[secretagent]

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.

[Fedora]

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.