Challenge to Kerry's Vietnam record sets off storm
By DAVID TARRANT / The Dallas Morning News
If the first casualty in war is the truth, as the old saying goes, the truth about John Kerry's military service is under fire from television and the bookstore shelves.
The group behind the attack, the Swift Boat Veterans for Truth, has accused Mr. Kerry of everything from exaggerating claims to earn medals and Purple Hearts to having his own film crew capturing future campaign footage during his tour in Vietnam almost 35 years ago. Many date their anger at Mr. Kerry to his anti-war activities after he returned from Vietnam, saying he slandered veterans at the time.
But the group has come under fierce counterattack by critics who say that the men featured in their ad did not serve directly with Mr. Kerry and that their charges are refuted by extensive military records and numerous eyewitnesses closer to the action than the group members. The Kerry campaign even notes that some of the accusers were superior officers who gave the candidate glowing performance reviews.
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Fact check: Kerry vs. swift boat vets
An examination of the evidence and interviews by The Dallas Morning News with several key witnesses on both sides reveal differing accounts of Mr. Kerry's war actions, even 35 years later.
Retired Rear Adm. Roy Hoffmann, who organized the group, says the members expected the reaction.
"We're not naive to think we're not going to get blasts," said Adm. Hoffmann, who as commander of Coastal Surveillance Force, which included the fleet of swift boats, was Mr. Kerry's superior officer.
Jim Rassmann, whose life was saved by Mr. Kerry, told CNN that the group's campaign is "very disingenuous," adding: "This is partisan motivation on his part and for the part of his whole organization."
Fresh battles
Even though the Vietnam War was fought decades ago, the battles over it are fresh in this campaign. Part of that is Mr. Kerry's own doing – he and surrogates have emphasized his Vietnam service over other parts of his life story, opening his record to scrutiny. But the charges also appear politically driven, in part because for the first time since the 1980s, the election is focused on which candidate will make a better commander in chief.
The escalating barrage continues today, with the release of a book targeting Mr. Kerry's war record and accusing the Democratic presidential nominee of distorting his military service for political gain.
The book, Unfit for Command, is co-authored by longtime Kerry nemesis John O'Neill, a Houston lawyer who followed Mr. Kerry as commander of Patrol Craft Fast 94. The two squared off in the early 1970s in a famous TV debate about the war.
The book comes on the heels of a disputed ad airing in three battleground states that has drawn criticism from Democrats as well as prominent Republicans, including Sen. John McCain, but has created a media buzz nationally, especially on conservative talk shows.
And more ads could be coming.
"You bet. You're damn right we're going to keep advertising," Adm. Hoffmann said.
Adm. Hoffmann and others with the Swift Boat Veterans for Truth say they are trying to counter the image of Mr. Kerry as a war hero. Adm. Hoffmann said the group was organized only when it became clear the Massachusetts senator would be the Democratic presidential nominee.
"We wouldn't be existing if someone else was nominated as president," he said.
Mr. Kerry prominently featured his swift boat crew members during the Democratic convention, and they told stories of his courage and leadership under fire. His four months of duty in Vietnam are a major focus of his television ads.
"The answer, plain and simple, is that we're trying to get the truth out in the public. He is trying to become the president and commander in chief ... and we cannot sit idly by," says Jack Chenoweth, a former swift boat commander who was on the mission for which Mr. Kerry was awarded a Bronze Star.
'Smear campaign'
Other swift boat veterans say that it's politics, not the truth, motivating the group – a "smear campaign," says Del Sandusky, who served on Mr. Kerry's boat and was the driver the day Mr. Kerry saved the life of a special forces soldier.
The Kerry campaign has called the group a Republican front operation. Houston home builder Bob Perry, a major financial supporter of President Bush and the Republican Party, has provided $100,000 to the group, about two-thirds of the organization's donations, according to recent federal records.
The White House and the Bush campaign say they had nothing to do with the ad but have declined to condemn it specifically.
The Kerry campaign also notes that none of the men in the ad were on Lt. Kerry's boats. Several of the men served on the same river patrols as Mr. Kerry, and three were on other boats during the rescue mission, which resulted in Mr. Kerry's Bronze Star and third Purple Heart.
Since the ad aired, the group has drawn intense scrutiny. One member in the ad, retired Capt. George Elliott, reportedly recanted his accusations that Mr. Kerry did not deserve his Silver Star. But after The Boston Globe published that, the Swift Boat Veterans released an affidavit in which Mr. Elliott swore he stood by his accusation. But in 1996, Mr. Elliott was quoted in news reports praising Mr. Kerry's actions as courageous.
"The fact that he chased an armed enemy down is something not to be looked down upon, but it was an act of courage," Mr. Elliott said then.
A woman who answered the phone at Mr. Elliott's home Monday said he declined to comment further.
Heroic or routine?
Mr. Kerry was awarded the Silver Star – the military's third-highest award for heroism in combat – for his actions on Feb. 28, 1969, when he beached his boat, went after a Viet Cong guerilla carrying a rocket launcher and shot him to death.
The anti-Kerry group says the guerilla was actually a wounded boy, who was shot in the back while fleeing – a charge that first surfaced during Mr. Kerry's 1996 Senate campaign. At that time, several of Mr. Kerry's crew members, along with Mr. Elliott, and the late Adm. Elmo Zumwalt, came to Mr. Kerry's defense.
Mr. Kerry's Bronze Star was awarded for his actions on March 13, 1969, when he was credited with pulling Jim Rassmann, a member of the special forces, out of the water during an ambush.
Van O'Dell, a gunner aboard another swift boat who is now retired from the oil business, said that as the patrol passed a fishing weir stretched across the Bay Hop River, a mine hit another boat. Mr. O'Dell said he fired "a couple of hundred rounds" from a twin 50-caliber machine gun but did not witness any return fire. Two others who commanded swift boats that day, Larry Thurlow and Jack Chenoweth, supported his version.
Mr. Rassmann has repeatedly said that Mr. Kerry saved his life, and since volunteering to appear with Mr. Kerry, has said that the boat was under heavy enemy fire and that none of the allegations about Mr. Kerry were raised at the time.
Mr. Thurlow, who also won a Bronze Star that day for coming to the aid of the wounded sailors in the craft hit by the mine, said that what Mr. Kerry did was routine.
"One of the main criticisms is that there was no hostile fire and all Kerry did was pull a guy out of the water," said Mr. Thurlow, who lives in Kansas.
But Mr. Sandusky, the driver of Mr. Kerry's boat that day, said he clearly remembers hostile fire. Mr. Kerry's detractors, said Mr. Sandusky, "weren't looking at Rassmann. I saw the bullets."
KERRY'S VIETNAM SERVICE
1966
Feb. 18: Enlists in the Navy while a senior at Yale University.
1967
June 8: Reports to the USS Gridley, a guided-missile cruiser in the Gulf of Tonkin.
1968
Feb. 10: Requests duty in Vietnam and asks to command a swift boat.
December: Takes his first command and soon sustains his first combat injury, for which he receives a Purple Heart.
1969
January: Takes command of Patrol Craft Fast 94.
February: Suffers second combat injury, a shrapnel wound in his left thigh, and receives a second Purple Heart.
Feb. 28: Receives a Silver Star for chasing down and killing a Viet Cong guerrilla.
March 13: Wounded pulling Green Beret Jim Rassman from a river; receives third Purple Heart and a Bronze Star.
April: Leaves Vietnam.
1970
March 1: Leaves active duty.
1971
April: During a huge Washington protest, Mr. Kerry, a leader of Vietnam Veterans Against the War, throws away his combat ribbons. He also testifies before a Senate committee, alleging U.S. troops committed widespread atrocities and asking: "How do you ask a man to be the last man to die for a mistake?"
December: By the end of the year, Mr. Kerry had left the anti-war group.
SOURCE: Dallas Morning News research
THE PURPLE HEART
It's the military's oldest decoration, dating to the Revolutionary War. After that, though, the Purple Heart was not used until the 1930s.
Under federal law, the award is given to anyone associated with the military who "has been wounded or killed, or who has died or may hereafter die after being wounded" fighting a U.S. enemy, serving with a U.S. ally or as a result of an attack by an enemy, a terrorist attack or when working as part of a peacekeeping force.
A physical lesion is not required to qualify a wound, but the wound must have been treated by medical personnel.
Friendly-fire injuries are eligible at a commander's discretion. Those suffering accidents or injuring themselves are not eligible.
SOURCE: Dallas Morning News research, PurpleHeart.org |
