preferential treatment, missing five months... what else?
"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.
"documents publicised last week by the cbs programme 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".
killian's surviving children have challenged the documents that have recently surfaced, and they are disclaiming any negative comments that were attributed to killian about bush in the latest round of who done it with regard to bush's service.
killian's former secretary, marian carr knox, 86, of houston, said the documents' content accurately reflected killian's opinions.
strong added that "he and knox worked closely with killian and are in better position to know about his work habits and feelings about bush than killian's five children, who were between the ages of two and nineteen in 1972". strong said killian's records would have been removed from his guard office before his family would have been allowed to retrieve his personal items after he died in 1984.
the allegation is that bush's records had been altered to sugar coat them and that there are blatant gaps in bush's official guard record.
bill burkett, a retired national guard officer, told ap about a conversation he overheard in 1997 between then-gov. bush's chief of staff, joe allbaugh, and then-adjutant gen. daniel james of the texas air national guard. reportedly the two men spoke about getting rid of any military records that would "embarrass the governor".
burkett is quoted as saying 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.
the questions surrounding bush's preferential treatment, the missed flight physical, the missed mandatory readiness exercise, and the missing 5 months have never been answered. members of the alabama guard unit which bush said he reported to still maintain they never saw bush.
