Report That Bentsen Got Son Into National Guard Also Denied : Dukakis Angry About Charge of Avoiding Korean War

Democratic presidential nominee Michael S. Dukakis and his running mate, Sen. Lloyd Bentsen, on Monday rebutted Republican counterattacks about their relationships with the military services.

Dukakis, speaking to reporters after a ceremony honoring a housing program here, angrily responded to a Republican congressman’s charge that he had used student deferments to avoid military service during the Korean War and said: “I served my country proudly.”

And spokesmen for Bentsen accused Republicans of a “dirty trick” after a senior adviser to Vice President George Bush accused Bentsen of helping his son get into the National Guard.

Bentsen’s Son ‘Furious’

Bentsen’s son, Lloyd Bentsen III, said in an interview with The Times Monday that he was “absolutely furious” about the charge, which New Hampshire Gov. John H. Sununu, co-chairman of Bush’s campaign, made Sunday in a television interview.

What raised Dukakis’ ire was a statement issued by Rep. Gerald B. H. Solomon (R-N. Y.), the senior Republican on the House Veterans Affairs Committee.

Solomon, in defending the Republican vice presidential nominee, Sen. Dan Quayle, in the controversy over how he got into the National Guard, said Monday that Quayle had “enlisted in the . . . Guard and took a chance of being called up” during the Vietnam War. By contrast, Solomon charged, Dukakis did not enlist and used student deferments to avoid serving in the Korean War.

Asked to Be Drafted

Dukakis, in response, said that, as a college student in 1955, he had asked his draft board “to move my number up” to allow him to be drafted as rapidly as possible after graduation.

Dukakis has long acknowledged that, as an undergraduate at Swarthmore College from 1951 to 1955, he deferred his military service, a standard practice at that time.

Several weeks before being graduated, Dukakis said Monday, he asked the draft board to move him to “the top of the list” to be drafted immediately. “In effect,” Dukakis said, “I volunteered to be drafted.” Although he could have obtained an additional deferment to attend law school, “I was anxious to do my military service,” he said.

“I served my country. I served my country proudly,” he said. “It was after the truce had been signed but at a time when Korea was very much on a war footing.”

Even had Dukakis not received a student deferment, he almost certainly would not have completed training in time to see combat in Korea. The armistice ending the war was signed in July, 1953, about seven months after Dukakis turned 18 and obtained his initial deferment.

Served in Korea

Dukakis was drafted within weeks of his graduation, then went through several months of training at Ft. Dix in New Jersey and Camp Gordon in Georgia before serving 16 months in Korea.

The Democratic candidate has avoided direct comment on Quayle but has taken care to add to his speeches a remark that “no one has questioned the qualifications” of his running mate, Bentsen.

“I don’t think it’s a coincidence that a Republican congressman raised” the military service issue, Dukakis said Monday. “It will be up to the Republican Party to explain all of this.

“I hope that’s the last we will hear about discussions of my military service,” he added.

Dukakis was also critical of Sununu’s charge that Bentsen had used his connections to assist his son in getting into the Texas National Guard. The charge, made on ABC’s “This Week With David Brinkley,” was “unfortunate and inaccurate,” Dukakis said.

The younger Bentsen, now a venture capitalist in Houston, used stronger words, calling Sununu “a desperate man grasping for straws.”

Bush Son in Same Unit

The younger Bentsen served in the 147th Fighter Group of the Texas National Guard along with George W. Bush, the vice president’s son. Both men enlisted in the late spring of 1968. At the time, the senior Bush was a congressman and the senior Bentsen, who had served in Congress in the 1940s, was a private businessman, although one who remained politically well connected.

According to the younger Bentsen, he got into the Guard as a result of a chance meeting at a party with the then-commander of the 147th Fighter Group, Brig. Gen. Walter (Buck) Staudt. Bentsen had recently been graduated from Stanford University’s business school and Staudt was looking for a financial officer for his unit.

No ‘Hanky-Panky’

“There wasn’t any hanky-panky that went on there,” Staudt said when reached by telephone at his Seguin, Tex., home.

Both the younger Bentsen and Jack DeVore, spokesman for Sen. Bentsen, vehemently denied that the senator had had any advance knowledge of the Guard opening or made any calls to help his son get it.

“What Sununu said was an outrage,” DeVore said. “It’s just a dirty trick, and there’s no way of knowing what stunt they’ll pull next.”

David Lauter reported from Massachusetts and J. Michael Kennedy from Texas.