Word: mccloskey
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...past few years, these gleaming images have dissolved into others: blood-spattered rubble in Beirut, interservice turf battles in Grenada, a can-do lieutenant colonel wearing a medal-bedecked uniform while invoking the Fifth Amendment, furtive Moscow nights of sex for secrets. Says former California Congressman Pete McCloskey, a twice-wounded Marine veteran of Korea: "When I saw 200-plus Marines in Beirut bunched up in violation of every standard precept, I winced a lot. When I saw Ollie North, I winced a lot. And Moscow. It just killed...
Former Marines like McCloskey point out that Marine guards held back a brick-throwing mob when the embassy in Islamabad, Pakistan, was burned in 1979. But some say embassy guard duty, which the Marines shouldered in 1949, is unsuited for a group that is supposed to be a well-honed fighting force. Indeed, perhaps the most fundamental problem faced by the Marines, one that affects both their morale and their effectiveness, is that their mission has become murky...
Back came a six-page letter from McCloskey, who now works as a lawyer in Palo Alto, Calif. In January 1951 he left San Diego on the U.S.S. Breckinridge along with Robertson and some 2,000 other Marines. The ship stopped at Yokosuka and Kobe, Japan; Robertson did not continue on to Korea. "My single distinct memory," McCloskey wrote, "is of Pat, with a big grin on his face, standing on the dock . . . saying something like, 'So long, you guys -- good luck,' and telling us that his father (Democratic Senator A. Willis Robertson) had got him out of combat duty...
...transferred to Korea, where he served at 1st Marine Division headquarters as an assistant adjutant for six months. In his 1972 autobiography Shout It from the Housetops, Robertson fleetingly mentions his service as a "Marine combat officer in Korea"; at a press conference last month where he vehemently denied McCloskey's charge, Robertson said his duties included transporting classified codes between Korea and Japan. But he did not claim any battle experience, and since then the words combat duty have been dropped from his official bio sheet...
...After McCloskey's letter was made public by Jacobs, at least one other ex- Marine offered a similar account of Robertson's discussing his father's string pulling. (Robertson Sr., who served in the Senate from 1946 to 1966, died in 1971.) "We are going to have to do something to put this thing down," said a Robertson aide earlier this month. "It's getting out of hand." The suits dramatize Robertson's intention to fight any hint that he sought to evade combat duty in Korea. In libel cases, however, the burden of proof is on the plaintiff...