Posted on 09/14/2004 7:44:41 PM PDT by PDR
Peter Principles: A fraud, not a mistake
By PETER ROFF
WASHINGTON, Sept. 13 (UPI) -- Though it is not a certainty, the documents produced by CBS News to support the assertions of former Texas House Speaker and Lt. Gov. Ben Barnes that George W. Bush was the beneficiary of special treatment throughout his service in the Texas Air National Guard are likely fraudulent.
This is no small issue.
It is unusual for a contemporary U.S. presidential campaign to give as much attention to the military service of the candidates. The Kerry campaign, as many have said, has been based almost entirely on the idea that the Massachusetts senator's 4 1/2 months on a Swift boat on the Mekong Delta qualifies him to be president of the United States. The Bush campaign, while not making much if anything about the president's close to six years in the National Guard -- it left it to the Democrats to raise the issue -- has made much of Bush's firm hand on the tiller of the ship of state as commander in chief during the war on terror.
The documents, which rather neatly tie up the many allegations made against Bush by the Democrats over the years, are on the surface too neat a package to have surfaced so late in Bush's political career -- which began in 1978 -- to not immediately be suspect.
Even the Democrats appear persuaded that they are forgeries. Several prominent party operatives, including former Al Gore press aide Chris Lehane, have suggested they were fabricated by senior White House adviser Karl Rove as an artful political dirty trick.
Unfortunately CBS and its news anchorman Dan Rather have added to the suspicions by building a stone wall of increasing size around the documents in an attempt to fend off questions about them.
Rather dug in his heels quite deeply on Friday's network news broadcast. He explained that whether the documents were forgeries -- he says they are not and that they were given to CBS by a credible source -- is not the issue; the issue is the questions they raise.
This, of course, is something of an inherent contradiction, since the issues raised depend on the documents to suggest their validity. CBS's assertions that the authenticity of the documents was verified by its own outside experts have been called into question by experts retained by the other news networks, while its explanation of charges that the technology to produce those documents was in fact available in 1972 and 1973 does not stand up under closer scrutiny, at least as far as these specific documents are concerned.
Nothing short of a successful search for the typewriter on which they were typed -- shades of Alger Hiss and Whitaker Chambers -- can at this point affirm the authenticity of documents that have given "Black Rock" a "black eye."
There is, however, a larger issue at stake -- a considerably larger issue involving freedom of the press, the presidency and the integrity of the U.S. electoral process.
Lest this be consigned to the trash bin as meaningless hyperbole, consider that, if the documents were in fact forged, they were produced for only one reason: to sway the outcome of the U.S. presidential election.
This is, to use the vernacular, a big deal indeed.
In the age of three and only three broadcast news outlets, such an action might have succeeded. In the age of the Internet, the blogger, the chat room, the cable news channel and the .pdf file, such chicanery is much less easy to pull off -- leaving CBS exposed to all sorts of charges that put the entire U.S. news industry at risk.
There are those who will suggest -- give it a few more days -- that Rather and company are bravely resisting calls they step forward to protect the integrity of the relationship between the journalist and his source and the First Amendment freedom of the press. I think it is just the opposite: Their stonewalling is putting all those things at risk.
It is important that a thorough, independent and, most importantly, open investigation into the provenience of the documents be conducted. If they are a deliberate attempt to deceive, to sway even a small portion of the electorate in what is expected to be the closest presidential election in a century, then CBS and the media are being used for nefarious purposes. The First Amendment guarantees are, to be sure, a constitutional right -- but they are also a trust that must be wielded wisely lest they be infringed upon.
In order to set things right, several things should occur.
First, CBS should make the documents -- the originals that were given to them -- public.
Second, they should identify by name the parties involved, including the source of the documents, but also the names of all those who verified their authenticity.
Third, CBS management should give Dan Rather a simple choice: Take a leave of absence until after the November election lest the network's reporting continue to be questioned, resign outright or be fired.
In the motion-picture version of "All the President's Men," Robert Redford -- as Bob Woodward -- tells Deep Throat during one of their parking-garage rendezvous that they "are resigning" if they got a critical component of a particular story wrong.
At that time, as the book recounts, the stakes were high. Today, with the nation at war and the country so closely divided, the stakes are even higher. An error such as the one Woodward and his former colleague Carl Bernstein made could even now be tolerated; a deliberate act of deception -- such as the one the memos now appear strongly to be -- cannot.
--
(Please send comments to nationaldesk@upi.com.)
Copyright 2004 by United Press International Want to email or reprint this story? Click here for options.
Who is the source that CBS News and Dan Rather are protecting? It must be someone big to merit the sort of defense we've seen the past week.
Not really. Not in any meaningful "debate" sense, at least.
You see, copies can be proven to be false, but they can never be proven to be authentic.
So you can falsify copies, but you can't authenticate them.
That doesn't leave much to debate.
The AWB Has Expired - Gun Owners Have Won Again For All Americans!
Sorry, Mr. Roff. If you have been following this story completely, you KNOW, and you should be honest about it: The chances that these documents were produced by anything other than a word processor less than 15 years old is less than the probability that a frog's DNA would look like OJ's.
This is no small issue.
Darn tootin'! This accounts for the ire of many of us.
It is unusual for a contemporary U.S. presidential campaign to give as much attention to the military service of the candidates. ... Blather...
<>
The documents, which rather neatly tie up the many allegations made against Bush by the Democrats over the years, are on the surface too neat a package to have surfaced so late in Bush's political career -- which began in 1978 -- to not immediately be suspect.
So now ASK THE REAL QUESTIONS! WHO DID IT AND WHY!
Even the Democrats appear persuaded that they are forgeries. Several prominent party operatives, including former Al Gore press aide Chris Lehane, have suggested they were fabricated by senior White House adviser Karl Rove as an artful political dirty trick.
Right ... Perpetrated on poor ol'Dan who felt simply forced to release this slanderous garbage.
Unfortunately CBS and its news anchorman Dan Rather have added to the suspicions by building a stone wall of increasing size around the documents in an attempt to fend off questions about them.<>
This would be a good time to state that if it were not for the NEW MEDIA watchdogs like FR and talk radio and the blogosphere, he would NEVER have had this type of pressure exerted in time to keep this screed from possibly totally changing the election. There have been other flippant Old Media stories which did just that, and they are still trying the Same Old ...
Rather dug in his heels quite deeply on Friday's network news broadcast. He explained that whether the documents were forgeries -- he says they are not and that they were given to CBS by a credible source -- is not the issue; the issue is the questions they raise.
This, of course, is something of an inherent contradiction, since the issues raised depend on the documents to suggest their validity.
... Duh... Sometimes I have to express surprise that somebody in the lamestream media actually gets it. It seems to happen so rarely I've come to expect simple further obfuscation. This is one of those times that someone from Old Media actually is expressing intelligence.
CBS's assertions that the authenticity of the documents was verified by its own outside experts have been called into question ...
as have the quality of "expert" that they consulted and the stupidity of their whole staff.
... by experts retained by the other news networks,
WHO HAVE ADDED NOTHING OF IMPORTANCE TO THE INFORMATION EASILY FOUND ON FREEREPUBLIC.COM AND THE BLOGS EARLY ON.
... while its explanation of charges that the technology to produce those documents was in fact available in 1972 and 1973 does not stand up under closer scrutiny, at least as far as these specific documents are concerned.
Nothing short of a successful search for the typewriter on which they were typed -- shades of Alger Hiss and Whitaker Chambers -- can at this point affirm the authenticity of documents that have given "Black Rock" a "black eye."
Sorry, Mr.Roff, but the "black eye" does not begin and end at CBS. This is clearly just a surrogate for all the Old Media's problems. CBS and Rather were ripe for the taking, but AP, Reuters, NYSlimes, LASlimes, B.Globe, and all the FRAUDcasters are just as vulnerable. I have to say that POSSIBLY the W.Post can survive this, along with FOX, IBD, and the WSJ, but any of the other OldMedia actors are clearly in jeopardy.
There is, however, a larger issue at stake -- a considerably larger issue involving freedom of the press, the presidency and the integrity of the U.S. electoral process.
Lest this be consigned to the trash bin as meaningless hyperbole, consider that, if the documents were in fact forged, they were produced for only one reason: to sway the outcome of the U.S. presidential election.
This is, to use the vernacular, a big deal indeed.
In the age of three and only three broadcast news outlets, such an action might have succeeded. In the age of the Internet, the blogger, the chat room, the cable news channel and the .pdf file, such chicanery is much less easy to pull off -- leaving CBS exposed to all sorts of charges that put the entire U.S. news industry at risk.
Anybody who dares to suggest that it was NOT the intention of Blather and CBiaS Fraudcasting network to damage President Bush and the Republicans is flat out lying. It is not meaningless hyperbole to state that FR and the rest of the internet may well have saved this election from being fatally swayed by FRAUD of CBS and the DNC
....If they are a deliberate attempt to deceive, to sway even a small portion of the electorate in what is expected to be the closest presidential election in a century, then CBS and the media are being used for nefarious purposes. The First Amendment guarantees are, to be sure, a constitutional right -- but they are also a trust that must be wielded wisely lest they be infringed upon.
It is important that a thorough, independent and, most importantly, open investigation into the provenience of the documents be conducted.
...
I have little quibble with the remainder... the investigation must proceed and prosecute the responsible parties. He ought to have added one last paragraph:
/
CBS is not obligated to protect a source WHICH PROVIDED THEM WITH FORGED DOCUMENTS! Their source has relinquished any claim to anonymity by breaching their arrangements with CBS in the first place!
The most ridiculous part of this statement is one that liberals just don't understand. The point isn't who made the documents. The point is that CBS would use and defend obvious forgeries because they are partisan and want to bring down the president. The DU poster is admitting that CBS is partisan and he doesn't even realize it!
Lest this be consigned to the trash bin as meaningless hyperbole, consider that, if the documents were in fact forged, they were produced for only one reason: to sway the outcome of the U.S. presidential election.
This is, to use the vernacular, a big deal indeed.
In the age of three and only three broadcast news outlets…
An important point to remember is that as a supposed news organization, CBS is exempt from the new “Campaign Finance Reform” law that restrict everyone else’s ability to get their voice out to the people.
With special rights come special responsibilities, if CBS isn’t up to the job, their broadcasting license should be pulled, it’s that important!
If the documents are a forgery, only Karl Rove would have put those papers out there. It is consistent with his trickery. "
Understand: This is like those Muslim idjits who claim 9/11 was caused by Mossad.
"Bad thing happened"
"Evil people did it"
"Rove is evil"
"Ergo, Rove did it"
QED
WHAT MORONS!
Go get 'em.
I can't believe I hadn't thought along those lines. That would help explain his irrational behavior when even his left wing buddies in other media outlets are starting to state the obvious.
I read a few nights ago on a blog that a dnc opposition research assistant said they received the documents and didn't know what to make of them, but passed them on to the Kerry campaign. This staffer felt it was the campaign that passed them on in the hopes CBS would do the work of establishing validity. You mentioned the daughter,some believe it's moveon.org.....so many candidates to choose from!
I think this would have normally been saved for right before the election, but because Kerry was in a freefall in the polls Dan decided to go with it now in the hopes it would have the same effect the Swiftboat Vets ads had against Kerry. 'The Dan' misunderestimated the pajama party peons on the web that didn't believe the democrat document fairy just happened to find these secret cya memos written by a deceased man 30 years after the fact that so neatly tied up loose ends for the I Hate Bush crowd.
a bit over the top - i think - but you make some good points
what does qed translate to?
I would love to hear, point by point, what you think I said that was "a bit over the top". I just re-read my post, and don't see what you could be referring to.
/
However, they were presented by CBS as originals and authentic, and only after more questions were raised in the blog did he have to respond that they received copies.
Further pressing and they confirmed they never had access to the originals, nor would they receive access to the originals in the future.
Pretty bad.
They can't do that either.
They originally peddled these are coming from Bush's military record. Only after Mr. Bush said he didn't have those copies and would like them (and admitted never seeing them before ) did CBS change their story to "personal" files.
The big mistake they made was Dan Rather pushing this through, digging his feet in, and by the time Viacom lawyers were involved, it was too late. He should have said "no comment" from his comment with the White House and then on. Now too much evidence points to collusion.
OK, I did not know that. Guess I'm not keeping up as well as I thought. Is there a link for that info?
Thanks.
Oh boy. That's a good question.
I'd start with the very first threads on this issue, and scroll through. I do remember reading it when this first broke on the internet and before it made it to mainstream.
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.