Fact and Fiction:

The Cambodians patrolled the crossing border points on the Bassac and Mekong Rivers and had fortifications above the frontier. In mid-1968, just before Adm. Zumwalt took over, a U.S. Army LCM landing craft sailing north on the Mekong River — loaded with lubricants, gas, rations, beer and a forklift, as well as a number of U.S. soldiers — missed the turn from the Mekong River to the Bassac River (the two main north-south rivers that flow through the Mekong Delta) in order to reach its destination on the southern portion of the Bassac. Apparently the troops were somewhat bemused from the heat and the beer consumed and sailed right up into Cambodia, where they were halted by a Cambodian patrol craft and taken to the frontier base and then up to Phnom Penh. Gen. Creighton Abrams, newly in command, was furious, and Adm. Zumwalt's predecessor was nonplussed, blurting out that it wasn't one of his boats.

Gen. Abrams snarled, "Yeah, it was one of mine and why did they do it?" We got the crew and LCM back eventually, but that was the only river incident involving the Cambodian border or Navy actions inside Cambodia to my recollection. There were continuing firefights along the Vinh the Canal, which is a kilometer inside the Vietnamese border and stretches straight as a shot from the Gulf of Siam to the Bassac River. The canal fronted the southern Communist base areas inside Cambodia and the Navy patrol craft frequently interdicted Communist infiltrators.

There were plenty of incidents on land in 1968 involving U.S. ground forces and aircraft along the 800-mile-plus length of the Cambodian border with Vietnam. A favorite VC/NVA tactic was to pull up next to a Cambodian military post, shoot at the Americans and then leave and let the Cambodians receive American counter-battery fire or aircraft strikes.

Finally, concerning the assertion that Mr. Kerry was shot at by the Khmer Rouge during his Christmas 1968 visit to Cambodia, it should be noted that the Khmer Rouge didn't take the field until the Easter Offensive of 1972, when the Vietnamese forces that had attacked the Cambodians initially in March 1970 pulled out of Cambodia to attack the U.S. and Vietnamese forces in Vietnam. Only Vietnamese Communist soldiers were found on the battlefields of Cambodia in 1970-72.

The bottom line of all this is that in the 15 years of active American military involvement in Vietnam and Cambodia, between 1961 and 1975, there was ongoing attention and scrutiny paid to the border because of the political sensitivities over the neutrality of the Cambodians. While things may have happened that no one ever found out about in Saigon, the Cambodians yelled bloody murder to the world press and the ICC whenever they found Americans trespassing.

Andrew Antippas served as a Foreign Service officer in the U.S. Embassy in Saigon (March 1968 to February 1970) as the "Cambodia Man" and at the U.S. Embassy in Phnom Penh, Cambodia (1970 to 1972). He spent 32 years with the State Department (1960-92).