Max Cleland: The Khe Sanh Grenade and the 2002 Bin Laden Attack Ad

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Max Cleland grew up in Lithonia, Georgia, graduated from Stetson University and Emory, and served as an Army captain with the 1st Cavalry Division in Vietnam, earning the Silver Star and Bronze Star. On April 8, 1968, a month before his tour ended, he flew to Hill 471 near Khe Sanh to set up a radio relay. Seeing a grenade on the ground after the helicopter lifted off, he reached for it; the blast cost him both legs above the knee and his right forearm. Marine David Lloyd used his own web belt as a tourniquet and later described a young U.S. soldier crying that the grenade was his, having left his pins unbent.

Cleland entered the Georgia Senate in 1971, ran the Veterans Administration under Jimmy Carter from 1977, and served 14 years as Georgia secretary of state, where his penny stock law became a national model. Elected to the U.S. Senate in 1996 for Sam Nunn's seat, he voted for the 2002 Iraq war resolution, which he later called the worst vote of his career. He had led Saxby Chambliss by 22 points in May 2002, but an ad showing Osama bin Laden and Saddam Hussein beside his face over a Homeland Security vote helped Chambliss win. He later served on the 9/11 Commission, the Export-Import Bank board and the American Battle Monuments Commission.

• He was a consultant on the 1978 film Coming Home, set in a 1968 VA hospital.
• His vote against the Homeland Security bill was over a provision stripping civil service protections from unionized workers.
• Fellow Vietnam veterans John McCain and Chuck Hagel condemned the ad produced with consultant Rick Wilson.
• He resigned from the 9/11 Commission, accusing the Bush administration of withholding documents.
• He introduced John Kerry at the 2004 Democratic National Convention and died in 2021 at 79.