http://www.usvetdsp.com/kiley_arrest.htm
Senator McCain to be subpoenaed as a witness
By Ted Sampley
U.S. Veteran Dispatch
23 June 2005
www.usvetdsp.com
Vietnam veteran and longtime POW/MIA activist Jerry Kiley was arrested by the U.S. Secret Service Tuesday evening and charged with a Federal crime. Agents charged Kiley under Title l8, United States Code, Section 112(B).
After a night and day in jail, Kiley was finally presented for arraignment to a federal judge in Washington's U.S. District Court. The judge set July 8, 2005 as trail date. Kiley was released after signing an agreement not to go anywhere around the White House, Khai or his delegation while they are still in the United States.
The charge states that Kiley "willfully intimidated, coerced, threatened and harassed a foreign official, an official guest of the United States Government, to wit, Phan Van Khai, Prime Minister of the Socialist Republic of Vietnam and obstructed the Prime Minister in the performance of Prime Minister Khai's official duties."
Before Kiley was arrested, he, along with Vietnam Veteran/POW activist Ted Sampley and former Vietnam POW Mike Benge, had spent the most part of that day, June 21, in front of the White House helping former South Vietnamese soldiers and political prisoners protest Khai's visit with President George Bush.
During the presidential election, Sampley, Benge and Kiley organized and operated Vietnam Veterans Against John Kerry (VVAJK). Their organization was first veterans group to publicly oppose Kerry. Their web site received over 10,000,000 visitors during the first 90 days online.
Khai is the highest-ranking Vietnamese official to visit the White House since 1975 when the North Vietnamese communist violated The 1973 Paris Peace Accords.
The peace agreement, which was signed by communist North Vietnam, the communist National Liberation Front, the United States and the anti-communist South Vietnam, promised a cease-fire in all of North and South Vietnam, withdrawal of all U.S. troops, and a special pledge by the communist Vietnamese not to use force to unify North and South Vietnam.
Two years after the U.S. honored the agreement and withdrew its troops, North Vietnam violated the agreement and marched it's Soviet-supplied army (the fifth largest in the world at the time), south occupying South Vietnam, Laos, and Cambodia.
The 1975 fall of South Vietnam triggered an exodus of nearly 2 million Vietnamese in small, unsafe, and crowded boats. Thousands of South Vietnamese died in the camps.
Among the demonstrators protesting the meeting between Bush and Khai were members of the National Vietnam and Gulf War Veterans Coalition and Rolling Thunder, one of the nation's largest veterans activist organizations.
Bush met with the Rolling Thunder leadership at the White House last year while campaigning for reelection and pledged his support for the POW/MIA issue in exchange for Rolling Thunder's endorsement.
Despite claims to the contrary by some high ranking U.S. government officials, Vietnam has reneged on all promises to honestly cooperate in the search for American prisoners of war known to have been held alive by Vietnam, but never released.
Families of the missing men ask if the POWs are still alive, why haven't they been released and if they are dead, where are their remains and why did they die?
The U.S. Department of Defense estimated in 1973 that cadre serving the communist Vietnamese government had tortured to death or murdered more than 55 U.S. prisoners, the same government that Khai serves today.
The coalition of Vietnamese Americans and U.S. war veterans point specifically to Human Rights Watch reports of Vietnam's continuous use of murder and brutality against evangelical Christians. Mennonites, Cao Dai, Hoa Hao and Unified Buddhist Church adherents are beaten, persecuted and imprisoned for not following communist orthodoxy. Catholics are severely restricted in their observance
Khai, the demonstrators say represents a totalitarian terrorist government with a continuing official policy of human rights violations, genocide and ethnic cleansing.
Vietnam remains a one-party state, ruled and controlled by the Communist Party of Vietnam (CPV). Vietnam tightly restricts freedom of speech, freedom of religion, freedom of the press, freedom of assembly, and freedom of association.
On September 15, 2004, the U.S. Secretary of State Colin Powell designated Vietnam a "Country of Particular Concern" for severe religious freedom violations.
Communist Vietnam with it's long history of deceit and broken agreements is currently increasing efforts to monitor and control citizen's access and use of the Internet.
One of Khai's first business meeting in the United States was with Bill Gates, the chairman of Microsoft Corp.
To appease the Chinese communist, Microsoft on June 13 joined Google and Yahoo to block users of its Internet portal in China from using the words "democracy," "freedom" and "human rights." Khai wants a similar agreement from Gates for Vietnam.
More than 1,000 Vietnamese-American demonstrators traveled to the Washington protest from all over the United States, some from as far as Hawaii.
At about 2 p.m., the demonstrators moved their protest a few blocks away from the White House to the ritzy Mayflower hotel where many of the 200 in Khai's communist delegation were staying.
The United States-Vietnam Trade Council, a pro-Hanoi lobby made up of U.S. businesses hoping to tap into Vietnam's slave labor market, had booked the hotel's Grand Ballroom to honor Khai with a "gala dinner celebrating friendship between communist Vietnam and the United States government."
That evening, Kiley, known in the POW movement as the "stealth activist," because of his uncanny ability to infiltrate secured political events and meetings, slipped through security at the Mayflower and mingled among several hundred people attending the Trade Council's gala for Khai.
Kiley positioned himself at one of the tables near the head table where Senator John McCain and Khai were seated.
Soon McCain, a returned Vietnam War POW, who has established himself as one of Hanoi's best friends in Washington, rose and gave a glowing introduction of Khai.
When Khai stepped to the podium and while the audience was giving him a standing ovation, Kiley walked to within ten feet of podium and tossed a glass of wine onto the carpet directly in front of the podium, then set the glass on a table.
He said the wine represented the blood of all of the political prisoners and Prisoners of War that Khai and the communist government he represented were responsible for murdering.
Kiley waved his hand in an attempt to get Khai's attention.
When the crowd grew silent, Kiley, looking straight at Khai said, "Khai, you and your Government are killing religious leaders."
As security was pouncing on him, Kiley turned to face McCain and said "And you Senator McCain are a traitor to the live POW's left behind."
As Secret Service agents were escorting Kiley out the door, he yelled "Free Vietnam!"
Visibly outraged, McCain attempted to apologize to Khai.
After questioning Kiley outside of the ballroom, the Secret Service released him.
But, just after Kiley stepped outside the hotel door, the agents called him back and placed him under arrest.
The outraged McCain was claiming that he and Khai had been splashed with the symbolic blood Kiley had thrown and that constituted assault.
Kiley said that he is securing an attorney and that McCain would be subpoenaed as a witness.