Documents Suggest Special Treatment for Bush in Guard [Buckhead post 47]

NYTIMES ^ | 09/09/04 | KATHARINE Q. SEELYE and RALPH BLUMENTHAL

[Pikamax]

September 9, 2004 Documents Suggest Special Treatment for Bush in Guard By KATHARINE Q. SEELYE and RALPH BLUMENTHAL

ASHINGTON, Sept. 8 - President Bush's Vietnam-era service in the National Guard came under renewed scrutiny on Wednesday as newfound documents emerged from his squadron commander's file that suggested favorable treatment.

At the same time, a once powerful Texas Democrat came forward to say that he had "abused my position of power" by helping Mr. Bush and others join the Guard.

Democrats also worked to stoke the issue with a new advertisement by a Texas group that featured a former lieutenant colonel, Bob Mintz, who said he never saw Mr. Bush in the period he transferred from the Texas Air National Guard to the Alabama Air National Guard.

The documents, obtained by the "60 Minutes" program at CBS News from the personal files of the late Lt. Col. Jerry B. Killian, Mr. Bush's squadron commander in Texas, suggest that Lieutenant Bush did not meet his performance standards and received favorable treatment.

One document, a "memo to file" dated May 1972 , refers to a conversation between Colonel Killian and Lieutenant Bush when they "discussed options of how Bush can get out of coming to drill from now through November," because the lieutenant "may not have time."

The memo said the commander had worked to come up with options, "but I think he's also talking to someone upstairs."

Colonel Killian wrote in another report, dated Aug. 1, 1972, that he ordered Lieutenant Bush "suspended from flight status" because he failed to perform to standards of the Air Force and Texas Air National Guard and "failure to meet annual physical examination (flight) as ordered."

Colonel Killian also wrote in a memo that his superiors were forcing him to give Lieutenant Bush a favorable review, but that he refused.

"I'm having trouble running interference and doing my job," he wrote.

CBS, which reported on the memos on "The CBS Evening News" and "60 Minutes," declined to say how it obtained the documents.

Dan Bartlett, the White House communications director, said in an interview with CBS, the full transcript of which the White House released on Wednesday night, that Mr. Bush had fulfilled his service and received an honorable discharge. Mr. Bartlett did not dispute the authenticity of the memos but said, "When you are talking about a memo to somebody's self - this is a memo to his own file - people are trying to read the mind of somebody who is no longer with us."

He called the release of the files politically motivated.

"Every time President Bush gets near another election, all the innuendo and rumors about President Bush's service in the National Guard come to the forefront," he said.

Separately, former Lt. Gov. Ben Barnes of Texas voiced regret for what he said was helping the privileged escape service in Vietnam.

"I'm not particularly proud of what I did," said Mr. Barnes, who in the 1960's was speaker of the Texas House at 26 and lieutenant governor at 30. "While I understand why parents wanted to shield their sons from danger, I abused my position of power by helping only those who knew me or had access to me."

Mr. Barnes, 66, an adviser to Senator John Kerry's campaign and an influential lobbyist with offices in Austin and Washington, said in a interview with The New York Times that he had intervened to get Mr. Bush, as well as other well-connected young men, into the Guard in 1968. He made similar comments on "60 Minutes" on Wednesday.

Mr. Barnes maintained, as he has since 1999, that he had contacted his friend who headed the Texas Air National Guard, Brig. Gen. James Rose, not at the behest of anyone in the Bush family, but rather a Houston businessman, Sidney A. Adger, a friend of the Bushes who has died.

"Yes, I called Rose to get George Bush into the Guard, I've said that," Mr. Barnes said in his office last week in Austin. "I called Rose for other sons of prominent families, and I'm not proud of it now."

Anticipating his remarks, Republicans worked to discredit Mr. Barnes as a partisan Democrat and large contributor to Mr. Kerry. The events created a new round of scrutiny for Mr. Bush, after a month in which Mr. Kerry's Vietnam service dominated the campaign because of veterans with longstanding anger at how Mr. Kerry, who was a decorated veteran, came home and turned against the war. With advertisements, through a book and on talk shows, the group, Swift Boat Veterans for Truth, leveled largely unsubstantiated accusations about Mr. Kerry's record and his antiwar statements.

Democrats were unabashed about turning the spotlight on Mr. Bush. Terry McAuliffe, the Democratic chairman, said in a conference call with reporters the party would keep Mr. Bush's Guard record before the public.

The events unfolded a day after the Pentagon, prompted by a lawsuit filed by The Associated Press, released a series of records on Mr. Bush's service, even though the White House had said this year that it had released all the records.

Mr. Bartlett said that the documents "demonstrate that he served his country, he logged hundreds and hundreds of hours as a fighter pilot in the Texas Air National Guard."

Mr. Bartlett rejected the suggestion based on Colonel Killian's files that Mr. Bush did not meet the performance standards. He said Mr. Bush did not have a physical examination because he was not going to be flying planes anymore, because his unit no longer flew the planes that Mr. Bush was trained on.

"Every step of the way, President Bush was meeting his requirements, granted permission to meet his requirements," Mr. Bartlett said.

A new commercial, produced by a group of Democrats, Texans for Truth, is to begin on Monday in five swing states that have lost high numbers of soldiers in Iraq. It features a former lieutenant colonel in the Alabama Guard, Bob Mintz, who lives in Tennessee. He told a columnist for The New York Times, Nicholas D. Kristof, for a column published on Wednesday, that he was actively looking for Lieutenant Bush at the Alabama base in the 1970's, because he had heard that Lieutenant Bush was a fellow bachelor who might like to party with him and other pilots. In the spot, Mr. Mintz said neither he nor his friends ever saw Mr. Bush.

"It would be impossible to be unseen in a unit of that size," he says.

The unit had 20 to 30 pilots.

In a conference call with reporters on Wednesday, Mr. Mintz was pressed about his recollections and whether he might have missed seeing Mr. Bush, possibly because Mr. Bush was no longer flying at that point and was working in an office position. Mr. Mintz said repeatedly he never saw Lieutenant Bush.

Asked for friends' names who could vouch that they never saw Lieutenant Bush, Mr. Mintz declined, saying he did not have their permission to make their names public.

Glenn Smith, the main figure in Texans for Truth, said he wanted to make the spot because he was angry over the Swift Boat veterans.

Steve Schmidt of the Bush campaign said that Texans for Truth was linked to the Kerry campaign in potential violation of campaign finance laws, saying the group was "made possible by contributions" from Moveon.org, another advocacy group that opposes Mr. Bush.

Mr. Smith said that Moveon.org had financed another group that he had founded, Drivedemocracy.org, but that neither had given money to the Texans, though he said that Moveon.org had put a link on its Web site to the Texans and sent e-mail messages to its members in Texas urging them to donate to the Texans.

Mr. Smith said the Texans raised more than $300,000 in 24 hours, with one contribution for $100,000 and most of the rest in $25 donations.

Adding to the picture of Mr. Bush's service, The Boston Globe reported on Wednesday that he fell short of meeting his military requirements and was not disciplined despite irregular attendance at required drills.

The paper said Mr. Bush signed documents in July 1973, before he left Houston for the Harvard Business School, promising to meet his training commitments or be punished by being called up to active duty.

Mr. Bartlett said on Wednesday that Mr. Bush was given permission to attend Harvard. He said that if there were any requirements Mr. Bush was not meeting, "the National Guard at the federal level, the state level and the local level, they all knew where he was."

Katharine Q. Seelye reported from Washingtonfor this article, and Ralph Blumenthal from Houston. Raymond Bonner contributed reporting from Houston

[Stupendous_man]

Yet another anomoly: there is only one space between sentences (well, the last two, which are the only back to bac sentences). That is an artifact of word processing software. Typists (even hunt and peck typists) would have most likely used the traditional two spaces between sentences.

http://www.livejournal.com/users/reality_hammer/170376.html

[Otta B Sleepin]

You are an awesome investigator, Buckhead, and I'm proud to be your fellow FReeper!

This thread and the posted links have been so much fun to read - you can bet I'll be forwarding the links to others.

[KoRn]

Hillary has them LOL!!!!

[DaughterofEve]

She also says that none of the "ball" typewriters she ever used had special characters such as the "th" for use in "#th"".

And she's absolutely correct.

Signed,
DOE, Former NYC Publications Typesetter, 1982-1988

[Andy from Beaverton]

You great post is now linked here: http://news.zdnet.com/2102-3513_22-5362393.html?tag=printthis

[jocon307]

"This thread may well be referenced in history books 50 years from now."

Indeed it may. The post heard 'round the world.

Buckhead, you may well have saved Western Civilization.

No, I'm not exagerrating. Basically, I never do that.

You've put a big, fat, finger in their self-regarding eye, and a stick in Kerry's spokes, at the very least.

Who's better than you? NOBODY!

[RayChuang88]

This thread may well be referenced in history books 50 years from now.

What Buckhead did is truly the epic triumph of the de-massification of the media that Alvin Toffler prophesized some 25 years ago in The Third Wave.

If we do find out that the memos were hoaxes created by a Kerry campaign operative, it will effectively DOOM Senator Kerry's campaign since American voters will suddenly become MUCH more critical of the mainstream press that seems to be so supportive of Kerry. It is also final vindication of Bernard Goldberg's two books about his criticisms of the mainstream press.

I am truly a witness to history in the making.

[jmstein7]

BUMP!!!

[Veto!]

Adding belated kudos to you for getting the ball rolling. It's now the size of CBS, and picking up even more debris as it merrily rolls right over Rather./

[paltz]

do you realize how many left wingers ya pissed off?....bwahhaaahahaha

[fhayek]

I just wanted to add my kudos, here on the early morning hours of September 11th. I hope you realize what you have done:

1. You have nailed Dan Rather and CBS. Something every conservative has wanted to do for 25 years.

2. You have added to the prestige of free republic

3. You have effected the presidential election of 2004.

And it was all caused by a font. This sure is a whacky world.

[westtexasjew]

I sent a complaint to the fcc: fccinfo@fcc.gov "Complaint concerning CBS's known fraud and continuing cover-up"
Fat chance this will do anything, (and this was before the amazing CYA last night!)
I am a computer person, and I showed the .pdf's to over 10 others as a blind test and they ALL immediately saw the obvious forgery. Why didn't the well-paid brain trust at CBS?
I believe, like Hugh Hewitt and the Powerline gang, that journalists are lazy, stupid half-educated dolts -- a thoroughly worthless breed.
It's interesting that the blogosphere's high-end neighborhood is comprised of brilliant conservative lawyers and law professors, and few journalists. The journalists are just thoroughly outmatched in brain power by the blogosphere. (I am not a lawyer, but a geologist, for full disclosure's sake)

Thank you, Buckhead.

Let's remember, on 9/11, this is why the First Amendment is so important, and why it is presently under attack by the Left.

[valleygal]

I receive e-mail from a Lt.Col. in the Marines stationed in Iraq at Camp Victory. Someone e-mailed her today regarding the forgeries and she sent his remarks to all of us. I then wrote and told her I knew who got the ball rolling and I'd send her the thread with your now famous post #47.

This thread and post #47 are now on it's way to Iraq!

Are you enjoying your (maybe more than) 15 minutes of fame, LOL?

[OneLoyalAmerican]

Buckhead:

If we're judged by the company we keep, FReepers, such as yourself, are indeed great company.

OLA

[ReleaseTheHounds]

Bookmark for posterity. Way to go, Buckhead!

[Paleo Conservative]

See post 47

The now famous "post 47" to which ABC refers.

[AAGabriel]

I think these documents are forgeries. If they were not, they could easily get many of the other reports signed by Killian during that time to see if the type is the same.

[orlop9]

bttt

[_Jim]

In the vein of 'connecting the dots' and tracing back the source of these documents ... I came across this posting from littlegreenfootballs Post # 431:

Post #431

Splatt3r9unk 9/10/2004 12:05AM PST

After doing some research (more than CBS did) I have a forgery suspect. Is AWOL the source of these fraudulent documents? Of course this is only a suspicion and my opinion, but there are some things here that make me want to know more about the people behind this site and if they dabble in docs. I wonder if there is anything on this site that resembles the fake documents. Do you think?

Here is a quote from the site...
------------------------------
And there are the haunting voices of Lieutenant Colonel William D. Harris Jr. and Lieutenant Colonel Jerry B. Killian, both dead, whose reports state that they could not fill out Bush?s annual evaluation because, ''Lt. Bush has not been observed at this unit during the period of report.?
------------------------------

...from a page that was last updated Sunday, July 30, 2000. It is almost word for word what the fake documents said. Very strange!

Then I did a little google search for the Copyright owners Coldfeet Press which lead me to this page page which in turn lead me to this site and after skimming the crap from the turds guess where I ended up?

THAT RIGHT! The Democrats website and their Smoking Jet Campaign. Something is definitely smoking but I believe it is a burning swift boat.

BURN AND SINK BABY!

Splatter In The Couv

BTW, good job guys ...