Torture of Duty XII: Dogs That Didn't Bark in the Night

I finally finished the book around 1:30am last night, dozing off every other page. It ended in an attempt at a rhapsodic crescendo worthy of a classical symphony. But the flat notes overwhelmed the effect. The epilog shifted from the early 1970s to near present, with only a brief aside or two about Kerry's involvement in normalizing relations with North Vietnam in the 1990s.

What's instructive is what's missing from this, things pertaining to the subject of John Kerry and Vietnam. At the November 1971 VVAW meeting in Kansas City, which Kerry has long denied attending, there was discussion of, and a vote against, the assassination of pro-Vietnam War senators. Kerry argued against the assassinations, but he also did not report the incident to proper authorities as any good citizen would do. FBI files recently obtained under a Freedom of Information Act request and available at wintersoldier.com in pdf form provided evidence that he was there and argued against the assassinations. It's possible that there is no evidence of this event in Kerry's journals or other private papers, but he is described as one who keeps everything. It would be odd if Kerry didn't at least obliquely record something. Brinkley's description of the meeting is very vague, which may reflect that, or it might also reflect a deliberate decision to obscure the meeting's hot topic in order to shield Kerry from criticism. Without actually examining Kerry's archives it would be difficult to determine if Brinkley knew more than he recounts in his book.

Understand, Kerry did speak against and vote against the assassinations. He deserves that much credit. He did not perform what most of us would consider the proper duty of a good citizen; he did not report a potential criminal consipiracy to assassinate government officials. This is certainly grounds for criticism.

There is also no mention of any meetings with the North Vietnamese or Viet Cong at the Paris Peace Talks. Kerry has long admitted he met with them as a private citizen (and perhaps as a representative of VVAW) in Paris, though he also claimed he only made one trip there to do so. The FBI files show a second trip was made. When presented with the evidence in the FBI files, Kerry admitted to the second trip.

That Kerry, as a private citizen, met with enemies of the United States while those enemies were in a state of war with the United States is problematic, to say the least. That he did so while serving as a commissioned officer in the U.S. Naval Reserve presents additional problems. Then there is the possibility those trips contravened orders to report any absense from the U.S. for more than 30 days (see below). That he lied about how many trips suggests, again, there was a deliberate intent to conceal the numbers of trips and meetings. One possible reason for this is that he appears to be guilty of violating federal law and perhaps the regulations of the U.S. Navy concerning the comportment of its officers. John Boyle wrote a letter to the editor of the Boston Globe that went unpublished that covers this well. In that he says:

Kerry's problem is not that he may have violated an esoteric prohibition against negotiating with foreign powers (18 U.S.C. 953). What he did was collaborate with enemy combatants during the war, "adhering to them and giving them aid." The evidence for this is in his own words. That is covered by another law, The Constitution of the United States, Article III, Section 3.

It is these events, even more than his other activities in protesting the war, that lead many to call John Kerry "traitor." At the recent Vietnam Veterans for Truth/Kerry Lied rally in D.C. many veterans, aware of the above, certainly did call him a traitor. It is an arguable position that has not been tested in any court. Treason is notoriously hard to prove under U.S. law.

But I think the absence of mention of any meetings in Paris in Brinkley's book reflects the concern of both Kerry and Brinkley about this topic. Both of them know that it is explosive. Brinkley cannot argue that it is not pertinent to the scope of his book when he includes passages about Kerry's later meetings, acting under the authority of the Clinton administration, with the North Vietnamese to normalize relations. He claimed no, and had no, governmental authority for those earlier Paris meetings he conducted on his own.

Posted by dan at September 15, 2004 07:20 PM | TrackBack