As noted here a few days ago, the Swifties promised to break some big news about John Kerry's less than honorable discharge. I then tried to help spread the word that the announcement would come at a rally at the Capital. Well, it looks like the info the Swifties had was not as shocking as some of my readers had suggested it would be and they pulled the plug on the event. I know Beth is pretty pissed about this, but I would remind her that the early reports at the Swiftie board promised that a former Sec. of Navy would confirm speculation on Kerry's discharge and not a former JAG officer--which is what we got.

Still, this World Net Daily article by Earl Livey does a pretty decent job at piecing together the case that John Kerry was not honorably discharged from the Navy. The Sun also runs a story by Thomas Lipscomb, the man who had first speculated on Kerry's discharge on the 13th of Oct. Of course, John Kerry could clear all of this up if he would just authorize the DOD to release all of his records, something President Bush has done. From WND:

There is overwhelming evidence that the Navy gave John Kerry either a dishonorable discharge or an undesirable discharge – which is the equivalent of a dishonorable discharge without the felony conviction – and that, as a result of such discharge, he was stripped of all of his famous but questionable Navy awards and medals. And the kicker? The evidence is on his website! ...

What Mr. Lipscomb noticed (and I overlooked when I first read the document) was the date of the posted discharge, Feb. 16, 1978. This was six years after Kerry's six-year (1966-1972) commitment to the Navy ended. The anti-war detractor of our military did not re-up for another six-year term in 1972, so why the delay of his discharge? The only logical conclusion is that the 1978 honorable discharge was a second discharge given to replace an earlier undesirable discharge under less-than-honorable conditions, as unfit for military service.

A former officer in the Navy's Judge Advocate General Corps Reserve has built a case that Senator Kerry was other than honorably discharged from the Navy by 1975, The New York Sun has learned.

The "honorable discharge" on the Kerry Web site appears to be a Carter administration substitute for an original action expunged from Mr. Kerry's record, according to Mark Sullivan, who retired as a captain in the Navy's Judge Advocate General Corps Reserve in 2003 after 33 years of service as a judge advocate. Mr. Sullivan served in the office of the Secretary of the Navy between 1975 and 1977....

"Mr. Meehan may well be right and all Mr. Kerry's military records are on his Web site," Mr. Sullivan said. "Unlike en listed members, officers do not receive other than honorable, or dishonorable, certificates of discharge. To the contrary, the rule is that no certificate will be awarded to an officer separated wherever the circumstances prompting separation are not deemed consonant with traditional naval concepts of honor. The absence of an honorable discharge certificate for a separated naval officer is, therefore, a harsh and severe sanction and is, in fact, the treatment given officers who are dismissed after a general court-martial."....

It is hard to see why Mr. Kerry had to file an "extremely late" application since he lost the congressional race in Lowell, Mass., the first week of November 1972 and was basically doing nothing until he entered law school the following September of 1973.A member of the Harvard Law School admissions committee recalled that the real reason Mr. Kerry was not admitted was because the committee was concerned that because Mr. Kerry had received a less than honorable discharge they were not sure he could be admitted to any state bar. [There's more in the Sun article, read the whole thing]

the information I received yesterday was that the story would go beyond circumstantial evidence, and have actual, on-the-record testimony from at least one senior military official with knowledge of Kerry's discharge.

That didn't happen. But if you read to the bottom of Sullivan's piece, you can see one potential reason why:

"All officials with knowledge of what specifically happened in Mr. Kerry's case are muzzled by the Privacy Act of 1974.The act makes it a crime for federal employees to knowingly disclose personal information or records."

Posted by: Rusty at 08:31 AM | Comments (3) | Add Comment
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