American Propaganda
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Case studies

Veterans on camera: the 2004 outside ads against Kerry's Navy medals and Bush's Guard duty

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What it said

Two men who wanted to be commander in chief had served during the Vietnam War in very different ways. John Kerry was a Navy officer in Vietnam and came home with a Silver Star, a Bronze Star, and three Purple Hearts. George W. Bush flew F-102 fighters in the Texas Air National Guard, transferred to an Alabama unit in 1972 to work on a Senate campaign, and was honorably discharged. In the summer of 2004 independent groups put veterans on television to attack each record.

The first and largest was "Any Questions?", which Swift Boat Veterans for Truth began airing on 5 August 2004 in Ohio, West Virginia, and Wisconsin. It opened with Kerry's running mate John Edwards inviting viewers to spend three minutes with the men who served with Kerry, then cut to men who said they had:

John Kerry has not been honest about what happened in Vietnam.

I know John Kerry is lying about his first Purple Heart because I treated him for that injury.

John Kerry lied to get his bronze star ... I know, I was there, I saw what happened.

"Any Questions?", Swift Boat Veterans for Truth, first aired 5 August 2004; the second line is Louis Letson's and the third Van O'Dell's, as recorded on the FRAME case study.

A second spot, "Sellout," announced on 20 August, used Kerry's 1971 Senate testimony about atrocities. On the other side, MoveOn.org aired an ad on 18 August saying Bush used his father to get into the National Guard and when the chips were down went missing. Texans for Truth, registered with the IRS on 31 August, ran "AWOL," in which former Alabama Guard officer Bob Mintz said:

that was my unit, and I don't remember seeing you there ... It would be impossible to be unseen in a unit of that size.

Bob Mintz, "AWOL," Texans for Truth, September 2004, as recorded on the FRAME case study.

That ad closed on George Bush has some explaining to do.

What the records showed

This is the part that cannot be balanced by splitting the difference, because the paper did not split evenly.

On Kerry, the documents contradicted specific claims. Larry Thurlow, an anti-Kerry veteran, swore Kerry was not under fire in the Bronze Star incident. Navy records reported by the Washington Post on 19 August showed that Thurlow's own Bronze Star recommendation said his actions took place under constant enemy small arms fire. Jim Rassmann, the Army officer Kerry pulled from the water that day and a Republican, wrote in the Wall Street Journal that the ad's makers were lying. Kerry's crewmates backed his account. When reporters pointed out that Kerry's treatment record was signed by "J. Carreon," Letson said Carreon was a corpsman who routinely wrote entries for him. FactCheck.org concluded the anti-Kerry veterans were contradicted by Kerry's former crewmen, and by Navy records. It also said "Sellout" left out that Kerry, in 1971, was repeating accounts others had given at a Detroit veterans' hearing.

On Bush, the records cut both ways. Payroll records the White House released in February 2004 show no paid service from 17 April to 27 October 1972, which supports part of the "AWOL" charge. The same records show paid days in late October and November 1972, and a dental exam dated 6 January 1973 at Dannelly Air National Guard Base in Alabama, which the ad did not mention. Mintz himself told CBS News, I cannot say he was not there. The records neither prove nor disprove his memory. They also do not support the ad's leap from "I don't remember" to "impossible to be unseen."

A related episode should not be filed under either ad. On 8 September CBS's 60 Minutes Wednesday aired memos attributed to Bush's late commander. An outside panel reported in January 2005 that CBS had failed to authenticate them, without saying for certain they were forged. CBS ousted four staff. That was a network's failure of verification, not a campaign ad, and it belongs in its own column.

Who paid, and who stood behind them

Both sides used groups organized under section 527 of the tax code, which file donor reports with the IRS but are not candidate committees. IRS filings compiled by ProPublica show about $27 million in contributions to the Swift Boat group, later renamed Swift Vets and POWs for Truth, over the cycle, including $4.45 million from Houston homebuilder Bob J. Perry. Texans for Truth, founded by Glenn W. Smith and linked to DriveDemocracy and MoveOn.org, had a known $100,000 gift from television producer Daniel O'Keefe; its full total was not found. What MoveOn spent on its Guard ad was not found either. On the numbers available, the effort against Kerry was much larger.

The candidates kept their distance in public while their allies did the work. At Senator John McCain's request, Kerry condemned the MoveOn ad. Bush said on 23 August that Senator Kerry served admirably, and he ought to be proud of his record, and asked for an end to all 527 ads. Kerry called the Swift Boat group a front for the Bush campaign. On 25 August Benjamin Ginsberg resigned as Bush-Cheney campaign counsel after it came out that he had also advised the Swift Boat group. Coordination beyond that is not shown in the record.

The speakers were not invented. The Swift Boat veterans had served on Swift boats, and Mintz was a real Guard officer. Calling either effort fake grassroots would overstate it. Big money and a shared lawyer are documented facts; fabricated personas are not.

The answer to the ad was more speech

Veterans criticizing a candidate's war record, and a donor paying to air it, is political speech at the center of what the First Amendment protects. That holds whether the speech is true, exaggerated, or contradicted by records. The answer to the Swift Boat ad was more speech: Rassmann's op-ed, the Post's records story, the crewmates, and the fact-checkers. The answer to "AWOL" was the payroll and dental records. Both answers came from the press and private citizens, not from a censor.

The government's own move came later. In December 2006 the Federal Election Commission fined the Swift Boat group's successor $299,500 and the MoveOn.org Voter Fund $150,000 for operating as unregistered political committees, and in November 2007 reached a conciliation agreement with Texans for Truth on the same theory. Those fines landed on both sides, which is the even-handedness one should ask of a regulator. A libertarian can still note the cost: the penalty was for failing to register as a political committee, not for anything false that was said, and it arrived two years after the votes were counted. Disclosure of who paid is a fair demand. Both groups had already filed donor reports with the IRS.

Its legacy

"Swiftboating" entered dictionaries. The American Heritage Dictionary defines it as the act of making exaggerated or unsubstantiated allegations to damage the credibility of a political candidate or other public figure. The word has stayed in use; NPR traced it to 2024, when Republicans criticized Tim Walz's National Guard record and some critics drew the comparison. The habit worth keeping is simple. Split a veteran's "I saw" from his "therefore." Ask for the citation, the payroll, the medical log. Read the 527's donor filing, not just its name. And treat a candidate's call to stop "all" outside ads as a statement about tactics, not about whether any one ad was true.

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