But the anti-Kerry faction has not definitively proved that Kerry was the sole source of the Bronze Star battle account. And according to Elliott, Kerry's immediate commander, Swift boat officers involved in battles normally were involved in drafting the after-action report, which in this case described repeated fire from small arms and automatic weapons.
Rassmann, whose life was saved, stands by Kerry.
"Their new charges are false; their stories are fabricated, made up by people who did not serve with Kerry in Vietnam," he wrote in a commentary last Wednesday in the Wall Street Journal. "They insult and defame all of us who served in Vietnam."
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A third and new allegation surfaced last week as part of the publicity campaign for O'Neill's new book.
O'Neill and several members of Swift Boat Veterans for Truth allege that in statements to Congress and in news accounts, Kerry lied in claiming that on Christmas Eve 1968, his Swift boat -- PCF-44 -- sailed into a Cambodian river.
Cambodia was supposed to be off-limits to the U.S. military because it was not an official combatant. However, U.S. troops made secret incursions into the country to stem Viet Cong operations and supply lines.
"I remember Christmas of 1968 sitting on a gunboat in Cambodia," Kerry said in a March 1986 Senate speech. "I remember what it was like to be shot at by the Vietnamese and Khmer Rouge and Cambodians."
At other times, Kerry has said he was near -- but not in -- Cambodia.
In a Times interview last June, Kerry said: "I celebrated Christmas Eve on the border of Cambodia." And he added that on a later mission, "I went into Cambodia with the CIA."
Kerry's critics have seized on his varying recollections to impugn his credibility and suggest he has embellished his war record.
Steven Gardner, the only member of Kerry's former crews to join Swift Boat Veterans for Truth and actively campaign against Kerry, has told some reporters that PCF-44 was 50 miles away from Cambodia that Christmas Eve.
But two of Kerry's crewmates -- Wasser and Zaladonis -- both told The Times the boat was in the vicinity of the Cambodian border and even fought an engagement with a Viet Cong sampan on Christmas Eve day.
"We patrolled a river on the border," Zaladonis said last week. "Unless I'm out of my mind or mistaken, that river was part of the border."
