CQ HOMELAND SECURITY
Oct. 10, 2008 – 7:28 p.m.
McCain Camp Ignores Questions About Candidate’s Military Record
By Jeff Stein, CQ Staff
Evidently taking a page from John Kerry ’s quest for the presidency in 2004, John McCain ’s campaign has decided — for now, anyway — not to respond to provocative attacks aimed squarely at his strong point: his reputation as a military hero.
The much talked about main broadside came in the form of a 12,000-word attack in Rolling Stone, which portrayed the hard-partying young McCain as a reckless pilot who totaled three jets, and whose career as a pilot was saved only by the pull of his father, commander of the U.S. Navy’s Pacific Fleet during the Vietnam War.
The piece, which Rolling Stone says has garnered 2.5 million hits on the magazine’s Web site since Oct. 6, has been the talk of the liberal blogosphere, but gotten zero attention from the mainstream media.
The Internet has also been afire with other, more vicious brickbats suggesting that a “cowboy pilot” prank by McCain might have started the July 1967 fire that destroyed the USS Forrestal aircraft carrier.
Unlike the Rolling Stone piece, however, whose negative coverage of McCain’s military years leans heavily on the recollections of John Dramesi, an Air Force pilot who was a prisoner of war with McCain, the blogs on the Forrestal incident rely almost entirely on anonymous sources.
In 2004, Kerry’s team initially decided to ignore attacks on his military record, figuring that few people would believe questions about his much-decorated performance as a Navy swift boat commander in Vietnam.
Like McCain, Kerry’s vaunted Vietnam service was a key element of his run for the presidency.
According to the conventional wisdom, the swift boaters sulphurous TV ads, which portrayed the Massachusetts senator as a resume-inflating imposter who did not deserve his medals, inflicted a fatal blow on Kerry’s campaign before he belatedly decided he had to respond.
The Rolling Stone piece, “Make Believe Maverick,” by Tim Dickinson, likewise calls into question McCain’s military legend.
It portrays him running from his burning jet on the Forrestal’s deck and virtually hiding in the carrier’s ward room while others died fighting the ferocious fire and exploding ordnance. In all, 133 sailors died in the tragedy.
Publicly, McCain’s campaign has ignored the story. It also declined to respond to my requests by phone and e-mail for a comment on the story’s accuracy.
Likewise, it has not responded to slashing blogs circulating intensely on the Web that offer an even darker view of the Forrestal incident.
According to these accounts, McCain, whose A4-E Skyhawk was queued up in a line of jets waiting to take off, “wet started” his engine, a prank designed to startle a trailing pilot with a flame of exploding kerosene.
McCain Camp Ignores Questions About Candidate’s Military Record
Normally, it’s a harmless, common stunt by “cowboy pilots.” But on this occasion the exploding kerosene caused a six-foot long Zuni rocket under the trailing pilot’s wing to launch across the flight deck.
“[It] ripped through the fuel tank of McCain’s aircraft,” Dickinson writes. “Hundreds of gallons of fuel splashed onto the deck and came ablaze. Then: Clank. Clank. Two 1,000-pound bombs dropped from under the belly of McCain’s stubby A-4 . . . into the fire.”
McCain rolled out of his cockpit onto the deck and ran for his life, Dickinson writes.
“Just then, one of his bombs ‘cooked off,’ blowing a crater in the deck and incinerating the sailors who had rushed past McCain with hoses and fire extinguishers.”
But according to historian Mary Hershberger, writing on the liberal Truthdig.com site, McCain panicked.
“Some of those who were on the Forrestal and other persons familiar with the ordnance told me that because the rocket did not hit McCain’s craft, only actions by the pilot could have caused any bomb to fall from McCain’s Skyhawk,” wrote Hershberger, who in 2005 published a biography, ”Jane Fonda’s War,” advertised as “an antidote to the ‘Hanoi Jane’ myth.”
“These sources . . . who spoke under the condition that they not be publicly identified,” Hershberger wrote, “agree with each other that, if any bomb fell from the McCain airplane, it was because of actions that he took either in error or panic upon seeing the fire on the deck or in his hasty exit from the plane. Two switches in the cockpit of a Skyhawk need to be thrown to drop such a bomb, according to the sources.”
Truthdig lists Hershberger’s piece, posted on May 7, as its “most read” and “most e-mailed” article.
But while Truthdig and Rolling Stone have liberals clucking, it’s yet to be seen whether they will have any where near the impact of the swift boat ads — which, by the way, the mainstream media also initially ignored because of questions about their accuracy.
“I doubt it will have much of an impact.,” says New York Times media columnist David Carr.
“There is a vertical axis of information in conservative circles that the swift boat moved on that is not replicated by liberals,” Carr said “The conservative talk radio shows have an ability to metastasize and amplify negative stories, and they won’t be punching in on this one.”
The Washington Post’s liberal blogger, Dan Froomkin, agreed.
“One enormous difference compared to Kerry, in my mind, is that the [mainstream media], with the exception of the LA Times, has refused to pick up any elements of this story, whereas it served (wittingly and unwittingly) as a massive echo chamber for the Swift boating,” according to Froomkin.
McCain Camp Ignores Questions About Candidate’s Military Record
But Josh Marshall, founding editor of the influential liberal blog Talking Points Memo, said the attack on Kerry’s military record and McCain’s are “fundamentally different in two respects. The more important of the two is that there’s been very little questioning, as far as I’ve seen, of McCain’s actual military and POW record.”
“Second,” he added, “there’s been no organized effort, again as far as I’ve seen, to denigrate his record.”
Mark Hertsgaard, author of “On Bended Knee,” a best-selling critique of the 1980s-era White House press corps, said attacks on McCain’s war record, lacking a right-wing media accelerant, will wilt without a boost from the major newspapers and networks.
“The obvious place to start is with the former POW, Mr. Dramesi,” featured in the Rolling Stone piece, he added. “Why aren’t we seeing him on TV shows already?”
Mark Crispin Miller, author of “Loser Take All: Election Fraud and the Subversion of Democracy, 2000-2008,” among other books on the media, called the Rolling Stone piece “devastating” and scolded the Democrats for being “too timid” to make more of it.
“It’s sadly typical that the Republicans could mount a big campaign of lies [against Kerry] and get away with it, while the Democrats do nothing with the very damning truth about McCain’s war record,” added Miller, who maintained he is “not a Democrat or Obama supporter.”
The lone establishment voice calling for the media to dig deeper into McCain’s war record belongs to Barry Sussman, one of the famed Washington Post editors in charge of the paper’s Watergate investigations.
“McCain has made his military experience a key reason to vote for him.,” Sussman wrote on the Nieman Watchdog Web site, which he now edits following his Post retirement.
“Reporters should examine his military records, including reports on air mishaps he was involved in before he was shot down over Hanoi. And McCain should see to it that all reports are made public,” Sussman said.
So far, though, no one outside the Web and Rolling Stone appears to be heeding Sussman’s call, posted in early September.
Rolling Stone managing editor Will Dana said he found that curious.
“Tim Dickinson gets asked to be on MSNBC and CNN all the time,” Dana said, “but the phones haven’t been ringing this week.”
Jeff Stein can be reached at jstein@cq.com.
Comments
the media coving up of McCain is too sinful...Americans should demand that his military files be made available for review. It everything about him being a war hero is true it should be documented in the files and something to be proud of. Instead media was conned by this liar and are too embarrass to owe up to it. The fact that the MSM has no integrity has come to finally come to light. The Rolling Stone article is devasting are most like the REAL TRUTH about Sen McCain. Thanks Rolling Stone for your Heroic action.
Like the old saying goes people in glass houses should not throw stones?? McCalin/Pallin should have taken this to heart!!
I am an avid and sincere Obama supporter, and anyone embracing the campaign of hope should understand that the truth always has a place at the table. The truth is, there is a flight deck video of the Forrestal disaster. It shows the jets waiting side by side, as they must on an aircraft carrier. There just isn't room to line up like they do at an airport. It clearly shows a missile on the jet adjacent to McCain's jet misfiring. Finally, the video shows McCain jumping from his jet, which is engulfed in flames. He has to jump into the fire around his jet, and crawl to safety. I despise the malicious, crazed creature that McCain has become, and perhaps always was, but he did not start the Forrestal disaster, and he certainly did not scamper away from it.
Guess what Rolling Stone, as a pilot I've dropped in 3 weeks a couple of A4 in the ocean during combat support in Nam (sorry taxpayers) if you have a damaged aircraft and there is only the CV to recover on (landing back aboard your Aircraft Carrier) the choices are slim the Air Boss and CIC will strongly suggest that you kick out and drop the aircraft in the ocean rather than coming aboard. Helps keep the day and flite deck in order.
McCain's medical records and military records should be open to public scrutiny. He is, after all, attempting to become our president and we should know these things. Palin, the abuser of power, is one heartbeat from his job if he croaks.
LZ - thanks for the info - post the info on where we can see the video if interested. Not sure I really am, I'm an Obama supporter but I too am sooooo tired of discussions about stuff like this instead of the very real problems we face. Talk radio sucks and the television media is just a bunch of talking heads talking about campaign strategy and the truly idiotic topics such as lapel pins and how many houses they own!
to LZ: the article doesn't blame McCain for the Forrestal disaster. It does address however the actions he took after while his crew mates were scrambling to resolve a crisis.
Actually, I find it kind of refreshing that this story does not get more play. As vile and mendacious yet highly effective it was against John Kerry, it does not mean that we would have to stoop to the same questionable level this time around. Besides that, with John Kerry, the swiftboating was the last straw that broke John Kerry's campaign camel's back. In the present presidential run, Barack Obama does not have to resort to this type of destructive arguments. He and his campaigns have plenty of other bones to pick with the by now so throughly discredited Republican ideology. In fact they have so many and more relevant ones, that having to dedicate time and effort to this dubious side of John McCain's background would greatly distract from the objective. The objective being the positive, thoughtful and honorable achievement of being elected in an ethically and morally superior fashion. Barack Obama has so far shown the adult, calm, intelligent and thoughtful ways in his efforts to achieve this goal. The contrast with McCain's campaign could not be starker and obviates the requirement for fishing expeditions into an old man's past. Pretty soon that old man will have little else to pride himself on anyway.
Trojan Swift Boat? ---For God's sake, don't start blowing this up without a better source! Remember how Dan Rather got snookered by false documents (I think) and wound up helping Bush look like the patriotic victim of a smear, instead of the creep he was? And remember: the Swift Boat charges were lies!! People chose to believe them or not because of their "truthiness" within their own world view. Does that feel familiar, bloggers? Do you itch to report, "It has been charged..."? Real truth is the prize here, not propaganda. Step back from the abyss.
I am a solid Obama supporter and ex-Navy pilot. The flight deck video LZ refers to shows a rocket from another aircraft on the other side of the Forrestal from McCain's shooting across the deck to start the fire. I flew A-4's in training and they, like all military aircraft, have switches in the landing gear which prevent ordinance drops if the aircraft is sitting on the ground. The pilot can't overrride the system. This revisionist description of the Forrestal disaster is a nasty lie, which I would expect from the Swift-boat party (I get plenty of similar stuff from my Republican relatives) but well beneath civilized discourse.
From Wikipedia: About 10:50 in the morning local time 19°9'5?N 107°23'5?E, while preparations for the second strike of the day were being made,[3] an unguided 5-inch Mk-32 "Zuni" rocket, one of four contained in a LAU-10 underwing rocket pod mounted on a F-4 Phantom II, was accidentally fired due to an electrical power surge during the switch from external power to internal power. A drawing of the stern of Forrestal showing the spotting of aircraft at the time. Likely source of the Zuni was F-4 No. 110. White's and McCain's aircraft are in the right hand circle. The rocket flew across the flight deck, striking a wing-mounted external fuel tank on a A-4 Skyhawk awaiting launch[3], either aircraft No. 405, piloted by LCDR Fred D. White[1], or No. 416, piloted by future U.S. Senator and Presidential candidate, LCDR John McCain.[4] The warhead's safety mechanism prevented it from detonating, but the impact tore the tank off the wing and ignited the resulting spray of escaping JP-5 fuel, causing an instantaneous conflagration. Other external fuel tanks overheated and ruptured, releasing more jet fuel to feed the flames which spread along the flight deck, leaving pilots in their aircraft with the options of being incinerated in their cockpits or running through the flames to escape. LCDR Fred D. White, waiting to launch in Aircraft No. 405, leaped out of his burning Skyhawk but was killed instantly (along with many firefighters) by the cooking off of the first bomb. LCDR Herbert A. Hope of VA-46 (and operations officer of CVW-17) jumped out of the cockpit of his Skyhawk between explosions, rolled off the flight deck and into the starboard man-overboard net. Making his way down below to the hangar deck, he took command of a firefighting team. "The port quarter of the flight deck where I was", he recalled, "is no longer there."[3] With his aircraft surrounded by flames, McCain escaped by climbing out of the cockpit, walking down the nose and jumping off the refueling probe. ******************* McCain did not start the fire. He did not "hide" while others fought the flames. This is a sleazy attack more worthy of of past Republican campaign tacticians. Obama does not need this type of "help". Drop it already.
The Rolling Stone piece is not the only one on the issue of McCain's record with respect to Vietnam. Another fine piece by Sydney Schanberg on The Nation Institute website shows how McCain moved legislation to block POW families from information about their missing loved ones. McCain vowed to "take care of soliders" yet his record on such care -- and care of their families -- is the opposite any reasonable expectation. Yet no one in the mainstream press has examined this either. http://www.nationinstitute.org/p/schanberg09182008pt1
When I first heard the vicious rumours about the Forrestal, I did some online research. The deck layout of the Forrestal was published and is available in several of the military magazines of the time online. While some of the A4s were indeed pointed in such a way that a "wet start" could have, er, surprised other jets, McCain's jet was pointed well out over the water, and it is not credible that he could have ignited the fire with a "wet start". The Forrestal smear appears to be a vicious, unfounded slander against McCain. Don't get me wrong: there's plenty about which to dislike McCain, but this isn't part of it.
I am a Democrat and I intend to vote Democratic across the board. I have been anti-Republican ever since I realized President Bush Jr. misled us into Iraq. This whole story is a load of crap. I've seen actual video of this very incident and I can tell you McCain's A4 was pointed outward, over the ocean. Also, the fire started in an adjacent jet, not McCain's. Rolling Stone really needs to verify their stories better. What a bunch of morons. I have been reading reports about the credit and stock markets. This is a serious situation and we really need to concentrate on how get out of this mess. If we don't figure out a way to fix this, America will become a second rate economic power. President Bush Jr. and Congress are borrowing massive amounts of money. If they spend it on worthless mortgage derivative paper and don't get OUR money back, we're going to be in hock forever. No matter WHO is elected in November, it won't make any difference because THERE WON'T BE ANY MONEY TO DO ANYTHING. Rolling Stone really needs to report on more important (and accurate) things instead of wasting their ink on this tripe.
The Rolling Stone article does NOT blame McCain for the carrier incident. The whole "wet start" story comes from an anonymous chain email. It's simple people, major magazines publishing investigative articles are reasonably reliable sources of facts. Emails flying around the internet are not. Political chain emails have about as much truth as the paper the're written on. Obama is not a Muslim. McCain did not cause the aircraft carrier incident. Youtube has video of the incident, and Wikipedia diagrams the layout of the aircraft in the 1967_USS_Forrestal_fire article. The back of McCain's plane was pointed out over the ocean, any supposed "wet start" would have flashed out over the water. The missle firing was an electrical glitch, and the missle came in from McCain's right side, not behind him. The "wet start" email is a fraud, and it has absolutely no connection to the Rolling Stone article. Trying to blame or discredit McCain based on the aircraft carrier explosion is wrong and is politically biased falsehood. Trying to blame or discredit Rolling Stone based on the frauduent "wet start" story is wrong and is politically biased falsehood as well. Anyone who wants to take about the Rolling Stone artcile should go read it, and and then talk about what it actually says, not go on some partisian biased rant for or against the Rolling Stone article based on the crap in some fraudulent email.
What a fairy tail. CQPolitics shouldn't be wasting internet bandwidth on this garbage. Rolling Stone must have been hit in the head with one of their own stones.
I have thought all along that both McCain and Palin would do anything to advance themselves with the ultimate goal of leading our country. To me that is the ultimate disaster. After reading the article, it only reinforces what I believed. On the campaign trail they they have used fiction to distort facts for votes and encourage hatred in their crowds. Now it is their time to sift the facts with this article. They need to comment on this. I would only now vote for Obama.
I'm an undecided voter. It seems reasonable to ask McCain to release ALL his military and medical records. That is basic information for voters to make an informed decision. I would not vote for the McCain-Palin ticket at this point, without knowing more about McCain's background, his health because I'm not sure Palin could handle the job w/out a lot more 'on the job' training-- and then, still maybe not be qualified. Her disregard for the boundaries of power, misuse of her position as Governor bothers me quite a bit. So, I want to know a lot more about McCain's health. He is mostly asking people to vote for him based on his status as a military man, his military career, but we have been given little information about his job performance - only that he was one of the unlucky guys caught and held as a POW. God Bless him for that time serving our country but-- what was the rest of his record? By some accounts, McCain was prone to being more of a prankster than a serious leader taking time to consider the needs of his team members. So, let's have the full records available to voters to make an informed decision.
I would not have questioned John McCain's military record, however, in light of his dishonorable campaign to incite voters in the worst possible way by trying to depict Obama as a terrorist, his military record is fair game. There are many of us who are disappointed with McCain. This is a man who was running on integrity. What has come to pass is that he has none, and will do anything to win. Even if that includes dividing our country.
Originally known as Sméagol, this character was later named Gollum after his habit of making "a horrible swallowing noise in his throat".[1] His life was extended far beyond its natural limits by the effects of possessing the One Ring. His one desire was to possess the Ring that had enslaved him. He pursued the Ring for 76 years after having lost it to Bilbo Baggins. During his centuries under the Ring's influence, he developed a sort of split personality: "Sméagol" still vaguely remembered things like friendship and love, while "Gollum" was a slave to the ring and would kill anyone who tried to take it. In The Two Towers, Samwise Gamgee named the good personality "Slinker" (for his fawning, eager-to-please demeanour), and the bad personality "Stinker" (for obvious reasons). The two personalities often quarrelled when Gollum talked to himself (as Tolkien puts it in The Hobbit, "through never having anyone else to speak to") and had a love/hate relationship, mirroring Gollum's feelings for the Ring and for himself.
USS Forestal. That and the fact that McCain graduated 5th from the bottom of his class of 899 cadets. I don't care that he was a POW. That happened because of the above two facts.
Thanks to all who have taken the time to comment on my piece, whose focus was not so much on the particular accuracy of the challenges to Sen. McCain's version of his military career, of course, so much as the swirling, unanswered attacks on it, some of which have at least as much, if not more, validity than those leveled at Sen. John Kerry in 2004. But the accuracy of one of those charges, however -- that McCain might have caused the Forrestal fire himself by "wet starting" his engine -- can easily be dispelled by reviewing the film of the event. Many readers have mentioned the film, and a link to it was embedded in my piece. But in the interests of accuracy, and just to make sure that everyone who is interested can access it, I'm placing the link to the full film here as well. As you will see, it is compelling viewing: http://www.archive.org/details/gov.ntis.ava19833vnb1
Regarding the remarks from Dramesi in the Rolling Stone. This is a direct quote from a book Dramesi wrote in 1975 entitled "Code of Honor", W.W. Norton & Co. I found this in a local library. Here is what he said about POW McCain, page 191: " I met white-haired John McCain for the first time. We shook hands and hugged as though we were longtime friends. The magnetism of two men with like attitudes and respect for one another was easily felt.Most of the time he moved around on a crutch.He had a broken arm and a damaged knee, yet he was able to get up on stools and devise the most ingenious ways of communicating. He was always on the move, smiling and waving to people he knew were watching and disregarding the guards' harassment. The sight of the lively John McCain was enough to lift your spirits for the rest of the week. For the weak he was an inspiration; for the strong a constant reminder to keep trying. It was not the North Vietnamese who impelled John's smiling and laughing. He had a smile for all Americans and a disdain for the North Vietnamese. He was thin and not a big man,but there was no doubt John had heart." Looks like this guy had a pretty high opinion of McCain.
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