Gerald Bruce Rose is buried at Arlington National Cemetery. He is honored on the Wall at Panel 1E, line 94.
General Westmoreland cables Washington to ask for two battalions of U.S. Marines to protect the U.S. base at Đà Nẵng. U.S. Army General William C. Westmoreland requested the first American combat troops for South Vietnam, asking for 3,500 U.S. Marines from the 9th Marine Expeditionary Brigade, to be sent to guard the Đà Nẵng Air Base.
Ambassador Taylor, aware of Westmoreland’s plan, disagrees and cables President Johnson to warn that such a step will encourage South Vietnam to ‘shuck off greater responsibilities.’ The JCS, however, support Westmoreland’s request and on 26 February Washington cables Taylor and Westmoreland that the troops are to be sent, and that Taylor should ‘Secure GVN [Government of South Vietnam] approval.’ General Westmoreland will later insist that he did not regard his request as ‘the first step in a growing American commitment,’ but although Taylor foresees just such a possibility, he does not raise any objections in public.
South Vietnam’s two-in-one coup d’état appeared to be over with Lieutenant General Nguyễn Khánh so far unable to fight or talk his way back into the all-powerful position of armed forces commander-in-chief.
The Administration believes that the ouster of Lieutenant General Nguyễn Khánh as South Vietnam’s strongman will lead to a series of changes in Saigon’s military command. Hope was expressed today that the changes would be peaceful. Although considerable friction had developed between General Khánh and Ambassador Maxwell D. Taylor, the deposed chief of the South Vietnamese armed forces had come to be regarded here as the most able and promising leader in sight, An extended period of maneuver is expected from his rivals, with Major General Trần Văn Minh, the new acting commander in chief, serving only temporarily.
The instability of South Vietnam’s Government drew new warnings from Capitol Hill that the United States could not indefinitely invest lives and resources in an “incredible situation.” The Administration, however, remained silent. The sternest words for South Vietnam’s rival military leaders came from the Senate majority leader, Mike Mansfield. The Montana Democrat praised President Johnson’s “great courage, firmness and restraint,” but he said that “jealous generals” were placing their personal prestige ahead of their people’s interest. “The United States is committed to aid the people of Vietnam,” the Senator said, “It is not committed to continued subsidy of intramilitary struggles for power and prestige with American lives and resources. The jealous generals of Saigon should realize that the hour is very late in Vietnam.”
A U.S. ultimatum to North Vietnam to halt troop infiltration into South Vietnam or face heavy sustained bombing was proposed by Senator Gale McGee (D-Wyoming).
North Vietnam recently urged France to intensify her efforts for a negotiated settlement of the war in South Vietnam, a reliable French source said today. The appeal was made during the present crisis and was related to President de Gaulle’s last call, on February 10, for the reconvening of the Geneva conference to negotiate a peace, the source said.
He did not link the North Vietnamese move directly to the United States airstrikes on targets in North Vietnam. Inquiries tonight failed to elicit either confirmation or denial of the connection. Не emphasized, however, that the Government of Hồ Chí Minh had proposed that, in view of France’s known support of a negotiated peace, General de Gaulle’s Government take a more active role in calling a conference.
The French have interpreted this suggestion as a hint that North Vietnam would support France if she proposed a date for the reconvening of the conference and would attend the meeting. In Washington, officials said that they had refused to give the French a “mandate” as mediators and that they were not interested now in reconvening the conference. This French effort is being made despite the continuing opposition of Washington to either a conference or negotiations carried out directly or through a third power.
The North Vietnamese have used the French mission in Hanoi, headed by Jacques de Buzon, for overtures to the United States before the one disclosed today. Diplomatic sources have reported Foreign Minister Maurice Couve de Murville as having said, as early as last December, that President Hồ Chí Minh had told France that he wanted to discuss the basis for an accommodation with the United States either directly and privately or through a third party, presumably France. An even earlier indication of President Hồ Chí Minh’s desire to negotiate developed at the first meeting between President Johnson and U Thant, Secretary General of the United Nations, after the assassination of President Kennedy.
At that meeting, according to diplomatic sources, Mr. Thant gave Mr. Johnson a message from the North Vietnamese President suggesting talks on a settlement. The French source who disclosed the latest approach said France had told President Hồ Chí Minh she did not wish to do anything to embarrass the United States at this critical juncture. The French Government, allied diplomats said, appeared to be playing a rather involved role in the crisis. The French source said the Government believed China and North Vietnam would be responsive to proposals for a conference that would discuss the future of Southeast Asia and of the United Nations.
The International Control Commission has bowed to North Vietnamese pressure and withdrawn inspection teams from the countryside to Hanoi, it has been learned.
Marshal Rodion Y. Malinovsky, the Soviet Defense Minister, accused the United States today of “unheard-of aggression” in Vietnam and warned that the conflict might “flare into the flame of a big war.” He repeated pledges that the Soviet Union would give all “necessary assistance” to the North Vietnamese. His warning coincided with the publication of a new Soviet protest note to the United States that charged American interference with Soviet shipping, especially in the vicinity of the Indochina Peninsula.
“More and more frequently” American planes buzz Soviet vessels at low altitudes and American warships maneuver “dangerously close” to Soviet ships under the “pretense of exerting some sort of police control over international shipping,” the note said. It added that the United States Government should know that “provocative actions” were all the more dangerous in such areas of international tensions as Indochina. The note was delivered to the United States Embassy and made public by Tass, the official press agency.
German Chancellor Ludwig Erhard called in the U.S. and French ambassadors to seek their help in smoothing out his nation’s disputes with Israel and the U.A.R. The United States, Britain, and France are rallying to West Germany’s aid in its efforts to limit the effect of East Germany’s political breakthrough in the Middle East. This was stated by diplomatic sources today as Walter Ulbricht, the East German chief of state, was on his way for an official visit to the United Arab Republic. Mr. Ulbricht regards his invitation from Cairo as tantamount to acceptance by the United Arab Republic of East Germany as a sovereign state.
The West German Government of Chancellor Erhard is attempting to persuade other Arab states to regard Mr. Ulbricht’s trip as a one-time affair not affecting Bonn’s claim to be sole representative of the German nation. Diplomatic sources said that Bonn’s principal Western allies were making diplomatic representations in the Middle East in support of the West German position.
Yemen ordered the expulsion today of the head of a West German aid mission and gave him 48 hours to leave the country, the Sana radio reported. Yemen is supporting the United Arab Republic in its dispute with West Germany over the supply of arms to Israel.
Former Premier Nikita S. Khrushchev and his wife have been assigned a new five-room apartment in midtown Moscow not far from the Kremlin, informed sources said today.
Britain has urged those involved in the Cyprus dispute to cooperate with Galo Plaza Lasso, the United Nations mediator, in finding a permanent solution.
Pope Paul formally created 27 new Roman Catholic cardinals and ” said that two of them had been unjustly punished by Russian and Czech Communists.
The Duke of Windsor flew to London and entered a hospital for treatment of an eye ailment.
The court-martial of an American airman accused of slaying a Filipino began today in the Philippines. The incident set off angry antiU.S. reaction.
A Belgian coffee planter described today how he led his wife and six other Europeans on a 15-day, 150-mile trek along uncharted wilderness paths to escape from rebel territory in the northeastern Congo.
A leftwing Labor Member of Parliament accused two British publications today of contempt of Parliament in articles saying that he had accepted Communist hospitality in a visit to North Vietnam.
Thirty-five miners were killed yesterday in a coal mine explosion and cave-in at the Hokkaido mining works in northern Japan, the police said today.
The Soviet Union launched the uncrewed Kosmos 57 space capsule in preparation of the Voskhod 2 crewed mission. In its first orbit, the capsule successfully tested its airlock, opening its outer hatch, then closing and pressurizing the interior. However, when space program director Nikolai Kamanin left the control room, “everything went terribly wrong”; the Tyuratam-based trackers and the ground stations lost contact with the Kosmos spacecraft as it entered its third orbit. They soon realized that the ship’s automatic self-destruct system had somehow triggered and destroyed the spacecraft, which “was tracked in 168 detectable pieces, which re-entered Earth’s atmosphere between 31 March and 6 April 1965.”
Prince Philip, Duke of Edinburgh, opened the Royal Australian Mint in Canberra. The Prince, husband of Queen Elizabeth II and a coin collector, “pushed two small green buttons to set in operation the minting of the first decimal coins” at the Australian Mint, and then picked one of the one-cent pieces from a wooden bowl to be placed in a proof set.
Thirty-five Americans were injured when a chartered bus overturned on a sightseeing trip yesterday. Hospital officials in Mexico City said five of the Americans were in critical condition.
Israeli spy Ze’ev Gur-Aryeh, who posed as a West German businessman using his original German name of Wolfgang Lotz, was arrested in Egypt, along with his wife Waldrud.
The United States is too rich, powerful, important and concerned to “withdraw from this world,” President Johnson said in an address at the University of Kentucky. President Johnson said today that if America’s global commitments “sometimes cause us difficulty or create danger, then let us not be dismayed.”
“We cannot, and will not, withdraw from this world,” Mr. Johnson said in a speech apparently aimed primarily at younger Americans. We are too rich and too powerful and too important. But most important is that we are too concerned.” The forum for the President’s speech today was the 100th anniversary convocation of the University of Kentucky here. Mr. Johnson received an honorary Doctor of Laws degree at the ceremony. Although it seemed possible that his words were an allusion to Vietnam, the President appeared to explode that possibility by adding: “I do not speak of the grave and immediate issues of foreign policy, although they concern me constantly. I speak of the great transcendent issues which affect the life of nearly every human being on this planet.”
Police in New York and Chicago were alert for reprisals in the killing of black nationalist Malcolm X.
A Black Muslim building in the heart of Harlem went up in flames early this morning, apparently after a fire bomb was tossed through its fourth-floor window.
Elijah Muhammad, the head of the anti-white Black Muslims, said he is not fearful of reports he might be the target of killers seeking revenge “because we are innocent of Malcolm X’s death.” Elijah Muhammad denied today that the Black Muslim movement, which he leads from a 19-room mansion here, had anything to do with the slaying yesterday of Malcolm X. Malcolm, the former No. 2 man of the Muslims who defected and set up a rival movement, was a “victim of his own preaching,” Muhammad said at two news conferences. “I don’t have any knowledge of anyone trying to kill Malcolm,” he said. “We have never resorted to no such thing as violence.” He said of Thomas Hagan, a suspect in the New York slaying: “He is a stranger to us.” Hagan has been identified as Talmadge Hayer of Paterson, New Jersey. Seated on a carved, upholstered chair in his 20-by-40-foot living room with silk-covered walls, he said that the Black Muslims were making their own investigation of the assassination to determine whether any of his followers had been involved.
Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. said in Selma, Alabama, that a federal official has informed him of a plot taking place in Alabama to kill him. King returned to Alabama today and called for a march on the State Capitol in Montgomery to protest barriers to Black voting. Dr. King told 700 Blacks in the Browns Chapel Methodist Church tonight that the march would be a response to Gov, George C. Wallace’s action in banning night demonstrations. “He said nothing about the problems that brought about the demonstrations,” Dr. King said. “We are going to have a motorcade to Montgomery in the next few days,” he went on, “We hope to have our forces mobilized to have carloads of people from all over the state to march on the Capitol. We will be going there to tell Governor Wallace we aren’t going to take it any more,” he said.
Dr. King said Blacks had no intention of abiding by the ban, which the Governor announced during the weekend for Selma and nearby Marion. He said it was “clearly unconstitutional” and civil rights lawyers might seek a federal court injunction voiding it. After a strategy conference with other leaders, however, he called off plans for immediate night marches. A spokesman for Dr. King said it was felt that “the people need to be better prepared for night marches.” As he spoke, 50 state troopers and numerous members of the Dallas County Sheriff’s Posse were waiting at the courthouse with guns, nightsticks and riot helmets.
There was a tense moment after the meeting when Dr. King and his assistants were driving away from the church. Bob Godwin, a plainclothes investigator for the state, stopped the car and asked why state agents had been run out of the church. “I didn’t know they had,” Dr. King replied, “our meetings are open to everyone.” About 20 troopers crowded around the car and Mr. Godwin asked Dr. King why he had been critical of the state troopers and state laws. “That’s another matter,” Dr. King replied. “I intend to be critical of the troopers and the state laws.” After a moment, the troopers let the car pass.”
A Black tailor ate peacefully today at the Atlanta restaurant closed recently by Lester Maddox, Georgia segregation leader. The restaurant was opened today under new management.
AFL-CIO President George Meany said he favors a delay in the May 1 showdown over a new steel contract to allow more time for negotiations. It was unusual for Mr. Meany, the president of the American Federation of Labor and Congress of Industrial Organizations, to inject himself into the collective bargaining strategy of a major union in this fashion. Mr. Meany pointed out, however, that considerable time had been lost in the negotiations as a result of the recent campaign and election in the million-member union. He suggested that the steel union extend its contracts and allow more time for reaching agreement in negotiations that could have a major impact on the nation’s economy.
The squeeze expected in April for taxpayers who didn’t have enough withheld for income taxes will not be as bad as feared earlier, Treasury Secretary Douglas Dillon said. Secretary of the Treasury Dillon disclosed today that under-withholding of income taxes last year probably totaled only about $400 million to $500 million instead of well over $1 billion as had been assumed earlier.
Defense Secretary Robert S. McNamara was quoted as saying he will leave to Congress the final decision on a proposed merger of Army Reserve units and the National Guard.
About 700 teen-agers, mostly members of synagogues in New Jersey, demonstrated near the United Nations yesterday to protest “cultural and religious persecution of Jews” in the Soviet Union.
The Most Rev. Lawrence Joseph Shehan, Archbishop of Baltimore, used the occasion of his elevation to Cardinal today to call attention to the American Black struggle and to urge greater effort by Roman Catholicism in helping Blacks.
A federal judge permanently lifted a Senate floor ban against The Nashville Tennessean’s reporters today. The judge called the ban “a dangerous step toward press control and censorship.”
Felix Frankfurter, retired Associate Justice of the Supreme Court, died today in Washington after a heart attack. He was 82 years old.
A new, revised, color production of Rodgers and Hammerstein’s “Cinderella” was broadcast on American television by CBS, with Lesley Ann Warren making her TV debut in the title role. The show would become an annual tradition for eight years, last broadcast in 1974. Although panned by some critics, the first broadcast drew an estimated 70 million viewers.
The Black Arts Movement was launched by LeRoi Jones (later Amiri Baraka) at a press conference in New York City, the day after the assassination of Malcolm X. Jones’s first project was BARTS, the Black Arts Movement Theater and School.
Born:
Pat LaFontaine, Team USA and NHL centre (Hockey Hall of Fame, 2003; Olympics, 1984, 1988; NHL All-Star, 1988-1991, 1993; New York Islanders, Buffalo Sabres, New York Rangers), in St. Louis, Missouri.
Joe Reekie, Canadian NHL defenseman (Buffalo Sabres, New York Islanders, Tampa Bay Lightning, Washington Capitals, Chicago Blackhawks), in Victoria, British Columbia, Canada.
Chris Dudley, NBA center and power forward (Cleveland Cavaliers, New Jersey Nets, Portland Trail Blazers, New York Knicks, Phoenix Suns), in Stamford, Connecticut.
Eric Yelding, MLB shortstop, centerfielder, and second baseman (Houston Astros, Chicago Cubs), in Montrose, Alabama.
Cornell Burbage, NFL wide receiver (Dallas Cowboys), in Lexington, Kentucky.
Dean Karr, American photographer, album cover designer, and music video and television advertisement director, in Seattle, Washington.
Died:
Felix Frankfurter, 82, Austrian-born jurist who served as a U.S. Supreme Court justice from 1939 to 1962; from heart failure.
History Diaries 