Author Suspects GOP in Kerry FBI File Theft

Vietnam War historian Gerald Nicosia said Friday that burglars who broke into his house a week ago Thursday and removed thousands of documents from Sen. John Kerry's FBI files were most likely Republican operatives.

"I would say that the Republicans had the largest motivation because there definitely is ... a heck of a lot of explosive stuff about Kerry in there," Nicosia told MSNBC's "Scarborough Country."

The author, who has unabashedly proclaimed his support for Kerry's presidential bid, obtained the FBI files while working on his 1999 book, "Home to War," filing a Freedom of Information Act request that took 11 years to yield results.

Nicosia said he didn't think the top Democrat or his staff were worried about the 20,000-page stash of surveillance material he had on him.

"The Kerry camp had no reason to believe I would not cooperate with them," Nicosia insisted, explaining that he shared portions of the files with Kerry operatives a few days before their theft.

Still, after Nicosia used the files two weeks ago to disprove Kerry's denials that he attended a 1971 meeting of the Vietnam Veterans Against the War - where a plot to assassinate pro-war politicians was discussed - some see the motivations of the file thieves differently.

"This almost sounds like a West Coast version of Watergate 2004," host Joe Scarborough told Nicosia and fellow guest Pat Buchanan. "Maybe it was an inside job by somebody in the Kerry campaign."

Indeed, if the Kerry camp was involved in the FBI file break-in, it wouldn't be the first time it had engaged in Watergate-style political sabotage.

As the New York Post reported just last month, during Kerry's 1972 bid for Congress, his younger brother, Cameron Kerry, was arrested for "breaking into ... the headquarters of a Kerry opponent" in Lowell, Mass.

Kerry's brother and another campaign worker pleaded not guilty to charges of "breaking and entering with the intent to commit grand larceny."

After the arrests, candidate Kerry told the New York Times that the break-in was a pre-emptive strike in response to threats that phone lines to his campaign headquarters were about to be sabotaged.

Cameron Kerry is now a partner in a Boston-based law firm and has been a key financial backer of all of his brother's campaigns.

Editor's note: