In Rush to Air, CBS Quashed Memo Worries

Washington Post ^ | 09/20/2004 | Howard Kurtz, Michael Dobbs

[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.

[rolling_stone]

now thats funny here is an office worker witness /collective bargaing unit member from his campign site;

A Witness's Testimonial


Here is my witness. I trust David Van Os with my voice and my rights. I trust him so much I believe you should, too, with your vote to elect him to the highest court in our State. Believe me when I say he will NOT let you down. You see I work with David Van Os and his legal team. I am a member of the collective bargaining unit in his office. If this were to ever be said of anyone, it can be said of him - David Van Os walks the walk and talks the talk. I heard President of CWA Local Union 6143 Ralph Cortez say at David's campaign kickoff function that all David really needs is a handshake to honor his word . . . and "brothers and sisters of the human race" this is no lie. What you hear and see is what you get. The man is as honest and honorable as they come. He's fair. He believes in the people and, more importantly, he walks and lives AMONG the people - as in the masses, as in YOU and ME. He IS US.



David respects the law and is passionate about making sure it is upheld as the Constitutions of the State of Texas and of the United States intended. He believes the ideals of the founding fathers and mothers of our country and lives up to these ideals day in and day out in his service to the people of this City and State. Although I believe he relishes knowledge for its own sake, he takes what he learns and already knows and applies it for the benefit of those he represents. He represents hard working, intelligent human beings, and uses every avenue available to seek justice for those who cannot seek it for themselves. He will do this for YOU as a Supreme Court Justice of Texas.



Vote for David Van Os and have your voice represented in the highest court in our State. Believe me when I say he will NOT let you down.



Sinceramente,


Mirta Rubalcava Luis

[Cboldt]

I hadn't thought of CBS referring to the WH return of the documents as "receiving the documents from an unimpeachable source," but you may be right. CBS refers to the WH as having "released" the documents, as if the WH had any control in the first place.

I don't think they are that Clintonian with that sort of assertion, but we'll have to wait and see what develops.

[topdog1]

A clear case of "doc" examiner shopping. If they were in Florida, they it would be a felony.

[KingKongCobra]

Nice try, troll. I think I'll take the Adobe expert over you. How's this going at DU?

[GoLightly]

Kamp Kerry's response to internal questions about coming up with a response to the Swifties keep coming back to haunt me. "The media wants us to win" AND "it's been taken care of".

[Cboldt]

Not a suicide bombing. More like a Palestinian "work" accident. They were putting their bomb together and it went off in their face.

Yeah, but ... once your own experts tell you the thing is live, and will go off 2 hours from now, do you strap it on? Or do you leave the building?

The way the WaPo story reads, CBS (Mapes at least) knew of the experts' objections well before the story aired. They had filler in case the story didn't check out. It's almost as though they knew they would be caught, the forgeries are that bad.

Maybe they are that stupid. They sure are mean - maybe blinded by their hatred. BUt hey, this story would have been as damaging a week later. Why the big rush? They had a scoop.

[VRWCer]

It seems CBS is trying to blame the whitehouse.... UNBELIEVEABLE

Yup, and Karl Rove is the Boogieman! Who knew? Poor dimplecRATs are terrified. These people are too stupid to wear shoes.

[bitt]

'Too bad we don't have one of those Star Trek space-based penal colonies yet. Love to see Mapes, Rather, and the rest of these pissants doing hard time on an asteroid mining colony far away from the rest of us.

I'd settle on sending them to this place!

[counterpunch]

On August 21, Burkett circulated an e-mail claiming he had been "in touch with Max Cleland".

On August 25, he posted the message that "we have reassembled [Bush's] files".

August 25, Cleland Puts On Political Theatre for Cameras in Texas


So, just a couple days after being contacted about the information by Burkett, Cleland just so happens to be in Texas.?
On the very same day that Burkett announces "we have reassembled" the files...
Who exactly is this "we"?

And I noticed this from the Washington Post:
In an Aug. 21 posting, Burkett referred to a conversation with former senator Max Cleland (D-Ga.) about the need to counteract Republican tactics: "I asked if they wanted to counterattack or ride this to ground and outlast it, not spending any money. He said counterattack. So I gave them the information to do it with. But none of them have called me back.

He clearly says I gave them the information to do it.
Perhaps Cleland came down to turn that "information" into some "authentic" documents.
Perhaps the forgery idea actually came from the Kerry campaign...
Look at the dates closely. He only had "information" on the 21st, when he contacted Cleland. Then Cleland comes into town and that same day Burkett and someone else reassembled the files.

Apparently someone from the Kerry campaign got in contact with him afterall, just sometime after writing the email. Sometime between the 21st and 25th.

[rolling_stone]

Examiner shopping...after posting that and googling I found this interesting overview of the diff between legal and journalistic standards for shopping examiners:

http://beldar.blogs.com/beldarblog/2004/09/consulting_expe.html

[counterpunch]

Month old eye-witness accounts from stoned Kinko's employees usually aren't too fruitful or reliable.

[Boundless]

Welcome to FR. Be careful to not be mistaken for a troll.

> ... none that I have viewed has been of a quality which
> can be used to definitely confirm or deny the
> authenticity of the documents.

The highest quality matches are from MS Word using
defaults. We have yet to see a real match produced on
any vintage technology. We have yet to see any evidence
that Killian could use such tech, or even had access to
it.

The formatting aside, the documents drip with errors
or date, people, addresses, jargon, etc.

Occam's Razor tells us that the likely explanation is
modern forgery.

> ... darker area around the outside of the characters ...

Ringing from JPG compression when converted to PDF?

> Furthermore the baseline position of the characters varies.

No problem. Once CBS produces closer-to-source docs,
we can settle it.

> George Bush has released some of his military documents
> which show the same exact superscripts as in the
> disputed documents.

Definite troll signs. The genuine docs are mono-spaced,
and the "th" in those was struck as a single, underlined,
elevated-but-not-superscript glyph.

> ... kerning ...

Not kerning, but pseudo kerning. Some glyphs are
definitely nested. One of the type experts went into
this in some detail.

So when is CBS going to air the segment of an untrained
user duplicating these memos on some museum's machine?

[Cboldt]

Kamp Kerry's response to internal questions about coming up with a response to the Swifties keep coming back to haunt me. "The media wants us to win" AND "it's been taken care of".

Yeah. And that one goes way back. Good memory.

There are plenty of pieces that show the DEM party and snob media being joined at the hip. Could be simple "trust" that generated the comment back then, as in "the media won't permit the Swiftees to have any credibility." And, for the most part, that has been born out. As far as I know, all of the snob media dismisses the Swift Boat Veterans for Truth as having been discredited, when in fact they have not.

[traviskicks]

This is from Newsmax:
http://www.newsmax.com/archives/ic/2004/9/17/04253.shtml


Burkett has frequently posted notes to an Internet message group for Texas Democrats, the Post said.

His comments urged other members to work harder to defeat Bush in the election, and blasted John Kerry for presiding over "one of the worst run campaigns I've seen in my lifetime."

"Many of us have risked everything on this election," Burkett said in a message posted a week before the Rather report. "The disappointment is deep and difficult to manage. But we fight on, in spite of incompetence at the top."

Burkett also recently posted an analysis of the president's Guard record on Democrats.com under the headline "Study Proves Bush Was Legally AWOL."

---

Point of interest:

"Many of us have risked everything on this election," Burkett said in a message posted a week before the Rather report. "The disappointment is deep and difficult to manage. But we fight on, in spite of incompetence at the top."

This risk he talks about might be him getting busted with these forgeries. All of this seems to point that he tried and tried to get this thing going and then one of two things happened. He just did the forgeries by himself without coordination and coincidences with the Kerry campaign occured. Or he finally got someone recepitve in teh Kerry campagin to listen to him (his lawyer got in it perhaps and his conversation with Cleland).

I'd say EVERYTHING is pointing to the latter. CBS wouldn't take JUST a disgruntled gaurdsmen, they needed backing from someone like Barnes and others in the Kerry campaign to give him legiitimacy and to boost his standing in the eyes of CBS. The national attack by surrogates at the DNC on Bush's guard service, the videos and advertisements, this Texans for truth group. All of this came together in a perfect way right as this was happening. I think someone up top saw an opportunity, identified persons of interest and set the balls rolling. Kerry himself said he was 'taking off the gloves' and was 'furious' over the Swift Vets. He also said something like, 'your going to question my patriotism/service then Bring it On!'. We just need to piece together how exactly it occured and how far up it went.

Remember the FIRST person to 'admit' (albiet indirectly) they were for sure fake was Terry McAulife, when he annouced the day right afterwards that 'if I were a young journalist I would ask Karl Rove those questions' (about how the memos were faked).

To be honest, I am surprised that as much has come out so far as it has..... You would think that Barnes, Burkett and Cleland would have kept their mouthes shut tight after all this....

[rolling_stone]

Wouldn't it be funny if Burkett gave the Kerry campaign the info, they made the docs (he thinking they could get a real forger to do it better than he could and he could deny he forged them) and Dems sent them back to him, then he contacts CBS an then faxes them when he first gets them from Dems...

[Travis McGee]

bttt

[Enchante]

That would be sweet, if the rope-a-dope helped lead c-BS to not only go with the story but continue to insist they had an 'unimpeachable' source. I don't know how even Dan Rather could consider the scummy likes of Ben Barnes or Bill Burkett 'unimpeachable' -- if nothing else, they're obviously very partisan, as well as men of very dubious ethics (even before the forgery scandal).

I like the Max Cleland theory, too (both may be true, Rather may have believed that he had confirmations from both Cleland and the White House). The White House has played this perfectly, as far as we know, and if Cleland is involved c-BS will probably be forced to reveal that when enough document experts and journalists have declared that the documents are indefensible. c-BS will have to reveal its sources when enough people have accepted that the documents are discredited, I would hope.

[topdog1]

16 day old as of today... Mapes reported on the 3rd that she had the documents... and maybe one of them's not stoned during working hours ;-)

[twntaipan]

Bingo! We have a winner!

[bitt]

'He will do this for YOU as a Supreme Court Justice of Texas.
Vote for David Van Os and have your voice represented in the highest court in our State. Believe me when I say he will NOT let you down. '

please tell me that this man will NOT be on the Texas Supreme Court....