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

What you are saying is that in this particular incident, March 13, 1969, that of four surviving Swift Boat commanders that were involved in this event, one of them is Kerry, and the other three are sources for your book?

J.O.: Exactly. And with the other three, their stories are exactly the same, and many of the crewmen on their boats.

And two of these commanders have signed sworn affidavits of their accounts of the event?

J.O.: Two of the commanders plus Van Odell.

Do Swift Boats ever just go off on missions of their own?

J.O.: Let me explain. If you were off the coast, it would be possible to operate on your own, but never in my experience did an individual Swift Boat go by itself in rivers and canals because you see the area we were operating in was so hostile that if your engine went out or something like that, you'd, run into big problems.

So it's somewhat disingenuous for someone to say, well, only one of these people was actually on Kerry's boat?

J.O.: I think that veterans all over the country are laughing at that. Anybody who was ever in a tank or operated in a fighter squadron, anybody who was ever in the brown-water navy, they think that that is the silliest thing they ever heard.

That is key to Lanny Davis' critique of you: that these guys were not in the boat.

J.O.: That is like trying to claim that unless you were in the tank, you don't know what happened with the tank, even if you were in the same little tank company. It's a great Washington lawyer comment and a great spin comment, but in the real world, outside of Washington, it's a big joke.

For everybody that I talk to who is not a veteran, that point is sort of lost on them.

J.O.: You have to look at each one of the incidents one by one. The first Purple Heart incident involved a little skimmer [Boston Whaler], Admiral Schachte was on the boat.... The second big incident was the [March 13, 1969] Bronze Star/third Purple Heart incident. We've been through that. That was an incident in close proximity to four other boats-the one we just talked about. A third important incident is the sampan incident. Kerry's problem on the sampan incident is that we have his account and those of all of his crewmen in Tour of Duty and the Kerry biography by [Mike] Kranish [of the Boston Globe], and then we have the report he made to the Navy Department. That report is completely different than... the little family of four described in his book. You don't need to be in the boat to hear what all the guys in the boat all say.

What about the Silver Star incident?

J.O.: Our sources on the Silver Star incident are [Michael] Medeiros and Kerry's crewmen on many occasions have described the incident. The facts are largely undisputed over what happened in that incident. The action was sort of pre-planned that the lead boat with a guy who favors Kerry, named Lt. [Doug] Reese, first went into shore, and then all the troops were discharged from that boat and had a little bit of a battle with the Viet Cong while Kerry milled about. And a rocket was fired at Kerry's boat. He went in to the shore. There was a lone Viet Cong guy, shot by Kerry's gunner in the legs. As he was fleeing and wounded, Kerry jumped off the boat, chased him down and shot him in the back. Those facts are agreed to in the Kranish book, essentially in the Tour of Duty book, and in many accounts by Kerry's crewmen.