AUSTIN, Texas - Governor George W. Bush's campaign workers have concluded that no documents exist showing that he reported for duty as ordered in Alabama with the Texas Air National Guard in 1972. They are looking for people who served with him to verify his story that he did.
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Dan Bartlett, a spokesman for Bush's Republican presidential campaign, said he reviewed another 200-page packet of documents last week from the National Guard's records repository in Denver.
''I have read it, and there is nothing Earth-shattering,'' he said. The campaign was looking for payroll records that would show that Bush reported for duty with the guard in Montgomery, Ala., while working on the unsuccessful Senate campaign of former postmaster general Winton Blount in 1972.
The new records were mostly duplicates of documents obtained by the campaign from the Texas National Guard headquarters in Austin about 18 months ago. ''The official records were either lost or misplaced or not filled out correctly or not deposited. We are not sure,'' Bartlett said.
Roberto Trinidad, freedom of information officer for the Air Reserve Personnel Center in Denver, said the military does not retain the sort of records Bush campaign officials are seeking.
''His payroll records are not here,'' Trinidad said.
The military saves only the most important personnel records for 50 years. Less important documents, including check stubs, are destroyed.
Bush, campaigning in Tuscaloosa, Ala., on Friday, was asked at a news conference about his 1972 Alabama service. His commitment to the Texas Guard was adjusted to let him serve with the Alabama Guard during Blount's campaign.
''I was there on a temporary assignment and fulfilled my weekends at one period of time,'' Bush said. ''I made up some missed weekends.''
''I can't remember what I did, but I wasn't flying because they didn't have the same airplanes. I fulfilled my obligations,'' he said.
Expanding on Bush's remarks later, campaign spokesman Ari Fleischer quoted Bush as saying he did ''paper shuffling'' in Montgomery.
''He thinks it was desk work,'' said Fleischer.
Bartlett said the campaign is now focusing on trying to locate people who served with Bush in late 1972 in the 187th Tactical Reconnaissance Group in the Alabama capital.
The controversy began after The Boston Globe reported last month that from May 1972 to April 1973, there is no record that Bush attended drills at an Air National Guard Unit in Montgomery or reported for duty at Ellington Air Force Base near Houston.
William Turnipseed, the retired general who commanded the Alabama unit at the time, said last month that Bush never appeared for duty there.
Spokesman Bartlett said Bush remembers meeting Turnipseed and drilling in Montgomery.
''Governor Bush specifically remembers pulling duty in Alabama at the end of the campaign,'' Bartlett said.
Bob Stein, a political science professor at Rice University in Houston, said the gap in the military record will become an issue only if Bush's story changes.
Bill Clinton's avoidance of the draft did not hurt him in his 1992 election campaign against Bush's father, a decorated World War II veteran, so a gap in Bush's military records will not matter, Stein said.
''It is just not an issue, unless the very act of asking the question forces the candidate to deceive or to lie,'' he said.
