A Jersey lawyer stands up for his Vietnam War buddy Roy Moore

A Jersey lawyer stands up for his Vietnam War buddy Roy Moore

Updated Nov 28; Posted Nov 28

By Paul Mulshine
Columnist, The Star-Ledger

(ABOVE: Am I the only one who's curious how the Washington Post uncovered so many women who made 40-year-old allegations against Republican U.S. Senate candidate Roy Moore while uncovering none who made one-year-old allegations against Democratic U.S. Senator Bob Menendez?)

Stop me if you've heard this one before.

Alabama U.S. Senate candidate Roy Moore walked into a brothel ...

... and then he walked right back out.

That's the account I got from Bill Staehle, a lawyer living in Asbury Park who served in Vietnam with Moore in the early 1970s.

Staehle, who is now 70, was a captain in the Military Police at a base just outside Da Nang, a perennial hot spot. Moore was a West Point grad and also a captain.

The evening in question began when a third officer, who was about to return to the States, came by in a Jeep and invited the two out for a beer to celebrate.

"It was interesting because the guy came down from Quang Tri and they had seen some tough duty," Staehle recalled when I talked with him on the phone Monday.

He expected they'd go to a bar and talk. Instead the guy pulled up at a nondescript house that was guarded by a couple South Vietnamese police with automatic weapons.

"We went inside and as soon as we walked in, Roy and I knew it was a brothel," he said. "The captain we were with was greeted by a couple of women and he obviously knew what was going on.

"Before anyone could come up to us, Moore said, 'We shouldn't be here. We're leaving,'" said Staehle. "The captain we were with said 'I'll get a ride home. Take my jeep.'"
They did, Staehle said.

He said his memories of Moore are all positive. You don't make a lot of friends when you're a captain in the MPs, Staehle recalled, so he appreciated Moore's companionship.

"I was really impressed with Roy's self-discipline, his integrity, his honor and his sense of duty," Staehle recalled. "We were just 24 years old at the time."

Until recently, Staehle hadn't heard from Moore since they left Vietnam in 1972. That changed amid the current political fight over published allegations in the Washington Post that Moore, who is running as a Republican in a special election Dec. 12, had fondled a 14-year-old girl when he was in his 30s.

Staehle decided to share his positive experiences of Moore. He sent an account of their service together to Yellowhammer, a conservative website in Alabama.

"What I saw, felt and knew about him in Vietnam stands in stark contrast to those allegations," he wrote in the online piece. "I sincerely doubt that Roy's character had changed fundamentally and dramatically in a few short years later."

Soon afterward he got a call from his old Army buddy.

"He said to me, 'Bill, I'm telling you, these allegations are not true,'" he said.

That was good enough for Staehle.

"You don't lie to a guy you went to war with," he said.

Staehle, who has been a lawyer for 42 years, said he has his doubts about the charges against Moore. He cited an account given by Moore accuser Leigh Corfman in a recent televised interview with Savannah Guthrie of the Today Show.

"I know when somebody is meticulously prepared and when the witness is using words that don't seem to suit where she's coming from," he said. "I prepare witnesses as well as depose witnesses. It was clear she was very well prepared."

That doesn't necessarily mean she's lying, said Staehle, who supervises 44 lawyers who do defense work for a major insurance company.

"With the passage of time, the story changes," he said. "I see that in my litigation all the time. People exaggerate things. They add to the story.''

Staehle is a Republican, but he said he would grant the same benefit of the doubt to Democrats.

"If you ask me should Al Franken be removed from the senate, I say, 'No, it's up to the people of Minnesota.'"

Similarly, the Moore case is up to the people of Alabama, he said.

"I'm just not convinced by the allegations," he said. "I believe the Alabama voters are going to reject them as well."

Staehle then offered this novel thought:

"I'm hoping they vote for or against him on the issues as they see them."

Me too. If we're going to start analyzing our Senate candidates based on their lifetime sexual histories, then every election will be fought out in the nether regions of the internet. It's time to get back to the issues.

In the meantime, a Moore victory would qualify as a historic first.

If elected, Moore will be the first senator in memory to have eyewitness evidence that he exited a brothel without having sex.

That may not sound like much.

But by Beltway standards, it's a lot.

http://image.nj.com/home/njo-media/w...hoto/moore.JPG

Former Alabama Chief Justice and U.S. Senate candidate Roy Moore speaks at a campaign rally on Monday in Henagar, Ala. (Brynn Anderson | Associated Press)

"No doubt, some of the allegations are true. No doubt, many of the allegations are false. No doubt, the vast majority of these allegations amount to no crimes (or unlawful activity of any kind) and/or lack the requisite evidence to prove guilt, by any legal standard, in an authentic system of justice."

As I noted above, if we're going to hold every politician to this non-standard, politics will descend into personality attacks as opposed to debates over issues.

But if the Democrats think that's a good idea, then they'd better be prepared for the inevitable outcome.

http://www.nj.com/opinion/index.ssf/...war_buddy.html