[Congressional Record Volume 147, Number 57 (Tuesday, May 1, 2001)]
[Senate]
[Pages S4091-S4094]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]
BOB KERREY, DISTINGUISHED OFFICER
Mr. WARNER. Mr. President, I address the Senate with regard to
Senator Bob Kerrey. I do this out of, first, a sense of duty. I was
Under Secretary of the Navy beginning in February 1969, together with
our most beloved and distinguished former colleague who sat behind me
many years, Senator Chafee, who was the Secretary. Senator Chafee and
I, then Secretary of the Navy and Under Secretary Warner, were a very
close working team. I have searched my mind many times as to what he
would say were he here today. I think I can safely represent to the
Senate that my remarks today would be very close to, if not exactly,
what my dear friend, our former Senator and former Secretary of the
Navy, would have said about our colleague, Bob Kerrey, this
distinguished officer of the U.S. Navy.
I came to know him in the many years we served together in the
Senate. We often sat together on the floor. I remember distinctly going
over to his side of the aisle. We reflected on those days together of
Vietnam. He shared with me some very personal insights with regard to
that conflict and how they affected his life.
I am also very respectful of Senators McCain, Cleland, Hagel, and
John Kerry. I have, likewise, had the benefit of listening to them and
sharing with them my recollections of that incredible period of
American history. I served in the Pentagon beginning in February 1969,
leaving in 1974, for 5 years plus a few months during some of the most
intense periods of that conflict. I visited Vietnam on occasions, as
did Secretary of the Navy Chafee, and then when I became Secretary of
the Navy, succeeding Chafee, of course, my visits continued. I have
been on the fire bases, in the hospitals, where the wounded were
brought back.
I remember one story, the former Commandant of the Marine Corps,
General Krulak, came to see me just before his confirmation to review
various procedural matters with regard to his confirmation. We were
there with General Mundy. He was then Commandant of the Marine Corps.
We spent an hour together in a very thorough analysis of his
background. I was doing it on behalf of then-Chairman Strom Thurmond.
General Krulak got up to leave. This is a moment I shall never forget
in my career as a Senator.
[[Page S4092]]
He said: Senator Warner, this is not the first time we met. I was a
little taken aback. I was thinking, where had I met this fine officer?
I had known his father. He said: I was wounded in Vietnam, and I was in
the process of being evacuated. I was on a stretcher with other men who
had just been wounded, and the helicopter was coming in to take us out.
Someone came up and grabbed me by the big toe and shook that toe. He
said to me: Captain, you are going to be all right; you are going to
make it. He said: I am here today to say, I made it, and you were that
gentleman, as Secretary of the Navy, who grabbed me by the toe.
I had no recollection because I visited with so many wounded and
injured in that period on my visits to Vietnam. But it is a personal
recollection of that period that I shared with another distinguished
combat veteran who did a wonderful job as Commandant.
Bob Kerrey and I traveled together, I remember so well, on a trip to
Bosnia. We were coming into that zone where the war had just passed
through not more than a day, if even as much as a day. Homes were
burning. The ordnance was clearly visible, and the escort officers we
had were somewhat concerned. I remember Kerrey fearlessly walking
through areas. I was there by his side. We visited with a number of
detainees who had been captured. You learn about an individual when you
do a trip such as that. I became very close to him. We bonded together
in many respects on that trip to that war zone on that particular day,
the several days we were together.
I reposed unquestioned confidence in his judgment, his honesty, and
his integrity, being his boss in 1969, as Under Secretary of the Navy,
at that time when these incidents happened. Indeed, the Medal Of Honor
came up through the Navy Secretariat. I remember it quite well. Senator
Chafee and I sat down, and Senator Chafee, then being the Secretary,
affixed his name to that citation for his heroic actions.
This has been a personal experience to watch very carefully, to study
and read the many pieces that have been written, to watch him in his
public appearances and study his face very carefully, his eyes and his
mannerism, as he, I think in a very forthright manner, shared with the
American public, and, indeed, those in Vietnam who watched, his
heartfelt expressions about this incident. It was a tragic incident.
I ask unanimous consent two articles which appeared in today's media
be printed in the Record.
There being no objection, the material was ordered to be printed in
the Record, as follows:
[From the Wall Street Journal, May 1, 2001]
The Consequence of War
(By James Webb)
The Vietnamese government is happy to trot out witnesses
from the supposed atrocity conducted by Bob Kerrey's Navy
SEALs at Thanh Phong. It is doubtful that they would be so
cooperative if questions were asked about Communist killings
in places such as My Loc.
In April 1969, the Marine rifle company to which I was
assigned was operating in the An Hoa Basin of Vietnam, west
and south of Danang. In addition to our routine of long-range
combat patrols and defensive positions along a vital and
heavily contested road, it was decided that we would provide
security for a ``town meeting'' hosted by the South
Vietnamese government's district chief, who had been
criticized for living in the distant and more secure confines
of Danang. Over the space of a few days, visits were made to
nearby hamlets, where 30 delegates were chosen to attend the
meeting. After that, the district chief and his senior aide
were brought in on the morning convoy.
A thatch-covered ``hooch'' at the bottom of our perimeter,
about the size of a typical American living room, was chosen
as the meeting place. Shortly after the meeting began, a Viet
Cong assassination team raced through the thick foliage, hit
the hooch, and fled. My rifle platoon was returning from a
combat patrol as explosions rang out to our front. In seconds
a Viet Cong soldier sprinting down the trail collided with my
point man. I can still see his young face, adrenalized and
madly grinning, as he was captured. And I remember the sight
of the others as we reached the hooch.
The floor inside was covered with an ankle-deep mix of
blood, innards, limbs and bodies. I and several others waded
into the human mire, emptying bodies from the hooch and
finding medical care for those who had survived. Nineteen
people were dead, including the district chief and his aide.
The aide's right arm was blown off near the elbow, its
tendons like slim white feathers, as if he had been reaching
to catch a grenade.
Nearby an older woman sat motionless against a wall, her
face stunned and her dark eyes piercing, untouched except for
a small, square hole in her forehead. I thought she was alive
until I grabbed her arm. The wounded squirmed on the floor,
reaching past dead bodies as they crawled in the muck,
covered thickly with blood and twisting among each other like
giant fishing worms.
We cleaned out the hooch, evacuated the wounded, washed at
a nearby well, and went back to our war. By the next day this
incident was over, a little piece of history in the long and
ugly journey of a combat tour. But in the coming months as I
reflected on them, the killings at My Loc raised an important
distinction, which has become even more relevant with the
media firestorm over Bob Kerrey's ill-fated SEAL patrol in
the Mekong Delta.
Civilians have a terrible time in any war zone--fully one-
third of the population of Okinawa was killed in 12 weeks of
fighting on that island in 1945. But in a guerrilla war, the
support or control of the local population, rather than the
conquest of territory, is the ultimate objective. Civilians
become enmeshed in the actual fighting, inseparable from it.
They fight among themselves for political dominance of a
local area. They form an infrastructure and quietly support
one side or the other when it moves through their village.
They suffer greatly when battles are fought on top of them,
and when emotions overcome logic and troops snap, as at My
Lai. But the villagers of My Loc and others like them,
clearly noncombatants, were killed purely as a matter of
political control, for having met with a South Vietnamese
government official and given some legitimacy to his
authority.
Any American who directed a similar slaughter, or
participated in it, would have been court-martialed. This
distinction was basic to our policy in Vietnam, and it seems
to have been lost by many over the past week. The body
language and word choices of many media commentators
indicates clearly that a larger issue--how history will judge
our involvement in Vietman--is still very much in play, and a
big part of that issue is to continue to demean the American
sacrifices in that war.
Words like ``atrocity'' and ``massacre'' are routinely
being thrown about, with some even calling for Nuremberg-like
trials for Americans' war crimes in Vietnam. Aggressive
reporters have played ``gotcha'' with every Kerrey statement.
How could he say it was a moonless night when the charts say
it was a half-moon? (Try clouds. Or canopy. Or vegetation.)
Did he take one shot or many shots at the first outpost? Did
he kneel on a guy when his throat was getting cut?
For many who went through extensive combat in Vietnam, such
parsing brings back an anger caused by memories not of the
war but of the condescending arrogance directed at them upon
their return, principally by people in their own age group
who had risked nothing and yet microscopically judged every
action of those who had risked everything and often lost a
great deal. Combat in a guerrilla war requires constant moral
judgments, in an environment with unending pressure, little
sheep, and no second chances for yourself or the people you
are leading when you guess wrong. Were we perfect? No. Were
we worse than Americans in other wars, or our enemy in this
one? Hardly.
Which brings us to the recent attention given the Kerrey
patrol. There is much in the New York Times magazine story to
make one uneasy. They key ``witness'' from the village where
the incident took place is the wife of a former Viet Cong
soldier, who now has told Time magazine that she did not
actually see the killings. She and the other Vietnamese
witness, who was 12 at the time of the incident, live in a
communist state where propaganda regarding America's ``evil''
war efforts is one of the mainsprings of political
legitimacy--not the best conditions to produce honesty in
cases with international implications.
The one member of Mr. Kerrey's SEAL team to allege extreme
conduct did not pass the credibility test with Newsweek
magazine when the story was considered there. CBS's ``60
Minutes,'' which co-sponsored the investigation, seems to
have an affinity for stories about Americans committing
atrocities, having rehashed My Lai as the best way to
remember the 30th anniversary of 1968, the year that brought
the worst fighting, and highest American casualties, of the
war.
Most important, to one practiced in both combat and
journalism, a key and possibly determinative piece of
information seems vastly underplayed. According to the Times
magazine story, archive records of Army radio transmissions
indicate that two days after the incident, ``an old man from
Thanh Phong presented himself to the district chief's
headquarters with claims for retribution for alleged
atrocities committed the night of 25 and 26 February 69. Thus
far it appears 24 people were killed. 13 were women and
children and one old man, 11 were unidentified and assumed to
be VC.''
Given the tone of the story, this radio transmission was
probably included because it refers to the Kerrey patrol as
having committed an atrocity. But a closer reading would
appear to confirm the position of Mr. Kerrey and the five
others on the patrol that they took fire and returned it,
with the loss of civilian lives an unfortunate consequence.
This piece of evidence is perhaps the most objective
account available of the results of the Kerrey patrol, coming
as it does from a
[[Page S4093]]
time near the incident, from a man who was asking for
retribution and thus was hardly trying to cover things up. It
also coincides with Mr. Kerry's recollection of 13 or 14 dead
civilians in the village before the team left the scene, as
any Viet Cong soldiers would most likely have been on the
other side of the villagers who were killed, perhaps even
using them as a screen while attempting to escape.
As has often been said over the past week, we will never
know the exact details of what occurred. But is a seven-man
patrol operating independently at night far inside enemy
territory killed 11 Viet Cong soldiers after coming under
fire, it would seem they hit their assigned target. And the
loss of civilian life that accompanied this brief but brutal
firefight adds up not to an atrocity or a massacre, but to a
tragic consequence of a war fought in the middle of a
civilian population.
____
[From the Washington Times, May 1, 2001]
Scales of Culpability
[(Georgie Anne Geyer)
In days long gone by, when we lived far simpler lives,
according to the corny but nevertheless accurate truism, we
agreed that to genuinely know another human, you needed to
walk awhile in his moccasins.
In those days, too, the press in particular held as its
central maxim the idea that we journalists were blessed with
our wondrous positions in order to tell the relative truths
that keep people sane (journalism is news, not ``truths'')
and to relate rather than judge. Walk in anyone else's
moccasins today trying to understand another's life? Not
really interested.
Instead, in journalism and in politics as well, the
response to trials, scandal and tragedy has boiled down to
most news-gatherers (1) having no common experience with the
prolific targets of their fleeting attention, and (2) not
hesitating to publicly reveal every delicious tidbit they can
unearth. Thus, they become prosecutor, judge and jury.
As you may perhaps have guessed, I'm being so critical
because of the evolving case study of Nebraska's respected
senator, Bob Kerrey.
The retired senator, now president of the New School
University in New York, has long been one of our most
responsible public servants. Thoughtful, intellectual, known
for his integrity: Those are only a few of the small
accolades he has merited in a capital so often these days
filled with incompetence and greed.
Recently, in a series of revelations whose genesis, at
least as of this writing remains unclear, a tragic story has
been unfolding about him in different venues of the press.
In short, the story is that, in a midnight raid on a
supposed Viet Cong village in 1969, Mr. Kerrey led a Navy
SEALs raid. He believed his nervous and inexperienced unit
had been fired upon by the village, and so they bombarded it.
But when they entered, they found only the bodies of 13
Vietnamese women and children or more.
For those of us who were in Vietnam (I was there for a
total of 10 months as a foreign correspondent for the Chicago
Daily News in 1967, '68, '69 and '70), such accidents of war
were so common as to be barely commented upon. In fact, what
exactly did Americans at home expect of these young men and
women, having sent them into such a hopeless and agonizing
morass, barely prepared and on such an imprecise, futile
mission?
On any given night there, our soldiers were in dark jungles
or mountain ranges. They didn't know where the ``enemy''
was--or why in God's name they were there at all. They didn't
speak the language, understand the culture, or see the great
``geopolitical importance'' their leaders safely at home in
their air conditioned Washington offices seemed so insistent
upon giving to ``Vietnam.''
There were some sadists and psychopaths in the U.S.
military then--and there were plenty of them in the anti-war
movement, as well--but Bob Kerrey was certainly not one of
them. Indeed, in all of the reporting on his bleak and
tormenting memories of that night, Mr.Kerrey has spoken
repeatedly of how he has ``never made by peace with what
happened that night.''
Nor should the fact that his own fellow SEALs offer
dirrerent versions of that night by really surprise anyone.
Thirty-two years ago, a moonless night in a strange and
unknown country, told the enemy was all around them. . . .
Why, most of the families I know would tell different stories
abut what they had for dinner last night.
Still, even having said this, at least two additional
points need to be made: about the men truly responsible for
those moonless missions in Vietnam and about the coverage of
this Bob Kerrey story.
For there are people who deserve to suffer as Mr. Kerrey
has--haunted and profoundly regretful for what he did under
his country's orders in the name of his people. They had the
real responsibility. Robert McNamara, the supercilious
weapons maven, Lyndon Johnson (remember how he just resigned
midstream when the war wouldn't go his way?), the fall-in-
line joint chiefs of staff, not one of whom resigned over the
war, even John F. Kennedy and Harry S. Truman. I haven't
heard of much trauma or many sounds of remorse from these
men, let alone any seeking of forgiveness. And, remember,
too, that the American people voted enthusiastically for many
of these ``strategists'' of war.
There are also people in the media for whom ``Vietnam'' is
less a country or even a war than another way to ``get''
public officials.
Most of the media do not cover stories overseas these days.
(If you watch the news discussion shows, few of the
participants go out in the field to actually report anymore.)
That's precisely why they can be so judgmental of the men
and women our country sends out to do its dirty work.
Judgmentalism is fun. It builds bylines and reputations, and
if it hurts a few public lives here and there, well, that's
what those guys should have expected when they went into
public office. Given all of this, Bob Kerrey continues to
look like the hero everyone has thought him.
Mr. WARNER. I was personally impressed by these articles, the first
written by former Secretary of the Navy Jim Webb appearing today in the
Wall Street Journal, and the second in the Washington Times, written by
Georgie Anne Geyer. I have not sat down with Ms. Geyer in some time,
but in my course of these 23 years in the Senate, I have had the
opportunity to be interviewed by her. She is a very thoughtful and
careful journalist. In this article she recounts that she spent some 10
months in country covering that war.
Jim Webb, of course, was a highly decorated combat Marine officer:
Navy Cross, second highest decoration next to the Medal of Honor;
Silver Star; Purple Heart; and, coincidentally, he was a naval aide to
me and to John Chafee as a young captain and major in the Marine Corps
in that period of time. He briefed me prior to trips I would take to
Vietnam. Through the years I have valued his friendship enormously.
I also had another personal experience. I remember one day there was
a knock on my Senate door and in walked Jan Scruggs, who asked if I
would help his group in their struggles to build the Vietnam Veterans
Memorial. I cannot think of a greater honor I have had as a Member of
the Senate than working, as I often refer to myself, as a private in
the rear ranks of Jan Scruggs' group of individuals, who conceived and
put together this magnificent memorial to the men and women who
sacrificed so much in that conflict.
I think I worked with him 6 to 7 years. I went to many meetings with
many stormy sessions in either my Senate office or across the hall in
the Armed Services Committee, and in the Veterans' Affairs Committee. I
remember we would thrash out, in a highly contentious way, certain
aspects of the design and development of that historic memorial. Now it
stands as just an extraordinary reminder of that period. Its symbolism
is different to every person who comes up to look at it.
But in the course of those years, I relived, with so many of those
people, their experiences in that conflict. Therefore I have had, if I
may say, some modest association with the men and women who fought in
that conflict, and I have shared with them many times their thoughts
and concerns and recollections of the stresses and hardships that they
have carried with them to this day.
So I find these articles to be very compelling and I urge my
colleagues to read them. I think they provide thoughtful, objective
thinking to help in the interpretation of that chapter in history which
was so difficult to understand, particularly Senator Kerrey's mission
on that fateful night in Vietnam.
Americans must understand that war is a terrible thing. Since the
beginning of history, wars have imposed the harshest of consequences,
not only on the combatants in uniform but so often on the innocent
civilians who get entrapped between the lines or in the path of the
advance or in the path of the retreat. And they have paid a price. I
thought both Jim Webb and Ms. Geyer treated that subject thoughtfully
based on their own firsthand observations and experiences in country in
Vietnam.
So I attribute a great deal of credibility to these two authors,
particularly because of my long personal knowledge of Jim Webb. I say,
with great respect to him, his career in the military far exceeded
anything I ever did with my two brief periods of active duty, one just
in the training command at the close of World War II, and the second
for a brief tour of duty in Korea with the 1st Marine Air Corps.
To the extent I was able to observe others in a combat situation in
Korea,
[[Page S4094]]
as basically a staff officer--I never put myself in the category of
those who rightfully claim combat status, but I did stay in the same
tents, eat in the mess, slept in the bunkers with them--they are a very
special breed, these young men and women who fought wars in harm's way
to preserve our freedom.
Today I do my very best as a member of the Armed Services Committee
to provide for a means of showing my respect for them and, indeed, my
gratefulness to the American military for training me as a young person
and for providing me with the GI bill of rights.
I have many emotions as I stand before the Senate tonight to express
these views. I got to know Jim Webb well when he was in the office of
the Navy Secretary and I tried to counsel him as best I could on his
decision to leave active duty--which largely was not of his choosing
but was dictated by facts very personal to him. Had he stayed in the
Marine Corps I think he was destined to the highest of rank and the
greatest of responsibility. He had to make a tough decision to leave
the Corps and pursue other challenges. I mentioned, of course, for a
brief period he became Secretary of the Navy. I was very proud of his
service as Navy Secretary.
Several facts which I note from these articles and which I note from
my own observation, again, are unquestioned. So many statements have
been made by my distinguished colleagues about the honor and integrity
of Bob Kerrey. His bravery and valor have been recognized many times,
including being awarded the Congressional Medal of Honor.
I know during the Vietnam war we asked many young men--I repeat that,
we, the United States of America, we the Congress of the United States
and the President, the Presidents of the United States--asked many
young men, and some women in a combat support status, to undertake very
difficult missions under the most extreme and dangerous of conditions.
They put their lives at risk to accomplish sometimes unclear missions
while trying to minimize casualties within their own units.
Recently, I discussed this with members of the Armed Services
Committee staff, combat veterans from Vietnam. We followed these
stories about Senator Kerrey. We sat down and exchanged our own views.
I deferred to them because two of them were in the thick of battle and
they talked about the number of times throughout that war as veterans
of ground combat that they took risks, themselves, personally, and
risks to their men who were with them, to provide some measure of
protection to the innocent non-combatant persons who had gotten
entrapped in those battles in the dark nights and dusty days in that
deep canopy.
Yes, they did take personal risks themselves. As near as I can
determine, then-Lieutenant Kerrey, Robert Kerrey, took those risks
himself.
They did so to protect the civilians in the combat zone. In that
period of time, it was very difficult to determine who the enemy was;
imagine that--who the enemy was. It was a very complex conflict into
which we injected our men and women.
So we will never know exactly what happened that February night in
that Thanh Phong, Vietnam, battle. But I respect the word of my former
colleague, Robert Kerrey, and I urge other Senators to read these
articles and decide for themselves. I believe each of us ought to make
our own determination about this situation.
I conclude my remarks with a salute to the men and women who fought
in that conflict and share with them my complete understanding, as near
as I can base it on my own experiences. I salute them.
____________________