Shades of Rosemary Woods
posted by Rick at 1:38 AM

Remember the 18-minute gap? The segment of the Nixon White House tapes that might have shown once and for all whether the President had been directly involved in the Watergate cover-up, and which (accidentally, of course) was destroyed by his personal secretary while she was transcribing it?

Well, it seems the same fate has befallen some of George W. Bush's National Guard records. The New York Times reported this morning that according to C. Y. Talbott, the Pentagon's top Freedom of Information officer, "the microfilm payroll records of numerous service members"--including Bush--were damaged "in a project to salvage deteriorating microfilm" in 1996 and 1997. The destroyed records included Bush's payroll records from the third quarter of 1972, which had been sought under the FOIA by the Associated Press.

There have been questions about Bush's military service record dating back to his gubernatorial campaign in 1994, and Air Guard insiders have said there was an effort in 1997 to "cleanse" Bush's record.

Now there are new questions...

• If these records were destroyed in 1996 or 1997, why didn't it come to light until the AP FOIA suit?


• Given that microfilm is estimated to last from 100 to 500 years, why were 25-year-old microfilm archives in such a state?


• Is it mere coincidence that the records that could establish whether Bush actually fulfilled his Guard duties are now said to have been destroyed (accidentally, of course) during the very time that then-governor Bush was preparing to run for President, and his staff was allegedly conspiring with Texas Guard commander Daniel James III to make sure there was nothing embarrassing in Bush's file?


• Is it also coincidence that once Bush ascended to the Presidency, he made James the director of the Air National Guard for the whole country?


• If Bush is committed to getting the truth out, why did Talbott's office refuse to answer questions about the "inadvertent" destruction of Bush's records without another Freedom of Information application?

Of course, the big question is really this: how stupid do they think we are?