THIS FAR AND NO FURTHER
A Timeline of Events Surrounding the Radical Right's Attempt to Subvert American Democracy
Written and Compiled by Black Max
1961-1970:
1961
- Francois "Papa Doc" Duvalier, the despotic president of Haiti, is assassinated with US assistance. That same year, fiercely nationalistic Patrice Lumumba, the first president of the Republic of Congo, is assassinated, also with US assistance. The CIA helps replace Lumumba with another despot, Colonel Mobutu. The Dominican Republic's leader, General Rafael Trujillo, is also assassinated with US help. (Historical Context of US Interventions)
- January: Soviet Premier Nikita Khrushchev pledges support for "wars of national liberation" throughout the world. His statement greatly encourages Communists in North Vietnam to escalate their armed struggle to unify Vietnam under Ho Chi Minh. (Vietnam War Timeline)
- January: In his farewell speech, outgoing President Dwight D. Eisenhower warns against the takeover of the "military-industrial complex:" he says, "In the councils of government, we must guard against the acquisition of unwarranted influence, whether sought or unsought, by the military-industrial complex. The potential for the disastrous rise of misplaced power exists and will persist. We must never let the weight of this combination endanger our liberties or democratic processes. We should take nothing for granted. Only an alert and knowledgeable citizenry can compel the proper meshing of the huge industrial and military machinery of defense with our peaceful methods and goals, so that security and liberty may prosper together." (JFK Assassination Timeline, The Avalon Project at Yale)
- January 20: John Fitzgerald Kennedy is inaugurated as the 35th U.S. President and declares "...we shall pay any price, bear any burden, meet any hardship, support any friend, oppose any foe, to insure the survival and the success of liberty." Privately, outgoing President Eisenhower tells him, "I think you're going to have to send troops" to Southeast Asia. The youthful Kennedy administration is inexperienced in matters regarding Southeast Asia. Kennedy's Secretary of Defense, 44-year-old Robert McNamara, along with civilian planners recruited from the academic community, will play a crucial role in deciding White House strategy for Vietnam over the next several years. Under their leadership, the United States will wage a limited war to force a political settlement. However, the US will be opposed by an enemy dedicated to total military victory "...whatever the sacrifices, however long the struggle...until Vietnam is fully independent and reunified," in the words of Ho Chi Minh. (Vietnam War Timeline)
- Early 1961: Kennedy says that Vietnam is "a proving ground for democracy" and a "test of American responsibility and determination." (D.J. Herda)
- February 5: Newly installed Secretary of Defense Robert McNamara tells the American people that there is no "missile gap" between the US and the USSR. Former estimates that the USSR was well ahead of the US in long- and intermediate-range ballistic missiles had been proven wrong by the first Corona spy satellite photos. (Philip Taubman)
- April 15: "Mystery planes" bomb Cuban military airfields in preparation for a CIA-sponsored invasion of Cuba by a motley group of mercenaries and Cuban exiles. The attack, by eight B-26 bombers, wipes out about a quarter of Cuba's air force. (History of Cuba)
Bay of Pigs
- April 17: The Bay of Pigs invasion is launched. A CIA-backed operation, it fails after three days of fighting Castro's troops. Kennedy is blamed by some for its failure, since he refused to provide air support for the invasion force. Many conservatives vow revenge on Kennedy; Gen. Charles Caball, fired by Kennedy after the disastrous invasion, brands Kennedy a "traitor." Castro declares that Cuba is a socialist country. (JFK Assassination Timeline, History of Cuba)
- An interesting sidebar to the Cuban invasion is found in journalist Ron Rosenbaum's attempts to find out about Yale's Skull and Bones society. In 2000, Rosenbaum tries in vain to trace the shell corporation, Russell Trust Association, which funded the society's year-to-year existence. He finds that the association had been abolished and re-established under the name RTA Incorporated. Further digging revealed that the papers dissolving the Russell Trust Association had been filed at 10:15 a.m. on April 14, 1961. At noon that same day, orders go out to begin the Bay of Pigs operation. While the timing is probably coincidental, it is interesting to note that one of the invasion's key CIA planners was Richard Drain, a Skull and Bones member from 1943. The White House's main planner is McGeorge Bundy, Skull and Bones '40. The State Department's liason to the invasion is his brother William Bundy, Skull and Bones '39. The man who files the reincorporation papers that dissolved the Russell Trust Association was Howard Weaver, Skull and Bones '45, a classmate of George H.W. Bush, who retired from the CIA in 1959. Rosenbaum speculates that the Skull and Bones corporate shell may have been used as a clandestine conduit for the Bay of Pigs program, and then erased from existence to cover up the connection once the invasion was underway. (Kevin Phillips)
- May: Vice President Lyndon Johnson, a fierce anti-communist, visits Vietnam to assess the situation and comes back with a warning that the loss of Vietnam to Communist forces would one day force Americans to fight "on the beaches of Waikiki [Hawaii]." He continues, "The battle against communism must be joined in Southeast Asia with strength and determination...or the United States, inevitably, must surrender the Pacific and take up defenses on our own shores." (D.J. Herda)
Kennedy sends more US troops to support the South Vietnamese against North Vietnamese incursions
- May: President Kennedy sends 400 American Green Beret "special Advisors" to South Vietnam to train South Vietnamese soldiers in methods of "counter-insurgency" in the fight against Viet Cong guerrillas. The role of the Green Berets soon expands to include the establishment of Civilian Irregular Defense Groups (CIDG) made up of fierce mountain tribesmen known as the Montagnards. These groups establish a series of fortified camps strung out along the mountains to thwart infiltration by North Vietnamese. (Vietnam War Timeline)
- June 19: Kuwait, a British protectorate, declares its independence. Iraq immediately makes noises about "reabsorbing Kuwait" back into its "mother country," but this is opposed by Egypt as part of challenging Iraq's attempt to dominate the Arab nations. Iraq breaks ties with Nasser's Arab League as a result. Iraq's Kurds break into open revolt. (FactMonster, Gamel Abdel-Nasser Biography, MidEast Web)
- August 14: Kenya's political leader Jomo Kenyatta is released from detention and brought to Gatandu, where he receives a hero's welcome. Kenyatta will soon form an independent government for Kenya. (Africa Within, Caroline Elkins)
- Fall: The conflict widens as 26,000 Viet Cong launch several successful attacks on South Vietnamese troops. Diem requests more military aid from the Kennedy administration. In October, senior Kennedy aides Maxwell Taylor and Walt Rostow visit South Vietnam to get a first-hand look at the deteriorating military situation. "If Vietnam goes, it will be exceedingly difficult to hold Southeast Asia," Taylor reports to the President and advises Kennedy to expand the number of US military advisors and to send 8000 combat soldiers. Defense Secretary McNamara and the Joint Chiefs of Staff recommend instead a massive show of force by sending six divisions (200,000 men) to Vietnam. However, Kennedy decides against sending any combat troops, though he will eventually send over 16,000 "combat advisors." (Vietnam War Timeline)
- September: A National Intelligence Estimate on Soviet missile capabilities is delivered to Kennedy, and based largely on Corona spy satellite photographs. The estimate of Soviet ballistic missiles is revised sharply downwards, easing the fears of the US military about the Soviet nuclear threat. (Philip Taubman)
- September: After much jockeying and infighting between the Pentagon and the CIA, the government creates a new bureaucracy for managing surveillance satellite information, the National Reconnaissance Office. Though the existence of American spy satellite systems was well-known by the world's intelligence agencies, not to mention journalists, espionage writers, and James Bond fans, officially their existence was kept secret for over thirty years, including the existence of the NRO, which was kept classified until 1992. The NRO will be marked by infighting and conflict between the CIA and the Air Force for years, especially after the ascension of John McCone to the leadership of the CIA, caused in part by McCone's indifference to scientific projects. (Philip Taubman)
- November 30: Kennedy authorizes "Operation Mongoose," an umbrella operation composed of various plots to assassinate Fidel Castro and destabilize the Cuban government. (History of Cuba)
- Zapata Oil boasts in its annual report that it has not paid one cent of taxes since its founding in 1954. (Bushwatch)
- The CIA's secret "Operation CHAOS," which would spawn the Domestic Operations Division, is formed. Counterintelligence chief James Angleton would supervise the illegal surveillance of up to 10,000 American citizens. (JFK Assassination Timeline, Domestic Surveillance)
- December: Viet Cong guerrillas now control much of the countryside in South Vietnam and frequently ambush South Vietnamese troops. The cost to America of maintaining South Vietnam's sagging 200,000 man army and managing the overall conflict in Vietnam rises to a million dollars per day. (Vietnam War Timeline)
- December: Wealthy California businessman John McCone replaces Allen Dulles as head of the CIA. (Philip Taubman)
- December 15: Former Nazi official Adolf Eichmann, one of the architects of the Holocaust and an author of Hitler's "Final Solution" to eradicate European Jewry, is sentenced to death by an Israeli court. Eichmann had fled to Argentina after the war, but was located and captured by an Israeli shock force and flown to Tel Aviv. Eichmann will be executed in May 1962. (Dan Cohn-Sherbok)
- Late 1961: Acting on the advice of General Maxwell Taylor, Kennedy sends 8,000 soldiers to Vietnam under the sobriquet of "advisors," along with steeply increased amounts of military weaponry and supplies. The reason for sending soldiers as "advisors" is multi-fold: to keep public knowledge of US involvement in Vietnam as secret as possible; to keep any possible public outcry to a minimum; and to comply, or to appear to comply, with the Geneva Conventions, which place strict limitations on the rights of one country to invade another. Taylor believes that the North Vietnamese forces were exceptionally vulnerable to air strikes, and that a concerted air offensive will crush the North Vietnamese forces with relative ease. (D.J. Herda)
