Tom Lipscomb sets the record straight
Thomas Lipscomb is Senior Fellow at the Heartland Institute and an investigative reporter who covered the questions regarding John Kerry’s military record for the Chicago Sun-Times and the New York Sun during the 2004 election. Tom has forwarded us a copy of his letter to the editor of the Wall Street Journal regarding the Swift Boat Vets in response to the January 31 column cited in the first sentence of his letter:
While outlining what he believed was “Hillary’s Smear Campaign” of his candidate for President, Barack Obama, former independent prosecutor Michael Zeldin engaged in a little smear campaign of his own.The story told by Lipscomb in this letter is told at greater length in a book that scrupulously documents the most dramatic story of the 2004 campaign. The book is To Set the Record Straight, by Scott Swett and Tim Ziegler. Jamie Glazov interviewed Swett about the book here for Frontpage earlier this week. Bruce Kesler reviewed the book here and Dennis Keohane here upon its publication this past December. Power Line figures in the book's account of the 2004 campaign with respect to Rathergate and our close encounter with the Minneapolis Star Tribune over our August 2004 op-ed columns on John Kerry's mythical "Christmas in Cambodia."“No one forgets and no one forgives in Washington. (Ask John Kerry if he has gotten over the Swift boat smear campaign)” states Zeldin in conclusion.
Leaving aside the established fact that John Kerry forgets a lot of things, even things “seared, seared” into his memory like his fairytale about “Christmas in Cambodia” one might ask Mr. Zeldin what “Swift boat smear campaign” he is talking about?
In an article ironically printed on the front page on Memorial Day 2006, Senator Kerry announced to a star-struck New York Times reporter, Kate Zernik, that he was going to go right out there and tell the truth about all these Swiftie allegations. He even announced he had a committee formed to support his investigation called the “Patriot Project.”
According to the New York Times, The Patriot Project "are compiling a dossier that they say will expose every one of the Swift boat group's charges as a lie and put to rest any question about Mr. Kerry's valor in combat.” The result? A year and a half later not a single Swift Boat Veterans for Truth “lie” has been refuted and no one has heard of the Patriot Project since.
A few months ago, billionaire Boone Pickens bet billionaire by marriage Kerry a million dollars if Kerry could disprove just one of the dastardly Swiftie allegations. Kerry eagerly rose to the challenge…. .The result? Nothing happened again.
Assuming Mr. Zeldin has some passing acquaintance with the rules of evidence, it would be nice if in the next op-ed he writes defending a political ally of his against a smear he manages not to indulge in a gratuitous smear without taking the trouble to make the slightest investigation of his own.
The Swift Boat Veterans for Truth have stood behind the allegations they made and have shown themselves prepared to defend them on numerous occasions under a barrage of emotional bathos and scant analysis for more than three years.
Isn’t the light beginning to dawn?
As Vanity Fair's acerbic columnist Michael Wolff said in the 3-minute 2-second trailer to a Kerry-sponsored (and Kerry-censored) documentary campaign film by respected producer Steve Rosenbaum, Inside the Bubble, the real problem with the Swift Boat claims was--- they were "largely true."
Thomas H. Lipscomb
Senior Fellow, Information Technology and Telecom
The Heartland Institute
New York
