"If he was actually in Cambodia on Christmas Eve and Christmas Day, he should sue me. If, in fact, those other five [Swift] Boats, on March the 13, [1969], if they all fled like he did, instead of staying like he knows they did, he should sue me."

O'Neill continued, "If he didn't wound himself with a grenade, causing sort of a rice-fanny wound, and then reported it to the Navy as a water mine - if he didn't do that on March 13, he should sue me."

O'Neill issued the challenge after noting that Kerry's campaign has gone to extraordinary lengths to suppress the information in "Unfit for Command."

"On our first [Swiftvet] ad, he had two huge law firms send letters to every [TV] station, threatening to sue the stations themselves" if they ran the ad, the former Swift Boat commander told Crowley.

"The next thing he did was challenge the book's publisher, Regnery, indicating he would sue them if they continued printing the book," he added.

The best-selling author said that while Regnery declined to stop printing "Unfit," it offered to republish Kerry's 1971 book, "The New Soldier," which chronicles the top Democrat's anti-war protests with a group bankrolled by Jane Fonda.

Kerry has declined to have "The New Soldier" republished over the years and reportedly bought up most of the available copies in 1972, after his opponent in a congressional race used it to paint him as anti-American.

Editor's note: