Sun, Feb 15, 2004 page1

• Bush records fail to scotch dispute

  • NY TIMES
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  It was February 1968, just a few months before he would graduate from Yale, and George W. Bush's plan to enlist in the National Guard had hit a snag.

  According to the records released by the White House on Friday night, Bush reported to an Air Force Base in Massachusetts for a medical examination on Feb. 21 of that year, and was deemed "not qualified" because of problems with his teeth. So Bush visited a dentist in New Haven on March 7. The dentist pulled one tooth from the future president and put a filling in another. A month later Bush's medical file was updated to show him as "medically qualified."

  The thick stack of military records were released as part of the White House's efforts to rebut accusations from Democrats that Bush might have shirked some of his duties in the Air National Guard during the Vietnam War. The documents seemed unlikely to resolve that dispute.

  But the documents offer up flashes of intimate detail about Bush's life during the six years after he finished college, as well as glowing evaluations of him as an officer and a pilot that could help the White House rebut any suggestion that he passed that period aimlessly while other young Americans were risking -- or giving -- their lives in Vietnam.

  In November 1970, the commander of the Texas Air National Guard, Leiutenant Colonel Jerry B. Killian, called Bush, then 24, "a dynamic outstanding young officer" who stood out as "a top notch fighter interceptor pilot" mature beyond his age.

  "Leiutenant Bush's skills far exceed his contemporaries," Killian wrote in recommending that Bush be promoted to first lieutenant. "He is a natural leader whom his contemporaries look to for leadership. Leiutenant Bush is also a good follower with outstanding disciplinary traits and an impeccable military bearing."

  There is no mention in the records of his father, who was a US representative from Texas at the time George W. Bush entered the guard, and in 1971 became the ambassador to the UN after losing a race for a Senate seat to Lloyd Bentsen in 1970. There is no indication in the documents that Bush was granted any special treatment at a time when competition for slots in the guard was intense, though he received only a 25 on a test for "pilot aptitude," compared to a 95 for "officer quality" on a test he took in January 1968.

  But there are documents fleshing out previously reported facts about Bush's life during that time and his service with the 111th Fighter Interceptor Squadron at Ellington Air Force Base. Also serving at Ellington during that period was Lloyd Bentsen III, son of the man who defeated Bush's father for the Senate seat in 1970. They were both promoted to second lieutenant on Nov. 6 of that year -- three days after the election.

  Looking back from more than three decades later, there are intimations in the records of a life of privilege and of fateful decisions to come. Asked to name character references, Bush listed Baine P. Kerr, then a prominent lawyer in Houston who went on to become a top executive of the Pennzoil Co, and C. Fred Chambers, a Texas oilman who was so close to the Bush family that they later named one of their dogs after him. On another application, he listed as a reference Cathryn Lee Wolfman, to whom he was engaged at the time he graduated from Yale and entered the guard, but with whom he would later break up.

  Much of the paperwork about Bush was routine. He was granted a security clearance that allowed him to see "secret" material. Thirty-five years before he would land on the carrier Abraham Lincoln in a flight suit, igniting a political storm, the future commander in chief was issued a duffel bag, six pairs of cotton drawers, a pair of black combat boots, a flight cap and some US Air Force insignia tape, among other supplies and clothing.
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