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From The Mailbag

he Vietnam War record of Lt. jg John Forbes Kerry may finally be coming back to haunt the U.S. Senator and presumptive Democratic presidential nominee. The McGovern-liberal Massachusetts senator just hired a public relations firm to give him an extreme makeover and recast him as a moderate. If you recall, Bill Clinton did the same thing in 1992. He hired a PR firm to make him appear like a John F. Kennedy moderate. They succeeded. But then, neither Bill nor Hillary are as liberal as Kerry, so it may be more difficult this time around. To help with the 'face lift," Kerry gathered around him his "Band of Brothers" (former swift boat crew members and a handful of soldiers he crossed paths with in the Mekong Delta and others he befriended after he was elected to federal office) to protect his fabricated image both as a war hero and as someone who cares about the middle class white working class. Kerry's word—and the word of his cronies—is suddenly no longer enough. Although he denies it, Kerry was pressured to release the official transcripts of how he won five medals in four months of action in Vietnam (which he managed to have sealed in the Department of Defense). Kerry released official military transcripts but he has not made public the transcripts of the affidavits of those who recommended his citations. Further, Kerry's detractors asked only to see the transcripts of the affidavits for his five citations. In response, Kerry released 210 documents that have nothing to do with the citations. It is a common practice for politicians—and lawyers—to provide tons more information than requested by an adversary. Experience has taught them that if you bury your adversary (in this case, the American people and not George W. Bush) in paper, they will have trouble finding whatever it is you don't want them to see. And, that is precisely what Kerry did. By placing 210 official Department of the Navy documents on his website, Kerry managed to conceal the fact that the personal affidavits of those who recommended Kerry to Kerry's commanding officer (who would then make the official request), were missing.

Kerry's Band of Brothers have sampled the good life of the aristocrat since Sen. Kerry has been wining and dining his former Mekong Delta cronies at his fancy digs all over the country. The Band of Brothers travel with him like well-rehearsed shills, affirming to the crowds that the new JFK is a war hero of the same magnitude as the original JFK. Only, the original JFK never threw hard-won, bloodstained medals of valor over the temporary fence that had been constructed around the Capitol building to keep dissidents from overrunning Congress, nor did John F. Kennedy hold the Statute of Liberty hostage. Nor did JFK—the real JFK—ever accuse his nation of war crimes against America's enemies. John Forbes Kerry, the icon of the Democratic Party more closely parallels another American military figure—and it is he with whom Kerry should be identified.. That figure from America's past is Benedict Arnold. Arnold, you will recall, commanded the army that failed to contain the British in the siege of Quebec. Later, it was learned, with the American capture of Major John André, that Arnold had plotted with English General Sir Henry Clinton to surrender West Point to the British. Kerry, Jane Fonda, and the liberal antiwar establishment in Congress openly plotted to surrender all of South Vietnam to Ho Chi Minh. Unlike Benedict Arnold, they succeeded. Arnold escaped to England. The people of Massachusetts rewarded Kerry by electing him to public office. Now, the Democrats want to "honor" Kerry even more as they disgrace the memories of men and women, far better than Kerry, who died honorably serving a nation they respected and loved. Why is it, I wonder, that Democratic icons today are either traitors or are people so deeply enamored with communism that, to them, liberty has become a dirty word?

Today John Forbes Kerry claims to be a patriotic war hero. But that's only because the American people love war heroes. If the voters in America loved antiwar protesters, Kerry would be the biggest antiwar protester in the country. Kerry is a student of history. He knew in 1960, when John Fitzgerald Kennedy's biography, PT109, hit the bestseller list, that Americans traditionally elect war heroes to the White House. And, it was precisely because of PT109 that John Forbes Kerry decided to trace Kennedy's footsteps from the seas of battle to the White House by becoming a naval hero during the Vietnam War. To Kerry, it was a very deliberate, very conscious plan. He volunteered for service in Vietnam with a specific agenda. He planned to get on the fringe of danger, become a war hero in the shortest possible period of time, and then get out of harm's way so he would still be alive to serve in the government. Later, using Kennedy's political strategies, he would win the White House and become the President of the United States. Kerry had no other reason to be in Vietnam. Coming from an aristocratic background, he was immune from the draft. And, he certainly didn't believe in the cause. He had only one cause even as he was accusing the United States of America of war crimes against the people of North Vietnam and Cambodia. That cause? Putting into motion the strategy necessary to ultimately win the White House.

And, because he knew he would need his medals to convince the majority of the American people that he was the genuine article like the original JFK when he decided to make a run for the Rose Garden, John Forbes Kerry couldn't even be loyal to his own disillusioned "band of brothers" and communist agitators (many of whom posed as veterans but had never served). When they pitched their medals over the fence surrounding the Capitol, Kerry refused to part with his. Some of the medals tossed over the fence were won by the disillusioned soldiers who threw them away in protest, but far more of the medals that lay on the Capitol steps had been purchased by the dissidents at pawn shops around the country where they had been hocked by down-on-their-luck veterans for the price of a meal, a couple of drinks, or their daily fix because those unsung heroes remained jobless when they returned home from their tours of duty in Southeast Asia. However, most of those who tossed them in well-staged liberal photo ops had never served a day in the uniform of the United States military.

Thirty years ago Kerry was an arrogant, aristocratic, pro-Communist, antiwar protester During the Vietnam Era. the far left controlled the Congress of the United States and antiwar fever, fanned by the Washington Post and the New York Times was sweeping the nation. While most working class people don't realize it today, the American military was fighting a two-front war in Vietnam. Vietnam was a war that the United States should have easily won in less than 90-days. Instead, it raged on for a decade, and thousands of America's youth that did not need to perish, died in what can best be described as a game of political polo. On one hand, the US military fought the North Vietnamese regular army and the irregular Viet Cong who were supported economically and militarily by the People's Republic of China and the Soviet Union. On the other hand, the US military fought the liberal politicians who controlled the American Congress at that time, and who succeeding in making it literally impossible for the Army to win the war they were using as a political pawn in their biannual inside-the-beltway chess game. The politicians were supported by socialist Tinseltown liberals, the Communist Party of the United States, and the liberal media that focused solely on body bag counts to win seats for more liberals on election day. John F. Kerry, like the liberals who controlled Congress during that era, used the Vietnam War, the military, and the American people for his own purposes. When the new coffin flap started up last week when the photo above (or one very similar to it) appeared in the Seattle Times, John Kerry argued that photos of the returning dead should be aired on TV and in newspapers so people could see the total consequences of war. Kerry knows from experience that body bags equal votes for whatever party is not holding the White House. He learned that lesson well from 1970 to 1972 and he plans to profit from those lessons in the Election of 2004.

John Forbes Kerry is a duplicitous man. Like most deceitful men, he wants to be all things to all people. Kerry has simultaneously become both war hero and antiwar hero. And that's a pretty good trick. Unlike Forrest Gump who was tricked into delivering an antiwar speech to what appeared, in the movie Forrest Gump, to be a facsimile of Vietnam Veterans Against War, John Kerry was the key organizer of the antiwar movement he helped start with the assistance of Senator Edward M. Kennedy and Robert Kennedy's speech writer, Adam Walinsky. Even when Kerry volunteered for duty in Vietnam he was abhorrently opposed to the war. He volunteered for one reason and one reason only: Kerry was on a quest for medals because he understood that recognized valor was the key to the gateway to power. Only, in ultra liberal Massachusetts in 1972 the Democratic political machine that controlled the unions controlled which levers the union workers pulled on election day

It may be harder than the Senator thinks to shed the Vietnam-era image of the dissident. Kerry's Vietnam era book, The New Soldier, which was published in 1971, is bound to end up back in print before the November election—and not by someone in the Kerry camp looking for the anti-government vote. A large percentage of today swing voters were not born until after that war ended, or were too young to remember much about it. Many of those have been sold a bill of goods that Kerry was a genuine war hero who became convinced the war was wrong and became an antiwar protester based on his convictions and, thus, is a man of immense integrity. Kerry's actions after he left Vietnam and was released from his military duties while still classified as being on active duty speaks volumes about his character and conduct while he was serving in the Navy in Vietnam.

Democratic National Committee chairman Terry McAuliffe appeared on Fox News on Monday, April 26 to argue that Kerry is a national hero who volunteered for not one but two tours of duty in Vietnam and that, during those two tours, he sailed "...up and down the Mekong Delta saving lives." It is true that Kerry served two tours. Protected by his status as a Bay State blueblood, his first tour "in" Vietnam was off the coast of Vietnam on the U.S.S. Gridley, a guided missile frigate. At the end of an uneventful six month tour, the Gridley returned to the United States in June, 1968. Kerry applied for duty on the swift boats. In November, 1968 Kerry returned to Vietnam as the X0 of a swift boat. A few days before he received his own command, Kerry received his first "war wound" and his first Purple Heart. This was the most severe wound suffered by Kerry during his abortive four month tour of duty. And, according to his boss at the time, Lt. Commander Grant Hibbel, it was a scratch that barely merited a band-aid. Even if it had been more serious it still would not have qualified for a Purple Heart since it was, according now-Rear Admiral William Schachte, who was then a 1st Lieutenant in command of the operation that night, and was on the skimmer where the incident occurred, a self-inflicted wound—and there was no enemy fire.

To qualify for a purple heart, the wound must have been the result of enemy fire. The skimmer (a foam-filled boat towed by a Swift Boat) opened fire on some Vietnamese fishermen that Kerry thought might be Viet Cong insurgents running ashore from a sampan. Kerry was firing an M-16. It jammed. Kerry tossed it aside and picked up an M-79 grenade launcher and fired it. According to Schachte, who witnessed the incident, Kerry fired the M-79 to close to the shoreline, and a splinter (about the size of a rose thorn) bounced back and stuck in his arm (and was later removed by Dr. Louis Letson with tweezers). Letson applied Bacitracin to the bloodless wound and applied a band-aid. The following morning Kerry appeared at Hibbel's office and applied for a Purple Heart. Hibbel, who had already heard from Schachte, knew [a] there had been no enemy fire, and [b] the wound was self-inflicted. He denied Kerry's request. Kerry then wrote up the citation request himself, recommending himself for a Purple Heart. When Kerry got his own boat he quickly mastered the art of using his own crew to request the medals he sought.

According to Kerry, who laughed about it later, the shrapnel wound, he said, incapacitated him for about an hour. It was the first of three Band-Aid wounds suffered by Kerry. But those three wounds, based on the Navy's "thrice-wounded" rule, would be sufficient to cut his tour short by eight months. And, while Kerry's commanding officer, Adm. Charles Horne did not know there was a thrice-wounded policy, Kerry did since he pointed it out to the Admiral when he requested reassignment to Washington, DC. Several media people and military advocacy groups have attempted to secure Kerry's Sick Call Treatment Record. The Kerry Campaign has blocked access to that report although they did let the Associated Press to view it. The report on Kerry's first Purple Heart noted that shrapnel in left arm above elbow was removed and Bacitracin dressing was applied. Ray Waller, a battlefield medic said that if the wound only required Bacitracin and a Band-Aid, it sounds like a piece of hot shrapnel burned him—not that it broke the skin." Waller added that he had never seen a shrapnel wound that did not require a tetanus shot and time off.

After four months of service in the fast boats Kerry had been awarded a Bronze Star with Combat V, a Silver Star with Combat V, three Purple Hearts, the Combat Action Ribbon, a Presidential Unit Citation, the Navy Unit Citation, the National Defense Service Medal, the Vietnam Service Medal, the Republic of Vietnam Gallantry Cross, the Republic of Vietnam Civil Actions ribbon, and the Republic of Vietnam Campaign Medal. Kerry received his Silver Star on Feb. 20, 1969. Granted, some of the medals and ribbons Kerry received were given to any soldier or sailor who showed up for the war, it is nevertheless an impressive list of awards—especially to a politician who went to war only to garner medals and citations. To John Forbes Kerry, the service ribbons and citations were an added bonanza. And, even when he was denouncing the United States Kerry knew the political value of his ribbons and medals and even though Charles Gibson of ABC's Good Morning America personally watched Kerry throw some medals and ribbons over the fence on April 22. 1971, more likely than not, they were not Kerry's medals that were being tossed. Kerry, after all, risked his life to get them—and he wasn't about to throw them away on a whim when he knew he would need them somewhere down the road to political fame and fortune. And, if Kerry did toss his own medals over the fence, then the Senator is now facing an even more serious challenge—whose medals are hanging in his Senate office? However, since he was wearing his ribbons and medals when he addressed the Senate Foreign Relations Committee later that same day—April 22, 1971—at the invitation of Committee Chairman J. William Fulbright [D-AK] it is not likely the ribbons and medal tossed during the photo op witnessed by Charlie Gibson were his. And that makes Kerry even more of a snake since he was not even loyal to his fellow antiwar protesters. He used the antiwar crowd the same way he used the military—for personal gain. Both sides should distance themselves from him but, ironically, both sides believe he is a hero. Kerry has become a master politico—he can't be trusted by anyone.

The transcripts of Kerry's second Purple Heart and his Silver Star claim his swift boat, PCF-94 came under heavy fire on Feb. 20, 1969. One Viet Cong soldier, in a concealed pit along the shoreline, fired a mortar that exploded near Kerry's craft. Kerry suffered a slight shrapnel wound to his left thigh. Executing what Kerry's crew later described as "an evasive maneuver," Kerry grounded his craft—less than ten feet from the enemy soldier who fired at them. The startled Viet Cong jumped from his cover and turned to flee. Gunner's Mate Tom Belodeau opened fire with his twin 50-caliber machine guns, wounding the loin-clothj clad teenaged soldier. Kerry jumped from the deck of his swift boat to the shore (which gives you an idea just how badly he was wounded), and "chased down" the severely wounded boy and finished him off. Kerry retrieved the mortar like a trophy from the hapless soldier to the cheers of his crew. With that mortar silenced, the "heavy firing" ceased although the affidavits said that as they pulled back out into the delta they encountered heavy firing from the other shore. For this brief melee, for heroism under intense fire, Kerry was recommended for a Purple Heart and a Silver Star—by, it now appears, his own crew. If an American soldier today executed a wounded enemy combatant under those same conditions, his action would be construed as a war crime, and he would face a war crimes tribunal. Kerry received his second Purple Heart and the nation's second highest award for valor.

During the Vietnam Era, 278 American soldiers and marines were convicted of war crimes for similar violations of military protocol—killing unarmed enemy combatants or suspected but nevertheless still unarmed enemy combatants. Within that total was Lt. William Calley who was convicted of ordering the My Lai Massacre. Kerry received the Silver Star for killing a critically wounded, disarmed enemy combatant who was begging for his life. Where was the valor in that deed that merited honor?

Kerry also experienced his own "My Lai." While patrolling what Kerry described as a "free fire zone" in the Delta, Kerry's crew spotted what they believed to be North Vietnamese soldiers in an area where no "friendlies" were thought to be. Kerry's crew opened fire and killed several South Vietnamese soldiers, an old man, a woman and a small baby.

Kerry's final act of heroism—now hotly contested by several of the Swift Boat commmanders who served with Kerry in Coastal Division 11—came two weeks later on March 13, 1969. Kerry's craft was one of five patrol boats involved in a rescue operation in Bay Hop. The fast boats were sent to retrieve some Green Beret special ops people and a marine patrol. According to John Kerry's crew, there was an intense, heavy fire fight around the rescue area. According to the other four Swift Boat captains, there was no hostile fire from either bank, and the pickup would have been free of any incidents had a mine not exploded under PCF-3, which was captained by Lt. Dick Pease. According to Kerry's version of the story, two mines exploded near Kerry's craft—one directly under it and another nearby. The transcripts (which appear to have been written by Kerry himself, although Kerry denies it) state that Kerry suffered two shrapnel wounds—one in his buttocks and the other in his right arm which, the transcript said, was bleeding profusely. The only problem with Kerry's story is that the wound to his buttocks occurred earlier that day in what was a non-combat injury. American soldiers were destroying enemy food stores when it happened. Kerry received a sliver-sized piece of shrapnel in his buttock when an American grenade detonated in a rice bin that was being destroyed. The sliver did not draw blood, nor did it incapacitate Kerry. Nor was the wound the result of enemy action—which means the wound, even if it was severe, would not be eligible for a Purple Heart. (This version of the buttock wound came from Kerry's own statements to author Douglas Brinkley who wrote Kerry's "official version" of what happened in Vietnam in the book Tour of Duty, which was just released.)

The casualty report filed the following morning concerning the rescue operation did not contain any information about the rice bin injury. In fact, the report attributed the shrapnel wound in his buttock to a mine that he claimed exploded under PCF-94 (which did not happen). According to the eyewitness testimony of three of the other Swift Boat commanders in Bay Hop that day, Kerry's craft was on the opposite side of the river when the mine detonated under Pease's PCF-3. According to Pease, Lt. jg. Larry Thurlow and Lt. Jack Chenoweth, the explosion of the only mine that detonated during that operation pitched the crew members from PCF-3 into the water. Kerry's PCF-94 was on the opposite side of the river and was not affected by the blast that almost sunk PCF-3.

When the mine exploded, Kerry bolted, speeding off downstream. Kerry's crew opened fire on the shoreline with their 50 caliber machine guns for about 40 seconds before they realized there was no incoming fire from either shore. It was at that point that someone noticed that Green Beret 1st Lt. James Rassmann had fallen overboard. Kerry then turned PCF-94 around and retrieved the Green Beret.

According to Kerry's affidavit, when the mine exploded near Patrol Fast Boat 94, one of the soldiers, Rassmann fell overboard. Kerry ordered his boat around, and under heavy fire from the shoreline, exposed himself to danger and grabbed Rassman, pulling him back into the boat, sustaining what was purported to be a profusely bleeding wound to his right arm while doing so. The Personal Casualty Report from that day indicates that Kerry suffered from a slight shrapnel wound to the buttock and a bruise on his right forearm, but the citation report claims Kerry suffered a wound to his forearm that was bleeding and in pain. Kerry's skipper, Lt. Commander Grant Hibbel, told the Boston Globe that Kerry's "wounds" were too minor to qualify for a Purple Heart. Nor was it clear to him that Kerry's boat had even come under direct enemy fire. Hibbel refused to submit Kerry's name, but Kerry went around him. Hibbel told the Globe he received some correspondence about it, and rather than take the heat, he stopped resisting. "I finally said," Hibbel told the Globe,"if that's what happened...okay. Do whatever you want...Obviously he got [the medals]. I don't know how."

Capt. Charles Kaufman, USAF-Ret., whose job it was to submit military citation requests, said Kerry's "...Bronze Star medal appears to be based on an injury he did not receive." Kaufman's statement certainly lends credence to the citation mill theory. Kaufman believes if the citation report mentioned a bruised arm instead of a bleeding arm, Kerry would have been denied the citation. Whether or not, based on the heroics of all of the fast boats involved in the rescue, Kerry deserved a Bronze Star is a question the historians—and the Hollywood playwrights—will ultimately answer. And that answer will largely depend on whether or not Kerry wins his bid for the White House. If Kerry wins in November, the revisionist historians will tidy up history to make John Forbes Kerry into the hero he professes to be.

The American people need to decide in their own minds whether or not Lt. jg John F. Kerry deserved the citations he received in Vietnam; or if he created—as his critics claim—a citation mill specifically designed to recommend medals for himself and his crew. Clearly, Kerry's superiors seemed to think well of him. But it must be noted that Kerry, as a member of a Bay State blueblood family with important political connections, had enough clout through his family to impact the careers of his superior officers—even as a lowly junior grade lieutenant. There is no doubt his commanding officers knew that as well. So, the endorsements of his superior officers may be discounted as politically biased.

You have just read a fairly accurate profile of the first John F. Kerry. He was an opportunistic young man seeking a fast track to political success through the battlefield. While John F. Kerry is not the all-American hero he would like us to believe he was, he nevertheless volunteered for service on the fast boats in the Mekong Delta in Vietnam and placed himself in harm's way in the service of his country. His motives notwithstanding, Kerry's detractors—myself included—cannot take that away from him. He was there—and he did not have to be there simply because he would never have been drafted. That is more than can be said for Bill Clinton who successfully evaded the draft after he had been ordered to report for induction on July 28, 1969. And while Air National Guard Lt. George W. Bush was safe in Texas, in fairness to Bush, it should be noted that, according to Col. William J. Campenni, USAF-Ret. (who served with Bush in the 111th Fighter Inceptor Squadron of the Texas Air National Guard, Bush applied for fighter duty in Vietnam in 1970 or 1971. The military had initiated a program called "Palace Alert" in which Air National Guard fighter pilots were being transferred to Vietnam to fly F102 Delta Dagger Inceptors. Bush's request for a transfer from his safe haven perch in the Texas Air National Guard to a fighter squadron in Vietnam was squashed. It appears that Daddy Bush or Mommy Bush did not want their son in harm's way. Bush was told that he didn't have enough flight time to qualify—he needed 500 hours—for duty in Vietnam. When Bush persisted he was told the program was being discontinued and that they weren't accepting any more volunteers. So, even though he tried, George W. was not allowed to go to war. If you don't like the fact that Bush was not in Vietnam, you might blame Barbara Bush, but you can't blame GW. And, by the way, George W. Bush was not on a treasure hunt for medals. He just wanted to serve his country. Quaint idea.

John Kerry the antiwar protester is the antithesis of the patriotic, heroic Lt. jg John F. Kerry It was a Jekyll and Hyde transition. And, it is hard to believe that the first John Kerry was not intimately familiar with the second John Kerry as he tried to convert the Mekong Delta into Treasure Island—a treasure trove of medals and citations that would help launch his political career.

On March 17, 1969—nine days after Kerry's bruised arm secured his third Purple Heart—Adm. Horn reluctantly signed his orders and Kerry was transferred to Washington, DC. Kerry had just managed to pull off the liberal politician's best military wet dream—all gain, no pain. Kerry resigned his commission on January 3, 1970 to run for the House of Representatives. He lost in the primaries. In fact, he was a no show. Kerry positioned himself as the new JFK, but the voters weren't looking for war heroes in a war the media said was immoral. Kerry ran in the Massachusetts congressional primary against a radical liberal antiwar Jesuit priest, Robert Drinan in 1970. Drinan drummed the political newcomer who lacked any campaign experience. Drinan went on to win the Congressional seat and became one of the radical members of Congress who was most responsible for deconstructing the American intelligence community beginning in 1974. After his failed election campaign, Kerry was introduced to Robert F. Kennedy's former speech writer, Adam Walinksky, by Teddy Kennedy. Walinsky was now working for Jane Fonda and Noam Chomsky in the antiwar movement.

Kerry spoke at a Vietnam Veterans Against War demonstration in Detroit, Michigan in February, 1971. When he reached, Washington, DC on April 18, 1971 with a thousand protesters who claimed to be Vietnam vets, Kerry had become one of the visible leaders of the antiwar movement. Yet, the "power behind the throne" was still Jane Fonda, her husband Tom Hayden and communist activists Noam Chomsky and Rita Laser. In the turbulent 60s when most Americans hated and mistrusted communists, Chomsky, Laser and the more virulent communists that created the antiwar movement, remained concealed in the background. After the "death" of Soviet communism, they could safely emerge from the shadows and openly become associated with the NOT IN MY NAME and NOT IN OUR NAME movements which they also created. NOT IN MY NAME and NOT IN OUR NAME are groups denouncing Israel's war against the Palestinian terrorists and America's War on Terrorism.

As Kerry, using his political connections on Capitol Hill through Teddy Kennedy and his touted status as a genuine war hero took a more high profile role in "leading" the Vietnam Veterans Against War, more and more of those joining the "movement" were men who had never served in the military but wore military fatigues defaced with communist graffiti as they marched under the flag of North Vietnam. This is the John Forbes Kerry that Senator John F. Kerry, the presumptive Democratic presidential nominee does not want the American people to see. (At least antiwar protester Bill Clinton was smart enough to do all of his protesting in Europe. The American people never got to see snapshots of Clinton hobnobbing with the anti-American, antiwar crowd.) Kerry, who believed in the early 1970s that the communists would prevail in American politics, did not hesitate to throw his lot in with the socialists who controlled the US Congress.

Kerry was invited to address Sen. J. William Fulbright's Senate Foreign Relations Committee on the afternoon of April 22, 1971—an hour or so after he threw a handful of medals and ribbons over the makeshift fence surrounding the Capitol building. Fulbright, who led the opposition to America's position invited Kerry to address his committee because he wanted to use the VVAW as a backdrop for Sen. George McGovern's anti-Nixon campaign speech that was also delivered that day. As he addressed the Foreign Relations Committee that day, Kerry was wearing both campaign ribbons and medals, clearly suggesting that whatever medals Charles Gibson witnessed Kerry throw over the fence were not his. Even then, Kerry was playing both ends against the middle. Kerry had no loyalties other than to his own agenda. He was not loyal to the nation he served as an officer and a gentleman. And, at the same time, he was disloyal to his own "band of brothers" in the antiwar movement.

Kerry ran for Congress again in 1972. He was now starting to learn that while unbathed and unkempt radicals in army fatigues wearing peace symbols and adorned with North Vietnamese flags sell newspapers and create TV audiences for the news media, real working class Americans are not impressed with unshaven, unbathed, disheveled radicals who spit on the American flag before burning it. Kerry's antiwar antics were now coming back to haunt him. Haunting him most in 1972 was his 1971 book, The New Soldiers which pictured, on the cover, Kerry's ragtag radicals. Kerry never realized when he wrote his epic denouncing the United States that his communistic rant could never be justified in Kennedyesque terms when he needed to appear, to the masses, as the great American war hero. His book—The New Soldiers—and Kerry, were rejected by the voters of Massachusetts in 1972.

Kerry wanted to give America enough time to forget Mr. Hyde. Dr. Jekyll framed his war medals and enrolled in Yale, earning a law degree. Upon graduation from Yale, the refurbished John Forbes Kerry ran for, and was elected Lt. Governor of the State of Massachusetts. In 1980 he ran for the US Senate and was elected.

But even with all of his newfound mainstream legitimacy, it would take America time to forget Kerry's willing affiliation and open association with revolutionary Communists during the height of the Cold War.

In the summer of 1971, the Communist Party's newspaper, The Daily World published photos of Kerry speaking to demonstrators as one of the newly anointed leaders of Vietnam Veterans Against the War. On April 22, 1971—as Kerry was throwing medals on the steps of the Capitol Building—that day's edition of The Daily World noted with pride that the VVAW protesters carried a banner depicting Black Panther separatist leader Angela Davis, who had promised the American people that she would "...overthrow of your system of government and your society." On December 12, 1971 The Herald Traveler reported that the VVAW had an "...abundance of Vietcong flags, clenched fists raised in the air, and placards plainly bearing legends in support of the People's Republic of China, Cuba, the Soviet Union, North Korea and the Hanoi government." It took Dr. Jekyll a long time to bury Mr. Hyde—but the monster, much to Kerry's dismay, has been resurrected—just months short of Kerry's seizing the ultimate treasure, the presidency of the United States.