Month: November 2011

Phoenix: Moral & Effective Counterinsugency

Post author By Roger Canfield
Post date November 22, 2011

Comrades—Phoenix: An Untold USA Success is Hanoi’s Propaganda Victory

In the end, Mark Moyar, author of the definitive work on the Phoenix pacification program,
writes, “The Government of Vietnam had won the struggle for control over rural
South Vietnam and the allegiance of its inhabitants, but it lost the war.”[1]

Conventional histories tell another story of a program of great moral depravity and militarily ineffective.

Among the little told successes of the Diem
regime was pacification of hamlets beginning with providing safe havens,
fortifications, outside of Viet Cong territory. Hanoi promptly described Diem’s
strategic hamlets as “concentration camps,” a characterization more accurate
for Hanoi practice than Saigon policy.

Strategic Hamlets: Unpopular but Effective

Meanwhile, fortifying hamlets and relocating remote hamlets had improved security for
elections.[2] Involuntary moves to Strategic Hamlets away from VC controlled home hamlets was
not popular, perhaps intentionally over extended,[3]
mismanaged and sabotaged by communist spy Pham Ngoc Thao,[4]
but still “abandonment of the hamlets hindered [the VC making)]. . . the
villagers both less accessible and less cooperative” to the VC. A former village cadre said,

“The more that people migrated to the Government areas, the less production workers, corve laborers, and informers the Front had.

“The Front would no longer have the people to support them and with whom they could mingle to hide.

“Many young men from the village went to the Nationalist areas, enlisted in the Nationalist army and returned to
the village to fight against the Front.

“This fact demoralized and confused the Front cadres the most.”[5]

Col. Pham Ngoc Thao was a serial coup plotter and Hanoi spy that the
CIA and Ambassador Henry Cabot Lodge nearly put into office after the Lodge
facilitated coup (and assassination) of South Vietnam’s President Ngo Dinh Diem.

Viet Cong expert and scholar Douglas Pike said of Pham Ngoc Thao that, “Although he was never uncovered as a Viet Cong spy, postwar reports from Hanoi indicated that he had been promoted posthumously to the rank of Colonel in People’s Army of Viet Nam and was buried in the Go Vap Hero Cemetery outside of Saigon.”[6]

…The Party Line: Pacification—Brutal and …Ineffective.

Hanoi’s super spy among the Saigon media, Pham Xuan An also was anxious to have Americans understand the failures of
pacification programs—Hop Tac, Phoenix-CORD—and to interpret them as
ineffective and brutal. It was one of An’s long term projects. Pham Xuan An
kept the North Vietnamese informed on all pacification efforts.

In one instance, Pham Xuan An drove Rufus Phillips, American pacification specialist, in his battered green Renault to
Cho Lon, site of a 100-man Viet Cong ambush of South Vietnamese village
self-defense forces at An Phu. According to Phillip’s account, Pham, a
Vietnamese friend, told him about “An incident occurred yesterday, right
outside of Saigon. The area is insecure as hell.”

Pham Xuan An says, “There were many places I could have taken Rufus, but this one [had] innocent
people…killed …and there was no such thing as security in these programs.”

The Viet Cong attack had passed through General Westmoreland’s vaunted “Rings
of Steel.” Decentralized South Vietnamese units did not communicate and had
taken six hours to respond to calls for assistance. Phillips passed the word to
Edward Lansdale and Brig. Gen. Fritz Fine who wrote reports, but “not a
goddamned thing happened.”[7]

Though Rufus Phillips believed An’s motivation was concern for the human tragedy at An Phu,[8] spy An had also achieved the objective of
disinformation, showing that pacification was not working to Phillips a man deeply dedicated to helping the Vietnamese pacification and nation building.

Spy An’s northern commander, Mai Chi Tho, thought
that impugning the effectiveness of pacification was one of An’s greatest
achievements,[9] but Mai Chi Tho did not explain to Larry Berman,
An’s biographer, why An’s reports on pacification had high value added.

After all, the North Vietnamese already had reports from thousands of their other
cadre in the hamlets of South Vietnam who saw pacification up close and
personal every day in thousands of hamlets. An’s contribution was surely different.

The value of An’s work was likely sowing disinformation among the allies, saying the effective was ineffective and the humane was inhumane.

Moyar: Pacification Effective

Mark Moyar has documented that pacification programs had considerable successes in his Phoenix and The Birds of Prey[10], a book that was checked out only twice in a
decade from the shelves of professor Larry Berman’s university, UC-Davis, where he and others gave courses on the Vietnam War to a student body of 20,000.

A massive propaganda campaign was necessary to
defame pacification, the war in the shadows the communists finally lost. To
this day history falsely records pacification, particularly Phoenix, as brutal
and ineffective. Later, the North Vietnamese admitted that Phoenix was effective[11] and that they had nonetheless successfully
undermined its legitimacy. “History,” Napoleon said, “is a fraud agreed upon.”

Phoenix—Moral and Effective Work to Pacify Villages

Pacification, especially the Phoenix program, has been falsely portrayed as an ineffective
program of indiscriminate assassination of thousands of innocent civilians and
political opponents. Both immoral and ineffective.

Its object was to neutralize the Viet Cong’s apparatus, its organized cadre, its secret shadow
government, propaganda shows and structure of terror. Neutralization could
consist of defection, capture, imprisonment, and yes, death. The Phoenix
program was the successor to a wide range of programs beginning with Diem,
Lansdale and Rufus Phillips such as the Intelligence Coordination and Exploitation, ICEX, Civil Action
Program, CAP, and in South Vietnamese it was known as Phung Hoang.

War Against A Shadow Government

This “war against the shadow government” was vast, complex and diverse and continued for many
years across many provinces and through many fits and starts and name changes.

Mark Moyar in Phoenix and the Birds of Prey presents the most thorough and honest treatment.[12] Moyar argues that Phoenix was neither
entirely black nor entirely white. It was shades of gray. It is true that the
South Vietnamese “arrested, tortured and killed (some) civilians who were not
Viet Cong…[On the other hand, it is clear] The allies went out of their way to
keep such abuses from occurring…The gray of the allies tended to be lighter
rather than darker…[Certainly] Ideals ran into reality”[13] in the villages and on the battlefields.

From 1960-1967 South Vietnamese pacification had included capturing, torturing, blackmailing and killing VC.

After 1967, the Phoenix era beginning in July 1968, American CIA advisors generally prevented
South Vietnamese torture and killing and insisted upon evidence to imprison.
Thereafter most of the falsely accused were promptly released and others served
short terms. In the end, as to who ultimately killed the Cong, Mark Moyar
credits the South Vietnamese: Provincial Reconnaissance Units, PRUs, and local
militias, which “devastated the Viet Cong shadow government, as well as the Viet Cong guerrilla forces.”[14]
Bruce Lawlor, former CIA officer and attorney remembers,

“A female lawyer…asked me…whether I had killed any babies…

“How do you answer an idiot like that…

“The PRU wasn’t a conspiracy. It was never an assassination program.

“Sometimes we made mistakes…but there was no evil intent. There were a lot of very honorable people.”[15]
The communists understood Phoenix better than our own CIA officers and morally pretentious attorneys,
not to be an assassination program, but a combination of allied Special Forces
targeting the shadow government, the Viet Cong terror network. These forces
included the PRU, Special Police, unconventional ARVN and U.S. specialty units,
e.g. Kit Carson Scouts, national police forces and small paramilitary units.

Indeed, Viet Cong cadre, traveling with armed escorts, resisting arrest, were shot rather more
often than they were peacefully arrested. Another explanation for high kill
rates was the bookkeeping—who got the credit. Phoenix
intelligence units provided the names of VC members to U.S. and ARVN military
units. Yet if ordinary military actions killed someone on the list, Phoenix
units were credited with the kill[16] instead of ARVN military units.

Hence, dead VC killed in armed combat and carried
on the Phoenix lists, easily were misinterpreted or intentionally characterized
as Phoenix assassinations. It was this faulty method of accounting, so endemic to McNamara’s obsession with counting
things, resulting in Phoenix intelligence operations wrongfully being morphed
into an assassination program directed at civilians.

Covert cadre pretending to be civilians did not make them so.

It was this failure to make distinctions absolutely necessary in a covert war such as that fought in Vietnam and now in
Iraq and Afghanistan that led to charges of brutality and wanton civilian killing.

But killing armed Viet Cong cadre, dressed as civilians, was the same as killing armed soldiers, spies and terrorists. Viet
Cong cadres, whatever their disguises, were combatants, not civilians.[17]

But the Americong was highly proficient at disseminating this myth of wanton indiscriminate
killing of civilians. For example, Elton
Manzione, a VVAW member is often cited as someone who claimed he had murdered
many civilians. Yet Navy Seals who served in Vietnam did not know this
self-proclaimed Seal because Manzione had never been to Vietnam.[18] Likewise, Mark Moyar discredits two other
witnesses, Mike Beamon and Kenneth Barton Osborne as an imposter and as a liar respectively.[19]
Journalists, Neil Sheehan and Frances Fitzgerald, widely promulgated the ruling myths of Phoenix assassinations.

Attempts were made to debunk the myth. For example, in
answering the charge by columnist Walter Scott that Phoenix “established a new
high for U.S. political assassinations in Vietnam,” Phoenix Director, William
Colby, in a letter to editor Lloyd Shearer of Parade magazine on January 11, 1972 wrote:

“‘…Operation Phoenix is not and was not a program of assassination.

“It countered the Viet Cong apparatus attempting to overthrow the Government of [South] Vietnam by targeting its leaders.

“Wherever possible, [members of the Viet Cong apparatus] …were apprehended or invited to defect, but a substantial
number were killed in firefights during military operations or resisting capture.

“There is a vast difference in kind, not merely degree, between these combat casualties (even including the few
abuses which occurred) and the victims of the Viet Cong’s systematic campaign of terrorism…”[20]

Of the 15,000 neutralized in 1968 some 72% were captured, 13 rallied to the government, and
only 15% were killed.[21] The South Vietnamese embraced pacification after Tet 1968. In 1969 the number of killed doubled. Through July 1972 26,000 killed, 32% were killed.[22]

It was hardly successful as an assassination program when those in custody stayed alive.

Hanoi Found Phoenix Effective

Besides accusations of the immorality of Phoenix, another contradictory false claim was
simultaneously disseminated, namely that Phoenix was not effective. Nguyen Co
Thach, a senior North Vietnamese diplomat, said that Phoenix, “had slaughtered
far more than the 21,000 officially listed… We had many weaknesses in the south because of Phoenix.”[23]

For the sake of argument, as an assassination programs Phoenix was very ineffective 73% of the 67,006
“neutralized” Viet Cong defected or were captured, only 27% were killed.[24]
The Communists knew pacification programs were always a threat to the Viet Cong
and could sometimes be very effective. Hanoi assessed Phoenix as a combination
of “political, economic, and cultural schemes with espionage warfare in order
to eliminate the infrastructure of the revolution and build the infrastructure of neo-colonialism.”[25]

After the war the communists told Stanley Karnow, that Phoenix was “the single most effective
program you used …in the entire war.”[26]
That was why Hanoi made pacification programs prime targets of propaganda blasts on the Second
Front, where their reliable agents could be expected to dutifully parrot the North Vietnamese party line.

In the end, Mark Moyar, author of the definitive work on
the Phoenix pacification program, writes, “The Government of Vietnam had won
the struggle for control over rural South Vietnam and the allegiance of its inhabitants, but it lost the war.”^{^[27]}^[1]

[1] Mark Moyar, “VILLAGER ATTITUDES DURING THE FINAL DECADE OF THE VIETNAM WAR, 1996
Vietnam Symposium, “After the Cold War: Reassessing Vietnam,” 18-20
April 1996, http://www.vietnam.ttu.edu/vietnamcenter/events/1996_Symposium/96papers/moyar.htm

[2] Cutting vegetation, erecting fences, moats, towers, guard posts and government forces manning the hamlet 24
hours a day. See: Moyar, Phoenix, 126.

[3] Marguerite Higgins, Our Vietnam Nightmare, New York: Harper & Row, 1965, 116-7.

[4] Karnow, 257.

[5] Rand Vietnam Interviews, Series AG, No. 545, 30 cited in Mark Moyar, “VILLAGER ATTITUDES DURING THE FINAL DECADE OF THE
VIETNAM WAR, 1996 Vietnam Symposium, “After the Cold War: Reassessing
Vietnam,”18-20 April 1996, http://www.vietnam.ttu.edu/vietnamcenter/events/1996_Symposium/96papers/moyar.htm

[6] Pike, Chapter 1, War in Shadows, Boston: Boston Publishing Co., 1988, 6.

[7] Rufus Phillips, “Rings of Steel,” Al Santoli, To Bear Any Burden, 167-8.

[8] Rufus Phillips, Why Vietnam Matters: An eyewitness account of lessons not
learned, Naval Institute Press, 2008, 270-272.

[9] Larry Berman, The Perfect Spy: The Incredible Double Life of Pham Xuan An, Time Magazine Reporter
& Vietnamese Communist Agent, New York: Harper Collins, 2007, 178-9.

[10] Mark Moyar, Phoenix and the Birds of Prey; The CIA’s Secret Campaign to Destroy the Viet Cong, Annapolis:
Naval Institute Press, 1997; See also Lewis B. Sorley, A Better War: The Unexamined Victories and Final Tragedy of America’s Final Years in Vietnam,
New York: Harcourt, Brace 1999.

[11] Stanley Karnow, 601-2.

[12] Mark Moyar, Phoenix…

[13] Mark Moyar, Phoenix…, xvi.

[14] Mark Moyar, Phoenix , xi.

[15] Mark Moyar, Phoenix 365n45 cites his interview of Bruce Lawlor.

[16] D.E, Bordenkircher, S.A. Bordenkircher, Tiger Cage: Untold Story, Abby Publishing, 1998, 31.

[17] Mark Moyar, Phoenix, 226n9 cites Stuart A. Herrington, 13.

[18] Mark Moyar, Phoenix, 225n6 cites Douglas Valentine, The Phoenix Program, NY: Pocket Books, 1994, 340.

[19]Mark Moyar, Phoenix [Also University of Nebraska, 2007.93-96, 117, 213, 216, 380 n26.

[20] CIA, FOIA, W.E. Colby to Lloyd Shearer, January 11, 1972, at 668 of Family Jewels.

[21] Lewis Sorley, A Better War: The Unexamined Victories and Final Tragedy of
America’s Last Years in Vietnam, New York: Harcourt, 1999, 145.

[22] Moyar Phoenix and the Birds of Prey, 236.

[23] Mark Moyar, Phoenix, 246n9 cites Seymour Hersh, Price of
Power: Kissinger in the Nixon White House, NY: Summit Books, 1983, 280-81.

[24] Bill Laurie, Godzilla at Khe Sanh: Viet Nam’s Enduring Hallucinatory
Illusions, unpublished manuscript to author August 26, 2009.

[25] War Experiences Recapitulation Committee of the High-Level Military Institute, Vietnam:
The Anti-U.S. Resistance War for National Salvation, 1954-1975, English 122
cited in Lewis Sorley, A Better War: The Unexamined Victories and Final
Tragedy of America’s Last Years in Vietnam, New York: Harcourt, 1999, 147.

[26] Karnow Vietnam, 602.

[27] Rufus Phillips, “Rings of Steel,” Al Santoli, To Bear Any Burden, 167-8.

Tags Bill Laurie, Mark Moyar, Pham Xuan An, Phoenix Birds Prey, Phoenix effective counterinsurgency, Rufus Phillips, spy Thao, strategic hamlet, Stuart Herrington, War Experiences Recapitulation

Cambodia Comrades in Arms Vietnam

Vietnam in HD: Barry Romo, Hanoi Agent? w/ postwar UPDATE

Post author By Roger Canfield
Post date November 21, 2011

Comrades—Barry Romo

Barry Romo was a major commentator on the History Channel’s “Vietnam in (High Definition)—HD.” The viewer is informed that
Romo came home to toss his war medals and join the Vietnam Veterans Against the War, VVAW.

That account is incomplete.

In “Vietnam-HD” Barry Romo was falsely identified as a spokesman for American veterans in Vietnam. He
was a willing and enthusiastic agent of Hanoi during the war. He and others
like him did not seek peace in Vietnam. They sought victory for the Communist
enemy and a transformed America.

Romo had joined the enemy in war and at home. Today he continues in Iraq and the USA. (Update Below)

The horrific consequences for the peoples of Indochina cannot be fixed by a correction of Barry Romo’s curriculum vitae, but perhaps history
can catch up with the truth.

The following are extended excerpts from Comrades in Arms: How the
Americong Won the War in Vietnam Against the Common Enemy—America. These extended
excerpts show the full context of Romo’s participation in pro-Hanoi activities.

Though a numerical minority, the collaborators with Hanoi created a large number of front groups claiming to
speak for vast constituencies: women, lawyers, doctors, students, racial minorities, and war veterans.[1]

Romo played a prominent role in Vietnam Veterans Against the War, VVAW which, among other groups, fronted for Hanoi.

At most VVAW had a few thousand members out of the 2.4 million who served in Vietnam.

American War Medals Tossed

On April 23, 1971, John Kerry led members of VVAW in a protest of tossing American war medals and
ribbons over a fence in front of the U.S. Capitol. “We came here to undertake one last mission, to
search out and destroy the last vestige of this barbaric war,” Kerry said.

Among those tossing their medals are Rep. Ron Dellums, (D-California),[3] and Barry Romo.[4]

Parts of the toss were a fraud.

VVAW Tosses Medals: Some Theirs Some Not

Paul Withers of Boston came to the microphone claiming to be a former Green Beret. He said he had received
nine purple hearts and a long list of other medals, including the Distinguished Service Cross.[5]
The name Withers does not appear in an alphabetical list of the 1,055
recipients of the Distinguished Service Cross between the names Wishik,
Jeffrey and Witherspoon, Thomas where Withers should appear.[6]

Moreover, a Purple Heart website
cites Medal of Honor recipient Robert Howard being wounded 14 times in 54 months receiving a total of 9 awards
of the Purple Heart.[7] The Purple Heart website does not mention Withers as a recipient of an equal number of Purple Hearts.

While the “absence of a name should NOT
be construed to definitively negate a veteran’s claim to this award,” the VVAW
was legendary for the phony claims of its members including one of its
presidents Al Hubbard. B.G. Burkett and Glenna Whitley in Stolen Valor
document 1,700 persons fabricating war stories.

Lying about service in Vietnam gained veterans benefits for those
who had not earned them, made political points and answered the question, “What
did you do during the Vietnam War?” By 2000 service in Vietnam had become honorable.

Scott Swett reports that some VVAW participants were carrying medals for others who could
not make the trip to the Washington rally.

VVAW member Steve Pitkin remembered someone with long hair holding a bag filled with military
ribbons and medals and offering them to VVAW members. Pitkin said that most of
the medals, Korean War, weren’t right for service in Vietnam. Pitkin heard that
VVAW had cleaned out the local Army-Navy stores the day before. Disgusted,
Pitkin grabbed his handful of medals and threw them not over the fence, but
into a mob of reporters and marched off. [8]

Hanoi Happy With Medal Toss

Hanoi appreciated their front groups and their activities including the medal toss.

…Enemy’s Intimate Knowledge of U.S. Antiwar Movement–Viet Cong
Directive 31

In the midst of the spring demonstrations on April 28, 1971 the Viet Cong, oft described as uninformed black-pajamaed peasants
isolated from great world affairs, issued Directive No. 31 OT/TV[9] ordering VCI cadre to “step up …the anti-Vietnam War movement of the Americans.”

Directive No. 31 very precisely identified the activities of every major antiwar organization from
March through May 1971 including: the “nationwide alliance for peace” [i.e.
National Peace Action Coalition, NPAC], the Alliance of Americans for Just
Peace [i.e. Peoples Coalition for Peace and Justice, PCPC], the “US war
veterans who have fought in Vietnam” [i.e. Vietnam Veterans Against the War,
VVAW,] and “the families of those US soldiers who were KIA or captured” [i.e. COLIFAM].

The Directive No. 31 also mentioned ‘a law court to denounce the crimes of the US” [i.e. the VVAW’s
Winter Soldier Investigation], the “return of medals” [VVAW medal toss] and the demonstrations on April 24.

The Directive showed that Hanoi’s puppet had either a very comprehensive understanding of the
anti-war movement inside the USA or had a Hanoi-American author or both.

VVAW’s Joe Urgo on a tour in Hanoi received four tapes of POWs held by the Provisional Revolutionary
Government of South Vietnam—the Viet Cong.[10]

One POW was disturbed by “stories” of atrocities and had heard “reports” of the VVAW medal tosses.
Another praised the patriotism of PCPJ and VVAW. Another accused the U.S. of
“waging the most vicious and ignoble war of all times,”[11] a Hanoi theme John Kerry and VVAW oft repeated.

Meeting Pham Van Dong

OUpon meeting the PCPJ, VVAW and NPAC delegation in Hanoi, Pham Van Dong “highly praised the antiwar
activities…especially in the 1971 spring offensive” in which the VVAW had
played such a large role in the “Dewey Canyon”: the medal toss.

Radio Hanoi said, “The American guests …welcomed the Seven Point peace initiative…and promised to push
on [with] their coordinated antiwar actions.”[12]

…VVAW Plans Another Hanoi Tour

Al Hubbard whose credentials were marred by his lies about his rank and service in Vietnam did
not stand for reelection to VVAW. His pro-Hanoi agenda would continue nonetheless.

The Houston meeting of VVAW on the 11^th of April 1972 would select its nominees
for a proposed trip to Hanoi.

Prospective candidates for a Hanoi trip were: were George Smith, Indiana-Ohio, a former POW; Marty O.
Jordan, an Indian from Arkansas; Scott Camil, Florida advocate of the
assassination of pro-war U.S. Senators; John Musgrave, Kansas; Barry Romo,
California; David Evans Ross, Colorado; and Bill Marshall, Michigan, a black.
Alternates selected were Peter Mahoney, Louisiana; Richard Bangert, Missouri;
Mike Dedrick, Seattle; Chuck Geisler, Michigan; Gale Graham, New York; and Jon
Birch, Philadelphia.[13]

The FBI transmitted the list of VVAW nominees for a Hanoi trip to the President and to
diplomatic and military agencies.[14] Local FBI offices were instructed to find
“possible weaknesses including pending prosecution, etc which can be exploited to bar individuals’ travel…”[15]

On May 9, 1972 John Smith, regional coordinator of the Connecticut VVAW, wrote to the North
Vietnamese Embassy, Paris offering a medical assistance team for Hanoi.[16]

Plans proceeded to send a seven-person VVAW team to Paris to meet with North
Vietnamese. It would cost $30,000, but VVAW was hopeful that Jane Fonda and
Soviet Union (half) would cover a major portion.[17]

Al Hubbard went on a California fundraising tour to San Francisco.

The Christmas Bombings of Hanoi: Barry Romo’s Ringside in Hanoi

On December 11, 1972 Anniversary Tours, a
Communist Party-USA owned travel agency, booked Scandinavian Airlines, SAS,
flights out of JFK Airport bound for Hanoi with folksinger Joan Baez,
the Episcopal Rev. Michael Allen of Yale Divinity, Barry Romo of VVAW, and Gen.
Telford Taylor, the former chief counsel of the war crimes trials of the Nazis at Nuremberg, Germany.[18]

On December 13, 1972, Cora Weiss held a press conference and introduced Baez, Allen, Taylor and
Romo as departing for Hanoi. Baez said she wanted to meet North Vietnamese and
to witness war damage. Allen said they carried 500 pieces of mail. Weiss said this was COLIFAM’s 36^th mail trip.

…“Wet His Pants”

Nixon’s “Christmas” bombing strategy in December 1972 worked.

As Nixon and Kissinger first claimed, American POW’s later confirmed and the North Vietnamese admit today, the
December bombings were terrifying. Joan Baez in the Metropole’s bomb shelter with Rev. Michael Allen of Yale Divinity,
Barry Romo of VVAW and Telford Taylor sang Christmas Carols. Close by in the
“Hanoi Hilton” the POWs cheered.

The Vietnamese trembled.[19] Truong
Nhu Tang remembered, “I had been caught in the Apocalypse. The terror was
complete. One lost control bodily functions as the mind screamed
incomprehensible orders to get out.”[20] One POW saw his prison guard
“trembling like a leaf, drop his rifle, and wet his pants.”[21]

Some 42,000 bombs fell seeking “maximum destruction of selected military targets.”
Hanoi’s 1,242 SAM missiles and artillery shells fired at American
aircraft fell back down amongst the civilians remaining in Hanoi.[22]

Romo Claims Civilians Targeted

VVAW’s Barry Romo claimed the bombing was
never to destroy military targets, but to terrorize and demoralize the
Vietnamese people. Bombs falling on nonmilitary targets were not errors. The
same homes and shops were hit several times, Romo claimed.[23]

Yet the actual orders from Washington were to
“exercise precaution to minimize risk of civilian casualties…”[24] Aircrews were ordered to maintain straight and
level flight to “maximize aiming time” and to “reduce the
chances of civilian damage.”[25]

These orders increased crew exposure to the
world’s best antiaircraft defenses. Although not the nuclear holocaust the left
frequently accused the US of planning—whenever the U.S. showed even diplomatic
firmness to Communist aggression–the new smart bombs fell with great accuracy.

“Carpet Bombing”

Stanley Karnow says American newspapers, television, and radio had uncritically carried a
French reporter’s claims [in Le Monde] of “carpet bombing” of downtown
Haiphong and Hanoi. Malcolm Browne of The
New York Times, a war critic, said this was “grossly overstated.”

Indeed, even Tran Duy Hung, mayor of Hanoi denied such false claims. Karnow says, “American antiwar
activists…during the attacks urged the mayor to claim a death toll of ten
thousand.”

The suspects for such an intentional fabrication, a lie, would have
been Joan Baez, Barry Romo, Michael Allen, and Telford Taylor. Mayor Tran
refused to bump the numbers because “his government’s credibility was at stake.”

The North Vietnamese counted 1,318 civilian fatalities in Hanoi and 305 in Haiphong—a pittance
of the 85,000 killed in the real carpet firebombing of Tokyo in March 1945.[26]

Earlier in 1972, the North Vietnamese had turned artillery upon civilians
fleeing Quang Tri and An Loc killing at least 15,000. There was neither
discernible media nor “peace” pilgrim outrage to this slaughter of the purely innocent.

VVAW Support Hanoi’s Line and Tone

….At its January 4-8, 1973 national steering committee meeting of 102 delegates VVAW discussed
the inaugural, supported the Vietnamese 9 Point Peace Plan and approved sending
cash and medical supplies to the National Liberation Front.[27] Deciding to take a less militant tone than
their previous public tossing away of war medals, takeover of the Statute of
Liberty etc., the Vietnam Veterans Against the War, VVAW, vowed to refrain from violence and stop carrying the Viet Cong flag.

Had the North Vietnamese told VVAW to tone it down?

Barry Romo, returned from talks with communist officials in North Vietnam and hearing bomb
blasts, spoke at Arlington National Cemetery and signed the 9-point peace plan.[28]
Some 2,000 attended the Arlington demonstration and 30,000 from allied groups
rallied at the Washington Memorial.[29]

…VVAW Supports Amnesty for Draft Dodgers and Deserters

April 19-23, 1973 the VVAW National Steering Committee met at George Stapleton’s Ranch and at
Bernalillo Community Center in Placitas, New Mexico. Ed Damato discussed an
ambitious VVAW effort to win amnesty for deserters and draft dodgers.[30]

May 26-28 about 30 VVAW members including Al
Hubbard, Barry Romo, representatives of PCPJ, Fellowship Of Reconciliation and
persons from Canada and Europe attended an Amnesty Action Conference in Toronto, Canada.

Al Hubbard said, “Third World” brothers—blacks,
Hispanics—received a disproportionate number of less than honorable discharges.
The VVAW dominated conference supported unconditional amnesty and sought to
expand its amnesty efforts beyond its PCPJ patron to include Clergy and Laity
Concerned, CALC, and the War Resisters League, WRL.

The May Toronto conference was followed by the
creation of VVAW clearinghouse on amnesty, by the Midwest Amnesty Conference of
the National Council for Universal and Unconditional Amnesty, NCUUA, in
September[31] and by an amnesty conference at Edgewater
College in Madison Wisconsin in October.[32]

In January 1974 Fellowship for Reconciliation, War Resisters League and the Women Strike
for Peace, WSP, held an organizational meeting for amnesty. FOR files indicate
the ACLU, AFSC, CALC, WRL, WSP and other organizations supported amnesty for deserters.[33]

On April 11-15, 1974 a VVAW National Steering Committee would reaffirm its dedication to fight against imperialism and fight
for amnesty for deserters. The National Unitarian Organization of Churches,
NUOC, agreed to help pay for the VVAW amnesty campaign. Demonstrations were planned for May 17-18, 1974 and July 1- 4, 1974.[34]

In June VVAW/WSO conducted workshops on amnesty
through the Washington Peace Center Amnesty Project focusing on VVAW’s
Discharge Upgrading Project[35] using a National Council of Churches, NCC, film,
“Amnesty or Exile” before church and peace groups.

On occasion in the
Washington region the conservative Young Americans for Freedom debated the
issue. On WMAL-Channel 7, Henry Swartzchild of ACLU, Sen. Claireborne Pell and
Rev. Sterling Morse of NCC favored amnesty. Sen. Strom Thurmond, Rep. Larry
Hogan and Brian Jones, VFW, opposed.[36]

Meanwhile Hanoi had released POWS according to their own schedule and agenda.

…VVAW Goes International in St. Louis

August 23-27, 1973 nearly 70 members of VVAW from 15 states attended the National steering
committee in St. Louis, Missouri. Discussions covered recruiting GI’s at bases
overseas and detecting and jamming U.S. electronic surveillance.

Barry Romo read a telegram from a Cambodian General “thanking the American people and the VVAW
for…stopping the bombing in Cambodia. …Keep up the good work.”[37]

Romo had been communicating with the
Cambodian shadow government of Norodom Sihanouk, which had fallen under Khmer
Rouge control in May.

The Khmer Rouge–butchers of two million people–would never be remembered for its good
works. Bill Hager objected to the Marxist-Leninist slant of VVAW national—Sam Schorr and Venceremos Brigadier
Brian Adams. For such Bill Hager was deemed incapable of political growth.[38]

…VVAW Solidarity With Khmer Krahom: Barry Romo

In Paris December 8-9, 1973, VVAW members Barry Romo and Peter Zastrow attended a Conference of
Solidarity with the Cambodian People.

The Cambodian Khmer Krahom had previously awed the VVAW delegates at the WPC conference in Moscow.

Romo had faithfully reported the Cambodian communist agenda. The Khmer Krahom demanded
the U.S. stop bombing Cambodia and aiding the “puppet” Lon Nol regime. It also
and recognize the Khmer Krahom dominated Royal Government of National Union of
now puppet Prince Norodom Sihanouk. “With the rainy season ending shortly in
Cambodia, the liberation forces will be on the move and in need of as much support as we can give them.”

VVAW delegates to the Paris conference, Romo and Zastrow, vowed, “to continue our support of the
struggle of the people of Cambodia” against American bombing and the puppet Lon Nol.[39]

And the Cambodians made a chilling forecast: “They do not intend to settle for anything less than total victory.”[40]

Saloth Sâr, Pol Pot, brutal leader of the Khmer Krahom was on the payrolls of Vietnamese and Chinese Communists and
Paris trained. Sar was fan of utopian socialism and took his practical
political instruction from reading Lenin, Stalin and Mao in Paris cafes.

Communists Rain Artillery and Rockets on Fleeing Cambodians

Meanwhile, back in Cambodia
the NVA and Khmer Rouge rained artillery and rockets upon the civilian
population of Phnom Penh, Cambodia who fled to safety or hunkered down in
bunkers, ditches and behind sandbags.

Agence France Presse reported 100 dead and 300
wounded over four days.

Elizabeth Becker told readers of the Washington Post,
“One can only imagine that many more wounded and dead were lying undiscovered
in bunkers and ditches.” Becker noted, “Phenom Penh is now experiencing the war
the way countless other villages have during the past three years.”

An unidentified European women, said, “I saw a rocket land just ahead of me.
…bodies shot into the sky so I ran home and drank one scotch.”[41]

The woman left in a few days yet another witness removed from the scene of a secret war of artillery and
terror in Cambodia. The North Vietnamese communists and Khmer Krahom were far more evil than America’s long pilloried
“secret” bombing reported in every day’s New York Times.

Conclusion

The horrific consequences for the peoples of Indochina cannot be fixed by a correction of Barry Romo’s curriculum vitae, but perhaps history can catch up with the truth.

POST WAR UPDATE: Transforming America

Revolutionary Union–Revolutionary Communist Party.

Besides aiding Hanoi Romo’s VVAW continued on a far leftist path to transform America under
their increasingly a false flag of veterans rights.

Many sympathetic historians of VVAW, FBI informers, and local police reports agree on the critical facts.

During 1973, members of the Maoist Robert Avakian’s Revolutionary Union, RU (in fall of 1975
renamed the Revolutionary Communist Party, RCP) became active in VVAW[42]
with Barry Romo’s support. The RU faction claimed to represent an activist
veteran’s “vanguard of revolutionary change.”

In supporting the Revolutionary
Union (Revolutionary Communist Party) faction, Barry Romo said VVAW had to
avoid becoming a “Petite bourgeois debating society.” It was a classic split
between Maoists and other communists, single issue versus multiple issue.[43]

Like Barry Romo, VVAW’s Joe Urgo was also a member of the Revolutionary Communist
Party USA, RCUSA along with SDs members Clark Kissinger and Carl Davidson.^{^[44]}

VVAW Honors Disloyal POWs

In 1973 The VVAW appily recognized and welcomed home the POW’s Peace Committee which had
voluntarily made propaganda broadcast for Hanoi from the “Hanoi Hilton” where other
POWs were tortured to confess war crimes. VVAW listed the names and address of
the collaborators in VVAW minutes and newsletters. [45]

This VVAW roll of honor was SSG John A. Young, Sp4 Michael Branch, SSG Robert
P. Chenoweth, SSG James A. Daly, Sgt. Abel L. Kavanaugh, SSG King David Rayford
Jr., SSG Alphonso Ray Riate, and Pvt. Frederick L. Elbert Jr.

The now Marxist VAW had dropped the commissioned officers, members of the ruling class Col.
Miller and Cmd. Wilber, from their honor roll. The VVAW was surely under orrect party discipline.

Revolutionary Communist Party

In the fall of 1974, RU became the Revolutionary Communist party (RCP). VVAW/WSO members Barry
Romo, Bill Davis, and Pete Zastrow numbered among the founders. Uncertain about taking over VVAW/ WSO Davis, Zastrow, and Romo were elected to the national
office. “Their takeover resulted in the disintegration of the organization. By
the fall of Saigon in May 1975, VVAW/WSO had become just another small eft-wing splinter group.”[46]

In December 1974 according o an FBI report, “VVAW/WSO leaders voted at the Nat’l. Steering Committee meeting
to align with the RU, which organization follows a strict Maoist line designed o bring about violent revolution in the U.S.”[47]

Celebrating Communist Victories

A VVAW/WSO letter ays, “The Vietnamese and Cambodians have won great victories …aided by
progressive people and organizations throughout the world … such as IPC and
VVAW/WSO. …We too will one day celebrate our victory over imperialism.”[48]

New York: Khmer Rouge Welcomed

Five months after te fall of Phnom Penh on September 6, 1975 IPC, VVAW/WSO, the Maoist
Revolutionary Union (Revolutionary Communist Party), and the CPUSA sponsored a
reception at John C. Bennett’s Union Theological Seminary to receive thanks
from two Kampuchea (Cambodian) generals and Vice Prime Minister Ieng Sary for te American left’s support against “U.S. imperialist forces.”[49]

The Americans members of the antiwar movement had helped unleash one of the most loodthirsty regimes in human history.

The National ffice Collective of VVAW/WSO had thought the Indochina Peace Campaign, IPC,
was insufficiently revolutionary for getting involved in electoral politics.
Revolutionary Tom Hayden has decided to run for the U.S. Senate in California.^{^[50]}

Planning to Disrupt America’s 200^thBirthday

After the war Romo’s VAW’s sought to disrupt the 200^th birthday of the Republic on July , 1976.

VVAW and Revolutionary Communist Party eadership

Dr. William Kintner, Professor at the University of Pennsylvania testified before the Senate a rival July 4th Coalition, a radical group, the
Revolutionary Communist Party (formerly the Revolutionary Union) planned demonstrations
in Philadelphia on the Fourth of July 1976 under the slogan. “Get the rich
off our backs!” According to Kintner, “The RCP, a Maoist-Communist group” sought to
organize thousands of through its own “RCP youth organization, the
Revolutionary Student Brigade and the Vietnam Vietnam Veterans Against the War,
which some consider an RCP front operation.”[51]

Promotional materials for the July 4^th demonstrations showed Romo’s VVAW taking
a leading role from the beginning. ““It is in this spirit that the Vietnam
Veterans Against the War put out the original call…” And “The Unemployed
Workers Organizing Committee has since endorsed the rally, along with many
other fighting workers’ organizations.” Promotional materials listed The July
4th Coalition as including Vietnam Veterans Against the War, Unemployed Workers
Organizing Committee, Revolutionary Communist Party, Revolutionary Student Brigade and unspecified others.

The two key demands were to be “Jobs or Income Now” and “We Won’t Fight in a Rich Man’s War!”[52]

Inspector George Fenel, Philadelphia Police Department testified that the plans were to take
physical action for “Four Days of Raising Hell. Targets were “museums,
statues, forts.” And that “every time the rich celebrate, we should be there and be visible for the 4 days.”

VVAW and Barry Romo Lead Protest

Inspector Fenel alsodescribed Vietnam Veterans Against the War (VVAW) as the main organizer of a July
4th Coalition planning conference held on March 27 and 28, 1976, at New York
University in New York City attended by about 200 persons. The goal was 60,000
in march and rally where “We will do what we have to.”

The Rich Off Our Back July 4th Coalition split off from the main coalition. Barry Romo was among
its spokesman including June Cohen, Roger Tauss. Glen Kirby.[53]

By 1978, there was a split with Romo and others creating VVAW-AI [Anti-Imperialist] as an offshoot
of the larger VVAW/WSO. (Nicosia 2001, 312-313; Moser 1996, 127).

A number of sources allege that Barry Romo was a founding member of the Revolutionary
Communist Party, RCP. Some also show he had disputes with RCP. It appears he a
Maoist in VVAW created RCP along with VVAW members Bill Davis and Mike Zastrow
and with Maoist and Revolutionary Union member Robert Avakian.[54]

Romo Stays Left

Romo’s credentials have remained far left and associated with Communists and their fronts. A Chicago New Party (the Democratic Socialists of America,
ACORN and SEIU) mailing list circa 1993 included Barry Romo, VVAW.

In 1994 Barry Romo, Chicago was listed on a “Membership, Subscription and Mailing List”
for the Chicago Committees of Correspondence, an offshoot of the CPUSA.[55]

Barry Romo has been frequently cited and once published (May 27, 2005) in People’s World, self-described as a “direct descendant of the Dailey Worker…

“We enjoy a special relationship with the Communist Party USA, founded in 1919, and publish its news and views.”

By 2007 on VVAW stationary Romo condemns far leftists in VVAW. “The ultra-leftists, Trotskyists,
Maoists, Stalinists, anarchists, and Avakianoids are mostly estranged from
their own families, mostly active on campuses… and number in the thousands….Let’s
be clear. I don’t want them driven out of the movement or kept from speaking
(except for the Revolutionary Communist Party)…”[56]

In defending Marxist Ward Churchill, Romo condemned the Revolutionary Communist Party.

In opposing the Iraq War Romo has worked with radical, communist influenced antiwar organizationa just as he did in Vietnam.

Romo’s complaints about RCP and Communists are tactical and sectarian, not fundamental.

As a moderator at the VVAW’s “Winter Soldier” investigation of American war crimes in Detroit (
January 31, 1971, February 1 and 2, 1971) Barry Romo said, “[T]he pacification
program…consisted of moving or forcing villagers to leave their homes…to deny
them to the Communists….I saw the use of artillery fire against civilian
targets… with no regard taken for the Vietnamese. I saw rice stolen from
Vietnamese because it was considered too much for them to have. I saw also a
general racist attitude by most Americans towards the Vietnamese.”[57]

Romo said that the My Lai murder of innocent civilians was “general policy and not an isolated
incident. We’re trained… to kill…. It is not the fault of Lieutenant Calley. It
is not the fault of the infantryman in his platoon, but the fault of the U.S.
government and the U.S. military…The whole system is… set up to dehumanize us
and to make everybody we see a nonhuman so that we can kill them. It would be
impossible with our background to go into a village and kill a woman and child
unless we looked at those people as nonhumans…. that’s how we look at the Vietnamese.”[58]

[1]
Veterans: Jack Calhoun, William Cathcart, Jerry Chodick, Gerry Condon, Donald
Duncan, Jan Barry Crumb, Jack Godoy, Frank Hoffman, Al Hubbard, Pfc. James
Johnson, Bill Jones, John Kerry, Dee Knight, Steve Krauss, Robert Levine, Bob
Marinaro, Peter Martinsen, Donald McDonough, Robert Bruce MacLeod, Dennis Mora,
James Purdy, Barry Romo, David Samas, John Seeley, Mike Spector, David Kenneth
Tuck, Terry Whitmore and many others.

[2] E.g. WILPF’s Carol Pendell consulted with KGB officer, Sergi Paramanov, First
Secretary of the Soviet Mission. John
Barron, KGB Today, Reader’s Digest Press, 1983, 242-3. VVAW had a number
of Soviet bloc contacts.

[3] Tim Wheeler and Gene
Tournour, “Vets Dump Medals, Nixon Ducks March,” Daily World, April 23,
1971 at Wintersoldier.com … CDW0424_1.jpg

[4] Vietnam HD, History Channel, November
2011.

[5] Tim Wheeler and Gene
Tournour, “Vets Dump Medals, Nixon Ducks March,” Daily World, April 23,
1971 at Wintersoldier.com … CDW0424_1.jpg

[6] ttp://www.homeofheroes.com/valor/0_DSC/4_rvn/dsc_rvn_list.html

[7] tp://www.homeofheroes.com/medals/purple_heart/purple_heart.html

[8] Pitkins recollections are a http://www.wintersoldier.com/staticpages/index.php?page=YesterdaysLies1. Armond Noble, publisher of
Military magazine, says that phony vts often have chests filled with medals worn in inappropriate patterns.

[9 Directive No. 31 OT/TV, pril 28, 1971 captured in the field by the 23^rd infantry Division
forwarded to Commander, United States Military Assistance Command, Vietnam
(COMUSMACV) and to Combined Documents Exploitation Center, CDEC, at the
United States Military Assistance Command, Saigon, Vietnam. Directive 31 is
CDEC Doc Log No. 05-1660-71 and item number 2150901041 on line at the Vietnam
Archive at Texas Tech. Also cited in small part in Thomas Lipscomb, “Hanoi
Approved of Role Played by Anti-War Vets, New York Sun, October 26, 2004
at nysun.com/article/7356A. The Combined Documentation Exploitation Center
(CDEC) was created in October 1966 under the MACV Assistant Chief of Staff for
Intelligence (J-2), with the mission of receiving and exploiting captured enemy
documents as a source of military intelligence for assessments and
planning.

[1o] BI, VVAW, Member[s] of ubject organization, n.d., 6.

[11] Scot Swett and Tim Zigler cite transcripts of recorded messages from US servicemen captured
in South Vietnam, August 1971, FBI VVAW, HQ 100-448092, section 11, 174-181.

[12] “Pham Van Dong Receives Two
Antiwar Delegations,” Hanoi International News Service, 1557 GMT, August 26,
1971, TTU Archive cited in Rothrock, Divided…171n35

[13] FBI, Houston to Director,
Teletype, URGENT April 12, 1972 list
names. For reasons unknown three names were redacted under FOIA- George Smith,
David Ross and Marty Jordan on Jan 1, 1994; FBI, Acting Director to SACs (List
Albany St. Louis), VVAW-IS-Revolutionary Activities, URGENT TELETYPE May 2,
1972, 7.

[14] FBI, Domestic Intelligence Division, Informative Note, April 12, 1972.

[15] FBI, fragment CV 100-31431, 3.

[16] FBI, New Haven memo, VVAW, May 31, 1972.

[17] FBI, St. Louis to Acting
Director, VVAW-IS-RA, 7;56 PM NITEL, May 12, 1972; FBI fragment May 24,1972,
file 100-448092, 2481-9

[18] FBI, Acting Director to
President, COLIFAM, internal Security-Revolutionary Activities, 6:05AM December
12, 1972

[19] Fourth Estate (University of Colorado), February 20, 1973 cited in FBI, Denver, Memo, “VVAW,
Appearance of Barry Romo, National Coordinator, in Colorado, February 15-16,
1973,” Denver, February 27, 1973; FBI, Legat Rome to Acting Director, VVAW,
IS-RA, Hilev, TELETYPE 4:30 PM January 30, 1973.

[20] Truong Nhu Tang cited in Larry Berman, No Peace, No Honor, 216.

[21] Eschmann, 179N22.

[22] Eschmann, 202-203.

[23] FBI, Legat Rome to Acting Director, VVAW, IS-RA, Hilev, TELETYPE 4:30 PM January 30, 1973.

[24] Eschmann, 74-5 cites: W. Hays Parks, “Line Backer and the Law of War,” Air University
Review, Vol. 34, No. 2, (January-February 1983), 18.

[25] Eschmann, 80 N 27 cites:
Brig. Gen. James R. McCarthy, Et Al, U.S.A.F., Linebacker II,
Airpower Research Institute, Maxwell AFB, Al, 1979, 46-47.

[26] Stanley Karnow, Vietnam: A History, 653

[27] FBI, Chicago to acting Director, VVAW-IS-Ra Protests During Presidential Inaugural Ceremonies,
TELETYPE 756pM URGENT January 9, 1973

[28] FBI, Tampa to Acting
Director, VVAW-IS-RA, TELEYPE 8:15 PM January 16, 1973.

[29] FBI, Kansas City, Demonstrations During Presidential Inauguration, 1973” LHM, January 30, 1973;
FBI, Washington, “Protests During Presidential Inauguration, 1973,” LHM, February 5, 1973.

[30] Acting Director to Chicago, VVAW National Steering Committee Meeting Placitas, New Mexico, 4/19-23/73,
April 12, 1973;

[31] St. John’s Unitarian Church in Cincinnati, Ohio, September 21-23, 1973.

[32] October 26-28, 1973; FBI, [Redacted] to Acting Director, VVAW/WSO. IS-RA,
TELETYPE 7:23 PM URGENT April 26, 1973; FBI Jacksonville, LHM, VVAW/Winter
Soldier Organization, April 30, 1973; SAC, Denver to Director, VVAW-IS-RA, July
30, 1973; FBI, Cincinnati to Director, “Proposed Midwest Amnesty Conference,
Sponsored by VVAW, Cincinnati, 9/21-23/73,” NITEL, 613 PM, September 18, 1973
CFR; FBI, [REDACTED] to Director, “Proposed Midwest Amnesty Conference,
Sponsored by VVAW, Cincinnati, 9/21-23/73,” NITEL 742 PM September 24, 1973.

[33] Records of the Fellowship of Reconciliation, USA,(FOR-USA), files of Jack Travers, Amnesty Coordinator,
DG 013, Section 2, Series G, G-8, Box 22,23, 24,25 Swarthmore College Library at Swarthmore.edu/library/peace.

[34] FBI, Milwaukee to Director,
VVAW/WSO National Steering Committee; Milwaukee, Wis., April 11-15,
1974.IS-VVAW/WSO. 00: Chicago. TELETYPE, 11:15PMTVKNITEL April 14, 1974, 1-2;
Newsletter, Washington Peace Center, June 1974, July 1974.

[35] Newsletter, Washington Peace Center, June 1974.

[36] Newsletter, Washington Peace Center, July 1974.

[37] FBI, [REDACTED] to
Director, VVAW/WSO National Steering Committee Meeting, St. Louis, Missouri,
6/23-27/73, IS-VVAW-WSO, TELETYPE, 12-35 PM URGENT August 31, 1973; FBI, St.
Louis to Director, VVAW/WSO National Steering Committee Meeting, St. Louis,
Missouri, 6/23-27/73, IS-VVAW-WSO, TELETYPE, 1120 PM NITEL August 27, 1973.

[38] FBI, [REDACTED] to Director, VVAW/WSO; IS-RA, TELETYPE, 1114PM NITEL September 19, 1973.

[39] “Two VVAW/WSO Members Attend Conference on Cambodia,” National Office, Newsletter #16, Dec. 5. 1973, 3.

[40] VVAW, National Office, Newsletter, # 14, November 1973, 12-13.

[41] Elizabeth Becker, “The Agony of Phnom Penh… On
Edge As Insurgents Escalate Artillery Fire,” Washington Post, January 28, 1974, A-1.

[42] Mark D. Harmon, Found, Featured, then Forgotten: U.S. Network TV News and the Vietnam Veterans
Against the War, Knoxville: New Found Press, 2011, Digital version at
www.newfoundpress.utk.edu/pubs/harmon

[43] Jeanne Friedman cited in Andrew Hunt, The Turning: A History of Vietnam Veterans
Against the War, New York University Press, 180n60; Barry Romo at 181.

[44] National Office Collective of VVAW/WSO to Dear IPC members, June 3, 1975.

[45] “Eight POWs Charged,” Weekly Indochina News Report, VVAW, Number 4, June 29, 1973.

[46] Vietnam Vets, “John Kerry and VVAW (Vietnam Veterans Against the War), Bella Ciao, Sunday August 29, 2004 – 22:36,
http://bellaciao.org/en/spip.php?article3093

[47] FBI Rpt. 12/15/75, S 75, p. 171-172.

[48] National Office Collective of VVAW/WSO to Dear IPC members, June 3, 1975.

[49] FBI, VVAW/WSO, fragment, October 8, 1975.

[50] National Office Collective of VVAW/WSO to Dear IPC members, June 3, 1975.

[51] THREATS TO THE PEACEFUL OBSERVANCE OF THE
BICENTENNIAL, Hearing Before The Subcommittee To Investigate To Investigate
The Administration Of The Internal Security Act And Other Internal Security
Laws Of The Committee On The Judiciary of
The United States Senate, Ninety-Fourth
Congress, Second Session June 18, 1976, 75-425 Washington 1976, p. 19.
http://www.archive.org/stream/threatstopeacefu00unit/threatstopeacefu00unit_djvu.txt

[52] “Fight Back July 4!…”, pamphlet, RICH OFF OUR BACKS JULY 4TH COALITION, Revolutionary Student Brigade, Chicago, “The
Revolutionary Communist Party has forwarded to us your request for copies…” Appendix to^{^[11]} THREATS TO THE PEACEFUL OBSERVANCE OF THE
BICENTENNIAL, Hearing Before The Subcommittee To Investigate To Investigate
The Administration Of The Internal Security Act And Other Internal Security
Laws Of The Committee On The Judiciary of The United States Senate,
Ninety-Fourth Congress, Second Session June 18, 1976, 75-425 Washington 1976, 109.
http://www.archive.org/stream/threatstopeacefu00unit/threatstopeacefu00unit_djvu.txt p. 109.

[53] THREATS TO THE PEACEFUL OBSERVANCE OF THE
BICENTENNIAL, Hearing Before The Subcommittee To Investigate To Investigate
The Administration Of The Internal Security Act And Other Internal Security Laws
Of The Committee On The Judiciary of The United States Senate,
Ninety-Fourth Congress, Second Session June 18, 1976, 75-425 Washington 1976,p.
40. http://www.archive.org/stream/threatstopeacefu00unit/threatstopeacefu00unit_djvu.txt

[54] As a Founder of Revolutionary Communist Party along with other VVAW members, Bill Davis and Pete Zastrow. Maoist founder Robert Akavian is
unmentioned here in a discussion of internal VVAW factions. Ssee: Melvin Small and William D. Hoover
(eds.), Give Peace a Chance: Exploring the Vietnam Antiwar Movement : Essays from the Charles Debenedetti Memorial Conference, Syracuse: Syracuse
Studies on Peace and Conflict Resolution, June 1992, p. 152, note 24. http://books.google.com/books?id=j-AUuKaDCKUC&pg=PA152&lpg=PA152&dq=barry+romo+%22revolutionary+communist+party%22&source=bl&ots=1T4m4vVbDh&sig=Nu5q0r5cDwDeg1VrpeNbDh_vaDk&hl=en&ei=iznLTtCXG6nYiQLUgqTBCw&sa=X&oi=book_result&ct=result&resnum=2&ved=0CCMQ6AEwAQ#v=onepage&q=barry%20romo%20%22revolutionary%20communist%20party%22&f=false;

Romo as RCP activist in disputes among VVAW members in Riverside County California, see: eyewitness Steve Hassna, “VietNam Veterans
Against the War – Part II 1975 and Into the Abyss,” http://www.sonomacountyfreepress.com/hassna/vvaw2.html;

Romo as part of a RCP, Maoist take over of VVAW in 1971-1972 see: Tim Ziegler, Scott
Swett and Max Friedman, “Interview with Max Friedman,” The Inquisition, Right
Talk Radio, July 4, 2005, transcript at www.tosettherecordstraight.com/staticpages/index.Php?p…j.

[56]“New Party,” http://keywiki.org/index.php/New_Party

[57] Barry Romo, The Veteran, Fall 2007, Volume 37, No. 2.

[58] Also, “All it has been has been the atrocities that have been committed and not the reasons
why. And it boils down to one thing, and that’s racism.” Third World Panel, Part
I, http://www2.iath.virginia.edu/sixties/HTML_docs/Resources/Primary/Winter_Soldier/WS_32_3d_World.html

[59]
“Americal Division,” Winter Soldier Investigation. http://www.wintersoldier.com/staticpages/index.php?page=2004031620223057&mode=print

WHAT READERS ARE SAYING: RELEVANCE
TO IRAQ, AFGHANISTAN, CHINA

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Division, 1969-1970.

Promotes historical truths… and unfolds the ugly, shameful and mischievous acts of the
anti-war liberals and leftists in the USA and all over the world. Joachim Le

“Masterpiece”, HUNG LE.

[1] Activist anti-war Veterans: Jack Calhoun, William Cathcart, Jerry Chodick, Gerry Condon, Donald
Duncan, Jan Barry Crumb, Jack Godoy, Frank Hoffman, Al Hubbard, Pfc. James
Johnson, Bill Jones, John Kerry, Dee Knight, Steve Krauss, Robert Levine, Bob
Marinaro, Peter Martinsen, Donald McDonough, Robert Bruce MacLeod, Dennis Mora,
James Purdy, Barry Romo, David Samas, John Seeley, Mike Spector, David Kenneth
Tuck, Joe Urgo, Terry Whitmore and many others in full text of Comrades in Arms.

[2] E.g.WILPF’s Carol Pendell consulted with KGB officer, Sergi Paramanov, First
Secretary of the Soviet Mission. John Barron, KGB Today, Reader’s Digest Press, 1983, 242-3. VVAW had a number
of Soviet bloc contacts.

[3] Tim Wheeler and Gene Tournour, “Vets Dump Medals, Nixon Ducks March,” Daily World, April 23,
1971 at Wintersoldier.com … CDW0424_1.jpg

[4] Vietnam HD, History Channel, November 2011.

[5] Tim Wheeler and Gene Tournour, “Vets Dump Medals, Nixon Ducks March,” Daily World, April 23,
1971 at Wintersoldier.com … CDW0424_1.jpg

[6] http://www.homeofheroes.com/valor/0_DSC/4_rvn/dsc_rvn_list.html

[7] http://www.homeofheroes.com/medals/purple_heart/purple_heart.html

[8] Pitkins recollections are at http://www.wintersoldier.com/staticpages/index.php?page=YesterdaysLies1. Armond Noble, publisher of
Military magazine, says that phony vets often have chests filled with medals worn in inappropriate patterns.

[9] Directive No. 31 OT/TV, April 28, 1971 captured in the field by the 23^rd infantry Division
forwarded to Commander, United States Military Assistance Command, Vietnam
(COMUSMACV) and to Combined Documents Exploitation Center, CDEC, at the
United States Military Assistance Command, Saigon, Vietnam. Directive 31 is
CDEC Doc Log No. 05-1660-71 and item number 2150901041 on line at the Vietnam
Archive at Texas Tech. Also cited in small part in Thomas Lipscomb, “Hanoi
Approved of Role Played by Anti-War Vets, New York Sun, October 26, 2004
at nysun.com/article/7356A. The Combined Documentation Exploitation Center
(CDEC) was created in October 1966 under the MACV Assistant Chief of Staff for
Intelligence (J-2), with the mission of receiving and exploiting captured enemy
documents as a source of military intelligence for assessments and planning.

[10] FBI, VVAW, Member[s] of subject organization, n.d., 6.

[11] Scott Swett and Tim Ziegler cite transcripts of recorded messages from US servicemen
captured in South Vietnam, August 1971, FBI VVAW, HQ 100-448092, section 11, 174-181.

[12] “Pham Van Dong Receives Two
Antiwar Delegations,” Hanoi International News Service, 1557 GMT, August 26,
1971, TTU Archive cited in Rothrock, Divided…171n35

[13] FBI, Houston to Director, Teletype, URGENT April 12, 1972 list names.
For reasons unknown three names were redacted under FOIA- George Smith, David
Ross and Marty Jordan on Jan 1, 1994; FBI, Acting Director to SACs (List Albany
St. Louis), VVAW-IS-Revolutionary Activities, URGENT TELETYPE May 2, 1972, 7.

[14] FBI, Domestic Intelligence Division, Informative Note, April 12, 1972.

[15] FBI, fragment CV 100-31431, 3.

[16] FBI, New Haven memo, VVAW, May 31, 1972.

[17] FBI, St. Louis to Acting Director, VVAW-IS-RA, 7;56 PM NITEL, May 12, 1972; FBI fragment May 24,1972,
file 100-448092, 2481-9

[18] FBI, Acting Director to President, COLIFAM, internal Security-Revolutionary Activities, 6:05AM December 12, 1972

[20] Truong Nhu Tang cited in Larry Berman, No Peace, No Honor, 216.

[21] Karl J. Eschmann, Linebacker: The Untold Story of the Air Raids Over North Vietnam, New York: Ballantine Books, 1989, 179N22.

[22] Eschmann, 202-203.

[23] FBI, Legat Rome to Acting Director, VVAW, IS-RA, Hilev, TELETYPE 4:30 PM January 30, 1973.

[24] Eschmann, 74-5 cites: W. Hays Parks, “Line Backer and the Law of War,” Air University
Review, Vol. 34, No. 2, (January-February 1983), 18.

[25] Eschmann, 80 N 27 cites: Brig. Gen. James R. McCarthy, Et Al, U.S.A.F., Linebacker II,
Airpower Research Institute, Maxwell AFB, Al, 1979, 46-47.

[26] Stanley Karnow, Vietnam: A History, 653

[27] FBI, Chicago to acting Director, VVAW-IS-Ra Protests During Presidential Inaugural Ceremonies,
TELETYPE 756pM URGENT January 9, 1973

[28] FBI, Tampa to Acting Director, VVAW-IS-RA, TELEYPE 8:15 PM January 16, 1973.

[29] FBI, Kansas City, Demonstrations During Presidential Inauguration, 1973” LHM, January 30, 1973;
FBI, Washington, “Protests During Presidential Inauguration, 1973,” LHM, February 5, 1973.

[30] Acting Director to Chicago,
VVAW National Steering Committee Meeting Placitas, New Mexico, 4/19-23/73, April 12, 1973;

[31] St. John’s Unitarian Church in Cincinnati, Ohio, September 21-23, 1973.

[34] FBI, Milwaukee to Director, VVAW/WSO National Steering Committee; Milwaukee, Wis., April 11-15,
1974.IS-VVAW/WSO. 00: Chicago. TELETYPE, 11:15PMTVKNITEL April 14, 1974, 1-2;
Newsletter, Washington Peace Center, June 1974, July 1974.

[35] Newsletter, Washington Peace Center, June 1974.

[36] Newsletter, Washington Peace Center, July 1974.

[38] FBI, [REDACTED] to Director,
VVAW/WSO; IS-RA, TELETYPE, 1114PM NITEL September 19, 1973.

[39] “Two VVAW/WSO Members
Attend Conference on Cambodia,” National Office, Newsletter #16, Dec. 5. 1973, 3.

[40] VVAW, National Office, Newsletter, # 14, November 1973, 12-13.

[41] Elizabeth Becker, “The Agony of Phnom Penh… On Edge As Insurgents Escalate
Artillery Fire,” Washington Post, January 28, 1974, A-1.

Tags amnesty deserters, Barry Romo, carpet bombing, Dewey Canyon medal toss, directive 31, FBI, imperialism, Iraq Vietnam torture, John Kerry, kymer rouge, Pham Van Dong, racism, Revolutionary Communist Party, Revolutionary Umion, vietnam HD, vietnam high definition, Vietnam Veterans Against the War, winter soldier

California Politics Clean Water Act Environmental Extremism

“Clean Water” Lawyers Clean Out Colfax

Post author By Roger Canfield
Post date November 19, 2011

Lawyers trying to clean out Colfax

Colfax Record, 6/10/10

Bruce Kranz, Colfax City Manager

On May 12, the Colfax City Council unanimously declared the city faced
unreasonable hardship, even bankruptcy, if it were not allowed to make
installment payments on massive monetary judgments impending against the city.

The citizens and taxpayers of Colfax deserve to know the truth about lawsuits against the city.

Lawyers for Clean Water are surely all for cleaning up Colfax … and then some.

As is well-known to the poor citizens of the city, Colfax has been struggling for
some years to clean up an old, tired, leaking, sewage system.

The city has borrowed money, increased fees and received grants to build a new
state-of-the-art sewage treatment plant and now to begin to replace miles of
old pipes, both public and private.

Under existing law the new plant must produce water cleaner — in the case of copper
100 times cleaner — than drinking water.

That’s the law and the Colfax plant complies, but its pipes do not. There is a long
way, many miles of pipe, and many million dollars to go, but the city is trying
to do the best it can to comply with the law and protect the public’s health.

In the midst of this mess and fiscal nightmare, Lawyers for Clean Water, have
flown into town, allegedly to assist damaged neighbors suing the city.

In fact, San Francisco-based lawyers paid $550 an hour, eating a celebratory $125
lunch at Il Fornaio and giving 40 percent tips are acting like vultures feasting upon Colfax like it was roadkill.

Perhaps they think they are dealing with country mountain hicks, who won’t catch what they are doing.

Lawyers for Clean Water, doing business as Environmental Law Foundation, might be more
accurately called Lawyers to Clean Out Colfax. They seem bent on picking the pockets of penniless Colfax.

Instead of honoring a contract — a settlement — they signed to limit attorney fees,
they are demanding fees and costs more than triple the settlement cap they previously agreed to.

They are demanding exorbitant attorney fees, as much as $550 an hour and
reimbursements for costs, such as $125 lunches.

They are demanding preemptive, immediate payment for services not yet completed in
the ongoing case and without a hearing to determine the reasonableness of their
fees and costs. They are double billing, back billing, the city’s taxpayers for
services for which they have already been paid.

They want to pay an apprentice lawyer with 18 months experience in environmental law
$350 an hour.

They are claiming lawyer time well over twice that of the city’s attorney doing the
same work, on the same motions on the same case.

They want to be paid unsubstantiated, undocumented and unexplained cost for
computers, travel, research economist, meals etc.

We are appealing to the judge to hold payments until the end; cap fees to the
limit agreed to in the settlement; accept reasonable fees for lawyers in the
Sacramento region rather than San Francisco; and to allow the city to pay
annual installments.

Lawyers ought to be paid reasonable fees and no more.

Tags bruce kranz, clean water act, clean water lawyers, colfax, lawyers for clean water

Comrades in Arms Vietnam

Kent State: The Rest of the Story

Post author By Roger Canfield
Post date November 13, 2011

Students Killed at Kent State and Jackson State

New Perspectives

Poorly understood and historically distorted events at Kent State in April 1970 turned millions
against the war.

Ohio National Guardsmen killed four students and wounded nine without readily apparent reason. Kent State
became another exemplar of how the U.S. government was conducting a uniquely
illegal and immoral war in Vietnam and on the very streets of America. The
background and context of radical political activities before and after those
events may perhaps offer new perspectives.

Radical Students for a Democratic Society Were Active at Kent State

At Kent State University in Ohio[1] for two years Weatherman Terry Robbins, SDS regional traveler, had helped Rick
and Candy Erickson and Weatherman and red diaper baby Howie Emmer organize[2]
a radical and militant chapter of the SDS ranging from six to 30 members.[3]
They operated out of the “Haunted House” on Ash Street up the hill from the fictional
“Bates Motel” in Alfred Hitchcock’s film classic “Psycho.”[4]

Assaulting Cops

A year before the killings, on April 8, 1969 six SDS members (No first name) Dimarco, Colin S. Neiberger,
George Gibeaut, Howard Emmer, Edward Erickson and Jeff David Powell—had been
arrested for assaulting campus cops at Kent State.[5]

Other SDS members at Kent State were Tim Butz, Joyce Cecora, Colin Neiburger and Mark Real.

Revolutionaries

Debbie Shryock of the Kent Daily Stater, wrote, ”They were…bent on destroying the university. They
were determined to start revolution here.”[6]

Many SDS national leaders visited the Haunted House, Bill Ayers, Corky Benedict, Katie Boudin, Lisa Meisel, Jim Mellen, Carl Oglesby, Diana Oughton, and Mark Rudd.

On April 28, 1969, Bernardine Dohrn had told students there to arm for revolution. On another occasion Jerry Rubin had said, “Until you are ready to kill your parents, you’re not ready to change this country.”[7]

Other groups at Kent State were the Young Socialist Alliance, YSL, Student Mobilization and Moratorium
Committee—all vigorous opponents of ROTC on campus.

Communists

Senior Professor Sidney L. Jackson, a lifelong communist activist of the CPUSA, was the faculty advisor to Kent State Committee to End the War,[8]
Among whose members were red diaper baby Howie Emmer, Bob Erlich, Joe Walsh,
Rick Erickson and Robin Marks. YSLer Mike Alewitz was leader of the Kent State Mobilization Against the War.

Weathermen Arrive on Scene: “Join the Americong…”

In early May 1970 cars arrived from Illinois and New York, home turfs of the Weather SDS, Bill Ayers
and others. In requesting help from the Governor, Kent Mayor Leroy told a grand
jury that two cars of Weathermen had arrived.[9]
The out of town contingent emerged with walkie-talkies and armbands. The
SDS Weather controlled Revolutionary Printing Cooperative Committee produced a
leaflet distributed at Kent State showing white radicals carrying rifles
captioned, “Join the Americong…Be an Outlaw. The Time is right for fighting
in the streets.” [10]

Not Students

Some of the most prominently witnessed leaders of the riots, Jerry Rupe, Rick Felber, Doug Cormak, Peter
Bleik, Thomas Foglesong and Thomas Miller, were not students of Kent State
University.[11] Witnesses later reported overhearing talk of meetings planning riots and the
burning of the ROTC building on campus[12] including gathering rocks[13],
railroad flares, and machetes. Students warned merchants to post signs
protesting the war in Vietnam and Cambodia or face damages to their stores.[14]

City of Kent: Days of Rage Before National Guard Called Out

Indistinguishable from the Weathermen “Days of Rage” in the streets of Chicago in October 1969, for three
days May 1-3, 1970 mobs surged through the streets of Kent, Ohio and the
university campus breaking windows, setting fires, burning the ROTC building,
attacking photographers, firemen and policemen and cutting fire hoses.[15]

Ohio Governor James Rhodes compared the mobs to Nazi brown shirts, Communists, nightriders and vigilantes.
They were “well-trained, militant” revolutionaries”.[16] [17]

Twenty-three faculty members of Kent State signed a leaflet distributed by the hundreds deploring the
Governor’s deployment of the National Guard saying the burning of the ROTC
building had to be taken in the “larger context of the daily burning of buildings
and people by our government in Vietnam, Laos and now Cambodia.” This faculty
minority demanded the removal of the National Guard, the end of “martial law”
and “greater understanding of the issues …contributing to the burning of ROTC building….”[18]

Only after the trashing of the city and the burning of the ROTC building, on May 4, 1970 had the Governor
called out the Ohio National Guardsmen.

Mobs Attack National Guard

Hundreds of students and nonstudents advanced upon the Guardsmen shouting obscenities and yelling KILL,
KILL, KILL.”[19] According to various witnesses and photographs the mob bombarded the Guardsmen
with bricks, concrete, golf clubs, baseball bats, spiked golf balls, sling
shots and ball bearings, razor embedded blocks of wood and bags of excrement.

Sniper Fire Reported

Radios of the National Guard and State Police reported sniper fire. Retreating up a hill one or more shots,
not from the Guard’s M-1 rifles according to contemporary witnesses, rang out.[20]
A TV reporter, Fred DeBrine of WKYC, claimed to have seen and overheard Kent
State student and FBI informant and photographer, Terry Norman, handing a
revolver to a police officer and saying “I was afraid they were going to kill
me, so I took out my revolver, and I fired it the air and into the ground.” [21]

Gunfire Confirmed in 2010

Such gunfire prior to the shootings of the Ohio National Guard was in dispute until a digitally mastered
copy of an audiotape of that day revealed new evidence in October 2010:

Kent State student and law
enforcement photographer, Terry Norman, was surrounded by an angry mob recorded
shouting, “They got someone” followed by “Kill Him, Kill Him.” Thereafter, the
sound of a digitally identical .38 caliber revolver is heard followed by “Whack
that [expletive]”and three more .38 caliber shots.

Then a command, “prepare to fire.”[22]
A contemporary photo shows Terry Norman in the protection of Ohio National
Guardsmen.[23] A perhaps guilt-ridden Terry Norman has since told many stories, denied firing
his .38 and avoided interviews, but the forensic evidence now seems to place
him in self-defense precipitating a human tragedy.

13 Seconds of Hell

Seventy seconds later, frightened and undisciplined members of the National Guard, 29 out of 77
guardsmen, returned rifle fire 67 times for 13 seconds killing four
students—Allison Krause, Jeffrey Miller[24], Sandra Scheuer, William Schroeder– and wounding nine others.

Fateful Photo Forever Condemns U.S. Government

In a Pulitzer Prize winning John Filo photo, a tall 14-year-old runaway girl from a Florida junior high
school, Mary Ann Vecchio, was forever remembered kneeling, screaming with arms
outstretched over the prostate body of an innocent student bystander Jeffrey Miller.[25]
(There a similar photo of a woman holding the head of Benno Ohnessorg shot by a
West German policeman in a 1967 protest. The policeman, Karl-Heinz Kurras, was
a paid agent of the Stasi, the East German Secret Police. The “fascist” police
murder mobilized the German Left.[26])

The Filo photo and news coverage radicalized thousands.

Jerry Rubin who had told Kent State students,
“Until you are ready to kill your parents, you’re not ready to change this
country.”[27]

“radicalized, revolutionized and yippized”

About the bloodshed, Rubin said, “In 48 hours more young people were radicalized, revolutionized and
yippized than in any single time in American history.”[28]

According to Bob Haldeman’s diary, President Nixon upon being told of the student deaths
was “very disturbed. Afraid his (Cambodian) decision set it off, and that is
the ostensible cause of the demonstrations there.”[29]

Kent Makes Effective Soviet Propaganda

Kent State provided the stuff for Soviet agit-prop[30] such as Soviet poet
Yevgeny Yevtushenko’s Bullets don’t like people / who love flowers, a
propaganda piece, published in Pravda, the official newspaper of the
Communist Party of the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics. The poem was a
eulogy for 19-year-old protester and victim Allison Krause. The day before she
was quoted as saying “Flowers are better than bullets.” Yevtushenko’s
poem was both a condemnation of the war and a call to arms to overthrow
capitalism to “become a legion of flowers… armed with bullets.”[31]

To this day the photo of Mary Ann Vecchio hangs in Hanoi’s war museums.

Photo: Iconic Kent State photo, War Remnants Museum wall, Roger Canfield, March
2008:.[32]

FBI Investigation

FBI Director Hoover privately reported, but did not publicly conclude that FBI investigations
showed rioting students and nonstudents at fault, as would ultimately a Special
Ohio Grand Jury and the families of the student victims.

Yet Jerris Leonard of the Justice Department, who had prosecutorial responsibility (and political
vulnerability) publicly claimed the FBI had concluded the Guard was at fault[33]
and on June 15, 1970 J. Walter Yeagley, Assistant Attorney General for Internal
Security wrote Hoover, “the evidence was insufficient to warrant presentation
…to a grand jury.” Hoover scrawled on the memo, “The usual run around by the do nothing Div.”[34]

Scranton Commission

Nixon appointed Pennsylvania Governor William Scranton to lead a Commission on Kent State, which would call
the actions of the National Guard “unnecessary, unwarranted, and inexcusable.”

Ohio Grand Jury

Thinking otherwise, Ohio Governor James Rhoades called a Special Ohio Grand Jury, which indicted 25 students[35] and no Guardsmen.[36]

U.S. District Court

On October 16, 1970. Eight Guardsmen (James Daniel McGee, Mathew
Junior McManus, Barry William Morris, William Earl Perkins, James Edward
Pierce, Lawrence Anthony Shafer, Leon Herbert Smith, Ralph William Zoller) were
prosecuted for violating the civil rights of students, but U.S. District Court
Judge Frank J. Battisti acquitted the guardsmen. They lacked willful intent to
deprive victims of their civil rights.[37]

Prosecutions and Culprits Fade Away

Thomas S. Lough, a sociology professor and faculty advisor to SDS,[38]
was indicted for inciting a riot. Only two of the wounded students were among
the 25 indicted, Joe Lewis and Alan Canfora. Canfora was an identified Maoist
member of the Revolutionary Communist Party[39] and a member of the National Lawyers Guild.[40]
After two years of SDS mentoring only three of the indicted were SDS members in
the action-Ruth Gibson, Ken Hammond and Ron Weissenberger.

Thomas Graydon Fogleson, witnessed pulling fire hoses,[41]
and Larry A. Shub both pled guilty to first-degree riot. Jerry Rupe who was
witnessed setting fire to the ROTC building with a gasoline soaked rag, burning
an American flag, and assaulting firemen[42] was found guilty by a hung jury only for interfering with a fireman by cutting fire hoses.[43]
During trial charges were dismissed against Peter Bleik, witnessed leading the
action at the ROTC fire scene,[44] was not identified at trial.[45]
Charges against Mary Helen Nicholas were also dismissed at trial. On December
23, 1971 all charges against the remaining 20 were also dismissed.

Meanwhile, two of the indicted fled, Carol Mirman to California and Allen “Alfie” Tate, a Black
Panther, to New York and were never arrested or prosecuted –Tate for being
witnessed helping to set fire to the ROTC building. [46]

Payday for Rioters

Two indicted students, Joe Lewis and Alan Canfora, and one witnessed riot participant, Thomas Grace,
received money settlements in civil suits equal to or larger than the $675,000
settlements given to parents of the four dead students.

Every subsequent year since 1970 commemorative ceremonies have been held at Kent State as perpetual symbols
of the evil empire and its war in Vietnam. Mark Rudd, weatherman and an SDS visitor
to Kent State, in retrospect wrote, “In some measure, the militancy of the
university’s Cambodia demonstrations resulted from the confrontational politics
that Weatherman had helped to create at Kent.” The Kent State chapter of SDS “had produced dozens of Weather cadre.”[47]

Buying Dynamite

Taking no time to mourn the dead at Kent State on May 4,
1970 Weatherman John Allen Fuerst (Aka Jeremy Pikser, Phil) and Roberta Brent
Smith, dedicated to an immediate revolution, illegally bought 30 pounds of dynamite,
under the alias William Allen Friedman and took the explosives to California.[48]

In mid 1970 a Gallup poll asked Americans to rate groups. 42% rated the SDS
highly unfavorable and the Black Panthers 75% highly unfavorable.[49]
A Gallup poll revealed that 58% of Americans blamed the protesters and only 11% the guard.[50]

Hardhats: “Kill the Commie Bastards

On May 8^th in New York some two hundred, hardhatted
construction workers, following the example of their AFL-CIO leader, George
Meany who supported the war, opposed the leftists. Apparently not having read
Karl Marx’s Das Kapital, the workers chanted, “Kill the Commie
Bastards,” while defending capitalist Wall Street from a leftist assault.
The hardhats roughed up seventy students. In the weeks that followed prowar
hardhats in the thousands took to the streets in response to antiwar protests.
J. Edgar Hoover told Egil Krogh, “I’m glad (the construction guys) did what
they did…[T]hey really chased them down Broadway.”[51]

Washington Protest of Kent Killings

Assisted by Cora Rubin Weiss’s intelligence
network, organizational apparatus and public outrage over the killing of
innocents at Kent State in a few days, on May 9th up to 50,000-100,000
demonstrators converged on Washington, D.C.

Major speakers and organizers were Barbara Bick, Rennie Davis, Dave Dellinger, Richard Fernandez,
Fred Halstead, Phil Hirschkop, Abbie Hoffman, Brad Lyttle, John McAuliff,
Stuart Meacham, Sidney Peck, Jerry Rubin, Arthur Waskow, and Ron Young. The
protest concluded with demonstrators picking up caskets and marching them down
15^th Street toward the White House ringed by tightly packed buses
and an invisible thousand National Guardsmen.

Police and National Guard Refuse to be Provoked

Marshals directed the caskets away from the White House, but an angry thousand rushed down H Street
breaking windows of buses until police tear gas turned them back. Some who occupied
the Peace Corps claimed, “Like the Viet Cong, we escape back into the people.”
On the whole the mass of demonstrators on the 9th was calm and peaceful. That angered Norma Becker,
Arthur Waskow and Sidney Peck who had hoped that mass civil disobedience would
provoke the government to use excessive force[52] as it had at the Democratic Convention in Chicago in 1968.

Nixon: “Bunch of Bums”

Jane Fonda called President Nixon a “warmonger” for sending U.S. troops against the
Vietnamese in their sanctuary of Cambodia. Nixon replied that Fonda and kind
was “a bunch of bums.” At a Washington rally Fonda welcomed her
“fellow bums,” clenched her fist and declared “Power to the people.”

FBI Investigation of Kent State

On May 11, 1970, J. Edgar Hoover told White House aide Egil Krogh, “The national guardsmen (at Kent
State) would have been killed if they had not fired because students were
throwing lead pipes, rocks, and bricks at Guardsmen. …We have…photos of bruises
of the Guardsmen in color, some of which are shocking.” Hoover reminded Krogh
that the burning of an ROTC building two nights before had precipitated the calling out of the National Guard.[53]

Protesters Target ROTC

Attacks, harassment and disruption of ROTC
and military recruiting on campus—e.g. Wisconsin, Northwestern, Dartmouth,
Berkeley, Princeton– would reduce ROTC enrollments by two-thirds from the mid-1960s to the 1970s.[54]
This diminished the ranks of recruitable commissioned officers and negatively
impacted the quality of junior officers serving in combat, e.g. William Calley at My Lai.

Jackson State Killings

On May 15, two more students protesting the war were shot and killed at Jackson State College in
Mississippi. On May 18^th, Hoover told Vice President Agnew, “We found a considerable amount of firearms
in the …rooms of students (at Kent State)…Some say there was sniping and some
say there was not. …The same is true at Jackson …allegations of sniping at the troops before they fired and denials.”

Agnew said the media covered police shootings, but not the looting.

Hoover said Guardsmen were “severely provoked” at Jackson and Kent State.[55]

Later media reports would say the FBI had found no justification for the Kent
State shootings. An angry Hoover told President Nixon that was the view of
Assistant Attorney General Jerris Leonard, not the FBI. The FBI did not draw
conclusions. “We must not allow the press to get by with attributing things to
the FBI which are absolutely untrue,” said Hoover.[56]

In Washington on May 10, 1970 the Weather Underground bombed the National Guard’s Washington Headquarters in
retaliation, they said, for the killings of anti-war protesters at Jackson and
Kent State Universities. In addition, a fire truck was destroyed, rocks
were thrown, windows broken at the Department of Justice and at businesses
along Connecticut Avenue and at Dupont Circle, areas around the Washington Monument were disrupted.[57]

Shutting Down the Universities, Nationwide

The organized left joined by the outraged shut
down universities nationwide for teach-ins on the Vietnam War. The objective
was not debates of the issues. They sought to win the Vietnam “debate” by superior force.
And they did.

More than 400 universities were shut down or on strike. There
were protests on 57% of the nation’s college campuses and even junior high
schools experienced protests.[58] On the whole, the left on campuses almost
everywhere succeeded in bullying timid school administrators and faced
unorganized or intimidated opposition.

An FBI report, “Campus violence hits new high during period of May 1-15” said, “Campus
violence hits new high during period of May 1-15” and counted the number of
student demonstrations. May’s two-week total was equal to the previous eight
months—844 campus demonstrations, 3,000 arrests, 166 injuries, six deaths.
Property losses were $4.5 million ranging from vandalism, 115 arsonist attacks,
3 bombings–often targeting ROTC facilities. Of 458 injuries, two-thirds, 295 were of police officers.

Public Opposes Student Strikes

“Less than 3% of student enrollment …(had)…taken part”[59] in a near 100 percent shutdown of the nation’s
colleges and universities. Indeed, throughout the war young people under thirty
were far less likely to think the war was a mistake than those over thirty when
answering Gallup’s question, “Do you think the U.S. made a mistake sending
troops to fight in Vietnam?”[60] By June Gallup found that 82% disapproved
of “College students going on strike…to protest the way things are run in this country.”[61]

[1] Ron Jacobs, The Way The Wind Blew: A
History Of The Weather Underground, Verso, 1997, 49-50.

[2] Mark Rudd, Underground: My Life With the SDS and the Weathermen, New
York: Harper Collins, 2009, 210; James A. Michener, Kent State: What
Happened and Why, New York: Random House, 1971, 92; Cathy Wilkerson, Flying
Close to the Sun, New York: Seven Stories Press, 2007, 228, 356.

[3] “Active Members in SDS,” T.F. Kelly to D.L. Schwartzmiller, Kent State
University [n.d.1969] in a special collection, “4 May 1970,” Box 107, at the
Kent State University Library at speccoll.library.kent.edu/4may70/box 107/107f9p12.gif.

[4] James A. Michener, Kent State: What Happened and Why, New York: random
House, 1971, 80.

[5] Neil Wetterman report attached to T.F. Kelly to D.L. Schwartzmiller, Kent State
University, May 1, 1969 in a special collection, “4 May 1970,” Box 107, at the
Kent State University Library at speccoll.library.kent.edu/4may70/box 107/107f9p12.gif.

[6] James A. Michener, Kent State: What Happened and Why, New York: random
House, 1971, 88-89, 98.

[7] Alan Stang, “Kent State,” American Opinion, June 1974, 2,4,10.

[8] “Ohio notables at rites for Prof. Jackson,” Daily World, May 16, 1979, 11.

[9] “Entire text of special grand jury report,” The Record (Kent-Ravenna), October 16, 1970.

[10] Senate, Committee on the Judiciary, Subcommittee to Investigate the
Administration of the Internal Security Act and Other Internal Security Laws, The
Weather Underground, Committee Print, January 1975, 27-29.

[11] C.D. Brennan to W.C. Sullivan, FBI Memo, June 10, 1970.

[12] FBI, FOIA, Kent State, CV 98-2140, 302 interview of [redacted] on 5/19/70 at
Canton Ohio; FBI, FOIA, Kent State, CV 98-2140, 302 interview of [redacted] at Ravenna, Ohio 5/16/70.

[13] FBI, FOIA, Kent State, CV 98-2140, 302 interview of [redacted] at Kent Ohio, May 26, 1970.

[14] “Entire text of special grand jury report,” The Record (Kent-Ravenna), October 16, 1970.

[15] Francis L. Brininger, State Arson Bureau, to Eugene Jewell, Chief August 6,
1970, in “ROTC building arson May 2, 1970: Witness statements taken August 6,
1970, Kent State University in a special collection, “4 May 1970,” Box 107, at
the Kent State University Library at speccoll.library.kent.edu/4may70/box
107/107f9p12.gif.

[16] Cathy Wilkerson, Flying Close to the Sun, New York: Seven Stories Press, 2007, 356.

[18] “Entire text of special grand jury report,” The Record (Kent-Ravenna), October 16, 1970.

[19] “Entire text of special grand jury report,” The Record (Kent-Ravenna),
October 16, 1970.

[20] FBI, FOIA, Kent State, CV 98-2140, 302 interview of [redacted], by [redacted]
JJD/jky, Cleveland, 5/15/70.

[21] Norman repeated his story off camera to DeBrine the next day; John
Mangels, “Kent State tape indicates altercation and pistol fire preceded
National Guard shootings (audio), Cleveland Plain Dealer, October 8, 2010.

[22] Terry Strubbe, tape recording from the ledge of his dorm room at Kent State,
April 4, 1970: AP, “Report: Pistol shots preceded Kent St. shootings,” Cleveland
Plain Dealer, October 8, 2010; Robert F. Turner, “Turner: Not a massacre
but a mistake: New evidence indicates source of gunfire of shots that triggered
shootings,” Washington Times, October 12, 2010; “Kent Tribunal Hears New
Evidence of Clear Order to Fire at Kent State, Backs Rep. Kucinich in Call to
Open Inquiry: Audio Tape Shows Evidence of Pistol Firing Seconds Before
Verified Order to Shoot,” Common Dreams.Org, Press Release, October 12, 2010;
Testimony of Stuart Allen bit.ly/dakhWw;

[23] John Mangels, “Kent State tape indicates altercation and pistol fire preceded National
Guard shootings (audio), Cleveland Plain Dealer, October 8, 2010.

[24] A search of Miller’s clothing turned up a scrap paper with the number 673-1759
and words “communications center.” FBI, FOIA, Kent State, Teletype, FBI
Cleveland to Director FBI Washington, Unsubs: Firebombing of Army ROTC Bldg.,
Kent State Univ. (KSU), Kent Ohio, 5-6-70.

[25] The Filo photo of Vecchio is honored in the War Remnants Museum in Saigon,
author’s photos Viet II DSC_327-8

[26] Nicolas Kulish, “Spy Fires Shot in ’67 That Shook Germany, The New York
Times, May 27, 2009, A4.

[27] Alan Stang, “Kent State,” American Opinion, June 1974, 2,4,10.

[28] Alan Stang, “Kent State,” American Opinion, June 1974, 2,4,10.

[29] H.R. Haldeman, The Haldeman Diaries: Inside the Nixon White House, New
York: Berkley Books, 1994,191.

[30] Bill Rood to author, April 1, 2011.

[31] Solomon Todd, “Ten Years After: Kent State in the Rearview,” The Nation,
May 1980.

[32] Author’s photos, Viet II, 237, 238.

[33] H.R. Haldeman, The Haldeman Diaries: Inside the Nixon White House, New
York: Berkley Books, 1994,220.

[34] FBI, FOIA, Kent State, Memo, C.D. Brennan to W. C. Sullivan, 6/10/70; FBI,
FOIA, Kent State, J. Walter Yeagley, Assistant Attorney General, Internal Security Division to
Director, FBI. June 15, 1970.

[35] The following were indicted: David O. Adams, William G. Arthrell, Peter C.
Bliek, Alan M. Canfora, Roseann Canfora, Douglas Charles Cormack, Joseph B.
Cullum, Michael Erwin, Richard G. Felber, Thomas Graydon Foglesong, John
Gerbetz, Ruth Gibson, Kenneth J. Hammond, Jeffrey D. Hartzler, Joseph J. Lewis,
Dr. Thomas S. Lough, Thomas D. Miller, Carol Lynn Mirman, Craig A. Morgan, Mary
Helen Nicholas, James M. Riggs, Jerry H. Rupe, Larry A. Shub, Allen Tate,
Ronald Weissenberger; FBI, FOIA, AIRTEL, SAC, Cleveland to Director [redacted]
et al Sabotage; Sedition; Destruction Government Property, civil Rights Act of
1968—interference with Federally Protected Facility, 10/20/70, 1-3; “Kent
25,” The Burr, May 2000 at http://www.burr.kent.edu/archives/may4/twentyfive/twentyfive1.html.
Only three of the indicted were SDS-Ruth Gibson, Ken Hammond and Ron
Weissenberger. Eyewitnesses identified the following
either throwing rocks, starting fires, beating up witnesses and firemen or
cutting fire hoses: Mike Brock, Peter Bliek, Tony Compton, Debbie Durham,
Richard Felber, Tom Grace, James Harrington, Jimmy Riggs, Jerry Rupe, Larry A.
Shub, Allen Tate, Donald Weisenberger. For eye witnesses see: Francis L.
Brininger, State Arson Bureau, to Eugene Jewell, Chief August 6, 1970, in “ROTC
building arson May 2, 1970: Witness statements taken August 6, 1970, Kent State
University in a special collection, “4 May 1970,” Box 107, at the Kent State
University Library at speccoll.library.kent.edu/4may70/box 107/107f9p12.gif

[36] H.R. Haldeman, The Haldeman Diaries: Inside the Nixon White House, New
York: Berkley Books, 1994,242.

[37] FBIB, FOIA, Kent State, FBI note, JJB, 11/8/74; FBI, FOIA, Kent State, SA
Martin V. Hale, Killing of Four Students at Kent State University, Kent, Ohio,
–May 4, 1970; Allison Krause, ET AL – Victims.

[38] Ken Hammond, Thomas Lough, Papers May 4 Collection, Box 21 http://speccoll.library.kent.edu/4may70/21.html

[39] Max Friedman to Roger Canfield, May 6, 2010.

[40] The NLG National Convention, February15-19, 1979, Information Digest, 9.

[41] FBI, FOIA, Kent State, Cleveland FD 204 June 23, 1970.

[42] FBI, FOIA, Kent State, Cleveland FD 204 June 23, 1970; FBI, FOIA, Kent State,
CV 98-2140, 302 interview of [redacted]at Kent Ohio, May 26, 1970; FBI, FOIA,
Kent State, CV 98-2140, 302 interview of [redacted] at [redacted] Ohio on June 18, 1970.

[43] FBI, FOIA, Kent State, Teletype, Cleveland to Director, 11-30-71.

[44] FBI, FOIA, Kent State, Cleveland FD 204 June 23, 1970.

[45] FBI, FOIA, Kent State, Teletype, Cleveland to Director, 11-30-71.

[46] FBI, FOIA, Kent State, LHM Cleveland [redacted] et al, February 8, 1972.

[47] Mark Rudd, Underground: My Life With the SDS and the Weathermen, New
York: Harper Collins, 2009, 210.

[48] FBI, FOIA, Weather Underground. The primary source is Acting SAC Chicago to Director, memo,
“Foreign Influence-Weather Underground Organization,” August 20, 1976, 199.

[49] Adam Garfinkle, Telltale Hearts: The Origins and the Impact of the Vietnam
Antiwar Movement, NY: St. Martin’s Griffin, 1997, 8n44, 306.

[50] Robert F. Turner, “Turner: Not a massacre but a mistake: New evidence indicates
source of gunfire of shots that triggered shootings,” Washington Times, October 12, 2010.

[51] Hoover to Tolson, memo, 10:27 AM, May 11, 1970 at FBI FOIA website under Tolson. DISCLOSURE-The author
was a leader, chairman of Campus Mobilization for the Committee for Academic Freedom,
which successfully fought to keep the Claremont Graduate School open during
debates about US Cambodian operations. Other activists of the committee were
Gary Gammon, Sue Leeson, Jo Ellen Schroeder, Richard Reeb, Steve Schlesinger.
See: Leeson, Canfield and Schroeder, “A Plea For Academic Freedom”, spring 1970. The author subsequently gave speeches
supporting Governor Ronald Reagan’s policies at the University of California.
Some members of Claremont doctoral examination committee were unhappy—delaying
completion of the author’s PhD for several years. Perpetrators of bombings injuring a
professor’s secretary and burning down a campus landmark, Story House, were never prosecuted in Claremont.

[52] Stewart Meacham, “May Ninth,” Win Magazine, July 1970; Wells, the War Within…, 437-445.

[53] Hoover to Tolson etc, memo, May 11, 1970 found at FBI FOIA website under Tolson.

[54] Rothrock Divided… 242-3.

[55] Hoover to Tolson, memo, 9:49 AM, May 18, 1970 at FBI FOIA website under Tolson.

[56] Hoover to Tolson, memo, July 24, 1970 at FBI FOIA website under Tolson; Hoover to Tolson, memo, 8:47 AM July
24, 1970 at FBI FOIA website under Tolson.

[57] Hoover to Tolson, memo, May 14, 1970 at FBI FOIA website under Tolson.

[58] Roger B. Canfield, “Democratic Legitimacy and American Political Violence, 1964-1970,” doctoral
dissertation, Claremont Graduate School, Claremont, California 1972, 3.

[59] FBI, FOIA, “Campus violence hits new high during period of May 1-15,”file number 65-73268-127, May 21,
1970,at seanet.com/…

[60] “Support for the Vietnam War,” 21 November 2002.

[61] Joseph A. Fry, “Unpopular Messenger; Student Opposition to the Vietnam War,”
cited in David L. Anderson, John Ernst (eds.) The War Never Ends: New
Perspectives on Vietnam War, Lexington: University of Kentucky, 2007, 237.

Tags Bernardine Dohrn, Bill Ayers, Haldeman, J Edgar Hoover, Kent State riots, Ohio Grand Jury

California Politics Endangered Species Act Environmental Extremism

Leaping Lizards: Absurd Science of ESA; Update 2011

Post author By Roger Canfield
Post date November 13, 2011

Whackos-Leaping Lizards Sac Union, Aug 20, 1990, A-2.

The Department of Fish and Game is considering banning all off-road vehicles from
thousands of miles of Southern California Desert. It seems that a study shows
that dirt bikes destroy the hearing of desert critters. This study and others
helped advance a lizard’s status to that of an endangered species.

Now an insider reports on how some of the science was conducted to study the
Flat-tailed Horned Lizard.

Problem: Bike and lizard are not unlike Roadrunner cartoons. That is, machine-amphibian
interaction could only be measured in split seconds. Impact on candidate species was zilch.

Solution: Record bike engine at high-noise level. Place lizard inside a 4-x-4-inch cage, tape
cage-lizard assembly to blasting speakers for half hour.

Result: Species hearing impaired, therefor ban bikes.

Question: What happened to the “endangered”
lizard in the experiment? The scientists said: We terminated him.

Editor Update: Science outwithstanding, lizard won

U.S. Fish and Wildlife rejected an endangered
listing for the fourth time in March 2011. All prior rejections were successfully
challenged in court by the Center for Biological Diversity, Defenders of
Wildlife, the Sierra Club and the Horned Lizard Conservation Society. In
practice the species is protected on habitat of 457, 000 acres where human
activity is subject to arrest and prosecution. OHV enthusiasts are limit to existing roads,
trails and restrictive permits.

Ironically the proposed Imperial Valley Solar Project threatens 10 square miles of lizard habitat.

Tags departmen tof Fish and Game, Endangered Species Act, faulty experiments bias results, Flat-tailed Horned Lizard, Southern California desert

Comrades in Arms Vietnam

The True Story of “Christmas” Bombing, N. Vietnam 1972

Post author By Roger Canfield
Post date November 11, 2011

The Christmas Bombings of Hanoi, North Vietnam.

During the Vietnam War on December 11, 1972 Anniversary Tours, a
Communist Party-USA owned travel agency, booked Scandinavian Airlines, SAS,
flights out of JFK Airport bound for Hanoi, North Vietnam.

Among its passengers were folksinger Joan Baez,
the Episcopal Rev. Michael Allen of Yale Divinity, Barry Romo of Vietnam Veterans Against the War, and Gen.
Telford Taylor, the former chief counsel of the war crimes trials of the Nazis at Nuremberg, Germany.[1]

On December 13, 1972 Cora Rubin Weiss, Hanoi’s chosen liasion for POW mail and more, held a press conference and introduced Baez,
Allen, Taylor and Romo as departing for Hanoi. Baez said she wanted to meet
North Vietnamese and to witness war damage. Allen said they had 500 pieces
of mail for American POWs carried by Hanoi approved Committee of Liaison with Families of Servicemen
Detained in North Vietnam, COLIFAM. Weiss said this was COLIFAM’s 36^th mail trip.

ABC, NBC, CBS, AP and UPI covered this pro-Hanoi press conference.[2] Such
favorable coverage of the enemy in war was common during the war. A study of CBS by the
Institute for American Strategy showed that 83.33 % of stories about the
government of South Vietnam were critical while 57.3% of stories about the Communist enemy in Hanoi were favorable.[3]

The media coverage of “Christmas bombings” is a case study not only of media bias, but media support for the enmy in war.

The bombings were also a success story for America in the Cold War. A success later squandered, but that is another story.

Nixon’s vigorous prosecution of the war, ‘Peace with Honor,” was an election mandate, a landslide, forty-nine state, victory
over the single issue, anti-war candidate, George McGovern. McGovern had met secretly with Hanoi officials in Paris to seek political advantage against Nixon failing miserably to do so.

So, in an effort to force the North Vietnamese back to the negotiating table, resoundingly reelected President
Nixon escalated the bombing of targets previously off-limits in North Vietnam.

The bombings ocurred December 18-29 — the so-called Christmas Bombings despite a 36 hour bombing
pause at Christmas.[4]

There was no Christmas bombing. Since Communists do not celebrate Christmas or
any other religious holiday, their outrage over bombings on a Christian holy
day was feigned. The bombings, none of which occurred on Christmas day, were
dubbed the Christmas bombings for maximum propaganda value in the USA where a
majority were Christians.

The bombings were to provide “maximum destruction …of military targets” and to “inflict the
utmost civilian distress.” Admiral Moorer said, “I want the people of Hanoi to hear the bombs.”

Bombing of the 5-railroad track Long Bien Bridge
across the Red River into Hanoi was only two miles from the Metropole Hotel.
Surrounded by beautiful women and good food, the Baez group was well cared for at the Metropole.

There they met other internationalists such as Jean Thoroval of Agence France Press, a Cuban, an Indian and others.

The Americans were shown films of deformed children, dying caged animals and “an
American soldier shooting fire from a hose.” They were taken to a bombsite.

Joan Baez remembers very telling details,

“We came to what looked like a large expensive movie set of a piece of the moon.
…Men [were] shouting out the number of dead…in the hundreds. …Here was a shoe…
a half-buried little sweater, a piece of broken dish… a book lying open, its
damp pages stuck together. The press was there with their cameras.”

Nearby a women “hobbled back and forth” singing,
‘My son. My son. Where are you now?”
Twas a movie set, which Baez, a professional entertainer, recognized,
but she somehow failed to identify as a propaganda show too well staged to be true.
Telford Taylor astutely asked if the bombed sites were recent or left over from bombing in June.[5]

Ultimately, Nixon’s idea was to destroy the North’s will to fight.[6]

“Wet His Pants”

Nixon’s strategy worked.

As Nixon and Kissinger first claimed, American POW’s later confirmed and the North Vietnamese admit today, the
December bombings were terrifying. Truong Nhu Tang remembered, “I had been caught in the Apocalypse. The terror was
complete. One lost control bodily functions as the mind screamed incomprehensible
orders to get out.”[8] One POW saw his prison guard “trembling like a leaf, drop his rifle, and wet his pants.”[9]

Joan Baez in the Metropole’s bomb shelter with Rev. Michael Allen of Yale Divinity,
Barry Romo of VVAW and Telford Taylor sang Christmas Carols.

Close by in the “Hanoi Hilton” the POWs cheered. The Vietnamese trembled.[7]

POW and Admiral James Stockdale, remembers: “At dawn, the streets of Hanoi were absolutely
silent. …Patriotic wakeup music was missing, …street sounds, the horns, all
gone. Our interrogators and guards (were solicitous)… morning coffee was
delivered…Any Vietnamese officer’s face . . . telegraphed… hopelessness,
remorse, fear. …[O]ur enemy’s will was broken.[10]
POW Michael O’Connor: “When we heard them crying in the streets, we knew it
would soon be over.”[11] POW Lt. Col. Frank Lewis remembers: “I … danced around my cell like a
fool, yelling, and cheering … I cried with pleasure.”[12] The POW’s cheered.

The North Vietnamese had never experienced anything like it in decades of an American limited war strategy calibrated to send signals of
resolve with minimal provocations of either the enemy or his Soviet and Chinese Communist allies.

During thirteen days in Hanoi, the Vietnamese gave propaganda talking points to the
Americans–support the 9 Point Peace Plan, stop bombing and free South
Vietnamese political prisoners. Baez sang to a group of twelve POWs.[13]

Baez told a Japanese reporter, Tsuyoshi Doki,
“Nixon is nothing but a madman… When I return home, I will do my utmost so that
the antiwar movement can be unified and become more powerful.”[14]

VVAW’s Barry Romo claimed the bombing was never to destroy military
targets, but to terrorize and demoralize the Vietnamese people. Bombs falling
on nonmilitary targets were not errors. The same homes and shops were hit several times, Romo claimed.[16]

Yet the actual orders from Washington were to “exercise precaution to minimize risk of civilian casualties…”[17]
Aircrews were ordered to maintain straight and level flight to “maximize
aiming time” and to “reduce the chances of civilian damage.”[18]
These orders increased crew exposure to the world’s best antiaircraft defenses.
Although not the nuclear holocaust the left frequently accused the US of
planning—whenever the U.S. showed even diplomatic firmness to Communist aggression–the
new smart bombs fell with great accuracy.

The New York Times claimed carpet bombing of square miles of densely populated
areas. Joseph Kraft wrote of “senseless terror” bombing. Dan Rather: “large
scale terror bombing.” The Washington Post quested Nixon’s sanity. Anthony Lewis called the President a “maddened
tyrant.”[19] Aerial photos showed that there was no indiscriminate carpet-bombing and no terror attacks upon civilians.[20]

Walter Cronkite uncritically cited the Soviet News Agency Tass and Radio Hanoi as
credible news sources about the alleged massive scale of the damages to
civilian homes and the President’s mental condition.[21]

Still on December 29, 1972 Nhan Dan reported excerpts from a statement of Lieutenant Colonel Luis (SIC) Henry
Bernasconi, navigator of a B-52 shot down on December 22. Now a POW Bernasconi
said, “We are taught that B-52s are used to bomb targets …tens of square miles.
Such targets do not exist in Vietnam. …B-52 bombing in densely [SIC] populated
areas is to kill more and more people to generate pressure.”[22]
Once released Bernasconi did not repeat such wild claims about B-52 target
sizes and intents to kill.

As the North Vietnamese now admit, their radar was successfully blinded, making their SAM missiles ineffective.[23]
Stanley Karnow’s first hand observations were that populations had evacuated,
damage in Hanoi and Haiphong was minimal, civilians were spared and the bombing
was accurately placed upon military targets.[24]

Back on the homefront on Christmas Eve, a small contingent of the members of VVAW, Brown
Berets, and Venceremos Brigade marched to the Veterans Administration Cemetery
in Los Angeles. They distribute leaflets titled “SIX MILLION VICTIMS—THE HUMAN
COST OF THE INDOCHINA WAR UNDER PRESIDENT NIXON.”[25] Six million was an outrageous number.

In contrast in South Vietnam when villagers moved to safer areas under government control the
Communists routinely mortared, bombed and mined markets and roads for no
military purpose whatsoever. Between 1968 and 1972, “roughly thirty thousand
civilians a year went to GVN hospitals with injuries from mines and
mortars…wounds [which] …greatly exceeded…those…by Allied shelling and bombing.”[26]
Unlike the communists raining artillery and mortar fire directly upon fleeing
South Vietnamese civilians, U.S. B-52s did not bomb people evacuating Hanoi.

Outrage Over “Carpet” Bombings of Hanoi

Le Monde compared the American
attacks to the horrific bombing of Guernica in the Spanish Civil War, a leftist
symbol of Fascist brutality against heroic Communist revolutionaries. Like
Pavlov’s dogs, the progressive media salivated on cue.

Friends of the Vietnamese communists, including the American media, were spitting mad and
hysterically outraged—not over the endless Viet Cong atrocities, but the bombing of Hanoi.

CBS’s Dan Rather called the bombing “(unrestricted) large scale terror bombing.” Radio Hanoi told
him and he parroted claims of “extermination raids on many populous areas.”

CBS’s Walter Cronkite quoted as sources of fact the
Soviet News Agency, Tass, “U.S. bombers destroyed thousands of homes,” and
Radio Hanoi, “Nixon has taken leave of his senses.”

Henry Kissinger in his White House Years quoted the newspaper editorial headlines after the
bombings: “New Madness in Viet Nam” (St. Louis Post Dispatch,
December 19); “The Rain of Death Continues” (Boston Globe,
December 20); “Terror From the Skies” (New York Times,
December 26); “Terror Bombing in the Name of Peace” (Washington
Post, December 28); “Beyond All Reasons” (Los Angeles Times,
December 28).[27] “Frighteningly callous to consequences,” Mary McCarthy wrote upon learning a
bomb had killed the French Chief of Mission,[28]
presumably an unconscionable assault utopian high intellect and culture.
Privately Nixon called it “media fueled hysteria,” but to his critics such the coverage “reasonable.”[29]

On the whole Nixon was silent to outrageously false claims of immorality, barbarism and butchery,
fearing he later said, of driving Hanoi away from peace talks in Paris.

Stanley Karnow says American newspapers, television, and radio had uncritically carried a
French reporter’s claims [in Le Monde] of “carpet bombing” of downtown
Haiphong and Hanoi. Malcolm Browne of The New York Times, a war critic, said this was “grossly overstated.”

Indeed, even Tran Duy Hung, mayor of Hanoi denied such false claims. Karnow says, “American antiwar
activists…during the attacks urged the mayor to claim a death toll of ten
thousand.” The suspects for such an intentional fabrication, a lie, would have
been Joan Baez, Barry Romo, Michael Allen, and Telford Taylor. Mayor Tran
refused to bump the numbers because “his government’s credibility was at stake.”

The North Vietnamese counted 1,318 civilian fatalities in Hanoi and 305 in Haiphong—a
pittance of the 85,000 killed in the real carpet firebombing of Tokyo in March 1945.[30]

Earlier in 1972 the North Vietnamese had turned artillery upon civilians
fleeing Quang Tri and An Loc killing at least 15,000. There was neither
discernable media nor “peace” pilgrim outrage to this slaughter of the purely innocent.

And upon her return Joan Baez accurately estimated the casualties at 2,000.[31]

Parks says the civilian deaths in the Hanoi count were not entirely innocent. Civilians worked at
lawful military targets. Some were human shields. And still other civilians
were killed by “North Vietnamese SAMs or AAA projectiles…plummeted to the ground.”

Since “Hanoi fired more than 1,000 SAMs…[M]any
of the 1,318 civilian deaths can be attributed to these North Vietnamese
defenses. …Measured against …the law of
war…Linebacker II is unprecedented in its minimization… of collateral civilian
casualties when compared with the intensity of effort against legitimate targets.”

That during the most intense bombing of the entire war Hanoi counted far less than 2,000 people
dead is “persuasive evidence (that)… the United States sought to avoid
collateral damage… so too had [the earlier] Rolling Thunder been “one of the
most constrained military campaigns in history.”

That the U.S. spent $100,000 for every truck destroyed [32]
was a measure of neither indiscriminate bombing nor economic waste, but of the
value Americans placed on innocent human life.

Bach Mai Hospital and Kham Thien Street

The few civilian targets hit loomed very large in propaganda about American bombing — the Bach Mai
hospital and Kham Thien Street, a residential area.

The North Vietnamese and their American friends said these were bombed intentionally.

Telford Taylor said Bach Mai hospital had been totally destroyed [For the 1,000^th time?] and Baez
claimed the bombing had injured POWs in the Hanoi Hilton. The hospital was
never targeted, but the area around Bach Mai was target rich with legitimate
military objectives. It was only 1,000 meter from the Bach Mai Military Airfield and 200 yards from a POL fuel storage
facility.[33] Also air defenses and Radio Hanoi.

The prime target was clear. “The overall control of
the NVA air defenses … one of the best … in the world … was directed by
an air defense command and control center located at (less than 500 meters away
at) Bach Mai airfield.” This air defense system commanded and controlled
from Bach Mai airfield allowed targeting of U.S. aircraft from ground level to
19 miles up.[34] Moreover, air defenses were located among civilians and patients at Bach Mai.

Only a laser-guided bomb finally hit Radio Hanoi, which was at Bach Mai protected by a concrete revetment.

In the event photos prove that only the corner of one wing
of the hospital, not its center, was accidentally destroyed killing 28.[35]

The hospital was hit in a tragic accident. Col. John Yuill lost control of his aircraft at the
very moment of his bomb release as two SAM missiles exploded above and below
him spewing his bomb train off target and onto a portion of the hospital.[36]
Though captions of photos in one war museum claim the hospital was “destroyed”[37]
and in another museum only “damaged,[38] a
careful analysis of photos shows a corner of the hospital hit and a big bomb
crater off to the side of the hospital.[39]
Views of remodeled hospital today[40]
seems to confirm that the left front part of hospital was hit, probably
accidentally as Col. John Yuill described it thereafter.

Similarly, on December 26, 1972 SAM attacks on another aircraft diverted a B-52 bomb train to
residential Kham Thien Street[41] where it was claimed that 287 were killed and 290 injured.[42]

Upon her return to Hanoi in early January Joan Baez would report that $400,000 had been raised to
rebuild Bach Mai Hospital.[43] The CPUSA’s Young Workers’ Liberation League had created the tax exempt Bach
Mai Hospital Relief Fund.[44] April 8-15, 1973 was Bach Mai Week during which local peace organizations canvassed
dor to door and sold pancake breakfasts.[45] Despite the monetary contributions of many
other Americans to the relief fund, e.g. through Bill Zimmerman’s fund raising
for Medical Aid to Vietnam; Bach Mai would remain unrepaired for nine years.

To the “humane” Vietnamese Communists Bach Mai was worth far more as a war trophy
and as cash flow than it was as a functioning hospital.

For those who dismissed official American sources, such as Pentagon aerial photos showing
minimal damage to Hanoi, the Baez contingency had brought back North Vietnamese
Government film. The COLIFAM delegation used NBC film.[46]
CBS would forevermore simply report Hanoi’s numbers and never covered Hanoi’s
subsequent repudiation of the claim of extensive casualties at Bach Mai, which
had been evacuated long before the bombing.[47]

After the signing of the Paris Accord Henry Kissinger visited Hanoi and shared
his observations with Nixon and Haldeman,

“It was absolutely amazing in Hanoi how remarkably precise the American bombing had been. There’s virtually no
destruction in the city of Hanoi of anything except military targets, the
railway yard is completely wiped out, but all the other buildings and facilities
still stand. Large storage areas have been demolished, but virtually nothing adjacent to them.”

And “Henry feels that it is…a total repudiation of the attacks on the P(resident) for his
so-called carpet bombing….”[48] POW James Kasler soon told a Congressional committee, “The Americans who came
to Hanoi…[reported] Hanoi… lying in shambles.” Yet “the city was barely touched
as has been proven by unbiased photographers who visited there after our [POW]
release” some 90 days later. Kasler insisted, American travelers “distorted the truth about the bombing of
civilian targets…because they wanted the North Vietnamese to win and they were
willing to betray their own country to attain that goal.”[49]

In contrast to Hanoi’s death toll of 1,318 civilians in December 1972, during its Easter
offensive during the spring of 1972 Hanoi’s invading armies had turned its
artillery and rockets upon the civilian populations of An Loc, Hue, Quang Tri and other cities.

During the battles of April 1972 the North Vietnamese had rained
artillery upon tens of thousands of civilian refugees fleeing on roads running
south from battles in Quang Tri and in An Loc. Some 15,000 or so civilians were
slaughtered on the escape routes Highways 1 and Highway 13 respectively.

About this indiscriminate slaughter of helpless civilians in South Vietnam there was
silence among the self-anointed humanitarians and pacifists within the peace
movement. Against all evidence they persisted in claiming that all the barbarism
of war came from one side, the American side. By late that July President Nixon
had reported 860,000 refugees, 45,000 casualties (15,000 dead). Such was the “liberation” (during
the Easter Offensive) of Quang Tri, Hue, An Loc, Binh Dinh province and other
areas benefiting from the humanitarian policies of the North.

December’s bombings gave the Americans the moral high ground, if there is such a thing in the
accidental killing of civilians in war.

Of course, Hanoi’s franchised peace movement usurped the high ground by
declaring Hanoi’s death toll of 1,318 civilians was indiscriminate carpet bombing of many square miles of North Vietnam.

For the first time in the war Hanoi was shaken.

The communists had angered the mad man Nixon. America could at long last negotiate from a position of strength.

Visiting at the invitation of her Vietnamese friends at
Choisy-le-Roi, Mary McCarthy and Mr. Phan and Vy discussed the antiwar
movement. Barbara Deming’s letter wanted American women to go to Hanoi to work
under the bombs. Mary McCarthy suggested a group of big names go to Hanoi to
risk their lives. Phan said, “The place to be effective had been America.” From Paris NFL representative Phan
Thanh Nam secretly ran Hanoi’s intelligence operations in the USA, in part by meeting “freindly” Americans like Mary McCarthy.
McCarthy says, “About the failure of Americans at home to rise in protest
against the bombing he was bitter.” Mary McCarthy doubted the value of another
demonstration particularly during Christmas. She said the antiwar people were tired, alone and discouraged.

Among McCarthy’s handwritten list of notables to ask to go to Hanoi during bombings there had been no takers:
[Roger] Hilsman, Wald + Luris, Gene McCarthy, Ramsey Clark, F[rances]
Fitzgerald, Norman Mailer, Francine Gray, Tom Wicker, Francis Plympton, Tom
Finletter, Bishop Moore, John Kerry, McGovern, Father Hesburg, Abraham Herchel,
Waldheim, Mayor Lindsey, Al Lowenstein, Rene Dubos, James Baldwin, Roy Wilkins,
Coretta King, Gary Wills, Margaret Mead, Robert Lowell, James Jones, Wm.
Styron, John Knowles, Andrew Young, Ron Dellums, Arthur Schlesinger, Bennington Moore.[50]

Maybe Vietnam twasn’t radical chic any more.

The Christmas bombings had all but won the war
and the gas had run out of the antiwar movement. Or so it seemed.

The Christmas bombings of Hanoi in December 1972 had outraged Hanoi, the American press and
Hanoi’s allies on the Second Front in the USA, a “peace” movement largely
seeking a Viet Cong victory. That December the U.S. opportunity to negotiate
from a position of strength had never been better. The enemy’s will and
capability to wage war had been challenged as never before.

Yet Henry Kissinger would negotiate a betrayal of South Vietnam and a “bugout” and declare it peace. John
Negroponte, a member of the Kissinger negotiating team later said, “We bombed them into accepting our compromises.”

The antiwar movement’s influence on domestic politics, specifically upon Congress, provided an
explanation for this strange surrender moments before a final victory seemed in clear sight.

“One With You in Struggle,” Tom and Jane Tell Communists

In December 1972, “I’m Viet Cong” Tom Hayden, founder of Students for a Democratic Society, frequent flyer to Hanoi
and its messenger to the antiwar movement, was in Norway with actress Jane
Fonda, notorious propagandist for Hanoi and patron of both Vietnam Veterans
Against the War and John Kerry’s “Winter Soldier” charges of U.S. war crimes. Fonda was filming
“A Doll House”[1] for “progressive Marxist” Robert Losey.

Hayden and Fonda learned of the December bombings
of Hanoi and the port of Haiphong in a theatre in Paris. They marched off to
the Vietnamese mission to see some old friends, Nguyen Minh Vy and Madame
Nguyen Thi Binh, to ask them what to do. Jane flew to a Stockholm rally to denounce the “escalation of killing.”

Tom Hayden and Jane Fonda telegraphed North Vietnam. On December 26, 1972, Radio
Hanoi broadcast the text of the Hayden-Fonda message to Hanoi:

“HAYDEN-FONDA MESSAGE–here is a message from Jane Fonda and Tom Hayden to the Vietnamese
people: [Word indistinct] Vietnamese will long live in people’s memory. Defeat of B-52’s shows that our spirit and
resistance is stronger than technological power of any kind. We are one with you in struggle. There will come [words
indistinct]. We are organizing international campaign for Nixon to sign the [“Hanoi-NLF”] agreement.”

Jane Fonda and Tom Hayden.[2]

In an Indochina Peace Campaign, IPC, brochure, Tom and Jane joined a broad coalition of
pro-Hanoi antiwar groups in escalating their claims of genocide in South Vietnam from four million[3]
to “six million.” After the widely described horrendous Christmas
bombings, Hanoi, despite the urging of Americans “peace” activists housed in
the luxurious French colonial Metropole hotel, curiously made no official
claims of genocide in the Hanoi bombings. Hanoi alleged only 1,600 dead in the
“carpet bombing” of a city of a million people. A real carpet-bombing of Tokyo in WWII took 85,000 souls.

1972 had closed with Fonda and Hayden telling fellow Americans they wanted to defeat the U.S.
forces– proclaiming their desire for a Communist victory. Though an American
peace would soon be at hand with North Vietnam, Tom and Jane, joined by many
other individuals and groups, would continue through the next two and a half
years to work tirelessly for a North Vietnamese Communist victory over the people of South Vietnam, Cambodia and Laos.

Among those Hanoi front groups on the Viet Cong team after the Paris Peace Accords were: America Friends Service Committee, AFSC/NARMIC,
Clergy And Laity Concerned, Women Strike for Peace, Women’s International League for Peace and Freedom, War Resisters
League, Vietnam Veterans Against the War, People’s Coalition for Peace and Justice, Fellowship of Reconciliation, SANE, Episcopal Peace Fellowship,
Medical Aid for Indochina, Indochina Resource Center, Don Luce’s Indochina Mobile [tiger cage] Education Project, church affiliated International
Committee to Free South Vietnamese Prisoners from Detention, Torture and Death[4].

There was the small, but more than symbolic Union of Vietnamese
in the U.S.A.[5] which attributed “the historic victory of our Vietnamese nation” to the wise and clear sighted leadership of the party Central Committee.”[6]

The Union was a front for Hanoi intelligence and influence operations in the USA.

Hanoi’s American operation included Nguyen Thi Ngoc Thoa in Washington, D.C., Nguyen Van Luy in SanFrancisco and later Dinh
Ba Chi in New York at the United Nations.[1] Both Luy and Thoa were active in the American antiwar movement, in Berkeley and in Hayden-Fonda’s IPC respectively.

Hanoi would be forever appreciative of the anti-war movement as revealed in annual public
statements on the April 30 anniversary dates and in displays in its many war museums.

Major Thomas Bibby writes;

“The outrageous reports of indiscriminate U.S. bombings of North Vietnam in December 1972 by the Western
news media were extremely successful in substantially hardening public and
Congressional opinions against continued American involvement in the war and
forcing the Nixon Administration to stop the bombing.”

In halting the bombing when it did, the U.S. failed to destroy North Vietnam’s war sustaining capabilities just at
the most opportune moment when Hanoi’s air defenses[7] were almost completely annihilated and U.S. aircraft could have virtually
roamed free over the skies of North Vietnam.[8]“

It had been quite a turn around from communists’ military losses on the battlefields and loss of
popular support in the hamlets and villages of South Vietnam. Anticipating a
final defeat by the end of 1972, some 40,000 North Vietnamese soldiers had deserted to the South.[9]

The antiwar movement had helped mightily in translating the 1972 battlefield
defeats into a political victory in the USA.

[1] Yung Krall, A Thousand Tears Falling.

[1] FBI, Acting Director to President, COLIFAM, internal Security-Revolutionary Activities, 6:05AM December
12, 1972

[2] FBI, New York to Acting Director, COLIFAM, IS-RA, TELETYPE, 1125 PM December 13, 1972.
[3] Bruce Herschensohn, An American Amnesia: How the U.S. Congress Forced the Surrenders of South Vietnam and Cambodia, New York: Beaufort Books,
2010, 9-10.

[4] Bruce Herschensohn, An American Amnesia: How the U.S. Congress Forced the Surrenders of South Vietnam and Cambodia, New York: Beaufort Books, 2010, 6.

[5] Joan Baez, And a Song to Sing With, New York: Plume Trademark, 1987,
201-202 209-210, 218 cited on December 25, 2004 at
thecommonills.blogspot.com/2004/12where-are-you-now-my-son.html.

[6] Larry Berman, No Peace, No Honor, 215.

[7] Fourth Estate (University of Colorado), February 20, 1973 cited in FBI, Denver, Memo, “VVAW,
Appearance of Barry Romo, National Coordinator, in Colorado, February 15-16,
1973,” Denver, February 27, 1973; FBI, Legat Rome to Acting Director, VVAW,
IS-RA, Hilev, TELETYPE 4:30 PM January 30, 1973.

[8] Truong Nhu Tang cited in Larry Berman, No Peace, No Honor, 216.

[9] Karl J. Eschmann, Linebacker: The Untold Story of the Air Raids Over North Vietnam, New York: Ivy Books, 1989, 179N22.

[10] Jim & Sybil Stockdale, In Love and War
(Annapolis: United States Naval Institute Press, 1984, 432 (emphasis added).

[11] Michael O’Connor, September 30, 2008.

[12] Eschmann, 236-237.

[13] Denver Post, February 18, 1973, cited in FBI, Denver, Memo, “VVAW, Appearance of Barry Romo,
National Coordinator, in Colorado, February 15-16, 1973,” Denver, February 27,
1973; VVAW newsletter, (n.d.), 3; San Francisco Chronicle, December 22, 1972,and January 2, 1973.

[14] “Akahata Interviews U.S. Singer in Hanoi,” Akahata, Tokyo, December 24, 1972 cited in Rothrock, Divided
We Fall, 169n26.

[15] Eschmann, 202-203.

[16] FBI, Legat Rome to Acting Director, VVAW, IS-RA, Hilev, TELETYPE 4:30 PM January 30, 1973.

[17] Eschmann, 74-5 cites: W. Hays Parks, “Line Backer and the Law of War,” Air University
Review, Vol. 34, No. 2, (January-February 1983), 18.

[18] Eschmann, 80 N 27 cites: Brig. Gen. James R. McCarthy, Et Al, U.S.A.F., Linebacker II,
Airpower Research Institute, Maxwell AFB, Al, 1979, 46-47.

[19] Bruce Herschensohn, An American Amnesia: How the U.S. Congress Forced the Surrenders of
South Vietnam and Cambodia, New York: Beaufort Books, 2010, 8-9.

[20] Eschmann, 202-203.

[21] Bruce Herschensohn, An American Amnesia: How the U.S. Congress Forced the Surrenders
of South Vietnam and Cambodia, New York: Beaufort Books, 2010, 9.

[22] Photo with caption at “Hanoi Hilton” museum, author’s Viet I 226.

[23] Indo. Chron. Vol. VI, No. 4 (October-December 1987, 19 cites “Aerial Dien Bien Phu
Victory”, Radio Hanoi, December 18, 1987, FBIS-EAS 87-247; and Gen. Tran Nhan in Nhan Dan December 17, 1987.

[24] Stanley Karnow, 668 in Rothrock, Divided… v

[25] FBI, Los Angeles to Acting Director, 4:00 PM NITEL, December 24, 1972.

[26] Louis Wiesner, Victims and Survivors: Displaced Persons and Other War Victims in Viet-Nam, 1954-1975 (New
York: Greenwood Press, 1988), 229, cited in Mark Moyar, “VILLAGER ATTITUDES
DURING THE FINAL DECADE OF THE VIETNAM WAR, 1996 Vietnam Symposium, “After
the Cold War: Reassessing Vietnam,”18-20 April 1996, http://www.vietnam.ttu.edu/vietnamcenter/events/1996_Symposium/96papers/moyar.htm

[27] Lt.-Gen. Lam Quang Thi, ARVN), THE VIET NAM WAR REVISITED: A VIEW FROM THE OTHER SIDE OF THE STORY
quotes from Henry Kissinger, the Whitehouse Years.

[28] Mary McCarthy, The Seventeenth Degree: How It Went, Vietnam, Hanoi, Medina, Sons of the Morning, New York:
Harcourt Brace, 1967, 1968, 1972, 1973, 1974, 9.

[29] Christopher Goffard, “New batch of Nixon tapes released,” Los Angeles Times, June 24, 2009.

[30] Stanley Karnow, Vietnam: A History, 653

[31] San Francisco Chronicle, December 22, 1972,and January 2, 1973.

[32] Parks, “Rolling Thunder and the Rule of Law,” 10, 23, 26.

[33] John Morocco, Rain of Fire, Boston: Boston Publishing Co., 1985, 157.

[34] Eschmann, 29 N 59 cites USAF, AIROPS, Top Secret, 148. See also: Eschmann, 23.

[35]Wayne Thompson, To Hanoi and Back: The US Air Force and North Vietnam,
1966-1973, Washington DC.: Smithsonian Institute Press, 2002, 262; John
Hubbell, POW, 592-3; James Banerian and the Vietnamese Community Action
Committee, Losers Are Pirates: A Close Look at the PBS Series “Vietnam: A
Television History,” Phoenix: Tieng Me Publications, 1984, 227.

[36] Eschmann, 143-145, N 33-36.

[37] New Bach Mai Hospital “Destroyed,” December 22, 1972, author’s Viet I DSC_ 230
displayed at Hanoi Hilton, in Hanoi. Actual photo shows corner of hospital,
left front, destroyed and a big bomb crater nearby.

[38] Bach Mai heavily “damaged” December 22, 1972, author’s Viet II DSC_ 274-77 captions and photos displayed
Saigon, Remnants Museum.

[40] Author’s Viet I DSC_ 246-256 Today’s Bach Mai Hospital.

[41] W. Hays Parks, “Linebacker and the Law of War,” Air University Review,
January-February 1983 at airpower.maxwell /airchronicles/aureview/1983/jan-feb/parks.html

[42] At Hanoi Hilton museum in Hanoi, author’s Viet I DSC_231 and Viet II DSC_270-271 at Saigon’s War Remnants museum.

[43] Stanford Daily, January 15, 1973.

[44] Max Friedman, Council for Inter-American Security, study in lieu of testimony
to Chairman of House Ways and Means Committee, Lobbying and Political
Activities of Tax-Exempt Organizations, Hearings, subcommittee on Oversight,
March 12-13, 1987, 399 cites Rep. Larry McDonald,(D-Ga), Congressional
Record, February 19, 1976, E 709-10 and July 5, 1977, E 4809-4810.

[45] Syracuse Peace Council, Peace Newsletter, April 1973, SPC [No.] 682, 1-2, 8-9, 12.

[46] FBI, Acting Director to President, COLIFAM, TELETYPE, 12:35AM January 2, 1973, 5.

[47] W. Hays Parks, “Linebacker and the Law of War,” Air University Review,
January-February 1983, note 53 at airpower.maxwell
/airchronicles/aureview/1983/jan-feb/parks.html

[48] Haldeman, Diaries…708.

[49] House, Hearings on Restraints on Travel to Hostile Areas: Hearings before the Committee on
Internal Security, 93^rd Cong., 1^st sess., 1973, 32-3 cited in Rothrock Divided… 197n14.

[50] Mary McCarthy, The Seventeenth Degree: How It Went, Vietnam, Hanoi, Medina, Sons of the Morning, New York:
Harcourt Brace, 1967, 1968, 1972, 1973, 1974, 54-58.

[1] Time, January 3, 1972, 67.

[2] Hanoi in English to American Servicemen involved in the Indochina War, 1300, GMT, 26 Dec. 72
B; “Hayden Detained,” The Washington Post, December 27, 1972, A-5.

[3] Los Angeles Times, August 3, 1972.

[4] The International Committee to Free South Vietnamese Prisoners from Detention,
Torture and Death was affiliated with AFSC, War Resisters League, Catholic
Peace Fellowship and Canadian Council of Churches. Sources: CCPF 1/13 folder,
Catholic Peace Fellowship Records, University of Notre Dame Archives; Ann
Buttrick Collection, University of Toronto Library; Records of War Resisters
League, box 25, Collection DG 040, Swarthmore College Peace Collection.

[5] IPC, “Indochina: A National Planning Conference, October 26-28, in a camp at
Germantown near Dayton, Ohio, initiated by the Indochina Peace Campaign,” n.d.,
[October 1973]; Tom Hayden, “Cutting Off Funding for War: the 1973 Indochina
Case,” Huffington Post, March 20, 2007 at huffingtonpost.com.

[6] Vietnam News Agency, VNA 14 Feb 73, K-16.

[7] “Not a single SAM was left”, Allan Goodman, Lost Peace, 161 cited in
James Banerian and the Vietnamese Community Action Committee, Losers Are Pirates:
A Close Look at the PBS Series “Vietnam: A Television History,” Phoenix:
Tieng Me Publications, 1984, 226.

[8] Sir Robert Thompson, Peace Is Not At Hand, New York: David McKay, 1974, 135, cited in Thomas M. Bibby,
Major USAF, “Vietnam: The End, 1975” 1 April 1985 at global security.org See
also: Herz, Martin F. (Rider, Leslie, Assisted by). The Prestige Press and The
Christmas Bombing, 1972: Images and Reality in Vietnam, Ethics and Public
Policy Center; Washington, D. C.1980.

[9] John M. Del Vecchio, “Cambodia, Laos and Viet Nam? The Importance of Story Individual and Cultural Effects of
Skewing the Realities of American Involvement in Southeast Asia for Social, Political and/or Economic Ends,” 1996 Vietnam
Symposium “After the Cold War: Reassessing Vietnam,” Texas Tech, 18-20 April 1996.

Tags Bach Mai hospital, Barry Romo, celebrity outrage, christmas bombing hanoi, Cora Weiss, few civilian casualties, hysterial false media, Jane Fonda, Joan Baez, Tom Hayden

California Politics Comrades in Arms Songs

Song: Where Have All the Commies Gone

Post author By Roger Canfield
Post date November 11, 2011

Where have all the commies gone?
Long time passing.
Where have all the commies gone?
Long time ago.

Where have all the commies gone?
The liberals kissed them ev’ry one.
Oh, when will you ever learn?
Oh, when will you ever learn?

Where have all the liberals gone?
Long time passing.
Where have all the liberals gone?
Long time ago.

Where have all the liberals gone?
They’ve become progressives every one.
Oh, when will you ever learn?
Oh, when will you ever learn?

Where have all the progressives gone?
Long time passing.
Where have all the progressives gone?
Long time ago.

Where have all the progressives gone?
They’re all in camouflage.
Oh, when will you ever learn?
Oh, when will you ever learn?

Where have all the progressives gone?
Long time passing.
Where have all the progressives gone?
Long time ago.

Where have all the progressives gone?
They’ve gone to California every one.
Oh, when will they ever learn?
Oh, when will they ever learn?

Where has poor California gone?
Long time passing.
Where has California gone?
Long time ago.

Where have all the Californians gone?
They’re gone to Arizona, nearly every one.
Oh, when will they ever learn?
Oh, when will they ever learn?

Where have all the commies gone?
Long time passing.
Where have all the commies gone?
Long time ago.

Where have all the commies gone?
Universities hired them, every one.
Oh, when will we ever learn?
Oh, when will we ever learn?

Tags california, communist progressive liberal, where are communists