A Different World: 1961

Chapter 1

May you live in interesting times.

—Ancient Chinese Curse

Interesting times indeed. Had I known how interesting, I might have made some different decisions in life. You know: different college, different major, different career, friends with normal professions, that sort of thing. But over forty years later, well, you know,…hindsight is twenty-twenty. Some people say I’m a cynic, but I disagree. I’m a realist. That’s a cynic with experience. After over forty years of reporting the news, most of it bad, I think I can safely say I have experience.

I’m Ryan Ferguson, Fergy to my friends. Third generation Irish-American, with a little bit of Scottish, English, Polish, and German thrown in for good measure, sort of you average American mutt. You might have read some of my articles, editorials, or by-lines in the newspaper, or in one of the news magazines. You might have even bought and read one of my earlier books. If you did: Thank You!

Well anyway, after a two-year stint in the Army; I was drafted right after high school and served during that unpleasantness in Korea; the normal people at school were sort of boring. After my experiences in Korea, I just couldn’t fit in with the in-crowd on campus. Oh, I got along with them okay. It’s just that their concerns, worries, and interests were so petty and mundane. After sitting in a frozen hole in the ground; waiting for a human wave attack; after beating back that attack and knowing the next one was just a few minutes away; after holding your best friends hand while medics tried to keep his life blood from gushing out after a piece of steel ripped off half of his leg; after all of that, it was hard to get excited about the Home Coming Game or going to the beach for Spring Break.

Having gotten a late start in college, most of my classmates were three or four years younger than I was. They were from the middle and upper classes. Their fathers were bank VP’s, insurance executives, accountants, doctors, and lawyers. My father was a union pipe fitter. They were unfamiliar with want or depravation. I don’t blame them. I wished I’d had the same background and upbringing; could get excited about the same trivial things; but I can’t. As a result, most of my acquaintances were of a different mold in college. My career wasn’t exactly what you would call normal either.

I majored in Journalism. I like writing and at that time, the only real jobs for writers were as journalists, newspaper reporters. I guess I could have tried my hand writing comedy for television in Hollywood. One of my classmates made it big in the Sixties doing just that. But I’m also kind of nosy and like to know what’s going on. I also have a couple of annoying and expensive habits. You know, things like eating and having a roof over my head. At the time, being a newspaper reporter seemed like the logical and natural career choice. I knew I could detach myself and report objectively, not let my biases or feelings getting in the way of reporting the facts. Going to college on the GI Bill meant I only had to work a part-time job at a local paper to pay my living expenses and maintain an apartment, actually one side of a duplex, off campus.

I had two roommates whom I split the living expenses with. Charlie Duncan was a Mechanical Engineering major, minoring in Military Science. Energetic and short but muscular in stature, he had light brown hair and steely gray eyes. He wanted to become a Naval Aviator. Being a veteran, I tried to talk sense to him, but you can’t talk to some people, especially a testosterone charged twenty-two-year-old who knows everything and is indestructible. After graduation, he was commissioned as an ensign in the Naval Reserves and sent to Pensacola for primary flight training. He then went to all of the necessary training, always at the top of his class, and became a pilot, or as he insists, a Naval Aviator. He began flying jets off of aircraft carriers. I can think of saner and safer ways of making a living. You know explosive ordinance disposal, New York City cab driver, alligator wrestler. But you know what high levels of testosterone can do. Being only five-six, I think Charlie also had a Napoleon Complex, but being so small made it easier to for him to fit into the cockpit of those jets.

My other roommate, whom we only half-jokingly referred to as the southern branch of the Syndicate, Andrew Andy Provenzano was a Political Science major and went on to Emory Law School in Atlanta after graduation. He had the classic Italian features, olive complexion, Romanesque nose, and jet black hair. He loved politics and wanted to work behind the scenes. His father had been the mayor of his hometown, a small town outside Raleigh, North Carolina. He had no desire to run for elected office, claiming the real power in politics lay behind the scenes with the political staffers. That is a fact that over the years, I have come to accept as gospel. Having a heavy southern accent, severe acne scarring, and being prematurely bald would have limited his chances for national office anyway, especially with television making one’s appearance so much more important. A staunch Republican, he was active in the Young Republicans and had worked on the Eisenhower re-election campaign while in school, and later worked on Nixon’s presidential campaigns.

Besides Charlie and Andy, I hung out with a few other students. Peter Blackwell was in the Military Science program with Charlie and about as gung-ho. He was tall and with an athletic physique, he was considered good-looking in a rugged sort of way. He kept his blond hair in a crew cut, was laid back and easy going, and he was very popular with the girls. He had been a high school wrestling champion and received a partial scholarship for college. After graduation, he was commissioned as a second lieutenant in the Marine Corps Reserves and placed on active duty at Camp LeJeune, North Carolina.

Wayne McMillan is a year older than I am. He was a Reserve Captain in the Army. He had received a battlefield commission and was awarded the Silver Star for his actions in Korea. For some strange reason, he wanted to make the Army a career. To keep his commission, the Army required him to obtain a college degree. He was going to college on the Army’s Bootstrap Program. Having been in the same battalion and involved in many of the same battles in Korea, we had a lot in common and our friendship has lasted over the years. After graduation, he was sent to Fort Knox, Kentucky to attend the Advanced Armor Officer’s course. After completion of training, he was assigned to NATO as a Troop Commander to the Second Armored Cavalry Regiment stationed in Nurnberg, Germany.

Brian Abelman had already received a bachelor’s degree in Economics and was working on his master’s degree in International Relations. He lived next door and, as we shared a patio and barbecue pit, he and his wife Barbara were frequent visitors and drinking companions. After he completed his master’s program, he accepted a position with the State Department’s Foreign Service Division. In 1960, he transferred from Washington, DC to a staff position with the US Embassy in Saigon, South Vietnam.

Franklin Aderholt was one of the first Negroes enrolled in our college. Being a small progressive private school, there wasn’t much of a stink made about the fact that he was Colored. Like Wayne and I, he had served in Korea and was attending college on the GI Bill. He majored in Economics and Political Science and went on to graduate from law school at Morehouse College in Atlanta. While in law school he became very active in the Civil Rights Movement and later became involved with its leadership.

All of us graduated in June of 1957, and vowing to keep in touch, we went our separate ways. I got a job working for a weekly neighborhood newspaper in Fort Lauderdale. The owner had served in the Marines with my uncle during the War and owed him a favor or two. Hiring the nephew of a guy who saved his life was no big deal to him. Being a small local newspaper, I covered a myriad of topics. In the morning I might be at the marina covering a yacht launching. After lunch, I would be in the Everglades for an alligator roundup. Some days it was crime reporting. Other days, I would cover groundbreaking ceremonies and high school graduations. In January 1958, I went to Cape Canaveral to report on the launch of the first US satellite, Explorer I.

In December of 1958, I accepted an offer to work as a staff reporter for one of the large newspapers in Atlanta. Although the climate was not as pleasant, the pay was much better. Andy and Frank were finishing up law school and my relocating gave us the opportunity to spend some time together. Soon after completing law school and passing the BAR, Andy accepted a staff position with the North Carolina Republican Party and moved to Raleigh. He was immediately involved in the 1960 Presidential election and worked in the local efforts to support Vice President Nixon’s successful bid for the presidency. I lost track of Andy and his career until he resurfaced as a prominent player in the Nixon re-election campaign in 1964.

Frank was a student activist during his time in law school and was very involved with the Civil Rights Movement. After completing law school he accepted a position with a small progressive law firm in Birmingham as a criminal trial lawyer and community activist.

Being new and single, I was often sent on the out-of-town assignments none of the more senior reporters wanted. It got to the point where I kept my passport and a packed suitcase in the office, knowing I would be going somewhere on a monthly, if not weekly basis. Being a veteran and having served in combat, I was frequently sent to where people were shooting at each other, not an assignment many people relished, and it was an assignment most of the married reporters shied away from.

My first overseas assignment was to Cuba to report on Fidel Castro’s taking power after Batista fled. I spent two weeks in Havana with the international press corps and had a brief interview with Raul Castro and Ernesto Guevara. Provisional President Dr. Manuel Urratia granted me a brief interview as well. Fidel Castro, the spirit behind the Cuban Revolution, was not available to be interviewed. The change of climate was nice. February in Atlanta can be cold, wet, and dreary. Havana, with its sub-tropical climate, was similar to what I was used to in Fort Lauderdale. I wasn’t back in Atlanta two months when I was sent off to New York and Washington to report on Fidel Castro’s visit to the United States.

Next, I was off to Saigon to report on the US Military Assistance and Advisory Group-Vietnam’s (MAAG-V) expanding role in advising and training the Army, Navy, and Air Force of the Republic of Vietnam, the southern half of the former French colony in Indo-China. For two weeks I toured South Vietnam by airplane, helicopter, and bus with a group of American, Australian, and British journalists. The entire time, senior American and Vietnamese officials explained how with the help of nearly seven hundred American Army Special Forces, Navy, and Air Force advisors, and lots of American money, weapons, and equipment, the South Vietnamese were defeating the Viet Cong, Vietnam’s pro-Communist guerrillas. We were never allowed to speak directly to the troops, American or Vietnamese, and except in the larger cities, we were discouraged from becoming separated from the group and our escorts. We were informed that North Vietnamese and Viet Cong agents might attack any Americans they found alone after mistaking them for military advisors. So much for their claims of defeating the Communist insurgents.

While in Saigon, I had the opportunity to spend a few hours with my former neighbors, Brian and Barbara Abelman. Brian was attached to the US Embassy working with the International Cooperation Agency (ICA), a State Department program to administer aid for economic, political, and social development programs. Strictly speaking, he was not supposed to talk with me as a journalist. We had a nice dinner on the roof of the Hotel Caravel where Brian filled me in, off the record, on what was really happening in Southeast Asia, including Laos and South Vietnam. With the suggestions he gave me, I was able to ask more informed questions of our guides and do some digging around on my own.

I made a quick one-week side trip to Vientiane, the capital of Laos, before returning to the States. Laos was involved in a three-way civil war between Royalist, Neutralist, and Communist factions. The United States supported the Royalist forces, but they were poorly led and trained. The United Nations permitted several hundred US military and CIA advisors to be involved in training and equipping the Royal Army and the indigenous mountain tribesmen along the Laos-Thailand border, but such an endeavor would require a great deal of time and money.

I was also able to find out that the Pathet Lao, the Laotian Communists faction, had formed a coalition with the Neutralist faction. They were, in direct violation of the UN Treaty, supported by soldiers from the North Vietnamese Peoples Army of Vietnam, the PAVN. The Chinese and the Russians were providing them with advisors, arms, and equipment. The Pathet Lao was the strongest faction and they were threatening to over-run the country. Unless the United States, the United Nations, or the Southeast Asia Treaty Organization (SEATO) countries intervened, all of Laos, and subsequently all of Southeast Asia would be in danger of falling to the Communists.

After I returned from Southeast Asia, I rested and reported on events occurring around the United States. In November 1960, I was in Washington, DC at the Nixon Campaign Headquarters when the final results that showed he won by a large margin came in from the West Coast Polls. Nixon may have been a Quaker, but he knew how to throw a party.

Chapter 2

Havana, Cuba

January 3, 1961

On November 25, 1956, eighty-three men, the exiled leadership of Cuba’s revolutionary 26th of July Movement, boarded the yacht Granma in the Mexican port of Tuxpan and set a course for Cuba. On December 1st, the Granma pulled to within one hundred yards of the Cuban coast at Playa Colorada and put it’s passengers ashore in a mangrove swamp. For hours the Revolutionaries struggled through the swamp before they reached dry ground. They had landed late, and they were put ashore at the wrong location, but the Revolutionaries were finally back on Cuban soil. On December 5th, the Cuban Army ambushed the guerrillas, killing, wounding, or capturing seventy-one of them. A week later the dozen remaining Revolutionaries made contact with local elements of the 26th of July Movement and sought refuge in the rugged Sierra Maestra in southeastern Cuba.

Operating from their mountain refuge, the members of the 26th of July Movement began the final struggle to remove Fulgencio Batista from power through agitation and sabotage. Sugar-cane fields were burned; public utilities were damaged; trains were derailed; estates were destroyed; military garrisons were attacked. The Batista Regime responded to these provocations with a wave of terror, killing or imprisoning hundreds of innocent citizens and generating hundreds more new recruits for the Movement.

On New Years Eve, 1958, Fulgencio Batista, his family, and his closest associates abdicated control of Cuba and fled to the Dominican Republic. Fidel Castro, his brother Raul, and his confidant and closest friend Ernesto Che Guevara, along with the remainder of the leadership of the 26th of July Movement marched into Havana to fill the vacancy left by the fleeing Batista Regime. With Fidel Castro’s assumption of power, most of the senior officials, senior military officers, business leaders, and community leaders fled the country. The majority of them sought refuge in the United States.

One week after Castro took power, President Dwight D. Eisenhower recognized the new Cuban government. A few months later, Fidel Castro traveled to the United States and met with members of the Eisenhower Administration. Vice President Nixon commented that Fidel Castro possessed those indefinable qualities which make him a leader of men, and that whatever we may think of him, he is going to be a great factor in the development of Cuba and very possibly Latin American affairs generally. He has the power to lead.

Within weeks of returning from his visit to the United States, the Castro Government began a policy of land reform. His government seized the lands owned by international and local businesses and Batista supporters and redistributed it to the peasants. His security services began to round up Batista supporters and former members of the Batista government. They were then tried and imprisoned or executed. Another wave of refugees, this time the Cuban middle class and intelligentsia; doctors, lawyers, engineers, educators, students, journalists, and mid-level government workers fled Cuba, mostly to the United States. Many of the leaders of the 26th of July Movement, seeing Castro’s political ideology displayed for the first time, declared that Castro had betrayed the Revolution and, fearing for their lives, fled the country.

By October, the Eisenhower Administration recognized that the Castro Government was Socialist, if not Communist, and with the support of the State Department, authorized the Central Intelligence Agency, the CIA, to support anti-Castro elements in Cuba. By December the CIA’s Plans Directorate presented an outline of possible covert operations to overthrow Castro to the Director of the Central Intelligence Agency (DCI), Allen Dulles, and President Eisenhower. By January 1960, a task force of the CIA’s Western Hemisphere Division had begun comprehensive planning of covert actions against the Castro Government. A policy paper was presented to President Eisenhower in March and the President gave his approval to initiate covert operations designed to oust Castro.

In May a covert CIA radio station, Radio Swan, began broadcasting anti-Castro propaganda from Swan Island in the western Gulf of Mexico. At the same time, the CIA began to set up a training facility and built an airstrip on an American owned coffee plantation in western Guatemala. Cuban exiles began guerrilla training there in July. Within a few months, the training regimen was transformed from guerrilla tactics to conventional military tactics. In August, President Eisenhower gave approval to use military personnel, Army Special Forces troops and Air Force National Guard pilots, to train the Cuban expatriates. Surplus US military equipment was also provided, including several World War Two vintage B-26 medium bombers.

On October 12, 1960, Castro further demonstrated his political philosophy when he nationalized several hundred American owned businesses. One week later, the United States recalled Ambassador, Philip Bonsal. In response to the aggressive measures of the United States, namely supporting anti-Castro insurgents, the Castro Government nationalized nearly two hundred more American owned businesses. The United States responded by imposing an embargo on Cuban products, primarily sugar, tobacco, and coffee.

On November 8, 1960, the people of the United States chose Vice President Richard M. Nixon to be the next President of the United States with Massachusetts Senator Henry Cabot Lodge as his Vice President. Vice President Nixon ran against Senate Majority Leader Lyndon Baines Johnson on a strong anti-Communism platform with the Cuban situation as a central theme of his campaign.

On November 10th, President-elect Nixon was provided with a State Department study of the Cuban situation. The study, prepared by the Office of Inter-American Affairs, examined the legality of intervention in Cuba by the United States. The conclusion of the study was that due to Cuba’s geographic proximity to the United States, the current Communist government in Cuba was a direct threat to the security of the United States and therefore intervention was legal under international law.

At a transition briefing by the CIA on November 18th, President-elect Nixon instructed DCI Dulles to continue with the plans to overthrow of the Castro Government. He also told the CIA Director to expand the scope of the operation to include direct US military support of the Cuban expatriates upon the request of the Cuban government-in-exile, members of the Cuban Revolutionary Council, the CRC, and the Frente Revolucionario Democratico, the Frente. He instructed Director Dulles to be prepared to turn planning and control of the operation over to the military as soon as he was sworn into office.

Director Dulles argued that it should be a CIA run operation, but President-elect Nixon insisted the role of the Central Intelligence Agency was primarily to gather and interpret intelligence, and the planned operation in Cuba, essentially a paramilitary invasion, was too large and complex for the resources of the Agency. He further maintained that only the Pentagon had the expertise and resources necessary to ensure success of the operation. He ordered Dulles to brief the Joint Chiefs of Staff ( JCS) immediately, and to plan on turning the operation over to them on January 21st.

Two days after the transition briefing, the CIA Director and his Deputy Director-Plans outlined the extent of their planning with the Joint Chiefs of Staff, the Commanders in Chief, Caribbean (CinCarib), and Atlantic, (CinCLant), and the commanders of the US Army’s Southern and Strike Commands. President-elect Nixon’s Executive Assistant for National Security, General Robert Cushman, was also present to show Nixon’s support for the operation and to report back to him on the military’s reaction to the plans. According to his report, the Chairman’s reaction was favorable about the idea, and he indicated he would comply with whatever orders he received from his Commander in Chief.

On January 3, 1961, Fidel Castro directed the Cuban Ministry of Foreign Relations to notify the American Embassy that effective immediately, no more than eleven Americans were to be assigned to the US Embassy and Consulates in Cuba. Nineteen hours later, the US State Department notified the Cuban Embassy in Washington DC that the United States was severing diplomatic relations with Cuba and requested that all Cuban Nationals employed by the Cuban Embassy and its consulates leave the United States as soon as possible.

* * *

Georgia State Penitentiary at Reidsville Reidsville, Georgia January 16, 1961

During the month of April 1960, Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., Chairman and cofounder of the Southern Christian Leadership Conference, the SCLC, was arrested in DeKalb County, Georgia for driving without a license. His Alabama Driver License had expired after he moved to Atlanta, and he had failed to obtain a Georgia Driver License. The DeKalb County Court fined him and placed on one year’s probation.

On October 19, 1960, Dr. King and seventy-five other Civil Right’s activists staged sit-ins in several downtown Atlanta department stores.

They did this to protest the discriminatory practices of the stores that refused to serve Negro customers. This was one of the Civil Rights Movement’s first attempts to desegregate private businesses in the Deep South. The Atlanta Police arrested Dr. King and other protesters and charged them with trespass.

As a result of this arrest, Dr. King was returned to neighboring DeKalb County for violating his probation. On October 25th, Judge Oscar Mitchell sentenced him to four months hard labor at the notorious State Prison in Reidsville for violating the conditions of his probation. Fearful for his safety, Dr. King’s family and associates pleaded with President Eisenhower, Vice President Nixon, and Democratic Presidential candidate, Lyndon Johnson to intervene on behalf of Dr. King.

Vice President Nixon responded that though Dr. King had received a bum rap, it would be improper and contrary to the American Bar Association’s Rules of Professional Conduct for him, as a lawyer, to call Judge Mitchell and protest the sentence. He also stated that as the Vice President, it would be inappropriate and political grandstanding for him to intervene. He believed that any such action should emanate from the President who, as a lame duck, was in a politically safe position to respond without fear of political backlash only two weeks before the national elections. Vice President Nixon’s Press Secretary released a No comment statement to the press regarding the imprisonment of the nations foremost Civil Rights activist and leader. President Eisenhower failed to issue a statement of any kind.

On hearing of the arrest and harsh sentence, Democratic Presidential candidate Lyndon Johnson sent a telegram to Judge Mitchell. The telegram demanded the immediate release and exoneration of Dr. King. A member of Senator Johnson’s staff released a copy of the telegram to the media. Judge Mitchell sent the Presidential hopeful a reply indicating he would give the Senator’s demand due consideration. Not to be badgered or intimidated by liberal politicians, he ordered that Dr.

King be immediately transferred to the state penitentiary to begin serving his sentence.

On the morning of January 16, 1961, the day after his thirty-second birthday, and after having served nearly three-fourths of his prison sentence without incident, Dr. King was burned to death in the exercise yard. A Negro inmate named Harold Summers doused Dr. King with a mayonnaise jar filled with gasoline he had stolen from the motor pool while on a work detail. He then lit a book of matches and tossed the fiery packet onto the gasoline soaked Dr. King. Sixteen prison guards and eighty-seven inmates, Colored and white, witnessed the gruesome and barbaric slaying.

Fifty-nine-year-old Harold Summers was serving a ten to twenty-five year sentence for armed robbery. He told prison and Tattnall County investigators that he killed Dr. King because the uppity Nigger stole food from my cell, and that Dr. King thought he was better than the other Colored inmates. He stated that his messin with the way things were, was making circumstances worse for the Negroes rather than improving their conditions, and he should have know to leave well enough alone.

After the investigation, Mr. Summers was transferred to the Tattnall County jail to be arraigned for the murder of Dr. King. During his first night in the custody of the Tattnall County Sheriff ’s Department, Harold Summers was stabbed in the chest and throat six times by another Negro inmate with a crude knife fashioned from a Prince Albert tobacco can. Before he died, Harold Summers told the ambulance attendant he had been coerced into killing Dr. King. In his deathbed statement, he told the attendant he agreed to kill Dr. King after several members of the prison staff threatened his family, especially his twenty-year-old son, if he did not. He told the attendant that they had provided him with the matches and gasoline.

Though the Tattnall County Sheriff ’s Office initially handled both of the murder investigations, shortly after he was sworn in, President Nixon ordered the Justice Department to investigate the incident to determine if the murder was a dispute between the two inmates or a well staged assassination. During the FBI’s investigation it was learned Mr. Summer’s son had been in jail in nearby Chatham County on burglary charges, and it was expected that he would be sentenced to a lengthy prison term if found guilty. Suspiciously, charges against him were dropped after the victim and eyewitness in the case