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I [Hugh Hewitt] interviewed Steve Gardner today. He served two tours in Vietnam, including two months and two weeks of John Kerry's swift boat service--on John Kerry's swift boat-- from November 1968 through January 1969:
HH: Mr. Gardner, welcome to the Hugh Hewittt Show, it is an honor to talk to you.
SG: I am glad to be here Hugh.
HH: Thanks for your service.
SG: Thank you again, I really appreciate you're allowing me to come aboard.
HH: Now let me start with some basics. I said you served two tours in Vietnam. Can you tell me what years those were?
SG: 1966 to 1967 and then in 1968 and 1969, when I served with Kerry.
HH: What months did you serve with Senator Kerry?
SG: November through January. Here's what I did. I served two months and two weeks of his four month, 12 day tour.
HH: Alright. Why did you leave off in january. What happened in January?
SG: That was my rotation time.
HH: OK. When you were on the boat, did you ever go into Cambodian waters?
SG: Absolutely not. That was a physical impossibility to go inside Cambodian waters.
HH; Why?
SG: They had four or five, at all times, boats, plus they had it wired with wire, they had concrete pylons down so that thee only time they could get through it was at high tide, and that was just so the sampans and the people that trafficked back and forth could get through.
HH: Now you served with him on Christmas Eve 1968, correct?
SG: That is correct.
HH: What did you do on Christmas Eve 1968?
SG: Well, I damn sure wasn't in Cambodia, I'll tell you that.
HH: (Laughter) Do you remember?
SG: We were basically just down in the lower part of the Sa Dec. just patrolling.
HH: All right. Were you looking for Bob Hope that night?
SG: No, (laughter) this was just how bad this guy is. People get a whiff of this and get a hold of it. Because you are just getting the edge of what drives John Kerry.
HH: What is that Steve Gardner?
SG: He is an opportunist, number one. But he is a self-seeking opportunist who used the laws that were designed to help the honest men who were over there in Vietnam who had gotten wounded three times to get them back out of it. He knew the rules well, and he used that to get out of there early.
HH: Last night on the Daily Show on Comedy Central, Jon Stewart, the host, said this about the book that is coming about by John O'Neill: There are powerful indictments, or rather it would be had any of those guys served on Kerry's boat,. By saying 'with him' they mean they were in Vietnam at the same time. Kind of the same way Snoopy served with the Red Baron. How do you respond to that?
SG: Well, on any movement we would do, we are talking four or five boats going in on an engagement, we were always within 50 or 75 yards of each other. And to be perfectly honest about it, if you were to look at an overview, if your were looking for an overview of a situation, you were better off being on another boat and looking at the rest of the other boats.
HH: OK, well put. Now, Steve Gardner, John Kerry has also been discovered to have been telling a story that he took a CIA man at least one CIA man into Cambodia and that he kept his hat. When you were on the boat with John Kerry, for your two months and two weeks of the tour that he served, did you ever have a CIA man on board?
SG: Number one, no.
HH: Did you ever take anyone to Cambodia and drop them off?
SG: Categorically no.
HH: Did you get near Cambodia and drop anybody off?
SG: The closest we can get to Cambodia, and that's a long swim, is 50 miles.
HH: Alright. Let me ask you about other people on the boat. Could John Kerry have just misunderstood someone on the boat was CIA when it wasn't CIA? Did you ever have any strangers on the boat?
SG: Nope. We always would have an interpreter, or something like that with us, or we would take others and take them in to areas in the Mekong Delta where they would be doing surveillance, but never did we have anybody that we would take close or could take close to Cambodia.
HH: Is it possible that you would drop them off a few miles away from Cambodia and they would walk in?''
SG: Fifty miles away is a long walk, let me tell you.
HH: If such a mission had been undertaken, would it have been undertaken by a swift boat?
SG: Nope.
HH: What kind of boat would it have been undertaken by?
SG: If something was going to be done, it would have had to have been done by a PBR.
HH: What's a PBR?
SG: That's one of the smaller boats that they used in Vietnam, that were water driven motors.
HH: When you read these stories about John Kerry and his CIA agents, how do you react? Does he believe it himself, do you think?
SG: No. It is laughable. John Kerry, number one, we were never, we were never made privy to anything. Even if that were so, even if there was some reason to believe that that had transpired, we would not have been made privy to that.
HH: You mean that John Kerry wouldn't have known who was on the boat?
SG: Number one, no. That would have been such a top secret operation, and a positioning, that that guy would have killed himself before he told anybody he was going to Cambodia. It didn't happen. Like I said, to get into Cambodia, you were over 50 miles away from the border.
HH: Is that the closest you think you came, 50 miles?
SG: I know it is, categorically. You couldn't go any farther.
HH: Could it have happened once you left the boat?
SG: No, you still couldn't get through that same creek.
HH: Will any of the guys who have endorsed John Kerry, who served on the boat with you, will they back him up on the CIA agent story, or the Christmas Eve story?
HH: Well they can't now.
HH; Why?
SG: Well they all know that that didn't transpire. John Kerry has already said that from what I understand.
HH: What he said, eh, what his staff has been saying is that they think he said he was close to Cambodia, but not in it, but in 1986 he stood on the floor of the Senate and said he was in Cambodia.
SG: That's correct, and that's an absolute categorical lie.
