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[John] Kerry's [Cambodia] story is clearly meant as a "conversion moment." A significant divergent detail in the above is that Kerry's revelation was negative. Saul heard a voice speaking truth. Kerry, appropriately, heard a voice speaking lies. Of course, Kerry was not in Cambodia on that Christmas. He has admitted that. The then current President made no such speech. The story was a falsehood in itself. But it was made to illustrate Kerry's own conversion from supporting the war to opposing it. He felt need to dramatize the event and to make it into a moment when he had a sudden flash of enlightenment.

With that as context, Brinkley's book [Tour of Duty] is interesting. Brinkley never mentions the story, which suggests that he knew that it was not true. But it would have made an interesting inclusion. It is dramatic, and it could have been retold in such a way to make plain that Brinkley knew that it was Kerry's fabrication. There was no way to retell it without making plain that it was a stretcher, however, because the story runs directly counter to documented events and also to statements made by Kerry and others in the book. Brinkley did not choose the "flash of enlightenment" path, he chose instead to employ careful billboards of foreshadowing to demonstrate Kerry's shift from accepting at least as reasonable the U.S. involvement in Vietnam to vigorously and harshly attacking it ..