Blumenthal’s Vietnamgate: A Quagmire Of His Making

Connecticut Attorney General Richard Blumenthal’s self-inflicted Vietnamgate is getting to be a real quagmire for the former Mr. Clean, who used to have a reputation for integrity, even by his political opponents.

Ever since the New York Times exposed Blumenthal’s Stolen Valor stories to small veteran groups, the now U.S. Senate candidate has been caught between avoiding the media and then twisting the truth again when he attempts to explain that he never really lied and didn’t really try to get out of Vietnam.

His latest trek to swamp was with veteran Connecticut  political journalist Mark Pazniokas, when Blumenthal sat down for an interview on June 14. Pazniokas, who was laid off by The Courant, is now the political reporter for the non-profit political website CtMirror.Org.

Even though Pazniokas used kid gloves on Blumenthal in the interview – judging by the resulting column he wrote – the Attorney General still ended up splattering mud on himself.

The reason I say Pazniokas gave Blumenthal soft-ball questions, was because there was no mention of the real smoking gun of the accusations against Blumenthal, that he on numerous occasions said and/or gave the impression that he was in Vietnam during the war.

The smoking gun, of course, are the comments Blumenthal’s good friend, former U.S. Rep. Chris Shays made to the New York Times and to me, that he attended numerous veteran events with Blumenthal where Blumenthal told people he was a Marine in Vietnam. In fact, Shays told me, Blumenthal, as the years went by, kept embellishing his military record to indicate that he was in actual combat, instead of soft duty in Washington D.C. and in New Haven.

I guess Pazniokas hasn’t had time to read my May 26 column where Shays mentioned the combat role before Pazniokas wrote on June 14:

“No evidence has emerged of Blumenthal spinning a tale about actions in Vietnam, despite Chris Matthews denouncing him on MSNBC for claiming to be a combat vet. Still, Blumenthal, who never left the states as a reservist, put himself there in public remarks.”

Pazniokas may have also failed to see the Washington Post May 20 editorial that noted:  “Indeed, Mr. Blumenthal was less candid than he had been eight years ago, when he acknowledged to the Associated Press that he had enlisted because he had a “pretty low draft number.”

In the Pazniokas story, Blumenthal was allowed to get away with this little rewriting of history:

“Blumenthal, whose educational and employment deferrals kept him out of the draft from 1965 to 1970, joined the Marine Reserves in 1970, when he says his draft number was probably high enough to keep him out of the military. He said he does not remember, however, the number he drew in the draft lottery.”

But then perhaps that was the exact reason Blumenthal chose Pazniokas and CtMirror for his first interview about Vietnam since the May 18 Times article. A search of the CtMirror site has no reference to Shays’ comments about the issue and has treated Vietnamgate as a minor distraction, as if its routine for a state Attorney General to be caught lying. But then most other media in Connecticut have done the same.

Getting back to the column, Blumenthal makes the claim to Pazniokas that:

“”I could have stayed in the White House and continued the deferment,” Blumenthal said. “I did not want to avoid service. I did realize reservists could be called up, and that it was something I wanted to do.”

It again took the New York Times’ Raymond Hernandez to bring some light to this smoke that Blumenthal blew. Hernandez is the one who disclosed Blumenthal’s Vietnam valor claims.

This morning, Hernandez’s story destroys Blumenthal’s claims by talking to experts whose minds have not been affected by the fog of war, and reminded us that no reserve unit had ever been sent to Vietnam and that Blumenthal – like all other draft age folks back then – knew that.That would be especially true for Blumenthal who used his deferments to work in the Nixon White House and was especially privy to such military matters. Being a veteran of that era myself (I did volunteer for active duty and severed three years, mostly in Germany), we all knew that if you wanted to stay out of Vietnam you did whatever was necessary to join a reserve unit.

It will be interesting how much longer Blumenthal believes he can avoid serious questioning of his false claims by simply stating that he has already cleared the air by admitting that he “misspoke” on a few occasions and apologized for misspeaking.

The longer that Blumenthal keeps to that script, the longer he will have to stay in hiding and be unable to act as a political candidate or even in his full role as Attorney General, since he is afraid to even return telephone calls to reporters about legal issues as Vietnamgate may come up.