Do you have a link to the affidavit?
Still searching. Actually, the hunt is interesting. I found this copy of John O'Neill's letter to station managers at
rivervets.com:
As described in the attached affidavits, Al French (Exhibit 2), Bob Elder (Exhibit 3), Jack Chenoweth (Exhibit 7), Larry Thurlow (Exhibit 10), and Bob Hildreth (Exhibit 14) were all officers in charge of Swift boats in Vietnam in Coastal Division 11 with John Kerry.
With French now discredited as a witness to these events, 20% of the officers who accuse Kerry just evaporated. That two attorneys (French & O'Neill) could have somehow overlooked the fact that French did not serve with Kerry in combat is more than a little odd.
Then we see that Kerry's immediate commander, Elliott, retracted his statement entirely about Kerry's Silver Star. Frankly, his statements about it all just sound confused to me. At any rate, he was one of the top three commanding officers in the chain of command over Kerry and all SwiftVets.
It's interesting to examine the documents (the few you can still find from either side!) in the light of how they appeared when first issued and how they now appear when we learn of the specific accusations by the most important players have been retracted or discredited.
Natually, Kerry is still a worm. No retractions by French or Elliot alters that. There are plenty of questions about his service and the actions he took after leaving Vietnam that remain unanswered. Or are unanswerable.
I think your statement that French did not serve with Kerry in combat is not accurate. You cited this above:
The two men were in the same division for two months in early 1969. He said Kerry's claims after he returned home that the unit engaged in "atrocities" are false
With the Swift Boaters, That's the equivalent of being in the same company in the army....it's probably even fewer people than that. It is not the same as an army "division" of thousands of people. Trust me...if you were in 1st platoon C Company and I was in 2nd platoon C Company, then we served in combat together. Our paths probably crossed regularly when in the field, and we could easily have been friends who hung out together when off duty.