Quayle Admits Joining Guard Cut Risks : Draft: Vice president defends his actions during Vietnam in light of questions Bush camp has raised about Clinton’s avoidance of military service.

WASHINGTON —  Vice President Dan Quayle acknowledged Sunday that joining the National Guard in 1969 had sharply reduced his chances of being sent to Vietnam, but he insisted that avoidance of military service should not be an issue in the presidential election.

“Obviously, if you join the National Guard, you have less of a chance of going to Vietnam,” Quayle said on NBC-TV’s “Meet the Press.” “I mean, that goes without saying.”

The vice president, who has repeatedly attacked Democratic nominee Bill Clinton for his handling of the military service issue, did not answer directly when asked whether avoiding Vietnam was his motive in choosing the Indiana National Guard.

“There are a lot of factors in this,” Quayle said. “. . . Obviously, there were a lot of choices that I had.”

He said that by joining the Guard, “of course you had much less of a chance to go to Vietnam. But my unit could have been called up to go to Vietnam. And had it been called, I would have gone.

“Indiana guardsmen did go to Vietnam, and Indiana guardsmen were killed in Vietnam.”

Less than 1% of the 2.5 million Americans who served in Vietnam were in the National Guard. Of the 58,000 GIs who were killed in the war, 97 were members of the National Guard.

Quayle said there was “no news” in a New York Times report on Sunday that said Quayle’s special connections helped him win a coveted headquarters post in the Indiana National Guard at a time when others were being turned away.

The New York Times reported that Quayle was referred to the unit, which had openings, while others who did not have his connections were not. Other members of the headquarters unit told the newspaper that they too knew someone who knew whom to call.

Anyone trying to join the Indiana National Guard by contacting a recruiter was told that it had no openings. There was a waiting list “in the thousands,” the paper reported.

Quayle said the charges about how he got into the Guard were “hashed over in 1988.”

“I never asked for any special treatment,” he said. “No rules were broken, no regulations broken. There were openings. Thousands of people joined the Indiana National Guard in the year 1969, just like I did.”

But Quayle said that military service is not a prerequisite for the presidency. “I don’t think that military service one way or another is a definitive character issue on whether you can be a good commander in chief or not,” he said, adding that Clinton’s problem is he “has not told the truth.”

David C. Beckwith, Quayle’s press secretary, said Quayle was not worried in 1969 about avoiding combat duty because he believed he could have easily gotten a desk job far from the front lines.

Rather, his concern in picking the Guard was finding a duty that would let him pursue his plan to go to law school without years of delay.

“He wanted to get on with his life,” Beckwith said.

And, in keeping with Quayle’s long-running feud with Hollywood, he said that tonight he’ll be watching the season premiere of “Murphy Brown.” The show has been the target of the vice president’s “family values” campaign since the fictional anchorwoman gave birth to a child out of wedlock last season.

Quayle said he plans “a temporary cease-fire with Hollywood.”