Bush lawyer quits over tie to anti-Kerry veterans

CRAWFORD, Texas -- The chief outside lawyer for President Bush's reelection campaign resigned yesterday after admitting that he had provided legal services to a group of Vietnam veterans impugning John F. Kerry's military record, despite the Bush campaign's denials to the Federal Election Commission that it played any role in the anti-Kerry attacks.

While Kerry advisers cheered the departure of prominent Washington lawyer Benjamin L. Ginsberg -- who worked unpaid -- as a public relations victory, they immediately faced fresh pressure from Republicans and reporters to explain the involvement of Democratic lawyers and former Kerry aides in a much larger network of privately-funded anti-Bush groups. Under federal campaign finance law, such groups must act independently of the campaigns.

The Bush camp zeroed in on several Democratic lawyers, including Robert Bauer, who is listed on his law firm's website as national counsel to ''Kerry-Edwards 2004 Inc." He provides legal advice to America Coming Together, which plans to spend millions to mobilize voters against Bush.

Bauer said yesterday that his work shifted from the Kerry campaign to the Democratic National Committee months ago and that the website had not been updated. He acknowledged that his current work for the committee, which he described in an interview as safeguarding voters' interests on Election Day, involved ''coordinating" some activities with the Kerry campaign, but insisted that his various roles do not violate federal law barring campaigns from colluding with such outside groups.

''Ben Ginsberg's role at the Bush campaign included reading TV ad scripts, advising on strategy, sitting in on meetings, and I do absolutely none of that," said Bauer. Lawyers at his firm, Perkins Coie, earned more than $300,000 in legal services from the Kerry campaign this year, mostly for work during the primary season.

Ginsberg, who represented Bush's interests in the 2000 Florida recount, said yesterday that the media were applying ''a stunning double standard" by creating a firestorm over his ''fully appropriate" advice to the Swift Boat Veterans for Truth, which issued two commercials and a book this month alleging that Kerry did not deserve his combat medals. In a resignation letter to Bush, Ginsberg said his dual roles never overlapped -- but that if they deserved scrutiny, so did Democrats' efforts.

He did not mention any names, but the Bush campaign listed several, including Bauer; Jim Jordan, who was fired as Kerry's campaign manager in November 2003 and has since acted as a spokesman for the anti-Bush Media Fund and advised America Coming Together; Joe Sandler, a top legal adviser to the Democratic National Committee, who has also advised MoveOn.org; and Zack Exley, a former staff member of MoveOn.org who switched to the Kerry campaign to oversee online communications.

''I cannot begin to express my sadness that my legal representations have become a distraction from the critical issues at hand in this election," wrote Ginsberg, who had been the campaign's national counsel.

As spokespeople for Kerry and Bush argued over Ginsberg all day on cable news programs, another, more theatrical showdown over Kerry's military record took place outside Bush's ranch yesterday. The Kerry campaign, smelling blood Tuesday as Ginsberg's dual roles began coming to light, sent former Georgia senator Max Cleland and former Green Beret Jim Rassmann, who served with Kerry, into enemy territory. They appeared at the foot of Bush's driveway just after noon with a letter from nine Democratic senators -- all former veterans -- asking the president to issue a ''cease and desist" order to the Swift Boat Veterans for Truth.

Cleland, a decorated Vietnam veteran who lost both legs and his right arm to friendly fire from a grenade, yesterday accused Bush of dodging Vietnam War service and then engaging in ''character assassination" against veterans-turned-politicians such as Kerry, Senator John McCain -- who lost the 2000 GOP nomination to Bush -- and Cleland himself, who lost his seat in 2002 after Republican ads that questioned his resolve against Saddam Hussein and Osama bin Laden.

''The question is, where is George Bush's honor? The question is, where is his shame?" Cleland asked in an appearance with reporters outside Crawford Middle School after being rebuffed at Bush's ranch. ''He's trying to cover up for the terrible presidency that he has given this country."

Rassmann, whom Kerry pulled from a Vietnam river during a gunboat battle in March 1969, an action that earned Kerry a Bronze Star, said he came to Bush's ranch as an ''eyewitness" to events that Republican veterans are alleging were far less dangerous than naval records indicate.

''I had bullets flying around me, and now they're telling me that I'm a liar. I am not a liar. I know it when a bullet comes near me, I know that the crack over my head and the splashes in the water are just exactly what I say they are," said Rassmann. ''And for these people to come out 35 years after the fact, and lie as they're doing, is unconscionable."

The spectacle of Cleland wheeling himself along the edge of Bush's ranch -- and being met there by a Republican former Marine, wearing a tie printed with shotgun shells, who carried a letter from pro-Bush veterans for Cleland -- marked a day of theatrical oneupmanship for the two campaigns, which have increasingly struggled with the unpredictable nature of the fight over Vietnam-era service. The former Marine, Jerry Patterson, was one of seven veterans yesterday who signed a letter -- written ''hastily" by the Bush campaign, Patterson acknowledged -- that blasted Kerry for trying to ''have it both ways."

''You can't have this elective indignation -- you can't say that ads that attack Bush are OK, and ads that attack Kerry are not," said Patterson, who was asked to appear by the Bush campaign. He said Bush called him yesterday to thank him. Patterson, a land commissioner and former state senator, said he was not allied with the swift boat group, although one of its main funders, Texas businessman Robert Perry, has been a ''major contributor" to his and Bush's campaigns.

Patterson passed his veterans' letter to a spokeswoman for Kerry after being rebuffed by Cleland. Cleland, likewise, was unable to hand over the senators' letter, asserting that the US Secret Service had left Bush's driveway and ''evaded" him so the letter could not get to the president.

The Kerry camp staged Cleland's visit to mount a full offensive over the Vietnam service controversy -- after days of punching back from the ropes -- while a Bush campaign spokesman, Steve Schmidt, criticized the move as a stunt that reflected Kerry's ''desperate new strategy of portraying himself as a victim."

Kerry's campaign manager, Mary Beth Cahill, seized on Ginsberg's resignation as a smoking gun in the debate over the Bush campaign's direct ties to the swift boat group, which had been thought to be limited to a low-level volunteer for both who has since resigned from the campaign.

''The sudden resignation of Bush's top lawyer doesn't end the extensive web of connections between George Bush and the group trying to smear John Kerry's military record," Cahill said. ''In fact, it only confirms the extent of those connections."

Cahill repeated calls for Bush to condemn the swift boat group's television ads. White House spokesman Scott McClellan declined to do that during a briefing with reporters in Crawford yesterday afternoon, instead deriding Cleland's visit here as ''a political stunt."

Ginsberg told FOX News last night that he respected Kerry's Vietnam service but did not know if Kerry was wholly honest in representing it, and passed on a question about whether the swift boat group's challenge to Kerry's medals made him ''uneasy."

''Frankly, that's not my role as a lawyer" to judge, Ginsberg said. He added the Kerry campaign's response to his resignation from the Bush campaign was ''far from honorable and far from honest."

Patrick Healy can be reached at phealy@globe.com.