The majors won't cover it, but the Swift Vets are getting coverage from the Knight Ridder chain. This includes some of us, folks. That's a $50 per donor average. And a new Ad is being readied.
an additional $400,000 from 8,000 donors around the country.
Anti-Kerry group sees rise in donations after airing ads
BY TOM INFIELD
Knight Ridder Newspapers
PHILADELPHIA - (KRT) - A group of Vietnam veterans that is challenging Sen. John Kerry's claims of heroic war service says it received a flood of donations in recent days after advertising its contentions on television in three states.
The group, Swift Boat Veterans for Truth, said it hoped to use the money to monitor Kerry's campaign travels and run ads in cities where he appears.
"That's our goal," said John E. O'Neill, a Houston attorney who's one of the group's leaders and co-author of "Unfit to Command," a 251-page book being distributed this week by the conservative Regnery Publishing house. The book quotes Navy veterans as saying Kerry distorted his record as a river boat commander in Vietnam's Mekong Delta in 1968 to 1969.
Democrats have said the group is nothing but a Republican hit squad determined to besmirch their candidate.
Swift Boat Veterans for Truth is registered with the Federal Election Commission as a so-called 527 organization, not affiliated with any party. It got off the ground with a $100,000 donation from Texas homebuilder Bob J. Perry, a prominent Republican donor.
Roy F. Hoffman, a retired admiral and chairman of Swift Boat Veterans for Truth, said the first TV ad, which ran for one week in Ohio, Wisconsin and West Virginia at a cost of $550,000, got so much national news attention that it generated an additional $400,000 from 8,000 donors around the country.
"We are putting together the second ad," said Hoffman, 78, of Richmond, Va. As a Navy captain in 1968 and 1969, Hoffman commanded a unit of 1,650 sailors that included Kerry as a lieutenant.
Hoffman said the unit, known as Task Force 115, included about 16 swift boats and their crews, which patrolled the delta for Viet Cong and other enemy fighters.
"I knew Kerry pretty well," he said. "I did not ride his boat, but we operated very close together. ... I can't say I was a personal friend or buddy-buddy, but I sure knew him ... and I never felt he had the qualifications."
Kerry has made his war service the centerpiece of his campaign to become president. His supporters include men who served on his boat, including a former Green Beret who said Kerry rescued him from the water while under fire.
Swift Boat Veterans for Truth first gained public attention in May when its leaders - including men who served on boats near Kerry's - called a news conference at the National Press Club in Washington.
Hoffman denied that the group is connected to the Republican Party. He said he hasn't been politically involved since leaving the Navy in 1978. Yes, he said, the group had taken cash donations from Republicans. But that became necessary, he said, because the news conference received little attention on network television and in national newspapers.
The group concluded that it needed to buy its own TV ad, he said. And that required money.
He said of Perry: "We had our hand out, and he put money in it. ... As far as I'm concerned, he's a wealthy construction person. If he owns the money legally, I'm all for it."
The group reported $158,000 in donations as of June 30, its latest filing with the election commission.
Donors as of that date included O'Neill and Texas real estate developer Harlan Crow, also a Republican contributor. Each of them gave $25,000, according to the Center for Responsive Politics, a Washington nonprofit that tracks political donations.
The group has received strategic help from Merrie Spaeth, a GOP strategist in Dallas. Spaeth was involved in a 2000 ad campaign against Republican Sen. John McCain of Arizona, then running for president against George W. Bush.
Current advisers include Creative Response Concepts, a public relations firm in Arlington, Va., that Mike Russell, a spokesman, said has done work for the Republican Party and "conservative-oriented causes."
O'Neill's co-writer on the book is Jerome R. Corsi, an author of other books on the Vietnam-era anti-war movement and political violence.
Now 58, O'Neill was a Swift boat commander who took over Kerry's boat after Kerry returned home with three Purple Hearts in 1969. He didn't know Kerry until later. They met in the national debate over the merits of the war and a claim by war opponents, including Kerry, that American troops commonly committed atrocities.
After O'Neill confronted Kerry on a Washington TV station, he said, he got a call from the White House. He then met with President Richard Nixon and his counselor Charles Colson.
O'Neill said he had "read in the papers" that the White House later asked him to speak in Philadelphia at a meeting of the National Conference of Mayors. He said he made a speech but doesn't remember who asked him to attend.
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© 2004, Knight Ridder/Tribune Information Services.
© 2004 KRT Wire and wire service sources. All Rights Reserved.
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