February 14, 2004
Files Offer Glimpse of Bush After College
By RICHARD W. STEVENSON
ASHINGTON, Feb. 13 ? It was February 1968, just a few months before he would graduate from Yale, and George W. Bush's plan to enlist in the National Guard had hit a snag.
According to records released by the White House on Friday night, Mr. Bush reported to an Air Force base in Massachusetts for a medical examination on Feb. 21 of that year and was deemed "not qualified" because of problems with his teeth. So Mr. Bush visited a dentist in New Haven, Conn., on March 7. The dentist pulled one tooth from the future president and put a filling in another. A month later Mr. Bush's file was updated to show him as "medically qualified."
The thick stack of military records were released as part of the White House's efforts to rebut accusations from Democrats that Mr. Bush might have avoided some duties in the Air National Guard during the Vietnam War. The documents seemed unlikely to resolve that dispute.
But the documents offer up flashes of detail about Mr. Bush's life in the six years after he finished college, as well as glowing evaluations of him as an officer and as a pilot that could help the White House rebut any suggestion that he passed that period aimlessly while other young Americans were risking or giving their lives in Vietnam.
In November 1970, the commander of the Texas Air National Guard, Lt. Col. Jerry B. Killian, called Mr. Bush, then 24, "a dynamic outstanding young officer" who stood out as "a top-notch fighter interceptor pilot" mature beyond his age.
"Lt. Bush's skills far exceed his contemporaries," Colonel Killian wrote in recommending that Mr. Bush be promoted to first lieutenant. "He is a natural leader whom his contemporaries look to for leadership. Lt. Bush is also a good follower with outstanding disciplinary traits and an impeccable military bearing."
There is no mention in the records of Mr. Bush's father, who was a United States representative from Texas at the time Mr. Bush entered the guard, and in 1971 became the ambassador to the United Nations after losing a race for a Senate seat to Lloyd Bentsen in 1970.
There is no indication in the documents that Mr. Bush was granted any special treatment at a time when competition for slots in the Guard was intense, though he received only a 25 on a test for "pilot aptitude," compared with a 95 for "officer quality" on a test he took in January 1968.
But there are documents fleshing out previously reported facts about Mr. Bush's life during that time and his service with the 111th Fighter Interceptor Squadron at Ellington Air Force Base in Texas. Also serving at Ellington during that period was Lloyd Bentsen III, son of the man who defeated Mr. Bush's father for the Senate seat in 1970. They were both promoted to second lieutenant on Nov. 6 of that year, three days after the election.
Looking back from more than three decades, there are intimations in the records of a life of privilege and of fateful decisions to come. Asked to name character references, Mr. Bush listed Baine P. Kerr, then a prominent lawyer in Houston who went on to become a top executive of the Pennzoil Company, and C. Fred Chambers, a Texas oilman who was so close to the Bush family that they named one of their dogs after him. On another application, he listed as a reference Cathryn Lee Wolfman, to whom he was engaged at the time he entered the Guard, but with whom he would later break up.
Much of the paperwork about Mr. Bush was routine. He was granted a security clearance that allowed him to see "secret" material. Thirty-five years before he would land on the carrier Abraham Lincoln in a flight suit, igniting a political storm, the future commander in chief was issued a duffel bag, six pairs of cotton drawers, a pair of black combat boots, a flight cap and some United States Air Force insignia tape, among other supplies and clothing.
To Mr. Bush's previously known arrest record up to that point in his life ? a misdemeanor charge, later dropped, for a prank at Yale in 1966 ? the documents added that he was issued two speeding tickets in the summer of 1964, for which he was fined $10 each. He also had two "negligent collisions" in the month after he turned 16 in July 1962.
Then there is his medical history, set out in more detail than many Americans might want to know. He had his tonsils removed as a young boy, had appendicitis when he was 10 and at 14 had an operation to remove a cyst from his chest, leaving a scar. At the time he applied for entrance into the guard, he had a hemorrhoid, the location of which was charted with military precision.