Theft of FBI files 'has makings of Kerry Watergate' [in major UK paper]

It has, according to the victim of a burglary in California, all the makings of a "west coast Watergate".

When Gerald Nicosia, a respected author and historian, returned to his home in the town of Corte Madera on March 25, it became clear that he had been the victim of an unusual break-in. Doors were ajar and there was evidence of a hurried departure, but no valuables had been taken: a Canon camera was still lying on the kitchen table.

The only items missing, Mr Nicosia realised, were three box files of politically-charged documents. They looked unexceptional but were filled with FBI surveillance records on a Vietnam veteran and anti-war activist by the name of John Kerry.

Mr Nicosia believes that the burglars were seeking papers that link Senator Kerry - the Democratic presidential candidate - to a controversial meeting of anti-Vietnam War activists in the early 1970s, at which a proposal to assassinate US congressmen was discussed.

"I think this was a political burglary," said Mr Nicosia, whose archives on Mr Kerry have been featured on national television. "It could have been a souvenir-hunter, but I think that's implausible. Whoever did this wanted to know something about John Kerry."

Although Senator Kerry has always denied attending the meeting in Kansas City, the FBI records stated otherwise. As a Democrat himself, Mr Nicosia felt that he should warn the Kerry campaign about his discovery. "I told the Kerry campaign that they could not continue to deny that Kerry was there," he said.

The senator's distinguished Vietnam record had become a prime focus of the presidential campaign. While supporters compared it to President Bush's unheroic stint in the National Guard, critics also pointed to the anti-war protests he led on returning from action in the Mekong Delta.

Within days of the tip-off, Kerry aides arrived in Corte Madera, just north of San Franciso, to collect photocopies of the 1971 document. Mr Nicosia believes that his discovery was also what later lured burglars to his home. "My hunch is that Republicans did this," he said last week. "I was co-operating with the Democrats. I warned them about what I had found and opened it up to them."

For their part, Republicans believe that the documents may have been stolen by Democrats anxious to avoid a scandal over the assassination meeting. Pat Buchanan, the former Republican presidential candidate, said: "What I smell is that John Kerry has not told the whole truth about his relationship with the Vietnam Veterans Against the War [VVAW]. I think he's not been forthcoming about that Kansas City meeting."

The FBI's monitoring reports on Mr Kerry from the early 1970s, which were studied in the Nixon White House, are a severe embarrassment for a would-be president. Mr Nicosia's papers seem set to spark the latest controversy in an increasingly bitter presidential campaign: so far, more than 300 journalists have requested access to his files.

The author had requested the FBI records under the US Freedom of Information Act while researching Home to War, a book about the Vietnam anti-movement. For 11 years, the FBI dragged its feet; by the time 20,000 pages arrived from the organisation in 1998, Mr Nicosia had finished most of his work on the book. "They put all kinds of obstacles in my way," he said last week. "They said they hadn't got the manpower to collect them, that they weren't properly categorised and so on."

He stored the 14 box files in his garage, not bothering to examine them in detail until earlier this year, when Mr Kerry's Vietnam record suddenly came under renewed scrutiny.

Combing through the papers, Mr Nicosia found the startling document, dating from November 1971. It said that Mr Kerry took part in the VVAW meeting in Kansas, at which the assassination of pro-war senators was openly discussed before being rejected as a tactic.

Campaign aides have repeatedly denied that Mr Kerry attended the Kansas meeting, claiming that the senator left the VVAW in July 1971. Other VVAW members have offered conflicting accounts. Randy Barnes, the organiser of the Kansas City chapter, initially said that Mr Kerry did attend, but later claimed that he may have confused the Kansas meeting with one in St Louis.

"Senator Kerry does not remember attending the Kansas City meeting," said a Kerry campaign spokesman. Yet aides now acknowledge that the FBI records indicate that he was, indeed, present.

Mr Nicosia, it appears, had stumbled on the truth - which is more than the burglars managed to do. Despite rifling through most of the historian's papers, and removing three box files, they failed to find the Kansas documents.

"They were still up by the photocopier," Mr Nicosia said, "away from the rest of the boxes. The three files that were taken were from 1976 to 1977, and the burglars also took bookmarked sheaves of files which were lying on the kitchen table. But I think they were disturbed as they were looking through the material. There is a dobermann next door with a very loud bark."

Local police officers are still investigating the break-in, which they are treating as a burglary, and have refused to comment on the case. The Kerry campaign has also refused to comment. "I think they are afraid of stirring up the whole Kansas debate," Mr Nicosia said.

It sounds like the investigating officers are already suspicious of Nicosia, so that's a good sign. The problem is media articles like this which ignore the holes in Nicosia's story. How can that be countered?--I'm trying to think of what the next step should be.

BTW, I managed to get ahold of a copy of Nicosia's book on the antiwar movement, which I'll be going through to identify who his political allies might be. Nicosia has already admitted he's pro-Kerry, detailing his specific political connections might help highlight his vested interest. Here's his bio, with some highlights bolded:

Biography of Gerald Nicosia

Born November 18, 1949, in Berwyn, Illinois, just outside Chicago, Gerald Nicosia received a B.A. (1971) and an M.A. (1973) in English and American Literature, with Highest Distinction in English, from the University of Illinois in Chicago. In the late 1970's, Mr. Nicosia traveled the United States and Canada, interviewing over 300 people who knew Jack Kerouac. His biography of Kerouac, Memory Babe (Grove Press, 1983), earned the Distinguished Young Writer Award from the National Society of Arts and Letters while still a work-in-progress in 1978. Upon publication, it garnered over 200 reviews worldwide, and has generally been recognized as the definitive book on Kerouac’s life and work. It has been translated into French, Spanish, and Czech, and is currently in print in a revised U.S. edition from the University of California Press.

Nicosia has been a freelance journalist, interviewer, and literary critic for the past twenty years, contributing to hundreds of publications, including the Washington Post, the Chicago Tribune, the Los Angeles Times, the San Francisco Chronicle, USA Today, the American Book Review, the Review of Contemporary Fiction, Contemporary Literary Criticism, and the New York Quarterly.

Nicosia has taught creative writing and journalism at the University of Illinois and the University of California, Los Angeles, and he has lectured and conducted workshops at dozens of other colleges and universities, including New York University, Northwestern University, Columbia College in Chicago, the New College of California, Evergreen College in Olympia, Washington, and Carleton University in Ottawa, Canada. He has been a featured speaker at Beat and Kerouac conferences worldwide, including the Naropa Institute’s 25-year-anniversary celebration of On the Road in Boulder, Colorado, in 1982, the Beat Weekend at Plymouth Arts Centre in England, June, 1987, the Rencontre Internationale Jack Kerouac in Quebec City in October,1987, and the dedication of the Kerouac Commemorative in Lowell, Massachusetts, in June, 1988

Nicosia scripted and narrated the acclaimed public television documentary film West Coast: Beat and Beyond, which was directed by Chris Felver; he was an advisor to John Antonelli’s documentary film Kerouac; and he wrote a three-act play called Jack in Ghost-Town, about Kerouac’s decline and death, which was produced by the American Blues Theater in Chicago.

Nicosia is also well-known for his own poetry and fiction, much of which has been published in literary magazines. He frequently reads this material in public. He published a collection of his poetry, Lunatics, Lovers, Poets, Vets & Bargirls with Host Publications in Austin, Texas, in 1991, and has a new collection called Love, California Style forthcoming in 2001 from Buchenroth Publishing. He is also the author of a nonfiction novel about the tragic suicide of his friend Richard Raff, called Bughouse Blues.

For the past fifteen years, Nicosia has worked with Vietnam veterans, studying, documenting, and aiding in their recovery from the war. Having interviewed over 600 veterans and doctors, he completed a massive book called Home to War: A History of the Vietnam Veterans Movement, which will be published by Crown/Random House in 2001. It is expected to be the definitive work on Vietnam Veteran healing and readjustment from the late 1960’s to the present, and has been praised by the likes of Senators John Kerry and Alan Cranston, author Maxine Hong Kingston, and National Book Award winners Gloria Emerson and Larry Heinemann.

Nicosia is arranging to donate his thousands of hours of tapes and voluminous files on Vietnam veterans to the Center for Vietnam Studies at Texas Tech University. His research materials will be designated the Vietnam Veteran Peace Archive, providing the only comprehensive resource in the world for the study of Vietnam Veteran healing.

A close friend of Kerouac’s daughter for nearly 20 years, Nicosia was appointed by Jan Kerouac to be her literary executor. After Jan’s death in 1996, Nicosia attempted to carry out her intention of placing Jack Kerouac’s archive of papers and manuscripts intact in a library for public study, rather than having pieces of it sold off to collectors and dealers, as is currently being done. Opposed by Jan’s heir, her ex-husband John Lash, as well as the Sampas family of Lowell, Mr. Nicosia was prevented from ever bringing this critical case to court in order to get a legal ruling on what rights Jan may have had.

Nicosia is currently working on a book about the case of death-row inmate Mumia Abu-Jamal and the death penalty in America.

His credentials scream "democrat/leftist" which tells me he's a seasoned, expert liar.

Your insight into his character is corroborated by this:

Bibliofile: Dead beats

The 12th annual Lowell Celebrates Kerouac! festival promises everything you'd expect from an event honoring the town's most famous native son. But in between the beat poetry and the jazz, festival organizers have found themselves presiding over an unanticipated sideshow: a power struggle between Kerouac scholars and family members.

The story boils down to a bitter fight between two men: Gerald Nicosia, a Kerouac biographer and the literary executor for Kerouac's late daughter, Jan; and John Sampas, brother to Kerouac's third wife, Stella, and executor of Jack Kerouac's estate. For years, the two have been wrestling in and out of court for control of Jack's letters, journals, and personal items -- valued at around $10 million.

The situation is as ugly as it is complex. Nicosia has accused Sampas of selling Kerouac's belongings for profit. The other side has shot back with allegations that Nicosia manipulated Kerouac's sickly daughter for personal gain. Nicosia has charged Sampas with making death threats against him. Now, amid the bickering and litigation, Nicosia has taken aim at the Lowell celebration, claiming he has been unfairly banned from taking part.

"John Sampas calls the shots and he doesn't want me there," says Nicosia, noting that Sampas is a sponsor of the festival. "Mr. Sampas takes the position that no one can speak on Kerouac without his permission." Festival organizers, Nicosia claims, are intimidated by Sampas's clout and indentured to his cash -- thus their decision to blackball Nicosia.

Nonsense, says UMass Lowell professor Hilary Holladay, who organized the festival's showcase "Beat Attitudes" conference and rejected a bid by Nicosia to take part. His proposal "didn't fit with the theme of the conference," she says. "He attached some vitriol that wasn't in the spirit of the event. It would have been foolish of me to invite someone who wasn't behaving professionally as a scholar."

Holladay allows that Nicosia is "unpopular among organizers of the festival," but she dismisses as paranoia his claims of a Sampas-led blacklisting. "He's persona non grata among Kerouac scholars," she says. "He's caused a lot of bad feelings in the city."

Nicosia chalks this attitude up to Sampas's alleged campaign to discredit him. "You'll hear that I'm a mad dog with foam coming out of my mouth," he says. "I'm tired of it. I'm a respected scholar." Accordingly, Nicosia is planning a few events of his own to coincide with the official celebration, including a protest by "nationally prominent writers."

Nicosia also plans to attend the Beat Attitudes conference. "I will be there if they let me in," he says. In 1995, Nicosia was thrown out of a similar event at New York University for arguing loudly with Allen Ginsberg. Does he plan a repeat performance? "I want to make some statements," he says. "If they allow a Q&A, I plan on asking some questions."

While Sampas and Nicosia duke it out, one wonders what Jack Kerouac would have made of this mess. As Nicosia puts it, "It's totally antithetical to what Kerouac stood for: compassion, tolerance, brotherhood."

Nicosia is a sell out.

Yes--I think the Kerouac scandal described in my other post confirms that money is what motivates him. Also, after reading the part there which says, "He's persona non grata among Kerouac scholars", it occurred to me that he's been misrepresenting his academic credentials. His website says he has degrees in Literature:

Biography of Gerald Nicosia

Gerald Nicosia received a B.A. (1971) and an M.A. (1973) in English and American Literature. . .Nicosia has been a freelance journalist, interviewer, and literary critic for the past twenty years. . .Nicosia has taught creative writing and journalism at the University of Illinois and the University of California, Los Angeles. ..Nicosia is also well-known for his own poetry and fiction, much of which has been published in literary magazines.

But here is how he is described in every article I've seen on his "theft" claims:

Historian: Kerry FBI files stolen

FBI documents about FBI surveillance of John Kerry in the early 1970s have been stolen, according to their owner, a historian who lives near San Francisco, California.

Now I happen to have one of my degrees in History, and I can tell you I didn't get it by taking Literature classes, teaching creative writing, or writing books on Jack Kerouac. Furthermore, as the above indicates, Nicosia is not even considered a reputable scholar by his colleagues in his own field. Nicosia is an academic fraud.

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