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:
1966
- Sometime during the year, Saudi Arabia's King Faisal and Saudi businessman Adnan Khashoggi visit Washington. Khashoggi makes the case for US support for Saudi Arabia so powerfully that the US revamps its position, becoming a strong supporter of the Saudis. Miles Copeland, the CIA spymaster, will later say that if not for Khashoggi, the Soviet Union may have eventually taken complete control of the Arabian Peninsula and its rich oil fields. (Larry Kolb)
- Investigative reporters Drew Pearson and Jack Anderson write several columns during the year that allege the involvement of Fidel Castro in the assassination of John F. Kennedy. Their prime source is mob boss John Roselli (Filippo Sacco), who tells attorney Edward Morgan, "The last of the sniper teams dispatched by Robert Kennedy in 1963 to assassinate Fidel Castro were captured in Havana. Under torture they broke and confessed to being sponsored by the CIA and the US government. At that point, Castro remarked that, 'If that was the way President Kennedy wanted it, Cuba could engage in the same tactics'. The result was that Castro infiltrated teams of snipers into the US to kill Kennedy." Roselli is a credible witness, in the journalists' view, because of his involvement in the CIA's abortive efforts to assassinate Castro. When neither Earl Warren of the Warren Commission nor the FBI seem interested in the story, Pearson and Anderson go public with the allegations. Some have suggested that Roselli farmed this story to the press at the request of friends in the CIA, in order to divert attention from the investigation being carried out by Jim Garrison. (Spartacus Educational)
- January 31: Senator Robert Kennedy criticizes President Johnson's decision to resume the Vietnam bombing, stating that the US may be headed "on a road from which there is no turning back, a road that leads to catastrophe for all mankind." His comments infuriate the President. (Vietnam War Timeline)
- February 3: Influential newspaper columnist Walter Lippmann lambasts President Johnson's strategy in Vietnam, stating, "Gestures, propaganda, public relations and bombing and more bombing will not work." Lippmann predicts Vietnam will divide America as combat causalities mount. (Vietnam War Timeline)
- February 18: John Kerry, a senior at Yale, enlists in the US Navy and volunteers to serve in Vietnam. (Bush-Kerry Timeline)
- March 10: French president Charles de Gaulle pulls France out of NATO's integrated military structure. (NATO and UN History)
- April: A new spy satellite, officially named the KH-9 Hexagon but informally dubbed "Big Bird" because of its size, is authorized for development by the CIA after years of bureaucratic stalling. The spy satellite and its offshoot, the KH-11 Crystal, will provide the US with cutting-edge surveillance information; they will feature, among other things, digital information feeds instead of film. The Hexagon satellite program will continue through 1984. (Philip Taubman)
Miranda ruling by US Supreme Court
- June 13: The US Supreme Court, in a 5-4 decision, upholds the rights of the accused in the case of Miranda v. Arizona. Chief Justice Earl Warren writes the majority opinion. For the first time, police are compelled to inform those they arrest that they have certain rights that must be observed, including the right to remain silent and the right to legal representation at any time. Police are no longer able to coerce confessions out of suspects by grilling them for hours without the presence of a lawyer. Critics, mostly conservatives, worry that the ruling "handcuffs" the police and focus on the rights of the accused to the detriment of the rights of the victim. Many call the Miranda ruling a mistake that "invents" rights for criminals, and predict the ruling will cause the US criminal justice system to collapse. Instead, as extensive research shows, the ruling affects only a small minority of cases, and, as stated by Bronx County Defense Attorney Mario Merola in a 1986 interview, the ruling has forced the police to be more fair-minded. Merola says in that interview, "I think that overall that Miranda has not hurt us. We're putting more people away than ever. We have more work than ever. So for us to deal with just a few cases, and you're concerned about that, really I think Miranda is overblown. ...There were cases where the individual is beaten and brutalized...by policemen who were interrogating, and I think that's what Miranda has done. It has civilized the whole operation, the criminal justice system, and it has civilized the police." One of the Supreme Court justices who dissented against the decision, Tom Clark, says in late 1966 that he was wrong in his expectations that the ruling would hinder law enforcement, and notes that after the ruling went into effect, the number of confessions obtained by the police actually goes up. In fact, the dire warnings of doom ignore the fact that for two years prior to the Supreme Court ruling, the FBI had been informing suspects of their rights under the law; Miranda was nothing new to law enforcement. All in all, far less than 1% of criminal cases are thrown out because of failure to follow Miranda guidelines. (G.B. Riley)
- June 29: An attempted peace between the Kurds and the Iraqi government is implemented, but fails to take root. (MidEast Web)
- June 29: Citing increased infiltration of Communist guerrillas from North Vietnam into the South, the US bombs oil depots around Hanoi and Haiphong, ending a self-imposed moratorium. The US is very cautious about targeting the city of Hanoi itself over concerns for the reactions of North Vietnam's military allies, China and the Soviet Union. This concern also prevents any US ground invasion of North Vietnam, despite such recommendations by a few military planners in Washington. (Vietnam War Timeline)
- September 1: During a visit to neighboring Cambodia, French President Charles de Gaulle calls for US withdrawal from Vietnam. (Vietnam War Timeline)
- September 3: Nguyen Van Thieu is elected president of South Vietnam. Thieu, a former member of the Viet Minh who left the movement after becoming disillusioned with Ho Chi Minh's Communist affiliations, is a decorated military officer who will preside over an intensely corrupt, highly centralized government that will abandon all but the thinnest pretense of democracy. He will abdicate power nine days before the 1975 fall of Saigon with 17 tons of stolen gold, fleeing first to Taiwan, then to Britain and later to Boston, where he will die in his sleep in 2001. (Wikipedia, Chronology of US-Vietnam Relations)
- September 23: The US reveals jungles near the Demilitarized Zone are being defoliated by sprayed chemicals. (Vietnam War Timeline)
"The big problem is to get it and to keep it. You can get it today and it will be gone next week. That is the problem. You have to have enough people to clear it...and enough people to preserve what you have done." -- Lyndon Johnson, speaking about Vietnam, October 14
- October 21 - 23: 50,000 people demonstrate against the war in Washington. (Chronology of US-Vietnam Relations)
- October 25: President Johnson conducts a conference in Manila with America's Vietnam allies; Australia, Philippines, Thailand, New Zealand, South Korea and South Vietnam. The allies pledge to withdraw from Vietnam within six months if North Vietnam will withdraw completely from the South. (Vietnam War Timeline)
- November: George H.W. Bush succeeds in winning a House of Representatives seat from Midland, Texas. Robert Mosbacher chairs Oil Men for Bush. (Bushwatch)
- November 12: The New York Times reports that 40 percent of U.S. economic aid sent to Saigon is stolen or winds up on the black market. (Vietnam War Timeline)
- December 13: One month after Ronald Reagan's election as Governor of California, his former MCA associates and political mentors Taft Schreiber and Jules Stein, along with Reagan's personal attorney, William French Smith, sell 236 of Reagan's 290 acres in Malibu Canyon to 20th Century Fox. The purchase price is $1.93 million, or $8,178 an acre -- even though Fox's experts had appraised the land at only $944,000, or $4,000 an acre. In July 1968, Reagan will use the remaining 54 acres in Malibu Canyon, appraised at $165,000, as a down payment on a $346,950 property in Riverside, California, that he is buying from Kaiser Aluminum Company. A proviso in the contract says that if Kaiser couldn't sell the 54 acres within a year, Reagan will have to buy them back. Indeed, a year later, Kaiser had not yet sold the land. To bail Reagan out, Stein will set up the 57th Madison Corporation and personally purchase the property for precisely $165,000.
- Years later, as President, Reagan will oversee his Justice Department quashing major federal investigations into Mafia penetration of both MCA and the entire film industry, conducted by the Los Angeles office of the US Strike Force Against Organized Crime. Two highly respected Strike Force prosecutors, Marvin Rudnick and Richard Stavin, will lose their jobs because of their refusal to succumb to pressure from Reagan's administration to back off on their prosecutions. Reagan and his Justice Department, headed by Attorney General William French Smith, will continue to facilitate and expedite organized crime's hold on Hollywood throughout his tenure as president. (Dan Moldea)
- December 26: Facing increased scrutiny from journalists over mounting civilian causalities in North Vietnam, the Defense Department now admits civilians may have been bombed accidentally. (Vietnam War Timeline)
- By year's end, US troop levels in Vietnam reach 389,000 with 5008 combat deaths and 30,093 wounded. Over half of the American causalities are caused by snipers and small-arms fire during Viet Cong ambushes, along with handmade booby traps and mines planted everywhere in the countryside by Viet Cong. American allies fighting in Vietnam include 45,000 soldiers from South Korea and 7000 Australians. An estimated 89,000 soldiers from North Vietnam infiltrated the South via the Ho Chi Minh trail in 1966. (Vietnam War Timeline)
