The Navy task force overseeing US Senator John Kerry's swift boat squadron in Vietnam reported that his group of boats came under enemy fire during a March 13, 1969, incident that three decades later is being challenged by the Democratic presidential nominee's critics.
The March 18, 1969, weekly report from Task Force 115, which was located by reporters during a search of Navy archives, is the latest document to surface that supports Kerry's description of an event for which he won a Bronze Star and a third Purple Heart.
The Task Force report twice mentions the incident five days earlier and both times calls it "an enemy initiated firefight" that included automatic weapons fire and underwater mines used against a group of five boats that included Kerry's.
Task Force 115 was commanded at the time by retired Rear Admiral Roy Hoffmann, the founder of the group Swift Boat Veterans for Truth, which has been running ads challenging Kerry's account of the episode.
A member of the group, Larry Thurlow, said on Tuesday he stood by his assertion that there was no enemy fire that day. Thurlow, the commander of another boat who also won a Bronze Star, said task force commanders probably relied on the initial report of the incident. Thurlow says Kerry wrote that report.
The document, part of thousands of pages of records housed at the Naval Historical Center, is one of several that say Kerry and other servicemen were shot at from the banks of the Bay Hap River on March 13, 1969. Reporters located the document on Tuesday during a search of available records.
Earlier this month, Swift Boat Veterans for Truth aired a television ad claiming Kerry lied about the circumstances surrounding his medals. Several members of the group who were aboard nearby boats that March 13 said in the ad and in affidavits that there was no enemy gunfire during the incident.
The anti-Kerry group has not produced any official Navy documents supporting that claim, however. The man Kerry rescued, Jim Rassmann, and the crew of Kerry's boat all say there was gunfire from both banks of the river at the time.
The Kerry campaign has filed a complaint with the Federal Election Commission accusing the Bush campaign and the Swift Boat Veterans for Truth of illegally coordinating the group's ads. The Bush campaign and the veterans group say there was no coordination.
Kerry has denounced the assertions from Swift Boat Veterans for Truth as lies made as part of a Republican smear campaign. Most of the group's members and early financial backers are Republicans and one member who appeared in an ad, Ken Cordier, was a volunteer member of the Bush campaign. The campaign cut its ties with Cordier last week.
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