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O'Neill misquotes an NBC interview of Kerry |
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p. 36 |
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On pages 31-41 of Unfit for Command O'Neill gives his interpretation of what happened the night of December 2, 1968, when Kerry recieved a wound for which he was awarded his first Purple Heart.
On page 36 O'Neill mentions an NBC interview of Kerry about the incident this way: |
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Still, on Sunday, April 18, 2004, when NBC correspondent Time Russert questioned Kerry on national television about the skimmer incident, Kerry described the incident as "the most frightening night" of his Vietnam experience. The Globe reporters noted that Kerry had declined to be interviewed about the Boston Whaler incident for their book. Kerry's refusal to be interviewed may well have been because witnesses such as Commander Hibbard, Dr. Louis Letson, Rear Admiral William Schachte, and others had begun to surface, and Kerry's fabricated story of "the most frightening night" had begun to unravel. |
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O'Neill later uses the words "most frightening night" two more times. At the bottom of page 36 he says, |
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Following "the most frightening night" of his life, to the surprize of both Schachte and the treating doctor, Louis Letson, Kerry managed to keep the tiny hanging fragment barely embedded in his arm until he arrived at sickbay a number of miles away... |
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and on page 39 he says, |
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This is because there was no hostile fire, casualty, or action on this "most frightening night" of Kerry's Vietnam experience. |
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Using Lexis-nexis I was able to easily retrieve a transcript of Kerry's April 18, 2004 interview with Tim Russert. This is the exchange in which Kerry uses the words "most frightening night" (it occurs only once in the transcript): |
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MR. RUSSERT: The Boston Globe reports that your commanding officer, Lieutenant Commander Grant Hibbard has suggested that you perhaps didn't earn your first Purple Heart and questioned whether you should have left Vietnam after six months. In order to deal with those kinds of issued, when I asked President Bush about his service in the Texas Guard, he agreed to release all his military records, health records, everything. Would you agree to release all your military records?
SEN. KERRY: I have. I've shown them -- they're available to you to come and look at. I think that's a very unfair characterization by that person. I mean, politics is politics. The medical records show that I had shrapnel removed from my arm. We were in combat. We were in a very, very -- probably one of the most frightening -- if you ask anybody who was with me, the two guys who were with me, was probably the most frightening night that they had that they were in Vietnam and we're... |
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[ellipsis in original]
I think O'Neill significantly misrepresented Kerry's words. The transcript reveals Kerry's confidence in his belief that the other men with him regarded that night as very frightening -- perhaps the most frightening night they had ever experienced in Vietnam.
Kerry almost (but not quite) says that it was also the most frightening night of his Vietnam experience. He seems to intend to imply this, however, so O'Neill seems mostly guilty of an ommision in that regard.
But the misquote (shown above) from the bottom of page 36, with Kerry supposedly saying it was the "most frightening night" of his life, is plainly a lie by O'Neill. |
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