TANG Col. Campenni Interview on Fox News about docs

JIM ANGLE [FOX NEWS]: The memos that CBS broadcast about the National Guard service of a young George W Bush have caused a controversy of their own. There is widespread suspicion that the documents CBS used are not authentic. One of the people who holds that view and has some doubts is Retired Col Bill Campenni, who served with George Bush in Texas, and he joins us now. Thank you sir, appreciate your joining us.

ANGLE: Let's talk about the documents in general, at first. There are a lot of things about these documents, about questions have been raised; what makes you suspicious of them?

COL WILLIAM CAMPENNI: Well, I'm suspicious because of the form and content and the presentation. That's not normally the way we'd do some of these things. I can reference then some of the specific documents here in a second, when you get to them there. But it just wasn't the way we did business, and two, it's suspect both in the format and the dates and the way it was phrased.

ANGLE: Well let's talk about the format. One of the things that's been talked about is the way they report 111th, 187th, 1st, that sort of thing. Here you see, ordinarily in documents of the time, you would have the "th" down on the bottom of the line. Here you see it raised, and in a lot of references to the 103rd, 111th flight squadron, you see it raised. That is called superscript, and some people claim that that was not widely available at the time, but is widely available today on things like Microsoft.

CAMPENNI: That's a pretty good, accurate description. By the way, in my civilian life I did work with some of those issues at IBM. We had the Selectric typewriter which you could buy special balls that had those fancy characters. But nobody would be buying special balls at that time. But more importantly, I brought a bunch of forms with me just for reference. But none of the forms that I had, which were written on the same typewriters in the same office area, my efficiency reports, some orders and all, have the superscript/subscript. We just didn't have it back in those days. We had plain old typewriters and at the best we had an IBM Selectric.

ANGLE: And one of the documents had two of the things where it was on the bottom line and one superscript, suggesting somebody changed in the middle of a document, which would have been difficult to do.

CAMPENNI: Well also, you'll notice, they tend to have, the ones that have a conventional "th", not superscript/subscript, tend to have a space between them; that's how you fool the Microsoft program into putting "th" rather than 147 superscript.

ANGLE: OK. Now let's go on to some other things here. There is one letter that CBS makes quite a bit of, it's known as the CYA Letter, because the heading on it is CYA. I think we have that for you here; CYA obviously referring to, I think most people know what CYA means, but cover your rear would be a polite way of putting it. In this particular memo, we'll look at some of the language here, it talks about: Staudt has obviously pressured Hodges more about Bush. I'm having trouble running intereference and doing my job. Now first, tell me, who is Staudt?

CAMPENNI: Staudt is Walter Staudt. At the time he was the Colonel and Commander of the 147th Fighter Group when George Bush came on board. And later on, I'm not sure of the year, '69 or '70, he then moved on up to state headquarters, became a General. His name was Walter Staudt, nicknamed Buck Staudt. So if anybody says Buck Staudt, you can say they know the guy.

ANGLE: OK. So now Col Killian at this point is saying that, Col Killian was telling him, as he says at the end there: Staudt is pushing him to sugar coat it. Clearly as you see here on that document, clearly suggesting here in August of 1973 that Staudt is pressuring him to do something to clean up Bush's record or make him look better. You have some suspicion about this document; what is it?

CAMPENNI: Well, my suspicion there is that Gen Staudt's name is on it. I joined that unit for my second time in 1973, one week after this particular August 18th, I believe it is, letter was supposedly written. And I'm thinking back that I didn't remember Gen Staudt being at state headquarters at that time; he would have been retired. And I checked last night with some Texas Guard friends and they said we thought he retired around '72. And I think you've since confirmed that there's an L.A. Times article about that too.

ANGLE: There are several media reports that say he did indeed retire in 1972, suggesting that he wouldn't have been there in August of '73.

CAMPENNI: That's right. I mean, if he's not in the food chain, Col Killian shouldn't be worried about him. Bobby Hodges was the Commander of the unit there, and I think he does reference him there on that. The other issue on that particular letter, there's another comment farther down, O.E.T.D., that's I presume--O.E.T.R., referring to the Officer Efficiency Report that everybody would get annually. But the term of art is O.E.R. at that time, now it's O.E.S. O.E.T.R., I went and looked in the Air Force Glossary for that period, and it's Officer Education Training Repositories, totally unrelated to that. So I dont know why someone would be doing these things all the time and put the wrong acronymn in there for that.

ANGLE: Now I want you to listen something that Sen Harkin said. Let's listen to that.

VIDEO: We know that George Bush did not take his physical when he was ordered to do so. And that raises all kinds of questions about why didn't he take his physical at that time?

ANGLE: Now there's been a bit of whispering campaign among critics alluding to what Sen Harkin just did, alluding to something, some reason he wouldn't have taken--the whispering campaign is that he was trying to avoid drug tests. When you took a physical in those days was there any way to discover whether or not someone was using drugs?

CAMPENNI: I can't recall, the whole purpose of a physical in that era was to see if you were a healthy pilot so you didn't get a dangerous pilot in an airplane who might have a heart attack or some other problem, kidney stone or that. So we did do urinalysis testing, we did blood testing, but it was to insure a healthy pilot. The formal Air Force drug testing program, and you can check this in the records, I believe began in 1981. Now at this time interval, 1972-1973, the drug testing would have been command directed. That means the Commander would have been suspect of the individual first, before he said you're going down take a drug test, or you're going to take a test for alcoholism or something.

ANGLE: We have less than a minute, I want to ask you one other thing. There's some who suggest there was a long waiting list at the time. Kent Benson, who apparently got some nod from Ben Barnes, said there was a waiting list for enlisted men, but not for officers. And he didn't need any help, because it was easy to get in as an officer. About 30 seconds. Is that true?

CAMPENNI: No, as you mentioned, there may have been a big 500, 150, number changes every day, lists for the other positions. The pilot pool was totally separate. People would apply for the pilot slots. The pool probably never got more than ten, because of the educational, security clearance, and physical requirements. So the pool was about ten or so maybe, maybe a couple more, and from that they picked for that year the one or two people for the slots.

It dawned on me that Col Campenni says he has contemporary TANG documents from exactly the same time period, and from exactly the same TANG office (and maybe office typewriter) as the genuine Bush ones and when the CBS documents were supposedly typed up. If he could post those on the web where they could be compared to what we know is genuine and the CBS forgeries?? Anyone able to contact him through Fox News perhaps???

SUNDAY Morning BUMP---

Latest blurb from Fox----

Sun Sep 12 07:42:27 2004
air national guard service. The latest controversy comes courtesy of the dallas morning news who alleges one of the officers that pushed to clean up bush's record in august 1973, had retired 18 months beforehand beforehand. The 60 minutes report showed one memo titled cya showing that colonel walter stout pressured one officer to sugar coat bush's record.

>> Cbs originally defended attacks that its report was wrong saying the documents are the best evidence the story is legit. In a report, dan rather interviews author and bush critic jim moore.

>> There is no doubt in my mind that these documents are stating accurately what we know took place from the records that are available.

>> The report comes on the heels of a newsweek poll that shows some slip for president bush in the polls. The president's 11 point lead over kerry following the republican convention has fallen to six points. What's more the washington post is reporting that cbs's trump card source used to verify the accuracy of these memos now says he was misled by cbs, and he believes the documents are forgeries. Back to you guys.

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