Journalist and Former Swift Cmdr Breaks Silence, Backs Kerry's Vitetnam Claims

[D2bets]

Former Swift Boat Commander Backs Kerry on Vietnam
By Carol Giacomo

PITTSBURGH (Reuters) - An American journalist who commanded a boat alongside John Kerry in Vietnam broke a 35-year silence on Saturday and defended the Democratic presidential candidate against Republican critics of his military service and integrity.

Weighing in on the bitterly divisive issue, William Rood of the Chicago Tribune said the tales told by Kerry's detractors are simply untrue.

"There were three swift boats on the river that day in Vietnam more than 35 years ago -- three officers and 15 crew members. Only two of those officers remain to talk about what happened on February 28, 1969," he wrote in a story on the newspaper's Web site.

"One is John Kerry ... who won a Silver Star for what happened on that date. I am the other."

Before now, wanting to put memories of war and killing behind him, Rood refused all interviews. "But Kerry's critics, armed with stories I know to be untrue, have charged that the accounts of what happened were overblown," he wrote.

"It's gotten harder and harder for those of us who were there to listen to accounts we know to be untrue, especially when they come from people who were not there," he added.

Kerry, a former Navy lieutenant, is a highly decorated Vietnam veteran, and his war service is essential to his challenge to President Bush (news - web sites) as commander-in-chief when America is faces terrorism and other threats.

Increasingly, veterans opposed to Kerry and allied with Bush, led by a group called Swift Boat Veterans for Truth, have tried to undermine Kerry's record and credibility.

Many veterans are bitter that after returning from Vietnam, Kerry became one of the war's most prominent critics.

After a new CBS poll showing Kerry's support among veterans slipping since the Democratic convention, the Massachusetts senator launched a counterattack.

On Friday, he accused the Swift Boat Veterans for Truth of collaborating with the Bush campaign and asked the Federal Election Commission (news - web sites) to force the group to withdraw its ads.

Bush spent the war in the United States serving in the Texas Air National Guard. Some Democrats accuse Bush of going absent without leave from the guard, citing gaps in his attendance record.

AGGRESSIVE AND UNUSUAL COUNTERATTACK

In the Chicago Tribune article, Rood said Kerry urged him to go public with his account.

While "I can't pretend those calls had no effect on me ... what matters most to me is that this is hurting crewmen who are not public figures and who deserved to be honored for what they did," Rood wrote.

Members of Kerry's swift boat crew have played a prominent role in his campaign, appearing at the Democratic National Convention and many other events.

Rood said he was part of the operation that led to Kerry receiving the Silver Star and had no firsthand knowledge of events that resulted in his Purple Hearts or Bronze Star.

In that February 1969 operation, he said Kerry came under rocket and automatic weapons fire from Viet Cong soldiers and Kerry devised an aggressive ad unusual attack strategy that was praised by their superiors.

In their book, "Unfit for Command," Kerry critics John O'Neill and Jerome Corsi accuse Kerry of exaggerating wartime events. They said Kerry's attack on the Viet Cong ambush displayed "stupidity, not courage."

"The only explanation for what Kerry did is the same justification that characterizes his entire short Vietnam adventure: the pursuit of medals and ribbons," they alleged.

Rood said while ambushes were common, the difference in this fight was that Kerry, who had tactical command of the operation, had talked to Rood and other commanders beforehand about not responding the way they usually did to an ambush.

"We agreed that if we were not crippled by the initial volley and had a clear fix on the location of the ambush, we would turn directly into it, focusing the boats' twin .50-caliber machine guns on the attackers and beaching the boats," Rood said.

He said the first time they took fire Kerry ordered a "turn 90" and the three boats roared in on the ambush.

The plan worked. "We routed the ambush, killing three of the attackers. The troops, led by an Army adviser, jumped off the boats and began a sweep, which killed another half dozen VC, wounded or captured others," Rood said.

Rood said then-Capt. and now retired Rear Adm. Roy Hoffmann, the task force commander, congratulated the three swift boats, saying the tactic of charging the ambushes was a "shining example of completely overwhelming the enemy."

Hoffmann has become a Kerry critic and now says what the boats did that day showed Kerry was impulsive to a fault.

 

[wilheim]

The truth always comes out in the end. Actual article from Chicago Tribune:


By William B. Rood
Chicago Tribune
Published August 21, 2004

There were three swift boats on the river that day in Vietnam more than 35 years ago—three officers and 15 crew members. Only two of those officers remain to talk about what happened on February 28, 1969.

One is John Kerry, the Democratic presidential candidate who won a Silver Star for what happened on that date. I am the other.

For years, no one asked about those events. But now they are the focus of skirmishing in a presidential election with a group of swift boat veterans and others contending that Kerry didn't deserve the Silver Star for what he did on that day, or the Bronze Star and three Purple Hearts he was awarded for other actions.

Many of us wanted to put it all behind us—the rivers, the ambushes, the killing. Ever since that time, I have refused all requests for interviews about Kerry's service—even those from reporters at the Chicago Tribune, where I work.

But Kerry's critics, armed with stories I know to be untrue, have charged that the accounts of what happened were overblown. The critics have taken pains to say they're not trying to cast doubts on the merit of what others did, but their version of events has splashed doubt on all of us. It's gotten harder and harder for those of us who were there to listen to accounts we know to be untrue, especially when they come from people who were not there.

Even though Kerry's own crew members have backed him, the attacks have continued, and in recent days Kerry has called me and others who were with him in those days, asking that we go public with our accounts.

I can't pretend those calls had no effect on me, but that is not why I am writing this. What matters most to me is that this is hurting crewmen who are not public figures and who deserved to be honored for what they did. My intent is to tell the story here and to never again talk publicly about it.

I was part of the operation that led to Kerry's Silver Star. I have no firsthand knowledge of the events that resulted in his winning the Purple Hearts or the Bronze Star.

But on Feb. 28, 1969, I was officer in charge of PCF-23, one of three swift boats—including Kerry's PCF-94 and Lt. j.g. Donald Droz's PCF-43—that carried Vietnamese regional and Popular Force troops and a Navy demolition team up the Dong Cung, a narrow tributary of the Bay Hap River, to conduct a sweep in the area.

The approach of the noisy 50-foot aluminum boats, each driven by two huge 12-cylinder diesels and loaded down with six crew members, troops and gear, was no secret.

Ambushes were a virtual certainty, and that day was no exception.

Instructions from Kerry

The difference was that Kerry, who had tactical command of that particular operation, had talked to Droz and me beforehand about not responding the way the boats usually did to an ambush.

We agreed that if we were not crippled by the initial volley and had a clear fix on the location of the ambush, we would turn directly into it, focusing the boats' twin .50-caliber machine guns on the attackers and beaching the boats. We told our crews about the plan.

The Viet Cong in the area had come to expect that the heavily loaded boats would lumber on past an ambush, firing at the entrenched attackers, beaching upstream and putting troops ashore to sweep back down on the ambush site. Often, they were long gone by the time the troops got there.

The first time we took fire—the usual rockets and automatic weapons—Kerry ordered a "turn 90" and the three boats roared in on the ambush. It worked. We routed the ambush, killing three of the attackers. The troops, led by an Army adviser, jumped off the boats and began a sweep, which killed another half dozen VC, wounded or captured others and found weapons, blast masks and other supplies used to stage ambushes.

Meanwhile, Kerry ordered our boat to head upstream with his, leaving Droz's boat at the first site.

It happened again, another ambush. And again, Kerry ordered the turn maneuver, and again it worked. As we headed for the riverbank, I remember seeing a loaded B-40 launcher pointed at the boats. It wasn't fired as two men jumped up from their spider holes.

We called Droz's boat up to assist us, and Kerry, followed by one member of his crew, jumped ashore and chased a VC behind a hooch—a thatched hut—maybe 15 yards inland from the ambush site. Some who were there that day recall the man being wounded as he ran. Neither I nor Jerry Leeds, our boat's leading petty officer with whom I've checked my recollection of all these events, recalls that, which is no surprise. Recollections of those who go through experiences like that frequently differ.

With our troops involved in the sweep of the first ambush site, Richard Lamberson, a member of my crew, and I also went ashore to search the area. I was checking out the inside of the hooch when I heard gunfire nearby.

Not long after that, Kerry returned, reporting that he had killed the man he chased behind the hooch. He also had picked up a loaded B-40 rocket launcher, which we took back to our base in An Thoi after the operation.

John O'Neill, author of a highly critical account of Kerry's Vietnam service, describes the man Kerry chased as a "teenager" in a "loincloth." I have no idea how old the gunner Kerry chased that day was, but both Leeds and I recall that he was a grown man, dressed in the kind of garb the VC usually wore.

The man Kerry chased was not the "lone" attacker at that site, as O'Neill suggests. There were others who fled. There was also firing from the tree line well behind the spider holes and at one point, from the opposite riverbank as well. It was not the work of just one attacker.

Our initial reports of the day's action caused an immediate response from our task force headquarters in Cam Ranh Bay.

Congratulatory message

Known over radio circuits by the call sign "Latch," then-Capt. and now retired Rear Adm. Roy Hoffmann, the task force commander, fired off a message congratulating the three swift boats, saying at one point that the tactic of charging the ambushes was a "shining example of completely overwhelming the enemy" and that it "may be the most efficacious method of dealing with small numbers of ambushers."

Hoffmann has become a leading critic of Kerry's and now says that what the boats did on that day demonstrated Kerry's inclination to be impulsive to a fault.

Our decision to use that tactic under the right circumstances was not impulsive but was the result of discussions well beforehand and a mutual agreement of all three boat officers.

It was also well within the aggressive tradition that was embraced by the late Adm. Elmo Zumwalt, then commander of U.S. Naval Forces, Vietnam. Months before that day in February, a fellow boat officer, Michael Bernique, was summoned to Saigon to explain to top Navy commanders why he had made an unauthorized run up the Giang Thanh River, which runs along the Vietnam-Cambodia border. Bernique, who speaks French fluently, had been told by a source in Ha Tien at the mouth of the river that a VC tax collector was operating upstream.

Ignoring the prohibition against it, Bernique and his crew went upstream and routed the VC, pursuing and killing several.

Instead of facing disciplinary action as he had expected, Bernique was given the Silver Star, and Zumwalt ordered other swifts, which had largely patrolled coastal waters, into the rivers.

The decision sent a clear message, underscored repeatedly by Hoffmann's congratulatory messages, that aggressive patrolling was expected and that well-timed, if unconventional, tactics like Bernique's were encouraged.

What we did on Feb. 28, 1969, was well in line with the tone set by our top commanders.

Zumwalt made that clear when he flew down to our base at An Thoi off the southern tip of Vietnam to pin the Silver Star on Kerry and assorted Bronze Stars and commendation medals on the rest of us.

Error in citation

My Bronze Star citation, signed by Zumwalt, praised the charge tactic we used that day, saying the VC were "caught completely off guard."

There's at least one mistake in that citation. It incorrectly identifies the river where the main action occurred, a reminder that such documents were often done in haste and sometimes authored for their signers by staffers. It's a cautionary note for those trying to piece it all together. There's no final authority on something that happened so long ago—not the documents and not even the strained recollections of those of us who were there.

But I know that what some people are saying now is wrong. While they mean to hurt Kerry, what they're saying impugns others who are not in the public eye.

Men like Larry Lee, who was on our bow with an M-60 machine gun as we charged the riverbank, Kenneth Martin, who was in the .50-caliber gun tub atop our boat, and Benjamin Cueva, our engineman, who was at our aft gun mount suppressing the fire from the opposite bank.

Wayne Langhoffer and the other crewmen on Droz's boat went through even worse on April 12, 1969, when they saw Droz killed in a brutal ambush that left PCF-43 an abandoned pile of wreckage on the banks of the Duong Keo River. That was just a few months after the birth of his only child, Tracy.

The survivors of all these events are scattered across the country now.

Jerry Leeds lives in a tiny Kansas town where he built and sold a successful printing business. He owns a beautiful home with a lawn that sweeps to the edge of a small lake, which he also owns. Every year, flights of purple martins return to the stately birdhouses on the tall poles in his back yard.

Cueva, recently retired, has raised three daughters and is beloved by his neighbors for all the years he spent keeping their cars running. Lee is a senior computer programmer in Kentucky, and Lamberson finished a second military career in the Army.

With the debate over that long-ago day in February, they're all living that war another time.
Chicago Tribune


Now maybe some long lost member of the Alabama Air National Guard might come forward and say "I think I saw a guy who looked like George Bush one day at the O club". Personally I doubt it though.


wil.

 

[wilheim]

Nice VC rocket launcher.

John Kerry (left) and William Rood on a barracks barge with a rocket launcher and an automatic rifle seized in a raid on Feb. 28, 1969, in southern Vietnam in which swift boats charged ambush sites.
(Photo courtesy of William B. Rood)

 

[wilheim]

William Rood’s Bronze Star citation, signed by Adm. Elmo Zumwalt, praises the charge tactics used on Feb. 28, 1969, saying the Viet Cong were “caught completely off guard.”



Can't wait for the new spin about this information.

wil.

 

[GAMEFACE]

The swift boat vets are very credible. Kerry could release his military records and discredit and kill the swift boat vets claims if the claims were untrue. Kerrys military records would back the swift boats vets claims. I believe the 250 honorably discharged vets.

 

[wilheim]

Do the math.

Medal awarded to George Bush - National Defense Service Medal.

Awarded to anyone who shows up for basic training.


wil.

 

[Shotgun]

Game, you notice how the blowhards on here ignore the requests for Kerry to sign Form 180 and prove how much the Swift Vets are lying?

They ignore his Christmas in Cambodia lies, his 'magic hat from the CIA' lie, his 'everyone over there was a war criminal' lie, as well as numerous other slurs on veterans. This article doesn't vindicate him; it simply dusputes one claim that there were other attackers in the episode. It also verifies the fact that there were mistakes in the citation as well as saying that these citations weren't always written by the signatories. Is the guy credible? Maybe...who knows? When the article is compared with the book (O'Neill's main critics likely haven't read the book) it adds nothing earthshaking.

 

[wilheim]

Another Vet who was there must also be lying.

ABC News:

Kerry also picked up support from Wayne D. Langhofer, who told The Washington Post he was manning a machine gun in a boat behind Kerry's and saw firing from both banks of a river as Kerry dived in to rescue Special Forces soldier James Rassmann, the basis for Kerry's Bronze Star.

Until now, the Post noted on its Web site, Kerry's version of acting under fire had come from crewmen on his own boat. It quoted Langhofer as saying he was approached by leaders of Swift Boat Veterans for Truth several months ago but declined to join them in speaking against Kerry.

Opps.