XXXXX DRUDGE REPORT XXXXX WED JULY 28, 2004 12:56:02 ET XXXXX
CONTROVERSY SURROUNDS KERRY CONVENTION FILM: WAR SCENES REENACTED
**World Exclusive**
A bombshell new book written by the man who took over John Kerry's Swift Boat charges: Kerry reenacted combat scenes for film while in Vietnam!
The footage is at the center of a growing controversy in Boston.
The official convention video introducing Kerry is directed by Steven Spielberg protégé James Moll.
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Moll was given hours of Kerry's homemade 8 millimeter film to incorporate into the convention short, the DRUDGE REPORT has learned.
"Kerry carried a home movie camera to record his exploits for later viewing," charges a naval officer in the upcoming book UNFIT FOR COMMAND.
"Kerry would revisit ambush locations for reenacting combat scenes where he would portray the hero, catching it all on film. Kerry would take movies of himself walking around in combat gear, sometimes dressed as an infantryman walking resolutely through the terrain. He even filmed mock interviews of himself narrating his exploits. A joke circulated among Swiftees was that Kerry left Vietnam early not because he received three Purple Hearts, but because he had recorded enough film of himself to take home for his planned political campaigns."
UNFIT FOR COMMAND, Swift Boat Veterans Speak Out Against John Kerry, will be unleashed next month by REGNERY. [It ranked #1,318 on the AMAZON hitparade Wednesday morning.]
The films shot by Kerry's own Super 8 millimeter hand-held movie camera have the grainy quality of home movies.
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The BOSTON GLOBE reported in 1996 that the Kerry home movies "reveal something indelible about the man who shot them - the tall, thin, handsome Naval officer seen striding through the reeds in flak jacket and helmet, holding aloft the captured B-40 rocket. The young man so unconscious of risk in the heat of battle, yet so focused on his future ambitions that he would reenact the moment for film. It is as if he had cast himself in the sequel to the experience of his hero, John F. Kennedy, on the PT-109."
"John was thinking Camelot when he shot that film, absolutely," says Thomas Vallely, a fellow veteran and one of Kerry's closest political advisers and friends.
NEW YORK TIMES bestselling author Lt. Col. Robert "Buzz" Patterson in his new book RECKLESS DISREGARD, details one of the claimed Kerry reenactments for film:
"On February 28, 1969, now in charge of PCF 94, Kerry came under fire from an enemy location on the shore. The crew's gunner returned fire, hitting and wounding the lone gunman. Kerry directed the boat to charge the enemy position. Beaching his boat, Kerry jumped off, chased the wounded insurgent behind a thatched hutch, and killed him. Kerry and his crew returned within days, armed with a Super 8 video camera he had purchased at the post exchange at Cam Ranh Bay, and reenacted the skirmish on film."
Developing...
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Filed By Matt Drudge
Reports are moved when circumstances warrant
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