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New World Order Title: THE HIJACKING OF AMERICA by SatanistS Deuteronomy 7:4 For they will turn away thy Son from following me, that they may serve other gods: so will the anger of the LORD be kindled against you, and destroy thee suddenly. THE ILLUMINATI AND THE SKULL & BONES The Illuminati originates in the Jewish Kabala, Babylonian mystery cults, the Templars, Freemasons and assorted interests dedicated to Satan worship and absolute power. On May 1 1776, Adam Weishaupt, a professor at the University of Inglestadt in Germany, founded "The Order of the Illuminati." Many people believe Weishaupt was sponsored by Prince William of Hesse Casel and his banker Meyer Amschel Rothschild, the wealthiest man in the world. The Illuminati's goal was to destroy Western Civilization and to erect a new world order ruled by them. Its method was to dissolve all social ties (employer, nation, religion, race, family) by exploiting social discontent and promising a golden age of "human brotherhood." This is now called "globalization." Attracted by the promise of power and change, people served without realizing who or what they were supporting. Weishaupt urged his followers to "practise the art of counterfeit." New recruits were told the Illuminati expressed the original spirit of Christianity. Weishaupt marvelled that even churchmen could be gulled. "Oh! Men, of what cannot you be persuaded?" (Nesta Webster, World Revolution, 1921, p. 27) The Illuminati had a hand in every so-called "progressive" movement of the past 200 years. Women, said Weishaupt, were to be enlisted with "hints of emancipation." They "can all be led toward change by vanity, curiosity, sensuality and inclination." (Webster, 29) William Huntington, an American who had studied in Germany, founded the "Skull and Bones" (Chapter 322 of the Bavarian Illuminati) at Yale University in 1832. The members wore a death's head on their chests and were sworn to secrecy on pain of death. "The Order" became the preserve of the leading New England families, many wealthy from the Opium trade. These include the Whitneys, Tafts, Buckleys, Lowells, Sloans, Coffins, and Harrimans. The Bush family was dependent on these interests. For over 150 years, "Bonesmen" have run the world from positions in banking, intelligence, media, law and government. Members included Presidential handler Averell Harriman, anti war leader William Sloan Coffin, Time-Life magnate Henry Luce, Truman war secretary Henry Stimson (responsible for dropping the atomic bomb), pseudo conservative William F. Buckley and many more. "THE BATTLE IS NOT BETWEEN LEFT AND RIGHT" In the 1960's British-born Dr. Anthony Sutton was a Fellow at Stanford's Hoover Institute when he discovered that, in spite of the Cold War, the US was supplying the USSR with its technology, including weapons used against American soldiers in Vietnam. Sutton dug deeper and discovered that Wall Street had sponsored both the Bolshevik Revolution and the rise of Nazi Germany. The resulting books which are on line cost Dr. Sutton his academic career. In 1983, Dr. Sutton received a list of Skull and Bones members and immediately recognized the names of many men who controlled American policy. He published a book entitled "America's Secret Establishment: An Introduction to the Order of Skull and Bones" (1986). He updated and republished this book just before his death last June at age 77. Here are some of his conclusions. * "The Order" is " a purely American phenomenon with German origin." Dr. Sutton compares it to the Round Table, Cecil Rhodes' secret society at Oxford also known as "The Group." The American and British entities consist of 20-30 dynastic families each. Jewish banking interests connect them. "The links between 'The Order' and Britain go through Lazard Freres and the private merchant banks... 'The Group' links to the Jewish equivalent through the Rothschilds in Britain... 'The Order' in the US links to the Guggenheim, Schiff and Warburg families." (23) As Dr. Sutton notes, the "Order" had definite anti Semitic tendencies but by the 1960's, many Jewish names started to appear among the 15 annual inductees. See list of Skull and Bones members. http://www.the7thfire.com/Politics%20and%20History/skull_and_bones.htm Investigations into America's Most Powerful Secret Society Tue Sep 2 17:05:49 2003 64.140.158.45 * Everything you ever wanted to ask, but were afraid to know • Blackmarket Bones • Prescott Bush,the Union Banking Corporation and The Story • The Tomb • Man, Magic and Yale • The Skeleton Crew • RTA Incorporated • A Shill Game • What Hath Women Wrought? by Kris Millegan Fleshing Out Skull & Bones — Investigations into America's Most Powerful Secret Society http://www.fleshingoutskullandbones.com/ Prescott Bush, the Union Banking Corporation and The Story Kris Millegan ©2003 “There’s three things to remember: claim everything, explain nothing, deny everything,” recalled Prescott Bush as to how politics was explained to him by Clare Booth Luce, congresswoman and wife of fellow Bonesman and magazine magnate, Henry Luce. The remarks were recorded in a 1966 interview with Prescott for an oral history project about the Eisenhower Administration by Columbia University. The Bush political family seems to have taken those words to heart, one example being the story of Prescott’s involvement with the Union Banking Corporation and the financing of Hitler and fascism. Why there has been such a deliberate and hard cover-up of this affair is in no doubt due to its sensitive nature. The who, what and where of this business is already covered in several of the other articles in this book. Here we will examine the story as it appears today. The specific allegations about the Union Banking Corporation first surfaced in Antony Sutton’s 1975 book, Wall Street and the Rise of Hitler. Sutton at that time did not know about the Order of Skull & Bones. After becoming aware of the Order in 1983 he expanded his writings on the subject in How the Order Creates War and Revolution in 1984, which was later published, with Antony’s three other booklets on The Order of Skull & Bones, together as America’s Secret Establishment in 1986. The charges were articulated again in 1988 in Sutton’s The Two Faces of George Bush. The mainstream press and establishment historians ignored Sutton’s books and the accusations. In 1992, Webster Tarpley and Anton Chaitkin authored George Bush: The Unauthorized Biography (some chapters are presented in this book), which took the investigations further. They found in U.S. government archives the vesting order seizing the Union Banking Corporation and documented other Harriman/Bush controlled interests that were doing business with the Nazis. Their book was published by Executive Intelligence Review, a Lyndon Laurouche organization, and again the reports were ignored. John Loftus, a former attorney for the Office of Special Operations prosecuting Nazi war criminals in the US Justice Department also added information about the situation in his 1994 book, The Secret War Against the Jews. A Dutch producer Daniël De Witt, from Dutch National Television interviewed Sutton, Chaitkin, Tarpley and others in 1996, for a documentary on Skull & Bones that included confirmation from Dutch officials concerning the Union Banking Corporation and its activities in financing Hitler through a Dutch bank, the Bank voor Handel en Scheepvart ( Bank for Trade and Shipping). “Original documents of the Amsterdam based International Institute of Social History (Instituut voor Sociale Geschiedenis) clearly show the connection between the BHS, the August Thyssen Bank from Fritz Thyssen and Harrimans Union Banking Corporation.” The show — as produced — never aired.* The show was listed in printed schedules and there was a preview in a TV guide but the program was pulled just before being a televised in 1998. Finally in January 2001, a re-edited thirty minute segment of the original eighty minute film was aired plus ten minutes of new footage of interviews of the movie, The Skulls, writer and director. With the advent and growth of the Internet and its ability to by-pass the mainstream media editorial bottleneck there was a growing awareness of the Nazi-Bush financial connections. Newspaper reporter Michael Kranish finally made the accusations public through a mainstream press article in the Boston Globe that became the story about the charges. A front-page article headlined Triumphs, Troubles Shape Generations, ran on April 23, 2001. The story was told in first three paragraphs. The story: Prescott Bush was surely aghast at a sensational article the New York Herald Tribune splashed on its front page in July 1942. “Hitler’s Angel Has 3 Million in US Bank,” read the headline above a story reporting that Adolf Hitler’s financier had stowed the fortune in Union Banking Corp., possibly to be held for “Nazi bigwigs.” Bush knew all about the New York bank: He was one of its seven directors. If the Nazi tie became known, it would be a potential “embarrassment,” Bush and his partners at Brown Brothers Harriman worried, explaining to government regulators that their position was merely an unpaid courtesy for a client. The situation grew more serious when the government seized Union’s assets under the Trading with the Enemy Act, the sort of action that could have ruined Bush’s political dreams. As it turned out, his involvement wasn’t pursued by the press or political opponents during his Senate campaigns a decade later. But the episode may well have been one of the catalysts for a dramatic change in his life. Just as the Union Banking story broke, Bush volunteered to be chairman of United Service Organizations, putting himself on the national stage for the first time. He traveled the country raising millions of dollars to help boost the morale of US troops during World War II, enhancing his stature in a way that helped him get elected US senator. A son and grandson would become presidents. The next fifty plus paragraphs extolled Prescott’s liberal virtues, proclaimed him to be “akin to the Kennedys” and mentions Prescott’s membership in the Yale singing group the Whiffenpoofs, but failed to inform about his membership in the Order of Skull & Bones. Alexandra Robbins, a member of Yale’s second oldest senior secret society Scroll & Key, used the story in 2002 to deflect the charges in her faux exposé of the Order of Skull & Bones, Secrets of the Tomb: Nor was it Skull and Bones that specifically instructed members to aid Adolf Hitler, though Hitler’s financier stowed $3 million in the Union Banking Corporation, a bank that counted among its seven directors Prescott Bush. That’s it. That is Ms. Robbins complete comment on the subject of the Union Banking Corporation, financing of Hitler and the Order of Skull & Bones. No mention about the American Ship and Commerce Company, Consolidated Silesian Steel Corporation, Hamburg-Amerika Lines, Harriman Fifteen Corporation, Harriman International Company, Holland-American Trading Company, Steamless Steel Corporation or the Silesian-American Corporation, companies of which Brown Brothers Harriman were involved and all of which were enmeshed with Hitler’s rise to power. No mention that under the Trading with the Enemy Act many of these companies were seized and were placed at the US Office of Alien Property Custodian. No mention that the Union Banking Corporation was established in August 1924 with George Herbert Walker serving as president and working out of the offices of W. A. Harriman and Company. No mention that in 1932, four out of the eight bank directors were members of the Order of Skull & Bones. No mention that, in the fall of 1942 when Union Banking Corporation was taken over by the government, that a total of three out of seven directors were members of the Order and that a fourth director was an employee of Brown Brothers Harriman — effectively giving Brown Brothers Harriman voting control. No mention that while there were many other non-Bones personnel in partnership at Brown Brothers Harriman, none of them were directors of Union Banking, only Bones partners were on the Union Banking Corporation board. The only exception being not another partner but a Brown Brothers Harriman employee. No mention that two of the other directors have been identified as Nazis. There was no mention of published accounts such as “[a] 1934 congressional investigation alleged that Walker’s Hamburg-Amerika Line subsidized a wide-range of pro-Nazi propaganda efforts both in Germany and the United States;” or that in June of 1936 “[i]nstead of divesting of the Nazi money, [Prescott] Bush hired a lawyer to hide his assets. The lawyer he hired … was Allen Dulles.” Was it because Ms. Robbins didn’t do her homework — or was she just advancing the story? FULL STORY: http://www.fleshingoutskullandbones.com/ Skull And Bones CBS News - There are secrets that George W. Bush guards at least as carefully as any entrusted to a president. He's forbidden to share these secrets even with the vice president -- secrets he has held ever since his days as an undergraduate at Yale. In his senior year, Mr. Bush - like his father and his grandfather - belonged to Skull and Bones, an elite secret society that includes some of the most powerful men of the 20th century. All Bonesmen, as they're called, are forbidden to reveal what goes on in their inner sanctum, the windowless building on the Yale campus that is called "The Tomb." There are conspiracy theorists who see Skull and Bones behind everything that goes wrong, and occasionally even right in the world. Apart from presidents, Bones has included cabinet officers, spies, Supreme Court justices, statesmen and captains of industry - and often their sons, and lately their daughters, too. It’s a social and political network like no other. And they've responded to outsiders with utter silence – until an enterprising Yale graduate, Alexandra Robbins, managed to penetrate the wall of silence in her book, “Secrets of the Tomb.” Correspondent Morley Safer reports. ”I spoke with about 100 members of Skull and Bones and they were members who were tired of the secrecy, and that's why they were willing to talk to me,” says Robbins. “But probably twice that number hung up on me, harassed me, or threatened me.” Secret or not, Skull and Bones is as essential to Yale as the Whiffenpoofs, the tables down at a pub called Mory's, and the Yale mascot - that ever-slobbering bulldog. Skull and Bones, with all its ritual and macabre relics, was founded in 1832 as a new world version of secret student societies that were common in Germany at the time. Since then, it has chosen or "tapped" only 15 senior students a year who become patriarchs when they graduate -- lifetime members of the ultimate old boys' club. “Skull and Bones is so tiny. That's what makes this staggering,” says Robbins. “There are only 15 people a year, which means there are about 800 living members at any one time.” But a lot of Bonesmen have gone on to positions of great power, which Robbins says is the main purpose of this secret society: to get as many members as possible into positions of power. “They do have many individuals in influential positions,” says Robbins. “And that's why this is something that we need to know about.” President Bush has tapped five fellow Bonesmen to join his administration. Most recently, he selected William Donaldson, Skull and Bones 1953, the head of the Securities and Exchange Commission. Like the President, he's taken the Bones oath of silence. Ron Rosenbaum, author and columnist for the New York Observer, has become obsessed with cracking that code of secrecy. “I think there is a deep and legitimate distrust in America for power and privilege that are cloaked in secrecy. It's not supposed to be the way we do things,” says Rosenbaum. “We're supposed to do things out in the open in America. And so that any society or institution that hints that there is something hidden is, I think, a legitimate subject for investigation.” His investigation is a 30-year obsession dating back to his days as a Yale classmate of George W. Bush. Rosenbaum, a self-described undergraduate nerd, was certainly not a contender for Bones. But he was fascinated by its weirdness. “It's this sepulchral, tomblike, windowless, granite, sandstone bulk that you can't miss. And I lived next to it,” says Rosenbaum. “I had passed it all the time. And during the initiation rites, you could hear strange cries and whispers coming from the Skull and Bones tomb.” Despite a lifetime of attempts to get inside, the best Rosenbaum could do was hide out on the ledge of a nearby building a few years ago to videotape a nocturnal initiation ceremony in the Tomb's courtyard. “A woman holds a knife and pretends to slash the throat of another person lying down before them, and there's screaming and yelling at the neophytes,” he says. Robbins says the cast of the initiation ritual is right out of Harry Potter meets Dracula: “There is a devil, a Don Quixote and a Pope who has one foot sheathed in a white monogrammed slipper resting on a stone skull. The initiates are led into the room one at a time. And once an initiate is inside, the Bonesmen shriek at him. Finally, the Bonesman is shoved to his knees in front of Don Quixote as the shrieking crowd falls silent. And Don Quixote lifts his sword and taps the Bonesman on his left shoulder and says, ‘By order of our order, I dub thee knight of Euloga.’" It’s a lot of mumbo-jumbo, says Robbins, but it means a lot to the people who are in it. “Prescott Bush, George W's grandfather, and a band of Bonesmen, robbed the grave of Geronimo, took the skull and some personal relics of the Apache Chief and brought them back to the tomb,” says Robbins. “There is still a glass case, Bonesmen tell me, within the tomb that displays a skull that they all refer to as Geronimo.” “The preoccupation with bones, mortality, with coffins, lying in coffins, standing around coffins, all this sort of thing I think is designed to give them the sense that, and it's very true, life is short,” says Rosenbaum. “You can spend it, if you have a privileged background, enjoying yourself, contributing nothing, or you can spend it making a contribution.” And plenty of Bonesmen have made a contribution, from William Howard Taft, the 27th President; Henry Luce, the founder of Time Magazine; and W. Averell Harriman, the diplomat and confidant of U.S. presidents. “What's important about the undergraduate years of Skull and Bones, as opposed to fraternities, is that it imbues them with a kind of mission for moral leadership,” says Rosenbaum. “And it's something that they may ignore for 30 years of their life, as George W. Bush seemed to successfully ignore it for quite a long time. But he came back to it.” Mr. Bush, like his father and grandfather before him, has refused to talk openly about Skull and Bones. But as a Bonesman, he was required to reveal his innermost secrets to his fellow Bones initiates. “They're supposed to recount their entire sexual histories in sort of a dim, a dimly-lit cozy room. The other 14 members are sitting on plush couches, and the lights are dimmed,” says Robbins. “And there's a fire roaring. And the, this activity is supposed to last anywhere from between one to three hours.” What’s the point of this? ”I believe the point of the year in the tomb is to forge such a strong bond between these 15 new members that after they graduate, for them to betray Skull and Bones would mean they'd have to betray their fourteen closest friends,” says Robbins. One can't help but make certain comparisons with the mafia, for example. Secret society, bonding, stakes may be a little higher in one than the other. But everybody knows everything about everybody, which is a form of protection. “I think Skull and Bones has had slightly more success than the mafia in the sense that the leaders of the five families are all doing 100 years in jail, and the leaders of the Skull and Bones families are doing four and eight years in the White House,” says Rosenbaum. Bones is not restricted to the Republican Party. Yet another Bonesman has his eye on the Oval Office: Senator John Kerry, Democrat, Skull & Bones 1966. “It is fascinating isn't it? I mean, again, all the people say, ‘Oh, these societies don't matter. The Eastern Establishment is in decline.’ And you could not find two more quintessential Eastern establishment, privileged guys,” says Rosenbaum. “I remember when I was a nerdy scholarship student in the reserve book room at, at the Yale Library, and John Kerry, who at that point styled himself ‘John F. Kerry’ would walk in.” “There was always a little buzz,” adds Rosenbaum. “Because even then he was seen to be destined for higher things. He was head of the Yale Political Union, and a tap for Skull and Bones was seen as the natural sequel to that.” David Brooks, a conservative commentator who has published a book on the social dynamics of the upwardly mobile, says that while Skull & Bones may be elite and secret, it's anything but exciting. “My view of secret societies is they're like the first class cabin in airplanes. They're really impressive until you get into them, and then once you're there they're a little dull. So you hear all these conspiracy theories about Skull and Bones,” says Brooks. “And to me, to be in one of these organizations, you have to have an incredibly high tolerance for tedium 'cause you're sittin' around talking, talking, and talking. You're not running the world, you're just gassing.” Gassing or not, the best-connected white man's club in America has moved reluctantly into the 21st Century. “Skull and Bones narrowly endorsed admitting women,” says Robbins. “The day before these women were supposed to be initiated, a group of Bonesmen, including William F. Buckley, obtained a court order to block the initiation claiming that letting women into the tomb would lead to date rape. Again more legal wrangling; finally it came down to another vote and women were admitted and initiated.” But Skull & Bones now has women, and it’s become more multicultural. “It has gays who got the SAT scores, it's got the gays who got the straight A's,” says Brooks. “It's got the blacks who are the president of the right associations. It's different criteria. More multicultural, but it's still an elite, selective institution.” On balance, it may be bizarre, but on a certain perspective, does it provide something of value? “You take these young strivers, you put them in this weird castle. They spill their guts with each other, fine. But they learn something beyond themselves. They learn a commitment to each other, they learn a commitment to the community,” says Brooks. “And maybe they inherit some of those old ideals of public service that are missing in a lot of other parts of the country.” And is that relationship, in some cases, stronger that family or faith? “Absolutely,” says Robbins. “You know, they say, they say the motto at Yale is, ‘For God, for country, and for Yale.’ At Bones, I would think it's ‘For Bones.'” http://post911timeline.org/News/index.php?itemid=781 With antiwar role, high visibility By Michael Kranish, Globe Staff, 6/17/2003 April 28, 1971, 4:33 p.m. President Richard M. Nixon takes a call from his counsel, Charles Colson. "This fellow Kerry that they had on last week," Colson tells the president, referring to a television appearance by John F. Kerry, a leader of Vietnam Veterans Against the War. "Yeah," Nixon responds. "He turns out to be really quite a phony," Colson says. "Well, he is sort of a phony, isn't he?" Nixon says. Yes, Colson says in a gossiping vein, telling the president that Kerry stayed at the home of a Georgetown socialite while other protesters slept on the mall. "He was in Vietnam a total of four months," Colson scoffs, without mentioning that Kerry earned three Purple Hearts, a Silver Star, and a Bronze Star, and had also been on an earlier tour. "He's politically ambitious and just looking for an issue." "Yeah." "He came back a hawk and became a dove when he saw the political opportunities," Colson says. "Sure," Nixon responds. "Well, anyway, keep the faith." The tone was sneering. But the secretly recorded dialogue illustrates just how seriously Kerry was viewed by the Nixon White House. Some of these conversations have not been previously publicized, and Kerry said he had never heard them until they were provided by a reporter. Day after day, according to the tapes and memos, Nixon aides worried that Kerry was a unique, charismatic leader who could undermine support for the war. Other veteran protesters were easier targets, with their long hair, their use of a Viet Cong flag, and in some cases, their calls for overthrowing the US government. Kerry, by contrast, was a neat, well-spoken, highly decorated veteran who seemed to be a clone of former President John F. Kennedy, right down to the military service on a patrol boat. The White House feared him like no other protester. Colson, in a secret memo, revealed he had a mission to target Kerry: "Destroy the young demagogue before he becomes another Ralph Nader." The effort by Nixon and his aides to undermine Kerry went much deeper than even Kerry realized. Yet it is this chapter in his life, as much as any other, that helped turn Kerry into a national political figure. By targeting Kerry, the Nixon White House boosted his stature in ways that still are having an impact. But at the same time, many of the issues that Nixon and his aides raised more than 30 years ago about Kerry still remain. Echoes of Colson's words can still be heard in Washington: "He's politically ambitious and just looking for an issue, a phony." Yet even Nixon described Kerry as an articulate and impressive spokesman. The Nixon White House began an investigation of Kerry. Who was he, the Nixonites wanted to know. What was his real motivation? And how could they stop him? Connecting with a cause As an antiwar leader, John Kerry was arrested with hundreds of others after protesting on the green in Lexington, Mass., on May 31, 1971. The Nixon White House identified Kerry as the movement's most effective spokesman. (AP File Photo) John Kerry returned from Vietnam in April 1969, having won early transfer out of the conflict because of his three Purple Hearts. He asked for a cushy assignment - service as an admiral's aide - and was given precisely that job in Brooklyn. Kerry had thought about running for public office long before he had gone to Vietnam. But when he returned from the war, he wasn't greeted as a hero, like the soldiers of his father's generation. Kerry found that being a veteran could be a drawback, especially in Eastern Massachusetts, where he hoped to run for the US House. "I just came back really concerned about it and upset about it and angry about it," Kerry said. "It took me a little while to decompress. I saw someone who said, `What happened to you? Your eyes are sunk way back in your head.' The tension and the trauma in your life took its toll." When Kerry returned to the United States, the country's troop strength in Vietnam was at its height - 543,000. To that date, 33,400 Americans had been killed, and the number of protests was surging. But during this time, Kerry was still a naval officer and not publicly protesting the war. It was his sister, Peggy, who was involved in the antiwar movement. One day in October 1969, Peggy Kerry was working in the New York office of a Vietnam War protest group that was planning a "moratorium" peace rally in Washington, which would draw 250,000 protesters one month later. A leader in the New York protest, Adam Walinsky, a former speechwriter for Robert F. Kennedy, said he needed a pilot and plane to take him around the state on Oct. 15. Did anyone know a pilot? Peggy Kerry said she would provide such a volunteer: her brother. John Kerry flew Walinsky around New York to deliver speeches against the war. Kerry did not wear his uniform and did not speak at the events, but the experience helped convince him that he wanted to become a public leader of the antiwar movement. On Jan. 3, 1970, Kerry requested that his superior, Rear Admiral Walter F. Schlech, Jr., grant him an early discharge so that he could run for Congress on an antiwar platform. "I just said to the admiral: `I've got to get out. I've got to go do what I came back here to do, which is, end this thing,'" Kerry recalled, referring to the war. The request was approved, and Kerry was honorably discharged, which he said shaved six months from his commitment. But for all his Vietnam heroics and patrician background, Kerry was, politically speaking, a nobody. He gave up on a three-month 1970 bid for Congress in Massachusetts' Third District, which at the time stretched from Newton to Fitchburg, when it became clear the Rev. Robert F. Drinan would instead get the Democratic Party nomination. Some of Kerry's positions at the time sound naive in retrospect. He was quoted in The Harvard Crimson as saying he would like to "almost eliminate CIA activity" and wanted US troops "dispersed through the world only at the directive of the United Nations." Out of the Navy and with a political failure behind him, Kerry refocused on his personal life. In May 1970, he married the woman he had been dating for more than six years, Julia Thorne, the sister of his best friend, David Thorne. Kerry, whose upper-class image was already well established due to his Forbes and Winthrop roots, had a glittering wedding. The New York Times described it this way: "Miss Julia Stimson Thorne, whose ancestors helped to shape the American republic in its early days, and John Forbes Kerry, who wants to help steer it back from what he considers a wayward course, were married this afternoon at the 200-acre Thorne family estate" on Long Island. The article noted that Miss Thorne's cream-colored dress had been worn by her ancestor, Catherine Peartree-Smith, who married Elias Boudinot IV, who served as president of the Continental Congress under the Articles of Confederation. "Alexander Hamilton was best man at that wedding and among those present was George Washington," the story noted. "Whether today's wedding becomes a similar footnote to history may depend on the bridegroom, a graduate of Yale and a veteran of the Vietnam war, who is considering running for Congress from his native Massachusetts." (The article left unsaid that Kerry had just failed in that bid.) For his honeymoon, Kerry chose a telling location: the Pershing family's Jamaica home. Richard Pershing, a close friend of Kerry's and a fellow member of Yale's Skull and Bones society, had been killed in Vietnam. Pershing's grandfather, General John Joseph "Black Jack" Pershing, had commanded US forces in Europe during World War I. With Julia by his side, Kerry became more active in the antiwar movement. After working behind the scenes and making a few little-noticed appearances at rallies, Kerry joined a group called Vietnam Veterans Against the War. Some thought the group was marginal; others mocked its connection to Jane Fonda, who had earned enmity by visiting North Vietnam. In January 1971, the organization held a series of hearings in Detroit called the "Winter Soldier Investigation," but Kerry did not speak at the event, which received only modest press coverage. Kerry wanted a bigger stage, and he wanted the top role. During private conversations with other group leaders, Kerry suggested that a veterans rally be held on the Mall in Washington, an effort Kerry hoped would refute Nixon's charge that the protesters were mostly college "bums." "It was my sense that it wasn't going to be heard unless we went to a place where the issue was joined," Kerry said. "It was my idea to come to Washington. It was my idea to do the march. I floated that idea at the Detroit meeting. We all decided to make it happen. I became the unofficial coordinator-organizer." Some members of the antiwar group viewed Kerry as an opportunist. He hadn't testified during the Winter Soldier hearings, hadn't organized the group, yet now he was seeking to become the coordinator and spokesman. But plenty of veterans also realized Kerry - erudite and clean-cut - was the ideal foil for those who viewed the group as hippie traitors or even communists. So Kerry became the face of the organization, and a media sensation. The protests were set for the week of April 20. Kerry spent some of his time at the Georgetown townhouse of his longtime friend George Butler, working the phones, trying to round up veterans. But the real problem was money. Kerry, who was not financially independent despite rumors to the contrary, was supposed to raise money to pay for buses that would transport the veterans. 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." Face of the antiwar movement In Lowell, Mass., the veteran and onetime antiwar activist, watches as President Nixon announces a Vietnam cease-fire in January 1973. Just before the event, on April 19, 1971, Colson fired off a memo expressing exasperation that more wasn't being done to undermine the organizers. He ordered administration officials to show that Vietnam Veterans Against the War was "a fringe group, that it is financed from questionable sources, that it doesn't represent a veterans movement, and that the guys involved are a pretty shoddy bunch. . . . There just must be more that we can be doing." At a jammed Senate Foreign Relations Committee hearing on April 22, 1971, Kerry took his case to Congress. Television cameras lined the walls, and veterans packed the seats. Kerry was dressed in his green fatigues and wore his Silver Star and Purple Heart ribbons, although he said he left the medals at home. With his thatch of dark hair swept across his brow, Kerry sat at a witness table and delivered the most famous speech of his life, the speech that defined him and made possible his political career. "How do you ask a man to be the last man to die in Vietnam?" Kerry asked. "How do you ask a man to be the last man to die for a mistake?" Attacking the Nixon White House, he said, "This administration has done us the ultimate dishonor. They have attempted to disown us and the sacrifices we made for this country." Almost forgotten in that famous speech were Kerry's controversial assertions that Vietnam veterans had "personally raped, cut off ears, cut off heads, taped wires from portable telephone 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, shot cattle and dogs for fun, poisoned food stocks, and generally ravaged the countryside of South Vietnam in addition to the normal ravage of war, and the normal and very particular ravaging which is done by the applied bombing power of this country." To some veterans, including some of those who served alongside Kerry, this was too much. They thought they had served honorably, and they had seen Kerry as a gung-ho skipper who led the charge and didn't voice such opposition on the battlefield. "I would go up a river with that man anytime. He was a great American fighting man," said Michael Bernique, a highly decorated veteran who served as a swift boat skipper alongside Kerry. But Bernique remains upset with Kerry's assertion that atrocities were committed, an assertion that Kerry has not backed away from. "I think there was a point in time when John was making it up fast and quick. I think he was saying whatever he needed to say." In the Oval Office, President Nixon delivered a backhanded compliment to Kerry, whom he distinguished from the other "bearded weirdos." The "real star" of the hearing was Kerry, Nixon told chief of staff H. R. "Bob" Haldeman and national security adviser Henry Kissinger the day after Kerry testified, according to the secretly taped White House recordings. "He did a hell of a great job," Haldeman said. "He was extremely effective," Nixon agreed. "He did a superb job on it at Foreign Relations Committee yesterday," Haldeman said. "A Kennedy-type guy, he looks like a Kennedy, and he, he talks exactly like a Kennedy." "Where did he serve?" Nixon asked. "He was a Navy lieutenant, j.g., on a gunboat, and he used to run his gunboat up and shoot at, shoot babies out of women's arms," Haldeman said. (A member of Kerry's crew had shot and killed a Vietnamese child in an episode that occurred in a "free-fire zone," according to Kerry, but it is not clear whether Haldeman knew about the matter or was being jocular.) "Oh, stop that," Nixon said. "People in the Navy don't do things [like that.]" With apparent sarcasm, Nixon turned to Kissinger, who assured him a naval officer would not shoot babies out of women's arms. But there was a seriousness to the statement as well; just three weeks earlier, a jury had convicted Lieutenant William Calley of killing 22 civilians in what became known as the My Lai massacre. Just days earlier, Nixon had ordered Calley released pending his appeal. The case had been more fuel for the antiwar movement. Nixon seemed particularly incredulous that Kerry had won so many medals. "Bob, the Navy didn't have any casualties in Vietnam except in the air," Nixon told Haldeman, showing either a disregard for the high casualty rate of swift boat sailors or an extraordinary lack of knowledge about what had really happened during the war he oversaw as commander in chief. The White House staff decided it needed to dig up dirt on Kerry, or at least undermine his effort. Three days later, Haldeman arrived in the Oval Office and announced to the president: "We've got some interesting dope on Kerry." Nixon was interested. "Kerry, it turns out, some time ago decided he wanted to get into politics," Haldeman said. "Well, he ran for, took a stab at the congressional thing. And he consulted with some of the folks in the Georgetown set here. So what, what the issue, what, he'd like to get an issue. He wanted a horse to ride." The tape recording inexplicably ends at this point. Kerry, meanwhile, was becoming a celebrity. Overnight, he had emerged as one of the most recognized veterans in America. Kerry, who understood well the importance that the media placed on imagery, put an exclamation mark on events by lining up with veterans to return their medals to the military on April 23. Kerry said he suggested that veterans place their medals and ribbons on a table and return them. But he said other members of the antiwar veterans group wanted to throw the medals and ribbons over a fence in front of the Capitol, and Kerry went along with the idea. Video footage of the scene shows hundreds of veterans angrily gathering in front of the Capitol, near a fenced-in bin with the large sign saying "Trash." One by one, the veterans, most of whom had long hair and wore combat jackets, threw their medals into the makeshift trash bin. Some press reports say that Kerry "threw his medals." But Kerry has long maintained he threw his own ribbons but someone else's medals. In an interview, he said that he had previously met two veterans, one from the Vietnam War and another from World War II, who had asked Kerry to return their medals to the military. Kerry said he stuffed them into his jacket. He said that when he prepared to throw his ribbons over the fence, he reached into his jacket and pulled out the medals from those two veterans. He said his own medals remained in safekeeping. The week's events had unquestionable impact. At the beginning of the week, a band of 800 or so Vietnam veterans gathered to protest the war, followed by Kerry's April 22 testimony, then the medal-tossing ceremony on April 23. By the following day, the publicity helped draw at least 250,000 people to the Mall in a massive protest. Kerry, wearing a blue button-down shirt under his combat jacket, addressed the rally from the Capitol steps. "We came here to undertake one last mission, to search out and destroy the last vestige of this barbaric war," Kerry told the cheering throng. In one week, Kerry had gone from little-known former swift boat skipper to the face of the protest movement. "The transformation was instant," said Kerry's friend George Butler. "Eight hundred people had turned into 250,000," said Kerry's then-brother-in-law, David Thorne, who stood beside Kerry during the rally. "That is what made it so spectacular." A national figure 1971 Doonesbury cartoon about John Kerry A few weeks later, Kerry was featured in a lengthy segment on the CBS television program "60 Minutes." Correspondent Morley Safer, in a segment titled "First Hurrah," portrayed Kerry as an eloquent man of turmoil who had a Kennedyesque future. "Do you want to be president of the United States?" Safer asked Kerry. "No," Kerry replied. "That's such a crazy question when there are so many things to be done and I don't know whether I could do them." But Kerry's image as a self-promoter soon became the subject of parody, none more on-target than a Doonesbury comic strip penned by fellow Yale alumnus Garry Trudeau. A character in the strip is heard urging that they all attend John Kerry's speech. "He speaks with a rare eloquence and astonishing conviction. If you see no one else this year, you must see John Kerry!" "Who was that?" another character asks. "John Kerry," comes the response. Another strip shows Kerry soaking up the adulation after a speech, smiling and thinking, "You're really clicking tonight, you gorgeous preppie." At the White House, the plotting against Kerry continued. "The concern about Kerry was that he had great credibility as a decorated Vietnam veteran," Colson recalled in a recent interview. So Colson and his staff tried repeatedly to dig up dirt on Kerry. The effort failed. "I don't ever remember finding anything negative about Kerry or hearing anything negative about him," Colson said. "If we had found anything, I'm sure we would have used it to discredit him." Colson's memos, in storage at the National Archives, show that he tried mightily to discredit Kerry. On April 16, Colson noted that, "A number of tough questions have also been planted with the Vietnam Veterans Against the War questioners for `Meet the Press."' Vice President Spiro T. Agnew briefly led the White House charge against Kerry. Appearing in the Bahamas, Agnew said that Kerry, "who drew rave notices in the media for his eloquent testimony before Congress, was later revealed to have been using material ghosted for him by a former Kennedy speechwriter, and to have spent most of his nights in posh surroundings in Georgetown rather than on the Mall with his buddies." Both of Agnew's charges were false, according to Kerry and Walinsky, the former Kennedy aide to whom Agnew referred. Kerry began traveling around the country to carry the antiwar flag. During Memorial Day weekend, he joined a throng of antiwar protesters on the green in Lexington, Mass., where he and hundreds of others were arrested. Kerry said the arrest, for which he paid a $5 fine and spent the night at the Lexington Public Works Garage, is the only arrest of his life. At the time, Kerry's wife, Julia, kept $100 under her pillow just in case she needed to bail out her husband on short notice. In another iconic moment, Kerry appeared with former Beatle John Lennon at a protest in New York City. The White House found a better way to go after Kerry. Colson had seen a press conference featuring a young Navy veteran named John O'Neill, who served in the same swift boat division as Kerry shortly after Kerry left Vietnam. O'Neill, like many swift boat veterans, was outraged at Kerry's claim of US atrocities. In short order, O'Neill became the centerpiece of the Nixon White House strategy to undermine Kerry. O'Neill, now a Texas lawyer, stresses that he did not receive any payment from the White House and was acting on his own because he thought Kerry's statements were unconscionable lies. For weeks, Colson had been accusing Kerry of ducking a debate with O'Neill. On June 15, Colson wrote to another White House aide: "I think we have Kerry on the run, he is beginning to take a tremendous beating in the press, but let's not let him up, let's destroy this young demagogue before he becomes another Ralph Nader. Let's try to move through as many sources as we can the fact that he has refused to meet in debate, even though he agreed to do so and announced to the press he would." The next day, O'Neill arrived at the White House to meet with Nixon. The two men bonded; a brief "grip and grin" session turned into an hourlong meeting, with Nixon bucking up O'Neill for the fight against Kerry. 'We've got to change' Kerry's 1971 book later became the focus of controversy because of the cover photo which showed of veterans hoisting an upside-down US flag. Two weeks later, on June 30, the much anticipated debate took place. Kerry, who had been studying debate since he was about 14 years old, appeared with O'Neill on "The Dick Cavett Show." At 6 feet 4 inches, Kerry towered over Cavett and O'Neill. With his thick dark hair, dark blue suit, and lean features, he cut a striking figure. O'Neill came out swinging. Visibly angry from the start, wearing a light suit, short hair, and white socks, O'Neill used words seemingly intended to taunt his opponent. "Mr. Kerry is the type of person who lives and survives only on war-weariness and fears of the American people," O'Neill said. "This is the same little man who on nationwide television in April spoke of, quote, `crimes committed on a day-to-day basis, with the full awareness of officers at all levels of command.' Who was quoted in a prominent news magazine in May as saying, `War crimes in Vietnam are the rule, not the exception."' Where O'Neill was red-hot, Kerry sought to look calm and intellectual, toting a hefty briefing book. He said the veterans weren't trying to tear down the country, but instead say to the country: "Here is where we went wrong, and we've got to change. What we say is, the killing can stop tomorrow." "On the question of war crimes, it is really only with the utmost consideration that we pose this question," Kerry said. "I don't think that any man comes back to say that he raped, or to say that he burned a village, or to say that he wantonly destroyed crops or something for pleasure. I think he does it at the risk of certain kinds of punishment, at the risks of injuring his own character, which he has to live with, at the risk of the loss of family and friends as a result of it. But he does it because he believes intensely that people have got to be educated about the devastation of this war. We thought we were a moral country, yes, but we are now engaged in the most rampant bombing in the history of mankind." Again and again, the question was asked: Did Kerry commit atrocities or see them committed by others? Kerry stuck to his script. "I personally didn't see personal atrocities in the sense I saw somebody cut a head off or something like that," Kerry said. "However, I did take part in free-fire zones, I did take part in harassment and interdiction fire, I did take part in search-and-destroy missions in which the houses of noncombatants were burned to the ground. And all of these acts, I find out later on, are contrary to the Hague and Geneva conventions and to the laws of warfare. So in that sense, anybody who took part in those, if you carry out the application of the Nuremberg Principles, is in fact guilty. But we are not trying to find war criminals. That is not our purpose. It never has been." O'Neill for years has declined to talk about the experience, partly because he says he became disillusioned with politics and government after the fall of Saigon in 1975. But in a telephone interview from Texas, where he is a trial attorney, O'Neill made it clear he still harbors resentment at the way Kerry accused veterans of atrocities. "The primary reason I got involved was I thought the charges of war crimes were irresponsible and wrong," O'Neill said. "I thought they did a real disservice to all the people that were there. I thought they were immoral." The bitterness remains. Asked whether he agrees with the view of some observers that Kerry was forever altered by the war, O'Neill responded: "The war didn't change [Kerry]. I think he was a guy driven tremendously by ambition. I think he was that way before he went and is that way today." Some Vietnam Veterans Against the War leaders also viewed Kerry as a power-grabbing elitist, a source of internal friction within the antiwar movement. "There was no question but that the rift existed," said Butler, who was with Kerry at the time and remains a close friend. "A wing of the VVAW were pushing so hard to the left that they were almost Maoist. Every time John did something useful like raise money or speak in front of the Foreign Relations Committee or give an interview, he was criticized for being a media whiz." Scott Camil, a former group leader, said Kerry "was not as radical as some of the rest of us. He was a pretty straight shooter, and he came under criticism for things that weren't fair." Still, Camil recalled that Kerry's patrician image was derided by others in the group, which was mostly composed of working-class veterans. Camil said Kerry showed up in ironed clothes, while most of the others were rumpled. Camil said a member had tried to reach Kerry by telephone and was told by someone, presumably a maid, that "Master Kerry is not at home." At the next meeting, someone hung a sign on Kerry's chair that said: "Free the Kerry Maid." Kerry left the organization after about a year of participation and about five months after assuming a leadership role. Kerry says he quit partly to focus on a new organization that emphasized veterans' benefits; others say Kerry was forced out. In fact, Kerry once again was thinking of running for the US House from Massachusetts. But unlike in 1970, when Kerry was barely known, the antiwar movement had turned him into a national figure and taught him how to campaign, how to organize, how to raise money, how to use the media, even how to debate on national television. Kerry had battled the Viet Cong, the Nixon White House, and the extremes of the antiwar movement. Now all he had to do was persuade mostly working-class voters north of Boston to vote for him. Michael Kranish can be reached by email at kranish@globe.com Post Comment Private Reply Ignore Thread |
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