"This fellow Kerry that they had on last week," Colson tells the president, referring to a television appearance by John F. Kerry, a leader of Vietnam Veterans Against the War.
"Yeah," Nixon responds.
"He turns out to be really quite a phony," Colson says.
"Well, he is sort of a phony, isn't he?" Nixon says.
Yes, Colson says in a gossiping vein, telling the president that Kerry stayed at the home of a Georgetown socialite while other protesters slept on the mall.
"He was in Vietnam a total of four months," Colson scoffs, without mentioning that Kerry earned three Purple Hearts, a Silver Star, and a Bronze Star, and had also been on an earlier tour. "He's politically ambitious and just looking for an issue."
"Yeah."
"He came back a hawk and became a dove when he saw the political opportunities," Colson says.
"Sure," Nixon responds. "Well, anyway, keep the faith."
The tone was sneering. But the secretly recorded dialogue illustrates just how seriously Kerry was viewed by the Nixon White House. Some of these conversations have not been previously publicized, and Kerry said he had never heard them until they were provided by a reporter.
Day after day, according to the tapes and memos, Nixon aides worried that Kerry was a unique, charismatic leader who could undermine support for the war. Other veteran protesters were easier targets, with their long hair, their use of a Viet Cong flag, and in some cases, their calls for overthrowing the US government. Kerry, by contrast, was a neat, well-spoken, highly decorated veteran who seemed to be a clone of former President John F. Kennedy, right down to the military service on a patrol boat.
The White House feared him like no other protester.
Colson, in a secret memo, revealed he had a mission to target Kerry: "Destroy the young demagogue before he becomes another Ralph Nader."
The effort by Nixon and his aides to undermine Kerry went much deeper than even Kerry realized. Yet it is this chapter in his life, as much as any other, that helped turn Kerry into a national political figure. By targeting Kerry, the Nixon White House boosted his stature in ways that still are having an impact.
But at the same time, many of the issues that Nixon and his aides raised more than 30 years ago about Kerry still remain. Echoes of Colson's words can still be heard in Washington: "He's politically ambitious and just looking for an issue, a phony."
Yet even Nixon described Kerry as an articulate and impressive spokesman. The Nixon White House began an investigation of Kerry. Who was he, the Nixonites wanted to know. What was his real motivation? And how could they stop him?
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