Countering Kerry's Orwellian History: FReeper Review of To Set the Record Straight

I recently had the pleasure of reading Scott Swett and Tim Ziegler’s new book To Set the Record Straight: How Swift Boat Veterans, POWs and the New Media Defeated John Kerry (Foreword by John O’Neill, New American Media Publishing, 2008, 389pp, hardcover $29.95, ToSetTheRecordStraight.com). As someone whose research is given an acknowledgment by the authors, I would like here to share some of my reactions to this important book.

The first chapter begins with a review of John Kerry’s role in promoting Vietnam Veterans Against the War’s atrocity allegations against US troops during the Vietnam War. The chapter also highlights the media’s role in publicizing these allegations. The next chapter then relates the lesser-publicized effort of Vietnam veterans and their supporters to challenge such allegations and other negative public perceptions of the Vietnam War and its veterans. This sets the stage for a chronicle of the battle between Kerry’s supporters and critics during the 2004 campaign, which forms the heart of the book. The final chapter fills in events since the 2004 election, including controversies over recent atrocities allegations which echo Vietnam-era accusations.

For the sake of analysis, the book’s contributions to the historical record can be grouped under three headings: revelations about Kerry’s activity during his Vietnam War period and about the Vietnam era, revelations about the 2004 campaign, and revelations about the state of politics today which remain pertinent during the 2008 campaign.

The book makes important contributions to the biographical record of John Kerry’s activity during the Vietnam War and to the history of the Vietnam era. It records facts about Kerry’s military service and antiwar activity which either did not receive much publicity during the 2004 campaign or were not available at the time. In the process it documents facts relevant to the history of the Vietnam antiwar movement and the Vietnam War.

Interviews with two new witnesses provide information on the events associated with the controversy over Kerry’s third Purple Heart and his Bronze Star: Richard O’Connor, who commanded a Special Forces unit working with Kerry’s Naval team on a mission that day; and John Tackett, an Army pilot from a unit that provided aerial support to the mission. O’Connor recalls seeing Kerry after the injury prompting Kerry’s third Purple Heart, an injury O’Connor believes was caused by his own subordinate Jim Rassmann inadvisably using a fragmentation grenade instead of a smoke grenade to destroy a rice bin. Neither O’Connor nor Tackett--who had an aerial view of the scene--observed any enemy fire during the river mine incident that day that became the basis of Kerry’s third Purple Heart and Bronze Star and transfer out of Vietnam.

The book further discloses new details about Kerry’s antiwar activity, such as a report that his May 1970 meeting with North Vietnamese representatives in Paris was arranged by antiwar leader David Dellinger. This is an important detail that those familiar with Dellinger will find significant but not surprising. Dellinger, who was a key contact point between US antiwar movement delegations and foreign Communist nations in the late 1960s, had inherited this position from his mentor A.J. Muste, identified in 1957 FBI testimony to the Senate Internal Security Subcommittee as having “long fronted for Communists.” Muste became one of the earliest American pacifist leaders to join the Vietnam antiwar movement in 1963, and began leading antiwar delegations to Saigon and Hanoi in 1966. Following Muste’s death in early 1967, Dellinger took over his role organizing such delegations. As of 1970 Dellinger was coordinating communication between the North Vietnamese and American Communist groups through such conduits as the New Mobe and the Committee of Liaison with the Families of Servicemen Detained in North Vietnam (COLIFAM). Kerry evidently drifted into the orbit of the New Mobe through his work in early 1970 with the New Mobe ally the Vietnam Moratorium Committee (VMC) and with Congressional candidate Robert Drinan. This work was also what first brought him to the attention of Vietnam Veterans Against the War (VVAW), which would work closely in 1971-1972 with a Communist-dominated offshoot of the New Mobe linked to Dellinger’s associate Rennie Davis, as well as with COLIFAM.

In addition to providing such details on Kerry’s military service and antiwar activity, the authors also revisit the election-eve 2004 reporting of Thomas Lipscomb and Art Moore, who quoted Naval and Harvard Law School sources indicating that Kerry received a less-than-honorable discharge which hindered his law school admissions pursuits in the 1970s. This allegation came too late in the campaign to receive the same degree of publicity and scrutiny as other aspects of Kerry’s career, but remains of interest to Kerry biographers.

Besides contributing to Kerry’s own biography, the book contributes to the history of Kerry’s antiwar colleagues with Vietnam Veterans Against the War. Historical records on the VVAW not widely publicized or not available during the 2004 campaign are incorporated into the book to provide a more complete picture of the VVAW’s ties to Communist groups and involvement in subversive activity. New or newly-publicized sources cited include a comprehensive 1972 FBI review of VVAW activity which documents the role of Stalinist and Trotskyist groups in creating and sustaining the VVAW; and two captured North Vietnamese documents illustrating collaboration between the Vietcong and a Communist front coalition the VVAW had joined in 1971, the People’s Coalition for Peace and Justice (PCPJ), descended from Dellinger’s New Mobe faction. Also cited are articles and original interviews quoting antiwar expert Max Friedman, who comments on the VVAW’s alliance with Communist leaders such as Abe Feinglass. The VVAW’s war crimes allegations against US soldiers are scrutinized against military intelligence investigations of the VVAW’s charges and found wanting in substantiation. Army investigators scrutinized 46 cases of atrocities alleged by VVAW witnesses with the result that 3 witnesses could not be identified, 25 refused to provide factual data, 13 provided information that did not support the allegations, and 5 witnesses could not be located. Navy investigators likewise found that the VVAW used fake witnesses and failed to cooperate with investigators or provide corroborating details. In no known instance did VVAW witnesses provide any information that led to a criminal indictment.

The VVAW’s war crimes allegations have relevance to the history of the Vietnam War era as a whole, a topic the book also bears on. The media’s role in promoting the VVAW’s unsubstantiated allegations reflects a broader pattern of distorting the record on Vietnam, a pattern documented in detail by the authors’ meticulous research. Different sections of the book explore the media’s role in not only broadcasting unsubstantiated war crimes allegations against US troops, but also ignoring actual Communist atrocities in Vietnam and Cambodia, misreporting the Tet Offensive to the advantage of the North Vietnamese, and using unreliable sources to fuel the stereotypical image of the “crazy Vietnam vet”. In a foreshadowing of Rathergate, the authors recall a 1988 incident involving the CBS News documentary The Wall Within, which showed Dan Rather interviewing self-proclaimed combat veterans who claimed to have committed atrocities in Vietnam. These claims were later exposed as unsubstantiated by independent researchers who took the time to check the individuals’ claims against military records. Rather than retracting its story, CBS quietly withdrew videos of The Wall Within from circulation.

Although the book makes such significant contributions to Kerry’s biography and the history of the Vietnam War era, it is primarily a chronicle of the 2004 campaign’s battle between Kerry critics and defenders, and will bring back memories for anyone who followed that battle. It recounts the efforts of the Kerry campaign and its media supporters to suppress, deny, and downplay the evidence of Kerry’s presence at a 1971 VVAW meeting where participants voted on an assassination plot against US Senators. It describes from an insider’s viewpoint how Kerry’s war crimes allegations provoked his critics to coalesce into the coalition that was spearheaded by the Swift Boat Veterans for Truth. In the process it documents that the Swifties were not a creation of the Bush administration or the Republican Party, contrary to their critics’ charges. It describes how critics’ efforts to suppress the Swifties’ story forced the veterans to develop an innovative public relations strategy to outflank traditional media resistance by using the Internet, an independent publisher, and local television and film distribution. It records how the Kerry campaign responded to this effort with attempts at censorship, slander, and intimidation, none of which succeeded in suppressing the Swifties’ voices. It recalls how the Swifties exposed the implausibility of Kerry’s claim to have spent Christmas 1968 in Cambodia, and how the Kerry campaign attempted to divert attention from this with evasions, backpedalling, and counterattacks on critics. It analyzes the Internet’s role in the campaign and the factor it played in exposing the false claims of Kerry’s associate David Alston and the Rathergate forgeries. It narrates how veterans organized the Kerry Lied Rally to answer Kerry’s war crimes accusations, and how veteran Steve Pitkin was moved to retract his Winter Soldier Investigation testimony. It exposes how Kerry’s supporters used intimidation tactics to attempt to suppress the anti-Kerry film Stolen Honor. The final chapter brings the reader up to date on post-2004 developments on such topics as Kerry’s unfulfilled promises to release his full military records and legal disputes over Stolen Honor and the Swift Boat Veterans tax-exempt status.

The final chapter also broaches issues with implications that extend beyond the 2004 campaign and touch on the state of politics today. Echoes of the VVAW’s Vietnam-era war crimes allegations resound in reviews of Dick Durbin’s comparison of US detention camps to Nazi and Soviet prisons, Edward Kennedy’s comparison of Abu Ghraib to Saddam Hussein’s prisons, Iraq Veterans Against the War cofounder Jimmy Massey’s debunked atrocity claims, John Murtha’s denunciations of the Haditha Marines, and John Kerry’s own characterization of US troops as uneducated. In reviewing the authors’ footnotes on these subjects, I discovered that many articles on these topics have been purged from the Internet and even libraries’ electronic databases in an apparent attempt to erase the public’s recollection of some individuals’ embarrassing statements. This underscores what for me was one of the most disturbing themes of the book: an increasingly totalitarian tendency towards the suppression of free speech in today’s political society. Kerry famously called the Bush administration “Orwellian” during the 2004 campaign, but for those of us who have actually read Orwell, the word seems more applicable to Kerry’s own Stalinist efforts to silence his critics, efforts fully supported by the Democratic National Committee in 2004. As we face another election year in 2008, we should remain vigilant against Big Brother, and grateful for those like the Swift Boat Veterans who had the courage to speak up against the Big Lie.

Finally, this last topic highlights a ray of hope offered by the book: the ability of the new media to bypass the traditional media’s censorship tactics. Swett and Ziegler’s account of the Swifties’ public relations campaign reminds us of the pivotal role the Internet, independent publishing, and independent TV-film production played in the 2004 election. Future campaign strategists will undoubtedly read this book as a case study in how to use these new communication tools effectively in today’s political world. Future voters should do the same, with the awareness of the power and responsibility that Internet access brings. Everyone really can make a difference.

Of course there’s serious doubt, for many good reasons.

The NCIS report under question hasn’t been found. No NCIS record of the report has surfaced. No NCIS record of an investigation into WSI has surfaced. No NCIS individuals have stepped forward to say they investigated WSI.

No institutional memory of the NCIS looking into the WSI, as requested by Hatfield, or deciding not to look into it. A spokesman for the NCIS, Paul O’Donnell, has said that they don’t know whether the report ever existed, or might have been destroyed.

No other historian, or anyone at all other than Lewy, has said that they know anything at all about whether the NCIS investigated or decided not to investigate WSI.

And this is a mystery. Both “sides” had a lot to gain or lose from Hatfield’s requested investigation.

Nixon was convinced that the WSI was fraudulent and could be so proved, while the true WSI believers would fear an NCIS cover-up, yet hope for vindication as with the My Lai investigation. Wouldn’t the White House be closely monitoring and encouraging the query? Ditto Hatfield, the Fulbright committee, and the liberal press.

So how did the investigation and its report just disappear?

Was it aborted at conception? Did it take place just as Lewy says, but inside forces loyal to VVAW got to the records and destroyed them, as per our speculation?

It casts no doubt on Lewy’s honesty to doubt the existence of the report. For example, he might have been mislead by a bureaucrat at NCIS who gave him a false summary just to cover up the fact that NCIS dropped the ball and didn’t do the investigation they were supposed to do.

I can think of other possible reasons for why the NCIS report isn’t available, just speculation, and none of those what-ifs would cast suspicion on Lewy’s honesty.

Even the best historians make mistakes. Perhaps Lewy made one, perhaps not. But the fact remains that Lewy's citing "Office of the Director, Judge Advocate Division, Headquarters USMC, Winter Soldier Investigation files" doesn't yield any trace of the goods, when going to that cited source.

The unqualified citation of an undocumented NCIS report detracts from that work, IMHO.

I understand your point, but I think rather than calling it undocumented, I'd characterize it as "documented by Lewy." If he did see or receive a briefing on a report, and recorded that experience when writing his book, that would be a case similar to oral history, though not precisely oral history since he wrote it down--it'd be somewhere between oral history and a secondary source. Oral history and secondary sources are also a type of documentation. Now the strength of such documentation can be challenged by the types of questions and inconsistencies you raise in your other post, and certainly there is something there that needs to be explained one way or another. I can only speculate as to the explanation at this point, and rather than speculate I'd prefer to leave it at encouraging a further investigation of the matter. It's fertile ground that can be ploughed if more information can be tracked down.

If the documents themselves can't be located, the next logical line of inquiry would be to locate the original investigative personnel. I'm also curious if other government bodies ran investigations of this--Air Force, FBI, CIA, NSA, etc. Why I mention those in particular: The VVAW and its allies in the antiwar movement were focusing on trying to halt Air Force bombings in Vietnam and Cambodia with claims about atrocities and civilian casualities, so the Air Force would be another military agency with a possible interest in the VVAW. The FBI's investigation of the VVAW at this time is known and the documents have generally been released, though a close investigation of the portion of the released VVAW files pertaining to the Dewey Canyon III period and Kerry's testimony at that time was *not* released with the other files in 2004 (or at least it did not make it into the electronic batches that were distributed online); this may be where more information lies, as it's likely the FBI would've checked with its military counterpart, which was standard operating procedure in this type of situation, and what the military communicated back to the Bureau should be recorded there. The VVAW was also helping some of Philip Agee and Victor Marchetti's associates attack the CIA and NSA in Congressional hearings about this time, there is reference to CIA surveillance of VVAW activity abroad in the FBI's files, and we also know James McCord was tasked to investigate VVAW in relation to the Republican National Convention and what became Watergate, so those are some reasons to think CIA and NSA files might have information. Obviously this would take some research, but I toss that line of thought out FWIW.

I understand your point on the primary source thing. As I see it, what we have here is a situation similar to, for instance, that which sometimes occurs with ancient historians or other ancient writers, who sometimes mention documents they had access to in their time but we no longer have available, such as archives Herodotus saw when travelling the ancient world, or works of Aristotle that were believed lost by the Western world but eventually recovered from the East by the Muslims and Crusaders, or the earliest European historians' accounts of royal lines in Britain and Scandinavia. This can also happen with more recent sources--for instance in film history there are many silent films known today from stills but we no longer have the original movie intact. In some cases the original sources turn up in archives somewhere eventually, in some cases they don't and we remain dependent on someone's summary or some other second-hand source (I'll call it that to draw an analogy to secondary sources, but using a different term to emphasize it's not quite the same thing). It's not as desireable as having the primary source but it's not regarded as completely unsourced, either, and in most cases the second-hand source's accuracy is given the benefit of the doubt unless there is some reason to suspect otherwise based on the specifics of the source and the topic in question. You could also take the analogy of a biography or autobiography, where in many cases you only have one person's word to go on for key events, but the biography is not automatically considered unsourced or unsubstantiated for that reason, unless there is some specific reason for doubt. On this analogy you could see Lewy's footnote as an autobiographical account of his investigation of the source indicated in his note. The credibility of this account essentially rests on Lewy's credibility as a historian, which is good.

On your other point:

Lewy may have been briefed by someone who told him of the NCIS report residing in “Office of the Director, Judge Advocate Division, Headquarters USMC, Winter Soldier Investigation files”.

If that were the case, it would have been indicated by a prefatory comment such as "Conversation with. . ." or "Communication with. . ." or something like that. The way he cites it is a citation format for a government document. There is nothing to indicate otherwise in his book, it's only the much later interview that was spun to suggest the possibility of an oral briefing, but what he recorded in his book when he wrote it is very clearly referencing a document. A historian used to working with government documents looking at this note would assume a document was intended--I have seen a very similar format used for citing FBI files, for instance. That a document is indicated by this wording is also implied by the general comments in Lewy's preface and at the beginning of his footnotes where he discusses his sources. His preface says, "Scholars interested in the archival location of particular documents should consult the Note on Military Records at the back of the book", and the comments there pertain to the format used in the footnote we're discussing.

The Note on the Military Records also has another item I noticed which may be relevant to our discussion:

Records of general courts-martial and of special courts-martial resulting in a bad conduct discharge involving U.S. military tried and convicted in Vietnam are held at the Washington National Records Center. Access to Army cases is arranged through the U.S. Army Judiciary, Falls Church, Virginia. Access to Marine Corps cases is through the Military Law Branch, USMC Office of the Judge Advocate General. .. Investigative files on war crimes are held at the respective Offices of the Judge Advocates General, but probably are no longer accessible due to Privacy Act constraints.

Lewy's preface indicates he began writing his book around 1972, and his access to documents was facilitated by an Executive Order issued on March 8, 1972, which permitted the military to give qualified researchers discretionary access to classified files. The Privacy Act Lewy mentions went into effect in 1974. Perhaps that is part of the problem with accessing these records today?

Finally, Lewy's preface indicates his research was assisted by Major W. Hays Parks of the staff of the Judge Advocates General's School at Charlottesville, Virginia, Dr. Charles MacDonald and Vincent Demma of the Vietnam project of the U.S. Army Center of Military History, and John Henry Hatcher, formerly chief archivist of Vietnam records, U.S. army, who is credited with helping cut through bureacratic red-tape. Perhaps some of these individuals or those who knew them could be of assistance to researchers today.

It's not as desireable as having the primary source but it's not regarded as completely unsourced, either, and in most cases the second-hand source's accuracy is given the benefit of the doubt unless there is some reason to suspect otherwise based on the specifics of the source and the topic in question.

In this case, skepticism arises from the fact that NCIS says they can't locate the report and have no record of an investigation or report. If it was restricted material, spokesman Paul O'Donnell could have said that.

Other reasons for skepticism include the charged nature of the topic at the time, Nixon's interest in publicly debunking WSI witnesses, and the lack of any other person saying they saw the report or helped in the NCIS investigation.

You could also take the analogy of a biography or autobiography, where in many cases you only have one person's word to go on for key events, but the biography is not automatically considered unsourced or unsubstantiated for that reason, unless there is some specific reason for doubt. On this analogy you could see Lewy's footnote as an autobiographical account of his investigation of the source indicated in his note. The credibility of this account essentially rests on Lewy's credibility as a historian, which is good.

Lewy's general credibility rests on his general record for accuracy and care, which I gather scores high. On this detail he merits skepticism, mostly because of the absence of an NCIS record of the report, and partly because he later said he can't remember if he read the report or was just briefed on its contents. His account deserves a passing mention because of Lewy's good reputation, as a heads-up for later discovery.

But it should get only a passing and properly qualified mention, and not an easily refuted citation as proof of WSI fraudulence.

Again, I think in that case, NCIS would say that, and even offer a version redacted enough to secure the privacy of the WSI witnesses who requested anonymity.

Yes. Also, a long shot: did Senator Hatfield seek to insure that the NCIS would follow through, and therefore some records in his papers might help?

These are things that trip my critical thinking, but my skepticism is not directed at Lewy. The probability of forgery seems low due both to Lewy's credibility and to the lack of motive: he has no pro-war axe to grind in his book, and the passage under discussion when read in context is not really a focal point of his study, it is something he mentions in passing. It is only in light of the 2004 campaign that it has acquired the type of significance that would constitute a motive for forgery. Furthermore, since we know from a primary source that there was an Army investigation, the possibility that there was no parallel investigation by other military bodies seems far-fetched. The existence of a report such as Lewy describes is what one would logically expect, it is the alleged absence of such a report which seems grounds for skepticism. If we thus rule out forgery, and if we rule out an oral briefing--as the format of the citation necessitates, the later interview's speculation of an oral briefing can be dismissed by the actual content of the book which is unequivocally clear--the logical conclusion is that Lewy saw the document he described in detail and documented in proper academic format, and something has since happened to it. What happened to it is my main question at this point, and that is indeed something that could be investigated further. Your suggestion of looking into Hatfield's papers is a good one, there are other avenues that might be pursued. But as far as the citation of Lewy's study in To Set the Record Straight goes, I don't think Lewy has been refuted simply because his primary source cannot be located decades later, so I don't see a major problem with the citation. However if the authors wanted to make the type of qualification you suggest in a future edition of the book, this could be done simply enough by mentioning the article with the later discussion of Lewy's study in a footnote and briefly responding to the article, which is an accepted method of addressing secondary literature on a topic.

I also don’t question Lewy’s honesty.

Unlike you, though, I tend towards thinking the report never got made, for my stated reasons.

My main objection to the NCIS report reference concerns its current use by many challengers of the WSI. It never fails that someone will trumpet it as “proving” that WSI witnesses lied, usually not knowing that no such NCIS document is available to back up this claim.

A “gotcha” moment, the revelation of no available NCIS report, has already been used by WSI defenders to discredit the WSI challengers. A shame, because newcomers to the controversy might be dissuaded from reading more from the WSI skeptic side.

The NCIS citation shouldn’t be pushed front and center in the debunking of WSI, but listed only as a footnote - a flag to scholars for future resolution.

I understand your concern, and there are certainly other ways one might go about criticizing WSI, and it would certainly be helpful if the primary source or other new information could be located.

I also understand you're not meaning to question Lewy's honesty, but as I see it that would be a logical corollary of questioning the report's existence, because of what I pointed out about the format Lewy uses in his original footnote. I'm quite familiar with the format Lewy is using from my own training in citing government documents--I trained under two specialists in this area, one of whom wrote a style manual on the subject that I employed in a research project involving government archives. Contrary to what the later article prompted by the 2004 campaign suggests, what Lewy has in his original footnote does not really leave open a viable possibility of an oral briefing, which would have had its own distinct format. If you want to satisfy yourself on this you might compare the format Lewy is using and his general documentation style with the guidelines for citing unpublished public/government documents laid out in such style manuals as Turabian (12.19) and the Chicago Manual of Style (15.374), as well as other historical works besides Lewy's which cite government documents and specifically military documents. (Contrast with Turabian 9.102 and 11.50 and Chicago 15.262-269 on the format used to cite interviews and personal communications.) The documentation in Lewy's original book follows these guidelines, more or less--as the Chicago Manual notes, there is some flexibility allowed among specialists, with the main demand being consistency by an author. This is the relevant point as far as whether Lewy is intending to reference a written report or oral briefing, because the documentation at stake here--the primary source for our discussion, if you will--is Lewy's original footnote, not the commentary in the later article--in other words, the article has the same relation to Lewy's original book as a secondary source to a primary one. The fact Lewy does not remember the circumstances of his footnote decades later during a politically-motivated and probably impromptu interview is not a criterion for documentation--no academic is required to remember the circumstances of an obscure footnote when called upon for an interview decades later, the very purpose of footnoting is to preserve a record to outlast the writer's memory--and does not affect the validity of his original documentation. So this is not really a "gotcha", it's more of a rhetorical dodge employed in Kerry and the VVAW's defense by the article. The article did not really give Lewy any space to elaborate on the issue, the author/editor seemingly placed a question to him and then put his answer in a context that suited a political purpose, characterizing it as an "admission", which is the article's own term rather than a direct quotation from Lewy. In the rush to get the article out in time to defend Kerry, I wonder how much effort was actually made to locate the report, beyond calling and quoting O'Donnell, who is a spokesman rather than a research assistant for the authors of politically-motivated articles--a phone call to a busy spokesman is not a substitute for the years of archival research Lewy did and hardly refutes it, and O'Donnell does not imply otherwise in his quoted remark. You will note that O'Donnell's quoted statement raises the possibility that "such records could have been destroyed or misplaced", rather than suggesting that there was no report. I see the odds of the report being refiled and/or reclassified as the most likely possibility, while the possibility of Lewy quoting a nonexistent report, in as much detail as he gives and in the format he uses, seems too remote to entertain as viable.

I am currently in the process of determining where in the National Archives a report such as Lewy describes should have been filed. If I come up with any significant information I will post it.

Any information will be appreciated. You have the skills to pursue this, as you have detailed.

Might this help? James J. Reilley LTC USA (RET) said:

The U.S. Navy Criminal Investigative Service was tasked with investigating Lt Kerry's allegations. They found them to be baseless. Privately Naval Investigators expressed outrage at the ridiculousness of the accusations. The origins of the charges were often from supposed veterans who were found to have never served in Vietnam. It was slander that demoralized our forces, eroded our resolve, and gave aid and comfort to our enemy.

http://www.wintersoldier.com/staticpages/index.php?page=Reilley1

Did NCIS investigators speak to Reilley, and can he remember their names? Perhaps they can help find the report.

The fact Lewy does not remember the circumstances of his footnote decades later during a politically-motivated and probably impromptu interview is not a criterion for documentation--no academic is required to remember the circumstances of an obscure footnote when called upon for an interview decades later, the very purpose of footnoting is to preserve a record to outlast the writer's memory--and does not affect the validity of his original documentation. So this is not really a "gotcha", it's more of a rhetorical dodge employed in Kerry and the VVAW's defense by the article.

By "gotcha", I meant not so much Lewy's later memory but rather the embarrassment of WSI skeptics not being able to produce the NCIS report, heretofore trumpeted as proof of fraudulence, especially after assuming that it could be accessed if desired.

The article did not really give Lewy any space to elaborate on the issue, the author/editor seemingly placed a question to him and then put his answer in a context that suited a political purpose, characterizing it as an "admission", which is the article's own term rather than a direct quotation from Lewy.

He has many sympathetic forums, including here, within which to expand his remarks, his health permitting. He might be the go-to guy for finding the NCIS report.

It certainly seems logical that the investigation Reilley refers to should overlap with the one Lewy refers to. This highlights another relevant point: given that Kerry was at the forefront of the VVAW's allegations, it can be assumed the Navy would have investigated the matter. This raises the question, where are the findings?--which not only bears on Lewy's statement, but gets back to the issue of Kerry's incomplete disclosure of his military records, and the gap in the FBI VVAW releases from the Dewey Canyon III/Winter Soldier period I mentioned above. I will add that Kerry's personal FBI file has not been released, either--it is referenced in the VVAW files with its file number, but was not included with the 2004 releases of the Bureau's VVAW files. Kerry certainly has the file himself via FOIA. Why he chose not to release his FBI file in 2004 is a question he needs to be asked, and the answer may well bear on the present topic.

Regarding Lewy's health, I don't know his current health, but he was born in 1923, so he would've been in his 50s when he wrote his book, and about 81 at the time he was interviewed for that article, closer to 85 today.

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