September 08, 2004

LYING ABOUT VIETNAM -- a former member of John Kerry's "Vietnam Veterans Against the War" comes forward. Quotable:
[Steve] Pitkin appears several times in the [VVAW] documentary film "Winter Soldier," where he comes across as vague and somewhat stunned, especially while being questioned by John Kerry in a preliminary interview .. But Steve Pitkin says today that what the film actually shows are his efforts to avoid answering Kerry�s questions at all. During the formal hearings, Pitkin started to slam the press for misrepresenting what GIs really did in Vietnam, but a woman he believes was Jane Fonda shot him an astonished look and started to stand up. Steve could see other members of the group getting ready to cut him off, so he changed course and made up a few things he thought they would be willing to accept. "Everything I said about atrocities and racism was a lie. My unit never went out with the intention of doing anything but its job. And I never saw black soldiers treated differently, get picked out for the worst or most dangerous jobs, or anything like that. There were some guys, shirkers, who would intentionally injure themselves to get sent home, so I talked about that for a while. But the fact is I lied my ass off, and I'm not proud of it."
UPDATE: There's a news story on this here. Quotable:
In a sworn affidavit on August 31, 2004, Pitkin said that he rode in a van with John Kerry, a national leader of the VVAW, Scott Camil, and others from Washington, DC to attend the conference. The event was intended to publicize alleged American war crimes in Vietnam, but Pitkin maintains that he did not intend to speak at the inquiry since he had no knowledge of such war crimes.

Pitkin now claims that Kerry and other anti-war leaders pressured him to testify about American war crimes, despite his protestations that he could not honestly do so. He says that one of the event leaders threatened to leave him stranded in Detroit if he refused to participate.

Pitkin's affidavit says, "Kerry and other leaders of the event instructed me to publicly state that I had witnessed incidents of rape, brutality, atrocities and racism, knowing that such statements would necessarily be untrue." ..

Pitkin says that on the second day of the conference, he was surrounded by a group of the event's leaders who wanted him to speak. He reiterated that he had no personal knowledge of any of the alleged misconduct. He claims that Kerry said to him, "Surely you had to have seen some of the atrocities."

It was at this point that Pitkin says the group's leaders threatened him. Under pressure from the group that he describes as "menacing." He finally agreed to testify. Pitkin says that group coached him to tell stories about rape, brutality, shooting prisoners, and racism.

Posted by Greg Ransom | TrackBack