John Kerry: “Let me just start off and try to say the accuracy in this process is awfully important. It is hard for people who do not…”

“Let me just start off and try to say the accuracy in this process is awfully important. It is hard for people who do not know a lot about this to pick through it. We are obviously not going to be able to do that in a short span of time. But the Senator has made a number of representations, and I would really like to correct some of them and let the record be clear on them. No. 1, he quoted the Foreign Relations Committee actions on the embargo as indicating why we ought to be in sync with his particular amendment, and that in fact the Foreign Relations Committee in the action it took on the embargo was reflecting the decision let the President decide. Let me say to my friend, since I am on the Foreign Relations Committee and since I was the principal one opposing proceeding forward on the embargo at that point in time, I know what that message was and what we did. We did not decide on the basis of his amendment to let the President decide. That had nothing to do with it. We decided it because we wanted to keep faith with the effort in place to make sure that the whole JTF process in Vietnam was working.”