Kerry doomed, Fake docs and FR mention all on ABC's Notes.

The Kerry end is near? At this precise time every four years, the most media-savvy members of the Gang of 500 begin to think about their roles in the premiere post-election forum that revisits the actions and players of the presidential race.

But if nothing changes in the race as it now stands — with President Bush winning a decent-sized victory — much of the talk will be about the greater technical proficiency of the Bush-Cheney effort.

Democrats, who deny up and down that they had anything to do with the documents, tell ABC News that they plan to continue their push to question the president's Guard service, irrespective of the CBS situation.

Top Democrats vow to continue to lead the charge against Bush along these four lines

1. Bush allegedly got special treatment
2. Bush allegedly was suspended for missing his medical exam
3. Bush allegedly didn't fulfill his requirements
4. Bush allegedly didn't release all the documents he said he'd release

But they acknowledge that it might be more difficult to break through the clutter of questions surrounding the documents' authenticity. (Guess they won't heed BC's advice?)

ABC News' George Stephanopoulos said on "Good Morning America" that "a lot of Democrats think this might have been a set-up" by Republicans — a sentiment we are likely to hear more of in the days to come.

We always favor looking at the content and substance over WHO is offering up the information, but in the war that will ensue about WHO gave CBS the potentially phony documents, it is interesting to Note that the right (Drudge, Fox, right-leaning blogs, others) led the way in pointing out the questions we have all been asking — and they were onto the questions, with remarkable detail, relatively soon after the documents were made public.

Here's part of how this story got here . . . from a little Marc Ambinder back-lurking on the blogs . . .

at 8:59 ET — before the broadcast is finished!!! — the documents come into question via a poster named Buckhead on the Free Republic Web site: LINK http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/1210662/posts

Buckhead seems well-read on his forensic document examination skills. "Howlin, every single one of these memos to file is in a proportionally spaced font, probably Palatino or Times New Roman. In 1972 people used typewriters for this sort of thing, and typewriters used monospaced fonts. The use of proportionally spaced fonts did not come into common use for office memos until the introduction of laser printers, word processing software, and personal computers. They were not widespread until the mid to late 90's. Before then, you needed typesetting equipment, and that wasn't used for personal memos to file. Even the Wang systems that were dominant in the mid 80's used monospaced fonts. I am saying these documents are forgeries, run through a copier for 15 generations to make them look old."

Well, this is bandied about by dozens of Freepers, as they're called and is picked up at 8:30 am ET and added to by www.littlegreenfootballs.com/weblog/ — this little green football guy is a very popular conservative blogger . . .

snip The Boston Globe does not get into the debate about the documents, focusing instead on the full-throated DNC push on Bush's service. LINK

A New York Times editorial on the new documents and Bush's Guard service does include a reference to the documents' authenticity being challenged. LINK

The White House lobs claims that the Kerry team is behind attacks on Bush's military service record. The Washington Times ' Bill Sammon reports White House press secretary Scott McClellan describes it as desperate measures for desperate times. "You absolutely are seeing a coordinated attack by John Kerry and his surrogates on the president." LINK

And let us not be the last to point out that if a(nother) major corporation was withholding information related to serious allegations made against the president of the United States, "60 Minutes" would be all over them, demanding to know about their documentation and expert back up.

Between the lines, I feel your love for a free press. My dream is for people like you (liberal or conservative) to once again take control from the "Rather" types. A free and honorable press is worth fighting for -- a "Rather" one is not. This issue matters.

There's no doubt that even at CBS, some news pros would have been questioning this story. Some might even have been going ballistic over running with it (I've seen phone books thrown across the bullpen during hot editorial disagreements).

Rather might even had disagreements with the senior editors/reporters, though he'd be the big dog because it's his face on the tube. So ultimately he won, and ran with a bogus story.

I'll venture that right now, several CBS news staffers want Rather's head on a plate, perhaps to the point of threatened resignations and unfettered newsroom grumbling. Rather has embarrassed the entire CBS staff.

The coin of the realm for Rather is the validation of his own political beliefs. He's not supposed to do that, and he knows it, but he's obviously lost his news judgement. I don't believe there's a "payoff" beyond that.

You almost have to feel sorry for See-BS. (Almost.) They have maybe a handful of lazy, over-paid, under-used, and biased 9-5 fact-checkers. We have, 24-7, tens of thousands of motivated, experienced, and knowledgeable volunteers who look into things as we please because we love to do it. The sluggish MSM is just now noticing the fact that we've been ahead of them for at least two years, now. Too bad they had to take notice because of declining ratings, declining revenues, and declining credibility. (Schadenfreude.)

Here's to hoping this is the future of news reporting! Faster, more accurate, more interactive, more diverse opinions, better citations, more humorous/entertaining, more accountable... while the idiot box can only hope for more idiots!

(Did you hear that, ABC?)

Sorry I don't have the link right now....received this via e-mail from a friend.

From TAS: (The American Spectator)
Anatomy of a Forgery
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.

Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.