Posted on 09/20/2004 6:28:41 AM PDT by johnny7
Also- General STAUDT was IGNORED!!!!!
He is still alive and living in Texas!!!!
No one in CBS seems to have contacted him for comments.
Yet General Staudt is explicitly named (and slandered) in one of the memos as pushing Guard officials to "sugar coat" their performance reviews.
Un-be-frickin-lievable "journalism".
I think Cleland is a definite high probability.
CBS must divulge all sources in the chain of custody of the documents.
If they were "decieved" then there is no first amendment protection issue. divulge the decievers.
Yup! One look at her face and you can see she's no major player... neither is Burkett... they're just the mules.
Cleland to Kerry to Rather... the baseball opposite of Tinker to Evers to Chance.
Who say's politics and baseball have nothing in common!
all over the WWW this morning is the "CBS thinks they were "midlead" .. this is SO MADDENING to read!!...mislead?? Dan Rather himself said "there is No APOLOGY coming and no investigation coming, NOR SHOULD THERE BE"... they are ONLY doing this AFTER A SOLID WEEK of people like us, calling them on it.. if NOT they would have "STUCK" by that pack of lies.....I say they get NO PASS ON THIS.....that RATHER and his PRODUCER BOTH and the HEAD OF CBS should be fired....less than THAT is an INSULT to US and the President of the United States....
dont LET this story go away!!!
Maybe Cleland was trying to deliver copies of the "memos" when he showed-up at W's ranch?
*groan* :)
Two thumbs up, Max.
A week before McAulliffe started accusing Rove of planting the documents, I posted a thread showing the dems were trying to pin it on the GOP. (The thread was pulled for some reason)
Anyway, the DemocRATS proved to be true to form.
Possible. It would sure cut their credibility off above the knees.
Bill Burkett states he then sent what he had to Max Cleland, and that was the last Burkett heard from anyone involved with the Kerry campaign.
This is the first time I've read that Max Cleland was in the actual chain of custody of the ''documents''. What I've read other places is more ambiguous, something along the lines that Burkett gave ''them'' the information, implying the Kerry campaign organization without any info as to ''who'', specifically, the info was mailed/ faxed to. IF it has been nailed down that the info was sent to Cleland, this is a significant new fact, I would think, although not a real surprising one.
After listening to all the stories and thinking about all the personalities involved, here's the way I think it went down: Bill Burkett first provided the memos to Max Cleland who passed them along to the DNC/Kerry Campaign. The Kerry gang discussed the memos, looked them over, argued among themselves whether to use them or not, and ended up sitting on them. In the mean time, CBS producer Mary Mapes is still trying to get some dirt on Bush's ANG career. She gets in touch with Burkett, who by that time is getting impatient that the DNC/Kerry campaign are using the memos and he feels they are running out of time. Burkett decides to take matters into his own hands, and provides CBS with copies of the memos. The rest, as they say, is history.
Simplest scenerio: Burkett created and faxed the memos. Barnes and Cleland vouched for them. CBS showed the documents to the WH and held their breath.
Now from the point of view of the WH, the documents are noting thyy've seen before. They are either real or not. If they are real, it is best not to say anything. If they are fake it is best not to say anything.
CBS takes their silence as "proof" that the documents are real. I am pretty certain that the WH played poker on this.
If Cleland is the source, you can expect 0 legal ramifications from this and the story will probably die.
Despite the obvious fact that things were done that were illegal against federal law, you're just not going to see anyone from the Bush Administration go after a handicapped vet, it's just not going to happen.
By making Cleland the conduit, the DNC probably, sad by true, protected the inner workings of this strategy and fiasco.
So, if Max was confronted with this, do you think he would be stumped for a response?
Mad Max would give his right arm to get out of this one.
bump to read more comments later
LOL. I'm spent.
Okay, try this one: Burkett comes up with the .docs, contacts Kerry campaign. Cleland goes to Kerry and says "We got dirt, but it's from Burkett." Kerry says, "Whatever it is, I don't want to know." Cleland takes this as a go-ahead with plausible deniability for JFK and lets it rip.
I know, we're all shotgunning this, but we're probably in the ballpark as a whole.
One more possible link in the chain...Dan Rather's daughter is a Democrat activist in Texas with party connections.
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