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The Many Faces Of Sen. John Kerry; John Kerry decided three decades ago that the path to political stardom was to be all things to all people - which included tailoring his stance on issues depending on his audience. Now that he wants to be president, can we trust him to tell us where he really stands?(THE NATION)(stance on Vietnam War in the seventies)


Insight on the News; 9/16/2003



Byline: John Pike, INSIGHT

Sen. John Kerry of Massachusetts, 60, was scheduled formally to announce his bid for the Democratic nomination for president in front of an aircraft carrier in South Carolina as this issue of Insight goes to press. This is the same John Kerry who only a few months ago complained when President George W. Bush landed on the flight deck of the USS Abraham Lincoln as the carrier was returning from the Middle East formally to welcome home the warfighters aboard that he used it as a stage prop for political campaigning. It is said in the Bay State that it may take extraterrestrial intelligence to figure him out. Kerry has the backbone to fly a plane under a bridge, ride motorcycles at high speed and steer a warship toward enemy fire in Vietnam, beach it and earn the Silver Star, a Bronze Star and three Purple Hearts. Yet he does not have the spine to stick with a politically unpopular opinion, or even reveal his ethnic and family heritage. In Boston they say it is as if Kerry's backbone works for only half his body. Call him the man with half a backbone.

Granted, to win elections American politicians of every political stripe have for centuries altered and bonded their positions to suit the zeitgeist of mercurial public opinion. But for decades Kerry has been singled out for simply saying without conviction or belief whatever will generate media attention and help win elections. Often he is ambivalent or obfuscates to try to satisfy those on both sides of antithetical issues. Many editorial writers and commentators have dismissed him as a transparent self-promoter, a phony and an opportunist. It has been reported widely that he has been running for president since his days at prep school, with every significant move in his life calculated to further that end. A local joke among Boston polls is that his initials, JFK, are based on the acronym "Just for Kerry."

At a time of few antiwar protests, Kerry had during a class speech at graduation questioned the wisdom of militarily engaging the North Vietnamese. But he knew the political value of military service. After being graduated from Yale University in 1966 following years of prestigious New England and European boarding schools, Kerry did not delay or avoid service in Vietnam. Soon he commanded a patrol boat similar to that of John F. Kennedy, the mother of all JFKs, whose political career he sought to emulate. After a few months he requested and received a transfer out of Southeast Asia to become an aide to an admiral in Washington, and then maneuvered an early honorable discharge to run for Congress. But the district he picked was very liberal indeed, and he soon found it was impossible to get to the left of Robert Drinan, a Jesuit priest from Boston College Law School, and dropped out of the contest.

Kerry's first national media attention and the first in which the epithet "phony" was directed against him came on April 22, 1971, when he testified before the Senate Committee on Foreign Relations as part of a carefully orchestrated buildup to an antiwar protest in Washington. The object was publicity, and a nationwide storm developed around this tall young man still in his 20s. He spoke as a member of an antiwar group called the Vietnam Veterans Against the War (VVAW), some of whom felt kinship with Communist China's Chairman Mao. Testifying eloquently against the war and U.S. bombings using a speech prepared with the help of a Bobby Kennedy speechwriter, Kerry slipped away from the manuscript to add rhetorical bombs of his own design, saying he had heard U.S. soldiers relate how they had "personally raped, cut off ears, cut off heads, taped wires from portable telephones to human genitals and turned up the power, cut off limbs, blown up bodies, randomly shot at civilians, razed villages in a fashion reminiscent of Genghis Khan, shot cattle and dogs for fun, poisoned food stocks and generally ravaged the countryside of South Vietnam in addition to the normal ravage of war." Kerry also was quoted during this period as saying, "War crimes in Vietnam are the rule, not the exception." He spoke on television of "crimes committed on a day-to-day basis, with the full awareness of officers at all levels of command."

Many veterans were outraged at these charges of American war crimes, which he later acknowledged he personally never saw, and which it developed had been spun out of the mouths of young Maoists. Michael Bernique, who served with Kerry as a swift-boat skipper, reportedly said, "I think there was a point in time when John was making it up fast and quick. I think he was saying whatever he needed to say."

War veteran John O'Neill, who publicly debated Kerry at this time, has been reported as saying Kerry's statements about war crimes were irresponsible, wrong, immoral and a "disservice to all the people that were there. ... The war didn't change [Kerry]. I think he was a guy driven tremendously by ambition. I think he was that way before he went and is that way today."

With his testimony before the committee, Kerry was in the eye of a hurricane, providing visibility calculated to propel a political career in Eastern Massachusetts, a whirlpool of antiwar activism so powerful that in 1972 it was the only state to vote for antiwar candidate George McGovern. Years later, local journalists who remember this era say Kerry was known as "live shot" for his strenuous efforts to appear on the nightly news.

But did Kerry's private beliefs about the Vietnam War match his public statements of opposition? Was it all a fraud to ride the antiwar movement and gain media attention? President Richard Nixon's staff certainly thought Kerry was a phony. According to a secretly recorded White House conversation on April 28, 1971, Nixon spoke on the phone with his counsel, Charles Colson. Consider:

"This fellow Kerry that they had on last week," says Colson about a Kerry TV appearance, "he turns out to be quite a phony."

"Well, he is sort of a phony, isn't he?" says Nixon.

"Yes," says Colson, and mentions that in the antiwar demonstrations held that weekend Kerry stayed at the home of a Georgetown socialite while other protesters slept on The Mall. "He's politically ambitious and just looking for an issue. Yeah. He came back [from Vietnam] a hawk and became a dove when he saw the political opportunities."

"Sure," says Nixon. "Well, anyway, keep the faith."

A Kerry spokesman denies he returned from Vietnam a hawk.

In another reported conversation, White House chief of staff H.R. "Bob" Haldeman is speaking to Nixon: "He [Kerry] did a superb job on it at the Foreign Relations Committee yesterday. A Kennedy-type guy, he looks like a Kennedy, and he, he talks exactly like a Kennedy." A reporter says Kerry deliberately affected his accent during the testimony to sound like Kennedy. For example, he occasionally "ahsked" questions.

And three days later Haldeman tells the president, "Kerry, it turns out, some time ago decided he wanted to get into politics. Well, he ran for, took a stab at, the congressional thing. And he consulted with some of the folks in the Georgetown set here. So what, what the issue, what, he'd like to get an issue. He wanted a horse to ride."

And there are others, this time within the antiwar movement itself, who also viewed Kerry as a fake. When he returned to the United States in April 1969 he was still a U.S. Navy officer and not protesting the war, though it was a time of many demonstrations. He first became involved in the antiwar movement that October after his sister Peggy, who was working for a radical group organizing a 250,000-strong Washington antiwar protest, contacted Kerry to ask if he could provide a plane and fly an activist around New York state to deliver speeches. He could, and he reportedly flew the plane himself to get a look at the burgeoning movement.

Soon afterward, in January 1971, Kerry attended a series of hearings of the radical VVAW in Detroit. He reportedly did not speak at the event, which received limited press coverage. He is said to have wanted a larger platform, the top role. It was here again that Kerry was labeled an opportunist, this time by members of the VVAW. He was not an organizer, yet he was seeking to become the spokesman and coordinator. He was called a power-grabbing elitist who generated internal friction within the group.

But some members also believed that Kerry intelligent, clean-cut and college-educated would be an especially effective representative for a group being labeled as hippies, traitors or communists. He also was considered influential enough to raise money.

Within five months of becoming its leader, Kerry says he quit the VVAW to focus on a new organization that emphasized veterans' benefits. Others say he was told to leave. His personal arrogance was so notorious that a Doonesbury cartoon from the era, created by fellow Yale alumnus Garry Trudeau, pictured Kerry as a shameless self-promoter. Another displays him absorbing praise following a speech, beaming and saying to himself, "You're really clicking tonight, you gorgeous preppie."

From the start, Kerry's mouth has been a loose cannon. During his first run for Congress, trying to get to the left of Father Drinan, Kerry was quoted as saying he would like to "almost eliminate CIA activity" and declaring that he wanted U.S. troops "dispersed through the world only at the directive of the United Nations."

Saying whatever he needed to say apparently came easily to Kerry during his failed 1972 second attempt for Congress. According to Anthony R. DiFruscia, who ran against Kerry in that race and now is a Republican state representative in New Hampshire, Kerry would say one thing in one town and something else in another. In the more Hispanic and Catholic area of Lawrence, DiFruscia said recently, Kerry would give speeches saying he personally was opposed to abortion and finds it repulsive, leaving the impression he was opposed to abortion. But in the more socially liberal and protestant Concord area, Kerry would say he supports a woman's right to choose, so voters there would believe he supported abortion. "He set a pattern of providing to various groups what they wanted to hear," DiFruscia said. And, "Kerry would also show pictures of himself holding a gun" and then make vehement statements opposing the war.

"Kerry is an opportunist, no doubt about it, and a carpetbagger" who moved to Lowell, Mass., only to run for office, says DiFruscia. "I do not think his stripes have changed much, but maybe they have."

After that 1972 congressional campaign a race that also included future congressman, U.S. senator and presidential candidate Paul Tsongas DiFruscia had lunch with the two men."Back in 1973, [Kerry] said he had presidential ambitions," says DiFruscia. "He planned his life around being president. There was sincerity with Paul that I did not see with John. Kerry would make statements according to only what he thought people wanted to hear, rather than how be believed the country should be influenced."

Another candidate that election year was Paul J. Sheehy, who said recently that Kerry was even more liberal in 1972 than he is now. According to his best recollection, Sheehy reports, Kerry said in a speech during that race that things were so bad someone had died of starvation in Lowell, an event that never happened. Kerry ran fourth in Lowell.

Is Kerry a Democratic liberal or a centrist, as sometimes is claimed? The rating services of both the left and right report that he votes with Sen. Edward Kennedy of Massachusetts about 96 percent of the time in support of a strong tax-raising and government-knows-best platform. In the 1972 campaign, Kerry ads displayed photos of Kerry and Kennedy together.

John Forbes Kerry no longer trumpets the fact that his initials are JFK, and he has expunged his middle initial from his bumper stickers. Political operatives in the Bay State say this is because it is believed his close association with the Kennedys and Massachusetts liberalism might hurt his presidential candidacy, especially in the South. When it is remembered that he was Democratic presidential-nominee Michael Dukakis' lieutenant governor, Kerry campaigners note that the two were elected on separate ballots.

There are other image problems that still have not been handled. The week that included Kerry's appearance before Congress included another incident that produced an embarrassment that took years to be exposed. In a protest on April 23, 1971, Kerry led his shocked countrymen to believe that, weeping, he and his VVAW comrades had tossed their war medals onto the steps of the Capitol where a large sign nearby proclaimed: "Trash." It stirred the emotions for those on both sides of the conflict and again spurred media attention for Kerry. But then in 1984 a reporter noticed that Kerry's medals were displayed on the wall of his office and the Wall Street Journal reported that, when confronted, Kerry claimed he actually tossed away his combat ribbons, not his medals. Kerry says he threw someone else's medals. Whatever the truth, he had let the fabrication continue for years.

But enough for now of Kerry's life many years ago when the Earth was flat. Anyone past the age of 40 knows that people change their minds and even reform their character during the course of their lives. Perhaps the question should be, "Is Kerry still saying whatever needs to be said to get elected?" You bet.

Last December, after arriving a half-hour late to speak and answer the questions of 175 politically savvy Dartmouth College students on the cold and snowy New Hampshire campus, Kerry spoke of the need for increased investment in renewable energy sources such as wind, geothermal, ethanol, biomass and solar. "Twenty percent of all electricity to be produced by renewable energy sources by 2020" is his battle cry. He calls for "a new Manhattan Project" to do this job. He says he disagrees with the Green Party platform on only one issue. The kids love it.

Naturally, when a private company came to Massachusetts recently and told of plans to generate electricity with the winds that blow through the 18 miles of ocean between touristy Cape Cod and wealthy Nantucket Island, one would expect that Kerry would jump up and down with glee. Wrong. He is waffling. With super-rich landholders and yachtsmen such as Walter Cronkite, the Kennedys, Kerry himself and his neighbors concerned about the possible sighting from the shore of a few sea-based windmills, the candidate is unwilling to give the project his support at this time a critical period when the alternative-energy company needs as much help as it can get. Critics call it hypocritical, but a Kerry spokesman provides this disclaimer: "The facts aren't in on Cape Wind and its environmental effect. ... John Kerry is waiting for all the information to come in the environmental-impact statement before he makes a decision on whether to support the project."

Those opposed to the project are not saying they don't want to have to sail around the windmills, but are talking about such concerns and sensitivities as whether birds will fly into them and be hurt or killed a worry that never stopped the erecting of a skyscraper or a barn or house or even a telephone pole. Needless to say, environmentalists who favor use of alternative energy to replace fossil fuels wherever possible, and who considered Kerry to be a strong ally, indeed a very strong ally, are beginning to use the "O" word"[opportunity] and the "P" word [phony].

Kert Davies, research director of Greenpeace, has put it this way: "Kerry is the one who really needs to be called out on this stuff. He's been pretty mum so far. We don't know where he stands." And many on the left who were expected to support Kerry's candidacy, but have drifted off to Howard Dean, say there is a pattern to all of this. Most cite the invasion of Iraq, currently a more important issue than renewable energy. They note that Kerry voted to give Bush authorization to wage war in Iraq, and they say they are not likely to forgive him for it.

In a speech Jan. 23 at Washington's Georgetown University, this longtime member of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee said, "We need a new approach to national security. A bold progressive internationalism that stands in stark contrast to the too-often belligerent and myopic unilateralism of the Bush administration. The blustering unilateralism is wrong, and even dangerous, for our country. In practice, it has meant alienating our longtime friends and allies, alarming potential foes and spreading anti-Americanism around the world. I say to the president, show respect for the process of international diplomacy because it is not only right, it can make America stronger. And show the world some appropriate patience in building a genuine coalition. Mr. President, do not rush to war."

Columnist Jeff Jacoby of the Boston Globe also wonders whether Kerry tries to be all things to all people. Jacoby reports that, when in the early 1990s a constituent wrote Kerry expressing support for an invasion of Iraq, Kerry's office responded by sending two letters one saying he opposed the war and another supporting President George H.W. Bush's response. Kerry blamed it on computer problems and the failure to dispatch a third letter one opposing the war but supporting the troops.

With antiwar candidate Dean moving ahead in New Hampshire and Iowa, Kerry continued to try to present himself as both for the war and against it, say Democratic political consultants in the Bay State. Now, they say, he may be writing off those states in favor of a last-ditch stand in the South as a national-security veteran.

An experienced Kerry watcher reminds that in 1984, when he first was trying to win election to the Senate, his chief rival in the tough Democratic primary was U.S. Rep. James M. Shannon. Kerry had been outscored by Shannon, 100-94, on the endorsement questionnaire of a group opposed to America's then-growing military. In Massachusetts, the antiwar vote was and is significant, and the two liberals were vying for their vote. A member of the group favoring a reduction in funds earmarked to build key weapons systems contacted a Kerry lieutenant and advised that Kerry change his answers on the questionnaire so that both candidates would have an equal score. Kerry changed his answers, both got a perfect score and the maneuver kept Shannon from receiving the important endorsement of the group.

In seeking approval of this disarmament group, Kerry formally expressed approval of canceling a host of the very weapons systems that helped defeat Iraq so quickly, including the B-1 and B-2 stealth bombers, the AH-64 Apache helicopter, the Patriot missile system, the F-15, F-14A and F-14D jets, the AV-8B Harrier jet, the Aegis air-defense cruiser and the Trident missile system. Kerry says of this 1984 campaign posture, "I'm sure that some of it was driven at the time by the nature of the beast I was fighting politically."

Kerry said recently he does not remember changing his answers on the questionnaire, even though it was well-publicized at the time, and that his first responses may just have been a misstatement of his position or misinterpreted. "I wasn't trying to be on both sides of it," he soothes.

The problem for Bay Staters who know him, and for Democrats in nearby New Hampshire who are swamped by Massachusetts media with tales of his comings and goings, poses and postures, commitments and causes, is that this man thinks nothing at all of being mercurial and contradictory. It is a joke among local politicians that Kerry will simply say or do anything for the slightest advantage. For instance, they point out, Massachusetts has lots of folks of Irish decent who vote out of proportion to their numbers and being Irish there is a strong advantage to winning election especially for Democrats, as the large number of Irish surnames at the Massachusetts Statehouse will testify. "It is how you become one of the boys," says Mike Gilleran, the former deputy chief of the Massachusetts Republican Party.

To Kerry's advantage his surname sounds Irish and his facial features look Celtic to locals. Virtually everyone has always assumed he was Irish-American. He isn't. And not only is he not Irish-American, his mother's people are New England Brahmins. For some Massachusetts Democrats, voting even once for a Yankee Brahmin requires three "Hail Marys" to cleanse the soul.

The maternal ancestors of John Forbes Kerry include the Forbeses, who made their fortune starting the Boston-China trade, and the Winthrops, one of whom led the English settlers overseas to Boston and was the first governor of Massachusetts in the 1630s. Another Winthrop was governor of Connecticut from 1676 to 1683.

While Kerry's maternal forebears were known by all, he was forgiven that accident of birth for the sake of his father's presumed Irish stock. Kerry says he has known for only about 15 years that his father's mother was in fact Jewish and from the former Austrian empire. He also says he only found out recently, when a Boston Globe reporter informed him of it, that around 1902 his grandfather Kohn, a Jew from Bohemia, changed his name from Kohn to Kerry. Not only that, he says he was completely unaware that grandfather Kerry shot himself to death in the men's room of the Copley Hotel in Boston, a story so notorious that it appeared at the time on the front pages of Boston newspapers.

Although a Kerry spokesman says that he continually corrected reported misstatements about his supposed Irish heritage, it immediately became clear to the scoffing Boston press that the senator had manipulated the misunderstanding to his advantage, having tried to correct the record in only the most tangential way if at all. Other Massachusetts politicians also have lied about their supposedly Irish heritage to gain electoral advantage. But, says Gilleran, "If it were understood by the population that he was not Irish, he would never have risen in Massachusetts politics.

Pretense to imaginary forebears may be a misdemeanor as these things go, but breaking and entering is not. Heard of Watergate? Get ready for Lowellgate.

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? And what does any of this say about Kerry's mind-set? Kerry campaign officials did not answer important Lowellgate questions.

The case was transferred to superior court and continued without a finding, where it was dismissed about a year later. But since it happened at the last minute, and Kerry won the primary but went on to lose the general election, this ugly business did not receive intense media scrutiny. Bob Woodward and Carl Bernstein were busy investigating another break-in.

To tease Kerry, the editors of his Yale yearbook listed him as a member of the Young Republicans. As the Democratic primary grows more heated, says a top Democratic political consultant, the issues are likely to become: "What is a Democrat?" And, "Is John Kerry one of them?"

John Pike is a contributing writer for Insight.

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