Bush Lawyer Linked To 'Swift' Vets

Latest Example Of Ties Between Campaigns And 'Independent' Groups

(CBS/AP)  One of President Bush's election lawyers also advises a group running ads against Democratic rival John Kerry.

On Tuesday, Benjamin Ginsberg, a lawyer for Mr. Bush's re-election campaign, disclosed that he has been providing legal advice for a veterans group challenging Kerry's account of his Vietnam War service.

Ginsberg's acknowledgment marked the second time in days that someone associated with the Bush-Cheney campaign has been connected to Swift Boat Veterans for Truth, the group Kerry accuses of being a front for Mr. Bush's re-election effort.

At the same time, a Democratic Party attorney works for the group behind commercials that criticize Mr. Bush. One anti-Bush group has run television ads saying Mr. Bush shirked his duty in the Texas Air National Guard during the Vietnam War.

Welcome to politics under a new campaign finance law. In effect for the first time this election cycle, the law bans national party committees and federal candidates from raising or spending big donations known as soft money, and imposes tougher rules banning coordination between soft-money groups and parties or candidates.

But the law doesn't necessarily make it easier to prove who's involved with what on the campaign trail.

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

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 strategy. He said he had not yet decided whether to charge the Swift Boat Veterans for his work.

Ginsberg contends that by offering legal advice to both the Bush campaign and the Swift Boat group, he has done nothing different from other election lawyers, including attorneys for Kerry and the Democratic National Committee who have also advised soft-money groups. Representing campaigns, parties and outside groups simultaneously is legal and allowed under the Federal Election Commission coordination rules, he said.

In addition to Ginsberg, Democrats also see the Bush campaign tied to the Swift Boat vets through Bob Perry, a generous Republican contributor who has also funded the veterans' group.

Joe Sandler, a lawyer for the DNC and MoveOn.org, a group running anti-Bush ads, said there is nothing wrong with serving in both roles at once. Attorneys are ethically bound to maintain attorney-client confidentiality, and could lose their law licenses if they violate that, he said.

Larry Noble, head of the Center for Responsive Politics campaign watchdog group and a former FEC general counsel, said serving as a lawyer for both a campaign and a soft-money group isn't considered automatic evidence of coordination under commission rules. But that doesn't mean the FEC won't look at it, he said.

"I would think it's a relationship that may very well raise coordination concerns," Noble said. "I think this issue has been percolating."

Kerry's campaign has filed a complaint with the FEC accusing the Bush campaign and the Swift Boat Veterans for Truth of illegally coordinating the group's ads.

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

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.

The Navy task force overseeing Kerry's swift boat squadron in Vietnam reported that his group of boats came under enemy fire during a March 13, 1969, incident that has been highlighted by Kerry's critics.

The March 18, 1969, weekly report from Task Force 115, which was located by The Associated Press during a search of Navy archives, is the latest document to surface that supports Kerry's description of an event for which he won a Bronze Star and a third Purple Heart.

The Task Force report twice mentions the incident five days earlier and both times calls it "an enemy initiated firefight" that included automatic weapons fire and underwater mines used against a group of five boats that included Kerry's.

Task Force 115 was commanded at the time by retired Rear Adm. Roy Hoffmann, the founder of the group Swift Boat Veterans for Truth, which has been running ads challenging Kerry's account of the episode.

A member of the group, Larry Thurlow, said Tuesday he stood by his assertion that there was no enemy fire that day. Thurlow, the commander of another boat who also won a Bronze Star, said task force commanders probably relied on the initial report of the incident. Thurlow says Kerry wrote that report.

The document, part of thousands of pages of records housed at the Naval Historical Center, is one of several that say Kerry and other servicemen were shot at from the banks of the Bay Hap River on March 13, 1969.

Earlier this month, Swift Boat Veterans for Truth aired a television ad claiming Kerry lied about the circumstances surrounding his medals. Several members of the group who were aboard nearby boats that March 13 said in the ad and in affidavits that there was no enemy gunfire during the incident.

The anti-Kerry group has not produced any official Navy documents supporting that claim, however. The man Kerry rescued, Jim Rassmann, and the crew of Kerry's boat all say there was gunfire from both banks of the river at the time.