CBS Independent Panel Review Credits Free Republic

foxnews ^ | 1/10/04 | CBS Investigatory Panel

[FreeTheHostages]

Check out the actual investigatory panel report -- it credits Free Republic (accurately) for first questioning the authenticity of thye documents. The actual investigatory report can be seen

[daybreakcoming]

***Burkett should be prosecuted for libel, slander, forgery, and the illegal counterfeiting of military orders (all felonies).***

Do you really think crazy ol Burkett did this forging all by himself? I thought our TX AG was supposed to be looking into it - but have heard no more.

[Southack]

"Do you really think crazy ol Burkett did this forging all by himself?"

Yes. It was amatuerish. He even posted onto one of his web forums that he had "reassembled" Bush's TANG documents several months before Mapes got them from him. That on-line quote alone should have had the mainstream news media smashing CBS' fake story from Day One; instead, several MSM outlets ran with it as being true on September 9...when *any* Google searches on their own would have shown the entire exercise to have been fraudulent.

Burkett also had a highly questionable personal history (he had been running a "Bush got his documents purged" story, among others) that was readily available to the Old Media at the time, plus a poor mental / physical medical history and some failed lawsuits.

Which is to say, he's probably one of the most trustworthy sources that the lying, scheming, Goebbels-esque CBS News has ever used...but no reputable source should have touched him with anything except jeers and professional disdain.

[Shortstop7]

Well, that's interesting reading.......pretty good report.

But they are all still lying. (Surprise surprise!)

Mapes said Lockhart called her.......and Lockhart says Mapes called him. (He hesitated to take the call..yeah right!)

Rather still believes in the "story behind the documents".. and only has "vague recollectations" about some conversations cause he was hurrying off to Hurricane Frances?

Rather never heard of "Burkett's notoriety" before the story aired? Okayyyyy Dan......

I must have missed it. Who is the "Smith" person that Mapes kept emailing? I couldn't find a first name. I noticed the person referenced the "bushies" a lot.... Did anyone else catch who that was?

[Do not dub me shapka broham]

WE ROCK!

(Raises "Pajama Patrol Deputy" skyward.)

-good times, G.J.P.(Jr.)

[Do not dub me shapka broham]

My last post should have read "Pajama Patrol Deputy mug."

Ugh.

I need to get some rest.

[purpleland]

Good points. re Dan fighting "until the bitter end," you may be amused to note that the Panel records that Dan Rather's CURRENT point of view is that the story may be right -- that he went on air and said it was wrong at the behest of CBS management.

The panel indicates that they find this statement by Dan Rather "troubling."

The guy is quite possibly insane.

***Hyper-hubris is a form of insanity or certain derangement.

Rather has a cattle ranch, and Heel retire in the familiar comfort of lotsa bovine manure.

[Lijahsbubbe]

they had to run the whole piece calling him 'Buckhead.' I died laughing!

Ha ha ha! That's funny!

[daybreakcoming]

Thank you for your well stated reply. I've known a kook or two like Burkett and cannot imagine anyone of an IQ above 50 listening to them. However, he was offering "info" that Mapes, Inc. was desperately looking for. That adds up to what you are saying but in that one line that was published by him he says "we have reassembled" referring to the papers. That "we" makes me wonder but he may have just been referring to his wife or other family member. I'm still waiting for our AG......crickets chirping.

[Kitten Festival]

He made 'em look so darn stupid! I love it!

[Kitten Festival]

Mark Steyn summed it up better than anyone: Of all the loopy statements made by Dan Rather in the 10 days since he decided to throw his career away, my favorite is this, from Dan's interview with the Washington Post on Thursday: ''If the documents are not what we were led to believe, I'd like to break that story.'' Hel-looooo? Earth to the Lost Planet of Ratheria: You can't ''break that story.'' A guy called ''Buckhead'' did that, on the Free Republic Web site a couple of hours after you and your money-no-object resources-a-go-go ''60 Minutes'' crew attempted to pass off four obvious Microsoft Word documents as authentic 1972 typewritten memos about Bush's skipping latrine duty in the Spanish-American War, or whatever it was.

[thelastvirgil]

Way to go, CBS: Deny, deny, deny. Keep it up, and you will be even less relevant than you are now. AND, where was The Droll One during his Evening News timeslot, last night? Danny Boy having another tantrum? Awwwwwwwww, poor baby.

[cbkaty]

"Bloggers with a conservative agenda".....

Hey....CBS, are you listening? How about Bloggers with and an agenda of truth?

[sevry]

Actually the IBM Selectric Composer could type proportional fonts

No, you still got it wrong. The typeball was close because it also was based on Times New Roman. But the spacing for the letters was more limited, did not match that for MS Word, and neither did the line spacing.

That's what all those overlays people made up in the first week or so showed. You could scale an MS Word version to word boundries and find that every letter matched up, and the line spacing as well. Not so if you typed the same thing on Composer with that typeface, and never mind that Composer was an expensive cold typesetter simply not used for one-off in-office memos.

[tobyhill]

This investigation could have been summed up in a couple paragraphs,"we didn't expect people to call us on our partisan lies and forgeries".

[Lijahsbubbe]

Too bad Buckhead's screen name wasn't 'Dan Rather's a Commie', or 'Rather Loves Castro'. LOL

[visualops]

because it also was based on Times New Roman

I don't have time for a long discussion of typography, but you've got it backwards on that.
The Selectric Composer did indeed type proportional fonts. That fact that it doesn't match exactly is to be expected, since the document in question was forged and not typed on a Composer, and it wasn't the same font. Furthermore, a computer & laser/inkjet is far more consistently accurate than typewriters, each of which has a "signature" based on the slight differences in each machine's typing.
And, I already made the point about the expense and use of a machine such as the Composer.

[FreeTheHostages]

Yeah, it's sorta nice, but the panel report certainly gives sufficient basis to FIRE Dan Rather, and no one did that. Plus, the report did a typo on the link the FR thread, so it can't be accessed easily.

I'm plugging along.

[FreeTheHostages]

it was a freelance associate producer

Yeah, it's pretty amazing: Mapes is caught with all this derisive email about silver spoons and "bushies" and she's gonna get him, and she issues a statement about how high-minded she's been and it's all a corporate plot.

[PreviouslyA-Lurker]

Hey, G.J.P. (Jr.), I haven't seen you since the now dead undead thread!

[Do not dub me shapka broham]

Really?

You haven't?

Not as prominent as its predecessor, I guess.

I've made a few appearances before.