[BIGLOOK]

cgbg missed a few things....35 years of Kerry's history.

If Kerry was an ONI or FBI plant in the VVAW(the leadership of the VVAW), where were all the prosecutions?

[cgbg]

where are the prosecutions

I never said he was a "competent" intelligence agent. :-)

More seriously, many undercover folks were infiltrating leftist groups during the Vietnam era as part of general intelligence gathering rather than participating on particular "cases". They gathered "background intelligence" to assist law enforcement with details on organizational structures, meeting times and places, membership lists, that sort of thing.

In the case of Lee Harvey Oswald I believe he was a part of a small group of young men sent to the Soviet Union to gather whatever intelligence he could--I don't think the effort was that well organized or focused on one specific piece of data for one specific case.

I would hope that today we have such agents throughout the Arab world gathering that same type of general background intelligence. Such information could save thousands of lives ten years from now or it may produce little relevant information. That is just the way life works.