Filling in as host of Rush Limbaugh's radio show on August 25, radio host and former San Diego mayor Roger Hedgecock said Senator John Kerry “coined the phrase 'baby killers'” in reference to soldiers fighting in Vietnam. While Hedgecock claimed that Kerry “first brought up that phrase” in his 1971 testimony before the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, Kerry did not use this phrase in an audio clip from the testimony that Hedgecock played on the show, at any other point in his testimony or, apparently, at any other time.

From the August 25 edition of The Rush Limbaugh Show:

HEDGECOCK: He [Kerry] was the one who coined the phrase “baby killers.” That's the phrase returning veterans from Vietnam had to hear, including [former senator] Max Cleland [(D-GA)], when they came home, when they were spit on in airports. I remember this stuff, when they were called “baby killers.” It was John Kerry's testimony that first brought up that phrase. In fact, I think we have that phrase somewhere in the testimony. Now listen to this. This is the testimony before the Foreign Relations Committee of April 22, 1971. I stress again, and I wish these members of Congress would remember this, these veterans who are standing up for Kerry today who say that the Swift Boat Veterans for Truth, that those ads by attacking John Kerry attack all veterans' records. How about this attack on veterans?

KERRY AUDIO CLIP: They told the stories at times they had personally raped, cut off ears, cut off heads, taped wires from portable telephones to human genitals and turned up the power, cut off limbs, blown up bodies, randomly shot at civilians, razed villages in fashion reminiscent of Genghis Khan, shot cattle and dogs for fun, poisoned food stocks, and generally ravaged the countryside of South Vietnam in addition to the normal ravage of war, and the normal and very particular ravaging which is done by the applied bombing power of this country.

As Media Matters for America has noted, when Kerry testified in 1971 before the Senate Foreign Relations Committee in his capacity as spokesman for Vietnam Veterans Against the War (VVAW), he did not “attack” veterans; rather, he related the stories of other Vietnam veterans who came home and testified to their personal experiences in what was known as the Winter Soldier Investigation, which VVAW had commissioned a few months earlier in Detroit, Michigan. Nor did Kerry's testimony blame the soldiers who reported having committed atrocities in Vietnam.

While Kerry did not describe soldiers in Vietnam as “baby killers” during his Senate testimony or apparently at any other time, the term appears in the book Unfit for Command: Vietnam Veterans Speak Out Against John Kerry, co-authored by Jerome R. Corsi and Swift Boat Veterans for Truth co-founder John E. O'Neill. Anti-Kerry veteran William Franke is quoted on page 51 of the book as follows: “I will tell you in all candor that the only baby killer I knew in Vietnam was John F. Kerry.” In a May 14 article at Salon.com, Joe Conason reported that Franke is “well known in Missouri as a longtime Republican Party activist and financier” with “strong commercial interests in Southeast Asia.”