Kerry in Congress: an investigator's rise

It's an irony of politics that a strong legislative résumé may be more likely to sink a presidential bid than to make one. Thousands of votes make too big a target, experts say. And the grind of making laws rarely helps a newcomer make a name.

Early on, Kerry took the road prospected by John F. Kennedy: nailing a big oversight investigation. For Kennedy, it was corruption in the Teamsters union - a high-profile probe including recognizable villains, misdeeds you can talk about over breakfast, and television coverage.

"The public has paid more attention to those investigations than they do to the daily legislative grind that goes on here," says Senate historian Don Ritchie. "Prominence as an investigator is a boost to someone with presidential aspirations."

Even before his Senate career began, Kerry had made his way into public life by asking questions. Best known is his testimony before the Senate Foreign Relations Committee as a witness for Vietnam Veterans Against the War in 1971 when he queried: "How do you ask a man to be the last man to die for a mistake?"

Elected to the US Senate in 1984, he gave up a prized offer to be on the Senate Appropriations committee and joined the Senate Foreign Relations Committee instead. It was a sign of longstanding interest in world affairs, fed by his father's career involvement in the foreign service. Kerry's internationalist views echo today in his calls for repairing relations with longtime allies in Europe.

On that committee, he pursued some of the most complex investigations in Senate history. On a tip from a Vietnam vet, he investigated reports that mercenaries were dealing arms to contra rebels in Nicaragua. The threads led to the White House.

Kerry, seen as too opinionated in this case, was not included on the congressional panel that investigated Iran-contra. Still, he used his position on the Senate subcommittee on terrorism, narcotics, and international operations - a panel not known for deep investigations - to continue his investigation of dirty guns, drugs, and money. He tracked leads from Colombia, the Bahamas and Haiti to Panamanian leader Manuel Noriega, who is now serving time in a federal prison. The Noriega probe led to the downfall of BCCI, where the money was laundered.

A colleague on the Foreign Relations Committee, Joseph Biden (D) of Delaware, says Kerry approaches such investigations with a prosecutor's mind: "He is very logical and almost didactic in the way he approaches issues. He takes a complicated problem and tries to deconstruct it."

Such work involves a mastery of detail that senators usually leave to their staff. But a former aide describes handing Kerry 800 pages of documents during the Noriega investigation, along with scripted questions to use in the hearing the next morning. "To my amazement, he read not only the script, but the documents," says Jack Blum, the subcommittee's former chief investigator.

Colleagues credit Kerry with doing much of the heavy lifting himself. Mr. Blum adds that pressure to back off the BCCI investigation was intense: "From Day 1, there was never a committee that took such an unmerciful pounding from the White House. Kerry said: 'Just ignore it.' "

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