Deep Politics Timeline

[Tracy Riddle]

• 7/1964 A WC assistant counsel called Robert Oswald and tried to get his help in determing a motive for Lee's crimes.
  
• 7/1964 Violent race riots in New York City after police killed a black boy in Harlem; hundreds arrested.
  
• 7/1/1964 The Dallas Times Herald carried an article captioned, "Wade Denies Diary Leak"; this is in reference to Oswald's "History Diary."
  
• 7/2/1964 Civil Rights Act of 1964 passed the House 289-126, and LBJ quickly signed it into law. It prohibited legal racial segregation in public accommodations and jobs; MLK attended the signing. LBJ privately remarked to Bill Moyers, "I think we just delivered the South to the Republican Party." Early in 1965, the Supreme Court unanimously upheld the constitutionality of the Civil Rights Act.
  
• 7/2/1964 US announced that Castro's sister had been a CIA informant for four years.
  
• 7/2/1964 Commission No. 1216. Memo for: J. Lee Rankin...Subject: Lee Harvey Oswald. 1. The following remarks have been recently attributed to Soviet Consul Pavel Antonovich Yatskov in Mexico City regarding the subject. 'I met Oswald here. He stormed into my office and wanted me to introduce him to the Cubans. He told me that he had lived in the USSR. I told him that I would have to check before I could recommend him. He was nervous and his hands trembled, and he stormed out of my office. I don't believe that a person as nervous as Oswald, whose hands trembled, could have accurately fired a rifle.' 2...has checked its records for the period Oswald was in Mexico City and has advised it is quite possible that Oswald thought he had talked with Valery Kostikov when he actually had spoken to Yatskov; or that he first spoke to Kostikov who turned him over to his superior Yatskov. 3. The source of the above information is a confidential contact...who is believed to be reliable. Anthony Summers obtained this document through the FOIA and showed it to Col. Nechiporenko in 1993. (NECH p283)
  
• 7/2/1964 Airtel from NY's FBI special agent in charge to Hoover regarding a book to be published linking RFK with Marilyn Monroe's death.
  
• 7/2/1964 Mark Lane testified before the WC again.
  
• 7/4/1964 In The Klan Ledger, Imperial Wizard Sam Bowers published an open letter to the Klan community: "We are now in the midst of the long hot summer' of agitation which was promised to the Innocent People of Mississippi by the savage blacks and their Communist masters…We were NOT involved, and there was NO DISAPPEARANCE. Anyone who is so simple that he cannot recognize a Communist hoax which is as plain as the one they pulled on Kennedy in Dallas (and which Earl Warren is working so hard to cover-up), had better do a little reading in J. Edgar Hoover's primer on communism, Masters of Deceit.' We refuse to be concerned or upset about this fraud…We Knights are working day and night to preserve Law and Order here in Mississippi, in the only way that it can be preserved: by strict segregation of the races, and the control of the social structure in the hands of the Christian, Anglo-Saxon White men, the only race on earth that can build and maintain just and stable governments. We are deadly serious about this business…Take heed, atheists and mongrels, we will not travel your path to a Leninist Hell, but we will buy YOU a ticket to the Eternal if you insist."
  
• 7/6/1964 Chinese Foreign Minister Chen Yi warned that if the US attacked North Vietnam, "the Chinese people naturally cannot be expected to look on with folded arms." The US interpreted the message to mean that only a land invasion of North Vietnam would bring Chinese intervention.
  
• 7/7/1964 Memo to William Sullivan; the Atlanta FBI office requested authority to install "three additional technical surveillances" at the SCLC facilities. Hoover authorized it with an "OK" at the bottom.
  
• 7/7/1964 White House memorandum, Top Secret, "Adlai Stevenson and Lisa Howard," July 7, 1964. Gordon Chase reports to Bundy on his concerns that Howard's role as an intermediary has now escalated through her contact with Stevenson at the United Nations and the fact that a message has been sent back through her to Castro from the White House. Chase recommends trying "to remove Lisa from direct participation in the business of passing messages," and using Cuban Ambassador to the UN, Carlos Lechuga, instead.
  
• 7/7/1964 Rankin letter to Hoover about the James Tague missed bullet. Rankin wanted to know at what point in the Zapruder film the "wild" shot passed over the limo and struck near the Triple Underpass. (McKnight)
  
• 7/8/1964 Hoover warned RFK in a memo that a new book was to be published about Bobby's alleged relations with Marilyn Monroe: "He will indicate in his book that you and Miss Monroe were intimate, and that you were in Miss Monroe's home at the time of her death." Its author, right-winger Frank Capell, also accused RFK of being an agent of international communism, and claimed Marilyn was killed by Bobby's communist friends to keep her from upsetting their plans for taking over the government.
  
• 7/8/1964 Letter from Hoover to Rankin: "As previously reported to the Commission, certain small lead metal fragments uncovered in connection with this matter were analyzed spectrographically to determine whether they could be associated with one or more of the lead bullet fragments and no significant differences were found within the sensitivity of the spectrographic method. Because of the higher sensitivity of the neutron activation analysis, certain of the small lead fragments were then subjected to neutron activation analyses and comparisons with the larger bullet fragments. The items analyzed included the following: C1 - bullet from stretcher; C2 - fragment from front seat cushion; C4 and C5 - metal fragments from President Kennedy's head; C9 - metal fragment from the arm of Governor Connally; C16 - metal fragments from rear floor board carpet of the car. While minor variations in composition were found by this method, these were not considered sufficient to permit positively differentiating among the larger bullet fragments and thus positively determining from which of the larger bullet fragments any given small lead fragment may have come." (Post Mortem 607) This is all the WC got from the FBI on fragment tests; there was not even any attached documentation or data. Weisberg uncovered this memo in 1974.
  
• 7/9/1964 Meeting of Commission Members With Psychiatric Panel on July 9,.1964 (Tad Szulc, The Warren Commission in its Own Words, 9/1975) Allen Dulles advised his colleagues not to worry about the final report being scrutinized: "But nobody reads. Don't believe people read in this country. There will be a few professors that will read the record...the public will read very little."
  
• 7/10/1964 LBJ flies J. Edgar Hoover down to Jackson, Missippi on Air Force One. Received by local politicians as a hero and sympathizer, Hoover emphasizes that the Bureau "does not and will not give protection to civil rights workers" and refuses to repudiate the governor's statement that "the state should refuse to comply with the new Civil Rights Law."
  
• 7/10/1964 LBJ wrote a statement to the WC that gave his recollections on the assassination (H 5 561-4). "As the motorcade proceeded down Elm Street to the point where the assassination occurred, it was traveling at a speed which I should estimate at 12 or 15 miles an hour. After we had proceeded a short way down Elm Street, I heard a sharp report...The Vice-Presidential car was then about three car lengths behind President Kennedy's car, with the Presidential followup car intervening. I was startled by the sharp report or explosion. but I had no time to speculate as to its origin because Agent Youngblood turned in a flash, immediately after the first explosion, hitting me on the shoulder, and shouted to all of us in the back seat to get down...Almost in the same moment in which he hit or pushed me, he vaulted over the back seat and sat on me. I was bent over under the weight of Agent Youngblood's body, toward Mrs. Johnson and Senator Yarborough. I remember attempting to turn my head to make sure that Mrs. Johnson had bent down. Both she and Senator Yarborough had crouched down at Agent Youngblood's command. At some time in this sequence of events. I heard other explosions. It was impossible for me to tell the direction from which the explosions came. I felt the automobile sharply accelerate, and in a moment or so Agent Youngblood released me. I ascertained that Mrs. Johnson and Senator Yarborough were all right. I heard Agent Youngblood speaking over his radio transmitter. I asked him what had happened. He said that he was not sure but that he had learned that the motorcade was going to the hospital. I did not see anything that was going on in and around the President's automobile. When we arrived at the hospital; Agent Youngblood told me to get out of the car, go into the building, not to stop, and to stay close to him and the other agents. When the car came to a stop, a cordon of agents formed around me, and we walked rapidly into the hospital and then we went into a room there...I found it hard to believe that this had happened. The whole thing seemed unreal--unbelievable. A few hours earlier, I had breakfast with John Kennedy; he was alive, strong, vigorous. I could not believe now that he was dead. I was shocked and sickened...When Mr. O'Donnell told us to get on the plane and go back to Washington, I asked about Mrs. Kennedy. O'Donnell told me that Mrs. Kennedy would not leave the hospital without the President's body, and urged again that we go ahead and take Air Force I and return to Washington. I did not want to go and leave Mrs. Kennedy in this situation. I said so, but I agreed that we would board the airplane and wait until Mrs. Kennedy and the President's body were brought aboard the plane." RFK told him he should be sworn in right away.
  
• 7/10/1964 Life magazine featured an article on Oswald's Russian diary, which was discovered by Dallas reporter Hugh Aynesworth, who leaked it to the Dallas Morning News.
  
• 7/11/1964 Lady Bird Johnson diary entry: "This weekend [Lyndon] is going through the throes of what may be the last desperate turning away, the desire to escape being the Democratic candidate this fall. But the trouble is he can't find any honorable escape."
  
• 7/11/1964 Three black army reserve officers were returning home to Washington DC after serving two weeks of reserve duty at Georgia's Fort Benning. At five in the morning they stopped their car near Athens, Georgia and Lt. Lemuel A. Penn, a 49-year-old teacher and combat veteran, took over driving. Near the Broad River Bridge on Highway 172, the car was sighted by Klansmen Howard Sims and Cecil Myers, who were in a station wagon driven by James Lackey. They drove up alongside the other car, Sims and Myers fired their shotguns and killed Penn instantly.
  
• 7/12/1964 Viet Cong troops inflict a major defeat on government troops in the Mekong Delta region.
  
• 7/13/1964 Adm. Arleigh Burke was interviewed by US News & World Report. He stated, "Do we really believe that a nation that's starving can field a more powerful force in South Vietnam than we - the most powerful nation in the world?"
  
• 7/13/1964 Responding to a second written request from the Warren Commission, J. Edgar Hoover again refuses to allow the FBI to administer a polygraph test to Jack Ruby.
  
• 7/14/1964 Lemuel Penn was buried with full honors at Arlington National Cemetery. His body was conveyed on the same military caisson used in JFK's funeral. (The Fiery Cross p345)
  
• 7/14/1964 US sends 600 more troops to Vietnam.
  
• 7/15/1964 Barry Goldwater is nominated for president by the GOP in San Francisco.
  
• 7/15/1964 Liberty Magazine, a Toronto publication, prints an interview with Norman Similas. His story will later be revealed as a fraud. The title of the story is called "THE DALLAS PUZZLE". The reporter who conducted the interview, Kenneth Gamble Armstrong, claims Norman Similas approved its contents. The following excerpts are the words of Norman Similas: "While I attended a national convention of the carbonated beverage bottlers, the following events occurred ... Nov.21 - I interviewed Vice President Lyndon Johnson and photographed him in several informal poses. I spent more than an hour chatting with Jack Ruby in his nightclub. November 22 - I witnessed from a distance of less that seven feet the assassination of President Kennedy, and unwittingly photographed his assassin or assassins as a rifle was leveled at him from a nearby building. I am convinced that if Oswald was the assassin - and this has never been definitely proven - he was not alone when he aimed from the sixth floor window of the depository. One of the pictures I took as the presidential car passed, showed two figures beside the gun barrel in the window. A reporter for the Dallas Times also saw two figures. His newspaper published that story too. (The FBI determined that Similas was referring to photographer Robert H. Jackson of the Dallas Times.) More than seven months have passed since the horrors of Dallas. Never a day passes but what the projector has not flipped in my mind, and the scenes tumble out in sequence after sequence. I can see Lyndon Johnson smiling as he pushed his hand into his coat and says, "Shall I pose like Napoleon?" In the semidarkness of the entrance of his night club, Jack Ruby throws a bear-like arm around my shoulders and ushers me to a table. He is saying, "Save your film. Why shoot the entertainers when you can photograph the President tomorrow. He'll be passing by, just down the street." There is a fade-out and I'm next standing on the curb across from the Texas School Book Depository. I have selected a spot not far from the underpass where the crowd has thinned out. As the crowds cheer and wave the limousine slowly passes the Book Depository."
  
• 7/16/1964 In his acceptance speech, Goldwater said, "failure infest the jungles of Vietnam...Don't try to sweep this under the rug. We are at war in Vietnam. And yet the President...refuses to say...whether or not the objective over there is victory, and his Secretary of Defense continues to mislead and misinform the American people...I needn't remind you, but I will, it has been during Democratic years that a billion persons were cast into Communist captivity and their fates cynically sealed." The Republicans offered voters "a choice, not an echo"; Goldwater wanted to eliminate the welfare state and have a more aggressive anti-communist foreign policy. Some mainstream conservatives felt he was a dangerous revolutionary who wanted to turn the country upside-down. Moderates at the convention in San Francisco were shouted down by Goldwaterites; Goldwater, generally a down-to-earth and conscientious man, reluctantly accepted the nomination with the statement "extremism in the defense of liberty is no vice!" Gore Vidal, who covered the convention for Westinghouse, wrote four years later that "Reagan would some day find himself up there on the platform: as the age of television progresses, the Reagans will be the rule, not the exception." (NY Review of Books 9/12/1968)
  
• 7/18/1964 A polygraph test is finally administered to Jack Ruby. (The House Assassinations Committee will eventually conclude that the results are impossible to interpret because of "numerous procedural errors made during the test.)
  
• 7/18-23/1964 Riots occur in Harlem. One black man is killed.
  
• 7/19/1964 South Vietnamese president Khanh made an impassioned public speech demanding that he be given the equipment to launch an invasion of the North. LBJ fumed, "Can't this man shut up for awhile? If Khanh marches north, Lyndon Johnson isn't marching with him." This week, Air Marshal Nguyen Cao Ky offhandledly revealed to reporters that for three years the South had been sending "combat teams" on hit-and-run raids against the North "by land, air and sea."
  
• 7/19/1964 Mrs. Wilma Tice receives a letter asking her to testify for the Warren Commission.
  
• 7/20/1964 Warren Commission staffer Wesley Liebeler met with Arthur Dooley at CIA. Liebeler had already received affidavits from FBI's James Malley and Bardwell Odum regarding the CIA Mexico City mystery man photograph, but Liebeler also wanted an affidavit from the CIA regarding the date the photo was taken, and indicated that the Commission would publish the photo. [Memorandum of Arthur Dooley of 7-20-64, at RIF #104-10400-10293]
  
• 7/20/1964 Liebeler submitted his WR chapter on Oswald's motives; Redlich and Rankin thought it was "too psychological," and Goldberg was given the task of rewriting it. (Inquest)
  
• 7/20/1964 Mrs. Wilma Tice receives an anonymous call from a man who warns her: "It would pay to keep your mouth shut."
  
• 7/21/1964 President Johnson and Attorney General Robert Kennedy phone conversation, which was recorded:
  

ROBERT KENNEDY: I understand that--you knowhe [Hoover] sends all kinds of reports over to you about me and about the Department of Justice.
PRESIDENT JOHNSON: Not any that I've seen. What are you talking about?
ROBERT KENNEDY: Well, I just understand that--about me planning and plotting things.
PRESIDENT JOHNSON: No, he hasn't sent me a report that I remember. He hasn't sent me any report on you or on the department any time. And I get, I guess, a letter every three or four days that summarize a good deal of stuff. And Walter Jenkins gets eight or ten of em a day on Yugoslavia, various routine things where people are talking. But as far as I know they haven't involved you.
ROBERT KENNEDY: Well, I had understood that he had had some report about me.
PRESIDENT JOHNSON: No, no.
ROBERT KENNEDY: About the overthrow of the government by force and violence.
PRESIDENT JOHNSON: No, no.
ROBERT KENNEDY: Leading a coup.
PRESIDENT JOHNSON: No. That's an error. He never said that or indicated or given any indication of it.

• 7/21/1964 reporter Hugh Aynesworth's name surfaced in the newspapers in Dallas in a column by his friend Holmes Alexander. Alexander implied that Aynesworth did not trust Earl Warren and therefore was conducting his own investigation of the Kennedy murder. He was ready to reveal that the FBI knew Oswald was a potential assassin and blew their assignment. He also had talked to Marina Oswald and she had told him that Oswald had also threatened to kill Richard Nixon. Alexander goes on to say that these kinds of incidents show the mind of a killer at work. That "of a hard-driven, politically radical Leftist which is emerging from the small amount of news put out by the Warren Commission. If the full report follows the expected line, Oswald will be shown as a homicidal maniac." Holmes concludes his piece with a warning: If the Commission's verdict "jibes with that of Aynesworth's independent research, credibility will be added to its findings. If [it] does not there will be some explaining to do." Clearly, Aynesworth contributed mightily to the article, had decided Oswald had done it even before the Commission had revealed its evidence, and was bent on destroying its credibility if it differed from his opinion.
  
• 7/21/1964 Dean Andrews appeared before the WC. He told the WC that Bertrand was 5' 8" with sandy hair, blue eyes, a ruddy complexion, weighing 165 pounds, and said he was bisexual. He told the FBI that he was 6' 1" with brown hair.
  
• 7/22/1964 Memo from Arthur Marmor to Norman Redlich about Deputy Sheriff Buddy Walthers (declassified 1997): "Walthers confirmed Patrolman McDonald's testimony that Oswald said at the time of his arrest, "It's all over." (Ch. 4, p 56) He also alleged that a set of metal file-cabinets were found at Irving containing records that appeared to be names and activities of Cuban sympathizers. He said this evidence was turned over to Captain Fritz and Secret Service Officers."
  
• 7/22/1964 Mr. Emmett Hudson, groundskeeper for Dealey Plaza, testifies that "they have moved some of those signs." Questions still remain today about the true location of the Stemmons freeway sign in Dealey Plaza.
  
• 7/22/1964 Mrs. Wilma Tice calls police because someone has tried to break into her home while her husband is away.
  
• 7/22/1964 Sylvia Odio testified before the WC.
  
• 7/22/1964 McNamara told the Senate Appropriations Committee, "The primary problem in South Vietnam is not a military problem. The primary problem is a political and economic problem."
  
• 7/22/1964 Warren Reynolds told the WC that the man he saw at the Tippit murder scene was Oswald.
  
• 7/23/1964 Richard Helms supplied an affidavit to Chief Counsel Rankin, along with a request that the Warren Commission not publish the CIA Mexico City "Oswald" photograph, giving as reasons that "…it would jeopardize a most confidential and productive operation" and "It could be embarrassing to the individual involved who as far as this Agency is aware, had no connection with Lee Harvey Oswald or the assassination of President Kennedy." [Memo from Helms to Rankin, 7-23-64, at RIF #104-10400-10292] The CIA's concern for this individual's privacy is touching, but the Commission did not back down. Two months later, on September 22, Arthur Dooley and Louis Pucket of CIA visited the Commission, where they met with staffers Goldberg and Liebeler, who insisted that the photo must be published, but deferred the final decision as to cropping and other matters to Chief Counsel Rankin. [Dooley memorandum of 9-25-64, at RIF #104-10400-10279] CIA Headquarters promptly alerted the Mexico City Station the next day regarding publication of the "Oswald" photo. The possibility that publication would "blow" the photo-surveillance operation was on Headquarter's mind, and the cable noted: "OUSLER BEING CALLED TO WASH TO GIVE INFORMED OPINION OF POSSIBLE DAMAGE TO LILYRIC OR LIMITED" [the photo surveillance operations] [DIR 51937 of 9-23-64, at RIF #104-10400-10291]. In a follow-up memo the next day, Headquarters invited the station's comment on possible exposure of the photo surveillance operations, but added "IT IS NOT POSSIBLE HAVE PHOTOS EXCLUDED FROM REPORT." [DIR 52398 of 9-24-64, at RIF #104-10400-10290]
  
• 7/23/1964 The Crescent Firearms Company was the supplier of both rifles of this type and soft-nosed bullets (26H65). The Commission was in touch with this company, from which on July 23, 1964, it obtained an affidavit five brief sentences long. This set forth that the FBI had been in contact with the company November 22, 1963, had learned of the sale of the C2766 rifle to Klein's Sporting Goods in Chicago, had gotten all appropriate records from Crescent, and mentioned not a single word about ammunition (11H205).
  
• 7/23/1964 Gen. Edwin Walker testifies before the WC. When assistant counsel Wesley Liebeler deposed Walker for two hours, he never mentioned CE 573, the mutilated remainder of the bullet recovered from Gen. Walker's home. This seemed odd since Walker held the bullet in his hands after the shooting. Fifteen years later Walker was watching a televised hearing of the House Select Committee on Assassinations. Chief Counsel Robert Blakey held up CE 573 for the camera while discussing the firearms evidence in the JFK case. As McKnight notes: "Walker, a thirty-year career army officer with extensive combat experience in World War II, and with more than a passing familiarity with military weaponry, was stunned. According to Walker, what Blakey represented as the bullet fired into his home bore no resemblance to the piece of lead the police had recovered, which he had held in his own hand and closely examined. (Breach of Trust p. 52)
  
• 7/23/1964 James Tague, whose cheek was cut by a piece of concrete blown off by one of the bullets fired at JFK, is interviewed and finally deposed by the Warren Commission. Deputy Sheriff Eddy Walthers, one of the officers who inspected the curb just after the shooting is also deposed by Wesley Liebeler, an assistant council to the commission. Liebeler has been sent back to Dallas specifically for these depositions. Tague was shocked to find out that Liebeler knew that he had gone back to the area in Dealey Plaza to take pictures of the curb. Tague said that the mark on the curb was no longer visible.
  
• 7/23/1964 Senate passed LBJ's anti-poverty bill.
  
• 7/23/1964 DeGaulle said in a news conference that peace in Indochina would best be achieved by foreign powers keeping out of those countries.
  
• 7/23/1964 NY Times quoted South Vietnam's Vice-Marshall Nguyen Cao Ky, commander of the air force, as saying, "We are ready [to attack the North]. We could go this afternoon. I cannot assure that all of North Vietnam would be destroyed, but Hanoi would certainly be destroyed." NYT reported "Sabotage raids on North [Vietnam] confirmed by Saigon aide."
  
• 7/24/1964 Charlestown, Rhode Island, United States - Criticality Accident * An error by a worker at a United Nuclear Corporation fuel facility led to an accidental criticality. Robert Peabody, believing he was using a diluted uranium solution, accidentally put concentrated solution into an agitation tank containing sodium carbonate. Peabody was exposed to 10,000rad (100Gy) of radiation and died two days later. Ninety minutes after the criticality, a plant manager and another administrator returned to the building and were exposed to 100rad (1Gy), but suffered no ill effects.
  
• 7/24/1964 The Commission called James A. Zahm, a Marine non-commissioned officer in weapons training (11H306ff.) Zahm was willing to call Oswald a good shot. But even he specified a minimum of ten practice shots as prerequisite in the use of the telescopic sight (R192). And this, of course, assumed a good telescopic sight.
  
• 7/24/1964 Jimmy Hoffa was convicted by a federal jury of mail fraud and conspiracy to abuse the Teamsters' pension fund.
  
• 7/24/1964 LBJ met with Goldwater to discuss civil rights and the campaign.
  
• 7/24/1964 Wesley Liebeler today arranges a meeting of Mrs. Edith Whitworth and Mrs. Gertrude Hunter with Marina Oswald and her two children. The meeting takes place in the U.S. attorney's office located in the main Post Office building in Dallas, Texas. Mrs. Whitworth and Mrs. Hunter were in the Furniture Mart at 149 East Irving Boulevard in early November, 1963 when Lee Harvey Oswald, Marina and the two Oswald children supposedly visited the shop. The two women's testimony is troubling the Commission because their account of the visit has Oswald driving a car. He supposedly could not drive and had no license. Also present at the meeting today are: William McKenzie and Henry Baer, attorneys for Mrs. Oswald; Peter Paul Gregory, an interpreter; and Forrest Sorrels and John Joe Howlett, agents for the U.S. Secret Service. Despite tough cross-examination by Mr. McKenzie, both women continue to assert without reservation that Mrs. Oswald and her two children were in the store with her husband on a weekday afternoon during the first week of November. Mrs. Oswald is equally uncompromising in her insistence that she has never met the two women and that she has never set foot in the Furniture Mart. The meeting ends as a complete failure in solving the problem. Ultimately, the Commission will impugn the integrity of Mrs. Whitworth and Mrs. Hunter.
  
• 7/25/1964 The CIA's Mexico City Station was not happy. Replying on September 25, the Station responded that "STATION UNCLEAR AS TO PURPOSE SERVED BY PUBLICATION PHOTO OF PERSON NOT EVEN INVOLVED IN THIS CASE." After complaining that Marguerite Oswald could simply be ignored in this matter (she had been shown the "Oswald" photo months earlier and thought it was Jack Ruby), the cable went on to add a very curious paragraph: "IF AS MEXI PREFERS TO BELIEVE OF ODENVY SHE SHOWN SPREAD OF CROPPED PHOTOS ALL OF WHICH TO APPEAR, NO OBJECTION HERE TO PUBLICATION OF REF PHOTO. IF THIS INCORRECT AND THIS SOLE PHOTO SHOWN HER AND TO BE PUBLISHED AGAINST MEXI WISHES, REQUEST EXACT ACCOUNT OF WHAT ODENVY TOLD HER." [MEXI 1011 of 9-25-64, at RIF #104-10400-10286] This cable is strange in several regards. For one thing, the testimony of Marguerite Oswald is explicit that she was shown a single photograph by FBI Agent Bardwell Odum, "in the cup of his hand." [WH1, p.152-153] And an affidavit signed by Odum on July 10 1964 refers to his cropping and display of a single photo [Affidavit of Bardwell D. Odum, WH11 p.468]. So why does the Mexico City station "prefer to believe" that she was shown a spread of cropped photos. And if this is really true, was it a spread consisting of all of the Mystery Man photos flown up from Mexico City (several were indeed supplied), or was it a spread of other photos which included a single Mystery Man photo? If the latter, why would they all have been cropped? Probably the strangest aspect of the cable is that the Mexico City station did not object to an entire spread of photos being published; the objection was if publication was to be of a single photo. This makes no sense if the real objection had to do with blowing the photo-surveillance operation (i.e., showing backgrounds which would reveal camera placements to the Cubans and Soviets, etc). The more photographs published, the more likely someone would identify the source. What is going on here? The cable ends with the plea: "STATION WOULD APPRECIATE EFFORT TO DELETE PHOTO FROM PUBLICATION." CIA Headquarters replied the same day, confirming that the FBI had indeed shown Marguerite Oswald an entire spread of photos, "BUT SUBJECT PHOTO ONLY ONE WHICH ATTRACTED ATTENTION." [DIR 52774 of 9-25-64, at RIF #104-10400-10287] And again on the same day, Mexico City Station responded, announcing its plans to evacuate the photo-surveillance stations in anticipation of publication of the offending photograph. But the detailed plans for such evacuation were preceded by the most curious statements in all of these cables, reproduced below: 1. REFS OBVIOUSLY CROSSED. IN STATION VIEW DANGERS PARA 3, LARGELY RECOGNIZED IN REF A, STILL APPLY. 2. ONLY REMAINING HOPE WOULD APPEAR BE TO GET ASCHAM PREVAIL ON COMMISSION NOT ONLY RETOUCH BACKGROUND IN PHOTOS BUT ALSO RETOUCH FACE TO DEGREE OBVIOUSLY NOT IDENTIFIABLE WITH RUBY BUT ALSO NOT WITH ACTUAL SUBJECT OF PHOTO. [MEXI 1018 of 9-25-64, at RIF #104-10400-10288] This cable is remarkable. The "dangers para 3" refer to the earlier Mexi cable's assertion that "CANNOT PREDICT SECURITY EFFECT OF PUBLICATION WITHOUT ANSWER PARA 2," where paragraph 2 is the strange assertion previously shown, i.e., that the Mexi station was fine with publication of an entire spread of photos, but not of the single Mystery Man shot. What is yet more remarkable here is the Mexico City Station's request to retouch not only the background but also the face of the unidentified man. The Warren Commission had agreed to strip out every stitch of background at CIA's requestnow the CIA, or at least the Mexico City Station, abruptly urged a photo alteration to avoid revealing (to whom?) the identity of the supposedly unknown Mystery Man. It strains credulity that such a request was made by people who did not know the identity of the man in the photograph. There is at least one albeit cryptic indication in the record that they did.
  
• 7/27/1964 Dulles wrote a memo to Rankin asking him, "Where have we dealt with the evidence as to Oswald's ability to handle a rifle?" (CIA 1647-452B)
  
• 7/27/1964 US plans to send 5000 more advisers to Vietnam.
  
• 7/27-30/1964 Greg Scarpa takes top secret journey from New York to Miami to New Orleans to Philadelphia, Miss., to find out where the slain civil rights workers are buried, and returns to New York.
  
• 7/28/1964 THE STATE OF TEXAS vs. JACK RUBENSTEIN -- Defense counsel files fifteen formal bills of exception.
  
• 7/29/1964 RFK and LBJ met in the Oval Office. LBJ switched on his tape recorder, then told Bobby he wasn't going to be his running-mate; would he be interested in another job? Bobby said he only wanted to be Attorney General. RFK brought up the Baker scandal, and LBJ said he thought the issue was dead because, he implied, he had the goods on various Republicans. (It Didn't Start with Watergate p137-41)
  
• 7/29/1964 Today and 8/1 articles in Le Monde quote South Vietnamese Gen. Nguyen Cao Ky saying that US-trained commandos were parachuted into North Vietnam by US planes on sabotage raids as early as 1957.
  
• 7/30/1964 10:01am in a phone call, Mac Bundy urges LBJ to just announce his choice for VP and get it over with. Johnson worries that "everybody that's left out concentrates their attentions on the fellow's deficiencies and the party men go to hitting at him."
  
• 7/30/1964 This afternoon, Ken O'Donnell tells LBJ in a phone call that however Johnson wants to announce that RFK won't be his running-mate is fine with Kennedy.
  
• 7/30/1964 5:34pm LBJ tells McNamara in a phone call that he had been a serious contender for the position of Johnson's running-mate.
  
• 7/30/1964 5:56pm LBJ calls Humphrey ally James Rowe; he wants to make sure that Humphrey will be a loyal vice-president if he should be chosen. Johnson worries that Humphrey voices his opinions too much in public.
  
• 7/30/1964 6:00pm LBJ tells the press that no members of his cabinet will be chosen as his running-mate.
  
• 7/30/1964 6:10pm LBJ phone call with Dick Russell. Russell: That'll eliminate a whole lot of em. LBJ: [laughs gleefully] I just had to eliminate one."
  
• 7/30/1964 6:46pm Humphrey calls LBJ and assures him that he will be a loyal VP.
  
• 7/30/1964 8:50pm LBJ phone call with Robert Anderson, former Treasury Sec. under Ike. He tells Anderson that he thinks RFK is plotting to stir up the blacks to create a white backlash, so that LBJ will lose in November.
  
• 7/30/1964 A covert-action plan carried out by South Vietnamese patrol boats shelled two North Vietnamese islands in the Tonkin Gulf. This plan (Op Plan 34-A) was approved by LBJ in early 1964. The boats left Da Nang and attacked Hon Me and Hon Ngu shortly after midnight on 7/31. The boats had only 40mm and 20mm guns.
  
• 7/31/1964 The USS Maddox sighted the South Vietnamese boats, and at first thought they were Soviet P-6 vessels. The Maddox began to patrol the area.
  
• Late July 1964 an informant told the FBI where the bodies of the civil rights workers could be found; he was paid $30,000 and his identity was never released. When the FBI offered a $25,000 reward for news of the workers' whereabouts, a break came in the case. After paying at least one participant in the crime for details, the FBI found the men's bodies on August 4. They were buried in an earthen dam on Olen Burrage's Old Jolly Farm, six miles southwest of Philadelphia, Mississippi. Schwerner and Goodman had each been shot once in the heart; Chaney, a black man, had been beaten and shot three times. Known as "Mr. X", the identity of the informant was a closely held secret by the government for 40 years. In the process of studying the case, journalist Jerry Mitchell and teacher Barry Bradford uncovered his identity: Maynard King, a highway patrolman who had been tipped off by Klansman Pete Jordan. In 2007, Linda Schiro testified in an unrelated court case that her late boyfriend, Gregory Scarpa Sr., a capo in the Colombo crime family, had been recruited by the FBI to help find the civil rights workers' bodies. She said that she had been with Scarpa in Mississippi at the time and had witnessed his being given a gun, and later a cash payment, by FBI agents. She testified he told her he had threatened a Klansman by placing a gun in his mouth, forcing him to reveal the location of the bodies. Similar stories of mafia involvement in the case had been circulating for years, and had been previously published in the New York Daily News, but had never before been introduced in court.
  

[Tracy Riddle]

• 8/1964 McGeorge Bundy wrote a memo to LBJ outlining how to get "Backing from the Establishment...I think the key to these people is McCloy. He is for us, but he is under very heavy pressure from Eisenhower and others to keep quiet" during the campaign. John McCloy was finally persuaded to join LBJ's "Peace Panel" of Establishment figures (including Acheson and Lovett) for a photo-opportunity 9/10/1964. (The Wise Men p644)
  
• 8/1964 Another trademark of Aynseworth's Kennedy career appeared: his penchant to attack and ridicule anyone who disagreed with him. Aynesworth published a review of Joachim Joesten's early book on the case entitled Oswald: Assassin or Fall Guy. The review is not really a review at all, it is just a string of invective directed at the author for believing such silly notions that Oswald could have been innocent and that he could have been an agent of the FBI and/or CIA. When rumors circulated that Oswald had been an FBI informant, which he apparently was, Aynesworth went to work discrediting them saying that it was all a joke he had made up --- even though he was not the source of the quite specific information.
  
• 8/1/1964 Hanoi protested the attacks on its territory by Laotian aircraft and South Vietnamese gunboats. (NYT 8/2)
  
• 8/1/1964 Maddox in the vicinity of North Vietnamese islands, around 7 miles from the mainland. Maddox picked up radio traffic from North Vietnam, which was placing a defensive ring of PT boats to prevent a repetition of the South Vietnamese attack. The North Vietnamese also monitored the Maddox's movements.
  
• 8/1/1964 FBI scouts out earthen dam six miles southwest of Philadelphia, Mississippi.
  
• 8/2/1964 At 3:40pm (3:40am Washington time), Maddox attacked in Gulf of Tonkin. A North Vietnamese commander in the area ordered three PT boats to attack the destroyer to test the destroyer's reaction. Officially, three North Vietnamese PT boats fired torpedoes and shells at the Maddox while it was on patrol 30 miles off the coast; the destroyer fired back and drove them off. Actually, the Maddox was between 4 and 10 miles from the coast during the first attack, not in international waters; the destroyer was providing cover for South Vietnamese gunboats, "manned with CIA crew" according to former CIA station chief John Stockwell, who had long been raiding the North Vietnamese coast. The Maddox's log also showed that it fired the first shot while the PT boats were still 6 miles away. Robert McNamara says that Hanoi had never made a claim on the size of its territorial waters, so the administration assumed three miles; only after the Gulf of Tonkin did Hanoi claim a 12-mile territorial limit. As it was, he says that the Maddox was more than 25 miles off the coast. (In Retrospect p130-1) The Maddox was actually the first to open fire, and some of the crew (and the ship's log) said they were not "warning shots." The PT boats continued coming and returned fire with torpedoes and machine guns. Capt Herrick: "They came at us with blood in their eyes." Planes from the nearby Ticonderoga came to their assistance. The Maddox was going to finish off the PT boats when one of the planes thought it was experiencing a malfunction, and the destroyer pulled away in case the pilot had to ditch. Only one North Vietnamese bullet struck the Maddox; this bullet would be produced by the administration to prove to Congress that the attack happened. (Truth is the First Casualty p132, 202) The admiral in charge of the US fleet in the gulf was George Stephen Morrison, father of Doors singer Jim Morrison. (LA Times 12/8/2008, NYT 12/9/2008; Adm. Morrison died Nov 17 2008 at the age of 89)
  
• 8/2/1964 Before dawn in Washington, Mac Bundy heard the first reports of the attack, but decided not to wake LBJ until more information was available.
  
• 8/2/1964 10:15am the Pentagon announced, "While on routine patrol in international waters at 020808 GCT (1608 local time) the US destroyer Maddox underwent an unprovoked attack by three PT type boats in latitude 19-40 North; longitude 106-34 East, in the Tonkin Gulf. The attacking boats launched three torpedoes and used 37mm gunfire. The Maddox answered with 5in gunfire. Shortly thereafter four F-8 (Crusader) aircraft joined in the defense of the Maddox, using Zuni rockets and 20mm strafing attacks. The PT boats were driven off, with one seen to be badly damaged and not moving, and the other two damaged and retreating slowly. No casualties or damage were sustained by Maddox or the aircraft."
  
• 8/2/1964 11:30am (Washington time), LBJ met with his advisers, decided to overlook the incident and not retaliate because the Maddox had hit the PT boats hard; Max Taylor urged retaliation. Johnson did want the destroyer to go back into the area to demonstrate that the US had a right to be there. The meeting lasted 45 minutes; they mostly wondered why the North Vietnamese would attack the US Navy. A note of protest was sent to Hanoi and another destroyer was sent into the Gulf. General Nguyen Dinh Voc, director of the Institute of Military History in Hanoi, confirmed LBJ's belief that this attack was ordered by a local commander acting on his own, not Hanoi. (NYT Magazine 8/10/1997) Johnson also decided to draft a personal message to Khrushchev and sent it over the "hot line," assuring him that the US did not want a wider war in Vietnam.
  
• 8/2/1964 Barry Goldwater declined to comment to the press, claiming a lack of information.
  
• 8/3/1964 On August 3 Roy Truly supplied the Warren Commission with an affidavit (7H591) attesting that the door in the vestibule outside the employees' lunchroom was usually closed because it was controlled by an automatic mechanism.
  
• 8/3/1964 Washington Post reported North Vietnamese claims (made on Hanoi radio shortly before the Tonkin incident) that the South had raided two islands on the night of 7/30-31. "Administration officials denied there was any shelling of North Vietnamese islands…"
  
• 8/3/1964 9:46am Robert Anderson phone conversation with LBJ. LBJ: There have been some covert operations in that area that we have been carrying on - blowing up some bridges and things of that kind, roads and so forth. So I imagine they wanted to put a stop to it. So they...fired and we responded immediately with five-inch [shells] from the destroyer and with planes overhead. And we...knock one of em out and cripple the other two. Anderson: You're going to be running against a man who's a wild man on this subject. Any lack of firmness he'll make up...You've got to do what's right for the country...we're not soft...I haven't heard any adverse criticism from anybody. But I just know that this fellow's [Goldwater] going to play all the angles."
  
• 8/3/1964 10:20am Phone call between LBJ and McNamara.
  
• 8/3/1964 11:30am LBJ gave a statement to the press that the Navy would continue patrolling the Gulf of Tonkin and was under orders to destroy any enemy craft that attacked them. No questions from reporters were permitted.
  
• 8/3/1964 Noon: the Pentagon releases to the public a chronology of the attack. Again it is stated by spokesman Robert McCloskey that the US ships were on routine patrol in international waters, but he would not give more details. He rejected as "without foundation" charges by the North Vietnamese that their islands had been attacked. Privately, in background briefings with reporters, administration officials theorized that the Communists were testing US resolve.
  
• 8/3/1964 Noon: The Maddox, joined by the destroyer C. Turner Joy, began patrolling the Tonkin Gulf again. Maddox radarman James Stankevitz recalled, "We didn't even know this South Vietnamese deal had taken place. We thought it was kind of a shady deal to be pulling on us, setting us up as ducks. The crew was very resentful of it." (Truth is the First Casualty p139)
  
• 8/3/1964 NY Times reported Defense Dept officials saying that they had no idea why the North Vietnamese patrol boats would attack the US fleet. At this time, the North Vietnamese navy consisted of 4 wooden PT boats, 12 aluminum PT boats, three subchaser patrol craft and three small gunboats.
  
• 8/3/1964 Goldwater told the press: "Does the presence of American destroyers in the area signify the possible landing of larger American ground forces? Does it mean medium bombers are going to be used to intercept supply lines?"
  
• 8/3/1964 3pm Rusk and McNamara briefed members of the Senate Foreign Relations and Armed Services committee secretly about the events of the previous days.
  
• 8/3/1964 4pm: a group of South Vietnamese patrol boats left Da Nang, and by midnight were attacking North Vietnamese island installations at Cua Ron and Cape Vinh Son. Washington was not made aware of these attacks until sometime after 8/6. Why local US commanders did not inform Washington is not known. (Truth p139)
  
• 8/4/1964 FBI supervisor Lyndal L. Shaneyfelt arrived in Dallas to collect "the desired portion of the curb" containing the "chip marks."
  
• 8/4/1964 The FBI dug up a new earthen dam on a farm southwest of Philadelphia, Miss. Just as the informant had said, the bodies of the three slain civil rights workers were found under it. The FBI soon named 21 Klansmen responsible for the crime, including Sheriff Lawrence Rainey and Deputy Cecil Price. Schwerner's family wanted to bury Mickey next to his friend James Chaney in Meridian, but the state law forbid blacks and whites to be buried in the same cemetery. At Chaney's funeral, his friend Dave Dennis (Mickey Schwerner's supervisor in COFU/CORE) spoke, originally planning to talk about nonviolence. But when he saw Chaney's younger brother Ben, rage built up inside him and he thundered, "I'm sick and tired of going to the funerals of black men who have been murdered by white men! I've got vengeance in my heart tonight...The white men who murdered James Chaney are never going to be punished...if you take it and don't do something about it, then God damn your souls! Don't bow down anymore! We want our freedom now!"
  
• 8/4/1964 7:40pm (Vietnamese time) The Maddox reported radar contact with unidentified surface vessels who were paralleling its course. The Maddox's sonar equipment and the IFF device to identify friendly ships were giving them trouble.
  
• 8/4/1964 8:36pm (Vietnamese time) Maddox established two new radar contacts with two unidentified surface and three unidentified aircraft. Fighter aircraft were launched from the Ticonderoga to rendezvous with the Maddox and Turner Joy.
  
• 8/4/1964 9:08pm (Vietnamese time) the unidentified aircraft disappeared from radar and the surface vessels remained at a distance.
  
• 8/4/1964 9:30pm (Vietnamese time) attack occurred; additional vessels appeared on the Maddox's radar and were observed to close very rapidly on the destroyers from the west and south. The night was pitch black and the weather was very bad; numerous confusing signals were picked up, and were assumed to be enemy boats. The main sonarman/gun director on the Maddox, Patrick Park, was certain that they never picked up any real evidence of enemy craft. Capt. Herrick was certain that at least one torpedo was fired. Meanwhile, the Turner Joy fired away at various "targets."
  
• 8/4/1964 9:20am (EST) the war room in the Pentagon received the first flash message that another attack was thought to be under way. Admiral Sharp requested and was granted permission to ready carrier planes for a possible retaliatory strike.
  
• 8/4/1964 9:52pm (Vietnamese time) Maddox and Turner Joy reported they were under continuous torpedo attack.
  
• 8/4/1964 10:15pm (Vietnamese time) destroyers reported they were avoiding torpedoes and had sunk one attacking patrol craft.
  
• 8/4/1964 10:42pm (Vietnamese time) destroyers reported they had sunk a second patrol craft.
  
• 8/4/1964 10:52pm (Vietnamese time) Maddox reported the destroyers were again under attack.
  
• Midnight (Vietnamese time) destroyers reported they had suffered no hits, no casualties, and that the aircraft from the Ticonderoga were illuminating the area and attacking enemy boats. Patrick N. Park, fire-control radar operator aboard the Maddox, is told by the bridge to fire at a large target spotted on radar. "Just before I pushed the trigger I realized, That's the Turner Joy. This came right with the order to open fire. I shouted back, Where is the Turner Joy?' There was a lot of yelling of Goddamn' back and forth, with the bridge telling me to fire before we lose the contact' and me yelling right back at them…I finally told them, I'm not opening fire until I know where the Turner Joy is.' The bridge got on the phone and said, Turn on your lights, Turner Joy.' Sure enough, there she was, right in the crosshairs. I had six five-inch guns right at the Turner Joy, 1500 yards away. If I had fired, it would have blown it clean out of the water." (12/2/1968 interview with Park by Joseph Goulden; Truth is the First Casualty p11)
  
• 8/4/1964 12:32am (Vietnamese time) they reported that an additional PT boat was believed to have been sunk, but poor weather was making it difficult for planes to operate.
  
• 8/4/1964 12:54am (Vietnamese time) Turner Joy reported that during the attack they had been fired upon by automatic weapons while being illuminated by search lights.
  
• 8/4/1964 1:30am (Vietnamese time) destroyers reported that attacking craft had broken off the engagement.
  
• 8/4/1964 During a meeting with Rusk, McNamara, Bundy and McCone, LBJ insisted that Hanoi had to be punished with a retaliatory strike. Targets would be shore installations associated with the PT boat attacks.
  
• 8/4/1964 12:03pm: (EST) the second attack had occurred 3 hours before, but Adm. William Mack, in a press conference, did not mention it to the press.
  
• 8/4/1964 At 1:30pm (EST) a cable from Commodore John Herrick aboard the Maddox reached the Pentagon: "Review of action makes many recorded contacts and torpedoes fired appear doubtful. Freak weather effects and overeager sonarman may have accounted for many reports. No actual visual sightings by Maddox. Suggest complete evaluation before any further action." This cable was made public during the 1968 Senate hearings.
  
• 8/4/1964 6:00pm (EST) Defense Dept issued a public statement: "A second deliberate attack was made during darkness by an undetermined number of North Vietnamese PT boats on the USS Maddox and USS C. Turner Joy while the two destroyers were cruising in company on routine patrol in the Tonkin Gulf in international waters about 65 miles from the nearest land. The attack came at 10:3pm local time (10:30am, August 4, Washington time). The PT boats were taken under fire by the destroyers and thereafter by attack aircraft from the Ticonderoga and the Constellation. The attackers were driven off with no US casualties, no hits and no damage to either destroyer. It is believed that at least two of the PT boats were sunk and two others damaged."
  
• 8/4/1964 6:45pm key congressmen were assembled at the White House for a briefing. LBJ informed them that the US would retaliate. The congressmen were briefed by McCone, Wheeler and McNamara until 8:15pm. They were admonished to keep quiet about it for the time being.
  
• 8/4/1964 8:00pm (EST) Herrick cabled: "Maddox scored no known hits and never positively identified a boat as such...Weather was overcast with limited visibility...almost total darkness throughout action...it is supposed that sonarman was hearing ship's own propeller beat." Herrick would later tell the L.A. Times (4/28/1985) he thought no torpedo was fired.
  
• 8/4/1964 8:25pm (EST) George Reedy told reporters there would be a presidential statement on national TV later that night.
  
• 8/4/1964 10:07pm (EST) the White House briefed Goldwater on the impending bombing raid.
  
• 8/4/1964 11:00pm: (EST) bombers were already on their way to bomb North Vietnam and LBJ was preparing to go on television; Vice Admiral Roy L. Johnson sent an urgent cable to the Turner Joy: "Who were witnesses, what is witness reliability? Most important that present evidence substantiating type and number of attacking forces be gathered and disseminated."
  
• 8/4/1964 11:37pm: (EST) LBJ went on national TV and told the public about the two attacks, and said that US planes were already on their way to bomb targets in the North as a retaliatory measure. Actually, the attack would not begin for another hour and 40 minutes, but if Johnson had waited any longer, the news networks would have gone off the air for the night. "Aggression by terror against the peaceful villages of South Vietnam has now been joined by open aggession on the high seas against the United States of America…We still seek no wider war." The North Vietnamese denied any involvement in the second "attack."
  
• 8/5/1964 12:02-12:30am McNamara spoke to reporters in the Pentagon, telling them that planes from the Ticonderoga and Constellation had conducted air strikes against the PT boat bases. He also said that the US was moving "substantial military reinforcements to Southeast Asia from our Pacific bases…" He repeatedly emphasized that they were on "routine patrol…between 30 and 60 miles of the North Vietnamese coast." He estimated there were between 3 and 6 PT boats. McNamara claimed not to know of any South Vietnamese raids against Northern islands, and said that US ships do not participate in any of the South Vietnamese naval operations.
  
• 8/5/1964 1:15pm (Vietnamese time) the first air attack began; another strike happened at 4:45pm.
  
• 8/5/1964 9am (EST) McNamara televised press conference: he announced that 64 US air attack sorties had been launched at four patrol-boat bases (in Hon Gay, Loc Chao, Phuc Loi and Quang Khe) and at the oil storage depot at Vinh. Two planes were lost; one pilot, Richard Sather, was killed, and the other, Everett Alvarez Jr., was captured. He was the first US pilot shot down by the North Vietnamese; he was released 8 years later.
  
• 8/5/1964 Dean Rusk did TV interviews for CBS and NBC. He said he had "no satisfactory explanation" for the attacks because the Communists "see the world in wholly different terms" from the US. On NBC, he denied that the US was involved in South Vietnamese raids: "Hanoi knows just as well as we do that our destroyers were not involved in any mission other than that was publicly announced."
  
• 8/5/1964 This morning, Sen. Morse received a telephone call from a civilian bureaucrat at the Pentagon. He suggested that Morse get hold of the logbooks of the Maddox and find out that ship's exact location in the Gulf of Tonkin. The caller told him that the ship was absolutely not on routine patrol, but was actually a spy ship connected with the South Vietnamese raids. Morse soon found out from McNamara that the logs would not be available for days; he began warning his collegaues that LBJ would try to rush the resolution through as soon as possible. Morse found most of his colleagues willing to trust Johnson. (Truth is the First Casualty 48)
  
• 8/5/1964 The President, proclaimed the New York Times, "went to the American people last night with the somber facts." The Los Angeles Times urged Americans to "face the fact that the Communists, by their attack on American vessels in international waters, have themselves escalated the hostilities."
  
• 8/5/1964 Washington Post analysis by Chalmers Roberts: "The United States turned loose its military might on North Vietnam last night to prevent the Communist leaders in Hanoi and Peking from making the mistaken decision that they could attack American ships with impunity...not a decision to escalate the war in Southeast Asia. These views came last night from official American sources who would not let themselves be otherwise identified. But there was no doubt they reflected the views of President Johnson...It was said by American sources that the attacks, clearly not accidental, could be part of some over-all plan." In 1966, professors Franz Schurmann, Peter Dale Scott and Reginald Zelnik would advance the thesis (in The Politics of Escalation) that the Gulf of Tonkin incident was created to quash a Geneva-style conference on ending the war in Vietnam, which had been agreed to by the UN, France, the USSR, North Vietnam and China.
  
• 8/5/1964 Noon: a presidential messenger brought the Tonkin Gulf Resolution to the Senate. It read, "Whereas naval units of the Communist regime in Vietnam, in violation of the Charter of the United Nations and of international law, have deliberately and repeatedly attacked United States naval vessels lawfully present in international waters, and have thereby created a serious threat to international peace; and whereas these attacks are part of a deliberate and systematic campaign of aggression that the Communist regime in North Vietnam has been waging against its neighbors and the nations joined with them in the collective defense of their freedom; and whereas the United States is assisting the peoples of Southeast Asia to protect their freedom and has no territorial, military, or political ambitions in that area, but desires only that these people should be left in peace to work out their own destinies in their own way: Now, therefore, be it resolved by the Senate and House of Representatives of the United States of America in Congress assembled, That the Congress approves and supports the determination of the President, as Commander in Chief, to take all necessary measures to repel any armed attack against the forces of the United States and to prevent further aggression. Section 2. The United States regards as vital to its national interest and to world peace the maintenance of international peace and security in southeast Asia. Consonant with the Constitution of the United States and the Charter of the United Nations and in accordance with its obligations under the Southeast Asia Collective Defense Treaty, the United States is, therefore, prepared, as the President determines, to take all necessary steps, including the use of armed force, to assist any member or protocol state of the Southeast Asia Collective Defense Treaty requesting assistance in defense of its freedom. Section 3. This resolution shall expire when the President shall determine that the peace and security of the area is reasonably assured by international conditions created by action of the United Nations or otherwise, except that it may be terminated earlier by concurrent resolution of the Congress." The final 13 words were added at the suggestion of Sen. Russell, who wanted to give Congress a way of withdrawing its endorsement of the resolution in needed.
  
• 8/5/1964 Sen. Morse told the Senate, that bombing mainland North Vietnam required a declaration of war from Congress, and suggested that South Vietnamese raids may have provoked the attack. "I have been briefed many times, as have the other members of the Foreign Relations Committee, and all this time witness after witness from the State Department and from the Pentagon have admitted under examination that they had no evidence of any foreign troops in South Vietnam from North Vietnam, Red China, Cambodia or anywhere else." Sen. Fulbright disagreed, saying that the administration had been forthcoming about the incident: "I do not believe there has been any tendency to withhold anything." Morse received hundreds of telegrams that day in response to his speech, nearly all of them favorable.
  
• 8/5/1964 After the first US air strikes on North Vietnam, LBJ bragged to reporters, "I didn't just screw Ho Chi Minh. I cut his pecker off." (The Best and the Brightest, Halberstam)
  
• 8/5/1964 A piece of curb from Dealey Plaza with a bullet mark in it, near where James Tague stood, is removed by the FBI under the direction of Lyndal Shaneyfelt.
  
• 8/6/1964 LBJ met with Mayor Daley about the possibility of race riots breaking out in Chicago. (White House Diary 189)
  
• 8/6/1964 "McNamara, Rusk and Wheeler testified before the Senate Foreign Relations and Armed Services Committees. Several Senators disputed the administration's version of the events of the previous days. McNamara said that 8/3 had been an "uneventful" day. Rusk emphasized that the SEATO treaty "does not cover any action to resist aggression that is not Communist in origin…it is directed solely against Communist' aggression…" He assured the Committee that the administration would continue to be forthcoming about all future events in Southeast Asia. Fulbright asked no questions, only praised the administration for its handling of the situation. Sen. Morse again accused the US destroyers of being involved in the South Vietnamese raids. Rusk grew somewhat angry, insisting that the Communists were the aggressors around the world, while the US was just trying to help other countries: "We have none of them in any American empire." McNamara: "Our Navy played absolutely no part in, was not associated with, was not aware of any South Vietnamese actions, if there were any. I want to make that very clear." This reponse and Morse's comments about it were censored by the Pentagon in its published report of the hearings 11/1966. McNamara admitted that their was still confusion about the night attack. Rusk told Sen. Ervin that the US was helping Vietnam because the Saigon government had asked us for help, not because of obligations under the SEATO treaty. But by 1966 Rusk would be using the SEATO treaty as a former obligation of the US to be in Vietnam. McNamara told Sen. Thurmond, "It is our objective to move our forces as rapidly out of Vietnam as that government can maintain its independence and as rapidly as the North Vietnamese stop their attempts to subvert it." Morse and Rusk argued about Rusk's off-the-record statement 8/2, and whether he had said then that the US ships were within 11 miles of the North Vietnam. Finally, the hearing ended, and with only Morse dissenting, the Resolution was sent to the floor for a vote. The administration was pressing hard for immediate approval, without delay or amendments.
  
• 8/6/1964 In Senate debate, Morse and Sen. Lausche argued over whether administration officials had actually admitted to knowing about South Vietnamese raids against North Vietnamese islands. Lausche: There is no testimony to that effect whatsoever. That is an inference made by the Senator from Oregon as to the… Morse: Get permission from the State Dept or the Pentagon to publicly release the whole of the transcript without a single word deleted, and let the country know what they said. Senator Daniel Brewster of Maryland expressed concern that the Resolution might be used to introduce US combat troops into Vietnam. Sen. Fulbright replied, "There is nothing in the resolution, as I read it, that contemplates it. I agree with the Senator that that is the last thing we would want to do. However, the language of the resolution would not prevent it.""
  
• 8/6/1964 Chinese government announced, "Should US imperialism at any moment invade the DRV's territory or its territorial waters and air space, the Chinese people will be honor bound to give resolute support to the Vietnamese people."
  
• 8/6/1964 McNamara said in a press conference, "I think it probable that the Communist Chinese will introduce some combat aircraft into North Vietnam in support of them; North Vietnam does not possess any combat aircraft of its own…"
  
• 8/6/1964 THE STATE OF TEXAS vs. JACK RUBENSTEIN -- Judge Brown refuses to approve fifteen bills of exception.
  
• 8/7/1964 Richard Helms wrote an affidavit for the WC.
  
• 8/7/1964 Further debate in the Senate: Sen. Gruening denounced the resolution as "a predated declaration of war." Sen. Morse predicted "that history will record that we have made a great mistake…we are in effect giving the President…warmaking powers in the absence of a declaration of war." Altogether, the Senate debated the resolution for a total of 8 hours.
  
• 8/7/1964 Congress passed Gulf of Tonkin Resolution. It was approved by the Senate 88-2 (with only Morse and Gruening dissenting), by the House unanimously. "Even while he was blasting Goldwater as a warmonger, LBJ had made up his mind to escalate the conflict by bombing North Vietnam - a fact he later confided to Charles W. Roberts of Newsweek...he ordered his national security adviser, McGeorge Bundy, to draw up a resolution which would give him a free hand in Vietnam. The idea was to send it to Congress for approval at the proper time. Bundy later confirmed there was such a draft, explaining, 'We had always anticipated...the possibility that things might take a more drastic turn at any time.'" (It Didn't Start with Watergate p183) McNamara says that the reason why the resolution was prepared a couple of months in advance was because of the deteriorating situation in Vietnam, and because they had briefly considered escalating the war effort in June 1964, but then decided against it. (In Retrospect p121-22) George Ball told the BBC in 1977 that "Many of the people who were associated with the war...were looking for any excuse to initiate bombing...The DESOTO [covert action] patrol [raids] was primarily for provocation...There was a feeling that if the destroyer got into some trouble, that would provide the provocation we needed." William Bundy said in the same interview that the crisis had not been "engineered"; he believed that both Hanoi and Washington miscalculated.
  
• 8/27/1964 In the New York Times today, of the 27 editorials excerpted fully 24 endorsed the bombing without reservation, 2 expressed minor reservations, and one was noncommittal.
  
• 8/8/1964 House passed LBJ's anti-poverty bill 226-184.
  
• 8/8/1964 French paper Le Monde commented that the US was ignoring the influence of its covert raids in provoking the North Vietnamese attacks.
  
• 8/10/1964 Lou Harris poll found that 85% of the country approved of the reprisal attacks on North Vietnam. In July, 58% of the public had criticized LBJ's handling of the war. That changed to 72% favorable after the Gulf of Tonkin. All year, polls had showed the public felt LBJ would handle the war better than Goldwater.
  
• 8/11/1964 Hoover memo to NY office, granting authority to bug MLK while he was at the Democratic Convention.
  
• 8/11/1964 After drinking an unknown amount of beer and vodka, John Franklin Elrod winds up at the Shelby County sheriff's Office in downtown Memphis. While there he volunteers information that he had been a cell mate of LHO's on November 22, 1963. The FBI sends two agents -- Norman L. Casey and Francil B. Cole, to interview Elrod. The agents dictate a two-page report summarizing Elrod's story. Dallas Police Department files discovered in 1992 will confirm that Elrod was in the Dallas City Jail on the day of the assassination.
  
• 8/12/1964 LBJ made a speech to the American Bar Association in NYC in which he argued that the US had a moral duty to help weaker nations resist aggression. He also attacked "others" who wanted to enlarge the war in Vietnam and "to supply American boys to do the job that Asian boys should do...Such action would offer no solution at all to the real problem of Vietnam."
  
• 8/12/1964 The CIA reports: "American citizen Waldemar Boris Karapatnitsky last known address West Berlin, visited relatives USSR 1959, and believed hospitalized Botkina Hospital Moscow in bed next to OSWALD October 21, 1959, to October 28, 1959. Subject a retired machinery importer-exporter born January 14, 1886, Ukraine ... Subject denounced 1950 by neighbor as communist based on conversations between informant and SAC. No further derog. traces." From 1958 to 1962, Counter-Intelligence HT-LINGUAL will intercept 15 letters mailed either to the Soviet Union from the United States by Boris Karapatnitsky, or mailed from the Soviet Union and received by him in the United States. The CIA is reluctant to take the testimony of Boris Karapatnitsky because of "complications that would later arise," and discusses the problem with David Slawson. David Slawson tells the CIA he will get the State Department to take Boris Karapatnitsky's statement. From the State Department report: "A Mission Officer called on Boris Karapatnitsky on August 14, 1964, under pretext of checking residences of older U.S. citizens residing in Berlin. Karapatnitsky said he thought he knew why the officer had come and stated he had intended to visit consular section for advice concerning problem. He described problem as follows: He had been informed by a friend in New York that a Secret Service agent, representing the Warren Commission, had inquired about him asking Kara had been in USSR certain time and if he had known OSWALD. Showed Consular Officer letter from friend dated August 10, 1964, surmising that Sovs had furnished names of all patients in hospital at time of OSWALD'S hospitalization and that he had been traced from there. Kara said he had never heard of OSWALD until after assassination of President Kennedy. He volunteered there had been only one American in Karapatnitsky's room in hospital but he was 69 year old industrialist. In response to repeated he had heard nothing about OSWALD in the USSR and could recall no reason to believe their paths have crossed."
  
• 8/13/1964 Mac Bundy sent a memo to LBJ admitting that "South Vietnam is not going well." He worried about Saigon's possible collapse, but wouldn't recommend anything specific other than refusing to negotiate with Hanoi.
  
• 8/14/1964 Time and LIFE magazines had blatantly inaccurate stories about the second Gulf of Tonkin "attack." From Life, a story "pieced together by Life correspondent Bill Wise with the help of US Navy Intelligence and the Department of Defense": "A few of [the PT boats] amazed those aboard the Maddox by brazenly using searchlights to light up the destroyers thus making ideal targets of themselves. They also peppered the ships with more 37mm fire, keeping heads on the US craft low but causing no real damage." From Time: "The night glowed eerily with the nightmarish glare of air-dropped flares and boats' searchlights. For 3 ½ hours the small boats attacked in pass after pass. Ten enemy torpedoes sizzled through the water…Two of the enemy boats went down. Then, at 1:30am, the remaining PTs ended the fight, roared off through the black night to the north." Maddox radarman James Stankevitz recalled four years later, "I couldn't believe it, the way they blew that story out of proportion. It was something out of Male Magazine, the way they described that battle.' All we needed were naked women running up and down the deck. We were disgusted, because it just wasn't true. It didn't happen that way…" (Truth is the First Casualty p158)
  
• 8/14/1964 Vice Adm. Roy L. Johnson and Adm. Thomas Moorer wrote a report on the Tonkin incident, and agreed that the night attack definitely occurred. Only the conclusions were made public, not the report itself.
  
• 8/14/1964 JCS told McNamara that plans for air strikes on North Vietnam and the Ho Chi Minh Trail should be prepared.
  
• 8/17/1964 Marina Oswald discovers bus tickets for Mexican bus company in brown suitcase for trip from Mexico City to Laredo, Texas on 10/30/63.
  
• 8/18/1964 Max Taylor cabled from Saigon to propose "a carefully orchestrated bombing attack" on North Vietnam beginning 1/1/1965.
  
• 8/20/1964 J. Edgar Hoover writes to J. Lee Rankin: "... it should be noted that the firing pin of this rifle has been used extensively as shown by wear on the nose or striking portion of the firing pin and, further, the presence of rust on the firing pin and its spring may be an indication that the firing pin had not been recently changed prior to November 22, 1963. This rust would have been disturbed had the firing pin been changed subsequent to the formation of the rust. In this regard, the firing pin and spring of this weapon are well oiled and the rust present necessarily must have been formed prior to the oiling of these parts. No oil has been applied to the weapon by the FBI; however, it is not known whether it was oiled by any other person having this rifle in his possession. It was noted during the examination of the firing pin that numerous shots have been fired with the weapon in its present well-oiled condition as shown by the presence of residues on the interior surfaces of the bolt and on the firing pin. The Laboratory has no record of any outlet where spare parts, including firing pins, can be obtained for rifles such as Commission Number 139. In accordance with Mr. Redlich's telephonic request and in the absence of any indication that the firing pin of the rifle was changed, no investigative survey was conducted to ascertain whether any such outlets exist in the United States."
  
• 8/20/1964 AFFIDAVIT IN ANY FACT My name is J.L. Popplewell. I entered the Dallas Police Department January 11th, 1957. I have worked the fifth floor jail most of this time. The 23rd day of November, 1963, at 3PM, I was assigned to guard the area in front of Lee Harvey Oswald's cell, watching all of his movements to see that he didn't hurt himself. At about 4PM Lt. Lord called on the jail phone and instructed me to put Oswald on the phone. Oswald asked the operator for two telephone numbers - then asked me for pencil and paper while in the telephone booth. I tore a small piece of plain paper, about two by three inches from the telephone record sheet that hung outside the telephone booth; then handed this piece of paper and my pencil to him. Oswald wrote a number on this paper and then returned my pencil to me. Then he asked if he could call later. Oswald did not get his call through at this time. I called Lt. Lord and informed him that Oswald did not get his party and wanted to call again later. About 8PM Lt. Lord came up to the jail and told me to let Oswald use the phone. I was instructed to step back away from the booth so the phone call could be private. From this location I watched the prisoner talking to someone. He used the phone about thirty minutes. I asked Oswald if he got his call through and he answered, yes. I then returned him to his cell. About four months ago on a Monday, I received a call from an FBI agent who wanted to know about a slip of paper with a phone number on it. This was supposed to have been in Oswald's pocket when he died. The agent asked if we allowed prisoners to keep phone numbers on their person. I said that if a call wasn't completed the first time, we could let them write the number down and keep it for a later call. The agent asked me the size of the paper I might have given Oswald to write on. I told him it was probably torn off of a telephone record sheet hanging outside the telephone booth; that the paper was plain, unmarked, about two by three inches. The telephone sheet is usually used for writing names of prisoners who use the phone, but due to the large volume of prisoners that weekend, it was possible I missed writing Oswald's name down on it. I have been unable to locate a sheet with his name on it.
  
• 8/20/1964 LBJ signs Economic Opportunity Act into law.
  
• 8/21/1964 Sen. Wayne Morse complained in a Senate speech that the US had sent gunboats to attack two North Vietnamese islands before the Gulf of Tonkin.
  
• 8/21/1964 THE STATE OF TEXAS vs. JACK RUBENSTEIN -- Defense counsel files bystander bills of exception -- a "bystander" filing being necessary when the presiding judge has denied approval of the initial filing of the bills of exception.
  
• 8/22/1964 RFK announces his candidacy for the United States Senate today in New York. LBJ, now headed for a landslide against Barry Goldwater, performs on platforms with RFK. In public, LBJ hugs RFK and calls him "ma boy." RFK will win by a little over 700,000 votes, although Johnson carries New York by 2.7 million. LBJ's participation has probably secured his Senate seat for RFK, but Kennedy refrains from mentioning LBJ in his victory statement.
  
• 8/24/1964 St. Louis, Missouri: the first Catholic Mass ever performed in English was done by Rev. Frederick R. McManus of Catholic University.
  
• 8/24/1964 Attorney General Robert Kennedy told House immigration subcommittee members, "I would say for the Asia-Pacific Triangle it [immigration] would be approximately 5,000, Mr. Chairman, after which immigration from that source would virtually disappear; 5,000 immigrants would come the first year, but we do not expect that there would be any great influx after that." (U.S. Congress, House, 1964 hearings, p. 418.) And in a letter to The New York Times, he called for repeal of the national origins system: "The time has come for us to insist that the quota system be replaced by the merit system...It deprives us of able immigrants whose contributions we need...It would increase the amount of authorized immigration by only a fraction." (The New York Times, Aug. 24, 1964, p. 26.)
  
• 8/26/1964 LBJ and Humphrey are nominated at the Democratic convention. Sen. Fulbright seconded LBJ's nomination, praising his "sense of responsibility" in foreign affairs and citing the Tonkin Gulf incident as evidence of his "restraint." A top official of one of the news networks got a call from LBJ telling him to "get your goddamn cameras off the niggers out front and back on the speaker's stand inside, goddamn it!" (Accidental President p19)
  
• 8/26/1964 L.J. Lewis, an eyewitness at the scene of Tippit's murder, who was interviewed by two FBI agents on January 21, 1964 submits an affidavit to the Warren Commission in which he states that the FBI report submitted by the two agents is incorrect.
  
• 8/26/1964 The FBI files a report on this date concerning assassination suspect Gilberto Policarpo Lopez who is now in Cuba. It contains an interview with Lopez's cousin, Guillermo Serpa Rodriguez, conducted in Key West, Florida. Rodriguez says that Lopez had come to the United States after Castro took over in Cuba, had returned to Cuba after about a year because he was homesick, then returned to the U.S.A. in 1960 or 1961 to avoid the Cuban draft. According to the report, Lopez told Rodriguez of his plans to return to Cuba in November 1963, saying he was afraid of getting drafted into the U.S. military. This report also contains an interview with Lopez's wife, also conducted in Key West. She says that Lopez was hospitalized at Jackson Memorial Hospital in early 1963 in Miami because he had begun to suffer from epileptic attacks. He was also treated for the condition by doctors in Key West and Coral Gables. In the opinion of Lopez's wife, his seizures were brought on by worry for his family in Cuba. She says that Lopez has written her since his return to Cuba, telling her that his trip had been made with financial assistance from "an organization in Tampa."
  
• 8/27/1964 FBI agents submit a second report to the Warren Commission regarding the testimony of L.J. Lewis in which they say Lewis wishes to make certain "clarifications" regarding his original statement. The timing of the events, as Lewis says he saw them occur, is STILL incorrect. Thus after Lewis has submitted an affidavit correcting the original FBI report, agents submit a second report -- similarly incorrect -- which also conforms to the Warren Commission's accepted narrative.
  
• 8/28/1964 CE 3045: letter from Rankin to Hoover, requesting an investigation of Sylvia Odio's story. "It is a matter of some importance to the Commission that Mrs Odio's allegations either be proved or disproved...We are also concerned about the possibility that Oswald may have left New Orleans on September 24, 1963, instead of September 25, 1963 as has been previously thought. In that connection, Marina Oswald has recently advised us that her husband told her he intended to leave New Orleans the very next day following her departure on September 23, 1963. She has also indicated that he told her an unemployment check would be forwarded to Mrs Ruth Paine's address in Irving from his post office box in New Orleans. We also have testimony that Oswald left his apartment on the evening of September 24, 1963, carrying two suitcases. It also seems impossible to us that Oswald would have gone all the way back to the Winn-Dixie Store at 4303 Magazine Street to cash the unemployment check which he supposedly picked up at the Lafayette Branch of the Post Office when he could have cashed it at Martin's Restaurant, where he had previously cashed many of his Reily checks and one unemployment check. That is particularly true if he received the check on September 25, 1963, as previously thought, and had left his apartment with his suitcases the evening before." (H 26 595) No new information was turned up about this by the FBI, but the WR stated as a fact that Oswald had left on 9/25/1963.
  
• 8/28/1964 Internal FBI memo from Rosen to Belmont: "Rankin advised because of the circumstances that now exist there was a serious question in the minds of the Commission as to whether or not the palm print impression that has been obtained from the Dallas Police Department is a legitimate latent palm print impression removed from the rifle barrel or whether it was obtained from some other source and that for this reason this matter needs to be resolved." This was declassified in 1978.
  
• 8/28/1964 Federal government passed a law making it a federal crime to kill, assault or kidnap the President, Vice-President and certain officials.
  
• 8/29/1964 In a speech in Stonewall, Texas, LBJ attacked the idea of bombing North Vietnam and escalating the war, "and result in our committing a good many American boys to fighting a war that I think ought to be fought by the boys of Asia..."
  
• 8/29/1964 Cartha DeLoach wrote a report about LBJ's use of the FBI to infiltrate and monitor the various elements of the Democratic Party during the 1964 convention. "...we utilized a highly successful cover through cooperation of the [deleted] furnished us credentials. I selected several members of this squad to use this cover. As an example, one of our 'reporters' was able to gain the confidence [deleted]....One of our [deleted] successfully established contact with [deleted] Saturday night, August 22nd, and maintained this relationship throughout the course of the entire Convention...proved to be a highly valuable source of information since [deleted] was constantly trying to incite racial groups to violence...we established a secondary command post at the Convention Hall Rotunda operated by an Agent using his 'reporter' cover...the boardwalk was the center of agitation by dissident elements...We necessarily kept these people under close observation." They wiretapped MLK to keep track of "plans" to "disrupt the orderly progress of the Convention." Bill Moyers and Walter Jenkins worked closely with the FBI on these operations. All of these things went on without the knowledge of Bobby Kennedy, the Secret Service and the local police, indicating that these groups were more of a political risk than a true security risk.
  
• 8/30/1964 Congress passed a law making it a federal offense to knowingly "destroy or mutilate a Selective Service registration card."
  
• 8/31/1964 Almost as the Report was going to press and more than nine months following the assassination, the Commission wrote the FBI Dallas office asking that Roy S. Truly, manager of the Depository, "be interviewed to ascertain if he knows of any curtain rods having been found in the TSBD building after November 22, 1963." The FBI reported, ". . . He stated that it would be customary for any discovery of curtain rods to immediately be called to his attention and that he has received no information to the effect that any curtain rods were found . . ." (Exhibit 2640, 25H899). (Weisberg, Whitewash)
  
• 8/31/1964 The New York Post reported: "Investigative agencies have spent many hours and interviewed hundreds of witnesses since the Nov. 22 assassination trying to trace Oswald's steps on the Mexico trip. It is known, for instance, that he was seen in a Dallas bus station at 6pm Sept. 25 and that he crossed the border at Nuevo Laredo next day." ('Bus Stub Traces Oswald in Mexico') The WC never refuted this claim. Posner says that Oswald was very talkative on the bus ride to Mexico since "he felt he had no reason to be secretive any longer since he would soon be in Cuba..."
  

[Tracy Riddle]

• 9/1/1964 The Commission wrote to the FBI requesting certain additional information about the lifted print (the actual letter does not appear in the Exhibits). (Meagher)
  
• 9/1/1964 Wesley Liebeler memo to Howard Willens: "...it reflects badly that Marina Oswald still had material on August 26 not known to the FBI." (Inquest)
  
• 9/2 or 9/3/1964 RFK resigns as Attorney General.
  
• 9/2/1964 Jackie Kennedy and her children move, this month, to live in New York City.
  
• 9/4/1964 In a JCS meeting, Army Chief of Staff Gen. Harold K. Johnson argued that air strikes against the North wouldn't have much effect. Johnson's dissent was not mentioned to McNamara. (In Retrospect p152-3)
  
• 9/4/1964 CE 2637: Letter from Hoover to Rankin about the palm print found on the rifle: "This palm print lift has been compared with the assassination rifle in the FBI laboratory. The laboratory examiners were able to positively identify this lift as having come from the assassination rifle in the area of the wooden foregrip. This conclusion is based on a comparison of irregularities in the surface of the metal of the barrel with the impressions of these irregularities as shown in the lift." Sylvia Meagher: "On September 4, 1964, J. Edgar Hoover replied, stating that the palmprint lift had been compared with the assassination rifle in the FBI Laboratory, and that the laboratory examiners had positively identified the lift as having come from the assassination rifle on the basis of a comparison of irregularities on the surface of the metal of the barrel with the impressions of those irregularities as shown in the lift. (CE 2637) The authentication was obtained not in sworn testimony, but in a letter, and no inquiries were made to determine whether those "irregularities" could have been imposed or superimposed on the lift. Obviously, the authenticity of the lift cannot be taken as proved unless the possibility of the imposition of the rifle markings can be ruled out. The possibility of fabrication still exists--and becomes all the more apparent on returning to Latona's testimony and his 12 points of identity between the lift and the inked palmprint. An arrested person having his fingerprints and palmprints taken holds his inked hand flat, on a police record form. A person who handles a rifle curls his hand around the barrel. The curving of the hand would almost certainly, it seems to me, distort the lines and loops [of the impression] so that the resulting print would differ markedly from a print made by the flat of the hand. Nothing in Latona's testimony suggests the lifted palmprint had any characteristics indicating that the print was made by a curved hand. On the contrary, Latona found 12 points of identity between the lift and a palmprint made by a hand in flat position. (Accessories After the Fact, Vintage Books Edition, New York: Vintage Books, 1992, reprint, p. 127)
  
• 9/4/1964 Galley proofs of the Warren Report were circulated among the Commission and staffers for final comments. (Inquest)
  
• 9/4/1964 Washington - Review of Robert Kennedy's three years in office; obliquely deals with RFK - J. Edgar Hoover frictions, including fact that RFK made the first real effort in years to bring FBI and its powerful director under effective direction and to turn its attention to such law enforcement problems as civil rights and organized crime. New York Times, Anthony Lewis
  
• 9/5/1964 William Bradford Huie wrote about the Mississippi murders in the Saturday Evening Post: "What makes this lynching a high crime against humanity is the role of the police. The three young men were not criminals. They were unarmed. They were well-intentioned. They were peaceful and peace-loving. Mississippi requires no visa for an American citizen to visit it."
  
• 9/5/1964 Memo from Melvin Eisenberg to Norman Redlich: "Subject: Neutron Activation Analysis. The following questions should be asked of the FBI: 1.A description of the neutron activation test. 2.When the test was performed on the paraffin cast. 3.How much barium and antimony were found on the cast. 4.Were any significant elements of other than barium and antimony found? 5.How rare are barium and antimony as compared with nitrates or other oxidozing agents which can cause a reaction to the paraffin test? 6.Were barium and antimony found on both sides of the paraffin cast of the cheek? 7.If so, doesn't that indicate that the casts were contaminated so that the whole test was worthless? 8.What is the meaning of the statement in the letter from the FBI that there was more barium and antimony on the cast than might normally be expected to be found on a person who had not fired a weapon. Does this mean that there were more barium and antimony than would be present on a person's hands even if he had handled some of the items listed in the letter from the FBI setting forth items containing barium and/or antimony? If not, what is the validity of the statement?" (Post-Mortem p447)
  
• 9/6/1964 26-page memo from Liebeler to Rankin attacking the Warren Report chapter on the identity of the assassin; it was revised again. (Inquest) He argued that "...the best evidence that Oswald could fire as fast as he did and hit the target is the fact that he did so." He admitted that the "fact is that not one person alive today ever saw that rifle [the Carcano] in the Paine garage in such a way that it could be identified as that rifle." He complained about how the Commission equated Oswald's hunting in Russia with a shotgun, to his experience with a rifle: "Under what theory do we include activities concerning a shotgun under a heading relating to rifle practice, and then presume not to advise the reader of that?" He feared that the Report was too strongly biased against Oswald and would end up looking like a prosecution brief: "To put it bluntly, this sort of selection from the record could seriously affect the integrity and credibility of the entire report...Gaps cannot be filled by ignoring them." He noted that Frazier's description of Oswald carrying the rifle bag cupped in his hand agreed with his estimation of the length of the bag. Liebeler also warned that relying on Helen Markham's testimony would leave the Report open to criticism from critics. He felt it was "dishonest" not to mention the misaligned scope, or evidence that Oswald was a poor shot, and leave the reader with the impression that the shooting was easy to accomplish. When Liebeler gave this memo to Rankin, the latter complained, "No more memorandums! The Report has to be published!" Redlich also complained about Liebeler's criticisms, saying, "The Commission judged it an easy shot, and I work for the Commission." (Inquest) Liebeler also warned that "some question might be raised when the public discovers that there was only one person who saw Oswald kill him. All the rest only saw subsequent events. Mrs. Markham is nicely buried here, but I predict not for long."
  
• 9/6/1964 Sen. Richard Russell led a small expedition to a US Naval Air Station in Dallas to interview Marina Oswald. Russell presided, with Boggs and Cooper in attendance. Rankin was there along with two interpreters. (WC Vol. V, p. 589) "I feel in my own mind that Lee did not have President Kennedy as a prime target when he assassinated him." Representative Boggs asks, "Well, who was it?" Marina replies, "I think it was Connally. That's my personal opinion that he perhaps was shooting at Governor Connally, the Governor of Texas." From the beginning of his examination of Marina Oswald, Russell makes two things clear. First, he has thoroughly digested the past record of her interrogations. This includes her relationship with Ruth Paine, who he once called Marina's alter ego and "one of the most charitable people we have." (12/16 Commission meeting, p. 41) Second, unlike Bugliosi and others, he has real doubts about Marina's testimony concerning her husband and about Oswald's real reasons for going to Russia. For instance, he asked the following: if Lee had told Marina that Russia was such an outstanding communist country to live in, and that is why he moved there, then why did he decline citizenship in Russia? (ibid) Some of Marina's answers make little sense. She actually says that Oswald was unhappy with his living quarters and his wages. (ibid p. 590) Yet most observers know that Oswald was granted a very nice domicile at a low rent and was given a fairly good job. Clearly, as far as living standards went, this is as good as it got for Oswald once he left the service. Russell then went on to address the possible Cuban connection with Oswald. He asked if Oswald knew any Cubans while in Russia, New Orleans or Texas. (ibid) He asked her about his joining a gun club in Minsk and got her to admit that he only went hunting there once. (ibid p. 591) Russell then probed for any connections between Marina and the KGB or the Soviet military. The CIA had written a memo in March 1964 that stated, "In practice, permission for a Soviet wife to accompany her foreign national husband abroad is rarely given. In almost every case available for our review, the foreign national was obliged to depart the USSR alone and either return to escort his wife out or arrange for her exit while he was still abroad. In some cases, the wife was never granted permission to leave." Following this proven record, Russell asked Marina who she saw in the military to get her exit visa out of Russia. He then asks another pointed question: Did she know any other Russian citizen who left Russia with a foreign national? (ibid p. 592) Clearly, Russell is skeptical about why she was allowed to leave Russia at the height of the Cold War. In fact, this line of questioning got Marina so on the defensive that she actually volunteered that she was never given any assignment by the Soviets or the Americans! Even though she was never asked that specific question. (ibid p. 604) Russell also uncovered the fact that Marina, with Priscilla Johnson's help, found a ticket stub to Mexico in the middle of a television program guide. (ibid p. 602) Conveniently, right after this discovery, Wesley Liebeler happened to call her with questions about Oswald in Mexico. And she told him about this ticket stub that she and Priscilla had miraculously discovered nine months after the police first searched the Paine residence. (ibid p. 602) Russell also discovered that Marina was planning on publishing her memoirs at the end of 1964. (ibid p. 600) She didn't. So the timely appearance of the eventual co-writer Ms. Johnson helped delay her plans for about 13 years. Sen. Cooper also pressed the ease with which she gained an exit visa from the Soviets. (ibid p. 604) And it is here that Marina denied any "assignment" for the Soviets or Americans. Cooper also probed her relationship with Ruth Paine. (ibid p. 607) In trying to discern a motive, Boggs asked her questions about how Oswald felt about Kennedy. (ibid p. 606) He was so persistent in this line that he got her to admit she was thoroughly rehearsed on this point in her previous Commission appearance. (p. 607) The questions also focused on Marina's facility with the English language. Russell seemed to doubt her need for an interpreter. (ibid p. 600)
  
• 9/6/1964 Max Taylor cabled from Saigon that "only the emergence of an exceptional leader could improve the situation and no George Washington is in sight."
  
• 9/6/1964 16 Questions on the Assassination By Bertrand Russell The Minority of One, 6 September 1964
  
• 9/7/1964 Bundy statement in State Dept bulletin: "We seek no wider war...it is clear enough that anything in the nature of attacks on North Viet-Nam of a systematic character by the South Vietnamese or ourselves would involve very grave issues and we would, therefore, prefer to pursue the policy we are now pursuing of maximum assistance in South Viet-Nam."
  
• 9/7/1964 Few people know that the day after Russell's interview with Marina Oswald, he visited Dealey Plaza with Boggs and Cooper. He took an unloaded rifle up to the sixth floor and simulated firing at JFK. In light of what Corso had told him, he commented rather wryly that "Oswald must have been an expert shot." Which, of course, he knew he wasn't. (Flagpole Magazine, 11/19/03, "Sen. Richard Russell and the Great American Murder Mystery") Russell also consulted with was Colonel Philip Corso, a retired Army Intelligence officer who had been on the staff of the National Security Council under Eisenhower. Corso did some investigating for the Commissioner and found out some interesting tidbits. He concluded that the Mannlicher-Carcano could not have performed as the official story leads us to believe. He also concluded that there was a Second Oswald. Further, that Oswald had gone to Russia as part of a fake defector program being run out of the Office of Naval Intelligence. After doing all this inquiry he told Russell that his opinion was the assassination was a project of rogue CIA agents and anti-Castro Cubans. Russell tended to agree with him but he said he could never get the other members of the panel to believe him. (On the Trail of the JFK Assassins, Dick Russell)
  
• 9/8/1964 Republican Vice Presidential candidate Rep. William Miller of New York wrote: "We estimate that if the President gets his way, and the current immigration laws are repealed, the number of immigrants next year will increase threefold and in subsequent years will increase even more ... shall we, instead, look at this situation realistically and begin solving our own unemployment problems before we start tackling the world's?" (The New York Times, Sept. 8, 1964, p. 14.)
  
• 9/8/1964 A WC lawyer wrote a memo warning that "eight months' work of the Commission and staff is in serious danger of being nullified because of the present impatience to publish [the Report]...Staff members are becoming increasingly unwilling to discuss change or refinement, which would cause a printing delay." (Inquest)
  
• 9/8/1964 Dr. Howard P. Rome of the Mayo Clinic wrote the WC about Oswald's spelling and grammar; he concluded that LHO "had a specific learning disability…" (H 26 812-7)
  
• 9/8/1964 (Telex from J. Edgar Hoover to RCMP): "URGENT ... appreciate knowing if you have on record any reference to one NORMAN SIMILAS of Toronto Canada being an eye witness within ten feet to the assassination of President Kennedy on Nov. 22/63. Urgent wire reply collect."
  
• 9/9/1964 In a meeting, the top military leaders split over whether to launch air strikes on North Vietnam; Wheeler, Johnson, Westmoreland and Max Taylor were opposed to it. Everyone present (which included LBJ, McCone, McNamara, and Rusk) agreed that Hanoi could not be allowed to win, but no one had any solution to prevent it from happening.
  
• 9/9/1964 LBJ authorized NSAM 314, okaying US retaliation against North Vietnam for any "special" attacks against US units by Hanoi or the VC.
  
• 9/10/1964 DeLoach letter to Bill Moyers, commenting on the success of the "operation in Atlantic City."
  
• 9/10/1964 (Memo to RCMP from FBI Liaison Officer): "The President's Commission has requested that the author of this article (from Liberty Magazine) be contacted and the photograph referred to be obtained, if possible. The Commission has also requested that the name of the presumably Dallas Times reporter referred to in the article be determined in order to ascertain whether such a picture ever existed."
  
• 9/11/1964 The FBI hastily interviews the superintendent of the Book Depository regarding the cartons on the sixth floor and particularly those cartons at the "sniper's perch." The report contains the statement that "there were no cartons on the sixth floor ... which could not have been handled by one man." This interview takes place because someone apparently became concerned that the "cardboard cartons" piled around the sniper's window to ensure seclusion might have been too heavy to be moved by one man. It is determined that the cartons weighed approximately 50 pounds apiece.
  
• 9/11/1964 (Memo to Commanding Officer of the RCMP branch in Toronto from the RCMP Commissioner in Ottawa): "FBI advise article appearing in July issue of Liberty Magazine by Norman Similas (address unknown) suggests Similas took photo which shows two persons at window from which fatal shots fired at late President Kennedy. Article also indicated reporter from Dallas Newspaper present when photo taken. Ascertain (a) whether such photo exists (b) identity of Dallas reporter."
  
• 9/11/1964 Lady Bird Johnson began a tour of the South to meet with various governors (except for George Wallace).
  
• 9/13/1964 A failed coup in Saigon by Catholics in the military who felt that Khanh was too friendly with the Buddhists. The NY Times today reported that Khanh "has accepted in general and in detail an immediate Buddhist formula for reforming his government along new civilian lines."
  
• 9/14-18/1964 CIA provides most of its information to the Warren Commission on these dates. Questions have been posed to the Agency by the Commission months earlier. The report will be officially presented to LBJ in only six days. The CIA is in the process of amassing what will be something on the order of 300,000 pages of info on LHO. (The public will see little of this material until August 1993.)
  
• 9/14/1964 (Memo to RCMP from FBI Liaison Officer): "One Robert H. Jackson, a photographer for the Dallas Times was interviewed in this matter last year and stated that upon hearing the shots, he looked up at the Texas School Book Depository window in time to see the barrel of a rifle being pulled inside the window, but could not see the person holding the rifle. He also recalled seeing two Negro individuals looking out of the windows immediately below the window in which he saw the rifle."
  
• 9/14/1964 The theologian Reinhold Neibuhr receives the Medal of Freedom.
  
• 9/14/1964 UC Berkeley officials announce a new policy prohibiting political action at the campus entrance at Bancroft Way and Telegraph Avenue. (SF Chronicle 6/9/02)
  
• 9/14/1964 The Warren Commission By Maurice Rosenberg The Nation, 14 September 1964, pages 110112
  
• 9/15/1964 The last person to testify before the Warren Commission, John F. Gallagher, gives testimony to Norman Relich.
  
• 9/15/1964 (Internal RCMP memo from Criminal Investigation Branch to Operations Division): "Kindly endeavor to obtain a copy of the August, 1964 issue of Liberty Magazine. The FBI have requested that this matter be treated as urgent."
  
• 9/15/1964 The CIA responded to the WC's February request for information by saying that "an examination of Central Intelligence Agency files has produced no information on Jack Ruby or his activities. The Central Intelligence Agency has no indication that Ruby and Lee Harvey Oswald ever knew each other, were associated, or might have been connected in any manner." (H 26 466).
  
• 9/16/1964 Sen. Richard Russell wrote a 2-page dissent for his files about the single-bullet theory. It was later found in his private papers. Russell disagreed with the Warren Report view that JFK and Connally were hit by the same bullet, and also disagreed with the Report's conclusion of no conspiracy. In Russell's judgment, the insufficiency of the evidence gathered against Oswald "preclude the conclusive determination that Oswald and Oswald alone, without the knowledge, encouragement or assistance of any other person, planned and perpetrated the assassination."
  
• 9/16/1964 FBI interview of Loran Hall, 16 Sep 1964. In this interview, Loran Hall said he had visited Ms. Odio's apartment in late September 1963 with Lawrence Howard and William Seymour. International Anti-Communist Brigade soldier of fortune Loran Hall allegedly tells FBI agents that it was her, William Seymour and Lawrence Howard who visited Silvia Odio in Dallas. The WC uses the FBI conclusions in its report to dismiss her story. Later, both Seymour and Howard contradict Hall. Hall later tells the HSCA he never told FBI of any visit. (Fonzi chronology)
  
• 9/16/1964 Two RCMP officers pay a visit to the home of Norman Similas. They take down the following statement: "The position I finally took (for picture taking) was approximately 250 or 300 yards west of the Texas School Book Depository building. Approximately five minutes later the autocade appeared at the corner of Main and Houston. I took my first picture as the lead motorcycle passed in front of me. At the same time as I took the first picture I heard the first shot fired. I didn't take any more pictures until a bus carrying the Presidential Press Party came into view. I took a bus from Dallas to Chicago as I was unable to make airline reservations. En route I picked up a newspaper in St. Louis and noticed a story which was published on the day of the assassination and which was written by a Dallas reporter. His account of the assassination indicated that he observed two people and the rifle barrel being withdrawn from the window in the building. At Chicago I contacted T.C.A. Reservations where I received a message to call a local Chicago number. I called and a Ray Jefferies answered. It was the Associated Press Office. They sent a car for me and I gave him the rolls of film less one of which I did not know the locale. They developed the film there and advised me that they had coverage of most of the pictures that I had. I arrived in Toronto at about 10 PM on November 23rd. Almost immediately on my arrival at home, I was contacted by a reporter from the Toronto Telegram who advised they received word from the AP in Chicago that I had negatives that they might be interested in. He arrived in my home in five or ten minutes. He then examined the negatives, and while examining them he exclaimed, "there looks like two people at this window." I then went over and looked at the negative and I agreed that there were two objects in the window on the 6th floor southeast corner of the building. This window differed from the others in that it had an alcove above the window as opposed to the others on the 5th and other floors, which were square frame. The two objects appeared to be people and the Telegram reporter thought he saw what appeared to be a rifle barrel between them. I did not make any comment on this upon looking at it as it blended into the shadow of the object to the left. This negative was one of a strip of three and this strip plus another of three was handed over to this reporter. The following Wednesday, my wife telephoned me at work and told me a letter had arrived from the Telegram. This letter apologetically explained that they had lost the negatives. In a matter of a few days I received a cheque for $50.00 from the Telegram. Since that time I have heard nothing further from the Telegram."
  
• 9/16/1964 Disillusioned with Johnson's push for civil rights legislation and his sending troops to Vietnam without a clear goal of victory, Strom Thurmond left the Democratic Party and in a state-wide television speech today, told South Carolina voters that he was backing Goldwater. Explaining his reasons for leaving the party: The Democratic Party has forsaken the people to become the party of minority groups [and] power-hungry union leaders....'
  
• 9/17-18/1964 this night, US destroyers Morton and Edwards were on patrol in the Gulf of Tonkin; they picked up numerous radar contacts of enemy boats and the Morton began firing at them. A Navy review board 9/21-22 concluded that the destroyers had not actually been attacked by North Vietnamese craft.
  
• 9/17/1964 One of the two investigating officers files a report on Norman Similas. This is his statement: "During the course of this interview SIMILAS struck me as being a cocky, brash, individual who was quite anxious to create the impression of the "big-shot". When we began to question him on specifics he lost some of his composure and became extremely nervous and unsure of himself. It was not until Nov. 23rd, 1963 when he and a Toronto Telegram reporter were examining the negatives of photos he took, that the idea that two persons may have been in the window came up. SIMILAS went on to say that it was this reporter who drew it to his attention, and SIMILAS is very careful to point out that the reporter said "two people". I have attempted to verify the loss of the negatives by the Toronto Telegram newspaper as alleged by SIMILAS and inquiries at the Photo Department have failed to produce them. The photographer who took this picture is one Colin Davis however, I have been unable to contact him to date, as he is on assignment and only reports in to the office when he has something for publication. [signed] C.A. Beacock RCMP Sgt."
  
• 9/18/1964 Final WC executive session instigated by Sen. Russell. Russell helped Harold Weisberg track down the transcript to this meeting. He recalls that they had discussed problem areas in the WC's findings during that meeting. He "was shaken" when Weisberg told him that the transcript he received (prepared under the direction of Rankin) made no mention of the discrepancies Russell and other members had pointed out that day. Apparently the only transcript that existed was a fake one prepared by Rankin. Soon after this revelation, Russell "broke his long friendship with Lyndon Johnson and resigned the chairmanship of the Military Affairs Committee so important to him and his district..." (Whitewash IV p20-22; Washington Post 10/11/1968)
  
• 9/18/1964 Conversation between President Johnson and Warren Commissioner Richard Russell. In a taped call of that day, they both said that they did not believe the single bullet theory. Russell said, "I don't believe it" and LBJ replied with "I don't either." They also talked about the Gulf of Tonkin incident, and both express skepticism about what happened.
  

Richard Russell: That danged Warren Commission business, it whupped me down so. We got through today. You know what I did? I... got on the plane and came home. I didn't even have a toothbrush. I didn't bring a shirt.... Didn't even have my pills-antihistamine pills to take care of my em-fy-see-ma.
Lyndon B. Johnson: Why did you get in such a rush?
Richard Russell: I'm just worn out, fighting over that damned report.
Lyndon B. Johnson: Well, you ought to have taken another hour and gone get your clothes.
Richard Russell: No, no. They're trying to prove that the same bullet that hit Kennedy first was the one that hit Connally, went through him and through his hand, his bone, and into his leg... I couldn't hear all the evidence and cross examine all of them. But I did read the record.... I was the only fellow there that ... suggested any change whatever in what the staff got up.' This staff business always scares me. I like to put my own views down. But we got you a pretty good report.
Lyndon B. Johnson: Well, what difference does it make which bullet got Connally?
Richard Russell: Well, it don't make much difference. But they said that... the commission believes that the same bullet that hit Kennedy hit Connally. Well, I don't believe it.
Lyndon B. Johnson: I don't either.
Richard Russell: And so I couldn't sign it. And I said that Governor Connally testified directly to the contrary and I'm not gonna approve of that. So I finally made them say there was a difference in the commission, in that part of them believed that that wasn't so. And of course if a fellow was accurate enough to hit Kennedy right in the neck on one shot and knock his head off in the next one - and he's leaning up against his wife's head - and not even wound her - why, he didn't miss completely with that third shot. But according to their theory, he not only missed the whole automobile, but he missed the street! Well, a man that's a good enough shot to put two bullets right into Kennedy, he didn't miss that whole automobile... But anyhow, that's just a little thing.
Lyndon B. Johnson: What's the net of the whole thing? What's it say? Oswald did it? And he did it for any reason?
Richard Russell: Just that he was a general misanthropic fellow, that he had never been satisfied anywhere he was on earth - in Russia or here. And that he had a desire to get his name in history.... I don't think you'll be displeased with the report. It's too long.... Four volumes.
Lyndon B. Johnson: Unanimous?
Richard Russell: Yes, sir. I tried my best to get in a dissent, but they'd come round and trade me out of it by giving me a little old threat.

• 9/18/1964 CE 2676 memo from Richard Helms to Rankin: "Subject: Lee Harvey Oswald. In response to your request, I forward information regarding Lee Harvey Oswald's stay in Helsinki. According to a reliable source, Oswald stayed at the Torni Hotel in Helsinki from 10 to 11 October 1959 and then moved to the Klaus Kurki Hotel, where he stayed until 15 October, apparently waiting for a visa to be issued him by the Soviet Consulate in Helsinki. He traveled to the USSR by train, crossing at Vainikkala on 15 October." "Subject: Lee Harvey Oswald's Arrival time in Helsinki on 10 October 1959. 1. In response to your memorandum of 25 May 1964, we have established that the only direct flight from London to Helsinki on 10 October 1959 was Finn Air flight 852 which arrived in Helsinki at 2333 (11:33pm.) If Oswald had taken this flight, he could not normally have cleared customs and landing formalities and reached the Torni Hotel downtown by 2400 (midnight) on the same day. This is based on the judgement of officers in this Agency familiar with the Helsinki airport. 2. We are presently attempting to determine if Oswald could have taken a more circuitous flight from London, with a stop at Stockholm, Copenhagen or some other city. Any additional information received will be forwarded to you promptly."
  
• 9/18/1964 Dr. King has an audience with Pope Paul VI at the Vatican.
  
• 9/18/1964 FBI interview of William Seymour, 18 Sep 1964. Seymour disputed Hall's account and called him a liar.
  
• 9/18/1964 In an FBI report dated this day, Special Agent Wallace R. Heitman reveals the identity of "George Perrel" (known to the FBI since before the assassination). Heitman explains that the reason "Perrel" -- aka Fermin de Goicochea Sanchez -- couldn't be interviewed until the month the Warren Report is published is because Agent James Hosty was too busy investigating the JFK assassination.
  
• 9/18/1964 During the fall of this year, JFK Jr. moves from Washington to New York, where he attends a Catholic private school, then the Collegiate boys' school.
  
• 9/19/1964 RCMP Sgt. Beacock interviews the Toronto Telegram reporter regarding Norman Similas: "Further to previous report in this regard I interviewed Mr. Colin Davies, reporter and photographer of the Toronto Telegram. Davies stated that Similas was very excited at the time of this interview. While viewing the negatives Similas was said to have pointed out the window and asked Davies if he didn't think there were two people there. Similas drew his attention to the article written by a Dallas reporter in which two people were mentioned as being in the window. Davies said he felt that it was the power of suggestion and that Similas wanted to see two people in the negative so badly that he actually believed that he did. It was Davies opinion that the negatives were worthless from a news standpoint, but due to Similas' state of excitement he didn't have the heart to disappoint him. Davies decided to take the negatives and let the Photo Editor decide what should be done. During the next day or so, the negatives somehow became lost and the Telegram, feeling responsible, sent Similas a cheque to pay for them. I questioned Davies as to his impression of Similas and his story and he replied that he had no doubt that Similas has witnessed the assassination, but "he was sure going to get a lot of mileage out of the story." There appears to be a complete reversal of the roles played by SIMILAS and DAVIES depending on whose story you hear.
  
• 9/19/1964 Memo from acting CIA Deputy Director for Plans Thomas Karamessines to Rankin. "Information Concerning Jack Ruby and His Associates. Reference is made to your memorandum of 19 May 1964, requesting that this Agency furnish any information in its files relative to Jack Ruby, his activities and his associates...An examination of Central Intelligence Agency files has produced no information on Jack Ruby and his activities...no indication that Ruby or Lee Harvey Oswald ever knew each other, were associated, or might have been connected in any manner."
  
• 9/20/1964 FBI interview of Lawrence Howard, 20 Sep 1964. Howard similarly disputed meeting Sylvia Odio, but he did tell the FBI of a trip to Dallas in September to obtain "supplies" and funds.
  
• 9/20/1964 FBI interview of Loran Hall, 20 Sep 1964. On September 20 Hall retracted his original account.
  
• 9/21/1964 The body of Jim Koethe, a young Dallas reporter, is found swathed in a blanket on the floor of his bachelor apartment. Police say the cause of death is asphyxiation from a broken bone at the base of the neck --- apparently the result of a karate chop. Robbery appears to be the motive, although Koethe's parents believe he has been killed for other reasons. Whoever ransacked his apartment, they point out, was careful to remove his notes for a book he was preparing, in collaboration with two other journalists, on the Kennedy assassination. Within a week a 22-year-old ex-con from Alabama named Larry Earl Reno will be picked up selling Koethe's personal effects and held on suspicion of murder. Reno's lawyers will be Mike Barclay and Jim Martin, both friends of Jack Ruby's room mate George Senator. Martin and Senator were with Koethe at a meeting on the evening of November 24, 1963 in Ruby's apartment. When the Reno case comes before the grand jury, District Attorney Henry Wade secretly instructs the jurors not to indict---an extraordinary move for a chief prosecuting officer with as strong a case as he has. The grand jury returns a no-bill. Reno, however, remains in jail on a previous charge. When they finally spring him, in January 1965, he is rearrested within a month for the robbery of a hotel. This time the prosecution, led by a one-time law partner of Martin's has no qualms about getting an indictment, and a conviction. Reno is sentenced to life for the hotel robbery. At the trial, his lawyers call no witnesses in his defense.
  
• 9/21/1964 RCMP Statement by Kenneth G. Armstrong, editor of Liberty Magazine regarding Norman Similas: "On our first meeting (with Similas) we discussed his visit to Dallas and the events leading up to the assassination. There were two subsequent meetings at which I got the remainder of the information that I wanted for my story. Similas offered to supply me with pictures which were taken prior to and during the assassination. These were to be used to illustrate the story. It was my understanding that one of these pictures was the one in which two persons and the gun barrel could be seen, and these were to be forthcoming when developed. I phoned Similas a day or so later and he said they had been mailed to me from a Post Office on Yonge St. After a week had gone by Albert Plock, Art Director of Liberty, and I went through the entire amount of mail received during the previous week but we found nothing. I mention this because it was so important to the story to have that picture which contained the two faces at the window. We still held out hope that they might arrive in time for the second installment, however, they never did arrive."
  
• 9/22/1964 Conclusion of report submitted by RCMP Stg. C.A. Beacock regarding Norman Similas: "The foregoing statement indicates that SIMILAS knowingly deceived ARMSTRONG into buying the story by promising him pictures which he knew to be nonexistent. The paragraph of the July issue which states "a picture I took showed two figures beside a gun barrel" was actually the main point of interest of this story. From all the inquiries here I doubt that such a picture ever existed and it is a certainty that is does not now exist. It was pointed out to me that had SIMILAS taken the picture showing the assassin or assassins, it would have been an exclusive and every medium in the world would be after it. SIMILAS told ARMSTRONG that he mailed this photograph along with others to the Liberty Magazine fully three months after he had been paid for the pictures lost by the Toronto Telegram and which supposedly contained this picture. SIMILAS' story to me, and to both Davis and Armstrong contains too many inconsistencies and outright lies to be taken seriously. I feel he was an opportunist who saw a chance to cash in on the fact that he had witnessed the assassination and in order to do so he had to make the story as convincing as possible. It is unfortunate that by a coincidence the negatives which would prove the lie have been lost." The RCMP sent their report down to the FBI and closed the books on Norman Similas.
  
• 9/22/1964 A CIA bulletin stated that around the world there was a widespread suspicion that Kennedy had been killed as a result of a political plot. "Covert assets should explain the tragedy wherever it is genuinely misunderstood and counter all efforts to misconstrue it intentionally…communists and other extremists always attempt to prove a political conspiracy behind violence." (Kelin; ARRB)
  
• 9/23/1964 Letter from Hoover and Rankin: "On September 22, 1964, during a discussion by you with J.R. Malley, the matter of information relating to the assassination of President Kennedy continuing to be referred to the FBI and subsequent investigations made as a result of these referrals was discussed in some detail. Particular reference was made to the necessity of this Bureau, as the investigating agency, being able to refer results of its investigation to some authority designated for such purpose after the termination of the President's Commission. It is quite possible that information relating to the assassination of President Kennedy will continue to be received for an indefinite period of time and the FBI will continue to fulfill its responsibilities in checking out to the fullest all information which is received. It would be appreciated if you would advise the name of the appropriate authority to receive such investigation conducted by this Bureau following termination of the President's Commission." (Post Mortem p315)
  
• 9/23/1964 Assassin or Fall Guy? - Book Reviews Victor Perlo, American Journalist New Times, No. 38, 23 September 1964, pp. 30-31.
  
• 9/24/1964 The Warren Commission's report is submitted to LBJ by Chief Justice Earl Warren. Of the $1.2 million allocated to the investigation, $608,000 went to the cost of printing the report and the 1500 copies of its 26 volumes.
  
• 9/24/1964 Spanish freighter Sierra Aranzazu carrying a shipment of toys for Cuba is attacked seventy-five miles off Cuba. Captain and two crewmen killed in the attack.
  
• 9/24 or 9/29/1964 "Mr Hoover, after reading a Washington Post article captioned 'Praise is Voiced for Staff Engaged in Warren Report,' directed that the Bureau's files on the eighty-four staff members listed in the article 'be checked.'" The "derogatory information" was then given to him 10/2/1964. (Church Report)
  
• 9/24/1964 Gus Russo: "Although Moynihan declined to divulge any information [about the Kennedy family's investigation of the Secret Services], other sources, albeit second-hand ones, have disclosed that Bobby Kennedy's next foray into the mystery of his brother's death came after the release of the Warren Commission Report. At that time, Kennedy said, "I just can't believe that guy [Oswald] acted alone. I'm going to contact someone independent of this government to get to the bottom of this." Bobby then contacted a lifelong friend of the Kennedy family, then working in Britain's intelligence agency, known as MI6. The friendship dated back to the days when Papa Joe Kennedy was the US Ambassador to England. Undertaking this highly secretive mission, the MI6 agent contacted two French intelligence operatives who proceeded to conduct, over a three year period, a quiet investigation that involved hundreds of interviews in the United States. One agent was the head of the French Secret Service, Andre Ducret. The second was known only as "Philippe" -- believed to be Philippe Vosjoly, who was a former French Intelligence Chief in the United States. Over the years, Ducret and Philippe hired men to infiltrate the Texas oil industry, the CIA, and Cuban mercenary groups in Florida. Their report, replete with innuendo about Lyndon Johnson and right-wing Texas oil barons, was delivered to Bobby Kennedy only months before his own assassination in June of 1968. There is no information concerning Bobby's reaction to the document. After Bobby's death, the MI6 agent contacted the last surviving brother, Senator Ted Kennedy, inquiring as to what to do with the material. Teddy said the family wasn't interested. The agent proceeded to hire a French writer by the name of Herve LaMarre to fashion the material into a book. Published in Europe and authored under the pseudonym of "James Hepburn," the book was entitled Farewell, America. It contains highly exaggerated prose combined with a large dose of poetic license. Because the anecdotes about LBJ and others could be considered downright libelous, the book was never published in America. Over the years, however, through private dealers, the book obtained an "underground" distributorship in the United States. One of the dealers approached Dave Powers, Kennedy intimate and curator of the John F. Kennedy Museum, for his opinion of the book. Echoing Moynihan, Powers responded, "I can't confirm or deny the European connection, but Bobby definitely didn't believe the Warren Report." (Al Navis, interview by author, 19 November 1993. In the 1980's, Navis conducted inquiries about RFK's investigation with members of the Kennedy family inner-circle.)
  
• 9/25/1964 Adm. Sharp cabled Wheeler that "the political situation in RVN is now so unstable as to raise some serious questions about our future courses of action...Conceivably the decision could be one of disengagement."
  
• 9/25/1964 FBI agent Harry Whidbee reported on the interviews of the previous week, including the retractions. Note that this report is dated one day after the delivery of the Warren Report to President Johnson.
  
• 9/25/1964 September 25, 1964 THE STATE OF TEXAS vs. JACK RUBENSTEIN -- Defense counsel files second motion for extension of time to file statement of facts. Judge Brown grants thirty-day extension.
  
• 9/25/1964 LBJ, dedicating a dam in Oklahoma, said, "There are those that say you ought to go north and drop bombs, to try to wipe out the supply lines...We don't want our American boys to do the fighting for Asian boys...and get tied down in a land war in Asia."
  
• 9/26/1964 FBI report of 26 Sep 1964. This report recorded more details from the follow-up interviews with Howard, Seymour, and an associate named Celio Sergio Castro Alba.
  
• 9/27/1964 This evening, CBS aired a two-hour news special titled, "November 22 and the Warren Report," hosted by Walter Cronkite, Dan Rather and Eddie Barker; it was produced by Les Midgely. George O'Toole later commented: "while not openly challenging the Warren Report, [it] seemed to carry strong undercurrents of doubt about the official conclusions." John Connally was interviewed, and he insisted he wasn't hit by the same bullet as Kennedy. Interviews (done by Eddie Barker) were conducted with numerous witnesses. Marguerite insisted her son worked for US intelligence. Ruth Paine repeated almost verbatin the story she told in her first televised interview. Jesse Curry said that LHO was not in the Dallas police "subversive files." Wesley Frazier recalled that Oswald said he wouldn't need a ride home on Friday night. Malcolm Price and Garland Slack were interviewed, but then it was explained that the Warren Commission discounted their stories. CBS had originally agreed to give Mark Lane and de Antonio access to their 9/1964 documentary outtakes; the company's film librarian had given them this assurance. They viewed enormous amounts of outtake footage and had wanted to purchase large quantities of it for use in their film, but higher-ups at CBS soon vetoed this idea. They were told that this footage would not be sold, and would soon be destroyed. CBS had had very good relations with the WC during its existence; Inquest reported (p136) that the WC had originally decided not to mention Howard Brennan in the Report because of the inconsistencies in his testimony. CBS' planned documentary therefore would exclude Brennan. But when the WC decided to include him as an important witness, CBS also included him in their program, interviewing him at the last moment. The outtake footage that Lane and de Antonio saw included interviews with witnesses making statements contrary to the official story. When a witness was finally prompted to say that he thought the shots came from the Depository, only that bit of footage was used. (Citizen's Dissent 75-78)
  
• 9/28/1964 The Warren Report is made public. It is a 469-page document, supplemented by eighteen appendices. Although more than thirty persons had a hand in writing it, the work was mainly written by Norman Redlich and Alfred Goldberg. William L. O'Neill, Professor of History at Rutgers University, wrote in his history of the Sixties, Coming Apart (1971): "Solitary maniacs who assassinate Presidents are a national tradition. The idea of a conspiracy, so logical to European minds, was alien to Americans. Then too, if even one more suspect was uncovered the whole ghastly matter would have to be reopened with unpredictable consequences. No one wanted that. It was much better all around to accept the Warren Report...For all its bulk, the report was a sloppy piece of work, carelessly researched and based on a priori judgements...Evidence that cast doubt on the single-killer hypothesis was ignored, so was material pointing to other possibilities...There was no proof that Oswald was such a marksman, considerable evidence that he was a poor shot, yet the Commission insisted that he was expert and the shot itself an easy one...There was much reason to doubt [the single-bullet theory], little to believe it, yet the Commission clung to it desperately." Hugh Brogan, British historian and author, wrote in his 1985 book, The Penguin History of the United States of America: "An official investigating commission, headed by Chief Justice Warren, found that the President had been shot by a solitary psychotic, like Lincoln and McKinley before him; but it tortured the evidence to arrive at this conclusion. It seems more likely that the assassination was the work of a small-time, semi-criminal, semi-political conspiracy, but the truth has never been satisfactorily established. Whatever it may be, the event was a reminder of all the ugly, chaotic forces in American life..." (p654).
  
• 9/28/1964 A special request, on behalf of LBJ, is made to the Archivist of the United States that the seventy-five year ban on the Warren Commission files be waived wherever possible and that much of the material be opened to the public. Following approved guidelines, all the agencies involved in the investigation are to review their files and declassify everything except pages containing the names of confidential informers, information damaging to innocent parties, and information about the agencies' operating procedures. There is to be a periodic review by all the agencies concerned. This request, made on behalf of LBJ and the approved guidelines are made by McGeorge Bundy.
  
• 9/28/1964 In a telephone conversation with Mike Mansfield, LBJ says: "I wouldn't have this repeated to anybody - my judgment is that they're [the Secret Service] more likely to get me killed than they are to protect me ... They're just not heavy thinkers. They're just like the average cop and they don't plan. Hoover's the one that's put me in an [armored limousine] ... [and] he doesn't object to my shakin' hands with high school kids or people along a fence at Billings, Montana."
  
• 9/28/1964 Robert Kennedy issued at his campaign headquarters in New York a formal statement that said: "As I said in Poland last summer, I am convinced that Oswald was solely responsible for what happened and that he did not have any outside help or assistance. He was a malcontent who could not get along here or in the Soviet Union. I have not read his (sic) report nor do I plan to. But I have been briefed on it and I am completely satisfied that the Commission investigated every lead and examined every piece of evidence. The Commission's enquiry was thorough and conscientious."
  
• 9/28/1964 The day the Warren Report was published, The New York Herald Tribune carried an article by its star reporter Jimmy Breslin entitled "A Brother Who Won't Read the Report..." based on an interview Mr. Breslin had obtained from Robert Kennedy the night before while driving with him in a car through Manhattan. Here are a few significant excerpts from this article which throws a disturbing light both on the Report and on the workings of Bobby's mind:
  

"The Warren Report comes out tomorrow," he was told.
"Yes, I know," he said.
"Is this going to put the thing right back into your mind all over again?"
No," he said slowly. "I don't need the reminder. There are a lot of other things to remind me. I don't need the report."
"Have you read it?"
"No. I know what is in it. I'm not going to read the report."
"Not at all? I thought it is history and you have a sense of history …"
"He said no again, (Breslin continues) and when he said it his head began to shake quickly from side to side and his eyes were looking out somewhere into the streetlights on 86th Street. For blocks, Bobby Kennedy sat in silence with his head shaking quickly and there was something about the day he had his lips, despair or trying to forget or trying to say something that would change everything."

• 9/28/1964 In a speech in Manchester, New Hampshire, LBJ criticized Republicans for urging that the war in Vietnam be brought to the North.
  
• 9/28/1964 CIA reported that the regime in Saigon was likely to continue to disintegrate.
  
• 9/28/1964 Thomas Buchanan, Detective By Leo Sauvage The New Leader, 28 September 1964, pages 1015
  
• 9/28/1964 Radio Havana criticized the WR and argued that if Oswald had been a genuine Marxist, he wouldn't have engaged in assassination. "But it's already clear that it is a document that tries to cover up, tries to sweep the mess under the rug, and fails to get at the facts."
  
• 9/28/1964 The NY Times reported on its front page that "the Commission analyzed every issue in exhaustive, almost archaeological detail." The editorial page commented, "the facts - exhaustively gathered, independently checked and cogently set forth - destroy the basis for conspiracy theories that have grown weedlike in this country and abroad." The New York Times had favorable coverage of the WR by Anthony Lewis and James Reston. The Times printed the entire Report in a 48-page supplement on this day. C.L. Sulzberger expressed relief at the report's conclusions. "It was essential in these restless days," he wrote, "to remove unfounded suspicions that could excite latent jingo spirit. And it was necessary to reassure our allies that ours is a stable reliable democracy." In addition the Times collaborated with the Book of the Month Club on a hard-bound edition and with Bantam Books on a soft-bound edition of the report (with a laudatory introduction by Harrison Salisbury in the latter). By the end of the first week Bantam had printed 1,100,000 copies. Ironically the Times would later imply that the critics of the report were guilty of exploitation because of the "minor, if lucrative industry" that arose from their challenges to the official version of the assassination. In the Washington Post it was praised by Robert Donovan, Roscoe Drummond and Marquis Childs; an editorial said the WR "deserves acceptance as the whole truth, and nothing but the truth."
  
• 9/29/1964 Mrs. Joseph P. Kennedy, the President's mother, declared at a news conference in Montreal, Canada, on Sept. 29, 1964, that she had no intention of reading the Warren Report. The UPI dispatch reporting this gave no indication, however, as to whether she, too, believed Oswald to have been the killer.
  
• 9/29/1964 Mr Hoover, after reading a Washington Post article captioned 'Praise is Voiced for Staff Engaged in Warren Report,' directed that the Bureau's files on the eighty-four staff members listed in the article 'be checked.' (Church Committee Report)
  
• 9/29/1964 NY Times' Arthur Krock wrote that the WR was the "definitive history of the tragedy."
  
• 9/29/1964 Hoover ordered Agent Hosty transferred to the Kansas City office.
  
• 9/29/1964 20 Questions for the Warren Report Curtis Crawford radio Lecture, WBAI-FM, 29 September 1964
  
• 9/30/1964 New York Journal-American (a Hearst paper) editorialized, "The Warren Commission Report is a magnificent masterpiece of soundly reasoned judgement. It is clear, judicial, calm and meticulous in its determinations. All persons capable of restrained consideration of the facts, and of discarding conjecture based on spectacular rumor, will accept the conclusion inevitably reached by the seven eminent Americans who with superb achievement realize their purpose: TRUTH."
  

[Tracy Riddle]

• 10/1964 George and Patricia Nash documented Commission negligence in the October 1964 New Leader by locating without difficulty three witnesses to the slaying of Patrolman Tippit who had not been called by the Warren Commission, but whose accounts differed radically from the Commission's.
  
• 10/1/1964 US Army Fifth Special Forces Group arrives in Vietnam.
  
• 10/1-2/1964 A 32-hour sit-in by students at Berkeley in protest over the banning of political activities on campus. Former graduate student Jack Weinberg is arrested for conducting political activity on campus, but students surround the police car and prevent the officers from leaving. Mario Savio, a junior, addresses the crowd from the car. (SF Chronicle 6/9/02)
  
• 10/2/1964 CD 1553 FBI report on 9/18/1964 interview with William Seymour in which he denied ever having any contact with Sylvia Odio. This report was not included in the WC's Exhibits, and was discovered at the National Archives by Paul Hoch.
  
• 10/2/1964 Kerr meets with students, including Savio, and reaches an agreement that includes dropping charges against Weinberg. Over the next two days, student leaders create the Free Speech Movement. (SF Chronicle 6/9/02)
  
• 10/2/1964 Life magazine featured an article about the Warren Report written by WC member Gerald Ford; this issue showed 8 frames of the Zapruder film and it went through two revisions after going to press. The first edition showed frame 323 and the caption describing JFK's head "snapping to the side." The second edition substituted frame 313 for 323, with a caption describing how the shot "caused the front part of his skull to explode forward."
  
• 10/2/1964 Time featured a lengthy story praising the Warren Report.
  
• 10/2/1964 J. Edgar Hoover, stung by the Warren Commission's condemnation of the FBI in its report, probably has Cartha DeLoach leak a copy of the FBI director's May 1964 testimony before the Commission to Jerry O'Leary of the Washington Star. O'Leary writes a copyrighted front-page story that attempts to absolve the bureau and contradict the Commission's criticism.
  
• 10/3/1964 57 people escape from East Berlin via a 470 foot tunnel they had dug under the Berlin Wall.
  
• 10/3/1964 USS Enterprise (CVAN 65), along with USS Long Beach and USS Bainbridge, complete Operation Sea Orbit. The task force was the world's first composed of solely nuclear-powered ships. The ships circumnavigated the globe in 65 days without taking on either fuel or provisions.
  
• 10/4/64 Washington State Department angry at J. Edgar Hoover's contention that it had concluded Oswald was "a thoroughly safe risk." State Department officials said they could find no reports or documents to support that statement by the FBI chief. "A widespread view in official Washington yesterday was that Hoover authorized advance disclosure of his testimony before the Warren Commission to try to offset [Warren Report] criticism of the FBI." San Francisco Chronicle, Unattributed
  
• 10/5/1964 George Ball sent a lengthy memo to McNamara, Rusk and Bundy arguing that the US should find some political means to begin disengaging from Vietnam; he forcefully argued against escalation: "Once on the tiger's back we cannot be sure of picking the place to dismount." They met with Ball about the memo 10/7, but his proposals were ignored after that.
  
• 10/5/1964 The Left and the Warren Commission Report I. F. Stone I. F. Stone's Weekly Vol. XII, NO. 33, October 5, 1964
  
• 10/5/1964 Texas Atty General Waggoner Carr presented to Governor Connally the "Texas Supplemental on The Assassination of President John F. Kennedy and the Serious Wounding of Governor John B. Connally November 22, 1963." It claims to be a "supplement to the Warren Report" but actually appears to be an attempt to counter the negative allegations directed towards the Dallas Police.
  
• 10/5/1964 FBI agent Hosty was suspended without pay for 30 days. His badge and gun were confiscated. Hoover had wanted to fire him, but all twelve assistant directors talked him into only a suspension. (Assignment Oswald p163)
  
• 10/5/1964 Newsweek had a lengthy article praising the Warren Report.
  
• 10/7/1964 The film Fail-Safe is theatrically released after a 9/15 premiere at the NY Film Festival; this somber account of a President trying to prevent a nuclear war triggered by a technical malfunction is quite effective. Directed by Sidney Lumet, starring Henry Fonda, Dan O'Herlihy, Walter Matthau. The scene where the US President and Soviet Premier are on the phone desperately trying to avoid nuclear war, while their militaries are increasingly out of their control, is reminiscent of the Cuban Missile Crisis.
  
• 10/7/1964 Interview of Constine Alfred Droby, President of the Criminal Bar Association of Dallas, by Jean Campbell for the London Evening Standard, Oct. 7, 1964; Droby was Ruby's first lawyer...... Droby told me that as Ruby's attorney he had rushed around Ruby's apartment soon after the shooting with Jim Koethe, a Dallas news reporter. "The place was in chaos. I think we were the first people to see it." "You remember anything especially?" I said.. "No, just chaos and newspapers," Droby answered. "I wonder if Jim Koethe saw anything?" I asked. Mr. Droby folded his hands and leaned forward: "Koethe's murdered," he said. "He was choked to death the Monday before."
  
• 10/7/1964 Walter W. Jenkins, chief White House aide and longtime friend of LBJ, was arrested on a morals charge in a YMCA bathroom two blocks from the White House. He had been arrested in the same bathroom for the same charge in 1/1959, but the arrest had not been publicized. Jenkins was discovered in a YMCA pay toilet with another man. Ultimately, Jenkins is forced to resign, so as not to jeopardize Johnson's re-election campaign. Jenkins stated that during his arrest, his mind had been "befuddled by fatigue, alcohol, physical illness, and lack of food."
  
• 10/8/1964 C. D. DeLoach memo about Jesse Curry's allegations that the FBI knew about Oswald before the assassination.
  
• 10/9/1964 The Rolling Stones announce the cancellation of a planned South African tour due to an anti-apartheid embargo by the British Musicians' Union.
  
• 10/9/1964 Mark Lane engaged in a stage debate with Melvin Belli in San Francisco; the moderator, Jake Ehrlich, who described himself as a friend of Earl Warren, pointedly asked Lane, "How do you explain the chicken bones and Oswald's prints on the bag they were in?" The audience groaned. Belli argued, "If we cannot trust the FBI, the CIA and Earl Warren, then God pity us!" and accused Lane of "hurting our national image." None of the three major area papers carried any news about the debate; only a leftist paper, the People's World (10/17/1964), covered it.
  
• 10/10/1964 Warren Report: Case for the Prosecution Murray Kempton The New Republic, 10 October 1964
  
• 10/10/1964 One of the most interesting aspects of the Report has been the unexpected emergence of FBI director J. Edgar Hoover in the guise of a civil libertarian. ... Hoover declared that he was opposed to tightening Presidential security to any large degree because "I don't think you can get absolute security without almost establishing a police state - and we don't want that." National Guardian
  
• 10/12/1964 Mary Pinchot Meyer was shot to death in Georgetown; she was a Georgetown artist and sister-in-law of Ben Bradlee, and reportedly a mistress of JFK's up until his death. The Washington Post reported 2/23/1976 that shortly after her death her personal diary was stolen from her home by James Jesus Angleton, a friend of the Meyer family. The Post claims Angleton then took the diary to CIA headquarters in Virginia and destroyed it. Angleton refused any comment. (Washington Post, Newsweek). Her murder was never solved. Mary Pinchot is the niece of that early conservationist hero Gifford Pinchot. She married CIA officer, and Allen Dulles protégé, Cord Meyer. Mary's sister is named Tony and is married to Ben Bradlee. Mary and Cord divorced in 1956 and he later goes on to become a CIA-associated reporter for various papers including the Chicago Tribune. In the fall of 1964, while walking along the tow path of the C & O Canal in Georgetown, Mary Pinchot Meyer is murdered by being shot through the face. A suspiciously acting black man is apprehended nearby and is identified by a witness as being the nearest person to Meyer before she was killed. At the trial, the man was acquitted through the efforts of a very good defense attorney, mainly due to the circumstantial nature of the case. Many years after Mary's death, the National Enquirer will reveal that she had been a girlfriend of Kennedy. Ben Bradlee is the editor of the Washington Post in 1976 when the Enquirer breaks the story. The Post gives it its imprimatur by filling out certain elements of the story and giving it respectable, mainstream play. The night of the Meyer murder, at his home, Bradlee gets a call from Anne Truitt, Mary's artist friend and then the wife of Jim Truitt, Newsweek's Tokyo correspondent. Mary has told Anne to retrieve her diary in case anything happens to her. The next morning, Ben and Tony go to Mary's house. Once inside they discover James Angleton there (Bradlee provides no explanation as to why he was there). No diary is found. But later in the day the Bradlees decide to go to Mary's art studio which is down the alley in their garage. They again discover Angleton there in the process of picking the lock. Embarrassed, the super spook walks off. The Bradlees make a pass through the studio and don't find the diary. But an hour later, Tony secures it. In Bradlee's telling, there is only a diary. Bradlee writes that, although Kennedy's name is not in it, it is clear that he is the person having an affair with her. Bradlee decides not to make the diary public and a day or so later, gives it to Angleton because he feels he will be able to ensure that it will be permanently destroyed. Years later, when Tony Bradlee asks Angleton how he had destroyed the diary, Angleton admits he hadn't. She demands it back. He gives it to her and she burns it with a friend (not named) as a witness.
  
• 10/12/1964 At the Mormon Tabernacle in Salt Lake City, Barry Goldwater said, "Why do we see wave after wave of crime in our streets and in our homes? Why do we see riot and disorder in our cities; a breakdown of the morals of our young people; an alarming rise in juvenile delinquency; an increasing flood of obscene literature; corruption around our highest offices, erosion of the honor and dignity of our nation and of the individuals who compose it? Something basic, something dangerous is eating away at the morality, the dignity, and respect of our citizens…is this the time in our nation's history for our federal government to ban almighty God from our schoolrooms?"
  
• 10/12/1964 The Triumph of Caliban - Karl E. Meyer The New Leader, 12 October 1964, pages 46: " No doubt the central conclusion of the long-awaited Warren Commission Reportthat Lee Harvey Oswald, acting alone, killed President Kennedywill continue to be challenged. But the Commission's Report is so solidly wrought, so overwhelmingly backed by fact, so persuasive in its parts and so coherent as a whole, that it will be vastly more difficult to confute than earlier, garbled accounts of the Dallas infamy. In my view, the Report's services are three: (1) It meets head-on various conspiracy theories; (2) it offers a critique of police, national and local; (3) it provides a troubling moral commentary for a country still struggling to come to terms with what happened last November 22. When President Kennedy died, efforts were quickly made to pin the blame on conspiracies of the extreme Right or Left. In the circumstances, considering Oswald's Marxist views and record as a defector in the Soviet Union, it was perhaps surprisingand surely encouragingthat there was no orgy of McCarthyism. Most Americans saw that neither Moscow nor Havana had anything to gain from Kennedy's death and were prepared to believe that Oswald had no foreign encouragement. But the extreme Right spread reports that Oswald had secretly visited Cuba, that he had been recruited into Soviet espionage, and that Castro, in a drunken moment, had referred in a speech to a clandestine trip of Oswald to Havana. The Warren Commission, whose members include such impeccable conservatives as Senator Russell of Georgia, has now definitively set to rest all such lurid rumors. Every charge is answered in painstaking detail; every aspect of Oswald's stay in the Soviet Union and of his trip to Mexico City shortly before the assassination is explored. Nothing has come to light to support charges of a Leftist plot, though the Report makes quite clear that in his own muddled way Oswald was a Leftist."
  
• 10/12/1964 The Other Witnesses By George and Patricia Nash The New Leader, 12 October 1964, pages 69
  
• 10/12/1964 Russian spacecraft Vokshod I contained pilot Vladimir Komarov, a doctor and a scientist for 15 orbits.
  
• 10/13/1964 Paid advertisement by International Latex Corp. pointing out J. Edgar Hoover's testimony before Warren Commission [See 10/10/64] to effect that security can't be tightened too much without infringing on personal liberties. New York Times
  
• 10/14/1964 The news breaks that Walter Jenkins, LBJ's closest aide, has been arrested in a YMCA toilet, two blocks from the White House, having sex with a retired Army soldier. Jenkins admits the offense, resigns and takes refuge in a hospital room, suffering from "exhaustion." A rapid FBI inquiry concludes that Jenkins has never compromised national security. Jenkins has actually been arrested for a similar lapse, in the very same toilet, nearly six years earlier.
  
• 10/14/1964 It is announced that MLK will be awarded the Nobel Peace Prize. Hoover was enraged, and contacted Bill Moyers. Soon Hoover sent out a booklet on King's sexual activities to the secretary of state, secretary of defense, CIA director, Katzenbach, and the heads of all military intelligence agencies; he also made sure US ambassadors in Europe (where King would receive the award), UN ambassador Adlai Stevenson, Nelson Rockefeller, Nixon, and Humphrey were briefed about King's private life. Hoover did everything he could to ruin King's trip to Europe and his return home. (Church report; The Man and the Secrets 571) But Hoover's efforts failed to produce a leak to the press.
  
• 10/14/1964 Khrushchev had been brought back from a vacation on the Black Sea to face the Central Committee plenum, which required his resignation. Realizing inevitable fall, he signed his resignation as First Secretary and head of government accepted by the plenum today. Khrushchev is removed by hardliners in the Kremlin. Today he was relieved of duties by the decree issued by the Presidium of the 6th Supreme Soviet. Former KGB chief Alexander Shelpin and his protegé, Vladamir Semichastny, reportedly instigate the action against Khrushchev. Although the Cuban missile crisis is not a major cause of Khrushchev 's fall--the majority of the formal charges leveled against Krushchev reportedly deal with domestic affairs--his handling of the Cuban crisis may have contributed indirectly to his loss of support among the other high-level Soviet officials. (WP, 9/15/88; Time, 11/14/88)
  
• 10/15/1964 NYT reported, "The telephone awoke the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. yesterday in an Atlanta hospital room, where he had gone for a rest. The caller was his wife, Coretta. She told him that he had just won the Nobel Peace Prize. I was not fully awake' Dr. King said later. For a while I thought it was a dream, and then I realized that it was true…History has thrust me into this position. It would both be immoral and a sign of ingratitude if I did not face my moral responsibility to do what I can in this struggle.'"
  
• 10/16/1964 China exploded its first atomic bomb.
  
• 10/17/1964 Westmoreland wrote a memo to the JCS saying that no amount of US military might could substitute for a stable regime in Saigon.
  
• 10/17/1964 Pravda attacked Khrushchev and his "harebrained scheming...and actions divorced from reality," and announced he was resigning due to his health. Breznhev and Kosygin took over his posts.
  
• 10/18/1964 New York Daily News says J. Edgar Hoover blasts Warren Commission for accusing FBI of failing to notify Secret Service about Oswald. AP
  
• 10/19/1964 DeLoach memo to Hoover; LBJ and Abe Fortas had decided to explain that Jenkins' behavior was caused by "a very serious disease which causes disintegration of the brain." But since the FBI could not get Jenkin's physician to agree to this, the explanation was never made public. (The Man and the Secrets 580)
  
• 10/19/1964 State Dept bulletin issued by Bundy: "Expansion of the war outside South Vietnam, while not a course we want or seek, could be forced upon us by the increased external pressures of the Communists, including a rising scale of infiltration."
  
• 10/19/1964 Debate between Mark Lane and Melvin Belli at the Manhattan Center, NYC. Like the Frisco debate, this one was sold-out. It was moderated by William Kunstler. This time, Belli argued that Oswald "has been tried in the Dallas police station and been found guilty." Lane later wrote, "Belli was ill-prepared and misinformed regarding the facts, and his not inconsiderable oratorical gifts were squandered as he pleaded with the audience to have faith in the nation's Federal police force and political leaders." Again, there was no real coverage of the debate in the papers. Belli cancelled the proposed third debate. "The New York Times refers to itself as a newspaper of record. That which is not found within its many pages ostensibly did not happen. For this reason the Belli encounter in New York is known to some as the debate that never occurred." (Citizen's Dissent 32-36)
  
• 10/19/1964 Barry Goldwater gave a speech on civil rights, written by William Rehnquist, in which he came out against both compulsory segregation and compulsory integration, opting instead for the right of free association.
  
• 10/19/1964 By this date, the Warren Report's lone-assassin conclusion is doubted by 31% of the American population.
  
• 10/21/1964 In a campaign address in Akron, Ohio, LBJ stated, "We are not about to send American boys nine or ten thousand miles away from home to do what Asian boys ought to be doing for themselves." During this month, LBJ had made the decision to bomb North Vietnam (according to White House correspondent Charles Roberts), but kept quiet about it because "the American public…was not prepared psychologically for a deliberate calculated step-up in the war effort." (LBJ's Inner Circle, 1965)
  
• 10/21/1964 Alleged JFK plot witness Rose Cheramie (Melba Marcades) is charged with vagrancy. Her behavior is described as loud and erratic.
  
• 10/21/1964 An article in today's Washington Post is titled "CIA withheld vital intelligence from Warren Commission." It is written by Robert S. Allen and Paul Scott. This concerns a National Intelligence Estimate (NIE) warning that it is Kremlin policy to remove from public office by assassination Western officials who oppose Soviet policy.
  
• 10/22/1964 THE STATE OF TEXAS vs. JACK RUBENSTEIN -- Defense counsel files third motion for extension of time to file statement of facts.
  
• 10/23/1964 FBI director J. Edgar Hoover apparently did notice, however, that there was a de Mohrenschildt-Paine parallel of a classified nature whose public revelation could threaten the credibility of the Warren Commission. Hoover wrote a letter to J. Lee Rankin on October 23, 1 964, urging him not to release certain FBI " reports and memoranda dealing with Michael and Ruth Paine and George and Jeanne de Mohrenschildt." Hoover warned Rankin: " Making the contents of such documents available to the public could cause serious repercussions to the Commission. " (J. Edgar Hoover Letter to J. Lee Rankin, October 23, 1 964. FBI Record Number 124-10147-10006. Agency File Number 105-126128-1sT NR 120.)
  
• 10/24/1964 With the independence of Northern Rhodesia (Zambia), Southern Rhodesia colony becomes simply colony of Rhodesia.
  
• 10/27/1964 DeLoach memo to Hoover reported that LBJ wanted FBI "agents to bear down on [the man arrested with Jenkins] with respect to his knowledge of...Republican National Committee members." Jenkins and Goldwater had flown together in the same Air Force squadron, and LBJ was sure there had to be a link. The FBI interviewed more than 300 people to ensure that Jenkins hadn't compromised the nation's security by his homosexual acts. Finally, the White House calmed down when a poll showed that most Americans couldn't care less about the issue. (The Man and the Secrets 580) But right-wing admirers of Hoover were angry that he had "whitewashed" the Jenkins issue.
  
• 10/27/1964 Ronald Reagan made a nationally televised speech in support of Goldwater, and it established him as a rising star among conservatives: "The Founding Fathers knew a government can't control the economy without controlling people. And they knew when a government sets out to do that, it must use force and coercion to achieve its purpose. So we have come to a time for choosing…They say the world has become too complex for simple answers. They are wrong. There are no easy answers, but there are simple answers. We must have the courage to do what we know is morally right… We are for a provision that destitution should not follow unemployment by reason of old age, and to that end we have accepted Social Security as a step toward meeting the problem. However, we are against those entrusted with this program when they practice deception regarding its fiscal shortcomings, when they charge that any criticism of the program means that we want to end payments…We are for aiding our allies by sharing our material blessings with nations which share our fundamental beliefs, but we are against doling out money government to government, creating bureaucracy, if not socialism, all over the world...We need true tax reform that will at least make a start toward restoring for our children the American Dream that wealth is denied to no one, that each individual has the right to fly as high as his strength and ability will take him...But we cannot have such reform while our tax policy is engineered by people who view the tax as a means of achieving changes in our social structure… Have we the courage and the will to face up to the immorality and discrimination of the progressive tax, and demand a return to traditional proportionate taxation?...Today in our country the tax collector's share is 37 cents of every dollar earned. Freedom has never been so fragile, so close to slipping from our grasp…You and I are told we must choose between a left or right, but I suggest there is no such thing as a left or right. There is only an up or down. Up to man's age-old dream -- the maximum of individual freedom consistent with order -- or down to the ant heap of totalitarianism. Regardless of their sincerity, their humanitarian motives, those who would sacrifice freedom for security have embarked on this downward path… You and I have a rendezvous with destiny. We will preserve for our children this, the last best hope of man on earth, or we will sentence them to take the first step into a thousand years of darkness. If we fail, at least let our children and our children's children say of us we justified our brief moment here. We did all that could be done." Phyllis Schlafly recalled that Reagan's speech "just went through the country like electricity. As soon as it was shown on television, all of these unorganized grassrooters went around raising their last dollar to keep putting it on again."
  
• 10/27/1964 LBJ campaign speech: "There is and will be, as long as I am president, peace for all Americans."
  
• 10/27/1964 The JCS sent a memo to McNamara warning that US military action had to be taken to shore up the Saigon regime.
  
• 10/28/1964 LBJ campaign speech: "The only real issue in this campaign, the only one you ought to be concerned about, is who can best keep the peace."
  
• 10/28/1964 Washington -- J. Edgar Hoover criticized for sending flowers to Walter Jenkins, White House Aide [See AP World in 1964, pp. 182, 185; Hoover, 1/14/66]. Who hospitalized after arrest on morals charge. Critics mostly right-wingers who formerly among Hoover s more ardent admirers. New York Times. Minneapolis - Former Representative Walter Judd alarmed by report J. Edgar Hoover sent flowers to Walter Jenkins after latter hospitalized following arrest on morals charge. [10/7, AP, The World in 1964, p. 182]. Says "the public wonders if these has been some sort of impropriety involving FBI agents. That would be devastating." Called on J. Edgar Hoover to explain the flowers. AP
  
• 10/1964 Iraq: After going underground, police found Saddam Hussein and after a vicious shootout he was arrested and jailed.
  

[Tracy Riddle]

• 11/1964 In this month's Harpers magazine was the famous essay, "The Paranoid Style of American Politics," by historian and public intellectual Richard Hofstadter. Appearing in the wake of President John F. Kennedy's assassination and Arizona Senator Barry Goldwater's Republican presidential nomination, the tract remains emblematic of liberal anxiety toward serious and in many cases unresolved questions regarding the forces behind American governance. "The Paranoid Style" overall helped establish the term "conspiracy theory" as perhaps the most powerful epithet in the American political lexicon. "American politics has often been an arena for angry minds," Hofstadter wrote. "In recent years, we have seen angry minds at work, mainly among extreme right-wingers, who have now demonstrated, in the Goldwater movement, how much political leverage can be got out of the animosities and passions of a small minority. But, behind this, I believe, there is a style of mind that is far from new, and that is not necessarily right-wing. I call it the paranoid style, simply because no other word adequately evokes the sense of heated exaggeration, suspiciousness, and conspiratorial fantasy that I have in mind."
  
• 11/1964 This month's issue of Readers Digest, Nixon wrote an article ("Cuba, Castro and John F. Kennedy") about his involvement with the anti-Castro programs. He discussed his meeting with Castro 4/1960: "After 3 1/2 hours of discussion, I summed up my impressions in this way - he looked like a revolutionary, talked like an idealistic college professor and reacted like a communist...At the conclusion of our conference I wrote a four-page secret memorandum, and sent copies to President Eisenhower, Secretary Herter and Allen Dulles...My conclusion was, 'Castro is either incredible naive about communism or is under communist discipline.'" Nixon says that most of the State Dept did not view Castro as a communist. "By early 1960 President Eisenhower reached the conclusion that Castro was an agent of international communism and a menace to peace in this hemisphere. In a top-secret meeting in his office, at which I was present, he authorized the CIA to organize and train Cuban exiles for the eventual purpose of freeing their homeland from Castro's communist rule." Nixon recalled that he had to appear "soft" on Cuba during the presidential debates with JFK to protect the security of the invasion. "...as had happened in the Eisenhower administration, a sharp difference of opinion about Castro developed among President Kennedy's advisers. One group of activists urged him to go forward with the invasion plan. His liberal advisers...advised that the United States should either try to get along with Castro or find some other method of dealing with him...in the end the soft-liners won their point and, by last-minute compromises, doomed the operation to failure." He met with Allen Dulles during the landing, and Dulles told him "Everything is lost. The Cuban invasion is a total failure."
  
• 11/1/1964 The VC attacked Bien Hoa air base outside Saigon with artillery. After inflicting substantial damage and casualties on US forces (4 dead, 12 wounded), they withdrew undetected. JCS chairman Wheeler told McNamara that if LBJ wouldn't escalate in Vietnam, then withdrawal was the only other possibility. Taylor recommended a retaliatory air strike, but LBJ refused.
  
• 11/2/1964 LBJ sets up a working group under Assistant Secretary of State William Bundy to review the Vietnam War policy alternatives. It included Vice Adm. Lloyd M. Mustin, CIA man Harold Ford, and John T. McNaughton. The Working Group will eventually conclude: "We cannot guarantee to maintain a noncommunist South Vietnam short of committing ourselves to whatever military action would be required to defeat North Vietnam and probably Communist China militarily. Such a commitment would involve high risks of a major conflict in Asia, which could not be confined to air and naval action but would almost inevitably involve a Korean-scale ground action and possibly even the use of nuclear weapons at some point."
  
• 11/2/1964 Lawyer Vincent Salandria writes an extensive criticism of the Warren Report in The Legal Intelligencer.
  
• 11/2/1964 A Measure of the Achievement Herbert L. Packer The Nation, 2 November 1964 (an article defending the WC)
  
• 11/3/1964 LBJ elected over Goldwater by 61% to 38.5% margin. The 89th Congress contained 68 Democrats in the Senate and 295 in the House (with 140 Republicans, a loss of 38 for the GOP). The GOP lost 2 Senate seats, but picked up a net gain of one governor's seat. 91 new Democrats were elected to Congress that year; voter turnout was 62%. LBJ got 43 million votes (486 electoral) to Goldwater's 27 million (52 electoral); Eric Hass (Socialist-Labor) got 45,187 votes; Clifton DeBarry (Socialist Workers) got 32,701; Other 258,794. The two parties spent a total of $37.5 million on the presidential race. Newcomers in Congress included Sens. Harry Byrd Jr., former film star George Murphy. In the Georgia House of Representatives, Julian Bond (a black civil rights leader) won a seat but was blocked from taking office because of his opposition to the Vietnam War. The Supreme Court would rule 12/5/1966 that Bond's rights had been violated.
  
• 11/3/1964 Maxwell Taylor told McNamara that he feared the JCS was moving away from the principle of having the South Vietnamese "fight their own war."
  
• 11/3/1964 A high-level committee headed by William Bundy met, and recommended bombing of North Vietnam.
  
• 11/4/1964 James Reston wrote in the NYT: "Barry Goldwater has not only lost the Republican election yesterday, but the conservative cause as well. He has wrecked his party for a long time to come..."
  
• 11/4/1964 Discussing LBJ's choices following election, asks: "Will the attorney general regain control over the communications of the Federal Bureau of Investigation, or will the FBI retain the independent access it has had to the White House for the last ten months?" New York Times, James Reston
  
• 11/4/1964 Louis Farrakhan, known now as Louis X, makes the following statement in an issue of Muhammad Speaks: "The die is set, and Malcolm [X] shall not escape, especially after such evil, foolish talk about his benefactor, Elijah Muhammad, in trying to rob him of the divine glory which Allah had bestowed upon him. Such a man as Malcolm is worthy of death, and would have met with death if it had not been for Muhammad's confidence in Allah for victory over his enemies."
  
• 11/8/1964 The Meridian (Miss.) Star recommended to citizens that they not talk to FBI agents. But numerous Mississippians did talk, including hundreds of Klansmen.
  
• 11/10/1964 Oakland Tribune's Warren Duffee quoted Nixon in an interview as saying that the GOP had "gone too far right" and should move to the center. "I will discourage - I will not tolerate - any activity on behalf of myself by anyone else for 1968."
  
• 11/10/1964 Bundy's working group wrote a draft report that concluded that full military escalation to save Saigon could be very costly, and would require ground troops.
  
• 11/18/1964 DeLoach memo to Hoover, expressing LBJ's concern that some of RFK's people who worked on his Senate campaign were being re-employed at the Justice Department.
  
• 11/18/1964 J. Edgar Hoover summons a contingent of the Women's National Press Club, and, after rambling through chapter and verse to repudiate the notion that the Bureau has done nothing in the civil rights field, refers to Martin Luther King's complaints in 1962 "In view of King's attitude and his continued criticism of the FBI on this point," Hoover says, "I consider King to be the most notorious liar in the country." Off the record, he stated, "He is one of the lowest characters in the country."(Church report) Later this month, LBJ will personally contact Hoover and order him to patch things up with King. Hoover also charges the Warren Commission with "a classic case of Monday morning quarterbacking" for daring to criticize the FBI.
  
• 11/18/1964 AP, Houston - Aaron Henry, NAACP leader, says FBI agents in south general not in sympathy with civil rights. "I'll go farther than that. J. Edgar Hoover himself is not in tune with civil rights."
  
• 11/19/1964 Major media report J. Edgar Hoover calling Martin Luther King, Jr. "most notorious liar in-the country." Washington Post quoted Hoover saying that he didn't like "wet nursing" those "who go down to reform the South."
  
• 11/19/1964 McNamara announced the further closing of 95 military bases and installations which would save $477 million a year.
  
• 11/20/1964 NY Times quoted King's reponse to Hoover: "I cannot conceive of Mr. Hoover making a statement like this without being under extreme pressure. He has apparently faltered under the awesome burden, complexities and responsibilities of his office."
  
• 11/20/1964 UPI Atlanta - Dr. Martin Luther King said yesterday that J. Edgar Hoover "has apparently faltered under the awesome burden, complexities and responsibilities of his office." See also Chronicle editorial same date, also New York Times version of story, same date. Times editorial, calls for J. Edgar Hoover's retirement. San Francisco Chronicle, UPI
  
• 11/20/1964 THE STATE OF TEXAS vs. JACK RUBENSTEIN -- Defense counsel files fourth motion for extension of time to file statement of facts. Judge Brown grants ten-day extension. Judge Brown also signs statement of facts.
  
• 11/20/1964 In San Marcos, Texas, President Johnson makes a speech at Southwest Texas State Teachers College where he once worked his way to a college degree as a student and part-time janitor. He says: "I have traveled a long way from this college to the office I now occupy. In few times -- yes, in few nations, in man's journey, has it been possible for any man to travel such a road."
  
• 11/20/1964 Hoover lashed out in an internal memo to the Bureau's number three man, Deputy Associate Director Alan Belmont: 'I can't understand why we are unable to get the true facts before the public. We can't even get our accomplishments published. We are never taking the aggressive, but above lies [i.e., King's charges against the Bureau and Hoover] remain unanswered.' Later that same dayand it would be reasonable to surmise it was in response to Hoover's outburstSullivan slipped a piece of untraceable unwatermarked paper into an old, also untraceable, typewriter, and composed and crudely typed a letter to King: "King, look into your heart. You know, you are a complete fraud and a greater liability to all of us Negroes. White people in this country have enough frauds of their own but I am sure they don't have one at this time that is anywhere near your equal. You are no clergyman and you know it. I repeat that you are a colossal fraud and an evil, vicious one at that….King, like all frauds your end is approaching. You could have been our greatest leader….But you are done. Your honorary degrees, your Nobel Prize (what a grim farce) and other awards will not save you. King, I repeat you are done….The American public, the church organizations that have been helpingProtestants, Catholics and Jews will know you for what you arean evil beast. So will others who have backed you. You are done. King, there is only one thing left for you to do. You know what it is. You have just 34 days in which to do (this exact number has been selected for a specific reason, it has definite practical significance). You are done. There is but one way out for you. You better take it before your filthy fraudulent self is bared to the nation." When he had finished typing, Sullivan placed the note in a package containing a reel of tape. Earlier that day, Sullivan had had the FBI labs prepare a composite tape of the most salacious episodes recorded by microphones hidden in King's hotel. The tape contained bawdy conversations between King and his friends, sexual conversations between King and several different female sexual partners, and soundsmattress creaking, groans and criesassociated with sexual intercourse. The next morning Sullivan handed the package to an agent, told him to fly to Miami, and mail the package to King at his Atlanta SCLC office. The package was opened, as it happened, by King's wife Coretta. She often received recordings of King's speeches, and assumed that this was another. She listened to part of it, quickly recognizing that this was something different, and then she read the threatening note. She called King. Then she, King, Ralph Abernathy, Andrew Young and Joseph Lowery listened to it all. They immediately realized that the source had to be the FBI. Some of King's friends thought the purpose had been to blackmail King into declining the Nobel Prize. Others thought the tapes were intended to goad Coretta into divorcing King. A third theory, and the most plausible, was that Sullivan was trying to put the thought of suicide in King's mind. 'They are out to break me,' King said. 'They are out to get me, harass me, break my spirit.' He was right. The FBI was trying to destroy him, cruelly using 'the content of his character' against him. And even after King's death, the Bureau continued its assault on his name and memory. Whenever there were calls to honor the fallen civil rights leader, Hoover was sure to counter with an unsolicited missive alluding to King's character flaws and his associations with Communists.
  
• 11/21/1964 Four Days in November debuted today in American theaters. A two-hour, high-quality documentary produced and directed by Mel Stuart for David Wolper productions. Narrated by Richard Basehart, score by Elmer Bernstein, made up mostly of newsreel footage, with some recreations in Dallas to simulate Oswald's movements (the same manner as the film Rise and Fall of the Third Reich). Sylvia Meagher saw the film several times; "On viewing the picture for the first time in 1965, I was impressed by the quality, volume and variety of the sound track: it seemed exactly as if one were hearing the event in person, standing right there or riding in the motorcade. And when the Presidential car turned on to Elm Street in the newsreel, I expected, with rising excitement, to hear the actual 'crack!' of the first shot. Instead, both the film and the sound stopped abruptly, and a still photograph showing the President after he was shot in the head [the Moorman photo] was projected onto the screen...if the original unedited sound track recorded [other sounds]...why couldn't it resolve the problem of how many shots were fired, and of the interval between the shots?" (Accessories After the Fact p24-5) There is no mention of anyone hearing shots from the grassy knoll, and no footage is shown of people running in that direction; Four Days sticks closely to the official story. Film footage of the rifle being discovered is a highlight. (The film had a New York premiere on October 7, 1964, a month-and-a-half prior to its general USA release date.) "Four Days" received a significant amount of attention and was, in fact, nominated for an Academy Award (for "Best Documentary Feature" of 1964). Via several re-creations of the actual Dallas events (using some of the people who were directly involved, such as Buell Wesley Frazier, Linnie Mae Randle, Johnny Brewer, and William Whaley) Assassination footage shown: Orville Nix's films of the motorcade entering Dealey Plaza, the fatal head shot followed by Secret Service Agent Clint Hill climbing on top of the limousine and the post-shooting confusion at the Plaza; Mary Moorman's photo taken just a fraction of a second after the fatal shot. The Zapruder film is not shown.
  
• 11/21/1964 An FBI-drafted, anonymous letter was sent to MLK at the SCLC office in Atlanta, where his wife frequently opened the mail addressed to him: "King, look into your heart. You know you are a complete fraud and a great liability to all of us Negroes...You are no clergyman and you know it...you are a colossal fraud and an evil, vicious one at that. You could not believe in God and act as you do...you end is approaching...you are done. Your 'honorary' degrees, your Nobel Prize (what a grim farce) and other awards will not save you King..." The letter made reference to King's sexual activities and included a tape medley of surveillances from various hotel rooms. "The American public, the church organizations that have been helping...will know you for what you are - an evil, abnormal beast....there is only one thing left for you to do. You know what it is...There is but one way out for you. You better take it before your filthy, abnormal fraudulent self is bared to the nation." The letter stated he should kill himself before he was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize. Belmont and Sullivan later told Curt Gentry that this was done because the FBI was concerned about King's adultery. (The Man and the Secrets 572) Some would later point out that Hoover had been guilty of sending "obscene" materials through the mails. But MLK would not find out about the mail until early January 1965, when his wife opened the box and called him about it.
  
• 11/22/1964 Richard Russell visits LBJ at his Texas ranch. They decide it's best that they don't go deer hunting today.
  
• 11/23/1964 Supreme Court overturned Louisiana District Attorney Jim Garrison's libel conviction on the ground that "speech concerning public affairs is more than self-expression; it is the essence of self-government."
  
• 11/23/1964 The 26 volumes of testimony and exhibits from the Warren Commission are released.
  
• 11/23/1964 LBJ lays a wreath on JFK's grave in Arlington.
  
• 11/24/1964 CIA reported that bombing would have little effect on North Vietnam because most of its economy was pre-industrial.
  
• 11/24/1964 Hoover gave a speech at Loyola and referred to "degenerates" in "pressure groups," a slap at MLK and the civil rights movement.
  
• 11/25/1964 The Senate Intelligence Committee disclosed in the mid-'70s that on this day the Washington bureau chief of a "national news publication" told Nicholas B. Katzenbach that one of his reporters had been approached by the FBI and offered tapes of MLK. Katzenbach and Burke Marshall were so shocked, they flew to LBJ's ranch and told him about it.
  
• 11/25/1964 AP: Washington - The Secret Service investigated 34 Texas-based threats against President John F. Kennedy in the two years before his assassination in Dallas, Warren Commission testimony revealed. Among them:… An informant's claim that a man had told a bridge party he would donate $1,000 toward the assassination of the President.… An alleged statement by an auxiliary deputy sheriff in Houston that Kennedy should be "gotten rid of." ...
  
• 11/25/1964 The NYT Times instant analysis of the more than 10 million words contained in the WC volumes brought the premature observation that their publication by the Warren Commission "brings to a close its inquiry, at once monumental and meticulous." Within a month, again in collaboration with Bantam, the Times published The Witnesses, consisting of "highlights" of the hearings before the Warren Commission, prepared by "a group of editors and reporters of The New York Times." The Witnesses included the affidavit of Arnold Rowland stating that he had observed a man with a rifle on the 6th floor of the Texas School Book Depository before the assassination, but not his testimony in which he stated that he had actually seen two men, and that the FBI had told him to "forget it," and in which he stated his opinion that the source of the shots had been the railroad yards in front of the President. Omitted from the testimony of amateur photographer Abraham Zapruder was his statement that his immediate reaction was that the shots had come from behind him (in front of the President). Similar statements relating an immediate impression that the shots had come from the front were deleted from the excerpted testimony of David F. Powers, a special assistant to the President, and Secret Service Agent Forest V. Sorrels, as it appeared in The Witnesses.
  
• 11/27/1964 NY Times reported Sen. Russell as saying, "We either have to get out or take some action to help the Vietnamese. They won't help themselves. We made a big mistake in going in there, but I can't figure out any way to get out without scaring the rest of the world."
  
• 11/27/1964 DeLoach memo to John Mohr; Roy Wilkins came to see DeLoach today, asking the FBI not to release any damaging information about King's private life. DeLoach told him that "King had organized a bitter crusade against the Director and the FBI" and that Hoover otherwise "sympathized with the civil rights movement...we deeply and bitterly resented the lies and falsehoods told by King and that if King wanted war we certainly would give it to him...Wilkins...will attempt to see King, along with other Negro leaders, and tell King he can't possibly win in any battle with the FBI and that the best thing for him to do is retire from public life." On November 27, Roy Wilkins was told by Cartha DeLoach that if King wanted "war" the FBI was prepared to engage in one, and the two of them discussed the FBI's "derogatory" material. Wilkins told DeLoach that if the FBI made it public, it could ruin the civil rights movement. Obviously Wilkins reported this back to King, and a number of leaders, including King, agreed to take steps to set up a meeting with the director.
  
• 11/27/1964 Washington - J. Edgar Hoover tells Betty Beale of Washington Star he has sworn off press conferences. [Miss Beale is wife of AP chief of bureau William L. Beale]. She also says J. Edgar Hoover explains his sending of flowers to Walter Jenkins was before he knew Jenkins was to be investigated on morals arrest charge. AP
  
• 11/30/1964 AP New York - Newsweek magazine says LBJ decided to replace J. Edgar Hoover. White House promptly denies it. Newsweek, discussing feud between RFK and J. Edgar Hoover, says J. Edgar Hoover never bothered to send note of regret to RFK when JFK assassinated. AP says FBI spokesman in Washington quotes note he claims J. Edgar Hoover did send.
  
• 11/30/1964 An account of J. Edgar Hoover's famous press conference in which he blasted Martin Luther King, Jr. as the most notorious liar in the country. Contains extensive verbatim quotes from reporter's notes. Also reaction from various quarters. Newsweek, Off the Chest and Into the Fire, p. 29 U.S. News &World Report version of J. Edgar Hoover's famous press conference 11/18. All quotes, possibly laundered. U.S. News &World Report, J. Edgar Hoover Speaks Out, p. 56
  
• 12/1964 Castro enlisted the help of Cuban Minister of Industry Ernesto "Che" Guevara, previously an opponent to dialogue, in what had become a Cuban diplomatic offensive for negotiations with the United States. During Guevara's December 1964 visit to the United Nations, he tried to arrange a secret meeting with a White House or State Department representative but was unsuccessful. Finally Guevara met with Senator Eugene McCarthy at Lisa Howard's apartment. The next day McCarthy reported to Under Secretary of State George Ball that Guevara's purpose was " to express Cuban interest in trade with the U.S. and U.S. recognition of the Castro regime. " Ball rewarded McCarthy by admonishing him for even meeting with Guevara, because there was " suspicion throughout Latin America that the U.S. might make a deal with Cuba behind the backs of the other American states. " Ball told McCarthy to say nothing publicly about the meeting. When Lyndon Johnson ignored this Cuban initiative as well, Castro gave up on him. He realized that John Kennedy's successor as president had no interest whatsoever in speaking with Fidel Castro, no matter what he had to say. (Kornbluth, JFK and Castro)
  
• 12/1964 McNamara went ahead with the shutdown of the Brooklyn Navy Yard in the face of protests by Senator-elector Robert Kennedy. (The Pentagon, Mollenhoff)
  
• 12/1964 In the 1970s, Fidel Castro reflected on a peculiar fact of Cold War history that related closely to the story of John Kennedy. Thanks to the decisions made by Khrushchev and Kennedy, "in the final balance Cuba was not invaded and there was no world war. We did not, therefore, have to suffer a war like Vietnam-because many Americans could ask themselves, why a war in Vietnam, thousands of miles away, why millions of tons of bombs dropped on Vietnam and not in Cuba? It was much more logical for the United States to do this to Cuba than to do it ten thousand kilometers away." (Frank Mankiewicz and Kirby Jones, With Fidel: A Portrait of Castro and Cuba (Chicago: Playboy Press, 1975), p. 173)
  
• 12/1964 Joan Baez leads six hundred people in an antiwar demonstration in San Francisco.
  
• 12/1964 In 1964 the US GNP was $622 billion. Prime rate of interest: 4.5%
  
• 12/1964 Who Killed Kennedy, a critical book by American expatriate Thomas Buchanan was already a best-seller in Europe by the end of 1964. In Britain, philosopher Bertrand Russell organized a "Who Killed Kennedy Committee" composed of some of the most influential members of the British intellectual community. In December 1964, Hugh Trevor-Roper, well-known British historian and Regius Professor of Modern History at Oxford University, writing in The Sunday Times of London, accused the Warren Commission of setting up a smokescreen of irrelevant material while failing to ask elementary and essential questions. The WHO KILLED KENNEDY COMMITTEE was founded in 1964 in England; members included Lord Boyd Orr (former director-general of the UN Food Organization), Sir Compton Mackenzie, J.B. Priestley, Hugh Trevor-Roper, Kingsley Martin (former editor of the New Statesman), Michael Foot, Tony Richardson (the movie producer), Kenneth Tynan (writer and critic), and Bertrand Russell. Lord Russell announced that the group believed that "there has never been a more subversive, conspiratorial, unpatriotic or endangering course for the security of the United States and the world than the attempt by the United States Government to hide the murderer of its recent President."
  
• 12/1/1964 Harrisonburg, Virginia: a Mr. Burns saw a huge object cross the road, hover at ground level in a field for less than one minute, then take off vertically. There were other witnesses in the area. Some local college teachers measured strong radioactivity at the site, but Air Force investigators ridicule the witnesses as "nuts" and decided that their own equipment was malfunctioning when they took picked up radioactivity. (Forbidden Science p136)
  
• 12/1/1964 The Working Group met with LBJ, Hubert Humphrey and Max Taylor. Johnson decided to give Taylor one more chance to try to create a stable regime in Saigon; if that didn't work, then bombing would be the next step.
  
• 12/1/1964 FBI memo by Cartha DeLoach said: "Bill Moyers, while I was at the White House today, advised that word had gotten to the President this afternoon that [the newsman] was telling all over town...that the FBI had told him that Martin Luther King was [deleted.] [The newsman] according to Moyers had stated to several people that, 'If the FBI will do this to Martin Luther King, they will undoubtedly do it to anyone for personal reasons.' Moyers stated the President wanted to get this word to us so we would know not to trust [the newsman]." The newsman was later identified as Ben Bradlee. Moyers could later recall nothing of this episode. (It Didn't Start with Watergate 195-201)
  
• 12/1/1964 MLK, Ralph Abernathy, Dr. Andrew Young and Walter Fauntroy met with Hoover and DeLoach at FBI headquarters. LBJ had ordered Hoover to meet with King to patch things up. King was apologetic and conciliatory to Hoover, and expressed his concern about Communists in the civil rights movement; Hoover assured King he was doing all he could to help the movement in the South. (DeLoach memo to John Mohr 12/2/1964) By most accounts the two men were polite to each other, though in 1970 Hoover would create a wholly fictional account of the meeting for a Time reporter, claiming that he had repeatedly called King a liar. Hoover thought he had succeeded in charming King, but soon a wiretap picked up MLK remarking, "the old man talks too much." Sullivan would recall, "there was no hope for [King] after that." (The Man and the Secrets 575)
  
• 12/2/1964 Memo from William Sullivan to Belmont: Hoover ordered the tapes of MLK to be transcribed.
  
• 12/2/1964 Gov. Pat Brown orders police to arrest hundreds of students who took over Sproul Hall in protest of campus ban on political activity. (SF Chronicle 6/9/02)
  
• 12/3/1964 The Catholic Legion of Decency attacks the increasing number of Hollywood's "morally objectionable films."
  
• 12/4/1964 As part of the Free Speech Movement, most of the students at the University of Berkeley went on strike.
  
• 12/4/1964 FBI arrests 20, including the imperial wizard of the White Knights of the Ku Klux Klan, Samuel Bowers Jr., Sheriff Lawrence Rainey and Deputy Sheriff Price for conspiring to violate the civil rights of the three slain workers.
  
• 12/4/1964 Tulsa, OK - ... [Melvin] Belli told reporters here he thought FBI chief J. Edgar Hoover had outlived any usefulness and charged Hoover with attempting to establish a police state.… Belli said he was "scared of this man. … I'm scared this man will knock at my door. The faster we get rid of him the better off we all are, the more securely we'll sleep in our homes …" AP
  
• 12/4/1964 AP - Washington - Interview with J. Edgar Hoover by Don Whitehead, retired, indicating J. Edgar Hoover has no intention of quitting, and why.
  
• 12/4/1964 WC staffer Joseph Ball, ACLU lawyer A.L. Wirin, and Herman Selvin (former president of the Los Angeles County Bar Association) met Mark Lane at the Beverly Hills High School. Though the terms of the debate were patently one-side, Lane agreed to it anyway. A reporter for KPFK-FM radio asked the participants if he could record the debate; everyone agreed, but at the end Ball tried to get the reporter to promise not to broadcast the recording. When the reporter protested, Ball shouted that he would sue his station. This was all caught on tape, and was broadcast on KPFK. Since then, he began avoiding public debates. A.L. Wirin, said, "I say thank God for Earl Warren. He saved us from a pogrom. He saved our nation. God bless him for what he has done in establishing that Oswald was the lone assassin." In response to a question from Lane, Wirin said that even if Oswald were innocent, Warren had done the right thing for the country. (Plausible Denial 52)
  
• 12/4/1964 Robert F. Kennedy and Burke Marshall interviewed by Anthony Lewis Dec 4 and 6.
  
• 12/5/1964 Drew Pearson - Account of J. Edgar Hoover interview with Martin Lather King, Jr., his understanding - and lack of it - of-the Negro and civil rights problem. San Francisco Chronicle
  
• 12/6/1964 In a letter to the editors of the New Haven Register, former Lt. (jg) John W. White of Cheshire, Connecticut wrote: "I maintain that President Johnson, Secretary McNamara and the Joint Chiefs of Staff gave false information to Congress in their report about US destroyers being attacked in the Gulf of Tonkin." He was an officer aboard the USS Pine Island which was the first ship to enter the war zone in response to the attack on the destroyers. "I recall clearly the confusing radio messages sent at that time by the destroyers confusing because the destroyers themselves were not certain they were being attacked. Granted that some North Vietnamese motor torpedo boats were in the area and using harassing maneuvers, the question is this: did they actually fire shells or torpedoes at US warships? The answer is no. I learned this by speaking with the chief sonarman of the Maddox who was in the sonar room during the attack.' He told me that his evaluation of the sonarscope picture was negative, meaning that no torpedoes were fired through the water, at the ship or otherwise. And he also said that he consistently reported this to the commanding officer during the attack.'"
  
• 12/7-9/1964 British PM Harold Wilson is in Washington; he was briefed on LBJ's plans to begin bombing North Vietnam in the near future. (Politics of Lying p48)
  
• 12/7/1964 None too gentle resume of the Bureau's and Hoover's history, pegged on J. Edgar Hoover's blasts at the Warren Commission and Martin Luther King, Jr.... Johnson had decided by last week that he must find a new chief for the FBI … The search is on ...... A friend recently cautioned Hoover not to go too far in his attacks on Martin Luther King, Jr. and other civil rights leaders. "They might get you," said the friend. "They might," said Hoover, "if I were gettable." Newsweek, J. Edgar Hoover and the FBI., p. 21
  
• 12/10/1964 Mark Lane lectured on the JFK assassination at University College, London.
  
• 12/10/1964 Bernard Fall delivered a lecture at the Naval War College on "The Theory and Practice of Insurgency and Counterinsurgency". He believed that the real objective of guerrilla (or small) war methods is to advance "an ideology or a political system". The US government saw fighting as the primary challenge and responded by seeking a military solution. In so doing, it misjudged the depth and extent of political action by the North Vietnamese and Vietcong - the primacy of "political, ideological and administrative" control - and thus the true nature of their "revolutionary warfare". Moreover, in failing to properly assess the political and ideological (nationalistic) forces at work in Vietnam, the Lyndon B Johnson and Richard Nixon administrations tended to mischaracterize (or ignore) the multitudinous economic and social cross-currents that were represented by those committed to the cause of Vietnam unification under Vietnamese leaders.
  
• 12/10/1964 MLK received the Nobel Peace Prize in Oslo, Norway.
  
• 12/11/1964 Soul singer Sam Cooke is shot and beaten to death by a woman who managed a motel in Los Angeles. Cooke allegedly broke into her office trying to find a woman he had fought with earlier that night.
  
• 12/11/1964 MLK said in a speech, "Those who pioneer in the struggle for peace and freedom will still be battered by the storms of persecution, leading them to nagging feelings that they can no longer bear such a heavy burden."
  
• 12/12/1964 Courtney Evans resigned from the FBI to take a job at the Justice Dept.
  
• 12/13/1964 New York Herald Tribune quoted Hoover: "Let me emphasize that the American civil-rights movement is not and has never been dominated by Communists - because the overwhelming majority of civil-rights leaders in this country…have recognized and rejected Communism as a menace to the freedom of all."
  
• 12/13/1964 Reporter Tad Szulc meets in New York City with Che Guevara for "several hours. On Che's eight-day trip to the UN this month, he also has secret meetings with Senator Eugene McCarthy and former ABC reporter Lisa Howard, who has told the White House "Che has something to say to us." Che's relationship to Castro is at a very low ebb.
  
• 12/14 or 4/1964 Hoover memo refers to "Adrian" Zapruder and mentions that the CIA would like to view the film "for training purposes." (Photographic Whitewash, Weisberg) J. Edgar Hoover wrote to J. Lee Rankin, saying the CIA requested the FBI copy of the film be loaned to them "solely for training purposes." Rankin contacted Time, and informed the FBI that Time would contact the CIA to make their own arrangements.(Trask)
  
• 12/14/1964 LBJ phone call with Katzenbach. LBJ wants to see if there is any legal way to get every American registered to vote automatically, and get 100% voter turnout in elections.
  
• 12/18/1964 The New York Herald Tribune reports: "Evidence and investigating reports used by the Warren commission have been stored in a special vault in the National Archives Building and will remain inaccessible to the public for 75 years. As a result, much of what was said off the record by some of the 552 witnesses during the investigation of President Kennedy's assassination may not be known in our lifetime.'" "The Kennedy assassination material will be stored in an inner vault equipped with highly sensitive electronic detection devices to guard against fire and theft ... The combination to the vault will be known by only two or three persons." Robert H. Bahmer, deputy archivist at the National Archives, was quoted in the New York Herald Tribune as saying "75 years was chosen as the declassification figure [for WC documents] because it is considered to be the life span of an individual." Several years after the Warren Commission publishes its Report and disbands, Earl Warren writes his memoirs. In a chapter devoted to the Commission's work, he writes the following: "Practically all the Cabinet members of President Kennedy's administration, along with Director J. Edgar Hoover of the FBI and Chief James Rowley of the Secret Service...testified that to their knowledge there was no sign of any conspiracy. To say now that these people, as well as the Commission, suppressed, neglected to unearth, or overlooked evidence of conspiracy would be an indictment of the entire government of the United States. It would mean the whole structure was absolutely corrupt from top to bottom..."
  
• 12/1964 During this month, LBJ writes to Jacqueline Kennedy concerning their continued correspondence saying: "I find it a selfish motive, but one over which my disciplines have no power: I enjoy reading a letter from you just for the sheer pleasure of hearing you speak on paper." He continues: "Time goes by too swiftly, my dear Jackie. But the day never goes by without some tremor of a memory or some edge of a feeling that reminds me of all that you and I went through together." He concludes: "Please let my young friends, Caroline and John, know they are loved by the Johnsons."
  
• 12/20/1964 Simon Wiesenthal, Nazi hunter, was the target of an unsuccessful assassination attempt in Austria.
  
• 12/21/1964 Aristotle Onassis is driven by his chauffeur onto a runway at Orlay Airport in Paris where an Olympic jet has just landed. There is only one passenger onboard - Jackie Kennedy. She by-passes customs and goes straight to Onassis's apartment for a secluded visit. She will return to the USA three months from now, and the same secret procedures will be followed. It is alleged that the two have seen each other at least 30 times since the death of JFK.
  
• 12/21/1964 US News reported that Goldwater was not going to try to dominate the party or dictate policy for the GOP.
  
• 12/21/1964 Newsweek quoted North Carolina governor Terry Sanford - responding to threats made by the Klan against businessmen who sponsored integrated Christmas parades - "I would urge all members of the KKK to read the Christmas story and the message of goodwill to all men contained in the Bible. In the meantime, I am instructing the State Highway Patrol to provide all aid necessary…If there are illegal acts on the part of the Ku Klux Klan, they will be prosecuted."
  
• 12/22/1964 Robert F. Kennedy and Burke Marshall interviewed by Anthony Lewis
  
• 12/23/1964 Five days after Che Guevara's eight-day trip to the UN, one of Eloy Menoyo's CIA files talks about the "imminent infiltration [into Cuba] of Cuban exiles allegedly involved in [Castro] assassination plots.
  
• 12/24/1964 VC kill two US soldiers in a bomb attack on the Brinks Hotel in Saigon. Max Taylor recommended bombing retaliation, but LBJ refused.
  
• 12/30/1964 LBJ cabled to Taylor that he was irritated with the JCS for constantly pushing a full-scale bombing campaign: "I have never felt that this war will be won from the air...What is much more needed and would be more effective is...appropriate military strength on the ground...I am ready to look with great favor on this kind of increased American effort."
  
• 12/31/1964 US military personnel in Vietnam now at 23,300. Max Taylor cabled that withdrawing support from Saigon, "an unreliable ally" might force the government there "to walk on its own legs and be responsible for its own stumbles."
  
• 12/31/1964 Malcolm X said in a speech, "Never at any time in the history of our people in this country have we made advances or progress in any way based upon the internal goodwill of this country. We have made advancement in this country only when this country was under pressure from forces above and beyond its control."
  

[Tracy Riddle]

11/25/1963 (Monday)

AP article by Lewis Gulick: "Johnson Reaffirms Viet Policy, Pledges U. S. To Victory - Grasping the reins of foreign policy quickly . President Johnson pledged the United States anew to winning the war against the Communist guerrillas in South Viet Nam. This was the core of a general directive - his first in the foreign-policy field - he issued after conferring with Henry Cabot Lodge, U. S. ambassador to South Viet Nam, and other top diplomatic and military leaders. President Johnson's directive said also that he will adhere to the schedule set up by President Kennedy to withdraw at least 1,000 Americans from South Viet Nam by the end of this year. Service personnel now numbers about 14,000 plus about 2,500 civilians. Johnson adheres also to the objective of withdrawing all military personnel by the end of 1965, contingent upon a demonstrated ability of the South Vietnamese government by that time to carry the war to a successful conclusion.

JFK's friend John Kenneth Galbraith, his ambassador to India, said in a reflection published the day of the president's funeral that none of Kennedy's advisers could keep up with the man's own understanding: "What Mr. Kennedy had come to know about the art and substance of American Government was prodigious...My Harvard colleague Professor Carl Kaysen, who has worked in the White House these last years, has said that when asked who is the most knowledgeable of the President's advisers he always felt obliged to remind his questioner that none was half so well informed as the President himself. "Departments and individuals, in approaching the President, invariably emphasized the matters which impress them most. Mr. Kennedy knew how to make the appropriate discounts without anyone quite realizing they were being made. He had a natural sense for all of the variables in a problem; he would not be carried away by anyone. " Galbraith said, " No one knew the President well. " (John Kenneth Galbraith, "A Communication , " originally published in the Washington Post (November 25, 1963) ; in Ambassador's journal: A Personal Account of the Kennedy Years ( Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1969), pp. 63 1-3 2)

The Justice Department pressured the Washington Post into dumping an editorial calling for an independent investigation; Johnson wanted to get an FBI report out first. A declassified FBI memo showed that Katzenbach called Post editor Russell Wiggins and told him that "the Department of Justice seriously hoped that the 'Washington Post' would not encourage any specific means" by which the facts should be made public. The memo also says that an FBI agent talked with Post managing editor Al Friendly, discouraging publication of the editorial and and claiming that it would "merely 'muddy the waters' and would create further confusion and hysteria." The editorial was killed and later that day J. Edgar Hoover boasted in a memo that "I called Mr. Walter Jenkins at the White House and advised him that we had killed the editorial in The Post." (Village Voice, Robert Hennelly and Jerry Policoff, 3/31/1992)

FBI agents went to Laredo, Texas, to investigate a story that Oswald had bought $32 worth of clothes at a store there; a receipt from the store dated 9/26 was found among his belongings. (NY Times 11/30)

Hosty and DeBrueys went to the police department to review their evidence on Oswald. (Assignment Oswald 71)

DPD took two photos of Dealey Plaza, apparently from the position where Zapruder was standing.

Afternoon: Stolley and Zapruder agree sale of all rights to film to Life. Dan Rather may have been present for part of meeting. Stolley leaves with the last of the first-day copies, which Zapruder retained since Nov 22. Horne, 1202; Wrone, 35-6, 283-5; Trask, 146; Mack e-mail to author, May 14, 2010; Zapruder / Time Inc contract, Nov 25, 1963

Today, Multiple copies of Zapruder film (#0186) generated by FBI Lab in Washington between Nov. 23 and Nov. 25 Trask, 122; Wrone, 30; Murr (unpubl) 2010

SS agent Patterson interviewed Marina and wrote in his report: "She advised that she was a Castro supporter and from the interview it was felt that she is still a hard-core Communist...She stated that she did not know the man who killed her husband. It was felt by the interviewer that she was not telling the truth and still believes in Communism." (H 23 390)

Jack Ruby is transferred to the Dallas county jail under heavy guard.

FBI interviewed Adrian Thomas Alba, a New Orleans acquaintance of Oswald. He told the FBI that he knew of no rifle practice which Oswald had engaged in while in New Orleans, adding that from his conversation with Oswald he did not believe that Oswald belonged to any of the local gun clubs. He added that it would have been almost impossible for Oswald to practice with a rifle around New Orleans unless he belonged to a gun club. (CD 7:203)

Joe Alsop phone call to LBJ; Johnson did not want a presidential commission which would be seen as a "carpetbagger" interference in the Texas investigation. Alsop strongly recommended an independent panel to report on the FBI's findings.

Sen. Eastland phone call with LBJ; Eastland explains that a committee hearing would be used to present proof that Oswald was the assassin. LBJ sounds like a committed states' righter as he worries about federal interference in the Texas investigation.

Silvia Duran and her husband are released.

Wayne January reports the Red Bird Airport incident to the Dallas FBI. (Summers, Conspiracy)

Dean Andrews told the Secret Service about the phone call and Oswald's visits in June and July '63. His secretary recalled that Andrews spoke of a client who wanted to change his Marine discharge. (CE 2901) Another employee in his office, R.M. Davis, recalled talking with Andrews 6/1963 about that subject, and that Andrews had mentioned Oswald on various occasions. (CE 2900) Also on this day Andrews gave information to the SS about Oswald that he couldn't possibly have known if the story weren't true. Weisberg: "Not one of those [agents] who questioned Andrews was a [WC] witness. ...there are quite a few Andrews-Bertrand exhibits that could have been printed in the millions of words the Commission did publish. The extent of what is still suppressed is unknown, but there is a considerable amount that I have obtained." (Oswald In New Orleans 129)

FBI agents interviewed Sam Zelden, a lawyer friend of Dean Andrews': "Zelden advised that he was surprised [at Dean's call] and not interested in defending Oswald and he told Andrews that he would have to think about it and about this time he heard on television that Oswald had been shot." This report was not published by the WC. (Oswald in New Orleans 135)

LBJ phone call with Boggs. Johnson explored the idea of a presidential commission. During another call with Boggs, Johnson says he has his lawyers working on how a commission could be set up.

LBJ phone call with Dirksen. Johnson worries about "international complications" and suggests a commission that includes Allen Dulles.

LBJ phone call with Fortas about a commission; Johnson suggests McCloy and Sens. Russell and Cooper. Fortas suggests Boggs and Ford. Dulles is again mentioned, and the possibility of Earl Warren heading it is mentioned.

LBJ call to Sen. Russell, who is surprised that Hoover is already done with his assassination report. Russell doesn't want to serve on the commission. Johnson says that RFK is agreeable to Dulles being on the Commission.

LBJ call to Dulles asking him to serve on the commission.

On this day, Harry L. Power, an Army veteran and one-time resident of San Antonio, inexplicably leaves a 6.5 Mannlicher-Carcano in the Terre Haute House Hotel in Terre Haute, Indiana. When Terre Haute officials investigate the matter they find no fingerprints on the rifle and no explanation as to why it was abandoned. They also believe that the name of "Harry Power" may be an alias. Terre Haute Police Chief Frank Riddle will eventually tell an AP reporter that all the information his office collected was turned over to the Warren Commission when Secret Service Agents confiscated the rifle. A National Archives document, released in 1970, will report that Power was investigated in connection with the shooting attempt on General Walker in Dallas. Other files associated with the Power rifle claim that it was a 7.65 Mauser. CIA agent Richard Nagell will tell Garrison investigators in 1967 at Power was a Maoist or Trotskyite and "had known Lee Harvey Oswald and had been seen with him."

Gilberto Policarpo Lopez checks into the Roosevelt Hotel in Mexico City. He stays there for two days before flying to Havana, Cuba.

Sometime during this weekend, RFK asks family friend Daniel Patrick Moynihan, assistant secretary of labor, to explore whether Jimmy Hoffa was involved in the murder and whether the Secret Service might have been bought off. (Brothers)

FBI agents, acting on an anonymous telephone tip, visit the Irving Sports Shop and find a repair tag indicating that a rifle has been sighted for a customer named "Oswald." The man who did the work, Dial D. Ryder, claims he never worked on an Italian-manufactured rifle similar to the one allegedly found in the Texas School Book Depository Building. Further, the ticket indicates that three holes were drilled in the rifle to mount the sight, while the rifle alleged to be Oswald's requires only two holes for its mount. It has since been speculated that an impersonator using Oswald's name had a rifle sighted at the shop, then later tipped off the FBI and police to lead them to this "evidence" against Lee Harvey Oswald.

Alvin Beauboeuf is questioned by the FBI about Dave Ferrie.

Galloway transmits 'sole remaining copy' of autopsy to Burkley at the White House.

Former California Gov. Goodwin Knight attacked the Dallas police: "This is a crime of the century, yet because of the carelessness of these officials in Dallas the American people will now forever be denied the whole truth of the assassination." (UPI)

According to LBJ Chief of Staff Bob Hardesty, LBJ asks Nicholas Katzenbach and Ramsey Clark to investigate the Oswald-Castro connection. LBJ's press secretary, George Reedy, also notes, "[LBJ] frequently made statements that the Cubans must have been involved. The whole idea that the Cubans - meaning Castro - might have had something to do with it was linked to the CIA's attempt to assassinate Castro. That was the root of Johnson's concern." Michael Beschloss writes: "Richard Helms found Lyndon Johnson distracted well into 1964 by his worry that Kennedy had been assassinated by a conspiracy. As Helms recalled, the Agency was very helpful to Johnson on this' and met the new President's requests for an independent CIA study."

In Dallas, Police sergeant J.C. Bowles, the radio-room supervisor, who will later prepare transcripts for the Warren Commission, states that federal agents "borrow" the original police Dictabelts and he is under the impression they take them to a recording studio in Oklahoma. These Dictabelts contain all recordings of police communications during the assassination on Channels 1 & 2.

On this day, Jack Ruby is interviewed for the first time by the FBI. He recites the chronicle of an aggrieved loner who desired only to spare the Kennedy family the anguish of a trial. HSCA polygraph experts will study Jack Ruby's polygraph and find it was very ineptly done. They will find that the polygrapher ignored standard procedure in a way that made it harder to detect falsehood. Yet, even with the polygraph's sensitivity turned down (instead of up, as it should have been), the registered responses indicate Ruby is lying when he denies having a role in the assassination. The HSCA polygraph experts state the following in their report regarding the reaction to the question, "Did you assist Oswald in the assassination?": In fact, the reactions to the preceding question--(Did you assist Oswald in the assassination?)--show the largest valid GSR reaction in test series No. 1. In addition, there is a constant suppression of breathing and a rise in blood pressure at the time of this crucial relevant question. From this test, it appears to the panel that Ruby was possibly lying when answering "no" to the question, "Did you assist Oswald in the assassination?" This is contrary to Herndon's opinion that Ruby was truthful when answering that question. (8 HSCA 217-218)

Rep. Hale Boggs called for a full-scale congressional investigation into the assassination.

White House formally announces that LBJ has ordered Hoover to investigate the assassination.

Texas Atty Gen. Waggoner Carr, after talking by phone with LBJ aide Walter Jenkins, announced that his state would hold a public court of inquiry on the assassination. Carr named Texas lawyers Leon Jaworski and Dean Robert G. Storey as special counsel.

Around noon today, an employee of the Ford Motor Company in Dearborn, Michigan, reports to the glass plant lab as ordered. There, according to him, are two lab men, and they have the windshield from JFK's motorcade limousine. The windshield has a bullet hole in it, coming from the outside through. The lab men are using the windshield as a template in order to make another windshield. The workers have been told that, if anybody asks what they are doing, they are to say they are running a template for a prototype. The employee notes that the entire interior of the limo has been stripped out. The carpeting and everything is gone. The windshield eventually presented to the Warren Commission does NOT have ANY hole going through it. The employee relating this account is not named- but is interviewed by Douglas Weldon. The interview is eventually included as part of a book entitled Murder In Dealey Plaza.
F. Vaughn Ferguson of the Ford Motor Company returns to the White House garage today. Personnel from Arlington Glass also arrive. They advise Morgan Geis and Ferguson that removal of the limo's windshield will cause additional damage. Geis tells them to go ahead and remove the windshield anyway. The Arlington Glass personnel remove it by putting their feet against the inside of the windshield and pushing it out. In doing so, additional cracks form (downward to the bottom of the windshield). A Mr. Davis of the Secret Service then takes the windshield and puts it in the stockroom under lock and key. Ferguson never sees the windshield again. Ferguson also attempts to clean a blood spot on the limo carpet with only moderate success. Morgan Geis calls to Ferguson's attention a dent in the chrome topping of the windshield at a point just above the rear view mirror.
The windshield is reportedly preserved as evidence, and metallic fragments are taken from the inside of the original crack. These fragments are tested by the FBI on March 20, 1964, and determinded to be lead. The minute quantity of lead recovered from the crack in the windshield reportedly makes further testing, such as neutron activation analysis, impossible. The Warren Report states: "Although there is some uncertainty whether the dent in the chrome on the windshield was present prior to the assassination, Frazier testified that the dent had been caused by some projectile which struck the chrome on the inside surface.' If it was caused by a shot during the assassination, Frazier stated that it would not have been caused by a bullet traveling at full velocity, but rather by a fragment traveling at a fairly high velocity.' It could have been caused by either fragment found in the front seat of the limousine." "The minute examination by the FBI inspection team, conducted in Washington between 14-16 hours after the assassination, revealed no damage indicating that a bullet struck any part of the interior of the Presidential limousine, with the exception of the cracking of the windshield and the dent on the windshield chrome. Neither of these points of damage to the car could have been caused by the bullet that exited the President's nect at a velocity of 1,772 to 1, 779 feet per second." Secret Service agents William Greer and Roy Kellerman both state that they did not observe the dent in the windshield trim prior to the assassination.

Jack Martin is interviewed today by special Agent Regis Kennedy at the New Orleans FBI Office. According to Kennedy's report of the interview, Martin states that he has seen rifles of the type Oswald had allegedly used against the President in David Ferrie's apartment, that Ferrie is a well-known amateur hypnotist who could have hypnotized Oswald, that Ferrie is "a completely disreputable person, a notorious sex deviate with a brilliant mind," and that he, Martin, "suspected him of being capable of any type of crime." Martin concludes his statement saying that he feels "Ferrie's possible association with Lee Oswald should be the subject of close examination as he personally believes that he could be implicated in the killing of President John F. Kennedy."

New Orleans Assistant District Attorney Herman Kohlman informs FBI Agent Regis Kennedy that "An unknown police officer had told the Intelligence Division of the New Orleans Police Department that he was in the Civil Air Patrol with Lee Harvey Oswald and that [David] Ferrie knew Oswald." Later today, the FBI is able to identify Fred O'Sullivan of the New Orleans Police Department Vice Squad as the classmate. In an interview with Bureau agents today, O'Sullivan states that he had persuaded his classmates, Lee Oswald and Ed Voebel, to attend his Civil Air Patrol squadron meetings at the New Orleans Lakefront Airport. Oswald and Voebel had come "to one or two meetings, but did not join." O'Sullivan states that Oswald thought the Lakefront CAP location was too far away and decided to attend the Moisant Airport CAP squadron instead. O'Sullivan tells the FBI that Ferrie "was Squadron Commander" at the "approximate time" that Oswald came to the Lakefront CAP meetings. He adds, however, that he "could not say for certain that Oswald ever met Ferrie" at the time. He further states that Ferrie himself also subsequently began working with the other CAP unit at Moisant Airport.

Today, a Nicaraguan double agent, Gilberto Alvarado, tells a Mexico City CIA officer that he saw Lee Harvey Oswald recruited to kill Kennedy inside the Cuban Consulate in Mexico City. The fatal weakness of the Alvarado story is his claim to have seen Oswald in the Cuban Consulate on September 18, 1963, at a time when Oswald had not yet left New Orleans. Faced with this problem, Alvarado will retract his story on November 30. We do not yet know if CIA Director McCone told President Johnson this when he discussed Alvarado with him on November 30 and December 1. By November 29, Lyndon Johnson will have announced the formation of the Warren Commission. (It appears that the Alvarado story delayed the FBI's official report on the assassination, originally scheduled for November 29, until December 5.)

12:23 AM CST Dallas - [Ruby] had an arrest record in Dallas for carrying concealed weapons. He was acquitted of aggravated assault just recently after a fight with a heckler 'in another night spot.
"I can take care of myself," was his proudest boast.
… Ruby drove up to City Hall in his car shortly before the Oswald shooting. His background had given him an extensive acquaintance among Dallas policemen and there seemed no apparent reason why his presence amidst newsmen and officials should be restricted. AP, 12:23 a.m. CST, Arthur Everett

3:56 AM CST Dallas - His roommate, George Senator, said Ruby appeared to go into a state of shock after the assassination and grieved particularly for "those poor [Kennedy] children." Senator, also an employee at Ruby's night spot, was questioned by police and dismissed. AP, 3:56 a.m. CST

4:50 AM CST Dallas -- Personality sketch on Ruby, quoting C. D. Kelley of New Orleans, a business associate of Ruby's two years ago, as figuring Ruby was more upset over the killing of a Dallas policeman [by Oswald] than over the President's death. "Patriotic, he wasn't. A police buff, he was." AP, 4:50 a.m. CST. Wilbur Martin

7:00 AM FBI agent Hosty was shocked to find that he had been made a member of the team to investigate Ruby's background, rather than Oswald's. (Assignment Oswald 68)

10:25 AM (EST) Johnson called Hoover.
LBJ: Apparently some lawyer in Justice is lobbying with the Post because that's where the suggestion came from for this presidential commission, which we think would be very bad and put it right in the White House. We can't be checking up on every shooting scrape in the country, but they've gone to the Post now to get em an editorial, and the Post is calling up and saying they're going to run an editorial if we don't do things. Now we're going to do two things and I wanted you to know about it. one - we believe that the way to handle this, as we said yesterday - your suggestion - that you put every facility at your command, making a full report to the Attorney General and then they make it available to the country in whatever form may seem desirable. Second - it's a state matter too, and the state Attorney General is young and able and prudent and very cooperative with you. He's going to run a Court of Inquiry...But he's a good conservative fella and we don't start invading local jurisdictions that way and he understands what you're doing and he's for it...
Hoover: We'll both work together on it.
LBJ: And any influence you got with the Post...point out to them that...just picking out a Tom Dewey lawyer from New York and sending him down on new facts - this commission thing - Mr. Herbert Hoover tried that and sometimes a commission that's not trained hurts more than it helps.
Hoover: It's a regular circus then.
LBJ: That's right.
Hoover: I don't have much influence with the Post because I frankly don't read it. I view it like the Daily Worker. [both laugh]

10:40 AM (EST) LBJ talks on the phone with Joe Alsop. Alsop heaped praise on LBJ for handling the governmental transition so well. Johnson expresses his opposition to a presidential commission. LBJ: Now, if we have another commission, hell, you're gonna have people running over each other and everybody agrees...We decided that the best thing to do to counterattack is, number one, to put the FBI in full force, number two, to put the state in full force....And the FBI is of the opinion that the wisest, quickest, ablest, most effective way to go about it is for them to thoroughly study it and bring in a written report to the Attorney General at the earliest possible date, which they've been working on since twelve-thirty yesterday. Number one - and they have information that is available to no one, that has not been presented so thus far...Number two, to parallel that, we're having a blue-ribbon Court of Inquiry...in Texas, where this thing occured....We just don't want to be in a position....[where] some outsiders have told them that their integrity is no good and that we're going to have some carpetbag trials. Alsop: [Fred] Friendly is going to come out tomorrow morning with a big thing about a blue-ribbon commission, which he thought of independently...I suggest that you announce that as you do not want the Attorney General to have the painful responsibility of reporting on his own brother's assassination, that you have authorized three jurists...to review all the evidence by the FBI and produce a report to the nation... LBJ: ...My lawyers, Joe, tell me that...the President must not inject himself into local killings. Alsop: I agree with that. But in this case it does happen to be the killing of the President... LBJ: I know that....Why can't the FBI transmit it [the report to the public]? Alsop: Because no one...on the left - they won't believe the FBI. And the FBI doesn't write very well...I just wouldn't put it on Bobby and Nick Katzenbach...I'm just suggesting...this very small addition to the admirable machinery that you've already set up...And I now see exactly how right you are and how wrong I was about this idea of a blue-ribbon commission. LBJ: Now, you see, Katzenbach suggested that and that provoked it. The lawyers that counsel me just hit the ceiling.

10:50 AM EST JFK's body is taken from the Capitol rotunda. JFK's lavish funeral with representatives from 102 nations present. His son, John Jr., saluted his father's coffin; it was the boy's third birthday. Daughter Caroline's birthday was on the 27th. Kennedy is buried with full military honors in Arlington National Cemetary. Harry Truman met afterward with Eisenhower, effecting for the press a final "reconciliation" between these two political adversaries.

10:50 AM CST Dallas - Ruby had been in City Hall police press facilities often since the President was assassinated. City Manager Elgin Crull said "We now have good evidence that Ruby got into the basement by helping to move one of the heavy television cameras." AP, 10:50 am CST

The body of Lee Harvey Oswald is being held at Miller Funeral Home in Fort Worth, Texas - prior to his funeral. Funeral home director Paul Groody says that the FBI comes and fingerprints Oswald's corpse. Oswald had been fingerprinted three times while alive and in Dallas police custody. There is no explanation for this postmortem fingerprinting. FBI agent Richard Harrison confirms that he personally drives another Bureau agent AND the Oswald rifle to the Miller Funeral home. Harrison says he understands that the other agent intended to place Oswald's palm print on the rifle "for comparison purposes."

Later this morning, OSWALD is buried in Rose Hill Cemetery in Fort Worth, Texas. The two grave diggers are told that they are preparing a plot for a "William Bobo." The Lutheran minister who ends up presiding over the funeral is practically forced to do so by the National Council of Churches in Dallas. Reporters are pressed into service as pallbearers.

11:00 AM Kyle Clark told Hosty that he managed to get him switched to the Oswald squad, and make him lead investigator of Oswald's background. Hosty asked for Warren DeBrueys as his partner. (Assignment Oswald p70)

11:30 AM Funeral ceremonies begin in Washington. After the funeral, LBJ met with the governors of the 50 states and warned them that without confidence in his administration, "our whole system could go awry..." (Exercise of Power 347) At the end of the funeral ceremonies, KLIF radio broadcast an editorial: "Dallas has one of the nation's finest police forces. Dallas is one of the nation's cleanest cities. There are no payoffs, no rackets, no bribes - an extremely low incidence of violence...to the Eastern critics of Dallas police, we say that where there is life, there is always human error." This evening, following the Kennedy funeral services, LBJ holds a reception in the State Department Building for the 220 government leaders who have gathered from all parts of the world to honor the late president.

Adlai Stevenson met with LBJ, who asked for Stevenson's support, saying, "I know and you know that you should be sitting behind this desk rather than me. You could have had the vice-presidential nomination in Los Angeles, but you kept your word to me that you wouldn't back any of the candidates and as a result I am here instead of you." Though Stevenson had thought he would have more of a role in policy-making under LBJ, he actually found himself shut out. (Exercise of Power 342)

LBJ told Hubert Humphrey, "We had a hand in killing him [South Vietnam's Diem]. Now it's happening here." (Education of a Public Man 265) Days after JFK's burial, LBJ tells Kennedy aide Ralph Dungan: "I want to tell you why Kennedy died. Divine retribution. He murdered Diem and then he got it himself."

1:00 PM Dave Ferrie leaves Hammond, Louisiana and returns to New Orleans, arriving about 3pm. Ferrie was then brought to the DA's office for questioning. He denied having been in Dallas for about 8 to 10 years. Ferrie said he suspected that Jack Martin was the source of the rumor about him and Oswald. That afternoon and evening, Ferrie was then interrogated by the Secret Service and FBI, and was cleared by the latter. (Secret Service report 12/13/1963, CO-2-34,030; FBI report 11/26/1963 #89-68) Ferrie denied knowing Oswald or being involved with the assassination, and had an alibi: as a private investigator for attorneys of Carlos Marcello, he had been sitting outside a New Orleans federal courtroom while Marcello was facing a deportation hearing at the the time of Kennedy's assassination. He then went to Houston and Galveston for a weekend trip with two young companions (Alvin Beaubouef and Melvin Coffey). They drove 350 miles in heavy thunderstorms to Houston, arrived at four in the morning 11/23, and checked into the Marcello-owned Alamotel. On Saturday afternoon, they placed a collect call to the Town & Country, Marcello's New Orleans hotel and headquarters. They then went to the Winterland and Belair skating rinks, then drove to Galveston and checked into the Driftwood Motel. As they were returning on Sunday, Ferrie talked with Gill on the phone and learned that Jack Martin had implicated him in the assassination. When he reached his apartment, Ferrie spotted police cars; he sent in Beaubouef, who was arrested, along with Ferrie's roomate, Layton Martens. He turned himself in the next day and was questioned by Secret Service and the FBI. Ferrie told Garrison that he and his friends had gone goose-hunting, but his friends had told Garrison's investigators that they had no guns. A talk with the manager of the Winterland rink revealed that Ferrie had spent the entire time talking on the pay phone. (Fatal Hour) David Ferrie leaves Hammond for New Orleans. Once in the city, he immediately contacts attorney G. Wray Gill, who then accompanies him to the New Orleans Parish District Attorney's Office for questioning in connection with the assassination of JFK. During this initial questioning session, a Secret Service agent asks him: "Did you loan your library card to Lee Harvey Oswald?" Ferrie replies that he has not. Immediately following the questioning, however, there is evidence that Ferrie goes into something of a panic and takes off for Oswald's former New Orleans residence in search of information about his library card.

1:23 PM CST Chicago - Luis Kutner, Chicago lawyer ... said Ruby boasted he was well acquainted with members of the Chicago Crime Syndicate. "I got the impression he liked to hang around with those fellows," Kutner said. Chicago - Luis Kutner, Chicago lawyer, told the AP that Ruby was an organizer for the Waste Handlers for about three or four months in 1947 or 1948. Kutner said Ruby got interested in the labor movement and was employed by [secretary-treasurer Pau1] Dorfman as an organizer for a brief period. The lawyer said he learned later that Dorfman became dissatisfied with the rough methods employed by Ruby in his organizing efforts and fired him. Kutner said the FBI questioned him yesterday about his relationship with Ruby. The lawyer said Ruby in 1950 told him he had certain information he wanted to deliver to the Senate Rackets Investigating Committee and asked Kutner to arrange a meeting with Rudolph Halley, committee investigator. Kutner said he phoned Halley and told him where to reach Ruby. Kutner said he doesn't know whether Halley ever talked with Ruby. AP, 1:23 p.m. CST Chicago - One man who said he knew Ruby from 1944 on, and visited with him as recently as three years ago in Dallas, scoffed at the idea that a patriotic motive was involved in the slaying of Oswald. "I can't see the guy as pushing through a thing like this out of patriotism. He might for publicity, yes. He might for money," said Jack Kelley, 54, former vaudevillian and nightclub master of ceremonies. Kelley, now manager of a Pekin, IL, drive-in restaurant, said he knew Ruby during World War II, and that Ruby wore a false hearing aid. "He wasn't deaf. His friends all said it was to duck the draft board," Kelly said. AP, 1:23 p.m. CST

4:00 PM Texas time, Oswald's body was buried.

4:00 PM (EST) LBJ phone call with McGeorge Bundy

4:04 PM (EST) LBJ phone call with Larry O'Brien

4:23 PM CST Dallas - Ruby, transferred from city to county jail. ... His sister [Mrs. Eva Grant] said she was sure Ruby did not know Oswald. "I would stake my life on that. "My brother and I saw Oswald on television, and we both agreed he looked like a creep. Jack hadn't ever seen him before." AP, 4:23 p.m. CST, Wilbur Martin

6:06 PM CST Detroit - Earl R. Ruby, a 48-year-old brother of Lee Harvey Oswald's slayer, told a news conference today his brother, Jack, is a highly emotional man with a quick temper and "almost aggressively patriotic." … Jack also was pictured by his brother as "tremendously in favor of President Kennedy" and an admirer of American presidents, regardless of their political ties. AP, 6:06 p.m. CST

David Ferrie is interviewed by FBI agents today. He recommends Jerry Paradis as a CAP member who will be able to verify whether Oswald had ever been involved in the CAP unit headed by Ferrie. Ferrie tells the FBI agents that he has never known Oswald and that other witnesses can confirm that Oswald had never attended CAP meetings during the period that Ferrie was active with the group. According to the report of his FBI interview, Ferrie states that "during the period he was commander of the squadron, Jerry C. Paradis was the recruit instructor and took all the squadron recruits through their training." Ferrie supplies the Bureau with the home and business addresses of Paradis, so as to aid the agents in interviewing him. The committee also interviews Jerry Paradis, the former recruit instructor of the New Orleans Lakefront CAP unit. In confirming that Oswald had attended the Lakefront squadron meetings (in addition to the Moisant CAP meetings), Paradis corroborates the accounts of other Oswald colleagues in the CAP. Paradis, now a corporate attorney, tells the committee that Oswald attended the Lakefront CAP meetings for several weeks or several months. During the period that he had served as recruit instructor, Paradis can recall that Oswald came to "at least 10 or 15 meetings," attending the CAP sessions "quite a few times. Oswald was a quiet person and rarely discussed anything with him other than CAP business and instructions."
In an interview today with Special FBI Agents Wall and Shearer, David Ferrie denies all allegations recently made about him. No, he does not know Lee Harvey Oswald. No, Oswald had not served under him in the Civil Air Patrol. No, he had never taught Oswald how to shoot a high-powered rifle and had never loaned him his library card. When it comes to his association with Carlos Marcello, Ferrie is quite candid. He tells his interviewers that he has worked hard throughout October and November helping to prepare Marcello's defense, that he flew twice to Guatemala on behalf of Marcello in October and met with Marcello on November 9 and 16 "at Churchill Downs [sic], which is a farm owned by Carlos Marcello, mapping strategy in connection with Marcello's trial."

8:40 PM Dallas Secret Service contact Dallas FBI office requesting return of their copy (#0186) of the Zapruder film. Request passed to Washington HQ Wrone, 31; Trask, 122

9:20 PM LBJ phone call with Martin Luther King
PRESIDENT JOHNSON: A good many people told me that they heard about your statement. I guess on TV, wasn't it?
MARTIN LUTHER KING: Yes, that's right.
PRESIDENT JOHNSON: I've been locked up in this office and haven't seen it, but I want to tell you how grateful I am and how worthy I'm going to try to be of all your hopes.
MARTIN LUTHER KING: Well, thank you very much. I'm so happy to hear that, and I knew that you had just that great spirit. And you know you have our support and backing. We know what a difficult period this is.
PRESIDENT JOHNSON: It's just an impossible period. We've got a budget coming up that we've got nothing to do with. It's practically already made. And we've got a civil rights bill that hasn't even passed the House and it's November, and Hubert Humphrey told me yesterday that everybody wanted to go home, and I'm going to ask the Congress Wednesday to just stay there till they pass em all. They won't do it, but we'll just keep them there next year until they do, and we just won't give up an inch.
MARTIN LUTHER KING: Uh-huh. Well, this is mighty fine. I think it's so imperative. I think one of the great tributes that we can pay a memory of President Kennedy is to try to enact some of the great progressive policies that he sought to initiate
PRESIDENT JOHNSON: Well, I'm going to support em all, and you can count on that. And I'm going to do my best to get other men to do likewise. I'll have to have you-all's help. And I never needed it more than I do now.

9:29 PM LBJ phone call with McGeorge Bundy
10:10 PM LBJ phone call with Ted Sorensen

11:53 PM RFK and Jackie Kennedy visit JFK's grave alone. She places a small sprig of lily-of-the-valley on his grave. AOT

By now, LBJ is telling everyone concerned that J. Edgar Hoover is in charge of the investigation. This same day, Hoover tells LBJ the investigation is winding down, and that he has succeeded in "killing" a Washington Post story suggesting there will be a full presidential report on the assassination.

FBI agent James Anderton is contacted today by Dr. Jack Harper from Dallas's Methodist Hospital. The doctor explains that his nephew, William Allen Harper, a college student, has found a fragment of what appears to be a human bone in the grassy triangle just to the left of where the president was hit. When the Secret Service learns about the fragment, Anderton is told to send it directly to the White House. This order is quickly countermanded by FBI assistant director Alan Belmont, who orders the piece of bone sent to the FBI laboratory in Washington, D.C.

On November 25, 1963, Richard Helms sent a memorandum to J. Edgar Hoover that marshaled the CIA's phone-tapped evidence suggesting that Oswald had received not only Soviet but also Cuban government support in assassinating Kennedy. Attached to the Helms memorandum were transcripts for the audiotapes of seven calls to the Soviet Mexico City embassy attributed to Oswald. Two of them stood out. One was the October 1 call in which " Oswald " identified Kostikov as the Soviet consul he had met with on September 28 . In the other outstanding call, reportedly made on September 28 , the same man, speaking from the Cuban Consulate, made reference to his having just been at the Soviet Embassy. To understand this revealing call, we need to put it in the context of what may or may not have been the real Oswald's shuttles between the Cuban and Soviet Consulates during his first two days in Mexico City, September 27 and 28.

The Dallas Police took official photos reconstructing the "sniper's nest" scene which later became WC evidence (CE 1301, 1302)

FBI interview of Mrs. Gladys Rodgers, 25 Nov 1963. Mrs. Rodgers told the FBI of Oswald's afternoon outings after he lost his job at the Reilly Coffee Company, and also how several days before Oswald moved away a man with "dark complexion...probably Spanish" came looking for him.

A memo from Alan Belmont, an assistant director and number three man in the FBI, to Hoover's assistant, William Sullivan, dated November 25th, refers to conversations between Katzenbach and Hoover about the assassination. The memo emphasizes that the FBI's report should cover all the areas that might cause concern with the press and the public. Belmont wrote: "In other words, this report is to settle the dust, in so far as Oswald and his activities are concerned, both from the standpoint that he is the man who assassinated the President, and relative to Oswald himself and his activities and background, et cetera."

The CIA produced a document on the 25th of November 1963 declaring " ... employed in this criminal attack is a Model 91 rifle, 7.35 caliber, 1938 modification ... the description of a Mannlicher-Carcano rifle in the Italian and foreign press is in error. It was a Mauser." [CIA report 104-40, WC XXIV, p. 829, 831.] Oswald told his inquisitors that he had seen a Mauser in the Texas School Book Depository. On November 20th, Warren Carter, an employee of Southwestern Publishing Company that occupied part of the second floor in the Depository, brought a Mauser rifle and a .22 calibre rifle for his fellow employees to look at, a fact that was verified by numerous Depository employees. A CIA memo written on this day and declassified in 1976 (CIA 104-40, document #1367; Reasonable Doubt 102-3): "The rifle he used was a Mauser which Oswald had ordered (this is now known by handwriting examination) from Klein's Mail Order House, Chicago, Illinois...In the order for the rifle, Oswald used the name Alex Hidell. Oswald also had in his possession at the time of his arrest...a US Selective Service card in the name of Alex Hidell."

Deputy Attorney General Nicholas deB. Katzenbach sent a memorandum to Bill Moyers, LBJ's press secretary: "It is important that all of the facts surrounding President Kennedy's Assassination be made public in a way which will satisfy people in the United States and abroad that all the facts have been told and that a statement to this effect be made now. 1.The public must be satisfied that Oswald was the assassin; that he did not have confederates who are still at large; and that the evidence was such that he would have been convicted at trial 2. Speculation about Oswald's motivation ought to be cut off, and we should have some basis for rebutting thought that this was a Communist conspiracy or (as the Iron Curtain press is saying) a right-wing conspiracy to blame it on the Communists. Unfortunately the facts on Oswald seem to pat to obvious (Marxist, Cuba, Russian wife, etc.). The Dallas police have put out statements on the Communist conspiracy theory, and it was they who were in charge when he was shot and thus silenced. 3. The matter has been handled thus far with neither dignity nor conviction. Facts have been mixed with rumor and speculation. We can scarcely let the world see us totally in the image of the Dallas police when our President is murdered. I think this objective may be satisfied by making public as soon as possible a complete and thorough FBI report on Oswald and the assassination. This may run into the difficulty of pointing to inconsistencies between this report and statements by Dallas police officials. But the reputation of the Bureau is such that it may do the whole job. The only other step would be the appointment of a Presidential Commission of unimpeachable personnel to review and examine the evidence and announce its conclusions. This has both advantages and disadvantages. It (sic) think it can await publication of the FBI report and public reaction to it here and abroad. I think, however, that a statement that all the facts will be made public property in an orderly and responsible way should be made now. We need something to head off public speculation or Congressional hearings of the wrong sort." Katzenbach would later say that RFK never saw this memo. (McCall's 3/1977)

FBI report: "Jack Ruby was observed by Special Agent Joseph M. Myers [who was not a WC witness] at the Dallas City Jail, Fifth Floor, from 5:06 p.m. November 24, 1963 to 1:20 a.m. November 25....He was allowed to talk to two visitors through the visiting room on a communication system and the permit allowing these visitors was signed by Will Fritz, 5:55 p.m. The visitors were Pauline Hall [not a WC witness] and Eva L. Grant. Ruby kept talking to his sister, Eva Grant, about all of his attorneys, naming Fred Bruner, Tom Howard, George Sanders, Jim Martin, and another named Kaufman. He made the following remarks to his sister: 'Bruner is my man. I have friends here so don't worry about me. Something happens inside of you and then you crack and then it happens. Fred Bruner will come down in the morning and arrange bonds and have a hearing. I have nothing else to say and I've got the strength to stand up. I got lots of friends here so don't make a scene and get hysterical.' Jack [unknown person] came up and said 'we don't care how much the bonds are we'll make them.' 'You can't live forever so they will let any of my relatives come up to see me any time. The judge is real nice and they don't bother me here.'" (CE 2080) Curry would later tell the WC that the police had no way of monitoring conversations between inmates and visitors (using the phones on either side of the glass windows): "...we have no setup for doing this." (H 4 200)

Internal FBI memo written on this date by J. Edgar Hoover:
"Oswald made a phone call to the Cuban embassy in Mexico City, which we intercepted. It was only about a visa, however. He also wrote a letter to the Soviet Embassy here in Washington, which we intercepted, read and resealed. This letter referred to the fact that the FBI had questioned his activities on the Fair Play to Cuba Committee and also asked about extension of his wife's visa. That letter from Oswald was addressed to the man in the Soviet Embassy who is in charge of assassinations and similar activities on the part of the Soviet government. To have that drawn into a public hearing would muddy the waters internationally."

On this day, around noon, Raymond B. Carnay, news director for radio station KBEA in Mission, Kansas, calls a friend of his on the Dallas Police Department, Officer Art Hammett. Carnay had worked at KBOX in Dallas in the early 1960s, and he calls Hammett to see if there is "any newsworthy information available on the Ruby matter." Carnay's other reason for calling Hammett is to seek the officer's advice on an interesting matter relating to the late Lee Harvey Oswald. Carnay says that he had met with Oswald in person several times in Dallas in 1961, and that Oswald had tried repeatedly to convince him to cease and desist anti-Castro activities while expressing "pro-Castro sympathies ... in an effort to convince him that Castro was right." Oswald, of course, was working at a radio factory in Minsk at the time.

FBI Interview of Jack S. Martin 11/25/1963
by SA REGIS L. KENNEDY and SA CLAUDE L. SCHLAGER at New Orleans, Louisiana
JACK S. MARTIN, 1311 North Prieur Street, New Orleans, Louisiana, advised that he was listening to a TV program on WWL-TV reporting the life of LEE OSWALD and reporting various interviews with people in New Orleans that were acquainted with LEE OSWALD. MARTIN stated that one of the people interviewed whose name he does not know who he describes as a white male, age early 20's, wearing horn rimmed glasses, recalled that OSWALD had been active in the Civil Air Patrol with DAVID FERRIE. MARTIN stated that when he heard this he "flipped." MARTIN advised that in his occupation as a private investigator he has had occasion to develop considerable information about FERRIE and reported it to RICHARD E. ROBY, Special Agent, Investigative Division, Office of Compliance and Security, Federal Aviation Agency, Washington, D.C., who must have a big file on FERRIE as they conducted a complete investigation of his activities in New Orleans several years ago. MARTIN advised that he called WWL-TV Station and furnished the station with background information about FERRIE, particularly his homosexual tendencies and the fact that he formerly operated the Civil Air Patrol. He also told them that FERRIE was an amateur hypnotist and that it was his idea that FERRIE may have hypnotized LEE OSWALD and planted a post-hypnotic suggestion that he kill the President.
MARTIN state that has visited in the home of DAVID FERRIE and he saw a group of photographs of various Civil Air Patrol cadet groups and in this group he is sure he saw several years ago a photograph of LEE OSWALD as a member of one of the classes. He stated he did not recall the group that OSWALD was in or any other details. In addition he stated that FERRIE conducted military type drills with rifles, fatigue clothes and helmet liners of the Civil Air Patrol Cadets and he recalled that FERRIE claimed to have taught these cadets how to shoot. MARTIN stated that he observed in FERRIE's home a number of foreign made firearms and it is his opinion that FERRIE could have taught OSWALD how to purchase a foreign made firearm or possibly have purchased the gun that was shown on television. He advised that he saw similar type weapons at FERRIE's home when he visited there two years ago.
MARTIN advised that FERRIE discussed with him the charges of crime against nature which resulted in the his arrest by Jefferson Parish authorities and he recalled that FERRIE had told him that one of the "kids that was a witness against him" had moved to Mississippi from New Orleans and subsequently joined the United States Marine Corps. He heard on television that OSWALD had been in the Marine Corps therefore he surmised that OSWALD was that "kid," that he was a witness against FERRIE in the crime against nature charge that had joined the Marine Corps. Martin explained that it might have been the same individual or a very close coincidence.
MARTIN advised that he has reported this matter to Major TROSCLAIR of the New Orleans Police Department, Intelligence Division, and he felt that Major TROSCLAIR was not giving the matter sufficient concern so he called Assistant District Attorney HERMAN KOHLMAN who was a former newspaper reporter and who was very familiar with the FERRIE case as he had written various feature stories about FERRIE. MARTIN stated that he explained all of his ideas and suspicions to KOHLMAN.
MARTIN advised he was really suspicious of FERRIE's activities when he received a report from W. HARDY DAVIS, a New Orleans Bail Bondsman, who told him that G. WRAY GILL, New Orleans attorney and employer of FERRIE had called him to locate FERRIE who lives down the street from him and at the same time had denied to the TV station that FERRIE was an employee of GILL's Office. DAVIS furnished MARTIN information that FERRIE had left town for Texas on Friday evening, November 22, 1963, which information he also made available to Mr. KOHLMAN of the District Attorney's office. Martin stated that FERRIE is a completely disreputable person, a notorious sex deviate with a brilliant mind being highly trained in mathematics, sciences, several foreign languages including Latin, modern Greek and ancient Greek. MARTIN advised that FERRIE had been educated in a seminary and subsequently expelled from the Catholic Church and he, MARTIN, suspected him of being capable of committing any type of crime.
MARTIN stated that he felt that FERRIE's possible association with LEE OSWALD should be the subject of close examination as he personally believed that he could be implicated in the killing of President JOHN F. KENNEDY.

An FBI Teletype from the New Orleans field office to Director J. Edgar Hoover and the special agent in charge of the FBI office in Dallas summarizes an interview with Layton Martens, David Ferrie's roommate: "Martens said that attorney G. Wray Gill visited Ferrie's residence and told Martens he was looking for Ferrie who was then not at home. Gill remarked to Martens that when Lee Harvey Oswald was arrested by the Dallas Police Oswald was carrying a library card with Ferrie's name on it. Gill instructed Martens to tell Ferrie to contact him and Gill would represent Ferrie as his attorney."

FBI Document #89-69-169
UNITED STATES GOVERNMENT
MEMORANDUM
TO: SAC, NEW ORLEANS (89-69) DATE: 11/25/63
FROM: ASAC J. T. SYLVESTER, JR.
SUBJECT: ASSASSINATION OF PRESIDENT Re: DAVID WILLIAM FERRIE JOHN F. KENNEDY, 11/22/63, DALLAS, TEXAS

[REDACTED] Intelligence Unit, at 8:32 p.m., 11/22/63 telephonically contacted ASAC J. T. SYLVESTER at home. He inquired as to whether or not the gun had been identified and whether this office had any information concerning the gun that was used to shoot the President. He stated the reason he was asking was because they had received no request from the Dallas police or anyone; that the only information he had was via the radio and T.V. concerning this gun. He advised there were a lot of outlets in New Orleans that could be checked as LEE HARVEY OSWALD had lived here. He was advised that I had no definite information concerning this and that all of our leads would be coming out of Dallas if they desired any check.

He referred to DAVID WILLIAM FERRIE, advising he was tied in with a Cuban movement; was an ex-pilot of Eastern Airlines; had flown planes into Central America and was currently employed by G. WRAY GILL, an attorney. He stated he understood but he had to back it up that OSWALD was possibly friendly with FERRIE in view of his Cuban activities. I advised [REDACTED] that we were interested in any information he might have which would indicate that OSWALD was friendly with FERRIE.

BILL REED of WWL T. V. on 11/24/63 at 12:25 p.m. stated they were running a check of DAVID FERRIE of 3303 Louisiana Ave. Pkwy., formerly connected with the Civil Air Patrol and Eastern Airlines, who allegedly a few years ago was a friend of LEE HARVEY OSWALD and that OSWALD might be
connected with the Civil Air Patrol. He stated they were looking to interview FERRIE who is employed by G. WRAY GILL but were unsuccessful and FERRIE had an unlisted telephone.

5 - New Orleans
JTS:lil

FBI interview of Dean Andrews, 25 Nov 1963. Andrews told the FBI of Oswald's visit and contacts with his office, in the company of others, and also of Clay Bertrand's 23 Nov 1963 call requesting legal assistance for Oswald.

FBI interview of Sam "Monk" Zeldeon, 25 Nov 1963. Andrews' colleague Monk Zelden corroborated Andrews' account regarding having been contacted to defend Oswald.

FBI interview of Carlos Bringuier, 25 Nov 1963. Bringuier told the FBI of Oswald's approach and the later scuffle over Oswald's leafletting.

FBI interview of Oscar DeSlatte, 25 Nov 1963. The interview report notes that DeSlatte had retained a carbon copy of the form with the name Oswald on it, which he "made available to the interviewing Agents."

The Associated Press reported that J. Edgar Hoover "said today all available information indicates that Lee Harvey Oswald acted alone in the assassination...'Not one shred of evidence has been developed to link any other person in a conspiracy with Oswald to assassinate President Kennedy,' Hoover said in a statement."

The New York Times reports today that when Oswald crossed the border from Texas to Mexico, his "movements were watched at the request of a Federal agency at Washington," according to "William M. Kline, assistant United States Customs Agent-in-Charge of the Bureau's Investigative Service at Laredo, Texas."

The NYT headline - "President's Assassin Shot to Death in Jail Corridor by a Dallas Citizen" was typical of media coverage in that it reflected no presumption of Oswald's innocence.

NYT: Dallas, [11/24] - …The shooting occurred in the basement of the municipal building at 11:26 a.m. CST ..
… At 11:25 Oswald was taken in an elevator to the basement. He was led through the booking office to the open vestibule between two lines of detectives. As they turned right from the vestibule to start up the ramp, Ruby jumped forward from against the railing.

San Francisco Chronicle: Dallas - The man who shot the accused assassin of President Kennedy was constantly seeking and apparently enjoying the company of policemen. He had a press pass on his windshield.

In The New York Times of November 25, Fred Powledge's story from Dallas listed as part of the evidence supporting the Oswald-School-Book-Depository-Mannlicher-Carcano theory: "A bullet that Secret Service men removed from a stretcher at Parkland Hospital after the shooting, and two bullet fragments removed from the Presidential automobile matched bullets fired by the rifle [FBI] agents found inside the [warehouse]." Powledge cites Gordon Shanklin, FBI agent in charge in Dallas, as his source of information. This it would appear accounts for two bullets.

NY Herald Tribune: "Dallas - ... Mr. Senator talked with reporters inside ... police headquarters . … He had gone there voluntarily with James Martin, a lawyer, after hearing the stunning news. … It is interesting that after he [Ruby] was arrested no less than six lawyers appeared at the police station, ready to represent him if he indicated he wanted them."

UPI: "Dallas - Ruby went out of his way to make friends with policemen. Once, said an attorney, he rushed to the side of a patrolman being beaten by a group of thugs and fought them off "like a tiger."

NYT (Gladwin Hill): Dallas, [11/24] - [Shooting of Oswald]: The group with the chief walked through a short corridor past the basement booking office and out the door onto the guarded ramp. Uniformed policemen checked the reporters' credentials. But they passed familiar faces, such as those of policemen and collaborating Secret Service and FBI agents. Ruby's face was familiar to many policemen who had encountered him at his two nightclubs and in his frequent visits to the municipal building. New York Times, Gladwin Hill

The Sunday Dallas Morning News publishes a banner story revealing that Oswald met with the FBI on November 16.

Fort Worth Star-Telegram story by reporter Phil Vinson: "In 1947, the year I met Lee Oswald, I'm sure neither of us had heard of John Kennedy nor Karl Marx. But to this tousle-haired boy, who was my classmate in the second grade at Lily B. Clayton Elementary School in Fort Worth, these two men were to probably be the most important in Lee's life - and death. Of all the boys in our class at the South Side school, I think probably Lee Oswald stands-out most vividly in my mind. Perhaps it's because of the mystery that seemed to surround this quiet, soft-spoken and popular boy. No one in our class was a close friend of Lee's. Yet, all of the boys seemed to look up to him. During recess periods, the boys would form into what we called gangs' and engage in friendly wrestling matches or games of touch football. According to the code of us 7 or 8-year olds, being in Lee's gang was a high honor. Lee was a leader and he chose those to serve with him on the grade school playground. In class, he remained quiet. I recall no disciplinary action being taken against him. He usually answered questions when called upon, or told our teacher, Mrs. Florence Murphy, he didn't know the answer. He appeared to be honest. When we were called upon to read aloud, I remember that Lee read well, but I also recall that when report cards time came around, he didn't post very good grades. I never saw Lee outside school. To my knowledge, he didn't associate with any of his classmates except during school hours. Lee spoke with an accent unlike most of the kids in the class. At the time I thought he was from the North...nobody knew much about him, except that he lived with his mother and apparently had no father...I moved from the South Side the year after the second grade and never saw Lee again until Friday...The disbelief [in his being shot] was almost as great as when I heard the first word of Kennedy's assassination."

AP reported: "The assassin had not been apprehended late Friday afternoon. However, police held a 24-year-old Ft. Worth man for questioning....Lee Harvey Oswald, an ex-Marine who was a prime suspect in the killing of a Dallas policeman...A number of suspects were picked up during the next few hours...[Connally] was riding beside Mr. Kennedy...Connally slumped in his seat beside the President...[Police] believed the fatal shots were fired by a white man about 39, slender of build, weighing about 165 lbs, and standing 5 feet 10. The murder weapon reportedly was a 30-30 rifle....Ironically, Mr. Kennedy was shot to death at a spot where there were few spectators - after driving almost within handshaking distance of many thousand...Mr. Kennedy's body was removed from Parkland Hospital at 2:05pm in an ambulance..."

The New York Times reported that Gordon Shanklin said the chicken lunch bag contained Oswald's fingerprint and palmprint.

AP reported: "The killing of Lee Harvey Oswald was a highly appreciated gift to the Communist propaganda machine. Within minutes after news of the second Dallas assassination, the machine went into action, depicting Oswald as a martyr shot in an attempt to hide those responsible for President John F. Kennedy's assassination. The murderers of President John Kennedy are trying to cover up their traces,' said the Soviet news agency Tass. now the only person who was accused of killing President Kennedy, the man who until the very end denied implication, has been silenced forever.' Neues Deutschland, the East German Communist party newspaper, told its readers the killing of Oswald strengthened suspicion that Mr. Kennedy was the victim of a conspiracy by right-wing extremists....'I don't think we've had the whole truth from Dallas,' said a Swede in West Berlin. It almost seems as if they wanted him killed, just to close the case.' Stephen Barber, special correspondent of the London Daily Telegraph, cabled from Dallas that precautions at the police headquarters there were extraordinary lax. During the past 48 hours," he wrote, "I have been able to saunter in and out of the City Hall police headquarters on innumerable occasions without anyone asking to see my White House press card. The first and only time it was required was to enter the underground garage where this astonishing shooting (of Oswald) took place. Even that was a completely perfunctory request.'...Belgian Catholic and Socialist papers questioned whether the killing had been ordered by a political group or criminal organization,' as the Catholic Le Cite put it. Was Lee Oswald perhaps the man who knew too much and had to be liquidated, since he would be forced to speak?' queried the Socialist Vooruit. In Lebanon, the Beirut daily Al Hadaf raised the same question. Said Bildzeitungen, which has West Germany's largest circulation: Until now it is not known whether he (Ruby) belonged with Oswald to a ring of agents that planned the Kennedy murder. Did he kill Oswald because he feared he would reveal all? Or, did he want to avenge Kennedy's death?' A comment by a French television announcer summed up much of the reaction in Western Europe to the Oswald killing. There will always be a doubt in the world whether he was innocent or guilty.'

New Delhi newspaper The Patriot reported, "It looks now as though Oswald, who was silenced so quickly, was only an agent...the ease with which a nightclub keeper with a criminal record could get access to a prisoner in police custody and shoot him suggests collusion [and] points to the existence of influences bent on changing Mr. Kennedy's policies at whatever cost."

The tiny Texas newspaper, Midlothian Mirror, published by JFK fan Penn Jones Jr., featured the editorial: "We think the disgrace of Dallas may well hang on its conscience for many years. We have only contempt for H. L. Hunt and his lackey former General Edwin Walker. The blame should also be shared by too many gutless people who live in a city that should be plowed under the soil and sowed with salt."

[B]NYT story by Foster Hailey was titled, "Lone Assassin the Rule in U.S.:

[Tracy Riddle]

November 26 1963 (Tuesday)

LBJ takes over the Oval office. Stock Market reopens. The New York Stock Exchange makes a record $21 billion advance, more than regaining the losses incurred the day JFK died. The stock market soared today in "its sharpest advance in history Tuesday, indicating strong Wall Street confidence in the new Johnson administration." It went up 32 points to 743. The Dow Jones average had dropped 21 points on the day of the assassination. (UPI 11/27)

LBJ signed into law an increase in the National Debt limit.

Today, Lyndon Johnson signs NSAM # 273. This directive cancels the withdrawal of American troops from Vietnam (a move initiated by JFK on October 11, 1963 in his own NSAM # 263), commits America to support the Diem government in South Vietnam, and gives LBJ sweeping powers in dealing with the Southeast Asia situation. In 1991 a draft copy of NSAM # 273, prepared for LBJ by William Bundy, is discovered in the archives of the LBJ Library in Texas. It is dated November 21, 1963 -- the day before JFK's assassination. Thirty-two years later, Robert McNamara confirms the belief that JFK would have eventually withdrawn the U.S. from Vietnam: "Having reviewed the record in detail, and with the advantage of hindsight, I think it highly probable that, had President Kennedy lived, he would have pulled us out of Vietnam." This document also subtly changes the United States objective from simply assisting the South Vietnamese to assisting them "to win" against the Communists, and authorizes plans for expanding the war into Vietnam. Robert McNamara will later write: "... President Johnson made clear to (Henry Cabot) Lodge on November 24 that he wanted to win the war and that, at least in the short run, he wanted priority given to military operations over so-called' social reforms. He felt the United States had spent too much time and energy trying to shape other countries in its own image. Win the war! That was his message."

LBJ talked with Arthur Schlesinger and persuaded him not to leave the administration at this time; LBJ needed Schlesinger as a symbolic figure to appease the liberals in the Democratic Party. (Exercise of Power)

LBJ talked with some Latin American representatives on the Alliance for Progress, and met with Soviet Deputy PM Anastas Mikoyan. He gave him a letter to Khrushchev, assuring the Soviet leader that he would continue Kennedy's policies.

On 26th November, Grant Stockdale flew to Washington and talked with Robert Kennedy and Edward Kennedy. On his return Stockdale told several of his friends that "the world was closing in." On 1st December, he spoke to his attorney, William Frates who later recalled: "He started talking. It didn't make much sense. He said something about 'those guys' trying to get him. Then about the assassination."

3:21 AM FBI HQ return Zapruder film to Dallas office on Braniff Airlines flight 543; film picked up by SA Hall and given to SA Bookhout Wrone, 31; Trask, 122

9:00 AM Bookhout returns Zapruder film to Inspector Kelley (Dallas Secret Service) Wrone, 31; Trask, 122

RFK has a private talk with SS Agent Clint Hill today. There is no record of the conversation. (Brothers)

11:20 AM CIA Director, John McCone, calls J. Edgar Hoover and they discuss coordination of their intelligence-gathering assets, especially in Mexico City. Hoover says: "We are trying to do it as fast as we can so we can dispel various wild rumors that have been circulating as to whether this man [Oswald] was the right man, etc., that fired the gun. But there is no question that he is the right man."

Senator Richard Russel has a long lunch (75 minutes) with LBJ today. There is no record of their discussion.

1:11 PM LBJ phone call with Sen. Hubert Humphrey
1:25 PM LBJ phone call with Horace Busby

3pm Jackie met with Lady Byrd Johnson at the White House: "She went on to say a lot of things, like Don't be frightened of this house - some of the happiest years of my marriage have been spent here - you will be happy here.' In fact, she repeated that over and over, as though she were trying to reassure me." (White House Diary 11)

3:30 PM LBJ phone call with Speaker John McCormack
3:55 PM LBJ phone call with John Bailey
4:35 PM LBJ phone call with James Webb
5:15 PM LBJ phone call with Henry Luce
5:40 PM LBJ phone call with Keith Funston
6:00 PM LBJ phone call with Robert McNamara

U.S. Ambassador to Mexico Thomas Mann sends a cable to the State Department, expressing his fears that Cubans are involved in the assassination. He initiates his own investigation, but is stopped by the White House.

Jack Ruby is indicted for the murder of Oswald. Charge: "murder with malice."

Francis Fruge of the Louisiana State Police flies Rose Cheramie to Houston today. In the back seat of the Sesna 180, a newspaper is lying between them. One of the headlines reads to the effect that "investigators or something had not been able to establish a relationship between Jack Ruby and Lee Harvey Oswald." When Cheramie reads this, she starts to giggle. She then says, "Them two queer sons-of-bitches. They've been shacking up for years." She adds that she knows this to be true from her experience, working as a stripper for Jack Ruby. (Probe Vol. 6, No. 5)

An inventory of Lee Harvey Oswald's property taken from the Paine home is made. Listed under item 375 is "one Minox camera." Later the word "camera" is changed to "light meter." Motive may have been that the existence of the camera pointed to Lee Harvey Oswald's intelligence connections. This type of camera is was not available to the general public in 1963. The camera's serial number is also untraceable.

Fred O'Sullivan further advises the FBI that David Ferrie might have had contact with Oswald at the Moisant Airport Civil Air Patrol. According to the FBI report of this interview, "Ferrie transferred and assumed command of the CAP at Moisant Airport at about the same time O'Sullivan thought Oswald might have joined." O'Sullivan further informs the Bureau that he has only recently learned of Ferrie's homosexual background. He also notes that Ferrie "had acquired a reputation for being able to hypnotize people," and that he had once hypnotized a man following one of the CAP meetings.

The first survey plot of Dealey Plaza is made by Robert H. West, Dallas County Surveyor on this date. The survey is made for Time-Life, the new owners of the Zapruder film, and will never be introduced as a Warren commission exhibit.

SS Agent Robert I. Bouck issues receipt to Dr. Burkley for JFK autopsy report and related material.

Carolyn Arnold told the FBI about seeing Oswald on the first floor 15 minutes before the assassination. FBI (Dallas) report is generated regarding Mrs. R. E. Arnold's assertion she had seen Lee Harvey Oswald on the first floor of the Depository between 12:15 and 12:20 PM. This apparently catches J. Edgar Hoover's eye, as he will have different agents obtain a contradictory statement from her on 3/18/64. At that time, she will state, "I did not see Lee Harvey Oswald at the time President Kennedy was shot." She will not be called as a Warren Commission witness.

The alleged murder weapon (Oswald's rifle) is again sent to Washington. The four cartridge cases, supposedly found at the Tippit murder scene, are only now turned over to the FBI by the Dallas police. (There is speculation that the cases originally found were of a different ammunition type from those later produced in evidence.)

Marina Oswald refuses to be interviewed by two FBI agents because one of them is Agent James Hosty, who she is familiar with. She has been taken to the Six Flags motel, halfway between Fort Worth and Dallas. Agent Mike Howard remembers a call from LBJ to the motel, ordering: "Nobody talks to those people, not even Washington. Nothing is to happen to that family." At one point, Howard instructs one of the local police guards to remain outside the motel as a "final line of resistance." Howard hands the cop a submachine gun and orders him, "If anyone comes up that walk, you take care of em one way or the other." This protective entourage will remain at the motel for five days.

Today, there is an announcement by the state of Texas concerning its intention to conduct an independent inquiry into the JFK assassination. Three days from now, Texas A. G. Waggoner Carr announces that there will be NO inquiry.

Former congressman Martin Dies charged that Moscow may have directed the assassination, and urged greater surveillance of Communists in the US. (UPI)

The Dallas Police prepared to give all their evidence on the assassination to the FBI. This morning, Hosty and DeBrueys transported all of the evidence, including the rifle, from the police station to the FBI office. Lt. Day also sent his palm print from the Carcano to the FBI. At 12:45am, the next morning, agent Drain told them that Fritz still had Oswald's wallet, one Carcano shell casing, and Oswald's notebook; Hosty went over to get them from Fritz. DeBrueys then took all the evidence to Washington in an Air Force jet. (Assignment Oswald 77) The first official word on the transfer of assassination evidence came on Tuesday, Nov. 26, when both Dallas newspapers carried stories announcing that the evidence was to be turned over to federal authorities. "The Dallas Police Department Tuesday prepared to turn over all evidence in the assassination case against Lee Harvey Oswald to the Federal Bureau of Investigation," stated the Dallas Times Herald. "FBI agents Tuesday took control of all evidence gathered by Dallas police against accused assassin Lee Harvey Oswald on an agreement between Police Chief Jesse E. Curry and Dist. Atty. Henry Wade," announced The Dallas Morning News. The News went on to explain, "Curry went before reporters at noon Tuesday to make the announcement. The disclosure came after Curry held several morning conferences with top aides. The transfer of evidence from city police to federal control was completed four hours later."

The FBI is notified of Milteer's further statements to Somersett about the assassination. (CD 1347)

Abe Fortas was assigned to coordinate the FBI, Justice Dept and Texas investigations. At the same time, though, Henry Wade was turning the state's investigation over to the FBI.

Today is the first time that the name "F. Vaughn Ferguson" appears in the White House Garage log. Mr. Ferguson is a Ford Motor Company employee. Ferguson will create interoffice memorandum detailing reconstruction work done on the Presidential limousine. He will also testify that he is the individual who drives the limousine to Dearborn, Michigan on December 20, 1963. However, Ferguson also testifies that his work on the limousine actually began on November 23rd. There is no official record of his presence in the White House Garage until today.

A November 26 call between Cuban Ambassador to Mexico Hernandez Armas and Cuban President Dorticos was a cause of some concern. Hernandez told Dorticos that the DFS had asked Silvia Duran about intimate relations with Oswald, and Dorticos for his part repeatedly asked whether she had been asked about monetary payments to Oswald. The conversation, sinister as it could appear to some, had its comic aspects as well. The phone connection was terrible, and most of the conversation is spent with the two parties trying desperately to make themselves understood. The vigorous promotion of the idea that a conspiracy to kill the U.S. President had been conducted by parties who could hardly make a phone call to each other has its amusing side. Perhaps the connection was so bad because of too many taps on the line. An excerpted transcript was sent from Mexico City to CIA HQ on November 26, 1963 [MEXI 7068, at RIF #104-10404-10175]. A complete version, which includes the comical inability of the parties to communicate, was sent to the Warren Commission on May 22, 1964. [Memo from Helms to Rankin of 5-22-64, at RIF #104-10408-10072]

On November 26, just after the dust had settled and the CIA and FBI had agreed that there were no tapes after all, only transcripts, CIA Director McCone and FBI Director J. Edgar Hoover had a little phone conversation. Here is an excerpt, taken from a transcript preserved in CIA files (there are many indications that FBI Director Hoover and more than one CIA Director taped their own phone calls, though such tapes have not been released and may well be destroyed):
Hoover: But there is no question that he [Oswald] is the right man. There are a lot of aspects that we have dug up, for instance, with regards to the matter in Mexico City. We have now found that the photograph that was taken was not that of Oswald. We do find from our informant down there that Oswald did call at the Embassy that day and the informant has given us the conversation that he had….. [Telephone conversation between Hoover and McCone, 11-26-63, at RIF #104-10408-10100]

Sen. Everett Dirksen (R-Illinois), backed by bipartisan support, suggested that the Senate Judiciary Committee investigate the assassination.

Sen. Thruston Morton (R-Kentucky) stated, "John Kennedy was struck down by a man whose mind had been warped by an alien violence, not a native condition," and urged Americans not to blame Dallas.

FBI Agents Sibert and O'Neill issue a supplemental report on autopsy and memo to Baltimore field office file. It was not published by the WC. It was released primarily due to the efforts of Vincent Salandria and Paul Hoch. They drove in the motorcade which followed the President's body from Andrews Air Force base to Bethesda. "Following the removal of the wrapping, it was ascertained that the President's clothing had been removed and it was also apparent that a tracheotomy had been performed, as well as surgery of the head area, namely, in the top of the skull. All personnel with the exception of medical officers needed in the taking of photographs and X-Rays were requested to leave the autopsy room and remain in an adjacent room."

Asst FBI Director Courtney Evans memoed Hoover that the question of Oswald's motive had to be dealt with: "A matter of this magnitude cannot be investigated in a week's time." Hoover shot back with a response on the bottom of the memo, "Just how long do you estimate it will take? It seems to me we have the basic facts now." (The Man and the Secrets p548)

FBI memo from Alex Rosen: "The Secret Service has advised our Baltimore office that the photographs and X-rays of the President's body would be available to us through Secret Service headquarters, Washington...It is not recommended that we request these photographs and X-rays through the Secret Service at this time as it does not appear that we shall have need of this material." (Never Again p32)

FBI interview of Mrs. Jesse Garner, 26 Nov 1963. Mrs. Garner gave the FBI details of Ruth Paine's appearance to move Marina to Dallas, and Lee Oswald's actions after they left.

AP report (Frank Carey): Washington - No bullets were removed [from JFK] at the Dallas hospital.

James Wagenvoord, email to John Simkin (3rd November, 2009): "Beginning in later summer 1963 the magazine [LIFE], based upon information fed from Bobby Kennedy and the Justice Department, had been developing a major news break piece concerning Johnson and Bobby Baker. On publication Johnson would have been finished and off the 1964 ticket (reason the material was fed to us) and would probably have been facing prison time. At the time LIFE magazine was arguably the most important general news source in the US. The top management of Time Inc. was closely allied with the USA's various intelligence agencies and we were used after by the Kennedy Justice Department as a conduit to the public....The LBJ/Baker piece was in the final editing stages and was scheduled to break in the issue of the magazine due out the week of November 24th (the magazine would have made it to the newsstands on November 26th or 27th). It had been prepared in relative secrecy by a small special editorial team. On Kennedy's death research files and all numbered copies of the nearly print-ready draft were gathered up by my boss (he had been the top editor on the team) and shredded. The issue that was to expose LBJ instead featured the Zapruder film."

The New York Herald-Tribune reports: U.S. Customs official Oran Pugh says that Oswald had been checked by U.S. Immigration officials on entering and leaving Mexico; Pugh admits that this is not the usual procedure but that "U.S. Immigration has a folder on Oswald's trip." The Warren Report will not mention the newspaper stories in the sections which deal with Oswald's trip to Mexico City.

Washington Post editorial stated that no state or local inquiry into the assassination would be enough: "The Federal Government must prosecute this inquiry by means that assure the most objective, the most thorough and the most speedy analysis and canvass of every scrap of relevant information. The disclosures and conclusions must be so sweeping and extensive that they leave no room for the imagination of the morbid, the propaganda of the left or right, or the sheer fantasy of the irresponsible."

Washington Daily News reports that after their talk the day before, Hoover "is said to have told [LBJ] he expects to complete his investigation of both cases this week."

NYT headline: "Doctors Question Oswald's Sanity."

The Chicago Tribune, quoting a Nov. 25th report from the Mexico Newspaper, EXCELSIOR says today that Lee Harvey Oswald crossed the border at Laredo, Texas on Sept. 26 and drove to Mexico City. The United States customs service at Laredo confirms the crossing. A spokesman says,"There are records to establish this." The records also show Oswald reentered the United States on Oct. 3.

NYT: "A Mexican Government source said today that Lee H. Oswald...was in Mexico from Sept. 26 until Oct. 3 attempting without success to get visas to Cuba and the Soviet Union. There were reports here also that his movements were followed in Mexico by an unidentified United States agency. The United States Embassy here declined to confirm or deny any knowledge of the visit. A Mexican official said it was evident that Oswald wanted to leave the continent immediately. A spokesman of the Ministry of the Interior confirmed this morning a report that appeared in the morning paper Excelisior. It said Oswald crossed the Mexican border Sept. 26 and traveled by highway to Mexico City the next day. On that day he appeared at the Cuban Consulate here and applied to the then Consul General Eusabio Azcue, for a visa to Havana. According to the Government official, Mr. Azcue was suspicious of the applicant and told him he would have to apply to Havana for the visa. He said an answer would require 10 to 12 days. Mr. Azcue has since been transferred from the consulate here, but it was reported at the office that the applicant became incensed at the delay and left the consulate, slamming the door behind him. The following day the applicant appeared at the Soviet Consulate. Both the Cuban and the Soviet Consulates are in the compounds of their respective embassies. Oswald applied to an unidentified employee at the Soviet Consulate. He was told there that his application would have to be submitted to Moscow and a reply might require up to three months. Soviet Embassy officials today would neither confirm nor deny that the application had been made. But it was confirmed by the Ministry of the Interior official who asked that his name not be used. Oswald demonstrated anger at the delay, according to the report, and explained that he had lived in the Soviet Union, that his wife was Russian and their child had been born there. He offered to pay the expenses of a telephone call to his wife in New Orleans to verify the story, the report said, but the offer was declined. The Russian people thought there was something suspicious about the applicant, he acted so wild,' the Mexican official explained. Apparently Mexican secret police had observed the American from time to time but the Government official said it had not been determined where he lived during his stay in Mexico City. It has been established, he said, that he did not meet with any of the known established leftist groups while here. Oswald entered Mexico through the port of Nuevo Laredo, presenting a tourist visa.

Dallas Times Herald: "A former business associate of Jack Ruby said last night he believed Ruby killed Lee Harvey Oswald to avenge the slaying of Dallas policeman J.D. Tippit rather than President John F. Kennedy. Patriotic, he wasn't - a police buff he was,' said Herbert C. D. Kelly, chef and part owner of Ruby's Carousel Club in Dallas for more than a year starting in 1959. He visited Ruby in Dallas about a month ago, he said. I thing Ruby just got himself an impulse,' Kelly said. And operated on him (Oswald)....The only patriotism he had was for the President's picture on the buck.' Kelly described Ruby as Both extremely generous and very violent. He'd give you the shirt off his back one moment and be fighting you the next...but he was a person of extreme loyalty. And he could have been showing loyalty to the policeman Tippit....Well, his tremendous friendship with the police was of long years' standing. But it was a sincere friendship - genuine. Ruby was not out to get anything from them. He never asked anything from them. He never asked for and got any breaks from them. He just liked policemen.'"

St. Louis Post-Dispatch: "A full-scale federal investigation into the assassination of President John F. Kennedy was ordered last night by President Lyndon B. Johnson. The new Chief Executive said that all facts uncovered by the inquiry would be made public....A White House statement issued last night said that President Johnson had directed the Justice Department and the FBI to conduct a prompt and thorough investigation of all the circumstances surrounding the brutal assassination of President Kennedy and the murder of his alleged assassin.' The statement said that Johnson had directed all federal agencies to co-operate in the investigation...Reliable sources said that the timing of the Johnson directive was intended to make it clear that the federal inquiry will embrace everything,' not only the assassination of Mr. Kennedy but the wounding of Connally and the killing of Oswald. They point out that the Dallas police Department said on Sunday that the Oswald case was closed as a result of his murder. Federal officials clearly were deeply concerned about the effect of the Dallas statement, although the Police Department reversed itself and reopened the Oswald investigation."

St. Louis Post-Dispatch: "In France, the Paris Jour also speculated that no sniper could have fired three bullet as Oswald is reported to have done with a nonautomatic rifle. Combat, another Paris paper said, The character of Oswald's killer invites suspecion. It is difficult to imagine this night club owner, with his police record, committing a chivalrous murder to avenge a widow and children.'...'The killing of Oswald closed nothing except the main doorway, till then still open, the the whole truth,' said London's Daily Telegraph...The conservative London Daily Mail said that facts can be produced that a right-wing plot against the President had caused his death....the ease with which Oswald was picked up and the evidence against him made ready, his extraordinary end.'"

The Hamburg, West Germany newspaper Echo suggested that JFK's death was a "gang plot."

Columnist Richard Starnes wrote, "Our credentials as a civilized people stand suspect before the world..." (New York World-Telegram and The Sun)

A Dallas correspondent for the New York Times stated, "The known facts about the bullets, and the position of the assassin, suggested that he started shooting as the President's car was coming toward him [on Houston Street], swung his rifle in an arc of almost 180°, and fired at least twice more." This totally inaccurate account was based on information he gained from local and federal officers, who were trying to explain the entry wound in Kennedy's throat. But photos, films and witnesses from that day shot that explanation down quickly.

Dallas Times Herald: "The Communists aren't the only ones in Europe raising questions about the killing of Lee H. Oswald. Anti-Communist papers in Western Europe also voiced suspecions about the slaying...Unlike Communist propagandists, however, they did not attempt to pin the killing on a plot by rightwing extremists. Criticism of the Dallas police also was widespread....'What if Oswald was innocent?'

Vienna's independent Die Presse asked. What if he was only a victum of that spiral of panic evident among police who, after having become guilty of negligence in protecting Kennedy's life, might have been driven to find a murderer at once and at all costs and pronounced Oswald guilty. Considering the position of the Dallas police Oswald might have been the perfect culprit.'...Il Giorno of Milan critized the Dallas police, who it said showed themselves to the world in a tragic-comic sketch...and who topped off the job with their chief quietly stating that the case was closed by the assassination of the assassin.'...Because Ruby is a Jew, some Arab newspapers in Syria and Lebanon charged or implied that Zionist were to blame for Kennedy's assassination.

Al Siassa of Beirut said international Zionism had opposed Kennedy when he stood against the halting of U.S. aid to the United Arab Republic and when the United States backed the United Nations resolution supporting the right of Palestine refugees to compensation and repatriation.'"

NYT reported, "Dallas authorities were willing today [25th] to make public all the physical evidence connecting Lee H. Oswald with the murder of President Kennedy, but the revelation was postponed at the suggestion of federal officials here and in Washington. Two local authorities involved in the case, Chief of Police Jesse Curry and Dallas County District Attorney, Henry Wade, said they would like to place the evidence before the public. Both men added, however, that they would not do so if authorities in Washington wished otherwise. Justice Department sources in Washington said that when they discuss a subject of such importance as the Oswald case they must be absolutely correct. They said no pressure had been brought on officials here. They expressed confidence that all the evidence would eventually be made public. The report of the Federal Bureau of Investigation on the slaying will go first to President Johnson, who requested it. The Dallas police and Mr. Wade contend they have conclusive evidence that Oswald Killed Mr. Kennedy and wounded Gov. John B. Connally Jr. last Friday and that he murdered a Dallas policeman, J.D. Tippit shortly afterwards. Chief Curry said today in a formal statement: When the investigation in the case of Lee Harvey Oswald is completed insofar as the Dallas Police Department is concerned, we intend to make the entire file public unless federal authorities specifically request that some part be withheld and turned over. Unless we are specifically instructed otherwise from Washington, we believe it can and should become public information. At this time, we can not designate when the release will be made.'...The police have already released descriptions of pieces of evidence. Today, Mr. Wade announced that authorities had also found a marked map, showing the course of the President's motorcade, in Oswald's rented room. It was a map tracing the location of the parade route,' the district attorney said, "and this place (The Texas School Book Depository, a warehouse from which the fatal bullets were fired), was marked with a straight line.' Mr. Wade said Oswald had marked the map at two other places, apparently places which he considered as a possibility' for an assassination. He said he had not personally seen the map, and could not describe it further. The district attorney said the police had traced the serial number of the murder weapon, an Italian rifle with a telescopic sight, to a Chicago mail-order house that had sold Oswald the rifle last spring. Mr. Wade said that the Dallas Police had obtained a palm print from the rifle that matched Oswald's hand...The district attorney said today that he had no knowledge of any connection between Oswald and his assassin, Jack Ruby of Dallas....Sources in the Justice Department in Washington said that they had found no evidence of a conspiracy in the Dallas slayings."

NYT featured an interview with Spas Raikin: "He had been a member of the Marine Corps on duty with the United States Embassy in Moscow. I was under obligation to contact this man,' Mr. Raikin said yesterday in Rio Grande (Ohio where he currently taught Western civilization at Rio Grande College.) I had been paging him three or four times for one hour on the ship, because the people were not allowed to disembark. For one hour apparently this man was hiding. He did not respond to the paging.'...He and his wife, who was 20, and child had six suitcases and one bag. [Recall, if you will, the story told of OSWALD coming Stateside with seven suitcases, left NYC with five and landed in Dallas with only two. - Michael Parks]

Story in the Pompano Sun Sentinel (Florida) by James Buchanan; it reported that Oswald had been in Miami in November 1962, contacting "Miami-based supporters of Fidel Castro," had tried to infiltrate an anti-Castro group, passed out FPCC leaflets, and got into a fight with some exiles." Oswald had telephone conversations with the Cuban government G-2 Intelligence Service..." The source for the story was Frank Sturgis.

Story by Warren Bosworth in the Dallas Times Herald: "A former undercover agent for the New Orleans police" Monday night described Oswald as "a loner who frequented low class dives catering to all kinds of riff raff...I saw him a number of times in...French Quarter and Irish Channel District while working there." The man was an unpaid agent in his off-hours and had lived in Dallas for the last 18 months. "Some weeks ago he spotted Oswald's familiar face at a downtown restaurant and later at the YMCA on Ervay Street. 'I saw him several times but I did not know his name.'" He recognized Oswald on television. "'He is the same one I used to see in New Orleans. He usually stayed to himself but occasionally talked with longshoremen and others who hung around the bars and joints of the French Quarter. He almost always talked to them in Spanish.' Oswald, he said, drank moderately...'Sometimes he'd get too much under his belt and would get loud and boisterous and then take part in a Spanish dance'...The man said he never heard Oswald discuss politics. 'Of course, he was usually gabbing in Spanish and I don't understand the language.'"

The official communist newspaper, The Worker, suggested a commission headed by Earl Warren to investigate the assassination. When LBJ did this a few days later, conservatives took this as a sign that he was letting the communists dictate policy to him.

Washington Daily News reported that persons who had seen the Zapruder film "say it shows the following sequence: ...The first of three...shots appears to strike...Kennedy in the shoulder or back...Gov. Connally turns toward the right [and is struck]...Then a third shot strikes Mr. Kennedy in the head, and he lurches forward." The Boston Record American ran a more accurate description of the Z-film.

Dallas Times Herald editorial mentioned that Ruby "was well known to most Dallas policemen in the station, he had been a frequenter of the station for years..."

NYT story by Drew Middleton: "The murder of Lee H. Oswald, accused as the killer of the President, in the presence of police officers has caused many friends of the United States to question the internal stability of Europe's protector. Another effect is that a normally prudent people are at least listening to a Communist tale, spread by the party newspapers, that Oswald was eliminated as part of a plot...The Paris newspaper Le Monde devoted an entire page tonight to serious doubts' about the Dallas police and what the two killings appear to divulge about American characteristics."

NYT story by Sidney Gruson: "LONDON AWAITS PROOF THAT NO PLOT WAS BEHIND DEATHS" - "The murder of Lee Harvey Oswald...has blemished the image of the United States in Britain....there is disbelief that the sequel to the President's murder could have happened. The reaction was evident in questions put to Americans in London today, questions put with embarrassment in many cases. The questions added up to the same thing: was there a plot in which the Dallas police were involved and was lawlessness taking over in the United States?"

Dr. Kemp Clark "said in Dallas today that a bullet did much massive damage at the right rear of the President's head...A missile had (come or gone) out the back of his head, causing extensive lacerations and loss of bone tissue." (AP 11/26/1963)

Dallas Morning News reported that Asst District Attorney Bill Alexander said on Monday all leads linking Ruby to Oswald were being checked. "Wade said he also lacks evidence which would show that any Communist conspiracy was involved...Alexander said the public misinterpreted statements that 'the case was closed'...'The case against Oswald was obviously closed with his death,' Alexander said. 'You can't have a rabbit stew without a rabbit.'" But he assured the press that all efforts were being made to get to the bottom of the assassination. Alexander talked to Ruby minutes after the shooting: "He knew exactly what had happened. He talked rationally and called us by our names. I saw nothing which would indicated he had suffered a nervous or emotional collapse." The News also reported that "Alexander said Rubenstein expressed no remorse."
The paper's lead editorial that day accused "Reds" of trying to blame conservatives for the assassination: "this new Big Lie will probably succeed in many parts of Asia and Africa. With their gigantic, well-organized propaganda aparatus, the communists will probably be able to use the murder of the President by a leftist to accomplish their own devious plans...the one thing we can be sure of is the ultimate aim of the party, which has never changed: the destruction of our way of life. Our best bet is to close ranks and defy our enemy's efforts to divide us in these days of confusion and peril."

UPI reported that members of the Senate Judiciary Committee felt that a Texas investigation would not be good enough; one Republican member said, "Too many people are disturbed about the strange circumstances of the whole tragic affair."

AP reported that "the White House has so far declined to say whether an autopsy was performed on the body [of JFK]..."

UPI reported that Moscow was telling the Russian people that the assassination was the work of an "ultra-rightist plot to wreck Soviet-American relations and world peace."

[Tracy Riddle]

November 27 1963 (Wednesday)

12:30 PM LBJ's first address to a joint session of Congress emphasizes the theme of continuity in United States government. Regarding foreign policy, he declares that "this nation will keep its commitments from South Vietnam to West Berlin." He pledges continuation of foreign aid to Africa, Asia, and Latin America. In addition, he promises continued support of the United Nations by the United States. In domestic affairs, he asks Congress to enact a tax-cut bill and stresses economy in government spending. LBJ addresses a joint session of Congress: "In this age when there can be no losers in peace and no victors in war, we must recognize the obligation to match national strength with national restraint." He also pushed for civil rights: "We have talked long enough in this country about equal rights. We have talked for one hundred years or more. It is time now to write the next chapter, and to write it in the books of law...no memorial oration or eulogy could more eloquently honor President Kennedy's memory than the earliest possible passage of the civil rights bill for which he fought so long...Today, in this moment of new resolve, I would say to all my fellow Americans, let us continue." Also, "We will keep our commitments from South Vietnam to West Berlin."

Phone conversations
LBJ - Cong. Joe Kilgore, 10:27 AM
LBJ - Sen. Clinton Anderson, 10:31 AM
LBJ - George Aiken, 10:47 AM
LBJ - Nellie Connally, 1:35 PM
LBJ - Jim Haggarty, 2:04 PM
LBJ - Otis Chandler, 2:10 PM
LBJ - Dr. Frank Stanton, 2:10 PM
LBJ - Gen. David Sarnoff, 2:13 PM
LBJ - Walker Stone, 2:15 PM
LBJ - Cong. Adam Clayton Powell, 2:22PM
LBJ - J. Waddy Bullion, 2:30 PM
LBJ - Ben McElway, 2:30 PM
LBJ - Russell Wiggins, 2:31 PM
LBJ - Samuel Newhouse, 2:35 PM
LBJ - Louis Seltzer, 2:45 PM
LBJ - Gene Pulliam, 3:25 PM
LBJ - Joe Alsop, 4:01 PM
LBJ - Roscoe Drummond, 5:00 PM
LBJ - William S. White, 5:01 PM
LBJ - Gould Lincoln, 5:10 PM
LBJ - Sen. Spessard Holland, 5:13 PM
LBJ - Cong. Joe Kilgore, 5:21 PM
LBJ - Gov. Farris Bryant, 5:26 PM
LBJ - Prof. Eric Goldman, 6:35 PM
LBJ - Jus. Arthur Goldberg, 6:37 PM
LBJ - Dr. Jerome Weisner, 6:40PM
LBJ - McGeorge Bundy, 6:55 PM

2:50 PM Jackie Kennedy pays a visit to LBJ in the business end of the White House. This will be her first and last visit to see LBJ. TKAT

4:00 PM Bobby Kennedy comes by the Oval Office for his first private meeting with LBJ. Points of discussion concern Bobby's anger over the swearing-in of LBJ on Air Force One [LBJ has publicly stated that he did so at RFK's urging, which RFK denies], the delay in leaving Dallas after the assassination, and LBJ's abortive effort to use the Oval Office on Saturday. The meeting is over in twelve minutes. The two men will not see each other privately for almost two months. TKAT

Clark Clifford met with LBJ at the White House for five hours; Clifford gave LBJ the benefit of his experience with past presidents. (Exercise of Power 346)

LBJ signed a bill increasing the debt ceiling to $315 billion for the remainder of the fiscal year.

Secret Service/DPD reenactment filmed in Dealey Plaza:

The Associated Press reported in 1998 an ARRB discovery: "In an affidavit, Leonard D. Saslaw (Ph.D.), a biochemist who worked at the Armed Forces Institute of Pathology in Bethesda, Md., said that at lunch in the week following the assassination he overheard one of the autopsy doctors, Pierre Finck, complain that he had been unable to locate the handwritten notes that he had taken during the autopsy … Dr. Finck elaborated to his companions, with considerable irritation, that immediately after washing up following the autopsy, he looked for his notes, and could not find them anywhere.'" Autopsy face sheet prepared during the autopsy by Dr. Boswell. Note the presence of JFK's bloodstains on these notes. The explanation Dr. Humes gave for destroying other notes from the autopsy was that they were stained with the President's blood. The original ARRB account added that, "Dr. Saslaw's main concern with what he heard Dr. Finck say is that as a scientist, he is well aware that any observations which are not written down contemporaneously, but reconstructed from memory after the fact, are not likely to be as accurate or complete as the original observations were." The AP also reported that, "Finck told the board he couldn't recall the lunchroom conversation." Yet Finck testified to the HSCA and to the ARRB that he had taken measurements and written notes himself, and that both his notes and measurements "were turned over to Dr. Humes." Those documents have vanished. Ironically, as we will see, the explanation Humes gave for destroying the original notes to forever deny possible sensationalists access to pages bespattered with the President's blood seems dubious at best. For Humes did not destroy all of the original autopsy notes; he preserved those of his Navy assistant, J. Thornton Boswell, MD. And just like those he supposedly destroyed because of JFK's bloodstains, Boswell's notes are also adorned with JFK's blood.

At 1:00 AM this morning, according to a Dallas police memo, FBI Agent James Hosty picks up a "notebook recovered from room of Lee Harvey Oswald at 1026 No. Beckley on 11-22 from Capt. Will Fritz, along with Oswald's billfold and 16 cards and pictures, and a 6.5 rifle hull recovered at [the] Texas School Book Depository." The FBI will make a transcript of the contents of the notebook, and the Warren Commission will be provided with a copy. Two of its pages, however, the cover and a page that contains a notation concerning Hosty are retyped. (One page is removed entirely with a razor blade.) The Hosty notation is deleted from the retyped page -- and is the only deletion from the transcript. The original notation reads as follows:
Oct. Nov. 1, 1963
FBI agent (RI-11211)
James P. Hosty
MU 8605
1114 Commerce St. Dallas

A Dallas grand jury today indicts Jack Ruby for the murder of Lee Harvey Oswald.

Joseph Milteer is arrested by the FBI near his Valdosta, Georgia home and then released after vigorous denial of having made any threat against the President. (Milteer was tape recorded on Nov. 9th by FBI informant William Somersett.)

FBI agents Sibert and O'Neill interview Secret Service agents Kellerman, Greer, and Gerald Behn at the White House.

Gilberto Policarpo Lopez flies to Havana, Cuba from Mexico City. The flight (#465) carries a crew of nine. Policarpo is the only passenger. The HSCA will later conclude: " Lopez' association with the Fair Play for Cuba Committee, however, coupled with the facts that the dates of his travel to Mexico via Texas coincide with the assassination, plus the reports in Mexico that Lopez' activities were "suspicious," all amount to a troublesome circumstance that the committee was unable to resolve with confidence." (HSCA)

For the Thanksgiving holiday, RFK and his family remain at Hickory Hill. Bobby has a private conversation with Walter Sheridan (who has been invited to RFK's home). RFK wants to know what Sheridan has found out about Jimmy Hoffa's possible involvement in JFK's assassination. Sheridan suspects that Hoffa was involved. "I remember telling him what Hoffa had said when John Kennedy was killed...I didn't want to tell him, but he made me tell him...Hoffa was down in Miami in some restaurant when the word came of the assassination, and he got up on the table and cheered. At least that's what we heard." RFK wants Sheridan to fly to Dallas and make some private inquiries. He also wants Sheridan to check to see what Marina Oswald really knows about it all. Over the weekend, RFK takes his family to the Kennedy compound in Palm Beach. (Brothers)

Also on this day, the FBI begins conducting an initial series of rifle tests with the alleged assassination weapon. The FBI has three master marksmen, using Lee Harvey Oswald's rifle, rapidly firing a series of 3 shots at STATIONARY targets located only 45 feet away. The three experts each fire 3 shots within 9 seconds, 8 seconds and 6 seconds, respectively. In this test none of the marksmen are physically capable of firing the three rounds within the 5.6 second requirement. Also, all of the marksmen's shots were high and to the right, missing the stationary targets located only 45 feet away.

A copy of the Zapruder film is received at FBI headquarters in Washington, D.C., today. It is held until December 4, when it is returned to the Secret Service in Dallas.

A Miami Secret Service informant today tells Special Agent Ernest Aragon that if the assassination involved an international plot in which Castro had participated, then Castro's agent in the plot would have been Machado, a well-known terrorist. There are rumors in the Miami Cuban community that Machado had been assigned to escort Oswald from Texas to Cuba after the assassination. The plan went awry, the report continues, because Oswald had not been wearing clothing of a prearranged color and because of the shooting of Dallas Patrolman J.D. Tippit. The reports on Machado, along with other suspicions of Castro complicity in the assassination, are forwarded only in brief summary form by the Secret Service to the Warren Commission. The committee will find no record of follow-up action. (HSCA)

Memo from FBI headquarters to its office in Mexico City, today states: "If tapes covering any contacts subject (Oswald) with Soviet or Cuban embassies available, forward to bureau for laboratory examination and analysis together with transcript. Include tapes previously reviewed Dallas if they were returned to you.''

In the House of Representatives, Congressman Charles Goodell (R-NY) proposed a joint committee of both houses investigate the assassination. By this date, Senator Everett M. Dirksen has proposed a Senate Judiciary Committee investigation and Representative Charles E. Goodell has proposed a join Senate-House investigation. Also, Texas Attorney General Waggoner Carr has announed that a state court of inquiry will be established. LBJ will agree to the idea of a Comission no later than Nov. 28. It appears that the idea of a Presidential commission to report on the assassination of JFK was first suggested by Eugene Rostow, Dean of the Yale Law School, in a telephone call to LFJ aide Bill Moyers during the afternoon of Nov. 24th. In less than two and a half hours following OSWALD's death, Rostow thought about and discussed with at least one other person the idea of a commission. He has also had one or more phone conversations with Katzenbach about this. TA

FBI agents Sibert and O'Neil went to the White House to formally interview just three of the nearly fifty WHD SS agents: SAIC Gerald Behn, ASAIC Roy Kellerman, and Bill Greer. In a strange departure from routine procedures when interviewing fellow government agents, the FBI men record Greer's complete physical description: age, height, color of eyes, etc. Was Greer a target of FBI suspicion?

2:10 PM (EST) LBJ phone call with Otis Chandler (transcript released Sep 1993)
Chandler: …and how are you feeling?
LBJ: Couldn't be better. Couldn't be better.
Chandler: I was awfully worried that first report you'd had another little heart flutter there…right after the President was assassinated.
LBJ: Not at all. I never had…all they did was put me on the bottom of the car…face down…and some reporter, I guess, saw me with my hand…and they were pretty excited about that time…but I never felt better in my life…and I was up till 2:30 this morning on that speech.

The Dallas Police Department obtained 455 items of evidence belonging to Lee Oswald from 1026 North Beckley and 2313 West 5th in Irving, Texas on November 22-23, 1963. DPD Officer Paul McCaghren photographed those items on November 24-25, 1963, using five rolls of Kodak High Contrast Copy film. Special Agent Warren deBrueys took possession of the undeveloped film as well as physical possession of the 455 items on November 26, 1963. SA Warren deBrueys took the film and the 455 items to Washington, D.C. on November 27. The FBI copied the film given to them by the DPD. On December 2, 1963, the FBI returned not five but two rolls of copied film to the DPD. Of the 455 items photographed by the DPD, only 167 items appeared on the film that was returned to the DPD by the FBI. There were 288 items missing from the developed film. The FBI had the physical evidence and the original film. The DPD was left with copies of two rolls of film containing less than half of the items they had photographed. On December 3, 1963, DPD Chief Curry wrote to Gordon Shanklin informing him that "items #164 thru #360 did not record."

Henry Wade told the press "he did not believe the story of....Ruby that he had killed...Oswald to avenge the assassination of President Kennedy. 'It...may have involved something far deeper...Our law enforcement agencies are still checking to determine if links exist between Oswald and Ruby...'"

This night Castro, in a TV and radio address, charged that US reactionaries had killed JFK and tried to implicate Cuba. "How strange! Why go to Mexico to request a visa to Russia by way of Cuba? Ideal to make the American people believe the assassin had been an agent of Cuba and the Soviet Union." He felt that Oswald was deliberately laying a trail of clues. "Those guilty of Kennedy's death wanted at all costs to eliminate the accused to keep him from talking." He found it strange that a rifle was used rather than the usual "revolvers, pistols, hand grenades, etc." Castro said that Oswald had made a "provocative statement" when he went to the Embassy. (Dallas Times Herald 11/28/1963)

Also today, Havana accused Mexico of being part of a "reactionary plot" to link Castro to the assassination. This had to do with the arrest of Silvia Duran "last Saturday for questioning about a visa application by Lee H. Oswald...The Cuban protest charged that the Mexican police had used coercion and brutality' in questioning Mrs. Duran before releasing her the same night. It said the Cuban Government considered the arrest a flagrant complicity by members of the Mexican police and those who perfidiously intended to involve the fatherland with the dirty crime.' Manuel Tello, the Mexican Foreign Minister, who came here to attend Mr. Kennedy's funeral, appeared surprised and irritated when he was read the text of the Cuban note. He decline to comment." (NYT 11/28) "Premier Castro believed President Kennedy could have solved the explosive situation in Lain America, a French newsman, Jean Daniel, said today. Mr. Daniel was with Dr. Castro at his country home at Varadero when the news of President Kennedy's assassination was announced. Mr. Daniel said Dr. Castro thought Mr. Kennedy could have become the greatest President in the history of the United States if he had solved the political and economic crises in Latin America." (NYT 11/28)

Gov. Connally was interviewed by Martin Agronsky of NBC news:
Q. Governor Connally, what are your recollections of those fateful moments when you and President Kennedy were shot? A...We just turned the corner, we heard a shot, I turned to my left, and the President had slumped. He said nothing. As I turned, I was hit and I know I had been hit badly. I knew the President had been hit and I said, ""My God, they are going to kill us all."" Then there was a third shot and the President was hit again. When he was hit, she said, ""Oh, my God, they have killed my husband - Jack, Jack."" After the third shot, the next thing that occurred - the Secret Service said, ""get out of here and get to the hospital."" Q. What other reflections have you had, Governor? A. Only that maybe, Martin, the President of the United States, as a result of this great tragedy, has been asked to do something in death that he could not do in life, that is to so shock and so stun the nation, the people and the world of what is happening to us, of the cancerous growth that is being permitted to expand and enlarge upon the world and the society in which we live, that breeds hatred and bigotry, and intolerance, indifference and lawlessness, and is an outward manifestation of what occurred in Dallas, which could have occurred in any other city in America."

Adm. George G Burkley composes a statement which later becomes CE 1126.

On the orders of Bouck, SS agent James Fox and Kennedy's personal photographer Robert Knudsen take the autopsy film to the Naval Processing Center in Anacostia, MD for processing by Lt. V. Madonia.

Because an unauthorized person had used SS credentials on the day of the assassination, all Special Agents were then required to surrender their Commission Book (ID documents) for an unprecedented service-wide check. (According to Abraham Bolden, in Citizen's Dissent 193)

Silvia Duran was arrested again for more questioning.

This afternoon, Hosty, agent Charlie Brown, SS interpreter Leon Gopadze, SS agent Max Phillips and an INS official interviewed Marina at the Six Flags hotel. Marguerite had been taken out shopping. Hosty was angry when the INS official assured Marina she would not be deported; Hosty wanted to use this as leverage to make her talk. Marina was short-tempered and not willing to talk. Hosty found out that four men whom they had assumed were SS agents guarding the Oswalds were actually off-duty Fort Worth firemen. (Assignment Oswald)

FBI interview of Carlos Bringuier, 27 Nov 1963. This interview contains Bringuier's curious statement that Oswald had warned Bringuier that "we can infiltrate you."

FBI interview of Dean Andrews, 27 Nov 1963. Andrews told the FBI he had been under "heavy sedation" when Bertrand contacted him, and this idea was subsequently used to discredit Andrews' story.

FBI rifle tests with the Carcano; Robert Frazier, Cortlandt Cunningham and Charles Killion each fired three shots at a silhouette target 15 yards away to see how fast the rifle could be fired. It took between six and nine seconds to fire the three shots; Frazier then did a test firing two series of three shots at a target 25 yards away. He did this in 4.6 and 4.8 seconds; this was done primarily to see how fast the weapon could be fired. (Frazier testimony)

FBI interview of David Ferrie, 27 Nov 1963. Ferrie was questioned about anti-Kennedy statements and about whether his library card had ever been loaned to Oswald.
Dave Ferrie told the FBI that he didn't know Oswald in the CAP. (FBI report #89-69-682, interviewed by agents Ernest C. Wall Jr. and Theodore R. Viater.) Posner says that Ferrie showed them his library card during that interview; the FBI also found that his single-engine four-passenger monoplane had not been airworthy since 1962. Posner also says that CAP records show that Ferrie was a member through 1954, but was ousted because he giving political lectures to the cadets. He was reinstated 12/1958. Apparently the HSCA did not see these records. (Case Closed p143) He told the agents that he had never loaned his library card to Oswald and never taught anyone how to use a telescopic sight. He didn't deny knowing Oswald "in the Civil Air Patrol or in any business or social capacity." Ferrie told them he had "no recollection of knowing or having met" Oswald. He admitted being very angry with JFK over the Bay of Pigs, but denied ever plotting to kill him. "He said he had also been critical of any president riding in an open car and had made the statement that anyone could hide in the bushes and shoot a president. Ferrie also advised that he has been accused of being a worshipper of President Kennedy because he is a liberal and strongly believes in President Kennedy's Civil Rights program and fiscal program." (Oswald in New Orleans 184) When he was first interrogated he told authorities, without being asked, that he didn't know how Oswald had got hold of his library card. "Ferrie was asked to step down just before Oswald joined that particular CAP group, but Ferrie remained close to it and was in contact with Oswald." (LIVINGSTONE 505) "They [FBI] have a large file on him. They 'investigated' him, if only because it was made unavoidable when Jim Garrison arrested him on November 25, 1963." Declassified documents falsely claim that Garrison charged Ferrie with being the "get-away pilot": "They say this not from what Garrison told the FBI (of which there is not a whisper in any of the not-suppressed documents) but because this same David William Ferrie immediately took over direction of the so-called 'investigation' of himself and, knowing to be untrue, with federal-agent complicity, made it the charge against him!" (Post Mortem 3-4) Weisberg points out that though he had been arrested after the assassination and investigated by the FBI, there is not one mention of him in the WR. Garrison was never given a copy of the FBI's report of their interrogation of Ferrie. (Oswald In New Orleans 168)

FBI memo from Courtney Evans to Belmont: "Katzenbach said he had learned on an extremely confidential basis that Abe Fortas...had been in touch with President Johnson and had argued against the idea of having a Presidential Commission look into the Kennedy assassination. Fortas' argument to Johnson was that for the President to announce such a commission would merely suggest that there was evidence of something other than Oswald alone killing Kennedy and thus build up public speculation. Fortas' second argument was that the formation of such a commission would cause a reflection on the FBI. Fortas, of course, is no friend of the Bureau and there would appear to be some obvious underhand motive in his using us in his argument, although we do not know what this is." Hoover added to the memo, "Certainly something sinister here." (Never Again p22)

Winston Scott memo to Clark D. Anderson (legal attache) about 7 telephone wiretaps involving Oswald in Mexico City. These included a 9/27/1963 call to the Soviet Embassy at 1037 hours; Silvia Duran call to Soviet Embassy 9/27 at 1605 hours; call from man at Cuban Embassy to Soviet 9/27 at 1626 hours, asking for Duran; call to Soviet from Duran 9/28 at 1151 hours; call from man speaking broken Russian to Soviet Military Attache 10/1 at 1031 hours; Oswald call to Soviet 10/1 at 1035 hours; caller, probably not Oswald, to Soviet Embassy (military attache) 10/3 at 1539 hours requesting a visa. (declassified 1995; Assignment Oswald 292)

The day following the Hoover-McCone conversation, CIA HQ sent a cable down to the Mexico City station, alerting them to Hoover's revelation. DIR 85245 of November 27 suggests that Silvia Duran's statements be used instead of the LIENVOY take, to avoid compromising the operation, and then goes on to discuss the problem of where the FBI is getting its information. In the following cable standard CIA-speak applies, so "KUBARK" refers to the CIA and "ODENVY" is the FBI.
2. PLS NOTE THAT DIRECTOR ODENVY IS GETTING FROM ODENVY MEXI MUCH INFO WHICH OBVIOUSLY ORIGINATES WITH THE LIENVOY OPERATION. ODENVY HERE APPARENTLY DOES NOT REALIZE THAT THIS INFO WAS PRODUCED BY A KUBARK OPERATION, AND INDEED, ODENVY MAY BE GETTING THIS LIENVOY INFO THRU ITS OWN CLANDESTINE SOURCES [ **************** ] OR EVEN IN THE [ ************ ]. PLS TRY TO CLARIFY WITH ODENVY REP THERE THE EXACT MANNER IN WHICH HE HAS OBTAINED SUCH INFO AND THE FORM IN WHICH HE HAS SENT IT TO ODENVY HQ. WE MUST AVOID THE INADVERTENT COMPROMISE OF LIENVOY. [DIR 85245 of 11-27-63, at RIF #104-10404-10162]

FBI interview of David Magyar, 27 Nov 1963. Magyar was an acquaintance of Ferrie and knew of Ferrie's involvement the Civil Air Patrol. He named George Piazza as one of Ferrie's "best friends"; Weisberg points out that Piazza was killed in a plane crash early in the Garrison investigation.

FBI Interview of Jack S. Martin 11/27/1963
by SAs L.M. SHEARER, JR. and REGIS L. KENNEDY
at New Orleans, La.
JACK S. MARTIN, 1311 North Prieur Street, New Orleans, advised that he has never heard DAVID FERRIE make a statement that President KENNEDY should be killed, or outline a means by which he could be killed. MARTIN stated he had never made a statement to anyone regarding this allegation.
He advised that over several years association with FERRIE, he has heard him state the Deputy Sheriffs in Jefferson Parish who had charged him (FERRIE) with a Crime against Nature offense, should be killed. His remarks were made in general conversation several years ago. MARTIN stated he had never repeated these comments to anyone.
MARTIN advised he had several phone discussions with HARDY DAVIS, a bail bondsman . . . regarding a television program which mentioned the possibility that DAVID FERRIE was associated with LEE HARVEY OSWALD in the Civil Air Patrol, and MARTIN and DAVIS may have come to the conclusion the OSWALD had used or carried FERRIE's library card. He advised he had three telephone conversations with Assistant District Attorney HERMAN KOHLMAN, New Orleans, on Saturday, November 23, 1963, in which he told KOHLMAN that FERRIE had guns similar to the type used to kill President KENNEDY that had appeared on television, and further informed KOHLMAN that HARDY DAVIS had told him FERRIE possessed Cuban propaganda literature that he kept in attorney G. WRAY GILL's office in New Orleans, but GILL made FERRIE move it approximately a year ago. MARTIN said DAVIS claimed it was Fair Play for Cuba Committee literature but MARTIN did not believe it, because he knew FERRIE was active with the Cuban Front Group that was anti-Castro. MARTIN stated he is acquainted with the leaders of the anti-Castro group that were in New Orleans before the Bay of Pigs Invasion, and was aware that FERRIE was also involved with this group. MARTIN advised he talked with JERRY PHILIP STEIN to obtain the phone number of KOHLMAN, who had recently married and obtained a new phone number, and that STEIN was the former roommate of KOHLMAN.
MARTIN admitted he had talked with STEIN about FERRIE, but did not recall specifically what information he furnished STEIN.
MARTIN advised he called television station WWL, New Orleans, and told them they should contact Major PRESLEY J. TROSCLAIR of the New Orleans Police Department, who was investigating FERRIE's connection with the shooting of President KENNEDY. He made this call immediately after he had called TROSCLAIR and furnished him with his suspicions regarding FERRIE, based on his personal knowledge of FERRIE and his observation of WWL-TV programs of the background of OSWALD.
MARTIN advised he received information from HARDY DAVIS that FERRIE was out of town and suspected FERRIE had gone to Texas. MARTIN made this information available to Assistant District Attorney KOHLMAN.
MARTIN further stated he considered FERRIE to be a completely degenerate person and it was his opinion that FERRIE is capable of any crime. If was for this reason that MARTIN suspected FERRIE of being involved in the killing of President KENNEDY.
MARTIN advised that he considered the possibility that FERRIE had taught OSWALD to shoot a rifle and use a telescopic sight, in that he knew FERRIE taught military training to Civil Air Patrol Cadets and OSWALD was a Civil Air Patrol member. MARTIN insisted he told no one FERRIE had flown OSWALD to Dallas, Texas.

WINNIPEG FREE PRESS, WEDNESDAY, NOVEMBER 27, 1963: LOS ANGELES (Special-TPNS) The FBI refused Tuesday to confirm, or deny whether it is investigating a mysterious telephone call from nearby Oxnard, California, that predicted President Kennedy's assassination 15 minutes before he was shot. A.spokesman for the FBI here, asked specifically if an investigation is under way, answered "no comment."

AP/UPI: Dallas -- In story on controversy whether one gunman could have fired three shots so quickly, various opinions are quoted and projected against a 15-second film strip which shows some of the action both before a and after the series of shots. Paraphrase: Dr. Kemp Clark, Parkland Hospital brain surgeon who worked on JFK, said the bullet hole in the right rear of the President's head had done such massive damage that physicians could not tell whether it had entered or come out of the head at that point. Dr. Clark said again yesterday that he was unable to say whether the wound in the President's neck below the Adam's apple was due to the same bullet which had coursed through the President's brain. He said there could have been two bullets. On Friday after the death, Secret Service operatives picked up a bullet from the President's stretcher. Dallas police officials said that it matched fragments in the Presidential car and constituted one of their firmest pieces of evidence that it had been fired by the rifle traced to Oswald by them. San Francisco Chronicle, AP and UPI

New York Times, John Herbers: Dallas, Nov. 26 - Dr. Kemp Clark ... said one struck him at about the necktie knot. "It ranged downward in his chest and did not exit," the surgeon said. The second he called a "tangential wound" caused by a bullet that struck the "right back of his head." … Since one bullet did not exit it is presumed that the bullet that struck the President's head was the one recovered from the stretcher that bore the President into the hospital. A third bullet was found in fragments in the car and is presumed by official sources to be the one that coursed through the body of Gov. Connally. … The known facts about the bullets, and the position of the assassin, suggested that he started shooting as the President's car was coming toward him, swung his rifle in an arc of almost 180 degrees and fired at least twice more. A strip of color movie film taken by a Dallas clothing manufacturer ... tends to support this sequence of events. The film covers about a 15-second period. As the President's car comes abreast of the photographer, the President was struck in the front of the neck. The President turned toward Mrs. Kennedy as she began to put her hands around his head. At the same time, Governor Connally, riding in front of the President, turned to see what had happened. Then the President was struck on the head. His head went forward, then snapped back, as he slumped in his seat. At that time, Governor Connally was wounded. … A hospital spokesman said the medical record of President Kennedy's assassination, written in longhand by Dr. Clark, chief of neurosurgery at Parkland, had been given to the Secret Service and the hospital had no copy. The hospital expects the Secret Service to return it eventually.

The New York Herald Tribune reported: "On the basis of accumulated data, investigators have concluded that the first shot, fired as the Presidential car was approaching [the TSBD], struck the President in the neck just above the knot of his necktie, then ranged downward into his body." This story fell apart when it became apparent that the shooting didn't begin that early.

NYT "TRAIL OF OSWALD IN MEXICO VAGUE. The trail in Mexico of Lee Harvey Oswald...seems to end in a series of unresolved questions. Oswald was in Mexico between Sept. 26 and Oct. 3. While here he applied under his own name for visas both to Cuba and to the Soviet Union. It has been established, however, that his activities in Mexico came to the attention of authorities only after his arrest on Nov. 22...Mexican and American investigative authorities here admitted that they were at a loss as to how to uncover further information concerning Oswald's residence during his stay here or any sustained accounts of his movements. They were inclined today to discount Mexican immigration reports that Oswald entered the country in a United States sailor's uniform and in the company of two women and a man. Raul Luebano, Mexican immigration agent at the Nuevo Larado port-of-entry, said today that his memory of Oswald's entrance into Mexico on Sept. 26 was reconstructed following the events in Dallas. He said he had communicated his recollections of Oswald to the United States consulate in Nuevo Larado. A United States consular official at Nuevo Larado said he had sent all his information to the United States Embassy in Mexico City. He indicated that little credence could be attached to the possibility that Oswald had entered Mexico in a sailor's uniform. He also said that the report that Oswald had entered in the company of two women and a man was very vague.' All information available indicated that Oswald, after having abandoned his attempts to obtain visas to Cuba and Russia, conducted himself more or less as a tourist. He entered the country with a 15-day tourist permit."

Paris Jour carried a front-page article, "Oswald Cannot Have Been Alone in the Shooting." Paris Presse reported that the FBI had evidence that a second man fired with Oswald from the TSBD.

A drawing published today in the Chicago Daily News depicts JFK turning around to receive a bullet in his throat from the rear.

Houston Chronicle: "The Department of Public Safety knew Lee Harvey Oswald's communist background and maintained an extensive file on him, but did not know he was in Dallas at the time of the President's visit. Col. Homer Garrison, DPS director, said his intelligence agents began compiling a file on Oswald shortly after his return to Texas in 1962 from Russia. The last entry in the file, made last summer, shows Oswald, the accused slayer of President Kennedy, as living in New Orleans, his birthplace....' Had we known Oswald was back in Texas and living in the Ft. Worth - Dallas area, we would certainly have notified the police and federal agents, and would have kept him under surveillance ourselves,' Garrison said. Gordon Shanklin, FBI agent in charge here, would not comment on whether the FBI knew Oswald was in Dallas...'I will say we did not interview him in Dallas prior to the President's visit,' Shanklin said. He would not comment on whether the FBI had questioned Oswald elsewhere. Garrison said: Oswald's file contains pretty complete information on him. We were pretty well abreast of his attempt to defect to Russia, his activities in the United States since his return and his activities in New Orleans. He went to New Orleans from Ft. Worth. Nothing in his file, however, indicated he was a violent man who would stoop to assassination.' Garrison said his intelligence agents keep tabs on every known or suspected Communist in the state. His men always turn over to the FBI information on Communists, but the FBI doesn't do the same for the DPS, Garrison said. He has offered the help of the Texas Rangers and DPS agents in the investigation, Garrison said. But so far, we have not been asked to participate, to my knowledge.'"

AP reported that the White House would not confirm if an autopsy had been done, though they stated that JFK's body was at Bethesda "For approximately nine hours."

The NY Times' managing editor, Turner Catledge, apologized for the paper constantly calling Oswald the assassin rather than the "accused" or "alleged" assassin.

[Tracy Riddle]

November 28 (Thursday)

Phone conversations:
LBJ - Sen. James Eastland, 3:00 PM
LBJ - Sen. James Eastland, 3:21 PM
Senator Eastland, Judiciary Committee Chairman, agreed in this call to drop committee hearings, in favor of the President's Commission.
LBJ - Lou Deschler, 3:40 PM
LBJ - Gov. Frank Clement, 6:30 PM

Marina gives her first real interview to the FBI (SAs Wallace Heitman and Anatole Boguslav). Marguerite Oswald is released from protective custody. Prior to that date Marina was shielded and interviewed only by DPD (first days) and the Secret Service.

"Friends of the Attorney General" said he wasn't even thinking about what he would do with his future, but "he has developed the highest high regard for Johnson because of the hard work and loyalty the Texan gave Kennedy while vice president." (AP)

Statement by Texas Highway Patrolman Hurchel Jacks: "We were assigned by the Secret Service to prevent any pictures of any nature to be taken of the President's car on the inside."

In an interview with the FBI today, Sheriff Decker basically declines to discuss the assassination further.

FBI report on activities of David Ferrie, 28 Nov 1963. This report and those on successive pages focus on the "goose hunting" trip to Texas Ferrie and three companions made in a rainstorm late in the evening after the JFK assassination. They spent a few hours on Nov 23 at an ice-skating rink in Houston, where Ferrie made several phone calls.

Marguerite Oswald (being held by the Secret Service in the Inn of the Six Flags several miles outside of Dallas) is released today from custody after making repeated demands for freedom and threatening to secure legal counsel. She wants to say goodbye to Marina and her grandchildren, but the federal authorities prevent her. An interpreter from the Secret Service comes to Marina's motel room door and tells Marguerite: "We are interviewing her, and she is on tape. She will get in touch with you." "So I never saw Marina after that time," Marguerite says.

Silvia Odio confides to her friend, Lucille Connell, that she knew OSWALD from meetings of Cuban exiles, and considered him brilliant and clever. She had learned from a source in New Orleans that OSWALD should not be trusted -- that he was probably trying to infiltrate Cuban groups in Dallas as a "double agent." Odio also tells the same thing to her psychiatrist, Dr. Burton Einspruch. Connell contacts the FBI and passes along Odio's story to them.

Gilberto Alvarado is being held at a CIA safe house in Mexico City, where he is undergoing intensive interrogation in collaboration with the FBI. Alvarado has claimed that he was inside the Cuban consulate when OSWALD visited, and has said he personally saw a Cuban official give Oswald $6500.00 in cash on September 18. There is considerable doubt about his allegation, because the FBI says it can prove Oswald was in New Orleans on September 18. TKAT

The Secret Service reports today that three shots were fired - the first hit the President, the second hit Governor John Connally of Texas, and the third struck the President. There were no other shots according to the Secret Service.

At 3:21 PM today, LBJ calls Senator James Q. Eastland, a Mississippi Democrat, to get his cooperation in shutting down a proposal for a Senate committee hearing which will produce a record of the fact surrounding the assassination. LBJ's initiative will prove successful.

LBJ, in a Thanksgiving Day message, called for a "new American greatness" to arise in JFK's memory. Johnson announces that the Space Center at Cape Canaveral, Florida, will be renamed the John F. Kennedy Space Center (better known as Cape Kennedy). Residents voted in 1973 to change the name back to Cape Canaveral.

Ambassador to Mexico Thomas Mann (a conservative Texan who helped plan the Bay of Pigs) cabled Dean Rusk, "In reading Oswald's rather complete dossier...I did not get an impression of a man would would kill a person he had never met for a cause, without offers from the apparatus to which he apparently belonged, when there was nothing in it for him." He suggested Havana as a likely suspect. "Castro is the kind of person who would avenge himself in this way. He is the Latin type of extremist who reacts viscerally rather than intellectually..." (Conspiracy 441)

In a Teletype to the Director and the Dallas office dated today, the New Orleans FBI office reports that the investigation of Jack S. Martin's allegations is being concluded and notes that "all allegations against [David] Ferrie stem from Jack S. Martin who was previously confined to the psychiatric ward of Charity Hospital, New Orleans, for character disorder. Martin is well known to New Orleans office and is considered thoroughly unreliable." This Teletype also sets forth additional information obtained during a second interview with Ferrie from earlier today. In it, Ferrie has again denied that he has ever had any contact with Oswald. The FBI report of the interview notes, however:
David William Ferrie reinterviewed today and advised at time of Bay of Pigs invasion of Cuba he was very much embarrassed and concerned over lack of air cover provided and severely criticized President Kennedy, both in public and private. Ferrie stated he has never made any statement that President Kennedy should be killed with any intention to do so and has never at any time outlined any plan or made any statement how this could be done or who should do it. Ferrie said he is very outspoken and may have used an offhand or colloquial expression, "He ought to be shot" in expressing his feelings concerning Cuban situation. Ferrie said he has also been critical of any President riding in open car and has stated anyone could hide in the bushes and shoot a President.
(House Select Committee Hearings Vol. IX, 106; FBI airtel from New Orleans to Director and Dallas office, Nov. 28, 1963, David W. Ferrie file.)

The FBI and Secret Service investigation into the possibility that Oswald and Ferrie had been associated in the Civil Air Patrol comes to an end a few days after the allegations are reported. A Secret Service report concludes that "information furnished by Jack S. Martin to the effect that David William Ferrie associated with Lee Harvey Oswald at New Orleans and trained Oswald in the use of a rifle" was "without foundation." It states further that "Jack S. Martin, who has the appearance of being an alcoholic, has the reputation of furnishing incorrect information to law enforcement officers, attorneys, etc."

Richard Helms sent a cable to CIA station chief Winston Scott in Mexico City: "For your private information, there is distinct feeling here in all three agencies [CIA, FBI and State] that Ambassador [Mann] is pushing this case too hard...and that we could well create flap with Cubans which could have serious repercussions."

Cable sent from the Mexico City CIA station to headquarters on November 28, 1963.
[ ********** ] REPORTED 27 NOV AFTER SYLVIA DURAN FIRST ARREST WAS PUBLIC KNOWLEDGE THAT THERE GREAT DEAL DISCUSSION OF THIS IN EMBASSY. SHE BACK IN OFFICE 25 NOV AND SEEMED QUITE PLEASED WITH HER PERFORMANCE. HER ACCOUNT INTERROGATION CONTAINED LITTLE NEW EXCEPT POLICE HAD THREATENED HER WITH EXTRADITION TO U.S. TO FACE OSWALD. SHE HAD NO FEAR OF CONFRONTATION. [ ******** ] DESCRIBES HER AS VERY INTELLIGENT AND QUICK-WITTED.
OF ASSASSINATION ITSELF [ ********* ] SAID THERE ALMOST NO DISCUSSION IN EMBASSY. STAFF MEETING 23 NOV VERY SHORT AND SOMBER WITH GENERAL IMPRESSION BEING ONE OF SHOCK AND DISBELIEF. HEARD NO EXPRESSIONS OF PLEASURE.
[ *********** ] SEEN NIGHT 27 NOV HAD NOTHING TO ADD TO ABOVE. INDEED HER VERSION MUCH LESS DETAILED. NEITHER [ ****** ] NOR [ ******** ] HAD ANY PERSONAL KNOWLEDGE OSWALD PRESENCE CUBAN EMBASSY AT ANY TIME. [MEXI 7115 of 11-28-63, at RIF #104-10404-10159]
The report above clearly comes from human informants inside the Cuban Embassy. This cable and others [see also MEXI 7615 of 1-2-64, at RIF #104-10404-10130] show that there were two informants, one male and one female, who worked there. Their identities are not revealed, at least in these cables of the days following the assassination, where their identities are redacted.

NYT reported that French press had trouble believing that Oswald acted alone. "Questions asked in the street were: Who was really responsible for the assassination? Is this a secret organization opposing desegregation behind it all?'...The part played by Jack Ruby, the night-club operator charged with killing Oswald, also seems strange to French newspapers."

The conservative French newspaper, Le Figaro, charged Dallas authorities and federal agencies investigating the assassination with "contradictions, obscurities, intentional omissions and deliberate lies."

Oswald Planned to Ride by Scene, taken from the Dallas Morning News, 11/28/63.
Oswald was reported in a used furniture store that occupies a tall, weather-beaten green frame building at 413 E. Jefferson. About the same time, spectators at a service station further west up the street saw him run into a vacant lot, where police say the killer discarded his newly acquired jacket and three pistol shells. Then followed a chase in and out of alleyways in the Jefferson - Beckley - Cumberland - Zang area. About 1:45 p.m. Julie Postal, cashier at the Texas Theater at 231 W. Jefferson saw a hurrying stranger rush past her into the theater. To this day, she can't recall whether or not he bought a ticket. "I was so upset listening to the radio about the President and all," she said. (Brewer rushed up, Postal called the police and the story continues): The cashier immediately called police - who had just sped en masse to a false alarm at the Dallas Library branch on Jefferson, further to the east. The police sirens wailed again.
Oddly enough, it was at the library that McWatters - bus driver who, unknowingly, had Oswald as a passenger earlier - had his second brush with fate. His bus pulled up at the intersection as a swarm of 10 or 15 police cars zeroed in on the library. "I couldn't imagine what was going on," McWatters said. "Little did I know!"
Police went in the Texas Theater to the machine-gunning clatter of a movie called "War Is Hell." They found their man hiding in a middle-section seat. Three officers dragged him to a waiting unmarked car where two others had the motor gunning. Fifteen minutes later, the assassin of President Kennedy was safe in a jail cell.

NYT reported, "An unskilled occupation from which he was dismissed for incompetence accounted for about 5 months of Lee H. Oswald's time in Dallas last fall and winter. His pay was about $50 a week...A downtown graphic arts concern hired Oswald last October. He had been referred by the State Employment Commission. He was given a discharge notice late last March and his employment ended in early April. His employer, who said he preferred not to be identified, said Oswald had been hired as a trainee...He didn't show any competence or hope of developing competence,' he said. Oswald's job was to develop photostatic prints, described by the employer as an unskilled occupation.' Oswald seemed to have trouble with the exact size called for, the employer said. He said Oswald told him he had just been discharged from the Marine Corps, in which he won a Good Conduct Metal. The employer did not check on that. Actually, Oswald had been discharged three years earlier. The employer said he believed Oswald had been paid about $1.45 an hour and occasionally might have worked more than 40 hours a week....Published reports that Oswald was dismissed for Communist leanings are not true, the employer declared. A fellow worker had reported seeing Oswald carrying a Communist newspaper. However, the employer said, he took no significant notice of that. Oswald, he said, came to work on time, returned to work from lunch on time and, was so remote that nobody had any feelings about him."

NYT on the SS reenactment in Dealey Plaza: "The purpose was 'to test whether it could be done the way we believe it was done' an official source said. There were many witnesses to the re-enactment and almost as many versions of it, the source said. The consensus was that the shooting began after the President's car had made the turn from Houston Street into Elm Street. That was confirmed late today [27th] by Governor John B. Connally Jr., who was wounded in the shooting, at a news conference at the hospital. No results of the test were announced."

Walter Lippmann wrote, "The first need of the country is to take to heart the nature of this unspeakable crime...there is a searing internal crisis within the American spirit which we have first to realize and then to resolve." (NYT)

Houston Chronicle reported: "Oswald, who had been interviewed by the FBI only six days before [the assassination], became important to the police only after he missed an employee roll call soon afterwards. 'He was the only one who couldn't be accounted for,' Detective Capt. Pat Gannaway said. The taxi driver who took Oswald to the rooming house has not been found, or authorities have not disclosed his name....Witnesses - there were plenty of them - said Tippit stopped a bushy-haired man about 30, wearing a white cotton jacket. This didn't sound like Oswald, but several witnesses later confirmed that he was the man...An elevator operator said Oswald carried the package to the deserted storeroom from which the shots were fired...Was Ruby hired, or perhaps forced, to carry out the almost suicidal killing of Oswald? 'Ruby would do anything for a buck,' said Police Lieutenant George Butler. 'I don't buy the story he was emotional and did it for his country.'...Where was Oswald when the mail-order rifle was delivered to the post office box last March? Homicide Captain Fritz and Wade said they do not know....The FBI said a letter ordering the rifle in Oswald's handwriting was sent March 20 to Klein Sporting Goods, Inc., Chicago. The letter was signed 'A. Hidell.' It has been assumed Oswald was in Fort Worth at that time, not Dallas....Another mystery - how could Oswald afford the Mexico City visit he made in Sept. 26 to Oct 3.?"

Dallas Morning News editorial by Suzanne La Follette: "Note Lee Oswald's upraised, clenched fist [in a photograph], the Communist symbol of the triumph of Marxism by revolution violence."

[Tracy Riddle]

November 29 (Friday)

Joseph Alsop wrote in his column that the "old New York crowd" will turn to Nixon as the future of the GOP if Nelson Rockefeller "does not make the grade."

Paul Nitze becomes Secretary of the Navy. JFK "didn't like Paul Nitze very much...didn't please the President very much in some of the answers he gave at the time of the Cuban missile crisis." (RFK oral history interview 2/27/1965)

President LBJ meets with Central Intelligence Agency director, John A. McCone and Presidential assistant for National Security Affairs, McGeorge Bundy.

LBJ met with Roy Wilkins of the NAACP.

White House phone logs show numerous phone calls today.
LBJ - Sen. Mike Mansfield, 11:10 AM

LBJ - Cong. Hale Boggs, 11:30 AM

LBJ - Sen. Everett Dirksen, 10:47 AM
In a telephone conversation with Everett Dirksen, LBJ says: "These investigations in the House and Senate on this Dallas affair ... Hoover's a little concerned about [them] reflecting on him. He's making a very full report on it. The [Texas] attorney general's gettin' an inquiry - a state inquiry [going on] he's a very young, and able, and effective man. And we don't wanna ... we got some international complications that could come up to us if we are not very careful." TKAT

LBJ - Speaker John McCormack, 12:04 PM

LBJ - James Farley, 12:27 PM

LBJ - Cong. Hale Boggs, 1:11 PM

LBJ - Abe Fortas, 1:15 PM

LBJ - David McDonald, 1:29 PM

Dallas Police take photographs of the backyard behind the Neely St. house. (CE 712, 713) The small plant at left foreground with bare branches is not in the "Oswald" backyard photos.

1:40pm (EST) J. Edgar Hoover phone call with LBJ.
LBJ: Are you familiar with this proposed group that they're trying to put together on this study of your report and other things - two from the House, two from the Senate, somebody from the Court, a couple of outsiders?
Hoover: No, I haven't heard of that...I think it would be very, very bad to have a rash of investigations on this thing.
LBJ: Well, the only way we can stop them is probably to appoint a high-level one to evaluate your report and put somebody that's pretty good on it that I can select...and tell the House and the Senate not to go ahead...because they'll get a lot of television going and I thought it would be bad.
Hoover: It would be a three-ring circus.
LBJ: What do you think about Allen Dulles?
Hoover: I think he would be a good man.
LBJ: What do you think about John McCloy?
Hoover: I'm not as enthusiastic about McCloy...I'm not so certain as to the matter of the publicity that he might seek on it.
LBJ: What about General Norstad?
Hoover: Good man.
LBJ: I thought maybe I might try to get Boggs and Jerry Ford in the House, maybe try to get Dick Russell and maybe Cooper in the Senate.
Hoover: Yes, I think so.
LBJ: ...Me and you are just going to talk like brothers...I thought Russell could kind of look after the general situation, see that the states and their relations -
Hoover: Russell would be an excellent man.
LBJ: And I thought Cooper might look after the liberal group...Do you know Ford from Michigan?
Hoover: I know of him, but I don't know him.
LBJ: You know Boggs?
Hoover: Oh, yes, I know Boggs.
LBJ: He's kind of the author of the resolution. That's why. Now, Walter tells me - Walter Jenkins - that you've designated Deke to work with us, like you did on the Hill, and I tell you I sure appreciate that...We consider him as high-class as you do...We salute you for knowing how to pick good men.
Hoover: That's mighty nice of you, Mr. President, indeed. We hope to have this thing wrapped up today, but could be we probably won't get it before the first of the week. This angle in Mexico is giving us a great deal of trouble because the story there is of this man Oswald getting $6,500 from the Cuban embassy and then coming back to this country with it. We're not able to prove that fact, but the information was that he was there on the 18th of September in Mexico City and we are able to prove conclusively he was in New Orleans that day. Now then they've changed the dates. The story came in changing the dates to the 28th of September and he was in Mexico City on the 28th. Now the Mexican police have arrested this woman Duran, who is a member of the Cuban embassy...and we're going to confront her with the original informant, who saw the money pass, so he says, and we're also going to put the lie detector test on him...There is no question but that he [Oswald] is the man now - with the fingerprints and things we have. This fellow Rubenstein down there - he has offered to take the lie detector test...
LBJ: Have you got any relationship between the two yet?
Hoover: No, at the present time we have not. There was a story down there...that this fellow had been in this nightclub that is a striptease joint, that he had. But this has not been able to be confirmed. Now, this fellow Rubenstein is a very shady character, has a bad record - street brawler, fighter, and that sort of thing - and in the place in Dallas, if a fellow came in there and couldn't pay his bill completely, Rubenstein would beat the very devil out of him and throw him out of the place...he didn't drink, didn't smoke, boasted about that. He is what I would put in a category of one of these "egomaniacs." Likes to be in the limelight. He knew all the police in that white-light district...and he also let them come in, see the show, get food, liquor and so forth. That's how, I think, he got into police headquarters...we've tied Oswald into the Civil Liberties Union in New York, membership into that and, of course, this Cuban Fair Play Committee...
LBJ: How many shots were fired? Three?
Hoover: Three.
LBJ: Any of them fired at me?
Hoover: No.
LBJ: All three at the president?
Hoover: All three at the president and we have them. Two of the shots fired at the president were splintered but they had characteristics on them so that our ballistics expert was able to prove that they were fired by this gun...The president - he was hit by the first and third. The second shot hit the governor. The third shot is a complete bullet and that rolled out of the President's head. It tore a large part of the President's head off and, in trying to massage his heart at the hospital on the way to the hospital, they apparently loosened that and it fell off onto the stretcher.
LBJ: Were they aiming at the President?
Hoover: They were aiming directly at the President. There is no question about that. This telescopic lens, which I've looked through - it brings a person as close to you as if they were sitting right beside you. And we also have tested the fact that you could fire those three shots...within three seconds.
LBJ: How did it happen they hit Connally?
Hoover: Connally turned to the president when the first shot was fired and I think in that turning, it was where he got hit.
LBJ: ...if Connally hadn't been in his way?
Hoover: Oh yes, yes, the President would no doubt have been hit.
LBJ: He would have been hit three times.
Hoover: He would have been hit three times from the fifth floor of what that building where we found the gun and the wrapping paper in which the gun was wrapped...and upon which we found the full fingerprints of this man Oswald. On that floor we found the three empty shells that had been fired and one shell that had not been fired...He then threw the gun aside and came down. At the entrance of the building, he was stopped by a police officer and some manager in the building told the police officer, Well, he's all right. He works there. You needn't hold him.' They let him go...and then he got on a bus...He went out to his home and got ahold of a jacket...and he came back downtown...and the police officer who was killed stopped him, not knowing who he was and not knowing whether he was the man, but just on suspicion...Then he walked another two blocks and went to the theater, and the woman at the window selling the tickets, she was suspicious the way he was acting, she said he was carrying a gun...He went into the theater and she notified the police and the police and our man down there went in there and located this particular man. They had quite a struggle with him. He fought like a regular lion...he was strongly pro-Castro, he was strongly anti-American...This woman, his wife, had been very hostile. She would not cooperate, speaks Russian only. She did say to us yesterday down there that if we could give her assurance that she would be allowed to remain in this country, she might cooperate. I told our agents down there to give her that assurance...
LBJ: Did anybody hear, did anybody see him on the fifth floor or -
Hoover: Yes, he was seen on the fifth floor by one of the workmen there before the assassination took place.
LBJ: Do you have a bulletproof car?
Hoover: Oh yes, I do.
LBJ: You think I ought to have one?
Hoover: I think you most certainly should have one...
LBJ: ...you're more than the head of the Federal Bureau. As far as I'm concerned, you're my brother and personal friend...I've got more confidence in your judgement than anybody in town."
Hoover also told LBJ in this phone call: "You see, there was no Secret Service man standing on the back of the car. Usually the presidential car in the past has had steps on the back, next to the bumpers, and there's usually been one [agent] on either side standing on these steps … [ellipsis in text] … Whether the President asked that that not be done, we don't know."

From Hoover's Memorandum for Messrs. Tolson, Belmont, and Mohr, November 29, 1963: "… there was no Secret Service Agent on the back of the car; that in the past they have added steps on the back of the car and usually had an agent on either side standing on the bumper; that I did not know why this was not donethat the President may have requested it …."

In his biography of Warren, writer Ed Cray reported that he had spoken to an unnamed friend of Warren's, and that this friend had claimed that Warren had confided "There was great pressure on us to prove, first, that President Johnson was not involved, and, second, that the Russians were not involved."

FBI interview of Philip Geraci, 29 Nov 1963. Bringuier had mentioned the 15-year-old Geraci as a possible associate of Oswald's. Weisberg notes that Geraci's connection with Bringuier had to do with the illegal sale of bonds.

FBI interview of Mrs. C.L. Connell, 29 Nov 1963. Mrs. Connell told the FBI that Ms. Odio had phoned her the previous day and stated that Oswald had "made some talks to small groups of Cuban refugees in Dallas," that she "personally considered Oswald brilliant and clever," and that New Orleans-based Cuban associates considered Oswald to be a "double agent."
Today, Ms. C.L. Connell of the Catholic Cuban Relief Committee informs the FBI that Sylvia Odio has called her and has said that she knew Lee Harvey Oswald. The FBI will not interview Odio until December 19, 1963. Ms. Connell also states that he is suspicious of someone everyone calls "Mr. Martin," a contact man from "Uruguay" who has tried to obtain guns for anti-Castroites in the Dallas area. NOTE: When James McCord is caught, along with the group of burglers trying to bug the Democratic National Committee Office in the Watergate he is using the name Edward J. Martin. E. Howard Hunt is using the code name Mr. White. An ex-political informant for the Los Angeles Police Department, Louis Tackwood, will say at a press conference held several months before Watergate, that he had been indirectly approached by a Mr. Martin and a Mr. White and been asked to incite a riot at the 1972 Republican Convention. CDIA

LBJ - Sen. John Pastore, 2:16PM

LBJ - Sen. Leverett Saltonstall, 2:22 PM

(From later WC testimony)
Mr. BALL. We have some pictures here from the crime laboratory as we have marked Exhibits 712, 713, and 714. The witness has already identified a picture of Oswald. I show you this, Captain, can you tell me which one of these pictures on Exhibit 714 that you showed to Oswald the day when you interrogated him, asked him it that was his picture?
Mr. FRITZ. It is the one with the two papers in his hand.
Mr. BALL. The one to the right. Did you ever show him the one to the left?
Mr. FRITZ. I don't think so.
Mr. BALL. We offer 713, 712, and 714 as two pictures taken.
Mr. FRITZ. These are the pictures I told about a while ago.
Mr. BALL. They were taken by your crime lab?
Mr. FRITZ. Our crime lab took these pictures when I went over there with Mr. Sorrels.
Mr. BALL. Where were they taken?
Mr. FRITZ. In the backyard of the Neely Street address. If you will note, you will see in this picture, you notice that top right there of this shed. Of course, this picture is taken up closer, but if you step back further you can see about where the height comes to on that shed right there. Not exactly in the same position.
Mr. BALL. I offered these.
(Commission Exhibits Nos. 712, 713, and 714 were admitted.)
Mr. FRITZ. It shows the gate.
Mr. BALL. Indicating the location of the picture taken--this set will indicate the pictures were all taken at the Neely Street backyard.
Mr. DULLES. You recall the date of these pictures, in April?
Mr. FRITZ. I believe they will be dated on the back of them.
Mr. DULLES. April, so the trees would be about the same.
Mr. BALL. When were the pictures taken by your crime lab?
Mr. FRITZ. I am not sure but I believe the date will be on the back of the picture. November 29, 1963. Picture made by Officer Brown who works in the crime lab.

LBJ - Sen. Hugh Scott, 2:26 PM

Sometime after 3 PM today, LBJ learns that Chief Justice Earl Warren is adamant about not wanting to serve on a commission investigating JFK's assassination. LBJ requests that Warren come to the Oval Office at 4:30 PM to discuss an urgent matter. LBJ intends to administer a healthy dose of what is well known on Capitol Hill as the "Johnson treatment." TKAT

The palm print sent by Lt. Day arrives at the FBI lab in Washington. The FBI would determine that the print had come from the rifle barrel. (WR) The incriminating palm print of Lee Harvey Oswald's, taken off the rifle butt in Dallas, arrives at Washington's FBI lab. This is 3 days after all other Dallas police evidence has been turned over to the Bureau on orders from President LBJ. Why didn't the lift of the palm print arrive to the Washington FBI until November 29, whereas the other prints--from cartons in the Book Depository--arrived and were examined on November 27? Why the delay?

Around this time period - a week after the assassination - RFK sends Bill Walton, a trusted Kennedy family intimate, to Moscow with a secret message for the Soviet government from RFK and Jackie. The message is personally delivered to Georgi Bolshakov - a Russian agent RFK has used before to get private information delivered to Khrushchev. Walton's message to Bolshakov is that RFK and Jackie believe that JFK has been killed by a large political conspiracy. "Perhaps there was only one assassin, but he did not act alone," Walton tells Bolshakov. He also tells the Russian agent that "Dallas was the ideal location for such a crime." RFK wants the Russians to know that he will eventually run for President and resume his brother's quest for detente with the Soviet Union. Bolshakov immediately delivers RFK's message to his superiors at the GRU, the Soviet military intelligence agency. Author David Talbot suggests that, at this time, RFK seems to be placing more trust in the Soviet government than the one he serves. (Brothers)

Jackie Kennedy interview with Theodore White: "… Clint Hill, he loved us, he was the first man in the car …." White's notes were released May 26, 1995. (White wrote The Making of the President 1960, the Camelot article for the December 6, 1963 Life magazine, and his own memoirs entitled In Search of History, among others.)

New Orleans: Jack Martin is interviewed by the Secret Service today in his "small, run-down apartment," as his residence is described by the reporting agent. Apparently terrorized, Jack Martin reverses himself, telling Secret Service Agents Rice and Gerrots that he suffers from "telephonitis while drinking and that it was during one of his drinking sprees that he telephoned Assistant District Attorney Kohlman and told him this fantastic story about David William Ferrie being involved with Lee Harvey Oswald."

A. C. Greene, editorial page editor of the Dallas Times Herald states: "Within a week after the assassination, everything that was sent to the editor or to the [Dallas]Times Herald came to me. We got literally thousands of letters from all over the world, especially from all over the United States, and a lot of them had money for Jacqueline Kennedy, but most of the money was for Officer Tippit's wife, and then Marina Oswald. From the Times Herald through me, from various readers all over the world, I sent Mrs. Tippit over $200,000. I sent Marina Oswald about the same amount." PKHBS

As soon as LBJ appoints his seven commissioners to report on the assassination, Hoover orders his aides to compile secret dossiers on each member of the Commission, so he will have adequate dirt in his files, if a need arises.

LBJ - David Lawrence, 3:14 PM

LBJ - J. Waddy Bullion, 3:37 PM

LBJ - Sen. Russell Long, 3:45 PM

4:05pm (EST): LBJ called Sen. Richard Russell regarding the proposed Commission.
Lyndon B. Johnson: I talked to the leadership on trying to have... about a seven-man board to evaluate Hoover's report... I think it would be better than.. having four or five going in the opposite direction.
Richard Russell: I agree with that, but I don't think that Hoover ought to make his report too soon.
Lyndon B. Johnson: He's ready with it now and he wants to get it off just as quick as he can.
Richard Russell: Oh-oh.
Lyndon B. Johnson: And he'll probably have it out today. At most, on Monday.
Richard Russell: Well, but he ain't going to publish the damned thing, is he?
Lyndon B. Johnson: He's going to turn it over to this group and there's some things about it I can't talk about.
Richard Russell: Yeah, I understand that, but I think it be mighty well if that thing was kept quiet another week or ten days. I just do.
Lyndon B. Johnson: They're taking this Court of Inquiry in Texas and I think the results of that Court of Inquiry, Hoover's report, and all of them would go to this group.... Now here's who I'm going to try to get on it... I don't think I can get any member of the Court. I'm going to try to get Allen Dulles. I'm going to try Senator Russell and Senator Cooper from the Senate...
Richard Russell: Oh no, no, no, get somebody else now.
Lyndon B. Johnson: Now wait a minute, now I want to try to get...
Richard Russell: I haven't got time.
Lyndon B. Johnson: Jerry Ford. It is not going to take much time but we've got to get a states' rights man in there and somebody that the country has confidence in. And I'm going to have Boggs in... I think that Ford and Boggs would be pretty good. They're both pretty young men.
Richard Russell: They're both solid citizens.
Lyndon B. Johnson: And I think that Cooper as a Republican and you're a good states rights' man. I think we might get John McCloy . . . and maybe somebody from the Court.... Who would be the best then if I didn't get the Chief?
Richard Russell: I know you wouldn't want Clark hardly.
Lyndon B. Johnson: No, I can't have a Texan.
Richard Russell: Really, Mr. President, unless you really think it would be of some benefit, it would really save my life. I declare I don't want to serve.
Lyndon B. Johnson: I know you don't want to do anything, but I want you to. And I think that this is important enough and you'll see why. Now, the next thing: I know how you feel about this CIA, but they're worried about having to go into a lot of this stuff with the Foreign Relations Committee. How much of a problem would it give you to just quietly let Fulbright and Hickenlooper come into your CIA committee?
Richard Russell: As long as it is confined to those two, it wouldn't present any problem at all.
(Gap in the transcript.)
Richard Russell: Now you're going to let the Attorney General nominate someone, aren't you?
Lyndon B. Johnson: No. Uh-uh.
Richard Russell: Well, you going to have Hoover on there?
Lyndon B. Johnson: No, it is his report.
Richard Russell: Oh, that's right, that's right. It wouldn't do. ... Let me see, if I think of a judge in the next thirty or forty minutes...
Lyndon B. Johnson: What do you think about a Justice sitting on it? You don't have a President assassinated but every fifty years.
Richard Russell: They put them on the Pearl Harbor inquiry, you know.
Lyndon B. Johnson: I know. That's why he's against it now.
Richard Russell: Afraid it might get into the courts?
Lyndon B. Johnson: I guess so, I don't know.
Richard Russell: That's probably the theory of it....
Lyndon B. Johnson: Give me the arguments why they ought to.
Richard Russell: The only argument about it is that, of course, in a matter of this magnitude... the American people would feel reassured to have a member of the highest Court... If you would have some top-flight state Supreme Court Chief Justice - but they're not known all over the country... This thing in television and radio has narrowed the group of celebrities. I don't know. You've got some smart boys there around you who can give you the name of some outstanding Circuit Court judge.
Lyndon B. Johnson: Okay. You be thinking.

LBJ - A. Philip Randolph, 4:17 PM

4:30pm (EST) Earl Warren received a call from Katzenbach and Archibald Cox; they met with him and said LBJ wanted him to head a presidential commission to investigate the assassination. Warren declined on constitutional grounds. About 90 minutes later, LBJ himself called and asked Warren to come to the White House. They met privately at 4:30pm for 20 minutes in the Oval Office. Johnson told him that if Castro was behind the assassination, the US could face a catastrophic world war. Johnson poured on the flattery until Warren gave in, reportedly in tears. Johnson also falsely told him that the other members of the Commission were already lined up, but would serve only if Warren headed it. (Chief Justice p415) The Chief Justice reportedly leaves the Oval Office in tears. Once Warren agreed, LBJ got on the phone and began rounding up the other members.

LBJ - Speaker John McCormack, 4:55 PM

LBJ - Sen. Everett Dirksen, 5:10 PM

5:32pm (EST) LBJ called Hoover.

5:40pm (EST) LBJ called Dulles. 5:41 PM LBJ calls Allen Dulles to say he wants Dulles to serve on the commission. Dulles agrees to do so.

5:41pm (EST) Hoover called LBJ.

LBJ - Allen Dulles, 5:41 PM

LBJ - Abe Fortas, time unknown

LBJ - Sen. John Sherman Cooper, 5:45PM LBJ called Cooper again around 6pm?, urging him to be on the WC.

5:55pm (EST) McCloy calls LBJ.

LBJ - Cong. Les Arends, 6:15 PM

LBJ - Sen. Hubert Humphrey, 6:20 PM

6:30pm Lyndon Johnson has a phone conversation with Congressman Charles Halleck: "This thing is getting pretty serious and our folks are worried about it ... it has some foreign implications ... CIA and other things ... and I'm going to try to get the Chief Justice on it." Johnson adds that "we can't have Congress, FBI and others saying that Khrushchev or Castro ordered the assassination:" "This thing is so touchy from an international standpoint .... This is a question that could involve our losing 39 million people."
Telephone conversation between Lyndon B. Johnson and Charles Halleck, House Minority Leader (6.30 pm, 29th November, 1963)

Lyndon B. Johnson: Charlie, I hate to bother you but... I've got to appoint a commission and issue an executive order tonight on investigation of the assassination of the President because this thing is getting pretty serious and our folks are worried about it. It's got some foreign complications - CIA and other things - and I'm going to try to get the Chief Justice to go on it. He declined earlier in the day, but I think I'm going to try to get him to head it....
Charles Halleck: Chief Justice Warren?
Lyndon B. Johnson: Yes.
Charles Halleck: I think that's a mistake....
Lyndon B. Johnson: I'd be glad to hear you, but I want to talk to you about - he thought it was a mistake till I told him everything we knew and we just can't have House and Senate and FBI and other people going around testifying that Khrushchev killed Kennedy or Castro killed him. We've got to have the facts, and you don't have a President assassinated once every fifty years. And this thing is so touchy from an international standpoint that every man we've got over there is concerned about it....
Charles Halleck: I'll cooperate, my friend. I'll tell you one thing, Lyndon - Mr. President - I think that to call on Supreme Court guys to do jobs is kind of a mistake.
Lyndon B. Johnson: It is on all these other things I agree with you on Pearl Harbor and I agree with you on the railroad strike. But this is a question that could involve our losing thirty-nine million people. This is a judicial question.
Charles Halleck: I, of course, don't want that to happen. Of course, I was a little disappointed in the speech the Chief Justice made. I'll talk to you real plainly. He's jumped at the gun and, of course, I don't know whether the right wing was in this or not. You've been very discreet. You have mentioned the left and the right and I am for that.

LBJ - Sec. Dean Rusk, 6:30PM

LBJ - Cong. Carl Albert, 6:37 PM

LBJ - Cong. Les Arends, 6:43PM

6:52pm (EST) LBJ calls Gerald Ford and asks him to serve on the commission. Ford agrees to do so. LBJ then releases the press statement and text of the executive order prepared by Abe Fortas. The news just barely manages to make the Saturday morning editions of several major East Coast newspapers. TKAT

LBJ - Joe Alsop, 7:00PM

LBJ - Sen. James Eastland, 7:03 PM

LBJ - Sen. William Fulbright, 7:11PM

LBJ - Sen. Thomas Dodd, 7:15 PM
LBJ: "How are you getting along?"
Dodd: "Hello Mr. President…fine, couldn't be better."
LBJ informs him of his intention to appoint the WC. "Well, you're my man on that Committee. You know I put you on it cause I couldn't get you on Appropriations. I put you on there and damned if you haven't done more there than…"
Dodd: "I'm a Johnson man, you know that."

LBJ - Sen. Bourke Hickenlooper, 7:20PM

LBJ - Cong. Carl Albert, 7:36 PM

7:45pm (EST) Johnson signed the formal order setting up the Warren Commission.

LBJ - Gov. Allan Shivers, 7:45PM

LBJ - Katherine Graham, 7:50 PM

LBJ - Sen. Thomas Kuchel, 8:25PM

8:30 PM-2 AM Hyannis Port, Mass.
Kennedy's 34-year-old widow spoke to the writer, Theodore H. White, for four hours, urging him to tell the world -- through LIFE magazine on Dec 6 -- that Kennedy was truly "a man of magic," that his presidency was truly special, that the era was, to use the words she borrowed from a Broadway musical, "one brief shining moment that was known as Camelot." Author Theodore White will later write: "The magic Camelot of John F. Kennedy never existed. Of all the figures of the New Frontier," he believes JFK to be the "toughest, the most intelligent, the most attractive - and inside, the least romantic." Pierre Salinger will say: "Camelot is a fraud." Roger Hilsman will say: "Camelot was an invention of my good friend Teddy White, using Jackie's romanticism after the president's death. If Jack Kennedy had heard this stuff about Camelot he would have vomited." K&N Jackie says: "I want John-John to be a fine young man. He's so interested in planes; maybe he'll be an astronaut or just plain John Kennedy fixing planes on the ground." AC Vol. 1, Issue 3

8:55pm (EST) LBJ telephones Senator Richard Russell and informs him that he has announced the formation of the commission and Russell will be a member.
Lyndon B. Johnson: Dick, I hate to bother you again but I wanted you to know that I made that announcement.
Richard Russell: Announcement of what?
Lyndon B. Johnson: Of this special commission.
Richard Russell: Oh, you have already?
Lyndon B. Johnson: Yes. May I read it to you? (reads from the statement)...
Richard Russell: I know I don't have to tell you of my devotion to you but I just can't serve on that Commission. I'm highly honoured you'd think about me in connection with it but I couldn't serve on it with Chief Justice Warren. I don't like that man. I don't have any confidence in him at all. So you get John Stennis.
Lyndon B. Johnson: It has already been announced and you can serve with anybody for the good of America and this is a question that has a good many more ramifications than on the surface and we've got to take this out of the arena where they're testifying that Khrushchev and Castro did this and did that and chuck us into a war that can kill 40 million Americans in an hour. And you would put on your uniform in a minute. Now the reason I've asked Warren is because he is the Chief Justice of this country and we've got to have the highest judicial people we can have. The reason I ask you is because you have that same kind of temperament and you can do anything for your country. And don't go to giving me that kind of stuff about you can't serve with anybody. You can do anything.
Richard Russell: It is not only that. I just don't think the Chief Justice should have served on it.
Lyndon B. Johnson: The Chief Justice ought to do anything he can to save America and right now we've got a very touchy thing. And you wait until you look at this evidence.... Now I'm not going to lead you wrong and you're not going to be an Old Dog Tray.
Richard Russell: I know that but I have never...
Lyndon B. Johnson: You've never turned your country down. This is not me. This is your country... You're my man on that commission and you're going to do it! And don't tell me what you can do and what you can't because I can't arrest you and I'm not going to put the FBI on you. But you're goddammed sure going to serve - I'll tell you that! And A.W. Moursund is here and he wants to tell you how much all of us love you. Wait a minute.
Richard Russell: Mr. President, you ought to have told me you were going to name me.
Lyndon B. Johnson: I told you! I told you today I was going to name the Chief Justice when I called you.
Richard Russell: You did not. You talked about getting somebody from the Supreme Court. You didn't tell me you were going to name him.
Lyndon B. Johnson: I told you! I told you I was going to name Warren...
Richard Russell: Oh no! ... I said Clark wouldn't do.
Lyndon B. Johnson: No, that's right, and I've got to get the highest Justice I can get. He turned Bobby Kennedy down! Bobby and they talked to him and he just said he wouldn't serve under any circumstances. I called him down here and I spent an hour with him and I begged him as much as I'm begging you. I just said, "Now here's the situation I want to tell you."
Richard Russell: You've never begged me. You've always told me.
Lyndon B. Johnson: No, I haven't. No I haven't.
Richard Russell: Mr. President, please now...
Lyndon B. Johnson: No! It is already done. It has been announced.
Richard Russell: You mean you've given that...
Lyndon B. Johnson: Yes sir. I gave the announcement. It is already in the papers and you're on it and you're going to be my man on it and you just forget that. Now wait a minute. A.W. wants to say a word to you and I'll be back.
A.W. MOURSUND: Hello, Senator. We were just sitting here talking and he says, "I've got one man that's smarter than all the rest of them put together."
Richard Russell: You don't have to butter me up.
MOURSUND: I ain't buttering you up. Senator. You know I'm not that kind of a fellow. I just heard that and I wanted you to know it. Hell, he's depending on you. You know that.
Richard Russell: I don't know when I've been as unhappy about a thing as I am this.
MOURSUND: I know, but you can take them. God Almighty, you've taken it for years and the hard ones and the tough ones, and you can take care of it and you can take care of yourself.
Richard Russell: How are things down in Texas? Kill any deer down there?
MOURSUND: But you come see us. But don't say you can't do anything 'cause you're the best can-do man there is.
Richard Russell: Oh, no, oh, no.
Lyndon B. Johnson: Dick? Now we're going into a lot of problems... I saw Wilkins today and had a long talk with him. Now these things are going to be developing and I know you're going to have your reservations and your modesty.
Richard Russell: Oh...
Lyndon B. Johnson: Now, wait a minute! Wait a minute! Now your President's asking you to do these things and there are some things I want you in besides civil rights and, by God, you're going to be in 'em, because I can't run this country by myself.
Richard Russell: You know damned well my future is behind me, and that is not entering into it at all.
Lyndon B. Johnson: Your future is your country and you're going to do everything you can to serve America.
Richard Russell: I just can't do it. I haven't got the time.
Lyndon B. Johnson: All right, we'll just make the time.
RUSSELL: With all my Georgia items in there.
Lyndon B. Johnson: Well, we'll just make the time. There's not going to be any time, to begin with. All you're going to do is evaluate the Hoover report he has already made.
Richard Russell: I don't think they'll move that fast on it.
Lyndon B. Johnson: Okay, well then, we won't move any faster than you want to move... The Secretary of State came over here this afternoon. He's deeply concerned, Dick, about the idea that they're spreading throughout the Communist world that Khrushchev killed Kennedy. Now he didn't. He didn't have a damned thing to do with it.
Richard Russell: I don't think he did directly. I know Khrushchev didn't because he thought he'd get along better with Kennedy.
Lyndon B. Johnson: All right, but we've...
Richard Russell: I wouldn't be surprised if Castro had.
Lyndon B. Johnson: All right then, okay. That's what we want to know. And people have got confidence in you and you can be just surprised or not surprised. They want to know what you think...
Richard Russell: You're taking advantage of me...
Lyndon B. Johnson: No, no, no. . . . I'm going to take a hell of a lot of advantage of you, my friend, 'cause you made me and I know it and I don't ever forget. And I'll be going to be taking advantage of you a good deal. But you're going to serve your country and do what is right and if you can't do it, you get that damned little Bobby up there and let him twist your tail and put a cocklebur under it. Where is he?
Richard Russell: I don't know. He's in Atlanta tonight.
Lyndon B. Johnson: Well, you just tell him to get ready because I'm going to need him and you just tell him that.
Richard Russell: I saw he and Vandiver this afternoon for about thirty minutes. They came by here.
Lyndon B. Johnson: Just tell either one of them that I just would like to use them anyplace because I'm a Russell protege and I don't forget my friends and I want you to stand up and be counted and I don't want to beg you, by God, to serve on these things....
Richard Russell: I know, but this is a sort of rough one.
Lyndon B. Johnson: No, it is not rough. What is rough about this? They had a full-scale investigation going, Dick, with the TV up there. They had the House Un-American Activities Committee in it.
Richard Russell: They shouldn't have done it.
Lyndon B. Johnson: Of course, but how do I stop it? How do I stop it, Dick? Now don't tell me that I've worked all day and done wrong.
Richard Russell: I didn't say you'd done wrong. I just said... it could have been stopped some other way. . . .
Lyndon B. Johnson: What do you think I've done wrong now by appointing you on a commission?
Richard Russell: Well, I just don't like Warren.
Lyndon B. Johnson: Of course, you don't like Warren, but you'll like him before it is over with.
Richard Russell: I haven't got any confidence in him.
Lyndon B. Johnson: Well, you can give him some confidence. Goddamn it! Associate with him now... I'm not afraid to put your intelligence against Warren's. Now by God, I want a man on that commission and I've got one!
Richard Russell: I don't know about the intelligence, of course, and I feel like I'm being kidded, but if you think...
Lyndon B. Johnson: Well, if you think now Dick, do you think I'd kid you?
Richard Russell: If it is for the good of the country, you know damned well I'll do it and I'll do it for you, for that matter...
Lyndon B. Johnson: Dick, do you remember when you met me at the Carlton Hotel in 1952? When we had breakfast there one morning?
Richard Russell: Yes, I think I do.
Lyndon B. Johnson: All right. Do you think I'm kidding you?
Richard Russell: No, I don't think you're kidding me. But I think - well, I'm not going to say any more, Mr. President. I'm at your command and I'll do anything you want me to do.
Lyndon B. Johnson: You damned sure going to be at my command! You're going to be at my command as long as I'm here.
Richard Russell: I do wish you be a little more deliberate and considerate next time about it but... if you've done this, I'm going to... go through with it and say I think it is a wonderful idea.
Lyndon B. Johnson: I'm going to have you on a good goddamned many things that I have to decide.... I've served under you and I don't give a damn if you have to serve with a Republican, if you have to serve with a Communist, if you have to serve with a Negro, or if you have to serve with a thug - or if you have to serve with A.W. Moursund.
Richard Russell: I can serve with a Communist and I can serve with a Negro. I can serve with a Chinaman.
Lyndon B. Johnson: Well, you may have to serve with A.W. Moursund!
Richard Russell: And if I can serve with A.W. Moursund, I would say, "Mr. Chairman, I am pleased to serve with you, Judge Moursund." But - we won't discuss it any further Mr. President. I'll serve.
Lyndon B. Johnson: Okay, Dick, and give Bobby my love and tell him he'd better get ready to give up that fruitful law practice he's got.
Richard Russell: He's been appointed to the Georgia Court of Appeals. Now, you see, I got him on there. He's making as much money as I am.
Lyndon B. Johnson: What about Vandiver?
Richard Russell: Well, he's running for Governor next time and he'll be elected.
Lyndon B. Johnson: Who in the hell is going to help me besides you?
Richard Russell: Those boys will help you if you need them.
Lyndon B. Johnson: Well, I need 'em.
Richard Russell: Goddamn it, they're harder for you than I was - remember?
Lyndon B. Johnson: No, nobody ever has been more to me than you have, Dick - except my mother.
Richard Russell: (laughs scoffmgly)
Lyndon B. Johnson: No, no, that's true. I've bothered you more and made you spend more hours with me telling me what's right and wrong than anybody except my mother.
Richard Russell: You've made me do more things I didn't want to do.
Lyndon B. Johnson: No, no, I never made you do anything that was wrong. I never...
Richard Russell: I didn't say "wrong." I said more things I didn't want to do. But Bobby and Ernie are two of the most loyal friends you've got on earth.
Lyndon B. Johnson: I know that.
Richard Russell: They both called me up and said, "You've just got to do whatever Mr. Johnson says."
Lyndon B. Johnson: No ... I just want to counsel with you and I just want your judgment and your wisdom.
Richard Russell: For whatever it's worth, you've got it.
Lyndon B. Johnson: I'm going to have it 'cause I haven't got any daddy and you're going to be it. And don't just forget that.
Richard Russell: Mr. President, you know - I think you know me.
Lyndon B. Johnson: I do. I do. I know you're for your country and - period. Now you just get ready to do this and you're my man on there.
Richard Russell: If you hadn't announced it, I would absolutely be...
Lyndon B. Johnson: No you wouldn't. No, you wouldn't.
Richard Russell: Yes, I would. Yes, I would.
Lyndon B. Johnson: Warren told me he wouldn't do it under any circumstances. Didn't think a Supreme Court Justice ought to go on... He said a man that criticized this fellow that went on the Nuremberg trial - Jackson. And I said, "Let me read you one report." And I just picked up one report and read it to him, and I said, "Okay, now, forty million Americans involved here."
Richard Russell: I may be wholly wrong. But I think Mr. Warren would serve on anything that would give him any publicity.
Lyndon B. Johnson: You want me to tell you the truth? You know what happened? Bobby and them went up to see him today and he turned them down cold and said, "No." Two hours later, I called him and ordered him down here and he didn't want to come. I insisted he come. He came down here and told me no - twice. And I just pulled out what Hoover told me about a little incident in Mexico City and I said, "Now I don't want Mr. Khrushchev to be told tomorrow - and be testifying before a camera that he killed this fellow and that Castro killed him and all I want you to do is look at the facts and bring in any other facts you want in here and determine who killed the President. And I think you put on your uniform in World War I, fat as you are, and would do anything you could to save one American life. And I'm surprised that you, the Chief Justice of the United States, would turn me down." And he started crying and he said, "I won't turn you down. I'll just do whatever you say." But he turned the Attorney General down!
Richard Russell: You ought not to be so persuasive.
Lyndon B. Johnson: I think I ought to.
Richard Russell: I think you did wrong in getting Warren, and I know damned well you did wrong in getting me. But we'll both do the best we can.
Lyndon B. Johnson: I think that's what you'll do. That's the kind of Americans both of you are. Good night.

President's Commission on the Assassination of President Kennedy (Warren Commission) established by LBJ (Executive Order #11130) "to ascertain, evaluate and report on" the assassination. The members were:
Supreme Court Chief Justice Earl Warren, Congressman Gerald Ford (R-Michigan), former CIA Director Allen Dulles, former World Bank president John J. McCloy, Congressman Hale Boggs (D-Louisiana), Senator John Sherman Cooper (R-Kentucky), Senator Richard Russell (D-Georgia).
The Church Committee found that "each time Hoover received word that a particular person was being considered for the Commission staff, he asked 'what the Bureau had' on the individual..." (Church Report)

Dr. Shaw was quoted by Martin Steadman that the doctors were "baffled" by the throat wound since the assassin was supposed to be behind JFK; "yet the bullet entered at the front of his neck. Mr. Kennedy must have turned to his left to talk to Mrs. Kennedy or to wave to someone." (Houston Post)

Jack Martin was interviewed by the FBI and SS and admitted that he had been drunk when he made up the story about Oswald and Ferrie. (SS Report)

LBJ met with McCone and George McBundy. (NY Times 11/30)

Silvia Duran was released from custody.

A letter is delivered to Arnold Johnson, an official of the Communist Party, a week after the assassination. The letter is from Oswald and is postmarked November 1, 1963 - exactly four weeks before it arrives at Johnson's address in New York City. Oswald writes in the letter that he has attended a right-wing meeting at which General Walker has made a speech and then a meeting of the American Civil Liberties Union. Johnson considers the four-week delay in the delivery of the letter to be "beyond all normal procedure." The lateness, it should be noted, covered a period of three weeks before Oswald's arrest and cannot be attributed to his sudden notoriety on Nov. 22. Johnson will testify: "... something odd about the whole letter...For instance, you have a different kind of ink in two places here. It seems that way to me. But that's pretty hard to say with modern pens. The way he signs his name and the way - that could be a problem, because he didn't always sign it the same...I would just as soon leave that to a handwriting expert...It may be worthwhile to check it with a handwriting expert..." There is no indication that the letter was submitted to handwriting analysis or that any inquiry was made into the four-week delay in its transit. AATF

11/29/63: URGENT TO DIRECTOR [J. Edgar Hoover] AND SAC, BOSTON [unknown] FROM SAC, DALLAS [J. Gordon Shanklin] ON THE MORNING OF NOVEMBER TWENTY-THREE, LAST, A SNUB NOSE THIRTY EIGHT CALIBER SMITH AND WESSON, SERIAL NUMBER EIGHT NINE THREE TWO SIX FIVE [893265], WITH THE WORD QUOTE ENGLAND UNQUOTE ON THE CYLINDER WAS FOUND AT APPROXIMATELY SEVEN THIRTY AM., IN A BROWN PAPER BAG IN THE GENERAL AREA OF WHERE THE ASSASSINATION OF PRESIDENT KENNEDY TOOK PLACE."
This weapon is the same type weapon which has been allegedly taken from accused assassin Lee Harvey Oswald at the time of his arrest in the Texas Theater. The serial numbers of the two guns are the only basic difference. The so-called Oswald pistol bears the serial number V510210.

Memo from Walter Jenkins to LBJ: "Abe [Fortas] has talked with Katzenbach and Katzenbach has talked with the Attorney General. They recommend a seven man commission-two Senators, two Congressmen, the Chief Justice, Allen Dulles, and a retired military man (general or admiral). Katzenbach is preparing a description of how the Commission would function."

Cable sent from CIA HQ to the White House, FBI, and State Department:
NONE OF THESE SOURCES HAD ANY PERSONAL KNOWLEDGE OF ANY VISITS THAT LEE OSWALD MAY HAVE MADE TO THE CUBAN EMBASSY IN MEXICO CITY OR OF ANY BUSINESS HE MAY HAVE TRANSACTED. [DIR 85670 of 11-29-63, at RIF #104-10404-10144]
The key phrase here may be "personal" knowledge, as opposed to what these informants learned from other employees. HSCA investigators Ed Lopez and Harold Leap found and interviewed these two informants, without permission from the CIA. According to another HSCA investigator, Gaeton Fonzi, the informants told Lopez and Leap that "the consensus among the employees within the Cuban Consulate after the Kennedy assassination was that it wasn't Oswald who had been there." [Gaeton Fonzi, The Last Investigation, Thunder's Mouth Press, 1993, p. 294] The informants also said that they had reported this fact to the Agency.

1:39 Hoover wrote a memo to his Assistant Directors. He must have taped his phone call with LBJ because the memo is almost a verbatin repeat of it. (First disclosed by the Church Committee; HSCA 3 476)
UNITED STATES DEPARTMENT OF JUSTICE FEDERAL BUREAU OF INVESTIGATION
WASHINGTON, D.C.
1:39 p.m. November 29, 1963
MEMORANDUM FOR MR. TOLSON MR. BELMONT MR. MOHR MR. CONRAD MR. DE LOACH MR. EVANS MR. ROSEN MR. SULLIVAN
FROM: J. EDGAR HOOVER
The President called and asked if I am familiar with the proposed group they are trying to get to study my report - two from the House, two from the Senate, two from the courts, and a couple of outsiders. I replied that I had not heard of that but had seen reports from the Senate Investigating Committee. The President stated he wanted to get by just with my file and my report. I told him I thought it would be very bad to have a rash of investigations. He then indicated the only way to stop it is to appoint a high-level committee to evaluate my report and tell the House and Senate not to go ahead with the investigation. I stated that would be a three-ring circus. The President then asked what I think about Allen Dulles, and I replied that he is a good man. He then asked about John McCloy, and I stated I am not as enthusiastic about McCloy, that he is a good man but I am not so certain as to the matter of publicity he might want. The President then mentioned General (Lauris) Norstad, and I said he is a good man. He said in the House he might try (Hale) Boggs and (Gerald R.) Ford and in the Senate (Richard B.) Russell and (John Sherman) Cooper. I asked him about Cooper and he indicated Cooper of Kentucky whom he described as a judicial man, stating he would not want (Jacob K.) Javits. I agreed on this point. He then reiterated Ford of Michigan, and I indicated I know of him but do not know him and had never seen him except on television the other day and that he handled himself well on television. I indicated that I do know Boggs. The President then mentioned that (Walter) Jenkins had told him that I have designated Mr. DeLoach to work with them as he had on the Hill. He indicated they appreciated that and just wanted to tell me they consider Mr. DeLoach as high class as I do, and that they salute me for knowing how to pick good men. I advised the President that we hope to have the investigation wrapped up today but probably won't have it before the first of the week as an angle in Mexico is giving trouble - the matter of Oswald's getting $6500 from the Cuban Embassy and coming back to this country with it; that we are not able to prove that fact; that we have information he was there on September 18 and we are able to prove he was in New Orleans on that date; that a story came in changing the date to September 28 and he was in Mexico on the 28th. I related that the police have again arrested Duran, a member of the Cuban Embassy; that they will hold her two or three days; will confront her with the original informant; and will also try a lie detector test on her. The President then inquired if I pay any attention to the lie detector test. I answered that I would not pay 100% attention to them; that it was only a psychological asset in investigation; that I would not want to be a part of sending a man to the chair on a lie detector test. I explained that we have used them in bank investigations and a person will confess before the lie detector test is finished, more or less fearful it will show him guilty. I said the lie detector test has this psychological advantage. I further stated that it is a misnomer to call it a lie detector since the evaluation of the chart made by the machine is made by a human being and any human being is apt to make the wrong interpretation. I stated, if Oswald had lived and had take a lie detector test, this with the evidence we have would have added that much strength to the case; that there is no question he is the man. I also told him that Rubenstein down there has offered to take a lie detector test but his lawyer must be consulted first; that I doubt the lawyer will allow him to do so; that he has a West Coast lawyer somewhat like the Edward Bennett Williams type and almost as much of a shyster. The President asked if we have any relationship between the two (Oswald and Rubenstein) as yet. I replied that at the present time we have not; that there was a story that the fellow had been in Rubenstein's nightclub but it has not been confirmed. I told the President that Rubenstein is a very seedy character, had a bad record - street brawls, fights, etc.; that in Dallas, if a fellow came into his nightclub and could not pay his bill completely, Rubenstein would beat him up and throw him out; that he did not drink or smoke; that he was an egomaniac; that he likes to be in the limelight; knew all of the police officers in the white light district; let them come in and get food and liquor, etc.; and that is how I think he got into police headquarters. I said if they ever made any move, the pictures did not show it even when they saw him approach and he got right up to Oswald and pressed the pistol against Oswald's stomach; that neither officer on either side made any effort to grab Rubenstein - not until after the pistol was fired. I said, secondly, the chief of police admits he moved Oswald in the morning as a convenience and at the request of motion picture people who wanted daylight. I said insofar as tying Rubenstein and Oswald together, we have not yet done so; that there are a number of stories which tied Oswald to the Civil Liberties Union in New York in which he applied for membership and to the Fair Play for Cuba Committee which is pro-Castro, directed by communists, and financed to some extent by the Castro Government. The President asked how many shots were fired, and I told him three. He then asked if any were fired at him. I said no, that three shots were fired at the President and we have them. I stated that our ballistic experts were able to prove the shots were fired by this gun; that the President was hit by the first and third bullets and the second hit the Governor; that there were three shots; that one complete bullet rolled out of the President's head; that it tore a large part of the President's head off; that in trying to massage his heart on the way into the hospital they loosened the bullet which fell on the stretcher and we have that. He then asked were they aimed at the President. I replied they were aimed at the President, no question about that. I further advised him that we have also tested the fact you could fire those three shots in three seconds. I explained that there is a story out that there must have been more than one man to fire several shots but we have proven it could be done by one man. The President then asked how it happened that Connally was hit. I explained that Connally turned to the President when the first shot was fired and in that turning he got hit. The President then asked, if Connally had not been in his seat, would the President have been hit by the second shot. I said yes. I related that on the fifth floor of the building where we found the gun and the wrapping paper we found three empty shells that had been fired and one that had not been fired. that he had four but didn't fire the fourth; then threw the gun aside; went down the steps; was seen by a police officer; the manager told the officer that Oswald was all right, worked there; they let him go; he got on a bus; went to his home and got a jacket; then came back downtown, walking; the police officer who was killed stopped him, not knowing who he was; and he fired and killed the police officer. The President asked if we can prove that and I answered yes. I further related that Oswald then walked another two blocks; went to the theater; the woman selling tickets was so suspicious - said he was carrying a gun when he went into the theater - that she notified the police; the police and our man went in and located Oswald. I told him they had quite a struggle with Oswald but that he was subdued and shown out and taken to police headquarters. I advised the President that apparently Oswald had come down the steps from the fifth floor; that apparently the elevator was not used. The President then indicated our conclusions are: (1) he is the one who did it; (2) after the President was hit, Governor Connally was hit; (3) the President would have been hit three times except for the fact that Governor Connally turned after the first shot and was hit by the second; (4) whether he was connected with the Cuban operation with money we are trying to nail down. I told him that is what we are trying to nail down; that we have copies of the correspondence; that none of the letters dealt with any indication of violence or assassination; that they were dealing with a visa to go back to Russia. I advised the President that his wife had been very hostile, would not cooperate and speaks only Russian; that yesterday she said , if we could give assurance she would be allowed to remain in the country, she would cooperate; and that I told our agents to give that assurance and sent a Russian-speaking agent to Dallas last night to interview her. I said I do not know whether or not she has any information but we would learn what we could. The President asked how Oswald had access to the fifth floor of the building. I replied that he had access to all floors. The President asked where was his office and I stated he did not have any particular place; that he was not situated in any particular place; that he was just a general packer of requisitions that came in for books from Dallas schools; that he would have had proper access to the fifth and sixth floors whereas usually the employees were down on lower floors. The President then inquired if anybody saw him on the fifth floor, and I stated he was seen by one of the workmen before the assassination. The President then asked if we got a picture taken of him shooting the gun and I said no. He asked what was the picture sold for $25,000, and I advised him this was a picture of the parade showing Mrs. Kennedy crawling out of the back seat; that there was no Secret Service Agent on the back of the car; that in the past they have added steps on the back of the car and usually had an agent on either side standing on the bumper; that I did not know why this was not done - that the President may have requested it; that the bubble top was not up but I understand the bubble top was not worth anything because it was made entirely of plastic; that I had learned much to my surprise that the Secret Service does not have any armored cars. The President asked if I have a bulletproof car and I told him I most certainly have. I told him we use it here for my own use and, whenever we have any raids, we make use of the bulletproof car on them. I explained that it is a limousine which has been armor plated and that it looks exactly like any other car. I stated I think the President ought to have a bulletproof car; that from all I understand the Secret Service has had two cars with metal plates underneath the car to take care of hand grenades or bombs thrown out on the street. I said this is European; that there have been several such attempts on DeGaulle's life; but they do not do that in this country; that all assassinations have been with guns; and for that reason I think very definitely the President ought to always ride in a bulletproof car; that it certainly would prevent anything like this ever happening again; but that I do not mean a sniper could not snipe him from a window if he were exposed. The President asked if I meant on his ranch he should be in a bulletproof car. I said I would think so; that the little car we rode around in when I was at the ranch should be bulletproofed; that it ought to be done very quietly. I told him we have four bulletproof cars in the Bureau: one on the West Coast, one in New York and two here. I said this could be done quietly without publicity and without pictures taken of it if handled properly and I think he should have one on his ranch. The President then asked if I think all the entrances should be guarded. I replied by all means, that he had almost to be in the capacity of a so-called prisoner because without that security anything could be done. I told him lots of phone calls had been received over the last four or five days about threats on his life; that I talked to the Attorney General about the funeral procession from the White House to the Cathedral; that I was opposed to it. The President remarked that the Secret Service told them not to but the family wanted to do it. I stated that was what the Attorney General told me but I was very much opposed to it. I further related that I saw the procession from the Capitol to the White House on Pennsylvania and, while they had police standing on the curbs, when the parade came, the police turned around and looked at the parade. The President then stated he is going to take every precaution he can; that he wants to talk to me; and asked if I would put down my thoughts. He stated I was more than head of the FBI - I was his brother and personal friend; that he knew I did not want anything to happen to his family; that he has more confidence in me than anybody in town; that he would not embroil me in a jurisdictional dispute; but that he did want to have my thoughts on the matter to advocate as his own opinion. I stated I would be glad to do this for him and that I would do anything I can. The President expressed his appreciation.
Very truly yours,
J. E. H.
John Edgar Hoover
Director

Date: November 29, 1963
To: Director of Intelligence and Research Department of State
From: John Edgar Hoover, Director
Subject: ASSASSINATION OF PRESIDENT JOHN F. KENNEDY, NOVEMBER 22, 1963
"Our Miami, Florida Office on November 23, 1963 advised that the Office of Coordinator of Cuban Affairs in Miami advised that the Department of State feels some misguided anti-Castro group might capitalize on the present situation and undertake an unauthorized raid against Cuba, believing that the assassination of President John F. Kennedy might herald a change in U.S. policy, which is not true.
"Our sources and informants familiar with Cuban matters in the Miami area advise that the general feeling in the anti-Castro Cuban community is one of stunned disbelief and, even among those who did not entirely agree with the President's policy concerning Cuba, the feeling is that the President's death represents a great loss not only to the U.S. but to all Latin America. These sources know of no plans for unauthorized action against Cuba.
"An informant who has furnished reliable information in the past and who is close to a small pro-Castro group in Miami has advised that those individuals are afraid that the assassination of the President may result in strong repressive measures being taken against them and, although pro-Castro in their feelings, regret the assassination.
"The substance of the foregoing information was orally furnished to Mr. George Bush of the Central Intelligence Agency and Captain William Edwards of the Defense Intelligence Agency on November 23, 1963, by Mr. W.T. Forsyth of this Bureau."
FBI memo from Hoover stated that "George Bush of the CIA" would be assessing reaction to the assassination by the Cuban-exile community. (The Nation 7/1988) It's a memorandum of FBI director J Edgar Hoover to the State department, dated 29 November 1963. It describes a meeting, one day after JFK's murder, between FBI and CIA officials talking about the reaction of the Cuban exile community to the Kennedy Assassination. The last paragraph states that the "the substance of the foregoing information was orally furnished to us and George Bush of the Central Intelligence agency". When asked by journalists, President Bush initially stated "It's not me, must be another Bush!" This was checked and found to be NOT true. When asked again, a spokesperson for Bush declined to comment any further. The obvious question is: Why does Bush need to lie about it? This FBI document identifying George Bush as a CIA agent in November 1963 is first published by Joseph McBride in "The Nation" in July 1988, just before Bush receives the Republican nomination for President. McBride's source observes: "I know [Bush] was involved in the Caribbean. I know he was involved in the suppression of things after the Kennedy assassination. There was a very definite worry that some Cuban groups were going to move against Castro and attempt to blame it on the CIA."

FBI document Dallas 89-43 dated Nov. 29, 1963, and first publicly released in 1968, stated brown wrapping paper in the Texas School Book Depository "was examined by the FBI Laboratory and found to have the same observable characteristics as the brown paper bag shaped like a gun case which was found near the scene of the shooting on the sixth floor…" This was incriminating evidence against Oswald, as he worked in the building and had access to the wrapping paper. However, in 1980, another document labeled Dallas 89-43 and dated Nov. 29, 1963, was found in the National Archives which was identical to the 1968 version except it stated the wrapping paper "was examined by the FBI Laboratory and found not to be identical with the paper gun case found at the scene of the shooting."

FBI Quigley memo of 29 Nov 1963. FBI Special Agent Quigley interviewed Martello, who talked about a handwritten note in Russian and English in Oswald's wallet. FBI Quigley report of 29 Nov 1963. This report contains a much more detailed description of Martello's account of his interview with Oswald after the New Orleans arrest.

[B]A right-wing Munich new