SwiftVets' sixth ad focuses on Kerry's Paris meeting (or meetings) with America's enemies — Did he "betray his country"?

I. What the new SwiftVets ad says

According to Fox News, the SwiftVets organization

has made its largest media buy yet of the presidential campaign. It has put $1.2 million behind a new ad that attacks the candidate's 1970 meeting in Paris with members of two North Vietnamese delegations. The ads, which will be launched Wednesday, will run on broadcast affiliates in the battleground states of Pennsylvania, Ohio, West Virginia, Nevada and New Mexico.

The ad can be viewed in multiple streaming video formats from the page on the SwiftVets' website that collects all their other ads.  Here's the script from the ad, titled (somewhat strangely, to my mind) "Friends":

Opens with: Footage of Jane Fonda.  Cuts to: Stills of Kerry, protesters, then Kerry testifying.  Cuts to: Fonda at a press conference

Announcer: "Even before Jane Fonda went to Hanoi to meet with the enemy and mock America, John Kerry secretly met with enemy leaders in Paris. Though we were still at war and Americans were being held in North Vietnamese prison camps. Then, he returned and accused American troops of committing war crimes on a daily basis. Eventually Jane Fonda apologized for her activities, but John Kerry refuses to. In a time of war, can America trust a man who betrayed his country?"

Obviously, in a short television ad, the SwiftVets could not include many factual details, but this advertisement will inevitably encourage more extended debate on the underlying questions: 

What are the facts about Kerry's meeting(s) with the enemy, and what laws may he arguably have broken?  Did John Kerry, while still an officer in the U.S. Naval Reserve, "betray his country"?

(Warning: this is another one of Beldar's long-winded™ and link- and quote-filled diatribes; proceed at your own risk.)

II. Fox News' brief summary

Fox News' brief summary of the historical record on Kerry's Paris trip(s) is a fair introduction to these broader subjects:

The Kerry campaign has acknowledged that Kerry traveled to Paris in 1970 with his then new wife, Julia Thorne. Kerry's campaign said the meetings were not part of any negotiation with the enemy but were part of Kerry's fact-finding efforts relating to the war and ways to win the release of U.S. prisoners of war.

Historian Gerald Nicosia has told FOX News that Kerry made a second trip to Paris in 1971 for many of the same reasons Kerry's campaign has cited for the 1970 trip. Kerry's camp denies a Kerry meeting with the North Vietnamese in the summer of 1971.

Unfortunately, although I've skimmed portions of a library copy of Nicosia's 2001 book, Home to War: A History of the Vietnam Veterans' Movement, I don't have a copy of my own and didn't photocopy the relevant pages about Kerry or other Vietnam Veterans Against the War members meeting with enemy representatives in Paris.  But Nicosia's book, and subsequent writings in the Los Angeles Times on the subject, are discussed below in part VII of this post.

III. The Holzer & Holzer analysis of the relevant
laws and the Navy Department's rejection of
Judicial Watch's complaint

Although it doesn't contain a very meaty discussion of the facts of Kerry's Paris trip(s), the most thorough analysis of the relevant criminal statutes prohibiting trafficking directly with the enemy, and of the cases interpreting those statutes, is in a passionately anti-Kerry article in FrontPageMag.com by Brooklyn Law School Professor Emeritus Henry Mark Holzer and author-attorney Erika Holzer.  I've not independently studied the cases they cited.  The two statutes they discuss, however, are 10 U.S.C. § 904 (from the Uniform Code of Military Justice) —

Any person who —

(1) aids, or attempts to aid, the enemy with arms, ammunition, supplies, money, or other things; or

(2) without proper authority, knowingly harbors or protects or gives intelligence to, or communicates or corresponds with or holds any intercourse with the enemy, either directly or indirectly;

shall suffer death or such other punishment as a court-martial or military commission may direct.

— and 18 U.S.C. § 953:

Any citizen of the United States, wherever he may be, who, without authority of the United States, directly or indirectly commences or carries on any correspondence or intercourse with any foreign government or any officer or agent thereof, with intent to influence the measures or conduct of any foreign government or of any officer or agent thereof, in relation to any disputes or controversies with the United States, or to defeat the measures of the United States, shall be fined under this title or imprisoned not more than three years, or both....

Of course, in each of the precedents from these statutes discussed by the Holzers, there had been a full-blown criminal trial, and the essential elements of the crimes charged were proved beyond a reasonable doubt.  While their discussion of the statutes and interpreting precedents is useful, their discussion — as I suspect, if pressed, they'd admit — falls necessarily short of a thorough analysis of how those statutes might apply to Kerry's Paris meeting(s) (and perhaps his subsequent conduct, if it was pursuant to an agreement or quid pro quo reached there). 

We do know (from Nicosia's FOIA request results) that the FBI was digging around about Kerry's and his comrades' Paris trips.  Yet no indictment was ever filed — which I interpret not as a lack of zeal on the part of the FBI or the Nixon administration DoJ, but rather simply as a lack of sufficient evidence gathered then that could have supported an indictment (much less a conviction).  There simply is not now, and never has been, enough factual detail for anyone to conclude yet, or even assert yet with prosecutorial confidence, that what Kerry did in Paris actually satisfied all of the essential elements of these crimes as defined — and of course, the only "conclusive conclusion" would be one reached by a court martial or criminal proceeding.  The title of the Holzers' article — "John Kerry, Criminal" — is thus metaphorical and speculative at best. 

But neither is there detail in the public record that would exonerate Kerry of these temporally distant crimes.  While Kerry enjoys a constitutional presumption of innocence unless and until there's a conviction, the absense of an indictment isn't itself affirmative proof of innocence — and doesn't end the public discussion.  (Insert semi-obligatory O.J. Simpson comparisons here if you wish.) 

These two statutes were among the bases for Judicial Watch's original and supplemental complaints to the DoD and the Navy Department, calling for an investigation and the possible stripping of Sen. Kerry's medals.  However, the Naval Inspector General, Vice Admiral Ronald A. Route, in a one-page letter to Judicial Watch last Friday, September 17th, refused to initiate such an investigation.  With respect to Judicial Watch's (and implicitly the Holzers') allegations that Kerry had violated these statutes, Adm. Route wrote in pertinent part:

Our review also considered the fact that Senator Kerry's post-active duty activities were public and that military and civilian officials were aware of his actions at the time.

I recently blogged in considerable detail about Adm. Route's decision, and with respect to this aspect I wrote:

What we still don't know — and what neither military or civilian officials knew at the time — is what actually transpired in those meetings, or even how many such meetings took place!

Then and now, Kerry has been carefully vague in describing those meetings, characterizing them as "fact-finding" expeditions.... That [Kerry and his VVAW comrades] have succeeded in keeping the details of their negotiations, and their agreements (if any), secret for so long is hardly a reason to assert that those details were known long ago.

Here again, however, I must concede that even if not supported by persuasive reasoning, Inspector General Route is probably the authority within the military structure who has the discretionary authority to decide whether this is something the Navy Department wishes to pursue. And clearly, he has exercised that discretion against any further investigation.

Thus, the odds of even administrative proceedings in the Navy Department on these allegations are now extremely remote, and the odds of an actual criminal proceeding are essentially nil.  Indeed, the Kerry campaign, and probably too its sycophants in the mainstream media, will portray Adm. Route's ruling as a "pre-buttal" of the sixth SwiftVets ad in attempting to dismiss it out of hand.

I disagree, however.  Adm. Route's rulings, to use a bit of lawyer-speak, weren't "on the merits," but rather represented a procedural refusal to delve into the underlying questions.  And those underlying questions therefore remain genuinely unanswered — whether likely to result in current consequences or not, what did Kerry do in Paris, and did it break either of these laws?

IV. Kerry's Fulbright Committee testimony

So what did happen in Paris?  As is typically the case, the starting point for all accusations against John Kerry remains — John Kerry.

Kerry acknowledged in his famous testimony before the Senate Foreign Relations Committe (chaired by Sen. J. William Fulbright (D-Ark.)) on April 22, 1971, that he'd met with enemy representatives in Paris, and that in so doing, he'd been on the "borderline" of violating section 953 (at .pdf file pp. 13-14; hyperlink and bracketed portions added):

The Chairman: The congress cannot directly under our system negotiate a cease-fire or anything of this kind. Under our constitutional system we can advice 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.

Mr. Kerry: Mr. Chairman, I realize that full well as a study [sic — probably should be "student"] 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 [Eugene J.] McCarthy [(D-Minn.)] 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 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.

Kerry had not yet started law school when he gave this testimony, but it seems relatively clear that he was already studying section 953 and uncomfortable about the possibility that he might have arguably violated it.  He was already referring here to "visits" (plural), for whatever that's worth.  But his sentence structure has begun to slip (as compared to most of the rest of his testimony).  From the "et cetera" in particular — and in general from the abrupt dropping of the subject without going into any details whatsoever about the "visits" or what he'd learned about our enemies (who elsewhere in this speech he was so eager to expound upon and about) — it looks to me like Kerry suddenly realized that he was skating on thin ice, and wisely decided to change the subject before he focused anyone else's attention on this subject.

V. Biographer Brinkley's contributions

As to what authorized Kerry biographer Douglas Brinkley has to say about Kerry and the long-running Paris peace talks in Tour of Duty: John Kerry and the Vietnam War:  First he quotes Kerry at the start of his Swift Boats service in late 1968, as the Swiftees were switching from coastal patrols to patroling the inland rivers and canals that would take the battle to the enemy as part of Operation Sealords (page 137):

"You might say I was conflicted," he confessed.  "On the one hand, I wanted the Paris peace talks to end the war.  On the other hand, I had trained to fight, and I wanted to."

Then in 1971, after he'd left active duty with the Navy (but was still in the Naval Reserve) and shortly after his televised debate with John O'Neill on The Dick Cavett Show (page 403):

Led by Patricia Hardy of Los Angeles, [wives of POWs] charged Kerry with using antiwar issues to further his political career.  When a Boston Globe reporter caught up with Kerry, he was saddened that these angry wives had taken issue with him.  It hurt.  But he kept to his point.  "What bothers me most is that action must be taken now in the Paris peace talks," Kerry stated.  "We need a date set, for total withdrawal from Vietnam."

Brinkley's book, which frequently cites Nicosia's Home to War with regard to Kerry's antiwar activities, reports that Kerry married Julia Stimson Thorne in Bay Shore, Long Island, on May 23, 1970, and that they honeymooned in Jamaica (ToD pages 340-41).  Strangely, however — given that Brinkley is the only historian, biographer, or reporter who's had (at least supposedly) unfettered access to (at least supposedly) all of Kerry's own war notes, journals, diaries, correspondence, and military records — Brinkley's book says nothing about Kerry ever meeting with representatives of the North Vietnamese government or Viet Cong in Paris, either in 1970 or 1971.

VI.  Kranish & Healey's reporting for the Boston Globe

 

On March 25, 2004, the Boston Globe's Michael Kranish and Patrick Healey wrote an article on Kerry's 1970 Paris meeting:

In a question-and-answer session before a Senate committee in 1971, John F. Kerry, who was a leading antiwar activist at the time, asserted that 200,000 Vietnamese per year were being "murdered by the United States of America" and said he had gone to Paris and "talked with both delegations at the peace talks" and met with communist representatives.

Kerry, now the presumptive Democratic presidential nominee, yesterday confirmed through a spokesman that he did go to Paris and talked privately with a leading communist representative. But the spokesman played down the extent of Kerry's role and said Kerry did not engage in negotiations.

The Kranish and Healey article gives these further details:

After their May 1970 marriage, Kerry traveled to Paris with his wife, Julia Thorne, on a private trip, Meehan said. Kerry did not go to Paris with the intention of meeting with participants in the peace talks or involving himself in the negotiations, Meehan added, saying that while there Kerry had his brief meeting with Binh, which included members of both delegations to the peace talks.

As Kerry runs for president, he is finding that many of his statements and activities over the last 33 years are drawing new attention. Last year, the Globe published White House transcripts of discussions about Kerry by President Nixon in the Oval Office. More recently, the Los Angeles Times focused on FBI surveillance reports, obtained by historian Gerald Nicosia, in which the FBI monitored meetings of the Vietnam Veterans Against the War, a group that Kerry led in 1971.

Indeed, there may be a tie between Kerry's statement before the Senate committee and the interest of the FBI in his activities. One FBI report provided to the Globe by Nicosia shows that the government was monitoring whether Kerry planned to go to Paris again. Kerry was "planning to travel to Paris, France ... for talks with North Vietnamese peace delegation," said the report, dated Nov. 11, 1971.

After describing Kerry's reference (quoted above) to section 953 in his Fulbright Committee testimony, Kranish & Healey wrote:

Kerry's statement dealt with the question of whether he was trying to negotiate in Paris as a private citizen and was thus on that "borderline" of what was allowable. A US law forbids citizens from negotiating with foreign governments on matters such as peace treaties. Meehan said Kerry was not negotiating.

"Senator Kerry had no role whatsoever in the Paris peace talks or negotiations," Meehan said in his statement. "He did not engage in any negotiations and did not attend any session of the talks. Prior to his Senate testimony, he went to Paris on a private trip, where he had one brief meeting with Madam Binh and others. In an effort to find facts, he learned the status of the peace talks from their point of view and about any progress in resolving the conflict, particularly as it related to the fate of the POWs."

Kerry's suggestion before the Senate committee that there be an immediate pullout led to questions about whether such a move would endanger the lives of South Vietnamese allies.

Kerry responded that "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." If the United States did not withdraw, Kerry said, then US bombing would continue, and "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 ...."

Meehan, asked to explain Kerry's comment, said: "During a very emotionally charged time in American history, Senator Kerry was testifying against a failed policy, which resulted in the killing of hundreds of thousands of people. That policy resulted in one of the highest civilian casualty rate in the history of war. In answering Senator [George D.] Aiken's question about the consequences of an American withdrawal and potential additional bloodbath, Senator Kerry used a word he deems inappropriate.

"Senator Kerry never suggested or believed and absolutely rejects the idea that the word applied to service of the American soldiers in Vietnam. While opposed to the failed policy, Senator Kerry insisted that Americans must never confuse the war with the warriors."

Although not published until April 27, 2004 — over a month after Kranish & Healey's Boston Globe article — the Kerry biography by Kranish et al., John F. Kerry: The Complete Biography By The Boston Globe Reporters Who Know Him Best, contains no reference to Kerry's Paris meeting(s).  Perhaps the book, based largely on a series of Boston Globe articles from June 2003, was already too close to publication.  On the other hand, the book (at pp. 124-25) manages to tell the story of Kerry's Fulbright Committee testimony without mentioning one of Kerry's most infamous lines — that he was testifying to atrocities that were "not isolated incidents but crimes committed on a day-to-day basis with the full awareness of officers at all levels of command" — and dutifully repeats the Kerry campaign's disingenuous arguments that Kerry was only purporting to describe statements about atrocities that had been made at the so-called "Winter Soldier hearings" some months earlier in Detroit.

VII.  The allegations in O'Neill's Unfit for Command

John O'Neill's Unfit for Command: Swift Boat Veterans Speak Out Against John Kerry has quite a bit to say about Kerry's meetings, and they would probably point to it as the primary source material for the sixth SwiftVets ad — although it draws heavily on Nicosia's book and the Kranish & Healey article.  Beginning at page 126:

In June 1971, Lo [sic — should be "Le"] Duc Tho arrived in Paris to join the North Vietnamese Communist delegation to the peace talks.  His arrival marked a change in the Communists' approach to advancing their goals through negotiation.  [Le] Duc Tho was, with Ho Chi Minh, one of the original founders of the Communist Party of Indochina and one of North Vietnam's chief strategists.

He arrived to join a comrade, Madame Nguyen Thi Binh .... Madame Binh was recognized as the Viet Cong delegate to the conference.

On July 1, 1971, within days of [Le] Duc Tho's arrival, Madame Binh advanced a new seven-point proposal to end the war.  Central to this plan was a cleverly crafted provision offering to set a date for the return of U.S. POWs in exchange for the Americans' setting a date for complete, unilateral military withdrawal from Vietnam.  In other words, America could have its POWs back only if we agreed that we lost, then surrendered, and then set a date to leave.

O'Neill's book then runs through the substance of the Kranish & Healey article's reporting, and then picks up thusly (at page 127):

On July 22, 1971 [some three weeks after Madame Binh's proposal], Kerry called a press conference in Washington, D.C.  Speaking on behalf of the VVAW, Kerry openly urged President Nixon to accept Madame Binh's seven-point plan.

After discussing the obvious reasons why the Nixon administration rejected Madame Binh's plan, O'Neill describes section 953, and then continues (at page 129):

There is no public record of what Kerry discussed with the Vietnamese Communists in Paris in 1970.  Kerry's presidential campaign has refused to provide any detailed account of the discussion, nor has the campaign answered questions regarding who set up the meeting.  There must have been contact between Kerry or his representatives and the representatives of the Vietnamese Communists.  Which Communists assisted Kerry in arranging his meeting with Madame Binh, and why?

... [I]t is hard to find any disagreement whatsoever between Kerry's words and actions as a leader of theVVAW and those of the Hanoi and Viet Cong leadership.  Had Madame Binh herself been permitted to appear at the July 22, 1971, press conference instead of John Kerry, the most noticeable difference in the argument presented might have been the absence of a Boston accent.

Unfit for Command goes on to discuss (at pp. 130-31) an FBI confidential surveillance report dated November 11, 1971, which "indicates that the FBI was monitoring Kerry to see if he planned another trip to Paris to meet with the Communist delegations."  Other FBI reports discuss multiple trips to Paris to meet with the Communists that were undertaken by Kerry's cohorts in the VVAW, including the radical Al Hubbard (who was eventually exposed as not being a Vietnam veteran at all after having falsely claimed to have been wounded as a combat pilot there).  As for whether Kerry himself made another trip (at page 135; hyperlink to Lexis/Nexis download and bracketed page reference added):

There is also good reason to believe that prior to the Kansas City [VVAW] meeting in November 1971, Kerry himself had made a second trip to Paris to meet with the Vietnamese Communists.  Evidence for this comes from Gerald Nicosia, a very pro-VVAW and pro-Kerry historian ....  Writing in the Los Angeles Times on May 24, 2004, Nicosia noted [page 5 of .pdf file], "Kerry's public image was perhaps tarnished most in 1971 by his attempts to hasten the return of American POWs.  The files record that Kerry made a second trip to Paris that summer to learn how the North Vietnamese might release prisoners."

VIII. Beldar's take

The sixth SwiftVets' ad is careful not to use the word "treason," and neither it nor O'Neill's book accuses Kerry in so many words of that crime or of violating statutes like 18 U.S.C. § 923.  From their point of view as veterans who were still fighting in Vietnam while Kerry was urging an immediate and unilateral withdrawal, they are certainly entitled to assert, however, that Kerry's actions — even if there were no substantive agreements reached at his Paris meeting(s) and it was "pure coincidence" that Kerry ended up endorsing unreservedly Madame Binh's "seven-point peace plan — nevertheless "betrayed his country."  That is a moral value judgment, not a legal conclusion — and obviously it's one that Kerry's supporters, and probably many undecided voters, will reject outright.

From a purely political standpoint, however, I believe that this latest ad — whether its viewers join in or reject the SwiftVets' judgment — will be another effective blow to Kerry's candidacy.  As with his medal-throwing incident and the words he spoke before the Fulbright Committee, Kerry's Paris trip(s) have long been known to those who've carefully studied his history — but I strongly suspect that a substantial portion of the American public has remained unaware of that part of his antiwar activist history.

As for my own reaction:  Again, I fully respect the SwiftVets' right to draw their own judgments, based on their service and their sacrifices, which neither I nor most Americans ever directly shared.  With no disrespect to them, however, from my own admittedly cushy perspective, "betrayal" is still a stronger word than I would yet feel comfortable using, and it conveys a more damning moral  judgment than I am yet comfortable making.  Although the circumstantial evidence is powerful, it still requires the drawing of an inference to conclude that there was an express quid pro quo or agreement between Kerry and his VVAW comrades and the North Vietnamese and Viet Cong representatives in Paris.  Kerry's resolute silence on all the details of his discussions, what was actually discussed, how and through whom the meeting(s) were arranged also cuts against him, and in favor of drawing the factual inference of a quid pro quo and the moral conclusion of "betrayal."

But in the absence of more facts — which, frankly, seem unlikely to be developed unless Sen. Kerry has a sudden change of heart, or other eyewitnesses step forward — I personally will continue to withhold judgment on the ultimate question of "betrayal." 

I have no hesitation, however, in agreeing that even in what Sen. Kerry has admitted, his actions in meeting even once with our nation's enemies during wartime, while the uniform of a Naval Reserve officer still hung in his closet, showed a profound foolishness — not a casual or trivial mistake in judgment by a callow youth, but a reprehensible misjudgment by a young man then already in his late 20s who ought to have known far better.  I'd think better of him now if he admitted that, and apologized.  But I'm not holding my breath waiting for that to happen.

------------------

Update (Wed Sep 23 @ 2:05am):  Wednesday's WaPo has the Kerry camp's first reaction to the sixth ad, which is to blast the "secret" allegation — pointing out that Kerry admitted the contact in his Fulbright Committee testimony.  Well, yes — after the fact.  That doesn't mean it wasn't a "secret" trip at the time he made it, though, and as far as I know, it was. 

It's also pretty funny that WaPo quotes Brinkley — who, as I mentioned above, doesn't mention the Paris trip(s) in any of his copious writing about Kerry's antiwar activism.  Apparently it was a secret to him, too. 

Although there is that (nervous) reference to Paris in Kerry's Fulbright Committee testimony, it's certainly fair to say that Kerry hasn't gone out of his way to publicize the meeting.  For example, according to Google's search function, there are five references to the word "Paris" on the official Kerry website, none of them about the meeting.  "Le Duc Tho" draws zip, as does "Nguyen Thi Binh."  Neither name is in the index of Brinkley's book; ditto the Kranish book's index.  I'm pretty sure I didn't hear either of those names mentioned at the Democratic National Convention, either.  And of course, the Kerry website also doesn't mention that Kerry repeatedly called Ho Chi Minh "the George Washington of Vietnam" during his antiwar days either, as Nicosia's LAT article notes (pp. 3-4 of the .pdf). 

This WaPo article another marks another appearance of the "evil WaPo twin" — the incredibly biased or fact-challenged one — as the concluding paragraph shows:

Some of the [SwiftVets'] assertions were refuted, and several links between it and President Bush's campaign subsequently came to light. But the media storm created by the ad put Kerry and his campaign on the defensive.

Gee, I'd like to see the backup for that "refuted" claim, and I'd like to see even the same limited degree of objectivity that poor Nick Kristof displayed in admitting that the SwiftVets have at least scored some service aces (Christmas in Cambodia) and have proved Kerry to be a serial exaggerator about his war record.  WaPo could say, I suppose, "We've decided to believe the eyewitnesses who say there was enemy fire incoming on the Bronze Star, and disbelieve the ones who say there wasn't, and we just think all the VC were really, really bad shots to miss everyone and the boats during the hour and a half they were dead in the water rescuing PCF 3's crewmen and setting it up for a tow."  But I suspect staff writer Paul Farhi knows even less about the details of Kerry's war record, and the SwiftVets' claims, than even Mr. Kristof.  Mr. Farhi should maybe read what his colleague Michael Dobbs has written; Dobbs at least acknowledges that the Bronze Star comes down to a swearing match over enemy fire, and that Kerry's stonewalling on his military records that might support other SwiftVets claims.

But best of all is WaPo's quote of John O'Neill (boldface added):

In an interview yesterday, John O'Neill, an organizer of the Swift boat group and co-author of the anti-Kerry book "Unfit for Command," said it would be "unprecedented" for a future commander in chief to have met with enemy leaders. "It would be like an American today meeting with the heads of al Qaeda," he said.

I agree with Jim Geraghty's take on O'Neill's quote:

Team Kerry better have a good defense to refute that talking point, because if that one sentence comparison breaks through the media static and gets into voter's heads, Kerry will make Walter Mondale look like Bill Clinton.

The evil twin must not have thought of that.

Nicosia also repeated his insistence about the second (1971) trip to CNS News in a June 2004 story.  And although I didn't notice it before, Nicosia's LAT article (page 2 of the .pdf) pegs the 1970 trip as being in May "with his new wife" — they must not have spent much time in Jamaica if they were married on May 23rd and were in Paris with Madame Binh before the month was out.

Finally, from an April 24, 2004, article in the New York Times re the 1970 trip (at page 2 of the .pdf file):

Two weeks later, he married Julia Thorne, and on a trip to Europe with his new bride, Mr. Kerry, the 26-year-old ex-lieutenant took a taxicab from Paris to a suburban villa. The son of a diplomat, Mr. Kerry had managed to arrange a private meeting with North Vietnamese and Vietcong emissaries to the peace talks.

He says he does not remember who else was in the room except for Nguyen Thi Binh, the Vietcong spokeswoman in Paris, who was then bedeviling the Nixon administration by issuing peace proposals it considered little more than propaganda.

''It's not a big deal,'' he says now. ''People were dropping in. It was a regular sort of deal.'' Senator Eugene J. McCarthy had visited Paris months earlier, and other officials often sat in with the Vietnamese and held news conferences afterward.

Mr. Kerry said he considered it a fact-finding mission. The talks had been stalemated for months. Still on the table was a year-old Vietcong initiative that included an offer to release American prisoners of war when American forces pulled out.

Mr. Kerry recalled ''testing what I thought the lay of the land was'' in the meeting. ''Not that you take their word for their word, but because you sort of put the pieces of the puzzle together.''

Asked why the Vietnamese would meet with a 26-year-old, Mr. Kerry suggested it was because he had been on television as a veteran opposed to the war. He acknowledged that they might have been trying to use him to shape American public opinion.

''I knew that, and I was trying to be careful about what was real and what wasn't real,'' he said. ''I wanted to really probe. I wanted to look them in the eyes, and say, 'Well, what happens if this happens? And what does this mean?'''

Mr. Kerry came home, and before a Senate hearing 10 months later he criticized President Nixon for not accepting Mrs. Binh's assurances that the Vietnamese would release American prisoners of war if U.S. troops simply left.

See, Brinkley forgot the part about Paris, and Sen. Kerry forgot the part about Jamaica.  Odd honeymoon, that.  But he asked Madame Binh, "what happens if this happens"?  Sounds oddly like "negotiations" to me.

Update (Wed Sep 23 @ 4:30am): Three nits that've been gnawing on me:  First, the WaPo article gets the year of the undisputed meeting wrong (I'm assuming that's what WaPo was referring to, since it doesn't mention the Nicosia quotes or the Fox News story saying that Kerry's campaign denies a 1971 meeting):

The group, whose members served in the Navy at the same time as Kerry, is referring to a meeting Kerry had in early 1971 with leaders of the communist delegation that was negotiating with U.S. representatives at the Paris peace talks. The meeting, however, was not a secret.

Second, I was probably wrong to characterize the "wasn't secret" point as coming from the Kerry camp rather than from WaPo initially.  The current Kerry campaign reaction (as opposed to what they were arguing when the LAT and NYT articles came out earlier this year) is to ignore what they've already admitted, and to attack the SwiftVets again:

"This is more trash from a group that's doing the Bush campaign's dirty work," Kerry spokesman Chad Clanton said. "Their charges are as credible as a supermarket rag."

Supermarket rag, Congressional Record, whatever.

Third, the WaPo article reminded me that one other place in his Fulbright Committee testimony (page 11 of the .pdf file), Kerry stated (boldface added; bracketed portions mine):

I have been to Paris.  I have talked with both delegations at the peace talks, that is to say the Democratic Republic of Vietnam [a/k/a "Communist North Vietnam"] and the Provisional Revolutionary Government [a/k/a the Communists who claimed to govern South Vietnam, and whose military arm was the Viet Cong] and all eight of Madame 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.

So despite his fuzzy memory when speaking to the NYT in April 2004, apparently on April 22, 1971, young Kerry still remembered who else he'd met with in May 1970 besides Madame Binh — and it was someone from the North Vietnamese government (although it's unclear whether it was at the same meeting or a different one).  Too bad there's no "delete button" on either Lexis/Nexis or the Congressional Record, Senator.

Update (Fri Sep 24 @ 6:08pm): I've edited the post above to correct my original reference to another press account of Nicosia's insistence on a second Paris trip from "CBS" to "CNS," and I've also fixed a broken link to Kerry's Fulbright Committee testimony.