The claims of John O'Neill, Dr. Louis Letson, Grant Hibbard and others that John Kerry faked his first Purple Heart

By Erik Mattheis, August 9, 2004
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Swift Boat Vets for Truth, the group spearheaded by John O'Neill who I spoke of in a previous post has made the third chapter of their book Unfit for Command available to download for free. I've read it - in this analysis, quotations from that text are contained in red boxes, quotations from other sources are in blue. It's spurious argument that John Kerry acted dishonorably while serving in Vietnam may not warrant such a lengthy attention, but if Robert Novak can say the book is a "meticulously researched account" in his nationally syndicated column, sharing my observations here is no large sin.

The free chapter is titled "THE PURPLE HEART HUNTER" and asserts that Kerry faked his first Purple Heart. The last sentence of the first paragraph of the chapter is simply devastating:

John Kerry is also the only known Swiftee who received the Purple Heart for a self-inflicted wound.

As we will see later, it's also simply farcical prattle. But the criticism that Kerry did not earn or deserve his first Purple Heart deserves attention. So let's give it some.

First, to establish context to the tale a short synopsis of the chain of events which led to Kerry's first war wound. It happened during Kerry's first combat experience and also before he commanded a Swift boat. I was of course not there and to be fair to John O'Neill - who neither was there - I'll only relate points on which the chapter describes no controversy.

The personalities

What everybody agrees happened

The crew was on patrol at 2-3 am when they came across a group of sampans (a type of small Asian boat). They were patrolling a zone with a curfew - anyone out after curfew was considered an enemy. Kerry ordered the engine to be cut and the crew paddled towards the sampans. The men in the sampans began to disembark to shore. The crew launched a flare and ordered the men to stop. When the men reacted by bolting for cover, the crew opened fire. During the incident, Kerry got hit by a shard of shrapnel in his arm. As Kerry's first combat experience, he has described it as the most frightening night of his life.

After the incident, Dr. Louis Letson removed the shrapnel from Kerry's arm. The next day, Kerry approached Grant Hibbard and applied for a Purple Heart.

If you wish to skip over the bulk of the evaluation, you can jump ahead to the evaluation of the controversy on Kerry's first Purple Heart which the document presents. The more ridiculous stuff is in the content tangential to the significant dispued facts (or, more accurately "fact" - in the singular), so if you're here for the chuckles, reading straight through is the wise course.  

The Unfit for Command story

Now we're ready to analyze what is said about the incident in the free downloadable PDF version of Chapter 3 of Unfit for Command. We'll go in the order things are presented and start with this:

... many Swiftees have now come forth to question Kerry's deception. "I was there the entire time Kerry was and witnessed two of his war 'wounds.' I was also present during the action [in which] he received his Bronze Star. I know what a fraud he is. How can I help?" wrote Van Odell, a gunner from Kerry's unit in An Thoi.2 Commander John Kipp, USN (retired), of Coastal Division 13 also volunteered, "If there is anything I can do to unmask this charlatan, please let me know. He brings disgrace to all who served."

We're off to a good start! This has footnotes to back up and further substantiate it's claims - 24 of them in this short chapter alone! Or, wait, no it doesn't. It has references to footnotes, but no footnotes appear anywhere in the document. Neither does it number it's pages, but it should be easy to find the passages I cite.

Van O'Dell is not mentioned again in this chapter - despite his contention that he "was there the entire time Kerry was and witnessed two of his war 'wounds.'" Per John Kipp, maybe he's the Vietnam vet who died May 23, 2004, or maybe he's the John Kipp who's help to "unmask this charlatan" was not employed in the provided chapter - it's the first and last time he's mentioned. But mentioning these names adds bulk, and that's the important thing, right? After all, to the authors' credit, the prose does not waste words noting that the Clintons have murdered 48 people or even that John Kerry looks French. So we should cut the authors some slack. They turn to Kerry's decision to leave Vietnam,

Indeed, many share the feelings of Admiral Roy Hoffmann, to whom all Swiftees reported: Kerry simply "bugged out" when the heat was on.

Although Kerry puts it differently, he doesn't disagree with the substance of that feeling. He has spoken of the difficult decision to come back home and work against the war. As he put it in his 1971 debate on the Dick Cavett show with John O'Neill,

The fact of the matter remains that after I received my third wound, I was told that I could return to the United States. I deliberated for about two weeks because there was a very difficult decision in whether or not you leave your friends because you have an opportunity to go, but I finally made the decision to go back and did leave of my own volition because I felt that I could do more against the war back here. And when I got back here, I was serving as an aide to an admiral in New York City, and I wrote a letter through him requesting that I be released from the Navy early because of my opposition, and I was granted that release, and I have been working against the war ever since then.

An additional fact of the matter is that once Kerry saw the reality of the war first-hand, he decided it was not a good idea to continue fighting the war and came back home to join Vietnam Veterans Against the War. Compare this to John O'Neill who saw the reality of the war first-hand, decided it was a good thing to continue fighting it and decided to come back home and work for it. That, my friends, is what we call a "chicken-hawk." Or to borrow a phrase from this chapter, "unbelievable hypocrisy and the truly bottom rung of human conduct."

The authors describe the events around Kerry's wound for which he received his first Purple Heart, as related in Tour of Duty, by respected historian Douglas Brinkley. It then attempts to juxtapose Brinkley's account with a "somewhat different" account as related in the Boston Globe's biography of John Kerry:

A somewhat different version is recounted in the Kerry biography written by the Boston Globe reporters. In this account, Kerry had emphasized that he was patrolling with the Boston Whaler in a freefire curfew zone, and that "anyone violating the curfew could be considered an enemy and shot."9

Another reference to a non-existent footnote - a reasonable reader would assume that it's simply a citation to the Boston Globe biography, just as you probably did if you noticed it. Immediately after the footnote reference, it continues,

By the time the Globe biography was written, questions had been raised about whether the incident involved any enemy fire at all. The Globe reporters covered this point as follows:

The Kerry campaign showed the Boston Globe a one-page document listing Kerry's medical treatment during some of his service time. The notation said: "3 DEC 1968 U.S. NAVAL SUPPORT FACILITY CAM RANH BAY RVN FPO Shrapnel in left arm above elbow. Shrapnel removed and apply Bacitracin dressing. Ret to duty."

So that must be something the Boston Globe reporters wrote in contraction to Douglas Brinkley's account, right? Well maybe it's in the Globe reporters' biography, I haven't read their book. What it is for sure is the same information contained in an April 17, 2004 Salon article written by guess who? Douglas Brinkley. In it, Brinkley criticizes an April 14, 2004 Globe article for printing the statements of Vietnam veteran Grant Hibbard ("He had a little scratch on his forearm") without mentioning that the actual medical report describes the removal of shrapnel from the flesh of Kerry's (upper) left arm. Says Brinkley,

Not included in either newspaper account, however, is Kerry's medical report from the incident. He shared it with me last year when I was writing "Tour of Duty." It reads: "3 DEC 1968 U.S. NAVAL SUPPORT FACILITY CAM RANH BAY RVN FPO Shrapnel in left arm above elbow ...

The misdirection is astounding. It's not surprising that O'Neill favors Grant Hibbard's 33 year old second-hand memories over the medical report. But again, to the authors' credit, they do note that Kerry's crewmates relate a similar story as Kerry does,

The two men serving alongside Kerry that night had similar memories of the incident that led to Kerry's first wartime injury. William Zaldonis, who was manning an M-60, and Patrick Runyon, operating the engine, said they spotted some people running from a sampan to a nearby shoreline.

Indeed, they had similar memories because they refused to go down the rabbit-hole O'Neill opened up for them. The group that researched this book contacted Patrick Runyon during their "investigation". Runyun related his experience with O'Neill's group to The Dallas Morning News (link is a to reprint, the original article requiring registration is here).

Pat Runyon said the crew was patrolling north of Cam Ranh Bay the night of Dec. 2, 1968, when Kerry and fellow crewman Bill Zaledonis spotted Viet Cong guerrillas massed on a beach and began firing. He said Kerry was subsequently treated for a wound to the arm, which led to his first Purple Heart. Runyon said he recounted the episode for the private investigator because he gave the impression he was working for an independent or pro-Kerry veterans group. But Runyon said he was distressed when the investigator sent him an inaccurate synopsis of their conversation suggesting that the wound was likely caused by a flare.

So what we have is an investigator interviewing Kerry's old war buddies and faxing them back inaccurate synopses of the interviews. That was their technique with Runyon. The authors also use the technique of hoping their audience's reading comprehension is quite low. We're still in the section describing Kerry's vesion of events,

The Globe reporters noted that Kerry had declined to be interviewed about the Boston Whaler incident for their book.

Insert a puzzled pause here, then rewind to what we read six paragraphs prior:

A somewhat different version is recounted in the Kerry biography written by the Boston Globe reporters. In this account, Kerry had emphasized that he was patrolling with the Boston Whaler ...

Upon that masterstroke, the section ominously ends, "Kerry's fabricated story of 'the most frightening night' had begun to unravel."

Now we hear the real story. And more opinion.

Following is a section titled "What Really Happened." The version it tells simply cannot be as true as Kerry's version because it only contains three references to non-existent footnotes, whereas the preceding section describing Kerry's version contains twelve! Sorry, but I couldn't resist sarcastically using an argument similar to those presented in the chapter.

The section stakes out a handful of repeated claims over the space of five pages. Giving it an cursory reading leaves the impression that more than one person with first-hand knowledge dispute the Kerry/Runyon/Zaledonis account, but the bulk of it consists of transcriptions of statements from Grant Hibbard, the Commander of Coastal Division 14 (who wasn't there) and Dr. Louis Letson, who removed the shrapnel from Kerry's arm (and wasn't there either).

For even more bulk, the authors weave in the names of two other individuals that don't claim first hand knowledge of the incident, one that says Kerry didn't tell him he was wounded (who had no reason to know as he just towed the damaged boat) and another thrown in for good measure (who has nothing to do with the story, but says he once made a taunting remark to Kerry - for all we know, it was good natured cajolery).  

The facts of the case, as told by John O'Neill

The factual claims in the "What Really Happened" version are as follows:

  1. Kerry's M-16 had jammed, and he picked up a grenade launcher, which he fired too close to shore and the shrapnel in his arm came from a grenade he launched, but Kerry claimed it was from enemy fire.
  2. The piece of shrapnel was one or two centimeters long and two or three millimeters thick; most of the shrapnel was sticking out of Kerry's arm.
  3. William Schachte, the officer in command of the boat Kerry was on says there was no enemy fire.
  4. Grant Hibbard says he was told there was no enemy fire.
  5. Dr. Louis Letson, the doctor who removed the shrapnel from Kerry's arm, says he was told there was no enemy fire.
  6. Dr. Louis Letson think Kerry's wound merited a Purple Heart, characterizing the wound as a "tiny scratch".
  7. Direct quote from chapter: Kerry somehow "gamed the system" nearly three months later to obtain the Purple Heart that Hibbard had denied. How he obtained the award is unknown, since his refusal to execute Standard Form 180 means that whatever documents exist are known only to Kerry, the Department of Defense, and God.

I don't claim to be God or anything, so I'm unsure if the authors themselves will value these observations, but nonetheless, here's my take on the claims they present - using only the information the authors provide:

  1. Accepted as fact. Zaldonis and Runyon do not claim with certainty there was enemy fire.
  2. Accepted as fact. The piece of shrapnel was small and did not fully embed itself in Kerry's flesh.
  3. Accepted as fact. Schachte's impression was that there was no enemy fire.
  4. Accepted as fact. It's reasonable to believe Schante told Hibbard there was no enemy fire.
  5. Accepted as fact. It's reasonable to believe Schante or Hibbard told Letson there was no enemy fire.
  6. Accepted as fact. Dr. Louis Letson didn't think the size of the wound merited a Purple Heart.
  7. Accepted as fact. Kerry's Purple Heart could have been awarded by an officer somewhere else in the chain of command based on the medical report which stated, "Shrapnel in left arm above elbow. Shrapnel removed and apply Bacitracin dressing."

Combinining without discrepancy the undisputed facts between the "Kerry story" and "Other story", we understand that there was an incident where two witnesses are unsure if they received hostile fire or not, a Lieutenant in his first intense combat experience in the jungles of Vietnam who says there was hostile fire, someone else on the boat who says there wasn't hostile fire, and a couple other people who believed the commander of the boat, and a small piece of shrapnel which was removed from Kerry's upper left arm, which could have been no larger than the bottom three-fourths of a small wood screw such as this:

I wouldn't want one of these in my arm

(computer graphics appear different sizes on different screens, imagine the screw as about an inch long)

Now that we agree

Well and fine, we all agree on almost everything. The single point of factual disagreement is whether these was hostile enemy fire. I was not there and as a fair and balanced third party, I'm willing to accept that it's indeed possible that there was, in fact, no enemy fire. Now let's look at Army Regulation 600-8-22 which defines military awards:

2-8. Purple Heart

(2) A wound is defined as an injury to any part of the body from an outside force or agent sustained under one or more of the conditions listed above [this author's note: "In any action against an enemy of the United States" is the first condition listed]. A physical lesion is not required, however, the wound for which the award is made must have required treatment by a medical officer and records of medical treatment for wounds or injuries received in action must have been made a matter of official record.

... (6) It is not intended that such a strict interpretation of the requirement for the wound or injury to be caused by direct result of hostile action be taken that it would preclude the award being made to deserving personnel. Commanders must also take into consideration the circumstances surrounding an injury, even if it appears to meet the criteria. Note the following examples:

... (b) Individuals wounded or killed as a result of "friendly fire" in the "heat of battle" will be awarded the Purple Heart as long as the "friendly" projectile or agent was released with the full intent of inflicting damage or destroying enemy troops or equipment.

Although the "argument's" main point is that Kerry didn't deserve his first Purple Heart, nowhere do we find even a hint of the conditions and cirumstances a serviceman must experience to earn a Purple Heart. The reason for the intentional omission is clear: if the military regulations were described, the contention that Kerry didn't deserve the Purple Heart would fall flat on it's face! Really, read the chapter and the regulations yourself and decide if what Kerry experienced falls within the definition of what a Purple Heart is meant to reward. Both the links in the previous sentance are repeats, but I only repeat them to reinforce the the honesty with which I'm evaluating the claims.

We can now return to the simply farcical prattle we started with: "John Kerry is also the only known Swiftee who received the Purple Heart for a self-inflicted wound." All that means is the authors characterize a wound from "friendly fire" as "self-inflicted" because Kerry launched the grenade (from which they claim the shrapnel came) himself and they don't know of another Swiftee that earned a Purple Heart in a similar "friendly fire" incident. Perhaps they could have started their research with familiarizing themselves with military awards instead of figuring out how to present an outrageously silly claim that to some may appear to reveal Kerry as a fraudulent monster.

Separating opinion from fact

Granted, it's abundantly apparent that many people judge that Kerry didn't deserve his first Purple Heart. The only difference on the facts we're presented with is whether Kerry's wound was caused by enemy or "friendly" fire. Once we have read the regulatiuons regarding Purple Hearts, we understand that where the shrapnel came from is immaterial. We do know someone did assess that rewarding a Purple Heart for the wound was proper, and anybody who disagreed is going to have to let the healing process begin - it's three decades later for goodness sake. Er, wait just this April, Grant Hibbard told the Boston Globe he remembered "some questions" about Kerry's first Purple Heart and was disgruntled by the request:

Hibbard said he couldn't be certain whether Kerry actually came under fire on Dec. 2, 1968, the date in question and that is why he said he asked Kerry questions about the matter. But Kerry persisted and, to his own "chagrin," Hibbard said, he dropped the matter. "I do remember some questions, some correspondence about it," Hibbard said. "I finally said, 'OK, if that's what happened ... do whatever you want.'"

Compare to what the book reports Hibbard remembering his sentiments as,

I told Kerry to "forget it." There was no hostile fire ... Kerry wasn't getting any Purple Heart recommendation from me.

This group's smear is pure pap. On right-leaning webboards, I've noted that although many are willing to believe anything negative about John Kerry no matter how absurd, some otherwise thoughtful individuals are saying "many people are questioning Kerry's truthfulness", "it appears that it may be the case that ..." etc. This is a twist on the Nixonian doctrine of plausible deniability: "plausible veracity". And that is exactly the intention - to call into question John Kerry's character and trustworthiness.

Although they fail to note that "friendly fire" injuries can warrant a Purple Heart, FactCheck.org has some additional commentary on Swift Boat Vets for "Truth"'s gutter politics and their fanciful propaganda.

One thing is certain above all: this group is lacking confidence Bush can win in a fair fight. But I believe America wants the debate leading up to the election to be about important things ... for instance figuring out how we're going to minimize the number incidents in Iraq and Afghanistan which will result in undeniably meritorious Purple Hearts ...

 

If you jumped ahead to read to read the evaluation of the factual disagreement and wish to hear what else can be observed about the book's presentation of the alleged "controversy", here's is your link to go back and read the full analysis.

 

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