Kerry Spot    [ jim geraghty reporting ]
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Kerry and Edwards at a late-night rally in Springfield, Ohio, September 2, 2004.

It's quickly becoming conventional wisdom that every major-media investigative account of Kerry's Vietnam years has supported the Democratic candidate, and refuted the Swift Boat Vets for Truth. But that's not quite the case.

Retired Special Forces Officer Jim Rassmann is probably a fine man; his gratitude to Kerry for fishing him out of the water is genuine; and there is little doubt that his retelling of events represents his honest perception of what happened. But the serious, detailed effort on the part of the Washington Post on Sunday to put together the whole picture suggests Rassmann may be wrong about essential details.

A key element of Rassmann's version of his rescue by John Kerry, recounted in the Wall Street Journal on August 10, is his description of being left alone in the river:

While returning from a SEA LORDS operation along the Bay Hap River, a mine detonated under another swift boat.

Machine-gun fire erupted from both banks of the river, and a second explosion followed moments later. The second blast blew me off John's swift boat, PCF-94, throwing me into the river. Fearing that the other boats would run me over, I swam to the bottom of the river and stayed there as long as I could hold my breath.

When I surfaced, all the swift boats had left, and I was alone taking fire from both banks.

That haunting image — of a lone U.S. soldier coming to the surface of a river and finding himself left behind by his comrades, only to be saved minutes later by the determination of Lt. j.g. John Forbes Kerry and Swift Boat 94 — has been the recurring theme of the Kerry campaign.

"When John Kerry turned that boat back and hauled Jim Rassmann out of the water, risking his own life, what he has said: We leave no one behind," Sen. Edward Kennedy opined back in January. "He didn't leave Jim Rassmann behind. He won't leave veterans behind. He won't leave our national security behind."

And then there was John Edwards, in his convention speech: "They saw him reach down and pull one of his men from the river and save his life. And in the heat of battle, they saw him decide in an instant to turn his boat around, drive it straight through an enemy position, and chase down the enemy to save his crew."

But according to the Post, Rassmann skips over a key fact about how he — and Kerry's PCF-94, which he was riding on — could get separated from the other boats. While Swift Boats PCF-23, PCF-43, and PCF-51 went to provide suppressive fire and aid to PCF-3, PCF-94 raced away. And "raced" appears to be the appropriate term, according to the Post: "'When the mine went off, we were still going full speed,' recalled Michael, one of Kerry's crew members. Kerry's boat raced off down the river, away from the ambush zone."

Why? Here's what the Post reported: "O'Neill claims that Kerry 'fled the scene' despite the absence of hostile fire. Kerry, in a purported journal entry cited in Brinkley's 'Tour of Duty,' maintains that he wanted to get his troops ashore 'on the outskirts of the ambush.'"

One way or another, Kerry is far away from the trouble on boat PCF-3, where three men have suffered concussions, one is injured, one is knocked unconscious, and the boat is now circling in the river while taking on water. Instead he speeds away, and suffers some other jarring impact that knocks Rassmann overboard. Rassmann dives to the bottom to avoid the propellers, comes to the surface, and finds ... nobody.

Where is Kerry?

Continuing to speed away, apparently, according to the Washington Post's account:

At first, nobody noticed what had happened to Rassmann. But then Medeiros, who was standing at the stern, saw him bobbing up and down in the water and shouted, "Man overboard." Around this time, crew members said, Kerry decided to go back to help the crippled 3 boat.

An odd wording. Was it in reaction to Medeiros' call? Before? Did he abandon the "get the troops ashore" plan? Did he suddenly realize that PCF-3 needed help? The Post continues: "It is unclear how far down the river Kerry's boat was when he turned around. It could have been anywhere from a few hundred yards to a mile."

A rather key point, isn't it? How far away from the site of the PCF-3, and then the second blast/impact that knocked Rassmann overboard (and caused Kerry's contusion), did Kerry and the PCF-94 get before he decided to turn back and help out?

Rassmann, still in the water at this point, has no idea what's going on aboard the PCF-94, but he speculates nonetheless in his Wall Street Journal piece: "Kerry must have seen me in the water and directed his driver, Del Sandusky, to turn the boat around."

The rest of Rassmann's account of the rescue mentions no other boats — strengthening the case that only Kerry returned to "leave no man behind":

Kerry's boat ran up to me in the water, bow on, and I was able to climb up a cargo net to the lip of the deck. But, because I was nearly upside down, I couldn't make it over the edge of the deck. This left me hanging out in the open, a perfect target. John, already wounded by the explosion that threw me off his boat, came out onto the bow, exposing himself to the fire directed at us from the jungle, and pulled me aboard.

But according to the Post, Rassmann remembered several boats coming back up the river toward him. These other boats are apparently edited out of the Journal account. Another PCF-23 captain, Jack Chenoweth, insisted to the Post that he was close to picking up Rassmann himself. Chenoweth says this is supported by an entry in his diary, which he read over the phone to the Washington Post, but was not willing to provide to the Post.

Jim Russell, on PCF-43, witnessed Kerry's rescue as well, suggesting boat 43 couldn't have been too far away. So Kerry's boat didn't go back alone to rescue Rassmann — it just got to him first.

Again, none of this suggests that Rassmann's emotional, cinematically dramatic testimony about Kerry's valor is intentionally false. But it suggests that his version of events should not be considered the definitive one, and that his testimony does not refute the case of the Swift Boat Vets.