Waiting for Douglas Brinkley to come out and share what he knows about John Kerry's Cambodia adventure. The Weekly Standard 08/19/2004 12:00:00 AM
"KERRY WENT into Cambodian waters three or four times in January and February 1969 on clandestine missions," historian Douglas Brinkley told the London Telegraph last week. "He had a run dropping off U.S. Navy Seals, Green Berets, and CIA guys. . . . He was a ferry master, a drop-off guy, but it was dangerous as hell. Kerry carries a hat he was given by one CIA operative. In a part of his journals which I didn't use he writes about discussions with CIA guys he was dropping off."
John Kerry was obliged last week to recant a number of statements he has made over the years--statements rich in detail and emotion--about his Christmas Eve, 1968 illegal mission into Cambodia. Turns out that despite his ringing oratory on the floor of the Senate, Kerry had invented that account.
Perhaps Brinkley had never spotted Kerry's accounts of his December 24, 1968 adventures, or because he knew them to be bunkum, the historian chose not to include this tale of daring-do in his best-seller Tour of Duty. But Kerry has told other stories of secret missions across the border, including to a Washington Post reporter in June of 2003 and a U.S. News reporter in May of 2000. To the Post reporter he spoke of a CIA man he dropped off and the "lucky hat" he gave Kerry. To the magazine writer he told a tale of running weapons to anticommunists across the border. To Brinkley Kerry either told, or allowed the historian to read, accounts of Navy SEALs, Green Berets, and spooks jammed on his swift boat.
Retired Navy Admiral Roy Hoffman, commander of the swift boats during Kerry's four months on board them, scoffed at these stories in a report in the Kansas City Star: "'I was always properly informed. The whole time I was there, I don't recall such a mission," Hoffman said. The available sources do not support the notion that any swift boats, much less Kerry's, were supporting covert-ops across the Vietnam-Cambodian border. If Brinkley has sources beyond Kerry's private recollections and journals, he should let the public know what they are.
Interestingly, as Kerry's campaign spokesmen retreated last week from their boss's floor-of-the-Senate declamations, they did not claim that he had been on any covert ops. Word of this retreat had either not reached Brinkley when he made his statement to the Telegraph, or his own researchers compelled him to stick up for the idea of John Kerry as a ferry-man of SEALs, spooks, and weapons-runner.
Drudge announced last week that Brinkley was rushing a New Yorker piece into print that would defend Kerry's magic hat account, but does Brinkley really want to bet his reputation on Kerry's journals at this point? Or does he want to step back and ask himself whether a senator who invented "searing" memories might have had a creative pen along with his movie camera during his tour of duty?
It remains possible that Kerry's magic hat and his gun-running are true accounts that neither his campaign nor Admiral Hoffman know of, and which have somehow eluded the historians' accounts of the "Salem House" operations of the Studies and Observations Group that was running the covert insertions into Cambodia in early 1969.
What is more likely is that Kerry has expanded his Vietnam service whenever necessary for the advancement of his career, that he has molded it to the exigencies of the speech he needed to give or the attention he needed to gain. Kerry did not anticipate the internet or the power of a thousand pairs of eyes checking and rechecking, and he may not have counted on the instinct of a historian to preserve his reputation even at the expense of his access.
Douglas Brinkley owes the public an accounting of John Kerry's accounts. Perhaps he will salvage the senator's Cambodian tale. And perhaps he will sink it.
Hugh Hewitt is the host of a nationally syndicated radio show, and author most recently of If It's Not Close, They Can't Cheat: Crushing the Democrats in Every Election and Why Your Life Depends Upon It. His daily blog can be found at HughHewitt.com.
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