The Assassination Game: The Story So Far
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Like many news stories, the VVAW assassination plot has dribbled out a bit at a time, so that the entire picture may be hard to see, just as the subject of a jigsaw puzzle may be difficult to identify until all the pieces are put together. So I thought I'd spend a little time recapping the story as we know it to date.
In 2001, Gerald Nicosia wrote a book entitled Home to War with the subtitle A History of the Vietnam Veterans' Movement. The movement referred to is the anti-Vietnam War movement. The book is extremely sympathetic to the anti-war cause, which is not surprising in that the author notes that he was seriously considering emigrating to Canada in 1971 in order to dodge the draft, even making a trip to Toronto. How sympathetic? Well, consider that former VVAW member and current presidential aspirant John Kerry hosted a party for the book, and also contributed a blurb that reads as follows:
"Home to War captures America's struggle to heal the wounds of a war too many--particularly those at the highest levels of our government--would have preferred to forget. Gerry Nicosia's important new book ties together the many threads of a difficult period in our history every American should take the time to understand in its totality."--Senator John F. Kerry, recipient of the Silver Star for heroism in Vietnam.
On pages 219-222 of the softcover version of the book
(Three Rivers Press, first printing), Nicosia discusses
the assassination plot, which I summarized as follows:
The section begins by introducing Scott Camil, the person who proposed the assassination. "...[E]x-Marine Sergeant Camil could be described as on fire most of his waking hours." When he got to Vietnam, "he had done his best to kill as many Vietnamese as he could--men, women and children." Camil had become something of a leader in the VVAW after coming home and reading the Pentagon Papers and realizing that "his conduct was not so distant from that of the good German boys of the thirties who had followed orders and exterminated Jews..."
Camil went to the Kansas City meeting with several proposals. One of the sticking points about ending the war at the time was the situation of the POWs. Camil proposed that the VVAW offer themselves to the North Vietnamese as hostages in exchange for the POWs; unfortunately this plan foundered when none of the other VVAW members volunteered.
He also proposed that the VVAW "return in force to Washington D.C., and there apply pressure in every conceivable way to the legislators who were still voting to fund the war." When this also was voted down, Camil made his most dramatic proposal.
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VVAW coordinators moved the meeting TWICE before even
discussing it. First they moved it to a church, but their
electronics expert discovered that the church was bugged.
After that, they moved to a Mennonite hall located on 77th
Terrace. At that location "a vote was taken to exclude
anyone but regional coordinators and members of the
national office". There was good reason for the desire for
secrecy; "According to [VVAW member Randy] Barnes,
everybody knew the discussion in that hall 'was grounds
for criminal indictment of conspiracy.'"
Camil's proposal became known as the Phoenix plan, in
mockery of a US military plan in Vietnam, under which
village leaders and others sympathetic to the communists
were being executed. The "Phoenix" notion was that Vietnam
would rise from the ashes, transformed after the
elimination of the communist sympathizers. The VVAW's
Phoenix plan was to assassinate "the most hard-core
conservative members of Congress, as well as any powerful,
intractable opponents of the anti-war movement."
John Upton, a member of the VVAW steering committee, says
that at first the plan was laughed down, but Camil was
insistent and he had supporters. "Especially when we moved
over to 77th Terrace, a lot of people were convinced this
was the way to do it." (Italics in original).
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Quoting again from the book, not Upton, "The Phoenix plan, like the rest of Camil's proposals, was voted down in Kansas City...."
Nicosia's book does not mention John Kerry being in attendance at the Kansas City meeting, and in fact at least implies that he had resigned from the VVAW several months before. Quoting from page 211, "In St. Louis in July... Kerry played his trump card: He resigned from the executive committee."
However, on March 12, 2004, Thomas Lipscomb, reporter for
the tiny New York Sun, broke the story that Kerry had
apparently been in attendance at the Kansas City meeting
where the assassination plot was discussed. Key paragraphs:
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.
The article also notes that Douglas Brinkley's recently-published hagiography of Kerry, "Tour of Duty", states that Kerry resigned in a letter dated 11/10/71, which was supposedly on file with the VVAW papers in Madison, Wisconsin. However, a footnote comments that Brinkley could not find the letter himself, and relied on an earlier book. However, Andrew Hunt, the author of that earlier book, says that he never found the letter either, and never said that he had.
The date is significant because it was two days before the assassination plot was discussed. This undermines the claim that Kerry had resigned months earlier, and highlights that Kerry was making sure that his supposed resignation predated the assassination plot.
CNS News picked up the story a few days later, revealing
that Nicosia had obtained FBI files under the Freedom of
Information Act which noted Kerry's presence at the Kansas
City meeting. Nicosia commented:
"I am in kind of an awkward position here. I am a Kerry
supporter and I certainly don't want to do anything that
hurts him. On the other hand, my number one allegiance is
to truth. So I am going to go with where the facts are,
and John is going to have to deal with that," Nicosia said.
"I am having some problems with the things he is saying
right now, which are not matching up with accuracy," he
added.
Kerry was at the meeting, Nicosia insisted, pointing to
FBI files and the minutes from the VVAW meeting, which he
has obtained. "The minutes of the meeting -- November 12th
through the 15th -- it's got John Kerry there, it's got
John Kerry resigning there on the third day," Nicosia said.
Faced with this evidence, Kerry backtracked on his
statement that he had resigned prior to the Kansas City
meeting, The New York Sun noted on March 19, 2004.
“John Kerry had no personal recollection of this meeting
33 years ago,” a Kerry campaign spokesman, David Wade,
said in a statement e-mailed last night from Idaho, where
Mr. Kerry is on vacation.
Mr. Wade said Mr. Kerry does remember “disagreements with
elements of VVAW leadership” that led to his resignation,
but the statement did not specify what the disagreements
were.
“If there are valid FBI surveillance reports from credible
sources that place some of those disagreements in Kansas
City, we accept that historical footnote in the account of
his work to end the difficult and divisive war,” the
statement said.
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It did not address the murder plot, though as recently as
Wednesday a top aide to Mr. Kerry said that the
Massachusetts senator and presumptive Democratic
presidential nominee was “absolutely certain” he was not
present when the assassination plan, known as the “Phoenix
Project,” was discussed.
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The New York Sun first reported last week that other anti-
war activists placed Mr. Kerry at the Kansas City meeting.
A total of six people have now said publicly that they
remember seeing Mr. Kerry there. Participants say the plot
was voted down, and several say they remember Mr. Kerry
speaking and voting against it.
A historian and expert on activism against the Vietnam
War, Gerald Nicosia, provided the Sun yesterday with
minutes of the meeting.
Mr. Nicosia also read quotes from FBI surveillance
documents he obtained under the Freedom of Information Act
as he was preparing his 2001 book, “Home to War.”
“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.
At this point, the mainstream media began to be interested in the story. The Kansas City Star, a Knight-Ridder paper, noted Kerry's retraction of his earlier claim that he had not attended the meeting.
The New York Times waddled in on March 23, although predictably, they did not mention the assassination story. Instead they highlighted the FBI's surveillance of Kerry, noting that Kerry's aides considered it "a badge of honor" and an encroachment on Kerry's civil liberties.
CNN contributed an article that same day that was marginally better. Although they focused also on the outrage of surveillance on such a fine, upstanding, young man, they did find the time to mention the assassination plot... beginning in the 25th paragraph!
Meanwhile, the New York Sun continued to shine. On March 22, they revealed that officials with the Kerry campaign had pressured one of the veterans who corroborated the account of Kerry being present at the Kansas City meeting to attempt to get him to change his story.
The veteran, John Musgrave, says he was called twice by the head of Veterans for Kerry, John Hurley, while a reporter for the Kansas City Star worked on a follow-up piece to a New York Sun article about the November 1971 meeting of Vietnam Veterans Against the War at which a plot to kill U.S. senators was voted down. Asked by The New York Sun if he felt pressured, Mr. Musgrave said, “In the second call I did.” Mr. Musgrave said Mr. Hurley said Mr. Kerry had told him “he was definitely not in Kansas City.”
According to Mr. Musgrave, Mr. Hurley said, “Why don’t you refresh your memory and call that reporter back?”
The next big story on the case came on March 26, when the Associated Press noted that Gerald Nicosia, whose book had started the whole flap, reported to the police that his home had been burglarized.
Author Gerald Nicosia reported to police Friday that three of the 14 boxes of once-secret FBI files he obtained under the Freedom of Information Act were taken from his Corte Madera home.
Particular files from the remaining 11 boxes were also taken, Nicosia said, including files containing documents about Kerry that hadn't been reviewed yet by others.
"The three files folders about John Kerry were taken," Nicosia said. "Those revelations are lost now, at least to me."
I half-jokingly wondered at the time whether the burglars had left any ketchup behind. At Lucianne.com, a follow-up story with more details from the Los Angeles Times was published, and one of my fellow L-Dotters, ProudVet provided the next dot.
Reply 8 - Posted by: ProudVet, 3/27/2004 6:56:30 AM
I'd suggest looking for his brother who was involved in LowellGate.
The linked article was startling to say the least. Apparently published in Insight Magazine, it discussed John Kerry's history. The key points are as follows:
On Sept. 18, 1972, the evening before the primary election during his second attempt for Congress, Kerry's brother Cameron and one Thomas Vallely, both part of his current campaign team, were arrested by Lowell police at 1:40 a.m. and charged with breaking and entering with the intent to commit larceny. The two were apprehended in the basement of a building whose door had been forced open, police said. It housed the headquarters of candidate DiFruscia. The Watergate scandal was making headlines at this time, and it was called the Lowell Watergate.
"They wanted to sever my telephone lines," DiFruscia said recently. Had those lines been cut, Kerry's opponent would not have been able to telephone supporters on Election Day to get out the vote and coordinate poll watchers, vital roles in a close election. "I do not know if they wanted to break into my office," says DiFruscia today. At the time he said, "All my IBM cards and the list of my voter identification in the greater Lowell area are in my headquarters."
Cameron and Vallely, along with David Thorne, who was Kerry's campaign manager at the time and has been close to him since they attended Yale together, did not deny the two entered the building in which they were captured. They said at the time they were in the cellar of the building to check their own telephone lines because they had received an anonymous call warning they would be cut.
This reporter heard an allegation that another congressional candidate placed the alleged anonymous call, which was denied. But if the Kerry campaign was concerned about someone breaking and entering to cut off its telephone service, why didn't they just call the police? Why break the law?
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That's the story as it stands today. Hope you don't mind the length of this piece, but it's a complicated story and I have gotten pieces of it wrong from time to time (for example, in one post to Lucianne's website, I stated that Nicosia was a VVAW member who was present at the assassination plot meeting; I realize now that is incorrect).
(Later addition: In the interests of fairness, I should note that there is no evidence that Kerry was favor of the plot. Indeed, all indications are that he opposed the plan and resigned in large part because of it. However, that he denied being in attendance at the meeting until confronted with FBI evidence, that his campaign pressured one of the witnesses who recalls him being there, and of course the burglary of Mr Nicosia means that this story has relevance in the present).
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