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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BILL MILLER, Austin lobbyist and spokesperson for Bob Perry: Bob Perry does not seek out the limelight, and he does not do interviews. So he will not comment for this story. I can tell you that he gave a lot of money to the Swift Boat Veterans, there’s no question. John O’Neill talked to him, and Bob liked what he heard. But there is no conspiracy involving him and Karl. He hasn’t talked to Karl in over a year.
PAUL BEGALA, co-host of CNN’s Crossfire and former adviser to President Clinton; raised in Missouri City: I have no direct knowledge that anyone from the White House or the Bush campaign coordinated the attacks, and I doubt they did. But was there some kind of tacit or implicit approval? Of course. First, the president could have publicly expressed his disapproval of the ads; he chose not to. Second, it’s part of a remarkable pattern. In 1988 an “independent group” emerged from under a rock to run the Willie Horton ads. When Bush was running against John McCain, someone McCain claimed was from a “fringe” veterans’ group attacked his war record—and in at least one instance, in Bush’s presence. And in 2004 the pattern repeats. Either Bush is implicitly encouraging such shadowy attack groups or there’s one hell of a coincidence here.
SPAETH: Bob Perry helped us early on, as did [Dallas real estate executive and George Bush Presidential Library Foundation trustee] Harlan Crow. But it was slow going after that. I’m not a fund-raiser, so what I did was throw myself on the mercy of two very close friends here in Texas and say, “I need your help.” Neither of them has been identified in the press, so I would rather not say who they are. But they are both longtime Republicans who had no role in, or contact with, the Bush campaign. When I approached them about helping me fund-raise, their initial response was hardly positive. You have to understand what I was asking them to do. Because we were a 527, if they got involved they could not play a role in the campaign. Plus, if the whole thing blew up, we’d all look like idiots. So they were putting a lot at risk. Both of them came to the conclusion that the Swifties were very credible. They agreed to help me, and as a trio we went around scraping up money.
HAROLD SIMMONS, chemical- and waste-industry magnate; chairman of the board and CEO of Contrain Corporation, in Dallas: Merrie Spaeth came to see me. I asked her, “How much do you need?” and she said, “To run an effective ad campaign, about $9 million.” So I told her I would give $500,000 to help her get started. I thought the Swift Boat Veterans had something to say that the public needed to know about. I ended up giving another $500,000, and then another million, and another million. So I gave $3 million in total.
T. BOONE PICKENS, former oil tycoon and corporate raider; CEO of BP Capital, in Dallas: John O’Neill came to my office in July, and I listened to his story. He was very convincing. He said, “We believe the American people need to know about John Kerry’s record in Vietnam.” He asked for my help. Now, this may come as a surprise to you, but I don’t like 527’s. I think Congress made a big mistake when they allowed that loophole. This legislation was supposed to take big money out of political campaigns, which is how it should be. But once we were stuck with the playbook, we didn’t have a choice. Democrats were pouring money into 527’s. [Billionaire investor and philanthropist] George Soros made a commitment that he was not going to see President Bush reelected, and he gave millions to make that happen. He made some pretty strong statements against the president that I thought were out of bounds, and that really got my attention. I figured if 527’s were going to be a part of the process, we’d have to play our part too. That coincided with O’Neill coming to see me. I wrote the Swift Boat Veterans a check for $100,000 toward the end of July. Shortly after that, I gave them another $400,000. My entire contribution was $2.5 million.
O’NEILL: The whole thing was like a snowball that rolls downhill, gathering force and mass as it goes. Once we had major contributors backing us, it was easier for us to solicit donations. We also began operating a very sophisticated Web site, which gave us an additional way to raise money, particularly with small donors. Ultimately the Web site took in more than 150,000 individual contributions. We raised $8 million on the Internet alone. I think the total amount of money we raised was $27 million.
The Ammunition
At the request of Spaeth and the Swift Boat group, Tom Rupprath, a former FBI agent based in Rockwall, interviewed several of Kerry’s crewmates and other Swift boat veterans last spring. The crewmates would later accuse him of twisting their accounts to cast doubt on the legitimacy of Kerry’s medals. O’Neill interviewed more veterans and turned his findings into his book, Unfit for Command. It makes the group’s argument that Kerry should not have been awarded his first or third Purple Heart, his Bronze Star, or his Silver Star.
O’NEILL: Two of the Purple Hearts that Kerry obtained are extremely questionable. They were almost certainly the result of wounds that were inadvertently self-inflicted—by which I mean that he wounded himself by mistake, by setting off a grenade too close—rather than from hostile fire. His wounds were of the minor, tweezers-and-Band-Aid variety, not the kinds of injuries that usually earned you medals. His citations were drawn from his after-action reports by an administrative commander, whose only knowledge of what happened came from Kerry. Everyone else in our unit, unless they were killed or seriously wounded, spent a year in Vietnam. Kerry left after four months, invoking a rule that if you had three Purple Hearts, you could go home. He was the only one in our unit to ever invoke that rule without being injured in any serious way.
HURLEY: John O’Neill would have you believe that the United States Navy was duped by John Kerry and his crew. It’s ludicrous. Document after document supports Kerry’s version of events, as does every single member of his crew who witnessed these incidents. There was nothing out of the ordinary about the way his medals were awarded. John O’Neill says that the initials K.J.W., which appear at the bottom of the after-action report that led to Kerry’s Bronze Star, prove it was written by Kerry. But Kerry’s initials are J.F.K. And Larry Thurlow, one of the Swift Boat guys who was on another boat, who said there was no hostile fire that day, wouldn’t release his own citation for the Bronze Star that he received after that same incident. Why? Well, the Washington Post filed a Freedom of Information Act request, and lo and behold, his citation said that he had come under “enemy small arms and automatic weapons fire” and had had “enemy bullets flying about him.”
VAN ODELL, a woodworker in Katy and a member of the Swift Boat Veterans for Truth: When John O’Neill contacted me last spring, I went back and read Kerry’s account of how he won his Bronze Star. I told O’Neill, “The guy’s lying. Nothing like this ever happened.” Kerry claimed that he pulled Jim Rassmann out of the water in a hail of gunfire and saved his life. Except there was no hail of gunfire. I was the gunner’s mate on another Swift boat that was there that day. I sat fourteen feet above the waterline and I had a 360-degree view, and I saw no gunfire whatsoever. O’Neill said, “Can you help us?” And I said, “You can count on me to help you in any way that I can.”
HURLEY: Jim Rassmann and every single crewmate who served on Kerry’s boat during that incident—Del Sandusky, Gene Thorson, Michael Medeiros, David Alston—all confirm that they were under hostile fire. Van Odell was not on Kerry’s boat. Jim Rassmann came forward this year to talk about how Kerry saved his life when he pulled him out of the water while snipers were shooting at him. It was Rassmann who recommended Kerry for a medal. The after-action report, the personnel casualty list, and the damage-assessment report for Kerry’s boat all verify that they were under hostile fire. These reports were written at the time of the incident, not 35 years later, when memories may have become clouded by the fog of war. Let’s not forget the bigger picture, too, that John Kerry volunteered to go to Vietnam. He served with distinction, he was decorated for heroism in combat, and he was discharged honorably. The man still has shrapnel in his leg. And yet we’re supposed to second-guess his service to this country?
My Library
