[Congressional Record Volume 140, Number 139 (Thursday, September 29, 1994)]
[House]
[Page H]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Printing Office [www.gpo.gov]


[Congressional Record: September 29, 1994]
From the Congressional Record Online via GPO Access [wais.access.gpo.gov]

 
              CONTINUATION OF UPDATE ON HAITIAN SITUATION

  The SPEAKER pro tempore (Mr. Roemer). Under a previous order of the 
House, the gentleman from Pennsylvania [Mr. Weldon] will be recognized 
for 5 minutes.
  Mr. WELDON. I thank the Speaker.
  Mr. Speaker, the situation here is very grave because we have young 
people in harm's way.
  We know there is conflict right now. We know there is going to be 
loss of life.
  The other major thing that we have been misled on, that the American 
people have been misled on, is the actual number of coalition forces in 
there with U.S. troops. In yesterday's closed briefing I asked 
Secretary Deutch, Deputy Secretary of Defense, at this point in time, 
10 days after we entered Haiti, how many American troops are in Haiti? 
He said 19,000. I said, ``How many coalition forces are there?'' 
President Clinton told the American people it is a 24-nation coalition. 
He hemmed and he hawed. I said, ``How many Mr. Secretary?'' He said 
about two dozen. Where are they? I said, ``Do you mean as in 24?'' He 
said, ``Yes. There are 24 coalition forces in Haiti,'' 11 days after we 
sent our troops in. And I said, I asked him where they were, and he 
said the coalition troops are inside the command headquarters. They are 
not out there with our troops on the streets.
  I yield to the gentleman from California.
  Mr. DORNAN. Listen to this statement we both have put into the 
Congressional Record of these Dante Caputo memos: ``In the same 
fashion, the President of the United States' main advisers, led by 
Strobe Talbott,'' and this is important. Clinton's roommate in Oxford, 
he was actually sleeping on Strobe Talbott's floor. Going through the 
third dodging-the-draft process which is described, and I submit the 
article for the Record.

              Clinton and the Draft: A Personal Testimony

                          (By Strobe Talbott)

       This is a glimpse into the past--the fall of 1969--and into 
     the lives of two Americans abroad, Frank Aller and Bill 
     Clinton. I shared with them a sparsely furnished row house in 
     Oxford. Frank was there to learn about Chinese history and 
     culture; Bill's field, not surprisingly, was political 
     science. But in addition to our formal studies, we were 
     enrolled in a permanent, floating, teacherless seminar on 
     Vietnam. Like many of our contemporaries, we felt that the 
     war was profoundly wrong. Many of us had to decide what to do 
     if we were ordered by our government to fight, kill, perhaps 
     die for a cause we did not believe in. We talked about that 
     more than anything else among ourselves.
       We were also engaged, although from a distance, in an 
     angry, ugly debate that was going on back home. In the 
     polarized climate of those days, each side impugned the 
     motives of the other. Those of us who opposed the war didn't 
     just disagree with those who conducted it--we often denounced 
     them as fools, knaves, even criminals. I'm not proud of 
     having marched to the cadence of ``Hey, hey, L.B.J.! How many 
     kids did you kill today?'' For their part, supporters of U.S. 
     policy were quick to charge dissenters with selfishness, 
     cowardice, even treason.
       I recall all this now, 23 years later, because that whole 
     messy, divisive issue is back, along with the tendency toward 
     cynicism and name-calling. This is happening because Clinton 
     may become the first member of the Vietnam generation to be a 
     candidate in a general election for the post of Commander in 
     Chief.
       Clinton and I have remained close since Oxford. I've always 
     suspected that eventually his prominence as a political 
     figure would require me to write about him. Readers are 
     entitled to know if a journalist has personal ties to a 
     subject of public attention. Therefore I've been prepared to 
     acknowledge the bias of friendship the first time Clinton's 
     name appeared under my byline.
       But now that the day has come, I find that what also 
     requires full disclosure is my knowledge of Clinton's 
     attitude and conduct during the Vietnam War. What I know is 
     quite different from what the electorate has been led to 
     believe.
       ``Draft questions still plague Clinton,'' reported the Wall 
     Street Journal on its front page last Friday. The item added 
     that to fend off Republican attacks on this score, Clinton 
     may feel compelled to pick as his running mate his erstwhile 
     rival Bob Kerrey, who lost a leg and won the Congressional 
     Medal of Honor in Vietnam.
       Since shortly before the New Hampshire primary, Clinton has 
     been accused of having dodged the draft. His opponents are 
     hoping that impression will resonate with attacks on his 
     character. That's politics, I suppose. But I've been 
     disappointed to see how many of my colleagues in the press, 
     in their coverage of Clinton, have referred to the matter as 
     though draft dodging were proved. Well, it's not, and it 
     can't be, because it's not true.
       In the summer of 1969, after the first year of his Rhodes 
     scholarship, Clinton was indeed casting about for some way to 
     avoid going to Vietnam--not by evading the draft, but by 
     taking advantage of one of a number of special deals that the 
     system offered to young men who were well connected. One way 
     was to enlist in the National Guard. That's how Dan Quayle 
     was able to do military duty in his home state of Indiana.
       An alternative was to join a Reserve Officers Training 
     Corps program in graduate school. Clinton signed up for ROTC 
     at the University of Arkansas Law School, which he intended 
     to enter the following year. That would have exempted him 
     from being sent to Vietnam for several years, by which time 
     the war would probably be over.
       As the summer went on, Clinton was increasingly unsure 
     about the course he had chosen. He and I talked about his 
     situation on a number of occasions by phone that August, when 
     I was home in Cleveland and he in Hot Springs, Ark. He was 
     troubled that while he would be earning an officer's 
     commission and a law degree, some other, less privileged kid 
     would have to go in his place to trade bullets with the Viet 
     Cong.
       In September 1969 he decided to withdraw from ROTC--
     specifically in order to put himself into the pool of young 
     men liable to call-up. Back at Oxford, he asked his 
     stepfather in Arkansas to notify his draft board of this 
     decision. He was reclassified as 1-A or draftable, in late 
     October.
       In early December, Clinton explained his decision in a 
     letter to Colonel Eugene Holmes, the ROTC director at the 
     University of Arkansas: ``I began to wonder whether the 
     compromise I had made with myself was not more objectionable 
     than the draft would have been.''
       The letter to Colonel Homes, which was released two months 
     ago, has only fueled the controversy. Ironically, it turns 
     out that Clinton opened himself to the charge of draft 
     dodging by doing just the opposite--by making himself subject 
     to the draft.
       A number of articles have argued, in essence, that giving 
     up the ROTC option was a disingenuous, self-serving gesture, 
     since Clinton was already safe from the draft. The heart of 
     the case was summed up in the headline on a front-page 
     article by David E. Rosenbaum in the New York Times on Feb. 
     14: Clinton could have known draft was unlikely for him.
       Why? Supposedly because during that period, the Nixon 
     Administration lowered draft quotas, decreasing the risk to 
     those in the pool, and announced that graduate students would 
     be able to finish their current academic year before being 
     called. Furthermore, on Dec. 1, two days before Clinton wrote 
     colonel Holmes, the government has held a lottery based on 
     birth dates--the higher the number the lower the chance of 
     being called. Clinton had drawn a lucky 311.
       Against that backdrop, his letter to Colonel Holmes has 
     been disparaged as an after-the-fact gimmick intended to 
     establish a noble-sounding alibi for his maneuvering during 
     the preceding months. The incident is being treated as 
     evidence of how slick ``Slick Willie'' was even in his salad 
     days.
       At issue here is what lawyers call state of mind; How real 
     was Clinton's concern that he might be drafted? The surmise 
     that Clinton had nothing to worry about is based on more than 
     20 years' hindsight. It's a perfect example of how a partial 
     recitation of the fact can lie, especially if it fails to 
     take into account the tenor of the time when the facts 
     occurred.
       In the autumn of '69, no one who was at the mercy of the 
     draft knew for sure who would be called up when and according 
     to what procedures. The Administration's policy was 
     constantly shifting, and its pronouncements were, from the 
     standpoint of an antiwar 23-year-old, far from trustworthy.
       Clinton showed up in Oxford that fall so uncertain about 
     his future that he didn't even arrange in advance for a place 
     to live. He camped out with various friends, including 
     Richard Stearns, a Rhodes scholar from California who is now 
     a superior court judge in Massachusetts. After living the 
     life of an off-campus nomad, Clinton moved in with Aller and 
     me.
       Aller had already decided to resist the draft and remain in 
     England as a fugitive from American justice. Clinton later 
     referred to him, although not by name, in his letter to 
     Colonel Holmes. ``One of my roommates is a draft resister who 
     is possibly under indictment and may never be able to go home 
     again. He is one of the bravest, best men I know. His country 
     needs men like him more than they know. That he is considered 
     a criminal is an obscenity.''
       I sat in on many long, intense discussions between Frank 
     and Bill that fall. One particularly sticks in my mind. That 
     November, we had a houseful of visitors, including a young 
     woman from the U.S., whom I subsequently married. She found a 
     turkey in a local market and prepared it for Thanksgiving. 
     She used a recipe that required basting the bird every 15 
     minutes for four hours. She organized the crowded household 
     for the task. Frank and Bill shared what was supposed to be 
     the first shift and ended up so deep in conversation that 
     they did the whole job. Perhaps because it was such an 
     American holiday and they felt so far from home in so many 
     ways, they talked on and on about whether real patriotism 
     required submitting to the draft or resisting it.
       The hell of it was, there was no right answer. If you 
     obeyed your country, as Bill had concluded he should do, 
     you'd be contributing to its greatest folly. If you followed 
     your conscience and defied the law--Frank's choice--you would 
     be causing pain, even disgrace, to your family and outrage in 
     your community back home.
       Those, like myself, with medical deferments had our own, 
     less muscular demons to wrestle with. My gimpy knee was 
     enough to keep me out of the Mekong Delta but not off the 
     squash courts and playing fields of Oxford. As a beneficiary 
     of the capriciousness of the system. I felt relief, of 
     course, but also a moral discomfort that bordered on guilt, 
     specially when I listened to Frank and Bill discuss the 
     ethical implications of their 1-A classifications.
       While very clear in my mind, these are recollections from 
     more than 20 years ago. But there's at least one document 
     that has not come to light before. It is a letter Clinton 
     wrote to Stearns on Sept. 9, 1969. It's full of articulate 
     ambivalence, expressing confusion, self-doubt, even self-
     recrimination. The principal reason for the anguish is the 
     one he stressed to me in our phone conversations during the 
     preceding weeks: after arranging to go to the University of 
     Arkansas (which he mocks in the letter as ``The thing for 
     aspiring politicos to do''), he spent the summer in his 
     hometown, ``where everyone else's children seem to be in the 
     military, most of them in Vietnam.'' He felt he was ``running 
     away from something maybe for the first time in my life.'' As 
     a result, he describes himself as being in ``mental 
     torment,'' adding that ``if I cannot rid myself of it, I will 
     just have to go into the service and begin to root out the 
     cause.''
       He writes that he is on the brink of a decision to abandon 
     the ROTC shield from the draft: ``I am about resolved to go 
     to England come hell or high water and take my chances.'' He 
     is not referring to the risk of being run over by a double-
     deck bus on the Oxford High Street.
       In tone and content, this letter is totally consistent with 
     the now famous one that Clinton wrote to Colonel Holmes three 
     months later. Together, the two letters bracket the period 
     when Rosenbaum and others suggest Clinton as confident that 
     he had successfully dodged the draft.
       After withdrawing this name from the University of 
     Arkansas, Clinton applied to Yale Law School. In the spring 
     of 1970, the Rhodes administrators circulated a questionnaire 
     to determine which scholars were planning to return for a 
     third year at Oxford. Clinton's answer: ``Perhaps. If not, 
     will be entering Yale Law School, or getting drafted.''
       Such was his state of mind. Frank's was even more 
     tormented. Like Bill, he had initially decided on one way of 
     coping with the dilemma posed by the war and the draft, then 
     had second thoughts. After a miserable year, he concluded 
     that it was a mistake to cut himself off from his family and 
     his country, so he went home to Spokane to sort out his life. 
     He was unable to do so. On Sept. 12, 1971, he killed himself. 
     I called Bill with the news. There was nothing slick in his 
     grief.
  It completely weaves a false tale involving this whole period. Here 
is what Caputo continues to say:

       The President of the United States's main advisers, led by 
     Strobe Talbott, are of the opinion that not only does this 
     option constitute the lesser evil but is politically 
     desirable, and we think the current opposition of public 
     opinion to nonintervention will change radically once it has 
     taken place.

  Now, there was a short bounce, and now the American people are going, 
``Oh, oh,'' they are seeing the bloody carnage which looks like a 
mortar shell in Bosnia--this is the biggest grenade I ever heard of--to 
kill 5 and maim 9 or 10 others. We are doing this for a politically 
desirable option, and then we are going to get out, dump it in the 
United Nations. It goes on to say this will end the talk that Clinton 
is indecisive.
  Mr. BURTON of Indiana. Another big problem is that Strobe Talbott 
lied to a congressional committee. Now, he is the Deputy Secretary of 
State, and he came up here and lied to a congressional committee. He 
ought to be summarily fired. If he is really doing what the President 
wanted and he did mislead the American public, the President should be 
taken to task.
  I would ask my two colleagues tomorrow to join me in a letter to 
President Clinton asking about these issues, and if they are true, that 
Strobe Talbott either resign or be removed summarily.
  Mr. WELDON. I do not disagree with the gentleman. I think we owe 
Strobe Talbott the ability to respond. But I can tell you in a closed 
briefing with eight Members who are in Jack Fields's office in late 
August about the Coast Guard situation, the representative of the 
National Security Council in the White House, in direct response to my 
question about these memos, said, ``We have no comment.'' He did not 
say we deny them, he did not say they were false. He said, ``We have no 
comment.'' This was in August of this year.
  Now all of a sudden we look at these memos and I sent about 300 
copies of these across the country to people who have asked for them. 
Two different memos and two notes of meetings that were held. These 
memos lay out exactly what is happening. So the United Nations knew 
back in May we were going to go in there with our troops. The United 
Nations knew we were going to not allow sanctions to work. Here we are 
and now we find out we are also paying all of the costs. When these 
other troops come in, the American taxpayers are going to pay the full 
bill, 100 percent of all the costs. We are paying for the guns they are 
buying back.
  Mr. DORNAN. At $50 a pop.
  Mr. WELDON. The United States is sustaining the bill up to $1.5 
billion.
  Under questioning yesterday, Secretary Deutch said, ``Well, the 
estimate is $800 million, but that is high. Internal Pentagon documents 
have shown that this could cost us $1.5 billion, American money only, 
not U.N. money, American money.'' This is an outrage.
  Mr. DORNAN. The gentleman and I as of the midafternoon were supposed 
to be going with one of the leaders on the other side that we think 
very highly of, going to Haiti on Saturday. Now I understand it is 
iffy, that they may only take one Republican, a freshman. And I think 
he should go. He has the 10th Mountain Division.
  I want to go down there to understand where all these foreign nations 
are down there that are supposed to politically take up the heat once 
we are out of there. And nobody in this country can give us a price 
tag, as the gentleman just said. They are paying $300 for rockets; not 
one has been turned in, not a single one; $100 for automatic weapons; 
none have been turned in. Just old rusty rifles so far.
  If Cedras is right, and there are those who would take vengeance, he 
has $39 million in the bank. What Catholic priest, excommunicated or 
self-excommunicated, has $39 million to spend?

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