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Gen. Turnipseed mentioned a couple of new points of information to me in this last telephone call.

One, was that it was 60 Minutes who first contacted him (during the primaries in 2000) about Bush's Guard service. He said a woman called him, saying that she was in Texas looking at Bush's record and looking at Lt. Col. Lott's letter to Bush.

Gen. Turnipseed says that he said the same thing to her that he later said to the reporter for the Boston Globe. That he couldn't remember whether Bush had shown up or not. I'm not sure whether he said this to her, but he said he felt at the time that it was a non-story. He said that 60 Minutes must have felt the same way since they didn't do a story on it.

Gen. Turnipseed said that the Boston Globe may have gotten the story from 60 Minutes. But in any case they didn't contact him until later, after the primaries were over and it was clear that Bush would get the GOP nomination.

Also, Gen. Turnipseed told me that when the Boston Globe reporter (Walter Robinson) talked to him, he assured him that he was a "fair reporter." Gen. Turnipseed said that he was "suckered" in.

Again, Gen. Turnipseed thought at the time that there wasn't any story there. He didn't expect the Boston Globe reporter to make it into such a big deal.

Gen. Turnipseed repeated to me what he had told me the first time we spoke, that the media people just don't understand how the guard works. That Lott's letter, for instance, was not an order, it was not a directive. It was just to inform Bush when the drills were scheduled.

But the most important thing to remember in all of this is that Gen. Turnipseed was just talking about all of this casually. He casually mentioned that he couldn't remember whether Bush had shown up or not. He told them that he might not have even been on the base at the time.

But the Boston Globe reporter and the rest of the media have cited Gen. Turnipseed in such a way as to make it seem that he was declaring that Bush didn't for a fact show up. And that Bush had somehow disobeyed an order to show up.

Gen. Turnipseed says he didn't say any such thing. And I believe him.