23-11-2014, 07:42 PM
- 12/1976 US inflation rate was 5.8%. Federal spending was $371 billion with a $73 billion deficit. National debt was $620 billion (interest paid: $37 billion).
- 12/1976: HSCA Chairman Thomas Downing retires. Richard A. Sprague tells Congress he needs $13 million for a real investigation.
- 12/1976 Chile: Pinochet told an interviewer that he was committed to "authoritarian democracy" and that representative democracy was an "outdated system."
- 12/2/1976 George Lardner Jr. reported that it was Mark Lane who recruited Arlen Specter's Philadelphia D.A. office partner, Richard A. Sprague, to become the chief counsel for the HSCA. (Washington Post)
- 12/3/1976 Carter announces Cyrus Vance as his choice for Secretary of State.
- 12/5/1976 Washington Star reported that two months before Nixon resigned, Haig had ordered the Army's Criminal Investigation Command to conduct a secret investigation into Nixon's possible ties to the mob, specifically Southeast Asian narcotics traffickers. This information was confirmed for the Star by Army officials involved. The Star's Jeremiah O'Leary reported that the investigation was ordered by Haig during a meeting with the Army's Criminal Investigation Command Chief, Col. Henry H. Tufts, at Ford McNair. The chief investigator was CIC special agent Russell L. Bintliff, a former special operations officer for the Army and CIA. Bintliff told the Star: "...Haig wanted some things checked out on the President. It involved Caulfield and Ulasewicz. Haig wanted to know whether Caulfield and Ulasewicz had been to the Far East and carried back any money for Nixon. He also wanted to know whether Nixon had ever been mixed up with organized crime...I never could find that Caulfield and Ulasewicz had gone to the Far East, but in my verbal reports to Col. Tufts I pointed out that in those days an American didn't need a passport to get into Vietnam...I concluded that they probably had gone to Vietnam, and I considered there were strong indications of a history of Nixon connections with money from organized crime."
- 12/6/1976 Thomas P. "Tip" O'Neill Jr. (D-Mass.) is chosen Speaker of the House.
- 12/6-10/1976 NATO holds year-end meetings in Brussels.
- 12/8/1976 In 1976 Thomas N. Downing began campaigning for a new investigation into the assassination of John F. Kennedy. Downing said he was certain that Kennedy had been killed as a result of a conspiracy. He believed that the recent deaths of Sam Giancana and Johnny Roselli were highly significant. He also argued that the Central Intelligence Agency and the Federal Bureau of Investigation had withheld important information from the Warren Commission. Downing was not alone in taking this view. In 1976, a Detroit News poll indicated that 87% of the American population did not believe that Lee Harvey Oswald was the lone gunman who killed Kennedy. Coretta Scott King, was also calling for her husband's murder to be looked at by a Senate Committee. It was suggested that there was more chance of success if these two investigations could be combined. Henry Gonzalez and Walter E. Fauntroy joined Downing in his campaign and in 1976 Congress voted to create a 12-member committee to investigate the deaths of Kennedy and King. Thomas N. Downing named Sprague as chief counsel of the House Select Committee on Assassinations. Gaeton Fonzi was to later say: "Sprague was known as tough, tenacious and independent. There was absolutely no doubt in my mind when I heard of Sprague's appointment that the Kennedy assassination would finally get what it needed: a no-holds-barred, honest investigation. Which just goes to show how ignorant of the ways of Washington both Sprague and I were". Sprague quickly assembled a staff of 170 lawyers, investigators and researchers. On 8th December, 1976, Sprague submitted a 1977 budget of $6.5 million. Frank Thompson, Chairman of the House Administration Committee made it clear he opposed the idea of so much money being spent on the investigation. Smear stories against Sprague began appearing in the press. David B. Burnham of The New York Times reported that Sprague had mishandled a homicide case involving the son of a friend. Members of Congress joined in the attacks and Robert E. Bauman of Maryland claimed that Sprague had a "checkered career" and was not to be trusted. Richard Kelly of Florida called the House Select Committee on Assassinations a "multimillion-dollar fishing expedition for the benefit of a bunch of publicity seekers." Probably the most important criticism came from Eldon J. Rudd of Arizona, a former FBI agent who had worked on the assassination investigation, declared the Committee had "already fanned the flames of rumor, distortion and unwanted distrust of law enforcement agencies." However, Walter E. Fauntroy defended the work of Sprague: "threshold inquiries by a thoroughly professional staff... in the last three months have produced literally a thousand questions unanswered by the investigations of record."
- 12/10/1976 Science magazine predicted the possibility of heading "toward extensive Northern Hemisphere glaciation" in the near future.
- 12/10/1976 David Burnham - "Assassination Study Requests $13 million" - New York Times
- 12/11/1976 The episode of All in the Family tonight featured Archie Bunker predicting that Reagan would win the 1980 presidential election.
- 12/17/1976 Judith Campbell Exner holds San Diego press conference, denying any role in CIA-Mafia plots to kill Castro.
- 12/18/1976 "The Fort Worth Star-Telegram, 12/18/76 (Liz Smith): Now that we're going to ante up $13 million tax paid dollars for Congress to reinvestigate the deaths of John F. Kennedy and Martin Luther King, it bears thinking on that our own CIA and FBI were neither up to nor trustworthy enough, to do the job for us as they should have. This brings to mind the strange case of Dorothy Kilgallen. Kilgallen's biographer, Lee Israel, and the son of the columnist, Kerry Kollmar, have spent almost a year trying to wrest from these two government agencies the pertinent papers concerning Kilgallen's involvement with the assassination of JFK. They embarked on their efforts separately - Lee, because she is writing Dorothy's life story; Kerry because he is fighting mad, livid with frustration and wants to find out what his famous mother knew and how she really died. Kerry wants the material he is entitled to under the Freedom of Information Act. Proud of what he has learned of his mother, he wants the story of her prescience and courage in the matter of JFK's death made public. He wants it in Lee Israel's book for the records. Yet even the intervention of Bella Abzug before she became a lame duck, led nowhere. The FBI has voluminous Kilgallen material. In 1964, several weeks before the Warren Commission Report was released, Dorothy published prematurely Jack Ruby's testimony to the Commission. The FBI then began investigating the columnist. She refused to reveal sources and advised the FBI to stop wasting time on her and ""go after the facts."" The FBI still tapped Kilgallen's phones and placed her under surveillance. The columnist began making calls from booths using code names. (She always called herself Parker when talking to investigator Mark Lane, and called him ""Robinson."") So much for the FBI and its Mickey Mouse behavior. But what about the CIA? The CIA, for instance, has 20 odd pages on Dorothy Kilgallen in its files. It contacted 51 CIA offices in her ""case""! Yet requests to both the FBI and CIA by Kerry Kollmar continue to run up against a bureaucratic jargon and delay that resemble ""stonewalling."" With both the FBI and CIA under shadows of suspicion and clouds of disgrace, one would think it would behoove them to act quickly and openly to make the Kilgallen dossiers available to her outraged son and her intrepid, stubborn biographer. Bu the cover-up goes on!"
- 12/20/1976 Chicago mayor Richard Daley dies in office of a heart attack at age 74.
- 12/20/1976 Jack Anderson reported that Letelier had been receiving money from Castro each month; this was based on papers found in Letelier's briefcase by D.C. Homicide.