2001-04-28 危機管理 crisis management
次期大統領候補でありうるケリー元上院議員(57歳）についての以下の読売の記事をみてAP、Reutersを覗くと、この告白には背景があるとのことでした。
Gregory Visticaという記者が1998年から本件を追いかけており、その結果がニューヨークタイム・マガジンとCBSの"60分"に来週に出るのを察して、自らウオールストリート・ジャーナルとネブラスカの地元紙に登場して、1969.2.25のメコンデルタでのSeal部隊(Sea-Air-Land)の作戦について、「敵が攻撃してきたので反撃したが、戦闘が終わると多数の婦女子が死亡しており、罪の意識を感じる」と述べたとのこと。一方、部隊の1名Gerhard
Klannは"60分"インタビューで、「犠牲者は集められ整列のうえ射殺された」と述べており（放映はまだ）、ケリー氏はその部下の発言の意図はわからないとしている。
APによると「public relationsにおけるCrisis
Managementの第一原則は、その件の前面にでて自分の立場での見解をしめして、同情を得ること」をケリー氏はそれを実行した政治戦略家は言っているとのこと。
ベトナム側の言い分は、夜中の8時に6人の覆面をした軍人と1名のベトナム人通訳がボートで上陸、壕から壕に移動して殺した。13人の子供､5人の女性､1名の老人が犠牲者で、その間は20分とのこと。メコンデルタのヴェトコン解放区での、テロにはテロでゲリラにはゲリラで対抗するためにSeal部隊を投入で、本件についても真相はわかりません。夜中の不正規戦なので不正行為は多々あったはず。30年前の話が何故、今ごろ表にでてきたかですが、告発を行っているGerhard
Klann氏の意図で、罪の意識があったのでしょう。
One squad member, Gerhard Klann, told "60
Minutes II" and the Times that the victims
were herded into a group and then massacred.
Political strategists said Thursday that
Kerrey, now president of the New School University
in New York, employed the first rule of crisis
management in public relations -- get in
front of the story, get your side out and
create some sympathy.
"This way, he's able to create his own
explanation for what happened and protect
himself," said Hank Scheinkopf, who
worked on President Clinton's successful
re-election campaign.
Thirty-two years later, Kerrey is publicly
agonizing in front of one TV camera after
another over what he calls a mistake. "We
fired because we were fired upon," he
said Thursday. "We did not go out on
a mission to kill innocent people. I feel
guilty about what happened." At least
one other member of the SEAL unit claims
it was more than that -- it was, he says,
a massacre. "We herded them together
in a group. We lined them up and we opened
fire," Gerhard Klann says in an interview
to be shown on CBS' "60 Minutes II."
Cu said Lanh had told how the seven-man squad
-- six masked Americans and a Vietnamese
interpreter -- moved from bunker to bunker
in the hamlet killing people.
He said the villagers could not tell if all
the squad had taken part in the killing.
One person survived from one of the bunkers,
a girl named Luom, now about 40, whose leg
was severed by bullets, Cu added.
読売04/27 21:52 ベトナム戦争の英雄ケリー氏、住民虐殺を告白
【ニューヨーク２６日＝河野博子】ベトナム戦争の英雄として知られ、次期大統領選への出馬も取りざたされる民主党のボブ・ケリー前上院議員（ニュースクール大学長）（５７）が二十六日、ニューヨーク市内のホテルで記者会見し、三十二年前にメコンデルタ地帯の村で、自ら率いた部隊が非武装の住民十三〜二十人を虐殺した、と告白した。ケリー氏によると、虐殺現場はメコンデルタ地帯東部にあるタン・ホン村。一九六九年二月二十五日、ケリー大尉率いる海軍特殊部隊が、南ベトナム解放民族戦線（ベトコン）が頻繁に会議を開いていた同村に侵入。銃撃戦となった際、少なくとも十三人の丸腰の女性や子供を殺したという。会見で同氏は「三十年以上も心の奥深くに苦しい記憶を抱えてきた。今、公にするのは、私自身の心をいやすためと、軍の出動は他人の命を奪うことになることを忘れてはならない、と米国民に伝えたかったからだ」と語った。[2001-04-27-21:52]
<Official homepage of John Kerry>
A graduate of Yale University, John Kerry
entered the Navy after graduation, becoming
an officer on a gunboat in the Mekong Delta
in Vietnam. He received a Silver Star, Bronze
Star and three awards of the Purple Heart
for his service in combat. Upon his return
home, he became an active leader of the Vietnam
Veterans Against the War and a co-founder
of the Vietnam Veterans of America. He attended
Boston College Law School and after graduating
worked as a prosecutor in Middlesex County.
APn 04/26 2138 Kerrey-Media
Copyright, 2001. The Associated Press. All
rights reserved.
By FRANK ELTMAN Associated Press Writer
NEW YORK (AP) -- Bob Kerrey's role in a deadly
attack in Vietnam lay dormant for decades.
He had run for office three times in Nebraska
and it didn't come out. He sought the White
House and, still, it wasn't disclosed. Then,
with a story years in preparation about to
become public, the news broke this week with
a ferocity fueled by a competitive 24-hour
news cycle that didn't exist three decades
ago.
One news organization, Newsweek, had taken
a pass on the story in its early stages.
And the two news organizations that devoted
time and resources to its preparation found
themselves scooped on their own story. Just
days before The New York Times and CBS News
were to release their own, critical account
of Kerrey's role, the former senator told
his version to newspapers in New York and
his home state of Nebraska.
Kerrey said the Navy SEALS team he led killed
civilians in a 1969 firefight, but that they
were fired on first and did not know of the
civilian casualties until the shooting stopped.
One squad member, Gerhard Klann, told "60
Minutes II" and the Times that the victims
were herded into a group and then massacred.
Political strategists said Thursday that
Kerrey, now president of the New School University
in New York, employed the first rule of crisis
management in public relations -- get in
front of the story, get your side out and
create some sympathy.
"This way, he's able to create his own
explanation for what happened and protect
himself," said Hank Scheinkopf, who
worked on President Clinton's successful
re-election campaign.
Kerrey insisted Thursday that there was nothing
calculated about the timing. "I was
not trying to pre-empt the story," he
said at a news conference.
Nevertheless, reporters already had their
fingerprints on it. The Times has a story
coming up this weekend in its magazine that
veteran defense reporter Gregory Vistica
has been working on since 1998.
After Kerrey's version of events appeared
Wednesday in The Wall Street Journal and
the Omaha-World Herald, the Times took the
unusual step of posting its story several
days in advance on its Web site. Bill Keller,
the Times' managing editor, said that "pretty
rare" decision was made Wednesday morning,
after the Wall Street Journal and Omaha stories
were published.
"We figured if Senator Kerrey was going
public with his version of the events back
in the Mekong Delta, people ought to see
what he was talking about," Keller said.
CBS News worked with the Times on the story
and planned to air its own piece Tuesday
on "60 Minutes II." When Kerrey's
account appeared Wednesday, it hustled out
a partial transcript to media organizations.
Newsweek magazine, which balked at breaking
the Monica Lewinsky story three years ago,
decided in 1999 against running a story about
Kerrey's involvement in the killing of the
women and children.
Editor Mark Whitaker told The Associated
Press that Vistica's work was not published
at the time because many of the details "were
still very murky."
"It was a 'fog of war' situation much
more than any type of civilian massacre,"
Whitaker said. "He did not deny it.
It was clear something had happened, which
is why we told Vistica to keep pursuing it."
Vistica left Newsweek and continued to work
on the story for two more years, Whitaker
said.
Vistica, who could not be reached Thursday,
wrote the Times magazine article and was
co-producer of the "60 Minutes II"
piece.
APn 04/27 0325 Kerrey-Mekong Delta
By RICHARD PYLE
Associated Press Writer
NEW YORK (AP) -- At the end of its 2,600-mile
meander from the high country of Tibet, the
Mekong River splays into muddy fingers reaching
for the South China Sea. There, in a wide
estuary of mangrove swamps and clusters of
huts on stilts, the other Vietnam war was
fought. And it was there, in a tiny coastal
settlement called Thanh Phong, in February
1969, that then-Lt. j.g. Bob Kerrey and his
six-man Navy SEAL team came to grips with
that war. In a furious few minutes of red
muzzle flashes and confusion, they killed
a dozen or more Vietnamese civilians.
Thirty-two years later, Kerrey is publicly
agonizing in front of one TV camera after
another over what he calls a mistake. "We
fired because we were fired upon," he
said Thursday. "We did not go out on
a mission to kill innocent people. I feel
guilty about what happened." At least
one other member of the SEAL unit claims
it was more than that -- it was, he says,
a massacre. "We herded them together
in a group. We lined them up and we opened
fire," Gerhard Klann says in an interview
to be shown on CBS' "60 Minutes II."
Kerrey, a Democrat who served as governor
and senator from Nebraska and ran for president
in 1992, said Thursday he doesn't know why
his former colleague is making that claim.
"I don't know his motive," Kerrey
said. Mistake or massacre, it was the Delta
war in microcosm, a war of ambiguity, where
the "enemy" was everywhere yet
nowhere, and solid intelligence information
was sometimes guesswork in disguise.
"I heard this story before, but always
in the context of other SEAL operations,
as the sort of thing that probably happened
more often than we want to believe,"
said Dale Andrade, an Army historian who
wrote a book about the war in the Mekong
Delta.
The National Liberation Front, the homegrown
insurgency that fought to overthrow the central
government of South Vietnam, had its roots
and its greatest strength in the rice paddies
and hamlets of the Delta. The yellow-and-red
government flags, fluttering from shacks
and fishing sampans, could mean political
allegiance to Saigon -- or insurance from
being attacked from the air. While North
Vietnam funneled fully equipped army divisions
down the Ho Chi Minh Trail and fought set-piece
battles against American and South Vietnamese
forces in the mountains and rice plains to
the north, the Delta was where the grass-roots
revolutionaries known as the Viet Cong flourished,
recruiting and haranguing the peasantry into
embracing the communist cause.
Many of the war's best-known images and catch
phrases came from this fertile, lowland region,
where rice grew in fields of Day-Glo-green
and old women gazed stoically from under
their conical hats. The "black pajamas"
worn by the Delta's peasants became the uniform
of the Viet Cong. Children tossed grenades
from motor bikes as they rode past bridge
guards. Saigon's "struggle for the hearts
and minds" of the local populace was
distilled to its essence here.
On the first peninsula north of Thanh Phong
was Ben Tre, immortalized by a U.S. officer
as the town "we had to destroy ... in
order to save it." To U.S. troops it
was "Charlie country," a deceptively
tranquil, table-flat landscape defined only
by canals, paddy dikes and tree lines that
sometimes provided cover for enemy ambushes.
One U.S. Army division, the 9th Infantry,
was deployed there as a "riverine force"
to patrol inland waterways in armored scows
resembling Civil War iron-clads. But Andrade
said the riverine forces never reached into
the Viet Cong-dominated coastal areas.
For the most part, it was a war that came
alive after dark. It was then that the Viet
Cong invaded villages, held political rallies,
proselytized and terrorized the population,
and kidnapped and murdered local officials
appointed by Saigon.To counter this, the
United States in late 1967 devised the so-called
Phoenix program, whose mission, in the bland
argot of the war bureaucracy, was to "neutralize"
the communist leadership, allowing the government
to take local control. Neutralize could mean
anything:terrorize, detain, convert, assassinate.
While officially described as a South Vietnamese
program, Phoenix was run by the U.S. Military
Assistance Command Vietnam, with assistance
from the CIA. Both Vietnamese and American
units carried out the missions.
The late William Colby, who ran the program
from the U.S. Embassy in Saigon and went
on to become CIA director, later told Congress
that Phoenix had led to the deaths of 20,587
people by May 1971.
The Navy SEALS -- a crack commando force
whose acronym stands for Sea-Air-Land --
were perfectly suited for this kind of work.
Working in small teams, their clandestine
night missions took them into areas either
controlled by the Viet Cong or declared "free
fire zones" from which villagers had
been evacuated and anyone remaining was assumed
to be hostile.
Kerrey says his team was not on a Phoenix
mission at the time, but the purpose and
effect were the same.
It was that kind of mission, and that kind
of place, where Kerrey's squad landed by
boat on the night of Feb. 25, 1969, expecting
to find a secret meeting of Viet Cong officials
and came face to face with Vietnam's other
war.
------
EDITOR'S NOTE -- Richard Pyle covered the
Vietnam War for five years and was the AP's
Saigon bureau chief in 1970-73.
RTw 04/27 1403 UPDATE 1-Kerrey says Vietnamese
``brutality'' account untrue (Adds Kerrey
denial, edits)
By David Brunnstrom
BEN TRE, Vietnam, April 27 (Reuters) - A
U.S. Navy Seal squadron led by former U.S.
Sen. Bob Kerrey acted with brutality when
it attacked a Vietnamese hamlet 32 years
ago, a local official quoted survivors as
saying. In New York, Kerrey flatly denied
the charge. "This account is absolutely
untrue," he said in a statement, declining
any further comment.
Pham Di Cu, head of the foreign relations
department of the Mekong Delta province of
Ben Tre, where the massacre occurred, told
Reuters on Friday that 13 children, five
women and an elderly man had been killed
in the attack on Feb. 25, 1969. Kerrey has
acknowledged that the killing of civilians
took place, but he said the squad was returning
fire and did not know that civilians had
been killed until after the fighting. Cu
quoted surviving witness Pham Thi Lanh, 67,
as saying the attack on the hamlet of Thanh
Phong began in darkness at about 8 p.m. and
lasted just 20 minutes.
"I think in terms of brutality, this
was the worst incident in this province during
the war," he told Reuters. "Personally,
I think it was inhuman."
Cu said Lanh had told how the seven-man squad
-- six masked Americans and a Vietnamese
interpreter -- moved from bunker to bunker
in the hamlet killing people.
He said the villagers could not tell if all
the squad had taken part in the killing.
One person survived from one of the bunkers,
a girl named Luom, now about 40, whose leg
was severed by bullets, Cu added.
Cu, a history graduate, said the hamlet was
a military target in that it was controlled
by the communist Viet Cong guerrillas in
an area used to unload arms brought by boat
from North Vietnam, but he said all those
killed were civilians.
He said he first heard of the massacre when
he took a CBS News "60 Minutes II"
film crew to the village and interviewed
the survivors. "I was very shocked and
emotional when I heard. I was appalled by
the survivors' accounts," he said.
Other foreign journalists are to be allowed
by the communist authorities to visit Thanh
Phong and interview the survivors on Saturday.
The hamlet could not be reached by telephone.
Vietnam's official media on Friday called
the incident a crime. "Another painful
tragedy has been exposed before the April
30th liberation day, although no one is still
vague about the crimes of the Americans during
the war," the Tuoi Tre (Youth) newspaper
said under the headline "Nightmare in
Thanh Phong."
The Thanh Nien (Young People) printed with
its account a black and white wartime picture
of unidentified U.S. soldiers standing in
a ricefield, surrounded by Vietnamese corpses.
"In terms of the way it was done, it
was a war crime," said Cu, although
he noted Kerrey had shown public remorse.
News of the incident emerged just ahead of
the April 30 anniversary of the defeat of
the U.S.-backed government of the then South
Vietnam by communist forces in 1975.
In his first public remarks since the massacre,
Kerrey said this week he felt guilty about
what happened and unable to justify it militarily
or morally, but he did not consider it a
war crime.
"When we fired, we fired because we
were fired upon," he told a news conference.
"In short, we did not go out on a mission
with the intent of killing innocent people,"
he said. Kerrey, who has been seen as a potential
Democratic candidate for president in 2004,
and who ran unsuccessfully for the office
in 1992, told CBS: "To describe it as
an atrocity, I would say, is pretty close
to being right, because that's how it felt,
and that's why I feel guilt and shame for
it."
However, he said he and the others in his
counter-insurgency squad did not know they
were killing unarmed civilians. Kerrey won
the highest U.S. military decoration, the
Medal of Honor, for actions the month after
the controversial encounter. News of the
incident has stirred memories of the March
1968 My Lai massacre, in which, according
to Vietnamese figures, U.S. troops slaughtered
more than 500 civilians. U.S. army figures
estimate more than 300 civilians died.