| Democratic
Party officials are hoping that no photographs
exist of a well-covered Vietnam War protest
where soldier-hating actress Jane Fonda and
Democratic presidential front-runner John
Kerry, then an up-and-coming member of Vietnam
Veterans Against the War, railed against U.S.
war policy from the back of the same pickup
truck.
"Scores of newspaper articles about the
march exist," according to Kerry biographer
Douglas Brinkley.
Dubbed "Operation RAW" (Rapid American
Withdrawal), the September 1970 march featured
Fonda, Kerry and a motley band of anti-war
vets in an 86-mile trek from Morristown, N.J.,
and Valley Forge, Pa. - two Revolutionary War
sites.
According to "Tour of Duty," Brinkley's
book on Kerry's war years, when the protesters
reached their destination they were treated to
Fonda standing in the bed of a pickup truck,
where she "denounced the Nixon administration
as a beehive for cold blooded killers."
"Along the marching route, veterans would
shout out phrases like 'Kill him!' and 'Cut
his belly open' for dramatic effect," said
Brinkley.
Others who spoke that day proclaimed the
U.S. guilty of "genocide" in Southeast Asia.
Kerry followed Fonda's Nixon denunciation
with a rousing anti-war address that made him
"the new leader of Vietnam Veterans Against
the War," Brinkley said. "From Valley Forge
onward, [Kerry] was a committed antiwar
activist. ..."
From there, Kerry went on to Detroit to
organize a particularly offensive bit of
guerrilla theater dubbed the "Winter Soldier
Investigation," where Fonda presided as U.S.
war atrocities were chronicled by "soldiers"
who some later suspected were impostors.
After Winter Soldier, writes Brinkley,
"Fonda personally adopted [Kerry's Vietnam
Veterans Against the War] as her leading
cause."
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