-- by Tyler Whitley

Richmonder Phyllis Galanti, the wife of former prisoner of war Paul Galanti, is featured in a new television ad sponsored by Swift Boat Veterans for the Truth, a group attacking Democratic presidential candidate John Kerry.

The 60-second spot will be aired nationwide on cable television, beginning tomorrow, said Chris LaCivita, a Republican consultant from Richmond who is a media adviser to the Swift Boat organization.

Mrs. Galanti was filmed Monday in her West Richmond home.

The ad is running now in three so-called battleground states Pennsylvania, New Mexico and Nevada in a $1.4 million ad buy, LaCivita said. In the ad, Mrs. Galanti and Mary Jane McManus, the wife of another former prisoner of war in Vietnam, say Kerry shouldn't be trusted because he spoke out against the war while their husbands were being tortured in a North Vietnamese prison.

Kerry, after receiving three Purple Hearts, a Bronze Star and a Silver Star for service in Vietnam, returned to the states and led a movement against the war.

The new TV ad shows Kerry, in military fatigues, testifying before the U.S. Senate in 1971 that American servicemen committed atrocities in Vietnam. Kerry says now he regrets some of the rhetoric he used and was relaying the complaints of other servicemen.

While her husband was a prisoner of war, Mrs. Galanti led a national movement to call attention to the prisoners in Vietnam. Galanti, a Navy pilot and lieutenant commander, spent 6 years in a North Vietnamese prison camp. He was shot down two years after the Galantis were married, Mrs. Galanti points out in the ad.

Paul Galanti was featured in an earlier ad sponsored by the Swift Boats group, which has created a sensation, and criticism, with its attacks on Kerry and his military service.

This article was published by The Richmond Times-Dispatch.