From the article:
Senator Kerry has said that his medal certificates were reissued because he lost them (and his dog ate his homework, I suppose). Rewards are certified in one's permanent personnel record jacket. If you lose a medal, you can get a replacement medal if your records show the award. The only way awards would have to be reissued is if they were rescinded and deleted from your records. And this narrows the possibilities down to a dishonorable discharge or an undesirable discharge. As Mr. Lipscomb noted, "There is one odd coincidence that gives some weight to the possibility that Mr. Kerry was dishonorably discharged. … (W)hen a dishonorable discharge is issued, all pay benefits, and allowances, and all medals and honors are revoked as well. And five months after Mr. Kerry joined the U.S. Senate in 1985, on one single day, June 4, all of Mr. Kerry's medals were reissued." Military sources tell me that an undesirable discharge under other-than-honorable conditions would also result in a loss of benefits and awards. Kerry could have received a dishonorable discharge, but that would have required a court martial and a felony conviction that might be harder to conceal, so the undesirable discharge is more likely.
The experience of my thirty-plus years in the Navy, U.S. Air Force, and Air National Guard tells me that the late-issued honorable discharge was obviously a cover-up whitewash. Ditto for the re-issuance of Kerry's medals shortly after he became a member of the "ol' boys club" in the Senate.
One of the top dogs in that club, Sen. John Warner, has amnesia about "any representation" about Kerry receiving a less than honorable discharge, even though he was Nixon's Secretary of the Navy when Kerry delivered his diatribe against the Navy and other services in the Senate in April, 1971. In May of 1970, Kerry conferred with the Viet Cong in Paris, and in July of 1971, he demonstrated in Washington to sell their peace proposal – while he was in the Naval Reserve. This variety of amnesia is common among Republicans asked to stand up and testify to Democrat crimes and injustices (see the GOP Senators' "support" of the House impeachment prosecutors).
The Nixon/Ford presidency gave way to Democrat President Jimmy Carter in 1977, which tends to explain the six-year delay in getting the revised discharge. Mr. Lipscomb adds some insight:
"Mr. Carter's first act as president was a general amnesty for draft dodgers and other war protesters. Less than an hour after his inauguration on January 21, 1977, while still in the Capitol building, Mr. Carter signed Executive Order 4483 empowering it. By the time it became a directive from the Defense Department in March 1977 it had been expanded to include other offenders who may have had general, bad conduct, dishonorable discharges, and any other discharge or sentence with negative effect on military records. In those cases the directive outlined a procedure for appeal on a case by case basis before a board of officers. A satisfactory appeal would result in an improvement of discharge status or an honorable discharge."
A document on Kerry's website is a form letter from W. Graham Claytor, Carter's Secretary of the Navy, which grants his Honorable Discharge.
My thanks to BulletBobCo for the concept of this
pic and to Conspiracy Guy for the captions!
