Some readers of HuffingtonPost.com have initiated a new wave of
harassing phone calls to Swift Boat veterans who questioned John
Kerry’s military record in the 2004 campaign — and the website’s
proprietors remained ignorant of it for days, despite repeated
complaints.
Last Saturday morning, HuffPost, Arianna Huffington’s year-old
online effort, linked to a story regarding the release of Navy personal
information. By Saturday afternoon, two registered “trusted”
HuffPost commenters posted the names and personal information of
more than a dozen Swift Boat veterans. “SatanLivesinUSA” wrote at
2:15 p.m., June 24, “SwiftBoatVets who need some Black Ops done on
them. I have some very good ideas I gleaned from ‘CIA BOOK of DIRTY
TRICKS’ Don’t get mad, get EVEN.” Minutes later, at 2:19 p.m.,
“YvonneMoorhead” repeatedly pasted SatanLivesinUSA’s comments on
that page and on another Huffington Post post. Elsewhere, in February, YvonneMoorhead had
posted, “F*** em, they died for the greater
Isreali [sic] goal of stealing more land by having its proxy
America invade Iraq and next Iran. They are not called Masters of
Deceit for nothing.” Aside from one or two complaints, fellow
commenters did not object to the posting of the information or the
threats.
Some of these men reported receiving harassing and threatening
phone calls over the weekend. At 2:30 a.m., Saturday, June 24,
Adrian Lonsdale said he received a call from an apparently drunk
man claiming to be another veteran, Van Odell. The caller said,
“Our lies are all over the Internet. We are in deep ****.”
After the contact information was posted on the Huffington Post,
the harassing calls increased in frequency. Saturday afternoon
Lonsdale received another call, “congratulating” him for “ruining
our country.” In the early hours of Sunday morning, Van Odell
received three calls, he told TAS, at 1:47 a.m., 1:48, and
1:50. A man calmly told him, “I want to know why you lied about
John Kerry… Traitors must die. We will get you. You can’t get
away with this.” Then his call descended into cursing, at which
point Odell said he hung up on him. Odell received another round of
calls around 3 p.m. Sunday afternoon. He has turned his phone off
so that his six-year-old grandson could not pick up the calls.
Though the men have contacted their local law enforcement
officials, they had difficulty addressing the harassment through
the Huffington Post. They told TAS that they repeatedly
emailed HuffPost at info@huffingtonpost.com,
beginning Sunday night. Odell’s son said that he and co-workers
flagged the comments as “abusive.”
The comments remained posted on the pages until Tuesday
afternoon, when TAS contacted Katharine Zaleski, HuffPost
news editor, via an unlisted telephone number. HuffPost promptly
removed the comments. (They can be seen here —
telephone numbers and street addresses have been blocked out by
TAS.) Asked about procedures to identify and remove
threatening comments, Zaleski issued a statement, “Thank you for
telling us. We were not aware since we receive over up to 10,000
comments a day. We are erasing them.” She added that the offending
commenters will be banned.
This incident is a repeat of similar tactics employed against
members of the Swift Boat Veterans for Truth during the 2004
election. The same list of names and contact information remains
posted on the blog “Democratic Veteran.” And
since John Kerry recently indicated that he intends to press the case for
his military records and against the Swift Boat veterans ahead of
the 2008 election, perhaps this is what the Swift Boat veterans can
look forward to. Van Odell hopes not. “It happened before during
the election,” he said yesterday. “I was hoping everyone would
realize the election was over. Evidently not.”
