LITTLE WHITE HOUSE LIES?
Vice-President Al Gore has been accused on numerous occasions of bending the truth – even telling outright lies – when discussing his political achievements and career milestones.
How much did these incidents influence voters in the recent inconclusive US presidential poll? The Bug lets you be the judge. We have searched Gore’s recent past and assembled the following list of incidents in which this senior politician has caught out being less than frank.
March 1996: While addressing an information technology conference in Houston, claimed to have invented the internet.
June 1996: While opening a writers’ convention in Los Angeles, claimed he and his wife Tipper were the real-life central characters of Erich Segal’s popular novel Love Story.
October 1996: As keynote speaker at a mathematicians’ conference in San Francisco, claimed to have invented and named the system for solving particular mathematical problems in a limited number of steps, now known as algorithms.
February 1997: While meeting film industry lobbyists in Washington, clarified his earlier comments about Love Story by claiming he and his wife Tipper were really the real-life central characters in George Segal and Glenda Jackson’s 1973 smash hit film A Touch of Class.
November 1997: While addressing ethnic community representatives at a conference in New York, claimed to have descended from a hard-working, dirt-poor family who migrated to the United States in the mid-19th century from the little-known European principality of Algoria.
May 1998: While visiting a Boston martial arts school, clarified his earlier comments about A Touch of Class by claiming he had really been the real-life central character in Steven Seagal’s Under Siege and Under Siege 2.
April 1999: On an inspection tour of a new gaol outside Atlanta, claimed he had invented the term used to describe prison guards, but had chosen to use an anagram – “gaoler” – rather than his real name, “for security purposes”.
May 2000: While addressing a conference of casino operators in Las Vegas, clarified his earlier remarks about Under Siege and Under Siege 2 by claiming he had shot and killed Benjamin “Bugsy” Siegel in June 1947.
