The Magic Hat - Redux
Thomas Lipscomb has a column up over at Real Clear Politics that, quite frankly, makes the New York Times look really bad. The story the Times ran on efforts by some people to address the charges by the Swift Boat Veterans For Truth is pretty well shredded.
Kate Zernike's story on the front page of the Memorial Day Sunday New York Times, "Kerry Pressing Swift Boat Case Long After Loss," is an unfortunate reminder of the Times's embarrassingly poor coverage of Kerry in the face of the Swift Boat Veterans' for Truth charges in the 2004 election. Now as then, the Times acts as if the issues involved were between Kerry's latest representations of his record and the "unsubstantiated" charges of the Swift Boat group. The Times used the term "unsubstantiated" more than twenty times during its election coverage and continues to make no discernible effort to examine any of the charges in detail.
But there was plenty of evidence in the work of other news organizations that some of the charges, and the Kerry military records themselves, were worth examining seriously. I found numerous problems with Kerry's records on his website in my own reporting for the Chicago Sun-Times: a Silver Star with a V for valor listed that the Navy stated it had never awarded in the history of the US Navy, three separate medal citations with some heavy revisions in Kerry's favor signed by former Navy Secretary John Lehman who denied ever signing them, to name two.
Additionally I found by examining the message traffic with experts that when the Swift Boat Vets charged that Kerry had written the Bay Hap after action report, by which he received his bronze star and the third purple heart that was his ticket out of Vietnam, the evidence showed that it was indeed probably written by Kerry himself. Zernike seems to have totally missed this in her reporting. Zernike is content to refer to Kerry's claim that "original reports pulled from the naval archives contradict the charge that he drafted his own accounts of various incidents," none of which she cites, provides, or analyzes.
Zernike appears to have made no effort to look at any record besides listing Kerry's latest assertions with obligatory quotes from the usual Swiftie suspects to provide "balance." She doesn't appear to be aware of the hilarious inconsistency of the Kerry hat story she recites dutifully as if this was the very first time the hat had appeared in print. As the clips should have shown her, Kerry first pulled the famous hat out of a "secret compartment" for Washington Post reporter Laura Blumenfeld's feature story in 2003. "My good luck hat," Kerry told Blumenfeld, "given to me by a CIA guy." Now he tells Zernike a "special operations team" member gave it to him on a secret "mission that records say was to insert Navy Seals" in February.
It's a longish article, but well worth the read. Personally, I think John Kerry has exactly zero chance of gaining the nomination again, but it would be interesting to see the Kerry defenders trying to address substantive issues like Lipscomb raises instead of just flinging the "they're lying" charges all over again. All Kerry has to do is allow his records to be examined if he wants to put this issue to bed once and for all, right?
UPDATE: I knew Bruce Kesler would have something to say about this, too!
By Black Jack, Monday, 5 June , 2006 @ 12:40 pm
“All Kerry has to do is allow his records to be examined if he wants to put this issue to bed once and for all, right?”
Yeah right. But, but, but, what if the records show John Kerry has been telling whoppers all along? What if those 3 Purple Hearts, Bronze Star, and Silver Star Kerry got in only 4 months and 12 days in Vietnam, including the time spent recovering from his wounds, are decorations he didn’t deserve? What if he made it all up? What if the records show that Kerry nominated himself for medals that no one else would recommend him for?
What if Senator Kerry is caught in a trap of his own nefarious design and can’t release his records without exposing himself for a two-faces liar? Why, he’d have to keep saying the records support his case, while at the same time withholding those records and making up excuses to continue his idiot charade. But, then, that’s exactly what he’s been doing.