WI: VVAW political assassinations in early 70s?

While thinking about this thread, I came across the following:

Kansas City meeting

During a four day series of meetings in Kansas City, Missouri on November 12–15, 1971, Scott Camil, a radical VVAW southern coordinator, proposed the assassination of the most conservative members of United States Congress, and other powerful opponents of the antiwar movement.

According to interviews with VVAW members who were present at the Kansas City meetings, Camil suggested something he called "The Phoenix Project," named after the original Phoenix Program operations during the Vietnam War used by the CIA to assassinate the Viet Cong. Originally conceived as an option during the protest march in Washington, Camil's Phoenix Project plan was to execute the Southern senatorial leadership that was backing the war, including John Tower, Strom Thurmond, and John Stennis. In Camil's words:
“ I did not think it was terrible at the time. My plan was that, on the last day we would go into the [congressional] offices we would schedule the most hardcore hawks for last — and we would shoot them all...I was serious. I felt that I spent two years killing women and children in their own fucking homes. These are the guys that fucking made the policy, and these were the guys that were responsible for it, and these were the guys that were voting to continue the fucking war when the public was against it. I felt that if we really believed in what we were doing, and if we were willing to put our lives on the line for the country over there, we should be willing to put our lives on the line for the country over here." [33] ”

The proposed assassinations were to be executed during the Senate Christmas recess. The plan was voted down, although there's a "difference of opinion" as to how close the vote was.[34] It is unclear whether 2004 presidential candidate John Kerry was present for this meeting.[34] His campaign indicated he was not there and had resigned from the organization by then. He continued to speak at anti-war events for several more months.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vietnam_Veterans_Against_the_War#Kansas_City_meeting

and

In two days of testimony, Lemmer, a former paratrooper in Viet Nam, described a fantastic plot that he says he watched develop while serving as Arkansas-Oklahoma coordinator for the antiwar vets. He outlined the scheme that he says Veteran Leader Scott Camil called "Phoenix II" (named after a CIA-sponsored project to eliminate Viet Cong cadres in Viet Nam). Lemmer told the jury that early in 1972, Camil said he was conducting training operations for political assassination squads on an isolated Florida farm with facilities for rifle, pistol and mortar practice. Lemmer, who spent approximately two years as an FBI informer, testified that the plotting veterans had traded "dope for weapons." He related that once Defendant John W. Kniffen had demonstrated how to use a crossbow by firing a steel shaft through a door. He also claimed that Camil had asked him to "fill a contract," presumably for a gangland-style murder.
http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,907734,00.html

So, what would have happened had Scott Camil gone about this in a better organized manner and actually managed to put together a team and carry out the assassinations of several congressional hawks in late '71 or early '72?
 
From what I know about the VVAW they were a pretty broad church, and it's not like they actually did go down the path of the Weathermen, so any real violent radicals would have to be 'splitters' thrown out of the organisation.

Such a group mightn't even identify as veterans.

Of course if they perpetuated a single outrage against any elected official the man in the White House and the man at the FBI may well use it to push for some kind of proto-Patriot Act.

(FWIW I don't recall this 'Kansas City meeting' ever being brought up by the anti-Kerry GOP activists in 2004, so it hasn't resonated down through the years. Hell, I doubt the members here with KDS even know about it.:D)

Lemmer, who spent approximately two years as an FBI informer, testified that the plotting veterans had traded "dope for weapons."

I wonder how much of this stuff was whipped up by agents provocoteurs.
 
From what I know about the VVAW they were a pretty broad church, and it's not like they actually did go down the path of the Weathermen, so any real violent radicals would have to be 'splitters' thrown out of the organisation.

Such a group mightn't even identify as veterans.

No, they didn't. That's why this is a "what if". ;)

Of course if they perpetuated a single outrage against any elected official the man in the White House and the man at the FBI may well use it to push for some kind of proto-Patriot Act.

I kind of suspect it'd go further than that.

(FWIW I don't recall this 'Kansas City meeting' ever being brought up by the anti-Kerry GOP activists in 2004, so it hasn't resonated down through the years. Hell, I doubt the members here with KDS even know about it.:D)

It was actually brought up by those very people and others. See:

http://books.google.co.uk/books?id=...ok_result&ct=result&resnum=15&ved=0CHsQ6AEwDg
http://www.terpsboy.com/blogarchives/000849.html
http://www.swiftvets.com/phpBB2/viewtopic.php?t=12735
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/1102880/posts


I wonder how much of this stuff was whipped up by agents provocoteurs.

I suspect it was less that and more pipe dreams. Quite a few people at the time had some odd ball ideas that never got off the ground because they simply weren't well organized.
 
I kind of suspect it'd go further than that.

Pretty hard to go further than the Patriot Act, at least legally.

It was actually brought up by those very people and others.

I have to admit I didn't catch any of that at the time, it wasn't reported in either the MSM or Left blog reports I was reading--and getting covered by the MSM and, yes, even Leftwing blogs was a serious motivating factor for the SwiftBoaters in everything they did that year.

I suspect it was less that and more pipe dreams. Quite a few people at the time had some odd ball ideas that never got off the ground because they simply weren't well organized.

Perlstein in 'Nixonland' writes that the most aggressive loudmouths in the VVAW contingent that was protesting the GOP convention in 1972 tended to be FBI and police informants.

Though this Kansas City thing is a year earlier, when the memory of Kent State is stronger and the US drawdown in Vietnam hadn't begun to speed up, so maybe the most genuinely aggressive members had drifted away to Mexico etc by the time of Miami.
 
This story was circulating in VVAW circles in the Northeast back in late 71-72. Kent State was a major motivating factor. The feeling among some was that they were shooting us, and it was time to shoot back. They also felt Nixon had reneged on his 1968 promise to get us out of Vietnam. There were some genuinely crazy dudes in VVAW at the time, guys who still had the thousand-yard stare and set up LPs in their back yards and booby traps on their doors every night. (No, I wasn't a member, but several friends were.)

This was the high era of COINTELPRO, and the FBI had infiltrated just about every antiwar group across the spectrum, from Weather Underground to the Quakers. VVAW was no exception, and paranoia levels within the organization were stratospheric -- which is a highly effective organizational disruption device.

But assuming the fibbies fell down on the job, Camil and his followers would have been kicked out the door at VVAW and would have set up their own organization Weather Underground style. Those vets certainly had the skill sets necessary to mount an effective assassination campaign. Whether they could have held together psychologically long enough to pull it off -- well, that's another issue.
 
This story was circulating in VVAW circles in the Northeast back in late 71-72. Kent State was a major motivating factor. The feeling among some was that they were shooting us, and it was time to shoot back. They also felt Nixon had reneged on his 1968 promise to get us out of Vietnam. There were some genuinely crazy dudes in VVAW at the time, guys who still had the thousand-yard stare and set up LPs in their back yards and booby traps on their doors every night. (No, I wasn't a member, but several friends were.)

That was my impresion about the motivations. And I've run across a few who've either been on the lower end of the "odd" scale or had moderated it over the years.

This was the high era of COINTELPRO, and the FBI had infiltrated just about every antiwar group across the spectrum, from Weather Underground to the Quakers. VVAW was no exception, and paranoia levels within the organization were stratospheric -- which is a highly effective organizational disruption device.

But assuming the fibbies fell down on the job, Camil and his followers would have been kicked out the door at VVAW and would have set up their own organization Weather Underground style. Those vets certainly had the skill sets necessary to mount an effective assassination campaign. Whether they could have held together psychologically long enough to pull it off -- well, that's another issue.

That would be part of the going about it in a better organized manner requirement of the WI, at least as I see it.

(For what it's worth, looking back at it, I have a sneaking suspision my question was partly prompted subconsciously by my having recently finished reading Hideous Dream, a memoir by a former SOF operator focusing on Operation Restore Democracy and how he became of a radical activist.)
 
That was my impresion about the motivations. And I've run across a few who've either been on the lower end of the "odd" scale or had moderated it over the years.

I was still running into vets in the mid-1980s who were seriously warped. There was a group here in Maine -- long story short -- that split, went paranoid on each other and associated friends/enemies/innocent observers (me), and kept the violence level just barely below lethal.

You need to remember that besides the PTSD, a lot of this was fueled by alcohol and drugs. The level of opiate addiction among late-era Vietnam vets was staggering -- I've seen estimates as high as 30 percent, altho that seems exaggerated to me. They could buy supercheap heroin from kids right outside the main gates of their compounds. The FBI was quick to exploit those weaknesses when infiltrating antiwar veterans' groups.
 
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