Dean's World

I must confess that I nearly did not do this, my third interview with a Swift Boat Vet for Truth. The incredible negativity of this year's Presidential campaign has been exhausting. Yet recently, ABC News found the time to send a crew of journalists all the way to Viet Nam to interview several former Viet Cong about John Kerry's service there, but neither they nor any of the other major news networks have, to my knowledge, sat down to talk to any of the 250-strong group who served personally with John Kerry and who question his fitness to be President.

I did make an attempt to contact the Kerry campaign to speak to the one veteran who served personally with John Kerry who is willing to go on record and talk to the press, a man named Del Sandusky. I failed to get through to anyone at the Kerry campaign who would help me.

I spoke this time with Steve Gardner, a southern gentleman from North Carolina who served under John Kerry's command, on his Swift Boat, for two and a half of the three months that John Kerry served in combat in Viet Nam. Gardner also served on that boat and several other boats in Viet Nam before Kerry ever arrived in the combat zone. We spoke over the phone on the morning of Friday, October 29.--Dean

Dean's World: Thanks for talking to me, Mr. Gardner. For starters, can you tell me when and where you served?

Steve Gardner: I served starting in February 1966. On my first tour, I believe it was in early 1968 that I went over. I didn't serve quite a full tour in Viet Nam because they didn't extend my service. I went into the service in 1965, and I came out in February of 1969. So I served up to January 29th of 1968.

DW: How long did you serve with young Lt. Kerry?

SG: Two and a half months of his four month tour.

DW: All on same boat?

SG: Absolutely. On the PCF-44.

DW: Okay, so you were an enlisted man on his boat. So let me be blunt, did you always dislike him?

SG: No. I mean, we started out, obviously, just officer and enlisted. He was always standoffish, very aloof, but I mean you know, that's typical for an officer when you first meet him. I never had an actual active dislike for him, I just had a very large preponderance questions of what he was doing.

DW: Of what he was doing in Viet Nam?

SG: Yeah, the first 30 days for any green officer in any situation like that is to learn, and learn as fast as you can. My crew was an experienced crew, they'd been over there, well, they were all at the end of their tour because when they left on January 15th or so, all of my crew transferred off because they were getting shipped back to CONUS.

DW: CONUS?

SG: [laughs] Continental US. And so I was the last one to actually serve any time with John Kerry on the 44 boat.

DW: So you knew him about 2 and a half months?

SG: Two and a half months, yeah.

DW: I thought he shipped in there in December.

SG: Yeah, I guess he actually was in-country November but I was with him starting about two weeks before his December 2 debacle that he called his first purple heart.

DW: Okay, I want to get back to that but let me ask you something first--Much has been made of the book Unfit for Command. I'd like to ask you several questions about that. First off, do you stand by everything in that book?

SG: Absolutely. That is as closely documented as any document can be when you're talking about 35 year old veterans' memories and the paperwork that come from that time period.

I'll give you an example. If you look at what actually transpired on Jan 20 1969 and you read the report that John Kerry sent in about January 20 1969, the only two factors in it that were the same was the fact that there was a woman and a baby taken off the bow of the boat, and the date.

DW: Well okay I want to ask about that incident too, but, some say that book is a bunch of lies. The pundit Lawrence O'Donnell says it's nothing but unsubstantiated lies, and sources like John Dean and the Daily Howler say that this book is so full of blatant falsehoods you could be sued for what's in it.

SG: Well you tell that skinny long [muffled... pause] Well go ahead and have Mr. Kerry sue me. I've asked him three or four times why he won't sue me. He won't do it. I'd be very happy to step into a courtroom because you know what? I'd go on and demand that the hundred some odd pages from his form 180 that he's never signed be exhumed and brought forward. He won't do it and you know what? We obviously know why he won't do it.

DW: Okay. So you're not afraid to be sued. I guess I can't say what would come of that, but, I'd like to ask you specifically about something called the "Sampan Incident."

SG: You mean how we spent Christmas in Cambodia? I was right there on that boat and I categorically deny ever being in Cambodia, and so does his whole crew. Every single guy who served on that boat with me on PCF 44 have all said that John Kerry never went in that boat into Cambodia.

DW: Well that's not what I was referring to but, okay, on the Christmas in Cambodia thing, aren't the other guys on your boat on Kerry's side now?

SG: Regardless of whether they're on his side in the campaign or not they still say he wasn't in Cambodia. He had to retract that entire statement out of his campaign records. Now the sad part of this is that if you listen to what went on, John Kerry testified before the congressional record about what happened, and we've all found out since that time that that was just a political ploy that he made up to make himself look good.

(For details on the Christmas in Cambodia story, see this Instapundit roundup.--Dean)

DW: Okay, this is where I get into some questions that make me uncomfortable. In the book Tour of Duty, it describes where you guys on Kerry's boat fired on another boat, a sampan (Note: a sampan is a small Vietnamese wooden boat.--Dean) and a child was killed. You fired without orders from Kerry, apparently. I'd like you to tell me about that if you could. You pulled the trigger on that boat, didn't you?

SG: I was the gunner's mate on that boat, yeah.

DW: Okay, why did you fire on it?

SG: Let's start from the beginning---the premise of what we had done was to set up an ambush. We'd done this many, many many times. This wasn't a new thing. And the idea was that we knew we were in a VC-controlled area. Now in doing that, what our whole job was, what we were there for was the intervention of supplies. To stop them, to capture VC or to keep them from supplying the VC.

And the way we did that was to set up ambushes. Any boat moving at night, these were total free-fire zones, and we could fire at anything that moved at night. And now we come to the boat that Mr. Kerry lied about in the past. What we actually did, and what we always did with every officer I ever talked to or about, was when we saw a boat coming at us at night, we would illuminate them at about 4-500 yards out. And we would illuminate them with these high-watt lights we had, and this would startle them. If they didn't stop immediately, that would tell us--well they'd been stopped so many times, they knew what the plan was. If they didn't stop, then we'd run a few rounds across the bow, and that was usually enough to stop 99% of them. Then we'd start up the motor and go search them. 99 times out of 100 it would be some poor old fisherman coming back from the bay area fishing all night, hightailing for his home. We'd search his boat, make sure there was no contraband and send the guy on home.

In this particular instance John Kerry was either asleep at the wheel or just wasn't paying attention to the RADAR. I don't know which it was or what the problem was, but all of a sudden about 30 yards out, suddenly we got a junk coming up on us. And....

DW: I'm sorry, a "junk?" You mean a sampan? You called a sampan boat a junk?

SG: Yeah right, a sampan, a junk, it's coming at us. We immediately, Drew Whitlow and I both, we stood up from my gun tub and turned the lights on this guy. We turned on him and we hollered at him and said, "hey! gun lai! gun lai!" And he didn't do anything but jump down in his boat and come up with an AK-47. As he started to swing it around on the boat to bring it in line and open fire on us, well as soon as I seen the first wink come out of it I fired on him. And I literally blew him out of the boat. We never did find his body. But we immediately pulled away from the bank there where we were laid up, and pulled out to where that junk was. Now all the time we got our lights shining on this thing, and our whole boat's lighted up like a Christmas tree while we're pointed at this junk, and I'm watching all around to see if anyone's coming at us.

Then Drew Whitlow says "you gotta look down here Gardner," and I said "Buddy I can't, we gotta watch out here." Drew said, "No you gotta look down here. You killed a kid."

DW: At this point Mr. Gardner stopped talking and drew a ragged breath. I wasn't sure what to say, so I waited a moment. Finally I asked: So... then what?

SG: So I obviously I looked over the side immediately and with dismay I saw this little boy blowed apart, and he was obviously lying right where his father, or whoever the guy was, and of course I'd shot right through the guy and where he'd been standing. As the boat was sinking we saw all kinds of contraband, guns and ammo, along with huge bags of rice that we know aren't supposed to be there. And so we rounded up who was left in the boat.

DW: Okay that's mostly what's in the book...

SG: Yeah now, what you don't get from the book is the fact of why John Kerry wrote such a bogus, fraudulent report. And John Kerry knew that the next day there would be an inquiry into the death of that little boy. Now the only reason--the only reason--that I can think of why John Kerry did what he did was because he didn't want to face an inquiry about the death of that child. And, honestly, there wouldn't have been anything major that would have happened, he'd have probably gotten a slap on the wrist. "Why didn't you follow procedure?" "Why did you let him get so close?" and so on. You know, that kind of stuff.

But Kerry was so full of himself that he wasn't about to take that kind of criticism from anybody. So he knowingly wrote a fraudulent report and sent it up the chain of command.

DW: Okay, don't you think maybe he was just young and scared and maybe didn't want to face an inquiry about the incident?

SG: Well, if you'd have said that about a 17 year old gunner's mate or an 18 year old engine man, you might be able to make that supposition, but now we've got a boat officer who's already got 2 and a half months of service basically. We'd been in several gun fights, too many to be honest about it. So that absolutely is not even food for thought. An officer's responsibility in our armed services--and every officer that I've ever dealth with have carried the same creed wherever they go, it's their code of honor and the expectation that they tell the truth regardless of consequences, that's an absolute for an officer--is that you tell the truth about what happened, that's an oath they take as an officer going into the service.

DW: Okay, how old were you?

SG: I was 20 years old at the time. Actually I was 21 come to think of it. My birthday's January 3rd 1948 so I was just turned 21.

DW: Kerry would have been... 25?

SG: Yep, 25, 26 years old. And see the strange part of it is we almost had Kerry. We come within a cat distance of walking up on the skipper of the base to ask him why we hadn't been called up as to what at happened. But we assumed that John Kerry went up there and took the brunt of the heat as an officer's supposed to do, and well at that point after he'd already sent that report up the chain of command, if I'd gone up to the skipper and said "I want to talk about that little boy dyin'..." or if either one of us had went ahead with what we were thinking, and asked why we hadn't been asked to testify about the little boy's death, then John Kerry would have been done! They'd have given him an Article 32 immediately, and that's some real serious stuff. They would have actually pulled John Kerry out and, well not locked him up but literally took him off the boat and confined him to quarters, and then they would have done an investigation. And to tell you how serious the US Navy thinks about that stuff, when they'd have seen the fraudulent report specific to the incident, John Kerry would have been court martialed and given a dishonorable discharge, and we wouldn't be having this conversation now.

DW: So just for....

SG: [Interrupting] Now we aren't talking about a matter of opinion here, we call that a matter of fact. They call that deriliction of duty, and in a time of war that's some pretty serious stuff.

DW: Okay, I've got to be honest, this is a hard question for me to ask you, but, is there any possibility you're just angry with Kerry because you feel guilty about your own actions?

SG: Well please believe me when I say this, but in all actuality, I lay every night with the fact that I killed that little boy. Now the fact that he died, I exclusively place the blame on John Kerry for that happening. But I'm the one who killed him. I'm the one that shot the gun. I made the judgment call to shoot him rather than have him shoot me.

DW: You blame Kerry because he didn't alert you the boat was coming?

SG: That is correct.

DW: Wouldn't he have gotten in trouble for that?

SG: Well yes, but it's all one and the same. In his report, John Kerry should have written that due to inattentiveness, or whatever you wanted to call it, that we allowed a sampan to intrude on us with an armed man on board.

The thing to do is just actually ask any officer in any service what that oath of office means to them that they have signed, and that code of honor that they have dealt with. The death of that child in that free fire zone--I was in my rights, as our ethics were designed, and yeah I'd still feel bad about that and I do feel bad about it.

DW: So wait, you're saying if Kerry said "I was inattentive, I wasn't paying attention," he wouldn't have been in seriously deep trouble?

SG: Hellfire no, absolutely no! That's the whole key to this thing. He probably would have gotten a reprimand, probably no worse than a slap on the wrist. We all know that nobody is a perfect individual, and nobody does things by the perfect standards. But we have a code of honor that we live by that we keep by to live, but John Kerry took that code of honor and pissed it out the window.

DW: Wow, okay, so... that wouldn't have screwed up his career?

SG: Hell no. Listen no one in war is perfect, the whole thing is scary and crazy and ain't nobody does everything perfect. That was a free fire zone and you did what you had to do to secure the area.

DW: Some observers, including John Dean, have basically said that, especially in Chapter 4 of Tour of Duty, you guys called Kerry a murderer and a baby killer and a war criminal. That you're accusing him of being guilty of what he said all Viet Nam vets were guilty of. How do you respond to that?

SG: Well my response to it is that John Kerry is not even close to having any of the tenets of command that are described as having loyalty to your country. He has shown no integrity whatsoever. He showed that in the fraudulent reports that we've caught him in and the fraudulent things he's said under oath. I mean, how many times does this guy have to lie to us and the country before they realize, how can he give you any sense of security if he's in charge of the country? I mean the whole premise of everything that we finally as a group put together was, we had to painstakingly go through every single report to make absolutely certain that what our memories were telling us were things that John Kerry did, and if he did them that he had to own up to them.

Now just like I said with that little boy, the fact that that little boy died because of his negligence wasn't as much a problem as what John Kerry didn't do. He didn't acknowledge it, he just actually pissed it away like it just didn't exist. Now what kind of a President does that? I'd be willing to bet my life that George Bush has never done anything like that. But what we've addressed, this whole thing has been John Kerry's character, nothing more and nothing less.

DW: So you're not saying that John Kerry's a war criminal or a monster?

SG: Absolutely right. But if he's gone to that extent to cover up those minor misdeeds, what do you think he would cover up as President? It's a real scary thought if you think about it.

DW: Okay, so, he's not a war criminal, but you're saying he's still a bad guy for what he did?

SG: Just so you do understand, absolutely I do have a grudge against John Kerry for what he did in 1971 and 1972 for what he did when he met with the Viet Cong and said in Senate that we were baby killers and were committing war atrocities--that is absolutely a categorical lie. But the guys who really have a grudge are the POWs that he caused all the harm to because of his self-aggrandizing lies that he told.

DW: So you're saying he's not a war criminal?

SG: Listen, two of my skippers who went to Annapolis testified about John Kerry, on his behalf, and said at point blank range that John Kerry wasn't a war criminal. I still don't go with the idea that John Kerry was a war criminal, because I was with John Kerry for those two months and we never committed any atrocities, except for that boy dying and that was because of his ineptitude.

DW: Okay but there was one part of the book where he fired on some farm animals, set a village on fire...?

SG: John Kerry said that, but you won't find any one of the guys who served on that boat to say that. I was born on a farm and I wouldn't do that.

DW: Okay, but wait a minute. In Chapter 4 of "Unfit for Command," there's a quote by a guy named William Franke. Do you know him?"

SG: Willie Franke, yeah I know him.

DW: Okay, but in it he says this, and I want to quote him: "Kerry seemed to believe that there were no rules in a free-fire zone and you were supposed to kill everyone. I didn't see it that way. I will tell you in all candor that the only baby killer I knew in Vietnam was John Kerry." Okay, doesn't that make it sound like you guys are saying Kerry was a horrible monster, saying the same things about him that he supposedly said about you? Do you stand by that? Or is Franke just being hyperbolic, exaggerating for effect?

SG: Well now we're talking about a time when I wasn't on that boat. I can tell you that categorically I never participated in anything like that when I was on his boat. John Kerry and I used to butt heads after almost every firefight because I could never figure out why he would do the things he'd do, and I would ask him questions because there were times when he would put our boat in more jeopardy than the actual firefight we were in.

DW: Okay, Franke served after you?

SG: Yeah.

DW: Did you witness, or participate in, incidents where Kerry supposedly mowed down farm animals, set villages on fire, and stuff like that?

SG: Absolutely categorically no.

DW: Okay, do you criticize Kerry simply because he spoke out against the war?

SG: No. Hell my brother and sister protested the war while I was there and when I came home and I'm not mad at them. I'm mad because John Kerry told lies about our troops. He caused deaths to our guys. We don't have any idea, no way of knowing the numbers, but I know the morale-breaking context that he caused us, to come back to in the United States to be spit on. And I know for a fact that with his words he caused the deaths of some of our fellow veterans.

DW: Because he spoke against the conflict?

SG: Because with his lies he extended the conflict and because of how he turned our populace against us when we came back from Vietnam.

DW: You mean he made people treat you guys bad?

SG: Listen, there were a lot of guys that came back that couldn't stand the pressure of coming back and being called baby killers, being called war criminals, while guys like me and Van Odell, we just put our heads down and made our families and made our lives and did our thing. But guys who were weaker than us, or maybe went through some more horrible shit, they came home looking for solace and instead they got treated like murderers and rapists. It was horrible.

DW: Okay, are you a Republican?

SG: No actually I'm an independent.

DW: Have you voted for any Democrats?

SG: Absolutely I have. My mother is an absolute staunch Democrat. As a matter of fact I'm having words with her this very day and time as to who she's going to vote for. But I have never voted for a straight party line ticket, I have always voted for the best man for the job whether it be a senator or a commissioner or sherrif or county guy or whatever.

DW: Are you receiving any compensation for speaking out against Senator Kerry? Book royalties, TV royalties, etc.?

SG: No. What they're paying me is whatever my expenses are for wherever I go and whatever I do.

DW: What do you do for a living?

SG: I am a marine adjustor, an insurance adjustor for boats basically.

DW: Have you had any contact with Karl Rove or anyone directly associated with the Bush campaign?

SG: No as a matter of fact I've made it very clear and very personal about that. I do not want any contact with anyone like that. I don't even open up the Bush/Cheney literature that comes in the mail that they send to everybody, they just go right in the trash.

DW: When you say literature they send to everybody, you mean normal campaign mailings everyone in the country gets? They don't send special mailings just to you Swift Vets guys, do they?

SG: Right, I've never had anything sent to me that's directly from them to me or us.

DW: So you guys are totally unaffiliated with the Bush campaign?

SG: Categorically 100% unaffiliated.

DW: What do you say to those who say that you're just being manipulated by big-money Republicans?

SG: Well when you have 254 men who have the same thought processes, who have... I have never spoken to a single Viet Nam vet about any of this since I came back from 1969 until April, well, March or April or so when Admiral Hoffman called me and he said, "Gardner, you know who this is?" "No," "This is Roy Hoffman. Rear Admiral Roy Hoffman. I just wanted you to know that you're not out there all alone. That we're out there putting the Swift Boat Veterans for the Truth together, and we'll be calling you shortly." Until then I hadn't been talking with nobody.

DW: So the Admiral knew, he just knew already you'd want to do this, even after three decades?

SG: He knew we all would. How could we not?

DW: Do you have anything else you want to add?

SG: Only that the scariest proposition that I can think of at this point in time is John Kerry being President of these here United States.

DW: Okay, I forgot to ask one. Would you forgive Senator Kerry if he apologized for some of his statements in the early '70s?

SG: No sir. He's caused, absolutely categorically from what I've seen, the Viet Nam vets that I've talked to, guys that have went off the deep end from when they came back, I will never forgive him for that. John Kerry told lies about us Viet Nam veterans. Guys who weren't as strong as I was... there were a lot of guys that came back from Viet Nam with traumatic experiences that they just couldn't bear, and then to have all this heaped on top of them after what they went through is just unconscionable. And we again go right back to the same thing, John Kerry did that knowingly and with malice, knowing that he was going to cause all of them problems, and knowing that he was lying every step of the way.

DW: Thanks for talking to me.

You can read the entire testimony young John Kerry gave before the Senate, which Gardner, Odell, Elliot, and 251 of the Swift Boat Vets who served in Kerry's unit have objected strongly to, right here.

I think I should note that in my after-interview, off-the-record conversations with Mr. Gardner, he seemed to be a pretty conservative guy. Some have even called him a "rightwing dittohead,". On the other hand, it seems strange to me that many sources seem willing to make this observation about his character, but do not actually seek him out to talk to him. Indeed, a few weeks ago ABC News went so far as to fly interviewers all the way out to Viet Nam to interview some former Viet Cong about Kerry's record, yet ABC has yet to ask Gardner, Odell, Elliot, or any of the other Swift Boat Vets who served personally with Kerry any questions on the air.

The Swift Boat Vets for Truth have recently merged with another Viet Nam veterans group, POWs for Truth. A lengthy documentary featuring extensive interviews with former Prisoners of War who say they were tortured in part because of Senator Kerry's claims about war crimes in Viet Nam is now available for free viewing over the Internet. The Kerry campaign sued to keep that film off of national television, but you can view it for free right here.

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 young Lieutenant Junior Grade and later Senator Kerry is now available. It is written by the man who took over Kerry's boat after Kerry left Viet Nam, and with the full support of a majority of the men who personally served personally with Kerry in Viet Nam. Although you should be aware that a half-dozen or so of the men who served with Kerry do support his candidacy before reading it, the book is entitled Unfit For Command, and can be purchased at any reputable book store, including Amazon. It is currently a national bestseller.

(Note: This interview is copyrighted by Dean Esmay, and may not be quoted in whole or in part without crediting Dean's World.)