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For example, the fabled and distinguished chief of naval operations (CNO), Admiral Elmo Zumwalt, told me -- 30 years ago when he was still CNO -- that during his own command of US naval forces in Vietnam, just prior to his anointment as CNO, young Kerry had created great problems for him and the other top brass, by killing so many non-combatant civilians and going after other non-military targets. I think he is talking about the wrong Kerry. The Kerr(e)y Zumwalt was talking about was Bob Kerrey, a Navy Seal who served on the 9/11 commission. I highly doubt a LTJG serving on a PCF for 4 months is going to have time to get Zumwalts attention. It surprises me that people will print something like that without first doing a little research.

OK. Prove you are right.

The only articles which feature this quote are all written by this author, but I'm still looking. In the meantime I found this account of Bob Kerrey admitting to killing a group of civilians in a village.

Associated Press | Saturday, June 1, 2002 Vietnam: Kerrey Committed War Crime HANOI, Vietnam (AP) - Vietnam accused former Sen. Bob Kerrey of crimes during the Vietnam War, saying Friday that families of villagers killed by his Navy team experienced ``incomparable suffering and losses.'' It was the first time Vietnam has publicly accused Kerrey of criminal activity. Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Phan Thuy Thanh made the accusation in reaction to a revised account of the raid in Kerrey's new memoir. Thanhdid not specify what crimes Vietnam believed Kerrey had committed. ``Whatever Mr. Kerrey says cannot change the truth. Mr. Kerrey himself has admitted that he was ashamed of the crimes he committed,'' she said. On Friday, Kerrey said he was disappointed by the government's comments,saying officials there have long blamed Americans for war-time atrocities. ``I pointed out then, and I'm pointing out now, both sides did a lot of damage in the Vietnam war,'' he said, adding the North Vietnamese used terror as one of their tools. ``You gotta get beyond it,'' he said at a Washington bookstore where he was doing a reading. ``I'm quite certain the majority of people in Vietnam want to go on with their lives.'' Kerrey currently serves as president at New York's New School University. The incident, which Kerrey first acknowledged last year, put the former senator at the center of a national discussion about U.S. conduct during the war. Kerrey said then that about 13 civilians were killed ``by mistake'' after his SEAL team was fired on and returned fire during the raid on Thanh Phong village on Feb. 25, 1969. He said he did not know of the civilian casualties until the shooting stopped. But in his new memoir, ``When I Was a Young Man,'' Kerrey writes that he was aware that women and children had begun to gather as his squad searched the village for enemy Viet Cong. Shortly thereafter, Kerrey says his men were fired upon from the direction of the women and children. The Americans fired back, and the villagers were hopelessly caught in the cross fire, he says. Kerrey acknowledged the difference in his recollection of events in an author's note, saying it changed after he met with members of his squad following news reports. After Kerrey acknowledged the incident last year, a member of his Navy SEAL unit and two Vietnamese women who said they witnessed the raid alleged the soldiers herded the women and children together and massacred them - a charge that Kerrey and five other members of the Navy SEAL team deny. Oneof the women, Pham Thi Lanh, said 20 unarmed villagers, mostly women and children, were killed.