The White House and Air Force Reserve officials in Denver were scrambling on Wednesday to explain the sudden appearance of a record written and signed by President Bush resigning from the US Air Reserve in 1974 because he had ‘‘inadequate time’’ to fulfill his duty obligations.The document surfaced on Wednesday afternoon and was publicly released on Wednesday night after the White House was asked about it by The Denver Post.A White House spokesman said the Department of Defence apparently had the record since it was filed in November 1974, but it had somehow failed to provide it in February when the President ordered that all of his service records be released. ‘‘We’ve continually asked DoD to make the President’s records available, and obviously, it would’ve been preferable if this had been released at the same time as the others,’’ said White House spokesman Jim Morrell. Earlier in the day, Defence officials had denied knowledge of the records’ existence. It was later confirmed by a spokesman at Denver’s Air Reserve Personnel Center, then by the White House. The emergence of the new document raises questions about what else might surface in the five weeks before the November 2 election. In February, Bush said that all his records were released to the public. Morrell downplayed the significance of the document, pointing out that it was signed on November 8, 1974, a year after Bush notified the Texas National Guard that he was relocating from Houston to Cambridge, Mass., to attend Harvard Business School. As reported previously by The Boston Globe, Bush had promised in 1973 to find a Guard unit in Massachusetts to complete his six-year commitment or face immediate call-up to active duty. Instead, he was officially transferred by May 1974 to an inactive assignment as an executive support officer at Denver’s Air Reserve Center, records show. Bush apparently never reported to Denver, then wrote the discovered ‘‘Tender of Resignation’’ in November 1974, in which he says he wants out because he has ‘‘inadequate time to fulfill possible future commitments.’’ He was discharged from the Reserve two weeks later. —(NYT)
