On August 25, FOX News managing editor and chief Washington correspondent Brit Hume falsely accused Senator John Kerry of lying in a 2003 speech in which Kerry reminisced about hearing the news of riots following the assassination of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. in April 1968 while “serving in Vietnam.” Hume claimed that Kerry's own website proves that Kerry did not begin his Vietnam service until November 1968.

In fact, in April 1968, Kerry was serving on the U.S.S. Gridley, which was stationed off the coast of Vietnam “to engage in operations in support of the Vietnam War,” according to his website. As Media Matters for America has noted, no less a critic of Kerry than John E. O'Neill, co-founder of Swift Boat Veterans for Truth and co-author of the anti-Kerry book Unfit for Command: Swift Boat Veterans Speak Out Against John Kerry, has conceded that Kerry's service on the U.S.S. Gridley was indeed “recorded as combat theater duty” and that for this service Kerry was “given credit by the Navy for serving in Vietnam.”

From the August 25 edition of FOX News Channel's Special Report with Brit Hume:

HUME: John Kerry, speaking at a Martin Luther King Day celebration in Virginia last year, said, quote, “I remember well April 1968. I was serving in Vietnam, a place of violence. When the news reports brought home to me and my crewmates the violence back home and the tragic news that one of the bullets flying that terrible spring took the life of Dr. King.”

That date of Dr. King's death was April 4, 1968. But according to Kerry's website, it was not until November 17, 1968, that he reported for duty in Vietnam.

A timeline of Kerry's Vietnam service on his website shows that Kerry began serving on the U.S.S. Gridley in June 1967, and the ship departed for the western Pacific on February 9, 1968, “to engage in operations in support of the Vietnam War.” According to the timeline, the ship “spen[t] time in the Gulf of Tonkin off North Vietnam, at Subic Bay in the Philippines and in Wellington, New Zealand.” Kerry remained on the ship until June 20, 1968, when Kerry left to begin “specialized training” in preparation for his service as a swift boat commander on the rivers of mainland Vietnam, which he began on November 17.