Posted on 03/19/2004 9:07:07 AM PST by kennedy
MILL VALLEY, Calif. — Senator Kerry of Massachusetts yesterday retreated from his earlier steadfast denials that he attended a meeting of Vietnam Veterans Against the War at which a plan to assassinate U.S. Senators was debated.
The reversal came as new evidence, including reports from FBI informants, emerged that contradicted Mr. Kerry’s previous statements about the gathering, which was held in Kansas City, Mo. in November 1971.
“John Kerry had no personal recollection of this meeting 33 years ago,” a Kerry campaign spokesman, David Wade, said in a statement e-mailed last night from Idaho, where Mr. Kerry is on vacation.
Mr. Wade said Mr. Kerry does remember “disagreements with elements of VVAW leadership” that led to his resignation, but the statement did not specify what the disagreements were.
“If there are valid FBI surveillance reports from credible sources that place some of those disagreements in Kansas City, we accept that historical footnote in the account of his work to end the difficult and divisive war,” the statement said.
It did not address the murder plot, though as recently as Wednesday a top aide to Mr. Kerry said that the Massachusetts senator and presumptive Democratic presidential nominee was “absolutely certain” he was not present when the assassination plan, known as the “Phoenix Project,” was discussed.
The New York Sun first reported last week that other anti-war activists placed Mr. Kerry at the Kansas City meeting. A total of six people have now said publicly that they remember seeing Mr. Kerry there. Participants say the plot was voted down, and several say they remember Mr. Kerry speaking and voting against it.
A historian and expert on activism against the Vietnam War, Gerald Nicosia, provided the Sun yesterday with minutes of the meeting.
Mr. Nicosia also read quotes from FBI surveillance documents he obtained under the Freedom of Information Act as he was preparing his 2001 book, “Home to War.”
“My evidence is incontrovertible.He was there,” Mr. Nicosia said in an interview yesterday. “There’s no way that five or six agents saw his ghost there,” said the historian, who lives in Marin County, north of San Francisco.
Mr. Nicosia said that the records show Mr. Kerry resigned from the group on the third day of the meeting, following discussion of the assassination plan and an argument between Mr. Kerry and another VVAW national coordinator, Al Hubbard.
Reading from an FBI informant report, Mr. Nicosia said, “John Kerry at a national Vietnam Veterans Against the War meeting appeared and announced to those present that he resigned for personal reasons but said he would be able to speak for VVAW” at future events.Another document “describes a conversation actually a confrontation between John Kerry and Hubbard that was taking place on one of the days of that meeting,” Mr. Nicosia added.
Mr. Nicosia said it is clear that Mr. Kerry and the others resigned because of the extreme actions the group was considering.
“It’s kind of unmistakable to see a pattern. All four of them were out the door, bingo, the morning after” the socalled Phoenix plot was discussed, the author said.
Mr. Nicosia generally declined to speculate on why Mr. Kerry had denied being present. However, the author did observe, “Especially if you’re running for president, you don’t want to be associated with a plot for assassinating people.”
Mr. Nicosia repeatedly stressed that he was not calling Mr. Kerry a liar and said he has no animus towards the senator. The historian said he sent copies of some of the documents to the Kerry campaign yesterday morning on his own initiative. “I think Senator Kerry better get his story straight on this,”Mr. Nicosia said.
“I’m a Kerry supporter. I honor the guy,”Mr.Nicosia said.He noted that Mr. Kerry threw a book party for “Home at War” at the Hart Senate Office Building. The senator also wrote a positive blurb for the book’s dust jacket.
The book does not mention Mr. Kerry’s presence at the Kansas City meeting. Mr. Nicosia said he did not have the FBI files as he was writing the manuscript. Other accounts led him to think that Mr. Kerry had quit the group at a July meeting in St. Louis.
Mr. Nicosia also provided the Sun with minutes of the meeting that he obtained from the Wisconsin state archives, which hold most of VVAW’s papers.
The minutes, prepared at the group’s national office in New York, recount the actions taken by VVAW’s “emergency steering committee” during the four-day meeting, which ran from November 12 to 15, 1971. The minutes indicate that at the end of the day on Saturday, November 13, discussion turned to “national actions and other things.” The meeting is reported to have adjourned at 10 p.m. and resumed at 11 a.m. Sunday. The document goes on to say that the group passed a motion to hold a “national action… in 3 to 5 different sites.”The next entry in the minutes is, “John Kerry, Scott Moore, Mike Oliver and Skip Roberts resigned as national coordinators.” A later entry indicates that it was decided that the resignations and the decision on the “national action” should be reflected in all the group’s papers.
According to Mr. Nicosia, the FBI documents and other records do not include any direct reference to the assassination plot. However, Mr. Nicosia said some informants who attended the Kansas City meeting warned the FBI of a “drastic move toward more violent actions.”
A VVAW chapter newsletter obtained by the Sun reports that after “much argument” the Kansas City meeting went into closed session “for various opaque reasons of security and expediency in order to discuss the national Christmas action.” The newsletter also notes the resignation of Mr. Kerry and the other three leaders. It cites “personality conflicts and differences in political philosophies” as the main reasons for the resignations.
A group of VVAW members seized the Statue of Liberty on behalf of the group on December 27, 1971. It’s unclear whether that action was approved at the Kansas City meeting in November.
The three other men who appear to have resigned along with Mr. Kerry did not respond to requests for comment for this story.
Mr. Moore did not reply to an e-mail and messages left at his home. Mr. Roberts is now the legislative director for the Service Employees International Union, which is supporting Mr. Kerry’s presidential bid. Reached at his union office Wednesday, Mr. Roberts said he would call back but did not. Efforts to locate Mr. Oliver were unsuccessful.
Earlier in the week,some aides to Mr. Kerry suggested that because he appeared on a PBS “Firing Line” broadcast with William F. Buckley on November 14, 1971, Mr. Kerry could not have attended the Kansas City gathering. But that contention also disintegrated yesterday on closer examination.
Tapes of the “Firing Line” television program are housed at the Hoover Institution at Stanford University. An archivist there, Carol Leadenham, told the Sun that Mr. Kerry and Mr. Buckley taped a program on November 2, 1971. No air date was noted, but Ms. Leadenham said it is likely that it aired about two weeks later.
“That’s about the usual time between the taping and the air date,” she said.
Some discrepancies in Mr. Kerry’s earlier statements about VVAW remain unaddressed by the campaign. Last week, Mr. Kerry said he last saw Mr. Hubbard in April 1971, shortly before a National Review article exposed Mr. Hubbard for exaggerating his rank and his service record in Vietnam. However, a New York Times report put Mr. Kerry at a fund-raiser with Mr. Hubbard on Long Island on August 29, 1971. Now, Mr. Nicosia’s documents indicate that Mr. Kerry had a verbal altercation with Mr. Hubbard in November of that year.
The "other accounts" emanated from Kerry or his aides in order to put out the evidently false assertion that he did not attend. In other words he's lied for years about attending.
And check out the fellow VVAW, Skip Roberts, who resigned with him now heading a union which--surprise!--has endorsed Kerry. (I concede that President Bush also has supporters that come from his college days)
How does one "seize" the Statue of Libery? I'll read the replies, somebody's probably already explained.
How you folks can so naive about the national media after all we've seen is beyond me.
Yes, and he lied about his attendance because he was too modest to speak up about taking this stand. /sarcasm
As to the idea that we should all shut up because the media runs the show and they'll decide how to spin it, you can forget about it.
The fact is the idea that Kerry was part of a group that would even entertain such a plan is news and will be disseminated. None of us are naive enough to think all will be horrified. We have eyes and ears. But it IS horrifying and it WILL be discussed.
I don't think he quit based on principle but because of political calculations and the fear of being caught.
That's my opinion watching how Kerry operates and reading and hearing how he thinks. I don't think he was against the idea per se. Just listen to how he'll say the name "John Ashcroft" when he's at a campaign rally and it's easy to picture a young John Kerry being attracted in a way to the idea of assassinating hard right-wingers who were pro-Vietnam War.
Democratic presidential candidate Sen. John Kerry (news - web sites), D-Mass., carries a snowboard as he snowshoes his way toward a mountain in Sawtooth National Recreation Area in Ketchum, Idaho Friday, March 19, 2004. Kerry planned to snowboard down from about a 8000-foot elevation. (AP Photo/Elise Amendola)
That bears repeating, as well as the idea that he went out and stumped for them for close to two years afterward, KNOWING these were people who even considered assassination as a political tool. How are these people different from terrorists again?
I said this last night. Just his association with such a group merits scrutiny and if a Republican had been in it and even had really quit months before, I posit the media would STILL cover it as "this is the type of group so and so associated with". And actually they would be right, unless the Republican had vocally and by action completely disassociated themselves from the group and denounced over and over and demonstrated by deeds a rejection of their creed.
None of that has happened with Kerry. He has not renounced or rejected the group or any individuals associated with it. Including the plot's architect, Scott Camil.
Duh, ya think?
In a few short weeks the tone has changed from a phony AWOL charge to a real charge of attending a meeting where they voted on assassinations. Kerry is on the defense big time. Thanks to the internet and FreeRepublic, he can not Slick Willy his way of of this.
Hillary, I'm sure, has known about this all along. Now, she is not even going the have to secretly blackmail him into dropping out. Her hands are clean. Good grief, what have we done here?
Translation: Kerry was too arrogant and vain to realize that anarchists are THE most important useful idiots of commusocialists like him.
Except that Kerry:
1. Didn't report it to the authorities, and
2. Assured them that he (Kerry) would be available to speak at future events for the group.
Any man of principle would have immediately reported this to the FBI and would have completely disassociated himself from the group rather than offer to continue to speak at their functions.
Carolyn
When does someone ask?
Why bother asking? Kerry will just say it's none of our business.
The article makes clear that he agreed to continue as a spokesman. So does history.
They just went in and took it over using force and intimidation. In fact, they did it TWICE.
They then presented their list of demands--just like terrorists do the world over. One of their demands was to be allowed to broadcast their anti-American propaganda over Armed Forces Radio so that the troops in Vietnam and elsewhere could hear it.
The VVAW also took over Betsy's Ross's house. Scott Camil wanted to burn it to the ground.
Those things can slip your mind, ya know...
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