Bush Service Documents Only Deepen Controversy
    By Brian Knowlton 
    International Herald Tribune 
    Wednesday 11 February 2004 

  White House releases Guard data to show he fulfilled his duty
    WASHINGTON The White House on Tuesday released payroll records meant to confirm that President George W. Bush fulfilled his required duty in the Air National Guard during the Vietnam War, as he and his advisers sought to put to rest a potentially damaging political controversy. 

    "These documents clearly show that the president fulfilled his duties," Scott McClellan, the White House spokesman, said. "He met the requirements necessary to fulfill his duties." 

    The papers released Tuesday included a summary of retirement credits earned by Bush in the guard, which had been released during Bush's 2000 campaign. They also, however, for the first time included some payroll records, including specific dates for which Bush was paid. 

    The payroll records had arrived late Monday from the Air Reserve Personnel Center in Denver, Colorado, McClellan said, after officials there "on their own went back and looked for these records." Some of those released were illegible, and the White House promised clearer versions soon. 

    McClellan, however, was unable to say why the newly provided documents left a gap for several months in late 1972 and early 1973. That period falls within roughly a year when two former commanders of Bush's units said they had not "observed" Bush on their bases. Nor was McClellan able to say why the White House could not provide a fellow guardsman of Bush's to confirm that he had attended drills and summer meetings either at his base near Houston nor in Alabama, where he received permission to fulfill his requirements while working on a campaign there. "Obviously, we would have made people available" had they been found, he said. As reporters pressed him for answers, McClellan suggested that Bush's political foes were seeking to manufacture controversy out of nothing. 

    The question of Bush's service, raised in the 2000 election, received renewed attention after the Democratic national chairman, Terry McAuliffe, suggested Feb. 1 that Bush had been AWOL, or absent without leave, from the guard. Senator John Kerry of Massachusetts, who looks increasingly likely to be Bush's opponent in the Nov. 2 election, has not repeated that language but has suggested that the president should explain his military record. Kerry himself is a decorated Vietnam veteran. And on a Sunday television appearance, Bush was asked about his service and vowed to release relevant documents. Politically, the release of the documents Tuesday may lend some support to both sides, allowing Bush to say that he fulfilled his legal duties, but leaving enough of a gray area that Democrats may not let the matter lie. 

    Bush and his Republican backers have counted on two areas of support as he begins his campaign: a recovering economy, and the muscular response to the Sept. 11 attacks, which he said Sunday had made him a "war president." 

    But the "war president" image might have worked more effectively against a Democratic candidate like Howard Dean, the antiwar candidate whom Republicans derided as weak on national security, than against Kerry, who regularly brings up his Vietnam experience and often appears with veterans who fought alongside him there. 

    The White House had previously pointed to Bush's honorable discharge, saying he would not have received it had he fallen short of his duty requirements. Bush aides apparently decided in the past week that they needed to do more. McClellan could not answer questions about whether Bush's payroll records necessarily proved that he had served. 

    The opinion columnist Richard Cohen wrote in The Washington Post on Tuesday that as a member of the National Guard during the Vietnam War, Bush avoided weekly drills and summer camp for two years by pretending to have moved from one state to another, but was paid nonetheless. He suggested that this was not terribly difficult. 

    And McClellan brushed aside a question about whether Bush had enlisted in the Air National Guard to avoid service in Vietnam. Few guard units were called to serve in Vietnam. The Air National Guard's Web site says: "Vietnam revealed a negative aspect of relying on reservists. For largely domestic political reasons, President Johnson chose not to mobilize most of the nations' reserve forces." Partly as a result, it adds, "The Reserves and the Guard acquired reputations as draft havens." 

    The White House also released a memo by retired Lieutenant Colonel Albert Lloyd Jr., who was personnel director for the Texas Air National Guard from 1969 to 1995, in which he said that a review of Bush's records "proves that he completed his military obligation in a satisfactory manner." Dan Bartlett, White House communications director, said earlier that drills Bush attended from in 1973 probably took place at Ellington Air Force Base in Houston. But two commanders there said in May 1973 that they could not evaluate his performance because he had not been seen in the preceding 12 months. 

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