Thursday, August 19, 2004
Harkin Update
Apparently CNN still thought, as of January 2004, that Harkin was a Vietnam veteran.
The 64-year-old Harkin is a political icon in the Hawkeye State where he grew up.
A Navy veteran who served in Vietnam, he first went to Washington in 1974 as a member of the House, where he served for 10 years.
To set the record straight, the WSJ has republished their news story from 1991, where they broke the original story:
In 1979, Mr. Harkin, then a congressman, participated in a round-table discussion arranged by the Congressional Vietnam Veterans' Caucus. "I spent five years as a Navy pilot, starting in November of 1962," Mr. Harkin said at that meeting, in words that were later quoted in a book, Changing of the Guard, by Washington Post political writer David Broder. "One year was in Vietnam. I was flying F-4s and F-8s on combat air patrols and photo-reconnaissance support missions. I did no bombing."
That clearly is not an accurate picture of his Navy service. Though Mr. Harkin stresses he is proud of his Navy record--"I put my ass on the line day after day"--he concedes now he never flew combat air patrols in Vietnam.
