June 26, 2005

See-Dubya: Yet Another Kerry Cambodia Story Surfaces

One of the strangest episodes of the 2004 election was John Kerry’s insistence that he had gone on a covert mission to Cambodia in 1968 or 1969. At one point he showed a reporter a moldy old “lucky hat�, squirreled away in a secret compartment of his briefcase, which he said was given to him by a CIA agent on the (one of the?) mission(s?). But he kept changing the facts of the story; at one point he just went “near� the Cambodian border, it wasn’t at Christmas, there were three or four trips, etc., etc. Much of the story began to sound like a politically convenient fabrication, and the constant revisions and defensiveness about the details undermined Kerry's credibility for many voters—especially vis-a-vis the accusations of the Swift Vets for Truth.

“No s---, See-Dub, thanks for the enlightenment,� I can hear you lovely readers saying. Fine. We are revisiting this because I just found another version of Kerry’s story. It’s a little late to the game, sure, but I’m all about getting to the bottom of mysteries rather than just about scoring political points.

First, some context for this new stuff. In 1988, dashing young Senator Kerry convened a Senate subcommittee to look at the drug problem, especially as it related to Latin America and the Caribbean. The hearings went on for a long time and thousands of pages of testimony were taken before the final report was issued. Anyway, one of the witnesses was a guy named Franklin Camper, who ran a paramilitary training camp in Alabama and trained, well, mercenaries and foreign terrorists. He testified about goings-on in Noriega’s Panama. As his testimony wrapped up, Kerry sort of gave a retrospective and then said the following:

And you’ve referred to Vietnam. This Senator is also painfully aware of the trafficking that took place at that period of time, of the Golden Triangle, as it was referred to, and of the use of heroin, poppy, and so forth to buy weapons, transfer information, deal with the Khmer Rouge, among others.

And I personally went on one clandestine joint CIA mission into Cambodia in which we delivered weapons. So, I am very familiar with it.

Source: Hearings Before the Subcommittee on Terrorism, Narcotics and International Operations of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, part IV. 100th Congress. July 14, 1988. p.319.

Much analysis and commentary on this after the jump.

What’s new about this?
What’s new here is that this is a different reason for the trip. Before he was dropping off personnel, according to Kerry biographer Douglas Brinkley:

He [Brinkley] said: "Kerry went into Cambodian waters three or four times in January and February 1969 on clandestine missions. He had a run dropping off US Navy Seals, Green Berets and CIA guys." The missions were not armed attacks on Cambodia, said Mr Brinkley, who did not include the clandestine missions in his wartime biography of Mr Kerry, Tour of Duty.

"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."

But in 1988, he’s delivering weapons, not personnel. Either Brinkley made that up, Kerry made that up, Kerry lied to Brinkley about what the purpose of the Cambodia voyage was supposed to be, or Kerry lied in this statement before the Senate.

To whom would he have been delivering weapons?
Beats the crap outta me. Here’s a wild guess. Cambodia’s Prince Sianhouk refused American offers of aid in the form of helicopters and communications equipment because accepting American aid might upset the Russians, according to State Department “Cambodia Guy� Andrew Antippas. If Kerry had all this to tell again, he might make a case that he was delivering a covert shipment of arms to Prince Sianhouk’s government in a way that would avoid causing an international incident, I guess.

Do you actually believe that?
Not for a minute. Because I can construct a faintly plausible interpretation of these facts doesn’t mean it was actually true--even Kerry says otherwise. He certainly wasn’t delivering helicopters in his swift boat, and he spoke of “weapons�, not “communications equipment�. And anyway, if you wanted to drop off a package of arms for Prince Sianhouk discreetly, you could just send stuff over the border in a truck. No reason to use a boat.

More importantly, the Cambodia story changed around so much under scrutiny of the campaign that I don’t think even Kerry really knows what happened. There’s a lot of evidence that the whole trip to Cambodia was manufactured and this is just one more cockeyed version of it.

Why didn’t this come up during the campaign?
Maybe it did and it just never came to my attention. But I suspect it didn’t, because this arose spontaneously in an unrelated hearing about Latin America, and not in a place where you would expect to find a statement about Cambodia. It’s just one aside in a thousand or more pages of testimony, which is not electronically searchable, and I just happened across it. (Funny, I’d have thought opposition research would have done this, though.)

Why in the hell were you reading it?
Look at my posting times. I obviously suffer from acute insomnia. Transcriptions of Kerry speeches and hearings do the trick.

What about that drug stuff? He sounds like he knows a lot about that.
I wouldn’t put too much weight on it. He probably read Alfred W. McCoy’s 1972 book about the CIA and drug dealers in SE Asia, a perennial favorite among moonbats, which details pretty much everything he said. You could read that statement to read that he has personal knowledge of drug traffic in SE Asia, but that’s not quite what he said. He just said he’s familiar with it.

On the other hand I would say his choice of words does nothing to dispel that. It almost sounds like he wants to create the impression that he was involved in some shady Special Ops-drugs-for-arms scheme or some dodgy CIA-arms-for-drugs racket or some illicit NSA-blackmail-for-murder-for-hire-for-meth-for-oil-for-food-for-transvestite-mercenary-spanking-for-a-speaking-part-in-the-Beverly-Hillbillies-remake-for-Stinger-missiles-for-guns-for-butter-for-hot-hot-hiney-sex-with-Washingtonienne kinda black–op, Mack Bolan-bad-ass-pulp-novel-plot, but he doesn’t want to quite come out and say that.

Especially since it never actually happened.

You get paid by the hyphen?
The Jawa Report is proudly sponsored by Acme Hyphen and Em-Dash, for all your compounding needs.

Dude, the election’s over. Your guy won. Can’t you just let it go?
What, did I twist your arm and make you read this far? Look, I think there’s a legitimate historical interest in establishing whether or not there were covert US boat runs into Cambodia during the Johnson presidency. It’s nice to be able to do that without the clamor and partisanship of an election going on. Plus it’s an interesting gloss on the election and the loyalties and assessments of the pundits and personalities involved (especially the Swift Vets and Douglas Brinkley). Kerry may not run again, but who else told the truth and who lied or got it wrong? Were the accusations against Kerry baseless electioneering? Or was John Kerry a serial fibber, who was inconsistently spinning a bogus yarn to elevate a carefully filmed and stage-managed, though honorable, tour of duty into an Apocalypse Now fantasy with him in the Martin Sheen role? (or more correctly, the Lawrence Fishburne role?)

This new fact edges the balance of history a little bit more toward the latter. The American public’s judgment is to be commended.