Path: bloom-picayune.mit.edu!snorkelwacker.mit.edu!americast.com!americast.com!americast-post Newsgroups: americast.twt.news From: americast-post@AmeriCast.Com Organization: American Cybercasting Approved: americast-post@AmeriCast.com Subject: Clinton friends took, destroyed ROTC file Date: Sat, 31 Oct 92 14:00:15 EST Message-ID: \SE A;CAMPAIGN '92 \HD Clinton friends took, destroyed ROTC file \SH Witnesses: Papers handed over in '74 \BY Michael Hedges and Jerry Seper \CR THE WASHINGTON TIMES Bill Clinton's file was removed from the University of Arkansas ROTC office by Clinton representatives and destroyed in 1974 to cover up his maneuvering to avoid the draft five years earlier, witnesses say. The records clerk who handled the file and an Army officer in the ROTC office at the time said Clinton associates demanded and got the ROTC file when the politically well-connected Mr. Clinton was beginning his public career. Don Cake, then a captain with the Army ROTC at the university, said two men who said they worked for Mr. Clinton demanded the file in the months before Mr. Clinton began an unsuccessful bid for Congress in 1974. "I was there when the ROTC commander announced he had gotten authority to release Clinton's file to the people who were demanding it. I will swear to that," the retired Army colonel told The Washington Times in an interview Thursday. "I was outraged." Barbara Hausam, who was the military personnel records clerk for the Arkansas ROTC in the early 1970s, told The Times she was "absolutely positive" Mr. Clinton engineered the removal of his own draft file to hide its contents. She also said she remembered that Mr. Clinton signed a form obligating him to serve in the military in return for a draft deferment, something Mr. Clinton has denied. Betsey Wright, Mr. Clinton's research director, said yesterday: "This is hogwash. This rumor has been around for a long time. . . . "I don't know if there ever was an ROTC file. We attempted to find it earlier this year and couldn't." Ms. Wright said she's "done more research on this than you have. I've talked with people who were on the campaign in 1974, and they all deny knowing anything about it." The Washington Times began investigating the ROTC file charges after being approached by Col. Cake late this week. Col. Cake said he had spent the previous six to eight weeks working with NBC-TV in what he assumed was an exclusive relationship that would result in the story being aired. But he decided to call other news organizations after NBC decided not to run the story. A spokeswoman for NBC declined to comment on any work the network had done on the story, but a source at the network who asked not to be identified said it found nothing to refute anything Col. Cake said or to undercut his credibility. Mr. Clinton's promise to join the ROTC program to avoid the Vietnam War draft and his subsequent decision to renege on that promise have been the subject of escalating controversy on the campaign trail. The Democratic presidential nominee has said that his dealings with the ROTC were entirely within the law. But people working in the program at the time say Mr. Clinton recognized at the beginning of his political career that his behavior in 1969 might affect what he referred to in a letter that year as his "political viability." Mr. Clinton, a former staffer for Democratic Sen. J. William Fulbright, used many political and family connections to avoid the draft and positioned himself after graduation from Yale University Law School to run for Congress. He was a University of Arkansas law professor in 1974 and a known quantity in the ROTC office. "I could remember when he sent that letter to Colonel [Eugene] Holmes in December 1969," Mrs. Hausam said, referring to a letter Mr. Clinton sent two days after the institution of a national draft lottery to inform the university's ROTC commander that he would not fulfill his promise to join the program. "Everybody in the office was upset by that," she said. "There aren't words to tell you how betrayed people felt. The feeling was, look who we have given a deferment to." It was in the Dec. 3, 1969, letter that Mr. Clinton first told ROTC officials that he had "no interest" in the program and had signed on "to protect myself from physical harm." He thanked Col. Holmes for "saving me from the draft." The 1969 letter so outraged the program's executive officer, Lt. Col. Clinton D. Jones, that he made a copy of it and has kept it since. The letter surfaced as a campaign issue during the New Hampshire primary when Col. Jones gave it to ABC-TV. Col. Jones confirmed last month that officials began a file on Mr. Clinton in August 1969 after he agreed to join the program. Col. Jones said Mr. Clinton never told ROTC officers that he had received two draft-induction notices before he signed the ROTC agreement or that he had been involved in anti-war activities. Either admission would have kept Mr. Clinton out of the program. Col. Guy Tutwiler, who commanded the ROTC office in the mid-1970s, said he does not recall turning Mr. Clinton's file over to anyone. But he said there was an ROTC file on Mr. Clinton. Col. Tutwiler recalled seeing the letter Mr. Clinton had sent to Col. Holmes in December 1969 and sending that letter to his commanding officer at Fort Riley, Kan. Brig. Gen. Henry Miller, a captain in the Arkansas ROTC at the time, told The Times yesterday: "I remember seeing a file during the period I was there, probably in 1973, and its contents reflected all the information that has been published. I don't have any knowledge what was done with that file." Gen. Miller, now deputy commanding general of the Army base at Fort Leonard Wood, Mo., said: "I recall a Bill Clinton file. I remember seeing some letters that appeared to be signed by somebody named Clinton." Mrs. Hausam said she was first approached early in 1974 by a man who said he represented Bill Clinton. "The first man tried a good ol' boy approach," she said. "He represented himself as one of a group that felt I should help them because Bill Clinton was such a wonderful candidate and all the good things he would do." She said the man urged her to give him the Clinton file. "He went so far as to say he had gone over to the courthouse and they had given him a file, so couldn't I help him as well," Mrs. Hausam said. "I told him nothing short of threatening me with bodily harm would make me give him a file from our records." She said a second man came to her office soon after and tried a more stern approach to get the file. She turned him down. Col. Cake, who said he had not talked with Mrs. Hausam about the matter in recent years, recalled those events. "Mrs. Hausam came to me [in early 1974 or late 1973] and said she had been approached by people who said they represented Mr. Bill Clinton and would like to have his files." Col. Cake said that soon after he heard about the file requests from Mrs. Hausam, there was a staff meeting in Col. Tutwiler's office. "Colonel Tutwiler almost reiterated verbatim what Mrs. Hausam had told me," he said. "The colonel said, 'Well, I guess you've heard Bill Clinton has asked for his files.' " Clinton representatives, Col. Cake was told, "demanded the entire file. They demanded that no copies be made and that we make no comment. I was irate. I was livid." Col. Cake said his superiors chose to let university authorities decide whether to release the file. "In that era the military was very sensitive to generating anti-military feeling on the campus," he said. He said university officials directed that the file be given to representatives of Mr. Clinton. Later that summer, Mrs. Hausam said, she was called into the office by Col. Tutwiler and asked if she knew about a file on Bill Clinton. "I said I did, and he said, 'Well, get it,' " Mrs. Hausam said. The colonel told her to put the file in a large envelope. "Every bit of the file was in that envelope," she said. "That was the last I ever saw of it." Mrs. Hausam said there were several forms in the file, including a DA-1608, a form that obligated someone getting an ROTC deferment to serve in the military. "He says he never signed a form like that, but I know he did. I'm the one who typed the form," she said. Retired Master Sgt. Eddie Howard said he pulled and mailed a file containing information on Mr. Clinton to officers in Kansas and was later told by his commanding officer that the file had been destroyed. Sgt. Howard, who was the principal drill instructor for the unit in the early 1970s, said Col. Tutwiler ordered him to pull a file known as the "dissident file," which contained information on Mr. Clinton and others who were considered draft evaders. Sgt. Howard and Col. Cake said they believe the "dissident file" was different than the personnel file the Clinton workers sought. Sgt. Howard said the 1969 Clinton letter to Col. Holmes was in the file, as were newspaper clippings about protests and other material. "Colonel Tutwiler commented to me that he burned the file," Sgt. Howard said. A file kept by the ROTC on dissident activities might have been of questionable legality, Col. Cake and Sgt. Howard said. Sgt. Howard said, "One reason Colonel Tutwiler burned the file was that I think he thought it shouldn't exist." This article is copyright 1992 The Washington Times. Redistribution to other sites is not permitted except by arrangement with American Cybercasting Corporation. For more information, send-email to usa@AmeriCast.COM