one, when it goes through the secretary. I'd stand by the process that awarded that medal, and I think we best acknowledge that his heroism did gain that recognition." Elmo Zumwalt, Commander of the United States Naval Forces in Vietnam at that time, signed Kerry's original Silver Star citation and defended the award in 1996, saying "It is a disgrace to the United States Navy that there's any inference that the [medal] process was anything other than totally honest." Boston Herald, October 28, 1996. Cambodia mission On March 27, 1986, while giving a speech to the Senate, Kerry mentioned he was in Cambodia on a swift boat around Christmas, 1968, during the Vietnam War. During that encounter, Kerry said he was shot at by Vietnamese and Khmer Rouge Cambodians, while the President had told the American people that U.S. military personnel were not in Cambodia. According to the Boston Globe biography of Kerry, he later recalled that after the Christmas Eve incident, he began to develop a deep mistrust of U.S. government pronouncements. One chapter of SBVT's Unfit for Command questioned Kerry's statements that he was in Cambodia during the war. Kerry did not claim to have been sent on a covert mission to Cambodia on Christmas Eve, 1968. Rather, he believed at the time he had crossed the border while on a patrol near the border, during which the boats were ambushed and later came under friendly fire from South Vietnamese soldiers. None of Kerry's crewmates confirmed being sent to Cambodia. One of Kerry's crewmen, SBVT member Steven Gardner, asserted that it was physically impossible to cross the Cambodian border, as it was blocked and patrolled by PBRs (a type of patrol boat); however, Kerry's boat was evidently patrolling with PBRs during the mission in question. Some crewmembers have, moreover, stated that they may at some point have entered Cambodia without knowing it. James Wasser, who was on PCF-44 on that December mission, while saying that he believed they were "very, very close" to Cambodia, did not recall actually crossing over; he also stated that it was very hard to tell their exact position in the border area. Kerry's own journal entry on this, written the night of the mission, does not specifically say they entered Cambodia. However, it does state that PCF-44 was somewhere "toward Cambodia" to provide cover for two smaller patrol boats, and in sarcasm, that