corrente

Froomkin reports that the "inadvertent" destruction (back) of the microfilmed records that would have proved that Bush was not a deserter came as a surprise:

A surprise, indeed. Heck, just two weeks ago in an interview for this column, Associated Press Assistant General Counsel Dave Tomlin told me the AP has been informed that the microfilm in question did indeed exist.
(via WaPo)

Gee, everybody seems really confused about this. I thought Bush released "all" the records months ago? How could they have known they had "all" (ha) the records if they didn't have either the microfilm or the paper backups?

Kevin Drum has more:

On the other hand, these three months (July-September 1972) are the crucial three months in the whole Bush National Guard saga, since this is when he skipped his physical, was grounded, and then disappeared from sight for six months. It's definitely fishy that of all possible periods, this is the one that went missing. (Note also that the 3Q72 payroll records were missing in the original document dump in February, as I noted in this post, and that the 4Q72 and 1Q73 records don't seem to agree with each other. As always with this stuff, it's hard to make sense of it.)

Of course, it's the Flight Inquiry Board report on why he was grounded after skipping his physical that we'd really like to take a look at. That would be interesting to see — assuming it wasn't also "inadvertantly destroyed," of course....

And now, aWol paperwork expert and analyst paul lukasiak—the man who actually figured out how to read the Army's payroll punchcards— moves the story forward this way:

We have the previous and subsequent reports, which tell us what the "missing" report contained, i.e. nothing.

The subsequent reports have a "points grid" that show that Bush was not credited with any duty during the quarter in question. In addition, there are cumulative payroll summaries in the header of the document, and by comparing the data in the previous quarterly summary to the data in the subsequent quarterly summary, one can ascertain that Bush was paid nothing during the "missing" quarter.

This is, in other words, ALMOST a non-story. What the payroll records from that quarter would have revealed is information regarding the abortive transfer to the 9921st Air Reserve Squadron, and the loss of flight status. Because both changes would have affected Bush's payroll, there would have been data entered with regard to those changes, and that data entry would have shown up on the bottom of the payroll reports themselves.

However, the story does say that some punch cards were being released. Insofar as the payroll data was entered into the system using punch cards, it is possible that there is a punch card showing the order removing Bush from flight status.

Re the "abortive transfer", if there were no changes made in the payroll records, it is absolute proof that Bush remained obligated to attend drills with his Texas unit for that entire six month period. "Approval" of the transfer request did not mean that Bush was no longer obligated, only ORDERS tranferring Bush to the 9921st would make that happen. And those orders would be reflected on that payroll report.

So, if I have this right, the missing records would add nothing to our knowledge of whether Bush served in the period they cover; we already know that he didn't.

What the missing records would show is that he was obligated to serve, and didn't. Correct? Readers?

And it's all so very, very simple. Why doesn't Bush authorize the release of all his military records, just Like Kerry and McCain have? After all, that's just what Bush said he would do:

[RUSSERT] Would you authorize the release of everything to settle this?

[BUSH] Yes, absolutely.
(Meet the Press via TAPPED

But Bush hasn't released "everything." The latest release withheld 60 pages of medical records, and the report of the Flight Inquery Board isn't even in play. I wonder why not?