EMENDATION WALTER F. WOUK, TOM PAINE PROJECT - On February 10, Newsmax ran a story entitled, "Gen. Giap: Kerry's Group Helped Hanoi Defeat U.S." The story claimed that "In his 1985 memoir about the war, Gen. Vo Nguyen Giap wrote that if it weren't for organizations like Kerry's Vietnam Veterans Against the War, Hanoi would have surrendered to the U.S. - according to Fox News Channel war historian Oliver North."
North's claim has been repeated as gospel in numerous articles, blogs, commentaries and pseudo-news reports, despite the fact that the Giap memoir is bogus. According to Washington Dispatch columnist Greg Lewis, who researched the alleged quotation, "no such volume exists." Lewis wrote, "A few weeks ago in a column about Kerry, I referred to what has turned out to be an "urban legend." Specifically, based on a "news" item that appeared on NewsMax.com, I repeated a reference to a volume of memoirs supposedly published by North Vietnamese General Vo Nguyen Giap in 1985 as the source of an assertion by Colonel Oliver North. After a reader requested a reference to Giap's 1985 "Memoirs," I did research that convinced me no such volume exists. For that matter, I haven't been able to verify through Fox News that Colonel North actually made the comments he is said to have made and which I repeated."
In the past, General Giap is alleged to have made similar statements about Jane Fonda and Walter Cronkite, though there is no verifiable evidence that he ever did.