Posted on 08/19/2004 7:16:58 PM PDT by conservative in nyc
fter weeks of taking fire over veterans' accusations that he had lied about his Vietnam service record to win medals and build a political career, Senator John Kerry shot back yesterday, calling those statements categorically false and branding the people behind them tools of the Bush campaign.
His decision to take on the group directly was a measure of how the group that calls itself Swift Boat Veterans for Truth has catapulted itself to the forefront of the presidential campaign. It has advanced its cause in a book, in a television advertisement and on cable news and talk radio shows, all in an attempt to discredit Mr. Kerry's war record, a pillar of his campaign.
How the group came into existence is a story of how veterans with longstanding anger_ about Mr. Kerry's antiwar statements in the early 1970's allied themselves with Texas Republicans.
Mr. Kerry called them "a front for the Bush campaign." [Article, Page A17]. A series of interviews and a review of documentsshow a web of connections to the Bush family, high-profile Texas political figures and President Bush's chief political aide, Karl Rove.
Records show that the group received the bulk of its initial financing from two men with ties to the president and his family - one a longtime political associate of Mr. Rove's, the other a treasurer of the George H. W. Bush Library Foundation. A Texas publicist who once helped prepare Mr. Bush's father for his debate when he was running for vice president provided them with strategic advice. And the group's television commercial was produced by the same team that made the devastating ad mocking Michael S. Dukakis in an oversized tank helmet when he and Mr. Bush's father faced off in the 1988 presidential election.
The strategy the veterans devised would ultimately paint John Kerry the war hero as John Kerry the "baby killer" and the fabricator of the events that resulted in his war medals. But on close examination, the accounts of Swift Boat Veterans for Truth' prove to be riddled with inconsistencies. In many cases, material offered as proof by these veterans is undercut by official Navy records and the men's own statements.
Several of those now declaring Mr. Kerry "unfit" had lavished praise on him, some as recently as last year.
In an unpublished interview in March 2003 with Mr. Kerry's authorized biographer, Douglas Brinkley, provided by Mr. Brinkley to The New York Times, Roy F. Hoffmann, a retired rear admiral and a leader of the group, allowed that he had disagreed with Mr. Kerry's antiwar positions but said, "I am not going to say anything negative about him." He added, "He's a good man."
In a profile of the candidate that ran in The Boston Globe in June 2003, Mr. Hoffmann approvingly recalled the actions that led to Mr. Kerry's Silver Star: "It took guts, and I admire that."
George Elliott, one of the Vietnam veterans in the group, flew from his home in Delaware to Boston in 1996 to stand up for Mr. Kerry during a tough re-election fight, declaring at a news conference that the action that won Mr. Kerry a Silver Star was "an act of courage." At that same event, Adrian L. Lonsdale, another Vietnam veteran now speaking out against Mr. Kerry, supported him with a statement about the "bravado and courage of the young officers that ran the Swift boats."
"Senator Kerry was no exception," Mr. Lonsdale told the reporters and cameras assembled at the Charlestown Navy Yard. "He was among the finest of those Swift boat drivers."
Those comments echoed the official record. In an evaluation of Mr. Kerry in 1969, Mr. Elliott, who was one of his commanders, ranked him as "not exceeded" in 11 categories, including moral courage, judgment and decisiveness, and "one of the top few" - the second-highest distinction - in the remaining five. In written comments, he called Mr. Kerry "unsurpassed," "beyond reproach" and "the acknowledged leader in his peer group."
The Admiral Calls
It all began last winter, as Mr. Kerry was wrapping up the Democratic nomination. Mr. Lonsdale received a call at his Massachusetts home from his old commander in Vietnam, Mr. Hoffmann, asking if he had seen the new biography of the man who would be president.
Mr. Hoffmann had commanded the Swift boats during the war from a base in Cam Ranh Bay and advocated a search-and-destroy campaign against the Vietcong - the kind of tactic Mr. Kerry criticized when he was a spokesman for Vietnam Veterans Against the War in 1971. Shortly after leaving the Navy in 1978, he was been issued a letter of censure for exercising undue influence on cases in the military justice system.
Both Mr. Hoffmann and Mr. Lonsdale had publicly lauded Mr. Kerry in the past. But the book, Mr. Brinkley's "Tour of Duty," while it burnished Mr. Kerry's reputation, portrayed the two men as reckless leaders whose military approach had led to the deaths of countless sailors and innocent civilians. Several Swift boat veterans compared Mr. Hoffmann to the bloodthirsty colonel in the film "Apocalypse Now" - the one who loves the smell of Napalm in the morning.
The two men were determined to set the record, as they saw it, straight.
"It was the admiral who started it and got the rest of us into it," Mr. Lonsdale said.
Mr. Hoffmann's phone calls led them to Texas and to John E. O'Neill, who at one point commanded the same Swift boat in Vietnam, and whose mission against him dated to 1971, when he had been recruited by the Nixon administration to debate Mr. Kerry on "The Dick Cavett Show."
Mr. O'Neill, who pressed his charges against Mr. Kerry in numerous television appearances Thursday, had spent the 33 years since he debated Mr. Kerry building a successful law practice in Houston, intermingling with some of the state's most powerful Republicans and building an impressive client list. Among the companies he represented was Falcon Seaboard, the energy firm founded by the current lieutenant governor of Texas, David Dewhurst, a central player in the Texas redistricting plan that has positioned state Republicans to win more Congressional seats this fall.
Mr. O'Neill said during one of several interviews that he had come to know two of his biggest donors, Harlan Crow and Bob J. Perry, through longtime social and business contacts.
Mr. Perry, who has given $200,000 to the group, is the top donor to Republicans in the state, according to Texans for Public Justice, a nonpartisan group that tracks political donations. He donated $46,000 to President Bush's campaigns for governor in 1994 and 1998. In the 2002 election, the group said, he donated nearly $4 million to Texas candidates and political committees.
Mr. Rove, Mr. Bush's top political aide, recently said through a spokeswoman that he and Mr. Perry were longtime friends, though he said they had not spoken for at least a year. Mr. Rove and Mr. Perry have been associates since at least 1986, when they both worked on the gubernatorial campaign of Bill Clements.
Mr. O'Neill said he had known Mr. Perry for 30 years. "I've represented many of his friends,'' Mr. O'Neill said. Mr. Perry did not respond to requests for comment.
Mr. O'Neill said he had also known Mr. Crow for 30 years, through mutual friends. Mr. Crow, the seventh-largest donor to Republicans in the state according to the Texans for Public Justice, has donated nowhere near as much money as Mr. Perry to the Swift boat group. His family owns one of the largest diversified commercial real estate companies in the nation, Trammell Crow Company, and has given money to Mr. Bush and his father throughout their careers. He is listed as a trustee of the George H. W. Bush Library Foundation.
One of his law partners, Margaret Wilson, became Mr. Bush's general counsel when he was governor of Texas and followed him to the White House as deputy counsel for the Department of Commerce, according to her biography on the law firm's Web site.
Another partner, Tex Lezar, ran on the Republican ticket with Mr. Bush in 1994, as lieutenant governor. They were two years apart at Yale, and Mr. Lezar worked for the attorney general's office in the Reagan administration. Mr. Lezar, who died last year, was married to Merrie Spaeth, a powerful public relations executive who has helped coordinate the efforts of Swift Boat Veterans for Truth.
In 2000, Ms. Spaeth was spokeswoman for a group that ran $2 million worth of ads attacking Senator John McCain's environmental record and lauding Mr. Bush's in crucial states during their fierce primary battle. The group called itself Republicans for Clean Air, but was later found to consist only of a prominent Texas supporter of Mr. Bush, Sam Wyly.
Ms. Spaeth had been a communications official in the Reagan White House, where the president's aides had enough confidence in her to invite her to help prepare George H.W. Bush for his vice-presidential debate in 1984. She says she is also a close friend of Senator Kay Bailey Hutchison of Texas, a client of Mr. Rove's. Ms. Spaeth said in an interview that the one time she had ever spoken to Mr. Rove was when Ms. Hutchison was running for the Texas treasurer's office in 1990.
When asked if she had ever visited the White House during Mr. Bush's tenure, Ms. Spaeth initially said that she had been there only once, in 2002, when Kenneth Starr gave her a personal tour. But this week Ms. Spaeth acknowledged that she had spent an hour in the Old Executive Office Building, part of the White House complex, in the spring of 2003, giving Mr. Bush's chief economic adviser, Stephen Friedman, public speaking advice. Asked if it was possible that she had worked with other administration officials, Ms. Spaeth said, "The answer is 'no,' unless you refresh my memory.''
"Is the White House directing this?" Ms. Spaeth said of the organization. "Absolutely not.''
About 10 veterans met in Ms. Spaeth's office in Dallas in April to share outrage and plot their campaign against Mr. Kerry. Mr. Lonsdale, who did not attend, said the meeting had been planned as "an indoctrination session."
"How to conduct yourself when you're being interviewed," he added.
What might have been loose impressions about Mr. Kerry began to harden.
"That was an awakening experience," Ms. Spaeth said. "Not just for me, but for many of them who had not heard each other's stories."
The group decided to hire a private investigator to probe Mr. Brinkley's account of the war - to find "some neutral way of actually questioning people involved in these incidents,'' Mr. O'Neill said.
But the investigator's questions did not seem neutral to some.
Patrick Runyon, who served on a mission with Mr. Kerry, said he initially thought the caller was from a pro-Kerry group, and happily gave a statement about the night Mr. Kerry won his first Purple Heart. The investigator said he would e-mail it to him for his signature. Mr. Runyon said the edited version was stripped of all references to enemy combat, making it look like just another night in the Mekong Delta.
"It made it sound like I didn't believe we got any returned fire," he said. "He made it sound like it was a normal operation. It was the scariest night of my life."
By May, the group had the money that Mr. O'Neill had collected as well as additional veterans rallied by Mr. O'Neill, Mr. Hoffmann and others. The expanded group gathered in Washington to record the veterans' stories for a television commercial.
Each veteran's statement was written down as an affidavit and sent to him to sign and have notarized. But the validity of those affidavits soon came into question.
Mr. Elliott, who was in charge of the process of awarding medals in Vietnam, had signed one affidavit saying Mr. Kerry "was not forthright" in the statements that had led to his Silver Star. Two weeks ago, he told The Boston Globe that in retrospect he felt he should not have signed the affidavit. He then signed a second affidavit that reaffirmed his first, which the Swift Boat Veterans gave to reporters. Mr. Elliott has refused to speak publicly since then.
The Questions
The book outlining the veterans' charges, "Unfit for Command: Swift Boat Veterans Speak Out Against Kerry," has also come under fire. It is published by Regnery, a conservative house that has published numerous books critical of Democrats, and written by Mr. O'Neill and Jerome R. Corsi, who was identified on the book jacket as a Harvard Ph.D. and the author of many books and articles. But Mr. Corsi also acknowledged that he has been a contributor of anti-Catholic, anti-Muslim and anti-Semitic comments to a right-wing Web site. He said he regretted those comments.
The group's arguments have foundered on other contradictions. In the television commercial, Dr. Louis Letson looks into the camera and declares, "I know John Kerry is lying about his first Purple Heart because I treated him for that injury." Dr. Letson does not dispute the wound - a piece of shrapnel above Mr. Kerry's left elbow - but he and others in the group argue that it was minor and self-inflicted.
Yet Dr. Letson's name does not appear on any of the medical records for Mr. Kerry. Under "person administering treatment" for the injury, the form is signed by a medic, J. C. Carreon, who died several years ago. Dr. Letson said it was common for medics to treat sailors with the kind of injury that Mr. Kerry had and to fill out paperwork when doctors did the treatment.
Asked in an interview if there was any way to confirm that he had treated Mr. Kerry, Dr. Letson replied, "I guess you'll have to take my word for it."
The group also offers the account of William L. Schachte Jr., a retired rear admiral who says in the book that he had been on the small skimmer on which Mr. Kerry was injured that night in December 1968. He contends that Mr. Kerry wounded himself while firing a grenade.
But the two other men who acknowledged that they had been with Mr. Kerry, Bill Zaladonis and Mr. Runyon, say they cannot recall a third crew member. "Me and Bill aren't the smartest, but we can count to three," Mr. Runyon said in an interview. And even Dr. Letson said he had not recalled Mr. Schachte until he had a conversation with another veteran earlier this year and received a subsequent phone call from Mr. Schachte himself.
Mr. Schachte did not return a telephone call, and a spokesman for the group said he would not comment.
The Silver Star was awarded after Mr. Kerry's boat came under heavy fire from shore during a mission in February 1969. According to Navy records, he turned the boat to charge the Viet Cong position. An enemy solider sprang from the shore about 10 feet in front of the boat. Mr. Kerry leaped onto the shore, chased the soldier behind a small hut and killed him, seizing a B-40 rocket launcher with a round in the chamber.
Swift Boat Veterans for Truth describes the man Mr. Kerry killed as a solitary wounded teenager "in a loincloth," who may or may not have been armed. They say the charge to the beach was planned the night before and, citing a report from one crew member on a different boat, maintain that the sailors even schemed about who would win which medals.
The group says Mr. Kerry himself wrote the reports that led to the medal. But Mr. Elliott and Mr. Lonsdale, who handled reports going up the line for recognition, have previously said that a medal would be awarded only if there was corroboration from others and that they had thoroughly corroborated the accounts.
"Witness reports were reviewed; battle reports were reviewed," Mr. Lonsdale said at the 1996 news conference, adding, "It was a very complete and carefully orchestrated procedure." In his statements Mr. Elliott described the action that day as "intense" and "unusual."
According to a citation for Mr. Kerry's Bronze Star, a group of Swift boats was leaving the Bay Hap river when several mines detonated, disabling one boat and knocking a soldier named Jim Rassmann overboard. In a hail of enemy fire, Mr. Kerry turned the boat around to pull Mr. Rassmann from the water.
Mr. Rassmann, who says he is a Republican, reappeared during the Iowa caucuses this year to tell his story and support Mr. Kerry, and is widely credited with reviving Mr. Kerry's campaign.
But the group says that there was no enemy fire, and that while Mr. Kerry did rescue Mr. Rassmann, the action was what anyone would have expected of a sailor, and hardly heroic. Asked why Mr. Rassmann recalled that he was dodging enemy bullets, a member of the group, Jack Chenoweth, said, "He's lying."
"If that's what we have to say," Mr. Chenoweth added, "that's how it was."
Several veterans insist that Mr. Kerry wrote his own reports, pointing to the initials K. J. W. on one of the reports and saying they are Mr. Kerry's. "What's the W for, I cannot answer," said Larry Thurlow, who said his boat was 50 to 60 yards behind Mr. Kerry's. Mr. Kerry's middle initial is F, and a Navy official said the initials refer to the person who had received the report at headquarters, not the author.
A damage report to Mr. Thurlow's boat shows that it received three bullet holes that day, suggesting enemy fire, and later intelligence reports indicate that one Viet Cong was killed in action and five others wounded, reaffirming the presence of an enemy. Mr. Thurlow himself also received a Bronze Star for the day, a fact left out of "Unfit for Command."
Asked about the award, Mr. Thurlow said that he did not recall what the citation said but that he believed it had commended him for saving the lives of sailors on a boat hit by a mine. If it did mention enemy fire, he said, that was based on Mr. Kerry's false reports. The actual citation, Mr. Thurlow said, was with an ex-wife with whom he no longer has contact, and he declined to authorize the Navy to release a copy. But a copy obtained by The New York Times indicates "enemy small arms," "automatic weapons fire" and "enemy bullets flying about him." The citation was first reported by The Washington Post on Thursday.
Standing Their Ground
As serious questions about its claims have arisen, the group has remained steadfast and adaptable.
This week, as its leaders spoke with reporters, they have focused primarily on the one allegation in the book that Mr. Kerry's campaign has not been able to put to rest: that he was not in Cambodia on Christmas Eve in 1968, as he declared in a statement to the Senate in 1986. Even Mr. Brinkley, who has emerged as a defender of Mr. Kerry, said in an interview that it was unlikely that Mr. Kerry's Swift boat ventured into Cambodia on Christmas or Christmas Eve, though he said he believed that Mr. Kerry was probably there shortly afterward.
The group said it would introduce a new advertisement against Mr. Kerry on Friday. What drives the veterans, they acknowledge, is less what Mr. Kerry did during his time in Vietnam than what he said after. Their affidavits and their television commercial focus mostly on those antiwar statements. Most members of the group object to his using the word "atrocities" to describe what happened in Vietnam when he returned and became an antiwar activist. And they are offended, they say, by the gall of his running for president as a hero of that war.
"I went to university and was called a baby killer and a murderer because of guys like Kerry and what he was saying," said Van Odell, who appears in the first advertisement, accusing Mr. Kerry of lying to get his Bronze Star. "Not once did I participate in the atrocities he said were happening."
As Mr. Lonsdale explained it: "We won the battle. Kerry went home and lost the war for us.
"He called us rapers and killers and that's not true," he continued. "If he expects our loyalty, we should expect loyalty from him."
"Washington Times and NY Post, clean-up in the diaper aisle...don't slip in it..."
Do you think that it might have been done on purpose?
To confuse the issue and the sheeple even more.
Well, small correction, that man who loved "the smell of Napalm in the morning" was was a Lt. Colonel, not a Colonel (played by Robert Duvall).
I do find it interesting that Duvall's character's name was Lt. Col. Bill Kilgore. Interesting name. [wink]
Now, please notice that if I were a liberal my response to this article would have been:
This article is a total fabrication! There is not even a character in the movie Apocalypse Now who is a Colonel that loves the smell of Napalm in the morning! With this kind of wreckless disregard for the facts. This source has been completely discredited. This article is shown to be the pure partisan rhetoric that Americans should reject. It is an outrage and I have to note that the timing is very suspicious as well.There. That was my impression of a lefty that takes an utterly minor "fact" and uses as the entire basis of argumentation. Really pathetic.
Now, if you will excuse. Just writing a few sentences as a liberal makes me feel dirty. I'm going to go take a shower.
It is a poorly written piece, even by Times standards.
I don't know if this is true, but anyway, what does it have to do if Kerry lied?
I wonder if the NYT is going to run an "expose" on the $15M - $20M that Soros has given to left-wing groups, some little more than "Shell 527s". In fact, we only know what he gave to groups whose existence we know about. An entity created in Texas called the Sustainable World Corp., incorporated on December 10, 2003. A few days later, it split $3.1 million between a "527" called Joint Victory Campaign 2004 and the Ickes Media Fund. The Post noted that the only public information available on the Sustainable World Corp. is a Houston post office box, and that its registered agent refused to identify the principals of his client.
Soros' "Reform"
By James O. E. Norell
First Freedoms | May 31, 2004
If there were an illustration accompanying the word "hypocrisy" in the dictionary, it would be an engraving of globalist billionaire George Soros.
Soros, one of the richest men in the world, backed campaign finance reform with huge cash donations to a wide variety of Washington "reform" special interest groups to accomplish what his funding conduit called an effort "to reduce the corrupting influence of very large donors" and to ban pre-election "issue advocacy" ads by groups like the NRA.
Now, arch-reformer Soros is pouring perhaps as much as $30-million of his own money into left-wing "progressive" organizations he believes are uniquely inoculated against the restrictions of the very law Soros bought and paid for – restrictions like the ban on
Broadcast political advertising.
When the U.S. Senate debated the so-called campaign finance reform bill, March 19, 2001, U.S. Sen. Susan M. Collins (R-Maine) said of The Bipartisan Campaign Reform Act of 2001 (BCRA), "First and foremost, the bill closes the most glaring loophole in our campaign finance laws by banning the unlimited, unregulated contributions known as ‘soft money.’ Second, the bill regulates and limits the campaign advertisements masquerading as issue ads that corporations and labor organizations often run in the weeks leading up to an election. And third, the bill prohibits foreign nationals from contributing soft money in connection with federal, state, or local elections."
That oppressive law, which NRA opposed in Congress, and fought all the way to the U.S. Supreme Court, bans any broadcast "issue advocacy" advertising paid for by independent organizations like NRA or by unions if the ads "refer to" a candidate for Federal office and can be seen or heard by people who are eligible to vote for that candidate. The ban takes effect 30 day before a primary and 60 days before the general election. And the ban has criminal penalties attached. Under rules adopted by the FEC, an ad that even refers to a candidate by generic title, such as "the President," is prohibited. An ad where the viewer can guess the subject of the ad is also prohibited.
U.S. Sen. Christopher J. Dodd (D-Conn.) voiced the "reformers" definition of the evil term "soft money" during the floor debate, saying, "Money that threatens to drown out the voice of the average voter of average means; money that creates the appearance that a wealthy few have a disproportionate say over public policy…"
Bingo.
But in terms of the public policy of so-called campaign finance reform, Dodd’s words couldn’t have been truer. Without Soros spending at least $18 million to fund an army of the slickest "public interest" D.C. lobbyists and PR spin meisters, it is doubtful that McCain-Feingold would have become law. Soros was the hand in the sock-puppet.
Once he bought that "disproportionate say" over that public policy, Soros moved on to fund opposition to the NRA’s U.S. Supreme Court challenge to the broadcast ban, and the umbrella suit bearing the name of U.S. Sen. Mitch McConnel, which challenged most sections of BCRA on First Amendment grounds.
Having done that, Soros moved on to what may have been his real purpose. The Washington Post – in a fawning November 11, 2003 profile interview with Soros – served up his political manifesto, erasing illusions about the "soft money reform," or at least the notion of the average little guy versus the average billionaire.
"George Soros, one of the world's richest men, has given away nearly $5 billion to promote democracy in the former Soviet bloc, Africa and Asia. Now he has a new project: defeating President Bush.
"‘It is the central focus of my life,’ Soros said."
In fact, Soros said he would spend all the billions of dollars in his personal fortune if he could be guaranteed that President Bush would be cast out of the White House.
Does that statement meet Chris Dodd’s cry of concern? "Money that threatens to drown out the voice of the average voter of average means" is a phrase that surely describes most NRA members, who pooling individual worth could not match the fortune at Soros’ disposal.
Soros believes he is the apostle of something he calls "the open society" under which national sovereignty is subjugated to global "democracy;" a vision that includes the borderless spread of international gun control. Soros has promoted this cause with an outpouring of funds from his Open Society Institute (OSI), which he also used to fund campaign finance lobbying for the last half of the 1990’s.
The Washington Post puff piece on Soros was sparked by news that the one-world billionaire had given $5-million – the largest "soft money" contribution in American history -- to an organization called MoveOn.org. It was the first of many such massive Soros contributions to this and other similar "stealth" groups set up after enactment of McCain-Feingold.
But Soros, as an unspeakably wealthy donor, is not alone. He is an enabler, a networker, a fund-raiser sparking huge contributions from other leftist billionaires – personal friends and business associates -- like Peter B. Lewis, chairman of Progressive Corp. (insurance), and Hollywood mogul Stephen Bing. These friends have ponied up millions to fund MoveOn.org, along with other shadowy, under-the-radar political organizations.
Soros -- a self-styled citizen of the world who has spent billions meddling in the internal affairs of many nations -- has been credited with wrecking national currencies and toppling governments.
Soros has compared Bush to Hitler and told a European audience he was seeking "regime change" in the U.S. "America, under Bush, is a danger to the world, and I'm willing to put my money where my mouth is," Soros told the Washington Post.
He told Bill Moyer’s PBS NOW broadcast that his multi-million-dollar gift is "the same kind of grass roots organizing that we did when we helped in Slovakia when Mechar was defeated, in Croatia when Tudjman was defeated and in Yugoslavia when Milisovioc…" He is widely credited last year with funding the revolution that ousted the elected leader in the former Soviet Republic, Georgia.
How does the infusion of billionaire dollars to MoveOn.org bring about a "regime change" in America?
What Soros’ and his "progressive" billionaire partners are getting from MoveOn.org in return for their breathtaking "soft money" largess is a massive attack-ad campaign – which they believe is immune from BCRA – designed to move radical voters to "take back America." That means "take" the power of the national government – the White House and Congress.
In targeting President Bush, The MoveOn.org Voter Fund website brags, "We will produce convincing anti-Bush TV spots and get them on the air in targeted states. We will buy enough airtime to effectively deliver our message to swing voters in those states.
We will sustain our advertising presence continually throughout the pre-primary and primary periods."
So how is it that MoveOn.org is doing what law-abiding non-profit grass roots organizations cannot do? And how is it that even the "appearance of corruption" that soft money represented doesn’t apply to Soros.
Soros and his fellow billionaire travelers are poster boys for what they once claimed were the evils of soft money. But in Soros’ grand vision of himself, "the corrupting influence of very large donors" (his OSI’s words) doesn’t apply to him or his pure motives. In his thick Hungarian accent, he told National Public Radio that his massive contributions to affect the November 2004 elections were morally above question.
"I am not motivated by self-interest but by what I believe to be the public interest. So when the Republican National Committee attacks me and distorts my motives… You see, I'm different from their contributors," he said.
In other words, Soros believes he is above the law, above even the question of appearance of corruption, because, in his heart he knows he’s right. Soros indeed believes he is special -- not just in moral purity, but under the law as well.
While the long debate over campaign finance was rife with the use of the pejorative, "loophole," Soros and the handful of "progressive" political activists he funds believe they have found total immunity from the laws Soros paid so heavily to have applied to everyone else. The loophole they have sought comes not in the BCRA, but in the Federal Tax Code, which covers certain entities known as "527’s."
Since it is now against the law for national parties to receive "soft money" -- which they used in pre-McCain-Feingold days used for get-out-the-vote drives and issue advertising -- the theory is that those functions, along with the unlimited funds from big donors like Soros can be shifted to "527’s".
In essence, "527’s" claim to have immunity from sunshine reporting and all other strictures demanded by the FEC under BCRA, because they were created under the U.S. Tax code. It’s like a drunk driver saying the traffic laws don’t apply to him because anti-pollution laws in a vehicle cover him. Hiding under the "527" category are some very inbred Democratic Party operatives – all on the radical left. Their organizations have become stealth political parties – in the case of Soros’ benefaction, stealth ultra-left, anti-gun-rights political parties.
And unlike the Democratic or Republican parties, nobody elects those who control "527" functions, and many of these organizations aided by Soros operate in near total secrecy.
Some – like former Clinton White House operative Harold Ickes’ Media Fund – which scant press reports say will be launching attack ads against President Bush -- can’t be found in a Google Search. Some are merely addresses in nowhere.
The Washington Post, perhaps the only media outlet waking up to the depth of this scam, editorialized on an entity created in Texas called the Sustainable World Corp., incorporated on December 10, 2003. A few days later it split $3.1 million between a "527" called Joint Victory Campaign 2004 and the Ickes Media Fund. The Post noted that the only public information available on the Sustainable World Corp. is a Houston post office box, and that its registered agent refused to identify the principals of his client.
Another "527" listed on the IRS website called "Campaign for a Progressive Future" (CPF) has expenditures tied to the Million Mom March. It has an address in the tiny town of Washington, Virginia. Among its donors are George Soros and Soros Fund Management and the Irene Diamond Fund, which helped bankroll the NAACP anti-gun lawsuit. Each Fund gave the CPF $500,000. A Google Search on the CPF produces nothing but an information page under the heading "Silent Partners" from the Center for Public Integrity, which lists the group as an "organization that supports candidates opposed by the National Rifle Association." (The NRA-ILA Website provides a good but necessarily sketchy a fact sheet as well.)
In his NPR NOW interview, Soros claimed, "I am contributing to independent organizations that are by law forbidden to coordinate their activities with political parties or candidates." That is what he sees as the only restriction on his obscene soft money largess.
But a search on the Democratic National Committee Website for the words "MoveOn.org" produces a few paragraphs that raise instant questions for Soros.
One item says, "The DNC is also conducting a major petition drive in partnership with MoveOn.org. More than 310,000 Americans have signed the petition to protect our courts - with more than 172,000 of those signatures coming in the past 36 hours. The petition calls on Bush and the Republicans to stop nominating judges that are out of step with mainstream Americans and praising the Democrats for standing up for their rights." The DNC website links the petition.
The other announcement involved what the DNC called "a massive public mobilization" in which "The Democratic Party is partnering with MoveOn.org…" to fight President Bush’s tax cuts.
But this is just the beginning of obvious coordination of this "527" and the DNC. A December 9, 2003 In These Times magazine cover-story described the work of a small network of radical "527’s" including MoveOn.org Voter Fund which were "created after McCain-Feingold to circumvent the ban on soft money. Named for the section of the tax code that regulates them, these progressive 527s -- nearly all funded and organized by traditional Democratic allies such as labor, environmental and reproductive rights groups -- can raise huge sums of unregulated money for voter education and registration so long as they do not advocate for a specific candidate."
As for their source of "huge sums of unregulated money," the article says, "So far the 527’s haven't had much of a problem finding cash, thanks in no small part to billionaire financier George Soros, who has donated $12 million so far to 527’s and has pledged millions more."
George has in reality shut down the traditional functions of political parties. Campaign finance reforms have allowed a small handful of left wing radicals to hijack the key machinery of a whole segment American politics.
The key stealth "527" organization funded by Soros is something called American’s Coming Together (ACT), to which Soros reportedly provided $10-million in seed money.
An August 8, 2003 press release from the group said, "A new political action committee, America Coming Together (ACT), will undertake a substantial effort in 17 key states to defeat President George W. Bush and elect progressive officials at every level in 2004, and to engage and mobilize millions of voters on key public issues." The press release characterization was a slip of the tongue. In fact, ACT is not a political action committee at all but a 527.
Sugar-daddy Soros’ America Coming Together is headed by Steve Rosenthal, formerly the Political Director of the AFL-CIO, whose title is now Chief Executive Officer of ACT, and by and Ellen R. Malcom, founder of EMILY’s list, the nation’s most notable pro-abortion "special interest" political action committee. Ms. Malcolm’s title is President, though the ACT website says she will keep her post at EMILY’s List.
In addition the ACT website www.americacomingtogether.com lists:
Minyon Moore, "formerly Chief Operations Officer for the Democratic National Committee;" Gina Glantz, the former national campaign manager for the Bill Bradley for President Campaign; Cecile Richards, "President of America Votes, a coalition of 17 national organizations working together to educate and mobilize voters in the 2004 elections…;" Andy Stern, President of the Service Employees International Union (SEIU); and Carl Pope, Executive Director of the Sierra Club. Pope is listed as ACT’s Treasurer.
There’s more. An Internet search produces a press release on the Democratic National Committee website announcing Minyon Moore’s August 2002 departure as the DNC’s Chief Operating Officer to work for Dewey Square Group, a Democratic political consultancy.
According to the DNC, "Moore served as White House political director under President Clinton, as Political Director of the DNC… Moore will continue to serve as a senior advisor to the DNC and to Chairman (Terry) McAuliff." In addition, the chairman said, "I couldn’t be more thrilled than to nominate her to serve as an At-Large DNC member as well as a member of the DNC’s executive committee." The release quotes Ms. Moore: "I look forward to maintaining a close relationship with the DNC in my new position at Dewy Square…"
Cecile Richards is the activist daughter of Anne Richards, the former Governor of Texas who lost her job to George W. Bush. She is a former organizer for the Service Employees Union and is President of America Votes, which just so happen to be another 527 organization getting soft money. Before coming to America Votes, Ms. Richards was Deputy Chief of Staff to House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi.
At Ms. Richard’s America Votes website (www.Americavotes.org) the group claims to be a "non-partisan political organization" which includes among its "coalition," – you guessed it – America Coming Together. Also among the 17 America Votes affiliates are the Service Employees Union, the Sierra Club and EMILY’s list.
The address for America Votes is:
888 16th St., N.W. Suite 440
Washington, D.C. 20006
Incidentally, that is the same address as America Coming Together, which is located one door down at suite 450.
And it is the address of another 527 "stealth PAC" – The Partnership for America’s Families, which according to The Center for Public Integrity, received funding from the Dewey Square Group, Ms. Moore’s employer, and DNC consultant.
There is a phrase for this. Political incest.
In case there is any doubt about the possibility of coordination with a party, 888 16th Street is the same address as the Democratic National Committee’s temporary headquarters.
How on earth can anybody pretend there is no coordination?
Author Christopher Hayes’ description in the In These Times, article, "Door by Door -- Progressives hit the streets in massive voter outreach, bears repeating:
"These field operations will be supervised, coordinated and executed by these same dozen so-called 527s, such as Americans Coming Together and America Votes, created after McCain-Feingold to circumvent the ban on soft money."
"Issue advocacy and voter contact in an election year is nothing new, but never before have progressive groups come together to coordinate their efforts, pool their resources and collectively execute the program. Although the organizational structure binding the half-dozen largest 527s is to a certain extent ad hoc, most of the groups are staffed by the same pool of veteran political organizers and headquartered in the same office building at 888 16th St.-across the street from the AFL-CIO in Washington, D.C.
"Alongside groups that will manage and execute the field operations are a few 527s, like America Votes, dedicated solely to coordinating these efforts.
"The energy surrounding field efforts is palpable, and many veteran party activists and organizers who were critical of the ways in which the Bipartisan Campaign Finance Reform Act would end up handcuffing the Democrats now say that birth of the 527s has reinvigorated the party by moving money and manpower outside the Democratic National Committee and closer to activists."
So there it is. In the pre-McCain-Feingold political world, national parties, with officials elected by members, with platforms debated in open forums, with all sorts of sunshine through existing campaign laws, were the center of power. Now, under the "reform," power is in the hands of people who know no party discipline, hold no responsibility to voters, and are indeed beholden for their very existence to a few "very large donors."
And where are the big reformers in all of this?
Remarkably, McCain – whose face was everywhere on television pontificating about the corruption of soft money and sham ads during the years leading to enactment of BCRA -- has been deadly silent about Soros’ huge soft money donations. And he is silent about the unfettered television attack ad campaign by MoveOn.org.
An October 28, 2003 Bloomberg News Wire story did quote someone closely associated with McCain: ‘"The McCain Feingold bill was not intended to drive money from politics’ said Trevor Potter, a former FEC chairman who worked for McCain…’George Soros has a constitutional right to spend $10-million.’" Potter was among the heavyweight Washington attorneys defending the law in court.
As for Russell Feingold, the Wisconsin Senator was quoted in that same Bloomberg piece as saying, "The soft money ban was designed to break the connection between big money and elected officials, not to dry up or clamp down on political activism."
So MoveOn.org’s massive anti-Bush ad campaign morphs from "electioneering communication," to "political activism." And Soros’ obscene infusion of money to change the ideological direction of the nation is not "soft money" and has no connection with elected officials.
In the looking-glass-world of campaign finance reformers, "A rose by any other name…" is not a rose at all. In the floor debate John McCain looked to the future and to circumvention of the law he was forcing by sleight of hand on the American people.
"Do I believe that any law will prove effective over time? No, I do not. Were we to pass this legislation today, I am sure that at some time in the future, hopefully many years from now, we will need to address some new circumvention. So what? So we have to debate this matter again. Is that such a burden on us or our successors that we should simply be indifferent to the abundant evidence of at least the appearance of corruption," he said.
That last notion – "the appearance of corruption" was the essence of the case for banning "soft money" and for banning non-profit corporations like the NRA and unions from spending money on pre-election issue advocacy ads. There was never any evidence of corruption. No Senator or Congressman got up and pointed the finger or confessed that a vote was bought and paid for.
Senator Russ Feingold summed it up, saying, "We are going to talk about corruption, but, more importantly, what is much more obvious and much more relevant is the appearance of corruption. It is what it does to our Government and our system when people think there may be corruption even if it may not exist."
But the corruption does exist and its name is "527."
Herb Kohl, another of the sanctimonious supporters of McCain- Feingold, gave the best Alice in Wonderland description of fraud the Congress was about to foist on the American electorate, saying "Let me be clear, I do not believe that our system is corrupt or that elected officials are corrupted by campaign contributions. However, I agree that we must combat the perception of corruption.
"Whether the presence of unlimited political contributions is corrupting or whether it just creates the appearance of corruption, the damage is done," he said.
Open your eyes, Senator. The appearance may well be the reality, and you voted to create it.
LOL! But it will be ignored.
That was my exact thinking. I am so sick of eveyone saying this ad can not be credible because it was financed by Republicans
If there was a similar group questioning George Bush that received assistance from long-time, well-heeled, politically-active people from the Commonwealth I betcha that maybe...just maybe...at some point in time in the past they *gasp* crossed paths with John Kerry!
Or am I going out on a limb here?
However, if there is, O'Neill will come out right away and admit the error. Of that, I am sure.
Also, the dirty little secret is The Times is not as well-written and literary as supposed. I find the majority of their editorial content ill-written and poorly edited, reflective of the majority of their readership, who I find to be ignorant, ill-mannered peasants who play-act at "sophistication" is as grounded in reality as little girls' tea parties with the stuffed animals and Barbies.
I'll write a script for a potential 527 ad with a Kerry puppet with actors portraying Soros, Kennedy and Moore as the puppeteers only if I know other people are serious about putting it together, and getting it on TV.
>>little girls' tea parties with the stuffed animals and Barbies<<
Which is probably a fair description of a meeting of NYTIMES writers and editors, if you catch my drift.
I think the opposite is true. Most people read the first couple of paragraphs and in this case, the Times once again paints it black for Bush.
[David] Alston spoke only briefly with National Review Online, saying all interviews must be approved by the Kerry campaign... (Kerry’s Brief Brotherhood - Byron York/NRO)
Well, at least we know that Patrick Runyon got permission from the Kerry campaign to put out the hit on the Swifties...
Maybe we better ask Rutenberg if he knows he's only getting statements vetted by Kerry's minions...
Except they're likely in "costume".
You might be right, but if I'm not going to read the whole thing, I read the first few paragraphs, and then drop down to the bottom of the article to see the conclusion.
(A little secret: I also read the last chapter in the book first to see how it ends, LOL)
Since my DEROS was 17 May 1969 I am familiar with medical record keeping at the time. The doctor is right. For example, I had a medical detachment with up to 75 enlisted men, several psychiatrists and one or two psychologists. I signed all day and especially signed and reviewed any injury that could possibly be construed as self-inflicted regardless of any mental health issue. Our mission was "to preserve the fighting strength" and I, like the soldiers knew that there was no medical privilege. That is, medical records were reviewed by the soldier's command and my notes were scanned from time to time, or if there was a problem, by my command.
This personal vignette leads me to the final point. Almost of all the disputes can be easily remedied, or at least documented, by Senator Kerry releasing both his medical records and his personnel file in their entirety. Just giving the fitness reports is unsatisfactory since these were always laudatory.
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