Site Presented By
Saturday, Jul 11, 2009
Records covering the president's crucial missing months in the Texas Air National Guard were "accidentally" destroyed. But he could still clear his name if he chose to.
Jul 15, 2004 | If the narrative weren't so difficult to trace, the story of President Bush's missing records from his service in the Texas Air National Guard might be gaining more attention. Last week's revelation from the Pentagon that microfilmed records related to the most controversial months of 1st Lt. Bush's service in Alabama (where he had been transferred at his request) were "accidentally" destroyed should cause alarm and energize new endeavors by the media to determine what Bush did in Alabama. But there's no sign of that yet.
There are several reasons for the media's reluctance to investigate this issue more aggressively. Documents can be hard to find. Freedom of Information Act requests take a long time to produce results. No one who might have information is authorized to answer questions without White House clearance. So reporters get frustrated and discouraged. I understand. I've been trying to sift fact from conspiracy on the Bush Guard story for a decade, first as a Texas television reporter and then as the author of two books on Bush's political ascension.
The initial challenge is to learn who keeps what records and the various processes of retention. Then you have to figure out the perfect phrasing of questions and FOIA requests, or your requests will be dismissed over a technicality. Finally, you have to wait. And wait. Until a journalist discovers a critical missing document that answers the remaining questions about Bush's service, learning the truth will be a game of sleuthing, trying to figure out which papers, if any, are missing and what they might mean.
Although searching for missing Bush records is an arcane exercise, it has great value, as was demonstrated last week when reporters finally got a response from the Defense Finance and Accounting Services in Denver. DFAS, the federal agency responsible for maintaining the records of those compensated for military service, paid Lt. Bush during his time in the Texas Guard. The existence of a master check register or pay stubs at DFAS could have solved many of the mysteries attached to the president's military service. Simple math taking into account his rate of pay, the amount of compensation for specific periods, and his total earnings would confirm whether Bush did the minimal duty necessary under his six-year obligation to the Guard.
Unfortunately, key payroll records once held by DFAS are no longer available, and curiously, they happen to be from Bush's period in Alabama. Journalists' FOIA requests for the records held by DFAS are relatively recent. Perhaps they didn't bother previously because they thought they knew what the results would be -- that is, further stonewalling. (I was previously unaware that DFAS was the repository of payroll records; I had originally been informed that they were kept in state Guard offices and that the Texas Guard no longer had Bush's on file.) When DFAS responded, reporters for major newspapers received CD-ROMs and a letter from a Pentagon information officer detailing some missing information: Data for three months, July to September 1972, was not on the discs.
Although that was not a big surprise to those of us who have followed the issue for years, it is significant that the missing data covers the 90-day period when Bush was in Alabama reporting, according to White House spokesman Dan Bartlett, "many times" for Guard duty while also working on a U.S. Senate campaign. The White House has never been able to produce either a document or a credible witness that 1st Lt. Bush reported for duty in Alabama, and the DFAS pay records would have confirmed its assertions that Bush was not AWOL at the time.
When the New York Times, Washington Post and Associated Press opened their mail from the Pentagon, they learned that the microfilmed records had been destroyed during an attempt to restore the spools of film. The latter two publications either did not know what they were being told or simply thought the matter was not significant enough to warrant a story. When Ralph Blumenthal of the Times called me to ask about the relevance of the missing records, I told him I never expected definitive information to turn up in an official record. But I continue to be amazed at this "coincidence" that effectively hides the truth about Bush's military service.
Blumenthal wrote that DFAS said Bush's microfilmed payroll records were lost as the agency was beginning a project to restore old files. But reporters so far have not received answers on what precipitated the restoration efforts. DFAS is a minor government agency, and it is unlikely someone working there woke up one day and proposed that the aging film be unrolled and examined for salvaging. The logical conclusion is that the decision was prompted by an external consideration. It is not totally out of the question that an energetic government employee decided to show some initiative, but if so, that worker needs to be asked why the particular years 1969 through 1972 were included in the project. Moreover, did the same three months in 1972 disappear for all of the service members whose records were on film? Or just for Lt. Bush? According to the letter accompanying the CD-ROMs, the first three months from 1969 were also lost. Bush was in flight training at that time and there is no doubt about his fulfillment of that responsibility, but an explanation would be helpful in clarifying how the records were destroyed for the first quarter of 1969 and the third quarter of 1972.
