Robert Novak has interviewed one of Kerry’s crewmates.
Retired Rear Adm. William L. Schachte Jr. said Thursday in his first on-the- record interview about the Swift boat veterans dispute that “I was absolutely in the skimmer” in the early morning on Dec. 2, 1968, when Lt. (j.g.) John Kerry was involved in an incident which led to his first Purple Heart.
“Kerry nicked himself with a M-79 (grenade launcher),” Schachte said in a telephone interview from his home in Charleston, S.C. He said, “Kerry requested a Purple Heart.”
Kerry was turned down, and filed the request with a later commander.
Schachte described the use of the skimmer operating very close to shore as a technique that he personally designed to flush enemy forces on the banks of Mekong River so that the larger Swift boats could move in. At about 3 a.m. on Dec. 2, Schachte said, the skimmer — code-named “Batman” — fired a hand-held flare. He said that after Kerry’s M-16 rifle jammed, the new officer picked up the M-79 and “I heard a ‘thunk.’ There was no fire from the enemy,” he said.
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“I was astonished by Kerry’s version” (in his book, “Tour of Duty”) of what happened Dec. 2, Schachte said Thursday. When asked to support the Kerry critics in the Swift boat controversy, Schachte said, “I didn’t want to get involved.” But he said he gradually began to change his mind when he saw his own involvement and credibility challenged, starting with Lanny Davis on CNN’s “Crossfire” Aug. 12.
Chicago Sun Times has been combing the records on Kerry’s campaign website, and discovering some of the same discrepencies noted for weeks by various military bloggers and commentors.
The Kerry campaign has repeatedly stated that the official naval records prove the truth of Kerry’s assertions about his service.
But the official records on Kerry’s Web site only add to the confusion. The DD214 form, an official Defense Department document summarizing Kerry’s military career posted on johnkerry.com, includes a “Silver Star with combat V.”
But according to a U.S. Navy spokesman, “Kerry’s record is incorrect. The Navy has never issued a ‘combat V’ to anyone for a Silver Star.”
There is curiosity about the fact that three separate citations exist for this medal – from three different people. Two are on Kerry’s website, the first isn’t.
Normally in the case of a lost citation, Milavec points out, the awardee simply asked for a copy to be sent to him from his service personnel records office where it remains on file. “I have never heard of multi-citations from three different people for the same medal award,” he said. Nor has Burkett: “It is even stranger to have three different descriptions of the awardee’s conduct in the citations for the same award.”
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Reporting by the Washington Post’s Michael Dobbs points out that although the Kerry campaign insists that it has released Kerry’s full military records, the Post was only able to get six pages of records under its Freedom of Information Act request out of the “at least a hundred pages” a Naval Personnel Office spokesman called the “full file.”
What could that more than 100 pages contain? Questions have been raised about President Bush’s drill attendance in the reserves, but Bush received his honorable discharge on schedule. Kerry, who should have been discharged from the Navy about the same time — July 1, 1972 — wasn’t given the discharge he has on his campaign Web site until July 13, 1978. What delayed the discharge for six years? This raises serious questions about Kerry’s performance while in the reserves that are far more potentially damaging than those raised against Bush.
Update – The entire text of John Kerry’s out of print book “The New Soldier”, as well as links to free chapters from “Unfit For Duty” can be found here. Included in one of the chapters are the events that Retired Rear Adm. William L. Schachte Jr. speaks to.