Kerrey admits killing Vietnamese civilians WASHINGTON - Former Sen. Bob Kerrey has acknowledged his previously undisclosed role in the killing of more than a dozen civilians during the Vietnam War, breaking a 32-year silence in an effort to pre-empt a more critical account set for publication Sunday. "I was so ashamed I wanted to die," the Medal of Honor winner told the Wall Street Journal for a story published yesterday. "This is killing me. I'm tired of people describing me as a hero and holding this inside." The Nebraskan gave a similar account to the Omaha World-Herald. Kerrey maintains that his Navy SEAL unit killed the Vietnamese civilians inadvertently after believing they were fired upon in the village of Thanh Phong on Feb. 25, 1969. However, a member of Kerrey's unit and a Vietnamese woman who said she witnessed the raid allege the soldiers herded women, children and old men and massacred them. Broaching the subject last week in a little-noticed speech at Virginia Military Institute, Kerrey said his unit acted in self-defense while approaching a suspected enemy post "on a dark and moonless night." "We returned fire," he said. "But when the fire 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. ... I could never make my own peace with what happened that night. I have been haunted by it for 32 years." One unit member essentially confirmed Kerrey's account to The Washington Post yesterday. Kerrey said he believes Viet Cong guerrillas were firing at his team from behind the civilians, which could justify the killings from a military standpoint, but said he was not at peace with it personally. Kerrey initiated the two newspaper interviews Tuesday before publication of a New York Times Magazine article that includes a far more chilling account of the shootings. In that story, posted on the newspaper's Web site yesterday, a senior commando in Kerrey's Navy SEAL unit, Gerhard Klann, says that at Kerrey's order the unit rounded up and killed unarmed women and children, and that a "baby was the last one alive. There were blood and guts splattering everywhere." The unit expended 1,200 rounds of ammunition, according to an after-action report filed by the unit to superior officers. In The New York Times interview, Kerrey said he could not be absolutely sure that he and his men were fired upon first, as he maintains, saying it could have been "noise." For one of America's most prominent war heroes and onetime presidential candidate to publicly acknowledge his long-ago role in the killing of civilians - intentional or not - could well have a lasting effect on his public image. Throughout his career, Kerrey has presented himself as a candid politician who speaks difficult truths, whether about the long-term solvency of Social Security or the shortcomings of opponents. Kerrey, a Democrat who is weighing another run for president, never mentioned the incident during his term as governor of Nebraska, two Senate terms or his 1992 campaign for the White House. His reputation for battlefield bravery was a prominent theme of his candidacy. A grenade exploded at his feet, taking off his right leg below the knee. But he continued directing his unit's fire until his men were able to escape. As a result, he was given the Medal of Honor, the nation's highest military award. "It was the men and women who went to Vietnam who suffered," Kerrey said during his presidential campaign, predicting that Republicans would open up candidate Bill Clinton "like a soft peanut" over his avoidance of the draft. Kerrey, who was awarded a Bronze Star after the 1969 encounter, did a round of network interviews yesterday. CBS aired portions of a "60 Minutes II" story, scheduled for broadcast Tuesday and done in conjunction with the journalist who did the 2-1/2-year investigation for the Times, Gregory Vistica. "I have never been able to justify what we did, either militarily or certainly not morally," Kerrey told CNN's Wolf Blitzer. Kerrey denied the account of Klann, the SEAL senior commando, that the civilians were rounded up. Kerry told NBC's Tom Brokaw: "It is entirely possible that all kinds of other memories can come out of that night, but I would remember if we pulled these people ... into a group and killed them at point-blank range, and that did not happen." In the Times article, Kerrey attacked Klann's credibility, saying he was angry that Kerrey hadn't helped him win a Medal of Honor. Klann, speaking to the Omaha World-Herald about his relationship with Kerrey, said: "There is no animosity between him and me. There never has been." Michael Ambrose, a Houston executive who served with Kerrey, told The Post that Klann's account is "the most ridiculous thing I've ever heard in my life. It is untrue in every sense of the word." Ambrose said the unit advanced on the village based on intelligence about a high-level enemy meeting there, responded to hostile fire and "we were all upset ... Bob was tremendously upset" when "we found only innocent victims, not our target whatsoever." Visibility was "literally zero," he said, and "we were lucky to get out of there alive." Another member of Kerrey's squad, Lee "Doc" Schrier of Dayville, Ore., told the World-Herald he had talked to his former squad leader and other members of the unit, with the exception of Klann. He said he understands there is a disagreement between Kerrey's and Klann's accounts but is not taking sides. "I don't have any animosity to anybody - at this moment," Schrier said. "We wouldn't be in these kinds of messes if people wouldn't talk." The CBS News story includes an interview with Pham Tri Lanh, the wife of a Viet Cong fighter, who claims to be an eyewitness. "It was very crowded, so it wasn't possible for them to cut everybody's throats one by one," she said. "Two women came out and kneeled down. They shot these two old women and they fell forward and they rolled over and then they ordered everybody out from the bunker and they lined them up and they shot all of them from behind." Kerrey told CBS that Lanh is, at the very least, "sympathetic to the Viet Cong." Kerrey, now president of the New School University in New York, did not respond yesterday to a request for comment, but also denied to the Journal and World-Herald that the killings were intentional. After the initial shootings, he told the Times, his unit saw several people running away and killed them as well. Alan Murray, the Journal's Washington bureau chief, said of his newspaper's interview with Kerrey: "There's no question this was an effort on his part to pre-empt some bad publicity." C. David Kotok, co-author of the World Herald piece, said he and the Journal reporter, Dennis Farney, had accompanied Kerrey on a visit to Vietnam in 1990. "I hope we did a fair and full story and didn't come off looking like homers," he said. Adam Moss, editor of the Times Magazine, said Kerrey "is entitled to do what he wants. He's putting out his version. But there's also another version which he has obviously not talked about. We don't draw a conclusion as to who is telling the truth." Sen. John Kerry, D-Mass., a Vietnam veteran and friend of the former senator, defended Kerrey in a floor speech yesterday. He urged the media not "to engage in some kind of 32-year-later binge because there is a difference of memory about a particularly confusing night in the delta in a free-fire zone under circumstances which most of us who served in Vietnam understood were the daily fare of life in Vietnam." By Howard Kurtz - The Washington Post - April 26, 2001.

Ex-senator Kerrey admits Vietnam raid NEW YORK — Former Nebraska senator and Navy SEAL Bob Kerrey says he is haunted by the 32-year-old memory of a raid in which he ordered his men to shoot Vietnamese who turned out to be civilians. But a member of Kerrey's unit and a Vietnamese woman who said she witnessed the raid allege the soldiers herded together the women, children, and old men and massacred them. Kerrey, who has not ruled out a run for president in 2004, received a Bronze Star for the Feb. 25, 1969, raid in the Mekong Delta. The award citation says 21 Viet Cong were killed and enemy weapons were captured or destroyed. ``The citation is different than what we reported,'' to military superiors, he told the Omaha World-Herald in an interview published Wednesday. ``I lived with this privately for 32 years,'' said Kerrey, who called the shooting a tragic mistake. ``I felt it best to keep this memory private. I can't keep it private any more. My conscience tells me some good should come from this.'' Kerrey, who earned the nation's highest valor award, the Medal of Honor, for a later SEAL action, talked about the raid publicly for the first time last week in a speech to ROTC students at Virginia Military Institute in Lexington, Va. Kerrey said the mission took place on a moonless night, when he was a 25-year-old lieutenant leading a seven-man commando team. Shots were fired at his squad and his men returned fire. ``But when the fire 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,'' said Kerrey. He has since said he counted about 14 bodies. Kerrey said he decided to talk about the shooting because he heard that Gerhard Klann, a member his team, was offering a different account. ``We gathered everybody up, searched the place, searched everything,'' Klann said, according to a partial transcript of a ''60 Minutes II'' segment scheduled for broadcast Tuesday. ``We herded them together in a group. We lined them up and we opened fire.'' Neither Kerrey nor Klann returned calls Wednesday from The Associated Press. Klann's version of the shooting, and an account from Pham Tri Lanh, a woman who said she saw the raid, were reported as part of a joint effort by CBS News and The New York Times. The Times will publish the story in its Sunday magazine and posted it on its Web site Wednesday. ``It was very crowded, so it wasn't possible for them to cut everybody's throats one by one,'' Lanh told CBS News. ``Two women came out and kneeled down,'' she said. ``They shot these two old women and they fell forward and they rolled over and then they ordered everybody out from the bunker and they lined them up and they shot all of them from behind.'' Kerrey told CBS News that he and other team members have different memories of the night. ``Gerhard I will not contradict. I will not contradict the memory of any of the six people that were on the operation that night,'' he said. ``So if that's his view, I don't contradict it, it's not my memory of it and as to the eyewitness is, at the very least, sympathetic to the Viet Cong.'' Kerrey, a Democrat, served one term as governor of Nebraska and two terms as senator. He sought the Democratic presidential nomination in 1992, and recently became president of the New School University in New York. Kerrey said he believes Viet Cong guerillas were firing at his team from behind the civilians, which could justify the killings from a military standpoint, but said he was not at peace with it personally. Fellow Vietnam veteran Sen. John Kerry on Wednesday defended Kerrey's wartime actions in a speech on the Senate floor. Kerrey ``feels obviously anguish and pain about those events,'' the Massachusetts Democrat said. ``But I don't believe they should diminish for one moment the full measure of what he has given to his country and of what he represents.'' The Associated Press - April 25, 2001.