Today's NY Sun article on Kerry's discharge status

Reporter Thomas Lipscomb's article in today's New York Sun — which Big Trunk at Power Line correctly describes as the "capstone of a series of pieces this year that should earn him a Pulitzer Prize for Journalism" —  is entitled "Kerry's Discharge Is Questioned by an Ex-JAG Officer."  The lede:

A former officer in the Navy's Judge Advocate General Corps Reserve has built a case that Senator Kerry was other than honorably discharged from the Navy by 1975, The New York Sun has learned.

This article builds and expands upon Mr. Lipscomb's October 13th article in the Sun, which has since been moved to a subscription-only archive.  I blogged at considerable length about that article, with meaty quotes, in a post entitled "Was Kerry's original discharge less than honorable?" and no doubt Mr. Lipscomb's October 13th article can be found in full various other places on the net.  My commenters have done a commendable job of providing additional links and arguments, pro and con, both on my original thread and in a newer one from last Friday.  If you have the patience to parse through Mr. Lipscomb's two articles and my two prior posts and their comments, I daresay you'll be about as well informed as any layman in the country on the question of whether an inferential case can be built that Sen. Kerry's original discharge was less than fully honorable — based on the records reproduced on Sen. Kerry's website and the records that experts say should be there, but aren't, if Sen. Kerry's original discharge was indeed fully honorable.  What Mr. Lipscomb's article today adds to the inferential case are the opinions of Navy lawyers — JAG lawyers — who have first-hand experience in dealing with these regulations and procedures from within the Navy Department that I certainly lack. 

What fascinates me most about Mr. Lipscomb's new article, however, is this quote — purportedly based on first-hand recollection rather than inference (boldface added):

Certainly something was wrong as early as 1973 when Mr. Kerry was applying to law school.

Mr. Kerry has said, "I applied to Harvard, Boston University, and Boston College. I was extremely late. Only BC would entertain a late application."

It is hard to see why Mr. Kerry had to file an "extremely late" application since he lost the congressional race in Lowell, Mass., the first week of November 1972 and was basically doing nothing until he entered law school the following September of 1973. A member of the Harvard Law School admissions committee recalled that the real reason Mr. Kerry was not admitted was because the committee was concerned that because Mr. Kerry had received a less than honorable discharge they were not sure he could be admitted to any state bar.

Both law school and bar applications require quite comprehensive disclosures from the applicants and inquire specifically about past military service and the conditions of the applicant's discharge.  And given young John Kerry's then-existing fame, it is entirely unsurprising that a member of Harvard Law School's admissions committee would clearly remember discussing the circumstances of his application, even thirty-odd years later.  On its face, then, this report from Mr. Lipscomb's source definitely qualifies as someone with first-hand knowledge of Sen. Kerry's application and his statements therein about the character of his then-existing discharge status.

But is the source reliable?  I'm quite certain that Mr. Lipscomb, and his editors at the Sun, would have much preferred to use an on-the-record quotation attributed to his source by name.  However, the reasons why such a source would decline to speak on the record and for attribution are obvious:  although probably not protected by legal teeth comparable to those in the federal privacy laws that govern Sen. Kerry's military records, both Sen. Kerry's application and the Harvard Law School admissions committee's deliberations on it were undoubtedly considered by the committee to be confidential, both in the interests of the applicant and of the institution.  Whether one characterizes this source as a deplorable "leaker" or a courageous "whistleblower" largely depends, of course, on one's political predispositions.  But either way, this clearly is a classic example of a situation in which reporters have traditionally relied upon and reported information from confidential sources.

Here's another important bit from Mr. Lipscomb's article:

Kerry spokesman David Wade did not reply when asked if Mr. Kerry was other than honorably discharged before he was honorably discharged.

If I'd asked the same question of the Kerry campaign — here on my blog, or in an email or a telephone call — the campaign would have almost certainly ignored me.  But there can be no doubt that the Kerry campaign is aware of Mr. Lipscomb (who, I'm told, earned his spurs as a journalist at the New York Times) and his previous reporting on Sen. Kerry's military record in the Sun and the Chicago Sun-Times, and they've explicitly responded to his questions and reacted to his reporting in the past.  The odds that the Kerry campaign simply ignored Mr. Lipscomb's inquiry altogether (as they would have my own) are therefore nil.  Rather, Sen. Kerry and his surrogates deliberately decided not to respond.  If Sen. Kerry's original discharge was fully honorable — if the Harvard Law School admissions committee member is mistaken or lying, and if the inferential case argued from Sen. Kerry's records is mistaken — why did the Kerry campaign not simply flatly answer with an affirmative assertion that his original discharge was fully honorable?

You don't have to be a crusty old trial lawyer, with many seasons of cross-examining reluctant witnesses, to spot that as a huge red flag and draw appropriate inferences from it.  But the Kerry campaign — perhaps correctly, if audaciously — is gambling that because Mr. Lipscomb's article is in the New York Sun instead of in the New York Times, no significant portion of the voting public will notice. 

John Kerry is stonewalling, and he's gambling that he'll get away with it, at least through the close of the last poll tomorrow.