SwiftVets.com

[Me#1You#10]

Courage to scrutinize
By Nat Hentoff
Washington Times
November 15, 2004

During the most mean-spirited verbal gunfire of any presidential campaign I remember, I have most respected the steady, measured refusal of swift boat veteran John O'Neill to let his fierce, robot-like attackers deter him from his successful determination to show that John Kerry is — as the title of his book puts it — unfit for command.

Mr. O'Neill was called a "liar" to his face on a number of television appearances, and, on the Oct. 14 "Nightline," ABC-TV's Ted Koppel actually sent a crew to Vietnam to film alleged eyewitnesses in order to disprove one of the accounts in "Unfit for Command" of how Mr. Kerry won his Silver Star. Casually, ABC News director Andrew Morse mentioned that "the Vietnamese require an official minder to accompany journalists on reporting trips." The minder-censor from the Communist totalitarian state was there, watching, to ensure that the "eyewitnesses" stuck to the government script.

On camera, Mr. O'Neill told Mr. Koppel: "You went to a country where all the elections are hundred-percent [victory margin] elections, and you relied on people that were enemies of the United States" for the alleged testimony. Mr. O'Neill repeatedly showed Mr. Koppel how the supposed eyewitnesses contradicted Mr. Kerry's own accounts in the past.

At first, the mainstream media had ignored the charges of the Swift Boat Veterans. Alison Mitchell, deputy national editor of The New York Times, admitted to Editor & Publisher that she's "not sure that in an era of no-cable television we would even have looked into (the Swift Boat story)." But as happened with the exposure of Dan Rather's use of ultimately discredited documents to deride George W. Bush's National Guard service, cable television and the Internet allowed the public to examine both sides of the swift boat veterans stories.

Moreover, in a front-page Aug. 22 Washington Post story, reporter Michael Dobbs noted, as Mr. O'Neill often has, that "although Kerry campaign officials insist that they have published Kerry's full military records on their Web site (with the exception of medical records shown briefly to reporters earlier this year), they have not permitted independent access to his original Navy records." When Mr. Dobbs tried to get those Kerry records through a Freedom of Information request, he received just over six pages and was told by the Navy Personnel Command that the full file consisting of at least 100 pages could not be released unless Mr. Kerry himself signed a Standard Form 180 granting permission.

To this day, Mr. Kerry has not signed that release form.

In his story of one contested episode during Mr. Kerry's service in Vietnam, Mr. Dobbs found that the edge favored Mr. Kerry's version, but that in Mr. Dobbs' extensive interviews, the accounts by both Mr. Kerry and his swift boat opponents "contain significant flaws and factual errors." Only Mr. Kerry refused to be interviewed for the story.

Among the relatively few reporters who have engaged in substantial research on the contentions of both sides, the most painstakingly persistent has been Thomas Lipscomb in his reports in the Chicago Sun- Times and the New York Sun. Mr. Lipscomb has found much that credits Mr. O'Neill's charges, and so have I.

The former publisher of Times Books and an old-fashioned journalist in the tradition of one of my mentors, George Seldes, Mr. Lipscomb is an insistent fact-checker, dogged until he's ready to file his story.

Accordingly, a Lipscomb report on the front-page of the Nov. 1 New York Sun begins: "A former officer in the Navy's Judge Advocate General Corps Reserve has built a case that Senator Kerry was other than honorably discharged from the Navy by 1975.... The (subsequent 1978) 'honorable discharge' on the Kerry Web site appears to be a Carter administration substitute for an original action expunged from Mr. Kerry's record." If I were still teaching journalism, I would have the students study Mr. Lipscomb's entire article as an example of the quality of research that complex stories require but do not often get during the hurried reporting in the present 24-hour news cycle.

As that news cycle keeps churning, a few other reporters have taken the time to find out more about the so-called Bush operative Mr. O'Neill. In both the Aug. 28 New York Times and Los Angeles Times, a careful reader would have discovered that Mr. O'Neill voted for Democrats Hubert Humphrey, and, years later, Al Gore, for president. And his favorite presidential candidate this year was John Edwards. Also, Mr. O'Neill has described George W. Bush as an "empty suit."

Yet, on Election Day, historian Douglas Brinkley who wrote a hagiographic book on Mr. Kerry, "Tour of Duty," triumphantly told the Financial Times that the mainstream media have "exposed Kerry's critics as liars and frauds." I would not take a course with that careless historian; but I respect Mr. O'Neill for his courage and his public service for having enabled many Americans to look much more closely as John Kerry's presidential qualifications. And, indeed, the swift boat veterans did a lot to keep Kerry from the Oval Office.

Washington Times

[noc]

Great article. My hats off to Nat Hentoff for his writing.

Thanks to John O'Niell and the Swift Boat Veterans. We are all very proud. You are great Americans.

Cheers all around!!

[producehawk]

hopefully the story will continue to get out, and kerry will be outed to the entire world.

[mach9]

This may well be a separate subject, but I'd like to know (because I haven't read the book)--from someone who has read Tour of Duty whether or not Brinkley recorded Kerry's meeting with the VC & DRV and, if so, how it was portrayed. The Newsweek article reported Brinkley's comment to Edwards (Kerry met with "terrorists," etc.) and that the meeting had been recorded in Kerry's diary. If that meeting was NOT included in the book, it rather damages Brinkley's bona fides as an historian.

[Navy_Navy_Navy]

I just got my copy (ugh!) and there is very little mention of the Paris Peace Talks at all - in fact, in the citations listed in the back of the book, the pages referenced make no mention of Kerry having gone to Paris to meet with the NV and PRG, much less "terrorists."

As precise as Kerry was with words back then, for him to use that word betrays any pretense at naivete' on his part as to who he was meeting with.

OTOH, in his little "Space Ranger" world, of which he was the only hero, maybe writing about meeting with terrorists was akin to the clandestine operations in Cambodia or being given a boonie hat by a SF guy.

Who knows.

Anything is possible with Kerry - I'd put nothing past him. Stepping all over dead soldiers for political gain should be proof enough that he is capable of vast depravity.
_________________
~ Echo Juliet ~
Altering course to starboard - On Fire, Keep Clear
Navy woman, Navy wife, Navy mother

[mach9]

It's not even the word (terrorists) by itself. It's the act. How could that page in a chapter of Kerry's life have been ignored by a biographer? Sure would like some real historians to weigh in on Brinkley's "scholarship."

[PC]

Me#1You#10 -- Thanks for that article from Hentoff. I am keeping that in my files for future reference. I have also sent it to lefty friends who might yet listen because it was written by Hentoff.

I lived in NYC in the late 60's and I remember Hentoff's writing for the Village Voice regarding Vietnam and the anti-war movement. He was relentless as was Rosenbaum and all the other guys at that paper against the war.

Hentoff is a big time New York journalist and very well respected and there are a lot of people who may read that and because of his byline maybe finally realize that the Swifties never were debunked and very badly treated by the mainstream media.

I hope Kerry does sue John O"Neill for libel because it would be worth it just to have Kerry deposed and have all the "protected" documents in his file finally revealed. O'Neill would be dancing in the streets the day that lawsuit was filed.