The world’s most boring cover-up continues
John O’Neill comments:
We called for Kerry to execute a form which would permit anyone to examine his full and unexpulgated military records at the Navy Department and the National Personnel Records Center. Instead he executed a form permitting his hometown paper to obtain the records currently at the Navy Department. The Navy Department previously indicated its records did not include various materials. This is hardly what we called for. If he did execute a complete release of all records we could then answer questions such as
(1)Did he ever receive orders to Cambodia or file any report of such a mission (whether at Christmas or otherwise);
(2) What was his discharge status between 1970 and 1978 (when he received a discharge) and was it affected by his meetings in 1970 and 1971 with the North Vietnamese?
(3)why did he receive much later citations for medals purportedly signed by Secretary Lehman who said he did not know of them;
(4) Are there Hostile Fire and Personnel Injured by Hostile Fire Reports for Kerry’s Dec. 1968 Purple Heart (when the officer in charge of the boat Admiral Schacte, the treating Surgeon Louis Letsos, and Kerry’s Division Commander deny there was hostile fire causing a scratch) awarded three months later under unknown circumstances.
The funniest part is that this fellow still thinks he can run for President in 2008 (HT: Powerline).
UPDATE
Powerline reader John Boyle comments further on what appears to be a clever shell game:
I want to give you another shot on this, just to be sure you understand. It is crystal clear obvious to me, yet very few people seem to get it…is it how I ‘splain it?
The SF 180 is actually a request for “Report of Separation” and all such documents are in the sole custody of the National Personnel Records Center, in St. Louis – not the branch in which the veteran served (in this case the Navy). And the character of Kerry’s “separation” (discharge) from the Navy is obviously the document(s) that are hot.
The SF 180 directs the National Personnel Records Center to release records, at the request of the documented veteran, and send them to whomever he designates (usually himself) – period. What is the Navy doing in the middle of this? The Navy must have been the designated recipient, on this specific SF 180 (not the Boston Globe, as Kranish explicitly admits). As a Federal entity, the Navy is then subject to Privacy Laws and any release by them had to be additionally waived by Kerry – or not. He could then easily not waive specific documents for release that he found damaging. What the Boston Globe got was the remainder of whatever the Navy received from NPRC, less what Kerry wished to withhold.
It may be that the Globe is unaware of this game; although I wrote about this at length last week to their reporter Joan Vennochi, who had written that Kerry’s 180 was in the pipeline, in order to alert the Globe to what was afoot.
A real shell game.
UPDATE II
Thomas Lipscomb in the Chicago Sun Times:
[T]he Globe story says Kerry sent it to the Navy Personnel Command, which is only a limited storage location. So it is not surprising that the Globe then notes that what they received was largely ‘duplication’ of records previously released. The Navy Personnel Command primarily stores a subset of service records rather than a person’s full military records. There is no doubt there are a lot of after-action records missing from what Kerry has released…..
Washington Post reporter Michael Dobbs has already found a discrepancy confirmed by the Department of the Navy of “at least a hundred pages” missing from those already disclosed by Kerry…..So how an SF 180 is filled out is as important as signing it. But no one in the press has yet claimed to have seen a copy of Kerry’s SF-180. When asked if she had a copy of Kerry’s SF 180, the Globe’s Managing Editor Mary Jane Wilkinson said, “I haven’t seen it, and I don’t know if anyone here has.”