SWIFT BOAT FRAUDSTERS SPONSORED BY SUN MYUNG MOON?

Swiftly Slanted, Part 4: No Questions AskedThe ConWeb lets obvious
errors in the latest Swifties' ad just slide right by unchallenged.
Plus: Is the Winter Soldier investigation discredited, or just the
ConWeb that declared without any evidence that it was?

By Terry Krepel
Posted 9/30/2004

Just how snuggled in bed are the ConWeb and Swift Boat Veterans for
Truth? The ConWeb will not point out obvious errors in the group's ads.

Case in point: the latest offering from the Kerry-bashing group,
alleging that John Kerry "secretly met with enemy leaders in Paris,"
then "accused American troops of committing war crimes on a daily
basis."
Related articles on ConWebWatch:

Swiftly Slanted
Swiftly Slanted, Part 2: Now They Tell Us
Swiftly Slanted, Part 3: Evolving to Half-Truths

A Forgery of Outrage

The problem is, both of those accusations are wrong. Yes, Kerry did go
to Paris and meet with Vietnamese leaders, but since he said he did that
during his 1971 public testimony before a Senate committee, it was
hardly a secret. And Kerry did not accuse American troops of "committing
war crimes on a daily basis;" he merely recounted during his Senate
testimony what soldiers had testified to during the Winter Soldier
investigation held earlier in 1971.

But you wouldn't know that from reading the ConWeb. WorldNetDaily
dutifully reported on the Swift Boat Vets' ad without question. A Sept.
22 article tries to obscure the fact that Kerry did no negotiating in
his meeting with Viet Cong leaders by stating that "in 1971, Kerry
called a press conference in Washington and urged President Nixon to
accept the seven-point surrender plan of Madame Nguyen Thi Binh, the
foreign minister of the Viet Cong's political entity.

" WND's source for this is, unsurprisingly, the Swifties' own book, the
factually challenged "Unfit for Command." (WND has never reported to its
readers the bigoted history of "Unfit for Command" co-author Jerome
Corsi.)

CNSNews.com was also uncritical of the ad, but its Sept. 22 story added
a new spin: a report of a second meeting between Kerry and " North
Vietnamese communists in Paris" in 1971, something that it had reported
on back in June. The source for this was a Los Angeles Times Magazine
article written in May by author Gerald Nicosia, citing newly released
FBI files.

But, according to Media Matters for America (full disclosure: my
employer), the only evidence for a second meeting in Paris is, as
Nicosia told FOX News Channel, a single newspaper clipping from the FBI
files in which Kerry mentioned during a speech about having "just
returned from Paris and a meeting with North Vietnamese."

It can be argued that he may have been referencing his trip the previous
year. And even if he wasn't, if there was indeed a second trip to Paris,
the fact that he was apparently discussing it in public speeches makes
it something other than the "secret" the Swifties claim it was.

CNS also ran an article back in May based on one man's claim that
Kerry's trip to Paris broke several U.S. laws. That man: Jerome "Jerry"
Corsi. Neither that article nor the September article on the Swifties'
ad that references the May article notes his connection with the Swift
Boat Vets or his history of bigotry; it merely refers to Corsi as an
"researcher and author."

NewsMax, surprisingly, didn't report on the Swift Boat Vets' new ad, but
an April 11 story pushes the line that Kerry's Paris meeting was
"secret," and that his discussion of it during his Senate testimony
occurred during "a little-noticed question and answer session."
* * *

It's an article of faith in the ConWeb: the 1971 Winter Soldier
investigation, which John Kerry cited in his Senate testimony as
evidence of atrocities committed in Vietnam, is discredited.

"More than a few Winter Soldier witnesses later turned out to be
complete impostors," claims a February NewsMax story.

Another February story at NewsMax states: " Later, some 'veterans' who
participated in Winter Soldier were exposed as impostors." Yet another
story states that "many of the accounts were later completely
discredited."

At CNSNews.com, Winter Soldier-bashing started early. A November 1998
"news analysis" from the Claremont Institute references "the
now-discredited 'Winter Soldier' investigation of 1970" that gets the
year it occurred wrong, as does a February 1999 opinion piece also
supplied by Claremont.

Closer to current events, an August commentary by Paul Weyrich claims:
"The only problem is that many who testified never served in Vietnam and
others who testified, while in Vietnam, were never near where they had
claimed they had committed the atrocities."

And a Sept. 10 article on a new anti-Kerry documentary claims that "The
new documentary also features clips of anti-war former Vietnam veterans
apparently making up and embellishing testimony." That documentary was
made by a man named Carlton Sherwood, last seen claiming that the Rev.
Sun Myung Moon is simply a victim of religious persecution.

At WorldNetDaily, an Aug. 26 story states that "some of those presenting
horror stories at the Jane Fonda-sponsored probe had misrepresented
themselves as Vietnam War vets – even using the names of other
veterans who did not attend the hearings. Several veterans provided
sworn affidavits that others spoke in their names."

The problem? The main evidence that the Winter Soldier investigation was
"discredited" is dubious at best. And the ConWeb offers virtually
nothing beyond the above excerpts to prove that it was.

The only place where there is any documentation whatsoever that anyone
who offered Winter Soldier testimony is in a 1978 book, "America in
Vietnam" by historian Guenter Lewy, which claims that a Naval
Investigative Service report into the Winter Soldier allegations had
discredited many of the witnesses and accounts, and in some cases
impostors had assumed the identities of real veterans who were not
present at the investigation.

Even WinterSoldier.com, the Free Republic-operated Kerry-bashing web
site, offers only the Lewy book as direct evidence that the Winter
Soldier investigation is discredited.

However, as Media Matters for America discovered, that Naval
Investigative Service report Lewy cites is nowhere to be found; Naval
Criminal Investigative Service public affairs specialist Paul O'Donnell
told (registration required) the Chicago Tribune: "We have not been able
to confirm the existence of this report, but it's also possible that
such records could have been destroyed or misplaced." And Lewy himself
admitted to The Baltimore Sun that "he does not recall if he saw a copy
of the naval investigative report or was briefed on its contents."

WinterSoldier.com also offers a sideways attempt to discredit the
investigation -- a long excerpt from a book by Kerry-basher B.G. Burkett
that attack on Mark Lane, a Winter Soldier organizer who, prior to the
investigation, wrote a book in which Vietnam veterans told stories of
atrocities and war crimes.

Some of the soldiers quoted in Lane's book turned out to be unreliable
or fraudulent, but they didn't testify at the Winter Soldier
investigation, something Burkett fails to note (but Media Matters did).
The Burkett excerpt also rehashes Lewy's allegations.

The ConWeb has tossed in a couple side issues to distract from this lack
of actual facts. CNSNews.com ran a story in March on another Winter
soldier organizer who lied about his military background. The story, by
Mark Morano, wrote that the investigation "culminated in a stage
production," then quotes Burkett quoting Lewy as evidence that the
investigation was discredited.

(The fact that this story appeared in March should put the lie to any
claim that Kerry opened himself up to criticism of his war record by
making a big deal of it at the Democratic National Convention.)
In early September, the ConWeb also jumped on the story that a veteran
who testified at Winter Soldier was recanting his testimony, adding the
juicy detail that Kerry coerced him into it.

Both WorldNetDaily and NewsMax featured it prominently, while
CNSNews.com strangely stayed away from it.

But one guy crawling out of the woodwork 33 years after the fact during
an election smacks more of partisanship than a blow to credibility.

Blogads @ ConWebWatch

Swiftly Slanted, Part 4: No
Questions AskedThe ConWeb lets obvious errors in the lat
est Swifties' ad just slide right by unchallenged.

Plus: Is the Winter Soldier inv
estigation discredited, or
just the ConWeb that declared without
any evidence that it was?By Terry KrepelPosted 9/30/2004Just how
snuggled in bed are the ConWeb and Swift Boat Veterans for Tr

This site Š Copyright 2000-04 Terry Krepel

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the above x-posted as a community service. better informed voters make
for more interesting elections.if you don't vote you let somone else
vote twice by default!
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