SwiftVets.com

[TroyS]

This is a link to 620wtmj talk radio. Right now Charlie Sykes has posted his interview with Adrian Lonsdale and he interviewed Admiral Hoffmann yesterday which he will probably post shortly. Also he is interviewing Joe Ponder this afternoon. Lots of other good stuff here too.

www.620wtmj.com/620programs/charliesykes/

This is the largest talk radio station in Wisconsin so the message is getting out. Keep up the good work.

[Lendorien]

(Here's a transcript of the interview.)

Interview with Adrian Lonsdale
Transcript of Charlie Sykes Show on WTMJ 620
In Milwaukee, WI
August 10(?), 2004

CHARLIE SYKES: We’re fortunate right now to be joined on the line by retired Captain Adrian Lonsdale. Good Morning Captain.

ADRIAN LONSDALE: Morning sir. How are you doing this morning?

CHARLIE SYKES: Good. I appreciate it. Now my understanding is that you were the operational commander of Operation SeaLords, which uh…

ADRIAN LONSDALE: (??) …in the fourth coastal zone of Vietnam, and that’s essentially the west coast and that’s where most of the action took place.

CHARLIE SYKES: And… and you were in the chain of command, John Kerry served under you.

ADRIAN LONSDALE: Yes, he was in one of the divisions under my command. There were two divisions, one coast guard of patrol boats and one of swift boats and he was in the swift boats division.

CHARLIE SYKES: Now, you joined… you announced that you were part of this Swift Boats Veterans for Truth. I wanted to talk to you in particular because you have a somewhat different position than some of the others. A lot of the others have been critical of John Kerry all along. You had supported John Kerry when he ran for reelection as senator back in 1996 but you have changed your mind… or have you changed you mind now that he’s running for president?

ADRIAN LONSDALE: Yes, that’s true. I went up and spoke up for him at a press conference when he was accused of atrocities in Vietnam, the same things he accused us of in ‘71. But I thought maybe he had mellowed. But then I read a biography of him in Vietnam, three or four months ago and it was the same old stuff and up to that time I had decided to stay out of it completely. But when I read the book and saw how he treated me and Admiral Hoffmann and other people, I decided I had to get back into it.

CHARLIE SYKES: Very specifically, what were the things that John Kerry said in that book that you believe were untrue?

ADRIAN LONSDALE: Well, first of all, he characterized then Captain Hoffmann, now Admiral Hoffmann, as the kind of a… a monster who loved to send people to their deaths, you know, and so on, and in my mind, Admiral Hoffmann is one of the finest Navy officers I ever served with and I don’t think that his… his description of Admiral Hoffmann was at all fair. And then he went on, he described a meeting with me which never occurred and then there were numerous others. He talked about the Son Bodai (sp?) Massacre, which is an operation that I ordered. He said seventeen people were wounded, well three people were wounded, and one of them is a fellow named Joe Ponder who would be interesting for you to talk to. And… so there were a number of exaggerations and outright lies in this thing, and…

CHARLIE SYKES: Now some, some of the controversy has been focussing on the medals he won. You… you are more concerned about the comments he made after returning home from Vietnam.

ADRIAN LONSDALE: Uh, yes I was. I felt that he betrayed the hundreds of thousands of… of patriotic Americans who had fought over there in Vietnam in response to what they thought was right and they were following the orders of their Commander in Chief. And he portrayed us as war criminals, murderers, rapists and so on, and demoralized those fighting people and as it was, when we came home, for instance, we didn’t wear our uniforms; we almost had to hide the fact that we were Vietnam veterans and, I blame that on him and others.

CHARLIE SYKES: Now… now, do you… you remember, you spent time with… with John Kerry, in fact we talked about that, did you meet him on a… how many occasions?

ADRIAN LONSDALE: I… I met him on a… I think a couple of occasions in our little, what we call our Officer’s Club in Antoi (sp?), was where my headquarters, which was actually just a… a little shack, but we had some wide ranging of discussions on the war, and at the time, I remember him because he was whining about the lack of air support and the futility of the operation, and so on. And… so that’s how I remember him as distinguished from the others.

CHARLIE SYKES: Do you… how do you react to the controversy that’s going on right now? You had indicated before you had wanted to stay out of this. In the past you had been cited as a Kerry supporter…

ADRIAN LONSDALE: Well, I’m in complete agreement with the Veterans for the Truth that we do not want him as Commander in Chief because he could not command the loyalty of the armed forces of the United States.

CHARLIE SYKES: Do you believe he earned the medals that he was granted?

ADRIAN LONSDALE: Well, I didn’t have first hand knowledge, but all my knowledge is from talking to people who did have the first hand knowledge. And I know that, for instance, his first purple heart, his doctor that examined him removed a small sliver from his arm and covered it up with a band-aid and told him to forget it, and his commanding officer, Skip Hebert also looked at it and told him to forget it and somehow he got it. And that’s kind of a mystery as to how he got it, and I thinks there’s some questions on his other medals too, but you’d be better off to talk to the people who have first hand information and who were there.

CHARLIE SYKES: Now, when he was serving in Vietnam you were commander. You had a rank of commander?

ADRIAN LONSDALE: Yes, I was a Commander at the time, yes

CHARLIE SYKES: And you commanded two division flotillas operating near the Cambodian border?

ADRIAN LONSDALE: From the Cambodian border down to the tip of Kamal (sp) Peninsula which is the southern end of Vietnam… it was the west coast of Vietnam.

CHARLIE SYKES: And as you know, the latest controversy involves his claim of that he actually spent Christmas of 1968 in Cambodia, in that country. In the book the now all the members of the command… of the command structure says there was no way he was in Cambodia, that is simply not true.

ADRIAN LONSDALE: And I know Admiral Hoffmann researched that very thoroughly, and he knows better the total operation than anybody and he determined and others determined, that Kerry was about 55 miles from the Cambodian border, and I think he said contrary, I mean, Nixon at the time, was in power and Nixon wasn’t even inaugurated yet.

CHARLIE SYKES: So there were about 50… these were about… about how many boats were in the divisions you commanded?

ADRIAN LONSDALE: I think, I’m not sure, I’d have to guess, I’d say maybe 12, 15 something like that. And there was about 8 or 9 coast guard patrol boats. And then I also had operational control of the larger coast guard cutters that patrolled off shore.

CHARLIE SYKES: Now most of the other officers, including the chain of command have taken the same position you have about John Kerry. The Kerry Campaign is going to turn around, of course, and point out that the men who served on the boat with him tend to be very supportive of him, and including the man who claims that John Kerry saved his life. How do you account… how do you explain to people outside of this, those of us who weren’t there, the difference of opinion? Because the people on the boat are right now showing up at the Democratic National Convention, and other commanders like yourself are saying this man is just simply unfit to serve.

ADRIAN LONSDALE: Well, I think you ought to, you know, you haven’t talked to them all, the five people who of course are being hauled around and being put up at motels, and that and receiving a lot of adoration. But there are others. One I mentioned before, his name is Joe Ponder and he’s a guy you… you should talk to. He was one of Kerry’s gunners who got wounded and was partially paralyzed from the waist down, and he’s not being hauled around like the rest of them, so you haven’t talked to them all.

CHARLIE SYKES: Ok…

ADRIAN LONSDALE: And, a boat crewman doesn’t have the overall picture. He knows what his commander orders him to do and so on, but he doesn’t know what the orders were and whether the commander was doing what he was supposed to do and so on.

CHARLIE SYKES: Is this a matter, for you and the other commanders, the other men who served in the swift boat division… Is this a matter of honor for you?

ADRIAN LONSDALE: Yes it is. We’re very concerned that… you know, it didn’t make much difference until suddenly it appeared that he might be the Commander in Chief of our armed forces. And all of the sudden it became a very important matter. If the Democratic nominee were anybody else, we wouldn’t even be in existence.

CHARLIE SYKES: The…yeah, obviously one of the spins is going to be is that you’re simply republican front group

ADRIAN LONSDALE: The… We have no connection with the Republican Party, in fact there are several members in our group that are independents and Democrats. They only thing they have in common is they all served in Vietnam in the… and somehow were associated with the swiftboat operations.

CHARLIE SYKES: Captain, I appreciate you joining me this morning.

ADRIAN LONSDALE: Ok, and I sure appreciate the opportunity to let us put forth our point of view on this whole matter.

CHARLIE SYKES: Well, any time. I appreciate it

ADRIAN LONSDALE: And I thank you sir.

CHARLIE SYKES: That was former… retired captain Adrian Lonsdale.