By Phillip Jennings

President Obama said this week in Laos that sometimes Americans “feel lazy and think we’re so big we don’t have to really know anything about other people.” [1. http://www.nytimes.com/2016/09/07/world/asia/obama-laos-bombs-war.html?_r=0] He then addressed America’s “secret war” in that country, and proved what he didn’t know. What went on in Laos was hardly a secret, and was not much of a war either, except for those of us who fought it.

When President Dwight D. Eisenhower met President-elect John F. Kennedy in the Oval Office prior to passing the reigns of the presidency, he warned the young Prince of the dangers of war in Southeast Asia. In Laos to be exact. Over first months of the tragically short Kennedy administration, the communists – Soviet, Chinese and North Vietnamese -- kept their aggressive pressure on the small nation as only communists seem able to do; through killings, kidnappings, thievery and rabid control of all aspects of life.

Kennedy sent U.S. Marines to the southern border of Laos, with a warning to the communists to get out and stay out. The bluff worked, and in July 1962 fourteen nations signed another in a long line of Geneva accords, this one guaranteeing Laotian neutrality. The buck was passed to South Vietnam to become the whipping boy for communist aggression in Indochina.

Kennedy, meanwhile, made a rookie mistake which haunted and inhibited America’s commitment to keep Ho Chi Minh’s brutal troops out of Saigon over the next decade; he ceded the eastern third of “neutral” Laos to the communists. And that strip of jungle and Annamite foothills became the Ho Chi Minh Trail. The trail – actually a superhighway -- was built using Laotian slave labor to wage war in South Vietnam. The locals were under constant attack from tens of thousands of North Vietnamese regulars.

After North Vietnamese troops moved into Laos, the Marine helicopters in northern Thailand mysteriously lost their MARINES markings and ended up being flown by civilian (mostly former Marine) pilots in what would become part of a company known as Air America. And in late 1967, I became one of those former Marine pilots who flew the former Marine helicopters in and around Laos for the next three years.

The war in the countryside was brutal, but small and mostly contained. The Americans who trained and led the anti-communist troops were among the gutsiest our country has ever produced. There was less than a thousand of them in-country at any one time. They were primarily CIA (we called them customers) and U.S. Army. They worked alone in the country- side, depending on the locals for everything but air support, which was aptly supplied by Air America, the U.S. Air Force Ravens, and the sometimes available American fighters and bombers for close air support when things got really dicey. This small band of warriors and their local counterparts kept Laos from being overrun by the North Vietnamese divisions until South Vietnam fell and Laos became a domino.

It was tragic that the Laotians were caught in the middle of the North Vietnamese invasion of South Vietnam. But it is not dismissing the tragedy to point out that the overwhelming majority of American bombs fell on unpopulated areas along the Ho Chi Minh Trail. Most of the Laotian population live in the lowlands, and near the Mekong River which was the western border for much of the country. The cities of Houi Sai, Luang Prabang (the Royal Capital), Vientiane, Savannakhet, and to the far south, Pakse, were never bombed, and lay as peacefully in the Indochinese sun when the Americans left as when they had arrived.

Good Soldier Obama rightly commented that the U.S. has a moral obligation to continue, and in fact intensify, the efforts to find and defuse/destroy the unexploded ordnance scattered mostly over the eastern one-third of Laos. This is a noble and necessary effort the Americans who fought there, and most Americans at large, would whole-heartedly support.

Obama did not mention the greater moral obligation the Americans have to the remaining Huang/Meo people who gave up a large percentage of their population fighting the communists in Laos on our behalf, led primarily by the great Lao general, Vang Pao. When the Democrat U.S. congress abandoned the South Vietnamese in 1973, they also abandoned our friends and allies in Laos. The communists then slaughtered, bombed, gassed and exiled them from their native lands. It is to our shame for betraying our friends and allies. I would not have expected Obama to bring this up while he was kow-towing to the existing Laotian communist government, and he met my low expectations.

Yes, there was a war in Laos (I was shot down more than once) and the Laotian and American deaths at the hands of the communists were tragic and often extremely brutal. Was it a secret? Absolutely, unless you read The Bangkok Post, The New York Times, or any one of dozens of newspapers and magazines constantly reporting on the war in Laos. I myself was interviewed for articles in Time and the Wall Street Journal while I was “under cover.”

We fought the good fight in Laos. A small, neutral country was being invaded, and we were providing the barest of support. We were enforcing a Geneva Convention mandate, and worked with the indigenous people who carried the brunt of the fighting, and the casualties. Given what we had, we did a respectable job.

The left at the time could find nothing to protest in what we were doing, but they did anyway. Leftists have an innate desire to blame America for all the world’s evils. It was obvious to me, hearing our President speak about Laos, that he was one of the people who hadn’t taken the time to learn about our history and sacrifice in that very gracious and beautiful land. His speech inferred that the United States inflicted massive airstrikes and ruined cities. He expressed regret about the brutality of bombing a peaceful country. He used all the old clichés and leftist tropes (e.g., more bombs than on Europe in World War Two). He all but apologized for our attempt to defend Laos from the communists. And if he knew the first thing about the war we actually fought, he kept it a secret.

Phillip Jennings is an investment banker and entrepreneur, former United States Marine Corps pilot in Vietnam and Air America pilot in Laos. He was also an agent for the Central Intelligence Agency in Central and South America. He is the author of two novels and one best-selling non-fiction book, and received the Pirates Alley Faulkner Prize for fiction in 1999.

by Col. Andrew Finlayson, VVFH Founding Member

In the late 1950’s and early 1960’s, there were seven ongoing communist insurgencies in SE Asia - Vietnam, Laos, Cambodia, Thailand, Malaysia, Indonesia, and the Philippines all had active communist insurgencies. Three of those insurgencies were successful in 1975 (Vietnam, Laos, and Cambodia). When one considers the question of whether or not the successful communist insurgencies lived up to the promises they made to their respective populations to provide peace, social justice and economic well-being, it is instructive to look at the records of those seven countries with communist insurgencies and see how they fared over the past 40 years.

Peace

Many in the West thought that once the communists came to power and all of the US and allied forces left Vietnam, a new era of peace and harmony would exist. At least that is what the communists promised. Unfortunately, it was not to be. The communist government of the united Vietnam fought two wars with their neighbors, China and Cambodia, and tensions still persist with China over the East China Sea. A little known fact that is often overlooked by some in the West is more SE Asians died in war and the results of war in the 14 years after the last American left Vietnam than during the years when US forces were in South Vietnam. Although exact figures for the number of SE Asians who died after the communist victories in Vietnam, Laos and Cambodia vary, even the conservative estimates are mind-boggling. There were 65,000 executions in Vietnam between 1975 and 1982 (Desbarats and Jackson, “The Cruel Peace,” Washington Quarterly, Fall 1985: also US Dept. of State Bulletin, Sept. 1985). The UN High Commissioner on Refugees estimated that 250,000 people fleeing Vietnam by boat died at sea. Another 165,000 died in Vietnam’s infamous “re-education camps” (Desbarats, Jacqueline. “Repression in the Socialist Republic of Vietnam: Executions and Population Relocation,” The Vietnam Debate, 1990).

According to Lt. Gen. Le Kha Phieu, the commander of Vietnamese forces in Cambodia, the Vietnamese military suffered 55,000 deaths between 1978 and when the Vietnamese ended their occupation of Cambodia (Reaves, Joseph. “Vietnam Reveals Cambodian Death Toll,” Chicago Tribune, July 1, 1988). There are no accurate figures for the number of Cambodian deaths suffered in the war, but it is safe to assume they suffered heavier casualties than the Vietnamese.

Although the claims of the Vietnamese and Chinese differ widely on the casualties produced by their 1979 war, a conservative estimate provides a range of Chinese military deaths at 7,000 to 26,000 and approximately 30,000 Vietnamese military deaths, with an additional 100,000 Vietnamese civilian deaths (Zhang Xiaoming, “China’s 1979 War with Vietnam,” China Quarterly, No. 184, December 2005, pp. 851-874). The Communist Lao government continues to this day to inflict casualties on the Hmong minority in that country with the figure of 100,000 killed since 1975 (Rummel, Rudolph. Statistics of Democide, University of Hawaii; also, “Forced and Forgotten” Lawyers’ Committee on Human Rights, 1989, p. 8). And, according to the Yale Genocide Program, the communist party in Cambodia killed approximately 1.7 million of that country’s citizens when it came to power, one of the most horrific genocidal crimes ever committed.

By James D. McLeroy

After the 1954 partition of Vietnam into a Communist north and an anti-Communist south, approximately 100,000 South Vietnamese Communists moved north to the Democratic Republic of Viet Nam (DRV). About 80,000 of them were Viet Minh veterans of the First Indochina War against the French, and an estimated 10,000 of those were Montagnards. Between 5,000 and 10,000 other Communist Viet Minh combat veterans were ordered to remain in remote areas of the Republic of Viet Nam (South Vietnam), carefully bury their weapons and radios, and wait quietly for future orders from the DRV.

Many of the South Vietnamese “regroupees” in the DRV became regular soldiers in the 338th NVA Division stationed at Xuan Mai near Hanoi. Some 4,500 other regroupees were trained to infiltrate South Vietnam as covert military and political cadre. Their mission was to organize Communist Viet Minh veterans in guerrilla platoons and companies. Other regroupees were trained as agitation-propaganda (agitprop) teams. Their mission was to recruit disaffected South Vietnamese civilians, indoctrinate them in Leninist ideology, and organize them in covert intelligence and logistical networks to support the guerrilla forces.

In 1957, the Communist Viet Minh veterans who remained in South Vietnam were ordered to initiate a terror campaign in rural areas to destabilize the local governments and organize shadow Communist governments. They did so by intimidating, kidnapping, torturing, and assassinating thousands of village leaders, influential individuals, and their families. The South Vietnamese government called the South Vietnamese Communists Viet Cong (VC).

When NVA Transportation Group 559 began work on the Ho Chi Minh Trail network in May, 1957, 12,000 NVA troops were already in Laos to shield and protect them. The first stage of the Trail was completed in October, 1959, and by the end of 1960, some 3,500 NVA regroupee troops had infiltrated South Vietnam. In May, 1961 500 senior and mid-level NVA regroupee officers left for South Vietnam on the Ho Chi Minh Trail. The next month, 400 NVA regroupee officers and sergeants followed them.

This is the Congressional testimony of a Jesuit Priest who lived in Vietnam for nineteen years and remained after the communist takeover for fifteen months. Judge for yourself whether the communist takeover was good for the people who were unable to escape.

HEARINGS BEFORE THE SUBCOMMITTEE ON INTERNATIONAL ORGANIZATIONS OF THE COMMITTEE ON INTERNATIONAL RELATIONS HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES NINETY-FIFTH CONGEESS FIRST SESSION JUNE 16, 21, AND JULY 26, 1977

STATEMENT OP REV. ANDRE GELINAS, JESUIT PRIEST, PAR EASTERN PROVINCE OE THE JESUIT ORDER

Father Gelinas. First, a word of introduction on my sources of information for the facts that I am about to describe.

I am a Canadian, a Jesuit Priest, as has already been stated. I came to Vietnam in 1957 as a professor of Chinese history at the University of Saigon. Starting in 1963, and for 13 years without interruption, I was on the staff of the Alexander-de-Rhodes Student Center, which has been for all these years the largest and most influential center of activities for Vietnamese University students.

After the Communist takeover, I stayed on at the center for 15 more months, moving around freely within the borders of Gia Dinh Province. My information on conditions outside of Gia Dinh Province comes from these hundreds of Vietnamese students and families that I dealt with daily.

I might add here that most of these were Buddhists and Confucians, only one-third being Christians.

Now, the facts. Let me start with the most obvious, the expected: the complete suppression of the freedom of speech, press, and information. Before the Communist victory. South Vietnam published 27 daily newspapers, 22 in Vietnamese, 3 in Chinese, 1 in French, and 1 in English. It also produced some 200 scholarly journals, scholarly, technical, or literary, and a number of popular magazines. It had three TV channels and some 2 dozen radio stations.

In May 1975, every single one of these newspapers, serials, and stations were suppressed. Back issues of magazines, books, records, and cassettes were confiscated from homes and from libraries and burned in the streets in huge bonfires. From then on, our only source of in-formation was one TV channel owned by the Government, on the air for 2 hours only, from 7:30 to 9:30, and concerned exclusively with propaganda.

Also, two radio stations and three dailies providing the same propaganda, the same editorials, and the same selection of biased news items dictated by the unique party-controlled news agency.

No one was allowed to listen to short-wave radio, and any person aware of this crime in his neighborhood and failing to report it could be deported to the work camps with his entire family.

It was also the duty of every citizen to report ali private conversations deemed contrary to the spirit of the revolution. I hurry to add, however, that at least in Saigon this often repeated threat failed to curb the curiosity of the people. News items from the daily bulletins of the BBC and of the VOA were eagerly sought after, and spread through the population like brushfire.

Another basic human right which has been wiped out by the Communist victor is the freedom of movement. Without a special pass from the police, no one is allowed to go from place to place, not even to the next village or suburb. These official passes are not always easy to obtain, and often they can be had only through bribery.

It goes without saying that permission to travel abroad is restricted to official envoys of the Government. Thousands of Vietnamese Americans can testify to this who are hopelessly separated from their wives, children, and parents.

Another basic right ignored in Vietnam is the right for a court of law, or at least for a hearing before condemnation. Some 300,000 men have been imprisoned in reeducation camps for over 2 years now, and not one of them has ever been judged, condemned, or even accused of any. crime.

In Saigon, someone disappears nearly every day, and note that I am not talking on hearsay. Many of my friends have seen their daughter, their son, their husband fail to come home for supper. After frustrating inquiries from one police station to another, they were invariably told that if they want to stay out of trouble, they should mind their own business, or that the police does not know where this person is, but if he or she was not a criminal, he would surely be home by now.

Arrests are usually made in one of the following four ways, all of which I have personally witnessed. First, the person is called to report to the police station, and is never heard of since. Many priests have disappeared in this way. Second, the person is quietly kidnaped by the police patrol car while walking back home on the street or walking to work or walking to the market. This seems the most often-used method.

To list only the big names, Father Minh, Father Loc, Father Thanh were arrested in this way.

Third, the house is raided, usually at dawn. All the occupants are ordered out, and a search conducted without witness by a swarm of troops invariably produces some damning evidence, guns, documents, U.S. dollars, and so on.

Fourth, the house is searched at night, and the person is carried away during curfew hours. It is impossible to know how many persons are presently in jail. All I know is that all jails are crowded, that at least two large new ones have been built near Saigon, and that almost all U.S. BOQ's and BEQ's are now used as houses of detention, as many as 26 persons occupying the average GI single bedroom. I know this from the report of prisoners who have come back to tell me.

Now, not everyone is sent to jail, and only men with a high school education are kept in reeducation camps, but every single South Vietnamese, young or old, man or woman, is submitted to the triweekly sessions of political brainwashing, which often drag on from 7 o'clock to midnight. Everyone has to show his contrition for past crimes, his hatred for Americans who, among other crimes, used to cook and eat Vietnamese babies, so it is said, and his love for the Marxist-Leninist society.

Everyone is threatened with deportation to the work camps if he does not join in the campaign of denunciation against his neighbor, if he clings too hard to religious convictions or if, in any way, he fails to cooperate fully with the new regime. The right to one's own convictions is another one that has been banished from Communist Vietnam.

The list could go on and on, but I think my time is over, and I may say more under the questions.

By James D. McLeroy

The first step in the North Vietnamese Politburo's grand strategy for the conquest of South Vietnam was its May, 1959 order to the Ministry of Defense to begin construction of the Truong Son Strategic Supply Route, later known as the Ho Chi Minh Trail. The Ministry of Defense gave the task to its Rear Services Directorate, which assigned it to the 559th Transportation Group. The Group was designated 559 for the date of its creation in the fifth month of 1959.

The complex transportation network built with enormous difficulty through the jungles and mountains of eastern Laos and Cambodia was one of the greatest feats of military engineering of the 20th Century. Aided by Russian and Chinese advisors, NVA engineers began to improve, expand, and lengthen animal trails, Montagnard paths, and stream beds through the Truong Son range.

River fords were hidden by underwater bridges. Roads and paths were wound around trees to enhance their concealment from the air. Open areas in the jungle canopy were camouflaged by interlacing tree tops or connecting them with trellises interwoven with living plants and vines.  The result was an interconnected, 12,000-mile network of roads, paths, bridges, bypasses, tunnels, caves, and pipelines.

Its widest east-west axis was about thirty miles, and its north-south axis from North Vietnam to the South Vietnamese delta was approximately 3,500 miles. It was vital for the supply of war material and replacement troops to the Communist Viet Cong (VC) and North Vietnamese Army (NVA) forces in South Vietnam. Because of its strategic importance the NVA eventually made eastern Laos and Cambodia virtual extensions of North Vietnam.

After traversing three mountain passes from North Vietnam into Laos, the Trail was divided into eleven regions, five large base areas, five main roads, twenty-nine branch roads, and numerous, frequently changed shortcuts and bypasses. In addition to sanctuary bases for VC and NVA troop units recovering from or preparing for combat in South Vietnam, fifteen large logistics headquarters called binh trams were spaced along the Trail.

Adopted from Roger Canfield’s Comrades in Arms: How the Americong Won the War in Vietnam Against the Common Enemy—America.
SAM ANSON
24-year-old Robert Sam Anson, a Time Magazine reporter who arrived in Vietnam in early 1970 was an experienced war protester who already believed the war was colonial, immoral, illegal and unwinnable.[1. Robert Sam Anson, War News, New York: Simon and Schuster, 1989, 26, 40, 69]

Upon release by North Vietnamese Anson said, “They weren’t…my enemy. I never considered the people of Vietnam or Cambodia or Laos to be my enemy. I believed in peace...and so they treated me like a friend. …We really got to be brothers.” Press conference after a recording over Radio Hanoi.[2. Robert Sam Anson, War News, New York: Simon and Schuster, 1989, 280-1, 283-5.]

FRED BRANFMAN
Fred Branfman head of Project Air War, along with Howard Zinn and Tom Hayden, visited Hanoi. On November 12, 1972 he “We hope the war will end soon…if the war continues we hope you will grow up and become valiant combatants and will be able to down U.S. planes.”[3. “Antiwar Delegation Visits Northern Region of DRV,” Hanoi Domestic Service, 0430 GMT, November 4, 1972, 10, TTU Archive cited in Rothrock 172n32, 472.] He authored “Air War the New Totalitarians.”[4. FBI, Denver, Memo, “VVAW National Steering Committee Meeting, Denver, Colorado, February 18-21, Internal Security-new Left,” March 17, 1972, 58-59.]

Branfman later said, “I was naïve and wrong in my belief that [the Communists] would usher in a better world. Communism is obviously no better than capitalism. But I certainly have no regrets that I tried to stop the bombing.”[5. Fred Branfman, “What would it be like to hide in a cave day after day for five years?” Christian G. Appy, Patriots: The Vietnam War Remembered From All Sides, New York: Penguin Books, 2003, 219.]

RENNIE DAVIS
Rennie Davis, planner of the disruption of democratic convention[6. Davis-Hayden Paper: Plans for the Protest in Chicago, http://www.dhr.history.vt.edu/modules/eu/mod05_1968/pdfs/25.pdf], said, “Chicago was really conceived coming out of Vietnam." The Davis and Tom Hayden plan of March 23, 1968 described, “imperialistic role of the United States in the world.” Anti-War Union, a Rennie Davis organization,[7. FBI, Washington Field to Acting Director, VVAW-IS, TELETYPE, June 27, 1972.] met the North Vietnamese in Paris where “The Vietnamese...stated they would be interested in having any information…concerning development of new weapons by the US.... Such information would be especially helpful…before such weapons were used on the battlefield.”[8. FBI, FOIA, Weather Underground, p. 28 or 361 C]

RON DELLUMS
Rep. Ron Dellums (D-Berkeley) authored a joint resolution on the “terrible realities of war atrocities as an integral component of our illegal, insane and immoral adventurism in Southeast Asia.”[9. National Veterans Inquiry on U.S. War Crimes in Vietnam, Washington D.C., Congressional Record, March 1, 1971, 4238.] On October 18, 1971, Radio Hanoi lauded Dellums and others for protests “condemning the Vietnam war as immoral.”[10. “Commentary Applauds U.S. Antiwar Fall Offensive: The American People Warn the Nixon Administration,” Hanoi Domestic service in Vietnamese 1430 18 Oct 71, cited in Rothrock, Divided… 292-3n75]

BERNARDINE DOHRN
“We understood the reason the Vietnamese called the meeting was to get us moving against the war again. The Viet Cong was giving us a kick in the ass….” Bernardine Dohrn appreciated Ba’s advice, “look for the one who fights hardest against the cops.” Now the “only way we’re going to build a fighting force is if we become one ourselves.”[11. Bernardine Dohrn, notes, captured at a Chicago bomb factory cited in FBI, FOIA, Weather Underground. The primary source is Acting SAC Chicago to Director, memo, “Foreign Influence-Weather Underground Organization,” August 20, 1976, 106; See also: AP, “Chicago Officials Drop Charge in ‘Bomb Factory,” New York Times, June 17, 1970.] Havana 1969

At Kent State on April 28, 1969, Dohrn told Kent students to arm for revolution.[12. Alan Stang, “Kent State,” American Opinion, June 1974, 2,4,10.]

The August 23, 1969 issue of New Left Notes, Dohrn, Ayers and others wrote, their National Action is “a movement that allies with and proposed material aid to the people of Vietnam. …Its primary task the establishment of another front in the international class war –not only to defeat the imperialists in Vietnam but to BRING THE WAR HOME! [13. Kathy Boudin, Bernardine Dohrn, Terry Robbins, “Bringing the War Back Home,” cited in FBI, FOIA, Weather Underground. The primary source is Acting SAC Chicago to Director, memo, “Foreign Influence-Weather Underground Organization,” August 20, 1976, 111-113.]

Travels with Bernardine. In 1967 Bernardine Dohrn[14. Kirkpatrick Sale, SDS, 357] attended a celebration in Moscow of the fiftieth anniversary of the Bolshevik Revolution.[15. New Left Notes, July 10, 1967: 8; Sale, SDS, 348-9.] In August 1968 Bernardine Dohrn attended a conference on “Anti-Imperialists and Anti-Capitalist Struggle” in communist Ljubljana, Yugoslavia, well attended by proclaimed communist members of SDS including. In 1969 in Cuba Vietnamese given her a ring of comradeship made from the debris of an American aircraft. [16. Sale, SDS, 316; Swinney talk at University of Wisconsin, Madison, October 29, 1968; cited in FBI, FOIA, Weather Underground. The primary source is Acting SAC Chicago to Director, memo, “Foreign Influence-Weather Underground Organization,” August 20, 1976, 93.] In March 1969 in Austin, Texas Dohrn and Bergman “star-chambered” Carl Oglesby for rejecting Marxist-Leninism and cavorting with the neo-imperialist camp. [17. Carl Oglesby, Ravens in the Storm: A Personal History of the 1970s Antiwar Movement, New York: Scribner, 2008, 215.] In Budapest she talks with five NLF members. Two NLF told her they worked with American GIs in Saigon—“attempting to obtain information.” Military intelligence. Vernon Grizzard said, “North Vietnamese give no directions… but were pleased and interested in ‘our’ plans.”[18. “US War Foes Meet with Hanoi Group,” Washington Post, September 21, 1968 cited in FBI, FOIA, Weather Underground. The primary source is Acting SAC Chicago to Director, memo, “Foreign Influence-Weather Underground Organization,” August 20, 1976, 269; “Declassified U.S. Government intelligence information regarding the communist and foreign connections of the Weather Underground. Presented as evidence, on the agreement of the prosecution and defense counsel, in the trial of W. Mark Felt and Edward S, Miller,” 2 at www.usasurvival.org.] A German SDS conference Dohrn and comrades were demonstrating international solidarity not only on Vietnam, but also anti-imperialism and anti-capitalism.[19. Martin Klimke, The Other Alliance: Student Protest in West Germany & the United States in the Global Sixties, Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2010, 3-5, 8.]

Bernardine Dohrn Notes of July 13-15, 1969 outline Viet Cong concerns about GI’s, their motivation, morale and involvement in antiwar movement and the objective of “work w/GIs” to “weaken the enemy.” (U.S. forces).[20. 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, 145-146.] U.S. troops were not very good: they were “not trained for close-in fighting,” and “140,000 U.S. troops (were) wiped out.”

At a Flint Michigan “War Conference” about the Charles “Manson family” who butchered the pregnant actress Sharon Tate, her unborn child and her houseguests, Dohrn said, “Dig it. First they killed those pigs, then they ate dinner in the same room with them, then they even shoved a fork into a victim’s stomach. Wild.”[21. “Weatherman Goes for Weapons,” Combat: a National Review inc. publication, Vol. 2, No. 3, February 1, 1970 Lawrence V. Cott, editor.] Mark Rudd who was there says a four-finger fork salute became a Weather trademark.[22. Mark Rudd, Underground: My Life With the SDS and the Weathermen, New York: Harper Collins, 2009, 189.] At a secret leadership meeting in Flint, “Part of armed struggle, as Dohrn and others laid it down, is terrorism. Political assassination… and… violence…were put forward as legitimate forms of armed struggle.”[23. Liberation News Service cited in “The Weather Underground Organization,” Information Digest, Vol. XIV, #22, November 13, 1981, 340.]

Larry Grathwohl testified before the Senate that Bill Ayers said Dohrn had to “plan, develop and carryout the bombing of the police station in San Francisco (all by herself) and he [Ayers] specifically named her as the person committing the act.” Matthew Landy Steen and Karen Latimer attended two meetings in which the bombing of the Park Station was planned. Dohrn was the ringleader. Howard Machtinger was the bomb builder. Latimer had herself cased the police station and handled the bomb,[24. Peter Jamison, “Time Bomb: Weather Underground leaders claimed their bombings were devised to avoid bloodshed. But FBI agents suspect the radical ‘70s group killed a S.F. cop in the name of revolution,” SF Weekly, September 16, 2009.]

DANIEL ELLSBERG
“We weren't on the wrong side. We are the wrong side.”[25. Daniel Ellsberg, Hearts and Minds (1974), a documentary of the Vietnam War.]

RICHARD FALKAdopting the Hanoi view Richard Falk said, “We urge…the end of combat operations by a date certain prior to June 1, 1972... [There is] no other way to secure prisoner release.”[26. Richard Falk to Dear friends, COLIFAM, January 17, 1972. ] Ending US air and naval power and stopping all aid to Saigon.[27. Richard Falk, “Mr. Nixon and the Prisoner Smoke screen, New York Times, June 29, 1971.] Later he would say the victims of 9 11 got what they deserved.

Falk defended Karleton Armstrong, who bombed the Army Mathematics Research Center, University of Wisconsin, killing a researcher and injuring four. The New York Times reported that Falk "appealed for full amnesty for all resistors, including those who use violent tactics to oppose the war in Vietnam." Falk "cited the Nuremberg Trials as precedent …to actively oppose the war by any means.

Falk said "free fire" zones, authorized pilots and soldiers to kill whatever moved, even farm animals and most of the victims of illegal methods being on the Vietnamese side. “I remember listening in my living room… to tear-filled stories told by returning GIs about their role … involve[ing] the deliberate killing of Vietnamese peasant women and children. … [R]ecognition of the criminality of the war policies in Vietnam cannot bring the victims back to life.” Falk cited “journalistic accounts of crimes associated with US military…[28. 'Richard Falk, “The Vietnam Syndrome,” The Nation, July 9, 2001.]

JANE FONDA—one quote out of hundreds.
We have a common enemy---U.S. imperialism. JANE FONDA, July 1972
TODD GITLEN
Todd Gitlin revised a “Freedom Song,” “And before I’ll be fenced in, I’ll vote for Ho Chi Minh, or go back to the North and be free.”[29. Studies on the Left, Vol. 5, No. 2, Spring 1965.]

Todd Gitlin, whose wife Nanci Gitlin was with the North Vietnamese and the WSP in Indonesia in July 1965, proposed an SDS sponsored trip to North Vietnam: “"The proposal is to send a mission ... to North Vietnam to help rebuild a hospital or school destroyed by American bombing…and to serve as American hostages against further bombing in their vicinity.”[30. Todd Gitlin, "SDS Aid to North Vietnam? A Proposal for a Mission to North Vietnam." SDS Bulletin, Vol. 4, No. 1, 2-4. (August 1965).]

TOM HARKIN
After a 30 minute visit Tom Harkin described S. Vietnam’s “tiger cages,”, “They were never let out, the food was minimal …little water. … forced to drink their own urine. Most…could not stand up, their legs having been paralyzed by beatings and by being shackled to a bar. …There were buckets of lime dust …above the cages… [to] throw down on the prisoners when they beg for food and water.”[31. Patsy Truxaw, “House Committee Staffer Sees ‘Tiger Cages’ at Con Son, Quits When Committee Produces Whitewash Report,” Liberation News Service, July 22, 1970, 5.]

Tom Harkin, claiming falsely, to having been a combat fighter pilot in Vietnam, was elected to Congress (1974) and the US Senate (1984). [32. Tom Harkin, Congressional Record, May 23, 2007, S6560; “Senator returns to South Vietnam’s ‘tiger cages,” Knight-Ridder, July 5, 1995.] Senator Tom Harkin, visiting Vietnam in July 1995, claimed the communist regime was “not allowing freedoms it should, But it [is] better than the ousted South Vietnamese regime.”[33. “Senator returns to South Vietnam’s ‘tiger cages,” Knight-Ridder, July 5, 1995.]

JEFF JONES
After the 1969 SDS convention Weathermen—Mark Rudd, Jeff Jones, and Bill Ayers—sent a letter to Mao’s sycophant Anna Louise Strong.[34. FBI, FOIA, Weather Underground. The primary source is Acting SAC Chicago to Director, memo, “Foreign Influence-Weather Underground Organization,” August 20, 1976, 65.] “Our…convention… was highly honored to hear greetings from our best-loved revolutionary writer and champion of People’s China and the thought of Mao Tse Tung. …Long life to comrade Mao Tse Tung….”[35. FBI, FOIA, Weather Underground. The primary source is Acting SAC Chicago to Director, memo, “Foreign Influence-Weather Underground Organization,” August 20, 1976, 144-45.]

“In August 1969 (Cuban UN) mission intelligence personnel…counseled Mark Rudd and Jeff Jones of SDS concerning slogans to be used in demonstrations planned that fall.”[36. Georgie Anne Geyer and Keyes Beech, “Cuba: School for US Radicals,” Chicago Sun Times, October 1970 cited in FBI, FOIA, Weather Underground. The primary source is Acting SAC Chicago to Director, memo, “Foreign Influence-Weather Underground Organization,” August 20, 1976, 42.]

Clark Kissinger
Clark Kissinger, SDS leader, now active in the Revolutionary Communist Party USA:

“I think that the largest single failing that we made during that whole period of time was not sending a contingent to North Vietnam to fight on the North Vietnamese side. For example, to man antiaircraft gun emplacements around Hanoi. …I felt it was significantly important for the movement to take on a more treasonous edge.[37. Tom Wells, The War Within]

Larry Levin
On June 5, 1971, Larry Levin, Tom Hayden and others attended the Soviet funded, CP-USSR and KGB, Stockholm Conference on Vietnam.[38. Photo on Levin Website; On the conference see Papers of Jack Askins, Anti-Vietnam War Movement, Ref. Code MSS.189/V/1/12/6 cited at http://dscalm.warwick.ac.uk/DServe/dserve.exe?dsqIni=Dserve.ini&dsqApp=Archive&dsqCmd=NaviTree.tcl&dsqDb=Catalog&dsqItem=ASV/1/12&dsqField=RefNo, archives@warwick.ac.uk
In Washington, Larry Levin, was Hayden-Fonda’s Indochina Peace Campaign full time lobbyist, using an office of Rep. Ron Dellums (D-CA) where they lectured 60 House staff on “American Imperialism”

Visiting Hanoi Larry Levin, staff director of the U.S. Coalition to Stop Funding the War, interviewed Paris negotiator Xuan Thuy 14 days before the fall of Saigon, broadcast on April 16, 1975. Observing thousands of South Vietnamese choosing to flee their homeland, Thuy condemns “the forcible evacuation… (the U.S. Government) …refers to as rescue of ‘evacuees.’ This is a mere U.S. hoax aimed at upsetting world public opinion and providing itself with a pretext to intervene in Vietnam.”[39. Xuan Thuy Interview With (Larry) Levin (IPC), Hanoi VNA in English 1544 GMT 16 Apr 75 BK]

DON LUCE
The Viet Cong’s official South Vietnam in Struggle, published letters of Don Luce and women prisoners [40. “A letter from Don Luce,” South Vietnam in Struggle, No 77, October 20, 1970.] claiming “The women were stripped naked, transported naked, and loaded on the planes naked.” It hadn’t happened, but Don Luce believed what the Viet Cong women told him and no one else.[41. Luce to Shirley Bordenkircher; McPhee to Berkeley, “Transfer of Female Prisoners to Con Son, December 28, 1969; Berkeley to Colby, “Transfer of Female Prisoners to Con Son,” November 28, 1969 cited in D.E, Bordenkircher, S.A. Bordenkircher, Tiger Cage: Untold Story, Abby Publishing, 1998, 107-113.]

Led efforts to propagandize “torturous [and brutal] conditions in the Tiger cages” at Con Son, South Vietnam. He interviewed and translated the stories of Viet Cong prisoners making claims of being doused with lime and urine, beaten and shackled, denied food and water; fed rice with sand, live lizards and beetles, and suffered paralysis from cramped quarters.[42. “The Cages of Con Son island,” Time, Jul. 20, 1970;] During 1972-4 Luce’s Mobile Education Project[43. Indochina Mobile Education Project, 1973, Catholic Peace Fellowship Records, University of Notre Dame Archives, CCPF 3/24 Folder.] toured the U.S. with mock prisoners shackled in cramped mock, bamboo, tiger cages, which in fact only existed in Vietnam as VC cells for American POWs, not at Con Son.

Gareth Porter
Gareth Porter used word for word English translations[44. Hoang Van Chi answers to questions of Daniel Teoduro, National Student Coordinating Committee, December 20, 1972, printed as Appendix III, a supplement to Testimony of Daniel E. Teodoru, U.S. Congress, Senate, Committee on Judiciary, The Human Cost of Communism in Vietnam-II, Washington; U.S. Government Printing Office, January 5, 1973, 41-42.] of North Vietnamese propaganda tracts.[45. Testimony of Daniel E. Teodoru, U.S. Congress, Senate, Committee on Judiciary, The Human Cost of Communism in Vietnam, Washington; U.S. Government Printing Office, January 5, 1973, 6-7.] He dismissed Hanoi’s slaughter of no less than 50,000 or more during their 1954 “land reforms” as a myth.[46. D. Gareth Porter, “The Myth of the Bloodbath: North Vietnam’s Land Reform Reconsidered,” Bulletin of Concerned Asian Scholars, Vol. 5, 1973; Testimony of Daniel E. Teodoru, U.S. Congress, Senate, Committee on Judiciary, The Human Cost of Communism in Vietnam-II, Washington; U.S. Government Printing Office, January 5, 1973. ] The slaughter at Hue of perhaps 5,800 during Tet 1968 was a fabrication.[47. D. Gareth Porter, “The 1968 ‘Hue Massacre,” Indochina Chronicle, No. 33, June 24, 1974, 2-13.] Gareth Porter and Edward Herman wrote, “And there is no evidence in documents, graves, or from individual witnesses which suggests any large and indiscriminate slaughter of civilians by the NLF at Hue.”[48. Edward Herman and D. Gareth Porter, “The Myth of the Hue Massacre,” Ramparts, 13:8 (May-June 1975), 10.] Also a myth was Pol Pot’s “killing fields” genocide in Cambodia.[49. D. Gareth Porter, “The Myth of the Bloodbath: North Vietnam’s Land Reform Reconsidered,” Bulletin of Concerned Asian Scholars, Vol. 5, 1973; Gareth Porter, “The 1968 ‘Hue Massacre’ Indochina Chronicle, Issue 33, June 24, 1974.] In several articles and his 1976 book Cambodia. Starvation and Revolution, Porter denied the Khmer Rouge holocaust.[50. Stephen Morris, National Review, Oct 31, 2004]

In 1975 Ambassador Dinh Ba Thi, Cora Weiss, Gareth Porter opposing the evacuation of people and evacuating orphans from South Vietnam.”[51. “Dinh Ba Thi Receives Antiwar Activists Delegation 7 Apr,” Liberation Radio (Clandestine] in Vietnamese 1000 GMT 9 Apr 75, SG, IV. 10Apr 75 L 13, South Vietnam.]

Gareth Porter denounced peace activist Joan Baez’s Appeal to expose oppression after the fall. Baez aimed to “impugn the good faith” of the Vietnamese. Hard core Hanoi defenders signed a “A Time For Healing and Compassion,” in the New York Times praising “the present government of Vietnam…for its moderation and its extraordinary efforts to achieve reconciliation among its many signators were Richard A. Falk, Don Luce, Cora Weiss, Friendshipment.[52. “To the American People, the Carter Administration and the Congress, “Vietnam: A Time for Healing and Compassion,” The New York Times, January 30, 1977; James Finn, “Fighting Among the Doves,” Worldview, April 1977.] Porter "spent days campaigning against the [Baez] letter. He spent literally hours on the phone haranguing Daniel Ellsberg…” [53. James L. Tyson, Target America: The Influence of Communist Propaganda on U.S. Media, 115.]

Barry Romo
Barry Romo, long-time leader of Vietnam Veterans Against the War, VVAW said that in Vietnam prisoners were tossed out of helicopters, pregnant women kicked in the gut. “The military is constructed to…instruct individual soldiers to conduct…(abuse and torture of …prisoners).”[54. Dave Curry and Barry Romo, “VIETNAM VETERANS SAY TORTURE POLICY NOT AN ABERATION-DATES BACK TO VIETNAM WAR,” News Release of VVAW, May 26, 2004; Robert Dunn, “Veteran at Urbana High School: Soldier No More,” The Veteran (VVAW), Spring/Summer 1999, Volume 29, Number 1.] Barry Romo, claimed at a “Winter Soldier” conference that the racist military dehumanized the enemy and made it easy and normal to kill civilians.[55. 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]

While in Hanoi VVAW’s Barry Romo claimed the “Christmas” bombing in 1972 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.[56. FBI, Legat Rome to Acting Director, VVAW, IS-RA, Hilev, TELETYPE 4:30 PM January 30, 1973.]

Mark Rudd
Mark Rudd remembers a February 6, 1968, Cuba paid[57. “Declassified U.S. Government intelligence information regarding the communist and foreign connections of the Weather Underground. Presented as evidence, on the agreement of the prosecution and defense counsel, in the trial of W. Mark Felt and Edward S. Miller,” 12 at www.usasurvival.org.; Mark Rudd remembers paying his way by selling “opiated hashish” brought back from Vietnam. Mark Rudd, Underground: My Life With the SDS and the Weathermen, New York: Harper Collins, 2009, 38-9] and Soviet KGB subsidized[58. Frank J. Rafalko, MH/CHAOS: The CIA’s Campaign Against the Radical Left and the Black Panthers, Annapolis: Naval Institute Press, 2011, 134.] visit of some 22 SDS members to Havana, “to talk with …the National Liberation Front…” The group received “souvenir rings made of extremely lightweight titanium. The number 2017 was stamped inside to indicate that each ring had been made from debris from the 2017th American plane shot down in Vietnam. I wore mine proudly for years afterwards.”[59. Mark Rudd, Underground: My Life With the SDS and the Weathermen, New York: Harper Collins, 2009, 40.] Rudd says, “I passionately wanted to be a revolutionary like Che, no matter what the costs. …Our goal was…ending the capitalist system that caused the war.” Mark Rudd bragged to his Havana comrade Huynh Van Ba that New Left Notes of August 29, 1969 declared “Vietnam has Won.”

During the Columbia University protest led by Mark Rudd, tThe Viet Cong flew over the Math building at Broadway and 117^th Street from on April 23-30, 1968.[60. Mark Rudd, Underground: My Life With the SDS and the Weathermen, New York: Harper Collins, 2009, 55-77; “Declassified U.S. Government intelligence information regarding the communist and foreign connections of the Weather Underground. Presented as evidence, on the agreement of the prosecution and defense counsel, in the trial of W. Mark Felt and Edward S, Miller,” 2 at www.usasurvival.org; 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.]

In 1969 Weathermen—Mark Rudd, Jeff Jones, and Bill Ayers-- sent a letter to Mao’s sycophant Anna Louise Strong.[61. FBI, FOIA, Weather Underground. The primary source is Acting SAC Chicago to Director, memo, “Foreign Influence-Weather Underground Organization,” August 20, 1976, 65.] “Our…convention… was highly honored to hear greetings from our best-loved revolutionary writer and champion of People’s China and the thought of Mao Tse Tung. …Long life to comrade Mao Tse Tung….”[62. FBI, FOIA, Weather Underground. The primary source is Acting SAC Chicago to Director, memo, “Foreign Influence-Weather Underground Organization,” August 20, 1976, 144-45.]

MORLEY SAFER
About the burning of Cam Ne, a fortified and bunkered Vietcong[63. Peter Brush, “What Really Happened at Cam Ne, Vietnam magazine, June 12, 2006; Andrew Finlayson to Roger Canfield June 26, 2014.] village, Morley Safer wrote,

“conjured up not America, but some brutal power — Germany. …To see young G.I.s, big guys in flak jackets, lighting up thatched roofs, and women holding babies running away, wailing… . Soldiers aren’t innocent….It was so shocking…it’s not how we do things…seen to be doing it. …There was a realization…that the rules had changed,” Morley Safer.[64. From Reporting America at War: An Oral History, compiled by Michelle Ferrari, with commentary by James Tobin, published by Hyperion, 2003. Copyright ©, 2003 Goodhue Pictures.]

Robert Scheer
In 1965 Robert Scheer claimed the Viet Cong were patriotic nationalists free of Hanoi and that Catholics, spies and hawks had dragged the U.S. into a civil war[65. Peter Collier, “Life Along the ‘Ramparts,” New Criterion, January 2010 comments on Scheer’s How the U.S. Got Involved in Vietnam, Santa Barbara: Center for the Study of Democratic Institutions, 196x.] and that Diem was a puppet of Americans rather than a genuine Vietnamese nationalist and patriot.

In a 1966 Radio Hanoi broadcast Robert Scheer said the Vietnam War was untenable, violates “all the norms and decent values of this society.”[66. “Antiwar Rally Speeches by [Donald] Duncan, [Robert] Scheer,” Hanoi in English to American Servicemen in South Vietnam 1300 GMT 26 February 1966—S.]

An August 8, 1970 article of The Black Panther has a Scheer statement,

Since the peoples of the world have a common enemy, we must begin to think of revolution as an international struggle against U.S. imperialism. …Understanding the [North] Korean people's struggle and communicating this to the American movement is a crucial step in developing this internationalist perspective."[67. August 8, 1970, The Black Panther cited in David Horowitz, FrontpageMagazine.com on May 6, 2003.]

Robert Scheer made a broadcast on Radio Hanoi on September 5, 1970.[68. Hanoi in English to American Servicemen in S. Vietnam 0830 GMT 5 Sep 70. Robert Scheer talks about his visit to both zones of Vietnam.] Robert Scheer said, “The US government is a criminal government that got those pilots [to] perform the highest war crimes…”

Pham Van Dong, General Giap[69. Photo with General Giap is at “U.S. Anti-imperialism Delegation,” Journeys Toward Peace: Internationalism and Radical Orientalism During the U.S. War in Vietnam, http://digitalunion.osu.edu/r2/summer09/caldwell/Pages/eldridgecleaver.html] received Robert Scheer quite well: “Our delegation moved …met openly with the peoples governments and were received as comrades-in-arms. We are fellow combatant against US imperialism.”

September 16, 1970 FBI agents watched Customs inspect literature and films mostly from North Korea written by Kim IL Sung and V.I. Lenin. Robert Scheer later sang the praises of the thoughts of North Korea’s Kim IL Sung in Tom Hayden’s Red Family commune at Berkeley and at Ramparts magazine.[70. Collier and Horowitz, Destructive Generation, 226; Armstrong, Trumpet, 165, 188.]

NEIL SHEEHAN
Sheehan’s Bright Shining Lie accepted Ho Chi Minh’s murders of Vietnamese nationalists as a necessity, called Hanoi’s butchery of 50,000 in 1956 “an unfortunate mistake” performed by Ho’s renegade underlings, dismissed the communist massacre at as a “stupid mistake” and a public relations problem. As late as July 2002 Sheehan told CSPAN that Hanoi’s “reeducation camps” were not so bad (no less than 10% died there) and, falsely, that Hanoi “didn’t shoot anyone.”[71. Bill Laurie, review of Neil Sheehan’s A Bright Shining Lie: John Paul Vann and America in Vietnam lcounterparts.net/message3_NEW.cfm?threaded=120&messages=6]

“In some countries a Communist government may be the best government. …“Anticommunism [is] as destructive as Stalinism.”[72. Alice Widener, “The Coo of the Doves: From Waldorf to Hilton, 1949-1969,” U.S.A. Vol. XV, No. 26,March 14, 1969.] March 1969, NEIL SHEEHAN at First National Convocation on the Challenge of Building Peace. Neil Sheehan said that North Vietnam was a “modern dynamic society” and South Vietnam was a “dying post-feudal order.”[73. Thomas B. Morgan, “Reporters of the Lost War,” Esquire, July 1984, 52 cited in Berman, The Perfect Spy: The Incredible Double Life of Pham Xuan An, Time Magazine Reporter & Vietnamese Communist Agent, New York: Harper Collins, 2007, 146.]

After the exposure of Pham Xuan An, Hanoi’s master spy, Neil Sheehan remained a gushing fan: “My friend, who served the cause of journalism and the cause of his country with honor and distinction—fondest regards.”[74. Larry Berman, A Perfect Spy: The Incredible Double Life of Pham Xuan An, Time Magazine Reporter & Vietnamese Communist Agent, New York: Harper Collins, 2007, 10.] In late 1974 Neil Sheehan would tell his audience at the Army War College “The idea of fairness and objectivity is specious.”[75. Lewis Sorley, A Better War: The Unexamined Victories and Final Tragedy of America’s Last Years in Vietnam, New York: Harcourt, 1999, 427-8n8.]

Oliver Stone
Oliver Stone's error laden film "Born on the 4th of July" in 1988 portrayed Ron Kovic attacked and thrown from his wheel chair by Republicans, which he was not. Films such as Oliver Stone’s Apocalypse Now or Platoon, showing barbarous soldiers largely formed early public opinion about the Vietnam War and all its participants.

“I will come out with my interpretation. If I'm wrong, fine. It will become part of the debris of history, part of the give and take.[76. http://www.brainyquote.com/quotes/authors/o/oliver_stone.html#2f51ruCxtQ4PJrqY.99]

Cathy Wilkerson
In Hanoi Cathy Wilkerson, SDS Weather, remembers,” I absorbed the optimistic Vietnamese belief that most people deep down did not want to live by aggression and manipulation… They could ...reject leadership based on brutality.” She believed Ho Chi Minh taught his people to resist “the corrosive powers of hatred and revenge.”[77. Cathy Wilkerson, Flying Close to the Sun, New York: Seven Stories Press, 2007,162, 295.]

DAGMAR WILSON
Dagmar Wilson, on a tour of North Vietnam for Women's Strike for Peace, said, “We knew the Vietnamese were going to win.”[78. Wells interview of Dagmar Wilson, Wells, The War Within, 163]

Dagmar Wilson, Women Strike for Peace, was a member of “The Wilfred Burchett 60^th Birthday Committee,”[79. Guardian, February 27, 1971, 9.] Burchett was a Soviet agent. Dagmar Wilson, said, “the Russians want to disarm.… They won’t have… vested interests profiting from the arms race.” After a flyover, Wilson said, “Vietnamese presence in Cambodia left no military or political marks in Cambodia.”[80. Lt. Gen. Harold G. Moore, We Were Soldiers once...and young, New York; Harper Torch, 1994, 438.]

Wilson described antiwar activity in the U.S. as a ‘Second front’ in …Vietnam’s fight against ‘American aggression.’…’The Vietnamese are resisting violence on their side and we resist in our way here. …We are a second front in the same war. We need each other’s support. [81. Laurence Feinberg, “Dissent Called 2nd War Front,” Washington Post, Oct. 25, 1967, 1 Texas Tech.]

JON VOIGHT
“The communists were behind organizing all of these rallies and things. … We didn’t want to believe in evil so we just hid from it.[82. Jon Voight, op ed. Washington Times, July 28, 2008, http://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2008/jul/28/voight/; Scott Holleran, “Interview: Actor Jon Voight,” boxofficemojo.com.]

MARILYN YOUNG
“[T]he Vietminh acted to alleviate the famine then raging in the North by opening local granaries and distributing rice.” Marilyn Young²⁶
The Sixties…centrally about the recognition, on the part of an ever growing number of Americans, that the country in which they thought they lived – peaceful, generous, honourable, just – did not exist and never had. The emergence of a more nuanced history of the US as opposed to the patriotic meta-narrative taught in grade school…[83. Marilyn B. Young, “Reflections on the Anti-war Movement, Then and Now,” 31 March 2003.]

Marilyn B. Young, member of the Committee of Concerned Asian Scholars and a well-read orthodox historian of the war developed a more nuanced rationalization of the Hue massacre. “A]ll the accounts agree that NLF rather than North Vietnamese units were responsible for the executions (in Hue),” [84. Marilyn B. Young, The Vietnam Wars, 1945-1990 (New York: HarperPerennial, 1991, 217-19.]

The central mechanism of US policy in the 1940s, as today, the pivot around which all the rest rotates, is the conviction that the particular national interests of the United States are identical with the transcendent, universal interests of humanity. The increasingly evident falsehood of this claim produces what Che Guevara once hoped for, "two, three, many Vietnams." Thank you. Marilyn Young.

“There was no conceivable justification for the horrors daily inflicted on and suffered in Vietnam.”[85. (Preface, xi) Marilyn Young. Vietnam Wars, 1945-1990. New York: Harper Perennial, 2004. Pp. 329]

Comrades—Meetings 1963-1975

Appendix IA--American “Peace Activist” Meetings[1] with Enemy During War, 1962-1975 by Roger Canfield in Comrades in Arms: How the Americong Won the War in Vietnam Against the Common Enemy-America available http://americong.com
1962
March, Hanoi, Ruth Gage-Colby, Women Strike for Peace, WSP

July, Moscow, Dagmar Wilson, Ruth Gage-Colby, WSP

July, Havana, Brad Lyttle, Fellowship for Reconciliation, FOR

July 29-August 6, Helsinki, Rabinowitz, Myer, Supriano, Frank, Coffin and 445 others, CPUSA etc.

1963
Prague, FOR

Havana, Brad Lyttle, FOR

September, Moscow, Brad Lyttle, FOR

Hanoi, trade unions.

Hanoi, Ralph Schoenman, Russell War Crimes Commission

1964
May, Havana, Dave Dellinger, FOR

June, Hanoi, Phillip Abbot Luce, PLP

June, Prague, Hassler, Jim Forest, Phil Berrigan

Sept, Moscow, Aptheker, Bloice, Goodlett, CPUSA

November, Hanoi, Robt Williams, Rittenberg, Coe, Worthy, Strong

1965
March, Hanoi, Robert Williams

July, Helsinki, Aptheker, John Lewis, Myerson, Koch, Supriano, Ward, CPUSA

May-July, Moscow, Hanoi, Jakarta, Clarke, Gordon, Frances Herring, , Margaret Russell, Phyllis Schmidt Shirley Lens, Bergman, Nanci Gitlin, Bev Axelrod, Mary Lou Packard (Randal), Ruth Gage-Colby WSP

August, Hanoi, Myerson, Koch, Supriano, Ward, CPUSA

October, Toronto, Cora Weiss, Duckles, Taylor, Ayers and 225 others

Prague, Lightfoot, CPUSA

December, Prague, Hanoi, Peking, Moscow, Aptheker, Hayden, Lynd.

1966
February 8, Cambodia,Robert Scheer.

April, Moscow, Morris Childs,

Spring, Hanoi, Ralph Schoenman,

Summer, Geneva Staughton Lynd,
June, July and August 1966, Japan, Howard Zinn, Cynthia Quenton Basset, Kay Boyle, David Dellinger, Donald Duncan, Israel Dresner, Russell Johnson, Donald Keyes, Murray Levin, Floyd McKissick, David Ernest McReynolds, Robert Morris Ockene.

July 27, Phnom Penh, Cambodia Dagmar Wilson, Donald Duncan, Floyd McKissick, Kay Boyle, Rabbi Israel Dresner and Russell Johnson.

October, Hanoi David Dellinger.

December and January, Hanoi, Harrison Salisbury.

December 22, Hanoi, Barbara Deming, Grace Mora Newman, Patricia Griffith and Diane Nash

Late December 1966, Hanoi, AJ Muste, Rabbi Abraham L. Feinberg, Ambrose Reeves, Pastor Friedrich Gustav Emil Martin Niemoller.

1967
April, Puerto Rico Tom Hayden.

May 2-10, Stockholm, Carl Oglesby, Courtland Cox.

Summer, Stockholm, Dave Dellinger, Oglesby, James Baldwin, Stokely Carmichael, Gabriel Kolko.

April 19, Hanoi, Nick Egelson.

July 6-9, Stockholm, Spock, Herbert Aptheker, James Bevel, Amy Swerdlow, Simon Casady, Arlene Eisen Bergman, Bernardine Dohrn, Jeff Shero and 442 other Americans.

Montreal, students.

July 28 - August 5, Havana, SDS, SNCC.

August 29, Hanoi, Stokely Carmichael.

August 1967, Hanoi, David Schoenbrun and wife.

September 2-18, Hanoi, Wilfred Burchett, Dagmar Wilson, Ruth Krause and Mary, WSP.

September 6-13, 1967, BRATISLAVA, CZECHOSLOVAKIA, Hayden and David Dellinger, Robert Allen, Malcolm Boyd, Carol Brightman, John "Jock" Pairman Brown, Bronson Clark, Robert “Stoney” Cooks, Rennie Davis, Dave and Betty Dellinger, Thorne Webb Dreyer, Nicholas Egleson, red diaper baby Richard Flacks, Ross Flanagan, Norman David Fruchter, Tom Gardner, Carol Glassman, Steve Halliwell, Christopher Jencks, Russell Johnson, Carole King, Andrew David Kopkind, Robert Kramer, Carol Cohen McEldowney, Leon Moore, Linda Moore, Raymond Mungo, Douglas Craig Norberg, Vivian Emma LeBurg Rothstein, Steve Schwarzchild, Sol Stern, Dennis Sweeney, John Tillman, Barbara Webster, Eric Weinberger, Hank Werner, John Wilson, Willie Wright, Ron Wright.

September 30- Oct.18, Hanoi, Hayden entourage.

OCTOBER 28, NOVEMBER 4, Hanoi, Tom HAYDEN ON RADIO HANOI.

(November 4-11) Phnom Penh, Hayden.

1968
January 23, Haiphong and Hanoi, Quaker Action Group, AQUAG.

February 28, Japan, deserters.

February 1968, Budapest, 67 Western Hemispheric Communist parties.

November, Stockholm, American Deserters Committee, ADC

February, Havana, Tom Hayden, Carl Davidson, Todd Gitlin, Gerry Long, Susan Sutheim, Ed Jennings, Joe Horton, Paul Hugh Shinoff, and Les Coleman and 40 other Americans.

Moscow, North Korea, two SNCC leaders.

February, Havana, Ted Gold, Mark Rudd and twenty other SDS.

February 9, Vientiane, Laos Daniel Berrigan, Professor Howard Zinn.

February 17, Hanoi,. Berrigan, Zinn.

March, Hanoi Mary McCarthy, Franz Schurmann, Harry Ashmore, William Baggs and Charles Collingwood.

March, Hanoi, Charles Collingwood, Harry Ashmore and William Baggs.

April, Hanoi, Steve Halliwell.

April, Sweden, Ken Cloke.

April 3-6, Paris WSP.

Paris, American contacts.

May 3-17, Hanoi, Robert Greenblatt, Susan Sontag and Andrew Kopkind.

May 15, Hanoi, Naomi Jaffe and three other SDS members.

June 16, July, Paris, Greenblatt and Dellinger.

July, Hanoi, Richard Barnet and Marcus Raskin of IPS.

Prague and to Budapest, Greenblatt.

July 3-6, Paris, Hayden, Stuart Meacham, Vernon Grizzard, and Anne Weills Scheer.

July 17-August 1, Hanoi Hayden, Stuart Meacham, Vernon Grizzard, and Anne Weills Scheer.

July 26, Havana, five SDS and 300 others.

June 16, Prague, Robert Greenblatt and Dellinger.

July, Grenoble William Standard, Carey McWilliams, Richard Falk, Hans Morganthal, and Quincy Wright.

July 28-August 6, Sofia, Bulgaria Howard Jeffrey Melish, Leslie Cagan and some fifty to seventy-one other Americans.

August 11-14, Kyoto, Japan, 23 Americans.

August 25-28, Ljubljana, Yugoslavia, Bernadine Dohrn, Judi Bernsten, Larry Bloom, Jeff Blum, Ruth Chamberlain, Bernardine Dohrn, Bryan Flack, Ruth Glick, Martin Kinner, Ellen and Fred Lessinger, Miles Mogulescu, Paul Schollmen, Mollje Struerer, and Daniel Swinney.

August 26-27, Mexico, Havana, Douglas Bernhardt, Michelle Clark, Ross Danielson, Pam Enriques, Larry Erander, Nancy Figeroa, Nick Freudenberg, Daniel Friedlander, Thomas Good, George Greunthal, Fred Halper, Louise Halper, Mark Hershel, (illegible) Iglesias, Hilda Ignatin, Jim Kulk, Jim Mitchell, Holly Moore, Steve Moore, Thomas Mosher, Mary Nalcoln, Morris Older, Sue Orrin, Mark Shapiro, Helen Shiller, Russell Smith, Jeffrey Swanson, Cliff Taylor, Joseph Webb, Marilyn Webb, and Bill Yates.

summer Cuba, Barbara Stone.

July–October, Cuba, Carol “Kali” Grosberg.

August and September, Yugoslavia, Hungary, Germany and Sweden, Bernadine Dohrn.

September 3, Budapest, Hungary, twenty-eight Americans

September 10- September 23, Paris, John Davis.

Prague Stockholm, John Davis.

September 12-16, Frankfurt, West Germany, Bernardine Dohrn and Bill Ayers.

Late September, Paris Howard Zinn, Jonathan Mirsky, George Kahin of Cornell, Marilyn Young and Douglas Dowd.

October 24-30, Paris and Stockholm Rabbi Balfour Brickner.

November 8, Japan Ernest P. Young,

November 28-December 1, Montreal, Douglas Dowd, Howard Zinn and 500 other Americans.

1969
January 1-10 Havana, Carl Oglesby, Bruce Goldberg, Russ Neufeld and Dan Friedlander.

May 14-16, Stockholm World Peace Council’s Conference on Vietnam, 1969.

April Cuba, East Berlin, Hanoi, new left.

April Prague office of the SDS Bernardine Dohrn and Steve Halliwell.

May 16-18, Stockholm, George Carrano, Donald McDonough, Anatol Rapaport, Noam Chomsky and Gabriel Kolko, John Wilson, Sherman Adams, Amy Swerdlow, Serita Crown, Althea Alexander Noam Chomsky, Joseph Elder, Bob Eaton, Bronson Clark, Joseph Crown, Richard Falk, Stanley Swerdlow, Doris Roberson, Carlton Goodlett, John McAuliff.

June 10-17, Phnom Penh, Hanoi, Joseph Elder

June 5-17, Moscow, Irving Sarnoff, , Barbara Bick, Arnold Samuel Johnson, Charles Fitzpatrick, Barbara Ruth Bick, Rennie Davis, David Tyre Dellinger, William Douthard, Douglas Fitzgerald Dowd, Carlton Benjamin Goodlett, Terrence Tyrone Hallinan, Gersho Phineas Horowitz, Arnold Johnson, Sylvia Kushner, Stewart Meacham, Sidney Peck and Irving Sarnoff

June 21-23, East Berlin, Dick Gregory; Stanley Faulkner, , Valeri Mitchell, Sonia Karose, Estelle Cypher, Susan Borenstein, Karen B. Ackerman, Herbert Aptheker, Barbara Bick, Mary Clarke, Martin Hall, Jarvis Tyner, Irving Sarnoff; Mary Angie Dickerson, Eleanor Ohman, Pauline Rosen and Carlton Goodlett.

July, Stockholm Irving Sarnoff.

July 9-15, July, Havana, Carlos Antonio Aponte, Robert Jay Barano, Christopher Kit Bakke, Thomas Wilson Bell, Edward “Corky” Benedict, Kathie Boudin, Cristina Bristol, Aubrey Brown, Robert Burlingham, George Cavalletto, Peter Clapp, Luis John Cuza, Lucas Daumont, Carl Alfred Davidson, Dianne Donghi, Bernardine Dohrn, Diane Westbrook Faber, Richard Rees Fagen, Ted Gold, Kenneth Alan Hechter, Frank Petras James, Nino Jeronimo, Gregory, Nina, Saul Irwin and Valerie Landau, Sandra Hale Levinson, Gerald “Jerry” William Long, Robert Schenk Love, Beth Susan Lyons, John “Shorty” Marquez, Albert Martinez, Howard Jeff Melish, David Millstone, Robert Edward Norton, Orlando Ortiz, Diana Oughton, Rose Paul, Verna Elinor Richey Pedrin, Jesus Maria Ramirez, Jose Ramirez, Eleanor Raskin, Patricia Ellen Shea, Jane Spielman, Jeronomi Ulpiano, Joanne Washington, Robert Wetzler, Myra Ann Wood, and Mary Woznich

August 4, Hanoi , SDS group

October 10-17, Paris, Rennie Davis and David Dellinger.

October 11-12, Stockholm, Irving Sarnoff and Ron Young.

October 15, Havana, George Cavalletto.

Late November, Havana, Julie Nichamin, Diana Oughton, John Butney (phonetic), Bruce Goldberg, Brian Murphy, Bill Thomas, Bill Drew, Phoebe Hirsch, Jerry Long. Arlene Bergman, Allen Young, Jerry Long; John McAuliff, Al Martinent. Weathermen: : Nichamin, Pierre Joseph Barthel, Neal Birnbaum, Marianne Camp, Sonia Helen Dettman, Linda Sue Evans, Laura Ann Obert, Nicholas Britt Riddle, Sheila Marie Ryan, Jeffrey David Sokolow, Mallorie N. Tolles, Robert Greg Wilfong, and Donna Jean Willmott, Willie Brand and Wendy Yoshimira, Bert Garskof, Sandy Pollack, Leslie Cagan.

December 1969 Hanoi, Cora Weiss, Ethel Taylor and Madeleine Duckles.

1970
January 31, 1970 Quebec, Montreal, Sylvia Kushner Katherine Camp, Arnold Johnson, and Stewart Meacham Stanley Faulkner, Joseph Crown, Pauline Rosen, Rev. Richard Norford

February 7-8, Vancouver, British Columbia, Carlton Goodlett and Irving Sarnoff and 125 others.

March 24- June 10, Hanoi, Stockholm, Moscow, Nancy Kurshan Rubin, Anita Susan Kushner Hoffman, Judith Gumbo Genie Plamondon.

March 28-30, Stockholm Robert Greenblatt, Irving Sarnoff, William Davidon, Doug Dowd, Carlton Goodlett, Sylvia Kushner, Noam Chomsky, Richard Fernandez, Nancy Kurshan Rubin, Anita Hoffman Judith Clavir and 34 other Americans.

February 13-April 28, Havana, Venceremos: Second Contingent, Edith Crichton, David Ira Camp, John De Wind, Nancy Frappier, Vicki Gabriner, Joyce Greenways, Ann Hathaway, Robert Hackman, Marguarita Hope, Lenore Ruth Kalom, Jonathan Lerner, Jeffrey Melish, Jed Proujansky, Daniel Ross Slick, Marguerite “Mini” Smith, Carlie Tanner, “Daren” [Karen] B. Ackerman, David L. Berger, Carol Brightman, Angela Davis, Ellis Jay Goldberg, William Joseph Maher, Karen Beth Nussbaum, Stephen William Shriver, Shari Whitehead.

April 13, Hanoi Noam Chomsky, Douglas Dowd and Rev. Richard Fernandez

April 12-22, Hanoi 1970 Institute for Policy Studies—Charlotte Bunch-Weeks, Gerald Shin, Frank Joyce and Elisabeth Sutherland-Martinez.

late May, Paris, John Kerry and his new wife Julia Thorne.

May 22-24, Toronto, Joseph H. Crown, William Standard, Richard Falk and 97 other U.S. lawyers.

May, Prague, Czechoslovakia, Ann Hathaway, Eleanor Ruth Kalom, Jonathan David Lerner and Carlie Tanner

June 25-July 2, Paris, Adam Schesch and 31 Minnesotans.

July 27, Havana, third Venceremos Brigade, Jon Frederic Frappier, Eda Godell Hallinan, Richard Gutman and others.

August 27, Cuba Robert Greenblatt,, Nancy Kurshan (Rubin), and Judy Clavir, Judy Gumbo)

Continuous, Cuban intelligence, Bernardine Dohrn, Martin Kenner, Mark Rudd, Julie Nichamin, Karen Koonan, Kathy Boudin, Gerry Long, Karen Ashley, Jeff Jones and Jennifer Dohrn.

August 25-27, Helsinki, Dave Dellinger, Bernardine Dohrn and others.

August and early September 1970, USSR, North Korea, North Vietnam, Algeria, and China, Eldridge Cleaver, Robert Scheer, Regina Blumenfeld, Randy Rappaport, Alexander Hing, Janet Austin, Hideko Pat Sumi, Anne Froines Janet Kranzberg Elaine Brown, Judith Clavir Andrew Truskier.

September 18-23, Pyongyang, Eldridge Cleaver and Byron Booth.

Algeria Cleaver.

September 23, Canada, Jane Fonda, Tommy Douglas

October 22-25, New Delhi, India, Moscow, three Americans.

November 9-23, Hanoi, Peter Weiss, William Standard and Morton Stavis.

November 28-30, Stockholm, David Dellinger, Rep. Ron Dellums, William Douthard, Sidney Peck, Jerrie M. Meadows, Willie Jenkins, Janey Hayes, Pauline Rosen, Bruce Beyer, Gerry Condon, Mike Powers, John Woods, Estelle Cypher, Eleanor Fowler, Carlton Goodlett, Gil Green Rev. Thomas Hayes, Stan Faulkner Ron Young Silvia Kushner and 15 other Americans.

December Moscow, Saigon, Paris, Hanoi, Mark Rasenick, Doug Hostetter, Keith Parker, David Ifshin and eight other NSA members. People’s Peace Treaty, Robert Greenblatt, Douglas Hostetter.

December 18-26, Hanoi, Anne M. Bennett, Ron Young, Trudi Young, Mary Luke Tobin

1971
March 3-10, Paris, Gabriel Kolko Rev. William T. Gramley, Allan Brick, Mrs. Allides Christopher, Rev. Richard McCollum, Mrs. Jane Whitney, Elaine Schmitt Urbain, Bud Ogle, Rev. Bruce Pierce Harriet Price and 160 other Americans.

Paris. Jane Fonda, Mark Lane, and Michael Hunter.

April 1-6, Vancouver and Toronto, Canada, 600-1,000 American women.

May 10, Paris, Sidney and Louise Peck, Robert Greenblatt, Carol Kitchen and Jack Davis

May 12-16, Budapest, Hungary, Ruth Gage-Colby, John Rankin Davis, Pauline Rosen and 25 other Americans including VVAW.

June 5, 1971, Stockholm, Larry Levin, Tom Hayden and others

June 20-26, Moscow, Oslo and Paris. VVAW Larry Rottman, John Onda, John Randolph “Randy” Floyd or Ken Campbell

Late June, Paris Cora Weiss, Richard Falk, David Dellinger and Ethel Taylor.

September 11-12, Paris. George McGovern, Frank Mankiewicz, Pierre Salinger

On September 21, Stockholm American Deserters Committee, ADC.

Late October, Hanoi WSP’s Amy Swerdlow and two others.

December 21, Paris, Rev. Richard Fernandez, a COLIFAM courier.

August, Paris, John Kerry

Paris VVAW staff member Joe Urgo’s trip to along with a [redacted] member of the War Resisters League, WRL, and [redacted] of Women’s Strike for Peace, WSP.[2]
Hanoi, David McReynold.

Paris, Al Hubbard.

1972
February 5, Paris, Richard J. Barnet and Peter Weiss of IPS.

late February Hanoi, China, George Wald.

January-March, Paris, Budapest, Moscow, Hanoi, and Japan, Al Hubbard.

Mid-February-March, Hanoi, Al Hubbard, Seymour Hersh and Pete Seeger.

February 11-13, Versailles, France, John Gilman, Elizabeth Moos, Sidney Peck, Evelynne Perry, Pauline Rosen, Irving and Ruth Sarnoff, Abe Weisburd, Bernard Weller, Michael Zagarell, Deborah Bustin, Fred Halstead, Daniel Rosenshine, Rennie Davis, Jane Fonda; Al Hubbard, [Richard?] Joe Bangert, Edward Damato, Robert Greenblatt, Fred Branfman, Delia Alvarez, Ron Ridenour, Margery Tabankin, Howard Zinn.

End of March, Hanoi, David Livingston and other labor leaders.

April 6-8, Paris, Cora Weiss, Bob Levering Marcus Raskin, Sister Mary –Luc (sic, Luke) Tobin, Stoney Cookes and Maria Jolas. .

April 20 Paris, Rep. Bella Abzug, Rep. Patsy Takemoto Mink and Amy] Swerdlow.

May 19-21, Canada, a VVAW member.

Mid-May? Paris, Rennie Davis

On May 25, Hanoi, Robert Lecky, Rev. Paul Mayer; Marge Tabankin, William Zimmerman

Late June Paris, Peter Mahoney, Rich Bangert, John Bochum, Stanley Michelson, Joseph Hirsch, Gary Steger, Forest Lindley, David Baily, John Turner, “Jack” Bronaugh, Willie Sykes, Ronald Sable, Thomas Zangrilli, Sean Newton, Toby Hollander, Paul Richards, Donald Ullrich all sixteen VVAW members

July 5, Cuba, Jean-Pierre Wendell, Leland Lubinsky, Fred Werner, Alan Morris, and Albert Morgafive members of VVAW in Venceremos Brigade.

June 6-10, Paris, Tom Hayden, David Dellinger and Rennie Davis

Most of July 1972 Hanoi, Moscow Jane Fonda.

August 4, Hanoi ,Dr. George Perera and John A. Sullivan.

July 29 to August 12, Hanoi, General Ramsey Clark.

End of August, Paris, David Dellinger and Cora Weiss.

September 11, Hanoi, Mrs. Charles, Mrs. Gartley, Elias, Weiss, Dellinger, Coffin, Mrs. Mary Anne Hamilton and Rev. Harry Bury.

October 4-17, Hanoi, 1972, Drs. Gardner, Simon and Wolf and one other.

In October 1972, Copenhagen, Denmark, CALC, and VVAW member assisting ADC.

During October Hanoi, Jane Hart (nee Senator Philip Hart), Mrs. D. Goodwin, Muriel Rukeyser and Denise Levertov COLIFAM sponsored.

End of October 25, Hanoi, Joseph Crown, Malcolm Monroe, Lawrence Velvel and John Wells.

Late October Paris, Cora Weiss and Richard Barnet.

November 12, Hanoi, Hayden, Howard Zinn, Rev. David Hunter, Fred Branfman, Susan Miller, Carolyn Mugar, Jan Austin.

December 11, Hanoi, Joan Baez; the Episcopal Rev. Michael Allen of Yale Divinity; Barry Romo , Gen. Telford Taylor.

1973
Hayden and Fonda Paris. They marched off to the Vietnamese mission.

January 23-February 3, Hanoi Dorothy R. Steffens,[3] Judy Tzu-Chun Wu, and Marii Hasegawa all WILFP.

February 19-24, Rome, Sidney Peck, John David Musgrave

July 28-August 4, East Berlin, 1973, Robert Diaz, Maria Elena Gaitan, Tony Herman, Maggie Block, Tim Brick, Judy Simmons, Joe Rhodes, Mary Clemons, Jeanne Woods, Linda Weber, Beatrice Siskind Johnson, Karen Ackerman, and some 285 other Americans.

August 2-15, 1973, Tokyo, Gensuiko,

August 8-August 26, Moscow, Kiev, Leningrad, and Odessa, many Americans.

October 20-27, Paris, Hayden, Jane Fonda and others re: Germantown strategy meeting.

October 25-November 2, 1973, Moscow, Brian Adams, Joan Elberg, Andre Souquire, Ann Bailey, John Naveau, Tim Butz, Pete Zastrow, Paul Mayer, Grace Paley, Noam Chomsky, David Dellinger, David McReynolds, Sidney Peck, Noam Chomsky, Father Dan Berrigan and 1805 other Americans.

November 1973, “liberated” South Vietnam, Cora Weiss, Don Luce and professor Sam Noumoff.

Sometime, Hanoi, Karen Nussbaum and six other IPC.

December 8-9, Paris, Barry Romo and Peter Zastrow.

December 1973 Hanoi, professor Gabriel Kolko.

1974
March 29-31, Stockholm, Fred Branfman, Richard A. Falk, William Goodfellow, Gabriel Kolko.

April 1-24, North Vietnam "liberated South Vietnam, Tom Hayden and Jane Fonda.

1975
March, Moscow, Jane Fonda.

March 1975, Hanoi, Professor Gabriel Kolko.

March 13, Cuba, 125-135 Americans in Eighth Venceremos Brigade.

April, Cuba, 200 Americans travel in 9^th Venceremos Brigade.

On April 7 Paris, Cora Weiss and Gareth Porter.

April 16-27, Hanoi, Larry Levin

April 29, Hanoi, John McAuliff.

May 17, Vancouver, Arlene Eisen Bergman and 250 other Americans.

Amsterdam, American “peace” organizations.

June 20-22, Stockholm, Cora Weiss, Fred Branfman and Ira Arlook.

1985
April and May, Hanoi, David Dellinger, George Wald, John McAuliff and two others celebrate the 10^th anniversary of the conquest of South Vietnam. Invited ,Jane Fonda, Tom Hayden, do not go.

[1] Does not include Radio Hanoi, correspondence, telephone contacts in FBIS broadcasts and NSA intercepts.

The ancient symbolic four-faced sandstone Bayon is thought by some Cambodians to represent simplicity, compassion, equanimity and wisdom, virtues lacking in those involved in the factional struggles of the communists in Cambodia. A symbolic Bayon for the Khmer Rouge would have only two faces, that of the barbaric and amoral genocidal “year zero” Pol Pot Khmer  Rouge (PP-KR), and that of the murderous Viet-Minh Khmer Rouge (VM-KR). Equanimity may have been relevant to the

Cambodian culture and society during the Ankor Wat era centuries ago, but not during the past hundred years.

The VM-KR was a mixed bag of Vietnamese NVA and VC, Khmer Krom, and other Cambodian Khmer conscripts, as well as Vietminh holdovers from the French Indochina War. All were under the command of Hanoi. Before French colonization of Indochina, the Mekong Delta was part of the greater Cambodia Empire – Kampuchea Krom (comprising a great portion of the fertile Mekong Delta) - and (what today) is Northeast Thailand. On June 4, 1949, the French formerly annexed Kampuchea Krom and made it a separate protectorate called Cochin China. After the 1954 Geneva Conference dismantled French Indochina, Kampuchea Krom (the Mekong Delta) formally became part of the Republic of Viet Nam. By that time, Kampuchea Krom was populated by large numbers of Vietnamese.

Ironically, Ho Chi Minh set conditions for future Khmer Rouge when he formed the Indochina communist party in the 1930s, and although somewhat separate, three distinct branches were structured for Viet Nam, Laos and Cambodia with the Machiavellian Ho Chi Minh and his Vietnamese associates dominating. It wasn’t long before many of the Cambodians began to realize that they were being duped by their centuries’ old arch-enemy the Vietnamese, led by the manipulative Ho. His intent was to replace French Indochina colonial rule of three countries with Vietnamese communist party control. Cambodian communist party members therefore split into two factions: 1) Those who felt they owed their loyalty to Ho and his communist party after receiving political indoctrination in communist ideology and military training, remained in the North Viet Nam and became part of the Vietminh against the French. The Vietminh was a “tri-nation force” fighting the French, with Ho and his henchmen at the helm. Anyone

who showed independent nationalistic leadership characteristics were eliminated. Those Cambodians who survived Ho’s purges, and did not trust Ho and the Vietnamese, went south into the jungles of Cambodia, later to evolve and morph into the xenophobic, ground zero Pol Pot Khmer Rouge which gained support from China.

By Uwe Siemon-Netto