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WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Microfilm records related to President Bush's service in the Air National Guard three decades ago were accidentally destroyed when the military tried to improve its files, the Pentagon said on Friday.

Payroll records of large numbers of service members, including Bush, were ruined in 1996 and 1997 in a project to save large, brittle rolls of microfilm, Defense Finance and Accounting Service spokesman Bryan Hubbard told Reuters.

Bush's whereabouts during his service as a pilot in the Texas Air National Guard in the United States during the Vietnam War have become an election-year issue, with some Democrats accusing him of shirking his duty.

The destroyed files kept in Denver on deteriorating 2,000-foot rolls of microfilm covered three months of a period in 1972 and 1973 when Bush's claims of service with the guard in Alabama are in question.

``It (the film) just crumbled. We were attempting to improve the preservation,'' Hubbard told Reuters. He said he did not know why the destruction had not been previously announced.

The White House said it has already been shown that Bush performed his duties in the National Guard.

``We released all of the documents that are available. We made that clear at the time and they demonstrate that the president fulfilled his duties in the National Guard at the time. And there is nothing new in this report,'' said White House spokeswoman Claire Buchan.

HUNDREDS OF PAGES

Last February, the White House released hundreds of pages of Bush's military records. Those records did not provide new evidence to place Bush in Alabama during the latter part of 1972, when some Democrats say he was basically absent without leave.

The White House said on Friday that it had included a footnote to those earlier records saying that files for the 3rd quarter of 1972 had apparently been lost in microfilm processing.

``This whole thing was inadvertent. It happened a long time ago at a files storage site in Denver,'' a senior defense official, who asked not to be identified, said.

The Defense Department's Office of Freedom of Information said in a letter obtained by Reuters that records of a large number of National Guard members were damaged, including from the first quarter of 1969 and the third quarter of 1972.

``Searches for backup copies of the missing records were unsuccessful,'' said the letter, dated June 25 and signed by C.Y. Talbott, chief of the Pentagon's Office of Freedom of Information.

The 1969 period is not in dispute for Bush, who was training at that time to be a pilot.

But in May 1972, he moved to Alabama to work on a political campaign and, he has said, to perform his Guard service there for a year. But other Guard officers have said they had no recollection of ever seeing him there.

The New York Times, which first reported the disclosure, noted that the White House had produced records showing that Bush was paid for six days in October and November 1972, but those records did not say where he was at the time. Also provided was the record of a dental exam at a Montgomery, Alabama, air base on Jan. 6, 1973.

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Sorry, I don't get this at all. Either he is a politician or he is not. By definition, as an ex-governor of Texas and current president of the United States, he is in fact a politician. How does the mere fact of his being a politician show he has said "the Big Lie"?
 

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How was the invasion of either country "the Big Crime"? Afghanistan was invaded because the Taliban refused to hand over bin Laden. You will note that it was an international effort, and that it was one of only four UN-approved invasions ever. Why is it Bush rather than the UN being accused of having committed "the Big Crime" here?

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We have been searching for a couple years for the bastard in a world wide manhunt what on earth makes you believe Afghanistan COULD have handed him over?
BTW how is progress on the pipeline through Afghanistan from the northern Stan oil regions coming along?Has it reached all our new processing facilities in Iraq?
In addition your claim of an "international" intervention is stretching things when our staunchest allies (except our lil butt buddy Great Britain)protested our intervention and your "international" includes a couple troops from a few insignificant welfare states.
WR