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But Kerry's was only increasing. A few week's later, Kerry was featured in a lengthy segment on 60 Minutes. In a segment titled "First Hurrah" portrayed Kerry as an eloquent man of turmoil with a Kennedyesque future ahead of him. The interview was taped in a cabin on the shores of New Hampshire where Kerry was visiting his friend George Butler.
At the White House, the plotting against Kerry continued. "The concern about Kerry was that he had great credibility as a decorated Vietnam veteran," Colson said. Colson and his staff repeatedly tried to dig up dirt on Kerry. The effort failed. "I don't remember finding anything negative about Kerry or hearing anything negative about him. If we had of found anything, we would have used it to discredit him," Colson said in a 2003 interview.
Kerry began traveling around the country to carrying the antiwar flag. During Memorial Day weekend, he joined a throng of antiwar protesters on the green in Lexington, Massachusetts where he and hundreds of others were arrested. Kerry said that the arrest, for which he paid a $5.00 fine and spent the night at the Lexington Public Works garage, is the only arrest in his life. At the time, Kerry's wife, Julia, kept $100 under her pillow just in case she needed to bail out her husband on short notice.
The White House decided to find a better way to go after Kerry. Colson had seen a press conference featuring a young navy veteran O'Neill who served in the same swift boat division as Kerry shortly after Kerry left Vietnam. O'Neill was outraged at Kerry's claim of U.S atrocities. In short order O'Neill became the centerpiece of the Nixon White House plot to undermine Kerry.
On June 15, Colson, who grew up in Winthrop Mass., wrote another White House aide: "I think we have Kerry on the run, he is beginning to take a tremendous beating in the media, but let's not let up on him, let's destroy this young demagogue before he becomes another Ralph Nadar. Let's try to move through as many sources as we can, the fact that he has refused to debate, even though he agreed to do so and announced to the press he would.
Nixon aides wanted to buck up O'Neill for what they believed would be a drawn out fight with Kerry. O'Neill was invited to the White House for a personal meeting with Nixon. The two bonded in what was suppose to be a brief grip and grin that turned into a hour long meeting. On June 30, the much anticipated debate took place. Kerry appeared with O'Neill on the Dick Cavett show. At 6ft 4in Kerry towered over Cavett and O'Neill. With his thick dark hair, and dark blue suit, and his lean features, he cut a striking figure.
O'Neill came out mad and swinging. Visibly angry from the start. O'Neill used words seemingly intended to taunt Kerry. O'Neill said: "Mr. Kerry is the type of person who lives and survives only on war-weariness and fears of the American people! This is the same little man who on nationwide April spoke of crimes committed on day to day basis, with full awareness of officers at the levels of command! Who in May said war crimes in Vietnam are the rule not the exception!"
Where O'Neill was red hot mad, Kerry sought to look calm and intellectual, toting a hefty briefing book. Kerry said: "The veterans weren't to tear down the country, but instead wanted to say to the country: Here is where we went wrong, we got to change.What we say is, the killing can stop tomorrow. On the question of war crimes, it is really only with the utmost consideration that we pose these question. I don't think that any man comes back to say he raped, or to say he burned down a village, or to say he wantonly destroyed crops or something with pleasure. I think he does it at the risk of certain kinds of punishment, at the risk of injuring his own character, which he has to live with, at the risk of the loss of family and friends as a result of it, But he does it because he believes intensely that people have got to be educated about the devastation of this war. We thought we were a moral country, yes, but we are now engaged in the most rampant bombing in the history of mankind.
O'Neill became disillusioned with politics and government after the fall of Saigon in 1975. But he still harbors resentment at Kerry to this very day.
Some say that as quickly as Kerry's star had risen it began to fade. When Kerry with the families of some prisoners of war, they were all heckled by four women whose husbands were also POW's. "You're stupid, Kerry is using you to run for office," one of the women said in a exchange recounted by columnist Mary McGory in July 1971.
Moreover Nixon had gotten the message, and he launched an all out effort to assure the American public the war was winding down. As Kerry traveled across the country, he found that even some college audience's were not paying attention. An Oct.9,1971 story in the National Observer said Kerry's college tour was "dogged by apathy", By Dec.17,1971, Kerry himself said that Nixon "has been very successful in quelling the emotions against this war in this country. He has convinced alot of people that he was ending it."
Some of the VVAW leaders started viewing Kerry as a power grabbing elitist, a source of internal friction within the movement. Butler said "there was no question but the rift existed. A wing of the VVAW were pushing so hard left that they almost Maoist. Everytime John did something useful like raise money or speak in front of the Foreign Relations Committee or give an interview he was criticized for being a media whiz." Camil the veteran who worked close with Kerry, said Kerry "was not as radical as some of the rest of us. He was pretty straight shooter, and he came under criticism for tings that weren't fair"
So five months after assuming leadership role in the VVAW, Kerry quit. He redirected his energy toward helping organize a new group that focused on veterans benefits, but remained a vocal antiwar leader. Then even before the Watergate scandal, called for the impeachment of Nixon. That got the president's attention. Some members of the antiwar movement began to suspect with good cause that the leadership had been infiltrated with spies by the Nixon administration. Kerry himself suspected the CIA or FBI was at work. Even though Kerry had left a leadership position in the VVAW, he was still one of the most visible antiwar leader.
For example, on April 22,1972, one year after delivering the Senate testimony, Kerry appeared at a New York City rally with former Beatle John Lennon before a crowd of 20,000 people, including several dozen bus loads from Boston. Like Kerry, Lennon had become a leading figure in the antiwar movement, returning his Order of his British Empire award in protest of Britain's support for U.S. policy in Vietnam. Now Lennon led a swaying crowd in Bryant Park in his antiwar theme "All we are saying...is give peace a chance." When it's Kerry's turn to address the crowd he used the opportunity not only as a chance to call for a pullout in Vietnam but also for the removal of Nixon in the White House. Kerry's friend Butler snapped a photo of Lennon and Kerry, which the senator has long treasured as one of his favorite photos.
The event was one of several that set off a new round of paranoia in the White House. Nixon who had established a "plumbers unit" to stop leaks such as Pentagon papers, was concerned that his Democratic opponent George McGovern was in cahoots with the VVAW.
On June 17,1972 five men broke into the Watergate headquarters of the DNC. The men were later revealed to have connections to the Nixon administration. There have been many explanations for the breaking in, which eventually led to Nixon's resignation, but one of the excuses was given at the time was the government was investigating wether the DNC was working with VVAW in some kind of plot against the RNC. James McCord, one of the Watergate burglars later testified "I felt the Watergate operation might produce some leads in answering some of the questions, and I had been advised that the operation had the saction of the White House."
The later led some to wonder wether the burglars were looking for material on Kerry, who had led the VVAW and was gearing up to run for Congress. Now that the antiwar movement has transformed him into a national figure, Kerry revived his desire to run for the the U.S. House from Mass. As a war protester he learned how to campaign, raise money, how to organize, how to attract the media, even how to debate on national TV. He had battled Vietcong, the Nixon White House, and the left wing antiwar movement. Now all he had to do was declare victory at the polls by appealing to the mostly working class voters of Boston.
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