Swift Boat Author Told President Nixon He Was in Cambodia
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WASHINGTON – The chief critic of John Kerry’s military record told President Nixon in 1971 that he had been in Cambodia in a swift boat during the Vietnam War – a claim at odds with his recent statements that he was not.
“I was in Cambodia, sir. I worked along the border,” said John O’Neill in a conversation that was taped by the former president’s secret recording system. The tape is stored at the National Archives in College Park, Md.
In an interview with the Associated Press yesterday, Mr. O’Neill did not dispute what he said to Nixon, but insisted he was never actually in Cambodia.
“I think I made it very clear that I was on the border, which is exactly where I was for three months. I was about 100 yards from Cambodia,” Mr. O’Neill said in clarifying the June 16, 1971, conversation with Nixon.
A spokesman for the Democratic presidential candidate, Chad Clanton, said the tape “is just the latest in a long line of lies and false statements from a group trying to smear John Kerry’s military service. Again, they’re being proven liars with their own words.”
Mr. O’Neill served in Vietnam from 1969-70 and says in a recent book that he took command of Mr. Kerry’s swift boat after the future Massachusetts senator returned home from the war.
Mr. O’Neill has emerged as a leading figure in the attacks on Mr. Kerry’s war record. He is co-author of “Unfit for Command,” which accuses Mr. Kerry of lying about his record, and is a member of Swift Boat Veterans for Truth..
In the book, Mr. O’Neill wrote that Mr. Kerry’s accounts of having been in Cambodia on Christmas Eve of 1968 “are complete lies.”
“…Kerry was never ordered into Cambodia by anyone and would have been court-martialed had he gone there,” he wrote. Mr. O’Neill wrote that the Navy positioned its own craft along the border area to make sure no American vessels strayed across the border from Vietnam.
In an interview Sunday on ABC’s “This Week” Mr. O’Neill said: “Our boats didn’t go north of, only slightly north of Sedek,” which he said was about 50 miles from the Cambodian border.
