[Mb-civic] The Birth of the Anti-Kerry Ad

[Michael Butler]

Kitty sent this:

      August 20, 2004
      Friendly Fire: The Birth of an Anti-Kerry Ad
      By KATE ZERNIKE and JIM RUTENBERG
           
      fter weeks of taking fire over veterans' accusations that he had lied
about his Vietnam service record to win medals and build a political career,
Senator John Kerry shot back yesterday, calling those statements
categorically false and branding the people behind them tools of the Bush
campaign.

      His decision to take on the group directly was a measure of how the
group that calls itself Swift Boat Veterans for Truth has catapulted itself
to the forefront of the presidential campaign. It has advanced its cause in
a book, in a television advertisement and on cable news and talk radio
shows, all in an attempt to discredit Mr. Kerry's war record, a pillar of
his campaign. 

      How the group came into existence is a story of how veterans with
longstanding anger about Mr. Kerry's antiwar statements in the early 1970's
allied themselves with Texas Republicans.

      Mr. Kerry called them "a front for the Bush campaign" - a charge the
campaign denied. 

      A series of interviews and a review of documents show a web of
connections to the Bush family, high-profile Texas political figures and
President Bush's chief political aide, Karl Rove.

      Records show that the group received the bulk of its initial financing
from two men with ties to the president and his family - one a longtime
political associate of Mr. Rove's, the other a trustee of the foundation for
Mr. Bush's father's presidential library. A Texas publicist who once helped
prepare Mr. Bush's father for his debate when he was running for vice
president provided them with strategic advice. And the group's television
commercial was produced by the same team that made the devastating ad
mocking Michael S. Dukakis in an oversized tank helmet when he and Mr.
Bush's father faced off in the 1988 presidential election.

      The strategy the veterans devised would ultimately paint John Kerry
the war hero as John Kerry the "baby killer" and the fabricator of the
events that resulted in his war medals. But on close examination, the
accounts of Swift Boat Veterans for Truth' prove to be riddled with
inconsistencies. In many cases, material offered as proof by these veterans
is undercut by official Navy records and the men's own statements.

      Several of those now declaring Mr. Kerry "unfit" had lavished praise
on him, some as recently as last year.

      In an unpublished interview in March 2003 with Mr. Kerry's authorized
biographer, Douglas Brinkley, provided by Mr. Brinkley to The New York
Times, Roy F. Hoffmann, a retired rear admiral and a leader of the group,
allowed that he had disagreed with Mr. Kerry's antiwar positions but said,
"I am not going to say anything negative about him." He added, "He's a good
man." 

      In a profile of the candidate that ran in The Boston Globe in June
2003, Mr. Hoffmann approvingly recalled the actions that led to Mr. Kerry's
Silver Star: "It took guts, and I admire that."

      George Elliott, one of the Vietnam veterans in the group, flew from
his home in Delaware to Boston in 1996 to stand up for Mr. Kerry during a
tough re-election fight, declaring at a news conference that the action that
won Mr. Kerry a Silver Star was "an act of courage." At that same event,
Adrian L. Lonsdale, another Vietnam veteran now speaking out against Mr.
Kerry, supported him with a statement about the "bravado and courage of the
young officers that ran the Swift boats."

      "Senator Kerry was no exception," Mr. Lonsdale told the reporters and
cameras assembled at the Charlestown Navy Yard. "He was among the finest of
those Swift boat drivers."

      Those comments echoed the official record. In an evaluation of Mr.
Kerry in 1969, Mr. Elliott, who was one of his commanders, ranked him as
"not exceeded" in 11 categories, including moral courage, judgment and
decisiveness, and "one of the top few" - the second-highest distinction - in
the remaining five. In written comments, he called Mr. Kerry "unsurpassed,"
"beyond reproach" and "the acknowledged leader in his peer group."

      The Admiral Calls

      It all began last winter, as Mr. Kerry was wrapping up the Democratic
nomination. Mr. Lonsdale received a call at his Massachusetts home from his
old commander in Vietnam, Mr. Hoffmann, asking if he had seen the new
biography of the man who would be president.

      Mr. Hoffmann had commanded the Swift boats during the war from a base
in Cam Ranh Bay and advocated a search-and-destroy campaign against the
Vietcong - the kind of tactic Mr. Kerry criticized when he was a spokesman
for Vietnam Veterans Against the War in 1971. Shortly after leaving the Navy
in 1978, he was issued a letter of censure for exercising undue influence on
cases in the military justice system.

      Both Mr. Hoffmann and Mr. Lonsdale had publicly lauded Mr. Kerry in
the past. But the book, Mr. Brinkley's "Tour of Duty," while it burnished
Mr. Kerry's reputation, portrayed the two men as reckless leaders whose
military approach had led to the deaths of countless sailors and innocent
civilians. Several Swift boat veterans compared Mr. Hoffmann to the
bloodthirsty colonel in the film "Apocalypse Now" - the one who loves the
smell of Napalm in the morning.

      The two men were determined to set the record, as they saw it,
straight.

      "It was the admiral who started it and got the rest of us into it,"
Mr. Lonsdale said.

      Mr. Hoffmann's phone calls led them to Texas and to John E. O'Neill,
who at one point commanded the same Swift boat in Vietnam, and whose mission
against him dated to 1971, when he had been recruited by the Nixon
administration to debate Mr. Kerry on "The Dick Cavett Show."

      Mr. O'Neill, who pressed his charges against Mr. Kerry in numerous
television appearances Thursday, had spent the 33 years since he debated Mr.
Kerry building a successful law practice in Houston, intermingling with some
of the state's most powerful Republicans and building an impressive client
list. Among the companies he represented was Falcon Seaboard, the energy
firm founded by the current lieutenant governor of Texas, David Dewhurst, a
central player in the Texas redistricting plan that has positioned state
Republicans to win more Congressional seats this fall.

      Mr. O'Neill said during one of several interviews that he had come to
know two of his biggest donors, Harlan Crow and Bob J. Perry, through
longtime social and business contacts.

      Mr. Perry, who has given $200,000 to the group, is the top donor to
Republicans in the state, according to Texans for Public Justice, a
nonpartisan group that tracks political donations. He donated $46,000 to
President Bush's campaigns for governor in 1994 and 1998. In the 2002
election, the group said, he donated nearly $4 million to Texas candidates
and political committees.

      Mr. Rove, Mr. Bush's top political aide, recently said through a
spokeswoman that he and Mr. Perry were longtime friends, though he said they
had not spoken for at least a year. Mr. Rove and Mr. Perry have been
associates since at least 1986, when they both worked on the gubernatorial
campaign of Bill Clements.

      Mr. O'Neill said he had known Mr. Perry for 30 years. "I've
represented many of his friends,'' Mr. O'Neill said. Mr. Perry did not
respond to requests for comment.

      Mr. O'Neill said he had also known Mr. Crow for 30 years, through
mutual friends. Mr. Crow, the seventh-largest donor to Republicans in the
state according to the Texans for Public Justice, has donated nowhere near
as much money as Mr. Perry to the Swift boat group. His family owns one of
the largest diversified commercial real estate companies in the nation, the
Trammell Crow Company, and has given money to Mr. Bush and his father
throughout their careers. He is listed as a trustee of the George Bush
Presidential Library Foundation.

      One of his law partners, Margaret Wilson, became Mr. Bush's general
counsel when he was governor of Texas and followed him to the White House as
deputy counsel for the Department of Commerce, according to her biography on
the law firm's Web site.

      Another partner, Tex Lezar, ran on the Republican ticket with Mr. Bush
in 1994, as lieutenant governor. They were two years apart at Yale, and Mr.
Lezar worked for the attorney general's office in the Reagan administration.
Mr. Lezar, who died last year, was married to Merrie Spaeth, a powerful
public relations executive who has helped coordinate the efforts of Swift
Boat Veterans for Truth.

      In 2000, Ms. Spaeth was spokeswoman for a group that ran $2 million
worth of ads attacking Senator John McCain's environmental record and
lauding Mr. Bush's in crucial states during their fierce primary battle. The
group, calling itself Republicans for Clean Air, was founded by a prominent
Texas supporter of Mr. Bush, Sam Wyly.

      Ms. Spaeth had been a communications official in the Reagan White
House, where the president's aides had enough confidence in her to invite
her to help prepare George Bush for his vice-presidential debate in 1984.
She says she is also a close friend of Senator Kay Bailey Hutchison of
Texas, a client of Mr. Rove's. Ms. Spaeth said in an interview that the one
time she had ever spoken to Mr. Rove was when Ms. Hutchison was running for
the Texas treasurer's office in 1990.

      When asked if she had ever visited the White House during Mr. Bush's
tenure, Ms. Spaeth initially said that she had been there only once, in
2002, when Kenneth Starr gave her a personal tour. But this week Ms. Spaeth
acknowledged that she had spent an hour in the Old Executive Office
Building, part of the White House complex, in the spring of 2003, giving Mr.
Bush's chief economic adviser, Stephen Friedman, public speaking advice.
Asked if it was possible that she had worked with other administration
officials, Ms. Spaeth said, "The answer is 'no,' unless you refresh my
memory.''

      "Is the White House directing this?" Ms. Spaeth said of the
organization. "Absolutely not.''

      Another participant is the political advertising agency that made the
group's television commercial: Stevens Reed Curcio & Potholm, based in
Alexandria, Va. The agency worked for Senator McCain in 2000 and for Mr.
Bush's father in 1988, when it created the "tank" advertisement mocking Mr.
Dukakis. A spokesman for the Swift boat veterans said the organization
decided to hire the agency after a member saw one of its partners speaking
on television.

      About 10 veterans met in Ms. Spaeth's office in Dallas in April to
share outrage and plot their campaign against Mr. Kerry, she and others
said. Mr. Lonsdale, who did not attend, said the meeting had been planned as
"an indoctrination session."

      What might have been loose impressions about Mr. Kerry began to
harden.

      "That was an awakening experience," Ms. Spaeth said. "Not just for me,
but for many of them who had not heard each other's stories."

      The group decided to hire a private investigator to investigate Mr.
Brinkley's account of the war - to find "some neutral way of actually
questioning people involved in these incidents,'' Mr. O'Neill said.

      But the investigator's questions did not seem neutral to some.

      Patrick Runyon, who served on a mission with Mr. Kerry, said he
initially thought the caller was from a pro-Kerry group, and happily gave a
statement about the night Mr. Kerry won his first Purple Heart. The
investigator said he would send it to him by e-mail for his signature. Mr.
Runyon said the edited version was stripped of all references to enemy
combat, making it look like just another night in the Mekong Delta.

      "It made it sound like I didn't believe we got any returned fire," he
said. "He made it sound like it was a normal operation. It was the scariest
night of my life." 

      By May, the group had the money that Mr. O'Neill had collected as well
as additional veterans rallied by Mr. O'Neill, Mr. Hoffmann and others. The
expanded group gathered in Washington to record the veterans' stories for a
television commercial.

      Each veteran's statement was written down as an affidavit and sent to
him to sign and have notarized. But the validity of those affidavits soon
came into question.

      Mr. Elliott, who recommended Mr. Kerry for the Silver Star, had signed
one affidavit saying Mr. Kerry "was not forthright" in the statements that
had led to the award. Two weeks ago, The Boston Globe quoted him as saying
that he felt he should not have signed the affidavit. He then signed a
second affidavit that reaffirmed his first, which the Swift Boat Veterans
gave to reporters. Mr. Elliott has refused to speak publicly since then.

      The Questions

      The book outlining the veterans' charges, "Unfit for Command: Swift
Boat Veterans Speak Out Against Kerry," has also come under fire. It is
published by Regnery, a conservative company that has published numerous
books critical of Democrats, and written by Mr. O'Neill and Jerome R. Corsi,
who was identified on the book jacket as a Harvard Ph.D. and the author of
many books and articles. But Mr. Corsi also acknowledged that he has been a
contributor of anti-Catholic, anti-Muslim and anti-Semitic comments to a
right-wing Web site. He said he regretted those comments.

      The group's arguments have foundered on other contradictions. In the
television commercial, Dr. Louis Letson looks into the camera and declares,
"I know John Kerry is lying about his first Purple Heart because I treated
him for that injury." Dr. Letson does not dispute the wound - a piece of
shrapnel above Mr. Kerry's left elbow - but he and others in the group argue
that it was minor and self-inflicted.

      Yet Dr. Letson's name does not appear on any of the medical records
for Mr. Kerry. Under "person administering treatment" for the injury, the
form is signed by a medic, J. C. Carreon, who died several years ago. Dr.
Letson said it was common for medics to treat sailors with the kind of
injury that Mr. Kerry had and to fill out paperwork when doctors did the
treatment. 

      Asked in an interview if there was any way to confirm he had treated
Mr. Kerry, Dr. Letson said, "I guess you'll have to take my word for it."

      The group also offers the account of William L. Schachte Jr., a
retired rear admiral who says in the book that he had been on the small
skimmer on which Mr. Kerry was injured that night in December 1968. He
contends that Mr. Kerry wounded himself while firing a grenade.

      But the two other men who acknowledged that they had been with Mr.
Kerry, Bill Zaladonis and Mr. Runyon, say they cannot recall a third crew
member. "Me and Bill aren't the smartest, but we can count to three," Mr.
Runyon said in an interview. And even Dr. Letson said he had not recalled
Mr. Schachte until he had a conversation with another veteran earlier this
year and received a subsequent phone call from Mr. Schachte himself.

      Mr. Schachte did not return a telephone call, and a spokesman for the
group said he would not comment.

      The Silver Star was awarded after Mr. Kerry's boat came under heavy
fire from shore during a mission in February 1969. According to Navy
records, he turned the boat to charge the Vietcong position. An enemy
solider sprang from the shore about 10 feet in front of the boat. Mr. Kerry
leaped onto the shore, chased the soldier behind a small hut and killed him,
seizing a B-40 rocket launcher with a round in the chamber.

      Swift Boat Veterans for Truth describes the man Mr. Kerry killed as a
solitary wounded teenager "in a loincloth," who may or may not have been
armed. They say the charge to the beach was planned the night before and,
citing a report from one crew member on a different boat, maintain that the
sailors even schemed about who would win which medals.

      The group says Mr. Kerry himself wrote the reports that led to the
medal. But Mr. Elliott and Mr. Lonsdale, who handled reports going up the
line for recognition, have previously said that a medal would be awarded
only if there was corroboration from others and that they had thoroughly
corroborated the accounts.

      "Witness reports were reviewed; battle reports were reviewed," Mr.
Lonsdale said at the 1996 news conference, adding, "It was a very complete
and carefully orchestrated procedure." In his statements Mr. Elliott
described the action that day as "intense" and "unusual."

      According to a citation for Mr. Kerry's Bronze Star, a group of Swift
boats was leaving the Bay Hap river when several mines detonated, disabling
one boat and knocking a soldier named Jim Rassmann overboard. In a hail of
enemy fire, Mr. Kerry turned the boat around to pull Mr. Rassmann from the
water. 

      Mr. Rassmann, who says he is a Republican, reappeared during the Iowa
caucuses this year to tell his story and support Mr. Kerry, and is widely
credited with helping to revive Mr. Kerry's campaign.

      But the group says that there was no enemy fire, and that while Mr.
Kerry did rescue Mr. Rassmann, the action was what anyone would have
expected of a sailor, and hardly heroic. Asked why Mr. Rassmann recalled
that he was dodging enemy bullets, a member of the group, Jack Chenoweth,
said, "He's lying."

      "If that's what we have to say," Mr. Chenoweth added, "that's how it
was." 

      Several veterans insist that Mr. Kerry wrote his own reports, pointing
to the initials K. J. W. on one of the reports and saying they are Mr.
Kerry's. "What's the W for, I cannot answer," said Larry Thurlow, who said
his boat was 50 to 60 yards from Mr. Kerry's. Mr. Kerry's middle initial is
F, and a Navy official said the initials refer to the person who had
received the report at headquarters, not the author.

      A damage report to Mr. Thurlow's boat shows that it received three
bullet holes, suggesting enemy fire, and later intelligence reports indicate
that one Vietcong was killed in action and five others wounded, reaffirming
the presence of an enemy. Mr. Thurlow said the boat was hit the day before.
He also received a Bronze Star for the day, a fact left out of "Unfit for
Command."

      Asked about the award, Mr. Thurlow said that he did not recall what
the citation said but that he believed it had commended him for saving the
lives of sailors on a boat hit by a mine. If it did mention enemy fire, he
said, that was based on Mr. Kerry's false reports. The actual citation, Mr.
Thurlow said, was with an ex-wife with whom he no longer has contact, and he
declined to authorize the Navy to release a copy. But a copy obtained by The
New York Times indicates "enemy small arms," "automatic weapons fire" and
"enemy bullets flying about him." The citation was first reported by The
Washington Post on Thursday.

      Standing Their Ground

      As serious questions about its claims have arisen, the group has
remained steadfast and adaptable.

      This week, as its leaders spoke with reporters, they have focused
primarily on the one allegation in the book that Mr. Kerry's campaign has
not been able to put to rest: that he was not in Cambodia at Christmas in
1968, as he declared in a statement to the Senate in 1986. Even Mr.
Brinkley, who has emerged as a defender of Mr. Kerry, said in an interview
that it was unlikely that Mr. Kerry's Swift boat ventured into Cambodia at
Christmas, though he said he believed that Mr. Kerry was probably there
shortly afterward. 

      The group said it would introduce a new advertisement against Mr.
Kerry on Friday. What drives the veterans, they acknowledge, is less what
Mr. Kerry did during his time in Vietnam than what he said after. Their
affidavits and their television commercial focus mostly on those antiwar
statements. Most members of the group object to his using the word
"atrocities" to describe what happened in Vietnam when he returned and
became an antiwar activist. And they are offended, they say, by the gall of
his running for president as a hero of that war.

      "I went to university and was called a baby killer and a murderer
because of guys like Kerry and what he was saying," said Van Odell, who
appears in the first advertisement, accusing Mr. Kerry of lying to get his
Bronze Star. "Not once did I participate in the atrocities he said were
happening."

      As Mr. Lonsdale explained it: "We won the battle. Kerry went home and
lost the war for us.

      "He called us rapers and killers and that's not true," he continued.
"If he expects our loyalty, we should expect loyalty from him."