Kate Zernike Reporting For Duty

The New York Times’ reporter of things John Kerry saluted Kerry’s latest version of his service in Vietnam in her lengthy, uncritical and uninformed recitation of Kerry’s “evidence” that he was wronged by the Swift Boat Veterans for Truth.

Ms. Zernike’s crack, or should I say cracked, reporting skills apparently do not include even including the few facts she does know.

Her latest piece of puffery begins:

John Kerry starts by showing the entry in a log he kept from 1969: "Feb 12: 0800 run to Cambodia."

He moves on to the photographs: his boat leaving the base at Ha Tien, Vietnam; the harbor; the mountains fading frame by frame as the boat heads north; the special operations team the boat was ferrying across the border; the men reading maps and setting off flares.
"They gave me a hat," Mr. Kerry says. "I have the hat to this day," he declares, rising to pull it from his briefcase. "I have the hat."

Omitted from Ms. Zernike’s story is any mention of what she said when interviewed by CNN’s Aaron Brown on August 23, 2004:

BROWN: …The one issue the Senator has some problems on I think is this Cambodia, fair?
ZERNIKE: Right. Right.
BROWN: He says he was there on Christmas and the record doesn’t seem to support that.
ZERNIKE: No, in fact, if you look in “Tour of Duty” by Douglas Brinkley, which is his biography, or a biography of the Senator, he’s somewhere else on December 25th, on Christmas Eve and on Christmas Day. Brinkley himself says there’s some question Kerry may have been in Cambodia later.

So, now, Kerry reveals one line from his journal – which he refuses to share with the public -- to say he was, according even to the New York Times’ display of the supposed evidence, “35 miles from the border.” No mention by Zernike of Kerry's previous false claims to have been in Cambodia on Christmas Eve or Christmas Day.

The expose in Unfit For Command of Kerry’s exaggerations and lies in his staged Brinkley bio relied upon Kerry’s own words and the differing eyewitness and knowledgeable accounts of those who also served in the same unit.

Sorry, Ms. Zernike, your salute to John Kerry rings as hollow as his at his nomination.