The VVAW Assassination Discussion - "A lot of people were convinced that this was the way to do it."

March 25, 2004 | Compiled

[Hon]

Sometime during a national meeting of the Vietnam Veterans Against The War (VVAW) held November 12-14, 1971 there was an intense "discussion" and vote on a plan offered by Scott Camil to assassinate top Congressional leaders who had voted to continue funding the war in Vietnam.

There has been much discussion here and some in the media of this topic. The details are getting confused, and few people have seen any of the original source material.

I first came upon the subject in early February when I was looking for information about Kerry in "Winter Soldiers," by Richard Staciewicz. The following is an excerpt from pp 294-295:

In the fall of 1971, tensions over the direction in which the organization was heading, as it spread out into various community activities and took on a more consciously anti-imperialist position, were becoming more evident. In November, an emergency meeting of the steering committee was held in Kansas City. This meeting was a result of the growing friction among members of the steering committee, and between new members and the old leadership.

[snip]

[Terry DuBose] TDB: That was also where there was actually some discussion of assassinating some senators during the Christmas holidays. They were people who I knew from the organization with hotheaded rhetoric.

They had a list of six senators ... Helms, John Tower, and I can't remember the others, who they wanted to assassinate when they adjourned for Christmas. They were the ones voting to fund the war. They approached me about assassinating John Tower because he was from Texas. The logic made a certain amount of sense because there's thousands of people dying in southeast Asia. We can shoot these six people and probably stop it. Some of us were willing to sabotage materials, but when it came to people ... I mean, there were a lot of angry people...

Staciewicz went on to say that Kerry left or was removed from the steering committee of the VVAW after this meeting:

The meeting in Kansas City brought in a new steering committee. John Kerry, Craig Scott Moore, Mike Oliver, and Skip Roberts resigned from their leadership positions and were replaced by several new members. Al Hubbard and Joe Urgo remained in office and were joined by John Birch, Lenny Rotman, and Larry Rottman.

I then came across the plan againg in Gerald Nicosia's book, "Home To War," pp 221-223:

[Scott] Camil proposed VVAW return in force to Washington, D.C., and there apply pressure in every conceivable way to the legislators who were still voting to fund the war. After the assembly of coordinators defeated the plan, he was told it was “a closed issue at this point." Camil replied that such a tactic was "never a closed issue." He then made known an even more radical proposal, which he intended to submit to the coordinators for their approval. If undertaken, he claimed, it would guarantee the end of congressional support for the war. It was this proposal that nearly blew the Kansas City convention wide open, and which branded Camil as both dangerous and crazy for the remainder of his time in the organization.

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 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," on 77th Terrace. This time a vote was taken to exclude anyone but regional coordinators and members the national office. The rest of the members, even trusted leaders such as Randy Barnes and John Upton (who had earned their credibility in the mud and tears of Dewey Canvon III), were forced to wait outside on the grass, where messeng­ers brought frequent word of what was going on inside. According to Barnes, everybody knew that the discussion in that hall "was grounds for criminal indictment of conspiracy."

Discussion was not exactly the word for it. John Upton recalls it being "a knock-down-drag-out [fight] at times." Randy Barnes remembers "people standing up on the tables yelling and screaming at one another." The proposal that fired so much anger was called the "Phoenix plan," in mockery of the U.S. government's similar program in Vietnam. There was, in fact, good evidence that the United States Studies and Observation Group (SOG) - known to those inside it as the Special Operations Group - had used its own Special Forces, those of South Vietnam, and even South Vietnamese mercenaries to murder various Communist and Communist-sympathizing village chiefs, political leaders,­ and other influential citizens in South Vietnam. Some say as many as 10,000 were assassinated, in order (theoretically) to rebuild a more democratic infrastructure in the south. Hence the name "Phoenix": a better, stronger Vietnam was supposed to rise from the ashes of the Communist-tainted one. Similarly, Camil now 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 ones who would rather die than see America suffer a military defeat in Vietnam. Fine, let them die, suggested Camil - in fact, help them along in that direction and once they were cleared out of the way, a truly democratic America could arise, one that would choose to be at peace with the rest of the world.

When the Phoenix plan first came before the steering committee meeting, John Upton had been standing almost next to Camil, and he recalls that "at first it was laughed off. Then he [Camil] became really irate, and some other people that were supporting that got really irate, and it got down to a really hard discussion about it. There was a time, I'm not kidding you, I was almost one of them. Especially when we moved over to 77th Terrace, a lot of people were convinced that this was the way to do it. I thought it was a novel idea, but it was not something I would support. I looked on it as doing just what we were fighting against. It was killing people for no [good] reason. I remember saying this, and somebodv stood up and called me a 'moderate'! If I went an inch more crazier than I was, I could have endorsed it one hundred percent. Scott was pissed off just like I was. He was one of those people I really identified with ­ with the anger I saw there. My whole instinct here was, `Let's demonstrate and do these things against the fucking war, to get the word out. Let's talk in high schools. But let's do things legal. Let's get the right permits.' The Phoenix plan was like, that's what needs to be done, but, God, we can't really do that."

Nicosia's book was confusing in that he had claimed that Kerry had quit the VVAW in July after a showdown with Al Hubbard. And yet even he then went on to talk about the change in leadership after the KC meeting.

We now know for a fact, thanks to the FBI surveillance files, that Kerry was in fact at this meeting--despite Kerry's many earilier denials to the contrary.

Also, it should be noted that despite Nicosia's claim that this proposal "branded Camil as both dangerous and crazy for the remainder of his time in the organization" -- in fact, Camil became one of the two top leaders in the VVAW from then on. And indeed, Camil had been a major force and a close ally of Kerry's before then.

[Sabertooth]

Yes, many here are cheering you on, thinking you are fighting the good fight against Kerry. In reality, I see you as trying to portray FR as being a fringe conspiracy site.

< -snip- >

Conspiratorial hyping is good info? Dream on. I see it as a shrewd form of contra-agit-prop, to make FR look bad

Have you seen the Free Republic Network's own Winter Soldier Investigation?

Check out their links, including many about the Kansas City meeting.

[tpaine]

Whatever.. It seems I must retire from the field. See ya..

[Congressman Billybob]

I meant that in the kindest possible way. If you weren't an arrogant twit, what would be left? I shudder to speculate.

Have a nice day.

J / BB

[doug from upland]

MIDI - BATTLE OF NEW ORLEANS

It's mid November nineteen seventy one
A major confrontation, friends, was said to have begun
Some vets had done some planning...they were getting really sore
They would move to the next level in attempts to stop the war

The FBI had been watchin' 'em in action
They're gettin' real scary...what's the next thing they would do?
In Kansas City would the plot gain traction
Would senators see pearly gates before the year was through?

A young John F. Kerry had been telling great big lies
U.S. troops pulled off mass murder, that should come as no surprise
They're killing for pleasure and were zapping testicles
Before the U.S. Congress he was spreading all that bull

The FBI had been watchin' 'em in action
They're gettin' real scary...what's the next thing they would do?
In Kansas City would the plot gain traction
Would senators see pearly gates before the year was through?

Back in Vietnam there were some men held by the Cong
They were undergoing torture...that side thought it wasn't wrong
They used John's words...and for the men it's really rough
John F. Kerry, you're a traitor...we have really had enough

The FBI had been watchin' 'em in action
They're gettin' real scary...what's the next thing they would do?
In Kansas City would the plot gain traction
Would senators see pearly gates before the year was through?

Scott Camil had been screamin' "It's time we were votin'!
Are you with or against us...we must know where you all stand"
John told them no and gave his resignation
'Cause after all, you know, that a career had been well-planned

He's hidden the record and hoped we would not find out
But Tom Lipscomb found the story...we know what John's all about
A lesson Kerry learned is now becoming evident
If you are whacking senators, you can't be president

The FBI had been watchin' 'em in action
They're gettin' real scary...what's the next thing they would do?
In Kansas City would the plot gain traction
Would senators see pearly gates before the year was through?

Scott Camil had been screamin' "It's time we were votin'!
Are you with or against us...we must know where you all stand"
John told them no and gave his resignation
'Cause after all, you know, that a career had been well-planned

[Hon]

"A young John F. Kerry had been telling great big lies
U.S. troops pulled off mass murder, that should come as no surprise
They're killing for pleasure and were zapping testicles
Before the U.S. Congress he was spreading all that bull"

Lest we forget, Kerry was parroting the testimony of Scott Camil. (You know, "the kook.")

[doug from upland]

That is correct.

[Hon]

"Camil now 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 ones who would rather die than see America suffer a military defeat in Vietnam. Fine, let them die, suggested Camil - in fact, help them along in that direction and once they were cleared out of the way, a truly democratic America could arise, one that would choose to be at peace with the rest of the world."

Another thing that seems to be conveniently forgotten about the VVAW, was that they didn't limit their hatred of America to the war in Vietnam. They hated the US for its racism, sexism, genocide of Indians, capitalism--and much much more.

This is often overlooked in even Kerry's speeches. He even touched on these topics in his "testimony" before the Senate. The Vietnam war was just the starting point. By this time it was clearly winding down. So they needed to transfer their hatred onto other subjects.

[devolve]

[texasbluebell]

Yep. One of the named targets, John Stennis, was shot in January of 1973, three days after the cease fire between the U.S. and North Vietnam went into effect.

Holy cow.

There is so much I've forgotten from those years. This shooting didn't even register with me.

And Tower and the first (real) Mr. Heinz died only one day apart, albeit years after all this.

I certainly would like know who the other Senators were who were targeted in this plot. So far we have: Helms, Stennis, Tower, and Thurmond, if I'm remembering correctly.

[alnick]

Is Camil part of Kerry's campaign staff now?

[alnick]

You're right. It was just a plot to assassinate a few U.S. senators. No biggie.

[An.American.Expatriate]

Thanks for a great recap -

what strikes me here is:
1. Both Barnes and Upton, altough exclude from the "final" debate, apparently knew quite a bit "first hand". ["When the Phoenix plan first came before the steering committee meeting, John Upton had been standing almost next to Camil,..."]
2. they actually approached a potential "assassin" [I would love to know the who, what, when, where etc... on that!!]
3. The suggestion from Camil is not the same as the one he discussed in his "Oral History Interview". There he described it as an alternative to Kerry's plan at dewey Canyon III.

All of this leads me to believe that the Executive Committee knew, long before the Emergency Meeting in KC, that Camil was entertaining such ideas and may have been actively recruiting -

I'd love to see some more background on this (dates, names, etc...) but it seems the data is hard to find.

[jjbrouwer]

I don't know how much longer I will be posting here if the moderators are going to allow the trolls to post outright libels about me with impugnity.

Yeah, right. You'll be here till they turn the lights out.

[NYCVirago]

Thanks for posting this. On a related subject, the one copy of The New Soldier at the New York Public Library was due January 29, but it still has not been returned. Strange, huh?

[MeekOneGOP]

More on this ...

The VVAW Assassination Discussion - "A lot of people
were convinced that this was the way to do it."

Please let me know if you want ON or OFF my General Interest ping list!. . .don't be shy.

[Carolinamom]

Slightly off topic but about Kerry:

Tuesday night in a Charlotte, NC, radio show (WBT), Steve Gardner, the tenth member of Kerry's crew who lives in nearby Clover, SC, said among several interesting things that at least one of Kerry's Purple Hearts was suspicious. He himself saw the ABRASION..."not even a cut" Garner said. According to his first-hand account, Gardner said that Kerry went to the commanding officer (G. gave his rank and name) and said he wanted a Purple Heart for his "wound". The officer said, "NO WAY." Then, Garner said, Kerry went to two other officers w/the same request (demand?). The first officer, scheduled to leave Vietnam, told them that if THEY wanted to give Kerry the Purple Heart commendation, THEY could do it, but he was not about to write Kerry up for the award himself.

Perhaps this detail is another reason for Kerry to refuse releasing his records.

[Hon]

As you may be aware, it's reported that Kerry's Purple Hearts will be raised in a forthcoming bio of Kerry written by two Boston Globe reporters. I believe they are the same reporters who tried to get Kerry to waive his privacy rights regarding his military medical records, and specifically his treatment for his three wounds.

It was reported that this book will question the propriety of these medals and Kerry's subsequent re-assignment out of Vietnam back to a desk in an Admiral's office in New York City.

[Carolinamom]

Please ping me whenever you know the title and publishing date of this book. Thanks in advance.

[stockpirate]

You should know that the FBI files indicate that the idea was only tabled until the next meeting and most liked the idea.