Portions of a collection of FBI files that included records documenting Sen. John Kerry's attendance at a 1971 anti-war meeting where a plot to assassinate U.S. senators was discussed have been stolen, with files' owner reporting the theft to police on Friday.
"I don't know who could have done this," author and researcher Gerald Nicosia told the Los Angeles Times on Saturday. "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, author of the book "Home to War," which details the activities of the Kerry-led group Vietnam Veterans Against the War, produced the files last week to counter claims from the Kerry campaign that he wasn't present for a VVAW meeting where the assassination plot was voted on.
Nicosia told police that the theft occurred sometime Thursday from his home in Corte Madera, a Marin County suburb of San Francisco, the Times said.
He suspects the thieves were specifically in pursuit of the files because a camera and other expensive items in the home were left untouched.
Three of fourteen boxes obtained by the author under the Freedom of Information Act in 1999 were taken in the break in, with the others showing signs that they had been opened, removed and replaced. The total collection contained some 20,000 pages of documents.
Nicosia said he had yet to determine what materials were taken since none of the boxes were catalogued or marked.
Before the break in, Nicosia had allowed the Times to photocopy 50 pages that chronicle Kerry's anti-war activities in the early 1970s.
The author said that he had tipped the Kerry campaign that he had the files, promising at one point to deliver the files to Kerry so he could review the material for possible comment.
"Whoever did this wanted to know something about John Kerry," Nicosia told the Times. "But in the meantime, somebody got there first."
