Swift Boat Vet "Appalled" by McCain Smear (smear from fake Swift Boat group)

Is the ragtag Vietnam Veterans against John McCain giving swift boating a bad name?

Yes, said Swift Boat Veterans and POW’s for Truth treasurer Weymouth Symmes. "I don't think there's any truth to that at all. He was a hero, in my opinion. I'd be appalled if anybody questioned his war service."

The reason I asked is that the anti-McCain group seems to be piggybacking on the Swift Boat Vets in their recent mailer, which was sent out to 80 newspaper editors. (For a quick summary of the group's attack and McCain's response, see the AP.)

In the mailer (above), you can see the icon for the Swift Boat Vets for Truth in the lower left hand corner. But Symmes said that the real Swift Boat Vets isn't affiliated with the group -- or any group active in the 2008 race. In fact, he'd never even heard of the group, adding "they must be a pretty small and obscure group, I would guess."

In fact, on closer inspection, the Swift Boat Vets icon has a North Carolina address, the same as the anti-McCain vet group. And we've been having an internal debate here at TPM whether, in a possible precaution against charges of infringement, it actually says Swift Boot Vets for Truth:

We've been playing phone tag with Jerry Kiley, one of the founders of the group, and hope to speak to him later this afternoon to sort all this out.

As for the size of the group and it's supporters, it's not clear. They filed papers with the FEC last February and March establishing the group, announcing in a statement of purpose that "We will collect donations to pay for a web site, radio and TV ads exposing John McCain only (negative advertizing). We are completely independant (sic) and not connected to any political organization. All of the money collected will be used for the express purpose of defeating John McCain.” But they've reported no contributions since then, even failing to file the required mid-year report, which won them a chiding letter from the FEC.

Kiley, along and another Vietnam vet, Ted Sampley, who's part of the effort, also ran a Vietnam Veterans against John Kerry website in 2004. They've also been after McCain for a while; they registered the Vietnam Veterans against John McCain website back in 2005.

Sampley* has quite a history with McCain, going back to the 1980's, even getting into a fight with McCain's longtime aide Mark Salter. Here's an account from a long piece in the Phoenix New Times back in 1999:

*Update/Correction: This post originally said that Sampley is an Arizona resident -- he's actually in North Carolina. Another of the group's founders, Earl Hopper, is in Arizona.

In December 1992, as the Senate hearings were winding down, Sampley was making the rounds in the halls of Congress, handing out copies of his latest periodical, which featured McCain and the Queen of Diamonds on the cover with the headline: "Sen. John McCain: 'The Manchurian Candidate.'"

The story condemned McCain for his lack of support on the live POW/MIA issue, and cited the U.S. News article and others as evidence that McCain had collaborated with the enemy and was protecting the Vietnamese for fear of being exposed. The article summarized the senator's political career, relying on reports from daily newspapers and wire services. It touched on McCain's role in the Keating Five and his friendship with former Arizona Republic publisher Duke Tully, who had fabricated a military career for himself, only to be exposed in the mid-Eighties.

Sampley claims he never intended to go into McCain's office, but when he realized that's where he was, he tossed a copy to the receptionist, requesting that it be delivered to the senator's veterans affairs assistant.

Mark Salter happened to be standing by the front desk. Sampley's version of what ensued goes like this:

"He [Salter] said to me, 'You son of a bitch.' Those were his words. He said, 'You low-life bastard.' . . . The dumbass followed me, yakking at me all the way down the hall. I'm thinking, 'Why doesn't this guy go away? I'm leaving.' I turn to go into the stairway, he followed me in there and for some reason he felt frisky and he punched me in the back of the shoulder--not hard--and that was it. I turned around and I fried him."

Salter claims he just tapped Sampley on the shoulder to get his attention. Security guards intervened. Sampley eventually was found guilty of assault and sentenced to two days in jail and 180 days of probation. He also was ordered to stay away from McCain and his staff.

Kiley himself has a history of brushes with the law. A U.S. District Court found Jerry Kiley not guilty of charges that he attempted to harass Vietnamese Prime Minister Phan Van Khai when he was visiting Washington, D.C for a June 2005 U.S.-Vietnam Trade Council meeting in Washington. But as a result of Riley’s acquittal and pressure from the Secret Service, federal prosecutors filed a new charge of unlawful entry. He was arrested and charged on June 21, 2005 after he slipped past security at the Mayflower Hotel and then threw a glass of wine in the Prime Minister’s direction during a $1000 a plate dinner. Kiley has a history of evading security at Vietnamese functions, including an event that Khai attended at the Plaza Hotel in NYC in 1993.

We'll let you know when we hear more.

No one has to vote for Senator John McCain, you don't even have to like him, but I sincerely hope that all conservatives on Free Republic will respect Senator McCain's faithful and honorable service to our great nation during the Viet Nam War.

There are untruths being spread about Senator John McCain's time in service and when he was held as a POW in Viet Nam. The lies are being generated by a few people including a Ted Sampley, who has "information" about Senator McCain's service in Viet Nam, and that so-called "information" is ready to be copied and pasted from the Ted Sampley website.

Now you also don't have to like President George H. W. Bush, and you probably won't have another chance to vote for him, but again, I sincerely hope that conservatives on Free Republic will respect President George H. W. Bush's faithful and honorable service to our great nation during World War II.

There are untruths being spread about President George H.W. Bush's time in service during World War II. The lies about President George H.W. Bush are also being generated by a few people including a Ted Sampley, who has "information" about President George H.W. Bush's service in World War II, and that so-called "information" is ready to be copied and pasted from the Ted Sampley website.

I hope that conservatives will ignore the lies and vicious innuendoes which Ted Sampley has on his website about the service records of both Senator John McCain and President George H.W. Bush.

We can elect a conservative President without resorting to the deceptive tricks of the liberals. Again, you don't have to like Senator McCain to understand and respect that McCain faithfully and honorably served his country.

Whispering little lies and spreading falsehoods that he did otherwise is still lying. It was a discovered lie which eventually lead conservatives to seek the impeachment of President Clinton.

We conservatives do not have to sink to deceit to be heard and to elect a conservative President. We cannot afford to be distracted and demoralized by lies told by others, nor those spread amongst ourselves.

FReegards,
bd476

Reference: George Bush Parachutes Again to Exorcise Demons of Past Betrayal By Ted March/April/May 1997

John McCain was not the only prisoner of war in Vietnam, and that was forty years ago.

When he had the power and the opportunity to remove the veil of secrecy over the hundreds of men we KNEW we left behind in 1973, he worked with John F’n Kerry to browbeat the POW/MIA FAMILIES to remove any roadblocks to normalization with Vietnam. This is spite of thousands of sightings, call signs being seen from the air, others with info seeing the Americans moved from place to place years after the war ended.

In my mind, he betrayed the very men he was a prisoner with. And for what price?

Only 591 POWs were repatriated in the spring of 1973—we were shocked-we expected more than a thousand to be returned because we had active intelligence on so many more known to be alive and in captivity.

Nixon and Kissinger negotiated a sum close to $ 4 billion to be given to North Vietnam for “rebuilding” as a part of the release negotiations. When Congress balked at that, well, they just kept the remainder of POWS for bargaining chips.

Imagine these men keeping faith until they died, one by one, in the vain hope someone would come to rescue them or secure their release.

Manchurian Candidate McCain can go to hell.

If Swftboating means getting to the truth then what applies to Kerry applies to McCain. The seed of distrust is the way McCain refused to open his records and fought viciously against the POW/MIA families and the prisoners left behind in Vietnam....a smaller number of former POWs, MIA families and veterans have suggested there is something especially damning about McCain that the senator wants to keep hidden. Without release of the files, such accusations must be viewed as unsubstantiated speculation. The main reason, however, for seeking these files is to find out if there is any information in the debriefings, or in other MIA documents that McCain and the Pentagon have kept sealed, about how many prisoners were held back by North Vietnam after the Paris peace treaty was signed in January 1973. The defense and intelligence establishment has long resisted the declassification of critical records on this subject. McCain has been the main congressional force behind this effort.
The prisoner return in 1973 saw 591 Americans repatriated by North Vietnam. The problem was that the U.S. intelligence list of men believed to be alive at that time in captivity — in Vietnam, Laos and possibly across the border in southern China and in the Soviet Union — was much larger.Possibly hundreds of men larger.
The State Department stated publicly in 1973 that intelligence data showed the prisoner list to be starkly incomplete. For example, only nine of the 591 returnees came out of Laos, though experts in U.S. military intelligence listed 311 men as missing in that Hanoi-run country alone, and their field reports indicated that many of those men were probably still alive. Hanoi said it was returning all the prisoners it had. President Nixon, on March 29, 1973, seconded that claim, telling the nation on television: “All of our American POWs are on their way home.” This discrepancy has never been acknowledged or explained by official Washington. Over the years in Washington, McCain, at times almost single-handedly, has pushed through Pentagon-desired legislation to make it impossible or much harder for the public to acquire POW/MIA information and much easier for the defense bureaucracy to keep it hidden.

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