[mburbank]

Though I've been very dissapointed with Kerry as candidate, he's been a hero of mine as a senator and person, for three major reasosns, one of which was his work on BCCI which is detiled in the articl you posted.

The other two were his principled stance against the Vietnam war as a returning soldier and his lengthy work on the CIA's involvement in South America. He uncovered a lot of the groundwork that made Iran Contra possible well in advance of Oliver North, and had more poeple been willing to listen might have thwarted it before it ever happened. He investigated widespread use of 'independent contractors' by the CIA circumventing US law to aid the contras by ferrying them arms and assisting them in the cocaine trade. Not a conspiracy theory, verifiable news. He was pretty much alone, it expended a lot of his political capital and it gained him just about nothing, yet he persued it doggedly.