Key Bush Military Service Files Destroyed

By Charles Aldinger

WASHINGTON (Reuters) -  Microfilm records related to President Bush
(news - web sites)'s service in the Air National Guard three decades
ago were accidentally destroyed when the military tried to improve its
files, the Pentagon (news - web sites) said on Friday.

  Payroll records of large numbers of service members, including Bush,
were ruined in 1996 and 1997 in a project to save large, brittle rolls
of microfilm, Defense Finance and Accounting Service spokesman Bryan
Hubbard told Reuters.

  Bush's whereabouts during his service as a pilot in the Texas Air
National Guard in the United States during the Vietnam War have become
an election-year issue, with some Democrats accusing him of shirking
his duty.

  The destroyed files kept in Denver on deteriorating 2,000-foot rolls
of microfilm covered three months of a period in 1972 and 1973 when
Bush's claims of service with the guard in Alabama are in question.

  "It (the film) just crumbled. We were attempting to improve the
preservation," Hubbard told Reuters. He said he did not know why the
destruction had not been previously announced.

  The White House said it has already been shown that Bush performed his
duties in the National Guard.

  "We released all of the documents that are available. We made that
clear at the time and they demonstrate that the president fulfilled his
duties in the National Guard at the time. And there is nothing new in
this report," said White House spokeswoman Claire Buchan.

  HUNDREDS OF PAGES

  Last February, the White House released hundreds of pages of Bush's
military records. Those records did not provide new evidence to place
Bush in Alabama during the latter part of 1972, when some Democrats say
he was basically absent without leave.

  There was no indication at that time that the pay records had been
destroyed.

  "This whole thing was inadvertent. It happened a long time ago at a
files storage site in Denver," a senior defense official, who asked not
to be identified, said.

  The Defense Department's Office of Freedom of Information and Security
Review said in a letter obtained by Reuters that records of a large
number of National Guard members were damaged, including from the first
quarter of 1969 and the third quarter of 1972.

  "Searches for backup copies of the missing records were unsuccessful,"
said the letter, dated June 25 and signed by C.Y. Talbott, chief of the
Pentagon's Freedom of Information Office.

  The 1969 period is not in dispute for Bush, who was training at that
time to be a pilot.

  But in May 1972, he moved to Alabama to work on a political campaign
and, he has said, to perform his Guard service there for a year. But
other Guard officers have said they had no recollection of ever seeing
him there.

  The New York Times, which first reported the disclosure, noted that
the White House had produced records showing that Bush was paid for six
days in October and November 1972, but those records did not say where
he was at the time. Also provided was the record of a dental exam at a
Montgomery, Alabama, air base on Jan. 6, 1973.
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