[Congressional Record Volume 150, Number 53 (Thursday, April 22, 2004)]
[Extensions of Remarks]
[Pages E599-E608]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]
[[Page E599]]
TESTIMONY OF JOHN KERRY FROM 1971
______
HON. SAM JOHNSON
of texas
in the house of representatives
Thursday, April 22, 2004
Mr. SAM JOHNSON of Texas. Mr. Speaker, I would like to insert the
following testimony into the Record.
On this date in 1971, John Kerry stated that America violated the
Geneva Conventions in Vietnam. Mr. Speaker, when Mr. Kerry made these
remarks, I just emerged from nearly four years of solitary confinement
in Vietnam. Trust me when I say the Vietnamese regularly violated the
Geneva Conventions, not the other way around.
John Kerry also alleges American soldiers tortured innocent
Vietnamese. These statements were later proved incorrect (during the
question and answer session).
Last, John Kerry said communism was not a threat in 1971. This could
not have been further from the truth.
These are just a few reasons I believe America needs to see this
testimony. It says a lot about John Kerry.
LEGISLATIVE PROPOSALS RELATING TO THE WAR IN SOUTHEAST ASIA
The committee met, pursuant to notice, at 11:05 a.m., in
Room 4221, New Senate Office Building, Senator J. W.
Fulbright (Chairman) presiding.
Present: Senators Fulbright, Symington, Pell, Aiken, Case,
and Javits.
The Chairman. The committee will come to order.
opening statement
The committee is continuing this morning its hearings on
proposals relating to the ending of the war in Southeast
Asia. This morning the committee will hear testimony from Mr.
John Kerry, and, if he has any associates, we will be glad to
hear from them. These are men who have fought in this
unfortunate war in Vietnam. I believe they deserve to be
heard and listened to by the Congress and by the officials in
the executive branch and by the public generally. You have a
perspective that those in the Government who make our
Nation's policy do not always have and I am sure that your
testimony today will be helpful to the committee in its
consideration of the proposals before us.
I would like to add simply on my own account that I regret
very much the action of the Supreme Court in denying the
veterans the right to use the Mall. [Applause.]
I regret that. It seems to me to be but another instance of
an insensitivity of our Government to the tragic effects of
this war upon our people.
I want also to congratulate Mr. Kerry, you, and your
associates upon the restraint that you have shown, certainly
in the hearing the other day when there were a great many of
your people here. I think you conducted yourselves in a most
commendable manner throughout this week. Whenever people
gather there is always a tendency for some of the more
emotional ones to do things which are even against their own
interests. I think you deserve much of the credit because I
understand you are one of the leaders of this group.
I have joined with some of my colleagues, specifically
Senator Hart, in an effort to try to change the attitude of
our Government toward your efforts in bringing to this
committee and to the country your views about the war.
I personally don't know of any group which would have both
a greater justification for doing it and also a more accurate
view of the effect of the war. As you know, there has grown
up in this town a feeling that it is extremely difficult to
get accurate information about the war and I don't know a
better source than you and your associates. So we are very
pleased to have you and your associates, Mr. Kerry.
At the beginning if you would give to the reporter your
full name and a brief biography so that the record will show
who you are.
Senator Javits. Mr. Chairman, I was down there to the
veterans' camp yesterday and saw the New York group and I
would like to say I am very proud of the deportment and
general attitude of the group.
I hope it continues. I have joined in the Hart resolution,
too. As a lawyer I hope you will find it possible to comply
with the order even though, like the chairman, I am unhappy
about it. I think it is our job to see that you are suitably
set up as an alternative so that you can do what you came
here to do. I welcome the fact that you came and what you are
doing.
[Applause.]
The Chairman. You may proceed, Mr. Kerry.
Statement of John Kerry, Vietnam Veterans Against The War
Mr. Kerry. Thank you very much, Senator Fulbright, Senator
Javits, Senator Symington, Senator Pell. I would like to say
for the record, and also for the men behind me who are also
wearing the uniforms and their medals, that my sitting here
is really symbolic. I am not here as John Kerry. I am here as
one member of the group of 1,000, which is a small
representation of a very much larger group of veterans in
this country, and were it possible for all of them to sit at
this table they would be here and have the same kind of
testimony.
I would simply like to speak in very general terms. I
apologize if my statement is general because I received
notification yesterday you would hear me and I am afraid
because of the injunction I was up most of the night and
haven't had a great deal of chance to prepare.
winter soldier investigation
I would like to talk, representing all those veterans, and
say that several months ago in Detroit, we had an
investigation at which over 150 honorably discharged and many
very highly decorated veterans testified to war crimes
committed in Southeast Asia, not isolated incidents but
crimes committed on a day-to-day basis with the full
awareness of officers at all levels of command.
It is impossible to describe to you exactly what did happen
in Detroit, the emotions in the room, the feelings of the men
who were reliving their experiences in Vietnam, but they did.
They relived the absolute horror of what this country, in a
sense, made them do.
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.
We call this investigation the ``Winter Soldier
Investigation.'' The term ``Winter Soldier'' is a play on
words of Thomas Paine in 1776 when he spoke of the Sunshine
Patriot and summertime soldiers who deserted at Valley Forge
because the going was rough.
We who have come here to Washington have come here because
we feel we have to be winter soldiers now. We could come back
to this country; we could be quiet; we could hold our
silence; we could not tell what went on in Vietnam, but we
feel because of what threatens this country, the fact that
the crimes threaten it, not reds, and not redcoats but the
crimes which we are committing that threaten it, that we have
to speak out.
feelings of men coming back from vietnam
I would like to talk to you a little bit about what the
result is of the feelings these men carry with them after
coming back from Vietnam. The country doesn't know it yet,
but it has created a monster, a monster in the form of
millions of men who have been taught to deal and to trade in
violence, and who are given the chance to die for the biggest
nothing in history; men who have returned with a sense of
anger and a sense of betrayal which no one has yet grasped.
As a veteran and one who feels this anger, I would like to
talk about it. We are angry because we feel we have been used
in the worst fashion by the administration of this country.
In 1970 at West Point, Vice President Agnew said ``some
glamorize the criminal misfits of society while our best men
die in Asian rice paddies to preserve the freedom which most
of those misfits abuse,'' and this was used as a rallying
point for our effort in Vietnam.
But for us, as boys in Asia whom the country was supposed
to support, his statement is a terrible distortion from which
we can only draw a very deep sense of revulsion. Hence the
anger of some of the men who are here in Washington today. It
is a distortion because we in no way consider ourselves the
best men of this country; because those he calls misfits were
standing up for us in a way that nobody else in this country
dared to, because so many who have died would have returned
to this country to join the misfits in their efforts to ask
for an immediate withdrawal from South Vietnam, because so
many of those best men have returned as quadriplegics and
amputees, and they lie forgotten in Veterans' Administration
hospitals in this country which fly the flag which so many
have chosen as their own personal symbol. And we cannot
consider ourselves America's best men when we are ashamed of
and hated what we were called on to do in Southeast Asia.
In our opinion, and from our experience, there is nothing
in South Vietnam, nothing
[[Page E600]]
which could happen that realistically threatens the United
States of America. And to attempt to justify the loss of one
American life in Vietnam, Cambodia, or Laos by linking such
loss to the preservation of freedom, which those misfits
supposedly abuse, is to us the height of criminal hypocrisy,
and it is that kind of hypocrisy which we feel has torn this
country apart.
We are probably much more angry than that and I don't want
to go into the foreign policy aspects because I am outclassed
here. I know that all of you talk about every possible
alternative of getting out of Vietnam. We understand that. We
know you have considered the seriousness of the aspects to
the utmost level and I am not going to try to dwell on
that, but I want to relate to you the feeling that many of
the men who have returned to this country express because
we are probably angriest about all that we were told about
Vietnam and about the mystical war against communism.
what was found and learned in vietnam
We found that not only was it a civil war, an effort by a
people who had for years been seeking their liberation from
any colonial influence whatsoever, but also five found that
the Vietnamese whom we had enthusiastically molded after our
own image were hard put to take up the fight against the
threat we were supposedly saving them from.
We found most people didn't even know the difference
between communism and democracy. They only wanted to work in
rice paddies without helicopters strafing them and bombs with
napalm burning their villages and tearing their country
apart. They wanted everything to do with the war,
particularly with this foreign presence of the United States
of America, to leave them alone in peace, and they practiced
the art of survival by siding with whichever military force
was present at a particular time, be it Vietcong, North
Vietnamese, or American.
We found also that all too often American men were dying in
those rice paddies for want of support from their allies. We
saw first hand how money from American taxes was used for a
corrupt dictatorial regime. We saw that many people in this
country had a one-sided idea of who was kept free by our
flag, as blacks provided the highest percentage of
casualties. We saw Vietnam ravaged equally by American bombs
as well as by search and destroy missions, as well as by
Vietcong terrorism, and yet we listened while this country
tried to blame all of the havoc on the Vietcong.
We rationalized destroying villages in order to save them.
We saw America lose her sense of morality as she accepted
very coolly a My Lai and refused to give up the image of
American soldiers who hand out chocolate bars and chewing
gum.
We learned the meaning of free fire zones, shooting
anything that moves, and we watched while America placed a
cheapness on the lives of orientals.
We watched the U.S. falsification of body counts, in fact
the glorification of body counts. We listened while month
after month we were told the back of the enemy was about to
break. We fought using weapons against ``oriental human
beings,'' with quotation marks around that. We fought using
weapons against those people which I do not believe this
country would dream of using were we fighting in the European
theater or let us say a non-third-world people theater, and
so we watched while men charged up hills because a general
said that hill has to be taken, and after losing one platoon
or two platoons they marched away to leave the high for the
reoccupation by the North Vietnamese because we watched pride
allow the most unimportant of battles to be blown into
extravaganzas, because we couldn't lose and we couldn't
retreat, and because it didn't matter how many American
bodies were lost to prove that point. And so there were
Hamburger Hills and Khe Sanhs and Hill 881's and Fire Base
6's and so, many others.
vietnamization
Now we are told that the men who fought there must watch
quietly while American lives are lost so that we can exercise
the incredible arrogance of Vietnamizing the Vietnamese.
Each day----
[Applause.]
The Chairman. I hope you won't interrupt. He is making a
very significant statement. Let him proceed.
Mr. Kerry. Each day to facilitate the process by which the
United States washes her hands of Vietnam someone has to give
up his life so that the United States doesn't have to admit
something that the entire world already knows, so that we
can't say that we have made a mistake. Someone has to die so
that President Nixon won't be, and these are his words, ``the
first President to lose a war.''
We are asking Americans to think about that because how do
you ask a man to be the last man to die in Vietnam? How do
you ask a man to be the last man to die for a mistake? But we
are trying to do that, and we are doing it with thousands of
rationalizations, and if you read carefully the President's
last speech to the people of this country, you can see that
he says, and says clearly:
But the issue, gentlemen, the issue is communism, and the
question is whether or not we will leave that country to the
Communists or whether or not we will try to give it hope to
be a free people.
But the point is they are not a free people now under us.
They are not a free people, and we cannot fight communism all
over the world, and I think we should have learned that
lesson by now.
returning veterans are not really wanted
But the problem of veterans goes beyond this personal
problem, because you think about a poster in this country
with a picture of Uncle Sam and the picture says ``I want
you.'' And a young man comes out of high school and says,
``That is fine: I am going to serve my country.'' And he goes
to Vietnam and he shoots and he kills and he does his job or
maybe he doesn't kill, maybe he just goes and he comes back,
and when he gets back to this country he finds that he isn't
really wanted, because the largest unemployment figure in the
country--it varies depending on who you get it from, the VA
Administration 15 percent, various other sources 22 percent.
But the largest corps of unemployed in this country are
veterans of this war, and of those veterans 33 percent of the
unemployed are black. That means 1 out of every 10 of the
Nation's unemployed is a veteran of Vietnam.
The hospitals across the country won't, or can't meet their
demands. It is not a question of not trying. They don't have
the appropriations. A man recently died after he had a
tracheotomy in California, not because of the operation but
because there weren't enough personnel to clean the mucous
out of his tube and he suffocated to death.
Another young man just died in a New York VA hospital the
other day. A friend of mine was lying in a bed two beds away
and tried to help him, but he couldn't. He rang a bell and
there was nobody there to service that man and so he died of
convulsions.
I understand 57 percent of all those entering the VA
hospitals talk about suicide. Some 27 percent have tried, and
they try because they come back to this country and they have
to face what they did in Vietnam, and then they come back
and find the indifference of a country that doesn't really
care, that doesn't really care.
lack of moral indignation in united states
Suddenly we are faced with a very sickening situation in
this country, because there is no moral indignation and, if
there is, it comes from people who are almost exhausted by
their past indignations, and I know that many of them are
sitting in front of me. The country seems to have lain down
and shrugged off something as serious as Laos, just as we
calmly shrugged off the loss of 700,000 lives in Pakistan,
the so-called greatest disaster of all times.
But we are here as veterans to say we think we are in the
midst of the greatest disaster of all times now because they
are still dying over there, and not just Americans,
Vietnamese, and we are rationalizing leaving that country so
that those people can go on killing each other for years to
come.
Americans seem to have accepted the idea that the war is
winding down, at least for Americans, and they have also
allowed the bodies which were once used by a President for
statistics to prove that we were winning that war, to be used
as evidence against a man who followed orders and who
interpreted those orders no differently than hundreds of
other men in Vietnam.
We veterans can only look with amazement on the fact that
this country has been unable to see there is absolutely no
difference between ground troops and a helicopter crew, and
yet people have accepted a differentiation fed them by the
administration.
No ground troops are in Laos, so it is all right to kill
Laotians by remote control. But believe me the helicopter
crews fill the same body bags and they wreak the same kind of
damage on the Vietnamese and Laotian countryside as anybody
else and the President is talking about allowing that to go
on for many years to come. One can only ask if we will really
be satisfied only when the troops march into Hanoi.
request for action by congress
We are asking here in Washington for some action, action
from the Congress of the United States of America which has
the power to raise and maintain armies, and which by the
Constitution also has the power to declare war.
We have come here, not to the President, because we believe
that this body can be responsive to the will of the people,
and we believe that the will of the people says that we
should be out of Vietnam now.
extent of problem of vietnam war
We are here in Washington also to say that the problem of
this war is not just a question of war and diplomacy. It is
part and parcel of everything that we are trying as human
beings to communicate to people in this country, the question
of racism, which is rampant in the military, and so many
other questions also, the use of weapons, the hypocrisy in
our taking umbrage in the Geneva Conventions and using that
as justification for a continuation of this war, when we are
more guilty than any other body of violations of those
Geneva Conventions, in the use of free fire zones,
harassment interdiction fire, search and destroy missions,
the bombings, the torture of prisoners, the killing of
prisoners, accepted policy by many units in South Vietnam.
That is what we are trying to say. It is part and parcel
of everything.
An American Indian friend of mine who lives in the Indian
Nation of Alcatraz put it
[[Page E601]]
to me very succinctly. He told me how as a boy on an Indian
reservation he had watched television and he used to cheer
the cowboys when they came in and shot the Indians, and then
suddenly one day he stopped in Vietnam and he said ``My God,
I am doing to these people the very same thing that was done
to my people.'' And he stopped. And that is what we are
trying to say, that we think this thing has to end.
where is the leadership?
We are also here to ask, and we are here to ask vehemently,
where are the leaders of our country? Where is the
leadership? We are here to ask where are McNamara, Rostow,
Bundy, Gilpatric and so many others. Where are they now that
we, the men whom they sent off to war, have returned? These
are commanders who have deserted their troops, and there is
no more serious crime in the law of war. The Army says they
never leave their wounded.
The Marines say they never leave even their dead. These men
have left all the casualties and retreated behind a pious
shield of public rectitude. They have left the real stuff of
their reputations bleaching behind them in the sun in this
country.
administration's attempt to disown veterans
Finally, this administration has done us the ultimate
dishonor. They have attempted to disown us and the sacrifice
we made for this country. In their blindness and fear they
have tried to deny that we are veterans or that we served in
Nam. We do not need their testimony. Our own scars and stumps
of limbs are witnesses enough for others and for ourselves.
We wish that a merciful God could wipe away our own
memories of that service as easily as this administration has
wiped their memories of us. But all that they have done and
all that they can do by this denial is to make more clear
than ever our own determination to undertake one last
mission, to search out and destroy the last vestige of this
barbaric war, to pacify our own hearts, to conquer the hate
and the fear that have driven this country these last 10
years and more, and so when, in 30 years from now, our
brothers go down the street without a leg, without an arm, or
a face, and small boys ask why, we will be able to say
``Vietnam'' and not mean a desert, not a filthy obscene
memory but mean instead the place where America finally
turned and where soldiers like us helped it in the turning.
Thank you. [Applause.]
The Chairman. Mr. Kerry, it is quite evident from that
demonstration that you are speaking not only for yourself but
for all your associates, as you properly said in the
beginning.
commendation of witness
You said you wished to communicate. I can't imagine anyone
communicating more eloquently than you did. I think it is
extremely helpful and beneficial to the committee and the
country to have you make such a statement.
You said you had been awake all night. I can see that you
spent that time very well indeed. [Laughter.]
Perhaps that was the better part, better that you should be
awake than otherwise.
proposals before committee
You have said that the question before this committee and
the Congress is really how to end the war. The resolutions
about which we have been hearing testimony during the past
several days, the sponsors of which are some members of this
committee, are seeking the most practical way that we can
find and, I believe, to do it at the earliest opportunity
that we can. That is the purpose of these hearings and that
is why you were brought here.
You have been very eloquent about the reasons why we should
proceed as quickly as possible. Are you familiar with some of
the proposals before this committee?
Mr. Kerry. Yes, I am, Senator.
The Chairman. Do you support or do you have any particular
views about any one of them you wish to give the committee?
Mr. Kerry. My feeling, Senator, is undoubtedly this
Congress, and I don't mean to sound pessimistic, but I do not
believe that this Congress will, in fact, end the war as we
would like to, which is immediately and unilaterally and,
therefore, if I were to speak I would say we would set a date
and the date obviously would be the earliest possible date.
But I would like to say, in answering that, that I do not
believe it is necessary to stall any longer. 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.
I think this negates very clearly the argument of the
President that we have to maintain a presence in Vietnam, to
use as a negotiating block for the return of those prisoners.
The setting of a date will accomplish that.
As to the argument concerning the danger to our troops were
we to withdraw or state that we would, they have also said
many times in conjunction with that statement that all of our
troops, the moment we set a date, will be given safe conduct
out of Vietnam. The only other important point is that we
allow the South Vietnamese people to determine their own
future and that ostensibly is what we have been fighting for
anyway.
I would, therefore, submit that the most expedient means of
getting out of South Vietnam would be for the President of
the United States to declare a cease-fire, to stop this blind
commitment to a dictatorial regime, the Thieu-Ky-Khiem
regime, accept a coalition regime which would represent all
the political forces of the country which is in fact what
a representative government is supposed to do and which is
in fact what this Government here in this country purports
to do, and pull the troops out without losing one more
American, and still further without losing the South
Vietnamese.
desire to disengage from vietnam
The Chairman. You seem to feel that there is still some
doubt about the desire to disengage. I don't believe that is
true. I believe there has been a tremendous change in the
attitude of the people. As reflected in the Congress, they do
wish to disengage and to bring the war to an end as soon as
we can.
question is how to disengage
The question before us is how to do it. What is the best
means that is most effective, taking into consideration the
circumstances with which all governments are burdened? We
have a precedent in this same country. The French had an
experience, perhaps not traumatic as ours has been, but
nevertheless they did make up their minds in the spring of
1954 and within a few weeks did bring it to a close. Some of
us have thought that this is a precedent, from which we could
learn, for ending such a war. I have personally advocated
that this is the best procedure. It is a traditional rather
classic procedure of how to end a war that could be called a
stalemate, that neither side apparently has the capacity to
end by military victory, and which apparently is going to go
on for a long time. Speaking only for myself, this seems the
more reasonable procedure.
I realize you want it immediately, but I think that
procedure was about as immediate as any by which a country
has ever succeeded in ending such a conflict or a similar
conflict. Would that not appeal to you?
Mr. Kerry. Well, Senator, frankly it does not appeal to me
if American men have to continue to die when they don't have
to, particularly when it seems the Government of this country
is more concerned with the legality of where men sleep than
it is with the legality of where they drop bombs. [Applause.]
The Chairman. In the case of the French when they made up
their mind to take the matter up at the conference in Geneva,
they did. The first thing they did was to arrange a ceasefire
and the killing did cease. Then it took only, I think, two or
three weeks to tidy up all the details regarding the
withdrawal. Actually when they made up their mind to stop the
war, they did have a ceasefire which is what you are
recommending as the first step.
Mr. Kerry. Yes, sir; that is correct.
The Chairman. It did not drag on. They didn't continue to
fight. They stopped the fighting by agreement when they went
to Geneva and all the countries then directly involved
participated in that agreement.
I don't wish to press you on the details. It is for the
committee to determine the best means, but you have given
most eloquently the reasons why we should proceed as early as
we can. That is, of course, the purpose of the hearing.
Mr. Kerry. Senator, if I may interject. I think that what
we are trying to say is we do have a method. We believe we do
have a plan, and that plan is that if this body were by some
means either to permit a special referendum in this country
so that the country itself might decide and therefore avoid
this recrimination which people constantly refer to or if
they couldn't do that, at least do it through immediate
legislation which would state there would be an immediate
ceasefire and we would be willing to undertake negotiations
for a coalition government. But at the present moment that is
not going to happen, so we are talking about men continuing
to die for nothing and I think there is a tremendous moral
question here which the Congress of the United States is
ignoring.
The Chairman. The Congress cannot directly under our system
negotiate a cease-fire or anything of this kind. Under our
constitutional system we can advise the President. We have to
persuade the President of the urgency of taking this action.
Now we have certain ways in which to proceed. We can, of
course, express ourselves in a resolution or we can pass an
act which directly affects appropriations which is the most
concrete positive way the Congress can express itself.
But Congress has no capacity under our system to go out and
negotiate a cease-fire. We have to persuade the Executive to
do this for the country.
EXTRAORDINARY RESPONSE DEMANDED BY EXTRAORDINARY QUESTION
Mr. Kerry. Mr. Chairman, I realize that full well as a
study of political science. I realize that we cannot
negotiate treaties and I realize that even my visits in
Paris, precedents had been set by Senator McCarthy and
others, in a sense are on the borderline of private
individuals negotiating, et cetera. I understand these
things. But what I am saying is that I believe that there is
a mood in this country which I know you are aware of and you
have been one of the strongest critics of this war for the
longest time. But I
[[Page E602]]
think if we can talk in this legislative body about
filibustering for porkbarrel programs, then we should start
now to talk about filibustering for the saving of lives and
of our country. [Applause.]
And this, Mr. Chairman, is what we are trying to convey.
I understand. I really am aware that there are a tremendous
number of difficulties in trying to persuade the Executive to
move at this time. I believe they are committed. I don't
believe we can. But I hope that we are not going to have to
wait until 1972 to have this decision made. And what I am
suggesting is that I think this is an extraordinary enough
question so that it demands an extraordinary response, and if
we can't respond extraordinarily to this problem then I doubt
very seriously as men on each that we will be able to respond
to the other serious questions which face us. I think we have
to start to consider that. This is what I am trying to say.
If this body could perhaps call for a referendum in the
country or if we could perhaps move now for a vote in 3
weeks, I think the people of this country would rise up and
back that. I am not saying a vote nationwide. I am talking
about a vote here in Congress to cut off the funds, and a
vote to perhaps pass a resolution calling on the Supreme
Court to rule on the constitutionality of the war, and to
do the things that uphold those things which we pretend to
be. That is what we are asking. I don't think we can turn
our backs on that any longer, Senator.
The Chairman. Senator Symington?
WITNESS' SERVICE DECORATIONS
Senator Symington. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
Mr. Kerry, please move your microphone. You have a Silver
Star; have you not?
Mr. Kerry. Yes, I do.
Senator Symington. And a Purple Heart?
Mr. Kerry. Yes, I do.
Senator Symington. How many clusters?
Mr. Kerry. Two clusters.
Senator Symington. So you have been wounded three times.
Mr. Kerry. Yes, sir.
Senator Symington. I have no further questions, Mr.
Chairman.
The Chairman. Senator Aiken. [Applause.]
NORTH VIETNAMESE AND VC ATTITUDE TOWARD DEFINITE WITHDRAWAL DATE
Senator Aiken. Mr. Kerry, the Defense Department seems to
feel that if we set a definite date for withdrawal when our
forces get down to a certain level, they would be seriously
in danger by the North Vietnamese and the Vietcong. Do you
believe that the North Vietnamese would undertake to prevent
our withdrawal from the country and attack the troops that
remain there?
Mr. Kerry. Well, Senator, if I may answer you directly I
believe we are running that danger with the present course of
withdrawal because the President has neglected to state to
this country, exactly what his response will be when we have
reached the point that we do have, let us say, 50,000 support
troops in Vietnam.
Senator Aiken. I am not telling you what I think. I am
telling you what the Department says.
Mr. Kerry. Yes Sir; I understand that.
Senator Aiken. Do you believe the North Vietnamese would
seriously undertake, to impede our complete withdrawal?
Mr. Kerry. No, I do not believe that the North Vietnamese
would and it has been clearly indicated at the Paris peace
talks they would not.
Senator Aiken. Do you think they might help carry the bags
for us? [Laughter.]
Mr. Kerry. I would say they would be more prone to do that
than the Army of the South Vietnamese. [Laughter.]
[Applause.]
Senator Aiken. I think your answer is ahead of my question.
[Laughter.]
SAIGON GOVERNMENT'S ATTITUDE TOWARD COMPLETE WITHDRAWAL DATE
I was going to ask you next what the attitude of the Saigon
government would be if we announced that we were going to
withdraw our troops, say, by October 1st, and be completely
out of there--air, sea, land--leaving them on their own. What
do you think would be the attitude of the Saigon government
under those circumstances?
Mr. Kerry. Well, I think if we were to replace the Thieu-
Ky-Khiem regime and offer these men sanctuary somewhere,
which I think this Government has an obligation to do since
we created that government and supported it all along. I
think there would not be any problems. The number two man at
the Saigon talks to Ambassador Lam was asked by the Concerned
Laymen, who visited with them in Paris last month, how long
they felt they could survive if the United States-- would
pull out and his answer was 1 week. So I think clearly we do
have to face this question. But I think, having done what we
have done to that country, we have an obligation to offer
sanctuary to the perhaps 2,000, 3,000 people who might face,
and obviously they would, we understand that, might face
political assassination something, else. But my feeling is
that those 3,000 who may have to leave that country
ATTITUDE OF SOUTH VIETNAMESE ARMY AND PEOPLE TOWARD WITHDRAWAL
Senator Aiken. I think your 3,000 estimate might be a
little low because we had to help 800,000 find sanctuary from
North Vietnam after the French lost at Dienbienphu. But
assuming that we resettle the members of the Saigon
government, who would undoubtedly be in danger, in some other
area, what do you think would be the attitude of the large,
well-armed South Vietnamese army and the South Vietnamese
people? Would they be happy to have us withdraw or what?
Mr. Kerry. Well, Senator, this obviously is the most
difficult question of all, but I think that at this point the
United States is not really in a position to consider the
happiness of those people as pertains to the army in our
withdrawal. We have to consider the happiness of the people
as pertains to the life which they will be able to lead in
the next few years.
If we don't withdraw, if we maintain a Korean-type presence
in South Vietnam, say 50,000 troops or something, with
strategic bombing raids from Guam and from Japan and from
Thailand dropping these 15,000 pound fragmentation bombs on
them, et cetera, in the next few years, then what you will
have is a people who are continually oppressed, who are
continually at warfare, and whose problems will not at all be
solved because they will not have any kind of representation.
The war will continue. So what I am saying is that yes,
there will be some recrimination but far, far less than the
200,000 a year who are murdered by the United States of
America, and we can't go around President Kennedy said this
many times. He said that the United States simply can't right
every wrong, that we can't solve the problems of the other 94
percent of mankind. We didn't go into East Pakistan; we
didn't go into Czechoslovakia. Why then should we feel that
we now have the power to solve the internal political
struggles of this country?
We have to let them solve their problems while we solve
ours and help other people in an altruistic fashion
commensurate with our capacity. But we have extended that
capacity; we have exhausted that capacity, Senator. So I
think the question is really moot.
Senator Aiken. I might say I asked those questions several
years ago, rather ineffectively. But what I would like to
know now is if we, as we complete our withdrawal and, say,
get down to 10,000, 20,000, 30,000 or even 50,000 troops
there, would there be any effort on the part of the South
Vietnamese government or the South Vietnamese army, in
your opinion, to impede their withdrawal?
Mr. Kerry. No. I don't think so, Senator.
Senator Aiken. I don't see why North Vietnam should object.
Mr. Kerry. I don't for the simple reason, I used to talk
with officers about their--we asked them, and one officer
took great pleasure in playing with me in the sense that he
would say, ``Well, you know you Americans, you come over here
for 1 year and you can afford, you know, you go to Hong Kong
for R. & R. and if you are a good boy you get another R. & R.
or something you know. You can afford to charge bunkers, but
I have to try and be here for 30 years and stay alive.'' And
I think that that really is the governing principle by which
those people are now living and have been allowed to live
because of our mistake. So that when we in fact state, let us
say, that we will have a ceasefire or have a coalition
government, most of the 2 million men you often hear quoted
under arms, most of whom are regional popular reconnaissance
forces, which is to say militia, and a very poor militia at
that, will simply lay down their arms, if they haven't done
so already, and not fight. And I think you will find they
will respond to whatever government evolves which answers
their needs, and those needs quite simply are to be fed, to
bury their dead in plots where their ancestors lived, to be
allowed to extend their culture, to try and exist as human
beings. And I think that is what will happen.
I can cite many, many instances, sir, as in combat when
these men refused to fight with us, when they shot with their
guns over in this area like this and their heads turned
facing the other way. When we were taken under fire we
Americans, supposedly fighting with them, and pinned down in
a ditch, and I was in the Navy and this was pretty
unconventional, but when we were pinned down in a ditch
recovering bodies or something and they refused to come in
and help us, point blank refused. I don't believe they want
to fight, sir.
obligation to furnish economic assistance
Senator Aiken. Do you think we are under obligation to
furnish them with extensive economic assistance?
Mr. Kerry. Yes, sir. I think we have a very definite
obligation to make extensive reparations to the people of
Indochina.
Senator Aiken. I think that is all.
The Chairman. Senator Pell.
Senator Pell. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
As the witness knows, I have a very high personal regard
for him and hope before his life ends he will be a colleague
of ours in this body.
growth of opposition to war
This war was really just as wrong, immoral, and unrelated
to our national interests 5 years ago as it is today, and I
must say I agree with you. I think it is rather poor taste
for the architects of this war to now be sitting as they are
in quite sacrosanct intellectual glass houses.
I think that this committee, and particularly Chairman
Fulbright, deserve a huge debt of gratitude from you and
everyone of your men who are here because when he conducted
hearings some years ago when we were fighting in Vietnam. At
that time the word ``peace'' was a dirty word. It was tied in
with ``appeasement'' and Nervous Nellies and that sort of
thing. Chairman Fulbright and this committee really took
public opinion at that time and turned it around and made
``peace'' a respectable word and produced the
[[Page E603]]
climate that produced President Johnson's abdication.
The problem is that the majority of the people in the
Congress still don't agree with the view that you and we
have. As the chairman pointed out, and as you know as a
student of political science, whenever we wanted to end this
war, we could have ended this war if the majority of us had
used the power of the purse strings. That was just as true 5
years ago as it is today.
I don't think it is a question of guts. We didn't have the
desire to do that and I am not sure the majority has the
desire to do that yet. Whenever we want to as a Congress, we
could do it. We can't start an action, but we can force an
action with the purse strings.
I think it is wonderful you veterans have come down here as
a cutting edge of public opinion because you again make this
have more respect and I hope you succeed and prevail on the
majority of the Congress.
voting of veterans and nonveterans concerning vietnam war
It is interesting, speaking of veterans and speaking of
statistics, that the press has never picked up and
concentrated on quite interesting votes in the past. In those
votes you find the majority of hawks, were usually
nonveterans and the majority of doves were usually veterans.
Specifically, of those who voted in favor of the Hatfield-
McGovern end-the-war amendment in the last session of the
Congress 79 percent were veterans with actual military
service. Of those voting against the amendment, only 36
percent were veterans.
Now on the sponsors of the Cooper-Church amendment you will
find very much the same statistics. Eighty-two percent were
veterans as compared to 71 percent of the Senate as a whole
being veterans. So I would hope what you are doing will have
an effect on the Congress.
obligation to south vietnamese. allies
I have two questions I would like to ask you. First, I was
very much struck by your concern with asylum because now I
see public opinion starting to swing and Congress passing
legislation. Before they wouldn't get out at all; now they
are talking about getting out yesterday. When it comes to
looking after the people who would be killed if we left or
badly ruined, I would hope you would develop your thinking a
little bit to make sure that American public opinion, which
now wants to get out, also bears in mind that when we depart
we have an obligation to these people. I hope you will keep
to that point.
actions of lieutenant calley
Finally, in connection with Lieutenant Calley, which is a
very emotional issue in this country, I was struck by your
passing reference to that incident.
Wouldn't you agree with me though that what he did in
herding old men, women and children into a trench and then
shooting them was a little bit beyond the perimeter of even
what has been going on in this war and that that action
should be discouraged. There are other actions not that
extreme that have gone on and have been permitted. If we had
not taken action or cognizance of it, it would have been even
worse. It would have indicated we encouraged this kind of
action.
Mr. Kerry. My feeling, Senator, on Lieutenant Calley is
what he did quite obviously was a horrible, horrible,
horrible thing and I have no bone to pick with the fact that
he was prosecuted. But I think that in this question you have
to separate guilt from responsibility, and I think clearly
the responsibility for what has happened there lies
elsewhere.
I think it lies with the men who designed free fire zones.
I think it lies with the men who encouraged body counts. I
think it lies in large part with this country, which allows a
young child before he reaches the age of 14 to see 12,500
deaths on television, which glorifies the John Wayne
syndrome, which puts out fighting man comic books on the
stands, which allows us in training to do calisthenics to
four counts, on the fourth count of which we stand up and
shout ``kill'' in unison, which has posters in barracks in
this country with a crucified Vietnamese, blood on him, and
underneath it says ``kill the gook,'' and I think that
clearly the responsibility for all of this is what has
produced this horrible abberation.
Now, I think if you are going to try Lieutenant Calley then
you must at the same time, if this country is going to demand
respect for the law, you must at the same time try all those
other people who have responsibility, and any aversion that
we may have to the verdict as veterans is not to say that
Calley should be freed, not to say that he is innocent, but
to say that you can't just take him alone, and that would be
my response to that.
Senator Pell. I agree with you. The guilt is shared by
many, many, many of us, including the leaders of the get-out-
now school. But in this regard if we had not tried him, I
think we would be much more criticized and should be
criticized. I would think the same fate would probably befall
him as befell either Sergeant or Lieutenant Schwarz of West
Virginia who was tried for life for the same offense and is
out on a 9 months commuted sentence. By the same token I
would hope the quality of mercy would be exercised in this
regard for a young man who was not equipped for the job and
ran amuck. But I think public opinion should think this
through. We who have taken this position find ourselves very
much in the minority.
Mr. Kerry. I understand that, Senator, but I think it is a
very difficult thing for the public to think through faced
with the facts. The fact that 18 other people indicted for
the very same crime were freed and the fact among those were
generals and colonels. I mean this simply is not justice.
That is all. It is just not justice.
Senator Pell. I guess it is the revolutionary adage. When
you see the whites of their eyes you are more guilty. This
seems to be our morality as has been pointed out. If you drop
a bomb from a plane, you don't see the whites of their eyes.
I agree with you with the body count. It is like a Scottish
nobleman saying, ``How many grouse were caught on the moor.''
Four or five years ago those of us who criticized were more
criticized.
Thank you for being here and I wish you all success.
[Applause.]
The Chairman. Senator from New Jersey.
Senator Case. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
strategic implications of Vietnam war
Mr. Kerry, thank you too for coming You have made more than
clear something that I think always has been true: that the
war never had any justification in terms of Indochina itself.
I wish you would take this question a little further and
touch on the larger strategic implications. It is in these
larger strategic implications, if anywhere, that may be found
justification for our involvement. As you know, the President
said the other day that it is easy to get out and to end the
war immediately.
The question is to get out and leave a reasonable chance
for lasting peace. We have to look at this because the
American people are going to see the issue in the terms he
has defined it. I would be glad to have your comment on this
matter, although I won't press you to discuss it because in a
sense you have already said this is not your area.
Mr. Kerry. I do want to. I want to very much.
Senator Case. And I would be very glad to have you do it.
Mr. Kerry. Thank you, sir. I would like to very much.
In my opinion what we are trying to do, as the President
talks about getting out with a semblance of honor is simply
whitewashing ourselves. On the question of getting out with
some semblance for peace, as a man who has fought here, I am
dying to say that this policy has no chance for peace. You
don't have a chance for peace when you arm the people of
another country and tell them they can fight a war. That is
not peace; that is fighting a war; that is continuing a war.
That is even criminal in the sense that this country, if we
are really worried about recrimination, is going to have to
some day face up to the fact that we convinced a certain
number of people, perhaps hundreds of thousands, perhaps
there will be several million, that they could stand up to
something which they couldn't and ultimately will face the
recrimination of the fact that their lives in addition to all
the lives at this point, will be on our conscience. I don't
think it is a question of peace at all. What we are doing is
very, very hypocritical in our withdrawal, and we really
should face up to that.
Senator Case. May I press you just a little further or at
least raise the question on which I would ask you to comment.
Mr. Kerry. I wish you would, please.
indochina and question of world peace
Senator Case. I think your answer was related still to the
question of Indochina, but I think the President has tried to
tie in Indochina with the question of world peace.
Mr. Kerry. I would like to discuss that.
It is my opinion that the United States is still reacting
in very much the 1945 mood and postwar cold-war period when
we reacted to the forces which were at work in World-War II
and came out of it with this paranoia, about the Russians and
how the world was going to be divided up between the super
powers, and the foreign policy of John Foster Dulles which
was responsible for the creation of the SEATO treaty, which
was, in fact, a direct reaction to this so called Communist
monolith: And I think we are reacting under cold-war precepts
which are no longer applicable.
I say that because so long as we have the kind of strike
force we have, and I am not party to the secret statistics
which you gentlemen have here, but as long as we have the
ones which we of the public know we have, I think we have a
strike force of such capability and I think we have a strike
force simply in our Polaris submarines, in the 62 or some
Polaris submarines, which are constantly roaming around under
the sea. And I know as a Navy man the underwater detection is
the hardest kind in the world, and they have not perfected
it, that we have the ability to destroy the human race. Why
do we have to, therefore, consider and keep considering
threats?
At any time that an actual threat is posed to this country
or to the security and freedom I will be one of the first
people to pick up a gun and defend it, but right now we are
reacting with paranoia to this question of peace and the
people taking over the world. I think if we are ever going to
get down to the question of dropping those bombs most of us
in my generation simply don't want to be alive afterwards
because of the kind of world that it would be with mutations
and the genetic probabilities of freaks and everything else.
Therefore, I think it is ridiculous to assume we have to
play this power game based
[[Page E604]]
on total warfare. I think there will be guerrilla wars and I
think we must have a capability to fight those. And we may
have to fight them somewhere based on legitimate threats, but
we must learn; in this country, how to define those threats
and that is what I would say to this question of world peace.
I think it is bogus, totally artificial. There is no threat.
The Communists are not about to take over our McDonald
hamburger stands. [Laughter.]
Senator, I will say this. I think that politically,
historically, the one thing that people try to do, that
society is structured on as a whole, is an attempt to satisfy
their felt needs, and you can satisfy those needs with almost
any kind of political structure, giving it one name or the
other. In this name it is democratic; in others it is
communism, in, others it is benevolent dictatorship. As long
as those needs are satisfied, that structure will exist.
But when you start to neglect those needs, people will
start to demand a new structure, and that, to me, is the only
threat that this country faces now, because we are not
responding to the needs and we are not responding to them
because we work on these old cold-war precepts and because
we have not woken up to realizing what is happening in the
United States of America.
Senator Case. I thank you very much. I wanted you to have a
chance to respond to the question of Indochina in a large
context.
Mr. Chairman, I have just one further thing to do. Senator
Javits had to go to the floor on important business, and he
asked me to express his regret that he couldn't stay and also
that if he had stayed he would have limited his participation
to agreement with everything Senator Symington said.
[Applause.]
background of vietnam war
The Chairman. Mr. Kerry, I have one other aspect of this I
would like to explore for a moment. I recognize you and your
associates, putting it on a personal point of view, feeling
the seriousness and the tragedy of the experience in Vietnam.
But I am disturbed very much by the possibility that your
generation may become or is perhaps already in the process of
becoming disillusioned with our whole country, with our
system of government. There was much said about it. You
didn't say it, but others have said this. I wonder if we
could explore for a moment the background of this war.
It has seemed to me that its origin was essentially a
mistake in judgment, beginning with our support of the French
as a colonial power, which, I believe, is the only time our
country has ever done that. Always our sympathies has been
with the colony. If you will recall, we urged the British to
get out of Egypt and India, and we urged, many thought too
vigorously, the Dutch prematurely to get out of Indonesia. I
think there was much criticism that we acted prematurely in
urging the Belgians to get out of the Congo. In any case, the
support of the French to maintain their power was a departure
from our traditional attitude toward colonial powers because
of our own history.
It started in a relatively small way by our support of the
French. Then one thing led to another. But these were not
decisions, I believe, that involved evil motives. They were
political judgments which at that time were justified by the
conditions in the world. You have already referred to the
fact that after World War II there was great apprehension,
and I think properly. The apprehension was justified by the
events, especially from Stalin's regime. There was
apprehension that he would be able, and if he could he would
impose his regime by force on all of Western Europe which
could have created an extremely difficult situation which
would amount to what you said a moment ago. You said if our
country was really threatened, you would have no hesitancy in
taking up a gun. So I think, in trying to evaluate the course
of our involvement in this war, we have to take all of this
into consideration. It was not a sign of any moral
degradation or of bad motives. They were simply political
judgments as to where our interest really was.
In retrospect I think we can say that our interest was not
in supporting the French, that it was not in intervening, and
it was not in undoing the Geneva Accords by the creation of
SEATO, but that is all history. I am not saying this in order
to try to lay the blame on anyone, but to get a perspective
of our present situation, and hopefully to help, if I can,
you and others not to be too disillusioned and not to lose
faith in the capacity of our institutions to respond to
the public welfare. I believe what you and your associates
are doing today certainly contributes to that, by the fact
that you have taken the trouble to think these things
through, and to come here. I know it is not very pleasant
to do the things you have done.
While I wouldn't presume to compare my own experience, I
have taken a great deal of criticism since I myself in 1965
took issue with the then President Johnson over his policies.
I did what I could within my particular role in the
Government to persuade both President Johnson and subsequent
political leaders that this was not in the interests of our
country. I did this, not because I thought they were evil men
inherently or they were morally misguided, but their
political judgment was wrong. All of us, of course, know that
as fallible human beings we all make errors of judgment.
possibility of making u.s. institutions work effectively
I think it is helpful to try to put it in perspective and
not lose confidence in the basically good motives and
purposes of this country. I believe in the possibility of
making our institutions work effectively. I think they can be
made responsive to the welfare of the people and to proper
judgments. I only throw this out because I have a feeling
that because of the unusual horror that has developed from
this war too many people may lose confidence in our system as
a whole. I know of no better system for a country as large as
this, with 200-plus millions of people. No other country
comparable to it in history has ever made a democratic system
work.
They have all become dictatorships when they have achieved
the size and complexity of this country. Only smaller
countries really have made a democratic system work at all.
So I only wish to throw it out hopefully that, in spite of
the tragic experiences of you and so many other people and
the deaths of so many people, this system is not beyond
recall and with the assistance of people like yourself and
the younger generation we can get back on the track, and can
make this system operate effectively.
I know that the idea of working within the system has been
used so much, and many people have lost confidence that it
can be done. They wish to destroy the system, to start all
over, but I don't think in the history of human experience
that those destructions of systems work. They usually destroy
everything good as well as bad, and you have an awful lot of
doing to recreate the good part and to get started again.
So I am very hopeful that the younger generation--and I am
certainly getting at the end of my generation because I have
been here an awfully long time--but that you younger people
can find it possible to accept the system and try to make it
work because I can't at the moment think of a better one
given the conditions that we have in this country and the
great complexity and diversity.
I really believe if we can stop this war--I certainly
expect to do everything I can. I have done all I can with all
my limitations. I am sure many people have thought I could do
bettor, but I did all that I was capable of doing and what
wisdom I may have has been applied to it. I hope that you and
your colleagues will feel the same way or at least you
will accept the structure of the system and try to make it
work. I can see no better alternative to offer in its
place.
If I thought there was one, I would certainly propose it or
try.
can basic system be made to work?
Have you yourself arrived at the point where you believe
that basic structural changes must be brought about in our
system or do you believe it can be made to work?
Mr. Kerry. I don't think I would be here if I didn't
believe that it can be made to work, but I would have to say,
and one of the traits of my generation now is that people
don't pretend to speak for other people in it, and I can only
speak as an individual about it, but I would say that I have
certainly been frustrated in the past months, very, very
seriously frustrated. I have gone to businessmen all over
this country asking for money for fees, and met with a
varying range of comments, ranging from ``You can't sell war
crimes'' to, ``War crimes are a glut on the market'' or to
``well, you know we are tired now, we have tried, we can't do
anything.'' So I have seen unresponsiveness on the racial
question in this country. I see an unwillingness on the part
of too many of the members of this body to respond, to take
gutsy stands, to face questions other than their own
reelection, to make a profile of courage, and I am--although
still with faith--very, very, very full of doubt, and I am
not going to quit. But I think that unless we can respond on
as a great a question as the war, I seriously question how we
are going to find the kind of response needed to meet
questions such as poverty and hunger and questions such as
birth control and so many of the things that face our society
today from low income housing to schooling, to recent
reaction to the Supreme Court's decision on busing.
But I will say that I think we are going to keep trying. I
also agree with you, Senator. I don't see another system
other than democracy, but democracy has to remain responsive.
When it does not, you create the possibilities for all kinds
of other systems to supplant it, and that very possibility, I
think, is beginning to exist in this country.
The Chairman. That is why I ask you that. The feeling that
it cannot be made responsive comes not so much from what you
have said but from many different sources. I can assure you I
have been frustrated too. We have lost most of our major
efforts. That is we have not succeeded in getting enough
votes, but there has been a very marked increase, I think, in
the realization of the seriousness of the war. I think you
have to keep in perspective, as I say, the size and
complexity of the country itself and the difficulties of
communication. This war is so far removed. The very fact, as
you have said, you do not believe what happens there to be in
the vital interests of this country, has from the beginning
caused many people to think it wasn't so important.
gradual development of concern about vietnam war
In the beginning, back in the times that I mentioned when
we first supported the
[[Page E605]]
French and throughout the 1950's up until the 1960's, this
whole matter was not very much on the minds of anybody in the
Congress. We were more preoccupied with what was going on in
Western Europe, the fear, particularly during Stalin's time,
that lie might be able to subjugate all of Western Europe,
which would have been a very serious challenge to us. This
grew up almost as a peripheral matter without anyone
taking too much notice until the 1960's. The major time
when the Congress, I think, really became concerned about
the significance of the war was really not before 1965,
the big escalation. It was a very minor sideshow in all
the things in which this country was involved until
February of 1965. That was when it became a matter that,
you might say, warranted and compelled the attention of
the country. It has been a gradual development of our
realization of just what we were into.
As I said before, I think this came about not because of
bad motives but by very serious errors in political judgment
as to where our interest lies and what should be done about
it.
I am only saying this Hopefully to at least try to enlist
your consideration, of the view that in a country of this
kind I don't believe there is a better alternative from a
structural point of view. I think the structure of our
Government is sound.
To go back to my own State certainly, leaving out now the
war, its affairs are being well managed. The people are, as
you may say, maybe too indifferent to this.
Mr. Kerry. As it does in Massachusetts, too.
The Chairman. I have often thought they were too
indifferent to it, but they have responded to the arguments
as to where our interest lies quite well, at least from my
personal experience. Otherwise I would not be here. But I
think there is a gradual recognition of this.
war's interference with dealing with other problems
I also feel that if we could finish the war completely
within the reasonably near future, as some of the proposals
before this committee are designed to do if we can pass them,
I think the country can right itself and get back on the
track, in a reasonably quick time, dealing with the problems
you mentioned. We are aware and conscious of all of them.
The thing that has inhibited us in doing things about what
,you mention has been the war. It has been the principal
obstacle to dealing with these other problems with which you
are very concerned, as, I think, the Congress is. Always we
are faced with the demands of the war itself. Do you realize
that this country has put well over $1,000 billion into
military affairs since World War II?
I think it now approaches $1,500 billion. It is a sum so
large no one can comprehend it, but I don't think outside of
this war issue there is anything fundamentally wrong with the
system that cannot be righted.
If we can give our resources to those developments, I don't
have any doubt myself that it can be done. Whether it will be
done or not is a matter of will. It is a matter of conviction
of the various people who are involved, including the younger
generation.
In that connection, I may say, the recent enactment of the
right of all people from 18 years up to vote is at least a
step in the direction where you and your generation can have
an effect.
I hope that you won't lose faith in it. I hope you will use
your talents after the war is over, and it surely will be
over, to then attack these other problems and to make the
system work.
I believe it can be made to work.
Do you have anything else you would like to say?
Mr. Kerry. Would you like me to respond at all, sir?
The Chairman. If you care to.
Mr. Kerry. Well, my feeling is that if you are talking
about the ideal structure of this country as it is written
down in the Constitution, then you or I would not differ at
all. Yes, that is an ideal structure.
developments in united states requiring fundamental changes
What has developed in this country, however, at this point
is something quite different and that does require some
fundamental changes. I do agree with you that what happened
in Vietnam was not the product of evil men seeking evil
goals. It was misguided principles and judgments and other
things.
However, at some point you have to stop playing the game.
At some point you have to say, ``All right we did make a
mistake.'' At some point the basic human values have to come
back into this system and at this moment we are so built up
within it by these outside structures, other interests, for
instance, government by vested power which, in fact, you and
I really know it is. When a minority body comes down here to
Washington with a bill, those bodies which have the funds and
the ability to lobby are those which generally get it passed.
If you wanted to pass a health care medical bill, which we
have finally perhaps gotten to this year, we may, but in past
years the AMA has been able to come down here and squash
them. The American Legion has successfully prevented people
like Vietnam Veterans against the War from getting their
programs through the Veterans' Administration. Those bodies
in existence have tremendous power.
There is one other body that has tremendous power in this
country, which is a favorite topic of Vice President Agnew
and I would take some agreement with him. That would be the
fourth estate. The press. I think the very reason that we
veterans are here today is the result partially of our
inability to get our story out through the legitimate
channels.
That is to say, for instance, I held a press conference
here in Washington, D.C., some weeks ago with General Shoup,
with General Hester, with the mother of a prisoner of war,
the wife of a man who was killed, the mother of a soldier who
was killed, and with a bilateral amputee, all representing
the so-called silent majority, the silent so-called majority
which the President used to perpetuate the war, and because
it was a press conference and an antiwar conference and
people simply exposing ideas we had no electronic media
there.
I called the media afterward and asked them why and the
answer was, from one of the networks, it doesn't have to be
identified, ``because, sir, news business is really partly
entertainment business visually, you see, and a press
conference like that is not visual.''
Of course, we don't have the position of power to get our
ideas out, I said, ``If I take-some crippled veterans down to
the White House and we chain ourselves to the gates, will we
get coverage?'' ``Oh, yes, we will cover that.''
So you are reduced to a position where the only way you can
get your ideas out is to stage events, because had we not
staged the events with all due respect, Senator, and I really
appreciate the fact that I am here obviously, and I know you
are committed to this, but with all due respect I probably
wouldn't be sitting at this table. You see this is the
problem.
It goes beyond that. We really have a constitutional crisis
in this country right now. The Constitution under test, and
we are failing. We are failing clearly because the power of
the Executive has became exorbitant, because Congress has not
wanted to exercise its own power, and so that is going to
require some very fundamental changes.
So the system itself on paper, no, it is a question of
making it work, and in that I would agree with you, and I
think that things are changing in a sense. I think the
victory of the ABM was a tremendous boost.
The Chairman. SST.
Mr. Kerry. SST, excuse me.
The Chairman. I hope the ABM.
[Applause.]
Mr. Kerry. Wrong system.
I think the fact that certain individuals are in Congress
today, particularly in the House, who several years ago could
never have been. I would cite Representative Dellums and
Congresswoman Abzug and Congressman Drinan and people like
this. I think this is a terribly encouraging sign, and I
think if nothing more, and this is really sad poetic justice,
if nothing more, this war when it is over, will ultimately
probably have done more to awaken the conscience of this
country than any other similar thing. It may in fact be the
thing that will set us on the right road.
I earnestly hope so and I join you in that.
But meanwhile, I think we still need that extraordinary
response to the problem that exists and I hope that we will
get it.
IMPACT OF VIETNAM WAR AND OTHERS ON CONSTITUTIONAL BALANCE
The Chairman. I am glad to hear you say that. I have the
same feeling. But you must remember we have been through
nearly 30 years of warfare or cold war or crises which I
think have upset the balance, as you say, in our
constitutional system. Senator Javits has introduced a bill
with regard to the war powers in an effort to reestablish
what we believe to be the constitutional system in which you
say you have confidence. I introduced and we passed a
commitments resolution. There are a number of others. I won't
relate them all, but they are all designed to try to bring
back into proper relationship the various elements in our
Government. This effort is being made.
I think the culprit is the war itself. The fact we had been
at war, not just the Vietnam war but others too, diverted the
attention of our people from our domestic concerns and
certainly eroded the role of the Congress. Under the impact
of this and other wars we have allowed this distortion to
develop. If we can end the war, there is no good reason why
it cannot be corrected.
REPRESENTATION OF CONSTITUENCIES
You mentioned some new faces in the Congress. After all,
all these people get here because of the support back home,
as you know. They are simply representative of their
constituents. You do accept that, I believe.
Mr. Kerry. Partially, not totally.
The Chairman. Why not?
Mr. Kerry. As someone who ran for office for 3\1/2\ weeks,
I am aware of many of the problems involved, and in many
places, you can take certain districts in New York City, the
structure is such that people can't really run and represent
necessarily the people. People often don't care. The apathy
is so great that they believe they are being represented when
in fact they are not. I think that you and I could run
through a list of people in this body itself and find many
who are there through the powers of the office itself as
opposed to the fact they are truly representing the people.
It is very easy to give the illusion of representing the
people
[[Page E606]]
through the frank privileges which allow you to send back
what you are doing here in Congress. Congressman insert so
often.
You know, they gave a speech for the Polish and they gave a
speech for the Irish and they gave a speech for this, and
actually handed the paper in to the clerk and the clerk
submits it for the record and a copy of the record goes home
and people say, ``Hey, he really is doing something for me.''
But he isn't.
The Chairman. Well----
Mr. Kerry. Senator, we also know prior to this past year
the House used to meet in the Committee of the Whole and the
Committee of the Whole would make the votes, and votes not of
record and people would file through, and important
legislation was decided then, and after the vote came out and
after people made their hacks and cuts, and the porkbarrel
came out, the vote was reported and gave them an easy out and
they could say ``Well, I voted against this.'' And actually
they voted for it all the time in the committee.
Some of us know that this is going on. So I would say there
are problems with it. Again I come back and say they are not
insoluble. They can be solved, but they can only be solved by
demanding leadership, the same kind of leadership that we
have seen in some countries during war time. That seems to be
the few times we get it. If we could get that kind because I
think we are in a constant war against ourselves and I would
like to see that come--they should demand it of each other if
we can demand it of people.
The Chairman. Take the two cases of what goes on in the
House about the secret votes. That is not a structural aspect
of our Government. That is a regulation or whatever you call
it of the procedures in the House itself.
NECESSITY OF INFORMED ELECTORATE
Fundamentally you said that the people can bamboozle their
constituents; they can fool them. Of course, that is quite
true of any system of a representative nature. The solution
to that is to inform the electorate itself to the extent that
they recognize a fraud or a phony when they have one. This is
not easy to do, but it is fundamental in a democracy. If you
believe in a democratic system, the electorate who elect the
representatives have to have sufficient capacity for
discrimination. They have to be able to tell the difference
between a phony, someone who simply puts pieces in the
record, and someone who actually does something, so that they
can recognize it in an election, if they are interested.
Now if they are apathetic, as you say they are apathetic,
and don't care, then democracy cannot work if they continue
to be apathetic and don't care who represents them. This
comes back to a fundamental question of education through all
different resources, not only the formal education but the
use of the media and other means to educate them. Our
Founding Fathers recognized that you couldn't have a
democracy without an informed electorate. It comes back to
the informing of the electorate; doesn't it? That is not a
structural deficiency in our system. You are dealing now with
the deficiencies of human nature, the failure of their
education and their capacity for discrimination in the
selection of their representatives.
I recognize this is difficult. All countries have had this
same problem and so long as they have a representative system
this has to be met. But there is no reason why it cannot be
met.
A structural change does not affect the capacity of the
electorate to choose good representatives; does it?
COST OF ELECTION CAMPAIGNS
Mr. Kerry. Well, no, sir; except for the fact that to run
for representative in any populated area costs about $50,000.
Many people simply don't have that available, and. in order
to. get it inevitably wind up with their hands tied.
The Chairman. That is a common statement, but we had an
example during this last year of a man being elected because
he walked througn Florida with a minimum of money. As he
became attractive to the people he may have received more,
but he started without money. You are familiar with Mr.
Chiles.
Mr. Kerry. Yes, I am familiar. I understand it.
The Chairman. I know in my own state, our Governor started
without any money or with just himself and came from nowhere
and defeated a Rockefeller. So it is not true that you have
to have a lot of money to get elected. If you have the other
things that it takes, personality, the determination and the
intelligence, it is still possible. ``There were other
examples, but those are well known. I don't think it is
correct to say you have to have a lot of money. It helps, of
course. It makes it easier and all that, but it isn't
essential. I think you can cite many examples where that is
true.
Essential Question will be response to Vietnam issue
Mr. Kerry. Senator, I would basically agree with what you
are saying and obviously we could find exceptions to parts of
everything everywhere and I understand really the essential
question is going to be the response to the issue of Vietnam.
The Chairman. I agree with that. I can assure you that this
committee and, certainly, I are going to do everything we
can. That is what these hearings are about. It is lust by
coincidence you came to Washington in the very midst of them.
We only opened these hearings on Tuesday of this week. I
personally believe that the great majority of all the people
of this country are in accord with your desire, and certainly
mine, to get the war over at the earliest possible moment.
All we are concerned with at the moment is the best procedure
to bring that about, the procedure to persuade the President
to take the steps that will bring that about. I for one
have more hope now than I had at any time in the last 6
years because of several things you have mentioned. I
think there is a very good chance that it will be brought
about in the. reasonably near future.
commendation of vietnam veterans against the war
I think you and your associates have contributed a great
deal in the actions you have taken. As I said in the
beginning, the fact that you have shown both great conviction
and patience about this matter and at the same time conducted
yourself in the most commendable manner has been the most
effective demonstration, if I may use that word. Although you
have demonstrated in the sense that has become disapproved of
in some circles, I think you have demonstrated in the most
proper way and the most effective way to bring about the
results that you wish and I believe you have made a great
contribution.
I apologize. I am not trying to lecture you about our
Government. I have just been disturbed, not so much by you as
by other things that have happened, that the younger
generation has lost faith in our system. I don't think it is
correct. I think the paranoia to which you referred has been
true. It arose at a time when there was reason for it
perhaps, but we have long since gone out of that time, and I
think your idea of timing is correct. But I congratulate you
and thank you very much for coming. [Applause.]
Senator Symington would like to ask a question.
Senator Symington. Yes. Mr. Kerry I had to leave because we
are marking up the selective service bill in the Armed
Services Committee. But I will read the record.
Attitude of Servicemen Toward Congressional Opposition to War
The staff has a group of questions here, four of which I
would ask. Over the years members of this committee who spoke
out in opposition to the war were often accused of stabbing
our boys in the back. What, in your opinion, is the attitude
of servicemen in Vietnam about congressional opposition to
the war?
Mr. Kerry. If I could answer that, it is very difficult,
Senator, because I just know, I don't want to get into the
game of saying I represent everybody over there, but let me
try to say, as straightforwardly as I can, we had an
advertisement, ran full page, to show you what the troops
read. It ran in Playboy and the response to it within two and
a half weeks from Vietnam was 1,200 members. We received
initially about 50 to 80 letters a day from troops there. We
now receive about 20 letters a day from troops arriving at
our New York office. Some of these letters--and I wanted to
bring some down, I didn't know we were going to be testifying
here and I can make them available to you--are very, very
moving, some of them written by hospital corpsmen on things,
on casualty report sheets which say, you know, ``Get us out
of here.'' ``You are the only hope we have got.'' ``You have
got to get us back; it is crazy.'' We received recently 80
members of the 101st Airborne signed up in one letter. Forty
members from a helicopter assault squadron, crash and rescue
mission signed up in another one.
I think they are expressing, some of these troops,
solidarity with us, right now by wearing black arm bands and
Vietnam Veterans Against the War buttons. They want to
come out and I think they are looking at the people who
want to try to get them out as a help.
However, I do recognize there are some men who are in the
military for life. The job in the military is to fight wars.
When they have a war to fight, they are just as happy in a
sense, and I am sure that these men feel they are being
stabbed in the back. But, at the same time, I think to most
of them the realization of the emptiness, the hollowness, the
absurdity of Vietnam has finally hit home, and I feel if they
did come home the recrimination would certainly not come from
the right, from the military. I don't think there would be
that problem.
Senator Symington. Thank you.
Has the fact Congress has never passed a declaration of war
undermined the morale of U.S. servicemen in Vietnam, to the
best of your knowledge?
Mr. Kerry. Yes; it has clearly and to a great, great
extent.
USE OF DRUGS BY U.S. SERVICEMEN IN VIETNAM
Senator Symington. There have been many reports of
widespread use of drugs by U.S. servicemen in Vietnam. I
might add I was in Europe last week and the growth of that
problem was confirmed on direct questioning of people in the
military. How serious is the problem and to what do you
attribute it?
Mr. Kerry. The problem is extremely serious. It is serious
in very many different ways. I believe two Congressmen today
broke a story. I can't remember their names. There were
35,000 or some men, heroin addicts that were back.
The problem exists for a number of reasons, not the least
of which is the emptiness. It is the only way to get through
it. A lot of guys, 60, 80 percent stay stoned 24 hours a day
just to get through the Vietnam----
Senator Symington. You say 60 to 80 percent.
[[Page E607]]
Mr. Kerry. Sixty to 80 percent is the figure used that try
something, let's say, at one point. Of that I couldn't give
you a figure of habitual smokers, let's say, of pot, and I
certainly couldn't begin to say how many are hard drug
addicts, but I do know that the problem for the returning
veteran is acute because we have, let's say, a veteran picks
up a $12 habit in Saigon. He comes back to this country and
the moment he steps off an airplane that same habit costs him
some $90 to support. With the state of the economy, he can't
get a job. He doesn't earn money. He turns criminal or just
finds his normal sources and in a sense drops out.
The alienation of the war, the emptiness of back and forth,
all combined adds to this. There is no real drug
rehabilitation program. I know the VA hospital in New York
City has 20 beds allocated for drug addicts; 168 men are on
the waiting list, and I really don't know what a drug addict
does on the waiting list.
And just recently the same hospital gave three wards to New
York University for research purposes.
It is very, very widespread. It is a very serious problem.
I think that this Congress should undertake to investigate
the sources because I heard many implications of Madam Ky and
others being involved in the traffic and I think there are
some very serious things here at stake.
Senator Symington. In the press there was a woman reporter.
I think her name was Emerson. In any case she stated she
bought drugs six or nine times openly, heroin, in a 15-mile
walk from Saigon. The article had a picture of a child with a
parasol and a parrot. She said this child was one of the
people from whom she had bought, herself, these drugs and
that the cost of the heroin was from $3 to $6.
If we are over there, in effect, protecting the Thieu-Ky
government, why is it that this type and character of sale of
drugs to anybody, including our own servicemen, can't be
controlled?
Mr. Kerry. It is not controllable in this country. Why
should it be controllable in that country?
Senator Symington. It isn't quite that open in this
country, do you think?
Mr. Kerry. It depends on where you are. [Applause.]
Senator Symington. We are talking about heroin, not pot, or
LSD.
Mr. Kerry. I understand that, but if you walk up 116th
Street in Harlem I am sure somebody can help you out pretty
fast. [Laughter.]
accuracy of information through official military channels
Senator Symington. 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.
(Shouts of ``No.'' from the audience.)
Mr. Kerry. I don't know----
Senator Symington. I am beginning to think you have some
supporters here.
Mr. Kerry. I don't know where they came from, sir, maybe
Vietnam.
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.
The intelligence missions themselves are based on very,
very flimsy information. Several friends of mine were
intelligence officers and I think you should have them in
sometime to testify. Once in Saigon I was visiting this
friend of mine and he gave me a complete rundown on how the
entire intelligence system should be re-set up on all of its
problems, namely, that you give a young guy a certain amount
of money, he goes out, sets up his own contacts under the
table, gets intelligence, comes in. It is not reliable;
everybody is feeding each other double intelligence, and I
think that is what comes back to this country.
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. And this is a very
serious thing because I know on several visits--Secretary
Laird came to Vietnam once and they staged an entire invasion
for him. When the initial force at Dang Tam, it was the 9th
Infantry when it was still there--when the initial recon
platoon went out and met with resistance, they changed the
entire operation the night before and sent them down into the
South China Seas so they would not run into resistance and
the Secretary would have a chance to see how smoothly the war
was going.
I know General Wheeler came over at one point and a major
in Saigon escorted him around. General Wheeler went out to
the field and saw 12 pacification leaders and asked about 10
of them how things were going and they all said, ``It is
really going pretty badly.'' The 11th one said, ``It couldn't
be better, General. We are really doing the thing here to win
the war.'' And the General said, ``I am finally glad to find
somebody who knows what he is talking about.'' (Laughter.)
This is the kind of problem that you have. I think that the
intelligence which finally reaches the White House does have
serious problems with it in that I think you know full well,
I know certainly from my experience, I served as aide to an
admiral in my last days in the Navy before I was discharged,
and I have seen exactly what the response is up the echelon,
the chain of command, and how things get distorted and people
say to the man above him what is needed to be said, to keep
everybody happy, and so I don't--I think the entire thing is
distorted.
It is just a rambling answer.
Senator Symington. How do you think this could be changed?
Mr. Kerry. I have never really given that aspect of it all
that much thought. I wish I had this intelligence officer
with me. He is a very intelligent young man.
reporting of vietnam war in the press
Senator Symington. There has been considerable criticism of
the war's reporting by the press and news media. What are
your thoughts on that?
Mr. Kerry. On that I could definitely comment. I think the
press has been extremely negligent in reporting. At one point
and at the same time they have not been able to report
because the Government of this country has not allowed them
to. I went to Saigon to try to report. We were running
missions in the Mekong Delta. We were running raids through
these rivers on an operation called Sealord and we thought it
was absurd.
We didn't have helicopter cover often. We seldom had jet
aircraft cover. We were out of artillery range. We would go
in with two quarter-inch aluminum hull boats and get shot at
and never secure territory or anything except to quote
Admiral Zumwalt to show the American flag and prove to the
Vietcong they don't own the rivers. We found they did own
them with 60 percent casualties and we thought this was
absurd.
I went to Saigon and told this to a member of the news
bureau there and I said, ``Look, you have got to tell the
American people this story.'' The response was, ``Well, I
can't write that kind of thing. I can't criticize that much
because if I do I would lose my accreditation, and we have to
be very careful about just how much we say and when.''
We are holding a press conference today, as a matter of
fact, at the National Press Building--it might be going on at
this minute--in which public information officers who are
members of our group, and former Army reporters, are going to
testify to direct orders of censorship in which they had to
take out certain pictures, phrases they couldn't use and so
on down the line and, in fact, the information they gave
newsmen and directions they gave newsmen when an operation
was going on when the military didn't want the press
informed on what was going on they would offer them
transportation to go someplace else, there is something
else happened and they would fly a guy 55 miles from where
the operation was. So the war has not been reported
correctly.
I know from a reporter of Time--showed the massacre of 150
Cambodians, these were South Vietnamese troops that did it,
but there were American advisers present and he couldn't even
get other newsmen to get it out let alone his own magazine,
which doesn't need to be named here. So it is a terrible
problem, and I think that really it is a question of the
Government allowing free ideas to be exchanged and if it is
going to fight a war then fight it correctly. The only people
who can prevent My Lais are the press and if there is
something to hide perhaps we shouldn't be there in the first
place.
Senator Symington. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
[Applause.]
request for letters sent to vietnam veterans against war
The Chairman. With regard to the letters you have
mentioned, I wondered about them. I have received a great
many letters, but usually particularly in those from Vietnam,
the men would say that they would not like me to use them or
use their names for fear of retaliation. Of course, I
respected their request. If you have those letters, it might
be interesting, if you would like to, and if the writer has
no objection, to submit them for the record which would be
for the information of the committee.
changing mood of troops in vietnam
Mr. Kerry. Senator, I would like to add a comment on that.
You see the mood is changing over there and a search and
destroy mission is a search and avoid mission, and troops
don't--you know, like that revolt that took place that was
mentioned in the New York Times when they refused to go in
after a piece of dead machinery, because it didn't have any
value. They are making their own judgments.
There is a GI movement in this country now as well as over
there, and soon these people, these men, who are prescribing
wars for these young men to fight are going to find out they
are going to have to find some other men to fight them
because we are going to change prescriptions. They are going
to have to change doctors, because we are not going to fight
for them. That is what they are going to realize. There is
now a more militant attitude even within the military itself,
among these soldiers evidenced by the advertisements recently
in the New York Times in which members of the First Air
Cavalry publicly signed up and said, ``We would march on the
24th if we could be there, but we can't because we are in
Vietnam.'' Those men are subject obviously to some kind of
discipline, but people are beginning to be willing to submit
to that. And I would just say, yes, I would like to enter the
letters in testimony when I can get hold of
[[Page E608]]
them and I think you are going to see this will be a
continuing thing.
(As of the date of publication the information referred to
had not been received.)
The Chairman. If you would like to we can incorporate some
of them in the record.
DOCUMENTARY ENTITLED ``THE SELLING OF THE PENTAGON''
This is inspired by your reply to the Senator from
Missouri's question. Did you happen to see a documentary
called, ``The Selling of the Pentagon''?
Mr. Kerry. Yes, I did. I thought it was the most powerful
and persuasive and helpful documentary in recent years.
The Chairman. But you know what happened to CBS? They have
been pilloried by the----
Mr. Kerry. They are doing all right.
The Chairman. You think they can defend themselves?
Mr. Kerry. I think they have; yes sir. I think the public
opinion in this country, believes that, ``The Selling of the
Pentagon.'' I was a public information officer before I went
to Vietnam, and I know that those things were just the way
they said because I conducted several of those tours on a
ship, and I have seen my own men wait hours until people got
away, and I have seen cooks put on special uniforms for them.
I have seen good food come out for the visitors and
everything else. It really happens.
The Chairman. The Senator from New York has returned. Would
he care to ask a question?
RESOLUTION CONCERNING VIETNAM VETERANS' ENCAMPMENT
Senator Javits. I don't want to delay either the witness or
the committee. Senator Case was tied up on the floor on your
resolution on the encampment and the expected occurred, of
course. It has gone to the calendar.
Senator Symington. If you will yield, Senator. I have to
preside at 1 o'clock. I thank you for your testimony.
Mr. Kerry. Thank you, Senator. [Applause.]
Senator Javits. It has gone to the calendar but I think the
point has been very well made by, I think, the total number
of sponsors. There were some 27 Senators.
WITNESS' CREDENTIALS
Senator Case was kind enough to express my view. I wish to
associate myself with the statement Senator Symington made
when I was here as to your credentials. That is what we
always think about with a witness and your credentials
couldn't be higher.
The moral and morale issues you have raised will have to be
finally acted upon by the committee. I think it always fires
us to a deeper sense of emergency and dedication when we hear
from a young man like yourself in what we know to be the
reflection of the attitude of so many others who have served
in a way which the American people so clearly understand. It
is not as effective unless you have those credentials. The
kind you have.
The only other thing I would like to add is this:
EVALUATION OF TESTIMONY
I hope you will understand me and I think you will agree
with me. Your testimony about what you know and what you see,
how you feel and how your colleagues feel, is entitled to the
highest standing and priority. When it comes to the bits and
pieces of information, you know, like you heard that Madam Ky
is associated with the sale of narcotics or some other guy
got a good meal, I hope you will understand as Senators and
evaluators of testimony we have to take that in the context
of many other things, but I couldn't think of anybody whose
testimony I would rather have and act on from the point of
view of what this is doing to our young men we are sending
over there, how they feel about it, what the impact is on the
conscience of a country, what the impact is on even the
future of the military services from the point of view of the
men who served, than your own.
Thank you very much.
Mr. Kerry. Thank you, Senator. [Applause.]
The Chairman. Mr. Kerry, I am sure you can sense the
committee members appreciate very much your coming. Do you
have anything further to say before we recess?
EXPRESSION OF APPRECIATION
Mr. Kerry. No, sir; I would just like to say on behalf of
the Vietnam Veterans Against the War that we do appreciate
the efforts made by the Senators to put that resolution on
the floor, to help us, help us in their offices in the event
we were arrested and particularly for the chance to express
the thoughts that I have put forward today. I appreciate it.
The Chairman. You have certainly done a remarkable job of
it. I can't imagine their having selected a better
representative or spokesman.
Thank you very much. [Applause.]
(Whereupon, at 1 p.m. the committee was adjourned subject
to the call of the Chair.)
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