Childhood passport in hand, John Kerry tells of early trip across Iron Curtain

John Kerry, the new U.S. Secretary of State, holds the diplomatic passport he was issued at eleven years old, while greeting employees of the State Department in Washington on Monday. Kerry's father, Richard, was a U.S. Foreign Service officer in Berlin after World War II.

The AP reports: As a 12-year-old in postwar Berlin of the 1950s, Kerry recounted how he could have caused a diplomatic incident by riding his bicycle around the destroyed and divided German capital, past the burnt out Reichstag and the Brandenburg gate and - using his first diplomatic passport - into the Soviet-controlled eastern part of the city.

"If the tabloids today knew I had done that, I can see the headlines that say, 'Kerry's Early Communist Connections!'" he joked, before describing more seriously how he explained to his irritated parents why he felt the need to cross the Iron Curtain. Full story

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