If You Want To Know What Is Going On With Greenwich Politicians - You Have To Read The Out Of Town Newspapers
Richard Blumenthal Was Never Ever Been Challenged By The Greenwich Time On Any Issue
This One Is Going To Sting Richard Blumenthal Real Bad
Candidate’s Words on Vietnam Service Differ From History
At a ceremony honoring veterans and senior citizens who sent presents to soldiers overseas, Attorney General Richard Blumenthal of Connecticut rose and spoke of an earlier time in his life.
“We 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 think 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 Senate, never served in Vietnam. He obtained at least five military deferments from 1965 to 1970 and took repeated steps that enabled him to avoid going to war, according to records.
The deferments allowed Mr. Blumenthal to complete his studies at Harvard; pursue a graduate fellowship in England; serve as a special assistant to The Washington Post’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 have 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 alone in staying out of the war.
But what is striking about Mr. Blumenthal’s record is the contrast between the many steps he took that allowed him to avoid Vietnam, and the misleading way he often speaks about that period of his life now, especially when he is speaking at veterans’ ceremonies or other patriotic events.
Sometimes his remarks have been plainly untrue, as in his speech to the group in Norwalk. At other times, he has used more ambiguous language, but the impression left on audiences can be similar.
In an interview on Monday, the attorney general said that he had misspoken about his service during the Norwalk event and might have misspoken on other occasions. “My intention has always been to be completely clear and accurate and straightforward, out of respect to the veterans who served in Vietnam,” he said.
But an examination 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 back from Vietnam, intimating that he was among them.
In 2003, he addressed a rally in Bridgeport, where about 100 military families gathered to express support for American troops overseas. “When we returned, we saw nothing like this,” Mr. Blumenthal said. “Let us do better by this generation of men and women.”
At a 2008 ceremony 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 always done so.
“I served during the Vietnam era,” he said. “I remember the taunts, the insults, sometimes even physical abuse.”
Mr. Blumenthal, 64, is known as a brilliant lawyer who likes to argue cases in court and uses language with power and precision. He is also savvy about the news media and attentive to how he is portrayed in the press.
But the way he speaks about his military service has led to confusion and frequent mischaracterizations of his biography in his home state newspapers. In at least eight newspaper articles published in Connecticut from 2003 to 2009, he is described as having served in Vietnam.
The New Haven Register on July 20, 2006, described him as “a veteran of the Vietnam War,” and on April 6, 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 about his experience as a Marine sergeant in Vietnam.”
And the idea that he served in Vietnam has become such an accepted part of his public biography that when a national outlet, Slate magazine, produced a profile of Mr. Blumenthal in 2006, 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 certain whether he had seen the stories or whether any steps had been taken to point out the inaccuracies.
“I don’t know if we tried to do so or not,” he said. He added that he “can’t possibly know what is reported in all” the articles that are written about him, given the large number of appearances he makes at military-style events.
He said he had tried to stick to a consistent way of describing his military experience: 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 not recall the event.
An aide pointed out that in a different appearance this year, Mr. Blumenthal was forthright about not having gone to war. In a Senate debate in March, he responded to a question about Iran and the use of military force by saying, “Although I did not serve in Vietnam, I have seen firsthand the effects of military action, and no one wants it to be the first resort, nor do we want to mortgage the country’s future with a deficit that is ballooning out of control.”
On a less serious matter, 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 article in The Hartford Courant in 2004 with which he cooperated, Mr. Blumenthal is described prominently as having served as captain of the swim team at Harvard. Records at the college show 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 it in print.
Mr. Blumenthal has made veterans’ issues a centerpiece of his public life and his Senate campaign, but even those who have worked closely with him have 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 offering 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 sad moment,” she recalled. “He said, ‘When we came back, we were spat on; we couldn’t wear our uniforms.’ It looked like he was sad to me when he said it.”
Ms. Risley later telephoned the reporter to say she had checked into Mr. Blumenthal’s military background and learned that he had not, in fact, served in Vietnam.
The Vietnam chapter in Mr. Blumenthal’s biography has received little attention despite his nearly three decades in Connecticut politics.
But now, after repeatedly shunning opportunities for higher office, Mr. Blumenthal is the man Democrats nationally are depending on to retain the seat they controlled for 30 years under Mr. Dodd, and he is likely to face more intense scrutiny.
After obtaining Mr. Blumenthal’s Selective Service records through a Freedom of Information Act request, The New York Times asked David Curry, 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 but said he did not know how many deferments he had received.
Mr. Blumenthal grew up in New York City, the son of a successful businessman who ran an import-export company.
As a young man, he attended Riverdale Country School in the Bronx and showed great 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 there and guided Mr. Blumenthal’s senior thesis on the failure of government poverty programs.
He received two student deferments during his undergraduate years there, the records show.
After graduating from Harvard in 1967, military records show, Mr. Blumenthal obtained another educational deferment and headed to Britain, 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 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 summer, Mr. Blumenthal’s draft classification changed from 2-S, an educational deferment, to 2-A, an occupational deferment — a rare exemption from military service for men who contended that it was in the “national health, safety 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.
About six months later, following 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 then Nixon’s urban affairs adviser.
But at the end of that year, he became eligible for induction after he drew a low number in a draft lottery held on Dec. 1, 1969. His number was 152, and people with numbers as high as 195 were being drafted in his group, according to the Selective Service.
Two months after the lottery, in February 1970, Mr. Blumenthal obtained a second occupational deferment, according to the records. The status of people with occupational deferments, however, was growing increasingly shaky, 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 not want to go to war.
“The Reserves were not being activated for Vietnam and were seen as a shelter for young privileged men,” Mr. Curry said.
Mr. Blumenthal landed in the Fourth Civil Affairs Group in Washington, whose members included the well-connected in Washington.
At the time, the unit was not associated with the kind of hardship of traditional fighting units, according to Marine reports from the period and interviews with about a half-dozen men who served in the unit during the Vietnam years.
In the 1970s, for example, the unit’s members were dispatched to undertake projects like refurbishing tent decks and showers at a campground for underprivileged Washington children, as well as collecting and distributing toys and games as part 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 as a reservist, recalled the young men who joined the unit in the late 1960s and early 1970s.
“These kids we were getting in — a lot of them were worried about 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, as well 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 law clerk for Justice Harry C. Blackmun of the United States Supreme Court and transferred back to a Washington unit, where he completed his service.
The Senate race in Connecticut is likely to be a closely watched contest. Democrats were relieved when Mr. Dodd stepped aside this year and believed that Mr. Blumenthal, with his long record and high name recognition, assured them of the seat. He is considered the front-runner in the campaign for the Democratic primary, in August.
But Republicans have a spirited race of their own. The field includes Linda McMahon, who along with her husband, Vince, founded the World Wrestling Federation, and Rob Simmons, a Vietnam combat veteran.
A closer look at Connecticut Attorney General Richard Blumenthal's military ...
Addressing a crowd of veterans and supporters in March 2008, Attorney General Richard Blumenthal of Connecticut said that he had served in Vietnam.
"It's become increasingly clear to us over the past weeks and months as
we've researched Mr. Blumenthal in earnest that there are some deeplydisturbing disconnects between the image he's sought to portray and reality,'' says Ed Patru, spokesman for Linda McMahon. "These are questions that will not and cannot be easily answered."
Rob Simmons, who is a Vietnam veteran, said the following: "As someone who served, I respect Dick for wearing the uniform, but I am deeply troubled by allegations that he has misrepresented his service. Too many have sacrificed too much to have their valor stolen in this way. I hope Mr. Blumenthal steps forward and forthrightly addresses the questions that have arisen about this matter."
The New York Times tonight described Attorney General Richard Blumenthal as falsely describing himself on at least two occasions as a Vietnam veteran, ...
In a story that can't be good for Richard Blumenthal's U.S. Senate campaign, the New York Times is reporting the Democratic hopeful has repeatedly ...
Chris Dodd lied about serving in Vietnam, The New York Times reported Monday night. Attorney General Richard Blumenthal of Connecticut had made frequent ...
"The New York Times story is an outrageous distortion of Dick Blumenthal's record of service. Unlike many of his peers, Dick Blumenthal voluntarily joined ...
47 minutes ago - Did attorney general and senate hopeful Richard Blumenthal ever serve in Vietnam? Well, no. But according to The New York Times, Blumenthal is suggesting ...
New York Times: At a ceremony honoring veterans and senior citizens who sent presents to soldiers overseas, Attorney General Richard Blumenthal of ...
Blumenthal's repeated suggestions that he served in Vietnam are revealed as ... when the New York Times reported he has misled voters about his military ...
Connecticut's Blumenthal Confronted With False Claims of Vietnam War Service. FOXNews.com. The New York Times found the state attorney general received five ...
In an interview with Hearst Connecticut Newspapers Monday night, Blumenthal insisted that he never has misled the public or has mischaracterized his military service, saying that he has been careful to refer to himself as a "Vietnam-era" veteran.
But The Times account reported that in numerous public appearances Blumenthal either has plainly misspoken about the details of his service or has allowed audiences to assume he physically served in Vietnam.
Typical, the paper said, was a 2008 appearance before veterans in Norwalk. At a ceremony honoring veterans and senior citizens who sent presents to soldiers overseas, Blumenthal rose and spoke of an earlier time in his life......
"I can tell you that my intention was to be always clear and straightforward about what my service was," Blumenthal said. "I've always said that I've served in the Marine Corps Reserve during the Vietnam era. If I said anything otherwise on very rare occasions, I may have misspoken."
When asked about various media reports referring to him as a Vietnam veteran over the years and why he didn't attempt to correct the record, Blumenthal said he was "unaware of those articles."
Blumenthal disputed the Times' claim that his military service and public comments don't match up......
Connecticut Attorney General and U.S. Senate candidate Richard Blumenthal is defending himself against a report he misstated his military service in Vietnam.
Blumenthal's campaign called a New York Times report which includes video of him at a 2008 event saying he had served "in Vietnam" an "outrageous distortion" on his record.
Blumenthal says he's always tried to make it clear his Marine Reserve service never took him overseas. The Times reported he got five deferments to avoid going to war between 1965 and 1970. ....
Alpert, who is also seeking the Democratic Senate nomination, said the Times revelations are "pretty striking" and fly in the face of Blumenthal's public image.
"As a citizen and as candidate, it's shocking to see someone who has tried to craft this image of themselves as a fighter, as someone who is willing to always step up and tell the truth, to see him lie about serving in Vietnam,'' Alpert said during a brief phone conversation tonight.
"He was a coward to go and get five deferments and he's clearly a liar for standing up for his own political benefit years later...It's disgraceful behavior from someone who is clearly not qualified to serve in the U.S. Senate."
The words were totally sober.
No hint of gloating in the press release Rob Simmons sent out tonight.
Rob Simmons was a special operations specialist who is the one candidate with a special handle on how to deal with foreign policy challenges in the 21st century.
Mere moments after the Times expose hit the web Monday night, the Simmons campaign issued a one-paragraph statement. It read:
“As someone who served, I respect Richard Blumenthal for wearing the uniform, but I am deeply troubled by allegations that he has misrepresented his service. Too many have sacrificed too much to have their valor stolen in this way. I hope Mr. Blumenthal steps forward and forthrightly addresses the questions that have arisen about this matter.”
Linda McMahon’s campaign rushed out an email message to the press, too. It reprinted the Times story in full. It added no other words of its own. It subsequently followed up with a release quoting a blog item crediting the McMahon campaign for digging up the video and providing it to the Times—portraying McMahon not as a soldier (in comparison to Blumenthal) but rather a candidate with “$16 million” to fund “a crack opposition research operation.” McMahon’s team portrayed this as a characterization to be proud of.
The Blumenthal campaign, meanwhile, swung back with an angry denial in a release Monday night and a promise of a press event Tuesday morning.
Greenwich Roundup Political Political Suiside
Greenwich Resident Richard Blumental plans to stay in the US Senate race despite a New York Times report that he didn't serve in Vietnam as he had claimed in public appearances.
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I think CT should demand a public apology and his resignation from the US Senate race.
If he lies about this, what else has he already lied about?
The New York Times was too kind when they charitably said, "It does not appear that Mr. Blumenthal ever sought to correct those mistakes" when people (himself included) implied that he was deployed to Vietnamese soil during the conflict.
Blumenthal deserves no charity here.
He is a was born a very privileged and later lied about his military record, while truly brave young men and women shed their blood and die in far off lands.
Blumenthal, for once in his life, ought to to the honorable thing and drop his Democratic bid for the U.S. Senate.
The dirty little secret is that many young men and women who have came home wounded or in a pine box came from poor families and volunteered to put themselves in harms way, so that they could get a chance to go to college and improve their lot in life.
These young men and women were not born with a silver spoon in their mouths like Richard Blumenthal was.
Blumenthal is basically a spoiled rich kid that has been overindulged by his parents.
This over indulgence is characterized by "excessive, self-centered, and immature behavior". It includes lack of consideration for other people, recurrent temper tantrums, an inability to handle the delay of gratification, demands for having one's own way, obstructiveness, and manipulation.
The last thing Richard Blumenthal will do is say."I was totally wrong. I am sorry and I hope you can forgive me."
Right now Blumenthal is thinking., 'Batten down the hatches and ride out the storm as long as you can. Forget the toll it takes on your family! Forget the toll it takes on the effectiveness of your office! Because there's always the chance you'll beat the rap, and people will forget, and no matter how egregious your error, you will retain POWER.'
Connecticut Attorney General Richard Blumenthal will hold a news conference later this morning to discuss how he exaggerated his military service.
Behind the scenes, the Blumenthal campaign will point to the times Blumenthal referred to his service correctly so that they can paint the picture of a candidate who just misspoke about having his boots on the ground in Vietnam..
Bottom line: It's fingernail bitting time time for Blumenthal.
Blumenthal right now is hoping two things:
1) that the reservoir of goodwill he's built up with Connecticut voters is real;
and
2) that the only times he lied about his Vietnam service are those cited by the New York Times.
Any other revelations... and then he is definitely toast?
The next 24 to 48 hours will be critical as to whether Blumenthal survives as his party's U.S. Senate nominee.
The Democratic nominating convention is on Friday.