Patriot Project reveals Swift Liars paid $100K plus; liars threaten suit

[ProSense]

Patriot Project News
July 17, 2006

JOHN O'NEILL THREATENS PATRIOT PROJECT WITH LAWSUIT

Last week, in a blog post I wrote at the Huffington Post, I questioned the motives of some of the veterans involved in the Swift Boating of John Kerry in 2004. I have commented and written on many subjects at the Huffington Post since its inception and fully intend to keep doing so.

In this instance, I wondered whether the six figure payments made to people involved in the Swift Boat debacle could influence their behavior and memories.

In response, a site called the http://www.democracy-project.com/index.html">Democracy Project called John O'Neill directly and quickly posted his rebuttal. He said the Patriot Project was approaching "actionable libel."

This is quite an interesting response when someone is merely repeating information that is publicly available. For example, if you were to go to www.campaignmoney.com and search 527 groups and see the records for the Swift Boat Veterans And Pows For Truth, you can see all the donations to the group, and all the expenditures from the group.

Expenditures, I might add, that include an August 31, 2004 payment of $50,000 to John O'Neill for "reimburse media training."

Enough of that. Now's the time to introduce a remarkable, thorough and well-researched piece by Dave Johnson called http://www.patriotproject.com/2006/07/dave_johnson_th.php">"The Swift Boaters Are Back In The Water". It reveals how many of the consultants and media firms behind the Swift Boat attacks are ready to use the strategy of personal destruction again.

http://www.patriotproject.com

July 17, 2006

Dave Johnson: The Swiftboaters Are Back in the Water

Snip...

If you thought the tactic of "swiftboating" ended when John Kerry conceded the 2004 election, or perhaps when report after report and article after article after article refuted the "facts" or discredited those http://www.debbieschlussel.com/archives/2006/02/swift_boat_auth.html">involved, you were wrong.

Snip...

Let's start with some background. In 2004, the Swiftboat Veterans for Truth claimed that Kerry was "unfit to serve" because, among other accusations, his wounds were "self-inflicted," and that he was guilty of "withholding and/or distortion of material facts" about his service in Vietnam. The accusations were later proven to be categorically false, and the funding and political team behind the group was shown to be closely associated with the Bush/Cheney campaign. Media Matters' compilation of evidence includes a link to this graphic from the August 25, 2004 New York Times article, Bush Campaign's Top Outside Lawyer Advised Veterans Group (and the chart and article only begin to touch on the connections).




Snip...

And, finally, the Republicans have the money and organizational connections to overwhelmingly implement their strategy. According to Open Secrets, in 2004 the Swift Boat Veterans spent $22.5 million, Progress for America $35.6 million and the Bush campaign $345.2 million. This is on top of the huge amount of long-term money spent outside the election cycle by the network of conservative think tanks and business groups promoting conservative ideology and issues, repeating to the public in a thousand different ways and through a thousand different channels that conservatives are good and liberals are bad. (Have you heard that?)

Snip...

But a Knight Ridder story, Anti-Kerry Veterans' group now political machine with big budget3, reports that major Bush-connected Republican funders enabled the connections,

"O'Neill said he researched how to form and run (a 527) and got help from Political Compliance Strategies, a suburban Washington organization. Political Compliance Strategies is led by Susan Arceneaux, who was the treasurer of a political action committee associated with former House Majority Leader Dick Armey, a Texas Republican. (...) Texan Harlan Crow, a trustee of the George Bush Presidential Library Fund, which honors the current president's father, gave $25,000 (note, post-election records show the Crow donations as $100-125,000). Bob J. Perry, a major GOP donor in Texas and a friend of Karl Rove, Bush's top political adviser, gave $100,000 on June 30, according to a financial report. (Note, according to John O’Neill Perry ultimately gave a total of $7 million.)

Snip...

(And by the way, in that IRS information linked above, was that the same Admiral Roy Hoffman as this one?

"Finance reports filed with the U.S. Internal Revenue Service show Swift Boat contributed $100,000 on February 8, 2006 to an outfit called the Admiral Roy F. Hoffman Foundation in Fairfax, Virginia. In 2005, the group donated $10,000 to Hoffmans foundation, $100,000 to the Vietnam Veterans Legacy Foundation and spent $132,087 on meeting expenses at the Walt Disney World Resort in Florida.")

more...

http://www.patriotproject.com/2006/07/dave_johnson_th.php

[TayTay]

1. Excellent

Follow the money and see who was paid off to do this.

Thanks for posting this!

[blm]

2. No more swiftboating of Veterans and Democrats - support Patriot Project

.

[karynnj]

3. Wow, the Patriot's group is impressive

That is really easy to follow. That all this is public information from credible sources is wonderful. (Wouldn't you love to see a real debate between O'Neill and the lovely Judy Droz Keyes - she was fantastic speaking in Boston - she might make him look worse in 2006 than Kerry made him look in 1971.)

[blm]

4. Swifts won't sue - it opens them up to DISCOVERY phase, and they won't

want to get that far. The stupid idiots who believe their lies should try putting 2+2 together.

[alvarezadams]

5. You might also like...

PRWatch: http://www.prwatch.org/

And http://rightweb.irc-online.org/

[ProSense]

6. The lights go on and cockroaches dash for the dark!

Vietnam veterans drop suit over 2004 anti-Kerry film

By Maryclaire Dale, Associated Press Writer | July 17, 2006

PHILADELPHIA --Several Vietnam War veterans who sued over a documentary about Sen. John Kerry's anti-war activities have dropped their libel suits, leaving just one lawsuit pending over the controversial 2004 film.

Filmmaker Carlton Sherwood says the outcome shows the suits were frivolous complaints filed by Kerry operatives to try to block the film's release in the final weeks of the presidential race.

"We've always believed that Kerry controlled these lawsuits," Sherwood said Monday. He said the suits were dropped as depositions got under way. "We also felt we were getting a tad too close to the truth about Kerry."

The 42-minute film, "Stolen Honor: Wounds That Never Heal," charges that Kerry's actions as an anti-war activist after his tour in Vietnam harmed American POWs, and questions the veracity of the U.S. atrocities that some veterans reported.

more...

http://www.boston.com/news/local/massachusetts/articles/2006/07/17/vietnam_veterans_drop_suit_over_2004_anti_kerry_film/

[ProSense]

7. Now the liars are trying to trick people with a bogus url

But something else about the Democracy Project is that they evidently are close enough to have O'Neill's ear. This is what he sent to them via email today: “I guess this is how a weasel retracts and disappears into the shadows or to Cambodia for Christmas (as the case may be)."

UPDATE: Just got off the phone with James Boyce. What these liars at Democracy Project charge is that James Boyce's piece has been nuked from Huffington Post. WRONG. They didn't put in the full URL, so it just appears that way. Here's Boyce's piece. Now, go back to Democracy Project and check out http://www.huffingtonpost.com/james-boyce/how-much-is-that-admiral-_b_24">their bogus URL.


http://www.taylormarsh.com/archives_view.php?id=24261

[grannylib]

8. Great post - thanks for the info! Follow the money, indeed...good to see

this all laid out so clearly.
When the hell are people going to wake up and realize that if it's connected to a rePiglican, it's filth through and through???

[alvarezadams]

10. It's not just the GOP

It's the compendium of corporate special interests ranging from Murdoch to Scaife to the Olins and Bradleys, via the AEI, Heritage, Cato, Brookings, through the Benadors and ...

Today they work through the GOP and the DLC. Tomorrow?

As long as we're subjected to virtual indoctrination we're screwed.

[bleever]

9. Those are some expensive sock puppets.

They smell worse and worse as time goes by, and I applaud the people making this known.

[ProSense]

11. They're not just paid liars, they're nuts!

Wow. Freedom of speech. What a concept. Here's the original post right here. Still alive and kicking.

Next, the gentleman called me on The Patriot Project claim that John O'Neill stated that The Patriot Project was approaching "actionable libel."

I believed this to be the case because in a blog post on http://www.democracy-project.com that quoted John O'Neill, there was also a quote from "A very experienced attorney with deep knowledge of the details tells me that the defend John Kerry organization, Patriot Project, may be approaching "actionable libel." John O'Neill is a very experienced attorney with deep knowledge of the details, so I put two and two together. Evidently, I shouldn't have. (Math was never my strong suit.)

Today, the poster at the same site says that I put his words in John O'Neill's mouth. It took me a minute to grasp what he was saying. The well respected attorney is not John O'Neill but the person writing the post. Ergo, the writing of the post was talking to himself and told himself that the Patriot Project was approaching "libel."

Snip...

What about the $100,000 paid to Admiral Roy Hoffman's Foundation? It was reported that this was paid back to the Swift Boaters. Hmm. Perhaps there's another $100,000 payment/donation I don't know about. I was referring to this one in the IRS records from THIS YEAR.

more...

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/james-boyce/punkd-by-john-oneill-an_b_25294.html

[blm]

12. They know GOPs will pay for disinfo campaigns against their Dem enemies

and eventually good fortune will come their way. Outright bribes - sometimes. Usually a huge payday for some other purported task or a house sale.

[ProSense]

13. Liars! n/t

[KansDem]

14. Where's the "mainstream media" on all this?

After all, they were complicit in keeping the Swift Boat Liars in the forefront for weeks. What do they have to say for themselves now?

Are they going to say they didn't know? BWAHAHAHA-that'll surely expose them as lazy and incompetent!

[karynnj]

15. The fact is they knew in spring 2004

When this first came up Kerry put 140 pages of naval records on his web site. Senator John Warner, who was the Secretary of the Navy then said that Kerry's silver star was deserved then and he repeated that in his discussion on Iraq with Kerry last month.

If you looked at the records, you saw that the fitness reports spanned the nearly 4 years of his service. There were no unexplained gaps and they were uniformly glowing reports. They all praised his leadership, his ability to bond with his supordinants, his communication skills and his intelligence and creativity. Many were written by the SBVT.

At the point he left Vietnam, it was to be an aide to a rear admiral. In the pages of naval records, there are forms that requested he be given a higher security clearance needed for this job. If there were any problems in Vietnam, Kerry would not have been given either the clearance or a plum job which this was.

This really was the equivilent of you being asked to prove that you were a credible college student AFTER YOU PROVIDED a glowing transcript. The media NEVER asked the SBVT for any back up on their charges. Shouldn't there have been some paperwork generated between the officers? The existing official record showed an officer anyone who love to have. This defies belief.

Contrast this to TANG - where there were missing reports, there were red flags (Bush lost his clearance to fly). The media downplayed these real problems and ignored that Kerry's records looked in order, were great, had been checked by both the Nixon administration and the Boston Globe.

What this adds is simply proof that the Bush people were involved and that the Navy people were paid to say what they did. I agree that the media owes Kerry articles saying NOW that the facts aren't in question on his service and never were in spite of their disgusting 2004 behavior.