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They got it from Kerry and the official Navy reports, which were in reality, untrue. Kerry is the one who was writing them up out of whole cloth. The official record is wrong. I have gone over the Kerry records with a fine tooth comb.

The first PH is especially questionable because no documentation supporting the award has been released except for the certificate itself. Kerry's immediate superiors refused to put him in for the award. The doctor who treated him compared the wound to that caused by a rose thorn, with the little piece of metal two centimeters long. It came from the shrapnel from an M-79 fired by Kerry on a training mission in a Boston whaler. It was self-inflicted. The Adm states quite clearly there was no hostile enemy fire. Hence no after action report or casualty report.

After Kerry left the unit, Coastal Div 14, and transferred into a new unit, he mysteriously was awarded the PH three months later. No one knows how it was submitted since his previous CO, Grant Hibbard, refused to submit his PH request. Hibbard said "no way" and told him to "get out of my office." The only thing to substantiate the claim is a treatment report signed three months later. Apparently, Kerry was able to get someone else to sign off on the award in the new unit, but no documentation has been produced showing who signed off on it. I wouldn't put it past Kerry to falsify the submission and forge a signature.