ANOTHER KERRY DISCHARGE
Before Memorial Day weekend, Sen. John Kerry sat
down with editors of his hometown newspaper, the Boston
Globe and announced that he had signed the form SF 180,
authorizing the Department of Defense to grant access to all his
military records. This, more than a year after he had claimed the
press and public had seen all there was to see from his military
record.
Only one problem: according to several sources who formerly
worked on the Kerry campaign, the senator expects that little to
nothing new will be in the files that are released. “He’s fairly
confident that there is nothing in there that would be considered
embarrassing or controversial,” says a former adviser of Kerry.
According to another former campaign staffer, there was talk
late in the campaign that Kerry and senior advisers had previously
filed a request for the documents from the Defense Department, and
had viewed the file that would be made public. “If he did, there
was nothing earthshaking, or else you would have seen people go
into defense mode,” says another former campaign staffer.
But why is Kerry — if he actually has gone ahead — signing SF
180 now? During the election cycle, the New York Sun was
the only newspaper of record to delve into Kerry’s odd military and
post-military career. The paper’s reporting -— which
included background quotes from a former Harvard Law School
administrator stating that Kerry’s application to the school may
have been scuttled due to issues surrounding his background and
military service — led many to believe that Kerry’s record would
be dynamite material. After all, how does a man who attended the
best private schools and Yale undergrad end up going to what was
then a mediocre Boston College law school?
Kerry has claimed that BC Law was not his choice. He’d lost his
run for political office in the fall of 1972, then learned his
then-wife Julia was pregnant, so Yale Law was out. He then claimed
that he never did apply to Harvard because he missed the submission
deadline.
But the New York Sun last November 1 reported a different
scenario:
Mr. Kerry has said, “I applied to Harvard, Boston
University, and Boston College. I was extremely late. Only BC would
entertain a late application.”
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.
Kerry campaign staff when presented with the N.Y. Sun
story last fall never addressed the issue directly, and some
believe the SF 180 document will answer a number of those
unanswered questions from the campaign.
“Our greatest fear as a campaign was that someone enterprising
enough would figure out a way to get to those files through other
sources and means and do to Kerry what we did to Bush’s National
Guard files,” says one of the former Kerry staffers. “But as time
went by, it became clear that there just wasn’t anything out there.
We were safe.”
But this time around, it may not be Republicans looking for dirt
about Kerry. Some Democrats with an eye to 2008 are interested in
seeing Kerry taken down a couple of notches, taking him out of play
for another run at the White House.
UPDATE (6/7/03,9:25 a.m.): Late
Thursday, the Boston Globe received a copy of Kerry’s
file.
However, sources familiar with the documents viewed by the
Boston Globe and other media outlets said today those
documents are not the complete file of Kerry’s military service,
and that further investigation is required.
A VICTORY FOR TOM DELAY
According to staffers at Americans United for Separation of Church
and State, their boss Rev. Barry Lynn requested a
speaking slot at the Campaign for America’s Future “Take Back
America” conference last week but was rejected. His organization
was allowed to set up a table on the concourse, but that was
it.
“They’re not letting Barry speak this year,” one disappointed
Americans United staffer said. When asked if Lynn would show up at
all during the conference, Lynn’s people said no, not even as an
ordinary participant. “That’s not his style,” one said.
This isn’t new apparently. Lynn hasn’t been given a spot in
previous years either.
On the other hand, left-wing evangelical Jim
Wallis, author of God’s Politics, was featured at
the event’s Friday sendoff and given a special book signing
period.
Interestingly, Americans United for Separation of Church and
State was listed in the conference program as simply “Americans
United,” dropping the “church and state” part of its name.
Clearly, even the left doesn’t want to appear
anti-religious.
