Below is Scott Camil's reaction to this whole thing, in an article in our local paper.
Jenny Brown
March 24. 2004 Gainesville (Fla.) Sun Area activist, Kerry share Vietnam-era ties
By BOB ARNDORFER Sun staff writer
BC's "World News Tonight" hadn't finished Monday before Gainesville resident Scott Camil's phone started ringing.
Friends were calling to see if he had seen a report about newly disclosed information that the FBI had kept tabs on Sen. John Kerry during his anti-war days in the early 1970s.
The report included a passing reference to and a circa-1973 photo of Camil, who had met Kerry at national meetings of Vietnam Veterans Against the War. Citing Gerald Nicosia's 2001 book, "Home to War," the ABC report said that at a national meeting of the anti-war group, Camil had floated the idea of assassinating congressional leaders and others who opposed the anti-war movement.
"I had some warning that the Republicans were going to smear Kerry with my tar brush," Camil told The Gainesville Sun on Tuesday.
The report was another example of the role a war still in the American consciousness 30 years after it ended is playing in this year's presidential race.
Camil, 57, was one of the so-called "Gainesville Eight" - anti-war activists who, in a 1973 federal trial in Gainesville, were found not guilty of conspiring to violently disrupt the 1972 Republican National Convention in Miami. Camil has lived here since before the trial, and long has been active in Veterans for Peace.
Although he has no official connection to the Kerry campaign, Camil - who until the March 9 Democratic primary supported Rep. Dennis Kucinich - said, "I am heading up Veterans for Kerry."
He said ABC had called him Monday before airing the report, which he did not see. But he said that, while he gave some background information, he doesn't talk to the national media partly because he doesn't believe sound bites are a worthy forum for complex issues. Also, he said, he has been burned in the past by people posing as journalists.
In an interview with The Sun, Camil acknowledged that, as a 24-year-old Marine sergeant fresh from Vietnam, he had proposed a philosophical concept of assassination. But he said the idea was just that, and was voted down at the meeting.
Camil said the idea was born out of his combat experience in Vietnam, where he was wounded twice, and his firm belief that what the government was doing was illegal and immoral.
"We need to put it into perspective," he said. "When I was in Vietnam, I was acutely aware we were committing acts against international law.
"When I came home, I saw that not only was our government committing criminal acts abroad, but it was committing them at home," he said. "Students were being killed on college campuses. American Indians were being killed. Black Panthers were being killed.
"We felt that as citizens in a democracy, we were the highest authority," he said.
Camil said "body counts" were the government's measure of success during the Vietnam War. He said in free-fire zones - areas of known enemy activity - U.S. forces were authorized and trained to kill anyone within the zone because even non-combatants were assumed to be helping the enemy.
"The operational method we had was called search and destroy," he said.
It was that mind-set in which he found himself when he returned from Vietnam, Camil said.
"I wasn't a 57-year-old civilian as I am now," he said. "I was a 24-year-old Marine with two Purple Hearts, and my method of conflict resolution was based on my training. When we had those (anti-war) meetings, we were fresh from Vietnam and talking as combat soldiers."
He said Kerry wasn't the only anti-war Vietnam veteran the FBI was tracking in those days.
"All of us were being followed by FBI agents all the time back then," Camil said. "I couldn't go to the bathroom without them knowing about it.
"And at meetings, (FBI informants) were the guys pushing for the more violent stuff," he said. "If they were at these meetings and thought these ideas were so bad, why weren't they included in the other charges in the Gainesville Eight trial that stemmed from those same meetings?"
There have been inconsistencies from Kerry on what anti-war meetings he did or did not attend. Camil said that, after more than 30 years, that shouldn't be surprising.
"We had national meetings every three months," Camil said. "We had meetings in Denver, St. Louis, Detroit, Kansas City. What was the order of the meetings? What were the dates? I haven't the slightest.
"It's not a question of lying about stuff," he said. "To remember the order of meetings 33 years ago and who was there and when specific ideas came up, who can do that? The fact is there were FBI agents at every meeting. They should have good records."
Kerry's military record has helped propel Vietnam to the forefront of the presidential campaigns. But University of Florida political scientist Michael Martinez said that even with the debate over the war in Iraq, without Kerry in the race, Vietnam probably wouldn't be much of an issue this election year.
"It's an issue now, I think, because people who didn't participate in the primaries and caucuses are trying to get a read on who Kerry is," said Martinez, an associate professor and interim chair in the UF Department of Political Science whose specialties include political and electoral behavior. "Part of it is his service in Vietnam and its aftermath when he got involved in the anti-war movement."
He said he thinks Vietnam will have only an indirect impact on the election.
"Vietnam will not be a dividing issue that will decide the election," Martinez said. "But Iraq could be a dividing issue. It's a very salient issue and the candidates are offering very different perspectives on whether we should have been involved there in the first place."
Bob Arndorfer can be reached at 374-5042 or arndorb at gvillesun.com.