In article <XnsAE59C95D7CF07JF72A@0.0.0.1>
BMC Bush <bmcbush@navy.mil> wrote:
>
> 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.
>
> https://www.nysun.com/national/mystery-surrounds-kerrys-navy-
> discharge/3107/
>
> Originally published: http://www.nysun.com/article/3107

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