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0 Comments | Insight on the News, April 13, 2004

Byline: INSIGHT

Why do the major dailies continue to spike the story of John Kerry's role in the Nov. 12-15, 1971, "assassination summit" in Kansas City at which Kerry participated in the secret discussion and vote by the executive board of Vietnam Veterans Against the War (VVAW) on whether to murder seven U.S. senators and other leaders who continued to resist New Left demands that Vietnam be turned over to the Viet Cong? Tom Lipscomb, founding editor of (New York) Times Books, has nailed it all down in the New York Sun with an FBI surveillance report and six eyewitnesses, of whom five are current Kerry supporters/members of his presidential campaign and the sixth is for "anybody but Bush ... or Kerry."

* Self-confessed father of the VVAW murder conspiracy was Scott Camil, known as "Scott the Assassin," who confirms it was all deadly real. Camil says he has been invited to join the Kerry campaign in Florida and will do so.

* Kerry has been lying about this one for years, claiming he left the group two days before the secret meetings at Kansas City. He did resign, but after the assassination summit - to run for Congress. (He lost.) Witnesses say Kerry, then 27, thought the assassination strategy would be counterproductive and voted no, but he did not break with the conspirators and call a cop.

* Among those said to have been on the assassination list were Sens. Strom Thurmond, John Tower and John Stennis, as well as House Majority Leader Hale Boggs, father of commentator Cokie Roberts. An aircraft in which Boggs was flying disappeared mysteriously in Alaska on Oct. 16, 1972.

* In an otherwise humorous talk at the Radio and Television Correspondents' annual dinner in Washington, President George W. Bush showed Special Forces troops solemnly burying a piece of the fallen World Trade Center at a memorial site in Afghanistan, which was headquarters for the al-Qaeda terrorists before the United States invaded the country

and killed or drove them into hiding.

* Those who have heard President Bush's detractors trying to minimize the achievement of our troops in Afghanistan would do well to remember that the Soviets, right next door, were bogged down there for more than a decade, suffered terrible casualties and eventually were pulled out in defeat.

* The U.S. economy grew last year at a solid annual rate of 4.1 percent, and the last two quarters of the year marked the fastest back-to-back quarterly growth in the 20 years since the first half of 1984.

* Insiders say that before the war in Iraq the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence was provided 50 intelligence reports showing contacts between the regime of Saddam Hussein and the al-Qaeda terrorists.

* A captured 1993 Iraqi intelligence report labeled "Top Secret" identifies agents operating as "collaborators" for Saddam's regime. Among those so listed on page 14 is "the Saudi Osama bin Laden," cited as working "in good relationship with our section in Syria."

* An insider boasting last week that his kid just got into Harvard, early decision, reports with a long face that the tab for next year will be $39,880. When we gasped, he said not to worry, it's free for poor people making less than $40,000.

* John Kerry may be trying to be a regular guy. But no matter what he does, says Peggy Noonan, Kerry seems like a man "who keeps a secret stash of Grey Poupon."

* As the Republic of China on Taiwan was preparing democratically to elect its president, the People's Republic on the Mainland began exercises designed to look like a missile attack against the island nation in joint military operations with the French, who apparently will do anything for a franc.

* No wonder there aren't enough young workers to support Social Security. There have been 40 million abortions in the United States since 1973, and 25 percent of pregnancies in the U.S. now result in abortion. May God forgive us!

* Archbishop Raymond Burke of St. Louis says he would refuse Communion to Sen. John Kerry, who calls himself a Catholic but is divorced, remarried and an advocate of abortion. "I would have to admonish him not to present himself for Communion," says the archbishop. Kerry's own archbishop, Sean O'Malley of Boston, says, "These politicians should know that if they're not voting correctly on these life issues that they shouldn't dare come to Communion."

* Wall Street's highest paid CEO at $28.1 million this year is Stan O'Neal of Merrill Lynch, an African-American and one tough cookie. O'Neal has overseen elimination of 17,500 jobs since 2001.

c* Don't you love those spy get-

togethers on Capitol Hill? Overheard this week in the corner of a Senate hearing room: "When the agency formally reported to Bill Clinton that Bertrand Aristide of Haiti is a manic-depressive and nutty as a fruitcake, the president reminded his briefer that he had just sent 20,000 troops to restore Aristide to power in Haiti and observed: 'You know, you can make too much of normalcy.'"

* And, finally, Texans are saving June 11 and 12 for celebrating the 80th birthday of George H.W. Bush. Our invitation, marked 41@80, is to a College Station bash called "The President's Parachute Jump, Barbecue Luncheon and Entertainment." Hmm. Last we heard, Barbara Bush had said no mas to those birthday parachute jumps. As she put it: "If the parachute jump doesn't kill him, I will."