeat for the US in history. He explained that there was no honorable way out of our commitment there. (White House Diary p168)
  
• 6/15/1964 US News and World Report commented, "Signs point toward Mississippi as a major battleground in this summer's campaign. White students from the North are moving in to help Negroes - and white Mississippians are preparing their defenses."
  
• 6/16/1964 CE2560: attached to CE 2559, FBI document. "Memo for the record. Mr Eisenberg. Telephone message received from Mr. Meade Warner of the FBI of the Aberdeen Proving Ground on April 6, 1964: 'There were three pieces in the scope examined by the FBI gunsmith. Two pieces were .015 inches thick so placed as to elevate the scope with respect to the gun. One piece was .020 inches thick so placed as to point the scope leftward with respect to the gun. The gunsmith observed that the scope as we received it was installed as if for a left-handed man."(H 25 799)
  
• 6/16/1964 United Nations memorandum, Top Secret, from Adlai Stevenson to President Johnson, June 16, 1964. Stevenson sends the "verbal message" given to Lisa Howard to Johnson with a cover memo briefing him on the Castro dialogue started under Kennedy and suggesting consideration of resumption of talks "on a low enough level to avoid any possible embarrassment."
  
• 6/16/1964 THE STATE OF TEXAS vs. JACK RUBENSTEIN -- Defense counsel files motion for continuance in sanity hearing.
  
• 6/16/1964 A joint meeting of Klansmen from Meridian and Philadelphia, Mississippi discussed how they were going to kill Mickey Schwerner. They decided to go to the Mount Zion United Methodist Church in Neshoba County, where Schwerner had been seen in his attempts to start a freedom school. They learned that Schwerner was still in Ohio, so the Klansmen burnt down the church and beaten several blacks. The incident wasn't even reported in local newspapers.
  
• 6/17/1964 Hoover memo to Rankin: "Through a confidential source which has furnished reliable information in the past, we have been advised of some statements made by Fidel Castro, Cuban Prime Minister, concerning the assassination of President Kennedy. In connection with these statements of Castro, your attention is called to the speech made by Castro on November 27, 1963, in Havana, Cuba, during which Castro made similar statements concerning this matter. The pertinent portions of this speech are set out in the report of Special Agent James J. O'Connor dated May 8, 1964, at Miami, Florida, beginning on page 30. According to our source, Castro recently is reported to have Said, "Our people in Mexico gave us the details in a full report of how he (Oswald) acted when he came to Mexico to their embassy (uncertain whether he means -Cuban or Russian Embassy)," Castro further related, "First of all, nobody ever goes that way for a visa. Second, it costs money to go that distance. He (Oswald) stormed into the embassy, demanded the visa, and when it was refused to him, headed out saying, 'I'm going to kill Kennedy for this.'" Castro is alleged to have continued and asked, "What is your government doing to catch the other assassins?" and speculated, "It took about three people." The source then advised that Castro's speculation was based on tests which Castro and his men allegedly made under similar conditions with a similar rifle and telescopic sight. Castro is said to have expressed the conclusion that Oswald could not have fired three times in succession and bit the target with the telescopic sight in the available time, that he would have needed two other men in order for the three shots to have been tired in the time interval. The source commented that on the basis of Castro's remarks, it was clear that his beliefs were based on theory as a result of Cuban experiments and not on any firsthand information in Castro's possession."
  
• 6/17/1964 Memo from Hoover to Rankin: "Mr. Arlen Specter of the Commission's staff provided this Bureau with four photographs and the clothing worn by Governor John Connally on November 22, 1963, for use in connection with the re-enactment of certain aspects of the assassinations of President Kennedy at Dallas, Texas. The photographs and the clothing, consisting of Governor Connally's coat, trousers, shirt and tie...were returned to Miss Mary North at the Commission on June 16, 1964." (Post Mortem p126)
  
• 6/17/1964 The Warren Commission announces that its hearings are completed. By July, Adams, Coleman, Ball, Hubert and Jenner had returned to their private practices and made almost no contribution to the writing of the Report. Norman Redlich and Alfred Goldberg were the primary authors of the WR, and Warren kept pushing the deadline back as the project dragged on. (Inquest)
  
• 6/18/1964 Richard Russell, speech in the Senate on his opposition to the Civil Rights Act (18th June, 1964) I am proud to have been a member of that small group of determined senators that since the 9th of March has given ... the last iota of physical strength in the effort to hold back the overwhelming combination of forces supporting this bill until its manifold evils could be laid bare before the people of the country. The depth of our conviction is evidenced by the intensity of our opposition. There is little room for honorable men to compromise where the inalienable rights of future generations are at stake. . . . Mr. President, the people of the South are citizens of this Republic. They are entitled to some consideration. It seems to me that fair men should recognize that the people of the South, too, have some rights which should be respected. And though, Mr. President, we have failed in this fight to protect them from a burgeoning bureaucracy that is already planning and organizing invasion after invasion of the South... our failure cannot be ascribed to lack of effort. Our ranks were too thin, our resources too scanty, but we did our best. I say to my comrades in arms in this long fight that there will never come a time when it will be necessary for any one of us to apologize for his conduct or his courage.
  
• 6/18/1964 During his Warren Commission testimony, Secret Service Chief Rowley was asked the following: Mr. Rankin: "Chief Rowley, I should like to have you state for the record, for the Commission, whether the action of President Kennedy in making these statements was understood by you or properly could have been understood by the agents as relieving them of any responsibility about the protection of the President." Mr. Rowley: "No; I would not so construe that, Mr. Rankin. The agents would respond regardless of what the President said if the situation indicated a potential danger. The facilities were available to them. They had the rear steps, they would be there as a part of the screen. And immediately in the event of any emergency they would have used them."… "Now, if the thing gets too sticky, you put the agent right in the back seat, which I have done many times with past Presidents."
  
• 6/19/1964 Senate passes the Civil Rights Bill 73-27.
  
• 6/19/1964 U.S. Senator Edward M. Kennedy is involved in a plane crash in which one of his aides and the pilot were killed. He was pulled from the wreckage by fellow senator Birch E. Bayh II and spent weeks in a hospital recovering from a broken back, a punctured lung, broken ribs, and internal bleeding. Joachim Joesten: "Edward Kennedy at first gave some underhanded support to some people who urged him to undertake a private investigation of his brother's death. He had occasion to rue this short fling at bravery. On June 21, 1964 [sic], he came close to losing his life in the crash of his private airplane near Northampton, Maas. Although there were clear-cut indications that the plane had been sabotaged before the take-off from Washington, the cause of the accident was glossed over, as usual. Teddy was cured; he never tried to play the hero again after that. His mother Rose, who had also for a while considered launching a private investigation into the murder of her son, the President, now also read the writing on the wall correctly and stayed her hand. The whole clan withdrew into its shell, well aware that it would be too dangerous to fight the Usurper. And so they decided to play his game. Robert, the head of the clan took the lead with that unconscionable statement in Cracow - one week after his brother Ted had narrowly escaped death in the airplane crash."
  
• 6/19/1964 TIME story told of Marina being recalled by the WC to testify about her husband's threats against Nixon. The story speculated, "When the full report of the Warren Commission is published it may well reflect the theory that Lee Harvey Oswald had an obssessive yen to kill not just John F. Kennedy, but any notable person."
  
• 6/19/1964 CIA sends a memo on Soviet mind-control techniques to the WC: "1. There are two major methods of altering or controlling human behavior, and the Soviets are interested in both. The first is psychological; the second, pharmacological. The two may be used as individual methods or for mutual reinforcement. For long-term control of large numbers of people, the former method is more promising than the latter. In dealing with individuals, the U.S. experience suggests the pharmacological approach (assisted by psychological techniques) would be the only effective method. Neither method would be very effective for single individuals on a long term basis. 2. Soviet research on the pharmacological agents producing behavioral effects has consistently lagged about five years behind Western research. They have been interested in such research, however, and are now pursuing research on such chemicals as LSD-25, amphetamines, tranquillizers, hypnotics, and similar materials. There is no present evidence that the Soviets have any singular, new, potent drugs to force a course of action on an individual. They are aware, however, of the tremendous drive produced by drug addiction, and PERHAPS could couple this with psychological direction to achieve control of an individual. 3. The psychological aspects of behavior control would include not only conditioning by repetition and training, but such things as hypnosis, deprivation, isolation, manipulation of guilt feelings, subtle or overt threats, social pressure, and so on. Some of the newer trends in the USSR are as follows: a. The adoption of a multidisciplinary approach integrating biological, social and physical-mathematical research in attempts better to understand, and eventually, to control human behavior in a manner consonant with national plans. b. The outstanding feature, in addition to the interdisciplinary approach, is a new concern for mathematical approaches to an understanding of behavior. Particularly notable are attempts to use modern information theory, automata theory, and feedback concepts in interpreting the mechanisms by which the "second signal system," i.e., speech and associated phenomena, affect human behavior. Implied by this "second signal system," using INFORMATION inputs as causative agents rather than chemical agents, electrodes or other more exotic techniques applicable, perhaps, to individuals rather than groups. c. This new trend, observed in the early Post-Stalin Period, continues. By 1960 the word "cybernetics" was used by the Soviets to designate this new trend. This new science is considered by some as the key to understanding the human brain and the product of its functioning --psychic activity and personality--to the development of means for controlling it and to ways for molding the character of the "New Communist Man". As one Soviet author puts it: Cybernetics can be used in "molding of a child's character, the inculcation of knowledge and techniques, the amassing of experience, the establishment of social behavior patterns...all functions which can be summarized as 'control' of the growth process of the individual." 1/Students of particular disciplines in the USSR, such as psychologist and social scientists, also support the general cybernetic trend. 2/ (Blanked by CIA) 4. In summary, therefore, there is no evidence that the Soviets have any techniques or agents capable of producing particular behavioral patterns which are not available in the West. Current research indicates that the Soviets are attempting to develop a technology forcontrolling the development of behavioral patterns among the citizenry of the USSR in accordance with politically determined requirements of the system. Furthermore, the same technology can be applied to more sophisticated approaches to the "coding" of information for transmittal to population targets in the "battle for the minds of men." Some of the more esoteric techniques such as ESP or, as the Soviets call it, "biological radio-communication", and psychogenic agents such as LSD, are receiving some overt attention with, possibly, applications in mind for individual behavior control under clandestine conditions. However, we require more information than is currently available in order to establish or disprove planned or actual applications of various methodologies by Soviet scientists to the control of actions of articular individuals.
  
• 6/20/1964 Gen. William Westmoreland succeeded Gen. Paul Harkins as head of US forces in Vietnam.
  
• 6/20/1964 Civil rights activists Michael Schwerner, James Chaney and Andrew Goodman drove all day to Mississippi, arriving in Meridian in the evening.
  
• 6/20/1964 An FBI airtel of June 20, reveals a snag in the WC/FBI plan -- neither Tomlinson nor Wright (the man who turned the bullet over to the SA Johnsen) could ID CE-399. The airtel also advised: Obtain [CE-399] from FBI Laboratory and thereafter immediately exhibit to SA Robert [sic] E. Johnson [sic], Secret Service, who is attached to White House detail, and to James Rowley, Chief, Secret Service, to have [CE-399] identified. If neither can identify, C1 should then be examined by SA Elmer Lee Todd for the purpose of identifying item by inspection [emphasis added].June 20, 1964 FBI Airtel from SAC, Dallas to J. Edgar Hoover: "... neither Darrell C. Tomlinson, who found bullet [CE # 399] at Parkland Hospital, Dallas, nor O. P. Wright, Personnel Officer, Parkland Hospital, who obtained bullet from Tomlinson and gave to Special Service, at Dallas 11/22/63, can identify bullet ... ."
  
• 6/21/1964 Schwerner, Chaney and Goodman arose early and drove out to inspect the remains of the Mt. Zion church. They talked to the beating victims and asked them if they were willing to sign affidavits. They got back in their Ford station wagon to visit other blacks, but were stopped on Highway 19, three miles east of Philadelphia, by Deputy Sheriff Cecil Price for "speeding." He locked all three up in the Neshoba County jail. They were fed a good dinner by the prison matron, and at 10:30pm price told Mickey and his friends they could go if they paid a $20 fine. They paid their fine, and Price told them, "You came here to stir up trouble. These folks were getting along all right before you got here and they can do without your help now." The boys got into their blue station wagon and drove off. Later that night, Price pulled them over again deep in the woods, and turned them over to a group of klansmen. All three were beaten and then shot to death. Goodman and Schwerner were shot once in the heart; Chaney was beaten and then shot three times.
  
• 6/22/1964 As their friends noticed them missing, Schwerner, Chaney and Goodman quickly became a national news story. Mississippi officials and common citizens alike charged that their disappearance was a hoax designed to embarrass the state and help the civil rights movement. Gov. Paul Johnson suggested the boys might be hiding out in Cuba.
  
• 6/22/1964 Prime Tippit murder scene witness, Helen Markham is visited by independent interviewers. She declines to talk to them, but her son, William Markham, consents to an interview. He later tells the FBI that he informs these interviewers that his mother "had lied on many occasions, even to members of her immediate family." Three days later, the Dallas police will arrest another of Mrs. Markham's sons. He will be injured while "trying to escape" from the police at that time. He falls from a window to a concrete driveway about 20 feet below. After recovering from his injuries, he will be sent to the Dallas County Jail.
  
• 6/23/1964 In this WC session, Commissioner Ford brought up the fact that one section of the draft report included references to the views of Soviet defector Yuri Nosenko, when "we have never had Mr. Nosenko before the Commission" and there were questions about his bona fides. Warren concurred that Nosenko should be left out of the report, saying that "I am allergic to defectors...it would be a tragic thing if we were to rely on him to any extent, and then it should later come out that he was a plant..."
  
• 6/23/1964 Henry Cabot Lodge resigns as US ambassador to South Vietnam; Maxwell Taylor replaced him.
  
• 6/23/1964 The burned-out remains of the station wagon the three civil rights workers were driving is found in the Bogue Chitto swamp, north of Philadelphia, Miss., but their bodies were not in it. The FBI now entered the case.
  
• 6/24 or 30/1964 WC announced that the Report would not be released until after the Republican Convention.
  
• 6/24/1964 Note the final notation on the chain-of-custody card in Figure 2, which relates that CE-399 was taken from the FBI Lab by "Elmer Todd WFO [Washington Field Office] 6/24/64." That is exactly what happened; SA Elmer Lee Todd (deceased) showed CE-399 to Rowley and Johnsen at the White House, and neither could identify the bullet as the one they'd handled seven months prior. Not having marked the bullet with their initials, a failure to positively ID the bullet might be written off as bureaucratic CYA caution. Not so, Elmer Todd. Tomlinson, Wright, Johnsen, and Rowley all failed to positively ID CE-399. Thus it fell to Elmer Todd to make the positive ID, which he did. And just how did Todd accomplish that? He purportedly recognized the initials he placed on the bullet on the day of the assassination (CE 2011, at 24H412, CD 2). However, there is no question but that only three sets of initials now appear on CE-399. There is likewise no question that they have all been positively identified: RF is Robert Frazier, CK is Charles Killion, and JH is Cortland Cunningham.
  
• 6/24/1964 De-classified memo from John McCloy to J. Lee Rankin showed that he had doubts about the single bullet theory. "I think too much effort is expended on attempting to prove that the first bullet, which hit the president, was also responsible for all of Connally's wounds," McCloy wrote. "The evidence against this is not fully stated." He added that a section of the report dealing with the possibility of shots being fired at Kennedy's motorcade from an overpass was "not well done." Elsewhere, McCloy questioned the commission's account that a bullet found on a stretcher at Dallas' Parkland Hospital - where Kennedy and Connally were treated after being shot - was the CE399 bullet. He wrote: "The statement concerning the bullet which was found on the stretcher is not particularly persuasive because there is no indication that the stretcher bullet' was in fact the bullet which caused the [Connally] wrist wound." It also contains many other suggestions by McCloy on revising the draft report. Some of those suggestions were adopted by the commission. But the commission did not revise the sections dealing with the "magic-bullet" theory. Nor did it revise other sections criticized by McCloy, dealing with the Kennedy and Connally wounds. He asked at one point, for example: "Why is there no citation of authority with regard to the wound in the president's back and its path through his body?"
  
• 6/24/1964 On orders from LBJ, sailors from the Meridian Naval Air Station arrived at the Bogue Chitto swamp to drag it for the bodies of the missing civil rights workers. They were not found, but as the search spread over the state, the bodies of other missing blacks from years past were discovered. Pressure from LBJ and RFK caused the FBI to form MIBURN ("Mississippi Burning") an investigative unit designed to pick up the ball dropped by local law enforcement. LBJ forced Hoover to open a Bureau office in Mississippi, but Hoover made the best of it with a photo-opportunity on the scene in Jackson. Locals thought the whole thing was ridiculous; one man joked to reporters that finding a dead body in a swamp meant nothing: "We throw two or three niggers in every year to feed the fish."
  
• 6/25/1964 Memo to Hoover from New York field office regarding SOLO (Jack Childs) source's statement from Castro that Oswald charged into the Cuban embassy threatening to kill Kennedy; "immediately the people in the Embassy suspected something wrong - why go to the Soviet Union through Cuba? An attempt is being made to involve Cuba in this conspiracy from the beginning...Castro stated that when Oswald was refused his visa at the Cuban Embassy in Mexico City, he acted like a real madman and started yelling and shouting and yelled on his way out, 'I'm going to kill that bastard. I'm going to kill Kennedy.'" The source "is of the opinion that Castro had nothing to do with the assassination and was concerned mainly with the question of the guilt of Oswald and that this was a conspiracy not only of Oswald but of two or three other people involved. The informant stated that Castro made no comment as to the fact that he was pleased that President Kennedy was killed and showed no elation about the matter and discussed it in a very serious matter." Castro, to satisfy his own curiosity as an expert sharpshooter, conducted tests with a similar rifle as the Carcano and came to the conclusion that Oswald could not have done the shooting by himself. This was declassified in 1995. (Assignment Oswald p276)
  
• 6/26/1964 Adlai Stevenson wrote a " Secret and Personal " memo to Johnson saying Castro felt that " all of our crises could be avoided if there was some way to communicate; that for want of anything better, he assumed that he could call [Howard] and she call me and I would advise you." Again Johnson gave no response.
  
• 6/26/1964 Look magazine published an exposé by David Wise and Thomas B. Ross which revealed that Zenith was a CIA front. The University of Miami authorities denied knowledge of the CIA operation (though Shackley would claim privately that University President Henry King Stanford was fully aware) and JMWAVE changed its main front company name from Zenith to "Melmar Corporation".
  
• 6/27/1964 THE STATE OF TEXAS vs. JACK RUBENSTEIN -- Defense counsel files a motion for an extension of time to file statement of facts (a court-approved transcript of the trial required by Texas law in order to file an appeal) and bills of exception (a list of challenges that are made considering specific rulings of a judge during a trial). Motion for extension of statement of facts is granted with sixty-day limit. Motion for extension of bills of exception is denied.
  
• 6/28/1964 Malcolm X said in a speech in NY, "We live in one of the rottenest countries that has ever existed on this earth. It's a system of exploitation, of outright humiliation and degradation."
  
• 6/29/1964 Sen. Russell's legal assistant, Alfredda Scobey, had severe doubts about the testimony of Marina Oswald. In fact, in a memo she wrote to him, she all but called Marina a liar. (Scobey Memo to Russell of 6/29/64) She added that there were many parts of her testimony that could be challenged. In fact, in 1965, Scobey wrote an essay for a legal journal pointing out that much of the Warren Commission's case against Lee Oswald rested on Marina's testimony. Yet, if Oswald had stood trial, Texas law prohibited her from testifying against him. (American Bar Association Journal, January 1965, pgs 39-43)
  
• 6/29/1964 In the essay Behind Closed Doors, filmmaker Mark Sobel describes notes of a June 29 meeting found among J. Lee Rankin's papers. If the meeting, which discussed tentative findings of the Commission, was transcribed, that transcript has never been located.
  
• 6/29/1964 Castro's sister defects to the US, accusing him of selling the country out to "Russian imperialism."
  
• 6/29/1964 A letter from this date "concerning Richard Nixon" was reported in 1976 to be missing from the National Archives' WC records. The contents of the letter were unknown. (Coincidence or Conspiracy? 530)
  
• 6/30/1964 NY Times today reported that the Warren Commission Report would not be released until after the GOP convention.
  
• 6/30/1964 Senate Ethics Committee's final report recommends that Bobby Baker be indicted for violations of conflict of interest laws.
  
• 6/30/1964 New York Times quoted a recent interview with Henry Cabot Lodge: "Now, the overthrow...of the Diem regime was a purely Vietnamese affair. We never participated in the planning. We never gave any advice. We had nothing whatever to do with it...I shall always be loyal to President Kennedy's memory on this, because I carried out his policy...When I arrived in Saigon...there was a great deal of police brutality and oppression and everything was pretty much at a standstill." When asked about defoliation, he replied, "Well, we're defoliating every day...You kill the bushes and the trees and it broadens it out and you can't be ambushed." He explained that the VC in the northern part of the South Vietnam were dependent on Hanoi for aid, but the VC in the southern part were self-sufficient because of the "fantastically rich food-growing areas...There are such tremendous long coastlines and tremendous long frontiers - tremendously rough country. There isn't a superhighway that you can blow it up with bombs and stop...the supplies..." Yet, only five days after Diem and Nhu were executed after the coup on November 1, 1963, Lodge had sent a cable to the White House which read, "... the ground in which the coup seed grew into a robust plant was prepared by us and the coup would not have happened without our preparation."