Induction of Clinton Seen Delayed by Lobbying Effort : Draft: Interviews indicate uncle led drive. Candidate says he has “told the truth about my draft status.”

Despite statements by Democratic presidential candidate Bill Clinton that he “never received any unusual or favorable treatment” to avoid being drafted during the Vietnam War, there is strong evidence that Clinton benefited from a concerted lobbying campaign orchestrated by his uncle to delay his military induction, The Times has found.

The previously undisclosed lobbying effort directed by his uncle, Raymond Clinton, produced, among other results, the offer of a Navy reserve assignment created especially for the young Clinton at a time in 1968 when no existing reserve slots were open in his hometown unit.

Bill Clinton did not accept the Navy offer. His uncle’s attorney said in a recent interview that the Navy assignment was solicited in part to buy time while the local draft board was pressured to let Clinton, a Rhodes scholar, attend graduate school in England.

The late Raymond Clinton, a Hot Springs, Ark., car dealer who had politically prominent friends and associates in both the Democratic and Republican parties, later said that the draft board “was handled” successfully, according to Henry M. Britt, the uncle’s attorney at the time who said he also assisted in the lobby effort.

The apparent success of the lobbying also is reflected in Selective Service System records reviewed by The Times.

Shortly before graduating from Georgetown University in the spring of 1968, Bill Clinton was reclassified 1-A (ready for induction) on March 20 by his Hot Springs draft board. The Times found that the future Arkansas governor was the only man of his prime draft age classified 1-A by that board in 1968 whose pre-induction physical examination was put off for 10 1/2 months--more than twice as long as anyone else and more than five times longer than most area men of comparable eligibility.

That delay enabled Clinton to enroll at Oxford University in the fall of 1968 and complete his first year of study despite the fact that he did not have the protection of a formal deferment.

Shown those statistics, Robert Corrado--the only surviving Hot Springs draft board member from that period--concluded that Clinton’s treatment was unusual. The only explanation for the long delay would be some form of preferential treatment, Corrado said, “but I wasn’t privy to the details.”

There was nothing illegal in these steps. One function of local draft boards was to use discretion in unusual circumstances, even if that meant giving favorable treatment.

The controversy that has resulted over Clinton’s draft record has less to do with his efforts to avoid an unpopular war--a common goal of many in his generation--and more to do with questions of whether his public statements as a political figure today have been candid or complete.

The presidential candidate has not mentioned the lobbying role of his late uncle or the offer of a Navy reserve slot.

On Tuesday, while campaigning in Maryland, Clinton responded to Times inquiries about these matters by saying: “Everyone involved in the story is now dead. . . . I can tell you this. I have told the truth about my draft status. And I’ve told you the only military options that I considered or was offered was the one I have reported to you.”

Clinton was referring to his brief consideration of becoming a member of a Reserve Officer Training Corps unit at the University of Arkansas in 1969 to avoid being drafted.

Clinton on Tuesday also said: “I said everything (about the draft issue) I had to say at the American Legion.”

He was referring to a speech he gave last week to the American Legion convention in Chicago, in which he said he was going to “set the record straight” about his Vietnam era draft record, but offered no new information. The day before the speech he told reporters “we wrote everybody in the whole wide world and we didn’t find anything out from any of the people we wrote to that hadn’t been written in the press already.”

Since the draft issue first erupted during the New Hampshire primary, Clinton has dismissed suggestions that he got special treatment, once saying “it was just a fluke” that he was not drafted. He told a press conference at the time: “I certainly had no leverage to get” special treatment from the draft board.

And later, during a New York primary debate, Clinton declared that even Republican members of his old draft board “have repeatedly said I never received any unusual or favorable treatment.”

Now, however, in an interview prompted by the review of the draft board’s records, Corrado recalled that the chairman of the three-man draft panel, the late William S. (Bill) Armstrong, once held back Clinton’s file with the explanation that “we’ve got to give him time to (go) to Oxford,” where the term began in the fall of 1968.

Corrado also complained that he was called by an aide to then-Sen. J. William Fulbright urging him and his fellow board members to “give every consideration” to keep Clinton out of the draft so he could attend Oxford. Corrado, a Republican, said he was annoyed “something terrible” by what he regarded as a request for special treatment.

Through the remainder of 1968, Corrado said, Clinton’s draft file was routinely held back from consideration by the full board. Consequently, although he was classified 1-A on March 20, 1968, he was not called for his physical exam until Feb. 3, 1969, when he was at Oxford.

Hot Springs attorney Britt, now a retired circuit court judge who was Raymond Clinton’s longtime friend and personal lawyer, recounted details of a calculated campaign to “get what Bill wanted,” the opportunity to attend Oxford University in the fall of 1968.

“We started working as soon as (Raymond) got word Billy was going to be drafted” after graduating from Georgetown, he said.

Britt discounts the possibility that Clinton was unaware of his uncle’s lobbying efforts. “Of course Billy knew about it,” Britt said.

Britt, a Republican who had lost an Arkansas gubernatorial bid in 1960, recalled that the Clinton uncle had “one goal, in my judgment--to delay, delay, delay” so that Clinton could attend Oxford. No formal deferment was available to graduate students at the time, except for those attending medical school.

Among those approached for help by Raymond Clinton while the Navy reserve request was pending, according to Britt, was Fulbright. The Clinton uncle, accompanied by Britt, met Fulbright on the banks of the Arkansas River before a dam dedication ceremony to discuss the car dealer’s nephew. It was sometime after that July, 1968, meeting that Corrado says he was called by an aide to Fulbright whose name he cannot recall.

Fulbright, 88, now an attorney in Washington, D.C., said in a telephone interview that his memory is failing and he could not “recall much from the old days.”

According to Britt, Raymond Clinton also personally lobbied Armstrong, the head of Hot Springs Draft Board 26, and Lt. Cmdr. Trice Ellis Jr., commanding officer of the local Navy reserve unit. Raymond Clinton, Britt, Armstrong and Ellis all were founding members of the Hot Springs chapter of the U.S. Navy League, a national service organization of Navy supporters.

Britt said the pursuit of the Navy reserve billet was intended to stall the draft process. “Raymond went to (the chairman of the draft board) and said, ‘why don’t you give the boy a chance to get in the Navy . . . ‘ And that’s why (Bill Clinton) never was called for his physical” during the summer of 1968, Britt said.

“Raymond was playing both sides of the fence, like a good politician,” the lawyer said. “If nothing else worked, he could always get Billy into the Navy. He was hedging his bets.”

Ellis, now retired after 30 years in the Navy and reserves, confirmed in a recent interview that he persuaded officials of the Eighth Naval District in New Orleans to create a billet, or enlistment slot, especially for Bill Clinton. At the time, existing Navy reserve billets all over Arkansas were filled. Many units had long waiting lists.

Ellis, a Hot Springs Democrat now seeking election to a local office, declined to discuss some aspects of the Clinton case. However, he called his own efforts on the young man’s behalf “routine--what I’d do for anyone I thought would be good for the Navy.” He said he acted after a personal call from Raymond Clinton.

“Raymond said he had a nephew who was college-educated and the Army was about to draft him and the boy wanted to join the Navy,” Ellis recalled. “I was always looking for good people. I said I’d see what I could do.”

The local naval reserve chief secured a standard enlisted man’s billet, not an officer’s slot, a fact he said Raymond knew from the outset. It would have required Clinton to serve two years on active duty beginning within 12 months of his acceptance.

After about two weeks waiting for Bill Clinton to arrive for his preliminary interview and physical exam, Ellis said he called Raymond to inquire: “What happened to that boy?” According to Ellis, the Clinton uncle replied: “Don’t worry about it. He won’t be coming down. It’s all been taken care of.”

Neither Britt nor Ellis had made prior public statements about Clinton and the draft and both were reluctant to do so. Ellis said that after learning The Times was preparing to write about the Navy reserve billet he agreed to confirm some of the facts to be sure it was accurately reported. Britt, who first declined to meet with a Times reporter, was approached through a longtime acquaintance who has no links to the Bush-Quayle campaign.

Raymond Clinton’s lobbying effort is the newest chapter in the controversial saga of Bill Clinton’s dealing with the Vietnam era draft.

When asked about his draft status early in his presidential campaign, Clinton routinely said he had a four-year deferment, made himself available for the draft, got a high lottery number and was never called.

But in February, the Wall Street Journal reported that Clinton had signed up for an ROTC unit at the University of Arkansas in the summer of 1969, where he said he planned to attend law school. He did not report immediately, instead using his 1-D deferment to return to Oxford to begin his second year of study. After ABC’s “Nightline” obtained a copy of a 1969 Clinton letter thanking an ROTC colonel for “saving me from the draft,” the candidate released the letter himself.

In April, The Times disclosed that Clinton had received an induction notice in the spring of 1969, before joining the ROTC unit. The revelation raised questions about whether he had misled ROTC officials and how the induction notice was subsequently withdrawn.

“Getting at the truth about Bill Clinton and his draft record is like peeling an onion--and that onion is deceit,” said Little Rock attorney Cliff Jackson, a Fulbright scholar who studied in England with Clinton.

Jackson also counseled Clinton on strategies for avoiding the draft, details of which he sometimes included in letters to friends and family in the United States. The revelation of Clinton’s induction notice in the spring of 1969 came from the discovery of one of those 23-year-old Jackson letters.

Jackson, a political independent and former Republican, is a critic of Clinton. He said he became disillusioned after he helped the young Rhodes scholar obtain an ROTC deferment with the understanding that he actually intended to honor that commitment. But Clinton never reported.

Jackson also said Clinton told him in England about the lobbying help he was getting in Arkansas from Raymond Clinton and Britt.

When Bill Clinton graduated from Georgetown University in the spring of 1968, he joined a pool of about 400,000 young men in their early 20s leaving college to face increasingly demanding national draft quotas.

Meanwhile, the war was becoming more unpopular as fighting and American casualties escalated in places like Saigon and Da Nang. On March 20, the Hot Springs draft board meeting in a small room of the federal building initialed the manila folder of Bill Clinton. He was reclassified 1-A, ready for induction. His age made him more likely to be drafted immediately than younger men.

Customarily, men classified 1-A at that time were called for a pre-induction physical within 45 to 60 days. If they passed, the standard induction date was about a month later. Clinton’s plans to pursue graduate studies in England with his Rhodes scholarship were in serious jeopardy.

Complicating matters further, President Lyndon B. Johnson had signed an executive order a few months earlier ending virtually all post-graduate deferments with the exception of those for medical students. Without his draft board making a special exception for him, Bill Clinton was almost certain to be drafted in the summer of 1968.

Pentagon officials in the spring of 1968 estimated that at least one-third of Army draftees would serve in Vietnam. Many men rushed to join National Guard units, Air Force and Navy reserve units and various ROTC units to finish advanced college degrees or minimize chances of being sent to Vietnam.

Almost six months after getting his 1-A classification, Clinton left for Oxford. In February, 1969, he passed his pre-induction physical examination at a military base in England. In April he was notified he was to be inducted.

Last week Clinton told American Legion members that his draft board then postponed his induction date so he could finish the school term. Apparently, a new induction date was set for July 28, according to one of Jackson’s letters. Ultimately, the induction notice was withdrawn altogether, an unusual action that has not been explained.

After returning home in June, Clinton decided to enter the ROTC program at the University of Arkansas. He signed a letter of intent and on Aug. 7 he was reclassified 1-D, a draft deferment for students taking military training.

Clinton has said he had second thoughts about the ROTC deferment almost immediately. He did not enroll at the University of Arkansas in the fall, explaining later that ROTC officials had given him permission to return to Oxford for another term before reporting. Finally, according to Clinton, he decided to take his chances with the draft in the fall of 1969.

There is some question about what happened next. Clinton said he put himself into the draft by contacting his draft board in September or October and asking to be classified 1-A again. He was, in fact, reclassified on Oct. 30, 1969. It is not clear, however, whether that occurred at Clinton’s urging or whether his failure to enroll at the University of Arkansas automatically canceled his 1-D deferment.

By that time, Clinton’s risk of being drafted already had been significantly reduced. In anticipation of the upcoming draft lottery, President Richard M. Nixon announced in September that there would be no new draft calls for the rest of the year. He also said that graduate students would not be drafted until they completed their current school year.

On Dec. 1, 1969, Clinton drew number 311 in the draft lottery, virtually ending his vulnerability to induction.

Times staff writers Cathleen Decker in Severn, Md., and Richard E. Meyer in Los Angeles contributed to this story.