Who is Thomas Vallely, anybody knows?

Newsweek ^ | September 05, 2004 | crushelits

[crushelits]

Sept. 13 issue - John Kerry wanted to hit back. It had been a miserable August as he took incoming fire about his military service from a gang of hostile Vietnam vets. But no, campaign manager Mary Beth Cahill and other staffers argued, the Swift Boat ads would blow over. Finally, Kerry had had enough. For three or four days, as he campaigned across the country, Kerry ripped into Cahill, furious that the mostly baseless attacks on his valor were driving his numbers down. "He was very angry," one old friend says. "The calculation had been made that this wasn't going to hurt him." Kerry's solution was to reach for an old ally. "Get Vallely," he screamed.

Thomas Vallely is the leader of the pack of vets that Kerry calls his dog-hunters, a group that has beaten back the attacks on his Vietnam record since his first Senate race 20 years ago. "He knows that I know the other players," Vallely says of Kerry's Mayday call. "He knows that I also like this stuff."

[edfrank_1998]

He is currently Director of the Vietnam Program at the Kennedy School of Government at Harvard University.
photo at: http://www.fetp.edu.vn/Events/eventshow.cfm?eventid=66

---

He found Rood for Kerry.



found at: http://new.blackvoices.com/news/chi-0408230193aug23,0,2305872.story?coll=bv-news-black-headlines

From the Chicago Tribune

Sniping escalates on war service


By Rick Pearson and Frank James, Tribune staff reporters. Tribune political reporter Rick Pearson reported from Texas, and Tribune national correspondent Frank James reported from Boston

August 23, 2004

..snip..

The first-person account by Vietnam veteran Rood in Sunday's Tribune came about after he was contacted by a supporter of Kerry named Thomas Vallely, a Marine during the Vietnam War and a former Massachusetts lawmaker who is director of the Vietnam program at Harvard University's Kennedy School of Government.

Last week, with Kerry taking a pounding from the Swift Boat Veterans for Truth, Kerry told Vallely: "`We need to find Billy Rood.' He called him Billy," Vallely said in an interview. "It was Kerry's idea" to contact Rood in the hope that he might support Kerry's account.

So Vallely "Googled" Rood.

"I called the place we thought he was working, a suburban chain of newspapers in Chicago. He didn't work there anymore. Then I `Verizoned' up his home phone number and I called his house and I asked if this was Mr. Bill Rood's home, someone said yes and gave me the number for the Chicago Tribune."

Vallely said he never had heard Rood's name before Kerry asked him to find him.

A call from Kerry

"I basically said, `Would you talk to Sen. Kerry?' Then we had a little bit of a private conversation, then John Kerry called him. This all took place within 15 minutes, maybe a half an hour. [Kerry] called me a half an hour later. He was talking to Bill Rood."

Vallely added: "John Kerry mentioned to me, `They're going to make their own decision about how to do this.' That was fine with him."

"They" referred to the crew of Rood's swift boat. "We had no idea what they were going to do," Vallely said. "They never showed their hand to us."

Vallely recalled that Rood provided him the name of Jerry Leeds, who was the senior enlisted man on Rood's boat. He said Rood indicated that Leeds and other members of his crew had been following the swift boat controversy.

..snip..

---

He was the "field director" for Kerry's 1972 primary run.



"At about 2 a.m. on the day before the primary, police arrested Kerry's brother Cameron and field director Thomas Vallely were arrested for breaking and entering the basement of the building that housed campaign offices for both Kerry and DiFruscia. The two were discovered near the building's phone lines.

Vallely said the campaign had received threatening calls from someone saying they were going to cut the phone lines."


found at: http://wbz1030.com/massnews/MA--KerrysOnlyLoss-gn/resources_news_html

In a hardscrabble town, Kerry learned tough political lessons
Saturday August 21, 2004
By STEVE LeBLANC
Associated Press Writer
BOSTON (AP) In 1972, it seemed nothing could stop John Kerry's rocket ride to political fame.

His box office looks, Kennedyesque accent and dual role as war hero and war dissenter made Kerry a hero of the anti-war movement and toast of the left-leaning intelligentsia.

But Kerry's rocket would crash in a down-on-its heels New England mill town when the novice politician ran up against an electorate suspicious of outsiders and a local newspaper editor fiercely critical of his race for the 5th Congressional District.

He would walk away from the wreckage of the race wounded but wiser. The lessons he learned during the summer and fall of that year in Lowell would serve him throughout his political career.

Kerry's troubles began even before he formally announced his plan to run for the seat, which then encompassed 24 communities in the Merrimack Valley and suburbs north of Boston.

After returning from Vietnam, he made little secret of his desire to run for office. The only question was where. After spending the early part of his life shuttling among boarding schools here and abroad, there was no one place to call home.

In 1970, he briefly considered challenging an aging Democratic incumbent in the state's 3rd Congressional District. Two years later, he was on the move again, weighing a challenge to a Democratic incumbent in yet another district.

After learning that the Republican incumbent in the 5th District, F. Bradford Morse, would not be running for re-election, Kerry switched again, moving to Lowell, an old mill town about 30 miles north of Boston, and launched his campaign.

The district-hopping led to charges of ``Kerrymandering'' and set his image as a carpetbagger.

At first it seemed an awkward fit the lanky patrician and the hardscrabble mill town. But he brought in a state-of-the-art telephone banking system to contact voters, raised hundreds of thousands of dollars and published slick campaign ads and brochures.

Bob Kennedy, then a Lowell city councilor, was among those in a Democratic primary crowded with politicians who had toiled at the local level and were hoping to make the leap to the big leagues.

``In the '60s and '70s, Lowell looked a lot like Berlin after World War II. There was high unemployment, young people were leaving and people were without hope. John Kerry showed up like a carpetbagger or a 'blow-in' and bought a beautiful home,'' he said. ``He wasn't the instant winner from our perspective. We didn't see how he was going to win.''

Another one of Kerry's rivals that year, then-state Rep. Tony DiFruscia was more blunt, saying Kerry would tailor his message to depending on which part of the district he was speaking, the conservative urban areas like Lowell and its sister city Lawrence or the more liberal suburbs.

``He was a faker,'' DiFruscia said. ``In (suburban) Concord on abortion he would defend a right to choose. In the basement of a Catholic church, he said he is personally opposed to abortion, but the law's the law.''

Kerry himself at times seemed to dig himself a deeper hole as he defended his decision to choose the 5th District.

``I considered several areas, no doubt about it. I'm not ducking that at all. I was very fortunate. People came to me from California and offered me five districts out there,'' Kerry said during the campaign. ``I turned them all down because Massachusetts is my home.''

Kerry would soon find himself saddled with one more charge to rebut.

At about 2 a.m. on the day before the primary, police arrested Kerry's brother Cameron and field director Thomas Vallely were arrested for breaking and entering the basement of the building that housed campaign offices for both Kerry and DiFruscia. The two were discovered near the building's phone lines.

Vallely said the campaign had received threatening calls from someone saying they were going to cut the phone lines.

``I break the door down, Cam follows and a minute later the Lowell police show up,'' Vallely said. ``We were probably a little paranoid about it.'' The charges were later dropped.

Winning the primary was not the shoe-in that it might have meant in other districts. The heavily Democratic district hadn't elected a Democrat to Congress in over a century and Kerry still had to overcome the carpetbagger label.

The arrests appeared to have no lasting effect on his campaign, and Kerry easily won by a comfortable seven point victory over his closest Democratic rival. Still, the Lowell Sun newspaper pounced on it.

``Kerry brother arrested in Lowell 'Watergate''' the banner headline screamed.

It was a sign of the rocky relationship between Kerry and Clement Costello, then-editor of the Lowell Sun. Costello, who indulged a penchant for silk shirts, French Gauloises cigarettes and berets and capes, was pro-war and pro-Nixon and, to him, Kerry's anti-war efforts verged on the unpatriotic.

Costello penned a series of blistering front page editorials blasting Kerry that were often accompanied by mocking cartoons. In one, he labeled Kerry a ``radical leftist war agitator'' and in another compared him to protesters who ``all but wipe their noses with (the American flag).''

Kendall Wallace, now the paper's publisher, was the city editor then.

``This paper just brutalized the Kerry campaign. Anything negative it could find, it threw at Kerry,'' he said. ``Clem was a tough old editor. He believed strongly in the newspaper having a hard voice. He felt very strongly that Kerry was wrong for this district. At the same time, he never interfered in the news side.''

The attacks drew blood. But Kerry chose to ignore the editorials, a decision he would regret.

While Kerry made some missteps of his own the initial district-shopping, his inability to rally his Democratic rivals during the general election campaign, and his image as a wealthy outsider his supporters put the blame for his November loss to Republican Paul Cronin squarely on Costello's shoulders.

``There's no other issue that takes hold against Kerry except Clem Costello painting him to be something that he wasn't, which was un-American,'' Vallely said.

Others say Kerry was his own worst enemy and credit Cronin with running a solid race.

``Kerry came off as an elite snob,'' said Republican analyst Charley Manning. ``Paul Cronin was a terrific candidate, he only served one term because he got taken out in the post-Watergate, anti-Republican tide.''

But the race was ultimately a referendum on Kerry, according to Lou DiNatale, a University of Massachusetts-Boston political science professor.

``It wasn't about Cronin. It was about Kerry. Cronin was 'anybody but Kerry,''' DiNatale said.

Kerry took the loss hard. He remained defiant in his concession speech, addressing Costello by name and defending his decision to oppose the war. (Costello died in 1987.)

A short time after his loss, he invited Wallace and a Lowell Sun reporter to his house for lunch. When it was time to eat, he opened up a can of Franco-American spaghetti.

``That was our lunch and ultimately his revenge,'' Wallace said.

Kerry went to law school and spent the next decade working as an assistant district attorney and private lawyer before he would launch another bid at public office, this time winning a much lower profile contest for Massachusetts lieutenant governor.

Those who have watched Kerry closely over the year said his experience in Lowell taught him critical political lessons: never make voters feel like an afterthought; don't rely on star power; and do the hard work on building a constituency.

``I think he learned that you have to build a base. He learned how to campaign. He learned how to embrace people. He learned that you can't demand support, you have to earn support,'' Wallace said.

But most of all, observers said, Kerry learned the most important lesson of modern politics never let any attack go unanswered. It's a lesson Kerry has referred to during this year's campaign for president.

``In the first race I ever ran I came under withering attack, and it was the first time that negative advertising had taken place and even negative attacks from newspapers,'' he said during a debate in Iowa this year. ``I made the great mistake of thinking you didn't have to defend yourself. I have learned now and I will never, ever make that mistake again.''

---

found at: http://www.ksg.harvard.edu/cbg/peopleQtoZ.html#Vallely

Thomas J. Vallely is the director of the Vietnam Program and a research associate at the Center for Business and Government. He is responsible for directing the Program's research efforts into Vietnam's economy, as well as its teaching and exchange programs, both in the United States and Vietnam. He helped to establish the Fulbright Economics Teaching Program in Ho Chi Minh City. In addition, Vallely conducts research on specific aspects of Vietnam's development for the United Nations Development Programme, the World Bank, and the Japanese Ministry of Finance. Prior to becoming director of the Vietnam Program, Vallely served with the US Marine Corps in Vietnam and was a Senior Research Fellow at the Kennedy School, where he worked on strategic and military issues in East and Southeast Asia. He has worked as a political consultant and was elected to the Massachusetts House of Representatives in 1980, serving until 1987. Vallely received a bachelor's degree from the University of Massachusetts and an M.P.A. from the Kennedy School of Government.

---

found at: http://vallely.com/tomvallely.html

reprinted from Kennedy School of Government-- Harvard

The first time I went to Vietnam, I prayed to go home," says Thomas J. Vallely (MPA '83) who was 18 years old when he was sent to fight in the Vietnam War. A member of the U.S. Marine Corps infantry, Vallely was stationed at the coastal city of Danang, a strategic center dominated by Communist forces. "The second time, I went and never really came back."
Tom Vallely with Charlene Barshefsky, former U.S. Trade Representative in Ho Chi Minh City, Vietnam.

Vallely returned to Vietnam in 1985 as a Massachusetts State Representative, invited by Senator John Kerry as part of a goodwill delegation. The trip marked the beginning of Vallely's commitment to fostering exchange between the two countries. Awarded a scholarship to the Kennedy School, the Newton, Mass. native gave a cash donation to the School to help a Vietnamese student as a way of thanking his hosts. While his generosity ultimately aided a Chinese student, the seed for what would become the Vietnam Program had been planted.

Established in 1988, the Vietnam Program at the Kennedy School's Center for Business and Government serves as a central organizing point for a variety of research, teaching, and policy advising activities with the dual goal of promoting U.S.-Vietnamese understanding and enabling Vietnam to integrate successfully into the global economy.

As director, Vallely coordinates a public policy program at the University of Economics of Ho Chi Minh City, as well as a Fulbright Exchange Program, which selects qualified Vietnamese professionals to study at U.S. graduate programs. "We were lucky enough to be in the human capital business early on," remarks Vallely, noting that the program's launch established its presence several years before the U.S. and Vietnam resumed diplomatic relations.

"These are people who want Vietnam to be a modern country. They don't want it to be a mere image of the U.S., either -- they have their own understanding of what that means," he says.

Cao Duc Phat (MPA2 '95) is a particularly dramatic example of how program graduates can effect change in their native country, notes Vallely. Phat returned to Vietnam as Vice Minister of Agriculture and eliminated the state's monopoly on selling farm products to the world market, increasing rural income by one-third.

Phat's success won the approval of colleagues, but importing new concepts from the U.S. is not always easy, Vallely observes. "There's a fear that the ideas one learns here will change the country too quickly. On the positive side, Vietnam has the right framework in place to be a successful member of the global economy."

"Vietnam is a big part of American history," he continues. "I was lucky enough to come home from the war in one piece, go to school, and be involved public life before I realized I wanted to think more about the country and its issues. Now I want to continue doing that. My best friends in the world live in Vietnam."

[kenth]

Is that the same General Vallely that was doing commentary for Fox? I hadn't heard that he lost his son.

[mass55th]

I was wondering if Vallely had been in VVAW with Kerry. I found another article that said he had been a Marine during the Vietnam War, and was a former Massachusetts lawmaker. You'll notice it doesn't say that he was in Vietnam, just that he was in during the war.

[doctor noe]

Vallely was a guard who played in the late 60's for UCLA. Good ball-handling skills, decent shooter, but too slow to play in the NBA.

[mass55th]

Kerry's Doghunters article:

Click Here

[crushelits]

Mysterious Dirty Tricks Follow Kerry During Election Years

As we have reported before, dirty tricks seem to follow John Kerry wherever and whenever he runs for office. Our original story detailed some nasty trickery on Kerry’s part during the final days of the New Hampshire primary.

Since then, of course, John Kerry has earned enough delegates to become the nominee of the Democrat Party. As such, he has come under intense scrutiny for his shady past as a radical Vietnam War protester and for his attempts to disguise and obfuscate that past.

And wouldn’t you know it, amidst all that controversy, the Kerry Dirty Tricks Brigade appears to have struck again.

The latest development involves a break-in at the home of a writer who is investigating in depth Kerry’s anti-war past. The writer, Gerald Nicosia, who lives in San Francisco is a self-identified Kerry supporter. However, Nicosia acquired some highly explosive files relating to Kerry’s past in 1999 and has been working on a book regarding Kerry’s life upon returning home from Vietnam.

The burglars who broke into Nicosia’s house made off with some of the most damaging Kerry documents. They left the balance of his valuables behind, making it all but obvious they burgled on behalf of the Kerry campaign, or interested parties thereof.

Nicosia made news a couple of weeks ago when he revealed the Kerry campaign lied when they said the junior Senator from Massachusetts was not at a meeting in Kansas City of anti-war radicals in 1971 in which a motion to assassinate 6 or 7 U.S. Senators was raised, but shot down. Kerry was indeed there. As we have reported, Kerry voted ‘NO’ on killing his future colleagues.

The Nicosia break-in is eerily similar to the notorious “Lowell Watergate” story that is widely believed to have cost Kerry victory in his first race for public office, a Congressional seat in Massachusetts in 1972. During the closing weeks of that election, Kerry’s brother Cameron and another Kerry campaign aide were arrested for having broken into the headquarters of at least one of Kerry’s opponents. The headline of the Lowell Sun the next day sealed Kerry’s defeat: "Kerry brother arrested in Lowell `Watergate.’"

We await, perhaps in vain, for the mainstream press to pick up on John Kerry’s bag of dirty tricks. Where’re Woodward and Bernstein when you need ‘em?

<![if !supportEmptyParas]> <![endif]>

Posted on Thursday, April 01

<![if !supportEmptyParas]> <![endif]>

[kcvl]

Thomas Vallely is a political analyst in the Asia program at Harvard University's Kennedy School of Government. For the past ten years, he has been a consultant to the United Nations focusing on Myanmar.

He is responsible for directing the Program's research efforts into Vietnam's economy, as well as its teaching and exchange programs, both in the United States and Vietnam. He helped to establish the Fulbright Economics Teaching Program in Ho Chi Minh City. In addition, Vallely conducts research on specific aspects of Vietnam's development for the United Nations Development Programme, the World Bank, and the Japanese Ministry of Finance. Prior to becoming director of the Vietnam Program, Vallely served with the US Marine Corps in Vietnam and was a Senior Research Fellow at the Kennedy School, where he worked on strategic and military issues in East and Southeast Asia. He has worked as a political consultant and was elected to the Massachusetts House of Representatives in 1980, serving until 1987. Vallely received a bachelor's degree from the University of Massachusetts and an M.P.A. from the Kennedy School of Government. thomas_vallely@ksg.harvard.edu

[hadaclueonce]

I think I went to school with him..

[Just another Rob]

Mike Vallely was an awesome pro skateboarder in the late 80's with a mean temper.... I wonder?

[kcvl]

The first-person account by Vietnam veteran Rood in Sunday's Tribune came about after he was contacted by a supporter of Kerry's named Thomas Vallely, a Marine during the Vietnam War and a former Massachusetts lawmaker who is director of the Vietnam program at Harvard University's Kennedy School of Government.

Last week, with Kerry taking a pounding from the Swift Boat Veterans for Truth, Kerry told Vallely: "

'We need to find Billy Rood.' He called him Billy," Vallely said in an interview. "It was Kerry's idea" to contact Rood in the hope that he might support Kerry's account.

So Vallely "Googled" Rood.

"I called the place we thought he was working, a suburban chain of newspapers in Chicago. He didn't work there anymore. Then I 'Verizoned' up his home phone number and I called his house and I asked if this was Mr. Bill Rood's home, someone said yes and gave me the number for the Chicago Tribune."

Vallely said he never had heard Rood's name before Kerry asked him to find him.

"I basically said, 'Would you talk to Sen. Kerry?' Then we had a little bit of a private conversation, then John Kerry called him. This all took place within 15 minutes, maybe a half an hour. (Kerry) called me a half an hour later. He was talking to Bill Rood."

Vallely added: "John Kerry mentioned to me, 'They're going to make their own decision about how to do this.' That was fine with him."

"They" referred to the crew of Rood's swift boat. "We had no idea what they were going to do," Vallely said. "They never showed their hand to us."

Vallely recalled that Rood provided him the name of Jerry Leeds, who was the senior enlisted man on Rood's boat. He said Rood indicated that Leeds and other members of his crew had been following the swift boat controversy.

Tribune Managing Editor James O'Shea said Rood approached the newspaper's top editors after talking with Kerry.

"He said he was undecided about whether he was going to step forward," O'Shea said. "We told Bill that we would respect his decision to remain silent, but that if he was going to talk and come forward with a statement, we wanted that statement to be published in the Chicago Tribune.

"Bill said he wanted to think it over overnight, and Thursday afternoon, he decided he was going to write his story and talk to no one else."

[MN_Mike]

This is interesting. I had no idea that the stage prop hands were affiliated with some vets peace movement. Is Rasmussan part of that too?

[cookcounty]

" " September 18, 1972 -- John Kerry's brother Cameron and Vietnam veteran Thomas Vallely are arrested in Lowell, Massachusetts in the basement of a building that houses both Kerry's campaign headquarters and those of opposing candidate Tony DiFruscia. Cameron Kerry and Vallely are charged with breaking and entering with intent to commit larceny. Kerry will win the Democratic nomination for a Massachusetts congressional seat the next day, but lose in the general election to Republican Paul Cronin. Thomas Vallely will later become director of the Vietnam Program at the John F. Kennedy School of Government, Harvard University."

Kerry's version of Gordon Liddy! LOL!!!

[boop]

So Kerry is turning to a BURGLAR for advice? What's wrong with the media in not reporting this?

[kcvl]

In Vietnam he learned that turning his Swift boat toward the riverbank and motoring toward enemy attack presented a smaller target for incoming fire and in many circumstances was safer than turning and running. The result: an informed aggression.

Firsthand service in Southeast Asia convinced Kerry that the US effort there was misbegotten. He came back a paradox: a decorated protester.

"At a young age he perceived reality, the world as it is," says Thomas Vallely, director of the Vietnam program at the John F. Kennedy School of Government and a longtime Kerry friend.

This realism was combined with an education that stressed Socratic discussion. A champion debater at Yale, Kerry later served as a local prosecutor in Massachusetts. After two failed runs for Congress he eventually won a Senate seat - and the Senate styles itself as the debate chamber of the nation, after all.

The Ultimate Campaign Simulation Game

And even by Senate standards Kerry has been a honed advocate. He's won recognition not so much by legislating as by serving on quasi-prosecutorial investigative panels, such as the Iran-contra commission of the late 1980s.

"Kerry learns by arguing. It gets him in trouble sometimes," says Mr. Vallely.

[Vn_survivor_67-68]

to introduce the Vallely in question......the top reference has already been taken down, but I doubt they can get them all.

Results 1 - 10 of about 60 for "cameron kerry" vallely arrested. (0.67 seconds)

Newsgroup talk.rumors
... Kerry's brother Cameron and >Vietnam veteran Thomas Vallely are arrested in Lowell ...
Cameron Kerry and Vallely are >charged with breaking and entering with ...
www.mynewsgate.net/ message.php?id=7737HHjf73gg33o0o3%40unilib.ru&ng=talk.rumors&offset=0 - 10k - Cached - Similar pages

John Kerry's Watergate
... during his second attempt for Congress, Kerry's brother Cameron and one Thomas Vallely,
both part of his current campaign team, were arrested by Lowell police ...
www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/1065034/posts - 50k - Sep 3, 2004 - Cached - Similar pages

Wizbang: John Kerry: Peace Criminal?
... field director Thomas Vallely and arrested them ... his phone lines; Kerry and Vallely
said they ... the incident, charges were dropped against Cameron Kerry and Vallely ...
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Kerry Familiar
... Kerry's younger brother, Cameron, and his campaign field director, Thomas Vallely,
were arrested one day before the ... Cameron Kerry and Vallely said at the ...
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John Kerry - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
... They were arrested and charged with "breaking and entering with the intent to commit
grand larceny," but the case ... Vallely and Cameron Kerry maintained that ...
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Kerry - 101k - Cached - Similar pages

***The Complete John F. Kerry TIMELINE - A Work in Progress***
... 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 ...
209.157.64.200/focus/f-news/1201178/posts - 101k - Cached - Similar pages

10 Questions MSM needs to ask Kerry
... 18, 1972, Why were Cameron Kerry and Thomas Vallely, both part of your current campaign
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[ More results from 209.157.64.200 ]

www.bostonmagazine.com: The Silent Partner
... "My name is Cameron Kerry, and I ... As it happened, the basement Cam and Vallely broke
into ... under a double-barreled headline: "Kerry Brother Arrested in Lowell ...
www.bostonmagazine.com/ArticleDisplay.php?id=353 - 40k - Cached - Similar pages

Re: John Kerry Brother breaks into GOP HQ!! LIBERALS HATE AMERICA! ...
... Kerry's brother Cameron and Vietnam veteran >Thomas Vallely are arrested in Lowell ...
Cameron Kerry and Vallely are >charged with breaking and entering with ...
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... field director Thomas Vallely *and arrested them. ... his phone lines; Kerry and Vallely
said they ... incident, charges were dropped against Cameron Kerry and Vallely ...
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[kcvl]

“John needs a kind of tension to be at his best,” said Thomas Vallely, one of
Kerry’s Vietnam veteran pals. “Part of him needs the high-wire act.”.


Thomas Vallely, a fellow veteran and one of Kerry's closest political advisers and
friends

[mass55th]

Well, you had to know that he was involved in the business between Kerry & McCain's MIA committee work. Here's a clip from an article about a college program set up in Vietnam through Harvard:

" A year later, the only freestanding foreign-sponsored academic institution in Vietnam, attached to the Ho Chi Minh City Economics University, is a project of Harvard's Institute for International Development and the American Council of Learned Societies. It is called the Fulbright Center [after Senator Fulbright I presume], and was dedicated in November of 1995, four months after normalization. On that occasion, Thomas Vallely, himself a former marine who served in Vietnam in 1969 and part of 1970, told the audience, "This teaching center is a gift to the Vietnamese people from the American people, a gift conceived by John Kerry, the senator from Massachusetts." Vallely went on to acknowledge John McCain as well: "I think that if we could overhear the voices of those silent American veterans whose names are engraved on the black granite wall in Washington, they would agree with Senator McCain and say that it was time for Americans to remember the many silent Vietnamese veterans and to reach out toward Vietnam in a peace of the brave."

This guy is a real a$$hole. I wouldn't be surprised if he was somehow involved in either the business opened by Kerry's Forbes cousin in Vietnam, or had some other monetary investment over there.

It warms the cockles of my heart to know that Kerry made it a priority to provide an educational institute in his fatherland, but never once did anything for education here in his 20 years in the Senate.

[Just Lori]

"Vietnam is a big part of American history," he continues. "I was lucky enough to come home from the war in one piece, go to school, and be involved public life before I realized I wanted to think more about the country and its issues. Now I want to continue doing that. My best friends in the world live in Vietnam."


Holy cow! Thanks for all the info!

[mass55th]

"Thomas Vallely, a fellow veteran and one of Kerry's closest political advisers and friends"

In other words, a fellow Communist and hater of America.

[Congressman Billybob]

Halfway down in this article one finds that Kerry has brought on board John Sasso (Communications Director?) for the Dukakis Campaign. Who else will Kerry rely on down the stretch? The Captain of the Hindenburg? The Captain of the Titanic? The architect of the Tower of Babel?

Kerry has pitched himself overboard from his own campaign, and now is calling on various people to throw him concrete life rings. This is just plain fun to watch.

Congressman Billybob