Dean's World

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I've been trying for some time to obtain an interview with one of the members of the Swift Boat Veterans for Truth. I most wanted to talked to one of the enlisted men who served personally with Kerry, and after much trying, I finally managed to get a phone interview late last week with Van Odell, who served as a gunner's mate in the same unit as John Kerry and who served with him longer than anyone else did in Viet Nam.

Van runs his own small business in Texas as a professional woodworker, making custom furniture and speciality jewelry boxes. He also does some work for the Boy Scouts of America. He has no professional or formal background in politics. We spoke last week, and then exchanged a few emails for clarification, whereupon he sent me the above photo of his swift boat on patrol in Viet Nam. That's him in the gun tub (click on the image to see the full size photo).

As I spoke to Mr. Odell, I decided to ask him the most blunt questions I could think of, wondering at times if he might become offended. He never did. He is a soft-spoken man with a mild demeanor, and displayed an easy temper and a gentle sense of humor throughout.

I spoke to him via telephone on Wednesday:

Dean's World: Thanks for talking to me, Mr. Odell. Can you tell me when and where you served in Viet Nam?

Van Odell: I served from January 1969 to January 1970. I was in Coastal Division 11 which was the hottest division in Viet Nam at that time. I served along with John Kerry for the short 3 months he was there. He had a month of training in Viet Nam and then he transferred about a week before I did and we served together in the combat zone after that.

DW: Are you receiving any sort of compensation for your campaigning against John Kerry?

VO: No compensation. My expenses are covered by Swift Boat Veterans For Truth. If I have travel or out of pocket expenses they pick that up. If I fly out to Washington or need to stay in a hotel or need to spend some money on my Swift Boat Vets for Truth activities they will reimburse me for that, but nothing personal and no compensation.

DW: Have you had any contact with Karl Rove or members of the Bush campaign, for advice or other support?

VO: None whatsoever.

DW: A couple of your group's members claim to have had their statements distorted by papers such as the Boston Globe. Have you experienced anything like that with any press you've talked to?

VO: The distortion that I have seen is that they say that my claims are unsubstantiated, specifically to the March 13th incident, even though we've got 10 other eyewitnesses who tell the same story I do.

I have also been taken to task as a liar by the New York Times and the Washington Post by journalists who've never talked to me.

DW: But no direct distortions of your words by reporters?

VO: I haven't read them all so I can't say for sure but the main thing seems to be that most of the reporters who have not talked to me from Washington Post and the New York Times have called me a liar without ever having talked to me. After anything I say they always have a disclaimer that these are unsubstantiated allegations, even though everything I say is substantiated by multiple eyewitnesses on different boats.

DW: What do you say to those who say that because you were not on Lt. Kerry's boat, you did not serve with him?

VO: I say two things: right now they're trotting out a guy named Rich McCann who didn't serve on Kerry's boat, they appear to feel what he has to say is valid.

But really, our boats served in combat together, we went on missions together, we knew each other intimately and fought together. This is like saying Major Reno and Captain Benteen did not serve with General Custer because they did not ride on the same horse with him.

DW: The impression I get from news reports is that Kerry's actual crew are standing by him, while those criticising him are other Swift Boat skippers and their crews. If true, what is your best guess as to why that should be so?

VO: It's not true. Steve Gardner served on Kerry's boat longer than anybody else and he's one of our guys. He served with Kerry longer than any other crew member with Kerry, knew him better than any of those guys.

I would also say I don't know how Kerry cultivated those guys two years ago. When I knew them in Viet Nam they couldn't stand him, and even if you read Kerry's book Tour of Duty, that even says his crew couldn't stand him then.

We don't know how much they support him. Of those who are with him, the only one that will come out and talk to the press is Del Sandusky. The rest are never in the press. Whereas all 60 of us who served with Senator Kerry in our group are all out on the road and talking about why we oppose the Senator.

DW: Do you consider the members of Kerry's crew, who have backed his version of the story, to be liars? If not, why do you believe their perceptions of the events in question differ so widely from your own?

VO: No I don't consider them liars. I consider them led by Kerry right now. One of the incidents that I can talk about, why I think their story differs, is that Rassman said he heard gunfire from the bank. I didn't see any gunfire and I was at the highest point of the field. I think Rassman just heard our gunfire, and when we realized we weren't under fire we stopped.

You would otherwise have to ask them why they think their memories are different. So far only Del Sandusky has been allowed to talk to reporters, so we really don't know what the others have to say.

I don't know why these guys' memories differ, you will have to ask them. I only know that over 60 who served in An Thoi--and we had about a hundred men in our division at any one time--we've got 60 people from there who say his service was questionable in Viet Nam and who take him to task for lying about us as murderers and war criminals when he came back in 1971. That stacks up to only 7 of his own swift boat people that follow him.

DW: Some have said that by questioning Kerry's valor in combat, you have diminished all who served and were decorated. Do you have a response for those critics?

VO: We're not questioning anybody else's service, we're questioning John Kerry's. To say that you can never question one guy's service is wrong. Kerry fudged and faked things that happened. In a six week time period, he received three purple hearts, a bronze star and a Silver Star. That's faster than Audie Murphy earned his medals in World War II.

What we're questioning is that the way he manipulated his Viet Nam record, the way he came back and called us all war criminals, and the way he's behaved since then, which shows me that he's not fit to be Commander in Chief.

DW: Are you a Republican?

VO: No I'm an independent. I usually vote both sides of the ticket.

DW: Some have suggested that you guys only questioned John Kerry's medals because that was the best way to get attention. That your other issues wouldn't have made as much news if you hadn't done that. Do you have any response to such accusations?

VO: We question both equally. We find that his actions after the war are extremely despicable because they cast aspersions on all veterans that served in Viet Nam. But at the same time you have to look at how he treated the Navy and the system in order to gain as many medals as possible to further his own career. And that goes to his character.

There's a lot of officers who served with us who were there longer and did more, and no one gathered so many commendations in so short a time. Most of the people who earned that many medals spent a hell of a lot of time in a battle zone, and didn't write the reports that allowed them to get those medals.

That's why we're not questioning anybody else's medals, only Kerry's. I did not realize, none of us realized, that he'd gotten all these commendations until just this last year or so.

DW: What have the reactions from your fellow veterans been like when you've encountered them since you started your campaign against Senator Kerry?

VO: The ones that I've had are mostly people that I've known, my relatives who served, and they're so happy that we're doing this. I even received a letter from a lady whose husband was killed in Viet Nam and she said "thank you for doing this, this man should not be our President, and I thank you for bringing out the truth about him."

The reactions from veterans and veterans' wives has been overwhelmingly supportive of what we're doing.

DW: Not much negativity then?

VO: I have had no negative encounters and I don't know any in our group who have.

DW: Would you say it's really Kerry's combat record that disturbs you most, or his testimony and actions after coming home from the war?

VO: I would have to say it's both. You have to take Kerry as a whole ball of wax, you have to look at what he did in Viet Nam and what he did after coming home.

But deep down, viscerally, when he went before the Senate and called me a killer, a murderer and a rapist, I couldn't believe one of our own service members would get up and lie about us like that. I was there for 12 months, not just the 4 months that he was there, and I never saw or participated in any atrocities, nor anything like he described, while I was there.

DW: Do you think all Viet Nam vets who came to oppose the war were finks?

VO: No! As a matter of fact, everybody has a right to protest a war. What they don't have a right to do is to lie about their fellow soldiers in such a fashion that it affects them in the field of battle and affects them in a prison camp.

Things that POWs were tortured to be forced to say are things John Kerry said freely to the Senate and to the TV cameras and guys were sometimes tortured back in prison camps showing them that.

I would say that any American has a right to say anything he wants about a war they want to but they do not have a right to lie about what soldiers are doing in the field.

DW: In the past you and others in your group defended Kerry. Did you guys just not know about his congressional testimony and statements about war crimes before this?

VO: Well, I have never defended John Kerry. The two who did are Adrian Lonsdale and George Elliot. And they defended Kerry against war crimes charges by his opponent in 1996. They were more interested in the truth getting out than in defending John Kerry.

What they did is that his opponent kept charging him that he was a war criminal by his own words in the Senate. Lonsdale and Elliot got up and said he was not a war criminal, and I would say that those guys were committed to the truth and not John Kerry himself. But I have never defended John Kerry for anything.

DW: If President Bush were to publicly call for your group to pull its ads and to stop campaigning against Senator Kerry, would you stop?

VO: No. No. No. We're not part of the Republican party, we're not trying to elect Bush, we're Democrats and independents and Republicans across the board. The Navy didn't send Republicans to Vietnam, they sent men.

All 60 of our group who served with Kerry in Vietnam, and the others who served there and have joined us, we want the American people to hear our story. Personally, I also want this story to be known to historians....

We're not tied to any campaign. We're a group of private citizens who've formed a 527. We're going to tell our truth to the American people up until November 2nd. We don't want his lies recorded as truth in the history books.

DW: Are you going to quit on November 2 even if Kerry wins?

VO: Well, yeah, the American people will have spoken. Just speaking personally, I'll return to my job, start making money again, and move on. But by that time our story will be out.

That's personally for me. I wouldn't go back to this after the election. I don't want to say for the other guys. We're doing this day by day right now.

DW: You have received some big money from a few wealthy Republicans.

VO: Yes. The wealthy Democrats haven't been flooding us with money. But the biggest donor we have is the American people. We have received over 5 million dollars in small donations. I think the total number of people who have given us money have been around 70,000, in donations of $20, $30, $50, sometimes $200 or $500.

Sure some big money Republican donors gave us money, and we thank them, but we let them know up front that we would not be accepting any input from them on what we had to say. When we go out there and speak or put out statements or new ads, we meet together just us Vets, without any input from the donors, to talk about what we'll say.

DW: Some of President Bush's critics allege that he avoided the draft by having political strings pulled to get into National Guard service. Some say that's a bogus charge. If it were true, would it bother you?

VO: I didn't serve with George Bush, I'd rather not even comment on that. That's for people who served with George Bush to comment on what he did or didn't do. I did serve with John Kerry, and I'm concerned with talking about what I know of him and his service and his statements.

DW: If Kerry had not built so much of his campaign around his service, would you still attack him for it?

VO: We would still be out there telling the story, yes. I don't think we would have had as big an effect if he hadn't brought it up. But the first few months of his campaign we kept hoping someone else would be the nominee. [But] the way he made his Viet Nam record such a big part of his campaign made it clear that we had to say something, that we had to let the American people know what we know of this man and to help them see what he really is.

DW: If John Kerry offered to shake your hand, look you in the eye, and apologize for his actions after returning from Viet Nam, would you accept his apology?

VO: I would accept his apology.

DW: That's it? You'd just accept it?

VO: I'd still keep telling my story. Basically I would accept his apology but it's about 35 years too late. It's essentially too late to the men who died since we got back, the men who never got back, and the families involved.

But knowing the man the way I do, he would never apologize.

DW: You've obviously been very busy with this campaign. How have you and your family been holding up? Have you had trouble with harassers?

VO: Early on we had quite a bit of harassment and it was very rough, but we got so much good positive feedback from people that that helped us through. And a couple of times that I was rather down, when we were getting beat to death pretty heavy, and I was thinking about how much the cost was to our family, my wife said "Just suck it up, think about what the prisoner of war guys went through. You just keep on trucking." My wife's been my biggest supporter and when things got tough she's always told me to keep going and supported me.

DW: Is there anything else you'd like to add or say to our readers?

VO: I would just like to say that I am extremely concerned now having children that are military age and soon will have grandchildren of military age that someone like John Kerry who doesn't respect the people, the men and women of the military, to be Commander In Chief, that concerns me to the point where I have taken a large amount of my life to tell the story of how Kerry behaved in Viet Nam and how his statements in 1971 affected veterans and the people he served with.

DW: Thanks for your time.

To see all the ads put out by the Swift Boat Vets and POWs for Truth, click here. If you would like to sign a petition urging Senator Kerry to release his military records and come clean about his military and post-war activities, you can find that petition right here.

A book documenting the group's claims about Senator Kerry, written by the man who took over Lt. Kerry's boat after he left Viet Nam, and with the full support of a majority of the men who served with Senator Kerry, is entitled Unfit For Command, and can be purchased at any book store, including Amazon. It is currently a national bestseller.

I am now seeking an interview with George Elliot, the man who claims he was misquoted and distorted by reporters at the Boston Globe. If I am successful in that endeavor, I will then seek an interview with the reporters and editors responsible for the story at the Globe, since that one story has been used repeatedly to try to discredit this man and his associates. Stay tuned.

Finally, in closing, I'll mention that if any of you have any questions--skeptical or otherwise--for Mr. Odell, you can leave them in the comments here. I cannot promise he'll answer, but I will forward any reasonable questions to him to see if he has any response, so long as we are not deluged. --Dean