INTERESTING SUSPECTS OF WHO GAVE CBS THE MEMOS
I have no idea if the guys at CrushKerry.com are right, but they have an anonymous Democratic source who offers an intriguing theory. Go to the website, and learn why they think the memos were given to CBS... by MoveOn.org.
The idea that the Kerry camp gave the memos to CBS doesn't quite feel right. One, the documents are a ridiculously amateurish forgery, and one would think the Kerry campaign, for all of their problems, could at least be competent in its dirty tricks. Two, if one were a nefarious Kerry or DNC operative, wouldn’t one want a memo that was a little more… useful? Something like a memo from Colin Powell warning Bush about all the potential problems in Iraq after Saddam’s regime fell. A memo from someone in the Pentagon warning Bush and Cheney about the problems of Abu Ghraib. A memo from a CIA study group concluding Iraq didn’t have weapons of mass destruction, dating from the middle of 2003. (Plus, a forger trying to create one of those documents wouldn’t have to worry about accurately recreating 1972-era fonts.)
All of those would have proven exponentially more useful to the Kerry campaign than rehashing the National Guard stuff, which is small and old potatoes.
But MoveOn.org… they seem impulsive enough to do something like that. Their members obviously hate Bush with a passion, and their fiery rage seems powerful enough to blind them to the ramifications of a stunt like this and the consequences of it backfiring. Their members have been clear that their goal is to beat Bush, not necessarily to build up Kerry. And their members were fired up by Michael Moore’s “Bush is a deserter” claim during the Democratic primaries.
Eh, right now, this is just speculation. The most likely source for the documents would be some Texas-area Bush critic who could semi-plausibly claim to be in the right place at the right time to get these documents. Someone like Bob Burkett, who Newsweek describes as “a disgruntled former Guard officer who lives in Baird, Texas, who says he was present at Guard headquarters in Austin in 1997, when a top aide to the then Governor Bush ordered records sanitized to protect the Boss. Other Guard officials disputed Burkett's account, and the Bush aide involved, Joe Allbaugh, called it "absolute garbage." Burkett may have a motive to make trouble for the powers that be. In 1998, he grew gravely ill on a Guard mission to Panama, causing him to be hospitalized, and he suffered two nervous breakdowns. He unsuccessfully sued for medical expenses.”
On a related note, AllahPundit makes a compelling case that the author of this memo surfs anti-Bush websites. Why? Well, the memo includes the wrong acronym, “OETR”. People familiar with military terminology suggest that the acronym the author of the memo meant to use was OER — an abbreviation for “Officer Effectiveness Report.” An anti-Bush website called the “AWOL Project” lists a bunch of released documents under the title, “The OETR Scam.”
Maybe it’s a coincidence.
THIS STORY GETS BETTER AND BETTER
From The New York Post:
The expert chosen by CBS to check Dan Rather's disputed National Guard documents got his start as a graphologist analyzing "Spirituality in Handwriting" and lacks recognized document training, The Post has learned.
Analyst Marcel Matley lists "Spirituality in Handwriting" and "Female/Male Traits in Handwriting" on the Web site for a foundation he serves as librarian. They were privately printed, but another analyst provided portions to The Post.
In "Spirituality in Handwriting," Matley assesses a woman's "libidinal energy" based on her handwriting.
Now, we as know, Matley has flipped like a common street hood getting worked over by Sipowicz on NYPD Blue, and is now cooperating with the critics of the report ["1970s-Era Typewriter Vets For Truth?"] , and admitting he couldn't authenticate the memo from a photocopy.
However, finding out that CBS originally thought this guy was going to save them and end the controversy reveals a great deal about what they think of their viewers, and their critics.
THE LATEST FROM WITHIN CBS
I have recently talked with an individual who claims to be familiar with the internal discussions at CBS News. This source built some credibility when he/she accurately stated that Drudge’s report of an internal investigation was wrong (Rather denied Drudge‘s report a few hours later), and this person also accurately predicted the network’s full-throated defense of the story on Friday evening, when some were wondering if the network would backtrack.
This individual told the Kerry Spot late Monday night that some of CBS’ news talent who were campaigning for the anchor desk when Rather retires, are more than a little pleased with the recent turn of events. These individuals, who, admittedly, have a great personal stake in getting Rather out the door, are contending in internal discussions that the blame belongs with Rather, not with any lower-ranking producer.
This individual also suggests that Don Hewitt, creator of 60 Minutes and who initially opposed the idea of establishing ‘60 Minutes II,’ is as livid as one would imagine. The pressure within CBS is intense and building steadily, the source said.
In another assessment of morale at CBS, I have also heard from one CBS employee, who works outside the newsroom, who has lamented that the memo controversy has left him/her “horribly disappointed, because I truly want to believe we're better than that.” (These sources have asked to not be identified, because they would like to keep their jobs.)
I also spent Monday touching base with various reporters and editors at mainstream newspapers and magazines in Washington, and not one would defend CBS’s action in this case. One editor at a publication that covers Capitol Hill said, “Anytime a major media outlet leaps to a conclusion on what appears to be highly questionable evidence, we all pay a price in terms of lessened credibility. Bad journalism is like bad anything — lawyers, doctors or apples. One bad one can taint the whole group.”
UPDATE: Here's a report in the New York Times that appears to back up my source's description of tension at CBS. Of course, this presumes the Times reporter is better than Jayson Blair.
Several CBS correspondents said in interviews that such developments were making them increasingly nervous.
One network correspondent said, "I've talked to colleagues who would love to see more of a defense."
This person described the state of the staff as "deep concern, I'd say not panic - we all want it to be right." This person, echoing others, said that Mr. Rather's resoluteness in addressing the charges on the air was allaying some of the concern. "Dan really put himself on the line and I can't imagine him knowingly defending something he knew not to be the case."
A longtime correspondent said flatly, "I'm distressed."
Mike Wallace, the longtime "60 Minutes" correspondent, said after hearing about new challenges to the validity of the documents on Sunday, "I'm confused by some of what I've heard today." But of his colleagues working on the report, he said: "You're dealing with genuine professionals. The last thing in the world that any of these people would want is to phony something."
My guess is that now that the Post has dismembered the CBS defense in this morning's edition, and raised a new set of hard questions, internal grumbling and finger-pointing at CBS News will intensify in the coming days.
DEVELOPMENT ON KERRY'S NAVY DOCS
I have been informed of this site, reporting that the After Action reports for the incident that resulted in John Kerry's Silver Star from the U.S. Navy Archives and have posted it online. According to the commentary, they say that the after-action report was written by Kerry, and constitutes a key fact supporting the argument of the Swift Boat Vets for Truth.
The commentary is written by Mark Hyman, vice president for corporate relations for Sinclair, the nation’s largest operator of television stations.
Honestly, my first reaction is, one big earth-shattering story based on thirty-some year old documents at a time, folks.
And yes, the font on the After Action reports looks accurate.
READ THE POST, PRONTO
The Washington Post has another huge story on this — too bad it's running on Page A8.
The lead expert retained by CBS News to examine disputed memos from President Bush's former squadron commander in the National Guard said yesterday that he examined only the late officer's signature and made no attempt to authenticate the documents themselves.
"There's no way that I, as a document expert, can authenticate them," Marcel Matley said in a telephone interview from San Francisco. The main reason, he said, is that they are "copies" that are "far removed" from the originals.
Matley's comments came amid growing evidence challenging the authenticity of the documents aired Wednesday on CBS's "60 Minutes."...
A detailed comparison by The Washington Post of memos obtained by CBS News with authenticated documents on Bush's National Guard service reveals dozens of inconsistencies, ranging from conflicting military terminology to different word-processing techniques.
The analysis shows that half a dozen Killian memos released earlier by the military were written with a standard typewriter using different formatting techniques from those characteristic of computer-generated documents. CBS's Killian memos bear numerous signs that are more consistent with modern-day word-processing programs, particularly Microsoft Word.
"I am personally 100 percent sure that they are fake," said Joseph M. Newcomer, author of several books on Windows programming, who worked on electronic typesetting techniques in the early 1970s. Newcomer said he had produced virtually exact replicas of the CBS documents using Microsoft Word formatting and the Times New Roman font.
Newcomer drew an analogy with an art expert trying to determine whether a painting of unknown provenance was painted by Leonardo Da Vinci. "If I was looking for a Da Vinci, I would look for characteristic brush strokes," he said. "If I found something that was painted with a modern synthetic brush, I would know that I have a forgery."
Meanwhile, Laura Bush became the first person from the White House to say the documents are likely forgeries. "You know they are probably altered," she told Radio Iowa in Des Moines yesterday. "And they probably are forgeries, and I think that's terrible, really."
UPDATE: More strikingly tough criticism of CBS from the Post:
In its broadcast last night, CBS News produced a new expert, Bill Glennon, an information technology consultant. He said that IBM electric typewriters in use in 1972 could produce superscripts and proportional spacing similar to those used in the disputed documents.
Any argument to the contrary is "an out-and-out lie," Glennon said in a telephone interview. But Glennon said he is not a document expert, could not vouch for the memos' authenticity and only examined them online because CBS did not give him copies when asked to visit the network's offices.
Thomas Phinney, program manager for fonts for the Adobe company in Seattle, which helped to develop the modern Times New Roman font, disputed Glennon's statement to CBS. He said "fairly extensive testing" had convinced him that the fonts and formatting used in the CBS documents could not have been produced by the most sophisticated IBM typewriters in use in 1972, including the Selectric and the Executive. He said the two systems used fonts of different widths.
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