Posted on 09/13/2004 4:15:44 PM PDT by Oldeconomybuyer
Questions Linger Over Bush Memos NEW YORK, Sept. 13, 2004
(CBS/AP) Amid challenges from other news media, CBS News continued to defend itself over criticism stemming from documents it obtained that questioned President Bush's service in the Air National Guard.
CBS said it used several techniques to make sure the memos should be taken seriously, including talking to handwriting and document analysts and other experts who strongly insist that the documents could have been created in the 1970s. CBS said Monday it relied on an analysis of the contents of the documents themselves to determine their authenticity. The new papers are in line with what is known about the president's service assignments and dates, CBS said. For instance, CBS said, the official record shows that Mr. Bush was suspended from flying on Aug. 1, 1972. That date matches the one on a memo given to CBS News, ordering that Mr. Bush be suspended. CBS News said last week the memos it received about President Bush's service in the Air National Guard came from "solid sources." At question are memos that carry the signature of the late Lt. Col. Jerry Killian, who was the commander of Mr. Bush's Texas Air National Guard fighter squadron. They say Killian was under pressure to "sugar coat" Mr. Bush's record, and Mr. Bush refused a direct order to take a required medical examination and discussed how he could skip drills. Casting further doubt on the memos, The Dallas Morning News said in a report for its Saturday editions that the officer named in a memo as exerting pressure to "sugar coat" Mr. Bush's record had left the Texas Air National Guard 1½ years before the memo was dated. The newspaper said it obtained an order showing that Walter B. Staudt, former commander of the Texas Guard, retired on March 1, 1972. The memo was dated Aug. 18, 1973. A telephone call to Staudt's home Friday night was not answered. New York Times columnist William Safire wrote Monday that Newsweek magazine had apparently begun an external investigation: it names "a disgruntled former Guard officer" as a principal source for CBS, noting "he suffered two nervous breakdowns" and "unsuccessfully sued for medical expenses." The L.A. Times reported that handwriting analyst, Marcel Matley, who CBS had claimed vouched for the authenticity of four memos, vouched for only one signature, and no scribbled initials. The Times reports he has no opinion about the typography of any of the supposed memos. "60 Minutes" relied on the documents as part of a Wednesday segment reported by Rather on Mr. Bush's service in the Texas Air National Guard from 1968 to 1973. Former colleagues of Killian disagreed Friday on the authenticity of the documents. One, who appeared in the TV newsmagazine segment, said Friday he did not see anything in the memos that made him think they were forgeries. Robert Strong noted he's not a forensic expert and isn't vouching for the documents. "I didn't see anything that was inconsistent with how we did business," Strong said in an interview. "It looked like the sort of thing that Jerry Killian would have done or said. He was a very professional guy." Both Wednesday and Friday, Strong was the only associate of Killian quoted by CBS as supporting the memo's contents. Retired Col. Maurice Udell, the unit's instructor pilot who helped train Mr. Bush, said Friday he thought the documents were fake. "I completely am disgusted with this (report) I saw on 60 Minutes,"' Udell said. "That's not true. I was there. I knew Jerry Killian. I went to Vietnam with Jerry Killian in 1968." Killian's son also questioned some of the documents, saying his father would never write a memo like the "sugar coat" one. Several of the document examiners said one clue that the documents may be forgeries was the presence of superscripts in this case, a raised, smaller "th" in two references to Guard units. CBS News Anchor Dan Rather, who reported the story for 60 Minutes, said typewriters were available in the early 1970s which were capable of printing superscripts. CBS pointed to other Texas Air National Guard documents released by the White House that include an example of a raised "th" superscript. That superscript, however, is in a different typeface than the one used for the CBS memos. Document examiner Sandra Ramsey Lines of Paradise Valley, Ariz., who examined the documents for the AP, said she was "virtually certain" they were generated by computer. Some forensic experts were quoted by news organizations, including The Associated Press, saying the memos appeared to have been computer-generated with characteristics that weren't available three decades ago. |
I was shocked to see Dan attempt to get answers again to the Bogus questions raised by these fraudu1ent documents..
Which it seems this is the on1y purpose of revisiting this issue.. but..
Where are the CBS executives? Where are the shareho1ders? I was ta1king to another FReeper.. who ca11ed and ta1ked to our 1oca1 paper about basing an artic1e on the o1d story today.. and they get it.. and wi11 be pub1ishing stuff about the prob1ems tomarrow.
a11 of this hanging on a not being ab1e to use a "1" as an e11 in a "modern" document..
Pro11y have to give Rush credit for his theory about Dan becoming everything he supposed1y hates.
Oh by the way.. must be getting near Christmas.. no e11.. Bwa Ha Ha Ha...
ah -- drop by 524?
1o1!!!!
Does anyone else find it telling that CBS finds memos it thinks contain the long sought but never seen smoking gun that Bush was a foul up and then claims that the content (that same long sought but never actually seen) itself proves that the memos are legit. It's like me searching the web and finding posts saying Clinton had people killed, and then saying that since I had expected to find that, it has to be true. Such obvious bias!
Yeah, and I guess Hitler *could* have written the secret Hitler diaries. After all, did anyone ever get Hitler under oath saying he didn't write them?
I don't think the Weekly World News is really interested in getting lumped into the same category as CBS, do you?
If you're going to forge a lie, make it sweet.
"CBS said it used several techniques to make sure the memos should be taken seriously"
What does that mean "should be taken seriously"? CBS had been saying they had used several techniques to make sure they were GENUINE. Now they have watered down the criteria to "should be taken seriously", a "passive-voice" construction that begs the question "taken seriously by whom"?
It seems that CBS is trying to lower the bar from "these documents are real" to "it was imporant to let the public judge for itself." Or is "taken seriously" intended to mean "passed off as genuine on network television news?"
no, it's not using a 1 as an l. it's using an l as a 1. which was pretty clearly done in the documents. and which is an impediment to -- nothing. just smoke from cbs in an effort to confise and obfuscate.
"For instance, CBS said, the official record shows that Mr. Bush was suspended from flying on Aug. 1, 1972"
Another example of distortion. His flight physical expired on 31 July, so he was not "medically cleared" to fly after that date. His other quals should have been intact. "Suspension" is completely different and permanent, requiring a board of aviators to adjudicate.
If he spent a morning over at medical taking a physical, he's back in the airplane.
This has been a tough year for VIACON -- the Opie and Anthony fine, the problems with Howard Stern, The Reagans, Ms. Boob, the Spike TV/Spike Lee brouhaha, the resignation of the LEGENDARY Mel Karmazin, the spin-off of the suddenly obsolete Blockbuster, continuing woes at Paramount -- and through it all, like the flag over Ft. McHenry, SUMNER'S STILL THERE. What's one more problem when you've got ATTITUDE? (Never mind that you merely BOUGHT it.) Let us not forget that SUMNER'S as hard-core a liberal Democrat as they come, which means he could well be nodding at Danno's fibs in agreement, provided he doesn't nod off first.
No, we're talking two IMMORTALS. Because of SUMNER, DANNO STAYS.
P. S. Advertiser boycotts WILL NOT WORK. If the recent history of American commercial television says something, it's that ADVERTISERS WILL SPONSOR ANYTHING except the un-PC or after a major calamity. Most of corporate America's CEOs don't know what the heck they're sponsoring, and they want to keep it that way. And more than a few of their ad-vice-president factotums have come to view exercising good judgment as CENSORSHIP, never mind that they can do some heavy-duty censoring of their audience's discontent just by exercising the power of their purse.
Stiffy Dan Rather has the management's boot up his ass in his future...
Forgery DOES take several techniques.
goto IBM.com and ust Contact Us at the bottom of the page.
Reading this story, I'm getting the feeling that CBS News is trying to distance itself from Dan Rather.
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