Did Not Duck Service, Clinton Insists as Draft Questions Arise : Candidate: He defends his Vietnam-era status. His presidential campaign again is sidetracked by potential character issue.

For the second time in as many weeks, Democratic presidential candidate Bill Clinton on Thursday found his campaign sidetracked by a published account that struck at his character, this time centering on whether he avoided the Vietnam draft for two months by promising to enter an ROTC program in which he ultimately did not serve.

Defending himself in an impromptu news conference in a hotel lobby here, Clinton told reporters that he reneged on his ROTC commitment--and the military deferment that went with it--because he chose instead to turn to the draft and run the risk of being deployed to Vietnam.

The Arkansas governor said that while he “bitterly” opposed the Vietnam War, he ultimately could not accept an ROTC deferment because he did not think it was fair.

“I put myself into the draft,” he said. “I was not seeking to avoid military service by this . . . I put myself in a position to be drafted. Not very many people were doing that.”

Discussion of Clinton’s draft record was prompted Thursday by the Wall Street Journal, which quoted a former Arkansas draft board secretary and the colonel in charge of the ROTC program that Clinton was to join as suggesting that Clinton may have manipulated the Selective Service system to avoid timely military service.

Clinton firmly denied any manipulation or preferential treatment.

A Times study of Clinton’s complicated draft record indicates that while his initial decision to join the ROTC did allow him to avoid a large draft call in September, 1969, it did not permit him to avoid the draft altogether.

More than 50% of those who were part of the Dec. 1, 1969, draft lottery with Clinton ultimately served in the military, according to Selective Service records.

On Thursday, Clinton appeared to be only mildly exasperated by the flurry of controversy about his draft record, which has been circulated for years by Arkansas Republicans. But the dust-up comes at a particularly difficult time for his presidential campaign.

In recent days, the Arkansas governor had moved to put behind him an earlier and much-publicized contretemps centering on unsubstantiated allegations that he had engaged in extramarital affairs.

With less than two weeks to go before the pivotal New Hampshire primary, some of Clinton’s opponents took the opportunity Thursday to question the apparent front-runner’s veracity.

Nebraska Sen. Bob Kerrey, who won the Medal of Honor for valor in Vietnam, said that part of Clinton’s explanation for his draft status caused “warning signals to go off.” But he stopped short of accusing Clinton of lying.

Clinton, for his part, said the published questions about his draft record would have no impact on his candidacy.

“I’ve been a public official for 11 years,” he said. “My honesty and integrity in public life have never been questioned. This story has been written and rewritten for 13 years . . . I’m going on with my campaign.”

According to Selective Service records, interviews with principals and Clinton’s own account, the governor became eligible for the draft on Aug. 19, 1964, when he turned 18. An undergraduate student deferment, which was common in that period, kept him out of the draft for almost four years as he attended Georgetown University.

He became eligible again in the spring of 1968, but was not called into the service. At the time, local draft boards had broad discretion over the timing of inductions, and Clinton’s was put off for a year so that he could pursue his Rhodes scholarship.

In the summer of 1969, Clinton said, he came home from England, and took physical examinations to enter Air Force and Navy officer’s school. He had already passed his draft physical, but flunked his Air Force pilot’s exam because of an eye problem and his Navy test because of a hearing difficulty, he said.

Late in the summer, when he presumably would have been ripe for induction, Clinton said he agreed to join the ROTC program at the University of Arkansas at Fayetteville. Under that program, he would have attended law school at the university and then, after graduation, would have had to serve two years in the Army.

Because of his oral agreement to enter the ROTC program, Clinton on Aug. 7, 1968, was reclassified from 1-A, the prime induction status, to 1-D, which protected those in the reserves.

That crucial classification allowed Clinton to miss a September, 1969, draft call in which 29,000 men were called up nationwide. Had he not been deferred, Clinton was a very likely target for induction since he was 23 and Selective Service policy was to draft the oldest eligible men first.

Two months after he agreed to join the ROTC, however, Clinton backed out and decided instead to revert to 1-A status. He had never formally applied to the University of Arkansas for admission, and ultimately attended Yale Law School.

His classification was changed on Oct. 30, the same day that the House passed a bill setting up the lottery, under which draft status would be determined by random drawing of birth dates.

Clinton was eligible to be among 10,000 Americans drafted in November and 9,000 in December--but both times he was not chosen.

The first lottery was conducted at Selective Service headquarters in Washington on Dec. 1. Clinton’s birth date was the 311th of the 366 dates pulled from a large bowl. Ultimately, only those with a draft number of 195 or lower were drafted.

Clinton told reporters Thursday that he decided to try his chances outside of the ROTC because of a lingering sense that such a deferment was unfair, even though he was not thrilled about the prospect of military service.

“Nearly everyone else was being called . . . I had friends who’d been wounded there--I ultimately had four high school classmates who were killed there,” he said. “I just didn’t think it was right.

“I put myself into the draft before the lottery was in, without knowing for sure that there would be a lottery, with no way of knowing what the lottery number would be, with no way of knowing that all of the lottery numbers wouldn’t be called,” he said.

The Wall Street Journal story quoted Col. Eugene Holmes, the ROTC recruiter at the University of Arkansas at Fayetteville, as saying that Clinton “was able to manipulate things so that he didn’t have to go in.”

But Clinton campaign officials also distributed an October, 1991, story by the Arkansas Democrat-Gazette in which Holmes, 75, insisted that he did not remember details of Clinton’s ROTC consideration. At that time, Holmes also denied that Clinton received any special treatment.

The Journal also quoted the local draft board secretary, 84-year-old Opal Ellis, as saying that Clinton told her he would “pull every string that he could think of” to stay out of the military. Clinton said the conversation described by Ellis never occurred.

Asked why Ellis would manufacture the story, he replied: “Well, she’s identified in the story as a Republican. You ask me . . . I mean, she’s had 23 years to tell this story and she’s never done it before. I think that’s an interesting thing.”

Neither Ellis nor Holmes could be reached for comment Thursday.

The other Democrats vying against Clinton for the nomination offered mixed responses. Kerrey, who enlisted in the Navy three years before Clinton’s draft number came up, said he was most disturbed about Clinton’s statement that he flunked two officer’s exams because of sight and hearing difficulties.

“Maybe it was different in 1969, but in 1966 (when Kerrey enlisted) they were taking any warm body that could walk upright and eat with a knife and fork,” the senator said. “I don’t recall any such intensive scrutiny of my hearing or sight when I went in.”

Iowa Sen. Tom Harkin, who was a Navy pilot for five years, used the occasion to indirectly question Clinton’s sense of duty.

“Quite frankly, the last thing Gov. Clinton needs is another story questioning his veracity and his character,” Harkin added. “I think this is going to hurt him.”

But former Massachusetts Sen. Paul E. Tsongas, who has no military experience but who volunteered for the Peace Corps, lamented that once again issues like the economy are being subjugated to discussions of character.

“It’s bringing us back to a point where these issues become the dominant theme of the campaign,” Tsongas said. “And in essence, you’re in a state of suspension when all the other issues do not get talked about.”

Decker reported from Nashua and Lauter from Washington. Times staff writer Paul Richter also contributed to this story.