Cox frames it as an attack on O'Neil. Cox has about 17 regional dailies.
Old nemesis stalking Kerry's campaign trail
Democrat's supporters call fellow veteran's book, released Wednesday, a 'new low.'
Indianapolis Star
By Scott Shepard
Cox News Service
August 15, 2004
WASHINGTON -- For more than 30 years, John O'Neill has been stalking John Kerry, sometimes at the behest of a Republican president, but always in an attempt to discredit Kerry's combat service record in Vietnam.
With Kerry now the Democratic nominee for president, however, O'Neill's anti-Kerry campaign is intensifying. In a new book, released Wednesday, O'Neill presents a sweeping indictment of Kerry, including charges that two of his three Purple Hearts were from self-inflicted wounds, not enemy fire.
The indictment of Kerry does not stop there, however. In his 214-page book, "Unfit For Command," O'Neill also charges that as an anti-war activist following his service in Vietnam, Kerry attended a meeting where plots to assassinate pro-war senators were discussed.
The book, published by conservative Regnery Publishing Inc., also accuses Kerry of having met secretly with communist delegates to the Vietnamese peace talks in Paris -- having "danced on the edge of treason," in the words of Regnery's publicists.
Kerry's campaign manager, Mary Beth Cahill, released a statement Wednesday suggesting O'Neill's book, along with television ads sponsored by the organization he heads, Swift Boat Veterans for Truth, is part of an orchestrated attempt by President Bush's supporters to "tear down John Kerry . . . with lies."
"We knew it was coming: The Bush campaign and several allied right-wing groups are using August to launch a vicious smear attack against John Kerry," she said. "They're taking this opportunity to go for the jugular. It is a new low for the Republicans."
With the exception of an appearance on CNN to debate former Joint Chiefs of Staff chairman William Crowe, a retired admiral and Kerry supporter, O'Neill has kept an uncharacteristically low profile in the days leading up to the publication of his book, co-authored with Jerome Corsi, a conservative firebrand who has apologized for inflammatory remarks he posted on a conservative Web site, FreeRepublic.com
O'Neill, his publicists and his publisher did not respond to repeated interview requests that began last Thursday with the broadcast of a television ad by Swift Boat Veterans for Truth accusing Kerry of lying about his combat record in Vietnam, a cornerstone of his campaign for president.
In a statement provided by his publicists, O'Neill explained the reason for publishing his book and the TV ads: "I think it's important the country have the facts about John Kerry so that they can reach a reasonable decision."
And on CNN with Crowe on Wednesday, O'Neill rejected the suggestion that his book is filled with falsehoods about Kerry.
"No one is angry at John Kerry for being against the war (in Vietnam)," he said. "People are upset that he came back and labeled us all war criminals. But that wouldn't cause people to say things falsely."
It is not the first time O'Neill has tried to convince Americans that Kerry is something less than the combat hero to which his former Swift Boat crewmates, his performance evaluations and his military decorations -- three Purple Hearts, a Silver Star and a Bronze Star -- might attest.
In 1971, when Kerry emerged as the articulate and telegenic leader of Vietnam veterans trying to end the lengthy conflict, the Nixon White House offered up O'Neill as "the un-Kerry."
A clean-cut Naval Academy honor graduate from San Antonio, O'Neill had earned two Bronze Stars as, like Kerry, a Swift Boat skipper in "Coastal Division II," better known as the Mekong Delta. O'Neill, in fact, once commanded PCF 94, the same Swift Boat that had previously been under Kerry's command.
O'Neill was incensed by Kerry's anti-war activities, particularly his claims that American troops in Vietnam had committed wholesale atrocities. His criticism of Kerry eventually came to the attention of Nixon White House counsel Charles Colson, and he became the centerpiece of Colson's attempt to discredit Kerry.
"Let's destroy this young demagogue before he becomes a Ralph Nader," Colson wrote in one of the White House memos about recruiting O'Neill to challenge Kerry.
Nixon himself became part of the effort, meeting with O'Neill for an hour in the Oval Office.
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