Like I said, I am half waiting for Rather to pull something out of his hat, or pants as the case may be, but I think this is a reach. First, in a professional environment, CBS would have had the same questions about authenticity that were expressed here within an hour of looking at those documents. If there were handwritten backups that eased their fears, they wouldn't have presented this as they did. Second, there are factual errors in those documents that have added to the opinion that they are forgeries, including a retired man's name (which couldn't be a typo).
Ah; but what if the source said: "You can use these documents, but only on the condition that you not reveal my "originals" are handwritten until a week after you air the original story... you can show the "transcriptions" all you want, just call them 'copies'...."
Second, there are factual errors in those documents that have added to the opinion that they are forgeries, including a retired man's name (which couldn't be a typo).
But that's the whole point of the exercise: to make it impossible to challenge the authenticity of the forged handwritten documents, so they can say: "Now that the forgery accusation has been refuted, we know that these handwritten originals (no proportional fonts, no funny apostrophes, no superscripts to question anymore) prove Bush lied...."
That's what I fear they may try to do. You and I both know it doesn't logically hold water, but it doesn't have to. It just has to be plausible to 5 or 10% of likely voters.... and then they begin to doubt Bush's intergrity, and then the smear campaign commences in earnest for 6 weeks straight.
It's admittedly a long shot, and I hope I'm wrong about it.