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John Forbes Kerry (born December 11, 1943) is a United States senator from Massachusetts, and, due to victories in the U.S. presidential primary elections, is the Democratic Party's presumptive nominee for President in 2004.
This article deals with Kerry's biography, background and experience. For the presidential campaign, see John Kerry presidential campaign, 2004.
Early Life and Education
Kerry was born at the Fitzsimons Army Hospital in Aurora, Colorado outside Denver. His father, Richard Kerry, a former Army Air Corps test pilot, who had served stateside in Alabama during World War II, had been undergoing treatment there for tuberculosis.
His family returned to their native state of Massachusetts shortly after John's birth. The family was Roman Catholic, and as a child John served as an altar boy.
Family background
Kerry's paternal grandfather, Frederick A. Kerry (born Fritz Kohn), was born in the town of Horni Benesov, Austria-Hungary (in what is now the Moravian-Silesian Region of the Czech Republic), and grew up in Mödling (a small town near Vienna, Austria). He immigrated to the US arriving at Ellis Island with his wife Ida (née Loewe, who was born in Budapest, Hungary) and son Erich on May 18, 1905. Mildred was born (c. 1910) in Illinois, and son Richard was born (c. 1916) in Massachusetts. The Kerry-Kohns were German-speaking Jews, but the family concealed its background upon migrating to the United States, and raised the Kerry children as Catholics. A Czech historian has shown that Ida is a descendant of Sinai Loew, one of three older brothers of Rabbi Judah Loew (1525-August 22, 1609), a famous Kabbalist, philosopher and talmudist known as the Maharal of Prague.
Two of Ida's siblings, Otto Loewe and Jenni Loewe, died in the Nazi extermination camps (Theresienstadt and Treblinka, respectively), after being deported from Vienna in 1942, about a year before Kerry's birth. Frederick committed suicide on November 23, 1921, by gunshot to the head at the Copley Plaza Hotel in Boston. His second son, Richard, was only six at the time.
Richard John Kerry, John's father, graduated from Yale University in 1937. He received a degree from Harvard Law School in 1940, and then joined the U.S. Army Air Corps. In his adult career, he worked for the Foreign Service and served as an attorney for the Bureau of United Nations Affairs in the U.S. Department of State. In 1937, he met Rosemary Forbes, a member of the wealthy Forbes family. One of eleven children, she studied to be a nurse, and served in the Red Cross in Paris during World War II (she also was a Girl Scout leader for 50 years). Rosemary would stand to inherit approximately $20 million to $40 million from her father and the Forbes family (adjusted for inflation). The couple married in Montgomery, Alabama in January 1941.
John Kerry's maternal grandfather, James Grant Forbes, was born in Shanghai, China, where the Forbes family of China and Boston accumulated a fortune in the opium and China trade, and became an international businessman and attorney living in France and England.
John Kerry's maternal grandmother, Margaret Tyndal Winthrop, came from a family with deep roots in Massachusetts history, and was raised in Boston. Her grandfather was Robert Charles Winthrop, the conservative Whig Speaker of the House and a senator, and her ancestors include James Bowdoin, former governor of Maine, and John Winthrop, the first governor of the Massachusetts Bay Colony. Other notable figures in this branch of Kerry's family tree are Franklin Roosevelt, Jane Addams, Calvin Coolidge, and ironically, George H.W. Bush, and George W. Bush.
Childhood years
Kerry has said that his first memory is when he was three years old and held his mother's hand while she cried as they walked through the broken glass and rubble of her childhood home in Saint-Briac, France. The memorable visit came just a short period after the United States had liberated Saint-Briac from the Nazis on August 14, 1944. The family estate, known as Les Essarts, had been occupied and used as a Nazi headquarters during the war; when the Germans fled Les Essarts, they bombed it and burnt it down.
The sprawling estate was rebuilt in 1954. Kerry and his parents would often spend the summer holidays there. Kerry occupied his time there racing his cousins on bicycles and challenging relatives to games of kick the can. During his summers there, he became good friends with his first cousin Brice Lalonde, a future Socialist and Green Party leader in France who ran for president of France in 1981.
Because Kerry's family moved around a lot, he attended several schools as a child. Many years later, he said that "to my chagrin, and everlasting damnation, I was always moving on and saying goodbye. It kind of had an effect on you. It steeled you. There wasn't a lot of permanence and roots. For kids, [that's] not the greatest thing." He went to a Swiss boarding school at age 11 while his family lived in Berlin. When he visited home, he biked around and saw the rubble of Hitler's bunker, and also sneaked into East Berlin, until his father found out and grounded him. The boy often spent time alone. He biked through France, took a ferry from Norway to England, and even camped alone in Sherwood Forest. While attending the boarding school, Kerry saw the film Scaramouche, which became his favorite movie. He later would name his powerboat after its hero.
Boarding school
While his father was stationed at the U.S. Embassy in Oslo, Norway, Kerry was sent to Massachusetts to attend boarding school. In 1957, he attended the Fessenden School in West Newton, a village in Newton, Massachusetts. There he met and befriended Richard Pershing, grandson of the famed U.S. Gen. John Joseph Pershing.
The following year, he enrolled at St. Paul's School in Concord, New Hampshire, and graduated from there in 1962. His father's Foreign Service salary did not earn enough to pay the school's tuition. Kerry's childless great-aunt, Clara Winthrop, then very much advanced in age, voluntarily covered the costs. At St. Paul's, Kerry felt like an outsider because he was a Catholic and liberal while most of his fellow students were Republican Episcopalians.
Despite having difficulty fitting in, he made friends and developed his interests. He learned skills in public speaking and he became deeply interested in politics. In his free time, he enjoyed ice hockey and lacrosse, which he played on teams captained by classmate Robert S. Mueller III, the current director of the FBI. Kerry also played electric bass for the prep school's band The Electras, which produced an album in 1961. Only 500 copies were made, and in 2004 one of the copies was auctioned at EBay for $2,551.
In 1959 Kerry founded the John Winant Society at St. Paul's to debate the issues of the day; the Society still exists there. In November of 1960, Kerry gave his first political speech, in favor of John F. Kennedy's election to the White House.
While living in the U.S., Kerry spent several summers at the Forbes family's estates on Naushon Island off Cape Cod.
Encounters with President Kennedy
In 1962, Kerry volunteered to work for Ted Kennedy's first senatorial campaign. That summer, he began dating Janet Jennings Auchincloss, Jacqueline Kennedy's half-sister. Auchincloss invited Kerry to visit her family's estate, Hammersmith Farm in Rhode Island (home to Janet and Jackie's mother Janet Lee Bouvier Auchincloss and her husband Hugh D. Auchincloss, Jr.), on Sunday, August 26. It was then that Kerry met President Kennedy for the first time.
When Kerry told Kennedy that he was about to enter Yale University, Kennedy grimaced because he had gone to rival school Harvard University. Kerry later recalled, "He smiled at me, laughed and said, 'Oh, don't worry about it. You know I'm a Yale man too now.'" According to Kerry, "The President uttered that famous comment about how he had the best of two worlds now: a Harvard education and Yale degree," in reference to the fact he had received an honorary degree from Yale a few months prior (June 11, 1962). Later that day, a White House photographer snapped a photo of Kerry sailing with Kennedy and his family in Narragansett Bay. They met again a few weeks later while at the September 1962 America's Cup race off the coast of Rhode Island.
Yale University
In 1962, Kerry entered Yale University. There he majored in political science and graduated with a B.A. in 1966. He also played on the soccer, hockey, lacrosse, and fencing teams; in addition, he took flying lessons. To earn extra money during the summers, he loaded trucks in a grocery warehouse and sold encyclopedias door to door.
In his sophomore year Kerry became president of the Yale Political Union. His involvement with the Political Union gave him an opportunity to be involved with important issues of the day, such as the civil rights movement and President Kennedy's New Frontier program. Under the guidance of the speaking coach and history professor Rollin Osterweis, Kerry won dozens of debate contests against other college students from across the nation. In March 1965, as the Vietnam War escalated, he won the Ten Eyck prize as the best orator in the junior class for a speech that was critical of U.S. foreign policy.
In the speech he said, "It is the specter of Western imperialism that causes more fear among Africans and Asians than communism, and thus it is self-defeating." Because of his public speaking skills, he was chosen to give the class oration at graduation. The speech was hastily rewritten at the last moment, and was a broad criticism of American foreign policy, including the war.
At the invitation of his friend John Shattuck, John Kerry joined the Skull and Bones society in April 1965.
Military Service
Enlistment, training, and first tour of duty on the USS Gridley
After an application for a 12-month deferment to study in Paris was denied, Kerry enlisted in the Navy on February 18, 1966. On August 22 he reported for training at the Naval Officer Candidate School at the U.S. Naval Training Center in Newport, Rhode Island.
Kerry was ordered into active duty on October 19, and received his Navy commission on December 16. On January 3, 1967, Kerry began a year of training for duty at a ten-week Officer Damage Control Course at the Naval Schools Command on Treasure Island, California. On March 22, Kerry reported at the U.S. Fleet Anti-Air Warfare Training Center, where he received training as a Combat Information Center Watch Officer.
Kerry began his first tour of duty in June 8, serving as an ensign in the electrical department on the guided missile frigate USS Gridley. On February 9, 1968, the Gridley set sail for Western Pacific deployment. The next day, Kerry requested duty in Vietnam, listing as his first preference a position as the commandor of a swift boat, designated the Patrol Craft Fast (PCF) boats. These 50-foot boat have aluminum hulls and have little or no armor, but are heavily armed and rely on speed. (Kerry's second choice was a to be an officer in a patrol boat squadron, designated the Patrol Boat River (PBR) boats.)
The Gridley travelled to several places, including Wellington in New Zealand, Subic Bay in the Philippines, and the Gulf of Tonkin off North Vietnam, where the ship supported aircraft carriers. The ship had no enemy contact during this time, and departed for the U.S. on May 27, returned to port at Long Beach, California on June 6.
Ten days after returning, on June 16, Kerry was promoted to the rank of Lieutenant Junior Grade; on June 20, Kerry left the Gridley for special training at the Naval Amphibious Base in Coronado. After completing swift boat commander training on November 17, Kerry reported for duty at Coastal Squadron 1 of Coastal Division 14 at the Cam Ranh Bay in South Vietnam, arriving on December 1.
Kerry's second tour of duty as commander of a Swift Boat
During his first three and half weeks in Vietnam, Kerry led a Swift Boat Patrol Craft Fast-94, patrolling the coast on Swift Boat #44 until late January 1969. Here, Kerry led one of the boats that took part in the extremely dangerous Operation Sealord.
Operation Sealord was the brainchild of Admiral Elmo Zumwalt. Zumwalt's plan was to have swift boats aggressively patrol the narrow waterways — inlets, canals, and coves — of the Mekong River's delta in order to draw fire and smoke out hostile forces. During this time, Kerry commanded five soldiers in the raids on areas controlled by the National Front for the Liberation of Vietnam near the Cua Long River.
On December 2, 1968, his crew encountered Viet Cong forces on Cam Ranh Bay, and Kerry suffered a minor shrapnel wound in the left arm above the elbow from an enemy M-79 grenade. Dr. Louis Letson, who treated Kerry by removing the shrapnel and apply bacitracin dressing, remembers the incident because his crew told the medics that Kerry was "the next JFK from Massachusetts" and "would some day be president." For his combat injuries, Kerry was awarded his first Purple Heart and returned to duty soon afterward.
In late January, Kerry was transferred to Swift Boat #94. This boat had 18 missions in the next 48 days, almost all in the Mekong Delta.
Kerry lost five friends in war, including Yale classmate Richard Pershing, who was killed in action on February 17, 1968. The death had a devastating impact on Kerry.
Kerry earned a second Purple Heart when his left thigh was hit with shrapnel on the Bo De River on February 28, 1969. Again, Kerry was treated and returned to duty:
- "One of the mission's support helicopters had been hit by small-arms fire during the trip up the Bo De and the rest had returned with it to their base to refuel and get the damage inspected. While there the pilots found that they wouldn't be able to return to the Swifts for several more hours. "We therefore had a choice: to wait for what was not a confirmed return by the helos [and] give any snipers more time to set up an ambush for our exit or we could take a chance and exit immediately without any cover," Kerry recorded in his notebook. "We chose the latter."
- Just as they moved out onto the Cua Lon, at a junction known for unfriendliness in the past, kaboom! PCF-94 had taken a rocket-propelled grenade round off the port side, fired at them from the far left bank. Kerry felt a piece of hot shrapnel bore into his left leg. With blood running down the deck, the Swift managed to make an otherwise uneventful exit into the Gulf of Thailand, where they rendezvoused with a Coast Guard cutter. The injury Kerry suffered in that action earned his his second Purple Heart." [1]
Kerry still has shrapnel in his left thigh because doctors decided to removed damaged tissue and close the wound with sutures rather than make an wide opening to remove the shrapnel.
Only eight days later, on February 28, another incident occurred. This time, Kerry's boat was on a mission with three other boats to patrol a canal off the Bay Hap River. This dangerous waterway was surrounded by thick mangroves and was a Viet Cong stronghold. When Kerry heard that another swift boat had been ambushed near the Dong Cung River, the crew rushed to assist them. While moving, the boat was shot at by several Viet Cong B-40 rocket, with one hitting and shattered the crew cabin windows. Fred Short, the crewmember with the best view, said that he saw, "out of a spider hole, a Vietcong standing up, dressed in a loincloth, holding a B-40 rocket."
The normal procedure that would have usually have been done was to fire to shore and then flee. But Kerry ordered him Sandusky, the second-in-command and navigator, to take the boat ashore, directly into an ambush. Whether this was bravery, foolhardiness, or some combination of both is in dispute, but the facts are clear; once on land, a teenager in a loincloth jumped out of the bush, carrying a powerful grenade launcher that could have destroyed the boat. Only feet away from Kerry and the crew, forward gunner Tommy Belodeau shot the enemy in the leg with the the boat's M-60 machine gun. "Tommy in the pit tank winged him in the side of the legs as he was coming across," Short said. "But the guy didn't miss stride. I mean, he did not break stride." According to crewmate accounts, Belodeau's gun jammed after he fired, and while fellow crewmate Michael Medeiros attempted to fire, he was unable to do so.
Kerry, with Medeiros searched the soldier's corpse and took the rocket launcher, returning to the boat. Kerry's supervisors joked that they didn't know whether to court-martial him for beaching the boat without orders or give him a medal for saving the crew. They settled on the latter, and Kerry won the Silver Star.
This incident was a defining moment in Kerry's life; he does not usually talk about it in the media. In one of the very few quotes about what happened in the press, Kerry said that "It is a matter of record, what I did in Vietnam. And over the months that I was in combat, yes, we know that we were responsible for the loss of enemy lives. But that's war." Sources close to Kerry said the incident had a profound effect on Kerry:
- "It's the reason he gets so angry when his patriotism is challenged. It was a traumatic experience that's still with him, and he went through it for his country." It affects the way Kerry lives his life every day, the source said, since "he knows he very well would not be alive today had he not taken the life of another man [he] never ever met."[2]
Kerry even told his daughter Vanessa that the man he killed had fled; she did not find out the truth until she was an adult.
On March 13, Kerry's boat hit a mine as his position took heavy fire. His wounds included brusing and contusions from hitting the bulkhead, which was treated with warm soaking, and several shrapnel wounds in his left upper buttock, which was treated with a tetanus shot, topical lotion and an bandage. He spent two days out of service while recovering.
For his injury and rescuing Green Beret James Rassmann, Kerry was awarded a third Purple Heart and the Bronze Star with Valor Device.
Return from Vietnam
Kerry requested reassignment to the U.S. after having been wounded three times. He was entitled to an early departure from Vietnam, subject to approval by the Bureau of Naval Personnel, according to the regulations at that time, which provided that those who had been wounded three times, "regardless of the nature of the wound or treatment required...will not be ordered to serve in Vietnam and contiguous waters or to duty with ships or units which have been alerted for movement to that area."
On March 17, 1969, Commodore Charles Horne, the commander of Kerry's coastal squadron and a military administrator, filed a document requesting that Kerry, having been "thrice wounded in action while on duty in country Vietnam" be allowed to leave. "Reassignment is requested as a personal aide in Boston, New York, or Washington, D.C., area."
Kerry ended his tour of duty in Vietnam in early April, after 11 months in country. On April 11, he reported to the Brooklyn-based Atlantic Military Sea Transportation Service, where he would remain on active duty for one more year. On January 1, Kerry was promoted to full Lieutenant; on January 3, he requested discharge. After having been listed as completing his service on April 29, he officially left active duty on March 1.
In total, Kerry served on active duty for four years, from February 1966 until March 1970. He was transferred to the Naval Reserve in 1970, and was later transferred to the Standby Reserve in 1972, where he no longer was required to participate in Reserve activities. He received his honorable discharge in 1978.
Criticism
Critics have questioned Kerry's first Purple Heart, asserting that the injury was much too minor to merit a citation. They point out that the only treatment Kerry received was bacitracin and a bandage, and that he returned to service immediately.
Whether Kerry did in fact deserve his first Purple Heart is the subject of much debate and speculation. An article in the Boston Globe described the circumstances in which Purple Hearts were given to wounded soldiers in Vietnam:
- "'There were an awful lot of Purple Hearts — from shrapnel, some of those might have been M-40 grenades,' said George Elliott, Kerry's commanding officer. 'The Purple Hearts were coming down in boxes. Kerry, he had three Purple Hearts. None of them took him off duty. Not to belittle it, that was more the rule than the exception.' [3]
In Douglas Brinkley's book Tour of Duty: John Kerry and the Vietnam War, he mentions that Purple Hearts were given out frequently:
- "As generally understood, the Purple Heart is given to any U.S. citizen wounded in wartime service to the nation. Giving out Purple Hearts increased as the United States started sending Swifts up rivers. Sailors — no longer safe on aircraft carriers or battleships in the Gulf of Tonkin — were starting to bleed, a lot."
A hoax e-mail that claimed Kerry's service record was "wildy inflated" and "fishy" was analyzed by Snopes, a non-partisan urban legend reference website, and was found to be false [4].
John Kerry's former commander, Grant Hibbard, disputes Kerry's account of how he received his first Purple Heart. According to Hibbard, Kerry had intentionally exaggerated the source and extent of his injury. Because records also show that Hibbard gave Kerry a positive performance evaluation shortly after the incident, some have questioned Hibbard's motives. The Kerry campaign’s main reaction to Hibbard's charges was a public statement saying that Hibbard is politically motivated and question why Hibbard came out only now.
Hibbard is joined in his criticism of Kerry by approximately 200 other veterans calling themselves Swift Boat Veterans for Truth. Led by Roy Hoffmann, who commanded Kerry's unit in Vietnam, Hoffmann and SBVT claim that Kerry was a "loose cannon" and "grossly and knowingly distorted the conduct" of U.S. forces in his congressional testimony. They called on Kerry to release all of his military records, which he did. [5]
It was after receiving questions regarding the nature and extent of his wounds that in 2004, Kerry's Campaign staff released his military records. These show second citations for a Silver Star and a Bronze Star were issued by John F. Lehman, who was Secretary of the Navy eleven years after Kerry's service. Some news reports have indicated that parts of these released records were in summary form only (Kerry Doctor Issues Summary).
Though several people in the same unit with Kerry are part of SBVT, the men who served with Kerry on his boat regularly campaign with him. Drew Whitlow called that SBVT's claims "totally false." [6][7]
Leadership against the Vietnam War
As a member and spokesman for the Vietnam Veterans Against the War, Kerry spoke before the Senate Armed Services Committee. He testifed about VVAW's Winter Soldier Investigation, which took place from January 31 to February 2, 1971 in Detroit, Michigan. [8]
The medal-tossing incident
On April 23, John Kerry and other veterans threw their medals and ribbons over a fence at the Capitol building at Washington, D.C. in protest. The demonstration was intended to show that veterans thought the war was unjust. Later on, during Kerry's political career, this incident caused a firestorm of controversy.
Kerry threw his military ribbons over the fence along with the medals of two other veterans who asked him to throw them over the fence. The difference between "ribbons" and "medals" in the military is that while the former are the small colored bars that are worn on uniforms, the latter are larger ribbons with attached metal medallions that are only worn on special occasions.
On November 6, 1971, Kerry was being interviewed by a television station in Washington, D.C. where he said that he "gave back, I can't remember, six, seven, eight, nine medals."
The incident is controversial because it ultimately turned out that Sen. Kerry keeps a display of medals at his home. If these are his original medals, then this proves that what he threw over the Capitol fence in 1971 were not his medals. Over the years, political opponents of Kerry have seized upon this incident, saying it demonstrates that Kerry is untruthful. Kerry responds that he has always been clear about what happened:
- News accounts from the time say Kerry tossed a handful of ribbons over a fence, along with two medals that had been given to him by other veterans to throw back. Kerry himself has retold that story consistently over the years. Critics are questioning whether in a 1971 TV interview, he said he threw away his medals.
- "This is a phony controversy," he said Monday on ABC's Good Morning America. [9]
1971 Meeting of Vietnam Veterans Against the War (VVAW)
From November 12-15, 1971, a VVAW meeting was held in Kansas City, Missouri. The meeting is quite controversial because one activist suggested that the VVAW should assassinate politicians who were in favor of continuing the Vietnam War. The Boston Globe reported:
- "Senator Kerry does not remember attending the Kansas City meeting," Kerry spokesman Michael Meehan said in a statement to the Globe in response to written questions about the matter. "Kerry does not remember any discussions that you referred to," the statement added, referring to the assassination plot. (...)
- Kerry has long been portrayed as not being at the Kansas City, Mo., meeting because Kerry recalled quitting the organization at an acrimonious July 1971 session, four months before the November meeting at which the assassination plot was discussed. (...)
- The assassination plot was suggested by antiwar activist Scott Camil. Camil and Kerry knew each other well; the two were together during the April 1971 protests on the Mall in Washington. In a telephone interview from his Florida home, Camil confirmed historical reports that he had suggested a vague plot aimed at prowar senators, but he said he has no recollection of seeing Kerry at the meeting.
- "He had nothing to do with this," Camil said. "I don't remember seeing him there."
- Another person at the Kansas City session, Larry Rottmann, also said he does not remember seeing Kerry there. A third key player, Randy Barnes, who headed the Kansas City chapter that hosted the meeting, has been quoted in the media as saying Kerry was there. But in a telephone interview, Barnes said he may have confused that session with an earlier one in St. Louis and now is unsure whether Kerry attended the Kansas City function.
- "Quite honestly, I am not absolutely certain that John Kerry was at that meeting," Barnes said about the Kansas City session. "A meeting occurred in St. Louis and one occurred in Kansas City. I thought the Kansas City meeting was first."
- But Barnes said he now realizes that "the St. Louis meeting was first. What I had thought was a certain thing, I am absolutely not sure now."
- In any case, Barnes said, the plot suggested by Camil was never taken seriously and was quickly shouted down. As for Kerry, Barnes said, "John constantly gave an impassioned plea to be nonviolent, work within the system."
- Many members of the organization agreed with Barnes that Kerry sought to moderate the group and that he quit the organization in 1971 when he could not come to terms with some of the more radical members the group. [10]
Law practice and early political career
Law school, birth of daughters, and store opening
John Kerry entered Boston College Law School at Newton in September 1973, within days of the birth of his first daughter, Alexandra. He graduated in May 1976, the same year his second daughter, Vanessa, was born. That same yeat, he and his friend and business partner K. Dunn Gifford opened a small cookie and muffin shop in Boston's Quincy Market area, naming it "Kilvert & Forbes" after their mothers'. In 1982, then-Lieutenant Governor Kerry bought Gifford's shares and sold them to Stanley and Linda Klein; a few years later, he sold his own shares ro to the Kleins. The store still exists today as "Maggie's Sweets." The current owners, Carol Troxell and Sara Youngelson, supplied 1,000 gift bags of "John Kerry Chocolate Chip Cookies" made with his mother's original recipe to the Boston 2004 host committee for a DNC media walkthrough during the Democratic Convention at FleetCenter.
Law practice and first election
The Boston Globe wrote of Kerry's early political career:
- "By 1972, John F. Kerry was a national figure, but without roots in one place he could call home. For a young man with congressional ambitions, that was a handicap, one he would quickly compound.
- "The 28-year-old activist believed Congress was the logical extension of his activism to end the Vietnam War. He was ready to leave the streets to work within what some fellow protesters scorned as "the system."
- "His ambition tempered only by political naivete, Kerry tried on congressional districts like suits off the rack. In less than two months in early 1972, the antiwar leader called three different districts in Massachusetts home. To this day, he bears the brand of opportunist from that brazen district-hopping, which he acknowledges as part of his political 'baggage.' " [11]
Kerry ran for Congress in 1972 but did not win. This was a race for the Democratic Party primary to replace the pro-war Democrat Philip J. Philbin, who represented Massachusetts's third district. After failing to garner enough support, Kerry dropped out of the race and endorsed the Rev. Robert F. Drinan, a Jesuit priest and outspoken Vietnam War opponent. He later became Drinan's campaign manager.
In April, Kerry moved to Lowell to run for congress in the general election. During this campaign, Kerry's younger brother Cameron and campaign field director Thomas J. Vallely were arrested in connection with a break-in at their opponents' headquarters, which was in the same building as Kerry's own headquarters. The duo was arrested at 1:40 a.m. on September 18, the night before the primary, after having been found in a basement where telephone lines were located. After they were charged with "breaking and entering with the intent to commit grand larceny," the case was transferred to superior court, where it was dismissed about a year later.
Kerry's opponent at the time, state Rep. Anthony R. DiFruscia of Lawrence, claims that the break-in was a deliberate attempt to disrupt his get-out-the vote efforts. The Kerry campaigned maintained that they were only checking their own telephone lines because they had received an anonymous call warning they would be cut. The Boston Globe reported:
- To this day Kerry becomes animated talking about the episode, convinced it was part of a conspiracy against his insurgency. He said he does not know who was involved. He dismissed as ridiculous the charge that DiFruscia was a target. "He didn't figure in the race," said Kerry. (...)
- "It was an impulsive, rash thing that we did and that John Kerry ended up having to deal with," said Cam Kerry, now a partner at the Boston law firm of Mintz, Levin, Cohn, Ferris, Glovsky, and Popeo. "That's all we're going to say on that one."
- Vallely, a former Marine who served in Vietnam and later became a state representative in Boston, had more to say.
- "I kicked in the door," he said, and then, police swarmed the area. Vallely said DiFruscia's office was of no interest; the Kerry phone lines were. In hindsight, he said, "We probably were overreacting to someone who was joking."
- In the September primary, Kerry carried 18 of 22 towns, offsetting his fourth-place finish in Lowell and second-place finish in Lawrence, which together delivered half the Democratic vote. He buried the huge field with astounding tallies in outlying towns, where antiwar sentiment was strongest. In Carlisle he bagged 82 percent of the vote, in Lexington and Concord 72 percent and 78 percent, respectively.
- Overall, Kerry drew 20,771 votes, or 28 percent, 5,130 votes more than runner-up Paul J. Sheehy, a state representative from Lowell. DiFruscia ran a distant third. [12]
Kerry was the First Assistant District Attorney of Middlesex County, Massachusetts, from 1977 to 1979.
In 1979 he opened a private law practice, and in the fall of 1981 began his campaign for lieutenant governor of Massachusetts. During the campaign, he separated from his wife Julia, but it had no effect on the election; he won in November 1982, and served under Michael Dukakis until 1984. In January 1984, Kerry announced his decision to again run for Congress. This time he set his sights on the United States Senate, running as a Democrat to replace Paul Tsongas. In his campaign he promised to mix liberalism with tight budget controls. In the November election he won the seat, despite a nationwide landslide for the re-election of Republican president Ronald Reagan. In his acceptance speech, Kerry asserted that his win meant that the people of Massachusetts "emphatically reject the politics of selfishness and the notion that women must be treated as second-class citizens."
Meeting with Ortega
Shortly after taking office in 1985, Kerry and Senator Tom Harkin of Iowa traveled to Nicaragua, and met the Communist leader of the Sandanista National Liberation Front, Daniel Ortega. The visit prompted a storm of controversy at a time when Ronald Reagan and US foreign policy was decidedly anti-Soviet. Kerry and Ortega
Iran-Contra hearings
In April 1986, Kerry and Sen. Christopher Dodd, a Democrat from Connecticut, proposed that hearings be conducted by the Senate Foreign Relations Committee regarding charges of Contra involvement in cocaine and marijuana trafficking. Sen. Richard Lugar of Indiana, the Republican chairman of the committee, agreed to conduct the hearings.
Meanwhile, Kerry's staff began their own investigations, and on October 14 issued a report which exposed illegal activities on the part of Lt. Col. Oliver North, who set up a private network involving the National Security Council and the CIA to deliver military equipment to right-wing Nicaraguan rebels, who were. In effect, North and members of the White House were illegally funding and supplying armed militants without the authorization of Congress.
The network was thought to be involved with shipping cocaine and marijuana to the United States, with profits from their sales going to pay for more arms for the insurgents. The investigation, the report said, raised "serious questions about whether the United States has abided by the law in its handling of the contras over the past three years." The Kerry report generated a firestorm of controversy and led to years of investigations, hearings, and widely-seen television proceedings, known collectively as the Iran-Contra affair.
Kerry's inquiry eventually widened, expanding its focus from the Contras to U.S. involvement in Cuba, Haiti, the Bahamas, Panama, and Honduras. In 1989, he released a report that slammed the Reagan administration for neglecting and undermining anti-drug efforts while pursing other objectives in foreign policy. The report noted that the government "turned a blind eye" in the 1980s to the corruption and drug dealings of CIA-backed Panamanian dictator Manuel Noriega, who had assisted the Contras. The report concluded that the CIA and the State Department had known that "individuals who provided support for the contras were involved in drug trafficking...and elements of the contras themselves knowingly received financial and material assistance from drug traffickers." While some critics attacked him as being a "conspiracy theorist," the CIA inspector general released a pair of reports that confirmed Kerry's findings ten years later.
During the investigation of Noriega, Kerry's staff discovered that the Pakistan-based Bank of Credit and Commerce International (BCCI) had facilitated Noriega's drug trafficking and money laundering. This led to a separate inquiry into BCCI, and as a result, banking regulators shut down BCCI in 1991. In December 1992, Kerry and Sen. Hank Brown, a Republican from Colorado, released The BCCI Affair, a report on the BCCI scandal. The report showed that the bank was crooked and was working with terrorists, including Abu Nidal. It blasted the Department of Justice, the Department of the Treasury, the Customs Service, the Federal Reserve Bank, as well as influential lobbyists and the CIA.
One of the Bush administration figures criticized for his handling of BCCI was Robert Mueller who, as deputy attorney general, had dragged his heels on the investigation.
Political chairmanship and presidential nomination
Kerry was the chairman of the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee from 1987 to 1989, and was reelected to the Senate in 1990, 1996 (despite the candidacy of popular Republican ex-Gov. William Weld), and 2002. His current term will end on January 3 2009.
In 2003 and 2004, the Presidential campaign of John Kerry defeated Democratic rivals Sen. John Edwards (D-N.C.), ex-Vermont Gov. Howard Dean and retired Gen. Wesley K. Clark, all but clinching the Democratic nomination for Kerry. Kerry is running for President of the United States against incumbent George W. Bush. On July 6, 2004, he announced John Edwards as his running mate.
Committee assignments
In the Senate, Kerry serves several commmitees:
- Committee on Foreign Relations
- Committee on Commerce, Science and Transportation
- Committee on Finance.
Kerry was the chairman of the Committee on Small Business and Entrepreneurship from 2001 to 2003, but lost the position when Republicans gained control of the Senate. He remains the ranking member.
Kerry also serves on several Senate subcommittees:
- Subcommittee on Oceans, Fisheries and the Environment (ranking member)
- Subcommittee on East Asian and Pacific Affairs. (ranking member)
- Subcommittee on Communications
- Subcommittee on Transportation
- Subcommittee on Health Care
- Subcommittee on International Trade
- Subcommittee on Social Security and Family Policy
- Subcommittee on European Affairs
- Subcommittee on Western Hemisphere, Peace Corps & Narcotics Affairs
Issues and Voting Record
For information on Kerry's political views and voting record, see John Kerry presidential campaign, 2004.
Home Life and Interests
John Kerry is 6-feet 4-inches (1.94 meters) tall and has been called the "Lanky Yankee." His oldest friends and family call him Johnny. He speaks fluent French, having spent time in Switzerland and France with his family as a young man. He enjoys surfing, hockey, hunting, and playing the bass.
He has a yellow canary named Sunshine. His favorite food is chocolate chip cookies. His astrological sign is Sagittarius.
Kerry's favorite films are Giant and Casablanca. His favorite books are said to be James Bradley's Flags of Our Fathers and Stephen Ambrose's Undaunted Courage. While campaigning in 2003, he read Clyde Prestowitz's Rogue Nation, and Barbara Ehrenreich's Nickel and Dimed.
In 2003, John Kerry was diagnosed with and successfully treated for prostate cancer. By odd coincidence, Kerry's Massachusetts predecessor in the Senate, was Paul Tsongas who died of complications arising from cancer in January, 1997.
Kerry met once with famous musician John Lennon at an anti-war protest in the early 1970s. http://kerry.senate.gov/low/i/r0020.jpg
Family
Kerry was married to Julia Thorne in 1970, and they had two children together: Alexandra Kerry (b. 1973), who graduated in June 2004 from a film-school in the Los Angeles area, and Vanessa Kerry (b. 1976), a graduate of Phillips Academy like her grandfather, Yale University, and currently a student at Harvard Medical School. Vanessa has been active in her father's Presidential campaign.
Kerry and Thorne were separated in 1982 and divorced July 25, 1988. "After 14 years as a political wife," she wrote in A Change of Heart, her book about depression, "I associated politics only with anger, fear and loneliness." The marriage was formally annulled by the Roman Catholic Church in 1997. Thorne later married an architect named Richard Charlesworth, and moved to Bozeman, Montana, where she became active in local environmental groups such as the Greater Yellowstone Coalition.
Between his first and second marriages he dated actresses Morgan Fairchild and Catherine Oxenberg.
Kerry and Teresa Simões-Ferreira Heinz, the widow of Pennsylvania Sen. H. John Heinz III (R-Pa.) and formerly a United Nations translator, met at the UN-sponsored Earth Summit at Rio de Janeiro in 1992. They married on May 26, 1995, in Nantucket, Massachusetts. Teresa has three sons from her previous marriage: John Heinz Jr., André Heinz, and Christopher Heinz (b. ~1973).
Today, the combined net worth of the Kerry-Heinz fortune is estimated to be around $1 billion, making Kerry the wealthiest U.S. senator. Kerry is wealthy in his own name, and is the beneficiary of at least four trusts inherited from Forbes family members, including his mother, who died in 2002.
Kerry has a younger brother, Cameron Kerry, who is a litigator in Boston, and two sisters, Diane and Peggy.
External links and references
Official
Print media
- Klein, Joe, "The Long War of John Kerry: Can a Massachusetts Brahmin become President?," The New Yorker, December 2, 2002.
- Kranish, Michael, "John Kerry: Candidate in the making," Boston Globe, June 15, 2003.
- Gibbs, Nancy and Douglas Waller, "What Kind of President Would Kerry Be?," TIME Magazine, February 9, 2004.
Online media
- "John Kerry rated most liberal member of Senate." GovExec.com, February 27, 2004
- "Profile: John Kerry". BBC News. January 20, 2004.
- "Senator John Forbes Kerry". Project Vote Smart. 2002-2004.
- "Senate Elections, John Kerry (1997-2002)". OpenSecrets.org.
- John Kerry's "Winter Soldier" testimony to the Senate Committee on Foreign Relations in 1971. (PDF file)
- The BCCI Affair, A Report to the Committee on Foreign Relations, United States Senate, by Senator John Kerry and Senator Hank Brown, December 1992
- Kaplan, Fred, "John Kerry's Defense Defense - Setting his voting record straight." Slate, MSN. February 25, 2004.
Information
- Reitwiesner, William Addams, "The Ancestors of Sen. John Forbes Kerry".
- wikisource: Statement on behalf of Vietnam Veterans Against the War - April 1971.
- wikisource: John Kerry's letter to his parents about Richard Pershing's death - 1968
- John Kerry Campaign Organization Wiki
- Voting history for Senator John F. Kerry of Massachusetts in the 108th Congress
Further reading
- John F. Kerry: The Complete Biography, PublicAffairs, 2004 - 1-58648-273-4.
- Kerry, John and Vietnam Veterans Against the War, The New Soldier, MacMillan Publishing Company, 1971. ASIN 002073610X
- Thorne, Julia and Larry Rothstein, You Are Not Alone: Words of Experience and Hope for the Journey Through Depression, HarperCollins, 1993. ISBN 0060969776
- Kerry, John, The New War: The Web of Crime That Threatens America's Security, Simon & Schuster, 1997. ISBN 0684818159
- Smith, Gene, Until the Last Trumpet Sounds: The Life of General of the Armies John J. Pershing, John Wiley & Sons, 1999. ISBN 0471350648 (For information on Kerry's closest friends at Yale, class of 1966.)
- Kerry, John, A Call to Service: My Vision for a Better America, Viking Press, 2003. ISBN 0670032603
- Brinkley, Douglas, Tour of Duty: John Kerry and the Vietnam War, William Morrow & Company, 2004. ISBN 0060565233