Family of Secrets: The Bush Dynasty, America's Invisible Government, and the Hidden History of the Last Fifty Years (94 page)

22: DEFLECTION FOR REELECTION

1
. Katharine Q. Seelye, “democratic Chief Says ‘AWOL’ Bush Will Be an Issue After a Nominee Emerges,”
New York Times
, February 1, 2004.

2
. George W. Bush interview with Tim Russert,
Meet the Press
, NBC, February 8, 2004.

3
. United States Statutes (1971), Title 10: Armed Forces, 10 USC 843, art. 43 states, “A personcharged with desertion or absence without leave in time of war, or with aiding the enemy, mutiny, or murder, may be tried and punished at any time without limitation.” Failure to perform military obligations or to report for regular duty can be construed either as being AWOL or a deserter; the distinction is a technical one, made more complex by the part-time nature of National Guard service. Desertion is taken seriously by the military. Between 1998 and 2007 alone, 670 people were prosecuted for desertion. There is no statute of limitations, and deserters from the Vietnam era are still occasionally picked up and arrested. Commanders are given wide discretion on how to handle deserters, and punishment ranges all the way from counseling and pay forfeiture to—in cases of desertion in wartime—the death penalty, though no such punishment has been meted out in recent memory. The separate and distinct charge under the Uniform Code of Military Justice (UCMJ) for desertion is violation of Article 85, Desertion, UCMJ. The last service member executed for desertion was Private Eddie Slovik, shot by a firing squad in France on January 31, 1945, following his conviction for desertion under fire.

4
. Bill Morlin and Karen Dorn Steele, “Bush’s Partial History: Stringent Military Screening Program May Explain Gaps on President’s Record,”
Spokesman-Review
, March 14, 2004.

5
. Based on unpublished reporting by the author and Stefanie Von Brochowski.

6
. Mary Orndorff and Brett J. Blackledge, “Bush Met Military Obligation,”
Birmingham News
, February 11, 2004.

7
. Mike Allen and Lois Romano, “Aides Study President’s service Records; White House Won’t ReleaseMore Documents Now but Is Awaiting Another Batch,”
Washington Post
, February 13, 2004.

8
.
Hardball with Chris Matthews
, MSNBC, February 12, 2004.

9
. In 2008, Scott McClellan published his memoirs of his time working for Bush. Although he gave media interviews for his book, he did not respond to an e-mail requesting an interview for this one.

10
. David Barstow, “Seeking Memories of Bush at an Alabama Air Base,”
New York Times
, February 13, 2004.

11
.
World News Tonight with Peter Jennings
, ABC, February 12, 2004.

12
.
NBC Nightly News
, February 12, 2004.

13
. Barstow, “Seeking Memories of Bush.”

14
. Dana Beyerle, “Friend: Bush Did Duty in Alabama,”
Tuscaloosa News
, February 12, 2004.

15
. Sara Rimer, Ralph Blumenthal, and Raymond Bonner, “Portrait of George Bush in ’72: Unanchored in Turbulent Time,”
New York Times
, September 20, 2004.

16
. Retired general Walter (“Buck”) Staudt, the profane, cigar-chewing commander of 147th Fighter Group; Major Dean Roome, a fellow pilot who had been Bush’s roommate off base, and was now an antiques dealer; Colonel Maurice Udell, the man who taught Bush how to fly an F-102; and Colonel Albert Lloyd Jr., who had been the personnel director at Ellington and would go on the Bush campaign’s payroll in mid-1999 to try to explain away the anomalies and deficiencies in Bush’s records.

17
. Author interview with Dean Roome, July 19, 2004.

18
. Walter V. Robinson, “1-year Gap in Bush’s Guard Duty,”
Boston Globe
, May 23, 2000.

19
. Roome and Udell had been involuntarily discharged from the Guard in the eighties, and their joint petitions for redress would eventually find their way to the commander in chief of the Texas Air National Guard, Governor George W. Bush. Udell had been thrown out of the Guard and was seeking redress in the same petition that Roome had before Governor Bush’s office. At some point in the eighties Udell had been named as commander of the 147th Flight Interceptor Group, taking Buck Staudt’s old job. Udell had been in the job but a short while before he was accused of harassment and impropriety by a group of officers and an enlisted NCO. Although ensuing investigations did not establish wrongdoing (per Dean Roome’s letter to Governor Bush), Udell had nonetheless left the Guard involuntarily. As for Staudt, in the spring of 1972, at the precise time W. was vanishing from his Houston Guard unit, Staudt and his superior Ross Ayers were taken to task by columnist Jack Anderson for outfitting a huge Boeing KC-135 Stratotanker according to specifications supplied by Ayers’s wife, so that the couple could fly off in style on a twenty-five-thousand-dollar junket to visit their daughter in Germany. Enlisted men had carried out the refurbishment of the plane, which included a stateroom, using tax dollars to pay for it. Ayers and Staudt were also using Texas Air National Guard planes to fly businessmen and politicians to Las Vegas. Finally, Staudt, then still a colonel, had also been caught wearing the plumage of a brigadier general. After retirement, Staudt became a member of the committee that controlled the leasing of commercial space at Ellington Field, where Jim Bath had a lease and where Air Force One landed.

20
. “Wolf Blitzer Reports,” CNN, March 8, 2004.

21
. Ken Herman, “Bush Takes Aim at Kerry During Texas Campaign Stops,”
Austin American-
Statesman
, March 9, 2004.

22
. Author interview with Dean Roome, June 9, 2006.

23
. Kate Zernike and Jim Rutenberg, “Friendly Fire: The Birth of an Attack on John Kerry,”
New
York Times
, August 20, 2004.

24
. Media Matters for America survey, August 25, 2004,
http://mediamatters.org/items/200408250006
.

25
. David Brock,
The Republican Noise Machine: Right-Wing Media and How It Corrupts Democracy
(New York: Crown, 2004), p. 110.

26
. Frank Rich,
The Greatest Story Ever Sold: The Decline and Fall of Truth in Bush’s America
(New York: Penguin, 2007), p. 137.

27
. Mary Mapes,
Truth and Duty: The Press, the President, and the Privilege of Power
(New York: St. Martin’s, 2005), pp. 212–15.

28
. Mapes,
Truth and Duty
, p. 169.

29
. David Rubien, “Seymour Hersh,” Salon.com, January 18, 2000.

30
. John Carlin, “What the Movie Star Did Not Say to the President,”
Independent
(London), October 19, 1997.

31
. “New Questions on Bush Guard Duty,”
CBS News
, September 20, 2004.

32
. Message board post by “TankerKC,” FreeRepublic.com, September 8, 2004, 17:19:00 PDT.

33
. Message board post by “Buckhead,” FreeRepublic.com, September 8, 2004, 23:59:43 EDT.

34
. Stephen F. Hayes, “Is It a Hoax?”
Weekly Standard
, September 9, 2004.

35
. Message board post by “Buckhead,” FreeRepublic.com, September 9, 2004, 22:51:04 EDT.

36
. Message board post by “NYCVirago,” FreeRepublic.com, September 9, 2004, 23:02:27 EDT.

37
. Message board post by “Barlowmaker,” FreeRepublic.com, September 9, 2004, 23:06:26 EDT.

38
. Peter Wallsten, “GOP Activist Made Allegations on CBS Memos,”
Los Angeles Times
, September 18, 2004.

39
. Mapes,
Truth and Duty
, pp. 237–40.

40
. There was even a historic Bush connection. Bush family investment bank Brown Brothers Harrimanhad played a key role in helping CBS chief executive William Paley expand the network, and Paley’s good friend Prescott Bush had sat on the CBS board for two decades.

41
. Neil Gough, “10 Questions for Sumner Redstone,”
Time
, September 26, 2004.

42
. George H. W. Bush interview with Dan Rather,
CBS Eve ning News
, January 25, 1988.

23: DOMESTIC DISTURBANCE

1
. These included Kuwait and Saudi Arabia, along with funds from Texas oil baron Edwin L. Cox Sr. and other tycoons. See Michael Weisskopf, “A Pardon, a Presidential Library, a Big Donation,”
Time
, March 6, 2001. The Texas A&M Foundation has also taken in excess of one million dollars from the ExxonMobil Foundation. See Texas A&M Newswire, “ExxonMobil Foundation Presents $1 Million to Texas A&M Foundation,” press release, June 26, 2008.

2
. Baker IV was counsel for the Justice Department’s Office of Intelligence Policy and Review.

3
. Author interview with Steven Aftergood, February 2002.

4
. Michael Abramowitz, “Rove E-Mail Sought by Congress May Be Missing,”
Washington Post
, April 13, 2007.

5
. Richard L. Berke, “The Last (E-Mail) Goodbye, from ‘gwb’ to His 42 Buddies,”
New York Times
, March 17, 2001.

6
. Barton Gellman and Jo Becker, “Angler: The Cheney Vice Presidency,”
Washington Post
, June 24, 2007.

7
. Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA) annual reports to Congress, available through the Federation of American Scientists,
www.fas.org/irp/agency/doj/fisa/#rept
.

8
. In 2001, the USA Patriot Act expanded FISA, allowing the government access to personal records of all Americans from Internet service providers and libraries. Meanwhile, the National Security Agency was authorized by W. to eavesdrop domestically on both phone calls and e-mails without a warrant, even forgoing the prior setup’s allowance of a seventy-two-hour window for a Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court to approve the wiretapping retroactively. Now the NSA did not need to provide any form of evidence, as the 2007 Protect America Act (PAA) granted even more expansive surveillance powers to W.’s administration. When the Democratic-controlled Congress allowed the PAA to expire in February 2007, Republicans reproached the Democrats as being soft on terrorism, leading to the passing of a new FISA bill in 2008. The Democrats, sensing that their only chance at regaining power lay in showing their “security credentials,” still were reluctant to take the issue on, even with Bush an unpopular lame duck. In July 2008, Congress voted to expand the government’s surveillance powers and give immunity to telecommunications companies that cooperated with President Bush’s illegal snooping. In May 2008, the
Los Angeles Times
would report on the sizable gap between the administration’s efforts and its results. One study found that terrorism and national security cases initiated by the Justice Department were down 19 percent from 2006. At the same time, the number of warrants requested for eavesdropping on suspected terrorists had risen by 9 percent. The article described this as “further evidence that the government has compromised the privacy rights of ordinary citizens without much to show for it.” Richard B. Schmitt, “Spying Up, but Terror Cases Drop,”
Los Angeles Times
, May 12, 2008.