Why/how is a Silver Star certificate/citation changed in this manner? As stated earlier on this thread, most of us, and especially veterans, have assumed that a military award/citation was written up for one time and one time only by a single authority. Are we mistaken? We are not dealing here with casual words but with carefully selected words that have meaning and ramifications.
The way the system worked when I was on active duty was that the award was submitted on a prescribed form and went through an approval process. The nominator usually wrote up a synopsis of the award (citation), which could fit on one page and be placed on a single page for display and framing purposes. The final approving authority could edit the citation, not usual, for various reasons. However, the citation should bear some resemblance to the actual write up. Hyland could have edited Zumwalt's citation, but I have no explanation as to why Lehman made the slight change to Hyland's. The Bronze Star nomination remained unchanged.
While we can quibble about the significance of the changes, I think we are missing the forrest for the trees. The big question is what are the circumstances surrounding Lehman signing these citations and did Kerry request replacement medals after stating that he never threw his away. Kerry has some 'splaining to do.