by Robert Coram
What Churchill actually said on October 29, 1941, to students at the Harrow School was somewhat different. But Perot had already rewritten the Old Testament. Churchill was small potatoes.
WILLIAM O. Schism, one of the plaintiffs in the suit against the government, died on March 30, 2003. And by July, of the original thirteen CAG volunteers who worked in Day’s office, seven had died.
Now the only plaintiff was Reinlie. It was not widely known, but Reinlie had colon cancer and diabetes. If he died before the Supreme Court heard the case, the case might end.
But Reinlie was alive in June 2003 when the Supreme Court of the United States declined to hear the case. This meant that the decision of the Washington appellate court stood: it was regrettable that recruiters made promises to the “greatest generation,” but those were empty promises and Congress did not fund empty promises.
The irony, as many retirees noted, was that Chief Justice Rehnquist, who served only three years in the military, was being provided with free medical care at Walter Reed.
BUD Day decided to fight on. It was clear that President George W. Bush had forgotten his campaign promises and his speech about the retirees. Like Clinton before him, he was trying to cut costs at the expense of the retirees. But maybe Congress would use its powers to specifically fund the free medical care.
Bud Day and CAG were not finished.
19
One More Mission
BEFORE Day’s story can move to another part of the national stage, three bits of background are necessary.
First, the military invented the Internet, and military people are among the most Internet-savvy people on the planet. Many veterans and retirees stay in regular online touch with the members of their old units. Most active-duty military units have Web sites, and there are Web sites for every type of aircraft flown by military pilots, even the aircraft of Vietnam, Korea, and World War II. Many of these sites transcend interservice rivalries and, through various links, reach active-duty or retired members of every branch of the military.
Almost all of these sites are for members only. Webmasters rebuff attempts by outsiders to contact members of the network. Some Web sites, and messages sent through those sites, have enormous weight and credibility. At the top of that list is the NAM-POW Web site.
This military side of the Internet is parallel to the Internet that most people know; it is there but is neither visible nor accessible without proper credentials. And while it is impossible to quantify the number of people who can be reached through military-connected sites, the number is certainly in the hundreds of thousands.
The second bit of background concerns the military caste system. MOH recipients are at the top of the system. Many civilians believe the Medal of Honor is awarded for killing enemy soldiers. (Think Audie Murphy in World War II.) But in real life, the medal often is awarded for defying death in order to save a comrade: falling on a grenade to protect others or landing a helicopter under heavy fire to perform a rescue. That is why many MOH awards are posthumous. Most of the living recipients would have died but for a twist of fate.
POWs are up there pretty close to MOH recipients. Next in the military caste system are the DAV, the Disabled American Veterans. Many members are amputees or severely handicapped. You don’t get into this club unless you have left your blood and pieces of yourself on a battlefield.
If a man is in all three categories — an MOH recipient, a POW, and a member of the DAV — then he has really pushed his luck. He should have been dead many times over.
Bud Day is one of very few of these men still alive. To several million young active-duty officers and enlisted personnel, seeing these men and hearing them speak is not unlike having George Washington step from a painting and issue marching orders. When Bud Day sends an e-mail signed “Bud Day, MOH,” it is as close to holy writ as can be found.
Finally, and in light of what was about to take place, the most crucial bit of background information is to know something about military culture, particularly the inviolate concepts of honor and duty, of adhering to principle. (The overtly corrupt world where Congress, the military, and the defense industry come together, and the political world of generals, are obvious exceptions.)
If a civilian can’t get his arms around the simple fact that honor and patriotism and adherence to a code of conduct are the inviolate core of the military heart, then he will never begin to understand the men and women in uniform.
Now we can pick up Bud Day’s story.
IN July 2004, at the Democratic National Convention, Senator John Kerry became his party’s nominee for president of the United States. He began his acceptance speech by saluting and saying he was “reporting for duty.”
That salute was a big mistake.
Bud Day exploded in anger.
The next morning he called a friend and said, “You know, I thought the reason God saved my life so many times was so I could be in jail in Hanoi. Then, twenty years later, I thought God had saved my life so I could work to restore medical benefits to the retirees. But I was wrong. Now I really know why my life was spared. I have one more job, one more mission before I die.”
There was a pause as the friend thought through Day’s past and wondered what there was at his age that could galvanize him enough to sally forth into battle again. “What is it?”
“To do everything I can to keep that traitor John Kerry from being elected.”
And then Bud Day sat down at his computer and began firing off e-mails through the NAM-POW list and his own list of hundreds of names. To each one he added in the abbreviated system of POWs, “Pls fwrd to ur net.” Many recipients, proud that they were on Day’s mailing list, forwarded the message to those on their own e-mail lists. And those people did the same with their lists.
It is easy to say Day was motivated by party politics. After all, he had been an ardent Republican for more than thirty years. He had worked for Reagan and for Bush — father and son — and for McCain. On August 10, when President George W. Bush campaigned near Fort Walton Beach, Day met him at the airport rally and led the Pledge of Allegiance.
Later, after his speech, the president went to Day and said, “Bud, I thank you for your support.”
“It can be no other way,” Day replied.
But on the other side of the coin was a matter of principle.
When Kerry had saluted, the bitter memories had rushed in: Once again it was April 1971, and Kerry was testifying before the Senate Committee on Foreign Relations. All the newspaper and television reporting about the Vietnam War flooded back too, coverage that many Vietnam veterans believe is the longest-running hoax ever perpetrated on the American public. And here was the man they believed responsible. Many in the military community suddenly realized John Kerry could be elected commander in chief.
It was time for John Kerry to be held accountable.
It was time for a great wrong to be righted.
Night and day, dozens of military sites flashed impassioned messages across the Internet. No one could read the volume and sense the intensity of the e-mail traffic and not know something big was beginning.
What happened next, in the late summer and early fall of 2004, has never before happened in American politics. And today, the backstory of those tumultuous months remains either generally unknown or widely misunderstood.
In previous presidential elections, if the national media — television networks, major daily newspapers, and news magazines — ignored a story, there was no story. But the anti-Kerry movement surging through the Internet soon would make it embarrassingly clear to the traditional media that this no longer was the case. For the first time in the history of presidential campaigns, the traditional media faced off with the “new media” — the Internet. The agility of the new media, aided and abetted by talk radio and cable television, enabled it to own one of the most important stories of the year, a story that changed history. And because the traditional media believed they were the only media that matt
ered, they never realized they were roadkill until long after events had passed them by.
In early August, retired major general Patrick Brady, an MOH recipient, published an emotional and angry Op-Ed column in an obscure veterans’ newsletter in Missouri. Usually, maybe a hundred people would have seen the column. But in this instance someone scanned it, added his own comments, attached it to an e-mail list, and hit the “send” button.
The column talked of how Vietnam veterans had suffered more than any veterans of the past century. “What Kerry/Fonda and the media elite did to the Vietnam veteran and his family is deplorable,” General Brady wrote. He said even the men who died in Vietnam suffered because their families wondered if they were war criminals.
He said real heroes do not use their medals for political gain and that after Kerry had thrown away his medals, he then used the same medals as the basis for his political career. He added that Kerry’s medals were “unchallenged by mainstream media.” The column rocketed through the military network for days.
In the September 6 edition of the Army Times was a full-page ad paid for by Dexter Lehtinen, a former Army Ranger who had been wounded in Vietnam and who then came home to graduate first in his class at Stanford Law School. He later served as a Florida state senator and as U.S. attorney in Miami. His ad told how in 1971 he was wounded in Vietnam and awakened days later on a hospital ship, where he learned of Kerry’s congressional testimony. He said the wounds he suffered on the battlefield eventually healed, but the wounds inflicted by John Kerry continued to bring pain to him and to other Vietnam veterans. He said these wounds “go to the heart and soul. These wounds never go away.” Contents of the ad circulated widely through the military community on the Internet, again with numerous supportive comments.
In midmonth came a column by Barbara Stock on FrontPageMag.com that was widely circulated. “Revenge Is a Dish Best Served Cold” told how John Kerry’s salute and his “reporting for duty” had resurrected the anger of Vietnam veterans; how Kerry “had shredded their honor without a thought and climbed over the bodies of their fallen friends to launch a political career.”
The important thing here, the near universal sentiment in the military, is the deep sense of anger that Kerry’s salute evoked and how this time the military was going to hold him accountable.
One group, the highly vocal “Swift Boat Veterans for Truth,” or “Swifties,” as they came to be known, began putting ads on television that talked of Kerry’s service in Vietnam, the circumstances under which his medals were awarded, and the details of his discharge. Holy writ for the Swifties was a book published in May, Unfit for Command by John E. O’Neill and Jerome R. Corsi. After its publication, the Swifties asked Kerry to release his military records to the media, a standard and long-existing campaign practice. Kerry refused, never releasing the full details of his military record. (After the campaign he released part of the record to selected reporters.)
Kerry loyalists and the media declared the Swift Boat campaign underhanded and sleazy for wanting to go back thirty years into a candidate’s past. But while the media generally supported Kerry’s position that his military records were off-limits, George Bush’s National Guard records were a major media event. Bloggers and the military side of the Internet — along with the Boston Globe — months earlier had discredited the source for the anti-Bush stories. Nevertheless, CBS continued with a story, claiming Bush had used political connections not only to avoid being shipped to Vietnam but to avoid even showing up for his National Guard postings, and the network suffered great embarrassment when it aired spurious allegations. The self-inflicted wound resulted in the firing of a producer and the resignation of three senior executives, and was a factor in the retirement of CBS anchor Dan Rather. When it became known that the producer had given the source’s phone number to the Kerry campaign, it did little to improve the image of CBS — or the national media — in the military community.
The media’s refusal to examine Kerry’s military background with the same energy with which they examined Bush’s did something else: it reinforced the belief of veterans that television networks and major daily newspapers were liberal to the core, were biased, had little or no concerns about military interests, and rather than reporting the news were generating propaganda for John Kerry. And all this made those opposed to Kerry even more determined.
The Swifties, in large part because of Unfit for Command, continued to hammer Kerry’s military record. One of the authors, John E. O’Neill, was a Naval Academy graduate who took command of Kerry’s boat after Kerry’s four-month tour in Vietnam. O’Neill, who had attacked Kerry back in 1971 in a debate on The Dick Cavett Show, said, among other things, that Kerry lied about the circumstances under which his medals were awarded and did not deserve the medals.
The book was such a scathing denunciation of Kerry that Kerry loyalists threatened to sue bookstores that carried it. The controversy put the book on the New York Times bestseller list for five weeks and resulted in some 800,000 copies being sold. The national media savaged the book but were never able to disprove the allegations.
From a military standpoint, what the Swifties were doing was unprecedented in U.S. military history or in the history of presidential campaigns. It is an inviolate principle of the military that officers do not criticize fellow officers in public. But 253 Swifties, Kerry’s entire chain of command up to and including Rear Admiral Roy Hoffmann, commander of all Swift Boats in Vietnam, publicly opposed Kerry’s candidacy. They did not believe he was fit to be president.
The civilian equivalent of this would be if a governor announced he was running for president, and his chief of staff and everyone who worked for him or with him opposed his candidacy.
The widespread perception that Kerry had broad military support is simply wrong. His “band of brothers” was few in number.
The anti-Kerry buzz on the military side of the Internet began to move to talk radio and then to cable television.
After about a six-week delay, Kerry responded to the Swifties by questioning their patriotism and motives. He reminded people that he was a Vietnam veteran who wore a Silver Star and three Purple Hearts. He diverted the thrust of what the Swifties were saying by claiming they were part of the “Republican attack machine” and were guided by Karl Rove of President Bush’s staff and financed by Republican fat cats. The last point is certainly true. But no evidence points to the GOP or to Karl Rove.
Finally, John McCain publicly weighed in. McCain declared that the Swifties’ going after Kerry’s military records was “dishonest and dishonorable.” (He also said — and this was not widely reported — that Kerry’s 1971 testimony was fair game.) McCain was one of the few men in America who could have single-handedly stopped the Swift Boat Veterans. His comment carried enormous weight with the media and with much of America. But it engendered great anger in the military community. The Kerry campaign earlier had floated McCain’s name as a possible vice presidential candidate. Now it seemed McCain was demonstrating that for him the brotherhood of the Senate was stronger than the brotherhood of the military. And veterans believed he was splitting hairs by opposing opening Kerry’s military records and minimizing what to most veterans was the real issue — Kerry’s 1971 Senate testimony. Still, McCain’s statements, when coupled with the strength of Kerry’s response — and how widely it was reported — dispirited the Swifties. They thought they were dead in the water.
And John Kerry thought he was wounded. From August 9 until September 21 — forty-three days in the middle of a presidential campaign — Kerry did not hold a news conference. He knew reporters wanted to talk about the Swift Boat Veterans.
After McCain’s comment, Bud Day closed his office door and spent hours reading and rereading Kerry’s 1971 testimony. The testimony, to him, was the main issue. Then he made a very difficult decision to publicly oppose his old and dear friend. He called McCain and, in his words, “chewed his ass out.” Then he sat down and, on October 4, w
rote an e-mail saying that while he and McCain were friends, McCain was wrong and the Swift Boat Veterans were right. In the letter he compared Kerry to Benedict Arnold. He ended by saying, “John Kerry for president? Ridiculous. Unthinkable. Unbelievable. Outrageous.” He signed the letter “Col. Bud Day, MOH, POW, USMC, US Army, USAF” and hit the “send” button.
In the military community, Bud Day’s moral high ground is considerably above that staked out by John McCain. His e-mail about Kerry may be one of the most widely circulated e-mails in the history of the Internet. It simply would not stop. And suddenly the tide had turned.
OTHER things were happening in the background.
About the same time the Swifties first were planning their course of action, a retired journalist in Pennsylvania came to a turning point in his life. Carlton Sherwood, as a young man, had been a Marine Corps sniper at Con Thien, the remote outpost Bud Day was trying to reach during his escape. Sherwood came back home and went into journalism, and later had the unusual distinction of winning a Pulitzer Prize in 1980 as a newspaperman and a Peabody Award in 1982 as a television journalist. He knew a story when he saw one. But he had a serious heart problem and did not want to come out of retirement to get involved. He spent months trying to motivate his old friends in the media to do some research about Kerry. But they would not listen when he said they should look at the “John Kerry myth.”
Sherwood found that reporters and columnists, especially the older ones who had an institutional memory of Vietnam, were afraid of the story. Many of them had made their bones writing that the Vietnam War was an evil war in which it was wrong to serve. They did not want to write a story that would undermine the foundation of their careers. The Kerry mythology was a train that could not be turned around.