Tin Foil Hat Since the Bushies are flailing away at Kerry's record let's look at the latest on Bush's National Guard Records again, via Atrios. In Salon: The records released by the White House last month fail to answer that question, but they do add one compelling fact to the story -- namely, that Bush was not the only man in his unit to be suspended for failing to take the physical, and that someone else at Ellington Air Force Base in Houston was suspended for exactly the same reason at almost the same time. However, in the documents, the second man's name was inexplicably redacted -- raising new questions. Throughout the reams of documents released by the administration, standard practice was to allow each National Guardsman's name to be printed in full. Why did the White House make an exception in this case? Why would the Bush administration want to make sure this name in particular did not make it into the public eye? The White House declined to answer these questions. However, the same document that was redacted by the White House had been the subject of a Freedom of Information Act request filed by Marty Heidt [sic], who was investigating the story before the 2000 presidential election. In the same document that the White House selectively censored for release to the public, the name of the man who was also suspended with Bush is clearly printed. His name: James R. Bath Who is James R. Bath? "I discovered that the White House may not want to reveal his name because Bath, a Houston businessman who became friends with George W. Bush in the '70s, is the middleman in a story Bush doesn't particularly want told -- the saga of how the richest family in the world, the House of Saud, and its surrogates courted the Bush family. Bath was present at the birth of a relationship that would bring more than $1.4 billion in investments and contracts from the House of Saud to the House of Bush over more than 20 years. The blotting out of Bath's name indicates President Bush's extreme sensitivity about his family's extensive connections with the Saudis." ... A native of Natchitoches, La., Bath moved to Houston in 1965 at age 29 to join the Texas Air National Guard. In 1968, he was hired by Atlantic Aviation, a Delaware company that sells business aircraft, to open an office in Houston. He went on to become an airplane broker on his own. Sometime around 1974 -- Bath doesn't recall the exact date -- he was trying to sell an F-27 turboprop when he received a phone call that changed his life. The man on the phone was Salem bin Laden, heir to the great Saudi Binladin Group fortune. Then only about 25, Salem was also the older brother of Osama bin Laden, then 17. ... In the mid-'70s, the young Bush introduced Bath to his father, George H.W. Bush, a former U.S. ambassador to the United Nations, chairman of the Republican National Committee and, under President Ford, chief plenipotentiary of the U.S. mission to China. There was also Bath's duck-hunting buddy, James A. Baker III, then in his mid-40s, one of Houston's most powerful corporate attorneys and a true Texas patrician as a member of one of the oldest and wealthiest families in the city. Finally, there was John Connally, the former Democratic Texas governor who became secretary of the Treasury under Nixon in 1971 and had switched to the Republican Party. By 1976, bin Laden had appointed Bath to be his American business representative. Hmmm...