swiftboat bak
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have i never written this up? not really
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cu fdn wiki 4 24
...## Activities
Political ads
The Foundation sponsored ads in support of President George W. Bush "and our Troops" in an anti anti-war movement. "The ads featured former Senator and star of 'Law and Order' Fred Thompson. The ads encouraged ALL Americans to come together and Support President Bush and our men and women in uniform as they fight the war on terror."[9] See Citizen United's YouTube page[10] and Fred Thompson ads "Courage"[11] and "Soldier"[12] posted on YouTube by the Foundation.
In September 2005, as President George W. Bush addressed the United Nations as it celebrated its 60th anniversary, the Foundation posted "ads on a truck circling the block just outside the UN building, on a ferry on the East River, and on a billboard banner across 42nd Street from the UN" in a "new advertising campaign blasting the world organization" ... The "signs reading Broken Promises: The United Nations at 60 ... [were] advertisements for a new, in-depth documentary on UN failures".[13]
American Sovereignty Action Project
Funding
The Presidential Coalition
Expenditure records show The Presidential Coalition making disbursements for rent and payroll to Citizens United and Citizens United Foundation.[14][15]
Donations: Donatelli Group and the Swift Boat connection
The Citizens United Foundation's donation page[16] states that "Your generous, tax-deductible gift at this time will help us restore the control of our government back to its citizenry."
Donations to the Citizens United Foundation can be made through DonationReport.com, plus an extension code for Citizens United Foundation.[17] Citizens United utilizes DonationReport.com for its online store using a separate extension code.
The connection for the DonationReport.com website[18] arrives at a Login[19]—requiring both a User ID and Password—which belongs to eDonation.com, a member of The Donatelli Group, a fundraising company that has raised campaign funds for the Republican National Committee, Republican National Convention, Bush-Cheney '04 Inc., John McCain, the NRA[20] and an exhaustive list of Republican members of the U.S. Senate and the U.S. House of Representatives, as well as other political organizations.[21]
The Donatelli Group, using its "primary segment" Campaign Solutions[22], is associated with Creative Response Concepts, the public relations firm that advised Swift Boat Veterans for Truth, the "organization that accused Kerry of inflating his Vietnam War record" during the 2004 presidential campaign.[23]
The Donatelli Group, which produced the RNC website[24], also created the SWIFTBOATVETSFORTRUTH.ORG website July 30, 2004, with Connell Donatelli Inc.[25] (a.k.a. The Donatelli Group) as Registrant. Connell Donatelli Inc. was also listed as both Administrator and the Tech Organization for the Swift Boat Veterans for Truth website.[26]
Mailing lists
The Citizens United Foundation Mailing List is offered for sale by NextMark.[27]
...
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model for attacks
anti-Hillary dirty tricks war hots up
guardian
Republicans use the internet, books and a film to try to derail Clinton's White House campaign
Paul Harris in New York
Sat 16 Jun 2007
She's ahead in the polls and on course to become the Democrats' presidential candidate for 2008. So it is no surprise that a right-wing smear campaign is gathering speed to derail Senator Hillary Clinton's bid for the White House. Conservative groups and political figures are planning a film, books and a concerted media campaign to demonise Clinton, who is already one of the most polarising figures in American politics.
Top of the list of projects is a planned movie, being filmed by veteran Republican operator David Bossie. Bossie is raising money for the film through his conservative group Citizens United, which is appealing for video footage, stories about Clinton and money. It plans a release by the end of the year, just as the first primary elections are held in New Hampshire. Bossie is being helped in the project by Dick Morris, a former top Clinton aide who has become a leading Clinton critic.
The film aims to delve into past Clinton scandals, such as the Whitewater real estate deals, and to dig up new dirt. 'This project aims to expose the truth about her conflicts in the past and her liberal plot for the future,' said a statement on the film's website. Bossie did not return repeated calls for comment.
The film also has the backing of other veteran Republican dirty-tricks campaigners. The chairman of Citizens United is Floyd Brown, a Republican media consultant who worked on the Willie Horton TV ad in 1988 that helped destroy the campaign of presidential candidate Michael Dukakis.
Citizens United and other Republican groups are set to model their anti-Clinton operation on the notorious Swift Boat campaign that derailed John Kerry's 2004 bid for the White House. That aggressive smear campaign focused on Kerry's Vietnam war record and was seen as critical in President George W Bush's election victory. 'The Swift Boat campaign is going to be a direct model. They have openly come out and said that,' said Terry Krepel, editor of Conwebwatch, a website that monitors the output of conservative news media.
There is already a swath of other anti-Hillary websites popping up with support from Republican figures. They include sites such as StopHerNow, StopHillaryPAC and HillCAP. The last is dedicated to showing that Clinton was involved in fraudulent fundraising in her 2000 Senate campaign. It supports a bid to have her prosecuted.
A slew of conservative books on Clinton are also planned for release or have already hit the stores. These include The Extreme Makeover of Hillary Rodham Clinton, by Bay Buchanan, sister of former Republican presidential hopeful Pat Buchanan, and Whitewash by Brent Bozell, a veteran conservative who will try to show that Clinton is a pawn of the liberal media. Another book, God and Hillary Clinton, will look at her religious beliefs and her pro-choice position on abortion.
Right-wing news organisations are pumping out anti-Clinton stories. Last week, World Net Daily published a story claiming Bill Clinton had reneged on a secret deal with his wife to take turns at being governor of Arkansas. The story was solely sourced to an anonymous 'Clinton aide'.
Hillary Clinton is starting to be targeted by the mainstream campaigns of top-tier Republican candidates such as Rudy Giuliani, John McCain and Mitt Romney. The Republican approach has been to maintain a distance between the dirty tricks-style operators and their senior figures. 'It is all based on plausible deniability, so that mainstream Republicans can dissociate with anti-Clinton activists,' said Shawn Bowler, a political scientist at the University of California.
However, there is some clear overlap. For example, Texan businessman Bob Perry has joined Republican Mitt Romney's campaign as a fundraiser. In 2004, Perry gave more than $4m to the Swift Boat campaign.
But one of the main reasons why the Republican whispering campaign against Clinton is starting so early is simply how well Clinton is doing. After surviving the shock entry of Illinois Senator Barack Obama into the race, Clinton has maintained a steady and large lead among the Democrats. She has continued to rack up high-profile endorsements, such as last week's backing from Steven Spielberg, and her fundraising is steaming powerfully ahead. 'She is looking tough to beat. She is well funded and well organised,' Bowler said. With the Republican party in disarray and coping with the legacy of the Iraq war, there is a real feeling that Clinton could win the White House.
Her campaign is prepared for a conservative attack, no matter how dirty. On the campaign trail, one of her slogans is: 'I know how Washington Republicans think, how they operate and how to beat them.' Her staff have vowed not to repeat Kerry's 2004 mistake with the Swift Boat campaign when he delayed responding to their accusations that he did not tell the truth about his war record.
'Liberals have learnt a lot from the Swift Boat experience. You can't sit by and let it fester,' said Krepel.
Ghosts In The GOP Attack Machine
June 20, 2008 / / The Politico
In a web video emailed to supporters Thursday, Barack Obama explained that he was opting out of the public financing system because John McCain is “not going to stop the smears and attacks from his allies running so-called 527 groups who will spend millions and millions of dollars in unlimited donations.”
Republicans can only wish that were the case.
Obama’s alarmist prophecy — a bit of typical campaign rhetoric meant to scare his own donors into reaching for their credit cards — is wildly at odds with the flatlined state of conservative third-party efforts.
The truth is that, less than five months before Election Day, there are no serious anti-Obama 527s in existence nor are there any immediate plans to create such a group.
Conversations with more than a dozen Republican strategists find near unanimity in the belief that, at some point, there will be a real third-party effort aimed at Obama.
But not one knows who will run it, who will pay for it, what shape it will eventually take or when such a group may form.
More worrisome for Republicans who believe such an outside attack apparatus is essential to defeating Obama, some key individuals and groups who were being looked to for help say they won’t be involved.
T. Boone Pickens, the Texas oilman who gave $3 million to the Swift Boat Veterans for Truth and who numerous GOP sources said was being looked to as a funding source this year, is sitting the race out.
“He is not giving anything to 527s involved in the presidential race this cycle, and has communicated that…to Republican strategists and operatives,” said Pickens spokesman Jay Rosser.
Rosser said Pickens “has a much broader public policy initiative in mind that will focus on energy, and is approaching that in a bipartisan manner.” He only “contributed last cycle because they were in play, and were so heavily funded on the other side.”
Also staying out of the third-party effort this time is the powerful Republican public affairs firm, the DCI Group.
DCI ran the independent Progress for America (PFA) campaign that raised $45 million to tout George W. Bush and tar John Kerry in 2004.
But after helping to underwrite ad campaigns for Bush’s second term effort to privatize Social Security and confirm two Supreme Court justices, PFA has become defunct.
Now, DCI officials emphatically want it to be known—and specifically asked that it be included in this story—that they won’t resurrect PFA or be involved at all in this campaign.
“DCI Group is not and will not be involved in any 527 activity this cycle,” said a spokesman for the group, which has a bevy of image-sensitive corporate clients. “DCI is out of the business.”
Further, Freedom’s Watch, the one third-party group that many conservatives expected to step into the void left by PFA, has decided to exclusively focus on congressional battles.
Asked if was still the intent of Freedom’s Watch to stay out of the presidential fray, Carl Forti, the group’s director, flatly said: “Yes.”
A spokesman for Sheldon Adelson, the chief financial patron of Freedom’s Watch, declined to comment when asked if the Las Vegas casino mogul would help finance other third-party groups targeting the presidential race.
Multiple Republican sources say that Karl Rove has been in contact with donors such as Adelson and Pickens about helping to create an independent effort but that to date nothing has come of it. Rove didn’t respond to an email.
“There has to be a group and there will be a group,” said a GOP strategist who has been closely involved in past third-party efforts. “But when and where it is formed is yet to be determined. And we’re running out of time, the clock’s ticking.”
Another veteran Republican who works closely with outside conservatve groups is even more blunt: “[Democrats] think another Swift Boat is coming – and it’s not.”
The situation was far different this time four years ago.
The Swift Boat Veterans were unveiled at National Press Club event on May 4 that year. By late June, PFA was not only up and running but had launched ads in some key states. And a handful of well-funded Democratic third-party groups had already spent tens of millions of dollars at that point hammering Bush and the GOP.
The reasons for inactivity on the right are many: tougher FEC regulations that make it more difficult to launch attacks that aren’t tied to an issue, donor fatigue, lack of enthusiasm among Republicans for McCain, and a fear from both contributors and operatives of being painted as a racist in the first general election campaign in history that features an African American as a major party nominee.
But, in explaining the absence of any anti-Obama groups this time around, every individual interviewed for this story cited the same central reason: a fear that their party’s nominee will publicly denounce them and hold a grudge.
“Both donors and operatives know how much [McCain] abhors these groups,” said John Weaver, the Arizona senator’s former chief strategist, referring to the independent groups that have thrived following passage of the landmark McCain-Feingold campaign finance law. “If he is ultimately successful and any of these groups played a significant effort in electing him, many believe, probably rightfully, that they would be ostracized.”
Another GOP strategist said that McCain’s denunciation of a 501(c)(4) which aired an ad in South Carolina last November touting McCain when his resources were severely limited sent a chilling message to potential independent expenditure groups.
McCain issued a public statement at the time calling on the group, spearheaded by GOP adman Rick Reed, to “cease and desist.”
"Anyone who believes they could assist my campaign by exploiting a loophole in campaign finance laws is doing me and our country a disservice,” McCain said then.
He used even stronger language after that, saying at a Texas town hall meeting in late February that 527s “are distorting the entire political process and they need to be outlawed.”
Aping the voice of an imaginary donor, one Republican strategist posited: “I’m supposed to put millions of dollars up to be called a lawbreaker? That doesn’t make one feel very good.”
While Bush spoke out against third-party activity in 2004, it was widely understood in the Republican political community to have been done with a wink and a nod.
McCain, too, has eased somewhat off his harder line of late.
Since speaking out this spring against a North Carolina Republican Party ad that invoked Obama and his pastor, the Rev. Jeremiah Wright, and angering conservatives who see the use of such associations as imperative to winning in an otherwise tough year for the GOP, McCain has said that he won’t play the role of “referee” about every ad that is aired.
Told that party allies were hesitant to form groups out of fear that they’d never be able to do business with or even darken the door of a McCain White House, a top campaign adviser suggested that the candidate who rebuked the Swift Boat Veterans might not do the same this time when it’s his name on the ballot and there are similar third-party attacks being waged against him.
“He wishes that 527s did not exist on either side,” said McCain strategist Steve Schmidt. “But he understands that they do. And he certainly isn’t going to say that one side should have them and one side should not in the context of a presidential campaign.”
But that’s not enough reassurance for some longtime Republicans.
“People think that if they take the wink and nod and give the money that he will piss all over them like he pissed all over the lobbyists," said a Republican who has been involved in past third-party efforts.
Aside from fears about antagonizing McCain, there is palpable disappointment over the failure of Hillary Clinton to claim the Democratic nomination. Many in the GOP were gearing up for, and were energized by, the prospect of a run against Clinton.
Several Republicans, including the Vice-President’s daughter, Mary Cheney, talked about creating an independent group at the end of last year but the group fizzled out during the course of the long Democratic primary, sources say.
They weren’t alone.
Richard Collins, a wealthy Dallas-based entrepreneur, bankrolled “StopHerNow," an entity set up to defeat the former First Lady.
“For six months, it’s been do we stop her, stop him or stop somebody else?” he notes.
“We spent 18 months and millions of dollars making 'Hillary The Movie,'" laments David Bossie, head of Citizens United and a longtime Clinton tormentor. “We’re incredibly proud, but the problem is the film has no relevance anymore.”
Bossie is now rushing out an Obama movie for later this summer that he promises will include Wright and other controversial figures from the Democrat’s past. But while promising that they’ll also do TV spots, Bossie’s outfit faces the same challenges as other third-party groups hoping to engage in the race – a lack of money.
Citizens United had less than $1 million on hand at then of April.
Floyd Brown, another right-wing operative who has been thought to be planning an anti-Obama effort, has largely been relegated to broadcasting ads online and had less than $50,000 combined in two accounts at the end of March.
And Collins’s group only had raised only about $8,000 more than it spent this cycle as of March 30, according to a Center for Responsive Politics analysis.
Asked if they would air TV ads, Collins said, “We might.” Then he noted the cartoon-filled website they had mocking Obama. “We get a lot of hits on our internet site,” he said.
The diminished role of third-party groups this campaign isn’t confined to the right, though. Democratic-leaning groups have done far less so far this year than in 2004, when outfits such as the George Soros-funded America Coming Together and The Media Fund spent hundreds of millions of dollars attacking Bush.
The reasoning is the same: fear of being rebuked by their own candidate.
One liberal group, David Brock’s Progressive Media USA, declared in April that it would spend $40 million against McCain, but two months later, after Obama signaled his unease with outside help, they had stopped airing ads and were expected to be absorbed into a pair of other left-leaning organizations.
Still, that hasn’t stopped sympathizers such as MoveOn.org and the government employee union AFSCME from attacking McCain. The two groups joined together this week to air a hard-edged spot this week featuring an actress playing a young mother with an infant son in her lap telling McCain that he “can’t have [the baby]” for the Iraq war.
“527s are here to stay and they mean at least two to three points in the general,” said conservative public relations executive Greg Mueller, a veteran of past presidential campaigns. “Both sides need them – whether they like it or not.”
===
new 4 24
CNN LIVE EVENT/SPECIAL
Campaign Killers: Why Do Negative Ads Work?
Aired November 28, 2007
THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.
(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)
CAMPBELL BROWN, HOST (voice-over): This is a political attack in the making. Guerrilla warriors on a changing battlefield. They use weapons like ridicule.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: I invaded two countries, broke the Geneva Convention.
BROWN: Distortion.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: For racial quotas, Harvey Gantt.
BROWN: And fear.
UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: Liberals in Congress voted to slash America's intelligence operations.
BROWN: It doesn't matter if it's deceptive. What matters is that it works.
(END VIDEOTAPE)
BROWN: Remember that infamous Willie Horton ad or how about the controversial daisy ad against Barry Goldwater? I'm Campbell Brown. Those ads and others like them can sink a campaign and some argue turn American voters off the political process altogether.
But if you think you're going to get a free pass from all the negativity this primary season, well, forget it. We live in what some political observers call the golden age of mudslinging. We've got two front-runners, Hillary and Rudy, who are especially divisive figures. So get ready. The mud bath is about to begin.
(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: I served with John Kerry.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: I served with John Kerry.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: John Kerry has not been honest about what happened in Vietnam.
BROWN (voice-over): It was a minor ad buy in just seven inexpensive media markets.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Swift boat. UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: Swift boat.
WOLF BLITZER, CNN ANCHOR: That swift boat...
BROWN: But it became the dominant news story of the 2004 campaign.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: John Kerry lied.
BROWN: The attack didn't come from a campaign but rather a group of Vietnam vets attacking the candidate who had billed himself as a war hero.
STEPHANIE CUTTER, KERRY '04 COMMUNICATIONS DIR.: When I first saw the ads, I thought, this is crazy. There's no way that these accusations are going to hold up.
BROWN: Stephanie Cutter was John Kerry's communications director.
CUTTER: The old rule of crisis communications is that you don't respond to an attack, otherwise you elevate it.
BROWN: It took two weeks for Kerry to speak out.
SEN. JOHN KERRY (D-MA), 2004 PRESIDENTIAL CANDIDATE: They're not telling the truth. They're a front for a Bush campaign.
BROWN: But by then the damage was done. CNN senior political analyst Bill Schneider.
WILLIAM SCHNEIDER, CNN SENIOR POLITICAL ANALYST: People figured, well, if he's not answering the ads, the charges, they must be true.
BROWN: What was especially troubling to some was that Naval records and eyewitness accounts by other sailors contradicted just about every claim the swift boat vets made. But it didn't seem to matter.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: The ad was misleading.
BROWN: John Gere (ph) is a political scientist from Vanderbilt University.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: The real problem with the swift boat ad isn't the content of the ad, per se, it's the fact -- the attention the news media gave it.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: They served their country.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: It actually got more attention than the Iraq War. That strikes me as a problem because the Iraq War was the big issue in 2004. Swift boat wasn't.
BROWN: Yet the swift boat ad may well have been the lethal blow to Kerry's campaign. The attack has even added a new term to the political lexicon, swift-boating a candidate. It also demonstrated the power of independent groups, the damage they can do while allowing the candidate they support to claim innocence.
KEN MEHLMAN, BUSH '04 CAMPAIGN DIR.: There is absolutely no connection between the Bush campaign and this organization.
BROWN: President Bush has had his own taste of the power of independent organizations. When he was governor, the NAACP ran this ad.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: On June 7th, 1998, in Texas, my father was killed.
BROWN: The daughter of murder victim James Byrd lashes out at Bush for his opposition to hate crimes legislation. Byrd, an African- American, was chained to a truck and dragged to his death.
UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: But when Governor George W. Bush refused to support hate crimes legislation, it was like my father was killed all over again.
BROWN: To many, it was race-baiting, a shocking ad that crossed a line.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: When I die, Harold Ford will let me pay taxes again.
BROWN: Well, where is the line today, and does it even exist? It sure doesn't seem like it.
UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: Hi, sexy.
BROWN: Just take a look at this attack against Michael Arcuri, running for congress from New York.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: A phone number to an adult fantasy hotline appeared on Michael Arcuri's New York City hotel room bill while he was there on official business, and the called was charged to Oneida County taxpayers.
BROWN: It is a total extortion. What really happened, one of the candidate's colleagues had tried to call the state criminal justice division which had a number almost identical to a porn line, a misdial. It cost the taxpayers $1.25.
UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: I met Harold at the Playboy party.
BROWN: So why doesn't someone stand up and say, enough? Well, for one thing, a good negative ad gets a lot of attention.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: You may go with a negative ad simply because you know the news media may cover it and give you extra pop, so to speak, in your advertising dollar because all of the sudden it gets communicated to a lot more homes.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: What does he not want you to know? BROWN: And negative ads work.
MARK MCKINNON, FMR. MEDIA ADVISER, GEORGE W. BUSH: They work all the time. They've worked in the beginning. They've worked in the middle. And they've worked in the end. And they're going to continue to work.
BROWN: Mark McKinnon ran George Bush's ad campaign in 2004 and is working now with Republican John McCain.
(on camera): In every poll, whenever you ask people, they say, we hate negative ads, but they're effective. Like how do you explain that discrepancy?
MCKINNON: You know, Campbell, I hear that every cycle, you know, that people are fed up with negative advertising. But the fact is that while they say that, it motivates them, it moves them, it persuades them, it compels them.
BROWN (voice-over): And that's why the first swift-boating attempt of 2008 has already been launched.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: He's running on his 9/11 leadership, and it was lacking, and there was none.
BROWN: The firefighters union is going after "America's mayor," Rudy Giuliani, on his supposed strength. Their video, called "Urban Legend," was launched on YouTube. It blames Giuliani for defective radios some firefighters had at Ground Zero.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: A 1994 report confirmed the radios didn't work, and Mayor Giuliani knew it.
JIM RICHES, DEPUTY FIRE CHIEF, FDNY: People saw him on TV and projected him as a hero, and he's not a hero. I mean, what did he do? He politicized 9/11. He has profited off 9/11 to the tune of tens of millions of dollars.
BROWN: Deputy Fire Chief Jim Riches' son, Jimmy, also a firefighter, died on 9/11. Riches believes many of the firefighters died needlessly that day.
(on camera): Is it fair to place blame for that solely on the mayor?
RICHES: Sure, the mayor's job was to get us proper equipment.
BROWN (voice-over): The ad monitor, factcheck.org, calls the firemen's DVD misleading, pointing to the 9/11 Commission which found the failure of radios was a contributing factor but not the primary cause of the many firefighter fatalities.
Unlike John Kerry, Giuliani struck back immediately.
RUDY GIULIANI (R), PRESIDENTIAL CANDIDATE: People know what I did on September 11th. They can judge it for themselves. I was there. I led from the front, not from the back.
BROWN: Jimmy Riches doesn't buy it.
GIULIANI: We're going that way?
RICHES: We're going to go around. We're going to do town hall meetings throughout New Hampshire, Iowa, and we're going to follow Rudy Giuliani around and we're going to let the word out because New York knows what Rudy is like.
BROWN: A battle-scarred veteran of the real swift boat attack says if Giuliani thinks he has got nothing to worry about, think again.
CUTTER: I guarantee you that it's going to come back in the general election and that destroys the entire narrative of why he's running for president. So I guarantee you we're going to see more of that.
BROWN: When we come back, they are only one of the guerrilla groups out there ready for battle. The liberal moveon.org.
(END VIDEOTAPE)
(COMMERCIAL BREAK)
(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)
BROWN (voice-over): General David Petraeus made his reputation taking on insurgents in Iraq. But when he came to Capitol Hill in September, he was confronted by American insurgents, a liberal anti- war group called moveon.org. MoveOn bought this full-page ad in The New York Times. It accused Petraeus of betraying us by cooking the books on progress in Iraq.
MoveOn's executive director, Eli Pariser.
ELI PARISER, EXECUTIVE DIR., MOVEON.ORG: The goal was not to necessarily persuade, you know, lots of voters, it was to get the ad talked about and get that critique of what the general was saying, talked about.
BROWN: But what the general said on Iraq was overshadowed by what MoveOn said about the general.
GEORGE W. BUSH, PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES: I thought the ad was disgusting.
BROWN: The ad became a huge news story because it questioned the loyalty of a wartime commander, implying he was a traitor.
BUSH: I felt like the ad was an attack not only on General Petraeus, but on the U.S. military.
BROWN: Many Democrats, too, were embarrassed by the ad and distanced themselves from MoveOn, the left wing of their own party. SEN. CARL LEVIN (D), MICHIGAN: I hope we all condemn the ad in The New York Times.
SEN. HARRY REID (D-NV), MAJORITY LEADER: An unwarranted personal attack on General Petraeus.
LEVIN: I thought it was a disgraceful ad.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: It is not OK.
BROWN: But as congressional Republicans engineered landslide votes to condemn MoveOn, the organization says its anti-war membership was sending in cash, $1.5 million.
MoveOn made no apologies.
PARISER: Sometimes you have to just lay the issues out in very clear, stark terms and fight the fight.
BILL CLINTON, 42ND PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES: I will answer each question as accurately and fully as I can.
BROWN: Moveon.org got its start in 1998 when President Clinton was facing impeachment for lying under oath about Monica Lewinsky. With the goal of defending Clinton, two Silicon Valley entrepreneurs harnessed the power of the Internet.
PARISER: They put up a little petition on their Web site that said "censure and move on." And never anticipated it being an organization that would stick around, but, you know, here we are.
BROWN: With 3.3 million members, you might think MoveOn would have better digs. But this is headquarters, Pariser's Brooklyn apartment.
(on camera): You're 26 years old, and there are people who would argue you are one of the most powerful people in Democratic politics right now.
Come on. You've got to have some sort of reaction to that.
PARISER: Well, you know, I mean, for me, it's not about this role, and it's not about me. It's about our members.
BROWN (voice-over): And no office space necessary because members join online stay in touch online and contribute online. An average of $47 per member, money that funds hard-hitting, often controversial attacks.
MCKINNON: One of the best things the Republicans have going for them.
BROWN: Republicans are gleeful over what they see as MoveOn's extremism.
MCKINNON: We're all for moveon.org, God bless you. God bless you. Bring it on.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: What it has turned into is an organization that's run by the people in the choir.
BROWN: Even liberals like political consultant Bill Hillsman (ph) worry that MoveOn can alienate swing voters.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: What I have told my candidates is that MoveOn can be as much of a harm as do you good.
BROWN: For example, when President Bush ran for re-election in 2004, MoveOn organized a contest called "Bush in 30 seconds." Members would submit their own ads...
PARISER: And we'll run the one that wins.
BROWN: Two of the 1,500 ads compared Bush to Hitler. It was way below the belt. And Republicans went ballistic.
ED GILLESPIE, FMR. RNC CHAIRMAN: It's not appropriate political discourse. Every one of the Democratic candidates running for president today should repudiate this.
BROWN: MoveOn apologized, and it was score one for the Republicans. As the contest continued, an ad called "Child's Pay" was voted number one. It depicted a future generation working to pay off what the ad called Bush's deficit. But when MoveOn tried to buy time for the ad during the Super Bowl, CBS pointed to its policy against advocacy ads and said no.
(on camera): But it became a huge news story.
PARISER: It was a huge story.
PAUL BEGALA, CNN CONTRIBUTOR: CBS is refusing to air an ad during the Super Bowl.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: In that situation what happens is everybody wants to see that commercial then.
BEGALA: The ad shows children working manual labor as a way of paying off President Bush's trillion dollar debt.
BROWN (voice-over): This time, score one for moveon.org.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Congressman Chocola has been caught red- handed protecting oil company profits.
BROWN: Two years later in the 2006 midterm election, MoveOn spent $27 million.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Caught red-handed again.
BROWN: And attacked Republicans by trying to link them to the left's favorite villains.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Tom DeLay, Dick Cheney, Jack Abramoff, and now Nancy Johnson, another Republican caught red-handed.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: MoveOn was very insightful and strategic in picking districts.
BROWN: Political consultant John Lap (ph) also worked that year to elect House Democrats. Lap says he's the new breed of Democratic consultant.
UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: Simmons has taken nearly $200,000 from the pharmaceutical industry.
BROWN: Like MoveOn, he favors hitting hard.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: I'm going to use every single weapon I have in my quiver.
BROWN: Lap likes to compare himself to "The Untouchables" taking down Al Capone.
SEAN CONNERY, ACTOR: He pulls a knife, you pull a gun.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: You send one of ours to the hospital, I send one of yours to the morgue.
CONNERY: That's the Chicago way.
BROWN: It seemed to help in 2006 when the Democrats took control of Congress. But in 2008, the stakes are higher, and MoveOn says it will spend as much as $45 million to put a Democrat in the White House.
MCKINNON: I remember the same feeling among Republicans in the late '90s. They've been in the desert for a long time. You get thirsty. You know? And that's what's happening on the Democratic side. They've been in the desert, and they want water.
BROWN: When we come back, campaign killers on the right.
UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: You know, I'm really excited about the Hillary show.
(END VIDEOTAPE)
(COMMERCIAL BREAK)
JOE JOHNS, CNN ANCHOR: Hello, I'm Joe Johns. "BROKEN GOVERNMENT: Campaign Killers" continues in a moment. First, what's "Now in the News."
The talks are over, now it's time for action. The Mideast summit ended today. Appearing with Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert and Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas, President Bush called the two-day conference a hopeful beginning. Both sides say they'll try to reach a peace deal by the end of next year.
Out of Florida tonight, new details in the murder of Sean Taylor. The star NFL player was shot to death during what authorities now call a random burglary. While they say they are pursuing several leads, police are asking the public for help.
In Las Vegas, a big court day for O.J. Simpson. He pleaded not guilty to charges connected to the alleged armed robbery at a hotel in September. Simpson and two others are accused of holding up two memorabilia dealers. The trial begins in April.
Back to "BROKEN GOVERNMENT: Campaign Killers" in just a minute.
(COMMERCIAL BREAK)
(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: We started off with all these possibilities.
UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: The whole idea is to get the audience engaged.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Because to me the key is...
BROWN (voice-over): In Houston, Texas, far from any campaign headquarters...
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Challenge.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Challenged and you're up.
BROWN: ... a small group is plotting...
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: I mean, we could come up with whatever we wanted.
BROWN: ... arming themselves for a big war of words...
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: What do you get after you whack the guy?
BROWN: ... using an unconventional weapon.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Hillary Clinton! Yeaaagh!
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Our message of humor and satire will be much more important than having to buy some negative ad.
BROWN: Richard Collins (ph) is a Texan, a Republican and a millionaire who has found his calling.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: We're not being balanced.
BROWN: Collins says he spent half a million dollars. His goal is to raise $3 million more in 2008 he hopes from the same people who funded the swift boat attacks. All of that money supporting his pet project, Stop Her Now, a Web-based weekly cartoon and blog that lambastes and lampoons the Democratic front-runner.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE (singing): Her name is Hill, she fills her till with dirty bills.
BROWN: Without the membership or the money of moveon.org, on the right, it's smaller fringe groups like this one that are forming the ranks of Hillary-hunters.
(on camera): This can't be cheap to do.
(voice-over): We went behind the scenes as they drew up their latest battle plan.
(on camera): So are you kind of always on the lookout, I guess, for ideas?
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Well, we've got about eight or nine guys that are on the lookout for ideas. And recently a story went out that, you know, when Hillary was at the AFL-CIO convention...
SEN. HILLARY CLINTON (D-NY), PRESIDENTIAL CANDIDATE: So if you want a winner who knows how to take them on, I'm your girl.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Got a cartoon out about 48 hours where Hillary said, in front of the audience, that I'm your girl. And out front we have Bill with his arm around a babe, and he says, "honey, will you be my girl?"
BROWN: With the exception of Chelsea Clinton, there's very little off limits.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: I've had enough of you.
BROWN (on camera): "We've blogged about her. Even a cursory review of her time in the White House reinforces the truth that not only is Hillary a big-government liberal but an arrogant and a vicious one." That's pretty mean-spirited. You're calling her vicious.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Well, she's a very tough woman.
BROWN: So how can you argue that it's all good sort of fun and satire?
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Well, the site has several features to it. But, you know, politics is a tough business. We try not to do it in a mean-spirited way.
UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: Our next guest is loved by millions.
BROWN (voice-over): Collins believes humor can be an effective tool, and history shows he might be right. Just ask Mark McKinnon...
MCKINNON: It worked because people laughed about it.
BROWN: ... chief media adviser for George W. Bush in 2000 and 2004.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: In which direction would John Kerry lead? Kerry voted for the Iraq War. Opposed it. MCKINNON: We saw that footage of him windsurfing, and we knew we had something magic. I literally heard "Blue Danube" in my head, da- da-da-da-da-da-da. You know, it just was like, boom, the voters see that and they laugh. And anytime you can get people laughing at your opponent, that's a good thing.
BROWN: Humor was also the weapon of choice for conservative David Bossie (ph).
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Priceless.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: If we didn't use humor and we were just attacking John Kerry on being a rich guy, it doesn't necessarily carry any water.
BROWN: Bossie has been called one of the best dirty tricksters in the business. Many mainstream Republicans have denounced his tactics, but he has drawn blood. For decades, he has had his sights trained squarely on the Clintons.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: All while Bill Clinton was president.
BROWN: Challenging Bill Clinton's record on terrorism and on Whitewater, he was also the spokesman for a group that released a notorious ad called "Run and Hide." Though Bossie says he had nothing to do with actually creating the ad.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: what really happened between Bill Clinton and Gennifer Flowers?
BROWN: It was considered such a low blow that even Clinton's opponent at the time, then-President George H.W. Bush, filed a complaint with the Federal Election Commission.
GEORGE H.W. BUSH, 41ST PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES: We will do whatever we can to stop any filthy campaign tactics.
BROWN: Today Bossie is once again focused on a Clinton, this time Hillary.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: We are going to take a very close look at her.
BROWN: He's now head of Citizens United, a conservative advocacy group with, according to Bossie, half a million members and about $16 million. His first attack will be a documentary called "Hillary: The Movie."
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: We tell these stories as best we can.
BROWN: His goal is to release the movie before the primaries.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: My job, I look at it, is to educate the American people about Hillary Clinton.
BROWN: Like his fellow Hillary-hunters at Stop Her Now, Bossie is always on the lookout for that perfect usable moment.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: I think that you saw recently, you know, she did a round of interviews on the Sunday shows, and she gave that now famous cackle. People were referring to it as the Howard Dean moment where Howard Dean kind of did that yee-haw!
HOWARD DEAN (D), 2004 PRESIDENTIAL CANDIDATE: Yeaagh!
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: It's not presidential, and that's part of what you need to look for.
BROWN: Mainstream Republicans may distance themselves from Bossie and Collins, but they are painfully aware that they don't have a true counter to the powerful moveon.org. So now some of the more traditional faces of the GOP are trying to level the playing field.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: We needed a conservative voice, a right of center voice in the war in Iraq and the global war on terror.
BROWN: Brad Blakeman (ph) is a graduate of the Bush White House and runs Freedom's Watch. It has deep pockets, enormous funding from wealthy conservatives, but a relatively small membership. They've already launched ads to try to counter MoveOn.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Moveon.org is losing their battle because...
BROWN: And they plan to train their guns on any candidate who gets in their way.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: We're not wallflowers, right, and we're going to come out swinging when we have to.
BROWN: It's too early to tell with whether it will be Freedom's Watch or the fringe militias who will score the most direct hits in this campaign season. Bossie and Collins both argue if they take the enemy down, no Republican is going to complain.
(on camera): How far are you willing to take this?
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Well, we're going to take it all the way.
BROWN: Coming up, the ad that brought down a candidate.
MICHAEL DUKAKIS (D), 1988 PRESIDENTIAL CANDIDATE: The thing that hurt was the Willie Horton stuff.
(END VIDEOTAPE)
(COMMERCIAL BREAK)
BROWN: As today's candidates gear up for battle, they are haunted by ghosts from campaigns past. You'll remember them. They were vicious attacks that wounded some candidates so badly they never recovered. We now head down memory lane to take a look at the giants in the art of attack.
(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)
BROWN (voice-over): Summer 1988, the end of the Reagan era and the beginning of a war for the presidency. The Democratic candidate, Massachusetts Governor Michael Dukakis.
GOV. MICHAEL DUKAKIS, PRESIDENTIAL CANDIDATE: I felt good about my primary victory, that it had been positive, that we hadn't engaged in that kind of stuff. And I made a basic judgment that that's what we were going to do in the final no matter what came at me from the other side.
BILL SCHNEIDER, CNN SENIOR POLITICAL ANALYST: Dukakis was 17 points ahead. The Republicans had to do something to bring them down.
FLOYD BROWN, POLITICAL AD PRODUCER: I was hired by a political action committee called Americans for Bush, and they asked me to craft some ads for them.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Bush and Dukakis on crime.
BROWN: Republican Floyd Brown created one of the most devastating attacks of all time.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: He allowed first-degree murderers to have weekend passes from prison. One was Willie Horton who murdered a boy in a robbery, stabbing him 19 times. Despite a life sentence, Horton received ten weekend passes from prison. Horton fled, kidnapped a young couple, stabbing the man and repeatedly raping his girlfriend.
F. BROWN: We could see, through the nightly tracking poll --
BROWN (on camera): The numbers changed. Just after that ad hit the airwaves?
F. BROWN: Yes.
BROWN: What were you thinking at the time as you were watching that development?
F. BROWN: Yahoo!
DUKAKIS: It was a racist ad, no question about. This image of a black guy going after a white woman. And for George Bush and the people around him to use it I think was pretty outrageous and pretty despicable.
SCHNEIDER: To Democrats, it's a synonym for a scurrilous, reprehensible attack. But for Republicans and for a lot of people, the Willie Horton ad was an effective ad. It worked.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Bush and Dukakis on crime.
BROWN: As soon as the ad aired, the news media picked up the story.
DUKAKIS: And I just made a dumb decision that I wasn't going to respond to the attack campaign. And by the time I realized what was going on, we had essentially lost it.
BROWN: And the Bush camp seized the momentum and went for the kill.
GEORGE H. W. BUSH, FORMER PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES: He let convicted first-degree murderers out on weekend passes.
BROWN: They attacked Dukakis on crime.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: His revolving door prison policy gave weekend furloughs to first-degree murderers not eligible for parole.
BROWN: On his environmental record.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: As a candidate, Michael Dukakis called Boston Harbor an open sewer. As governor, he had the opportunity to do something about it, but chose not to.
BROWN: And finally on his ability to lead.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Michael Dukakis has opposed virtually every defense system we've developed. And now he wants to be our commander in chief. America can't afford that risk.
DAVID SCHWARTZ, MUSEUM OF THE MOVING IMAGE: Outright lies or clever misrepresentations.
BROWN: David Schwartz is chief curator at the Museum of the Moving Image and has studied campaign ads through the years.
SCHWARTZ: Well, the way that they got away with it was because Dukakis didn't respond quickly or aggressively enough, that he thought that the voters would see through this, and they didn't.
BROWN: Experts say Dukakis ignored the basic rules of campaign combat. When attacked, attack back. Don't let them turn a positive, for example, his environmental record, into a negative. And always, always remember any picture can come back to haunt you. Tried and true strategies that have been used for centuries.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: If Thomas Jefferson is elected president, murder, robbery, rape and incest will be openly taught and practiced.
BROWN: These words were taken from campaign handouts used against Thomas Jefferson in the 1800 presidential race. The dramatization is used by Mark McKinnon, formerly President Bush's media adviser, in a class he teaches on the history of ads.
(on camera): And that was the actual language, rape, robbery, murder, incest.
MARK MCKINNON, FMR. BUSH MEDIA ADVISER: That's right. That's right from the actual pamphlets that they produced back then and distributed, and pretty brutal stuff.
BROWN: It was nasty in the good old days. MCKINNON: Nasty, nasty, nasty. Yes, really tough.
BROWN: Of course, Jefferson fought back and won.
(SINGING)
BROWN: Everything changed in the 1960s when TV entered the picture and extended the power and the reach of attacks. In 1964, Lyndon Johnson ran this famous ad against Barry Goldwater.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Ten, nine, eight, seven, six, five, four, three, two, one, zero.
These are the stakes.
MCKINNON: Vote or die.
BROWN: Terrifying.
MCKINNON: Yes. Yes, I mean, he's basically saying, you elect my opponent, he's going to blow up the world.
SCHWARTZ: People were worried about nuclear war, and they just didn't know enough about Goldwater. So the ads raised enough concern.
BROWN: Fast forward now to 2004, when technology once again changed the battlefield.
JOHN EDWARDS (D), PRESIDENTIAL CANDIDATE: If you have any question about what John Kerry's made of --
BROWN: Swift Boat's power was magnified by the nonstop play it got on the Internet, blogs and 24-hour cable news.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: -- for that injury.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: John Kerry lied to get his bronze star. I know. I was there. I saw what happened.
BROWN: There was plenty of evidence to contradict the ad, but it didn't matter. The charges seemed to stick.
MCKINNON: I knew it was going to have a huge impact, and the only surprise was that the Kerry campaign didn't respond quicker.
STEPHANIE CUTTER, KERRY CAMPAIGN COMMUNICATIONS DIRECTOR: In retrospect, we probably should have had him respond earlier. And there was much debate about that in the campaign.
BROWN: Stephanie Cutter, Kerry's communications director --
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: The Navy documented John Kerry's heroism --
BROWN: Says the campaign did put out a response to the attack.
VANESSA KERRY, KERRY-EDWARDS 2004: Which wound do you want to see? Which scar do you need to see to prove --
BROWN: But that they underestimated the power of the new media environment.
CUTTER: We didn't understand at that point the power of right wing blogs, how that seeps over to Fox News, gets covered by the mainstream media, and seeps out into the general public. By the time you're responding to an attack like that, the damage is already done.
DUKAKIS: When something like that happens, you've got to put responsibility for it squarely in the lap of your opponent.
We go through these cycles over and over again.
BROWN: From the man who made his share of mistakes, some words of advice for surviving the attacks to come.
DUKAKIS: Any candidate who is running for the presidency of the United States, particularly on the Democratic side, has got to expect them. They're going to be coming. They already are.
(END VIDEOTAPE)
BROWN: Coming up, the anatomy of an attack.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: The tighter you go on someone's face, cropping out the context, slowing down video, usually the more unattractive most of us look.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
(COMMERCIAL BREAK)
BILL HILLSMAN, POLITICAL AD PRODUCER: Hey, everybody. I'm in an edit studio.
Maybe. Probably not.
Take number 52.
I like that one.
BROWN: Bill Hillsman is known in political advertising --
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Mr. Engineer, why is the Big Dig 12 billion dollars over budget?
BROWN: For using a few words --
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: You see --
BROWN: -- to make a big point.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Hey, how did the Big Dig get 12 billion dollars over budget?
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Simply put --
HILLSMAN: If we were talking about this in marketing terms, we would represent challenger brands.
BROWN: A self-described independent progressive from Minneapolis, Hillsman likes to work for the underdog. He turned former TV wrestler Jesse Ventura -- he's the one with the chair -- into the thinking man's candidate for Minnesota governor.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: A man who will fight to return Minnesota's budget surplus to the tax payers and who will work to improve public schools by reducing class sizes.
BROWN: Hillsman believes fair-minded attacks -- he calls them contrast ads -- help voters understand the difference between candidates.
HILLSMAN: It might be too subtle.
If it's presenting a fair picture, it's a plus to the political discourse.
BROWN: It's the deceptive slash and burn attacks that he believes are hurting the political system, a time-honored tradition from both parties.
HILLSMAN: As Lyndon Johnson used to famously say, when he was about to make a spurious allegation about an opponent, make the bastard deny it.
BROWN: A vicious attack will start with opposition research, even rumors and gossip. And if there's not enough mud to sling, a political alchemist creates it.
UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: 2008.
BROWN: Hillsman showed us how using the presidential front- runners.
HILLSMAN: Look, you can make a poll say anything.
BROWN: For example, in June the "Washington Post" asked likely Republican voters who is the strongest leader? Fifty five percent said Rudy Giuliani, more than John McCain and Mitt Romney combined.
HILLSMAN: If Giuliani is rated 55 percent as the strongest leader, you could say that 45 percent of Americans don't believe Rudy Giuliani is a strong leader. It's taking the data totally out of context.
BROWN: In September, the poll asked likely Democratic voters which candidate best represents the core values of the Democratic party? Fifty percent said Hillary Clinton. HILLSMAN: The truth of this statistic is that Hillary's basically twice as good on this particular measuring stick as any of these other guys. But the way you can take it out of context and twist it is to say only half of Democrats really think Hillary Clinton respects or reflects the values of the Democratic party.
BROWN: By law, TV stations cannot refuse ads from candidates for federal office. So unlike commercial advertising, no one is protecting the public.
SCHNEIDER: In the world of commercial advertising, if you make a false claim, you can be sued. There's something called a Federal Trade Commission that can slap you with a fine for saying something that's false or unprovable. In politics, free speech. You can say anything you want.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Sex lives of Vietnamese prostitutes.
BROWN: Broadcasters can reject ads from outside advocacy groups if the claims are not documented. But is that enough of a safe guard?
HILLSMAN: The stations are inundated with this type of advertising. And if they had to devote the resources to checking out every single claim in all of these ads, they'd never get anything done besides this.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Senator Hillary Clinton!
BROWN: Political ads that distort the facts use visuals to match. To make your opponent look bad, drain the color. Or better yet, slow motion. It gives a sinister feel.
HILLSMAN: The editor controls everything. Everybody out there, the editor controls everything. The camera angle comes into play here. When you shoot people from a little bit lower, they look more heroic. It's too positive. I think this is actually a very strong photograph of Giuliani for a positive ad.
BROWN: The photo was taken at the funeral of a marine killed in Iraq.
BROWN: If you can put this photo in that context, it's brilliant because he looks angry. He looks determined. And that's exactly what Americans would be looking for.
BROWN: But crop the photo and it changes.
HILLSMAN: The tighter you go on someone's face, usually the more unattractive most of us look.
BROWN: Those who know the game say the really nasty ads will pop up late in the primaries and in the general election. But just remember, what's said in the positive ads isn't necessarily true either.
HILLSMAN: It's all caveat emptor. It's all buyer beware. It's voter beware.
(END VIDEOTAPE)
BROWN: When we come back, attacks from cyber-space.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
CLINTON: November 2008.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
(COMMERCIAL BREAK)
(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)
CLINTON: -- help you and other people who are hardworking like you. And I've really been impressed.
BROWN: It was an attack that sent shock waves through the political world, a slickly produced ad portraying Hillary Clinton as Big Brother. Its ultimate message, Vote Obama.
MCKINNON: That's one of the best ads I've ever seen.
BROWN: But this was a very different kind of attack ad. It was made by someone known only as ParkRidge47, Clinton's hometown and the year she was born. And it was created for and distributed on the Internet.
CLINTON: This is a new era of campaigning.
BROWN: The Clinton campaign shrugged off the anonymous attack. But who was behind it? The Obama campaign said not us.
SEN. BARACK OBAMA (D), PRESIDENTIAL CANDIDATE: Given what it looks like, we don't have the technical capacity to create something like that.
BROWN: The hunt was on to see who had created it. Fingers were pointed, including at our expert in Minnesota, Bill Hillsman.
HILLSMAN: I spent, like, 36 hours saying, first of all, what is it; and second of all, no, we didn't do it.
BROWN: Meet ParkRidge47, Phil Devalese (ph).
PHIL DEVALESE, PARKRIDGE47: I was actually kind of bored watching the presidential race from the sidelines. And I was a real supporter and fan of Barack Obama, and I wanted to make a statement.
BROWN: How did you do it physically?
DEVALESE: I did right here on this laptop.
BROWN: I mean, that's all it took, you and your laptop?
DEVALESE: Yes, that's all it took.
BROWN: Devalese posted his video on Youtube and sent out anonymous links to some key political blogs. From there, it took off like a virus from person to person to person.
DEVALESE: Where the first day it maybe got a few thousand views, and tens of thousands, and it went all the way up to a few million.
BROWN: Devalese makes political ads for a living; and he worked for a company that had been hired by the Obama campaign when he made his video. All parties say Devalese acted on his own. But he did leave his job after he revealed his identity and is now with a company working for presidential candidate Bill Richardson. Regardless, the Hillary 1984 ad marked a turning point; the Internet is leveling the political playing field.
CLINTON: Hard working, patriotic --
BROWN: We are sitting in this coffee shop; people have got their laptops out everywhere you look. Anyone in here could be making an ad ultimately that may change the outcome of the presidential campaign.
DEVALESE: I mean, it's fascinating. The barriers to entry are very low right now. Anybody who has a good idea and has some skills can make a great ad.
BROWN: Even the pros agree. Mark McKinnon, a Republican political consultant --
MCKINNON: The impact that it has on us is that we've lost control. It used to be that we could control our message and control the political messages out there. Now it's just out there Wild West.
JEFFREY COLE, CENTER FOR THE DIGITAL FUTURE: The Internet changes the rules of everything.
BROWN: Jeffrey Cole is the director of the Center for the Digital Future at USC.
COLE: The real long-term effect is empowerment. We found, after the 2004 presidential election, 40 percent of Internet users thought they were gaining power online.
BROWN: We've already seen that power in action.
LOU DOBBS, CNN ANCHOR: There is a rising controversy tonight over a comment made by Senator George Allen of Virginia.
BROWN: In 2006, Allen used the controversial word --
FMR. SEN. GEORGE ALLEN, VIRGINIA: Macaca or whatever his name is.
BROWN: -- to describe a person of color working for his opponent. His opponent's campaign taped the even, put it up online and sent out a link to the video. ALLEN: And let's give a welcome to Macaca here.
SCHNEIDER: If something like that happens, sure we're going to cover it because it touches a nerve. People are responding to it. And it becomes an issue in the campaign.
BROWN: Allen lost his re-election bid and a possible presidential run was ended.
COLE: I think but for the Internet and Youtube, George Allen would be sailing to the Republican presidential nomination.
BROWN: With the 2008 presidential election now less than a year away, there are more viral attack videos being uploaded every day. Search Youtube, and you can find Rudy Giuliani dressed in drag and John Edwards combing his hair.
Campaigns, though, are fighting back. For example, Hillary Clinton now has an entire website dedicated to rapid responses to issues and attacks that come out of nowhere.
HILLSMAN: We're in a brave new world right now. We're in the Wild Wild West right now. Anybody can basically do an attack ad. Anybody can do a political commercial and put it up on the web.
BROWN: And that's a big concern that the Internet, a place where there are seemingly no rules and no consequences, could make previous attack ads look like childs play.
MCKINNON: What's changed is accountability. It's like, people knew who was doing what, when and where. We don't know that anymore. We don't know who's doing it. We don't know where they're doing it. And we don't know how they're doing it.
(END VIDEOTAPE)
BROWN: No competitive candidate is likely to swear off attack ads any time soon. But, consider this, a recent Gallup poll found the vast majority of American voters, 69 percent, don't believe much that they see in any political ad, negative or positive. The slug fest goes on, though, with today's campaigns caught up in the culture of attack and counterattack, so much so that they might not even notice if the voters just stopped listening.
I'm Campbell Brown, thanks for watching.
===
[### Ready to Attack Obama, if Some Money Arrives
The New York Times
https://www.nytimes.com › U.S. › Politics](https://www.nytimes.com/2008/06/21/us/politics/21ads.html)
Jun 21, 2008 — Mr. Brown is back to his trade of bludgeoning a Democratic candidate for president, producing an innuendo-laden advertisement that is being ...
[### Anti-Obama operatives join forces
Reveal from The Center for Investigative Reporting
https://revealnews.org › article › anti-obama-operatives-...](https://revealnews.org/article/anti-obama-operatives-join-forces/)
... Swift-Boat-style campaign. And now, the two are working together. Floyd Brown, whose most famous effort was the “Willie Horton ad” that damaged Democrat ...
[### Obama foe continues 'swift-boat style' attacks on candidate
Orange County Register
https://www.ocregister.com › 2008/10/09 › obama-foe-...](https://www.ocregister.com/2008/10/09/obama-foe-continues-swift-boat-style-attacks-on-candidate/)
... Floyd Brown, the mastermind behind the Willie Horton ad. When the two went out fundraising, they referred to one of their first attack videos as the “Obama ...
[### The New York Times reports here that professional slimer ...
Seattle Weekly
https://www.seattleweekly.com › news › the-new-york-t...](https://www.seattleweekly.com/news/the-new-york-times-reports-here-that-professional-slimer-for-hire-floyd-brown-is/)
Jun 21, 2008 — The New York Times reports here that professional slimer-for-hire Floyd Brown is ready to dig for dirt--or just invent some--on the ...
[### 'Swift Boat times five' this fall - The President and Jenna dance to ...
Politico
https://www.politico.com › playbook › 2008/05 › swift...](https://www.politico.com/tipsheets/playbook/2008/05/swift-boat-times-five-this-fall-the-president-and-jenna-dance-to-you-are-so-beautiful-001986)
McCain adviser bluntly warns: 'It's going to be Swift Boat times five on both sides ... 'Swift Boat times ... Floyd Brown, who produced the infamous 'Willie ...
[### Floyd brown says he'll stop toilet fishing - BlatherWatch BlatherWatch
https://blatherwatch.blogs.com › talk_radio › 2008/06](https://blatherwatch.blogs.com/talk_radio/2008/06/floyd-brown-wil.html)
Jun 21, 2008 — A Bible verse is taped to a whiteboard in Floyd Brown's office: That is why for Christ's sake I delight in weakness, in insults, ...
===
To the extent LaCivita has achieved any notoriety in his career, it is for his role helping run the Swift Boat campaign that has been credited with sinking Kerry in 2004. Early in the campaign, allegations were bubbling on the right that the Democrat, campaigning as a war hero against post-9/11 George W. Bush, was inflating his record in Vietnam. These same veterans were furious Kerry had denounced the war after returning home, and one named John O’Neill teamed up with Jerome Corsi, who would later inspire Donald Trump on his birther crusade, to write a book called Unfit for Command. But it was LaCivita who turned their fringe allegations into a campaign funded by millions of dollars in shadowy contributions. The operation cut campaign ads with vet testimonials questioning Kerry’s service.
“He just knew how to frame the message and how to deliver it,” says one person involved in the effort. “We could have done cookie-cutter campaign ads, but he knew that wouldn’t have worked. He’s a political animal, and he always wants to be in the fight.”
The Swift Boat campaign stretched the boundaries of what had been considered within bounds of acceptable politics, both by using an outside, dark-money vehicle in a presidential campaign in the pre-super-PAC era, and also for broadcasting what were later revealed to be demonstrably false claims against Kerry.
Still, today most Republicans operatives view the episode as one to be proud of, and it provides a template for how LaCivita will go after Joe Biden and the Democrats: not by attacking what is perceived as Biden’s weaknesses but his strengths. If Biden portrays himself as the person defending American democracy from Trump, then, as LaCivita told the Line Drive podcast, they will argue “it’s Biden that’s really against democracy, right? Biden against democracy — that stands for BAD.”
“You lose elections when you surprise the electorate,” says Hogan Gidley, a Line Drive co-host who was the Trump 2020 campaign’s press secretary. “Everybody knew Clinton was a dirtbag, and so the whole Monica thing didn’t shock anybody. And so the media and the left want you to think that Joe is just Ol’ Steady Hand Joe who keeps everything stable. But then you have all the instability, all the chaos, and the projection onto our party of the things that Democrats are guilty of doing. Chris has a way of reframing the argument so that it takes away their opponent’s strongest argument and takes away something that America believes about a candidate.”
After cutting down John Kerry, LaCivita started to develop a reputation of bringing a kind of devil-may-care attitude to politics. In 2010, during Rand Paul’s run for Senate, GQ published a story about a bizarre tale from Paul’s college days when he and a buddy, both stoned, allegedly forced a fellow female student to worship a made-up god, “Aqua Buddha.” The campaign considered suing GQ, but, according to McKay Coppins’s book, LaCivita laughed it off as “fucking hilarious. I love that.”
===
no lnx
https://www.marketwatch.com/story/creator-of-notorious-ads-that-swift-boated-john-kerrys-2004-presidential-campaign-has-died-at-69-11661387298
First Published: Aug. 24, 2022
By Tim Rostan
The reputed architect of the ‘Swift Boat Veterans’ ad campaign, Republican strategist Rick Reed, has died at the age of 69
‘Swift boating.’
That was the term applied in 2004 to the legendary-in-political-lore series of political ads that sought to portray Democratic presidential nominee John Kerry, famously a decorated Vietnam War veteran who had captained a Patrol Craft Fast (also known as a PCF and, most frequently, a swift boat), as unpatriotic and duplicitous.
The delivery mechanism for that voter-persuasion message was video testimony from scores of Kerry’s fellow Navy veterans from the Vietnam era, who accused Kerry, then a U.S. senator from Massachusetts, of exaggerating his heroism. It later turned out that a not insignificant number of the 200-odd Swift Boat Veterans for Truth who came out against Kerry had little or no firsthand knowledge of him or his service or had partisan or other motivations for denigrating Kerry’s qualifications. (Kerry, notably, had come out against the war upon his release from active duty in 1969, when he launched his first congressional campaign.)
George W. Bush secured re-election over Kerry by a popular-vote margin of 50.7%–48.3% to open a 286–251 gap in the Electoral College, and the ad campaign’s reputed architect, Rick Reed of the political advertising agency Stevens Reed Curcio & Potholm, stood by the political-action-committee-funded ads, based in large part on the book “Unfit for Command,” authored by John O’Neill and the now-well-known conspiracy theorist Jerome Corsi, and the accounts of the naval vets.
Reed died last week in Virginia at the age of 69, the Washington Post and others reported.
U.S. Special Presidential Envoy for Climate John Kerry participates in November 2021 in a plenary session of COP26 climate summit in Glasgow. JEFF J MITCHELL/GETTY IMAGES
Kerry returned to the Senate and went on to serve as President Barack Obama’s second secretary of state and is now President Joe Biden’s special presidential envoy for climate.
Reed later was reported to have worked on campaigns for candidates including Sen. Lindsey Graham; created ads for John McCain’s presidential campaign in 2000; and, after launching his own consulting company, served as a senior media adviser to Donald Trump in 2016.Fox News personality Tucker Carlson, the Washington Post recalled, described Reed as “the smartest political consultant I know.”
===
"new book" ggl
Drudge important in launch/boost, escalator (also CNS Morano, Am Spect]; new media drudge "weblog" key part of escalator (origin of?! possible rival Sciafe Pitssburg paper?} [i wonder what my 1st mention os escalator was]
Bush campaign denied involvment, but if you look at the network deeply entwined.
mod: "Morano is a former journalist withCybercast News Service (CNS, again perhaps a “mirror’ of venerable AP newswire), which is owned by the conservative Media Research Center (a mirror/faux watchdog). CNS and Morano were the first source in May 2004 of the Swift Boat Veterans for Truth claims against John Kerry in the 2004 presidential election (and in January 2006 of similar smears against Vietnam War veteran John Murtha when he opposed the war in Iraq). However, his primary influence has been on climate....
Founder Henry Regnery was an Axis sympathizer and staunch anti-communist (an early member of JBS). His sonAlfred later ranThe American Spectatormagazine,which was key in Clinton attacks (Regnery Books published several hit jobs on Clintons, as well as a Swift Boat attack on Kerry).
... Segretti is said to be a mentor of Karl Rove, and Atwater continued his tactics. John Kerry, who would have taken action on climate change, was “Swift Boated” by J. O’Neil (published by Regnery), who was recruited by the Nixon White House to discredit him for his Viet Nam War protests. O’Neil now works with the David Horowitz Foundation, a media “watchdog” group, presumably along the lines of Accuracy in Media to root out perceived bias. Horowitz has also set up groups of conservative students to check the ideology of academics [cf FOIA] in the classroom () . A number of conservative organizations also provide funding to train college journalists and fund their papers (Scaife, for example). William O’Keefe, as noted previously, (arrested for bugging a Congressional representative’s office) was a graduate of such an organization, as well as Blackwell’s Leadership Institute (see Section 2.6.5 ACORN/video).
...
Weblogs are another important end-run around traditional media filters, and can quickly bootstrap marginal misinformation into the mainstream. The Drudge Reportgets 6.5 million visits/day. It began as an online supplement to a gossip newsletter and migrated into the political sphere when it broke the story that Jack Kemp would be the running mate for Dole in 1996, then the Clinton intern scandal in 1998 (he was friends with some of the Federalist Society “elves” promulgating the scandal). The Drudge Report was also along with American Spectator an important launching point for Swift Boat disinformation.
The Drudge Report “is part of the "Bush/Cheney right-wing noise machine…Allowing those elements to dominate our political debates and drive media coverage guarantees a decrepit, rotted, and deeply corrupt country.. ... Their endless lynch mob crusades supplant rational and substantive political debate" (Greenwald quoted on Sourcewatch).
Furthermore, "According to Mark Halperin, ‘Drudge's coverage affects the media's political coverage,’ effectively steering the media's political coverage towards what Halperin calls ‘the most salacious aspects of American politics’”(:{Cillizza}:). Although it has lost some of its influence, the Drudge Report continues to have an effect through its imitators, the aforementioned Scaife-funded Newsmax, which bills itself as conservative news source widely read, including by influential people such as Gingrich, as well as the blog by his former associate Andrew Breitbart, key in promoting the video scams by William O’Keefe (4.3.5) [end mod]
===
B2 called Rove “architect on win over Kerry Swift Boat? Is attack the strength MO?).
Swift Boat
Aug 20 2004 Kerry campaign filed FEC complaint SBVT and twenty associated groups had connections to Bush campaign, NYT backed. 12/06 dismissed, though one count of failing to register and disclose, 300K$ fine. SBVT criticized Kerry for not releasing his war records, though they were posted on his website, and they refused to disclose their own.
:{
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The major/ funder $4.5 million , of the Swift Boat smear was real estate magnateBob Perry, biggest Texas donor to GOP. He is a friend of both Rove and John O'Neill, recruited by the Nixon administration (Colson) to trash Kerry and the Winter Soldier testimony. O'Neill is a major figure in Swift Boat, and derigeur Regnery author (oil and gas lawyer in firm with Spaeth's husband; clerked for Rehnquist,Director of David Horowitz Center). His co-author Jerome Corsiafter a failed investment scheme became an ideological entrepreneur, writing hit jobs on Kerry then Obama, published by Matalin, who rallied the echo chamber to defense when a host of factual errors were quickly uncovered, and she got conservative think tanks and other friendly organizations to bulk order enough to propel it to the top of the NYT bestseller list. (Most of the swift boat funders were associated with Rove and GOP (Harold Simmons, T. Boone Pickens, Linder and McClendon). Merrie Spaeth (married to Tex Lazar) consulted on communications Regan, Starr Clinton impeachment, Republicans for Clean Air (527 went after McCain in primary fight).So it's clear that Bush campaign claims that they had no connections to Swift Boat smear are dubious if not laughable.
Rove involved in firing Attorney Generals [Iglesias for NOT going after ACORN?] ; in the investigation, it was discovered that many emails had been deleted, and that it was SOP for WH staffers and admin officials to use their RNC accounts to avoid disclosure.
__?Resigned Aug 2007 for the sake of my family
July 2008 Contempt of Congressional
May 2009 testified to House Jud Comm, claimed peripheral role in firings, the Aug NYT had emails that prove lie.
:{
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bak 919
mma tag:
https://mediamatters.org/stories-and-interests/swift-boat-veterans-truth
==
919 AN art'l on masculinity dings reporting for duty as dem version [ and hypocritical since Winter Soldier, medals?], but as i recall, part of a larger strategy to take back flg/patriotism as birthright of rt; plus war hero vs b43 air nat guard draft dodger b/c of rich daddy.
==
ad:
Any Questions? (2004)
As Dubya learned from his old man, sling enough mud and some of it will stick. Any Questions? wasn’t an official ad, but was tacitly endorsed by Bush and adopted the style of a stirring war homily (think Band of Brothers: the Documentary) as a group of Vietnam vets smeared John Kerry’s war record. It later transpired that none of them had served alongside him, and Bush was of course a draft dodger, but the damage was done.
==
srcwtch
Swift Boat Veterans for Truth (SBVT) "registered their group under Section 527 of the U.S. tax code and went public at a news conference held in the National Press Club in Washington, D.C. on May 4, 2004." [1]
The group, rebranded as Swift Vets and POWs for Truth, is an advocacy organization formed in 2004 by opponents of John Kerry's U.S. presidential campaign. (The group's name refers to the class of boat on which Kerry and some of the organization's members served in the Vietnam War.)
Primary projects have been: their www.swiftvets.com website, the book Unfit for Command: Swift Boat Veterans Speak Out Against John Kerry (released by the conservative **Regnery**Publishing), and a series of television advertisements challenging John Kerry's military record and activism against the Vietnam War.
The group's credibility has been challenged due to misleading, false or inconsistent statements. [2][3] A detailed review of the claims in their book is also available. [4]
The SBVT propaganda smear campaign was financed by Sam Fox, a billionaire and hardline rightwinger.[5] The fact that Fox financed this project was revealed during his Senate confirmation hearings to becomeUS ambassador to Belgium. Although the Senate blocked his confirmation pointing out Fox's pernicious activities, George Bush appointed Fox over the authority of the Senate during a "Senate recess".
Furthermore, the PR company responsible for the SBVT (and whose bill Fox paid) was Arthur J. Finkelstein and Associates run by Arthur J. Finkelstein, the "dirty-tricks guy for the Republicans". [6] Finkelstein is best know for his black-propaganda campaigns that are primarily character assassinations or smearing -- as the SBVT campaign demonstrates.
- 1 Post-election Plans
- 2 Mission
- 3 Navy Inspector General Report on Medals
- 4 History
- 5 Affidavits as 'evidence'
- 6 SBVT television advertisements
- 7 Racist comments by Jerry Corsi of SBVT
- 8 SBVT, Susan Arceneaux, and The Majority Leader's Fund
- 9 Chris LaCivita, media strategy adviser to SBVT
- 10 Websites
- 11 Extension Articles
- 12 Contact Information
- 13 Related SourceWatch Resources
- 14 External links
Post-election Plans
In late November 2004, The Hill reported that SBVT "is pondering its next step." One possibility, said former SBVT consultant Chris LaCivita, is that "the Swiftvets will become a full-time public-relations outfit for veterans." LaCivita, a former Marine who served in the first Gulf War, said "many conservatives are disgusted with what they see as a left-wing caricature of U.S. soldiers in Vietnam as 'crazed hippies that went around mowing people down.'" Veterans "endure a lot more, and they do a lot of good things people back home never hear about," said LaCivita. [7]
SBVT founder Roy Hoffmann told The Hill, "We have definitely an interest in continuing our work on the discharge and activities in regard to the POWs. ... At this point, we really haven't made any firm decisions. We feel that our primary mission has been accomplished." But Hoffman guessed that SBVT "members would probably be interested in fighting a future Kerry bid for the White House." [8]
Mission
click here.">Yp7P5b_boz4
The group is devoted to calling Kerry's war record into question, particularly with regard to the length of his tour of duty and the nature of the injuries for which he received three Purple Hearts, a Bronze Star and a Silver Star. It has also questioned claims by Kerry that he was sent on an illegal mission to Cambodia in December of 1968.
"Our mission is to provide solid factual information relating to Mr. Kerry's abbreviated tour of duty as a member of Coastal Division 14 and Coastal Division 11. Since many who are involved with Swiftvets.com themselves had swift boat duty and knew John Kerry personally, they are in a unique position to provide such information," their website previously stated. [9]
It also takes issue with Kerry's remarks 30 years ago that "war crimes" were taking place throughout the military conflicts in and about Vietnam "on a day-to-day basis with the full awareness of officers at all levels of command." [10][11] In a May 2004 letter to Kerry, the SBVT wrote "It is our collective judgment that, upon your return from Vietnam, you grossly and knowingly distorted the conduct of the American soldiers, marines, sailors and airmen of that war (including a betrayal of many of us, without regard for the danger your actions caused us.) Further, we believe that you have withheld and/or distorted material facts as to your own conduct in this war."
In his testimony before Congress, Kerry recounted statements by Vietnam Veterans at the Winter Soldier hearings of incidents by some troops in what were alleged to be war crimes. [12] These comments were later played back, out of context, in the SBVT ads. [13] [14]
Navy Inspector General Report on Medals
In September 2004, Vice Admiral Ronald A. Route, the Navy inspector general, completed a review of Kerry's combat medals, initiated at the request of **Judicial Watch**. In a memo to the Secretary of the NavyGordon R. England, Route stated [15]
"Our examination found that existing documentation regarding the Silver Star, Bronze Star and Purple Heart medals indicates the awards approval process was properly followed. In particular, the senior officers who awarded the medals were properly delegated authority to do so. In addition, we found that they correctly followed the procedures in place at the time for approving these awards."Conducting any additional review regarding events that took place over 30 years ago would not be productive. The passage of time would make reconstruction of the facts and circumstances unreliable, and would not allow the information gathered to be considered in the context of the time in which the events took place."Our review also considered the fact that Senator Kerry's post-active duty activities were public and that military and civilian officials were aware of his actions at the time. For these reasons, I have determined that Senator Kerry's awards were properly approved and will take no further action in this matter."
History
The SBVT criticisms against Kerry are not the first time that SBVT leader John E. O'Neill has campaigned against him. [16] Writing in The New Yorker, Joe Klein reported that, in 1971, Richard Nixon's chief counsel Charles Colson formed the Vietnam Veterans for a Just Peace, featuring O'Neill, to publicly criticize Kerry.
Klein recounted a conversation with Colson years after the war in which Colson said of Kerry: "He was a thorn in our flesh. He was very articulate, a credible leader of the opposition. He forced us to create a counterfoil. We found a vet named John O'Neill and formed a group called Vietnam Veterans for a Just Peace. We had O'Neill meet the President, and we did everything we could do to boost his group."
The New York Times reported that the initial SBVT meeting comprised 10 veterans gathering in the Dallas office of Merrie Spaeth of Spaeth Communications, Inc. Spaeth is the widow of Tex Lezar, "eternal Kerry antagonist and Dallas attorney" John E. O'Neill's law partner. [17]
The website for SBVT was registered on April 14, 2004, under the name of Lewis Waterman, the information technology manager for Gannon International, a St. Louis company that has diversified interests, including in Vietnam. Joe Conason wrote in Salon that "although Waterman wouldn't discuss why he had set up the Web site, he didn't deny that his boss, Gannon president and CEO William Franke, had asked him to do so." [18]
"The information about my client is confidential," Waterman told Conason. He acknowledged knowing, however, that his boss Franke is a Navy veteran who served in Vietnam on swift boats.Gannon vice president Stephen D. Hayes, who oversees the company's office in Alexandria, Va., is likewise a swift boat veteran who first met Franke when they served together in the Mekong Delta.
On May 4, 2004, the Swift Boat Veterans for Truth went public at a news conference organized by Merrie Spaeth at the National Press Club.
Spaeth defended her role, insisting that she had no connection with the Bush re-election campaign. "Being director of media relations with Reagan is a long way from being part of the Bush team. Anyone who understands politics knows that. The Kerry people have jumped all over me as a Bush operative. I haven't been involved in this [Bush/Cheney] campaign, and I wasn't involved in 2000. The Swifties are asking people to be open-minded and look at the facts," Spaeth told the Dallas Observer's John Gonzalez.
Spaeth told the NYT that she had only visited the White House once during the presidency of George W. Bush. Initially she said she had been there as a guest of Kenneth Starr, who had been her client. She later confirmed doing public speaking training work in 2003 for Bush's chief economic adviser, Stephen Friedman. When asked if she had worked with other White House officials, Spaeth said "The answer is 'no' unless you refresh my memory." [19]
Prompted by her comments, the Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington filed a Freedom of Information request for the White House information on contacts with Spaeth and a number of others associated with the SBVT.[20]
In late August 2004, Bloomberg reported that Benjamin Ginsberg, a Patton Boggs attorney, had provided legal advice to SBVT. Ginsberg had been an attorney for the Bush campaign during the Florida recount and was counsel for the Bush 2004 re-election campaign. A spokeswoman for SBVT, Jennifer Webster, said "it was an effort to make sure we were doing everything legal, that's why you hire a lawyer." Webster said Ginsberg was sought out because he had worked on election law and had worked with the Republican National Committee. [21]
Following the public revelations that he worked for both the Bush campaign and SBVT, Ginsberg resigned. In his resignation letter to Bush he wrote "I have decided to resign as national counsel to your campaign to ensure that the giving of legal advice to decorated military veterans, which was entirely within the boundaries of the law, doesn't distract from the real issues upon which you and the country should be focusing."[22][23]
The SBVT book Unfit for Command, published by Regnery Publishing has sold well with strong support from conservative cable programs. Robert Novak, who has a syndicated column with Creators Syndicate and appears on CNN's Crossfire program, has touted the book but without revealing that his son, Alex Novak, is head of marketing for Regnery. Robert Novak dismissed concern about the failure to disclose the link, telling the New York Times "I don't think it's relevant." [24]
Affidavits as 'evidence'
According to John Gonzalez, the newly formed group hired former-FBI-agent-turned-private-investigator Tom Rupprath, "to locate swift boat vets and to dig up whatever he could regarding Kerry's service record."[25]
John O'Neill told the New York Times that the private investigator was hired as a "neutral way of actually questioning people involved in these incidents." [26]
Central to the SBVT media campaign has been a reliance on sworn affidavits to be provided as 'evidence' to journalists. However, Patrick Runyon, who provided a statement about the mission for which Kerry was awarded his first Purple Heart, found the interest in his views to be more partisan than neutral. When his statement was returned for his signature, he told the New York Times, references to being fired on had been removed. "It made it sound like I didn't believe we got any returned fire ... He made it sound like it was a normal operation. It was the scariest night of my life," he said. [27]
Commander George Elliott--who praised Kerry's conduct during the Vietnam War--provided an affidavit criticizing Kerry for being awarded a Silver Star.
However, what appeared at first as a coup for them appeared to backfire when, on August 5, 2004, a Boston Globe article reported that Elliott had recanted his criticism of Kerry. The article quoted Elliott as saying, "It was a terrible mistake probably for me to sign the affidavit with those words. I'm the one in trouble here." The affidavit states that the incident for which Kerry received the medal was actually shooting "a wounded, fleeing Viet Cong in the back." Elliott said he felt "time pressure" to sign the affidavit "That's no excuse," Elliott said, "I knew it was wrong. ... In a hurry I signed it and faxed it back. That was a mistake." [28]
In the same article Elliott maintained that, "based on the affidavits of the veterans on other boats," Kerry's being awarded the Bronze Star and third Purple Heart might be questionable. He said: "I simply have no reason for these guys [signing the other affidavits] to be lying, and if they are lying in concert, it is one hell of a conspiracy. So, on the basis of all of the information that has come out, I have chosen to believe the other men. I absolutely do not know first hand."
On August 6, 2004, Elliott claimed he had been misquoted in the Boston Globe article, and reaffirmed his original statement with another affidavit. However, since issuing the second affidavit Elliot has refused to speak to reporters. [29]
In an affidavit released in July 2004, Larry Thurlow claimed that Kerry's statements that the five boats on that patrol came under small arms fire on March 13, 1969 was "totally fabricated." [30][31]
The Washington Post reported August 19, 2004, that the military records of Larry Thurlow, obtained under the Freedom of Information Act, contain several references to "enemy small arms and automatic weapons fire" directed at "all units" of the five-boat flotilla. Both Kerry and Thurlow were awarded Bronze Stars for their actions on that day. According to the Washington Post, Thurlow's citation praises him for providing assistance to a damaged swift boat "despite enemy bullets flying about him."
But James Rassmann, who Kerry pulled back into the boat after he was knocked overboard following an explosion, "said he has never had any question that Kerry deserved the Purple Heart." [32] In response to the controversy fueled by the SBVT campaign, the Kerry campaign released an advertisement featuring Rassmann, who described himself as a Republican.
The success of the SBVT campaign in gaining profile also prompted reluctant participants in the debate to come forward. William B. Rood was an officer serving in another swift boat on the day Kerry's actions led to him being awarded his Silver Star. Rood, now the editor of the Chicago Tribune, wrote a 1600-word account of the events that day.
"The critics have taken pains to say they're not trying to cast doubts on the merit of what others did, but their version of events has splashed doubt on all of us. It's gotten harder and harder for those of us who were there to listen to accounts we know to be untrue, especially when they come from people who were not there," Rood wrote. [33]
"But I know that what some people are saying now is wrong. While they mean to hurt Kerry, what they're saying impugns others who are not in the public eye," he wrote.
SBVT television advertisements
In August 2004, SBVT aired its first television advertisement, accusing Kerry of lying about his war record, in three swing states. [34]
One of the SBVT told the New York Times that it would be spending $500,000 on the advertisement but declined to comment on how long it would remain on the air. "A Kerry aide said the buy was far smaller, $156,000 in seven smallish markets like Green Bay, Wis., and Toledo, Ohio, suggesting it was a 'vanity buy' intended to attract news coverage," the Times reported.
The SBVT television advertisements were produced by theAlexandria, Virginia-based Stevens Reed Curcio & Potholm (SRCP). SRCP worked for Senator John McCain in 2000 and George H.W. Bush in 1988. [35]
If the aim was to gain more free airtime coverage than paid advertising time, the strategy was successful. While the SBVT ad and official statements by the group correctly claim only that the speakers "served with" Kerry, not that they were on the same boat, the distinction was lost on others. Only one of the members of SWVT was actually a crewmate of Kerry.
The August 4, 2004, edition of Fox News Channel's Hannity & Colmes dedicated coverage and airtime to the SBVT campaign, referring to the group as Kerry's "crewmates." [36]
The second of their advertisements--Sellout--featured comments, taken out of context, from John Kerry's 1971 Senate Testimony interspliced with comments from other veterans. The advertisement opened with a brief excerpt featuring Kerry stating "soldiers had personally raped, cut off ears, cut off heads ..." and then cuts to veteran Joe Ponder: "The accusations made against the veterans who served in Vietnam was just devastating."
The advertisement omitted the beginning of Kerry's sentence, which referred to what had been said by veterans themselves at a meeting in Detroit as part of the Winter Soldier Investigation. The transcript of Kerry's evidence included him telling the committee that at the Detroit meeting "many very highly decorated veterans testified to war crimes committed in Southeast Asia" and relived the "absolute horror of what this country, in a sense, made them do."
"They told the stories at times they had personally raped, cut off ears, cut off heads, taped wires from portable telephones to human genitals and turned up the power, cut off limbs, blown up bodies, randomly shot at civilians, razed villages in fashion reminiscent of Genghis Khan, shot cattle and dogs for fun, poisoned food stocks, and generally ravaged the countryside of South Vietnam in addition to the normal ravage of war, and the normal and very particular ravaging which is done by the applied bombing power of this country," Kerry said. [37][38]
On its website, the SBVT sidesteps addressing what were specific statements of veterans, instead portraying Kerry's comments as being against all Veterans."For more than thirty years, most Vietnam veterans kept silent as we were maligned as misfits, addicts, and baby killers. Now that a key creator of that poisonous image is seeking the Presidency we have resolved to end our silence." [39]
As the coverage of the SBVT claims became more widespread, Kerry's campaign was forced to respond. Speaking at a firefighters convention in Boston, Kerry criticized George W. Bush for not publicly distancing himself from the campaign. "The fact that the President won't denounce what they're up to tells you everything that you need to know--he wants them to do his dirty work ... The president keeps telling people he would never question my service to our country. Instead, he watches as a Republican-funded attack group does just that," Kerry said. [40]
Defenders of SBVT's campaign have argued that their activities are similar to those of a number of 527 committees, like MoveOn.org, which campaigned against Bush.
Racist comments by Jerry Corsi of SBVT
The claim to objectivity by the Unfit for Command book also appeared to be undermined by the revelation that Jerome Corsi (also known as Jerry Corsi), listed as co-author (O'Neill claims Corsi acted as "simply an editor"), regularly posted comments to a conservative website portraying Muslims and Catholics as pedophiles. The Associated Press reported that in one posting to freerepublic.com, he wrote: "Islam is a peaceful religion--just as long as the women are beaten, the boys buggered and the infidels are killed."
Free Republic is one of the conservative websites where Corsi's racist contributions were posted. Scott Swett, webmaster of WinterSoldier.com and Free Republic's Director, is also the webmaster for the Swift Boat Veterans website--further indication that the group is neither unbiased nor nonpartisan.
In another message Corsi wrote: "So this is what the last days of the Catholic Church are going to look like. Buggering boys undermines the moral base and the lawyers rip the gold off the Vatican altars. We may get one more Pope, when this senile one dies, but that's probably about it." Asked about his comments, Corsi said they were meant as a joke and he apologized. [41]
However, an examination of the full list of Jerome Corsi's Free Republic postings reveals that Corsi has made hundreds of them, many of which are racist. A February 2003 posting by Corsi asked "Who are the Frogs going to cry to when the ragheads destroy the Eiffel Tower?" [42]. And in March 2004, Corsi even made the wild claim that "JaneFondaKerry is being heavily funded by Iranians--check out how [Al] Gore was funded by the Chinese in 2000." [43]
SBVT, Susan Arceneaux, and The Majority Leader's Fund
Swift Boat Veterans for Truth appears to have sought professional help with Federal Election Commission compliance. In May 2004, it paid $7500 to Political Compliance Services Inc., a consulting company in Fairfax, VA. [44] Political Compliance Services describes itself as "an accounting services vendor specializing in FEC regulations. Our comprehensive approach to your individual accounting needs will deliver you from the headaches and legal ramifications of FEC non-compliance." [45]
However, Political Compliance Services itself appears to have strong Republican ties. All of its known clients are conservative. [46] Its administrative contact Susan Arceneaux is a Republican stalwart involved with several right-wing organizations. She is treasurer of The Majority Leader's Fund [47], a listed contact for FreedomWorks [48], and was the custodian of records for David Horowitz's defunct 527,**PoliticalWar.com** Inc. [49][50]
On August 24, 2004, the extent of Arceneaux's involvement with SBVT became clear. According to The New York Times, SBVT had admitted the previous day that Arceneaux "helped set it up and works for it." TheTimes had discovered that Arceneaux "is given as the contact person on the post office box that Swift Boat Veterans for Truth lists as its address." The article also pointed out that The Majority Leader's Fund "receives significant financing from Bob Perry," the major donor to SBVT. [51][52]
Chris LaCivita, media strategy adviser to SBVT
On August 25, 2004, the New York Times reported that Chris LaCivita was working for Swift Boat Veterans for Truth as an adviser on media strategy. LaCivita works for the DCI Group, a Republican lobbying firm. He is also involved in Progress for America, a conservative 'grassroots' organization which was set up by Tony Feather, who is a close ally of **Karl Rove**.
According to the article [53] , "Mr. LaCivita said yesterday that he worked as a private contractor for DCI and Swift Boat Veterans for Truth and that there was no coordination between the firm and the group. 'Obviously, I don't work for the Bush campaign,' he said. Mr. LaCivita described his role as providing advice on the news media and placing advertisements. Asked to describe how close his involvement was or how Mr. Ginsberg was involved, Mr. LaCivita referred calls to a spokesman for Swift Boat Veterans, which declined to comment."
A Richmond Times-Dispatch article shed further light on LaCivita and SBVT. According to the article, LaCivita said: "I'm a Republican. What are they going to do, go to a Democrat? ... They came to me because I'm a combat veteran myself and I could identify with them ... I provided guidance and counsel in the paid media campaign." [54] The article also said that asked whether he wrote the ad himself, LaCivita said the "veterans wrote the ad."
The article also explains how SBVT was put in contact with LaCivita. "Retired Rear Adm. Roy Francis Hoffmann, chairman of the swift-boat group and a virtual neighbor of LaCivita in Chesterfield County ... said CRC (Creative Response Concepts), a public-relations firm in Arlington, put the group in touch with LaCivita. CRC is involved in a number of conservative causes." [55]
Websites
**The Donatelli Group**, which produced the RNC website [56], on July 30, 2004, registered the SWIFTBOATVETSFORTRUTH.ORG website with Connell Donatelli Inc. (a.k.a. The Donatelli Group) as registrant. Connell Donatelli Inc. also registered the SWIFTBOATVETSFORTRUTH.COM website on July 30, 2004, with CD, Inc. as both the website's administrator and tech organization.
The SWIFTVETS.COM website ("SwiftVets.com | The Real Story on John Kerry's Military Service") was registered with the registrant Domains by Proxy, Inc., registered through GoDaddy.com, Inc. (http://www.godaddy.com). Data dates from November 21, 2005.
Extension Articles
Due to the length of this article, several sections of this page have been moved to separate pages. These are:
- Complaint against SBVT filed with the FEC
- SBVT Membership
- SBVT Funding
- SBVT Researchers
- Personal Expressions
- Swift Boat Veterans for Kerry (Vets who served with Lt. John F. Kerry, and publicly supported him)
Contact Information
PO Box 26184
Alexandria, VA 22313
Email: Latch AT swiftvets.net
Website: http://www.swiftvets.com
Related SourceWatch Resources
- 527 committee
- Bush National Guard Veterans for Truth
- Charles Wyly and Sam Wyly
- Chris LaCivita
- Creative Response Concepts
- DCI Group
- front groups
- George W. Bush's military service
- Marc **Morano**
- Merrie Spaeth
- Political Compliance Services Inc.
- Progress for America
- Susan Arceneaux
- Swift Boat Veterans for Truth Republican Connection
- Swiftboating John Murtha
- Texans for Truth
- USANext
- Vietnam Vets for the Truth
- Arthur J. Finkelstein
- Sam Fox
External links
Records & Data
- John F. Kerry's Official Navy Records.
- Schema-root.org: Swift Boat Veterans For Truth current and archived news feeds.
- John Kerry's Vietnam medals. Links to all the key documentation, including U.S. Navy material not on the official Kerry site and statements by veterans who where really there and who support Kerry.
- There are other veterans groups opposing Kerry too such as Vietnam Veterans Against John Kerry and Vietnam Special Forces Against Kerry.
- Swift Boat Veterans For Truth's IRS Report of Contributions and Expenditures for April 23-June 30, 2004 (PDF).
- **^** Jennifer Siegel, Controversial Envoy to Belgium Vows More Campaign Giving, Forward, 13 April 2007.
- **^** Jeff Halper, Dirty Politics, KPFA, 16 January 2006, relevant section starts at the 33:35m mark. ("They use the most sophisticated American PR firms, specially a guy called Finkelstein that you have never heard of in the States, but he is the dirty tricks guy for the Republicans. When Karl Rove and the Republicans when they go through all the campaign and you start getting negative advertising, the dirty tricks, and the Swift Boats, the dirty-dirty stuff, that is Finkelstein.")
Articles & Commentary
- See extensive list of hotlinked articles.
---
Banana Republicans, the latest book by Sheldon Rampton and John Stauber, lays bare how the “right-wing conspiracy,” as represented by the national GOP and its functionaries in the media, think tanks and lobbying establishment, is undermining dissent and squelching pluralistic politics in America. An excerpt is available. It can be ordered online. All royalties from book sales go to the Center for Media and Democracy, which publishes SourceWatch.
---
Notes: This article was created May 4, 2004. Portions of this article were taken from an article about Swift Boat Veterans in the Wikipedia, dating from July 17, 2004.
==
http://www.nndb.com/org/316/000058142/
| Roger G. Ackerman | Business | c. 1938 | CEO of Corning, 1996-2000 | |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Norman P. Blake, Jr. | Business | c. 1942 | CEO of USF&G Corporation, 1990-97 | |
| Stephen Brauer | Business | 1945 | US Ambassador to Belgium, 2001-03 | |
| Stephen G. Butler | Business | c. 1948 | CEO of KPMG, 1996-2002 | |
| Louis C. Camilleri | Business | 1955 | CEO of Altria | |
| John T. Chain | Military | 11-Dec-1934 | C-in-C, Strategic Air Command, 1986-91 | |
| Jerome Corsi | Activist | 31-Aug-1946 | Co-Author, Unfit for Command | |
| Harlan Crow | Business | 1950 | Chairman and CEO, Crow Holdings | |
| Timothy A. Crown | Business | c. 1964 | Chairman of Insight Enterprises | |
| Bud Day | Activist | 24-Feb-1925 | Former POW | |
| Todd S. Farha | Business | 1968 | President and CEO of WellCare Health Plans | |
| Sam Fox | Business | 9-May-1929 | US Ambassador to Belgium | |
| Robert M. Furek | Business | c. 1942 | Former CEO of Heublein | |
| Ed Goeas | Business | 31-Aug-1952 | Pollster | |
| Tim Griffin | Politician | 21-Aug-1968 | Congressman, Arkansas 2nd | |
| John Huarte | Football | 6-Apr-1944 | Winner, 1964 Heisman Trophy | |
| Stan E. Hubbard | Business | c. 1961 | Hubbard Broadcasting Inc. | |
| L. Daniel Jorndt | Business | c. 1941 | CEO of Walgreens, 1998-2002 | |
| Chris LaCivita | Government | c. 1967 | Crosslink Strategy Group | |
| Barrett Moore | Business | ? | Triple Canopy founder | |
| Michael E. Murphy | Government | 1962 | Founding partner, D.C. Navigators | |
| John E. O'Neill | Activist | 19-Feb-1946 | Longtime John Kerry antagonist | |
| Steve Pearce | Politician | 24-Aug-1947 | Congressman, New Mexico 2nd | |
| Bob Perry | Business | 30-Oct-1932 | Perry Homes, Republican financier | |
| Randall Brooks Phillips | Journalist | 16-Feb-1967 | Spectrum Media | |
| Thomas L. Phillips | Publisher | 25-Dec-1941 | Phillips Publishing International | |
| T. Boone Pickens | Business | 22-May-1928 | Texas oilman, founded Mesa Petroleum | |
| Robert E. Rector | Activist | ? | Heritage Foundation | |
| Thomas V. Reifenheiser | Business | c. 1936 | Managing Director, Chase Securities | |
| Louis Rossetto | Publisher | 1949 | Wired co-founder | |
| Joseph M. Scaminace | Business | c. 1953 | CEO of OM Group | |
| Charles R. Shoemate | Business | c. 1940 | CEO of Best Foods, 1990-2000 | |
| Harold C**. Simmons** | Business | 1931 | Drugstore billionaire | |
| Paul E. Singer | Business | 1944 | Billionaire, vulture capitalist | |
| Merrie Spaeth | Business | 23-Aug-1948 | PR guru for Reagan, Swift Boat Vets | |
| Ben**Stein** | Game Show Host | 25-Nov-1944 | Host of Win Ben Stein's Money | |
| John M. Templeton, Jr. | Relative | 19-Feb-1940 | Conservative philanthropist | |
| Larry Thurlow | Activist | ? | Vocal John Kerry detractor | |
| Bruce W. Wilkinson | Business | c. 1944 | CEO of McDermott International | |
| Sam Wyly | Business | 1934 | Early computer entrepreneur | |
| Ken Zangara | Business | c. 1952 | Albuquerque car dealer |
===
Stephen G. Butler Born: c. 1948 Birthplace: Kansas City, MO Gender: Male Race or Ethnicity: White Occupation: Business Party Affiliation: Republican Nationality: United States Executive summary: CEO of KPMG, 1996-2002 University: BA Business, University of Missouri (1969) KPMG CEO (1996-2002) KPMG (1969-1996) Member of the Board of ConAgra (2003-) Member of the Board of Cooper Industries (2002-) Member of the Board of Ford Motors (2004-) Member of the Board of KPMG (as Chairman, 1999-2002) American Institute of Certified Public Accountants National Republican Congressional Committee United Way of the Greater Tri-State Area US Chamber of Commerce Board of Directors (1999-2001) US Council for International Business | Louis C. Camilleri Born: 1955 Birthplace: Alexandria, Egypt Gender: Male Race or Ethnicity: White Sexual orientation: Straight Occupation: Business Party Affiliation: Republican Nationality: United States Executive summary: CEO of Altria Wife: Marjolyn (div., three children) University: BS Economics and Business Administration, Lausanne University (1976) :{ Altria CEO (2002-) Altria Senior VP and CFO (1996-2002) Philip Morris President and CEO Kraft Foods International (1995-96)}: Philip Morris VP Corporate Business Strategy, PMI (1995) Philip Morris Senior VP, European Union Region, PMI (1993-95) Philip Morris VP Central & Eastern Europe, PMI (1990-93) Philip Morris VP EEMA Region, PMI (1986-90) Philip Morris (1978-86) WR Grace & Co. Business Analyst, Lausanne (-1978) Member of the Board of Altria (as Chairman, 2002-) Member of the Board of Kraft Foods (as Chairman, 2002-07) Member of the Board of New York Stock Exchange Member of the Board of SABMiller Every Republican is Crucial PAC Friends of Giuliani Exploratory Committee |
==
Stephen F. Brauer
Born: 1945
Birthplace: St. Louis, MO
Gender: Male
Race or Ethnicity: White
Sexual orientation: Straight
Occupation: Business, Diplomat
Party Affiliation: Republican
Nationality: United States
Executive summary: US Ambassador to Belgium, 2001-03
Military service: US Army Corps of Engineers (1st Lt, Vietnam, 1968-70)
Wife: Camilla Thompson Brauer
University: BA Economics, Westminster College Missouri (1967)
Administrator: Trustee, Washington University in St. Louis (1991-)
Hunter Engineering CEO (1980-)
Hunter Engineering COO (1978-80)
Hunter Engineering (1971-)
US Ambassador to Belgium 2001-03
Member of the Board of Ameren (2006-)
Member of the Board of Hunter Engineering (as Chairman)
Bank of America Private Client Board
Americans for Truth in Politics
Council of American Ambassadors
National Republican Congressional Committee
Progress for America Voter Fund
==
attempt on obama:http://www.thenation.com/blog/169420/new-swiftboat-group-hits-obama-leaks-will-media-play-along#
New 'Swiftboat' Group Hits Obama on Leaks—Will the Media Play Along?
Greg Mitchell on August 16, 2012 - 2:16 PM ET
It’s a word that’s entered the political language—much like attaching “-gate” to the end of every scandal, real or faux. It’s “swiftboating” or “to swiftboat” or “he got swiftboated.” Of course, this goes back to the successful effort by a well-funded, allegedly “nonpartisan” group to destroy John Kerrey and his stellar military record—one of his chief attributes—in his race for president in 2004.
In a ludicrous and imprecise use of the term recently, the GOP claimed the Democrats were “swiftboating” Mitt Romney by bringing up so many questions about his years with Bain and his refusal to release tax returns. One difference, of course, is that most of those claims had a factual basis. But there will no doubt be a lot of more comparable (to 2004) “swiftboating” coming up in the next two months or so.
The media did not strongly combat the anti-Kerry lies in 2004 so it’s uncertain what will transpire this year. Fact-check sites are now numerous but they often take one shot at a pack of lies, get attention and praise, and let it disappear, even as the lies continue.
A major 2012 Swift Boat example emerged just yesterday.
A new group of ex–military and security veterans—allegedly “non-partisan” but actually made up mainly of GOPers and Tea Partiers—has launched a fresh attack and sitevs. Obama, claiming he and his cronies leaked info on the Osama bin Laden raid for political gain. Of course, this brings these critics into the race for political gain.
“Chad Kolton, who was spokesman for the director of national intelligence in the Bush administration and now represents the Opsec group,” the New York Times reported yesterday, “said that because the it was classified as a 501(c)(4) educational group under the tax laws, it was not required to identify its donors. He said the group had raised nearly $1 million since June and intended to run television and Internet ads, as well as host showings of ‘Dishonorable Disclosures’ in swing states.”
Here’s that over-the-top, clearly partisan, twenty-two-minute video just released Wednesday. It already has had 242,000 views on YouTube:
Thankfully, some in the media have already critiqued it, and the new group. “It’s a dishonest hatchet job that’ll make you long for a shower, especially since the ‘stars’ of the video present themselves as concerned citizens with no partisan motivations,” Juliet Lapidos charges in an opinion piece just posted on the Timessite.
Reuters swiftly covered the Obama camp’s response to the ad: “The Republicans are resorting to ‘Swift Boat’ tactics because when it comes to foreign policy and national security, Mitt Romney has offered nothing but reckless rhetoric.”
And Reuters took aim at Opsec’s nonpartisan claim: “The group’s president, Scott Taylor, is a former Navy SEAL who in 2010 ran unsuccessfully for the Republican nomination for a congressional seat in Virginia. A spokesman for the group, Chad Kolton, served in the Bush administration as a spokesman for the Director of National Intelligence.A former CIA officer who appears in the OPSEC video, Fred Rustmann, has given interviews to conservative news outlets including the Newsmax website and Fox News.” The Los Angeles Times also noted the backgrounds of the attackers.
Here’s more from the Lapidos’ critique at the Times: “Anyone who watched Mr. Obama’s late-night address in which he announced bin Laden’s death will remember that he praised the ‘tireless and heroic work of our military and our counterterrorism professionals’ and the ‘years of painstaking work by our intelligence community.’ The Opsec video includes a clip of that address, but omits the ‘heroic work’ and ‘painstaking work’ lines so that it seems as though Mr. Obama gave himself undue credit.
“Cue Dave Lamorte, a retired C.I.A. officer, who says: ‘The administration didn’t capture, or kill or eliminate bin Laden or anybody else. There’s a whole lot of folks in the intelligence and the military community who have been working on this for a very long time.’ Then Ben Smith, a former Navy SEAL, chimes in with his best Don LaFontaine impression: ‘Mr. President, you did not kill Osama bin Laden. America did.’ ”
---
LAT: Dilanian
...They are members of a new nonprofit group called Special Operations OPSEC Education Fund. Known as OPSEC, military shorthand for operational security, the group says it has raised about $1 million for TV ads and a short film called “Dishonorable Disclosures,” which criticizes the Obama administration for alleged national security leaks.
The organizers say they don’t intend to release a list of their donors or their members. Neither is required by law.
“It’s time for President Obama and other administration officials to stop jeopardizing national security operations for political gain,” said Fred Rustmann, an OPSEC member, who worked at the CIA for 24 years before he retired in 1990.
Rustmann and two other key members of the group, all self-described Republicans, have a history of talking openly to the media about national security, a review of articles and transcripts shows.
Rustmann appeared on Fox News’ “Hannity and Colmes” in 2005 to discuss Valerie Plame Wilson, a covert CIA operations officer who was outed in July 2003 by members of the George W. Bush administration. A federal jury convicted I. Lewis “Scooter” Libby, who was chief of staff for Vice President Dick Cheney, of four felony counts for his role in the crime.
Rustmann, who had supervised Plame during her early years at the CIA, argued on Fox that disclosing Plame’s name was not a significant breach of national security. He discussed details of her training, her career and her cover.
“It isn't a big deal,” he said about the illegal disclosure of the covert officer’s name. “It was a light, nonofficial cover.”
Scott Taylor, chairman of OPSEC, is a former Navy SEAL. An unsuccessful Republican candidate for Congress in Virginia in 2010, he sat down with NBC News last summer for a documentary titled “Secrets of Seal Team Six.” The film said the military had urged former SEALs not to talk.
And OPSEC member Chad Kolton, a former spokesman for the director of National Intelligence during the George W. Bush administration, helped make the office “more accessible to reporters, including regular off-the-record briefings by senior analysts on global hot spots,” according to a newswire report that announced his departure to form a communications firm.
==
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Swift_Vets_and_POWs_for_Truth
http://216.92.66.74/index.php?title=Swift_Boat_Veterans_for_Truth
big GOP funderhttp://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/:{Bob_J._Perry:(style="background-color:#ffff66;"):}:
http://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php?title=Americans_for_Honesty_on_Issues 527 link to Enron
In the 2004 election cycle, Perry gave $4.45 million to Swift Vets and POWs for Truth (formerly Swift Boat Veterans for Truth), a 527 group; he was the largest single donor.[^^3]^(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bob_J._Perry#cite_note-TPM-2006-09-14-2)
In that cycle, Perry also donated $3 million to Progress for America Voter Fund. In all, he donated almost $8.1 million to 527 groups in 2003-2004.[^^3]^(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bob_J._Perry#cite_note-TPM-2006-09-14-2)]
In mid-2006, Perry donated $5,000,000 to found a new 527 group, the Economic Freedom Fund. The $5 million makes the group one of the top ten in the 2006 election cycle.[^^4]^(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bob_J._Perry#cite_note-3) He also appears to be the sole donor to Americans for Honesty on Issues. These groups have primarily paid for negative advertisements targeting Democratic Party candidates in the 2006 United States general election.
Background
SBVT asserted that Kerry was "unfit to serve" as President based upon his alleged "willful distortion of the conduct" of American servicemen during that war, and his alleged "withholding and/or distortion of material facts" as to his own conduct during that war.[^^2]^(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Swift_Vets_and_POWs_for_Truth#cite_note-lettertokerry-1) This claim caused tremendous controversy during the election, particularly because some perceived the veterans as partisans who had not been in a place to assess Kerry,[^^3]^(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Swift_Vets_and_POWs_for_Truth#cite_note-factcheckrepfunded-2) while several other Vietnam veterans who served alongside Kerry or under his command disputed the criticisms and supported Kerry in his presidential aspirations.[^^4]^(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Swift_Vets_and_POWs_for_Truth#cite_note-acctsincomplete-3)[^(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Swift_Vets_and_POWs_for_Truth#cite_note-returnshome-4)5]
SBVT stated that "Kerry's phony war crimes charges, his exaggerated claims about his own service in Vietnam, and his deliberate misrepresentation of the nature and effectiveness of Swift boat operations compel us to step forward."[^^6]^(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Swift_Vets_and_POWs_for_Truth#cite_note-5) The group challenged the legitimacy of each of the combat medals awarded to Kerry by the U.S. Navyand the disposition of his discharge. (See John Kerry military service controversy.) Further, SBVT said that Kerry's later criticism of the war was a "betrayal of trust" with other soldiers, and that by his activism he had caused direct "harm" to soldiers still at war. (See John Kerry VVAW controversy.
...
Book
| Unfit for Command | Unfit for Command |
|---|---|
| Author | John E. O'Neill and Jerome Corsi |
| Publisher | Regnery Publishing |
| Publication date | August 2004 |
| Media type | Hardcover/Paperback |
| ISBN | ISBN 0-89526-017-4 |
| OCLC Number | 56057932 |
| Dewey Decimal | 973.931/092 B 22 |
| LC Classification | E840.8.K427 O54 2004 |
SBVT founder and spokesman John O'Neill and Jerome Corsi are listed as coauthors of the book *Unfit for Command: Swift Boat Veterans Speak Out Against John Kerry*, published by Regnery Publishing. A best-seller upon its release in August 2004,[^^44]^(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Swift_Vets_and_POWs_for_Truth#cite_note-43) it criticized Kerry's judgment in battle, his truthfulness, his entitlement to certain medals, and his later anti-war activities. The book was based in part on interviews with veterans who served in or with Kerry's division, and also on biographies of Kerry.[^^45]^(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Swift_Vets_and_POWs_for_Truth#cite_note-44) Several members of Kerry's crew stated that O'Neill failed to interview them; some veterans who were interviewed asserted that their statements were edited to strip out material favorable to Kerry.[^^46]^(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Swift_Vets_and_POWs_for_Truth#cite_note-45) Neither O'Neill nor Corsi had any firsthand knowledge of Kerry's service. O'Neill served on the Swift boats after Kerry left Vietnam and Corsi never served in Vietnam.[^^47]^(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Swift_Vets_and_POWs_for_Truth#cite_note-46)[^(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Swift_Vets_and_POWs_for_Truth#cite_note-47)48]
After controversial statements made by Corsi became public, O'Neill denied Corsi's coauthorship of the book, saying that Corsi was "simply an editor and not really any sort of co-author."[^^49]^(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Swift_Vets_and_POWs_for_Truth#cite_note-48)[^(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Swift_Vets_and_POWs_for_Truth#cite_note-49)50]^(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Swift_Vets_and_POWs_for_Truth#cite_note-49) However, portions of the book[^^51]^(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Swift_Vets_and_POWs_for_Truth#cite_note-excerpts-50) contain material also found in articles posted under Corsi's name at WinterSoldier.com, a website critical of John Kerry,[^^52]^(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Swift_Vets_and_POWs_for_Truth#cite_note-communistshonorkerry-51)[^(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Swift_Vets_and_POWs_for_Truth#cite_note-coordinatingwithenemy-52)53]^(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Swift_Vets_and_POWs_for_Truth#cite_note-coordinatingwithenemy-52) and O'Neill is cited in a later book as describing Corsi as helping to write "Unfit for Command," and urging him to back out of media appearances after the controversial comments became public.[^^54]^(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Swift_Vets_and_POWs_for_Truth#cite_note-53)
[edit] Controversy
[edit] Truth of allegations
A major part of the SBVT controversy centered on the group's testimony. The SBVT statements were accompanied by sworn affidavits, although one affiant, Al French, later admitted he had no firsthand knowledge of what he had sworn to.[^^55]^(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Swift_Vets_and_POWs_for_Truth#cite_note-callforresignation-54)
The first SBVT ad was contradicted by the statements of several other veterans who observed the incidents, by the Navy's official records, and, in some instances, by the contemporaneous statements of SBVT members themselves.
Several major newspapers were also skeptical of the SBVT allegations. For example, a *New York Times* news article stated, "on close examination, the accounts of Swift Boat Veterans for Truth prove to be riddled with inconsistencies."[^^56]^(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Swift_Vets_and_POWs_for_Truth#cite_note-birthantikerryad-55) Regarding the medal dispute, a *Los Angeles Times* editorial[^^57]^(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Swift_Vets_and_POWs_for_Truth#cite_note-56) stated, "Not limited by the conventions of our colleagues in the newsroom, we can say it outright: These charges against John Kerry are false." The editorial argued this position on the basis that "Kerry is backed by almost all those who witnessed the events in question, as well as by documentation." On August 22, 2004 *The Washington Post* reported: "An investigation by The Washington Post into what happened that day suggests that both sides have withheld information from the public record and provided an incomplete, and sometimes inaccurate, picture of what took place. But although Kerry's accusers have succeeded in raising doubts about his war record, they have failed to come up with sufficient evidence to prove him a liar."[^^58]^(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Swift_Vets_and_POWs_for_Truth#cite_note-accountsimcomplete-57)
The ABC television show *Nightline* traveled to Vietnam and interviewed Vietnamese who were involved in the battle for which Kerry was awarded the Silver Star. These witnesses disputed O'Neill's charge that there "was little or no fire" that day; they said that thefighting was fierce.[^^59]^(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Swift_Vets_and_POWs_for_Truth#cite_note-abcwhathappened-58) SBVT supporters question whether these witnesses are reliable because they spoke "in the presence of a Communist official",[^^60]^(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Swift_Vets_and_POWs_for_Truth#cite_note-abcnewsorspin-59) but their account of enemy fire is substantially the same as that previously given by another former VC to an AP reporter[^^61]^(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Swift_Vets_and_POWs_for_Truth#cite_note-60) and by the American witnesses, including the only SBVT member who was actually present that day, Larry Clayton Lee.[^^62]^(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Swift_Vets_and_POWs_for_Truth#cite_note-chicagotribrood-61)[^(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Swift_Vets_and_POWs_for_Truth#cite_note-courantbattletested-62)63]^(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Swift_Vets_and_POWs_for_Truth#cite_note-courantbattletested-62)[^(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Swift_Vets_and_POWs_for_Truth#cite_note-63)64]^(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Swift_Vets_and_POWs_for_Truth#cite_note-63)[^(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Swift_Vets_and_POWs_for_Truth#cite_note-64)65]^(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Swift_Vets_and_POWs_for_Truth#cite_note-64) ABC News's The Note opined, "the Swift Boat ad and their primary charges about Kerry's medals are personal, negative, extremely suspect, or false."[^^66]^(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Swift_Vets_and_POWs_for_Truth#cite_note-abcskeptical-65)
Jerome Corsi has said that a picture of Kerry's 1993 visit to Vietnam hangs in the War Remnants Museum in Ho Chi Minh City as a gesture of "honor" by the Communists"for his contribution to their victory over [the] United States",[citation needed] and John O'Neill has stated that Kerry "is in the North Vietnamese war museum as a hero... . one of the heroes who caused them to win the war in Vietnam".[^^67]^(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Swift_Vets_and_POWs_for_Truth#cite_note-nightline-66) The statement is also repeated in "Unfit for Command" (pp 167–174). However, Josh Gerstein of the *New York Sun* stated in this regard:
| “ | While the museum clearly honors opponents of the war from America and other countries, it is not clear that the photo of Mr. Kerry is part of that tribute. The picture of the senator hangs among a set of photos devoted to the restoration of diplomatic relations between America and Vietnam in the 1990s. The picture apparently was taken as Kerry took part in a delegation President Bill Clinton sent to Hanoi in 1993. Other photos nearby show visits during that period by former American officials who played key roles in the Vietnam War, including a Navy admiral who has since died, Elmo Zumwalt, and a defense secretary, Robert McNamara. A secretary of state during Clinton’s term, Warren Christopher, is also shown meeting Vietnamese officials | ” |
|---|---|---|
| — Josh Gerstein[^^68]^(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Swift_Vets_and_POWs_for_Truth#cite_note-nysun-67) | — Josh Gerstein[^^68]^(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Swift_Vets_and_POWs_for_Truth#cite_note-nysun-67) |
In this connection, the web page Corsi and another anti-Kerry veteran originally published on the Kerry museum photo contained the picture of Robert McNamara's 1995 meeting with General Giap, who was misidentified as "Mao Tse-Tung".[^^69]^(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Swift_Vets_and_POWs_for_Truth#cite_note-68) (Photo #10).
In addition, John O'Neill said that in 1971 John Kerry "wanted to abandon ship and leave the POWs [in Vietnam]" and that "[o]n the Dick Cavett show and elsewhere, John Kerry‘s position was that we should accept the Madame Binh seven-point proposal, which called for unilateral withdrawal, setting a date after which at some future time, we‘d negotiate the return of the POWs. So we would set a date. We would withdraw and then we would begin to discuss how to bring them home".[^^70]^(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Swift_Vets_and_POWs_for_Truth#cite_note-scarborough-69) However, in the Cavett debate, Kerry actually said:
| “ | Now, if we were to set a date for withdrawal from Southeast Asia, we can – the Vietnamese, first of all, have said it will be settled prior to the arrival of that date, but we can set a time limit on that. If the prisoners of war aren't back prior to the arrival of that date, then I think we would have – for the first time in all of our history in Vietnam we would have a legitimate reason for taking some kind of reaction to it. | ” |
|---|---|---|
| — John Kerry[^^71]^(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Swift_Vets_and_POWs_for_Truth#cite_note-dickcavett-70) | — John Kerry[^^71]^(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Swift_Vets_and_POWs_for_Truth#cite_note-dickcavett-70) |
Early in the advertising campaign, *Time* magazine surveyed public credence in the SBVT advertisements among those who viewed them. The poll, conducted August 24 through 26, showed that aboutone-third of viewers believed there was at least "some truth" to the allegations. Among swing voters, about one-fourth felt there was any truth to the ads.[^^72]^(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Swift_Vets_and_POWs_for_Truth#cite_note-kerryslips-71)
More recently, an early member of the group, Steve Hayes, stated that he came to believe that the group was twisting Kerry's record, and broke with the group and voted for Kerry. Hayes told the *New York Times*:
The mantra was just 'We want to set the record straight,' Mr. Hayes said this month.It became clear to me that it was morphing from an organization to set the record straight into a highly political vendetta. They knew it was not the truth.
Hayes also told the New York Times that he provided a long interview to Kerry's supporters, backing their version of the incident for which Kerry received the Bronze Star.[^^73]^(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Swift_Vets_and_POWs_for_Truth#cite_note-nytpressingcase-72)
Connections with Republicans
SBVT characterized itself as a non-partisan group both in the legal sense and in spirit, yet several prominent individuals who assisted SBVT also have had close ties to the Republican Party. According to information released by the IRS on February 22, 2005, more than half of the group's reported contributions came from just three sources, all prominent Texas Republican donors: Houston builder Bob J. **Perry**, a longtime supporter of George W. Bush, donated $4.45 million, Harold Simmons' Contrans donated $3 million, and T. Boone Pickens, Jr. donated $2 million. Other major contributors included Bush fundraiser Carl Lindner ($300,000), Robert Lindner ($260,000), GOP contributor Aubrey McClendon ($250,000), George Matthews Jr. ($250,000), and Crow Holdings ($100,000).[^^74]^(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Swift_Vets_and_POWs_for_Truth#cite_note-opensecrets-73)[^(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Swift_Vets_and_POWs_for_Truth#cite_note-chronoctcontrib-74)75]^(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Swift_Vets_and_POWs_for_Truth#cite_note-chronoctcontrib-74)[^(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Swift_Vets_and_POWs_for_Truth#cite_note-tpjfactsheet-75)76]
The initial communications consultant for SBVT was Merrie Spaeth, a Reagan administration press officer and a volunteer consultant to Ken Starr in the Clinton impeachment; she was also a spokesperson for "Republicans for Clean Air," a 527 group opposing John McCain's 2000 presidential campaign and funded by Bush supporters who also helped fund SBVT.[^^77]^(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Swift_Vets_and_POWs_for_Truth#cite_note-wikisourcewatch-76)[^(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Swift_Vets_and_POWs_for_Truth#cite_note-bushcallshalt-77)78]^(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Swift_Vets_and_POWs_for_Truth#cite_note-bushcallshalt-77) John E. O'Neill — the primary author of Unfit for Command and a key player in the formation of SBVT — donated over $14,000 to Republican candidates. He co-operated with the Nixon White House in opposing Kerry in 1971, and seconded Nixon's nomination at the 1972 Republican national convention.[^^79]^(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Swift_Vets_and_POWs_for_Truth#cite_note-nbcnixon-78)[^(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Swift_Vets_and_POWs_for_Truth#cite_note-wapooldconflict-79)80]
Retired Admiral William Schachte, a principal source for the SBVT allegations about Kerry's first Purple Heart, has donated to both of Bush’s presidential campaigns. Schachte was also a lobbyist for FastShip, a firm that recently announced it was receiving $40 million in federal funding for one of its projects. In addition, Schachte's lobbying firm associate, David Norcross, was chairman of the 2004 Republican convention.[^^81]^(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Swift_Vets_and_POWs_for_Truth#cite_note-waposwiftshift-80) Chris LaCivita, Political Director of the National Republican Senatorial Committee in 2002,[^^82]^(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Swift_Vets_and_POWs_for_Truth#cite_note-orgsandfinances-81) works as a private contractor providing media advice for SBVT.[^^83]^(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Swift_Vets_and_POWs_for_Truth#cite_note-nytlawyerresigns-82)
The SBVT postal address was registered to Susan Arceneaux, treasurer of the Majority Leader's Fund, a PAC closely tied to the former Congressional leader, RepublicanDick Armey.[^^84]^(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Swift_Vets_and_POWs_for_Truth#cite_note-sailingbuddies-83)
Republican activist Sam Fox's donation of $50,000 to SBVT during the 2004 campaign[^^85]^(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Swift_Vets_and_POWs_for_Truth#cite_note-campaignmoneydotcom-84) caused a controversy when Bush nominated him to the position of ambassador to Belgium. Because the Democratic members of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee indicated that they would not support his nomination,Bush withdrew the nomination; he appointed Fox to the position on April 4, 2007, while Congress was in recess.[^^86]^(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Swift_Vets_and_POWs_for_Truth#cite_note-cnnappointment-85)[^(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Swift_Vets_and_POWs_for_Truth#cite_note-appointment-86)87]^(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Swift_Vets_and_POWs_for_Truth#cite_note-appointment-86)
These ties, along with others (see below), led to suggestions in the popular press that SBVT was a front group for Republicans.[^^56]^(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Swift_Vets_and_POWs_for_Truth#cite_note-birthantikerryad-55)[^(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Swift_Vets_and_POWs_for_Truth#cite_note-dishonorablecharge-87)88]^(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Swift_Vets_and_POWs_for_Truth#cite_note-dishonorablecharge-87)[^(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Swift_Vets_and_POWs_for_Truth#cite_note-phonywar-88)89]^(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Swift_Vets_and_POWs_for_Truth#cite_note-phonywar-88)
Connections with the Bush campaign
The Bush campaign became part of the general SBVT controversy whenMcCain condemned the first SBVT ad, and said, "I hope that the president will also condemn it." The Bush campaign did not condemn SBVT or the SBVT ads. The campaign did not endorse the group either, stating "We have not and we will not question Senator Kerry's service in Vietnam."[^^90]^(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Swift_Vets_and_POWs_for_Truth#cite_note-wontquestionservice-89) Kerry was dismissive of this statement, saying, "Of course, the President keeps telling people he would never question my service to our country. Instead, he watches as a Republican-funded attack group does just that."[^^91]^(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Swift_Vets_and_POWs_for_Truth#cite_note-apkerrystrikesback-90) Kerry also alleged that SBVT was "a front for the Bush campaign. And the fact that the President won’t denounce what they’re up to tells you everything you need to know — he wants them to do his dirty work".[^^92]^(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Swift_Vets_and_POWs_for_Truth#cite_note-dohisdirtywork-91) When pressed on the issue, President Bush called for an end to all 527 group political advertisements, and challenged Kerry to do the same.[^^93]^(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Swift_Vets_and_POWs_for_Truth#cite_note-bushurgeskerry-92)
Critics and the Kerry campaign pointed to several specific connections between SBVT and the Bush campaign. The Kerry campaign asserted that Bush campaign headquarters in Florida distributed fliers promoting SBVT events, a charge the Bush campaign denied.[^^94]^(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Swift_Vets_and_POWs_for_Truth#cite_note-fliertobush-93) Kenneth :{Cordier:(style="background-color:#ffff66;"):}:, former vice-chair of Veterans for Bush/Cheney (in 2000) and volunteer member of the Bush campaign veterans steering committee, appeared in the second SBVT advertisement. The Bush campaign asked him to resign and stated that it had been unaware of his SBVT involvement.[^^95]^(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Swift_Vets_and_POWs_for_Truth#cite_note-wapocortierresigns-94)
On August 25, 2004, Benjamin Ginsberg, the top election lawyer to the Bush campaign on campaign finance law, also resigned after it was learned that SBVT was one of his clients. Ginsberg stated that he was withdrawing to avoid being a distraction to the campaign. He declared that he had acted "in a manner that is fully appropriate and legal,"[^^83]^(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Swift_Vets_and_POWs_for_Truth#cite_note-nytlawyerresigns-82) arguing that it was not uncommon or illegal for lawyers to represent campaigns or political parties while also representing 527 groups. He also maintained that he did not disclose to the Bush campaign that he was simultaneously representing the SBVT group. After leaving the Bush campaign, Ginsberg retained his status as counsel to SBVT.
In January 2005, Governor Jeb Bush, the President's brother and Florida chairman for his 2004 campaign,[^^96]^(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Swift_Vets_and_POWs_for_Truth#cite_note-floridacampaignorg-95) sent a letter to SBVT member and former POW Bud Day, thanking him for his "personal support of my brother in his re-election." In addition, Governor Bush said of the SBVT:
"As someone who truly understands the risk of standing up for something, I simply cannot express in words how much I value their willingness to stand up against John Kerry."[^^73]^(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Swift_Vets_and_POWs_for_Truth#cite_note-nytpressingcase-72)[^(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Swift_Vets_and_POWs_for_Truth#cite_note-jebbushletter-96)97]^(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Swift_Vets_and_POWs_for_Truth#cite_note-jebbushletter-96)
FEC Filings
FEC Cases #5511 and #5525
On August 10, 2004, three campaign finance watchdog groups — Democracy 21, the Campaign Legal Center, and the Center for Responsive Politics — jointly filed an independent complaint with the Federal Election Commission (Case #5511).[^^98]^(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Swift_Vets_and_POWs_for_Truth#cite_note-fecwatchdog-97)[^(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Swift_Vets_and_POWs_for_Truth#cite_note-watchdogcomplaint-98)99]^(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Swift_Vets_and_POWs_for_Truth#cite_note-watchdogcomplaint-98) The complaint alleged that SBVT's sources of funding were in violation of federal election law in that "Swift Boat Veterans for Truth (SBVT) is registered with the IRS as a section 527 group but is not registered with the Commission as a political committee. However, SBVT is, in fact, a federal political committee."
On August 20, 2004, the Kerry campaign filed a complaint with the FEC (Case #5525)[^^100]^(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Swift_Vets_and_POWs_for_Truth#cite_note-feckerry-99)[^(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Swift_Vets_and_POWs_for_Truth#cite_note-kerryfeccomplaint-100)101]^(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Swift_Vets_and_POWs_for_Truth#cite_note-kerryfeccomplaint-100) alleging that SBVT and 20 additional named respondents had conducted campaign activity that "has been coordinated with the Bush campaign and the Republican Party from the outset." Under federal election law, SBVT, as a nonpartisan 527 group, was barred from coordinating with any political campaign. The complaint, citing the "ties" noted above, claimed a "web of connections to the Bush family, high-profile Texas political figures, and President Bush's chief political aide, Karl Rove".
The Bush campaign dismissed charges of ties and asserted there was no co-ordination between SBVT and the campaign. Editorial opinion on the evidence for co-ordination varied. ABC News' The Note stated, "There is no evidence that the Bush campaign is orchestrating the Swift Boat Veterans for Truth."[^^102]^(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Swift_Vets_and_POWs_for_Truth#cite_note-notenoevidence-101) In contrast, the New York Times opined that the SBVT attacks were "orchestrated by negative-campaign specialists deep in the heart of the Texas Republican machine."[^^103]^(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Swift_Vets_and_POWs_for_Truth#cite_note-texasnexus-102)
FEC Findings - Cases #5511 and #5525
On December 13, 2006, in a consolidated finding, the FEC ruled against the Kerry campaign allegations (Case #5525)[^^104]^(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Swift_Vets_and_POWs_for_Truth#cite_note-fecruling-103) finding that...
Following an investigation, the Commission concluded that Swiftvets did not unlawfully coordinate its activities with, or make excessive in-kind contributions to, any federal candidate or political party committee.
In addition, Kerry campaign complaints against 18 other respondents were relegated to "dismissed-other" and 2 relegated to "Reason To Believe/No Further Action" (RTB/NFA) status.
The FEC did, however, find for the joint complainants (Case #5511)[^^105]^(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Swift_Vets_and_POWs_for_Truth#cite_note-fecpressrelease-104) in that the SBVT failed to register and file disclosure reports as a federal political committee, and accepted contributions in violation of federal limits and source prohibitions. SBVT was assessed a fine of $299,500.
The conciliation agreement between the FEC and the SBVT also stated, in part:
Indeed, the Commission has never alleged that the SwiftVets acted in knowing defiance of the law, or with the conscious recognition that their actions were prohibited by law, made no findings or conclusions that there were any knowing and willful violations of the law in connection with this matter, and, thus, does not challenge SwiftVets' assertion of its good faith reliance on its understanding of the law.
Solely for the purpose of settling this matter expeditiously and avoiding litigation, without admission with respect to any other proceeding, and with no finding of probable cause by the Commission, SwiftVets agrees not to contest the Commission's conclusions ... .
In addition, as part of the conciliation agreement, SBVT stated that upon completing its obligations under the agreement, it "intends to cease operationsas an IRC Section 527 organization and to donate the remainder of its funds to a charity supporting the families of U.S. servicemen and servicewomen killed or wounded in the War in Iraq."[^^104]^(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Swift_Vets_and_POWs_for_Truth#cite_note-fecruling-103)
Disclosure of documents
During the campaign, SBVT criticized Kerry for not signing a Standard Form 180 authorizing general public access to his Navy personnel records.[^^106]^(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Swift_Vets_and_POWs_for_Truth#cite_note-sbvtfaq-105) Kerry responded that the documents were posted on his website.[^^107]^(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Swift_Vets_and_POWs_for_Truth#cite_note-recordsindicate-106) On May 20, 2005, Kerry did sign the SF-180 form permitting release of his service records and medical records to reporters from the *Boston Globe*, the *Los Angeles Times*, and the Associated Press;[^^108]^(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Swift_Vets_and_POWs_for_Truth#cite_note-sawitherefirst-107) he refused a request by the *New York Sun* for access to the records.[^^109]^(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Swift_Vets_and_POWs_for_Truth#cite_note-kerrygrants-108) The Boston Globe and Los Angeles Times reported that the records largely duplicated what Kerry had released during the campaign.[^^110]^(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Swift_Vets_and_POWs_for_Truth#cite_note-globekerryallows-109)[^(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Swift_Vets_and_POWs_for_Truth#cite_note-timeskerryreleases-110)111]^(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Swift_Vets_and_POWs_for_Truth#cite_note-timeskerryreleases-110)
SBVT members also criticized Kerry for not releasing his own private journals and letters. However, SBVT members themselves refused to release documents. For example, a journal by another of the Swift boat commanders and the relevant Navy records of some of the SBVT members involved in specific allegations have not been released.[^^4]^(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Swift_Vets_and_POWs_for_Truth#cite_note-acctsincomplete-3)
The White House refused to release records detailing any Bush administration contacts with prominent individuals associated with SBVT. The denied Freedom of Information Act request was filed on August 24 by Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington.[^^112]^(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Swift_Vets_and_POWs_for_Truth#cite_note-111)
[edit] Relationship to Admiral Roy F. Hoffmann Foundation
In July 2006, controversy arose over donations SBVT made to a non-profit organization, the Admiral Roy F. Hoffmann Foundation,[^^113]^(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Swift_Vets_and_POWs_for_Truth#cite_note-hoffmannorg-112) founded by the chairman of SBVT, Roy F. Hoffmann.[^^114]^(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Swift_Vets_and_POWs_for_Truth#cite_note-hoffmaninfo-113) The address and agent for service for the foundation is Political Compliance Services, the same consulting firm, and consultant - Susan Arceneaux - used by SBVT.[^^114]^(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Swift_Vets_and_POWs_for_Truth#cite_note-hoffmaninfo-113)
According to reports and SBVT's own filings, SBVT donated $10,000 to the Hoffmann organization in 2005, and in early 2006 donated another $100,000 to the organization.[^^115]^(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Swift_Vets_and_POWs_for_Truth#cite_note-irsquarterlyreport-114)[^(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Swift_Vets_and_POWs_for_Truth#cite_note-bigmoneyblog-115)116]^(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Swift_Vets_and_POWs_for_Truth#cite_note-bigmoneyblog-115)[^(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Swift_Vets_and_POWs_for_Truth#cite_note-johnsonhuffpost-116)117]^(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Swift_Vets_and_POWs_for_Truth#cite_note-johnsonhuffpost-116) According to a website purporting to quote SBVT treasurer Weymouth Symmes, the latter donation was subsequently reimbursed by the foundation.[^^118]^(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Swift_Vets_and_POWs_for_Truth#cite_note-democracyprojectblog-117)
According to the foundation's own website, SBVT has donated a total of $500,000, SBVT co-founder John O'Neill has donated his proceeds from the publication of the book "Unfit for Command," and one of SBVT's major funders, T. Boone Pickens, has contributed nearly $2 million.[^^113]^(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Swift_Vets_and_POWs_for_Truth#cite_note-hoffmannorg-112)
[blog
MON FEB 11, 2008 AT 08:56 AM PST
NRCC Scandal: Swift Boat Vets Accounting Irregularity
byMrs PanstrepponFollow
Last week, I wrote about the burgeoning financial scandal at the NRCC. The scandal centers around long time NRCC treasurer,Christopher J. Ward. Ward is, or was until very recently, the treasurer of dozens of GOP PACs and committees.
Ward is partners with Susan Arceneaux, a long time aide to Dick Armey,
in Political Compliance Services Inc., a firm that provides FEC reporting services to political entities. Swift Boat Vets and POWS For Truth, a 527, has been a PCS client since its inception.
In its 3/31/06 quarterly 8872 filed with the IRS, Swift Boat Vets reported making a $100,000 contribution to the Admiral Roy F. Hoffmann Foundation on 2/8/06. Admiral Roy F. Hoffmann is a Swift Boat Vets co-founder
The problem is that the Admiral Roy F. Hoffmann Foundation did not record a contribution from Swift Boat Vets in 2006, according to the foundation's 2006 990 filed with the IRS. The foundation's 2005 and 2006 990s are online at the Foundation Center's 990 Finder. Search "admiral roy".
The Admiral Roy F. Hoffmann Foundation only reported three contributions in 2006:
Boone Pickens - $1,000,000
John O'Neill - $170,839
Weymouth Symmes - $5,000
The three contributions account for all but $400 of total contributions to the foundation in 2006.
Without more information, it is not possible to determine where the missing Swift Boat Vets $100,000 ended up. But I think we can conclude that Susan Arceneaux, at best, is a sloppy bookkeeper. At worst, she is laundering money.
Over the past few years, Susan Arceneaux and Christopher J. Ward have been responsible for reporting the receipt and disbursement of tens of millions of dollars for GOP causes to the FEC. The NRCC already admitted that Ward forged an audit. Maybe someone should ask Susan Arceneaux to account for the missing $100,000 Swift Boat contribution.
Update #1 - Bruce Kesler at the Democracy Project, a right wing blog, posted about the $100,000 Swift Boat Vets contribution on July 17, 2006. The post was in response to a charge that Swift Boat Vets paid $100,000 directly to Admiral Roy F. Hoffmann. In response, Kesler claimed to have gotten an email from the Swift Boat Vets treasurer about the issue:
"Despite great personal expense Admiral Hoffmann only received just over $1,000 in travel reimbursements in the nearly two years of SBVFT existence.
SBVFT made two donations to the Admiral Roy F. Hoffmann Foundation. A $10,000 donation was made, as was a $100,000 donation, which was later reimbursed back to SBVFT by the Foundation. In the interim the Foundation used the money for payments to soldiers and Marines who had suffered grievous wounds during the fighting in Iraq and Afghanistan. To think that those funds were used by any individuals is a despicable distortion slandering honorable men."
I checked every Swift Boat Vets 8872 filed with the IRS in 2006 and 2007 and Swift Boat Vets never recorded a reimbursement from the Admiral Roy F. Hoffmann Foundation. Swift Boat Vets treasurer Weymouth D. Symmes was not telling the truth if he did indeed send that email to Bruce Kesler.
On 1/5/07, Swift Boat Vets contributed $400,000 to the Admiral Roy F. Hoffmann Foundation and then contributed another $100,000 on 4/26/07. However, we won't know how or even if the foundation recorded the contributions until it files a 2007 990 which could be months from now.
ORIGINALLY POSTED TO MRS PANSTREPPON ON MON FEB 11, 2008 AT 08:56 AM PST.]
---
Ex-NRCC aide admits embezzlement :{By: John Bresnahan September 3, 201009:27 AM EDT}: |
|---|
Christopher J. Ward, the former treasurer for the National Republican Congressional Committee, pleaded guilty in federal court on Friday toembezzling more $844,000from the NRCC and other committees he worked for, ending one of the largest campaign embezzlement schemes in Washington history. Prosecutors and Ward's attorneys have recommended that he be sentenced to 37 months in federal prison and be required to repay more than $812,000 in illegally diverted funds. Ward has already repaid nearly $32,000 that he stole, DOJ said. Prosecutors and Ward's attorneys have recommended that he besentenced to 37 months in federal prison and be required to repay more than $812,000 in illegally diverted funds. “Christopher J. Ward was trusted to oversee other people’s money, and he violated that trust by diverting nearly $850,000 into his own pocket and creating fraudulent documentation to conceal the theft,” U.S. Attorney Rod J. Rosenstein of Maryland said in a statement. “Mr. Ward then caused false reports to be filed with the Federal Election Commission concerning the expenditure of the political contributions.” Ward will be formally sentenced on Dec. 2. According to a filing by the Justice Department in the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia, between March 2001 and Dec. 2007, Ward “stole approximately $844,718 by issuing unauthorized checks and wire transfers from the NRCC and political committees that were clients of his business for the personal benefit of the defendant...." As part of his plea deal, the Justice Department demanded that Ward turn over any assets “obtained, directly or indirectly” from his illegal activities. DOJ, Ward, and his wife have worked out an agreement in a civil forfeiture action by federal prosecutors against his home in Bethesda, Md. Ward, a top GOP expert on campaign finance reports, used the stolen funds to pay for extensive landscaping work on his home, as well as to cover mortgage costs. A prime target for Ward’s theft was the annual “President’s Dinner Committees, which he controlled, and subsequently transferred the same funds to his own bank accounts, to be used for his personal benefit,” according to prosecutors. The annual fundraising events starred former President George W. Bush and resulted in millions of dollars of donations for the NRCC and its Senate counterpart, the National Republican Senatorial Committee. Due to Ward's actions, the NRCC and other political committees that he worked for filed inaccurate campaign finance reports with the Federal Election Commission. The NRCC recently paid a $10,000 fine to the FEC related to these inaccurate reports. |
"Swift Boating"
Main article: Swiftboating
Since the 2004 election, the term "Swift Boating" (or "swiftboating") has become a common expression for a campaign attacking opponents by questioning their credibility and patriotism. The term is most often used with the pejorative meaning of a smear campaign,[^^119]^(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Swift_Vets_and_POWs_for_Truth#cite_note-Sheehan-118) but has also been used positively by a conservative.[^^120]^(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Swift_Vets_and_POWs_for_Truth#cite_note-armytimes-119)
==
usatoday
Volunteer links 'Swift Boat Veterans for Truth' flier to Bush
CRAWFORD, Texas (AP) — A volunteer for John Kerry said Friday he picked up a flier in a Bush-Cheney campaign office in Gainesville, Fla., promoting Swift Boat Veterans for Truth, a group the Bush campaign has insisted for weeks it has no connection to.
The Kerry campaign e-mailed the flier to news organizations Friday, declaring that the Bush-Cheney campaign was "busted" for coordinating "in their smear campaign against John Kerry."
At Bush-Cheney campaign headquarters outside Washington, spokesmanSteve Schmidtsaid: "The Bush-Cheney campaign has nothing to do with that piece of paper. ... I don't know how it showed up at the campaign headquarters."
"The Bush-Cheney campaign would object to any flier like this being displayed in any Republican headquarters," said Schmidt. He characterized the campaign operation in Gainesville where the flier was found as county GOP offices used by Bush-Cheney volunteers.
The flier distributed at Alachua County Republican Party headquarters promotes a weekend rally sponsored by "Swift Boat Vets for Truth" and other groups.
Bill Shilling, a Kerry volunteer in Gainesville, says he went to the GOP offices there Thursday and picked up the flier from a pile of literature on the table.
"The flier they gave me was on the same table as some Bush-Cheney bumper stickers," said Shilling. "I asked them if the Swift boat veterans were coming to Gainesville, and the woman I talked to said yes."
Shilling said he went back to Kerry headquarters and turned over the flier.
"I thought there was supposed to be some separation between Bush-Cheney and the Swift boat controversy but I didn't understand there was a big deal about this," said Shilling. "I think this whole thing attacking Kerry's war record is a diversion by Bush-Cheney from the real issues of the campaign."
Financed by a Texas businessman with longtime ties to prominent Republicans in the state, including President Bush, Swift Boat Veterans for Truth sponsored an ad featuring several Vietnam veterans who accuse Kerry of lying about the circumstances surrounding events for which he won his medals. Kerry received a Silver Star, Bronze Star and three Purple Hearts while in Vietnam.
The anti-Kerry group distributed a second commercial to the news media and said it would begin airing the ad next week in Pennsylvania, Nevada and New Mexico, the last a state Bush plans to visit next Thursday. The ad intersperses clips of a youthful Kerry talking about war atrocities during an appearance before Congress in 1971 with images of veterans condemning his testimony.
The Kerry campaign filed a complaint with the Federal Election Commission alleging Swift Boat Veterans for Truth was illegally coordinating its efforts with the Bush-Cheney campaign.
The Kerry campaign cited recent press reports and the group's own statements. The Bush campaign denied the allegation, as did the organization that aired the ad.
==
Bush Campaign Drops Swift Boat Ad Figure
Democrat's Team Says Veteran's Role in Drive to Discredit Kerry Shows a Link
By Dana Milbank
Washington Post Staff Writer
Sunday, August 22, 2004; Page A13
CRAWFORD, Tex., Aug. 21 -- The Bush campaign said late Saturday that it dismissed an adviser on veterans issues after learning that he is part of an independent group that has been running anti-Kerry ads.
The Bush campaign said Kenneth Cordier, who appears in a new advertisement to be aired by the anti-Kerry group, Swift Boat Veterans for Truth, will no longer serve in his voluntary position on Bush's veterans steering committee. A Bush spokesman said Cordier had not previously informed the campaign that he had been involved with the group, but the Kerry campaign said the matter provides evidence supporting its complaint to the Federal Election Commission alleging illegal cooperation between the campaign and the independent group.
"Col. Cordier did not inform the campaign of his involvement in the advertisement being run by a 527 organization," Bush campaign spokesman Steve Schmidt wrote in a statement, referring to the technical name for independent groups such as the Swift boat organization. Schmidt said Cordier "will no longer participate as a volunteer for Bush-Cheney '04."
Cordier's connection to the Bush campaign was made public yesterday by the Kerry campaign, which found that Cordier had been named on the Bush Web site earlier this month as a member of the veterans committee but that his name had subsequently been removed. A Bush aide said Cordier, who spent six years as a prisoner of war in Vietnam and was a Bush supporter in 2000, called the campaign to disclose his involvement on Friday and was told he could no longer serve as an adviser to the campaign.
The ads by the Swift boat group, named for the type of boat Kerry commanded during the Vietnam War, has been causing a furious debate between the campaigns, with Kerry demanding that Bush condemn the ads that suggest that Kerry did not earn his war decorations and that he betrayed his fellow veterans by his later antiwar activity. The Bush campaign has said it opposes ads by all outside groups but declined to specifically criticize the Swift boat ads.
The Swift boat veterans ad featuring Cordier, to air this week in Pennsylvania, New Mexico and Nevada, shows footage of Kerry's antiwar testimony from 1971. "He betrayed us in the past -- how can we be loyal to him now?" Cordier said in the ad.
Cordier could not be reached at his home in Dallas last night.
Kerry campaign spokesman Chad Clanton said the Cordier matter added more weight to its complaint filed last week with the FEC. "This is another brick in the wall of evidence that the Bush campaign is behind this smear," he said. "No wonder the president won't condemn the ads."
Under law, political campaigns cannot coordinate with the 527 organizations, which are funded with unregulated "soft" money and have proved to be an enormous loophole in the new campaign-finance legislation. Bush aides have said there has been no coordination with the Swift boat group. "We've already said we weren't involved in any way in these ads," White House spokesman Scott McClellan said last week. "We've made that clear."
But the Kerry campaign said that claim is put in doubt both by the Cordier issue and by various news accounts demonstrating close relationships between the Swift boat veterans and key Bush advisers. The Kerry campaign also asserts that a Kerry campaign volunteer picked up a Swift Boat Veterans for Truth flier at the Bush-Cheney office in Gainesville, Fla.
===
nyt op ed
Swift Boats and the Texas Nexus
Published: August 25, 2004
President Bush should stop evading responsibility and unequivocally condemn the attacks on Senator John Kerry's Vietnam War service that are being orchestrated by negative-campaign specialists deep in the heart of the Texas Republican machine. Mr. Bush says that Mr. Kerry's record is admirable and something to be proud of. Yet he allows these politically useful ads to continue spreading unfounded charges that Mr. Kerry fabricated his medal-winning experience as a Swift boat commander.
The attempt to contradict the federal government's own records about Mr. Kerry's record is the work of a transparently partisan group led by a longtime Kerry antagonist, John O'Neill, a Swift boat veteran recruited by the Nixon White House to counter Mr. Kerry's denunciations of the war when he returned from Vietnam. The operation's start-up money came from big-money Texas donors long supportive of Bush political causes; some principals have ties to the ''independent'' attack ads that blindsided another Vietnam veteran, Senator John McCain, in his 2000 primary contest with Mr. Bush.
Rather than single out the Swift boat group, Mr. Bush condemned all such stealth-party activities, Democratic and Republican, which have sprung up to evade legal restrictions on the flood of ''soft money'' into political races. Mr. Bush called on Mr. Kerry to join in renouncing these specialists in low-blow politicking -- an idea we applaud. This page has long criticized the Democrats' pioneering soft-money evasions, and the Federal Election Commission's refusal to control these rogue operations.
But the president had hardly finished speaking when the White House began sidestepping, insisting that Mr. Bush had not intended to single out the anti-Kerry ads as something that should be stopped. This is unfortunate. Senator McCain has called on the administration to ''specifically condemn'' the ads.
Senator Kerry invited debate on his war service by making it a keystone of his campaign. But that means fair debate. Some of the veterans in the ads criticizing Mr. Kerry have praised his courage in the past. No one has offered evidence to contradict the record. By failing to condemn the ads, Mr. Bush leaves the impression that he condones this effort to turn the historical record into a partisan blur.
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graphic :http://graphics7.nytimes.com/images/2004/08/19/politics/campaign/20040820swift_graph.gif
http://www.dailykos.com/story/2004/8/20/14735/6707
nyt http://topics.nytimes.com/top/reference/timestopics/organizations/s/swift_boat_veterans_for_truth/index.html?scp=1-spot&sq=swift%20boat&st=cse
404 http://www.nytimes.com/2004/08/20/politics/campaign/20swift.html
McCain hires the shop
In 2004, Mr. McCain said the Swift Boat Veterans for Truth advertisement asserting that Senator John Kerry of Massachusetts had not properly earned his medals from the Vietnam War was “dishonest and dishonorable.” Nonetheless, he has hired the firm that made the spots, Stevens Reed Curcio & Potholm, which worked on his 2000 campaign, to work for him again this year.
http://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php?title=Stevens_Reed_Curcio_%26_Potholm
funded by Rovepal Perry, described as a "close friend" of both Karl Rove and**John E. O'Neil**l and said to be the "single largest Texas donor" to the Republican Party, contributed 4.5 million dollars[18]^(http://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php?title=Robert_J._Perry#cite_note-17) to the Swift Boat Veterans for Truth smear campaign against then presidential candidate John F. Kerry.[19]^(http://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php?title=Robert_J._Perry#cite_note-18)[20]^(http://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php?title=Robert_J._Perry#cite_note-19)
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http://www.nndb.com/people/127/000058950/
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LaCivita's role as political director of NRSC in 2002 places him on the edge of a Republican phone-jamming scandal in which Democratic get-out-the-vote calls in Manchester, N.H., were blocked on election day.[2] In December 2005 James Tobin, who worked under LaCivita as the New England regional director, was convicted of two felony telephone harassment charges but was acquitted of the charge of conspiring against voters rights. He was sentenced in May 2006 to 10 months in prison, AP reported, that he "helped plan the phone jamming." Tobin was convicted in December of two felony telephone harassment charges. He was acquitted of a third, more serious charge, of conspiring against voters rights.[3]
On August 25, 2004 the New York Times reported that LaCivita was working for Swift Boat Veterans for Truth as an adviser on media strategy. According to Federal Election Committee filings by SBVT, LaCivita received $35,700 for his media consulting work.[4] He received $39,897 for providing consulting services to Progress for America.[5]
LaCivita told the New York Times that he worked as a private contractor forDCIand Swift Boat Veterans for Truth and that there was no coordination between the firm and the group. "Obviously, I don't work for the Bush campaign," he said. Mr. LaCivita described his role as providing advice on the news media and placing advertisements.[6]
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LC head of progress for Am 35m to beat Kerry,
http://www.salon.com/news/opinion/joe_conason/2004/04/23/o_neill
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Singer is an up-and-coming GOP funder. He gave just $5K to the Swift Boaters in 2004, compared to millions from Bob Perry, the Houston homebuilding magnate who also put his money behind George Bush's smear campaign against John McCain in the 2000 primaries. Apparently Singer wants to be Rudy's Perry, using his vast wealth to manipulate the political system without getting Rudy's hands dirty.
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all donors? http://www.campaignmoney.com/political/527/swift_boat_vets_and_pows_for_truth.asp
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http://works.bepress.com/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1020&context=bill_israel
70% of SB funders were Rove associates? p 14
SB lawyer B Ginsberg was lawyer for Progress for Am, Lacivita had been head PFA gave bucks to B2
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http://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php?title=Sam_Fox
Sam Fox, a Republican fundraiser from Missouri, was named Ambassador Extraordinary and Plenifotentiary of the United States of America to Belgium on April 4, 2007, by President George W. Bush in a recess appointment, "a maneuver that allowed him to bypass Congress, where Democrats had derailed Fox's nomination." [1]
On December 4, 2006, Fox was nominated to the post by President Bush, but on March 28, 2007, Bush withdrew Fox's nomination after Democrats complained about Fox's donation to Swift Boat Veterans for Truth, "a group that questioned Sen. John Kerry's war record during the 2004 presidential campaign."
In late 2004, Fox "gave $50,000 to no less solid citizens than the Swift Boat Liars who made it their mission to discredit a highly-decorated Vietnam Veteran in John Kerry," Bob Geiger wrote February 27, 2007.
At the time of his nomination, Fox, who founded the company, was serving as Chairman and Chief Executive Officer of the Harbour Group. [2][3]
According to WhiteHouseForSale.org, Fox is "a Bush Ranger, responsible for millions of dollars of donations to both the Bush/Cheney campaigns and the Republican Party. He's also a charter member of the Libby Defense Fund. In other words, this guy is neck deep in the Bush/Cheney circles," Nicolle Bell wrote February 27, 2007, for Crooks and Liars.
In the 2000 election cycle, Fox, "the top individual donor to the Republican Party, ... is the ultimate 'Republican Regent,' the elite group of donors who gave $250,000 or more to the GOP." [4]
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With annual revenues of more than $1.5 billion, Harbour Group has executed more than 100 leveraged buyouts since it started in �76. He gave more than $300,000 to GOP candidates and groups in �99. He ranks among the nation�s top donors of �soft money,� having contributed $435,000 of it to the Republican Party since �97. Fox hosted a record-setting Washington fundraiser in 2000 that took in $21 million. His personal wealth has been pegged at more than $500 million. Fox flew to Austin to meet with Bush in early �99 along with three other Missouri Pioneers: Adele Hall, Stephen Brauer and John Mahaffey. He oversees the national Republican Jewish Coalition.
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http://www.nndb.com/people/259/000118902/
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Spaeth is "the public relations consultant representing" Swift Boat Veterans for Truth (SBVT). "According to CBS television news, election commission records [reveal that Spaeth] gave the maximum possible £2,000 donation" [sic] to the Bush-Cheney '04 Inc. re-election campaign in June 2003. [2] (Note: The actual amount was probably $2,000, not £2,000.)
Her role with the SBVT attack on Kerry prompted the Kerry campaign to allege that she previously played a role in attempting to discredit John McCain in the Republican presidential primary in 2000. Spaeth told National Review that she was approached to provide phone support after thetwo Texas millionaires Sam and Charles Wyly, created the front group Republicans for Clean Air to attack McCains environmental policies.
Spaeth said that she agreed to field press inquiries for the group. It "turned out to be the biggest mistake, at least one of the top five," of her life, she said. "I regret being involved in any way," she said. [3]
Spaeth, founder of Spaeth Communications, Inc., "served as a White House Fellow and was assigned to FBI Director William Webster. She was the first Fellow and one of the first two women on the director's staff. From the FBI, she served two years at the Federal Trade Commission as director of public affairs, and in 1983, President Ronald Reagan named her director of media relations at the White House. Merrie introduced satellite communications to the White House, and the electronic White House News Service. One newspaper headline said she 'took the White House into the Space Age.' [4]