SwiftVets.com

[Jette]

2/9/2004 6:00:00 AM


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To: National Desk, Political Reporter

Contact: Bob Weiner or Jeff Buchanan, 301-283-0821 or 202-329-1700

WASHINGTON, Feb. 9 /U.S. Newswire/ -- Were John Kerry and the veterans organization he led the real reason the Republicans broke into Watergate in 1972, with information on them the target of the espionage? Was doing so an early onset of Republican political paranoia against his work, a harbinger of the pending campaign against him in 2004?

Bob Weiner, the 1971-72 Youth Voter Registration director for the Young Democrats office at the Watergate headquarters of the Democratic National Committee and recently a Clinton White House staffer for six years, is asking these questions after doing a little research to refresh his memory. Weiner looked in the Senate's Watergate Hearings in volumes held by the Library of Congress and researched Kerry's specific assistance to the Party's '72 effort, a Rhode Island speech supporting youth voter registration, in the Providence Public Library's archives.

Here's what Weiner has confirmed:

James McCord of the Watergate burglars and CREEP (Committee for the Reelection of the President) testified before the Select Committee on Presidential Campaign Activities on May 18, 1973 and was asked by Senator James Inouye (D-Hawaii) why the break-in was conducted. McCord replied, "Democratic national headquarters staff members" were "working closely with violence groups"... "which involved violence and demonstrations against our committee". When Senators Inouye, Lowell Weicker (R-Conn.), Ed Gurney (R-Fla.), and Howard Baker (R-Tenn.) asked for more detail, in each case McCord repeated the "violence" reference but specifically -- and only -- named the "Vietnam Veterans Against the War", accusing them as "a violence-oriented group" (Hearing pages 180, 200, 201, 223-24 and elsewhere, May 18 and 22 testimony).

So what was the actual connection that the national Democratic office had with Kerry? Kerry was the public spokesperson and national chairman of the Vietnam Veterans Against the War. At the request of the Rhode Island Young Democrats, Weiner had invited Kerry to speak, urging youth voter registration, at the Rhode Island Young Democrats' convention in Providence on February 12, 1972. Kerry accepted and spoke as documented in the Providence Journal of Feb. 13, 1972. Kerry also in a news availability there called for Nixon's impeachment as later did the House Judiciary committee by a 28-10 vote before Nixon resigned.

Weiner recalls, "That's ALL that we did with John Kerry and the Vietnam Veterans Against the War -- invited him to give a voter registration speech to help increase youth voter participation, and he accepted. That's just God, Mother, and Apple Pie. It shows the paranoia and overcharged actions that Republicans used against him -- and the extremes that they would go to against him and the Democratic Party -- even back then when he and the Party were doing nothing together but positive voter involvement. Nothing is more American than that. Oh, we did have one other link with him: we invited him to give a similar speech to the Wisconsin Young Democrats a few weeks later -- but he was busy that day."

"The Republicans showed their hand as far back as 1972 in blasting John Kerry and his causes for being extremist when he in fact was helping our nation in the most patriotic ways, and that will once again be the Republican strategy in this presidential race," Weiner, now a Democratic strategist, asserts.

In his May 18, 1972 Senate testimony, McCord conceded, "Part of the reason attributed to the operation was political" (page 173). Under further questioning by Senator Inouye, he also admitted the acts were "wrong... a mistake." But, Weiner asks, "Have the Republicans yet learned the lesson of this historic miscalculation of hyping opponents as unpatriotic?"

Weiner said he is bringing out the story and facts as an "important part of history now and maybe one from which we can learn."


http://releases.usnewswire.com/GetRelease.asp?id=26038

[Jack Mclaughlin]

Jette: The May 18th 1972 testimony by James McChord could not have happened since the actual burglary did not occur until June 17th of 1972.

[Jette]

Typo. First mention says 1973.

[jstoc]

Jette, so what's your point?
_________________
Veritas

[Jette]

It means that contrary to the stories that have been told RECENTLY, Kerry was still active in the VVAW in 1972. It also means that VVAW was considered a terrorist group at that time. Also, note the involvement of John Hurley in the story.


Publication:The New York Sun; Date:Mar 15, 2004; Section:National; Page:4
New Witness: Kerry Was Present at Dark Plot Meeting
Group Debated and Voted Down Plan To Assassinate Senators
By THOMAS H. LIPSCOMB Special to the Sun


Another witness has come forward to attest that John Kerry was at a November 1971 meeting of Vietnam Veterans Against the War at which the group debated and voted down a plan to assassinate senators who supported the Vietnam War.

A Kerry campaign spokesman, David Wade, has said Mr. Kerry did not attend the Kansas City meeting, and Kerry biographer Douglas Brinkley has said Mr. Kerry told him he was a “noshow.”

“Kerry may have resigned shortly after that meeting or at the meeting…” recalled the VVAW Kansas State coordinator at the time, John Musgrave, in an interview that was published Saturday in the Kansas City Star. Mr. Musgrave is the third VVAW member at the time that has been named as seeing Mr. Kerry at Kansas City. Mr. Musgrave specifically remembered Mr. Kerry’s attendance and his speaking against the murder plot against the senators.

The Star cited the national director of Veterans for Kerry, a former VVAW member, John Hurley, as saying: “I think he is confusing the St. Louis and Kansas City meetings.”

But if Mr. Hurley is acknowledging that Mr. Kerry was present at the earlier St. Louis meeting, he is disagreeing with the Kerry spokesman, Mr.Wade, and calling into doubt a recent statement by Mr. Kerry.

At a Capitol Hill press conference Thursday, Mr. Kerry was asked by a reporter if he thought his credibility had been affected by his close association with Al Hubbard, a key VVAW colleague of Mr. Kerry’s who had appointed him to the leadership of Vietnam Veterans Against the War.

Mr. Hubbard claimed to be a wounded Air Force officer who had served at Danang during the Vietnam War. He appeared with Mr. Kerry many times, including the “Meet the Press” interview after Mr. Kerry’s Senate testimony about American “war crimes” in Vietnam. But Mr. Hubbard was never in Vietnam, was never wounded, and was not an officer, as subsequent research and Mr.Kerry himself have pointed out.

Mr.Kerry answered he had not spoken to Mr. Hubbard since the week of April 19, 1971. But in the New York Times of August 30, 1971, reporter Enid Nemy, covering an East Hampton fund-raising party for the Vietnam Veterans Against the War, states: “Later, Mr. Kerry and Al Hubbard, another veteran, explained some of the aims of the organization….”

Those present included journalists Jimmy Breslin and Peter Maas, Bruce Jay Friedman, Tom Paxton, and Patricia Kennedy Lawford.

In separate interviews with The New York Sun, both VVAW member Terry DuBose and Kerry biographer Mr. Brinkley have confirmed Mr. Kerry’s presence at the July St. Louis steering committee meeting of the VVAW.

Gerald Nicosia, author of the 2001 book “Home to War,” also writes that Mr. Kerry was at that meeting. In a memorable account, Mr. Nicosia said Mr. Kerry “resigned from the executive committee” after a spectacular argument with Mr. Hubbard.“Kerry made a long speech punctuated at frequent intervals by the demand: ‘Who is Al Hubbard?’” and “challenged him to prove he was a Vietnam veteran.” According to the book, Mr. Hubbard “freaked out” and screamed insults at Mr. Kerry.

In the Kansas City Star account, one of the three veterans who has placed Mr. Kerry at the Kansas City meeting, Randy Barnes, first was quoted as saying Mr. Kerry was in Kansas City, which is what he had stated in his interview with the Sun.

According to the Star, “upon reflection later in the day [Barnes stated] that he could ‘not be absolutely certain’ that Kerry was in Kansas City for the meeting.”

Terry DuBose, who initially remembered a great deal, began having failures of memory on a third call. And Scott Camil, who in his interview with the Sun could not recall whether Mr. Kerry was at the Kansas City meeting, suddenly remembered in talking with the Star several days later that Mr. Kerry was not.

In a March 13, 2004, story, the New York Times cited concern among Democrats about “careless utterances of a fatigued, or undisciplined candidate,” but Mr. Wade reassured that “every statement he made we stand by.”