More AlGore the Junior Lies:
TEST-BAN TREATY
October 14, 1999; Gore ad
CLAIM: “I ask for your support, and your mandate if elected president, to send this treaty back to the Senate with your demand that they ratify it. I’ve worked on this for 20 years because, unless we get this one right, nothing else matters.”
TRUTH: Gore indeed “worked on” this matter for many years, but often in opposition to a test ban. During his presidential campaign in 1988, he criticized his Democratic primary opponents for “the very idea of having a complete ban on all flight-testing of missiles when we rely on deterrence for the survival of our civilization” (Washington Post, 2-22-88).
INTERNET
March 9, 1999; CNN interview
CLAIM: “During my service in the United States Congress, I took the initiative in creating the Internet.”
TRUTH: The Internet is an outgrowth of a Pentagon program established in 1969. In the 1980s, Gore supported legislation considered favorable to the Internet’s development.
CENSUS
July 16, 1998; NAACP annual convention
CLAIM: “The Republicans know theirs is the wrong agenda for African Americans. They don’t even want to count you in the census!”
TRUTH: Most Republicans opposed the Clinton administration’s plan to conduct the census by statistically sampling the population rather than actually trying to count everybody.
BUDDHIST TEMPLE
January 24, 1997; Today show
CLAIM: “I did not know that it was a fundraiser.”
TRUTH: A DNC memo prepared for Gore made plain that the event at Hsi Lai Temple in Hacienda Heights, Calif., was a fundraiser. A Secret Service document called it a fundraiser, Gore’s staff described the event as a fundraiser to reporters, and DNC chairman Don Fowler testified to the Senate that he knew “there was a fundraising aspect to this event.” Six weeks before attending the event, Gore met with temple master Hsing Yun at the White House with fundraisers Maria Hsia and John Huang. Later that day, Gore sent an e-mail saying that he couldn’t be in New York on April 28, 1996: “If we have already booked the fundraisers [in California], then we have to decline.”
ABORTION #2
January 22, 1997; NARAL meeting
CLAIM: “I reached out to individuals who are leaders on the [pro-life] side of this issue” to “make common cause” on reducing unwanted pregnancies. He went on to imply that Catholic pro-lifers’ opposition to birth control made it impossible for both sides join “together to make abortions rare.”
TRUTH: Despite many queries, no pro-life leader has ever said Gore approached him on this subject.
PEACE CORPS
February 16, 1992; C-SPAN’s Booknotes
CLAIM: Gore said his sister was “the very first volunteer for the Peace Corps.”
TRUTH: Nancy Gore Hunger was a paid employee at Peace Corps headquarters, 1961-64.
SUPERFUND
April 16, 1988; Democratic debate in New York
CLAIM: “I have written the law, along with one other principal author of the Superfund law, and amendments to the other major law in this area, which requires that companies improperly disposing of hazardous waste must bear the financial consequences of cleaning it up.”
TRUTH: Rep. Jim Florio, Democrat of New Jersey, wrote the first Superfund law in 1980. Gore was not a coauthor but merely one of 42 cosponsors in the House. Eight years before claiming authorship and praising the Superfund law, Gore criticized it for being “far too small to make a reasonable start on correcting this enormous environmental problem” (Congressional Record, 5-16-80).
HOMETOWN
February 1988; two ads
CLAIM: “I’m Al Gore. I grew up on a farm,” and “growing up in Carthage, Tennessee, I learned our bedrock values . . .”
TRUTH: Gore, the son of a senator, grew up primarily at the Fairfax Hotel in Washington, D.C., in a suite of rooms overlooking Embassy Row. He graduated from the ritzy St. Albans National Cathedral School, also in the capital.
SCHOOL DAYS
1988 campaign video
CLAIM: Narrator calls him a “brilliant student.”
TRUTH: “His grades were uneven, never approaching the plateau of A’s and B’s that might be expected of one who possesses such a pedagogical demeanor,” reported the Washington Post (3-19-00).
MUSIC LYRICS
November 3, 1987; Variety
CLAIM: “I was not in favor of the hearing” on music lyrics.
TRUTH: At the Senate Commerce Committee hearing on September 19, 1985, Gore said: “Thank you very much, Mr. Chairman. I would like to thank you and commend you for calling this hearing. Because my wife has been heavily involved in the evolution of this issue, I have gained quite a bit of familiarity with it, and I have really gained an education in what is involved.”
INVESTIGATIVE REPORTER
September 27, 1987; Des Moines Register
CLAIM: Gore claimed he “got a bunch of people indicted and sent to jail” as a reporter in the 1970s.
TRUTH: Two city councilmen were indicted; one was acquitted and the other given a suspended sentence. In an interview with the Memphis Commercial Appeal (10-3-87) a few days later, Gore admitted to “a careless statement that was unintentional.”
FEMALE STAFFERS
August 22, 1987; Associated Press
CLAIM: Gore “said half his campaign staff were women, and he would make half of a Gore Cabinet women.”
TRUTH: “But pressed by reporters later to name women on his staff, he fumbled and then mentioned one name, which later turned out to be incorrect.”
ARMS CONTROL
1984 Senate ad
CLAIM: Narrator says Gore “wrote the bipartisan plan on arms control that U.S. negotiators will take to the Russians.”
TRUTH: Ken Adelman, director of U.S. Arms Control and Disarmament Agency: “He had nothing to do with what we proposed to the Soviets” (Boston Globe, 4-11-00).
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