Ted Kennedy's Vietnam Plot
americanthinker.com | Mar 11th 2011 Last week
at American Thinker (click here), I wrote on the latest declassified FBI
files on Ted Kennedy. I looked at several intriguing claims, mainly based on
Kennedy's July-August 1961 "familiarization tour" of Latin America.
According to the file, Kennedy familiarized himself not only with the
political/social life of the region -- reportedly attempting to "rent" an
entire brothel -- but also with one of the most suspicious, notorious Cold
War figures, Lauchlin Currie, FDR adviser and alleged Soviet agent.
One item I didn't note, but want to deal with here, is an eye-opening March
2, 1967 memo. Written by an FBI officer whose name is redacted, the memo
considered whether Kennedy, then a young senator, was "plotting" with his
brother, Robert, to bring to America 100 Vietnamese children burned and
maimed by napalm. These children would be paraded around America. Not only
would this gruesome spectacle undermine our troops and their mission, but
would have the added effect of humiliating President Lyndon Johnson.
"These children are horribly burned as a result of our napalm bombing in
Viet Nam," reads the document. The children might be "toured through the
United States so the American people can see the horrible results of our
bombing."
The claim came from a credible source, a woman who appears to have been a
staff member on the Senate Subcommittee on Refugees and Escapees, which was
chaired by Senator Edward Kennedy. The woman said that discussion on this
within the subcommittee was being kept "very quiet."
The source, said the memo, "suspected but could not prove that the Kennedy
brothers were plotting to use these children by touring them through the
country for political purposes to embarrass President Johnson." She added
that such a display could only be political, given that the children were so
seriously injured that the only discussion by the committee should be "the
question of special hospital care." These kids needed hospital rooms, not
display cages.
The memo named a George L. Abrams, chief counsel and staff director of the
subcommittee, as being present in Birmingham, Alabama to talk to "a group of
medical doctors" to see whether they could help organize a group to bring
the children to America.
Imagine that. The propaganda effect would have been devastating. Some
readers will recall the tremendous impact of the 1972 photo of the young
girl "Kim," a victim of a South Vietnamese napalm attack. These 100
Vietnamese children would have an effect far more traumatic than that one
photo. Of course, this begs the question: Did Teddy and Bobby actually
consider something this obscene? I'd like to say no, that the Kennedy boys
would never do something so low. Yet, when you consider the question deeper,
it seems plausible. Consider:
One of the more sordid aspects of Ted Kennedy's checkered life, lost between
Chappaquiddick and other assorted moral-political outrages, was his public
maligning of our troops in Vietnam.
In January 1968, Kennedy did a fact-finding trip to refugee camps in South
Vietnam. According to one account, the senator discerned that "half of the
30 million dollars a year the United States has given South Vietnam for
refugee relief was finding its way into the pockets of government officials
and province chiefs." Kennedy complained of rampant corruption; the kind
that was apparently absent -- or at least not mentioned -- among North
Vietnamese officials.
Of the South Vietnamese who were refugees, reported Senator Kennedy, "the
vast majority -- I would say over 80 percent -- claimed that they were
either deposited in camps by the Americans or fled to camps in fear of
American airplanes and artillery. Only a handful claimed they were driven
from their homes by the Viet Cong."
Yes, at best, according to Kennedy, "only a handful" of South Vietnamese --
maybe a half-dozen or so -- were refugees because of anything done by North
Vietnam's communists. Everything was Uncle Sam's fault.
Sadly, this was a Ted Kennedy practice throughout a nearly 50-year Senate
career, as he was repeatedly re-elected by the people of Massachusetts.
Fast forward to the war in Iraq. In May 2004, Senator Kennedy said, "we now
learn that Saddam's torture chambers reopened under new management -- U.S.
management." Kennedy dubbed Iraq a "quagmire," just like Vietnam. "Iraq is
George Bush's Vietnam," he said, accusing President Bush of "lie after lie
after lie."
The 1967 memo fits not only Kennedy's pattern against our troops, but also
against our sitting presidents -- especially presidents who stood in the way
of Ted and his kin advancing to the White House. Previously, in columns here
and in books (click here and here), I've written about the May 1983 KGB memo
where Kennedy's target was Ronald Reagan. When Kennedy reached out to Yuri
Andropov to undermine President Reagan's "belligerent" defense policies, it
was just as Reagan's re-election campaign was getting underway, with Kennedy
a Democratic frontrunner. I've also reported (click here) that Kennedy tried
the same against his own political flesh and blood, Jimmy Carter, when
Carter was the Democratic incumbent in 1980 -- being challenged by, yes, Ted
Kennedy.
Well, in 1967, the date of this memo, the Democrats again had an incumbent
president eligible for re-election. The Democratic frontrunner to replace
LBJ was again a Kennedy -- Bobby Kennedy.
In each case, the president in power, Democrat or Republican, standing
between a Kennedy and the Oval Office, was seen as the aggressor.
Thus, when you consider all of this, that March 1967 memo about parading
around burnt Vietnamese children doesn't seem out of character for Ted
Kennedy. By 1967, Bobby was not only strenuously anti-war but despised
Lyndon Johnson, whom he hated for multiple reasons. Among them was LBJ's
escalation of a conflict that Bobby's older brother, JFK, began. Some were
blaming JFK for a destructive war that was really LBJ's doing.
I would like to say that Bobby Kennedy had more character than Teddy
Kennedy. Of course, that wouldn't be saying much.
So, did the Kennedy brothers consider hatching this plot? Can anyone out
there confirm or reject the story? Are there any witnesses still living?
Surely, there's someone, somewhere, perhaps in Birmingham, Alabama, who
could shed some light?
And are there any Kennedy biographers or "journalists" willing to dare come
forward with information or do some actual digging? If the story can be
disproven, I'm sure they won't hesitate. If the story is accurate, I expect
their usual response: dead silence.
Original Page:
http://www.americanthinker.com/2011/03/ted_kennedys_vietnam_plot.html
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