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Gore letters reveal his inner conflict on Vietnam

CAMBRIDGE, Mass. - A recently publicized series of letters written by Vice President Al Gore during the spring of 1966 express his turmoil over America's involvement in the Vietnam War.

In letters to his future wife Mary Elizabeth "Tipper" Aitcheson on Harvard University stationery, Gore described his mixed feelings about Vietnam - his admiration for a classmate who left school to enlist and the presidential candidate's frustration with the war in general.

"It's wrong, we're wrong," he wrote. "A lot of people won't admit it and never will, but we're wrong."

Gore recently gave the letters to Douglas Brinkley, director of the Eisenhower Center for American Studies at the University of New Orleans, whose article on Gore's Harvard years will appear in the November issue of Talk magazine.

"He trusted me as a historian," Brinkley said. "I asked him for primary documents, as historians do. Labor Day, in the pouring rain, I was at the Vice President's residence and he handed them to me in an envelope - 'because you're not cynical,' he told me."

In one letter, Gore complained about his parents' opposition to his motorcycle rides to Cambridge and his long hair.

"I didn't even think it was long," Gore wrote.

The Vice President's office confirmed the validity of the letters.

"[Gore] was working with Douglas Brinkley," said Melissa Bonney Ratcliff, a Gore spokesperson. "It was part of a series of conversations they've had over the past few months."

Denmark Groover III, a classmate of Gore's who left Harvard to enlist in the military, had a changing influence on Gore's opposition to the war.

"I admire him a great deal; I admire his courage and rashness," Gore wrote. "I'm not sure at all that he didn't do the right thing."

Gore's mixed emotions were not rare at the time, according to Secretary of the Faculty John B. Fox Jr., then director of the Office of Career Services.

"I think there were a fair number of undergraduates who were conflicted as Vice President Gore says he was," Fox said.

Yet, at the time, Gore said he felt alienated by his classmates.

"They just can't understand. With their tremendous vocabulary and intelligence, they just can't understand," he wrote.

Richard T. Gill, who was Master of Leverett House in the late 1960s, said there were very few students or Faculty members who were openly in favor of the Vietnam War.

"The faculty was ready to go along with the limitations on free speech," Gill said. "It became impossible to express pro-war sentiment."

Gill praised Gore for having the courage to enlist, especially considering former Tennessee Senator Albert Gore Sr.'s public opposition to the war and the anti-war sentiment on campus.

"No question that his decision to go in was very exceptional," he said.

Richard Hyland, a fellow Dunster House resident who was active in Students for a Democratic Society (SDS), said he doubts the depth of Gore's inner conflict.

"There were people who were very engaged liberals," Hyland said. "Nothing got done except discussing the war. Al Gore never participated in a single conversation while I was there."

The media has also been skeptical.

As the letters have leaked to the press over the past two days, commentators on cable television have said the Talk magazine article may be intended to boost Gore's image in light of the upcoming election.

But Brinkley said he is more optimistic about the purpose of publishing the letters.

"You really do see in a clear, candid, moving fashion how deeply the war affected him," Brinkley said.

Hyland views Gore's emotional turmoil somewhat differently.

"I remember going down to the Dunster House Grille late at night," Hyland said.

"He'd be there watching the ballgame. I had a sense that he spent the '60s watching the ballgame."