| Proof that some people have waaaaaay too much time on their hands. |
In one respect, Bush's skeptics are right: Bush never did report to the Alabama Air National Guard. He may not even know where its barracks were. That's because during the period in question, Bush was serving his country elsewhere, in a clandestine military unit: the Special Undercover Missions Service (SUMS), an elite air-force agency specializing in national security and acts of espionage. Created by the Eisenhower administration in 1958 to respond to growing concerns about aerial reconnaissance by the Soviet Union, SUMS operated for twenty-one years in a shroud of secrecy. There is no offcial record of the organization; SUMS is said to have been terminated by President Jimmy Carter in 1979.
If the young Bush was looking for globe-trotting action, he could not have picked a better time to join SUMS. The agency was a favorite of then president Richard Nixon and his FBI chief, J. Edgar Hoover, who, before his death, in May 1972, regularly used SUMS operatives for missions both military and cultural. Under the Nixon White House, SUMS agents were dispatched to Vietnam, Russia, Korea, East Germany, China, and Israel. They were also assigned domestically, spying on individuals and groups believed to be detrimental to U.S. interests. Before Bush's arrival, SUMS is believed to have briefly infiltrated the Allman Brothers Band, the Students for a Democratic Society, and The Dick Cavett Show.
"For politicians, SUMS was a fantasy agency—they were autonomous, intelligent, and eager," says Prentiss. "If the White House wanted them to pop out of a hole in Cambodia, they could do that. But if they wanted them to ball Janis Joplin, they could do that too. Those guys could do anything." |