John Kerry
United States Senator from Massachusetts
Incumbent
Assumed office January 2, 1985 Serving with Scott Brown
Preceded by	Paul Tsongas
Chairman of the Senate Committee on Foreign Relations
Incumbent
Assumed office January 6, 2009
Preceded by	Joe Biden
Chairman of the Senate Committee on Small Business and Entrepreneurship
In office January 4, 2007 – January 3, 2009
Preceded by	Olympia Snowe
Succeeded by	Mary Landrieu
In office June 6, 2001 – January 3, 2003
Preceded by	Kit Bond
Succeeded by	Olympia Snowe
In office January 3, 2001 – January 20, 2001
Preceded by	Kit Bond
Succeeded by	Kit Bond
Chairman of the Senate Select Committee on POW/MIA Affairs
In office August 2, 1991 – January 2, 1993
66th Lieutenant Governor of Massachusetts
In office March 6, 1983 – January 2, 1985
Governor	Michael Dukakis
Preceded by	Thomas P. O'Neill III
Succeeded by	Evelyn Murphy (1987)
Personal details
Born	John Forbes Kerry (1943-12-11) December 11, 1943 (age 68) Aurora, Colorado
Nationality	U.S. Citizen
Spouse(s)	Julia Thorne (1970–88, divorced) Teresa Heinz (1995–present)
Children	Alexandra Kerry Vanessa Kerry H. John Heinz IV (stepson) Andre Heinz (stepson) Christopher Heinz (stepson)
Residence	Boston, Massachusetts
Alma mater	Yale University (B.A.) Boston College (J.D.)
Occupation	Attorney
Religion	Roman Catholic
Signature
Website	kerry.senate.gov
Military service
Allegiance	United States of America
Service/branch	United States Navy
Years of service	1966–1978
Rank	Lieutenant
Unit	USS Gridley Coastal Squadron 1
Commands	PCF-44, PCF-94
Battles/wars	Vietnam War
Awards	Silver Star Bronze Star Purple Heart (3)

John Forbes Kerry (born December 11, 1943) is the senior United States Senator from Massachusetts, the 10th most senior United States Senator and chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee. He was the presidential nominee of the Democratic Party in the 2004 presidential election, but lost to then President George W. Bush.

The son of an Army Air Corps serviceman, Kerry was born in Aurora, Colorado. He attended boarding school in Massachusetts and New Hampshire and went on to graduate from Yale University class of 1966, where he majored in political science. He enlisted in the Naval Reserve in 1966 and, during 1968-1969, served a four-month tour of duty in South Vietnam as officer-in-charge (OIC) of a Swift Boat. For that service he was awarded several combat medals that include the Silver Star, Bronze Star, and three Purple Hearts. After returning to the United States, Kerry joined the Vietnam Veterans Against the War in which he served as a nationally recognized spokesperson and as an outspoken opponent of the Vietnam war. During that period, he appeared before the Senate Committee on Foreign Affairs where he deemed United States war policy in Vietnam to be the cause of "war crimes".

After graduating from Boston College Law School, Kerry worked as an Assistant District Attorney and co-founded a private firm. He served as Lieutenant Governor of Massachusetts under Michael Dukakis from 1983 to 1985, where he worked on an early forerunner to the national Clean Air Act. He won a tight Democratic primary in 1984 for the U.S. Senate and was sworn in the following January. On the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, he led a series of hearings from 1987 to 1989 which were a precursor to the Iran–Contra affair. He was an early backer of the 2003 invasion of Iraq, but became a strong opponent of the subsequent war.

Kerry based his 2004 presidential campaign on opposition to the Iraq War. He and his running mate Senator John Edwards lost by 34 electoral votes. Since then, he has established the Keeping America's Promise PAC. He became chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee in 2009, and in 2011 he was appointed to the Joint Select Committee on Deficit Reduction.

Personal life and background[link]

Kerry is the child of Richard Kerry (1915–2000), a Foreign Service Officer and an attorney for the Bureau of United Nations Affairs, and Rosemary Forbes Kerry (1913–2002), a World War II nurse and member of the wealthy Forbes family. He has three siblings: two sisters, Diana (born in 1947) and Margerie (aka Peggy; born in 1941), and a brother, Cameron (born in 1950), Cameron Kerry was picked to be President Barack Obama's general counsel of the Commerce Department.^[1] One of Kerry's maternal great-great-grandfathers was Robert Charles Winthrop, the 22nd Speaker of the U.S. House of Representatives.^[2]

Kerry was raised as a Roman Catholic by his Catholic father and Episcopalian mother.^[3] As a child, Kerry served as an altar boy. Although the extended family enjoyed a great fortune, Kerry's parents themselves were upper-middle class; a wealthy great aunt paid for Kerry to attend elite schools in Europe and New England. Kerry spent his summers at the Forbes family estate in Brittany, and there, he enjoyed a more opulent lifestyle than he had previously known in Massachusetts.

It was discovered in 2003 by genealogist Felix Gundacker,^[4] working with The Boston Globe, that Kerry's paternal grandparents, who had been born "Fritz Kohn" and "Ida Löwe" in the Austro-Hungarian Empire, changed their names to "Frederick and Ida Kerry" in 1900 and converted from Judaism to Roman Catholicism in 1901^[5][6] or 1902.^[7] Fritz' elder brother Otto had earlier, in 1887^[6] or 1896,^[4] also embraced Catholicism. The "Kerry" name, widely misinterpreted as indicative of Irish heritage, was reputedly selected arbitrarily: "According to family legend, Fritz and another family member opened an atlas at random and dropped a pencil on a map. It fell on County Kerry in Ireland, and thus a name was chosen."^[5][7] Leaving their hometown Mödling, a suburb of Vienna where they had lived since 1896, Fred and Ida, together with their son Eric, emigrated to the United States in 1905, living at first in Chicago and eventually moving to Brookline, Massachusetts, by 1915.^[5]

The village where Fritz Kohn was born in 1873 was at that time known as Bennisch and was a part of Silesia in the Austro-Hungarian Empire, but is today known as Horní Benešov in the Czech Republic.^[6] After learning of his ancestral connection with their village, the mayor and citizens sent congratulatory correspondence to John Kerry with regard to his political pursuits.^[6]

For a time, Fred Kerry was a prosperous and successful shoe merchant, and Ida and two of the children — Richard (who would become the father of John Kerry) and Mildred — were able to afford to travel to Europe in the autumn of 1921, returning on October 21.^[5] A few weeks later, on November 15, Fred Kerry filed a will leaving everything to Ida and then, on November 23, walked into a washroom of the Copley Plaza Hotel in Boston and committed suicide by shooting himself in the head with a handgun.^[5] The suicide was front-page news in all of the Boston newspapers, reporting at the time that the motive was severe asthma and related health problems, but modern reports cite family sources saying that the motive was financial trouble: "He had made three fortunes and when he had lost the third fortune, he couldn't face it anymore", according to granddaughter Nancy Stockslager.^[5]

John Kerry has said that although he knew his paternal grandfather had come from Austria, he did not know until informed by The Boston Globe on the basis of their genealogical research that Fred Kerry had changed his name from "Fritz Kohn" and had been born Jewish,^[7] nor that his great-uncle and great-aunt, Ida Kerry's brother Otto and sister Jenni, died in Nazi concentration camps.^[4]

On his mother's side, the Forbes name can be traced back to Thomas Dudley of the Dudley-Winthrop family who landed in Salem, Massachusetts, on June 14, 1630, with his daughter, poet Anne Dudley Bradstreet, and others aboard the Arbella.

Kerry is 6 ft 4 in (1.93 m) tall,^[8] enjoys surfing and windsurfing, as well as ice hockey, hunting and playing bass guitar. According to an interview he gave to Rolling Stone magazine in 2004, Kerry's favorite album is Abbey Road and he is a fan of The Beatles and The Rolling Stones, as well as of Jimi Hendrix and Jimmy Buffett. He never liked heavy metal.^[9] During his 2004 presidential campaign, Kerry used Bruce Springsteen's "No Surrender" as one of his campaign songs. Later he would adopt U2's "Beautiful Day" as his official campaign song.

Kerry is described by Sports Illustrated, among others, as an "avid cyclist",^[10][11] primarily riding on a road bike. Prior to his Presidential bid, Kerry was known to have participated in several long-distance rides (centuries). Even during his many campaigns, he was reported to have visited bicycle stores in both his home state and elsewhere. His staff requested recumbent stationary bikes for his hotel rooms.^[12]

Kerry appeared in a cameo as himself on the April 30, 1992, episode of the hit television sitcom Cheers, in the episode, "Bar Wars VI: This Time It's For Real."

In 2003, Kerry was diagnosed with and successfully treated for prostate cancer.^[13]

Family[link]

Kerry was married to Julia Thorne in 1970, and they had two daughters together: Alexandra and Vanessa. Alexandra was born on September 5, 1973, days before Kerry began law school. A graduate of Milton Academy and Brown University, she received her M.F.A. in June 2004 from the AFI Conservatory. She is a documentary filmmaker. Vanessa was born on December 31, 1976. She is a graduate of Phillips Academy and Yale University, and attended Harvard Medical School and a master's program in health policy at the London School of Economics. Both daughters were active in their father's 2004 Presidential campaign.

In 1982 Thorne, who was suffering from severe depression, asked Kerry for a separation.^[14] They were divorced on July 25, 1988, and the marriage was formally annulled in 1997. "After 14 years as a political wife, I associated politics only with anger, fear and loneliness" she wrote in A Change of Heart, her book about depression. Thorne later married Richard Charlesworth, an architect, and moved to Bozeman, Montana, where she became active in local environmental groups such as the Greater Yellowstone Coalition. Thorne supported Kerry's 2004 presidential run. She died of cancer on April 27, 2006.

Kerry and his second wife, Teresa Simões-Ferreira Heinz, the widow of Pennsylvania Senator H. John Heinz III, a Republican, and former United Nations interpreter, were introduced to each other by John Heinz at an Earth Day rally in 1990. They did not meet again until after John Heinz's death, at the 1992 Earth Summit in Rio de Janeiro. They married on May 26, 1995, in Nantucket. John Kerry's stepsons – Teresa's three sons from her previous marriage – are H. John Heinz IV, André Heinz and Christopher Heinz, who married Alexandra DeRuyter Lewis on February 10, 2007.

The Forbes 400 survey estimated in 2004 that Teresa Heinz Kerry had a net worth of $750 million. However, estimates have frequently varied, ranging from around $165 million to as high as $3.2 billion, according to a study in the Los Angeles Times. Regardless of which figure is correct, Kerry is the wealthiest U.S. Senator. Kerry is wealthy in his own name, and is the beneficiary of at least four trusts inherited from Forbes family members, including his mother, who died in 2002. Forbes magazine (a major business magazine named for an unrelated Forbes family) estimated that if elected, Kerry would have been the third-richest U.S. President in history when adjusted for inflation.^[15] This assessment was based on the couple's combined assets, but Kerry and Heinz signed a prenuptial agreement that keeps their assets separate.^[16] Kerry's financial disclosure form for 2002 put his personal assets in the range of $409,000 to $1.8 million, with additional assets held jointly by Kerry and his wife in the range of $300,000 to $600,000.^[17]

Religious beliefs[link]

Congressional portrait with U.S. flag in the background

A Roman Catholic, Kerry was said to carry a rosary, a prayer book, and a St. Christopher medal (the patron saint of travelers) when he campaigned. However, while Kerry is personally against abortion, he supports a woman's legal right to have one, which puts him at odds with the Catholic Church. Similar tension exists between the Church and several other Catholic national political figures, including Rudy Giuliani, George Pataki, Nancy Pelosi, Tom Ridge, Tom Vilsack (one of his possible vice-presidential choices in the 2004 election), Joe Biden, and Arnold Schwarzenegger. Discussing his faith, Kerry said, "I thought of being a priest. I was very religious while at school in Switzerland. I was an altar boy and prayed all the time. I was very centered around the Mass and the church." He also said that the Letters of Paul moved him the most, stating that they taught him to "not feel sorry for myself."^[18]

According to Christianity Today, Kerry remarks about his faith:

I'm a Catholic and I practice, but at the same time I have an open-mindedness to many other expressions of spirituality that come through different religions. ... I've spent some time reading and thinking about [religion] and trying to study it, and I've arrived at not so much a sense of the differences, but a sense of the similarities in so many ways; the value-system roots and linkages between the Torah, the Qur'an, and the Bible and the fundamental story that runs through all of this, that ... really connects all of us.^[19]

Early years (1943–1966)[link]

Childhood[link]

Kerry was born in Aurora, Colorado, at Fitzsimmons Army Hospital on December 11, 1943; his father was a member of the Army Air Corps at the time.^[20]

Kerry has said that his first memory is from when he was three years old, of holding his crying mother's hand while they walked through the broken glass and rubble of her childhood home in Saint-Briac, France. This visit came two and a half years after the United States had liberated Saint-Briac from the Nazis on August 14, 1944. The family estate, known as Les Essarts, had been occupied and used as a Nazi headquarters during the war. When the Germans abandoned it, they bombed Les Essarts and burned it down.

The sprawling estate was rebuilt in 1954. Kerry and his parents would often spend the summer holidays there. During these summers, he became good friends with his first cousin Brice Lalonde, a future Socialist and Green Party leader in France, who ran for president of France in 1981.

While his father was stationed at the U.S. Embassy in Oslo, Norway, Kerry was sent to Massachusetts to attend boarding school. In 1957, he attended the Fessenden School in West Newton, a village in Newton, Massachusetts. The Fessenden School is the oldest all-boys independent junior boarding school in the country. There he met and became friends with Richard Pershing, grandson of First World War U.S. Gen. John Joseph Pershing. Former Massachusetts senator Ted Kennedy also attended the Fessenden School, although several years prior to Kerry.

The following year, he enrolled at St. Paul's School in Concord, New Hampshire, and graduated from there in 1962. Kerry learned skills in public speaking and began developing an interest in politics. In his free time, he enjoyed ice hockey and lacrosse, which he played on teams captained by classmate Robert S. Mueller III, the current director of the FBI. Kerry also played bass guitar for the prep school's band The Electras, which produced an album in 1961. Only five hundred copies were made, one of which was auctioned on eBay in 2004 for $2,551.

In 1959, Kerry founded the John Winant Society at St. Paul's to debate the issues of the day; the Society still exists there.^[21][22] In November 1960, Kerry gave his first political speech, in favor of John F. Kennedy's election to the White House.

In 1962, Kerry was a volunteer for Ted Kennedy's first Senatorial campaign. The summer after his graduation from St. Paul's, he dated Janet Jennings Auchincloss, First Lady Jacqueline Kennedy's half-sister. Auchincloss invited Kerry to visit her family's estate, Hammersmith Farm, in Rhode Island, where Kerry met President John F. Kennedy for the first time.

According to Kerry, when he told the president he was about to enter Yale University, Kennedy grimaced, because he had gone to rival Harvard University. Kerry later recalled, "He smiled at me, laughed and said: 'Oh, don't worry about it. You know I'm a Yale man too now.'" According to Kerry "The President uttered that famous comment about how he had the best of two worlds now: a Harvard education and Yale degree", in reference to the honorary degree he had received from Yale a few months earlier. Later that day, a White House photographer snapped a photo of Kerry sailing with Kennedy and his family in Narragansett Bay.

Yale University[link]

In 1962, Kerry entered Yale University, majoring in political science. He graduated with a Bachelor of Arts degree in 1966. Kerry played on the soccer, hockey, lacrosse and fencing teams; in addition, he took flying lessons.^[22]

In his sophomore year, Kerry became the Chairman of the Liberal Party of the Yale Political Union, and a year later he served as President of the Union. Amongst his influential teachers in this period was Professor H. Bradford Westerfield, who was himself a former President of the Political Union.^[23] His involvement with the Political Union gave him an opportunity to be involved with important issues of the day, such as the civil rights movement and Kennedy's New Frontier program. He was also a member of the secretive Skull and Bones Society. He also traveled to Switzerland^[24] through AIESEC Yale.^[25][26]

Under the guidance of the speaking coach and history professor Rollin Osterweis, Kerry won many debates against other college students from across the nation.^[27] In March 1965, as the Vietnam War escalated, he won the Ten Eyck prize as the best orator in the junior class for a speech that was critical of U.S. foreign policy. In the speech he said, "It is the spectre of Western imperialism that causes more fear among Africans and Asians than communism and thus, it is self-defeating."^[28]

Kerry, viewed as a capable speaker, was chosen to give the class oration at graduation. His speech was a broad criticism of American foreign policy, including the Vietnam War, in which he would soon participate.

Military service (1966–1970)[link]

Duty on the USS Gridley[link]

On February 18, 1966, Kerry enlisted in the Naval Reserve.^[29] He began his active duty military service on August 19, 1966. After completing sixteen weeks of Officer Candidate School at the U.S. Naval Training Center in Newport, Rhode Island, Kerry received his officer's commission on December 16, 1966. During the 2004 election, Kerry posted his military records at his website, and permitted reporters to inspect his medical records. In 2005, Kerry released his military and medical records to the representatives of three news organizations, but has not authorized full public access to those records.^[30][31]

Kerry's first tour of duty was as an ensign on the guided missile frigate USS Gridley in 1968. The executive officer of the Gridley described the deployment: "We deployed from San Diego to the Vietnam theatre in early 1968 after only a six-month turnaround, and spent most of a four month deployment on rescue station in the Gulf of Tonkin, standing by to pick up downed aviators."

During his tour on the Gridley, Kerry requested duty in Vietnam, listing as his first preference a position as the commander of a Fast Patrol Craft (PCF), also known as a "Swift boat."^[32] These 50-foot (15 m) boats have aluminum hulls and have little or no armor, but are heavily armed and rely on speed. "I didn't really want to get involved in the war", Kerry said in a book of Vietnam reminiscences published in 1986. "When I signed up for the swift boats, they had very little to do with the war. They were engaged in coastal patrolling and that's what I thought I was going to be doing."^[33] However, his second choice of billet was on a river patrol boat, or "PBR", which at the time was serving a more dangerous duty on the rivers of Vietnam.^[32]

On June 16, 1968, Kerry was promoted to the rank of lieutenant, junior grade. On June 20, 1968, he left the Gridley for Swift boat training at the Naval Amphibious Base in Coronado.

Swift boat duty[link]

On November 17, 1968, Kerry reported for duty at Coastal Squadron 1 in Cam Ranh Bay in South Vietnam. In his role as an officer in charge of Swift boats, Kerry led five-man crews on a number of patrols into enemy-controlled areas. His first command was Swift boat PCF-44, from December 6, 1968 to January 21, 1969, when the crew was disbanded. They were based at Coastal Division 13 at Cat Lo from December 13, 1968, to January 6, 1969. Otherwise, they were stationed at Coastal Division 11 at An Thoi. On January 30, 1969, Kerry took charge of PCF-94 and its crew, which he led until he departed An Thoi on March 26, 1969, and subsequently the crew was disbanded.^[34]

On January 22, 1969, Kerry and several other officers had a meeting in Saigon with Admiral Elmo Zumwalt, the commander of U.S. Naval forces in Vietnam, and U.S. Army General Creighton Abrams, the overall commander of U.S. forces in Vietnam. Kerry and the other officers reported that the "free-fire zone" policy was alienating the Vietnamese and that the Swift boats' actions were not accomplishing their ostensible goal of interdicting Viet Cong supply lines. According to his biographer, Douglas Brinkley, Kerry and the other visiting officers felt their concerns were dismissed with what amounted to a pep talk (Tour of Duty, pp. 254–261).

Military honors[link]

During the night of December 2, 1968 and early morning of December 3, 1968, Kerry was in charge of a small boat operating near a peninsula north of Cam Ranh Bay together with a Swift boat (PCF-60). According to Kerry and the two crewmen who accompanied him that night, Patrick Runyon and William Zaladonis, they surprised a group of men unloading sampans at a river crossing, who began running and failed to obey an order to stop. As the men fled, Kerry and his crew opened fire on the sampans and destroyed them, then rapidly left. During this encounter, Kerry received a shrapnel wound in the left arm above the elbow. It was for this injury that Kerry received his first Purple Heart.^[35]

Kerry received his second Purple Heart for a wound received in action on the Bo De River on February 20, 1969. The plan had been for the Swift boats to be accompanied by support helicopters. On the way up the Bo De, however, the helicopters were attacked. They returned to their base to refuel and were unable to return to the mission for several hours.

As the Swift boats reached the Cua Lon River, Kerry's boat was hit by a RPG round, and a piece of shrapnel hit Kerry's left leg, wounding him. Thereafter, they had no more trouble, and reached the Gulf of Thailand safely. Kerry still has shrapnel in his left thigh because the doctors tending to him decided to remove the damaged tissue and close the wound with sutures rather than make a wide opening to remove the shrapnel.^[36] Kerry received his second Purple Heart for this injury, but like several others wounded earlier that day, he did not lose any time off from duty.^[37][38]

Eight days later, on February 28, 1969, came the events for which Kerry was awarded his Silver Star. On this occasion, Kerry was in tactical command of his Swift boat and two others in an eight boat formation. Their mission on the Duong Keo river included bringing a demolition team and dozens of South Vietnamese Marines to destroy enemy sampans, structures and bunkers as described in the story The Death Of PCF 43.^[39] Running into an ambush, Kerry "directed the boats to turn to the beach and charge the Viet Cong positions" and he "expertly directed" his boat's fire and coordinated the deployment of the South Vietnamese troops, according to the original medal citation (signed by Admiral Zumwalt). Going a short distance farther, Kerry's boat was the target of an RPG round; as the boat beached at the site, a VC with a rocket launcher jumped and ran from a spider hole. While the boat's gunner opened fire, wounding the VC on the leg, and while the other boats approached and offered cover fire, Kerry jumped from the boat and chased the VC and killed him, capturing a loaded rocket launcher.^[40][41][41]

Kerry's commanding officer, Lieutenant Commander George Elliott, joked to Douglas Brinkley in 2003 that he didn't know whether to court-martial Kerry for beaching the boat without orders or give him a medal for saving the crew. Elliott recommended Kerry for the Silver Star, and Zumwalt flew into An Thoi to personally award medals to Kerry and the rest of the sailors involved in the mission. The Navy's account of Kerry's actions is presented in the original medal citation signed by Zumwalt. The engagement was documented in an after-action report, a press release written on March 1, 1969, and a historical summary dated March 17, 1969.^[42]

On March 13, 1969, five Swift boats were returning to base together on the Bay Hap river from their missions that day, after a firefight earlier in the day (during which time Kerry received a slight shrapnel wound in the buttocks from blowing up a rice bunker), and debarking some but not all of the passengers at a small village. They approached a fishing weir (a series of poles across the river for hanging nets), so that one group of boats went around left, hugging the shore, and a group with Kerry's 94 boat went around right along the shoreline. A mine was detonated directly beneath the lead boat, PCF-3, as it crossed the weir to the left, lifting PCF-3 completely into the air.^[43]

James Rassmann, a Green Beret advisor who was aboard PCF-94, was knocked overboard when, according to witnesses and the documentation of the event, a mine or rocket exploded close to the boat. According to the documentation for the event, Kerry's arm was injured when he was thrown against a bulkhead during the explosion. PCF 94 returned to the scene and Kerry rescued Rassmann from the water. Kerry received the Bronze Star for his actions during this incident; he also received his third Purple Heart.^[44]

After the crew of PCF-3 had been rescued, and the most seriously wounded sailors evacuated by two of the PCFs, PCF 94 and another boat remained behind and helped salvage the stricken boat together with a damage-control party that had been immediately dispatched to the scene.

Controversy[link]

As the presidential campaign of 2004 developed, approximately 200 Vietnam veterans formed the group Swift Boat Veterans for Truth (SBVT), subsequently renamed Swift Vets and POWs for Truth, which held press conferences, ran ads and endorsed a book questioning Kerry's service record and his military awards. The group included several members of Kerry's unit, such as Larry Thurlow, who commanded a swift boat alongside of Kerry's,^[45] and Stephen Gardner, who served on Kerry's boat.^[46]

Return from Vietnam[link]

After Kerry's third qualifying wound, he was entitled per Navy regulations to re-assignment away from combat duties. Navy records show that Kerry's preferred choice for re-assignment was as an aide in Boston, New York or Washington, D.C.^[47]

On March 26, 1969, after a final patrol the night before, Kerry was transferred to Cam Ranh Bay to await his orders. He was there for five or six days and left Vietnam in early April. On April 11, 1969, he reported to the Brooklyn-based Atlantic Military Sea Transportation Service, where he would remain on active duty for the following year as a personal aide to an officer, Rear Admiral Walter Schlech. On January 1, 1970 Kerry was temporarily promoted to full Lieutenant.^[48] Kerry had agreed to an extension of his active duty obligation from December 1969 to August 1970 in order to perform Swift Boat duty,^[49][50] but in January, 1970, he requested early discharge in order to run for Congress the following fall. He was discharged from active duty on March 1, 1970.

John Kerry was on active duty in the United States Navy from August 1966 until January 1970. He continued to serve in the Naval Reserve until February 1978. Kerry lost at least five friends in the war including Yale classmate Richard Pershing, who was killed in action on February 17, 1968.

Anti-war activism (1970–1971)[link]

After returning to the United States, Kerry joined the Vietnam Veterans Against the War (VVAW). Then numbering about 20,000,^[51] VVAW was considered by some (including the administration of President Richard Nixon) to be an effective, if controversial, component of the antiwar movement.^[52]

Kerry at the Fulbright Hearings

On April 22, 1971, Kerry became the first Vietnam veteran to testify before Congress about the war, when he appeared before a Senate committee hearing on proposals relating to ending the war. He was still a member of the United States Navy Reserve, holding the rank of Lieutenant Junior Grade. Wearing green fatigues and service ribbons, he spoke for nearly two hours with the Senate Foreign Relations Committee in what has been named the Fulbright Hearings, after the Chairman of the proceedings, Senator J.W. Fulbright. Kerry began with a prepared speech, in which he presented the conclusions of the Winter Soldier Investigation, and then went on to address larger policy issues.

The day after this testimony, Kerry participated in a demonstration with thousands of other veterans in which he and other veterans threw their medals and ribbons over a fence erected at the front steps of the United States Capitol building to dramatize their opposition to the war. Jack Smith, a Marine, read a statement explaining why the veterans were returning their military awards to the government. For more than two hours, almost 1000 angry veterans tossed their medals, ribbons, hats, jackets, and military papers over the fence. Each veteran gave his or her name, hometown, branch of service and a statement. Kerry threw some of his decorations as well as some given to him by other veterans to throw. As Kerry threw his decorations over the fence, his statement was: "I'm not doing this for any violent reasons, but for peace and justice, and to try and make this country wake up once and for all."^[53] The documentary film Sir! No Sir! includes archival footage of Kerry at the demonstration: he is one of several young men seen throwing things over the fence.

Media appearances[link]

Because Kerry was a decorated veteran who took a stand against the government's official position, he was frequently interviewed by broadcast and print media. He was able to use these occasions to bring the themes of his Senate testimony to a wider audience.

For example, Kerry appeared more than once on The Dick Cavett Show on ABC television. On one Cavett program (June 30, 1971), in debating John O'Neill, Kerry argued that some of the policies instituted by the U.S. military leaders in Vietnam, such as free-fire zones and burning noncombatants' houses, were contrary to the laws of war. In the Washington Star newspaper (June 6, 1971), he recounted how he and other Swift boat officers had become disillusioned by the contrast between what the leaders told them and what they saw: "That's when I realized I could never remain silent about the realities of the war in Vietnam."

On NBC's Meet The Press in 1971, Kerry was asked whether he had personally committed atrocities in Vietnam. He responded:

Operation POW[link]