Interview Transcript of Swifty Steve Gardner by H. Hewitt

I interviewed Steve Gardner today. He served two tours in Vietnam, including two months and two weeks of John Kerry's swift boat service--on John Kerry's swift boat-- from November 1968 through January 1969:

HH: Mr. Gardner, welcome to the Hugh Hewittt Show, it is an honor to talk to you.

HH: Now let me start with some basics. I said you served two tours in Vietnam. Can you tell me what years those were?

SG: November through January. Here's what I did. I served two months and two weeks of his four month, 12 day tour.

SG: Absolutely not. That was a physical impossibility to go inside Cambodian waters.

SG: They had four or five, at all times, boats, plus they had it wired with wire, they had concrete pylons down so that thee only time they could get through it was at high tide, and that was just so the sampans and the people that trafficked back and forth could get through.

SG: We were basically just down in the lower part of the Sa Dec. just patrolling.

SG: No, (laughter) this was just how bad this guy is. People get a whiff of this and get a hold of it. Because you are just getting the edge of what drives John Kerry.

SG: He is an opportunist, number one. But he is a self-seeking opportunist who used the laws that were designed to help the honest men who were over there in Vietnam who had gotten wounded three times to get them back out of it. He knew the rules well, and he used that to get out of there early.

HH: Last night on the Daily Show on Comedy Central, Jon Stewart, the host, said this about the book that is coming about by John O'Neill: There are powerful indictments, or rather it would be had any of those guys served on Kerry's boat,. By saying 'with him' they mean they were in Vietnam at the same time. Kind of the same way Snoopy served with the Red Baron. How do you respond to that?

SG: Well, on any movement we would do, we are talking four or five boats going in on an engagement, we were always within 50 or 75 yards of each other. And to be perfectly honest about it, if you were to look at an overview, if your were looking for an overview of a situation, you were better off being on another boat and looking at the rest of the other boats.

HH: OK, well put. Now, Steve Gardner, John Kerry has also been discovered to have been telling a story that he took a CIA man at least one CIA man into Cambodia and that he kept his hat. When you were on the boat with John Kerry, for your two months and two weeks of the tour that he served, did you ever have a CIA man on board?

HH: Alright. Let me ask you about other people on the boat. Could John Kerry have just misunderstood someone on the boat was CIA when it wasn't CIA? Did you ever have any strangers on the boat?

SG: Nope. We always would have an interpreter, or something like that with us, or we would take others and take them in to areas in the Mekong Delta where they would be doing surveillance, but never did we have anybody that we would take close or could take close to Cambodia.

HH: Is it possible that you would drop them off a few miles away from Cambodia and they would walk in?''

HH: If such a mission had been undertaken, would it have been undertaken by a swift boat?

SG: If something was going to be done, it would have had to have been done by a PBR.

SG: That's one of the smaller boats that they used in Vietnam, that were water driven motors.

HH: When you read these stories about John Kerry and his CIA agents, how do you react? Does he believe it himself, do you think?

SG: No. It is laughable. John Kerry, number one, we were never, we were never made privy to anything. Even if that were so, even if there was some reason to believe that that had transpired, we would not have been made privy to that.

SG: Number one, no. That would have been such a top secret operation, and a positioning, that that guy would have killed himself before he told anybody he was going to Cambodia. It didn't happen. Like I said, to get into Cambodia, you were over 50 miles away from the border.

HH: Will any of the guys who have endorsed John Kerry, who served on the boat with you, will they back him up on the CIA agent story, or the Christmas Eve story?

SG: Well they all know that that didn't transpire. John Kerry has already said that from what I understand.

HH: What he said, eh, what his staff has been saying is that they think he said he was close to Cambodia, but not in it, but in 1986 he stood on the floor of the Senate and said he was in Cambodia.

Kerry's camp is scared, and should be. Check this out...Here's an email I got from the Kerry campaign. My name has been changed to protect the innocent:


			Click here to help elect Kerry-Edwards & other Democrats in 2004

Dear Silverback,

I'm interrupting John Kerry's dispatches from the road to tell you about something that will make you angry, but which is important for you to hear.

We knew it was coming: the Bush campaign and several allied right-wing groups are using August to launch a vicious smear attack against John Kerry. They think we're vulnerable this month because while George Bush is still able to raise money for attack ads, Kerry had to stop fundraising at the Democratic convention last week. They're taking this opportunity to go for the jugular.

We need you to join us in this fight today by supporting the Democratic Party.

https://www.democrats.org/support/kerry.html

The worst of the current wave of attacks is coming from a Republican-funded group called "Swift Boat Veterans for Truth." (I'll call them by a more accurate name: Swift Boat Veterans for Bush.) The group is led by a longtime Republican operative and financed by GOP contributors with strong ties to George Bush. Its function in the overall Republican strategy is this: tear down John Kerry since Bush has no record or vision to run on.

The swift boat ad is full of lies. Thirteen men who never served with John Kerry lie about knowing him and viciously attack his record. It is a new low for the Republicans.

Every time they have attacked us like this, it has only made us stronger. When they ran dishonest attack ads (like the unbelievable new one on the air right now), thousands of new supporters flocked to our campaign to give us the resources we need to fight back on the airwaves.

Now that the general election has begun, they're hoping things are different. They're going to be sorely disappointed because we are not alone. The Democratic National Committee is well prepared to take on this fight.

And therefore I'm asking you: everything you did for our campaign, please do now for our Democratic Party. Give the party the resources it needs to fight against these right-wing attacks:

https://www.democrats.org/support/kerry.html

The Democratic Party is responsible for putting organizers and volunteers into the field and turning out the millions of votes we need to win. We literally cannot win this election without the party.

https://www.democrats.org/support/kerry.html

You and I know that if we so much as yield an inch to George Bush and the Republicans this month, we'll live to regret it. In fact, we may live to regret it for four long years. Join with me in supporting the Democratic Party today.

Thank you,

Mary Beth Cahill
Campaign Manager


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