New Group of Viet Vets in Anti-Kerry Ad Push
After the stunning success of anti-John Kerry ads produced by the group
Swift Boat Veterans for Truth, a separate group of Vietnam veterans is
planning to open a new front - in a move that could leave the Democratic
nominee sorry he ever mentioned Vietnam as a campaign issue.
Special Forces veteran Ted Sampley, co-founder with Mike Benge and Jerry
Kiley of Vietnam Veterans Against John Kerry, tells Ad Week magazine that
his group has launched a local spot buy targeting military family-rich areas
in North Carolina.
The ads started last week on Fox affiliates in the area, covering key
military installations at Camp LeJeune, Marine Corp Air Station Cherry Point
and Seymour Johnson AFB.
Sampley tells Ad Week he's currently negotiating further media buys that
will reach Fort Bragg and Pope AFB.
While VVAJK has been around for more than a year, the group's entry into the
Kerry ad wars is brand new and could showcase as never before the deep
resentment Vietnam veterans feel about Kerry's anti-war activities with the
group Vietnam Veterans Against the War.
Sampley's first ad covers information that's been hushed up by the
mainstream press: Kerry's participation in a 1971 VVAW meeting in Kansas
City where the assassination of several pro-war U.S. senators was plotted
and voted on.
The Kerry campaign at first denied that the top Democrat was present, but
was forced to retract the claim when the New York Sun unearthed FBI files
that placed him at the meeting. Kerry claimed he voted no on the plot and
then resigned from the group.
Sampley's 60-second spot blasts the White House hopeful for his leadership
role in the VVAW, calling it "one of America's most radical, pro-Communist,
anti-war groups" and accusing Kerry of having "marched in demonstrations
carrying the flags of the America's enemies, the Vietcong and the North
Vietnamese."
The spot also charges that Kerry "used the blood of U.S. servicemen, still
fighting on the battlefields of Vietnam, for his own political advancement."
In a twist that's likely to confound critics, Sampley's group has rejected
nonprofit status and is not operating as the kind of 527 group that both the
Bush and Kerry campaigns have condemned.
Instead, the veterans advocate says, his anti-Kerry ads are for-profit
advertising for his newspaper, U.S. Veteran Dispatch.
Monday, Sept. 6, 2004 11:37 a.m. EDT
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