From Michael Scherer, Time Magazine:

South Carolina’s Democratic nominee for the U.S. Senate, Alvin Greene, has based his candidacy, in large part, on his military service – a total of 13 years in the South Carolina Air National Guard, U.S. Air Force, Army National Guard and U.S. Army. Tarnishing this record are the mysterious circumstances around what he calls his “involuntary” discharges from the U.S. Air Force and the U.S. Army. In both cases, he has refused to detail the reasons for his dismissal.

In an interview a week ago in Greene’s living room, I asked him about his dismissal from the Air Force. His answer was, somewhat typically, cryptic. “I left the Air Force in September ‘05,” he said. “I ran through some problems, dealing with rank. It’s a long story. I guess that will be the next thing they will be focusing on.” I asked him repeatedly to clarify further, and he declined to do so.

But less than an hour later, he was encouraging me to pursue the story of his Air Force dismissal. He later declined to help by granting permission to one of his former officers to discuss his service. An Air Force public affairs officer said Greene was discharged through an administrative action, not a court martial, which is consistent with Greene’s characterization of an “involuntary” discharge. Otherwise, Air Force officials said they would not discuss the details.

After Greene was forced out of the Air Force in 2005, he says he joined the South Carolina Army National Guard for seven months, leading to an active-duty posting in the U.S. Army, this time as a supply specialist. He signed up for three years in February 2007, and was discharged from service in August of 2009, according to an Army official. He was promoted to his final rank of specialist – an E-4 rank, one higher than his final Air Force rank – in February 2009. Army officials also declined to describe the circumstances of his early departure, which Greene has characterized as “honorable.”

None of this answers the central question of Greene’s military service: Why did two branches of the military feel obliged to discharge him against his will? Greene will not say, though he says he expects the information to come out eventually, and he suggests that he will not be unhappy when it does.

Continue to the full article at Time Magazine.