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Monday, Feb. 9, 2004 1:45 p.m. EST
Kerry Photo Shocker: Candidate Teamed Up With 'Hanoi' Jane Fonda
The picture was removed because some asshole shut my site down because of it.
The picture can be viewed at
http://www.snopes.com/photos/politics/kerry.asp
Jane Fonda and John Kerry at an anti-war rally in Valley Forge, Pa. (Corbis Images)
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A photo seemingly showing Democratic presidential front-runner John Kerry protesting the Vietnam War with anti-American actress "Hanoi Jane" Fonda - the photo Dems fear most - exists, and has been obtained by NewsMax.com.
On Labor Day weekend 1970, Kerry - then a rising star with Vietnam Veteran Against the War - teamed up with Fonda as the two headlined an ugly anti-war in rally in Valley Forge, Pa., railing against U.S. policy in Southeast Asia from the back of the same flatbed truck.
The photo shows "Hanoi Jane" listening raptly as speakers denounced American soldiers for committing "genocide" in Vietnam and accusing the U.S. of "international racism."
Three rows behind 'Hanoi Jane" sits a man who bears a striking resemblance to the Democratic presidential front-runner.
According to Corbis Images, which owns the image, the photo was taken at the same 1970 Valley Forge protest that turned Sen. Kerry into an anti-war star.
Douglas Brinkley's biography "Tour of Duty" chronicles Kerry's exploits at Valley Forge, where he reportedly followed Fonda onto the back of that pick-up truck to deliver his own diatribe against the war in Vietnam.
"We are here because we above all others have earned the right to criticize the war on Southeast Asia," Kerry shouted into the microphone, as Fonda and the crowd cheered wildly.
"By the time [Kerry] hopped off that pick-up truck to thunderous applause," writes Brinkley, "he was the new leader of the VVAW by popular default."
The Massachusetts Democrat's speech also cemented his alliance with Fonda, and the two traveled to Detroit to organize a January 1971 event they called the "Winter Soldier Investigation."
At a Detroit motel, Kerry and Fonda assembled a myriad of disgruntled witnesses claiming to be Vietnam vets, each with his own story of American atrocities.
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Janes Radio Transcript- Read On
According to Jug Burkett, whose landmark Vietnam war history "Stolen Valor" chronicles some of Kerry's anti-war misadventures, Fonda played a key role at the Detroit event.
"There's no doubt that Jane Fonda financed the Winter Soldier hearings," Burkett told NewsMax on Monday.
He said that several of the witnesses who testified at the protest's "hearings" later turned out to be complete impostors.
The event prompted "Hanoi Jane" to "adopt" Kerry's group "as her leading cause," writes Brinkley. It was at Kerry's Winter Soldier protest that the anti-American actress met her future husband, Students for a Democratic Society radical Tom Hayden.
The next year Fonda was off to Hanoi, where she mounted an anti-aircraft battery and pretended to shoot down American pilots.
Of Kerry, Burkett told NewsMax, "Any Vietnam veteran who knows what Kerry did after he came home from Vietnam is definitely not a fan of John Kerry."
From Doonsberry 1971
After 35 years..nothin's changed
Kerry no hero in eyes of Vietnam-era veteran
By CHRISTOPHER WARD
Growing up in the 1950s, I was frequently exposed to the late-night discussions of my father and his friends, all of whom had served in World War II.
One of these men, Ed Fitzpatrick, served in the U.S. Coast Guard and was a launch driver during D-Day, delivering squads of U.S. boys to the beaches in France.
Rob Helb served as an Army Air Corps gunner and lost an arm over the oil fields of Turkey. After crashing, he asked a crew member to retrieve his bloodied and severed arm so he could remove from its wrist the gold watch his father had given him.
My dad, at 17, joined the Navy and served in the Pacific. Enlisting in mid 1943, he arrived in the islands as the war was ending and served in the supply section for the duration, rather than as an aviation gunner's mate, for which he was trained.
I often sat at the bottom of the stairs to my attic room late at night, listening (which was against the rules) to their stories as they sat around the kitchen table, drank beer and laughed about a lot of things I was still too young to understand.
These men respected each other, and no matter the circumstances of their service, each was considered a brother veteran; each was a member of what is now sometimes called the "Greatest Generation."
In 1970, during the Vietnam War, I enlisted in the Navy to do my part, as I believed was my duty. I assumed I would someday sit late at night around a kitchen table, recalling my experiences with my veteran friends as had my father.
But Vietnam was not WWII, and the vets who served during the '60s and the '70s drew -- and still draw -- a distinction between those who saw combat in Vietnam and those who did service elsewhere. Ours was a band of brothers divided.
I spent four years in Europe as an enlisted man working in signals intelligence. Those who served with me, and thousands of others who never saw combat, almost always refer to themselves as "Vietnam-era veterans," rather than Vietnam vets.
We draw a distinction between those who actually saw combat and those who served in other roles, and unlike our fathers, who thought all vets equal, we believe the title "Vietnam veteran" belongs only to those who saw service in the war zone.
But all those who served during the Vietnam years hold clear that each of us did our job and had, for the most part, no control over what position we were given or where we were stationed. Each who did serve is special and a brother veteran.
For this reason I find it difficult to understand why Sen. John Kerry's campaign is attempting to belittle the service of President Bush during the Vietnam conflict.
We all know the differences. Bush was a pilot in the National Guard; Kerry was a combat veteran. The Boston Globe recently pointed out that Kerry, in less than two months of combat, received the Silver Star and three Purple Hearts, which made him a hero and allowed him to request early termination of his combat duty.
But what happened next bothers me. According to the Globe, Kerry became involved in the anti-war movement upon his return, and asked for and received an early discharge from the Navy so he could continue those efforts.
How could Kerry so easily abandon his comrades in Vietnam, and then, 30 years on, call on those same men and women to back his presidential ambition?
Kerry now holds himself up as a war hero and asks for my vote. Yet, 30 years ago he stood with Jane Fonda and gave aid and comfort to an enemy still killing our brother veterans by the hundreds.
Bush's honorable service in the National Guard bothers me less than Kerry's abandonment of his brothers, his switching sides and his active contribution to an enemy's efforts to kill Americans.
Time often softens the dark edges of military service, leaving grown men the ability to sit around a kitchen table late at night to laugh about the exploits that left them less than whole. But the dramatic difference between Hero Kerry and Hanoi Kerry leave me to wonder who he might next abandon, and at what cost to America.
John (''Benedict'') Kerry
Posted by John Armor
Monday, February 09, 2004
We begin with what this column does not charge. I do not question John Kerry's patriotism. I do strongly question both his intelligence and his ethics. There are many aspects of John Kerry's career which should be reviewed during his campaign for President. I've previously covered my personal knowledge of him. Here, I’ll skip all other questions except his capacities as a military officer then, and his capacity to be the commander in chief today.
To understand the two sides of this modern citizen-soldier, it’s worthwhile to reexamine the two sides of the career of General Benedict Arnold.
The Battle of Saratoga was not a single battle at a single place, but a series of engagements at different places over several days. Major General Benedict Arnold played a critical role in two of those. In the first, he led 1,000 militia who stopped the advance of General Burgoyne's second column along the Mohawk River. He returned by October 7, 1777, to the Hudson River site of the main battle against General Burgoyne. Arnold led the assault against the redoubt held by German soldiers, broke the British lines, and was seriously wounded in the leg.
Burgoyne retreated. Days later, surrounded, outnumbered, and cut off from supplies or reinforcement, Burgoyne surrendered. This was a critical battle that saved the American Revolution. Had Burgoyne succeeded in driving south to New York City (held by the British), he would have split both the state and the nation, trapping the American armies in New England. As the website www.americanrevolution.com correctly says, ''Had he died there [of his wound], posterity would have known few names brighter than that of Benedict Arnold.''
At the Saratoga National Historic Park there’s a monument that displays only a boot. It is a memorial to the bravery and skill of Arnold in that battle, and of the injuries he suffered in his final, successful assault against the center of the British lines.
Two years later, General Arnold married a woman who was a British sympathizer, and he was placed in command of Philadelphia, where he came in contact with some wealthy families who favored the British. He'd had many quarrels with subordinates and superiors and he'd developed a taste for luxuries he could not afford. He was slated to take command of the garrison at West Point on the Hudson. He contacted the British about betraying that garrison in return for a substantial cash payment and rank and pay in the British military. His British contact was Major John Andre.
Andre went behind American lines in civilian clothes to complete the negotiations with Arnold. On his return toward British lines, Andre was captured by two American soldiers who questioned and searched him. They found documents outlining Arnold's planned treachery. Andre was tried by a military tribunal before General Washington. (This was the first American instance of such trials under the Law of War. Similar trials have been conducted in most American wars, and the latest of these are about to take place in Guantanamo, Cuba.) Andre was convicted, and sentenced to hang. Washington offered to free Andre in exchange for Arnold, who had fled to British lines. The British refused that offer. Andre was hanged. Benedict Arnold escaped to Britain, and his name entered the English language as a synonym for ''traitor.''
Had Arnold succeeded in betraying the garrison at West Point, the Hudson River would have been opened for a British attack from the south. That might have accomplished the same destruction of the American cause as Burgoyne's attack from the north had threatened two years before.
Although most Americans today know that Arnold was a traitor, his attempted betrayal took nothing away from his real achievements in the Battle of Saratoga, that saved the Revolution from defeat.
We turn now to the military changes of heart of Lt. John Kerry between his service in Vietnam and his later actions as a civilian. His later actions do not meet the constitutional definition of treason, and I make no suggestion to the contrary. They DO raise serious questions about his intelligence and integrity.
On 23 April, 1971, John Kerry testified under oath before Congress that Americans in Vietnam had ''personally raped, cut off ears, cut off heads, taped wires from portable telephones to human genitals and turned up the power, cut off limbs, blown up bodies, randomly shot at civilians, razed villages, shot cattle and dogs for fun, poisoned food stocks, and generally ravaged the countryside of South Vietnam.” Before his testimony was over, he said, ''We all did it.'' Read On
John Kerry's Resume for Commander and Chief and Defender of the Working Man: Protest with Jane Fonda, Accuse the American Military of War Crimes, and Marry Two Women with Inherited Fortunes? Bring it On!
By George F. Holland
Feb 8, 2004, 21:09
Every time the Democrats place all their intellectual resources behind a "winning" strategy they ultimately find themselves on ice so thin that the heat from a single candle can melt the ice beneath their feet. Today's democratic strategy is to base John F. Kerry's eventual candidacy on the strength of his war record and his defense of the working class. Howard Dean had not even finished the last note of his infamous screech before this strategy was embraced by almost every liberal constituency of the Democratic Party. These constituencies are now led by career operatives at the DNC, actors in Hollywood whose careers are on the decline, and a parade of failed Democratic candidates who now have time for party activities since they have nothing better to do. I think this strategy will ultimately fail since John Kerry's congressional record and life after Vietnam does not show he has the wisdom required to defend our country or any possible connection to the working man.
Claim Number One in the Kerry Campaign: John Kerry is eminently qualified to be Commander in Chief of our military and to lead the war against terrorism because of his service as a courageous young soldier in the 1960's. No one can dispute that John Kerry volunteered to go into military service and won several medals during his time in the Vietnam War. John Kerry's courage as a young man in the jungles of Vietnam will forever deserve the gratitude and admiration of our nation. However, courage as a young soldier does not automatically translate into wisdom as an older politician. Let us examine how John Kerry translated his youthful combat experience into further service to his country. Read On
Memorandum for:
Vice Chairman, Senate Select Committee on Prisoners of War and Missing in Action
From:John F. McCreary
Subject:Legal Misconduct and Possible Malpractice in the Select Committee
1. As a member of the Virginia State Bar, I am obliged by Disciplinary Rule DR-1-103(a) to report knowledge of misconduct by an attorney "to a tribunal or other authority empowered to investigate or act upon such violations." Under Rule IV, Paragraph 13, of the Rules for the integration of the Virginia State Bar, this obligation follows me as a member of the Bar, regardless of the location of my employment, for as long as I remain a member of the Virginia State Bar. Therefore, I am obliged, as a matter of law and under pain of discipline by the Virginia State Bar, to report to you my knowledge of misconduct and possible prima facie malpractice by attorneys on the Select Committee in ordering the destruction of Staff documents containing Staff intelligence findings on 9 April 1992 and in statements in meetings on 15 and 16 April to justify the destruction.
2. The attached Memoranda For the Record, one by myself and another by Mr. Jon D. Holstine, describe the relevant facts, which I summarize herein:
a. On 9 April 1992, the Chairman of the Senate Select Committee, Senator John Kerry of Massachusetts, in response to a protest by other members of the Select Committee, told the Select Committee members that "all copies" would be destroyed. This statement was made in the presence of the undersigned and of the Staff Chief Counsel who offered no protest.
b. Later on 9 April 1992, the Staff Director, Frances Zwenig, an attorney, repeated and insured the execution of Senator Kerry's order for the destruction of the Staff intelligence briefing text. I personally delivered to Mr. Barry Valentine, the Security Manager for SRB-78, the original printed version of the intelligence briefing text.
I also verified that the original was destroyed by shredding in the Office of Senate Security on 10 April 1992, along with 14 copies.
c. On 15 April 1992, the Staff Chief Counsel, J. William Codinha of Massachusetts, when advised by members if the Staff about their concerns over the possible criminal consequences of destroying documents, minimized the significance of the act of destruction; ridiculed the Staff members for expressing their concerns; and replied, in response to questions about the potential consequences, "Who's the injured party," and "How are they going to find out because its classified." Mr. Codinha repeatedly defended the destruction of the documents and gave no assurances or indications that any copies of the intelligence briefing text existed.
d. On 16 April, the Chairman of the Senate Select Committee, Senator John Kerry, stated that he gave the order to destroy "extraneous copies of the documents" and that no one objected. Moreover, he stated that the issue was "moot" because the original remained in the Office of Senate Security "all along."
e. I subsequently learned that the Staff Director had deposited a copy of the intelligence briefing text in the Office of Senate Security at 1307 on 16 April.
3. The foregoing facts establish potentially a prima facie violation of criminal law and a pattern of violations of legal ethics by attorneys in acts of commission and omission.
a. It is hornbook law that an attorney may not direct the commission of a crime. In this incident two attorneys, one by his own admission, ordered the destruction of documents, which could be violation of criminal law.
b. Neither the Staff Chief Counsel nor any member of the Select Committee made a protest or uttered words of caution against the destruction of documents, by admission of the Chairman, Senator Kerry. The Chief Counsel has an affirmative duty to advise the Staff about the legality of its actions, and, in fact, had earlier issued the general prohibition to the Staff against document destruction.
c. The Chief Counsel's statements during the 15 April meeting to discuss the document destruction showed no regard for the legality of the action and displayed to the Staff only a concern about getting caught. By his words and actions, he presented to the Staff investigators an interpretation of the confidentiality and security
rules that the rules of the Select Committee may be used to cover-up potentially unethical or illegal activity.
d. The Staff Director's action in placing an unaccounted for copy of the intelligence briefing text in the Office of Senate Security on 16 April constitutes an act to cover-up the destruction. Throughout the 16 April meeting, all three attorneys persisted in stating that the document had been on file since 9 April. This is simply not true.
4. I believe that the foregoing facts establish a pattern of grave legal misconduct - possibly including orders to commit a crime, followed by acts to justify and then to cover-up that crime. Even absent criminal liability, the behavioral pattern of the attorneys involved plays fast and loose with the Canons of Legal Ethics and
establishes that one or more of the attorneys on the Select Committee are unfit to practice law. I am obliged to recommend that this report be filed with the appropriate disciplinary authorities of the State Bars in which these attorneys are members.
(Signed)
John F. McCreary, Esquire
October 30, 1992
Memorandum for the Record
From: John F. McCreary
Subject: Obstruction of the Investigation
1. I am concerned that recent lines of investigation have been seriously compromised by leaks of sensitive information by the Committee Staff Director to the Department of Defense. Leaks to the Department of Defense or other agencies of the Executive Branch of my Memoranda for the Record are interfering with follow-up discussions with useful witnesses. Moreover, they are endangering the lives and livelihood of
two witnesses.
Leak of Information on Jan Sejna
2. Irrespective of leaks outside the government, Bill LeGro, attended a meeting of the US-Russia Joint Commission group in Washington on 28 October 1992 at the Department of State. The discussion featured information provided by Sejna. LeGro stated that Ambassador Malcolm Toon called for his dismissal. DIA personnel defended Sejna as to his expertise on Central Europe, but not as to his information on other
areas, particularly POW related.
4. On 30 October 1992, I learned from Bill LeGro that he was directed to read a letter from the Central Intelligence Agency to the Select Committee that discredits Sejna's information. The letter reportedly indicates that Sejna's information has been checked and not been confirmed by his former government. At the time this letter was received, the Staff had decided to take Sejna's deposition but had not yet scheduled a deposition of Sejna. In addition, my MFR was written from memory, and did not do justice to all that Sejna stated, either in detail or in context. As of this writing, we do not know what Sejna knows or will say under oath, yet his testimony has already been written off. This anticipatory discrediting of a Select Committee potential witness is tantamount to tampering with the evidence.
Suspected Leak of Information on Le Quang Khai
5. The second issue of suspected misconduct concerns witness Le Quang Khai. Although Le made a public statement concerning POWs on 12 September 1992, no agency of the US government contacted him concerning his POW information. He told me on 26 October that some men who represented themselves as FBI agents contacted him to attempts to recruit him to return to Vietnam as a US intelligence agent for six months. After which his request for asylum would be favorably considered.
6. On 30 October, Mr. Robert Egan of Hackensack, New Jersey, who is a close friend of Mr. Le and the intermediary whereby the Committee Staff met Mr. Le, informed McCreary and LeGro that the FBI had again contacted Mr. Le. A person representing himself as an FBI person called on 30 October to set up a meeting with Le to discuss Le's working as an intelligence agent for the FBI's POW/MIA office.
7. So far informal checks indicate there is no such office. Secondly, this contact occurred three days after my return from taking Le's deposition in Hackensack on 26 October. I observed a copy of the MFR with apparent routing designators written in the top margin on the desk of Frances Zwenig on 28 October.
8. The contact with Le two days after preparation of my MFR, despite the passage of a month since his public declarations, is highly suspicious and more than coincidental. The circumstances of both contacts in which persons identifying themselves as FBI without showing credentials or other evidence of authenticity or authority and also making a pitch to recruit Le are also highly suspicious.
9. An internal Department of Defense Memorandum identifies Frances Zwenig as the conduit to the Department of Defense for the acquisition of sensitive and restricted information from this Committee. Based on the above sequences of events, I must conclude that Frances Zwenig continues to leak all of my papers to the Defense Department. Her flagrant disregard of the rules of the Senate and her oath of office are now
jeopardizing the livelihood, if not the safety, of Senate witnesses. In addition, the Department of Defense's continuing access to sensitive Committee Staff papers is resulting in obstruction of the investigations by the Senate Select Committee by various agencies of the Executive Branch.
(Signed)
John F. McCreary
May 3, 1992
Memorandum for:
Vice Chairman, Senate Select Committee on Prisoners of War and Missing in Action
From:John F. McCreary
Subject:
Possible Violations of Title 18, U.S.C., Section 2071, by the Select Committee and Possible Ethical Misconduct by Staff Attorneys.
1. Continuing analysis of relevant laws and further review of the events between 8 April and 16 April 1992 connected with the destruction of the Investigators' Intelligence Briefing Text strongly indicate that the order to destroy all copies of that briefing text on 9 April and the actual destruction of copies of the briefing texts plus
the purging of computer files might constitute violations of Title 18, U.S.C., Section 2071, which imposes criminal penalties for unlawful document destruction. Even absent a finding of criminal misconduct, statements, actions, and failures to act by the senior Staff attorneys following the 9 April briefing might constitute serious breaches of ethical standards of conduct for attorneys, in addition to violations of Senate and Select Committee rules. The potential consequences of these possible misdeeds are such that they should be brought to the attention of all members of the Select Committee, plus all Designees and Staff members who were present at the 9 April briefing.
2. The relevant section of Title 18, U.S.C., states in pertinent part: Section 2071. Concealment, removal, or mutilation generally (a) Whoever willfully and unlawfully conceals, removes, mutilates, obliterates, or destroys, or attempts to do so, or, with intent to do so takes and carries away any record, proceeding, map, book, paper, document, or other thing, filed or deposited with any clerk or officer of any court of the United States, or in any public office, or with any judicial or public officer of the United States, shall be fined not more than $2,000 or imprisoned not more than three years, or both. (June 25, 1948, ch. 645, 62 Stat. 795)
3. The facts as the undersigned and others present at the briefing recall them are presented in the attached Memorandum for the Record. A summary of those facts - and others that have been established since that Memorandum was written - follows.
a. On 8 April 1992, the Investigators' Intelligence Briefing Text was presented to Senior Staff members and Designees for whom copies were available prior to beginning the briefing. Objections to the text by the Designees prompted the Staff Director to order all persons present to leave their copies of the briefing text in Room SRB078. Subsequent events indicated that two copies had been removed without authorization.
b. On 9 April 1992, at the beginning of the meeting of the Select Committee and prior to the scheduled investigators' briefing, Senator McCain produced a copy of the intelligence briefing text, with whose contents he strongly disagreed. He charged that the briefing text had already been leaked to a POW/MIA activist, but was reassured by the Chairman that such was not the case. He replied that he was certain it would be leaked. Whereupon, the Chairman assured Senator McCain that there would be no leaks because all copies would be gathered and destroyed, and he gave orders to that effect. No senior staff member or attorney present cautioned against a possible violation of Title 18, U.S.C., Section 2071, or of Senate or Select Committee Rules.
c. Following the briefing on 9 April, the Staff Director, Ms. Frances Zwenig, restated to the intelligence investigators the order to destroy the intelligence briefing text and took measures to ensure execution of the destruction order. (See paragraph 3 of the attachment.) During one telephone conversation with the undersigned, she stated that she was "acting under orders."
d. The undersigned also was instructed to delete all computer files, which Mr. Barry Valentine witnessed on 9 April.
e. In a meeting on 15 April 1992, the Staff's Chief Counsel, J. William Codinha, was advised by intelligence investigators of their concerns about the possibility that they had committed a crime by participating in the destruction of the briefing text. Mr. Codinha minimized the significance of the documents and of their destruction. He admonished the investigators for "making a mountain out of a molehill."
f. When investigators repeated their concern that the order to destroy the documents might lead to criminal charges, Mr. Codinha replied "Who's the injured party." He was told, "The 2,494 families of the unaccounted for US Servicemen, among others." Mr. Codinha then said, "Who's gonna tell them. It's classified." At that point the meeting erupted. The undersigned stated that the measure of merit was the law and what's right, not avoidance of getting caught. To which Mr. Codinha made no reply. At no time during the meeting did Mr. Codinha give any indication that any copies of the intelligence briefing text existed.
g. Investigators, thereupon, repeatedly requested actions by the Committee to clear them of any wrongdoing, such as provision of legal counsel. Mr. codinha admitted that he was not familiar with the law and promised to look into it. He invited a memorandum from the investigators stating what they wanted. Given Mr. Codinha's
statements and reactions to the possibility of criminal liability, the investigators concluded they must request appointment of an independent counsel. A memorandum making such a request and signed by all six intelligence investigators was delivered to Mr. Codinha on 16 April.
h. At 2130 on 16 April, the Chairman of the Senate Select Committee, convened a meeting with the intelligence investigators, who told him personally of their concern that they might have committed a crime by participating in the destruction of the briefing texts at the order of the Staff Director. Senator Kerry stated that he gave the order to destroy the documents, not the Staff Director, and that none of the Senators present at the meeting had objected. He also stated that the issue of document destruction was "moot" because the original briefing text had been deposited with the Office of Senate Security "all along." Both the Staff Director and the Chief Counsel supported this assertion by the Chairman.
i. Senator Kerry's remarks prompted follow-up investigations (See paragraphs 4 through 9 of the attachment) and inquiries that established that a copy of the text was not deposited in the Office of Senate Security until the afternoon of 16 April. The Staff Director has admitted that on the afternoon of 16 April, after receiving a copy of a memorandum from Senator Bob Smith to Senator Kerry in which Senator Smith outlined his concerns about the destruction of documents, she obtained a copy of the intelligence briefing text from the office of Senator McCain and took it to the Office of Senate Security. Office of Senate Security personnel confirmed that the Staff Director gave them an envelope, marked "Eyes Only," to be placed in her personal file. The Staff Director has admitted that the envelope contained the copy of the intelligence briefing text that she obtained from the
office of Senator McCain.
3. The facts of the destruction of the intelligence briefing text would seem to fall inside the prescriptions of the Statute, Title 18, U.S.C., Section 2071, so as to justify their referral for investigation to a competent law enforcement authority. The applicability of that Statute was debated in United States v. Poindexter, D.D.C.
1989, 725 F. Supp. 13, in connection with the Iran Contra investigation. The District Court ruled, inter alia, that the National Security Council is a public office within the meaning of the Statute and, thus, that its records and documents fell within the protection of the Statute. In light of that ruling, the Statute would seem to apply to this Senate Select Committee and its Staff. The continued existence of a "bootleg" copy of the intelligence briefing text - i.e., a copy that is not one of those made by the investigators for the purpose of briefing the Select
Committee - would seem to be irrelevant to the issues of intent to destroy and willfulness; as well as to the issue of responsibility for the order to destroy all copies of the briefing text, for the attempt to carry out that order, and for the destruction that actually was accomplished in execution of that order.
4. As for the issue of misconduct by Staff attorneys, all member of the Bar swear to uphold the law. That oath may be violated by acts of omission and commission. Even without a violation of the Federal criminal statute, the actions and failures to act by senior Staff attorneys in the sequence of events connected with the destruction of the briefing text might constitute violations of ethical standards for members of the Bar and of both Senate and Select Committee rules. The statements, actions and failures to act during and after the meeting on 15 April, when the investigators gave notice of their concern about possible criminal liability for document destruction, would seem to reflect disregard for the law and for the rules of the United States
Senate.
(Signed)
John F. McCreary
Kerry's Special Friends
New York Times
By DAVID BROOKS
Published: February 7, 2004
John Kerry has been railing against the special interests, and I don't think that's very nice because it implies that some people's interests are not so special. I like to think that everybody's interests are special in their own way.
What's more, I think Kerry knows this, because if you look over his long career, you see that he loves all our interests, big and small, near or far. For example, a Chinese businesswoman named Liu Chaoying dreamed of having her company listed on a U.S. stock exchange. That's certainly a special dream.
Maybe as a little girl she would come home from school, gather up her little dollies and tell them about her dream of ringing the bell to start the trading day, or of having little Lucite tombstones on her desk to mark her mergers and acquisitions. Maybe some of the other little girls in school told her she'd never have a company on a U.S. exchange, because you know how cruel little kids can be.
But she had an interest, and to her it was the most specialest interest in the world. And she kept at it. And that cute little girl grew up to become a lieutenant colonel in China's People's Liberation Army, which is a very special army, even measured against the armies of other human rights-violating dictatorships. And what's more, she had a $300,000 bank account with funds supplied by the head of Chinese intelligence, which is certainly quite special indeed.
And Liu came to America in search of her dream, for this is the nation of dreams. And she went to see a most special man named Johnny Chung. And in July 1996, according to Newsweek, Chung took Liu to see his special friend John Kerry about her dream, and Kerry recognized its specialness. So his aides faxed over a letter to the S.E.C. about the dream, and the very next day Liu and Chung had a private briefing with a senior S.E.C. official about making her special dream come true.
And then a few weeks after that, Johnny Chung threw a fund-raiser for John Kerry in Beverly Hills. And John Kerry came away with $10,000 in contributions, and I like to think they were very special contributions. I like to think they were written on special designer checks, maybe with rainbows or kittens or Chinese long-range missile designs shaded on the back, because special dreams deserve special checks, and when a man as special as John Kerry takes up an interest, I think that makes it a special interest all by itself.
Liu Chaoying's interest was not the only interest John Kerry took a special interest in. According to The Associated Press, Kerry took a special interest in the insurance giant American International Group. When Senator John McCain proposed legislation that would have ended a federal contracting loophole benefiting A.I.G., Kerry did not look away, as others might have done. A loophole may not seem like much to you and me, but to A.I.G. it was a very special loophole the cuddly kind of loophole you can hold under the blankets and tell your secrets to late at night. And according to The A.P., John Kerry preserved the little loophole. And by
sheer coincidence, A.I.G. donated $30,000 to help start Kerry's presidential campaign.
While sitting on the commerce and finance committees, John Kerry has seen many interests, and you could forgive him if he didn't think they were all special. But Kerry has raised more money from Washington lobbyists than any other senator. He's raised over $30 million over the past nine years, and you just ask the folks in the telecom industry if he doesn't make them feel special.
You just ask David Paul, one of the big figures in the savings and loan scandal, if Kerry didn't make him feel special. You just ask the high-tech executive Bob Majumder how special Kerry made him feel, at least until Majumder was charged with 40 counts of conspiracy, witness tampering, fraud, tax evasion and illegal campaign contributions. You just ask the law firms, the brokerage houses, the oil companies, the H.M.O.'s and the drug companies, which have donated tens of thousands of dollars to Kerry.
Oh, he sometimes pretends that he doesn't care about our special interests. He puts on that callous populist facade. But deep down he cares. Maybe he cares too much. When he's out on the stump saying otherwise, he's just being a big old phony.
THE REAL KERRY
By HOWIE CARR
Email Archives
Print Reprint
February 5, 2004 -- BOSTON
ONE of the surest ways to get the phones ringing on any Massachusetts talk-radio show is to ask people to call in and tell their John Kerry stories. The phone lines are soon filled, and most of the stories have a common theme: our junior senator pulling rank on one of his constituents, breaking in line, demanding to pay less (or nothing) or ducking out before the bill arrives.
The tales often have one other common thread. Most end with Sen. Kerry inquiring of the lesser mortal: "Do you know who I am?"
And now he's running for president as a populist. His first wife came from a Philadelphia Main Line family worth $300 million. His second wife is a pickle-and-ketchup heiress.
Kerry lives in a mansion on Beacon Hill on which he has borrowed $6 million to finance his campaign. A fire hydrant that prevented him and his wife from parking their SUV in front of their tony digs was removed by the city of Boston at his behest.
The Kerrys ski at a spa the widow Heinz owns in Aspen, and they summer on Nantucket in a sprawling seaside "cottage" on Hurlbert Avenue, which is so well-appointed that at a recent fund-raiser, they imported porta-toilets onto the front lawn so the donors wouldn't use the inside bathrooms. (They later claimed the decision was made on septic, not social, considerations).
It's a wonderful life these days for John Kerry. He sails Nantucket Sound in "the Scaramouche," a 42-foot Hinckley powerboat. Martha Stewart has a similar boat; the no-frills model reportedly starts at $695,000. Sen. Kerry bought it new, for cash.
Every Tuesday night, the local politicians here that Kerry elbowed out of his way on his march to the top watch, fascinated, as he claims victory in more primaries and denounces the special interests, the "millionaires" and "the overprivileged."
"His initials are JFK," longtime state Senate President William M. Bulger used to muse on St. Patrick's Day, "Just for Kerry. He's only Irish every sixth year." And now it turns out that he's not Irish at all.
But in the parochial world of Bay State politics, he was never really seen as Irish, even when he was claiming to be (although now, of course, he says that any references to his alleged Hibernian heritage were mistakenly put into the Congressional Record by an aide who apparently didn't know that on his paternal side he is, in fact, part-Jewish).
Kerry is, in fact, a Brahmin - his mother was a Forbes, from one of Massachusetts' oldest WASP families. The ancestor who wed Ralph Waldo Emerson's daughter was marrying down.
At the risk of engaging in ethnic stereotyping, Yankees have a reputation for, shall we say, frugality. And Kerry tosses around quarters like they were manhole covers. In 1993, for instance, living on a senator's salary of about $100,000, he managed to give a total of $135 to charity.
Yet that same year, he was somehow able to scrape together $8,600 for a brand-new, imported Italian motorcycle, a Ducati Paso 907 IE. He kept it for years, until he decided to run for president, at which time he traded it in for a Harley-Davidson like the one he rode onto "The Tonight Show" set a couple of months ago as Jay Leno applauded his fellow Bay Stater.
Of course, in 1993 he was between his first and second heiresses - a time he now calls "the wandering years," although an equally apt description might be "the freeloading years."
For some of the time, he was, for all practical purposes, homeless. His friends allowed him into a real-estate deal in which he flipped a condo for quick resale, netting a $21,000 profit on a cash investment of exactly nothing. For months he rode around in a new car supplied by a shady local Buick dealer. When the dealer's ties to a congressman who was later indicted for racketeering were exposed, Kerry quickly explained that the non-payment was a mere oversight, and wrote out a check.
In the Senate, his record of his constituent services has been lackluster, and most of his colleagues, despite their public support, are hard-pressed to list an accomplishment. Just last fall, a Boston TV reporter ambushed three congressmen with the question, name something John Kerry has accomplished in Congress. After a few nervous giggles, two could think of nothing, and a third mentioned a baseball field, and then misidentified Kerry as "Sen. Kennedy."
Many of his constituents see him in person only when he is cutting them in line - at an airport, a clam shack or the Registry of Motor Vehicles. One talk-show caller a few weeks back recalled standing behind a police barricade in 2002 as the Rolling Stones played the Orpheum Theater, a short limousine ride from Kerry's Louisburg Square mansion.
The caller, Jay, said he began heckling Kerry and his wife as they attempted to enter the theater. Finally, he said, the senator turned to him and asked him the eternal question.
"Do you know who I am?"
"Yeah," said Jay. "You're a gold-digger."
John Kerry. First he looks at the purse.
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Boston Globe Kerry Article -February 02, 2004, Gives insight into Kerry campaign tactics:
AS CAMPAIGN HEATS UP, VETERANS TAKING SIDES
February 04, 2004, 8:37 a.m.
John Kerry’s America,What he said about us.
By William F. Buckley Jr.
EDITOR'S NOTE: This is the text of William F. Buckley Jr.'s June 8, 1971, commencement address to the United States Military Academy at West Point. The speech appears here as it is in Let Us Talk of Many Things : The Collected Speeches.
The morale in the armed services was low, reflecting the impasse and progressive demoralization in Vietnam, and especially the trial of Lieutenant William Calley for the massacre at Mylai. A drastic charge, flamboyantly made by decorated veteran John Kerry (now a United States senator from Massachusetts), had been rapturously received. Kerry ascribed to our soldiers in Vietnam uncivilized, barbarous practices. I devoted my talk to asking about Mr. Kerry's charges and reflecting on their implications.
A great deal has been written lately on the spirit of progressivism at West Point. I note that a generation ago, cadets were not permitted to read a newspaper, whereas today, each cadet room receives a daily copy of the New York Times. I know now what it means to be nostalgic for the good old days.
I read ten days ago the full text of the quite remarkable address delivered by John Kerry before the Senate Committee on Foreign Relations. It was an address, I am told, that paralyzed the committee by its eloquence and made Mr. Kerry — a veteran of the war in Vietnam, a pedigreed Bostonian, a graduate of Yale University — an instant hero.
After reading it I put it aside, deeply troubled as I was by the haunting resonance of its peroration, which so moved the audience. The words he spoke were these:
"[We are determined] to undertake one last mission, to search out and destroy the last vestige of this barbaric war, to pacify our hearts, to conquer the hate and fear that have driven this country these last ten years and more, so that when, thirty years from now, our brothers go down the street without a leg, without an arm, or a face, and small boys ask why, we will be able to say 'Vietnam!' and not mean a desert, not a filthy obscene memory, but the place where America finally turned and where soldiers like us helped it in the turning."
"Where America finally turned." We need to wonder: where America finally turned from what?
Mr. Kerry, in introducing himself to the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, made it plain that he was there to speak not only for himself, but for what he called "a very much larger group of veterans in this country." He then proceeded to describe the America he knows, the America from which he enjoined us all to turn.
In Southeast Asia, he said, he saw "not isolated incidents but crimes committed on a day-to-day basis with the full awareness of officers at all levels of command."
A grave charge, but the sensitive listener will instantly assume that Mr. Kerry is using the word "crime" loosely, as in, "He was criminally thoughtless in not writing home more often to his mother." But Mr. Kerry quickly interdicted that line of retreat. He went on to enumerate precisely such crimes as are being committed "on a day-to-day basis, with the full awareness of officers at all levels of command." He gave tales of torture, of rape, of Americans who "randomly shot at civilians, razed villages in a fashion reminiscent of Genghis Khan, shot cattle and dogs for fun, poisoned food stocks, and generally ravaged the countryside of South Vietnam in addition to the normal ravages of war."
Mr. Kerry informed Congress that what threatens the United States is "not Reds, and not redcoats," but "the crimes" we are committing. He tells us that we have "created a monster, a monster in the form of millions of men who have been taught to deal and to trade in violence, and who have returned with a sense of anger."
Most specifically he singled out for criticism a sentence uttered by Mr. Agnew here at West Point a year ago: "Some glamorize the criminal misfits of society while our best men die in Asian rice paddies to preserve the freedom which most of those misfits abuse." Mr. Kerry insists that the so-called misfits are the true heroes, inasmuch as it was they who "were standing up for us in a way that nobody else in this country dared to." As for the men in Vietnam, he added, "we cannot consider ourselves America's 'best men' when we are ashamed of and hated for what we were called on to do in Southeast Asia."
And indeed, if American soldiers have been called upon to rape and to torture and to exterminate non-combatants, it is obvious that they should be ashamed, less obvious why they have not expressed that shame more widely on returning to the United States, particularly inasmuch as we have been assured by Mr. Kerry that they have been taught to deal and to trade in violence.
Are there extenuating circumstances? Is there a reason for our being in Vietnam?
"To attempt to justify the loss of one American life in Vietnam, Cambodia, or Laos by linking such loss to the preservation of freedom . . . is . . . the height of criminal hypocrisy, and it is that kind of hypocrisy which we feel has torn this country apart." It is then, we reason retrospectively, not alone an act of hypocrisy that caused the joint chiefs of staff and the heads of the civilian departments engaged in strategic calculations to make the recommendations they made over the past ten years, to three Presidents of the United States: it was not merely hypocrisy, but criminal hypocrisy. The nature of that hypocrisy? "All," Mr. Kerry sums up, "that we were told about the mystical war against Communism."
The indictment is complete.
It is the indictment of an ignorant young man who is willing to condemn in words that would have been appropriately used in Nuremberg the governing class of America: the legislators, the generals, the statesmen. And, reaching beyond them, the people, who named the governors to their positions of responsibility and ratified their decisions in several elections.
The point I want to raise is this: If America is everything that John Kerry says it is, what is it appropriate for us to do? The wells of regeneration are infinitely deep, but the stain described by John Kerry goes too deep to be bleached out by conventional remorse or resolution: better the destruction of America, if, to see ourselves truly, we need to look into the mirror John Kerry holds up for us. If we are a nation of sadists, of kid-killers and torturers, of hypocrites and criminals, let us be done with it, and pray that a great flood or fire will destroy us, leaving John Kerry and maybe Mrs. Benjamin Spock to take the place of Lot, in reseeding a new order.
Gentleman, how many times, in the days ahead, you will need to ask yourselves the most searching question of all, the counterpart of the priest's most agonizing doubt: Is there a God? Yours will be: Is America worth it?
John Kerry's assault on this country did not rise fullblown in his mind, like Venus from the Cypriot Sea. It is the crystallization of an assault upon America which has been fostered over the years by an intellectual class given over to self-doubt and self-hatred, driven by a cultural disgust with the uses to which so many people put their freedom. The assault on the military, the many and subtle vibrations of which you feel as keenly as James Baldwin knows the inflections of racism, is an assault on the proposition that what we have, in America, is truly worth defending. The military is to be loved or despised according as it defends that which is beloved or perpetuates that which is despised. The root question has not risen to such a level of respectability as to work itself into the platform of a national political party, but it lurks in the rhetoric of the John Kerrys, such that a blind man, running his fingers over the features of the public rhetoric, can discern the meaning of it:
Is America worth it?
That is what they are saying to you. And that is what so many Americans reacted to in the case of Lieutenant Calley. Mistakenly, they interpreted the conviction of Calley as yet another effort to discredit the military. And though they will not say it in as many words, they know that if there is no military, it will quickly follow that there will be no America, of the kind that they know, that we know. The America that listens so patiently to its John Kerrys, the America that shouldered the great burden of preserving oases of freedom after the great curtain came down with that Bolshevik subtlety that finally expressed itself in a Wall, to block citizens of the socialist utopia from leaving, en route even to John Kerry's America; the America that all but sank under the general obloquy, in order to stand by, in Southeast Asia, a commitment it had soberly made, to the cause of Containment — I shall listen patiently, decades hence, to those who argue that our commitment in Vietnam and our attempt to redeem it were tragically misconceived. I shall not listen to those who say that it was less than the highest tribute to national motivation, to collective idealism, and to international rectitude. I say this with confidence because I have never met an American who takes pleasure from the Vietnam War or who desires to exploit the Vietnamese.
So during those moments when doubt will assail you, moments that will come as surely as the temptations of the flesh, I hope you will pause. I know, I know, at the most hectic moments of one's life it isn't easy — indeed, the argument can be made that neither is it seemly — to withdraw from the front line in order to consider the general situation philosophically. But what I hope you will consider, during these moments of doubt, is the essential professional point: Without organized force, and the threat of the use of it under certain circumstances, there is no freedom, anywhere. Without freedom, there is no true humanity. If America is the monster of John Kerry, burn your commissions tomorrow morning and take others, which will not bind you in the depraved conspiracy you have heard described. If it is otherwise, remember: the freedom John Kerry enjoys, and the freedom I enjoy, are, quite simply, the result of your dedication. Do you wonder that I accepted the opportunity to salute you?
Kerry Angry at Bush for Making Vietnam an Issue
Wednesday, Feb. 4, 2004 11:26 a.m. EST
Sen. John Kerry and his media boosters are hoping bogus allegations that President Bush went AWOL from the National Guard will catapult him into the White House - but during the 1992 presidential campaign, Kerry angrily denounced Bush's father for raising Bill Clinton's Vietnam draft record.
In fact, back then, Kerry called those who wanted to make Vietnam service an issue "cowardly."
"I'm here personally to express my anger, as a veteran," Kerry told National Public Radio two months before the 1992 election, "that a president who would stand before this nation in his inaugural address and promise to put Vietnam behind us is now breaking yet another promise and trying to use Vietnam and service in order to get himself re-elected."
"That is not an act of leadership, that is an act of shame and cowardice," the Massachusetts Democrat railed.
In words that could now apply to his own presidential campaign, Kerry complained to reporters a month later that White House charges suggesting Clinton had gone AWOL from the draft were an ugly smear.
"It is a sad day when the president of the United States is willing to sully another man's reputation and challenge his patriotism merely to get elected," the current Democratic front-runner groused.
Tuesday night, Kerry pulled a 180-degree about-face on the issue of using a candidate's Vietnam-era military record, telling Fox News Channel's "Hannity & Colmes," "There is an issue about what [Bush's] service was - and I don't know the answers."
Saying he would defend Bush's decision to enlist in the Guard, Kerry rattled off a long list of Vietnam-era options that lumped Guard service in with draft-dodging.
"I've never made any judgments about any choice somebody made about avoiding the draft, about going to Canada, going to jail, being a conscientious objector [or] going into the National Guard," he told Sean Hannity. "Those are choices people make."
Kerry's $3.95 Book a $500 Hit
In the unlikely event that you snapped up copies of John "F." Kerry's book "The New Soldier" in 1971, you could make a huge profit today.
NewsMax's investigative report about Sen. Kerry's unusual past sparked a huge response from readers this week. Although we already had posted one, many sent pictures of the hard-to-find book, which features a cover photo of anti-war protesters desecrating the U.S. flag. Kerry tried to suppress copies of the book when he ran for the U.S. House in 1972.
Many readers also told of auction sites selling the embarrassing volume (cover price: $3.95) for hundreds of dollars. As of Friday afternoon, we found that eBay had one copy going for $255 and one signed by the esteemed author for $500.
Amazon lists the book but not the price. A reviewer from Boston gave it one star out of five and wrote: "The upside down flag on the cover of the book symbolizes the Left's feelings for America and the Constitution of the United States. This book reveals a different side of John Kerry, a side everyone should know before they go to the polls.
"However, the book is good to read if you would like to get into the early mind of the New Left, and contemporary radicals, who are disgusted by 'the Bush Doctrine.'"
Amazon notes: "Customers who bought titles by John Kerry also bought titles by these authors: Wesley K. Clark, Stephen E. Lambert, Douglas Brinkley, Howard Dean, Richard Gephardt."
Amazon's sales ranking of the tome: 1,513,725. The company offers a helpful link to publishers and authors on how to "improve your sales," but even though Kerry had to mortgage his mansion to finance his campaign, we doubt he'll take this advice.
Washington Times
Letters to the Editor
December 6, 2002
John Kerry's war record As Sen. John Kerry, Massachusetts Democrat,Considers a bid for the White House, Americans should know a few things about him that he might prefer go unmentioned; and I don't mean his $75
haircuts.
Cash-and-Kerry
By Lowell Ponte
FrontPageMagazine.com | January 27, 2004
PONTEFICATIONS
WILL COMMUNIST VIETNAM BE AMONG THE BIGGEST behind-the-scenes bankrollers of the Democratic National Convention this July 26-29 in Boston? It already has been, via a de facto intermediary, thanks to the Massachusetts boy and friend of Hanoi now likely to be nominated there as the Democrats’ presidential standard-bearer.
Senator John F. Kerry has a long political career, distinguished by his willingness to go farther Left in politics and lower for money than most other American politicians would dream of going. He has been largely unnoticed outside the liberal Northeast and the approving pages of leftist magazines and newspapers.
Read On This is a shocker!
A POW Speaks Out On Kerry
by Joe Crecca
29 Jan 04
The rigors and hardships of being a POW aside, I remember the so called "Peace Movement" and "Peace Marches" and "Rallies" that were taking placeback home in the U.S.A. Our captors were more than willing, within their means, to provide us with any and all anti-U.S. and anti-Vietnam War propaganda. Without a choice in the matter, we listened to the "Voice of Vietnam" broadcasts by "Hanoi Hannah" and were shown newspaper and magazine photos and articles about those opposing the war back in the States.
One of the peace marchers' standard slogans was to, "Bring our boys home now and, alive." The warped thinking of such people was that by demonstrating against U.S. involvement in Vietnam, they'd be shortening the war and reducing the number of American casualties. These demonstrators would also try to make one believe that their efforts would bring POWs like me home sooner. They were utterly wrong on both counts not to mention the detrimental effect their actions had on the morale of our troops and our POWs.
John F. Kerry was not just one of these demonstrators. He was leading them.
Therefore, these so-called demonstrations for peace had the exact opposite effect of what they were purporting to accomplish. Instead of shortening the war, the so-called "Peace Movement" served only to protract the conflict resulting in a vastly greater number of Americans killed and wounded, greater economic burdens and longer periods of incarceration for Americans held captive in Vietnam. The war would have been over much sooner and with a much more favorable result if those in the so-called "Peace Movement" would
have instead rallied behind the Commander-in-Chief to accomplish our mission and then, withdraw.
It is inescapable to think of the so-called peace movement and the anti-war demonstrators without also thinking how many fewer names there would now be engraved into the black granite of the Vietnam Wall if these same people had supported our efforts instead of trying to derail them. After all, fighting against a political regime that up to that time had murdered over a hundred million people couldn't have been all bad. But, John F. Kerry thought and acted differently. How many more names on the wall can he take credit for?
After the war ended, some of the war protesters hung on to their anti-war postures for a while. Some of them realized the errors of their ways almost immediately while for others it took twenty to twenty-five years.
But some, like John F. Kerry, have not realized there was anything wrong with what he did. Instead, he hopes we will see him as a courageous Vietnam veteran. I do not. He hopes we will admire his bravery. I do not. I remember him more for his misdeeds upon his return from Vietnam.
However, in the present political arena, he evidently has succeeded in gaining the support of some well-meaning but misled Americans. Given his past record, it is just astonishing that he has garnered any support from our nation's veterans.
I hope all will reconsider their support for Senator Kerry in light of his actions which were so detrimental to our Vietnam combat soldiers, sailors and airmen - many of whom are not here today to tell you themselves.
Thank you for considering my views. Please share what I have written with your fellow vets....
Joe Crecca scouser01@earthlink.net
Vietnam POW
22 NOV 66 - 18 FEB 73
Kerry's Voting Record
‘Comeback Kerry’ Now Faces Intense Scrutiny of Record
RUSH: I mentioned yesterday that John Kerry is going to have some trouble on the campaign trail because he's got a record that is going to be very difficult to defend, and this is one of the reasons why so many surrogates are out there speaking for Kerry, and no sooner did I say that than Morton Kondracke has put together a mini list of things that Kerry has voted for over the years and voted against that are going to add up to causing him problems.
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Kerry's War Record
On the campaign trail, White House wannabe Sen. John Forbes Kerry regularly mentions his Vietnam War combat experience, during which he received three Purple Hearts, the Silver Star and Bronze Star.
However, the Massachusetts Democrat doesn't like to talk much about how he received the awards or the time after he returned home when he was rubbing shoulders with Hanoi Jane Fonda as a much-celebrated organizer for Vietnam Veterans Against the War (VVAW), one of America's most radical pro-communist groups Read More
When Mr. Kerry pontificated at the Vietnam Veterans Memorial on Veterans Day, a group of veterans turned their backs on him and walked away. They remembered Mr. Kerry as the anti-war activist who testified before
Congress during the war, accusing veterans of being war criminals. The dust jacket of Mr. Kerry's pro-Hanoi book, "The New Soldier," features a photograph of his ragged band of radicals mocking the U.S. Marine Corps Memorial, which depicts the flag-raising on Iwo Jima, with an upside-down American flag.
Retired Gen. George S. Patton III charged that Mr. Kerry's actions as an anti-war activist had "given aid and comfort to the enemy," as had the actions of Ramsey Clark and Jane Fonda. Also, Mr. Kerry lied when he
threw what he claimed were his war medals over the White House fence; he later admitted they weren't his. Now they are displayed on his office wall.
Long after he changed sides in congressional hearings, Mr. Kerry lobbied for renewed trade relations with Hanoi. At the same time, his cousin C. StewartForbes, chief Executive for Colliers International, assisted in
brokering a $905 million deal to develop a deep-sea port at Vung Tau, Vietnam; an odd coincidence.
As noted in the Inside Politics column of Nov. 14 (Nation), historian Douglas Brinkley is writing Mr. Kerry's biography. Hopefully, he'll include the senator's latest ignominious feat: preventing the Vietnam Human Rights
Act (HR2833) from coming to a vote in the Senate, claiming human rights would deteriorate as a result. His actions sent a clear signal to Hanoi that Congress cares little about the human rights for which so many Americans fought and died.
The State Department ranked Vietnam among the 10 regimes worldwide least tolerant of religious freedom. Recently, 354 churches of the Montagnards, a Christian ethnic minority, were forcibly disbanded, and by mid-October, more than 50 Christian pastors and elders had been arrested in Dak Lak province alone.
On Oct. 29, the secret police executed three Montagnards by lethal injection simply for protesting religious repression. The communists are conducting a program against the Montagnards, forcing Christians to drink a mixture of goat's blood and alcohol and renounce Christianity. Thousands have been killed or imprisoned or have just "disappeared." The Montagnards lost one-half of their adult male population fighting for the United States, and without them, there might be thousands more American names on that somber black granite wall at the Vietnam memorial.
As Mr. Kerry contemplates a run for the presidency, people must remember that he has fought harder for Hanoi as an anti-war activist and a senator than he did against the Vietnamese communists while serving in the Navy in Vietnam.
Date: Thu, 17 May 2001
From: Vietnam Veterans Against the War <"xx600@prairienet.org>
Subject: John Kerry on Vietnam Atrocities
From VVAW's mailbox to all on VVAWNET and VVAWINC:
[Looks like Kerry has begun his presidential 'retooling' for 2004--jtm]
Portion of John Kerry remarks on NBC's "Meet the Press" May 6, 2001:
The Real John Kerry
VIETNAM VETERANS FOR ACADEMIC REFORM -
the student auxiliary at the University of Kansas
Leonard Magruder - Founder/President
Former professor of psychology, Suffolk College, N.Y.
STUDENTS CALL ON KERRY TO DISAVOW 70'S ANTI-WAR STATEMENT, OR DROP OUT.
by Leonard Magruder
In 1972 a book was published that contained statements by well known personalities at the time, pro and con, the Vietnam War. Called "The Eloquence of Protest " it was edited by Harrison E. Salisbury, and published by Houghton Mifflin. Among the statements was one by Navy Lieutenant John Kerry,testifying for his organization, Vietnam Veterans Against the War, before the Senate Foreign Relations Committee on April 22, 1971. At that time, and still today, I had strong ideas on the subject of the war, and have often have spoken out on the issue. While I did not see accuracy in a number of statements that Kerry made, I had read a lot about the war, felt I understood the feelings that produced such an outburst so did not complain at that time.
But now John Kerry is running for the highest office in the land, for President, in times as perilous as any America has ever faced. So a few days ago I took a second look at his statement and came away with these questions.
Isn't it clear that these statements had been heavily influenced by the standard arguments of the anti-war movement at the time, and haven't those arguments been shown in repeated history books in recent years to have been seriously misrepresentative of that war? Would not someone who had been so wide of the mark
in his understanding of that war be dangerous to the nation as a Commander-in-Chief, unless he had changed his mind significantly in later years ? While themedia today frequently mentions Senator Kerry's distinguished career in Vietnam, and rightly so, it has studiously avoided mentioning his major role in organizing Vietnam Veterans Against the War, or his speech to Congress condemning that war.
We think it vitally important that the media ask of Senator Kerry if he still stands by the statements he made to Congress in 1971. These statements were significantly at odds with majority American opinion on the war at that time and they clearly parallel the opinions of the campus war protests, which, in the long run made a major contribution to the failure of that campaign and the triumph of tyranny and genocide in Southeast Asia.
If he disavows his earlier position, that would be a major blow to the myths about Vietnam that are still being perpetuated in media and university to protect those who avoided that fight for freedom. If he does not disavow
his earlier position then we call on him to drop out of the race for the Presidency.
In the following what I do is quote some of the more startling passages from Mr. Kerry's statement and comment on them, in some cases borrowing information from the noted historian Lewis Sorley who describes the very same period in his recent book on Vietnam , "A Better War." Mr. Sorley is the historian who was selected to be the main analyst in the recent highly acclaimed 4-volume film series on the Vietnam War, "The Long Way Home Project", introduced by H. Norman Schwartkopf. If Kerry does disavow his 1971 statement then we also ask that he use his considerable influence to get PBS to air this series nationally to help heal the bitter division in the country that still exists between those who served and those who did not serve. We cannot go forward into a dangerous future without national unity. It is time to end the undeserved aura of
idealism that media and university attach to the phrase "anti-war activist", when in actual fact it should be viewed as shameful.
Excerpts from Senator Kerry's 1971 statement to Congress, followed by my comments.
Kerry:
"Several months ago in Detroit we had an investigation at which over 150 honorably discharged and many very highly decorated veterans testified to warcrimes committed in Southeast Asia , not isolated incidents, but crimes committed on a day-to-day basis with the full awareness of officers at all levels of command. They re-lived the absolute horror of what this country , in a sense made them do. They had personally raped, cut off ears, cut off heads, taped wires from portable telephones to human genitals , cut off limbs, blown up bodies, randomly shot civilians, razed villages in fashion reminiscent of Genghis Kahn, shot cattle and dogs for fun, poisoned food stocks, and generally ravaged the country side... We are ashamed of and hated what we were called on to do in Southeast Asia. "
Comment:
It is common knowledge that the medals that Kerry threw over the fence in Washington at Dewey Canyon lll were not his own. They are on his wall in his office. Kerry's was a fake sacrifice, but keeping the medals does show he cares about his reputation as a soldier . But he should have remembered that other veterans cared equally when he talked about "the crimes this country, in a sense, made them do." I had to read tons of Army manuals in becoming anR.O.T.C. 2nd Lieutenant, (although I never served , being transfered during the
Korean War to Honorary Reserve because of medical problems.) And I know that nothing in those manuals orders soldiers to do any of the things Kerry mentioned.
We know things like this happened, but they were crimes and were prosecuted when possible. Historian Guenter Lewy points out in statistical form in his highly acclaimed and objective history "America in Vietnam", that atrocities in Vietnam did not differ significantly in that war from any other American war.
Kerry:
"The country doesn't know it yet, but it has created a monster, a monster in the form of millions of men who have been taught to deal and trade in violence, and who are given the chance to die for the biggest nothing in
history."
Comment:
Psychologists, who were usually against the war, to buttress their position, charged the war with having created a "killer instinct" for which there was not the slightest shred of evidence. We know this from comparing the rates of crimes by Vietnam vets with the rest of the country over the years. Wrote the noted sociologist and student of war Charles Moskos, "Psychologists tried to portray the soldier as variously, wanton perpetrators of atrocities or proto-fascist automatons." The truth is the mental health community prostituted itself in creating this myth to forward its politics, using the suffering of the veterans to do so.
Also, what was "nothing" about the enormous sacrifice of men and treasure the U.S. expended to try to help a small country who asked for our aid against the horrors that we know occured when that country went down ?
Kerry:
"We are men who have returned with a sense of anger , and a sense of betrayal which no one yet has grasped. We are angry because we feel that we have been used in the worst fashion by the administration of this country."
.Comment:
A Harris poll in the 1980's found that 91% said they were glad they served, 74% said they enjoyed their time in the military, and 66% said they would serve again. As to the effects of their service many said it made them more ambitious, more determined to make something of their lives, that it made them more serious and that they appreciated America more, valued life more. Does this sound like men who were "used."
Kerry:
"We in no way consider ourselves the best men of this country , because those Agnew calls misfits (war protestors) were standing up for us in a way that nobody else in this country dared to, because so many who have died would have returned to this country to join the misfits in their efforts to ask for an immediate withdrawal from South Vietnam.
Comment:
The identification with the goals of the campus war protestors, or anti-war movement, is very clear. Kerry was reportedly (U.S.Veterans Dispatch) a supporter of the "People's Peace Treaty", a "peoples" declaration to end
the war drawn up in communist East Germany based on 9 points taken from Viet Cong peace proposals. The "Boston Herald Traveler" reported that Kerry marched in a protest on Dec. 12, 1971 in a group carrying Viet Cong flags and placards in support of China, Cuba, the USSR and Hanoi.
Only those in the anti-war movement called for "immediately withdrawal" an ignominious solution that the majority would not even consider. Nor did the protestors care about the soldiers. Again and again in my documentary, based on 68 interviews, "The Shame of the War Protestors: Vietnam Vets Speak Out",
the veterans of that war said , "When we came home, the protestors didn't care about us." Many told about being harassed, insulted, ostrasized, and even spit upon at airports when they returned.
Kerry:
"To attempt to justify the loss of one American life in Vietnam... by linking such loss to the preservation of freedom, which those misfits supposedly abuse, is to us the height of criminal hypocrisy, and it is that kind of
hypocrisy which we feel has torn this country apart."
Comment:
Is there any question but what the 58,000 plus lives that were given in South Vietnam was in a noble effort to preserve freedom for an oppressed people ?
American soldiers did give the South Vietnamese freedom. By late 1969 almost the entire population was thought to be living under substantially secure conditions. Said Ambassador Bunker, "By the end of 1972 one could travel anywhere in South Vietnam without security forces or anything else, even though by then American forces were about all gone." The American soldier never got any credit for all he did for the South Vietnamese, the media never mentioned it to the American people.
As to what tore the country apart, it was the protestors, and here is what the nation thought about them. (From "America in Our Time," by Godfrey Hodgson)
"At the height of the war, the Harris Poll showed that 69 % of the public believed that anti-war demonstrations were "acts of disloyalty against the boys fighting in Vietnam," 65% agreed that "protestors were giving aid and
comfort to the enemy," 64% said they were not "serious , thoughtful critics of the war, just peaceniks and hippies having a ball." A poll by the University of Michigan showed that reactions to "Vietnam war protestors", was "by a wide margin, the most negative shown any group."
Kerry:
"We are probably angriest about all that we were told about Vietnam and about the mystical war against Communism. We found that not only was it a civil war, but that the Vietnamese were hard put to take up the fight against the threat we were supposedly saving them from.
Comment:
Was there something 'mystical' about the soldiers he saw dying all around him?
Did he not know that is was because Communist soldiers from the North were trying to enslave South Vietnam ? While the partition of South Vietnam into two sections makes the charge of "civil war" problematic, the fact remains it was clearly a war between a South Vietnam seeking freedom, against a totalitarian aggressor from the North, something neither the Communists nor the anti-war movement ever acknowledged. As for "hard put", few realize that in every campaign, the South Vietamese Army lost over twice as many soldiers as we
did. The figures for the five major offensives are as follows: (from "Vietnam in Military Statistics", a major history of the Vietnam War by Micheal Clodfelter.) It was never made know by the media, by the way, just how badly the enemy was mauled during this war.You can see that below.
1968-the Tet Offensive- U.S.- 1,829 KIA (killed in action), South
Vietnam-2,788 KIA, Communist forces- 45,000 KIA
1969- U.S. -9,414 KIA, South Vietnam - 21,833 KIA, Communist forces -156,954 KIA
1970 (includes Cambodian incursion)- U.S. -4,221 KIA, South Vietnam-23,345
KIA, Communist forces- 103,638 KIA
Laos Invasion (Lam Son 719, with U.S. air support only)- SouthVietnam-3,800
KIA, Communist forces, -13,668 KIA
1972 - Easter Offensive (with U.S.air support only) -South Vietnnam 15,000 KIA, Communist forces - 83,000.
Kerry:
"We found most people didn't even know the difference between Communism and Democracy. They only wanted to work in rice paddies and without helicopters strafing them and bombs with napalm burning their villages and tearing their country apart. They wanted the United States of America to leave them alone
in peace. and they sided with whichever military force was present, be it Viet Cong, North Vietnamese, or American."
Comment:
The most devious of all the anti-war arguments. President Thieu distributed 600,000 weapons to his people. No government in doubt of theyearning for democracy of its people would have dared do this. In the villages and the hamlets the People's Self-Defense Force had mushroomed during 1969. At years end, now organized into a combat arm and a support arm, the PSDHF had more than 1,300,000 men and women in the combat arm, backed up by another 1,735,000 people in the support arm, all ready to stop Communists.
Also, why was there no uprising against the Americans during the Tet Offensive, or any effort to aid the invaders, and why did the South Vietnamese Army then almost double, largely due to volunteers ? How could an 'uncaring ' people put together an army of over one million, sacrifice over 250,000 soldiers in battle, and fight against Communism, alone, for two years after the Americans had left, when, even with occasional stumbling, there were greatvictories as in the Easter Offensive, and An Loc."The basic fact of life", said the
noted American commander John Vann , "is that the overwhelming majority of the population - somewhere about 95% - prefer the government of Vietnam to a Communist government."For two years the South Vietnamese held out, until Ted Kennedy, Kerry's biggest supporter, led anti-war forces in Congress in cutting off all ammunition to South Vietnam.
We are hoping that over the years Senator Kerry has come to see that the anti-war position was mistaken, that it fell for enemy propaganda, and that he will say so. If not then there is no way that he can be trusted on matters of national security and he should abandon his quest for the Presidency, as that is the number one issue.The media keeps talking about Kerry's "strong national security credentials." That is questionable. There is nothing in Kerry's speech tht shows any sign of "stong national security credentials." It is very possible to be a much decorated soldier and still have little understanding of the very war in which one is fighting. It is clear Kerry did not, and therefore might not understand the current war.
For John Kerry's full '71 testimony before the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, please see:
Magruder44@aol.com 785-312-9303
Distribution:
National and foreign media
Major media- New Hampshire
Vietnam vets in Congress
Heads of Vietnam vet organizations
Faculty and student org. -K.U.
Board of Advisors - National
Mr. Richard Kitson - President, Vietnam Veterans of America - Suffolk Chapter (New York)
Mr. Dennis Garbosky - founder, Vietnam War Historical Society (New York)
Lt. Col. Chuck Allen (ret.) - founder, “National Vietnam Veterans Review” (North Carolina)
Mr. Ray Gallagher - past Commander, American Legion - Toronto (Canada)
Col. Stanley Horton - former Director, V.V.Leadership- Houston (Texas)
Mr. John Lowe - Commander, Native American Veterans Association (Kansas)
Mr. Roger Young - Co-Editor, “Northwest Veterans Newsletter”, and military consultant - (Washington)
Mr. Stephen Markley - former Director, V.V.Leadership - Minnesota (Kansas)
Dr. William Beausay - Academic Consultant - psychology (Ohio)
Mr. Steve Hawkins - President, Committee on the Crisis in Education (Kansas)
Mr. William Street - history - Vietnam War (Hawaii)
Dr. Richard G. Stevens - Professor of Political Science Emeritus-Institute of World Politics (Washington, D.C.)
Mr. Dan M. Steinruck - Virginia State Director for Point Man Ministries (Virginia)
Mr. Bernie Russo - President, VVA Chapter #484, Editor, VVA Newspaper- Conn. Edition (Connecticut)
Mr. Joseph P. Larson - Consultant - Computer Science (Kansas)
Beverly Haire - Consultant - POW/MIA issues (Florida)
Mr. Bill Laurie - Academic Consultant - History of Vietnam War (Arizona)
Rev. Lloyd Snodgrass - Academic Consultant -Theology (Kansas)
From letters:
“Your activities, indeed, sound very worthwhile.”
- Edwin Feulner - President - The Heritage Foundation
“Very best wishes for success in your important work.” - Former President George Bush
“I salute your aims… my best wishes in this.” - Charlton Heston - actor, producer
“The purpose and goals you have outlined for Vietnam Veterans for Academic Reform are excellent and I commend you and your colleagues.” -Pat Robertson -Chairman - the Christian Broadcasting Network, Inc.
“Very best wishes for your important work.” Christopher Demuth - President -American Enterprise Institute
“Your concerns regarding the academic climat