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Back in June of 2005, John Kerry released his Navy military and medical records to the Boston Globe. The paper reports:

The records, which the Navy Personnel Command provided to the Globe, are mostly a duplication of what Kerry released during his 2004 campaign for president, including numerous commendations from commanding officers who later criticized Kerry’s Vietnam service.

The lack of any substantive new material about Kerry’s military career in the documents raises the question of why Kerry refused for so long to waive privacy restrictions.

Bloggers have questions about the release. Marc Landers at USS Neverdock wonders what exactly the paper got:

The Navy said they had over 100 pages they could not release without Kerry’s authorization. Did the Globe get that many and are they reporting on all of them?

The biggest question of all remains unanswered. What type of discharge did Kerry originally receive? Remember, Kerry had his discharge re-issued after Carter granted a pardon to Vietnam vets.

Then there is this exchange between Kerry and Tim Russert on Feb 7th.

Last week the 2008 presidential hopeful suggested he wanted to review his full Navy file to make sure of “what is in the record and what isn’t in the record” before signing Form 180.

“I’m going to sit down with them and make sure that they are clear and I am clear as to what is in the record and what isn’t in the record and we’ll put it out,” he told “Meet the Press” host Tim Russert.

Kerry did not explain his reference to “what isn’t in the record,” though questions arose late in the campaign about why he received his honorable discharge six years after leaving the service…

…We need someone else to do a Form 180 request and we need to know if Kerry signed Part III of that form.

The Globe piece reporting the news of the release is Michael Kranish, co-author of “John F. Kerry: The Complete Biography By The Boston Globe Reporters Who Know Him Best.”

At best, Kerry’s releasing his records to the guy who wrote his biography is very strange.

Hugh Hewitt says:

As for the Globe, why in the world doesn’t the paper post the documents on the web site for all to see and read? Answer: A bastion of MSM is playing guardian of the news again, interpreting the docs for the public too limited to understand.

Polipundit asks more questions.

There’s some information missing from the record. Last year, here’s what the Navy had to say:

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.”

What happened to those hundred pages? Did Kerry get the Navy to suppress them? Here’s what he had to say on his infamous January 30, 2005, appearance on Meet the Press:

I’d be happy to put the records out. We put all the records out that I had been sent by the military. Then at the last moment, they sent some more stuff, which had some things that weren’t even relevant to the record. So when we get–I’m going to sit down with them and make sure that they are clear and I am clear as to what is in the record and what isn’t in the record and we’ll put it out.

There’s “some more stuff” in the records that Kerry doesn’t want out there. That’s why he didn’t release the records before - he’s been trying to suppress information that’s in the record.

Image: LindaSog.com

Join the blogbursts to help FREE Kerry’s 180 every Tuesday!

We’ve formed a blogburst group and here are the bloggers who are contributing so far. If you want to join the blogroll for Free Kerry’s 180, click here to email me, include the url for your blog. The blogburst is every Tuesday, so don’t forget to blog about it. All you have to do is encourage Kerry to set his 180 FREE, I’ll send you the code for the blogroll.

The more people we have, the merrier!

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