Kerry Makes His Military, Medical File Available

On Tuesday, Kerry provided access to his complete records. The long-awaited documents contained no bombshells, and his enemies still were not satisfied.

The 180-page sheaf of medal commendations, officer's fitness reports and medical entries released under federal guidelines by Kerry's Senate office provided a few new nuggets of information about his 1968 to 1969 stint as a Swift boat commander during the Vietnam War.

There was one page from a January 1969 officer evaluation that appeared to back Kerry's claims that he had been well-rated by his superiors. During the heat of the 2004 campaign, some members of a group of anti-Kerry Navy veterans suggested that the then-missing document might provide a damning assessment of his wartime role.

Kerry said in a statement Tuesday that he had provided "unprecedented access" to his military and medical records during the campaign "and now months after it ended." In releasing the file, he said, "the facts speak for themselves and as these records prove, once again the right wing is wrong."

But Kerry's reluctance to provide easy access to records that buttressed his war resume remains one of the more puzzling aspects of his campaign strategy.

Pollsters and political scientists who have studied the race said that Kerry might have left himself vulnerable by reacting too slowly to criticism by pro-Bush veterans and their insistent calls for public access to all of his records. Kerry's move to release the file now, observers said, could inoculate him from similar pressure if he decided to run again in 2008.

"This would certainly help him keep his options open," said William Benoit, a communications professor at the University of Missouri-Columbia who has analyzed the repairing of political images.

But a former Swift boat officer who led the Navy veterans' bitter public campaign against Kerry demanded more Tuesday, saying that the file was incomplete.

"We asked him to universally release his entire file, and what we've seen instead is a parceling out of incomplete records," said John O'Neill, a Houston lawyer who was a founder of Swift Boat Veterans for Truth. The group last year mounted a well-bankrolled advertising campaign to undermine Kerry's wartime pedigree.