Skepticism and the memo controversy

I've stated a couple of times that Burkett is in his eighties, based on something I coulda swored I'd read. But I believe I may have been mistaken, so if anyone has better information, I'd be happy to stand corrected.
 
BPSCG said:
I've stated a couple of times that Burkett is in his eighties, based on something I coulda swored I'd read. But I believe I may have been mistaken, so if anyone has better information, I'd be happy to stand corrected.
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Burkett is 54. Here is a good backgrounder on him.

Burkett wrote a long indictment against Bush for a Web site in 2003 in which he said he personally was ordered to "alter personnel records of George W. Bush." In that article, Burkett said that when he refused he was sent to Panama as punishment, where he contracted a disabling disease.

But when asked about that charge by the Houston Chronicle in February, Burkett said, "That statement was not accurate, that is overstated."
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One month ago, in an essay posted on a progressive Web site, Burkett theorized that Killian would have been a likely person to know more about Bush's service. But, he conceded, "I have found no documentation from LTC Killian's hand or staff that indicate that this unit was involved in any complicit way to ... cover for the failures of 1Lt. Bush ... " Burkett went on to say, "On the contrary, LTC Killian's remarks are rare."
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Maybe he got tired of looking and decided he would just create them?

MattJ
 
Finally, the CBS network has taken serious action.

It is always a tough decision to fire someone working as a host or anchor for one of your shows, but CBS has finally done it:

In response to the 60 minutes/Dan Rather frackas, CBS has fired Brian Maloney. . . . for criticizing Dan Rather.

SEATTLE - A radio talk-show host said Saturday he has been fired for criticizing CBS newsman Dan Rather's handling of challenges to the authenticity of memos about President Bush's National Guard service.

"On the talk show that I host, or hosted, I said I felt Rather should either retire or be forced out over this," said Brian Maloney, whose weekly "The Brian Maloney Show" aired for three years on KIRO-AM Radio, a CBS affiliate here.

Maloney says he made that statement on his Sept. 12 program. He was fired Friday, he said. . . .
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http://www.kentucky.com/mld/kentucky/entertainment/9701134.htm

The radio station was a CBS affiliate, so I am not sure it is accurate to say CBS directly fired him -- but it appears that the company certainly /had/ him fired.
 
NoZed Avenger said:

The radio station was a CBS affiliate, so I am not sure it is accurate to say CBS directly fired him -- but it appears that the company certainly /had/ him fired.
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That's the conservative media for you. All these big media corps are owned by ultraright wingers you know. They are just protecting Rather since he is such a good undercover operative.
 
Edited to add: Ok, yeah it sounds really loony anyone would believe these are real, they should have at least EXPECTED them to be phony.

A simple way to explain the font problem and meet Occam's Razor would to be for someone to have OCR'd an original memo into an electronic archive. Not uncommon for font substitution to occur. This would make the entire font issue moot, since the original typewriter font would be replaced by the OCR program in favor of a similar computer font.

Should be lots of typewritten documents from that era to try it.

Does not explain the other errors though but they sound weaker than the proportional font problem. And hey, where's the whiteout? I've never seen a typewriter memo without errors. Not a good sign, newspaper guys should have suspected it right away.

Having said that, Rather's 'defense' comments indicate a lapse of normal thought process combined with a Geraldo Rivera-like skill in reporting facts. If the documents are not forgeries they should be, what a maroon.

And corplinx is having way too much fun with this, I suppose it has been worth the wait.
 
Kopji said:
A simple way to explain the font problem and meet Occam's Razor would to be for someone to have OCR'd an original memo into an electronic archive.
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Except there was no electronic archive of any other documents in existence.

So you have to assume the memos were

(1) made in the 70's;

(2) kept apart from the other documents;

(3) located by some anonymous source;

(4) taken by that source (after the advent of scanners - despite no one else being able to find these documents in the face of fairly thorough searching since Bush's run for governor 10 years back); and

(5) OCR'd instead of photocopied;

(6) hung onto for beaucoup years;

(7) reprinted from the OCR copy;

(8) THEN -- and only then -- photocopied multiple times (Why?) and presented to CBS.



That's the /simple/, Ockham approved way ?
 
New story from NYT:

After days of expressing confidence about the documents used in a “60 Minutes'’ report that raised new questions about President Bush’s National Guard service, CBS News officials have grave doubts about the authenticity of the material, network officials said last night.

The officials, who asked not to be identified, said CBS News would most likely make an announcement as early as today that it had been deceived about the documents’ origins. CBS News has already begun intensive reporting on where they came from, and people at the network said it was now possible that officials would open an internal inquiry into how it moved forward with the report. Officials say they are now beginning to believe the report was too flawed to have gone on the air.
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So CBS admits that they were 'technically deceived' about the typeface and fonts, but continues to float the story that the contents were accurate, while completely ignoring the questions about Staudt and the signatures (which make the contents as suspect as the format)...

And the questions about Kerry's active reserve obligations and activities sink deeper and deeper into the past...

Nothing here to make anyone go 'Hmmmm...'
:rolleyes:
 
So your troubled by the fact that he met, and negotiated with the enemy while still in service, and CBS, among others can see no story. Indeed "Hmmmmm..."
 
Those allegations have definitely piqued my interest, and I'd like to see more evidence, which would seem to call for Kerry to release more of his own records.

If the allegations are supported, then I'll be troubled by Kerry's behavior.
;)
 
Rather Statement on the Documents Hoax

Can you imagine a more twisted, tortured confession of guilt?

The only one that comes to mind is when David Frost interviewed Nixon, and on the topic of Watergate, Nixon admitted he had "failed to uphold the law." No, he'd actually broken the law.

This is in the same class:
Last week, amid increasing questions about the authenticity of documents used in support of a 60 MINUTES WEDNESDAY story about President Bush's time in the Texas Air National Guard, CBS News vowed to re-examine the documents in question-and their source-vigorously.
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After spending days vigorously defending them and vigorously impugning the "partisan" motives of anyone who questioned your authority.
And we promised that we would let the American public know what this examination turned up, whatever the outcome.

Now, after extensive additional interviews, I no longer have the confidence in these documents that would allow us to continue vouching for them journalistically.
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Why don't you simply say you have no confidence in them?
I find we have been misled
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More accurate to say "We allowed ourselves to be misled", or We allowed ourselves to be blinded", or "We let ourselves be led around by the nose by a clumsy forgery."
on the key question of how our source for the documents came into possession of these papers.
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What? I thought the key question was whether they were authentic.
That, combined with some of the questions that have been raised in public and in the press, leads me to a point where-if I knew then what I know now
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You didn't have to know. As long as you had reasonable suspicions about the documents, you were obligated to hold off.
-I would not have gone ahead with the story as it was aired, and I certainly would not have used the documents in question.

But we did use the documents. We made a mistake in judgment, and for that I am sorry. It was an error that was made, however, in good faith
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Errors that come from ignoring warnings from your own experts are hardly errors made in "good faith".
and in the spirit of trying to carry on a CBS News tradition of investigative reporting without fear or favoritism.
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Yes, CBS, fearlessly following the facts, even if the facts mean you might have to kill what would have been a good story.
Please know that nothing is more important to us than people's trust in our ability and our commitment to report fairly and truthfully.
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Talk is cheap. What is CBS going to do to restore that trust?
 
Ok. CBS has apparently announced (I got this from the radio) that Burkett -is- the source for the memos, but that he now claims to have gotten them from another person who is anonymous -- and whose identity was not revealed to CBS.

. . .


Frankly, I don't know why I should believe anything put out by CBS on the topic at this point.

However, let us assume that the above is true for the moment:

This is the "unimpeachable source" cited by Rather in his defense of the documents after the forgery questions started being raised -- Burkett and some anonymous person that only Burkett knows ???

"Unimpeachable." Really.

Burkett, a partisan with a long-held grudge against the President, a man who has tried to sell this story previously (but who went 5+ years without any documents and who just now, 60 days out from the election, by an amazing coincidence, manages to find documents supporting his assertions. A man who just this year advised the DNC to start using "dirty tricks" because the ends justified the means in winning this election.

If this story is true, then I can only conclude that Rather was intentionally and willfully trying to deceive everyone by saying that the source for these documents was unimpeachable -- as CBS is now claiming that it doesn't even know who the original source for the documents were.

And that is the most favorable interpretation of the facts.

I am sure that theorists are going to have a field day with this.

For a start, there is no evidence apart from Burkett's assertion that Burkett ever got these documents from any other, anonymous person. Obviously, Burkett has a motive to deny forging the documents, which may represent a crime and certainly would open him up to charges for defamation on more than one front.

Less plausible is a scenario where these documents were passed to CBS from the DNC or Kerry campaign after Burkett gave copies to them. I do not think either the campaign or the DNC would be that stupid, but the stone-walling and foot dragging by CBS after this story broke is sure going to fuel that kind of speculation.

What does it take to get fired at CBS any more?
 
From Rather's statement:
Now, after extensive additional interviews, I no longer have the confidence in these documents that would allow us to continue vouching for them journalistically. I find we have been misled on the key question of how our source for the documents came into possession of these papers. That, combined with some of the questions that have been raised in public and in the press, leads me to a point where-if I knew then what I know now-I would not have gone ahead with the story as it was aired, and I certainly would not have used the documents in question.

But we did use the documents. We made a mistake in judgment, and for that I am sorry. It was an error that was made, however, in good faith and in the spirit of trying to carry on a CBS News tradition of investigative reporting without fear or favoritism.
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From CBS's statement:
Bill Burkett, in a weekend interview with CBS News Anchor and Correspondent Dan Rather, has acknowledged that he provided the now-disputed documents used in the Sept. 8 "60 Minutes Wednesday" report on President Bush’s service in the Texas Air National Guard.

Burkett, a retired National Guard lieutenant colonel, also admits that he deliberately misled the CBS News producer working on the report, giving her a false account of the documents’ origins to protect a promise of confidentiality to the actual source.

Burkett originally said he obtained the documents from another former Guardsman. Now he says he got them from a different source whose connection to the documents and identity CBS News has been unable to verify to this point.
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I note the memos are still on the CBS website -- in fact, they are the first documents posted in their "documents" section.

CBS has added a disclaimer:

The following documents reflecting President Bush's National Guard service were obtained by "60 Minutes." Their authenticity was called into doubt, and on Sept. 20, 2004, CBS issued a statement saying did say it could not authenticate the documents and that it should not have reported them. The network also said it had been misled by the source of the material.
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We "cannot authenticate them" -- not "They are poor forgeries."

Oh, and here they are, despite the fact that we should not have reported them.


Oh, and what is this third person stuff? This is the CBS wesite wuoting CBS? "CBS issued a statement" . . . . This IS CBS, isn't it?
 
NoZed Avenger said:
Oh, and what is this third person stuff? This is the CBS wesite wuoting CBS? "CBS issued a statement" . . . . This IS CBS, isn't it?
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It depends on what the meaning of the word "is" is, and what the meaning of the word "CBS" is...
 
BPSCG said:
It depends on what the meaning of the word "is" is, and what the meaning of the word "CBS" is...
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CBS = "See? BS!"

:D
 
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