Video Shows Kerry Conducting 'War Crimes' Interviews

A 1971 videotape shows Sen. John Kerry taking an active roll at the infamous Winter Soldier Investigation by personally grilling Vietnam vets about alleged war crimes they committed.

The tape, obtained by Vietnam war historian B.G. Burkett, apparently contradicts Kerry's claim that he was a mere observer at the Winter Soldier hearings - an event bankrolled by Jane Fonda that Kerry later cited in testimony before the Senate Foreign Relations committee.

"I was looking at the tape tonight," Burkett told WABC Radio's Steve Malzberg on Tuesday. "It shows that prior to putting these people on the air, Kerry is interviewing them."

According to Burkett - whose book "Stolen Valor" debunks much of the disparaging mythology perpetuated by the anti-war movement about Vietnam veterans - the tape shows Kerry rehearsing the Winter Soldier witnesses.

"They're sorting them out in terms of what each one of them is going to testify to and how they're going to testify," he told Malzberg.

Kerry wasn't the moderator at Winter Soldier - that task fell to Kerry's partner Al Hubbard, who was later exposed as an impostor who never served in Vietnam. But Burkett said the tape clearly shows Kerry "asking questions and presenting these individuals to the press."

Burkett said he obtained the video from a television producer who used it as part of an anti-war program to be shown to college students.

In a separate interview, New York Sun reporter Thomas Lipscomb shared new details about an assassination plot against pro-war U.S. congressmen hatched by Kerry's organization, Vietnam Veterans Against the War, a few months after the Winter Soldier hearings.

Seven U.S. senators were marked for death in the plot, which the VVAW "spent a day and a half discussing seriously" before turning it down, Lipscomb told Malzberg.

"It was a remarkable moment when this peace organization turned into a terror organization," he said.

The meeting was held in a Mennonite Church in Kansas City, a location the VVAW settled on after moving the venue twice in a bid to elude possible FBI surveillance.

Witnesses differ on whether the likely Democratic presidential nominee attended the meeting, with Kerry himself claiming he resigned from the VVAW just prior to the Kansas City event.

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