General Recalls No Request to Favor Robertson

Television evangelist Pat Robertson on Thursday released a letter from retired Marine Gen. Lemuel C. Shepherd, in which Shepherd says he has “no recollection” of any special request made to help Robertson avoid combat while Robertson was a Marine second lieutenant during the Korean War.

Shepherd, who was commanding general of the Marine force in the Pacific at the time, was responding to a letter from Robertson asking him to help Robertson rebut published allegations that he had used the influence of his father, the late Sen. A. Willis Robertson (D-Va.), to avoid combat.

The charges have stirred a controversy about Robertson’s background as he is soliciting support to seek the Republican presidential nomination.

Although Shepherd, now 90, said in the letter that he knew of no influence used to keep Robertson out of combat, he did not shed any light on the question of whether Robertson actually served in the fighting, as Robertson publicly claims. Defense Department officials have said that Robertson’s military records reflect his duty in Korea but do not show combat service.

Shepherd’s letter was released to The Times by Americans for Robertson, the evangelist’s exploratory presidential campaign organization, in response to Times reports that several of Robertson’s Marine colleagues believed he used political influence in 1951 to keep himself away from the front lines.

Buddy Remembers Call

One of the former servicemen, John Gearhart, a Los Angeles manufacturer’s representative, told The Times he was with Robertson when Robertson called his parents from a military post in Japan shortly before they were to be shipped to Korea. After the phone call, he said, they were reassigned to duty in Japan, and he believed that Robertson’s father had intervened on his behalf.

Another ex-Marine, former Rep. Paul N. (Pete) McCloskey Jr. (R-Menlo Park), said Robertson spoke frankly about asking his father to help him stay out of combat.

(Robertson, in Atlanta Thursday night for a GOP function, told a news conference that, while in the Marine Corps, “I went where I was told. I did what I was told. I served honorably and I came back home again.

(“I did not make the call,” Robertson said.)

The charges about the use of influence were first aired earlier this month in a syndicated column by Rowland Evans and Robert Novak. The column quoted from a letter from McCloskey about Robertson’s military service.

Robertson, in his Sept. 6 letter to Shepherd, said: “The attack . . . is obviously a slander against the United States Marine Corps, against my distinguished father, A. Willis Robertson, and against me.”

In his reply of Sept. 11, Shepherd confirmed that Robertson’s first assignment in the Far East was to a rehabilitation center at Camp Otsu, Japan, an assignment that Shepherd characterized as not unusual.

Shepherd added: “I have no recollection of receiving any communication from the Commandant of the Marine Corps, or any of his staff, from the Secretary of the Navy, from his staff or from Sen. Robertson himself, concerning your assignment or any aspect thereof. Had I received such an unusual request as described in the Evans-Novak column, I am sure I would remember it.”

Didn’t Handle Assignments

In a telephone interview from his home in La Jolla, Calif., on Thursday, Shepherd confirmed that the letter was accurate but added that he had nothing to do with personnel assignments. “I was many echelons above that,” he said.

Shepherd, who said he had known Pat Robertson as a young civilian in Norfolk, Va., said also: “I think the whole thing is a tempest in a teapot. I can’t see that boy running for President. He’s just a psalm-singing preacher.”

David West, press coordinator of Americans for Robertson, said that Robertson is still trying to arrive at “the definitive answer” to allegations about his service career. “Not that anyone appears willing to believe it,” he added.

West said that when Robertson had developed such an answer he would probably call a press conference to make it public.