In addition to his three now-documented "exaggerations" or "reconstructions" -- the student with no desk in her science class, the senior citizen's need to pick up cans to pay for her prescription drugs and the supposed trip with FEMA Director James Lee Witt to a Texas fire scene -- Vice President Al Gore's first presidential debate performance included another apparent faux pas.

"And when the conflict came up in Bosnia," said Gore, "I saw a genocide in the heart of Europe, with the most violent war on the continent of Europe since World War II. Look, that's where World War I started, in the Balkans. My uncle was a victim of poison gas there. Millions of Americans saw the results of that conflict."

Question: Did Al Gore really have an uncle who was the victim of poison gas in the Balkans?

Although World War I did begin in Sarajevo, in the Balkans, there were no Americans stationed in that region. According to Martin Gilbert's seminal work "The First World War," most of the fighting in that region was between local groups aligned with the Austro-Hungarian forces and Russians. American troops fought in France during the war, but certainly no Americans were gassed in the Balkans.

Independent attempts to identify this relative have been unsuccessful. Albert Gore, Sr. was the third of five children, including, according to WND's research, only one brother, Reginald. A thorough review of Tennessee's World War I records reveals no Reginald Gore on any of the rosters, nor any Gores from Smith County, Tenn., where the senior Gore's family was raised. Gore's other siblings were sisters.

According to an Associated Press report, the uncle Gore referred to in the debate was his late uncle, Reginald. After the debate, the Gore campaign contacted the National Archives seeking any World War I records to support Gore's assertion. Apparently it came up empty-handed in the quest for confirmation from official sources, since, as the Associated Press story reports, the campaign fell back on the uncle's 1959 newspaper obituary. It said he had been treated for illness caused by being gassed as a soldier in France (not in the Balkans). Newspaper obituaries are typically based on information provided by the family, with no effort made by the newspaper to verify its accuracy.

Could Gore have gotten the story confused with another uncle?

Pauline LaFon Gore, Al Gore's mother, was one of six children, among them three brothers -- Gilbert, Whit and Everett. Although two of the three, Whit and Everett, served in World War II, all three were too young to have served in World War I, nor could they have been exposed to gas.

According to an Emmy-winning story on CBS' 60 Minutes (produced by Charles C. Thompson II, one of the writers of this report for WND), the only troops exposed to mustard gas in World War II were a group of several hundred naval recruits. The U.S. Navy experimented on these recruits with mustard gas and phosgene. Later, those men were denied veterans' benefits because, according to the U.S. government, no Americans had been subjected to such experiments.

The cover-up lasted nearly 50 years, until the 60 Minutes story aired. The Navy was forced to acknowledge the experiments, and the surviving veterans were given their long-withheld benefits.

Even allowing that Gore could have been referring to a great uncle, his grandfather's siblings were far too old for military service in World War I. Indeed, Gore's grandfather, Allen Gore, was born in 1869. On his maternal grandfather's side, Walter LaFon's only apparent brother, Whit LaFon, died in 1919, but again, there's no record of military service.

Repeated attempts by WND for a response from the Gore campaign were unsuccessful. WND reporters were referred to Ellen Melody, of the campaign press office, but she did not respond to messages. Efforts to reach chief campaign spokesman Doug Hattaway were also fruitless.

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