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Post by Paul Ernst on Feb 11, 2020 18:31:35 GMT -5
Nikita Khrushchev
January 21, 1961 Khrushchev, as a good-will gesture to the newly inaugurated JFK, releases Bruce Olmstead and John McKone (two pilots shot down by the Russians) from their cells in the Lubyanka prison, where they have been held by the KGB for seven months. Besides Francis Gary Powers, these two men will be the only American fliers to get out of Moscow’s infamous Lubyanka prison alive.
Note:
Nikita Khrushchev; First Secretary of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union (USSR).
Bruce Olmstead and John McKone,
Capt. Bruce Olmstead and his wife, Gail,and Capt. John McKone and his then-wife, Connie, are reunited in January 1961 after Olmstead and McKone were released after seven months in a Soviet prisson, Moscow’s infamous Lubyanka prison alive.
On July 1, 1960, a U.S. Air Force RB-47 aircraft with a crew of six was shot down over the Barents Sea. Captains John McKone and Freeman Olmstead were rescued by a Soviet trawler and held captive at Lubyanak prison until January 25, 1961 when they were released. The remains of one crewman, Willard Palm, were recovered and returned July 25, 1960. The other three crewman: Oscar Goforth, Dean Phillips, and Eugene Posa, remain missing in action.
Francis Gary Poweres a pilot who was captured on May 1, 1960, while on a reconnaissance flight deep inside the Soviet Union with his shotsown U-2 spy plain. The capture, known as the U-2 incident, resulted in the cancellation by the Soviet Union of a conference with the United States, Great Britain, and France.
Powers was tried and convicted of espionage and was sentenced to 10 years in prison. He was released in 1962, however, in exchange for the Soviet spy Rudolf Abel. Powers returned to the United States and wrote of his view of the incident in Operation Overflight (1970). In 1977 he died in the crash of a helicopter that he flew as a reporter for a Los Angeles television station.
Note: U2 program.
In May 1945, General Cabell was assigned to Air Force headquarters, where he became chief of the Strategy and Policy Division in the Office of the Assistant Chief of Air Staff for Plans.
In December 1945 he was assigned with the Military Staff Committee of the United Nations, and after attending the London Conference, remained on duty with the United Nations in New York, as deputy and later as U.S. Air Force Representative on the Military Staff Committee.
General Cabell was assigned to Air Force Headquarters in August 1957 as special assistant to the assistant chief of air staff for plans, and the following two months served as acting deputy to the director (designate) of the Joint Staff.
In November 1947 Major General Cabell became chief of the Air Intelligence Requirements Division in the Office of the Director of Intelligence. On May 15, 1948, he was appointed director of intelligence of the U.S. Air Force.
On Nov. 1, 1951, General Cabell was named director of the joint staff in the Office of the Joint Chiefs of Staff.
Lieutenant General Cabell was sworn in as deputy director of Central Intelligence on April 23, 1953.
Lt Gen. Cabell his brother Earle, was the mayor in Dallas when President Kennedy was killed in 1963.
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Post by Paul Ernst on Feb 13, 2020 1:39:25 GMT -5
January 22, 1961 Beginning today, calls begin between Judith Campbell and the White House.
Seventy calls will be logged in during the next two months.
Campbell is also seeing Chicago mafioso Sam Giancana on a regular basis.
Note:
John F. Kennedy has had a large number of extra-marital relationships during his presidency. One of the most remarkable was with Judith Campbell.
Judith Campell was born in 1934 as Judith Immoor. At the age of eighteen she married actor William Campbell, eleven years older.
In 1958, the marriage was getting worse again, but Judith kept her new surname and, more importantly, her connection to Hollywood.
She became a welcome guest in the world of hip parties and famous actors. One of her buddies in that circuit was Frank Sinatra, the most famous actor and singer of that time.
She also went to bed with him occasionally, possibly even before her divorce. And it was Frank Sinatra who would eventually introduce her to Kennedy.
In 1961 and 1962 she visited Kennedy 21 times in the White House and at least as often outside of it. We know that so well because it was continuously shadowed by the FBI.
The FBI saw it as its task to see if the president did not deal with overly wrong people, and Judith Campbell had some criminal contacts. In addition to Kennedy and Sinatra, Mrs. Campbell also had close ties with the mafia figures Sam Giancana and John Roselli.
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Post by Paul Ernst on Feb 13, 2020 21:13:36 GMT -5
January 25, 1961:
The CIA’s William Harvey meets with Dr. Sidney Gottlieb. Harvey says “I’ve been asked to form this group to assassinate people and I need to know what you can do for me.”
The two men specifically discuss Castro, Lumumba and Trujillo as potential targets.
Harvey’s notes of the meeting show that he and Gottlieb talk of assassination as a “last resort” and as “a confession of weakness.”
Note: source Spartacus EDU
Joseph Scheider (Sidney Gottlieb) was born in 1918. He studied chemistry at the California Institute of Technology and after he finished his Ph.D. he joined the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA).
He worked as a member of the Technical Services Staff (TSS) and eventually became head of the Chemical Division.
Richard Bissell, head of the Directorate for Plans, an organization instructed to conduct covert anti-Communist operations around the world, made full use of Gottlieb's abilities.
The Directorate for Plans was responsible for what became known as the CIA's Black Operations.
This involved a policy that was later to become known as Executive Action (a plan to remove unfriendly foreign leaders from power). In March I960, President Dwight Eisenhower of the United States approved a CIA plan to overthrow Fidel Castro.
Gottlieb was asked to come up with proposals that would undermine Castro's popularity with the Cuban people.
Plans included a scheme to spray a television studio in which he was about to appear with an hallucinogenic drug (LSD) and contaminating his shoes with thallium which they believed would cause the hair in his beard to fall out.
Note:
William King "Bill" Harvey (September 13, 1915 – June 9, 1976) was a Central Intelligence Agency officer, best known for his role in Operation Mongoose.
He was known as "America's James Bond", a tag given to him by Edward Lansdale from the OSS later CIA. Harvey was also involved in Operation Mongoose, a CIA operation run from Miami, Florida that ran various attempts to undermine or overthrow the Cuban Revolution
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Post by Paul Ernst on Feb 14, 2020 21:42:17 GMT -5
January 26, 1961: Deputy Chief of the Secret Service, Russell Daniel, retires from the number-two position after a thirty-two-year career.
“Maybe it’s time for me to retire. Maybe I’m getting old and soft.
Note: Source: Homeland Sec. Release Date:June 6, 2019 United States Secret Service
CMR 21-19
The Secret Service sent some of our finest onto the beaches of Normandy, France, on June 6th, 1944. One of them came home and became the Deputy Chief of the Secret Service. Russell “Buck” Daniel was born November 28, 1906, in Lancaster, Missouri.
He began his career in the Secret Service in Kansas City, Missouri, as a stenographer on October 7, 1929.
He served continuously, except for 2 ½ years in the United States Army.
In 1932, he became a Special Agent in Kansas City, and was later assigned to field offices in New York, Detroit, St. Louis, Cleveland, and Oklahoma City, where he gained wide experience in the suppression of counterfeiting, and in the investigation of forgeries of Treasury checks and bonds.
In 1938, Daniel was a member of a special detail in New York established to investigate large-scale counterfeiting activities.
His success in the investigation of major counterfeiting and check forgery cases won him a promotion to Special Agent in Charge of Omaha, Nebraska, in March 1939.
In May 1943, Daniel enlisted in the Army and later participated in the Normandy invasion, the Battle of the Bulge, and three other major European campaigns as a paratrooper with the famed 82nd Airborne Division.
He was honorably discharged as a Technical Sergeant, wearing the Bronze Star Medal, the Combat Infantry Badge, Parachutist’s Badge, five Battle Stars, and the Bronze Service Arrowhead.
Returning to the Secret Service in 1945, he became Assistant Special Agent in Charge at St. Paul, Minnesota.
On January 3, 1949, he came to Washington to assume charge of the Washington Field District. Shortly after his promotion he supervised the investigation and arrests of four men and a woman for making about $150,000 in counterfeit $20 bills in a plant located only a few blocks from the Treasury Building.
On July 17, 1950, Daniel was promoted to the position of Inspector and engaged in inspecting Secret Service field offices and providing liaison between Washington headquarters and the field.
In this position he also personally supervised a number of criminal investigations, including the attempted assassination of President Truman at Blair House in 1950 and the $160,000 theft of currency from the Bureau of Engraving and Printing in 1954.
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Post by Paul Ernst on Feb 15, 2020 19:14:52 GMT -5
January 28, 1961: Marguerite Oswald
Oswald’s mother arrives in Washington, via train from Dallas, and calls the White House in an effort to get information about her son, Lee.
She is granted an immediate interview with Eugene Boster, White House Soviet Affairs officer.
Although she has not heard from her son in more than a year, Mrs. Oswald quotes Boster as saying, “Oh yes, Mrs. Oswald, I’m familiar with the case.” She is promised action.
Note: source Wikipedia.
Boster was posted to the United States Embassy in Moscow in 1947. In 1951 he served as the United States liaison officer to the Soviet and Eastern European delegations at the Japanese Peace Conference in San Francisco. He also served as the staff assistant to Secretary of State John Foster Dulles. From 1959 to 1962 he was the officer in charge of Soviet Union affairs in United States Embassy in Moscow.
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Post by Paul Ernst on Feb 17, 2020 20:25:52 GMT -5
January 28, 1961:
First JFK White House meeting on Vietnam: CIP approved, links U.S. aid to SVN reforms;
JFK decides to replace Ambassador Burbrow with Lansdale.
JFK orders the Joint Chiefs of Staff to review the military aspects of an American-supported invasion.
He also authorizes continued U-2 flights over Cuba and the continuation of the CIA operations already underway.
Also in a meeting today -- six days after moving into the White House -- JFK and his National Security Adviser McGeorge Bundy receive the first general instruction on Project Pluto from the Chiefs of Staff of the Armed Forces and the CIA. But the Kennedy team will only become fully aware of Operation Pluto at the end of February.
Note: source: NARAA.
President Kennedy meets with Joint Chiefs of Staff. Commandant of the United States Marine Corps General David M. Shoup; Chief of Staff of the United States Air Force General Thomas D. White; Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff General Lyman Lemnitzer; President Kennedy; Chief of Staff of the United States Navy Admiral Arleigh A. Burke; Chief of Staff of the United States Army General George H. Decker. Oval Office, White House, Washington, D.C.
Note:
Operation Pluto became later on Operation Zapata,.. (Zapata oil). Operation Rifle became later on Operation Pluto.
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Post by Paul Ernst on Feb 19, 2020 0:15:13 GMT -5
January 30, 1961:
JFK telephones his father to remind him to watch his first State of the Union address on television.
Then he and Jackie ride to the Capitol. Evelyn Lincoln thinks JFK is in a particularly good mood. An Italian magazine publishes comments by Alicia Purdom, wife of British actor Edmund Purdom.
She claims that in 1951, before either of them was married, she and JFK had had an affair.
Had Joseph Kennedy not stepped in to end it, they would have been married.
This story is not picked up in the American press. J. Edgar Hoover promplty informs Robert Kennedy.
Allegations reach Hoover that the affair involved a pregnancy and that the Kennedy family had paid a vast sum of money to hush the matter up.
As an FBI agent at headquarters, Gordon Liddy sees files on JFK.
From mid-1961, while on a headquarters assignment that includes research on politicians,
Liddy peruses numerous 5” x 7” cards packed with file references to JFK’s past and present.
“There was a lot,” he recalls. “It grew while I was there, and kept growing.”
Note: So In 1961 The FBI watched JFK. Lyndon Johnson writes a letter to the Secretary of Agriculture supporting Billy Sol Estes’ practices with respect to his cotton land allotments. Estes in in the middle of a federal fraud scandal - by building grain warehouses and buying up federal cotton allotments to grow cotton on submerged lands.
Johnson’s letter eventually becomes the impetus for an Agriculture Department investigation involving both estes and Johnson. (TTC) NOTE: LBJ will be involved in three major scandals during his Vice Presidency:
1.The Billy Sol Estes affair 2. The TFX Missile Scandal 3. The Bobby Baker scandal. Each of these scandals, as it surfaces, comes closer to implicating Johnson directly.
These investigations cease immediately after JFK’s assassination, when LBJ becomes President.
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Post by Paul Ernst on Feb 20, 2020 3:51:45 GMT -5
February 1, 1961:
Less than a week after Mrs. Oswald’s Washington visit, the State Department sends a “Welfare-Whereabouts” memo to Moscow.
Oswald’s Diary: Feb. 1st Make my first request to American Embassy, Moscow for reconsidering my position. I stated "I would like to go back to U.S."
JFK meets today with his National Security Council (NSC) to formulate National Security Action Memorandum 2 (NSAM2).
The document calls for “an expanded guerrilla program,” the addition of 3,000 men to the Army’s 1,000-man Special Forces, funded by a budget increase of $19 million, and a reallocation of $100 million within the Defense Department for “unconventional wars.”
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Post by Paul Ernst on Feb 25, 2020 4:12:17 GMT -5
February 2, 1961:
Walt Rostow gives JFK a memorandum about Vietnam written by Brigadier General Edward Lansdale.
After reading it, JFK says: “ This is the worst yet.
” He then adds, “
You know, Ike never briefed me about Vietnam.
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Post by Paul Ernst on Feb 26, 2020 1:35:09 GMT -5
February 4, 1961:
JFK bans all trade with Cuba, depriving the Castro government of $35 million in annual income.
Drew Pearson, in his regular radio broadcast, reports the first major battle between Robert Kennedy and J. Edgar Hoover.
The new Attorney General wants to go all out against the underworld.
To do so, Bobby Kennedy proposes a crack squad of racket busters, but Edgar Hoover objects. Hoover claims that a special crime bureau reflects on the FBI, and he is opposing his new boss.
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