Ex-Navy Officer Pokes Holes In Kerry's Vietnam Resume
BY DAVID ISAAC
INVESTOR'S BUSINESS DAILY
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Adm. Elmo Zumwalt, chief of naval operations in Vietnam, prophesied that John Kerry's career there would come back to haunt him.
The prophesy has come to pass.
On May 4, a remarkable, though underreported, press conference took place at the National Press Club in Washington announcing the formation of a new group: Swift Boat Veterans for Truth.
Its mission: To set the record straight about Sen. John Kerry's service in Vietnam and the accusations he made against his fellow soldiers after returning to the states.
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Swift boats — small, mostly aluminum vessels — were used to patrol Vietnam's coastal waterways. The men who served in them say they don't like to be pushed around.
From their remarks last week, it's clear they feel that's just what one of their own, presidential nominee John Kerry, has done.
John O'Neill, co-chairman of the group, says for many the final straw came with Kerry's new biography, "Tour of Duty."
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In it, Kerry repeats accusations he made when he came back from Vietnam after serving as a Swift boat officer. Upon returning, Kerry led the anti-war group Vietnam Veterans Against the War, and claimed U.S. forces committed war crimes on a daily basis.
Investor's Business Daily recently spoke with O'Neill, who by coincidence took over as skipper of Kerry's boat, PCF-94, after he left.
IBD: John Kerry's entire chain of command said he is unfit to be commander in chief. Do you feel it was adequately covered by the press?
O'Neill: No. Understand that having spent so many millions and millions of dollars in advertising to portray himself as a war hero, it's very hard for people to even sit and listen to the first-party testimony that we had and realize they've been taken by him.
But the truth is the mainstream press has simply been taken, by which I mean totally duped by him.
IBD: Did The Associated Press cover the event?
O'Neill: A reporter from The Associated Press attended the news conference and then refused to write a story on it.
AP received many inquiries asking, "Why have you not run a story on it?" They simply issued a statement saying they didn't believe it added anything to the dialogue between veterans and John Kerry.
IBD: What about the Kerry camp's charge that your effort
was steered and paid for by Republicans?
O'Neill: It's ironic because they've paid for all the
veterans supporting them. The people are literally on
salary. . . . They're typically flown around on a plane.
None of us have been paid by the Republicans; none of our
bills or expenses. And in fact none of us has any serious
tie of any kind with any party.
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I debated Kerry back in 1971 on "The Dick Cavett Show" and
I met with Nixon before that debate. I told Nixon I was a
Democrat.
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IBD: Why have you personally put so much time and effort into this?
O'Neill: I probably knew 15 to 20 people who were killed in Vietnam. When Kerry came forward with the war crimes charges in 1971, it just tore at the soul of all of us.
We went to such elaborate lengths to avoid injuring civilians. In our little unit we lost a number of people because we would go into canals and rivers with loudspeakers instead of shooting. . . .
When you had a guy who actually served with us condemning us en masse as war criminals — the injustice of that tarnished the souls of everybody there, particularly the people in our unit.
IBD: Only one person in your group actually served under
Kerry's command. The others who did have joined him. Why?
O'Neill: First, you need to understand these were little
boats that operate in clusters. Of the 23 officers who
were on those boats with Kerry, 17 of them have signed the
letter. We're not dealing with a situation where the only
ones who know about him are the five guys on his boat. His
little boat operated with these other boats always in
joint operations.
With respect to the nine people who are surviving who
served under Kerry, one came out in opposition to him,
eight were favorable to him. But when you read his
book, "Tour of Duty" you learn over half of them were
embittered, hated him and wanted nothing to do with him as
recently as three or four years ago.
IBD: What happened?
O'Neill: He met with them, assuaged them and they reached
the conclusion that whatever their personal friendship
was, that overcame the resentment at his activities in the
early 1970s.
I guess none of the rest of us feel that way. And we don't begrudge them feeling that way. But it's clear that those people once were also very strongly opposed to him, even off his own boat. And my source for that is his campaign biography.
IBD: Grant Hibbard, one of Kerry's commanders, went into some detail about Kerry's first Purple Heart, received for a scratch on his hand. How could Kerry get a Purple Heart for something like that without his commanding officer knowing?
O'Neill: Those are part of the records Kerry's hiding. Kerry claimed he released all records. What he won't do is execute Standard Form 180. That removes Kerry as gatekeeper and lets the Department of Defense actually show up with the records. Kerry will never execute Standard Form 180.
Among the records that are missing are anything on his first Purple Heart except the certificate itself.
We know he made a request for that Purple Heart from
Commander Hibbard, who turned it down. We know he appealed
that in some fashion. We know there has to be paperwork on
how it was granted. All that has now disappeared.
By the way it isn't only Commander Hibbard but also the
doctor. Dr. Louis Letson was the doctor who actually
treated him. . . .
Letson recalled treating him for that first Purple Heart.
The reason he recalled it is that when the crewman came
in, they told him he was running for president.
This was in 1969.
He looked at it and said, "Why are you here?" because it
was a tiny splinter, and Kerry said, "I've been wounded by
hostile fire and I need medical attention."
And the people began making fun of him and they told the
doctor, "Look, he just wounded himself with his own
grenade." What he'd done is shoot his grenade too close to
his boat and a little tiny bit of shrapnel, an
infinitesimal amount, came back and hit him.
Letson got tweezers and a small Band-Aid. Pulled the
splinter out. Put the Band-Aid on and patted Kerry on the
fanny and sent him on his way.
Each of the purported Purple Hearts are for scratches less
than a rose prick . . . Each one involves virtually no
serious wound of any kind. He then used the three Purple
Hearts to escape from Vietnam.
IBD: Your news conference was dramatic. How can people see it?
O'Neill: It can be downloaded at either one of two places, our Web site swiftvets.com and cspan.com. According to the Cspan records, it is the second most watched tape on Cspan in the past three years.
IBD: What effect do you think this will have on the elections?
O'Neill: First of all, my hope is he's not nominated. And my hope is it would have no effect on the election because he wouldn't be the Democratic nominee. . . .
Assuming that doesn't happen and he's nominated I don't believe his candidacy can survive the actual truth of what he did in the '70s. <font size=3>
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