The US begins a 40-year plus trade embargo on Cuba. The embargo applies to a wide range of goods including both food and medicine. Beginning in 1992, the UN General Assembly will annually condemn these sanctions against Cuba.

Dr. Kwame Nkrumah makes Ghana a republic with himself as president. Under Ghana’s new constitution, the president has wide legislative and executive powers. Over the next 6 years, President Nkrumah spends much of his time campaigning for the political unity of black Africa. In his 1961 book, "I Speak of Freedom", Nkrumah writes of the need for a united black Africa. “Divided we are weak; united, Africa could become one of the greatest forces for good in the world,” he writes. However, other African governments, burdened with their own problems, are reluctant to heed his call.

Over the next 13 years in Vietnam, the US military uses 21 million gallons of Agent Orange to defoliate the jungle in order to deny enemy fighters cover. The defoliant, manufactured primarily by Monsanto and Dow Chemical, gets its name from the 55-gallon drums it is shipped in that are marked with an orange stripe.

At least 3,181 villages are sprayed with the highly toxic herbicide, which is comprised of a 50:50 mixture of 2,4-D and 2,4,5-T and contaminated with dangerous levels of dioxins. Much of the dioxin is tetrachlorodibenzo-p-dioxin (TCDD), which is linked to liver and other cancers, diabetes, spina bifida, immune-deficiency diseases, severe diarrhea, persistent malaria, miscarriages, premature births, and severe birth defects. Between 2.1 and 4.8 million Vietnamese are exposed, as are about 20,000 US soldiers. According to Vietnamese estimates, Agent Orange is responsible for the deaths of 400,000 people.

Because there is a continued presence of high dioxin levels in the food chain of several sprayed areas, the health effects of Agent Orange persist to the present day. According to studies by Arnold Schecter of the University of Texas School of Public Health in Dallas, some Vietnamese have dioxin levels 135 times higher than people living in unsprayed areas. Schecter has called Vietnam “the largest contamination of dioxin in the world.”

The Vietnamese believe the herbicide has contributed to birth defects in 500,000 children, many of them 2nd and 3rd generation. Though the US government has accepted responsibility for the health complications in US soldiers that resulted from exposure to Agent Orange (providing up to $1,989 per month for affected vets and more than $5,000 per month for those severely disabled and homebound), the US has refused to compensate Vietnamese victims.

To date, no US agency, including USAID, has conducted any program in Vietnam to address the issue of Agent Orange. When asked by Mother Jones magazine in 1999 if the Vietnam government has raised the issue in private talks with the United States, a State Department official responds: “Ohhhh, yes. They have. But for us there is real concern that if we start down the road of research, what does that portend for liability-type issues further on?”

Between March and August the CIA’s Technical Services Division (TSD) considers plans to undermine Fidel Castro’s charismatic appeal by sabotaging his speeches. At one point, there is discussion of spraying Castro’s broadcasting studio with a hallucinogenic chemical. The plan is taken of the shelf because the chemical is deemed unreliable. During this period, the TSD laces a box of cigars with a chemical that would produce temporary disorientation, hoping that he will smoke one of the cigars before giving a speech. In another instance, the TSD comes up with a scheme to dust Castro’s shoes with thallium salts during a trip outside of Cuba. The salts would cause his beard to fall out. The plan is abandoned when Castro cancels the trip.

In July the CIA offers to pay a Cuban $10,000 to arrange a fatal accident involving Fidel Castro’s brother, Raul. After the Cuban leaves to meet with Raul, the CIA instructs the local case officer in Havana to abort the operation. The Cuban later says he did not have an opportunity to set up an accident.

The CIA plans an operation to poison Fidel Castro, as well as his brother Raul and Che Guevara, with pills containing botulinum toxin. The plan drags on for more than two years, but is ultimately aborted.

October 7, a CIA official laces a box of Fidel Castro’s favorite cigars with botulinum toxin that is “so potent ... a person would die after putting in his mouth.” The box of poisoned cigars is then delivered to an unnamed person who is instructed to deliver them to Castro. It is not known what happens to the cigars or if Castro ever receives them.

Top of tab

Clarence Dillon is appointed Secretary of Treasury.

The CIA begins working with a high-level Cuban official, codenamed “AM/LASH,” on a plan to assassinate Fidel Castro and overthrow his government. In June 1965, the CIA ends its contact with AM/LASH and his associates citing security concerns.

Ghanaian President Kwame Nkrumah introduces his Soviet-inspired 7-year plan to establish state-owned factories and public authorities. The projects are financed by foreign loans and taxes, saddling the country with debt and stifling certain sectors of the economy. Cocoa production in Ghana drops dramatically when farmers, whose income has been reduced by the government marketing board’s price controls, begin smuggling cocoa to neighboring countries or switch to other crops. As a result, Ghana ceases to be the world’s largest cocoa producer. Burdened with debt, the Ghanaian economy contracts, undermining the Nkrumah government’s popularity. The downturn brings widespread unrest which is exacerbated by criticisms that Nkrumah is focusing too much on the promotion of his vision of African-unity.

Janio da Silva Quadros is elected president of Brazil by a record margin. He mysteriously resigns, reportedly under military pressure. Joao Goulart, the vice president, succeeds Quadros as president and aims to continue Quadros’ independent foreign policy. He expands the country’s trade with socialist countries and refuses to participate in the embargo against Cuba. Joao Goulart is no communist. He is described as a “millionaire landowner and a catholic who wears a medal of the virgin around his neck.” He receives “a ticker-tape parade in New York City in April, and toasts the US ambassador, ‘To the Yankee Victory!’ after the ‘Cuban Missile Crisis’ in October.”

The CIA sends 1,500 Cuban exiles to invade Cuba in what becomes known as the Bay of Pigs invasion. Operation Mongoose fails, due to poor planning, security and backing. The planners had imagined that the invasion would spark a popular uprising against Castro - which never happens. A promised American air strike also never occurs. This is the CIA's first public setback, causing President Kennedy to fire CIA director Allen Dulles. Incidentally, the code name for the Bay of Pigs is Operation Zapata, implcating George H.W. Bush's company in the Gulf of Mexico. Additionally in 1981, the year before George Bush is elected vice-president, all of the SEC records for Zapata Petroleum from between 1960-1966 disappear.

The CIA assassinates Rafael Trujillo, a murderous dictator in the Dominican Republic, who Washington had been supporting since 1930. Trujillo's business interests have grown so large (about 60% of the economy) that they have begun to compete with American business interests.

The CIA-backed military forces Ecuador's democratically-elected President Jose Velasco to resign. Vice-President Carlos Julio Arosemena Monroy replaces him; the CIA fills the now vacant vice presidency with its own man.

The CIA assassinates the democratically elected Patrice Lumumba. However, public support for Lumumba's politics runs so high that the CIA cannot clearly install his opponents in power. Four years of political turmoil follow.

August 11, US Secretary of State Dean Rusk sends British Foreign Minister Lord Home a letter which includes the following passage:

“... we do believe that Jagan and his American wife are very far to the left indeed and that his accession to power in British Guiana would be a most troublesome setback in this Hemisphere. Would you be willing to have this looked into urgently to see whether there is anything which you or we can do to forestall such an eventuality?”

A week later the British foreign minister Lord Home responds:

"... now the choice before us in situations like this is either to allow the normal process of democracy and progress towards self-government to go ahead and do our best to win the confidence of the elected leaders, and to wean them away from any dangerous tendencies, or else to revert to what we call ‘Crown Colony rule.’ It is practical politics to take the latter course only when it is quite clear that a territory is heading for disaster. We have done this once already in British Guiana-in 1953. But since the restoration of the democratic process in 1957, the elected government has behaved reasonably well and we have had no grounds which would justify a second attempt to put the clock back.”

October 25, Guyana President Cheddi Jagan pays a visit to the White House, seeking financial aid and offering assurances that Guyana will not host a Soviet base. President Kennedy tells Jagan that the US is not concerned with his left-leaning politics. Kennedy says: “National independence. This is the basic thing. As long as you do that, we don’t care whether you are socialist, capitalist, pragmatist or whatever. We regard ourselves as pragmatists.” Also in attendance at the meeting are the president’s special assistant Arthur Schlesinger, Jr., and George Ball, the Assistant Secretary for Economic Affairs at the State Department. Following Jagan’s departure, US President John F. Kennedy will meet in secret with his top national security officers and issue a direct order to remove Dr. Jagan from power. Sources will note that “Though many Presidents have ordered the CIA to undermine foreign leaders, they say, the Jagan papers are a rare smoking gun: a clear written record, without veiled words or plausible denials, of a President’s command to depose a Prime Minister.”

Top of tab

US President John F. Kennedy denies accusations that the US is meddling in the affairs of Guyana. He states, “The United States supports the idea that every people should have the right to make a free choice of the kind of government they want. Mr. Jagan who has recently elected Prime Minister in British Guiana, is a Marxist, but the United States doesn’t object because that choice was made by honest election, which he won.”

However over the next year, the CIA promotes civil unrest in the Caribbean country of Guyana. “Previously unheard-of radio stations went on the air in the capital, Georgetown,” the New York Times will later recount. “The papers printed false stories about approaching Cuban warships. Civil servants walked out. The labor unions revolted. Riots took the lives of more than 100 people.”

February 19, US Secretary of State Dean Rusk sends British Foreign Minister Lord Home a letter addressing concerns about Guyana President Cheddi Jagan that had been discussed in previous correspondences. He writes: “I must tell you now that I have reached the conclusion that it is not possible for us to put up with an independent British Guiana under Jagan .... These considerations, I believe, make it mandatory that we concert on remedial steps.”

February 26, The US President’s Special Assistant Arthur Schlesinger has lunch with British politician Iain MacLeod and Colonial Secretary Reginald Maudling. Describing the event in an letter to the US ambassador to Britain, he writes:

1. Jagan is not a Communist. He is a naive, London School of Economics Marxist filled with charm, personal honesty and juvenile nationalism. 2. The tax problem which caused the trouble was not a Marxist program. It was a severely orthodox program of a ‘Crippsian’ sort appropriate for a developed nation like Great Britain but wholly unsuited for an immature and volatile country like British Guiana. 3. If another election is held before independence Jagan will win. 4. Jagan is infinitely preferable to Burnham.

The US State Department drafts a planning document titled, “Possible Courses of Action in British Guiana.” In it, its authors ask: “Can we topple Jagan while maintaining at least a facade of democratic institutions,” and “Can the PPP be defeated in new elections without obvious interference?” The paper observes that “it is unproven that CIA knows how to manipulate an election in British Guiana without a backfire.” The document also notes: “Disclosure of US involvement would undermine our carefully nurtured position of anti-colonialism among the new nations of Asia and Africa and damage our position in Latin America. It could also strengthen Jagan over the long term if he became a ‘martyr of Yankee imperialism.’”

Juan Bosch, a leftist reformer, is elected president in the Dominican Republic’s first democratic elections in nearly four decades defeating Trujillo’s heir, Joaquin Balaguer.

The CIA begins an intensive propaganda campaign against Joao Goulart which dates from at least the 1962 election operation and which includes the financing of mass urban demonstrations.

de Rothschild Frères establishes Imétal as an umbrella company for all their mineral mining interests.

Frederic Morton publishes his book, "The Rothschilds", in which he states, "Though they control scores of industrial, commercial, mining and tourist corporations, not one bears the name Rothschild. Being private partnerships, the family houses never need to, and never do, publish a single public balance sheet, or any other report of their financial condition."

This attitude reveals the true aim of the Rothschilds, to eliminate all competition and create their own worldwide monopoly.

Top of tab

Concerned about the prospects of Soviet expansion in the Indian Ocean, the US government asks Britain to find an uninhabited island where the US can build a naval base. In return, the US says it is willing to waive up to $14 million in research and development fees related to Britain’s Polaris missile program. The US puts its sights first on the island of Aldabra, located north of Madagascar. But the island is a breeding ground for rare giant tortoises, whose mating habits would likely be disturbed by military activities. Fearing that ecologists would bring publicity to US activities on the island, the US looks for an alternative. The US decides on Diego Garcia, the largest island of the Chagos Archipelago. It is strategically located in the heart of the Indian Ocean just south of the equator. There is one problem, however. The islands have a population of roughly 1,800 people (who are known as Chagossians, but also referred to as Ilois) who have inhabited the 65-island archipelago for more than 200 years. Most of them are descendents of African slaves and Indian plantation workers. To deal with this “population problem,” British politicians, diplomats and civil servants begin a campaign “to maintain the pretence there [are] no permanent inhabitants” on the islands. They fear that if the international community learns about the existence of the population, it will demand that the Chagossians be recognized as a people “whose democratic rights have to be safeguarded.”

Task Force W devises 2 plans to assassinate Fidel Castro. The first one, involving an exploding sea shell that would be placed where Castro regularly dives, is dismissed by the CIA’s Technical Services Division (TSD) as impractical. In the second plan, James Donovan (who has been negotiating with Castro for the release of prisoners taken during the Bay of Pigs operation) would present Castro with a contaminated diving suit. TSD decides to give the plan a try. They purchase a diving suit and lace its breathing apparatus with tubercule bacillus. The suit itself is dusted with a fungus that is known to cause a chronic skin disease, but the suit never leaves the laboratory.

January 1, Brazilian President Joao Goulart holds a national plebiscite on whether Brazil should have a presidential or parliamentary government (a recent constitutional amendment required the president to share power with a council of ministers responsible to the legislature). Voters decide overwhelmingly to restore to Goulart full presidential powers under the 1946 constitution despite the CIA spending close to $20 million in an effort to thwart his election.

Juan Bosch is democratically elected president of the Dominical Republic. A liberal anti-communist, he attempts to implement significant economic and social reforms including land reform, nationalization of some businesses and physical infrastructure development. Though opposed to communism, he respects the right of communists to speak and assemble freely. Conservative voices in the US are not satisfied with Bosch, alleging that he is allowing communists to infiltrate into the country. One reporter for the Miami News claims “Communist penetration of the Dominican Republic is progressing with incredible speed and efficiency.”

March 31, Guatemalan President Miguel Ydigoras Fuentes is overthrown in a coup and succeeded by his minister of defense, Enrique Peralta Azurdi. According to some sources, the coup plotters were given a green light by John F. Kennedy, who opposed Fuentes’ decision to allow former President Juan Jose Arevalo to return from exile and participate in the upcoming presidential elections.

On June 4th President John F. Kennedy signs Executive Order 11110 which returns to the US government the power to issue currency, a direct affront to the 50-year-old Rosthchild-owned Federal Reserve. This order gives the Treasury the power to issue silver certificates against any silver bullion, silver, or standard silver dollars in the Treasury. This means that for every ounce of silver in the US Treasury's vault, the government can introduce new debt free money into circulation. Kennedy issues dollar bills (United States Note) carrying a red seal, which are basically a reissue of the greenbacks introduced by President Lincoln.

Edmond de Rothschild establishes La Compagnie Financière Edmond de Rothschild (LCF), in Switzerland as a venture capital house. This later develops into an investment bank and asset management company with many affiliates. He also marries his wife Nadine and they have a son, Benjamin de Rothschild.

A CIA-backed military coup overthrows Ecuador's President, Carlos Julio Arosemena Monroy, whose independent (non-socialist) policies have become unacceptable to Washington. A military junta assumes command, cancels the 1964 elections, and begins abusing human rights.

In the Dominican Republic, the government of Juan Bosch is overthrown on September 25 by an archconservative faction of the military led Colonel Elias Wessin y Wessin and replaced with a civilian triumvirate. The new leaders quickly abolish the constitution, declaring it “nonexistent.” The coup reportedly happens with a “wink from the US Pentagon.”

Iraqi President Abdul Karim Qassem is assassinated in a Ba'athist coup. The US is among the first nations to recognize the new government and arms shipments begin immediately. On the eve of the overflow, the CIA offers the Ba'athist insurgents a list of 800 Iraqi communists; all 800 are killed. Although the overthrow is successful, the Ba'athist government collapses within 9 months, which would bring about 2 more CIA-backed Ba'athist coups.

Over the next decade during the Vietnam war, the US uses a total of 373,000 tons of napalm. One ton of napalm alone is enough to burn a football field in seconds. The use of napalm in Vietnam is widespread and is a favorite weapon of the US military. General Paul Harkins says it “really puts the fear of God into the Vietcong - and that is what counts.” Pilots are given authority to use the weapon without prior authorization if the original target is inaccessible.

In June Buddhist clerics begin immolating themselves in protest of South Vietnamese President Ngo Dinh Diem’s prosecution of Buddhists.

In November, the policies of South Vietnamese President Ngo Dinh Diem create concern in Washington when Diem’s government intensifies its repression of the Buddhists and clamps down on the press. Also worrisome to his US backers are rumors that he is considering unification with the North. When the Kennedy administration learns that a group of South Vietnamese generals are planning a [2nd] coup attempt, the decision is made to provide them with support.

“President Kennedy and his advisers, both individually and collectively, had a considerable role in the coup overall, by giving initial support to Saigon military officers uncertain what the US response might be, by withdrawing US aid from Diem himself, and by publicly pressuring the Saigon government in a way that made clear to South Vietnamese that Diem was isolated from his American ally. In addition, at several of his meetings Kennedy had CIA briefings and led discussions based on the estimated balance between pro- and anti-coup forces in Saigon that leave no doubt the United States had a detailed interest in the outcome of a coup against Ngo Dinh Diem. The CIA also provided $42,000 in immediate support money to the plotters the morning of the coup, carried by Lucien Conein, an act prefigured in administration planning.”

June 30, US and British officials meet and discuss the Guyana government of the left-leaning Cheddi Jagan. A memorandum of the meeting states: “The President [Kennedy] said he agreed with the analysis of all the difficulties, but that these still paled in comparison with the prospect of the establishment of a Communist regime in Latin America. Mr. Sandys said he thought the best solution was that of a Burnham-D’Aguiar government to which the UK would grant independence.”

On October 23, the British, at the behest of the Kennedy administration, postpones Guyana’s independence and modifies the country’s electoral system so that the Guyanese would have to vote for parties instead of individual candidates.

While a US emissary is meeting with Fidel Castro to discuss the possibility of improved relations, a CIA official offers a poison pen to a Cuban hoping that it will be used by Castro.

On November 22nd, President Kennedy is assassinated.

Executive Order 11110, is rescinded by Lyndon Baines Johnson on Air Force One from Dallas to Washington, the day President Kennedy is assassinated.

It is also belived Kennedy's assassination was neccessary because of the fact that he made it clear to Israeli Prime Minister, David Ben-Gurion, that under no circumstances would he agree to Israel becoming a nuclear state. The Israeli newspaper Ha'aretz on February 5, 1999, in a review of, Avner Cohen's book, "Israel and the Bomb," states the following, "The murder of American President John F. Kennedy brought to an abrupt end the massive pressure being applied by the U.S. administration on the government of Israel to discontinue the nuclear program...The book implied that, had Kennedy remained alive, it is doubtful whether Israel would today have a nuclear option."

Top of tab

	Francois Duvalier declares himself dictator of Haiti. He will rule the country until his death in April 1971.
	Ghanaian President Kwame Nkrumah becomes increasingly authoritarian, declaring himself president for life and banning opposition parties.

For the next 20 years Guyana is governed by Forbes Burnham, who is later described by Kennedy’s special assistant Arthur Schlesinger in his book, A Thousand Days, as “an opportunist, racist and demagogue intent only on personal power.” He holds power through force and fraud until his death in 1985 and runs up a foreign debt totaling over $2 billion during this time - an amount representing over five times the country’s GDP. Burnham’s two decades of rule is marked by questionable elections; suppression of human rights, civil liberties, and union activities; corruption and economic stagnation. During this time there are two major political assassinations. Jesuit priest and journalist Bernard Darke is killed in July 1979 and the distinguished historian and Working People’s Alliance (WPA) party leader Walter Rodney is murdered in June 1980. President Burnham is widely believed to have had a hand in the killings.

Brazilian President Joao Goulart nationalizes oil, expropriates unused land, and passes a law limiting the amount of profits multinationals can send out of the country.

A CIA (John McCone)-backed military-civilian coup overthrows the Brazilian government; coup plotters receive assurances from the US State Department (Deak Rusk) in advance of Goulart’s ousting that the US would recognize the new government and provide assistance to the rebels if needed. As part of Operation Uncle Sam, the US Navy dispatched tankers to the coast of southern Brazil and mobilized for a possible airlift of 110 tons of ammunition and other equipment including CS gas for crowd control. But the Goulart government falls with little resistance and US assistance is not requested. Not wanting to be responsible for bloodshed among Brazilians, Goulart refuses to call on loyalist forces and flees to Uruguay.

On April 2, Readers Digest reports on the coup in Brazil: “Seldom has a major nation come closer to the brink of disaster and yet recovered than did Brazil in its recent triumph over Red subversion. The communist drive for domination-marked by propaganda, infiltration, terror-was moving in high gear. Total surrender seemed imminent - and then the people said ‘No!’”

The junta that replaces Goulart's government will, over the next 2 decades, become one of the most bloodthirsty in history. General Castelo Branco will create Latin America's first death squads, or bands of secret police that hunt down "communists" for torture, interrogation and murder. Often these "communists" are no more than Branco's political opponents. Later it is revealed that the CIA trains the death squads. The US House Committee on Foreign Affairs will report in 1974:

“[General Castelo Branco] shuts down Congress, virtually extinguishes political opposition, suspends habeas corpus for ‘political crimes,’ forbids by law criticism of the dictator, takes over labor unions, institutes police and military firing into protesting crowds, burns down peasant homes, [and] brutalizes priests, ....”

Amnesty International also reports on the situation in Brazil:

"Tortures range from simple but brutal blows from a truncheon to electric shocks. Often the torture is more refined: the end of a reed is placed in the anus of a naked man hanging suspended downwards on the pau de arara [parrot’s perch] and a piece of cotton soaked in petrol is lit at the other end of the reed. Pregnant women have been forced to watch their husbands being tortured. Other wives have been hung naked beside their husbands and given electric shocks on the sexual parts of their body, while subjected to the worst kind of obscenities. Children have been tortured before their parents and vice versa. At least one child, the three month old baby of Virgilio Gomes da Silva was reported to have died under police torture. The length of sessions depends upon the resistance capacity of the victims and have sometimes continued for days at a time.”

The CIA spends $3 million to influence the elections in order to prevent Salvador Allende from being elected as president of Chile.

A military junta headed by General René Barrientos overthrows the MNR. Military regimes subsequently come and go with monotonous regularity until the election of the leftist civilian Movimiento de la Izquierda Revolucionaria (MIR) under Dr Hernan Siles Zuazo in 1982.

On July 31, South Vietnamese gun boats attack the North Vietnamese island of Hon Me as part of operation OPLAN 34A. Daniel Ellsberg, a Pentagon official working under US Secretary of Defense Robert McNamara, will later describe 34A as a “100% US operations, utilizing some South Vietnamese personnel along with ... foreign mercenary crews, totally planned and controlled by the US, through MACV [Military Assistance Command Vietnam], CIA and CINCPAC [Commander in Chief, Pacific Fleet]; some people in the GVN [Government of (South) Vietnam] had very limited knowledge of the operations, but no hand in planning or managing them.”

August 2, the USS Maddox is gathering intelligence off the coast of North Vietnam when a group of North Vietnamese torpedo boats come within range of the vessel there is a brief, but tense, exchange of fire. The USS Maddox fires on the boats, which respond with torpedoes. The torpedo boats are quickly driven away when aircraft from the USS Ticonderoga come to the Maddox’s assistance. The US government and the press will report that the torpedo boats had launched an “unprovoked attack” against the Maddox while it was on a “routine patrol.” When reports of the incident are received in Washington, the Maddox is ordered to continue is operations close to North Vietnamese shores. Another destroyer, the C. Turner Joy, is sent to support it.

One day after the alleged “unprovoked” attacks on the USS Maddox by North Vietnamese torpedo boats, the vessel’s captain, John J. Herrick, reports to Washington: “Evaluation of info from various sources indicates DRV considers [my] patrol directly involved with 34-A ops DRV considers US ships present as enemies because of these ops and have already indicated their readiness to treat us in that category.”

On August 4, Captain John J. Herrick of the USS Maddox sees two “mysterious dots” on his radar screen. He determines they are torpedo boats and sends an emergency cable to headquarters in Honolulu reporting that the ship is under attack. Honolulu quickly passes the report on to Washington. President Johnson meets with his advisors and decides that the US must respond. “We cannot sit still as a nation and let them attack us on the high seas and get away with it,” Secretary of Defense Robert McNamara says. A few hours later, a cable arrives from Captain Herrick, which reads: “Freak weather effects on radar and over eager sonar men . . . No actual visual sightings by Maddox. Suggest complete evaluation before any further action taken.” A little later, Herrick cables that though it was “a confusing picture,” he did believe that there had been an attack. [In 1985, Herrick will reveal that this judgment had been based on “intercepted North Vietnamese communications” which he had not seen.] Half an hour later, the White House receives a third cable from Herrick, in which the captain says he is now uncertain what had happened. But this last report is ignored and President Johnson announces in a televised address, “Renewed hostile actions against United States ships on the high seas have today required me to order the military forces of the United States to take action in reply.” Meanwhile, US forces in Vietnam launch “retaliatory” air strikes against five North Vietnamese patrol boats and the oil facilities at Vinh. The American media praises the president’s speech and actions. The New York Times states the following day that Johnson had gone to “the American people ... with the somber facts.” And the Los Angeles Times urges its readers to “face the fact that the Communists, by their attack on American vessels in international waters, have themselves escalated the hostilities.” But time will reveal that there had been no attacks. US Navy squadron commander James Stockdale, who had been in the air at the time of the alleged attacks, will later recall: “I had the best seat in the house to watch that event and our destroyers were just shooting at phantom targets—there were no PT boats there.... There was nothing there but black water and American fire power.”

August 6, the Senate Foreign Relations Committee and the House Foreign Relations Committee hold closed hearings on the Gulf of Tonkin torpedo attacks. Senator Wayne Morse of Oregon, who had received a tip from an unnamed Pentagon insider (not Daniel Ellsberg), asks US Defense Secretary Robert McNamara if the torpedo attacks might have been a response to operation OPLAN 34A which had conducted attacks on the North Vietnamese island of Hon Me on July 31. The Senator raises the possibility that the North Vietnamese may have thought the ship was supporting OPLAN 34A’s attacks. Morse suggests that McNamara should inquire as to the exact location of the Maddox on those days and what its true mission was. McNamara responds: “First, our Navy played absolutely no part in, was not associated with, was not aware of, any South Vietnamese actions, if there were any.... The Maddox was operating in international waters, was carrying out a routine patrol of the type we carry out all over the world at all times. I did not have knowledge at the time of the attack on the island. There is no connection between this patrol and any action of South Vietnam.”

On August 7, in response to alleged “unprovoked” attacks by North Vietnamese torpedo boats against the USS Maddox on August 2 and August 4, Congress passes the Gulf of Tonkin Resolution, authorizing President Johnson to take “all necessary measures to repel any armed attacks against the forces of the United States and to prevent further aggression.” It sails though the House unanimously and in the Senate it meets only the slightest resistance with two dissenting votes. When Daniel Ellsberg leaks the Pentagon Papers seven years later, it is revealed that the resolution had been drafted 2 months earlier.

	George Bush campaigns against the Civil Rights Act in his bid for election. He loses the election.
	Elections are held and the Progressive People’s Party (PPP) gains 46% of the vote, while the People’s National Congress (PNC) receives 41% and the conservative United Force (TUF) ends up with 12%. But the TUF gives its votes in the legislature to the PNC and consequently PNC candidate Forbes Burnham becomes the prime minister.

Top of tab

Ghanaian President Kwame Nkrumah rejects IMF and World Bank recommendations to implement a economic development strategy based on non-inflationary borrowing and reduced government spending. Ghana’s refusal to implement these reforms makes it ineligible to receive loans from the two institutions. Nkrumah continues with a policy aimed at diversifying the Ghanaian economy through import substituting industrialization (ISI).

On March 11, in Washington, D.C., US ambassador to Ghana William P. Mahoney meets with CIA Director John A. McCone and the deputy chief of the CIA’s Africa division [name unknown] to discuss a “Coup d’etat Plot” in Ghana. According to a CIA document summarizing the meeting, Mahoney says that he is uncertain whether the coup, being planned by Acting Police Commissioner Harlley and Generals “Otu” and “Ankrah,” will ever come to pass. Notwithstanding, he adds that he is confident that President Kwame Nkrumah will not make it another year, given his waning popularity and Ghana’s deteriorating economy. “In the interests of further weakening Nkrumah,” Mahoney recommends that the US deny Nkrumah’s forthcoming request for financial assistance, according to the CIA memo. He adds that by refusing the request it would make a “desirable impression on other countries in Africa,” the memo also says. In the event of a coup, Mahoney says a military junta would likely come to power.

March 22, in a public speech, Ghanaian President Kwame Nkrumah lashes out against US support for Tshombe in the Congo and blames the US government and financiers for many of the problems in Africa. The same day, in a telegraph to the US Department of State, US ambassador to Ghana William P. Mahoney recounts a meeting he had that morning with President Kwame Nkrumah. He says he told the president that the US government resented the anti-US statements he had made in his March 22 speech, in which he had laid blame on the US for many of Africa’s problems. “I said I would never have believed that [a] man of his sophistication and refinement would use language like that against my country, and it shock[ed] [me] to hear him do so.” Mahoney says that Nkrumah conceded that the rhetoric in his speech was “loaded and slanted throughout,” but insisted that “he had special purpose in mind.” After Mahoney further criticized Nkrumah’s speech, defending US policy in Africa, he saw that the president was crying. “I looked up and I saw he was crying. With difficulty he said I could not understand [the] ordeal he had been through during [the] last month. [He [r]ecalled that there had been seven attempts on his life.” In comments listed at the end of his telegraph, Mahoney says that Nkrumah seems “convinced as ever [that the] US is out to get him” and “still suspects US involvement” in the recent assassination attempts. He explains that Nkrumah appears to be a “badly frightened man” whose “emotional resources seem [to] be running out” and predicts that there will be “more hysterical outbursts” from Nkrumah against the US.

March 27, Robert W. Komer, a National Security Council staffer, says in a memorandum to McGeorge Bundy, President Johnson’s Special Assistant for National Security Affairs, that plans to overthrow the Ghanaian government are looking “good.” “[W]e may have a pro-Western coup in Ghana soon,” he states at the beginning of his memo. “Certain key military and police figures have been planning one for some time, and Ghana’s deteriorating economic condition may provide the spark. The plotters are keeping us briefed, and State thinks we’re more on the inside than the British. While we’re not directly involved (I’m told), we and other Western countries (including France) have been helping to set up the situation by ignoring Nkrumah’s pleas for economic aid. The new OCAM (Francophone) group’s refusal to attend any OAU meeting in Accra (because of Nkrumah’s plotting) will further isolate him. All in all, looks good.”

April 24, 500 US troops invade the Dominican Republic to crush a popular revolt aimed at returning John Bosch to power. The US presence in the Dominican quickly grows, with an additional 4,000 troops arriving a few days later. Eventually, a force of 23,000 will occupy the country. US troops in the DR, as well as forces from Honduras, Brazil and Costa Rica, remain in that country for about one year. During that time, about 2000 Dominicans are killed - as the New York Times notes at the time - “fighting and dying for social justice and constitutionalism.” The US forces leave in September 1966 after supervising elections in which they ensure Joaquin Balaguer, a friend of the notorious Trujillo family, wins. The US will be content with Balaguer. Describing the time period under his leadership, William Blum will later write: “Joachim Balaguer [ruled] ... his people in the grand Latin American style: The rich became richer and the poor had babies, hungry babies; democracy remained an alien concept; the police and military regularly kidnapped, tortured and murdered opponents of the government and terrorized union organizers. But the man was not, personally, the monster that Trujillo was. There was relative calm and peace. No ‘communist threat’ hovered over the land. The pot was sweetened for foreign investors, and American corporations moved in with big bucks. There was stability and order. And the men who ran the United States looked and were satisfied.”

Sir Bruce Greatbatch, governor of Seychelles, says in a Foreign Office memorandum how the US has made the depopulation of the Chagos Islands “virtually a condition of the agreement.” Describing the islands’ inhabitants, he says, “[T]hese people have little aptitude for anything other than growing coconuts.” They are “unsophisticated and untrainable,” he remarks.

Commenting on the US and Britain’s plan to evict the inhabitants of Diego Garcia so the two countries can establish a military base on the island, British Colonial Secretary Anthony Greenwood warns that it must be presented to the United Nations “with a fait accompli.”

In April, British Secretary of State for the Colonies Anthony Greenwood travels to Mauritius to negotiate terms of independence for Mauritius. He says Britain expects to retain the Chagos Archipelago when Mauritius becomes independent.

September 30, a small group of Indonesian junior military officers loyal to left-wing nationalist President Ahmed Sukarno, kidnaps and kills 6 senior army generals and announces the creation of a revolutionary council to rule the country. The officers, led by one of Sukarno’s bodyguards, Colonel Untung, claim the killings were necessary to thwart an imminent, CIA-backed coup against the Sukarno government. This event is known as the “September 30 Affair.” Interestingly, Indonesian General Suharto, who takes control of Jakarta the following day, had foreknowledge of the attacks but did nothing to stop them. Prior to this event, tension between Indonesia and the West were on the rise. Sukarno had earlier threatened to nationalize US oil assets.

On October 1, Indonesian General Suharto takes control of Jakarta and claims the prior day's killings were part of a Communist plan to take over Indonesia. For the next five months, he oversees the slaughter of between 500,000 and 1 million people, many of them targeted because of their affiliation with the PKI, Indonesia’s Communist party. During this period, Suharto is backed by the US, Britain, and Australia. The US embassy in Indonesia provides the Indonesian army with a list compiled by the CIA consisting of the names of thousands of Communist Party leaders who the Indonesian military hunts down and executes.

Ghanaian President Kwame Nkrumah publishes his famous work, Neo-Colonialism: The Last Stage of Imperialism, in which he predicts, quite accurately, that Africa will suffer persistent meddling by the intelligence agencies of foreign governments, particularly the CIA and KGB. He accuses American intelligence of being behind several of the crises being experienced by the Third World. His book introduces the term “neo-colonialism,” whereby a state is theoretically independent, but in reality, has its economic system and political policies directed from outside. He again calls on Africans to be united against imperialism and global capitalism. The US government quickly informs Nkrumah that it opposes the ideas presented in the book and cancels $35 million in aid to Ghana.

A popular rebellion breaks out in the Dominican Republic, promising to reinstall Juan Bosch as the country's elected leader. The revolution is crushed when U.S. Marines land to uphold the military regime by force. The CIA directs everything behind the scenes.

In November during negotiations with Mauritius over independence, Prime Minister Harold Wilson insists that Britain retain the Chagos Archipelago. Britain plans to forcibly remove the archipelago’s inhabitants from their homes so the largest island, Diego Garcia, can be leased to the US, which intends to establish a military presence on the island. A telegram sent to the UK mission at the United Nations describes how the US and Britain are conspiring to hide the fact that the planned relocation of residents from the island of Diego Garcia will include inhabitants who have lived there for generations. “We recognize that we are in a difficult position as regards references to people at present on the detached islands,” the telegram says. “We know that a few were born in Diego Garcia and perhaps some of the other islands, and so were their parents before them. We cannot therefore assert that there are no permanent inhabitants, however much this would have been to our advantage. In these circumstances, we think it would be best to avoid all references to permanent inhabitants.”

On November 8, Britain issues an Order in Council (SI 1965/1920) separating the Chagos Archipelago, Aldabra, Farquhar and Desroches from Mauritius and making them into a new colony, the British Indian Ocean Territory (BIOT). Britain pays the Seychelles and Mauritius three million pounds for their “loss of sovereignty” over the islands.

	Israel illegally obtains enriched uranium from NUMEC (Nuclear Materials and Equipment Corporation).
	In Greece, with CIA backing, the King removes George Papandreous as Prime Minister for failing to vigorously support U.S. interests in Greece.
	The CIA backs a military coup in the Congo which installs Mobutu Sese Seko as dictator. The hated and repressive Mobutu exploits his desperately poor country for billions.

Top of tab

In January of this year a British Foreign Office official writes of “convert[ing] all the existing residents [of the Chagos Islands] into short-term, temporary residents” in order to justify their removal to make room for US naval facilities planned for the island of Diego Garcia.

Sir Paul Gore-Booth, a senior official at the Foreign Office, writes to diplomat Dennis Greenhill about the “population problem” on the island of Diego Garcia where the US and Britain want to establish a military base. “We must surely be very tough about this,” he says. “The object of the exercise is to get some rocks which will remain ours... There will be no indigenous population except seagulls... The United States Government will require the removal of the entire population of the atoll by July.” In his reply, Greenhill says, “Unfortunately along with the birds go some few Tarzans or Man Fridays whose origins are obscure and who are hopefully being wished on to Mauritius.” Under the heading “Maintaining The Fiction,” an unnamed British official recommends in a memo that Britain reclassify the residents of the Chagos Archipelago as “a floating population.” He also suggests making “up the rules as we go along.”

The radical magazine Ramparts begins a series of unprecedented anti-CIA articles. Among their scoops: the CIA has paid the University of Michigan $25 million dollars to hire "professors" to train South Vietnamese students in covert police methods. MIT and other universities have received similar payments. Ramparts also reveal that the National Students' Association is a CIA front. Students are sometimes recruited through blackmail and bribery, including draft deferments.

Britain grants Guyana independence.

February 24, the Ghanaian army stages a coup, overthrowing the pan-Africanist government of Kwame Nkrumah - who is in Burma at the start of a grand tour aimed at resolving the conflict in Vietnam. A weak economy, exacerbated by the deliberate actions of Western governments to destabilize the country, had severely damaged the president’s popularity among the masses. Additionally, the military was upset with Nkrumah’s cuts to the defense budget and the declining real wage of army officers. The coup itself was supported by the CIA, which had maintained intimate contact with the plotters for at least a year. The CIA’s involvement in the plot was so close that it managed to recover some classified Soviet military equipment as the coup was happening.

On March 12, commenting on the recent coup in Ghana, Robert W. Komer, a special assistant to the president, says in a memo to President Johnson that the overthrow of the Nkrumah government was “another example of a fortuitous windfall.” He gloats over the win noting that “Nkrumah was doing more to undermine our interests than any other black African” and that the “new military regime is almost pathetically pro-Western.” He then goes on to emphasize that the US should “follow through skillfully and consolidate such successes.” He explains: “A few thousand tons of surplus wheat or rice, given now when the new regimes are quite uncertain as to their future relations with us, could have a psychological significance out of all proportion to the cost of the gesture. I am not arguing for lavish gifts to these regimes - indeed, giving them a little only whets their appetites, and enables us to use the prospect of more as leverage.”

George Bush is elected to congress.

In May, the IMF and World Bank begin working with the military junta in Ghana, providing the country with standby credit. Western countries agree to postpone Ghana’s debt obligations until December when an IMF-sponsored meeting is scheduled to convene. In December the military government of Ghana meets with the Paris Club of Western governments and forges a debt rescheduling agreement, which defers Ghana’s debt obligations between June 1966 and December 1968 to the period 1971-1979.

On December 30, the US and Britain secretly agree to make the British Indian Ocean Territory (BIOT) available “for the defense purposes of both Governments as they may arise” for a period of 50 years, and thereafter for 20 years during which time either government will have the right to terminate the agreement.

Top of tab

Che Guevara, having gone to Bolivia in the hopes of starting a revolution to overthrow the military government, is captured and executed by Bolivian soldiers trained, equipped and guided by US Green Beret and CIA operatives.

On two separate voyages, plantation workers and residents leave the Chagos Islands on the Mauritius, a ship operated by Rogers & Co., to Port Louis, Mauritius’s capital. Many of the passengers are going to Mauritius only temporarily and intend to return to the island. But when they try to return to the Chagos Islands in 1968, they are refused passage and told they will not be permitted to return to their homes. The islanders are thus left stranded in Mauritius, without resettlement assistance or compensation.

Olivier Bancoult later recounts to the BBC how his 11-member family went to Mauritius in 1968 so that his ill sister could see a doctor. After she died, family members tried to return to the islands, but “were told the land had been given to the Americans for a US military base.”

The British also purchase the islands’ copra plantations and shut down their medical facilities. Ships carrying food and medicine to Diego Garcia are turned back. These measures are taken with the knowledge of British Prime Minister Harold Wilson and his Conservative successor, Edward Heath. In 1968 Foreign Secretary Michael Stewart writes that “by any stretch of the English language, there was an indigenous population and the Foreign Office knew it.”

Congressman Wright Patman, then the Chairman Of The House Banking And Currency Committee, states in Congress, "In the United States today, we have in effect two governments...We have the duly constituted government...Then we have an independent, uncontrolled and uncoordinated government in the Federal Reserve System, operating the money powers which are reserved to Congress by the Constitution."

The treatment of the Palestinians by the Zionist Jews finally ignites enough anger in the Arab world for Egypt, Jordan and Syria to mobilize on Israel's borders. All of these three countries are suddenly attacked by Israel and as a result the Sinai which included Gaza is stolen from Egypt, and the West Bank and the Jordan River is taken from Jordan.

On June 8, the Israelis launch an attack on the USS Liberty with Israeli aircraft and motor torpedo boats, in an effort to blame it on Egypt, to bring America into the war on their side, and of course follow to the letter, their Mossad motto, "By Way Of Deception, Thou Shalt Do War."

As a result of their attack, 34 American servicemen are killed and 174 wounded. Israel lies as usual, claiming it mistook this warship (flying a large United States flag) for an ancient out-of-service Egyptian horse carrier El Quseir, which is 180 feet shorter. They also claim the ship was in the war zone, when it was actually in international waters, far from any fighting. The Israeli's attack on this warship lasts 75 minutes during which time they shoot up one of the United States flags, resulting in the sailors desperately raising another one.

In the aftermath of this attack, the American sailors who survived are warned by the United States military not to discuss the matter with anyone due to, "national security." This story gets no prominence in the Rothschild-controlled mainstream media and as usual Israel is in no way even rebuked for their crimes by their subservient country of America.

The following day, June 9th, Israel illegally occupies the Golan Heights which it seizes from Syria. This area goes on to provide Israel with one third of its fresh water.

Israeli General Matityahu Peled, is quoted in Ha'aretz (March 19, 1972) with the following statement, "The thesis that the danger of genocide was hanging over us in June 1967 and that Israel was fighting for its physical existence is only bluff, which was born and developed after the war."

Another sickening and deceptive statement but again at least he's consistent with the Mossad motto, "By Way Of Deception, Thou Shalt Do War."

Following the Six Day War, Israel takes over the administration of the West Bank and Gaza. Whereas Egyptian President Gamal Abddul Nasser had been tough on Islamist militants, Israel is much more permissive. One of their first actions is to release Sheikh Ahmed Yassin from prison. Yassin, a charismatic radical Islamist and the future founder of Hamas had been jailed in 1965 during one of Nasser’s crackdowns. David Shipler, a former New York Times reporter, later recounts that he was told by the military governor of the Gaza Strip, Brigadier General Yitzhak Segev, that the Israeli government had financed the Islamic movement to counteract the PLO and the communists. According to Martha Kessler, a senior analyst for the CIA, “we saw Israel cultivate Islam as a counterweight to Palestinian nationalism.” Yassin will later form Hamas as the military arm of his organizations.

de Rothschild Frères is renamed Banque Rothschild.

A CIA-backed military coup overthrows the government in Greece 2 days before the elections. The favorite to win was George Papandreous, the liberal candidate. During the next 6 years, the "reign of the colonels" - backed by the CIA - will usher in the widespread use of torture and murder against political opponents. When a Greek ambassador objects to President Johnson about U.S. plans for Cyprus, Johnson tells him: "Fuck your parliament and your constitution."

During Operation Phoenix the CIA helps South Vietnamese agents identify and murder alleged Viet Cong leaders operating in South Vietnamese villages. According to a 1971 congressional report, this operation kills about 20,000 "Viet Cong."

The CIA has been illegally spying on American citizens since 1959, but with Operation CHAOS, President Johnson dramatically boosts the effort. CIA agents go undercover as student radicals to spy on and disrupt campus organizations protesting the Vietnam War. They are searching for Russian instigators, which they never find. CHAOS will effectively spies on 7,000 individuals and 1,000 organizations.

Top of tab

George W. Bush is inducted into Skull & Bones at Yale University. His opponent in a future Presidential election, John Kerry, was a bonesman only two years prior.

Richard Nixon is elected President.

The US informs Britain that it will proceed with an “austere” communication and other facilities on Diego Garcia, the largest atoll of the Chagos Archipelago. This information is not made public.

A CIA-backed Ba'athist coup brings Ahmad Hassan al-Bakr to power in Iraq, who places his cousin Saddam Hussein in charge of state security operations.

Top of tab

In March Henry Kissinger, President Nixon’s assistant for National Security Affairs, convinces the president to begin a bombing campaign in Cambodia where Viet Cong and North Vietnamese have established logistical bases. The campaign, secretly referred to as “Operation Breakfast,” spurs the Vietnamese to move deeper into Cambodia causing US bombings to move further into the country’s interior.

The US drops an incredible number of bombs on civilian areas. Craig Etcheson will later write in his book, The Rise and Demise of Democratic Kampuchea: “The fact is that the United States dropped three times the quantity of explosives on Cambodia between 1970 and 1973 than it had dropped on Japan for the duration of World War II. Between 1969 and 1973, 539,129 tons of high explosives rained down on Cambodia; that is more than one billion pounds. This is equivalent to some 15,400 pounds of explosives for every square mile of Cambodian territory. Considering that probably less than 25% of the total area of Cambodia was bombed at one time or another, the actual explosive force per area would be at least four times this level.”

The US also drops more than two million tons of bombs on Laos during more than 500,000 bombing missions - exceeding what it had dropped on Germany and Japan during all of World War II - in an effort to defeat the left-leaning Pathet Lao and to destroy North Vietnamese supply lines. The ordnance includes some 90 million cluster bombs, 20-30% of which do not detonate. A Senate report finds: “The United States has undertaken a large-scale air war over Laos to destroy the physical and social infrastructure of Pathet Lao held areas and to interdict North Vietnamese infiltration ... throughout all this there has been a policy of subterfuge and secrecy ... through such things as saturation bombing and the forced evacuation of population from enemy held or threatened areas - we have helped to create untold agony for hundreds of thousands of villagers.” And in 1970, Far Eastern Economic Review reports: “For the past two years the US has carried out one of the most sustained bombing campaigns in history against essentially civilian targets in northeastern Laos.... Operating from Thai bases and from aircraft carriers, American jets have destroyed the great majority of villages and towns in the northeast. Severe casualties have been inflicted upon the inhabitants ... Refugees from the Plain of Jars report they were bombed almost daily by American jets last year. They say they spent most of the past two years living in caves or holes.” Meo villagers who attempt neutrality or refuse to send their 13-year-olds to fight in the CIA’s army, are refused American-supplied rice and “ultimately bombed by the US Air Force.” The CIA also drops millions of dollars in forged Pathet Lao currency in an attempt to destabilize the Lao economy. During this period, the existence of US operations in Laos is outright denied.

British Foreign Secretary Michael Stewart notes in a memo to Prime Minister Harold Wilson that Parliament and US Congress were not informed that the US had waived several million dollars worth of fees associated with Britain’s Polaris submarine program. The US had agreed to waive the fees in exchange for an agreement that the British would rid Diego Garcia of its indigenous inhabitants so the US could build a military base there.

In April Prime Minister Wilson, Chancellor of the Exchequer Roy Jenkins and Secretary of State for Defense Denis Healey approve plans to completely evacuate the Chagos Islands in order to make way for the construction of a US communications facility on Diego Garcia, the archipelago’s largest island. In a secret memo to British Prime Minister Harold Wilson, Foreign Secretary Michael Stewart proposes that Britain mislead the UN “by present(ing) any move as a change of employment for contract workers - rather than as a population resettlement.” Five days later, Harold Wilson approves the recommendation to mislead the UN about the population of the Chagos Islands.

The notorious CIA torturer Dan Mitrione arrives in Uruguay, a country torn with political strife. Whereas right-wing forces previously used torture only as a last resort, Mitrione convinces them to use it as a routine, widespread practice. "The precise pain, in the precise place, in the precise amount, for the desired effect," is his motto. The torture techniques he teaches to the death squads rival the Nazis'. He eventually becomes so feared that revolutionaries kidnap and murder him a year later.

Zapata attempts to buy out United Fruit, another company with strong ties to the CIA and involved in the overthrow of reformed-minded Central American countries.

Bush tells the House of Representatives that unless the menace of human population growth is "recognized and made manageable, starvation, pestilence and war will solve it for us." Bush repeatedly compares population growth to a disease. In remarks to the House July 30, 1969, he likens the fight against the polio virus to the crusade to reduce the world's population. Urging the federal government to step up population control efforts, he said: "We have a clear precedent: When the Salk vaccine was discovered, large-scale programs were undertaken to distribute it. I see no reason why similar programs of education and family planning assistance should not be instituted in the United States on a massive scope."

Congressman Bush helps found, then chairs, the Republican Task Force on Earth Resources and Population, which produces a steady stream of propaganda claiming the world is already seriously overpopulated. The task force tries to rehabilitate the eugenics movement, seeking to accredit the idea that the human race was being "down bred," or reduced in genetic quality. A kind of 'Malthusian vanguard' organization, they hear testimony from "race scientist" William Shockley at Bush's invitation, pointing up the arrogance of Bush's commitment to eugenics.

Shockley causes a furor during the 1960's by advancing his thesis, already repeatedly disproven, that blacks are genetically inferior to whites in cognitive faculties and intelligence. The same year Bush invites him to appear before the GOP task force, Shockley writes: "Our nobly intended welfare programs may be encouraging dysgenics -- retrogressive evolution through disproportionate reproduction of the genetically disadvantaged ... We fear that 'fatuous beliefs' in the power of welfare money, unaided by eugenic foresight, may contribute to a decline of human quality for all segments of society." Shockley advocated a program of mass sterilization of the unfit and mentally defective, which he called his "Bonus Sterilization Plan." The special target of Shockley's prescriptions for mass sterilizations is blacks, whom he saw as reproducing too fast. "If those blacks with the least amount of Caucasian genes are in fact the most prolific and the least intelligent, then genetic enslavement will be the destiny of their next generation," he writes. Looking at the recent past, Shockley says in 1967: "The lesson to be drawn from Nazi history is the value of free speech, not that eugenics is intolerable."

Congress approves laws authorizing the Federal Reserve to accept the IMF's SDRs as reserves in the United States and to issue Federal Reserve Notes in exchange for SDRs.

Top of tab