Anti-Kerry Veterans' group now political machine with big budget
Knight Ridder Newspapers
WASHINGTON - Swift Boat Veterans for Truth, the Vietnam veterans group that set out this spring to make an issue of Democrat John Kerry's 1971 anti-war stance, has grown into a well-organized political machine with a multimillion-dollar budget and a network of Republican-affiliated paid consultants.
Organization leaders are adamant that they remain in control of the group's strategy. But interviews with founders and others familiar with the group's formation make it clear that the GOP-allied pros have joined with hard-liners in the group's leadership to make its campaign against Kerry more strident.
Some feel the advertising campaign, which initially featured plain-spoken old sailors, has become too slick.
"Sincere is better than smooth. I get my two cents in, but I'm not making (ad) decisions anymore," said retired Rear Adm. Roy F. Hoffmann, one of the group's founders.
The Kerry campaign contends that the group is directed by President Bush's re-election campaign in violation of federal law. Three election-watchdog groups have filed complaints with the Federal Election Commission. The veterans group's legal counsel, Benjamin Ginsberg, who also was an adviser to Bush, resigned from the president's campaign after the complaints were filed.
Founders of Swift Boat Veterans for Truth say the president's campaign never called the shots.
But since its founding in April, the group has taken on a range of Republican-affiliated paid consultants, including Ginsberg's law firm, a network of GOP political and media strategists, and TV-ad producers.
When nearly 200 Swift boat veterans signed a letter in May demanding that Kerry account for statements he made after he returned home from Vietnam, the unifying theme was that Kerry had besmirched their honor by alleging that American troops routinely committed atrocities in Vietnam.
Not everyone agreed that Kerry had lied about his own conduct in Vietnam or had falsified reports to get medals. But by early July, as the group and its advisers began planning television ads, that theme took hold.
Group hard-liners and the advisers "felt it was time to raise some of the more serious charges," said Merrie Spaeth, a Dallas public relations specialist who's worked with the group since its inception. "...What clearly has happened is that the people who wanted to raise every point (against Kerry) get more and more of an opportunity."
Why? Because as contributions to the group grew, so did its staff of professionals who knew how to play political hardball. And as their anti-Kerry message became increasingly damaging with a wider reach, hard-line veterans led by John E. O'Neill, a Houston attorney, and William Franke, a Washington-area businessman, felt they could flex more muscle.
The group today claims to have raised $6.7 million from 53,000 people. Much of that comes from small contributors giving $100 or less, the group says.
"A grass-roots effort," spokesman Mike Russell calls it.
But a report the group filed Friday with the Federal Election Commission showed that big money from Texas Republicans continues to fuel a major part of the anti-Kerry effort. The report showed that T. Boone Pickens, a Dallas oilman and corporate-takeover specialist, gave $500,000, and that another Dallas oilman, Albert Huddleston, gave $100,000.
Fueled by this money, the group's three TV ads and one Internet ad have been seen by millions of Americans.
On Friday, an ad blasting Kerry for renouncing his war medals 30 years ago was re-released on national cable television. The group says it's spent close to $3 million to air its ads.
And the ads aren't the end of the group's success. "Unfit for Command," a book written by O'Neill and Jerome R. Corsi to bolster the group's anti-Kerry campaign, became an instant best-seller last month.
Many political observers believe the group's advertising has played a major role in undercutting Kerry's standing in the polls.
O'Neill said this was a far cry from the small impact he hoped for when he decided in February to campaign against Kerry.
A former Swift boat commander, O'Neill was in a hospital in February when he saw Kerry on television, surrounded by veteran supporters. He cringed at the thought of him becoming commander in chief.
He hadn't met Kerry in Vietnam. But 33 years earlier, they'd debated on the nationally broadcast "Dick Cavett Show." O'Neill had been urged to speak out against Kerry's anti-war position in a meeting with then-President Richard Nixon and top aide Charles Colson at the White House.
He said that as Kerry's campaign advanced he began to get calls from national media asking him for interviews.
"I needed someone to help me react, because I was getting a million calls and I was not in good shape," O'Neill said.
He contacted Spaeth, the wife of his late law partner, Harold "Tex" Lezar. She was President Ronald Reagan's director of media relations and, according to the Dallas Morning News, had coached independent counsel Kenneth Starr on his 1998 testimony against President Bill Clinton at Clinton's impeachment trial.
O'Neill said Spaeth, aware that he wasn't feeling well, advised him to "forget it." But O'Neill wouldn't be deterred.
A couple of weeks later, O'Neill learned that another veteran was working to stop Kerry. Hoffmann, who had commanded a task force of Swift boats in Vietnam, was angered by the way he and other officers were portrayed in a Kerry biography, "Tour of Duty," that drew on the Massachusetts senator's war journals.
Hoffmann, of Richmond, Va., began calling other veterans to see if they would join him in some kind of effort to challenge Kerry.
O'Neill and Hoffmann were brought together by a third Swift boat veteran, Houston attorney Alvin A. "Andy" Horne. He was O'Neill's friend and had heard of Hoffman's search.
O'Neill and Hoffmann became the group's driving force. Hoffmann had the organizational skills and the names of former Swift boat officers who might be enlisted in the cause. O'Neill, who graduated first in his class at the University of Texas Law School, had the professional savvy and lawyer's skills.
In time, they'd be joined by a number of financially successful Swift boat veterans who'd become businessmen, bankers and high-ranking officers - men who knew how to get things done.
In early April, O'Neill, Hoffmann, Horne, Franke and a handful of others who called themselves "the steering committee" met at Spaeth's office to strategize.
The steering committee immediately saw that some sort of political organization had to be formed - perhaps a 527 committee. Named for a section of the Internal Revenue Code, a 527 can raise money to influence a federal election, so long as it doesn't coordinate its activities with a candidate or party.
O'Neill said he researched how to form and run such a group and got help from Political Compliance Strategies, a suburban Washington organization. Political Compliance Strategies is led by Susan Arceneaux, who was the treasurer of a political action committee associated with former House Majority Leader Dick Armey, a Texas Republican. The company now oversees the group's books and prepares required government reports.
Swift Boat Veterans for Truth was registered with the IRS on April 23. Its early expenditures included money for a Dallas-area private investigator, Tom Rupprath. Hoffmann said Rupprath's job was to find vets and collect their stories so that a single account could be presented to the public.
"If everyone was saying something different it could be confusing. We wanted one version of the truth," Hoffmann said.
Eighteen veterans showed up at the May 4 news conference at the National Press Club organized by Spaeth, and 177 others added their names to the letter challenging Kerry.
Disappointed by the scant coverage from the national media, the steering committee - which still has weekly phone conference calls - decided to raise money for a TV ad campaign.
O'Neill said he asked two big donors for money.
Texan Harlan Crow, a trustee of the George Bush Presidential Library Fund, which honors the current president's father, gave $25,000.
Bob J. Perry, a major GOP donor in Texas and a friend of Karl Rove, Bush's top political adviser, gave $100,000 on June 30, according to a financial report. Later, O'Neill said, Perry doubled his donation.
"I'm certain some of the people giving us money are doing it because they think this will help their side of the campaign," O'Neill said. "It's probably fair to say the people more likely to help us are Republicans."
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With money in hand, the group was able to bring on advisers led by Chris LaCivita, a political strategist and an expert in TV ads. LaCivita had worked for the National Republican Senatorial Committee in 2002. Last year, he became the executive director of PFA (Progress for America), a Republican-affiliated tax-exempt organization founded by Tony Feather, the political director of Bush's campaign in 2000.
LaCivita, who O'Neill said draws a $10,000-a-month retainer, declined an interview with Knight Ridder.
Two steering-committee members - O'Neill and Franke, the founder of Gannon International, a St. Louis-based holding company - brought in LaCivita and a public relations firm to oversee ads and media strategy.
The public relations firm, Creative Response Concepts, of Alexandria, Va., has worked for the Republican Party and conservative causes.
In a defining moment, on July 9 and 10, dozens of veterans, the group's top advisers and a film-making crew descended on a Marriott hotel in Rosslyn, Va., to film raw material for later commercials.
Swift boat veteran Larry Thurlow flew in from Bogue, Kan., after the group offered to pay his and his wife's expenses. Thurlow said he was hesitant to become involved but Hoffmann kept asking him to join the group.
"The admiral helped me to see in hindsight what was really going on with Kerry," Thurlow said.
The veterans and a Studio City, Calif., film producer, Harry Kloor, moved to a Washington studio to film interviews for a later commercial that would be put together by LaCivita and another political ad man, Rick Reed, a member of a team that had worked for Sen. John McCain, R-Ariz., in his 2000 campaign for president.
Thurlow said the vets were told some of what to say, with the caveat that they weren't expected to say anything they didn't believe.
"I was told to say, `On the river that day, Kerry fled.' But `fled' connotes fear and I understood why Kerry left, then returned, so I didn't use that word," Thurlow said.
Each of the veterans talked from five to 20 minutes - giving the film crew enough footage for 10 commercials.
The group's first commercial aired on Aug. 4 in three states where Kerry had been campaigning - Ohio, Wisconsin and West Virginia - at a reported cost of about $550,000.
But its impact was national. News stories about the ads were published and broadcast throughout the country. The attention generated thousands of small donations that totaled up to $100,000 a day, group leaders say.
The group followed up with a $650,000 air-time buy to run a second commercial in Pennsylvania, Nevada and New Mexico. The same ad later ran nationwide on cable channels at a cost of $800,000.
After that came a $300,000 ad buy in Florida and Tennessee for a third commercial dealing with Kerry's post-Vietnam act of throwing away some of his Navy decorations. The group just spent $680,000 more to replay this ad on major cable networks.
More ads are on the way, and the group is hoping to become even a stronger force against Kerry.
"One thing's for sure," said Hoffmann. "November 2nd, we're finished."
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(Infield reports for The Philadelphia Inquirer, Laughlin, for The Miami Herald.)
