The Swiss Cheese Defense: Enumerating All CBS's Memogate Problems

RatherBiased.com ^

[RatherBiased.com]

September 10, 2004, XX:YY:ZZ EDT

Dan Rather's defense of himself tonight, while probably impressive to shallow observers was far from convincing. Here's a list of things he ignored, did not properly address, or concealed from viewers. Feel free to send us your suggestions to this live fisking. For the transcript, click here.

Sourcing problems

1. The 72-year-old anchor conveniently did not mention the fact that James Moore, one of his key validative sources, is a left-wing activist and author who has written two anti-Bush books, Bush's Brain, and Bush's War for Reelection. Rather referred to him as "author Jim Moore has written two books on the subject."

2. Not coincidentally, Rather also did not mention that one of its main validators, retired Maj. General Bobby Hodges is accusing 60 Minutes staff of lying to him in order to get him to say the supposed Killian memos were authentic. ABC News has the story:
         "Hodges, Killian's supervisor at the Guard, tells ABC News that he feels CBS misled him about the documents they uncovered. According to Hodges, CBS told him the documents were 'handwritten' and after CBS read him excerpts he said, 'well if he wrote them that's what he felt.'
         "Hodges also said he did not see the documents in the 70's and he cannot authenticate the documents or the contents. His personal belief is that the documents have been 'computer-generated' and are a 'fraud.'"
         The Washington Post reported earlier today that CBS considered Hodges its "trump card":
   

         "A senior CBS official, who asked not to be named because CBS managers did not want to go beyond their official statement, named one of the network's sources as retired Maj. Gen. Bobby W. Hodges, the immediate superior of the documents' alleged author, Lt. Col. Jerry B. Killian. He said a CBS reporter read the documents to Hodges over the phone and Hodges replied that "these are the things that Killian had expressed to me at the time."
   

         "These documents represent what Killian not only was putting in memoranda, but was telling other people," the CBS News official said. "Journalistically, we've gone several extra miles."
   

         The official said the network regarded Hodges's comments as "the trump card" on the question of authenticity, as he is a Republican who acknowledged that he did not want to hurt Bush. Hodges, who declined to grant an on-camera interview to CBS, did not respond to messages left on his home answering machine in Texas.
         Looks like jokers are no longer wild.

3. He deliberately ignored statements from Col. Killian's wife and son who said that he hated using typewriters, hardly ever kept notes, and very much liked George W. Bush. In today's Washington Post, CBS conceded that it had not asked his wife to authenticate the letters it claims were written by her husband. Both Killian's widow and son say that the alleged memos are not characteristic of his style and do not believe they are all authentic.

4. Rather did not mention that Ben Barnes, the Democratic lobbyist who is now saying he helped young Bush into the Texas Air National Guard (TANG), has changed his story according to his Republican daughter, Amy. She says that Barnes is making his Bush claims in preparation for his upcoming autobiography and to build up his political profile in the hopes of getting hired by a Kerry administration, all of which he allegedly told her.

5. Also left out by Rather was the fact that one of the CBS documents dated in 1973 refers to pressure that then-Col. Walter B. "Buck" Staudt, had supposedly been applying on Killian to make things easier for Bush. Unfortunately for CBS's case, however, Staudt had retired in 1973.

6. CBS's own paid signature expert (the network featured no typographers or typewriter experts tonight or in Wednesday's report), Marcel Matley, directly undermined CBS's case several years earlier in an essay for the American Law Institute:
   

         "Do not passively accept a copy as the sole basis of a case. Every copy, intentionally or unintentionally, is in some way false to the original. In fact, modern copiers and computer printers are so good that they permit easy fabrication of quality forgeries."
         In his defense tonight, Rather admitted that "the documents CBS started with were also photocopies."

7. The original 60 Minutes report as well as Friday's rebuttal did not feature a single person person who was quoted as coming to Bush's defense who was not on his staff, despite the fact that it is not hard at all to find people who say they served with Bush during the period in which he is accused of being AWOL. The only person that CBS did put on camera hardly provided much support for the documents' authenticity. Rather quoted him as follows (read the rest here.
   

   "Well, they are compatible with the way business was done at that time. They are compatible with the man that I remember, Jerry Killian, being. I don't see anything in the documents that are discordant with what were the times, what were the situation and what were the people that were involved."
         Reached by the AP today, Strong was even more lukewarm toward the documents' authenticity. His former colleague, Retired Col. Maurice Udell called them fakes: "That's not true. I was there. I knew Jerry Killian. I went to Vietnam with Jerry Killian in 1968."

Typographical problems

1. Although he tried to minimize the typographical concerns raised by many critics, Rather nonetheless tried to defend himself in this area. He failed, however. On the superscript issue, which Rather tried to explain away by throwing out the red herring that "Critics claim typewriters didn't have that ability in the 70s. But some models did."

   
         The problem with this statement is that Rather fails to list any such typewriters which might have the capability or how a measely Air National Guard office would be able to afford such expensive machines. Simply showing a photocopy of a letter in Bush's official file which originated from the Army's national office is no proof at all.

2. The split screen image CBS offered of an official Bush document with superscript ordinal suffix and one of its own documents was not very convincing to Sandra Ramsey Lines, a forensic document expert who edits the Journal of the American Society of Questioned Document Examiners who told the Associated Press that she "could testify in court that, beyond a reasonable doubt, her opinion was that the memos were written on a computer." She told the AP that she was "virtually certain" the CBS memos are not genuine.

3. Rather also neglected to mention that all of the documents which were written by Killian himself and his officers relied on simple mechanical typewriters incapable of printing in proportional fonts, let alone superscript.

4. Despite the fact that Jerry Killian hated keeping notes, hated typing things (see above) that National Guard offices mostly use hand-me-down equipment from the full-time armed forces, and that Killian and his Guard officers have not been observed to have ever sent documents printed with proportional fonts, there is a possibility (OK really, really small) that Bush's superviser might have had access to an expensive IBM electric typewriter.
   

         Assuming Killian somehow had access to an IBM Selectric Composer (or similar model), Blogger Jeff Harrell wondered what one of the CBS memos would look like if typed in one of the re-famous devices. His results are yet more evidence that the CBS docs are forgeries.

5. Dan also appears unfamiliar with fonts and typography. At one point in the rebuttal, he refers to the font used in the CBS documents as "New Times Roman," when the real name is Times New Roman. Rather also appears to be ignorant of the fact that Times New Roman was never used in typewriters and only came into wide use in the early 1990s when Microsoft licensed the font from the Monotype Corporation in preparation for the launch of Windows 3.0.
         Even if Times New Roman had been used in proportional typewriters during the 1970s, the font then was not the same as it is today since its present form actually dates from the 1980s following some changes that Monotype made to the font.

Rhetorical Problems

1. Rather tried to smear critics who disagreed with him: "Today on the Internet and elsewhere, including many who were partisan political operatives, concentrated on the key questions of the overall story, but on the documents that were part of the support of the story."
         Since Rather failed to differentiate between who is a "partisan political operative" and who isn't, it's hard to conclude this line is nothing more than a red herring meant to scare his viewers who have not been following the ongoing story.
         Les Jones adds: "Partisan political operatives? That's funny, I don't recall cashing any checks from Karl Rove. Translation: the jury didn't believe the witness, so they ignored the witness's testimony. Therefore CBS is going to claim the jury was rigged."

[RatherBiased.com]

Please join us this evening as we carve up roast anchorman in a live fisking. Send suggestions to blogs@ratherbiased.com We're looking especially for military sources regarding things like abbreviations, etc.

[rebel_yell2]

Time to stick'm with a LONG fork! I think Dan is WELL-done.

[Sir Gawain]

William Pitt and the DUmmies are saying Rather buried the charges. They look rather funny on their knees for Rather.

[dickmc]

Could you reduce this to any appropriate bullets and post on http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/1212788/posts?page=51,47

[spyone]

Excellently written article!

[T'wit]

As one who grew up with "who" and "whom," I react sharply to the latter-day error of substituting "that." Thus I was struck by phrasing in the "memo" of August 1, 1972, "... qualified Vietnam pilots that have rotated...."

I don't believe anyone would have written this in 1972. It would have been, "...pilots who have rotated...."

[DaveMSmith]

Thanks for the summary... hopefully you won't have to worry about Dan TheNewsMan's misconduct much longer!

[flashbunny]

don't you mean "staudt had retired in 1972" not 1973???

[Redcoat LI]

Please join us this evening as we carve up roast anchorman

I'd like a wing, the left wing,preferably.

[RatherBiased.com]

Yes. We fixed it online.

[RatherBiased.com]

And thanks for noticing.

[DaughterOfAnIwoJimaVet]

More good stuff...ping.

[flashbunny]

No problem. And btw, I sent this to your email earlier- -- do you think you could get it to danny boy and have his experts look it over?

[Iconoclast2]

bttt

[RatherBiased.com]

Nice parody

[Chad Fairbanks]

Thanks, LOL

[Chad Fairbanks]

ROTFLMAO

[Shortstop7]

Very well done. Thank you.

[Polybius]

We're looking especially for military sources regarding things like abbreviations, etc.

The bottom line in this case will be provided by forensic experts that will provide proof that no typewriter had the combination of features used in that memo.

Rather's defense is childishly naive. Yes, Times New Roman has been around since the 1930's......On Linotype machines:

History will judge Dan Rather as either a scoundrel or a fool.

For subjective military trivia.........

One memo had the date written as (let's use today's date):

11 September, 2004.

Proper military dating would have been:

11 September 2004

or

11 SEP 04

The date would never have had a comma after the date.

Another eye-catcher was an officer simply putting a rank in the signature space without then putting the branch of service right after it.

[Polybius]

The date would never have had a comma after the date.

Typo.

The date would never have had a comma after the month.