On at least one point the recollections align: A 1971 Kansas City meeting of the Vietnam Veterans Against the War was marred by talk — shouted down by a disgusted majority — of assassinating pro-war politicians.
Members of the group that John Kerry propelled to the center of the anti-war movement and that helped launch his political career do not agree, however, whether the man now on course to the Democratic presidential nomination was around for the debate.
At least one enthusiastic Kerry supporter said he remembered him attending at least the start of the group's national steering committee meeting and urging the organization to distance itself from radicals.
“John said, … I think his exact words were, ‘You guys are getting way too radical, you're defeating your purpose, and I quit,' ” Randy Barnes said Friday.
A Kansas Citian and an active volunteer this year for Kerry's presidential run, Barnes said upon reflection later in the day that he could “not be absolutely certain” that Kerry was in Kansas City for the meeting.
Others, including the veteran who had proposed the idea of violence at the meeting, think Kerry had left the organization before it gathered at various Kansas City locations in the fall of 1971.
“My recollection was that he wasn't there,” said Scott Camil, a disabled Marine veteran living in Gainesville, Fla.
At the time, Camil said, he thought severe action was needed to end the war, and he argued for a “domestic Phoenix Project” modeled after attempts by U.S. forces to make Viet Cong leaders targets for assassination.
“I thought that when the Congress is not doing what we want them to do, you change things. As a Marine sergeant in Vietnam I was conditioned to think you went after the head of the snake,” Camil said.
“I'm sorry about those discussions now, but they did take place. … I had no cause ever to discuss those plans with John Kerry.”
He disputed an article published Friday in The New York Sun that said specific senators were targets and that attempts were made to parcel out killings. Camil said the talk never got that far.
“It did not float at all,” Camil said. “I took a lot of (criticism) from the guys there for bringing it up.”
John Hurley, who runs the Kerry campaign's veterans operation, said he spoke to Kerry on Friday night. “There was no way” he attended the Kansas City meeting, Hurley said. “He was not there.”
In Tour of Duty, a largely sympathetic book about Kerry's war record and anti-war activism, author Douglas Brinkley wrote that the senator from Massachusetts did not attend the Kansas City meeting.
The book cites a Nov. 10 resignation letter saying that Kerry had been proud to work for the group but that he was leaving it because of “personality conflicts and differences in political philosophy.”
By the book's chronology, the Kansas City meetings began two days later. Those contacted for this story could not recall the precise dates of the gathering.
In his book Home to War, A History of the Vietnam Veterans Movement, Gerald Nicosia writes that Kerry resigned from the organization at its St. Louis meeting in July 1971.
John Musgrave said he attended the fall 1971 meeting in Kansas City, his first Vietnam Veterans Against the War session as Kansas state coordinator. He said he remembered Kerry attending as well.
“There was never any serious consideration of it (Camil's proposal against politicians) at all,” Musgrave said. “It went over like a lead balloon.”
He still respects Camil but said he was impulsive at the time and angered other members of the group by raising what they considered to be an absurd and ugly idea.
As for Kerry, Musgrave said he remembered him talking to the veterans about protecting the group's credibility.
“He said, ‘It's people like you who are going to hurt the credibility of the organization,” Musgrave said. “(Kerry) may have resigned shortly after that meeting or at that meeting, I don't know. …We were all aware that he was getting ready to run for some political office.”
Hurley said the speech Musgrave referred to came earlier in the year.
“I think he's confusing the St. Louis and the Kansas City meetings,” Hurley said.>{? ~END~
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Tom Lipscomb told me that Kerry was on TV recently saying he was not at the St. Louis meeting. The supposed letter of resignation from Kerry cannot be found! It was claimed to be in the VVAW archives in Madison, Wisconsin. It is not there.
Timeline for '71:
January: Attends ''Winter Soldier'' hearings in Detroit, but does not speak.
April 22: Kerry testifies before Senate Foreign Relations Committee.
April 23: Kerry and other veterans throw medals and ribbons over a fence at the Capitol to protest the war.
June 20: Debates John O'Neill on ''The Dick Cavett Show.''
I don't know who John O'Neill is, but in 1972:
September: Kerry wins the Democratic primary in the race for the Fifth Congressional District.
November: Loses his bid for Congress to Republican Paul W. Cronin in the general election.
He apparently resigned VVAW to run for Congress, but when is the question. Was it before the November meeting or after?
Is it possible to find out when he filed his papers to enter the '72 primary? I'm wondering what time limits were in effect back in '71 regarding Congressional seats, ie, how far in advance of the election would you have to file your papers to run?