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Close. I think it is actually more like this.

Burkett created Memo ======> Texas DNC hooks Burkett up with contact info leading to to Cleland ======> Burkett Provides Docs to Cleland ======> OK'd from Kerry ======> Cleland gave ok to fax to CBS News....

And the missing link....CBS 'unimpeachable authority' ======> Former Senator Cleland.

That, and protecting Cleland, and by extension the Kerry campaign is why Rather was in Texas, and hooked up with Burkett.

I trust you haven't forgotten about the two dirty tricksters (i.e., burglers Cam Kerry and Tom Vallely) who are or were high up in the Kerry camp.

John Kerry wanted to hit back. It had been a miserable August as he took incoming fire about his military service from a gang of hostile Vietnam vets. But no, campaign manager Mary Beth Cahill and other staffers argued, the Swift Boat ads would blow over. Finally, Kerry had had enough. For three or four days, as he campaigned across the country, Kerry ripped into Cahill, furious that the mostly baseless attacks on his valor were driving his numbers down. "He was very angry," one old friend says. "The calculation had been made that this wasn't going to hurt him." Kerry's solution was to reach for an old ally. "Get Vallely," he screamed.

Thomas Vallely is the leader of the pack of vets that Kerry calls his dog-hunters, a group that has beaten back the attacks on his Vietnam record since his first Senate race 20 years ago. "He knows that I know the other players," Vallely says of Kerry's Mayday call. "He knows that I also like this stuff."

Source: MSNBC