Nixon's Swiftvets: Just Who Are These Guys And Who Funds Them?

Ah yes, the completely non-partisan Swift Boat Veterans for [cough] Truth...

When the 'Swift Boat Veterans for Truth' launched its campaign against John Kerry, leadership and guidance were provided by Republican activists and presidential friends from Texas -- notably Houston attorney John E. O'Neill and corporate media consultant Merrie Spaeth.

On closer inspection, the ostensibly nonpartisan 'Swift Boat Vets' seem to have another pair of significant sponsors with deep and long-standing Republican connections [cough! A$$KKKroft] in Missouri. Both are officers of Gannon International, a St. Louis conglomerate that does lots of overseas business in, of all places, the Socialist Republic of Vietnam.

Ties to Gannon can be traced via the Swift Boat Vets Web site ... On April 14, the site was registered under the name of Lewis Waterman, Gannon's information technology manager, at 11301 Olive Boulevard in St. Louis, the firm's headquarters address. 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. What is most intriguing about Franke, Hayes, and Gannon -- especially in light of their apparent role in the campaign against John Kerry -- are their strong commercial interests in Southeast Asia. While Gannon is a highly diversified holding company whose divisions range from real estate in Florida and Missouri to Internet technology and software, it maintains an unusual presence in Vietnam, with offices in both Hanoi and Ho Chi Minh City. Indeed, Gannon has operated in that country's tourism, real estate and import-export sectors for a decade. (The target market for its tours was fellow Vietnam veterans.)

None of Gannon's profitable activities in the communist republic would be possible, of course, without the approval of the Hanoi government, which Franke has described as 'strong' and 'stable.' Nor would Gannon be conducting business in Vietnam without the Clinton administration diplomacy, assisted by Sen. Kerry, that established diplomatic and trade ties with the United States in 1994. Franke first began traveling to Vietnam on behalf of Operation Smile, an American charity that provides plastic surgery to children abroad. The relationships he established during those humanitarian missions provided a considerable advantage in doing business under government auspices.

Nixon's chief counsel, Charles Colson, didn't just tap John E. O'Neill to attack Kerry, he also formed an entire group around him called Vietnam Veterans for a Just Peace: [1]

[Kerry] was an immediate celebrity. He was also an immediate target of the Nixon administration. Years later, Chuck Colson--who was Nixon's political enforcer--told me, '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."

"'Swift Boat Veterans for Truth' can be seen as merely a 21st century reinvention of Vietnam Veterans for a Just Peace."

Joe Conason identifies "veteran corporate media consultant and Texas Republican activist Merrie Spaeth" as being behind the group. Spaeth, "listed as the group's media contact," is the widow of Tex Lezar, "eternal Kerry antagonist and Dallas attorney" John E. O'Neill's law partner.

The group's founder is "retired Rear Adm. Roy Hoffman, a cigar-chomping former Vietnam commander once described as 'the classic body-count guy' who 'wanted hooches destroyed and people killed.'" Hoffmann "first gained notoriety in Vietnam as a strutting, cigar-chewing Navy captain. But it was O'Neill, by now a familiar figure on the Kerry-bashing circuit, who came to Spaeth for assistance," according to Conason.

"Until now," he adds, "Hoffmann has been best known as the commanding officer whose obsession with body counts and 'scorekeeping' may have provoked the February 1969 massacre of Vietnamese civilians at Thanh Phong by a unit led by Bob Kerrey -- the Medal of Honor winner who lost a leg in Nam, became a U.S. senator from Nebraska and now sits on the 9-11 Commission."

Conason says that Spaeth is not "as well known as" Karen P. Hughes but yet is "among the most experienced and best connected Republican communications executives. During the Reagan administration she served as director of the White House Office of Media Liaison, where she specialized in promoting "news" items that boosted President Reagan to TV stations around the country. While living in Washington she met and married Lezar, a Reagan Justice Department lawyer who ran for lieutenant governor of Texas in 1994 with George W. Bush, then the party's candidate for governor. (Lezar lost; Bush won.)"

Conason concludes that "Arguments about the war in Vietnam seem destined to continue forever. For now, however, the lingering bitterness and ambiguity of those days provide smear material against an antiwar war hero with five medals on behalf of a privileged Guardsman with a dubious duty record. The president's Texas allies -- whose animus against his Democratic challenger dates back to the Nixon era -- are now deploying the same techniques and personnel they used to attack McCain's integrity four years ago. Bush's 'independent' supporters would apparently rather talk about the Vietnam quagmire than about his deadly incompetence in Iraq."
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