AWOL

From James Moore, of Salon, we read of aWol and the Case of the Missing DocumentsSalon.com News | The case of the missing Bush documents:

If the narrative weren't so difficult to trace, the story of President Bush's missing records from his service in the Texas Air National Guard might be gaining more attention. Last week's revelation from the Pentagon that microfilmed records related to the most controversial months of 1st Lt. Bush's service in Alabama (where he had been transferred at his request) were "accidentally" destroyed should cause alarm and energize new endeavors by the media to determine what Bush did in Alabama. But there's no sign of that yet.


There are several reasons for the media's reluctance to investigate this issue more aggressively. Documents can be hard to find. Freedom of Information Act requests take a long time to produce results. No one who might have information is authorized to answer questions without White House clearance. So reporters get frustrated and discouraged. I understand. I've been trying to sift fact from conspiracy on the Bush Guard story for a decade, first as a Texas television reporter and then as the author of two books on Bush's political ascension.

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When the New York Times, Washington Post and Associated Press opened their mail from the Pentagon, they learned that the microfilmed records had been destroyed during an attempt to restore the spools of film. The latter two publications either did not know what they were being told or simply thought the matter was not significant enough to warrant a story. When Ralph Blumenthal of the Times called me to ask about the relevance of the missing records, I told him I never expected definitive information to turn up in an official record. But I continue to be amazed at this "coincidence" that effectively hides the truth about Bush's military service.

Blumenthal wrote that DFAS said Bush's microfilmed payroll records were lost as the agency was beginning a project to restore old files. But reporters so far have not received answers on what precipitated the restoration efforts. DFAS is a minor government agency, and it is unlikely someone working there woke up one day and proposed that the aging film be unrolled and examined for salvaging. The logical conclusion is that the decision was prompted by an external consideration. It is not totally out of the question that an energetic government employee decided to show some initiative, but if so, that worker needs to be asked why the particular years 1969 through 1972 were included in the project. Moreover, did the same three months in 1972 disappear for all of the service members whose records were on film? Or just for Lt. Bush? According to the letter accompanying the CD-ROMs, the first three months from 1969 were also lost. Bush was in flight training at that time and there is no doubt about his fulfillment of that responsibility, but an explanation would be helpful in clarifying how the records were destroyed for the first quarter of 1969 and the third quarter of 1972.

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DFAS said its microfilm salvage project went bad in 1996 and 1997. This, too, suggests certain possibilities as to what prompted the examination of the records from that specific time. The year 1997 was when Texas National Guard state plans officer Bill Burkett said he heard a speakerphone conversation between Gov. Bush's chief of staff, Joe Allbaugh, and Gen. Danny James, commander of the Texas Guard, telling James to "clean up Bush's file and make sure there's nothing embarrassing in there." Burkett said that about 10 days later he witnessed Gen. John Scribner purging the Bush "military personnel records jacket" in the museum at Camp Mabry, the Austin base that serves as the Guard's state headquarters.

Scribner and James have denied Burkett's claims, and George Conn, who Burkett said was present at the time of the purge, no longer supports Burkett's version of events. But Burkett remains unwavering, convinced there was a covert effort to leave enough of a trail to show Bush served during the months in question but not enough evidence to answer questions about fulfilled obligations. If he is correct, it is possible that the 1997 purge of hard-copy records in Austin was part of a plan that included making inquiries to DFAS in Denver to see what was in its files. Is it possible that a call from the office of the governor of Texas caused DFAS to examine Bush's payroll records and "accidentally" destroy them? Isn't it just too convenient that the three mysterious Alabama months are the ones ruined?

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Nevertheless, the payroll documents would not answer a number of other lingering questions about Bush and the Guard. Was there something more to his grounding than failing to show up for a physical? Were Bush and his drinking buddy, James Bath, involved in any kind of incident involving alcohol or drugs? They were both suspended from flight duties in the same set of orders. That might explain how the hard-partying Bush suddenly ended up working with disadvantaged children in Houston's inner city through Project PULL -- a swift, radical change from his jet pilot persona. Was Project PULL part of a deal to keep any illegal behavior off his record and get Bush on the right track?