Twice in his life, in episodes more than 30 years apart, John O'Neill watched Democratic presidential nominee John Kerry on television and what he saw, he says, stirred him to angry action.
The first time was in 1971. As a young Vietnam veteran home from the very same Navy Swift boat that Kerry had commanded, O'Neill says, he was so outraged by Kerry's graphic Senate testimony against the war that he threw himself into the talkshow circuit to promote an opposing view. The second time was last February, when, he says, he looked up from a hospital bed to see Kerry on the campaign trail and decided he had to stop him from becoming president.
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"It was a moment for me like that [former president] John Kennedy deal," O'Neill said, comparing his reaction to his turbulent emotions after the Kennedy assassination. And as much as he venerated Kennedy, he despised Kerry.
"I felt strongly he would be a terrible commander-in-chief," he said.
That conviction, and not Republican machinations, explains his campaign against Kerry, he said in his law office on Friday. The campaign has included a book, television advertisements and a series of media appearances. As a leader of Swift Boat Veterans for Truth, O'Neill has become the most public face of an effort by angry fellow veterans to discredit Kerry, who enjoys equally vehement support from other war veterans who see him as a hero.
O'Neill was disdainful of President George W. Bush's comments on Thursday that he did not believe Kerry had lied about his war record.
"There's no indication that George Bush has read our book or made any study of it," O'Neill said. "He was not with us in Vietnam in our unit. He would definitely not have had firsthand knowledge of what we're talking about."
To many Democrats, O'Neill, 58, is little more than a Republican hit man. Last week the Kerry campaign filed a complaint with the Federal Elections Commission, accusing the Swift boat group of coordinating its activities with the Bush campaign, a charge that the Bush campaign has angrily denied. A top lawyer for Bush's campaign quit last week after disclosures that he had advised O'Neill's group.
But while enemies portray him as a one-dimensional partisan, O'Neill is a man of intriguing contradictions. He has extensive ties to prominent Texas Republicans, but he has told friends he considers Bush an "empty suit" who is unfit to lead the country and says he voted for Al Gore in 2000, and for Ross Perot in 1996 and 1992.
O'Neill is known in the Houston legal community for a near-photographic memory and an ability to master complex facts that have helped him win big trial judgments. Yet the book he co-wrote on Kerry, Unfit for Command, is riddled with inconsistencies and differences with the official record.
O'Neill's colleagues, including some who dislike him, agree on one thing: His crusade against Kerry is a personal one, the eruption of a grudge he has held for more than three decades. They say his attacks on Kerry are consistent with his approach to law and life, as a tenacious and aggressive litigator who rarely changes his mind once it is made up.
"He's very black-and-white," said Dan Hedges, a lawyer and former US attorney in Houston who has known O'Neill since they arrived at law school together 33 years ago, and counts him as a friend and former colleague.
After leaving the Navy in June 1971, O'Neill quickly emerged as a critic of the anti-war movement and drew the attention of President Richard Nixon, who invited him to the White House for a personal chat. O'Neill recalled on Friday that he had shocked Nixon by telling him he was a Democrat and had voted for Hubert Humphrey.
Two weeks later, the two young veterans had their celebrated debate on The Dick Cavett Show. On the videotape, rebroadcast repeatedly in recent months, O'Neill looks like an angry Boy Scout, his short hair slicked back, his white socks visible beneath a powder-blue suit.
"Mr. Kerry is the type of person who lives and survives only in the war weariness and fears of the American people," he says, glancing down occasionally at his notes.
A year later, O'Neill spoke at the Republican National Convention in support of Nixon. He does not recall having spoken with Nixon again after that time. And O'Neill said that he has never met George W. Bush.
O'Neill says he rarely thought about John Kerry over the three decades since their debate. It was not until February, he said, that he decided the time had come to take up arms again. At the time, he was in hospital recovering after donating one of his kidneys to his wife, Anne Bradley O'Neill, who has Wegener's disease, a form of lupus.
Reporters began calling his hospital room, he said. He was still very ill, but he began making calls to friends, and quickly discovered that a group of veterans was already making plans to attack Kerry. As soon as he was well enough to join them, he did. By that time, it was becoming clear that Kerry would be the Democratic nominee, and his face was everywhere on television, just as it had been back in 1971.
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