Make sure you don't miss the highlighted part:>>Kerry's confusion over Cambodia
By David Rennie in Washington
(Filed: 13/08/2004)
The biographer of John Kerry, the Democratic presidential candidate, said yesterday there was no basis for one of the senator's favourite Vietnam War anecdotes - that he spent Christmas 1968 in Cambodia, a neutral nation which US leaders vowed was off limits for American forces.
"On Christmas Eve he was near Cambodia; he was around 50 miles from the Cambodian border. There's no indictment of Kerry to be made, but he was mistaken about Christmas in Cambodia," said Douglas Brinkley, who has unique access to the candidate's wartime journals.
But Mr Brinkley rejected accusations that the senator had never been to Cambodia, insisting he was telling the truth about running undisclosed "black" missions there at the height of the war.
He said: "Kerry went into Cambodian waters three or four times in January and February 1969 on clandestine missions. He had a run dropping off US Navy Seals, Green Berets and CIA guys." The missions were not armed attacks on Cambodia, said Mr Brinkley, who did not include the clandestine missions in his wartime biography of Mr Kerry, Tour of Duty.
"He was a ferry master, a drop-off guy, but it was dangerous as hell. Kerry carries a hat he was given by one CIA operative. In a part of his journals which I didn't use he writes about discussions with CIA guys he was dropping off."
A group of anti-Kerry Vietnam veterans have accused him of lying when he said he was in Cambodia. The group, "Swiftboat Veterans for Truth", is officially independent, but has received much of its financial backing from a wealthy Texan Republican.
Group members have contributed to an anti-Kerry book published this week, Unfit for Command, which states: "All the living commanders in Kerry's chain of command . . . indicate that Kerry would have been seriously disciplined or court-martialled had he gone" to Cambodia.
telegraph.co.uk |
