Dean Rebuked for Statement Implying Brother Served in Military

New York Times ^ | December 23, 2003 | JODI WILGOREN

[Goreknowshowtocheat]

Traveling with Jane?

[expatpat]

That's quite a bit -- they don't name any old person POW, but it's not all. The Feds also gave him special treatment when he came back in pieces. The training of agents is never something that is publicized, so absence of proof there means nothing.

I'm not claiming that he was an agent, but we should be careful not to get out on a weak limb.

[LibKill]

I think Dean may be getting a bum rap, here, in a way. There are indications to suggest that his brother may have been working for the Feds when he was caught.

Perhaps. Everything I've read indicates he was a damn fool who thought he could walk through a combat zone and be safe because he was an unarmed civillian.

[beckett]

There are indications to suggest that his brother may have been working for the Feds when he was caught.

Where are these "indications"? It seems to me a 23 year old McGovernite would have been of little use to the intelligence community in those years. He may have tried, on his own initiative, to insinuate himself into dangerous company in Laos to establish his anti-war bona fides for the homefront anti-war movement, but that's something entirely different from working for the federal government.

If you have evidence he was working for the government, please present it.

[tkathy]

If a Republican did this, there would be insane hysteria over it.

[expatpat]

There are suggestions only. If I had evidence, I would have stated a case much more boldly than "indications", "suggest", "may have". Do you have evidence that he wasn't? The essence of being an agent is to have a public persona quite different from a 'spy profile'. I'm not convinced he was an agent -- far from it -- but I would be circumspect. Dean's implication re his brother sounds to me as much like a slip as a lie.

[GreenHornet]

Do you believe the same would be true about Jane Fonda?

No, I do not. Like everyone else on this site, I know the story of Jane Fonda and her activities in Viet Nam very well. I had never even heard of Dean's brother until the other day - that's why I asked the question. Lighten up.

[Lancey Howard]

Remember in '00 how Gore was caught "exagerating" so much that people concluded he was a liar? This guy Dean blows Gore out of the water in the exageration / lie department.

[Lancey Howard]

I don't know what, as a civilian, Dean's brother could have been doing in Southeast Asia at that particular point in time that wouldn't be connected to the military

He was a rich, hippie, war protestor.

[GreenHornet]

He was a rich, hippie, war protestor.

Okay, thanks for the info. As I said in post #27 above, I had not heard of him until this story came out.

[Sonny M]

The Feds also gave him special treatment when he came back in pieces.

Thats correct, but there was a great deal of protest from people involved who were all claiming that the special treatment was due to political reasons, something the Dean campaign will not deny.

[expatpat]

.....there was a great deal of protest from people.......claiming that the special treatment was due to political reasons....

Maybe it was, maybe not.......We know better than to pay too much attention to protesters.

[Sonny M]

Charlie Dean by many accounts was a renegade, an antiwar activist who didn't scream objections and wave signs.

He worked for George McGovern, and in 1974, began a world journey. The news stories called him a "tourist", but his activism was much more than that. He crossed the Pacific by freighter. He worked on an Australian ranch.

Then, for reasons only he knew, he went to Southeast Asia to see the war firsthand.

At some point, he was arrested by Laotian communist troops and held against the formal objections of the U.S. and Australian governments.

The U.S. Department of Defense as Missing in Action (sic) meaning that he was among those officially sought by our government. He wasn't the only civilian with such a classification.

But he was a civilian, not a member of the armed services

http://www.qctimes.com/internal.php?story_id=1022060&t=Opinion&c=22,1022060

Dean has acknowledged that his brother was always a cilvilian, his attempts to take somone who was probably there to commit treason and infer that he was somehow doing something to help his country is just heinous.