The Liquor Officer,
or,
Pat Robertson
Goes to War
Summary. Televangelist Pat Robertson, founder of the
"Christian Coalition" and host of the daily "700 Club" television
program, is a fraud and a liar. And don't bother to tell me that he is forgiven and
that makes it right. Pat continues to defraud people and lie, even on his
"Christian" broadcasting network.
I am a retired Army colonel. I served 28 years in uniform, including service in
Vietnam. Many of my friends were killed or wounded in Vietnam. There is a
special bond between men who have served in combat and God save the fool who tries to pass
himself off as a combat soldier when he is not. That's exactly what Pat Robertson
tried to do when he ran for President in 1986.
Quoted below is an excerpt from the book The Most Dangerous Man in America:
Pat Robertson and the Rise of the Christian Coalition, by Robert Boston (Prometheus
Books, published in 1996). In this excerpt, we learn that Robertson's claims to have
served in combat in Korea are a lie -- his father, a US senator, intervened to keep him
out of combat. In fact, Pat served in the rear where he consorted with whores and
made regular trips to Japan to purchase liquor for the rest of the officers in the rear,
hence his title "Liquor Officer."
Quoted from The Most Dangerous Man in America: Pat Robertson and the Rise of
the Christian Coalition, by Robert Boston, pages 40 - 42.
Revelations about Robertson's war record also dogged his
campaign. In his campaign literature Robertson claimed to be a combat veteran of the
Korean War. In fact, he served three miles from the front in a headquarters function
ferrying codes to Japan and never saw combat.
Former GOP congressman Pete McCloskey of California, who
served in the same unit as Robertson, claimed that Robertson had relied on his father's
influence to get him out of combat duty. Robertson was so rankled by the charge that he
sued McCloskey and Representative Andy Jacobs, an Indiana Democrat who also circulated the
charges, for $35 million.
McCloskey insisted that Robertson was on a ship headed
for combat until his father used his influence to have him removed. According to
McCloskey, Robertson later boasted that he had used his father to "get him out of
combat duty."
The libel suit turned out to be an embarrassment to
Robertson. During depositions, Paul Brosman, Jr., a retired university professor who
served with Robertson in Korea, backed up McCloskey's claim and went even further,
asserting that the televangelist had consorted with prostitutes and had sexually harassed
a Korean cleaning girl who worked in the barracks. Brosman's deposition asserted that
Robertson once feared he had contracted gonorrhea from a prostitute and was "very
relieved" when he discovered the problem was a urinary tract infection. Brosman added
that he had never personally seen Robertson with a prostitute and said some of his remarks
were based on "scuttlebutt" he heard from others.
The trial also established that Robertson's father did
indeed send a number of letters about his son, on Senate stationery, to Marine officials.
In one the elder Robertson expressed concern that his son had not been adequately trained
to be a combat officer.
McCloskey's lawyers also revealed that Robertson had used
a freelance journalist to gather information to use against the congressman. The reporter,
John Hasbrouck, had occasionally done pieces for the Christian Broadcasting Network but
represented himself to McCloskey as a reporter for "Worldwide News Service." The
New York Times reported that Hasbrouck interviewed McCloskey on videotape without
telling the congressman he was working for Robertson. Robertson admitted in a deposition
that he told Hasbrouck what questions to ask then reviewed the hour-long tape before
deciding to sue McCloskey. The New York Times also reported that Robertson asked
Iran-Contra figure Oliver L. North, then a White House security aide, to help him locate
military records to boost his case. North put Robertson in touch with a Marine general in
the Pentagon who provided copies of his service record.
In the end, Robertson dropped the lawsuit, claiming that
the trial date, which was set for March 8, the day of the "Super Tuesday"
primaries, was too inconvenient. Robertson groused that U.S. District Judge Joyce Hens
Green "presented me with one of the most unfair choices I have ever had to make"
when she set the trial date. When Robertson dropped his suit the court required him to pay
some of McCloskey's court costs, though not his legal fees.
The case hurt Robertson in another way: it led to a
spate of stories in the press recounting other instances of the TV preacher's dishonesty.
In one of the most shocking examples, the Washington Post reported that in the
summer of 1987 Robertson insisted that CBN's "financial affairs have been completely
open and on the record." In fact, CBN refused to join the Evangelical Council for
Financial Accountability, an oversight group that provides voluntary standards for
financial disclosure. (Robertson finally got around to signing up CBN for the ECFA in
1995, but only after most of his most profitable business ventures were spun off from CBN
and the National Religious Broadcasters threatened to expel any members that were not
accredited by the agency.)
End quote from The Most Dangerous Man in America: Pat Robertson and
the Rise of the Christian Coalition, by Robert Boston, pages 40 - 42.
I recommend that anyone who wants to know the truth about Pat Robertson read the
book from which the above excerpt was taken. I believe that, after reading this
book, you will agree with the title that Pat is the most dangerous man in America.
More resources about the real Pat Robertson
Another book
Another book -- this one is out of print and may be difficult to locate -- is
McCloskey, Paul N. (Pete) Jr. THE TAKING OF HILL 610, AND OTHER ESSAYS ON
FRIENDSHIP. Woodside, Cal.: Eaglet Books. In there you will find a
chapter titled "The Liquor Officer." That chapter goes into considerable
detail about Robertson's military service, how his father intervened to keep him from
combat, how he served as the "liquor officer," and about his behavior with
Korean prostitutes who were in the rear with Pat. Follow this link to read the
chapter, "The Liquor Officer," that details Pat
Robertson's activities in Korea.
Web sites
Check out these web sites; all were current as of April 26, 2002.
Start with this one about Pat Robertson's diamond mining business.
Here is the Anti-Pat
Robertson Site.
I'll add more sites as time goes on -- e-mail to me your favorite anti-Pat site.
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