George W. Bush was first asked about the Texas National Guard during the 1994 gubernatorial race with Ann Richards. I was a panelist in a televised debate and asked Bush how he managed to get into the Guard so easily when there were more than 100,000 young men on waiting lists. I wanted to know if Bushs father, then a U.S. Congressman from Houston, had used influence to help his son sign up as a pilot. Bushs response was that he knew of no special treatment he might have received, and that he just walked up, raised his hand, and got a pilots slot at Ellington Air Force Base. Although Bush has long denied any special privileges were afforded him to enlist in the Texas Air National Guard, there is a great deal of evidence that contradicts him.
A source inside the Texas National Guard said, The minute after that question was asked, they started building their alternative story. They contacted Maj. Dean Rhome, [Bush apartment roommate during Guard flight school] Col. Maury Udell, [Bush flight instructor] and Col. Walter B. Buck Staudt. [Commander 147th Fighter Group] They wanted to make sure who was gonna plug the holes. All they needed was the right people connected to Bush and the Guard to deny the favoritism stuff.
The strongest implication of the use of Bush family influence came during testimony in a lawsuit involving the Texas lottery. After he was fired only five months into his tenure as executive director of the Texas lottery, Larry Littwin, eventually, filed a suit claiming he was victimized by the states contractor, the G-Tech Corporation. Littwin, who was hired the same day as he was interviewed by the lotterys board, had, immediately, gone to work scrutinizing G-Techs deal with Texas. According to senior staffers on the lottery management team, Littwin wanted to re-bid the contract because he thought Texas had the leverage to acquire a more favorable agreement. In his court pleadings, Littwin alleged that his dismissal was prompted by a connection between G-Tech lobbyist Ben Barnes and Texas Governor George W. Bush.
Barnes had been hired by G-Tech, and had signed a lifetime contract giving him a percentage of revenues generated by the lottery. In the late 1960s, Barnes was also Speaker of the Texas House of Representatives. As one of the two most influential people in the Texas legislature during those years, Barnes frequently took requests from people interested in getting their sons enlisted in the Texas National Guard. Enrollment in the Army or Air National Guard was considered a legitimate method for avoiding the draft, and not fighting in Vietnam. As a result, there were more than 100,000 young men on waiting lists around the country, hoping to get enrolled. Usually, they were drafted before the Guard called. Waiting lists were often up to five years long. A friend, or family member, who wanted to get George W. Bush into the National Guard, would have had to contact Barnes or someone on his staff.
A Democrat, Barnes became the highest-paid lobbyist in Texas history when he signed the G-Tech contract. Complications arose for Barnes, however, when Republican George W. Bush was elected governor. Harriet Miers, Texas Lottery Commission chair, who later became Bushs personal attorney at the White House, urged the commissions attorney to begin re-bidding procedures on the contract.
The time has come, Miers wrote in a February 18, 1997 memo to Kim Kiplin, the commissions in-house counsel. I am convinced the Texas Lottery Commission and the State of Texas will be best served by the re-bid of the Lottery Operator contract as soon as possible.
As early as March 1996, Bush Chief of Staff Joe Allbaugh had been asking for information about the lottery contract. Miers, appointed to the chair by Bush, had sent Allbaugh notebooks of lottery meetings and details on the operators contract, according to a note from her to Allbaugh dated March 7th of 1996. Allbaughs interest may have been as political as it was economic. Hundreds of millions of dollars were involved in G-Techs contract, and two of the key people, Barnes, and Executive Director Nora Linares, were both Democrats, who had supported Ann Richards in the race against Bush. Linares was fired, and sued the commission over wrongful dismissal, settling for a statement from the lottery that she had done nothing wrong. Eventually, she sued G-Tech separately for complicity in her dismissal, also resolving that case before it got to court.
Barnes situation, though, was another matter. If anyone in the Bush family, or one of their friends, had contacted Barnes about getting George W. into the Guard in 1968, Barnes was the possessor of damaging political information, which might be used against the future presidential candidate. In the process of discovery during the lawsuit by fired lottery executive director Larry Littwin, an anonymous letter, addressed to U.S. Attorney Dan Mills in Austin, claimed that a deal had been brokered to keep Barnes silent. Copies of the letter were leaked to a few Texas reporters, but were never published.
Several months ago many of us felt that the Lottery Commission should re-bid the G-Tech contract when it came up for renewal, the unsigned and undated letter said. Leaders of the Republican Party strongly supported re-bidding and I believe the chair of the commission also wanted to re-bid. It is now time to disclose at least one reason why it was not re-bid. Governor Bush thru Reggie Bashur made a deal with Ben Barnes not to re-bid because Barnes could confirm that Bush had lied during the 94 campaign. During that campaign, Bush was asked if his father, then a member of Congress, had helped him get in the National Guard. Bush said no, he had not, but the fact is his dad called then Lt. Gov. Ben Barnes to ask for his help to get his son not just in the Guard, but to get one of the coveted pilot slots, which were extremely hard to get. At the time [name redacted] contacted General [James] Rose at the Guard and took care of it. George Bush was placed ahead of thousands of young men, some of whom died in Vietnam.
Bashur was sent to talk to Barnes who agreed never to confirm the story and the Governor talked to the chair of the Lottery two days later and she then agreed to support letting G-Tech keep the contract without a bid. Too many people know this happened. Governor Bush knows his election campaign might have a different result if this story had been confirmed at the time.
There are several possibilities for the identity of the individual whose name was redacted from the letter, but there is no way to know the writer who mailed the note to the U.S. Attorney. The only reason for the redacted name to be obscured is that it would directly connect the Bush family to the request of a personal favor to treat George W. with privilege. In court pleadings at the time of the lawsuit, Barnes and his attorneys described the notion of a favor repaid as fanciful and preposterous. Bashur has not commented. Nonetheless, there was great political risk for George W. Bush if the former Lt. Gov. Barnes went public with a claim that Bushs father had called and asked for help in getting his son into the Texas National Guard. The intercession of a family friend was certain to be less damaging to Bush, politically, especially if that person had contacted Barnes without Bush family knowledge.
After being deposed as part of Littwins lawsuit, Barnes issued a statement saying that neither Bushs father nor any other member of the Bush family asked Barnes for help getting into the Guard. Barnes indicated in his written statement that he was contacted by Houston businessman Sidney Adger, a wealthy friend of George H. W. Bush, who asked Barnes to recommend the younger Bush for a pilot position at the Air National Guard. Barnes said he called Brigadier General James M. Rose and suggested Bush be considered.
The younger Bush had already sent a personal emissary to Barnes to seek reassurance that his father did not ask for the favor. Don Evans, who was the Bush gubernatorial campaign manager in 1998 and later became commerce secretary, met with Barnes to knock down a rumor that the senior Bush had solicited Barnes help during an encounter at the Bluebonnet Bowl in December 1967. Governor Bush sent Barnes a grateful note when Evans returned with word that the former Lt. Gov. had no memory of the elder Bush asking for any such consideration.
Dear Ben, Bush wrote, Don Evans reported your conversation. Thank you for your candor and for killing the rumor about you and dad ever discussing my status. Like you, he never remembered any conversation. I appreciate your help.
Political opponents of Bush said the anonymous letter and the governors note to Barnes smacked of a back room deal. Barnes client, G-Tech, they argued, got to keep the lottery contract, and Barnes retained his lucrative deal with the company in exchange for not implicating the Bush family on matters of favoritism involving the Guard. But Barnes was already in trouble with G-Tech. The same month that Lottery Commission Chair Harriet Miers was instructing staff to prepare to re-bid the G-Tech contract, Barnes and the company had informed the Texas lottery commission that he had agreed to a 23 million dollar settlement to buy out his contract. G-Tech had decided Barnes had become a lightning rod, in part because he was included in a federal grand jury investigation in New Jersey, which accused Barnes of kicking back a share of his monthly retainer to G-Techs president. Barnes was not charged in connection with the G-Tech investigation.
Regardless, Democrat Barnes, whom Bush Republicans worried might know too much, was gone. And, financially, he had every reason to be happy. Joe Allbaugh and Harriet Miers had begun to ask questions about the G-Tech deal just as it was reported that Barnes was named in the New Jersey federal investigation. If he had become a political liability to G-Tech, for any reason, the Barnes relationship had been successfully excised, and, eventually, Commission Chair Miers dropped her call for a re-bid of G-Techs contract. G-Techs main lobbyists became former Bush aides. Republican Reggie Bashur was hired after Bush was elected, apparently in an attempt by G-Tech to improve connections to the new governor. Cliff Johnson was retained by G-Tech after Barnes was released.
And George Bush was on his way to becoming president.
