ARLINGTON SCANDAL; SALE OF HALLOWED GROUND IS VILE.

Byline: JOE GELMAN

MY father is a decorated, disabled American military veteran. He received the Air Medal for meritorious service while flying repeated, dangerous missions over Korea in a B-26 bomber in 1951. During one of those missions, he was forced to crash-land in a no man's land in darkness. Miraculously, the entire crew survived and was rescued.

I called the Department of Defense to find out if my father would qualify for burial at the prestigious Arlington National Cemetery.

I was told that because he did not have 20 years of service when he retired - although he retired as a result of his disability - and because his injuries occurred during a later training mission and not while he was in combat, and because he was not decorated beyond an Air Medal, he would not qualify for burial at Arlington.

My veteran father, despite all his sacrifices, is apparently not eligible for such a high honor. Arlington, with its limited space, is reserved for those who have sacrificed even more.

But Larry Lawrence, fat-cat contributor to Bill Clinton and the Democratic National Committee - who, as it turns out, never served a day in his life - was given a special waiver by the Clinton administration to be interred at Arlington.

When the story of the national cemetery scandal broke, I was sure that it was a manufactured story, aimed at embarrassing the president. Despite my low opinion of the ethical standards of this administration, I simply refused to believe that burial rights at the nation's most sacred grounds would be dished out to an unqualified political contributor.

Raising illegal foreign money, renting out the Lincoln bedroom, dialing for dollars in government buildings and attending Buddhist monk fund-raisers are low acts, but desecrating our national cemetery is a low that even the most ardent Clinton hater would find difficult to believe.

Larry Lawrence, who contributed more than $200,000 to the Democrats between 1991 and 1996, became a close personal friend to the Clintons. The president and first lady sometimes vacationed with Lawrence and stayed at his house in San Diego. Clinton appointed his pal ambassador to Switzerland and delivered a eulogy at his funeral.

To justify the special waiver for burial at Arlington, the White House pointed to Lawrence's service in the Merchant Marines in 1945. They pointed to his service aboard the liberty ship SS Horace Bushnell, which came under attack by a German submarine in the Arctic Ocean near the Russian port of Murmansk. During the torpedo attack, Lawrence was supposedly thrown overboard and suffered a serious head injury.

When Republicans called for an investigation of suspected abusive waivers at Arlington, the White House reacted angrily. They portrayed the entire affair as a perfect example of Republican scandal-mongering. Lawrence's widow stated that Republicans were mean-spirited and ``showed a lack of concern for either the truth or decency.''

It didn't take long for the facts to come out, and it also quickly became apparent who was lacking truth and decency.

Lawrence's service record was a fabrication. Records prove that he never served in the Merchant Marines or any other service. Lawrence was apparently a full-time college student in Chicago in 1945. He not only lied about serving in the Merchant Marines, but also fabricated an injury that would have entitled him to a Purple Heart and that was shamelessly used to justify his burial at Arlington in the midst of our nation's most revered heroes.

How Clintonesque.

It comes as no surprise that yet another close personal friend of our current president turned out to be a manipulating liar.

Faced with the cold, hard truth, Lawrence's widow wrote the president a letter asking that her late husband be removed from Arlington, if only because the controversy ``precludes his resting there in peace.'' The president responded by saying that he ``will always remember Larry for his friendship and for his service.'' Clinton added: ``I will never forget Larry's remarkable success as a businessman'' and ``his generosity.'' I bet he won't.

Lawrence personified everything I dislike about the Clinton administration - the manipulating phoniness and insincerity. Blatant lies, used to achieve objectives, are so routine as to be frequently unnoticed or ignored by the lazy media and the public.

We will probably never know whether Lawrence's record - or lack of record, that is - was innocently or deliberately overlooked by the Clinton administration. These things are hard to prove. The administration will once again plead incompetence because the alternative would point to criminal misbehavior.

Just when I thought that this administration could not possibly descend to new lows, I was proved wrong.