I AM NOT A CROOK EITHER
August 30, 2004
Rose Mary Woods Says She's Ashamed of Destroying Bush Military Records
Washington, DC | President Nixon's former private secretary has admitted responsibility for the 18-1/2 month gap in George W. Bush's Texas Air National Guard files.
The revelation comes on the heels of former Texas Lieutenant Governor Ben Barnes's public statement that he's ashamed he helped President Bush get into the Guard's "champagne unit" so he could avoid serving in Vietnam.
86-year-old Rose Mary Woods says Bush used his father's political connections in 1974 to personally request Nixon reassign her temporarily to Dannelly Base in Montgomery, Alabama, to "help reorganize" some old files.
"I now believe I was used," says Woods, who insists documents were supposed to be shredded only after they had been transferred to microfilm. "There were years of paperwork stacked up there. I think somehow they knew I would get confused and have an accident."
Thought to be among the documents destroyed were details of Bush's suspension from flight status, payroll and medical no-shows, as well as confidential military investigations into his DWI and cocaine-related arrests.
Woods said she decided to make her story public after walking through the Vietnam Memorial and looking at the more than 58 thousand names of soldiers killed during the war.
Surviving credit card records from a southern liquor store chain suggest that, during 1972 and 1973, Bush killed more than 58 cases of Jack Daniels.
