For decades Hillary Clinton has claimed that back in the 1970s the U.S. Marines rejected her because she was a woman. But a look at some of the information released by Wikileaks reveals that the Democrat nominee has more recently changed her story and admitted that the Marines did not reject her because of her gender.
One of the earliest reports on Hillary’s rejection claim came from The New York Times’ Maureen Dowd, who in 1994 reported Clinton’s claims as delivered at an event meant to honor military women hosted at the Capital in Washington D.C.
Dowd reported that Hillary told those gathered that she was rejected by the Marines because she was a woman. Dowd wrote that in 1975, the year she married Bill Clinton and when she was teaching at the University of Arkansas law school in Fayetteville, Hillary said she went to the Marines to see if she could sign up.
She was 27 then, she said, and the Marine recruiter was about 21. She was interested in joining either the active forces or the reserves, she recalled, but was swiftly rebuffed by the recruiter, who took a dim view of her age and her thick glasses. ‘Not Very Encouraging.’
“You’re too old, you can’t see and you’re a woman,” Mrs. Clinton said she was told, adding that the recruiter dismissed her by suggesting she try the Army. “Maybe the dogs would take you,” she recalled the recruiter saying.
“It was not a very encouraging conversation,” she said. “I decided maybe I’ll look for another way to serve my country.”
It was a story that Clinton would tell for years.
However, it appears that in some of the more recent speeches Hillary was paid millions to deliver to banks and corporations she contradicted that long time story about how the Marines so abrasively rejected her.
According to transcripts released by Wikileaks, in a speech at the annual meeting of the American Society for Clinical Pathology in September of 2013, Hillary had a completely different story than she gave in the Capital in 1994.
When asked by a member of the audience if in 1975 she was rejected from the Marines because she was female, Clinton said no and then explained she was rejected because she was “too old.”
This according to the excerpt from her 2013 appearance:
Question from the audience: Is it true that until 1975 you applied for the Marines and they told you no because you were a female?
Hillary: No. Here is what did happen: It was actually — there was a recruiting station, and I thought, you know, maybe I should consider serving my country by joining the military. So I walked into the recruiting station, and the person on duty was a Marine. And I think I was 26, maybe 27, so, an older potential recruit. I said to the young Marine, I said, “Well, you know, I’d be interested in getting some information to see whether I could maybe serve. I’m a lawyer. Maybe I could help in some way.” He says, “Well, I think you are too old for the Marines but maybe the dogs will take you.” I said, “The dogs?” He goes, “Yeah, you know, the Army.” I said, “Well, it doesn’t sound like I’m going to be welcome so…”
So, it appears that her claim about being rejected by the U.S. Marines because she had bad eyesight and because she was a woman had mysteriously vanished from her story between 1994 and her speech to the clinical pathology group in 2013.
Follow Warner Todd Huston on Twitter @warnerthuston or email the author at igcolonel@hotmail.com.
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