Interview with John O’Neill – Part III

Part I, Part II, Part III

David: What do you think about Kerry and his group, whoever did it, filing with the FEC, Federal Election Commission, trying to shut you guys down?

John O’Neill: It’s a tremendous assault, first of all, on the First Amendment, on just the basic right to speak. Second, you would think in the United States if there was anybody who had a right to talk about the record of our unit, his record in our unit since he’s made an issue out of it, it would be the guys who were actually there. We have 60 people who won the, you know, Purple Hearts. We have any number of people who won significant awards who were all there – and were badly injured -- three or four times the length of time Kerry was. I think that to put all these law firms together to sue us is despicable. I think it’s a despicable assault on free expression. It’s basically 1971 all over again.

David: And they are petitioning the federal government to suppress your speech, which means it really is a request for a constitutional suppression.

John O’Neill: It really is and they did that - they also threatened, of course, the stations that carry our ad.

David: Yes.

John O’Neill: And I was really proud. All 20 of those stations, some of them getting as little as $250, they waded through all the materials and then they all brought the ad up. I thought that said a lot about our country really.

David: That’s great. John, have you noticed the irony in the Kerry supporters treating his record as sacrosanct and not subject to debate and yet in the very process, they’re slandering you men whose records ought to be equally sacrosanct by their standards?

John O’Neill: I think it’s unbelievable, David. This is the guy who came home, remember, and labeled us all war criminals.

David: Yes.

John O’Neill: In addition, in his book Tour written for the Democratic primaries, if you study it, we’re all war criminals except him in that book, he even invents, you know, items that never occurred in Vietnam.  So the basic position is that he can slander us; he can lie about us, but we have no right to reply and clear our names, and we have no right to examine his record even though he’s made an issue out of it.

David: And even though it’s very germane to the national security and future best interests of this country?

John O’Neil: Exactly. You would think that the opposite would be true. None of us are running for president. None of us made our records an issue. You would think that, you know, we’re not going to be elected to anything. You would think our records would not be very relevant and that his would be highly relevant. Instead, the media is trying to do exactly the opposite and they’ve done that because his record can’t survive examination and they’re trying to intimidate all of us by looking at our records and they won’t succeed (in intimidating us).

David: Yeah, and I think all of us have somewhat missed the boat when we focus on this idea, and I’ve even done it in a column, that Kerry opened the door, therefore, it’s fair game. We’re really missing our focus here. The focus isn’t about any of us. The focus is about the nation, and I think . . .

John O’Neill: Right.

David: We have an affirmative obligation to get his record out. Do you agree with that?

John O’Neill: I agree completely. I will say this. If we were simply talking about events 34 years ago, they would be less relevant. What’s so critical is that he brought all these up and lied about them, not 34 years ago, but 2 weeks ago.

David: Yes.

John O’Neill: And so we’re talking about a guy who was actively lying about his entire record and made it the centerpiece of the convention and told lies about it.

David: Yes, and it’s also relevant, especially the second part of the book talking about his anti-war antics, that he’s an unreconstructed communist sympathizer. I don’t want to put words in your mouth, but he’s a guy that always seems to blame America first, and I think that mindset still continues. I think his suspicion and distrust of the benevolence of this country is a thread that runs through his public life for the last 34 years and still exists today and is relevant in terms of how we evaluate him as a prospective commander in chief.

John O’Neill: I believe it’s very much so. You know, the country - the great presidents of our country have been people, you know, they’re both Republican and Democratic, who have had a great optimistic view of our whole nation and basically a tremendous belief in the country and tremendous optimism.

David: Yes.

John O’Neill: The thing about this guy is he has a very, very dark view of things, both in Vietnam and after that, he paints stories that are not true and they’re always the same story and the story is Kerry the hero surrounded by any number of villains. Everybody else basically is a villain, his superiors are villains. The country is a villain, and that’s a very sad type of person to elect as president of the United States.

David: Well if in fact he is a sociopath -- a man without a conscious -- it’s not difficult to understand how he could project that on to the rest of us.

John O’Neill: A little bit that’s right. Let’s consider his Christmas in Cambodia story. It’s a typical, crazy story that, you know, really is, well, a typical Kerry story. In Christmas in Cambodia, Kerry, beginning in the early 1970s, claimed that he had been ordered into a secret mission into Cambodia on Christmas Eve and Christmas Day and he sat in his gunboat pitying himself on Christmas Eve and Christmas Day knowing the country would disavow him. Sometimes he has CIA agents with him on this mission. Sometimes he has his Seals. They’re a variety of different people that were with him on Christmas Day and Christmas Eve in Cambodia, according to his stories, but he’s always there and it’s always Christmas Eve and Christmas Day. He wrote an article about it in 1979 in the Boston Herald. He testified about it on the floor of the United States Senate in 1986 when he said it was seared forever in his memory. He said that the thing that was so unbelievable about it is that he heard Richard Nixon at the time saying that there were no Americans in Cambodia and there he was, knowing he was engaged in illegal activity. The story paints the United States as engaged in a war crime and all of his superiors engaged in a war crime. He described this as the turning point of his entire life. As recently as July 7 on the Hannity and Combs Show, Michael Kranish, his principal biographer, retold the story with no knowledge that it was false and described it as the turning point of Kerry’s life. The story is a total and complete fabrication and I think even Kerry has admitted now that he fabricated the story.

David: Well, last night I think I saw Hurley, one of his sympathizers and enablers, talking again about the fact that it was true that Kerry had been in Cambodia.

John O’Neill: Yes, but they’re now moving from this dramatic Christmas in Cambodia story, which, by the way, won’t work because Richard Nixon didn’t take office until three or four weeks after that Christmas.

David: Yes.

John O’Neill: You know, after the time Kerry was supposed to be in it, Kerry was in Coastal Division 13. There was no physical way for him to get to Cambodia on Christmas Eve and Christmas Day. When he’s been caught lying in this story, he now invents a new story. By the way, the new story is not even in his biography, Tour of Duty, which purports to summarize on a day by day basis his experience. There is no reference to any trip to Cambodia. The new story is that he was in some sort of secret mission or series of missions when he was on a creek called Bernique’s Creek, months later and there aren’t too many months with Kerry, but presumably in January or February, you know, on the other side of Vietnam. I was there. I was on that creek for three months within a very short time after Kerry. We never went into Cambodia. We never would go into Cambodia. It would be stupid to use a Swift Boat, which you can hear a mile and a half away, for any kind of secret mission and so the story makes no sense at all. Nonetheless, he hasn’t provided any specifics.

David: Isn’t it true that he talked about this as being seared in his memory. And doesn’t his effort to change the event to a date other than Christmas further impeach his story? After all, people have a sentimental feeling about Christmas and associate things with it, and indeed that was part of Kerry’s story – that he remembered it precisely because it was Christmas. But when all of a sudden he has to change the date to a time other than Christmas isn’t he ripping the very guts out of an essential part of the story that caused it to be seared in his memory – not to mention the Nixon factor: the whole reason he brought it up in the first place was to express his indignation that the evil Richard Nixon had ordered these secret missions into Cambodia. Well, if Nixon was not president – and he couldn’t have been as even Kerry himself now admits – Kerry could not have been indignant about that. That’s why he at least changed that part of the story – the Nixon part was even more essential to the story than Christmas, so he changed the date until after Christmas after he was caught in these lies, correct?

John O’Neill: Exactly, David. You’re exactly right. As you say, the heart of the story has always been that he spent Christmas there and how bad it was. It was only when he got caught he shifted to another story. But in addition to changing the date, you need to understand he’s going hundreds of miles away now across Vietnam to a whole different place that he says he was in instead of a camp inside Cambodia like he was in the story over and over and over again. He’s now just sort of a little bit inside Cambodia, as I understand the new story.

But we’ll have to get more specifics. You know, we call this story St. Patrick’s Day in Cambodia. We figure, he thinks he was in Cambodia because he saw the green uniforms.

David: Have you noticed that the counterattacks on you guys have lacked specificity have merely been aimed at trying to muck up the record so they can taint you all, almost by innuendo?

John O’Neill: Absolutely. For example, we went over “No Man Left Behind.” There’s been no effort that I can detect by the Kerry campaign to prove that he didn’t wound himself in the fanny. As a matter of fact, they now concede he fled. He didn’t stay with the other boats to save the 3 boat. He fled and then came back. So, the major parts of the story he told are already proven to be lies. Instead, they focus on whether or not there was gunfire when he returned and they ignore the ten people, four officers and six guys, who said there was no gunfire at all.

Instead, they find an obscure record of Thurlow’s, written citation based on Kerry’s own report and fixate on that, just ignore any evidence. In any court this would be proof beyond a reasonable doubt.

David: Tell us real briefly, if you would, about Kerry’s out of print book that he bought up to prevent its redistribution.

John O’Neill: The book that Kerry wrote that he will not allow to be reprinted - I’ve offered to reprint it and I will reprint it free of charge and distribute it - is called “The New Soldier.” Kerry wrote this book with two of his closest cohorts, David Thorne and George Butler in 1971. The reason he won’t allow the book to be reprinted is because it’s probably the most radical book ever produced by any sort of politician in the United States, much less a presidential candidate. The cover of the book begins with a mockery of the Iwo Jima Memorial.

What it does is have six bearded guys raising a flag backwards. It sort of reminds you of the Iwo Jima Memorial and if you read inside, you’ll find that’s exactly what they were trying to do - emulate it.

David: And mock it, obviously.

John O’Neill: Absolutely to mock it. The raising of the flag at Suribachi was the biggest day the Navy and Marine Corp ever had and the bravest thing people ever did, and so to mock that is just a direct assault.

David: Well, it’s also just directly contradictory to his projected image as a gung-ho military veteran who proudly fought for this nation.

John O’Neill: Exactly and the book itself, when you get into it, has extremely radical language. Kerry has things in it like we came to Vietnam to kill communists, instead we killed women and children. Interesting in light of what he did in the Sampanthat night but it’s certainly not true for almost anybody else.

David: Right.

John O’Neill: The other thing it has is a whole sequence of phony war crimes confessions. For example, featured prominently is Al Hubbard. Al Hubbard is the co-founder of Vietnam veterans against the war with Kerry. Hubbard pretended to be, and appeared on “Meet the Press” with Kerry, as a fighter pilot in Vietnam who had been terribly wounded by shrapnel, who confessed blowing up villages. In reality, Al Hubbard was a sergeant in the Air Force who never made it to Vietnam, was never a pilot, and who had hurt his back playing basketball and, therefore, was on disability. Many of the people in the book are identifiable as frauds and the stories in the book are ludicrous. For example, basic training is described as genocide training. That’s one that sticks in my mind The book depicts American troops basically as murderers and the like.  The reason he won’t allow the book to be republished is that no one, Democrat, Republican, or Independent, who read the book would ever vote for him and, so, anybody that tries to republish the book or even copy it, gets a letter from George Butler’s law firm indicating that they’re going to be sued if they in any way distribute it.

David: I believe on one of the talk shows I heard the claim that in Thurlow’s citation, Silver Star citation, there was a statement that Kerry’s boat was under fire and it wasn’t just from Kerry’s self-serving entry into the record but a witness, a mysterious witness named Lambert. Have you heard about that?

John O’Neill: No. You mean on Thurlow’s Bronze Star citation?

David: Yes.

John O’Neill: No I haven’t heard about that and I don’t think anybody’s going to show up that says there was any fire that particular day.  What Larry Thurlow got the Bronze Star for was probably one of the most heroic things anyone ever did. It was crawling into the hole of the 3 boat, plugging it and saving it, as I said before. Larry Thurlow would have no reason to say there was no fire.

David: But you’ve never heard of this mystery witness named Lambert?

John O’Neill: No. I haven’t.  I mean, I don’t know who that is. I think perhaps it may have been one of the people in the water off the 3 boat who was undergoing medical treatment. They may have had him right available at An Thoi. I know that the Thurlow citation was written at An Thoi by the administrative commander who had never seen - had nothing to rely on except Kerry’s after action report.

David: Okay. Also on that same show, Scarborough, I think I heard John Hurley or someone say that two witnesses now say Kerry was in Cambodia and some old man was killed. Have you heard anything about that?

John O’Neill: No. I don’t know anything about that and I don’t know who the witnesses are. So, I mean, what you got is Kerry circling around. For a while, Kerry claimed that after the Christmas in Cambodia story collapsed, Kerry claimed that he was with the CIA in Cambodia.

He even showed a reporter a hat. You know, he wasn’t there with the CIA and I don’t know where he got the hat. I gather now he’s basically trying to take this little canal that we served on and try and to claim that he went a tiny distance in Cambodia or dropped someone off there. Until he gets specific, you know, it’s hard to comment. I do know this that Steve Gardner was on his boat throughout the month of January when he so far has placed himself in Cambodia. Gardner says they never went to Cambodia.

David: Yeah. Gardner made that point again last night.

John O’Neill: Kerry, therefore, is running out of days, you know, when you’re only in combat for three months, you start to run out of time to make up a story and Kerry’s problem is that in February, we can account for almost all of his time. And for March. So, he’s going to have a hard time coming up with some days to place himself in Cambodia.

David: I assume you’ve heard about the charge that Hurley issued last night that you were part of Richard Nixon’s dirty tricks team. Pat Buchanan, of course, was outraged and sufficiently responded, but do you want to say anything about that?

John O’Neill: Sure. In 1971, I heard Kerry’s Senate Foreign Relations testimony. I tried to write to the Senate Foreign Relations Committee. They wouldn’t make any room for me. I saw Bruce Kessler - an article he wrote, he was a Vietnam marine vet. I went down and joined his press conference. I issued a challenge to Kerry to debate. Nixon and those guys had no idea we were even coming or what we were doing, to the best of my knowledge. They did see that press conference and so did many Democrats. At that point in time we were asked to come over to the White House. We were also invited to see various Democrats and I did - people like Henry (Scoop) Jackson, and others.

I remember meeting all those people and all of them encouraging me. At the White House, there is, amazingly, a tape recording of my meeting with Richard Nixon, which I didn’t know existed. The very first thing I told Richard Nixon in that meeting was that I and my family had all voted for Hubert Humphrey and we were all Democrats. That’s right on the tape.

David: Yeah. That’s in the book as well.

John O’Neill: The reason I wanted to make clear that I wasn’t just some loyalist, that we really stood with him on principle, on the principle that we hadn’t committed war crimes, on the principle that we were trying to do the right thing.

David: Okay. Now I want to ask you a few questions about the New York Times piece yesterday alleging that the Swiftees, you guys, have changed your stories from 1996 to today. Specifically, they said that Admiral Hoffman, George Elliott and Adrian Lonsdale, now part of your group, had said favorable things about Kerry in 1996. Do you have any explanation for these seeming inconsistencies elicited by the New York Times?

John O’Neill: Sure and so do the New York Times. They just didn’t bother to print them. In 1996, the question was whether John Kerry committed a war crime by shooting the kid in the back in the Silver Star incident and the position. And the people he invited to come with him are the same guys he now labels as hacks, that is Commander Elliott, Adrian Lonsdale, and Admiral Zumwalt, whose son has signed our letter. They all came and took the position that he had not committed war crimes and that his act involved some degree of courage. I think they’re saying exactly the same thing today. He did not commit war crimes and on the Silver Star incident, his act involved some degree of courage. Now the difference is that when they were involved all those years ago on that citation, he reported to them he had beached alongside a bunker full of many different Viet Cong and you can see this from his citation, which in two places says this, and describes how he had to - went into a numerically superior force and so on. The truth is that just didn’t happen. There was one kid, he was shot up in the legs and he was running away and that was fine. It required courage to jump off and shoot him in the back but not something you base a lifetime on. With respect to the other statements, I think likewise, they were simply trying to, you know, be fair. I will say that beyond question when these men see things like the fact that the Sampan report that he made to them, which resulted in Admiral Hoffman sending a bravo zulu congratulations, and Commander Hoffman learns that what really happened is that, you know, shot up a family in a sampan and there was no squad of Viet Cong, that that deeply affects their view of him. The same thing is true of Commander Elliott. For example, Kerry’s after-action report to Commander Elliott on March 13th reflected him as a tremendous hero.  A man who went through 5,000 meters of fire and saw him to come back and rescue Rassmann.  Everybody concedes now that’s a lie. It’s a lie to such a degree that Kerry doesn’t even want to be associated with his own report. So, their feelings about him are very understandable in light of the examination of the records that has actually occurred now.

David: Right. Is it true, that all the Swiftees on his boat support him and, if so, why do you think that is?

John O’Neill: Well, first with respect to the guys on his boat, they don’t all support him. Steve Gardner, who is the guy that was on his boat the very longest and the very closest to Kerry, thinks he’s a terrible officer, the worst he ever served with and has many specific criticisms of Kerry. With respect to the remaining eight Swiftees who served, some for periods as little as six days on his boat, they do tend to support him but they didn’t do so, according to the book Tour of Duty, when he came back from Vietnam. When they came back, they thought he had betrayed them. He churned their stomach. They were pissed off - those are the actual words that they gave in the interviews. Suddenly about two to three years ago, he began meeting with these fellows and they now support him. When we say they support him, we mean they generally support him for president. He’s been terrified to let them talk. In general, they’re surrounded by handlers. For example, Dale Sanduskysaid three days ago, that far from everybody fleeing and Kerry coming back on March 13. In fact, they fled somewhere between a half mile and a mile before they came back on the day that the 3 boat was hit so badly.

David: Have you noticed the Kerry teams anxiousness to use Senator McCain for their cause and have you specifically heard their charge that your group, the same group that is now attacking him, was the group that attacked McCain McCain in the 2000 primaries. That’s not true, is it?

John O’Neill: Not at all. Let me tell you. Senator McCain’s father graduated from the naval class of 1931 with my father. He was among his closest friends. They were dear and close friends. As a matter of fact, Senator McCain’s father invited me to go eat dinner with him when I was at Little Creek undergoing training as a Navy guy. Senator McCain graduated in ’58 and my brothers graduated in ’57 and ’59. We love the McCain family.  Particularly love Senator McCain’s father, who was a man we loved and thought was a fabulous man. Never attacked Senator McCain; very much like Senator McCain and admire him. In addition, there are 22 different POWs who’ve endorsed our effort, who have been very, very critical of the Kerry campaign and not of us.

David: I think McCain’s criticisms of you guys have been more generic. He has a distaste for what he perceives as negative campaigning and he hasn’t specifically said anything about your specific charges and tried to refute them, has he?

John O’Neill: No. Senator McCain actually campaigned against Kerry himself when he got back. He says, as I understand it, that he was tortured also because of statements like Kerry’s, although I’m not sure he said it was specifically Kerry’s statements. But he says finally in the 1990s, he became friends with Kerry and that’s fine. We respect that. The problem is the rest of us didn’t and we were there and Senator McCain was not in Coastal Division 11.

David: Right.

John O’Neill: And so we have a special perspective that, you know, is much more to the point in the case of Kerry’s Vietnam and post-Vietnam experience than Senator McCain’s.

David: I was particularly turned off by the aspects of Kerry’s speech in 1971 before the Senate Foreign Relations Committee and Senator Fulbright - and in the debate with you – predicting that there would be very few refugees and there would not be a bloodbath if we precipitously withdrew from Vietnam and you steadfastly maintained in that debate that there would be a bloodbath and that there would be refugees and, of course, history has vindicated you. You mentioned in the book that some 3.5 million people were slaughtered in Indochina after we withdrew and all kinds of refugees - has there been any mea culpa on his part for his insensitivity and flagrant misperceptions about what might occur?

John O’Neill: None at all, David. There isn’t a week that goes by that I don’t think about that. I knew a lot of those people. They were wonderful friends. The Navy guys at An Thoi got slaughtered, the high command of the Vietnamese Navy all died. We made it out, but there’s not a week in my life that I don’t actually think about with tremendous sadness.

David: Kerry also, as you point out in your book, equated the Vietnam War to a civil war, and said that the Vietnamese didn’t know the difference between communism or democracy. Kerry also attempted to establish moral equivalence between communism and free societies. Was that particularly repulsive to you?

John O’Neill: Yes. It’s a incredibly racist attitude. It really took the position that the Vietnamese just weren’t smart enough to see the difference between a free society and a communist society and that just wasn’t true. When they were given the chance, they very much wanted to be free.

David: And yet while he exhibited racism, he was accusing the United States of systematic racism in the way we prosecuted the war in Vietnam and Indochina, which he said we wouldn’t dare do to a European nation. Do you remember that?

John O’Neill: Yes. Exactly the opposite as it turns out was true. If you take a look at Europe, when we fought the Nazis, we took big bombers overhead and we took out Hamburg and a lot of cities with mass bombing. In the Vietnam war, my first classman at the Naval Academy, Jeff Shumway, was killed in a small attack plane because we were attacking with precision bombing at Haiphong and at Hanoi instead of mass bombing. We lost pilot after pilot basically trying to do it in a very restrained way compared to World War II. So, it really turned the world upside down.

Part I, Part II, Part III