"Cleaning up the Texas Guard records became a lot easier once W. was the titular commander in chief of the state's National Guard units. The effort got under way just months after Bush's inauguration. On May 16, 1995, Joe Allbaugh, by then Bush's chief of staff, met with Guard officials and asked to see Bush's personnel records. Three days later, they were sent over to the governor's office from the office of the outgoing adjutant general. "I am enclosing copies of the Texas Air National Guard personnel records for Mr. Daniel O. Shelley and Governor George W. Bush," wrote Turk. It is not clear why Shelley's records were also requested, except that he was about to be named Bush's legislative director. In any case, asking for two records rather than one likely was a form of cover -- comparable to what happened in 1972 when George W. Bush failed to take his mandatory National Guard physical and was joined in this violation by his friend Jim Bath. In each instance, the special treatment accorded W. was made to seem more "routine" by the fact that at least one other person was included.
That the people around the governor were concerned was evident when Dan Bartlett traveled to Denver to personally review the microfiche copy of Bush's records on file at the Air Reserve Personnel Center. Although Bartlett had little or no knowledge of the military, he would turn out to be a good man for the job. As was true of most Bush appointees, his primary qualification was loyalty. Bartlett had gone to work for Karl Rove's political consulting business in 1992, right out of college, and so by the 2000 presidential campaign, his entire adult life had been in service to Rove and Bush."
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/russ-baker/the-skeleton-in-ws-closet_b_152869.html
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