Jim Russell and other witnesses of uncertain provenance appearing from out of the woodwork

Roughly this time yesterday, a Google News search on "Kerry 'Jim Russell'" turned up exactly two entries — and tonight as I write this post, that same search turns up 210.  This should give you some clue how eagerly the Kerry campaign has embraced Mr. Russell after meaty parts of his letter to the editor in the Telluride Daily Planet Sunday were reprinted in Monday's WaPo.

Most of the hits, however, are to identical reprints of wire service reports.  AP's offers this short blurb about Mr. Russell:

In a conference call with reporters arranged by aides to the Democratic presidential candidate, Navy swift boat officers Rich McCann, Jim Russell and Rich Baker said Kerry acted honorably and bravely and was well qualified to be the nation's commander in chief.

Knight-Ridder's version has only a little more:

On Monday, three veterans who served with Kerry denounced the ads in a conference call arranged by Kerry's campaign. All said they'd intended to stay out of the presidential race, but were incensed by the ads.

"When those ads came out, when they misrepresented what I knew to be a fact, I knew I had to say something," said former Navy Lt. Jim Russell, 60, of Telluride, Colo.

A version from the Chicago Tribute's newswire, republished elsewhere, offers more detail, some of it clearly wrong (bracketed portion mine):

Rich Baker of Pittsburgh, Rich McCann of Chagrin Falls, Ohio, and Jim Russell of Telluride, Colo., said they voluntarily came forward because they were disturbed that some of the same men who honored Kerry for meritorious service, and later supported him for the Senate, were now attacking him in his run for the presidency.

Russell said he was in An Thoi [sic — that's the base, not where the action happened] on March 13, 1969, the day Army Special Forces Lt. James Rassmann was thrown from his boat and rescued by Kerry, who earned the Bronze Star for his actions.

"My recollection is that we were under fire off and on during the whole time this incident took place," Russell said. "My direct recollection is of seeing John Kerry bend over his boat and pick up the soldier out of the water, that (Kerry's) boat was by itself up river."

A later AP version offers quite a lot more about Mr. Russell, but then goes on to quote statements from him that would seem to directly impeach the assertions being made by the other vets who were not on Kerry's own boat who've nonetheless been produced by the Kerry campaign to support the claim that Kerry was under enemy fire when he plucked Rassmann from the water (boldface added):

A Colorado veteran who says he witnessed John Kerry's actions during a Vietnam firefight said Monday the presidential candidate deserves both the Bronze Star and Purple Heart medals he was awarded.

Jim Russell, now retired and living in the ski resort town of Telluride, said his boat was nearby, taking small arms fire on March, 13, 1969, as he watched Kerry pluck a crewman from the water upstream....

Russell said he kept quiet about his role in the fight for 35 years until he saw television ads attacking Kerry's war record and questioning his valor.

"When those ads came out and misrepresented what I knew to be a fact, I had to say something. I found him to be an aggressive, tough, and by-the-book kind of guy when he was in Vietnam," he said.

Russell said the casualty rate for boats going upriver during the war was 86 percent.

"You don't put in for a Purple Heart. It's the one medal you don't even want," Russell said during a telephone conference call set up by the Kerry campaign in response to allegations by veteran supporters of President Bush that Kerry exaggerated his military record.

Russell said Navy regulations at the time required troops to report injuries or face court-martial if the wounds got infected. "To say he should not be getting the Purple Hearts is just ridiculous," he said....

Russell said the only people who know for sure if they were under fire were in Kerry's boat, and they have supported Kerry's version of what happened that day.

"My direct recollection seeing John Kerry bend over his boat and pick up the soldier out of the water was that his boat was by itself, upriver," he said. "The only people that know if he was under fire were the people in that boat and the person in the water. Those are the people that you need to ask that question to, and I think they've already responded to it."

And Bloomberg.com provides another quote from the call that adds confusion (boldface added):

Jim Russell, who served on a separate gunboat during a mission with Kerry in Vietnam, disputed claims by the Swift Boat Veterans for Truth that there was no enemy fire when Kerry earned a Purple Heart and Silver Star for rescuing Jim Rassmann, who had fallen overboard. Rassmann also backs Kerry's story.

"We were under fire off and on while the incident took place,'' Russell, 60, said during a conference call organized by Kerry's campaign.  There were no other boats close enough to Kerry during the incident for the other veterans to be able to tell whether there were bullets flying, he told reporters.

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None of the press reports at all bother to mention that just days ago, the Kerry campaign's universal talking point was that none of the SwiftVets can be believed about anything because none of them "served with John Kerry."   Then came the modified version, that none of the SwiftVets can be believed about anything because (with one exception, usually ignored by the press and always ignored by Kerry partisans), the SwiftVets weren't under Kerry's command on his boat.  This week, however, William Rood's memoir of the Silver Star action is the Kerry campaign's new gospel, even though he commanded a different boat.

On Monday in particular, however, with respect to the Bay Hap River/Rassmann rescue/Bronze Star action, it apparently struck no one in the press as odd that on back-to-back days, the Kerry campaign has trumpeted the Langhofer version ("a lot of firing going on, and it came from both sides of the river") and then the Russell version ("off and on fire," just from the "left beach") — even though both Mr. Langhofer and Mr. Russell on were on Lt. Droz' PCF 43, and neither of them were on Lt. Kerry's PCF 94. 

And on this particular Monday, it also struck no one in the press as odd that most previous witnesses, including Kerry supporters, have agreed that another Swift Boat (Chenoweth's PCF 23) was no more than a few yards and a few seconds away from rescuing Rassmann when Kerry did so — but now Kerry backer Mr. Russell says nobody except Rassmann and the people on Kerry's boat could tell if Kerry's boat was under fire. 

These changes in Kerry campaign tactics, and these conflicts among their witnesses, go entirely unnoticed and unprobed.  Ummm — hello?  In addition to three Purple Hearts, a Silver Star, and a Bronze Star, did the US Navy also award Kerry an unlimited, transferable license to flip-flop?  In addition to his lucky hat from the CIA guy, is he also wearing, and slipping his witnesses under, Harry Potter's magic cloak of invisibility?

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Of course, an extremely important predicate question to any of this discussion remains entirely  unanswered by the mainstream media outlets who've now bought into Mr. Russell's (and others') absolute credibility without blinking an eyelash or asking any qualifying questions:

Who is this Jim Russell fellow, and how much can he actually tell us that's meaningful about Sen. Kerry's combat record?

Kerry partisan Dr. Josh Marshall of Talking Points Memo is entirely satisfied: "It seems he was where he said he was. The Post mentions his account in this story today [Monday]. And he was on a conference call today arranged by the Kerry campaign."  Well yeah, Josh, but ... I'm pretty sure you did better sourcing than this when you got that PhD in History, didn't ya?

I wrote yesterday at some length about the peculiarities apparent just from the face of Mr. Russell's original letter to the editor, and my commenters promptly chimed in with several more.  I won't repeat those here, but suffice it to say, Mr. Russell's description of the events create ample reasons to wonder whether he knows much about Swift Boats.

Moreover, Jim Russell's name appears nowhere on the comprehensive, but admittedly not exhaustive, "Swift Boat Crew Directory" of the general website of Swiftee veterans, www.swiftboats.net, which includes all of the various Coastal Divisions that together were part of Coastal Squadron One; this website predated, and is entirely unconnected with, Swift Boat Veterans for Truth or the current SwiftVets vs. Kerry controversy.  Although he's identified by the uncritical media reports as a "Swift Boat officer," that's not the way he identified himself in his original letter to the editor, and it seems extremely unlikely that he ever commanded or helped command — or was part of a regular crew for — any Swift Boat.

Nor does Mr. Russell's name appear in the indices of either John O'Neill's Unfit for Combat, Douglas Brinkley's Tour of Duty, or Michael Kranish et al.'s John F. Kerry: The Complete Biography by the Boston Globe Reporters Who Know Him Best.

In his letter to the editor, Mr. Russell described himself as having been "assigned as Psychological Operation Officer for the Swift Boat group out of An Thoi, Vietnam, from January 1969 to October 1969. As such, I was on No. 43 boat, skippered by Don Droz who was later that year killed by enemy fire."  Even if we take the Knight-Ridder reference to him as a "Navy Lt." at face value, it leaves entirely unclear Mr. Russell's position in the chain of command, his superior officers, or his regular duties.  Indeed, from Mr. Russell's description, one cannot even conclude with confidence that he was based at An Thoi, or whether instead Coastal Division 11 was one of many units for whom he also simultaneously served as "Psychological Operations Officer," perhaps from a desk in Saigon.

So what, if anything, is Mr. Russell's basis for asserting to the national press on Monday that he found young Lt. Kerry to be an "aggressive, tough, and by-the-book kind of guy"?  Could he tell all that from watching Kerry pluck Rassmann from the river?  Was he intimately acquainted with Kerry's performance in and out of combat, and yet he somehow managed not to have his name mentioned by anyone on either side of the controversy until yesterday?

We can only guess.  Apparently, that's good enough for the Kerry campaign, Josh Marshall, and the entire mainstream media.

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However, in chapter 5 at pp. 78-79, O'Neill's Unfit for Command (which I've finally laid hands upon, and just finished reading) includes this interesting passage, which to my knowledge has gotten no notice in either the mainstream media or the blogosphere:

In his Dam Doi operating report from February 20, 1969, Kerry recommended "psy-ops" (psychological operations) along the Dam Doi — a recommendation he lauds as a great achievement in his 1970 interview in the Harvard Crimson:  "One time Kerry was ordered to destroy a Viet Cong village but disobeyed orders and suggested that the Navy Command simply send in a Psychological Warefare team to befriend the villagers with food, hospital supplies, and better educational facilities."  Once again, Kerry promotes himself as an "antiwar warrior."

Surprisingly, the Navy adopted a psy-ops recommendation.  If the idea were indeed Kerry's, then it would have been the only such recommendation he made and the only one to be adopted.  At any rate, the program was an unmitigated disaster.  Many Swiftees, including John O'Neill, wondered who could have been so stupid as to recommend using our boats to travel slowly while playing psy-ops tapes over a loudspeaker, appealing in Vietnamese to the local population, in an area as hostile as the Dam Doi.  Many Swiftees and Mobile Riverine Sailors died or were wounded on these missions following the "Boston Strangler's" [Kerry's call-sign] recommendation.

One was Shelton White, a well-known film producer of underwater documentaries, who was wounded three times on the Dam Doi in a matter of minutes but returned to fight again.  White and many other sailors who signed the May 4, 2004, Swift Boat Veterans for the Truth letter opposing Kerry's presidential campaign did not realize even in 2004 that it was John Kerry who recommended this ill-conceived psy-ops operation for which they had paid with their blood.

And Brinkley's Tour of Duty (which I've just started reading, so I'm relying on its index for this discussion) also discusses the Swiftees' role in, and views on, psy-ops operations.  At page 202:

Frequently just as ineffective and perhaps even more absurd were the psychological operations (PsyOps) the United States mounted in Vietnam.  Concocted in 1954 by World War II Air Force officer turned advertising executive turned CIA agent Edward G. Lansdale, the initial U.S. PsyOps in Vietnam aimed at persuading the country's Catholics to move from North to South and back the Saigon government in the interest of their freedom to worship.  By 1965 the inevitable bureaucracy had grown up around PsyOps into the Joint U.S. Public Affairs Office.  Set up by the U.S. Information Agency (USIA) in Saigon, it deluged the entire country with anti-Communist propaganda leaflets, and air- and ship-borne pre-recorded loudspeaker appeals.  "The PsyOps tapes we were ordered to play on Swifts were ludicrous," Wade Sanders recalled.  "One was called 'The Ghost of the U-Minh Forest'!  The tape was supposed to be of VC ghosts who had been killed by the U.S. or ARVN in that mysterious region.  It was like a bad Halloween tape.  A Vietnamese voice instructing them to surrender was intermixed with moans and groans. We thought the VC who heard it must have had a hard time muffling their laughter.  So we ditched the tape and blasted out James Brown and the Stones instead."

Tour of Duty has a few other passing references that suggest that the playing of tapes and distribution of pre-assembled packages of materials may have been part of the Swiftees' duties going back into 1968 or earlier, but at least based on their indices, neither Brinkley's nor Kranish et al.'s books appear to discuss whether young Kerry was responsible for promoting PsyOps activities, or the presence of PsyOps officers, on Swift Boat missions. 

But note the date that O'Neill's book gives for Kerry's PsyOps recommendation, February 20, 1969, and the date of the only occasion that, so far at least, Mr. Russell claims to have had any first-hand exposure to Kerry, March 13, 1969.  Could Mr. Russell have been aboard PCF 43 on the day of the Bay Hap River action at least in part as the direct result of Kerry's recommendation?  Did they speak to one another?  Discuss PsyOps with one another?  Could Mr. Russell have considered Kerry a supporter in the midst of other Swiftees who were, it would seem, more than mildly skeptical about the PsyOps work they were being asked to do — work that seemed to increase greatly the risks they were taking without providing much, if any, compensating gain?

All this, of course, is my rank speculation — and I'd be the first to agree that it's not even well-informed speculation, given my own lack of military service.  My attempts to reach Mr. Russell by telephone have so far met with only busy signals, and I'd not be surprised if having been catapulted into this controversy, he's taken his phone off the hook.  (Or maybe he's on the phone right now with WaPo's crack reporters, who knows?)

I'm not trying to slime Mr. Russell, or suggest that he's making things up or shading his recollection to benefit the candidate he obviously favors in the upcoming election.  Indeed, the Bloomberg and second AP reports above suggest that — although the mainstream media completely missed it — Mr. Russell is quite effective in impeaching his own eyewitness testimony, not to mention that of other Kerry supporters!

The cattle-call presentation, en masse, of supposed eyewitnesses conducted by the Kerry campaign on Monday — without even minimal scrutinizing or vetting of those witnesses by the mainstream media covering the event — indeed serves Sen. Kerry's rather urgent need to staunch his campaign's bleeding from the hits he's taken from the SwiftVets. 

But it's a damned poor way of getting at the truth.

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Update:  The New York Daily News quotes Mr. Russell in a way that suggests he wasn't claiming that the Swift Boats were under enemy fire when Kerry plucked Rassmann out of the water (elipsis by NYDN):

On the day Kerry pulled Green Beret Jim Rassman from a river after falling overboard, "We were under fire off and on all day. ... Anyone who says we weren't must have been on a different river," Russell said. "We were going up those rivers with an ongoing casualty rate of 86%."