FW: George W. Bush's Lost Year in 1972 Alabama
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George W. Bush's Lost Year in 1972 Alabama
By Glynn Wilson
BIRMINGHAM, Ala., Feb. 2 (PS) - The result of an investigation into
George W. Bush's lost year in 1972 reveals a cocky privileged son
who used his family connections to avoid military service in Vietnam
and spend seven months in Alabama partying. He clearly skipped out
on National Guard duty and avoided a mandatory drug test, all while
learning the politics of "dirty tricks," deception and coded racism
in the land of George Wallace.
It was the year Wallace, the spunky Alabama governor and
presidential candidate, was gunned down in a Maryland parking lot,
the year of the Watergate break in and the beginning of the end
for "Tricky Dick" Nixon. It was also the last year for
segregationists to openly fight integration of the public schools, a
time when racism went underground in American politics in the form
of a "Dixie Strategy." And it was the beginning of a major political
realignment that transformed the American South from a one-party
Democratic stronghold into a solid block for the GOP.
Bush made the move to Alabama in May to work on Winton "Red"
Blount's campaign for the U.S. Senate against Southern Democrat John
Sparkman. The lessons of that year were not lost on Bush or his
political adviser Karl Rove, who also cut his political teeth in
1972. Their path to electoral success is a lesson in itself about
the state of American Democracy, an issue suitable for an H.L.
Mencken-style analysis.
Privileged Son
Those who encountered Bush in Alabama remember him as an affable
social drinker who acted younger than his 26 years. Referred to as
George Bush, Jr. by newspapers in those days, sources say he also
tended to show up late every day, around noon or one, at Blount's
campaign headquarters in Montgomery. They say Bush would prop his
cowboy boots on a desk and brag about how much he drank the night
before.
They also remember Bush's stories about how the New Haven,
Connecticut police always let him go, after he told them his name,
when they stopped him "all the time" for driving drunk as a student
at Yale in the late 1960s. Bush told this story to others working in
the campaign "what seemed like a hundred times," says Red Blount's
nephew C. Murphy Archibald, now an attorney in Charlotte, N.C., who
also worked on the Blount campaign and said he had "vivid memories"
of that time.
"He would laugh uproariously as though there was something funny
about this. To me, that was pretty memorable, because here he is, a
number of years out of college, talking about this to people he
doesn't know," Archibald said. "He just struck me as a guy who
really had an idea of himself as very much a child of privilege,
that he wasn't operating by the same rules."
During this period Bush often socialized with the young ladies
of Huntingdon College, located in the Old Cloverdale historic
neighborhood where he stayed. Bush even dated Nixon's daughter
Tricia in the early 1970s, according to newspaper accounts. Bush was
described as "young and personable" by the Montgomery Independent
society columnist, and seen dancing at the Whitley Hotel on election
night November 7 with "the blonde, pretty Emily Marks."
During the 2000 campaign, the Boston Globe named Marks as one of
Bush's former girlfriends. But she and several other women who dated
him during that time refused to say anything bad on the record about
Bush, now a sitting president.
Many of those who came into close contact with Bush say he liked
to drink beer and Jim Beam whiskey, and to eat fist-fulls of
peanuts, and Executive burgers, at the Cloverdale Grill. They also
say he liked to sneak out back for a joint of marijuana or into the
head for a line of cocaine. The newspapers that year are full of
stories about the scourges of cocaine and heroin making their way
into the U.S. from abroad in the early days of the so-called "war on
drugs."
According to Cathy Donelson, a daughter of old Montgomery but
one of the toughest investigative reporters to work for newspapers
in Alabama over the years, the 1960s came to Old Cloverdale in the
early 1970s about the time of Bush's arrival.
"We did a lot of drugs in those days," she said. "The 1970s are
a blur."
The top radio hits in 1972 included "My Ding-A-Ling" by Chuck
Berry, "Honky Cat" by Elton John, "Long Cool Woman" by the Hollies
and "Feeling Alright" by Joe Cocker, along with "I Am Woman" by
Helen Reddy, "Heart of Gold" by Neil Young, "Ben" by Michael Jackson
and "Black and White" by Three Dog Night.
It was that kind of year.
To "Blount's Belles," a group of young Republican women and
Montgomery debutantes working for the Blount campaign, Bush is
remembered showing up in "denim" and cowboy boots. To one who talked
about those times but requested anonymity, "We thought he was to die
for."
Winton Bount's son Tom, an accomplished architect who designed
the Shakespeare Festival Theater in Montgomery, remembers well his
encounter with Bush. He recently co-produced and underwrote a
telling movie called The Trip, set in the period from 1973 to the
early 1980s, about a young gay Texan and his conservative Republican
lover. The son known as "Tommy" said he ended up in the same car
with Bush, with Bush driving, on election night.
"He was an attractive person, kind of a 'frat boy,'" Blount
said. "I didn't like him."
He remembers thinking to himself, "This guy thinks he is such a
cuntsman, God's gift to women," he said. "He was all duded up in his
cowboy boots. It was sort of annoying seeing all these people who
thought they were hot shit just because they were from Texas."
Bush also made an impression on the "Blue-Haired Platoon," a
group of older Republican Women working for Blount. Behind his back
they called him "the Texas souffli," Archibald said, because he
was "all puffed up and full of hot air."
Archibald was recruited by Blount's Washington staff for his
administrative skills after returning home from a tour of duty as a
lieutenant in Vietnam.
Failure of Duty
Bush avoided Vietnam by using family connections to move ahead in
line for acceptance into the National Guard in Texas. He was
assigned to train as a pilot on the F-102 Delta Dagger, a plane
schedule for the scrap heap, guaranting Bush would never have to fly
in Vietnam himself.
That May, Bush first requested a transfer from his Texas unit to
the 9921st Air Reserve Squadron at Maxwell Air Force Base, a postal
unit, after he had already moved to Alabama to work on Blount's
campaign. The transfer was approved by his superiors in Houston,
after the fact, but ultimately denied up the chain of command, since
the unit only met one weekend night a month and had no airplanes.
Bush was finally approved for a transfer on Sept. 5, five months
after he had already established a residence in Alabama, to the
187th Tactical Reconnaissance Group in Montgomery. His orders,
available on the Net, required him to report to the unit commander,
Gen. William Turnipseed. He is named in the orders.
In interviews with the Boston Globe in 2000, Turnipseed and his
administrative officer in 1972, Kenneth K. Lott, said they had no
memory of Bush ever reporting, and could produce no documentation
that he ever even checked in.
''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.''
In a follow-up interview, Turnipseed acted like he wished the
story would go away, but said, "Yes, I think I would have
remembered."
Rewards offered by veterans groups in Alabama and Texas for any
proof that Bush showed up have never been claimed. There were 700
active guardsmen in Alabama at that time and not one who saw him on
the base has come forward. Even an extensive investigation by the
president's campaign staff could not turn up a shred of evidence
that Bush pulled any duty, according to newspaper accounts.
Perhaps the reason he didn't log any time toward his six-year
commitment was because the base had no Delta Daggers, although that
would not explain why he was granted an after-the-fact transfer
there in the first place. Or perhaps it had something to do with the
military's new policy of mandatory drug screening, implemented in
April. Bush's required physical exam officially came up in August
due to his birth date, but records indicate he never showed up for a
physical in Montgomery or when he returned to Houston after the
election.
Bush was never punished for skirting Guard requirements, even
though the military had passed a rule in in 1969 warning volunteers
that failure to fulfill the contract would result in immediate
selection for active duty in Vietnam. For not taking a physical,
though, he was grounded that August and never flew again, records
show, until last year when he reportedly says he took the "stick" in
a Navy plane on his way to declare "mission accomplished" over Iraq
on the U.S.S. Abraham Lincoln.
The gap in Bush's military records for 1972, and his lack of a
full answer to the question about his drug use, generated stories
during the 2000 campaign. Bush refused for months to say whether he
had ever used illegal drugs. Then he changed his stance, according
to the Boston Globe, saying he had not used illegal drugs "since
1974."
Two books now contain the charge that Bush was arrested for
possession of cocaine in 1972 in Texas, most likely in late November
or December after his stint in Alabama. Bush was allowed to perform
community service in 1973 by working for a minority children's
program in Houston, Professionals United for Leadership League
(PULL), chaired by his father. The record of that arrest was
expunged, meaning he apparently received the equivalent of Youthful
Offender status at the age of 26.
There are several possible interpretations of whether Bush can
be called AWOL during that period, or even a Deserter. Activist film
maker Michael Moore's claim that George W. Bush was a Deserter when
he skipped out on National Guard duty in 1972 is one interpretation,
but is not entirely based on the facts or a correct interpretation
of military regulations.
According to the Uniform Code of Military Justice, a soldier
would be considered Absent Without Leave (AWOL) if missing from his
unit for 30 days or less. If absent for more than 30 days, a soldier
would be considered a Deserter, if he had "no intention of
returning."
But Bush's superiors, at least in Houston, knew where he was. He
did come back and received an honorable discharge.
Moore's claim was dodged by Democratic candidate for president
Wesley Clark during a New Hampshire debate on Fox News in January,
in response to pointed questions by Peter Jennings of ABC and Britt
Hume of Fox in response to Moore's endorsement of Clark the previous
week.
The debate about whether Bush was AWOL, as the Boston Globe
reported, or deserves Deserter status, as claimed by Moore, may be
missing the point. It may be more accurate to say that while Bush
was not technically AWOL or a Deserter, he was allowed to do things
no average member of the National Guard would ever be allowed to do.
Any other member of the Guard, without Bush's family connections,
would be expected to wait until a transfer approval went through
before leaving town, much less moving four states away to work for a
political campaign. Also, the military does not usually grant
transfers to soldiers to units that have a purpose with no
resemblance to their training.
So the point is, Bush is no military hero. He is no Wesley
Clark, or John Kerry, both of whom earned purple hearts and other
medals for being injured in the line of duty.
Dirty Tricks
It is also apparent that Bush learned one of his first lessons in
the politics of "dirty tricks," deception and coded racism in 1972.
It was the biggest year for "Tricky Dick" style dirty tricks in
American politics. A group of Cubans working secretly for the
Committee to Reelect the President, otherwise known as CREEP, broke
into the Democratic Party headquarters at the Watergate Hotel in
Washington on June 17.
Just prior to the day on May 15 when Alabama Governor and
presidential candidate George Wallace took a bullet in a Maryland
parking lot - a shock but a political relief for President Richard
Nixon and Democratic candidate George McGovern in a race for the
White House themselves - Bush was recruited for the Blount campaign
by another Texan and Bush family friend named Jimmy Allison.
In several documented accounts, Allison is described as the
original Republican political pro who may have inspired Lee Atwater,
Ronald Reagan's gung-ho political director, and Karl Rove, who is
credited with orchestrating Bush's successful run for the White
House in 2000. Atwater and Rove are reported to have taken a drive
together across the South in 1972 campaigning for Rove's bid to lead
the College Republicans, so it is safe to say they cut their
political teeth that year as well as Bush.
Rove won that bid and dropped out of the University of Utah,
then moved to Washington to become executive director of the College
Republicans, even though he was accused of dirty tricks during that
campaign. The Republican National Committee, chaired at that time by
Bush's father, investigated but eventually cleared Rove of any wrong
doing, even though Rove admitted using a false identity to gain
entry to the campaign offices of Illinois Democrat Alan Dixon. He
admitted stealing letterhead stationary and sending out 1,000 fake
invitations to the campaign headquarters opening, promising "free
beer, free food, girls and a good time for nothing."
Allison had managed the senior Bush's campaigns for Congress and
served as vice chairman of the Republican National Committee.
Archibald remembers being impressed with the "Allisons," thinking he
would see more of Jimmy and his wife in the future, certainly more
than Bush.
"Allison was extremely bright and a well organized political
operative," he said.
Archibald remembers one speech Allison delivered to the campaign
staff and a group of British students. He said Allison talked about
Wallace's domination of state politics since his first election as
governor in 1962, and his "racist appeal." Some in the campaign were
hoping to portray Blount as a pro-business moderate, Archibald said.
But Tom Blount remembers his dad, who died two years ago, having
regrets about the dirty campaign tactics. Dividing people by coded
racism became a staple of the Southern Strategy leading up to Willie
Horton ads used successfully by the first Bush against Michael
Dukakis in 1988, and the junior Bush's smear campaign against Sen.
John McCain's adopted interracial child during the 2000 Republican
primary.
One of Bush's duties as "campaign coordinator," according to his
official title in the newspapers, was to stay in contact by phone
with campaign managers in Alabama's 67 counties, and to handle the
distribution of all campaign materials, Archibald says. That
material included a pamphlet accusing Sparkman of being soft on the
race issue. It also included a doctored tape from a radio debate
distorting Sparkman's position on busing.
Sparkman was forced to deny a series of false charges linking
him with McGovern, the South Dakota presidential candidate who
became the first in the modern era to be tainted and stomped as
a "liberal." The pamphlet distributed to campaign workers and leaked
to the press charged Sparkman with favoring drastic defense cuts,
big federal spending, abandoning American POWs in Vietnam, a
guaranteed wage for every American, relaxing drug laws, amnesty for
draft dodgers - and "forced busing."
The Birmingham News ran the transcript of the doctored radio
tape on November 6, the day before the election, which made it
appear Sparkman was in favor of busing black and white children
miles across towns to "mix" the public schools. The literature of
the campaign echoed the winning conservative Senate race of Ed
Gurney in Florida, also dreamed up by Allison and company. Blount's
campaign, awash in cash with twice the money of Sparkman's, paid for
billboards across the state proclaiming: "A vote for Red Blount is a
vote against forced busing . . . against coddling criminals . . .
against welfare freeloaders."
Sparkman was a moderate on the race issue compared to Wallace,
and got the support of African Americans who only had the right to
vote for seven years. But he not only voted for the anti-forced
busing bill. He co-sponsored it and spoke against busing on the
Senate floor. The measure, which would have blocked busing and
killed desegregation for all practical purposes, died a few weeks
later when the Republicans and Southern Democrats in the Senate
could not garner enough votes for cloture. It was the last gasp on
the part of segregationists to prevent the federal courts from
enforcing desegregation of the public schools, a fight that started
in earnest with the 1954 Supreme Court decision in Brown v. (Topeka,
Kansas) Board of Education.
Archibald says Allison called him aside and asked him quietly to
take over some of Bush's campaign duties, so he ended up handling
the Republican women and the counties in the final days of the
campaign. Apparently Bush was more interested in hanging out
with "Blount's Belles."
Some of the women, young and old, came from Union Springs, where
Archibald grew up in the enviable position of being the nephew of
Blount, also originally from Union Springs, just a short drive
southeast of Montgomery. It is a land of rolling hills, lakes,
forests and wide cow pastures, where the mostly African American
population of Bullock County is largely made up of descendents of
slaves, and a few slave owners. Little white churches are almost as
common as white-tailed deer on the run from hunters in camouflage
and bright orange. During the past century, pine plantations for
paper and wood products replaced cotton as the chief agricultural
crop.
Blount's construction and manufacturing empire prospered in the
new industrial economy here. The first big construction deal for
Blount Brother's construction was signed with the Saudi government.
On one occasion Archibald's uncle banked a check for $334 million to
build a university in Saudi Arabia. The check is on display in
Blount's ghostwritten biography in the Shakespeare theater box
office and gift shop on Vaughn Road. In the caption, Blount brags
about how he rushed the check into the bank to get that $200,000 a
day in interest flowing "as quickly as possible."
Winton Blount IV now carries on the family tradition, according
to newspaper accounts, subcontracting for the likes of Halliburton
and Bechtel in Saudi Arabia and Iraq today.
The "interlocking directorates" of the Bush family, their
friends and this administration is documented by conservative
Republican author Kevin Phillips in his book American Dynasty,
although he doesn't deal with the Blount connection in detail.
George H. W. Bush and Winton Blount met and became tight in
Washington during the Nixon years, according to published accounts,
when they were sometimes invited by the White House to play doubles
together on the south lawn tennis court.
Blount had served as southeastern campaign chair for Nixon in
his run against John Kennedy in 1960. He served as president of the
U.S. Chamber of Commerce in 1969 before accepting Nixon's
appointment as Postmaster General in 1970, where he generated a
major national controversy by laying off 33,000 postal workers. He
quit that job to run for office and try to help capture the Senate
for the Republican Party in 1972, but lost by a 24-point margin, in
spite of the political pros from Texas, and the deceptive campaign
practices.
Nixon appointed Bush's daddy Ambassador to the United Nations in
1972, a well publicized fact that was known to campaign workers and
Guard personnel in Alabama. He would be appointed by President
Gerald Ford as head of the CIA in 1976 and go on to serve as Ronald
Reagan's vice president, then as president in his own right for one
term. Bush Jr's. granddaddy Prescott Bush was a successful
industrialist from Kennebunkport, Maine, who served as a U.S.
Senator. Since leaving public office, the former President Bush now
sits on the board of the Carlyle Group, which has been accused of
profiteering off the war his son started, doing business with Saudi
Arabia, Iraq and other oil-rich countries in the Middle East.
It is worth noting in this context that several members of Osama
bin Laden's family from Saudi Arabia were onboard the only plane
allowed to fly around the country after the attacks on the World
Trade Center and the Pentagon on September 11, 2001, an incident
that has never been adequately explained by the Bush administration
or the commission investigating the attacks.
All of these connections and events have weighed heavily on the
mind of retired attorney Lewis Odom, a veteran himself who managed
Senator Sparkman's winning campaign in 1972. He was Allison's
counterpart, though he never met Bush personally during the
campaign. But he does remember being aware of a group of political
pros from Texas in Alabama working for Blount, and being appalled at
the deceptions of the campaign.
Odom, who served as a JAG officer in Korea and as a member of
the Alabama Air National Guard, only learned later that Bush was in
the state working for Blount while skipping out on Vietnam and his
Guard duties. But he remembers the radio tape and transcript.
"It was doctored to make it appear as if Sparkman was in favor
of forced-busing, which in Alabama at the time was political death,"
he said.
Odom said the Bush campaign has tried to dismiss the president's
early transgressions since they happened so long ago, although he
points out that Bill Clinton did not get a "free ride" on the issue
of his own history as a so-called "draft dodger" and "womanizer,"
even impeached in his second term.
Why is Bush's past important to examine now?
"It seems to me to be important because Bush is willing to send
our boys and girls over there to get shot, killed and wounded, to
lose their arms and legs," Odom said. "Then in his own life, he did
what he could to avoid it (going to war). And then later, he
presents himself as a fighter pilot, parading around on that flight
deck with his fighter pilot jacket on with 'Commander In Chief'' on
it."
Odom said the Guard probably spent a half a million dollars
training Bush, then he wouldn't even take his flight exam and failed
to check the box on the form making himself available for active
duty. Later, Bush was transferred on paper to a Guard unit in
Colorado prior to his early release to attend Harvard Business
School.
"I see him out parading around as if he was some sort of a
military hero, when the truth about the matter is, he used his
father's prestige in the community to get into the Guard in the
first place," Odom said. "And then he used it to get himself
transferred to Alabama to work on a political campaign."
State of Democracy
Many Americans, including Odom and a lot of combat veterans, wonder
how things might have been handled differently if only Bush had
served real time in the military and not skated because of his
privileged son status. Would he have been as likely to go to war in
Iraq so quickly and on such flimsy evidence, bringing the world to
the brink of an all out religious war between Christians and Jews
against the Muslim world and turning much of Europe and the rest of
the world against the U.S.?
That is a question that cannot be answered in hindsight. But in
a democracy, it is not supposed to matter what bloodline you come
from or what religion you practice. What should matter - to a
candidate for the highest office in the most powerful country in the
world - is the quality of his life, work and character.
What does Bush's success say about the state of American
Democracy?
The Bush White House openly promotes democracy around the world,
committing the full force of American military power to try creating
a capitalist democracy in Iraq. Yet Bush's entire history of success
fosters the mentality of a Royal Monarchy at home.
Attorney Mike Odom contributed research assistance for this report.
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