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EARLY LIFE AND MILITARY CAREER Edwin Walker was born in in 1927 . He then attended United States Military Academy , where he graduated in 1931 . During World War II , Walker commanded a Canadian-American commando team in Italy . In August 1944 , Walker's team landed on the Hyeres Islands off of the French Riviera , taking out a strong German garrison. Walker again saw combat in the Korean War , and next became the commander of the Arkansas Military district in Little Rock, Arkansas . During his years in Arkansas, he implemented the order of President Eisenhower to desegregate Central High School in Little Rock. In 1959 , Gen. Walker was sent to Germany to command the 24th Infantry Division . In 1961 , however, he became involved in controversy. Walker was accused of distributing right-wing literature from the John Birch Society to the soldiers of his division. He was also quoted by a newspaper, the ''Overseas Weekly'', as saying that Harry S. Truman , Eleanor Roosevelt , and Dean Acheson were 'definitely pink'. Secretary of Defense Robert McNamara relieved Walker of his command, while an inquiry was conducted. Walker resigned from the Army on November 2 , 1961 . Even before his resignation, Walker had organized protests in September 1961 against the enrollment of African-American James Meredith at the segregated University Of Mississippi . The following year, Walker ran for Governor of Texas, but finished last among six candidates in a primary election that was won by John Connally . OSWALD ATTEMPTS TO ASSASSINATE WALKER ''See: Lee Harvey Oswald '' It was around this time that Walker began to receive attention from Lee Harvey Oswald. In February 1963 , Walker was making front page news by joining forces with an Evangelist in an anti-communist tour called "Operation Midnight Ride". Oswald began to put Walker under Surveillance , taking pictures of Walker's home and nearby railroad tracks, perhaps his planned escape route, using the same camera used by Marina to take the famous backyard poses. Oswald mail-ordered a rifle using his alias Hidell (he had already ordered a pistol in January). He planned the assassination on April 10 , ten days after he was fired from Jaggars-Chiles-Stovall. He chose a Wednesday evening because the neighborhood would be relatively crowded because of services in a church adjacent to Walker's home; he would not stand out and could mingle with the crowds if necessary to make his escape. He left a note in Russian for Marina with instructions should he be caught. Walker was sitting at a desk in his dining room when Oswald fired at him from less than a hundred feet (30 m) away. Walker survived only because the bullet struck the wooden frame of the window, deflecting its path, though he was injured in the forearm by fragments. At the time, authorities had no idea who attempted to kill Walker. Marina saw Oswald burn most of his plans in the bathtub, though she hid the note he left her in a cookbook, intending to bring it to the police should Oswald again attempt to kill Walker or anyone else. Oswald's involvement was unknown until the note and some of the photos were found by the authorities following the assassination of JFK. The bullet was too badly damaged to run conclusive ballistics tests, though neutron activation tests later proved that the bullet was from the same manufacturer as the one that killed Kennedy. ''ASSOCIATED PRESS V. WALKER'' Angered by negative publicity he was receiving for his conservative political views, Walker began to file libel lawsuits against various media outlets. One of these suits, titled ''Associated Press v. Walker'' () went all the way to the United States Supreme Court , but the court ruled against Walker and found that the Associated Press was not guilty of reckless disregard in their reporting about Walker. The court, which had prevously said that public officials could not recover damages unless they could prove actual malice, extended this to public figures as well. MISCELLANY
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