CBS News is walking the plank for the Kerry campaign

[FringeNC]

http://www.powerlineblog.com/archives/007778.php

A half hour ago, Dan Rather went on CNN and said that he knows the Jerry Killian documents to be authentic, and knows that they are not forgeries. Therefore, he said, there will be no retraction, no correction, and -- apparently -- no investigation. The text of the interview is not yet available on CNN's site, but we'll link to it when it becomes available.

What does this mean? Last night, it was reported that senior executives at CBS News were promising an investigation. Today, Dan Rather is personally vouching for the documents' authenticity. This can only mean that Rather himself is the source of the documents. This makes sense; if a staffer on the 60 Minutes payroll had come up with the purported records, the story never would have run without the documents being authenticated. Who has the power to drive this story on to the air without an investigation that would include, for example, contacting Killian's widow, or his son? Dan Rather does.

This would appear to signal the end of Rather's career. If the documents are ultimately accepted as forgeries, which seems inevitable to us, he can't survive. My guess: Rather knows that he will be retiring soon in any event, so as his last public contribution, he is doing whatever he can to elect John Kerry.

An informant, meanwhile, has a theory about how Rather got the forged documents: keep an eye on Ben Barnes.

UPDATE: CBS News has issued a statement on the fraudulent documents. Bottom line: there will be no investigation.

This report was not based solely on recovered documents, but rather on a preponderance of evidence, including documents that were provided by unimpeachable sources, interviews with former Texas National Guard officials and individuals who worked closely back in the early 1970s with Colonel Jerry Killian and were well acquainted with his procedures, his character and his thinking.
In addition, the documents are backed up not only by independent handwriting and forensic document experts but by sources familiar with their content. Contrary to some rumors, no internal investigation is underway at CBS News nor is one planned.


So there you have it: CBS News is walking the plank for the Kerry campaign.

[homey]

What has Fox News been doing all this time?

[FringeNC]

Originally Posted by homey

What has Fox News been doing all this time?

Being "Fair and Balance" as the Stanford and U. of Chicago academic study indicates.

[Donger]

Originally Posted by homey

What has Fox News been doing all this time?

Did Fox run a story that was based on documents that may be forgeries?

[Chief Henry]

Originally Posted by homey

What has Fox News been doing all this time?

Being Fair@Balanced while kicking the crap out of its compition...

[FringeNC]

Longtime Democratic strategist Pat Caddell said Friday that if documents aired by CBS newsman Dan Rather Wednesday night turn out to be forged, as alleged by experts, the presidential race "is over." . . .

"[Democratic officials are] so involved in this," the former Carter pollster worried. "They have gotten themselves so involved in this issue [in] the last 24 hours that somebody's going to, if they're not authentic, they're going to be blamed for it. It's incredible to me that they've gotten in this."
Caddell said he wasn't trying to sensationalize the issue, explaining that instead "I'm trying to save my party, you know, by telling the truth."

He said that forfeiting the presidential race would be the least of his party's problems if Democrats are tied to any forgery scandal.

"The race is over – and we've got bigger problems than that," he warned.

[Cochise]

Can anyone imagine what will happen if Democratic operatives are linked the to the feeding of forged documents to willing accomplices the media? If this were an elaborate hoax designed to outright lie to voters and influence the election?

What if it was someone in the employ of the sKerry campaign?

I am still skeptical, and if these documents are forged it still seems likely that it would have been the work of a garden-variety overzealous sKerry supporter... but what if?

It would be the biggest thing since Watergate.

[FringeNC]

Originally Posted by Cochise

Can anyone imagine what will happen if Democratic operatives are linked the to the feeding of forged documents to willing accomplices the media? If this were an elaborate hoax designed to outright lie to voters and influence the election?

What if it was someone in the employ of the sKerry campaign?

I am still skeptical, and if these documents are forged it still seems likely that it would have been the work of a garden-variety overzealous sKerry supporter... but what if?

It would be the biggest thing since Watergate.

Rather's continuing denials indicate he is trying to protect someone. If the person was low-level, Dan was say he got duped.

But it makes no sense to create such bad forgeries. So who knows.

[Cochise]

Originally Posted by FringeNC

Rather's continuing denials indicate he is trying to protect someone. If the person was low-level, Dan was say he got duped.

But it makes no sense to create such bad forgeries. So who knows.

Surely they would have had the sense to keep the campaign away from this kind of operation, preserve deniability and all, if there was something sinister going on. But given the strange behavior of the sKerry campaign so far, who knows if they would have behaved in a rational manner?

Something definitely stinks.

And why is Rather personally vouching for the veracity of the documents? He must have recieved them firsthand, or his personal attestation that they are real would mean nothing. So who's his source?

[redbrian]

http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,131997,00.html

Authenticity of Bush Guard Docs in Question
Friday, September 10, 2004
By Liza Porteus

(select excerpts)

WASHINGTON — Questions continued to swirl Friday around the authenticity of memos purporting to show discrepancies in President Bush's (search) Texas Air National Guard service over 30 years ago.

Documents aired by CBS' "60 Minutes" Wednesday night were described as having been written by Bush's commanding officer during his Guard days. They seemed to show that Bush, then a pilot, violated a direct order and tried to avoid his duties.

Bush Memos (pdf)

CBS has defended the authenticity of the Guard memos, which were supposedly produced by Lt. Col. Jerry Killian (search), who died in 1984.

But one of Killian's fellow officers, an independent document examiner and Killian's own son doubted the veracity of the memos.

In an interview with FOX News, Gary Killian, who served in the Guard with his father and retired as a captain in 1991, said he is "very dubious" about the genuineness of the documents.


He said his father was "not in the habit of keeping secret files," didn't have a home office, didn't work after leaving his office and didn't have available to him at work the kind of typewriter that was apparently used to compose the documents.

Gary Killian said the sentiments in the documents didn't reflect his father's "true feelings" about Bush, and that if his father had actually written the papers, he would have signed them using his full name, not just "CYA," which is on the documents.

He also said his father would have typed such a document himself, "hated" typing and was a "very poor" typist. "He did not type memos to himself," Gary Killian added, saying it was "too much effort" and "very dangerous … not a good practice."

The personnel chief in Killian's unit at the time also said he believes the documents are fake.

"They looked to me like forgeries," said Rufus Martin. "I don't think Killian would do that, and I knew him for 17 years."

Killian's widow, Marjorie Connell, described the records to The Washington Post as "a farce," saying she was with her husband until the day he died in 1984 and that he did not "keep files." She said her husband considered Bush "an excellent pilot."

"I don't think there were any documents. He was not a paper person," she said, adding that she was "livid" at CBS journalists who did not, she said, ask her to authenticate the records.

Independent document examiner Sandra Ramsey Lines said the memos looked like they had been produced on a computer using Microsoft Word. Lines, a document expert with the American Academy of Forensic Sciences (search), pointed to a superscript — a smaller, raised "th" in "111th Fighter Interceptor Squadron" — as evidence indicating forgery.

"I'm virtually certain these were computer-generated," Lines said. She produced a nearly identical document using her computer's Microsoft Word software.

[redbrian]

Come on Frankie lets get your spin on this one, can we say shades of Water Gate?

[KCTitus]

The media's own version of watergate...I love it.