THE VETS ATTACK

Kerry himself was itching to hit back at the Swift Boat vets. He had been warned by a McCain aide two years earlier to watch out for the mudslingers on the Republican right. "They'll make it look like you fought for the Viet Cong," said the McCain aide, recalling the dirty tricks played on his own boss in the 2000 primaries. Kerry was furious at former senator Bob Dole, who had gone on TV to say that not all the Swift Boat veterans could be Republican liars. Kerry called his old Senate colleague (and fellow Purple Heart recipient). "You can't say this kind of stuff," Kerry lit into Dole, "and by the way, Bob, I bled from every one of my wounds." Dole blathered that Kerry was a great friend and that he admired him, but he didn't take back what he had said. ("He's an attack dog rehabbed as a statesman, and then he allows himself to be wheeled out for this," growled Shrum, in the midst of a fulmination about "the Big Lie.")

Kerry wanted to blister the Swift Boat vets in a speech he was scheduled to give to the Veterans of Foreign Wars on Aug. 18. "We need to get these guys," he said. But at the last minute his handlers on the road were ordered by headquarters in Washington to restrain the candidate. Cahill and Shrum were worried that Kerry would seem too bitter and angry, the way he had appeared when he sarcastically thanked "Good Morning America's" Charlie Gibson, back in April, for doing the Republicans' dirty work.

Kerry's running mate, John Edwards, also wanted to take a swipe at the Swifties. Edwards was hardly an attacker in the Dole (or Cheney) tradition of vice presidential hit men; his whole persona and appeal were based on sunny optimism. But as early as Aug. 5, when the Swifties were just getting traction, Edwards wanted to push back, hard. McCain had just told the Associated Press that the Swift Boat ads were "dishonest and dishonorable... the same kind of deal that was pulled on me." Edwards wanted to begin a speech, "I join with Senator McCain in calling on the president to condemn this dishonest and dishonorable ad." But Kerry headquarters said no. Stephanie Cutter, the boss of the Kerry communications shop, explained that the campaign didn't need to give the Swift Boat vets any more attention than they were already getting.

Edwards played along, but his aides were indignant. They warned the veep candidate that the story was already out of control and about to get worse. Historian Douglas Brinkley, author of a wartime biography of Kerry, cautioned that Kerry's diary included mention of a meeting with some North Vietnamese terrorists in Paris. Edwards was flabbergasted. "Let me get this straight," the senator said. "He met with terrorists? Oh, that's good."

Kerry was personally hurt by the Swift Boat attacks on his valor and honor. On his cell phone, he called Vanessa several times in August to vent about the Swift Boat vets. He would go on about the unfairness of it all. Vanessa could hear the anguish in his voice.

The pain reached deep into the Kerry family. His first wife, Julia Thorne, had been the forgotten woman of the campaign. Divorced from Kerry since 1988, she lived quietly in Montana, recovered from bouts of depression that had plagued her as the privately unhappy wife of a very public man. Thorne never gave interviews, but she was watching the campaign closely, talking to her daughters, Alexandra and Vanessa, at least once a day. She was very upset, she told Vanessa. She could remember how Kerry had suffered in Vietnam; she had seen the scars on his body, heard him cry out at night in his nightmares. She was so agitated about the unfairness of the Swift Boat assault that she told Vanessa she was ready to break her silence, to speak out and personally answer the Swift Boat charges. She changed her mind only when she was reassured that the campaign was about to start fighting back hard.