Posted on 09/16/2004 2:02:11 PM PDT by Leroy S. Mort
AUSTIN, Texas (AP) - A former Texas Air National Guard official who served at the same time as President Bush says he believes the bigger story about gaps in Bush's service is being overlooked in disputes over the validity of certain Guard documents.
``I think the public ought to be concerned about his preferential treatment getting in and whether he satisfied his commitment to the Air Guard. Those are the two fundamental questions,'' said Robert Strong, the administrative officer in charge of air operations at Guard state headquarters from early 1971 until March 1972.
Documents publicized last week by the CBS program ``60 Minutes'' have been called into question by some experts and relatives of the late Lt. Col. Jerry Killian, who supposedly wrote them when he was one of Bush's commanders in 1972 and 1973. The memos indicated that Killian had been pressured to sugarcoat Bush's performance and that the future president had ignored an order to take a physical.
CBS stood by its reporting, but CBS News President Andrew Heyward said the network would redouble its efforts to determine the authenticity of the documents.
Killian's former secretary, Marian Carr Knox, 86, of Houston has said she believed the memos were fake but their content accurately reflected Killian's opinions.
``I know that I didn't type them,'' she said in an interview with CBS. ``However, the information in those is correct.''
Strong told The Associated Press on Thursday that he couldn't vouch for the authenticity of the memos, but ``if Mrs. Knox didn't type those documents and she thinks they're fake, I'll go with her judgment.'' He said he doesn't know who provided CBS with the documents.
But Strong added that he and Knox worked closely with Killian and are in better position to know about his work habits and feelings about Bush than Killian's five children, who were between the ages of two and 19 in 1972. Strong said Killian's records would have been removed from his Guard office before his family would have been allowed to retrieve his personal items after he died in 1984.
Regardless of the authenticity of the memos, the question should be centered on Bush's Guard service, and what is indicated in the documents, Strong said.
``Why aren't we focusing on the content?'' Strong said, adding that he believes there are holes in Bush's official Guard record.
``The White House has just got to be thrilled to death that everybody's tormenting about subscripts and superscripts,'' he said, referring to the several days of debate among experts about whether the memos were forgeries generated on a computer instead or if a typewriter common in the 1970s was used.
As Bush flew to campaign in Minnesota on Thursday, White House spokesman Scott McClellan told reporters aboard Air Force One that ``CBS has now acknowledged that the crux of their story may have been based on forged documents.''
Strong confirmed that at least one of the documents used by CBS bore a faxed header indicating it had been sent from a Kinko's copy shop in Abilene. Strong said he was shown copies of the documents about three days before the ``60 Minutes'' broadcast on which he appeared last week.
Bill Burkett, a retired National Guard officer who lives just outside Abilene, has been cited in reports in Newsweek and The New York Times as a source for CBS' report. His lawyer, David Van Os, issued a statement saying Burkett ``no longer trusts any possible outcome of speaking to the press on any issue regarding George W. Bush.''
Burkett did not return several phone messages left by The Associated Press this week, and did not talk to an AP reporter who visited his ranch in Blair on Thursday.
Burkett, 55, told The Associated Press in February that he had overheard a conversation in 1997 between then-Gov. Bush's chief of staff, Joe Allbaugh, and then-Adjutant Gen. Daniel James of the Texas Air National Guard in which the two men spoke about getting rid of any military records that would ``embarrass the governor.''
Burkett said he saw documents from Bush's file discarded in a trash can a few days later at Camp Mabry in Austin. Burkett described them as performance and pay documents.
Allbaugh and James denied the allegations.
Guess I misunderstood......BTW Just saw a screen shot on Fox of the National Guard crowd at Kerry's speech today. HUGE audience, yet I could only heard individual clapping this afternoon for the most part, indicating sparse response for that dreadful speech.
And Strong was only there until March,1972 - so I am correct that he wasn't even around when this was an issue.
Or as cousin Vinnie might have said: "Your honor, I've got no further use for this "witness."
Those FAKE memos ...
... the question should be centered on Bush's Guard service, and what is indicated in the documents, Strong said.
AP relays this to us from Strong with a straight face. The question, we are told, is WHAT the faker put in the fake documents. Well, why don't we find out who the faker is so we can ask that person about the contents? Who is better than the person who GENERATED THE FORGERIES to answer questions on why the forgeries contain what they contain?
Strong worked in Austin, Killian worked in Houston - by the logic applied to the Swiftboat vets, Strong never "served with" Killian. Indeed, by any standard he did not serve closely with Killian - he would have no way to know what was happening at the squadron level, especially since these allegations were never in any official documents, which would be the only thing that an admin officer in Austin would see!
This guy is lying through his teeth...
I didn't see Gary Killian talking to Hannity but I was wondering if there were some other secretaries from the pool who might still be around to be questioned. It appears that Mrs. Knox doesn't know anything apart from the kinds of typewriters being used, and that Lt. Bush was polite to her...everything else she has said has been speculation on her part or suggested to her by whoever is coaching her.
That's exactly what Gary was talking about today, as he said the administrative officer he refered to could probably verify the type of typewriters used. According to Gary, he was kind of like the supply Seargent who ordered all that stuff. He also mentioned the other secretary for the same reason...and to see what her recollections were on Bush via Killian. Hannity supposedly got the names off-air when Gay left and said he'd check into it.
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