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On Sat, 29 Nov 2025 13:48:06 -0000 (UTC),  Leroy N. Soetoro says...  

> Leftists were led by the shit eating coward draft dodger

LITTLE ROCK, Ark. - The colonel who administered the college ROTC program that 
helped save Bill Clinton from the draft said Sunday that the future Democratic 
presidential front-runner never mentioned that he had received an induction 
notice months before he applied for admission.

Retired Lt. Col. Clinton D. Jones, who was responsible for recruiting 
candidates into the program, said he "relied heavily" on Clinton's 
representation of his draft status - that he was classified 1-A and needed a 
deferment in 1969 because the local draft board intended to call him for 
military service.

Had Clinton disclosed the fact that he had already received a draft notice, 
Jones said, he would have urged rejection of his application for ROTC at the 
University of Arkansas law school. Jones said he first learned about Clinton's 
induction letter while watching television Sunday morning.

"I think Bill Clinton should be more forthright with a lot of people," Jones 
said Sunday in a telephone interview from his home in South Carolina. "I think 
that's his problem."

Late Saturday night, Clinton's campaign said the candidate received a letter 
of induction from the Hot Springs, Ark., draft board while he was studying at 
Oxford in England in April,1969. The campaign issued the statement after 
Little Rock attorney Cliff Jackson showed The Times old letters Jackson had 
written to friends describing Clinton's draft notice and Clinton's attempts to 
avoid the draft. Jackson, who was a friend of Clinton when both were at 
Oxford, now opposes Clinton's bid for the White House.

By Sunday afternoon, however, Clinton's deputy campaign manager, George 
Stephanopoulos, had backtracked, saying Clinton was not sure the letter he 
received in England was an official induction notice. Stephanopoulos said the 
letter could have been his notice to take a pre-draft physical exam.

Clinton himself referred to the letter as an "induction notice" and a 'draft 
notice" as he campaigned on Sunday in New York.

He said he had not intended to deceive anyone by failing to disclose that he 
had received it. "I would gladly have told you this," he said, "if it had even 
occurred to me that this was relevant."

Jones said the existence of Clinton's induction notice would have been 
extremely relevant nearly 23 years ago, when the then-Rhodes scholar 
interviewed with him for a spot in the ROTC program.

"If he had a valid letter of induction, no, we wouldn't have taken him," said 
Jones, who served as director of procurement for the law school's ROTC program 
from 1967 until 1970.

"The draft board was doing its job. They had the same job I did: They had the 
job of procuring bodies," he said. "They got quotas, and if this was a man 
they felt should go, I don't think we would have touched somebody like that."

Jones said he took Clinton's representation of his draft status at face value 
because the future Arkansas governor was highly regarded, even as a student. 
It was based on that representation that Jones told The Times last week that 
Clinton never received an induction letter.

"Arkansas was very proud of Bill Clinton," Jones said. "(He was) a graduate of 
Georgetown and a Rhodes Scholar... . This was a man who was well known and 
well thought of and the state of Arkansas was very proud.

"This is a man who didn't walk in and say, "Hey, I want to get out of the 
draft," " Jones added. "This was a man of high character and high 
qualifications, the type you want in your program. I accepted his word, and 
the word of the man in the (state) draft headquarters in Little Rock, that 
(Clinton) was classified 1-A and was going to be drafted and couldn't go back 
to England."

Asked if he had any response, Stephanopoulos, Clinton's deputy campaign 
manager, said the governor 'did not conceal anything" from ROTC officials, who 
were in constant contact with the draft board and should have known about all 
matters pertaining to Clinton's draft status. Stephanopoulos said Clinton told 
him he had never interviewed with Jones.

Told about this, Jones declared: "If Bill Clinton said he did not talk to me, 
that's a flat lie... ."

Jones said he interviewed Clinton for 30 minutes. "Now he's calling me a 
liar," Jones said, "and I won't stand for that."

The retired colonel said he believed at the time that Clinton 'deserved" a 
second year at Oxford and agreed to admit him to the ROTC program in exchange 
for the student's promise that he would come back and attend the University of 
Arkansas law school the following year,1970.

By enrolling in the ROTC program, records show, Clinton obtained a deferment 
on Aug. 7,1969. The new status protected him during the next two months, when 
officials said his age would have virtually guaranteed his induction into the 
Army. Clinton has said he had a change of heart and asked that his deferment 
be canceled so he could take his chances on the draft, just as did other young 
men from his hometown.

Records show he was restored to 1-A status on Oct. 30, but Jones said the 
reclassification meant little, since Clinton continued to be shielded from the 
draft by his contract with ROTC.

By that time, Clinton's chances of being drafted were further diminished, 
because President Richard M. Nixon had announced that graduate students would 
be exempt from the draft that year. On Dec. 1, Clinton received a high number 
in the first draft lottery.

The ROTC program subsequently released Clinton after he wrote a letter Dec. 3 
to Jones" boss, Col. Eugene Holmes, thanking him for "saving me from the 
draft" and admitting he may have been deceptive about the depth of his anti-
war feeling when he enrolled in the program.

Holmes could not be reached for comment Sunday.

Although Clinton's ROTC file has been destroyed, Jones said he was so angered 
by the letter that he kept a copy. He released it to ABC News in February, 
forcing the candidate to confront the politically damaging issue on the eve of 
the New Hampshire primary.

Despite Clinton's admission that he received the induction notice, the former 
secretary for his local draft board continued to maintain Sunday that no such 
letter was sent to him.

"I don't care what he says," Opal Ellis said. "He did not receive his notice 
of induction."

Staff writers Richard E. Meyer in Little Rock, Ark., and David Lauter and Doug 
Jehl in New York contributed to this story.