MISSION UNACCOMPLISHED
So with the exception of seeing Sen. John Kerry’s
middling grades at Yale, what was achieved by his signing of the
SF-180 document?
If it was about releasing his military record, that wasn’t
achieved.
If it was about clarifying his reserve activities upon his
return from his short stint in Vietnam, that wasn’t achieved.
If it was to perhaps further obscure the truth about his service
and post-Vietnam activities, mission accomplished.
It is unclear exactly what was released by the Navy late Monday
to the Boston Globe. On its face it appears that aside
from the Yale transcript and some commendations, little new
appeared.
“I don’t know what everyone expected,” says a former Kerry
campaign staffer. “We said this was the complete file months ago.
The Senator pointedly requested that the grades not be included in
the documents released during the campaign.”
And there lies the rub. At no point has Kerry requested a full,
nonredacted release of his military record from the National
Personnel Record Center, which has custody of Kerry’s complete
record.
According to Steve Jones, a principal of Lyon Research, and a
respected researcher, who specializes in culling data at the
National Archives, the Library of Congress, and various military
and museum repositories across the country, Kerry’s full file could
contain a number of other documents not released on Monday, such as
documents that verify his status in the Reserves up to 1978.
But redirecting media and the public away from his full file
appears to have been Kerry’s plan all along, because he submitted
his SF-180 to the wrong entity.
“It doesn’t make sense that he is going through the Navy,” says
Jones. “Applying through the Navy gives this scenario the
appearance of a personnel shuffle. Kerry said he applied to the
Navy and the Boston Globe said they received his record
from the Navy and that makes no sense when the relevant records are
at the National Personnel Record Center, a part of the National
Archives. By going through the Navy Kerry makes it appear that he
is using the Navy to screen his file; he added a layer of
bureaucracy when all he needed to do was sign an authorization
allowing a third party to look at his record at the NPRC.”
What is the difference between the Navy and the NPRC?
The Navy, which created the documents to begin with, is legally
obligated to protect the privacy of the veteran. If, as many
conspiracy theorists have posited, negative material was expunged
from Kerry’s file, the Navy could most likely only include the
final version of a document.
For example, if an individual were to have a received a less
than honorable discharge, but then gained a full, honorable
discharge some years later, only the honorable discharge order
might appear in the Navy file, while both discharges might appear
in the individual’s file at the NPRC in St. Louis, Mo.
Jones, who has worked extensively at the NPRC and the National
Archives, says that were Kerry to sign an SF-180 and authorize a
third party full access to his NPRC records, more fodder would
likely be found. “There is no way to know what is in his file
unless an independent party looks at the file at the NPRC,” says
Jones.
But there is hope. The NRPC can open the file to the public ten
years after a famous individual dies.
As to what could possibly be in the full files, the former Kerry
staffer insists it’s time that Republicans and anti-Kerryites got a
life. “The man lost. He’s now had to admit that he was [crappier]
student than Bush and yet you keep hounding the man. Nothing will
ever satisfy you people. I guess you’re all going to go camp out
back down in Mena for Hillary’s 2008 run. Good luck with that.”
TRUTH SQUAD
Even Democrats were laughing about Sen. Hillary
Clinton’s speech at a fundraiser Monday for her
re-election campaign. On Tuesday, staffers for several U.S.
Senators, including fellow New Yorker Charles
Schumer, Sen. Dick Durbin, and Sen.
Barbara Boxer were forwarding to friends a
particularly ironic quote from Clinton, with messages that
essentially said, “If anyone should know, it’s the wife of Bill
Clinton”:
It’s the quote in which Hillary attacked the Bush White House in
these words: “I can tell you this: It’s very hard to stop people
who have no shame about what they’re doing…. It is very hard to
stop people who have never been acquainted with the truth.”
DEMOCRATIC WALLWEED
Judging by where Democratic National Committee chairman
Howard Dean has spent the last few days, he almost
certainly attempted to get invited to Sen. Hillary
Clinton’s and Sen. Harry Reid’s
fundraising events in Los Angeles. According to DNC sources, Dean
intentionally planned a West Coast swing around the dates Clinton
and Reid had circled for their events. On Sunday, Dean was in
Seattle, a quick shot down the Left Coast to Los Angeles, with
plans to fly to San Francisco for events Monday. Before Seattle,
Dean spent time with Democratic donors in Montana.
There is an increasing whiff of desperation permeating the
finance side of the DNC, what with Dean apparently feeling like the
nerd at a fraternity rush party scooted off to a room to hang with
the foreign kid and the nosepicker, and big-time DNC fundraisers
jumping ship like rats sensing something is amiss. On Monday it was
announced that three high-profile fundraising officials were
leaving Dean in the lurch: Bridget Siegel, finance
director for the New York metropolitan area (including parts of
Long Island, Westchester County, and Connecticut), Lori
Kreloff, finance director for California, and
Nancy Eiring, director of grassroots
fundraising.
Eiring is perhaps the least surprising to jump, given Dean’s
personal interest in grassroots donors, but Eiring was credited
with building up a first-class grassroots donor list over the past
two years.
Siegel is expected to play a high profile role in both the
Andrew Cuomo campaign for state attorney general, as well as some
role in a potential run by Hillary Clinton for the presidency.
Siegel was embarrassed after organizing a major donor event in
Manhattan earlier this year for Dean. But the response rate for the
event was less than 30 percent, and the event was moved from the
Jacob Javits Center to a more intimate hotel ballroom.
“Siegel did a great job for Dean, and instead, his people
complain about what was going on in New York,” says a Democratic
operative in New York. “None of the problems were her. It’s all
Dean, all the time.”
Kreloff is not believed to have had anything to do with the
snubs of Dean in the recent round of fundraisers in California,
though again, the events Dean attended in Seattle and San Francisco
were far smaller than the DNC had expected when they initially made
the plans for them.
