John Kerry Timeline
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| December 11, 1943 |
John Forbes Kerry was born to Rosemary and Richard Kerry at Fitzsimmons Army Hospital in Aurora, Colorado. Richard Kerry was a diplomat in the foreign service. Rosemary was a homemaker and a minor heir to the Forbes family wealth (one of 11 children born to James Grant Forbes and Margaret Winthrop). John has an older brother, Cameron, and two younger sisters, Diane and Peggy. |
| 1955-1957 |
Kerry attended boarding schools at La Clairiere, Vaud, Switzerland, joining his family in West Berlin on vacations. When Kerry was 13, his parents, who stayed in Europe, sent John to New England for his education, attending Fessenden School in West Newton, Massachusetts. |
| 1957-1962 |
John Kerry attended St. Paul's School, Concord, New Hampshire, where he was on the debate team and founded the John Winant Society, an organization that still exists to debate major issues of the day. He was a member of the Concordian Literary Society, and in a 1962 production of Caine Mutiny. He played ice hockey, soccer, and lacrosse. He played bass guitar in a high school band called The Electras. |
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| 1960s |
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| September 1962 |
John Kerry joined President John F. Kennedy to watch the America's Cup race from the USS Joseph P. Kennedy off Newport, Rhode Island. |
| 1962-1966 |
John Kerry attended Yale, New Haven, Connecticut. John and close friend, David Thorne played varsity soccer, and both dated Janet Auchincloss, the half-sister of Jacqueline Kennedy. He became a member of Yale's Skulls and Bones in his final year, 1966. Of the 15 members of Skull and Bones from that year, Kerry had an extraordinary bond with three who went to Vietnam: David Thorne, Fred Smith (a Kerry flying partner who would later found Federal Express), and Richard Pershing, Kerry's close friend since age 13. |
| February 18, 1966 |
While a senior at Yale, Kerry asked his draft board for permission to study a year in Paris, which the draft board declined. Kerry then voluntarily enlisted in the Navy. He had read a book about President Kennedy's World War II experiences on a patrol boat, PT-109, which helped inspire Kerry to volunteer for duty on a Navy patrol boat in Vietnam. |
| June 1966 |
Kerry graduated from Yale with a B.A. in Political Science, with an emphasis on American Government. John Kerry delivered the class Commencement speech. Many at Yale had noticed that Kerry, already on his way to becoming a commissioned officer in Vietnam, was critical of the war and the use of American military might against communist regimes. His oration included the following statement:
"What was an excess of isolationism has become an excess of interventionism. And this Vietnam War has found our policy makers forcing Americans into a strange corner . . . that if victory escapes us, it would not be the fault of those who lead, but of the doubters who stabbed them in the back -- notions all too typical of an America that had to find Americans to blame for the takeover in China by the communists, and then for the takeover in Cuba. "The United States must, I think, bring itself to understand that the policy of intervention that was right for Western Europe does not and cannot find the same application to the rest of the world. "We have not really lost the desire to serve. We question the very roots of what we are serving.''
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| August 1966 |
Kerry started his officer training program. |
| June 1967 |
Kerry was assigned to the frigate USS Gridley. |
| February 1968 |
Kerry made his first trip to Southeast Asia aboard the USS Gridley, supporting aircraft carriers in the Gulf of Tonkin off North Vietnam. |
| February 17, 1968 |
Kerry received a telegram that his friend, Richard Pershing had died due to "wounds received while on a combat mission when his unit came under hostile small-arms and rocket attack while searching for remains of a missing member of his unit." Kerry was devastated. He wrote a letter to his parents:
"What can I say? I am empty, bitter, angry and desperately lost with nothing but war, violence, and more war around me. I just don't believe that it was meant to be this cruel and senseless -- that anyone could possibly get near to Persh to take his life. What a God-damn total waste. . . . With the loss of Persh something has gone out of me -- he was so much a part of my life at the irreplaceable, incomparable moments of love, concerns, anger and compassion exchanged in Bones that can never be replaced -- never be satisfied in memory form. . . . "
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| June 1968 |
Kerry returned to California for training on 50-foot swift boats used for Vietnam coastal patrol, later for inland waterways. He returns to Vietnam in November after being promoted to lieutenant. |
| November 17, 1968 |
U.S. Naval Lieutenant John Kerry arrived in Vietnam and took command of Swift boat No. 44, operating in the Mekong Delta. |
| December 2, 1968 |
Kerry experienced first intense combat, and is slightly wounded in the arm. He was awarded a Purple Heart. (Note: In Kerry's own journal written 9 days later, he writes that he and his crew, "hadn't been shot at yet." Kerry's 2004 campaign said it is possible his first Purple Heart was awarded for unintentionally self-inflicted wounds.) |
| December 24, 1968 |
Kerry claimed that he was involved in combat in waters off Cambodia during Christmas Eve of 1968. Kerry said he ordered his crew to open fire, silencing the machine gun barrage aimed at them.
"I remember Christmas of 1968 sitting on a gunboat in Cambodia. I remember what it was like to be shot at by Vietnamese and Khmer Rouge and Cambodians, and have the president of the United States telling the American people that I was not there; the troops were not in Cambodia. I have that memory which is seared -- seared -- in me."
(Note: Kerry has since altered his claim to say he was in Cambodia in early 1969. This claim in unsubstantiated. The story changes by the day and unfolding.) |
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Kerry takes command of the PCF-94 swift boat. |
| February 20, 1969 |
Kerry and crew come under automatic weapon and rocket fire while on patrol in South Vietnam. Kerry was hit by shrapnel in his left thigh. He is awarded a second Purple Heart. (Note: This account is disputed by the Swift Boat Veterans.) |
| February 28, 1969 |
Kerry and crew again drew intense enemy fire. Kerry charged Viet Cong positions, grounded his boat, pursued a Viet Cong fighter into a small hut, killed him, and retrieved his loaded rocket launcher. Kerry then led an assault party to secure the area, killing 10 Viet Cong with no American casualties. He is awarded a Silver Star "for conspicuous gallantry and intrepidity in action." (This account is disputed by the Swift Boat Veterans.) |
| March 13, 1969 |
Patrolling the Bay Hap River with five other swift boats, Kerry's group is ambushed. Kerry is hit in the arm by an exploding mine while another boat is blown out of the water. Kerry turns his boat back toward the ambush to rescue survivors. "We were still under fire, and he was wounded at the time" recalled Jim Rassmann. Kerry pulled the Rassman into his boat, saving his life, and was awarded a third Purple Heart and a Bronze Star "For heroic achievement [and] great personal courage under fire." (This account is disputed by the Swift Boat Veterans.) |
| April 1969 |
After leaving Vietnam under a policy that grants relief to any individual who is wounded three times in action, Kerry returned to the U.S. to serve as an admiral's aide and flag lieutenant to Rear Admiral Walter F. Schlech, Jr. with the Military Sea Transportation Service based in Brooklyn, New York. |
| November 1969 |
Jeremy Rifkin and Tod Ensign launched a new organization called the Citizens Commissions of Inquiry (CCI) to publicize American war crimes in Indochina, in response to a public call from the Bertrand Russell Foundation in New York |
| December 1969 |
Kerry requests an early discharge from the Navy in order to run for the Fourth District congressional seat of Massachusetts on an antiwar platform. |
| December 18, 1969 |
Kerry's service record evaluation stated "In a combat environment often requiring independent, decisive action, LTJG Kerry was unsurpassed . . . LTJG Kerry emerges as the acknowledged leader in his peer group." - Lt. Cmdr. George Elliott. |
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| 1970s |
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| January 3, 1970 |
Kerry is discharged from active duty. He is honorably discharged, but remains in the Reserves. |
| February 18, 1970 |
Kerry tells the Harvard Crimson,
“I’m an internationalist. I’d like to see our troops dispersed through the world only at the directive of the United Nations . . . to almost eliminate CIA activity. The CIA is fighting its own war in Laos and nobody seems to care." He also favors a negative income tax and keeping unemployment at a very low level, "even if it means selective economic controls."
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| February 1970 |
CCI co-sponsored its first “commissions of inquiry” in Toronto and Annapolis MD, and began providing accounts of war crimes to the press. During the next few months, the CCI held events in Springfield Massachusetts, Richmond, New York City, Buffalo, Boston, Minneapolis, Los Angeles, and Portland Oregon. |
| March 1970 |
Kerry dropped out of the congressional race to make way for antiwar activist Father Robert F. Drinan, Dean of Boston College Law School, and later became chairman of Drinan’s campaign. Drinan defeated pro-war incumbent Philip Philbin in the Democratic primary and won the general election. |
| May 7, 1970 |
Kerry appeared on The Dick Cavett Show for the first time, speaking in opposition to U.S. involvement in Vietnam. |
| May 23, 1970 |
John Kerry married Philadelphia heiress Julia Stimson Thorne (b. 1945). (John and Julia later had two daughters, Alexandra, born on September 5, 1973, and Venessa, born on December 31, 1976.) |
| May 1970 |
Kerry and Julia traveled to Paris, France and met with Madame Nguyen Thi Binh, the Foreign Minister of the Provisional Revolutionary Government of Vietnam (PRG), the political wing of the Vietcong, and other Viet Cong and Communist Vietnamese representatives to the Paris peace talks, a trip he now calls a "fact-finding" mission. (U.S. code 18 U.S.C. 953, declares it illegal for a U.S. citizen to go abroad and negotiate with a foreign power.) |
| June 1970 |
Kerry joined the Vietnam Veterans Against the War (VVAW), a national veterans group that was part of the Peoples Coalition for Peace and Justice. (The PCPJ was a broad coalition of local and national organizations, including the Communist Party, USA, “committed to conducting demonstrations aimed at ending the war in Indochina, and poverty, racism and injustice at home.” The VVAW, CCI and PCPJ all had headquarters at 156 Fifth Avenue in New York City. VVAW Executive Secretary Al Hubbard (a former Black Panther) was also on the coordinating committee of the PCPJ. Hubbard soon appointed Kerry to the VVAW’s Executive Committee, bypassing the normal election process. |
| 1970 |
Kerry was one of the original organizers of the first Earth Day in Massachusetts, and would later chair the National Earth Day board in 1990. |
| 1971 |
John Kerry was the spokesman for the Vietnam Veterans Against the War (VVAW). |
| April 18, 1971 |
John Kerry first appeared on Meet the Press and made the following statement.:
MR. KERRY (Vietnam Veterans Against the War): There are all kinds of atrocities and I would have to say that, yes, yes, I committed the same kind of atrocities as thousands of other soldiers have committed in that I took part in shootings in free-fire zones. I conducted harassment and interdiction fire. I used 50-caliber machine guns which we were granted and ordered to use, which were our only weapon against people. I took part in search-and-destroy missions, in the burning of villages. All of this is contrary to the laws of warfare. All of this is contrary to the Geneva Conventions and all of this ordered as a matter of written established policy by the government of the United States from the top down. And I believe that the men who designed these, the men who designed the free-fire zone, the men who ordered us, the men who signed off the air raid strike areas, I think these men, by the letter of the law, the same letter of the law that tried Lieutenant Calley, are war criminals.
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| April 22, 1971 |
John Kerry, director of the Vietnam Veterans against the War, testified before special session the Senate Foreign Relations Committee for two hours about alleging widespread atrocities by U.S. troops, and the official policies in Vietnam which were illegal, according to international law. He asks the Congressional panel "How do you ask a man to be the last man to die for a mistake?"
Senator Stuart SYMINTON (D- Mo.): Mr. Kerry, from your experience in Vietnam do you think it is possible for the President or Congress to get accurate and undistorted information through official military channels." KERRY: I had direct experience with that. Senator, I had direct experience with that and I can recall often sending in the spot reports which we made after each mission; and including the GDA, gunfire damage assessments, in which we would say, maybe 15 sampans sunk or whatever it was. And I often read about my own missions in the Stars and Stripes and the very mission we had been on had been doubled in figures and tripled in figures. . . . I also think men in the military, sir, as do men in many other things, have a tendency to report what they want to report and see what they want to see.
A large group of veterans march to the steps of the Supreme Court to ask the Court why it has not ruled on the constitutionality of the war. They sing God Bless America. One hundred and ten are arrested for disturbing the peace and are led off the steps with their hands clasped behind their heads. Lobbying on Capitol Hill continues all day. A District Court judge angrily dissolves his injunction order, rebuking Justice Department lawyers for requesting the court order and then not enforcing it. Veterans stage a candlelight march around the White House. A huge American flag is carried upside down as a signal of distress. The march ends back at the camp when the flag carriers mount the stage. |
| April 23, 1971 |
Veterans cast down their medals and ribbons on the steps of the Capitol. Congressman Jonathan Bingham holds hearings with former intelligence and public information officers over distortion of news and information concerning the war. Senators George McGovern and Philip Hart hold hearings on atrocities committed by U.S. soldiers in Vietnam. Kerry is interviewed in a New York Times article titled “An Angry War Veteran,” in which he admits to the reporter that he enlisted in the Swift Boats to avoid the war in Vietnam, since the boats were only used for patrol duty:
“That first trip to Vietnam piqued his curiosity, 'I wanted to go back and see for myself what was going on, but I didn’t really want to get involved in the war.' So late in 1968 he volunteered for an assignment on "swift boats" - the short, fast aluminum craft that were then used for patrol duty off the coast of Vietnam. "Two weeks before he arrived in Vietnam as a swift boat commander, he said, 'they changed the policy on the use of the boats - decided to send them up the river to prove to the Vietcong that they didn’t own the waters.' The river missions involved shooting at sampans and at huts along the banks and suddenly, Mr. Kerry recalls, we said, ‘hey, wait a minute - we don’t know who these people are.’ So we started to beach our boats to go to ashore and find out what we had been shooting at.”
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| April 1971 |
Kerry organized anti-war protests in Washington, tossing his war ribbons away at one of the events. |
| May 31, 1971 |
John Kerry walked with his hands behind his head as police escorted veterans and supporters from the Lexington Green. |
| June 1971 |
According to an FBI report, Kerry praised Vietnam’s communist dictator Ho Chi Minh, comparing him to George Washington. At the time, Kerry was serving as the point man for VVAW. The president of the organization, Al Hubbard, claimed to be an Air Force captain who was severely injured during his service in Vietnam, but it was discovered that Hubbard was a sergeant who never served in Vietnam. Hubbard did serve the communist cause, making propaganda trips to Hanoi paid for by the Communist Party USA. |
| Summer 1971 |
According to the FBI files, Kerry met with representatives from the North Vietnamese government in Paris in 1971 in an effort to secure the release of captured American prisoners of war. Gerald Nicosia, a Kerry supporter and the author of Home to War: A History of the Vietnam Veterans' Movement, noted that this meeting is documented in redacted FBI files. |
| June 13, 1971 |
Kerry spoke at the Register for Peace Rally at Mineola, New York. (Despite a doctored photograph surfacing, Jane Fonda was not present at the event.) |
| July 6, 1971 |
John Kerry debated John O'Neill on The Dick Cavett Show. After his antiwar testimony before the Senate Foreign Relations committee, Kerry became a much sought-after guest on late night talk shows. |
| November 12, 1971 |
Declassified FBI documents identified John Kerry as having attended a VVAW meeting in Kansas City, Misouri in the house of one of the members. Scot Camil , VVAW Regional Coordinator from Florida was running the meeting. Camil proposed the establishment of "readiness groups" of the "Phoenix type." VVAW secretly voted on a proposal to kill six pro-war senators, including Republican Strom Thurmond of South Carolina and Democrat John Stennis of Mississippi. Gerald Nicosia, the historian, told the New York Sun that “Camil was deadly serious, brilliant and highly logical.” In his book he reports that “what Camil sketched was so explosive that the coordinators feared lest government agents even hear of it,” so they moved their meeting to a Mennonite hall. There, according to six eyewitnesses interviewed by the Sun, the plan was discussed and voted down, with Mr. Kerry speaking out against it, although there is disagreement about how narrow the margin of defeat was. On the third day of the meeting, Mr. Kerry and three others resigned from their posts as national coordinators of VVAW. Historian Douglas Brinkley says Mr. Kerry told him he quit because of “personality conflicts and differences in political philosophy.” Mr. Kerry also told Mr. Brinkley that he was a “no show” in Kansas City. Kerry later told two historians, Gerald Nicosia and Douglas Brinkley, that he was not there and that he had resigned from the organization before the meeting was held. In March 2004, reliable witnesses came forward and placed John Kerry at the meeting. In 2004, FBI files emerged establishing Kerry’s presence in Kansas City. His campaign conceded that Kerry somehow must have forgotten his involvement in the plot to assassinate U.S. senators while still on the executive committee of the VVAW. |
| November 15, 1971 |
John Kerry resigns from the Executive Committee of the VVAW stating personal reasons, after trying unsuccessfully to have Al Hubbard removed from the group’s leadership. (Kerry continued to represent the organization in interviews and public appearances for several months.) |
| December 26, 1971 |
VVAW protesters take over the Statue of Liberty for about 40 hours and draped an upside-down American flag across the statue’s face. According to the New York Post, the VVAW later receives a “congratulatory message” from Vietcong negotiator Le Mai in Paris. |
| December 27, 1971 |
Twenty-five VVAW protesters took over the Betsy Ross House in Philadelphia. |
| December 28, 1971 |
VVAW protesters splash bags of blood in front of the White House, then take over the Lincoln Memorial. 87 are arrested. John Kerry tells the New York Times that he is helping raise bail money for some of the demonstrators. |
| 1972 |
John Kerry wrote and published The New Soldier with Vietnam Veterans Against the War. It was edited by David Thorne and George Butler. Kerry later bought up all available copies of the book when he ran for political office, later in 1972. The book can be downloaded in three parts: Part I, Part II, Part III. |
| January 11, 1972 |
John Kerry represented the VVAW at Dartmouth College. |
| January 25, 1972 |
Kerry attended a Washington protest meeting where the New York Times described him as "a leader of the Vietnam Veterans Against the War." |
| February 1972 |
A VVAW delegation attended a World Assembly for Peace and Independence of the People of Indochina in Versailles, France. |
| April 3, 1972 |
John Kerry announced his candidacy for the Massachusetts 5th Congressional District seat vacated by Rep. F. Bradford Morse. |
| April 22, 1972 |
John Kerry represented the VVAW at the "Emergency March for Peace" in Bryant Park in New York City. |
| May 30, 1972 |
As a candidate for the US House of Representatives in the 5th Congressional District, John Kerry addressed the Democratic National Platform Committee at Faneuil Hall. |
| July 8 - 22, 1972 |
Jane Fonda made her infamous visit to Hanoi, where she made numerous radio broadcasts to American and South Vietnamese military personnel encouraging mutiny and desertion, while repeatedly claiming that the United States is committing war crimes in Vietnam. Fonda also visited American prisoners, reporting on the air that they are being “well cared for” and that they wished to convey their “sense of disgust of the war and their shame for what they have been asked to do.” Upon leaving North Vietnam, Fonda accepted from her hosts a ring made from the wreckage of a downed American plane. |
| July 29 - August 12, 1972 |
Former U.S. Attorney General Ramsey Clark travels to Hanoi on behalf of the Communist Stockholm International Commission for Inquiry. Clark denounces the U.S. bombing of North Vietnam and visited American POWs, reporting that they are in good health and their conditions "could not be better." |
| September 1972 |
On the eve of the primary, Cameron Kerry, John's brother, and campaign field director Thomas J. Vallely, were arrested in the basement of a Lowell building that housed the headquarters of Kerry and another Democratic contender, state Representative Anthony R. DiFruscia of Lawrence. (Thomas Vallely will later become director of the Vietnam Program at the John F. Kennedy School of Government, Harvard University.) |
| September 19, 1972 |
Kerry won the Democratic primary for his Congressional bid. |
| November 1972 |
Kerry lost his bid for Congress in the general election to Republican Paul Cronin. |
| Late 1972 |
The U.S Congress voted to eliminate funding for military operations in Indochina. |
| January 24, 1973 |
President Richard Nixon announced the cease-fire in Vietnam. |
| February and March 1973 |
American prisoners of war are released by North Vietnam. They report having been starved, beaten, and tortured by their captors, in an effort to make them sign documents in which they admitted to committing war crimes. |
| April 1973 |
Jane Fonda calls the freed American prisoners “hypocrites and pawns,” insisting that, "Tortured men do not march smartly off planes, salute the flag, and kiss their wives. They are liars. I also want to say that these men are not heroes." |
| 1973 - 1976 |
Kerry enrolled in September of 1973 at Boston College Law School, Chestnut Hill, Massachusetts. |
| 1974 |
North Vietnam initiates minor probing attacks into South Vietnam--in violation of the Paris treaty. There is no military response by the United States. |
| 1975 |
North Vietnam launches a massive invasion of South Vietnam. |
| April 30, 1975 |
Saigon falls. |
| 1975 - 1979 |
Communist regimes in southeast Asia murdered an estimated two million Cambodians, as well as tens of thousands of South Vietnamese. One million South Vietnamese were imprisoned in "re-education camps," and hundreds of thousands died there. An additional two million fled the country by boat, with many drowning in the attempt. |
| 1976 |
John Kerry earned his law degree from Boston College. |
| 1976 - 1979 |
John Kerry joined the Middlesex County district attorney's office. As a top prosecutor, Kerry fights organized crime putting the number two mob boss in New England behind bars. |
| 1978 |
The original VVAW split up when a minority broke away to form Vietnam Veterans Against the War Anti-Imperialist (VVAWAI), with the larger faction retaining the original name. Both the VVAW and the rabidly anti-American VVAWAI remain in operation today. |
| 1978 |
Former VVAW leader Robert Muller founds the Vietnam Veterans of America (VVA). The VVA also describes John Kerry as a “co-founder” of the organization. In the late 1980s, Mueller and the Vietnam Veterans of America Foundation (VVAF) split from the VVA. Mueller led a VVAF delegation to Hanoi, where he praised the communist leadership of Vietnam and laid a wreath on the grave of Ho Chi Minh. |
| February 1978 |
After Kerry was released from active duty in the Navy, he remained in the Naval Reserve until he was honorably discharged in February. (Discharge papers were stamped on July 13, 1978.) |
| June 16, 1978 |
As Middlesex County 1st Assistant DA, John Kerry held a press conference to explain that an investigation into possible criminal charges stemming from US Senator Edward Brooke's admitted "misstatements" in his first divorce trial was, ordered that day by Middlesex DA John Droney. |
| 1979 - 1982 |
John Kerry worked as an attorney in private practice. |
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| 1980s |
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| 1982 - 1984 |
Elected Lieutenant Governor of Massachusetts, under Governor Michael Dukakis. |
| November 6,1984 |
Elected to the US Senate. |
| January 1985 |
John Kerry is sworn in as US Senator. |
| February 8, 1985 |
Appointed to the Senate Foreign Relations Committee. |
| April 18 - ? , 1985 |
Senator John Kerry, Senator Tom Harkin, and other lawmakers went on a fact-finding trip to Nicaragua, where they met with Daniel Ortega and other Sandinistas. The trip was criticized when the Sandinistas cemented ties with Moscow. |
| 1985 |
Kerry supported the Gramm-Rudman Deficit Reduction Act. |
| 1985 - 1988 |
Senator Kerry co-sponsors Equal Rights Amendment |
| April 1986 |
Senator John Kerry chairs the Senate subcommittee on the Iran-Contra hearings that investigates US involvement in illegal gun-running and narcotics trafficking in the contra insurgency in Nicaragua. |
| July 25, 1988 |
After a six-year separation (1982-1988), John divorced his first wife, Julia Thorne. (Julia later remarried, to architect Richard Charlesworth and lives in Bozeman, Montana.) |
| 1989 |
Kerry co-sponsors the "Family and Medical Leave Act." |
| April 1989 |
Kerry was part of a committee on Terrorism, Narcotics, and International Operations that exposed the US government's tolerance of drug smuggling under the guise of national security. The investigation concluded that US officials "abandoned the responsibility for protecting our citizens from all threats to their security and well-being." |
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| 1990s |
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| September 21, 1990 |
John Kerry attended a 24-hour City Hall Plaza vigil commemorating POW/MIA families. |
| November 6, 1990 |
John Kerry celebrated his U.S. Senate re-election victory party at the Copley Plaza Hotel |
| July 1991 |
Senator Kerry chaired a select committee to investigate US soldiers still missing in Vietnam. He worked with Senator John McCain to begin to normalize relations with Vietnam. |
| 1992 |
Based on results of earlier investigations into drug trafficking and money laundering of Panamanian President Manuel A. Noriega, Senator Kerry presided over a Senate probe that exposed the fraud, abuse and terrorist financing of the Pakistan-based Bank of Credit and Commerce International (BCCI). Known as the BCCI scandal. The inquiry had led him to call 84-year-old Clark Clifford to testify, angering fellow Democrats. |
| June 24, 1992 |
John Kerry and Senator John McCain attend a hearing on Americans missing or imprisoned in southeast Asia. Kerry said that as many as 133 prisoners may have been left behind at the end of the Vietnam war, and the Pentagon may have deliberately misled families about the fate of some service men. |
| October 23, 1992 |
Senators Kerry and McCain, and acting Secretary of State Lawrence S. Engleburger, stood by as President George H. Bush made the POW Announcement in the Rose Garden that the Vietnamese Government had agreed to hand over all material on American prisoners of war. |
| July 15-18, 1993 |
John Kerry along with other Congressmen and a Veterans Delegation met with Do Muoi, Secretary General of the Vietnamese Communist Party in Vietnam. Kerry also visited the army museum in Ho Chi Minh City. While in Vietnam, Kerry visited two sites where it was reported that missing American soldiers had been spotted but not found.
"Vietnamese communists would not have won the war without John Kerry. They were cultivating his protest activity with the VVAW. . . .[The communists] said 'This is a guy who tells our story, it will undermine the sympathy for the war in America," said Jerome Corsi, co-author of Unfit for Command.
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| May 26, 1995 |
John Kerry married second wife, Theresa Heinz (Maria Teresa Thierstein Simões-Ferreira Heinz - born October 5, 1938, Mozambique) in Nantucket. Theresa is the widow of U.S. Senator John Heinz III (R-PA) who was killed in a plane crash April 4, 1991. They had three sons, John, André, and Christopher. Theresa's personal wealth is estimated to be in excess of $500,000. Theresa worked as a United Nations translator and is fluent in five languages: English, Spanish, French, Italian, and her native Portuguese. She is currently a philanthropist. John and Theresa were first introduced by John Heinz; they later met in 1990 at an Earth Day Rally, and then 1992 at a United Nations sponsored Earth Summit in Rio de Janeiro. They met again at a Washington dinner party and their courtship began in late 1993. They announced their engagement in November 1994. |
| July 11, 1995 |
With John Kerry at his side, President Bill Clinton extended US diplomatic recognition to Vietnam. |
| January 1997 |
John Kerry co-sponsored McCain-Feingold Campaign Finance Bill to ban "soft money" (unlimited donations from corporations, unions, and individuals) and sham attack ads. McCain-Feingold was signed into law in 2003. Kerry also teamed with Senator Paul Wellstone of Minnesota to present a Clean Money bill. |
| 1998 |
John Kerry was granted an annulment from the Catholic Church from first wife Julia Stimson Thorne Kerry. |
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| 2000s |
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| July 29, 2000 |
John Kerry's father, Richard J. Kerry, died of complications from prostate cancer at age 85. |
| 2001 |
Kerry fought for meaningful election reform, by co-sponsoring the bi-partisan Federal Election Reform Act of 2001. |
| 2002 |
Rosemary Kerry, John's mother, died at the age of 89. |
| January 2004 |
John Kerry announced his run for president in 2004 |
| May 4, 2004 |
Swift Boat Veterans for Truth was launched at a press conference at the National Press Club in Washington, DC., which was televised on CSPAN. More than 250 Swift boat veterans contacted by the group signed an open letter to Senator John F. Kerry that challenged his fitness to serve as America's Commander-in-Chief. The organization was established to rally publicity to expose "Kerry's lies"during the "Winter Soldier" hearings in the U.S. Senate in 1971. The Swift Boat Veterans also asked Kerry to stop unauthorized use of their images in national campaign advertising.The group said only two (now four?) of the 20 officers in one photo support him and 11 have signed the letter condemning the candidate. |
| July 2004 |
Kerry and the Democratic Party made Kerry's military service during Vietnam the centerpiece of their four-day convention to nominate the Massachusetts senator as the party's candidate for president, portraying him as a leader on national security issues in a post-Sept 11 world. Kerry accepts the nomination surrounded by fellow veterans who hailed him as a man of courage and strength. |
| August 2004 |
Unfit for Command, by John O'Neil and Jerome Corsi started the unraveling of the Kerry Presidential campaign. The book debuted at #1 on Amazon.com and #3 on New York Times best seller lists. By the second week, it was the #1 best selling book. The book takes issue with John Kerry's account of the war, with documentation and testimonials from Swift Boat Veterans. Kerry did not address the charges, but instead sent letters to TV stations to demand they not run commercials from the Swift Boat Veterans, demanding President Bush renounce the ads and put a stop to them (although the ads were legal according to campaign finance reform, and interference from the President would not be proper). Kerry also attempted to have the publisher stop distribution. |
| September 12, 2004 |
UPCOMING:
2:00 - 4:00 pm Eastern: Kerry Lied Rally, Upper Senate Park, Washington, D.C. This is the primary national rally by veterans and those who support them to tell the truth about Vietnam veterans. |
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| Vital Statistic |
60 years old, 6'4", 185 lbs. Exercises regularly. Had successful prostate cancer surgery in March 2003. |
| Children |
Vanesa Kerry, 27, is taking a break from her third year at Harvard Medical School to campaigng for her dad. She received a Fullbright Scholarship. Alexandra Kerry, 30, is a film student in Los Angeles. Christopher Heinz, 30, is on leave from a private equity firm to work on the campaign. Andre Heinz, 34, is an environmental consultant, who has made a few campaign appearances. John Heinz IV, 37, works as a blacksmith and a teacher. Lives with his wife and child in Pennsylvania, where he runs an alternative school for teenagers. |
| Current Residences |
Residences: Beacon Hill, Boston; Georgetown, Washington DC; Fox Chapel, Pennsylvania. Vacation homes in Nantucket, Massachusetts and Ketchum, Idaho. Kerry owns half of the Beacon Hill home, the other residences are owned by Theresa Heinz-Kerry and her sons. |
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| Sources |
About.com • Boston.com (Boston Globe - photos) • Boston.com (Boston Globe - articles) • FreeRepublic.com • JohnKerry.com • Harvard Crimson Online • The Winter Soldier • VillageVoice.com World Net Daily
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