Good morning, sports fans!
I am fully clothed and operational.
I trust we are all of us in the same condition.
CBS stonewalls as “guys in pajamas” uncover a fraud.
Mr. Klein dismissed the bloggers who are raising questions about the authenticity of the memos: “You couldn’t have a starker contrast between the multiple layers of check and balances [at '60 Minutes'] and a guy sitting in his living room in his pajamas writing.”
He will regret that snide disparagement of the bloggers, many of whom are skilled lawyers or have backgrounds in military intelligence or typeface design. A growing number of design and document experts say they are certain or almost certain the memos on which CBS relied are forgeries.
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“60 Minutes” may have a sterling reputation in journalism, but it has been burned before by forged documents. In 1997 it broadcast a report alleging that U.S. Customs Service inspectors looked the other way as drugs crossed the Mexican border at San Diego. The story’s prize exhibit was a memo from Rudy Comacho, head of the San Diego customs office, ordering that vehicles belonging to one trucking company should be given special leniency in crossing the border. The memo was given to “60 Minutes” by Mike Horner, a former customs inspector who had left the service five years earlier. When asked by CBS for additional proof, he sent another copy with an official stamp on it.
CBS did not interview Mr. Camacho for its story. “It was horrible for him,” says Bill Anthony, at the time head of public affairs for the Customs Service. “For 18 months, internal affairs and the Secret Service had him under a cloud while they established that Horner had forged the document out of bitterness over how he’d been treated.” In 2000, Mr. Horner admitted he forged the memo “for media exposure” and was sentenced to 10 months in federal prison. “Mr. Camacho’s reputation was tarnished significantly,” Judge Judith Keep noted.
Mr. Camacho sued CBS and eventually settled for an undisclosed sum. In 1999 Leslie Stahl read an apology on the air: “We have concluded we were deceived, and ultimately, so were you, the viewers.”
