posted September 08, 2004 04:58 PM            

WASHINGTON (Sept. 8) -- Months after insisting it could find no more records of President Bush's Air National Guard service, the Defense Department has released more than two dozen pages of files, including Bush's report card for flight training and dates of his flights.

The records, released under pressure of a Freedom of Information Act lawsuit by The Associated Press, show Bush ranked in the middle of his 1969 flight training class and flew 336 hours for the Texas Air National Guard, mostly in the F-102A fighter.

The Pentagon and Bush's campaign have claimed for months that all records detailing his fighter pilot career have been made public, but defense officials acknowledged Tuesday they had found two dozen new records detailing his training and flight logs after the AP sued and submitted new requests under the public records law.

''Previous requests from other requesters for President Bush's Individual Flight Records did not lead to the discovery of these records because at the time President Bush left the service, flight records were subject to retention for only 24 months and we understood that neither the Air Force nor the Texas Air National Guard retained such records thereafter,'' the Pentagon told the AP.

''Out of an abundance of caution,'' the government ''searched a file that had been preserved in spite of this policy'' and found the Bush records, the letter said. ''The Department of Defense regrets this oversight during the previous search efforts.''

Bush's Vietnam-era service in the Texas Air National Guard has become an issue in the presidential campaign as the candidates spar over who would make the best commander in chief. Supporters of Democratic nominee John Kerry, a decorated Vietnam combat veteran, have criticized Bush for serving stateside in the National Guard. Kerry's Republican critics claim Kerry did not deserve some of his five medals.

Bush has said repeatedly he is proud of his Air National Guard service. As late as last week, White House spokesmen said the administration knew of no other records of Bush's military service.

''These documents confirm that the president served honorably in the National Guard,'' White House spokeswoman Claire Buchan said Tuesday night.

Democratic National Committee communications director Jano Cabrera disagreed. ''For months George Bush told the nation that all his military records were public,'' he said. ''Now we know why Bush was trying so hard to withhold these records. When his nation asked him to be on call against possible surprise attacks, Bush wasn't there.''

The newly released records show Bush, a lieutenant in the Texas Air National Guard, ranked No. 22 in a class of 53 pilots when he finished his flight training at Moody Air Force Base in Georgia in 1969.

Over the next three years, he logged 326.4 hours as a pilot and an additional 9.9 hours as a co-pilot, mostly in the F-102A jet used to intercept enemy aircraft. Of the 278 hours he flew in the interceptor, about 77 hours were in the TF-102A, the two-seat trainer version of the one-seat fighter jet.

The records show his last flight was in April 1972, which is consistent with pay records indicating Bush had a lapse of duty between April and October of that year. Bush has said he had permission to go to Alabama in 1972 to work on an unsuccessful Republican Senate campaign. Bush skipped a required medical exam that cost him his pilot's status in August of that year.

Bush's 2000 campaign suggested the future president skipped his medical exam in part because the F-102A was nearly obsolete. Records show Bush's Texas unit flew the F-102A until 1974 and used the jets as part of an air defense drill during 1972.

A six-month historical record of his 147th Fighter Interceptor Group, also turned over to the AP on Tuesday, shows some of the training Bush missed with his colleagues during that time.

It showed the unit joined a ''24-hour active alert mission to safeguard against surprise attack'' in the southern United States beginning on Oct. 6, 1972, a mission for which Bush was not present, according to his pay records.

Bush's lone service in October was outside Texas, presumably with an Alabama unit he had permission to train with in September, October and November 1972.

As part of the mission, the 147th kept two F-102A jets - the same type Bush flew before he was grounded - on ready alert to be launched within five minutes' warning.

The records also show Bush made a grade of 88 on total airmanship and a perfect 100 for flying without navigational instruments, operating a T-38 System and studying applied aerodynamics. Other scores ranged from 89 in flight planning to 98 in aviation physiology.

The newly released records do not include any from five categories of documents Bush's commanders had been required to keep in response to the gaps in Bush's training in 1972 and 1973. For example, National Guard commanders were required to perform an investigation whenever any pilot skipped a medical exam and forward the results up the Air Force chain of command. No such documents have surfaced.

09-08-04 0341 EDT

posted September 09, 2004 04:57 PM            

The commander, the late Lieutenant Colonel Jerry B. Killian, wrote that he turned aside the suggestion from Brigadier General Walter B. Staudt, Bush's political mentor in the Guard. But he and another officer agreed to ''backdate" a report -- evidently the evaluation -- in which they did not rate him at all. There is such a report in Bush's file, dated May 2, 1973.

''I'll backdate but won't rate," Killian apparently wrote in what is labeled a ''memo to file." Initials that appear to be Killian's are on the memo, but not his name or unit letterhead.

The August 1973 document, dated as Bush was preparing to leave Texas to attend the Harvard Business School, represents the first apparent evidence of an attempt to embellish Bush's service record as his time in the Guard neared its end.

The four pages of documents also contain an August 1972 order from Killian, suspending Bush from flying status for ''failure to perform" up to US Air Force and Texas Air National Guard standards and failing to take his annual flight physical. The suspension came three months after Killian had ordered Bush to take his physical, on May 14, 1972.

The documents also contain what appears to be Killian's memo of a meeting he had with Bush in May 1972, at which they discussed the option of Bush skipping his military drills for the following six months while he worked on a US Senate campaign in Alabama. During that meeting, Killian wrote that he reminded Bush ''of our investment in him and his commitment."

CBS, on its Evening News and in an in-depth report on ''60 Minutes," said it obtained the documents from Killian's ''personal files." Anchorman Dan Rather reported that the White House did not dispute the authenticity of the documents and said the network had used document authorities to verify their authenticity.

The disclosures by CBS follow a report in yesterday's Globe that Bush signed documents in 1968 and in 1973 promising to fulfill specific training requirements or face a punitive order to active duty. The records examined by the Globe, and verified by several former military officers, show that Bush did not meet his commitments. Nor was he penalized.

The White House, in response to the Globe report, ascribed political motives to two of the analysts quoted by the Globe. A third retired officer quoted in the Globe report who agreed with them has been a White House consultant on Bush's military records. Last night, Dan Bartlett, the White House communications director, asserted in an e-mail to the Globe that Bush had no obligation to do Reserve duty in Massachusetts. And the White House reiterated its position that, notwithstanding the records, Bush fulfilled his military commitment. Bush received an honorable discharge.

Former military officers said last night that the four documents obtained by CBS, two of which should have been in Bush's publicly released file, contain evidence that political influence may have come into play as he sidestepped his training requirements in his final two years of service, from May 1972 until May 1974.

''These documents represent strong evidence that Lieutenant Bush didn't perform after April 1972, regardless of whether he received a paycheck," said retired Brigadier General David L. McGinnis, who was a top aide to the assistant secretary of Defense for Reserve Affairs.

Lawrence J. Korb, an assistant secretary of defense in the Reagan administration and now a national security specialist at a liberal think tank, said after reviewing the CBS documents last night that if Killian and Lieutenant Colonel William D. Harris Jr. had written a truthful evaluation report on Bush, ''he would have been called to involuntary active duty."

Added Korb: ''For the commanding officer to suggest that his [Bush's] evaluation be sugar-coated is a clear indication of the political influence Bush had." Korb said the alleged suggestion by Staudt was also a ''violation of military ethics." An effort by the Globe last night to reach Staudt was unsuccessful. Harris, like Killian, has died.

On ''60 Minutes," CBS also aired an interview with Ben Barnes, the former Democratic speaker of the Texas House of Representatives, expressing regret that he helped Bush land a Guard slot in 1968 at the request of a Bush family friend. Barnes's intercession was first reported in a legal deposition he gave in 1999. Bush has denied there was political influence.

In his first public interview on the subject, Barnes, now a fund-raiser for Senator John F. Kerry, said he helped Bush and many other politically connected young men avoid military service in the Vietnam War to further his own political career, and that he now regrets his actions.

''I don't think that I had any right to have the power that I had, to choose who was going to go to Vietnam and who was not going to go to Vietnam," Barnes said. ''In some instances, when I looked at those names, I was maybe determining life or death, and that's not a power that I want to have." He added: ''I'm very, very sorry."

Yesterday, the White House dismissed Barnes's interview. ''The bottom line is that there's no truth to this," Dan Bartlett, Bush's communication director, told CBS.

The White House spent much of yesterday on the defensive on the issue. After the Globe report, Terry McAuliffe, chairman of the Democratic National Committee, labeled Bush's National Guard service ''a very big issue," since it calls into question his credibility.

''These new documents show that the president did not serve honorably," McAuliffe said. ''How about you [Bush] for once owning up to your own record and tell the American people exactly what you were doing when you were supposed to be serving?"

Jim Dyke, a spokesman for the Republican National Committee, dismissed McAuliffe's comments as ''false," ''reckless," and ''silly."

The White House made no such characterizations of the four pages of documents written by Killian, whom Bush described as a friend in his 1999 autobiography, ''A Charge to Keep." Dated during the controversial final 17 months of Bush's assignment to Ellington Air Force Base in Houston, the four pages begin with Killian's written order dated May 4, 1972, for Bush to report 10 days later for an annual flight physical required of all pilots.

The Aug. 1, 1972, document removing Bush from flight status for ''failure to perform to USAF/TexANG [US Air Force and Texas Air National Guard] standards" and failing to take the flight physical suggests that Bush did not comply with Killian's May order. The August document also calls for the convening of a ''flight review board" that would have assessed Bush's status. There is no record that such a board was appointed. In that memo, Killian also recommended that the unit he commanded, the 111th Fighter Interceptor Squadron, replace Bush as a pilot with someone from a waiting list of pilots who had served in Vietnam.

The Aug. 18, 1973, memo might draw the most attention from the White House. Another ''Memo to File," it starts, ''SUBJECT: CYA" -- a venerable military acronym for ''cover your ass."

General Staudt, it begins, ''has obviously pressured [Colonel Bobby W.] Hodges more about Bush. I'm having trouble running interference and doing my job." He wrote that Lieutenant Colonel Harris ''gave me a message today . . . regarding Bush's [annual officer efficiency report] and Staudt is pushing to sugar coat it."

But, Killian wrote, ''Bush wasn't here during the rating period," and he didn't have any ''feedback" from the unit with whom Bush said he trained in Alabama. ''I will not rate," Killian wrote.

In the CBS news magazine report, Robert Strong, a friend of Killian who ran the Texas Air National Guard administrative offices during the Vietnam era and who reviewed the documents for ''60 Minutes," said he believed that Killian took his responsibilities as a pilot very seriously, but that in Bush's case, Killian found himself ''between a rock and a hard place."

In trying to satisfy commands from a superior to give a favorable evaluation to a soldier who had underperformed but had powerful political connections, Strong said Killian faced an impossible situation.

Globe staff reporters Rick Klein and Michael Rezendes contributed to this report.