CREATIVE HISTORY.(Joseph Ellis on Thomas Jefferson, impeachment of Bill Clinton)(Brief Article)

For years, Mount Holyoke professor Joseph "Full Metal Jacket" Ellis had been regaling students, interviewers, and friends with gripping stories of his service in Vietnam. The Pulitzer Prize-winning historian claimed to have been a platoon leader and paratrooper with the 101st Airborne Division. After the Boston Globe recently exposed these claims as lies, Mr. Ellis was forced to apologize for "having let stand" the "assumption" that he served in Vietnam. Mr. Ellis actually whiled away the Vietnam War in his college dorm room, presumably, like most academics, smoking pot and listening to the Beatles' "White Album."

Among the assumptions Mr. Ellis had let stand was his claim that after witnessing the horror of Vietnam first-hand, he came home and enlisted in the anti-war movement. He also boasted of helping David Halberstam with his 1972 best seller, The Best and the Brightest, by sharing his vivid recollections of Vietnam. In truth, he had no involvement in the anti-war movement, and Mr. Halberstam says he's never talked to Mr. Ellis.

Ellis also bragged about his work in the civil-rights movement, claiming that while on the Freedom Trail in Mississippi he was the victim of racist Southern cops banging on his door late at night and following his car. He wistfully recalled his years as a high school football star, describing to a reporter last year how he once scored a winning touchdown. Turns out he wasn't in Mississippi, and his greatest moment on the football field involved a clarinet.

Between 'Nam flashbacks and Freedom Rider reunions, Mr. Ellis co-authored the groundbreaking 1998 report that served as the Clinton flacks' giddiest "Gotcha" moment. Right at the climax of the impeachment drama, Ellis asserted "beyond any reasonable doubt that Jefferson had a long-term sexual relationship with his mulatto slave" Sally Hemings. Thus Bill Clinton wasn't a pervert, liar, and felon after ...