Childhood and history
Assertions In TV ads and interviews in 1988, Gore claimed to have been raised in Carthage, Tenn.		Counterpoints Gore lived as a youth in a hotel suite in Washington, where his father was a member of Congress. He spent summers on a family farm in Tennessee.
Assertions A 1988 Gore campaign television ad said he was a "brilliant student."		Counterpoints Gore's high school and college grades were predominantly B's and C's. He graduated with honors from Harvard -- but so did 70 percent of the Class of 1969.
Assertions Gore has said, as recently as last March, that as a young man he was a homebuilder and small businessman.		Counterpoints A family corporation nominally headed by Gore developed an 18-home subdivision in Carthage, Tenn. But Gore was at Harvard and in the Army for much of that time, and had little involvement.
Assertions Gore frequently told people that at the 1968 Democratic National Convention, when he was just a college student, he provided some of the wording that Hubert H. Humphrey used in his acceptance speech.		Counterpoints Last year, Gore admitted to the Washington Post that the story was not true, saying his memory had failed him.
Assertions Several times in the last two years, Gore has described his father, the late senator Albert Gore Sr., as a courageous fighter for civil rights in the Senate.		Counterpoints Among southern senators, Gore's father was a comparative moderate on civil rights. But he voted against the 1964 Civil Rights Act, the landmark civil rights legislation of the 1960s. The late senator Gore, in his 1972 autobiography, says he was not "a white knight on civil rights."
Assertions Gore, in remarks in 1992 and 1994, has described his late sister, Nancy Gore Hunger, as the very first Peace Corps "volunteer."		Counterpoints His sister was a paid staff assistant at Peace Corps headquarters from 1961-64, and never served as a volunteer -- the term used to describe those who served overseas.
Assertions At the 1996 Democratic National Convention, Gore attributed his sister's death from lung cancer to cigarette smoking, and said he would do anything to prevent other young people from taking up smoking.		Counterpoints For seven years after his sister's death in 1984, Gore voted with tobacco interests, took their campaign donations and collected tobacco subsidies for his Tennessee farm.
Soldier
Assertions In 1988, a Gore campaign ad said Gore "refused any special treatment" when he decided to join the Army.		Counterpoints A new biography by Newsweek reporter Bill Turque discloses that General William Westmoreland played a role in Gore's enlistment; and that in Vietnam, Gore's commander ordered him kept out of danger.
Assertions In 1988, Gore told interviewers he had been "under fire" during his 5-month Army tour in Vietnam.		Counterpoints Gore has not repeated the assertion since evidence surfaced that it was not so.
Early career
Assertions In 1988, Gore told several interviewers that his investigative reporting for the Tennessean in Nashville in the early 1970s had sent several people to jail.		Counterpoints His reporting prompted criminal charges, but no one ever went to jail. Gore later acknowledged he had made an "inaccurate statement."
Assertions In a 1994 speech at Harvard, Gore said he worked as a journalist for seven years after his Vietnam service.		Counterpoints Gore, in a 1992 letter to the New York Times, said he had been a journalist for five years, which approximates the time he spent at the Tennessean and as an Army public affairs specialist.
Assertions When first asked, Gore said he never used marijuana in college.		Counterpoints Later, he said he used it infrequently in college, in the Army and when he first became a reporter, but never after 1972. But Turque's biography, "Inventing Al Gore," quotes friends as saying Gore, while a reporter, smoked regularly until he ran for Congress in 1976.
Government and campaigns
Assertions A 1984 Gore campaign ad said, "He wrote the bipartisan plan on arms control that US negotiators will take to the Russians.		Counterpoints Gore was one of a group of congressional Democrats who tried to influence Reagan administration arms control policy, but with little success.
Assertions As recently as February, Gore said he worked for tougher restrictions against tobacco in 1984 and 1985.		Counterpoints Gore was a consistent congressional supporter of tobacco interests. In 1984, Gore offered compromise legislation supported by tobacco companies that weakened proposed new warning labels on cigarette packages.
Assertions A Gore television ad in the 1988 presidential campaign said Gore had met with Soviet Leader Mikhail Gorbachev.		Counterpoints Gore was one of 26 members of Congress who were at a lunch with Gorbachev. The two men shook hands.
Assertions Two 1988 Gore campaign ads give him credit for being the driving force behind the Superfund law designed to clean up toxic waste sites, saying he was the bill's author.		Counterpoints The legislation's author was Rep. Jim Florio of New Jersey; Gore was one of 42 House co-sponsors.
Assertions In a 1988 presidential campaign ad, Gore charged that one of his opponents, Rep. Richard Gephardt, "was against abortion, but before he ran for president, changed his mind."		Counterpoints The assertion was true, but applied to Gore, too.
Assertions At a 1988 news conference, Gore criticized his opponents for the Democratic presidential nomination for opposing funding for new aircraft carriers.		Counterpoints Gore himself had voted against the funding.