Zeev's Turnips Talk Politics (ZTTP)

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Kerry's disrupter
Robert Novak (archive)

October 2, 2004

WASHINGTON -- The well-dressed disrupter at the recent premiere of “Stolen Honor,” a documentary film attacking John Kerry’s role as a Vietnam War protester, has been identified as a Kerry campaign and Democratic National Committee staffer who had served time for manslaughter in a fatal shooting.

Wayne F. Smith interrupted the question-and-answer session following the Sept. 9 showing in Washington, delivering a long speech assailing the film and defending Sen. Kerry. He did not identify himself, but he recently had joined the Kerry campaign’s veterans outreach operation. The campaign told this column Thursday night that Smith worked for the DNC. Although Smith had an extension and a voicemail box at the campaign Thursday afternoon, it was removed by Friday morning.

Old media accounts and "Stolen Valor," a 1998 book by Vietnam veteran B.G. Burkett, show that Smith, a Vietnam War medic, was sentenced to hard labor for being AWOL before his 1972 drug-related manslaughter conviction. Smith later obtained a college education and became executive director of the Justice Project, which attempts to use DNA evidence to exonerate unjustly convicted felons.