The official white house web site2 biography of Vice President Al Gore puts a gloss on Mr. Gore's seven years of non-political, post college, life to an extent that would get most people fired in the private sector, and many in government would face perjury charges if they signed employment applications as disingenuous as this biography:

"...After graduation, he volunteered for enlistment in the U.S. Army and served in Viet Nam. Returning to civilian life, Vice President Gore became an investigative reporter with the Tennessean in Nashville. He attended Vanderbuilt University Divinity School and Vanderbuilt Law School."

Mr. Gore's official campaign website3, is equally delusive. It claims Gore, "enlisted" in the Army on August 25, 1969. That he was "assigned" to the Ft. Rucker (Alabama) USA Av school as an "information officer". That he went to Viet Nam in January of 1971, "assigned" to an engineer brigade, that he was honorably discharged "and return[ed] home from Vietnam."

Then Gore claims he settled in Nashville and began working as reporter and attending Divinity School and later Law School. As a reporter, during this period the young Gore claims to have "broken" a story about local city council corruption. End of Story. Again, seven important, formative and revealing years glossed over in a few glib sentences.

Is America entitled to know the true and complete facts of Gore's self-styled "army" and "growing" years, the only period in Gore's adult life when he was not openly running for, or holding, elective office in Congress, the Senate or the White House and which therefore might reveal more about the character of our potential president than the cautious and contrived posturing of a lifelong, professional politician?

Regrettably America's media, despite its frequent unsubstantiated speculations about personal failings of two-term Texas Governor Bush who actually holds a graduate degree from a major university and has significant non-political accomplishments to his credit, has been notoriously lax in examining Gore's auto-mythology such as his recently released (8/22/00) campaign commerical that describes this part of Mr. Gore's life with the euphamistic theme of "principled fighter", and which ad repeats Gore's mantra by which he 'covers' his military service, that he, "enlisted in the Army" and later "came home from Viet Nam.", where in fact Gore flew a typewriter, while George W. Bush was flying F-102's for the Texas ANG.

From published4 but not widely circulated reports the following details, which measurably alter the meaning and significigance of the Gore resume claims, have been credibly recorded about Mr. Gore's early years:

Military Service

The Enlistment:

Gore graduated from Havard "cum laude" majoring in 'Goverment' in the troubled Spring of 1969, after having switched from an early major in English, in which field he had floundered. His remarkably unprofound senior thesis at Harvard was on the influence of television on natonal politics. As soon as he graduated his student draft deferment expired, and to the dismay of many at Harvard, graduate school deferments had been cancelled two years earlier. Thus, throughout the summer of 1969 the politically ambitious Gore was draft classification 1-A, he was in the parlance of the time, 'draft-bait.' The evidence is that with both his future political ambitions and his father's (US Senator Al Gore Sr. D-Tenn) political fortunes clearly in mind and subject to intense, if subtle, pressure from his family not to undermine his father's re-election prospects in a socially conservative state, Gore, facing the draft anyway, elected to "enlist", under duress, for a two year term which he did not in fact ultimately serve in its entirety.

It is credibly reported and published that prior to embarking on military service, that a friend of his politically influential father, ultimately with Gore's knowledge and consent, intervened with no less a senior commander than Gen. William Westmoreland, himself, to ascertain the best "career path" for the young Gore. Not surprisingly, Gore thereafter became one of the remarkably rare two year enlistees to be 'fortuitously' offerred his first choice of military career assignment, as a reporter, notwithstanding his failure to master his original academic major that most related to the duties of his chosen military specialty. Gore incredibly claims a lieutenant at the end of the admissions process looked over his test results and resume and spontaneously and solely on his own judgement determined Gore's military specialty.

This choice and remarkably safe job classification, during what was essentially wartime, also came, however, following Gore's falsification of his work experience on his military enlistment application. During college, Gore had worked one summer in the offices of the NY Times newspaper with the union classification of "office boy". At best his errand running might have been legitimately characterized as "copy boy". Gore, in his quest for the safe and undemanding assignment as a military reporter, embellished (not for the last time in his life) this experience into a mythical stint as "newsman trainee" for the Times.

After completing basic training, Gore managed to skip the rigorous advanced military training virtually all regular recriuts undergo folloing basic, and was shipped off to a facility in Alabama where he joined a staff of military "reporters" whose duties were indisputably insignificant and barely, if at all, above the level of typist. Gore characterizes this assignment as serving as an "information officer". He was of course merely a private and not an officer, but that did not prevent Gen. Westmoreland who was touring the facility one day from unexplainedly noticing Gore from a distance and then hailing Gore and holding a ten minute private conversation with Private Gore, the details of which remain mysterious even today but make sense if you beleive the reports that Gore family friends co-ordinated his career with the General before enlistment.

Gore late in his enlistment ultimately did go to Vietnam. No one disputes that he calculated and weighed carefully the impact on his future career prospects of being able to say he served in Viet Nam,. Gore after all was from the southern, conservative, "volunteer' State of Tennessee. In 1970, it still would have been political suicide for a person with Tenessee political ambitions to shirk military service or to be shown or believed to have 'pulled strings' to avoid a combat zone. Something like 2.2 million Americans served in Viet Nam. Virtually all of them, once assigned there, were required to serve a full one-year tour of duty before returning home. Many Vietnam servicemen did not serve in combat. Most servicemen had to take their chances as to what level of danger their assignments exposed them to in Vietnam. Gore is reported to have arrived in Vietnam on January 8, 1971, he was assigned as a reporter/journalist/typist to an engineering batallion at a large military base near Saigon. No one who served with him reports or describes any meaningful exposure to the hazards of war in that largely uneventful, even tedious, assignment.

In later political campaigns and statements and as recently as 1988 Gore, however, claimed to have been 'shot at' and seen others "cut in half by machine gun fire". These are lies. Gore never saw combat. During his four and one - half months of Vietnam service (which is often reported in the press as six-months, if the duration of his overseas service is mentioned at all) and not excluding the one week of R & R he somehow obtained in Hong Kong, Gore spent a total of one nervous night in a combat zone in a foxhole on an evening when nothing happened. His duties were insignificant, even trivial. He was informally assigned a bodyguard and chaperone to keep him out of danger, though no one can prove Gore was aware that these duties had been assigned to his "partner". Gore returned from Vietnam on May 22, 1971, after barely 18 weeks including the week in Hong Kong, and after applying for early release from the Army, which he obtained, getting out more than two months short of his full two year enlistment. On the whole, his tour in Vietnam was short and less dangerous than teaching school for a semester in, say, Cleveland. As with most of Gore's life it allowed him to make and overstate self-inflating, inferential claims of service, duty fulfillment, and high purpose, while accomplishing and doing little, while enjoying the fruits of privilege and influence, and in order to drape himself in the mantle of responsibility and maturity, which to the best anyone can tell, are ill fitting when worn by Mr. Gore. Like most of Gore's life his Army and Vietnam experiences were really merely an exercise in role playing.