Swift Vets and POWs for Truth, formerly known as the Swift Boat Veterans for Truth (SBVT), was a political group of United States Swift boat veterans and former prisoners of war of the Vietnam War, formed during the 2004 presidential election campaign for the purpose of opposing John Kerry's candidacy for the presidency. The campaign inspired the widely used political pejorative "swiftboating", to describe an unfair or untrue political attack. The group disbanded and ceased operations on May 31, 2008.
The Fulbright Hearings refers to any of the set of U.S. Senate Foreign Relations Committee hearings on Vietnam conducted between 1966 and 1971. This article concerns those held by the U.S. Senate in 1971 relating to the Vietnam War. By April 1971, with at least seven pending legislative proposals concerning the war, the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, chaired by Democratic Senator J. William Fulbright of Arkansas began to hear testimony. The 22 hearings, titled "Legislative Proposals Relating to the War in Southeast Asia", were held on eleven different days between April 20, 1971, and May 27, 1971. The hearings included testimony and debate from several members of Congress, as well as from representatives of interested pro-war and anti-war organizations.
Rear Admiral Roy F. "Latch" Hoffmann, U.S. Navy (retired) (1925-2022) was Chairman of the former Swift Boat Veterans for Truth, established May 4, 2004, in opposition to John Kerry's candidacy for U.S. President, and which disbanded on May 31, 2008. As a naval officer, he patrolled the Mekong Delta on swift boats during the Vietnam War.
Stolen Honor is a 45-minute anti-John Kerry video documentary that was released during the September 2004 election season. It features interviews with a number of American men who contend they were prisoners of war in North Vietnam and suffered increased maltreatment while prisoners as a direct result of Kerry's Fulbright Hearing testimony in April 1971. The subtitle of the film is Wounds That Never Heal; on the production company's website the complete title is given instead as Stolen Honor: John Kerry's Record of Betrayal. Its name was based on the book Stolen Valor: How the Vietnam Generation Was Robbed of Its Heroes and Its History by B.G. Burkett and Glenna Whitley.
During John Kerry's candidacy in the 2004 U.S. presidential campaign, a political issue that gained widespread public attention was Kerry's Vietnam War record. In television advertisements and a book called Unfit for Command, co-authored by John O'Neill and Jerome Corsi, the Swift Boat Veterans for Truth (SBVT), a 527 group later known as the Swift Vets and POWs for Truth, questioned details of his military service record and circumstances relating to the awarding of his combat medals. Their campaign against Kerry's presidential bid received widespread publicity, but was later discredited and gave rise to the neologism "swiftboating", to describe an unfair or untrue political attack. Defenders of Kerry's service record, including former crewmates, stated that allegations made by SBVT were false.
Scott Camil is an American political activist. He first gained prominence as an opponent of the Vietnam War, as a witness in the Winter Soldier Investigation and a member of Vietnam Veterans Against the War.
The New Soldier was published as both a hard and soft cover book in October, 1971, by Vietnam Veterans Against the War. Principally a photographic essay accompanied by text, the work was edited by David Thorne and George Butler, with a section written by John Kerry. The work includes photographs captured by many photographers across five days in April, 1971.
George Tyssen Butler was a British filmmaker and photographer, and a pioneer of the theatrical documentary. Some of his most popular films include Pumping Iron (1977), which introduced a wider audience to Arnold Schwarzenegger, The Endurance films, retelling Sir Ernest Shackleton's saga of Antarctic survival, and Going Upriver: The Long War of John Kerry (2004), about his friend John Kerry's leadership in the peace movement.
Celsius 41.11 is a 2004 political documentary film inspired by, and partially in response to Michael Moore's film Fahrenheit 9/11. The title was chosen because, according to the makers of the movie, 41.11 °C is "The Temperature at Which the Brain Begins to Die", which is the film's tag-line.
America in Vietnam is a book by Guenter Lewy about America's role in the Vietnam War. The book is highly influential although it has remained controversial even decades after its publication. Lewy contends that the US actions in Vietnam had been neither illegal nor immoral and that tales of American atrocities were greatly exaggerated in what he understands as a "veritable industry" of war crimes allegations.
The term swiftboating is a pejorative American neologism used to describe an unfair or untrue political attack. The term is derived from the name of the organization "Swift Boat Veterans for Truth" because of their widely publicized—and later discredited—political smear campaign against 2004 U.S. presidential candidate John Kerry. Since the 2004 election, the term has come to commonly refer to a political attack that is dishonest, personal, and unfair.
The "Winter Soldier Investigation" was a media event sponsored by the Vietnam Veterans Against the War (VVAW) from January 31, 1971, to February 2, 1971. It was intended to publicize war crimes and atrocities by the United States Armed Forces and their allies in the Vietnam War. The VVAW challenged the morality and conduct of the war by showing the direct relationship between military policies and war crimes in Vietnam. The three-day gathering of 109 veterans and 16 civilians took place in Detroit, Michigan. Discharged servicemen from each branch of the armed forces, as well as civilian contractors, medical personnel and academics, all gave testimony about war crimes they had committed or witnessed during the years 1963–1970.
Vietnam Veterans Against the War (VVAW) is an American tax-exempt non-profit organization and corporation founded in 1967 to oppose the United States policy and participation in the Vietnam War. VVAW is a national veterans' organization that campaigns for peace, justice, and the rights of all United States military veterans. It publishes a twice-yearly newsletter, The Veteran; this was earlier published more frequently as 1st Casualty (1971–1972) and then as Winter Soldier (1973–1975).
Douglas Brinkley is an American author, Katherine Tsanoff Brown Chair in Humanities, and professor of history at Rice University. Brinkley is a history commentator for CNN, Presidential Historian for the New York Historical Society, and a contributing editor to the magazine Vanity Fair. He is a public spokesperson on conservation issues. He joined the faculty of Rice University as a professor of history in 2007.
John Forbes Kerry is an American attorney, politician and diplomat currently serving as the first U.S. Special Presidential Envoy for Climate. A member of the Forbes family and the Democratic Party, he previously served as the 68th United States secretary of state from 2013 to 2017 in the administration of Barack Obama and represented Massachusetts in the United States Senate from 1985 to 2013. Kerry was the Democratic nominee for president of the United States in the 2004 election, losing to president George W. Bush.
Sir! No Sir! is a 2005 documentary by Displaced Films about the anti-war movement within the ranks of the United States Armed Forces during the Vietnam War. The film was produced, directed, and written by David Zeiger. The film had a theatrical run in 80 cities throughout the U.S. and Canada in 2006, and was broadcast worldwide on Sundance Channel, Discovery Channel, BBC, ARTE France, ABC Australia, SBC Spain, ZDF Germany, YLE Finland, RT, and several others.
The Senate Select Committee on POW/MIA Affairs was a special committee convened by the United States Senate during the George H. W. Bush administration to investigate the Vietnam War POW/MIA issue, that is, the fate of United States service personnel listed as missing in action during the Vietnam War. The committee was in existence from August 2, 1991 to January 2, 1993.
The Vietnam War is a 10-part American television documentary series about the Vietnam War written by Geoffrey C. Ward and directed by Ken Burns and Lynn Novick. The first episode premiered on PBS on September 17, 2017. The script is by Geoffrey Ward, and the series is narrated by Peter Coyote. This series is one of the few PBS series to carry a TV-MA rating.
The Greatest Beer Run Ever is a 2022 American biographical war comedy drama film directed and co-written by Peter Farrelly, based on the book of the same name by John "Chickie" Donohue and Joanna Molloy. The film stars Zac Efron and Russell Crowe, and follows the true story of Donohue, who as a young veteran sneaks into the Vietnam War to deliver some beer to his friends, who are serving their duty.
Jan Barry Crumb is an American poet, journalist, author, and activist. A Vietnam veteran and former army National Officer of Vietnam Veterans Against the War, he resigned from West Point in 1965 "to become a writer and peace activist".
