Bill Burkett was the CBS source in the Killian documents affair of 2004. He retired as a Lieutenant Colonel from the Texas Army National Guard. He claimed that in 1997, while outside the governor's office in Austin, he allegedly overheard a conversation about "wanting to bury George W. Bush's Vietnam service record." This has been disputed. When asked about Burkett's role in the controversy, David Van Os, Burkett's lawyer, responded with the hypothetical that someone may have reconstructed documents that the preparer believed existed in 1972 or 1973.