Front Page Mag has a detailed comparison of the original and subsequently revised (sanitized) citations that accompany John Kerry’s Silver Star, and examination of the questions they raise.

Citation 3, like Citations 1 and 2, is undated.� But, again, we can narrow the time frame, since it was signed by John Lehman as Secretary of the Navy.� Lehman served from February1981 to April 1987�long after Kerry left Vietnam, long after he was separated from service, and during Kerry’s tenure as a United States Senator.
While it is not difficult to understand why Kerry apparently sought and obtained a sanitized second version of his Silver Star citation, at first glance it is not so easy to surmise why Kerry went after yet a third citation, this time from Lehman (especially because the third citation is word-for-word, in every important respect, the same as the second). �One theory dovetails with what may well have motivated him, at least in part, to prefer Hyland’s imprimatur over Zumwald’s.� Kerry, now a senator, may have been trying to upgrade his award, issued by a couple of “mere” admirals, to one issued by the Secretary of the Navy.

According to Front Page, correcting a citation isn’t easy.

This means that in order to obtain Citation 2, Kerry would have had to prove that there was an “error” in Citation 1 and/or that the existence of that citation somehow constituted an “injustice.”� Was the error in Citation 1 that he had shot the enemy soldier in the back, or that it was somehow an injustice to Kerry for the citation to say so?
As to obtaining Citation 3, there are two problems for Kerry.� First, since it is virtually identical with Citation 2, there could be no error or injustice.� Second, even if arguably there were, since the three-year statute of limitations had passed by the time Lehman was in office, in order for Kerry to obtain the correction, he would have had to prove that correcting Citation 2 was “in the interest of justice”.

The article was published Aug. 24.
This morning, one of the questions is cleared up by none other than former Navy Secretary John Lehman himself.

“It is a total mystery to me. I never saw it. I never signed it. I never approved it. And the additional language it contains was not written by me,” he said.

Complete Front Page article.

Robert Novak has interviewed one of Kerry’s crewmates.

Retired Rear Adm. William L. Schachte Jr. said Thursday in his first on-the- record interview about the Swift boat veterans dispute that “I was absolutely in the skimmer” in the early morning on Dec. 2, 1968, when Lt. (j.g.) John Kerry was involved in an incident which led to his first Purple Heart.
“Kerry nicked himself with a M-79 (grenade launcher),” Schachte said in a telephone interview from his home in Charleston, S.C. He said, “Kerry requested a Purple Heart.”

Kerry was turned down, and filed the request with a later commander.

Schachte described the use of the skimmer operating very close to shore as a technique that he personally designed to flush enemy forces on the banks of Mekong River so that the larger Swift boats could move in. At about 3 a.m. on Dec. 2, Schachte said, the skimmer — code-named “Batman” — fired a hand-held flare. He said that after Kerry’s M-16 rifle jammed, the new officer picked up the M-79 and “I heard a ‘thunk.’ There was no fire from the enemy,” he said.
[…]
“I was astonished by Kerry’s version” (in his book, “Tour of Duty”) of what happened Dec. 2, Schachte said Thursday. When asked to support the Kerry critics in the Swift boat controversy, Schachte said, “I didn’t want to get involved.” But he said he gradually began to change his mind when he saw his own involvement and credibility challenged, starting with Lanny Davis on CNN’s “Crossfire” Aug. 12.

Chicago Sun Times has been combing the records on Kerry’s campaign website, and discovering some of the same discrepencies noted for weeks by various military bloggers and commentors.

The Kerry campaign has repeatedly stated that the official naval records prove the truth of Kerry’s assertions about his service.
But the official records on Kerry’s Web site only add to the confusion. The DD214 form, an official Defense Department document summarizing Kerry’s military career posted on johnkerry.com, includes a “Silver Star with combat V.”
But according to a U.S. Navy spokesman, “Kerry’s record is incorrect. The Navy has never issued a ‘combat V’ to anyone for a Silver Star.”

There is curiosity about the fact that three separate citations exist for this medal – from three different people. Two are on Kerry’s website, the first isn’t.

Normally in the case of a lost citation, Milavec points out, the awardee simply asked for a copy to be sent to him from his service personnel records office where it remains on file. “I have never heard of multi-citations from three different people for the same medal award,” he said. Nor has Burkett: “It is even stranger to have three different descriptions of the awardee’s conduct in the citations for the same award.”
[…]
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 could that more than 100 pages contain? Questions have been raised about President Bush’s drill attendance in the reserves, but Bush received his honorable discharge on schedule. Kerry, who should have been discharged from the Navy about the same time — July 1, 1972 — wasn’t given the discharge he has on his campaign Web site until July 13, 1978. What delayed the discharge for six years? This raises serious questions about Kerry’s performance while in the reserves that are far more potentially damaging than those raised against Bush.

Update – The entire text of John Kerry’s out of print book “The New Soldier”, as well as links to free chapters from “Unfit For Duty” can be found here. Included in one of the chapters are the events that Retired Rear Adm. William L. Schachte Jr. speaks to.