Virginian, ex-POW speaks out in anti-Kerry ads

“John Kerry gave the enemy for free what I and many of my comrades in North Vietnam, in the prison camps, took torture to avoid saying.”

U.S. Navy Commander (Ret.) Paul Galanti flew 97 combat missions before being shot down and captured by the North Vietnamese in June 1966. He was a prisoner of war in North Vietnam for 2,432 days -- nearly seven years. Most of those years were spent in a 7-by-7 isolation cell.

He was featured on the cover of Newsweek when he returned home to Richmond a freed man in 1973. He was a Navy pilot and war hero, decorated with two Purple Hearts, two Legion of Merit medals, a Silver Star, a Bronze Star and several other honors.

Today, as one of the most prominent ex-POWs in Virginia and the country, he has appeared in two Swift Vets and POWs for Truth television ads, as well as in the documentary “Stolen Honor: Wounds that Never Heal.” He said he participated in these projects “to expose the truth” about presidential candidate John Kerry.

I spoke to him this week during a break between his interviews with several national news outlets and radio talk shows.

Cmdr. Paul Galanti first heard John Kerry’s 1971 Senate “testimony” about alleged war atrocities committed by U.S. troops when he was a POW in Vietnam and his captors played it over the public address system at the “Hanoi Hilton” prison camp. For years, the North Vietnamese tortured POWs to try to get them to admit they were war criminals and had razed villages and tortured and killed many innocent civilians -- crimes they never committed.

Much of that testimony is now discredited (even Kerry distances himself from it) and -- according to Galanti, veterans groups, and archive video footage of Kerry preparing for the testimony -- was made up by Kerry and his group, Vietnam Veterans Against the War.

In one of the Swift Vets TV ads, Galanti says, “John Kerry gave the enemy for free what I and many of my comrades in North Vietnam, in the prison camps, took torture to avoid saying. It demoralized us.”

Later in the ad, he states, “He dishonored his country and, more importantly, the people he served with. He just sold them out.”

He has called Kerry a traitor on national TV.

He believes that the presidential candidate may have been dishonorably discharged from the Navy, and that could be the reason he isn’t releasing all of his service records.

Several investigative journalists, such as Thomas Lipscomb of the New York Sun, have pointed out that only some of Kerry’s military records are posted on his campaign Web site.

“Something is really squirrelly about the documentation on his website,” Galanti said.

Journalists also point out a document that shows his discharge was reviewed by a "board of officers." According to experts, no such review should be necessary for an honorable discharge. The review was conducted under U.S. law that pertains to grounds for involuntary separation from military service.

The document was also dated February 1978, eight years after Kerry was discharged, and it was signed by President Carter’s secretary of the Navy. The significance is that Carter gave amnesty to all draft evaders and war protesters on his first day in office in 1977, and reversed many “less than honorable” discharges through review boards shortly thereafter.

Galanti has written an op-ed piece that is scheduled to appear in the Richmond Times-Dispatch this Sunday. It’s a letter to John Kerry, asking him to release his military service records, including his original discharge papers.

I asked Galanti if it was difficult to talk about his 7-year North Vietnamese imprisonment in TV ads and media interviews.

“I came out of the experience a better man, thinking that no matter what happens from now on, it’s all downhill from here.”

He has actually been talking about his experiences for years as a motivational speaker for business groups, schoolchildren and others.

His reaction now to Kerry’s 1971 Senate testimony about war atrocities allegedly committed by U.S. troops: “It makes me angry to hear that testimony again. He disgraced the uniform.”

I asked him if he has been threatened or lost friends over his outspoken views against the presidential candidate. He said he hasn’t, other than two phone calls and a few negative emails. “I’m too nice a guy” to get hate mail, he said.

He has been attacked by the Kerry camp, though. In 2003, the secretary of Veterans Affairs reappointed him to the Advisory Committee on Former POWs. The Kerry campaign alleged that appointment should have precluded his work with the Swift Vets ads, and was proof of his collusion with the Bush campaign, in violation of federal campaign regulations. He said the campaign was “grasping at straws” and they haven’t pursued it.

Do he and the Swift Vets and POWs have any plans if Kerry gets elected? He says none that he knows of, but he personally is planning on returning to retired life.

When I asked what he thought Kerry would do with the war on terror if he became president, Galanti answered, “Nobody knows what he would do. All those years in the U.S. Senate and he never demonstrated much leadership. I can only imagine that he will vacillate, compromise and fumble around, waiting to get direction from other nations.”

However, if Kerry loses and tries to run again in Massachusetts for the Senate, he jokingly said that he and other vets would get into several RVs, drive to Massachusetts, and work for his defeat. (He believes some vets will actually do it.)

“John Kerry is a self-serving egotist,” he said. “He lives the exact opposite of the motto ‘All for one, and one for all.’ ”

Galanti can’t be labeled a bitter George Bush partisan, though -- he ran Republican senator and fellow ex-POW John McCain’s presidential campaign in Virginia during the 2000 primaries (working against Bush), and he endorsed Democrat Gov. Mark Warner.

Why would a retired military officer come out so publicly to work against a presidential candidate, and risk condemnation, slurs and investigations into his personal life, just to help the Swift Vets get their message out?

“I’m not doing this for George Bush. I’m doing this because I want to save this country from John Kerry.”

In that one statement, his heroic spirit is still evident today, and is something that beatings, psychological torture, and seven years in captivity couldn’t destroy.

You can see the Swift Vet POW ads in which Galanti appears at swiftvets.com. He is in the “Why?” and “Sellout” ads.