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]
Kerry, who continues to give new hope to the enemy every time he speaks.
I understood that Barnes refused to talk on air until CBS came up with the records.
Oh what a tangled web THEY weave when first THEY practice to deceive!
Well, I knew it in my bones, but still - WOW. Just all above the laws aren't they?
Thank you.
Mapes needs to be exposed
I think Rather is in this all the way up to his formerly blue eyes! He looks so humble and sounds so sincere, but he still WILL NOT say the story is wrong. Only that the "documents" are not real. CBS and RATHER have attempted to put this doubt about W's service into the minds of the ninnys who get their news from CBS. Rather needs to take his medicine now.... and CBS, too.
Why would Burkett need help contacting the Kerry campaign when he already had Cleland's cell phone number?
Found it!! Very interesting.
I frankly, think that the content of the memos is a big yawn. Those who thought they would swing the election are delusional. I listen to ABC radio and they are reporting hourly on this story. Each report repeats the allegation that Bush got preferential treatment. I don't thik they should keep repeating an unfounded allegation every hour, but they are.
All this makes CBS' "we were duped" apology meaningless.Everyone involved knew the documents were fakes and they went through with the charade because they shared the same goal, the removal of the President. For arrogance, audacity, and criminality Watergate pales before this criminal conspiracy, but no one cares.
No one cares? Then what's all the hubbub about? You will soon see (if you can't yet) how many DO CARE!
The arrogance thing you mentioned is of great importance. They KNEW the documents were fake, but they figured: A: the American people are so stupid, they will buy it, especially since it comes from CBS.... and B: We're CBS! No one will dare to challenge "OUR" news!
Say nitey nite to CBS, or at least to Dan Blather.
This is what you get when someone lets rank, elitist amateurs with an axe to grind handle a major conspiracy.
Have to get up early tomorrow. I've a feeling it's going to be a BIG news day!
Jack.
I agree.
I'm not interested in saying nitey nite to Gunga Dan. The DNC and elements of the Kerry campaign worked hand in glove with CBS. They all had the same goal. If the focus is on Gunga Dan then the others get a get out of jail free card. And people should be going to jail for this
If people cared then the media would be all over the DNC elements of this story. The producer of a major anti Bush segment gets phony documents from Burkett and then calls the DNC on his behalf; and they admit to this!!! What happened that they don't admit to??
No! Nitey night Dan doesn't begin to make it right, and if that's all we get out of this then we and America have been taken.
"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?
And the DNC DU crowd said Rove and Buckhead were in cahoots because others and Buckhead caught the forgery so quickly.
Hell, these dunces left the trail a foot deep and a mile wide right to their front doors..
INTSUM Bump.
"Don't let them steal Florida again," said Palast, the investigative reporter who in 2000 first uncovered for BBC Television that Katherine Harris and Jeb Bush had wrongly removed tens of thousand of Black citizens from voter rolls. Palast's reports on the theft of the elections are featured in Moore's film "Fahrenheit 9/11."
I really think this is the worst of all. The Dems keep telling Black Americans that the Republicans are trying to "keep them down" when the exact opposite is true. Unfortunately, Black Americans believe it. All you have to do is read a bit of history to get the truth, but the Dems don't WANT Black Americans to know anything about history. So they're against "no child left behind" because that will call to account schools and teachers who pass Black American kids on to the next grade... and the next and the next, until the kids get a high school diploma, but can't read. THAT is what the Democrats want. STUPID AMERICANS. As long as they have that, they can feed all these stupid Americans lie after lie after lie after lie (seems I've heard that line somewhere before), and the minions will all become kool-aid drinkers. I'm mad as hell....er Zell.... I'm MAD!
If people cared then the media would be all over the DNC elements of this story
Many in the media ARE all over it! What are you watching or hearing? It's all over the place. Even MSNBC is hammering it..... knock me over with a feather!
I think more and more blacks are starting to see through that ploy. Unfortunately the mainstream media does its best to perpetuate the "racist Republican" stereotype, because the Democratic leadership knows they can't win votes without it. That media propaganda needs to be bypassed in order to get the truth through to black Americans, which is another reason I'm happy to see CBS being taken down a notch.
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