AlterNet: Palast the Iconoclast: "retired Lt. Colonel Bill Burkett of the Texas Air National Guard (TANG), who states on camera that shortly after George W. became Texas' governor in the 1990s, he witnessed a speakerphone call from the Texas governor's office to TANG, and overheard the caller tell Guard officers to 'clean [Bush's] records from his files.' Palast says that after the call, Burkett 'asked the officers if they'd carried out the questionable orders, and they said 'absolutely.' They pointed, and Burkett saw in the [shredding designated] trashcan George W. Bush's ... pay [and retirement points] records.'
Controversy has simmered for decades over George W.'s Vietnam era service record; critics have long charged he went AWOL from the Guard for long periods of time. The allegedly trashed documents, which had been undisclosed for years, could have proved whether or not G.W. had been absent without leave while he was in TANG.
If Bush went AWOL, this would have been desertion during wartime. 'Punishment for Air National guardsmen who missed two days of work was to be sent to Vietnam,' Burkett also said, according to Palast, interviewed in Santa Monica, California, before flying to London to broadcast the expose. "
- posted by geoff @ #