Another shoe drops; and with it another nail is driven into shrub & company's mendacity burial box--made of knotty Texas yellow pine. Below is an article in the Washington Post reporting more of the details about the "Swift Boat Liar" TV villain found working inside the bush campaign. The campaign that has sworn six ways from Sunday that it had nothing to do with the infamous ads. Who will be next? How high up the re-election committee ladder will this go--Mr. Rove?
CRAWFORD, Tex., Aug. 21 -- The Bush campaign said late Saturday that it dismissed an adviser on veterans issues after learning that he is part of an independent group that has been running anti-Kerry ads.
The Bush campaign said Kenneth Cordier, who appears in a new advertisement to be aired by the anti-Kerry group, Swift Boat Veterans for Truth, will no longer serve in his voluntary position on Bush's veterans steering committee. A Bush spokesman said Cordier had not previously informed the campaign that he had been involved with the group, but the Kerry campaign said the matter provides evidence supporting its complaint to the Federal Election Commission alleging illegal cooperation between the campaign and the independent group.
"Col. Cordier did not inform the campaign of his involvement in the advertisement being run by a 527 organization," Bush campaign spokesman Steve Schmidt wrote in a statement, referring to the technical name for independent groups such as the Swift boat organization. Schmidt said Cordier "will no longer participate as a volunteer for Bush-Cheney '04."
Cordier's connection to the Bush campaign was made public yesterday by the Kerry campaign, which found that Cordier had been named on the Bush Web site earlier this month as a member of the veterans committee but that his name had subsequently been removed. A Bush aide said Cordier, who spent six years as a prisoner of war in Vietnam and was a Bush supporter in 2000, called the campaign to disclose his involvement on Friday and was told he could no longer serve as an adviser to the campaign. ...
Kerry campaign spokesman Chad Clanton said the Cordier matter added more weight to its complaint filed last week with the FEC. "This is another brick in the wall of evidence that the Bush campaign is behind this smear," he said. "No wonder the president won't condemn the ads."
Under law, political campaigns cannot coordinate with the 527 organizations, which are funded with unregulated "soft" money and have proved to be an enormous loophole in the new campaign-finance legislation. Bush aides have said there has been no coordination with the Swift boat group. "We've already said we weren't involved in any way in these ads," White House spokesman Scott McClellan said last week. "We've made that clear."
Yes, it's very clear, Mr. McClellan, very clear indeed.
