In a rare move, Navy Secretary Ray Mabus has stripped former naval captain Wade Sanders of a Silver Star awarded for his Vietnam service, The Navy Times has reported. Sanders is best known as a prominent supporter of John Kerry’s 2004 presidential bid; he introduced Kerry on-stage at that year’s Democratic National Convention.
Sanders won the nation’s third-highest award for valor in 1992, but in 2008 pleaded guilty to possession of child pornography and is serving a 37-month prison sentence. He maintains he was compiling research for a book about child exploitation that he felt compelled to write as a consequence of suffering from post-traumatic stress disorder, according to the San Diego Union-Tribune.
Sanders has also served as a national security commentator for NBC, Fox News, and Military.com.
Capt. Pamela Kunze, a U.S. Navy spokesperson, told The Navy Times that since Sanders was awarded the Silver Star, new “facts and evidence surrounding both the incident for which the award was made and the processing of the award itself” came to light.
Had those facts been known in 1992, Kunze added, “those facts would have prevented the award of the Silver Star.”
The office of the Secretary of the Navy has declined to release a memo which reportedly contains details about how a decision to rescind Sanders’ Silver Star was reached.