FBI Files Show Kerry Met With Communists More Than Once
Marc Morano, CNSNews.com
Saturday, June 5, 2004

Newly released FBI files reveal that presumed Democrat presidential nominee
John Kerry attended a second meeting with North Vietnamese communists in Paris
in the early 1970s. Kerry has previously admitted to meeting only once with the
North Vietnamese delegations in 1970.

FBI Files Show Kerry Met With Communists More Than Once
Marc Morano, CNSNews.com
Saturday, June 5, 2004

Newly released FBI files reveal that presumed Democrat presidential nominee
John Kerry attended a second meeting with North Vietnamese communists in Paris
in the early 1970s. Kerry has previously admitted to meeting only once with the
North Vietnamese delegations in 1970.

According to the FBI files, Kerry met with representatives from the North
Vietnamese government in Paris in 1971 in an effort to secure the release of
captured American prisoners of war. Kerry has previously acknowledged meeting
"both delegations" of Vietnamese communists in Paris in 1970, but has said
nothing of the 1971 meeting.

Researcher and author Jerry Corsi, who began studying the anti-war movement in
the early 1970s, believes Kerry is hiding key aspects about his anti-war past
from the public as he seeks the presidency.

"Kerry has admitted to one meeting with Madam Binh. Now we have reason to
believe there was a second, so let's press them to admit the second," Corsi
told CNSNews.com.

"Kerry needs to explain to the American people why he directly went into
negotiations with communists." Corsi has written an essay on Kerry's dealings
with the Vietemese communists on the Internet site WinterSoldier.com.

According to Gerald Nicosia, a Kerry supporter and the author of the book "Home
to War: A History of the Vietnam Veterans' Movement," Kerry's second visit to
Paris to meet with emissaries of the North Vietnamese communist government is
documented in redacted FBI files from the era.

"The files record that Kerry made a second trip to Paris that summer to learn
how the North Vietnamese might release prisoners," Nicosia wrote in an essay in
the Los Angeles Times on May 23.

"After deciding not to run [for Congress] in 1970, he and his new wife, Julia
Thorne, traveled to France in May to meet Madame Nguyen Thi Binh and other Viet
Cong and Communist Vietnamese representatives to the Paris peace talks, a trip
he now calls a 'fact-finding mission,'" Nicosia wrote.



Nicosia noted, "Kerry had tried to distinguish between his own trips to meet
with the Vietnamese in Paris, which he considered necessary to fight through
the lies of his own government, and actual negotiations with the enemy, which
Kerry knew were illegal."

Kerry told the New York Times on April 24 that his first meeting with the
Vietnamese communists in 1970 was "not a big deal."

"People were dropping in [at the Paris Peace Talks]. It was a regular sort of
deal," Kerry explained to the New York Times.

But Corsi believes it was a very big deal.

"You had Henry Kissinger there trying to negotiate formally with the Paris
peace delegation, and then these guys [from Vietnam Veterans Against the War]
are off on their own side show, establishing back channels to the Vietnamese
communists; all of this is against the law," Corsi said, referring to U.S. code
18 U.S.C. 953, which declares it illegal for a U.S. citizen to go abroad and
negotiate with a foreign power.

"Exactly who was Kerry ... to have arranged these trips? He had to be in
discussion with some link with the communist party of Vietnam in order to
establish these trips and meetings," Corsi explained.

'What Is Really Happening' Indeed

Kerry also might have had plans to go to South Vietnam in 1971, according to a
June 16, 1971 article in the communist Daily World newspaper.

"Former Navy Lt. John Kerry is planning a three-week trip to South Vietnam in
July to report on 'what is really happening' to the GI's there, he told newsmen
here," read the article, written by the Daily World's Ted Pearson. Kerry was
attending an event in Chicago with Jesse Jackson, who at the time was head of
the organization Operation Bread Basket.

It is unclear whether Kerry ever made the trip to South Vietnam in 1971.
Kerry's campaign did not return several phone calls seeking comment for this
article.

Nicosia has criticized Kerry in the past for not being more open about his
anti-war past.

"I am in kind of an awkward position here. I am a Kerry supporter, and I
certainly don't want to do anything that hurts him. On the other hand, my
number one allegiance is to truth. So I am going to go with where the facts
are, and John is going to have to deal with that," Nicosia told CNSNews.com
back in March when the contents of the FBI files became public and caused Kerry
to revise his past statements on a series of issues dealing with his past.

"I am having some problems with the things he is saying right now, which are
not matching up with accuracy," Nicosia said in March.

"I think [Kerry] may be worried or the people around him may be worried that
his association with VVAW is a very negative thing and they want John to back
away from it," he added.

Kerry and Fonda in the Communists' Hall of Fame

Kerry's anti-war activism and his meetings with the communists had a big
impact, according to Corsi.

"Vietnamese communists would not have won the war without John Kerry. They were
cultivating his protest activity with the VVAW," Corsi said.

Corsi said the Vietnamese communists have shown their gratitude to Kerry by
displaying a photo of him at Ho Chi Minh City's Protestors Hall of the War
Remnants Museum. The photo of fellow anti-war activist and actress Jane Fonda
also appears in the Women's Museum in Saigon.

"As soon as [Kerry] came onto the seen, [the Vietnamese communists] latched on
to him like bees on to honey. [The communists] said, 'This is a guy who tells
our story, it will undermine the sympathy for the war in America,'" Corsi
added.