Bush says he did not defy an order

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The White House said yesterday President Bush did not defy a direct order from his commanding officer during his 1970s stint with the Texas Air National Guard, answering, for the first time, accusations that the former pilot did not deserve the honorable discharge that he received.

Despite the questionable authenticity of a document dated May 4, 1972, purportedly showing that Mr. Bush was "ordered to report ... no later than 14 May to conduct annual physical examination (flight)" -- an exam that the young lieutenant skipped -- White House Communications Director Dan Bartlett said Mr. Bush had talked with his commanding officer about a planned move to a base in Alabama, which did not fly the plane on which he was certified, the F-102.

"I don't accept that premise, that he defied a direct order. He did not take a flight physical because he was no longer going to fly," Mr. Bartlett told The Washington Times.

"It's not as if he was defying, as people try to say, a direct order. He was speaking to the very commanders who were in charge of the unit at the time about his personal situation and what he was doing and explaining why he wasn't going to take the flight exam. ... I think the commanders were obvious in saying, then keeping your flight status up was irrelevant."

Mr. Bush moved to Alabama in the spring of 1972 to work on the Senate campaign of Winton Blount, a family friend. He returned to his unit at Ellington, Texas, that November. Until he received permission to transfer to reserve status so he could attend Harvard Business School in the fall of 1973, he participated in nonflying drills and worked at an inner-city poverty program.

To dispel the charge that the president disobeyed a direct order, Mr. Bartlett said another disputed document -- an unsigned memo dated May 19, 1972, that CBS News attributed to Mr. Bush's former commander, the late Lt. Col. Jerry B. Killian -- says, "We talked about him getting his flight physical situation fixed." He noted that the memo said Mr. Bush "says he will do that in Alabama if he stays in a flight status."

"Even if you take the documents at face value and said that they were authentic, you can tell by one of the memos where it said that he talked to Bush about his flight exam. We obviously interpret that as he was working with his commanders on the very issue as to whether he needed to take it or not. He obviously ended up not taking it because he was not flying," Mr. Bartlett said.

Mr. Bartlett said he had showed the documents -- broadcast last week by CBS News and questioned by many analysts -- to Mr. Bush "and he did not remember them."

"He remembers not taking the flight exam, obviously, but he said, 'It wasn't a big deal because I was going to Alabama where I wasn't going to be flying,' " Mr. Bartlett said.

Until yesterday, the White House had deflected the question of whether the 25-year-old Lt. Bush had defied a direct order. Asked several times since the story broke last week, spokesman Scott McClellan said repeatedly that Mr. Bush had fulfilled his obligations and was honorably discharged after his term of service.