National Review White House correspondent Byron York falsely claimed that President George W. Bush fulfilled his contractual obligation to the Texas Air National Guard. In fact, Bush's Guard records prove the opposite. In an interview with FOX News Channel managing editor and chief Washington correspondent Brit Hume on the September 20 edition of Special Report with Brit Hume, York purported to give a summary of Bush's Guard service; instead, he falsified Bush's record to make it appear that Bush had fulfilled his duty.

FALSE CLAIM #1: Bush earned enough points to fulfill his obligation for 1972 and 1973

York purported to set out the terms of Bush's obligation to the Guard and explain how and whether he fulfilled that obligation, but he began by misstating the relevant standards:

HUME: Now, I take it that Guard service is measured and credit given by the National Guard on the basis of points.

YORK: Right. The way it was measured -- there were points that you, as a guardsman, accumulated toward your retirement. And the minimum standard per year, as a guardsman, was that you had to get 50 points.

In fact, retirement points were only one of two standards used to measure a guardsman's service. U.S. News & World Report explained on September 8:

There are two standards that apply to Guardsmen when deciding if they have completed their service each year. One standard is used to determine if the year's duty will count toward retirement and retention. The other, more stringent standard is applied to anyone with a military service obligation, as President Bush had.

Hume then displayed a chart that purported to list the number of retirement points Bush earned for each of the years 1968 to 1973. But the chart relied on a discredited calculation by retired Air Force Lieutenant Colonel Albert C. Lloyd Jr., whom the Bush administration hired to certify that Bush completed his service before the White House released a slew of documents in February. Both U.S. News and The Boston Globe explained that Lloyd's calculations were incorrect. U.S. News wrote:

A recent examination of the records by U.S. News does not appear to support Lloyd's conclusions. Among the issues identified by the magazine:

• The White House used an inappropriate -- and less stringent -- Air Force standard in determining that President Bush fulfilled his National Guard duty.

• Even using this lesser standard, the president did not attend enough drills to complete his obligation to the Guard during his final year of service.

• During the final two years of his service obligation, Bush did not comply with Air Force regulations that impose a time limit on making up missed drills. Instead, he took credit for makeup drills he participated in outside that time frame. Five months of drills missed by the President in 1972 were never made up, contrary to assertions made by the White House.

The U.S. News analysis relied on analyses by retired Army officer Gerald A. Lechliter and Lawrence J. Korb, a former assistant secretary of defense.

Neither Hume nor York acknowledged that the calculation that produced the retirement points figures listed on the chart had been undermined. York simply mentioned, “These are things added up from the documents the White House released in February.”

York then emphasized that (according to the flawed calculation) Bush completed slightly more than the minimum requirement in his final two years of service. “What you can see is in the last two years of his six-year commitment, he gets just 56 points a year, which is very close, just above the minimum of 50 that you need to accumulate each year,” York said. But the above quotation shows that, in fact, Bush did not attend enough drills to fulfill his service obligation.

Moreover, it's clear that York -- and whomever produced the chart for Special Report -- barely examined Lloyd's flawed calculations closely, since Lloyd's February memo purporting to certify that Bush had fulfilled his requirements service in his last two years of service contains a simple arithmetic error. Lloyd wrote: “Looking at ... the period May [19]73 - May [19]74 George W. Bush accumulated 19 points for 19 days of active duty and 16 points for 16 periods of inactive duty plus the 15 points for his guard/reserve membership for a total of 56 points for that year.” But 19 plus 16 plus 15 equals 50, not 56.

Hume and York then continued distorting the record of Bush's 1972-73 service. Hume mentioned that “some questions have been raised about those last two years and perhaps about those points.” York acknowledged that while Bush gained permission to complete substitute training in Alabama while he worked on a Senate campaign, “there are several months in 1972 where he did not show up. There is no record that he showed up for duty in Alabama.” Neither York nor Hume noted that Bush's apparent failure to perform duty in Alabama contradicts repeated White House statements that Bush did serve while in Alabama.

York then falsely claimed that Bush made up the missed drills:

HUME: So a guy doesn't show up for duty.

[...]

So what did you do then?

YORK: Well, you made it up. So what Bush did was in late 1972 and early 1973, you can see different periods in which he had kind of a flurry of activity, in which he went to drills enough to accumulate more than the minimum of points that he needed.

But, as U.S. News explained, Bush never made up for months of training he missed in 1972, nor did he complete additional substitute training within the required time window.

FALSE CLAIM #2: Bush didn't have to serve in Boston

York also falsely claimed that Bush had already completed his service requirement by the time he left the Texas National Guard in 1973, having earned all the points he needed for his final year of service in the summer of 1973, when he left to attend Harvard Business School. In fact, Bush was required to report for duty in Boston but failed to do so.

HUME: Some documents indicated he was supposed to find a unit up there [in Boston] to report to, but he never did. What about that?

YORK: Well, as I understand it, in May 1973, the sixth year began. And he -- in June and July, he did a lot of activity, accumulated 56 points just in those two months. So he kind of covered it. He asked for a discharge in October, was granted an honorable discharge from the Air National Guard. And as I understand it, that ended his ...

HUME: And by that time, he did have enough points.

YORK: He did. And that ended his obligation. So he served five years and four months of a six-year ...

HUME: So he didn't need to report in Boston? Legitimately didn't need to report?

YORK: No. It was after he received his honorable discharge, he did not have a further obligation.

In fact, as explained above, Bush did not perform enough substitute training in 1973-74 to fulfill his service requirement. Indeed, Air Force regulations concerning substitute training make it impossible for Bush to have completed ten months' worth of substitute training during “in June and July,” as York asserted. Bush's last payroll record shows that he completed substitute training on July 16-19, which was credited as substituting for scheduled training for August and September. But Bush never completed required training for the months of October 1973 through May 1974.

Bush himself knew he had not yet completed his obligation, which is why, on July 30, 1973, Bush signed a pledge stating: “It is my responsibility to locate and be assigned to another Reserve forces unit or mobilization augmentation position. If I fail to do so, I am subject to involuntary order to active duty for up to 24 months.” Bush's obligation required him to maintain readiness by completing monthly training until his six-year obligation ended on May 26, 1974.

Ironically, the same expert whose flawed analysis Hume and York used to claim that Bush had accumulated sufficient retirement points to fulfill his service agreed that Bush was required to perform duties in Boston. “Even retired Lieutenant Colonel Albert C. Lloyd Jr. ... who vouched for Bush at the White House's request in February, agreed that Bush walked away from his obligation to join a reserve unit in the Boston area when he moved to Cambridge in September 1973,” the Globe explained.

BONUS DISTORTION: Bush “could ... have ended up in Vietnam”

Before York launched into his distorted account of Bush's Guard service, Hume asked, “Could his unit have been called up and could he have ended up in Vietnam?” York answered, “Yes. It could indeed have happened.” Hume followed up: “But it didn't. It just didn't happen.”

But in fact, while it was theoretically possible for Bush's unit to be mobilized and sent to Vietnam (as MMFA previously explained), according to the Air National Guard's own website, few Air Guard and Reserve forces were ever mobilized for service in the Vietnam era; even fewer actually went to Vietnam. The final Air Guard mobilization of the Vietnam era occurred two weeks before Bush's enlistment.

The closest Bush's unit came to combat was in October 1972, during the six-month period when even the White House acknowledges that Bush did not serve. According to a September 8 Associated Press article, the 147th Fighter Interceptor Group “joined a 24-hour active alert mission to safeguard against surprise attack in the southern United States beginning Oct. 6, 1972, a time Bush did not report for duty, according to his pay records.”