Sinclair Broadcast Group of Maryland, owner of the largest chain of television stations in the nation, plans to preempt regular programming two weeks before the Nov. 2 election to air a documentary that accuses Sen. John F. Kerry of betraying American prisoners during the Vietnam War.

Midnight in South Vietnam, and the river is black. Past the rice paddies and shacks, small fires are burning by the shoreline as Lt. John H. Davis' 50-foot aluminum swift boat — PCF 19 — makes its routine patrol through the reeds.

In a split second, rocket fire shatters the silence, and through a plume of oily smoke, the boat sinks to the river's bottom.

"My whole crew lost their lives that night. I was the only one who survived," Lt. Davis says.

Of the Swift boat veterans, a Port Clinton native says he served the most time in Vietnam with presidential candidate John Kerry.

Steve Gardner, a native of Port Clinton and a Port Clinton High School graduate, appears alone in one of the organization's six ads. The ad was released Aug. 26 and is titled "Gunner."

On Sept. 21, 2004, the Swift Boat Veterans for the Truth introduced a TV ad titled, "Friends," with the message that "John Kerry Secretly Met Enemy Leaders" during the Vietnam War, in 1970, while he was yet in the Naval Reserves.

Far from being the war hero a campaign ad depicts him, John Kerry fled in an act of cowardice when a fellow swift boat struck an underwater mine in Vietnam, says the author of "Unfit for Command."

The e-mail on last week's Rather-gate column was almost entirely furious with CBS. About 95 percent of some 300 letters and E-mails attacked the network, and all but four or five of those messages denounced my oh-so-moderate suggestion that the goal is not a vengeful assault on CBS but safeguards for fairer reporting. "No," wrote one reader, "we really want a vengeful assault."

During the televised debate between George W. Bush and John Kerry last Thursday night, moderator Jim Lehrer served the president a softball: "Are there also underlying character issues that you believe are serious enough to deny Senator Kerry the job as commander in chief of the United States?"

I've been trying for some time to obtain an interview with one of the members of the Swift Boat Veterans for Truth. I most wanted to talked to one of the enlisted men who served personally with Kerry, and after much trying, I finally managed to get a phone interview late last week with Van Odell, who served as a gunner's mate in the same unit as John Kerry and who served with him longer than anyone else did in Viet Nam.

Here's why a lot of Vietnam veterans don't support Sen. John Kerry's presidential ambitions: They believe Kerry is a political opportunist who betrayed them.

It has nothing to do with what Kerry did or didn't do when he served in Vietnam as a young naval officer in charge of a Swift boat.

It has everything to do with what he did when he returned from the war and aligned himself with such radical members of the anti-war movement as ardent North Vietnam supporter Jane Fonda.

WASHINGTON - Almost overnight, it has become an article of faith among members of the mainstream media that the charges leveled against Sen. John Kerry by the Swift Boat Veterans for Truth have been proven to be untrue. David Broder, the dean of Washington columnists, got into the act this week with a column that appeared in the Herald in which he dismissed the Swift Vets as a group peddling a scurrilous and largely inaccurate attack on the Vietnam service of John Kerry.