John Kerry was on the radar screen of the Nixon White House as a major concern as he became a vocal leader of the antiwar movement in 1971. Nixon made Charles Colson his pointman in attempts to discredit Kerry, whom they found a hypocritical ‘opportunist’ because he opposed the war even though he was monied and connected, unlike the grungy disreputable prototypical Viet Vet Against the War. They set up a pro-war veteran, John O’Neill, to counter Kerry’s impact, and arranged for a debate between the two on the Dick Cavett Show. Joe Haldeman predicted that Kery would run for office one day. “It’s said that when Kerry ran for Congress in 1972, as Haldeman had predicted, Nixon stayed up late on Election Night until he knew for sure that Kerry had been defeated”. —NewsMax [thanks, abby]
(April 28, 1971) President Richard M. Nixon takes a call from his counsel, Charles Colson:
“This fellow Kerry that they had on last week,” Colson tells the president, referring to a television appearance by John F. Kerry, a leader of Vietnam Veterans Against the War.
“Yeah,” Nixon responds.
“He turns out to be really quite a phony,” Colson says.
“Well, he is sort of a phony, isn’t he?” Nixon says.
Yes, Colson says in a gossiping vein, telling the president that Kerry stayed at the home of a Georgetown socialite while other protesters slept on the mall.
“He was in Vietnam a total of four months,” Colson scoffs, without mentioning that Kerry earned three Purple Hearts, a Silver Star, and a Bronze Star, and had also been on an earlier tour. “He’s politically ambitious and just looking for an issue.”
“Yeah.”
“He came back a hawk and became a dove when he saw the political opportunities,” Colson says.
“Sure,” Nixon responds. “Well, anyway, keep the faith.”
The tone was sneering. But the secretly recorded dialogue illustrates just how seriously Kerry was viewed by the Nixon White House. Some of these conversations have not been previously publicized, and Kerry said he had never heard them until they were provided by a reporter.
Day after day, according to the tapes and memos, Nixon aides worried that Kerry was a unique, charismatic leader who could undermine support for the war. Other veteran protesters were easier targets, with their long hair, their use of a Viet Cong flag, and in some cases, their calls for overthrowing the US government. Kerry, by contrast, was a neat, well-spoken, highly decorated veteran who seemed to be a clone of former President John F. Kennedy, right down to the military service on a patrol boat. —Boston Globe
(January 24, 2004) Bush Official Uses Nixon Tactics to Smear John Kerry: “In 1971, the Nixon White House tried to discredit John Kerry by telling President Nixon that John Kerry was sleeping in a Georgetown home while other veterans protesting the war slept in tents on the National Mall. Yesterday, before a conference hosted by a conservative PAC headed by a former Nixon aide, Republican National Committee Chairman Ed Gillespie repeated the same smear, nearly verbatim, in a desperate attempt to discredit John Kerry again, this time as his campaign to remove Gillespie’s boss from the White House is gathering strength.”
