This lengthy analysis (via LGF) – actually quite fascinating and educational to read – should just about put an end to serious debate over whether we can now call the “Bush National Guard Documents” forgeries. Its author Joseph P. Newcomer quite literally wrote the book on modern computer laser printing and is one of the inventors of desktop publishing.
So moving on to the next question – who dunit? My guess is that many “Deep Throats” will be coming soon. The problem will be to cull them. A man of Rather’s, shall we say, “mildly arrogant behavior” will have made more than one enemy in his life. It’s payback time. The fingerpointing is about to begin.
Don’t look for the mainstream media to use any of its Watergate powers in this search for truth. Their response for the most part will be to soft-pedal this and move on. I have already heard one argument — that “Sixty Minutes” has been dismissible for a long time and no one believed them. Really? To most of America “Sixty Minutes” is the flagship of network news. If they go down five pegs, the rest will go down three. And their competitors know it. Interesting times indeed. Stay tuned.
Not all will go down 3 Roger. News Corporation’s Fox will go up a little. Viacom’s CBS unit is going to get smacked hardest and GE’s NBC should take a similiar hit for similiar reasons. In one sense this is Murdoch vs Redstone on a different playing field.
Upcoming book
Oh, by the way …
hah hah, beat you to it in your own blog.
That’s my revenge for thinking I was Catherine.
Although I think Catherine’s the one who should be worried….
Having watched the MSM in action the last few days, I wonder if they’re deluded enough to try a Reichstag fire.
Brooks
I do not think that this is a directed hit on Dan Rather, because USA Today has the extra two memos. This would tend to indicate that someone was trolling with the “evidence” and CBS bit. I would speculate someone wanted the smoking gun to finally hit Bush on this “AWOL” charge. The Dems have tried some four times up to this point without any success.
Ideas and accusations are beginning to fly, and it may be difficult for the blogs to pin this aspect down. Some have the credentials and resources (Powerline, Hugh Hewitt, NRO come to mind). However, it may be a job for the Old Media with New Media vetting. Open Sourceing I think you called it?
To believe that the MSM would do this is not a pipe dream. They smell blood in the water, as evidenced is the reporting by ABC, NYPost, etc. One of their competitors is down, and they will kick. And, if you start seeing CBS going after someone, you will have a very hot lead. They were fooled. They were tricked. They will come down with the vengence and ferocity of a jilted bride.
My mental picture of the forthcoming endgame looks something like this.
I do not think that this is a directed hit on Dan Rather, because USA Today has the extra two memos. This would tend to indicate that someone was trolling with the “evidence” and CBS bit. I would speculate someone wanted the smoking gun to finally hit Bush on this “AWOL” charge. The Dems have tried some four times up to this point without any success.
All the more reason to suspect Burkett.
I wish I could make sense out of the miscellaneous dates on the PDFs ‘Fresh Air’ found, though. I keep thinking there’s something deep there.
Roger says:
If they go down five pegs, the rest will go down three.
Dan The Man has been in the biz long enough to know where -all- the bodies are buried. He’s just the type, when cornered, to finally snarl: “Well, if that’s the way it is, then you SOBs are gonna go down with me!” Now, it’s going to take some tectonic movement of corporate cojones to eject Dan’l from his Black Rock office suite. What is CBS’ pain threshold?
And if he goes, the 60 Minutes franchise goes through the meat-grinder: Good-bye Morley. Good-bye Mikey. Good-bye Andy. Closed for renovation.
We can also now confidently assume that the fraud was perpetuated by a prominent Democrat. Letís face some cold reality—Dan Rather would not hesitate to give up the name
if it were somebody like Karl Rove! This is CYA time. It makes no sense for him to protect a Republican operative. No, this scoundrel is not only likely a Kerry supporter—but probably a high profile one. Only somebody ensconced within the Democrat establishment could have persuaded Rather to go out on a limb. Pat Caddell suspects the worse, and I see no reason to disagree.
No professional journalistic organization would run a story like this on the basis of the evidence CBS had, without verification. Xeroxes wouldn’t do it, they would insist on at least inspecting the originals, if not on actually taking them into their own possession, particularly since the documents mysteriously support previously discredited witnessed with a history literally decades’ worth of shady dealings and erratic behavior, Burkett and Barnes. Neither would a professional journalistic organization accept a “confirmation” of such documents by someone who hadn’t even seen them, Hodges.
Yet CBS is saying they did exactly that.
This implies an extraordinary state of mind among the decision makers at CBS News, or at least in Dan Rather. I can think of only two states of mind that would apply, one embarrassing but not necessarily fatal to Rather and CBS; the other fatal.
The one is, ‘jeez we were stupid, but we believed XXX when XXX passed us these documents.’ The question then becomes. who could Karl Rove or the Pentagon get to who would engender that level of trust in a cynical old reporter like Dan Rather? Who could the Bushies use to bait that honey trap so convincingly?
The odds are Rove et al simply couldn’t do that. Rather’s daughter has been mentioned as a possible conduit for the documents, but again, who would be a credible source to her? Burkett and Barnes? Both men are far too well known on the Texas scene; that would raise too many flags for Rather. Plus, if it was Burkett or Barnes, CBS could throw them over with no greater consequences than a shamefaced apology.
The most credible source that could inspire such acceptance, it seems to me, is the Kerry camp itself. We already have an allegation to that effect published in The American Spectator, attributed to a CBS producer. It is far easier to believe Rather could convince himself that the Kerry campaign and the Democratic Party were not prepared to commit suicide by passing off fake documents. This explanation still forces CBS to concede they’ve behaved in a credulous and unprofessional ó but not actively malicious ó manner.
The other explanation, sadly, the one I give the greater credence to, is that Dan Rather knew the documents were questionable and simply didn’t care. He wanted Bush out of office so badly that he didn’t hesitate to abandon his own professed journalistic ethics. And he did not understand the new media and the new environment he was playing in. He may have thought he would at worst inspire Nixonesque sputterings and rants from the White House; instead the White House has remained silent and Rather has run onto a thornbush, not of pajama-clad cellar-dwelling recluses, but a nationwide network of lawyers, computer professionals and veterans who were able to do in mere hours the research CBS didn’t bother with and completely discredit Rather’s amateurish “evidence.” Unfortunately, this argument requires actual malice on Rather’s part, a willingness to do or say anything to unseat George W. Bush that will forever taint any claims CBS NEws may have to journalistic integry.
ìAnd if he goes, the 60 Minutes franchise goes through the meat-grinder: Good-bye Morley. Good-bye Mikey. Good-bye Andy. Closed for renovation.î
Nope, Morley, Mike, and Andy will have nothing to worry about. Dan Rather will be the one to take the fall. Is hari-kari legal in the United States? Sixty Minutes is far too profitable for CBS to pull the plug. We should never overlook the fact that this network has investors who are concerned about the bottom line. There will, however, be some major changes. And yes, they should be for the good.
I know we (the RLS community) have asked this before, but given the way this whole affair is unfolding: What, if any, are the legal implications? Would love to hear from our resident lawyers/JDs
one thing that would make this even sweeter is if Peter Jennings forged the docs…
ìWhat, if any, are the legal implications?î
I would think that at least a misdemeanor has been committed. We are no longer talking about a First Amendment Issue—but a crime. It is well within reason to encourage our legal authorities to begin an investigation. CBS has neither a legal nor a moral reason to hide the name(s) of the perpetrators.
The other networks are covering this in a tentative way. I watched NBC News tonight and they talked the forgery angle and spent almost all of the time talking Hodges. Now Hodges is relevant to the story regarding CBS’ misrepresenting what he said, but he’s not a document expert. The other parts of MSM are only sticking toes in at this point.
One of the strange things about this is that someone would go to the trouble to do a forgery of this. If the documents were true it would be embarrassing for Bush but hardly a deal closer. It would only reinforce the Bushitler crowd and not much more. It would show that the tail end of his service was less than admirable and occurred during a time in his life when he’s basically admitted he drank like a fish. We already know this. He’s been president for three and half years; surely that’s plenty enough information for people to base their judgment of Bush on.
Kerry’s Cambodian misadventures are the result of repeated tall tales and used for the purpose of influencing US foreign policy. Much more serious than glossing over this part of Bush’s Guard record in his autobiography.
So was this stuff created as part of some other coordinated effort, with other shoes planned to drop in September and October? Or are some Kerry supporters afraid he’s tanking so badly that all they can think to do is make sure the base gets out to vote? Because by itself Memorather could never have achieved much more than that and now is making the Evan Thomas crowd look riduclous.
Rather, I believe, thought he was only getting a paper cut late last week. But cut after cut keeps coming. Pretty soon you’re really losing a lot of blood. Imagine that: Rather killed by a barrage of paper cuts.
Is hari-kari legal in the United States?
No, but approaches to punishment have not been very successful.
The death penalty has been suggested ….
Did the departure of Don Hewitt and his lack of oversight contribute to this problem? Thanks for the link to Dr. Newcomer, he answered several niggling questions that I had. I have been in the computer industry – and the associated print output – since 1963.
BTW, Richard, all I can say is “I wish I’d have written that”.
All: since I am a recovering engineer, I lapse back into the world of Hudson’s Manuals and slide rules. But: do any of us realize how fast information is appearing? It does boggle the mind.
Remember there is a lot of money in the pot already. Soros, MoveOn, DNC, etc. have a lot of money and power hinging on the outcome of the election. There are too many interests to properly sort. However it would seem handy that the connection would be related to Texas in some respect. It pulls in Rather and CBS. It has the patina of truth that, like a black hole, pulls the reporters toward natural desires for a big story that may render the race competitive.
Who dunit? This is purely circumstantial but the stench of the great Massachusetts slackjaw himself is all over this.
Why? Timing for one. This is one piece of a smear campaign orchestrated by the Kerry camp to discredit the President’s National Guard service. The initial shot (of the most recent volley) was fired last Thursday by the slackjaw in the Midnight Whine in Ohio following the President’s acceptance speech at the RNC.
Another reason is that the artless stupidity of the forgeries is in character with Kerry’s past behavior. One of the forgeries refers to pressure exerted on Killian by Colonel Straudt. Problem is that Straudt was retired prior to the date on the memo. Does that remind anyone of the Christmas in Cambodia fantasy that was seared – seared into Kerry’s feeble mind?
It is also likely that Kerry has prior experience with manipulating military documents. How else did he receive his first Purple Heart over the rejection of his commanding officer and the negative recommendations of the mission C.O. (ret. Admiral Richard Schachte) and the treating physician, Dr. Louis Letson? And how did a phony Silver Star commendation from Reagan’s Secretary of the Navy, John Lehmann wind up on the slackjaw’s website? (Lehmann denies writing it.) There’s also a matter of a “V” on said Silver Star. The forgeries of the President’s records are not outside of that pattern.
We should be asking this question about the forgeries, “what did Kerry know and when did he know it?” If the shoe were on the other foot, the MSM would be all over the Bush Campaign pointing fingers, making accusations, and demanding the most dire consequences. And CBS’ egomaniacal curmudgeon, Dan Rather, would be leading the charge.
Roger _ “the flagship of network news….” Since when do clown cars have flagships?
Barry Dauphin óHodges is getting the coverage because he’s a talking head and doesn’t need much explaining by the soi-disant TV “reporters.”
And it doesn’t surprise me at all that the Kerryistas have taken this tack. You have to understand, they don’t think “the people” disagree with them, except for the obviously evil ones like us. They think the poor benighted masses just don’t know any better, and as soon as the truth is shouted at them in the streets of Manhattan, they’ll come right around.
It’s like Che Guevara, sneaking into Bolivia from Cuba to mobilize the peasants against foreign influences and wondering why the message wasn’t taking…
I agree with those commenters above who think that this was supposed to be the beginning of a swipe at the President’s National Guard service, as a mirror and nullifier of sorts to the Swift Boat Vets onslaught. Here are some reasons why:
1. Almost immediately after the story that utilized the forged docs broke, at least one paper moved on to doing a story about how pissed-off current National Guard members were about the supposed shirking of duties by Bush.
2. Somewhere, on some other blog which I don’t recall off the top of my head, someone had reproduced an email or letter from a 60 Minutes producer. She was looking for disgruntled military types who could help with an upcoming story about the lack of supplies and equipment. One of the things that she specifically wanted was information supporting the thesis that the National Guard was being particularly screwed, as compared to other parts of the military.
3. Kerry is slated to speak in front of a National Guard assemblage — in October, I think. My first reaction to hearing this was, is he insane? But, think about it, if this forged-doc smear had gone as planned, that might have been a pretty smart move. I’ll be interested to see if he cancels.
Whodunnit?
Lots of speculation focusing on Bill Burkett.
Clinton conspiracy theory time! Is this a result of Clinton people within the Democratic Party (McAuliffe – who’s been incompetent since the beginning…seemingly – Lehane, others…) intentionally sabotaging Kerry to engineer either a Kerry loss for a Hillary run in ’08, or a cavalry to the rescue bid by Hillary this time out? (Is it even possible to pull a candidate switch this close to the election?)
Once you jump to this level of speculation based on no evidence at all, the imagination can invent all manner of fun and interesting scenarios!
Deus ex Macrame –
1. That was an AP feed.
2. That was Cap’n Ed Morrisey
3. Oh, I’d like to see him show up… you know how many Guardsmen have been in Iraq? So Kerry can insult Guard duty as a draft dodge, or he can insult their service in the Saddam Excavation…
Personally, I believe that Terry McCauliffe was deeply involved. His behavior before CBS’s bombshell was suspicious (he said that everyone would see that Bush didn’t meet his guard obligations) and his behavior as soon as the documents were questioned was the behavior of a child when confronted with his misdeeds–”I didn’t do it–Karl Rove did it”. I think we have plenty of evidence that his arrogance and hatred toward the President (e.g., that he was “AWOL” and a “deserter”) has taken him out of the bounds of appropriate behavior and there is no question in my mind that he was involved somehow, along possibly with Burkett and Moore.
David Thomson
What, in a nutshell, is Caddell’s latest?
Barry Dauphin and Right Wing Professor
I find your comments about Kerry’s involvement intersting. I’ve had a hard time understanding how Kerry gets to play these games with Bush’s record, when he hasn’t signed the DD180 to go completely above-board with his own.
Any of the military-types around
I’m ignorant about UCMJ. Might anything Kerry did between his leaving active duty and departing reserve status qualify as a UCMJ violation? Might Kerry have a less-than-honorable discharge?
what’s with that susan estrich column where she states that the dems need to play dirty…which now seems to have vanished…
should just about put an end to serious debate over whether we can now call the “Bush National Guard Documents” forgeries
Was there serious debate about that?
“Having watched the MSM in action the last few days, I wonder if they’re deluded enough to try a Reichstag fire.
Brooks”
I think they’ve already started their first one, but their pajamas are the only things burning right now.
Seriously, I am troubled by the current DNC line – so what if they’re forgeries, the story they tell is part of the “bigger truth” (whatever that is). Going down that road is truly a formula for tearing this country apart. If forgeries are somehow OK (but not worth admitting to) then really anything, no matter how corrupt, goes.
Just think how this could have been handled – on Friday CBS says ‘Oops, we made a big mistake. We apologize to the President and to our viewers.’ The story would have died very quickly. Now, however as long as CBS continues to dig its heels in, one can only expect similiar (although perhaps more cleverly done) conduct from them, and perhaps others in the Democratic media, which leaves the country truly polarized, not about partisan politics, but about the need for integrity in our lives. And with a great number of us will be extremely angry to say the least.
I do fear another ‘Reichstag fire’ from somewhere in the Democratic media. For that reason I really wish President Bush would make an announcement on this – expressing his disappointment at CBS’s refusal to acknowledge their ‘mistake’, and perhaps mentioning in passing that as Gary Killian (sp) said, he did volunter to go to Vietnam for Operation Palace (not sure that’s the correct name), but couldn’t because his type of planes weren’t needed (or whatever the reason was).
found the estrich column…
Lies move Democrats to dig up dirt
SUSAN ESTRICH
My Democratic friends are mad as hell, and they aren’t going to take it any more.
…
What do you do, Democrats keep asking each other.
The answer is not pretty, but everyone knows what it is.
The trouble with Democrats, traditionally, is that we’re not mean enough. Too much is at stake to play by Dukakis’ rules and lose again. That is the conclusion Democrats have reached. So watch out. Millions of dollars will be on the table. And there are plenty of choices for what to spend it on.
…
Or how about Dead Texans for Truth, highlighting those who served in Vietnam instead of the privileged draft-dodging president, and ended up as names on the wall instead of members of the Air National Guard.
Or maybe it will be Texas National Guardsmen for Truth, who can explain exactly what George W. Bush was doing while John Kerry was putting his life on the line. Perhaps with money on the table, or investigators on their trail, we will learn just what kind of wild and crazy things the president was doing while Kerry was saving a man’s life, facing enemy fire and serving his country.
…
Are you shocked? Remember Dukakis? Now he teaches at Northeastern University. John Kerry has been very fair in dealing with the Swift Boat charges. That’s why so many of my Democrat friends have decided to stop talking to the campaign, and start putting money together independently.
The arrogant little Republican boys who strutted around New York this week, claiming that they have this one won, would do well to take a step back. It could be a long and ugly road to November.
http://www.myrtlebeachonline.com/mld/sunnews/news/opinion/9580059.htm?template=contentModules/printstory.jsp
Bob T ó Well, if he was still a reservist when he met with the North Vietnamese and if he was reservist when he was still with VVAW while they were shaking down POW families, then yes, he would absolutely be subject to prosecution.
Heck, if even one of his Purple Hearts is disallowed, he could be charged with abandoning his post in the face of the enemy,,,
As far as anything else goes, a serving officer is not supposed to engage in political activity in his status as a serving officer, so by appearing before the Senate in uniform with his medals, I suppose he could be charged for that, and for his throwing-the-medals demonstration…
Personally, I’d settle for having him work off his eight remaining months of ‘Nam duty swabbing decks as a Seaman 1st…
The MSM fabricated “ties” between the SBVs and the Bush campaign, but ignores the obvious links between the DNC and the CBS forgeries. Barnes alone is an obvious link.
Now, Drudge reports that the DNC is proceeding with a major ad buy that effectually calls Bush a deserter, further proving that Michael Moore has penetrated the entire party. And the MSM cheers the DNC on! The RNC or Bush never published ads questioning Kerry’s service or his anti-American post-war conduct. The DNC and Kerry are going nuclear, with the MSM’s utmost support.
This entire campaign is maddening to anyone that simply wants to confront and defeat the islamofascist menace.
When it comes to the Democrats complaining about Republicans playing dirty, they’re in the position of the disgruntled postal worker standing on a pile of his coworker’s dead bodies and screaming, “see what you made me do?”
OK, its speculation time. Here is mine. I hope that I have refrained from introducing any tinfoil hat logic here.
I think that this was coordinated effort with Burkett and Barnes in the middle. First of all you have Barnes who has time line difficulties of the same nature that are shown in the CYA memo. That is, he claims that he helped Bush senior get into the Guard using his position of Lt Gov of Texas. Of course we all now know that GWB entered the Guard a year before Barnes became Lt Gov. Barnes was in Geneva at the time. We also know that the alledged CYA memo claimed that Killian was under pressure from Col Staudt in 1973. Staudt had retired 18 months earlier. So we have the same kind of made up story coming from Barnes as the forged memo from Killian.
So who is backing Barnes? “Texans for Truth” is a 527 connected to Moveon.org. They apparently received money and serves from Moveon.org. We also know that Moveon.org has been the prime purveyor of the Deserter Meme. What we have is Barnes marketing a Moveon.org meme. George Soros is big funder of Moveon.org. There are a number of stories about Soros playing the intel games that were going on in the Balkans in the 1990s. LGEN Sir Michael Rose, the last UN Peacekeeping CO in Bosnia has suspicions that Soros was working with the CIA. There also have been suspicions that Soros worked for the KGB during the cold war. I believe that Soros knows how to play disinformation games.
What is the relationship to the DNC? We know that there is an overlap between Moveon.org and the DNC. I think McCauliff is witting of the forgeries. He has established several cutouts to isolate Moveon.org coordinated activities from the Kerry campaign. Remember, McCauliff was in the thick of the Clinton era campaign finance money laundering operations. You can bet that he knows his way around the McCain-Feingold restrictions.
Is Kerry witting of the fraud? No, McCauliff is smart enough to let Kerry know what is coming down the road without having to tell Kerry that the documents are fraudulent. By fooling Kerry into thinking that the documents are authentic both Kerry and Edwards would come across a more sincere. I donít buy the deliberate sabotage angle. I think McCauliff thought he had a winner here.
Finally, where is CBS News in all of this? CBS had to know that these documents were fake. Maybe Rather was out of the loop for the same reasons that McCauliff left Kerry out. It would enhance the credibility of the report. The reason I believe CBS was in on it is because of their verification process. They told Hodges that they had handwritten notes and then misquoted him. Same thing with the documents in Boston. If CBS thought they were real they would have had no trouble showing to Hodges.
they know they have no choice now but to keep the hits coming fast and furious, there will be no time to dwell on what is bogus, just keep throwing mud, and a certain amount will stick…and here it comes:
DNC TO LAUNCH FRESH ATTACK ON BUSH GUARD DUTY: WILL RAISE QUESTIONS ABOUT 1978 CAMPAIGN LIT
**Exclusive**
Faster than a CBS eye can blink, dogged Dems are set to take to the airwaves anew hoping to keep questions about President Bush’s National Guard duty in play, the DRUDGE REPORT has learned.
Candidate Kerry apparently has rejected former President Clinton’s advice not to get further locked in a 2004 Vietnam quagmire.
“George W. Bush’s campaign literature claimed that he ‘served in the U.S. Air Force.’ The only problem? He didn’t,” slams a new DNC press release set for distribution.
Dems will attempt to increase the heat on Bush ahead of his planned Tuesday address before The National Guard Association gathering in Las Vegas.
http://www.drudgereport.com/dnc77.htm
Sunday Images:
Sy Hersh and Bob Woodward were on Russert this AM. Hersh pimps new book on Abu Ghraib. Woodward refused an interview with Kerry to find out exactly and in detail what he, as president, would do in Iraq and this, according to Woodward, is a major vulnerability for Kerry.
C Span televises the anti Kerry veterans protest on the Mall in Washington live. These guys lambast Kerry and the image of their outrage is disseminated across this country. A couple of points.
- C Span is a highly respected resource, well watched around the country. People have a deep sense of pride in it.
- This event does not play as a Bush generated event, this is a protest by Viet vets who waited for this opportunity to pay back Kerry. The president’s name is hardly mentioned.
- This event will play well out in the hinterlands. People watch and this will have its effect.
- Kerry is the issue. He is characterized as bringing shame to the Vietnam War effort.
The power of imagery can not be understated in this campaign. The network shots show the president in his blue shirt, tie off, barging on stage, grasping hands, bent over the lectern talking passionately about terrorism.
The War Hero mumbles with a micro in his mouth – like a rock star – repeating the same tired old saws America has heard for ten months in the same old Ivy League lock jaw tones.
Marshall McLuhan wrote about the medium being the message; the president is hot, the War Hero is icy.
While I am tempted to point the finger at McAuliffe and Estrich or even John Kerry himself I have to wonder if the nature of the memos does not preclude them.
Wouldn’t they make sure a better job was done? Maybe even have some kind of original available for experts to see? I heard some people say that they believe there is more evidence against Bush and that will come out. But with each passing day that seems more unlikely.
I think Bush bashing has turned into a growth industry, just look at book stores and movies. I think somebody with connections conned somebody at CBS who compounded his or her initial mistake by following it up with a bigger one: they posted the damn things.
I think this has to be the work of a desparate young Bush hater. Probably associated with one of the sleazy Soros funded organizations.
I think if an adult higher up in the food chain was responsible, the forgeries would have been more accurate (use a typewriter or at least inspect some period documents and choose a font that is close). Even if it was Rove (unlikely) he would have made good forgeries so that he would he sure CBS would take the bait while holding something that would prove them false as soon as he had sucked as many as possible into his trap.
As pointed out elsewere on this thread, 60 minutes was trolling for disgruntled national guardsmen (through moveon.org I think). I bet they were trolling for Bush AWOL dirt through the same organization and happily accepted documents produced by this person since they supported the conclusion they had already concluded was true.
insatty:
I guess they can spend their money however they want but there are a lot of Dems in Washington that did not fight in Viet Nam. Making this about Bush being a deserter is silly. Nobody believes that except for a few partisan Dems that seem to be too stupid to know that military background might be a general subject their guy wants to avoid.
Besides that it makes them look like they are working with people they should keep distance from right now.
David Thomson
Have people decided it’s not Rather’s daughter?
From Instapundit.com ó John Steele emails from Palo Alto:
CBS is full of smart people. It makes no sense to say they’re not stalling because they believe these things are genuine. They know what we all know. They are stalling to get their ducks in a row:
They are speaking to lawyers to see if a crime has been committed.
They are speaking to lawyers to see if they can/must/may disclose the source.
They are speaking to lawyers to see if they must make disclosure in their SEC filings.
They are speaking internally to see who will resign.
They are speaking internally to see how they will word their retraction.
All that takes time. That is why CBS hasn’t updated anything on this for too long. That is why their intitial counter-attacks (e.g., the first version of Times New Roman was invented in 1931), which are obviously inadequate, aren’t being buttressed by anything new.
As a news organization and as a publicly traded company, they can’t issue half-truths once they suspect what really happened. They are getting ready to make all their announcements at once.
Within 48 hours, CBS will come clean with a noise rivaling the disappearance of Krakatoa.
Is this true? I don’t know. What say we keep the pressure on with postings and e-mails until we see…
max
Going down that road is a formula for losing.
Richard M
That was a big part of the Jayson Blair story.
After Haines wrote his mea culpa about having grown up in the South & feeling guilty about black people, the TIMES folks had to consider the legal ramifications of a public statement, by the editor, that he had almost certainly discriminated against reporters of every other race.
From some of the reports I read at the time, it sounded as if the legal ramifications alone made it certain Blair & C. had to go.
CBS still calls them:
documents that were provided by unimpeachable sources.
What in the world would it take for a source to be that solid? They aren’t even trying to hedge. How could they possibly feel so confident?
But then again:
unimpeachable
a. Not impeachable; not to be called in question; exempt from liability to accusation; free from stain, guilt, or fault; irreproachable; blameless;
Maybe it’s the “not to be called into question” part they are thinking of, along with the exemption from accusation.
Opposition research trash comes over the transom to news organizations every hour of every day. It has to be relatively believable to hold someone’s attention. If it’s believable it is then vetted. If it’s big the vetting is generally pretty thorough because the difference in reputation between CBS (yesterday) and the National Enquirer is worth quite a bit of money.
What level of personal assurance would an anchor have to have in order to override the vetting process? Who would carry that kind of weight with Rather?
The list that Richard posted from Instapundit is probably close to reality. The item lacking is the decision on whether the source will be burned.
The electoral process of the United States has been compromised by the perpetuation of a forgery based fraud. It appears that the Democrat Party is going to continue to pursue a policy of defamation at least partially based upon forged records. Should they choose to do so they have elected to commit political suicide.
Who gave Rather the assurance and where are they placed in the Democrat campaign?
BobT
Re: UCMJ violation?
According to ìUnfit for Commandî (Swifty book)
Feb 18, 1966 ñ Enlisted as an OCSA (E-2) USNR (inactive)
Aug 19, 1966 ñ Commenced active duty as an OCIU2 (E-5)
Dec 15, 1966 ñ Honorably discharged as an OCIU2 to accept commission in US Naval Reserve
Dec 16, 1966 ñ Accepted commission, Ensign, US Naval Reserve, continued active duty
[...]
Jan 3, 1970 ñ Released from active duty, transferred to the Naval Reserve (inactive)
Jul 1, 1972 ñ Transferred to the Standby Reserve (inactive)
Feb 16, 1978 ñ Honorably discharged from the US Naval Reserve as a Leiutenant (0-3)
Catherine
The “so what if they’re forgeries” caused me to rant even longer then usual in the “Will Rather Be the Next OJ?” thread. This relly struck a nerve quite frankly. In fact I have done what I rarely do, I spent a couple of days going onto liberal blogs and let them have it bigtime, yes I picked some fights but remained respectful so I avoided the title “troll”. Of course this was also because I gave long issues based responses with detail on policy and fact not emotion. They did run out of talking points and resorted to the usual na-na-na gothca name calling games. They sure behaved like trolls on their home turf which I found desperate and surprising. Anyway if you care to hear more attitude from me on this then the afore mentioned thread is where you will find it.
RLS: “…”Deep Throats” will be coming soon. The problem will be to cull them.”
Ok… so how do “we” cull them? I mean honestly, I hope this doesn’t sound too dramatic, but CBS has now positioned itself as an unarguable enemy of the American people and the health of our democracy.
Does anybody disagree??? Let’s call a duck a duck, and let’s not let them get away with it– the question is how?
I too hope we hear from the legal eagles… Are these memos “slander”? The usual big problem with prosecuting slander, I believe, is the part about *proving malice*; in this case, that’s a no-brainer.
Bush’s status as a public figure is another trip– but this clearly is not “parody” or any of those similar excuses..?
I ask merely because I wonder if someone could not take up a case on behalf of the Bush campaign to force CBS to reveal the name of the criminal, er, I mean, the “source”..?
Guess I’m ranting; sorry, feeling frustrated with the other alphabet soup stations. I just don’t understand their half-hearted exposure.
Does anybody disagree???
No. This is the heart of Open Society CBS is attacking.
“Going down that road is a formula for losing.”
Catherine
I certainly hope you’re correct.
“John Steele emails from Palo Alto”
I also very much hope he’s correct, but my fear is that the “chain of custody” (which CBS has so far completely stonewalled on) (and on which the blogosphere has not given enough thought to imo) is non-existent for the period from 1973 through the summer of 2004 and that the source for the forgeries is so high up in the DNC and/or Kerry campaign that CBS will continue to stonewall because to otherwise would be to destroy (deseverdly so imo) the Democratic Party for at least the next 5 years.
Which means we will have to everything we can to keep the pressure on until CBS does cave in.
Last post for me today:
http://www.intellectualconservative.com/article3784.html
This HOT article has a Killian discharge request that is monospaces!
Good review of the story as well.
One thing that I’m certain of is that the person peddling the memos in the first place knew that they were forged. I assume the peddler came from the democratic side of the spectrum. Then I ask, assuming that the peddler is not an idiot (the only weak assumption here, but not very weak), then who did the peddler really seek to harm/help? Who is harmed? Kerry immediately. Who is helped? Bush immediately and Hillary Clinton distantly.
A couple of months ago I hpothesized in one of these threads that Hillary, if she’d tried her best, could she have ended up any better than how the DNC convention fared? I said that the Clinton’s couldn’t be that slick, right?
They can’t be, right?
Terrye
In reality it has to do with the weight they give to Party affiliation. For instance in 2000 Democrats had a 4% advantage in Party registration among likely voters. If for instance Zogby uses that model then he could be off because I believe there has been a shift to the Republicans, despite the MSM’s talk of Kerry taking on ex-Bush supporters. Over playing that shift could cause a reverse inconsistency in the numbers. In truth the tricky part of polling is getting accurate representations of party affiliation. Therein I would bet lay the possible variations. One thing is clear there has been a shift to Bush’s favor of at least 3-5 points in my opinion. Things will tighten up a bit and I believe mostly stay under the radar until the last few days of the campaign unless of course monstrous scandals metastasize. (The debates being an exception).
–And if he goes, the 60 Minutes franchise goes through the meat-grinder: Good-bye Morley. Good-bye Mikey. Good-bye Andy. Closed for renovation.–
That’s a feature, not a bug.
So the DNC is going launch blistering attack ads claiming that, gasp! horror! Bush wasn’t in the Air Force! Yeah, that’ll swing them votes, all right.
Honestly, can they get any sillier? We’re in the middle of a war for the preservation of western civilization and we’re supposed to care that some piece of campaign literature claimed Bush was in the Air Force, when he was only in the Air National Guard. All it is going to accomplish is to make people even more convinced that Kerry just doesn’t have the gravitas, or even the good sense, to be POTUS.
And since it’s a DNC ad doesn’t Kerry have to say, “I’m John Kerry and I approve of this message”?
It seems to me that the ads the Dems plan on running about Bush’ s National Guard service suggest two things. First higher ups in the DNC were aware of or involved with these memos. The ads are part of an attack planned prior to the news reports. Ads aren’t created impulsively out of thiin air. Estrich may not be responsible for the memos, but she knows who is. It would be nice if they ran ads the day that CBS apologizes and possibly cans Dan.
Second it strongly suggests that Dems are afraid that too many Bush haters might sit out the election. These kinds of ads should not persuade many fence sitters but are designed to play to the emotions of those who have already made up their minds.
Beldar and Bainbridge have legal particulars. Both are pretty sure that a shareholders suit would not work.
I participated in the Kerry Lied rally for Vietnam Veterans today in DC.
For some reason, Dan Rather’s name came up – loud boos. Rather was slightly less unpopular with this crowd than Kerry, who was universally despised.
It was a good rally. Good feelings. Remembrances. Lots of graying vets… I was trying to imagine them 35 years ago. I wonder if there will ever be another rally of Vietnam Vets.
We had John O’Neill there – he gave a good talk, and later was signing books – a very, very nice guy. Some other swifties were present also.
It’s good it was on CSPAN live.
Oddly, there were several infiltrators who were members of VVAW – still ticking after all these years. Rolling Thunder removed them.
This is one group that is nationwide and angry at Kerry, and will continue to work against him.
Dan done it. There are many lefty moonbat sources for the incredibly inept forgeries, and no doubt there is a fascinating expose waiting to be written about how silly moonbat forgeries made it onto Dan Rather’s desk. And no doubt, Dan knows the story. Are Terry McAwful et al complicit? Probably. We’ll find out soon enough.
But the truly seismic shift in the media tectonics that I think will follow all track back to Gunga Dan’s incredibly poor judgment.
Dan aired known forgeries to support a blatantly partisan position. He aired them as news. Only a child could believe that he was hoaxed given the totally bogus evidence.
‘Twas Dan that killed the MSM. Said more accurately, ‘Twas Dan that drove a stake into the already rotting corpses of the Alphabets.
Kerry’s lies to the Senate affect the war on terror. It is part of why there are people overseas (including those overseas in their hearts) who are so quick to assume that US forces are, well, everything critics accuse them to be. Back in the Bad Old Days, Moscow pushed this stuff hard.
I had someone from a former Warsaw Pact country bring it up in an email exchange we were having after she saw Apocalypse Now. This was a while ago, and she had no idea who Kerry was, or that he was even currently a Senator. So when we have people taking for granted how brutal we are, John Kerry is one we can thank for it.
Just posted this at the Belmont Club. Thought it might be of interest here. Also Allah is linking to an excellent post on LGF which appears to the definitive piece that the CBS document is a forgery:
http://www.flounder.com/bush.htm
*****
Allah in the House suggests we all write CBS and the Boston Globe:
http://www.allahpundit.com/archives/000944.html
Here’s my stab at it:
*****
POOR WALTER CRONKITE, “And that’s the way it is Sept. 11, 2004.”
CBS News and the Boston Globe,
You got STUFFED!!
If you want to run something relevant in the 21st Century try doing something on the Mad Mullahs of Iran going nuclear soon and also think it’s ok to hang a sixteen year-old girl.
Put the TANG issue to bed you got stuffed. People are not interested in hearing about it anymore. The issue is who will lead the country on the War On Islamofascism and wipe this failed Ideology of hate and murder from the face of the earth.
See my post over on Roger L. Simon’s blog site. BTW the Internet and the Blogosphere have made the MSM irrelevant.
http://www.rogerlsimon.com/mt-archives/2004/09/dept_of_dont_ge.php#c14394
Ron Wright
# posted by Rocket : 4:02 AM
I’m inclined to agree that Dan done it. Wasn’t he embarrassed on air one time by Bush 41. Maybe he has other personal motives. He has gone strange from time to time in the past.
Ooophs. The link on Allahpundit is the same thing Mr. Simon is linking to at the beginning of this thread.
Ron Wright
The memo does carry an air of McAuliffe. Oh, how the presence of Terry McAuliffe makes me grow misty eyed and pine for the lofty ethical standards of used car salesmen. Terry has miles and miles to climb before he could enter even that territory.
Powerline just outed another supposed CBS “witness”, the mysterious Robert Strong.
If we can get both McAuliffe and Rather, you don’t have to get me anything for Christmas or my birthday.
McAuliffe has been unbelivable, even before this. I guess the crazy wing of the party controlling so much infected hime. Has he always been like this?
But could he be the source Rather insists is “unimpeachable”?
Jerry, I like your scenario, but there’s a hole: If Soros is so savvy about covert ops, why were the forgeries so clumsy? As someone said on another thread, they must have been made by some 20-something who had not only never seen a typewriter in his life, but who didn’t care about acronyms, AF standards, dates, or any of the rest of it.
Folks, I don’t think Susan Estrich would have been willing to know anything about the active forgery — she’s a law professor, and I’d bet getting disbarred, and potentially imprisoned as an accessory before the fact would screw up that gig big time.
On the other hand, the “time to play dirty” column — and the mysterious way that the archives have disappeared from Creator’s Syndicate — certainly suggest that she was aware that people wre about to take steps that sound, well, less than ethical. (Honestly, did she have to throw in that part about people putting together untraceable money? That was just flat stupid.)
I’d love to see someone ask her “what did you know, and when did you know it?”
In the meantime, though — Jerry, John Moore, other real military folks on this Drudge story: I just read Bush’s DD214 and other personnel file material on the USA Today site, and it appears to confirm what I thought I remembered anyway, which was that when you’re commissioned in the Air Guard, you’re also commissioned in the USAF Reserve, and that while you’re AD you’re billeted and treated as a Researve officer; there’s no distinction between a “regular Reserve” officer on AD and and Air Guard officer who is on AD.
If I’m correct, then the assertion that Bush served in the Air Force would certainly be correct for the two years or so of AD he did. No?
Whoa, guys –
A spokeswoman for the CBS anchor Dan Rather, Kim Akhtar, said that Mr. Hodges had declined to appear on camera. As a result, Ms. Akhtar said, he was read the memos and responded that “he was familiar with the contents of the documents and that it sounded just like Killian.” He made it clear, she added, that he was a supporter of Mr. Bush.
….
He said he had not authenticated the documents for CBS News but had confirmed that they reflected issues he and Colonel Killian had discussed – namely Mr. Bush’s failure to appear for a physical, which military records released previously by the White House show, led to a suspension from flying.New York Times 12 Sept 2004
In other words, CBS News is now confirming Hodges’ story, ie, that he was only read the memos and didn’t express any opinion of their authenticity.
According to Indymedia (I know, I know) the Killian memos are in Kitty Kelley’s book.
Well, that would explain a lot. . . .
Charlie(Colorado) ó Keep it simple. George Bush was in the Air Force the exact same way John Kerry was in the Navy.
Ooh. Isn’t this interesting… Rather Says Might Have Been Duped… … and not in a pirated screener way…!
This is the way how I see it:
It becomes increasingly clear that the memos were an opening salvo for the Kerry campaign, to be followed by the ads. However, nobody expected the battery to be spiked so quickly, and the attack is going to proceed without the artillery support. It reminds me a bit of the battle of Gallipoli (as seen in the movie) ñ only question is whether the Kerry campaign will be similarly slaughtered in the attack.
The fact that the crudest of forgeries were used indicates that this kind of thing has been done before with success. Actually, the current stonewalling suggest to me that CBS in particular and MSM in general use unreliable and/or fictitious sources so commonly that they simply cannot believe that this is not going to work this time. According to the usual scenario they should have been able to keep up their version of ìtruthî long enough to allow the Kerry campaign to carry the attack, and if there had been still receiving letters to editor asking for explanations, perhaps issue some sort of correction or apology, say 2 months from now. They reckoned without the Blogosphere, poor dears.
MSM have been corrupted by the power of monopoly. They believed themselves to be untouchable because they are convinced of their own intellectual superiority over the rest of us.
They believed in their own hubris. Pride goes before Fall.
The fact that the crudest of forgeries were used indicates that this kind of thing has been done before with success. Actually, the current stonewalling suggest to me that CBS in particular and MSM in general use unreliable and/or fictitious sources so commonly that they simply cannot believe that this is not going to work this time.
Katherine — I think you’ve put your finger on something that several of us have been not quite getting. But I was thinking somethig along those lines myself: if this had been done just a few years ago, the documents would have been shown for a moment on TV. Even more, they would have been typed, because there was no other way of making them.
If we hadn’t had the more or less conclusive proof that the documents were made with Word, would all of the things about addresses, wording, and so on have been convincing? Or would the people objecting have been dismissed with “tinfoil hat” sneers?
This is part of why I’m so angry about this: anyone whose inclinations are “conservative: or “libertarian” or “Objectivist” has known for years that things weren’t getting out right. Robert Heinlein wrote somewhere — I think it’s in Expanded Universe but it could be Grumbles from the Grave — that he’d been on the site of three major events covered by Time and they hadn’t gotten even one of them remotely right.
But this makes it clear that the MSM doesn’t just slant things, it flat out makes them up. That’s the real milestone here — the MSM’s real practices have been made glaringly obvious. No one with any sense will ever trust them again.
If the actual forgers had a lick of sense, they’d have done a decent job, and we still wouldn’t know. We’d be suspicious, after that Estrich column — but we could never really prove it.
Well, they say God protects fools, drunks, and the United States of America.
Charlie(Colorado) ÔøΩ Keep it simple. George Bush was in the Air Force the exact same way John Kerry was in the Navy.
Richard, I understand it — but can we nail down doctrine, law, regulations?
That people like Rather and Juan Williams believe the forged documents speak to a greater truth is precisely because the conventional wisdom was created by people such as Burkett and Barnes (and Lechliter)long ago.
In other words, there is nothing to back the conventional wisdom. Burkett and Barnes over the years spouted mistruths and those that wanted to believe disseminated their spoutings far and wide. Any supposed confirmation was hailed, any refutation was dismissed.
So along come Barnes (and possibly Burkett is hiding in this process somewhere too) to confirm the CW they created in the first place.
It’s bizarre.
Just as Kerry’s lies created the conventional wisdom that our military is filled with f—ups and baby killers. Which lead to the instant confirmation of this CW when the Abu Ghraib story broke.
So when people today hear of Kerry’s testimony back in 1971 it confirms to them the CW that was created by Kerry himself. ‘What’s wrong with what Kerry testified to? It’s the truth. We all know it.’
Again, bizarre.
Jerry, Richard M.–
Two likely culprits who keep coming up in all the sites I have visited today are Bill Burkett and Marty Heldt. Marty is a Bush-hating freak from Iowa. He writes for ultra-liberal Tom Paine, which is evidently run by….drumroll…Bill Moyer’s son.
Do you think Bill Moyer’s son might know of a way to get something into the hands of Dan Rather?
Charlie (C)–
I believe your take on Bush Air Force versus Air National Guard is correct. The Kerry camp’s claim, BTW, has been rebutted before.
Simply put we are witnessing the culmination of what started with Nixon and then progressed to the Clinton years. This was when the press realized they could actively participate in the building up or bringing down of a President. They learned they held the trump card. For sure this began to worsen and metastasize under the hyper-stress of building up Clinton and a need on the MSM’s part to help control events.
During Bush I and Reagan the MSM played a partisan attack dog game, but they were one person at a time. In truth the full stress came from a complicit protection of Clinton coupled with the reversal of fortunes in politics (Democratic Presidency, Republican Congress). This led to double overreaching by the media, vacillating between protecting the public from the “Radical Republicans” (a President is one man, but a majority in congress is a multitude) and protecting Clinton. Face it they needed to kill Newt Gingrich and every other “right wing nut” as they Protected Clinton, they rode “Hi-Gear” throughout.
This led us to a “Perfect Storm” the MSM was not prepared for. This perfect storm became obvious during the mid-terms of 2002 and I hold little hope of it being relieved soon. This is why I refer to our current decade as the new Sixties, this time the “squares” must win out. (yes Roger this time around you are the uncool square deal with it!).
But let me explain the components of the perfect storm…
1) The election of 2000 and a split congress.
2) September 11th 2001
Those top two coupled with leftover simmerings of the Clinton Presidency created a very potent brew and basis for the storm to follow. This takes us to:
3) Midterms… BANG! Post 911 bipartisanship had run its course, in truth many Democrats and the media never really were on board 100%, but Bush’s 80% approval ratings and fear of reprisal by the public kept Democrats and the MSM “in a cage” to stew for a whole year. As the sentiments simmered the Republican’s regained a majority in Congress in historical fashion and the Democrats they walked away with nothing! This was too much burden to bare, in fact this is when I started blowing up myself.
4) Realities of Republicans controlling everything. This finally sunk in a struck a nerve with the MSM (the Democrats were already long gone) so they felt a need and/or responsibility to “police” Bush, effectively lining them up with Democrats as a “Loyal Opposition” to Republicans, all senses of professional responsibilities have now completely been lost in this shuffle. While it is akin to the 90′s when the Republicans took over Congress, it in truth was greatly exaggerated by 911, the Midterms and a Republican controlled Washington.
5) Iraq War – This was the last straw, now Bush has taken these people way beyond and I mean waaaay beyond what their instincts ever would have accepted, how could such a thing happen? For this they feel a renewed and exaggerated responsibity for correcting this, in fact they are now on a mission. Ironically their mission carries the same level of resolve to stop Bush as Bush’s is to stop Terrorism, for this they are blinded to the needs in the WOT because their focus is their War on Bush, this leads to instinctive undermining of the War. Now if anyone can turn this into Vietnam the press could if we allow it. By the way this is the point when the Democrats lost me, early last summer.
I could go on but you get the picture, this is where the media is at and how they got there. There is only one solution beyond being held accountable by blogs. Bush needs to win and win big so the MSM like with Reagan will be resigned to the realities that Bush is not going anywhere, and is not going to be controlled by them. Bush must after winnig big take his political capital and go over their collective heads and knock them on their asses if they start up again. Unfortunately it only worked when they feared Bush. Anyway that is my take on things.
It looks like Dan Rather will be remembered as the man who put the BS in CBS.
Safire, this morning in the Times, tries to throw Danny Boy a life preserver after laying a convincing argument that the memos are forgeries. Any bets he’ll take it and back off. Nah!
Danny Boy is at Black Rock paging through his book of Texas back country metaphors looking for the best one about toughing it out.
yehudit:
I believe that someone in Moveon.org may have brought the idea to Soros. He probably thought it was a good idea but did not have an active hand in it. You have to remember that he doesn’t have DO or KGB/GRU operatives executing the plan. Also, as suggested above the media has probably used forgeries before.
Legal issues: If the authorities want to get to bottom of this they would pursue the forging government documents angle in a Grand Jury investigation. There are no issues of public figures or first amendment rights involved. The prosecutor can be up front with CBS news officials and tell them they have no issue with their right to broadcast fact or fiction but the misuse and forgery of government documents is a serious offense. By making Rather a target of the investigation they could put in jeopardy by granting him immunity for his role in the con.
Well, as long as we’re speculating on the source of these documents…
I’m too lazy to go track this down again, but somewhere within the gojillion blog posts and comments on the topic of these forged memos I saw someone comment that they recalled “documents” similar to these memos for sale on eBay of whatever (the initial inclination is to laugh, but hold off on that for a while – the eBay or even “for sale” parts are not paticularly critical).
The BDS loons have been trying (and trying and trying and geezus won’t they EVER STFU about it already) to make a series of charges against Bush’s ANG service stick. The BDS memebots have the story down pat. They know… they just know what Bush did. But all along they’ve had this little problem of no documentation that Bush was not really considered a pretty good pilot but was terrible pilot who was only allowed into the TANG cause his daddy pulled strings, was only rated well because his daddy pulled strings, and ran away to the Alabama ANG on a cooked up excuse because the TANG was sick of him and suspending him from flying. All they ever lacked was documentation.
Somewhere along the line some helpful BDS moonbat whipped up some sample versions of what was needed. Who knows why – maybe just trying to cash in on the fact that there is a legit BDS Moonbat market that spends money. Maybe just to put out some samples to show what the folks looking for this desperately needed documentary evidence were looking for (“It will look something like this guys!”).
The BDS Moonbats being, well, Moonbats and suffering from every more feverish BDS episodes, some of the least introspective and iquisitive slowly but surely turned these fake docs into “real” docs in their own little fevered heads. And somewhere, somehow, one of those wound up in a significant DNC office somewhere. The docs got into the DNC pretty much by happenstance. A moonbat brought them in and they sat there with people not paying much attention to them.
That is until they grew increasingly desperate and increasingly convinced they weren’t being mean enough and since, after all, these docs, while not authentic, told a Larger Truth. Consider the recurring meme that Bush is hiding ever more NG documents. When these came out, even those who could accept that they looked suspicious were immediately screaming about “what else is the administration hiding!?!?).
They fully believe there are documents somewhere that say what they want some documents to say – documents that look just like the forged ones only real. There must be proof of the Larger Truths. Given enough time and access to enough docs they’d find the real documents. But there is not enough time – they needed to act now and this into the media cycle. They could no longer wait. At some point somebody with enough juice within the DNC decided that it was time to pull the trigger and released the falsified docs and then found whatever roundabout way necessary to get somebody with sufficient stature in the MSM to carry the torch. I don’t know if Rather is complicit but he is due to retire after he does his Last Great Service to Humanity but giving us all his incredible wisdom and insight by covering the election. And it seems clear to me that the guy has a TX sized vendetta against The Evil Bushies. He may have agreed to carry this torch or he may simply have been identified as the right sucker to run the con against.
Oh, BTW, I’m leaning toward Rather being complicit – he knew the docs were faked. Otherwise he’d be really pissed about being played for the fool. If he was played for the fool but isn’t turning on the ones who played him, that suggests their is some reason he’d take the bullet rather than reveal who scammed him. Just speculatin’.
Kay in CA
Thanks for the info.
Samuel (or anyone else here at Roger’s Place who has actually been involved with campaigns at a high level within the campaign team),
Somewhere within the Kerry Campaign staff and/or the DNC there is surely a “war room” where a team of people have whiteboarded out Bush’s ANG service and timelined everything and just repeatedly go through the released ANG records yammering back and forth about virtually every minute detail including the freakin’ dental records. What they are looking for is the “smoking gun”. But they haven’t been able to find the smoking gun.
The reason I bring this up is because I suspect/speculate that perhaps the Kerry campaign and/or the DNC actually took part in some effort to “enhance” what they knew were bogus docs (the ones that some BDS Moonbat had dragged in stuck to some chewing gum on the soles of their shoes). But in desperation they neglected to, or figured it didn’t matter, try a full-fledged effort to forge the docs.
I keep wondering why the heck they didn’t just use freakin’ courier font or something. Geeze, if the docs had looked even reasonably legit Rather and CBS might have pulled this off.
knuclehead:
Interesting speculation but I think that its a bit too complex a process from these are what it looks like to these documents are real.
McCauliffe and Moveon.org made a conscious decision to fabricate and place these documents in a quality MSM source, i.e., 60 minutes II. Despite its reputation 60 Minutes has a history of fabricating stories, not all of which are political, to grind some axe or push ratings. Given the MSM desire to unseat Bush the DNC/Moveon operatives would have no problem finding a willing player at CBS.
There are two other factors in play. First, Democrats and other lefties believe their own propaganda about Republicans being stupid. They thought that they would put Bush supporters on the defensive and therefore, did not expect a rapid counterattack. The failure to anticipate leads to the second point. The DNC/MSM complex does not understand the power of the net to rapidly fact check and disseminate information. I am sure McCauliffe thought CBS would just steamroll the opposition because there would be no other information source to challenge them.
Knucklehead, right now, somewhere, a forger is thinking “D’Oh! Notepad! Stupid! Stupid!”
This Homer Moment brought to you by the DNC.
Jerry,
I believe that DNC/MSM probably fits more tightly than DNC/Moveon. The moveon moonbats represent 25-30% of the Dem base and are vital (if they turn out) but they don’t have any real control. Look at the ease with which Dean (their boy, for sure) was brushed aside. I really think that the 60II program was designed as a prop for the ad campaign the DNC is kicking off this week. Rather was supposed to wave the memos after his “interview” of Dem hack Barnes. All to add an aura of authenticity to an ad campaign that was already in the can.
There is a centralized stupidity to this that has Shrum’s fingerprints all over it. Today they’ve taken the Gorebot out of storage and put new Energizers in it to go out and howl at the moon for a bit. That’s got to be a Shrum idea. Using CBS as lead shill sounds like Shrum too.
If you think of the memos as a small prop in the DNC/MSM coordinated kabuki dance then the lack of skill in the forgeries makes some sense. Rather’s willingness to take on a minor role as a Dem pimp is completely understandable. It’s a part he’s played for thirty years.
This would have worked like a charm if done in ’96. It might have worked in ’00. It only backfired today because the “boys at the top” are way dumber than anyone believes.
Wow, Jerry and Rick. I’ve been down on the Dems for a long time. I’ve long believed them corrupt and over the past 4 or 5 years have come to believe they’ve reached the point of having some sort of organizational mental disorder, but are they stupid enough to have plotted this as part of formalized campaign? I was willing to give them the benefit of the doubt and just take it as a really bad and dumb mistake born of desperation induced by the ticking campaing timeclock. A “well thought out” part of an actual campaign strategy…
What fools – as Catherine so rightly pointed out yesterday, nobody of any intelligence or professionalism FORGES documents. Yowza.
I’m going to go back and write CBS yet again. Then I’m going go back and track down the local affiliate and the sponsors and drop them each a line. This can’t be allowed to stand. The heat has to get turned up on CBS enough to get them to cough up the source.
And, BTW, I hope the blogosphere takes this opportunity and starts hammering on the MSM to hammer on Kerry to release the rest of HIS military records.
The sheer stupid chutzpa of believing a renewed and more virulent attack on Bush’s ANG service could be made to work just baffles me. These people are idiots. Everything that comes out of the Kerry campaign anymore just sounds freakin’ stupid. Yesterday I saw something about him screaming about how Bush has created a nuclear nightmare. Do these idiots thing the entire nation was holed up in some freakin’ monkery during the late 90′s when India and Pakistan exploded nukes and NK was exposed having a nuke program that Carter and Clinton thought they could be bribed out of pursuing? What idiots!
Rick:
I based the Moveon.org connection on the fact that Barnes’ “Texans for Truth” is a Moveon.org franchise operation. That’s where they got a significant part of their funding for their add campaign or so it has reported. To restate my reason for thinking Barnes as the source is that the memos have the same time line problems as his own specific claim about helping GWB get into the Guard. There is a very strong “informal” moveon.org connection to McCauliffe and the DNC. Moveon.org has kept the AWOL narrative alive. McCauliffe is smart enough to use cutouts for these kinds of dirty tricks. If you buy into the Clinton sabotage narrative then McCauliffe can’t get caught with his hands in the cookie jar because it will bring down Hillary in the blowback. By relying on Moveon.org McCauliffe can say he was duped like everyone else and he merely got carried away with his anti-Bush zeal.
I have had some of my own blowback for stating that George Soros is at least knowledgeable about what is going on. As I said in a private communication, there are quite a few people in the IC who suspect Soros was a creature of the KGB in the 1980ís. They may have been grooming him as a replacement for their long time uber-capitalist bagman, Armand Hammer.
Rick, what’s fascinating to me is how far inside the establishment’s OODA loop (Observe, Orient, Decide, Act) blogs are.
You’re right, eight years ago the forgeries would have been effective. By the time any kind of response filtered through the barriers to grass roots comunication, the misinformation would have been assimilated into the received wisdom of the public, making the potential blowback worth the risk.
(Not only that, but the forger back then would probably have used a typewriter because, you know, computers were only used by geeks….)
In this campaign CBS caught serious blowback before the story had time to take off. By the time Edwards was riffing off the documents, everybody knew they were fake. And if the Dems stay on-script with this little operation, they’ll end up doing far more damage to themselves than the original “revalations” would have done to Bush. (Someone needs to tell Terry and Little John to STFU.)
In other words, the establishment can’t go from Observe to Act fast enough to keep up with the new media. The establishment was wrong-footed by the Swifties, then by the type mavens, and they’ll be wrong-footed by the folks who have an interest in the next bit of turf they decide to fling.
“It’s the end of the world as we know it, and I feel fine.” — REM
Charlie(Colorado) ó All Guard officers hold Reserve commissions in their respective services. It’s right there in their commissioning paperwork.
KNuck, if you check out Kerry’s site (I’m about to rush to work, don’t have time to dig out the link, but I’ve posted it before) there’s a description of what documents they felt were missing: orders to go to a medical, orders documenting the real reasons for being grounded.
Amazingly, those are the very documents, sometimes in close to the smae wording, that Jerry Killian was laboriously typesetting.
This is not to suggest that the Kerry campaign actually did it; I think it’s more of a Henry II thing: “Who will rid me of this troublesome President?”
Richard — thanks, that’s both what I remembered and the way I read the DD214.
What the fuck is the DNC thinking?
USA Today has an article on the whole scandal under the bemusing headline They used their own experts, who come to the conclusion that the documents were produced by a word processor and the signatures are likely forgeries as well.
One telling new wrinkle comes in at the end:
“USA TODAY obtained copies of the documents independently soon after the 60 Minutes segment aired Wednesday, from a person with knowledge of Texas Air National Guard operations. The person refused to be identified out of fear of retaliation. It is unclear where the documents, if they are real, had been kept in the intervening three decades.”
Hmmm. Sounds like Burkett to me.
Then they wrap it up by stating baldly the pickle the Kerry and the Dems and the MSM now find themselves in:
“No matter how it turns out, for now the controversy over the documents has blunted criticism of Bush’s Guard record, which has been a persistent irritant for Bush since he first campaigned for the White House. It has sapped the power from an issue that had appeared to be a weapon for the Democrats against Bush.”
Yeah, whatever. Cry me a river.
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The URL for the USA Today article is so long I’m nervous trying to link to it because I don’t want to mess up the thread formatting. But I got to it via PoliPundit, which is here
http://polipundit.com/
Woops. I meant to go back and check the exact wording of the headline before I put it in the post and then I forgot and hit post and . . .
Anyway, it was “Memos Debate Eclipses Content.”
See, it’s not about the lie, stupid. It’s about the “truth” behind the lie.
Samuel, I really do enjoy your insight. Just 1 quibble, pubbies don’t have all 3 branches. If we did, I’d have my judges and Estrada would be sitting in the DC Circuit.
The Gang of 41 held them up, they could have held up the budget if they had wanted to.
Jerry,
I agree about the deniability component concerning moveon. The 527 loophole has provided an excellent cover for coordinated mudslinging. I suppose I could change the acronym to DNC/MSM/Moveon but it would be cumbersome. The impact element of the triumvirate is the MSM. Without their willing complicity this would have been a campaign idea marked DOA at sight. Scripting may very well have been done by moveon with some help from the DNC but only a dumb loser like Shrum would have passed the script to the MSM without vetting it with competent 30somethings who would have nailed the incongruencies immediately.
Sandy P.
I agree, but since Judges are in a way battled by proxy through Senate confirmation, the Republican controlled Senate is where the fight is. What is truly wrong is that constitutionally the Senate is meant to just confirm these Judges, the Founding Fathers desired the Executive Branch to appoint the Judges he desired. The Senate is really charged with making sure treasonous and corrupt ones didn’t get appointed, obviously Miguel Estrada doesn’t fit this category, so if you follow my 1:54 AM post(yes that’s 4:54 AM here in the east), this is really a Senate fight and part of the desperation of the MSM and Democrats, so the MSM suppresses the story. This is no doubt blatant misuse of the filibuster, yet they feel they can get away with this.
All the above being said however it is important to note the last thing I said about the MSM and Democrats having lost their fear of Bush. A 40+ State mandate with large popular vote totals would sure cure this, in fact short of this it will worsen. My guess is that the public will decide at some point that government is too polarized and will give one Party a clear majority. This will happen when either…
1) More of the majority of white’s that vote Republican go with Democrats or
2) Significant numbers of minorities decide the GOP is not the boogyman the MSM allows Democrats to paint them as, though their behavior shows they buy into the stereotype as well.
Therein lies the struggle, obviously Dubya knows this and has appointed people of color and is courting the Hispanic vote, the truth is while some Conservatives may struggle with such pandering they should yield to Bush on this because his instincts are right. In fact he is right for multitudes of reason I won’t get into now.
Knuckle–
FWIW, go to Wizbang for more on the alleged sale of the forgeries by Heldt.
robert:
Bullseye, I suspect.
The artlessness of the forgeries (assuming they are such) bespeaks a twenty- or thirty-something who had no more experience of typewriters than he did of sliderules or LPs, and therefore didn’t realize the gaffes he was making.
My guess is that he was probably just trying to “help,” somehow got the documents to the Kerry campaign, which was trying to decide whether or not to believe them when Kerry got torched by the Swifties. That tipped the decision. Stung by the Swifties, and reasoning that desperate times call for desperate measures, someone in the campaign figured, what the hell, let the media figure out whether or not the documents are authentic, and passed them along.
The relevant parties at CBS wanted the story to be true, which blinded them to the problems. While they were mulling over the authenticity of the documents, they had reason to believe someone else (Kitty Kelley?) was about to scoop them on this red-hot story, and that tipped their decision.
I’m sceptical of all conspiracy theories (as befits my screen name) as being too complicated. Before accepting any conspiracy scenarios, I’d have to rule out the prime movers of the universe, stupidity and incompetence, which apparently had a field day here.
Most likely, the only malice was on the part of the original hoaxer, who probably never dreamt things would go this far.
Occam:
Never underestimate the stupidy of a desperate man. First of all, the assumption that it must have been a 20 something because an older forger would have known to use a typewriter is false. How many 40+ year olds, who are not professional forgers would know all the technical differences between typewriter and word processing software. I am fairly computer literate, with a lot of experience programming in FORTRAN, PASCAL and C, and I didn’t know all the details of typefaces. I bet only a few people on this discussion group new beforehand either.
Second, disinformation does not have to rely on foolproof forgeries to be effective. The only thing that is required is sufficient time before refutation for the information to become part of current wisdom. As an experiment, try refuting the Joe Wilson yellowcake story with someone who relies on the MSM for news. You wonít get very far. CBS and DNC assumed that they could dominate the news cycle long enough for the memos to become “self-authenticating. They did not count on the independent media taking away their control of the story.
Bottom line: The MSM/DNC made some assumptions about the way information is controlled and transmitted to the public. They were wrong.
I read some of the comments on this story over in the NYT forums–yuck. So I had to come here for some sanity afterwards. Thanks, Roger, for providing such a great watering hole!
I haven’t done too much speculation on whodunnit, but I have put a bit of thought into the Karl Rove option here.