WASHINGTON -- Vice President Dan Quayle brushed off new questions Sunday about how he avoided military service in Vietnam, and again insisted Democrat Bill Clinton is the one with real explaining to do.
Quayle repeated his denial on NBC's 'Meet the Press' that he received 'special treatment' when he was able to join an elite National Guard unit which remained in his home state of Indiana during the Vietnam War.
The New York Times reported Sunday on what it described as a pattern of favoritism paid to Quayle in 1969, the year he managed to enter the Guard and thus avoid Vietnam.
The Times said the Indiana National Guard headquarters unit privately kept coveted slots open for the politically connected, such as Quayle, despite long waiting lists and an official first-come, first-served policy.
Quayle dismissed the report and denied, as he did in the 1988 presidential campaign, that he benefited from special treatment because of his family's prominence in Republican circles in Indiana.
'There's no new news there at all,' he said. 'This has all been rehashed....this was all hashed over in 1988.'
Quayle acknowledged he knew at the time that joining the headquarters unit generally spared an enlistee from Vietnam, but said that was not the only reason he joined the unit. However, he did not say what other reasons he had.
'Of course you had much less chance to go to Vietnam,' Quayle said. 'But my unit could have been called up to go to Vietnam. And had it been called up, I would have gone.'
President Bush, upon returning to the White House from a weekend at Camp David, Md., told reporters Quayle 'certainly has' answered all the questions he needs to about his military service.
'He served his country. He was in uniform for six years. In the Guard. That's pretty good, especially in this day and age,' Bush said.
The renewed questioning into his own military record did not rattle Quayle from continuing to lead the Republican charge on Democratic presidential hopeful Clinton's lack of military service during the Vietnam era.
Quayle said the issue is not whether or not military service better qualifies a candidate for being the nation's commmander-in-chief, but 'the element is truthfulness.'
'He (Clinton) can go ahead to run and to dodge this issue, but he simply cannot hide the truth from the American people,' Quayle said.
The Times said it re-examined Quayle's explanation of how he entered the Guard and avoided the draft, finding new evidence of favoritism, because the Republicans continue to promote military service as a campaign issue today.
It noted reporters conducted 30 interviews and again examined records and concluded Quayle's family connections did make a difference in his ability to find an unadvertised vacancy for himself in the administrative unit of the Indiana National Guard.
Chairmen for the Democratic National Committee and Republican National Commitee, appearing jointly on CBS's 'Face the Nation' on Sunday, tried to put their own spin on the draft stories.
Democratic National Committee Chairman Ronald Brown accused the Republicans of using the Clinton draft issue as a way to divert attention from the nation's ailing economy.
Brown called the issue a 'red herring.' But Republican Chairman Rich Bond said, 'This is about truth and integrity, not the draft.'
