My two cents. Chain of custody: Burkett (forger)-DNC-Kerry-CBS.
The DNC and Kerry were doubtful of the authenticity, but had to dump them because the SBV's were killing them and they needed to fight back. Probably would have liked to have saved them until late October, but had to dump them pronto.
CBS was a willing accomplice in the fraud.
Anyone with ping lists, can you do your ping thing?
Tag hobson's research on James C. Moore that was posted last night.
Tag Nancy Pelosi sticking her neck out to defend CBS - if Burkett was the source, she wouldn't have bothered. She would have let CBS handle it.
DNC is putting out Burkett's name, because everyone had his name RIGHT AFTER THE 60 MINUTES BROADCAST.
Tag the article posted last night from The Hill.
Fortunate Son ad, with CBS memo, was revealed to the press July 20 - before the SBVT ads even aired.
Less than a week after CBS's "Favorite Son" story, the DNC announces OPERATION FAVORITE SON with a "Favorite Son" ad buy and web site, this in the midst of the firestorm over the documents being fake and the entire CBS hierarchy having to pretend to not understand or even see the overwhelming and obvious nature of the evidence for fraud.
So let me guess at a connection or two. The DNC hooked CBS and probably USA Today up with Burkett and actively coordinated with CBS at least so that its ad campaign would be well-timed in the wake of CBS's big scoop.
OPERATION FAVORITE SON was too far along to just cancel, despite the story blowing up in CBS's face. It was past the final abort checkpoint.
Thus, CBS can never truly cooperate in investigating the real story here, the story of the fraud behind its memos. But the only way they can brazenly defy subpoenas, etc., with any sympathy at all is to stand on the confidentiality of their sources. The only way they can do THAT is to stay confused about whether the documents are actually fake, which means playing dumb for essentially the rest of their lives.
"Trust CBS. Get your news from people too dumb to pour piss out of a boot with the instructions on the sole."
Could be a Clintonesque parsing of words. His vehement denial is that the documents were absolutely not typed on a word processor in the year 2004. Burkett has been peddling documents for years. He may have begun rough drafts on these particular nine or ten months ago and still be able to truthfully deny that he had absolutely not typed them in the year 2004.
It could be much simpler than all of that. Mary Mapes visited Burkett during the summer according to reports. What if she generated them right after visiting with Burkett (with his tacit approval)? There were some obvious mistakes about TANG in them that you wouldn't think Burkett would make.
That would explain why Rather is so adamant; he doesn't know that Mapes faked them. That also turns things around and makes CBS the source of the memos rather than the DNC.
Pelosi's Poor Media screed.
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/1217632/posts
DNC Fortunate Son ad from The Hill
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/1217207/posts
1. Rather said that the source was unimpeachable. Is this Burkett guy unimpeachable? If not, what other source or sources were there.
2. TO whom was the fax addressed?
Nashville/Texas connections via a talk radio show
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/1216483/posts
I thought SeeBS had the docs for 6 weeks while they "vetted" them. Why would they have just been faxed last Tuesday?
Why did Barnes (DNC Fundraiser) seem to know so much about this?
Is a fax CBS's actual source or a front -- like those little corner stores that used to be around here, obviously not doing $10 business in a month, but the bookie need an obvious source of income.
Is the DNC/Kerry Campaign involved?
Absolutely! Terry McAuliffe said they're not, and that's enough proof for me! ;-)
If the DNC/Kerry Campaign is involved, can it be proven?
I doubt that it can be without a break or a mole. But considering the detectives-manque on FR and the blogs, maybe someone can ferret out some apparently innocent factoid that will unravel this.
Was Dan Rather a willing participant?
I would say yes. He's a liberal and a Dem: by their code of values, the highest good is to defeat the eeeeeeeevil Republicans. Compare an Orthodox Jew (and I have the highest respect for them, but it's the example that came to mind), who is justified in breaking the Sabbath to save a life: Dems are authorized by "higher principles" to allow defeating Republicans to override any consideration of justice, mercy, truth, honor, simple decency, etc., and they do it, not only with a clear conscience but with utter confidence in their own virtue!
It's not just one person. Burkett is the patsy. The brain is Sasso.
Pulled this interesting bit of information off the Texas Monthly website. We might need to look in the the Richards family connection. Specifically how involved is Cecile Richards?
From the August 2004 Issue...
The Daughter Also Rises
The Bush-Richards wars in Texas were supposed to have ended ten years agoand we all know who won. But with Ann's daughter, Cecile, overseeing the most well-funded effort to unseat a presidential incumbent in history, any talk of a cease-fire is officially over.
by S. C. Gwynne
THE MOST MEMORABLE quote of the 1988 Democratic National Convention came from Ann Richards, then the Texas state treasurer and one of the party's brightest rising stars. "Poor George," she said in the keynote address, referring to George H. W. Bush, then vice president of the United States. "He can't help it. He was born with a silver foot in his mouth." The line became instantly famous. Richards was elected governor of Texas two years later, and the irony was lost on no one when, after four years in office, she went down in bitter defeat to the son of the man she had so mercilessly derided.
That election ended her electoral career, launched W. toward his own elaborate political destiny, and might well have been the last anyone heard about Bush versus Richards. But the story does not end there. As it turns out, the silver-tongued Ann, like the silver-footed forty-first president of the United States, also has an ambitious, successful, and highly partisan eldest child. Her name is Cecile Richards, and she is the proximate political antipode of George W. Bush, as pure a creature of the Democratic left as he is of the Republican right. She is 47 years old, a striking six-footer and longtime labor organizer with a bright, explosive laugh who can stop a room when she walks into it just as her mother can. A full decade after W. beat Ann at the polls, Cecile, who like George W. made her first big political splash in Texas in the nineties (and like him went to a fancy private school and an Ivy League college), has become one of the key leaders of an unprecedented $250 million campaign being waged outside the Democratic party whose sole purpose is to drive George W. Bush from office. Think of it as Bush-Richards III.
It has to be a liberal/DNC link, because there is NO way that any conservative would send such a clumsy, half assed, forgery to CBS/Rather, unless it was a parody. A child could see that they were fakes. A non-partisan child anyway!
Rather would never have trusted any conservative/RNC source, and no doubt would have investigated the documents in a manner that these docs clearly were not.
Any DNC forger would have known that Rather would be a soft touch on them, and he has a record of lame attacks on Republicans.
Can you imagine, in your wildest dreams, that Rather would ever say that any conservative source was "unimpeachable?"
Conservatives don't need to do this sort of dishonest, deceitful act: we have the truth on our side, and it is always unimpeachable!
Another Freeper does the research for the "real" media.
Finding out how USA Today and other media outlets got their own copies of the memos before the CBS story will probably fill in a few of the blanks.