Posted on 03/19/2004 8:38:34 PM PST by nwrep
KANSAS CITY - (KRT) - Confronted with 32-year-old FBI records, Sen. John Kerry's campaign all but conceded he attended a 1971 Kansas City meeting where a fellow anti-war veteran called for political assassinations.
Those active in Vietnam Veterans Against the War at the time stress that the suggestion for such a violent approach was angrily rejected. They say their memories do not include Kerry taking part in the radical discussion.
A statement Thursday by Kerry's camp said the Massachusetts Democrat did not recall the meeting, although FBI surveillance material and the group's archives clearly show that Kerry resigned from his national coordinator post at that November 1971 meeting.
In interviews last week, the senator's campaign insisted that the presumptive Democratic presidential nominee clearly remembered bolting from the group months earlier.
Responding to a request by The Kansas City Star that staffers question the candidate about the meeting, Kerry passed word March 12 that he "never, ever" attended a meeting of Vietnam Veterans Against the War after a heated and public argument with the group's executive secretary in St. Louis in June 1971.
In a prepared statement late Thursday night, however, campaign spokesman David Wade, traveling with the candidate in Idaho, said: "John Kerry had no personal recollection of this meeting 33 years ago. John Kerry does recall the disagreements with elements of VVAW leadership...that led to his resignation.
"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."
Kerry's anti-war activities launched his political career but also have been used by opponents to portray him as a radical. One conservative tabloid has described the Kansas City meeting as a "dark plot."
By all accounts, Kerry stood as a voice for moderation in Vietnam Veterans Against the War. In fact, several records from the group stored at the Wisconsin State Historical Society show that he quit over philosophical differences in the middle of the four-day gathering in Kansas City.
The Kerry campaign on Friday released a 1972 FBI surveillance memo from its records that states a "review of subject's (Kerry's) file indicated there is nothing to associate him with any violence or violent-prone group. ..."
In the end, no violence has been attributed to the veterans' organization. Rather, historians view its so-called Dewey Canyon III demonstration - where veterans tossed their medals onto the Capitol steps - as a significant force in rejuvenating the anti-war movement.
The FBI teletypes based on informants' attendance at the meeting - with some sections and sources' names blacked out - appear to make no mention of any discussion of assassination plots, something sure to have caught the bureau's attention.
Gerald Nicosia, author of Home to War: A History of the Vietnam Veterans Movement, obtained records that the FBI kept on Vietnam Veterans Against the War throughout much of the group's history. In poring over the records this week, Nicosia found reports stating that Kerry's resignation was accepted at the Kansas City meeting amid a heated confrontation with the group's executive secretary, Al Hubbard.
In a brief interview, Wade said last week's denial stemmed from Kerry's failure to remember the Kansas City meeting and the campaign's reliance on Home to War and two other books that all suggest he quit before November.
After new evidence emerged this week, however, the campaign spokesman said Kerry simply mistook his recollection of the Kansas City meeting for the one in St. Louis in June 1971 - when records show Kerry was re-elected to the organization's executive committee despite growing resentment toward his celebrity and his push for moderation.
Last week, John Hurley, an organizer of veteran volunteers for Kerry's presidential run, called two men who were quoted in The Star as recalling Kerry attending the Kansas City meeting. John Musgrave of Baldwin City, Kan., said Hurley called him twice and in the second conversation asked the disabled veteran to contact the newspaper reporter to say he had doubts about the memory.
"He said, `I'd like you to consider that before that article comes out call him and tell him you were wrong,' " said Musgrave, who has expressed disappointment with Kerry's position on issues regarding prisoners of war.
Hurley said Friday he believed last week Musgrave was simply mistaken.
"I asked him to be very sure of his recollection, not to change his recollection," Hurley said. "I would apologize to John Musgrave if he thought in any way I was pressuring him."
Another veteran, Randy Barnes of Kansas City, said Hurley had contacted him but did not prompt him to question his memory, although his certainty about the fact wavered after their conversation.
Minutes of the Kansas City meeting and internal Vietnam Veterans Against the War correspondence make clear that Kerry was active in the group - mostly as a strong draw on the lecture circuit of campuses and groups such as the Kansas City Rotary Club in September 1971 - in the months leading up to the November meeting. One FBI report suggests that despite his resignation from leadership, Kerry was willing to work for the group after November 1971. Three other national coordinators also resigned at the meeting.
None of the records show any indication of what then-Florida organizer Scott Camil dubbed a "domestic Phoenix Program" he was promoting to the Vietnam veterans group. Camil told The Star last week that his idea - modeled after a U.S. military effort to hollow out the leadership of Viet Cong sympathizers in South Vietnam - would have made targets of pro-war politicians to force the withdrawal of American troops from Vietnam.
"I'm sorry about those discussions now, but they did take place," Camil, a Kerry supporter, said in a telephone interview last week. Camil said then he did not think Kerry attended the Kansas City meeting and that he did not recall ever making his suggestion of violence in the presence of the future U.S. senator.
That topic is absent from the group's archives - perhaps reflecting that it never gained credibility beyond a few members or that the discussion would have been too damaging to record.
"Was John obligated to go to the police on this?" asked Nicosia, the author who described himself as a Kerry supporter. "I think if the thing ever got off the ground, Kerry would do something to stop it."
His book is mostly flattering to Vietnam Veterans Against the War and to Kerry, whom he portrays as struggling against radical elements for control of the group.
Interviews with 18 men who in the early 1970s were members of the group, most of them in leadership positions, offer varying accounts of whether the vague plot was discussed as a matter of organization business or merely the stuff of late-night chatter.
"In the business meeting, there was no consideration of violence," said Dave Collins, then the group's Oklahoma coordinator. "The recollection I had was some guys saying, `We ought to go and off some of those (people).' ...It was guys ticked off and talking big at midnight. No one in the group took any of it seriously."
Collins, like others, did not remember Kerry attending the Kansas City meeting, which moved from the University of Missouri-Kansas City campus to different city churches over four days. At least two others who at the time were active in Vietnam Veterans Against the War said they thought Kerry was at the Kansas City meeting, although they did not connect their recollections of him to the debate over violent strategies.
Barnes of Kansas City first said he remembered Kerry attending the meeting and then, after talking about it with members of the campaign staff, said he could not be sure whether the budding politician was there. He also recalled the 1971 discussion of Camil's idea as a significant disruption to the Kansas City meeting.
"We're sitting there waiting for the joke. And it became clear that (Camil) was somewhat serious about it, so serious that people began to discuss it," Barnes said. "Now when I say that, I don't mean real substance discussion about doing that, but along the lines of `that's what our government was doing to Vietnam.' Once people understood he (Camil) was serious, they told him he was crazy."
Joe Bangert traveled from Philadelphia to the meeting and said the idea of killing was contrary to a group whose officers often closed correspondence with lines such as "peace and love and nonviolent action."
"We were rebelling. We were decompressing from our time in Vietnam," Bangert said. "But we were incapable of doing violence."
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Should we start calling him JWK (i.e. John Wilkes Kerry) instead of JFK.
i thot kerry said the problem was that the vets couldn't stop committing atrocities in vietnam?
Just another day of networking with would be assassins. I don't know about you, but it happens to me all the time that I intend meetings where political assassinations are discussed. I am sure that is a routine occurrence for most people .
I was just thinking the same thing. Let's put this into perspective--Jacques Querry belonged to a group that thought political assassination was a viable political process. That's Jacques Querry, a guy that wants to become President of the United States.
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