Friendly Fire: The Birth of an Anti-Kerry Ad
By KATE ZERNIKE and JIM RUTENBERG
The New York Times
August 20, 2004
After 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 discredi
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In an unpublished interview in March 2003 with Mr.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 effortts 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."
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