Swift Boat Liars For Bush (The Yarn Unravels)

The connection between the Bush campaign and the Swift Boat Liars For Bush continues to come to light...

Attorney Works for Bush, Anti-Kerry Group
By SHARON THEIMER (AP)

WASHINGTON - A lawyer for President Bush's re-election campaign disclosed Tuesday that he has been providing legal advice for a veterans group that is challenging Democratic Sen. John Kerry's account of his Vietnam War service.

Benjamin Ginsberg's acknowledgment marks the second time in days that an individual associated with the Bush-Cheney campaign has been connected to the group Swift Boat Veterans for Truth, which Kerry accuses of being a front for the Republican incumbent's re-election effort.

The Bush campaign and the veterans' group say there is no coordination.

The group "came to me and said, 'We have a point of view we want to get into the First Amendment debate right now. There's a new law. It's very complicated. We want to comply with the law, will you keep us in the bounds of the law?'" Ginsberg said in an interview with The Associated Press. "I said yes, absolutely, as I would do for anyone."

Ginsberg said he never told the Bush campaign what he discussed with the group, or vice versa, and doesn't advise the group on ad strategies.

"They have legal questions and when they have legal questions I answer them," Ginsberg said. He said he had not yet decided whether to charge the Swift Boat Veterans a fee for his work.

Kerry's presidential campaign last week filed a complaint with the Federal Election Commission accusing the Bush campaign and the Swift Boat Veterans for Truth of illegally coordinating the group's ads. The ads allege Kerry has lied about his decorated Vietnam War service; the group's accounts in a television ad have been disputed by Navy records and veterans who served on Kerry's boat.

"It's another piece of the mounting evidence of the ties between the Bush campaign and this group," Kerry campaign spokesman Chad Clanton said of Ginsberg's admission. "The longer President Bush waits to specifically condemn this smear, the more it looks like his campaign is behind it."

On Saturday, retired Air Force Col. Ken Cordier resigned as a member of the Bush campaign's veterans' steering committee after it was learned that he appeared in the Swift Boat veterans' commercial.

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