Pensioners for Bush Hire Help

Republican consultants who played a key role in a Vietnam Swift Boat veterans group which helped sink John Kerry's attempt for the White House are now being recruited to take on President Bush's latest adversary, America's biggest pensioners' organisation.

The American Association of Retired People (AARP), which claims 35 million members, has adamantly opposed White House plans to privatise some federal pensions, an ambitious scheme Mr Bush has made a central plank of his second term, and it is now bracing for a counterattack.

Leading the charge is an organisation called USA Next, which presents itself as a free-market alternative to the AARP. It is hiring the same team of consultants who worked on the anti-Kerry campaign by Swift Boat Veterans for Truth, which did tangible damage to the Democratic senator's challenge last summer by questioning his Vietnam combat record.

Chris LaCivita, a Republican media consultant who helped script the Swift Boat commercials, has been hired by USA Next to help craft its strategy. It has also recruited the same company, Creative Response Concepts, to help its public relations effort, and is seeking to hire the same media production company.

USA Next's president, Charlie Jarvis, a former senior official in past Republican administrations, told The Guardian yesterday that he hired the consultants because he knew them personally and had worked with them before.

But he added that he was also impressed by their work during last year's presidential election.