[ConservativeBamaFan]

What took so long?

[MistyCA]

And what about this???

---

Washington Prowler
Anatomy of a Forgery Print Friendly Format
E-Mail this to a Friend
By The Prowler
Published 9/10/2004 12:09:06 AM


More than six weeks ago, an opposition research staffer for the Democratic National Committee received documents purportedly written by President George W. Bush's Texas Air National Guard squadron commander, the late Col. Jerry Killian.

The oppo researcher claimed the source was "a retired military officer." According to a DNC staffer, the documents were seen by both senior staff members at the DNC, as well as the Kerry campaign.

"More than a couple people heard about the papers," says the DNC staffer. "I've heard that they ended up with the Kerry campaign, for them to decide to how to proceed, and presumably they were handed over to 60 Minutes, which used them the other night. But I know this much. When there was discussion here, there were doubts raised about their authenticity."

The concerns arose from the sourcing. "It wasn't clear that our source for the documents would have had access to them. Our person couldn't confirm from what file, from what original source they came from."

The documents that CBS News used were not documents from any of Bush's personnel files from his time in the National Guard. Rather, CBS News stated that they were documents uncovered in the personnel files of Killian. That would explain why the White House or the Pentagon had never before released or even seen them.

According to a Kerry campaign source, there was little gossip about the supposedly hot documents inside the office of the campaign on McPherson Square. "Those documents were not something anyone was talking about or trying to generate buzz on," says the staffer. "It wasn't like there were small groups of people talking about this as a bombshell. I think people here weren't sure what to make of it, because provenance of these documents was uncertain."

A CBS producer, who initially tipped off The Prowler about the 60 Minutes story, says that despite seeking professional assurances that the documents were legitimate, there was uncertainty even among the group of producers and researchers working on the story.

"The problem was we had one set of documents from Bush's file that had Killian calling Bush 'an exceptionally fine young officer and pilot.' And someone who Killian said 'performed in an outstanding manner.' Then you have these new documents and the tone and content are so different."

The CBS producer said that some alarms bells went off last week when the signatures and initials of Killian on the documents in hand did not match up with other documents available on the public record, but producers chose to move ahead with the story. "This was too hot not to push. If there were doubts, those people didn't show it," says the producer, who works on a rival CBS News program.

Now, the producer says, there is growing concern inside the building on 57th Street that they may have been suckered by the Kerry campaign. "There is a school of thought here that the Kerry people dumped this in our laps, figuring we'd do the heavy lifting on the story. That maybe they had doubts about these documents but hoped we'd get more information," says the producer. "If that's the case, then we're bigger fools than we already appear to be judging by all the chatter about how these documents could be forgeries."

ABC News' political unit held a conference call at 7:00 p.m. Thursday evening to discuss the memo and its potential ramifications should the documents turn out to be a forgery. That meeting took place around the time that the deceased Killian's son made public statements questioning the documents' authenticity.

According to one ABC News employee, some reporters believe that the Kerry campaign as well as the DNC were parties in duping CBS, but a smaller segment believe that both the DNC and the Kerry campaign were duped by Karl Rove, who would have engineered the flap to embarrass the opposition.



http://www.spectator.org/dsp_article.asp?art_id=7096

[TheGeezer]

Mr. Rather and others at the network are said to still believe that the sentiment in the memos accurately reflected Mr. Killian's feelings but that the documents' authenticity was now in grave doubt.

The documents are fake but true. That was and still is absolutely amazing, especially since others (Killian's son and widow, for example), have stepped forward to contradict the wishful thinking of Mapes and Rather concerning Killian's feelings. The last line of the story says it all: One person close to the situation said the critical question would be, "Where was everybody's judgment on that last day?"

Hmmm...last day and judgment resonate so well in this matter. Rather and Mapes sacrificed truth for personal advantage, ethics for political gain. Pretty disgusting stuff, especially in time of war.

Give Mapes a bottle of scotch and a revolver. Let's see if she has any dignity left.

Dan Rather? Well, he'll be studied as one whose hubris bred professional suicide and the end of the domination of American politics by MSM. His last days will deservedly be humiliating. Pack him off to some professorial position somewhere: isn't that what they do with failed liberals?

[sauropod]

Dan Rather puts the "BS" in See-BS.

[Liberty Valance]

IMO Dan Rather should publicly thank Buckhead for actually doing the job SeeBS so obviously neglected to do.

[Jeff Head]

This is their next fall back position...still a long ways from the ugly truth.

We were deceived on paper howerever is just one word away from...

We decieved.

[MinuteGal]

Man breaks phony story.
Story breaks phony man.

Leni

[woodb01]

Fact is, there are a LOT of VERY serious issues that should be pushed HARD about the documets.
1. The widow and son were IGNORED
2. Document experts were IGNORED
3. Hodges was MISLED
4. The old secretary was NOT INTERVIEWED until afterward
5. The opinions of the experts were MISREPRESENTED
6. The swift boat veterans were MALIGNED
7. George Bush's roomate DURING HIS GUARD YEARS, who AGREED TO SPEAK TO THEM WAS TURNED DOWN BECAUSE HE WAS TOO "PRO BUSH"...

And the list goes on. Fact is, this was a HIT PIECE ON BUSH. And just because dnCBS owns up to fake documents does NOT CLEAR THEIR PROPAGANDA / DNC REPORTING!!

If the documents were the ONLY ISSUE in this, without all of the other plainly propaganda driven results, it wouldn't be such an issue.

THE DOCUMENTS ARE JUST THE TIP OF THE ICEBERG! THE ICEBERG IS THE MANIPULATION AND DECEPTION OF THE PUBLIC!!

[LS]

In any responsible business, the producers and Dan Rather would be fired. Oh, damn. Forgot. This is CBS.

[Brian Allen]

CBS News Concludes It Was Misled on National Guard Memos, Network Officials Say
By JIM RUTENBERG

fter days of expressing confidence about the documents used in a "60 Minutes'' report that raised new questions about President Bush's National Guard service, CBS News officials have grave doubts about the authenticity of the material, network officials said last night.

The officials, who asked not to be identified, said CBS News would most likely make an announcement as early as today that it had been deceived about the documents' origins. CBS News has already begun intensive reporting on where they came from, and people at the network said it was now possible that officials would open an internal inquiry into how it moved forward with the report. Officials say they are now beginning to believe the report was too flawed to have gone on the air.

But they cautioned that CBS News could still pull back from an announcement. Officials met last night with Dan Rather, the anchor who presented the report, to go over the information it had collected about the documents one last time before making a final decision. Mr. Rather was not available for comment late last night.

The report relied in large part on four memorandums purported to be from the personal file of Mr. Bush's squadron commander, Lt. Col. Jerry B. Killian, who died 20 years ago. The memos, dated from the early 1970's, said that Colonel Killian was under pressure to "sugar coat'' the record of the young Lieutenant Bush and that the officer had disobeyed a direct order to take a physical.

Mr. Rather and others at the network are said to still believe that the sentiment in the memos accurately reflected Mr. Killian's feelings but that the documents' authenticity was now in grave doubt.

The developments last night marked a dramatic turn for CBS News, which for a week stood steadfastly by its Sept. 8 report as various document experts asserted that the typeface of the memos could have been produced only by a modern-day word processor, not Vietnam War-era typewriters.

The seemingly unflappable confidence of Mr. Rather and top news division officials in the documents allayed fears within the network and created doubt among some in the news media at large that those specialists were correct. CBS News officials had said they had reason to be certain that the documents indeed had come from the personal file of Colonel Killian.

Sandy Genelius, a network spokeswoman, said last week, "We are confident about the chain of custody; we're confident in how we secured the documents.''

But officials decided yesterday that they would most likely have to declare that they had been misled about the records' origin after Mr. Rather and a top network executive, Betsy West, met in Texas with a man who was said to have helped the news division obtain the memos, a former Guard officer named Bill Burkett.

Mr. Rather interviewed Mr. Burkett on camera this weekend, and several people close to the reporting process said his answers to Mr. Rather's questions led officials to conclude that their initial confidence that the memos had come from Mr. Killian's own files was not warranted. These people indicated that Mr. Burkett had previously led the producer of the piece, Mary Mapes, to have the utmost confidence in the material.

It was unclear last night if Mr. Burkett had told Mr. Rather that he had been misled about the documents' provenance or that he had been the one who did the misleading.

In an e-mail message yesterday, Mr. Burkett declined to answer any questions about the documents.

Yesterday, Emily J. Will, a document specialist who inspected the records for CBS News and said last week that she had raised concerns about their authenticity with CBS News producers, confirmed a report in Newsweek that a producer had told her that the source of the documents said they had been obtained anonymously and through the mail.

In an interview last night she declined to name the producer who told her this but said the producer was in a position to know. CBS News officials have disputed her contention that she warned the network the night before the initial "60 Minutes'' report that it would face questions from documents experts.

In the coming days CBS News officials plan to focus on how the network moved ahead with the report when there were warning signs that the memorandums were not genuine.

Ms. Will is one of two documents experts consulted by the network who said they raised doubts about the material before the segment was broadcast. Another expert, Marcel B. Matley, said in interviews that he had vouched only for Colonel Killian's signatures on the records and not the authenticity of the records themselves. Mr. Matley said he could not rule out that the signatures had been cut and pasted from official records pertaining to Colonel Killian.

In examining where the network had gone wrong, officials at CBS News turning their attention to Ms. Mapes, one of their most respected producers, who was riding particularly high this year after breaking news about the Abu Ghraib prison scandal for the network.

In a telephone interview this weekend, Josh Howard, the executive producer of the "60 Minutes'' Wednesday edition, said that he did not initially know who was Ms. Mapes' primary source for the documents but that he did not see any reason to doubt them. He said he believed Ms. Mapes and her team had appropriately answered all questions about the documents' authenticity and, he noted, no one seemed to be casting doubt upon the essential thrust of the report.

"The editorial story line was still intact, and still is, to this day,'' he said, "and the reporting that was done in it was by a person who has turned in decades of flawless reporting with no challenge to her credibility.''

He added, "We in management had no sense that the producing team wasn't completely comfortable with the results of the document analysis.''

Ms. Mapes has not responded to requests for comment.

Mr. Howard also said in the interview that the White House did not dispute the veracity of the documents when it was presented to them on the morning of the report. That reaction, he said, was "the icing on the cake'' of the other reporting the network was conducting on the documents. White House officials have said they saw no reason to challenge documents being presented by a credible news organization.

Several people familiar with the situation said they were girding for a particularly tough week for Mr. Rather and the news division should the network announce its new doubts.

One person close to the situation said the critical question would be, "Where was everybody's judgment on that last day?''

[Mr Ramsbotham]

But Officer, she told me she was 18!

[southernerwithanattitude]

Rember dncdan said that the documents came from an "unimpeachable" source. Boy that was a big time LIE! Unless you call Terry {global crossing}Mcalfull unimpeachable.

[Use It Or Lose It]

CBS and the MSM will change the story. The network was duped. Mapes was duped. Rather was duped. Let's move on, nothing to see here. End of story.

It will be up to the usual "truth tellers" to now focus on the real story. Where the docs originated, who had custody of them, and the motive for such activities. If the real story is allowed to fall off the radar screen, which the MSM will try to push, the uninformed will forget, as they usually do, what was really going on here. We can't allow this story to be spiked while the potentially criminal acts which were embraced by Terry McAuliffe, the Monstrous Minions, and the Kerry Kampaign to become whitewashed.

[txoilman]

You reap what you sow!!!

[Brilliant]

They can't fool anyone at this point, so they now paint themselves as dupes. Better to be a dupe than a crook, but I don't believe they are dupes just because they say so.

[thag]

Dear Dan,

No $hit you were deceived.

Going back into my pj's to wait for the next one.

[kellynla]

"CBS News officials have grave doubts about the authenticity of the material"

well no sheeeeet...

every kid who ever sat in front of a computer screen could tell you that the docs were generated on a word processor...

Let us know when the clowns at SeeBS discover that the world is round too!!! LMAO

[LowNslow]

CBS Decieved, - CBS - Planned to lie and got caught.

You don't collect documents and statements for five years and then be "misled" to base your whole story on 4 - 6 fake documents.

I can't believe CBS NEVER laid out all their documents for review and could not detect the real ones from the fakes.

The fakes are so bad it does not take an expert to figure out the problem.

CBS reported with malice is the only answer.

[freddiedavis]

cbs admits rather misled cbs

[toomanygrasshoppers]

"...CBS News could still pull back from an announcement."

Good Grief. They're still doing it. They announce that they are going to make an announcement and then they delay or cancel the announcement. Egad CBS! Get your act together. As President Reagan would say. "There you go again."