SwiftVets.com

[air_vet]

Just wondering about the real reason Kerry won't release ALL of his military records.

After commissioning, Kerry served 3 years 3 months on Extended Active Duty (EAD). Of that time, he spent a total of 2 years 4 months "working". The other 11 months he was being trained.

When I was commissioned in the Air Force in '64 we had a minimum of a 4 year EAD commitment. The total commitment was 8 years - so if you got off EAD, the remainder of the 8 years were to be spent in the Ready or Inactive Reserves.

Kerry was commissioned 16 Dec 66 so his TOTAL military commitment should not have been up until 16 Dec 74.

I've looked over a lot of Kerry's military records on the Kerry website and have spent a fair amount of time reviewing his fitness reports. I have no way of knowing if there is a page missing or a complete report missing - but I'm not sure it matters because of two factors. (1) he spent so little time in working units there probably wasn't much to be said about him - for example, his 3 Sep 68 report says "He presents a very neat appearance and meets people well." That kind of hackneyed boiler plate doesn't mean a thing; and (2) he was only a 0-1 (in the Air Force we called them "butter bars") and O-2. Promotions to O-2 and O-3 were automatic (unless you really screwed up) and Kerry's promotions came on schedule. It's the promotion to O-4 where the fitness/performance reports separate the men from the boys, and Kerry was long since gone. Anyway - as I expected, I didn't see any real smoking gun in the fitness reports on the site. All you can be sure of from those reports is the Ensign/Lt jg Kerry knew how to find his way to and from the head without getting lost.

Back to the reason I started this message: I wonder if the real reason Kerry doesn't want ALL his military records released is correspondence between the Navy Department and him in the period March 70 to Dec 74.

Given his"outside" activities during that period, I suspect that there might be some really interesting exchanges of communications in his records from that period.