John Kerry's Trail of Treachery

By WinterSoldier.com
WinterSoldier.com | April 8, 2004

March 8, 1965 -- The first Stockholm Conference on Vietnam is held in
Stockholm, Sweden. The conference is the creation of Romesh Chandra,
chairman of the KGB-funded World Peace Council. Former Soviet bloc spy
chief Ion Mihai Pacepa will later describe it as "a permanent
international organization to aid or to conduct operations to help
Americans dodge the draft or defect, to demoralize its army with
anti-American propaganda, to conduct protests, demonstrations, and
boycotts, and to sanction anyone connected with the war." The
operation is staffed by undercover intelligence officers and funded to
the tune of about $15 million per year by the Communist Party. Between
1966 and 1972 it will generate what Pacepa describes as "thousands of
'documentary' materials printed in all the major Western languages
describing the 'abominable crimes' committed by American soldiers
against civilians in Vietnam, along with counterfeited pictures."

May 2, 1967 -- Bertrand Russell's International War Crimes Tribunal
opens in Stockholm, Sweden, with Jean-Paul Sartre as executive
president. The members of the tribunal are all well-known supporters
of North Vietnam, and the "evidence" presented is supplied largely by
North Vietnam, the Vietcong, and communist investigators. The Tribunal
concludes that American forces are engaged in the "massive
extermination" of the people of South Vietnam, and are committing
"genocide in the strictest sense."

November 20, 1967 -- A second session of the International War Crimes
Tribunal is held at Roskilde, Denmark.

Early April, 1969 -- U.S. Naval Lieutenant John Kerry leaves Vietnam
and is soon reassigned as a personal aide and flag lieutenant to Rear
Admiral Walter F. Schlech, Jr. with the Military Sea Transportation
Service based in Brooklyn, New York.

November, 1969 -- In response to a public call from the Bertrand
Russell foundation in New York, Jeremy Rifkin and Tod Ensign launch a
new organization called Citizens Commissions of Inquiry (CCI) to
publicize American war crimes in Indochina.

November 22, 1969 -- During a fund-raising tour for GI deserters,
Vietnam Veterans Against the War, and the Black Panthers, Jane Fonda
is quoted in the Detroit Free Press as saying, "I would think that if
you understood what communism was, you would hope, you would pray on
your knees that we would someday become communist," and "The peace
proposal of the Viet Cong is the only honorable, just, possible way to
achieve peace in Vietnam."

December, 1969 -- Kerry requests an early discharge from the Navy in
order to run for a Massachusetts congressional seat on an antiwar
platform.

January 3, 1970 -- Kerry is discharged from active duty.

February 13, 1970 -- Candidate Kerry tells the Harvard Crimson, "I'm
an internationalist. I'd like to see our troops dispersed through the
world only at the directive of the United Nations," and that he wants
"to almost eliminate CIA activity."

February, 1970 -- CCI co-sponsors its first "commissions of inquiry"
in Toronto and Annapolis MD, and begins providing accounts of war
crimes to the press. During the next few months, the CCI holds events
in Springfield Massachusetts, Richmond, New York City, Buffalo,
Boston, Minneapolis, Los Angeles, and Portland Oregon.

March, 1970 -- Kerry drops out of the Fourth District congressional
race to make way for antiwar activist Father Robert F. Drinan, dean of
Boston College Law School, and later becomes chairman of Drinan's
campaign. Drinan defeats pro-war incumbent Philip Philbin in the
Democratic primary and goes on to win the general election.

May 7, 1970 -- Kerry appears on The Dick Cavett Show for the first
time, speaking in opposition to U.S. involvement in Vietnam.

May 23, 1970 -- Kerry marries Julia Stimson Thorne in New York.

Late May or early June, 1970 -- John and Julia Kerry travel to Paris
on a private trip. Kerry meets with Madam Win Thi Binh, the Foreign
Minister of the Provisional Revolutionary Government of Vietnam (PRG)
-- the political wing of the Vietcong -- and with representatives of
Hanoi who were in Paris for the peace talks.

June, 1970 -- Kerry joins Vietnam Veterans Against the War.

August, 1970 -- VVAW Executive Secretary Al Hubbard asks Tod Ensign
and Jeremy Rifkin of the CCI to join with the VVAW, the Reverend Dick
Fernandez of Clergy and Laymen Concerned about Vietnam (CALCAV), Jane
Fonda, Mark Lane and others to organize national hearings on war
crimes. Lane suggests calling the hearings "Winter Soldier," a play on
the opening lines of Thomas Paine's The American Crisis: "These are
the times that try men's souls. The summer soldier and the sunshine
patriot will, in this crisis, shrink for the service of his country;
but he that stands it now, deserves the love and thanks of man and
woman." By the end of the month the Winter Soldier Investigation has
been planned as a simultaneous event featuring "Vietnamese victims" in
Windsor, Canada, and Vietnam veterans in Detroit, connected by
closed-circuit television.

September 4, 1970 -- Operation RAW (Rapid American Withdrawal). Some
75 VVAW members begin a three-day hike to Valley Forge, Pennsylvania.
Along the way they simulate war atrocities against civilians, and hand
out flyers to townspeople stating that they might have been raped,
murdered or tortured by the U.S. Infantry had they been Vietnamese,
and claiming that "American soldiers do these things every day."

September 7, 1970 -- At the conclusion of Operation RAW, a rally is
held in Valley Forge, featuring speeches by John Kerry, Jane Fonda,
and Mark Lane. Fonda is quoted as saying that "...My Lai was not an
isolated incident but rather a way of life for many of our military."

September 11, 1970 -- A VVAW Executive Committee meeting is attended
by president Jan Crumb, executive secretary Al Hubbard, treasurer
Jason Gettinger, Northeast representative John Kerry, and three
others. The organization leadership decides to picket against the
National Guard Association in New York, send Hubbard on a "speaking
tour" with Jane Fonda, consider an "appropriate induction center
action for purpose of making clear transition from citizen to war
criminal," and "sponsor turn in of war crimes testimony to UN" after
the Winter Soldier event.

October, 1970 -- Jane Fonda and Al Hubbard raise money for the VVAW
and create new chapters through a nationwide lecture tour covering
more than 50 college campuses. Fonda and Mark Lane also plug the VVAW
during appearances on the Dick Cavett Show.

November, 1970 -- After a falling-out between Mark Lane and the CCI
leadership, the CCI splits from the VVAW and drops out of the Winter
Soldier event. The CCI turns to planning a National Veterans Inquiry
in Washington, D.C. in early December. Fonda and Lane continue working
with the VVAW on Winter Soldier.

December 27, 1970 -- In Mark Lane: Smearing America's Soldiers in
Vietnam, reporter and Vietnam veteran Neil Sheehan savages Mark Lane's
Conversations With Americans in the New York Times Book Review as
"irresponsible" and details several fabricated claims of American
atrocities. Publisher Simon & Schuster quickly cancels future
printings of Lane's book.

December 29, 1970 -- Playboy subscribers start receiving the February
1971 issue of the magazine, which contains a full page ad provided for
free to the VVAW by publisher Hugh Hefner. The ad brings in thousands
of new members during the next several weeks.

January, 1971 -- Jane Fonda raises money for the Winter Soldier
Investigation through a series of benefit concerts. Participants
include Fonda, Dick Gregory, Donald Sutherland, Graham Nash, David
Crosby and Phil Ochs.

Late January, 1971 -- Newly elected Congressman Ronald Dellums permits
the CCI to set up a display of "war crime materials" in his Washington
office.

Late January, 1971 -- Canadian authorities deny visas to the
Vietnamese refugees who had been scheduled to describe American
atrocities in Windsor, limiting the Winter Soldier Investigation to
the single event in Detroit.

January 31 - February 2, 1971 -- The Winter Soldier Investigation.
Members of the VVAW meet in a Detroit hotel to document war crimes
that they had participated in or witnessed during their combat tours
in Vietnam. During the next three days, more than 100 Vietnam veterans
and 16 civilians give anguished, emotional testimony describing
hundreds of atrocities against innocent civilians in South Vietnam,
including rape, arson, torture, murder, and the shelling or napalming
of entire villages. The witnesses state that these acts are being
committed casually and routinely, under orders, as a matter of policy.

February, 1971 -- VVAW leaders meet with Vietcong representatives in
Windsor, Canada after the Winter Soldier Investigation.

February 19, 1971 -- VVAW leaders meet in New York to plan the
organization's next action. John Kerry proposes to "march on
Washington and take this whole thing to Congress." The protest is
designated "Dewey Canyon III," after two military operations into Laos
intended to interdict the Ho Chi Minh Trail.

Early 1971 -- Jane Fonda and Donald Sutherland form "FTA" (F*** The
Army), an anti-war, anti-American road show that tours near Army bases
in order to undermine troop morale. Skits and songs portray American
defeats, soldiers refusing to fight, and the murder of officers by
their troops. FTA cast members mingle with soldiers after the shows,
encouraging them to desert or to sabotage the Army.

March, 1971 -- Jane Fonda meets privately in Paris with Madame Binh of
the PRG. Fonda then flies to London where according to the book
"Citizen Jane" she alleges American atrocities that include "applying
electrodes to prisoners' genitals, mass rapes, slicing off of body
parts, scalping, skinning alive, and leaving 'heat tablets' around
which burned the insides of children who ate them.'"

March 16, 1971 -- John Kerry holds a news conference with retired
general David Shoup in a congressional hearing room.

Early April, 1971 -- The VVAW is flat broke the week before the Dewey
Canyon III event, with no way to transport protestors. In his book
"Home to War," Gerald Nicosia will report that "Kerry immediately got
on the phone to some of the biggest Democratic Party fund-raisers in
New York and set up a meeting. When it broke up, VVAW was $75,000 in
the black, and busfare for at least a few hundred out-of-towners was
assured." Writing in "Winter Soldiers," Richard Stacewicz will cite an
FBI memorandum dated April 13, 1971 as follows, "VVAW had received
fifty thousand dollars from United States Senators McGovern and
Hatfield, who... obtained the money from an unknown New York source."

April 18, 1971 -- John Kerry and Al Hubbard appear on NBC's "Meet the
Press" to allege widespread atrocities by U.S. soldiers in Vietnam.
Hubbard is introduced as a former Air Force captain who had spent two
years in Vietnam and was wounded in action. Kerry seems to admit to
committing war crimes, saying, "There are all kinds of atrocities, and
I would have to say that, yes, yes, I committed the same kind of
atrocities as thousands of other soldiers have committed in that I
took part in shootings in free fire zones. I conducted harassment and
interdiction fire. I used 50 calibre machine guns, which we were
granted and ordered to use, which were our only weapon against people.
I took part in search and destroy missions, in the burning of
villages."

April 18 - 23, 1971 -- Operation Dewey Canyon III. More than a
thousand VVAW members stage an "invasion" of Washington D.C., where
they hold memorial ceremonies, meet with sympathetic members of
Congress, camp on the Mall, perform "guerilla theater" --
re-enactments of atrocities against civilians, complete with fake
blood -- on the Capitol steps and in front of the Justice Department,
and hold a candlelight march around the White House carrying an
upside-down American flag. At the end of the six-day event, a number
of the veterans throw military medals and ribbons over a fence in
front of the Capitol in a gesture of contempt. Many shout obscenities
or threats against the government. The protests receive enthusiastic
coverage in the communist Daily World newspaper on April 20th (Part 1,
Part 2), 21st (Part 1, Part 2), 23rd (Part 1, Part 2), and 24th (Part
1, Part 2). Later in 1971, Kerry and the VVAW will publish The New
Soldier, a book of essays and photographs documenting the event.

April 22, 1971 -- John Kerry testifies on behalf of the VVAW before
the Senate Committee on Foreign Affairs. He claims that American
soldiers 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 fashion reminiscent of Genghis Khan..." and that
these acts were "not isolated incidents but crimes committed on a
day-to-day basis with the full awareness of officers at all levels of
command." Kerry also accuses the U.S. military of "rampant" racism and
of being "more guilty than any other body" of violating the Geneva
Conventions, supports "Madame Binh's points" when asked to recommend a
peace proposal, and states that any reprisals against the South
Vietnamese after an American withdrawal would be "far, far less than
the 200,000 a year who are murdered by the United States of America."

April 22, 1971 -- The NBC Nightly News reveals that Al Hubbard had not
been an Air Force Captain, as he claimed, but a staff sergeant E-5. A
later investigation of Hubbard's military records shows that he was
never assigned to Vietnam.

April 25 - 28, 1971 -- Congressman Dellums sponsors ad hoc war crimes
hearings organized by the CCI and attended at least in part by twenty
members of Congress.

April 27, 1971 -- Hundreds of thousands of protestors march in
Washington, D.C., led by members of the VVAW. Kerry spoke to the
crowd, accepting applause on behalf of "the 1,200 active-duty GIs who
took part in the [Dewey Canyon III] demonstration." The Daily World is
on the job, with glowing coverage of the day's events (Part 1, Part 2,
Part 3, Part 4).

May 3, 1971 -- VVAW members throw bags of cow manure on the steps of
the Mall Entrance to the Pentagon, then offer to clean up the mess in
return for an audience with an assistant Secretary of Defense. This
offer is rejected, and 28 people are arrested and charged with
disorderly conduct.

May 25, 1971 -- Kerry appears on 60 Minutes with Morley Safer. Asked
whether he wants to be President of the United States, Kerry replies
in the negative, and calls it a "crazy question."

June 20, 1971 -- Kerry appears on The Dick Cavett Show to debate Navy
veteran John O'Neill, who is representing a group called Veterans for
a Just Peace put together by the Nixon Administration.

July 17, 1971 -- Following a month-long speaking tour of the Soviet
Union and other countries, six VVAW and CCI members meet with PRG
representatives in Paris to show support for the communist peace plan.

July 20, 1971 -- Leaders of the VVAW hold a staff meeting. They agree
to use the designations favored by North Vietnam (Democratic Republic
of Vietnam) and the Vietcong (Provisional Revolutionary Government)
for future press releases, decide to remove all American flags from
VVAW offices, and discuss how best to handle Al Hubbard's planned trip
to Hanoi.

July 24, 1971 -- the Daily World features a photograph of John Kerry
speaking in support of the Provisional Revolutionary Government
(Vietcong) Seven Point Plan.

August, 1971 -- VVAW Executive Committee member Joe Urgo travels with
other antiwar leaders to North Vietnam, where he meets with Prime
Minister Pham Van Dong.

August, 1971 -- The FBI opens a full investigation of the VVAW to
"determine the extent of control over VVAW by subversive groups and/or
violence-prone elements in the antiwar movement," noting that "sources
had provided information that VVAW was stockpiling weapons, VVAW had
been in contact with North Vietnam officials in Paris, France, VVAW
was receiving funds from former CPUSA members and VVAW was aiding and
financing U.S. military deserters. Additionally, information had been
received that some individual chapters throughout the country had been
infiltrated by the youth groups of the CPUSA and the SWP [Socialist
Workers Party]." Source: FBI Memorandum to Senate Select Committee,
12/2/75, pp. 2-3; Hearings, Vol. 6, Exhibit 72.

Late August, 1971 -- Kerry and Hubbard meet with leftist millionaires
in East Hampton to promote the VVAW and show film clips of atrocity
claims from the Winter Soldier Investigation. According to the New
York Times, a request for funds had the attendees "scrambling for pens
and checkbooks."

November 12-15, 1971 -- the VVAW leadership meets in Kansas City.
Fearing surveillance by authorities, the group relocates the meeting
to another building. They debate, then vote down a plan to assassinate
several pro-war U.S. Senators. Several witnesses, meeting minutes and
FBI records eventually place John Kerry at this meeting.

December 26, 1971 -- Fifteen VVAW protesters take over the Statue of
Liberty and drape a large upside-down American flag across the
statue's face.

December 27, 1971 -- Twenty-five VVAW protesters take over the Betsy
Ross House in Philadelphia, hanging an upside-down American flag in
front of the house.

December 28, 1971 -- 150 VVAW protesters splash bags of blood in front
of the White House, then take over the Lincoln Memorial. 87 are
arrested.

January 11, 1972 -- John Kerry represents the VVAW at Dartmouth
College.

January 25, 1972 -- John Kerry represents the VVAW at the "People's
State of the Union" in Washington, D.C.

February, 1972 -- A VVAW delegation attends a World Assembly for Peace
and Independence of the People of Indochina in Versailles, France.

April 22, 1972 -- John Kerry represents the VVAW at the "Emergency
March for Peace" in Bryant Park in New York City.

July 8 - 22, 1972 -- Jane Fonda visits Hanoi, where she makes numerous
radio broadcasts to American military personnel, encouraging mutiny
and desertion while repeatedly claiming that the United States is
committing war crimes in Vietnam. Fonda also visits American
prisoners, reporting on the air that they are being "well cared for"
and that they wished to convey their "sense of disgust of the war and
their shame for what they have been asked to do." Upon leaving North
Vietnam, Fonda accepts from her hosts a ring made from the wreckage of
a downed American plane.

September 18, 1972 -- John Kerry's brother Cameron and Vietnam veteran
Thomas Vallely are arrested in Lowell, Massachusetts in the basement
of a building that houses both Kerry's campaign headquarters and those
of opposing candidate Tony DiFruscia. Cameron Kerry and Vallely are
charged with breaking and entering with the intent to commit larceny.
Kerry will win the Democratic nomination for a Massachusetts
congressional seat the next day, but lose in the general election to
Republican Paul Cronin. Thomas Vallely will later become director of
the Vietnam Program at the John F. Kennedy School of Government,
Harvard University.

Late 1972 -- The U.S Congress votes to eliminate funding for military
operations in Indochina.

January, 1973 -- The Nixon Administration signs the Treaty of Paris.

February and March, 1973 -- American prisoners of war are released by
North Vietnam. They report having been starved, beaten and tortured by
their captors, in an effort to make them sign documents in which they
admitted to committing war crimes.

April, 1973 -- Jane Fonda calls the freed American prisoners
"hypocrites and pawns," insisting that, "Tortured men do not march
smartly off planes, salute the flag, and kiss their wives. They are
liars. I also want to say that these men are not heroes."

Fall, 1974 -- North Vietnam initiates minor probing attacks into South
Vietnam, in violation of the Paris treaty. There is no military
response by the United States.

Early 1975 -- North Vietnam launches a massive invasion of South
Vietnam.

April 30, 1975 -- Saigon falls.

1975 - 1979 -- Communist regimes in southeast Asia murder an estimated
two million Cambodians, as well as tens of thousands of South
Vietnamese. One million South Vietnamese are imprisoned in
"re-education camps," and hundreds of thousands die there. An
additional two million flee the country, with many drowning in the
attempt.

1978 -- The original VVAW splits when a minority breaks away to form
Vietnam Veterans Against the War Anti-Imperialist (VVAWAI), with the
larger faction retaining the original name. Both the VVAW and the
rabidly anti-American VVAWAI remain in operation today.

1978 -- Former VVAW leader Robert Muller founds the Vietnam Veterans
of America (VVA). The VVA also describes John Kerry as a "co-founder"
of the organization. In the late 1980s, Mueller and the Vietnam
Veterans of America Foundation (VVAF) will split from the VVA.

1981 -- Mueller leads a VVAF delegation to Hanoi, where he praises the
communist leadership of Vietnam and lays a wreath on the grave of Ho
Chi Minh.