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During CNN’s coverage of the confirmation hearings for former Senator Chuck Hagel I mentioned how the Vietnam war experiences of Secretary of State John Kerry and Hagel shaped their worldviews. I mentioned that Kerry had killed a man in Vietnam, though I wasn’t sure about Hagel.

Here’s a little bit more about the Kerry story, from a Nightline in 2004:

ABC News Transcripts

June 22, 2004 Tuesday

SHOW: NIGHTLINE (11:35 PM ET) - ABC

NIGHTLINE BAPTISM BY FIRE



June 22 2004

TED KOPPEL, ABC NEWS

It was dangerous and harrowing duty.

GENE THORSON, VIETNAM VETERAN

It was nervous-wracking, tense at all times because you never really knew what was really going to happen. You were like a big bull’s eye going up and down the river.

TED KOPPEL

He killed an enemy soldier at close quarters.

FRED SHORT, VIETNAM VETERAN

When you’re close enough to see them to count the whiskers on their face, to be that close to someone, it becomes very personal. And that would affect anyone, I would suspect.


TED KOPPEL

His experience in Vietnam changed him forever.

SENATOR JOHN KERRY,

DEMOCRATIC PRESIDENTIAL CANDIDATE

Well, I think it affects anybody who carries a gun in another country, shooting at other human beings. Unless you’re insensitive, it has an impact on you.

graphics: baptism by fire

TED KOPPEL

Tonight, “Baptism By Fire,” echoes of a distance war.

graphics: ABC NEWS: Nightline

ANNOUNCER

From ABC News, this is “Nightline.” Reporting from Washington, Ted Koppel.

TED KOPPEL

(Off Camera) In war time, governments award medals for behavior that could send a man to prison in times of peace. That can play games with a man’s head. It’s one reason why so many veterans who’ve been in combat, who have seen comrades killed, who themselves have killed, find it difficult to talk about the experience, even with family and friends, who have never been to war. I mention that because it’s relevant to John Kerry’s campaign for the presidency. Here’s a distinguished combat veteran who was wounded three times and awarded three Purple Hearts. Questions have been raised by Kerry’s political opponents about the seriousness of at least one of those wounds. But the rules are simple, if you’re wounded in combat and require treatment by a medic, you get a Purple Heart. Again, Kerry has three of them. Also, he was awarded a Bronze Star for courage and a Silver Star for gallantry. Those are the kind of medals you showcase in a Presidential campaign. And the Kerry campaign has done just that. It has also surrounded the candidate with Vietnam-era veterans. The Senator clearly sees his service in Vietnam as a plus. The Bush campaign has responded by reminded voters that Kerry became a peace activist when he came home. That he tossed those medals over the Capitol fence, in protest against the war, or at least claimed to be doing so at the time. John Kerry and his war time service are clearly a centerpiece for his campaign for President. But if you expect him to talk about how he won that Silver Star, the most important of his medals, you’re likely to be disappointed. As I said at the outset, there are some things that some veterans just can’t or won’t talk about. Here’s more from ABC News correspondent Jake Tapper.

JAKE TAPPER, ABC NEWS

(Voice Over) 35 years after his return from Vietnam, John Kerry remains inextricably bound to that war. His campaign tries to use his decorated service in Vietnam, as seen in this ad campaign.

POLITICAL AD VOICE, MALE

In combat, he earned the Silver Star, the Bronze Star and three Purple Hearts. Then, he came home, determined to end that war.

JAKE TAPPER

(Voice Over) But his leadership of a Navy swift boat and his anti-war movement upon his return, are also areas his opponents sharply criticize.

REPUBLICAN, FEMALE

I remember watching Senator Kerry back when he was against the war, when he came home. And I was very troubled by the kind of allegations that he hurled against his fellow veterans, saying that they were guilty of all kinds of atrocities.

JAKE TAPPER

(Voice Over) Clearly, Lieutenant John Kerry’s four months in Vietnam and years in the anti-war movement shaped him. Such experiences provide some of his most humanizing moments. Reuniting with a man whose life he saved in the Mayhap River. They also cause some of his more visceral reactions, like in April, when Kerry was again about asked about an old controversy, whether he had thrown away medals to protest the Vietnam war.

SENATOR JOHN KERRY

This comes from a President and a Republican party that can’t even answer whether or not he showed up for duty in the National Guard. I’m not going to stand for it.

JAKE TAPPER

(Off Camera) It is clear, 29 years after the fall of Saigon, Vietnam is a war still being fought. If only in the hearts and minds of American voters.

SENATOR JOHN MCCAIN, REPUBLICAN, ARIZONA

At least, could we declare that the Vietnam war is over and have a cease-fire?

JAKE TAPPER

(Voice Over) Amidst all this heated political rhetoric and angry exchanges, what may be most intriguing about Kerry’s service in Vietnam, are the limits he has established. Limits as to what he will talk about. Because, perhaps more instructive about him than whether he threw away his medals is how he earned them. John Kerry won his Silver Star on February 28th, 1969. But he does not like to talk about it.

INTERVIEWER, MALE

How did you get the Silver Star?

SENATOR JOHN KERRY

You know, I got it surviving, I guess is the best way to put it. I think most people who walk around with medals in this country may be proud of medals. And I am. But are much more sort of thoughtful in remembering of the people that didn’t come home who are really the heroes. And I just am not comfortable sort of going into the story.

INTERVIEWER

Did you have to kill somebody in Vietnam?

SENATOR JOHN KERRY

It is a matter of record, what I did in Vietnam. And over the months that I was in combat, yes, we know that we were responsible for the loss of enemy lives. But that’s war.

INTERVIEWER

How did that affect you?

SENATOR JOHN KERRY

Well, I think it affects anybody who carries a gun in another country, shooting at other human beings. Unless you’re insensitive, it has an impact on you.

JAKE TAPPER

(Voice Over) He is not fully comfortable talking about it, even with his family.

VANESSA, DAUGHTER

And I said, well, what happened? And I was about seven. And he said, oh, the guy dropped it and ran away. And to be honest, it wasn’t until that two or three years ago that I actually learned that, you know, in the end, he actually killed someone.

INTERVIEWER

We spoke with your daughter Vanessa. And she said that when you told her the story of how you won your Silver Star in Vietnam, you omitted the fact that you had to kill another man. And I was wondering why.

SENATOR JOHN KERRY

I don’t know when I told her. I can’t remember when I told her the story. But, you know, that’s the ugly side of war that I think you want to put behind you.

JAKE TAPPER

(Voice Over) But close friends of Kerry say the events of February 28th, 1969, are not something he has put behind him. They are something he carries with him everyday. Killing a Vietcong sniper was, by all accounts, a defining moment for him, as a soldier and as a man.

Jan 1966

LYNDON BAINES JOHNSON,

36TH PRESIDENT OF UNITED STATES

War is always the same. It is young men dying in the fullness of their promise. It is trying to kill a man that you do not even know well enough to hate.

JAKE TAPPER

(Voice Over) Since Kerry will not talk about the day he killed a man, four of Kerry’s crew mates from his swift boat sat down to try to explain what happened. Though, not one was eager to revisit the events of that day. They had been conducting Operation Sea Lords, an operation that sent Navy swift boats deep into enemy territory.

DEL SANDUSKY, VIETNAM VETERAN

We were in ambushes and firefights, you know, one, two, three, four times a day. And we’d be on patrol for a day or two, sometimes on a special operation. Sometimes just on a regular patrol up and down the river. But mostly, it was special op.

JAKE TAPPER

(Voice Over) It was dangerous duty. ABC News correspondent Frank Mariana was on board a swift boat when it was attacked by Vietcong on both banks.

DAVID ALSTON, VIETNAM VETERAN

There’s really no way you can prepare someone for what we did or what we went through. Going in a river, you know, the enemy hear you. He know you coming. You don’t know where he is.

GENE THORSON

When you got a 50-foot boat, and you go up 18 feet high from the water up, you’re nothing but a floating target.

DEL SANDUSKY

I think it was shooting gallery. And we’re the little duck that goes this way and then comes back this way, right? We did it everyday.

FRED SHORT

I just assumed that every breath I took was my last breath. I had to put it in my mind that I was not coming back to endure what was going on.

JAKE TAPPER

(Voice Over) February 28th, 1969, was a day that started out badly and got much worse.

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ANNOUNCER

This is ABC News “Nightline.” Brought to you by …

commercial break

TED KOPPEL

(Off Camera) John Kerry and his crew mates were about to encounter the enemy, face-to-face. Part two, now, of Jake Tapper’s report.

JAKE TAPPER

(Voice Over) February 28th, 1969. Kerry and his crew mates were given a mission to take their swift boat up a canal off the Mayhap River. Surrounded by thick mangrove brush and many, many Vietcong.

DEL SANDUSKY

So, we on the 94 and two other boats went up, with some friendlies. And we had two ambushes.

FRED SHORT

I guess we had gotten 800 yards or 1,000 yards at the most. And this time, another B-40 rocket hit and maybe a couple more. But this one was close aboard. It blew the windows out of the -crew cabin. I see out of a spider hole, a Vietcong stand up dressed in a loin cloth, holding a B-40 rocket. Now, that’s an RPG, a rocket propelled grenade. It was designed for -to take out armor.

DEL SANDUSKY

Charlie would have lit us up like a Roman candle because we’re full of fuel, we’re full of ammunition.

JAKE TAPPER

(Voice Over) Protocol at the time would be for Kerry’s swift boat to fire to shore and then take evasive commanders. But Kerry ordered his second in command, Del Sandusky, to drive the swift boat onto the beach, directly into the ambush.

DEL SANDUSKY

I knew right away that, you know, uh-oh, we’re in the -doo-doo now. But, yeah, I knew, you know, John was intent. You know, we got to go and get this guy. There was no way we were going to back down off the beach.

DAVID ALSTON

I know when John Kerry told Del to beach that damn boat, this was a brand-new ball game. We wasn’t running. We took it to Charlie.

FRED SHORT

I would say, he was so close that I could see that he had a mustache, a very weak mustache, that he was growing. I could see the mustache on his face. And things were going slow-motion now, because you feel you were, you know -this is really getting scary.

DEL SANDUSKY

He needed like, 25, 30 yards to arm that rocket, all right. And as we beached, he could not aim it at us. So, he got up out of the spider hole, started running.

JAKE TAPPER

(Voice Over) Tommy Belodeau was manning the boat’s M-60 machine gun.

FRED SHORT

Tommy in the pit tank, winged him in the side of the legs, as he was coming across. But the guy didn’t miss stride. I mean, he did not break stride. He -like he was hopped up on something. He booked it. Maybe his adrenaline was coursing.

DEL SANDUSKY

John sized up the situation and realized that once Tommy had started shooting at the guy and wounded him in the leg, you know, that this was the only course of action -you know, John was going to chase this guy down and kill him. ‘Cause if he didn’t, we were all dead.

GENE THORSON

When we got to the bank, the man -was still running down a path. And Senator Kerry jumped up. Tommy Belodeau jumped off. And Michael McDarris.

JAKE TAPPER

(Voice Over) Seconds later, the three men, in hot pursuit, saw the Vietcong.

FRED SHORT

The guy was getting dread to stand up with a rocket on his shoulder, coming up. And Mr. Kerry took him out.

JAKE TAPPER

(Off Camera) How close was he?

FRED SHORT

He would have been about a 30-yard shot. Which, we were dead in the water up on the bank, point blank. If he missed us, he would have to, you know -there’s no way he could miss us. He could’ve thrown a rock and taken me out.

GENE THORSON

If this guy would have got up and -he had a clear shot at us. We would have been history. Wouldn’t have been no doubt about it.

FRED SHORT

And if that RPG had exploded in the pilot house or anywhere in that area, we were toast.

JAKE TAPPER

(Voice Over) Kerry and Medeiros searched his corpse, confiscated the rocket launcher and returned to the boat. Kerry did not speak of what he had just done. But for a Navy man, killing a man face-to-face was unusual.

DEL SANDUSKY

We usually didn’t see Charlie. So, to do an actual event like John did, you know, he never came back and displayed any symptoms or signs of problems that it bothered him. But I know it would have bothered me, you know, to do that actual, you know, kill a man, face-to-face.

FRED SHORT

When you’re close enough to see him, to count the whiskers on their face, to be that close to someone, it becomes very personal. And that would affect anyone, I would suspect.

JAKE TAPPER

(Voice Over) Kerry refuses to discuss in public how that event shook him and shaped him. And his crew will not betray matters he has told them in confidence about that moment. But Sandusky recalls a similar kill that affected him.

DEL SANDUSKY

We knew that he was up to no good. So, we ran over with the boat, sliced up his legs pretty good. We brought him onboard the boat. The Vietnamese interpreter that we had onboard interrogating him, trying to get some information out of him. But he couldn’t talk much, he was going into shock. But as he was dying, he was looking me in the eye. And I still get bad dreams every once in a while. I’ll wake up and I’ll see that death stare. Seeing death face-to- face, in a combat, you know, it has to be a similarity of people that have done it, you know, when you kill someone and you’re looking them in the eye. When John Kerry shot the guy, I don’t know if there’s a similarity there to what I went through.

JAKE TAPPER

(Off Camera) Back at the base, Kerry’s commander said, half tongue in cheek, he didn’t know whether banking the boat and chasing down the sniper merited Kerry a medal or a court-martial. But days later in Saigon, Kerry was awarded the Silver Star for valor by Vice Admiral Elmo Zeumwald, commander of Naval forces in Vietnam.

JAKE TAPPER

(Voice Over) Only weeks later, Kerry earned a Bronze Star for saving a Green Beret while wounded and under sniper fire. He also earned his third Purple Heart, which at the time meant he could be transferred home. It wasn’t until 1996, when he even talked to many of his crew again. That was the year that, in the midst of a tough Senate re-election contest, a “Boston Globe” columnist questioned the circumstances under which Kerry was awarded his Silver Star, wondering how much of a threat a wounded VC could really have posed. Called by the campaign to defend their former officer, the crew immediately flew to Boston. Including Tom Belodeau, who died one year later.

TOM BELODEAU, VIETNAM VETERAN

This man was more than capable of destroying that boat and everybody on it. Senator Kerry did not give him that opportunity. And for that reason, myself and three other people are here today.

JAKE TAPPER

(Voice Over) Kerry’s response that day, visceral in his emotions, vague in the details, is pretty close to his reaction to attacks on his service today.

SENATOR JOHN KERRY

This was a firefight, life or death. And it was that way every, single day. And for some desk jockey who wants to come in, who hasn’t seen a firefight in his life, to try to say that, that is just wrong.

JAKE TAPPER

(Off Camera) Kerry’s crew mates have experienced a wide variety of post-war reactions, ranging from alcoholism and posttraumatic stress disorder, to normal acclimation in society. Kerry himself, by all accounts, has dealt with his demons, though both his first and current wives have spoken about the Vietnam ghosts that cause him nightmares. Clearly, killing that VC was a necessary action. It also is one that has left a mark on the Senator. The precise effect we may never fully understand. I’m Jake Tapper, for “Nightline” in Washington.

TED KOPPEL

(Off Camera) So, do John Kerry’s Vietnam experiences help or hurt his Presidential campaign? That conversation when we come back.

commercial break

TED KOPPEL

(Off Camera) And joining me tonight, Adam Nagourney. He’s the chief political correspondent for “The New York Times” and has been covering the Presidential election since last year. I can’t say that I would have predicted that Vietnam would become an issue in this campaign. How much of an issue is it going to be? I mean, we’re four months away from election day.

ADAM NAGOURNEY, “THE NEW YORK TIMES”

Well, I think clearly, if Kerry has his way, his war record is going to be a central part of the campaign. From the very beginning, he sort of defined himself as a Vietnam veteran. And the fact that he served in the war has been a big part of his biography. The Republicans have made attempts to try to discredit it. I’m not sure how far -they can get away with that. We’ll see over the next couple of months. If they do, you could see a debate, given the nature of his service. ‘Cause it’s not only that he served in Vietnam, it’s that he came back and became one of the nation’s leading opponents of the war, as well. And that’s what Republicans focus on.

TED KOPPEL

(Off Camera) And of course, there’s another aspect to this that you haven’t referred to yet. And that is questions about the President’s own record when he was in the Air National Guard.

ADAM NAGOURNEY

See, I think that’s what complicates things for White House if they want to try to raise questions about Kerry. I mean, it just -once again, it tears open this whole wound of Vietnam, which I think still remains very strong. And if they want to try to discredit Kerry’s record, I mean, the bottom line is, the guy won five medals. And the President and Vice President found ways not to serve in Vietnam. So, they’re -in a complicated position as they try to do it. But I think that Vietnam is such a central part of Kerry’s biography and his existence and why it is that he won the Democratic nomination that there’s going to be a lot of pressure on Republicans to try to figure out a way to discredit it, if they can.

TED KOPPEL

(Off Camera) Where does this go from here on in? In other words, just today, Adam, up on the Hill, there was a vote. He hasn’t been in Washington much for voting. But it has to do with veterans benefits. And the Republicans, apparently, deliberately delayed the vote so that he would not be able to get to California -I’m talking about John Kerry, now, in order to, you know, for a fund-raising trip. Is it really going to descend to that level?

ADAM NAGOURNEY

I mean, as we were saying before, I think the Republicans, or certainly the White House, is constrained to the extent to which they can try to disrupt him on this. I don’t recall him ever coming back to Washington for a vote. That’s probably too strong. But it shows how important this is to his biography. So, I think, no matter what the Republicans are hoping or intending to do, you’re going to find that as we get closer to the convention, this is gonna become more and more a central part of his biography and the definition of why he would be a good President. And -while I think that’s relevant in any Presidential campaign, you know, military service, I think in this one, it’s going to be more relevant than ever. And I think -both sides get that.

TED KOPPEL

(Off Camera) On balance, in other words, you think it’s a big plus for him?

ADAM NAGOURNEY

I mean, especially in this year, when -you know, we’re looking at election when we’re talking about electing a war-time President. And I think President Bush’s approaching the election this way and Kerry’s approaching the election this way. And I think to present yourself as someone who’s been in battle and one war -at least, I mean, the whole rationale of Kerry as a candidate from the very beginning -and this is why, in my opinion, he won the Democratic primary, to a large extent. Was because he had the sort of military background. He’d been there. That he could compete with the President, who had led this country through this awful, awful time. And I think that’s going to become more and more clear as we get to the general elections.

TED KOPPEL

(Off Camera) Adam Nagourney, thank you.

ADAM NAGOURNEY

Thank you.

TED KOPPEL

(Off Camera) American soldiers were, once again, under fire in Iraq today. Details of that when we come back.

graphics: Nightline: Abcnews.com

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TED KOPPEL

(Off Camera) It was another deadly day in Iraq for Americans in the line of duty. Two soldiers were killed and one wounded when a military convoy was ambushed north of Baghdad.

TED KOPPEL

(Off Camera) That’s our report for tonight. I’m Ted Koppel in Washington. For all of us here at ABC News, good night.