Thomas Lipscomb - Kerry's Skimmer Scam

Put the latest Lipscomb on my "Must Read" list - his topic is Kerry's controversial first Purple Heart.

More later, I desperately hope.

MORE IS NOW:

Kerry's supporter's will note a subtle shift in the Schachte story.  From the latest:

Schachte says he personally led seven out of the eight skimmer missions he ran at Cam Ranh, and the one he didn't lead was not led by what Hibbard terms "a 'rookie' who knew nothing about the concept or tactics involved to command the skimmer." Schachte points out that if he had risked the lives of two enlisted men with a green officer on a difficult night mission like this he should have been reprimanded. Kerry, after all, was an "officer in training" at Coastal Division 14. Kerry had never had a command and had not yet been released to a first command of his own. His job was to go on missions with veterans and learn.

In fact, the one mission Schachte didn't lead was led by veteran Swift boat skipper Tedd Peck, two nights after the Kerry mission, to the same place, with Peck as leader with two other officers, Stephen Hayes and Mark Janes.

From the versions presented by Novak and Myers (interview transcript), I think it is fair to say that folks took away the impression that Schachte was always on the skimmer during these missions.  Here is what he told Lisa Myers:

The enlisted person operated the motor.  Now, this was my idea.  And I went on each one of these – in command of each one that we did up to and including the night with Lieutenant Junior Grade Kerry.

I did that because it was my idea and people volunteered for this.  And I didn't think it was right having one of these operations and being on a swift boat or back at Operations Center or something like that.

Since the mission reportedly led by Ted Peck followed the Kerry mission, that is not a true contradiction.

And here is Novak:

However, two other former officers interviewed Thursday confirmed that Schachte was the originator of the technique and always was aboard the Boston whaler for these missions.

Grant Hibbard, who as a lieutenant commander was Schachte's superior officer, confirmed that Schachte always went on these skimmer missions and "I don't think he (Kerry) was alone" on his first assignment. Hibbard said he had told Kerry to "forget it" when he asked for a Purple Heart.

Ted Peck, another Swift boat commander, said, "I remember Bill (Schachte) telling me it didn't happen" -- that is, Kerry getting an enemy-inflicted wound. He said it would be "impossible" for Kerry to have been in the skimmer without Schachte.

Well, Ted Peck's story is not changing, based on these quotes anyway.  But the information attributed to Hibbard, that Schachte "always went on these skimmer missions", seems to be incomplete.

STILL WORKING...

Having finished the article (finally!), my biggest beef is that Lipscomb does not mention (let alone hammer unrelentingly) on the odd circumstances of Kerry's War Notes, and the odd appearance of Zaladonis and Runyon as supporting witnesses.

Briefly, Douglas Brinkley's "Tour of Duty" relies exclusively on interviews with Kerry from 2003 to tell the skimmer story.  Isn't it odd that Brinkley could find nothing of interest on Kerry's first combat and first medal in his extensive diary?  No letters home, nothing?

Also odd - Zaladonis, a crewman on Kerry's first boat, PCF-44, provided "multiple" interviews to Brinkley.  yet Brinkley did not mention (or failed to elicit) the fact that Zaladonis' first experience with Kerry came a few days before he joined Kerry's PCF-44 crew, when they had their harrowing adventure in the skimmer.

Michael Kranish of the Globe also interviewed Zaladonis for a 2003 story; Zaladonis apparently did not volunteer that tidbit on that ocassion either.

I wonder why - it's not as if the incident had slipped his mind.  As he told Lisa Myers, he and Pat Runyon regaled each other from time to time with that tale:

ZALADONIS:  ...I do remember who was on the boat and remember it very plainly.  Very plainly…  Like I said, it was one of the scariest nights I've had in my life.  And Pat and I have shared this story a few times since we've been out of the Navy.  We've been very good friends ever since we've been—when we were in the Navy and out – and this is something that we talked about every now and then.

Maybe we should just chalk that up to atrocious interview technique by both Brinkley and Kranish.

Comments

[Cecil Turner]

Lipscomb's view of the varying tales appears the most likely. In any event, this is the least plausible of Kerry's stories, and his refusal to release the pertinent records makes it even harder to credit.

Still, I'd be a lot happier with Lipscomb's reporting on the subject if he hadn't tried to prove who wrote the BS after action report with message traffic. And though I suspect he's probably right about the author, there's no way of telling that from the message traffic, and his detailed analysis was flawed (in a way that was prejudicial to Kerry). Similarly, this piece makes some allegations that rely on rather minute details of fallible memories (at least of personal reactions to that long-ago mission). I'd be inclined to believe the true story doesn't really require a parallel universe.

[lurker]

Heh, I *know* Doug Reese, Keith Nolan, and eecee and her alias, readingforfun will be back here.

[Patrick R. Sullivan]

Schachte has always said that this mission with Kerry was his last, because he soon went home. So, someone would have to lead them after he was finished. Though it seems Hibbard discontinued them after Peck's. Probably because they didn't produce anything.

Lipscomb did a good job with the ToD version where they ferry fishermen back to the Swift Boat, and asking; "Hey, I thought we couldn't get more than three people in the skimmer?'

[ed]

Hmmmmm.

1. *shrug* if your mission is nighttime interdiction using a machine gun, then having a boat commander, engineman and a gunner is about all you'd need.

2. I hope I won't disappoint but frankly this whole Kerry thing is really boring the heck out of me. No doubt my interest will be renewed when Kerry decides to run for President yet again.

IMHO I'm going to apply the same *exact* standard to Kerry that his supporters apply to Haditha.

*You* have to prove he's innocent.

[Tom Maguire]

Lipscomb did a good job with the ToD version where they ferry fishermen back to the Swift Boat...

Well, a question not addressed here - Mike Voss was on the Swift boat - does he recall interogating a stream of sampan sailors?

And was that "normal" for these missions?

And can anyone track down the "one or two" after-action reports for these missions that Schachte remembers, kinda? That might help establish what was normal procedure.

[Patrick R. Sullivan]

I'll ask Lipscomb about Voss and the fishermen, but I've been engaging Doug Reese on usenet about the Silver Star citations, and have discovered an interesting discrepancy between Tour of Duty and the second and third versions.

Here's how it reads in Tour of Duty:

'...KERRY was serving as Officer in Charge of Patrol Craft Fast 94 and Officer in Tactical Command of a three-boat mission. As the force approached the target....'

Here's what the Hyland and Lehman signed citations say:

'...KERRY was serving as Officer in Charge of Patrol Craft Fast 94 and Officer in Tactical Command of a three-boat unit engaged in inserting Vietnamese regional force troops on a reconnaissance in force mission. As the force approached the target....'

The 'Vietnamese regional force troops' have been made to disappear.

The original citation signed by Zumwalt has a lot of detail about the troops the Swift Boats were there to insert. The two following citations scrub most of that, and make it a very Navy-centric mission. Brinkley scrubs the ground troops even further.

[maryrose]

Four words for Senator Kerry-Give back your medal. The first Purple Heart was undeserved and you know it. Give it back and move on to topics people care about.I'm with Ed on this .Kerry you are and continue to be boring.

[Patton]

Hasn't Kerry been known to take Pecks missions and claim them as his own.....

[Joel]

My guess is that there is definitely some fuzzy information regarding Kerry's valor. But come on, it is hard for me to find much relevance considering the current political climate.

[Neo]

I think you guys are overanalyzing this.

The elephant lurking in the room is that John Kerry has a faulty memory or worse.

[Neo]

LOL

I tried the "John Kerry's Principled Positions" link in "Useful Stuff"

[Javani]

Schachte is right...or he is wrong...

what really matters is the medical records

[Sara (The Squiggler)]

OT - Jason Leopold is back

[Patrick R. Sullivan]

Thomas Lipscomb informs me that Mike Voss won't talk to him (he was quoting Voss's statement to Lisa Myers of NBC). Voss lives in Massachusetts.

[Sara (The Squiggler)]

[the last lines of article] On seeing Admiral Schachte, resplendent in his dress blues, gold braid and decorations, Kerry broke out in a broad grin and pointing his finger said: "BATMAN.".

How could he know?

That's my question too.

[Steve Smith]

Lipscomb is a discredited fraud.

[Other Tom]

"Lipscomb is a discredited fraud." Wow--that's pretty persuasive...

[Sara (The Squiggler)]

"Lipscomb is a discredited fraud."

By who? or is it whom? That paragon of honesty, John Kerry? Gag!

[Other Tom]

Here's what Lipscomb said last week concerning the after-action report on which Kerry's Bronze Star citation was based: "I found by examining the message traffic with experts that when the Swift Boat Vets charged that Kerry had written the Bay Hap after action report, by which he received his bronze star and the third purple heart that was his ticket out of Vietnam, the evidence showed that it was indeed probably written by Kerry himself."

I'm not sure what Lipscomb means by "the message traffic." During the 2004 campaign I saw an analysis of the after-action report (which is itself an ordinary message, transmitted by teletype) that established quite conclusively to me that the author was Kerry. (I don't recall whether the analysis was Lipscomb's or not.) The key item was an identifying alpha-numeric designator in the message caption that uniquely referred to Kerry. Couple this with the fact that, according to many others on the scene, Kerry was the only officer who had been involved in the incident who was aboard the Coast Guard cutter at the time the message was transmitted from there--the others were still engaged in the salvage and rescue efforts. The award itself is a pure piece of fiction--"intense automatic weapons fire" over a stretch of 5,000 meters of the river, etc. In fact no boat and no sailor was struck by a single round, and three of the boats were dead in the water attending to the stricken boat for an extended period of time. It's extremely galling to see this fraudulent fabulist inventing himself as a hero while so many better men simply did their duty and retained their modesty and their dignity.

[Lurker]

Kerry to introduce Iraq withdrawal plan

What???

"Finally, his amendment will call on President George W. Bush to convene a summit including the new Iraqi government, leaders of the governments of each country bordering Iraq, representatives of the Arab League, the secretary general of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization, representatives of the European Union, and leaders of the governments of each permanent member of the United Nations Security Council to reach reach an agreement on Iraq's fundamental political challenges -- whether and how the country will be federalized along geographic lines, how oil revenues are to be divided, what to do about sectarian militias, security guarantees, reconstruction, economic assistance and border security, Kerry's office said."

[Lurker]

Sara, AND....drum roll...Marc Ash has a follow up letter in response to Jason Leopold's new article. Check truthout forum.

[Bingo]

Kerry was the only officer who had been involved in the incident who was aboard the Coast Guard cutter at the time the message was transmitted from there--the others were still engaged in the salvage and rescue efforts.

I don't believe this is correct. By the time the message was sent, the salvage operation had already been completed. By process of elimination, Kerry appears to be the logical (though undocumented) author of the after-action report which supports his fabricated incorporation of a second injury, unintentionally self-inflicted earlier in the day, into the Bay Hap Bronze Star/Purple Heart #3 narrative.

[maryrose]

It's a no-brainer. Kerry wrote the report and there are other nuggets of gold in his 180 which he will not release publically for all because there is damaging ,compromising information in there that he cannot spin

[Sara (The Squiggler)]

Lurker, thanks, saw that. LOL.

Kerry's withdrawal plan ... ever wonder why he is always a day late? I mean wasn't that one of the things being done at Camp David this past weekend with discussions going on between all our top people, and the heads of the other countries involved. Sheesh!

Beginning a two-day strategy session on Iraq at Camp David, Bush said nations inside and outside the Middle East have pledged $13 billion for Iraq reconstruction and the United States expects them to back their financial commitments.

"We discussed that today, as to how to continue to rally not only the neighborhood and Iraq's neighbors to the cause of the new democracy, but how to help others who have made a pledge to honor their pledge," Bush said.

[Sara (The Squiggler)]

And this:

"I keep reminding the American people that the stakes are worth it," Bush said. "It is worth it to help Iraq succeed. It is worth it to have a democracy in the Middle East. It is worth it to show other reformers and people who want to live in a free society what is possible.'

Gen. George Casey, one of the generals who spoke with Bush via teleconference at Camp David, said he thinks it will be possible to withdraw some of the 130,000 U.S. forces in the months ahead as long as Iraq's government and security forces make progress.

But Bush made no predictions about U.S. troop withdrawals. He said Casey, the top American commander in Iraq, is working to assess the Iraqis' ability to take the fight to the enemy and secure the country.

"Whatever we do will be based upon the conditions on the ground," Bush said.

He said he and his advisers discussed the security situation in Iraq, especially in Baghdad and Basra, as well as the Iraqi economy and oil.

Bush suggested that the Iraqi government use the nation's vast supply of oil as a way to unite the country, perhaps creating a fund for the Iraqi people to restore their faith in the new unified central government.

On Tuesday, Bush is to hold a teleconference with Iraq's prime minister, Nouri al-Maliki, and members of his cabinet.

[Tom]

As a former navy Radioman I can tell you DateTimeGroup of a message is assigned by the ship when a message is released. It is roughly the time the message is scheduled for transmission. This may very with its actual transmission time.
The time the message was sent tells us very little about who sent it. The information for the report could have been gathered from numerous sources and assigned a date time group when the message was released.
Likewise on the Bay Hap incident the Navy probably had other sources of information to make a final judgement.

One final reminder the events described occurred nearly forty years ago and everyone's memories are foggy at best. When Kerry's medal's are challenged then everyone's medals are drawn into question. It is quite possible that two people can have entirely different recollections of events and both believe they are telling the truth.
It is the Navy that has to be the final authority on the granting of awards and decorations. The Navy had the means and documentation at the time to make judgements about who should and who should not receive awards and unless someone can come up with documention from that time period sufficient of depth and scope to cause the Navy to reverse is decision we have to assume the awarding of the medals are valid.
Forty-year old speculation and journalistic second guessing is of little value unless the Navy deems is credible, which the haven't.

[maryrose]

Kerry-a day late and a dollar sort. In keeping with the thread topic, Kerry after he fled the scene in one silver star incident was late getting back to the trouble spot. This is a life-long habit and his self-promotion is legendary. Voted for the troops before I voted against them indeed. Thank God he wasn't elected.

[maryrose]

should be short.

[Other Tom]

To Bingo: I believe you are correct, in that the salvage and rescue operation had been substantially completed. However, it remains true that at the time the message was transmitted (certainly at the time it was drafted), none of the other officers from the four other boats had yet arrived at the cutter. Kerry left his own Swift and went to the cutter on his own, leaving his boat and crew to work with the others.

To Tom: The alphanumeric indicator to which I referred is not part of the date-time group of the message. It was part of a string of characters elsewhere in the message, and preceding the text.

Finally, the whole point of my outrage and that of so many others is that, as Tom says, the "Navy had the means and documentation at the time to make judgements about who should and who should not receive awards." The principal one of those means was the integrity and honesty of the officers involved. The awards system was always subject to manipulation and fraud on the part of any officer who was low enough to take advantage of a system that was and is, in the final analysis, honor-based. The fact that the Navy does not now--or even did not then--undertake a rigorous investigation of Kerry's behavior tells us nothing at all about whether the various awards he received were merited. And many of the doubts about those awards are not based on 40-year-old memories; they were expressed at the time by eyewitnesses to the events in question.

[Pete]

I love this country. Only in this country would it be possible that the guy who chickened out and did not get his butt to Vietnam (despite claiming to support the war) would 35 years later hold an advantage over a guy who actually served in Vietnam.

This whole IS getting pretty boring.

[Lurker]

Hahaha, how about Bush says Iraq's new al Qaeda chief in US sights!!!

[antimedia]

For those complaining about this being 40 years ago, boring, not relevant, etc., tell that to Kerry. He's the asshole that keeps bringing it up. This recent flareup, as with all the previous ones, is entirely his doing. He grabs a sympathetic reporter at a liberal newspaper and plays the standoffish observer watching his "friends" defend his honor.

Tom, WRT to the actual incident being discussed, I did some research into the location of Zaldonis, and although I haven't found the conclusive proof yet, I'm convinced he wasn't even at Cam Rahn Bay when the incident occurred.

The most frustrating part of this entire fiasco is that, if Kerry et. al. would simply release their records to the public domain, everything would be resolved quite quickly, including the fact that he was less-than-honorably discharged from the Navy, something he later had altered by a friendly Navy buddy after he became a US Senator.

Mark my words. Kerry will NEVER release his records to the public domain. They would destroy his credibility and his career.

[JM Hanes]

"Mark my words. Kerry will NEVER release his records to the public domain. They would destroy his credibility and his career."

Change it to "what's left of his credibility and his career" and I'll second that observation.

[Bill Faith]

re: 40 years old, boring etc. It's not just about Kerry's medals, it's about the way he slandered a whole generation of American warriors and helped set the stage for the MSM's current tendancy to assume the worst about our military people. It's about my reputation, and Other Tom's, and the Marines involved in that Haditha battle, and a whole lot of other people who'll be better off once Kerry's exposed for the low-life lying scum he is and always has been.

[Doug Reese]

Well, not wanting to disappoint Lurker, I'm baaack . . .

"Kerry-a day late and a dollar sort. In keeping with the thread topic, Kerry after he fled the scene in one silver star incident was late getting back to the trouble spot."

Are you talking about the Feb 28 incident, MaryRose?

If so, that's an interesting viewpoint, and one I've never heard before. The closest was someone saying that Kerry was "milling around" in the canal when things were going down that day.

Of course that isn't what happpened, nor was it what was in the after-action report, and it wasn't what Bill Rood said happened. Come to think of it, Charles Gibson didn't say anything like that either, and he was on Kerry's boat.

But maybe you're talking about another incident.

Doug Reese

[Other Tom]

"Only in this country would it be possible that the guy who chickened out and did not get his butt to Vietnam (despite claiming to support the war) would 35 years later hold an advantage over a guy who actually served in Vietnam." Did Clinton really claim to support the war? I hadn't realized that. I do know that he dodged the draft by promising to join a national guard unit, then broke his word and never joined. But he definitely has an advantage over John Kerry.

[Patrick R. Sullivan]

'The key item was an identifying alpha-numeric designator in the message caption that uniquely referred to Kerry.'

I don't put too much stock in that, but it appears that only Kerry had the motive, means and opportunity to have written the report. It was transmitted after 11:00 PM from the Coast Guard Cutter Spencer, and only Kerry was aboard it then.

It isn't impossible that Dan Droz had written it (or part of it) earlier, but the probabilities are much stronger it was Kerry. Droz's #43 took the wounded from the river out to the cutter some 25 miles off shore.

Jack Chenoweth's #23 went out to the LST that was just off the mouth of both the Bay Hap and Cua Lon-Bo De rivers. According to Tour of Duty (I know, I know) he came back with a 'damage control' team and a pump for the damaged #3 boat.

Then Chenoweth took Kerry out to the Cutter for treatment of his 'wounds'. Kerry's medical report is signed at 7:00 PM.

Droz had to take the wounded back to the LST where the helicopters were to be medevacced to hospitals. Chenoweth is placed on the LST at 8:00PM. Both he and Thurlow deny having written the AAR, as does the badly injured Dick Peas.

We can't completely eliminate Droz, who died a month later, but clearly Kerry is a much, much better fit. And Kerry filed another report on the casualties the next day from the base at An Thoi, while the other Swift boats were on another mission.

[Patrick R. Sullivan]

'But maybe you're talking about another incident.'

Sounds like a description of the Bronze Star incident of March 13th '69, to me.

[Patrick R. Sullivan]

I wonder if Doug Reese would like to comment on Thomas Lipscomb's pointing out that what Kerry told the New York Times about not being able to get more than three people into the Boston Whaler, is contradicted by the version of events in Tour of Duty. Where they spent the night ferrying Vietnamese fisherman out to the waiting Swift Boat.

[cathyf]

I have a theory about the whole Bush-the-draft-dodger meme. Because, see, Bush served against the Soviets, flying patrols to protect US territory against Soviet bombers. If the russkies had launched an attack, it would have been Lt. Bush and/or his colleagues who would have scrambled into fighter jets to shoot down the incoming bombers and to save American cities from their nuclear payloads.

There were thousands of people like Lt. Bush who served in civil air defense during the Cold War. Some flew fighters to shoot down incoming bombers. Others flew our nuclear-armed bombers which were in the air 24 hours a day to carry out a devastating counter-attack against anyone who attacked us. Others descended each day into missile silos to stand watch, ready to launch those missiles within minutes of the order coming through. Others worked as air-traffic controllers, mechanics, and all sorts of different support jobs to keep the entire operation going.

But if you take the position that all of those thousands of people "served in the military" then you must be willing to admit that the Soviets were a military threat to us. That they were aiming missiles and bombers at us, and that we had some right to aim missiles and bombers at them.

I think that ultimately the American Left's beef with Bush and all the other airmen who served on the "Soviet Front" is that they were on the opposite side of that war.

cathy :-)

[Doug Reese]

Patrick,

While it's fun to jump in on some of these incidents and add my two cents (well, I'm not sure "fun" is the correct term), I'll leave this to the people who were there -- Kerry, Runyon, Zaladonis and/or Schacte.

Without some paperwork (and let's not be sure there isn't any), it is largely 35 year old memories.

Doug Reese

[Patrick R. Sullivan]

Uh, Doug, Kerry just a week or so ago showed a picture of a Boston Whaler being towed by a Swift Boat and said you could see it was too small for four people to fit into. Yet, ToD has the three men ferrying Vietnamese fishermen around in it.

Something is wrong with one of the two claims, right?

[Slartibartfast]

Skimmers crew 2-6, according to this link. But what's referred to as a "skimmer" is different (and smaller) than what's referred to as "Boston Whaler", even though both are built by Boston Whaler.

[Doug Reese]

Consider the source, Patrick, and I don't mean Kerry. Mr. Sloppy (referring to the newsgroup conversation) could be the problem.

It wouldn't surprise me.

We had what we called a Boston Whaler and it carried more than three people. Not many more, but more.

Doug Reese

[Tom]

First Nixon hated Kerry so if there was any, repeat any, negative information in his military record it would have come out a long time ago. Anybody who knew anything about the Nixon/Watergate era could tell you that. The tapes reveal a deep seated hatred for Kerry by Nixon. Secondly, the Navy does not issue Silver and Bronze stars on the reports of the person getting the award. For instance we know that person Kerry rescued recommended Kerry for an award and that report was probably used along with others to verify the award. Third, all the events in question took place in the 68-69 time period yet suddenly we have a whole bunch of changed stories and changed memories shortly before an election and we have millions of dollars floating around. So I place no value in any negative stories that did not exist prior to 2003.
Concerning Kerry's testimony before the Senate I actually went back and read the testimony. First, Kerry was reporting on the atrocities others had reported to him and he is quite clear about that. Secondly, a Republican Senator had placed that same information into the congressional record.
As to Kerry's testimony before the Senate. I ask one simple question. Should anyone with knowledge of war crimes conceal that information from a proper investigative body? If you believe that it is proper to cover-up war crime then you probably would side with the Oneal's and Corsi's of the world. If you believe that the United States Senate is entitled to this information then you probably disagree with the Corsi's and the Oneal's of the world its really that simple.