CBS 60 Minutes Sunday
February 8th, 2004
WHAT BUSH ANSWERED:
In Russert's Sunday interview with Bush, the elephant in the drawing room was acknowledged: What about charges that Bush was AWOL while serving in the Texas Guard?
"The political season's here," Bush responded, "I put in my time proudly." Then Bush went on to defend the Guard against those who think serving is a cop out from regular military service, a topic that Russert did not bring up.
"If the story were simply about how Bush used his family connections to land a slot in the Texas Air National Guard (and all indications are he did just that ), it wouldn't matter much. But the real story is not how Bush got into the Guard. It's how he got out." --Salon, 02.05.04
RUSSERT: The Boston Globe and the Associated Press have gone through some of their records and said there's no evidence that you reported to duty in Alabama during the summer and fall of 1972.
BUSH: Yeah, they're just wrong. There may be no evidence, but I did report; otherwise, I wouldn't have been honorably discharged. (transcript)
"ARF is a "paper unit" based in Denver that requires no drills and no attendance. For active guard members it is disciplinary because ARF members can theoretically be called up for active duty in the regular military, although this obviously never happened to George Bush.
To make a long story short, Bush apparently blew off drills beginning in May 1972, failed to show up for his physical, and was then grounded and transferred to ARF as a disciplinary measure....Bush's official records from Texas show no actual duty after May 1972, as his Form 712 Master Personnel Record from the Texas Air National Guard clearly indicates:...
Bush's record shows three years of service, followed by a fourth year in which he accumulated only a dismal 22 days of active service, followed by no service at all in his fifth and sixth years. This is because ARF duty isn't counted as official duty by the Texas guard.
So Bush may indeed have "fulfilled his obligation," as he says, but only because he had essentially been relieved of any further obligation after his transfer to ARF. It's pretty clear that no one in the Texas Air National Guard had much interest in pursuing anything more serious in the way of disciplinary action." --Calpundit, 02.08.04)
"Experts say that citation does not wipe away the questions. "An honorable discharge does not indicate a flawless record," says Grant Lattin, a military law attorney in Washington and a retired Marine Corps lieutenant colonel who served as a judge advocate, or JAG officer. "Somebody could have missed a year's worth of Guard drills and still end up with an honorable discharge." That's because of the extraordinary leeway local commanders within the Guard are given over these types of issues. Lattin notes that the Guard "is obviously very political, even more so than other military institutions, and is subject to political influence."...
Lattin is more blunt. "The National Guard is extremely political in the sense of who you know," he says. "And it's true to this very day. One person is handled very strictly and the next person is not. If George Bush Jr. is in your unit, you're going to bend over backward not to offend that family. It all comes down to who you know."
--Salon, 02.05.04
("A detailed Globe examination of the records in 2000 unearthed official reports by Bush's Guard commanders that they had not seen him for a year. There was also no evidence that Bush had done part of his Guard service in Alabama, as he has claimed. Bush's Guard appointment, made possible by family connections, was cut short when Bush was allowed to leave his Houston Guard unit eight months early to attend Harvard Business School....In August 1972, Bush was suspended from flight status for failing to take his annual flight physical....In May 1973, Bush's two superior officers in Houston wrote that they could not perform his annual evaluation, because he had "not been observed at this unit" during the preceding 12 months....The two officers, one of them a friend of Bush and both now dead, wrote that they Bush received an honorable discharge in 1973. --Boston Globe, 02.05.04)
WHAT RUSSERT DIDN'T ASK:
1. Mr. President, would you briefly tell us where relevant commanding officers and their superiors are today?
("Major General Daniel James was head of the Texas National Guard at the time of the alleged scrubbing of George W. Bush's National Guard records. He was appointed by George W. Bush to be commander of the nation's Air National Guard -- and was confirmed by the Senate last week." --Buzzflash, 05.28.02)
("Bill Burkett, a former lieutenant colonel in the Guard, said, 'As the State Plans Officer for the Texas National Guard, I was on full-time duty at Camp Mabry when [Bush aide] Dan Bartlett was cleansing the George W Bush file prior to G.W.'s presidential announcement. For most soldiers at Camp Mabry, this was a generally known event. The archives were closely scrutinized to make sure that the Bush autobiography plans and the record did not directly contradict each other. In essence it was the script of the autobiography which Dan Bartlett and his small team used to scrub a file to be released. This effort was further involved by General Daniel James and Chief of Staff William W. Goodwin at Camp Mabry.'" --Online Journal, 09.04.00)
"1973, Bush's two superior officers in Houston wrote that they could not perform his annual evaluation, because he had "not been observed at this unit" during the preceding 12 months. The two officers, one of them a friend of Bush and both now dead, wrote that they believed Bush had been fulfilling his commitment at the Alabama unit. Two other officers, in interviews, offered a similar account of Bush's absence, saying they had assumed Bush completed his service in Alabama" --Boston Globe, 02.05.04)
2. Mr. President, did you get any special treatment when you joined the Texas Guard. Say, a special swearing-in ceremony that was admittedly reserved for sons of VIP's?
("Former US president George Bush, then a US Congressman from Houston, pins bars on his son George W. Bush representing his entry as 2nd Lieutenant into the Texas Air National Guard in 1968. (AFP Photo)" --Boston Globe, 05.23.00)
3. Mr. President, military records say you were AWOL when you returned to Houston from Alabama after the political campaign you were involved in was over. Why didn't the relevant military authorities have records of your attendance when you reurned to Houston?
("In May 1973, Bush's two superior officers in Houston wrote that they could not perform his annual evaluation, because he had "not been observed at this unit" during the preceding 12 months. The two officers, one of them a friend of Bush and both now dead, wrote that they believed Bush had been fulfilling his commitment at the Alabama unit. ....From May to November 1972, Bush was in Alabama working in a US Senate campaign, and was required to attend drills at an Air National Guard unit in Montgomery. But there is no evidence in his record that he did so. And William Turnipseed, the retired general who commanded the Alabama unit back then, said in an interview last week that Bush never appeared for duty there." --Boston Globe, 05.23.00)
4. Mr. President, when you returned to Houston you never took a medical test, as required by the government Guard. Part of the medical test was a drug test. Why didn't you take the required medical test?
("In August 1972, Bush was suspended from flight status for failing to take his annual flight physical. Boston Globe, 02.05.04. During the 2000 presidential campaign Bush told reporters that he hadn't taken drugs from the age of 27 to 2000. He refused to answer any questions about taking drugs prior to the age of 27, a position he has held to this day. Bush was born on July 6, 1946, making him 26 years old when he was suspended for not taking the required flight physical, which included a drug test. --Politex)
5. Mr. President, is it true that, as a result of not taking the required medical test, the military grounded you from flying, and you never flew again as a Guardman?
("In August 1972, Bush was suspended from flight status for failing to take his annual flight physical." --Boston globe, 02.05.04 "In his final 18 months of military service in 1972 and 1973, Bush did not fly at all. And for much of that time, Bush was all but unaccounted for: For a full year, there is no record that he showed up for the periodic drills required of part-time guardsmen." --Boston Globe, 05.23.00)
6. Mr. President, after you were grounded because you failed to take the medical test, how much time was left in the Guard and how many meetings did you attend?
("Bush's official record of service, which is supposed to contain an account of his duty attendance for each year of service, shows no such attendance after May 1972. In unit records, however, there are documents showing that Bush was ordered to a flurry of drills -- over 36 days -- in the late spring and summer of 1973. He was discharged Oct. 1, 1973, eight months before his six-year commitment ended. --Boston Glove, 02.05.04)
"Bush was finally recorded as having crammed in 36 active-duty credits during May, June and July 1973, thereby meeting his minimal requirement. But as the Boston Globe pointed out, nobody connected with the Texas unit recalls seeing Bush during his cram sessions, leading to suspicions that Bush was given credits for active duty he did not perform." --Salon, 02.05.04
7. Mr. President, is it true that after Houston, you were transferred to a "paper" Reserve unit in Colorado, and this unit did not require attendance?
"Through [White House communications director Dan] Bartlett Bush insisted in 2000 that he had indeed attended military drills while he was in Alabama during 1972 and in 1973 after returning to his Houston base. At the time, Bartlett said Bush did not recall what duties he performed during that period. Albert Lloyd Jr., a retired colonel who was the personnel officer for the Texas Air National Guard at the time [and was later hired in 1999 by the Bush campaign to look over Bush's military record (see next entry)], said in an interview [in 2000] that the records suggested to him that Bush "had a bad year. He might have lost interest, since he knew he was getting out." Lloyd said he believed that after Bush's long attendance drought, the drills that were crammed into the months before Bush's early release gave him enough "points" to satisfy the minimal requirements to earn his discharge. At the time, Lloyd speculated that after the evaluation of Bush could not be done, his superiors told him, `George, you're in a pickle. Get your ass down here and perform some duty.' And he did....May to July 1973 : Logs 36 days of duty after special orders are issued for him to report for duty. [See next entry.] July 30, 1973 : Last day in uniform, according to his records. Oct. 1, 1973 : Formally discharged from the Texas National Guard Ñ eight months before his six-year term expires and a month after starting at Harvard Business School." --Boston Globe, 02.05.04)
("Back in 1999 the nascent Bush campaign, which was apparently already worried about his service record, hired Albert Lloyd Jr., a former Texas Air National Guard personnel director, to help make sense of Bush's file. Lloyd "scoured" the archives and found the document above, which he says contains Bush's Social Security number beneath the redaction. It has since been inserted into Bush's file....The torn document wasn't originally part of Bush's service file and is basically laughable as a piece of evidence since it contains no names or dates.
--Calpundit, 02.04.04)
("This is neither a Texas Air National Guard document nor an Alabama document. What is it? The answer, as you can see from the top line, is that it is an ARF document, as is this record from 1973-74. So what is ARF? I asked Bob Rogers, a retired Air National Guard pilot who's been following this for some time, and what follows is his interpretation of what happened. ARF stands for Army Reserve Force, and among other things it's where members of the guard are sent for disciplinary reasons. As we all know, Bush failed to show up for his annual physical in July 1972, he was suspended in August, and the suspension was recorded on September 29. He was apparently transferred to ARF at that time and began accumulating ARF points in October. ("ARF is a "paper unit" based in Denver that requires no drills and no attendance. For active guard members it is disciplinary because ARF members can theoretically be called up for active duty in the regular military, although this obviously never happened to George Bush." --Calpundit, 02.08.04)
8. Mr. President, are all Guardsmen who are reported absent from required duties given an opportunity to make up time lost, even those who are absent for over a year? Isn't it true that the rule in the Guard is to change the status of such Guardsmen to active duty in the regular military?
"For failing to attend required monthly drill sessions and refusing to take a physical, 1st Lt. Bush just as easily could have been moved to active duty, given a less-than-honorable discharge, or had his flying rights permanently revoked, says Eugene Fidell, a leading Washington expert on military law. "For a fully trained pilot, he was assigned to a nothing job [in Alabama], and the available records indicate he never performed that job." In the Guard today, as a general rule, "if someone doesn't show up for drill duty, doesn't show up, and doesn't show up, they'll be separated from their unit and given an other-than-honorable discharge" most likely noting "unsatisfactory participation," says D.C. military lawyer David Sheldon, who served in the Navy and represented officers before the Court of Military Appeals" --Salon, 02.05.04
("Copies of Bush's military records, [have been] obtained by the Globe. In his final 18 months of military service in 1972 and 1973, Bush did not fly at all. And for much of that time, Bush was all but unaccounted for: For a full year, there is no record that he showed up for the periodic drills required of part-time guardsmen." --Boston Globe, 05.23.00)
("So Bush may indeed have "fulfilled his obligation," as he says, but only because he had essentially been relieved of any further obligation after his transfer to ARF. [See #7 above.]... It's pretty clear that no one in the Texas Air National Guard had much interest in pursuing anything more serious in the way of disciplinary action." --Calpundit, 02.08.04)
9. Mr. President, is it usual in the Guard for the military to allow Guardsmen to take leaves of absence to engage in political campaigns and long-time absentees to cut their military obligations short in order to continue their education?
("Oct. 1, 1973 : Formally discharged from the Texas National Guard Ñ eight months before his six-year term expires and a month after starting at Harvard Business School." --Boston Globe, 02.05.04)
"One of the obvious questions raised by Bush's missing year is why he was never brought up on any disciplinary charges under the Uniform Code of Military Justice (UCMJ) and why he was given an honorable discharge. (It's unlikely Bush could have run for president if he'd been tainted with anything less than an honorable discharge from the military.)...
Says retired JAG officer Lattin, cases of guardsmen who fail to attend drill sessions are rarely dealt with under the military's criminal code, but rather administratively, which is less burdensome. Administrative options include transferring the solider to active duty, or separating him from his unit while beginning dismissal procedures that would likely -- although not always -- result in a less than, or other than, honorable discharge. Also in Bush's case, he could have been permanently stripped of his flight privileges.
So why was no administrative action taken against Bush during his missing year or more? "It could have been mere inefficiency, or a reluctance to create controversy with the son of an important federal official," says Fidell, the military law expert. "Observers of the Guard at that time have said it did seem to be an entity in which connections might be helpful."
Lattin is more blunt. "The National Guard is extremely political in the sense of who you know," he says. "And it's true to this very day. One person is handled very strictly and the next person is not. If George Bush Jr. is in your unit, you're going to bend over backward not to offend that family. It all comes down to who you know."
Lattin stresses that the Bush episode, and the Guard's failure to take any administrative actions against him, have to be viewed in context of the early '70s. With the Vietnam War beginning to wind down and the U.S. military battling endemic low morale, the Pentagon showed little interest in chasing after absent-without-leave guardsmen. "It was too hard and there were too many of them," says Lattin. "There was a 'who cares' attitude. Commanders didn't want to deal with them. And they knew they'd stir up a hornet's nest, especially if one of the [missing guardsmen] was named George Bush. --Salon, 02.05.04
WHAT RUSSERT FINALLY ASKED:
RUSSERT: When allegations were made about John McCain or Wesley Clark on their military records, they opened up their entire files. Would you agree to do that?
BUSH: Yeah. Listen, these files, I mean, people have been looking for these files for a long period of time, trust me....And absolutely. I mean.
RUSSERT: But would you allow pay stubs, tax records, anything to show that you were serving during that period?
BUSH: Yeah. If we still have them, but you know, the records are kept in Colorado, as I understand, and they scoured the records. (transcript)
"There is an indication that someone higher up was trying to find out why G W was missing for so long. Shortly before he was given his honorable discharge a request from National Guard headquarters was placed for Bush's annual evaluation for that year. The national headquarters was told by the administrative officer at Bush's base, ''Report for this period not available for administrative reasons.'' --Online Journal, 06.02.00)
RUSSERT: Would you authorize the release of everything to settle this?
BUSH: Yes, absolutely. We did so in 2000, by the way. (transcript)
"If Bush wanted to resolve the questions about his National Guard service, he could do so very easily. If he simply agreed to release the contents of his military personnel records jacket, the Guard could make public all his discharge papers, including pay records and total retirement points, which experts say would shed the best light on where Bush was, or was not, during the time in question between 1972 and 1973. (Many of Bush's documents are available through Freedom of Information requests, but certain items deemed personal or private cannot be released without Bush's permission [and, obviously, these were not released in 2000, or they wouldn't be requested today. --Politex)
Releasing military records has become a time-honored tradition of presidential campaigns. During the 1992 presidential election, Bush's father, George H.W. Bush, called on his Democratic opponent, Bill Clinton, to make public all personal documents relating his draft status during the Vietnam War, including any correspondences with "Clinton's draft board, the Selective Service System, the Reserve Officer Training Corps, the Army, the Navy, the Air Force, the Marines, the Coast Guard, the United States departments of State and Justice, any U.S. foreign embassy or consulate." That, according to a Bush-Quayle Oct. 15, 1992, press release. Calls to the White House seeking comment on if and when the president's full military records will be released were not returned." --Salon, 02.05.04
"Recent questions have surfaced not only about Bush's military service, but his official records. "I think some documents were taken out" of his military file, the Boston Globe's Robinson tells Salon. "And there's at least one document that appears to have been inserted into his record in early 2000." That document -- the aforementioned torn page that did not have Bush's full name on it -- plays a central role in the story.
'His records have clearly been cleaned up," says author James Moore, whose upcoming book, "Bush's War for Re-election," will examine the issue of Bush's military service in great detail. Moore says as far back as 1994, when Bush first ran for governor of Texas, his political aides "began contacting commanders and roommates and people who would spin and cover up his Guard record. And when my book comes out, people will be on the record testifying to that fact: witnesses who helped clean up Bush's military file.'" --Salon, 02.05.04
("Bill Burkett, a former lieutenant colonel in the Guard, said, 'As the State Plans Officer for the Texas National Guard, I was on full-time duty at Camp Mabry when [Bush aide] Dan Bartlett was cleansing the George W Bush file prior to G.W.'s presidential announcement. For most soldiers at Camp Mabry, this was a generally known event. The archives were closely scrutinized to make sure that the Bush autobiography plans and the record did not directly contradict each other. In essence it was the script of the autobiography which Dan Bartlett and his small team used to scrub a file to be released. This effort was further involved by General Daniel James and Chief of Staff William W. Goodwin at Camp Mabry.' Burkett stated, 'I knew one person who worked within the records scrub who commented to me, while at the smoke area, that the Bush files really showed some problems with his 'blue-blood service record.''" --Online Journal, 09.04.00)
("Texas National Guard Lt. Colonel (retired) Bill Burkett, in providing clarifications to published reports, says he was not pointing fingers but raising the question of whether Gov. George W. Bush, his aides, and other Guard officers were merely incompetent in their handling of Bush's military records and trying to get Bush to order the release of the pertinent records: his payroll and retirement records, which would settle the question of whether he fulfilled his military obligation." --Online Journal, 09.05.00)
(Back in 1999 the nascent Bush campaign, which was apparently already worried about his service record, hired Albert Lloyd Jr., a former Texas Air National Guard personnel director, to help make sense of Bush's file. Lloyd "scoured" the archives and found [a] document..., which he says contains Bush's Social Security number beneath the redaction. It has since been inserted int This document supposedly records Bush's attendance record in Texas from May 1972 to May 1973. However, the astute observer will note several things about this document:
It is strategically torn along its left edge.
There is no name on the document, only a single letter: W. Does it say "1LT BUSH GEORGE" just before the initial? Maybe, but the page has been torn so there's no way to tell.
The Social Security number is blacked out.
The tear eliminates the year and month of all the dates. (The date at the bottom right is just a note added by a reporter.)
In other words, there's really no evidence that this document refers to George W. Bush or even that it refers to the period 1972-73. But it's even worse than that: it turns out that this document wasn't even part of Bush's original service file....
So that's the story. The torn document wasn't originally part of Bush's service file and is basically laughable as a piece of evidence since it contains no names or dates.
--Calpundit, 02.04.04)
("[The document noted above is] real. Here's the untorn version, as delivered to Bob Fertik in response to a FOIA request in late 2000:
It's now clear that the document is genuine, but what exactly does it tell us? In particular:
The first listed date is October 29, not November 29 as we had theorized before. But George Bush was still in Alabama in October. What exactly was he getting attendance credit for?
This is neither a Texas Air National Guard document nor an Alabama document. What is it?
The answer, as you can see from the top line, is that it is an ARF document, as is this record from 1973-74. So what is ARF? I asked Bob Rogers, a retired Air National Guard pilot who's been following this for some time, and what follows is his interpretation of what happened.
ARF stands for Army Reserve Force, and among other things it's where members of the guard are sent for disciplinary reasons. As we all know, Bush failed to show up for his annual physical in July 1972, he was suspended in August, and the suspension was recorded on September 29. He was apparently transferred to ARF at that time and began accumulating ARF points in October.
ARF is a "paper unit" based in Denver that requires no drills and no attendance. For active guard members it is disciplinary because ARF members can theoretically be called up for active duty in the regular military, although this obviously never happened to George Bush.
To make a long story short, Bush apparently blew off drills beginning in May 1972, failed to show up for his physical, and was then grounded and transferred to ARF as a disciplinary measure. He didn't return to his original Texas Guard unit and cram in 36 days of active duty in 1973 Ñ as Time magazine and others continue to assert based on a mistaken interpretation of Bush's 1973-74 ARF record Ñ but rather accumulated only ARF points during that period. In fact, it's unclear even what the points on the ARF record are for, but what is clear is that Bush's official records from Texas show no actual duty after May 1972, as his Form 712 Master Personnel Record from the Texas Air National Guard clearly indicates:
Bush's record shows three years of service, followed by a fourth year in which he accumulated only a dismal 22 days of active service, followed by no service at all in his fifth and sixth years. This is because ARF duty isn't counted as official duty by the Texas guard.
So Bush may indeed have "fulfilled his obligation," as he says, but only because he had essentially been relieved of any further obligation after his transfer to ARF. It's pretty clear that no one in the Texas Air National Guard had much interest in pursuing anything more serious in the way of disciplinary action.
Can we confirm all this? Only if Bush is genuinely willing to release his entire service record, including the disciplinary action that presumably led to his transfer to ARF." --Calpundit, 02.08.04)
--Jerry Politex, Bush Watch (www.bushwatch.com), 02.08.04
