FBI files on Kerry reported stolen

A San Francisco-area historian yesterday reported the theft of three boxes of confidential FBI documents, some detailing government surveillance of presidential hopeful John F. Kerry when he was a spokesman for a 1970s veterans group protesting the Vietnam War.

Gerald Nicosia told police that the theft occurred sometime Thursday from his home in Corte Madera, a suburb of San Francisco, said Sergeant Chuck Lovenguth of the Twin Cities Police Department.

"I don't know who could have done this," Nicosia said yesterday. "It could be somebody who saw the boxes via news reports and wanted a piece of the presidential candidate for posterity, like a piece of the Berlin Wall."

Nicosia had received 20,000 pages of internal FBI surveillance files in 1999 through a Freedom of Information Act request. At the time, he was researching "Home to War," a chronicle of the Vietnam protest years. But the release came too late for use in the book, which was largely about Vietnam Veterans Against the War. Kerry was among the leaders of the group, which was founded in 1967 and drew 10,000 members nationwide. Nicosia says he suspected that the thieves were specifically in pursuit of the files because a camera and other expensive items in the home were left untouched. He added that he did not know exactly what material was taken because it was not catalogued or marked. Three of 14 boxes of files that had been stacked in his kitchen are missing. Nicosia said he left home Thursday and returned to find doors ajar. He said that while the boxes had been tightly packed when released by the FBI, he saw signs that ones not previously opened had been riffled.