Navy Department review of Kerry's medals and alleged misconduct

Several readers have emailed me recently to point out Thomas Lipscomb's articles for the Chicago Sun-Times (Aug. 27, Aug. 28, Sep. 3) and Prof. Henry Holzer & Erika Holzer's FrontPageMag.com article, which raise questions about the multiple, nonidentical citations issued for Kerry's various medals and related matters.  Some of the citations include additional language puffing up the descriptions of Kerry's heroics, and the form DD214 displayed on Kerry's campaign website references a "Silver Star with Combat 'V'" — which is a nonsequitur, since this "Combat Distinguishing Device" for "valor" is never awarded as part of a Silver Star, which already requires combat "gallantry" anyway.  [Update: Dr. James Joyner of Outside the Beltway has more about this point and adds an example of a clerical screw-up on his own Bronze Star.]

I haven't previously blogged much about this subject, but I did, however, post briefly (for me) on August 19th about Judicial Watch's formal complaint and request for investigation to the Navy Department and the DoD.

Today, the indispensible Prof. Reynolds has posted on InstaPundit with a link to an Australian newspaper (reg. req'd) that reports:

The Pentagon has ordered an investigation into the awarding of Democratic presidential candidate John Kerry's five Vietnam War decorations.

The highly unusual inquiry is to be carried out by the Inspector-General's Office of the US Navy. Senator Kerry served as a Swift boat captain for four months in 1968, serving two tours of duty in Vietnam.

The good Professor muses that this may result in some "more serious vetting" of Kerry's combat record than that which the mainstream media — prodded reluctantly along by the SwiftVets, talk radio, and the blogosphere — has provided.

Alas, while I would that it were so, and hope that it will be so, I'm unconvinced that it yet is so.  As best I can determine, the Australian newspaper's story, and similar ones here in the states, are the result of Judicial Watch's own September 2 press release.  It, in turn, is based on a one-page September 1 letter from the DoD's Inspector General to Judicial Watch in response to its August 18th complaint.  The DoD-IG's letter does indeed state that he has a legal responsibility to "report suspected or alleged violations" of the Uniform Code of Military Justice to the "Secretary of the Military Department concerned or the Secretary of Defense," and that the DoD-IG has forwarded Judicial Watch's allegations to the Secretary of the Navy.  But when you get past the citations to statutes and regulations, this boils down to:  "We've received your complaint and we've sent it along to the people who look into such things."

I believe it would be a serious overstatement to suggest that the DoD-IG has made any sort of preliminary determinations about the Judicial Watch complaint — certainly nothing even remotely akin yet to a finding of "probable cause" to believe there has indeed been a UCMJ violation (as opposed to, for example, a clerical mistake by whoever wrote up Kerry's DD214).  As Lipscomb's September 3 article notes,

If the Department of the Navy determines after a review of documents that it is warranted, an investigator is assigned by the naval inspector general to examine the validity of the charges.

A spokesman for the Navy said that no investigator has been assigned at this time.

That certainly doesn't mean that an investigator won't be assigned in due course.  Although the wheel of justice grinds exceedingly fine, it's also noted for grinding exceedingly slow.  Perhaps the military version of the wheel of justice turns more quickly, but I frankly will not be surprised if this takes several more weeks to get to the next procedural step, and many more weeks beyond that to reach even preliminary conclusions with respect to such relatively simple questions as the propriety of the "Combat 'V.'"  The other allegations in Judicial Watch's complaint — which include, for example, Kerry's meeting(s) in Paris with representatives of the North Vietnamese government and Viet Cong while still a Naval Reserve officer — are vastly more complicated, both factually and legally, and would require the Navy Department or the DoD to go far afield of its own personnel and records to resolve.  And regardless of how slowly the wheel turns, expect the Kerry camp to loudly "question the timing" — especially if there's even a hint that the Bush administration has given the Navy Department even the gentlest of nudges.

Don't get me wrong (switching metaphors here) — this may be a slow fused bombshell, or even a cluster bomb, waiting to explode.  As Lipscomb pointed out in a September 2 op-ed for the New York Sun,

The chief admiral of the Navy, Jeremy Michael Boorda, committed suicide over questions raised about his right to wear a Combat V by Newsweek magazine in 1996. Boorda stated in his suicide note to his sailors that the questions raised about those he wore caused him to take his life. And that was only a Bronze Star, not the Navy’s third highest decoration.

At the time, Mr. Kerry told the Boston Globe that Boorda’s conduct was "sufficient to question [Boorda’s] leadership position.... If you wind up being less than what you’re pretending to be, there is a major confrontation with value and self-esteem and your sense of how others view you."

I'm not at all sure that the fuse will reach the shell, though, much before the November 2nd election, if by then.  And yes, it would be just swell if the mainstream media did its own digging on these subjects in the meantime.  But I'm not holding my breath.

Update (Sun Sep 5 @ 9:30pm):  The Holzers have a new article entitled "The 34-Year Old 'Typo'" which argues that Kerry's at fault for failing to correct the DD214 even if the "Combat 'V'" reference was just a clerical error.  I see their point, but in a target-rich environment for Kerry mistakes and exaggerations, this one doesn't particularly thrill me.

Also, commenter Norman Rogers graciously directed me to a London Telegraph story which quotes an unidentified Navy Department official as saying, "There's a feeling that it's time to deal with this thoroughly, once and for all."  This article is a longer version of the same piece by the same reporter that Prof. Reynolds linked from the Australian paper, however, and with the exception of this unattributed remark doesn't really add anything new.  I'm not quite ready to get excited yet about a British reporter quoting an unidentified Navy Department source about unidentified parties' "feelings."  But I'm willing to be proved wrong!