BY THOMAS LIPSCOMB - Special to the Sun
October 13, 2004
An official Navy document on Senator Kerry's campaign
Web site listed as Mr. Kerry's "Honorable Discharge
from the Reserves" opens a door on a well kept secret
about his military service.
The document is a form cover letter in the name of the
Carter administration's secretary of the Navy, W.
Graham Claytor. It describes Mr. Kerry's discharge as
being subsequent to the review of "a board of
officers." This in it self is unusual. There is
nothing about an ordinary honorable discharge action
in the Navy that requires a review by a board of
officers.
According to the secretary of the Navy's document, the
"authority of reference" this board was using in
considering Mr. Kerry's record was "Title 10, U.S.
Code Section 1162 and 1163. "This section refers to
the grounds for involuntary separation from the
service. What was being reviewed, then, was Mr.
Kerry's involuntary separation from the service. And
it couldn't have been an honorable discharge, or there
would have been no point in any review at all. The
review was likely held to improve Mr. Kerry's status
of discharge from a less than honorable discharge to
an honorable discharge.
A Kerry campaign spokesman, David Wade, was asked
whether Mr. Kerry had ever been a victim of an attempt
to deny him an honorable discharge. There has been no
response to that inquiry.
The document is dated February 16, 1978. But Mr.
Kerry's military commitment began with his six-year
enlistment contract with the Navy on February 18,
1966. His commitment should have terminated in 1972.
It is highly unlikely that either the man who at that
time was a Vietnam Veterans Against the War leader,
John Kerry, requested or the Navy accepted an
additional six year reserve commitment. And the
Claytor document indicates proceedings to reverse a
less than honorable discharge that took place sometime
prior to February 1978.
The most routine time for Mr. Kerry's discharge would
have been at the end of his six-year obligation, in
1972. But how was it most likely to have come about?
NBC's release this March of some of the Nixon White
House tapes about Mr. Kerry show a great deal of
interest in Mr. Kerry by Nixon and his executive
staff, including, perhaps most importantly, Nixon's
special counsel, Charles Colson. In a meeting the day
after Mr. Kerry's Senate testimony, April 23, 1971,
Mr. Colson attacks Mr. Kerry as a "complete
opportunist...We'll keep hitting him, Mr. President."
Mr. Colson was still on the case two months later,
according to a memo he wrote on June 15,1971, that was
brought to the surface by the Houston Chronicle.
"Let's destroy this young demagogue before he becomes
another Ralph Nader." Nixon had been a naval officer
in World War II. Mr. Colson was a former Marine
captain. Mr. Colson had been prodded to find "dirt" on
Mr. Kerry, but reported that he couldn't find any.
The Nixon administration ran FBI surveillance on Mr.
Kerry from September 1970 until August 1972. Finding
grounds for an other than honorable discharge,
however, for a leader of the Vietnam Veterans Against
the War, given his numerous activities while still a
reserve officer of the Navy, was easier than finding
"dirt."
For example, while America was still at war, Mr. Kerry
had met with the North Vietnamese and Viet Cong
delegation to the Paris Peace talks in May 1970 and
then held a demonstration in July 1971 in Washington
to try to get Congress to accept the enemy's seven
point peace proposal without a single change. Woodrow
Wilson threw Eugene Debs, a former presidential
candidate, in prison just for demonstrating for peace
negotiations with Germany during World War I. No court
overturned his imprisonment. He had to receive a
pardon from President Harding.
Mr. Colson refused to answer any questions about his
activities regarding Mr. Kerry during his time in the
Nixon White House. The secretary of the Navy at the
time during the Nixon presidency is the current
chairman of the Senate Armed Services Committee,
Senator Warner. A spokesman for the senator, John
Ullyot, said, "Senator Warner has no recollection that
would either confirm or challenge any representation
that Senator Kerry received a less than honorable
discharge."
The "board of officers" review reported in the Claytor
document is even more extraordinary because it came
about "by direction of the President." No normal
honorable discharge requires the direction of the
president. The president at that time was James
Carter. This adds another twist to the story of Mr.
Kerry's hidden military records.
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.
Mr. Kerry has repeatedly refused to sign Standard Form
180, which would allow the release of all his military
records. And some of his various spokesmen have
claimed that all his records are already posted on his
Web site. But the Washington Post already noted that
the Naval Personnel Office admitted that they were
still withholding about 100 pages of files.
If Mr. Kerry was the victim of a Nixon "enemies list"
hit, one might have expected him to wear it like a
badge of honor, like many others such as his friend
Daniel Ellsberg, who leaked the Pentagon Papers, CBS's
Daniel Schorr, or the actor Paul Newman, who had made
Mr. Colson's original list of 20 "enemies."
There are a number of categories of discharges besides
honorable. There are general discharges, medical
discharges, bad conduct discharges, as well as other
than honorable and dishonorable discharges. There is
one odd coincidence that gives some weight to the
possibility that Mr. Kerry was dishonorably
discharged. Mr. Kerry has claimed that he lost his
medal certificates and that is why he asked that they
be reissued. But when 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.
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