Harriet Miers was the fixer for Bush's National Guard Records Purge

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Tue, 4 Oct 2005 01:36:09 -0400

Harriet Miers was the fixer for Bush's National Guard Records

Purge

 

 

 

http://www.globalnewsmatrix.com/modules.php?name=News & file=article & sid=2835

 

 

 

 

Harriet Miers was the fixer for Bush's National Guard Records Purge

Posted on Monday, October 03 @ 08:53:08 EDT by drew

 

 

Aides to Texas Governor George W. Bush visited the Air National Guard

archives at Camp Mabry in 1997 and possibly altered Bush's military

service records to conceal Bush's grounding from flight in 1972 and

subsequent missed duty, according to a former senior official of the

Texas National Guard.

 

Bill Burkett, a Lt. Colonel who was the State Plans Officer of the

Texas National Guard at the time, said Bush operative Dan Bartlett

headed a high-level operation to " scrub " Bush's Air National Guard

record, to make sure it was in synch with the biography that the

campaign was preparing.

 

The book, " A Charge to Keep, " was authored by Bush and his principal

spokeswoman, Karen Hughes. Hughes was recently exposed during the DUI

sidebar involving reporter Wayne Slater as the person who strictly

controls what Bush is allowed to say.

 

At the time, Bartlett was Governor Bush's liaison to the Texas

National Guard. Bartlett is now the campaign spokesman who has

provided misleading information to the press on several occasions

about Bush's military service.

 

In " A Charge to Keep, " Bush briefly mentioned his National Guard

service. After completing flight training in June 1970, Bush wrote, " I

continued flying with my unit for the next several years. "

 

In fact, according to reports by the Boston Globe, Democrats.com and

TomPaine.com, Bush stopped flying only 22 months later in April 1972.

He was subsequently grounded from flight on August 1, 1972 because he

" failed to accomplish his annual physical. "

 

There is no mention of the grounding in Bush's biography, which

falsely implies that Bush continued flying until he left the National

Guard.

 

When questioned by the press, Bush spokesman Dan Bartlett has offered

several different reasons for this grounding. Initially Bartlett said

that Bush could not get to Houston for his physical, but this was

proved wrong when it was shown that Bush could have visited flight

surgeons stationed in Alabama. Bartlett then said the F-102 fighter

that Bush was trained to fly was removed from service, but this was

proved wrong when it was shown that the F-102 remained in service in

Bush's unit for two more years.

 

Democrats.com has speculated that Bush skipped his annual physical in

1972 because the Pentagon that year imposed random drug testing for

the first time, and Bush feared he would fail the exam. Bush has

admitted drinking heavily at the time, and has refused to deny using

cocaine before 1974. Similar allegations have been reported in the

Times of London and the New York Post.

 

Democrats.com has stressed the significance of Bush's grounding.

Bush's pilot training cost the government nearly $1 million, and this

was a huge investment that the Pentagon would not lightly abandon with

two years remaining of a pilot's obligation. Moreover, pilots were

badly needed at the time because of the war in Vietnam.

 

According 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. Rewards for proof that Bush reported for

duty have been offered in Alabama and Texas and on the Internet, but

no one has claimed the rewards.

 

During the campaign, Bush has attempted to fend off charges that he

did not report for duty. When charges were raised about the time he

spent in Alabama in the fall of 1972, Bush insisted that he reported

for duty. " I can't remember what I did. I just - I fulfilled my

obligation, " he said. Bush has specifically disputed the recollection

of ret. Brig. Gen. William Turnipseed, who says he is " dead-certain "

that Bush did not report for duty in Alabama. ''I read the comments

from the guy who said he doesn't remember me being there, but I

remember being there, " Bush said.

 

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.

 

Heldt and Rogers filed a Freedom of Information Act request for Bush's

military records, which provided overwhelming evidence of Bush's

missed duty, and served as the basis of the articles in Democrats.com

and TomPaine.com.

 

On Thursday, Congressional Medal of Honor recipients Bob Kerrey and

Daniel Inouye brought these charges to the attention of the national

media, which has almost entirely ignored the work of Heldt and Rogers.

" The question is where were you, Governor Bush?, " said Inouye. " During

my service, if I missed training for two years, at the least, I would

have been court-martialed. I would have been placed in prison, " he said.

 

To rebut this charge, the Bush campaign has relied on two mysterious

documents. The documents are neither dated nor signed, which makes

their legitimacy entirely questionable. Moreover, the document that

the campaign claims covers the year from May 1972 to May 1973 is badly

torn and can only be linked to Lt. George W. Bush by the letter " W " .

Finally, these documents are directly contradicted by Bush's official

record, several signed memoranda, and the testimony of several witnesses.

 

Still, both the New York Times and George Magazine have used these

mysterious documents as the basis for dismissing all of the other

documents and witnesses which overwhelmingly show that Bush did not

report for duty.

 

Thus, the assertion by Bill Burkett that Dan Bartlett and his

operatives may have modified Bush's Air National Guard records takes

on exceptional significance. Bartlett's " scrubbing " operation in 1997

could have inserted these mysterious documents, or removed significant

information from the torn document. In addition, Bartlett's operation

could have removed or altered other revealing documents.

 

Indeed, there is corroborating evidence that Bush campaign operatives

have devoted considerable effort to " scrubbing " public records to

conceal other evidence of Bush's wrongdoing. For example, Bush got a

new driver's license after he was elected Governor, which appears to

be completely unprecedented. This prevented reporters from discovering

Bush's DUI arrest in Maine in 1976.

 

This new license may also be concealing a prior DUI or drug arrest in

1972 or 1973, when Bush went to work with an inner-city community

service group in Houston called Project PULL. There has been

considerable speculation that Bush performed this work as a form of

alternative sentencing for a DUI or drug arrest, but reporters have

been stymied by the fact that Bush's 1995 driver's license contains no

prior information.

 

Moreover, Newsweek reported on July 9, 2000 that the Bush campaign

" launched a secretive research operation designed to scour all records

relating to his Vietnam-era service " during preparation for Bush's

1998 re-election campaign. They paid " hard-nosed Dallas lawyer named

Harriet Miers " $19,000 to review the records. According to Newsweek,

one result of her work was to deflect charges that former Texas House

Speaker Ben Barnes helped Bush get into the Texas Air National Guard

despite low qualifications and a long waiting list. Barnes was later

forced to testify under oath that he helped Bush.

 

The same Newsweek article also discusses the absence of evidence that

Bush fulfilled his orders to report for duty in Alabama in the fall of

1972. According to the article, " Dan Bartlett conceded that the

records 'were either lost or misplaced... we are not sure.' " If

Burkett's charges are true, Bartlett may have had a hand in losing or

misplacing these records.

 

Burkett stops short of directly accusing Bartlett of " doctoring "

Bush's records. Instead, Burkett faults the Bush campaign and senior

officials of the Texas National Guard for incompetence in failing to

release two key documents that would answer questions about Bush's

absence from duty - but not his grounding from flight.

 

Burkett boils it down to a simple question: " Why didn't Governor Bush

simply release his military pay files and retirement points accounting

records, which are the only official records that will show that he

satisfactorily and honorably completed his service commitment? "

 

The simple answer may be that these records would prove the opposite -

that Bush never reported for duty after April 1972, and was simply

" given " the points he needed for discharge by senior officerswho

wanted to preserve his " political viability " then - and now.

 

link http://archive.democrats.com/display.cfm?id=171