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This email rumor about Al Gore's military service in Vietnam crossed our transom in 2000: Origins: Future U.S. senator and vice-president Al Gore, Jr. enlisted in the U.S. Army in August 1969. Although his choosing a two-year enlistment (the same as if he'd been drafted) rather than a three-year enlistment meant that he technically did not get to choose his occupational specialty, realistically there was little chance he would be assigned to a combat position. Gore did exaggerate his experience working as a copy boy for the New York Times one summer (listing his position as a newspaper trainee), and after basic training at Fort Dix, he was assigned to Fort Rucker in Alabama as a Public Affairs Officer. Of the suggestion that Gore used political connections to ensure a non-combat position as an information specialist, Gore biographer Bill Turque wrote: Gore has claimed that he eventually volunteered to give up his stateside post and go to Vietnam, but White House influence ensured that his orders were held up until after the November 1970 election so that his father, Senator Al Gore, Sr. of Tennessee, could not use the political benefits of having a son serving in Vietnam during his re-election campaign that year. Gore biographer Bob Zelnick maintained that this claim was baseless, as a 27 September 1970 article in the Nashville Tennessean reported that Gore had already received orders to go to Vietnam. Whatever the case, Gore did not arrive in Vietnam until the very end of 1970, by which time only seven months remained of his enlistment term. He couldn't have served a full year's tour of duty in Vietnam, because he had considerably less than a year's service remaining of his two-year hitch when he arrived in that country. Gore was assigned a position as reporter covering the activities of the 20th Engineer Brigade in Bien Hoa, South Vietnam. Obviously, this was a non-combat position, and some of those who served with Gore reported that their superiors requested Gore should cover only military operations where security was good. However, they also reported that Gore had not asked for any such arrangement, nor was he aware of it. As Turque wrote: (Zelnick similarly quotes O'Hara as having stated that Gore's special status lasted about 3-1/2 minutes. He pulled his weight like anyone else.) During his 1988 campaign for the Democratic presidential nomination, Gore issued brochures containing a photo of himself with an M-16 rifle, which created the false impression that he had served as an infantryman, even though his only real combat experience was interviewing other GIs who had been in combat. Gore defended his use of the photo to reporters in 1987 by proclaiming: Gore filled his position with the 20th Engineers for five months. Army regulations at the time allowed for early discharge of personnel who wanted to teach or attend school if their services were considered not essential to the mission. As a reporter, Gore was certainly not essential to the war effort, and he applied for such a discharge. After spending a final month at the U.S. Army Engineer Command in Long Binh, Gore was mustered out and sent home two months early to attend Vanderbilt Divinity School. His discharge was not, as the piece quoted above claims, a special dispensation, and it cut only two months (not seven) from a tour of duty that could not have lasted much more than seven months in the first place.
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