Caution: This posts explores all the information available about John Kerry's attendance at the 1971 Kansas VVAW meeting during which the assassination of several US Senators was proposed. I'm warning you now. It's very long. Ask yourself as you read, Where is the mainstream press coverage? Also includes conspiracy debunking at the end of the post.
Gerald Nicosia, author and John Kerry supporter, had possession of John Kerry's FBI files through a Freedom of Information Act request.
Nicosia, who needed to move on to another project, set the files aside. It wasn't until a month ago, after a writer from the New York Sun called him with questions about a 1971 VVAW meeting in Kansas City, that he began to read some of the files. At the end of their conversation, Nicosia says the Sun writer told him: "By the way, you know John Kerry was at that meeting."
Nicosia said all of the information he'd seen until then had indicated otherwise. Kerry had stated that he resigned four months prior to that four-day Kansas City meeting - during which some members of the VVAW suggested that the group initiate peace talks with North Vietnamese officials. One member at the meeting even suggested the possibility of assassinating U.S. senators who still backed the war, Nicosia said.
The information in the files that Nicosia obtained from the FBI indicated that Kerry resigned during this Kansas City meeting in November 1971. Nicosia, a Kerry supporter, said he notified the Kerry campaign when he noticed the discrepancy, and Kerry corrected his mistake shortly after. He chalked the error up to a faulty memory.
These files contained documentation that John Kerry attended the meeting during which the group VVAW discussed assassinating several U.S. Senators. John Kerry had previously denied being at this meeting, but was forced to change his story after several witnesses remembered him being there and the FBI files confirmed it.
“My evidence is incontrovertible.He was there,” Mr. Nicosia said in an interview yesterday. “There’s no way that five or six agents saw his ghost there,” said the historian, who lives in Marin County, north of San Francisco.
What else was in the files?
Nicosia said his files also contained information supporting a story that ran in the Boston Globe Wednesday. The story said that Kerry traveled to Paris in 1971 and spoke to North Vietnamese negotiators. Kerry has since issued a statement saying the talks were informal, Nicosia said.
Do we know if that was the extent of the information about Kerry?
No one knows what is in the missing files - including Nicosia, who submitted his Freedom of Information request in 1988 while working on his book "Home to War: A History of the Vietnam Veterans Movement."
He finally received them in 1999. Apparently there are few leads in the burglary. The thieves left other valuables and went directly for the Kerry information. Obviously political motives are suspected.
Now that it's been established that Kerry was at the meeting, denied it, and then changed his story, we have to ask ourselves if there's any meat to the story of the VVAW assassination plot?
It appears to be well documented. The story was included in Nicosia's book, Home to War, a book Kerry endorsed, (although Nicosia was unaware at the time that Kerry attended the meeting.) Scott Camil, who proposed the assassination plot included the story in a Oct. 20, 1992 University of Florida Oral History Archive. Mr. Camil and other veterans close to Kerry are now trying to pass it off as "just talk."
In an interview with The Sun, Camil acknowledged that, as a 24-year-old Marine sergeant fresh from Vietnam, he had proposed a philosophical concept of assassination. But he said the idea was just that, and was voted down at the meeting.
Yet, apparently it was considered seriously enough to move the meeting place three times for fear of the FBI finding out about the plot:
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.
Let's review.
John Kerry denied being at the November 1971 VVAW meeting during which there was a proposal to assassinate several U.S. Senators.
Witnesses remembered John Kerry being at the meeting. FBI files proved John Kerry was at the meeting.
Evidence shows the assassination proposal, caled the Phoenix project was taken seriously enough to cause the meeting location to be moved three times.
Did I mention that the witnesses were contacted by Kerry associates and pressured to change their stories?
Documentation also shows John Kerry resigned from the leadership of VVAW at this meeting, (instead of earlier in the year as Kerry had claimed and as had been published in two books).
The files containing all this documentation have now been stolen.
Other than reports in the New York Sun and Jerusalem World Review by Thomas Lipscomb, and an Opinion Journal piece, the mainstream media refuses to pursue this story.
This is the same mainstream media that recently made George Bush's National Guard service, (which occurred during the same time period), headline news on every broadcast channel, and in every newspaper.
John Kerry mentions his Vietnam service in his campaign so often it's become a joke, yet the press refuses to investigate his activities after the war including his knowledge of the Phoenix project, a plot that it appears Mr. Kerry never disclosed to the authorities. Also, even though Mr. Kerry resigned from the leadership of VVAW, he continued to represent them publicly according the the Opinion Journal story:
Two months after Kansas City he represented VVAW at a speech at Dartmouth College. On Jan. 26, 1972, he was at a Washington protest meeting where the New York Times described him as "a leader of the Vietnam Veterans Against the War."
Would you want your name associated in any way with a group that seriously considered assassination?
Finally, I have seen reference to tragedies involving two members of Congress that were targets of the VVAW, Senator John Stennis, (D) Mississipi, and House Majority Leader Hale Boggs, (D) Lousiana included in stories about the VVAW. From the information I have found, I don't think its fair to associate either incident with the VVAW plot.
First Senator Stennis. He was shot by three assailants in front of his Washington, D.C. home on January 31, 1973 in an apparent robbery. Though gravely wounded he survived. The only online evidence I could find about the investigation into this event was on a conspiracy page here which states:
Three black men were convicted of this crime. There was no political motive.
It's certainly not a source I would use for most information. Yet I would imagine the author, being a JFK conspiracy buff, would be looking hard for a political motive. Certainly in the political climate of the times, the government would have loved to find any connection to the anti-war crowd. I think we can conclude this incident is not connected to the VVAW plot.
Now for House Majority Leader, Hale Boggs. This story has enough ammunition to keep a conspiracy theorist busy for life! Hale Boggs, Rep. Nick Begich, an aide and their pilot were presumed killed when their plane disappeared between Anchorage and Juneau, Alaska on October 16, 1972.
Sen. Boggs was a member of the Warren Commission and had publicly expressed doubts about the Commisssion's findings. He was also the father of Cokie Roberts. There was a massive air search, but the crash site was never found.
Controversy was fueled when Roll Call reported in 1992 that the FBI had received a telex while the search was still ongoing indicating the crash site had been located and two people had survived. Yet, the official story to this day, is the plane went down with no survivors and the crash site was never found.
You'll never guess who drove Mr. Boggs to the airport for the first leg of the trip.
Some of the other interesting points surrounding the disappearance include: The fact that Boggs was taken to the airport for the first leg of the trip by a young democrat named Bill Clinton who later, as President, appointed Congressman Boggs' wife Lindy to the position of US Ambassador to the Vatican after she served eighteen years in the Congress after her husband's disappearance.
Certainly it's a strange tale. The JFK inquiry, Cokie Roberts, an unexplained FBI telex and Bill Clinton? With al these factors I don't think there's room to fit in the VVAW plot. Too many tin foil hats and you start to lose reception.
