Area activist, Kerry share Vietnam-era ties (Scott Camil)

ABC's "World News Tonight" hadn't finished Monday before Gainesville resident Scott Camil's phone started ringing.

Friends were calling to see if he had seen a report about newly disclosed information that the FBI had kept tabs on Sen. John Kerry during his anti-war days in the early 1970s.

The report included a passing reference to and a circa-1973 photo of Camil, who had met Kerry at national meetings of Vietnam Veterans Against the War. Citing Gerald Nicosia's 2001 book, "Home to War," the ABC report said that at a national meeting of the anti-war group, Camil had floated the idea of assassinating congressional leaders and others who opposed the anti-war movement.

"I had some warning that the Republicans were going to smear Kerry with my tar brush," Camil told The Gainesville Sun on Tuesday.

The report was another example of the role a war still in the American consciousness 30 years after it ended is playing in this year's presidential race.

Camil, 57, was one of the so-called "Gainesville Eight" - anti-war activists who, in a 1973 federal trial in Gainesville, were found not guilty of conspiring to violently disrupt the 1972 Republican National Convention in Miami. Camil has lived here since before the trial, and long has been active in Veterans for Peace.

Although he has no official connection to the Kerry campaign, Camil - who until the March 9 Democratic primary supported Rep. Dennis Kucinich - said, "I am heading up Veterans for Kerry."

He said ABC had called him Monday before airing the report, which he did not see. But he said that, while he gave some background information, he doesn't talk to the national media partly because he doesn't believe sound bites are a worthy forum for complex issues. Also, he said, he has been burned in the past by people posing as journalists.

In an interview with The Sun, Camil acknowledged that, as a 24-year-old Marine sergeant fresh from Vietnam, he had proposed a philosophical concept of assassination. But he said the idea was just that, and was voted down at the meeting.

Camil said the idea was born out of his combat experience in Vietnam, where he was wounded twice, and his firm belief that what the government was doing was illegal and immoral.

"We need to put it into perspective," he said. "When I was in Vietnam, I was acutely aware we were committing acts against international law.

"When I came home, I saw that not only was our government committing criminal acts abroad, but it was committing them at home," he said. "Students were being killed on college campuses. American Indians were being killed. Black Panthers were being killed.

"We felt that as citizens in a democracy, we were the highest authority," he said.

Camil said "body counts" were the government's measure of success during the Vietnam War. He said in free-fire zones - areas of known enemy activity - U.S. forces were authorized and trained to kill anyone within the zone because even non-combatants were assumed to be helping the enemy.

It was that mind-set in which he found himself when he returned from Vietnam, Camil said.

"I wasn't a 57-year-old civilian as I am now," he said. "I was a 24-year-old Marine with two Purple Hearts, and my method of conflict resolution was based on my training. When we had those (anti-war) meetings, we were fresh from Vietnam and talking as combat soldiers."

He said Kerry wasn't the only anti-war Vietnam veteran the FBI was tracking in those days.

"All of us were being followed by FBI agents all the time back then," Camil said. "I couldn't go to the bathroom without them knowing about it.

"And at meetings, (FBI informants) were the guys pushing for the more violent stuff," he said. "If they were at these meetings and thought these ideas were so bad, why weren't they included in the other charges in the Gainesville Eight trial that stemmed from those same meetings?"

There have been inconsistencies from Kerry on what anti-war meetings he did or did not attend. Camil said that, after more than 30 years, that shouldn't be surprising.

"We had national meetings every three months," Camil said. "We had meetings in Denver, St. Louis, Detroit, Kansas City. What was the order of the meetings? What were the dates? I haven't the slightest.

"It's not a question of lying about stuff," he said. "To remember the order of meetings 33 years ago and who was there and when specific ideas came up, who can do that? The fact is there were FBI agents at every meeting. They should have good records."

Kerry's military record has helped propel Vietnam to the forefront of the presidential campaigns. But University of Florida political scientist Michael Martinez said that even with the debate over the war in Iraq, without Kerry in the race, Vietnam probably wouldn't be much of an issue this election year.

"It's an issue now, I think, because people who didn't participate in the primaries and caucuses are trying to get a read on who Kerry is," said Martinez, an associate professor and interim chair in the UF Department of Political Science whose specialties include political and electoral behavior. "Part of it is his service in Vietnam and its aftermath when he got involved in the anti-war movement."

"Vietnam will not be a dividing issue that will decide the election," Martinez said. "But Iraq could be a dividing issue. It's a very salient issue and the candidates are offering very different perspectives on whether we should have been involved there in the first place."

Perhaps the interviewers for ABC and the Sun wasn't as nurturing as an earlier interviewer:
Throughout the interview, Landers is able to remain calm and somewhat detached, and avoids getting emotionally involved to the extent of sacrificing objectivity as a result of the shocking nature of Camil’s often graphic testimony. This skill is epitomized by his reaction to Camil’s explanation of an alternative to symbolically throwing away medals during a march on Washington. Camil prefaces the plan by saying that it is something he has never told anyone before, and “I did not think it was terrible at the time. My plan was that, on the last day…we would go into the [congressional] offices…we would schedule the most hard-core hawks for last-and we would shoot them all.” L: “Were you serious about this?” C: “I was serious. I felt that I spent two years killing women and children in their own fucking homes. These are the guys that fucking made the policy, and these were the guys that were responsible for it, and these were the guys that were voting to continue the fucking war when the public was against it. I felt that if we really believed in what we were doing, and if we were willing to put our lives on the line for the country over there, we should be willing to put our lives on the line for the country over here."” Had Landers vehemently objected to the feasibility, logic, legality, or appropriateness of this alternative plan, he would have alienated Camil, thereby destroying the rapport which enabled him to obtain information throughout the interview, which would have sacrificed the honesty of his description of the plan and his justification of such extreme measures, as well as his willingness to speak honestly throughout the remainder of the interview.
Overall, I found the interview’s content fascinating, and felt the format revealed that Landers conducted the interview effectively.
Scott Camil and the Gainesville Eight oral history analysis
~Rebecca Brown February 5, 2000
Interview with Scott Camil, conducted by Stuart Landers on October 20, 1992
Transcript of interview located in University of Florida Oral History Archive

Because Camil, Kerry, and the other VVAW leaders moved the discussion of the Phoenix Project in Kansas City twice to avoid FBI surveillance.
Mr. Camil was known to colleagues in the anti-war movement as “Scott the Assassin.” Mr. Camil told The New York Sun he got the name in Vietnam for “sneaking down to the Vietnamese villages at night and killing people.”
According to the Nicosia book and interviews with VVAW members who were involved, at theVietnam 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.” The original Phoenix Project during the Vietnam War was an attempt to destroy the Viet Cong leadership by assassination. 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.
After an attempt to parcel out the hit jobs required to kill the senators, Mr. Camil’s plan was presented to all the chapter coordinators present and the VVAW leadership. Mr. Nicosia’s book recounts, “What Camil sketched was so explosive that the coordinators feared lest government agents even hear of it. So they decamped to a church on the outskirts of town with the intention of debating the plan in complete privacy. When they got to the church, however, they found that the government was already on to them; their ‘debugging expert’ uncovered microphones hidden all over the place. An instantaneous decision was made to move again to Common Ground, a Mennonite hall used by homeless vets as a ‘crash pad.’”
John Kerry's Political Friends
Thomas H. Lipscomb | The New York Sun | March 15, 2004
Frontpage Magazine link

The author of this article was not paying attention to the contents of the article as he wrote it. Notice the internal contradiction between the two consecutive statements here: "[Camil] had proposed a philosophical concept of assassination. But he said the idea was just that, and was voted down at the meeting."

Anyone who has ever attended a meeting where votes are taken, understands the lie that Camil is telling, here. "Philosophical concepts" ARE NOT "voted on." No one at a meeting makes a proposal like "Mr. Chairman, I move that e=mc2." Or, "Madame Chair, I move that 'Truth is beauty and beauty, truth.' "

Instead, RESOLUTIONS take this form: "Mr. Chairman, I move that we [take the following action]." This reporter obviously did not think about what he/she was typing. He/she caught Scott Camil in a lie. The obvious follow-up questions are: What was the content of the Resolution? Who seconded it? What was the vote on it? Did John Kerry take part in the discussion and the vote?

Lordy, lordy, are all the reporters in the United States as dumb as a hoe handle? (Don't answer that; it's a philospohical concept.) Does anyone have an e-mail for this pathetic reporter? He/she needs to read this thread.

Congressman Billybob

Click here, then click the blue CFR button, to join the anti-CFR effort (or visit the "Hugh & Series, Critical & Pulled by JimRob" thread). Please do it now.

I tracked down the author of this article through Google. I just sent him an e-mail, flagging him to this thread on his article an suggesting, ever so politely, that he might want to read this, and then follow up on his own article. Thank you gentlemen for assembling here the information that will wake this man up, unless he insists on sleeping through a national story that has fallen in his lap.

We shall see if this does any good. The Gainesville story DOES advance the reporting a little. It has Scott Camil on the record as saying that his idea, in whatever form, was "voted on." That opens the door to finding out WHAT was voted on, who seconded it, and who voted how, including John Kerry.

It's like opening a dried-shut paint can to get the national media to report the complete story about the Camil assassination plan. Thanks to both of you for promoting this effort to ferret out the truth.

John / Billybob

Anyone who has ever attended a meeting where votes are taken, understands the lie that Camil is telling, here. "Philosophical concepts" ARE NOT "voted on."

Exactly. At the point where they were voting, IMO, they were already entered into conspiracy - as in "if this vote is aye, we'll go kill someone". Also note that they took extraordinary measures to escape surveillance by the FBI, moving the meeting from place to place. Also note that at least one of their targets was later shot.

But the fact that the dem campaign now has hired Camil is, to say the least, astounding. To give just a few highlights of this critter:

Mr. Camil was known to colleagues in the anti-war movement as “Scott the Assassin.” Mr. Camil told The New York Sun he got the name in Vietnam for “sneaking down to the Vietnamese villages at night and killing people.”
"While his three daughters were growing up, he tried to stay out of the spotlight. However, in the mid-eighties, Scott received a phone call that rekindled his activist nature. A friend told him that U.S. sponsored activity in Central America was very similar to what had happened in Vietnam. Scott traveled to Central America and acted as an official observer of the Nicaraguan elections through his new affiliation, Vets for Peace.
Scott has also traveled to Israel on an official fact-finding mission Although Scott has a Jewish heritage, his eyewitness account of the Palestinian plight had led him to support their cause." -- UFL Camil bio

Looks like a psycho, with traditional terrorist baggage. He also seems to have been trying (but the stuff is un-dated) to get into contact with friends from Vietnam, presumably his special kind of folks. So the question is, why are the dems going out on a limb to hire someone - some thing like this?

Having this guy on the loose in a presidential campaign seems insane.

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