Wizbang - Ted Koppel's Vietnam Quagmire
By and large, I think Koppel is one of the more balanced reporters in the big media. I also think, a minute tilt to the left aside, he is one of the best. That said, he got his hat handed to him by John O'Neil of the Swift Boat Veterans for Truth.
For only the third time since the Swift Vets formed their organization, Nightline did a story on Kerry's war record. You can read the bulk of their report here. In this show, they went to Vietnam and interviewed the Vietnamese in the village where John Kerry got his Silver Star. [That was the one where a rocket hit close to Kerry's boat and he supposedly attacked, beaching the boat, jumped out and killed the guy with the rocket launcher.]
It promised to be intriguing. Rather than Kerry's side or the Swifies' side, they were going to get the story from people who did not have a dog in the fight. Unfortunately, the reporting was not as good as it could have been and left one of the major questions not only unanswered but even unasked.
The citation for his Silver Star commends Kerry for, "extraordinary daring and personal courage" for "attacking a numerically superior force in the face of intense fire" as he beached his boat and went ashore. John O'Neil in his book, Unfit for Command, says that statement "is simply false. There was little or no fire." [When Kerry attacked]
Nightline fails to resolve the issue, mostly because they don't even ask the right question. From their report:
<<<Villagers say this is what they saw:
"Firing from over here. Firing from over there. Firing from the boat," [hands waving left and right as if to say firing from everywhere in video] Vo Thi Vi told Nightline.
She was only a couple hundred yards away when a Swift boat turned and approached the shore, she said, adding that the boat was unleashing a barrage of gunfire as it approached.
"I ran," she recalled, "Running fast. … And the Americans came from down there, yelling 'Attack, Attack!' And we ran."
Her husband Tam said the man who fired the B-40 rocket was hit in this barrage of gunfire. Then, he said, "he ran about 18 meters before he died, falling dead."
Was the man killed by Kerry or by fire from the Swift boat? It was the heat of battle, Tam said, and he doesn't know exactly how the man with the rocket launcher died. But he knows the man's name — Ba Thang. He was one of the 12 reinforcements sent to the village by provincial headquarters, and after he died, the firefight continued, according to Tam.
"When the firing started, Ba Thanh was killed," Tam said. "And I led Ba Thanh's comrades, the whole unit, to fight back. And we ran around the back and fought the Americans from behind. We worked with the city soldiers to fire on the American boats." >>>[emphasis mine]
The report only mentions the Americans shooting initially (other than the rocket shot that started it all) and indeed the Vietnamese man says they fought "back." Perhaps I'm reading too much into this, but clearly if the reporter was there to clear up the issue, getting an accurate timeline from the witnesses was important. It sounds from the report like the rocket was fired, the Swift Boat attacked THEN the Vietnamese fired back. If that were the case, it would directly contradict the citation and support John O'Neil. The one chance ABC had to clear it up and the muddy it up more!
Further, from their own report, they found no evidence Kerry went ashore and shot the man with the rocket launcher. In fact, the reporter stressed these people had a great view of the whole thing because it happened in their front yard (literally) but none of them could remember a U.S. soldier hopping off the boat and killing a guy in their front yard? It seems that would stick in the brain if anything would.
Still, from the report, it sounded like John O'Neil was in trouble. I was surprised to see he was the guest for the interview section, I thought he was going to squirm. I was wrong.
When Koppel asked O'Neil to respond to the villagers who he, in an overstatement, said backed Kerry's claims, O'Neil -ever the trial lawyer- did what I did not think possible. He laid Koppel on the canvas.
O'Neil held up his book and read the part where he claimed there was only one VC soldier. THEN he held up the Boston Globe biography of John Kerry and he read the part where IT said there was only one VC solder... Then in a coup de grâce, John O'Neil held up John Kerry's own AUTObiography and read the part where Kerry himself says he was glad there was only one VC soldier because he was not sure what would have happened if there had been "2, 5 or 10 of them."
The quaffed Koppel might have won on style but he took a thrashing on substance. He tried to get O'Neil to answer his question again and O'Neil repeated his answer. They did this for probably 4 iteration, each time Koppel getting more annoyed that he could not get O'Neil to squirm. At one point the exasperated Koppel said something to the effect of "Why not just admit Kerry was right?" It was a rather bold question considering the report was inconclusive at best.
In reply, O'Neil took both Koppel and ABC to task for not asking any of the Swift Boat Vets on to tell their story and for not even telling John Kerry's own version of the story but for only going to communist country and asking our former enemies.
By repeatedly highlighting that John Kerry even agreed with his version of the events in question, John O'Neil deflated what should have been a very good show for ABC.
I invite you to read the report. I read it before the show and I found the text version more compelling. Watching it, I found it interesting that it appeared to be a third version of events, not a validation of one of the others. In the end though, ABC found little or nothing to discredit the citation nor support it, despite Koppel's claims in the interview section.
The only thing we learned from the show is that Koppel might be a decent interviewer -but he is no trial lawyer- and it showed. He was on his home turf and he was clearly outclassed. O'Neil came across as somewhat of a jerk... but a jerk with facts. |
