Businessman fights war with his checkbook 

3/5/03
By SCOTT HADLY 

Santa Barbara NEWS-PRESS STAFF WRITER


What he lacks in sophistication, James "Jimmy" Walter Jr. makes up with 
a big fat checkbook.

Wearing a red-white-and-blue tie with a picture of Martin Luther King 
on it, sandals and dark socks, the 55-year-old heir to a Florida-based 
home building company talked about spending $200,000 of his fortune 
running full-page newspaper ads crammed with sometimes rambling text 
accusing Secretary of State Colin Powell of lying to the United Nations 
concerning Iraq.

"Is it wacko to want to stop thousands of people from being killed in 
an unnecessary war?" asked Mr. Walter, 55, during an interview in the 
living room of his rented Riviera home. "There's no other way to get 
the word out."


The ads began running in February in the News-Press and other smaller 
newspapers.

Beginning today and for the next week, he'll be running ads in the 
Washington Times calling for the impeachment of Mr. Powell.

Last week he spent $125,000 to cover the cost of a single day's ad that 
ran in the New York Times; the ads in the News-Press cost him $20,000, 
he said.

Before running the ad in the New York Times, Mr. Walter said he had 
wanted to place it in the Los Angeles Times, but they balked.

"I finally switched to the New York Times. It was twice as expensive 
but it's my target audience -- the U.

N. is there," said Mr. Walter. A recovering drug addict who suffers 
from Tourette's syndrome, he paced excitedly around his living room as 
he described his work. 

Why go after Mr. Powell and not President Bush?

"As I've said before, if we can slay the knight we'll checkmate the 
king," he said. 

Driving around town with posters of the ad displayed on his BMW, he has 
been challenged to fights, flipped off and cursed at, Mr. Walter said. 
Posters of the ad on the wall in front of his house have been torn down 
by neighbors, and someone threw a huge rock through the windshield of 
his car.

"But the number of thumbs-up I've got exceed the number of thumbs 
down," said Mr. Walter, who dabbled in dozens of ventures in Florida 
that failed and came to Santa Barbara two years ago to make a fresh 
start. 

The son of the founder of Walter Industries, a Tampa-based company that 
built homes, Mr. Walter said he jumped into the political arena after a 
tough break-up with his former girlfriend.

Instead of falling into a depression he decided to take "positive 
action."

A self-described humanist, Christian and Buddhist, Mr. Walter said he 
is working on a novel and operates a nonprofit group called Walden 
Three. He spent about $3 million in the mid-90's running the Florida-
based Life Skills Foundation, which operated training programs to help 
prison inmates adjust to life after incarceration. 

He moved to Santa Barbara after attending a writing workshop in Lompoc 
and falling in love with the area. From his hilltop home, he pointed 
out the window at a sweeping view of the city, the harbor and the 
Pacific Ocean and said, "What's not to love."


He also left Florida, in part, because his family name is so well 
known.

"I came here for a fresh start," he said. "People don't know me here, 
for one. And my money doesn't impress anyone. There's plenty of people 
here that have a lot more than me."


In the strongly worded ads that run under the big red headline "Powell 
Lied" and now "Impeach Powell," Mr. Walter has cobbled together text 
from several news stories in an effort to show that Mr. Powell has 
misled the U.

N. and the American people.

In one instance he excerpted a quote from a member of the Islamic 
terrorist group, Ansar al-Islam, who said that the buildings Powell 
claimed were terrorist chemical and poisons factory were just a rundown 
slum of concrete buildings.

Asked why he would believe a member of an Islamic terrorist group over 
the comments of the U.S. secretary of state, Mr. Walter said the 
respected former four-star general has been misleading the public about 
the threats posed by Saddam Hussein since the first Gulf War.

Mr. Walter, and the newspapers which have run the ad, are protected 
from libel suits because Mr. Powell is a public official. In order for 
Mr. Powell to be able to sue he'd have to prove that the newspaper and 
Mr. Walter printed the information knowing that it was false.

Contacted by the News-Press this week, the U.S. State Department said 
it was unaware of the ad campaign and faxed a list of "Iraq Weapons 
Facts."


The list includes information from U.

N. Resolution 1441, which details some kinds of biological and chemical 
weapons Saddam Hussein's regime has yet to disclose, as well as efforts 
to conceal information related to those weapons and Iraq's attempts to 
develop nuclear arms. 

Mr. Walter believes that information is bunk and is saying so in a big 
way in his ad campaign.

Although he said Mr. Hussein is clearly a tyrant, Mr. Walter said the 
United States will be creating more terrorists by attacking him. He 
believes that any threat posed by Mr. Hussein can be contained by U.S. 
military might, much as the allies contained the Soviet Union during 
the Cold War.

In an interview with his hometown newspaper, the St. Petersburg Times, 
Mr. Walter said part of the motivation for running the ads was a sort 
of "late mid-life crisis."


The decision to go to war or not will be made within the next week, Mr. 
Walter said. So the ads will stop soon.

"After seven it all will be over one way or the other," he said.