John Kerry
| Date of Birth: | Saturday, December 11, 1943 |
| Place of Birth: | Aurora, Colorado |
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| Children: |
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| Profession: | Lawyer |
| Political Party: | Democrat |
John Forbes Kerry (born December 11, 1943) is a United States senator from the state of Massachusetts. On July 29 2004 he became the nominee of the Democratic Party for President of the United States in the upcoming November 2004 presidential election.
This article discusses Kerry's biography, background and experience. For his 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.
Kerry's family returned to their native state of Massachusetts shortly after his birth. His 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 D. Roosevelt (4th cousin twice removed), Jane Addams, Calvin Coolidge (8th cousin once removed), and ironically, George H.W. Bush (9th cousin once removed), and George W. Bush (16th cousins, three times removed). [1]
Childhood years
Kerry's first memory, at age three, is of holding his crying mother's hand while they walked through the broken glass and rubble of her childhood home in Saint-Briac, France. The memorable visit came shortly 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, they bombed Les Essarts 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 these summers, 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 often, 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.
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.
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 honorary degree he had received from Yale a few months earlier. 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 at the America's Cup race off the coast of Rhode Island.
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.
Boarding school
Encounters with President Kennedy
yacht Manitou with President John F. Kennedy off Narragansett, Rhode Island, on August 26, 1962.]]
In 1962, Kerry volunteered for Edward 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. It was there that Kerry met President Kennedy for the first time.Yale University
team at Yale University as #14.]]
team.]]
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. Military Service
, Bronze Star for valor (and three Purple Hearts for wounds) during the Vietnam War.]]
Gene Thorson, David Alston, Thomas Belodeau, and Del Sandusky, Kerry's second-in-command.]]
. Top, from left: Del Sandusky, John Kerry, Gene Thorson, Thomas Belodeau. Bottom, from left: Mike Medeiros and Fred Short.]]
Enlistment, training, and 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 commander 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.
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 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, Kerry and his crew encountered Viet Cong forces on Cam Ranh Bay, and Kerry suffered a shrapnel wound in the left arm above the elbow from an enemy M-79 grenade. Dr. Louis Letson, treated Kerry by removing the shrapnel and apply bacitracin dressing. For his combat injuries, Kerry was awarded his first Purple Heart. He returned to duty the next day, conducting a regular Swift boat patrol with a bandaged arm.
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 earned his second Purple Heart in action on the Bo De River on February 28, 1969. The plan had been for the Swift boats to be accompanied by support helicopters. On the way up the Bo De, however, the helicopters were attacked. They returned to their base to refuel and were unable to return to the mission for several hours. Kerry recorded the situation in his notebook: "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. We chose the latter."
As the Swift boats reached the Cua Lon, Kerry's boat was hit by a rocket-propelled grenade round, and a piece of hot shrapnel hit Kerry's left leg. Thereafter, they had no more trouble, and reached the Gulf of Thailand safely. Kerry still has shrapnel in his left thigh because the doctors decided to removed damaged tissue and close the wound with sutures rather than make a wide opening to remove the shrapnel. Kerry received his second Purple Heart for this injury, but he did not take any time off from duty.
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 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, he and his crew rushed to assist them. While moving, the boat was shot at by several Viet Cong B-40 rockets, with one hitting and shattering the crew cabin windows. Fred Short, the crew member 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 would have been to fire to shore and then retreat to an off-shore position. Instead, Kerry ordered Sandusky, the second-in-command and navigator, to take the boat ashore, directly towards the enemy's position. Whether this was bravery, foolhardiness, or some combination of both is in dispute. As they reached the shore, a Viet Cong teenager jumped out of the bush, carrying a grenade launcher that could have seriously damaged the boat. With the enemy soldier only a short distance away from the boat and crew, forward gunner Tommy Belodeau shot him in the leg with the boat's .50 caliber 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. Reports indicate that it was Kerry who shot the fleeing Viet Cong soldier as he was trying to escape with the rocket launcher.
Kerry and Medeiros searched the soldier's corpse and took the rocket launcher, returning to the boat. Kerry's commanding officer, Commander George Elliott, joked that he didn't know whether to court-martial him for beaching the boat without orders or give him a medal for saving the crew. Elliott submitted Kerry for a Silver Star, which he later said he had no "regrets or second thoughts" about doing, and Admiral Zumwalt flew in to personally award it to Kerry. The Navy's account of Kerry's actions is presented in .
In one of his very few public comments about the incident, Kerry said, "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."
"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."[1]
On March 13, Kerry's boat hit a mine as his position came under attack. The explosion knocked Green Beret James Rassmann overboard. Under heavy fire, Kerry rescued Rassmann. For this action, he was awarded the Bronze Star with Valor Device. The Navy's account of Kerry's actions is presented in .
Kerry was again wounded in this incident, for which he also received his third Purple Heart. His injuries included several shrapnel wounds in his left upper buttock, which were treated with antiseptic lotion and bandaged. He also suffered bruising and contusions from hitting the bulkhead, which was treated with warm soaking. He spent two days out of service while recovering.
Kerry lost five friends in war, including Yale classmate Richard Pershing, who was killed in action on February 17, 1968. A fuller account of the incidents for which he was decorated appears in Snopes. [1]
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 as a personal aide to an officer. 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, with approximately four months of that period as commander of a Swift Boat in Vietnam. 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.
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.
The criteria for the Purple Heart specify citation for any injury received by hostile fire requiring treatment by a medical officer. An article in the Boston Globe described the circumstances in which Purple Hearts were given to wounded soldiers in Vietnam:
Also criticizing Kerry are approximately 200 other veterans calling themselves Swift Boat Veterans for Truth (SBVT). 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 (described below). They called on Kerry to release all of his military records, which he did. He also released a summary of all his medical records. [1]
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. Almost all of them appeared at the 2004 Democratic National Convention; Drew Whitlow called that SBVT's claims "totally false." class="external">[1Kerry's tour of duty as commander of a Swift Boat
During the first three and half weeks of his four month tour of duty as a boat commander, 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 Operation SEALORD.Return from Vietnam
Shortly after his third wound, on March 17, 1969, Commodore Charles Horne, the commander of Kerry's coastal squadron and a military administrator, filed a document allowing Kerry's reassignment to the U.S. He was entitled to this early departure from Vietnam (subject to approval by the Bureau of Naval Personnel), because 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." Criticism
In Douglas Brinkley's book Tour of Duty: John Kerry and the Vietnam War, Brinkley notes that Purple Hearts were given out frequently:
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 questioning why Hibbard came out only now.[1]
Anti-Vietnam War activism
After Kerry returned from Vietnam, he became active in the Vietnam Veterans Against the War. On April 22, 1971, as a VVAW leader, wearing green fatigues and service ribbons, he gave his testimony to the Senate Foreign Relations Committee. He discussed VVAW's Winter Soldier Investigation, a weekend meeting earlier in 1971 that had heard statements from more than 100 Vietnam veterans, as well as several civilians. Kerry summarized statements of other participants who said they had seen or committed atrocities in the war, and he described the problems faced by returning Vietnam veterans. He also expressed the view of VVAW members that the war was essentially a civil war and that nothing in Vietnam was a realistic threat to the United States. He argued that the real reason the fighting continued was quite different: "Someone has to die so that President Nixon won't be, and these are his words, 'the first President to lose a war.'" Kerry’s famous question to the Committee was: "How do you ask a man to be the last man to die for a mistake?”
The day after this testimony, Kerry participated in a demonstration in which he and other veterans threw their medals and ribbons over a fence at the Capitol building in Washington, D.C. to dramatize their opposition to the war. Kerry threw his military ribbons over the fence along with the medals of two other veterans who he has said asked him to throw their medals over the fence on their behalf. Kerry's account of this protest has been a subject of controversy in his later political campaigns.
As time went on, however, Kerry found that VVAW was becoming more radical. Kerry was trying to moderate the group, to push it in the direction of nonviolence and working within the system. Other members, however, were more militant. Kerry eventually quit the organization over this difference in approach.
VVAW, although not numerically large, was an effective component of the antiwar movement (the efforts by many Americans to end U.S. involvement in the war in Vietnam). VVAW's members, including Kerry, could speak with personal knowledge about what they had seen in Vietnam. Beyond such specifics, however, they were seen as having “paid their dues” in Vietnam, and therefore being entitled to at least a respectful hearing. Americans who opposed the war were grateful for VVAW’s work. Many Vietnam veterans saw the organization as giving voice to the views of the common soldier in exposing official deceit. Many other veterans, however, deeply resented the VVAW's activities, feeling that their own military service was being attacked or cheapened. Enough of this resentment lingered in 2004 to motivate some veterans into active opposition to Kerry's Presidential campaign. Some of Kerry’s detractors have also raised questions about exactly when he left VVAW, and about whether he gave up his own medals or just the ribbons; see John Kerry VVAW controversy for a full discussion.
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 year, 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 to 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 Kerry's mother's original recipe - to the 2004 DNC media walkthrough at the Democratic Convention.
Law practice and first election
The Boston Globe wrote of Kerry's early political career:
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. They were charged with "breaking and entering with the intent to commit grand larceny," but the case was dismissed about a year later by superior court.
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. [1]
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. He won the election 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
In April of 1985, soon after taking their Senate seats, Kerry and Senator Tom Harkin of Iowa traveled to Nicaragua, and met the country's President, Daniel Ortega. Although Ortega had been elected to office, the Kerry-Ortega meeting was criticized by those who considered Ortega's Sandinista movement to be radical and pro-Cuba. U.S. foreign policy at the time, under President Ronald Reagan, was decidedly hostile to the leftist Sandinistas. Shortly after the Senators returned from their visit, Reagan imposed a complete economic embargo on Nicaragua and increased support to the opposition Contras.
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 they contended set up a private network involving the National Security Council and the CIA to deliver military equipment to right-wing Nicaraguan rebels (Contras). In effect, North and members of the White House were accused by Kerry's report of illegally funding and supplying armed militants without the authorization of Congress.
These parties were said to be involved in shipping cocaine and marijuana to the United States, with the profits from the sales going to pay for the Contra weaponry . The investigation, Kerry's 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 televised proceedings, which altogether, were referred to by some 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 pursuing 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.
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.
Political chairmanship and presidential nomination
Committee assignments
In the Senate, Kerry serves on several committees:
Kerry also serves on several Senate subcommittees:Issues and Voting Record
For information on Kerry's political views and voting record, see John Kerry presidential campaign, 2004.
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.
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.
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
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 Richard Charlesworth, an architect, 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 his second wife, 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.
Home Life and Interests
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.External links and references
Official
Print media
Online media
Information
Further reading
