Posted on 09/20/2004 8:09:36 PM PDT by conservativecorner
A spit-take scoop from USA Today:
CBS arranged for a confidential source to talk with Joe Lockhart, a top aide to Democratic presidential candidate John Kerry, after the source provided the network with the now-disputed documents about President Bush's service in the Texas National Guard. Lockhart, the former press secretary to President Clinton, said a female producer talked to him about the 60 Minutes program a few days before it aired on Sept. 8. She gave Lockhart a telephone number and asked him to call Bill Burkett, a former Texas National Guard officer who gave CBS the documents. Lockhart couldn't recall the producer's name. But CBS said Monday night that it would examine the role of producer Mary Mapes in passing the name to Lockhart.
Burkett told USA TODAY that he had agreed to turn over the documents to CBS if the network would help arrange a conversation with the Kerry campaign.
"At Burkett's request, we gave his (telephone) number to the campaign," said Betsy West, senior CBS News vice president.
CBS would not discuss the propriety of the network serving as a conduit between its partisan source, Burkett, and the Kerry campaign. It was not part of any deal with Burkett to obtain the documents, West said, declining to elaborate.
But Burkett said Monday that his contact with Lockhart was indeed part of an "understanding" with CBS. Burkett said his interest in contacting the campaign was to offer advice in responding to Republican criticisms about Kerry's Vietnam service. It had nothing to do with the documents, he said.
Lockhart said he phoned Burkett at the number provided by CBS. Lockhart also said that subject of the documents never came up in his conversation with Burkett. Lockhart said the conversation lasted just a few minutes. "It's possible that the producer said they had documents," before his conversation with Burkett, he said.
At the end of the conversation, Lockhart said he thanked Burkett for his interest and there was no further contact with him. Asked why he called Burkett, Lockhart said he talks to "a lot of people."
The White House said CBS' contact with Lockhart was inappropriate. "The fact that CBS News would coordinate with the most senior levels of Sen. Kerry's campaign to attack the President is a stunning and deeply troubling revelation," said Dan Bartlett, White House communications director.
Wow. Michael Graham's dumping-Kerry theory doesn't seem so farfetched anymore.
UPDATE: So what's going on here? Okay, according to what's being pieced together, Burkett wanted to play Kerry campaign strategist, and to get the bigwigs at the Kerry campaign to use his memos that he, apparently, thought would be convincing. Mapes (presuming this female producer Lockhart is talking about is Mapes) wanted the memos. Burkett offers to trade the memos for an introduction to the Kerry campaign. Mapes calls the Kerry camp and eventually reaches Lockhart. Lockhart agrees to the favor, since when a "60 Minutes" producer asks you for a favor, you do it. (Building good relations with the press and all that.) Lockhart talks with Burkett...
...and are these two men being honest about what was and what wasn't discussed?
Let's look on Nexis for the first reference to "Operation Fortunate Son." We find an AP story from September 9, 2004.
Seizing on 30-year-old memos and memories, Sen. John Kerry's operatives are painting an unflattering portrait of President Bush as the "fortunate son" who used family connections to dodge the Vietnam War and then lied about it... "Two things: One, he didn't tell the truth and that's not going to go away," said Howard Wolfson, a strategist dispatched to the DNC by Kerry's campaign to go negative on Bush. "Second, it begins to paint a picture of a very fortunate son who uses connections and pulls strings for special favors. That is a theme running through the man's life."
The DNC has nicknamed its effort "Operation Fortunate Son" after a Creedence Clearwater Revival anti-war anthem from the 1960s. The song speaks of the privileged few, "born silver spoon in hand," who send others to war.
Bush is not the "senator's son" written about in the song, but he's the son of a former president who served in the House during the Vietnam War.
Former Texas House Speaker Ben Barnes, a Kerry supporter, says he helped Bush and the sons of other wealthy families get into the Texas National Guard to avoid serving in Vietnam.
As a young lieutenant, Bush was "talking to someone upstairs" and trying to "get out of coming to drill," according to newly unearthed memos by the late Col. Jerry B. Killian, squadron commander for Bush in Texas.
The CBS story based on the memos the evening of Sept. 8. Are we to believe that the Democratic National Committee put together "Operation Fortunate Son," in which these memos are front and center, entirely in the hours after the CBS report, and yet had their campaign ready so that these memos are referred to in the first words of the AP story Sept. 9?
Are we to believe that the DNC didn't know ahead of time what was in those memos, and how they could be used to attack the president?
Ladies and gentlemen, I am not a lawyer. Would this qualify as circumstantial evidence that CBS and the DNC were collaborating on using the memos before the story ran?
And would this explain why Terry McAuliffe said yesterday that no one at the DNC or Kerry campaign, 'had anything to do with the preparations of the documents,' but said nothing about the distribution or dissemination of the memo?
Oh and did no one at the DNC look at these documents and say, "Gee, these look like they were written with Microsoft Word"?
[Posted 09/20 10:30 PM]
CBSnooze: the "news" organization that wouldn't speak to people considered "too pro-Bush," but, couldn't get enough of what Burkett had to say.
"Annette, can you dig it? I knew that you could."
Mary Mapes (as most of you know) used to work for KIRO TV in Seattle. John Carlson of KVI radio was saying on his show that she was a leftwing nutjob when he worked for her at KIRO. Someone at National Review, Fox, etc. needs to get Carlson on to tell this story.
The media act like this is an honest mistake from CBS. This is not - this is a conspiracy between Mapes (maybe Rather), Texas Dems and Kerry's campaign. Mapes needs to be exposed... Anyone who knows anyone at National Review or Fox needs to talk to Carlson IMHO...
Amateurs and fools.
Lockhart knows his phone records would prove contact with Burkett before the show aired.
This is nothing more than that bug-eyed freak's lame cover story for those calls.
Who is Dan Rather covering up for? Where did the documents originate? You can bet that there will be an investigation into this. If this goes all of the way to the top of the Kerry campaign as this suggests, theres no way that John Kerry did not know what was going on at all levels of this deceit.
unconditional surrender
Watergate II
The rest of the media must expose the criminal conspiracy on behalf of the Democrat party or risk freedom of the press.
I posted this on another thread, but I think it bears repeating:
"I don't know what thread it is on, but someone posted 6 or 7 links to a Yahoo group, and there, in one of the messages, he stated that he wanted a position in the new Kerry administration. He was putting himself forward for Political Patronage."
Could someone document this, so I'm sure I remembered it correctly? It answers more as to Burkett's motivation than just "Bush hatred."
They leave out Max Clelland in all of this. We can't forget about him. And who faxed the memos from Texas? Do we know for sure if it was Burkett? Does Kinkos have surveillance cameras?
There are nothing but liars here. Burkett, CBS, and the DNC are engaged in diversionary lying. I doubt if much if anything is true except that they had some conservations. They are covering up the bigger truth which is all were engaged in a conspiracy to overthrow a sitting President with criminally forged documents. Any truth other than that may never be known unless some emails show up. You can hardly reconstruct the truth with conversations among a pack of professional liars.
Sounds like a smoking gun, and we are just at the tip of the iceberg!
I can't believe that this is all coming out..
I hope something can be done to these people. I'm no lawyer, but I hope an arrest or more is in the wind.
bookmark bump
It would be in Kerry's best interest to through the culprit off the train. But it ain't gonna happen, luckily.
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