by Jill Zuckman
Charleston, S.C. – The McCain campaign moved quickly this evening to stamp out an attempt by a group calling itself “Vietnam Veterans Against John McCain” to paint the Arizona senator as a “songbird” who “left behind” other prisoners of war in North Vietnam.
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Mailers were sent out to South Carolina newspaper editors with a caricature of McCain with puffed out cheeks and handwriting behind him that said “Elect me” and “POW for president.” Other words and phrases included: “An enormous crime,” “The POWS I helped leave behind,” and “collaborations.”
McCain’s campaign is on high alert in South Carolina, the scene of a smear campaign against the senator in 2000 when he was running against then-Texas Gov. George W. Bush. The campaign has put together a “truth squad” of well-known South Carolinians to denounce any and all untruths leveled against McCain this time around.
In 2004, a group calling itself Swift Boat Veterans for Truth managed to malign Sen. John Kerry’s war record in Vietnam, calling into question his honesty and integrity. Those attacks helped lead to Kerry’s defeat in the election against President Bush.
In a conference call with reporters, Orson Swindle, who shared a cell in the infamous Hanoi Hilton for over two years, attributed the mailer to “a few zealous conspiracy theory people” who still believe there are American prisoners of war left in North Vietnam.
“It’s very inappropriate in an election process and it’s a bit crazy, too,” said Swindle, a retired Marine aviator who was shot down while on his last mission and spent the next six years and four months as a prisoner of war. He said that he gets death threats from conspiracy sorts of groups a couple times a year.
“These two pieces of paper are a collection of half truths and misinformation and are simply done to destroy John McCain in the election Saturday,” said Swindle.
The group’s organizer, Jerry Kiley, who said he also is a Vietnam veteran, told the Associated Press that he has been trying for years to spread what he said is the truth about McCain’s record.
“John McCain has created this myth that he is a hero and he is not,” Kiley said in a telephone interview from his home in Garnerville, N.Y.
But South Carolina House Speaker Bobby Harrell called the tactic “absolutely despicable.”
And Attorney General Henry McMaster said he didn’t expect that the same sort of insidious, personal attacks against McCain would happen in 2008 the way they did in 2000.
“Some of these folks out there will do anything to make a point,” McMaster said. “This is totally unconscionable and the really harmful thing about it is that nothing in here is true. None of it is true.”
While in prison, McCain and his fellow prisoners all memorized each other’s names – often using a tap code system against the walls – to be sure that everyone was accounted for whenever they were released.