Swift Boat Vets: Kerry Unfit to be Commander-in-Chief

John O'Neill, who served in Viet Nam with John Kerry and succeeded him as commander of the same Swift boat after Kerry departed, is one of the principals of a political action group called Swift Boat Veterans for Truth. They are circulating a letter calling for Kerry to authorize the complete release of his military records, and have so far collected over 189 signatures, mostly from people who, like Kerry, served on Swift Boats. Regarding Kerry, O'Neill makes a pretty strong statement in an editorial in OpinionJournal:

Since 1971, I have refused many offers from John Kerry's political opponents to speak out against him. My reluctance to become involved once again in politics is outweighed now by my profound conviction that John Kerry is simply not fit to be America's commander in chief. Nobody has recruited me to come forward. My decision is the inevitable result of my own personal beliefs and life experience.

On May 4th, the group held a press briefing, which was covered on CSPAN. From a Kerry PR standpoint it was a disaster: one after another, men who had served with Kerry got up and declared him unfit to be Commander in Chief, using words like "devious", "reckless", and "contemptuous of authority". They were disdainful of his conduct in Viet Nam, and angered over his anti-war activism as a leading figure of Viet Nam Veterans Against the War and his oft-cited Senate testimony in which he characterized his fellow soldiers as war criminals.

Swift Boat Veterans for Truth claims to be not politically motivated, but the LA Times and the Boston Globe both raised the question of whether Swift Boat Vets for Truth is part of a smear campaign against Kerry. The Globe points out the O'Neill has longstanding ties to the Republican party, going back to the Nixon White House:

One organizer of the news conference is John O'Neill, a Navy veteran who in 1971 held a series of debates about the atrocity issue with Kerry. In 1972, O'Neill, who had the enthusiastic support of President Nixon and his staff, spoke on Nixon's behalf at the Republican National Convention. O'Neill said that he has since become politically independent and was not now acting in concert with GOP officials.

Kerry spokesman Michael Meehan dismissed the veterans' news conference as politically motivated: "First O'Neill was part of the Nixon White House attacks, and 33 years later he resurfaced to be part of the Bush attack machine," Meehan said in an e-mail. "It failed 33 years ago, and it will fail in this political campaign year, too."

Joe Conason echoes this sentiment in a piece he wrote for Salon, "Smear Boat Veterans for Bush": "The 'swift boat' veterans attacking John Kerry's war record are led by veteran right-wing operatives using the same vicious techniques they used against John McCain four years ago." Conason's article (requires registration or viewing a brief ad) goes on to connect the dots between O'Neill, whom he describes as an "eternal Kerry antagonist" and Merrie Spaeth, a Republican media relations consultant with connections to Kenneth Starr, White House counsel Theodore Olson...well, you get the idea, it's all apparently very incestuous. He goes on to link Spaeth to 2000 smear campaigns against John McCain's environmental record.

Having watched the press conference, I strongly doubt any of these career Naval officers would identify as liberal Democrats, but party identification alone should not automatically lead to charges of partisan motivation. For his part, O'Neill appeared as the most polished and media-savvy in his designated role as spokesperson and moderator (or lead attack dog, if you prefer); the others came across as fellow veterans who were visibly agitated at the prospect of Kerry in the role of Commander-in-Chief, and bluntly said so. They urged the Democratic party to find a different candidate. At face value, the event was a devastating blow to the Kerry bid for the Presidency, and I had expected that the charges would be front page news.

Well, guess I was mistaken. A quick (and admittedly superficial) perusal of the major news sites following the conference yielded very little in the way of coverage, other than the aforementioned articles in the LA Times and Boston Globe. The New York Times did cover it, though not on their home page and certainly not one of their lead stories. From this lack of interest, I must conclude that the press widely views O'Neill and his group as political hatchet men with an agenda, and does not want to give them much of a spotlight.

However, a few months back when a small group of "9-11 widows" known as the Jersey Girls was condemning the Bush campaign for including images of the WTC attacks in its ads, the same press ignored the fact that they were associated with an anti-war group called Peaceful Tomorrows, which has its own political agenda. Let me be clear - it is not a problem that either group has an agenda, but why is one group spotlighted while its politcal agenda is ignored, and the other is swept under the rug while its agenda is highlighted?

Here's the CSPAN link to the May 4 press conference by Swift Boat Veterans for Truth. You make the call: Impassioned veterans who served with Kerry and have deep concerns about his conduct and record? Or partisan political attack machine bent on destroying Kerry's record as a war hero?

UPDATE: Now that the Swift Boat Vets for Truth ad has been released on the Internet and O'Neill's book Unfit for Command: Swift Boat Veterans Speak Out Against John Kerry is #1 on Amazon 10 days ahead of its release, there is even more controversy swirling around the credibility of this group, especially its leader John O'Neill. I ran across a fascinating post by an attorney who had to cross-examine O'Neill, who was serving as an expert witness for the opposition, and who considers him highly honest and conscientious. His summation: "I had every incentive to discredit O'Neill, but I couldn't. He had every incentive to fudge his testimony in order to sink my client, but he didn't."

The Kerry campaign is now issuing letters threatening lawsuits. Are they walking into a carefully-laid trap? I have to imagine these folks are not stupid or liars, and that O'Neill has more than a passing understanding of the requirements for solid evidence.

ANOTHER UPDATE: Current (August 2004) coverage of the Swift Vets story - in depth via the blogosphere and superficial via the mainstream media - appears to be emanating from two parallel universes.