background to the scrubbing of some of shrub's Nat. Guard records:
February 12, 2004
AN INTERVIEW WITH BILL BURKETT....As promised earlier, here's the interview with former Lt. Colonel Bill Burkett regarding his charges that George Bush's National Guard files in Texas were "cleansed" back in 1997. This is not the entire enchilada, but it includes most of the interview directly relevant to the charges.
I'm posting this for two reasons. First, since Burkett's story has already been picked up by the mainstream media I think it's valuable to hear an extended interview with him that allows you to decide for yourself if his charges are credible — especially since there are some less than flattering moments that may hurt as well as help his story. As with any verbatim transcript, it can be a little hard to follow in places, but it's worth plowing through the whole thing if you're really interested in all this.
Second, although I said I was skeptical about Burkett yesterday, several things have convinced me that his story is at least believable enough that it deserves wider exposure:
I talked to him on the phone for nearly two hours on Wednesday and his story hung together pretty well. In particular, his story of how he overheard the conversation in General James' office and then saw some of Bush's files in a trashcan makes more sense when you hear the details. It's fairly melodramatic, but it does make sense.
In addition, although I haven't yet transcribed this part of the interview, he explained his "clarification" in 2000 that, as he puts it, seemed to "over-retract": basically, he got scared by the attention and backed down. He now admits it was a mistake.
And finally, in the interview he provided the names of several fellow guardsmen who can corroborate his story. Although details are lacking this early, various of these people have already been contacted by reporters and have backed up Burkett's story so far.
The first (partial) corroboration is from George Conn. According to the New York Times, he declined specific comment on the charges but said via email, "I know LTC Bill Burkett and served with him several years ago in the Texas Army National Guard. I believe him to be honest and forthright. He 'calls things like he sees them.'"
Also from the Times is this: "A retired officer, Lt. Col. Dennis Adams, said Mr. Burkett told him of the incidents shortly after they happened. 'We talked about them several different times,' said Mr. Adams, who spent 15 years in the Texas Guard and 12 years on active duty in the Army."
A third person, Harvey Gough, was interviewed last year by Sander Hicks. Although the conversation was not specifically about Burkett's charges, Hough did confirm that he believed Bush's records had been scrubbed: "He says that Dan Bartlett and Danny James came to him at Camp Mabry in 1993, right after Bush was inaugurated as Governor, and deleted portions of Bush's TANG file. I asked Gough what he believed was scrubbed? 'I think quite a bit. I think all his time in Alabama.'"
Finally, USA Today has a corroborating quote from an anonymous source: "A second former Texas Guard official, who spoke only on condition of anonymity, was told by a participant that commanders and Bush advisers were particularly worried about mentions in the records of arrests of Bush before he joined the National Guard in 1968, the second official said."
In addition, Jim Moore, a longtime Texas reporter (and, granted, hardly a fan of Bush), has talked with Burkett extensively for a soon to be published book titled Bush's War For Reelection: Iraq, the White House, and the People. Moore emailed me that he finds Burkett "immensely credible."
Put all this together and I think that Burkett's story is one worth hearing about from the horse's mouth. Here it is.
First, a bit of background about Burkett's service in the Guard.
I was a traditional guardsman, Vietnam era guardsman, lieutenant colonel, midlevel to senior level in rank and time. I was serving as the Mobilization Plans Officer for the Texas National Guard at the state headquarters, Camp Mabry, Austin, Texas, Building 8. Within that capacity as a traditional guardsman my primary objective was to assist units in planning and for mobilization and conducting mobilization of units either to training or to active duty mission situations.
How long were you with the Guard?
I was medically retired in 1999 after 28 years.
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Burkett worked as a private management consultant, but after business dropped off in 1996 he accepted a full-time job with the Texas National Guard.
When did you go on active duty?
Spring of '96, I believe the actual order dates began in May of '96....That was all approved and I was granted unimpeded access to the Adjutant General's office. I only bring this up to you because this establishes accessibility.
You probably have not been at headquarters building at Camp Mabry?
No.
It's a large structure, two stories, runs north to south with a long hallway, primarily north to south. The Adjutant General's office is in roughly the center of the building, second floor, northwest corner. My office was again second floor.
Within his office, which is the command suite, there are a group of eight or ten offices. There's two entrances to it, which is a horseshoe type thing, and off of that goes into his secretary's office, which is his outer office, roughly eight by ten foot at most in size, with a receptionist type desk and his secretary, Henrietta Valderes. I customarily would go through her and with all due courtesies would see the general.
In some cases when the door was open or slightly ajar I would lightly knock and do the courtesies and I'd ask a quick question and be on my way. I tried not to bother him, but I still tried to maintain constant and continuous contact. We worked very well together for a long time.
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Following is the account of how Burkett overheard the conversation about "cleansing" George Bush's National Guard files.
The occurrences here occurred in the early months, the spring months of 1997....I had meant to simply go in and, best I recall....I went in to ask a quick question, it was just a passing question, or maybe pass along some information, I don't remember specifically. I went into General [Daniel] James' outer office, Henrietta Valderes was not there, but the door was slightly ajar, I'd say roughly eight inches, and the reason I say eight inches is only because I wear a size seven and a half hat and I just basically stuck my head inside.
I heard voices, I figured somebody was on the blue couch or in the two wingback chairs that face his desk, and that's not seen unless you slightly stick your head inside the door. I stuck my head inside the door, saw that no one was there, and I was embarrassed. I stepped back and I waited for a second and I overheard this conversation.
And it was a short conversation that I overheard, I only heard a line or two of it, and I stepped out into the hallway because I was uncomfortable at this point.
And what was the conversation?
Well, that's where you really need to get Jim [Moore] because we have made sure that the words, I'm not going to get messed up on that deal. We've tried to make sure that the words were exact. I wish that you could get at least that part of the book faxed to you or something, I think that's very important that the words are exactly right.
I'd sure like to have as much I could here to make sure it's accurate....
I'm taking a look at one of his, and I'm going to have to, I've got a little draft of it, I'm trying to find the location as we speak, and maybe I can come back to that in a moment. Kevin, I'm going to try to help you all I can, and I'm going to trust that you'll at least treat me fairly.
At the end of our conversation Burkett said he would call me back with the correct quote later, but I was being injected with cortisone when he called. We played phone tag for the rest of the day but never got back in touch. However, today's USA Today story fills in the gap:
[Burkett] says he was just outside James' open office door when his boss discussed the records on a speakerphone with Joe Allbaugh, who was then Gov. Bush's chief of staff. In Burkett's account, Allbaugh told James that Bush's press secretary, Karen Hughes, was preparing a biography and needed information on Bush's military service.
In an interview, Burkett said he recalled Allbaugh's words: "We certainly don't want anything that is embarrassing in there."
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So what happened next?
I was embarrassed, I know that was an emotion and a reaction, a driver. I was ashamed, my mother and dad didn't raise me that way to eavesdrop on people's conversations. I was troubled.
I don't guess I really realized the extent of being troubled except that that evening at dinner Chief Warrant Officer [George] Conn and I – I lived in Abilene and he lived in Dallas or Cedar Hill – we both went down during the workweek and stayed in officer's quarters there, so as he called it we were geographical bachelors. So at night, a couple or three days a week, I'd say an average of three days a week, we would have dinner together. And we didn't just casually comment on things, but I brought it up to him, I looked to him, he was also a preacher's kid, and we both had that haunting of sorts, of living right, of doing right, and preparing for the next life, so we talked about it that evening. I brought it up to him, so I must have been troubled.
I told him the next morning, I was again in the command suite, I was in the doorwell of the Quality Coordinator's office, and there was a gathering of people about to go into a meeting in the conference room of the command group. That gathering included General James, General [Wayne] Marty, Colonel Goodwin, and maybe one or two others. And I was standing there and we were talking slightly and an individual walked into that horseshoe hallway. The coffee machine is just in the hallway, is what it is, and anytime there's a group there at the coffeepot they block traffic. And general officers, as people will tell you, block traffic anyway.
Two individuals walked in. I didn't know either one of them personally, but I do know that General James addressed one and said, General [John] Scribner, the folks from downtown are going to come out, Karen Hughes and [Dan] Bartlett are going to come out and they're, and I'm paraphrasing here, are going to come out and they're going to write a book about the governor for use in the reelection campaign or whatever else is going to follow on, and they need you to open access to your files and retained records. And there was a quick addition to that by General Marty, "and make sure there's nothing in there that'll embarrass the governor."
Now these are just matter-of-fact statements, I won't qualify intent necessarily at this point. I'll come back and say some things about intent later if you'll remind me. General Scribner, who is what we call a political general of sorts, he is a Texas state Guard general, not a federal general, and he had the job of running the museum, and still has that job. Scribner just replied, basically in the affirmative, OK or something along that line, and he and the individual who was with him, who I did not know and have not identified, but believe he was the retained records person, left, immediately left. They just, like all of us were prone to do when two or three generals are standing around, the best thing you can do is leave the area. So they left.
I mentioned this again to George in passing at dinner and told him again, renewed that I was troubled about it. I don't know in what detail we talked about it, but I know we talked.
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Following is the account of finding Bush's records in a trashcan, ready to be tossed away.
This went approximately ten days or a little bit later and Mr. Conn — you'll read all of this, you really, really need this book — Mr. Conn came to my desk, he and I, when I was moved to Plans Officer he became the Mobilization Plans Officer, his desk and mine were in cubicles across from each other.
Everybody knew me to be pretty much a workaholic, I'd say the minimum hours that I was at that desk was 12 and more likely 14 to 16 per day, and George sometimes would mother me a little bit, he'd come by and force me to take a break or something like that, so he came by at that occasion and he said, Colonel, get your hat, which implied to me that he wanted to take a break or we were going to go do something, and I probably laced back with him. I do have, even though I'm a preacher's kid, I do have a bad habit with my language, and I probably laced a little profanity back at him, just in banter, and he again repeated that term, get your hat, and I knew he was pretty serious. I knew George was a man of pretty few words, so I got my hat and we took a walk.
This is the second floor of the command building, building 8, long building, primarily laid out north to south. Typically what you do is go to the center of the building and there are a series of elevators and hallways there and you go to the first floor and then you go out and go where you want to go. In fact, very very seldom unless you had a need to go to the north side of that building, which was a low traffic area, would you go to the north side on the second floor. We went on the north side of the second floor to the north edge of the building, down a stairwell, out the north door, across a parking lot — and I know you think I'm getting into extreme detail, but I want you to know that obviously this was a path and there was intention to it. I asked him when we got outside, I said, where are we going, George? And he said, Colonel, just walk with me.
This is the day after you overheard the conversation?
No this is about ten days.
OK, ten days after.
And I left out something. George Conn is a smoker. George Conn knew everything that was happening on Camp Mabry, he picked up every rumor, he knew where everybody was, what they were doing, George knew it all. When I asked him where we were going, I believe I asked him three times in our little walk, and once I remember he said, "Trust me." There may have been a little retort at some point, but basically it was a "trust me" response, whether it was one time or three or two or whatever.
We go behind the building, headed toward the academy building, which goes behind a dormitory structure, and then we go over to the museum and we walk into the doors of the museum. The museum is an old armory, World War II-Korean War era vintage armory, which is a large structure. You walk into these doors and there's a concrete floor there with a larger open space than a high school gymnasium.
To the left of that are several offices built in Korean War style with basically little or no top to them, they're basically walled units, and offices are 8 by 12 to 10 by 12, in that size. And at approximately 30 or so feet from that on this concrete floor, or as we call it, the drill hall floor area, was a folding table, just a commercial grade folding table, and what I recognized as a — and you may know what I'm talking about. Do you know what a 15-gallon trashcan looks like?
Yeah, sure.
A metal gunbarrel style that we used for years and years in the military, that's what it was, and it was setting at the end of the table. George obviously knew General Scribner extremely well, and he says hello to him and there's little pleasantries and we walk up there, and as soon as we get there he introduces me to General Scribner, who I did not know. I said hello and very little if anything more. General Scribner was very polite, very punctual, very nice, and George carried on a conversation with him, basically asked him, OK, what are you doing, how's it coming? And obviously they had had previous conversations that he was working on files.
At that point I remember General Scribner saying that people downtown were coming out and they were going to do a book, and Bartlett and Hughes were coming out, and he'd been told to get all the files together and go through them and kind of clean them up a bit. And George said, well, what are you finding? And he says, well, he says he's been through it, and I'm paraphrasing all of this, he says, obviously lots of people have been through it, you know, there's just not as much here as I'd expected, mostly old press releases and that sort of stuff.
I'm standing there on one foot and another, very uncomfortable with this situation, I knew I'd been guided here and I knew why at that point. I was standing right next to the trash can. I mention that only for one reason, and that is my own alibi to my own conscience. I believe if I'd been one step away from the trash can I would not have done what I did, I would have been forced to make an obvious decision.
Instead I looked down into the trashcan. Underneath most of the trash — the trash level was within two inches of the top — I saw that the trash on the bottom was basically packing cartons, I do remember that there were a couple of elastic type straps and that sort of thing, and on top there was a little bit of paper. And on top of that pile of paper, approximately five-eighths of an inch thick, and Jim wanted me to estimate the number of pages and I said probably between 20 and 40 pages of documents that were clearly originals and photocopies. And it wasn't any big deal, I looked at it, it was a glance situation, and it made no sense to me at all except at the top of that top page was Bush, George W., 1LT. |
