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Family | Education | Military Service | Antiwar Activities | Senate Career | MIA/POW Issue | Nicarague | Presidential Campaign 2004
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| December 11, 1943 |
John Forbes Kerry was born to Rosemary and Richard Kerry in the west wing of the Fitzsimmons Army Hospital in Aurora, Colorado. Richard Kerry was a diplomat in the foreign service. Rosemary was a homemaker and a minor heir to the Forbes family wealth (one of 11 children born to James Grant Forbes and Margaret Winthrop). John has an older sister Peggy (Margaret) and younger sister, Diana, and younger brother, Cameron. The Kerry family was Roman Catholic, and John served as an altar boy as a young boy. |
| 1954-1957 |
Kerry attended boarding schools at the Institut Montana near Zug in Switzerland from 1954-1955, and La Clairiere, Villars sur Bez, Vaud, Switzerland, from 1955-1956, joining his family in West Berlin on vacations. When Kerry was 13, his parents, who stayed in Europe, sent John to New England for his education, attending Fessenden School in West Newton, Massachusetts in 1956-1957. |
| 1957-1962 |
John Kerry attended St. Paul's School, Concord, New Hampshire, where he was on the debate team and founded the John Winant Society, an organization that still exists to debate major issues of the day. He was a member of the Concordian Literary Society, and was in a 1962 production of Caine Mutiny. In November of 1960, Kerry gave his first political speech, in favor of John F. Kennedy's election to the Presidency.
He played ice hockey, soccer, and lacrosse. He also played bass guitar in a high school band called The Electras. |
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| 1960s |
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| September 1962 |
John Kerry joined President John F. Kennedy to watch the America's Cup race from the USS Joseph P. Kennedy off Newport, Rhode Island. |
| 1962 |
Kerry volunteered in the senatorial campaign of Edward M. Kennedy. |
| 1962-1966 |
John Kerry attended Yale, New Haven, Connecticut. John and close friend, David Thorne played varsity soccer, and both dated Janet Auchincloss, the half-sister of Jacqueline Kennedy.
He became a member of Yale's Skulls and Bones in his final year, 1966. Of the 15 members of Skull and Bones from that year, Kerry had an extraordinary bond with three who went to Vietnam: David Thorne, Fred Smith (a Kerry flying partner who would later found Federal Express), and Richard Pershing (grandson of World War General Jack Pershing), Kerry's close friend since age 13. |
| February 18, 1966 |
While a senior at Yale, Kerry asked his draft board for permission to study a year in Paris, which the draft board declined. A Slate article reported that Kerry wrote in a 1986 book,
"[The Swift Boats] were engaged in coastal patrolling and that's what I thought I was going to be doing. Although I wanted to see for myself what was going on, I didn't really want to get involved in the war."
Kerry was then inducted in the U.S. Naval Reserves.
He had read a book about President Kennedy's World War II experiences on a patrol boat, PT-109, which helped inspire Kerry to volunteer for duty on a Navy patrol boat in Vietnam. Additionally, William Bundy, the uncle of another of Kerry's roommates, Harvey Bundy III, encouraged Kerry to enlist in the officer's corps. |
| June 1966 |
Kerry graduated from Yale with a B.A. in Political Science, with an emphasis on American Government.
John Kerry delivered the class Commencement speech. Many at Yale had noticed that Kerry, already on his way to becoming a commissioned officer in Vietnam, was critical of the war and the use of American military might against communist regimes. His oration included the following:
"What was an excess of isolationism has become an excess of interventionism. And this Vietnam War has found our policy makers forcing Americans into a strange corner . . . that if victory escapes us, it would not be the fault of those who lead, but of the doubters who stabbed them in the back -- notions all too typical of an America that had to find Americans to blame for the takeover in China by the communists, and then for the takeover in Cuba.
"The United States must, I think, bring itself to understand that the policy of intervention that was right for Western Europe does not and cannot find the same application to the rest of the world.
"We have not really lost the desire to serve. We question the very roots of what we are serving.''
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| August 22, 1966 |
Kerry reported for officer training program at the Naval Officer Candidate School at the U.S. Naval Training Center in Newport, Rhode Island |
| December 16, 1966 |
After completing sixteen weeks of officer candidate training in Newport, Rhode Island, John Kerry received his commission as an Ensign, USNR. |
| January 3, 1967 |
Kerry began a 10 week Officer Damage Control Course at the Naval Schools Command on Treasure Island, California. |
| March 22, 1967 |
Kerry he reported to the U.S. Fleet Anti-Air Warfare Training Center, California for training as a Combat Information Center Watch Officer. |
| June 8, 1967 |
Kerry began his first tour of duty, serving as an Ensign in the electrical department on the guided missile frigate USS Gridley. |
| February 9, 1968 |
The USS Gridley set sail for Western Pacific (WESTPAC) deployment. The Gridley traveled to several places, including Wellington in New Zealand, Subic Bay in the Philippines, and the Gulf of Tonkin off North Vietnam, where the ship supported aircraft carriers. The ship had no enemy contact during this time. |
| February 10, 1968 |
Kerry requested duty in Vietnam, listing as his first preference a position as the commander of a Swift boat, designated the Patrol Crafts Fast (PCFs). The 50-foot boat have aluminum hulls and have little or no armor, but are heavily armed and rely on speed. Kerry thought he could avoid actual combat serving on the Swift boats as they originally operated offshore. (Kerry's second choice was a to be an officer in a patrol boat squadron, designated the Patrol Boat River [PBR] boats.) |
| February 17, 1968 |
Kerry received a telegram that his friend, Richard Pershing had died due to "wounds received while on a combat mission when his unit came under hostile small-arms and rocket attack while searching for remains of a missing member of his unit." Kerry was devastated. He wrote a letter to his parents:
"What can I say? I am empty, bitter, angry and desperately lost with nothing but war, violence, and more war around me. I just don't believe that it was meant to be this cruel and senseless -- that anyone could possibly get near to Persh to take his life. What a God-damn total waste. . . . With the loss of Persh something has gone out of me -- he was so much a part of my life at the irreplaceable, incomparable moments of love, concerns, anger and compassion exchanged in Bones that can never be replaced -- never be satisfied in memory form. . . . "
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| May 27, 1968 |
The USS Gridley departed to return to the United States |
| June 8, 1968 |
The USS Gridley returned to port at Long Beach, California. |
| June 16, 1968 |
Kerry was promoted to the rank of Lieutenant Junior Grade, USNR. |
| June 20, 1968 |
Kerry left the Gridley for special training on 50-foot swift boats (used for Vietnam coastal patrol, later for inland waterways) at the Naval Amphibious Base in Coronado. |
| November 17, 1968 |
U.S. Naval LieutenantJG John Kerry completed his Swift boat commander training. |
| December 1, 1968 |
Kerry reported for duty at Coastal Squadron One of Coastal Division 14 at the Cam Ranh Bay in South Vietnam (a port base considered the safest assignment in Vietnam), taking command of Swift boat No. 44, operating in the Mekong Delta. |
| December 2, 1968 |
Kerry experienced first intense combat, and is slightly wounded by shrapnel in the arm. He was awarded a Purple Heart.
There is, however, no after-action report released by the Kerry campaign. The attending physician, Louis Letson says “The story he told was different from what his crewmen had to say about that night. According to Kerry, they had been engaged in a firefight. . . Some of his crew confided that they did not receive any fire from shore, but that Kerry had fired a mortar round at close range to some rocks on shore. The crewman thought that the injury was caused by a fragment ricocheting from that mortar round when it struck the rocks. That seemed to fit the injury which I treated. What I saw was a small piece of metal sticking very superficially in the skin of Kerry's arm. The metal fragment measured about 1 cm. in length and was about 2 or 3 mm in diameter. . .I simply removed the piece of metal by lifting it out of the skin with forceps. I doubt that it penetrated more than 3 or 4 mm. It did not require probing to find it, did not require any anesthesia to remove it, and did not require any sutures to close the wound. The wound was covered with a band-aid.”
Kerry applied for a Purple Heart. His request was initially denied by his superior Grant Hibbard, as Purple Heart eligibility requirements that “the wound for which the award is made must have required treatment by a medical officer” and Purple Hearts are not to be awarded for “accidents. . .not related to or caused by enemy action” or for “self-inflicted wounds. . .involving gross negligence.” Hibbard later acquiesced.
There is a good summary of the Kerry's medals controversy in the report: "Forging a Paper Hero: The Mystery of Kerry's Medals."
(Note: In Kerry's own journal written 9 days later, he writes that he and his crew, "hadn't been shot at yet." Kerry's 2004 campaign said it is possible his first Purple Heart was awarded for unintentionally self-inflicted wounds.) |
| December 6, 1968 |
Kerry was transferred to a more dangerous unit, Coastal Division 11 at An Thoi on Phu Quoc Island, an isolated base on an island near an enemy position. Kerry was opposed to this reassignment. |
| December 13, 1968 |
Kerry was transferred on December 13 to Coastal Division 13 in Cat Lo, which had wider, less dangerous rivers. There he joined a unit which provided support to Zumwalt’s Operation SEALORDS. |
| December 24, 1968 |
Kerry claimed that he was involved in combat in waters off Cambodia during Christmas Eve of 1968. Kerry said he ordered his crew to open fire, silencing the machine gun barrage aimed at them.
"I remember Christmas of 1968 sitting on a gunboat in Cambodia. I remember what it was like to be shot at by Vietnamese and Khmer Rouge and Cambodians, and have the president of the United States telling the American people that I was not there; the troops were not in Cambodia. I have that memory which is seared -- seared -- in me."
(Note: Kerry has since altered his claim to say he was in Cambodia in early 1969. This claim in unsubstantiated. The story changes by the day and unfolding.) |
| December 1968 |
Within a few weeks Kerry was reassigned back to An Thoi.
Crewman Steve Gardner states that he filed a false after-action report to cover up a January incident involving the accidental shooting of a child.
(Kerry’s fellow officer George Bates similarly states that Kerry habitually overreacted to threatening situations by using excessive force, including on one occasion burning down a random village where there was no sign of enemy presence.) |
| January 22, 1969 |
Kerry and other Swift boat commanders travel to Saigon for meeting with Adm. Elmo Zumwalt, Commander Naval Forces Vietnam (COMNAVFORV), and Gen. Creighton Abrams, Commander United States Military Assistance Command Vietnam (COMUSMACV)
On June 6, 1971, John Kerry described the work of the Swift boats to the Washington Star as follows:
"We established an American presence in most cases by showing the flag and firing at sampans and villages along the banks. Those were our instructions, but they seemed so out of line that we finally began to go ashore, against our orders, and investigate the villages that were supposed to be our targets. We discovered we were butchering a lot of innocent people, and morale became so low among the officers on those 'swift boats' that we were called back to Saigon for special instructions from Gen. Abrams. He told us we were doing the right thing. He said our efforts would help win the war in the long run. That's when I realized I could never remain silent about the realities of the war in Vietnam."
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| January 30, 1969 |
Kerry took over command of the PCF-94 swift boat. |
| February 20, 1969 |
Kerry and crew come under automatic weapon and rocket fire while on patrol in South Vietnam. Kerry was hit by shrapnel in his left thigh. He is awarded a second Purple Heart.
(Note: Kerry's account is disputed by the Swift Boat Veterans, some of whom state there was no enemy fire.) |
| February 28, 1969 |
Kerry and crew again drew intense enemy fire. Kerry charged Viet Cong positions, grounded his boat, pursued a Viet Cong fighter into a small hut, killed him, and retrieved his loaded rocket launcher. Kerry then led an assault party to secure the area, killing 10 Viet Cong with no American casualties. He is awarded a Silver Star "for conspicuous gallantry and intrepidity in action."
"In addition to Kerry's Silver Star PCF-94's performance on February 28 also earned Bronze Stars for Tommy Belodeau and Mike Medeiros and Navy Commendation Medals with Combat V Devices for Del Sandusky, Fred Short, and Gene Thorson," wrote author Douglas Brinkley (Tour of Duty: John Kerry and the Vietnam War).
There were actually three citations issued for Kerry's Silver Star. They are all available on johnkerry.com. See this table for comparisons.
FrontPage Magazine.com also reviewed the Silver Star controversy in the article, "John Kerry's Puzzling Silver Star Citations": "Now, on the heels of yet another revelation—that Kerry’s DD 214 (“Report of Transfer or Separation”), displayed on his website, shows his Silver Star embellished with an unauthorized “V” for valor—which makes it facially false and at variance with official government records (see our article, John Kerry’s Mysterious Combat “V”)—it has come to light that his Silver Star award is fraught with other peculiarities."
(Note: Former Navy Secretary John Lehman stated on August 27, 2004 that he no idea where a Silver Star citation displayed on Democratic presidential nominee John Kerry's campaign Web site came from. The citation appears over Lehman's signature.
(Note: Kerry's account is disputed by the Swift Boat Veterans.) |
| March 13, 1969 |
Patrolling the Bay Hap River with five other swift boats, Kerry's group is ambushed. Kerry is hit in the arm by an exploding mine while another boat is blown out of the water. Kerry turns his boat back toward the ambush to rescue survivors. "We were still under fire, and he was wounded at the time" recalled Jim Rassmann. Kerry pulled the Rassman into his boat, saving his life, and was awarded a third Purple Heart and a Bronze Star "For heroic achievement [and] great personal courage under fire."
There is a detailed summary of the contradictory accounts of this event in the report, "Forging a Paper Hero: The Mystery of Kerry's Medals": "Where the reports state that Kerry’s buttocks injury occurred when the mine exploded, Brinkley’s biography records the account of Kerry’s war journal that the shrapnel in Kerry’s buttocks came from throwing a grenade into a rice cache—as Kerry wrote, 'I got a piece of small grenade in my ass from one of the rice bin explosions.' Rassmann recalls the rice explosion incident occurring prior to the incident where Kerry pulled him out of the water. Kerry’s fellow officer Larry Thurlow reports that Kerry’s buttocks injury was a self-inflicted wound caused by Kerry setting off a grenade too close to a stock of rice he was trying to destroy. The after-action report mentions 'TWO TONS GRAIN AND RICE DESTROYED.'"
(Note: Kerry's account is disputed by the Swift Boat Veterans.) |
| March 17, 1969 |
The policy of Coastal Squadron 1, the swift boat command, was to send home any individual who is wounded three times in action. After sustaining his third wound from enemy action in Vietnam, Kerry was granted relief under this policy. |
| April 11, 1969 |
After leaving Vietnam under a policy that grants relief to any individual who is wounded three times in action, Kerry returned to the U.S. to serve as an admiral's aide and flag lieutenant to Rear Admiral Walter F. Schlech, Jr. with the Military Sea Transportation Service based in Brooklyn, New York. |
| November 1969 |
Jeremy Rifkin and Tod Ensign launched a new organization called the Citizens Commissions of Inquiry (CCI) to publicize American war crimes in Indochina, in response to a public call from the Bertrand Russell Foundation in New York
(Editor's Note: I have included many references to anti-war war activities for historical pers[ective. John Kerry was involved with groups such as the CCI and activists such as Jane Fonda, although Kerry was not involved in all of their activities. A more indepth timeline is available at WinterSoldier.com.) |
| December 1969 |
Kerry requests an early release from the Naval Reserve in order to run for the Fourth District congressional seat of Massachusetts on an antiwar platform. |
| December 18, 1969 |
Kerry's service record evaluation stated "In a combat environment often requiring independent, decisive action, LTJG Kerry was unsurpassed . . . LTJG Kerry emerges as the acknowledged leader in his peer group." - Lt. Cmdr. George Elliott. |
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| 1970s |
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| January 1, 1970 |
Kerry was promoted to (full) Lieutenant, USNR. |
| January 3, 1970 |
Kerry requested and was granted a release from Active Duty and transfered to inactive duty in the U.S. Naval Reserve, with records forwarded to Reserve Manpower Center, Naval Training Center, Bainbridge, Maryland.
(Note: Paragraph 6 in the Release from Active Duty form states: "You are advised that your release from active duty does not terminate your status as a memeber of the U.S. Naval Reserve. ... While on inactive duty you are subject to involuntary recall to active duty to the extent authorized by federal statute. ...") |
| February 13, 1970 |
Kerry told the Harvard Crimson,
“I'm an internationalist. I'd like to see our troops dispersed through the world only at the directive of the United Nations . . . to almost eliminate CIA activity. The CIA is fighting its own war in Laos and nobody seems to care." He also favors a negative income tax and keeping unemployment at a very low level, "even if it means selective economic controls."
(The Harvard Crimson did a retrospective in its February 11, 2004 edition, Old Crimson Interview Reveals A More Radical John Kerry.) |
| February 1970 |
CCI co-sponsored its first “commissions of inquiry” in Toronto and Annapolis MD, and began providing accounts of war crimes to the press. During the next few months, the CCI held events in Springfield Massachusetts, Richmond, New York City, Buffalo, Boston, Minneapolis, Los Angeles, and Portland Oregon. |
| March 1970 |
Kerry dropped out of the congressional race to make way for antiwar activist Father Robert F. Drinan, Dean of Boston College Law School, and later became chairman of Drinan's campaign. Drinan defeated pro-war incumbent Philip Philbin in the Democratic primary and won the general election. |
| May 4, 1970 |
The day after it was announced that the U.S. would send troops into Cambodia, anti-war protests began on campus at Kent State University and spilled into the city of Kent's downtown. 13 seconds of rifle fire by 28 Ohio National Guardsmen left four students dead, one permanently paralyzed, and eight others wounded. Not every student was a demonstrator, some were students just walking to class. |
| May 7, 1970 |
Kerry appeared on The Dick Cavett Show for the first time, speaking in opposition to U.S. involvement in Vietnam. |
| May 23, 1970 |
John Kerry married Philadelphia heiress Julia Stimson Thorne (born September 16, 1944, twin sister of John's friend, David Thorne). John and Julia later had two daughters, Alexandra, born on September 5, 1973, and Venessa, born on December 31, 1976. |
| May/June 1970 |
Kerry and Julia traveled to Paris, France and met with Madame Nguyen Thi Binh, the Foreign Minister of the Provisional Revolutionary Government of Vietnam (PRG), the political wing of the Vietcong, and other Viet Cong and Communist Vietnamese representatives to the Paris peace talks, a trip he now calls a "fact-finding" mission.
(U.S. code 18 U.S.C. 953, declares it illegal for a U.S. citizen to go abroad and negotiate with a foreign power.) |
| June 1970 |
Kerry joined the Vietnam Veterans Against the War (VVAW), a national veterans group that was part of the Peoples Coalition for Peace and Justice. (The PCPJ was a broad coalition of local and national organizations, including the Communist Party, USA, “committed to conducting demonstrations aimed at ending the war in Indochina, and poverty, racism and injustice at home.” The VVAW, CCI and PCPJ all had headquarters at 156 Fifth Avenue in New York City. VVAW Executive Secretary Al Hubbard (a former Black Panther) was also on the coordinating committee of the PCPJ. Hubbard soon appointed Kerry to the VVAW’s Executive Committee, bypassing the normal election process. |
| August 1970 |
Al Hubbard asked Tod Ensign and Jeremy Rifkin of the CCI to join with the VVAW, the Reverend Dick Fernandez of Clergy and Laymen Concerned about Vietnam (CALCAV), Jane Fonda, Mark Lane and others to organize national hearings on war crimes. Lane suggested calling the hearings "Winter Soldier," a play on the opening lines of Thomas Paine's The American Crisis: "These are the times that try men's souls. The summer soldier and the sunshine patriot will, in this crisis, shrink for the service of his country; but he that stands it now, deserves the love and thanks of man and woman." By the end of the month the Winter Soldier Investigation has been planned as a simultaneous event featuring "Vietnamese victims" in Windsor, Canada, and Vietnam veterans in Detroit, connected by closed-circuit |
| September 4, 1970 |
Some 75 VVAW members began a three-day hike to Valley Forge, Pennsylvania. Along the way they simulated war atrocities against civilians, and handed out flyers to the townspeople stating that they might have been raped, murdered or tortured by the U.S. Infantry had they been Vietnamese, and claiming that "American soldiers do these things every day." Called Operation RAW (Rapid American Withdrawal). |
| September 7, 1970 |
At the conclusion of Operation RAW, a rally is held in Valley Forge, featuring speeches by John Kerry, Jane Fonda, and Mark Lane. Fonda is quoted as saying that ". . . My Lai was not an isolated incident but rather a way of life for many of our military." |
| September 11, 1970 |
A VVAW Executive Committee meeting is attended by president Jan Crumb, executive secretary Al Hubbard, treasurer Jason Gettinger, Northeast representative John Kerry, and three others. The organization leadership decides to picket against the National Guard Association in New York, send Hubbard on a "speaking tour" with Jane Fonda, consider an "appropriate induction center action for purpose of making clear transition from citizen to war criminal," and "sponsor turn in of war crimes testimony to UN" after the Winter Soldier event. |
| September 17, 1970 |
The VVAW protests the National Guard's national convention. |
| October, 1970 |
Jane Fonda, Al Hubbard, and Jan Crumb raise money for the VVAW and create new chapters through a nationwide lecture tour covering more than 50 college campuses. Fonda and Mark Lane also plug the VVAW during appearances on the Dick Cavett Show. |
| November 22, 1970 |
During a fund-raising tour for GI deserters, Vietnam Veterans Against the War and the Black Panthers, Jane Fonda is quoted in the Detroit Free Press as telling a University of Michigan audience,
"I would think that if you understood what communism was, you would hope, you would pray on your knees that we would someday become communist,"
"The peace proposal of the Viet Cong is the only honorable, just, possible way to achieve peace in Vietnam."
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| 1970 |
Kerry was one of the original organizers of the first Earth Day in Massachusetts, and would later chair the National Earth Day board in 1990. (1) |
| January 8-10, 1971 |
The People's Peace Treaty: Adopted by New University Conference and Chicago Movement Meeting:
"A Joint Treaty of Peace
BETWEEN THE PEOPLE OF THE UNITED STATES, SOUTH VIETNAM & NORTH VIETNAM
Be it known that the American and Vietnamese people are not enemies. The war is carried out in the names of the people of the United States and South Vietnam but without our consent. It destroys the land and people of Vietnam. It drains America of its resources, its youth and its honor."
It is a nine-point agreement. Kerry is thought to have been one of the signers of the treaty. |
| January 31 - February 1, 1971 |
The VVAW met at a at a Howard Johnson’s in Detroit for the "Winter Soldier Investigation," a national conference intended to convince the public that American troops were routinely committing war crimes in Vietnam. "I was just going to show support for the guys who were already picked out to testify," said Steve Pitkin. "Fighting in the war was terrible enough -- I shot people -- but I never saw any atrocities against civilians. The Vietcong hung up tribal chiefs and disemboweled them in front of their own families -- they did that to their own people. I never saw Americans do anything like that.
Among those present were Scott Camil, John Kerry, Jane Fonda, Jan Crumb, Joe Bangert, and Steven J. Pitkim.
Steven J. Pitkin gave testimony (1 - 2). "Kerry and other leaders of the event instructed me to publicly state that I had witnessed incidents of rape, brutality, atrocities and racism, knowing that such statements would necessarily be untrue.
(Note: August 31, 2004, Steve Pitkin signed an Affadavit. Steve wants to apologize to Vietnam veterans for what he did and said at the Winter Soldier Investigation. "The VVAW found me during a difficult time in my life, and I let them use me to advance their political agenda. They pressured me to tell their lies, but that's no excuse for what I did. I just want people to know the truth and to make amends as best I can. I'd hate to see the troops serving today have to go through what Vietnam veterans did.") |
| February 19, 1971 |
VVAW leaders meet in New York to plan the organization's next action. John Kerry proposes to "march on Washington and take this whole thing to Congress." The protest is designated "Dewey Canyon III," after two military operations into Laos intended to interdict the Ho Chi Minh Trail. John |
| March 14 - 18, 1971 |
Jane Fonda, Mark Lane, and VVAW representative Michael Hunter fly to Europe for a five-day tour. In Paris, Fonda meets privately with Madame Binh of the PRG, then the three activists fly to London, where Fonda alleges American atrocities that include "applying electrodes to prisoners' genitals, mass rapes, slicing off of body parts, scalping, skinning alive, and leaving 'heat tablets' around which burned the insides of children who ate them.'" |
| March 16, 1971 |
The VVAW held a news conference on the third anniversary of the My Lai massacre to announce the forthcoming protest in Washington, DC. Retired Marine commandant General David Shoup and John Kerry demanded an immediate end to the war. Kerry, wearing his medals, described American soldiers as being "given the chance to die for the biggest nothing in history." |
| April 18, 1971 |
John Kerry first appeared on NBC's Meet the Press with Al Hubbard and made the following statement.:
MR. KERRY (Vietnam Veterans Against the War): There are all kinds of atrocities and I would have to say that, yes, yes, I committed the same kind of atrocities as thousands of other soldiers have committed in that I took part in shootings in free-fire zones. I conducted harassment and interdiction fire. I used 50-caliber machine guns which we were granted and ordered to use, which were our only weapon against people. I took part in search-and-destroy missions, in the burning of villages. All of this is contrary to the laws of warfare. All of this is contrary to the Geneva Conventions and all of this ordered as a matter of written established policy by the government of the United States from the top down. And I believe that the men who designed these, the men who designed the free-fire zone, the men who ordered us, the men who signed off the air raid strike areas, I think these men, by the letter of the law, the same letter of the law that tried Lieutenant Calley, are war criminals.
Kerry introduced Hubbard as a former Air Force captain who had spent two years in Vietnam and was wounded in action. |
| April 18 - 23, 1971 |
More than a thousand VVAW members stage an "invasion" of Washington D.C., for Operation Dewey Canyon III. They hold memorial ceremonies, meet with sympathetic members of Congress, camp on the Mall, perform "guerilla theater" -- re-enactments of atrocities against civilians, complete with fake blood -- on the Capitol steps and in front of the Justice Department, and hold a candlelight march around the White House carrying an upside-down American flag. At the end of the six-day event, a number of the veterans throw military medals and ribbons over a fence in front of the Capitol in a gesture of contempt. Many shout obscenities or threats against the government.
The protests receive enthusiastic coverage in the communist Daily World newspaper on April 20th (Part 1, Part 2), 21st (Part 1, Part 2), 23rd (Part 1, Part 2), and 24th (Part 1, Part 2). |
| April 22, 1971 |
John Kerry, director of the Vietnam Veterans against the War, testified before special session the Senate Foreign Relations Committee for two hours about alleging widespread atrocities by U.S. troops, and the official policies in Vietnam which were illegal, according to international law. He asks the Congressional panel "How do you ask a man to be the last man to die for a mistake?"
"They told the stories at times they had personally raped, cut off ears, cut off heads, taped wires from portable telephones 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." (1 - 2)
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"I have been to Paris. I have talked with both delegations at the peace talks, that is to say the Democratic Republic of Vietnam and the Provisional Revolutionary Government and of all eight of Madam Binh's points it has been stated time and time again, and was stated by Senator Vance Hartke when he returned from Paris, and it has been stated by many other officials of this Government, if the United States were to set a date for withdrawal the prisoners of war would be returned." (3)
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Senator Stuart SYMINGTON (D- Mo.): Mr. Kerry, from your experience in Vietnam do you think it is possible for the President or Congress to get accurate and undistorted information through official military channels."
KERRY: I had direct experience with that. Senator, I had direct experience with that and I can recall often sending in the spot reports which we made after each mission; and including the GDA, gunfire damage assessments, in which we would say, maybe 15 sampans sunk or whatever it was. And I often read about my own missions in the Stars and Stripes and the very mission we had been on had been doubled in figures and tripled in figures. . . . I also think men in the military, sir, as do men in many other things, have a tendency to report what they want to report and see what they want to see. (4)
A large group of veterans march to the steps of the Supreme Court to ask the Court why it has not ruled on the constitutionality of the war. They sing God Bless America. One hundred and ten are arrested for disturbing the peace and are led off the steps with their hands clasped behind their heads. Lobbying on Capitol Hill continues all day. A District Court judge angrily dissolves his injunction order, rebuking Justice Department lawyers for requesting the court order and then not enforcing it.
Ramsey Clark, former U.S. Attorney General and lawyer for the vets, spoke on the Supreme Court's ban against the veteran's campsite at the foot of Capitol Hill. John Kerry can be seen pictured on the podium.
Veterans stage a candlelight march around the White House. A huge American flag is carried upside down as a signal of distress. The march ends back at the camp when the flag carriers mount the stage. |
| April 23, 1971 |
Veterans threw their medals and ribbons over a makeshift fence on the steps of the Capitol. Kerry claimed to throw his ribbons over the fense, then claimed they were someone else's ribbons or medals.
Congressman Jonathan Bingham held hearings with former intelligence and public information officers over distortion of news and information concerning the war. Senators George McGovern and Philip Hart held hearings on atrocities committed by U.S. soldiers in Vietnam.
The NBC Nightly News reveals that Al Hubbard had not been an Air Force Captain, as he claimed, but a staff sergeant E-5. A later investigation of Hubbard's military records shows that he was never assigned to Vietnam.
Kerry is interviewed in a New York Times article titled “An Angry War Veteran,” in which he admits to the reporter that he enlisted in the Swift Boats to avoid the war in Vietnam, since the boats were only used for patrol duty:
“That first trip to Vietnam piqued his curiosity, 'I wanted to go back and see for myself what was going on, but I didn’t really want to get involved in the war.' So late in 1968 he volunteered for an assignment on "swift boats" - the short, fast aluminum craft that were then used for patrol duty off the coast of Vietnam.
"Two weeks before he arrived in Vietnam as a swift boat commander, he said, 'they changed the policy on the use of the boats - decided to send them up the river to prove to the Vietcong that they didn’t own the waters.'
The river missions involved shooting at sampans and at huts along the banks and suddenly, Mr. Kerry recalls, we said, ‘hey, wait a minute - we don’t know who these people are.’ So we started to beach our boats to go to ashore and find out what we had been shooting at.”
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| May 25, 1971 |
Kerry appears on 60 Minutes with Morley Safer. Asked whether he wants to be President of the United States, Kerry replies in the negative, and calls it a "crazy question." |
| May 30 - 31, 1971 |
Several hundred VVAW members marched from Concord to Boston, reversing the path of Paul Revere's 1775 midnight ride.
After defying a ban on overnight use of Battle Green in Lexington, site of the first battle of the American Revolution, 458 people are arrested and held overnight, including John Kerry. The following day the group marches from Bunker Hill to Boston Common. |
| June 1971 |
According to an FBI report, Kerry praised Vietnam’s communist dictator Ho Chi Minh, comparing him to George Washington. At the time, Kerry was serving as the point man for VVAW. The president of the organization, Al Hubbard, claimed to be an Air Force captain who was severely injured during his service in Vietnam, but it was discovered that Hubbard was a sergeant who never served in Vietnam. Hubbard did serve the communist cause, making propaganda trips to Hanoi paid for by the Communist Party USA. |
| Summer 1971 |
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. Gerald Nicosia, a Kerry supporter and the author of Home to War: A History of the Vietnam Veterans' Movement, noted that this meeting is documented in redacted FBI files. |
| June 13, 1971 |
Kerry spoke at the Register for Peace Rally at Mineola, New York.
(Despite a doctored photograph surfacing, Jane Fonda was not present at the event.) |
| June 30, 1971 |
John Kerry debated John O'Neill on The Dick Cavett Show. After his antiwar testimony before the Senate Foreign Relations committee, Kerry became a much sought-after guest on late night talk shows. |
| July 24, 1971 |
John Kerry spoke in support of the Vietnam Provisional Revolutionary Government's Seven Point Plan. |
| October 1971 |
John Kerry and the VVAW published The New Soldier (Collier-Macmillan, 1971), a book of essays and photographs documenting Operation Dewey Canyon III, held April 18-23, 1971. It was edited by David Thorne and George Butler. Kerry later bought up all available copies of the book when he ran for political office, later in 1972. The book can be downloaded in three parts: Part I, Part II, Part III.
"We will not quickly join those who march on Veterans' Day waving small flags, calling to memory those thousands who died for the 'greater glory of the United States.' We will not accept the rhetoric. We will not readily join the American Legion and the Veterans of Foreign Wars-in fact, we will find it hard to join anything at all and when we do, we will demand relevancy such as other organizations have recently been unable to provide. We will not take solace from the creation of monuments or the naming of parks after a select few of the thousands of dead Americans and Vietnamese. We will not uphold traditions which decorously memorialize that which was base and grim."
|
| November 12 - 15, 1971 |
Declassified FBI documents identified John Kerry as having attended a VVAW meeting in Kansas City, Misouri in the house of one of the members. Scot Camil , VVAW Regional Coordinator from Florida was running the meeting. Camil proposed the establishment of "readiness groups" of the "Phoenix type."
VVAW secretly voted on a proposal to kill six pro-war senators, including Republican Strom Thurmond of South Carolina and Democrat John Stennis of Mississippi.
Gerald Nicosia, the historian, told the New York Sun that “Camil was deadly serious, brilliant and highly logical.” In his book he reports that “what Camil sketched was so explosive that the coordinators feared lest government agents even hear of it,” so they moved their meeting to a Mennonite hall.
There, according to six eyewitnesses interviewed by the Sun, the plan was discussed and voted down, with Mr. Kerry speaking out against it, although there is disagreement about how narrow the margin of defeat was. On the third day of the meeting, Mr. Kerry and three others resigned from their posts as national coordinators of VVAW. Historian Douglas Brinkley says Mr. Kerry told him he quit because of “personality conflicts and differences in political philosophy.” Mr. Kerry also told Mr. Brinkley that he was a “no show” in Kansas City.
Kerry later told two historians, Gerald Nicosia and Douglas Brinkley, that he was not there and that he had resigned from the organization before the meeting was held. In March 2004, reliable witnesses came forward and placed John Kerry at the meeting. In 2004, FBI files emerged establishing Kerry’s presence in Kansas City. His campaign conceded that Kerry somehow must have forgotten his involvement in the plot to assassinate U.S. senators while still on the executive committee of the VVAW. |
| November 15, 1971 |
John Kerry resigns from the Executive Committee of the VVAW stating personal reasons, after trying unsuccessfully to have Al Hubbard removed from the group’s leadership. (Kerry continued to represent the organization in interviews and public appearances for several months.) |
| December 26, 1971 |
VVAW protesters take over the Statue of Liberty for about 40 hours and draped an upside-down American flag across the statue’s face. According to the New York Post, the VVAW later receives a “congratulatory message” from Vietcong negotiator Le Mai in Paris. |
| December 27, 1971 |
Twenty-five VVAW protesters took over the Betsy Ross House in Philadelphia. |
| December 28, 1971 |
VVAW protesters splash bags of blood in front of the White House, then take over the Lincoln Memorial. 87 are arrested. John Kerry tells the New York Times that he is helping raise bail money for some of the demonstrators. |
| January 11, 1972 |
John Kerry represented the VVAW at Dartmouth College. |
| February 12, 1972 |
Kerry spoke at the Rhode Island Young Democrats' convention in Providence, Rhode Island, urging youth voter registration. |
| January 25, 1972 |
Kerry attended a Washington protest meeting where the New York Times described him as "a leader of the Vietnam Veterans Against the War." |
| February 1972 |
A VVAW delegation attended a World Assembly for Peace and Independence of the People of Indochina in Versailles, France. |
| April 3, 1972 |
John Kerry announced his candidacy for the Massachusetts 5th Congressional District seat vacated by Rep. F. Bradford Morse. |
| April 22, 1972 |
John Kerry represented the VVAW at the "Emergency March for Peace" in Bryant Park in New York City. |
| May 30, 1972 |
As a candidate for the US House of Representatives in the 5th Congressional District, John Kerry addressed the Democratic National Platform Committee at Faneuil Hall. |
| July 1, 1972 |
Lieutenant Kerry is transferred to Standby Reserves, Inactive. |
| July 8 - 22, 1972 |
Jane Fonda made her infamous visit to Hanoi, where she made numerous radio broadcasts to American and South Vietnamese military personnel encouraging mutiny and desertion, while repeatedly claiming that the United States is committing war crimes in Vietnam. Fonda also visited American prisoners, reporting on the air that they are being “well cared for” and that they wished to convey their “sense of disgust of the war and their shame for what they have been asked to do.” Upon leaving North Vietnam, Fonda accepted from her hosts a ring made from the wreckage of a downed American plane. |
| July 29 - August 12, 1972 |
Former U.S. Attorney General Ramsey Clark travels to Hanoi on behalf of the Communist Stockholm International Commission for Inquiry. Clark denounces the U.S. bombing of North Vietnam and visited American POWs, reporting that they are in good health and their conditions "could not be better." |
| September 1972 |
On the eve of the primary, Cameron Kerry, John's brother, and campaign field director Thomas J. Vallely, were arrested in the basement of a Lowell building that housed the headquarters of Kerry and another Democratic contender, state Representative Anthony R. DiFruscia of Lawrence. (Thomas Vallely will later become director of the Vietnam Program at the John F. Kennedy School of Government, Harvard University.) |
| September 19, 1972 |
Kerry won the Democratic primary for his Congressional bid. |
| November 1972 |
Kerry lost his bid for Congress in the general election to Republican Paul Cronin. |
| Late 1972 |
The U.S Congress voted to eliminate funding for military operations in Indochina. |
| January 24, 1973 |
President Richard Nixon announced the cease-fire in Vietnam. |
| March 4, 1973 |
Maj. Kenneth Cordier, is Air Force pilot who was in Vietnamese custody for 2,284 days. He said his captors "repeated incessantly" John Kerry's one-liner about being "the last man to die" for a lost cause. Cordier was released March 4, 1973. He is among many with similar stories. (1 - 2)
“This man committed an act of treason. He lied, he besmirched our name and he did it for self-interest. And now he wants us to forget.”
(Excerpt from “Stolen Honor”) -- George (Bud) Day,Former Vietnam POW
|
| April 1973 |
Jane Fonda calls the freed American prisoners “hypocrites and pawns,” insisting that, "Tortured men do not march smartly off planes, salute the flag, and kiss their wives. They are liars. I also want to say that these men are not heroes." |
| 1973 - 1976 |
Kerry enrolled in September of 1973 at Boston College Law School, Chestnut Hill, Massachusetts. |
| 1974 |
North Vietnam initiates minor probing attacks into South Vietnam--in violation of the Paris treaty. There is no military response by the United States. |
| 1975 |
North Vietnam launches a massive invasion of South Vietnam. |
| April 30, 1975 |
Saigon falls. |
| 1975 - 1979 |
Communist regimes in southeast Asia murdered an estimated two million Cambodians, as well as tens of thousands of South Vietnamese. One million South Vietnamese were imprisoned in "re-education camps," and hundreds of thousands died there. An additional two million fled the country by boat, with many drowning in the attempt. |
| 1976 |
John Kerry earned his law degree from Boston College. |
| 1976 - 1979 |
John Kerry joined the Middlesex County district attorney's office. As a top prosecutor, Kerry claimed to have fought organized crime and put the number two mob boss in New England behind bars (no one seems to name this mob boss). (1)
Kerry also boasted that he wiped out an inventory of eleven thousand cases, but the Boston Globe has reported that during his tenure the entire superior-court caseload, including backlog, never exceeded seven thousand two hundred and sixty-five cases. (1)
With grant money, Kerry initiated new programs: a priority prosecution program that sought to bring violent offenders to trial in less than ninety days; an organized-crime task force; an arson task force, the first victim-assistance unit in the country, and a rape-counselling unit. (1) |
| 1978 |
The original VVAW split up when a minority broke away to form Vietnam Veterans Against the War Anti-Imperialist (VVAWAI), with the larger faction retaining the original name. Both the VVAW and the rabidly anti-American VVAWAI remain in operation today. |
| 1978 |
Former VVAW leader Robert Muller founds the Vietnam Veterans of America (VVA). The VVA also describes John Kerry as a “co-founder” of the organization. In the late 1980s, Mueller and the Vietnam Veterans of America Foundation (VVAF) split from the VVA. Mueller led a VVAF delegation to Hanoi, where he praised the communist leadership of Vietnam and laid a wreath on the grave of Ho Chi Minh. |
| February 16, 1978 |
The Secretary of the Navy issues an acceptance of Lieutenant Kerry's resignation and Kerry is honorably discharged from U.S. Naval Reserve. This discharge has been questioned by some. |
| June 16, 1978 |
As Middlesex County 1st Assistant DA, John Kerry held a press conference to explain that an investigation into possible criminal charges stemming from US Senator Edward Brooke's admitted "misstatements" in his first divorce trial, ordered that day by Middlesex DA John Droney. |
| 1979 - 1982 |
In 1979, John Kerry and a colleague at the D.A.’s office, Roanne Sragow, opened the firm of Kerry & Sragow, at 60 State Street, in downtown Boston. Sragow, was one of the star assistant district attorneys during Kerry’s tenure in Middlesex County. She and Kerry later became romantically involved.
Kerry’s background as a prosecutor made criminal work unappealing to him. One of Kerry and Sragow’s more memorable cases involved a series of patients who had received a horrific treatment for baldness: implants of carpet fibres, in an attempt to simulate actual hair.
Sragow and Kerry got a conviction overturned for George Reissfelder, who was wrongly accused of murder. It was one reason Kerry stated he was opposed to the death penalty, because mistakes are made. He has modified his opposition in recent years, and he now supports the execution of convicted terrorists. (1) |
| 1980s |
Kerry prided himself on his homemade cookies, and during this period he and a friend, K. Dun Gifford, opened a cookie stand in Quincy Market. They called the business Kilvert and Forbes, after their mothers’ maiden names. Kerry sold his interest years ago, but the cookie emporium still exists, selling adaptations of the Senator’s original recipes. (Chocolate-chocolate-chunk cookies, based on a recipe by Kerry’s mother, remain especially popular.)
Note: That is the version of the cookie story according to John Kerry. David Liederman of David's cookies recalled a different version of how Kerry’s cookie venture crumbled.
“Some guy who called me up was John Kerry, in ’79 or ’80,” Liederman recalled. “He said he wanted to come down and talk to me about franchising. He came to the office and said he had an incredible space in Boston, which was Faneuil Hall. He said he needed some plans and some layouts and all sorts of things to get the approval of the landlord. So I gave him the layout, the package, and he went back and I didn’t hear from him for six or seven months.”
Then one day Liederman got a call from someone who said they’d seen one of his stores in Faneuil Hall. Not having a store in Boston, Liederman decided to have a look for himself. “It was a direct, 100-percent knock off of David’s Cookies,” said Liederman, from the appliances to the shop’s design to the cookies themselves. [...] “I told him he had stolen my idea, and he replied: ‘You’re absolutely right. I am a politician; I shouldn’t be in the cookie business, so let me sell you my store,’” Liederman wrote. Liederman never bought the store, he said, because Kerry was operating it in violation of his lease. “He was supposed to be selling jams and jellies, not cookies.”
|
|
|
| 1980s |
, |
| Summer 1982 |
John Kerry is separated from his wife, Julia |
| 1982 - 1984 |
John Kerry is elected Lieutenant Governor of Massachusetts; Michael S. Dukakis is elected governor. |
| January 26,1984 |
Kerry announces he is running for Paul Tsongas's seat in the Senate, after Senator Tsongas said he wouldn't seek reelection in. |
| September 18,1984 |
Kerry won the Democratic nomination for Senate. |
| November 6,1984 |
John Kerry elected to the US Senate. |
| January 1985 |
John Kerry is sworn in as US Senator. |
| February 8, 1985 |
Appointed to a coveted seat on the Senate Foreign Relations Committee. |
| April 18 - 20 , 1985 |
Senator John Kerry and Senator Tom Harkin went to Nicaragua, where they met with Daniel Ortega and other Sandinistas to hammer out a peace proposal, which a White House spokesman dismissed as nothing more than "propaganda." |
| April 23, 1985 |
Senate Intelligence Committee Chairman Barry Goldwater (R-Ariz.), rebuked his colleagues and accused Kerry and Harkin of breaking the law and "transgressing" against the Constitution by holding unauthorized negotiations with a foreign leader. As the House was rejecting the aid package to the Nicaraguan resistance, President Ortega went Moscow to seek funds for his Marxist regime.White House Chief of Staff Donald Regan accused congressional Democrats of "supporting communism" in Central America. |
| 1985 |
Kerry supported the Gramm-Rudman Deficit Reduction Act. |
| 1985 - 1988 |
Senator Kerry co-sponsors Equal Rights Amendment |
| February 15,1986 |
Philippine president Ferdinand Marcos held a snap election, running against Corazon Aquino, widow of the opposition leader assassinated by Marcos henchmen. The Reagan administration sent an official delegation of election observer headed by Senator Richard Lugar, and included John Kerry, the first-term senator from Massachusetts. Lugar said, "Our delegation is going to the Philippines to watch and observe and not to pass judgment on the elections." |
| March 27, 1986 |
On the floor of the U.S. Senate, Kerry accused President Ronald Reagan of leading the United States into another Vietnam in Central America, accusing the administration of Nixon-like duplicity and saying that he should recognize it because of his Vietnam experience.
Kerry told his colleagues he was on Navy duty in Cambodia at a time when President Richard M. Nixon lied to the public and said that there were no U.S. forces in that country. He even took enemy fire. In his words,
"I remember Christmas of 1968 sitting on a gunboat in Cambodia. I remember what it was like to be shot at by Vietnamese and Khmer Rouge and Cambodians, and have the president of the United States telling the American people that I was not there; the troops were not in Cambodia. I have that memory which is seared - seared - in me."
(Note: Nixon was not the president on Christmas of 1968, and Kerry's Swift Boat crew mates have stated that they were no where near Cambodia on Christmas). Kerry recanted this story during the 2004 presidential campaign.) |
| April 1986 |
Senator John Kerry chairs the Senate subcommittee on the Iran-Contra hearings that investigates US involvement in illegal gun-running and narcotics trafficking in the contra insurgency in Nicaragua. |
| November 1986 |
Kerry is denied a seat on the congressional Iran-contra investigation panel after news breaks that the US sold arms to Iran to fund the Contras. |
| 1987 |
Kerry was an integral player in the Oliver North Hearings, as part of his investigation known as the "Kerry Committee," that exposed the diversion of drug money from counternarcotic operations to the U.S.-backed Nicaraguan Contras. |
| April 6, 1987 |
US Senators Kerry and Kennedy win a victory as the Senate overrides a presidential veto and guarantees federal funding for Boston's Big Dig. "The Big Dig project has become a symbol of government contracting gone awry, known for its huge cost overruns that now total several billion dollars, and its admissions of mismanagement. " USAtoday.com, 2/5/04. |
| July 25, 1988 |
After a six-year separation (1982-1988), John divorced his first wife, Julia Thorne. (Julia later remarried, to architect Richard Charlesworth and lives in Bozeman, Montana.) |
| 1989 |
Kerry co-sponsors the "Family and Medical Leave Act." |
| April 13, 1989 |
Kerry, as part of a committee on Terrorism, Narcotics, and International Operations, released a report that exposed the US government's tolerance of drug smuggling under the guise of national security. The investigation concluded that US officials "abandoned the responsibility for protecting our citizens from all threats to their security and well-being." |
|
|
| 1990s |
, |
| September 21, 1990 |
John Kerry attended a 24-hour City Hall Plaza vigil commemorating POW/MIA families. |
| November 6, 1990 |
John Kerry celebrated his U.S. Senate re-election victory party at the Copley Plaza Hotel, after beating challenger James Rappaport. |
| July 21, 1991 |
The Senate voted to open a new investigation into Vietnam soldiers still missing in action, and establishes a select committee to be chaired by Kerry. (1) |
| November 5, 1991 |
The first hearing of the investigation of soldiers still missing in action in Vietnam was held. Kerry worked with Senator John McCain to begin to normalize relations with Vietnam. |
| 1992 |
Based on results of earlier investigations into drug trafficking and money laundering of Panamanian President Manuel A. Noriega, Senator Kerry presided over a Senate probe that exposed the fraud, abuse and terrorist financing of the Pakistan-based Bank of Credit and Commerce International (BCCI). Kerry coauthored a report for the Committee on Foreign Relations, showing BCCI to be "an elaborate corporate spider-web" that defrauded depositors of billions of dollars, engaged in money laundering, arms trafficking, and allegedly facilitated the development of Pakistan's nuclear arms program. Kerry pursued the charges against the "Bank of Crooks and Criminals International," as it became known, despite the involvement of the late Clark Clifford, an advisor to four Democratic presidents. Clifford was the president of First American Bank, a Washington, D.C.-based, federally regulated bank that was secretly and illegally bought by BCCI with Clifford's aid in the mid-1980s. (1) |
| February 27, 1992 |
During the 1992 Presidential election, John Kerry made the following statement in the Senate Congressional Record.
"I am saddened by the fact that Vietnam has yet again been inserted into the campaign, and that it has been inserted in what I feel to be the worst possible way. By that I mean that yesterday, during this Presidential campaign, and even throughout recent times, Vietnam has been discussed and written about without an adequate statement of its full meaning.
"We do not need to divide America over who served and how. I have personally always believed that many served in many different ways. Someone who was deeply against the war in 1969 or 1970 may well have served their country with equal passion and patriotism by opposing the war as by fighting in it. "
|
| June 24, 1992 |
John Kerry and Senator John McCain attend a hearing on Americans missing or imprisoned in southeast Asia. Kerry said that as many as 133 prisoners may have been left behind at the end of the Vietnam war, and the Pentagon may have deliberately misled families about the fate of some service men. |
| October 23, 1992 |
Senators Kerry and McCain, and acting Secretary of State Lawrence S. Engleburger, stood by as President George H. Bush made the POW Announcement in the Rose Garden that the Vietnamese Government had agreed to hand over all material on American prisoners of war. |
| July 15-18, 1993 |
John Kerry along with other Congressmen and a Veterans Delegation met with Do Muoi, Secretary General of the Vietnamese Communist Party in Vietnam. Kerry also visited the army museum in Ho Chi Minh City. While in Vietnam, Kerry visited two sites where it was reported that missing American soldiers had been spotted but not found.
"Vietnamese communists would not have won the war without John Kerry. They were cultivating his protest activity with the VVAW. . . .[The communists] said 'This is a guy who tells our story, it will undermine the sympathy for the war in America," said Jerome Corsi, co-author of Unfit for Command.
|
| May 26, 1995 |
John Kerry married his second wife, Theresa Heinz (Maria Teresa Thierstein Simões-Ferreira Heinz - born October 5, 1938, Mozambique) in Nantucket. Theresa is the widow of U.S. Senator John Heinz III (R-PA) who was killed in a plane crash April 4, 1991. They had three sons, John, André, and Christopher. Theresa's personal wealth is estimated to be in excess of $500 million.
Theresa worked as a United Nations translator and is fluent in five languages: English, Spanish, French, Italian, and her native Portuguese. She is currently a philanthropist.
John and Theresa were first introduced by John Heinz; they later met in 1990 at an Earth Day Rally, and then 1992 at a United Nations sponsored Earth Summit in Rio de Janeiro. They met again at a Washington dinner party and their courtship began in late 1993. They announced their engagement in November 1994. |
| July 11, 1995 |
With John Kerry at his side, President Bill Clinton extended US diplomatic recognition to Vietnam.
Background: Lack of human rights in Vietnam and their apparent continued holding of American POWs and MIAs had stood in the way of a profitable U.S.-Vietnam relation. In 1991 Kerry chaired a new Senate Select Committee for POW/MIA Affairs. His legislative assistant, Ms. Francis Zwenig alledgedly coached the North Vietnamese to concoct plausible stories on the fate of POW/MIAs in order to show that Hanoi was cooperating to resolve the POW/MIA issue. Anthony Nguyen, at the anti-communist website VietPage.com writes. “Senator Kerry was caught on camera making a promise to the North Vietnamese communists that he would ensure that they weren’t embarrassed by their concocted stories.”
Kerry had persuaded committee to vote unanimously that no POWs existed in Vietnam. And with the disappearance of this and the proposed human rights legislation, Kerry gave President Clinton the ability to begin reopen trade that kept the Marxist Vietnamese dictatorship afloat. In December 1992 Vietnam signed its first huge commercial deal worth at least $905 million to develop a deep-sea commercial port at Vung Tau to accommodate all the trade that was to come. It signed the deal with a company called Colliers International. At the time, the Chief Executive Officer of this company was C. Stewart Forbes, Senator John F. Kerry’s cousin.
The committee's final report issued in 1993 determined that American POWs were left alive in Viet Nam after the war but felt none were still alive. It makes no attempt to identify those left behind, how they died, who killed them, and where their remains are located. They were abandoned in life and death. (1 - 2) |
| September 10, 1996 |
Kerry voted against the Defense of Marriage Act, which would deny federal benefits to same-sex couples and permit states to not recognize same-sex marriages conducted in other states. He was one of only fourteen senators to oppose the |
| November 5, 1996 |
Kerry beat William Weld for reelection. |
| 1997 |
Kerry was one of five original sponsors (Wellstone, Leahy, John Glenn, and Joe Biden) of the Clean Money, Clean Elections Act, to provide for full public financing of Congressional elections. The measure would remove practically all special-interest money from House and Senate campaigns. (1) |
| 1997 |
Kerry was a delegate to the Kyoto climate talks. |
| January 1997 |
John Kerry co-sponsored McCain-Feingold Campaign Finance Bill to ban "soft money" (unlimited donations from corporations, unions, and individuals) and sham attack ads. McCain-Feingold was signed into law in 2003. Kerry also teamed with Senator Paul Wellstone of Minnesota to present a Clean Money bill. |
| November 9, 1997 |
John Kerry's speech on the floor of the Senate:
"We must recognize that there is no indication that Saddam Hussein has any intention of relenting. So we have an obligation of enormous consequence, an obligation to guarantee that Saddam Hussein cannot ignore the United Nations. He cannot be permitted to go unobserved and unimpeded toward his horrific objective of amassing a stockpile of weapons of mass destruction. This is not a matter about which there should be any debate whatsoever in the Security Council, or, certainly, in this Nation. If he remains obdurate, I believe that the United Nations must take, and should authorize immediately, whatever steps are necessary to force him to relent--and that the United States should support and participate in those steps.
We must not presume that these conclusions automatically will be accepted by every one of our allies, some of which have different interests both in the region and elsewhere, or will be of the same degree of concern to them that they are to the U.S. But it is my belief that we have the ability to persuade them of how serious this is and that the U.N. must not be diverted or bullied."
|
| 1998 |
John Kerry indicated he was granted an annulment from the Catholic Church from first wife Julia Stimson Thorne Kerry. There is some question as to whether the request was indeed granted. |
|
|
| 2000s |
, |
| July 29, 2000 |
John Kerry's father, Richard J. Kerry, died of complications from prostate cancer at age 85. Richard published his only book, The Star-Spangled Mirror, in 1990. He writes:
"Americans are inclined to see the world and foreign affairs in black and white. They celebrate their own form of government and denigrate all others, making them guilty of what he calls 'ethnocentric accommodation' -- everyone ought to be like us. As a result, America has committed the 'fatal error' of 'propagating democracy' and fallen prey to 'the siren's song of promoting human rights,' falsely assuming that our values and institutions are a good fit in the Third World. And, just as Americans exaggerate their own goodness, they exaggerate their enemies' badness. The Soviet Union wasn't nearly as imperialistic as American politicians warned. Seeing the Soviet Union as the aggressor in every instance, and the U.S. as only reacting defensively, relieves an American observer from the need to see any parallel between our use of military power in distant parts of the world, and the Soviet use of military power outside the Soviet Union. . . . Third world Marxist movements were autonomous national movements -- outside Moscow's orbit."
|
| 2000 |
Kerry was a delegate to the Hague Conference of the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change. Kerry has continuously criticized the Bush administration for its abandonment of the Kyoto protocol and encouraged the United States to promote what he views as sound and sustainable environmental policies. |
| 2001 |
The Vietnam Human Rights Act, (HR2833), which tied U.S. aid to Vietnam's human rights performance, passed by a 410-1 margin in the House of Representatives. Kerry, chairman of the Senate's East Asian and Pacific Affairs subcommittee in 2001, blocked the bill from coming to a vote in the Senate. Kerry said in a statement at the time that he and fellow Vietnam War veteran Senator John McCain (R-Ariz.) "are concerned that denying aid to Vietnam would actually slow human rights improvements." Many Vietnamese living abroad, along with human rights campaigners, say conditions in Vietnam have deteriorated in the three years since Kerry blocked the legislation. |
| 2001 |
Kerry fought for meaningful election reform, by co-sponsoring the bi-partisan Federal Election Reform Act of 2001. |
| October 9, 2002 |
John Kerry speech on the Floor of the Senate, from the Congressional Record, p. S10170-S10175
With respect to Saddam Hussein and the threat he presents, we must ask ourselves a simple question: Why? Why is Saddam Hussein pursuing weapons that most nations have agreed to limit or give up? Why is Saddam Hussein guilty of breaking his own cease-fire agreement with the international community? Why is Saddam Hussein attempting to develop nuclear weapons when most nations don't even try, and responsible nations that have them attempt to limit their potential for disaster? Why did Saddam Hussein threaten and provoke? Why does he develop missiles that exceed allowable limits? Why did Saddam Hussein lie and deceive the inspection teams previously? Why did Saddam Hussein not account for all of the weapons of mass destruction which UNSCOM identified? Why is he seeking to develop unmanned airborne vehicles for delivery of biological agents?
Does he do all of these things because he wants to live by international standards of behavior? Because he respects international law? Because he is a nice guy underneath it all and the world should trust him?
It would be naive to the point of grave danger not to believe that, left to his own devices, Saddam Hussein will provoke, misjudge, or stumble into a future, more dangerous confrontation with the civilized world. He has as much as promised it. He has already created a stunning track record of miscalculation. He miscalculated an 8-year war with Iran. He miscalculated the invasion of Kuwait. He miscalculated America's responses to it. He miscalculated the result of setting oil rigs on fire. He miscalculated the impact of sending Scuds into Israel. He miscalculated his own military might. He miscalculated the Arab world's response to his plight. He miscalculated in attempting an assassination of a former President of the United States. And he is miscalculating now America's judgments about his miscalculations.
All those miscalculations are compounded by the rest of history. A brutal, oppressive dictator, guilty of personally murdering and condoning murder and torture, grotesque violence against women, execution of political opponents, a war criminal who used chemical weapons against another nation and, of course, as we know, against his own people, the Kurds. He has diverted funds from the Oil-for-Food program, intended by the international community to go to his own people. He has supported and harbored terrorist groups, particularly radical Palestinian groups such as Abu Nidal, and he has given money to families of suicide murderers in Israel.
|
| 2002 |
Rosemary Kerry, John's mother, died at the age of 89. |
| 1999-2003 |
Contributions: Kerry's Top Fund-Raisers
|
Contributor
|
Organization
|
State
|
Total,
1999-2002
|
2004
Cycle
|
| Alan Solomont |
Solomont Bailis Ventures |
MA
|
$612,327
|
$82,500
|
| Orin Kramer |
Kramer Spellman |
NY
|
$425,835
|
$83,500
|
| Ben Barnes |
Entrecorp |
TX
|
$389,750
|
$74,500
|
| Richard & Daphna Ziman |
Arden Realty |
CA
|
$300,500
|
$36,000
|
| Mark Gorenberg |
Hummer Winblad Venture Partners |
CA
|
$177,250
|
$10,500
|
| Mark Weiner |
Financial Innovations |
RI
|
$176,726
|
$45,000
|
| Hassan Nemazee |
Nemazee Capital |
NY
|
$175,000
|
$8,000
|
| James Johnson |
Perseus |
DC
|
$140,409
|
$10,000
|
| Bob Clifford |
Clifford Law Offices |
IL
|
$122,500
|
$83,000
|
| John Merrigan |
Piper Rudnick |
DC
|
$92,417
|
$25,750
|
More information on John Kerry's campaign contributions and financing can be found at OpenSecrets.org. |
| January 12, 2003 |
John Kerry announced his run for president in 2004 |
| May 4, 2004 |
Swift Boat Veterans for Truth was launched at a press conference at the National Press Club in Washington, DC., which was televised on CSPAN. More than 250 Swift boat veterans contacted by the group signed an open letter to Senator John F. Kerry that challenged his fitness to serve as America's Commander-in-Chief. The organization was established to rally publicity to expose "Kerry's lies"during the "Winter Soldier" hearings in the U.S. Senate in 1971.
The Swift Boat Veterans for Truth also asked Kerry to stop unauthorized use of their images in national campaign advertising.The group said only two (now four?) of the 20 officers in one photo support him and 11 have signed the letter condemning the candidate. |
| July 26 - 29, 2004 |
Kerry and the Democratic Party made Kerry's military service during Vietnam the centerpiece of their four-day convention to nominate the Massachusetts senator as the party's candidate for president, portraying him as a leader on national security issues in a post-Sept 11 world. Kerry accepts the nomination surrounded by fellow veterans who hailed him as a man of courage and strength.
"I've been saying for many months now, John Kerry is a serious man for a serious job in a serious time in our country's history. . . . I am very optimistic about this election, because I think I know a great leader when I see one." Source: July 26, 2004 - Remarks by Sen. Hillary Clinton to the Democratic National Convention, Washington Post
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| July 29, 2004 |
John Forbes Kerry became the Democratic Party nominee for President of the United States in the upcoming 2004 US presidential election. |
| August 2004 |
Unfit for Command, by John O'Neil and Jerome Corsi started the unraveling of the Kerry Presidential campaign. The book debuted at #1 on Amazon.com and #3 on New York Times best seller lists. By the second week, it was the #1 best selling book. The book takes issue with John Kerry's account of the war, with documentation and testimonials from Swift Boat Veterans.
"I do not believe John Kerry is fit to be commander in chief of the armed forces of the United States. This is not a political issue. It is a matter of his judgment, truthfulness, reliability, loyalty, and trust—all absolute tenets of command." Rear Admiral Roy F. Hoffmann, USN (Retired), commander of the Swift Boats in Vietnam, 1968-1969, Unfit for Command
Kerry did not address the charges, but instead sent letters to TV stations to demand they not run commercials from the Swift Boat Veterans, demanding President Bush renounce the ads and put a stop to them (although the ads were legal according to campaign finance reform, and interference from the President would not be proper). Kerry also attempted to have the publisher stop distribution. |
| August 31, 2004 |
The Swift Boat Veterans for Truth sent a letter to John Kerry promising to call off its media campaign if the senator apologizes for his conduct after returning from Vietnam and resolves questions about his war record: Senator Kerry: Tell the Truth and We'll Stop the Ads. |
| September 1, 2004 |
"For more than twenty years, on every one of the great issues of freedom and security, John Kerry has been more wrong, more weak and more wobbly than any other national figure. As a war protestor, Kerry blamed our military. As a Senator, he voted to weaken our military. And nothing shows that more sadly and more clearly than his vote this year to deny protective armor for our troops in harms way, far-away." -- Zell Miller, Republican National Convention |
| September 12, 2004 |
Kerry Lied Rally, Upper Senate Park, Washington, D.C. A national rally was held by veterans and those who supported them to tell the truth about Vietnam veterans. |
| September 2004 |
The Kerry campaign attempted to deflect attention from and questions about John Kerry's military and antiwar background by attacking Bush on his National Guard service, knowingly or unknowingly, with the help of CBS and fraudulent memos. "People say that what happened thirty-plus years ago doesn't matter, shouldn't matter in this campaign. Perhaps, in most cases, that should be true. But in this case it certainly does matter. Does any sane person really believe that whether or not George W. Bush showed up for a week's worth of drills in Alabama thirty-three years ago is somehow more consequential than the admitted fact that Senator Kerry, as a nearly thirty year-old politician, travelled to a foreign nation to meet with the enemies of this country while the nation was at war and then returned in order to advocate that the United States accept peace on the terms of the communist Vietnamese (or, in other words, surrender)?" (1 - 2) |
| September 20, 2004 |
In a speech at New York University, Kerry said:
“. . . we must have a great honest national debate on Iraq. The President claims it is the centerpiece of his war on terror. In fact, Iraq was a profound diversion from that war and the battle against our greatest enemy, Osama bin Laden and the terrorists. Invading Iraq has created a crisis of historic proportions and, if we do not change course, there is the prospect of a war with no end in sight.”
Here is a chart which lists documentation of the years of collaboration between Saddam and Al Qaeda, including the Senate Intelligence Committee Report and the 9/11 Commission Report.
And here is a list of John Kerry's quotes on Iraq, in chronological order. |
| September 30, 2004 |
Senator John Kerry stated in the first presidential debate in Miami, Florida:
The president just talked about Iraq as a center of the war on terror. Iraq was not even close to the center of the war on terror before the president invaded it.
“No president, though all of American history, has ever ceded, and nor would I, the right to preempt in any way necessary to protect the United States of America. But if and when you do it, Jim, you have to do it in a way that passes the test, that passes the global test where your countrymen, your people understand fully why you’re doing what you’re doing and you can prove to the world that you did it for legitimate reasons.
I think the United States should have offered [Iran] the opportunity to provide the nuclear fuel, test them, see whether or not they were actually looking for it for peaceful purposes.
I want bilateral talks [with North Korea] which put all of the issues, from the armistice of 1952, the economic issues, the human rights issues, the artillery disposal issues, the DMZ issues and the nuclear issues on the table."
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| November, 2004 |
Senator John Kerry lost the election to incumbent President George W. Bush. |
| April 28, 2006 |
Julia Thorne, John Kerry's former wife and mother of his two daughters, died of cancer at the age of 61. |
| October, 2006 |
Controversy irrupted when John Kerry, speaking at a rally for California gubernatorial candidate Phil Angelides at Pasadena City College, on October 30, 2006, said:
"You know education, if you make the most of it, you study hard, you do your homework, and you make an effort to be smart, you can do well. If you don't, you get stuck in Iraq."
Watch Kerry's remarks on YouTube.com.
Instead of apologizing to the troops in Iraq who took the remark as an insult, Kerry responded.
I'm sick and tired of a bunch of despicable Republicans who will not debate real policy, who won't take responsibility for their own mistakes, standing up and trying to make other people the butt of those mistakes. It disgusts me that a bunch of these Republican hacks who've never worn the uniform of our country are willing to lie about those who did .'--Sen. John Kerry 10/31/06
Kerry later apologized, claiming the remark was a joke aimed at President Bush. |
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| Senate Career |
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| Current (2004) Committee Assignments: |
Commerce, Science & Transportation [Senate]
Finance [Senate]
Foreign Relations [Senate]
Small Business and Entrepreneurship [Senate], Ranking Member |
| Caucuses/Non-Legislative Committees |
Co-Chair, Congressional Vietnam-Era Veterans Caucus
Chair, Democratic Steering Committee
Chair, Hispanic Task Force
Senate New Democrat Coalition |
| Senate Legislatiive Record |
Sen. John Kerry has been more an investigator than a legislator. While championing one Senate investigation or another, Mr. Kerry's name has appeared on 56 bills and resolutions since his freshman year, 11 of which were signed by the president or otherwise became law. Six successful bills awarded a congressional gold medal to Jackie Robinson posthumously; reauthorized funds for the small business technology-transfer program; amended the Small Business Act regarding women's business programs; authorized funds for the Marine Mammal Protection Act of 1972; authorized funds for the National Sea Grant College Program Act; and redesignated the federal building in Waltham, Mass., as the "Frederick C. Murphy Federal Center." |
| Position on Issues |
On The Issues is a great web site to find Senator Kerry's position and record on the each issue.
Q: Under what future conditions would you support a pre-emptive military strike against another nation without wide international approval?
KERRY: Only when the US is so threatened that it is required for the survival of our country or for the accomplishment of some extraordinary humanitarian goal. Look, this administration misled the American people, abused the power that they were given, and has run an ineffective war on terror. Saddam Hussein was way down the list, with respect to the targets, even on the Pentagon's own list of targets. And what they did was supplant Iraq for the real war on terror, which is Osama bin Laden, Al Qaeda, and terror across the world. The war on terror is less of a military operation and far more of an intelligence-gathering and law-enforcement operation. And we deserve presidential leadership that knows that and knows how to make America safer, and I will do that.
Source: Democratic 2004 Presidential Primary Debate in Iowa January 4, 2004
Project Vote Smart is another source of information for voting record and legislative history. |
| Bill Summary & Status |
Thomas Legislative Information on the Internet lists Bill Summary & Status for the 93rd through the 108th Congress. John Kerry has served since the 98th Congress. Lists sponsored and cosponsored legislation. |
| Roll Call Vote Analysis |
| Year |
Voting Participation |
Party Support |
Presidential Support |
| 2003 |
36% |
100% |
30% |
| 2002 |
96% |
92% |
72% |
| 2001 |
98% |
98% |
65% |
| 2000 |
95% |
96% |
97% |
| 1999 |
99% |
95% |
93% |
Source: Project Vote Smart |
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| Personal Data |
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| Vital Statistic |
60 years old, 6'4", 185 lbs. Exercises regularly. Had successful prostate cancer surgery in March 2003. |
| Children |
Vanesa Kerry, 27, is taking a break from her third year at Harvard Medical School to campaign for her dad. She received a Fullbright Scholarship.
Alexandra Kerry, 30, is a film student in Los Angeles.
Christopher Heinz, 30, is on leave from a private equity firm to work on the campaign.
Andre Heinz, 34, is an environmental consultant, who has made a few campaign appearances.
John Heinz IV, 37, works as a blacksmith and a teacher. Lives with his wife and child in Pennsylvania, where he runs an alternative school for teenagers. |
| Parents/Grandparents |
John's father, Richard Kerry, was born in 1915 in Brookline, Massachusetts (the same Boston suburb where John F. Kennedy was born two years later).
Richard's father, Fredrick (Fred) A. Kerry, was a Czech Jew named Fritz Kohn who fled the Austro-Hungarian Empire in 1905 to escape anti-Semitism. In 1902, Fritz had married Ida Lowe, a beautiful Jewish musician from Budapest. The young couple studied a map of Europe (or by one account, randomly dropped a pencil on a map of Europe), found County Kerry in Ireland, and chose it as their last name. The couple was baptized as Catholics.
They moved to Chicago with their young son Eric, where Fred earned a living as a business manager. Eventually they moved to Brookline, known as the "town of millionaires" in the early 1900s, had two additional children, Richard and Mildred. He kept it secret that he was of Jewish descent. With a two-story house in Brookline, a black Cadillac, and three healthy children it seemed that the Kerry family exemplified the American dream.
That notion was brutally dispelled on November 23, 1921, when a depressed Fred Kerry, wandered into the Copley Plaza Hotel in Boston, walked into the men's room, and shot himself in the head.
John's mother, Rosemary Forbes, was the daughter of Massachusetts expatriate and Harvard law graduate James Grant Forbes. Forbes's wife, Margaret Winthrop, was a descendant of the Winthrops who had helped establish Massachusetts. She was one of 11 children
During an extended trip to Europe in 1937, Richard Kerry took a sculpture class in the coastal town of St. Brieuc, France, where the Forbes lived at the family estate, Kerry was attracted to Rosemary, she fell in love and promised to leave Europe to marry Richard, who became a US Army Air Corps pilot in WWII.
It is disputed whether John Kerry left the impression he was Irish in order to get the Irish vote in Massachusetts. "As some of you may know, I am part-English and part-Irish. And when my Kerry ancestors first came over to Massachusetts from the old country to find work in the New World, it was my English ancestors who refused to hire them." This quote and others were in several draft speeches that some claim he did not deliver. (1) |
| Current Residences |
Residences: Beacon Hill, Boston; Georgetown, Washington DC; Fox Chapel, Pennsylvania. Vacation homes in Nantucket, Massachusetts and Ketchum, Idaho. Kerry co-owns the Beacon Hill home, the other residences are owned by Theresa Heinz-Kerry and her sons. |
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| Sources |
About.com • The Australian • Boston.com (Boston Globe - photos) • Boston.com (Boston Globe - articles) • CapitalEye.org • CBC News • CBSnews.com • The Center for Public Integrity • CNSNews.com • FoxNews.com • FreeRepublic.com • FrontPage Magazine.com • JohnKerry.com • Harvard Crimson Online • On The Issues • Insight Magazine • Legal Information Institute • Modesto Bee • The Nation • NationMaster.com • NationalReview.com • The New Yorker • The New York Sun • On The Issues • Project Vote Smart • SFGate.com • SwiftVets.com • Thomas Legislative Information • Tour of Duty • Townhall.com • Uniform Code of Military Justice • USNewsWire.com • USAtoday.com • The Winter Soldier • VillageVoice.com • Washington Post • Washington Times • WorldNetDaily |
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Disclaimer: Although we have attempted to provide current and accurate information, we do not certify the accuracy of any information on this site. We compiled the above information in order to understand the life and history of John F. Kerry and try to sort out the conflicting reports of events. We hope you also will benefit from the effort. This site is not affiliated with any political party. For more information, or to submit comments, contact: JHSmith@archive-news.net. |
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