Posted on 09/14/2004 9:43:28 PM PDT by charleston1
I don't normally watch the ABC World News Tonight, but after a tip from someone a time zone ahead of me, I decided to watch and videotape their news tonight. I am glad I did. As described on several other threads, ABC News took their gloves off and gave CBS News/60 Minutes a good hard public flogging. In an article entitled "Casting Further Doubt," ABC News left no doubt that the CBS Evening News has perpetrated a clear case of fraud on its listening audience. The written article is located here.
http://abcnews.go.com/sections/WNT/Investigation/bush_guard_documents_040914-1.html.
In the article, ABC news systematically dismantled what was likely to have been Dan Rather's “Swan Song”. Instead, it will undoubtedly be the story that drowned his career, a career I used to respect years ago. I still fondly remember the Dan Rather that went to Afghanistan to report on the Mujadin. Wow, how far he has fallen since hiking through the mountains of Afghanistan. Whether ABC knows it or not, they went one step further than their story suggests. That is, they exposed malice and fraud by CBS News/60 Minutes. As I mentioned at the beginning of this article, I videotaped the news article. I stood there stunned as I watched the interview by Brian Ross with Emily Will and I have reviewed it several times. Was I seeing things? Yes I was! There in black and white was Ms. Will going over the one document CBS News gave to here to presumably authenticate. Brian Ross stated:
“Emily Will, a court certified examiner from North Carolina, says she saw problems right away with the one document CBS hired her to check in the days before the broadcast.”
Ms. Will said: "I found five significant differences in the questioned handwriting, and I found problems with the printing itself as to whether it could have been produced by a typewriter."
On camera, Ms. Will goes over an enlarged display copy of the document she examined. Therein is the problem and the answer to the question of whether CBS News was honestly just reporting the facts. Unless Ms. Will is lying, CBS News/60 Minutes gave her a document that CBS has never publicly admitted that they had in their possession. Ms. Will carefully reviewed the alleged signature of Jerry B. Killian on the June 24th, 1973 letter addressed to “Sir”. I first found this same document on the USA Today website as one of six (not four as reported by CBS) alleged Killian documents which I first shared here on September 11th: search under "Killian" for the "Two more 'Killian' Documents" thread. Since CBS News did not make the June 24, 1973 document available at their website as part of their original story, the question for me ever since has been why? As it turns out in perfect hindsight, CBS has made significant efforts to lead the public to believe that they only had four documents. Just go back and watch the 60 Minutes II, interview again or go see the four documents on their website today. Why only four CBS documents? Recall that Marcel Matley, the respected signature expert used for the 60 Minutes II, interview to support the authenticity of the alleged Killian documents, was also only given one document to examine. Mr. Matley was given the 04 May 1972 document in which Lieutenant Colonel Killian allegedly ordered then Lieutenant Bush to report for his annual physical “not later than” May 14, 1972. This is a case of authentication shopping!!! It is also fraudulent and it was clearly done with malice as there is no other reason to restrict an honest authentication expert from seeing all of the evidence unless you already know the answer you want to hear. If anyone was duped, it would appear to be the documents experts themselves and an unsuspecting TV audience. Obviously, CBS should have shared all of their documents with all of their experts. It would appear that the truth they were looking for is frustratedly hard to find and harder to accept—a truth which exists in the minds of the investigators but not in their fictitious documents. In the end CBS News chose to use for its broadcast, the one signature that looked most authentic when compared to other known signatures of the late Colonel Killian. CBS News cast aside the document Ms. Will told them was not authentic. Of course, it is possible that Ms. Will was using the June 24, 1973, document as a prop provided by ABC, but I don't think so. I think Ms. Will did examine document number five of six (chronologically speaking). If not where did she get it, ABC News? Oh, and Bloggers, it’s charleston1@cox.net. Thanks.
I beg to differ - nobody, until now, knew - for certain - that at least one of the 2 memos released on USA Today site had been previously received by CBS News. CBS had a duty to report that and to make sure each & every examiner had an opportunity to see them all in tandem. After all, their one & sole "expert" (who isn't even certified), the spiritual handwriting analyst, has written that if one document from a group is deemed a forgery then the rest are all suspect, too. Especially when signatures & other characteristics on the then reported forgeries matches others in the set.
It wasn't CNN, it was USA TODAY. I assume they know/knew because I assume they get their leads here(hi dan!) like much of the media. Charleston posted this info 2 or 3 days ago.
OK, stay...but just shut up for awhile.
But did they talk to her before or after the 60 minutes II piece came out last wendsday? if before, why didn't they use her on the show?
are they cherry picking information like they did with Col. Killons son and widow?
That appears to be what Christopher Cox of the House is saying as well. This is an attempt to throw an election by manufacturing a story. Not so good.
Coming from someone who has made SEVEN comments on this thread so far, I think you should STFU
Oh, I see your point...or...USA TODAY could do the right thing and report it for us, because they probably know what ABC has shown. They have been very silent, haven't they?
I think the secretary had something to do with the documents. She seems very partisan and I bet she has been concocting these stories for a long time. She isn't a spring chicken, for sure, but I would like to know if she has kids and what their connection is to the political world of Herry Kerry.
We can't really fault USA TODAY. What charleston1 saw is very subtle. You would have had to pay close attention to the date on the memo when the expert was discussing a different feature. That's what makes this thread good.
I agree with you. What is the matter with everyone here these days? More and more thread police than ever!
cherry picked everything! if they'd let anybody vet the stuff any further the whole thing would have totally collapsed all around them (as it did). They were just big enough suckers they let it fall apart on the air instead of in the production room where it belonged. And it is for that reason Rather & Mapes should be given their walking papers and CBS apologizing immediately! If they don't it means there is a true conspiracy here, maybe not in the making (I'll still follow the Bernard Goldberg thesis on that) but in the cover-up and response to their fraud & forgery.
I'm not getting that impression, she pretty flatly denied having anything to do with the current documents.....or at this point should I call them physical evidence, exhibits 1 through 6
and with her all that "guard yakity yak" and selected not elected stuff and being 86 wouldn't that have played well to a TV audience...or is she too looney and/or over the top?
I apologize for the rude treatment you are getting here. The post was very informative, well thought out and just plain interesting!
Get off it charleston, you're adding nothing to the breaking news. I remind you that Buckhead and others who started the ball rolling on this scandal didn't have to post their groundbreaking remarks as vanities. Enough vanities!
As poster Steven W said here or elsewhere this evening these so called journalists have been doing this for years and only now got caught, and any informed person would know it. For your benefit I'll relate a well known and once reliably reported anecdote about your one time hero.
After the 1989 Loma Prieta earthquake in San Francisco, your hero flew to the City (as SF is known to its residents), stood in front of a pancaked freeway across the water in Oakland, dressed in military fatigues, one or two day shave (or unshaven make up) on his face and "reported" while people behind him were literally dying inside the rubble. Just off the camera, as reported Herb Caen, at the time a columnist for the San Francisco Chronicle, was parked your hero's black limo and through the open door of it were observed plates of fresh fruit, a bottle of french champagne and a bowl of caviar! What then was the complete unreported news? The complete, unreported (except by Caen in a local rag) news, the complete picture which you never saw on your screen, was of a millionaire television personality, dressed in a rented actor's costume, prancing for the camera in front of a scene of a great tragedy while being pampered and attended to. And that was likely the picture in Afghanistan, and that is with variations the picture of your idiot box news every day, your hero or any other pretty face. The camera chooses, the camera hides more than it shows, it's not news, it's show biz!
This whole episode reminds me of the 1992 NBC Dateline story on GM trucks allegedly exploding upon impact. NBC staged the accidents, failing to ignite anything, and eventually resorted to rigging the trucks with explosives. NBC paid GM dearly for that piece of defamation. While I believe W. would not and should not consider a defamation suit here, the implications are far greater and insidious.
Even if one were to stuff ballot boxes in Chicago to swing a state's election, it pales in comparison to the nationwide effect of an MSM outlet deliberately trying to throw a national election at a time when the country is facing its greatest peril since Stalin detonated the Hydrogen bomb. One need not live in the "fever swamps" and conjure vast conspiracies here--the facts speak for themselves: at a bare minimum, CBS News wittingly or through sheer incompetence and hubris, has committed the most brazen journalistic fraud in an hundred years (remember the Maine?). This must go well beyond Dan Rather, who never struck me as an intelligent person--most anchors are just talking heads. There are bigger fish to fry--one must always ask, qui bono, who benefits?
Criminal charges must be filed when the forger is outed--it's the only the truth can come out (and even then, it probably won't).
I doubt the DNC did anything other than pass the documents along, though their motives in doing so are pretty obvious. If, on the other hand, McAuliffe & Co. knew or should have known that the docs were fakes (because the source was incredible) or if DNC staffers or Kerryites were involved in the composision, then it is no exaggeration that we are talking Watergate-level stuff here. That would bring down the whole D. party for a decade, as Watergate harmed Rs.
Then how does that fit the "we were duped" defense?
looks kinda weak to me at this point
exactly why Daniel's post here is such a bombshell - ABC didn't know what they were looking at!
Works for me, I'd love to see this go nuclaer..as the pres would say, and let the fallout hit as it may
so how we get this out?
I am not saying she knew about them. I am saying that she may have been repeating her version of events and stories to someone else who has some interest in the campaign....like one of her kids or something. I think the source of the memos may be close to her in some way. JMHO.
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