Posted on 09/03/2004 1:38:53 PM PDT by NormsRevenge
WASHINGTON - Two former Vietnam prisoners of war who appear in ads attacking Democratic presidential candidate John Kerry (news - web sites) were appointed by the Bush administration to a panel advising the Department of Veterans Affairs (news - web sites).
The former POWs in the ad, Kenneth Cordier and Paul Galanti, serve on the VA's 12-member Former POW Advisory Committee. VA Secretary Anthony Principi appointed Cordier in 2002 and Galanti in 2003.
Cordier said the VA panel has nothing to do with the Bush campaign or the anti-Kerry group. "It's totally apolitical, and we meet twice a year to bring to the secretary's attention problems from around the country in VA hospitals," he said.
Cordier and Galanti appear in an anti-Kerry ad saying their Vietnamese captors used news of anti-war protests, such as ones Kerry organized, to taunt the prisoners. Cordier also was a member of a Bush campaign veterans' committee but quit earlier this month after that role was revealed.
VA spokesman Phil Budahn said Principi did not know about or encourage the veterans' appearance in the anti-Kerry ad. Budahn said federal regulations bar advisory committee members from engaging in political activity while performing their committee duties, but there are no other restrictions on their activities when not working on committee business.
Kerry has labeled the group running the ads, Swift Boat Veterans for Truth, a front for the Bush campaign. Kerry's campaign complained to the Federal Election Commission (news - web sites) that the veterans' group was illegally coordinating its attacks with the Bush campaign.
More than $100,000 of the group's initial funding came from Houston-area homebuilder Bob J. Perry, a longtime donor to Bush and other Texas Republicans. A Bush campaign lawyer also advised the Swift boat group and was dropped from the campaign staff after his role became public.
Bush and his campaign have denied any coordination with Swift Boat Veterans for Truth.
Cordier said he got involved with the group because of his continuing outrage over anti-Vietnam war activists like Kerry. He said he got in touch with one of its leaders, John O'Neill, who later commanded the same Swift boat Kerry had overseen.
Cordier said he doesn't remember his Vietnamese captors specifically mentioning Kerry but he does remember them playing a tape of an address by anti-war activist Jane Fonda.
Cordier and Galanti are longtime friends and prominent former Vietnam POWs with long-standing Republican ties. Cordier said he suggested Galanti contact O'Neill.
Galanti coordinated Arizona Sen. John McCain (news, bio, voting record)'s presidential campaign in Virginia four years ago and was a member of the same VA advisory panel when Bush's father was president. Cordier gave $2,000 to Texas Republicans in 2000 and 2001.
The anti-Kerry group's ads have accused Kerry of lying to get some of the five medals he won as a Swift boat commander in Vietnam.
Navy documents and other servicemen who witnessed the incidents contradict the group's claims, and the group has not offered any documentary proof of its claims that Kerry lied about his medals. Kerry himself has given differing accounts of some incidents, however, and his past claim to have been in Cambodia on Christmas 1968 is not substantiated by any documents so far.
Navy records also show most of the anti-Kerry group's members were not in Vietnam at the same time as Kerry. The group has not released a membership list but did criticize Kerry in a May letter signed by 238 members.
Only 101 names on the letter match names of officers or enlisted men on the rolls of Kerry's units in Vietnam when he was there, from November 1968 through March 1969.
Van Odell, an enlisted man in Kerry's unit and a member of the group, said Swift Boat Veterans for Truth never claimed to be exclusively made up of veterans who served with Kerry. Finding such vets is difficult because Kerry was only in Vietnam for about four months, Odell said.
"It's hard to be there when he was," Odell said. "He was in and out so fast."
Before volunteering for Swift boat duty on Vietnam's rivers, Kerry served about a year on a Navy frigate offshore in the Gulf of Tonkin.
At least 30 men on the list, including one who appears in an anti-Kerry ad, served in Kerry's former Swift boat unit a year after Kerry left Vietnam, the records show.
Shelton White appears in the group's first ad, which claims it is quoting those who served with Kerry. In the ad, White says "John Kerry betrayed the men and women he served with in Vietnam." Navy records show White served in Kerry's former unit, Coastal Division 11, from November 1969 to March 1970 — a full year after Kerry left.
Odell said White was referring to Kerry's anti-war activities after Kerry returned to the United States.
Swift Boat Veterans for Truth ad is available at: http://wid.ap.org/video/ads/040820swiftvets.rm
VA POW site: http://www.vba.va.gov/bln/21/Benefits/POW/index.htm
Advisory committee appointments are usually unpaid-a real plumb.
The whole point of this article is stupid. It is trying to tie the Swift Vets to Bush.
All vets are normally either Republican or Democrat. Should Bush have appointed only Democrats. Should Bush have known that the Swift Vets would be coming out with ads years later.
The OLD media is so stupid.
They are trying to claim that Bush is psychic now...
Like he know Kerry would get the nomination back then and was already working on smearing him.
This is ludicrous.
Didn't Bush give Kerry's Butt-boy Hurley a paying job?
The VA is an independent orgainization not tied to any political campaign. This is a stupid article.
Um, do these idiots realize this means that Galanti supported McCain over Bush for president? So how does that make him a Bush partisan?
Does anybody know anything more about the author? Cannot find anything when I google.
Unique spelling for last name KELLEY, same spelling as Kitty Kelley of slander fame.
Here ya go.. product of Kent State '91
http://www.unityjournalists.org/Contacts/Bios03/bios03.html
Matt Kelley (of chippewa descent)
Newsman
The Associated Press
Matt Kelley has covered the U.S. military and the war on terrorism from the Pentagon for The Associated Press since shortly after the terrorist attacks on Sept. 11, 2001. Before being transferred to the Pentagon, he was an investigative reporter on the AP's Special Assignment Team in Washington.
Kelley came to Washington in 1999 as a regional reporter for Arizona, New Mexico, Colorado and Utah. He was a statehouse and general assignment reporter in the AP bureau in Phoenix from 1997 to 1999. Kelley also worked in AP bureaus in Champaign, Ill.; Sioux Falls, S.D.; Montgomery, Ala.; and Chicago.
Kelley, who is of Chippewa descent, has been a member of the Native American Journalists Association since 1991 and has worked as a mentor for the college student newspaper project at several NAJA conventions and as a conference planner for the 1998 NAJA conference in Phoenix. He won the top NAJA feature writing for a 1999 article examining the legacy of abuse at American Indian boarding schools.
Other award-winning articles in Kelley's portfolio include an expose of brutality by Bureau of Indian Affairs police, a computer-aided analysis of gifts from lobbyists to Illinois? state lawmakers and an investigation of scholarships given as perks to friends and relatives of Illinois politicians.
Kelley was graduated in 1991 with a bachelor's degree in journalism from Kent State University.
This is the blogger who was trying to find information on Kelley. Since you found the information, I'd like it if you would e-mail him with info.
Thanks.
PrestoPundit@cox.net
http://www.hayekcenter.org/prestopundit/
I'm thinking Bush gave Max Clelland, the ex-Governor of Georgia, a job and he's campaigning hard for Kerry. Don't think it was the VVAW Hurley guy.
I think you are correct, I keep getting Kerry' butt-boys mixed up. Cleland was a senator.
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