theaustralian.news.com.au
New intern claim hits Kerry run
By Roy Eccleston and Washington correspondent
14feb04
AMERICA'S "trash trawling" presidential election campaign shows no sign of abating after a conservative internet website made unsubstantiated claims that a personal scandal had "rocked" the campaign of Democrat frontrunner Senator John Kerry.
The allegations came as the Republican Party accused the Democrats of running the dirtiest election campaign of modern times, and tipped that false allegations about Mr Bush driving a girlfriend to an abortion clinic would surface on the internet.
With the US electorate split down the middle, both sides of politics are now working to attack the character and record of their opponents well ahead of the November contest.
The Kerry campaign declined to comment on the allegations on the controversial Drudge Report, which has about 8 million daily "hits" from around the world, fearing any response would encourage US media to report the claims.
The website has produced past scoops such as the Bill Clinton-Monica Lewinsky affair but has also sometimes got its facts badly wrong.
Drudge claimed that several large US media organisations including Time magazine, The Washington Post, the Associated Press and The Hill, a newspaper focused on the Congress, were investigating Senator Kerry's alleged relationship with a woman who had since "fled" to Africa.
Senator Kerry, 60, is married to Teresa Heinz, who inherited her $US500 million ($635 million) fortune from her first husband John Heinz of the tomato sauce empire.
Albert Eisele, editor of The Hill, confirmed the paper had been investigating allegations for several weeks now and was continuing its work. "The fact we have not published anything speaks for itself," Mr Eisele told The Weekend Australian. "We have not found any smoking gun."
Associated Press spokesman Jack Stokes said: "We do not comment on stories we're either pursuing or not pursuing. We also don't comment on the personal lives of employees or ex-staffers."
The Washington Post has denied it is doing any story on Senator Kerry's alleged relationship.
Drudge claimed that General Wesley Clark, who pulled out of the race this week, had told reporters that he expected the Kerry campaign to "implode" over an issue involving an intern (a young unpaid worker). But The Times of London quoted a Clark aide saying the claim was "utter rubbish" and the general is expected to endorse Senator Kerry as the party's presidential nominee today.
Senator Kerry, the decorated Vietnam War veteran, has already been targeted by several newspapers this week showing him at a 1970s anti-war rally sitting several rows behind actress Jane Fonda, who was known as Hanoi Jane for her pro-Vietnamese stance.
But the Democrats have said they will hit back, with Democratic National Committee chairman Terry McAuliffe claiming Mr Bush had gone absent without leave from his National Guard unit in Alabama during the Vietnam War.
The White House called that claim - still running in the US media - "gutter politics" and "trawling for trash" although there is evidence Mr Bush did not attend his unit for at least one six-month period. |
