WASHINGTON – A Navy report filed five days after a disputed incident in Vietnam supports John Kerry’s version and contradicts critics who say the Democratic presidential nominee never came under enemy gunfire when he won two medals.
The Navy task force overseeing Kerry’s swift boat squadron reported his group of boats being fired on during the March 13, 1969, incident. Some of Kerry’s critics, including several men who were on other boats that day, say there was no enemy gunfire during the incident that won Kerry a Bronze Star and his third Purple Heart.
The March 18, 1969, weekly report from Task Force 115, which was located by The Associated Press during a search of Navy archives, is the latest document to surface that supports Kerry’s description of the event. Crew members on Kerry’s boat and a Special Forces soldier Kerry pulled from the water that day insist there was enemy fire, and they have appeared on behalf of the Kerry campaign.
The task force report twice mentions the incident and both times calls it “an enemy initiated firefight” that included automatic weapons fire and underwater mines used against a group of five boats that included Kerry’s.
Task Force 115 was commanded at the time by retired Rear Adm. Roy Hoffmann, the founder of the group Swift Boat Veterans for Truth, which has been running TV ads challenging Kerry’s account of the episode.
A member of the group, Larry Thurlow, said he stood by his assertion that there was no enemy fire that day. Thurlow, the commander of another boat who also won a Bronze Star, said task force commanders probably relied on the initial report of the incident. Thurlow says Kerry wrote that report.
The document, part of thousands of pages of records housed at the Naval Historical Center, is one of several that say Kerry and other servicemen were shot at from the banks of the Bay Hap River on March 13, 1969.
The anti-Kerry group has not produced any official Navy documents supporting its claim.
Kerry has denounced the assertions from Swift Boat Veterans for Truth as lies made as part of a Republican smear campaign.
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