What Is Richard Blumenthal's Misinfo About His Vietnam Service?
Richard Blumenthal's Words on Vietnam Service Differ From History
At a anniversary honoring veterans and senior citizens who sent presents to soldiers overseas, Chaser General Richard Blumenthal of Connecticut rose and spoke of an earlier time in his life.
"Nosotros have learned something important since the days that I served in Vietnam," Mr. Blumenthal said to the group gathered in Norwalk in March 2008. "And you exemplify it. Whatever we call up about the war, whatever we call it — Afghanistan or Iraq — we owe our military men and women unconditional support."
There was one problem: Mr. Blumenthal, a Democrat now running for the United states of america Senate, never served in Vietnam. He obtained at least 5 military deferments from 1965 to 1970 and took repeated steps that enabled him to avert going to war, co-ordinate to records.
The deferments allowed Mr. Blumenthal to consummate his studies at Harvard; pursue a graduate fellowship in England; serve as a special assistant to The Washington Mail's publisher, Katharine Graham; and ultimately take a job in the Nixon White House.
In 1970, with his last deferment in jeopardy, he landed a coveted spot in the Marine Reserve, which virtually guaranteed that he would not be sent to Vietnam. He joined a unit in Washington that conducted drills and other exercises and focused on local projects, like fixing a campground and organizing a Toys for Tots drive.
Many politicians accept faced questions over their decisions during the Vietnam War, and Mr. Blumenthal, who is seeking the seat being vacated by Senator Christopher J. Dodd, is not lonely in staying out of the war.
Only what is striking about Mr. Blumenthal'southward tape is the dissimilarity between the many steps he took that allowed him to avoid Vietnam, and the misleading way he ofttimes speaks nigh that menses of his life now, peculiarly when he is speaking at veterans' ceremonies or other patriotic events.
Sometimes his remarks take been plainly untrue, as in his speech to the group in Norwalk. At other times, he has used more cryptic language, simply the impression left on audiences can be like.
In an interview on Monday, the chaser general said that he had misspoken well-nigh his service during the Norwalk effect and might have misspoken on other occasions. "My intention has ever been to exist completely clear and accurate and straightforward, out of respect to the veterans who served in Vietnam," he said.
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Simply an test of his remarks at the ceremonies shows that he does not volunteer that his service never took him overseas. And he describes the hostile reaction directed at veterans coming dorsum from Vietnam, intimating that he was among them.
In 2003, he addressed a rally in Bridgeport, where about 100 military machine families gathered to express support for American troops overseas. "When we returned, we saw nothing similar this," Mr. Blumenthal said. "Allow united states of america do better by this generation of men and women."
At a 2008 anniversary in front of the Veterans War Memorial Building in Shelton, he praised the audience for paying tribute to troops fighting abroad, noting that America had not ever done so.
"I served during the Vietnam era," he said. "I remember the taunts, the insults, sometimes even concrete abuse."
Mr. Blumenthal, 64, is known as a bright lawyer who likes to argue cases in courtroom and uses linguistic communication with ability and precision. He is also savvy about the news media and attentive to how he is portrayed in the press.
Merely the way he speaks about his military service has led to confusion and frequent mischaracterizations of his biography in his habitation state newspapers. In at to the lowest degree eight paper articles published in Connecticut from 2003 to 2009, he is described as having served in Vietnam.
The New Oasis Annals on July 20, 2006, described him as "a veteran of the Vietnam State of war," and on April half-dozen, 2007, said that the attorney general had "served in the Marines in Vietnam." On May 26, 2009, The Connecticut Post, a Bridgeport newspaper that is the state's third-largest daily, described Mr. Blumenthal as "a Vietnam veteran." The Shelton Weekly reported on May 23, 2008, that Mr. Blumenthal "was met with applause when he spoke most his experience as a Marine sergeant in Vietnam."
And the idea that he served in Vietnam has get such an accepted part of his public biography that when a national outlet, Slate magazine, produced a profile of Mr. Blumenthal in 2000, it said he had "enlisted in the Marines rather than duck the Vietnam draft."
It does not appear that Mr. Blumenthal ever sought to correct those mistakes.
In the interview, he said he was not sure whether he had seen the stories or whether any steps had been taken to bespeak out the inaccuracies.
"I don't know if we tried to do then or non," he said. He added that he "can't perhaps know what is reported in all" the articles that are written well-nigh him, given the large number of appearances he makes at armed forces-style events.
He said he had tried to stick to a consistent way of describing his military feel: that he served as a member of the United State Marine Corps Reserve during the Vietnam era.
Asked about the Bridgeport rally, when he told the crowd, "When we returned, we saw nothing like this," Mr. Blumenthal said he did non call up the outcome.
An aide pointed out that in a unlike advent this year, Mr. Blumenthal was forthright about not having gone to war. In a Senate debate in March, he responded to a question well-nigh Islamic republic of iran and the use of military force by saying, "Although I did not serve in Vietnam, I have seen immediate the effects of military action, and no i wants information technology to exist the starting time resort, nor do we want to mortgage the country'south futurity with a deficit that is ballooning out of control."
On a less serious thing, another flattering but untrue description of Mr. Blumenthal's history has appeared in profiles about him. In two largely favorable profiles, the Slate article and a magazine commodity in The Hartford Courant in 2004 with which he cooperated, Mr. Blumenthal is described prominently every bit having served as helm of the swim team at Harvard. Records at the college prove that he was never on the team.
Mr. Blumenthal said he did not provide the information to reporters, was unsure how it got into circulation and was "astonished" when he saw information technology in impress.
Mr. Blumenthal has fabricated veterans' bug a centerpiece of his public life and his Senate campaign, but even those who have worked closely with him take gotten the misimpression that he served in Vietnam.
In an interview, Jean Risley, the chairwoman of the Connecticut Vietnam Veterans Memorial Inc., recalled listening to an emotional Mr. Blumenthal offer remarks at the dedication of the memorial. She remembered him describing the indignities that he and other veterans faced when they returned from Vietnam.
"It was a distressing moment," she recalled. "He said, 'When we came dorsum, nosotros were spat on; we couldn't wear our uniforms.' It looked like he was pitiful to me when he said it."
Ms. Risley later telephoned the reporter to say she had checked into Mr. Blumenthal's armed services background and learned that he had non, in fact, served in Vietnam.
The Vietnam affiliate in Mr. Blumenthal'southward biography has received picayune attention despite his near three decades in Connecticut politics.
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But now, after repeatedly shunning opportunities for higher part, Mr. Blumenthal is the man Democrats nationally are depending on to retain the seat they controlled for xxx years under Mr. Dodd, and he is likely to confront more intense scrutiny.
Later obtaining Mr. Blumenthal'south Selective Service records through a Freedom of Data Act asking, The New York Times asked David Back-scratch, a professor at the University of Missouri-St. Louis and an expert on the Vietnam draft, to examine them.
Mr. Curry said the records showed that Mr. Blumenthal had received at least five deferments. Mr. Blumenthal did not dispute that only said he did not know how many deferments he had received.
Mr. Blumenthal grew upward in New York City, the son of a successful businessman who ran an import-consign company.
As a immature homo, he attended Riverdale Country School in the Bronx and showed dandy promise, along with an ability to ingratiate himself with powerful people.
In 1963, he entered Harvard College, where he met Daniel Patrick Moynihan, who served on the faculty at that place and guided Mr. Blumenthal'southward senior thesis on the failure of government poverty programs.
He received two student deferments during his undergraduate years at that place, the records show.
After graduating from Harvard in 1967, military records show, Mr. Blumenthal obtained another educational deferment and headed to U.k., where he filed stories for The Washington Post and attended Trinity College, Cambridge, on a graduate fellowship.
But in early 1968, President Lyndon B. Johnson, under pressure level over criticism that wealthier young men were avoiding the draft through graduate school, abolished nearly all graduate deferments and sharply increased the number of troops sent to Southeast Asia.
That summertime, Mr. Blumenthal'south typhoon classification changed from ii-S, an educational deferment, to 2-A, an occupational deferment — a rare exemption from military service for men who contended that information technology was in the "national health, condom and interest" for them to remain in their civilian jobs. At the time, he was working as a special assistant to Ms. Graham, whose son Donald he had befriended at Harvard. Half a year later, afterward the election of President Richard M. Nixon, Mr. Blumenthal went to work in the White House as a senior staff assistant to Mr. Moynihan, who was Nixon'due south urban affairs adviser.
But at the stop of that year, he became eligible for consecration after he drew a low number in a typhoon lottery held on Dec. 1, 1969. His number was 152, and people with numbers as high every bit 195 could be drafted, co-ordinate to the Selective Service.
Two months after the lottery, in Feb 1970, Mr. Blumenthal obtained a second occupational deferment, according to the records. The status of people with occupational deferments, however, was growing shakier, with the war raging and the Nixon administration increasingly uncomfortable with them.
In April 1970, Mr. Blumenthal secured a spot in the Marine Corps Reserve, which was regarded as a safe harbor for those who did non want to go to war.
"The Reserves were not beingness activated for Vietnam and were seen equally a shelter for young privileged men," Mr. Curry said.
But Mr. Blumenthal'south entrada manager, Mindy Myers, said Monday that any proffer that he was ducking the war was unfounded, proverb he was engaged in important piece of work. When he worked for Ms. Graham, for case, he helped teach children in a public school in the Anacostia section of Washington, for a project she had started there.
"It's apartment wrong to imply that Richard Blumenthal's decisions to take a Fiske Fellowship, teach inner-city schoolchildren and work in the White House for Daniel Patrick Moynihan were decisions to avoid service when in fact, while still eligible for a deferment, he chose to enlist in the Marine Corps Reserves and completed 6 months of service at Parris Isle, Due south.C., and and so six years of service in the Reserves."
Mr. Blumenthal landed in the Fourth Civil Diplomacy Grouping in Washington, whose members included the well-connected in Washington. At the time, the unit of measurement was not associated with the kind of hardship of traditional fighting units, co-ordinate to Marine reports from the catamenia and interviews with almost a half-dozen men who served in the unit during the Vietnam years.
In the 1970s, the unit'southward members were dispatched to undertake projects like refurbishing tent decks and showers at a campground for underprivileged Washington children, besides as collecting and distributing toys and games as function of regular Toys for Tots drives.
Robert Cole, a retired lieutenant colonel who did active duty overseas in the 1950s and later joined the unit of measurement as a reservist, recalled the young men who joined the unit in the late 1960s and early on 1970s. "These kids we were getting in — a lot of them were worried near the draft," he said.
After entering Yale Law School in the fall of 1970, Mr. Blumenthal transferred to a Marine Reserve unit in New Haven, Company C of the Sixth Motor Transport Battalion, Fourth Marine Division, which conducted occasional military drills, besides as participating in Christmas toy drives for children and recycling programs in neighboring communities, according to the unit's command reports from the time.
In 1974, Mr. Blumenthal took a position as a police force clerk for Justice Harry C. Blackmun of the United States Supreme Court and transferred back to a Washington unit, where he completed his service.
What Is Richard Blumenthal's Misinfo About His Vietnam Service?,
Source: https://www.nytimes.com/2010/05/18/nyregion/18blumenthal.html
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