Sunk
When the Swift Boat Veterans for Truth capsized John Kerry’s presidential campaign, much of the unfriendly fire came from Texas. Here’s how, in their own words, another band of brothers—and a few sisters—changed history. Or, at least, rewrote it.
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SPAETH: Everyone at the meeting agreed that Kerry’s comments after Vietnam were outrageous and that they should disqualify him from becoming commander in chief. With respect to his record in Vietnam, most of the guys felt that it needed to be more fully examined. They started trying to piece together what bits of information they had. I said, “Guys, you really need an outside person to investigate this and go through this methodically.” I suggested Tom Rupprath, a Vietnam veteran and retired FBI guy I had worked with before. He could try to corroborate the Swifties’ allegations and tell them whether what they thought they knew to be true was in fact true or whether they had just arrived at the conclusion that they wanted to arrive at, given their opinion of Kerry.
BERNIQUE: I could not accuse John Kerry of anything other than serving with distinction. So I was not entirely comfortable with where the discussion was going that day. John O’Neill was not in Vietnam at the same time as John Kerry; I was. Don’t misunderstand me. It was a very warm, friendly meeting. I hadn’t seen some of these guys in 33 years, so it was a joyful experience to reunite with them. The last time we had seen each other we were young, virile guys. Now here we were, grandfathers. But after thinking it over, I decided not to join the group. My nonparticipation should not be misconstrued. I have been candid about what I think of John’s Senate testimony. It was scurrilous. He brought dishonor on himself, and on all of us. His sins, as far as I’m concerned, occurred when he returned home. Those sins were unforgivable.
SPAETH: At some point, I sat back and I had two realizations. First, that I believed them when they said they had doubts about Kerry’s record. Second, that this was going to be very difficult to explain to the American public, since most people don’t have any understanding of military protocol. And I knew we ran a terrible risk of looking political.
Going Public
The Swift Boat Veterans for Truth held a press conference at the National Press Club, in Washington, D.C., on May 4. Many of the veterans had served on Swift boats at An Thoi around the same time as Kerry. None had served on his boat during the incidents for which he received his medals. Spaeth asked a former employee of Spaeth Communications, Jennifer Webster, to help prepare the veterans for their first public appearance.
JENNIFER WEBSTER, founder of the Webster Group, a political consulting and communications firm in Houston: A few days before we went to Washington, we sent out the press release. My phone started ringing immediately. It didn’t stop until one in the morning, and then the calls would start up again the next day, at five a.m. It was a feeding frenzy. The BBC, Argentina radio—everyone was calling on this story. The only room we could book at the National Press Club was too small, so the entire event had this frantic feel to it. The room was absolutely packed. People couldn’t get their cameras in.
SPAETH: Each of the Swifties introduced himself and made a short statement. They wanted the American public to know who they were, where they had served, what they had seen, and why they were speaking out.
WEBSTER: The guys used a lot of military jargon that the public wasn’t necessarily going to understand, so Merrie and I helped them simplify their message. Merrie was critical in teaching them that the first thing out of your mouth must be your “message point.” We worked until one or two in the morning the night before, doing drills and reviewing some of these message points: He is unfit to be commander in chief. We served with him. We were there. We were on those rivers. His entire chain of command is here today to say this man cannot be trusted.
O’NEILL: All of the networks were there. So were the Associated Press, the Washington Post, and the New York Times. Yet the only real coverage we got was on C-SPAN. The AP decided afterward that it wasn’t newsworthy. The sole question asked by the New York Times reporter was something to the effect of “Who is funding you?” or “Who paid for you all to come?” Now, this was at a press conference in which Joe Ponder, who was terribly wounded in Vietnam, talked about how Kerry’s 1971 Senate testimony had deeply affected his entire life—more profoundly than the wounds he had suffered, which placed him on disability all these years.
WEBSTER: That night I sat in front of the TV with the remote control, flipping from channel to channel, and there was nothing except a hatchet job on CBS. I was flabbergasted. The Kerry campaign had quashed it. They had handed out a list of talking points to the reporters at the press conference. It focused very heavily on Spaeth Communications and who Merrie had worked for. They told the reporters this was nothing more than dirty tricks put on by a Republican front group. Instinctively, the reporters must have known this wasn’t true. How were you going to get all these men to cooperate? But it gave them an out so they didn’t have to do the story.
O’NEILL: We were shocked by the attack that appeared in the New York Times the next day, which claimed that we were the same people who had attacked John McCain.
SPAETH: The Kerry people were desperate to discredit us, and me in particular. Because another Dallas firm, Rob Allyn, had worked on one of the McCain opposition ads and because we have worked with Rob occasionally, the Kerry people disseminated, and the Times and others reported, that we had done all the ads opposing McCain and Senator Max Cleland in 2000. I did not work on either set of ads.
O’NEILL: We felt that we had something very important to say, and yet we had no way of getting our message out to the American public. One of the POWs we spoke to said, “What you guys need is a tap code.” In Vietnam, when the POWs were held in the Hanoi Hilton, their guards wouldn’t let them talk to each other. So they devised a tap code to get around their guards. We started saying, “What we need is some kind of a tap code, some way of getting our message out and around the mainline media, past the three major networks and the New York Times.” So we developed a strategy to try to do that.
ALVIN A. HORNE, Houston attorney and secretary of the Swift Boat Veterans for Truth: Merrie said that we needed to start speaking on regional radio talk shows—wherever, whenever, as often as possible—until we began to get the attention, for instance, of Fox News. She said that as the tempo increased, we would end up becoming a story that couldn’t be ignored by the mainstream media. And even when they attacked us, as they ultimately did, they would have to repeat our arguments in their attacks. As our arguments were repeated, then there would be additional interest. That would be reflected on television, starting with cable television interviews. And that’s exactly what happened.
The Money
In May the Swift Boat Veterans for Truth registered with the IRS as a 527 organization. A 527 may raise and spend unlimited amounts of “soft” money (unregulated by federal law) in an effort to influence a federal election as long as it does not coordinate its activities with a political party or candidate. Spaeth and O’Neill began meeting with wealthy Texans who had given generously to Republican causes in the past, asking for contributions.
O’NEILL: The first person who helped us was [Houston homebuilder] Bob Perry. I knew Bob socially, but I had never been involved with him in any political endeavor before. I met with him last spring, and I talked to him at length about the Swift Boat Veterans. He gave us $200,000 initially, which we used to produce our first ad and our Web site. Then some protesters picketed his house. I contacted him to apologize for getting him involved. I felt very bad, you know, for affecting his life this way. He told me that it simply renewed his determination, which apparently was the case, because he gave us a total of $4.75 million. So I don’t think the picketing was very effective. I wouldn’t recommend it as a technique.
LOU DUBOSE, former editor of the Texas Observer and co-author of Boy Genius: Karl Rove, the Brains Behind the Remarkable Political Triumph of George W. Bush: When I saw that Bob Perry had backed the Swift Boat Veterans right at the start, with big money, I assumed—and many other people around Texas assumed—that Karl Rove was behind the organization. Perry was one of a handful of major donors who funded the Republican party in Texas early on, and it was Rove who first built the A-list for Republican fundraising in Texas. So you have the Rove money connection, and then you have the Rove MO: Attack your opponent’s strength until it becomes a liability. Who can imagine the Bush campaign countenancing such a risky attack on a veteran for two months during the campaign without Rove signing off on it? All you need to do is look at where the money came from.
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