Mort trying to say this TANG business no longer matters and shouldn't be brought up, and Birnbaum basically stuck to the point that it does matter if the documents are forgeries.
Mort, Mort, Mort. It matters when it could kill the Republicans, but they want to change the subject when they get caught.
In a hoax, the victim is taken advantage of. In this case, the so called 'journalists' should have easily detected the bad forgery, but did not.
It was not a hoax it was a fraud. They intended to dredge up the ANG story, 'prove' it conclusively, hammer it for a few days into the public consciousness, then after the forgery was discovered issue a one sentence 'correction' after the damage was done. They just didn't expect the forgery to be discovered so quickly. That is why the story is still on CNN and this evenings CBS news...they are still trying to impress it into the public consciousness, even though their fraud has already come crashing down.