On December 3rd, 1969, Bill Clinton, then in his second year as a Rhodes Scholar at Oxford University in England, wrote a letter to Colonel Eugene Holmes, who headed up the Reserve Officer Training Corps program at the University of Arkansas. Here is the full text of the letter. This text was taken verbatim from Slick Willie, by Floyd G. Brown. Not a word has been changed.
I am sorry to be so long in writing. I know I
promised to let you hear from me at least once a month, and from now on
you will, but I have had to have some time to think about this first letter.
Almost daily since my return to England I have thought about writing, about
what I want to and ought to say.
First, I want to thank you, not just for saving
me from the draft, but for being so kind and decent to me last summer,
when I was as low as I have ever been. One thing which made the bond we
struck in good faith somewhat palatable to me was my high regard for you
personally. In retrospect, it seems that the admiration might not have
been mutual had you known a little more about me, about my political beliefs
and activities. At least you might have thought me more fit for the draft
than for ROTC.
Let me try to explain. As you know, I worked
for two years in a very minor position on the Senate Foreign Relations
Committee. I did it for the experience and the salary but also for the
opportunity, however small, of working every day against a war I opposed
and despised with a depth of feeling I had reserved solely for racism in
America before Vietnam. I did not take the matter lightly but studied it
carefully, and there was a time when not many people had more information
about Vietnam at hand than I did.
I have written and spoken and marched against
the war. One of the national organizers of the Vietnam Moratorium is a
close friend of mine, After I left Arkansas last summer, I went to Washington
to work in the national headquarters of the Moratorium, then to England
to organize the Americans for the demonstrations Oct. 15 and Nov. 16.
Interlocked with the war is the draft issue,
which I did not begin to consider separately until early 1968. For a law
seminar Georgetown I wrote a paper on the legal arguments for and against
allowing, within the Selective Service System, the classification of selective
conscientious objection, for those opposed to participation in a particular
war, not simply to "participation in war in any form."
From my work I came to believe that the draft
system itself is illegitimate. No government really rooted in limited,
parliamentary democracy should have the power to make its citizens fight
and kill and die in a war they may oppose, a war which even possibly may
be wrong, a war which, in any case, does not involve immediately the peace
and freedom of the nation.
The draft was justified in World War II because
the life of the people collectively was at stake. Individuals had to fight,
if the nation was to survive, for the lives of their countrymen and their
way of life. Vietnam is no such case. Nor was Korea an example where, in
my opinion, certain military action was justified but the draft was not,
for the reasons stated above.
Because of my opposition to the draft and the
war, I am in great sympathy with those who are not willing to fight, kill,
and maybe die for their country (i.e. the particular policy of a particular
government) right or wrong. Two of my friends at Oxford are conscientious
objectors. I wrote a letter of recommendation for one of them to his Mississippi
draft board, a letter which I am more proud of than anything else I wrote
at Oxford last year. One of my roommates is a draft resister who is possibly
under indictment and may never be able to go home again. He is one of the
bravest, best men I know. That he is considered a criminal is an obscenity.
The decision not to be a resister and the related
subsequent decisions were the most difficult of my life. I decided to accept
the draft in spite of my beliefs for one reason: to maintain my political
viability within the system. For years I have worked to prepare myself
for a political life characterized by both practical political ability
and concern for rapid social progress. It is a life I still feel compelled
to try to lead. I do not think our system of government is by definition
corrupt, however dangerous and inadequate it has been in recent years.
(The society may be corrupt, but that is not the same thing, and if that
is true we are all finished anyway.)
When the draft came, despite political convictions,
I was having a hard time facing the prospect of fighting a war I had been
fighting against, and that is why I contacted you. ROTC was the one way
left in which I could possibly, but not positively, avoid both Vietnam
and resistance. Going on with my education, even coming back to England,
played no part in my decision to join ROTC. I am back here, and would have
been at Arkansas Law School because there is nothing else I can do. In
fact, I would like to have been able to take a year out perhaps to teach
in a small college or work on some community action project and in the
process to decide whether to attend law school or graduate school and how
to begin putting what I have learned to use.
But the particulars of my personal life are not
nearly as important to me as the principles involved. After I signed the
ROTC letter of intent I began to wonder whether the compromise I had made
with myself was not more objectionable than the draft would have been,
because I had no interest in the ROTC program in itself and all I seemed
to have done was to protect myself from physical harm. Also, I began to
think I had deceived you, not by lies because there were none but by failing
to tell you all the things I'm writing now. I doubt that I had the mental
coherence to articulate them then.
At that time, after we had made our agreement
and you had sent my 1-D deferment to my draft board, the anguish and loss
of my self-regard and self confidence really set in. I hardly slept for
weeks and kept going by eating compulsively and reading until exhaustion
brought sleep. Finally, on Sept. 12 I stayed up all night writing a letter
to the chairman of my draft board, saying basically what is in the preceding
paragraph, thanking him for trying to help in a case where he really couldn't,
and stating that I couldn't do the ROTC after all and would he please draft
me as soon as possible.
I never mailed the letter, but I did carry it
on me every day until I got on the plane to return to England. I didn't
mail the letter because I didn't see, in the end, how my going in the army
and maybe going to Vietnam would achieve anything except a feeling that
I had punished myself and gotten what I deserved. So I came back to England
to try to make something of this second year of my Rhodes scholarship.
And that is where I am now, writing to you because
you have been good to me and have a right to know what I think and feel.
I am writing too in the hope that my telling this one story will help you
to understand more clearly how so many fine people have come to find themselves
still loving their country but loathing the military, to which you and
other good men have devoted years, lifetimes, of the best service you could
give. To many of us, it is no longer clear what is service and what is
disservice, or if it is clear, the conclusion is likely to be illegal.
Forgive the length of this letter. There was
much to say. There is still a lot to be said, but it can wait. Please say
hello to Col. Jones for me.
Merry Christmas.
Sincerely,
Bill Clinton
Colonel Eugene Holmes
A highly decorated officer
of the United States Army September 1992's affidavit concerning Bill Clinton and the draft. He is a survivor of the Bataan Death March and
three and a half years as a POW of the Japanese. He served 32 years in
the army before retiring with 100% disability. His decorations include
the Silver Star, 2 Bronze Stars, 2 Legions of Merit, the Army Commendation
Medal and many others. During the Vietnam War, he personally inducted both
his sons into the service - one for 3 years as a regular army enlisted man,
and the other as a commissioned officer (after he had completed ROTC training).
There have been many unanswered questions
as to the circumstances surrounding Bill Clinton's involvement with the
ROTC department at the University of Arkansas. Prior to this time I have
not felt the necessity for discussing the details. The reason I have not
done so before is that my poor physical health (a consequence of participation
in the Battan Death March and the subsequent three and a half years interment
in Japanese POW camps) has precluded me from getting into what I felt was
unnecessary involvement. However, present polls show that there is the
imminent danger to our country of a draft dodger becoming Commander-in-Chief
of the Armed Forces of the United States. While it is true, as Mr. Clinton
has stated, that there were many others who avoided serving their country
in the Vietnam war, they are not aspiring to be the President of the United
States.
The tremendous implications of the possibility
of his becoming Commander-in-Chief of the United States Armed Forces compels
me now to comment on the facts concerning Mr. Clinton's evasion of the
draft. This account would not have been imperative had Bill Clinton been
completely honest with the American public concerning this matter. But
as Mr. Clinton replied on a news conference this evening (September 5,
1992) after being asked another particular about his dodging the draft,
"Almost everyone concerned with these incidents are dead. I have no more
comments to make". Since I may be the only person living who can give a
first hand account of what actually transpired, I am obligated by my love
for my country and my sense of duty to divulge what actually happened and
make it a matter of record.
Bill Clinton came to see me at my home in 1969
to discuss his desire to enroll in the ROTC program at the University of
Arkansas. We engaged in an extensive, approximately two (2) hour interview.
At no time during this long conversation about his desire to join the program
did he inform me of his involvement, participation and actually organizing
protests against the United States involvement in South East Asia. He was
shrewd enough to realize that had I been aware of his activities, he would
not have been accepted into the ROTC program as a potential officer in
the United States Army.
The next day I began to receive phone calls regarding
Bill Clinton's draft status. I was informed by the draft board that it
was of interest to Senator Fullbright's office that Bill Clinton, a Rhodes
Scholar, should be admitted to the ROTC program. I received several such
calls. The general message conveyed by the draft board to me was that Senator
Fullbright's
office was putting pressure on them and that they needed my help. I then
made the necessary arrangements to enroll Mr. Clinton into the ROTC program
at the University of Arkansas.
I was not "saving" him from serving his country,
as he erroneously thanked me for in his letter from England (dated December
3, 1969). I was making it possible for a Rhodes Scholar to serve in the
military as an officer. In retrospect I see that Mr. Clinton had no intention
of following through with his agreement to join the Army ROTC program at
the University of Arkansas or to attend the University of Arkansas Law
School. I had explained to him the necessity of enrolling at the University
of Arkansas as a student in order to be eligible to take the ROTC program
at the University. He never enrolled at the University of Arkansas, but
instead enrolled at Yale after attending Oxford. I believe that he purposely
deceived me, using the possibility of joining the ROTC as a ploy to work
with the draft board to delay his induction and get a new draft classification.
The December 3rd letter written to me by Mr.
Clinton, and subsequently taken from the files by Lt. Col. Clint Jones,
my executive officer, was placed into the ROTC files so that a record would
be available in case the applicant should again petition to enter the ROTC
program. The information in that letter alone would have restricted Bill
Clinton from ever qualifying to be an officer in the United States Military.
Even more significant was his lack of veracity in purposefully defrauding
the military by deceiving me, both in concealing his anti-military activities
overseas and his counterfeit intentions for later military service. These
actions cause me to question both his patriotism and his integrity.
When I consider the calabre, the bravery, and
the patriotism of the fine young soldiers whose deaths I have witnessed,
and others whose funerals I have attended.... When I reflect on not only
the willingness but eagerness that so many of them displayed in their earnest
desire to defend and serve their country, it is untenable and incomprehensible
to me that a man who was not merely unwilling to serve his country, but
actually protested against its military, should ever be in the position
of Commander-in-Chief of our armed Forces.
I write this declaration not only for the living
and future generations, but for those who fought and died for our country.
If space and time permitted I would include the names of the ones I knew
and fought with, and along with them I would mention my brother Bob, who
was killed during World War II and is buried in Cambridge, England (at
the age of 23, about the age Bill Clinton was when he was over in England
protesting the war).
I have agonized over whether or not to submit
this statement to the American people. But, I realize that even though
I served my country by being in the military for over 32 years, and having
gone through the ordeal of months of combat under the worst of conditions
followed by years of imprisonment by the Japanese, it is not enough. I'm
writing these comments to let everyone know that I love my country more
than I do my own personal security and well-being. I will go to my grave
loving these United States of America and the liberty for which so many
men have fought and died.
Because of my poor physical condition this will
be my final statement. I will make no further comments to any of the media
regarding this issue.
Eugene J. Holmes, Colonel, U.S.A., Ret, September
1992
