Military Warns Soldiers Not to Criticize Clinton

Concerned by public criticisms of President Clinton over the Monica S. Lewinsky affair, military authorities are threatening officers and enlisted personnel with punishment if they utter “contemptuous words” about their commander in chief.

In recent days, Clinton has been denounced in a newspaper column by a Marine major and blasted in a letter to the editor by an Army colonel. A group of Marine officers reportedly has circulated an e-mail petition calling for the president’s impeachment and he has been mocked in jokes making the rounds in military Internet traffic, officers said.

“One should call an adulterous liar exactly what he is--a criminal,” wrote Maj. Shane Sellers, a 20-year Marine veteran, in a column appearing in Monday’s issue of the Navy Times.

Alerted by a published report about the Marine e-mail petition, Gen. Terrence Drake, the Marine deputy commandant, last week sent a warning to all Marine generals. He said that, at a time of wide public debate about Clinton’s behavior, Marines need to be careful to stay out of the controversy. The Marine leadership is, meanwhile, “reviewing” Sellers’ column to decide whether any disciplinary action is justified, said Lt. Col. Scott Campbell, a spokesman.

Military officers are barred under Article 88 of the Uniformed Code of Military Justice from uttering “contemptuous words” about the president or a variety of other civilian leaders.

The prohibition, growing from the Founding Fathers’ view that civilian leadership must be supreme, sets as maximum penalties dismissal from the service, a year in jail and forfeiture of all military pay and allowances.

Enlisted personnel are barred under service regulations from making such statements.

The outburst of comments seems to signal a downturn in Clinton’s relationship with his military subordinates, many of whom have long questioned his morality and support for their institution. Clinton worked hard in his first term to win their backing but the Lewinsky affair, coming as the Pentagon has struggled to enforce standards of sexual conduct, brought new strains.

In his column, Sellers argued that Clinton should be held to the same standards that would apply to military officers and others in positions of responsibility.

“I always thought that the law was the law, fair and equal to all constituents,” he wrote. “So why should the president of the United States receive any less verdict and sentence for lying under oath. . . ? Wrong is wrong, regardless of the identity or position of the perpetrator.”

The nation should “hold Clinton accountable to the law he swore to uphold and defend--then swiftly punish him if the charges against him are corroborated,” he wrote in the column.

Clinton also came under fire when Army Col. John R. Baer wrote a letter to the Army Times, published Oct. 12, urging Clinton to stop issuing signed letters of appreciation to officers when they retire. At his own just-completed retirement ceremony, Baer wrote, mention of the certificate brought only scorn from the soldiers who were there.

Baer sent back his certificate, torn in four pieces, with a letter telling Clinton that “character is important and you’ve negotiated yours away.”

And a retired officer now employed in the White House castigated Clinton three weeks ago in an op-ed article published in the Wall Street Journal.

James R. McDonough, who led U.S. troops in their 1995 deployment in Bosnia and who now works in the White House Office of National Drug Control Policy, wrote to complain of an allegation in the Starr report that Clinton had received oral sex from Lewinsky while he was discussing the deployment on the telephone with a congressman.

“The act of casual sex at a moment of great importance smacks of callous indifference, sophomoric arrogance and reckless disregard of the sanctity of U.S. soldiers’ lives,” wrote McDonough, who is now strategic director of the drug policy office.

In an interview Monday, McDonough said there have been “no repercussions” from top administration officials about his comments. “I’m still here,” he said.

Active-duty military personnel have not hesitated to speak out.

A news article in the Sept. 28 Army Times reported the thoughts of a number of service members about the president, including several who were sympathetic--and others who expressed their unhappiness.

“What gets me is that he tried to use the fact that he is the commander in chief to block getting taken to court,” Navy Lt. Jeff Gray, an instructor pilot at the Naval Air Station in Kingsville, Texas, told the paper. “Yet the same standards that have gotten several high-level officers kicked out of the military don’t seem to apply to him.”

He was referring to cases in the last year in which the adulterous affairs of senior officers have been disclosed, subjecting them to a range of penalties.

A cautionary memo now circulating among Air Force officers warns officers that jokes about Clinton violate Article 88 if their language is “insulting, rude or disdainful.”

But an Air Force officer noted that although public expressions of opinion violate the rules, private expressions are not an infraction.

The officer said the punishments meted out for such violations tend to be fairly mild--for example, a simple admonition to “knock it off”--unless the “contemptuous words” come from a high-ranking officer or were widely distributed.

In 1993, Air Force Maj. Gen. Harold Campbell was forced into retirement after criticizing Clinton in public comments as a draft dodger, womanizer and drug user.

The Air Force memo noted that another, unidentified, Air Force general was reprimanded by the secretary of the Air Force early in Clinton’s first term for joking about the president’s lack of military experience.

Eugene Fidell, a military justice specialist in Washington, said that apparently only one officer has been convicted under Article 88. The officer, Army Lt. Henry H. Howe, was dismissed and sentenced to one year’s confinement for marching in 1967, during the Vietnam War, with a placard that called President Lyndon B. Johnson a “facist [sic].”