Brinkley: Kerry Faces Questions about Senate Hit Plot

NewsMax ^ | March 14, 2004 | Steve Malzberg

[Gypssy]

Sunday, Mar. 14, 2004 10:49 PM EST Brinkley: Kerry Faces Questions about Senate Hit Plot

What did Sen. John Kerry know and when did he know it about a plot to assassinate pro-Vietnam war U.S. Senators hatched at a November 1971 Kansas City meeting of the group Vietnam Veterans Against America?

According to presidential biographer Douglas Brinkley, that's the question Sen. Kerry needs to answer. If it turns out that the likely Democratic presidential nominee knew of the treasonous plan, Brinkley says he had an obligation to go to the authorities.

"The question is: did Kerry quit [VVAW] before Kansas City or did he quit after Kansas City," Brinkley told WABC Radio's Steve Malzberg. "If he quit after Kansas City, that means he clearly knew about this assassination plot against the Senators and never went to the authorities."

Kerry says he submitted his official letter of resignation to the VVAW just days before the critical Kansas City confab. But two Vietnam veterans who attended the session told the New York Sun on Friday that they remember Kerry was there.

Meanwhile copies of Kerry's resignation letter are nowhere to be found.

Brinkley, whose book "Tour of Duty" chronicles Kerry's Vietnam war exploits, said that the former Navy Lieutenant had an obligation to warn authorities about the frightening plan, telling Malzberg, "Clearly his critics would say, if he had known about it why didn't he report it."

Once put to a vote, the death plot went down to defeat, with Kerry voting in the majority, according to the two witnesses who say he was there.

However, Kerry officials in Florida have recently invited the assassination plan's author, Scott Camil, to join the Senator's campaign, the Sun report claimed.

Brinkley described Camil as "a hothead Vietnam vet who wanted to bring down the U.S. government."

"I'm a little shocked that the Kerry campaign would want him actively working with them in Florida," he told Malzberg.

[Gypssy]

I haven't heard much of this on news channels. Is there anything to this?

[raloxk]

"I haven't heard much of this on news channels. Is there anything to this?"

no and conservatives should stay away from this. This charge,even if true, is so outlandish, the public will never buy it. Seems that conservatives are willing to embrace loony theories about Kerry just as the left embraces loony theories about Bush. If the GOP cant beat Kerry on issues, and have to focus on this nonesense, they deserve to lose.

[binger]

[OldFriend]

Brinkley has the unenvious position of having gotten into bed with a lying piece of garbage. One wonders if he has the character to acknowledge his leftist leanings have gotten him in trouble.

[meatloaf]

I don't think anyone needs to embrace this. It's already out there especially since it hit WABC. I don't regard it as a loonie theory. Kerry was either involved or complicit in several illegal acts. His supporters will say it's due to his youth at that time.

It's the swing voters whose opinion counts. Kerry is coming off as less presidential every day. Once they realize what a flake the guy is, Kerry is set on "slow roast."

[twntaipan]

This is so much bigger than the fabrication that Bush went AWOL from Guard duty (which wasn't true).

[veronica]

This story is starting to make the rounds. Fox did a segment over the weekend. I picked up on it last week, posted a piece on it.

[magua]

steve malzberg gets my vote to run the media campaign against lurch.

[Dr Snide]

read the New York Post today I believe they are running with it in a column

[bondjamesbond]

You know, GreatEconomy, you made it just under the wire. With the amount of DU action going on, until the election, I will consider every sign-up with a 2004 date to be a presumptive troll.

Raloxk certainly fits the bill...

[Judith Anne]

Seems that conservatives are willing to embrace loony theories about Kerry just as the left embraces loony theories about Bush. If the GOP cant beat Kerry on issues, and have to focus on this nonesense, they deserve to lose.

Frankly nothing about this strikes me as a "loony theory. And as far as I'm concerned, it's treason.

[raloxk]

I support Bush, am a conservative.


unlike most conservatives, I know that the public is not conservative. I also remember how damaging all the Clinton conspiracy theories were to the right, in the publics mind.

I can bet that if Kerry wins. the right wil lbe as loony as the left is now.

This accusation may very well be true. The public wont buy it.

[freekitty]

I see Kerry is digging that hole deeper and deeper.

[MarkT]

"...conservatives should stay away from this. Even if true,..." Have you taken leave of your senses?

If it is true, then there is a direct linkage to Kerry's knowledge of and participation in a treasonous conspiracy and it is of the utmost importance to know...remember, we did not look at Clinton's record and examine it and pursue it and we got a fellow who happily sold techonology to our enemies in exchange for campaign donations...it is very important.

[robowombat]

Something more from a blog:
VVAW Assassination Plot
This article from Thomas H. Lipscomb, New York Sun, sheds some light on the history of Vietnam Veterans Against the War. Apparently, this was not quite the peaceful antiwar group we had thought.


The anti-war group that John Kerry was the principal spokesman for debated and voted on a plot to assassinate politicians who supported the Vietnam War.

Mr. Kerry denies being present at the November 12-15, 1971, meeting in Kansas City of Vietnam Veterans Against the War, and says he quit the group before the meeting. But according to the current head of Missouri Veterans for Kerry, Randy Barnes, Mr. Kerry, who was then 27, was at the meeting, voted against the plot, and then orally resigned from the organization.

…In addition to Mr. Barnes’s recollection placing Mr. Kerry at the Kansas City meeting, another Vietnam veteran who attended the meeting, Terry Du-Bose, said that Mr. Kerry was there.

Enough witnesses to show Kerry was there. To his credit, he did resign over the assassination plot. Just can’t come across such interesting history and not share it. It does give an indication of what kind of group he was involved in. More details can be in the following cited book.

Gerald Nicosia’s 2001 book “Home To War” reports that one of the key leaders of Vietnam Veterans Against the War, Scott Camil,"proposed the assassination of the most hard-core conservative members of Congress,as well as any other powerful, intractable opponents of the antiwar movement.” The book reports on the Kansas City meeting at which Mr.Camil’s plan was debated and then voted down.

Mr. Nicosia’s book was widely praised by reviewers as varied as General Harold Moore, author of “We Were Soldiers”; Gloria Emerson, who had been a New York Times reporter during the Vietnam War, and leftist Howard Zinn. Mr. Kerry himself stated in a blurb on the cover that the book “ties together the many threads of a difficult period.” Mr. Kerry hosted a party for the book in the Hart Senate Office Building that was televised on C-SPAN.

He was obviously aware of the book. Another twist on this is here.

Another source is an October 20,1992, oral history interview of Scott Camil on file at the University of Florida Oral History Archive. In it, Mr. Camil speaks of his plan for an alternative to Mr. Kerry’s idea of symbolically throwing veterans’ medals over the fence onto the steps of the Capitol during the Dewey Canyon III demonstration in Washington in April of 1971.

“My plan was that, on the last day we would go into the [congressional] offices we would schedule the most hardcore hawks for last - and we would shoot them all,” Mr. Camil told the Oral History interviewer. “I was serious.”

And we all know, Kerry threw the medals. Considering the alternative, he definitely chose the better option irregardless of whose medals he tossed. Suffice it to say this was a radical bunch. And to satisfy curiosity as to who the targets were is this quote.

According to the Nicosia book and interviews with VVAW members who were involved, at the Vietnam Veterans Against the War Kansas City leadership conference, Mr. Camil tried to put his plan into effect. He called together eight to 10 Marines to organize something he called “The Phoenix Project.” … Mr. Camil’s Phoenix Project planned to execute the Southern senatorial leadership that was financing the Vietnam War. Senators like John Stennis, Strom Thurmond, and John Tower were his targets, according to Mr. Camil. They were to be killed during the Senate Christmas recess the following month.
Interesting bit of history especially since Mr. Camil, the assassin, is joining Kerry’s campaign.

In a phone interview with the Sun this week, Mr. Camil did not dispute either the account in the Nicosia book or in the oral history. He said he plans to accept an offer by the Florida Kerry organization to become active in Mr. Kerry’s presidential campaign. Campaign aides to Mr. Kerry invited Mr. Camil to a meeting for the senator in Orlando last week, but they did not meet directly.
No crooks or liars in Kerry’s campaign, just an assassin. This should shape up to be a very interesting campaign, no?

[bluegrass]

At least that's what your hoping, huh?

[5by5]

OK, so Camil, an admitted assasination conspiricist, is now working for the Kerry campaign. Three questions:

1) What is the Kerry campaign's statement about his job description? At best it's a political payoff for keeping his mouth shut. At worst...?

2) Does the Service Service know about Camil? It seems Kerry's detail should do a little background work on this guy.

3) So what has Camil done since 1971?

[petitfour]

The right will be loony? Or conservatives will be loony? Or Republicans will be loony? Or paleoconservatives will be loony? Or neoconservatives will be loony? Or religious conservatives be loony? So many divisions. So little time to unite.

[mtbopfuyn]

Hanging out in a cave for the weekend, huh? This story is a biggie and has been discussed and researched here since Friday. Yes, it's true. The problem is not whether Kerry supposedly resigned (conveniently) 2 days before the vote to kill 7 US senators but that he was one of the head honchos of an organization that discussed and plotted to assassinate 7 US senators and did nothing to stop it or report the actions to the FBI.

http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/1097045/posts

http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/1097185/posts

http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/1096162/posts