| Publication:The New York Sun; | Date:Mar 22, 2004; | Section:Front page; | Page:1 |
KANSAS MEETING AT ISSUE
By THOMAS H. LIPSCOMB Special to the Sun
A Vietnam veteran who said he remembers John Kerry participating in a 1971 Kansas City meeting at which an assassination plot was discussed says an official with the Kerry presidential campaign called him this month and pressured him to change his story.
The veteran, John Musgrave, says he was called twice by the head of Veterans for Kerry, John Hurley, while a reporter for the Kansas City Star worked on a follow-up piece to a New York Sun article about the November 1971 meeting of Vietnam Veterans Against the War at which a plot to kill U.S. senators was voted down. Asked by The New York Sun if he felt pressured, Mr. Musgrave said, “In the second call I did.” Mr. Musgrave said Mr. Hurley said Mr. Kerry had told him “he was definitely not in Kansas City.”
According to Mr. Musgrave, Mr. Hurley said, “Why don’t you refresh your memory and call that reporter back?”
A spokesman for Mr. Kerry’s presidential campaign, David Wade, last week issued a statement to the Sun, following a week of denials, that said “we accept” Mr. Kerry’s presence in Kansas City as a “historical footnote.”
By then, the recollections of six witnesses, along with minutes and FBI records, placed Mr. Kerry at the Kansas City meeting.
But the news of the calls from the campaign to Mr. Musgrave may move the episode from what the campaign is describing as a “historical footnote” to a matter that involves the contemporary behavior of Mr. Kerry and his campaign.
Mr. Musgrave said he received three Purple Hearts in Vietnam. After the third Purple Heart for wounds by three 7.62 rounds, one to the jaw and two to the left chest, Mr. Musgrave refused the standard release from further service in the combat zone offered Marines with three Purple Hearts and tried to return to his unit, he said.
But because of the extent of his injuries he was retired from the Marines with full disability and sent home, he said.
Mr. Musgrave said, “I told Hurley it was my first meeting as a state officer of the VVAW, and I remember John being there. I remember what I remember.”
When asked whom he is supporting in the presidential election, Mr. Musgrave replied, “I am undecided. But I am sure not voting for some guy who called me a liar.”
Mr. Hurley did not return calls for comment for this article.
Group Debated and Voted Down Plan To Assassinate Senators
By THOMAS H. LIPSCOMB Special to the Sun
Another witness has come forward to attest that John Kerry was at a November 1971 meeting of Vietnam Veterans Against the War at which the group debated and voted down a plan to assassinate senators who supported the Vietnam War.
A Kerry campaign spokesman, David Wade, has said Mr. Kerry did not attend the Kansas City meeting, and Kerry biographer Douglas Brinkley has said Mr. Kerry told him he was a “noshow.”
“Kerry may have resigned shortly after that meeting or at the meeting…” recalled the VVAW Kansas State coordinator at the time, John Musgrave, in an interview that was published Saturday in the Kansas City Star. Mr. Musgrave is the third VVAW member at the time that has been named as seeing Mr. Kerry at Kansas City. Mr. Musgrave specifically remembered Mr. Kerry’s attendance and his speaking against the murder plot against the senators.
The Star cited the national director of Veterans for Kerry, a former VVAW member, John Hurley, as saying: “I think he is confusing the St. Louis and Kansas City meetings.”
But if Mr. Hurley is acknowledging that Mr. Kerry was present at the earlier St. Louis meeting, he is disagreeing with the Kerry spokesman, Mr.Wade, and calling into doubt a recent statement by Mr. Kerry.
At a Capitol Hill press conference Thursday, Mr. Kerry was asked by a reporter if he thought his credibility had been affected by his close association with Al Hubbard, a key VVAW colleague of Mr. Kerry’s who had appointed him to the leadership of Vietnam Veterans Against the War.
Mr. Hubbard claimed to be a wounded Air Force officer who had served at Danang during the Vietnam War. He appeared with Mr. Kerry many times, including the “Meet the Press” interview after Mr. Kerry’s Senate testimony about American “war crimes” in Vietnam. But Mr. Hubbard was never in Vietnam, was never wounded, and was not an officer, as subsequent research and Mr.Kerry himself have pointed out.
Mr.Kerry answered he had not spoken to Mr. Hubbard since the week of April 19, 1971. But in the New York Times of August 30, 1971, reporter Enid Nemy, covering an East Hampton fund-raising party for the Vietnam Veterans Against the War, states: “Later, Mr. Kerry and Al Hubbard, another veteran, explained some of the aims of the organization….”
Those present included journalists Jimmy Breslin and Peter Maas, Bruce Jay Friedman, Tom Paxton, and Patricia Kennedy Lawford.
In separate interviews with The New York Sun, both VVAW member Terry DuBose and Kerry biographer Mr. Brinkley have confirmed Mr. Kerry’s presence at the July St. Louis steering committee meeting of the VVAW.
Kerry's VVAW blocked Commandant of the Marine Corps investigation of Winter Soldier http://www.worldhistory.com/wiki/W/Winter-Soldier-Investigation.htm -----------
worldhistory.com/ ^
"...Sen. Mark Hatfield of Oregon entered the Winter Soldier transcripts into the Congressional Record
and asked the commandant of the Marine Corps for an investigation of the Marines that testified.
Investigators were unable to confirm or refute the claimed atrocities,
but identified one organizer (Al Hubbard) as never being in combat.
Guenter Lewy in America in Vietnam says
"The results of this investigation, carried out by the Naval Investigative Service
are interesting and revealing ... Many of the veterans, although assured that they
would not be questioned about atrocities they might have committed personally,
refused to be interviewed. One of the active members of the VVAW told investigators
that the leadership had directed the entire membership not to cooperate with military authorities ..."
bump
Thx guys, this/these articles should be very useful to counter the Media wing of the 'Rat party. :))
By THOMAS H. LIPSCOMB Special to the Sun
Publication:The New York Sun; Date:Mar 22, 2004; Section:Front page; Page:1