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Tracy Riddle · 25-07-2014, 02:39 AM

6/1/1973 Antonio Veciana has a lengthy meeting with Maurice Bishop at the race track in Caracas. Veciana suggests a new plan to assassinate Castro. Bishop says the timing isn't right. (Fonzi chronology)
6/1/1973 In a June 1, 1973 memo written to Colby, Walter Elder, who had been executive assistant for John McCone, the CIA director in the early 1960s, outlined "activities which to hostile observers or to someone without complete knowledge...could be interpreted as examples of activities exceeding CIA's charters." One such activity, he noted, "involved chemical warfare operations against...." The target is redacted. This operation, according to Elder, never went beyond the planning stage. In the same memo, Elder reports that discussions within the CIA chief's offices were recorded and transcribed: "I know that any one who has worked in the Director's office has worried about the fact that conversations within the offices and over the telephones were transcribed. During McCone's tenure, there were microphones in his regular office, his inner office, his dining room, his office in East Building, and his study at his residence on White Haven Street. I do not know who would be willing to raise such an issue, but knowledge of such operations tends to spread, and certainly the Agency is vulnerable on this score." Secret transcripts of conversations involving CIA directors? According to Blanton, there's never been any public indication that McCone or other CIA directors bugged themselves. Transcripts of such discussions could contain plenty of jewels. The National Security Archive is already filing a Freedom of Information Act request.
6/2/1973 Lieutenant Colonel Lewis Hawkins, U.S. military adviser in Iran, was shot to death by those thought to be left-wing terrorists.
6/3/1973 Ervin writes to Cox, "The American people are entitled to find out what actually happened without having to wait while justice travels on leaden feet."
6/3/1973 Washington Post reported that Dean had told prosecutors and Senate investigators about conversations with Nixon regarding the coverup. Nixon recalled that this hit him so hard, he asked Haig if he should resign; Haig gave a "robust no" and urged him to listen to the tapes of the Dean meetings. (RN)
6/3/1973 The administration denied "categorically" that Dean had been discussing Watergate with Nixon between Jan. and April of this year.
6/3/1973 European news agencies report that Sihanouk had been trying to contact Nixon through third parties, but that his overtures had been rejected; the State Dept confirmed these reports.
6/4/1973 Cox asks the committee to suspend its hearings for a few months.
6/4/1973 Nixon listened to several of the tapes of the Dean conversations. He then called Haig to discuss them:

Haig: You see it's so good because nobody in Congress likes him. You know, you don't know whether he's [unintelligible].
Nixon: God damn it [unintelligible].
Haig: now, if he's going into a full-fledged perjury job, uh, of the greatest magnitude, then we can take the son-of-a-bitch on.
Nixon: That's right. Well, as I told you, we do have one problem: it's that damn conversation of March 21st due to the fact that, uh, for the reasons [unintelligible]. But I think we can handle that...Bob will handle it. He'll get up there and...say 'I was there; the President said - '
Haig: That's exactly right...You just can't recall. It was in a meeting [unintelligible]. [Haig would later claim he never heard the 3/21 tape]
Nixon: As you know, we're up against ruthless people.
Haig: Well, we're going to be in great shape now, 'cause we're going to prepare.

6/5/1973 The committee rejects Cox's request to suspend its hearings.
6/5/1973 The Los Angeles County grand jury begins hearings on the break-in at Fielding's office.
6/6/1973 It is announced that Haig will replace Haldeman, Laird will replace Ehrlichman and Wright will be the White House Counsel.
6/6/1973 White House agrees to give the committee the logs of Nixon-Dean conversations.
6/7/1973 An FBI man was quoted as saying, "This whole thing of the Teamsters and the mob and the White House is one of the scariest things I've ever seen...We don't know what to expect out of the Justice Department." ("The White House, the Teamsters and the Mafia," Jack Nelson and Bill Hazlitt, 6/3/1973 Los Angeles Times and Miami Herald) This article detailed how the Nixon administration had intervened on behalf of the mob in Teamster-Mafia criminal cases.
6/8/1973 McCord asked for a new trial, charging that the government withheld evidence and perjury was committed. Sentencing of McCord is postponed by Sirica.
6/9/1973 Watergate Committee announces it will expand its investigation into the ITT case and the Ellsberg break-in.
6/11/1973 Agnew attacks the "swelling flood of prejudicial publicity" and the "Perry Masonish impact" of the television hearings; they "can hardly hope to find the truth and can hardly fail to muddy the waters of justice beyond repair."
6/13/1973 Nixon announces a price freeze on all retail goods.
6/18-26/1973 Nixon summit with Brezhnev in D.C., Camp David and San Clemente, California; more US-Soviet cooperation on different issues.
6/9/1973 Haig complained to Richardson that Cox's public remarks were blatantly partisan.
6/20/1973 The Finance Committee of CREEP is found guilty on three misdemeanor counts of concealing a $200,000 cash contribution.
6/21/1973 In five separate Supreme Court cases, all decided by a 5-4 vote, the justices give local communities more leeway to decide what materials are considered obscene.
6/21/1973 NY Post story by Woodward and Bernstein: "Hunt Tells of Orders to Raid Bremer's Flat." Hunt had told Senate investigators that an hour after Wallace was shot, Colson ordered him to fly to Milwaukee and break into Arthur Bremer's apartment; Colson denied this. A "White House source" told the reporters that Nixon feared the shooting might have been done by someone with "ties to the Republican Party or the Nixon campaign."
6/22/1973 Goldwater condemned the media for only attacking Nixon's abuses, and ignoring those of Democratic administrations. "I'm convinced that Johnson had my television speeches before I saw them. They seemed to know everything I was going to do, everything I was going to say [in 1964]." (Washington Post)
6/23/1973 Los Angeles Times reported that when Colson "asked the whereabouts of E. Howard Hunt two days after the Watergate break-in...John Dean said Hunt had been ordered out of the country. Colson said that he objected strongly, partly on grounds the White House might be aiding a fugitive, and Dean then made a telephone call and claimed he got the order rescinded...he did not ask Dean or anyone else who issued it or why.
6/24/1973 Brezhnev addresses Americans via a television broadcast, the first Soviet leader to do so.
6/24/1973 Wayne Morse told the Boston Globe: "He'd [JFK] seen the error of his ways. I'm satisfied if he'd lived another year we'd have been out of Vietnam. Ten days before his assassination, I went down to the White House and handed him his education bills...I'd been making two to five speeches a week against Kennedy on Vietnam...I'd gone into President Kennedy's office to discuss education bills, but he said, 'Wayne, I want you to know you're absolutely right in your criticism of my Vietnam policy. Keep this in mind. I'm in the midst of an intensive study which substantiates your position on Vietnam.'" This study would emerge in the Pentagon Papers as the McNamara study.
6/25/1973 Brezhnev ends his visit to the US.
6/25/1973 Several programs for state aid to parochial schools were declared unconstitutional by the Supreme Court.
6/25-29/1973 John Dean testifies before the Senate and implicates the President in Watergate coverup, offering hush money to the burglars and hiding behind executive privilege. He also implicated himself, Haldeman, Ehrlichman, Mitchell and others in the coverup.
6/27/1973 Clarence Kelley is appointed as director of the FBI.
6/29/1973 Nixon announced establishment of a Federal Energy Office to promote conservation and look into alternative energy sources.
6/30/1973 George Bell, Charles Colson's assistant, dies. Colson says that George Bell was responsible for Nixon's "enemies list." This is a list of two hundred politicians and celebrities that Richard Nixon considers a political threat to himself and his reputation.
7/1973 The Trilateral Commission was founded in July 1973, at the initiative of American banker David Rockefeller, who was chairman of the Council on Foreign Relations at that time, and by Zbigniew Brzezinski. It is a private organization established to foster closer cooperation among the United States, Europe and Japan. The Trilateral Commission is widely seen as a counterpart to the Council on Foreign Relations.
7/1973 Leo Janos' Atlantic Monthly article, The Last Days of The President: LBJ in Retirement, which was printed in July of 1973just six months after Johnson's death, provides us with perhaps the starkest appraisal of Johnson's mindset in later life: "During coffee, the talk turned to President Kennedy, and Johnson expressed his belief that "the assassination in Dallas had been part of a conspiracy." A little later Johnson said "I never believed that Oswald acted alone, although I can accept that he pulled the trigger." Johnson said that when he had taken office he found that "we had been operating a damned Murder, Inc. in the Caribbean."" Atlantic Monthly published an interview Leo Janos had done with LBJ in 1971: "...the talk turned to President Kennedy, and Johnson expressed his belief that the assassination in Dallas had been part of a conspiracy. 'I never believed that Oswald acted alone, although I can accept that he pulled the trigger.' Johnson said that when he had taken office he found that 'we had been operating a damned Murder Inc. in the Caribbean.' A year or so before Kennedy's death a CIA-backed assassination team had been picked up in Havana. Johnson speculated that Dallas had been a retaliation for this thwarted attempt, although he couldn't prove it. 'After the Warren Commission reported in, I asked Ramsey Clark to quietly look into the whole thing. Only two weeks later he reported back that he couldn't find anything new.' Disgust tinged Johnson's voice as the conversation came to an end. 'I thought I had appointed Tom Clark's son - I was wrong.'" Johnson also said, "The damn press always accused me of things I didn't do. They never once found out about the things I did do."
7/1/1973 Colonel Yosef Alon, Israeli military attache in Washington, D.C., was fatally shot at his house in Chevy Chase, Md., and Arab terrorists were suspected.
7/1/1973 Antonio Veciana meets Maurice Bishop in the Ramada Inn in Dallas and has a two-day conference with him. Again he presses for a new attempt to assassinate Castro. Bishop rejects the idea. (Fonzi chronology)
7/2/1973 Haig called Richardson to say that Nixon was "furious" about a report that Cox was looking into the President's real estate dealings.
7/2/1973 Lou Russell suffered a second, and fatal, heart attack. Before he died, he told his daughter that he thought he had been poisoned. (Secret Agenda) Lou Russel, an old friend of Richard Nixon's, dies of a second massive heart attack. Russell works for James McCord and knows a lot about call girls used in Washington for political blackmail.
7/6/1973 A US consulate general is officially opened in Leningrad.
7/6/1973 Nixon writes Sen. Ervin that he will not appear nor open his files to the committee on the grounds of separation of powers.
7/8/1973 Ehrlichman testifies before the Los Angeles County grand jury that he had no knowledge of the Fielding break-in or that "consideration was given to obtaining information from Dr. Ellsberg's psychiatric file."
7/9/1973 Rep. Garry Brown wrote to Sam Ervin that Dean's allegations were false; he explained that his 9/1972 letter to Kleindeinst was only out of concern that testimony by Stans "could prejudice the rights of those who might be indicted as a result of the grand jury proceedings..." He insisted that this letter was not prompted by pressure from the White House.
7/9/1973 Steve Bull delivered the 9/15/1972 tape to Haldeman, who took it home and listened to it.
7/9/1973 Secretary of State Rogers and Czech foreign minister Bohuslav Chnoupek sign a consular convention in Prague to help normalize trade and travel between the two countries.
7/10/1973 Lou Russell's friend and colleague, John Leon, provided Republicans with allegations of Democratic spying and bugging in past administrations, and that these people (including Carmine Bellino) may have had advanced knowledge about the Watergate break-in. Attorney Jerris Leonard talked with RNC chairman George Bush; they felt there was the possibility of putting a new spin on the Watergate scandal. They arranged for a press conference at which Leon would be the star speaker.
7/13/1973 Butterfield reveals the existence of the White House taping system to Senate investigators. Their suspicions had been aroused by the White House's highly detailed version of the Dean conversations.
7/13/1973 John Leon suffered a fatal heart attack. Jerris Leonard remembered the news of his sudden death "came as a complete shock. It wasâ€¦well, to be honest with you, it was frightening. It was only a week after Russell's death, or something like that, and it happened on the very eve of the press conference. We didn't know what was going on. We were scared." (Secret Agenda p311) John Leon - a Republican investigator - dies of a heart attack. He is scheduled to hold a Watergate press conference later today. Leon is "convinced that Watergate was a setup, that prostitution was at the heart of the affair, and that the ... burglary had been sabotaged from within."
7/13/1973 Juan Peron returned to Argentina.
7/16/1973 Butterfield publicly reveals the existence of the White House taping system in his Senate testimony. When he alleged that previous administrations had done the same thing, the Secret Service announced that no other administration had requested the installation of such a system. Butterfield did not think that Dean and Ehrlichman knew about the taping system.
7/16/1973 Senate Armed Forces Committee begins hearings into charges that the US made secret bombing raids into Cambodia in 1969-70 while that country was neutral.
7/16/1973 Antonio Veciana is arrested and charged with conspiracy to import cocaine. He claims he is innocent. His former business partner in Puerto Rico, previously charged, is the only witness against him. At first Veciana thinks he has been set up by Maurice Bishop, but later suspects it was Castro agents. (Fonzi chronology)
7/17/1973 Nixon forbids the SS from testifying before the Senate about the taping system; Ervin responds with a letter asking Nixon to make relevant tapes available.
7/17/1973 Secretary of Defense James Schlesinger tells the Senate Armed Forces Committee that the secret bombing of Cambodia (numbering some 3500 raids) were "fully authorized" and necessary to protect US troops.
7/18/1973 Nixon unveil's "Phase IV" of his economic program.
7/18/1973 Haig orders the taping system dismantled and custody of the tapes is transferred from the SS to the White House.
7/18/1973 Cox requests the tapes from Nixon. In a White House meeting today, the decision is made not to release the tapes.
7/19/1973 Newspaper columnist Andrew Tully publishes a quote from an interview with J. Edgar Hoover conducted a few years previous. Hoover had said, "By God, he's [Nixon's] got some former CIA men working for him that I'd kick out of my office. Someday, that bunch will serve him up a fine mess."
7/20/1973 Nixon claims that the whole scandal is "just plain poppycock...let others wallow in Watergate; we are going to do our job." Nixon is released from Bethesda.
7/21/1973 JFK supporter Marquis Childs admitted "that the Daley-controlled wards in Chicago supplied the 10,000 to put over the Kennedy-Johnson ticket [in 1960] can hardly be questioned." (Washington Post)
7/22/1973 Anderson wrote in Parade magazine that he had "run into" Frank Sturgis at Washington's National Airport less than 24 hours before the break-in; Sturgis told him he was in Washington on "private business," and introduced him to Virgilio Gonzalez. Anderson then visited Sturgis right after his arrest, finding that he had been booked under an alias. He found Sturgis "tight-lipped" and said that the break-in was only part of the struggle against Castro. Anderson tried to get him released to his custody, but the Justice Department refused. Anderson wrote, "My court appearance in Sturgis' behalf also disturbed the Democrats. After I printed details of Larry O'Brien's expense accounts, the Democrats issued a statement suggesting that I had received information stolen from their offices by the Waterbuggers. I had managed, as usual, to gain the enmity of both political parties."
7/23/1973 Cox subpoenas Nixon's tape recordings of conversations with Dean and others, and the Ervin committee asks for them as well; Nixon refuses, citing executive privilege.
7/23/1973 Haig called Richardson, telling him that Nixon "was very uptight about Cox" and his widening investigation. "If Cox does not agree, we will get rid of Cox." (General's Progress 246)
7/24/1973 Ehrlichman tells the Senate that Dean's charges are undermining Nixon's attempts to tell the public the truth about Watergate.
7/25/1973 Sirica is told by Nixon that he will not release the tapes Cox has requested because it jeopardize the "independence of the three branches of government."
7/25/1973 After Ehrlichman completes his testimony before the Ervin committee, Sen. Daniel Inouye, not realizing his microphone was on, muttered to himself, "What a liar."
7/25/1973 Federal court judge Orrin G. Judd ruled that the US bombing of Cambodia was illegal.
7/26/1973 AP quotes Gerald Ford as saying that Nixon's refusal to turn over the tapes had "no adverse impact whatsoever. In fact there has been a solidification of Republican support in backing up the President."
7/26/1973 Ervin committee unanimously decides to take the matter of the tapes to the courts.
7/26/1973 Maurice Bishop severs his relationship with Antonio Veciana, gives him a $253,000 cash payment for his services. (Fonzi chronology)
7/27/1973 Elliot Richardson told Haig that Agnew was under investigation for tax evasion, bribery and extortion.
7/31/1973 Rep. Robert F. Drinan (D-Mass.) introduced an impeachment resolution against Nixon.
8/1973 Defense Intelligence Agency, Biographic Data on General Augusto Pinochet, August/September 1973: This DIA biographic summary covers the military career of the leader of Chile's military coup, General Augusto Pinochet. The DIA, an intelligence branch of the U.S. Armed Forces, routinely collects "Biographic Data" on all high military officials around the world. The heavy deletions are likely to conceal Chilean sources providing information on Pinochet, his own contacts with U.S. officials, and commentary on his character, reputation, political orientation and actions during his career.
8/1/1973 Haig officially retired from the Army.
8/3/1973 Justice Dept reopens its investigation of the Kent State shootings.
8/6/1973 Haig and Bryce Harlow were sent by Nixon to ask Agnew to resign; he refused. Agnew did announce publicly that he was being investigated by the Justice Dept on charges of receiving kickbacks while an official in Maryland.
8/6/1973 Stewart Alsop column: "'When I am attacked,' Richard Nixon once remarked to this writer, it is my instinct to strike back.' The president is now clearly in a mood to obey his instinctsâ€¦The new game plan calls for a strategy of striking backâ€¦rather than a policy of attempted accomodationâ€¦"
8/7/1973 The Senate Select Committee on Presidential Campaign Activities recesses.
8/8/1973 Agnew branded as "damned lies" reports that he had taken kickbacks from government contracts in Maryland. He vowed never to resign.
8/10/1973 Dan Rather, on CBS News First Line Report, said in a commentary: "Lee Harvey Oswald...did he ever know or have contact with E. Howard Hunt or Gordon Liddy...Under normal circumstances, and in normal times, these questions would not be asked. Unfortunately for us all, circumstances are not normal. These are not normal times."
8/14/1973 Agnew makes his personal financial records available to the US attorney's office in Baltimore.
8/14/1973 Gallup poll showed that Nixon's approval rating was at 31%, disapproval at 57%.
8/17/1973 AP in London reported that former CIA official Miles Copeland was reported to have said that "senior agency officials are convinced Senator Edward Muskie's damaging breakdown during the presidential campaign last year was caused by...E. Howard Hunt or his henchmen spiking his drink with a sophisticated form of LSD."
8/22/1973 Nixon announces that Henry Kissinger is his new choice for Secretary of State. At the same press conference, he defended wiretapping on national security grounds by pointing to the Kennedy adminstration and its hundreds of wiretaps: "But if he'd had ten more, and as a result of wiretaps, had been able to discover the - discover the Oswald plan - it would have been worth it." A reporter asked him if he thought wiretaps might have prevented the assassination. Nixon replied, "No, what I said, let me correct you sir. I want to be sure that the assumption is correct. I said, if ten more wire taps could have the found the conspiracy - if it was a conspiracy - or the individual, then it would have been worth it' As far as I'm concerned, I'm no more of an expert on that assassination than anybody else...to have the Oswald thing happen just seemed...so unbelievable, with his record...with everything that everybody had on him, that this fellow could have been where he was, in a position to shoot the President...seems to me to be - to have been a terrible breakdown in our...protective, security areas." He repeatedly stated that he thought the Kennedys' wiretapping was justified on national security grounds.
8/22/1973 Jim Garrison is put on trial in New Orleans federal court on charges of accepting bribes from pinball dealers tied to New Orleans crime boss Carlos Marcello. The charge originates with John Mitchell's Justice Department.
8/27/1973 Story on E. Howard Hunt in Time magazine; he told correspondent David Beckwith concerning Watergate: "There were just too many fishy things that occured. What was the Mod Squad [Shoffler's officers] doing out on the street some two or three hours after they were supposed to be off duty?...Baldwin was a very convenient fellow. He had a girlfriend at the Democratic National Committee, and he somehow came up with the floor plan of the DNC headquarters. He was never checked out at all - McCord got him off a job-wanted list of former FBI agents. He didn't do his job; he didn't alert anybody about the police until they were running around the DNC with their guns drawn." He called McCord an "electronic hitchhiker who shouldn't have been allowed on our operation...There were just too many things that went wrong for them all to be coincidence." He explained that he thought Ellsberg might be controlled by the Soviets, and that was one reason why they broke into his psychiatrist's office.
8/29/1973 Sirica orders Nixon to turn over to him for private examination the tape recordings involving Watergate.

Tracy Riddle · 02-08-2014, 03:29 AM

9/1973 Cyril Wecht reports that his examination of the JFK "medical and photographic data" suggests that there were two gunmen, both in the TSBD, "but at points further west [than the SE corner window]...and on two different floors." He felt that the X-rays and photographs "give every indication of being authentic." He found no evidence for a grassy-knoll gunman. (Forensic Science Gazette)
9/1/1973 New York state implemented the toughest anti-drug law in the country; it imposed mandatory life sentences for drug traffickers and for addicts who commit violent crimes.
9/4/1973 William Colby becomes CIA Director (until January 1976)
9/4/1973 Los Angeles County grand jury returned secret indictments against Ehrlichman, Liddy, Krogh and Young for the Ellsberg break-in.
9/4/1973 One million Popular Unity supporters march through Santiago to support the government.
9/6/1973 W.A. "Tony" Boyle, the 71-year-old former president of the United Mine Workers, is charged with ordering the murder of Joseph Yablonski, his wife and daughter.
9/7/1973 US Ambassador Nathaniel Davis told Letelier he was returning to Washington to meet with Kissinger. Meanwhile, Gen. Prats told Allende and Letelier that he had information that a coup would occur on 9/14. Prats thought that Pinochet was loyal to the government.
9/9/1973 Christian Democrats suggest Allende resign and new elections be held.
9/10/1973 Martha Mitchell was reported in Newsweek ("How Much Does Martha Know?") as telling a reporter that Nixon "planned the whole goddamn thing [Watergate.]" They reported that she had spoken in "an undertone of desperation." Days later she called UPI reporter Helen Thomas and again directly implicated Nixon in the coverup. She also said, "Nixon is involved with the Mafia. The Mafia was involved in his reelection."
9/10/1973 Haig and Buzhardt met with Agnew, urging him to resign; again, he refused.
9/10/1973 Allende's government discussed the growing right-wing violence, much of it by the military, against Popular Unity supporters. That night, rumors of troop movements could not be verified by Allende and Letelier. Allende decided that tomorrow he would force several top generals into retirement.
9/11/1973 "The Armed Forces violently overthrow the constitutionally elected Popular Unity government of President Salvador Allende, who dies during the military attack on the presidential palace La Moneda. Led by Army Commander-in-Chief General Augusto Pinochet, the coup marks the beginning of 17 years of military rule in Chile. A state of siege throughout all Chilean territory is decreed. This state of exception is renewed every six months in the following years. At dawn Navy troops revolted and began heading toward Santiago. Pinochet was nowhere to be found. Letelier went to the Defense Ministry and was promptly arrested. The Air Force offered to fly Allende and his family out of the country but he refused; he sat in his presidential office, unable to get information about troop movements. Then the radio announced a decree by Pinochet and three other generals that they had formed a junta: "Mr. President Allende must proceed to hand over his office immediately to the members of the armed forces and police. The armed forces and the police are united to begin the historic mission of liberating our fatherland from the yoke of Marxism." Allende and a small group of intimates remained in the presidential palace, which the Air Force now began to bomb. At about 3pm, the burning building was overrun by soldiers, and Allende resisted to the last with an automatic rifle. He either committed suicide (as Pinochet claimed) or was killed by gunfire. During the following weeks, Allende supporters fought running battles with security forces. Pinochet decreed Sept. 11 as a national holiday. This violent coup saw between 5000-15,000 people die and ended 46 years of constitutional rule. Congress was also dissolved. Allende had once told foreign newsmen that the only way he would leave office before the end of his six-year-term was in a pine box. On news of the coup, Anaconda Copper's stock jumped on Wall Street. (Los Angeles Times 9/12/1973) The military junta massacres tens of thousands of workers and students considered leftists. "There is a strong probability that the CIA station in Chile helped supply the assassination lists," according to ex-agent Phillip Agee.
9/12/1973 Another meeting between Agnew and Haig about the possibility of the VP resigning.
9/12/1973 Egypt's Sadat, his Minister of War, Gen. Ahmed Ismail Ali, and Syria's president Assad met secretly during an Arab summit meeting in Cairo to select a day to attack Israel. (Dupuy)
9/12/1973 Allende supporters were rounded up and held in stadiums and other large areas; folksinger Victor Jara, in the Santiago stadium, refused to stop singing to the prisoners, and guards beat him to death. The four commanding officers of the armed forces meet to constitute the governing Junta and designate cabinet ministers. The constitutional act, penned by the Navy auditor general and admiral, lawyer Rodolfo Vio, states that the commanders-in-chief of the different branches of the Armed Forces constitute the Junta for the purposes of ""restoring the ruptured Chilean identity, justice and institutional framework."" The Junta members are General Augusto Pinochet of the Army - designated president of the Junta - Gustavo Leigh of the Air Force, Cesar Mendoza of Carabineros and Jose Toribio Merino of the Navy. The first Cabinet is comprised of 10 military officials and four civilians. A separate article stipulates that the new regime would respect the independence of the judiciary. The National Stadium in Santiago is set up as a temporary prison camp, holding thousands of political prisoners. Red Cross International estimates some 7,000 prisoners were held in the National Stadium as of September 22, 1973. The Chile Stadium was also used for the same purpose after the coup. Between September and the end of 1973, temporary prison camps were set up in stadiums and military regiments throughout Chile. Simultaneously, the military set up several concentration camps in isolated areas to keep prisoners for longer periods, such as Pisagua, Chacabuco, Dawson Island and others."
9/13/1973 The military junta chose Pinochet as President, and decreed that all power resided in the new military rulers, even the power to change the Constitution. They announced that their task was to uproot and eradicate Marxism from Chile. The Supreme Court declares its support for the coup in a document signed by Supreme Court president Enrique Urrutia Manzano. The judiciary is the only one of the three state powers that is not dissolved after the coup, partly because of the new regime's desire to maintain a semblance of legality. In 1991, the Rettig report's analysis of the role of the courts in the early period of the dictatorship concludes that it did not react energetically enough to defend human rights in this period. The Catholic Church of Chile calls on the governing Junta to respect the rights of its opponents, to proceed with moderation, to maintain the advances made for the working class and a prompt return to institutional rule. The declaration, issued by the Permanent Episcopate Committee, provokes a strong negative reaction in the Junta.
9/14/1973 The Junta dissolves the National Congress, through Decree Law No. 27, stating that its functionaries should leave their posts immediately. The justification given for this decision is the need for "greater expedition in carrying out the resolutions that the Junta has proposed."
9/14/1973 Carter Once Saw a UFO on 'Very Sober Occasion' (Atlanta Constitution, Sept. 14, 1973, p. 1D) by Howell Raines, Constitution Staff Writer DUBLIN- Gov. Jimmy Carter doesn't scoff at people who report UFO sightings, because he saw one himself about three years ago. And, Carter quipped, "it was on a very sober occasion." Carter said he saw a blue, disc-shaped object during a campaign stop in Leary, a South Georgia town in the same general area where numerous UFOs have been reported recently.
9/15/1973 The Appeals Court of Santiago rejects the first protective writ (habeus corpus) since the coup, filed by Christian Democrat Bernardo Leighton on behalf of arrested Popular Unity leaders. This legal instrument proved to be ineffective in adequately protecting the rights of arrested individuals throughout the 1973-90 period.
9/16/1973 The Washington Post reported: "Jim Garrison, as late as March 1971, was preparing to accuse another person of conspiring to assassinate President John F. Kennedy. Garrison's intended defendant this time was the late Air Force General Charles Cabell..."
9/16/1973 World renowned folk singer Victor Jara is killed after being tortured at the Chile Stadium.
9/17/1973 Henry Kissinger said during his confirmation hearings: "The CIA had nothing to do with the [Chilean] coup, to the best of my knowledge and belief, and I only put in that qualification in case some madman appears down there who, without instruction, talked to somebody. I have absolutely no reason to suppose it." (The Experts Speak)
9/17/1973 The ruling Junta exposes "Plan Z", an alleged plan by the Popular Unity (UP) government for a counter-coup, which included amassing large amounts of weaponry and political assassinations. Claiming to have found secret documents in the UP government's Interior Ministry offices, the Junta publishes these in its Libro Blanco as justification for its persecution of leftists and for the coup itself.
9/18/1973 "Thirteen people are killed by a civilian squad in Osorno, southern Chile. After curfew, the group of individuals is arrested by the local Carabineros police, who then leave them in the hands of armed civilians. These bring the prisoners to PilmaiquÃ©n River, line them up along the edge of a bridge and shoot them at point blank range. One woman from the group of victims, Blanca Ester Valderas - mayor of Entre Lagos and Socialist Party member - survives and lives in hiding in the area for several years. Years later, she brings her testimony to the regional court. Spanish priest Joan Alsina is killed. Alsina is head of personnel at the San Juan de Dios Hospital in Santiago at the time of the coup and is involved with the Worker's Movement for Catholic Action (MOAC). He is arrested on the hospital grounds and badly beaten before being taken away. Alsina's body is later found on the banks of the Mapocho River with ten bullet wounds in the back. Today, there is a small memorial on the Bulnes bridge, where Alsina died. Two other priests, Miguel Woodward of Valparaiso and Gerardo Poblete of Iquique, are also killed prior to Alsina. Nineteen people from the towns of Laja and San Rosendo near Los Angeles disappear after being arrested by the military. The group, which includes several workers from the pulp and paper company, Compania Manufacturera de Papeles y Cartones (CMPC), is forced into a company vehicle and driven away."
9/19/1973 Haig told Agnew that "the President will call for your resignation."
9/20/1973 Agnew met with Nixon to tell him that the charges were false.
9/20/1973 Jack B. Kubisch, US Assistant Sec of State for Inter-American Affairs, said before a subcommittee of the House Committee on Foreign Affairs: "Either explicitly or implicitly, the US Government has been charged with involvement or complicity in the [Chilean] coup. This is absolutely false. As official spokesmen of the US Government have stated repeatedly, we were not involved in the coup in any way." (NYT 9/21/73)
9/21/1973 Kissinger is confirmed as Secretary of State by the Senate.
9/21/1973 The New York Times reported that there might have been bribes made to fix the outcome of Jim Garrison's 1971 trial.
9/22/1973 Kissinger is sworn in as Secretary of State.
9/23/1973 "The Nobel prize-winning poet Pablo Neruda dies of a heart attack in his Isla Negra home. A member of the Communist Party, Neruda had left his post as ambassador to France due to poor health and returned to Chile a year before the coup. One popular account of his death says the military is guilty of negligence, delaying the dispatch of an ambulance to the poet's isolated residence, in effect leaving him to die unaided.
9/23/1973 Army officers conduct a 14-hour raid of the San Borja apartment buildings in downtown Santiago. They arrest dozens of people and burn books and other items considered "seditious."
9/24/1973 Newsweek reported that Mitchell family associates said Martha had had "a series of unpredictable and sometimes violent outbursts at home." John Mitchell complained, "You think the media would understand and leave Martha alone. It's obvious to anyone who knows her that she's a sick woman."
9/24/1973 Howard Hunt testified before the Watergate hearings; he said that Colson was part of the overall spy plan. Hunt also admitted to having doctored diplomatic cables to make it look like the Kennedy administration was involved in Diem's assassination in 1963. He explained that this was a bid to hurt the Democrats with Catholic voters in 1972.
9/24/1973 Chile: Eighteen farm workers from the El Escorial estate in Paine disappear after being rounded up by officials from the San Bernardo Infantry Regiment. Years later, morgue workers confirm some of those bodies arrived at the morgue with bullet wounds, and were later transferred to Patio 29 of the General Cemetery.
9/25/1973 Soviet Foreign Minister Andrei Gromyko, citing the "diminishing danger" of war with the US, proposed that the five major powers cut their military budgets and use part of the savings for aid to developing countries.
9/25/1973 E. Howard Hunt testified that most of his clandestine activities were for political, not national security, reasons; he also voiced suspicion that Alfred C. Baldwin III was a double agent. He also admitted that he had interviewed a bed-ridden Dita Davis Beard, while wearing a disguise and using a phony name; opposed a Colson plan to break into Arthur Bremer's apartment.
9/25/1973 SALT negotiations resume in Geneva.
9/25/1973 On the night of September 25, King Hussein secretly flew to Tel Aviv to warn Israeli Prime Minister Golda Meir of an impending Syrian attack. "Are they going to war without the Egyptians, asked Mrs. Meir. The king said he didn't think so. 'I think they [Egypt] would cooperate'". Surprisingly, this warning fell on deaf ears. Aman concluded that the king had not told it anything it did not already know. "Eleven warnings of war were received by Israel during September from well placed sources. But [Mossad chief] Zvi Zamir continued to insist that war was not an Arab option. Not even Hussein's warnings succeeded in stirring his doubts". He would later remark that "We simply didn't feel them capable [of War]" (Rabinovich, Jerusalem Post, September 25, 1998)
9/25/1973 The U.S. government officially recognizes Chile's military Junta.
9/26/1973 Nixon signs a vocational rehabiliation bill for the handicapped.
9/26/1973 Egypt and Syria announced concentrations of troops for routine maneuvers. Although Israeli and US intelligence believed there would be no war, a partial Israeli alert was ordered, including deployment of a second armored brigade to the Golan area on Sep 29. (Dupuy)
9/26/1973 Chile: The military Junta offers a reward of $500,000 escudos to anyone who can provide information as to the whereabouts of members of the former Popular Unity government.
9/27 or 28/1973 Jim Garrison was found not guilty of the bribery charges, but the incident narrowly cost him his reelection soon after. The government charged him with tax evasion in 1974 but that also fell apart. The trial was presided over by Judge Herbert W. Christenberry, who had presided over Marcello's 11/1963 trial and who had blocked Garrison's perjury charge against Clay Shaw. Garrison soon took over his own defense and charged that the tape recordings were fakes; he called Louis Gerstman to testify that they were doctored, but the government's expert, Lt. Ernest Nash of the Michigan State Police, said they were genuine. Garrison cross-examined Gervais on the stand and got him to admit that he was under the government's witness protection program, and that in a 1972 TV interview he called the case against Garrison a fraud. Now, though, Gervais said the charges were true. Garrison's forceful self-defense led to his acquittal.
9/30/1973 Former Army Commander-in-Chief Carlos Prats Gonzalez, is killed in Buenos Aires, Argentina by a car bomb alongside his wife Sofia Cuthbert. Prats, who fled to Argentina shortly after the military coup, was Pinochet's predecessor in the Army and had been loyal to Salvador Allende's government. As of April 1998, the Argentine courts investigating the crime have determined that the DINA was responsible for the murders. As of early 1998, only one DINA agent, Enrique Arancibia Clavel, has been apprehended.
10/1973 in National Review, Miles Copeland (a former CIA official), wrote an editorial warning that, as world disorder and Leftist terrorism increase, the necessity for more police state methods will be necessary to preserve order and Western civilization. "The only answer to the problem [of Left terror] seems to be to keep whole communities under surveillance....sooner rather than later, the public will swing over to sharing the alarm, and will become suddenly unsqueamish about police-state methods or whatever it takes to give them a good night's sleep. The CIA, the FBI and other security agencies had better be prepared."
10/1973 Peter Noyes' Legacy of Doubt is published, pointing the finger at Carlos Marcello for the JFK assassination.
10/1973 Nixon puts US forces on worldwide "Precautionary alert." Kissinger announced this was because of "ambiguous" signs that the Soviets might intervene militarily in the Middle East. (Dupuy) Israel reportedly assembles nuclear weapons during the war. (Nat Geographic Aug 05) As Israeli troops pushed into Egypt itself and neared Cairo, Sadat and Brezhnev appealed for joint US-Soviet supervision of the cease-fire. Brezhnev sent a message to Nixon warning that the Soviets were prepared to move into the region unilaterally to maintain the cease-fire. Nixon, bogged down in his own problems, let Kissinger and Haig handle this crisis. Eagleburger would later claim that Nixon was drunk. US forces were put on DefCon 3 and readied for war. But the Soviets quickly accepted a UN peacekeeping force. Critics would claim that Nixon was trying to deflect attention from Watergate and quiet domestic enemies. (General's Progress) The diversion of US resources to help Israel meant a corresponding drop in US aid to Vietnam. The war had seen 3,500 Syrians killed, 15,000 Egyptians killed, 2,569 Israelis killed, 125 Iraqis killed.
10/1/1973 Department of Defense, U.S. Milgroup, Situation Report #2, October 1, 1973: In a situation report, U.S. Naval attache Patrick Ryan, reports positively on events in Chile during the coup. He characterizes September 11 as "our D-Day," and states that "Chile's coup de etat [sic] was close to perfect." His report provides details on Chilean military operations during and after the coup, as well as glowing commentary on the character of the new regime.
10/1/1973 Rose Mary Woods reported to Haig about the 18.5 minute gap on the 6/20/1972 tape she was transcribing.
10/3/1973 Joseph Califano appeared in executive session testimony before the Ervin Committee.
10/4/1973 Agnew recalled that Al Haig practically threatened his life if he did not resign: "anything may be in the offing. It can and will get nasty and dirty. Don't think that the game cannot be played from here. The President has a lot of power - don't forget that." Agnew took this as an "open-ended threat" from the man "who was the de facto president...I feared for my life. If a decision had been made to eliminate me - through an automobile accident, a fake suicide or whatever, the order would not have been traced back to the White House any more than get-Castro orders were ever traced to their source...Haig did not want me in the line of succession." Haig did imply that if Agnew resigned he would get financial and legal help. (Go Quietly Or Else p186-93)
10/4-5/1973 The hasty departure of some Soviet advisers and all dependents from Egypt was noted by Israeli and US intelligence agencies, which again informed their governments that there would be no war. (Dupuy)
10/5/1973 Oregon became the first state to decriminalize the possession of small amounts of marijuana.
10/6/1973 0400 hours: Israeli Director of Intelligence Gen. Elihau Zeira informed Lt. Gen. David Elazar that the Arabs would attack at 1800 hours. Israeli mobilization was ordered at 0930. (Dupuy) Today is the Israeli holy day of Yom Kippur.
10/6/1973 1405 hours: A massive Egyptian air strike against Israeli artillery and command positions and a simultaneous intensive artillery bombardment of Bar Lev Line fortifications along the Suez Canal were a tactical surprise. Israeli frontline units had only been partially alerted. (Dupuy)
10/6/1973 1405 hours: A massive Syrian air attack and artillery bombardment against Israeli positions on the Golan achieved complete tactical surprise. (Dupuy)
10/6/1973 Egypt declared waters of Israel's coasts as a 'War Zone' and effectively blockaded commerce to Israel. A blockade by destroyers and subs at the Strait of Bab el Mandeb stopped all traffic to Eilat. (Dupuy) Israeli 'Saar' missile boats struck at night at the Syrian seaport of Latakia, and were engaged by a Syrian squadron. The Israelis sank 4 Syrian vessels without loss to themselves. (Dupuy)
10/6/1973 Syrian commandos, in a ground-helicopter attack, captured the fortified Israeli observation post on Mount Hermon, overlooking the Golan Plateau and the Damascus Plain. (Dupuy)
10/6-7/1973 Egyptian commandos crossed the canal at 1435, followed by infantry, engineers, and a few tanks. Engineers, opening approaches in the Bar Lev Line's sand embankment by demolitions and water jets, had bridges up in the Second Army area before midnight Oct 7. Bridges were complete in the Third Army area by the night of Oct 7/8. About 500 Egyptian tanks crossed the canal. Two quickly mobilized reserve Israeli armored divisions under Gens. Ariel Sharon and Abraham Adan approached the front, Adan near Romani, Sharon near Tasa. (Dupuy) North of Kuneitra the Syrian 7th Infantry Division was repulsed by the Israeli 7th Armored Brigade; most of the Syrian tanks were destroyed. The 3rd Syrian Tank Division, committed to pass through the 7th Infantry Division, suffered a costly defeat in a renewed major tank battle west of Amadiye (Oct 7). (Dupuy)
10/6-7/1973 Taking advantage of weaker opposition and better terrain, the Syrian 5th Mechanized Division broke through the defenses of the Israeli 188th Armored Brigade. In 2 days of fighting the brigade was virtually destroyed. The Israeli Golan command post at Khushniye was surrounded. Spearheads of the 5th Mechanized Division, reinforced by the 1st Tank Division, halted near the western escarpment of the Golan. (Dupuy)
10/6-8/1973 The first Israeli aircraft appeared over the Sinai and Golan fronts about 40 minutes after the Arab attack began. They encountered Soviet-made missiles and by dark the Israelis lost more than 30 aircraft. In the following days the Egyptian mobile SAM-6s claimed many Israeli planes, and the light, hand-held Strela (SAM-7) damaged many more. (Dupuy) Soviet air flights to Middle East accelerate, primarily to return Soviets to the USSR. (Dupuy)
10/7/1973 Second naval action off Latakia; results were inconclusive and the Syrians withdrew. (Dupuy)
10/7-8/1973 Scattered Egyptian-Israeli clashes in the Mediterranean and Red Seas. The results were inconclusive, with the Egyptians withdrawing in all instances. (Dupuy)
10/7/1973 Egyptian ambassador Kamal Rifaat said "We are defending ourselves in our own land."
10/8/1973 Counterattacks against the Egyptian Second Army by Adan's division and Sharon's division were repulsed with heavy losses. The Israelis dug in and the Egyptians consolidated, linking up all their bridgeheads. Israeli close support aircraft suffered heavy losses from Egyptian anti-aircraft using Soviet missiles and guns. (Dupuy)
10/8-9/1973 Assisted by units of the 7th Armored Brigade, displaced from the north, newly-arrived Israeli units drove back the Syrian 5th and 1st Divisions, in several places to the original front line. Most of the Syrian tanks were lost, many because they had run out of fuel and ammo. (Dupuy)
10/8-16/1973 Using hastily devised tactics and utilizing chaff and electronic countermeasures, Israeli aircraft began to make a greater effect in the ground battles. They claimed hits on Egyptian bridges over the Suez and strikes against Arab airfields. (Dupuy)
10/8-9/1973 Egyptian vessels, coming out to meet Israeli raiding boats off Damietta, suffered severe losses. (Dupuy) Israel begins to fly supplies from the US. The first of a number of flights by El Al aircraft took off from Ocean Naval Air Station, Virginia. (Dupuy) Israeli attempt to retake Mount Hermon is repulsed. (Dupuy)
10/8/1973 TIME - FRANCE: Objective: De Gaulle: Speeding through the Paris suburb of Petit-Clamart early one evening in August 1962, the French President's black CitroÃ«n ran into a barrage of submachine-gun fire. The colonel riding next to the chauffeur yelled to his father-in-law in the back seat: "Father, get down!" The tall, imperial figure budged not an inch. Again the distraught colonel pleaded: "I beg you, Father, get down." This time the President leaned slightly forward. A split second later, a stream of bullets ripped through the limousine. When the firing stopped, Charles de Gaulle flicked fragments of the broken rear window from his coat and declaimed: "What, again?" The Petit-Clamart ambushthe factual starting point of Frederick Forsyth's otherwise fictional The Day of the Jackalwas De Gaulle's closest brush with assassins. It was, however, neither the first nor the last. According to a new book published in Paris, Objectif de Gaulle, there were at least 31 serious plots against the general's life, and dozens of others that never got beyond the talking stage. Indeed, even as the would-be killers of Petit-Clamart went on trial for their lives, police averted a sniper's attempt to shoot De Gaulle with a telescopically fitted carbine while the President was on an inspection tour of Paris' Ecole Militaire. All the assassination attempts documented in the bookwith the lone exception of one by an embittered seaman who blamed De Gaulle for the World War II destruction of the French fleet by the Britishsprang from De Gaulle's decision to grant independence to Algeria. That policy led to the creation of the militant terrorist group known as the Secret Army Organization (O.A.S.), one of whose principal goals was to kill De Gaulle for having betrayed AlgÃ©rie franÃ§aise. The authors, Pierre DÃ©maret, 31, who once belonged to the O.A.S., and Christian Plume, 48, a journalist, interviewed former O.A.S. leaders and obtained access to the French Interior Ministry's records. The result is an extraordinary tale of mad zeal, abominable planning and incredibly bad luck by what was surely the world's most dedicated and inept gang of assassins. The O.A.S.'s impressive record of failure was racked up with little help from le grand Charles. "You can't keep De Gaulle under glass," he would declare whenever security got too tight. Fortunately for the French President, many of the assassination attempts sound as if they were concocted by Gordon Liddy. One zany plot called for poisoning the Communion Hosts at the village church in Colombey-les-Deux-Eglises, where De Gaulle attended Mass. The idea was discarded after the plotters realized that the first person to receive a Host would keel over dead and give the scheme away. And there was no way to guarantee that De Gaulle would be first at the Communion rail. Equally harebrained was a scheme for a kamikaze pilot to crash a small private plane into the French President's helicopter. While circling over Algeria's Blida Airport in anticipation of De Gaulle's departure, the pilot was dismayed to see that a swarm of helicopters had taken off at once. There was no way of knowing which one De Gaulle was in (French security forces routinely used dummy planes and juggled limousines as a precaution). Then there was the O.A.S. agent who was sent to Athens just prior to De Gaulle's May 1963 visit. The agent's mission: to shoot the general with a special camera that fired bullets. The gunman lost his fake identity papers during a lively evening at a local taverna and refused to take the risk without getaway documents. A new set arrived a day too late, and all he got was a photograph showing how close he had been to De Gaulle. The most determined assassin was the architect of the Petit-Clamart ambush (which the plotters called "Operation Charlotte Corday"*), an air force lieutenant colonel named Jean-Maria Bastien-Thiry. A brilliant engineer known as "the French von Braun" for his invention of the guided SSII missile, he masterminded both Petit-Clamart and an earlier attempt in which a napalm and plastique bomb was planted on the route to Colombey. De Gaulle commuted the death sentences of two other Petit-Clamart conspirators, Jacques PrÃ©vost and Alain Bougrenet de la Tocnaye. But he refused to grant clemency to Bastien-Thiry, reportedly because the attempt had been made when Mme. de Gaulle was also in the car. He was executed by a firing squad March 11, 1963. Today the only would-be De Gaulle assassin left in jail is Jean-Jacques Susini, a cofounder of the O.A.S., who once directed its terrorist activities in Algiers. The others convicted of participating in the plots44 in allwere granted either clemency, commutation or amnesty by the man they had tried to kill.
10/9/1973 Claiming retaliation for Syrian 'Frog' attacks (long-range surface to surface missiles) on the Hula Valley, the IAF began an intensive and effective strategic air bombardment campaign against mostly industrial targets deep inside Syria. The Syrian Defense Ministry in Damascus was also hit. Attacks on Syrian seaports, industrial plants and fuel storage depots continued until the first ceasefire. The attacks severely hurt the Syrian economy. (Dupuy)
10/9-10/1973 Israeli missile vessels bombarded Latakia, Tartus and Banias in Syria. The Syrian navy did not respond. (Dupuy) Israeli-Egyptian missile boat battle off Port Said: 3 Egyptian vessels were sunk and the others withdrew. (Dupuy) Major Soviet airlift to Egypt and Syria begins, via and/or over Hungary and Yugoslavia. Most of the flights were to Syria. (Dupuy)
10/10/1973 Senate approves War Powers Act 75-20.
10/10/1973 Agnew resigns over charges of tax evasion and bribery related to his period as governor of Maryland. He pleaded no contest to a single tax evasion charge, and the government agreed to bring no further criminal charges against him. He was fined and given three years' probation. Agnew will be disbarred in Maryland on May 2, 1974.
10/10-12/1973 Israeli counteroffensive. In a drive generally north of the Kuneitra-Damascus road, 3 Israeli divisions smashed through the first Syrian defensive zone east of the cease-fire line, and into the second zone, near Saasaa, in front of Damascus. (Dupuy)
10/11/1973 For several days, Egyptian Gen. Ismail rejected recommendations to attempt a deeper drive into Sinai. But to help the hardpressed Syrians, he reluctantly ordered an offensive to draw Israelis to the Sinai front. (Dupuy)
10/12/1973 The House overwhelmingly approved the War Powers Resolution, a bill that would limit the President's ability to send troops into combat without Congressional oversight; Nixon vetoed in 10/24.
10/12/1973 Richard Nixon nominates former Warren Commission member Gerald Ford as Vice President of the United States. Nixon's first choice is John Connally, but Democratic congressional leaders inform him that Connally will never be confirmed by the Senate. Gerald Ford has already violated national security by illegally publishing top secret transcripts which he appropriated from the Warren Commission files, in his ghostwritten PORTRAIT OF THE ASSASSIN. In this book, Ford goes out of his way to make Oswald appear to be the assassin and to bury criticism of the Warren Report.
10/12/1973 The Business Council, a group of top corporate executives, told Nixon that they wanted an end to wage- and price-controls before they wrecked the economy.
10/12/1973 US Circuit Court of Appeals ruled that Nixon "is not above the law's commands," and must let Judge Sirica decide whether the Watergate tapes should be turned over to a grand jury.
10/12/1973 The Israelis halted their Syria offensive and began to shift units to the Sinai front. The Iraqi 3rd Armored Division, on the south side of the Israeli salient, counterattacked by was ambushed and repulsed. (Dupuy)
10/12-13/1973 Israeli raids on Syrian coast: Tartus and Latakia were again bombarded. There were inconclusive clashes with Syrian missile boats. (Dupuy)
10/13/1973 Los Angeles Times: Gerald Ford told the press that Haig "had notified him of his nomination. What did Haig say? 'He said, "Gerry, I want you to be my nominee for Vice President of the United States."'
10/13-14/1973 Nixon and Haig went to Camp David to discuss Watergate.
10/13/1973 US airlift begins in response to urgent Israeli requests. American planes began to supplement the El Al lift. (Dupuy) In retrospect, Golda Meir's decision not to strike first was a sound one. Operation Nickel Grass, the American airlift of supplies during the war which began on October 13, while it did not immediately replace Israel's losses in equipment, did allow it to expend what it did have more freely (Rabinovich, 491). Had they struck first, according to Henry Kissinger, they would not have received "so much as a nail".
10/14/1973 The first seven US C5A transport planes arrived in Israel, flying via the Azores. (Dupuy)
10/14/1973 Egyptian offensive is repulsed; the Israelis inflict heavy casualties, particularly in tanks. (Dupuy)
10/14-21/1973 Massive Soviet and US airlifts continue. By the time of the ceasefire, the Soviets had airlifted about 15,000 tons, the US more than 20,000. (Dupuy)
10/15/1973 Supreme Court ruled 7-2 to refuse to review a 1971 Federal Communications directive to censor songs from the airwaves with drug-oriented lyrics. Dissenting justices were Douglas and Brennan.
10/15/1973 Haig met with Richardson and told him Nixon would fire Cox. Richardson threatened to resign. Haig would later claim he was against the idea of firing Cox, but Richardson felt this wasn't true. (Washington Post 11/28/1973; The Creative Balance 39) Haig then relented and suggested the idea to let Sen. Stennis listen to the tapes. Nixon suggests that J. Lee Rankin (of the Warren Commission) "edit" the tapes.
10/15/1973 US announces it is supplying Israel with military equipment to support its fight against the Arabs. By now the Israelis were concentrating their forces against the Egyptians; ten days of fighting would be needed to push them out of the Sinai.
10/15/1973 Another counterattack by the Iraqi 3rd Armored Division was repulsed. (Dupuy)
10/15-16/1973 Israeli missile boats sank a number of Egyptian landing craft in a raid on the Nile Delta. (Dupuy) Israeli thrust across Suez Canal: Sharon, hitting the boundary between the Egyptian 2nd and 3rd Armies, was abled to establish a bridgehead with a brigade of paratroopers near Deversoir around midnight. (Dupuy)
10/16/1973 The first black mayor of a major southern city, Maynard Jackson, was elected in Atlanta.
10/16/1973 Sirica denies bail to five of the original Watergate defendants.
10/16/1973 Melvin Laird discloses that he had warned Nixon that withholding the tapes might result in an impeachment attempt.
10/16/1973 Kissinger and Le Duc Tho are awarded the Nobel Peace Prize; Kissinger accepted it, but Le Duc Tho declined it until peace is truly established.
10/16/1973 The Jordanian 40th Armored Brigade counterattacked beside the Iraqis but was repulsed. (Dupuy)
10/16-18/1973 Battle of the 'Chinese Farm' (a former Japanese experimental agricultural station; Israeli troops in 1967 assumed the writing was Chinese). The Egyptian 2nd Army closed the corridor behind Sharon, isolating his division in small bridgheads east and west of the Canal. In intensive fighting Adan's division broke through, bringing a bridge to the crossing point. The 2nd Army with some aid from the 3rd Army tried repeatedly to close the corridor leading to the Israeli crossing site. Egyptian tank losses again were heavy. Adan's division then crossed during the night of Oct 17-18. (Dupuy)
10/16/1973 The Kurds of Iraq, eager to help the Israelis by launching an attack and tying down part of the Iraqi army, were told by Kissinger via a CIA cable: "We do not repeat not consider it advisable for you to undertake the offensive military actions that Israel has suggested to you." The Kurds did not move. (Pike Report)
10/17/1973 White House proposes to Cox that Sen. John Stennis listen to the tapes.
10/17/1973 Nixon holds talks with the foreign ministers of Saudi Arabia, Kuwait, Morocco and Algeria at the White House on the fighting in the Middle East.
10/17/1973 Eleven Arab nations began an oil embargo against the US because of the ammo and weapons sent to Israel when it became apparent that their military was running low.
10/17/1973 Israel regains air superiority over the Suez Canal. As Gen. Adan's advancing tanks captured a number of Egyptian antiaircraft batteries, a gap was created in the Egyptian air defense network. The Israeli air force quickly exploited this. (Dupuy)
10/17/1973 Tom Zito, Washington Post: "Ten years after the assassination of John F. Kennedy a semi-fictionalized movie thriller is about to be released, concluding that his murder was planned by a group of powerful industrialists. "Executive Action," scheduled to open at seven theaters here on Nov. 14, is based on a novel of the same name by Donald Freed and Mark Lane. Lane once served as attorney for Lee Harvey Oswald and wrote "Rush to Judgment," a book arguing Oswald's innocence and proposing a conspiracy theory for the assassination. Dalton Trumbo, author of the antiwar novel "Johnny Got His Gun" and imprisoned and blacklisted for his refusal to testify about alleged involvement with the Communist Party, wrote the screenplay. Burt Lancaster, the late Robert Ryan and Will Geer play conspirators. "I really think this film is going to appeal to a young audience," producer Ed Lewis said. Lewis also produced "Seven Days in May," another political thrillerâ€¦The independent production cost about $600,000, according to Lewis. Shooting was completed three months ago. The film had originally been the idea of actor Donald Sutherland, according to Lewis. "He commissioned Freed and Lane to write the screenplay about three years ago. He tiled to get backing, but then abandoned the project because he felt the script was too sensational to get financing."
10/18/1973 Krogh pleads not guilty to two counts of perjury.
10/18/1973 Haig met with Richardson, who once more threatened to resign.
10/18-19/1973 Expansion of Israeli bridgehead. Adan's division pushed westward from Sharon's bridgehead, overruning Egyptian rear areas. (Dupuy)
10/18/1973 Cox rejects the Stennis proposal.
10/18/1973 AP reported that Air Force Chief of Staff George S. Brown said that UFOs "plagued" the US during the Vietnam war; "They could only be seen at night in certain places...I think it's nothing. I think it is atmospherics."
10/19/1973 Dean pleads guilty to one count of conspiracy to obstruct justice for his role in the coverup. Cox then grants Dean immunity for any other Watergate-related crimes in exchange for his testimony.
10/19/1973 Haig told Richardson that Nixon wanted no more attempts by Cox to obtain Watergate evidence from the White House. Haig tried to argue with Nixon against this approach, but to no avail.
10/19/1973 A general Arab counterattack, spearheaded by the Jordanians, was repulsed. The lines stablized on the Damascus Plain. (Dupuy)
10/19/1973 Ariel Sharon's attempt to seize Ismailia was repulsed. (Dupuy)
10/20/1973 (Saturday) Repeated thrusts by Sharon to the northwest against Ismailia were contained by paratroop and armored reserves of the 2nd and 3rd Armies, reinforced from Cairo. (Dupuy)
1:00pm: Cox remained defiant in a press conference.
2:20pm: Haig ordered Richardson to fire Cox.
3:30pm: Richardson handed his resignation to Nixon. Nixon explained, "Brezhnev would never understand if I let Cox defy my instructions." Haig ordered Dep. Atty General Ruckelshaus to fire Cox; he refused and resigned as well. Haig then got the third man at Justice, Robert Bork, to do the job. This was the so-called "Saturday Night Massacre."
8:25pm: Ziegler announced the day's events to the press; quickly, FBI agents, called in by Haig, locked up the offices of Cox, Richardson and Ruckelshaus. Public and congressional reaction was explosivel; Haig was the first to use the term "fire storm" to describe the unexpected protests. Haig also urged Bork that all the key attorneys in the special prosecutor's office be fired as well; Bork refused to take this step. (Stonewall 142)
10/21/1973 ACLU printed a full-page ad in major newspapers, "Why it is necessary to impeach President Nixon and how it can be done."
10/21/1973 Major tank and aerial battles between Israelis and Egyptians along the Suez Canal. Kuwait, Bahrain, Qatar and Dubai announce they will join the ban on oil imports to US. Israeli effort to retake Mount Hermon is repulsed. (Dupuy)
10/21-22/1973 Israeli naval attacks on Aboukir Bay and Alexandria; two Egyptian patrol boats were sunk. (Dupuy)
10/22/1973 (Monday) Gallup poll shows Nixon's approval rating at 30%.
10/22/1973 UN Security Council overwhelmingly (with China abstaining) adopted a US-Soviet resolution calling for a Middle East cease-fire. At 1852 hours a cease-fire went into effect. Both sides quickly claimed violations. Israel sent strong reinforcements across the Canal. (Dupuy)
10/22/1973 Adan's drive south met weaker resistance cutting the main Suez-Cairo road northeast of Suez. (Dupuy)
10/22/1973 A final Israeli effort to retake Mount Hermon is successful; helicopter-borne paratroops seized the original Syrian observation post, higher up than that of the Israelis, and the "Golani" Infantry Brigade finally retook the position. An uneasy lull came over the Syrian front. (Dupuy)
10/23-24/1973 in Congress, 22 bills calling for Nixon's impeachment are introduced.
10/23/1973 Haig told the press that the offices had been sealed by the FBI because "we had reports that members of the staff were leaving rapidly with huge bundles under their arms." But Cox had had his staff remove the most important documents for safe-keeping days earlier.
10/23-24/1973 Battle of Suez-Adabiya: Despite the cease-fire Adan was ordered to continue his southward drive to the Gulf of Suez, isolating the Third Army. At the same time another Israeli division under Gen. Kalman Magen followed Adan and continued on to reach Adabiya on the Gulf of Suez. The Israelis tried to take Suez, but were repulsed. (Dupuy)
10/23/1973 Nixon offered to release the tapes that Cox sought and retain the special prosecutor's office.
10/23 or 11/1/1973 Leon Jaworski named Special Prosecutor.
10/24/1973 0700 hours: Second cease-fire takes effect. (Dupuy) As Israeli troops pushed into Egypt itself and neared Cairo, Sadat and Brezhnev appealed for joint US-Soviet supervision of the cease-fire. Brezhnev sent a message to Nixon warning that the Soviets were prepared to move into the region unilaterally to maintain the cease-fire. Nixon, bogged down in his own problems, let Kissinger and Haig handle this crisis. Eagleburger would later claim that Nixon was drunk. US forces were put on DefCon 3 and readied for war. But the Soviets quickly accepted a UN peacekeeping force. Critics would claim that Nixon was trying to deflect attention from Watergate and quiet domestic enemies. (General's Progress) The diversion of US resources to help Israel meant a corresponding drop in US aid to Vietnam. The war had seen 3,500 Syrians killed, 15,000 Egyptians killed, 2,569 Israelis killed, 125 Iraqis killed. A force of about 7 divisions of Soviet airborne troops was alerted, presumably for airlift to Egypt if it looked like Israel was going to destroy the Egyptian 3rd Army. (Dupuy)
10/25/1973 FBI Director Kelley wrote a correspondent that "the investigation of Unidentified Flying Objects is not and never has been a matter that is within the investigative jurisdiction of the FBI." (Above Top Secret 475)
10/25/1973 Nixon puts US forces on worldwide "Precautionary alert." Kissinger announced this was because of "ambiguous" signs that the Soviets might intervene militarily in the Middle East. (Dupuy) Israel reportedly assembles nuclear weapons during the war. (Nat Geographic Aug 05)
10/26/1973 Nixon, in a televised press conference, says he will appoint a new special prosecutor. He blamed the media for its "frantic, hysterical reporting" of Watergate, claiming they had made people lose faith in their government. He also congratulated himself for his handling of the middle east crisis, saying, "when I have to face an international crisis I have what it takes."
10/27/1973 Board of Governors of the American Bar Association urged that Congress establish an office of special Watergate prosecutor, to be appointed by the courts and not Nixon.
10/30/1973 White House reveals that two of the tapes Cox wanted never existed (Nixon-Mitchell phone call of 6/20/1972 and Nixon-Dean meeting of 4/15/1973). No mention of this had ever been made before, and it was always assumed the tapes did exist.
10/31/1973 US proposed that American and Soviet troops in Central Europe be cut in size as a first step toward achieving "a more stable military balance at lower levels of force with undiminished security..."
10/31/1973 Agnew paid a $10,000 federal fine for income tax evasion.
10/31/1973 Secret Service told Sirica that the two tapes were not recorded because of mechanical problems.
10/31/1973 Justice Dept announced that Bebe Rebozo did not engage in criminal conduct when he cashed $91,500 worth of stolen stock in 1968.
10/31/1973 Sen. Howard Cannon (D-Nev.) said that the Ford confirmation hearings would have to be approached as though "we may be confirming a President." He said he had some questions to ask Ford about "the laundering of campaign funds."
10/31/1973 Haig told Republican congressional leaders that the 3/21/1973 was "exculpatory" of Nixon and that he had learned of the Watergate cover-up for the first time on that date.

Tracy Riddle · 02-08-2014, 04:09 AM

11/1973 a severe recession in US begins, triggered by tight money and the OPEC oil shock; economy declines by 4.3%, industrial production by almost 15%. Unemployment would reach a peak of 9.1%; this was the worst downturn since the Depression.
11/1973 Jack Cleveland, a partner of Nixon's brother Donald, died; he was to have been questioned about a possible payoff to Howard Hughes.
11/1973 Andrew St. George article in Harper's ("The Cold War Comes Home") claimed that Richard Helms found out about the Watergate break-in when a CIA watch officer at Langely called him at 7am on 6/17/1972. Later, when questioned by the Senate, he was unable to verify his account in any way.
11/1973 William Colby told reporters and editors from the New York Times and the Washington Star that the Agency had "some three dozen" American newsmen "on the CIA payroll," including five who worked for "general-circulation news organizations." Yet even while the Senate Intelligence Committee was holding its hearings in 1976, according to high-level CIA sources, the CIA continued to maintain ties with seventy-five to ninety journalists of every descriptionexecutives, reporters, stringers, photographers, columnists, bureau clerks and members of broadcast technical crews. More than half of these had been moved off CIA contracts and payrolls but they were still bound by other secret agreements with the Agency. According to an unpublished report by the House Select Committee on Intelligence, chaired by Representative Otis Pike, at least fifteen news organizations were still providing cover for CIA operatives as of 1976. (Carl Bernstein)
11/1/1973 Nomination hearings into the approval of Ford as VP began.
11/1/1973 Nixon appointed Leon Jaworski as Watergate special prosecutor.
11/1/1973 Alfred Baldwin appeared in executive session testimony before the Ervin Committee.
11/2/1973 ACLU printed a full-page ad in major newspapers: "Stand Up for Law and Order: Impeach Richard Nixon."
11/3/1973 Martha Mitchell told the UP that Nixon would have to quit in early 1974, and she confirmed that her marriage to John Mitchell "was over." But she never gave up on the idea that her husband had been framed.
11/3/1973 Two White House lawyers recommend that Nixon resign.
11/4/1973 GOP Sen. Edward Brooke publicly calls for Nixon's resignation, as do editorials in Time, the New York Times, and the Detroit News.
11/5/1973 During his confirmation hearings, Gerald Ford was asked about using excerpts from the top secret 1/27/1964 Warren Commission transcript in his book, Portrait of the Assassin. His reply was an utter falsehood.
11/5/1973 Newsweek commented, "Comet Kohoutek promises to be the celestial extravaganza of the century." Actually, at its closest approach to Earth, it was nearly invisible.
11/5/1973 Leon Jaworski is sworn in as Special Prosecutor. [Jaworski was present when Earl Warren and Gerald Ford questioned Jack Ruby in jail.] Nixon had tried to hire John J. McCloy as Special Prosecutor for Watergate. [McCloy was a member of the Warren Commission]
11/6/1973 Nixon wrote Sirica expressing his concern over the impression that there are two missing tapes: "there are no missing tapes. The two conversations in question were a 5-minute telephone conversation with John Mitchell on the evening of June 20 and a conversation with John Dean in the EOB on the evening of April 15. These conversations were not recorded for purely mechanical reasons..."
11/7/1973 Congress overrode Nixon's veto of the War Powers Act, limiting the president's power to place American troops in foreign combat situations; many Republicans joined in the override. The Act required congressional approval for commitment of US forces in combat for longer than 60 days.
11/7/1973 Nixon addresses the nation by television on the energy crisis; he proposes year-round daylight savings time and relaxation of environmental standards to ease energy demands.
11/7/1973 US and Egypt announce resumption of diplomatic relations.
11/9/1973 Six of the Watergate defendants, including Hunt and Liddy, are sentenced by Sirica.
11/9/1973 Philadelphia Inquirer reported Sen. Goldwater's views on UFOs: "I've been flying now for 44 years, and I'm the last guy that's going to say I don't believe they're up there. I've never seen one, but when Air Force pilots, Navy pilots, Airline pilots tell me they see something come up on their wing that wasn't an airplane, I have to believe them."
11/13/1973 Plans for a trans-Alaska oil pipeline were approved by Congress.
11/13/1973 Gulf Oil and Ashland Oil plead guilty to illegal contributions to Nixon's reelection fund.
11/14/1973 Released in November 1973, near the tenth anniversary of the Kennedy assassination, EXECUTIVE ACTION is often overlooked as a film because of Oliver Stone's extraordinarily controversial 1991 film JFK. It obviously doesn't have the high-budget gloss or the montage that Stone's film does, but what it does have is a hard-hitting inside look into the individuals who might have had a direct hand in plotting this hideous crime. Burt Lancaster, Robert Ryan (in one of his final movies), and Will Geer are the conspirators, right-wing businessmen with an axe to grind. As in Stone's film, the motivations for the assassination are disgust with the way Kennedy handled Fidel Castro and the possibility that he would have stopped our involvement in Vietnam before it ever got to the ground troop stage. Based on Mark Lane's book "Rush To Judgement", scripted by former blacklisted writer Dalton Trumbo, and directed by David Miller (LONELY ARE THE BRAVE), EXECUTIVE ACTION is very somber and cold-blooded, but superbly constructed. It is amazing to think that three actors with ultra-liberal political credentials like Lancaster, Ryan, and Geer should be so icily convincing in their portrayals of fascists. The film makes very plausible the banality of evil. And like JFK, it also blows holes in the Warren Commission report big enough to drive a truck through and make apologists like Gerald Posner apoplectic.
11/14/1973 Commerce Sec. Stans admits that major corporations were expected to donate money to Nixon's reelection.
11/14/1973 Fred Buzhardt is granted access to the White House tapes. White House lawyers learn of the 18-minute gap in the 6/20/1972 tape.
11/15/1973 Ford testified before the House Judiciary Committee in nomination hearings.
11/15/1973 Braniff International, American Airlines and Goodyear admit to illegal donations to Nixon's reelection fund.
11/15/1973 Haig finally told Nixon about the 18.5 minute gap on the tape.
11/16/1973 Department of State, Chilean Executions, November 16, 1973: This memo, sent to the Secretary of State by Jack Kubisch, states that summary executions in the nineteen days following the coup totaled 320--more than three times the publicly acknowledged figure. At the same time, Kubisch reports on new economic assistance just authorized by the Nixon administration. The memo provides information about the Chilean military's justification for the continued executions. It also includes a situation report and human rights fact sheet on Chile.
11/16/1973 Nixon signs the Alaska Pipeline Bill to build a 789-mile pipeline across Alaska to carry oil to the rest of the US; it was opposed by environmental groups.
11/17/1973 Student uprising at Athens Polytechnic; police killed dozens.
11/17/1973 In a televised interview at the AP Managing Editors Association convention in Florida, Nixon said, "People have got to know whether or not their President is a crook. Well, I'm not a crook."
11/18/1973 In a NY Times book review, Priscilla and George McMillan praised Belin's You Are the Jury, a defense of the Warren Commission.
11/19/1973 Buzhardt returned certain unspecified tapes to the White House vault.
11/20/1973 Senate Rules Committee unanimously approved Ford's confirmation as VP.
11/20/1973 Buzhardt told Haig that he could find "no innocent explanation" for the 18.5 minute gap.
11/21/1973 The 18.5 minute gap is made known by the White House to Sirica and the public in court; Sirica appoints an advisory panel of experts to study the tapes.
11/22/1973 Priscilla McMillan wrote an article on the aniversary of the JFK assassination (NY Times); she described the WR as "the most completely documented story of a crime every put together....its mountain of positive evidence has yet to be refuted...The assassination of President Kennedy was a parricide...Oswald, it is true, lacked a father...Oswald had the Oedipal emotions. Like most people, and all neurotics, he failed to resolve them...he chose to enact the unresolved part of the drama - violently...We hold onto conspiracy theories because they are a defense, a screen, a barrier, against having to accept those feelings in ourselves."
11/22/1973 Researcher Alan Weberman sponsored a demonstration in front of the National Archives in Washington. The demonstrators demanded that all the documents that concerned the Kennedy assassination be released. Folksinger Phil Ochs attended the rally.
11/22/1973 Eugene McCarthy warned against a rush to impeachment because of the effect it would have on the conduct of foreign policy "which, with Henry Kissinger as Secretary of State, has been as good or better than what might have been supported by recent Democratic Presidents and candidates." (Village Voice)
11/22/1973 Billy Graham told the press that Americans should pray for Nixon, since "in all probability, Mr. Nixon will be the only president we have for the next three years."
11/22/1973 President Nixon's secretary, Rose Mary Woods, faces possible prosecution for erasing a critical portion of one of Nixon's tapes reportedly dealing with the assassination of JFK. She hires Charles Rhyne, a personal friend of Nixon, who was an official observer in monitoring the Warren investigation and advising on the individual rights of various witnesses.
11/23/1973 Argo 16 was the codename of an Italian Air Force C-47 Dakota aircraft, registration MM61832, used by the Italian Secret Service and the Central Intelligence Agency in covert operations. Officially, those operations were limited to electronic surveillance on the Adriatic Sea and interference with the Yugoslavian radar network. The aircraft crashed on November 23, 1973 at Marghera, Italy after an improvised explosive device detonated on board. Venetian Judge Carlo Mastelloni determined that the Argo 16 aircraft was used to shuttle trainees and munitions of NATO members between the military bases around Italy: the aircraft had been involved in unclear operations, as the repatriation of terrorists and transport of secret service agents. The explosion and the subsequent crash killed the four operatives onboard. There are many conspiracy theories surrounding this crash. Some believe that the aircraft was used by CIA in the Cold War conflict. According to a December 1, 1990 article in The Independent, quoted by Statewatch, "General Geraldo Serraville, head of Gladio from 1971 to 1974, told a television programme that he now thought the explosion aboard the plane Argo 16 on 23 November 1973 was probably the work of gladiatori who were refusing to hand over their clandestine arms. Until then it was widely believed the sabotage was carried out by Mossad, the Israeli foreign service, in retaliation for the pro-Libyan Italian government's decision to expel, rather than try, five Arabs who had tried to blow up an Israeli airliner. The Arabs had been spirited out of the country on board the Argo 16."
11/25/1973 Haig told Nick Thimmesch that he had experience with every part of government, "even the judicial process [sic] when I was with Bobby Kennedy during the Cuban missile crisis." He had been a briefing and liaison officer at that time. He bragged of sitting "at McNamara's right hand." (Washington Post)
11/27/1973 Senate voted to confirm Ford by 92 to 3 (Sens. Thomas Eagleton, William Hathaway, Gaylord Nelson).
11/27/1973 Rose Mary Woods testifies about accidentally erasing about 5 minutes of the 6/20/1972 tape while transcribing it.
11/27/1973 AP report: Navy Captain John W. Young, an astronaut aboard the Apollo 16 mission, and the 9th American on the moon commented: "If you bet against it [UFOs], you'd be betting against an almost sure thing. There are so many stars that it's mathematically improbable that there aren't other life sources in the universe."
11/28/1973 Washington Post quoted Haig telling Laurence Stern that the outcome of Watergate would be "to restore a sense of confidence in the office of the presidency...I'm not interested in politics, but I might well be interested in continued public service."
11/29/1973 NYT printed result of a Gallup Poll which showed that 57% of Americans believe UFOs are real.
11/30/1973 Buzhardt obtained the same batch of tapes from the White House vault as before, at 1:25pm, and returned them at 6pm that day.
11/30 or 12/1/1973 Egil Krogh Jr. pleaded guilty in the burglary of the office of Ellsberg's psychiatrist.
11/30/1973 Mark Lane tells us, "On November 30, 1973, it was revealed that the CIA had forty full-time news reporters on the CIA payroll as undercover informants, some of them as full-time agents." Lane adds, "It seems clear than an agent-journalist is really an agent, not a journalist." In 1973, the American press was able to secure just two of the forty names in the CIA file of journalists. The Washington Star and the Washington Post reported that one of the two was Jeremiah O'Leary. (Murder in Memphis)
11/30/1973 Nixon administration admits studying the legality of sending US bombers back into action over Vietnam, but pledged to take no action without "consulting" Congress.
12/1973 Nixon signed into law Endangered Species Act.
12/1973 Oregon takes the first steps towards decriminalization of cannabis. For the next 25 years, possession of up to one ounce of marijuana is considered the equivalent of a misdemeanor, with no criminal record for those caught in possession.
12/1973 AP reported 1/1/2004: LONDON - British spy chiefs warned after the 1973 Arab-Israeli war that they believed the United States might invade Saudi Arabia, Kuwait and Abu Dhabi to seize their oil fields, according to records released Thursday. A British intelligence committee report from December 1973 said America was so angry over Arab nations' earlier decision to cut oil production and impose an embargo on the United States that seizing oil-producing areas in the region was "the possibility uppermost in American thinking." Details of the Joint Intelligence Committee report were released under rules requiring that some secret documents be made public after 30 years. The report suggested that then-President Nixon might risk such a drastic move if Arab-Israeli fighting reignited and the oil-producing nations imposed new restrictions. The 1973 embargo and production cuts, used by oil-rich Arab nations as a means to pressure the United States and Western Europe, caused a major global energy crisis and sent oil prices skyrocketing. The committee of intelligence service directors calculated that the United States could guarantee sufficient oil supplies for themselves and their allies by taking oil fields in Saudi Arabia, Kuwait and Abu Dhabi, with total reserves of more than 28 billion tons. It warned however that the American occupation would need to last 10 years, as western nations developed alternative energy sources, and would lead to the "total alienation" of Arab states and many developing countries, as well as "domestic dissension" in the United States. Other records released Thursday showed that Prime Minister Edward Heath was furious at Nixon over the American president's failure to tell him he was putting U.S. forces on a worldwide alert during the 1973 Arab-Israeli war. Heath learned of the alert considered a high point in Cold War tensions from news reports while he waited in the House of Commons for Foreign Secretary Alec Douglas-Home to make a statement on the Middle East crisis. Britain's intelligence listening post, Government Communications Headquarters, had learned of the alert but did not tell Heath's office or the Foreign Office because officials assumed Heath and Douglas-Home already knew about it, the papers showed. Nixon said he put U.S. troops on high alert for just under a week, starting on Oct. 25, 1973, to show the Soviet Union that America would not allow it to send military forces to aid Arab states fighting Israel. The alert covered U.S. forces stationed in Britain, and Heath wrote in a memo that he thought Nixon's move, which came in the midst of the Watergate scandal, had been deeply damaging. "Personally I fail to see how any initiative, threatened or real, by the Soviet leadership required such a world wide nuclear alert," the prime minister wrote. "We have to face the fact that the American action has done immense harm, I believe, both in this country and worldwide."
US 1973 defense budget was 30% of the federal budget. Inflation rate for the year was 8.8%
12/1/1973 The AP reported that more than three dozen US journalists in foreign countries were doubling as CIA spies; most of them were free-lance writers.
12/1/1973 Buzhardt requested and received nine tapes from the White House vault. He later told Clark Mollenhoff that all of these comings and goings had nothing to do with Ford's confirmation hearings. (The Man Who Pardoned Nixon 280)
12/4/1973 Chicago Seven case: Dellinger, Hoffman, Rubin and their attorney William Kunstler were convicted of contempt of court, but no sentence was imposed.
12/5/1973 Nixon asks Arlen Specter to head his legal defense team. Specter met with Haig to discuss the situation, but Specter turned the job down. (Philadelphia Bulletin) Specter is a former Democrat and Warren Commission staffer. Specter is the protÃ©gÃ© of John Mitchell and served as Co-Chairman of the Pennsylvania CREEP in 1972.
12/1973 Also during this month Beverly Kay, who works for the Secret Service in the White House, dies of a "massive stroke" at the age of forty-two. She dies in the White House. Her job, among other things, is to store the tape recordings which the Secret Service has made of President Nixon. She has been telling her friends what she thinks about the culpability of Nixon and his aides from what she has heard on the tapes.
12/5/1973 Haig testified in Sirica's court about the 18.5 minute gap; he explained that "perhaps some sinister force had come in and...taken care of the information on that tape."
12/6/1973 House voted to confirm Ford as VP 387 to 35. Later in the day, Ford is sworn in.
12/6/1973 Nixon signs a bill providing a 10% cost-of-living boost to the monthly pension benefits of veterans and their dependents.
12/6/1973 Haig testified about the possible causes of the 18.5 minute gap on the tape, saying that White House lawyers had considered it possible that it was caused by "some sinister force."
12/6/1973 Daniel Ellsberg interview in Rolling Stone; he recalled that RFK told him in 1967 that the Kennedys were "determined early that we would never get into that position [of the French in Vietnam]." He also said that in 1964 John McNaughton informed him that McNamara "had told him of an understanding with President Kennedy that they would close out Vietnam by '65, whether it was in good shape or bad." RFK told Ellsberg that his brother would have arranged "a Laotian type solution, some form of coalition government with people who would ask us to leave."
12/7/1973 The AP reported that internal FBI memos showed that the Bureau launched a campaign to disrupt the New Left from 5/1968 to 4/1971.
12/7/1973 Ford announced that there was "no evidence that would justify impeachment."
12/8/1973 Nixon revealed that he had paid less than $1000 in taxes in 1970 and 1971.
12/8/1973 Dorothy Hunt, wife of E. Howard Hunt, dies in a mysterious crash of United Airlines - flight # 553 - in Chicago. She is reputedly carrying a large amount of money -- in excess of $100,000. The plane takes off from Washington National Airport for Chicago. There are sixty-one people and six crew members on the plane, a Boeing 737. With Dorothy Hunt is Michelle Clark of CBS. Michelle Clark "had learned from her inside sources that the Hunts might be getting ready to blow the White House out of the water, and that before Howard Hunt was hung out to twist slowly in the breeze he would bring down every tree in the forest." The plane crashes at 2:29 PM, and from that moment on, the FBI is in charge of the crash site for the first time in history. (The FBI office is forty minutes away from the crash site.) Immediately after the crash, even before the fire department arrives, over 200 FBI and DIA (Defense Intelligence Agency) men come in and take over the area. None show credentials when asked by local police or anyone. The head of the NTSB, John Reed, testifies that he complained to the FBI because FBI agents had taken over their job in the crash and were interviewing people before the NTSB could, and also listened to the tower tapes before anyone else, and then confiscated the tapes. Independent researcher Sherman Skolnick believes that Dorothy Hunt was also carrying documents that link Nixon to the Kennedy assassination. According to Skolnick these papers, which are being used to blackmail Nixon, are immediately seized by the FBI. One day after the plane crash, White House aide Egil Krough is appointed Undersecretary of Transportation. This gives him direct control over the National Transportation Safety Board and the Federal Aviation Administration -- the two agencies that are in charge of investigating the crash. Soon Dwight Chapin, Nixon's Appointment Secretary, becomes a top executive at United Airlines. (Dorothy is on a United carrier when she makes her ill-fated journey.)
12/10-11/1973 Kissinger attends the annual NATO winter ministerial meeting in Brussels.
12/11/1973 Rockefeller resigns as governor of New York.
12/13/1973 Gore Vidal wrote in NY Review of Books about the idea that Howard Hunt might have forged Arthur Bremer's diaries. "Although H.H. is a self-admitted forger of state papers, I do not think that he actually had a hand in writing Bremer's diary on the ground that the journal is a brilliant if flawed piece of work, and beyond H.H.'s known literary competence." His views on the JFK assassination: "the only Cuban group that would be entirely satisfied by Kennedy's death would be the right-wing enemies of Castro who held Kennedy responsible for their humiliation at the Bay of Pigs...setting up Oswald as a pro-Castro, pro-Moscow agent, they might be able to precipitate some desperate international crisis that would serve their cause. Certainly Castro at this date had no motive for killing Kennedy...I suspect that whoever planned the murder must have been astonished at the reaction of the American establishment...The fact that Bobby Kennedy accepted the Warren Report was proof to most people (myself among them) that Oswald acted alone. It was not until several years later that I learned from a member of the family that...[Bobby] refused to look at any of the FBI reports or even speculate on what might have happened in Dallas. Too shaken up, I was told...Most intriguing is Richard H. Popkin's theory that there were two Oswalds." (NY Review of Books 12/13/1973)
12/13/1973 FBI internal memo: "The only information we furnish to that [Watergate] Committee is the opportunity to review FD-302s of interviews conducted during the McCord investigation. Such FD-302s must be specified by the name of the person interviewed and are made available only for review, not copying." (Secret Agenda pxvii)
12/13/1973 Rev. Jim Jones was arrested and charged with soliciting a man for sex in a movie theater bathroom known for homosexual activity, in MacArthur Park in Los Angeles.
12/13/1973 Earl Warren, in a speech before the National Press Club, he described Watergate as "conduct debasing our institutions" and "a debacle, the great tragedy of our time...cancerous to the body politic."
12/15/1973 The American Psychiatric Association declared that homosexuality was not a mental illness, reversing its century-old position.
12/15/1973 Commerce Sec. Frederick Dent, at a GOP rally, called Nixon's critics "political jackals who worked tooth and claw to defeat him in 1972 and are now trying to reverse the decision of 45 million American voters. They are the people who would violate the sanctity of the ballot box, who would subvert the democratic electoral process..."
12/16/1973 Runoff election in New Orleans; Jim Garrison narrowly lost the District Attorney's race.
12/16/1973 Gallup poll showed that 54% of Americans were against Nixon leaving the presidency; his overall approval rating was 31%.
12/22/1973 The 93rd Congress ends its first session.
12/22/1973 After a meeting with the President, Zumwalt recorded in a memo, "The President is paranoid. Kissinger's paranoid. Haig is paranoid." Nixon saw himself as the victim of the "eastern liberal establishment...a vast plot by intellectual snobs to destroy a president who was representative of the man in the street." (On Watch)
12/22/1973 Haig visited Sen. Hugh Scott to quell congressional demands for the presidential tapes. Again Haig assured him that the 3/21/1973 recording would prove Nixon's innocence. (Washington Post 12/19/1980)
12/24/1973 Jim Garrison charged that irregular voting led to his narrow loss in the Democratic runoff election the week before. (UPI) 12/26 a judge dismissed Garrison's charges.
12/27/1973 James Earl Ray filed a $500,000 damage suit against Tennessee officials, claiming he was wrongfully imprisoned for a crime he didn't commit; his former attorney, Percy Foreman, explained, "I think he's stir crazy. He has a disorganized mind." (UPI)
12/27/1973 Howard Hughes, who was in the Bahamas, was indicted on charges of stock manipulation. Robert Maheu, Chester C. Davis, David B. Charnay and James H. Nall were also indicted.
12/28/1973 Nixon signs a comprehensive manpower training and jobs bill.
12/29/1973 Nixon signs the Health Maintenance Organization (HMO) Act.
12/31/1973 Knesset election in Israel: Golda Meir's Labor party won 51 seats, and Likud, led by Menachem Begin, 39.

Tracy Riddle · 21-08-2014, 03:21 AM

1974 Research proposal by J.F. Schapitz proposes recording EEG correlates induced by various drugs, and then to modulate these biological frequencies on a microwave carrier. Further, Schapitz' proposal included inducing hypnotic states and using words modulated on microwave carrier frequencies to condition human subjects to perform various acts. (FOIA).
1974 National Education Association (NEA) president James Harris states that "the state educational system must expand its teaching ... the family is failing to perform its function. The NEA has taken the following positions in its history: education of youth for a global community, promotion of a strong United Nations, support of a National Health Plan, opposition of legislation to benefit private schools, population control, federal day care centres, increase of federal control of education, and opposition to local control of public schools. The NEA is controlled by the Tavistock Institute through Stanford Research Institute. The Tavistock controlled National Training Lab brainwashes the leading executives of business and government. Tavistock scraps the US space program for nine years to allow the Soviets to catch up. Common strategy in Tavistock programs is the use of drugs. (See MK-ULTRA).
In 1974, due to a Freedom of Information Act request, a memorandum regarding the Battle of Los Angeles in 1942 was released. Written by General George C. Marshall for President Franklin Roosevelt, and dated February 26, 1942, the memo contradicts Knox's assertion that the incident was due only to "war nerves," and proves that officials took the event seriously. Marshall wrote that "unidentified airplanes, other than American Army or Navy planes, were probably sighted over Los Angeles" moving from "'very slow' to as much as 200 MPH and from elevations of 9000 to 18,000 feet." Marshall speculated that the craft might have been commercial airplanes used as a sort of psychological warfare to generate panic.
Henry Kissinger drafted the controversial NSSM-200 in 1974, called "the foundational document on population control issued by the United States government." According to NSSM-200, elements of the implementation of population control programs could include: the legalization of abortion; financial incentives for countries to increase their abortion, sterilization and contraception-use rates; indoctrination of children; mandatory population control, and coercion of other forms, such as withholding disaster and food aid unless an LDC implements population control programs. NSSM-200 also specifically declared that the United States was to cover up its population control activities and avoid charges of imperialism by inducing the United Nations and various non-governmental organizations to do its dirty work. (Human Life International, 2008)
1974 Study prepared by the Staff of the Subcommittee on Constitutional Rights of the Committee on the Judiciary (93rd Congress) titled "Individual Rights and The Federal Role in Behavior Modification" revealed "a number of departments and agencies, including the Department of Justice, Department of Defense, Veterans Administration, National Science Foundation, the Department of Health/Education/Welfare, fund, participate in, or otherwise sanction research involving various aspects of behavior modification in absence of effective review structures, guidelines or standards." And "the emphasis placed in violence-control by the federal government has been encouraged by several new agencies whose essential function is the funding of programs dealing with the various aspects of violence."
1974 CFR member Brent Scowcroft prepares NSSM 200, "Implications of Worldwide Population Growth for U.S. Security and Overseas Interests", which is immediately classified Secret (now declassified). Prepared for the National Security Council, this document proposes reduction of worldwide population by concentration on Third World Countries. A conclusion of the study is that mandatory population control may be appropriate.
1974 J.F.Schapitz proposes a project, later funded by the US Department of Defense, showing how the spoken word of a hypnotist may be conveyed by modulated electromagnetic energy directly into subconscious parts of the brain. The subject cannot consciously control the information input.
1974 Joint Publications Research Service in Arlington makes monograph entitled "Psychotronics in Engineering" available to US government requesters. In the monograph, Dr. J.F. Shapitz reveals "the spoken word of the hypnotist may be conveyed by modulated electromagnetic energy directly into the subconscious parts of the human brain. The voices would program the subconscious mind without employing any technical devices for receiving or transcoding the messages and without the person exposed having any chance to control the information input."
1974 Dr.James Lin, author of Microwave Auditory Effects and Applications, notes that "the capability of communicating directly with humans by pulsed microwaves is obviously not limited to the field of therapeutic medicine."
1974 Jose Delgado advocates psycho surgery and electrode implantation, as well as "conquest of the human mind."
1974 Army Medical and Information Agency document "Biological Effects of Electromagnetic Radiation" discusses the research of Dr. Allen Frey. The document reveals that scientists are fully aware of the biological effects of microwave radiation having offensive weapons application. Other research includes internal sound perception research (for disorienting or disrupting behavior patterns or use as an interrogation tool), use of mixed frequencies, electronic alteration of the blood-brain barrier permitting neurotoxins in blood to reach the brain (resulting in severe neuropathological symptoms) and induction of voices inside the brain by use of signal modulation at very low power densities.
1974 CIA releases a report "A Study of Climatological Research as it Pertains to Intelligence Problems", indicating that a major climate shift toward an Ice Age is imminent.
1974 CIA releases a report "Potential Implications of Trends in World Population, Food Production and Climate", indicating that food supplies would be affected by climate changes coming in near future, and that forced mass migrations, sometimes backed by force, would become an issue.
1974 Stanford Research Institute Center for Study of Social Policy produces a report called "Changing Images of Man", prepared by a staff of 14 researchers and supervised by 23 controllers, including anthropologist Margaret Mead, psychologist B.F. Skinner, Ervin Laslo of the United Nations, and Sir Geoffrey Vickers of British Intelligence. The aim of the study is to change the image of mankind from that of "industrial progress" to one of "spiritualism". Willis Harman was director of the project. According to the report, "the images of man that dominated the last 200 years will be inadequate for the post industrial era."
1974 The Safe Water Drinking Act is passed. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) sets maximum contamination levels (MCL) for various water pollutants, including sodium fluoride. The EPA sets the fluoride contamination level at an unbelievable 1.4 ppm for "warmer climates" and up to 2.4 ppm for "colder climates". Furthermore, the American Dental Association begins pressuring the EPA to raise the MCL for fluoride in public water to 8 ppm, when it is fully known that systemic damage occurs below 1 pmm. The former US Surgeon General C. Everett Koop is among those who join the drive to increase the MCL for fluoride, even doing television ads proclaiming that fluoridation was "absolutely safe". Shown slides of severe fluorosis damage to a childes teeth at 4ppm, ADA spokesperson Lisa Watson maintains that it does "not involve health effects but is only a cosmetic problem". The National Drinking Water Advisory Council refuses to recommend raising the fluoride MCL, and came close to recommending its lowering, but the EPA farmed out research work to ICAIR Life Systems, which issues a fraudulent report (confirmed by ICAIR employee Dr. John Beaver) that is woven into the US EPA report on fluoride, resulting in the EPA recommendation of MCL for sodium fluoride in public water to be 4 ppm.
1/1/1974 Hunter S. Thompson wrote in the NYT about the year just past ("Fear and Loathing in the Bunker"): "It was almost too good to be true. Richard Milhous Nixon, the main villain in my political consciousness for as long as I can remember, was finally biting that bullet he's been talking about all those years. The man that not even Goldwater or Eisenhower could tolerate had finally gone too far - and now he was walking the plank, on national TV, six hours a day - with The Whole World Watching, as it wereâ€¦Richard Nixon is living in the White House today because of what happened that night in Chicago. Hubert Humphrey lost that election by a handful of votes - mine among them - and if I had to do it again I would still vote for Dick Gregory. If nothing else, I take a certain pride in knowing that I helped spare the nation eight years of President Humphrey - an Administration that would have been equally corrupt and wrongheaded as Richard Nixon's, far more deviousâ€¦For now, we should make every effort to look at the bright side of the Nixon Administration. It has been a failure of such monumental proportions that political apathy is no longer considered fashionable, or even safe, among millions of people who only two years ago thought that anybody who disagreed openly with "the Government" was either paranoid or subversive. Political candidates in 1974, at least, are going to have to deal with an angry, disillusioned electorate that is not likely to settle for flag-waving and pompous bullshit. The Watergate spectacle was a shock, but the fact of a millionaire President paying less income tax than most construction workers while gasoline costs a dollar in Brooklyn and the threat of mass unemployment by spring tends to personalize Mr. Nixon's failures in a very visceral wayâ€¦This is the horror of American politics todayâ€¦that the only available alternatives are not much better [than Nixon]; the same dim collection of burned-out hacks who have been fouling our air with their gibberish for the last twenty yearsâ€¦If I were a gambling person - which I am, whenever possible - I would bet that Nixon will resign for reasons of health' within the next six monthsâ€¦The word paranoia' was no longer mentioned, except as a joke or by yahoos, in serious conversations about national politics. The truth was turning out to be even worse than my most paranoid ravings' during that painful 1972 election." Thompson mused that Nixon might be tempted to start a war to divert the country's attention and give himself emergency powers.
1/2/1974 President Nixon signed legislation requiring states to limit highway speeds to 55 mph, down from 70mph.
1/3/1974 Nixon signed amendments to Social Security to allow automatic cost-of-living adjustments.
1/4/1974 Nixon refuses to surrender 500 tapes and documents subpoenaed by the Senate, citing the need to protect the office of the presidency.
1/7/1974 Nixon approved the appointment of former Warren Commission staffer Albert Jenner to serve as the Minority Counsel for the Impeachment Investigation of the House Judiciary Committee. Jenner would end up siding with the pro-impeachment forces.
1/11/1974 Jacqueline Kennedy undertakes an oral-history interview for the LBJ Library today, during which, referring to her previous committee efforts to promote the shabby appearance of Pennsylvania Avenue, she says: "I thought it might come to an end. I asked President Johnson if he'd be nice enough to receive the commission and sort of give approval to the work they were doing, and he did. It was one of the first things he did." Of William Manchester's book The Death Of a President, she says: "The worst thing in my life was trying to get all those things of Mr. Manchester's out of his book. I've never read the book. I did my oral history with him in an evening and alone, and it's rather hard to stop when the floodgates open. I just talked about the private things. I know that afterwards there were so many things, one, about the private things, which were mostly expressions of grief of mine and Caroline's that I wanted to take out of the book. And whether or not they got out, they were all printed around. Now it doesn't seem to matter so much, but then I had such a feeling."
1/15/1974 A panel of experts reports that the 18.5 minute gap on the tape could not have been accidental; it also contained at least five separate erasures.
1/15/1974 Ford gave a speech before a meeting of farmers in Atlantic City; he accused "the AFL-CIO, the Americans for Democratic Action and other powerful pressure organizations" of "waging a massive propaganda campaign against the President...it is an all-out attack. Their aim is total victory for themselves and the total defeat not only of President Nixon but of the policies for which he stands." He called Nixon's accusers "a few extreme partisans" who "seem bent on stretching out the ordeal of Watergate for their own purposes...If they can crush the President and his philosophy, they are convinced that they can dominate the Congress and, through it, the nation." He called Nixon "a wise and good President" and dismissed Watergate as "a tragic but grotesque sideshow."'
1/17/1974 A CIA officer, Rob Roy Ratliff, made a sworn statement that Hunt made frequent, secret reports to Richard Helms and others at the CIA, using CIA channels on the NSC, while he was working in the Nixon White House. (House Committee on the Judiciary hearings) Ratliff had gone to James Schlesinger's home in May 1973 to warn him about this potential embarrassment. He told Jim Hougan in 1982 that he was working as a CIA liaison to the NSC in the Executive Office Building, and that Hunt's packages were routinely received and hand-carried to the Agency until shortly before the Watergate break-in. From what he found out, the reports contained "gossip" information about White House officials and others in the administration. A former staffer on the Judiciary Committee said that the gossip was "almost entirely of a sexual nature." (Secret Agenda p50) Colson told Hougan in 1980 that, based on CIA documents he remembered seeing, Hunt's packages also contained tape recordings.
1/17/1974 William Safire wrote in his column: "By its choice of counsel [John Doar], the House Judiciary Committee has made it plain that it intends to look busy for a few months and then recommend the impeachment of the President."
1/20/1974 Sen. Hugh Scott said he had seen evidence which could prove Nixon innocent of "specific items" in the Watergate scandal and prove he had committed no impeachable offenses. This was apparently a summary of the White House tapes.
1/21/1974 Supreme Court ruled that public schools must teach English to foreign-speaking students.
1/21/1974 Charles Morgan Jr., leader of the ACLU's campaign to push for Nixon's impeachment, was quoted in the Washington Post marvelling at how Watergate was bringing together the disparate elements of the Left: "There's no civil rights movement. There's no war. There's no social-action movement. I hate to use the word, but it's liberal chic. Impeachment is there."
1/24/1974 CIA inspector general's office announced it was about to review the Office of Security's Watergate file. Howard Osborn, director of OS, ordered the files on Lee Pennington to be removed. (Nedzi report p979) Instead, two security officers designed to resign and at the same time copy the Pennington material. In February, they blew the whistle on the matter.
1/25/1974 NY Times reported that shortly after becoming chief of staff, Al Haig was blackmailed by a ranking DOD official who threatened to go public with the military spy ring story if Nixon didn't make him FBI director; Haig told the blackmailer to "go to hell" but the man was not fired from his job.
1/28/1974 Time magazine had a story on the Moorer-Radford spy ring, titled "An Excessive Need to Know."
1/30/1974 State of the Union address; Nixon pledges he will not resign but will cooperate with the House Judiciary Committee investigation as long as it does not weaken the Presidency. He states, "I believe I have provided all the material that [the special prosecutor] needs to conclude his investigation..." He also stated his confidence in the economy: "...as we turn to the year ahead we hear once again the familiar voice of the perennial prophets of gloom telling us now that because of the need to fight inflation, because of the energy shortage, America may be headed for recession. Let me speak to that issue head on. There will be no recession in the United States of America."
1/30/1974 Nixon's old political manager Murray Chotiner died in a car crash. Murry Chotiner dies one week after his car is struck by a government truck. He has sustained a broken leg. Chotiner served as Richard Nixon's longtime political manager. He and his brother handled the legal defense of 221 mobsters prosecuted during the three years of Nixon's rise from Congressman to Senator to Vice Presidential nominee.
1/31/1974 Congress passed the Child Abuse Prevention and Treatment Act.

Tracy Riddle · 26-08-2014, 02:27 AM

2/1974 The Dreyfus investing firm established Dreyfus Liquid Assets, the first "money-market fund."
2/1974 Bob Woodward and Carl Bernstein's book, All the President's Men, was published.
2/1974 Ballentine paperback edition of The Secret Team by Fletcher Prouty was "disappeared" soon after it came out in February of 1974.
2/1/1974 The Rev. Sun Myung Moon met with Nixon and reportedly told him not to "knuckle under to pressure."
2/3/1974 Ford appeared on Face the Nation and declared that all relevant tapes and documents should be made available to the House Judiciary Committee.
2/3/1974 Leon Jaworski appeared on ABC's Issues and Answers and sharply stated that Nixon had not cooperated with the Special Prosecutor. He also said he believed Dean's testimony.
2/4/1974 Harold Wilson becomes PM of Britain again. On the BBC television programme The Plot Against Harold Wilson, broadcast on March 16, 2006 on BBC2, it was claimed there were threats of a coup d'Ã©tat, which was corroborated by leading figures of the time on both the left and the right . Wilson told two BBC journalists, Roger Courtiour and Barrie Penrose, that he feared he was being undermined by MI5. The first time was in the late 1960s after the Wilson Government devalued the pound sterling but the threat faded after Conservative leader Edward Heath won the election of 1970. However after a coal miners strike Heath decided to hold an election to renew his mandate to govern in February 1974 but lost narrowly to Wilson. There was again talk of a military coup, with rumours of Lord Mountbatten as head of an interregnal administration after Wilson had been deposed. In 1974 the Army occupied Heathrow Airport on the grounds of training for possible IRA terrorist action there, however Baroness Falkender (a senior aide and close friend of Wilson) asserted that it was ordered as a practice-run for a military takeover or as a show of strength as the government itself was not informed of such an exercise based around a key point in the nation's infrastructure.
2/4-5/1974 Gromyko talks with Nixon and Kissinger in Washington.
2/5/1974 Patricia Hearst, heir to the newspaper fortune, was kidnapped from her apartment by the Symbionese Liberation Army (SLA) in Berkeley, Calif. She soon announced that she had changed her named to Tania and joined the SLA.
2/5/1974 CIA's Thomas Karamessines testified before executive session of Ervin Committee.
2/5/1974 Sen. Harold Hughes (D-Iowa) urged an investigation of the Moorer Pentagon spy ring. The existence of this Pentagon spy ring was uncovered inadvertently when the Senate learned that in late 1971 David Young and the Plumbers had investigated the matter. Only five people were called to testify about it: Kissinger, Moorer, Welander, Radford and Buzhardt. Chairman of the Armed Services Committee John Stennis was not inclined to look very deeply into the issue. No one would ever be prosecuted in the case.
2/6/1974 Seymour Hersh story in NYT: "Adm. Thomas H. Moorer, Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, has acknowledged to the Senate Armed Services Committee that twice in 1971 he knowingly received documents that a Navy clerk had retained' while traveling to Asia and Southeast Asia with President Nixon's top national security advisers."
2/8/1974 Three astronauts complete a record 84-day space flight as the third and final Skylab crew.
2/11/1974 Department of State, Kubisch-Huerta Meeting: Request for Specific Replies to Previous Questions on Horman and Teruggi Cases, February 11, 1974: This telegram, written by Ambassador Popper and directed to the U.S. Secretary of State, reports on a meeting between Assistant Secretary of State Jack Kubisch, and Chile's foreign minister General Huerta on the controversy over two U.S. citizens--Charles Horman and Frank Teruggi--executed by the military after the coup. Kubisch notes that he is raising this issue "in the context of the need to be careful to keep relatively small issues in our relationship from making our cooperation more difficult."
2/12/1974 The trial of militant Indian leaders Russell Means and Dennis Banks in connection with the occupation of Wounded Knee begins.
2/12/1974 The SLA demanded that Randolph Hearst begin a massive program of food distribution to the poor.
2/12/1974 Federal officials in Buenos Aires detected a terrorist plot to murder Juan Peron, president of Argentina, and his wife, Isabel, and Uruguayan President Juan M. Bordaberry.
2/13/1974 Aleksander Solzhenitsyn was exiled from Russia to West Germany.
2/16/1974 Gerald Ford reveals in a televised interview that he has no clue who Mick Jagger is: "Mick Jagger? Isn't he the motorcycle rider?"
2/19/1974 Senate votes unanimously to end its public Watergate hearings and defer to the courts and House Judiciary Committee.
2/20/1974 J. Reginald Murphy, editor of the Atlanta Constitution, is kidnapped by the American Revolutionary Army. Murphy was released 2/23.
2/21/1974 A French radio program, France-Inter, broadcast an interview with Minister of Defense Robert Galley, who said, "I must say that if your listeners could see for themselves the mass of reports [of UFOS] coming in from the airborne gendarmerie, from the mobile gendarmerie, and from the gendarmerie charged with the job of conducting investigations...then they would see that it is all pretty disturbing." Galley stated that a department had been established in the Ministry of Defense for collecting reports and studying the UFO phenomena during the 1954 wave of sightings. He confirmed that there were "sightings reports from pilots, from the commanding personnel of various Air Force centers, with quite a lot of details, all of which agree in quite a disturbing manner - all in the course of the year 1954." (Above Top Secret 129)
2/22/1974 Around 7am at the Baltimore-Washington International Airport, Samuel Byck shot a security guard with a .22-caliber pistol, leaped over the security chain, and boarded Delta Flight 523 for Atlanta. He carried with him a gasoline bomb in a briefcase. He ordered the crew in the cockpit to take off; the pilot said he could not move until the wheel blocks were removed. Byck promptly shot the co-pilot and pilot. A police officer outside spotted Byck through the window and shot him in the chest; Byck then took his own life.
2/24/1974 "We need a programme of psychosurgery for political control of our society. The purpose is physical control of the mind. Everyone who deviates from the given norm can be surgically mutilated. The individual may think that the most important reality is his own existence, but this is only his personal point of view. This lacks historical perspective. Man does not have the right to develop his own mind. This kind of liberal orientation has great appeal. We must electrically control the brain. Some day armies and generals will be controlled by electric stimulation of the brain." Dr. Jose Delgado, February 24, 1974 edition of the Congressional Record, No. 262E, Vol. 118
2/28/1974 US and Egypt resume full diplomatic relations, which had been severed in 1967.
2/28/1974 Arthur Schlesinger was quoted as saying: "Unquestionably, one element in the Democratic drive for impeachment is a desire to humiliate Mr. Nixon, a politician Democrats have despised for more than a quarter of a century." (Wall St. Journal)
2/28/1974 Joseph Milteer, right-wing activist who had advance knowledge of the JFK assassination, died in a heater explosion.
3/1/1974 Grand jury indicts Haldeman, Ehrlichman, Mitchell, Mardian, Colson, Parkinson and Strachan for obstructing justice in their attempt to cover-up Watergate, with Nixon being named as unindicted co-conspirator.
3/6/1974 In a press conference, Nixon denies that his 3/21/1973 conversation with Haldeman and Dean was really about hush money for the burglars.
3/7/1974 Commenting on the SLA's ransom demand of free food for the poor, Gov. Reagan quipped, "It's just too bad we can't have an epidemic of botulism."
3/8/1974 The seven indicted presidential aides plead guilty. Nicholas von Hoffman, a staunch liberal and no fan of Nixon, wrote: "Nixon's right. The media has gone rabid, and pathologically arrogant. You can't hardly crack open a newspaper or turn on a TV without getting unsubstantiated garbage leaked out of a grand jury room, a barroom or some other place where rumors are trapped and collected." (New Times)
3/10/1974 A Japanese soldier from WWII, Lt. Onoda Hiroo, finally surrendered on the island of Lubang off the coast of Luzon. In 1945 he had been instructed to continue guerilla warfare, and at first with a few companions and then alone he did so for 29 years. He would not surrender until his former commander, Maj. Taniguchi Yoshimi, came from Japan and formally cancelled his orders.
3/13/1974 The US Senate voted to restore the death penalty.
3/15/1974 A federal grand jury concludes that President Nixon joined in a conspiracy to cover up White House involvement in the Watergate break-in of Democratic Party offices.
3/18/1974 Arab oil-producing nations agree to end the embargo imposed on the US.
3/19/1974 Sen. James Buckley calls on Nixon to resign.
3/21/1974 Ambassador Martin cabeled Kissinger to withhold "an honest and detailed answer" to a request by Sen. Edward Kennedy concerning Vietnam. He feared the Senator "will spearhead this effort [to cut aid to Saigon]," and detailed answers to his questions would give him "the tactical advantage" in the fight.
3/22/1974 A CIA memo about Iraq's Kurds: "We would think that Iran would not look with favor on the establishment of a formalized autonomous government. Iran, like ourselves, has seen benefit in a stalemate situationâ€¦in which Iraq is instrinsically weakened by the Kurds' refusal to relinguish semi-autonomy. Neither Iran nor ourselves with to see the matter resolved one way or the other." (Pike Report) The Kurds were not informed of this policy, and were encouraged to keep fighting.
3/23/1974 Jack Anderson column in Washington Post was that paper's first mention of ties between the CIA and the Mullen Company.
3/23/1974 Soviet Defense Minister Andrei Grechko arrived in Iraq to help the Iraqis reach a settlement with the Kurds. On the advice of the US and Iran, though, Kurdish leader Barzani refused to come to any terms. Earlier this month, the Kurds had rejected a law passed by the Iraqi government granting them limited autonomy. (NYT, Safire, 2/12/1976) The CIA believed that the Shah would abandon his support for the Kurds as soon as he reached some kind of agreement with Baghdad in their border dispute. (Pike Report)
3/24-28/1974 Kissinger talks with Brezhnev, Gromyko and other Soviet officals in Moscow.
3/24/1974 While Robert Vesco was hiding out in Costa Rica, Walter Cronkite interviewed him by a remote video hookup: Cronkite: Mr. Vesco, you said last January that six months before the Watergate break-in, the Democrats had come to you with a plan for impeachment of the President. Can you tell us what that plan was? Vesco: Well, let me just correct you for a moment. I don't think I said that the Democrats came to me. I said a group did. I don't believe I identified who. The plan was essentially as I have stated previously, where they were going to attempt to get initial indictments of some high officials, using this as a launching board to get public opinion and - in their favor and using the press media to a great degree. The objective was to reverse the outcome of the public election. Cronkite: Why would they have come to you with this plan? Vesco: Way before the Watergate affair got to the current state that it's at, there were - there was a - an article that appeared in the Washington Post alluding to the fact that there may have been a secret cash contribution made to the Republican Party. And it was that article that triggered their interest. Cronkite: And was the suggestion that you would help them finance their plans? Vesco: No, it did not come to a suggestion to help finance their plan. They were more interested in gaining the information from the details that I may have, with respect to the contribution and certain other things, and to exploit those. Cronkite: Now are they getting to the President, Nixon, through Mitchell and Stans and you? Is that the point? Vesco: That - that was the essential ingredients. And with the full knowledge that the grand jury process being what - that it - or being what it is, that with a limited amount of selected testimony and withholding, in effect, what might be countertestimony or cross-examination, they could achieve the indictments...If they can draw public opinion to a degree that they have, a conviction is almost irrelevant. Cronkite: Was the idea of the plot to neutralize the Administration in its - in its policies, or to secure Mr. Nixon's resignation, or to actually force the matter to impeachment? Vesco: I do not believe that that was their intention, at that time, to impeach the President but - or to force him to resign....because that would solve nothing. Cronkite: How many people involved in this plot? Vesco: I don't know how many were involved. I only dealt with three people. Cronkite: Were these people of importance? Vesco: They were names that everyone would recognize. Cronkite: Were they officials? They hold elective office? Vesco: No, but they had held extremely high posts in past administrations.
3/30/1974 Cox told the press: "The media certainly [are] turning gradually to a more active role in shaping the course of events...reflects the sort of notion that the press is the fourth branch of Government and it should play a major role in Government." (National Observer)

Tracy Riddle · 26-08-2014, 02:38 AM

4/1974 Sen. Lowell Weicker reveals White House memos that show the IRS being used to give tax breaks to friends of the Nixon administration, including John Wayne. Wayne responds by calling Weicker a "cheap politician."
4/1974 Foreign Affairs magazine contained an article by Richard N. Gardner of Columbia University: "In short, the 'house of world order' will have to be built from the bottom up rather than from the top down. An end run around national sovereignty, eroding it piece by piece, will accomplish much more than the old-fashioned frontal assault."
4/3/1974 IRS stated that Nixon owed $432,787 in back taxes, and interest penalties of $33,000. Nixon agreed to pay it.
4/7/1974 The Conversation, a film about a professional audio surveillance man, starring Gene Hackman, is released.
4/8/1974 Nixon signs a bill increasing the minimum wage to $2.30 an hour in stages.
4/11/1974 Israeli PM Golda Meir resigned.
4/15/1974 Patty Hearst, now calling herself "Tania," takes part in a bank robbery, and is captured on security cameras wielding a gun.
4/16/1974 Sec. of the Army Howard Callaway cuts Lt. William Calley's prison sentence in half.
4/18/1974 OPEC (excluding Libya and Syria) members voted to resume exporting oil to the US.
4/19/1974 Nicholas von Hoffman reports hearing a congressman saying during the impeachment hearings: "We're going to impeach his ass. We're going to do it." (Washington Post)
4/21/1974 Gerald Ford conceded that a recent GOP defeat in a special congressional election in Michigan had been because of Watergate, but then stated that Nixon's trip to Michigan on behalf of the Republican candidate had made the race closer than it might have been.
4/28-5/2/1974 Kissinger talks with officials from the USSR, Algiers, Egypt and Israel to work out an Israeli-Syrian troop disengagement.
4/28/1974 Jaworski was flown to the White House by an air force plane sent by Haig; Haig accused him, in a threatening tone, of "manipulating the grand jury" and working from baseless evidence. Haig once again insisted that the tape transcripts would prove the President innocent. (Stonewall 276; General's Progress 278)
4/29/1974 New York magazine reported that Elliott Richardson recalled Colson and Nixon wanting J. Lee Rankin to review and "edit" certain "national security" segements of the Watergate tapes. Supposedly, Archibald Cox considered this idea but rejected it. (Nightmare, Lukas 425)
4/30/1974 Edited transcripts of the Nixon tapes are released by the White House. They showed that he often raised the idea of hush money for the Watergate defendants. The edited versions were not accepted by Congress, because they contained many deletions and questionable transcriptions from the tapes; Sen. Hugh Scott called the conversations "shabby, disgusting, immoral..." Nixon-friendly papers such as the Chicago Tribune and the Omaha World-Herald attacked the "low level of political morality in the White House..."
5/1974 Richard Condon (author of The Manchurian Candidate) publishes his latest thriller, Winter Kills. A fictional account of the JFK assassination, it portrays the Kennedy family in an unflattering light. Before the main story of the novel begins, U.S. President Timothy Kegan is shot in Philadelphia at Hunt Plaza. The ensuing presidential commission condemns a lone gunman as the killer. The book starts years later, when Kegan's half-brother, Nick, witnesses the death-bed confession of a man claiming to have been part of the 'hit squad'. As the protagonist attempts to find the plotter(s), he encounters numerous groups and persons that could have led or been part of the conspiracy. One person is Lola Camonte, a hostess, lobbyist and fixer. She recounts the story of President Kegan asking her about appointing a member of organized crime to the Court of St. James. The character "Joe Diamond" is the fictional representation of Jack Ruby. Condon's book describes the numerous intertwined threads of the conspiracy, from the Mafia, Cuba, even possible domestic police connections. Only in the final act, in which Nick meets with his vicious and perverse Joseph P. Kennedy-like 'father-figure', is the truth revealed with a twist ending.
5/1/1974 House Judiciary Committee refuses to accept White House transcript.
5/2/1974 Maryland Court of Appeals disbarred Spiro Agnew, calling him "morally obtuse."
5/3-9/1974 Kissinger holds talks with Middle East leaders to end Israeli-Syrian fighting.
5/4/1974 White House accused Dean of making "misstatements" before the Senate committee.
5/5/1974 Jaworski privately told Haig that a grand jury had months earlier secretly named Nixon an "unindicted co-conspirator." (Stonewall)
5/5/1974 Haig, on Issues and Answers, and St. Clair, on Meet the Press, said they felt sure Nixon would prevail in an impeachment inquiry.
5/5/1974 Column by long-time Nixon supporter William Randolph Hearst Jr.: "This is a very tough column for me to write," he confessed, stating that the tape transcripts showed that Nixon had a "moral blind spot" and made his impeachment inevitable. "The gang talking on the tapes...come through in just that way...a gang of racketeers talking over strategy in a jam-up situation."
5/6/1974 Nixon checked out some of the tapes to listen to them at the EOB.
5/6/1974 West German chancellor Willy Brandt resigned over a scandal.
5/7/1974 The White House announced it would not comply with any part of the subpoena.
5/9/1974 House Judiciary Committee began formal hearings on impeachment of Nixon.
5/10/1974 Haig was quoted in an AP interview of saying that Nixon might step down "if he thought that served the best interests of the American people...at this juncture, I don't see anything on the horizon that would meet that criterion."
5/11/1974 Ford, at a Houston GOP rally, said, "I am convinced that President Nixon knew nothing of the plan to break in and had nothing to do with it. And in my opinion, he had nothing to do with the cover-up." He also expressed fears that Democratic gains in the November elections could lead to a "legislative dictatorship."
5/11/1974 The NY Times reported that in the White House tapes Nixon had referred to Sirica as a "wop" and to persons in the US Attorney's office and Securities and Exchange Commission as "Jew boys."
5/11/1974 Haig told the press that Nixon would not be "pressured out of office...we just can't succumb to the fire storm of public opinion."
5/11/1974 Julie Nixon Eisenhower reveals that her father told her he wouldn't resign as long as one senator still supported him.
5/13/1974 Ford says that he has read the transcripts and that "the overwhelming weight of the evidence" proves Nixon "innocent of any of the charges."
5/15/1974 In executive session of the Ervin Committee, Haig expressed irritation at committee leaks of his earlier testimony. (The Power to Probe by James Hamilton, 1976, p282)
5/16/1974 Kleindienst pleads guilty to withholding information from a Senate committee. This involved the investigation into the IT&T antitrust case.
5/17/1974 South Los Angeles: two-hour gun battle between the Symbionese Liberation Army (SLA) and LAPD; the SLA headquarters is burned and six members died.
5/18/1974 India detonates an underground nuclear device, called Smiling Buddha, in the Rajasthan desert.
5/20/1974 LBJ aide Joseph Califano was quoted in the New Yorker about Watergate: "I've read about half the transcripts, and the contrast with the Johnson White House is enormous. I think it's an utterly amoral discussion...It really is a group of amoral people saving their own skins...It's not really comparable to anything that happened to Johnson."
5/21/1974 Jeb Magruder is sentenced to a prison term of 10 months to four years.
5/23/1974 Haig gathered the sub-Cabinet officials together and gave them a pep talk; he assured them that Nixon was totally in command and that Watergate "will be a very long footnote" in Nixon's presidency.
5/24/1974 Complaining of chest pains, Earl Warren entered the hospital.
5/29/1974 NYT reports: "Rev. Billy Graham has called his reading of the transcripts of President Nixon's Watergate conversations "a profoundly disturbing and disappointing experience" but added that, as Mr. Nixon's friend, he had "no intention of forsaking him now." Mr. Graham, who in the past has offered only infrequent public comment on the Watergate affair, made his remarks in a statement issued yesterday from his home in Montreat, N.C. Mr. Graham said "One cannot but deplore the moral tone implied in these papers." It was not clear, however, whether his comments referred solely to the use of what he termed "objectionable language" in the transcripts or to substantive matters in the conversations. A spokesman for the Baptist clergyman said yesterday that he was traveling and not available to add to the statement. In a seeming allusion to a defense of Mr. Nixon's use of profanity by a Jesuit priest who is a salaried member of the President's staff, Mr. Graham said: "'Thou shalt not take the name of the Lord thy God in vain' is a Commandment which has not been suspended, regardless of any need to release tensions." The priest, the Rev. John J. McLaughlin, in an unusual news conference earlier this month defended the profanity as a "form of emotional drainage.'" Graham also said, "What comes through in these tapes is not the man I have known for many years. Other mutual friends have made the same observationâ€¦A nation confused for years by the teaching of situational ethics now finds itself dismayed by those in Government who apparently practiced it. We have lost our moral compass. We must get it back. Nowhere is it more clearly or concisely stated than in the Ten Commandments. If this nation is destroyed, it will be the result of moral decadence within."
5/31/1974 Israeli and Syrian military officials sign a cease-fire agreement in Geneva brought about by Kissinger. Israel would withdraw to the 1967 ceasefire line in Golan, with a UN buffer zone.
Early 6/1974 Alexander Haig ordered the Army's Criminal Investigation Command (CIC) to make a study of Nixon's alleged ties to organized crime and the smuggling of gold bullion to Vietnam. The results of that investigation, carried out by the CIC's Russell Bintliff at the direction of Col. Henry Tufts, was submitted to Haig in late July 1974. It is not known whether the results were presented to Nixon or not; Haig refuses to discuss the issue. (Secret Agenda p312)
6/5/1974 The Great Hughes Heist The private files and documents of the late Howard Hughes were reported stolen from his supposedly impregnable Hollywood headquarters on June 5, 1974. These files, including thousands of his private papers and verbatim transcripts of telephone calls, could expose illicit connections with the CIA, the Mafia, the White House, and private industry. It is said, for the first time, detailed knowledge of political bribes, financial "favors" to circumvent established government laws, and inner dealings within existing government agencies would become available to the American public. Yet, after more than two years of reportedly inept investigations by various police and governmental agencies and repeated accusations of a cover-up, the documents have not been recovered nor is the American public generally aware of their existence. The recovery and exposure of these papers could reveal to the American people the inner workings and structure of a national and international power elite. The dearth of coverage by the mass media of the burglary of these potentially explosive documents and of the. subsequent investigation qualifies the "Hughes Heist" for consideration as one of the "best censored stories" of 1976. SOURCE: New Times Magazine, January 21, 1977, "The Great Hughes Heist," by Michael Drosnin.
6/7/1974 Kleindeinst receives a suspended sentence.
6/8/1974 US and Saudi Arabia sign an agreement for economic and military cooperation.
6/10-19/1974 Nixon, Kissinger and Haig visited the Middle East.
6/10/1974 In a letter to the House Judiciary Committee Nixon says he must "draw a line" and refuse to provide them with any more Watergate evidence.
6/10/1974 Kissinger wrote a letter to Sen. Fulbright stating that he only suggested the names of people who might be responsible for leaks, and blamed the wiretaps on Nixon.
6/11/1974 Archibald Cox denounced the tactics of the Senate Watergate Committee as similar to those used by Joseph McCarthy. (New York Times)
6/11/1974 Kissinger, in Salzburg, told the press he will resign unless he is cleared of any involvement with wiretapping.
6/12/1974 Ford was given a CIA foreign policy/intelligence briefing.
6/12-18/1974 Nixon visits Egypt, Saudi Arabia, Syria, Jordan and Israel. 6/14 he and Sadat signed an accord by which the US would provide nuclear technology to Egypt for peaceful purposes.
6/12/1974 The CIA and the Cult of Intelligence by Victor Marchetti is published by Alfred A. Knopf. Marchetti is a former special assistant to the Deputy Director of the Central Intelligence Agency, and John D. Marks, a former officer of the United States Department of State. The authors claim to expose how the CIA actually works and how its original purpose (i.e. collecting and analyzing information about foreign governments, corporations, and persons in order to advise public policymakers) had been subverted by its obsession with clandestine operations. It is the first book the federal government of the United States ever went to court to censor before its publication. The CIA demanded the authors remove 399 passages but they stood firm and only 168 passages were censored. The publisher, Alfred A. Knopf, chose to publish the book with blanks for censored passages and with boldface type for passages that were challenged but later uncensored. The book was a critically acclaimed bestseller whose publication contributed to the establishment of the Church Committee, a United States Senate select committee to study governmental operations with respect to intelligence activities, in 1975. The book was published in paperback by Dell Publishing in 1975. The book is partly censored, but it is printed to show which parts were blacked outit is perhaps the earliest published book to show its deletions. The book contains a list of list of foreign officials, including King Hussein of Jordan, who received clandestine payments from the CIA in return for "favors." "There exists in our nation today a powerful and dangerous secret cult -- the cult of intelligence. Its holy men are the clandestine professionals of the Central Intelligence Agency. Its patrons and protectors are the highest officials of the federal government. Its membership, extending far beyond governmental circles, reaches into the power centers of industry, commerce, finance, and labor. Its friends are many in the areas of important public influence -- the academic world and the communications media. The cult of intelligence is a secret fraternity of the American political aristocracy. The purpose of the cult is to further the foreign policies of the U.S. government by covert and usually illegal means, while at the same time containing the spread of its avowed enemy, communism. Traditionally, the cult's hope has been to foster a world order in which America would reign supreme, the unchallenged international leader. Today, however, that dream stands tarnished by time and frequent failures. Thus, the cult's objectives are now less grandiose, but no less disturbing. It seeks largely to advance America's self-appointed role as the dominant arbiter of social, economic, and political change in the awakening regions of Asia, Africa, and Latin America. And its worldwide war against communism has to some extent been reduced to a covert struggle to maintain a self-serving stability in the Third World, using whatever clandestine methods are available."
6/14/1974 The Parallax View is released. It is a political thriller film directed by Alan J. Pakula and starring Warren Beatty. The film was adapted by David Giler, Lorenzo Semple Jr and an uncredited Robert Towne from the 1970 novel by Loren Singer. The story concerns a reporter's dangerous investigation into an obscure organization, the Parallax Corporation, whose primary, but not ostensible, enterprise is political assassination. It opens with a scene clearly reminiscent of the RFK assassination, and the film ends with the protagonist being framed as a "lone nut" assassin.
6/24/1974 Colson was quoted in the Washington Post as saying that Nixon was a prisoner of the CIA.
6/25/1974 Supreme Court ruled 5-4 that the CIA's budget did not have to be made public; the majority justices were Burger, White, Blackmun, Powell and Rehnquist.
6/26/1974 Washington Star-News quoted Atty Gen. Saxbe as blaming J. Edgar Hoover for making the FBI unresponsive to attorneys general.
6/27-7/3/1974 Summit between Nixon and Brezhnev in Moscow over nuclear arms and world peace issues. An agreement on nuclear weapons is signed 7/3 but there are no major breakthroughs.
6/29/1974 Soviet ballet dancer Mikhail Baryshnikov defected to the US.
6/30/1974 A gunman stood up from a pew inside the Ebenezer Baptist Church and fatally shot Martin Luther King's mother, Alberta Williams King, as she played "The Lord's Prayer" on the organ during morning worship. A deacon was also killed.

Tracy Riddle · 26-08-2014, 02:55 AM

7/1974 In the first quarter of 1974, the US GNP declined by 5.8%, and by July it was clear the US was in a recession.
7/1974 Nixon stated, "The President is not going to leave the White House until January 20, 1977." (Don't Quote Me, Atyeo & Green)
7/1/1974 Time magazine reported that 29 of the 38 members of the House Judiciary Committee favored impeachment.
7/1/1974 Kalmbach surrendered to a US marshal to begin serving a prison term.
7/2/1974 St. Clair wrote in a brief to the Supreme Court that the President is constitutionally entitled to immunity from judicial orders because of the separation of powers.
7/2/1974 David Young, former co-director of the Plumbers, testified that he talked with Ehrlichman about a "covert operation" against Ellsberg before the break-in at the office of his psychiatrist.
7/2/1974 Robert Bennett testified before the Nedzi committee: "I have told Woodward everything I know about the Watergate case, except the Mullen Company's tie to the CIA. I never mentioned that to him. It has never appeared in any Washington Post story."
7/2/1974 Alexander Butterfield told the House Judiciary Committee that Nixon kept a close watch on everything that went on in the White House.
7/2/1974 Washington Post story by Laurence Stern about Sen. Baker's dissent: "Baker to Say CIA Helped Hunt Get Job."
7/3/1974 Nixon left Moscow to return to the US.
7/3/1974 Sen. Baker announced that Howard Hunt had asked former superiors at the CIA for agents skilled in burglary before the break-in at the Watergate, and that the CIA concealed what it knew about the Watergate and Ellsberg break-ins than it told the FBI. Baker also said the CIA had refused to make many documents and witnesses available.
7/3/1974 Egil Krogh testified at Ehrlichman's trial that Ehrlichman had given the go-ahead on the eve of the Ellsberg break-in.
7/3/1974 Colson testified that Kissinger in 1971 had urged dissemination of material against Ellsberg.
7/3/1974 Haldeman told the Judiciary Committee he would take the Fifth Amendment rather than testify before its impeachment inquiry.
7/3/1974 Former CREEP lawyer Paul L. O'Brien stated that Hunt had not explicitly made a blackmail threat against Nixon.
7/4/1974 Nixon spends the weekend at Key Biscayne. Nixon's physician, Dr. Walter R. Tkach, said he warned Nixon before the his trip to the Middle East that the phlebitis in his left leg could be fatal. He confirmed for the first time that a blood clot had formed.
7/4/1974 At a Texas luncheon, Jaworski called Watergate a "calamitous burden" for the country.
7/6/1974 Prosecution concluded its case in Ehrlichman's trial.
7/6/1974 Kissinger's attorneys moved unsuccessfully to keep him from testifying at the trial.
7/6/1974 Ford spoke at the Dallas World Trade Center. He made no reference to an incident involving his motorcade; a shattered police window in a patrol car led to police reports - later reversed - that a sniper had fired on the motorcade as it moved from the Dallas-Fort Worth Airport to the downtown area. (The Breaking of a President 401) "FORD IN DALLAS Vice President Gerald Ford is shown at press conference in the World Trade Center Building in Dallas Tex Saturday The Vice President is here to dedicate the new facility. Texas Department of Safety said the windshield of a patrol car in the Vice President's motorcade had a window shattered by sniper fire but they later said the window was damaged by heat expansion." (Winona Daily News 7/7/74)
7/6/1974 Ford told the press that the odds against impeachment "have fallen considerably" and that the case against Nixon "has fallen flat...I have detected a movement in the House that is favorable to the President. No impeachable offense has been found..."
7/7/1974 Nixon talked with St. Clair.
7/8/1974 Colson began serving his prison sentence. Colson was quoted in Time magazine: "I don't say this to my people. They'd think I'm nuts. I think the CIA killed Dorothy Hunt."
7/8/1974 Ehrlichman denied having foreknowledge of the Ellsberg break-in.
7/8/1974 Supreme Court heard arguments on whether Nixon can be forced to surrender tapes for the Watergate trial.
7/8/1974 Haldeman has approached at least four NY publishers to offer them his memoirs for $1 million.
7/9/1974 Earl Warren died at the age of 83 of heart disease.
7/9/1974 Washington lawyer William Treadwell testified at the Plumbers trial that Krogh and David Young once said that Ehrlichman didn't authorize the Ellsberg break-in or know of it in advance.
7/9/1974 House Judiciary Committee issued its own transcripts of some of the Watergate tapes, and found considerable differences between theirs and the Nixon transcripts.
7/10/1974 Reg Murphy, editor of the Atlanta Constitution, headlined his column, "Jimmy Carter's Running for WHAT?"
7/10/1974 In a written affidavit, Nixon again stated he didn't authorize the Ellsberg break-in.
7/10/1974 In testimony lasting less than 2 minutes, Kissinger swore he never ordered a psychological profile of Ellsberg.
7/12/1974 Earl Warren was buried at Arlington National Cemetary.
7/12/1974 The Congressional Budget and Impoundment Control Act was enacted. Created the Congressional Budget Office.
7/12/1974 Ehrlichman was found guilty by a Washington jury of conspiring to break in to Ellsberg's psychiatrist's office.
7/15/1974 Jack Anderson column about Charles Colson being secretly recorded by private eye Richard Bast a few days before he went to prison: "Unaware of the turning reels, Colson speculated that the CIA planned a Seven Days in May' takeover of the government. He also asserted that the Pentagon practiced extortion to keep President Nixon from arresting military men who stole his secretsâ€¦[He and Nixon] discussed how Mr. Nixon could rid himself of CIA and military spying on the White House."
7/15/1974 Christine Chubbuck, an American television news reporter, committed suicide during a live television broadcast.
7/20/1974 Turkey invades Cyprus in dispute with Greece.
7/22/1974 William Greider commented in the Washington Post: "Even the most bullish Democrats conceded that their investigation did not produce a thunderous concensus that Mr. Nixon should be removed from office, the kind of compelling bipartisan agreement which would remove all doubt about the outcome."
7/23/1974 In secret testimony before the Senate, Kissinger blamed the wiretap program entirely on Hoover.
7/23/1974 Nixon noted that Haig was "not ready to give up...it would not only look like an admission of guilt, but...would mean a dangerously easy victory for the radicals - not just over me but over the system." (RN)
7/24/1974 11:20am (EST) Supreme Court rules 8-0 that Nixon must turn over the 64 tapes sought by Jaworski; Rehnquist had disqualified himself from hearing this case.
7/24/1974 4pm (PST) St. Clair told the press that Nixon would "comply with the decision."
7/24/1974 Meeting between Buzhardt, Garment, Dean Burch (coordinator of Nixon's political defense) and William Timmons, Nixon's liaison chief. Timmons and Burch felt that the Court's ruling meant that Nixon should give up and resign. Buzhardt had told Nixon early that morning that the Court's ruling would probably not be in their favor. Haig, in California with Nixon, then called Washington and told them to begin transcribing the tapes - from duplicates so as not to risk damaging the originals. (Breach of Faith)
7/24/1974 Nixon kept himself busy this day working on a major speech on inflation. Haig and Ray Price both reported him as being cool and collected.
7/24/1974 Buzhardt later revealed that on this day he suggested to Nixon by a call to Haig and St. Clair that Nixon could pardon himself and all of the Watergate defendants, and then resign. (1/1976 Washington Post)
7/27/1974 House Judiciary Committee passed first article of impeachment - Obstruction of Justice. Nixon would recall that Haig and Ziegler continued to urge Nixon to hold out at this point. (RN)
7/27/1974 Hours after the first article of impeachment was passed, Haig told 60 Minutes' Mike Wallace that the charges against Nixon were "a grab bag of generalities...the case for impeachment is not there."
7/28/1974 Nixon, Haig and Ziegler returned to Washington.
7/29/1974 Bribery and perjury indictments were returned against John Connally and Texas lawyer Jake Jacobsen.
7/29/1974 The first 20 of the 64 subpoenaed conversations were delivered to Sirica's office.
7/29/1974 Four bishops ordain 11 women as Episcopal priests in defiance of church law.
7/29/1974 House Judiciary Committee passed second article of impeachment, on Abuse of Power.
7/29/1974 "Mama" Cass Elliot, the "Earth Mother" of Laurel Canyon whose circle of friends included musicians, Mansonites, young Hollywood stars, the wealthy son of a State Department official, singer/songwriters, assorted drug dealers, and some particularly unsavory characters the LAPD once described as "some kind of hit squad," died in the London home of Harry Nilsson on July 29, 1974 (Nilsson had been a frequent drinking buddy of John Lennon in Laurel Canyon and on the Sunset Strip). At thirty-two, Cass had lived a long and productive life, by Laurel Canyon standards. Four years later, in the very same room of the very same London flat, still owned by Harry Nilsson, Keith Moon of The Who also died at thirty-two (on September 7, 1978). Though initial press reports held that Cass had choked to death on a ham sandwich, the official cause of death was listed as heart failure. Her actual cause of death could likely be filed under "knowing where too many of the bodies were buried.".
7/30/1974 House Judiciary Committee passed third article of impeachment, on contempt of Congress and Defiance of Committee Subpoenas; article IV was voted down. It dealt with waging a secret, illegal war in Cambodia.
7/30/1974 Nixon again listened to the 6/23/1972 tape and angrily disagreed with Buzhardt that it marked the end of the fight. (Breach of Faith 10) Buzhardt told Haig precisely what lay on the tapes; Haig decided he had to read the transcript for himself. (Breach of Faith 11)
7/31/1974 Haig read the transcript of the 6/23/1972 tape and realized that Nixon had to resign because what was left of his political support would disappear; Haig would later act as though he had never heard of that tape before, calling it "new evidence." "If Haig could get the facts before the President clearly, he was certain that the President would act beyond himself in the national interest and resign...Yet, with too much pressure, something might trigger the combat instinct in Richard Nixon...Haig was dealing with a time-bomb which, if not defused in just the right way, might blow the course of all American history apart." (Ted White, Breach of Faith)
Summer 1974 Sears, Roebuck and Company was accused of bait-and-switch selling tactics by the Chicago regional office of the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) during the summer of 1974. Sears was accused of systematically engaging in bait-and-switch selling tactics -- advertising low priced products, then making them unattractive or unavailable and pushing higher priced items on the baited customer. Sears emphatically denied the allegations. Douglas Collins documented the lack of mass media coverage given to the charges against Sears. Only one of 38 major newspapers gave the story front page coverage. Only one of the three TV networks even mentioned the story on its evening news. Then, nearly two years later, in February, 1976, the trial began before an FTC administrative law judge in Chicago. After 11 days of hearings, Sears abandoned its emphatic denial and sought to negotiate a consent order. This time, Michael Hirsh, told the story of how "The Sins of Sears Are Not News in Chicago" in the Columbia Journalism Review. One might think the story of how the world's largest retailer used illegal bait-and-switch tactics to deceive its customers would be a major story for the mass media. After all, 30 percent of all households in the United States have an account at Sears. However, Sears is also the nation's third most lavish advertiser. The lack of public knowledge about Sears' illegal selling tactics qualifies this story for nomination as one of the "best censored" stories of 1976. SOURCES: "How They Covered the Story" by Douglas Collins, Media and Consumer, September 1974, p 9. "The Sins of Sears Are Not News in Chicago" by Michael Hirsh, Columbia Journalism Review, July/August 1976, p 29.
8/1974 In the past year, the US Wholesale Price Index rose almost 18%.
8/1974 George Wallace described himself as "a victim of Watergate."
8/1974 Jack Anderson disclosed that Colson had met with Gordon Novel 3/1974 to discuss how Nixon's White House tapes could be destroyed by a magnetic erasure technique that wouldn't require them to handle the tapes in any way. Novel recalled that Colson had also talked of using the erasing machine to destroy some secret CIA recordings. Novel then went to Texas to see an associate about the erasure plan; Colson claimed the whole erasing discussion was just a "joke." (Coincidence or Conspiracy 522-3)
8/1/1974 (Thur) This morning, Nixon told Haig he had decided to resign. (RN)
8/1/1974 Haig met with Ford and advised him to be ready assume the presidency at any moment, and gave him various options on the possibility of pardoning Nixon; one of these options included the idea that Nixon might be able to pardon himself. Ford described himself as "shocked and stunned" about the seriousness of the newly released evidence and needed time to think about the possibility of a pardon.
8/1/1974 Haig talked with Nixon loyalist Sen. Eastland, who told him that the Senate would convict Nixon based on the new evidence. (Breach of Faith)
8/1/1974 Tonight, Nixon dined with Rebozo, telling him of his decision to resign. (RN)
8/2/1974 (Fri) James St. Clair repeated to Ford the seriousness of the evidence against Nixon. Ford told Haig that he was not going to recommend to Nixon whether or not to resign.
8/2/1974 Haig met with staunch Nixon loyalist Rep. Charles Wiggins; Haig let Wiggins in on the seriousness of the new evidence, who now became convinced that Nixon had to resign. Haig also called Nixon defender Sen. Robert Griffin and made him aware of the evidence. (Breach of Faith)
8/2/1974 John Dean is sentenced to one to four years in prison.
8/2/1974 Tonight, Ray Price and Pat Buchanan were given the transcripts to read and both were angry at having been lied to; both felt Nixon should resign. (Breach of Faith)
8/3/1974 (Sat) St. Clair now leaned toward a Senate trial, and Haig seemed to hesitate as well. (With Nixon)
8/3/1974 Today and the 4th, Raymond Price prepared two draft speeches, one a resignation speech, and the other a defiant declaration that he had done nothing "that justifies removing a duly elected president from office...We must not let this office be destroyed - or let it fall such easy prey to those who would exult in the breaking of the president that the game becomes a national habit." The latter was never delivered. Haig recalled that Nixon was torn between wanting to fight and wanting to give up. (AP 12/16/1996)
8/3/1974 Pat Buchanan met with Rebozo and Nixon's daughters, who wanted him to urge Nixon to fight; Buchanan told them to be practical and face the reality that he would either have to resign or be impeached. That afternoon, Ziegler was spreading the word that Nixon was going to fight. (Breach of Faith)
8/4/1974 (Sun) Nixon decided to simply release the tape transcripts the next day with an explanatory statement.
8/4/1974 NY Times reports that an unpublished Senate Watergate committee staff report theorizes that the break-in was prompted by fear of the Hughes-Rebozo contribution being made public.
8/5/1974 (Mon) Nixon signs a bill authorizing $22.2 billion for weapons research and procurement for FY 1975.
8/5/1974 4pm The White House released a transcript of 6/23/1972 tape that revealed that he had approved the cover-up only 6 days after the Watergate break-in. His remaining Congressional support vanishes; staunch supporter Charles Wiggins announces he will vote for impeachment. Sen. Robert Griffin urges Nixon to resign.
8/5/1974 Saturday, Sunday and today, Ford had been stating in speeches in the South that he saw no reason why Nixon should be impeached. He said he had not read the transcripts released so far.
8/5/1974 Asst Senate minority leader Robert P. Griffin (R-Michigan) said he thought Nixon should resign.
8/5/1974 Senate Foreign Relations committee released a report charging that US ambassador to Vietnam Graham Martin had held back or altered reports to Washington that made the situation in that country look bad.
8/5/1974 Haig called Jaworski to assure him that Nixon hadn't told him about the contents of the 6/23 tape until just recently. (The Right and the Power)
8/5/1974 Haig met with the White House staff and urged them to "all keep going for the good of the nation. And I also hope you would do it for the President too."
8/6/1974 (Tues) Republicans in Congress announced that most of them now favored impeachment of Nixon. House Minority Leader John Rhodes (R-Arizona) announced he and all members of the House Judiciary Committee would vote to impeach. The GOP Senators felt that Nixon was not aware how dire his situation was. Nixon supporters felt they had been deceived by Nixon's 8/5 admission of a coverup.
8/6/1974 Gov. Ronald Reagan said that he felt there was enough evidence for impeachment, and urged that the process "go forward" swiftly. But Reagan refused to call for Nixon's resignation; he felt it was "imperative" that all questions be answered during impeachment proceedings. Goldwater remarked in a Senate lunchroom, "Nixon should get his ass out of the White House - today!" (Nightmare)
8/6/1974 Nixon urged his cabinet to stick with him through the impeachment trial; he told Ford and George Bush that he would not resign. Kissinger and Haig saw this as phony bravado on Nixon's part, but others would leak stories that Nixon was losing touch with reality. Ford refused to take part in urging Nixon to resign. That afternoon, James Schlesigner gave secret orders that no military unit was to accept an order from "the White House" without Schlesinger's okay. Schlesinger would soon leak this act to the press in a background interview.
8/6/1974 The Senate Foreign Relations Committee voted unanimously to clear Kissinger on charges he had misled them about his role in the 1969-71 wiretapping; A Kissinger spokesman announces he is "gratified" and "no longer sees any reason for resignation."
8/6/1974 Julie Nixon wrote her father, urging him to "go through the fire just a little bit longer."
8/6/1974 Bill Clinton on Nixon, quoted in the Arkansas Democrat: "There's not any point now in his putting the country through an impeachment since he isn't making any pretense of innocence now...I think it's plain that the president should resign and spare the country the agony of this impeachment and removal proceeding. I think the country could be spared a lot of agony and the government could worry about inflation and a lot of other problems if he'd go on and resign." Clinton, a law professor at the University of Arkansas, said there was "no question that an admission of making false statements to government officials and interfering with the FBI and the CIA is an impeachable offense."
8/7/1974 (Wed) 5pm (EST) Republican leaders Hugh Scott, John Rhodes and Goldwater tell Nixon that "the situation is very gloomy on Capitol Hill." Goldwater tells the press that Nixon has no more than 15 votes in the Senate.
8/7/1974 A Gallup poll showed that 64% of the American people thought there should be an impeachment trial in the Senate, and 55% thought Nixon should be removed from office.
8/7/1974 Haldeman called the White House and reached Al Haig; according to Haig, Haldeman told him that Nixon had to be pardoned or he could "send Nixon to jail."
8/7/1974 St. Clair told Sirica he can't find any tapes of nine of the 64 subpoenaed conversations.
8/7/1974 Nixon spent the day meeting with family and top aides. Haig urged him to resign. Ed Cox and David Eisenhower urged Pat Buchanan to get Nixon to go through an impeachment fight; Buchanan disagreed with them. (Breach of Faith)
8/7/1974 A letter from RNC chairman George Bush to Nixon urged him to resign: "If you do leave office history will properly record your achievements with a lasting respect."
8/7/1974 Tonight, Nixon told Haig and Kissinger he planned to resign in the interest of the country.
8/8/1974 (Thur) Kissinger agrees to stay on as Secretary of State.
8/8/1974 11am Ford met with Nixon.
8/8/1974 Right-wing congressman Earl Landgrebe (R-Indiana) told reporters, "Don't confuse me with the facts. I've got a closed mind. I will not vote for impeachment. I'm going to stick with my president even if he and I have to be taken out of this building and shot."
8/8/1974 9pm In a televised address Nixon announces he will resign at noon the next day.
8/8/1974 Jaworski announces he has made no deal with Nixon for immunity.
8/8/1974 Ford praises Nixon's action as "one of the greatest personal sacrifices for the country and one of the finest personal decisions on behalf of all of us as Americans."
8/9/1974 (Fri) Nixon resigns in "the interests of the nation," saying he no longer had "a strong enough political base in Congress." He and Pat flew to California. His resignation letter is delivered to Kissinger at 11:35am.
8/9/1974 12:03pm Ford is sworn in and tells the nation, "our long national nightmare is over. Our Constitution works. Our great Republic is a government of laws and not of men." He pledged to run an "open and candid administration...I believe that the truth is the glue that holds government together..."
8/9/1974 This evening, Al Haig was busy burning documents in an office fireplace. When Haig left the White House that night, he told a Kissinger aide, "We'll be back. Believe me, we'll be back." (The General's Progress; Palace Politics)
8/9/1974 Columnist Marquis Childs wrote that Lyndon Johnson "was on a public payroll all his life until he left the presidency...Yet after his death in 1973, his estate was estimated at $35 to $40 million...The bulk of the estate was in valuable television and radio properties and in large landholdings...the Wall Street Journal did an in-depth investigation of how the President and Mrs Johnson acquired the TV stations...I was at the [LBJ] ranch as the Journal articles appeared and the President vented his wrath in typical Johnsonian fashion. Power and money were the two poles of attraction for Connally and his mentor."
8/9/1974 Gov. Reagan states that he felt Nixon's resignation would help Republican candidates in the November elections. Reagan also urged that Ford appoint Barry Goldwater as vice-president.
8/10/1974 Haig described to Ford how the White House worked using a "fat black briefing book," but when Ford asked him for a copy, Haig refused. (A Ford Not a Lincoln)
8/11/1974 The NYT's Stephen Farber writes about movies that deal with assassinations: "Alan J. Pakula's "The Parallax View" is probably the most mindless and irresponsible of the lotâ€¦There is a germ of a satiric idea herethe notion that America is so completely capitalistic that even assassination becomes a business proposition: maybe this solemn, ponderous movie would have worked better as a wicked black comedyâ€¦One thing we should have learned from Watergate is that while conspiracies do indeed affect the lives of all Americans, they are not quite so efficient or omnipotent as even the conspirators themselves would like to believeâ€¦Hollywood's new conspiratorial fantasies promote cynicism, self-righteousness, and complacencyan unhealthy combination."
8/12/1974 Ford appears before a joint session of Congress. He urged Congress to cooperate in fighting inflation (which he called "our domestic public enemy No.1"), and to use restraint in wage and price action. He admonished General Motors on price hike.
8/12/1974 Ford made his first veto - of a bill to upgrade deputy U.S. Marshals because it would create serious pay inequities with other Federal law enforcement personnel.
8/13/1974 Ford pledged to have "an open, honest government." The next day columnist Jack Anderson called him "an intensely human President, basically decent, inherently honest, without guile."
8/13/1974 Conservative Republican Congressman H.R. Gross told Clark Mollenhoff that Ford was an untrustworthy compromiser and deal-maker, "and don't you forget it." (The Man Who Pardoned Nixon 84)
8/15/1974 Clay Shaw was pronounced dead at the Ochsner Foundation Hospital at 1pm; no autopsy was performed. Clay Shaw, implicated in JFK conspiracy by Jim Garrison, his finances depleted after the years of defending himself and despondent over revelations of his homosexual connections dies of cancer in New Orleans. The circumstances of his death are extremely odd. One of Shaw's neighbors witnesses unidentified men carrying a stretcher, which holds a sheet-covered body, into Shaw's carriage house, through the front door. The neighbor, thinking this unusual, calls the coroner. Investigators are immediately dispatched to Shaw's home. When they arrive, the men and the body have vanished. Inquires a day later will reveal that Shaw has already been buried in his home town of Kentwood.
8/15/1974 Sen. Fulbright opened hearings on Kissinger's policies and detente; Fulbright stated, "The heart and core of the policy of detente...is the lessening of the danger of nuclear war...There is no rational alternative."
8/15/1974 Buzhardt resigned.
8/15-18/1974 Ford received a visit from King Hussein of Jordan.
8/15/1974 Park Chung Hee, president of South Korea, was the target of a failed attempt on his life by assassins who fatally shot his wife instead.
8/17/1974 Ford signed the Forest and Rangeland Renewable Resources Act.
8/17/1974 Los Angeles Times quoted Billy Graham on the profanity and thuggery revealed on the Nixon White House Tapes: "Those tapes revealed a man I never knew. I never saw that side of him."
8/19/1974 Rodger P. Davies, U.S. ambassador to Cyprus, was shot to death in Nicosia.
8/19/1974 Ford announced that he favored "leniency" for Vietnam draft evaders and deserters.
8/20/1974 Congress cuts aid to Saigon from $1 billion to $700 million.
8/20/1974 Ford announced he would nominate Nelson Rockefeller for VP. The move was viewed with suspicion by conservatives. Ford had up to this point indicated he would retire from politics in 1976; now he said he would run for the presidential nomination that year.
8/21/1974 Ford signs a bill providing $25 billion to support primary and secondary schools over the next four years; it includes a restriction on busing.
8/22/1974 Ford signed "with great pleasure" an $11.1 billion bill "of perhaps historic significance" substituting a single block grant for community development for seven categorical programs such as urban renewal and model cities.
8/22/1974 Ford proclaimed August 26 as Women's Equality Day, declaring that "Americans must deal with those inequities that still linger as barriers to the full participation of women in the Nation's life."
8/22/1974 House Judiciary Committee issued its final report on Watergate.
8/23/1974 John Lennon walked out on to the balcony of his New York apartment, and witnessed what he later described as a "Flying Saucer" hovering closely, just above his window. This article includes an interview with Lennon's assistant/girlfriend May Pang, who also witnessed the event, which completely describes the encounter. "It looked like a flattened cone with a brilliant light on top." -May Pang, assistant to John Lennon, describing the object they allegedly saw from Lennon's balcony in NY City. The fact that Lennon was so famous and controversial at that time makes his apparent UFO sighting all the stranger. On August 23rd, 1974 Lennon walked out on to the balcony of his New York apartment, and witnessed what he later described as a "Flying Saucer" hovering closely, just above his window. Lennon became so completely fascinated by the event, that he talked incessantly about the incident, and even included the encounter within two different songs on different albums.
8/28/1974 Ford gave his first presidential press conference and avoided questions about a pardon of Nixon: "I had hoped that our former President, who brought peace to millions, would find it for himself." He seemed to indicate that he had not made up his mind about a pardon, and he would wait until the Special Prosecutor took some action in the courts. He announced that "The code of ethics that will be followed will be the example I set."

Tracy Riddle · 01-09-2014, 03:12 PM

9/1974 In Saigon, a protest group issued an "Indictment Number 1" containing documented charges against Thieu and his family of their enormous corruption.
9/1/1974 Gallup poll shows that Ford's popularity rating is 71%.
9/2/1974 Ford signed the Employee Retirement Income Security Act, allowing people to set up tax-free Individual Retirement Accounts (IRAs).
9/3/1974 John Dean began serving his prison term.
9/4/1974 George Bush is named to head US liaison office in Peking.
9/4/1974 Formal US ties established with East Germany; former Sen. John Sherman Cooper is named US ambassador.
9/4/1974 Chairman of the Joint Chiefs Gen. Creighton W. Abrams died.
9/5/1974 Sen. William Proxmire is quoted as saying: "Returning Alexander Haig to active duty status would send a signal throughout the military officer corps that politics pays off - and in a big way."
9/5/1974 L.A. Times reports that "a critical drop in American aid has forced the South Vietnamese government into a crash belt-tightening program that has grounded most of the air force, cut ammunition expenditure in some cases by 80% and sharply limited many other activities."
9/6/1974 Nixon signed an agreement with the National Archives under which he could retain control of his presidential materials, and even begin destroying them. Congress soon acted to change the laws regarding Presidential papers.
9/8/1974 Ford announced, with barely any notice of his intentions, that he had pardoned Nixon of any and all crimes he may have committed while President. He claimed that a lengthy trial would only have hurt the country. Ford had not consulted with legal experts (such as the Attorney General) or members of Congress before making the decision. At the same time, an agreement was made to give Nixon title to all the White House tapes and papers, under joint control with Ford. Under this agreement, Nixon could destroy the tapes after 9/1/1979. The reaction from the public and Congress was one of anger and disappointment. Republicans in particular were upset because it hurt their chances in the fall elections. Members of congress in both parties began calling for an investigation.
9/8/1974 Robert Vesco told Neil Cullinan of the New Times that he thought Watergate was the result of a power struggle, and that the plotters were out to get Nixon. Vesco portrayed his legal problems and those of "Howard Hughes, H. Ross Perot, Armand Hammer and C. Arnhold Smith" as coming from "an attempt to shatter the mandate received by Richard Nixon in 1972 and to destroy in the process any large economic interests who supported the President publicly."
9/10 or 11/1974 deputy press secretary John W. Hushen revealed that Ford was studying a plan to pardon all of the Watergate criminals. Furious reaction from Congress quickly killed the idea. The administration blamed Hushen for making an announcement not authorized by the President.
9/12/1974 Race relations in Boston turn violent when high school students at South Boston High opposed to court-ordered busing rioted and attacked black students.
9/13/1974 Texas oil baron H.L. Hunt collapsed while at work, and was taken to Baylor hospital in Dallas.
9/14/1974 In an interview, Haig reported that Nixon still did not believe he had committed an impeachable offense. (UPI)
9/15/1974 Nixon is quoted as saying that if he is hospitalized for his phlebitis, "I'll never come out alive." His doctor, Walter R. Tkach, reported that Nixon "is a ravaged man who has lost the will to fight."
9/16/1974 NATO and Ford announced that Al Haig would become head of NATO effective 12/15. Demands by key Senators that Haig appear before them were answered by Ford, who said that the post did not require Senate confirmation.
9/16/1974 Charges against Indian activists Dennis Banks and Russell Means are dismissed by a federal district court judge.
9/16/1974 Ford signed a proclamation offering clemency to Vietnam war draft evaders and deserters in return for performing alternative service and an oath of allegiance. He had previously opposed such a program while a member of Congress.
9/16/1974 In a press conference, Ford denied that there was any "deal" between him and Nixon for a pardon. One reporter reminded him that during his confirmation hearings he had seemed to indicate that he would not pardon Nixon; Ford replied, "I think if you will reread what I said...I did not say I wouldn't." He also admitted that the CIA had spent millions of dollars in Chile, but only to support opposition press and parties; these actions were "in the best interests of the people of Chile and certainly in our best interest."
9/18/1974 Ford addressed the 29th session of the United Nations General Assembly, declaring that "We are committed to pursuit of a more peaceful, stable and cooperative world."
9/18/1974 Second round of SALT II talks resumes in Geneva.
9/18/1974 Rev. Sun Myung Moon filled Madison Square Garden for one of his Unification Church rallies.
9/18/1974 NY Times reported that Haig had been instrumental in persuading Ford to grant Nixon a pardon because of the ex-president's health.
9/18/1974 Chicago Daily News' Peter Lisagor interview with Al Haig: "I never was a Nixonite" or even a Republican, he admitted.
9/20/1974 Ford announced appointment of Ronald H. Nessen as his Press Secretary.
9/21/1974 President Ford asks Donald Rumsfeld to replace the outgoing Alexander Haig at the White House. Rumsfeld has long been Haig's choice to replace him. Ford does not want to give Rumsfeld the official title of "chief of staff," and instead wants Rumsfeld as "staff coordinator." The difference is academic. Ford wants the aggressive, bureaucratically savvy Rumsfeld to help him regain control over a White House that is, in the words of author Barry Werth, "riven with disunity, disorganization, and bad blood." Rumsfeld agrees, and names former Wyoming Congressman Dick Cheney as his deputy (who makes himself valuable by initially doing the lowest forms of bureaucratic scutwork).
9/22/1974 Ford and Kissinger warned in separate speeches that a continuing rise in oil prices would lead to a worldwide depression and, in Ford's words, "the breakdown of world order and safety." The oil price hike was also hurting South Vietnam, which had to ground half its air force.
9/23/1974 Ted Kennedy announced he would not run for the presidency in 1976.
9/23/1974 Washington Post reported that Haig's appointment was difficult for many commanders in Europe to deal with given his political promotions and slim command experience.
9/25/1974 The conviction of Lt. William Calley is overturned by US District Court Judge J. Robert Elliott.
9/28/1974 Ford announced formation of the Economic Policy Board to oversee formulation, coordination, and the implementation of all economic policy.
9/28/1974 Betty Ford successfully underwent a radical mastectomy at Bethesda after a cancerous lump was found on her breast.
9/30/1974 TIME reported that Ford gave a speech in which he defended the CIA against the rumors that they had overthrown Salvador Allende in Chile the year before. Which turned out to be true. When asked if this action was not in violation of international law, the new president replied with "I am not going to pass judgment on whether it is permitted or authorized under international law. It is a recognized fact that historically as well as presently, such actions are taken in the best interest of the countries involved." (Time, 9/30/74) In other words: Uncle Sam Knows Best. Time commented "Ford's words seemed to represent an anachronistic, cold-war view of national security reminiscent of the 1950"s. Complained Democratic Senator Frank Church of Idaho: 'It's tantamount to saying that we respect no law save the law of the jungle.' " (ibid)
10/1/1974 Trial of five of the seven Watergate defendants begins in Washington.
10/1/1974 Hussein I, king of Jordan, was the target of a murder plot by Black September Palestinian assassins in Rabat, Morocco.
10/6/1974 As the religious right opposition to sex education in Kanawha County (West Virginia) schools heats up, 8000 protestors attended a rally at which the features speakers were James McKenna, Mel & Norma Gabler, and Robert Dornan.
10/7/1974 House Ways and Means Committee Chairman Wilbur Mills is pulled over by police and found to be in the company of hooker Fanne Foxe.
10/8/1974 Ford offered economic program to fight inflation. He called on Americans to cut driving by 5% and use cold water for washing. He also pledged to keep the federal budget under $500 billion for 1975. He asked Congress for a 5% surtax on wealthier families and corporate profits, to liberalize investment tax credits, and extend unemployment benefits.
10/9/1974 Kissinger left for a trip to the Middle East.
10/11/1974 Labor Party wins British general election.
10/12/1974 Jaworski resigned as Watergate special prosecutor.
10/13/1974 The House Civil and Constitutional Rights Subcommittee announces it is launching a limited probe into the FBI's relationship with both Jack Ruby and Lee Harvey Oswald.
10/14/1974 New York magazine reported, in a story by Frank Fox and Stephen Parker, that Nixon was using the tapes to keep control of Ford: "Nixon is out of office but not out of power." They estimated that the White House tapes probably contained at least 20 hours of conversations between Nixon and Ford.
10/15/1974 Violence in Boston over busing reached a peak as white and black high school students clashed.
10/15/1974 Ford announced a "great citizens mobilization" under the slogan WIN (Whip Inflation Now). Among his suggestions was that Americans reduce the cost of food by planting WIN gardens.
10/15/1974 Ford signed the Federal Elections Campaign Act Amendments of 1974. It provided public funds for major presidential candidates and set spending limits in both presidential and congressional elections.
10/16/1974 Former intelligence agent and assassination investigator, Joe Cooper, is found dead in his bedroom -- a bullet wound in his head. Death is ruled suicide.
10/17/1974 Ford testified before the Judiciary Committee (but not under oath) that there was no deal for a Nixon pardon. He also stonewalled on the subject of releasing White House tapes containing talks between himself and Nixon. He insisted that he had pardoned Nixon so that the country could forget about Watergate and move on to other matters.
10/21/1974 Ford meets with Mexican president Echeverria to discuss finding new oil sources. Ford's popularity is at 55%.
10/22/1974 Canada, concerned over the changing racial makeup of the country, restricts immigration.
10/23/1974 The 1980 Summer Olympics will be held in Moscow.
10/24/1974 Kissinger meets with Brezhnev for six hours.
10/25/1974 The US Air Forces successfully fires an ICBM from a plane.
10/26/1974 Henry S. Ruth took office as the third Special Watergate Prosecutor, as Jaworski left for Texas.
10/28/1974 Rabat, Morroco: Arab heads of state call for an independent Palestinian nation.
10/29/1974 Nixon was listed in critical condition due to shock following surgery.
10/29/1974 Magruder testified at the trial that Mitchell approved a $250,000 political espionage plan three months before the Watergate break-in. He also told of Liddy's elaborate proposals to Mitchell.

Tracy Riddle · 01-09-2014, 03:24 PM

11/1/1974 Haig left the White House for his new post in Europe.
11/5/1974 GOP lost 43 House and 4 Senate seats in elections; 85 newcomers to Congress. Democrats had a 61-39 margin in the Senate (soon increased to 62 by special election of John Durkin) and 291 in the House. Democrats won 27 of 35 state governors' races. 38% voter turnout. Newcomers in the Senate include Dale Bumpers (who defeated William Fulbright in the Arkansas primary), Paul Laxalt, John Glenn, Jake Garn, Gary Hart. Ella Grasso became the nation's first female state governor (Connecticut) elected in her own right (without succeeding her husband).
11/5/1974 SALT II sessions recess.
11/5-7/1974 Kissinger visits the Middle East to talk about the Arab-Israeli situation.
11/8/1974 Eight former Ohio National Guardsmen are acquitted of charges stemming from the Kent State shooting.
11/12/1974 South Africa suspended from UN General Assembly because of its racial policies.
11/13/1974 Karen Silkwood, labor union activist and chemical technician at the Kerr-McGee plutonium fields near Crescent, Oklahoma, died in a mysterious car crash. When a strike ended in failure, many of the workers had severed ties with the union. Not Silkwood, however , and as a member of the bargaining committee (the first female to hold the position in the union's history) was charged with investigating health and safety issues at the plant. In the summer of 1974, Silkwood testified to the Atomic Energy Commission that she had found serious violations of health and safety regulations including evidence of spills, leaks, faulty fuel rods and enough missing plutonium to make multiple nuclear weapons. She also alleged the company had falsified inspection records. Not long after, some strange things began happening. On November 5th, during a routine check, Silkwood discovered she had been exposed to over 400 times the legal limit for plutonium. She was sent home with a sample kit to conduct more self-tests. The following morning, despite having handled no dangerous materials as part of her job that day, she tested positive once more. On the 7th, plutonium contamination was found in her lungs and she was sent to Los Alamos National Laboratory in New Mexico for further testing. Silkwood believed she was deliberately contaminated as a result of her whistleblowing efforts against Kerr-McGee. The company would later maintain in court that she willfully contaminated herself in an effort to make them look culpable. While radiation levels at her apartment were high, no radiation was detected either in her car or her work locker. By November 13, she had decided to go public with her story. She gathered evidence documenting the plant's wrongdoing and was enroute to meet a national representative of her union and a New York Times reporter in Oklahoma City when her car went off the road and struck a culvert, killing Silkwood. She was 28-years-old. The Oklahoma State Troopers ruled that she had fallen asleep at the wheel. But her family and supporters noted there were skidmarks in the road how could she have hit the brakes while asleep? Dents and paint scrapes on her rear bumper lead her supporters to believe that she was deliberately forced off the road by a trailing vehicle. The documents she'd planned to share with New York Times reporter were never found. The publicity surrounding the case led to a federal investigation of the plant, where many of Silkwood's allegations were proven true. Kerr-McGee closed Cimarron in 1975.
11/17 or 18-22/1974 Ford visits Japan, the first president to do so. He meets with PM Tanaka and also visits South Korea and the USSR.
11/21/1974 Sen. Walter Mondale dropped out of the 1976 presidential race.
11/21/1974 Congress overrode Ford's veto of the Freedom of Information Act, which added amendments to the 1966 act. He viewed it as further weakening the powers of the president. The Senate overrode it 65-27, the House 371-31; Ed Muskie commented, "The same President who began his administration with a promise of openness sided with the secret-makers on the first test of that promise."
11/23/1974 Rep. Morris Udall announces he will run for Democratic presidential nomination in 1976.
11/23-24/1974 Summit in Vladivostok, USSR; Ford and Brezhnev talk about limiting offensive nuclear weapons.
11/24/1974 Ford ends an eight-day world trip through Japan, South Korea and Russia; at Vladivostok he and Brezhnev signed a tentative agreement limiting offensive weapons until 1985.
11/24/1974 New York Times Magazine reported that Sen. Fulbright was disturbed by the role of the press in downfall of Nixon, and wondered where the press had been when similar wrongdoings had been committed by previous administrations. (Daniel Yergin, "Fulbright's Last Frustration")
11/25/1974 A coalition of right-wing groups (Liberty Lobby, National Right to Life Committee, the American Conservative Union), plus the liberal National Lawyers Guild, announced their opposition to Rockefeller as VP.
11/25/1974 Ford signs into law a bill providing $11.8 billion over the next six years for mass transit.
11/29/1974 Ford ordered Agriculture Sec. Butz to apologize for his joke about the Pope's position on birth control ("He no play-a the game, he no make-a the rules," he said with an Italian accent).
11/29/1974 Texas oil baron H.L. Hunt died at age 85 in Dallas. His fortune is variously estimated at between $3,000,000,000 and $5,000,000,000, with an income of more than $1,000,000 a week. Hunt is a bigamist with three separate families. He leaves seventy living direct descendants, including ten children, twenty-one grandchildren, and twelve great-grandchildren, accounting for forty-three members of the family.
12/1974 US inflation rate was 11%.
12/2/1974 Ford announces a tentative agreement with Brezhnev to put a "firm ceiling" on the arms race.
12/3/1974 At the trial, Haldeman denied that he tried to block the 1972 FBI investigation of the break-in.
12/3/1974 Rockefeller family financial adviser J. Richardson Dilworth told the House Judiciary Committee that the family members' total assets were over $1 billion; he said that the Rockefellers were simply investors and "are totally uninterested in controlling anything."
12/5/1974 24-day strike ends when United Mine Workers president Arnold Miller signs a new national coal contract.
12/6/1974 Robert Vesco was quoted as saying that "the forces that threatened me are the same politically that eliminated President Kennedy and then President Nixon and want to eliminate all of Nixon's associates." (Boston Globe 12/6/74) The Costa Rican government also announced that Vesco could stay in that country.
12/6/1974 Leonard Garment announced his resignation.
12/6/1974 The North Vietnamese launched a test offensive against Phuoc Long province, as a prelude to their 1975 offensive. The province fell in a month.
12/6/1974 Daniel Ellsberg said that once-secret government documents were stolen from his Mill Valley home 10/1; the police recovered the papers, but refused to say how. The burglar left a note: "Dear Daniel. Not a word of this to anyone. Much trouble will be avoided if you negotiate properly. Don't slip - soon you'll know."
12/9/1974 Stock market dropped to 570 points.
12/9/1974 Nat Hentoff criticized "Robert Kennedy's transmogrification of the grand jury system [in] his pursuit of Jimmy Hoffa" (Village Voice)
12/10/1974 Senate confirmed Nelson Rockefeller 90 to 7. The opposing votes were cast by conservatives and liberals: Goldwater, Jesse Helms, William Scott (R-Virginia), James Abourezk (D-South Dakota), Birch Bayh, Howard Metzenbaum, Gaylord Nelson.
12/10/1974 Ehrlichman testified that he told Nixon soon after the break-in not to ever pardon the Watergate figures, but in April 1973 Nixon said he would pardon them all eventually. In tears, Ehrlichman told how Nixon made him resign.
12/10/1974 The U.S. National Security Council under Henry Kissinger completed a classified 200-page study, "National Security Study Memorandum 200: Implications of Worldwide Population Growth for U.S. Security and Overseas Interests." The study falsely claimed that population growth in the so-called Lesser Developed Countries (LDCs) was a grave threat to U.S. national security. Adopted as official policy in November 1975 by President Gerald Ford, NSSM 200 outlined a covert plan to reduce population growth in those countries through birth control, and also, implicitly, war and famine. Brent Scowcroft, who had by then replaced Kissinger as national security adviser (the same post Scowcroft was to hold in the Bush administration), was put in charge of implementing the plan. CIA Director George Bush was ordered to assist Scowcroft, as were the secretaries of state, treasury, defense, and agriculture. The bogus arguments that Kissinger advanced were not original. One of his major sources was the Royal Commission on Population, which King George VI had created in 1944 "to consider what measures should be taken in the national interest to influence the future trend of population." The commission found that Britain was gravely threatened by population growth in its colonies, since "a populous country has decided advantages over a sparsely-populated one for industrial production." The combined effects of increasing population and industrialization in its colonies, it warned, "might be decisive in its effects on the prestige and influence of the West," especially effecting "military strength and security." NSSM 200 similarly concluded that the United States was threatened by population growth in the former colonial sector. It paid special attention to 13 "key countries" in which the United States had a "special political and strategic interest": India, Bangladesh, Pakistan, Indonesia, Thailand, the Philippines, Turkey, Nigeria, Egypt, Ethiopia, Mexico, Brazil, and Colombia. It claimed that population growth in those states was especially worrisome, since it would quickly increase their relative political, economic, and military strength. There were several measures that Kissinger advocated to deal with this alleged threat, most prominently, birth control and related population-reduction programs. He also warned that "population growth rates are likely to increase appreciably before they begin to decline," even if such measures were adopted. A second measure was curtailing food supplies to targetted states, in part to force compliance with birth control policies: "There is also some established precedent for taking account of family planning performance in appraisal of assistance requirements by AID [U.S. Agency for International Development] and consultative groups. Since population growth is a major determinant of increases in food demand, allocation of scarce PL 480 resources should take account of what steps a country is taking in population control as well as food production. In these sensitive relations, however, it is important in style as well as substance to avoid the appearance of coercion." "Mandatory programs may be needed and we should be considering these possibilities now," the document continued, adding, "Would food be considered an instrument of national power? ... Is the U.S. prepared to accept food rationing to help people who can't/won't control their population growth?"
12/11/1974 Ehrlichman testified that he was deceived by Nixon on Watergate in "at least four major instances."
12/11/1974 Harry Dent pleaded guilty to working with an illegal fund-raising committee that channeled money to candidates in 1970.
12/12/1974 Judiciary Committee voted 26-12 to send Rockefeller's nomination to the full House for a vote.
12/12/1974 Former Georgia governor Jimmy Carter, a complete unknown to most Americans, announces he will seek the Democratic presidential nomination in 1976.
12/13/1974 Attorney General Saxbe resigns.
12/13/1974 Mardian testified that he thought Nixon was running CREEP at the time of the break-in; he also agreed that if the RNC had been running the campaign, Watergate might not have occured.
12/13/1974 Combat between North Vietnamese Army and ARVN in Phuoc Long Province.
12/14/1974 Influential columnist Walter Lippmann died at age 85.
12/15/1974 Al Haig took over as commander of NATO.
12/16/1974 Ford met with French President d'Estaing in Martinique; they issued a statement saying that they hoped the parties in Cambodia would turn to negotiations "rather than continuing the military struggle." They also announced a plan for the US and France to coordinate energy policies.
12/17/1974 Following the U.S. Steel Corporation decision to raise prices 10 percent, Ford orders Wage and Price Control Council to investigate and obtain justification for such action.
12/17/1974 James Angleton is fired by CIA director William Colby after Colby was informed by Seymour Hersh that he was going to break a story about two Agency operations operations CHAOS and HT-LINGUAL. Angleton controlled both programs. (Fonzi chronology) Some sources say December 23 Angleton is asked to resign by CIA director William Colby. Angleton is thought by some to have been a "mole" for the KGB. Colby confirms to reporter Sy Hersh assertions that the CIA and primarily Angleton's units, have conducted illegal domestic operations. Colby also summarily fires Ray Rocca, Scotty Miler, and other Angleton loyalists within Counterintelligence. Angleton is quoted as saying: "A mansion has many rooms ... I'm not privy to Who Struck John." Some researchers have asserted that Angleton, having been fired for the first time in his life from a job that to him is his entire world, is in fact sending a warning shot across the bow to Colby of his own knowledge of the CIA's role in the JFK assassination.
12/18/1974 A major reshuffling of White House personnel is announced.
12/18/1974 A 20-day session of the North Vietnamese Politburo met to set policy.
12/19/1974 Ford signs into law a bill giving the federal government custody of the official tapes and papers of former President Nixon.
12/19/1974 House confirms Rockefeller 287 to 128. He was then sworn in as vice-president; it was covered live on television. For the first time in the country's history, neither the President nor Vice-President were elected by the people.
12/22/1974 New York Times' Seymour Hersh reported that the CIA had spied on domestic dissidents and kept files on 10,000 Americans in the late '60s and early '70s. The headline: "Huge CIA Operation Reported in U.S. Against Anti-War Forces, Other Dissidents in Nixon Years". The story quoted well-placed government sources, who also said that a number of break-ins, wiretaps and other crimes were committed inside the United States by CIA personnel in operations dating back to the 50s. "The Family Jewels" - a secret, internal CIA report on all potential CIA abuses during the CIA's entire existence, which had been commissioned by CIA Director James Schlesinger. Hersh, the Pulitzer Prize-winning investigative journalist who had revealed the My Lai massacres and the bombing of Cambodia, reported: "The Central Intelligence Agency , directly violating its charter, conducted a massive illegal domestic intelligence operation during the Nixon Administration against the antiwar movement and other dissident groups in the United States, according to well-placed government sources." The CIA, forbidden to operate within the United States, had opened files on 10,000 American citizens and conducted illegal wiretaps, break-ins and mail openings under its "Operation Chaos". This was the beginning of a flood of information to the public about the darker doings of the CIA and would result in the establishment of three investigative groups: the Rockefeller Commission, the "Pike Committee" in the House of Representatives and the "Church Committee" in the Senate.
12/23/1974 US Steel backs off from its price increase.
12/23/1974 B-1 bomber makes its first successful test flight.
12/27/1974 Ford signed a bill creating a temporary Commission to study the paperwork generated by the Federal Government.
12/27/1974 Within days of Hersh's first story, Ford's aides recommended that he set up an executive branch investigative commission to avoid "finding ourselves whipsawed by prolonged Congressional hearings." In a draft memo to the president written on 27 December, Deputy Chief of Staff Richard Cheney explained that the president had several reasons to establish such a commission: to avoid being put on the defensive, to minimize "damage" to the CIA, to head off "Congressional efforts to further encroach on the executive branch," to demonstrate presidential leadership, and to reestablish Americans' faith in their government. Ford's aides cautioned that this commission, formally called the Commission on CIA Activities within the United States, must not appear to be "a 'kept' body designed to whitewash the problem." But Ford apparently did not follow this advice. His choice for chairman, Vice President Nelson Rockefeller, had served as a member of the President's Foreign Intelligence Advisory Board, which monitored the CIA. Members Erwin Griswold, Lane Kirkland, Douglas Dillon, and Ronald Reagan had all been privy to CIA secrets in the past or noted for their strong support of governmental secrecy. Ford's aides cautioned that this commission, formally called the Commission on CIA Activities within the United States, must not appear to be "a 'kept' body designed to whitewash the problem." (Olmsted, Challenging the Secret Government)
12/29/1974 Three top officials of the CIA's counterintelligence division - Raymond Rocca, William J. Hood, and Newton S. Miller - resigned.
12/30/1974 The Watergate case went to the jury.
12/31/1974 Ford's victory rate in congressional votes in 1974 was 58%. By December, his popularity rating was 42%, with 41% disapproving.
12/31/1974 Cambodia: By this time, the Khmer Rouge had encircled Phnom Penh.

***Magda Hassan*** · 01-09-2014, 04:49 PM

Tracy Riddle Wrote:
12/6/1974 Robert Vesco was quoted as saying that "the forces that threatened me are the same politically that eliminated President Kennedy and then President Nixon and want to eliminate all of Nixon's associates." (Boston Globe 12/6/74) The Costa Rican government also announced that Vesco could stay in that country.

Oh, boy, what a blast from the past. I'd quite forgotten about him. Probably deserves his own thread. But not now as it is nearly 2 am. Manana.

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