Former President Bill Clinton defended signing "don't ask, don't tell" policy into law in an interview with CBS's Katie Couric on Tuesday, saying that Colin Powell, who was chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff at the time, told him the policy would be more lax than it turned out to be.
"Now, when Colin Powell sold me on 'don't ask, don't tell,' here's what he said it would be: Gay service members would never get in trouble for going to gay bars, marching in gay rights parades, as long as they weren't in uniform. That was what they were promised. That's a very different 'don't ask, don't tell' than we got," he said.
Clinton also said he agreed to the policy because otherwise Congress would have passed an absolute ban on gays in the military.
He said once Powell resigned his post, the policy was enforced in a more draconian way. Nearly 14,000 service members have been discharged since 1994 under the ban.
Though commanding officers are not allowed to ask service members about their sexual orientation, once a service member is outed -- even if inadvertently, as when a comrade accidentally sees a private email or overhears a phone conversation -- he or she must be investigated and discharged if the Defense Department determines that the person is gay.
Powell -- along with most Americans -- now supports a repeal of the policy, though Senate Republicans and two Democrats blocked its repeal in a test vote Tuesday.
An email requesting comment from Powell's assistant has so far gone unanswered.
