Bush campaign searches for records on Guard service

AUSTIN, Texas - Gov. George W. Bush's campaign workers have concluded that no documents exist showing he reported for duty as ordered in Alabama with the Texas Air National Guard in 1972. They are looking for people who served with him to verify his story that he did.

Dan Bartlett, a spokesman for Bush's Republican presidential campaign, said he reviewed another 200-page packet of documents last week from the National Guard's records repository in Denver.

''I have read it, and there is nothing earth-shattering,'' he said. The campaign was looking for payroll records that would show Bush reported for duty with the Guard in Montgomery, Ala., while working on the unsuccessful Senate campaign of former Postmaster General Winton Blount.

The new records were mostly duplicates of documents obtained by the campaign from the Texas National Guard headquarters in Austin about 18 months ago. ''The official records were either lost or misplaced or not filled out correctly or not deposited. We are not sure,'' Bartlett said.

Roberto Trinidad, freedom of information officer for the Air Reserve Personnel Center in Denver, said the military does not retain the sort of records Bush campaign officials are seeking.

''His payroll records are not here,'' Trinidad said.

The military saves only the most important personnel records for 50 years. Less important documents, including check stubs, are destroyed.

Bush, campaigning in Tuscaloosa, Ala., on Friday, was asked at a news conference about his 1972 Alabama service. His commitment to the Texas Guard was adjusted to let him serve with the Alabama Guard during Blount's campaign.

''I was there on a temporary assignment and fulfilled my weekends at one period of time,'' Bush said. ''I made up some missed weekends.''

''I can't remember what I did, but I wasn't flying because they didn't have the same airplanes. I fulfilled my obligations,'' he said.

Expanding on Bush's remarks later, campaign spokesman Ari Fleischer quoted Bush as saying he did ''paper shuffling'' in Montgomery.

''He thinks it was desk work,'' said Fleischer.

Bartlett said the campaign is now focusing its attention on trying to locate people who served with Bush in late 1972 in the 187th Tactical Reconnaissance Group in the Alabama capital.

The campaign was surprised in late May when retired Gen. William Turnipseed said Bush did not report to him, although the young airman was required to do so. His orders, dated Sept. 15, 1972, said: ''Lieutenant Bush should report to Lt. Col. William Turnipseed, DCO, to perform equivalent training.''

''To my knowledge, he never showed up,'' Turnipseed said last month.

Bush served as a pilot in the Texas Air National Guard from May 1968 to October 1973, primarily flying F-102 fighter-interceptors at Ellington Air Force Base, south of Houston.

He received a three-month transfer to Alabama to work as political director of Blount's Senate campaign. Blount, postmaster general from 1968-71, was a friend of Bush's father, former President George Bush.

Spokesman Bartlett said Bush remembers meeting Turnipseed and performing drills in Montgomery sporadically during the campaign and more frequently after the election in November and December.

''Governor Bush specifically remembers pulling duty in Alabama at the end of the campaign,'' Bartlett said.

The Associated Press reviewed nearly 200 pages of Bush's military records released by the National Guard Bureau in Arlington, Va. They contained no evidence that Bush reported for duty in Alabama.

Bob Stein, a political science professor at Rice University in Houston, said the gap in the military record will become an issue only if Bush's story changes.

Bill Clinton's avoidance of the draft did not hurt him in his 1992 election campaign against Bush's father, a decorated World War II veteran and the incumbent president, so a gap in Bush's military records will not matter, Stein said.

''It is just not an issue, unless the very act of asking the question forces the candidate to deceive or to lie,'' he said.

Bush was honorably discharged to reserve duty in October 1973 to attend Harvard Business School. He left the Guard for good in November 1974, records obtained by the AP show.

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