Retired Air Force Colonel Thomas M. McNish, M.D., a member of the anti-Kerry group Swift Vets and POWs for Truth who appears in the controversial anti-Kerry film Stolen Honor: Wounds that Never Heal, was a guest on FOX News Channel's The O'Reilly Factor on October 19. On the program, McNish repeated the false charge that during a 1970 trip to Paris, John Kerry “secretly and perhaps illegally met with the enemy [the North Vietnamese] and their negotiators to discuss their points of view and then [came] home to espouse their points of view.”

McNish's false claim has been made in several recent anti-Kerry Swift Vets and POWs for Truth TV ads. As Media Matters for America has noted, the purpose of Kerry's trip to Paris was not to formally participate in negotiations with Communist leaders, was not illegal, and was not a secret.

Kerry met with Nguyen Thi Binh, who was then foreign minister of the Provisional Revolutionary Government and a top negotiator at the peace talks. In his 1971 public testimony before the Senate, Kerry stated: “I have been to Paris. I have talked with both delegations at the peace talks, that is to say the Democratic Republic of Vietnam and the Provisional Revolutionary Government.” And as the Los Angeles Times reported on March 22, Kerry never supported formal meetings between North Vietnamese officials and American anti-war protesters: “Kerry recalled his opposition to VVAW [Vietnam Veterans Against the War] leaders meeting with North Vietnamese officials. 'I thought that would be disastrous to the credibility of the organization,' he said, 'to the people we were trying to convince about the war.'”

O'Reilly did not address McNish's false claims. As MMFA has noted, O'Reilly has boasted that his show offers the “fairest swift boat coverage in the country” but has agreed with or left unchallenged the inaccurate assertions of many anti-Kerry veterans who have appeared on his program.