Kerry rejects medals dispute

CANONSBURG, Pa. -- Senator John F. Kerry moved yesterday to shield his own war hero image from new doubts about whether he threw his Vietnam War medals away at a 1971 antiwar protest, while sharply questioning President Bush's National Guard record in the 1970s.

Kerry angrily accused ABC News and the Republican National Committee of creating ''a phony controversy" by portraying him as both unpatriotic for throwing away US medals and inconsistent because his details of the event have changed over time.

The senator has long said that he threw away his war ribbons -- but kept his medals -- at the rally on April 23, 1971.

But ABC aired footage yesterday of Kerry talking with an interviewer later in 1971. In response to a question about medals, Kerry indicated he threw away ''six, seven, eight, nine" at the protest. The interviewer at the time noted that Kerry had won three Purple Hearts, a Bronze Star, and a Silver Star. Kerry replied, ''Well, and above that, I gave back my others."

The presumptive Democratic nominee, in a carefully crafted counterassault, defended himself yesterday on major television networks by saying he meant ribbons were discarded, not the medals. He argued that few veterans distinguished between the two kinds of war decorations at the time -- a point of some dispute among veterans groups yesterday.

Then Kerry turned the issue against the president, saying for the first time that Bush was far more vulnerable on matters of Vietnam-era choices because of questions about whether he completed his service in the Texas Air National Guard. ''He owes America an explanation about whether or not he showed up for duty in the National Guard. Prove it," Kerry told NBC.

Kerry also contended that a top Bush adviser attacked him Sunday on the medals issue; Kerry aides, citing no evidence, contended that the Bush campaign had known about the 1971 footage for some time and had a hand in publicizing it.

''This comes from a president and a Republican Party that can't even answer whether or not [Bush] showed up for duty in the National Guard," Kerry said on ABC's ''Good Morning America," the first of three assaults on Bush directly. ''I'm not going to stand for it."

Minutes later, he called Bush's truthfulness into question as well, saying: ''George Bush has yet to explain to America whether or not -- and tell the truth -- about whether he showed up for duty."

Kerry has said for months that he would not question the president's Texas Air National Guard record even as his allies, such as the Democratic National Committee chairman, Terry McAuliffe, and former US senator Max Cleland, suggested Bush had been ''AWOL" at times in the early '70s and may not have completed his Guard service. Kerry said that, as a Vietnam veteran, he had come to terms with others' decisions about serving their country during the Vietnam era, and once defended President Clinton for not serving.

Yet the attacks reflect the enormous importance for the campaign to protect Kerry's biography as a decorated Navy lieutenant-turned-war protester. The Massachusetts senator has portrayed himself as battle-tested yet sufficiently clear-eyed about military conflict to be commander in chief -- understanding war on a personal level that Bush lacks. ''If the president is going to try to do this -- accountability time," Kerry told NBC.

Kerry spokesman David Wade said the senator's medals were probably at his home in Boston. The Globe asked to see the medals yesterday, and Wade said the campaign would consider it. Yet Kerry swatted down the idea of producing them when it was suggested by an NBC interviewer. ''Absolutely not. They're private, and I have no reason to do that whatsoever," Kerry said.

Republicans, meanwhile, pounced on Kerry's comments about Bush yesterday, noting his past pledge not to criticize the military service of other members of the Vietnam generation. ''It's another example of John Kerry saying one thing and doing another: He said he would never question the president's honorable service in the National Guard, but now he is lashing out," said Steve Schmidt, a spokesman for the Bush campaign. ''It is a purely venomous political attack, and the American people will reject it."

At particular issue yesterday was the apparent contradiction between Kerry's comments in 1971 about throwing medals, and from the early 1980s onward -- when he began his career in elective office -- that he threw only his ribbons, as he once told union members in 1984 who were upset that he would make such a spectacle.

Kerry was asked yesterday to reconcile differing explanations for why he did not throw his own medals: In 1985, he told The Washington Post it was because he did not want to, and in 1996, he told the Globe that he did not have time to go home and get them before the protest. He answered yesterday by saying he ''threw away the symbols of the war. I'm proud I stood up and fought against it. Proud I took on Richard Nixon and, I think, to this day, there is no distinction between" ribbons and medals.

The Globe reporter covering Kerry at the 1971 protest said yesterday that the senator, standing in a line of 1,000 or so, detached about six ribbons from his shirt, put them in a pocket, then took them out, balled them in his fist, and finally threw them over a fence on Capitol Hill. The reporter, Thomas Oliphant, who is now a Globe columnist, said he originally reported that Kerry lobbed ''his medals" because many people used the word ''medal" interchangeably with ''ribbon." Kerry has said he threw the ribbons for his Silver Star, his Bronze Star, and three Purple Hearts, as well as some others, as a protest.

Joe Davis, a spokesman for the Veterans of Foreign Wars in its Washington office, concurred. ''People said things like that -- all medals are ribbons, but not all ribbons are medals," he said.

But John Rowan, who served in the Air Force in Vietnam and is now president of Vietnam Veterans of America's New York State Council, said he ''never heard people mix up medals and ribbons." Rowan, who, like Kerry, later opposed the war, and described himself as a Democrat who planned to vote for the senator added: ''Veterans knew the difference between medals and ribbons. . . . You can get a ribbon for many things. Though of course, at the time of the protests we didn't give a damn much about those awards anymore."

In his column on today's op-ed page, Oliphant describes witnessing the April 1971 event at the Capitol, and says his daughter has recently joined the Kerry staff.

The medals controversy distracted from the Kerry campaign's message of the day, the start of his ''Jobs First Express" charter bus tour across four swing states such as West Virginia, where Kerry championed the interests of coal miners and steelworkers, and Pennsylvania, where he spoke about free trade and job creation to union workers.

Even his endorsement by the United Mine Workers of America, outside a coal mine near Wheeling, W.Va., was overshadowed by his appearance on ABC after ''Good Morning America" aired the 1971 footage. Kerry appeared on the program from the mine site, scrapping tensely with interviewer Charlie Gibson, who at one point intimated that the medals controversy might derail Kerry's presidential bid. When the segment was over, Kerry turned to two aides and complained, ''God, they're doing the bidding of the Republican National Committee."

Kerry appeared a little reserved as he shook hands with mine workers and accepted a gift, a gold-colored ''safety lamp" that miners use to determine whether there is enough oxygen in a mine. ''I can carry this in Congress to see if the oxygen goes out," Kerry said of the lamp. Later, he put on a hard hat and red, white, and blue-colored miner's lamp and rode an elevator 990 feet below ground to explore a series of shafts. There, he quickly summarized his plans for job creation and health care for 10 men coming off the midnight shift.

Bush won West Virginia over Vice President Al Gore in 2000, yet some union members and others who voted for the president have expressed frustration with his steel tariff policies and the war in Iraq. During a jobs forum featuring Kerry yesterday, his friend Senator Jay Rockefeller, Democrat of West Virginia, said that Gore did not try hard enough to win the state, which would have swung the election his way, and that Kerry will not make that mistake. Yet the Bush-Kerry military history did not recede even at that event, as Rockefeller extolled Kerry as a war hero and said he could ''think of a number of people" who did not serve in battle in Vietnam, including himself.

Patrick Healy can be reached at phealy@globe.com.