Deep Politics Timeline

[Tracy Riddle]

• 5/1968 Mark Lane writes this month that he has a copy of a letter written by Edgar Eugene Bradley to a young woman, in which he has written that he knows "facts about the [assassination] that the public will never know about ... ."
  
• 5/1968 The French May protests started with student protests over university reform and escalated into a month long protest. The trade unions joined the protest resulting in a general strike.
  
• 5/1968 Joachim Joesten publishes THE CASE AGAINST THE KENNEDY CLAN (In the Assassination of President John F. Kennedy), accusing the family of refusing to pursue the truth. He is particularly critical of Robert Kennedy.
  
• 5/1968 An Army intelligence document (declassified 2/1971) listed the NAACP, the Southern Christian Leadership Conference and CORE as groups "attempting to create, prolong or aggravate racial tensions." Intelligence was to be gathered on these groups and people sympathetic to them. The plan was approved by then Maj. Gen. William P. Yarborough, asst chief of staff for Intelligence. (L.A. Times 2/28/1971)
  
• 5/1/1968 Czechoslovakia: May Day celebrations show huge support for the new reform movement.
  
• 5/1/1968 the San Francisco Chronicle, quoting certain "unimpeachable sources" of the Los Angeles Times, said that the FBI had found or obtained a map of Atlanta with "the area of Dr. Martin Luther King's residence and church circled and ... linked to accused assassin James Earl Ray." The article went on to state that "the map tends to support a theory by some investigators that Ray stalked Dr. King for some time before fatally shooting him on April 4." (On May 22, the Scripps Howard newspaper chain carried the same story across the nation.) So, shortly after being identified, a leak, clearly from the bureau, portrayed Ray in the national media as a killer who consciously stalked his prey and left behind tangible evidence of his stalking.
  
• 5/2/1968 LBJ grants Jim Bishop a thirty-minute interview for Bishop's book entitled The Day Kennedy Was Shot. LBJ hopes that Bishop's book may correct some of the unflattering things said by William Manchester in his book, Death of a President.
  
• 5/2/1968 Another man visits James Earl Ray at Dundas Street. Ray pays $345 for an airplane ticket to London.
  
• 5/2/1968 Sirhan met with a young radical friend of his, Walter Crowe. Crowe expressed his support for Arab terrorist movements such as Al Fatah. After the assassination of RFK, Crowe would anguish over his statements to Sirhan and whether or not they influenced him.
  
• 5/2/1968 The Poor People's March, led by Ralph D. Abernathy, begins as caravans from all over the country leave for Washington, DC., to protest poverty and racial discrimination.
  
• 5/3/1968 LBJ announces that formal peace talks on Vietnam will take place in Paris.
  
• 5/3/1968 Students and riot police clash violently at the Sorbonne university in Paris; 500 students are arrested.
  
• 5/4-5/1968 Czech leaders visit Moscow: Soviet leadership expresses dissatisfaction with developments in Czechoslovakia.
  
• 5/6/1968 Norman Mailer's Armies of the Night,' about the Oct 1967 anti-war demonstrations at the Pentagon, is published.
  
• 5/6/1968 James Earl Ray leaves Toronto for London.
  
• 5/6/1968 Praise for the bureau manhunt also appeared in print. It was widespread and appears to have first been declared by nationally syndicated columnist and Hoover friend Drew Pearson in a column written with Jack Anderson that appeared on May 6, 1968: "We have checked into the operations of the FBI in this respect and are convinced that it is conducting perhaps the most painstaking, exhaustive manhunt ever before undertaken in the United States. Its G-men have checked every bar ever patronized by James Earl Ray, every flop-house he ever stopped at, every cantina in Mexico he ever visited. It has collected an amazing array of evidence, all linking Ray with the murder."
  
• 5/7/1968 In Indiana, RFK wins his first presidential primary, taking 42% of the vote; Gov. Branigin, standing in for Humphrey, got 31% and Eugene McCarthy 27%.
  
• 5/7/1968 James Earl Ray arrives in London.
  
• 5/8/1968 James Earl Ray arrives in Lisbon, Portugal.William Pepper: "Ray flew to England on May 8 and from there he made a quick trip to Portugal to try to get to one of the Portuguese overseas territories -- Angola or Mozambique. Unsuccessful, he returned to England, planning to go eventually to Belgium to explore the possibilities of taking another route. As we know, he was apprehended at Heathrow Airport on June 8, 1968, and extradited to the United States on July 19, 1968."
  
• 5/10/1968 Peace talks begin in Paris with Averell Harriman representing the US and Xuan Thuy representing North Vietnam.
  
• 5/10/1968 Hoover signed a number of memos to formally launch a counter-insurgency intelligence program (COINTELPRO); its target was the anti-war and civil rights movements.
  
• 5/11/1968 Unions in France called a general strike.
  
• 5/11/1968 Jerry Rubin announces the formation of the Youth International Party (Yippies) and its plans for massive demonstrations at the Democratic National Convention.
  
• 5/11/1968 Nine caravans of poor people arrive in Washington, DC for first phase of Poor People's Campaign. Caravans started from different sections of the country on May 2 and picked up demonstrators along the way. In Washington, demonstrators erect a camp called Resurrection City on a sixteen-acre site near the Lincoln Monument.
  
• 5/13/1968 Hundreds of thousands of students jammed the streets of Paris, protesting against the government and "police repression." Aristotle Onassis says: "That's why I love Paris so much. The French understand that a little violence applied at the right time can solve a lot of one's problems."
  
• 5/14/1968 Nebraska primary; RFK won with 52% to 31% for McCarthy and 14% for Humphrey.
  
• 5/15/1968 While campaigning, Nixon rejected the idea of a guaranteed annual income: "it would have a very detrimental effect on the productive capacity of the American people..."
  
• 5/16/1968 Nixon paid radio address over the CBS network: he suggested that there could be a "new alignment" in politics, that "the Republicans, the new liberals, the new South, the Black militants...are talking the same language" in preferring individual action over more big government. He also mentioned Daniel Patrick Moynihan as a "thoughtful liberal." Nixon's radio speeches were considerably more liberal-sounding than his stump speeches (which tended to focus on law and order), but his advisers never considered them anything more than attempts to get friendly with the mainstream media. (Nixon in the White House p11)
  
• 5/17/1968 Jackie Kennedy boards Aristotle Onassis's boat, the Christina, at the Caribbean island of St. John. She is piped aboard as if she is visiting royalty and will remain aboard for six days and nights. LBJ sends a memorandum to J. Edgar Hoover asking for a full FBI report on Aristotle Onassis. (Nemesis)
  
• 5/17/1968 David Broder, in his column, wrote that Nixon "has been paying keen interest to Agnew as a Vice Presidential nominee."
  
• 5/18/1968 James Earl Ray arrives back in London.
  
• 5/18/1968 An entry in Sirhan's diary dated this day, reads: "My determination to eliminate RFK is becoming more the more of an unshakable obsession...RFK must die - RFK must be killed Robert F. Kennedy must be assassinated RFK must be assassinated RFK must be assassinated...before 5 June 68 Robert F. Kennedy must be assassinated I have never heard please pay to the order of of of of of of of of of of of this or that please pay to the order of..."
  
• 5/18/1968 Human Events reported that Nixon played a key role in the passing of the 1968 Civil Rights Act, persuading key swing votes in Congress to support the bill.
  
• 5/20/1968 By this date, millions of French workers had seized control of their factories. The country is nearly paralyzed. Young people and intellectuals in particular became convinced that the country was on the verge of radical, positive change; posters and graffiti appeared on the streets with slogans like "Demand the Impossible" and "Imagination is Seizing Power."
  
• In early May, as a matter of routine, the FBI asked the Royal Canadian Mounted Police (RCMP) to examine its files to assess whether anyone resembling the fugitive James Earl Ray might have applied for a passport recently. (A similar exercise under way in the United States had been unproductive.) A task force of constables compared Ray's photograph with nearly a quarter of a million photographs submitted with passport applications from April 23, 1967 (the day of Ray's escape from prison). On May 20, a young constable saw a photograph that looked like Ray. It was attached to the application of one Ramon George Sneyd, a thirty-five-year-old native of Toronto. The passport had been issued on April 24, 1968, and sent on that date to Sneyd care of the Kennedy Travel Bureau in Toronto. Mr. Sneyd turned out to be a Toronto policeman who was clearly not the' man in the photograph accompanying the passport application. Sneyd said that around the first of May he had a call from someone who claimed to be with the passport division inquiring whether he had lost his passport. When he said he had never had a passport the caller apologized, saying that it must have been a mistake, and then hung up. The RCMP forwarded the passport application to the FBI laboratory in Washington for a handwriting comparison with the Galt signature. They matched. Backtracking Ray's movements, the RCMP discovered he had apparently arrived in Toronto on April 8 and explored using not one but two new identities: Sneyd and Paul Edward Bridgeman, a thirty-five-year-old man who had some resemblance to Ray. Bridgeman had also received a telephone call asking if he had lost his passport. (He had had one eight years earlier.) The RCMP also discovered that there was a Toronto citizen named Eric St. Vincent Galt who was the only Eric Galt listed in the Canadian telephone directories in 1968. He worked for Union Carbide, the U.S. defense manufacturer. The RCMP quickly learned from the Kennedy Travel Bureau that Ray, as Sneyd, had left for London on a BOAC flight on May 6. Scotland Yard was contacted and every port of entry into the United Kingdom was alerted. The official reason was that Ramon George Sneyd, traveling on a Canadian passport, had violated the Alien Immigration Act. If apprehended he was to be held for questioning. On the same day he flew to London, Ray flew to Portugal, where he obtained a new passport from the Canadian embassy that corrected a misspelling in the last name from "Sneya" to "Sneyd." He flew back to London on the 17th of May.
  
• 5/20/1968 RFK spoke before a crowd in the banquet room of Robbie's Restaurant in Pomona. A bartender who was acting as a security check at a stairway leading to the room stopped a young man and woman who claimed they were with the Kennedy party. The man looked a great deal like Sirhan. The couple left after being challenged. Two other onlookers witnessed the incident. A 400 person campaign luncheon was being held for RFK in the second floor dining area of the restaurant. Albert LeBeau, the night manager, was called on duty to act as ticket screener on the staircase leading to the function. William Schneid, a Pomona police officer, was assigned to security duty in the restaurant. Schneid encountered a young woman standing by the kitchen door of the restaurant, apparently trying to get inside through that door. He informed her that the door was locked and she then asked him which way Senator Kennedy would enter the luncheon. He told her that RFK would probably go up the stairs to the second floor. Later, Schneid observed the same young woman, along with a young man, cross over a brick façade adjacent to the stairs, climb over the stair railing behind people checking tickets at the foot of the stairs only to be intercepted by LeBeau at his position further up the stairs. LeBeau challenged the pair and the woman responded "we are with the Senator's party." LeBeau told her that they still needed tickets, to which she responded, "we are part of the Senator's party; he just waved us upstairs." Later, he observed them standing apart from the gathering, at the rear of the luncheon room on the second floor. At that point he was struck by the fact that the man had a coat over his arm, even though it was a very warm day, and he also appeared to be in what amounted to a "crouch". LeBeau challenged them as to why they were at the back of the room if they were really with the party and the young man turned on him and angrily asked "what the hell is it to you?" In addition to LeBeau and Schneid, the owner of the restaurant, Mrs. Felicia Maas, also recalled the incident with the young couple. However, she had not been close enough to them to offer any identification. LAPD records show that LeBeau was fairly certain the young man was Sirhan but would not swear it under oath. LeBeau had successfully picked Sirhan's photo from a sample set of 25 young dark skinned males but failed to pick out another photo of Sirhan taken from his Racing Commission ID. Schneid apparently did not participate in any photo reviews. Although there is no supporting information in LeBeau's files (portions of which are missing), the final LAPD report states LeBeau "initially stated the man was Sirhan, but later admitted he lied". There is also no remark about the importance of the man being with a young woman or about corroboration of the incident from police office Schneid and the restaurant owner.
  
• 5/20/1968 RFK spoke at a Los Angeles synagogue and spoke of his support for a US-USSR agreement to stop the spread of arms to the Middle East. But until such an agreement was reached, he felt the US must continue to support Israel, "with arms if necessary."
  
• 5/20/1968 Today, a television campaign documentary, "The Story of Robert Kennedy," was aired. The narrator described RFK's 1948 visit to Israel and how he had joined in to "celebrate" Israel's independence. With the Israeli flag waving in the background, the narrator said, "Bob Kennedy decided his future lay in the affairs of men and nations." Sirhan Sirhan watched the documentary, and was reportedly greatly disturbed by it.
  
• 5/20/1968 Supreme Court ruled 6-3 that states (in this case, Louisiana) could not discriminate against illegitimate children.
  
• 5/20/1968 In a Time article, "acquaintances" reportedly referred to Ray as "... an obsessive racial bigot, an abrasive patron, who belted screwdrivers, dozed on the bar stool and bickered with anyone around." Time carried the FBI line on the death slug, stating that "the unjacketed slug had been too badly marked for a definite comparison to be made."
  
• 5/20/1968 A Newsweek article cited the FBI's comments on an ad placed by Ray and another ad that he answered by sending a Polaroid photograph in which he looked fatter than usual. Newsweek reported that' 'bureau insiders said he was taking amphetamines off and on and his weight might well have fluctuated sharply as a result." The article noted that the bureau had released another photograph of Ray taken with a prostitute in Mexico, but she was "clipped out." The article continued: "Still, the fact of her presence -- plus Galt/Ray's pathetic try for mail-order romance-yielded telling insights, and thus helped fill out his emerging portrait as an ingrown, emotionally stunted loner. The more investigators find out about their man, in fact, the less they see him as the conspiratorial type. "You take five guys who don't know each other and put them in a room," said one. "Four of them would start talking small talk to each other. Ray would sit by himself." He picked up the suspect's mug shot. "This is our man," he said. "He killed King."" Hence, in this one leak to Newsweek the bureau conveyed to the American public, some two weeks before Ray's capture, that the man being sought for the killing of Dr. King was a vice-ridden loner and was certainly guilty. Jeremiah O'Leary, a frequent mouthpiece for the bureau, in an article in the Washington Star quoted unnamed convicts interviewed by unnamed investigators (who could only have been FBI agents tracking Ray) as saying that "Ray was a racist and a habitual user of amphetamines while in prison." O'Leary also maintained that "some of his fellow prisoners described him as an anti-negro loner who spent much of his time in jail reading sex books and girlie magazines." Other wire service syndicated pieces were equally damning. For example, one story under the leader "Ray Talked Of Bounty On King: Friend" put out by UPI quoted a convict named Raymond Curtis, allegedly a friend of Ray, as saying that Ray told him that if there was a bounty on Dr. King, he would collect it if he got out. Curtis also alleged that Ray used dope, bragged about picking up lots of women, and was a loner.
  
• 5/21/1968 GOP Senate Minority leader Hugh Scott said he wanted to introduce a bill to authorize the minting of "a gold medal to be presented to Dr. King's widow." The FBI soon persuaded Scott that King was an immoral degenerate, and he changed his mind. (5/22/1968 FBI memo)
  
• 5/21/1968 The USS Scorpion, a nuclear-powered attack sub, was last heard from on this date; it was eventually discovered lying on the bottom of the ocean southwest of the Azores. 99 lives were lost; details of the incident remain classified but it is assumed the sub was carrying four to six nuclear weapons. The Scorpion sank at 1844 GMT on 22 May, 1968 while 400 miles southwest of Azores. The wreckage was discovered in some 10,000 feet of water.
  
• 5/21/1968 An FBI document quoted Jack Anderson saying to the Bureau, "Kennedy should receive a death blow prior to the Oregon primary." Anderson proposed to the FBI that he write a column accusing RFK of initiating the wiretaps against MLK. (Unreliable Sources p122)
  
• 5/24-27/1968 students in Stockholm institute the occupation of the Student Union Building.
  
• 5/24/1968 Jim Garrison was quoted by the Los Angeles Free Press as saying that the JFK assassination "was precipitated by the Fascists and the rightist anarchists [who] are one and the same. I firmly believe that the rightist anarchists and the CIA can take over our country right now and it would be a Fascist state except for two things. They would have to demolish and destroy the conservative movement by the radical right. They would have to destroy organizations such as the John Birch Society...the other thing that is in their way is...Jim Garrison."
  
• 5/24/1968 Sirhan attended a rally for RFK at the Los Angeles Sports Arena. A psychologist in the crowd noticed Sirhan because he "appeared very intense and sinister."
  
• 5/25/1968 Nicholas Chetta dies of a heart attack. He was Coroner of New Orleans and a key witness in Jim Garrison's case against Clay Shaw.
  
• 5/26/1968 RFK made a speech in Portland, Oregon urging the sale of 50 jet bombers to Israel. The AP reported the story this night. Later that night KFWB "All News Radio" in Los Angeles reported that RFK had promised a Zionist audience in Beverly Hills that he would send jet bombers to Israel.
  
• 5/26/1968 Today, an editorial by David Lawrence called "Paradoxical Bob" (criticizing RFK's opposition to Vietnam while supporting aid to Israel) appeared in the Pasadena Independent Star-News. Sirhan clipped it and kept it in his pocket.
  
• 5/26/1968 The French government responded to unions' demands by raising the minimum wage by 35%.
  
• 5/26/1968 Eric Hoffer (LA Times): The Jews are a peculiar people: Things permitted to other nations are forbidden to the Jews. Other nations drive out thousands, even millions of people and there is no refugee problem. Russia did it, Poland and Czechoslovakia did it, Turkey threw out a million Greeks, and Algeria a million Frenchman. Indonesia threw out heaven knows how many Chinese-and no one says a word about refugees. But in the case of Israel the displaced Arabs have become eternal refugees. Everyone insists that Israel must take back every single Arab. Arnold Toynbee calls the displacement of the Arabs an atrocity greater than any committed by the Nazis. Other nations when victorious on the battlefield dictate peace terms. But when Israel is victorious it must sue for peace. Everyone expects the Jews to be the only real Christians in this world. Other nations when they are defeated survive and recover but should Israel be defeated it would be destroyed. Had Nasser triumphed last June [1967] he would have wiped Israel off the map, and no one would have lifted a finger to save the Jews. No commitment to the Jews by any government, including our own, is worth the paper it is written on. There is a cry of outrage all over the world when people die in Vietnam or when two Blacks are executed in Rhodesia. But when Hitler slaughtered Jews no one remonstrated with him. The Swedes, who are ready to break off diplomatic relations with America because of what we do in Vietnam, did not let out a peep when Hitler was slaughtering Jews. They sent Hitler choice iron ore, and ball bearings, and serviced his troop trains to Norway. The Jews are alone in the world. If Israel survives, it will be solely because of Jewish efforts. And Jewish resources. Yet at this moment Israel is our only reliable and unconditional ally. We can rely more on Israel than Israel can rely on us. And one has only to imagine what would have happened last summer [1967] had the Arabs and their Russian backers won the war to realize how vital the survival of Israel is to America and the West in general. I have a premonition that will not leave me; as it goes with Israel so will it go with all of us. Should Israel perish the holocaust will be upon us."
  
• 5/27/1968 Israel paid $3,325,500 in compensation to the next of kin of the 34 men of the Liberty killed.
  
• 5/28/1968 McCarthy beat RFK in Oregon primary, the first election defeat a Kennedy had ever experienced. McCarthy received 44%, RFK got 38%. A Drew Pearson column claiming that RFK had authorized wiretaps on MLK hurt Kennedy. McCarthy also had a well-organized campaign in Oregon, and RFK's message never resonated in the predominantly white, middle-class state. In the Florida primary today, McCarthy wins 29% to George Smathers' 46%
  
• 5/28/1968 RFK spends two hours in Oxnard, California checking out a reported lead to JFK's death. RFK attends a gathering at John Frakenheimer's Malibu beach house with some Hollywood glitteratie, including Shirley MacLain, Warren Beatty, Jean Seberg and Seberg's novelist husband, Romain Gary. Gary accosts RFK: "You know, don't you, that somebody is going to kill you?" RFK fends him off: "That's the chance I have to take."
  
• 5/28/1968 Sirhan attended a meeting of the Rosicrucian Society in Pasadena.
  
• 5/29/1968 A number of high-ranking Soviet military officials visit Czechoslovakia to lay the groundwork for Soviet military exercises.
  
• 5/29/1968 Evans and Novak reported in their column that "in recent days, Nixon has been in contact with CORE leaders Floyd McKissick and Roy Innis through intermediaries" over "economic black power..."
  
• 5/30/1968 Kennedy Campaign headquarters, Azuza California - Laverne Botting, a 41 year old RFK campaign worker, observed a young woman and two young men enter the Azuza campaign office. One of the young men approached Botting at her desk and said that he was from the RFK headquarters in Pasadena (Sirhan lived in Pasadena at the time). He wanted to know if RFK would be visiting that area. Botting told the young man that RFK would not. In an interview with the LAPD, Botting picked Sirhan out of a photo display as closely resembling the man who had spoken with her. She accurately described Sirhan's height, black eyes and kinky black hair. Independently of Botting, Ethel Crehan, another volunteer in the office, called police and told them that she was "fairly certain" that Sirhan had come into the office. She said she could be sure if she could see him in person, so was Botting. Neither women was offered the opportunity to view Sirhan in a line-up. The police did check with the Pasadena RFK office staff and were told that there would have been no reason for that office to send anyone to Azuza to check a schedule. For some reason, that seems to have played a part in the police decision to discount the importance of Botting and Crehan's observation. No transcript exists of the Botting interview, the officer in charge closed out her file with the remark that she "had obviously made an honest mistake." Although no one other than the police should have known of Botting's report, she later received a threatening phone call at home " I hear you think you saw Sirhan; you had better be sure of what you are saying!" [4] Crehan's report was closed because the officer noted that her estimate of the man's height was three to four inches above Sirhan's actual height (although still relatively short at 5'8"). For this reason he felt "it was doubtful she observed Sirhan."
  
• 5/30/1968 Westmoreland announced, while visiting LBJ in Texas, "The enemy's only victories in the last few years have been in the propaganda field…I am confident the enemy is receiving false reports from his field commanders…Time is on our side." (The Experts Speak)
  
• 5/30/1968 De Gaulle dissolved the Frency National Assembly, postponed a national referendum and went on TV vowing to use force to prevent what he believed was a Communist revolution.
  
• 5/31/1968 Is Jim Garrison Out of His Mind? By David Lifton published in the May 31 and June 6, 1968 issues of Open City, a Los Angeles underground newspaper.
  
• 5/31/1968 Camille Chamoun, president of Lebanon, was the target of a failed assassination attempt.