Memo to U.S. Rep James Comer: John Kerry was secretly negotiating with enemies of the U.S. before you were born.
So now you want to haul him before your House Oversight Committee to grill him on making secret “shady negotiations” on climate change with the communist Chinese?
Good luck with that.
John Kerry’s political career is coming full circle. It began around 1970 when, as a Vietnam War veteran turned anti-war activist, he met secretly in Paris with officials of the enemy Viet Cong and the North Vietnamese to discuss ending the war and the release of captured U.S. servicemen.
Comer, 50, of Kentucky was born in 1972.
Kerry had no authority to do so, but he did it anyway, which endeared him to Democrats and the anti-war crowd.
Kerry at the time was a commissioned U.S. Navy Reserve officer and may have broken the the law by colluding with the enemy, but nothing was officially made of it.
However, there were critics who later questioned his honorable discharge from the Navy.
And it made no difference to him that U.S. Secretary of State Henry Kissinger, on behalf of President Richard Nixon, was officially negotiating with the North Vietnamese to end the war at the same time.
Kerry returned home with his own peace plan, based on what the North Vietnamese proposed, and that was the unilateral withdrawal of all U.S. troops from Vietnam.
The plan went nowhere, but Kerry’s antiwar activities paved the way for a successful political career, despite losing his first run for public office for the Lowell based Congressional seat when he was defeated in 1972, losing to Republican Paul Cronin.
He later became Massachusetts lieutenant governor, then U.S. senator, presidential candidate, and secretary of state.
Now at age 79, as President Joe Biden’s climate czar, his career is ending as it began, with alleged secret and unannounced negotiations with an adversarial country–the Chinese Communists in Beijing.
The State Department has confirmed that Kerry is meeting with the Chinese on the “global crisis” of climate change but has provided no details.
Unlike the past, though, this time Kerry is facing a bulldog of an investigator and opponent in Comer who has demanded an account of the work Kerry has been doing in the name of the United States.
Comer is particularly concerned that as Biden’s appointee as special envoy on the climate, which is a cabinet-level position, Kerry did not go through the Senate for confirmation.
Nor has Kerry had to report to the Congress, or Secretary of State Antony Blinken, but reports directly to Biden. Blinken worked for Kerry when Kerry was secretary of state.
Comer is right to go after Kerry. Once a politician who was noted for obsequiously courting the press—the saying was that the most dangerous place in the world was between Kerry and a television camera—Kerry turned his new agency into something like the KGB.
Nobody knows where he goes, how he gets there, who is with him, who he talks to or what he does, until he suddenly pops up in Japan or India or China and talks about the world coming to an end unless people do what he says.
The only recent interview he did was with Jen Psaki of MSNBC who was his press secretary when Kerry was secretary of state. They talked about ice cream and the end of the world.
Getting public information out of him and his agency, as the Boston Herald has been trying to do for almost two years, is like pulling teeth. It has only just been revealed that Kerry has a staff of 44 people, but he will not release the payroll until October of 2024.
Comer said, “For the past two years, the Biden administration has withheld information on John Kerry’s role within the administration despite the committee’s many requests. He was not confirmed by the Senate. He is not held accountable by the American people. He is skirting congressional oversight and that is unacceptable.”
What would be more unacceptable is if Comer does nothing about it.
Peter Lucas is a veteran Massachusetts political reporter and columnist.
