Hanoi John

A buzz has been running through the blogosphere since last night about this story.

The communist regime in Hanoi monitored closely and looked favorably upon the activities of the Vietnam Veterans Against the War during the period Senator Kerry served most actively as the group's spokesman and a member of its executive committee, two captured Viet Cong documents suggest.

The documents - one dubbed a "circular" and the other a "directive" - were captured in 1971 and are part of a trove of material from the war currently stored at the Vietnam Archive at Texas Tech University at Lubbock. Originally organized by Douglas Pike, a major scholar who is now deceased, the archive contains more than 20 million documents. Many are available online at the Virtual Vietnam Archive and, as the election has heated up, have been the focus of a scramble for insights into Mr. Kerry's anti-war activities. The Circular and the Directive are listed as items numbered 2150901039b and 2150901041 respectively. Their authenticity was confirmed by Stephen Maxner, archivist at the Vietnam Archive.

My first reaction to this story? Well, duh.

... more than 350 Americans secretly worked for Soviet intelligence during World War II -- when the United States and the Soviet Union were allies. A number of them served in very high positions in the U.S. government. Harry Dexter White was assistant secretary of the Treasury and played a key role in creating the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund, pillars of the postwar world monetary structure. Lauchlin Currie was one of a half-dozen special assistants to President Franklin Roosevelt. Laurence Duggan was in charge of U.S. relations with Latin America.

The Venona story.

If Soviet communists could be this successful at infiltrating the highest levels of the US government, how difficult do you think it would be to influence Vietnam protest groups? One could hardly consider their goals to be in conflict.

Posted by Kate at October 26, 2004 12:01 PM