November 2: The American Friends Service Committee, a Quaker organization that has provided humanitarian aid to all sides in Southeast Asia during the war, gives three portable sawmills and instruction to the Pathet Lao and $10,000 in deep-disk plows to the coalition government in Laos.

November 4: A government spokesman denies reports that police killed a demonstrator and seriously wounded two others during a protest November 2 in Vo Dat, fifty-five miles northeast of Saigon.

November 6: Reversing an earlier statement, South Vietnam confirms that a 19-year-old man was killed during an antigovernment demonstration in Vo Dat.

November 7: Saigon orders new restraints on opposition groups. Distribution of printed material is restricted, and meetings and demonstrations seen as harmful to public order and security are prohibited.

November 8: In Cleveland, U.S. District Court Chief Judge Frank Battisti acquits eight former National Guardsmen of the 1970 Kent State shootings. He rules that prosecutors have not proven beyond a reasonable doubt that the guardsmen “willfully intended to deprive” the students of their civil rights.

November 9: Federal judge Robert Elliot releases Calley on unrestricted personal bond. Calley has served one-third of his ten-year sentence for the premeditated murders of South Vietnamese civilians in 1968.

November 11: Some 1,000 family members march from the Department of Justice to the White House, demanding the Ford Administration seek an accounting for servicemembers still unaccounted for in Southeast Asia.

November 12: The Pentagon acknowledges it is still using the Attorney General’s list of subversive groups to blacklist military personnel, despite the fact the list was abolished five months earlier by a presidential Executive Order.

November 13: The Army releases a 260-page report on the coverup that took place following the civilian murders at My Lai in 1968. Secretary of the Army Bo Callaway says the release “concludes a dark chapter in the Army’s history.”

November 20: The Navy says it has ordered a special court-martial for a Seabee who threw a chocolate cream pie in the face of a warrant officer. The Seabee’s lawyer argues the incident was a practical joke aimed at boosting morale.

November 26: President Gerald Ford vetoes a bill that would have increased veterans education benefits by nearly 23 percent.

November 29: As part of the first recommendations from a Clemency Board, Ford grants full pardons to eight civilian antiwar protesters and conditional amnesty to ten others.

December 3: The Senate and the House override President Ford’s veto of a bill that would grant the largest increase in education benefits for veterans since World War II.

December 5: U.S. District Judge John Sirica rules that Nixon does not need to testify or to provide a deposition during the Watergate coverup trial.

December 7: Heavy fighting is reported in the Mekong Delta.

December 9: Fighting continues near Tay Ninh City and in provinces around Saigon. Washington calls for Hanoi to halt cease-fire violations and to return to the negotiation table.

December 10: The Senate approves Nelson Rockefeller’s nomination for vice president. The South Vietnamese command reports 325 dead, almost 2,400 wounded, and 320 missing in five days of fighting. Enemy losses are put at 1,800 killed.

December 12: The Senate Foreign Relations Committee unanimously approves the 1925 Geneva Protocol banning chemical and bacteriological weapons and the 1972 treaty banning production and stockpiling of biological weapons.

December 15: Gen. Alexander Haig, Jr., becomes supreme commander of NATO forces in Europe.

December 16: The Senate ratifies the 1925 Geneva Protocol.

December 18: The House approves the foreign-aid bill. Ford signals his willingness to sign the compromise legislation.

December 19: Rockefeller is sworn in as vice president.

December 21: The New York Times publishes reports that the CIA, in violation of its charter, conducted illegal, large-scale intelligence operations against antiwar and other dissident groups in the U.S., and that a special unit reported directly to then-director Richard Helms, currently the U.S. ambassador to Iran.

December 22: Ford says he has informed the CIA he will not tolerate any illegal activity. Sen. William Proxmire (D-Wisc.) calls for Helm’s resignation as ambassador to Iran and a Justice Department investigation.

December 23: Ford orders CIA director William Colby to report “within a matter of days” on the accusations against the agency. Counterintelligence head James Angleton, who is alleged to have played a major role in domestic operations, resigns. Several Senate committee chairs announce they will hold hearings into the CIA allegations in January.

December 24: Helms denies domestic spying under his management of the CIA. Angleton tells UPI there is “something to it.”

December 25: Former Secretary of Defense Clark Clifford, who helped write the draft of the 1947 legislation that created the CIA, states he is in favor of Congress setting up a special committee to investigate domestic spying accusations.

December 27: South Vietnamese immigration police expel American author and former Foreign Service Officer John D. Marks, who co-wrote The CIA and the Cult of Intelligence. Rep. Michael Harrington (D-Mass.) announces that he has filed a claim in federal District Court against the CIA to stop foreign covert intervention and domestic surveillance “to force the CIA to obey its charter.”

December 29: Three high-ranking CIA counterintelligence division officials resign.

December 31: Sources contend Colby has confirmed to Ford that the CIA kept thousands of files on Americans in the U.S. The NVA takes over Phuoc Bình, 75 miles north of Saigon.

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