'USA Today' May Play Role in Resolving Issue of Bush's Military Records

By: E&P Staff One of the most intriguing, but widely overlooked, angles in the continuing flap over the "60 Minutes" documents relating the President Bush's military service is the role USA Today may play in its resolution.

With little fanfare, USA Today has revealed that it, too, received letters and memos purportedly written in the early 1970s by Lt. Col. Jerry Killian, Bush's former commander in the Texas National Guard.

USA Today, like CBS, has refused to say how it got them, beyond saying that it was "from a person with knowledge of Texas Air National Guard operations. The person refused to be identified out of fear of retaliation. It is unclear where the the documents, if they are real, had been kept in the intervening three decades."

This may or may not be the same person who leaked them to CBS. Like the CBS documents they are copies, not originals.

USA Today said it received the documents shortly after the Wednesday night "60 Minutes" segment, and that it got two documents in addition to the four aired on CBS. The paper says it has launched its own investigation.

On Monday, USA Today published one of the better summaries of the dispute so far, with a point-by-point analysis of the allegations, including conflicting quotes by experts and interviewees, some of whom have shifted their views just in the space of a few days.