One of the most important of the Swift Boat Veterans for Truth turns out to be a neighbor of mine, and so I've been lucky enough to have a few chats with him this summer. Captain George Elliott is a graduate of Annapolis, his back is still straight, and he deeply loves and honors the United States Navy. I want to keep what we talk about off the record, so as to not mix friendship with work. But there is one point I've learned from him that is so important to the ongoing debate, especially on the Kerry side (that is, the Big Media side), that I asked his permission to present it in public.

In recent days, I've heard at least three Kerry-supporting journalists say that the story of the Swift Boat Vets is crumbling. That certainly surprised me, so I listened carefully. One of the three or four instances they glancingly cited concerned Captain Elliott's testimony on behalf of Kerry in the Senate campaign of 1996.

They have missed an absolutely crucial point. In 1996, Kerry was being accused by a journalist of having committed war crimes. Captain Elliott and others hated this charge with regard to anything that occurred under their command, and so, putting out of mind Kerry's use of the same charge in 1971 against them and their fellows in Vietnam, these good men were willing to go to Boston "to defend the honor of the U.S. Navy," this time in the person of John Kerry. Thus, Captain Elliott's support of Kerry in 1996 does not contradict the criticism he makes now. And he is far from backing down in his support for the Swift Boat Veterans for Truth. He is painfully truthful himself, and is scrupulous in choosing his words.

That much I quote from Captain Elliott. What comes next is my own.

Close followers of this debate will know that the paperwork describing the actions on which Kerry's Silver and Bronze Stars were originally based came from Lieutenant (j.g.) Kerry's reports, passed up until they came to Captain Elliott. The Navy system is based on the honor code.

Only when they read the accounts published in the campaign biographies by Douglas Brinkley and a team from the Boston Globe did Kerry's superiors and peers, including Captain Elliott, come to see how widely Kerry's perception and self-serving descriptions differed from reality. Beginning then, they started to reevaluate everything they had heard from him back then. The man presented in those books was not the man they knew, and the events were not the events they knew. In wartime, one must trust one's mates. After they saw those books, they saw what Kerry reported to them then in a new light.

I infer that Captain Elliott and others in 1969 took on trust some reports from Kerry, reports they can no longer consider as truthful as they thought them before.

In later years, Kerry said in Senate debate that he often sent up action reports whose exact words he later read in Stars & Stripes, except that some of the numbers he had given of enemy casualties had been inflated by higher-ups. He admitted to somewhat inflating his reports himself, but said his superiors inflated them further. To my ears, this sounds like a man without honor later projecting his own weaknesses on others.

Today it is not the Swift Boat Veterans' story that is crumbling, but Kerry's. Two of its five pillars have already collapsed. The story that he said publicly for years had been "seared — seared" into his memory never happened: that so-called "Christmas in Cambodia 1968," when "President Nixon" was in the White House (in 1968, it was actually President Johnson).

Kerry's campaign has also admitted that his first Purple Heart — from December 2, 1968 — was probably not from action under hostile fire, but was from a self-inflicted wound caused by a small shred of shrapnel from a grenade Kerry himself launched at an unseen target. Both the attending doctor and Kerry's commanding officer, separately, refused to recommend a Purple Heart for so minor a wound. To this point, it is not known how Kerry ended up finding someone to award it.

There is no real need to argue over the other disputed points. All could be resolved if Kerry released his entire Navy file. He swears publicly these days that he is telling the absolute honest truth. The records would therefore bear him out. He should release them. Why is the Kerry press afraid to insist on that?

It would be good for all of us if we could simply honor Kerry for his service to his country, as President Bush has already said he does. But it would be far better still to have evidence that Kerry's word of honor is reliable. That evidence could be provided by the records.

This article was published by the National Review