August 28, 2004
For Kerry's Chief Accuser, a Flashback to a Political Battle From 1971
By RALPH BLUMENTHAL and ROBERT F. WORTH
OUSTON, Aug. 27 - Twice in his life, in episodes more than 30 years apart, John E. O'Neill watched John Kerry on television and what he saw, he says, stirred him to angry action.
The first time was in 1971. As a young Vietnam veteran home from the very same Navy Swift boat that Mr. Kerry had commanded, Mr. O'Neill says he was so outraged by Mr. Kerry's graphic Senate testimony against the war that he threw himself into the talk show circuit to promote an opposing view. The next time was last February when, he says, he looked up from a hospital bed to see Mr. Kerry on the campaign trail and decided he had to stop him from becoming president.
"It was a moment for me like that John Kennedy deal," he said, comparing his reaction to his turbulent emotions after the Kennedy assassination. And as much as he said he venerated President Kennedy, he despised Mr. Kerry. "I felt strongly he would be a terrible commander in chief," he said.
That conviction, not Republican machinations, he said in an interview in his law office on Friday, explained his campaign against the Democratic presidential nominee, which has included a book, television advertisements and blanketing media appearances. As a leader of Swift Boat Veterans for Truth, Mr. O'Neill has become the most public face of an effort by angry fellow veterans to discredit Mr. Kerry, who enjoys equally vehement support from other war buddies who see him as a hero.
Mr. O'Neill was disdainful of President Bush's comments Thursday that he did not believe Senator Kerry lied about his war record. "There's no indication that George Bush has read our book or made any study of it," Mr. O'Neill said. "He was not with us in Vietnam in our unit. He would definitely not have had firsthand knowledge of what were talking about."
To many Democrats, Mr. O'Neill, 58, is little more than a Republican hit man. Last week the Kerry campaign filed a complaint with the Federal Elections Commission accusing the Swift boat group of coordinating its activities with the Bush campaign, a charge that the Bush campaign has angrily denied. A top campaign lawyer quit last week after disclosures that he had advised Mr. O'Neill's group.
But while enemies portray him as a one-dimensional partisan, Mr. O'Neill is man of intriguing contradictions. He has extensive ties to prominent Texas Republicans, but he has told friends he considers Mr. Bush an "empty suit" who is unfit to lead the country, and says he voted for Al Gore in 2000, and for Ross Perot in 1996 and 1992.
Mr. O'Neill, who says he graduated first in his class from the University of Texas law school and clerked for William H. Rehnquist when he was an associate justice, is known in the Houston legal community for a near-photographic memory and an ability to master complex facts and that have helped him win big trial judgments. Yet the book he co-authored against Mr. Kerry, "Unfit for Command," is riddled with inconsistencies and differences with the official record.
"It's very difficult to stereotype John O'Neill," said the chairman of the Harris County Democratic Party, Gerry Birnberg, a lawyer who has known and worked with Mr. O'Neill for 20 years.
Mr. O'Neill's Texas colleagues, including some who dislike him, agree on one thing: his crusade against Mr. Kerry is a personal one, the eruption of a grudge he has held for more than three decades. They say his attacks on Mr. Kerry are consistent with his overall approach to law and life, as a tenacious and aggressive litigator who rarely changes his mind once it is made up.
"He's very black and white," said Dan Hedges, a lawyer and former United States attorney in Houston who has known Mr. O'Neill since they arrived at law school together 33 years ago, and counts him as a friend and former colleague. "There's right and wrong, good and bad. He can be a formidable foe, and he doesn't back down."
Mr. O'Neill grew up in San Antonio, the fifth of seven children in a family with strong military traditions. His father and grandfather were high-ranking Navy commanders, and altogether, he said, 18 relatives are graduates, like him, of the Naval Academy.
After leaving the Navy in June 1971, Mr. O'Neill quickly emerged as a critic of the antiwar movement and drew the attention of President Richard M. Nixon, who invited him to the White House for a personal chat. Although the president was clearly happy to have an articulate young man who could debate the telegenic Mr. Kerry, Mr. O'Neill recalled Friday that he shocked the president by telling him he was a Democrat and had voted for Hubert Humphrey.
Two weeks later, the two young veterans had their celebrated debate on "The Dick Cavett Show." On the videotape, rebroadcast repeatedly in recent months, Mr. O'Neill looks like an angry Boy Scout, his short hair slicked back, his white socks visible beneath a powder blue suit.
"Mr. Kerry is the type of person who lives and survives only in the war weariness and fears of the American people," he says, glancing down occasionally at his notes.
A year later, Mr. O'Neill spoke at the Republican National Convention in support of Mr. Nixon. He does not recall having spoken with Mr. Nixon again after that time, he said. Mr. O'Neill said he has never met the current President Bush, and only met his father once, in passing, 25 years ago.
After graduating from law school, he went to Washington, then moved to Houston, raising a family and starting a career in commercial litigation.
As a lawyer, Mr. O'Neill became known for his tenacity and single-mindedness. Some colleagues coined the phrase "Johnovision" to describe his tendency to settle on a particular view and then defend it remorselessly.
His clients have included some of the state's most powerful Republicans. Among the companies he represented was Falcon Seaboard, the energy company founded by Lt. Gov. David Dewhurst of Texas.
But Mr. O'Neill has also taken cases that put him at odds with prominent Republicans. In the 1990's he worked on a fraud case against the HCA hospital chain - founded by the family of Senator Bill Frist, the majority leader - that ultimately helped to win an $880 million settlement on behalf of the federal government.
In 1990, President George Bush selected Mr. O'Neill to serve as a judge in the federal Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit. But the nomination never went forward. In response to a question about the selection, Mr. O'Neill said he did not know whether the American Bar Association, which at that time reviewed federal judicial candidates - had thrown up a roadblock but that unnamed members of the Senate Judiciary Committee believed he lacked "judicial temperament."
A bar association spokeswoman declined to comment, citing its policy of confidentiality in reviews of potential judges.
Mr. O'Neill says he rarely thought about John Kerry over the three decades since their televised debate. It was not until February, he said, that he decided the time had come to take up arms again. At the time, he was in the hospital recovering after donating one of his kidneys to his wife, Anne Bradley O'Neill, who has Wegener's disease, a virulent form of lupus.
Reporters began calling his hospital room, he said. He was still very ill, but he began making calls to friends, and quickly discovered that a group of veterans was already making plans to attack Mr. Kerry. As soon as he was well enough to join them, he did. By that time, it was becoming clear that Mr. Kerry would be the Democratic nominee, and his face was everywhere on television, just as it had been back in 1971.
"It was déjà vu, as Yogi Berra says, all over again," Mr. O'Neill said.
