The Blog from the Core - Has John Kerry Just Been Inserted Into The Toaster?

Has John Kerry Just Been Inserted Into The Toaster?

Democrats in Self-Destruct Mode CCXCII

To begin, here's some of the coverage of Tuesday's SwiftVets press conference.

First, at UPI, May 4.

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Sen. John Kerry's accounts of his service in Vietnam and his statements that he witnessed atrocities were attacked as fabrications and political opportunism Tuesday by a group of Vietnam veterans who served with him personally or in the units affiliated with him during his short tour of duty in Southeast Asia.

The veterans, including some of Kerry's former commanders and shipmates, have formed an organization called "Swift Boat Veterans for Truth" and called on the presumptive Democratic presidential nominee to authorize release of all his service records, including medical records.

"We feel it is very, very important that the American people get the actual truth about that three or four months Kerry served in Vietnam since he has made it a center piece of his biography," said John O'Neill, who took charge of Kerry's boat and crew after Kerry left Vietnam. "Second, we resent very deeply the false war crimes charges he made coming back from Vietnam.... We think that those have cast aspersion on those living and dead.

"We think he knew he was lying when he made them. We think they are unsupportable. We intend to bring the truth about that to the American people. Third, we believe that based on our experience with him, he is totally unfit to be commander in chief."

Late Tuesday the Kerry campaign issued a statement through spokesman Chad Clanton, who sent an e-mail message stating: "The group behind this is the same pro-Bush group who smeared John McCain in the GOP presidential primary in 2000. They have an obvious political agenda, and are willing to say anything to push it. The bottom line is: John Kerry put his life on the line for his country — George Bush did not."

The Democratic National Committee put out a statement attacking the public relations company used by the group as having Republic Party connections. The veterans made no comment on the allegations.

Kerry, who commanded a river patrol boat, served about 4 months of a one-year tour of duty in Vietnam and won the Silver Star and Bronze Star. He requested and received reassignment to the United States after receiving three Purple Hearts for combat wounds, allowed under Navy regulations. The circumstances and merit of one of those awards has come into question in the campaign against President George W. Bush, leading to acrimonious mudslinging and a resurrection of the turmoil the conflict inflicted on American society.

Following his return and discharge from the Navy, Kerry became a prominent anti-war activist and testified before Congress that he had witnessed U.S. forces committing atrocities and war crimes.

"I do not believe John Kerry is fit to be commander in chief of the U.S. armed forces," said retired Rear Adm. Roy Hoffmann, chairman of the organization. "This is not a political issue. It is a matter of honesty."

Hoffman said Kerry had recently telephoned him and spent 45 minutes attempting to convince Hoffman to not proceed with the formation of the organization, which Democrats Tuesday attacked as a shill for Bush.

O'Neill, who debated Kerry on television in 1971 over Vietnam allegations, denied any ties to Bush or the Republican Party. The Swift Boat veterans held differing political and social views, he said. "There is only one issue we all agree on, and that is the issue of John Kerry."

In a letter to Kerry signed by more than 200 Swift Boat veterans, they wrote, "It is our collective judgment that, upon your return from Vietnam, you grossly and knowingly distorted the conduct of the American soldiers, Marines, sailors and airmen of that war (including a betrayal of many of us, without regard for the danger your actions caused us).

"Further, we believe that you have withheld and/or distorted material facts as to your own conduct in this war.

"We believe you continue this conduct today, albeit by changing from an anti-war to a 'war hero' status," the letter said.

The veterans Tuesday were vociferous in denying they had seen or had participated in wartime atrocities and questioned that if Kerry had indeed observed any, why he didn't report it as he was required to do.

One veteran, noting the allegations were again made in a book on Kerry's war experiences, choked back tears as he related how his wife and daughter had read about the alleged war crimes Kerry spoke about in Douglas Brinkley's "Tour of Duty: John Kerry and the Vietnam War" and asked him if he had committed them.

Kerry has admitted a poor choice of words in his testimony before Congress in 1971 but says he served with honor in the war.

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Now, a widely distributed Knight Ridder article, May 4.

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John Kerry's tour as a Swift boat skipper in Vietnam and his later leadership of Vietnam Veterans Against the War make him one of the iconic — and ironic — figures of the Vietnam era: a battle-hardened peace activist.

But that image, a cornerstone of his presidential campaign, is stirring 30-year-old passions and reopening wounds to the national psyche that threaten to overshadow his image as a reluctant warrior and sidetrack his campaign.

On Tuesday, a group of former Swift boat seamen held a news conference in Washington to accuse Kerry of dishonoring Vietnam veterans in 1971 with his accusations then that U.S. forces had committed atrocities, and by subsequently exploiting his military service to advance his political career.

The group, which included two of Kerry's commanding officers and several other Swift boat skippers, is the most organized challenge so far to Kerry's Vietnam-era activities. Kerry aides quickly organized their own media event with Kerry crewmates and fellow seamen to attest to his heroism and antiwar efforts.

But once again the dispute over distant Vietnam-era controversies eclipsed Kerry's intended message of the day — a critique he delivered in Minnesota of Bush's education policies. And the veterans' criticism came one day after Kerry launched $25 million worth of TV ads featuring two Vietnam veterans praising his service as heroic.

The leading organizer of the critics' group was John O'Neill, a Naval Academy graduate who also commanded a Swift boat in the Mekong Delta. The antagonism between Kerry and O'Neill dates back to 1971, when O'Neill, at the urging of the Nixon White House, provided a public counterpoint to Kerry's antiwar stance and his claims that U.S. leaders were guilty of "war crimes."

Kerry, appearing on NBC's "Meet the Press" last month, said his 1971 claim that thousands of U.S. soldiers had committed atrocities was "honest, but it was in anger. It was a little bit excessive."

O'Neill said Tuesday that if that was an apology, he wouldn't accept it.

"It was a gross effort to profit off the legacy of the people who served there and to lie about their legacy," O'Neill said.

Another organizer of Tuesday's news conference was retired Navy Rear Adm. Roy Hoffmann, who as a captain in Vietnam oversaw Operation Sealords, the Swift boat mission to rout the Viet Cong out of rivers in the Mekong Delta. Hoffmann is depicted as a win-at-all-costs commander in historian Douglas Brinkley's 2004 book, "Tour of Duty," which depicts Kerry's service in Vietnam and his antiwar activities afterward.

Hoffmann said Tuesday that after the book was published, Kerry had called him and said Hoffmann had been portrayed unfairly in the book. He said Kerry suggested making changes or corrections in later editions. "I didn't contribute anything," Hoffmann said, adding that he made it clear to Kerry that he couldn't support him for president.

"I just simply cannot consider this man a candidate for commander in chief of the armed forces. Politics has nothing to do with that," he said.

Kerry senior adviser Michael Meehan said he was unaware that Kerry had made such a call.

The two officers who directly supervised Kerry, Grant Hibbard and George Elliot, joined the group even though they wrote glowing evaluations of Kerry during his service in Vietnam. But Elliot said his opinion of Kerry changed after Kerry testified in 1971 before the Senate Foreign Relations Committee and described instances of indiscriminate killing, torture and rape by U.S. troops.

"I served with these men," Elliot said. "They served admirably. Kerry's testimony, it galls me to think about it."

The Kerry campaign accused the group of being part of an orchestrated Republican attack. Kerry aides cited O'Neill's links to President Nixon and noted that the news conference had been arranged by Spaeth Communications, a public relations firm with ties to Republicans.

Group members said they acted on their own, and the Bush campaign denied coordinating or planning Tuesday's news conference.

The emotional news conference illustrated the deep passions that Vietnam ignites. President Clinton, who avoided serving in Vietnam, was a polarizing figure with veterans. But Kerry's role as combatant and protester arouse deeper, more complicated emotions that divide veterans.

"When you talk to veterans of this era, they feel very strongly about this one way or the other," said presidential historian Stephen Hess of the Brookings Institution. "Yes, (Kerry) was an officer of courage and daring, but he also was an antiwar leader.

"The people who were in that war were not the same people who were in World War II or Korea. It was indeed their war. It was very much their defining moment. Imagine these people who came back to an ungrateful nation. It was so painful."

Wade Sanders, a Kerry supporter who was deputy secretary of the Navy and a Swift boat skipper, said the criticism of Kerry echoed Republican attacks on other Vietnam veterans who dared to cross Bush, including Sen. John McCain of Arizona, whom Bush defeated in the 2000 Republican presidential primary, and Sen. Max Cleland of Georgia, who was beaten, with Bush's help, in his 2002 bid for re-election.

"What we're seeing is a continuation of a mode of attack that seems to be favored by this president, which is to go after military veterans," Sanders said.

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Next, at WaPo yesterday (brackets in original).

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A group of Vietnam-era Navy veterans yesterday criticized Sen. John F. Kerry's conduct during the war, and called on him to release all of his military and medical records.

The Kerry campaign immediately responded that the recently formed group, Swift Boat Veterans for Truth, was a politically motivated organization with close ties to the Bush administration and prominent Republican contributors.

The exchange was another chapter in the campaign crossfire over Kerry's and President Bush's military service during the Vietnam years. Both men have had to defend their service records, with Bush on the defensive over his absences from his National Guard unit during the war, and Kerry over his antiwar activities following a decorated combat career as the commander of a swift boat in the Mekong Delta.

The Massachusetts senator made his service in Vietnam a centerpiece of his campaign ads during the Democratic primaries. It is also part of a new $25 million ad blitz.

In a news conference, the swift boat group — composed of about 215 former officers and enlisted men who served in Kerry's wartime division — declared Kerry unfit to be president because of his statements in 1971 alleging that U.S. soldiers committed routine atrocities during the war. Kerry raised the allegations in testimony to a Senate committee investigating the war that year.

The group also raised questions about Kerry's service record, for which he was awarded three Purple Hearts, and Bronze and Silver stars for valor. In particular, the group's founder and co-chairman, Texas lawyer John O'Neill, alleged in an interview that Kerry was awarded his first Purple Heart for a wound that was minor and self-inflicted.

"I have very serious questions based on talking to people who were involved in those incidents," said O'Neill, a former naval officer who has been a longtime Kerry critic. Calling Kerry's wound "trivial and insignificant," he said that it may have been the result of a fragment from an M-79 grenade Kerry launched at close quarters. "It was fraudulently reported [by Kerry] and used as the basis for leaving Vietnam early." O'Neill did not serve with Kerry.

Kerry spokesman David Wade denounced the statements as "a false, lying smear campaign against a decorated combat veteran." He added, "This is the ugly face of the Bush attack machine questioning John Kerry's patriotism."

Marc Racicot, chairman of Bush's reelection campaign, said in a statement: "Neither the Bush-Cheney '04 campaign nor the Republican National Committee have coordinated or participated in the planning of this news conference." O'Neill also denied any connection to the Bush camp.

O'Neill started the group earlier this year with help from Dallas communications specialist Merrie Spaeth, a former official in the Reagan White House who was spokeswoman in 2000 for Republicans for Clean Air, a group that spent $2 million on ads attacking Arizona Sen. John McCain's environmental record when he was seeking the GOP nomination against Bush. A director of that group was Sam Wylie, a Dallas investor who has contributed the maximum amounts allowable to the RNC and Bush's campaign.

Spaeth is mentioned on the White House's official Web site as among the "prominent public and private sector leaders who are alumni of the White House Fellows Program from Texas." Spaeth's late husband, H.J. "Tex" Lezar, a law partner of O'Neill's, was an unsuccessful Republican candidate for lieutenant governor of Texas the same year Bush won his first term as governor.

O'Neill, a former swift boat commander, debated Kerry about the war in 1971, at the urging of Nixon White House aide Charles Colson. O'Neill said yesterday he had bipartisan support at the time.

The swift boat group includes retired Navy Lt. Cmdr. Grant Hibbard, who was Kerry's commanding officer in Vietnam. Despite criticizing Kerry yesterday, Hibbard gave Kerry a glowing evaluation in 1968, calling him "one of the top few" in initiative, cooperation and personal behavior, according to a statement released by Kerry's campaign.

Staff writer Lois Romano contributed to this report.

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Now, at the Boston Globe yesterday (ellipsis and brackets in original).

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A group of former officers who commanded John F. Kerry in Vietnam more than three decades ago declared yesterday that they oppose his candidacy for president, challenged him to release more of his military and medical records, and said Kerry should be denied the White House because of his 1971 allegations that some superiors had committed ''war crimes."

Kerry has since said his accusation about war crimes and atrocities was too harsh, but many of his former commanders contended yesterday that they believed the allegations were aimed at them.

''I do not believe John Kerry is fit to be commander in chief," said retired Rear Admiral Roy Hoffmann, who helped organize the news conference and oversaw all of the swift boats in Vietnam at the time Kerry commanded one of those crafts. ''This is not a political issue; it is a matter of his judgment, truthfulness, reliability, loyalty, and trust — all absolute tenets of command."

The Kerry campaign, seeking to control the political damage on a day when a new batch of biographical ads touting Kerry's military service was hitting the airwaves, arranged for two of Kerry's crewmates to appear at a later news conference and declare that Kerry was a consummate leader who braved bullets and aggressively took on the enemy. The Kerry campaign also handed out documents it said showed that the news conference was handled by a public relations firm with ties to the Republican Party and President Bush.

One of Kerry's fellow patrol boat skippers, Wade Sanders, defended Kerry and compared the statements of Kerry's commanders to the investigations of suspected communists by Senator Joseph McCarthy in the 1950s, saying the commanders should be asked, ''Have you no decency?"

The senator's campaign has long weathered criticism from some Vietnam veterans over Kerry's actions in Vietnam and as an antiwar leader, but yesterday's event was unprecedented because it included nearly all of his commanding officers. Two of those officers, former lieutenant commander George Elliott and former Coast Guard captain Adrian Lonsdale, stood by Kerry's side when questions were raised during the 1996 Senate campaign about whether Kerry deserved the Silver Star.

Retired Lieutenant Colonel Jim Zumwalt — the son of the late Navy Admiral Elmo Zumwalt, who also had appeared by the senator's side in 1996 — also expressed his opposition to Kerry.

Eight years ago, Elliott, who wrote up Kerry for the Silver Star, rebutted suggestions that Kerry shot a retreating enemy in the back in that encounter, providing crucial support in the closing days of a hard-fought Senate race between Kerry and then-Governor William F. Weld. Yesterday, however, Elliott joined the other commanders in saying he opposed Kerry for president on the grounds that the senator was an antiwar leader who alleged atrocities were committed in Vietnam.

Elliott defended his current position, saying it was consistent to have supported the senator when he was wrongly accused in 1996.

''I find a couple of things ironic. I stood alongside John Kerry along with Admiral Zumwalt and Adrian Lonsdale in 1996 to defend him against the false accusation of — Guess what? — atrocities and war crimes," Elliott said. ''That wasn't true then; that's why I stood with him. The second irony is, in 1971... he claimed that the 500,000 men in Vietnam in combat were all villains. There were no heroes. In 2004, one hero from the Vietnam War has appeared running for president."

''It galls one to think about it," Elliott said.

Lonsdale, who recalled long discussions with Kerry when they served together, said, ''I never once heard Senator Kerry say one thing about atrocities."

In addition, one of Kerry's commanding officers, retired Lieutenant Commander Grant Hibbard, said he strongly questioned whether Kerry the senator deserved his first purple heart Purple Heart. Elaborating on an account reported in The Boston Globe last month, Hibbard said he was briefed after the Dec. 2, 1968, event for which Kerry received a Purple Heart.

''The briefing from some members of that crew the morning after revealed that they had not received enemy fire," Hibbard said. ''And yet Lieutenant [junior grade] Kerry informed me of a wound, he showed me a scratch on his arm and a piece of shrapnel in his hand that appeared to be from one of our own M-79s. It was later reported to me that Lieutenant Kerry had fired an M-79 and it had exploded off the adjacent shoreline. I do not recall being advised of any medical treatment and probably said something like, 'Forget it.'

''He later received a purple heart Purple Heart for that scratch, and I don't know how," Hibbard said.

Calling themselves Swift Veterans for Truth, the officers who criticized Kerry yesterday urged him to allow the Department of Defense to release all his military and medical records. The aim of that request appeared to focus on questions such as the one raised by Hibbard about the first Purple Heart. The veterans said they wanted the records released by the Navy, not by the campaign, to ensure that the public can see everything in Kerry's file. Michael Meehan, Kerry's spokesman, said the campaign has released everything in the Navy file.

Meehan said the commanders were motivated by partisan politics and noted that a lead organizer, John O'Neill, had ties to the Republican Party stretching back to the Nixon White House. The Kerry campaign showed reporters a photo of O'Neill meeting with President Nixon in 1971 and copies of favorable evaluations of Kerry by Elliott and Hibbard.

O'Neill said that he paid the $1,200 cost of the room for the news conference and that he had and others at the event had not been in touch with Republican officials.

The Kerry campaign said in a statement, however, that one of the news conference's organizers, Merrie Spaeth, was ''tied to the Bush campaign's underhanded tactics to smear John McCain in the 2000 Republican presidential primary." The Kerry campaign said Spaeth is the widow of Harold Lezar, who ran in 1994 with Bush as a candidate for lieutenant governor. Spaeth was director of media relations for President Reagan.

In a telephone interview, Spaeth said her firm had nothing to do with the attacks on McCain, and she said her late husband lost the race for lieutenant governor and had not been endorsed by Bush. She said she had been scrupulous in ensuring that she had no contact with Republican officials in helping set up yesterday's news conference.

In contrast to the commanders, all but one of the 15 or so men who served under Kerry's command have spoken highly of the senator, and many have said they eventually came to understand his opposition to the Vietnam War. ''John Kerry never backed down," crewmate Del Sandusky said yesterday. ''His philosophy was, 'Attack, attack, attack.'"

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Another closely related issue popped up at NRO, May 4 (brackets in original).

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Some critics of Democratic presidential candidate John Kerry have questioned the circumstances surrounding the first of three Purple Hearts Kerry won in Vietnam. Those critics, among them some of Kerry's fellow veterans, have suggested that a wound suffered by Kerry in December 1968 may have made him technically eligible for a Purple Heart but was not severe enough to warrant serious consideration, even for a decoration that was handed out by the thousands. Whatever the case, Kerry was awarded the Purple Heart, and, along with two others he won later, it allowed him to request to leave Vietnam before his tour of duty was finished.

Kerry was treated for the wound at a medical facility in Cam Ranh Bay. The doctor who treated Kerry, Louis Letson, is today a retired general practitioner in Alabama. Letson says he remembers his brief encounter with Kerry 35 years ago because "some of his crewmen related that Lt. Kerry had told them that he would be the next JFK from Massachusetts." Letson says that last year, as the Democratic campaign began to heat up, he told friends that he remembered treating one of the candidates many years ago. In response to their questions, Letson says, he wrote down his recollections of the time. (Letson says he has had no contacts with anyone from the Bush campaign or the Republican party.) What follows is Letson's memory, as he wrote it.

I have a very clear memory of an incident which occurred while I was the Medical Officer at Naval Support Facility, Cam Ranh Bay. John Kerry was a (jg), the OinC or skipper of a Swift boat, newly arrived in Vietnam. On the night of December 2, he was on patrol north of Cam Ranh, up near Nha Trang area. The next day he came to sick bay, the medical facility, for treatment of a wound that had occurred that night.

The story he told was different from what his crewmen had to say about that night. According to Kerry, they had been engaged in a fire fight, receiving small arms fire from on shore. He said that his injury resulted from this enemy action.

Some of his crew confided that they did not receive any fire from shore, but that Kerry had fired a mortar round at close range to some rocks on shore. The crewman thought that the injury was caused by a fragment ricocheting from that mortar round when it struck the rocks.

That seemed to fit the injury which I treated.

What I saw was a small piece of metal sticking very superficially in the skin of Kerry's arm. The metal fragment measured about 1 cm. in length and was about 2 or 3 mm in diameter. It certainly did not look like a round from a rifle.

I simply removed the piece of metal by lifting it out of the skin with forceps. I doubt that it penetrated more than 3 or 4 mm. It did not require probing to find it, did not require any anesthesia to remove it, and did not require any sutures to close the wound.

The wound was covered with a bandaid.

Not [sic] other injuries were reported and I do not recall that there was any reported damage to the boat.

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Finally, at LAT yesterday.

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A former Navy doctor who says he treated Sen. John F. Kerry for the wound that led to his first Purple Heart in Vietnam said Tuesday that several of Kerry's crewmates told medical personnel at the time that the injury did not occur in battle.

Dr. Louis Letson, a retired Alabama physician who served as Medical Officer at the Naval Support Facility at Cam Ranh Bay, said the crew's story contradicted Kerry's report in December 1968 that he was wounded during a river firefight between his swift boat and Viet Cong gunmen ashore.

The doctor's account surfaced Tuesday as part of a barrage of criticism of Kerry by former swift gunboat officers who gathered in Washington to press the likely Democratic nominee to authorize the release of his wartime records.

Kerry did not respond directly, but campaign officials angrily dismissed Letson's account and questioned why another medical official's signature appeared on Kerry's own records of his treatment for the wound. The Kerry campaign also said it had already posted online a copy of all official documents Kerry received from the Navy in his military file.

"If these people have different recollections 35 years later of what they saw or signed, they ought to take it up with the U.S. Navy," Kerry spokesman Michael Meehan said.

Several of Kerry's former swift boat crewmates also appeared in Washington to defend the Massachusetts senator. Drew Whitlow, an Arkansas man who served as rear gunner on one of the swift boats Kerry commanded, said that although critics were "entitled to their opinions," "I served alongside of the man. I know exactly what he was like. And I know the integrity and compassion he had."

In an e-mailed account of his recollection of Kerry's treatment and in two phone interviews, Letson said Kerry, then a Navy lieutenant, appeared in the medical tent at Cam Ranh Bay on December 3, 1968, with a slight wound "covered with a Band aid."

"There wasn't much blood to it," he said. "It looked like a splinter."

Letson described a "small piece of metal sticking very superficially in the skin of Kerry's arm. The metal fragment measured about 1 centimeter" and did "not look like a round from a rifle," he said. Letson said he "simply removed the piece of metal" with forceps.

Letson said by phone that the wound was "pretty rare." "I don't remember treating any other shrapnel wounds at Cam Ranh Bay," he said.

Meehan questioned Letson's role, saying a J.C. Carreon signed Kerry's medical report of the wound. "This gentleman is not the man who is on the report," he said.

Letson said Carreon, a lower-ranking "hospitalman," was "present at the time and he, in fact, made the entry into Lt. Kerry's medical record which has only recently been made available to the public." Letson, 63, was a Navy lieutenant as well as a medical officer at the time.

In several accounts, Kerry has said he was wounded by a piece of shrapnel as he and his crew engaged Viet Cong fleeing their boats on the beach. Kerry has said he was uncertain where the shrapnel came from.

The U.S. military's regulations on issuing a Purple Heart require that an injury is received during "action against an enemy of the United States."

According to Letson, Kerry told him during his visit to the medical tent that his crew "had been engaged in a firefight, receiving small arms fire from on shore. He said that his injury resulted from this enemy action." Letson said he did not recall Kerry's demeanor being "anything out of the ordinary."

Later, Letson said, several of Kerry's crew members told a different version to medical personnel: "They did not receive any fire from shore," he wrote, "but said that Kerry had fired a mortar round at close range to some rocks on shore. The crewmen thought that the injury was caused by a fragment ricocheting from that mortar round when it struck the rocks."

Letson added that the crew's account "seemed to fit the injury." Kerry's crewmen were "just talking to my guys," he said by phone. "It was just casual discussion. Up until that point, I didn't have any suspicions about it, but after I heard that, the circumstances sounded a little unusual. That's why I remembered it all this time."

Letson said he played no role in the Navy's decision to award Kerry his first Purple Heart. "I didn't even know he got a Purple Heart for it until years later," he said.

On Tuesday, nearly two dozen former swift boat commanders appeared at the National Press Club to disparage Kerry's war performance and his leadership role in the antiwar movement after he returned from Vietnam.

The group, Swift Boat Veterans for Truth, was organized by former Rear Adm. Roy F. Hoffmann and John O'Neill, a Dallas lawyer who commanded a Navy gunboat during the war.

O'Neill debated Kerry over the Vietnam War on TV in 1971 after a march organized by Vietnam Veterans Against the War, and was cheered on by President Nixon. He said Kerry "exaggerates the small record he established."

Hoffmann, who headed a command of 3,000 officers and enlisted men in 1968 and 1969, belittled Kerry as a "loose cannon" chafing under his command.

Meehan and other Kerry aides questioned the timing of the group's emergence just as the Kerry campaign was launching a $25-million television ad campaign based on his Vietnam War record — which, in addition to three Purple Hearts, included a Silver Star and Bronze Stars won for battlefield heroics.

Kerry aides cited O'Neill's "Republican ties" and charged that Spaeth Communications, a Dallas public relations firm that organized the meeting, also had ties to Bush and the Republicans.

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