VVAW/IVAW links: Scott Camil [Jonn]

This is probably one of the most symbolic pictures of the relationship between the Iraq Veterans Against the War and the old Vietnam veterans Against the War – Scott Camil and Clifton Hicks in bed together;

Here’s a video I found of Camil at the Winter Soldier II hearings;

Clifton Hicks was one of the IVAW members who testified at the Winter Soldier hearings in Silver Spring, MD  I dealt with his narrative over a year ago. But some of you might not know or remember Scott Camil from the VVAW. Camil was one of the Gainsville Eight who skated on a conspiracy charge after the 1972 Republican National Convention in Miami when the FBI pre-emptively stopped the VVAW from attacking public safety elements of Miami and Miami Beach. From a Time Magazine article at the time;

“Fire teams” using crossbows, wrist-rocket sling shots, automatic weapons and homemade grenades would roam the streets of Miami attacking police, knocking out electric transformers, and firebombing stores. According to FBI Informer William Lemmer, those bizarre, bloody plans to disrupt the Republican National Convention last year were hatched by a group of Viet Nam Veterans Against the War. Lemmer says he attended a secret meeting in May 1972 in a Gainesville, Fla., attic, where plans for the disruption were discussed and the plotters demonstrated the use of crossbows, carbines and explosives.

Lemmer’s story was a major factor in the arrest of six members of the V.V.A.W. in July 1972 on charges of conspiring and crossing state lines to incite a riot (subsequently, another vet and a civilian ally were also charged).

They got away with it because they didn’t actually do it, thanks to the FBI. But that’s not all about Scott Camil. He was known as Scott the Assassin because of his proposal to murder pro-war Congressmen and Senators. From the book, Unfit for Command;

Known as Scott the Assassin, Camil was a firebrand within the VVAW ranks. He advocated the creation of VVAW assassination squads who could emulate the CIA Phoenix Program in Vietnam. The idea, as proposed by Camil, was that the VVAW assassination squads would kill politicians who opposed ending the war, beginning with prominent senators.

From a 2004 Sun Times article;

Another source is an October 20,1992, oral history interview of Scott Camil on file at the University of Florida Oral History Archive. In it, Mr. Camil speaks of his plan for an alternative to Mr. Kerry’s idea of symbolically throwing veterans’ medals over the fence onto the steps of the Capitol during the Dewey Canyon III demonstration in Washington in April of 1971.

“My plan was that, on the last day we would go into the [congressional] offices we would schedule the most hardcore hawks for last ­ and we would shoot them all,” Mr. Camil told the Oral History interviewer. “I was serious.”

These are the people behind the IVAW.

Category: Antiwar crowd, Iraq Veterans Against the War, Liberals suck, Phony soldiers