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)
That's if you believe he did do so. I think he made the whole thing up to bash Bush.
Hell, I can't even remember what this is about anymore. But I am sure enjoying watching SeeBS exposed for what they are.
Calpundit: An Interview With Bill Burkett
February 12, 2004...
And I left out something. George Conn is a smoker. George Conn knew everything that was happening on Camp Mabry, he picked up every rumor, he knew where everybody was, what they were doing, George knew it all. When I asked him where we were going, I believe I asked him three times in our little walk, and once I remember he said, "Trust me." There may have been a little retort at some point, but basically it was a "trust me" response, whether it was one time or three or two or whatever.
We go behind the building, headed toward the academy building, which goes behind a dormitory structure, and then we go over to the museum and we walk into the doors of the museum. The museum is an old armory, World War II-Korean War era vintage armory, which is a large structure. You walk into these doors and there's a concrete floor there with a larger open space than a high school gymnasium.
To the left of that are several offices built in Korean War style with basically little or no top to them, they're basically walled units, and offices are 8 by 12 to 10 by 12, in that size. And at approximately 30 or so feet from that on this concrete floor, or as we call it, the drill hall floor area, was a folding table, just a commercial grade folding table, and what I recognized as a — and you may know what I'm talking about. Do you know what a 15-gallon trashcan looks like?
Yeah, sure.
A metal gunbarrel style that we used for years and years in the military, that's what it was, and it was setting at the end of the table. George obviously knew General Scribner extremely well, and he says hello to him and there's little pleasantries and we walk up there, and as soon as we get there he introduces me to General Scribner, who I did not know. I said hello and very little if anything more. General Scribner was very polite, very punctual, very nice, and George carried on a conversation with him, basically asked him, OK, what are you doing, how's it coming? And obviously they had had previous conversations that he was working on files.
At that point I remember General Scribner saying that people downtown were coming out and they were going to do a book, and Bartlett and Hughes were coming out, and he'd been told to get all the files together and go through them and kind of clean them up a bit. And George said, well, what are you finding? And he says, well, he says he's been through it, and I'm paraphrasing all of this, he says, obviously lots of people have been through it, you know, there's just not as much here as I'd expected, mostly old press releases and that sort of stuff.
I'm standing there on one foot and another, very uncomfortable with this situation, I knew I'd been guided here and I knew why at that point. I was standing right next to the trash can. I mention that only for one reason, and that is my own alibi to my own conscience. I believe if I'd been one step away from the trash can I would not have done what I did, I would have been forced to make an obvious decision.
Instead I looked down into the trashcan. Underneath most of the trash — the trash level was within two inches of the top — I saw that the trash on the bottom was basically packing cartons, I do remember that there were a couple of elastic type straps and that sort of thing, and on top there was a little bit of paper. And on top of that pile of paper, approximately five-eighths of an inch thick, and Jim wanted me to estimate the number of pages and I said probably between 20 and 40 pages of documents that were clearly originals and photocopies. And it wasn't any big deal, I looked at it, it was a glance situation, and it made no sense to me at all except at the top of that top page was Bush, George W., 1LT.
And I look back at it now and I know I was troubled that those documents were in the trashcan. I did ruffle through the top six to eight pages.
And what were they?
Those documents were performance, what I term performance documents, which would include retirement points, [unintelligible] type documents, which would be a record of drill performance or nonperformance, and there was at least one pay document copy within the top six to eight pages of that stack that was in the trash….