Did Senator Richard Blumenthal Lied About His Military Service
Richard Blumenthal's Words on Vietnam Service Differ From History
At a anniversary honoring veterans and senior citizens who sent presents to soldiers overseas, Attorney General Richard Blumenthal of Connecticut rose and spoke of an before fourth dimension in his life.
"Nosotros accept learned something important since the days that I served in Vietnam," Mr. Blumenthal said to the group gathered in Norwalk in March 2008. "And yous exemplify it. Whatsoever we think about the war, whatever we telephone call it — Afghanistan or Republic of iraq — we owe our military men and women unconditional back up."
There was i trouble: Mr. Blumenthal, a Democrat now running for the United States Senate, never served in Vietnam. He obtained at to the lowest degree five military deferments from 1965 to 1970 and took repeated steps that enabled him to avoid going to war, according to records.
The deferments immune Mr. Blumenthal to complete his studies at Harvard; pursue a graduate fellowship in England; serve as a special banana to The Washington Post's publisher, Katharine Graham; and ultimately take a job in the Nixon White Firm.
In 1970, with his last deferment in jeopardy, he landed a coveted spot in the Marine Reserve, which virtually guaranteed that he would not be sent to Vietnam. He joined a unit in Washington that conducted drills and other exercises and focused on local projects, like fixing a campground and organizing a Toys for Tots bulldoze.
Many politicians have faced questions over their decisions during the Vietnam War, and Mr. Blumenthal, who is seeking the seat being vacated by Senator Christopher J. Dodd, is not alone in staying out of the war.
Simply what is hitting well-nigh Mr. Blumenthal's tape is the contrast betwixt the many steps he took that allowed him to avoid Vietnam, and the misleading way he often speaks about that flow of his life now, especially when he is speaking at veterans' ceremonies or other patriotic events.
Sometimes his remarks have been plain untrue, every bit in his oral communication to the group in Norwalk. At other times, he has used more ambiguous language, only the impression left on audiences can be similar.
In an interview on Monday, the attorney general said that he had misspoken about his service during the Norwalk event and might have misspoken on other occasions. "My intention has e'er been to be completely clear and authentic and straightforward, out of respect to the veterans who served in Vietnam," he said.
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But an examination of his remarks at the ceremonies shows that he does not volunteer that his service never took him overseas. And he describes the hostile reaction directed at veterans coming back from Vietnam, intimating that he was among them.
In 2003, he addressed a rally in Bridgeport, where nearly 100 military machine families gathered to limited back up for American troops overseas. "When we returned, we saw nothing like this," Mr. Blumenthal said. "Let the states practise better by this generation of men and women."
At a 2008 ceremony in front of the Veterans War Memorial Edifice in Shelton, he praised the audience for paying tribute to troops fighting away, noting that America had not ever done so.
"I served during the Vietnam era," he said. "I remember the taunts, the insults, sometimes even physical abuse."
Mr. Blumenthal, 64, is known as a vivid lawyer who likes to argue cases in court and uses linguistic communication with power and precision. He is also savvy most the news media and circumspect to how he is portrayed in the printing.
But the mode he speaks about his armed services service has led to defoliation and frequent mischaracterizations of his biography in his home state newspapers. In at least eight newspaper manufactures published in Connecticut from 2003 to 2009, he is described equally having served in Vietnam.
The New Haven Annals on July 20, 2006, described him as "a veteran of the Vietnam State of war," and on April half dozen, 2007, said that the attorney full general had "served in the Marines in Vietnam." On May 26, 2009, The Connecticut Post, a Bridgeport paper that is the state's third-largest daily, described Mr. Blumenthal equally "a Vietnam veteran." The Shelton Weekly reported on May 23, 2008, that Mr. Blumenthal "was met with adulation when he spoke about his experience every bit a Marine sergeant in Vietnam."
And the idea that he served in Vietnam has become such an accepted office of his public biography that when a national outlet, Slate magazine, produced a contour of Mr. Blumenthal in 2000, information technology said he had "enlisted in the Marines rather than duck the Vietnam draft."
It does not announced that Mr. Blumenthal e'er sought to correct those mistakes.
In the interview, he said he was not certain whether he had seen the stories or whether any steps had been taken to point out the inaccuracies.
"I don't know if we tried to exercise so or not," he said. He added that he "can't possibly know what is reported in all" the manufactures that are written well-nigh him, given the big number of appearances he makes at armed services-style events.
He said he had tried to stick to a consequent style of describing his military experience: that he served as a member of the United Land Marine Corps Reserve during the Vietnam era.
Asked about the Bridgeport rally, when he told the crowd, "When we returned, we saw null similar this," Mr. Blumenthal said he did not recall the event.
An adjutant pointed out that in a dissimilar appearance this year, Mr. Blumenthal was forthright about not having gone to state of war. In a Senate contend in March, he responded to a question nigh Iran and the use of military force by maxim, "Although I did non serve in Vietnam, I have seen firsthand the effects of military activeness, and no one wants information technology to be the first resort, nor do we desire to mortgage the country's hereafter with a deficit that is ballooning out of control."
On a less serious matter, some other flattering merely untrue clarification of Mr. Blumenthal'due south history has appeared in profiles nearly him. In two largely favorable profiles, the Slate article and a magazine article in The Hartford Courant in 2004 with which he cooperated, Mr. Blumenthal is described prominently as having served as captain of the swim team at Harvard. Records at the college show that he was never on the squad.
Mr. Blumenthal said he did not provide the information to reporters, was unsure how it got into circulation and was "astonished" when he saw information technology in impress.
Mr. Blumenthal has made veterans' bug a centerpiece of his public life and his Senate campaign, simply fifty-fifty those who have worked closely with him have gotten the misimpression that he served in Vietnam.
In an interview, Jean Risley, the chairwoman of the Connecticut Vietnam Veterans Memorial Inc., recalled listening to an emotional Mr. Blumenthal offering remarks at the dedication of the memorial. She remembered him describing the indignities that he and other veterans faced when they returned from Vietnam.
"Information technology was a sad moment," she recalled. "He said, 'When we came dorsum, we were spat on; nosotros couldn't wear our uniforms.' It looked like he was sad to me when he said it."
Ms. Risley later telephoned the reporter to say she had checked into Mr. Blumenthal's military groundwork and learned that he had non, in fact, served in Vietnam.
The Vietnam chapter in Mr. Blumenthal'south biography has received little attention despite his nearly 3 decades in Connecticut politics.
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Simply now, after repeatedly shunning opportunities for college office, Mr. Blumenthal is the man Democrats nationally are depending on to retain the seat they controlled for 30 years under Mr. Dodd, and he is likely to face more intense scrutiny.
After obtaining Mr. Blumenthal'due south Selective Service records through a Freedom of Information Act request, The New York Times asked David Curry, a professor at the Academy of Missouri-St. Louis and an expert on the Vietnam draft, to examine them.
Mr. Curry said the records showed that Mr. Blumenthal had received at least five deferments. Mr. Blumenthal did not dispute that but said he did not know how many deferments he had received.
Mr. Blumenthal grew up in New York City, the son of a successful businessman who ran an import-consign company.
Equally a young homo, he attended Riverdale State Schoolhouse in the Bronx and showed neat promise, along with an power to ingratiate himself with powerful people.
In 1963, he entered Harvard College, where he met Daniel Patrick Moynihan, who served on the kinesthesia there and guided Mr. Blumenthal's senior thesis on the failure of authorities poverty programs.
He received 2 student deferments during his undergraduate years there, the records bear witness.
After graduating from Harvard in 1967, war machine records bear witness, Mr. Blumenthal obtained another educational deferment and headed to Britain, where he filed stories for The Washington Postal service and attended Trinity College, Cambridge, on a graduate fellowship.
But in early 1968, President Lyndon B. Johnson, under pressure over criticism that wealthier young men were fugitive the typhoon through graduate school, abolished nearly all graduate deferments and sharply increased the number of troops sent to Southeast Asia.
That summer, Mr. Blumenthal'southward draft classification changed from 2-Due south, an educational deferment, to ii-A, an occupational deferment — a rare exemption from military machine service for men who contended that it was in the "national health, safety and interest" for them to remain in their civilian jobs. At the time, he was working as a special assistant to Ms. Graham, whose son Donald he had befriended at Harvard. One-half a yr later, subsequently the election of President Richard M. Nixon, Mr. Blumenthal went to piece of work in the White House equally a senior staff assistant to Mr. Moynihan, who was Nixon's urban affairs adviser.
Simply at the cease of that year, he became eligible for consecration after he drew a low number in a draft lottery held on Dec. i, 1969. His number was 152, and people with numbers as loftier as 195 could be drafted, according to the Selective Service.
2 months later on the lottery, in February 1970, Mr. Blumenthal obtained a 2nd occupational deferment, according to the records. The status of people with occupational deferments, withal, was growing shakier, with the war raging and the Nixon administration increasingly uncomfortable with them.
In April 1970, Mr. Blumenthal secured a spot in the Marine Corps Reserve, which was regarded as a safe harbor for those who did not desire to go to war.
"The Reserves were not being activated for Vietnam and were seen as a shelter for young privileged men," Mr. Curry said.
But Mr. Blumenthal'south entrada manager, Mindy Myers, said Mon that any suggestion that he was ducking the war was unfounded, saying he was engaged in important piece of work. When he worked for Ms. Graham, for example, he helped teach children in a public schoolhouse in the Anacostia department of Washington, for a project she had started there.
"It's flat incorrect to imply that Richard Blumenthal's decisions to take a Fiske Fellowship, teach inner-city schoolchildren and work in the White Firm for Daniel Patrick Moynihan were decisions to avoid service when in fact, while still eligible for a deferment, he chose to enlist in the Marine Corps Reserves and completed six months of service at Parris Isle, S.C., and then six years of service in the Reserves."
Mr. Blumenthal landed in the Quaternary Ceremonious Affairs Group in Washington, whose members included the well-connected in Washington. At the time, the unit was non associated with the kind of hardship of traditional fighting units, co-ordinate to Marine reports from the period and interviews with nigh a half-dozen men who served in the unit of measurement during the Vietnam years.
In the 1970s, the unit'southward members were dispatched to undertake projects like refurbishing tent decks and showers at a campground for underprivileged Washington children, equally well as collecting and distributing toys and games every bit part of regular Toys for Tots drives.
Robert Cole, a retired lieutenant colonel who did active duty overseas in the 1950s and subsequently joined the unit every bit a reservist, recalled the immature men who joined the unit of measurement in the late 1960s and early 1970s. "These kids we were getting in — a lot of them were worried about the draft," he said.
Afterwards inbound Yale Law School in the fall of 1970, Mr. Blumenthal transferred to a Marine Reserve unit in New Haven, Company C of the Sixth Motor Transport Battalion, 4th Marine Division, which conducted occasional armed services drills, likewise as participating in Christmas toy drives for children and recycling programs in neighboring communities, according to the unit's command reports from the time.
In 1974, Mr. Blumenthal took a position as a law clerk for Justice Harry C. Blackmun of the U.s. Supreme Court and transferred back to a Washington unit of measurement, where he completed his service.
Source: https://www.nytimes.com/2010/05/18/nyregion/18blumenthal.html
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