posted on April 25, 2001 09:26:02 PM new
Ex-Senator Kerrey Admits Role in Vietnam Massacre
NEW YORK (Reuters) - Former U.S. Sen. Bob Kerrey has admitted that a Navy SEAL combat mission that he led during the Vietnam War and for which he was awarded the Bronze Star was responsible for the shooting deaths of more than 20 unarmed civilians, mostly women and children.
The incident, in a hamlet in the Mekong Delta, came to light on Wednesday as a result of a joint investigation by The New York Times Magazine and CBS News' "60 Minutes II" and was confirmed by Kerrey himself in a speech and in newspaper and television interviews.
"I went out on a mission, and after it was over, I was so ashamed I wanted to die," Kerrey, who is seen as a potential Democratic candidate for president in 2004 and who ran unsuccessfully for the office in 1992, told The Wall Street Journal on Tuesday.
"This is killing me. I'm tired of people describing me as a hero and holding this inside," he said.
In an interview on "60 Minutes II" set to air next Tuesday, Kerrey, 52, said that "to describe it as an atrocity, I would say, is pretty close to being right, because that's how it felt, and that's why I feel guilt and shame for it."
FORMER SENATOR, GOVERNOR
The former Nebraska governor and two-term senator told CBS that the men in the squadron did not know they were killing unarmed civilians.
But a surviving Vietnamese witness and a former squad member both contradicted that statement, with the ex-soldier telling CBS "we herded them all together in a group" and "lined them up and opened fire" from very close range.
To CBS, Kerrey seemed reluctant to dispute the allegations of Gerhard Klann, one of the seven SEALs in his unit in Thang Phong, where the killings took place in February 1969.
Kerrey told "60 Minutes II": "Gerhard I will not contradict. ... If that's his view, I don't contradict it. It's not my memory of it."
But the Journal quoted Kerrey as saying: "It did not happen that way. ... There are seven guys with seven different versions."
And he told NBC News on Wednesday that Klann's recollection that the unit fired on civilians at close range was "not true." "We were fired upon, and we returned fire. ... I would remember if we pulled these people ... into a group and killed them at point-blank range, and that did not happen."
Reminded on CNN's "Wolf Blitzer Reports" that Klann said "you and the rest of the squad knew that you were killing civilians," Kerrey replied, "That isn't true."
OCCURRED IN FREE-FIRE ZONE
"I organized the mission," he went on. "... It was a free-fire zone. ... There were enemy operating in the area. And even though there were civilian casualties, I have every reason to believe they were at the very least sympathetic to the Viet Cong and at the very worst participating in lethal force against the Americans."
According to a speech Kerrey gave to ROTC students in Lexington, Virginia, last week, his squad entered Viet Cong territory on a moonless night and was fired on. After returning fire, "we found that we had killed only women, children and older men."
Klann said, however, that the SEALs intentionally killed the civilians because they did not think they could get away from the village safely and did so on Kerrey's orders.
The witness interviewed by CBS, Pham Tri Lanh, said that two elderly women who were kneeling were shot and "fell forward and they rolled over, and then they ordered everybody out from the bunker, and they lined them up and they shot all of them from behind."
Of her account, Kerrey told CBS: "The eyewitness is, at the very least, sympathetic to the Viet Cong. At the absolute very least."
EXTENDED ACCOUNT
In his CNN interview, Kerrey recalled: "We had reason to believe that there was going to be a district-level meeting of Viet Cong in this particular village. I had done a flyover the area in a fixed-wing aircraft to make sure there weren't civilians in the area. The district chief we were working with told us that anybody in there, as a result of being a free-fire zone, was the enemy.
"We expected it to be a very difficult mission, and we met some people that we believed were the outpost, and we killed them and went on and took fire where we expected this meeting to occur, and we returned very lethal fire, and when the firing was over, all we had was women and children that were dead. We didn't have any physical evidence of the enemy having been there."
After the killings, the squad's commander reported that the unit had killed 21 Viet Cong, and Kerrey was awarded the Bronze Star.
Kerrey, now teaching at New York's New School for Social Research, said he was prepared for any consequences of his admission. "To describe it as a war crime, I think, is wrong," he told CBS.
"I understand that there are all kinds of potential consequences, up to and including somebody saying, 'This is a war crime, and let's investigate and charge him and put him in prison,"' he said.
Personally, I agree that it's a subject worth discussing. The problem is that the media will have a field day giving the story as many twist and turns and hype as possible - each passing judgement and inviting us to do the same - when in the end - they couldn't possibly know sh*t about the realities of what happened that day and neither do any of the rest of us... but, judge we will because that's what we do.
posted on April 26, 2001 05:38:49 AM new
James, I thank God that you and your generation didn't have to live through a 'vietnam' experience. From the things our friends have shared with us about their experiences, it was pure hell. That is for those who were lucky enough to return home. Many won't even discuss Vietnam at all. Maybe they can identify with memories this article brings up, like happenings etc.
I personally was moved by the NY Times Article where other Vietnam Vet senators shared they could identify and sympathize with what the senator went through....is still going.....32 years later.
As reports about the incident began circulating yesterday, the reaction from two of his former Senate colleagues who also served in Vietnam was one of sympathy and understanding.
Senator John McCain, an Arizona Republican and a former prisoner of war in Vietnam, told CNN: "My heart goes out to Bob Kerrey at this moment. All of us involved in wars do things we're proud of and things we're not so proud of."
On the Senate floor yesterday, Senator John Kerry, a Democrat of Massachusetts who once headed Vietnam Veterans Against the War, offered his public support to Mr. Kerrey.
"He obviously feels anguish and pain about those events," Senator Kerry said. "But I don't believe they should diminish for one moment the full measure of what he has given to his country and of what he represents."
And I agree, only those who served there could possibly understand what it was like. I only wish peace to all those very young men, who still feel the effects from a war (conflict) that happened so very long ago. Their lives were changed forever by those horrible experiences.
[ edited by Linda_K on Apr 26, 2001 05:41 AM ]
posted on April 26, 2001 07:14:12 AM new
Sympathy?
I want to congratulate Bob Kerry. Women and Children were sacrificed and used as lethal weapons by the Viet Cong.
This war was a nightmare beyond belief. And then these soldiers came home traumatized,
wounded, sick or dead to face a country mesmerized with Jane Fonda propaganda.
Give me a break. Bob Kerry deserves an apology along with every other vietnam veteran.
posted on April 26, 2001 07:54:29 AM new
I could have sworn I had made a short post in here last night. As a matter of fact, wasn't this thread a bit longer? Maybe I'm imagining things again and the thread-gnomes have been at it again!
I thought that I had posted that I felt that I was unqualified to pass judgement over this situation and leave it to a higher power. (now why would gnomes want to remove that notion?)
posted on April 26, 2001 07:59:47 AM newBorillar: *That* thread was longer, but it was done away with by request of the person who started it. This is the new thread about the same subject, but without the assumptive title
posted on April 26, 2001 08:06:39 AM new
i was not there. i have been told by friends who were that women and children fired on American troops. firing back may create a moral dilemma but self-preservation is the right thing.
posted on April 26, 2001 08:23:56 AM new
That's what war is about. If you are not willing to shoot strangers for vague political reasons then don't go into the military.
If anyone thinks this has not happened in every war in memory they are a fool.
My Uncle fought in the Pacific in World War II and it was not always possible to tell who was the enemy and you shot first and worried later or you were soon dead yourself.
