Swift Boat Vet John O'Neill Devastates Kerry on Hannity Show (Transcript from 8/10/04)

This is a transcript of the first 40 minutes of an interview with John O'Neill and Jerome Corsi from the Sean Hannity Show, taped off AM radio on 8/10/04. I've edited out the repeated introductions to each segment. If I have time, I'll transcribe and post the rest of the interview later in another thread.

Hannity: Today is the release date for this book, it's called "Unfit for Command--Swift Boat Veterans Speak Out Against John Kerry." The authors of this book join us for their first interview, now in studio John O'Neill and Jerome Corsi. Gentlemen thank you for being with us...appreciate it.

Hannity: I'm going to pull you up close to that microphone...there you go, right there. You don't like it?

O'Neill: No, I'd rather be home to tell you the truth Sean, and doing other stuff. But there are times in your life when your duty requires you to do something different.

Hannity: All right, let me begin with you John, and we'll start at the beginning. I want to go through this almost...I'll take the chronology you lay out in the book. There's so much to get to. And my take on this is, and I'm going to say this up front, John I wasn't in Vietnam, I wasn't there guys. Jerome, I wasn't there. I don't know. All I know is I really admire the guys that when their country called them up, you guys went to serve your country. And starting out I gotta say I appreciate that. You know I had Rassman on TV the other night. You know what, I know he's a Kerry guy, but I said to him "Hey thanks for serving your country." I said on page, I think page 32 of my first book, Kerry he served his country...thank you, and I mean that for all veterans. So I want you guys to know that up front how I feel. Here's the point, there are people that don't want your voices now to be heard. That scares me, and that tells me that there's something in play here. You deserve to have your voices heard.

O'Neill: Sean, our group has 254 swift veterans in it. There are 60 of them that were wounded in Vietnam.

O'Neill: 254 veterans of swift boats, a majority of all the known veterans that can be found. There are 60 of them who were wounded in Vietnam. There are nine of them who won the silver star. Almost all of them like I did served at least twelve months in Vietnam and got a lot of decorations although we don't talk about it. Now, we paid with blood and service for the right to be heard, and to us this isn't a political issue. It's a deeply personal issue about service. We feel John Kerry lied about our service and he's exaggerated his service, and those are important, very important to all of us.

Hannity: Well I think you do deserve the right to be heard and that's why I found it disturbing that the DNC and the Kerry/Edwards campaign, you know, tried to intimidate these stations when they sent out, and I have it right here, this letter. And in part they send it to these station managers that were going to run this add, and in part this letter says your station may freely refuse this advertisement because your station has this freedom and because it is not a use of your facilities that is clearly identified...of a clearly identified candidate, your station is responsible for the false and libelous charges made by this sponsor. So basically they are calling you guys liars. So this is where we are here, starting out on this debate, right?

O'Neill: Yes and Sean what they did was try and...I'm really proud of the stations. There were twenty stations that we tried to run our ad on. They all got that letter, and it threatened them with suit. It was from two large law firms in Washington. Nineteen of those stations carried our ad after looking at the materials relating to the ad.

Hannity: You gave me a whole copy here. This is a whole folder that you sent out along with, accompanying the ad.

O'Neill: Right. The people in the ad Sean, five of them are officers in command of boats right there at An Thoi in the little unit with John Kerry. He knew every one of them. Four of them are his commanding officers right there, and two of them are guys who were terribly wounded in Vietnam.

Hannity: All right, let's go through this systematically, and I'm not going to rush through this. I'm going to keep you guys longer if need be, and both of you will be on Hannity & Colmes tonight and we'll have the other side on tonight.

Hannity: John, you served in Coastal Division 11 in Vietnam, the same unit that John Kerry was assigned, right?

O'Neill: That's correct. I got there after John Kerry left and by coincidence I ended up on the same little boat, PCF-94. I was there for much longer than John Kerry.

Hannity: But you came after him, what do you say to your number one critics..."well you weren't there with him. What do you know about it?" Even though the book is not about what you're saying.

O'Neill: Sean there are 60 people that we interviewed that were right there with him. There were twenty-five officers that served with John Kerry. Two of them are dead, seventeen of them have condemned John Kerry. They've condemned him as unfit. There's a picture there. There's only one officer from our whole division out of twenty-five that supports John Kerry.

Hannity: One is dead, only one of the twenty...one of the twenty-three supports Kerry. These are his officers.

O'Neill: These are the guys who were just like him. They were lieutenants and JG's. They slept with him most nights, bunk-beds in the same bunk room.

Hannity: But if you listen very closely to what these guys are saying, and Jerome you can jump in here too, and they even said this in this letter they sent to the stations, and I actually thought it was fairly Clintonesque: "The advertisements contain statements by men who purport to have served on Kerry's swift boat in Vietnam." Now these boats only carry about what, six people?

O'Neill: They carry six people. They operated all together. It's like having five cars together. They never operated apart...not once.

O'Neill: Never, when they were operating in rivers and canals they never did, because if they had an engine failure or anything else happened while you were in hostile territory you would be captured.

Hannity: So when Lanny Davis claims that only one out of the ten people that served in Kerry's boat, only one is against him; the other nine support him. That represents the band of brothers. Is that statement factually accurate or inaccurate?

O'Neill: Well it's true that of the enlisted guys that served on his boat, eight out of the ten support him, one opposes him. These are people, by the way, many of them who were not on his boat for any longer than two or three weeks, and the longest of which saw him for about five or six weeks.

Hannity: Of the four months that he was there, you've gone back and looked at the time that they've been there.

Hannity: All right, 'cause this is important. So these are the arguments that have been going back and forth. So the Kerry people are saying, via Lanny Davis and some other people, and I'm friends with Lanny but Lanny's on Kerry's side on this and he admits that he's working with Kerry on this. So when he says the people that served on his boat, these are people that served with him in short duration based on your study that were enlisted people. You're claiming that of the officers that served with Kerry, you're saying side by side in adjacent boats next to and were eye witnesses to his service there, you're saying those guys only one in twenty-three that remain alive support him and the other ones are with you.

O'Neill: Not quite. There are four that have taken no position at all, who have civil service or other jobs. There are twenty-three left alive, one supports him, four have taken no position, every other one is with us.

Hannity: Did all of them serve with Kerry and observe him in Vietnam while he was there?

O'Neill: Yes, they were in the same little unit Sean. They served day after day with him. They operated day after day with him. They virtually...everyone was on operations with him.

Hannity: So what's misleading here and maybe perhaps even somewhat slick is when they say "the advertisement contains statements by men who purport to have served on the boat," it is not accurately describing the situation of what swift boat vets were going through at the time, which is you're saying all these boats were there in the same location every day together working together in close proximity. Is that what you're saying?

O'Neill: Yes, but not all of them every single day. But they all operated in teams of two to six boats, and the book of course is based on the eyewitness accounts of people who were right there. These are like tanks Sean, these are not aircraft carriers. They're like little tanks and they operate together all the time, just like tanks do.

Hannity: Now Jerome, you hooked up with John after you saw a rerun of the debate between John and Kerry on the Dick Cavett Show.

Corsi: Right, let me make clear Sean that I'm not a veteran. I'm not a Vietnam veteran or a veteran of any kind. I'm like Douglas Brinkley and Michael Kranish who wrote the biographies, a writer. Now John O'Neill and I knew each other in college. We debated against each other. When John was at Annapolis I was at Case Western Reserve and we were friends. And when I got my PhD at Harvard, the anti-war movement was one of my specialties. I wrote two studies on the Vietnam Veterans Against the War. So I saw the debate rebroadcast of John on the Dick Cavett show in 1971 and I picked up the phone and I called John O'Neill and I said "let's work together." You've got one half of the story, the Vietnam war part, and I've got the other half, the anti-war protesting. And let's work together and see what we can make happen.

Hannity: One of the things that's very impressive in reading this book, and I guess that's why there's been such a reaction by the Kerry people, is you have in this book and I assume if you've got it wrong you're gonna be sued, you have in this book statements by a lot of guys saying they saw Kerry do this...they saw this, they were eyewitnesses to that and this and that, which contradicts Kerry's thing. So this is why I'm urging this audience, our audience, to listen to both sides and make up there own mind. But we gotta take a break. We'll come back and we're not gonna rush through this. There's too many stories here, there's too many issues involving this. I think Kerry's made this the issue in the campaign. I think you guys deserve to be heard and we will continue. This is the first interview. This book just out today. You've heard a lot about it. It's called "Unfit for Command: Swift Boat Veterans Speak Out Against John Kerry." The authors of this new book, Jerome Corsi and John O'Neill will join us and later on we're going to get some of your calls in here on this as well. Straight ahead as we continue three hours a day now more than ever...straight ahead.

Hannity: (Introduction to Second Segment.) You start with a quote in your introduction: "I do not believe John Kerry is fit to be commander-in-chief of the armed forces of the United States. This is not a political issue. It's a matter of his judgment, truthfulness, reliability, loyalty, and trust, all absolute tenants of command." And that was Rear Admiral Roy Hoffman who we've had on this program. All throughout the book, all these veterans, all these people that served with him are claiming to be eyewitnesses to his activities in Vietnam are saying something similar. Do you worry about being sued? Do you worry about the legal issues?

O'Neill: I don't really worry about that Sean, because the truth has always been a defense. And I've looked over the documentation. I've talked to the guys involved, and truthfully it wouldn't make any difference if someone sued me, it wouldn't make any difference if I went to jail. Because the truth is the most important thing to me, and this is such a deep part of our lives.

Hannity: You tell the story in the book about a reunion, swift boat vets reunion in Norfolk, VA, and the emcee was a guy by the name of Dan Taylor and when he recognized Senator Kerry as "the man who would be the next President of the United States," you report that there was a deafening silence. And that Kerry had come with a film crew, etcetera, etcetera. Tell us about that.

O'Neill: What happened is there was a reunion in Norfolk, VA, and Dan Daley, actually from Massachusetts, whom I spoke to in connection with the book, was the emcee. And he introduced various people and some of them were dignitaries like Tony Principi the Secretary of Veterans Affairs. Others were swift boat guys. When the swift guys got introduced everybody would start cheering. He then introduced Kerry. He said I'd like to recognize Senator Kerry who was here earlier today. He may be the next President of the United States. And there was just absolute silence. There was just deafening silence.

Hannity: No applause, and he had been there for a cameo you write earlier and a film crew and you thought it was just, you know, basically a political opp for him.

O'Neill: It was just another political opp with a film crew. He left before the memorial service for the people who died there.

Hannity: All right, let me, we've got so much to get to I don't even know where to begin. Let's start with his statements and I guess maybe we'll start with the motivation for you guys putting this book together in the minute and a half we have in this segment. When he claimed that these guys, in 1971 when he testified before the Senate Foreign Relations Committee and you write about this at length, and he claims vets had raped, cut off ears, cut off heads, taped wires from portable telephones to human genitals and turned up the power, cut off limbs, blew up bodies, randomly shot at civilians, razed villages in a fashion reminiscent of Genghis Khan, shot dogs and cats, that bothers you more than anything.

O'Neill: It's a moment I'll never forget for the rest of my life. I was in Worcester, MA at the NRTC and I was trying to go home because my dad was sick. I turned on the television and I listened to it, and I had been in Coastal Division 11. I had a lot of friends that died there. And I couldn't believe it, what I heard. I just couldn't believe there could be injustice like that in the world. And I said no matter how long it took or whatever I could do I would try and do something about that. And so did a bunch of the other guys from our unit, because particularly from our unit because we tried so hard to avoid excess fire. We had a lot of people killed being shot at because we didn't shoot first.

Hannity: And this is why you want to get this story out, more than anything else, because you feel he's a liar?

O'Neill: It's a deep part of it Sean. Truthfully it's several things. That's a big big part of it. The same sort of lies were repeated in Kerry's book "Tour of Duty" in the last...just six or seven months ago. Also, truthfully, we all feel very very deeply concerned about what he would do if he were the commander-in-chief of the United States. It's not just the past. It's really the future for us too.

Hannity: We're going to get into all these issues. We're not gonna rush through this. More with John O'Neill and Jerome Corsi (lead out from second segment.)

Hannity: (Introduction to third segment.) Let's play his allegation against his fellow vets when he got back from Vietnam. Now this is the testimony that he gave before the Senate Foreign Relations Committee.

John Kerry on Tape from 1971: We had an investigation in which over 150 honorably discharged and many very highly decorated veterans testified to war crimes committed in Southeast Asia. Not isolated incidents, but crimes committed on a day-to-day basis with the full awareness of officers at all levels of command. It's impossible to describe to you exactly what did happen in Detroit...the emotions in the room, the feelings of the men who were reliving their experiences in Vietnam. But they did, they relived the absolute horror of what this country, in a sense, made them do. They told the stories of times that they had personally raped, cut off ears, cut off heads, taped wires from portable telephones to human genitals and turned up the power, cut off limbs, blown up bodies, randomly shot at civilians, razed villages in a fashion reminiscent of Genghis Khan, shot cattle and dogs for fun, poisoned food stocks, and generally ravaged the countryside of South Vietnam in addition to the normal ravage of war and the normal and very particular ravaging which is done by the applied bombing power of this country.

Hannity: All right, now you guys, the swift boat guys, in May of this year you had an open letter to John Kerry, you include it in the back of your book, saying he misrepresented his service in Vietnam, we're going to get to some of those charges in a minute, and that he lied about these claims of atrocity as a matter of policy. And you got 200 swifties, as you call yourselves, to sign the letter. Less than 10% of those contacted, you claim, declined to sign or indicated any support for his presidential campaign. So, that's a lot of people.

O'Neill: It's almost everybody we can find signs the letter and feels the same way. People are motivated by two things. They're motivated first by the way he lied and continued in "Tour of Duty" to lie about our service, and then second by the wild exaggeration that he's engaged in about his own service.

Hannity: Do you think because there's so many of you guys that were there that hear this and that are angry that has this campaign so panicked? Because they are panicked about this, 'cause I get Democratic talking points mailed to me by a spy, and they are not happy about you guys.

O'Neill: Sean they're scared to death because, not because of who we are, they're scared to death because of what we know. They're scared to death just about the simple truth. This guy has appeared puffed up like a peacock, exaggerating wildly his record in Vietnam. We've got all the guys who were there with him and who know the truth.

Hannity: A lot of these guys, for the sake of people who haven't had a chance to read the book, this is all chronicled here. Now let me play this where he admits he committed atrocities and violated the Geneva Convention. Listen to this exchange.

John Kerry on Tape: Yes, I committed the same kind of atrocities as thousands of other soldiers have committed in that I took part in shootings in free fire zones, I conducted harassment and interdiction fire, I used 50 caliber machine guns which we were granted and ordered to use, I took part in search and destroy missions, in the burning of villages.

Hannity: Well, he basically, he burned villages. Now Lanny Davis was on TV last night. Lanny is becoming the point man for the Kerry people on this. He told me himself. And Lanny says that "no, no, he misspoke now when he said he committed atrocities." Now that John Kerry has made, and you even mention this in the book, made this four month period of his life cornerstone of why he should get elected, and you point out he's done this in every election, should we not get an answer as to what the atrocities were that he committed, no?

O'Neill: We really should Sean. When I debated him I was convinced that this was all an exaggeration, that he hadn't committed any atrocities. I knew our unit hadn't 'cause I'd been there. I had watched people die. None of us would ever do anything wrong. What we came to learn in doing the book, I was shocked. The book recounts, for example, the incident where a sampan is shot up and he reports it with a bunch of people who were never really in it. And it recounts the story of George Bates which basically parallels what he said where apparently he went in and literally did burn down a village. We never did stuff like that. I was there for a year, Sean, and I had a lot of other friends. We would never do stuff like that. It just wouldn't happen in a million years. I mean, we'd rather have something bad happen to us than ever do anything like that.

O'Neill: I think he burned down the village just like he said right there, Sean.

O'Neill: Yes, Captain George M. Bates is quoted in the book. George Bates went with Kerry. They went past a small little village. There was no indication of Viet Cong flags or anything else. Bates relates how Kerry turned into the village and literally burned the village down and shot the animals and so on in the village. And Bates has remembered it his entire life.

Hannity: And I was gonna get to that in just a second here. But I want to ask you this, because you debated Kerry on this program and this is when he admitted in that program with Dick Cavett that he committed these atrocities and he did these things. You tried to pin him down, and you chronicle a lot of this in the book, and you say in the book "for John Kerry to lie at the expense of his former comrades, living and dead, in front of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee so he could outbid other radicals in the anti-war movement and gain attention was something else...," etc. You really think he did this for his own personal, you know, ambition.

O'Neill: That's the shocking thing about it, Sean. There are other people, many conscientious people opposed to our policy in Vietnam. There are other people like Jane Fonda that were radicals that believed in what they were doing at least. I think here we have somebody that literally came back with a charge of war criminal and all simply to get ahead in politics.

Hannity: But you say in the book about debating him, that you said he was a "self-promoting war hero who in reality was the greatest moral coward you had every met, willing to sell out friends and comrades for political fame." Those are strong words.

O'Neill: I've got to tell you. I thought strong, long, and hard before I wrote those words down. In the debate with him, I basically accused him of exactly the same thing and he went, wow, that was an amazing thing to me that he wouldn't be angry. That made no impression on him.

Hannity: You talk about that, and you said "the question of right, wrong, good and evil played no role in his thinking. He simply said whatever sounded popular. Lying about his friends on one hand, being called a moral coward on the other, had little impact on a person whose only values were political and ideological calculations." Do you think he was thinking about running for president then?

O'Neill: He clearly was. As a matter of fact, he talked to any number of people in our division about the fact he was going to run for President some day, even back then.

Hannity: You challenged him during this debate with Cavett to repeatedly list any war crimes or atrocities. See I think the media needs to ask him this. He admitted he did it. He admitted he burned down villages. You have guys on the record that are acknowledging and they're saying their stories. For saying that you guys are basically being called liars, and your character is being questioned. Why doesn't anyone in the media, and I think this would be a fair question, John Kerry said in this own words "I committed the same kind of atrocities as others. I burned villages." Why don't they ask him specifically to tell us what he said, considering he's made Vietnam such a big part of the campaign? Why is that such an intimidating question for people?

O'Neill: I don't understand it Sean. I honestly believe that when we elect a President that knowing a tremendous amount about them is real important for people of both parties an so on, because there are an awful lot of people that don't vote on the basis of party. I would think that where a guy, and I think it's peculiar that he's picked this four months to run on 34 years ago, but if this is his qualification, my goodness, we're certainly entitled to know everything about it.

Hannity: All right, you talk about this in the book, how he's used this military every campaign you write since 1972 ends with Kerry the war hero boasting about his, what you're describing as limited and controversial military record, etcetera. You point out he used it in '72, in '84, he used it in '90 and in '96 against Weld. This is what he does every election is what you're chronicling here.

O'Neill: It had to seem strange to people that Democratic convention, but that's what he does every single time. The way I know about it is, I got called by all of his opponents, Democratic and Republican. They said "what do you know?" I'd say forget it, I don't what anything to do with it.

Hannity: You think it's a trap he sets every election. That's how you describe it in the book.

O'Neill: Exactly. I think he's a one trick pony. I think that he's an equal opportunity veteran. that if you're a liberal Democrat you're...

Hannity: Well he has these nine guys including Rassman, who I interviewed the other night. He has these guys out there helping him.

O'Neill: And they show up. He had a group called the Dog Boys who were veterans. They show up every election Sean. They have ever since '84.

Hannity: But now look, one of the things they're saying about you guys is you're lying, you're not telling the truth, this is all baloney. What do you say about those guys?

O'Neill: Well what I say is there's more than 60 swift boat guys quoted in our book. None of them are political guys. I've never held a political office or run for anything. If 60 guys say one thing and one guy says something else, there's a pretty simple explanation I think people will really understand.

Hannity: All right, now you have another chapter in the book, and I tell you what we're gonna do. We're gonna take a break 'cause I don't want to rush through this. Give us a headline. You call the chapter "The Purple Heart Hunter." You don't think he deserved his Purple Hearts and you're going to describe that when we get back.

O'Neill: What he had was three insignificant wounds Sean, two of them he inflicted on himself. I don't think he meant to wound himself but he clearly did. He then falsified the circumstances in reports in order to get Purple Hearts and leave Vietnam after a very short period of time.

The Democrats are so pathetic. Kerry testifies under oath to a Senate committee in 1971 that he committed atrocities, and now Lanny Davis says "no, no, he misspoke about comitting atrocities." How could he misspeak while under oath to tell the truth? That's not possible, so Davis is just lying in an attempt to cover up for Kerry. The Democrat party was so corrupted by the Clintons. They don't know the difference between truth and lies, and they don't even care about speaking the truth. These people are dangerous. They're a threat to a truly functional democracy.

We are anxiouly waiting to read the book. Went to Borders in Scranton today. The employee pointed to a sign by the cash register stating to get the book we would have to sign for it and they would get in touch when one was available which would be 4 to 5 weeks or longer. They are awaiting a shipment. Someone came up behind us and said he wishes he had one to sell on E-bay to which the smiling employee replied he wish he had a case to sell on e-bay. Both of us were surprised at the happy-go-lucky banter.
We had expected to be ridiculed and given a line of BS. We mentioned ordering on Amazon and he said the waiting time is still several weeks. Ours is already on order at both Amazon and Human Events. BTW Scranton is a very democrat area.

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"I don't really worry about that Sean, because the truth has always been a defense. And I've looked over the documentation. I've talked to the guys involved, and truthfully it wouldn't make any difference if someone sued me, it wouldn't make any difference if I went to jail. Because the truth is the most important thing to me, and this is such a deep part of our lives."

- John O'Neill

All of this is incomprehensible to Kerry and his campaign staff. Truth doesn't matter to them, only winning matters.

"Truth doesn't matter to them, only winning matters."

This is unfortunately a pragmatic viewpoint. Once he manages to win, almost nothing matters. Look at clinton, who, dogged by scandal before and after his first election, did go on to win a second term.

Yes, I think without all the dishonest anti-war protestors here in America, we would have had a good chance to end the war in 1969 or 1970. Then we could have built South Vietnam up into a nation similar to South Korea that could have defended inself. We actually had North Vietnam on the ropes after the Tet Offensive and without the encouragement from the anti-war mob they might have agreed to a real peace treaty. So it's quite possible that Kerry and his gang directly caused the deaths of 20,000 or more men in the final three years of the war.

This is why everyone should question his judgment and patriotism. He's also really loose with the truth and likely to exaggerate or completely fabricate false statements. We can't afford to have another immature, vain, dishonest kid negotiating critical nuclear agreements with North Korea and Iran. That could lead to a catastrophic disaster for America.

Re "Yes, I think without all the dishonest anti-war protestors here in America, we would have had a good chance to end the war in 1969 or 1970. Then we could have built South Vietnam up into a nation similar to South Korea that could have defended inself. We actually had North Vietnam on the ropes after the Tet Offensive and without the encouragement from the anti-war mob they might have agreed to a real peace treaty. So it's quite possible that Kerry and his gang directly caused the deaths of 20,000 or more men in the final three years of the war."

You got it right!

"Truth doesn't matter to them, only winning matters."

That's the impact of eight years of Klintoon in the White House. He was the most unprincipled President in history and the Dem part lost all principles of honesty and honor while he was their leader.

Also, in the end this is a winner-take-all contest. Now that the dems are being so brazen about doing and saying literally anything to shift that unaware, politically ignorant portion of the population that votes into their column, it is amazing a republican can win a national election at all.

"All of this is incomprehensible to Kerry and his campaign staff. Truth doesn't matter to them, only winning matters."

Yes that's the biggest problem with liberals today: They are so dishonest and deceptive. I think many of them were the lying little brats I ran into at school in the 60's and 70's. They were unprincipled liars then and they've grown up into unprincipled liars who run the Dem party. Clinton is the prime example of this kind of Dem pol. I used to get in fights with these kids back in school, now I'm fighting them in political campaigns.

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