Desperate to denigrate John Kerry's war record, Republicans have trotted
out a "nonpartisan" Navy Vietnam vet -- who was a protege of Nixon dirty
trickster Charles Colson and whose law firm is closely tied to the Bush
White House.

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By Joe Conason



April 23, 2004 | Houston attorney John E. O'Neill, the Navy veteran who
has emerged recently as a harsh and ubiquitous critic of John Kerry's
military service, tells reporters that he has never really been interested
in politics and isn't motivated by partisan interests. In the media, O'Neill
is often described simply as a Vietnam vet still enraged by the antiwar
speeches Kerry delivered more than 30 years ago. That was when O'Neill first
came to public attention as a clean-cut, pro-war protégé of the Nixon White
House's highest-ranking dirty trickster (aside from the late president
himself), Charles Colson.

Colson, who went to prison for Watergate crimes, saw O'Neill as a perfect
foil to Kerry, whom Nixon and his aides feared as a decorated, articulate
and reasonable opponent of the war and their regime. Indeed, O'Neill was
perfect -- a crewcut officer who had served on the same Navy swift boat that
Kerry had commanded, although their stints in the Mekong Delta didn't
overlap. In June 1971, Colson brought O'Neill up to Washington for an Oval
Office audience with Nixon. His impressions live on in a memo filed later:

"O'Neill went out charging like a tiger, has agreed that he will appear
anytime, anywhere that we program him and was last seen walking up West
Executive Avenue mumbling to himself that he had just been with the most
magnificent man he had ever met in his life."

Now O'Neill has emerged from those decades of silence, roaring denunciations
of the man who will become the Democratic nominee for president this summer.
"I saw some war heroes," he told CNN's Wolf Blitzer on Tuesday. "John Kerry
is not a war hero."

To establish his nonpartisan credentials, O'Neill assured the CNN anchor
that he was "never contacted" by the Bush-Cheney campaign. What he didn't
mention, however, is that his law firm boasts long-standing and powerful
connections with the Bush White House.

With an oil and litigation practice focused on the defense of major energy
and industrial firms, the dozen partners in Clements, O'Neill, Pierce,
Wilson & Fulkerson have clout that exceeds their firm's small size. Their
corporate clients include Exxon Mobil, General Electric, Reliant Energy,
Koch Industries and Eastman Kodak. More important, among the name partners
is Margaret Wilson, the former general counsel to George W. Bush during his
second term as Texas governor. (She succeeded Alberto Gonzales, who
currently serves as White House counsel.)

In 2001, Wilson went to Washington with the new president, who appointed her
deputy general counsel in the Department of Commerce. During her tenure as
Bush's counsel in Austin, she was implicated in the Service Corporation
International funeral home scandal. State government whistle-blower Eliza
May accused Wilson of participating in an effort to "intimidate" her from
pursuing an investigation of SCI, a major Bush campaign donor.

Among the firm's partners with close ties to Bush was "Tex" Lezar, who ran
for lieutenant governor on the Republican ticket with him in 1994, when Bush
won and Lezar lost. An indefatigable conservative activist and lawyer
sympathetic to the most extreme elements in Southern GOP circles, Lezar died
last January at the age of 55. Before joining the Clements firm, Lezar
served in the Reagan Justice Department, where he befriended Kenneth Starr,
whom he often defended to the press when Starr was pursuing the Clintons as
Whitewater independent counsel. In later years, Lezar held important
positions in the Federalist Society, Empower America, the Texas Public
Policy Foundation and various other right-wing organizations.

As for O'Neill, his Republican loyalties may well have been cemented in
1974. Three years after Colson first brought him to the White House to meet
with Nixon, who encouraged the young O'Neill to "get" Kerry and the
protesters in Vietnam Veterans Against the War, he launched his legal career
with a coveted clerkship in the United States Supreme Court. No doubt it was
mere coincidence that O'Neill clerked with William Rehnquist, the
controversial conservative who was Nixon's favorite justice and who went on
to be appointed chief justice by President Reagan.

Nixon is gone, but his political heirs possess the White House -- and no
doubt the disgraced politician would be pleased and proud that they are
harassing Kerry with the same zeal that first brought Karl Rove to the
attention of Watergate investigators. The young veteran he once showcased is
now 58 years old, but O'Neill seems just as eager to battle Nixon's old
enemies as he was back then.

The credibility of Vietnam veterans like O'Neill is crucial to Republican
efforts to denigrate Kerry's war record. Those efforts suffered a setback
yesterday when, after angry demands for disclosure from GOP chairman Ed
Gillespie, the Democrat posted hundreds of pages documenting his service and
decorations on his campaign Web site. Those pages from his Navy records show
that Kerry's superiors consistently rated him as an outstanding and
unusually talented officer. Those pages show that he volunteered for service
in Vietnam and earned a Bronze and a Silver Star for valorous conduct under
fire.

So far, at least, the attempts to smear Kerry have backfired. Looking over
the citations and reports, and particularly those incidents when Kerry
risked his life to protect his comrades, it is natural to contrast his
experience with the National Guard career of George W. Bush -- and to wonder
why veterans like O'Neill are not troubled by the difference.