Book, ads assail Kerry's military record

By The Dallas Morning News and St. Louis Post-Dispatch

AP Retired Adm. Roy Hoffmann, head of the Swift Boat Veterans for Truth, is seen in an anti-John Kerry ad released earlier this month.

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DALLAS — Democratic presidential candidate John Kerry's much-vaunted military record is under attack in a controversial television ad and a newly released book.

The group behind the television attacks, the Swift Boat Veterans for Truth, has accused Kerry of exaggerating claims in order to earn medals and Purple Hearts during his tour in Vietnam almost 35 years ago.

Many members date their anger at Kerry to his anti-war activities after he returned from Vietnam, saying he slandered veterans.

The group has come under fierce counterattack by critics who say that the men featured in the ad did not serve directly with 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 at the time gave the candidate glowing performance reviews.

The group's 60-second TV commercial is running in three closely contested states — Ohio, Wisconsin and West Virginia.

Retired Rear Adm. Roy Hoffmann, an organizer of the group, says members expected attacks.

"We're not naive to think we're not going to get blasts," said Hoffmann, who, as commander of Coastal Surveillance Force, was Kerry's superior officer.

Jim Rassmann, a special-forces soldier who says Kerry saved his life, 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."

The anti-Kerry book released last week also accuses him 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 Kerry as commander of Patrol Craft Fast 94. The two squared off in the early 1970s in a famous TV debate about the war, and Kerry's campaign calls O'Neill a pawn of the Republican Party for more than three decades.

Hoffmann says his 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.

In a phone interview last week from his home in Richmond, Va., Hoffmann called Kerry "a chronic liar who cannot tell anything without exaggerating or fabricating."

Hoffmann cited a few examples that he conceded were petty — for example, a statement in Kerry's journals that the naval base at Cam Rahn Bay had a bowling alley. "There was no bowling alley," Hoffmann said. "That's insignificant, but it tells you the pattern of the man."

Kerry and his surrogates have touted his Vietnam service, opening up his record to scrutiny. He prominently featured his swift-boat crew members during the Democratic convention, and they told stories of his courage and leadership under fire.

The Kerry campaign has called the swift-boat 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.

Sen. John McCain, R-Ariz., a friend of Kerry's but who is supporting Bush's re-election, has called the TV spot "dishonest and dishonorable."

The Kerry campaign notes that none of the men in the ad were on Kerry's boats. And only one of the members of the Swift Boat Veterans for Truth actually served on Kerry's boats. However, several of the men served on the same river patrols as Kerry, and three were on other boats during the rescue mission that resulted in Kerry's Bronze Star and third Purple Heart.

Much of the debate over the TV ad boils down to different versions of the events.

For example, the ad quotes Navy doctor Louis Letson as saying Kerry lied about his first Purple Heart, awarded for action on the night of Dec. 2, 1968. In the ad, Letson offers no details, and he was unavailable for interviewing.

But the issue is whether Kerry accidentally wounded himself while firing at phantoms on the beach. Hoffmann, the admiral, says Kerry was hit in the arm by a tiny piece of shrapnel from a round he himself had fired from an M-79 grenade launcher, a shotgun-like weapon.

Three reporters for the Boston Globe researched the event for "John F. Kerry," a book published this year. They say his commanding officer at the time, retired Lt. Cmdr. Grant Hibbard, "thought the wound was slight and he had questions about whether Kerry's boat had taken enemy fire."

In Douglas Brinkley's "Line of Duty," also published this year, Kerry says he fired an illumination flare and saw men running from beached sampans, whereupon Kerry and his crew opened fire. But the book makes no mention of return fire at Kerry's boat. At any rate, the consensus holds that the wound was little more than a scratch.

Kerry's Silver Star — the military's third-highest award for heroism in combat — was awarded for his actions on Feb. 28, 1969, when he beached his boat, went after a Viet Cong guerrilla who was carrying a rocket launcher and fatally shot him.

The anti-Kerry group claims the guerrilla actually was a wounded boy, who was shot in the back while fleeing — a charge that first surfaced during Kerry's 1996 Senate campaign. Several of Kerry's crewmembers, along with the late Adm. Elmo Zumwalt, came to Kerry's defense at that time.

Kerry's Bronze Star was awarded for his actions March 13, 1969, when he was credited with pulling Rassmann out of the water during an ambush.

The citation says that despite an arm injury, Kerry exposed himself to enemy small-arms fire to rescue an Army Green Beret officer who had fallen into the water.

Van O'Dell, a gunner aboard another swift boat said that as the patrol passed a fishing weir across the Bay Hop River, another boat hit a mine. O'Dell said he fired "a couple of hundred rounds" from a machine gun but did not see return fire. Two others who commanded other swift boats that day, Larry Thurlow and Jack Chenoweth, supported his version.

Thurlow, who also won a Bronze Star that day for coming to the aid of the wounded sailors in the craft that hit the mine, said that what 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 Thurlow, who now lives in Kansas.

Rassmann, a Republican, volunteered to campaign with Kerry. He has said repeatedly that Kerry saved his life, and as recently as last week in an op-ed piece in The Wall Street Journal, said Kerry's boat was under heavy enemy fire.

And in a telephone interview last week from Clearwater, Fla., Del Sandusky, the driver of Kerry's boat that day, was asked about O'Dell's quote.

"That's a lie," he said. "I saw the gun flashes shooting at us from the shore. I saw the rounds hitting the water. O'Dell is full of crap."

Copyright © 2004 The Seattle Times Company

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