You are correct. Rassman, a Green Beret and passenger on Kerry's boat, was not a crewman, i.e., one of the Band of Brothers. It would be interesting to learn the true circumstance of how they got together.
Where did you hear he kept in touch with them? It seems as though Kerry would be "too good" for the unwashed left overs from his youth
I remember reading it in the Boston Globe series on Kerry's life and elsewhere. Here is one report about them that seems to indicate that 1996 was the first real use of the swift boat crew, but Kerry used veterans in earlier campaigns
"For the band of brothers' dozen or so core members--including most of the two swift boat crews Kerry commanded in Vietnam--down time was hard to come by last week. Betting that his buddies' war stories will help shore up his national security credentials, Kerry enlisted them in a daily blitzkrieg of interviews, speeches, and photo ops. But while their appearance on the national stage may be new, the band of brothers has actually been 20 years in the making.
The seed for the concept was planted in 1984, during Kerry's first Senate bid, when his main primary rival, Rep. Jim Shannon, took him to task for protesting the Vietnam War. When Kerry demanded an apology, Shannon refused, saying, "That dog won't hunt." With a week to go before the primary, a group of Vietnam vets from Massachusetts barnstormed the state in Kerry's defense, helping him. He barely eked out the win--but he's been winning ever since.
All for one. Heirs to the so-called dog hunters, the band of brothers was born during Kerry's 1996 re-election bid, when he faced popular Massachusetts Gov. William Weld. A couple of weeks before Election Day, a Boston Globe columnist suggested that Kerry's role in a 1969 Vietnam firefight--for which he won the Silver Star--might have constituted a war crime. A Kerry friend tracked down five of his 1969 crewmates--none of whom had spoken to Kerry or to one another since Vietnam--and flew them to Boston. "John saved our lives, and we saved his," says former crewmate Drew Whitlow. "If you get one of us in trouble, we're going to come after you." It was just what Kerry needed. "These veterans beat back the charges," says Rob Gray, Weld's 1996 spokesman. "We couldn't change the subject back to what we wanted to talk about."
In 1996, supporting the OinC, who was an incumbent Senator, was harmless. If the facts got embroidered into a bit of a fantasy, it was all in the interest of getting the skipper elected.
Now, the stakes are a lot higher. But the crewmen, as well as the Senator, are invested in the fantasy, not the facts.
If this is the correct thesis, Kerry's crewmen bear close watching. They're unlikely to "turn state's evidence", but they might start refusing interviews and begin drifting away from the campaign.
They're not corrupt men, necessarily. They'll want to be able to live with themselves.