Posted on 11/11/2005 8:55:59 AM PST by Crush T Velour
MEMO-GATE
On Friday, September 3, 2004, I was closing down my office and thinking about the Labor Day Weekend ahead when the phone rang and the caller asked whether I would be willing to work over the weekend on some important, time-sensitive documents. This was the beginning of my involvement in the examination of documents in the Bush National Guard Document/Memo-Gate news story.
This week, the book "Truth and Duty" by Mary Mapes, former CBS producer, was released. The book contains several inaccuracies in the description of my participation. Because the book is a public document, I see it as my duty to publicly state the truth about what I said and did.
Page 156: "On Sunday morning [Sept 5], Mike Smith called me with a new development. Burkett wanted him to come back to West Texas. He had more memos he wanted to hand off."
Page 160: "Another new document, dated June 24, 1973, and signed "Jerry B. Killian," was addressed to "Sir," someone above Killiant in the National Guard food chain."....
Book version is UNREASONABLE. What happened is: I received a faxed copy of this document (by Delta Flight 5261 followed by courier delivery) at my office on the morning of Sunday Sept. 5. The document has a fax footer reading "Sept 02 2004 18:41" Therefore it is not reasonable that this document was first received by Mapes on Sunday morning.
Mapes reproduces a copy of this document on page 341 of her book, and it has the fax footer in place.
Page 167: "Emily Will and I had an unusual conversation that Monday [Sept. 6], a talk that raised questions for me about how well-suited she was to be working on this project. I called to see how her analysis was going and she told me she had a problem with the documents."
Book version is INACCURATE. What happened is: Mary Mapes and I conversed on Sunday, Sept. 5 and Tuesday, Sept. 7, but we had no conversation on Monday, Sept. 6.
Page 167: "Concerned, I asked her what the trouble was.She said she had done research on the Internet about President Bush's military record and found that he had been in Alabama at the time those documents were written, so there was no way they could be true."
Book version is ABSOLUTELY FALSE. What did happen is that in our conversation on Sunday I outlined several problems with two questioned signatures, and with the typescript of the documents, including the superscripting and the proportional spacing, and I said that I had been researching online to determine the earliest date of production of typerwiters offering those features.
Page 167: "I was taken aback. Will wasn't supposed to be doing research on her own about the facts of the story. She was suppose to be looking at the memo's typeface and signatures for signs of authenticity and forgery."......
"I told Will that we could handle the information end of the investigation and asked her to confine herself to what she saw on the face of the documents. I recall her telling me "I always work on the whole thing." She saw her job as doing research and reaching conclusions on the total package, she said.
Book version is INCORRECT. What did happen is: As part of my examination, I arranged the known and questioned documents in chronological order, and in the course of the examination, I read them. I noticed some discrepencies in the chronology of events as outlined by the group of documents and pointed these out to Ms. Mapes. This upset her. I did say that it was my practice to examine all parts of documents and that having noticed contradictions in the timeline it seemed appropriate to mention them to her.
Page 183 "I called Marcel Matley, who was back in San Francisco, and he said he was certain that superscripts were in use on a variety of typewriters at that time, particularly customized machines purchased in special contracts by the military, among others."
"When I told Emily Will what Matley had said, I remember her telling me, "I defer to Marcel on this." But she didn't entirely drop her concern. Hers was a good point and exactly the kind of thing a document analyst ought to be asking about."
Book version is WRONG. What happened is:
Ms. Mapes asked if I were 100% certain that superscripting could not have existed in 1972. I said that I was as certain as I could be, but for 100% certainty she should contact a particular examiner whose office is in New York City.
Page 189 "Will would later tell the investigative panel that she had absolutely not deferred to Matley and that she had flagged more problems with the documents than simply the superscript "th." For my part, I have no recollection of that: I simply don't recall her raising questions about either proportional spacing or problems with the signatures."
"...and Emily Will, who had deferred to Marcel but had questions about the superscripted "th."
Book version NEEDS ASSISTANCE. I did tell the panel that I had absolutely not deferred to Mr. Matley, because I had not. Perhaps I can jog Ms. Mapes' memory. What happened is:
On Sunday, Sept. 5, I sent Yvonne Miller a pdf file illustrating my concerns with the questioned signatures. Ms. Miller said she would email the file to Mary Mapes. When Ms. Mapes called me I asked her if she had the file and she said that she did but that she "could not open it." When I later asked Ms. Miller if she had been able to open the file, she said "Yes." Despite the file opening problem, I explained in detail my five concerns about the signatures, both on Sunday and in my Tuesday evening phone call to Ms. Mapes.
During the course of these CBScapades, there came a time after the September 8 broadcast when the implications that all document examiners who had seen the documents supported them caused me to speak publicly about my observations and my communications with CBS (Mary Mapes). Following my appearance on ABC television, representatives of CBS made some deprecating statemtents about me and my involvement in the matter. The investigative panel found that CBS had made "harsh accusations" against me, and through the auspices of my personal attorney I obtained a letter of apology from CBS regarding those accusations.
MUST READ after the president's speech.
Ok. Let's have O'Reilly put this expert on the air.
your right..as I said many times before at FR, this hate monger spent 5 years trying to dig up dirt, only to fall to a real nutcase in 5 minutes,and now she'll spend the rest of her sane life (her breakdown will come soon) defending a lie and trying to defend herself for being a major part of one.
Doogle
I hope this woman sues--if she does, it could make Mapes' lies very public, and hopefully ruin her forever. She deserves that, and worse.
Those tricky Adobe PDF files use peripheral fonts, you know.
A CBS Newsie sloppy with the facts? I'm shocked, SHOCKED I tell you.
mark
marla maples lied? Gambling, going on at Rick's? I'm shocked {where is my money?}. klintoon did not have sex with that woman? hildabeast is a rugmuncher? the nytimes tells the thruth about GWB? April Fools.
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