Posted on 06/07/2005 7:54:01 AM PDT by Sir Gawain
The Boston Globe claims this morning that John Kerry has finally made his entire service record publicly available, at least to them. Michael Kranish, who wrote unquestioning articles about Kerry's service in Viet Name before and during the presidential campaign, proclaims that the release vindicates Kerry -- but even Kranish can't add up why Kerry kept the file secret:
Senator John F. Kerry, ending at least two years of refusal, has waived privacy restrictions and authorized the release of his full military and medical records.
The records, which the Navy Personnel Command provided to the Globe, are mostly a duplication of what Kerry released during his 2004 campaign for president, including numerous commendations from commanding officers who later criticized Kerry's Vietnam service.
The lack of any substantive new material about Kerry's military career in the documents raises the question of why Kerry refused for so long to waive privacy restrictions. An earlier release of the full record might have helped his campaign because it contains a number of reports lauding his service. Indeed, one of the first actions of the group that came to be known as Swift Boat Veterans for Truth was to call on Kerry to sign a privacy waiver and release all of his military and medical records.
But Kerry refused, even though it turned out that the records included commendations from some of the same veterans who were criticizing him.
On May 20, Kerry signed a document called Standard Form 180, authorizing the Navy to send an ''undeleted" copy of his ''complete military service record and medical record" to the Globe. Asked why he delayed signing the form for so long, Kerry said in a written response: ''The call for me to sign a 180 form came from the same partisan operatives who were lying about my record on a daily basis on the Web and in the right-wing media. Even though the media was discrediting them, they continued to lie. I felt strongly that we shouldn't kowtow to them and their attempts to drag their lies out."
Kranish then goes on to describe several commendations and memos of praise. Interestingly, though, Kranish remains silent on several points of controversy that the secrecy of the files helped stoke. Namely, Kranish doesn't mention anything about Kerry's discharge, and why it took him until 1978 to get it, while he quit serving in 1972. He doesn't mention any assignment or attachment to an intelligence unit that would corroborate his later explanations of Christmas In Cambodia or gun-running to the Khmer Rouge. Kranish also doesn't reveal anything about the timeline of events or command assignments that would answer whether he tried to steal part of Tedd Peck's service record in order to provide cover for David Alston to lie about their time together during the political campaign.
It did, however, contain Kerry's academic record from his four years in college. Despite the claims of his supporters, who seemed eager to paint Kerry as a towering intellect while castigating Bush as a moron, the two earned almost identical grades while at Yale:
During last year's presidential campaign, John F. Kerry was the candidate often portrayed as intellectual and complex, while George W. Bush was the populist who mangled his sentences.
But newly released records show that Bush and Kerry had a virtually identical grade average at Yale University four decades ago.
In 1999, The New Yorker published a transcript indicating that Bush had received a cumulative score of 77 for his first three years at Yale and a roughly similar average under a non-numerical rating system during his senior year.
Kerry, who graduated two years before Bush, got a cumulative 76 for his four years, according to a transcript that Kerry sent to the Navy when he was applying for officer training school. He received four D's in his freshman year out of 10 courses, but improved his average in later years.
In fact, the two men have so much in common, it's almost uncanny. Their grade points are almost identical, and both struggled through their freshman years before buckling down and working for their education. Both entered military service after graduating, and both went back afterwards for a higher degree (Bush - Harvard, MBA; Kerry - BC, law degree). Both appeared to be somewhat adrift when they did so.
The key difference, of course, is that Bush never pretended to be a great student at college, just as he never pretended to be a war hero. Nothing that Kranish reports relates to those issues. This release by Kerry still doesn't answer key questions about what he's claimed about his service and the conflicts in his narrative first exposed by the Swiftvets. Let Kerry make the entire record public, so we can all see the answers to these questions.
Michelle Malkin has a great roundup of links to this story.
UPDATE: Er, yes, a law degree is a higher degree. Mea stupida culpa. I've changed the post accordingly. Hat tip: Ted V.
If I read this story correctly, kerry signed a form 180 with limitations. All the records were released to one of his pet monkeys from the Boston Globe, the New York Times's leftmost subsidiary.
In other words, the records are still not public. They are still being carefully weeded out by his flunkies. The navy may have released all the records to his flunky, but his flunky has not released all the records to the public.
So this is meaningless.
This is actually a pretty plausible excuse for not releasing these records earlier.
it should be easy to prove... before the election the Navy said there were about 100 pages of his record withheld from public view, so... the NEW record should have about 100 pages MORE than the previous release, right???
Wrong headline and wrong question. The Navy turned over the file to the Globe based on an existing FOIA request and Kerry's signed SF-180. The second paragraph of the Globe article states exactly that.
The records, which the Navy Personnel Command provided to the Globe, are mostly a duplication of what Kerry released during his 2004 campaign for president, including numerous commendations from commanding officers who later criticized Kerry's Vietnam service.
I don't trust the Globe's, especially Kranish's, analysis. I want to see Kerry's signed SF-180 to see what restrictions or limitations were placed on the authorization. I want to see all the info supporting his first PH. Once the SBVFT get these records, we will have a far better analysis of what is in them. Until then, I take the Globe's analysis with a grain of salt.
"File sanitation takes time"
Exactly!!
How do you get into Harvard Law with a C average then?
When they told him 12 weeks, he said, DO you know who I am?
And they rushed the files right out.
Did he turn over whole file?
No.
(But, then, that HAD to be a rhetorical question.)
OMG...he looks just like Lurch..
Exactly.....I have a feeling that this stack of papers are what they had to begin with...covering once again for the traitor....sign the F180, Kerry!
Le F'in genius, rumored to have served in Viet Nam where he acquired mucho medals ...
Your observations are very astute.
I think in the Nixon White House, this was called a 'modified limited hang out.'
They released a bit of new info, even something that could be labeled 'bad,' but really isn't so much. Now, it's all old news.
I agree with your take that he signed the form to release the file to a known flunky, who would cull out anything damaging, rather than release the records to any who inquire. That's what Bush did.
I call, "Shenanigans!"
Pinz
Are Veteran Administration educational payments subject to FOIA?
If he didn't collect them at BC, he walked with bad paper.
No way would he have passed them up! His Daddy married the poor side of the Forbes family. (A mistake he noted and did not repeat)
Looks like Douglas Neidermeyer from Animal House.
Good point and question. Did Kerry attend BC using Veteran's benefits?
I don't know why people thought a less-than-honorable would have been so embarassing for Kerry. His story was that of a man who had to suffer because of his opposition to Nixon. He would have just said a Nixon flunkie would have given him the LTH.
'modified limited hang out.'
Yes, now you quote that, I remember it very well. It became a buzz in the press, kind of like gore's "no controlling legal authority."
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