In addition to serious revelations that Richard Blumenthal misrepresented his military service, there is also the matter of his role on the Harvard University swim team.
Two profiles of Blumenthal, one that appeared in Slate magazine in 2000 and a second in the Courant's Northeast magazine in 2004, both state -- incorrectly -- that Blumenthal was captain of the team. The inaccuracies were mentioned in this week's New York Times article on Blumenthal's misleading and false statements about his military service.
Blumenthal told the Times that he "did not provide the information to reporters, was unsure how it got into circulation and was 'astonished' when he saw it in print."
The Times story says that "[r]ecords at the college show that he was never on the team.''
But Waterbury native Peter Alter, who was the captain of the Harvard swim team in 1968, the year after Blumenthal graduated, told the Courant this morning that Blumenthal was on the team.
He was a freestyler and "was actually a pretty good one,'' said Alter, now a lawyer in Glastonbury who still on occasion talks to Blumenthal.
The Yankee Institute for Public Policy, a conservative think-tank based in Hartford, unearthed a trove of photographs from Harvard that show Blumenthal was at least associated with the team.
A photo from the 1964 Harvard College yearbook, posted on the Yankee Institute's Facebook page, shows Blumenthal participating in a Harvard swim meet his freshman year. "However, if Blumenthal was on the Harvard swim team, he is not included in the team's group yearbook photo that year,'' Yankee's executive director Fergus Cullen noted in an email.
The captain of the swim team in 1967, Blumenthal's senior year, was James Seubold, who is now a doctor in the Chicago area. He could not be reached for comment.
Alter, who was a diver and only the second diver in school history to be named captain, said it is a "big deal to be named captain" of any Harvard sports team.
Alter said he talked to Blumenthal a few years ago, when both of them were at a function. The two men joked about the inaccurate references to Blumenthal being the team captain. The attorney general told Alter "he had no idea where it came from."
"He said he had tried to figure out where it had started and that he had never claimed to have been the captain,'' Alter said.
1967 Harvard yearbook entry, via Yankee Institute for Public Policy