Salon/Conason: The Vietnam investor behind the "Swift Boat Vets" attack

[kskiska]

The group attacking Kerry for his antiwar record is backed by a wealthy veteran who's profiting from his business ties to the Communist regime.

May 14, 2004 | When the "Swift Boat Veterans for Truth" launched its campaign against John Kerry 10 days ago, leadership and guidance were provided by Republican activists and presidential friends from Texas -- notably Houston attorney John E. O'Neill and corporate media consultant Merrie Spaeth. Indeed, although the group made its debut at a press conference in Washington, it looked and sounded like a Texas GOP operation.

On closer inspection, the ostensibly nonpartisan "Swift Boat Vets" seem to have another pair of significant sponsors with deep and long-standing Republican connections in Missouri. Both are officers of Gannon International, a St. Louis conglomerate that does lots of overseas business in, of all places, the Socialist Republic of Vietnam.

Ties to Gannon can be traced via the Swift Boat Vets Web site (as an alert reader advised me last week). On April 14, the site was registered under the name of Lewis Waterman, Gannon's information technology manager, at 11301 Olive Boulevard in St. Louis, the firm's headquarters address. Although Waterman wouldn't discuss why he had set up the Web site, he didn't deny that his boss, Gannon president and CEO William Franke, had asked him to do so.

"The information about my client is confidential," said Waterman. He acknowledged knowing, however, that his boss Franke is a Navy veteran who served in Vietnam on swift boats. Gannon vice president Stephen Hayes, who oversees the company's office in Alexandria, Va., is likewise a swift boat veteran who first met Franke when they served together in the Mekong Delta.

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http://salon.com/opinion/conason/2004/05/14/gannon/index.html