John Kerry can expect to hear a lot more from the Vietnam veterans who have launched an ad campaign attacking his military record. Polls suggest the flap is damaging Kerry's image as a decorated veteran: 77% of registered voters surveyed by TIME say they have seen the ads or heard about them. And while Navy records and eyewitnesses contradict nearly all of the group's claims, 35% (including 25% of swing voters) suspect there's some truth to the charges.
"We knew that we were going to stir the pot, but I had no idea we'd be this successful," says retired Rear Admiral Roy Hoffmann, Kerry's former commander and founder of Swift Boat Veterans for Truth (SBVT). By last Friday the group said its website alone had raised $2.5 million from 37,183 donors--money Hoffmann says he plans to use to pummel Kerry with ads right up to Election Day. Kerry campaign officials say their focus groups suggest a backlash is building, one they hope will pick up if they can link President Bush to SBVT.
Some lifelong Bush backers from Texas have provided big sums to SBVT, and last week Bush campaign counsel Benjamin Ginsberg resigned from the campaign after acknowledging that he had advised the group, though he insisted he had done nothing illegal. Now it turns out that retired Rear Admiral and swift-boat veteran William Schachte, who claimed the wound that won Kerry his first Purple Heart was self-inflicted, is counsel at the same law firm as David Norcross, chairman of this week's Republican National Convention. Norcross tells TIME he knew nothing about Schachte's claim. "There's no connection whatsoever," says Bush campaign spokesman Steve Schmidt, accusing the Democrats of hypocrisy, since lawyers helping Kerry have also been linked to anti-Bush 527s. Neither Schachte nor his spokeswoman returned calls for comment. A Kerry spokesman, meanwhile, says Schachte was not even on the boat that day and claims this is only the latest evidence of Bush campaign ties to SBVT.
--By Karen Tumulty and Timothy J. Burger