SwiftVets.com

[Beatrice1000]

As they recently ran the 4/22/71 Senate Testimony on C-Span, I wanted to check back and see what Kerry was saying to the press at that time when he wasn’t “just speaking for the 150”; also wanted to see if he referenced the swift boat sailors specifically, and also just wanted to find some of his own words or any items of interest. The amount of docs at this site is overwhelming and one can’t copy them because it is old marked up and blackened newspaper articles and FBI notes, and etc. I took pieces out of the articles that involved Kerry or are related to him.

Extracts from four newspaper articles taken from:
“Sub A Section 01 (8/70-7/73)” -
declassified FBI files at wintersoldier.com

The Evening Star (Washington) (no date but right before 4/71 protest march articles) - “POW Drive in Confusion” by Mary McGrory, Star Staff Writer.…..

A new organization called “Families for Immediate Release” demand that the government’s obligation to the American prisoners should take precedence over its obligation to the government of South Vietnam “She agrees with Kerry that the road to Peking lies through Paris.”

…….
It was an orderly, nonviolent week in which Hollywood legends of superwarriors like John Wayne and Burt Lancaster dissolved into toyland as Massmind America faced the flesh-and-blood courage of men like former patrol boat Lieutenant John Forbes Kerry. Kerry, after graduating from Yale University, enlisted in the U.S. Navy and volunteered for duty aboard one of the gun boats used to patrol the waterways of Vietnam.

“We established an American presence in most cases by showing the flag and firing at sampans and villages along the banks,” said Kerry. “Those were our instructions, but they seemed so out of line that we finally began to go ashore, against our orders, and investigate the villages that were supposed to be our targets. We discovered we were butchering a lot of innocent people, and morale became so low among the officers on those ‘swift boats’ that we were called back to Saigon for special instructions from Gen. Abrams. He told us we were doing the right thing. He said our efforts would help win the war in the long run. That’s when I realized I could never remain silent about the realities of the war in Vietnam.”
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“Women in the March Dedicated” by Mary Anne Dolan, Star Staff Writer
The Evening Star (Washington) (not dated)

… Mary Lou, like graying Mrs. Richard Kerry of Massachusetts who marched last night, thinks that, so far, the activities of the VVAW have been, in Mrs. Kerry’s words, “extremely impressive.”
Mrs. Kerry is the mother of the 28-year-old coordinator of VVAW, John Kerry. After Kerry’s group ends it activities officially tonight, organizers for Saturday’s march will stay on and many of them are women.
One of their weapons for Saturday will be a mimeographed poem by the Russian poet, Yevtushenko: “Flood the streets and country roads with the tramp of a terrible army, marching in columns of humanity and flowers…..

If the administration treated the vets as a political problem, the Democrats did little better. They ate and laughed it up at a $500-a-plate political dinner at the Hilton, while the victims of the war they had made huddled on the cold, cold ground, waiting for the sirens (reference to the protestors on the lawn).
Of the presidential men, only Edward Kennedy realized how it looked. After the party, he went home, changed clothes and came back to drink wine and sing songs with the veterans until 3 o’clock that morning.

At the Foreign Relations Committee hearing, the veterans gave a standing ovation to McGovern when he accused all American forces in Indochina of war crimes.
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The New York Times - 4/71.
“U.S. Veterans of Vietnam War Rally on Wall Street for Peace” - by Michael T. Kaufman.

A Veteran of the war in Vietnam who has three Purple Hearts, a Bronze Star and a Silver Star told a noontime Wall Street rally yesterday, “We are all of us in this country guilty for having allowed the war to go on.”
The speaker, John Kerry of the Vietnam Veterans Against the War, addressed the crowd from a truck in front of the New York Stock Exchange. It was at about the same spot that nine months ago student antiwar protestors were jeered by Wall Street workers and were beaten by construction workers.
There was no fighting and no heated arguments yesterday as lunchtime strollers stopped to listen. Listeners came and went, at no time during the hour-and-a-half rally, did the crowd seem to number more than about 100.
Mr. Kerry, now a lieutenant in the Naval Reserve, contrasted the Army’s sentencing of First Lieut. William L. Calley Jr. with what he said was a wider collective responsibility for the war.
“Guilty as Lieutenant Calley may have been of the actual act of murder,” he said, “the verdict does not single out the real criminal. Those of us who have served in Vietnam know that the real guilty party is the United States of America.”
The United States, he said, “finds some men guilty and some men innocent of the very same charges” and tries to “ease its conscience by scapegoating one man.”

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The Washington Post Times Herald - 3/17/71
“Protest Planned Near Capitol” - by William L. Claiborne, Washington Post Staff Writer

A protest by as many as 5,000 Anti-War Vietnam veterans is scheduled April 19. The planned protest by VVAW brings to 16 the total number of days in Apriil during which peace organizations are scheduled to demonstrate….. (rest of col. 1 is unreadable/blackened copy -- has Kerry’s name, but can’t read it)

Kerry, a former Navy “swift boat” skipper who said he won a Silver Star, Bronze Star and three Purple Heart medals in Vietnam said the demonstration will begin April 19 with a ceremony at Arlington National Cemetery, followed by a mass march to the Capitol. He said a delegation of congressmen will meet the veterans.
Kerry said the five-day protest is being named “Dewy Canyon III” in recognition of a Laos incursion in which some veterans say they participated during February, 1969. The Pentagon has consistently denied that American ground forces operated in Laos at that time.
Kerry said that families of Vietnam veterans were being asked to participate in the protest march and related activities but that “we’re not asking for any kind of mass student backing at this time.”
He said, “This is the veteran’s effort and the veterans will do it alone.” Kerry said the VVAW has 8,000 members. The group said it plans “constant lobbying on Capitol Hill, daily teach-ins for the public and a final day visit to the White House to present peace demands to the President.