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The latest from PowerLine....Thomas Lipscomb (JWR) supposedly working on it.

On the mixed-up files of John Kerry

Reader John Boyle writes:

I have been yelling since last year that the Navy does not have Kerry's records, nor does DoD.

The Navy has always been Kerry's hide-out. The Navy is covered by the Privacy Laws. You're a lawyer, right? The SF 180 is generically addressed to the National Personnel Records Center in St. Louis. These records are 30 to 40 years old. They are history! They do not stay at Navy Personnel Command forever.

It seems to me that all of Kerry's tortured rhetoric on this subject attests to the fact that he was having his records vetted, in spite of the public claim to openness. How to accomplish this? Tell the NPRC, on the SF 180, that the designated recipient of the records is to be a federal Agency (subject to the Privacy Laws) - the Navy!

Then, Kerry or his people get to vet the records at the Navy's offices, allow release of what they want by another required waiver separate from the SF 180, withhold what they don't want out there, and the Navy cannot comment on the process, their holdings - or their withholdings!

The trick is in whom he designated to receive the outflow from NPRC. Read the opening of Kranish's article again:"The records, which the Navy Personnel Command provided to the Globe..."

This is not rocket science, yet no one seems to understand what was done here.

Boyle followed up with the following message:

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.

We have it on good authority that ace reporter Thomas Lipscomb is working the story of the Globe and Kerry's records as well. Until Lipscomb's stories surface, we'll try mull over Boyle's explanations.