McCain sends out his blogger to responds to "CrossGate" - in full damage control mode.

Posted at 5:08 PM on 8/18/2008 by Michael Goldfarb
Smears the Left Can Fight For

In the least credible and most vicious corner of the internet, liberal bloggers at the Daily Kos are accusing John McCain of plagiarizing from Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn. The story Solzhenitsyn told was of a prisoner who drew a cross in the dirt in a Soviet Gulag. McCain's story is of a guard who drew a cross in the dirt in a Vietnamese prisoner of war camp.

The only similarity between the two stories is a cross in the dirt, but it is hardly an unlikely coincidence that there were practicing Christians in both Russia and Vietnam, or that in the prisons of those two Communist countries the only crosses to be found were etched in the dirt, as easily disappeared as the Christians who drew them.

But those desperate to discredit Senator McCain's record will have to impugn his fellow prisoners as well. Orson Swindle, who was held as a prisoner of war along with McCain, tells the McCain Report that he heard this particular story from McCain "when we first moved in together." That was in the summer of 1971, Swindle said, though "time blurred" and he couldn't be sure. He said it was some time around then that the Vietnamese moved all "36 troublemakers" into the same quarters, where they "talked about everything under the sun."

It may be typical of the pro-Obama Dungeons & Dragons crowd to disparage a fellow countryman's memory of war from the comfort of mom's basement, but most Americans have the humility and gratitude to respect and learn from the memories of men who suffered on behalf of others. John McCain has often said he witnessed a thousand acts of bravery while he was imprisoned, and though not every one has been submitted into the public record, they are remembered by the men who were there (one such only recently reported by Karl Rove though it escaped mention in any of Senator McCain's books). But as Swindle said, this is a "desperate group of people trying to make something out of nothing."

http://www.johnmccain.com/McCainReport/Read.aspx?guid=181471d0-5456-4434-9f78-2f30ffc39459

Orson Swindle (Born March 8, 1937), a decorated Vietnam War POW, was a Commissioner of the Federal Trade Commission of the United States from December 18, 1997 to June 30, 2005. He had previously served as Assistant Secretary of Commerce during the Reagan Administration.

He previously served as State Director for the U.S. Department of Agriculture. In 1994 and in 1996 he was a Republican candidate for Congress in Hawaii's 1st Congressional District. In 1996 he held the incumbent, Democrat Neil Abercrombie, to 50% of the vote.

Swindle is a Senior Policy Advisor at the lobbying firm of Hunton & Williams in Washington, DC.<2> His specific charge is within the firm’s Center for Information Policy Leadership, which was founded to “develop innovative, pragmatic approaches to privacy and information security issues from a business-process perspective while respecting the privacy interests of individuals.” Their clients include American Express, Eli Lilly, GE, Microsoft, and Wal-Mart.

Swindle is also on the board of Citizens Against Government Waste (CAGW), an independent political advocacy group that seeks to eliminate waste, mismanagement, and inefficiency in the federal government. Throughout its history, CAGW has been accused of fronting lobbying efforts of corporations to give them the appearance of "grassroots" support.<3> In part, this is because CAGW has accepted donations from Phillip Morris, the Olin Foundation, the Bradley Foundation, Microsoft, Merrill-Lynch, and Exxon-Mobil. CAGW also has ties to convicted lobbyist Jack Abramoff.<4> While CAGW describes itself as non-partisan, it has endorsed John McCain<5> for president and donated $11,000 to his campaign or groups controlled by him.