Barnes tells his story on 60 Minutes

By Candace Cooksey Fulton -- Brownwood Bulletin

In 1968, Bert V. Massey was working on Texas Speaker of the House Ben Barnes' staff.It was a position Massey said he is confident he got solely because Groner Pitts asked Barnes to give him the job.And though Massey did not see Barnes' interview Wednesday with Dan Rather on 60 Minutes, in which Barnes said he was "at last going to tell the whole story" of how he helped get George W. Bush into the Air National Guard, he has followed the story over the last few months.Barnes got his political start as a state representative out of Brownwood. Though he lost his bid for governor in 1972, and since has been out of the political limelight, some in Brownwood remember him as being the "rising star" of the time.
Stuart Coleman said he had forgotten the interview was to be aired on Wednesday and didn't watch the show. As to whether it was strings pulled by Barnes that got Bush into the National Guard, Coleman said he didn't want to guess."I really had no idea of Ben helping George W. Bush, if he helped him. I'm sure he might have helped a lot of people get into the National Guard if he had the power to do so," Coleman said. "A lot of men served in the National Guard and it was considered an honorable thing to do. They weren't deserters.
Deserters went to Canada."

source: http://www.brownwoodbulletin.com/articles/2004/09/10/news/news03.txt