Who's Behind the Anti-Kerry Vet Group?

Aug. 20, 2004 -- Houston lawyer John O'Neill has been a nemesis of Sen. John Kerry's since the Nixon years. Now, three decades later, O'Neill has formed a group of anti-Kerry veterans to challenge four of the five medals Kerry was awarded in Vietnam — two Purple Hearts, a Silver Star and a Bronze Star.

The group has been angry with Kerry after since he returned from Vietnam, joined the antiwar movement and accused soldiers of war crimes.

"We have a guy who started out fabricating us as war criminals, fabricating even himself as war criminals," said O'Neill, co-author of the book Unfit for Command: Swift Boat Veterans Speak Out Against John Kerry. "He has now moved on to fabricating himself as a war hero."

But the men who served under Kerry's command stand by him.

"John Kerry earned every one of those medals. We were with him for the Bronze Star and the Silver Star. We validate, we authenticate, you know, his right to receive those medals," said Del Sandusky, the leading petty officer who served alongside Kerry.

"Every time they attack John's record, it attacks my record. I wish they'd stop," said Kerry's former crewmate Bill Zaladonis.

Making sense of the precise charges, however, depends upon which veterans one wishes to believe.

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The group of anti-Kerry veterans, called Swift Boat Veterans for Truth, has many ties to Republican financial backers. With one exception they did not, however, serve on Kerry's boat or with his actual crewmates.

‘A Front for the Bush Campaign’

So why did John Kerry even bother responding? Advisers to the Democratic presidential candidate had been hearing from party politicians that the anti-Kerry veterans group was beginning to be heard, that voters were starting to ask questions.

On Wednesday Kerry went to his Senate office. There he read a story in the Dallas Morning News that the group had received $200,000 from Bob Perry, a Houston real estate magnate and longtime Republican donor with ties to Bush's powerful political adviser, Karl Rove.