Posted on 09/08/2004 8:10:56 PM PDT by 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
Thanks Buckhead. I'm a current reservist, and keeping track of where personnel are from month-to-month is difficult. All of the officers in my unit confirm that no officer would write these kinds of memos.
I can't wait to hear CBS continue to try to defend these memos tonight. They have enough rope to hang the entire network and the Kerry campaign! How much more do they want? Are they really so tonedeaf as to think that even if this stuff was true, anyone (not retarded) would care?
This campaign is hilarious!
Good job, and rock on!
WHAT IS KERRY HIDING!!!!!
answer: Kamp Kerry just realized they need to buy a new antique typewriter. Thier MicrosofWord 1973 is not going to cut it.
The NYT times is a ship of fools.
How many of the OTHER DOCUMENTS ARE FRAUDS?
do they distinguish documents the media provided the WH and then the WH provided to other media outlets?
NYT get over it. KERRY LIED ABOUT HIS WOUNDS, KERRY LIED ABOUT HIS SELF NOMINATED MEDALS. No amount of focus on the fighter pilot George Bush will change KERRY LIED!
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Phil Dragoo has provide a link which shows us how this forgery was done on a computer with MS Word 2002.
Go to the link and see what Howlin told us, unfold in about one minute.
http://img41.exs.cx/my.php?loc=img41&image=60minbusted.swf
HAHAHAHAHAHHAHAHA!
This is great. CNN is on the way back from the black hole they've been in for the last 5 years.
HQ in Clinton Iowa..... hometown of Marty Heldt.......author of the FOIA on all of Bush's records......
What an outstanding piece of work.....see my effort at connecting the dots just above.
Lets recap Phils thread again:
Phil Dragoo has provided us with the incredible link below that will show us how the forgery was done.
Go to the link and just sit back and watch the forgery recreated in about one minute. If freepers like this, please send it to your email lists. Then next week send it to advertisers of this POS 60 Minutes of Forgery and Lies. Then ask them if they really want to be associated with forgers and liars trying to illegally impact a presidential election.
http://img41.exs.cx/my.php?loc=img41&image=60minbusted.swf
My postman, who does not have a computer, was telling me about Rather still sticking to his story, even though it is known to be wrong, I then told him...... the word from the internet is getting around.
ping to you for the latest.
Each minute, hour and day that Blather and C BS stick to their lies about the forgeries, the more harm they are doing to Kerry and the survival of ABCNNBC BS as NEWSNOT organizations.
If this forgery is tracked back to Marty Heldt, and he is proven to be the forger, he is in real trouble.
The rats have a long history of handling those who embarass them on national or state level.
He will become a leper, hated by the right and the left in his community.
AWESOME JOB!!!! Great thanks are due to you and everyone else who helped here! :D
It's not every day that "the common man" (Teresa Heinz-Kerry's words for us little people ;) can cause a national firestorm that is likely to have repercussions in the political and journalism worlds for YEARS to come!
This election was already beginning to tip in Bush's favor. In exposing the lengths to which the Democrats are willing to go to win an election, and the willingness of their allies in the liberal media to sacrifice the truth in order to support these efforts, you may have dropped the election solidly into Bush's lap! Our nation and our children are in your debt.
A few observations and questions of my own...
It should be easy to cross check Mr. Killian's signature on these questionable documents against the known-to-be-genuine documents concerning the President's stint in the National Guard that have already been released by the Pentagon. After seeing how simplistically these potential forgeries seem to have been created, I think it's likely that an image of his signature may have been lifted from an authentic document and pasted/inserted into these documents. Any handwriting expert would agree that signatures are always similar, but no one can sign their name in EXACTLY the same way any two times. If an exact match can be found between any signature on the questionable and any authentic documents, it would prove that the signature was lifted from a genuine document and placed into a forgery. I'd do the comparison myself, but I don't have access to pdf copies of the documents released by the Pentagon.
It isn't a sufficient answer for Mr. Matley -- or CBS -- to say that other document specialists may not have good enough copies to work with. The clear _implication_ is that other experts are seeing things that are not in the original, or vice versa. This is too important to be left to mere implications; the truth must be known. For example, some have mentioned the presence of curly apostrophes, rather than the 70's era straight apostrophes. Is it CBS's and Mr. Matley's specific claim that the apostrophes on the original are not curly, but only appear to be so in the copies that are available? If so, they should state that specifically. Or far better yet, release accurate digital images of these documents so that others can examine them properly. It's not that hard guys. This is the computer age!
I've already heard that this or that model of 1972-era typewriter could do superscript or variable-width spacing. Again, that is not good enough. Since it isn't plausible that more than one typewriter was used to write these documents, I'd like to know specifically which ONE model could create ALL of the Word-type anomalies that are seen in these documents! Which model typewriter can type variable width letters in Palatino (or whichever it is believed to be) font, has smaller, superscripted 'th' key(s), uses curly apostrophes, etc? In light of the evidence against these documents, the burden is on CBS to present a typewriter model that the National Guard used in the early 70's that is capable of creating these documents, and if they cannot do so, the story should be withdrawn with an apology to the American public.
Isn't it the obligation of a news medium to demonstrate the utter veracity of a 'news' story that smears someone, rather than the responsibility of someone else to prove it false? Do journalism schools teach that stories are 'ready for air' once a reporter can demonstrate that he has found the truth, or only after he is convinced that no one can prove him wrong? This is a real difference, and I'll wager it's the former. In saying that they will stick by their story unless and until someone else proves it wrong, CBS is avoiding it's journalistic responsibility in this matter.
P.S. I joined this site just to say thanks to you all, but I think I'll stick around now. ; )
This has turned quire funny. The only ones that should be concerned, if this were true, are VN vets. Most of us know this kind of thing went on and most of us don't care. It was a watse of time that will now cost them the whole election.
Chris Matthews is now attacking the story of the POW Vets hearing the name of Kerry from their NK tormentors. MSNBC 2 to 3 PDT today , hoped someone else saw it!
2000? Yes ... 2000 ...
Pertinent excerpt:
Bush Aides Possibly AlteredDoes the bolded wording in the above sound familiar?
National Guard Records
To Conceal Grounding and Missed Dutyby Bob Fertik
November 4, 2000According to Democrats.com, Bush's grounding would normally have been reviewed by a Flight Inquiry Board of three senior officers, but there is no record that such a board was convened in Bush's case. Democrats.com has called for Bush to reveal his full military records, to put these and other charges to rest. Moreover, Democrats.com and TomPaine.com have revealed that Bush did not report for duty for at least a year after he stopped flying, and possibly two years. Bush's official record shows no duty after April 1972, and his superior officers in both Alabama and Texas say they never saw him after that.
An official report issued on April 30, 1973 says "Lt. Bush has not been observed at this unit during the period of this report," from May 1 1972 to April 30, 1973.
...
Internet activists led by Iowa farmer Martin Heldt and retired Air National Guard pilot Bob Rogers have been campaigning to expose Bush's failure to report for duty since May 23, 2000, when the Boston Globe first reported on a "one-year gap" in Bush's military duty. Heldt created a discussion board at Salon Magazine charging that Bush was "AWOL", which spurred an explosion of grassroots Internet activism.
I think this 'document' has been lying around for awhile, looking for a 'market' - and they finally found one in SeeBS ...
I think they started back in 1999...
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Bill Burkett
• February 13 -- Globe Bashes Burkett's Anti-Bush Story: Will the NYT React? • February 12 -- Old Anti-Bush Whine in New Bottle
E-mail TimesWatch Director, Clay Waters, with TimesWatch feedback at cwaters@mediaresearch.org
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Diggin for stuff down here....who is Burkett?
Who is Bill Burkett?Short answer: Another DUer type.Former Lt. Colonel Bill Burkett is the man who claims that Bush and the Texas National Guard cleaned out any damaging information in Bush's National Guard files in 1997.
As Kevin Drum explains in an exhaustively researched post, Burkett has a major axe to grind - he blames Bush for the military denying him medical care during an illness in 1998.
However, there is another reason to be skeptical about Burkett. Burkett has strongly held loony left political views. He has written numerous articles espousing his positions and clearly wishes to sway the electorate. This gives him another obvious motive to lie about Bush's National Guard files.
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