Plot thickens after checking records

Jug Burkett:

B. G. "Jug" Burkett is a fellow who has made a second career for himself investigating suspicious claims to medals. He was cited this morning in an article that got picked up by Drudge: "Plot thickens after checking records."

We'll come back to that. Because it's usual to accuse such persons of having ties to the Bush campaign, I went to see if Burkett has any such. I couldn't find any ties to the campaign itself, but he is a Texan, and he did serve on a committee on Vietnam veteran history that was chaired by George Bush. As a consequence, he can be said to have a personal tie to GWB.

On the other hand, the US military has awarded him its highest civilian decoration for his work on false medal claims. He laid these out in Stolen Valor, both a book and an ongoing project to expose people who falsely claim to be war heroes. The book also won the Colby prize for excellence, and has been positively reviewed by ABC's 20/20, and Reader's Digest.

Now that you know all that, you can evaluate Drudge's story better:

But according to a U.S. Navy spokesman, "Kerry's record is incorrect. The Navy has never issued a 'combat V' to anyone for a Silver Star."

Naval regulations do not allow for the use of a "combat V" for the Silver Star, the third-highest decoration the Navy awards. None of the other services has ever granted a Silver Star "combat V," either.

B.G. Burkett, a Vietnam veteran himself, received the highest award the Army gives to a civilian, the Distinguished Civilian Service Award, for his book Stolen Valor. Burkett pored through thousands of military service records, uncovering phony claims of awards and fake claims of military service. "I've run across several claims for Silver Stars with combat V's, but they were all in fake records," he said....

Kerry's Web site also lists two different citations for the Silver Star. One was issued by the commander in chief of the Pacific Command (CINCPAC), Adm. John Hyland. The other, issued by Secretary of the Navy John Lehman during the Reagan administration, contained some revisions and additional language.... But a third citation exists that appears to be the earliest. And it is not on the Kerry campaign Web site. It was issued by Vice Adm. Elmo Zumwalt, commander of U.S. naval forces in Vietnam....

Maj. Anthony Milavic, a retired Marine Vietnam veteran, calls the issuance of three citations for the same medal "bizarre."... Normally in the case of a lost citation, Milavec points out, the awardee simply asked for a copy to be sent to him from his service personnel records office where it remains on file. "I have never heard of multi-citations from three different people for the same medal award," he said. Nor has Burkett: "It is even stranger to have three different descriptions of the awardee's conduct in the citations for the same award."

So far, there are also two varying citations for Kerry's Bronze Star, one by Zumwalt and the other by Lehman as secretary of the Navy, both posted on johnkerry.com.

Kerry's Web site also carries a DD215 form revising his DD214, issued March 12, 2001, which adds four bronze campaign stars to his Vietnam service medal. The campaign stars are issued for participation in any of the 17 Department of Defense named campaigns that extended from 1962 to the cease-fire in 1973.

However, according to the Navy spokesman, Kerry should only have two campaign stars: one for "Counteroffensive, Phase VI," and one for "Tet69, Counteroffensive."

Reporting by the Washington Post's Michael Dobbs points out that although the Kerry campaign insists that it has released Kerry's full military records, the Post was only able to get six pages of records under its Freedom of Information Act request out of the "at least a hundred pages" a Naval Personnel Office spokesman called the "full file."...

Experts point out that even the official military records get screwed up. Milavic is trying to get mistakes in his own DD214 file corrected. In his opinion, "these entries are not prima facie evidence of lying or unethical behavior on the part of Kerry or anyone else with screwed-up DD214s."

Burkett, who has spent years working with the FBI, Department of Justice and all of the military services uncovering fraudulent files in the official records, is less charitable: "The multiple citations and variations in the official record are reason for suspicion in itself, even disregarding the current swift boat veterans' controversy."

This report raises two questions, one which tends to favor Kerry and one that tends not to do so. The first question is, could the Navy's own reports on Kerry really be this screwed up? If so, it would explain his refusal to sign the Form 180: if the records are screwed up due to the bureaucracy, releasing them might give critics unfair, because false, evidence to use against him. As the Marine says, screwups do happen -- I'll be we can all point to at least one in our own records, if we think on it. Burkett says he feels there is cause for suspicion, based on the facts and patterns he's seen in previous investigations (e.g., silver stars with combat Vs having always previously been fakes). Maybe suspicion is too strong a word -- after all, a Secretary of the Navy signed off on it -- but "interest" or "concern" might do. It is curious.

On the other hand, there's that combat "V" and multiple citation issue. That's a whole lot of mistakes for one bureaucracy to make. Both of those issues do seem to call for an explanation from Kerry or his camp.

We know that as recently as last year, Kerry was pursuing changes to his official record. This follows additional changes he pursued with the Secretary of the Navy in the 1980s. We don't know what those changes were, except that one of them was a new Silver Star citation (one of the ones mentioned above) signed by John Lehman, Sec. of the Navy under Reagan. That could be explained by either of these concerns -- because he was trying to fix errors before his run for Presidency, or to eliminate inconsistencies in his medal records.

Perhaps Kerry would like to sign the 180, but also tell us what he considers to be mistaken in his Naval record.

UPDATE: I've been thinking about this some more, and I'd like to clarify two points:

1) I'm bothered by the fact that the Kerry campaign insists that it has posted his entire record, when it demonstrably has not. It has not posted, for example, all three of the medal citations for the Silver Star, but only the two latest ones. The original citation is not there. Nor are these other "96 pages," assuming that the unnamed source is speaking accurately about the number.

Why does the Kerry campaign continue to insist this? Is it a mistake, like when his website listed him as occupying Bob Kerrey's seat on the Intel committee? Or like when he was listed by his campaign as commanding the SWIFT boat in a firefight he didn't?

I'd like to believe that, but it seems unlikely. It seems unlikely because Kerry has been directly challenged on this point. If they said he'd posted the "full" records by mistake, he should have either corrected the mistake by now, or signed the 180 -- which would have proven him right when the released records contained only what was already posted. If that were the case, the 180 couldn't hurt him at all.

2) Do I think Reagan's Sec. of the Navy is in the tank for Kerry? No. I do know, however, that the military generally submits to requests from Senators. For budgetary reasons, as well as the tremendous power the Senate exerts through its oversight duties, a request from a sitting Senator (especially one on a committee like the intelligence committee, which directly oversees some military operations) is almost always approved with all speed.

I'm not suggesting any wrongdoing in the 1980s re-writeup, but I do admit to being curious about it. It's a little odd, twelve or fifteen years later, to decide that the language on your Silver Star citation could use some touching up.