Swiftee John O'Neill Speaks Out On John Kerry's Vietnam Claims

One of the attacks that has been made against you is that not one of the people you have used as a source for Unfit to Command was actually on the boat with Kerry when he won his Bronze or his Silver star.

... Look, for example, in the incident of March 13, [1969], the Rassmann incident, [when John Kerry was awarded the Bronze star for reportedly returning, under fire, to the scene of a series of mine explosions to pull Jim Rassmann out of the water, after Kerry had reportedly been wounded by shrapnel from one of the mines (see cover story)], there are six people who were on other boats and observed the incident and know that our boats did not flee. They know that the only boat that fled was Kerry's.

But so far, all we have is what Rassmann said. That's all we have in terms of a live person who was really there and says what he saw. He says that there was hostile fire and that he was rescued by Kerry, etc, etc. He says Kerry came back for him and that there were no other Swift Boats in the area. Now, you quoted people like Jack Chenoweth and Larry Thurlow and Van Odell. [See coverbox for the story of what happened on March 13,1969, as told through the eyes of these three eyewitnesses.] They are never seen on television. There are no affidavits from them. The point is, Rassmann seems to have a better part of this case. You are the only one out there and you didn't really serve with Kerry at that time.

J.O.: First, they have all executed affidavits. There are some 14 affidavits that were executed by these guys. The guy who hasn't executed an affidavit is Rassmann.

Was he asked to do one? Did you guys try to get him to do one?

J.O.: No. Obviously he will not talk to us. All those guys appeared on television, Odell, Chenoweth, Thurlow. We have every boat commander who was there that day other than Kerry. In addition, Kerry has a huge problem and that's a physical impossibility. What I mean is that the No. 3 boat was blown into the air by a mine. The sailors were knocked off the No. 3 boat into the water. The No. 3 boat couldn't go anywhere. It couldn't flee. The other four boats but [not] Kerry's closed in to save the No. 3 boat.

When this happened, how many boats were there in the general vicinity?

J.O.: There were five boats there.... They were following each other, within a few yards of each other, three on one side of the river and two on the other side.

Now one is sunk, or basically out of combat, and one left [the scene], Kerry's, right?

J.O.: Exactly. The other boats opened up because they thought there might be return fire in addition to the mine. Within 30 seconds they saw there was no return fire, so they ceased filing. If everybody had fled like Kerry describes, Dick Pees would be dead. His boat would have sunk with him on it.

He was on the No. 3 boat?

J.O.: He was the captain of the 3 boat, yes.

In the book where you describe this, you cite as sources Jack Chenoweth, Dick Pees, Van Odell and Larry Thurlow. All of those men have executed affidavits describing what happened at this event?