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Discovered papers: Hanoi directed Kerry
Recovered Vietnam documents 'smoking gun' researchers claim
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Posted: October 26, 2004
1:00 a.m. Eastern
By Art Moore
© 2004 WorldNetDaily.com
The first documentary evidence that Vietnamese communists were directly steering John Kerry's antiwar group Vietnam Veterans Against the War has been discovered in a U.S. archive, according to a researcher who spoke with WorldNetDaily.
One freshly unearthed document, captured by the U.S. from Vietnamese communists in 1971, indicates the Viet Cong and North Vietnamese delegations to the Paris peace talks that year were used as the communications link to direct the activities of Kerry and other antiwar activists who attended.
Kerry insists he attended the talks only because he happened to be in France on his honeymoon and maintains he met with both sides. But previously revealed records indicate the future senator made two, and possibly three, trips to Paris to meet with Viet Cong leader Madame Nguyen Thi Binh then promote her plan's demand for U.S. surrender.
Jerome Corsi, a specialist on the Vietnam era, told WND the new discoveries are the "most remarkable documents I've seen in the entire history of the antiwar movement."
"We're not going to say he's an agent for Vietnamese communists, but it's the next thing to it," he said. "Whether he was consciously carrying out their direction or naively doing what they wanted, it amounted to the same thing -- he advanced their cause."
Corsi, co-author of the Swift Boat Vets and POWs for Truth best-seller "Unfit for Command," and Scott Swett, who maintains the group's website, have posted a summary of the discovery on the website of Wintersoldier.com.
Corsi says the documents show how the North Vietnamese, the Viet Cong, the People's Coalition for Peace and Justice, the Communist Party of the USA and Kerry's VVAW worked closely together to achieve the Vietnamese communists' primary objective -- the defeat of the U.S. in Vietnam.
"I think what we've discovered is a smoking gun," Corsi said. "We knew when we wrote 'Unfit for Command' that Kerry had met with Madame Binh and then promoted her peace plan.
"This document enables us to connect the dots," he emphasized. "We now have evidence Madame Binh was directing the antiwar movement ... and the person who implemented her strategy was John Kerry."
July 22, 1971, Kerry called on President Nixon to accept the plan at a press conference in which he surrounded himself with the families of POWs, a strategy outlined in the first document.
The two documents also connect the dots between the Vietnamese communists and the radical U.S. group People's Coalition for Peace and Justice through the person of Al Hubbard, a coordinating member of PCPJ and the executive director of VVAW while Kerry was its national spokesman.
"Al Hubbard and John Kerry were carrying out the predetermined agenda of the enemy in a coordinated fashion," Corsi said. "It's a level of collaboration that exceeded anything we had imagined."
'Return the medals'
Another document, captured by U.S. military forces in South Vietnam May 12, 1972, urges Vietnamese officials to promote the antiwar activities in the United States.
Significantly, the fifth paragraph makes it clear the Vietnamese communists were using, for propaganda purposes, a protest described as taking place April 19-22, 1971.
This coincides with the well-known "Dewey Canyon III" protest in Washington, D.C., highlighted by Kerry's Senate Foreign Relations testimony charging American soldiers with war crimes.
The document's description of the protest includes the "return the medals" event in which Kerry and other VVAW members threw their war decorations toward the steps of the Capitol.
Why now?
Corsi told WND the documents have been authenticated with "100 percent certainty."
But why were they unearthed now, just one week before the Nov. 2 election?
Corsi insisted the timing was unintentional.
"It's truly one of those accidents of how things develop in research," he said. "We did not spring any surprise, we just found these documents, and even the archivist didn't know they were there."
Swift Boat Vets and POWs for Truth dispatched two researchers to Texas Tech University's Vietnam-era archive in Lubbock, which has more than 2 million documents, and "see if there was anything there," Corsi said.
Many of the documents are in Vietnamese and have not been translated yet.
The documents were found in boxes containing documents from antiwar activities during 1971-72, but they also turned out to be posted in an Internet database, which enabled further verification.
First document
The first document is a "circular" outlining the Vietnamese regime's strategies to coordinate its propaganda effort with orchestration of U.S. antiwar group activities.
The spontaneous antiwar movements in the US have received assistance and guidance from the friendly ((VC/NVN)) delegations at the Paris Peace Talks.
The phrases in double parentheses were added by U.S. translators for clarification. "VC" refers to the Viet Cong, while "NVN" is the North Vietnamese government.
Corsi and Swett point out that FBI files show Kerry returned to Paris to meet with the North Vietnamese delegation in August 1971 and planned a third trip in November.
Corsi emphasizes that before the discovery of this document, he and other researchers had no direct evidence that Hanoi actually was directing the antiwar movement to implement the regime's goals, although they assumed it to be the case based on other indications.
In her meeting with Kerry in Paris, Madame Binh instructed him on how he and the VVAW could "serve as Hanoi's surrogates in the United States," Corsi and Swett say. This included advancement of her seven-point peace plan forcing President Nixon to set a date to end the war and withdraw troops.
Hanoi cleverly constructed the plan so that the only barrier to release of American POWs was Nixon's unwillingness to set a withdrawal date.
But as Corsi and Swett emphasize, the plan amounted to a virtual surrender that included payment of reparations and an admission the U.S. was the aggressor in an immoral war against the communists.
The circular underscores the impact of the peace plan on U.S. activists, saying:
"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.
Another section of the circular, again highlighting the interconnectedness of the Vietnamese communists, the U.S. antiwar movement and politics in the U.S. and South Vietnam, says Nixon and South Vietnamese leader Thieu are "very embarrassed because the seven-point peace proposal is supported by the [South Vietnamese] people's (( political struggle)) movement and the antiwar movements in the US. "
Therefore, the circular says, "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."
Second document
In addition to tying activities surrounding Kerry's 1971 protest to the direction of Vietnamese communists, the second document reveals the degree to which Hanoi worked with and through the People's Coalition for Peace and Justice.
Of the U.S. antiwar movements, the two most important ones are: The PCPJ ((the People's Committee for Peace and Justice)) and the NPAC ((National Peace Action Committee)). These two movements have gathered much strength and staged many demonstrations. The PCPJ is the most important. It maintains relations with us.
Corsi and Swett note the House Internal Securities Committee in its 1971 Annual Report described the PCPJ as an organization strongly controlled by U.S. communists.
"There is no question but what members of the Communist Party have provided a very strong degree of influence, even a guiding influence, in the evolution and formation of policies of the People's Coalition for Peace and Justice."
Corsi cites recently released FBI surveillance reports that establish a strong link between Kerry, Hubbard, the VVAW, the PCPJ and their trips to Paris to meet with Madame Binh.
Kerry shared the stage with Hubbard, who recruited Kerry into the group, during the Dewey Canyon III protest, and they appeared together on NBC's Meet the Press April 18, 1971. Hubbard's claimed to have been a transport pilot wounded in combat, but the Department of Defense released documents showing he was neither a pilot nor an officer and had never served in Vietnam.
One FBI field surveillance report stamped Nov. 11, 1971, showed Kerry and Hubbard were planning to travel to Paris later that month to engage in talks with Vietnamese communist delegations. Other FBI reports clearly show the Communist Party of the USA was paying for Al Hubbard's trips to Paris, Corsi notes.
Another FBI report, dated Nov. 24, 1971, gives details of Hubbard's presentation to a VVAW meeting of the Executive and Steering committees in Kansas City, Mo., Nov. 12-15, 1971.
At that meeting, the VVAW considered and then rejected a plan to assassinate several pro-war U.S. Senators. Kerry is listed as present.
The FBI document shows communist coordination in Hubbard's trip to Paris.
[BLACK OUT] advised that Hubbard gave the following information regarding his Paris trip:
Two foreign groups, which are Democratic Republic of Vietnam (DRV) and Peoples Republic Government (PRG) (phonetic), invited representatives of the VVAW, Communist Party USA (CP USA), and a Left Wing group in Paris, to attend meeting of the above inviting groups in Paris. Hubbard advised he was elected to represent the VVAW. An unknown male was invited to represent the CP USA and an unknown individual was elected to represent the Left Wing group from Paris. He advised at the meeting that his trip was financed by CP USA.
Corsi and Swett cite an appeal letter written by Hubbard April 20, 1971, demonstrating the strong coordination between Vietnam Veterans Against the War and People's Coalition for Peace and Justice.
Addressed from the offices of the VVAW in Washington, D.C., the letter is an appeal to VVAW members to provide assistance to the PCPJ. It discusses several ways in which the two organizations have worked closely together:
This is an appeal for help for the Peoples Coalition for Peace and Justice. Over the past months the Peoples Coalition has supported the Vietnam Vets Against the War in many ways. The Coalition has made office space available at no charge, and permitted the use of all necessary office equipment such as mimeograph machines, stencil-making machines, folders and typewriters. They have loaned us cars, bullhorns, and public address equipment. Their staff has taken messages for us and joined fraternally in building our progress. Now we can return this support.
Saturday, April 24, the Coalition needs help collecting money and selling buttons at the great march and rally. Collectors and sellers must be energetic and determined. Theree will be security problems in taking large amounts of money to banks. The Coalition needs people power, hundreds of workers.
I earnestly hope that you will come forward to support our friends in this emergency.
Two days after Hubbard's letter was written, Kerry told Sen. William Fulbright's Foreign Relations Committee American military in Vietnam were committing war crimes in the manner of Genghis Khan.
The event referred to in the letter was PCPJ's massive April 24 demonstration in Washington that followed the VVAW's Dewey Canyon III protest.
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