Posted on 09/18/2004 7:27:43 PM PDT by jhouston
In the early-morning hours of Sept. 8, Dan Rather was preparing to fly to Washington for a crucial interview in the Old Executive Office Building, but torrential rain kept him in New York.
White House communications director Dan Bartlett had agreed to talk to "60 Minutes," but only on condition that the CBS program provide copies of what were being billed as newly unearthed memos indicating that President Bush had received preferential treatment in the National Guard. The papers were hand-delivered at 7:45 a.m. CBS correspondent John Roberts, filling in for Rather, sat down with Bartlett at 11:15.
(Excerpt) Read more at washingtonpost.com ...
> ... there is still Danny Boy's "unimpeachable source"
> to be identified.
My theory on that, is the White House angle.
CBS gave the memos to the WH, who declined to impeach them.
CBS mistook rope-a-doping for confirmation.
Ergo, the author wasn't impeached,
so they must be unimpeachable.
All those years of Rather holding up in front of Roberts pictures of Nixon (Bad), Clinton (Good), Reagan (Bad), DNC (Good), Bush (Bad), Kerry (Good), gone to waste? Oh, the humanity!
Please clarify that point. The article says that Mapes advised CBS on Sept 3 that her source had given her the documents. But if the documents were faxed to CBS from Kinkos on the 2nd ...
Anyway, the details escape me there.
see here for video from ol' Ben Barnes:
http://media.greaterdemocracy.org/
Rather's daughter worked for Barnes a couple years back, and Dan showed up to one of his Dem events to give a speech at his daughter's request. He caught some flak for it at the time.
Reading this thread and trying to put pieces together in my tired head, I came to the same conclusion an hour ago or so. Subject to change as the picture clarifies and/or other evidence comes in. =;-)
"So much of this debate has focused on the documents, and no one has really challenged the story. It's been frustrating to us to see all this reduced to a debate over little 'th's."
I believe they were faxed at 6:41 pm on the 2 ND, she probably go then the next am.
You might be right, but I doubt that fixes the problem. Nobody but us news junkies knows a thing about Mapes - I knew ZERO about her until this week. THis blow-up needs either a big fish, or a public fish. Heyward, or Rather, or both have to go. Mapes will go too, but that won't be enough.
I thought Barnes was supposed to have undergone some kind of epiphany during a stop at "The Wall". Also thought he was working on a book. When did his daughter say he told her about that?
CBS wouldn't lie in an interviews to a fellow journalist, about Barnes getting convinced to tell his story after they got their hands on the docs, now would they?
Man you are really up on your stuff... Nice pics! That is amazing. I don't even know why we need Cleland, Von Os is a prominent enough Democrat himself! All these people are not just active participents in the Kerry Reelection campaign, they are LEADERS IN IT!
The only thing I know offhand that might be useful to add to your compilation is this, Burkett is such a prominent Dem that he was asked to speak at a Dem group in Taylor county Democrats. I bet they tie into all this somehow too:
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A27239-2004Sep16.html
"He's very bright; he's not a hayseed," said Royse Kerr, chairman of the Taylor County Democratic Club, which last spring invited Burkett to speak to the members about the "state of politics in America."
That whole paragraph is very revealing. Look at the timing, the long-standing relationship and where it says Mapes was trying to convince Barnes to come forward and tell his story, like he'd never told it before when he has:
During the Republican National Convention in New York, Rather got a call from Ben Barnes, a onetime Texas lieutenant governor and veteran Democrat who has known the anchor, a former Houston TV reporter, for 30 years. Barnes said he was ready to say before the cameras that he had pulled strings to get Bush a coveted slot in the Texas Guard in 1968. Mapes had long been urging Barnes to tell his story.
~snip~
Heheheheh. You know, that is exactly how it works. Some people just know how to work the rumor mill.
What a decent journalist would do is find out who was working at the Abilene Kinko's at the time the memos were sent, show him/her some pictures and see if we can get a positive ID on the sender. Since Burkett limps and uses a cane, it should be easy to verify or eliminate him. If it was Barnes or the lawyer or some other TX Dem party operative, then there's your smoking gun.
'CBS gave you other documents besides the four that 60 Minutes used in the story? “Lots more documents” were his exact words.'
WaPo says Burkett
'In e-mails yesterday to The Washington Post, he said he would speak out "at the appropriate time" but "that time is not now."
also, I read somewhere that he 'warned not to dismiss everything so quickly...'
maybe there is some more trash letters coming out.
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