WORLD EXCLUSIVE
Reagan Defense Secretary confirms legal analysis Bush was AWOL

By John Byrne| RAW STORY EDITOR

Lawrence J. Korb, Assistant Secretary of Defense for Manpower, Reserve Affairs, Installations and Logistics under Ronald Reagan from 1981-1985, confirmed RAW STORY's legal analysis of President Bush's Guard Service in a telephone call Friday afternoon.

The analysis, which proves that President George W. Bush was absent without leave from the Texas Air National Guard in 1972, is available here. Given proof that Bush missed five months of Guard training sessions, he said that Bush would be considered AWOL.

"If you don't show up, you're absent without leave, by definition," Korb said.

No more than ten percent of sessions could be missed without them being made up, he asserted, confirming RAW STORY's findings. He added that President Bush should have been mandated to serve active duty if he missed even two months of service in a fiscal year — 24 months of active duty minus the amount of active duty already served.

For Bush, this would have amounted to 113 days. How this number was divined can be seen here.

"You would be put on active duty and sent wherever they needed you," he said.

At the time Bush was serving in the Texas Air National Guard, Korb himself was serving in the Naval Reserve, the Navy's equivalent of the National Guard, where he served from 1966 to 1985. He dismisses suggestions that the Guard was being lenient about service at the time.

"At that time they were very strict about fulfilling their obligations — and we don't like to say it — because this was a way to avoid the draft and going to Vietnam."'

He was unable to examine Bush's payroll records at his home on Friday, but is expected to formally confirm that Bush had failed to complete his required duty in 1972, therefore rendering him AWOL, at his office Monday.

Korb currently serves as a Senior Analyst at the Center for Defense Information and a Senior Fellow at the progressive thinktank, the Center for American Progress.

He has written more than 100 editorials in major publications, including the New York Times, the Wall Street Journal and the Washington Post, and has appeared more than a thousand times as a commentator on television on shows such as Larry King Live, Good Morning America and The O'Reilly Factor. RAW STORY plans to bring President Bush's AWOL research to its full conclusion Monday, when Korb is able to review Bush's payroll records.