Former Texas Lt. Gov paid off for getting Bush into Guard

So? It is obvious where Barnes' loyalty lies, and anyone who has been around Texas Democrats knows they speak first and seek truth later. Maybe if Barnes could tell us who he used to speak to get rich kids into the guard, so that what he says could be corroborated, he would be more than just another Democrat flack expecting us to believe every word (just like the guy they have running for prez).

nice try shaggy, but it doesnt get offn the ground.
Its just another Bush bald face lie and revisionist autobiography.

As they said about the plane bush flew.
'It couldnt shoot down the Goodyear Blimp, let alone consider it for service in Nam"

I have genarlly held Barnes in high regard. He is well liked in Texas (it probably slipped now). I never realized it was he that helped Bush hide from the war.

Ben Barnes was once a considered a rising-star in Texas politics after becoming a state representative at age 21. He remained a prominent political leader during the 1960s and 1970s.

Elected to the Texas House of Representatives when he was in his early 20's, he went on to become the youngest house speaker in Texas history. Barnes did not limit his involvement to just Texas politics.

He was a member of President Johnson's Commission on Intergovernmental Relations, U.S. representative to the NATO Conference in 1967, and United Nations Representative to Geneva, Switzerland, in 1968.

In 1969, Barnes was elected lieutenant governor of Texas and served from 1969 to 1973.

Since leaving elective office, Barnes has become a successful business executive and civic leader. He is the founder of Entrecorp, a business consulting and lobbying firm. He has served as a consultant, director or chairman of more than two dozen companies, including SBC, American Airlines, Dallas Bank and Trust, Grumman Systems Support Corporation, Laredo National Bank and the Barnes/Connally Partnership.

Barnes has been active in a number of community service organizations, including the People's Community Clinic, the Boys and Girls Club, the LBJ Library and School of Public Affairs, the Huntington Art Gallery and the Longhorn Foundation.

His honors include the UT Distinguished Alumnus Award, the Ellis Island Congressional Medal of Honor (1993), recognition as one of the "Ten Outstanding Young Men in America" by the U.S. Junior Chamber of Commerce (1965), and two honorary law degrees (McMurray University and Texas Tech).

I have reached a point in my life where I can no longer look at Bush's face in the newspaper or on tv.

I get nauseous.

But I do find it important to listen to his speeches, so I can keep abreast of his mendaciousness.

Still Unreported: The Pay-off in Bush Air Guard Fix
Still Unreported:
The Pay-off in Bush Air Guard FixThe letter said, "Governor Bush ... made a deal with Ben Barnes not to rebid [the GTech lottery contract] because Barnes could confirm that Bush had lied during the '94 campaign."

In that close race, Bush denied the fix was in to keep him out of 'Nam, and the US media stopped asking questions. What did the victorious Governor Bush's office do for Barnes? According to the tipster, "Barnes agreed never to confirm the story [of the draft dodging] and the governor talked to the chair of the lottery two days later and she then agreed to support letting GTech keep the contract without a bid."

And so it came to pass that the governor's commission reversed itself and gave GTech the billion dollar deal without a bid.

The happy client paid Barnes, the keeper of Governor Bush's secret, a fee of over $23 million. Barnes, not surprisingly, denies that Bush took care of his client in return for Barnes' silence. However, confronted with the evidence, the former Lt. Governor now admits to helping the young George stay out of Vietnam.

Take a look at the letter yourself - with information we confirmed with other sources - at
http://www.gregpalast.com/ulf/documents/draftdodgeblanked.jpg).

Frankly, I don't care if President Bush cowered and ran from Vietnam. I sure as hell didn't volunteer … but then, my daddy didn't send someone else in my place. And I don't march around aircraft carriers with parachute clips around my gonads talking about war and sacrifice.

More important, I haven't made any pay-offs to silence those who could change my image from war hero to war zero.

"Time Warner Won't Let Us Air This"

By the way: I first reported this story in 1999, including the evidence of payback, in The Observer of London. US media closed its eyes. Then I put the story on British television last year in the one-hour report, "Bush Family Fortunes." American networks turned down BBC's offer to run it in the USA. "Wonderful film," one executive told me, "but Time Warner is not going to let us put this on the air." However, US networks will take cash for advertisements calling Kerry a Vietnam coward.

The good news is, until Patriot Act 3 kicks in, they can't stop us selling the film to you directly. The updated version of "Bush Family Fortunes," with the full story you still can't see on your boob tube, will be released next month in DVD. See a preview at http://www.gregpalast.com/bff-dvd.htm

If the liberal media ever goes honest, Bush will be hounded from office.

George Wins the Lottery
George Wins the Lottery
Excerpt from The Best Democracy Money Can Buy (Penguin 2004)
By Greg Palast
Wednesday, July 9, 2003

The Bush family daisy chain of favors, friendship and finance goes way back to Dubya's "War Years." Junior Bush was a fighter pilot during the war in Vietnam; not in the United States Air Force, where one could get seriously hurt, mind you, but in the Texas air force, known as the Texas Air National Guard. Texas's toy army, an artifact of Civil War days, is a favorite club for warmongers who are a bit squeamish about actual combat. Membership excused these weekend warriors from the military draft and the real shoot-'em-up in 'Nam.

During the war, Senator Prescott Bush and his son, Congressman George Bush Sr., were more than happy to send other men's sons and grandsons to Southeast Asia. However, there were not enough volunteers for this suspect enterprise, so Congress created a kind of death lottery: If your birth date was picked out of a hat, off to the army you went. But the Air Guard flyboys were exempted from this macabre draft lotto.

When tested for the coveted Air Guard get-out, young George W. tested at twenty-five out of one hundred, one point above "too-dumb-to-fly" status, yet leaped ahead of hundreds of applicants to get the Guard slot.

Now, how could that happen? Only recently could I get a glimmer of the truth, a by-product of an Observer investigation of a New Jersey company called GTech. This firm holds the contract for a far less deadly and far more lucrative lottery operation than the one for the military draft: the Texas State Lottery.

Follow the money. It's 1997. Top-gun George Jr. is governor and GTech is in deep doo-doo with Texas lottery regulators. Texas is the nation's biggest, most lucrative lottery and GTech was about to lose its contract, worth hundreds of millions of dollars. The state's lottery director was sacked following revelations that GTech had put the director's boyfriend on the company payroll while he was under indictment for bribery. A new clean-hands director, Lawrence Littwin, ordered an audit, terminated GTech's contract and put it out for rebid. Littwin also launched an investigation into GTech's political donations.

Then a funny thing happened: The Texas Lottery Commission fired Littwin.

Almost immediately thereafter, the Bush-appointed commissioners canceled the bidding for a new operator, though the low bidder had already been announced to replace GTech. The commissioners also halted the financial audit, ended the political payola investigation and gave the contract back to GTech.

Why did the Texas government work so hard at saving GTech's license? A letter to the U.S. Justice Department - I have obtained a copy - provides some fascinating details. The writer points to one Ben Barnes, a lobbyist to whom GTech paid fees of $23 million. Way back in 1968, according to the whistleblower, an aide to Barnes - then lieutenant governor of the Lone Star State - quietly suggested to Air Guard chief Brig. Gen. James Rose that he find a safe spot in the Guard for Congressman George Bush's son.

Whether the Bushes used their influence to get young George out of serving in Vietnam was a big issue during George Jr.'s neck-and-neck race for governor against Ann Richards in 1994. Bush's opponents, however, did not know of Barnes's office's contact with General Rose, so the story died.

The letter ties Barnes's knowledge of Governor Bush's draft-dodging to GTech's exclusive deal with the state: "Governor Bush . . . made a deal with Ben Barnes not to rebid [the GTech lottery contract] 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'...George Bush was placed ahead of thousands of young men, some of whom died in Viet Nam...Barnes 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 GTech keep the contract without a bid."

The whistleblower remained anonymous, but offered to come forward later to authorities. Fingering Barnes, a Democrat, as the man who put in the fix for the Bushes with the Air Guard seemed wildly implausible. The letter remained sealed and buried. No investigation followed, neither Barnes nor the letter writer were called by the Feds.

But then in 1998, Littwin-the discharged reform lottery director-filed a suit charging that the millions GTech paid for lobbyists bought them contract protection. He subpoenaed Barnes. In 1999, facing a grilling under oath Barnes admitted in a sworn statement to the court, that it was indeed him who got George W. into the Air Guard.

Amazingly though, he claimed to have done this nice thing for young George without any contact, direct or indirect, from the Bushes. How Barnes knew he should make the fix without a request from the powerful Bush family remains a mystery, one of those combinations of telepathy and coincidence common to Texas politics.

Littwin asserted that other witnesses can verify that the cash bought the governor's influence to save GTech's license. GTech responds irrefutably that it terminated its lobbying contract with Barnes before the 1997 dismissals of the lottery directors-but not before the blackmailing alleged in the anonymous letter. And, although the company denies it maintained the financial connection to Barnes, GTech's chairman, Guy Snowden, was a partner in a big real estate venture with Barnes's wife. (In 1995, Snowden was forced to resign as chairman of GTech when a jury found he tried to bribe British billionaire Richard Branson.)

What did GTech get for their $23 million to Barnes, the man who saved Dubya from the war? Can't say. In November 1999, GTech paid a reported $300,000 to Littwin; in return, Littwin agreed to seal forever Barnes's five-hour deposition transcript about the Bush family influence on the lottery and the Air Guard.

I'm not complaining, mind you. After all, the Bush family has given us the best democracy money can buy.
--------------------------------------------


(c)Greg Palast
Excerpted from the New York Times bestseller, The Best Democracy Money Can Buy. Palast first reported this story for The Guardian newspapers of London and BBC Television in the documentary Bush Family Fortunes available in a special, updated US edition from Disinformation/Ryko (2004) at www.GregPalast.com

Re: George Wins the Lottery


Problem #1 - It is true that Bush joined TANG in 1968, but Barnes did not become Lieutenant Governor until the following year!

Professor says Bush revealed National Guard favoritism
Professor says Bush revealed National Guard favoritism
From Phil Hirschkorn
CNN
9/14/04

NEW YORK (CNN) -- A business school professor who taught George W. Bush at Harvard University in the early 1970s says the future president told him that family friends had pulled strings to get him into the Texas Air National Guard.

Yoshi Tsurumi, in his first on-camera interview on the subject, told CNN that Bush confided in him during an after-class hallway conversation during the 1973-74 school year.

"He admitted to me that to avoid the Vietnam draft, he had his dad -- he said 'Dad's friends' -- skip him through the long waiting list to get him into the Texas National Guard," Tsurumi said. "He thought that was a smart thing to do."

While the campaign has not responded directly to Tsurumi's allegations, White House Communications Director Dan Bartlett said last week, "Every time President Bush gets near another election, all the innuendo and rumors about President Bush's service in the National Guard come to the forefront."

Bush has said in the past that neither he nor his father sought special treatment for him. "Any allegation that my dad asked for special favors is simply not true," he said in 1999.

Tsurumi said Vietnam was a top topic among the 85 students in his class, when he was a visiting associate professor at Harvard from 1972 to 1976. He now teaches at Baruch College in New York.

"What I couldn't stand -- and I told him -- he was all for the U.S. to continue with the Vietnam War. That means he was all for other people, Americans, to keep on fighting and dying."

Tsurumi got to know Bush when the future president took his "Economics EAM" (Environmental Analysis for Management), a required two-semester class from the fall of 1973 to the spring of 1974, Bush's first year at Harvard's business school.

Bush had transferred to Air National Guard reserve status before he enrolled in the MBA program. He had enlisted in the Texas Air National Guard in May 1968 and trained to fly fighter jets until he was suspended from flying status in August 1972 for failing to submit to an annual physical, according to Bush's military records released earlier this year.

Tsurumi said he remembers Bush because every teacher remembers their best and worst students, and Bush was in the latter group.

"Lazy. He didn't come to my class prepared," Tsurumi said. "He did very badly."

Tsurumi concedes that he disapproves of Bush's politics. He wrote a letter to the editor of his hometown newspaper, the Scarsdale Inquirer, that derided the president's claims to "compassionate conservatism."

"Somehow I found him totally devoid of compassion, social responsibility, and good study discipline," Tsurumi said. "What I remember most about him was all the kind of flippant statements that he made inside of classroom as well as outside."

Tsurumi says he is not working for any Democratic group for the Kerry campaign. "The only activity I do is to vote for him," Tsurumi said.

But Tsurumi has been speaking out against Bush by giving newspaper and radio interviews.

The professor's comments come as a former Texas politician, former state House Speaker and Lieutenant Governor Ben Barnes, has said it was he got Bush into the Guard.

Barnes, a Democrat supporting John Kerry, says he called the head of the Texas unit in 1968, at the request of a Bush family friend. Bush's father was then a U.S congressman.
-----------------------------------------------

CNN's Jonathan Wald and Jennifer Icklan contributed to this story.

O.K. So lets see all the paperwork!

Frankly I'm willing to accept the word of mouth. It's not a matter of whether you believe the documentation or the reported and unreported histories of both men.

It's a matter that to those in the Bush camp, Bush can do no wrong and they don't care that he was a party animal. Loyalties among the republicans are not a matter of logic or a matter of applying equal standards.

This thread contains quite a few facts if the exact dates have yet to be established. It will embarass Bush. But who cares other than those like me who think he is a poor president and a wrecker?

Nobody.

But I'm not the only one like me. I live in a city of them.

As to Tsurumi - he confirms that comment that not every guy at Harvard graduates first in his class.

Bush of course banks on the notion that the plebe will view his low performance at Harvard as something endearing.

Unfortunately it is that sort of logic that does contribute to Bush's popularity among his lower middle class constituency.