Facing Allegations He Led a Massacre, Kerrey Quickly Got Control of the Story
by�Seth Mnookin�and�Stephen Battaglio
Thursday, April 26 05:13 P.M.
Facing a story that threatens his reputation as a war hero and his viability as a
potential presidential candidate, Bob Kerrey played the spin game with exceptional
skill this week, and in the process scooped two years of reporting that was about to
appear in the New York Times Sunday Magazine and on CBS's 60 Minutes II.
Before the fruits of the joint reporting project between the Times and 60 Minutes II
could appear next week, Kerrey reached out to the Wall Street Journal and the Omaha
World-Herald to talk about the mission he led during the Vietnam War that resulted in
the deaths of at least 13 unarmed Vietnamese women and children. By Wednesday, he had
also given on-air interviews to a range of television networks.
In the 7,700-word Times Magazine piece, a soldier under Kerrey's command, Gerhard
Klann, says that Kerrey ordered his squad to kill the civilians after he had
determined that there was no other way to escape safely. The former Senator says in
the piece that his memory is foggy but he is sure that he and his troops fired in the
dark only after being fired upon. Both the Journal and World-Herald only quote
Kerrey's account.
The Times's reaction was quick and severe. The paper rushed its article onto its Web
site Wednesday afternoon with a note explaining why the piece was posted early.
Thursday's edition brought a damning front-page article and a dismissive editorial
from the paper.
''Bob Kerrey is allowed to tell his story to whomever he wants to tell it to,'' said
Adam Moss, the editor of the Times Magazine. ''Obviously, he was trying to get his
version of what happened out before this other version got released. I think he did a
pretty good job of that. I was just grateful that largely because of the Web, we could
get our story out there.''
Kerrey put the wheels in play last weekend, a week before the Times Magazine cover
article was scheduled to run and nine days before next Tuesday's scheduled 60 Minutes
II broadcast, in which Klann also appears on air.
According to Jeff Fager, executive producer for 60 Minutes II, Kerrey sat for an
interview with the program in January, telling the same version of the story that he
went public with on Wednesday. The program went back to Kerrey three weeks ago with
the allegations from Klann, which Fager believes is the reason the story was put out
Wednesday. ''I think (Kerry) wanted to be in control of it and not be reacting to the
New York Times and 60 Minutes II,'' Fager said. ''Once we presented him with
contradicting stories on what happened that night, he did another interview with us.
But I think he was worried. He thought he should get out there first.''
So over the weekend, two reporters -- Dennis Farney of the Wall Street Journal and
David Kotok of the Omaha World-Herald -- got word that Kerrey wanted to speak with
them about an important story, a story that had to do with Vietnam. Farney and Kotok
had traveled with Kerrey to Vietnam in 1991, on what was the then-Senator's first trip
back to the country where he became a war hero.
But Kerrey, who is now the president of the New School University in New York City,
didn't call either reporter on Monday. By Tuesday morning, Kotok was getting worried.
''I was about to put a call into the New School when my phone rang,'' Kotok said.
Kerrey told Kotok and Farney about the killings, and said they had been accidental,
that his squad was returning what it thought was enemy fire.
''I was surprised he called me,'' Farney said from his Kansas City office. ''Since
that '91 trip, we've scarcely talked more than three or four times. But he said his
motive was to give David and myself a head's up on the story he knew was coming. Now,
you can argue that it was also a way of introducing to the public something he knew
was coming, and so a certain amount of calculation went into it.''
Indeed, on a number of network newscasts, Kerrey stressed that he was not trying to
manipulate the story. But his timing would seem to undercut that claim: by not calling
Kotok or Farney until Tuesday -- both reporters wrote for Wednesday's paper -- Kerrey
made sure that he would beat the 60 Minutes II report by a full week and not give the
program time to rush the report onto the air.
By Thursday afternoon, the story was rapidly spinning out of control. The Times's
Thursday news story details how the story's author, Gregory Vistica, began the piece
while working at Newsweek. Within weeks of being confronted with Vistica's evidence,
the Times account points out, Kerrey announced he would not run for president in 2000.
However, Newsweek never ran Vistica's report. At noon on Thursday, Newsweek managing
editor Mark Whitaker was in a staff meeting discussing how to deal with the story.
Whitaker told Inside Thursday afternoon that the magazine had made the right decision.
''Well, you know, I think we have no question we were right not to run it at the time,
based on what we had, I think we would have been justifiably criticized for going with
a story with a lot of sensational charges that was still very murky. Kerrey had talked
to us, it was clear that things had happened that he was troubled with but he said he
had no complete memory. He disputed it was a deliberate massacre, said it was much
more a fog of war situation but even he said he wasn't sure.
''This was all happening,'' Whitaker said, ''just as he was getting out of the
presidential race. He said then and he says now that this had nothing to do with him
dropping out, but we were sensitive to looking like we were hounding him out of the
race. At the same time we did tell Vistica to keep on pursuing the story and to make
it clear that when if Kerrey was ready, we'd want to talk to him. Unfortunately it
took two years for that to happen and by that time Vistica had left the magazine.'' In
a press conference on Thursday, Kerrey insisted that he had definitively ruled out
running for president in 2004.
He did not return several calls left for him at the New School on Thursday.
