John Kerry and the VVAW: Hanoi's American Puppets?
Newly discovered documents link Vietnam Veterans Against the War to Vietnamese communists
Two recently discovered documents captured from the Vietnamese communists during the Vietnam War strongly support the contention that a close link existed between the Hanoi regime and the Vietnam Veterans Against the War (VVAW) while John Kerry served as the group's leading national spokesman.
The Circular: International Coordination of Antiwar Propaganda
The first document is a 1971 "Circular" distributed by the Vietnamese communists within Vietnam. It discusses strategies to coordinate their national propaganda effort with their orchestration of the activities of sympathetic counterparts in the American anti-war movement. Specifically, the document notes that the Vietcong and North Vietnamese delegations to the Paris Peace talks were being used as the communications link to direct the activities of anti-war activists meeting with them in Paris. To quote from the document:
The spontaneous antiwar movements in the US have received assistance and guidance from the friendly ((VC/NVN)) delegations at the Paris Peace Talks.
-- Circular on Antiwar Movements in the US. The reference to "VC" indicates the Vietcong; "NVN" is the North Vietnamese government.
This sentence is particularly important in light of John Kerry's admission that he met with leaders of both communist delegations to the Paris Peace Talks in June 1970, including Madame Binh, foreign minister of the Provisional Revolutionary Government (PRG) of South Vietnam, also known as the Vietcong. FBI files record that Kerry returned to Paris to meet with the North Vietnamese delegation in August of 1971, and planned a third trip in November.
Prior to the discovery of the Circular, there was no direct evidence that Hanoi was actually steering the U.S. antiwar movement's activities by conveying Hanoi's goals and wishes to movement leaders during their frequent visits to Paris, though many investigators had assumed that to be the case. Further analysis of this document supports the contention that Madame Binh used her Paris meeting with John Kerry to instruct him on how he and the VVAW might best serve as Hanoi's surrogates in the United States. In the spring and summer of 1971, a key strategy of Hanoi was to advance what was known as Madame Binh's Seven Point Peace Plan.
The plan was cleverly constructed to force President Nixon to set a date to end the Vietnam War and withdraw American troops. According to the 7-Point Peace Plan of Madame Binh, the only barrier to Hanoi setting a date to release American Prisoners of War was President Nixon’s unwillingness to set a specific date for military withdrawal. Of course, accepting the full terms of the 7-Point Peace Plan would have amounted to an American capitulation, a virtual surrender that included the payment of reparations to the Vietnam communists as an admission that America was the wrongful aggressor in an immoral war.
A section of the Circular titled "PREPARATION FOR THE FALL ((1971)) ANTIWAR MOVEMENT" makes clear the importance the Vietnamese Communists placed on advancing Madame Binh's 7-Point Peace Plan within the United States:
The seven-point peace proposal ((of the SVN Provisional Revolutionary Government)) not only solved problems concerning the release of US prisoners but also motivated the people of all walks of life and even relatives of US pilots detained in NVN to participate in the antiwar movement.
-- Circular on Antiwar Movements in the US. "SVN" indicates the South Vietnam Provisional Revolutionary Government, i.e., the Vietcong. "NVN" refers to North Vietnam.
And again, highlighting how the Vietnamese communists viewed the activities of the US antiwar movement, US politics, and politics in South Vietnam as interconnected; all to be targeted by Madame Binh's 7-Point Peace Plan:
The Nixon-Thieu clique is very embarrassed because the seven-point peace proposal is supported by the SVN people's (( political struggle)) movement and the antiwar movements in the US. Therefore, all local areas, units, and branches must widely disseminate the seven-point peace proposal, step up the people's ((political struggle)) movements both in cities and rural areas, taking advantage of disturbances and dissensions in the enemy's forthcoming (RVN) Congressional and Presidential elections. They must coordinate more successfully with the antiwar movements in the US so as to isolate the Nixon-Thieu clique.
-- Circular on Antiwar Movements in the US. "RVN" refers to the Republic of Vietnam, the government in South Vietnam supported by the US.
POW Families: Targets of the Vietnamese Communists
Late in 1970, a defecting Vietcong organizer described a communist plan to use Vietcong sympathizers in the US to recruit family members of American POWs held captive in North Vietnam. The following summary of his interview was provided to the House Foreign Affairs Committee:
The Viet Cong plan to continue their efforts to win worldwide opinion to their side and to solicit as much material support for the VC struggle as possible from other countries in order to create a favorable climate for the VC at the Paris Peace Conference.
The Viet Cong will continue to promote domestic unrest against the war in the United States in order to speed withdrawal of US troops and create pressure for an end to the war.
Efforts will be directed toward the US soldier in Vietnam to demand that they be returned to the US and be reunited with their families and wives.
The VC will strive to create anti-draft and anti-war attitudes in the US by organizing VC sympathizers in the US to contact families with sons in Vietnam and urge them to call their sons home. Also VC sympathizers in the US will be organized to distribute anti-draft leaflets to students and young people.
On February 1, 1971, at their Winter Soldier Investigation in Detroit, the VVAW released a statement by Virginia Warner, mother of American POW Jim Warner, urging President Nixon to "end the war so the prisoners of war can come home." Jim Warner has accused John Kerry of exploiting his mother's fears to obtain this statement.
On July 22, 1971, John Kerry held a press conference in Washington, DC, to call upon President Nixon to accept Madame Binh's 7-Point Peace Plan. Kerry surrounded himself at the press conference with POW wives, parents and sisters who had been recruited to promote his message. The event was reported in The New York Times of July 23, 1971 and the communist Daily World of July 24, 1971. Each article included a photograph of Kerry surrounded by POW family members.
Kerry's use of POW families directly advanced the North Vietnamese communist agenda as described by enemy defectors and in the newly discovered Circular, which suggests that Madame Binh had recommended the same course of action to antiwar activists meeting with her in Paris.
[Note: A number of POW families were contacted by a "liason" group headed by Cora Weiss, the daughter of Communist Party financier Samuel Rubin, with offers to provide mail and information about their husbands if the families agreed to publicly denounce the war. Most POW family members refused to cooperate with this extortion, even when promised better treatment for their husbands or sons in Hanoi. Four angry POW wives protested at Kerry's July press conference, one of whom accused Kerry of "constantly using our own suffering and grief" to advance his political ambitions.
via: Little Green Footballs
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