HOW KERRY QUIT VETERANS GROUP AMID DARK PLOT

The New York Sun; Date:Mar 12, 2004 ^ | 68-69TonkinGulfYachtClub

[68-69TonkinGulfYachtClub]

Publication:The New York Sun;

Date:Mar 12, 2004;

Section:Front page;

Page:1

HOW KERRY QUIT VETERANS GROUP AMID DARK PLOT

When Talk Turned To Assassination He Exited, Vet Says

By THOMAS H. LIPSCOMB Special to the Sun


    The anti-war group that John Kerry was the principal spokesman for debated and voted on a plot to assassinate politicians who supported the Vietnam War.
    Mr. Kerry denies being present at the November 12-15, 1971, meeting in Kansas City of Vietnam Veterans Against the War, and says he quit the group before the meeting. But according to the current head of Missouri Veterans for Kerry, Randy Barnes, Mr. Kerry,who was then 27,was at the meeting, voted against the plot, and then orally resigned from the organization.
    Mr. Barnes was present as part of the Kansas City host chapter for the 1971 meeting and recounted the incident in a phone interview with The New York Sun this week.
    In addition to Mr. Barnes’s recollection placing Mr. Kerry at the Kansas City meeting, another Vietnam veteran who attended the meeting, Terry Du-Bose, said that Mr. Kerry was there.
    There are at least two other independent corroborations that the antiwar group Vietnam Veterans Against the War, of which Mr. Kerry was the most prominent national spokesman, considered assassinating American political leaders who favored the war.
    Gerald Nicosia’s 2001 book “Home To War” reports that one of the key leaders of Vietnam Veterans Against the War, Scott Camil,“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 book reports on the Kansas City meeting at which Mr.Camil’s plan was debated and then voted down.
    Mr. Nicosia’s book was widely praised by reviewers as varied as General Harold Moore, author of “We Were Soldiers”; Gloria Emerson, who had been a New YorkTimes reporter during the Vietnam War, and leftist Howard Zinn. Mr. Kerry himself stated in a blurb on the cover that the book “ties together the many threads of a difficult period.” Mr. Kerry hosted a party for the book in the Hart Senate Office Building that was televised on C-SPAN.
    Another source is an October 20,1992, oral history interview of Scott Camil on file at the University of Florida Oral History Archive.In it,Mr.Camil speaks of his plan for an alternative to Mr.Kerry’s idea of symbolically throwing veterans’ medals over the fence onto the steps of the Capitol during the Dewey Canyon III demonstration in Washington in April of 1971.
    “My plan was that, on the last day we would go into the [congressional] offices we would schedule the most hardcore hawks for last — and we would shoot them all,” Mr. Camil told the Oral History interviewer. “I was serious.”
    In a phone interview with the Sun this week, Mr. Camil did not dispute either the account in the Nicosia book or in the oral history.He said he plans to accept an offer by the Florida Kerry organization to become active in Mr. Kerry’s presidential campaign. Campaign aides to Mr. Kerry invited Mr.Camil to a meeting for the senator in Orlando last week, but they did not meet directly.
    Mr. Camil was known to colleagues in the anti-war movement as “Scott the Assassin.” Mr. Camil told The New York Sun he got the name in Vietnam for “sneaking down to the Vietnamese villages at night and killing people.”
    According to the Nicosia book and interviews with VVAW members who were involved, at theVietnamVeterans Against the War Kansas City leadership conference, Mr. Camil tried to put his plan into effect. He called together eight to 10 Marines to organize something he called “The Phoenix Project.” The original Phoenix Project during the Vietnam War was an attempt to destroy the Viet Cong leadership by assassination. Mr. Camil’s Phoenix Project planned to execute the Southern senatorial leadership that was financing the Vietnam War. Senators like John Stennis, Strom Thurmond, and John Tower were his targets, according to Mr. Camil. They were to be killed during the Senate Christmas recess the following month.
    After an attempt to parcel out the hit jobs required to kill the senators, Mr. Camil’s plan was presented to all the chapter coordinators present and the VVAW leadership. Mr. Nicosia’s book recounts, “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 to 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.’”
    “Camil was deadly serious, brilliant, and highly logical,” Mr. Nicosia told the Sun.
    The plan was voted down. There’s a difference of opinion as to how narrow the margin was.
    The claims of Mr. Kerry’s involvement in the assassination discussions in Kansas City have apparently not been previously reported.
    The most recent book that focuses on Mr. Kerry’s relations with his fellow Vietnam veterans, Douglas Brinkley’s “Tour of Duty,” reports the events as follows: “In a November 10 letter housed at the VVAW papers in Madison,Wisconsin, Kerry quit, politely noting he had been proud to serve in the national organization. His reason was straightforward: ‘personality conflicts and differences in political philosophy.’ In two days,VVAW was meeting in Kansas City and he would be a noshow.”
    But in a footnote, Mr. Brinkley acknowledges,“I could not locate Kerry’s November 10 VVAW resignation letter supposedly housed at the Wisconsin archives. The quote I used comes directly from Andrew E. Hunt’s essential ‘The Turning: A History of Vietnam Veterans Against the War (1999).”
    When asked by the Sun who told him Mr. Kerry was “no-show” at Kansas City, Mr. Brinkley replied, “Senator Kerry.” Mr. Brinkley also stated that Mr. Kerry did not have a personal copy of the resignation letter either.
    But in an interview with the Sun, the “essential” historian Mr. Brinkley relied on as his source, Andrew E. Hunt, said “I never stated that there was a letter of resignation, or even implied in my book that I saw one. I never could find one in the archives in Wisconsin. I don’t know how Brinkley got the idea that I had. I never could figure out when Kerry resigned.” When asked about Mr. Brinkley’s statement that Mr. Kerry didn’t have a copy of the resignation letter either, Mr. Hunt said, “I don’t know about that. I never could get an interview with Senator Kerry. But I never saw anyone who saves things the way Kerry does.”
    Whether or not there was a letter of resignation dated November 10 is obviously important, since it predates the Kansas City assassination discussions by two days.
    Mr. Camil said he did not recall whether Mr. Kerry was at the Kansas City meeting nor did he recall whether he had discussed his assassination plan with Mr. Kerry.
    But Mr. Barnes, the head of the Missouri Veterans for Kerry, said, “I don’t think there was a letter of resignation. He just said he was resigning after the vote.”
    Clearly there is considerable confusion about the time of Mr. Kerry’s resignation.According to Mr. Nicosia,“He resigned from the executive committee” after a spectacular argument with VVAW leader Al Hubbard at the July national leadership meeting in St Louis.
    But on behalf of the John Kerry campaign, spokesman David Wade told the Sun yesterday that Mr. Kerry resigned from Vietnam Veterans Against the War “sometime in the summer of 1971 after the August meeting in St. Louis, which Kerry did not attend.”
    Mr.Wade also said,“Kerry was not at the Kansas City meeting.”
    Two-thirds of the American troops in Vietnam at the height of American commitment in 1969 had already been withdrawn in the “Vietnamization” policy in effect at the time of the VVAW Kansas City conference in November 1971. When asked recently by the Sun why the assassinations still seemed necessary, Mr. Camil replied: “The war was still going on. We had to stop it.”

[backhoe]

Thanks- I'll use those links & info.

[Gee Wally]

But according to the current head of Missouri Veterans for Kerry, Randy Barnes, Mr. Kerry,who was then 27,was at the meeting, voted against the plot, and then orally resigned from the organization.

I just gotta know. Did he vote against the plan before he voted for the plan?

[Pharmboy]

Wow. And JUST when I thought that Kerry could go no lower in my estimation, we hear about a new achievement of his that is both treachorous and treasonous.

Thanks for the ping...

[leprechaun9]

Does anyone have the names of the "TARGETED" Seantors. Specifically, was Senator Heinz one of them?

[Claire Voyant]

Please remove me from your ping list.

[pray4liberty]

The lengths these people will go to...actually conspiring to murder and then to lie about it...I am just sick. What manner of whackjobs are these? If a man is known by the company he keeps...we should all be on our knees to God praying for mercy. The last thing we need in the Oval Office is a man with such nutcases for friends.

[stockpirate]

I also have a picture of Kerry watching Nixon on TV the day Nixon resigned from office, the information along with the picture states that Kerry is the National Leader of VVAW. Date picture was taken, January 23, 1973.

[stockpirate]

Sorry, it was not when Nixon resigned but when he announced a cease fire.

[68-69TonkinGulfYachtClub]

Do you have a previous screen name?

I searched my list for

Claire Voyant

and do not show this screen name?

[Doc On The Bay]

Mr Kerry's activities in VVAW were, Clearly, "Treason During a Time of War."

During that time, John Kerry was a Member of the Naval Reserve (inactive), & Subject to the "Uniform Code of Military Justice."

Mr Kerry's activities for the VVAW were BLATANTLY illegal.

Any other, "Regular Shmoe" would have been Jailed for 20+ years.

"JAWN" got a "pass" due to "Privilege!!"

He has gotten LOTS of "Passes" because of his Social/Political status.

He's NOW trying to parlay a Lifetime of "Political Favors" into a Bid for the Presidency.

Except his "Privileged Status," he has not demonstrated ANY COMPETENCE--EVER--in ANY endeavor.

John Kerry is a DISASTER--waiting to Happen!

He is a "HOLLOW BAG of OVER-PRIVILEGED, UNQUALIFIED AMBITION!"

GOD HELP our Nation if this Cipher becomes our President!!

Doc

[calcowgirl]

bump

[NordP]

"3. The plot to assassinate seven US senators was not even the worst part of the plot. A. Scott Camill stated that he was training twenty men outside of Gainesville Florida to decapitate the leaders of the US Government. (This is the Phoenix Operation) 4. Al Hubbard had briefed the North Vietnamese Communists and the Soviets concerning "Electronic Battlefield Vietnam," a highly secret aspect of the Vietnam war that was an early forerunner of smart weapons and tactics."

Ah....has anybody read this word, and put two and two together, like me???? DECAPITATE??? This should really alarm us all.

[Unruly Human]

"Aside from the VVAWAI letter Call to Conscience which both CAMIL and BURKETT signed, among others, is there anything else to directly link Camil and Burkett? The noose could be getting tighter......."

Tom Lipscomb said that Camil was involved in the Florida political flyer affair that was supposed to be the "smoking gun" that tied the swiftvets to the RNC. He was either the one who "found" it or the dude who faxed it to the Kerry campaign. He is working for the Kerry campaign in Gainsville FL.

[paulsy]

Myself, I will be very sceptical of this unless someone comes forward with proof that Kerry stayed on after those assasination meetings. Lack of an official "resignation letter" to me isn't all that important unless it was the custom in that group to resign in writing. To me it seems entirely plausible that someone would verbally announce departure. Of course I don't know all the details but I'm sure I'll learn a lot more about this in days to come. But on first blush it seems like an explosive theory that could make us look like the democrat "conspiracy theorists" - I think we're doing well enough as it is that this sort of thing, unless it's rock solid, could backfire negatively. Proceed with caution.

[NordP]

"...Isn't there a term for this?"

Yes, at the very least, it's in the categories of "Acting or Omitting to Act."

[Ann Archy]

Please....PLEASE take me of your ping list...it eats up ALL my space on my little webtv. Thanks

[MistyCA]

Speaking of Watergate, what about Kerry's brother Cameron and Vallely being arrested for breaking into the building that housed both the Kerry campaign and his opponent's headquarters in 1972. Both men are involved in Kerry's campaign today.

[MistyCA]

Kerry had said he broke ties with the group and was later arrested with them if I remember correctly. Boy! I can sure see where Terayza learned the term "scumbags!"

[Texas Eagle]

... Mr. Kerry,who was then 27,was at the meeting, voted against the plot....

Yeah? You got a copy of the vote, Mr. Barnes?

[Alamo-Girl]

Thanks for the ping!