Defense Dept. Seeks Bush*s Guard File [View All]

[kskiska]

The Defense Department has requested that President Bush's payroll records from his service in the National Guard be sent to Washington from a DOD archive in Colorado, to ascertain whether they can be released to news organizations and public interest groups that have formally requested them in recent days, according to DOD officials.

Bush, in an interview shown Sunday on NBC's "Meet the Press," said he would release all his records, including pay stubs, to put to rest political suggestions that he may not have fulfilled his duty near the end of his Guard service, from May 1972 to May 1973. The president also suggested there might not be anything in the records that has not already been in the public domain.

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According to military experts familiar with National Guard records, there are two documents that could indicate whether Bush reported for drills during that year. One is an annual summary of his points, the quantitative measure of his service. The summary includes each date he reported for a drill and how many points he received toward his annual requirement.

His official personnel record, obtained by The Post in 2000, does not include a summary of service for the time in Alabama. There is a sheet, where the name has been torn off, that includes dates for that period, but there is no way to confirm it refers to Bush because his Social Security number has been redacted. Also, no one who served in Bush's Alabama unit at that time has come forward, despite years of publicity on the subject. The brigadier general Bush was to report to in Alabama has said he has no recollection of Bush's doing so.

The other documents that should still be available are Bush's payroll records, which would show what drills Bush was compensated for during that period. Officials said yesterday that the DOD in Washington would review the master copy of Bush's payroll records, which have been storied on microfiche for 30 years at the Defense Finance and Accounting Service in Denver.

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http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A26843-2004Feb9.html