It's great when bloggers turn into journalists. The Bush military records flap has produced two first hand reports:

Oliver Willis located and interviewed Bush's "flight buddy" Bill Campenni:

I got in contact with Bill Campenni, known as the witness (possibly) to George W Bush's missing year. I asked him why he chose just now to finally come forth with his story and his reply was that "The stupidity reached a critical mass". He also says that he doesn't know why it's been so difficult for the national media to get in contact with him to verify his story (honestly, it was pretty easy to track him down), though he believes that stupidity has something to do with it.

When I asked him about being stationed in Pittsburgh, not Alabama and the fact that his story leads one to believe he was in grad school from '71-72 (the same years as the hole in Bush's record) and thus incapable of vouching for where the president was, his reply? An evasive "Nice Try".

Kevin Drum of Calpundit tracked down Bill Burkett and had a two hour conversation with him.

Basically, he confirmed his account and answered several of my questions about it. He says he accidentally overheard the conversation in General James' office about cleaning up George Bush's National Guard record and then discussed it with a friend who subsequently led him to the building where he saw 30 or 40 Bush documents lying in a trash can. He agrees that his "clarification" in 2000 went too far and says that he got scared by all the attention and backed off more than he should have. And he's quite frank about his run-ins with Dan Bartlett and the medical problems that he blames on retaliation by Bush's staff.

Kevin will be writing more tomorrow after he recovers from his cortisone shot, something we definitely can identify with--we hope it's not from overusing the computer.

We've only done one interview for TalkLeft--it was of Gary Hart, while he was considering running for President--you can read it The National Journal's rendition of it here.

It's a lot harder to interview a person than it is to be interviewed. We've been interviewed by journalists seeking legal analysis for the past 8 years on various topics, so we know first-hand how much tougher their job is. We'd be glad to try a stint at being an interviewer for a major publication, but, on the other hand, we're not sitting home scheming on how to make that happen.

All the more reason praise is due to Oliver and Kevin, who took it upon themselves to track down an interviewee, convince him to speak with them, and end up with a finished product we can all read about.

In our book, Oliver and Kevin have been raised to "way cool".