FLASH.....
Bush Campaign Rocked by Coverup Report
by Gene Gaudette and Morrie Friendly

Saturday, Nov. 4, 2000, 9PM EST -- WASHINGTON (AmpolNS) --
Devastating details surrounding the handling of George W.
Bush's Texas Air National Guard records are rocking the Bush
presidential campaign at this hour.

For over a year, questions have been raised concerning Bush's
service in the Texas Air National Guard in 1972 and 1973, when
Bush was supposed to have been fulfilling his service in Alabama
at a time when he was working in that state as an aide in a
Senate campaign.

In the course of the last eighteen months, American Politics
Journal made two such requests for Bush's service record.
The documents obtained by American Politics Journal consisted
primarily of press accounts of Bush's service as a pilot in
the Guard -- but no specific information on Bush's participation 
(or lack thereof) in Guard activities during the period in which
he was in Alabama.

According to a press release issued earlier today by a Virginia
organization known as Vets for Real Truth, "A former senior
commanding officer in the Air National Guard has come forward 
to allege that the Bush campaign actually 'cleansed' the Texas
Air National Guard records in order to make them conform to the
official Bush biography that was being written at the time of
the cleansing."

The press release goes on to say that the unnamed senior
commanding officer stated that documents which would be 
normally be released under a Freedom of Information Act request
for a serviceman's public records were missing from FOIA release
pertaining to Bush's service in the Air National Guard.

Early this evening (EST), a news report published on the (London)
Sunday Times web site stated that "a former officer in the Texas
National Guard claimed Bush had doctored his military record."

The report, by Times reporters Tom Rhodes and Matthew Campbell,
goes on to say "Bill Burkett, a former lieutenant-colonel, said
Bush aides had been 'scrubbing the files' to bury disparities
between his record while serving as a reserve pilot during the
Vietnam war and an account of the period in his official
biography."

But there may well be even more to the story than the Times
mentions.

According to Bob Rogers, an official with Vets for Real Truth
who spoke to one of our editors earlier this evening, "Bush
trained for two years, and then flew for two years, but then his
service sort of went into neverneverland."  As a Senior
at Yale, explained Rogers, Bush had signed a letter of agreement
that said if he were a "bad boy" in the Guard, he would have to
serve "ARF" -- an abbreviation for Air Reserve Force and
essentially a demotion.  Bush's record stops at May 1972 and
also indicates that he served ARF -- indicative of a disciplinary
sanction.

Additionally, American Politics Journal has learned that the
Boston Globe will be reporting more details of Burkett's claims
in tomorrow's edition -- and that Senator Bob Kerrey (D-NE)
intends to bring up the issue of an eyewitness to allies of
George W. Bush tampering with the presidential candidate's
military service records as part of an effort to conceal
misconduct on tomorrow's edition of Meet the Press.