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Point-of-View Notice: The 2004 U.S. presidential campaign is underway. The race will likely be heated and partisan; the related BambooWeb articles may be the focus of contention and debate—possibly diminishing their neutrality.
The George W. Bush military service controversy is an ongoing American political controversy regarding U.S. President George W. Bush and the differing contentions about his service with the Texas Air National Guard during the Vietnam War. The controversy was discussed in the mass media during the 2000 presidential campaign and again in the 2004 presidential campaign. Prior to his presidential campaigns, opponents of Mr. Bush invoked various contentions about his service during his successful Texas Gubernatorial campaigns in 1994 and 1998.
Bush enlisted in the Texas Air National Guard on May 27, 1968 during the Vietnam War, with a commitment to serve until May 26, 1974. In his Statement of Intent at the time, he wrote, "I have applied for pilot training with the goal of making flying a lifetime pursuit and I believe I can best accomplish this to my own satisfaction by serving as a member of the Air National Guard as long as possible." He performed Guard duty as an F-102 pilot through April 1972, logging a total of 336 flight hours and was twice promoted during his service, first to second lieutenant and then to first lieutenant.
In November 1970, Lt. Col. Jerry B. Killian, the commander of the Texas Air National Guard, recommended that Bush be promoted to first Lieutenant, calling him "a dynamic outstanding young officer" who stood out as "a top notch fighter interceptor pilot." He said that "Lt. Bush's skills far exceed his contemporaries," and that "he is a natural leader whom his contemporaries look to for leadership. Lt. Bush is also a good follower with outstanding disciplinary traits and an impeccable military bearing."
Prominent American Democratic, liberals, and left-wing political figures--most notably Democratic Party Chairman Terry McAuliffe and documentary filmmaker Michael Moore--have questioned whether Bush's father used his political influence to keep him out of the war. At the time, then-Presidents Johnson and Nixon decided against calling up the National Guard for extended service in Vietnam. As a result, National Guard service at the time was widely seen as a way to avoid going to war. The waiting list for the guard at that time was extremely long, but there have been charges that men from influential families were put to the top of the list (a similar accusation was leveled at J. Danforth Quayle III, vice-president while Bush's father was president).
Ben Barnes, the former speaker of the Texas House of Representatives, stated under oath that he had called the head of the Texas Air National Guard, Brig. Gen. James Rose, to recommend Bush for a pilot spot at the request of Bush family friend John Kerry's campaign in Texas, repeated these claims in an interview with CBS News on Sept. 8, 2004. Former Texas legislator Jake Johnson has stated that before General Rose died, he told him that he had been responsible for Bush's acceptance into the Guard. Yoshi Tsurumi, one of Bush's Harvard professors, claims that Bush told him that his "Dad's friends" got him into the Guard.
Both George W. Bush and his father have stated that they did not ask Adger to intercede and were unaware of any action he may have taken. Walter Staudt, the colonel in command of Bush's squadron, has stated that he accepted Bush's application without receiving any outside pressure to do so. It has been reported that Bush jumped to the top of a list of over 500 applicants for the position despite receiving the minimum passing score (25) on the pilot entrance aptitude test and listing no other qualifications. Serving in the same unit as Bush were the sons of other prominent men, including the sons of Democratic Governor John Connally, Democratic Senator and future Vice-Presidential nominee Lloyd Bentsen, and Republican Senator John Tower, as well as seven members of the Dallas Cowboys professional football club, and a man named James R. Bath, who would become a longtime friend of Bush's.
The unit in which Bush served was known as a "Champagne unit," where the scions of the Texas aristocracy could avoid combat duty with relatively few demands on their time. The Air National Guard did see limited Vietnam service in 1965 and 1968, and a pilot program to consider using F-102 airplanes as bombers in Vietnam was underway. According to a pilot from Bush's squadron, Bush inquired about this program but was advised by a supervisor (Maj.
Democratic National Committee chairman Terry McAuliffe, at the beginning of February 2004, specifically accused Bush of being AWOL from the National Guard. He stated that this charge was based on the gaps in documentation of Bush's service for one of the six years of his National Guard duty. "AWOL" is an acronym for "absent without leave". It refers to any instance in which a member of the US armed forces leaves or fails to report for a military assignment without permission.
In rebuttal of the "AWOL" charge, White House communications director Dan Bartlett and others have pointed out that he was honorably discharged. However critics argue that a defense of "honorable discharge" does not suffice, because it is entirely possible for someone to have gone AWOL at a given point and then later be honorably discharged. Further, they contend it is possible that Bush could have received an honorable discharge due to his influential father, who was at the time serving as US Ambassadors to the United Nations and had held a number of influential positions including Chairman of the Republican National Committee. Even so, there is no known record of any charge of "AWOL" ever having been raised against Bush at any time by the National Guard. Defenders of president Bush contend that the allegation of "AWOL" is nothing more than unsupported election year partisan slander.
Released military records show that Bush's documented service record until May 1972 is without gaps, but there are gaps in the paper trail after that date. Pertaining to the dates of controversy, on May 24, 1972, Bush filled out a form requesting a transfer to the 9921st Air Reserve Squadron in Montgomery, Alabama. According to his application, he was already in Alabama at work on the Senate campaign of Winton M. Blount, who was a friend of his father. Bush was employed by the firm of Allison & Travalan in Montgomery; Jimmy Allison was a longtime family friend. On May 26, Reese H. Bricken, commander of the 9921st, wrote to Bush to tell him that his application had been accepted. However, there has been controversy over the question of whether he reported for duty or not. No records have been offered to show that Bush did any work for the 9921st. Pay sheet summaries and attendance records contain no entries for the period of May 1972 to mid-October 1972.
On July 21, 1972, the Air Reserve Personnel Center in Denver, the final approval authority, rejected Bush's reassignment request to the 9921st, stating that as "an obligated Reservist" he could only be "assigned to a specific Ready Reserve Position." The ARPC wrote that Bush "is ineligible for assignment to an Air Reserve Squadron." According to Bricken, in an interview with the Boston Globe, We met just one weeknight a month. We were only a postal unit. We had no airplanes. We had no pilots. We had no nothing.. This rejection left Bush obligated to continue his duty with his Texas Air National Guard unit, the 111th at Ellington Air Force Base near Houston, Texas.
Also in the Summer of 1972, for reasons that are unclear, Bush skipped a mandatory physical examination. As a result, his flight status was revoked in September, which meant he no longer was authorized to fly as a pilot. Bush has claimed that he wanted to wait to perform the physical until it could be done by his own private doctor, but this is challenged by critics because regulations required that the physical be performed by an Air Force doctor and there is no record of the physical having been completed at a later date in any case. Bush has subsequently claimed that he did not take the physical because he was no longer flying and it was therefore unneccessary, but critics note that it was required whether he was flying or not. Rumors of Bush's use of cocaine in his youth (which he has refused to deny) have prompted speculation that Bush was afraid of testing positive for illegal drug use. Critics have claimed that failure to show up for the 1972 physical, in and of itself, constituted being 'Absent Without Leave'.
On September 5, 1972, Bush requested permission to "perform equivalent duty" at the 187th Tactical Recon Group in Alabama "for the months of September, October, and November." He quickly received approval to do so, and was told to report to Lt. Col. William Turnipseed, the base commander, for drills on October 7 and 8, and November 4 and 5. Turnipseed has said that he could not recall whether Bush reported on those occasions. Bush's records do not list any service on those dates, but they do show that he was paid for service on October 28 and 29, a weekend; on November 11 and 12, also a weekend; and November 13 and 14, a Tuesday and Wednesday. The location of the service and the duties performed are not described in the records.
Critics claim that if payroll records that show no indication Bush drilled in Alabama during July, August, or September 1972 are accurate, then Bush was 'Absent Without Leave' for the drills in question. Even if he later 'made up' the absences he was AWOL at the time. Lawrence Korb, former Assisstant Secretary of Defense for President Reagan, has reviewed the payroll records and concluded that they indicate that Bush was AWOL.
In 2004, a man named John "Bill" Calhoun, a former Alabama Air National Guard officer who had served at the Dannelly Air National Guard Base in Montgomery, home of the 187th, claimed he had seen Bush report for duty eight to 10 times between May and October 1972. His recollection has been questioned due to the fact that Bush didn't even apply for reassignment to the 187th until September of that year.
Bush received a dental examination at Dannelly in Alabama on January 6, 1973. (It is unclear why he stayed - or returned - to Alabama in January, his campaign job having ended in November.) Pay sheet summaries indicate 11 possible days of service from January 1973 to May 1973: January 4-6 and 8-10, April 7-8, and May 1-3. The April and May service presumably occurred at his home base,Ellington Air Force Base, in Houston. However there is nothing in the files showing that he reported on those days.
Between 1972 and 1973, Bush dated Archibald Blount, a relative of Blount, claimed that Bush was known during this time as the "Texas Souffle", for his supposed character of looking good on the outside but not having much on the inside. John White, a former professional football player and civic leader. The next reported date of service in his record is May 29, 1973.
On May 2, 1973, Bush's immediate superiors conducted an annual performance review covering the period from May 1, 1972 to April 30, 1973, which stated that "Lt. Bush has not been observed at this unit during the period of the report." Apparently unaware that Bush's campaign job in Alabama had ended in November, and that Bush had been working at Project P.U.L.L in Houston since December or January, Lt. Col. William D. Harris Jr. and Lt. Col. Jerry B. Killian wrote, "A civilian occupation made it necessary for him to move to Montgomery, Ala. He cleared this base on 15 May 1972 and has been performing equivalent training in a non-flying status with the 187 Tac Recon Gp. Dannelly ANG Base, Alabama."
weblog, noted that Bush's pay records from Alabama are Air Reserve Force (not to be confused with September 5, 1973, Bush requested discharge from service, to be effective on October 1. He wrote, "I am moving to Boston, Massachusetts to attend Harvard Business School as a full time student." Jerry Killian recommended approval of the discharge the following day. He had completed five years, four months, and five days toward his six-year service obligation, and was honorably discharged from the Texas Air National Guard on October 1, 1973. He was immediately transferred to the inactive reserves in Denver, Colorado, and then discharged from the Air Force Reserve on November 21, 1974.
On Sept. 9, 2004, the Boston Globe reported that when Bush was granted a transfer out of the Alabama National Guard so that he could attend Harvard Business School, Bush had committed himself to joining a National Guard unit in Massachusetts and completing his service there while attending business school. There is no record of Bush's having served in the Massachusetts National Guard and he has never claimed that he did so.
Some critics have gone beyond charges of 'AWOL' to claim that Bush was a 'deserter' or failed to complete his required National Guard service. Defenders of President Bush have countered that he was honorably discharged, which normally would not happen if he had not completed his service. In early 2004, at the request of the White House, retired Texas Air National Guard Lieutenant Colonel Albert Lloyd reviewed Bush's payroll records and stated that Bush earned 253 points in 1968, 340 points in 1969, 137 points in 1970, 112 points in 1971, 56 points in 1972, and 56 points in 1973. Lloyd also claims that pilots were required to attain only 50 points a year and Bush's service was thus satisfactorily completed. However, independant review of the records found the 56 point total for 1973-74 to be incorrect. Lloyd has since indicated that this was a 'typo' and should have been 50 points, but even that is not supported by the records. Lloyd listed 35 points for service at drills and 15 gratuitous points for remaining active in the guard, for a total of 50. However, review of the records by US News and World Report shows only 33 points for drills and only 5 gratuitous points due to Bush's move to inactive status while attending Harvard Business School, for a total of 38. The full 15 gratuitous points could not be assigned to a guardsman on inactive status, and were not on Bush's records.
Further, critics note that the '50 point' standard actually applies to whether or not a particular service year is counted towards military retirement benefits. The National Guard actually required attendance at monthly drills (their recruitment ads still state "just one weekend a month").
On May 27, 1968 Bush signed a six year obligation to complete "48 scheduled inactive-duty training periods" each year (four, one weekend, per month). Regulations allowed Bush's commanders to excuse him from a maximum of 10% of these training drills in any given year... thus requiring that Bush complete at least 43 to satisfy his obligation and avoid being transferred to active duty, most likely in Vietnam. However, Bush's payroll records show that he completed only 36 in 1972-73 and only 12 in 1973-74. Combined those amounts would add up to the yearly requirement of 48 training periods and Bush has stated that the time he missed in 1972 was 'made up' in January of 1973. However, regulations only allowed drills to be made up within a few weeks after the scheduled date and the payroll records show that those January training periods were actually applied as his service requirement for that month and pre service for February and March of 1973. In either case, in his final two years in the National Guard, George W Bush completed 48 out of a required minimum 86 training drills (96 he committed to minus 10 which his commanders could excuse him from). This was unsatisfactory service under the regulations and normally would have resulted in being forced onto active duty and sent to Vietnam.
When confronted with this information, Colonel Lloyd stated that if these standards were strictly enforced then "90 percent of the people in the Guard would not have made satisfactory participation." Bush's defenders have also argued that, at a time with a glut of pilots with the end of the Vietnam War, Bush was doing the Air National Guard a favor by leaving early, because excess pilots were then being assigned to desk jobs.
In response to requests, President Bush released his service records from the Alabama National Guard including, pay records, and a record of a dental examination. His mid-February release of additional guard documents are claimed by some to contradict his February 8, 2004, statements to Meet the Press interviewer Tim Russert of "We did [authorize the release of everything] in 2000, by the way." However, Bush contends that he was referring only to documents already in his possession, as opposed to the new documents. More than 700 additional documents were released on February 13, 2004. Service records were also obtained from the National Personnel Records Center which were released to the media, political campaign committees, and the general public under the provisions of the Freedom of Information Act.
James Moore, an Emmy Award winning TV news correspondent from Texas, claims to have a statement from the National Personnel Records Center in St. Louis that assures that the record of George W. Bush has not been altered in any way since it was committed to microfiche there , and that the documents that the press was allowed to see in February 2004 are incomplete ; thus implying that if the president was sincere when he said during the February 8, 2004 Meet the Press interview that he is willing to release the complete record, doing so might resolve the controversy.
On June 22, 2004, The Associated Press sued the U.S. Department of Defense and the U.S. Air Force, seeking access to all of Bush's records during his military service.
On July 8, 2004, the Pentagon reported that the microfilmed payroll records of Bush and numerous other service members had been inadvertantly ruined in 1996 and 1997 by the Defense Finance and Accounting Service during a project to salvage deteriorating microfilm. The records lost included those covering three months of a period in 1972 when Bush's claims of service in Alabama are in question, and the Pentagon reported that no paper backups could be found.
On July 23, 2004, the Pentagon reported that the records it had previously reported destroyed had been found after all; a Pentagon official said the earlier contention that the records were destroyed was an "inadvertent oversight."
In September of 2004, after denying their existence for months, the Pentagon released Bush's service obligation papers.
Coincident with CBS News's September 8, 2004, interview with Ben Barnes was the release of another set of documents related to Bush's National Guard service. The documents, allegedly from the personal files of the late Jerry Killian, added new allegations against Bush, but their authenticity was immediately attacked. On September 20, CBS News stated that it had been "misled" and that it should not have used the documents. See Killian memos for details.
On February 23, 2004, cartoonist Garry Trudeau, creator of Doonesbury, personally offered a highly-publicized $10,000 reward (in the form of a donation in the winner's name to the USO, which entertains U.S. troops) to anyone who had "personally witnessed" Bush reporting for drills at Dannelly Air National Guard Base between May and November 1972 . As of yet, the reward has not been paid.
On February 27, 2004, Trudeau announced that despite over 1,300 responses, his offer had unearthed no new evidence to show that Bush actually turned up for duty in the time period in question. A spokeswoman for the Republican National Committee dismissed the reward as a "silly stunt." Trudeau agreed, saying, "She's right, but as a simple investigative cartoonist, I don't have a very big tool kit."
In September 2004, the 527 group "Texans for Truth", offered a $50,000 reward to anyone who could prove that Bush fulfilled his service requirements by either "first-hand, eye-witness testimony," or authentic "documentary evidence."
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