Looking at the Bush AWOL story, a lot of reporters seem to be intrigued by the fact that no one who actually served in the Alabama National Guard in the early 1970s can remember seeing Bush there.
I’ve heard the GOP response and it’s not entirely unpersuasive. Bush, at the time, was not a nationally-known name. His father was a Texas congressman, but hardly a celebrity. He could have served in the Guard, kept a relatively low profile, and been entirely unmemorable. After 30 years have gone by, it’s hardly shocking that people on base wouldn’t remember seeing the guy.
The problem with this approach lies in the details.
William Turnipseed, a retired general who commanded the Alabama unit at the time, told the Boston Globe in 2000 that Bush never appeared for duty at the base.
“Had he reported in, I would have had some recall, and I do not,” Turnipseed said. “I had been in Texas, done my flight training there. If we had had a first lieutenant from Texas, I would have remembered.”
The context is important. Most of the guys in the Alabama unit were from Alabama. Turnipseed, with his background in Texas, believes a Texan would have stood out in his memory.
But let’s forget about Turnipseed for a moment. Maybe his memory is fuzzy. Perhaps Bush reported for duty and just managed to escape Turnipseed’s attention for over two years. How about the rest of the troops Bush allegedly served with?
That’s the new angle that national political reporters appear to be pursuing. So far, they’re not finding much to bolster the White House’s claims.
The New York Times, for example, has been checking with people at Dannelly Air Base at the time and can’t find a soul who knew, saw, or remember Lt. Bush.
Former comrades from the 187th have been calling and e-mailing one another, always with the same basic question: Did you see him?
So far, it appears that their efforts have come to naught. Indeed, in interviews this week with The New York Times, 16 retired officers, pilots and senior enlisted men who served among hundreds with the 187th in 1972 all said that they simply could not recall seeing Mr. Bush at Dannelly Air Base, the sprawling compound adjacent to Montgomery’s airport that is home to the 187th….
Yet try as they might — nearly all voiced strong support for Mr. Bush — none remembered crossing paths with him. Nor had any heard of anyone else in the 187th who recalled seeing him.
The Times also had this gem:
The closest any officer came to recalling Mr. Bush’s presence at the 187th was Robert L. Ficquette, another captain and supervisor in the communications unit. “I remember the name passing in front of me some way,” he said, although he said he could not be sure when or how or why. But he, too, said he did not recall seeing Mr. Bush.
Hilarious. Bush’s name “passed in front of him” in some ambiguous way. Hardly convincing stuff.
The Memphis Flyer, a weekly paper in Memphis, Tenn., had an even better, more entertaining, article that includes the perspective of one man who was actually looking for Bush on the base.
Recalls Memphian Mintz, now 63: “I remember that I heard someone was coming to drill with us from Texas. And it was implied that it was somebody with political influence. I was a young bachelor then. I was looking for somebody to prowl around with.” But, says Mintz, that “somebody” — better known to the world now as the president of the United States — never showed up at Dannelly in 1972. Nor in 1973, nor at any time that Mintz, a FedEx pilot now and an Eastern Airlines pilot then, when he was a reserve first lieutenant at Dannelly, can remember.
“And I was looking for him,” repeated Mintz, who said that he assumed that Bush “changed his mind and went somewhere else” to do his substitute drill….
“There’s no way we wouldn’t have noticed a strange rooster in the henhouse, especially since we were looking for him,” insists Mintz, who has pored over documents relating to the matter now making their way around the Internet….
“There’s no doubt. I would have heard of him, seen him, whatever.” Even if Bush, who was trained on a slightly different aircraft than the F4 Phantom jets flown by the squadron, opted not to fly with the unit, he would have had to encounter the rest of the flying personnel at some point, in non-flying formations or drills. “And if he did any flying at all, on whatever kind of craft, that would have involved a great number of supportive personnel. It takes a lot of people to get a plane into the air. But nobody I can think of remembers him. I talked to one of my buddies the other day and asked if he could remember Bush at drill at any time, and he said, ‘Naw, ol’ George wasn’t there.'”
The same article quotes Paul Bishop, another pilot at the base at the time, saying, “I never saw hide nor hair of Mr. Bush.”
In the meantime, all the White House can offer is a one-page dental record from an exam that took place when Bush was supposed to be in Houston.
Note to the White House: Anytime you guys want to release the full records and kill this story, go right ahead.