Bush's stint in Guard
scrutinized
Flier avoided battle but favoritism denied
By Pete Slover, George Kuempel Austin Bureau of The Dallas
Morning News
Published July 4, 1999
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With the Vietnam War raging, 21-year-old George W. Bush wanted
to join the Texas Air National Guard in 1968. He offered no
aviation experience but cited his work as a ranch hand, oil
field "roustabout" and sporting goods salesman.
He passed the written test required for pilot trainees. Among
the results: He showed below-average potential as a would-be
flier but scored high as a future leader.
Although Mr. Bush's unit in Texas had a waiting list for many
spots, he was accepted because he was one of a handful of
applicants willing and qualified to spend more than a year in
active training, and extra shifts after training, flying
single-seat F-102 fighter jets.
Once he was in, Guard officials sought to capitalize on his
standing as the son of a congressman.
A 1970 Guard news release featured Mr. Bush as "one member of
our younger generation who doesn't get his kicks from pot or
hashish or speed.
"On, he gets high, all right, but not from narcotics," it said.
"Fighters are it," Mr. Bush is quoted as saying. "I've always
wanted to be a fighter pilot, and I wouldn't want to fly
anything else."
Such are the details that emerge from a review of Mr. Bush's
service record by The Dallas Morning News, along with interviews
with Guard leaders, former colleagues and state officials
familiar with that unit.
Mr. Bush, 52, now the Republican front-runner for president, has
repeatedly denied suggestions by political rivals that he
received preferential treatment to get into the Guard - widely
seen as a haven from which enlistees were unlikely to be shipped
to Vietnam.
As evidence he wasn't dodging combat, Mr. Bush has pointed to
his efforts to try to volunteer for a program that rotated Guard
pilots to Vietnam, although he wasn't called.
"There was no special treatment," he said.
Mr. Bush said he took flying seriously. "You will die in your
airplane if you didn't practice, and I wasn't interested in
dying," he said.
Records provided to The News by Tom Hail, a historian for the
Texas Air National Guard, show that the unit Mr. Bush signed up
for was not filled. In mid-1968, the 147th Fighter Interceptor
Group, based in Houston, had 156 openings among its authorized
staff of 925 military personnel.
Of those, 26 openings were for officer slots, such as that
filled by Mr. Bush, and 130 were for enlisted men and women.
Also, several former Air Force pilots who served in the unit
said that they were recruited from elsewhere to fly for the
Texas Guard.
Officers who supervised Mr. Bush and approved his admission to
the Guard said they were never contacted by anyone on Mr. Bush's
behalf.
"He didn't have any strings pulled, because there weren't any
strings to pull," said Leroy Thompson of Brownwood, who
commanded the squadron that kept the waiting list for the guard
at Ellington Air Force Base. "Our practices were under
incredible scrutiny then. It was a very ticklish time."
Fellow members of the Bush unit said they knew of his
background.
U.S. Rep. George Bush was at his son's side when he was made an
officer in the Guard. The elder Mr. Bush, a former World War II
pilot, later spoke at his son's graduation from flight school.
David Hanifl of La Crescent, Minn., an Air Force regular who
went through pilot training in Georgia with George W. Bush, said
the flight instructors were eager to fly with the Texan.
"He didn't get any preferential treatment, but some of the
instructors liked the idea of scheduling him to fly with them
because of his connections," he said.
Mr. Hanifl said it was somewhat unusual for a Guardsman to be
included in the flight class with Air Force regulars.
"You had to have clout to get that type of assignment," he said.
He added that Mr. Bush was a good pilot and did not seek any
favors.
Also getting into the Bush unit in 1968 was Lloyd Bentsen III, a
recent graduate of Stanford University business school whose
father was a former congressman later elected Democratic U.S.
senator from Texas.
The waiting list
According to several former officers, the openings in the unit
were filled from a waiting list kept in the base safe of Rufus
G. Martin, then an Air National Guard personnel officer.
In a recent interview, Mr. Martin of San Antonio said the list
was kept on computer and in a bound volume, which was
periodically inspected by outside agencies to make sure the list
was kept properly.
Mr. Bush said he sought the Guard position on his own, before
graduating from Yale University in 1968. He personally met with
Col. Walter B. Staudt, commander of the 147th group.
In an interview, Mr. Bush said he walked into Col. Staudt's
Houston office and told him he wanted to be a fighter pilot.
"He told me they were looking for pilots," Mr. Bush said. He
said he was told that there were five or six flying slots
available, and he got one of them.
While Guard slots generally were coveted, pilot positions
required superior education, physical fitness and the
willingness to spend more than a year in full-time training.
"If somebody like that came along, you'd snatch them up," said
the former commander, who retired as a general. "He took no
advantage. It wouldn't have made any difference whether his
daddy was chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff."
Bobby Hodges, the group's operations officer, and others
familiar with Guard rules said Mr. Bush made it to the top of
the short list of candidates who could pass both the written
officer test and a rigorous flight physical to qualify for the
three to four annual pilot training "quotas" allotted to the
unit.
Mr. Hodges and Gen. Staudt are the two surviving members of the
military panel that reviewed and approved Mr. Bush's officer
commission.
Most of those wanting to get into the Guard at that time, they
said, didn't want to put in the full year of active service that
was required to become a pilot.
Pilot aptitude test
Records from his military file show that in January 1968, after
inquiring about Guard admission, Mr. Bush went to an Air Force
recruiting office near Yale, where he took and passed the test
required by the Air Force for pilot trainees. His score on the
pilot aptitude section, one of five on the test, was in the 25th
percentile, the lowest allowed for would-be fliers.
Ralph J. Ianuzzi, a newly minted Air Force captain, supervised
administration of the test and signed Mr. Bush's score sheet, an
event of which he had no recollection.
The pilot portion of the exam included tasks such as identifying
the angle of a plane in flight after being shown the view from
the cockpit and figuring out which way a gear in a machine would
turn in response to another gear's being turned.
"That score for pilot seems low. I made that, and I'm dyslexic,"
Mr. Ianuzzi, a retired FBI agent who never earned his wings but
said it was significant that Mr. Bush did. "He passed the most
important test. He flew the plane."
On the "officer quality section," designed to measure intangible
traits such as leadership, Mr. Bush scored better than 95
percent of those taking the test.
It's impossible to compare Mr. Bush's score on the test to
scores of other pilot candidates, because Air Force historians
say no records survive of average scores for those accepted to
pilot training.
Pilot training
After completing basic training in San Antonio in August 1968,
he helped out aircraft mechanics at Ellington until that
November, when a pilot-training slot came open.
He was promoted to second lieutenant and began a 13-month pilot
training program at Moody Air Force Base, in Georgia.
He was the only Guardsman among the 70 or so officers from other
branches of the military who began the training.
Under the terms of his contract with the military, if Mr. Bush
had failed to complete pilot school, he would have been required
to serve the Guard in some other capacity, to enter the draft,
or to enlist in another branch of the military.
After passing flight training, Mr. Bush was schooled for several
more months at Ellington, and in March 1970 began flying
"alerts," the name used to describe the 147th's mission of
guarding gulf coast borders against foreign attack.
In those days, just five years after the Cuban missile crisis,
the 147th kept at least two fighters ready to scramble,
round-the-clock, guarding Texas oil fields and refineries
against airstrikes.
"It's kind of a non-threatening way to do your military, get
paid well for some long shifts, and feel good about your own
involvement," said Douglas W. Solberg, now an airline pilot,
offering his reasons for joining the 147th and serving with Mr.
Bush after an Air Force flying stint. "It was a cushy way to be
a patriot."
A former non-commissioned officer who worked on planes and
supervised other ground crews at Ellington said Mr. Bush was not
a silver-spoon snob or elitist, unlike some former Air Force
fliers.
"I remember him coming down, kicking the tires, washing the
windows, whatever," said Joe H. Briggs, now of Houston. "I'm
probably one of the few people around who'll admit I voted for
Clinton. But I'll pull for this guy for president."
No overseas duty
Mr. Bush's application for the Guard included a box to be
checked specifying whether he did or did not volunteer for
overseas duty. His includes a check mark in the box not wanting
to volunteer for such an assignment.
But several personnel officers said that part of the application
for domestic Guard units routinely would be filled out that way
by a clerk typist, then given to the applicant to sign.
Mr. Bush has said that he signed up for but lacked the number of
flying hours to participate in a program called the Palace
Alert, which eventually rotated nine pilots from his unit into
duty in Southeast Asia from 1969 to 1970.
His signup and willingness to participate was confirmed by
several of his colleagues and superiors, who remembered the
effort as brash but admirable.
"The more experienced pilots were shaking their heads, saying,
"He doesn't even know where to park the planes,' " said Albert
C. Lloyd, then head of personnel for the Texas Air National
Guard.
Some attention has also focused on Mr. Bush's departure from the
service. Under his original oath, he was obligated to serve in
the Guard until May 1974. Instead, he was allowed to leave in
October 1973 to attend Harvard Business School.
Former Guard officials and members of Mr. Bush's unit said that
release, seven months early, was not unusual for the Guard. Mr.
Bush's unit was changing airplanes at the time, from the
single-seat F-102 to the dual-seat F-101. They said it made
little sense to retrain him for just a few months' service, and
letting him go freed spots for the Guard to recruit F-101 pilots
from the Air Force and elsewhere.
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