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Politics : Formerly About Advanced Micro Devices -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: longnshort who wrote (311617)	11/21/2006 8:07:14 PM
From: combjelly	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 1578177

"In Vietnam, Alan Leo, a photographer in the press brigade office where Gore worked as a reporter, said he was summoned by Brig. Gen. K.B. Cooper" Alan later backpedaled from this story. This quote leaves the impression that Gore was treated specially by not being sent into combat situations, and possibly that he or his politically connected family sought such favoritism. But other comments by Leo dispel these implications. Leo is both more specific and less incendiary in quotations that appear in Newsweek this week, as part of an excerpt from Bill Turque's forthcoming biography of Gore. Leo told Turque that the request to watch over Gore came from Brig. Gen. K.B. Cooper, the commander of the 20th Engineer Brigade. But Leo also told Turque that he never disclosed Cooper's request to Gore himself, and that he does not believe Gore was ever aware of the arrangement. When I reached Leo by phone at his home in Maryland, he said some other interesting things. He told me that the flap was "much ado about nothing" and that he thinks the use of the term "bodyguard" is inaccurate. For Army journalists in the unit, not visiting a battlefield until the battle was over was standard operating procedure. Leo himself was more daring--or "stupid" in his words--because he was single and addicted to adrenaline. He says he had mixed feelings about being asked to serve as Gore's "security escort." On the one hand, he resented Gore's special treatment. On the other hand, he felt honored to be chosen. And while he at first thought Gore was privileged and out of touch with the real world, "after I'd been around him for a while, I kind of changed my attitude--I found him to be a straight guy." Gen. Cooper told Turque that he had no memory of asking Leo to watch over Gore. But whether or not the conversation occurred, Gore clearly was not specially protected for much of the time he was in Vietnam. Journalists in the 20th Engineer Brigade would often go into the field in pairs on reporting assignments that were in practice largely voluntary. Gore went on many such trips, where he and other Army journalists caught a whiff of combat without participating in it. And often he went not with Leo but with other writers and photographers assigned to the brigade. Leo says he has no reason to believe these other journalists got the request he did to keep Gore out of danger. One who says he was never asked to protect Gore was Mike O'Hara, a fellow reporter attached to the 20th who became Gore's closest friend in the unit. O'Hara, who is now a sportswriter for the Detroit News, calls the idea that Gore was specially protected in Vietnam "a pile of shit." He recalls that he spoke to Gore soon after Gore arrived in Vietnam. O'Hara explained to him that he would have to choose between hanging around the base in Bien Hoa in relative safety or venturing out into the field to report on stories. "That's a decision I'm going to have to make," he remembers Gore telling him. Gore's decision was to go and see the war for himself, often in O'Hara's company. "Never once did I notice he was treated differently or asked to be treated differently from anybody else," O'Hara says. "We all would have known it. If you're not pulling your weight, you're an outcast. [Gore] was one of the best-liked guys in the unit."