Free Republic

CHRIS MATTHEWS, HOST: In 1971, John Kerry appeared on “The Dick Cavett Show” to debate Vietnam with John O‘Neill. Tonight: Thirty years later, the debate rages on. We‘ll talk about the origins of the political firestorm with Dick Cavett and Pat Buchanan. Plus, President Bush denounces all attack ads by outside groups and calls for a halt to the practice. The latest on the swift boat ad wars and the big question: Can the political wounds over Vietnam ever heal? And could John Kerry‘s presidential campaign be that war‘s latest casualties? Good evening. I‘m Chris Matthews. In recent weeks, the...

Key question..Kerry has given his wartime journal to Brinkley, said that's why he can't releasde it to the press. Will he be asked to make them public?..or will they all go in the tank

Brinkley told the Atlantic magazine, which excerpted a portion of the book, that he interviewed "every single one" of John Kerry's crewmates on the so-called swift boats that Kerry captained in Vietnam. But in fact he did not interview crew member Steven Gardner, and -- surprise! -- Gardner turned out to be the only one of Kerry's crewmates who disliked his former commander. "I would have talked to Gardner, but I couldn't find him," Brinkley says now.

"KERRY WENT into Cambodian waters three or four times in January and February 1969 on clandestine missions," historian Douglas Brinkley told the London Telegraph last week. "He had a run dropping off U.S. Navy Seals, Green Berets, and CIA guys. . . . He was a ferry master, a drop-off guy, but it was dangerous as hell. Kerry carries a hat he was given by one CIA operative. In a part of his journals which I didn't use he writes about discussions with CIA guys he was dropping off." John Kerry was obliged last week to recant a number of...

The greatest frustration of the "Swift Boat Veterans for Truth" is the establishment media's reluctance to explore their powerful testimony. Follow running mate John Edwards' advice and spend three minutes with "those men who served with" John Kerry in Vietnam, and you sense the disgust over this absence of dedication. Compounding it all are the escalating personal attacks unrelated to the substance of these first-hand accounts and the vigor displayed in digging into President Bush's service and even the backgrounds of the "Swifties." Indeed, Kerry seems to have predicted this behavior, leaning heavily on his wartime experience despite possible revelations...

"KERRY WENT into Cambodian waters three or four times in January and February 1969 on clandestine missions," historian Douglas Brinkley told the London Telegraph last week. "He had a run dropping off U.S. Navy Seals, Green Berets, and CIA guys. . . . He was a ferry master, a drop-off guy, but it was dangerous as hell. Kerry carries a hat he was given by one CIA operative. In a part of his journals which I didn't use he writes about discussions with CIA guys he was dropping off." John Kerry was obliged last week to recant a number of...

assessment of Douglas Brinkley John Kennedy Jr.'s most prolific mourner. Douglas Brinkley is the William Ginsburg of the Kennedy death circus. Before the crash, the boyish, gap-toothed Brinkley was known primarily as a Michael Beschloss-in-waiting, a telegenic historian fielding calls from the cable news networks. Now the University of New Orleans professor has parlayed a contributing editorship at George and a friendship with Kennedy into a job as a necropublicist. Between Saturday and Tuesday, Brinkley appeared on MSNBC, Late Edition, Meet the Press, Good Morning America, Dateline, Today (twice), and NPR (twice). He also penned columns about his relationship with...

Last Thursday, The Drudge Report touted an exclusive report that John Kerry biographer Douglas Brinkley was rushing to publish in The New Yorker a corrected version of Kerry's seared memory of being in Cambodia on Christmas Day, 1968.However, The New Yorker's press release issued today for their next issue, dated August 23, 2004, contains no mention at all of the piece by Brinkley.Hmmm....still in rewrite, perhaps?

**Exclusive** TOUR OF DUTY author and John Kerry historian Doug Brinkley is rushing a piece for the NEW YORKER: to set-the-record-straight on Kerry's Christmas in Cambodia tale, the DRUDGE REPORT has learned. Kerry has turned to author Brinkley for a "modification" after it was exposed that Kerry was not in Cambodia during Christmas of 1968, as he once claimed from the Senate floor. The Brinkley piece for the NEW YORKER will now say that Kerry was not in Cambodia during Christmas, but rather in January, publishing sources tell DRUDGE. MORE Since the early 1970s, Kerry has spoken and written of...

What kind of a historian is Douglas Brinkley anyway? These days Brinkley is acting a lot less like a historian and a lot more like a PR flack for John Kerry, the subject of Brinkley's flattering bestseller "Tour of Duty: John Kerry and the Vietnam War." Brinkley proclaims his independence from the Kerry campaign -- "This is my book, not his," he writes in "Tour" -- but he's become a major player in the Kerry agitprop machine.

What did Sen. John Kerry know and when did he know it about a plot to assassinate pro-Vietnam War U.S. senators hatched at a November 1971 Kansas City meeting of the group Vietnam Veterans Against America? According to presidential biographer Douglas Brinkley, that's the question Sen. Kerry needs to answer. If it turns out that the likely Democratic presidential nominee knew of the treasonous plan, Brinkley says he had an obligation to go to the authorities. "The question is: did Kerry quit [VVAW] before Kansas City or did he quit after Kansas City," Brinkley told WABC Radio's Steve Malzberg. "If...

Sunday, Mar. 14, 2004 10:49 PM EST Brinkley: Kerry Faces Questions about Senate Hit Plot What did Sen. John Kerry know and when did he know it about a plot to assassinate pro-Vietnam war U.S. Senators hatched at a November 1971 Kansas City meeting of the group Vietnam Veterans Against America? According to presidential biographer Douglas Brinkley, that's the question Sen. Kerry needs to answer. If it turns out that the likely Democratic presidential nominee knew of the treasonous plan, Brinkley says he had an obligation to go to the authorities. "The question is: did Kerry quit [VVAW] before Kansas...

What did Sen. John Kerry know and when did he know it about a plot to assassinate pro-Vietnam war U.S. Senators hatched at a November 1971 Kansas City meeting of the group Vietnam Veterans Against America? According to presidential biographer Douglas Brinkley, that's the question Sen. Kerry needs to answer. If it turns out that the likely Democratic presidential nominee knew of the treasonous plan, Brinkley says he had an obligation to go to the authorities. "The question is: did Kerry quit [VVAW] before Kansas City or did he quit after Kansas City," Brinkley told WABC Radio's Steve Malzberg. "If...

You have probably read the Time Magazine article, "The Tenth Brother," by Kerry's hagiographer, Douglas Brinkley: Tuesday, Mar. 09, 2004 The Tenth BrotherDouglas Brinkley, author of Tour of Duty: John Kerry and the Vietnam War, interviews Kerry’s tenth warmate and gets a story sharply different from what the other nine crew members have had to saySource At first blush it is a surprising piece. Brinkley managed after a Herculean effort to unearth a former crewmember of Kerry's Swiftboats who doesn't think Kerry walks on water. When writing my book Tour of Duty: John Kerry and the Vietnam War (William Morrow...

Just when it looked like Senator John Kerry’s so-called Band of Brothers were unified in vouching for his leadership in Vietnam there is suddenly a lone ripple of dissent in the ranks. “What can I say?” Kerry said when told that a former crewmate had unpleasant memories of him as his commanding officer. “I’ll take nine out of ten testimonies anytime.” Every sailor who served under Lieutenant John Kerry on Swift boats PCF-44 and PCF-94 have gushed about his poise under enemy fire. They tell stories of his rescuing a Green Beret from drowning, killing a Viet Cong sniper, and...

Tuesday, Mar. 09, 2004The Tenth Brother Douglas Brinkley, author of Tour of Duty: John Kerry and the Vietnam War, interviews Kerry’s tenth warmate and gets a story sharply different from what the other nine crew members have had to say ByDOUGLAS BRINKLEY Just when it looked like Senator John Kerry’s so-called Band of Brothers were unified in vouching for his leadership in Vietnam there is suddenly a lone ripple of dissent in the ranks. “What can I say?” Kerry said when told that a former crewmate had unpleasant memories of him as his commanding officer. “I’ll take nine out...

<p>Thirty-three years ago this winter, more than a hundred Vietnam War veterans from around the United States gathered at a Howard Johnson hotel in Detroit's New Center.</p> <p>In a second-floor ballroom, before an audience of hundreds of long-haired youths and conservatively dressed older people, the vets confessed to atrocities they claimed to have witnessed or committed in Vietnam, where hundreds of people on both sides still were dying each week.</p>

John Kerry's Final Mission in Vietnam John Kerry's last mission in Vietnam was a deadly Swift boat patrol up the Bay Hap River where everything was ventured but nothing gained -- except another medal and more horrific memories. By Douglas Brinkley March 13, 1969, would prove among the worst and best days John Kerry spent in Vietnam. Three years earlier, with the main thrust of the antiwar movement yet to come, Kerry had graduated from Yale University, delivering his class oration. Although he had just signed up with the U.S. Navy, in that address he questioned U.S. involvement in Southeast...

According to the publisher's press release, Tour of Duty: John Kerry and the Vietnam War, by Douglas Brinkley, "was never intended as a political biography"--meaning, I suppose, that it is not meant to be confused with those ghost-written, election-year puffers and potboilers under whose weight the remainder-tables of America's bookstores are already beginning to buckle and break. Tour of Duty is intended to be a real book that makes an enduring contribution to the national letters--akin to the moving and beautifully written "Faith of My Fathers," by John McCain and Mark Salter, rather than "A Charge to Keep," by George...