October 15th 2004
Tonight on ABC News Night Line, I witnessed the latest attempt by the media in America to prop up and salvage the alleged war record of John Kerry. Apparently ABC News has spent the last several weeks investigating John Kerry’s Silver Star. Why? Because John Kerry’s character has been brought into question by recently aired privately funded commercials challenging his character and sponsored by a group of former swift boat veterans.
Did ABC News go to the men who were there during the battle and interview them? No, they went to Viet Nam and interviewed the modern day communist and former Viet Cong members who reportedly still live in the area and who “remember the battle of February 28 1969 very well.”
Ted Koppel attempted to lay out the evidence after ABC interviewed people that he represented as “only peasants” with no “axes to grind” and no concerns about the American presidential election. The ABC team interviewed a “husband and wife” a “widow” and a “former Viet Namese Provincial Commander who each told a different account of the battle.
These witnesses claimed that the Viet Cong elements that day comprised 12 Provincial Viet Namese soldiers and 8 District soldiers and that there was a fierce battle with the American swift boats. (Not exactly a superior force to oppose three fully armed swift boats with full crews and additional infantry troops on board who were put ashore to route the insurgents) Yet John Kerry didn’t report any fierce contact that day other than the teenager he was awarded a Silver Star for leading a landing party to kill.
Apparently the same soldier that had fired at Kerry’s boat immediately prior to Kerry’s heroic act of chasing him down and shooting him in the back yet the modern day residents of the village reported to ABC that the man killed that day was actually a “big man who was 25-26 years old. One of the Provincial soldiers, not a teenager and that he fell in the open on a dyke, possibly shot in the chest when he stood up during the battle, not while running from an American and hiding behind a hooch. No one there seemed to remember LT. JG Kerry’s heroics or having seen him that day period.
The man and his wife did not see the man get shot and they don’t recall anyone having chased him before he was shot, but they found him with his rocket launcher dead after the battle. These witnesses also noted during the interview that they were hiding in bunkers during the battle that occurred that day (with the exception of the VC commander now 54 years old). ABC also failed to identify the other soldiers or sailors that Kerry reportedly led as a "landing party" to pursue the enemy that day. Why? Maybe because he didn't lead a landing party “in the face of superior forces” that day. He beached his boat and abandoned his command to chase after a wounded individual soldier who was no longer a threat to his boat or his command and was nothing more than an easy kill for the record. Why would he do that? Was that a proper action or response? No one seems to care. But Ted Koppel and ABC over looked those minor discrepancies in Kerry’s Silver Star citation along with several other glaring discrepancies in the official account of the battle in the after action report.
The same way they glided over the fact that these same peasants told them that the Americans did not recover any sizeable cache of weapons or other equipment that day. (Contrary to the after action report and the Silver Star citation citing recovery and destruction of an enemy re-supply strong hold) All that happened according to these present day witnesses was that South Viet Namese soldiers burned down several hooch’s on the orders of the Americans that day and the Americans missed a large cache of weapons buried in the village that remains buried to this day under the widow’s garden. No one made an attempt to do any digging to substantiate or dispel her claim. It didn’t fit the proposed story line or the reported facts that they were attempting to establish so it apparently wasn’t relevant to the ABC investigative team.
The former District commander they interviewed is today 54 years old. That would seem to reflect that he was no more than 19 when he reports having been a “commander” of District troops, but no one bothered to question his military or war credentials or the validity of his claim that he had led a counter assault to attack the rear of the Americans that day, when no such counter attack was ever reported by any American present during the battle, including John Kerry. Or was the fact that at 19, this reported commander was commanding men in their mid twenties or older.
Ted Koppel was satisfied to report that after ABC News interviewed these “peasants” that it was clear that their recollection of the battle paralleled the accounts reported in the after action report of the battle and the Silver Star citation citing Kerry’s bravery sufficiently to support the after action report and the citation. But Koppel did not address the fact that there are three separate citations that have been presented for the same battle action and the same Silver Star alleging Kerry’s actions on February 28, 1969. Koppel also failed to identify the author of the after action report citing the combat action that day (as reported and relied upon as fact by ABC News) or who reported those facts to superiors for the official record.
Had Koppel read the accounts of those Americans who were actually there that day and had related in their eye witness accounts in Unfit for Command what they say happened, he would have already known the answer to many of the questions that ABC says appear to remain unanswered after their report tonight.
When John O’Neill (coauthor of Unfit for Command) was finally allowed to address the Night Line report, Koppel appeared more interested in appearing condescending towards O’Neill’s attempts to address the Night Line report than in giving fair or equal treatment to what O’Neill actually had to say concerning the undisputed facts of the battle. Koppel did not care to address that John Kerry’s own accounts and Viet Nam biography “Tour of Duty” and the book by the Boston Globe were the original reference sources for the battle account utilized by O’Neill. Koppel also did not want to acknowledge that O’Neill’s book Unfit for Command utilized the same accounts of the battle as reported in all previous accounts with the exception of pointing out the obvious flaws and misstatements of facts when compared to numerous swift boat veterans and Kerry’s version of the events that day.
None of that mattered to Ted Koppel. The verdict was obviously in. While they had not found the smoking gun or the Holy Grail of truth that they sought and had hoped to use to vindicate Kerry, they had found what they represented as “independent and credible information” sufficiently supporting the after action report of the battle and Kerry’s Silver Star citation. The fact that the motivations and memories of the Viet Namese interviewed were not only questionable but conflicting didn’t seem to be of any concern to those involved in the ABC News investigation of the battle and Kerry’s Silver Star.
In the end, Koppel fell back on an often used and rarely questioned predetermined premise of journalism. That premise being, when they couldn’t prove the story that they were seeking to prove, they simply reported the facts that seemed to support some of their original hypothesis and left the truth to be obscured by stating “many unanswered questions remain.”
Later on, during the ABC News “Overnight” broadcast, limited excerpts from Night Line were rebroadcast. After which the commentator remarked, “its good to see some in depth reporting on this after having seen 30 and 60 second snippets for months.” © trickworm 2004
The link to their written version of tonight’s ABC NEWS Nightline report.http://abcnews.go.com/Nightline/Vote2004/story?id=166434&page=1
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