Replies

Remember that historian who was doing research on the anti-war movement?

Someone broke into his home and stole a bunch of the papers and documents, some of which may have been about John Kerry. The historian did not have time after receiving the documents to fully catalog them and knows that some Kerry documents were in those missing, but does not know the contents of those documents beyond the fact that Kerry was mentioned.

(CNN) -- FBI documents about FBI surveillance of John Kerry in the early 1970s have been stolen, according to their owner, a historian who lives near San Francisco, California.

Gerald Nicosia, who spent more than a decade collecting the information, said three of 14 boxes of documents plus a number of loose folders containing hundreds of pages were stolen from his home Thursday afternoon.

Nicosia reported the theft Friday to the Twin Cities Police Department, which covers Larkspur and Corte Madera in Marin County, where he lives. The police report found no sign of forced entry.

"It was a very clean burglary. They didn't break any glass. They didn't take anything like cameras sitting by. It was a very professional job," Nicosia said.

"Was it a thrill-seeker who wanted a piece of history? It could be," Nicosia said. "You'd think there was a very strong political motivation for taking those files. The odds are in favor of that."

Nicosia, author of "Home At War: A History of the Vietnam Veterans Movement," had obtained about 20,000 pages of FBI documents through Freedom of Information Act requests.

The documents center on FBI surveillance of Vietnam Veterans Against the War (VVAW), which Kerry represented as national spokesman. In April 1971, the decorated veteran testified in televised hearings before the Senate Foreign Relations Committee and led a large protest of veterans in the capital.

Nicosia estimated that 20 percent of his documents are missing.

"It's heartbreaking, after 11 years trying to get them," he said.

Kerry's antiwar efforts drew the attention of President Nixon, as revealed in recordings of White House conversations obtained by CNN from the National Archives, and of J. Edgar Hoover's FBI, as the documents revealed.

"I hadn't gotten a chance to review them all. I am sure there were some things about John Kerry that weren't known," Nicosia said. "These files would also cast a bad light on the ... Republican Party. This surveillance happened under the Nixon White House and Nixon FBI."

Nicosia showed about 50 pages of the documents to CNN last week.

The FBI followed Kerry as he traveled the country, speaking out against the war and raising money for the cause. Kerry, a Navy lieutenant, was honorably discharged upon his return from Vietnam with three Purple Hearts, a Bronze Star and a Silver Star.

Kerry, who obtained his personal FBI files years ago, knew of the surveillance, but the VVAW files obtained by Nicosia detail more extensive surveillance than the senator from Massachusetts might have realized.

"It is almost surreal to learn the extent to which I was followed by the FBI," Kerry said in a written statement earlier this week. "The experience of having been spied on for the act of engaging in peaceful patriotic protest makes you respect civil rights and the Constitution even more."

Kerry was seen as a tactical "conservative" among the antiwar veterans, the FBI documents say. The 27-year-old typically opposed demonstrations that would lead to arrests.

"A review of the subject's file reveals nothing whatsoever to link the subject with any violent type activity," said a May 1972 FBI memo about Kerry provided by his campaign.

The memo recommended that the surveillance end because Kerry had quit VVAW and was launching a political career.

Source: http://www.cnn.com/2004/US/West/03/27/kerry.documents/

Senator John Kerry FBI Files, Military Service Records, & CIA Files

Senator John Kerry

FBI Files, Military Service Records, & CIA Files

2934 pages of Senator John Kerry's FBI Files, military service records & CIA Files, archived on CD-ROM.

John Kerry was born on December 11, 1943 in Denver, Colorado. After graduating from Yale University, Kerry enlisted in the U.S. Navy. In time, he was serving on a gunboat in the Mekong Delta in Vietnam. He received a Silver Star, Bronze Star, and three Purple Hearts. After his discharge from the Navy, Kerry began to publicly question the policies behind American military involvement in Vietnam. This lead him to become a spokesman for the anti-Vietnam War group, Vietnam Veterans Against the War. Later, after leaving the VVAW, Kerry founded the organization Vietnam Veterans of America. Kerry later became a prosecutor in Middlesex County, Massachusetts. In 1982, John Kerry ran for, and was elected Lieutenant Governor of Massachusetts. John Kerry ran for Sentate in 1984. Kerry was elected, then re-elected in 1990, 1996, and 2002. Early in 2004, John Kerry emerged as the Democrtic Party's leading candidate to run against encumbent president George Bush in the November 2004 presidential election.

FBI FILES

2,701 pages of FBI files dating from 1967 to the end of 1971, taken from 20,000 pages of files maintained by the FBI on the Vietnam Veterans Against the War and its members. This material was originally released in 1999 to author and historian Gerald Nicosia, after seeking their release under the Freedom of Information Act in 1988. This set released in June 2004 contains pages of documents not released to Nicosia in 1999.

The files give broad coverage of the activities of VVAW members such as Scott Camil, Al Hubbard, Joseph Urgo, Michael Oliver, Edward Damato, Larry Rottman, George Roberts, Craig Scott Moore and the person who has become its most well known member, John Kerry.

John Kerry first became familiar with the VVAW through his sister Peggy, in 1969. After deciding not to run for Congress in 1970, Kerry went to Paris, site of Vietnam War peace negotiations, and met with Viet Cong representatives. After his return, he began participating in VVAW events. John Kerry became one the Vietnam Veteran's Against the War's most publicly recognizable figures. Especially after his appearance before the Senate Foreign Relations Committee in April 1971. As a veteran who was decorated with a Silver Star, Bronze Star, and three Purple Hearts, Kerry garnered attention and consideration that other anti-Vietnam War protestors could not achieve. Kerry went on to become one of the members of VVAW's national steering committee.

The coverage of Kerry is mostly intermittently spread across memos dating from 1971. Much of the clandestine surveillance is composed of reporting made by confidential informants. The files chronicle: John Kerry's rise in status as a member of the Vietnam Veterans Against the War, A growing ideological conflict with the more militant direction the VVAW was heading in, Travel to Paris for talks with North Vietnamese peace talk delegation, Kerry's pitched battle with VVAW leader Al Hubbard, and Kerry's dissolution as a leader of the VVAW

MILITARY FILES

148 pages of Senator John F. Kerry's military records. Includes: background Information, paper work dealing with his Bronze Star, Silver Star, and Purple Hearts, evaluations made by superiors, orders and duty assignments, and his discharge from the Navy. During his service in Vietnam, directing a swift boat in the Mekong Delta, Kerry was awarded the Bronze Star, the Silver Star and three Purple Hearts for wounds to his arms, legs and buttocks. He was awarded the Silver Star "for conspicuous gallantry and intrepidity in action," during an operation on the Ca Mau Peninsula.

In addition to the personnel records above, are 62 pages of Coastal Division 11 After-Action Combat reports for February and March 1969. Task Force 115, which included Coastal Division 11 and Kerry's Swift boats, was awarded the Presidential Unit Citation signed by then-President Nixon, for their work from December of 1968 to March of 1969.

CIA FILES

23 pages of CIA files. Composed of correspondences from the CIA to John Kerry concerning his work as Chairman of the Senate Select Committee on POW/MIA affairs

Archival copy on CD-ROM
Price $10.00

SALE ON COMPLETE SET ENDS 9/2/04

I am confused. Is the current incarnation of VVAW still a virtually communist organization? Have these tapes been sanitized, or are they trying to reach a pro-communist audience?

.In fact, the current incarnation of the VVAW is hawking [link] some of these tapes that were recently unearthed:

Radio Hanoi Tapes Found In Barn
By John 'Doc' Upton

The Vietnam Veterans Radio network has obtained audio tapes, recorded between 1964 and 1971, of regular daily broadcasts from Radio Hanoi's 'Voice of Vietnam', "...to American soldiers involved in the war in Vietnam," featuring reporters Thu Houng (better known as 'Hanoi Hannah') and Van Tung.

VVRN received the Radio Hanoi tapes, as well as recordings of Radio Peking, from Jack Bock, a W.W.II vet from Washington state, who had worked as a civilian communications technician in Japan and Thailand during the Vietnam War. In a letter, Jack said he had heard VVRN on Radio For Peace International's short-wave broadcasts, and thought we might be interested in the tapes, which he had stored in his barn until now. Jack said he had recorded the tapes "to get another slant on the news," and pointed to the "charges and counter-charges over the so-called Gulf of Tonkin Incident in August of 1964" as an example, adding, "Looking back, it is easy to see who was lying."

After receiving the tapes, VVRN's initial review found, as Jack had told us, that they contained a great deal of static and interference, including, no doubt, US jamming. We contacted Chuck Haddix, director of the Marr Sound Archives at the University of Missouri-KC, who offered to 'clean' the tapes for us. However, after hearing a portion of 'partially cleaned' tape, and realizing the historical significance of their content, Chuck put us in touch with Les Waffen, director of the Motion Picture, Sound and Video Branch of the National Archives. Les told us that the tapes of Radio Hanoi were "very rare," and said that his department had the equipment and staff necessary to clean the tapes digitally. They did an incredible job!

Except for a change from patriotic Vietnamese music in the earlier tapes to American rock and folk music later, the format of Radio Hanoi's Voice of Vietnam remained basically the same over the years, and includes:

News headlines and reports critical of the Vietnam War from the World, and from around the world Combat Action Reports, with descriptions of the fighting and the names and locations of the American units involved

Lists of the names, ranks, and serial numbers of Americans killed in action during the previous 24 hours, along with their families' names and hometown addresses

Speeches, poems and songs by American POWs, deserters and antiwar activists

Reports on the anti-Vietnam War activities of active duty GIs, primarily in the US and in Europe, and on VVAW's actions (including the Winter Soldier Investigation, Operation Heart of America, and the signing of the People's Peace Treaty)

Reminders that "Vietnam is not American soil," concern that "you could go home in a body bag," and encouragement to "demand your withdrawal from Vietnam now"

Copies of the Radio Hanoi/Radio Peking tapes, cassette and reel-to-reel, are available from VVRN. To receive a chronological catalog outlining the contents of these historic and revealing broadcasts (68 separate entries) from the Voice of Vietnam, send a self-addressed and stamped (52 cents) envelope plus $1.00, or just a buck and a half, to: VVAW/VVRN, 7807 North Avalon, Kansas City, MO 64152.

(By the way, John "Doc" Upton, was also at the Kansas City meeting in November 1971, where the assassination of US Congressmen was discussed. As was John Kerry.)

There is no mystery as to how Radio Hanoi came to have this material about the VVAW’s Winter Soldier Investigation or the VVAW’s signing of the People’s Peace Treaty -- Kerry’s VVAW sent them to Hanoi:

---snip--- These are the self-same tapes that Vietnam POWs, such as Paul Galanti, have stated were played to them by their captors to convince the US prisoners they should confess to being war criminals.

And thanks to the VVAW/VVRN, you can now buy them for your enjoyment in your own home. Steve Gilbert