AWOL & Wasted:
Bush in 1972-1973

"Official" Sources

• George Bush (ghostwritten by Karen Hughes): A Charge to Keep, 1999

Investigative Reports

• Paul Alexander, Alabama Getaway: What Dubya was doing when he was supposed to be serving in the National Guard, Rolling Stone 9/22/04
• Russ Baker, Why Bush Left Texas,  The Nation 9/14/04
• Mary Jacoby, George W. Bush's Missing Year, Salon 9/2/04

Critics

• Linda Allison: Widow of Jim Allison, campaign consultant, Red Blount's campaign manager, and Bush's first mentor

"The impression I had was that Georgie was raising a lot of hell in Houston, getting in trouble and embarrassing the family, and they just really wanted to get him out of Houston and under Jimmy's wing," Allison's widow, Linda, told me. "And Jimmy said, 'Sure.' He was so loyal."

Linda Allison's story, never before published, contradicts the Bush campaign's assertion that George W. Bush transferred from the Texas Air National Guard to the Alabama National Guard in 1972 because he received an irresistible offer to gain high-level experience on the campaign of Bush family friend Winton "Red" Blount. In fact, according to what Allison says her late husband told her, the younger Bush had become a political liability for his father, who was then the United States ambassador to the United Nations, and the family wanted him out of Texas. "I think they wanted someone they trusted to keep an eye on him," Linda Allison said.

Allison's account corroborates a Washington Post investigation in February that found no credible witnesses to the service in the Alabama National Guard that Bush maintains he performed, despite a lack of documentary evidence. Asked if she'd ever seen Bush in a uniform, Allison said: "Good lord, no. I had no idea that the National Guard was involved in his life in any way." Allison also confirmed previously published accounts that Bush often showed up in the Blount campaign offices around noon, boasting about how much alcohol he had consumed the night before. (Bush has admitted that he was a heavy drinker in those years, but he has refused to say whether he also used drugs).

"After about a month I asked Jimmy what was Georgie's job, because I couldn't figure it out. I never saw him do anything. He told me it basically consisted of him contacting people who were impressed by his name and asking for contributions and support," Allison said.

Leaving the election-night "celebration," Allison remembers encountering George W. Bush in the parking lot, urinating on a car, and hearing later about how he'd yelled obscenities at police officers that night.

For the 1972 Christmas holiday, the Allisons met up with the Bushes on vacation in Hobe Sound, Fla. Tension was still evident between Bush and his parents. Linda was a passenger in a car driven by Barbara Bush as they headed to lunch at the local beach club. Bush, who was 26 years old, got on a bicycle and rode in front of the car in a slow, serpentine manner, forcing his mother to crawl along. "He rode so slowly that he kept having to put his foot down to get his balance, and he kept in a weaving pattern so we couldn't get past," Allison recalled. "He was obviously furious with his mother about something, and she was furious at him, too."

About George W. Bush's disputed sojourn in Alabama, she asks simply: "Can we all be lying?"
-Mary Jacoby

In a July interview, Linda Allison, the widow of Jimmy Allison, the Alabama campaign manager and a close friend of Bush's father, revealed to me for the first time that Bush had come to Alabama not because the job had appeal or because his presence was required but because he needed to get out of Texas. "Well, you have to know Georgie," Allison said. "He really was a totally irresponsible person. Big George [George H.W. Bush] called Jimmy, and said, he's killing us in Houston, take him down there and let him work on that campaign.... The tenor of that was, Georgie is in and out of trouble seven days a week down here, and would you take him up there with you."

Allison said that the younger Bush's drinking problem was apparent. She also said that her husband, a circumspect man who did not gossip and held his cards closely, indicated to her that some use of drugs was involved. "I had the impression that he knew that Georgie was using pot, certainly, and perhaps cocaine," she said.
- Russ Baker

• C. Murphy Archibald: nephew of Red Blount and Vietnam veteran 

When questioned, Bush would not even talk about the Guard. "I had been told that George was a lieutenant in the National Guard," says C. Murphy Archibald, a nephew by marriage of Winton Blount, who was working on his uncle's campaign. "I had been a lieutenant in the Army, served fifteen months in Vietnam, and I tried to talk to Bush about the Guard, but he wouldn't talk about it. At that point, Vietnam was constantly being discussed, but George just changed the subject."

Bush regularly didn't show until noon or later, and then would leave four or five hours after that. He'd spend most of those few hours in his office with the door closed. When he did talk to the staff - and he made the rounds each day as soon as he came in before he locked himself away - his conversation was often disconcerting. "I found it so strange that in that position - in a United States Senate campaign - this guy who was twenty-six years old would come in and good-naturedly talk about how plastered he had gotten the night before. It was usually in the context of saying, 'I'm sorry to be coming in so late, but last night I really knocked them back.' He was very comfortable about talking about how drunk he got."

By late September it became obvious that Bush was performing his job so badly that changes had to be made. The county chairmen were talking to Bush on the phone, they were telling him what they needed in terms of support and campaign materials, and then nothing was happening. Finally, a substantial amount of Bush's responsibilities were turned over to Archibald, who marveled at how Bush seemed to assume no liability for his behavior - and knew he didn't have to.

"George had one story he told a lot," Archibald says, "and the story was about how he was always getting picked up by the police in New Haven during his time at Yale, and how they would always let him go when they found out his grandfather was Prescott Bush. When he told this story, George would always laugh as if it was the funniest joke. The first time I heard it, I said, 'Who's Prescott Bush?' And he said, 'My grandfather - the United States senator from Connecticut.' I thought it was stunning. He knew he was bulletproof because of his family. I had never seen someone with such a well-defined sense of being 'above it.' And it was not so much because of his money as his family."
-Paul Alexander

• Tom Blount: son of Red Blount

 "I heard what people were talking about," says Tom Blount, who was living in Washington, D.C., at the time. "I knew the guy was screwing around."

On Election Night, following Blount's concession speech, Bush drove Tom Blount to his father's house. "It was just the two of us," Tom Blount says. "Personally, I didn't like him. I thought he was real full of himself, and I had heard that he was making his way with all the ladies in town, which was fine, but I thought he was a little immature about it. I remember very clearly asking him - we were driving into the gates of my father's house - where he went to school. Then he did this fake 'Oh, shucks, man, I went to Yale,' like he was embarrassed by it. I thought this was so pretentious. I looked down at his cowboy boots and jeans and thought, 'Not my type.' "

Later that night, according to an article published in Salon, Bush would return to downtown Montgomery from the Blount estate, get drunk, urinate on a parked car and yell obscenities at police officers.
-Paul Alexander

• Devere McLennan: campaign worker

 "I have no memory of him talking about the Guard," says Devere McLennan, who worked on the campaign, first as a youth director and then as a staffer trying to woo disaffected Democrats to support Blount. "I think I had to run him to the cleaners to get some military uniforms once, but I never saw him wearing a uniform."

[Bush] was drinking heavily. "You had a bunch of guys and girls in their twenties just out of college - what do you think happened?" says McLennan. " We probably kept the state liquor store in business."
-Paul Alexander

• James Pryor Smith

"The trash and damage clearly came from drunken partying," says Mary Smith, who was married to Pryor at the time. "Pryor was very specific that this was related to booze."

Pryor Smith was livid. He had rented out his aunt's house in May as a favor to a family friend who knew Winton "Red" Blount, a construction magnate who became one the richest men in Alabama before being appointed postmaster general by President Nixon. The twenty-six-year-old tenant - his name was George W. Bush - had sounded like a reliable young man. He was a Yale graduate who came from a good family. His grandfather, Prescott Bush, had been a United States senator from Connecticut. His father, George H.W. Bush, was a former congressman from Houston who had gotten rich in the Texas oil business. Young Bush was coming to Montgomery to serve as the state organizational director of Blount's United States Senate campaign. After Pryor Smith had the house cleaned and repaired, he sent a bill to Bush - twice. Bush never responded.
-Paul Alexander

Defenders

• Emily Marks

Unknown

• Baba Groom: estranged wife of writer Winston Groom, who years later would write Forrest Gump.

• Mavanee Bear

Toward the end of the Blount campaign, Bush began dating a young woman named Mavanee Bear. He seems to have continued dating her after the campaign was over.

-Paul Alexander