SwiftVets.com

[fortdixlover]

The boycott of SwiftVets by the mainstream media begins to crack.

This article fills the top half of the second page, Saturday Philadelphia Inquirer, Aug. 14, 2004.

What is even more remarkable is the relatively objective tone of the article! It doesn't focus on the usual ad-hominems, slanders, non-sequiturs, and irrelevancies against the Swift Vets!



(Of course, way too much attention is paid to the sources of money, while Soros and MoveOn got a free pass on this issue in the 'mainstream' media!)

FDL


http://www.philly.com/mld/philly/news/nation/9399436.htm?1c

GOP donors bolster veterans' attack on Kerry war record
Posted on Sat, Aug. 14, 2004

By Tom Infield

Inquirer Staff Writer

A well-organized group of Vietnam veterans who are challenging Sen. John Kerry's claims of heroic war service says it has received a flood of donations in recent days after advertising its contentions on TV in three states.

The group, Swift Boat Veterans for Truth, said it hoped to use the money to track Kerry as he travels across the country and to run new ads in cities where he appears.

"That's our goal," said John E. O'Neill, a Houston lawyer and coauthor of Unfit to Command, a 251-page book being distributed this week by the conservative Regnery Publishing Inc. The book quotes Navy veterans saying Kerry distorted his record as a boat commander in Vietnam's Mekong Delta.

The group is registered with the Federal Election Commission as a 527 organization, not affiliated with any party. It got off the ground with a $100,000 donation from Texas home builder Bob J. Perry, a prominent Republican donor.

Roy F. Hoffman, a retired admiral, 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.... We're going to follow Kerry," 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 looking 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 came to limited 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.

Democrats have said the group's Republican ties show that it is nothing more than a political hit squad aimed at undermining the best of Kerry's record.

Hoffman said he had not 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, after the news conference received little attention on network TV and in national newspapers.

The group saw 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 included O'Neill and Texas real estate developer Harlan Crow, also a Republican contributor. Each of them gave $25,000, according to the nonpartisan Center for Responsive Politics.

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. A spokesman, Mike Russell, said the firm had done work for the Republican Party and conservative-oriented causes.

O'Neill's cowriter on the book is Jerome R. Corsi, an author of previous books on the Vietnam-era antiwar 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 did not 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 since listened to the conversation, which was picked up by Nixon's then-secret recording system.

"The first thing I told President Nixon," he said, "is that I was a Democrat and I had voted for Hubert Humphrey" in the 1968 presidential election.

He 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 does not remember who asked him to attend.


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Contact staff writer Tom Infield at 610-701-7622 or tinfield@phillynews.com.

[Doc Jerry]

Fort:

I agree it's about time the media elite is in the debate; however, this particular article focused more on the Republican donors. Regardless, it's good we're getting the word out in the elite media even though they will make every effort to spin things for Kerry. Kathleen Antrim's article in the Aug. 13, 2004 edition of the S.F. Chronicle was more accuate. She deserves kudos. It takes some balls to write that type of article for the S.F. Chronicle.











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