Felon Groovy
Claim: Bill Clinton was the "first pardoned federal felon ever to serve as President of the U.S."
 | FALSE |
Example: [Collected via e-mail, 2002]
First Pardoned Federal Felon ever to serve as President of the U.S.
Bill Clinton's Draft Records from the Freedom of Information Act files show he was a Pardoned Federal Felon
* Bill Clinton registers for the draft onSeptember 08, 1964, accepting all contractual conditions of registering for the draft. Given Selective Service Number 3 26 46 228.
* Bill Clinton classified 2-S on November 17, 1964.
* Bill Clinton reclassified 1-A on March 20, 1968.
* Bill Clinton ordered to report for induction on July 28, 1969.
* Bill Clinton dishonors order to report and is not inducted into the military.
* Bill Clinton reclassified 1-D after enlisting in the United States Army Reserves onAugust 07, 1969 under authority of Col. E. Holmes. Clinton signs enlistment papers and takes oath of enlistment.
* Bill Clinton fails to report to his duty station at the University of Arkansas ROTC, September 1969.
* Bill Clinton reclassified 1-A on October 30, 1969, as enlistment with Army Reserves is revoked by Colonel E. Holmes and Clinton now AWOL and subject to arrest under PublicLaw 90-40 (2)(a) 'registrant who has failed to report ... remain liable for induction'.
* Bill Clinton's birth date lottery number is 311, drawnDecember 1, 1969, but anyone who has already been ordered to report for induction, is INELIGIBLE!
* Bill Clinton runs for Congress (1974), while a fugitive from justice under PublicLaw 90-40.
* Bill Clinton runs for Arkansas Attorney General (1976), while a fugitive from justice.
* Bill Clinton receives pardon on January 21, 1977 from Carter.
* Bill Clinton FIRST PARDONED FEDERAL FELON ever to serve as President.
All these facts come from Freedom of Information requests, public laws, and various books that have been published, and have not been refuted by Clinton.
Bill Clinton's Draft Records from the Freedom of Information Act files show he was a Pardoned Federal Felon
* Bill Clinton registers for the draft on
* Bill Clinton classified 2-S on November 17, 1964.
* Bill Clinton reclassified 1-A on March 20, 1968.
* Bill Clinton ordered to report for induction on July 28, 1969.
* Bill Clinton dishonors order to report and is not inducted into the military.
* Bill Clinton reclassified 1-D after enlisting in the United States Army Reserves on
* Bill Clinton fails to report to his duty station at the University of Arkansas ROTC, September 1969.
* Bill Clinton reclassified 1-A on October 30, 1969, as enlistment with Army Reserves is revoked by Colonel E. Holmes and Clinton now AWOL and subject to arrest under Public
* Bill Clinton's birth date lottery number is 311, drawn
* Bill Clinton runs for Congress (1974), while a fugitive from justice under Public
* Bill Clinton runs for Arkansas Attorney General (1976), while a fugitive from justice.
* Bill Clinton receives pardon on January 21, 1977 from Carter.
* Bill Clinton FIRST PARDONED FEDERAL FELON ever to serve as President.
All these facts come from Freedom of Information requests, public laws, and various books that have been published, and have not been refuted by Clinton.
Origins: The arc of future President Bill Clinton's activities in avoiding the military draft during the Vietnam War years of
often responded to questions on the subject with misleading or
inaccurate information. Nonetheless, available documentation and
personal memories have enabled writers to reconstruct the essential
elements of the tale.
The saga began when an eighteen-year-old Bill Clinton entered Georgetown University's School of Foreign Service in the fall of 1964. As required by law of all 18-year-old males at the time, Clinton registered with the Selective Service System on
As American military involvement in Vietnam escalated in the mid-1960s, Clinton (like other male students his age) would reasonably have expected that his status as a college student would provide him with deferments from the draft for several more years, especially when in his senior year he was one of thirty-two American men selected to receive Rhodes Scholarships to study at Oxford University in England. However, on
In mid-1968 Clinton, who maintained that although he was not opposed to the military or war in general he was morally opposed to the Vietnam War in particular, began to seek ways of avoiding the draft. His first opportunity was provided through the political and social connections of Raymond Clinton, his uncle, and Henry Britt, a Hot Springs lawyer and former judge, who made arrangements with the commanding officer of the local Naval Reserve unit, Trice Ellis, to secure a billet for Clinton in the naval reserve:
The first relief Raymond Clinton and Britt found for Bill was a naval billet. This would not only give him more time — he would not have to fill it until after the school year ended in June — but
it also would more likely keep him out of harm's way in the war. Trice
Ellis, the local naval commander, said he was only too happy to
accommodate the request, which he did not consider out of the ordinary,
and was "impressed by the chance to enlist someone with a college
education." He called the Navy command in New Orleans and secured a
two-year active duty billet for young Clinton. Ellis assumed that
Clinton would stop by that summer for an interview, but Clinton never
did. When he asked Raymond Clinton what happened, Raymond told him not
to worry, Bill would not be coming, he had been taken care of in another
way.
The "other way" that had "taken care" of Clinton was a favor Henry Britt worked out with
Britt called draft board chairman Armstrong, his close friend, and asked
him, as he later recalled, to "put Clinton's draft notice in a drawer
someplace and leave it for a while. Give the boy a chance." This is
apparently what Armstrong did for several months. Another member of the
Garland County Draft Board, Robert Corrado, later remembered Armstrong
holding back Clinton's file and saying that they had to give him time to
go to Oxford.
As Clinton biographer David Maraniss pointed out, although the
deliberate delay in issuing Clinton's draft notice was undeniably a case
of special treatment, it was by no means an unusual consideration
granted to Rhodes Scholars:
Special consideration for Rhodes Scholars was not unusual around the
country. The draft board in Alameda County, California, was so impressed
by the achievements of the only black Rhodes winner that year, Tom
Williamson of Harvard, that they granted him a graduate school deferment
even though such deferments supposedly no longer existed. Darryl Gless,
whose small home town in Nebraska was so proud of him that they strung a
banner across the Main Street bank welcoming him back from his
successful Rhodes interview, also was given a special deferment.
Dartmouth scholar John Isaacson visited his draft board in Lewiston,
Maine, and pleaded with them to let him go to Oxford, which they did.
University of Iowa scholar Mike Shea went to England "happily but
erroneously 2-S " for the first year. Paul Parish's mother
in Port Gibson, Mississippi, received a letter from the governor telling
her that Paul should go to England because they were trying to get an
exemption for Rhodes Scholars. For virtually every member of the Rhodes
class of 1968 there was a similar story.
Clinton set sail from New York to begin his first year at Oxford in
 |
As Clinton headed home for Arkansas from England, his options for avoiding the draft were limited. He did not qualify for conscientious objector status because he did not have a history of opposing military service or war in general, only the Vietnam War specifically. The local Army National Guard and Reserve units were full. He took physicals for the Air Force and Navy officer programs but failed them both. (He was undersize and didn't possess the visual acuity required for the Air Force program, and he failed the Navy exam due to substandard hearing.) Clinton's only available out seemed to be joining the advanced ROTC program at the University of Arkansas, which had no quotas and was open to graduate students, but since Clinton had already received an induction notice he would have to obtain the approval of Willard Hawkins, the state Selective Service director (an appointee of the Arkansas governor) to enter the program.
Clinton called upon Cliff Jackson, an Arkansas College graduate who had been Clinton's acquaintance at Oxford and was now working for the state Republican party, and Jackson in turn asked his boss, the head of the Arkansas Republican party, to arrange a meeting between Clinton and Selective Service director Hawkins. Clinton also received assistance from Lee Williams, an aide to
Clinton apparently did intend to begin attending the University of Arkansas Law School that fall, but sometime during the summer he changed his mind and decided to return for a second year at Oxford instead:
By Clinton's account, he talked to Colonel Holmes and gained permission
to return to Oxford for the second year since the basic training that he
was required to attend before beginning advanced ROTC would not start
until the following summer. Holmes said later that he allowed Clinton to
return to Oxford for "a month or two," but expected him to enroll in
the law school as soon as possible. But a letter that Clinton wrote in
December 1969 in which he apologized for not writing more often — "I know I promised to let you hear from me at least once a month" — is
the strongest evidence that Holmes was aware of and approved Clinton's
plan to go back to Oxford. The rest of the ROTC staff was expecting
Clinton to enroll that fall. Ed Howard, the drill sergeant, later
recalled that there was great anger when word spread through the ROTC
office that Clinton was not on campus.
The details of Clinton's subsequent actions and decisions are murky, but
sometime after returning to Oxford that fall (where he later helped
organize anti-war protests in London), probably between
The proponderance of evidence leads in one direction: to the notion that
with each passing week there were more signs that he might not get
drafted even if he abandoned the deferment. If Clinton, acting through
his stepfather, arranged to have the local draft board reclassify him 1-A after October 1, he would have known that it was largely a symbolic act providing him with the best of both worlds — the ability to say he had given up a deferment, and the knowledge that even though he was 1-A again, he would not be drafted that year.
When the first draft lottery of the Vietnam era was held on That Bill Clinton went to great lengths to avoid the
If Clinton had still been obligated to report for induction, his draft board could have got him any time they wanted: they certainly knew where to find him, yet no one ordered him to report to an induction center, no federal agents arrested him for draft evasion, and no MPs came and hauled him away for being AWOL, because he hadn't broken any laws, civil or military. Likewise, President Carter's executive order of
Although what he did may not have been against the law, Clinton's broken promises and contradictory statements about his efforts to avoid the draft were prime examples of the kind of self-serving doublespeak that later earned him the sobriquet "Slick Willie." As Maraniss concluded in his Clinton biography, First in His Class:
"It was just a fluke," Clinton would say decades later, when first asked
how he had made it through this period without serving in the military.
But of course it was not a fluke. A fluke is a wholly accidental stroke
of good luck. What happened to Clinton during that fateful year did not
happen by accident. He fretted and planned every move, he got help from
others when needed, he resorted to some deception or manipulation when
necessary, and he was ultimately lucky.
Last updated: 4 March 2014
This material may not be reproduced without permission.
snopes and the snopes.com logo are registered service marks of snopes.com.
 | Sources: |
Allen, Charles F. and Johnathan Portis. The Comeback Kid: The Life and Career of Bill Clinton. New York: Birch Lane Press, 1992. ISBN 1-55972-154-5. Balz, Dan. "Clinton Uncle Said to Have Lobbied Draft Board." The Washington Post. 2 September 1992 (p. A4). Birnbaum, Jeffrey H. "Clinton Bid to Avoid Vietnam May Prompt Fresh Scrutiny." The Wall Street Journal. 8 February 1992. Maraniss, David. First in His Class: A Biography of Bill Clinton. New York: Simon & Schuster, 1995. ISBN 0-671-87109-9. Rempel, William C. "Induction of Clinton Seen Delayed by Lobbying Effort." Los Angeles Times. 2 September 1992 (p. A1). Tyrrell Jr., R. Emmett. Boy Clinton: The Political Biography. Washington: Regnery Publishing, 1996. ISBN 0-89526-439-0.
Read more at http://www.snopes.com/politics/clintons/felon.asp#dImaaQuqzz79pbzp.99
Send
RSS
