Seems there is more at least some truth to the documents.
However there are/were alot of different stories from people that were in
Vietnam about the story told by the Swift-Boat people.
So who's truth was the truth?
The main man from the Swiftboat said, that he's mad about Kerry because of
what Kerry said about what happened in Vietnam.


Ex-Guardsman: Probe Gaps in Bush Service
By KELLEY SHANNON, Associated Press Writer

AUSTIN, Texas - A former Texas Air National Guard official who served at
the same time as President Bush says he believes the bigger story about
gaps in Bush's service is being overlooked in disputes over the validity of
certain Guard documents.

"I think the public ought to be concerned about his preferential treatment
getting in and whether he satisfied his commitment to the Air Guard. Those
are the two fundamental questions," said Robert Strong, the administrative
officer in charge of air operations at Guard state headquarters from early
1971 until March 1972.

Documents publicized last week by the CBS program "60 Minutes" have been
called into question by some experts and relatives of the late Lt. Col.
Jerry Killian, who supposedly wrote them when he was one of Bush's
commanders in 1972 and 1973. The memos indicated that Killian had been
pressured to sugarcoat Bush's performance and that the future president had
ignored an order to take a physical.

CBS stood by its reporting, but CBS News President Andrew Heyward said the
network would redouble its efforts to determine the authenticity of the
documents.

Killian's former secretary, Marian Carr Knox, 86, of Houston has said she
believed the memos were fake but their content accurately reflected
Killian's opinions.

"I know that I didn't type them," she said in an interview with
CBS. "However, the information in those is correct."

Strong told The Associated Press on Thursday that he couldn't vouch for the
authenticity of the memos, but "if Mrs. Knox didn't type those documents
and she thinks they're fake, I'll go with her judgment." He said he doesn't
know who provided CBS with the documents.

But Strong added that he and Knox worked closely with Killian and are in
better position than Killian's family to know how he did business.
Killian's five children were between the ages of 2 and 19 in 1972. Strong
said Killian's official records would have been removed from his Guard
office by colleagues and commanders before his family would have been
allowed to retrieve his personal items after he died in 1984.

Regardless of the authenticity of the memos, the question should be
centered on Bush's Guard service, and what is indicated in the documents,
Strong said.

"Why aren't we focusing on the content?" Strong said, adding that he
believes there are holes in Bush's official Guard record.

"The White House has just got to be thrilled to death that everybody's
tormenting about subscripts and superscripts," he said, referring to the
several days of debate among experts about whether the memos were forgeries
generated on a computer instead or if a typewriter common in the 1970s was
used.

As Bush flew to campaign in Minnesota on Thursday, White House spokesman
Scott McClellan told reporters aboard Air Force One that "CBS has now
acknowledged that the crux of their story may have been based on forged
documents."

Strong confirmed that at least two of the documents used by CBS bore a
faxed header indicating they had been sent from a Kinko's copy shop in
Abilene. Strong said he was shown copies of the documents about three days
before the "60 Minutes" broadcast on which he appeared last week.

Bill Burkett, a retired National Guard officer who lives just outside
Abilene, has been cited in reports in Newsweek and The New York Times as a
source for CBS' report. His lawyer, David Van Os, issued a statement saying
Burkett "no longer trusts any possible outcome of speaking to the press on
any issue regarding George W. Bush."

Burkett did not return several phone messages left by The Associated Press
this week, and did not talk to an AP reporter who visited his ranch in
Blair on Thursday.

Burkett, 55, told The Associated Press in February that he had overheard a
conversation in 1997 between then-Gov. Bush's chief of staff, Joe Allbaugh,
and then-Adjutant Gen. Daniel James of the Texas Air National Guard in
which the two men spoke about getting rid of any military records that
would "embarrass the governor."

Burkett said he saw documents from Bush's file discarded in a trash can a
few days later at Camp Mabry in Austin. Burkett described them as
performance and pay documents.

Allbaugh and James denied the allegations.

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