Bill
Clinton was 22 and had just completed a degree at Georgetown
University in Washington, DC. And had won a prestigious
Rhodes Scholarship to study at University College, Oxford, for two years and
headed off to England for the 1968-69 academic term — but he returned to the
United States before finishing out the full two-year course of study.
In
October 1992, during Bill Clinton's first presidential campaign, a British news
report included interviews with a number of Clinton's Oxford classmates. The
article described Clinton's truncated study trajectory at Oxford as one that
was disrupted by the Vietnam-era draft, not by penalties for misbehavior. Had
Clinton left Oxford under dubious circumstances, reporting on such a scoop just
prior to the presidential election of 1992 would have been irresistible for the
British (and American) press. But Clinton's classmates made absolutely no mention of his departing abruptly or in
disgrace:
Clinton never completed his degree.
In part this was due to his worry about the draft. According to one
contemporary, he thought his first year would be his last and so there was
little point in doing the work for a two-year degree; in his second year it was
too late to start. This was not seen to matter. Many American Rhodes scholars
treated their time at Oxford as a version of the Grand Tour. They had their
degree and planned to go to law school when they returned to the US; Oxford was
an interesting interlude.
Clinton's non-completion of the
scholar program at Oxford was public knowledge more than 20 years prior to the
origination of rumors that he had been expelled from that university for sexual
misconduct. And as documented in a separate article on this
site, Clinton's efforts to avoid the military draft(ostensibly
by joining the ROTC at the University of Arkansas) were the likely reason
behind the timing of his movements between the U.S. and England.
Eileen
Wellstone, 19-year-old English woman who said Clinton sexually assaulted
her after she met him at a pub near the Oxford where the future President was a
student in 1969. A retired State Department employee, who asked not to be
identified, confirmed that he spoke with the family of the girl and filed a
report with his superiors. Clinton admitted having sex with the girl, but
claimed it was consensual. The victim's family declined to pursue the case;
A
retired State Department employee, who asked not to be identified, confirmed
that he spoke with the family of the girl and filed a report with his
superiors. Clinton admitted having sex with the girl, but claimed it was
consensual. The victim's family declined to pursue the case.
In
an interview with Capitol Hill Blue,
the retired State Department employee said he believed the story Miss
Wellstone, the young English woman who said Clinton raped her in 1969.
"There
was no doubt in my mind that this young woman had suffered severe emotional
trauma," he said. "But we were under tremendous pressure to avoid the
embarrassment of having a Rhodes Scholar charged with rape. I filed a report
with my superiors and that was the last I heard of it."
Miss Wellstone, who is now married
and lives near London, confirmed the incident when contacted, but refused to
discuss the matter further. She said she would not go public with further
details of the attack. Afterwards, she changed her phone number and hired a
barrister who warned a reporter to stay away from his client.
In
his book, Unlimited
Access, former FBI agent Gary Aldrich reported that Clinton left
Oxford University for a "European Tour" in 1969 and was told by
University officials that he was no longer welcome there. Aldrich said
Clinton's academic record at Oxford was lackluster. Clinton later accepted a
scholarship for Yale Law School and did not complete his studies at Oxford.
Oxford
officials refused comment. The State Department also refused to comment on the
incident. A Freedom of Information request filed by Capitol Hill Blue failed to turn up any records of the
incident. According
to Snopes Unproven
