On a less serious matter, another flattering but untrue description of Mr.
Blumenthal's history has appeared in profiles about him. In two largely
favorable profiles, the Slate article and a magazine article in The Hartford
Courant in 2004 with which he cooperated, Mr. Blumenthal is described
prominently as having served as captain of the swim team at Harvard. Records
at the college show that he was never on the team.

Mr. Blumenthal said he did not provide the information to reporters, was
unsure how it got into circulation and was "astonished" when he saw it in
print.

Mr. Blumenthal has made veterans' issues a centerpiece of his public life
and his Senate campaign, but even those who have worked closely with him
have gotten the misimpression that he served in Vietnam.

In an interview, Jean Risley, the chairwoman of the Connecticut Vietnam
Veterans Memorial Inc., recalled listening to an emotional Mr. Blumenthal
offering remarks at the dedication of the memorial. She remembered him
describing the indignities that he and other veterans faced when they
returned from Vietnam.

"It was a sad moment," she recalled. "He said, 'When we came
back, we were
spat on; we couldn't wear our uniforms.' It looked like he was sad to me
when he said it."

Ms. Risley later telephoned the reporter to say she had checked into Mr.
Blumenthal's military background and learned that he had not, in fact,
served in Vietnam.

The Vietnam chapter in Mr. Blumenthal's biography has received little
attention despite his nearly three decades in Connecticut politics.

But now, after repeatedly shunning opportunities for higher office, Mr.
Blumenthal is the man Democrats nationally are depending on to retain the
seat they controlled for 30 years under Mr. Dodd, and he is likely to face
more intense scrutiny.

After obtaining Mr. Blumenthal's Selective Service records through a Freedom
of Information Act request, The New York Times asked David Curry, a
professor at the University of Missouri-St. Louis and an expert on the
Vietnam draft, to examine them.

Mr. Curry said the records showed that Mr. Blumenthal had received at least
five deferments. Mr. Blumenthal did not dispute that but said he did not
know how many deferments he had received.

Mr. Blumenthal grew up in New York City, the son of a successful businessman
who ran an import-export company.

As a young man, he attended Riverdale Country School in the Bronx and showed
great promise, along with an ability to ingratiate himself with powerful
people.

In 1963, he entered Harvard College, where he met Daniel Patrick Moynihan,
who served on the faculty there and guided Mr. Blumenthal's senior thesis on
the failure of government poverty programs.

He received two student deferments during his undergraduate years there, the
records show.

After graduating from Harvard in 1967, military records show, Mr. Blumenthal
obtained another educational deferment and headed to Britain, where he filed
stories for The Washington Post and attended Trinity College, Cambridge, on
a graduate fellowship.

But in early 1968, President Lyndon B. Johnson, under pressure over
criticism that wealthier young men were avoiding the draft through graduate
school, abolished nearly all graduate deferments and sharply increased the
number of troops sent to Southeast Asia.

That summer, Mr. Blumenthal's draft classification changed from 2-S, an
educational deferment, to 2-A, an occupational deferment -- a rare exemption
from military service for men who contended that it was in the "national
health, safety and interest" for them to remain in their civilian jobs. At
the time, he was working as a special assistant to Ms. Graham, whose son
Donald he had befriended at Harvard. Half a year later, after the election
of President Richard M. Nixon, Mr. Blumenthal went to work in the White
House as a senior staff assistant to Mr. Moynihan, who was Nixon's urban
affairs adviser.

But at the end of that year, he became eligible for induction after he drew
a low number in a draft lottery held on Dec. 1, 1969. His number was 152,
and people with numbers as high as 195 could be drafted, according to the
Selective Service.

Two months after the lottery, in February 1970, Mr. Blumenthal obtained a
second occupational deferment, according to the records. The status of
people with occupational deferments, however, was growing shakier, with the
war raging and the Nixon administration increasingly uncomfortable with
them.

In April 1970, Mr. Blumenthal secured a spot in the Marine Corps Reserve,
which was regarded as a safe harbor for those who did not want to go to war.

"The Reserves were not being activated for Vietnam and were seen as a
shelter for young privileged men," Mr. Curry said.

But Mr. Blumenthal's campaign manager, Mindy Myers, said Monday that any
suggestion that he was ducking the war was unfounded, saying he was engaged
in important work. When he worked for Ms. Graham, for example, he helped
teach children in a public school in the Anacostia section of Washington,
for a project she had started there.

"It's flat wrong to imply that Richard Blumenthal's decisions to take a
Fiske Fellowship, teach inner-city schoolchildren and work in the White
House for Daniel Patrick Moynihan were decisions to avoid service when in
fact, while still eligible for a deferment, he chose to enlist in the Marine
Corps Reserves and completed six months of service at Parris Island, S.C.,
and then six years of service in the Reserves."

Mr. Blumenthal landed in the Fourth Civil Affairs Group in Washington, whose
members included the well-connected in Washington. At the time, the unit was
not associated with the kind of hardship of traditional fighting units,
according to Marine reports from the period and interviews with about a
half-dozen men who served in the unit during the Vietnam years.

In the 1970s, the unit's members were dispatched to undertake projects like
refurbishing tent decks and showers at a campground for underprivileged
Washington children, as well as collecting and distributing toys and games
as part of regular Toys for Tots drives.

Robert Cole, a retired lieutenant colonel who did active duty overseas in
the 1950s and later joined the unit as a reservist, recalled the young men
who joined the unit in the late 1960s and early 1970s. "These kids we were
getting in -- a lot of them were worried about the draft," he said.

After entering Yale Law School in the fall of 1970, Mr. Blumenthal
transferred to a Marine Reserve unit in New Haven, Company C of the Sixth
Motor Transport Battalion, Fourth Marine Division, which conducted
occasional military drills, as well as participating in Christmas toy drives
for children and recycling programs in neighboring communities, according to
the unit's command reports from the time.

In 1974, Mr. Blumenthal took a position as a law clerk for Justice Harry C.
Blackmun of the United States Supreme Court and transferred back to a
Washington unit, where he completed his service.



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