Dan Rather’s Long Goodbye: Who Done It?(Mapes,Smith and Burkett)

EASTLAND, TEX.—Three days before Dan Rather was to retire from the CBS Evening News on March 9, the man who gave him the suspicious memos that precipitated his departure as anchor sat in a Mexican restaurant here, 126 miles west of Dallas.

Former National Guardsman Bill Burkett, 55, has grown a full, white beard since his last face-to-face meeting with Mr. Rather, on Sept. 18, 2004. That day, the CBS anchor interviewed him for three hours at the Crescent Court hotel in Dallas, 10 days after 60 Minutes Wednesday had first presented the memos from Mr. Burkett asserting that George W. Bush had received preferential treatment in the National Guard .

Cameras rolling, Mr. Rather had asked Mr. Burkett, his former source—whom he had once promised not to "hang out"—point-blank, if he had misled the network about their provenance.

The former National Guardsman, knowing he was writing his own epitaph, said he had.

"I looked him in the eye," recalled Mr. Burkett, "and I said, ‘Dan, do you know what you just did to me? Will you attend my funeral?’"

And, according to Mr. Burkett, Dan Rather replied: "Will you attend mine? In fact, I want you to read the eulogy."

Texas is the place where Dan Rather’s career ballooned, first on local television and then in Dallas on Nov. 22, 1963, and Texas is the place that punctured it, as Mr. Rather might say, like a rattlesnake striking the tire treads of a prairie pick-up. And in Texas, if not at Black Rock itself, the question of just what brought Mr. Rather low still remains open. Even apparently to him.

When Mr. Burkett’s admission aired Sept. 20, it did nothing to resolve the mystery behind the documents. But it did mark the point at which CBS, embattled by attacks from consumers, ideologues and politicians, stopped defending its Sept. 8 report on Mr. Bush’s National Guard service and started a massive, and somewhat panicked, clean-up.

Mr. Rather continued hunting down the source of the documents, according to sources—when CBS convened an independent panel to investigate the process behind the story, Mr. Rather sought to hire a New York–based private eye with his own money, for a price sources put in the hundreds of thousands of dollars.

A CBS News spokesperson denied via e-mail that Mr. Rather had made any such offer.

But sources said that Mr. Rather did just that, and that CBS News president Andrew Heyward turned him down. To supplement the panel, the network hired its own P.I., whose quest for the source of the documents abruptly faded after the November 2004 Presidential election.

CBS’s pursuit of the story was sidelined. The network, and CBS News, then became focused on righting itself in the public eye, aggressively finishing its panel report and completing what the producers of the National Guard story felt became a "corporate execution," according to Mike Smith, a freelance producer who worked on the story. Mr. Smith—a soft-spoken, 33-year-old Austin native with a ponytail and spectacles—worked closely with Mary Mapes, Mr. Rather’s faithful producer.

Ms. Mapes was fired in January 2005, after the panel’s report came out, and three other employees involved in the segment—executive producer Josh Howard, senior vice president Betsy West and senior broadcast producer Mary Murphy—were asked to resign. Mr. Howard has not. And Mr. Rather was ushered to a conclusion of his tenure on his 24th anniversary as anchor—a year earlier than the anniversary he’d planned.

Ms. Mapes, Mr. Smith and Mr. Burkett—two producers and their source—are in contact with each other every day, still puzzling over the memo scandal.

"It’s like Groundhog Day," said Mr. Smith. "Mary and Bill are trying to figure out how to get out from under this thing."

In the past week, Mr. Smith has sought to help The New York Observer reconstruct the story of the network’s investigation. The investigating panel needed him: After Sept. 20, he was the only person connected to CBS News that Mr. Burkett was willing to talk to.

Mr. Smith had first convinced Mr. Burkett to give CBS News the memos—supposedly written by National Guard Lt. Col. Jerry Killian—which cast a negative light on Mr. Bush’s Vietnam-era service.

In early September 2004, Mr. Smith carried those four pieces of paper in his leather briefcase. But by the end of September, Mr. Smith began filling the briefcase with dozens of 90-minute microcassettes recording his telephone discussions with everyone he spoke to about the memo scandal.

Mr. Smith said he made the recordings to guard against being used by CBS to lay blame on people he sympathized with—Mr. Burkett and Ms. Mapes—and because he felt uncomfortable with his position: CBS News was paying him to get the angry Mr. Burkett to cooperate with the panel. Meanwhile, the panel was investigating Mr. Smith himself.

The conversations consisted of daily exchanges with Ms. Mapes and Mr. Burkett; with a private eye named Erik T. Rigler, who was hired by CBS; and with Linda Mason, the CBS News senior vice president who was coordinating interviews for the panel. They portray an investigation that bred confusion, occasional desperation and a deep suspicion in its subjects. Mr. Smith said they document how "no one really seemed to be interested in the truth."

In a tape from late December, days before the report was released, Ms. Mason was asked by Mr. Smith if CBS News would ever regain its former glory after the incident.

"I certainly hope so," she said, "but this has shaken … Mike, we’re part of this huge corporation now. And [Viacom C.E.O.] Sumner Redstone commented on it at one point. Who needs him commenting about things? Let him stay with his entertainment.

"In the news, when it was first happening," she continued, "he was away in Hong Kong or something. He made some kind of stupid statement about how he didn’t like this, but he was out of town and he had to learn more about it or something. I mean, wow, right?"

On Sept. 2, 2004, Mr. Smith and Ms. Mapes met with Mr. Burkett and his wife, Nicki Burkett, in a Whataburger restaurant in Clyde, Tex. They discussed the possibility of procuring the Bush National Guard documents. Mr. Smith had worked with Ms. Mapes on a number of 60 Minutes and CBS Evening News pieces starting in 2000. He was hired again as a freelancer in August to work on the National Guard story.

"The road to the White House leads through the Clyde Whataburger" was the group’s joke.

"He said, ‘Well, what do you think about this?’" Mr. Smith recalled. "It contained a lot of the elements that had happened with Bush. We read it and our jaws dropped: ‘Wow, that’s exactly what we heard happened.’ So we were stunned when he pulled this document out."

Mr. Burkett has said that this document and the others he gave CBS were provided on a "stand-alone" basis—meaning he wouldn’t vouch for their authenticity—and under a promise of the utmost secrecy. He had first told Ms. Mapes that the memos had come from a former Guard colleague named George Conn.

In the Sept. 18 interview and thereafter, he has maintained instead that a woman calling herself Lucy Ramirez phoned him—from a number later traced to a Holiday Inn in Houston—and instructed him to attend a livestock show, where he was handed the papers in an envelope.

Despite Mr. Burkett’s desire for secrecy, as CBS News came under fire for peculiarities in the documents’ format, newspapers began citing him as the possible source. With scrutiny mounting, Mr. Burkett requested a conversation with Mr. Rather himself.

The anchor called him at a Holiday Inn in Bozeman, Mont., where the Burketts were staying to avoid attention. Mr. Rather promised to protect his source, according to Mr. Burkett.

"It was very candid—very hard," recalled Mr. Burkett. "Twenty minutes. He said, ‘Bill, I believe in you. I realize you’re a truth-teller, and I understand we have a commitment to you. We’re not going to hang you out.’"

On Sept. 16, while the media surrounded his house with cameras, Mr. Burkett set up a conference call with CBS News president Andrew Heyward, Mr. Rather, Ms. West and Ms. Mapes. He said he wanted to set the record straight, fearing that, in his poor health, he might die of a heart attack.

"We agreed that we would do an interview—initially, we would do an interview which we would store," said Mr. Burkett, his voice growing somber and tears welling in his eyes. "It would be so Nicki would have it in case I died, for the protection of me. We talked about name-clearing for Bill Burkett, not for CBS."

Mr. Burkett insisted that the full taped interview of Sept. 18—a copy of which he said CBS promised him and never delivered—would correct the record regarding his involvement in the segment.

The tape, he said, would show Mr. Rather admitting that CBS had promised him absolute anonymity—a promise that he said was broken, and that unleashed events that ruined his life, from media attacks to health problems to a flagging cattle business.

Asked if Mr. Burkett had been treated fairly, CBS’s Ms. Mason was silent for at least 30 seconds.

"There was no agreement," she finally said. "There was never an agreement with Burkett. He decided to speak without his lawyer’s permission. In Burkett’s mind, there was an agreement."

A CBS News spokesperson said that Mr. Rather had not promised Mr. Burkett absolute anonymity and rejected Mr. Burkett’s claim that the interview backed him up, asking, "Why would you do an on-camera interview if you wanted to remain anonymous?"

From then on, Mr. Burkett refused to talk to CBS. He said he distrusted the investigative panel, led by former Attorney General Richard Thornburgh and former Associated Press head Louis Boccardi Jr., which he saw as bought and paid for by CBS.

He was not alone in having reservations about the panel. A number of critics and observers—including Mr. Rather—complained that the panel was tilted by the inclusion of Mr. Thornburgh, a Republican and Bush family friend. The nonpartisan Mr. Boccardi was supposed to be the neutralizing factor.

Convinced that it had made a mistake in broadcasting the report, CBS seemed more interested in trying to atone for its confessed error than in trying determine whether the memos were a hoax or not. On Oct. 5, CBS president Leslie Moonves promised at a Goldman Sachs media conference that the network would withhold the report until "after the election, so it won’t affect what is going on."

Still, CBS did take at least one step to dig into the document mystery: After Mr. Rather offered to hire his own private eye, Mr. Heyward stepped in, promising him and Ms. Mapes that Mr. Rigler would pursue the case.

Mr. Rigler is an employee of the New York–based corporate investigative group Safir Rosetti. The company was founded by former Mayor Rudolph Giuliani’s ex-police commissioner, Howard Safir.

Mr. Rigler, a former F.B.I. agent, first introduced himself via e-mail to Mr. Smith and to Mr. Burkett. In that message, sent in early October, Mr. Rigler said his "client" was a "investigative firm hired by CBS." But Mr. Rigler seems to have been confused about his assignment: In a tape from late October, he complained to Mr. Smith of uncertainty about exactly whom he was working for—the independent panel, which could presumably want to know the source of the documents in order to judge the broadcast, or CBS, which had hired him for the express purpose of finding the documents.

Mr. Rigler said that he would be filing reports directly to Mr. Thornburgh, according to Mr. Smith. On Oct. 25, Mr. Rigler told Mr. Smith: "I got to talk to the former Attorney General at length. What it means is they have enough trust in me to talk to [Bill Burkett] and then carry his message back to them."

But that apparently wasn’t the CBS plan. Mr. Rigler said on tape that Ms. Mason, the CBS News senior vice president, didn’t want him interacting with the panel. In the recording, he said that he’d consulted with her about questions the panel had asked him: "‘You know, these people are asking a lot of questions about this. I’m not sure how I’m supposed to answer—so what’s my role in all of this? Am I CBS’s investigator or the commission’s investigator?’"

Ms. Mason, he told Mr. Smith, "promptly chewed me out," saying explicitly: "You should never talk to those people!"

"I said, ‘Wait a minute—you’re the one that told me to call them!’" he recalled. "So it’s like, I guess, a runaway grand jury or something like that."

The incident in question took place on Oct. 27, after Ms. Mapes discovered that the panel had spoken with Mr. Rigler and received a two-page report on Ms. Mapes herself.

On Feb. 22, Michael Missal, the lead council for the panel, told The Observer that the memo was for cross-checking other things Ms. Mapes had told them.

But Ms. Mapes was infuriated by what she considered to be a double-cross by Mr. Heyward, who had told her the private eye was strictly for searching out the source of the documents, not for investigating staff. In a conversation taped in late December, Ms. Mason told Mr. Smith that Mr. Rigler’s investigation was separate from the panel’s and that his information only passed on through her.

"He was independent," Ms. Mason said. "Well, through me. If we had gotten information, I would have passed it on to the panel. But he was independent."

On March 1, Mr. Missal told The Observer that, contrary to what Ms. Mason had said, the panel had been in direct contact with Mr. Rigler on a regular basis and received a number of leads from him, including information about a possible source, J.R. Rodriguez, a former National Guardsman who worked with Lieutenant-Colonel Killian.

Reached for comment, Ms. Mason said via e-mail that Mr. Rigler had spoken to the panel "only twice."

In the late October tape, Mr. Rigler suggested that CBS News was only interested in the documents if they could get them before the Presidential election. After Nov. 2, he said, his services would no longer be needed.

"I’m going to be unemployed after the election," Mr. Rigler said on the tape. "I know what’s coming. I think 5 p.m. Friday, I’m gone—which makes me wonder if this whole thing wasn’t so CBS could tell Mary Mapes, ‘Well, we tried.’ Whatever you’re going to do … if they take any employment action against her and she says, ‘Well, wait a minute, you didn’t even try to verify my side of the story or make an attempt to contact this guy …. ’"

A CBS spokesperson said via e-mail that Mr. Rigler’s investigation ended on its own schedule. "CBS News wanted to find the source of the documents," the spokesperson wrote. "When all the attempts failed and the leads dried up, we stopped looking. That occurred before the election. If there were continuing leads, we would have followed them."

On tape, Mr. Rigler described spending an afternoon with J.R. Rodriguez and his wife, Charlotte, a woman whom Mr. Rigler and a number of reporters refer to by the nickname "Cookie." The couple lives outside Houston, the site of the livestock show where Mr. Burkett said he received the documents.

Mr. Smith had urged CBS to look into the Rodriguezes, and CBS had Mr. Rigler investigate the two. Mr. Missal said the panel actually called Mr. Rodriguez too, counting him as one of the 66 people the panel interviewed.

But Mr. Rigler said he came away unconvinced that they were related to Lucy Ramirez. In a taped conversation with Mr. Smith, he said, "I don’t see it. She’s Anglo, and he’s retired and patriotic."

Mr. Missal wouldn’t describe conversations the panel had with Mr. Rodriguez. But when contacted, the former Texas Air National Guard senior master sergeant said he’d never heard of Mr. Thornburgh, had only vaguely recalled the word "panel" in conversations he’d had with reporters and had no recollection whatsoever of Mr. Rigler.

In any case, Mr. Rigler went on to say that interviews with former National Guardsmen were leading him to believe the truth of the documents, if not their authenticity.

"It was so well known for years at Camp Avery about Bush and his failure to serve in the Texas Air National Guard," he said, referring to the base where Mr. Bush had been stationed in the early 1970’s. "It was just so very, very common. You know, he didn’t even show up out there during his whole eight-year tenure as governor and commander in chief of the Texas Air National Guard—not once did he go to Camp Avery. So most people just sort of looked at him as a draft dodger. They didn’t hold him in very high regard at all."

He continued: "The story—and I’m talking to some people at Camp Avery—the story about the files, the non-service, the memos, stuff like that, had floated around for years. For that reason, it makes you think it’s likely true."

By Nov. 23, when Mr. Rather announced he was retiring, Mr. Rigler was long out of the picture. He told Mr. Smith that the investigation was a "black hole," calling his awkward position between the panel, Ms. Mapes, CBS and Mr. Burkett a "no-win situation."

By Dec. 30—10 days before the report was released—Mr. Smith’s last-minute attempts to get Mr. Burkett to cooperate had failed. Mr. Burkett had offered to answer the panel, but only on the condition that his answers be confidential. The panel refused.

"You’ve made a heroic effort," Ms. Mason told Mr. Smith on one of his tapes. "You know how you follow a lead until you hit a dead end? Well, we’re at a dead end. We’re at an impasse here. He’s not going to do something, and we’re running out of time. So I would fold my tent and leave."

So he did. But Mr. Smith said a powerful memory stayed with him from the whole ordeal. When Mr. Burkett’s Sept. 18 interview with Mr. Rather was completed after three hours, Mr. Smith said that Mr. Burkett’s wife Nicki had wept and said, "They set a trap. They set us up."

Shortly after, other witnesses said, a cheerful and relieved CBS News senior vice president named Betsy West walked into the makeshift green room in the Crescent Court hotel to find the Burketts. She discovered them on their knees, praying. According to people who were there, Ms. West was highly unsettled.

The references to "Camp Avery" caught my eye, too. Someone was asleep at the switch, they are almost certainly referring to Camp Mabry in Austin, where Burkett was stationed and claims to have seen a bunch of Bush's files in a trash can. (Truthfully, I can see someone mis-hearing it, but it's not that hard to check, it's a known element of this story for months now.)

The stuff about the rumors being all over "Camp Avery" for years so-there-must-be-something-to-it is hysterical, because they are essentially using Burkett's rumors from while he worked at Mabry to confirm his later credibilty on the Killian memos!

Burkett made a bunch of claims of seing discarded memos back in Feb/March of 2004, months before the CBS memos, plus weird claims of having "reassembled" the trash memos. Google various combinations of "James Moore, Burkett, trash, files, reassembled" and some of the articles from Spring 2004 will surface. Including this fascinating one:
The Cleansing of Bush's Gaurd Duty: White House Ally, George Conn, Caught in a Lie [sic]

How any rational adult could not seriously question whether Burkett had somehow "reassembled" the Killian memos he conveniently produced for CBS defies belief. They have just wanted to believe it for so many years, this has cropped up every election since Bush ran for Governor the first time in '94.

Burkett was peddling a version of lost Bush memos at least in early '04, and when that didn't have the desired effect, he just HAPPENED to finally find the missing documents that would prove what they just KNEW was the truth! It's a miracle, LOL!

The disgusting thing isn't that these professional journalists are a bunch of morons--it's that they think WE are.

The references to "Camp Avery" caught my eye, too. Someone was asleep at the switch, they are almost certainly referring to Camp Mabry in Austin, where Burkett was stationed and claims to have seen a bunch of Bush's files in a trash can.

Even if they screwed up the name of the post, they still need to tell us why they think a Pilot assigned to the Air National Guard at an Air Base in Houston should have been reporting to an Army Guard base in Austin?

"It was so well known for years at Camp Avery about Bush and his failure to serve in the Texas Air National Guard," he said, referring to the base where Mr. Bush had been stationed in the early 1970’s.

Perhaps we give these newsies more credit than they deserve. Hell, even if your intentions is to produce a fraud, you still need to have basic facts if you want it to be believable. These people apparently don't even know the basics.

Burkett made a bunch of claims of seing discarded memos back in Feb/March of 2004, months before the CBS memos, plus weird claims of having "reassembled" the trash memos.

Exactly.

Rather flat out stated they had an "unimpeachable source" for these fake documents and as you note, the public record documents what type of character that source, Burkett, was. Yet the vaunted panel couldn't make the conclusions that are writ large...practically in flashing neon.

Not much of an effort was taken to find out who "Lucy Ramirez" was, and I'd be inclined to believe that Burkett just made the documents up himself if it weren't for that one little detail of the phone call from the Houston Holiday Inn. Somebody called Burkett, and it was almost certainly a dem political operative. I'm sure nothing short of a subpeona would get the guest list from that Holiday Inn on the day the phone call was made, but that could very well be the only way we'll ever know for sure who delivered the "memo's" to the fool Burkett. Hmmmm, freeper project anyone?

Here is my email to Hagan (Subject was the title of his article):

From your article:

"It was so well known for years at Camp Avery about Bush and his failure to serve in the Texas Air National Guard," he said, referring to the base where Mr. Bush had been stationed in the early 1970’s. "It was just so very, very common. You know, he didn’t even show up out there during his whole eight-year tenure as governor and commander in chief of the Texas Air National Guard—not once did he go to Camp Avery. So most people just sort of looked at him as a draft dodger. They didn’t hold him in very high regard at all."

-end excerpt-

Point of fact: George W. Bush was never stationed at "Camp Avery". In fact, I can't find a Camp Avery in Texas.

George W. Bush was stationed (and appeared and served ) at Ellington Air Force Base.

Bill Burkett, however, served at Camp Mabry.

Why is Burkett granted one shred of credibility and what kind of fact checking goes on when dealing with someone like him? It appears he is free to babble to various media and these "real journalists" for some reason have decided he does not need any vetting whatsoever. It seems clear to me that Burkett's statements have time and again been demonstrated to be false. Therefore, I would expect the average person--let alone a "real journalist"--to take what he has to say with a shaker of salt.

At any rate, a correction is in order for the assertion that George W. Bush served at this "Camp Avery" and, since he did not, also correct the slam at him for not visiting this phantom camp.

Thank you,

Name and Town

If I were investigating this, Burkett would be the prime suspect. He is both obsessed with Bush and demonstratively unstable enough to have fabricated the documents without considering the consequences.

True enough, but it also made him the perfect patsy to clean the true source of the documents, which I believe was either the DNC or the Kerry campaign. Burkett acting alone is certainly plausible, but someone placed that call from the Houston Holiday Inn. It could have just been an acqaintance of Burkett's and the time frame happened to work, but for some reason I just don't think Burkett was smart enough to come up with all of this on his own. "Lucy Ramirez" was probably real, and employed as a dem political operative using Burkett as the ideal mark. I also don't totally rule out that Rather and Mapes knew ahead of time that Burkett would be recieving the package, and just waited on the call from Burkett so they could press ahead with the story.

Well, while the facts are carelessly mixed and muddled in the Professional Journalist's article, Camp Mabry is not just an Army post, it's HQ for several divisions of the National Guard, including being the Headquarters of the Texas Air National Guard. From The Handbook of Texas Online:

The state adjutant general's office was moved to Camp Mabry in 1954, and the Texas National Guard State Officer Candidate School was established there in 1959. A historical marker acknowledging the contribution of Camp Mabry was dedicated in December 1972....
...The Texas National Guard Academy opened at Camp Mabry in June 1984. Also located on the post are the headquarters of the Texas Air National Guard, the Texas State Guard, the United States Property and Fiscal Office, the Texas National Guard Armory Board, the Headquarters Armory of the Forty-ninth Armored Division, a clinic, a parachute packing and storage facility, and numerous supply and warehouse facilities.

When you drive past Mabry on MoPac Expressway, the most noticeable features are two airplanes and a couple of helicopters on display. (They even string lights on them at Christmas time.) Here's a picture I found online of one of the planes here, note the Texas flag and TANG emblems on the tail:

I don't know about the assertion that Bush was actually stationed at Mabry (I suspect the reporter is melding/blurring his facts a bit and means Ellington, but I haven't followed this closely enough to say Bush was never at Mabry), but Mabry is indeed TANG HQ, and Burkett could theoretically have seen some sort of records when he was there in 1998 (not saying I believe him, just that Burkett apparently was indeed working at TANG HQ in '98 when Bush was the Governor). I think that's why he is given so much credibilty, there are so many people that see him as the link, he just must have seen something because he was there, etc., etc. It's his claim to fame in Dem circles, apparently. Were I a reporter using him as a source, I would have certainly given a heckuva lot more weight to the disbelief and denials of Killian's family than CBS did.

I got a note from Hagan saying they had made the correction. I just checked the link and here is the corrected portion:

In any case, Mr. Rigler went on to say that interviews with former National Guardsmen were leading him to believe the truth of the documents, if not their authenticity.

"It was so well known for years at Camp Mabry about Bush and his failure to serve in the Texas Air National Guard," he said, referring to the repository where Texas Air National Guard files are stored. "It was just so very, very common. You know, he didn’t even show up out there during his whole eight-year tenure as governor and commander in chief of the Texas Air National Guard—not once did he go to Camp Mabry. So most people just sort of looked at him as a draft dodger. They didn’t hold him in very high regard at all."

He continued: "The story—and I’m talking to some people at Camp Mabry—the story about the files, the non-service, the memos, stuff like that, had floated around for years. For that reason, it makes you think it’s likely true."

~snip~

"The road to the White House leads through the Clyde Whataburger" was the group’s joke.

Oh forgive me if I am not laughing. Like you, I find trying to knwoingly derail a presidential campaign with fraudulent documents vastly more serious than arresting Valerie Plame's husband for outing her.

These people lied and got caught. They are one of the three biggest news outlets in the country and they proved for once an all that they are a partisan organization.

There is no honor among thieves, liars, and partisan demcorats apparently.

I believe that Bill Burkett typed the things up himself, CBS reporters/producers failed to authenticate the memos, and Rather was all too happy to report it because their zeal and hatred to "get Bush" trumped all. It trumped the truth. They relied on false tin-foil hat conspiracies of the loony left instead of good objective journalism.

Has any of this really been confirmed?

People refer to things like the "common knowledge" in the ANG (or similar) that Bush was AWOL. In fact, the sole source of this is Burkett who blames Bush for his medical bills from over a decade ago.

Boy! I'm glad Rigler didn't bother us with dreary details like names when he made these claims about what "people" have said. Evidently he wasn't asked for them, either, as I don't see any reference to "Mr. Rigler refused to name the people he claims made these statements".

Yes, I notice that when this joke of an invesstigation gets to a point where their is a supposed source of certain claims, there actually is no cited source. Just rumors and innuendo, pulled out of thin air, but reported as facts. For all we know these claims came from Bill Burkett and posts on DU.

FReepers have become legendary. FReepers took down an anchor.

It was a Freeper......and it wasn't you....so it was somebody who knew type fonts and their history........that ran Dan into the can.

Just because someone is a Freeper does not make his achievement all of Free republics..........it was through his knowledge.....not mine or yours that brought down Dan.

We are not the BORG....we are not one....we are a collection of many different diciplines and personalities.

We can do a lot together...if we stop being the blogpiece of the Republicans......who by the way are not Conservative and are not for us....they are out for the party and they are all on someones list to be payed off.

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