Clinton Denies Fulbright Pulled Strings on Draft

Even as he was endorsed Saturday by a former leader of the nation’s military, Democratic presidential nominee Bill Clinton faced sharp new questions about the extent of his efforts to avoid the draft half a lifetime ago.

With four-star Navy Adm. William J. Crowe Jr., the retired chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, at his side, Clinton disputed a new report that he sought special treatment as he tried to avoid the draft during the Vietnam War by calling on the office of then-Sen. William J. Fulbright, an Arkansas Democrat. Clinton had worked part time for Fulbright while studying at Georgetown University.

At a Little Rock news conference, the Arkansas governor maintained that in his efforts to skirt the draft, he had simply played by the rules--rules that he conceded may have been unfair to the disadvantaged and “probably should” be changed if this nation ever reinstitutes military conscription.

The Selective Service rules during the Vietnam War, Clinton asserted, “clearly favored people who were well-educated and had options they could pursue that others didn’t.”

In endorsing Clinton, Crowe made a point of decrying what he termed “the inordinate amount of attention” being paid to the Democrat’s lack of military service and his efforts to avoid the draft.

He characterized those issues as “peripheral” and said: “You want to be judged on your life, not on when you were 23 years old.”

Crowe added pointedly that during 47 years of military service, he had known “many . . . who didn’t serve in uniform, including a number of key national security figures in the Bush Administration.”

The 76-year-old Crowe served as chairman of the Joint Chiefs for five years, under Republican Presidents Ronald Reagan and George Bush, until his retirement in October, 1989.

Crowe’s endorsement failed to overshadow the continuing focus on Clinton’s controversial draft record, which centers not so much on his motivations 23 years ago to avoid serving in an unpopular war but on whether, during his current presidential bid, he has given a full accounting of his actions then to escape military service.

Bush’s campaign has seized on the issue, casting it as one of trust rather than simply of whether Clinton did or did not serve in the military.

While Clinton previously has asserted that he neither sought nor received “unusual or favorable treatment,” the New York Times reported Saturday that he sought help in avoiding the draft from a senior staffer to Fulbright, then the powerful chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee and a staunch Vietnam War foe.

At his news conference, Clinton responded briefly when asked about having contacted Fulbright’s office.

“When I had to make arrangements about the service, I talked to a lot of people, including them,” Clinton said. “I never asked them for any special treatment. I tried to find out what my options were.”

Afterward, Clinton spokeswoman Dee Dee Myers elaborated on Clinton’s comments, saying: “Any contact he might have had was informational only. . . . He never asked for special treatment--ever.

“Clinton worked for Fulbright, had a relationship with (his office), talked to them about what his options were when he faced the draft. Thousands of people were in the same situation.”

The New York Times story was based on an office memorandum written by then-Fulbright aide Lee Williams, who recalled that after talking with Clinton, he discussed the young man’s draft status with a staff member of the Reserve Officer Training Corps at the University of Arkansas.

As part of his effort to avoid the draft, Clinton signed up for ROTC but then did not join the university’s ROTC program.

Fulbright himself said in an interview Saturday that he does not remember being approached by Clinton on the draft or any similar subject. The former senator, now 87, also said he considers it “disgraceful” that the draft issue is being used against Clinton.

Early in his presidential campaign, Clinton said that the reason he was not drafted was that he got a high number in the Selective Service lottery system after voluntarily giving up the deferment he received by signing up for the ROTC program.

But during the campaign, various news organizations have detailed efforts that Clinton and others undertook to help him avoid the draft. A recent Los Angeles Times story reported on the lobbying effort by Clinton’s late uncle for the creation of a special slot in the Navy Reserves for his nephew. Clinton has denied knowing about that effort.

The Bush campaign reacted quickly to Saturday’s New York Times story, as it has to earlier reports on the draft issue.

“This adds to the pattern of deceit that’s imbued the whole issue,” Torie Clarke, a Bush campaign spokeswoman, said Saturday. “Bill Clinton has lied repeatedly about this issue, and he owes the American people the truth and nothing but the truth.”

She added: “This raises serious questions about his character, trustworthiness and integrity. If he’s going to lie about this, what else is he going to lie about?”

The draft issue dogged Clinton last week despite his efforts to keep the campaign focused on his plan to revive the economy.

On Wednesday, the news media received a letter signed by retired Col. Eugene Holmes, in which the former chief of the University of Arkansas ROTC program criticized Clinton for having “defrauded the military” and “deceived me” in his efforts to avoid being drafted.

Meanwhile, the retired Army general who directed the Persian Gulf War, H. Norman Schwarzkopf, said he believed Clinton’s avoidance of the draft raised serious questions about his ability to serve as chief executive.

“How does a person who admits that he deliberately did not agree with the war (in Vietnam), and therefore did not want to go to that war, how does he handle it when he has to send other people to war?” Schwarzkopf said in an interview with the Associated Press Network News and Newsweek.

Crowe, in his comments Saturday, disagreed with Schwarzkopf.

“I think Gen. Schwarzkopf’s overdone it somewhat,” Crowe said. “He implied that people without military service could not commit people to war, that it would be difficult for them. And we, of course, have had some very successful wartime presidents in this century--Woodrow Wilson, Franklin Roosevelt--who did not have military experience.”

His endorsement, Crowe said, “is in no way, in no way, meant to denigrate the substantial accomplishments of these two presidents (Reagan and Bush) in national security affairs.”

But “the major deficiency in our security posture is our domestic climate. That is a part of our national security posture,” he said.