1959

The USA got bigger with the addition of Alaska and Hawaii. Ike signed the official declaration which made Alaska the 49th state on 3rd January 1959. Hawaii became a state on August 21st.

January 1959 Soviet “Luna 1” missed the Moon by 3,700 miles

February 1959 James Smith, ICA Director, was replaced by James W Riddleburger.

Fulgencio Batista’s government collapsed on January 1st 1959.

This was embarrassing for Eisenhower – there wasn;t even deemed to be a need for OISP policies in Cuba.

Summers page 267 – spring – the Ka----s mailed details of Kennedys affair witht heir lodger to the press. Noone published, but Stearn Publication sent it to Hoover.

“For the New Year [1959] pre-preparations to bring 1290d policies to more than 8 Latin American and Caribbean countries including Argentina, Colombia, Ecuador, Mexico, Panama, El Salvador, Peru, and Haiti were underway.” WWW.Colombiawar.org

All of the original 22 countries had forces sufficient or in excess of internal security requirements – except Bolivia and Afghanistan.

In several nations (Vietnam, Iran, Philippines) the military undertook police-type internal security functions while in others (Thailand) certain police units maintained military tasking and capabilities.

But the Eisenhower administration suffered bureaucratic problems regarding development of 1290d programs. Coordination proved erratic. See pages 9 and 10 on www.Colombiawar.org

Bolivia?

The Revolution in Cuba was complete on 8th January 1959.

Castro was not a communist and was even pro-US. Where he went wrong was that he wanted a more equitable relationship in trade with the US.

Castro was a Cuban nationalist – his heroes were other Cuban Latin America nationalists who fought against Spain or the US – Bolivar, Maceo, Martin.

USSR approached Castro with a certain amount of scepticism and caution – Castro was an unknown quantity and Cuba was close the USA.

10th Januray 1959, USSR make tentative move to re-establish diplomatic relations with Cuba. January 1959 at rotary club attended by US and Cuban businessmen  - stated that he was not a communist.

3rd February ML King embarks on a month long visit to India and meets PM Jawaharlal Nehru and many Gandhi followers.

Ike’s Travels

February 19th – 20th  he was in Acapulco having an informal meeting with President Lopez Mateos.

March 1959, the armed revolution in Vietnam began as Ho Chi Minh declared a People’s War to unite all of Vietnam under his leadership. His Politburo now orders a changeover to an all-out military struggle. Thus begins the second Indochina War.

MacMillan talks March 19th to 24th 1959. About What?

PM of GB – 1 Jan 1957 – 18 October 1963.

NATO ministerial meeting Washington and four powers meeting April 1959.

Berlin/Germany summit – March/April included four power Working Group reports on German reunification and European security.

April 1959, Castro made a visit to Washington, to try to win over American support. He was written off as a commie troublemaker. He reiterated that he wasn’t a communist and claimed to be opposed to all kinds of dictators and “that is why we are against communism”. At this press conference he told his audiuence that Cuba had not received any aid from USSR nor requested any and intended to keep Cuba equidistant between the superpowers although in context of global Cold War his heart was “with the west”.

The US were upset by plans for land reform and nationalisation; independent or non-aligned foreign policy challenging the US hegemony. As Castro’s overtures to the US were not reciprocated, USSR’s overtures to Havana became increasingly attractive.

Peter Shearman in “The Soviet Union and Cuba” describes “The USA’s self-fulfilling prophecy”.

Castro’s first threat came from popular Socialist Party (PSP).

The US’s negative reaction helped to polarise the factions in Cuba – to harden Castro’s attitude against those who opposed the reform and softened towards PSP. – US attitude led to polarisation of Cuban society and to a certain amount of internal repression.

Krushchev’s third world strategy was able to exploit the US attitude to the 3rd world shown in the particular case of Cuba. Relations with the US deteriorated and Castro came to recognise USSR as a guarantor of Cuban national security. October – bilateral trade agreement with USSR. USSR undertook to purchase 300,000 tons of sugar – but in the past 4 years had purchased sugar from Batista – in larger amounts. The US were cutting their sugar quota.

No OISP initiatives were considered for Cuba in the years prior to Castro’s revolution. Now the US had to deal with prospect of Cuban-style insurgency spreading throughout the hemisphere.OISP were in crisis.

After Cuba OISP policies (see 1954) came to dominate US-Latin American security relations for the rest of the Cold War.

“During 1959/60 Allen Dulles and the Eisenhower administration began to assemble in south Florida, the infrastructure for covert action against Cuba. This was the JM/WAVE capability, later formally constituted as the CIA Miami station. JM/WAVE was an operational centre for the Eisenhower regime’s project of staging an invasion of Cuba using a secret army of anti-Castro Cubans exiles organised, armed, trained, transported and directed by the CIA. The Cubans, called Brigade 2506, were trained in secret camps in Guatemala, and they had air support from B-26 bombers based in Nicaragua. This invasion was crushed by Castro’s defending forces in less than three days.

Before going along with the plan so eagerly touted by Allen Dulles, Kennedy had established the pre-condition that under no circumstances whatsoever would there be direct intervention by US military forces against Cuba. On the one hand, Dulles had assured Kennedy that the news of the invasion would trigger an insurrection which would sweep Castro and his regime away. On the other hand, Kennedy had to be concerned about provoking a global thermonuclear confrontation with the USSR, in the eventuality that NS Krushchev decided to respond to a US Cuban gambit by, for example, cutting off US access to Berlin.”

The CIA contracted with the organisation of Mafia boss Meyer Lansky to organise and train assassination squads for use against the Cuba government. Among those employed were John Rosselli Santos Trafficante and Sam Giancana.

VP Richard Nixon was the “White House action man” on cuba. Page 176 Kennedy Conspiracy.

On 4th May Ike and Churchill, who’d first met in 1942, reunited in Washington DC. JF Dulles was in hospital, dying of cancer. Geroge C Marrshall was paralysed by a stroke. Churchill was ill from jet-lag.

British PM 1951 – 1955 – he was old and frail anyway failing – details?

May, North Vietnam established the Central Office of South Vietnam (COSVN) to oversee the coming war in the south. Construction of the Ho Chi Minh trail now begins.

The trail will eventually expand into a 1500 mile-long network of jungle and mountain passes extending from North Vietnam’s coast along Vietnam’s western border through Laos, parts of cambodia, funneling a constant stream of soldiers  and supplies into the highlands of South Vietnam in 1959, it takes 6 months to make the journey, by 1968 it will take only 6 weeks due to road improvements by North Vietnamese labourers, many of whom are women. In the 1970s a parallel fule pipeline will be added.

Black Civil Rights

On the 23rd June, Martin Luther King and other civil rights leaders met with the President in Washington.

Ike’s Travels

On June 26th he was sent to Montreal for a ceremony opening the St Lawrence seaway, with Queen Elizabeth II.

Harriman trip to Russia in June. Foreign ministers conference – July – German peace treaty; Berlin; German reunification.

V-Ps trip to Russia and Poland July/August.

July, 4,000 VM guerrillas originally born in the south are sent from North VN to infiltrate south VN.

July 8th, two US military advisers, Major Dale Buis, and Sgt Chester Ovnand, are killed by VM guerrillas at Bien Hoa, South VN. They are the first US deaths in the 2nd war which Americans will come to know as The VietNam War.

In the south, Marshall Law was declared in October. It increased opposition and set Americans against Diem. New secret police and police forces to destroy all threats to diem. He ordered the removal of all peasants and villagers from areas susceptible to communist penetration and anti-government activity – put in internment camps or fortified settlements called “aggrovilles” – brutal and turned thousands of south Vietnamese against their government.

The first director of its strategic hamlet programme was called Col Pham Ngoc Thao, an early VC supporter and agent? – Idiot’s Guide to Vietnam. Is there a move to try to blame the atrocities carried out in south Vietnam on the VC?

Ike’s Travels

August 26th to 27th Ike was in West Germany – Bonn -  to meet Adenauer and Heuss. Then to London until September 2nd to meet MacMillan and the Queen at Chequers. Then to Paris until the 4th to meet De Gaulle and Italy’s Segru. Ike addressed the North Atlantic Council. He rested from the 4th to the 7th of September at Culzean Castle in the UK.

DDE trip to Europe (Bonn) – August 25th-27th. London 28th – Spetember 1st – Paris 3rd  September. Scotland 4-6th September. Krushchev visit to USA started on 15th Spetember.

NSC 5906/1 – called for continued support of civil police and other “overt and covert” programmes to fight commie subversion, etc…

13th September 1959 – The Russians sent a rocket to the moon.

Luna 2 on 13th September reached the Moon landing near Crater Archimedes. It also confirmed that the Moon has no significant magnetic field. Luna 3

Black Civil Rights

17th September, ML King's first book "Stride Toward Freedom: the Montgomery Story" is published.

20th September during a book signing in Harlem, NYC, King is stabbed by Izola Ware Curry. He is rushed to Harlem Hospital where a 7inch letter opener was removed from his chest.

Krushchev Thaw

Krushchev visited the US in September 1959. It was very successful – he proved popular and he suggested a 1960s détente –“nobody did a thing about it”. When?

There’s a story which as been handed down and embellished regarding a planned visit to Disneyland. The truth is that Walt Disney very much wanted the visit to go ahead, but US security services, guarding Krushchev, prevented the visit because of inadequate security. Krushchev later made a joke that there was a secret missile base hidden there.

October 7th 1959 Baath assassination team ambushes Iraqi strongman General Abdel – Karim Kassem in Baghdad, wounding him, Saddam – in the team – is wounded and flees to Syria, then Egypt.

4th October Luna III flew behind the Moon and sent photographs of the Moon’s far side, never before seen by man. USSR then did very little while the yanks caught up.

The President’s Goodwill trip (PGT), December, 1960

Rome, Ankora, Karachi, Kabul, New Delhi, Tehran, Athens, Tunis, Paris.

Meeting of heads of governments, Paris, Decemebr.

DATES - “The [McCarthyite] blacklist remained unchallenged until 1959, when Kirk Douglas insisted that Dalton Trumbo receive on screen credit for writing ‘Spartacus’ a movie with obvious allegorical refernce to the madness that had infected Hollywood”. – Eliot’s Disney.

DATES?

JF Dulles died and was replaced by Christian a Herter as Sec of State.

Lewis S Strauss was replaced by Frederick H Meuller as Sec of Commerce.

Neil H McElroy was replaced by Thomas S Gates as Sec of Defence.

MORE!!

US having a hard time in Middle East having run out of Arab patience. The US apposed to Nasser’s penetration of Lebanon. Dulles countered “indirect aggression” by the United Arab Republic with landings by US forces in the Lebanon.

Nelson Rockefeller became Governor of New York in 1959 and “began spending the taxpayers’ money like the legendary drunken sailor, piling up public debt with reckless abandon”. By the time he left Albany he had created 230 agencies and authorities and left the state with a massive $12bn debt. “Fighting the Good Fight: A History of the New York Conservative Party”, George Martin.

December 4th to 6th Ike went to Rome to meet Granchi, and the Pope on the 6th. December 6th to 7th in Ankara to meet Bayar. Then Karachi until the 9th on informal visit and met President Ayub Khan. December 9th Kabul – informal visit wto meet King Mohammed Zahir. In India until the 14th – New Delhi. He met President Prasad and pm Nehru. Addressed parliament. December 14th in Tehran to meet Shah Mohammed Peza Pahlau and addressed parliament.

December 14th to 15th in Athens. An official visit this time, meeting King Paul, pm Karamanlis, and addressed parliament.

December 17th – Tunisia to meet President Bourguiba

December 18th to 21st – Toulon, Paris conference with De Gaulle, MacMillan and Adenhauer.

December 21st – 22nd – Madrid met Franco

December 22nd – Casablanca to meet King Mohammed V

http://history.acusd.edu/gen/20th/coldwarike.html

The Ranger program was a series of unmanned space missions by the United States in the 1960s whose objective was to obtain the first close-up images of the surface of the Moon. The Ranger spacecraft were designed to collide with the lunar surface, returning imagery until they were destroyed upon impact.

Ranger was originally designed, beginning in 1959, in three distinct phases, called "blocks". Each block had different mission objectives and progressively more advanced system design. The JPL mission designers planned multiple launches in each block, to maximize the engineering experience and scientific value of the mission and to assure at least one successful flight. Total research, development, launch, and support costs for the Ranger series of spacecraft (Rangers 1 through 9) was approximately $170 million.

The Ranger spacecraft

Each Ranger spacecraft had six cameras on board. The cameras were fundamentally the same with differences in exposure times, fields of view, lenses, and scan rates. The camera system was divided into two channels, P (partial) and F (full). Each channel was self-contained with separate power supplies, timers, and transmitters. The F-channel had two cameras: the wide-angle A-camera and the narrow angle B-camera. The P-channel had four cameras: P1 and P2 (narrow angle) and P3 and P4 (wide angle). The final F-channel image was taken between 2.5 and 5 seconds before impact (altitude about 5 km) and the last P-channel image 0.2 to 0.4 seconds before impact (altitude about 600 m). The images provided better resolution than was available from Earth based views by a factor of 1000.

Wikipedia

Panama Canal

Egypt’s nationalisation of the Suez Canal led to Sec of State JF Dulles’ statement that his country had “rights of sovereignty” in the Panama Canal Zone. It brought more turmoil to Panama’s relations to the USA. Student riots erupted.

When Panamanians threatened a “peaceful invasion” of the Canal Zone, the US sent troops to back Panama’s National Guard and canal police to repel the demonstators. The Americans eventually built a fence around the zone.

Japan

Ike got no welcome in Japan - they refused to honour his visit with a welcome. To get an idea what the White House thought about Japan there’s a quote from JF Dulles, who referred to Japan as “the stationary aircraft carrier” of the Far East. US-Japan Mutual Security Treaty negotiations were in full swing. Consequently anti-US demos were plentiful in 1960s Japan. Inejiro Asanuma, the leader of Japan’s anti-US bases Socialist Party was assassinated in 1960. Since Japan needed access to US markets the treaty was signed and US bases in Japan remained.

DODGY ASSASSINATION IN JAPAN - ?