[Congressional Record Volume 142, Number 124 (Wednesday, September 11, 1996)]
[Extensions of Remarks]
[Pages E1562-E1564]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




   AMERICA'S VETERANS DESERVE BETTER THAN THE CLINTON ADMINISTRATION

                                 ______
                                 

                        HON. GERALD B.H. SOLOMON

                              of new york

                    in the house of representatives

                     Wednesday, September 11, 1996

  Mr. SOLOMON. Mr. Speaker, 4 years ago, then Governor Clinton 
campaigned as if he would be a great defender and proponent of 
America's veterans, their benefits and their role in his 
administration. Now, as is the case with many other campaign promises 
and claims he has levied, his record says differently.
  From the constitutional amendment to prohibit the physical 
desecration of the American Flag, to the employment of veterans at the 
White House and in his administration, President Clinton has repeatedly 
proven himself to be a disappointment to so many veterans who believed 
he was on their side in 1992. Even when it comes to financing the VA 
hospitals that provide critical health care to service-disabled 
veterans, President Clinton cannot compare to the record this Congress 
has shown. In fact, the congressional budget would spend $10.6 billion 
more than the President over the next 6 years and the House has 
proposed spending $60 million more on veterans health care than the 
President in 1997 alone.
  The following article which appeared in the August 26, 1996 edition 
of Insight magazine outlines perfectly the feeling of abandonment many 
of America's courageous veterans feel as a result of this President's 
actions, or inactions. Clearly, President Clinton's record on veterans 
issues says more than his rhetoric.

                          Last Line of Defense

                           (By David Wagner)

       Many Vietnam-era veterans rallied around Bill Clinton 
     during his campaign for the White House. Now some are 
     wondering if the president is a deserter in their battle for 
     those who served.
       In 1992, Lewis B. Puller, Jr., a severely wounded Vietnam 
     veteran and son of legendary Marine Gen. ``Chesty'' Puller, 
     won the 1992 Pulitzer Prize for his autobiography Fortunate 
     Son: The healing of a Vietnam Vet. On May 11, 1994, he 
     committed suicide.
       At the time, Puller had been working with John Wheeler--
     president of the Vietnam Children's Fund, chairman of the 
     committee that raised funds to build the Vietnam Veterans 
     Memorial and author of Touched With Fire: The Future of the 
     Vietnam Generation. The two were trying to obtain from the 
     Clinton White House an accounting of its records of hiring 
     veterans for senior positions.
       Puller and Wheeler had supported Bill Clinton in 1992 and 
     had helped rally vets to the militarily challenged Democrat's 
     candidacy. For instance, Wheeler wrote an op-ed that appeared 
     in USA Today during the 1992 Democratic primaries rebuking 
     then-candidate Sen. Bob Kerrey of Nebraska for exploiting his 
     Vietnam experience in the race against Clinton.
       Puller and Wheeler had expected that once the new 
     administration was in office it

[[Page E1563]]

     would reciprocate by hiring vets for senior positions in 
     rough proportion to their numbers in the workforce. But they 
     received no hiring data--just a part-time appointment for 
     Puller to the Battle Monuments Commission.
       Further evidence about the attitude of the new 
     administration toward the military unsettled Puller and 
     Wheeler. There was, for instance, the incident in which a 
     general officer, greeting a new White House staffer, was told 
     insultingly, ``We don't talk to people in the military around 
     here.''
       Wheeler points out that Puller had many personal problems 
     at the time of his suicide, so the perceived stonewalling by 
     the White House was unlikely to have been the sole source of 
     Puller's final depressive episode. But, says Wheeler, it took 
     its toll. ``One of the last things Lew ever said to me was, 
     `I feel used by Clinton.' ''
       According to figures that Wheeler since wrung from the 
     White House, 4 percent of the political appointees in the 
     Clinton White House are veterans. He notes for comparison 
     that 59 percent of senators, 40 percent of representatives 
     and 37 percent of men over age 35 in the nationwide workforce 
     are vets.
       Furthermore, there were 132 male veterans and one female 
     veteran in Senate-confirmed positions in December 1994 under 
     Clinton. In December 1992--while President Bush still was in 
     office but after many of his appointees already had left for 
     greener pastures--there still were 189 male veterans in 
     Senate-confirmed positions.
       ``Using Bush levels as a baseline,'' says Wheeler, 
     ``Clinton cut total vets by 57 and added 76 women and 64 
     nonvet men. For the Vietnam generation, Clinton cut vets by 
     12 and added 75 women and 105 nonvet men. Room for the 
     increases in women and nonvet men was made by cutting out 
     only vets.''
       Obtaining even such limited numbers, says Wheeler, was an 
     ordeal that began with polite letters and escalated into a 
     Freedom of Information Act, or FOIA, request. This led to a 
     White House meeting and was followed by more stonewalling.
       Leading veterans' organizations do not see the problem in 
     the same terms. Bill Smith, a spokesman for the Veterans of 
     Foreign Wars, or VFW, told Insight: ``This administration is 
     not antiveteran at all. Jesse Brown, secretary of Veterans 
     Affairs is earnestly working in the interests of vets. In an 
     age of budget cutbacks, VA has fared well.''
       On the question of whether customary numbers of veterans 
     are being hired for senior positions, Smith says that though 
     he has seen no surveys, he is not aware of any 
     discrimination. ``Compare the administration with the 
     Congress: There are fewer vets there too.''
       ``I'm not surprised he's seen no surveys,'' says Wheeler. 
     ``I still haven't gotten the information I've been promised, 
     and I've been at it for almost three years. Look, the VFW is 
     a venerable organization, but its job is to look after 
     veterans' benefits, not veterans' values. There are about 26 
     million American veterans altogether. About 4 million of them 
     are primarily interested in benefits, and the mainline vet 
     organizations represent them very well. But the rest of us 
     are more interested in the values represented by military 
     service: sacrifice, country, freedom, the reality of things 
     beyond your immediate circle that are worth dying for. These 
     values are traditional . . . and they are the antithesis of 
     the life the Clintons live.''
       Those values issues could have an electoral spillover. 
     ``These guys helped put Clinton over the top in 1992,'' says 
     Wheeler. ``If they desert him in '96, he could yet lose this 
     election. Strange, but no one has done any polling of vets on 
     their presidential preferences. The mainstream vet 
     organizations are scared of what they'd find.''
       The VFW's Smith says his organization hasn't conducted any 
     veteran polling. ``We're nonpartisan, not a PAC--but I 
     haven't heard of any of the veteran PACs having any poll 
     numbers either.''
       For Wheeler, the Clinton administration's good record on 
     veterans' benefits supports, rather than contradicts, his 
     overall theory: ``The Clintons want their vets to be victims, 
     not partners. They want to be photographed in attitudes of 
     pitying kindness toward veterans, but they don't want them as 
     colleagues in the Executive Office of the President. They've 
     done some good for vets on the benefits side of things, but 
     when it comes to recognizing vets as anything more than just 
     another victim class, this administration shows its 
     antiveteran face.''
       On April 17, 1994, in a letter to then-White House counsel 
     Lloyd Cutler, Wheeler filed a FOIA request for the vet hiring 
     data. This request led to a White House meeting on June 22, 
     1994, attended by Clinton administration officials Jody 
     Greenstone and Steve Hilton, representing Cutler, and Bob 
     Bell, of the National Security Council staff. At this 
     meeting, as a settlement of Wheeler's FOIA request, the White 
     House agreed to supply him with requested information.
       Some information has, in fact, been rolling into Wheeler's 
     mailbox. He now receives quarterly reports on the hiring of 
     veterans for the approximately 850 Senate-confirmed slots. As 
     per Wheeler's request, this information is broken down by 
     gender and age. But Wheeler still is awaiting information on 
     vet hiring in the Executive Office of the President, despite 
     agreement at the June 1994 meeting that this information is 
     public and despite the fact that the White House's promise to 
     provide it was offered as part of a settlement of the FOIA 
     request.
       Besides the question of hiring, three Vietnam vets whose 
     sons were killed in Somalia still are waiting for an adequate 
     accounting of the decisions that may have placed their sons 
     in unnecessary danger, such as the decision to exclude tanks 
     from the Somalia mission.
       Army Ranger Cpl. Jamie Smith bled to death during a battle 
     in Mogadishu, Sgt. Casey Joyce and Cpl. Dominic Phila, both 
     soldiers, also died there on the same day: Oct. 3, 1993. 
     Thereafter, the Smith and Pila families worked together with 
     retired Lt. Col. Larry Joyce, Casey's father, to learn what 
     led to those tragic events.
       Joyce tapped his Pentagon contacts and reports that the 
     field commanders in Somalia had requested tank support, that 
     the request had been approved up the chain of command through 
     the Pentagon--and that it had been denied at the White House 
     level for reasons that were political rather than military: 
     The administration wanted to avoid the appearance of 
     escalating the Somalia mission.
       Joyce composed a handwritten letter to Clinton and had it 
     delivered through a White House contact. On Nov. 19, Joyce 
     recalls, the president called him and said a meeting would be 
     arranged for the following week--but no further calls came.
       On Dec. 15, 1993, the day Defense Secretary Les Aspin 
     resigned, about a half-hour before the resignation 
     announcement, Joyce received a call from presidential 
     assistant Betty Currie assuring him that the president still 
     wanted to meet with him. Joyce says he suspects this call was 
     made to forestall his potential criticisms of military 
     decisions taken on Aspin's watch, including the fatal 
     mistakes in Somalia, for which some say Aspin had been made 
     to take the fall.
       Currie tells Insight that she cannot remember calling Joyce 
     on that particular day. ``But if he said so,'' she adds, 
     ``it's probably true.''
       In March 1994, Joyce, retired Capt. Jim Smith and retired 
     Sgt. Ben Phila met with Democratic Sen. Sam Nunn of Georgia, 
     at that time the chairman of the Senate Armed Services 
     Committee. Nunn scheduled a hearing, with Joyce and Smith as 
     witnesses, for May 12, 1994. on May 11, as Capitol Hill 
     committee procedure requires, they faxed their written 
     testimony to Nunn's committee--and within an hour of sending 
     the fax they received a call from the National Security 
     Council asking them to meet with the president the next day.
       By this time, testifying before Nunn's committee was a 
     higher priority for the bereaved fathers than meeting with 
     the president. But on the morning of the hearing, the 
     schedule was juggled so Joyce and Smith would testify after 
     lunch. Then, during the hearing's luncheon break, they were 
     taken to a limo, whisked off to the White House and deposited 
     in the Oval Office with Clinton, National Security Adviser 
     Anthony Lake and senior White House aide George 
     Stephanopoulos.
       Joyce says that during the meeting he found Clinton 
     arrogant, insensitive and anxious to retain control of the 
     conversation. Stephanopoulos hung back near the door, looking 
     annoyed, according to Joyce, and frequently checked his 
     watch.
       The line the president took was that he had relied upon his 
     military commanders and had not wanted to make former 
     President Johnson's mistake of trying to micromanage military 
     operations from the Oval Office.
       Joyce seized on a pause in the president's word flow to ask 
     if it were true that at the time that Casey Joyce, Jamie 
     Smith and Dominic Phila were killed, Clinton already was 
     working on a diplomatic solution brokered by former President 
     Carter, using Carter's contacts with Somalian ``warlord'' 
     Gen. Mohamed Farah Aideed, and that Clinton had accepted 
     Carter's opinion that a military solution in Somalia would 
     not work?
       Joyce says Clinton acknowledged all this.
       Joyce then asked why a raid aimed at capturing Aideed had 
     been carried out on Oct. 3. ``He was stunned at the 
     question,'' Joyce tells Insight. ``He then said: `On Oct. 3, 
     I asked Tony Lake the same question.' But later, after that 
     meeting, I asked Gen. Colin Powell whether the military had 
     been told of any change in the Somalia strategy, and he said 
     no, it had not.''
       Joyce says that, publicly and privately, the Clinton 
     administration ``is sticking to a canned response that says 
     the operation in Somalia saved lives and therefore our boys 
     did not die in vain. But the lifesaving part of the mission 
     was the humanitarian part, which ended in March of `93. The 
     rest--the part our sons died in--was just President Clinton's 
     participation in Boutros Boutros-Ghali's personal vendetta 
     against Aideed.''
       Throughout the 45-minute meeting, says Caroline Smith, 
     Jamie's mother, ``the president never acknowledged any 
     responsibility whatsoever. He was sorry, of course, but as 
     far as taking responsibility, he diffused it all over the 
     place.''
       The White House referred calls on all these matters to the 
     VA. VA spokesman Jim Holly tells Insight that the Clinton 
     administration's record on veterans' benefits and veteran 
     hiring makes this ``the most pro-vet administration since FDR 
     signed the GI Bill.''
       On July 28 the president told a Disabled American Veterans 
     conference in New Orleans: ``We're still around because of 
     you.''
       But others besides Wheeler are alarmed at the plight of 
     veterans. On July 31, Rep. John Mica, a Florida Republican, 
     shepherded the Veterans Employment Opportunities Act of 1996 
     through the House. The bill would strengthen veteran 
     preferences in federal

[[Page E1564]]

     hiring and allow vets in federal employment to appeal adverse 
     actions to the Merit Systems Protection Board.
       ``Right now,'' Mica tells Insight, ``veterans are the last 
     hired, first fired.''
       But for Wheeler the issue is not filling quotas, but 
     showing respect. ``I'm not trying to obtain a given number of 
     senior White House jobs for veterans,'' Wheeler says, ``I'm 
     trying to confirm or disprove a growing impression that this 
     White House doesn't want veterans in its face.''
       In a National Public Radio interview on March 14, 1994, 
     Puller observed: ``Clinton came in with a lot of baggage. His 
     draft record back in the sixties; he went to Yale Law School, 
     where virtually no one served; so, I sense sort of a `we-
     they' mentality there.''
       ``I know a number of years ago,'' Puller continued, 
     ``somebody said there's an unbridgeable gulf between those 
     who served and those who didn't serve in the Vietnam War. I 
     don't believe that any more, but I feel like veterans have 
     made more of an effort to be accessible to Clinton, and to 
     his administration, than his administration has to be 
     accessible to them.''
       Instead of accepting Puller's outreach, Wheeler says, this 
     White House has comported itself toward veterans as though 
     inspired by a remark of Shakespeare's great villain, Iago: 
     ``He hath a daily beauty in his life that makes me ugly.''

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