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Politics : Stockman Scott's Political Debate Porch -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: stockman_scott who wrote (56204)	9/16/2004 5:55:53 PM
From: T L Comiskey	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 89467

Ex-Guardsman: Probe Gaps in Bush Service By KELLEY SHANNON, Associated Press Writer AUSTIN, Texas - A former Texas Air National Guard official who served at the same time as President Bush (news - web sites) says he believes the bigger story about gaps in Bush's service is being overlooked in disputes over the validity of certain Guard documents. "I think the public ought to be concerned about his preferential treatment getting in and whether he satisfied his commitment to the Air Guard. Those are the two fundamental questions," said Robert Strong, the administrative officer in charge of air operations at Guard state headquarters from early 1971 until March 1972. Documents publicized last week by the CBS program "60 Minutes" have been called into question by some experts and relatives of the late Lt. Col. Jerry Killian, who supposedly wrote them when he was one of Bush's commanders in 1972 and 1973. The memos indicated that Killian had been pressured to sugarcoat Bush's performance and that the future president had ignored an order to take a physical. CBS stood by its reporting, but CBS News President Andrew Heyward said the network would redouble its efforts to determine the authenticity of the documents. Killian's former secretary, Marian Carr Knox, 86, of Houston has said she believed the memos were fake but their content accurately reflected Killian's opinions. "I know that I didn't type them," she said in an interview with CBS. "However, the information in those is correct." Strong told The Associated Press on Thursday that he couldn't vouch for the authenticity of the memos, but "if Mrs. Knox didn't type those documents and she thinks they're fake, I'll go with her judgment." He said he doesn't know who provided CBS with the documents. But Strong added that he and Knox worked closely with Killian and are in better position than Killian's family to know how he did business. Killian's five children were between the ages of 2 and 19 in 1972. Strong said Killian's official records would have been removed from his Guard office by colleagues and commanders before his family would have been allowed to retrieve his personal items after he died in 1984. Regardless of the authenticity of the memos, the question should be centered on Bush's Guard service, and what is indicated in the documents, Strong said. "Why aren't we focusing on the content?" Strong said, adding that he believes there are holes in Bush's official Guard record. "The White House has just got to be thrilled to death that everybody's tormenting about subscripts and superscripts," he said, referring to the several days of debate among experts about whether the memos were forgeries generated on a computer instead or if a typewriter common in the 1970s was used. As Bush flew to campaign in Minnesota on Thursday, White House spokesman Scott McClellan told reporters aboard Air Force One that "CBS has now acknowledged that the crux of their story may have been based on forged documents." Strong confirmed that at least two of the documents used by CBS bore a faxed header indicating they had been sent from a Kinko's copy shop in Abilene. Strong said he was shown copies of the documents about three days before the "60 Minutes" broadcast on which he appeared last week. Bill Burkett, a retired National Guard officer who lives just outside Abilene, has been cited in reports in Newsweek and The New York Times as a source for CBS' report. His lawyer, David Van Os, issued a statement saying Burkett "no longer trusts any possible outcome of speaking to the press on any issue regarding George W. Bush." Burkett did not return several phone messages left by The Associated Press this week, and did not talk to an AP reporter who visited his ranch in Blair on Thursday. Burkett, 55, told The Associated Press in February that he had overheard a conversation in 1997 between then-Gov. Bush's chief of staff, Joe Allbaugh, and then-Adjutant Gen. Daniel James of the Texas Air National Guard in which the two men spoke about getting rid of any military records that would "embarrass the governor." Burkett said he saw documents from Bush's file discarded in a trash can a few days later at Camp Mabry in Austin. Burkett described them as performance and pay documents. Allbaugh and James denied the allegations.