James Zumwalt knows the importance of his name. Son of the late Adm. Elmo
Zumwalt, the legendary chief of naval operations during the Vietnam War,
and brother of Elmo Zumwalt III, the swift-boat skipper who died in 1988
as a result of cancer related to his exposure to Agent Orange in Vietnam,
James Zumwalt knows that when he speaks, many listeners will hear not
only his voice but those of his family.
So it was only after much thought that on May 4, Zumwalt, a retired Marine
Corps lieutenant colonel, joined a group of former swift-boat officers
and crew to sign a letter citing “substantive concerns” about
former swiftie John Kerry’s fitness to serve as commander-in-chief. The
men, who called their group Swift Boat Veterans for Truth, had several
concerns. Some questioned parts of Kerry’s service record. Others questioned
his judgment. But all were united in one thing: their anger at Kerry’s
claim, dating back to his testimony before Congress in 1971, that Americans
had committed atrocities in Vietnam that “were not isolated incidents
but crimes committed on a day-to-day basis with the full awareness of
officers at all levels of command.”
The veterans believed Kerry was lying back then, and their unhappiness
with Kerry was rekindled when the charges were repeated in Tour of Duty,
historian Douglas Brinkley’s new book describing Kerry’s wartime experiences.
“We have concluded that you have deceived the public, and in the
process have betrayed honorable men, to further your personal political
goals,” the veterans wrote in a public letter to the senator.
Before he signed the letter, Zumwalt thought about his brother. “He
was not a big fan of Kerry’s,” Zumwalt recalls. “When they had
the dedication of the Vietnam Veterans Memorial, my brother refused to
go up and shake Kerry’s hand. He still had quite a bit of animosity.”
Zumwalt also thought about his father, who was angered by Kerry’s accusations
but who tried, in the final years of his life, to put the past behind
him. In 1996, when Kerry was in a tight Senate re-election race and found
himself facing allegations of having committed war crimes, he turned to
the admiral for help. “Kerry asked my father to come and attend a
press conference with him,” recalls James Zumwalt. “My father
agreed, and he went. I think his viewpoint at the time was that yes, Kerry
had made outrageous allegations and had hurt a lot of people and hurt
their reputations, but those wounds were now healed, and he [Admiral Zumwalt]
owed it to one of those men who had served under him to help him out in
his time of need.”
So the elder Zumwalt defended Kerry, who won re-election. Now Kerry is
on the stump again, and Tour of Duty, not to mention Kerry’s daily recitations
of his Vietnam record, have caused the old accusations to resurface. “I
just felt Kerry was way out of line to be repeating those things again,”
Zumwalt says, “not only because they were not true, but because it
was opening those old wounds again.” And so Zumwalt signed the letter.
So did a lot of other people, who also appeared at a Washington news
conference announcing the formation of Swift Boat Veterans for Truth.
There was Bob Elder, who skippered alongside Kerry in 1969, and who signed
because he felt a “deep sense of betrayal” by Kerry. There was
Bill Shumadine, another swift commander who served with Kerry and said,
“I was operating in every river, every canal, and I never saw or
even heard of all these so-called atrocities.” There was David Wallace,
who said, “In the whole year that I spent patrolling, I didn’t see
anything like a war crime, an atrocity, anything like that.” There
was Richard O’Meara, a former petty officer who said that, “even
though I had served at the same time, in the same unit [as Kerry], I had
never witnessed or participated in any of the events that the senator
had accused us of.” There was Robert Brant, a skipper who joined
the group “to express the anger I’ve harbored for over 33 years about
being accused with my fellow shipmates of war atrocities.” And there
were many more.
Nearly 200 men joined in — a number dwarfing Kerry’s “band
of brothers,” the former members of Kerry’s boat crew who are actively
supporting his campaign. Swift Boat Veterans for Truth includes a majority
of Kerry’s fellow skippers, as well as his superior officers, all the
way up to Adm. Roy Hoffmann, who ran the swift-boat program.
DUELING PRESS CONFERENCES
As the veterans spoke at their news conference on the 13th floor of the
National Press Building in Washington, the Kerry campaign held a hastily
arranged news conference of their own one floor below. Kerry aides handed
out a press release with five “key questions” about the swift-boat
group. The questions were clearly part of the Kerry counterattack, but
they were also legitimate queries that the veterans were eager to answer.
The first question was, Who coordinated and paid for the news conference
and the group’s expenses? The swift-boat veterans answered: We did. John
O’Neill, the former swift commander who debated Kerry on The Dick Cavett
Show back in 1971, and who was instrumental in forming the new group,
says that at the first organizational meeting, eight or nine veterans
pledged a total of about $60,000. (O’Neill, now a lawyer in Texas, himself
kicked in $25,000.) So far, most of that money has not been spent. O’Neill
paid $1,400 to rent the room at the National Press Building where the
press conference was held. He also reserved a block of rooms at a Comfort
Inn in downtown Washington — hardly deluxe accommodations —
where the men stayed. But O’Neill says each man paid for his own expenses,
with the exception of a couple who didn’t have the money, and whose expenses
were picked up by the group.
Second, the Kerry campaign asked whether anyone in the Swift Boat group
has “been in contact with any member of the Bush administration or
the Bush campaign.” The answer is no, according to O’Neill, and there
is no evidence to prove otherwise. Indeed, the Bush campaign and the Republican
National Committee, according to a statement by campaign chairman Mark
Racicot, only “learned of the event yesterday [May 3] through press
accounts.”
Third, the Kerry campaign asked the veterans, “Isn’t it true that
some of you have completely reversed your opinion of John Kerry after
having nothing but praise for him a few short years ago?” It turns
out that, yes, some of the group, led by Admiral Zumwalt, defended Kerry
back in 1996 against the atrocity charges. None of them believed then
or believes now that Kerry was guilty of something like that. After all,
they knew the sting of such accusations themselves — accusations
that had come from none other than John Kerry. But now, having once defended
Kerry against an unsupported allegation, they are quick to point out that
that doesn’t mean they believe he should be commander-in-chief.
Fourth, the Kerry campaign asked whether it bothered the veterans that
“George W. Bush has yet to produce a list of superior officers or
fellow guardsmen that served with him.” The answer, says O’Neill,
is that the members of this particular group served with Kerry and have
deep concerns about him. They know him. If other veterans want to question
or complain about President Bush, O’Neill says, they are certainly free
to do so.
Finally, the Kerry campaign raised questions about the public-relations
company O’Neill asked to organize the news conference. The campaign charged
that the firm’s president, Merrie Spaeth, was “part of the effort
to smear John McCain in the GOP presidential primary in 2000” and
has “close ties” to the Bush White House. Kerry supporters also
suggested that Spaeth had something to do with the campaign against former
Georgia senator Max Cleland in 2002.
Spaeth says the Cleland allegation is “not only false, but wildly
false.” She also says she has no ties to the Bush campaign or to
the Republican National Committee. But there is something to the McCain
story, Spaeth says, and she wants people to know what happened.
In the days before the 2000 GOP primary in New York, two Texas millionaires,
Sam and Charles Wyly, formed a front group, “Republicans for Clean
Air,” to pay for an ad attacking McCain’s environmental policies.
Spaeth says a friend of hers in public relations called her shortly before
the primary, saying he was representing a group that had done some ads
and asked her to help field press inquiries about the group. Spaeth says
she knew nothing about “Republicans for Clean Air,” and says
her decision to help, even in a small way, “turned out to be the
biggest mistake, at least one of the top five,” of her life. “I
regret being involved in any way,” Spaeth says, “and I am an
admirer of Senator McCain.” Now she is quick to point out that, unlike
Republicans for Clean Air, the swift-boat organization is “a real
group, with real members.”
For his part, O’Neill says he chose Spaeth because he knew her personally;
her late husband, Tex Lezar, had been O’Neill’s law partner. In the past,
O’Neill has worked with Spaeth’s firm on a variety of non-political issues.
VETERANS VS. VETERANS
In all, the Kerry questions were intended to create the impression that
the veterans were not credible because they were not independent. But
the questions in fact served to highlight other issues about the independence
of some of the veterans who support Kerry. For example, at the Kerry-campaign
news conference, reporters asked Del Sandusky, one of Kerry’s former crew
members who has made numerous campaign appearances for Kerry and who appears
in Kerry’s new biographical campaign ad, how they might get in touch with
him for further questions. “Through the campaign,” Sandusky
replied.
Another member of the “band of brothers” explained that all
contacts with the Kerry veterans have to go through the Kerry campaign.
And the campaign subsidizes the veterans’ testimonials. For example, a
quick look at Kerry’s voluminous campaign-finance filings shows a number
of checks written by the campaign to the veterans. In the early primary
season, there is a $210 check from the campaign to Sandusky, then a $100
check, then a $780 check, and so on — all to cover Sandusky’s expenses
in testifying for Kerry.
In contrast, the swift-boat veterans seem to be going it alone, on their
own dime. And no one would call them a slick political operation. They
were surprised, for example, when their website was knocked offline the
day of the news conference because so many people wanted to visit. Nobody
had thought about that ahead of time. “We’re pretty amateurish,”
says O’Neill.
Amateurish, at least politically speaking, but determined. And angry
at Kerry. When someone mentioned to O’Neill that Kerry had recently, in
an appearance on NBC’s Meet the Press, described his war-crimes accusations
as “honest” but at the same time “a little bit over the
top,” O’Neill was in no mood for conciliation. “The allegation
of war crimes on a systematic basis by Kerry was a total lie,” O’Neill
told the news conference. “He knew it was a lie when he said it in
1971. It wasn’t simply ‘over the top’ . . . It was done out of gross political
calculation. If that was an attempt to apologize, on behalf of my friends,
living and dead, I don’t accept that apology.”
| Vietnam Veterans Against Kerry A band of brothers, but not the kind the candidate likes National Review May 31, 2004 Issue BYRON YORK |