"What is George W. hiding?" redux
The corporate media may be giving Bush a pass, but we won't

Editor's note, July 8, 2000: The word coming through the media grapevine is that no matter what George W. Bush did in the past or does between now and November 7, he is to be given a pass by the corporate media.

Corporate America and the right wing have decreed that the Texas governor will be the next president of the United States, and that is that.

Given the larger issues of whether he's stupid or mentally impaired, since he has no grasp of the language and is pained to utter a sentence that make sense; his false claims of how well Texas has fared during his tenure as governor; how many wrongfully convicted people are in his state's prisons or how many innocent people have been executed under his watch; how he has helped his friends at Texas taxpayers' expense; and his and his family's oil connections, questions about possible drug use and whether he was absent without leave during the time he was supposed to be serving in the National Air Guard pale in comparison. Moreover, the public is being denied knowledge about George W.'s connection with the Hoover Institution, a right wing think tank that receives large grants from Richard Mellon Scaife's foundations and has become a repository for many of former President Bush's advisers and cabinet members – people who have been recycled into the junior Bush's election campaign.

George W., his advisers and his family also have been masterful in erecting a nearly impenetrable wall to keep pesky reporters (yes, there are still many good reporters out there) from finding out the truth – good or bad – about this Bush son. So more than a year after we broke the story about Gov. Bush's new driver's license, we still have no answers as to the why or the how, and we have run into a stonewall in our quest to get those answers. An MSNBC reporter who picked up on our story also ran into the same stonewall.

Though the story is still accessible through our Politics page, we are running it here again for those of you who are not familiar with it.

While we obtained our information from the official Texas Driver License Detail records, a spokesman for the Texas Department of Public Safety subsequently said the records contained an error; that Texas drivers' licenses have eight numbers, not nine. We made a note of that in a follow-up article, although it leads to more questions when it comes to the DL numbers of other Bush family members. Which number gets dropped since the records showed all had nine, not eight?

We recently heard from two Texas readers, one a Bush supporter and the other a Democrat, who contend that no Texas DL begins with 00, since there is no region in Texas with those digits. Again, we obtained George W.'s DL number – which is preceded by seven or eight zeroes (depending on the validity of what the Texas Department of Public Safety spokesman told us) and ends with a 5 – and the numbers of the holders of DL numbers 00000001 (or 000000001), issued to a person born in 1918, through 00000012 (or 00000012), all from the official records.

If we are to get to the truth, dear readers, it is up to you to raise a noise so loud that the corporate media can't ignore it. Our fellow Americans are not getting the information they need to make an informed decision about who will best serve them as president, thanks to the corporate media and those they serve

What Is George Dubya hiding?

By Linda L. Starr and Bev Conover

June 4, 1999 | There have been so many revelations regarding the past scandals of the Bush family that this almost seems irrelevant. However, since George Dubya is apparently a presidential candidate, it is almost certain we should examine every aspect of his past to see if he is morally fit to become president.

We only question this since it seems to be of such paramount importance to the GOP that we had a salacious report on the sex life of our president blasted on every medium known to man. Having said that, we must now ask some rather curious questions ourselves.

Now why would George Dubya require a Texas driver's license with an entirely new number?  It was obtained on March 31, 1995, as was his wife's Laura Welch Bush's. His wife and daughters didn't need new numbers, nor did his famous parents -- former president and first lady, George H. and Barbara Pierce Bush -- who all would seem to be at as much risk security-wise. And by the way, doesn't Texas require renewal of a driver's license every four years on one's birthday? Did George Dubya have something in his past to hide to cause him to purge the old record and number? This seems especially confusing since his birthday is July 6, 1946, but he obtained his new number on March 31, 1995 as a renewal.

Due to this little anomaly, we thought perhaps we should check to see if this was a common practice for former governors of Texas, but no, they were not listed among the first four numbers previous to Dubya's. Now, in all fairness to Dubya we must ask why he would get a new number and not just assume it was to hide something in his past life. And why would he be given the nine-digit DL number 000000005? His wife's DL number is 005295107.

Is it at all possible it is innocent?  Of course, but if Bill Clinton had done this we would all be hearing about some misdeed he was covering up.

Which brings us to another subject on Dubya. During our search for the truth about Dubya's past, we came across something very interesting indeed! Another George W. Bush, white male, blue eyes, brown hair, but born on Oct. 17, 1964! What called our attention to this person, since there are so many Bushes living in Texas, this person's record was deleted on Dec. 24, 1998. Could there possibly be a connection between this person and Dubya that we as voters as yet are not aware of and why was his record deleted? For that matter, is it possible to have a living skeleton in one's closet from a wildly misspent youth? We shudder to think of the implications considering the havoc wreaked on the president based on lies about paternity of a child, and not even a name or physical description in common? We wonder what Dubya will say about these questions???

Getting answers to these questions is proving difficult, to say the least.

A woman at the Governor George W. Bush Presidential Exploratory Committee, who identified herself as Vanessa, said in response to the questions about Dubya's driver's license, "I don't know anything about it." Asked if the George W. Bush, whose last listed address is Houston, was related to Dubya, she responded, "Why do you need this information?"  Then she said to call the governor's press office.

The governor's press office referred us back to the exploratory committee. A Megan Moran there told us either a Karen Hughes or Mindy Tucker would call Online Journal directly; that both were too busy to come to the phone then.  Moran, despite assurances to the contrary, seemed concerned that the Houston George W. Bush was claiming to be Dubya's son.  She asked three times about that.

A call to the Houston phone number listed for the address shown in George W. Bush's Texas Driver's License Detail produced no results.

The woman who answered the phone refused to provide her name.

Asked if George W. Bush was there, she said, "I don't know that person." When it was pointed out to her that was the phone number that was listed for the address shown on his driver's license record, she again said she didn't know him.

Questioned about whether this George W. Bush was related to Gov. George W. Bush, she responded, "I don't know anything about that."

Mindy Tucker, a spokesman for Bush's Presidential Exploratory Committee, could provide no answers, either. She said she would check into the DL number matter. Asked if something may have been expunged from the governor's driving record, which could have resulted in the issuance of a new license -- even though that would not explain the low number -- she said she doubted that.

To the question of whether the governor was related to the Houston George W. Bush, Tucker said, "Not that I know of." She added, "It's probably just someone with the same name," but said she would check into that, too.