Swift Boat issue becomes crucial to Kerry anew
WASHINGTON - Senator John F. Kerry, in aggressively pursuing a forum in which to disprove allegations about his Vietnam military service, is drawing new attention to an issue that he was slow to address during his 2004 presidential campaign but that he now contends is vital to his political future.
Questions about his military service reemerged on Nov. 6 when T. Boone Pickens, a Texas financier who helped to fund the original Swift Boat Veterans for Truth campaign against Kerry during the 2004 presidential election, offered $1 million to anyone who could prove that any of the group's assertions were wrong.
Kerry accepted the challenge last week. Since then, what was shaping up as a gentlemen's duel has devolved into a testy back-and-forth that Pickens described on Monday as "like playing poker," with a series of new demands and countercharges. Kerry yesterday accused Pickens of "parsing and backtracking" on his initial offer and said he is "prepared to prove the lie and marshal all the evidence."
For Kerry, the public showdown with Pickens represents not only a belated engagement with old antagonists, but also an early strike against a Democratic primary opponent who signaled Monday that he welcomes the scrutiny of Kerry's military record initiated by the Swift Boat ad campaign in 2004.
"It goes to his credibility," said Ed O'Reilly, a Gloucester lawyer mounting a challenge to Kerry in the Democratic primary. "It needs to be cleared up."
In the summer of 2004, the independent group aired a series of television ads asserting that Kerry - who had made his decorated Navy service a key part of his appeal in the primary and general-election campaigns - had "not been honest about what happened in Vietnam." Kerry, the ads alleged, had lied to earn combat medals and had unfairly attacked fellow troops as part of his antiwar activism upon his return from Vietnam.
While Kerry refrained from immediately responding to the attacks - damaging his campaign, in the view of many analysts - he became more aggressive after the election about making his case. In 2005, pressed by news organizations including the Globe, Kerry authorized the Navy to release his complete military and medical records. The records appeared to contain nothing to dispute Kerry's accounts of his service.
Yet Kerry continued to pursue the subject even after announcing in January that he would not run for president. Since then, according to an aide, Kerry has assembled a portfolio of other Vietnam-era documents that he expects to become useful during a Senate campaign.
"If you're running for reelection in Massachusetts, it's important to be able to defend yourself," said the aide, David Wade. "If there's a lesson from the last few years, it's that these same people will resurface."
Nonetheless, both of the Republicans challenging Kerry next year said yesterday that Kerry's war record is irrelevant to their campaigns.
"I hope this is never addressed. John Kerry has a congressional record that we need to focus on completely," said Kevin Scott, a former selectman in Wakefield. "If I am the nominee, I would steer this completely away from the Swift Boat issue."
"I do not plan on attacking Kerry's military service or anyone else's who took the oath to defend our country and who was honorably discharged," Jeff Beatty, a national-security consultant and Harwich resident, said in a statement.
Most people in national politics also thought the matter was unlikely to reemerge. On the presidential campaign trail, the term "Swift Boat" has come to be shorthand for a vicious attack. Former president Bill Clinton invoked "that scandalous Swift Boat ad" when cautioning Democrats against the type of attacks his wife has faced recently. Last month, Illinois Senator Barack Obama warned, "When people start to Swift Boat you, you have to respond forcefully, immediately, and truthfully."
But the original dispute lives on for Kerry. After Pickens announced his $1 million offer at a Washington banquet, Kerry declared last week that he wanted to meet in a "mutually agreed upon public forum" to present evidence disproving the Swift Boat group's assertions. Pickens responded by demanding that Kerry release his tapes and videos taken while in the war zone, and his "journal," believed to be a collection of letters Kerry wrote home during the war. Pickens said the new material was necessary to assess the accuracy of the original ads.
Pickens further suggested that Kerry forfeit $1 million of his own money to a charity of Pickens's choice should he be unable to disprove any of the Swift Boat allegations.
Kerry, traveling in South Africa, yesterday accused Pickens in a letter of "parsing and backtracking" on his initial offer. "I am prepared to prove the lie and marshal all the evidence, the question is whether you are prepared to fulfill your obligation," Kerry wrote.
The Swift Boat issue is not the only front where Kerry appears to be taking on unfinished business from 2004. He has been speaking more openly about his faith, beginning with a high-profile speech last fall at Pepperdine University. At a luncheon earlier this month hosted by the Pew Forum on Religion and Public Life, Kerry said he regretted not speaking more about the subject in 2004, calling the political uses of religion against him a "wedge process played out in a very open and public and difficult way." And Kerry has also spoken often about the Swift Boat group's attacks - which he considers a major factor in his presidential defeat.
"The fact that Pickens made this public challenge was the fulcrum," Wade said. "Everything is out there, but there was the sense that if T. Boone Pickens makes a public pronouncement, we ought to get the money and give it to some veterans."
Kerry, who has said he would contribute his prize to the Paralyzed Veterans of America, wrote yesterday that "the only thing remaining now is to set the date for our meeting," appearing to ensure that the showdown will occur.
But a Pickens spokesman said yesterday Kerry would have to hand over the wartime materials before proceeding further. "We are certainly open to a meeting after we have reviewed those two items," said Jay Rosser.
One prominent Swift Boat advocate, Jerome Corsi, author of "Unfit for Command," a book on which many of the ads' assertions were based, said he thought the matter wasn't appropriate for state-level politics.
"I'm not interested in entertaining any debates in the Massachusetts Senate race," said Corsi, "unless Kerry pursues this issue with Mr. Pickens and compels me to defend 'Unfit for Command,' which I will do."
As it stands, the man most welcoming of the return to the conflicts of 2004 is O'Reilly, who is attacking Kerry as not opposing the Iraq war strongly enough and says that the issues raised by the Swift Boat ads reflect on Kerry's character.
"I don't want to dwell too much on the past, but he keeps going back 40 years and bringing it up, bringing it up," said O'Reilly. "He keeps talking about it." 