A front-page story in this morning's New York Sun by Thomas Lipscomb
points to a document indicating that John Kerry initially
received a less than honorable discharge from the U.S. Naval Reserves:
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.