In February, when the White House made public hundreds of pages of President Bush's military records, White House officials repeatedly insisted that the records prove that Bush fulfilled his military commitment in the Texas Air National Guard during the Vietnam War.
But Bush fell well short of meeting his military obligation and didn't face any punishment, a Globe re-examination of the records shows.
On July 30, 1973, shortly before he moved from Houston to Cambridge, Bush signed a document that declared, "It is my responsibility to locate and be assigned to another Reserve forces unit or mobilization augmentation position. If I fail to do so, I am subject to involuntary order to active duty for up to 24 months. . . ." Under Guard regulations, Bush had 60 days to locate a new unit.
But Bush never signed up with a Boston-area unit. In 1999, Bush spokesman Dan Bartlett told the Washington Post that Bush finished his six-year commitment at a Boston area Air Force Reserve unit after he left Houston. Not so, Bartlett now concedes. "I must have misspoke," Bartlett, who is now the White House communications director, said in a recent interview.
And early in his Guard service, on May 27, 1968, Bush signed a "statement of understanding" pledging to achieve "satisfactory participation" that included attendance at 24 days of annual weekend duty — usually involving two weekend days each month — and 15 days of annual active duty.
Yet Bush, a fighter-interceptor pilot, performed no service at all for one six-month period in 1972 and for another period of almost three months in 1973, the records show.
The re-examination of Bush's records by the Globe, along with interviews with military specialists who have reviewed regulations from that era, show that Bush's attendance at required training drills was so irregular that his superiors could have disciplined him or ordered him to active duty in 1972, 1973 or 1974. But they did neither.
In fact, Bush's unit certified in late 1973 that his service had been "satisfactory."
Bartlett, in a statement to the Globe Tuesday night, sidestepped questions about Bush's record. In the statement, Bartlett asserted again that Bush would not have been honorably discharged if he had not "met all his requirements."
That assertion infuriates retired Army Colonel Gerald A. Lechliter, one of a number of retired military officers who have studied Bush's records.
"He broke his contract with the United States government — without any adverse consequences. And the Texas Air National Guard was complicit in allowing this to happen," Lechliter said in an interview Tuesday.
Even retired Lieutenant Colonel Albert C. Lloyd Jr., a former Texas Air National Guard personnel chief who vouched for Bush at the White House's request in February, agreed that Bush walked away from his obligation to join a reserve unit in the Boston area.
But Lloyd said that singling out Bush for criticism is unfair. "There were hundreds of guys like him who did the same thing," he said.
Lawrence J. Korb, an assistant secretary of defense for manpower and reserve affairs in the Reagan administration, said after studying many of the documents that it is clear to him that Bush "gamed the system." And he agreed with Lloyd that Bush was not alone in doing so. "If I cheat on my income tax and don't get caught, I'm still cheating on my income tax," Korb said.
The documents Bush signed only add to evidence that the future president — then the son of Houston's congressman — received favorable treatment when he joined the Guard after graduating from Yale in 1968. Ben Barnes, who was speaker of the Texas House of Representatives in 1968, said in a deposition in 2000 that he had placed a call to get young Bush a coveted slot in the Guard at the request of a Bush family friend.
Contributing: Walter V. Robinson, Stephen Kurkjian, Francie Latour, Sacha Pfeiffer, Michael Rezendes and Walter V. Robinson