Doubts raised on Bush accuser
Key witness disputes charge by Guard retiree that files were purgedBy Michael Rezendes, [Boston] Globe Staff, 2/13/2004
For at least six years, a retired Texas National Guard officer has maintained that President Bush's record as a member of the Guard was purged of potentially embarrassing material at the behest of high-ranking Bush aides laying the groundwork for Bush's 2000 run for the presidency.
Retired Lieutenant Colonel Bill Burkett, who has been pressing his charges in the national news media this week, says he even heard one high-ranking officer issue a 1997 order to sanitize the Bush file, and later saw another officer poring over the records and discovered that some had been discarded.
But a key witness to some of the events described by Burkett has told the Globe that the central elements of his story are false.
George O. Conn, a former chief warrant officer with the Guard and a friend of Burkett's, is the person whom Burkett says led [Burkett] to the room where the Bush records were being vetted. But Conn says he never saw anyone combing through the Bush file or discarding records.
"I have no recall of that," Conn said. "I have no recall of that whatsoever. None. Zip. Nada."
Conn's recollection also undercuts another of Burkett's central allegations: that he overheard Bush's onetime chief of staff, Joe M. Allbaugh, telling a Texas Guard general to make sure there were no embarrassments in the Bush record.
Burkett says he told Conn, over dinner that same night, what he had overheard. But Conn says that, although Burkett told him he worried that the Bush record would be sanitized, he never mentioned overhearing the conversation between Allbaugh and General Daniel James III.
...
Earlier this week, Burkett told the Globe that, in the telephone conversation between Allbaugh and James, Allbaugh said the Bush file had to be sanitized because two of Bush's aides were planning to review the records in preparation for Bush's 1999 autobiography, "A Charge to Keep." Burkett said that he overheard the conversation, conducted over James's speaker phone, while standing outside the open door of James's office, and that he was so troubled he told Conn about it that evening.
But Conn, now a civilian government employee working with the US Army in Germany, said Burkett never told him of the conversation. And Allbaugh, a Washington consultant and lobbyist, said, "I would never be so stupid as do something like that."
Allbaugh said he discussed Bush's file with Guard officials but only because Bush wanted to review it, and had never seen it.
Burkett, in his Globe interview and in Moore's book, titled "Bush's War for Re-election," said that a week to 10 days after he overheard the conversation between Allbaugh and James, Conn brought him to an office at the Camp Mabry military history museum, where Conn introduced Burkett to Scribner. Burkett says that at the moment they met Scribner, the officer was busy scrubbing the Bush file.
According to Burke, Conn asked Scribner what he was doing and Scribner replied that he was looking through Bush's records. Burkett said Conn and Scribner then briefly left him alone, and that he saw some pages of Bush's military records in a trash can near Scribner's desk.
Conn contradicts most of Burkett's rendition. He said that he remembers introducing Burkett to Scribner at the museum but that Scribner never said he was going over the Bush file. "If he had said he was going through George W. Bush's records I would have dropped my teeth. Wow," Conn said. "I would definitely have remembered that. I don't recall that at all."
Burkett also says that, before the encounter with Scribner, he was standing with a group of Guard officers, and heard a ranking officer order Scribner to review the Bush file and remove any documents that might be embarrassing to the then-governor.
But Scribner told the Globe yesterday that no such thing occurred. "It didn't happen. I wasn't even there," Scribner said.
...
Then today's (Sept. 14, 2004) story about Marion Carr Knox, Lt. Col. Jerry B. Killian's secretary:
Former secretary says she didn't type memos [excerpt]:
The information in here was correct, but it was picked up from the real ones,” she said.
She said that the culture of the time was that men didn’t type office-related documents, and she expressed doubt that Lt. Col. Killian would have typed the memos. She said she would typically type his memos from his handwritten notes, which she would then destroy.
Mrs. Knox, who left the Guard before Lt. Col. Killian died, said she was not sure of the disposition of his personal files when he died while still serving at Ellington. But, she said, it would have been logical that a master sergeant who worked in the squadron headquarters would have destroyed any such nonofficial documents after Lt. Col. Killian’s death.
That man, reached Tuesday, declined to comment. “I don’t know anything about the matter,” he said.
She also said the memos may have been constructed from memory by someone who had seen Lt. Col. Killian’s private file but were not transcriptions because the language and terminology did not match what he would have used.
For instance, she said, the use of the words “billets” and a reference to the “administrative officer” of Mr. Bush’s squadron reflect Army terminology rather than the Air National Guard. Some news reports attribute the CBS reports to a former Army National Guard officer who has a longstanding dispute with the Guard and has previously maintained that the president’s record was sanitized.
Mrs. Knox also cited stylistic differences in the form of the notes, such as the signature on the right side of the document, rather than the left, where she would have put it.
"That man, reached Tuesday ..." is presumably Warrant Officer Conn, from the earlier story, in which he said, "I have no recall of that whatsoever. None. Zip. Nada."
"Army terminology rather than the Air National Guard" presumably indicates Lt. Col. Burkett, who was not in the Air National Guard, but in the Army National Guard. So, while Ms. Carr is not quite a Bush fan, she accurately describes enough of the fine points, to make Burkett the prime holder of the original documents.
The Army should investigate Lt. Col. Burkett who probably committed a felony by swiping the files that he found in the trash, in that room. It is a very serious offense, for which he should be activated under the jurisdiction of the current Texas Army National Guard.
CBS is an accessory, and the Kerry Campaign.
Documents and memos typed at that time, included carbon copies on a kind of almost-tissue paper. Wadded up, these tissue copies took up little space, unlike 15lb and 20lb copier stuff that most folks use these days.
Sometimes, people typed memos on the tissue-like paper, saving "the office stock" for the official record. It was a time when officers still kept diaries and closely held portfolios of their in-server struggles and trails and successes; which documents several once understood, were their personal diary and not for public consumption.
That's another reason why the penalties for taking items from the trash, can be quite severe, other than for obvious security reasons.
CBS cannot give him up, because he'll sue them for violating his confidence; and they'll lose their "informed source" trust bank.
He won't give CBS up, because they are what stand between him and a courts martial.
(take care)
Might be fun to work up a "fake but accurate" list:
I'll start:
Hitler Diaries are Fake But Accurate
Howard Hughes Bio is Fake But Accurate
Counterfeiter's Bills Are Fake But Accurate
LA Times Iraq Photo Fake But Accurate
Arnold's Anonymous Accusers Fakes, But Accurately Describe What He Would Have Done If He Had Done It
that partisan old bag is guessing.
So, in the NYT world, evidence is real if they say it's real...even if it's not actually real...is that about right?
These folks are as deluded and arrogant as Rather.
Funny, thing, a koolaid Kerry liberal suggested to me that "maybe they scanned the original document into MS Word using an OCR program."
So I asked, "Why go to the trouble of scanning the original? Why not just keep the original?"
She said, "Oh, well, maybe it was in a historical archive somehwere and they weren't allowed to keep it."
Stupidity piled on stupidity. I could vomit.
The Times deliberately left out her DNC-talking-points-type comments about Bush, in an effort to make her look more credible.
Typist says.
Oh boy!
I think she was combining gossip, in her words "yak-yak", (which they also didn't quote), with the thoughts and feelings of Killian. Of course Killian may very well have written some memo's for the record, documenting his advice to Bush about his upcoming flight medical. We know that he had approved a transfer to an air reserve squadron, which did not require any active duty time each year, a position for which he was not *then* eligible. Later the rules changed at least enough for him to be released early. Instead a "training attachment" in a non flying status, was arranged with an Albama guard unit. The physical would normally have been conducted at about the time all this was in work, and Bush was already physcially in Alabama.
I personally do not approve of what Bush did, but it was legal under the rules. I think he should have just communted back to Texas once or twice a month for drills, and taken that physical. But under the rules then in existence, what he did was allowed. Just as Kerry was allowed to come home after only 4 months, under the rules, if the 3 purple hearts had all been legitimate, whereas we know the first was not. He had gone through channels (ie. his CO) and been refused, so he just waited until the CO and doctor were no longer around and submitted the paperwork to a distant higher command when those folks weren't around to stop him or the paperwork.
I'd say her comments remove some of the mystery. They show that the documents are complete and utter fakes.
The remarks by Ms. James and Ms. Will indicate that CBS had good reason to know or at least suspect that the documents were fake, but they went ahead and presented them without any indication of these doubts by the experts they had consulted. That shows that not only are the documents fakes, CBS willfully colluded with the forger by presenting them as authentic when they had reason to know better.
NYT BS Alert! Note that in this article, she is quoted as saying "The information in them is correct".
But in the Houston Chronicle article (not in the NYT), it asserts she had 'no firsthand knowledge of Bush's time' in the TANG.
Who _knows_ what she was asserting was correct. Whether the _fact_ that GWB missed a physical (which I believe is asserted to be true, and not a point of argument), or the _contention_ that he received special treatment.
That's the very point the NYT article leaves alive, and it's the leg that Dan Rather is trying desperately to stand on.
NYT to the public:
1. Ignore the fact that someone has forged several documents that imply that the President was delinquent in his duties (etc) . . . the allegations are IMPORTANT and YOU MUST BELIEVE THEM.
2. Ignore the serious allegations made by the SBVT for which there are several witnesses and a multitude on original military documents and sworn statements. The SBVT is a front for the RNC/VRWC and are thus UNIMPORTANT and YOU MUST IGNORE THEM.
So it is probably true that Bush needed prodding in those last two years to fulfill his obligations, because his interest had turned to politics, that he responded to the prodding, finished his service, got an honorable discharge, and his superiors continued to think highly of him till they died.
Now let's find the forger.