The Fog of War
32 years after leaving Vietnam,
Bob Kerrey admits a terrible secret - and stands accused of
worse. The tangled tale embodies the madness of Vietnam
By
JOHANNA MCGEARY and KAREN TUMULTY
He was in
the land of nightmares, where nothing counted but killing
or being killed. Twenty-five and eager to do his duty, whatever
that might be. He was supposed to kill, and he was also responsible
for the lives of six men in a war with almost no rules. The
enemy was all around, but he didn't know who or where they
were. The dark, the confusion, the strain of listening for
sounds that signaled death, the tension, the terror. Suddenly
he had to make a choice, and he pulled the trigger. Oh, God,
what have I done?
For former
Senator Bob Kerrey, that nightmare never goes away. He knows
that one night 32 years ago in Vietnam, he and his squad of
NavySEALskilled nearly a score of unarmed civilians, mainly
women and children. The shame and guilt and remorse have haunted
him since. He did not want to make his personal anguish public
any more than other Americans want to dredge up the nation's
agony again. But because a fellowSEAL who lived through the
same nightmare that night has come forward with an even more
damning chain of events than Kerrey admits to, his private
pain is reopening hard questions about war, memory and guilt.
The tangled tale of ambiguous acts, conflicting recollections
and tragic carnage embodies the madness that was the Vietnam
War. So here we are, faced with another judgment to make in
the endless reckoning of damages inflicted by that disastrous
conflict.
Why? Because
history never stops being written. Because Kerrey is a politician,
a public figure respected for his candor, a certified war
hero who survived grievous wounds, a man who once sought and
may again seek the presidency. And because the ambiguity of
his experience reminds us that good men did terrible things
in Vietnam, making us examine what it means when honor is
peeled away from war.
Several
years ago, a reporter named Gregory Vistica, who worked for
Newsweek at the time, got wind of a big story. A former commander
had heard from a troubledSEAL that his unit, led by the young
Kerrey, had been involved in a Vietnam raid that went horribly
wrong. Vistica pursued the tale until he turned up the Navy's
dusty "after action" reports on the events of Feb. 25, 1969,
in the isolated peasant village of Thanh Phong. Late in 1998,
when Kerrey was contemplating a second run for the presidency,
the reporter put those 30-year-old documents in then Senator
Kerrey's hands. The Senator knew his actions on that terrible
night were no longer a private affair. "There's a part of
me that wants to say to you all the memories that I've got
are my memories," Vistica quotes Kerrey as saying, "and I'm
not going to talk about them."
But he did.
And so last week Kerrey found himself talking again, this
time in a calculated effort to tell his version of the story
before Vistica's investigation appeared this week in a bylined
article in the New York Times Magazine and on a segment of
60 Minutes II, for which Vistica received a producer's credit.
These reports take a condemning view of the raid, strongly
suggesting that Kerrey is wrong when he says the civilian
deaths were the tragic consequence of the fog of war, and
that the former squad mate, Gerhard Klann, is right when he
says the killings were a deliberate execution. Now Kerrey
faces a whole army of reporters seeking to cut through the
shifting memories to get to the truth of what he did that
night.
We may never
find it. Decisions made under fire look different in hindsight.
The trauma of the moment can leave permanent gaps and contradictions
in testimony. Either Kerrey or Klann may be lying to himself
- and us - now.
In an interview
with TIME last Friday, Kerrey said the other five members
of his squad have agreed to come forward with a "statement
of facts" that he hopes will help set the controversy to rest.
Later Friday, they all dined at Kerrey's house and talked
the raid over for the very first time. The next evening, the
six formerSEALsissued a statement saying the allegation of
an execution "is simply not true," adding, "We took fire and
we returned fire." Kerrey also told TIME he is considering
surrendering the tainted Bronze Star he got for that night's
work.
In a citation
that accompanied the Bronze Star, Kerrey is lauded for his
unit's "heroic achievement" in killing 21 Viet Cong, burning
two hooches, or peasant huts, and capturing two enemy weapons.
Kerrey never mentioned the medal in his official bio. As he
acknowledged last week, there was nothing heroic about what
really happened.
Our experience
of Vietnam is shaped by what we let ourselves say. Memory
plays tricks - and to ward off horror, we make our memories
play tricks. Except for long ago, when he told his mother,
his first wife and a minister, Kerrey never brought up the
botched mission at Thanh Phong. And then, on April 18 of this
year, at a small speech to ROTC candidates at Virginia Military
Institute, toward the end of his discourse about moral justifications
of war, Kerrey spoke about the night in 1969 when he led six
NavySEALson an operation to take out a suspected Viet Cong
official. "We used lethal procedures when there was doubt,"
he said. "When we received fire, we returned fire. But when
the firing stopped, we found that we had killed only women,
children and older men. It was not a military victory; it
was a tragedy, and I had ordered it."
As Kerrey
recalls it, the nighttime assault unfolded amid the confusion
endemic to Vietnam. In-country for just a month, the 25-year-old
lieutenant had charge of a squad of élite NavySEALs(short
for Sea, Air and Land unit) trained to emerge from the dark,
kidnap or kill local Viet Cong leaders, then melt back into
the jungle. This night their target was a village secretary
reportedly holding a party meeting in Thanh Phong. The straggle
of hooches lay deep in the Mekong Delta "free-fire zone,"
where innocent civilians had - officially, at least - been
cleared out, and everyone left was deemed an enemy.
Kerrey's
Raiders, as the squad called itself, had little experience
but lots of enthusiasm. Despite warnings of "considerable
danger," toward 12 midnight on a moonless night, the men piled
into a swift boat and headed for Thanh Phong. Darkness gave
cover but heightened the confusion. As the men crept toward
the village, they bumped into an outlying hooch they thought
was a warning outpost. Kerrey says his men, wielding knives,
told him they would "take care" of the people inside to prevent
them from alerting the village. But Kerrey says he did not
join in the killings or examine the victims.
Some minutes
later, Kerrey recalls, the squad spotted four or five huts
by the faint flicker of candles inside. Then out of the night
came the whine of gunfire. "We returned it," says Kerrey,
giving the order for his men to unleash a ferocious barrage
of automatic rifle rounds, grenades and armor-piercing rockets.
In the flashing tracer light, no one could see who was being
hit. The assault lasted only a few minutes.
MORE>>
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May 7, 2001 | No. 18
COVER
STORIES
Haunted
by Vietnam
Former U.S. Senator Bob Kerrey confesses under pressure to killing more
than a dozen innocents in 1969. In his sadness, shame and decades-long
silence, fellow vets see themselves-and the rest of America confronts
war's wrenching ambiguity
TRAVELER'S
ADVISORY
SOUTH
PACIFIC
PAPUA NEW GUINEA: Murder in the Dark...
The still potent fear of sorcery is leading to vigilante killings
THE
ARTS
ART: Andrew Sayers reframes Australia's
view of itself...
THEATRE:
The RSC takes on Shakespeare's histories..
BOOKS: Inside the domestic interior of
Vermeer
MUSIC: Irish boy band Westlife goes transatlantic
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