Roy Hoffman's Take On Kerry's Vietnam Service

[Editor's Note: This is only an excerpt from a much longer piece.]

"This is Latch."

That's how Roy Hoffmann opened the calls, with a name he hadn't used in 35 years, a name the man at the other end of the line last heard crackling over a radio receiver in Vietnam.

He called all the men who'd been under his command there, finding their names in old mimeographed records and photos once stored in his attic and now spread all over his second-floor office.

"Latch, remember me?" he would say, transporting them back to those days on the Swift boats, the patrols in the Mekong Delta or even the middle of a firefight, when"Latch" had a habit of checking in from headquarters on the radio.

They had become bus drivers and lawyers and cotton farmers, retired or heading in that direction. Some remembered him by other names, Red Rooster or Smiley or Mad Dog Hoffmann. All of them remembered him.

"Before that call I hadn't thought for 30 minutes about Vietnam in 30 years," says George Elliott, a retired naval officer tending his garden in Delaware.

Now here was Hoffmann, calling out of the blue, asking,"Have you read the book?" Just like that --"the book." And Elliott knew he must be talking about historian Douglas Brinkley's book"Tour of Duty," describing John Kerry's time as a Navy officer in Vietnam. It was about them, too, after all.

Did he think it was accurate, Hoffmann wanted to know. Did it do them justice?

The results of Hoffmann's one-man crusade are now infamous, this year's version of the campaign mudfight -- was Bill Clinton a draft dodger? did Dan Quayle buy drugs? -- one of those nasty stories that pop up in the political season, with bit players dredging up thin allegations about a candidate's past.

Nearly nine months later, the group Hoffmann founded -- Swift Boat Veterans for Truth -- has raised $7.5 million, hired a PR agent, and run those notorious television ads claiming Kerry lied about his heroism in Vietnam. The group has moved so far beyond Hoffmann's attic they're having trouble convincing people they are not shills for President Bush.

Hoffmann is an unlikely player for this high-stakes political game. He'll vote for Bush but doesn't much respect him -- calling him"impulsive," an insult from an admiral who always insisted on discipline. The closest Hoffmann ever came to being a political operative was once collecting signatures on his block for John McCain.