Mickey Kaus - Where Kerry Slept: John Kerry didn't throw his own medals over the wall in that 1971 antiwar protest and he didn't sleep on the Mall with his Viet Vet buddies either. He snuck off and slept in a Georgetown townhouse. ... You can't accuse Robert Sam Anson of burying the lede! ... Assignment for ABC producer Chris Vlasto: As I recall, whether Kerry actually slept on the Mall has been a controversial issue over the years. Why do I think that if you go through the clips you'll find Kerry denying that he didn't sleep on the Mall? Just a guess. Anson, as an eyewitness sympathetic to Kerry, has now basically resolved the factual issue (for at least one night of the VVAW protest). ... Update: Here's one denial, in Michael Kranish's Boston Globe Kerry profile
Vice President Spiro T. Agnew briefly led the White House charge against Kerry. Appearing in the Bahamas, Agnew said that Kerry, "who drew rave notices in the media for his eloquent testimony before Congress, was later revealed to have been using material ghosted for him by a former Kennedy speechwriter, and to have spent most of his nights in posh surroundings in Georgetown rather than on the Mall with his buddies."
Both of Agnew's charges were false, according to Kerry and Walinsky, the former Kennedy aide to whom Agnew referred. [Emphasis added]
We now know, from Anson, that Agnew was on target on at least one charge. ... Note to Kranish: Do you feel conned? ... P.S.: I don't begrudge Kerry brandy in a walnut-paneled library after a hard day's protesting. It's the dissembling. ...More: Kerry's own Web site dismisses the Kerry-slept-in-Georgetown charge as an attempt to "smear him with the same unsubstantiated charge the Nixon White House used in 1971." Now not so unsubstantiated ... although I suppose Kerry will now claim he secretly snuck back to the Mall to sleep after the brandies in the library. ...
Update: Robert Sam Anson phones to point out that he doesn't know for certain that Kerry actually slept in the townhouse that night. "I have no idea whether any of those guys slept there." Anson himself slept in a Washington D.C. hotel--he left the townhouse after the brandy-drinking for a date with a Trotskyite! ... P.S.: How likely is it that Kerry didn't sleep at the townhouse? "It seemed comfy for everybody," Anson notes. And the library brandy session wasn't early in the evening--it must have been about 10:00 P.M., he reasons, since Kerry picked him up on the Mall after dark. ... Anson told me he was surprised to learn that Kerry had denied the townhouse-sleeping story. ... More: Anson notes he has no clue one way or another on whether this was the first or only night Kerry had used the townhouse. He also says nobody in the Kerry camp asked him to call me, and I believe him. |
