Washington — Alert bloggers who knew the difference between the product of old typewriters and new word processors immediately suspected a hoax: the "documents" presented by CBS News suggesting preferential treatment in Lt. George W. Bush's National Guard service have all the earmarks of forgeries.
The copies of copies of copies that formed the basis for the latest charges were supposedly typed by Guard officer Jerry Killian three decades ago and placed in his "personal" file. But it is the default typeface of Microsoft Word, highly unlikely to have been used by that Texas colonel, who died in 1984. His widow says he could hardly type and his son warned CBS that the memos were not real.
When the mainstream press checked the sources mentioned or ignored by "60 Minutes II," the story came apart.
The Los Angeles Times checked with Killian's former commander, the retired Guard general whom a CBS executive had said would be the "trump card" in corroborating its charges. But it turns out CBS had only read Maj. Gen. Bobby Hodges the purported memos on the phone, and did not trouble to show them to him. Hodges now says he was "misled" - he thought the memos were handwritten - and believes the machine-produced "documents" to be forgeries. (CBS accuses the officer of changing his story.)
The L.A. Times also checked out a handwriting analyst, Marcel Matley (of Vincent Foster suicide-note fame), who CBS had claimed vouched for the authenticity of four memos. It turns out he vouches for only one signature, and no scribbled initials, and has no opinion about the typography of any of the supposed memos.
The Dallas Morning News looked into the charge in one of the possible forgeries dated Aug. 18, 1973, that a commander of a Texas Air Guard squadron was trying to "sugar coat" Bush's service record. It found that the commander had retired from the Guard 18 months before that.
The Associated Press focused on the suspicion first voiced by a blogger on the Web site Freerepublic.com about modern "superscripts" that include a raised th after a number. CBS, on the defense, claimed that "some models" of typewriters of the 70's could do that trick, and some Texas Air National Guard documents released by the White House included it.
"That superscript, however," countered The A.P., "is in a different typeface than the one used for the CBS memos." It consulted the document examiner Sandra Ramsey Lines of Paradise Valley, Ariz., and reported "she could testify in court that, beyond a reasonable doubt, her opinion was that the memos were written on a computer."
The Washington Post reported Dan Rather's response to questions about the documents' authenticity: "Until someone shows me definitive proof that they are not, I don't see any reason to carry on a conversation with the professional rumor mill" and questioned the critics' "motivation."
After leading with that response, Post media reporter Howard Kurtz noted that the handwriting expert Matley said that CBS had asked him not to give interviews, and that an unidentified CBS staff member who had examined the documents saw potential problems with them: "There's a lot of sentiment that we should do an internal investigation."
Newsweek (which likes the word "discredited") has apparently begun an external investigation: it names "a disgruntled former Guard officer" as a principal source for CBS, noting "he suffered two nervous breakdowns" and "unsuccessfully sued for medical expenses."
It may be that CBS is the victim of a whopping journalistic hoax, besmearing a president to bring him down. What should a responsible news organization do?
To shut up sources and impugn the motives of serious critics - from opinionated bloggers to straight journalists - demeans the Murrow tradition. Nor is any angry demand that others prove them wrong acceptable, especially when no original documents are available to prove anything.
Years ago, Kurdish friends slipped me amateur film taken of Saddam's poison-gas attack that killed thousands in Halabja. I gave it to Dan Rather, who trusted my word on sources. Despite objections from queasy colleagues, he put it on the air.
Hey, Dan: On this, recognize the preponderance of doubt. Call for a panel of old CBS hands and independent editors to re-examine sources and papers. Courage.
since no dems that I know or know of have made too much of this, I am pretty sure this was a Karl Rove plant. We don't have to gild the lily of W's lily liver!
CBS, tho' is very eager to appeal to younger demos (demogaphics not democrats)and I think this was a try at that.
And no we are no0t desparate- just angry. And out of practive at dirty elections. Unlike the GOP, we haven't had to run one for a long time....
Ok, CBS won't say who gave them the documents, but when asked point blank if the Kerry camp gave them these documents, they refused to answer. Seems reasonable to me that we wouldn't be having this discussion & CBS could aleviate some heat from themselves if they at least state that the documents don't come from the Kerry camp.
While on the subject, it's very circumspect that only a month or two ago, the Kerry camp were making the SAME EXACT accusations on Bush's service. Coincedence? Who knows - but it's fun to watch CBS squirm.
Wouldn't CBS and Rather have already tried the "Rove Plant Theory" if they didn't have a paper trail back to someone else? Dan knows who gave it to him, and most likely so do many others. Since he is know to be a real asshole to his subordinates, he most likely just has to take the hit or reveal his TRUE source. What cause would Rather lose everything for? You know that answer, so does everyone else!
He was advised by his own people not to use those documents, he "all in" and now he has lost it!
"Out of "practive" at dirty elections", really stop, I am going to piss my pants. You guys have tried everything but Bush killed Scott Peterson's wife and baby spent weekends at Michael Jackson's "Whatweretheirparentsthinkingland"!
Need I bring up James Carville? remeber what his stance on dirty politics are?
"It's hard for someone to hit you when you have your fist in their face"
Page down to read the sidebar, it's funny when he mentions getting screwed on the facts.
Can we go over this again?
Dirty Politics is making stuff up or taking a fact and totally ignoring the context in order to make a false point
Pointing out the total inadequacy of your opponents ACTUAL RECORD is totally fair game. In fact that IS politics.
Right now, the CBS/Carl Rove debacle is the only false bomb tossed from the left, and we are pretty sure by now THAT was a GOP plant.
From the Right, we have Zell Miller's rant that has been torn up on the facts, the whole canard of Kerry's service record (done by Bush earlier to another GOPer, Sen. McCain, so there is a PATTERN!), and a whole slew of slurs and intentional misstatements by various fascist, er GOP operatives, led by the FU king, Cheney's INCREDIBLE statement that a vote for Kerry was a vote FOR TERRORISM!
Goebbels would be proud of you guys.
I think you invest Dan Rather with more smarts and historical knowledge than he has. And I think its the people who gave it to the people who gave it to CBS that I would like to know.
And I will remind you AGAIN- that Dems have only to point to Bush's record, stuff that he is actually proud of, to campaign. There's enough stupidity, venality, cowardice, corruption, and large scale blunders to make someone a total political pariah in most Developed Countries where the electorate is at all informed. His campaign hinges on the chronic ignorance of the American Voter and its love of simple answers.
Kerry is so innoccuous that to attack him, you guys are basically down to making shit up. And its effective, precisely because the voters here are so out of touch with reality and history.
BTW- you have to hand it to the spanish. Only a few decades removed from living under a Fascist dictator, they are already more informed and mature as a voting group than Americans, who have had a free vote for two centuries+! When their government lies to them they see it and take action!
And you cap on me for my respect for the Europeans, but with so little deserving my respect at home, I gotta look somewhere!
he will go down in flames this November.
What the people in Spain did is react in cowardice in the face of terrorism, whether or not it will work of them is only the future will tell, though I doubt it. Events in Russia, who have not participated in Iraq tell me that the terrorist really don't put much stock in that behavior.
What their government did was not lie to the people, it aimed its investigation at the logical culprit in the face of great tragedy. What the people of Spain did, by a narrow margin is knee jerk fear, a trait not common in Americans!
Your elitist liberal agenda is dead in America, the conservative party will pick up seats in both houses and the Presidency in a landslide. The only hope for the democratic party lies in the moderates like Liberman, election after election elitist liberal leftists like Mondale, Dukakas, Gore and now Kerry are being rejected. Bill Clinton ran as a moderate and was successful, Kerry has just too much baggage to go there, not that he hasn't tried, its just not tenable.
This is the greatest nation on Earth and thanks to conservative leadership, it will stay that way!
train attack the way the terrorists intended? They let the attack change the outcome of the election, which certainly will do very little to dissuade Al Qaeda from further attacks.