Kerry Met With Viet Cong And North Vietnamese In Paris In 1971

Congressional Record ^ | March 6, 2004 | John F. Kerry

[Hon]

A couple of weeks ago I posted this thread about a photograph that I wound in a book about Kerry's group, the Vietnam Veterans Against The War:

Kerry's Group Met With The Viet Cong In Paris In 1971

The Vietnam Veterans Against The War (VVAW) sent their own delegation to Paris to meet with the representatives of the National Liberation Front (AKA Viet Cong) in 1971. At this time John Kerry was their spokesman and defacto leader.

This photograph is from the book "The Winter Soldiers", by Richard Stacewicz, page 284:

Caption: First peace meeting between VVAW and the NLF, Paris, 1971.

Since Stacewicz did not mention whether Kerry had attended this meeting and I did not see it mentioned anywhere else, I assumed he did not attend go on this trip.

I was wrong. Kerry did go to Paris. He did talk with the Viet Cong and North Vietnamese. In fact, he was quite proud about it. For it was the first thing that he brought up once he was done with his speech before the Senate Foreign Relations Committee on April 22, 1971:

LEGISLATIVE PROPOSALS RELATING TO THE WAR IN SOUTHEAST ASIA

THURSDAY, APRIL 22, 1971

UNITED STATES SENATE;
COMMITTEE ON FOREIGN RELATIONS,
Washington, D.C.

The committee met, pursuant to notice, at 11:05 a.m., in Room 4221, New Senate Office Building, Senator J. W. Fulbright (Chairman) presiding.

Present: Senators Fulbright, Symington, Pell, Aiken, Case, and Javits.

Thank you. [Applause]

The CHAIRMAN. Mr. Kerry, it is quite evident from that demonstration that you are speaking not only for yourself but for all your associates, as you properly said in the beginning.

COMMENDATION OF WITNESS

You said you wished to communicate. I can't imagine anyone communicating more eloquently than you did. I think it is extremely helpful and beneficial to the committee and the country to have you make such a statement.

You said you had been awake all night. I can see that you spent that time very well indeed. [Laughter.]

Perhaps that was the better part, better that you should be awake than otherwise.

PROPOSALS BEFORE COMMITTEES

You have said that the question before this committee and the Congress is really how to end the war. The resolutions about which we have been hearing testimony during the past several days, the sponsors of which are some members of this committee, are seeking the most practical way that we can find and, I believe, to do it at the earliest opportunity that we can. That is the purpose of these hearings and that is why you were brought here.

You have been very eloquent about the reasons why we should proceed as quickly as possible. Are you familiar With some of the proposals before this committee?

Mr. KERRY. Yes, I am, Senator.

The CHAIRMAN. Do you support or do you have any particular views about any one of them you wish to give the committee?

Mr. KERRY. My feeling, Senator, is undoubtedly this Congress, and I don't mean to sound pessimistic, but I do not believe that this Congress will, in fact, end the war as we would like to, which is immediately and unilaterally and, therefore, if I were to speak I would say we would set a date and the date obviously would be the earliest possible date. But I would like to say, in answering that, that I do not believe it is necessary to stall any longer. I have been to Paris. I have talked with both delegations at the peace talks, that is to say the Democratic Republic of Vietnam and the Provisional Revolutionary Government and of all eight of Madam Binh's points it has been stated time and time again, and was stated by Senator Vance Hartke when he returned from Paris, and it has been stated by many other officials of this Government, if the United States were to set a date for withdrawal the prisoners of war would be returned.

I think this negates very clearly the argument of the President that we have to maintain a presence in Vietnam, to use as a negotiating block for the return of those prisoners. The setting of a date will accomplish that.

http://ice.he.net/~freepnet/kerry/index.php?topic=Testimony

[philetus]

John Kerry: The Chameleon Senator
By Ted Sampley
U.S. Veteran Dispatch
October-December 1996 Issue

Despite the prayers and wishful thinking of POW/MIA families and Vietnam veteran activists, Sen. John Forbes Kerry, the "chameleon" senator from Massachusetts, was re-elected to the Senate in the
1996 election. Apparently Kerry's well publicized history as a longtime radical supporter of the Vietnamese communists and a recent flap about whether or not he is guilty of a war crime meant very little to the voters in Massachusetts.

Sen. Kerry, the "noble statesman" and "highly decorated Vietnam vet" of today, is a far cry from Kerry, the radical, hippie-like leader of Vietnam Veterans Against the War (VVAW) in the early 1970s. After Kerry, as a Navy Lieutenant (junior grade) commanding a Swift boat in Vietnam, was awarded the
Silver he found it advantageous to quit the Navy, change the color of his politics and become a leader of VVAW. He went to work organizing opposition in America against the efforts of his former buddies still ducking communist bullets back in Vietnam. Kerry gained national attention in April 1971, when he testified before the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, then chaired by Sen. J. William Fulbright (D-AR), who led opposition in the Congress against U.S. participation in the war. During the course of his testimony, Kerry stated that the United States had a definite obligation to make extensive economic reparations to the people of Vietnam.

Kerry's testimony, it should be noted, occurred while some of his fellow Vietnam veterans were known by the world to be enduring terrible suffering as prisoners of war in North Vietnamese prisons. Kerry was a supporter of the "People's Peace Treaty," a supposed "people's" declaration to end the war, reportedly drawn up in communist East Germany. It included nine points, all of which were taken from Viet Cong peace proposals at the Paris peace talks as conditions for ending the war.

One of the provisions stated: "The Vietnamese pledge that as soon as the U.S. government publicly sets a date for total withdrawal [from Vietnam], they will enter discussion to secure the release of all American prisoners, including pilots captured while bombing North Vietnam." In other words, Kerry and his VVAW advocated the communist line to withdraw all U.S. troops from Vietnam first and then negotiate with Hanoi over the release of prisoners. Had the nine points of the "People's Peace Treaty" favored by Kerry been accepted by American negotiators, the United States would have totally lost all leverage to get the communists to release any POWs captured during the war years.

Kerry was fundamental in organizing antiwar activists to demonstrate in Washington, including the splattering of red paint, representing blood, on the Capitol steps. Several hundred of Kerry's VVAW demonstrators and supporters were allowed by Fulbright to jam into a Senate Foreign Relations Committee hearing in 1972 and to chant "Right on, brother!" as Sen. George McGovern (D-SD), then the only declared Democratic presidential candidate, accused U.S. troops of committing barbarisms in Vietnam.

Kerry became even more of a press celebrity during a highly publicized "anti-war" protest when he threw medals the press reported were his over a barricade and onto the steps of the Capitol. Kerry never mentioned that the medals he so gloriously tossed were not his own. The 1988 issue of Current Biography Yearbook explained: " . . . the ones he had discarded were not his own but had belonged to another veteran who asked him to make the gesture for him. When a 'Washington Post' reporter asked Kerry about the incident, he said: 'They're my medals. I'll do what I want with them. And there shouldn't be any expectations about them.'" Kerry's medals have reappeared, today hanging in his Senate office, now that it is "politically correct" for a U.S. Senator to be portrayed as a Vietnam War hero. Alas, so much for integrity.

Recently, Kerry became extremely defensive when David Warsh, an economics columnist for The Boston Globe, questioned the circumstances for which Kerry was awarded the Silver Star. Kerry, who was in a close re-election battle with Gov. William F. Weld, a Republican, quickly gathered his former crew from his Swift boat days to rebuff the "assault on his integrity."

According to the official citation accompanying the Silver Star for Kerry's actions on the waters of the Mekong Delta on February 28, 1969: "Kerry's craft received a B-40 rocket close aboard. Once again Lieutenant (j.g.) Kerry ordered his units to charge the enemy positions. . . Patrol Craft Fast 94 then
beached in the center of the enemy positions and an enemy soldier sprang up from his position not ten feet from Patrol Craft 94 and fled. Without hesitation Lieutenant (j.g.) Kerry leaped ashore, pursued the man behind a hootch and killed him, capturing a B-40 rocket launcher with a round in the chamber." In an article printed in the October 21st and 28th 1996 edition of The New Yorker, Kerry was asked about the man he had killed.

"It was either going to be him or it was going to be us. It was that simple. I don't know why it wasn't us--I mean, to this day. He had a rocket pointed right at our boat. He stood up out of the hole, and none of us saw him until he was standing in front of us, aiming a rocket right at us, and, for whatever reason, he didn't pull the trigger--he turned and ran. He was shocked to see our boat right in front of him. If he'd pulled the trigger, we'd all be dead . . . I just won't talk about all of it. I don't and I can't. The things that probably really turn me I've never told anybody. Nobody would understand," Kerry said. In the column, Warsh quoted the Swift boat's former gunner, Tom Belodeau, as saying the Viet Cong soldier who Kerry chased "behind a hootch" and "finished off" actually had already been wounded by the gunner.

Warsh wrote that such a "coup de grace" would have been considered a war crime. Belodeau stood beside Kerry and said he'd been misquoted. He conceded that he had fired at and wounded the Viet Cong, but denied Kerry had simply executed the wounded Viet Cong. Dan Carr, a former Marine from Massachusetts, who served 14 months as a rifleman sloshing around in the humid jungles of I Corps, South Vietnam, questioned whether or not Kerry deserved a Silver Star for chasing and killing a lone, wounded, retreating Viet Cong. "Kerry is certainly showing some sensitivity there. Most people I knew in Vietnam were just trying to pull their time there and get the hell out. There were some, though, who actually used Vietnam to get their tickets punched. You know, to build their resumes for future endeavors," Carr said.

In 1991, the United States Senate created the Senate Select Committee on POW/MIA Affairs to examine the possibility that U.S. POW/MIAs might still be held by the Vietnamese. As chairman of the Select Committee, Kerry proved himself to be a masterful chameleon portraying to the public at large what appeared to be an unbiased approach to resolving the POW/MIA issue. But, in reality, no one in the United States Senate pushed harder to bury the POW/MIA issue, the last obstacle preventing normalization of relations with Hanoi, than John Forbes Kerry. (Remember the middle name "Forbes").

In fact, his first act as chairman was to travel to Southeast Asia, where during a stopover in Bangkok, Thailand, he lectured the U.S. Chamber of Commerce there on the importance of lifting the trade embargo and normalizing relations with Vietnam. During the entire life of the Senate Select Committee, Kerry never missed a chance to propaganderize and distort the facts in favor of Hanoi.

Sydney H. Schanberg, associate editor and columnist for New York Newsday and Pulitzer Prize winning journalist veteran of the Indochina War whose book, The Death and Life of Dith Pran, became the subject of the Academy Award-winning film The Killing Fields, chronicled some of Kerry's more blatant pro-Hanoi biases in several of his columns.

In a Nov. 21, 1993 column, Schanberg wrote, "Highly credible information has been surfacing in recent days which indicates that the headlines you have been reading about a 'breakthrough' in Hanoi's cooperation on the POW/MIA issue are part of a carefully scripted performance. The apparent purpose is to move toward normalization of relations with Hanoi.

"Sen. John F. Kerry, chairman of the Senate Select Committee on POW/MIA Affairs, is one of the key figures pushing for normalization. Kerry is currently on a visit to Vietnam where he has been doing two
things: (1) praising the Vietnamese effusively for granting access to their war archives and (2) telling the press that there's no believable evidence to back up the stories of live POWs still being held.
"Ironically, that very kind of live-POW evidence has been brought to Kerry's own committee on a regular basis over the past year, and he has repeatedly sought to impeach its value. Moreover, Kerry and his allies on the committee - such as Sens. John McCain, Nancy Kassebaum and Tom Daschle - have worked to block much of this evidence from being made public."

In December of 1992, not long after Kerry was quoted in the world press stating "President Bush should reward Vietnam within a month for its increased cooperation in accounting for American MIAs," Vietnam announced it had granted Colliers International, based in Boston, Massachusetts, a contract worth billions
designating Colliers International as the exclusive real estate agent representing Vietnam.

That deal alone put Colliers in a position to make tens of millions of dollars on the rush to upgrade Vietnam's ports, railroads, highways, government buildings, etc. C. Stewart Forbes, Chief Executive Officer of Colliers International, is Kerry's cousin. Kerry was portrayed in The New Yorker as a proud
Vietnam veteran and "war hero" who, as chairman of the Senate Select Committee on POW/MIA Affairs, dared to take on and defeat the "mendacious POW lobby."

In its 1993 final report, the Select Committee determined that live U.S. prisoners of war were left behind in the hands of the Vietnamese after the end of the war. The committee also claimed it found no "compelling" evidence proving the POWs remain alive today. Kerry's committee stopped there without answering three of the most profound questions of the entire Senate POW/MIA investigation: What happened to those U.S. prisoners of war who the Select Committee said were alive and in the hands of the Vietnamese but not released at the end of the war? If they are dead, where are their remains? Who is responsible for their deaths?

No doubt most of the Establishment press will continue to obscure from the public and themselves the raw truth about Kerry, the communist Vietnamese and the POW/MIA issue because it is politically convenient. There is also no doubt the POW/MIA families and Vietnam veteran activists know the truth and recognize Kerry for what he truly is--a traitor, hypocrite, liar and chameleon.

[cake_crumb]

Hey, that's a good one...did you just make that or is it a real bumper sticker?

[SAMWolf]

I made it. I have a bunch with slogans people suggested.

[JDoutrider]

Like I said if someone showed up on drugs he was on the next chopper out. PERIOD! Semper Fi, Kelly

Roger that!

And hopefully needing a dust off bird before he was carried off...

[FairOpinion]

Excellent find!

[neverdem]

BTTT

He's also been endorsed by Kim Jong Il.

[Airborne Longhorn]

To your point:

cross-reference this thread:

North Korea warms to Kerry presidency bid

[Airborne Longhorn]

Sorry--wrong link!!:

cross-reference this thread:

North Korea warms to Kerry presidency bid

[Fedora]

He called his friend Walinsky, who had run unsuccessfully for New York attorney general and had excellent financial connections. Walinsky arranged a meeting of potential donors at the Seagram Building in New York City. Among those present were Seagram chief executive Edgar M. Bronfman Sr. and about 20 other New York businessmen who opposed the war. Kerry delivered a low-key speech about the importance of having veterans attend the protest. Then the businessmen were each asked to stand and declare how much they would contribute.

"We raised probably $50,000," Walinsky recalled. "It took an hour."

http://www.boston.com/globe/nation/packages/kerry/061703.shtml

Did Democrat Fat Cats Make John Kerry Famous? [Including Seagram's Bronfman]

So Bronfman was supporting Kerry already way back then in 1971? Very interesting. Bronfman's associate Meyer Lansky had supported Humphrey against Nixon in 1968. Meanwhile that same year Lansky's partner Santos Trafficante, Jr. made a trip to Hong Kong to make an arrangement with some Asian businessmen regarding the prospect of replacing the Turkish supply base for the French Connection with a new supply base in Southeast Asia; related high-level meetings were conducted over the next 3-4 years. The supply route then in use ran through territory controlled by the Union Corse (Lansky's French business partners) in Montreal, which was also the center of the Bronfman Seagram's empire. Curious that in light of that Bronfman should decide to come down on the antiwar side of the political fence by supporting Kerry in 1971.

[okie01]

"I have been to Paris. I have talked with both delegations at the peace talks, that is to say the Democratic Republic of Vietnam and the Provisional Revolutionary Government and of all eight of Madam Binh's points it has been stated time and time again, and was stated by Senator Vance Hartke when he returned from Paris, and it has been stated by many other officials of this Government, if the United States were to set a date for withdrawal the prisoners of war would be returned.

"I think this negates very clearly the argument of the President that we have to maintain a presence in Vietnam, to use as a negotiating block for the return of those prisoners. The setting of a date will accomplish that."

Thus, in 1971, John Effin' Kerry assured the United States Congress that any and all POWs would be returned by NVN and the VC. No "insurance" was required.

In 1993, this same Kerry, now a U.S. Senator investigating whether any POWs were still being held in custody, took steps to shred any and all evidence of their existence.

This explains the Senator's actions -- the Senator is covering up for the Lt JG.

[King Prout]

whoa.
and he was not tried for treason?
and he was not hanged for treason?
and he is yet a senator, no less?

[gaspar]

The thing I can't figure about all this is that when I was in the Delta in parts of late 1969-1970 there were damned few US military around. Sure there were Seals and river patrolling in Ba Xuyen and Sa Dec, and guys running around the Ca Mau Peninsula, but it wasn't at all like I or II Corps where jarheads and grunts were literally everywhere.
I would submit that If Kerry learned anything about what was happening in Viet Nam where most of the fighting was taking place it must have been anecdotal. Thus, his tarring of all military with a broad brush was in fact the exposition of his own "progressive" political ideology. It is, by the way, an ideology he still holds dear.

[ex-Texan]

This is strong evidence Kerry was a traitor in 1971.

[marty60]

This piece of trash was meeting with the VC, while our slodiers were dying in the jungles of VN. ANY veteran that would stand up with or for this slug should be ashamed of himself.

[proud American in Canada]

bttt

I've been hoping to find a source for that '71 Paris meeting. Great job.

[jla]

fyi

[proud American in Canada]

"so what??!! ....kerry is sooo a waste of our time."

What are you talking about? This is a man who could very well be our next president, and you think it's a waste of time to dig up information and spread the word about his treasonous activities?

[gaspar]

There is a long Kerry quote in "Who Spoke Up: American Protest Against the War in Vietnam 1963-1975" by Zaroulis and Sullivan. That quote is taken from "Dewey Canyon III; Kerry and VVAW", appearing in The New Soldier (Edited by Thorn and Butler, Macmillan 1971.) Does anyone know if the article by Kerry in the New Soldier is on line anywhere?

[gaspar]

You note Kerry's appearance on April 22, 1971. On May 4, Kerry was in New York City to appear in a Bryant Park demonstration along with anti-war senator Vance Hartke and left wing union reps David Livingston and Victor Gotbaum. I wonder if that speech was reported in the NYTimes or elsewhere?

[proud American in Canada]

"You're so good and thorough and accurate."

So very true. Hon is one amazing Freeper.