rather bak memogate

=919 bakno color below (see main)newScoops and skepticism: How the story unfolded<div class="by-line" style="font-family: " times="Times" new="New" roman="Roman" background-color="background-color" rgb="rgb">By Mark Memmott, USA TODAY</div><a href="https://usatoday30.usatoday.com/news/politicselections/nation/president/2004-09-21-guard-scoops-skepticism_x.htm">https://usatoday30.usatoday.com/news/politicselections/nation/president/2004-09-21-guard-scoops-skepticism_x.htm</a>Wednesday, Sept. 86:30 p.m. (all times Eastern): On the CBS Evening News, anchor Dan Rather previews that night's 60 Minutes program: "CBS News has exclusive information, including documents ... (that) indicate Mr. Bush may have received preferential treatment in the Guard after not fulfilling his commitments." Rather says the "government documents ... are from the personal files of the late Col. Jerry Killian, Bush's squadron commander."Also at 6:30 p.m.: The White House releases a transcript of a CBS interview with communications director Dan Bartlett, part of which appeared on the CBS Evening News .  Bartlett does not challenge the documents' authenticity but says the controversy is nothing more than "partisan politics."6:45 p.m.: Bartlett tells USA TODAY White House reporter Judy Keen, "President Bush met his military obligations and rightfully received an honorable discharge (from the Guard). While the official records show the facts, no one can read the mind of a dead man (Killian) who wrote memos to himself 32 years ago."8 p.m.: 60 Minutes airs. Midway through his 12½-minute report, Rather comes to "a number of documents we are told were taken from Col. Killian's personal file." He says 60 Minutes consulted a "handwriting analyst and document expert who believes the material is authentic."9:15 p.m.: USA TODAY reporter Dave Moniz meets with former National Guard lieutenant colonel Bill Burkett, who will be revealed later as CBS' source for the memos and whom Moniz had dealt with on previous stories related to the National Guard. Burkett gives Moniz copies of the same documents he gave CBS. Moniz faxes them to USA TODAY's Washington bureau. Copies are also faxed to USA TODAY headquarters in McLean, Va.USA TODAY editors, as they plan the next day's story and discuss how much weight to give the documents, rely in part on 60 Minutes' reporting and on Bartlett's comment about "a dead man who wrote memos to himself." USA TODAY faxes the documents to a person familiar with Guard personnel practices and files. She says it was not unusual for Guard commanders to write such memos, but could not offer additional authentication.9:30 p.m.: The White House e-mails copies of the four memos in the 60 Minutes report to reporters and editors across the country. [why?] The date "09/07/2004" and the words "CBS News" are at the top of each page, indicating they are copies that CBS faxed to the White House the previous day.Through the night: Internet "bloggers" dissect the 60 Minutes report. Many say the memos look like they were done using a modern computer that didn't exist in 1972 or 1973.Thursday, Sept. 9Daybreak: The 60 Minutes report is front-page news in The New York Times and The Washington Post. USA TODAY spreads its story across nearly two-thirds of one page inside its news section and notes that it, too, obtained the memos. There is no discussion in the major news media about whether the memos are authentic.7:51 a.m.: Powerlineblog.com, the Internet site that has received much of the credit for calling attention to signs that the documents might be forgeries, posts a long analysis of them.Friday, Sept. 10Daybreak:The New York Times runs a story (on Page 17) headlined, "Commander's Son Questions Memos on Bush's Service." The Washington Post headlines a front-page article, "Some Question Authenticity of Papers on Bush." USA TODAY publishes a five-paragraph story headlined, "Officer's son questions Bush memo." Rather says on CNN: "The story is true. The story is true." That day, USA TODAY editors assign reporters to expand the story and investigate the memos' authenticity.6:30 p.m.: On the CBS Evening News, Rather gives a six-minute defense of the 60 Minutes report. He says many of the story's critics are "partisan political operatives."Monday, Sept. 13Daybreak: USA TODAY, pulling from the work of six reporters, publishes a lengthy look into the documents' credibility. "Two retired FBI forensic document examiners who studied the memos at USA TODAY's request said Sunday that they probably are forgeries," the story says. The story also notes that some other experts said that typewriters in use in the early 1970s might have been able to create such documents.6:30 p.m.: On the CBS Evening News, Rather says, "CBS used several techniques to make sure these papers should be taken seriously."Tuesday, Sept. 146:30 p.m.: On ABC's World News Tonight, two experts whom CBS confirms it consulted before the 60 Minutes broadcast say they warned the network that the documents could be forgeries. CBS says later that it also consulted other experts and that the two who were quoted on ABC did not register strong objections.7 p.m.: Bloggers call attention to The Dallas Morning News Web site (www .dallasnews.com). A story there says Killian's former secretary, Marian Carr Knox, thinks the documents are fakes. But she also says that they reflect what Killian thought about Bush and that he kept files with similar notes.Wednesday, Sept. 15Daybreak: Knox is prominent in newspaper stories across the country, on blogs all over the Web and in TV and radio reports. USA TODAY, which tried but failed to reach her the night before, reports what she's been saying and says her son Pat Carr, whom the newspaper reached, confirmed her comments.6:50 p.m.: CBS News President Andrew Heyward says on the CBS Evening News, "We established to our satisfaction that the memos were accurate or we would not have put them on television." But he says CBS will "redouble" its efforts to authenticate the memos.8 p.m.: On 60 Minutes, Rather says, "Another voice — a credible voice — has entered the debate." He interviews Knox. She tells him that she did not type the memos and believes they are forgeries, but that "the information in those is correct."Thursday, Sept. 16Daybreak: "Rather Concedes Papers Are Suspect," a Washington Post front-page headline reads.Afternoon: Moniz and USA TODAY reporter Kevin Johnson begin a series of interviews with Burkett over five days. Burkett provides additional details on the condition that the newspaper's earlier promise of confidentiality be maintained, saying he expects CBS to identify him in a 60 Minutes interview Sunday. No interview is broadcast, and he waives that confidentiality agreement with USA TODAY on Monday.Monday12:15 p.m.: In a statement e-mailed to reporters, CBS reveals who provided the documents. The network says Burkett admits he "deliberately misled" CBS producer Mary Mapes by telling her that he got the documents from another ex-Guardsman.1:25 p.m.: Rather, in a statement e-mailed to reporters, says he is sorry for "a mistake in judgment."6:30 p.m.: On the CBS Evening News, Rather presents an interview with Burkett in which the former Guard officer admits he misled CBS researchers but also says he "insisted" that they authenticate the memos before using them in a story. Rather apologizes again, saying. "I'm sorry." He says CBS is launching an investigation of its work on the story.
Dan Rather an early victim of thugswarm; Roger Stone, MRC, NRO, PJ media, blogs, Drudge, Freepers Gannon (Leadership Inst, freeper, rove, hannity, Moonie, Liddy, National Press Club, Plame); Fox, Fedsoc MscDougald Womble SE Lgl Fdn], Sinclair, Corsi, Sean Spicer?! must have been much later.
Moonves wanted to bomb CBS News and start from scratch "entertaining, more upbeat, fun")p 170
https://books.google.com/books?id=E6xSE4M1TqsCThe Rise of the BlogosphereBy Aaron Barlow
Greenwood Publishing Group, 2007 
much on mapes, old media vs new; no reserach on the substance on the issues (ie did not try to defend, instant attack decision made), just fonts (and the speed and volume makes the author womder of attack was pre-pkg.
---guk
https://yyy.theguardian.com/film/2016/mar/03/dan-rather-robert-redford-made-me-look-better-in-truth...The report was a disaster: because the documents used to prove the allegations could not be authenticated, and may have been outright forgeries, the story had to be retracted. After that, heads rolled. Careers were destroyed, the image of journalists was badly tarnished, and bloggers – the ones who discovered that the documents seemed to have been typed with Microsoft Word, a program that did not exist in the early 70s – got to celebrate bringing down one of the most powerful names in US news: long-time CBS anchor Dan Rather.
At the time, Rather said that, had he known what he later knew about the documents, he would not have aired the story. However, he later said this retraction was coerced. He stepped down as anchor in 2005, when it became clear that his contract would not be renewed. He left the network entirely one year later. To all intents and purposes, the controversy shipwrecked an otherwise brilliant career....
...Though the film is based on Mapes’s memoir, the conclusions one can draw from it are ambiguous. It can be viewed as a puff piece that whitewashes the controversy by lionising a woman who dared speak truth to power and was punished for her efforts by the gutless suits who had taken over the network. In this version, Mapes may have used flawed journalism to get to the truth, but in the end she got the story right: Bush received special treatment and mysteriously vanished from the military records for an entire year. But it can also be viewed as a film depicting a woman so determined to humiliate the president that she failed to nail the story....Rather despises the higher-ups at CBS for the way they handled “Memogate”, accusing them of abandoning the network’s vaunted tradition of standing by its news division. To this day, he insists his team got the basic story right. “Bush, in his youth, through his father’s political influence, got put in a ‘champagne unit’ of the National Guard that ensured he did not go to Vietnam. After he got into the National Guard, he countermanded an order to take a physical, and then disappeared for a year. The sons of the less privileged were sent into the green jungle hell to die. He got a pass.”
But what about those tell-tale documents? “The process included controversial documents,” Rather says without hesitation. “But no one has ever proved that the documents are not what they purport to be. [Critics] could not attack the basic facts. No one in the Bush family has ever denied the two basic facts. Those who did not like the story picked its weakest point to attack. They changed the conversation.”
....<div>
</div>2012?<a href="https://www.texasmonthly.com/politics/truth-or-consequences/">https://www.texasmonthly.com/politics/truth-or-consequences/</a>...By all rights, Rather, who turns 81 this year, should be enjoying a few victory laps at the close of a remarkable career. And he would be, except for one report that he will never forget, because no one will ever let him: the botched 60 Minutes segment in 2004 on George W. Bush’s Texas Air National Guard service. The report, which lasted fifteen minutes, forever damaged Rather’s reputation and ended his network TV career after forty years. Its claims were potentially explosive—that Bush had received preferential treatment to enter the National Guard in 1968 in order to avoid the Vietnam draft and that he had then shirked his duty without repercussion. As evidence, Rather produced six documents that described the alleged political pressure Bush’s commanding officer was under to “sugarcoat” possibly embarrassing moments in Bush’s record, specifically his failure to show up for a flight physical and his loss of flight status. In a presidential campaign that had become a referendum on who had the credibility to take control of the quagmire in Iraq, Rather’s report could have seriously damaged Bush’s reelection effort. But he went at the king—and he missed.  Almost as soon as the broadcast aired, a swarm of right-wing blogs assailed Rather’s documents, claiming their typeface and spacing was inconsistent with any known typewriter of the early seventies. Within days CBS was reeling as Bush allies accused Rather and his longtime producer, Mary Mapes, of using forgeries to tip a presidential election in favor of the Democrats. Twelve days after the story aired, CBS backed down, forced Rather to apologize, and established a special panel to investigate what went wrong. Forty-three days later, Bush was reelected, beating Senator John Kerry by a two-point margin in the pivotal swing state of Ohio. By the time Mapes and three other producers were ousted by CBS, the Bush National Guard story was dead and buried, with Rather’s reputation as the tombstone.<p style="box-sizing: inherit; margin: 0px 0px 20px; padding: 0px; border: 0px; font-variant-numeric: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; line-height: 1.45em; vertical-align: baseline;">Eight years later, Bush is back in Texas, keeping a low profile and building his presidential library. Rather is still a newsman, hosting a program called Dan Rather Reports on HDNet, a niche cable and satellite channel. But he is also a man who cannot stop reliving his worst moment. This month he will publish Rather Outspoken: My Life in News, his fourth memoir but the first since his downfall. Not surprisingly, he uses the book to defend the details of his report, sharpening his ax for Bush, as well as former colleagues at CBS and its parent company at the time, Viacom, whom Rather believes caved under political pressure from the Bush White House.<p style="box-sizing: inherit; margin: 0px 0px 20px; padding: 0px; border: 0px; font-variant-numeric: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; line-height: 1.45em; vertical-align: baseline;">“The story we reported has never been denied by George W. Bush, by anyone in his close circles, including his family,” says Rather. “They have never denied the bulwark of the story, the spine of the story, the thrust of the story.” (In fact, Bush officials have indeed denied it, repeatedly. In a conversation I had with former White House director of communications Dan Bartlett in 2007, he told me, “We believe the story is inaccurate, both the general thrust of it and the questionable sources they used.”)<p style="box-sizing: inherit; margin: 0px 0px 20px; padding: 0px; border: 0px; font-variant-numeric: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; line-height: 1.45em; vertical-align: baseline;">Rather tried making his case in a 2007 lawsuit against his former bosses, but it was thrown out of court two years later. Nonetheless, he remains convinced that he did nothing wrong. “I believed at the time that the documents were genuine,” Rather says, “and I’ve never ceased believing that they are genuine.”<p style="box-sizing: inherit; margin: 0px 0px 20px; padding: 0px; border: 0px; font-variant-numeric: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; line-height: 1.45em; vertical-align: baseline;">This is nearly impossible to know. The documents were Xerox copies, which in forensics is a dead end—nothing can be proved, or disproved, without an original. Since the report, Rather has hired lawyers and private investigators to get to the bottom of the mystery, to no avail. Strangely, he has made only one attempt to contact the man who initially gave the documents to CBS, the former Guardsman and West Texas rancher Bill Burkett, who, after initially lying about where he got them, told a dubious tale of receiving them from shadowy characters at a cattle show in Houston—and then went stone silent. Burkett refused to talk to Rather.<p style="box-sizing: inherit; margin: 0px 0px 20px; padding: 0px; border: 0px; font-variant-numeric: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; line-height: 1.45em; vertical-align: baseline;">But the CBS documents that seem destined to haunt Rather are, and have always been, a red herring. The real story, assembled here for the first time in a single narrative, featuring new witnesses and never-reported details, is far more complex than what Rather and Mapes rushed onto the air in 2004. At the time, so much rancorous political gamesmanship surrounded Bush’s military history that it was impossible to report clearly (and Rather’s flawed report effectively ended further investigations). But with Bush out of office, this is no longer a problem. I’ve been reporting this story since it first broke, and today there is more cooperation and willingness to speak on the record than ever before. The picture that emerges is remarkable. Beyond the haze of elaborately revised fictions from both the political left and the political right is a bizarre account that has remained, until now, the great untold story of modern Texas politics. For 36 years, it made its way through the swamps of state government as it led up to the collision between two powerful Texans on the national stage.<p style="box-sizing: inherit; margin: 0px 0px 20px; padding: 0px; border: 0px; font-variant-numeric: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; line-height: 1.45em; vertical-align: baseline;">And by the time it was over, no one—not Dan Rather, not George W. Bush—would be left unbloodied.<figure id="attachment_492507" class="wp-caption aligncenter" style="box-sizing: inherit; margin: 40px 0px; padding: 0px; border: 0px; font-variant-numeric: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; line-height: inherit; vertical-align: baseline; height: auto; width: 1381px; max-width: 100%;"><figcaption class="wp-caption-text" style="box-sizing: inherit; margin: 15px 0px 0px; padding: 0px; border: 0px; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: 700; font-stretch: inherit; line-height: 1.3em; vertical-align: baseline;">Dan Rather for Texas Monthly in NYC on March 23, 2012.</figcaption></figure><h3 style="box-sizing: inherit; margin: 0px 0px 30px; padding: 0px; border: 0px; font-variant-numeric: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; line-height: 1em; vertical-align: baseline; clear: both;">THE BEGINNING</h3><p style="box-sizing: inherit; margin: 0px 0px 20px; padding: 0px; border: 0px; font-variant-numeric: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; line-height: 1.45em; vertical-align: baseline;">It was the 1988 presidential campaign of Bush’s father that first raised the issue of a privileged son from Texas getting special access to the National Guard—only the privileged son wasn’t a Bush. Michael Dukakis, the elder Bush’s opponent, had recently chosen Senator Lloyd Bentsen, of Houston, as his running mate. One Sunday morning in August of that year, George H. W. Bush’s campaign co-chairman, New Hampshire governor John Sununu, went on TV to attack Bentsen for allegedly helping his son, Lloyd Bentsen III, enter the Texas Air National Guard in 1968. “Someone called Senator Bentsen to point out to him that this special slot, which was rare, came open,” said Sununu, and Bentsen “ran to get his son to fill that.

This was the first presidential election in which candidates’ Vietnam-era decisions were resonating among the electorate. The question of who did what in the sixties, when an unpopular war divided the nation, had become a litmus test. (Incidentally, this was also the year that Dan Rather established himself as a Bush family enemy by needling then–vice president Bush with questions about his role in the Iran-Contra affair in an infamous live interview on CBS.) With Democrats attacking the elder Bush’s own running mate, Dan Quayle, for joining the Indiana National Guard during Vietnam, Sununu’s claim was a natural counteroffensive. But it boomeranged. It turned out that George W. Bush, at the time a senior staff member in his father’s campaign, had served in the same Houston unit as Lloyd Bentsen III and was recruited the same year by the same man, Colonel Walter “Buck” Staudt. That unit, the 147th Fighter Interceptor Group, tasked with defending the Gulf Coast, was well-known as a “champagne unit” because it housed not only Bentsen and Bush but a number of other sons of the Texas elite, such as John Connally III, son of the former Texas governor and Nixon treasury secretary; Al Hill, the grandson of oil tycoon H. L. Hunt; and several members of the Dallas Cowboys.<p style="box-sizing: inherit; margin: 0px 0px 20px; padding: 0px; border: 0px; font-variant-numeric: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; line-height: 1.45em; vertical-align: baseline;">Sununu’s attacks died after Bentsen and Staudt denied the allegations, but the issue had been introduced, and the timing and circumstances of Bush’s entry into the Guard were enough to raise eyebrows. In February 1968, three months before Bush graduated from Yale, the Tet offensive left more than five hundred U.S. soldiers dead in a single week. That same month, Walter Cronkite famously declared the Vietnam War “mired in stalemate” just as President Lyndon Johnson canceled draft deferments for most graduate students. Days before he would become subject to the draft, Bush, whose father was then a U.S. congressman from Houston, won a coveted slot as a pilot in the 147th.<p style="box-sizing: inherit; margin: 0px 0px 20px; padding: 0px; border: 0px; font-variant-numeric: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; line-height: 1.45em; vertical-align: baseline;">Bush maintains he simply interviewed with Staudt and was accepted on the spot. That may be true, but it would be hard to argue that there weren’t more-qualified candidates: Bush received the lowest acceptable score on his pilot aptitude test.<p style="box-sizing: inherit; margin: 0px 0px 20px; padding: 0px; border: 0px; font-variant-numeric: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; line-height: 1.45em; vertical-align: baseline;">In 1988 Staudt, by most accounts a bullying, cigar-chomping autocrat, told reporters that there had been no “hanky-panky” involved in getting Bush and Bentsen into the Guard, and he repeated that defense in 2000. But suspicion was not unwarranted. There was a long list of men trying to get into the Texas National Guard. And several months after Bush entered, Staudt paid a visit to Washington, D.C., and lobbied the elder Bush for funding for Ellington Air Force Base, in Houston, making sure to update him on how well his son was doing.<p style="box-sizing: inherit; margin: 0px 0px 20px; padding: 0px; border: 0px; font-variant-numeric: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; line-height: 1.45em; vertical-align: baseline;">Control over entry into the National Guard was a hotly fought-over lever of power in Texas. Staudt had considerable influence in Houston, but in a state still dominated by Democrats, the ultimate gatekeeper was his commanding officer and internal rival, Brigadier General James Rose. A Democrat, Rose was a handsome and sophisticated political operator who’d managed to become head of the Texas Air National Guard despite never having been a pilot. Rose had a close political bond with the man who would sit at the center of the Guard story: Ben Barnes, then the Speaker of the Texas House of Representatives.<p style="box-sizing: inherit; margin: 0px 0px 20px; padding: 0px; border: 0px; font-variant-numeric: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; line-height: 1.45em; vertical-align: baseline;">A fair-haired wunderkind who’d been elected a state representative while still in college, Barnes was widely considered a potential future governor and perhaps even a presidential contender. He was a protégé of President Johnson’s and counted him as a close friend. And he had learned from his mentor the art of collecting political chits as a way of life. Barnes has said he regularly fielded requests for entry into the National Guard, and after assessing the trade-in value of the favor, he would pass them on to Rose to sign off on.<p style="box-sizing: inherit; margin: 0px 0px 20px; padding: 0px; border: 0px; font-variant-numeric: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; line-height: 1.45em; vertical-align: baseline;">Barnes knew how to work the press too: he was a regular source for the man who was then the CBS White House correspondent, Dan Rather.<p style="box-sizing: inherit; margin: 0px 0px 20px; padding: 0px; border: 0px; font-variant-numeric: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; line-height: 1.45em; vertical-align: baseline;">Barnes would travel a rocky road after the Johnson era. He was elected lieutenant governor in 1968, but several years later, the Sharpstown stock-fraud scandal erupted, taking down much of the state’s Democratic power structure. Though Barnes was never charged, the scandal effectively ended his political career (and that of Governor Preston Smith and House Speaker Gus Mutscher). Out of office, he evolved into the kind of omnipresent backroom figure everyone either loves or hates, a charming and cunning wheeler-dealer with a huge grin, a firm handshake, and a finger in every pot. “Ugly as a cedar post,” says Houston lawyer Dick DeGuerin, “but he shakes your hand and you know your hand’s been shook.”<p style="box-sizing: inherit; margin: 0px 0px 20px; padding: 0px; border: 0px; font-variant-numeric: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; line-height: 1.45em; vertical-align: baseline;">It was on Rather’s infamous 60 Minutes segment, in 2004, that Barnes first publicly recounted how he had called General Rose on behalf of George W. Bush in the spring of 1968. Barnes claimed he had received a call from Sid Adger, an oilman in Houston who was a close friend of the elder Bush’s. As it happened, both of Adger’s sons were also in the Air National Guard in Houston, under Staudt’s command. Barnes told me that in the late seventies, while he and Adger served on the board of Texas International Airlines, Adger personally thanked him for helping Bush. “We both knew I had done him that favor,” he said.<p style="box-sizing: inherit; margin: 0px 0px 20px; padding: 0px; border: 0px; font-variant-numeric: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; line-height: 1.45em; vertical-align: baseline;">Barnes’s story has never been corroborated because both Rose and Adger were dead by the time he first told it publicly. The elder Bush has said he doesn’t recall asking Adger for help, and the younger Bush has denied knowledge of it. But during the 1988 campaign, Rose and his son Mark happened to be watching television together when a report came on about the Bush-Quayle campaign’s attacks on Bentsen. According to Mark Rose, who has never spoken about it on the record before now, his father admitted to him that he’d helped both Bush and Bentsen into the Guard.<p style="box-sizing: inherit; margin: 0px 0px 20px; padding: 0px; border: 0px; font-variant-numeric: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; line-height: 1.45em; vertical-align: baseline;">
<p style="box-sizing: inherit; margin: 0px 0px 20px; padding: 0px; border: 0px; font-variant-numeric: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; line-height: 1.45em; vertical-align: baseline;">“My dad looked at me and said, ‘I signed off on Bentsen’s son going into the Guard, and I signed off on Bush’s son going into the Guard,” said Rose, a former Austin city councilman who is now an energy executive living in Bastrop.<p style="box-sizing: inherit; margin: 0px 0px 20px; padding: 0px; border: 0px; font-variant-numeric: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; line-height: 1.45em; vertical-align: baseline;">
<p style="box-sizing: inherit; margin: 0px 0px 20px; padding: 0px; border: 0px; font-variant-numeric: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; line-height: 1.45em; vertical-align: baseline;">He added, “[George W. Bush] can’t say, ‘I didn’t have any help.’ Staudt didn’t work that way. My dad didn’t work that way.”<p style="box-sizing: inherit; margin: 0px 0px 20px; padding: 0px; border: 0px; font-variant-numeric: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; line-height: 1.45em; vertical-align: baseline;">
<p style="box-sizing: inherit; margin: 0px 0px 20px; padding: 0px; border: 0px; font-variant-numeric: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; line-height: 1.45em; vertical-align: baseline;">Bush’s onetime expert and advocate on his National Guard service, a former personnel officer named Albert Lloyd, agreed with Rose. In an interview conducted shortly before his death, in March, he said that General Rose, who was Lloyd’s direct boss in the sixties, had to have been aware of whose son he was admitting to the Guard—and that Ben Barnes was the likely broker.<p style="box-sizing: inherit; margin: 0px 0px 20px; padding: 0px; border: 0px; font-variant-numeric: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; line-height: 1.45em; vertical-align: baseline;">
<p style="box-sizing: inherit; margin: 0px 0px 20px; padding: 0px; border: 0px; font-variant-numeric: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; line-height: 1.45em; vertical-align: baseline;">[pix 1. Speaker of the Texas House Ben Barnes and President Lyndon Johnson in 1967. 2. Bush and his father, shortly after he was made an officer in the Texas Air National Guard in 1968. 3. Brigadier General James Rose. 4. Bush in 2003 after his infamous speech on the deck of the USS Abraham Lincoln. 5. & 6. Jim Moore and Bush at the 1994 gubernatorial debate. 7. Bush with Colonel Walter “Buck” Staudt in 1968.<p style="box-sizing: inherit; margin: 0px 0px 20px; padding: 0px; border: 0px; font-variant-numeric: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; line-height: 1.45em; vertical-align: baseline;">GOVERNOR BUSH<p style="box-sizing: inherit; margin: 0px 0px 20px; padding: 0px; border: 0px; font-variant-numeric: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; line-height: 1.45em; vertical-align: baseline;">None of this, however, was being reported in 1988, and after the elder Bush won the White House, the story died down. No one thought much about George W. Bush’s military records until he decided to run for governor in 1994 against the incumbent, Democrat Ann Richards. The first mention came from a TV reporter for Houston station KHOU named Jim Moore. During a debate in October, Moore asked Bush whether he’d received preferential treatment to get into the National Guard in 1968. Bush replied that most Guard assignments were for only six months and nobody else wanted to spend the extra time it took to train on a jet fighter. “My father, just like my commanding officer said, had nothing to do with getting me in that unit,” he said.<p style="box-sizing: inherit; margin: 0px 0px 20px; padding: 0px; border: 0px; font-variant-numeric: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; line-height: 1.45em; vertical-align: baseline;">
<p style="box-sizing: inherit; margin: 0px 0px 20px; padding: 0px; border: 0px; font-variant-numeric: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; line-height: 1.45em; vertical-align: baseline;">Governor Richards knew there was more to it than that. She had privately asked Barnes about the rumor that he had helped Bush get into the Guard, and Barnes told her that he had. Robert Spellings, who was Barnes’s chief of staff in the late sixties (his future wife, Margaret Spellings, would later become Bush’s Secretary of Education), also told Richards he recalled getting Bush in. But Spellings didn’t remember exactly how it was done and advised Barnes against going public, because Barnes had no real evidence. Richards, who had opposed the Vietnam War, didn’t push it.<p style="box-sizing: inherit; margin: 0px 0px 20px; padding: 0px; border: 0px; font-variant-numeric: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; line-height: 1.45em; vertical-align: baseline;">
<p style="box-sizing: inherit; margin: 0px 0px 20px; padding: 0px; border: 0px; font-variant-numeric: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; line-height: 1.45em; vertical-align: baseline;">But after Bush won the election, Barnes’s story spiked in political value. What was to unfold in Texas over the next five years was a political power struggle, at the center of which was Barnes and his claim about Bush’s military history. It began, of all places, at the Texas Lottery Commission.<p style="box-sizing: inherit; margin: 0px 0px 20px; padding: 0px; border: 0px; font-variant-numeric: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; line-height: 1.45em; vertical-align: baseline;">
<p style="box-sizing: inherit; margin: 0px 0px 20px; padding: 0px; border: 0px; font-variant-numeric: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; line-height: 1.45em; vertical-align: baseline;">Barnes was the chief lobbyist for the corporation under contract to operate the lottery in Texas, a multinational gaming services and technology company called GTECH. He and a partner had cut a sweetheart deal in 1992, when the state launched the lottery, to collect 4 percent of GTECH’s Texas revenue in exchange for maintaining the massive state contract, which was worth about $150 million annually. The deal made him enormously influential as a fundraiser for Democrats. In the mid-nineties, he bought a house on Nantucket and befriended the Kennedy family and John Kerry. To maintain his power and influence, Barnes just needed to protect the GTECH contract.<p style="box-sizing: inherit; margin: 0px 0px 20px; padding: 0px; border: 0px; font-variant-numeric: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; line-height: 1.45em; vertical-align: baseline;">
<p style="box-sizing: inherit; margin: 0px 0px 20px; padding: 0px; border: 0px; font-variant-numeric: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; line-height: 1.45em; vertical-align: baseline;">But when Bush took office, Barnes became a target. Bush’s political architect, Karl Rove, and his chief of staff, Joe Allbaugh, took a keen interest in the lottery’s machinations, requesting that minutes from lottery meetings and weekly reports be sent to them regularly. “The Bushes were paranoid about the lottery,” says George Kuempel, who covered the agency for the Dallas Morning News. “Rove wanted to f— Barnes.”<p style="box-sizing: inherit; margin: 0px 0px 20px; padding: 0px; border: 0px; font-variant-numeric: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; line-height: 1.45em; vertical-align: baseline;">Bush appointed his own lawyer, Harriet Miers, as chair of the Texas Lottery Commission. As soon as she arrived, Miers began studying the possibility of opening the GTECH contract to new bidders. Suddenly, Barnes needed all the leverage he could get, and one thing he had was the story about how Bush got into the Guard.<p style="box-sizing: inherit; margin: 0px 0px 20px; padding: 0px; border: 0px; font-variant-numeric: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; line-height: 1.45em; vertical-align: baseline;">About two years after Bush took power in Austin, the Lottery Commission became embroiled in a controversy that finally caused this tension to spill out into the open. A press leak in late 1996 revealed that the Lottery Commission’s executive director, a Democratic appointee named Nora Linares, was carrying on an extramarital affair with a GTECH consultant—a major conflict of interest that provided the perfect opportunity for the Bush camp to sweep Democrats from the lottery. Miers promptly fired Linares.<p style="box-sizing: inherit; margin: 0px 0px 20px; padding: 0px; border: 0px; font-variant-numeric: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; line-height: 1.45em; vertical-align: baseline;">And that is when a mysterious document began circulating in Austin that would serve as the Rosetta stone of the Bush National Guard controversy. The document, a single-page letter written by an anonymous author and addressed to a U.S. attorney, described an alleged secret deal struck between George W. Bush and Ben Barnes in which Barnes agreed to withhold the story of getting the governor into the Guard in exchange for Bush’s securing the GTECH contract against competing bidders.<p style="box-sizing: inherit; margin: 0px 0px 20px; padding: 0px; border: 0px; font-variant-numeric: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; line-height: 1.45em; vertical-align: baseline;">The memo fingered a Bush aide named Reggie Bashur as the one who brokered the alleged quid pro quo: “Bashur was sent to talk to Barnes who agreed never to confirm the story and the Governor talked to [Miers] two days later and she then agreed to support letting GTech keep the contract without a bid.” And indeed, the previous summer, Miers had renewed the GTECH contract without a bid, against the wishes of state Republicans.<p style="box-sizing: inherit; margin: 0px 0px 20px; padding: 0px; border: 0px; font-variant-numeric: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; line-height: 1.45em; vertical-align: baseline;">
<p style="box-sizing: inherit; margin: 0px 0px 20px; padding: 0px; border: 0px; font-variant-numeric: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; line-height: 1.45em; vertical-align: baseline;">The memo also claimed that Bush had lied to Jim Moore when he said in the 1994 debate that he’d received no help securing a slot in the Guard. According to the memo, Barnes’s former assistant Nick Krajl had personally called General Rose on Bush’s behalf. “At this time I can’t release my name,” the memo’s author wrote, “but at the proper time I will come forward and show this story to be true.”<p style="box-sizing: inherit; margin: 0px 0px 20px; padding: 0px; border: 0px; font-variant-numeric: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; line-height: 1.45em; vertical-align: baseline;">
<p style="box-sizing: inherit; margin: 0px 0px 20px; padding: 0px; border: 0px; font-variant-numeric: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; line-height: 1.45em; vertical-align: baseline;">Initially, no one could figure out who wrote the memo. But in early 1997 Linares brought a lawsuit against GTECH for allegedly helping engineer her ouster, and her lawyer, Charles Soechting, the former chairman of the Texas Democratic party, decided to investigate the memo’s origins. He tracked it to a copy center in Austin, subpoenaed the tape from the center’s security camera, and invited some local political figures and the senior captain of the Texas Rangers to identify the man who appeared to be faxing it. Though the man wore an L.A. Lakers cap and dark glasses, witnesses all agreed it was Tom Duffy, the chief of staff for Democrat John Sharp, the state comptroller.<p style="box-sizing: inherit; margin: 0px 0px 20px; padding: 0px; border: 0px; font-variant-numeric: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; line-height: 1.45em; vertical-align: baseline;">
<p style="box-sizing: inherit; margin: 0px 0px 20px; padding: 0px; border: 0px; font-variant-numeric: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; line-height: 1.45em; vertical-align: baseline;">“Everyone in the room, in unison, started laughing and said, ‘Duffy!’?” recalled Soechting. “Everybody knew he had one thing in life he does, and that’s take care of John.”<p style="box-sizing: inherit; margin: 0px 0px 20px; padding: 0px; border: 0px; font-variant-numeric: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; line-height: 1.45em; vertical-align: baseline;">But why would Sharp have had the memo sent? A possible motive became clearer in hindsight: Sharp was preparing to run for lieutenant governor in 1998 against Rick Perry, who would have Bush at the top of the ballot to help him out. Sharp had also been a longtime critic of state-sponsored gaming, the establishment of which had put him directly at odds with Barnes. It would be a three-birds-with-one-stone political hit.<p style="box-sizing: inherit; margin: 0px 0px 20px; padding: 0px; border: 0px; font-variant-numeric: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; line-height: 1.45em; vertical-align: baseline;">In an interview, Sharp told me he had nothing to do with the memo—and implicated Duffy as acting independently. “When I asked about it, he said he’s not interested in talking about it and appreciated it if I wouldn’t ask about it again,” Sharp said. “I take that to mean I’d better not ask him about it again.”<p style="box-sizing: inherit; margin: 0px 0px 20px; padding: 0px; border: 0px; font-variant-numeric: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; line-height: 1.45em; vertical-align: baseline;">Duffy declined comment, but he was in an unusually compromised position at the time: his girlfriend was a top executive at the Texas Lottery Commission and a close ally of Linares’s.<p style="box-sizing: inherit; margin: 0px 0px 20px; padding: 0px; border: 0px; font-variant-numeric: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; line-height: 1.45em; vertical-align: baseline;">In any case, everyone mentioned in the memo denies the story it tells. Barnes calls it “a lot of malarkey” and argues that because Rove was actively trying to get rid of him, Rove must not have feared any story that Barnes could reveal in retaliation.<p style="box-sizing: inherit; margin: 0px 0px 20px; padding: 0px; border: 0px; font-variant-numeric: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; line-height: 1.45em; vertical-align: baseline;">Soon after, Barnes was implicated in an elaborate GTECH kickback scheme in New Jersey, where the company had another lottery contract. These allegations were eventually retracted, and the federal prosecutor who brought them was forced to issue an apology, but Barnes agreed to part ways with the company not long after. His exit package was an eye-popping $23 million. To many observers in Texas, it looked more like a payoff than a buyout. As one former Bush aide told me, “It didn’t smell right to anyone who was paying attention.”<p style="box-sizing: inherit; margin: 0px 0px 20px; padding: 0px; border: 0px; font-variant-numeric: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; line-height: 1.45em; vertical-align: baseline;">The following year, yet another turn in the GTECH story fanned the theory that Barnes had engineered a deal to cover up Bush’s Guard history. Following Linares’s departure, the lottery commissioners decided to open up the bidding. To signal a fresh start, they hired a complete outsider as their new executive director—Larry Littwin, a short, unassuming New Yorker who had rarely set foot in Texas. He began by launching a complex investigation into illegal GTECH contributions to Texas lawmakers. But only five months after he took the post, Miers decided he’d gone rogue, stirring up paranoia among legislators from whom Bush needed cooperation on other matters and angering GTECH executives. Miers fired him without explanation, and the bidding was shut down, with GTECH retaining its contract.<p style="box-sizing: inherit; margin: 0px 0px 20px; padding: 0px; border: 0px; font-variant-numeric: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; line-height: 1.45em; vertical-align: baseline;">Like Linares before him, Littwin sued GTECH for allegedly exerting political influence over the state agency to get him fired. To prove it, Littwin’s lawyers also focused on the alleged Barnes-Bush handshake deal described in the anonymous memo from 1996.<p style="box-sizing: inherit; margin: 0px 0px 20px; padding: 0px; border: 0px; font-variant-numeric: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; line-height: 1.45em; vertical-align: baseline;">Legitimate or not, the timing of the Littwin suit was conspicuously poor for Bush: in 1998 he was running for reelection and laying the groundwork for a presidential run, polishing up his résumé and shaping the contours of his life into a political memoir. That year Bush’s campaign paid Miers $19,000 to examine his Guard record for “vulnerabilities,” according to a Newsweek report from July 2000. The central problem that Miers identified: “rumors that Bush had help from his father in getting into the National Guard in 1968.”<p style="box-sizing: inherit; margin: 0px 0px 20px; padding: 0px; border: 0px; font-variant-numeric: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; line-height: 1.45em; vertical-align: baseline;">For Bush, the most irksome version of the rumor had it that his father had personally asked Barnes for help. In order to put the matter to rest, Bush sent his 1998 campaign manager (and future Secretary of Commerce), Don Evans, to talk to Barnes, who later told me, “I got the impression they were very worried.” Barnes reassured Evans, telling him that he’d never spoken to the elder Bush directly about his son. Subsequently, Barnes received a solicitous letter, signed by Bush, which is now framed in Barnes’s office: “Dear Ben, Don Evans reported your conversation. Thank you for your candor and for killing the rumor about you and Dad ever discussing my status. Like you, he never remembered any conversation. I appreciate your help.”<p style="box-sizing: inherit; margin: 0px 0px 20px; padding: 0px; border: 0px; font-variant-numeric: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; line-height: 1.45em; vertical-align: baseline;">About a year later, after resisting a subpoena for several weeks in the Littwin case, Barnes was forced to give what would become his official version of the story: that Sid Adger, the Houston oilman and friend of the elder Bush’s, had called Barnes on behalf of Bush and asked if he could help get his son into the Guard. Soon after, GTECH settled with Littwin, paying him $300,000 and demanding that Barnes’s deposition be destroyed and that Littwin never talk about it again.<p style="box-sizing: inherit; margin: 0px 0px 20px; padding: 0px; border: 0px; font-variant-numeric: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; line-height: 1.45em; vertical-align: baseline;">[pix 8. Bush and Joe Allbaugh in 2001. 9. Bush in the Oval Office with Harriet Miers in 2001. 10. Nora Linares at the Texas Lottery Commission in 1993. 11. Bill Burkett. 13. Dan Bartlett at the White House in 2007. 13. Scott McClellan presenting new Bush military documents in 2004. 14. Barnes on 60 Minutes in 2004. 15. Mary Mapes in 1999.]<p style="box-sizing: inherit; margin: 0px 0px 20px; padding: 0px; border: 0px; font-variant-numeric: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; line-height: 1.45em; vertical-align: baseline;">THE 2000 ELECTION<p style="box-sizing: inherit; margin: 0px 0px 20px; padding: 0px; border: 0px; font-variant-numeric: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; line-height: 1.45em; vertical-align: baseline;">With the presidential campaign about to begin, it was now open season on the Guard story, which had still never drawn a sustained national investigation. Two TV producers pursued Barnes for his first on-air interview: Mary Mapes, Rather’s 60 Minutes producer at CBS, and David Bloom, the NBC correspondent who later died in Iraq. Mapes courted Barnes for months. Bloom spent two weeks in Austin, including a night drinking at Barnes’s estate, trying to cajole him into appearing on NBC.<p style="box-sizing: inherit; margin: 0px 0px 20px; padding: 0px; border: 0px; font-variant-numeric: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; line-height: 1.45em; vertical-align: baseline;">Barnes basked in the attention but had no intention of elevating his court admission to a political attack. When I asked Barnes why a Democratic fund-raiser with a damaging story about the Republican presidential nominee wouldn’t help his party in the close 2000 election, he said that Al Gore didn’t ask him for help. But Barnes’s friends say he was just hedging his bets: if he told his story and Bush won the presidency, Barnes would have a powerful political enemy in the White House. (And not for the first time: Barnes believes to this day that Richard Nixon was responsible for a politically motivated investigation that led to the Sharpstown scandal and his downfall.)<p style="box-sizing: inherit; margin: 0px 0px 20px; padding: 0px; border: 0px; font-variant-numeric: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; line-height: 1.45em; vertical-align: baseline;">But apart from Barnes, Littwin’s lawyers had inadvertently opened a second and more controversial chapter of the Bush Guard story. As part of their research, they obtained the most thorough and least redacted copy of Bush’s military file that anyone had yet seen. They obtained it not from the Texas National Guard archives, which were then controlled by a Bush appointee, but from the National Guard headquarters, in Arlington, Virginia.<p style="box-sizing: inherit; margin: 0px 0px 20px; padding: 0px; border: 0px; font-variant-numeric: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; line-height: 1.45em; vertical-align: baseline;">Littwin’s Dallas lawyers recruited a local Air Force veteran to interpret the file. He was a Bush antagonist still agitated by medical issues from his service, but he was an expert in the military jargon of the time. “I was stunned at what I saw,” explained the man, who requested anonymity for fear of retribution. “It was full of inconsistencies.” As compensation, the man asked Littwin’s lawyers if he could keep a photocopy of Bush’s record, then made an appointment to go see someone at the Dallas bureau of CBS News. That person was Mary Mapes.<p style="box-sizing: inherit; margin: 0px 0px 20px; padding: 0px; border: 0px; font-variant-numeric: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; line-height: 1.45em; vertical-align: baseline;">It would take her four years of obsessive pursuit—“myopic zeal,” as the special CBS panel would later describe it—to get a story on the air, but this was the exact moment when Rather’s destiny was set in motion.<p style="box-sizing: inherit; margin: 0px 0px 20px; padding: 0px; border: 0px; font-variant-numeric: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; line-height: 1.45em; vertical-align: baseline;">A few days later, the Air Force veteran decided to contact a Boston Globe reporter named Walter V. Robinson, who was covering the Guard story. Robinson immediately flew to Texas and spent several days studying Bush’s military records. What followed was a painstaking investigation by the Boston Globe, unrivaled in its detail, which put the Bush campaign on the defensive and inspired other reporters to focus on Bush’s “lost year.”<p style="box-sizing: inherit; margin: 0px 0px 20px; padding: 0px; border: 0px; font-variant-numeric: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; line-height: 1.45em; vertical-align: baseline;">
<p style="box-sizing: inherit; margin: 0px 0px 20px; padding: 0px; border: 0px; font-variant-numeric: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; line-height: 1.45em; vertical-align: baseline;">After training at Moody Air Force Base, in Georgia—from which a military aircraft once ferried him to Washington for a date with Tricia Nixon—Bush was assigned in 1970 to flying duty as a pilot of the F-102 jet fighter at Ellington Air Force Base, in Houston. He had an apartment at the Chateau Dijon complex, an enclave of affluence where he played volleyball, barbecued, drank beer, and chased girls among the city’s oil-industry elite. He drove a Triumph sports car, his buzz cut and flight jacket obscuring his Andover-to-Yale background. An aide who worked with Bush in later years recalled his simply saying, “I was a badass back then.”<p style="box-sizing: inherit; margin: 0px 0px 20px; padding: 0px; border: 0px; font-variant-numeric: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; line-height: 1.45em; vertical-align: baseline;">
<p style="box-sizing: inherit; margin: 0px 0px 20px; padding: 0px; border: 0px; font-variant-numeric: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; line-height: 1.45em; vertical-align: baseline;">But after receiving relatively high marks as a pilot of the F-102, Bush suddenly stopped flying in the spring of 1972. Despite the declaration in his 1999 memoir, A Charge to Keep, that he flew jets for “several years” starting in 1970, his flying career actually ended two years later. That was the year he left Houston to work on the long-shot Senate bid of Winton “Red” Blount, a candidate from Alabama whose campaign manager, Jimmy Allison, was an old Bush family friend. Bush had committed to continuing his Guard service with a unit based in Montgomery, but nobody from that unit remembered seeing him, including the commander of the base. As the Globe story reported, Bush’s next documented duty in the National Guard was a year later, back in Houston. It seemed that not only had Bush avoided Vietnam by entering the Guard, but he may have simply disappeared for a spell, failing to fulfill his duty to fly planes for a full six years.<p style="box-sizing: inherit; margin: 0px 0px 20px; padding: 0px; border: 0px; font-variant-numeric: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; line-height: 1.45em; vertical-align: baseline;">
<p style="box-sizing: inherit; margin: 0px 0px 20px; padding: 0px; border: 0px; font-variant-numeric: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; line-height: 1.45em; vertical-align: baseline;">The Globe story whipped the national media into a frenzy. The gaps that it revealed in Bush’s record—and his campaign’s inconsistent and sometimes discredited explanations for those gaps—prompted persistent questions about whether he had gone AWOL or even deserted the military for a time. In particular, reporters zeroed in on a document showing that Bush had lost his flight status in August 1972 for failing to take a flight physical, a serious offense.<p style="box-sizing: inherit; margin: 0px 0px 20px; padding: 0px; border: 0px; font-variant-numeric: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; line-height: 1.45em; vertical-align: baseline;">
<p style="box-sizing: inherit; margin: 0px 0px 20px; padding: 0px; border: 0px; font-variant-numeric: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; line-height: 1.45em; vertical-align: baseline;">As it happened, another pilot listed on the same document also lost his right to fly for the same reason and at around the same time. That name was initially redacted on copies of Bush’s military record released by the Texas National Guard, even though a dozen other names on the document were not. When a clean copy turned up, the name that had been blacked out was revealed to be that of James R. Bath, a close pal of Bush’s who would later become a business adviser to the bin Laden family in Texas as well as Bush’s business partner in his failed oil venture, Arbusto Energy.<p style="box-sizing: inherit; margin: 0px 0px 20px; padding: 0px; border: 0px; font-variant-numeric: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; line-height: 1.45em; vertical-align: baseline;">
<p style="box-sizing: inherit; margin: 0px 0px 20px; padding: 0px; border: 0px; font-variant-numeric: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; line-height: 1.45em; vertical-align: baseline;">Bath declined to comment on his loss of flight status, but his military file shows that, like Bush, he didn’t fly again for the National Guard after 1972 and was discharged one year later. Many investigative reporters, fed stories by Texas Democrats, became convinced, even obsessively so, that some specific incident had occurred to precipitate this unusual coincidence. Soon every major media outlet in the country was circling around the gaps in Bush’s record.<p style="box-sizing: inherit; margin: 0px 0px 20px; padding: 0px; border: 0px; font-variant-numeric: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; line-height: 1.45em; vertical-align: baseline;">
<p style="box-sizing: inherit; margin: 0px 0px 20px; padding: 0px; border: 0px; font-variant-numeric: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; line-height: 1.45em; vertical-align: baseline;">The Bush team knew it had to respond to the stories. Campaign spokesman Dan Bartlett explained that the reason Bush stopped flying in 1972 was that he was in Alabama and his family doctor wasn’t available to give him a physical. When it was pointed out that only a military physician could perform a pilot’s flight physical, Bartlett’s story shifted. He said the Guard was phasing out the F-102 on which Bush had trained, and therefore Bush had opted out of flying altogether. Reporters countered that the plane continued to fly at Ellington Air Force Base until 1974. The Bush campaign tweaked the explanation yet again, saying that the Air National Guard in Alabama didn’t have the F-102, so he saw no reason to maintain his flight status during his transfer.<p style="box-sizing: inherit; margin: 0px 0px 20px; padding: 0px; border: 0px; font-variant-numeric: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; line-height: 1.45em; vertical-align: baseline;">
<p style="box-sizing: inherit; margin: 0px 0px 20px; padding: 0px; border: 0px; font-variant-numeric: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; line-height: 1.45em; vertical-align: baseline;">These shifting explanations only intensified the scrutiny and led to questions about what else could have caused Bush’s loss of flight status. One possible answer was offered much later, in 2004, by a woman named Janet Linke. After Bush left for Alabama, her husband, Jan Peter Linke, was transferred to Houston to replace him on the F-102, which apparently still needed pilots, despite the phaseout. While the Linkes were there, Bush’s former commanding officer, Lieutenant Colonel Jerry Killian, allegedly told them that Bush had stopped flying because he became afraid to land the plane. “He was mucking up bad, Killian told us,” Janet said to a Florida newspaper. (Jan Peter died in a car accident in 1973.)<p style="box-sizing: inherit; margin: 0px 0px 20px; padding: 0px; border: 0px; font-variant-numeric: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; line-height: 1.45em; vertical-align: baseline;">
<p style="box-sizing: inherit; margin: 0px 0px 20px; padding: 0px; border: 0px; font-variant-numeric: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; line-height: 1.45em; vertical-align: baseline;">But by the time Linke went public with her allegation, the press had already abandoned the Bush National Guard story for the Dan Rather controversy. Also ignored was some possible corroborating evidence: an Associated Press investigation uncovered Bush’s original flight logs, which showed that after flying for hundreds of hours on the F-102, Bush suddenly began flying a two-seat T-33 training jet and spent more time in a flight simulator in the months preceding his departure for Alabama. The logs also showed instances of his having to make multiple passes at the landing strip.<p style="box-sizing: inherit; margin: 0px 0px 20px; padding: 0px; border: 0px; font-variant-numeric: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; line-height: 1.45em; vertical-align: baseline;">
<p style="box-sizing: inherit; margin: 0px 0px 20px; padding: 0px; border: 0px; font-variant-numeric: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; line-height: 1.45em; vertical-align: baseline;">The White House said that Bush was trying to rack up required flight hours in advance of his absence in Alabama. But the flight entries in question precede Bush’s application for a transfer to Alabama.<p style="box-sizing: inherit; margin: 0px 0px 20px; padding: 0px; border: 0px; font-variant-numeric: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; line-height: 1.45em; vertical-align: baseline;">
<p style="box-sizing: inherit; margin: 0px 0px 20px; padding: 0px; border: 0px; font-variant-numeric: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; line-height: 1.45em; vertical-align: baseline;">The landing issue remains mired in ambiguous records and the selective memory of people who were there. What’s clear, however, is that Bush’s superiors made it unusually easy for him to quit flying and leave Houston. They first attempted to sign him up for a postal unit in Alabama that met once a month. (The commander of the outfit told Bush he couldn’t guarantee that the group would even exist in three months but added, “We’re glad to have you!”) When Bush was informed that he couldn’t fulfill his duty by doing that, he sent a letter requesting “equivalent duty” with the 187th Tactical Reconnaissance Group, at Dannelly Air Base, in Montgomery. The unit commander, in official memos, said Bush could start by attending two drills in September 1972. He didn’t show up for the drills.<p style="box-sizing: inherit; margin: 0px 0px 20px; padding: 0px; border: 0px; font-variant-numeric: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; line-height: 1.45em; vertical-align: baseline;">
<p style="box-sizing: inherit; margin: 0px 0px 20px; padding: 0px; border: 0px; font-variant-numeric: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; line-height: 1.45em; vertical-align: baseline;">When Bush lost his flight status, in August 1972, the official military protocol of the Texas Air National Guard was to open an internal investigation and review why the pilot didn’t show up for his physical. It says so on Bush’s own documents. That never happened.<p style="box-sizing: inherit; margin: 0px 0px 20px; padding: 0px; border: 0px; font-variant-numeric: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; line-height: 1.45em; vertical-align: baseline;">
<p style="box-sizing: inherit; margin: 0px 0px 20px; padding: 0px; border: 0px; font-variant-numeric: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; line-height: 1.45em; vertical-align: baseline;">Bush’s go-to expert on his military record, Albert Lloyd, said a report wasn’t necessary because Bush’s commanders knew he had stopped flying to go to work in Alabama—proof only that the Air National Guard blew off the rules when it came to Bush. When I mentioned this to Lloyd in 2008, he growled that “pilots hate paperwork.”<p style="box-sizing: inherit; margin: 0px 0px 20px; padding: 0px; border: 0px; font-variant-numeric: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; line-height: 1.45em; vertical-align: baseline;">
<p style="box-sizing: inherit; margin: 0px 0px 20px; padding: 0px; border: 0px; font-variant-numeric: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; line-height: 1.45em; vertical-align: baseline;">Throughout 2000, the Bush campaign sought to settle the matter of his time in Alabama, but it struggled to provide reporters with anyone who could remember seeing him there. While Bush managed to find two ex-girlfriends who would vouch for him, neither saw him in uniform, and both said that they knew of his duty only because he told them.<p style="box-sizing: inherit; margin: 0px 0px 20px; padding: 0px; border: 0px; font-variant-numeric: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; line-height: 1.45em; vertical-align: baseline;">
<p style="box-sizing: inherit; margin: 0px 0px 20px; padding: 0px; border: 0px; font-variant-numeric: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; line-height: 1.45em; vertical-align: baseline;">One man from the Montgomery unit remembered seeing Bush, but he was a political supporter in Georgia who had his details mangled, recalling Bush sightings months before Bush claims to have served there. A $50,000 reward by a nonprofit group called Texans for Truth seeking anyone who could prove Bush fulfilled his Guard duty in Alabama was never collected (nor was cartoonist Garry Trudeau’s $10,000 reward for the same information). No paper records exist in the National Guard archives in Texas or Alabama that corroborate Bush’s service in Montgomery, and the personnel officer in Alabama at the time said it was up to his counterparts in Texas to keep track of Bush. Judging by his military files, they didn’t.<p style="box-sizing: inherit; margin: 0px 0px 20px; padding: 0px; border: 0px; font-variant-numeric: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; line-height: 1.45em; vertical-align: baseline;">
<p style="box-sizing: inherit; margin: 0px 0px 20px; padding: 0px; border: 0px; font-variant-numeric: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; line-height: 1.45em; vertical-align: baseline;">Bush moved back to Houston after the November 1972 election, which Red Blount lost badly. During the holidays, he visited his parents’ house in D.C. and, after drinking with his brother Marvin, drove his car into a neighbor’s garbage can. His father demanded to see him in the den, where the younger Bush challenged his father to go “mano a mano.” The showdown, part of Bush family lore, was defused when Jeb Bush announced that George had been accepted to Harvard Business School (though he had applied only to prove to his father that he could get in, George declared indignantly).<p style="box-sizing: inherit; margin: 0px 0px 20px; padding: 0px; border: 0px; font-variant-numeric: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; line-height: 1.45em; vertical-align: baseline;">
<p style="box-sizing: inherit; margin: 0px 0px 20px; padding: 0px; border: 0px; font-variant-numeric: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; line-height: 1.45em; vertical-align: baseline;">The next month, the elder Bush was named head of the Republican National Committee. According to George W. Bush’s official time line, this was also the month that his father enlisted him in volunteer work at a nonprofit poverty program for youths in Houston’s Third Ward. It was called Project PULL (Professionals United Leadership League), and his father was an honorary board member.<p style="box-sizing: inherit; margin: 0px 0px 20px; padding: 0px; border: 0px; font-variant-numeric: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; line-height: 1.45em; vertical-align: baseline;">
<p style="box-sizing: inherit; margin: 0px 0px 20px; padding: 0px; border: 0px; font-variant-numeric: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; line-height: 1.45em; vertical-align: baseline;">In 2004 Knight Ridder newspapers interviewed several people who had worked at PULL while Bush was there. One of them, Althia Turner, fearful of telling what she knew, agreed to an interview only after a call to her pastor. She said Bush had come to the program because he had been in “trouble,” a fact she learned as the secretary to John White, the program’s founder, who died in 1988. “We didn’t know what kind of trouble he’d been in, only that he’d done something that required him to put in the time,” she said, later adding that Bush had to sign in and out of PULL offices so White could keep a tally of his hours.<p style="box-sizing: inherit; margin: 0px 0px 20px; padding: 0px; border: 0px; font-variant-numeric: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; line-height: 1.45em; vertical-align: baseline;">
<p style="box-sizing: inherit; margin: 0px 0px 20px; padding: 0px; border: 0px; font-variant-numeric: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; line-height: 1.45em; vertical-align: baseline;">Regardless of the motives behind Bush’s volunteer work, however, there is a problem with this time line. His military file shows that he didn’t return to the National Guard base in Houston until May 1973, four months after he’d supposedly started working for PULL, in January. His commanding officer, Lieutenant Colonel Killian, signed off on a May 2, 1973, report that said Bush hadn’t been seen for a full year: “Lt. Bush has not been observed at this unit during the period of the report. . . . He cleared this base on 15 May 1972.”<p style="box-sizing: inherit; margin: 0px 0px 20px; padding: 0px; border: 0px; font-variant-numeric: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; line-height: 1.45em; vertical-align: baseline;">
<p style="box-sizing: inherit; margin: 0px 0px 20px; padding: 0px; border: 0px; font-variant-numeric: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; line-height: 1.45em; vertical-align: baseline;">Under pressure in 2004 to explain the gap, the White House produced as evidence of Bush’s service a military dental exam from January 6, 1973—in Montgomery, not Houston. It also released a computerized summary of his pay records from the period (discovered in a Denver repository after the Bush campaign had previously declared them lost in a fire), and the dates showed that Bush was paid for attending drills in Alabama in January and again in April of 1973.<p style="box-sizing: inherit; margin: 0px 0px 20px; padding: 0px; border: 0px; font-variant-numeric: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; line-height: 1.45em; vertical-align: baseline;">
<p style="box-sizing: inherit; margin: 0px 0px 20px; padding: 0px; border: 0px; font-variant-numeric: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; line-height: 1.45em; vertical-align: baseline;">Apparently, while he was volunteering in the Third Ward in Houston, he was also pulling Guard duty six hundred miles away, in Montgomery—or at least getting paid for it—despite the fact that his home base, Ellington, was right across town.<p style="box-sizing: inherit; margin: 0px 0px 20px; padding: 0px; border: 0px; font-variant-numeric: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; line-height: 1.45em; vertical-align: baseline;">
<p style="box-sizing: inherit; margin: 0px 0px 20px; padding: 0px; border: 0px; font-variant-numeric: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; line-height: 1.45em; vertical-align: baseline;">Compounding the mystery, one of Bush’s ex-girlfriends, Nee Bear, who worked on the Blount campaign and later moved to Houston and dated Bush in the summer of 1973, said she never saw him in Alabama after the election. She claims she would have been aware had he returned. “We would have all known about it,” said Bear. “We all kept in touch.”<p style="box-sizing: inherit; margin: 0px 0px 20px; padding: 0px; border: 0px; font-variant-numeric: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; line-height: 1.45em; vertical-align: baseline;">
<p style="box-sizing: inherit; margin: 0px 0px 20px; padding: 0px; border: 0px; font-variant-numeric: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; line-height: 1.45em; vertical-align: baseline;">In 2004 White House spokesman Scott McClellan very carefully answered questions about this period with the time-blurring catchall statement, “He does remember serving in Alabama and Texas. During that entire time, he was a member of the Texas Air National Guard.”<p style="box-sizing: inherit; margin: 0px 0px 20px; padding: 0px; border: 0px; font-variant-numeric: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; line-height: 1.45em; vertical-align: baseline;">
<p style="box-sizing: inherit; margin: 0px 0px 20px; padding: 0px; border: 0px; font-variant-numeric: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; line-height: 1.45em; vertical-align: baseline;">Here’s what we can say for sure. In the spring of 1972, Ellington Air Force Base was becoming a hub for pilot training. Bush could reasonably argue, as he did, that fewer planes were available for him to fly, and he opted against training on the next generation fighter, the F-101.<p style="box-sizing: inherit; margin: 0px 0px 20px; padding: 0px; border: 0px; font-variant-numeric: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; line-height: 1.45em; vertical-align: baseline;">
<p style="box-sizing: inherit; margin: 0px 0px 20px; padding: 0px; border: 0px; font-variant-numeric: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; line-height: 1.45em; vertical-align: baseline;">That explanation, however, doesn’t negate the other evidence but rather dovetails with it: as the Vietnam War wound down and Bush became less and less focused on flying (his annual performance review turned distinctly lackluster in 1972, and Bear said Bush was “terribly adrift” when she first met him in Alabama), an opportunity to duck out presented itself and he took it. There were ten other pilots who dropped out that same year—all much older men who had more than two decades’ worth of experience. That Bush’s commanders let the young pilot bow out early and arranged the paperwork accordingly wasn’t necessarily nefarious, but just the way things worked in the loosely regulated fiefdom of the Texas Air National Guard in 1972, especially for a son of wealth and power like Bush. Pilots didn’t like paperwork—and neither did National Guard commanders who coveted political influence in Texas.<p style="box-sizing: inherit; margin: 0px 0px 20px; padding: 0px; border: 0px; font-variant-numeric: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; line-height: 1.45em; vertical-align: baseline;">
<p style="box-sizing: inherit; margin: 0px 0px 20px; padding: 0px; border: 0px; font-variant-numeric: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; line-height: 1.45em; vertical-align: baseline;">This story, taken as a whole, isn’t particularly damning; it was typical for young men of Bush’s social standing. But it fundamentally undermines an element of Bush’s political identity: the “badass” jet pilot for whom flying was a “lifetime pursuit,” as he once put it. And because of Bush’s stonewalling on the issue, the power of the unanswered questions about this period of his life would take on a life of their own.<p style="box-sizing: inherit; margin: 0px 0px 20px; padding: 0px; border: 0px; font-variant-numeric: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; line-height: 1.45em; vertical-align: baseline;">
<p style="box-sizing: inherit; margin: 0px 0px 20px; padding: 0px; border: 0px; font-variant-numeric: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; line-height: 1.45em; vertical-align: baseline;">Case in point: a story that seemed to tie together all the questions hanging over Bush’s Guard service appeared in the controversial book Fortunate Son, by J.?H. Hatfield, during the 2000 campaign. In the book, Hatfield made the incendiary claim that Bush had been arrested in 1972 for cocaine possession but had had his record expunged through his father’s political influence with a state judge in exchange for community service at PULL. (The book also claimed the arrest file was stowed in a safe in Harriet Miers’s law office in Dallas.)<p style="box-sizing: inherit; margin: 0px 0px 20px; padding: 0px; border: 0px; font-variant-numeric: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; line-height: 1.45em; vertical-align: baseline;">
<p style="box-sizing: inherit; margin: 0px 0px 20px; padding: 0px; border: 0px; font-variant-numeric: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; line-height: 1.45em; vertical-align: baseline;">This story did a lot of work: it explained why Bush stopped flying, why he lit out for Alabama, and why he ended up at PULL when he got back to Houston. Within days of the book’s publication, however, a newspaper discovered that Hatfield had served five years in prison for hiring a hit man to kill a former colleague. The publisher, St. Martin’s Press, quickly pulled the book from the shelves, and, under pressure to reveal his sources, Hatfield claimed that Karl Rove himself had confirmed the story during a fishing trip. Rove denied all such claims. A small publisher in New York later reissued the book, offering as evidence of Hatfield’s honesty some phone records showing a two-minute call to Rove’s home before the original publication.<p style="box-sizing: inherit; margin: 0px 0px 20px; padding: 0px; border: 0px; font-variant-numeric: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; line-height: 1.45em; vertical-align: baseline;">
<p style="box-sizing: inherit; margin: 0px 0px 20px; padding: 0px; border: 0px; font-variant-numeric: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; line-height: 1.45em; vertical-align: baseline;">A year later, Hatfield died of a drug overdose in an apparent suicide. Hatfield’s defenders came to believe he’d been set up by Rove as the dupe messenger who could be easily destroyed. And with that, the Bush Guard story officially took on the dark aspects of a conspiracy: a puzzle in which the missing pieces became the story.<p style="box-sizing: inherit; margin: 0px 0px 20px; padding: 0px; border: 0px; font-variant-numeric: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; line-height: 1.45em; vertical-align: baseline;">
<p style="box-sizing: inherit; margin: 0px 0px 20px; padding: 0px; border: 0px; font-variant-numeric: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; line-height: 1.45em; vertical-align: baseline;">THE 2004 ELECTION<p style="box-sizing: inherit; margin: 0px 0px 20px; padding: 0px; border: 0px; font-variant-numeric: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; line-height: 1.45em; vertical-align: baseline;">By 2004 Dan Rather was the lowest rated of the three network evening-news anchors. He had, over the years, established himself as a reliable bogeyman for the Republican party—and for George W. Bush in particular. That spring, he and Mary Mapes broke the story that U.S. soldiers had tortured prisoners at Abu Ghraib, seriously tarnishing Bush’s war in Iraq. And Mapes had yet another story in the pipeline: ever since the Air Force vet had dropped off Bush’s military file at CBS News in Dallas, in 1999, she had been accumulating documents and interviewing retired Guard employees, building a case that Bush had received preferential treatment and possibly gone AWOL.<p style="box-sizing: inherit; margin: 0px 0px 20px; padding: 0px; border: 0px; font-variant-numeric: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; line-height: 1.45em; vertical-align: baseline;">
<p style="box-sizing: inherit; margin: 0px 0px 20px; padding: 0px; border: 0px; font-variant-numeric: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; line-height: 1.45em; vertical-align: baseline;">But Mapes wasn’t the only one who had continued to develop the National Guard story. One of the journalists working the story throughout Bush’s ascent from governor to president was Jim Moore, the KHOU TV reporter who’d originally asked Bush about his service during the gubernatorial debate in 1994. Now, ten years later, Moore published everything he’d found in a book called Bush’s War for Reelection. Among other things, the book publicized the claims of Bill Burkett, a grizzled lieutenant colonel in the Texas National Guard who said that in 1997 he had overheard Bush advisers Joe Allbaugh and Dan Bartlett asking Bush’s top Guard appointee in Texas to dispose of “embarrassments” in Bush’s file. (Allbaugh and Bartlett deny this.) Burkett also said he later saw some of Bush’s military records in a trash can.<p style="box-sizing: inherit; margin: 0px 0px 20px; padding: 0px; border: 0px; font-variant-numeric: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; line-height: 1.45em; vertical-align: baseline;">
<p style="box-sizing: inherit; margin: 0px 0px 20px; padding: 0px; border: 0px; font-variant-numeric: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; line-height: 1.45em; vertical-align: baseline;">Under media scrutiny, Burkett, a yellow-dog Democrat, changed important details of his story, and Bush aides easily dismissed him as a disgruntled Bush hater, who was angry over medical bills the National Guard refused to pay. But he had just enough of his facts straight to make his claim plausible. For one, the papers he said were destroyed were the same ones that reporters found to be missing, including performance reviews and pay records from Bush’s later years in the Guard.<p style="box-sizing: inherit; margin: 0px 0px 20px; padding: 0px; border: 0px; font-variant-numeric: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; line-height: 1.45em; vertical-align: baseline;">
<p style="box-sizing: inherit; margin: 0px 0px 20px; padding: 0px; border: 0px; font-variant-numeric: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; line-height: 1.45em; vertical-align: baseline;">And Allbaugh and Bartlett had indeed been assigned to manage the National Guard story. Bartlett, who began working for Karl Rove when he was 23, became Bush’s liaison to the Texas National Guard during the year Burkett said the files were scrubbed, and he later assisted Harriet Miers in her firm’s examination of Bush’s military file in the lead-up to the presidential run.<p style="box-sizing: inherit; margin: 0px 0px 20px; padding: 0px; border: 0px; font-variant-numeric: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; line-height: 1.45em; vertical-align: baseline;">
<p style="box-sizing: inherit; margin: 0px 0px 20px; padding: 0px; border: 0px; font-variant-numeric: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; line-height: 1.45em; vertical-align: baseline;">The current archivist of the Texas National Guard, James Shive, told me that he personally examined Bush’s file in 1992, before Bush ran for office, and found nothing damning in it. He did say, however, that Bush’s file had “unusual” gaps in it, referring in particular to an annotated history of his time in the Guard, typed up in the early seventies, that didn’t record Bush’s loss of flight status or any subsequent reassignment. But a scrubbing incident by state officials as late as 1997, he said, wasn’t plausible. Instead, Shive questioned whether anything negative would have been inserted into Bush’s record to begin with, given the political influence of his father in the early seventies.<p style="box-sizing: inherit; margin: 0px 0px 20px; padding: 0px; border: 0px; font-variant-numeric: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; line-height: 1.45em; vertical-align: baseline;">
<p style="box-sizing: inherit; margin: 0px 0px 20px; padding: 0px; border: 0px; font-variant-numeric: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; line-height: 1.45em; vertical-align: baseline;">Burkett’s allegations nonetheless spurred probes by several news organizations. In February 2004 he was invited on MSNBC, where he was asked by Chris Matthews whether he was willing to testify under oath that Bush’s aides discussed destroying his military records. Burkett’s reply was tricky: “I’m swearing to you on camera, and I’m swearing to the American people. And God is my pilot on this. And I have sworn this all along.”<p style="box-sizing: inherit; margin: 0px 0px 20px; padding: 0px; border: 0px; font-variant-numeric: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; line-height: 1.45em; vertical-align: baseline;">
<p style="box-sizing: inherit; margin: 0px 0px 20px; padding: 0px; border: 0px; font-variant-numeric: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; line-height: 1.45em; vertical-align: baseline;">The scrutiny on Bush’s past increased. Later that month, under pressure from Tim Russert on NBC’s Meet the Press, the president told the host he would release his entire military file, including pay records. But the release of pay dates from a computer database only spurred more questions: Why didn’t the pay records from 1973 match Bush’s official biography?<p style="box-sizing: inherit; margin: 0px 0px 20px; padding: 0px; border: 0px; font-variant-numeric: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; line-height: 1.45em; vertical-align: baseline;">
<p style="box-sizing: inherit; margin: 0px 0px 20px; padding: 0px; border: 0px; font-variant-numeric: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; line-height: 1.45em; vertical-align: baseline;">At first, White House spokesman Scott McClellan dismissed the attacks as attempts to stir up old news, pointing out that the Democratic National Committee had launched a special investigation called “Operation Fortunate Son,” which he noted was “the name of a book by an ex-convict that was widely discredited in the 2000 campaign.”<p style="box-sizing: inherit; margin: 0px 0px 20px; padding: 0px; border: 0px; font-variant-numeric: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; line-height: 1.45em; vertical-align: baseline;">
<p style="box-sizing: inherit; margin: 0px 0px 20px; padding: 0px; border: 0px; font-variant-numeric: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; line-height: 1.45em; vertical-align: baseline;">But McClellan had no idea what he was talking about. While trying to field press queries, he had asked Dan Bartlett, who had a thick notebook dedicated to the Guard issue, if he could study the book to help defend the president’s record. “He said, ‘No, I think you’ve got everything you need,’?” recalled McClellan. “I didn’t have all the facts. I would have preferred to look at the records myself, but I was denied access. So most of what I had was either what I was told by Dan or what the president confirmed in the presence of Dan.” Bartlett, he said, “probably remembers better than the president.” McClellan explained that a tight lid had been kept on the Bush National Guard issue, with access limited to Rove, Miers, and Bartlett. “It raises questions when you’re not open and candid about things,” McClellan said, “and this is something that has been closely held for a long time.”<p style="box-sizing: inherit; margin: 0px 0px 20px; padding: 0px; border: 0px; font-variant-numeric: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; line-height: 1.45em; vertical-align: baseline;">
<p style="box-sizing: inherit; margin: 0px 0px 20px; padding: 0px; border: 0px; font-variant-numeric: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; line-height: 1.45em; vertical-align: baseline;">(When I asked Bartlett about this, he explained that the notebook “wasn’t a formal dossier. It was a mixture of crib notes I’d taken over the years. It made sense to me, but not to other people.”)<p style="box-sizing: inherit; margin: 0px 0px 20px; padding: 0px; border: 0px; font-variant-numeric: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; line-height: 1.45em; vertical-align: baseline;">
<p style="box-sizing: inherit; margin: 0px 0px 20px; padding: 0px; border: 0px; font-variant-numeric: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; line-height: 1.45em; vertical-align: baseline;">Bush and his inner circle didn’t want to help the press expand on the Guard issue; they wanted it to go away. So when the Associated Press sought additional documents, the Pentagon denied the news agency for several months. The AP was forced to sue both the U.S. Department of Defense and the Air Force for access. Even then, the White House pushed back: in a phone conversation with the AP’s Washington bureau, Bartlett questioned the political leanings of the AP’s lawyer, David Schulz, detailing his Democratic campaign contributions. “Why in the world is the AP using a liberal lawyer?” Bartlett asked, according to Schulz. Bartlett then suggested the AP was letting Senator Kerry off the hook. “It was all-out war against the AP,” recalled Schulz.<p style="box-sizing: inherit; margin: 0px 0px 20px; padding: 0px; border: 0px; font-variant-numeric: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; line-height: 1.45em; vertical-align: baseline;">
<p style="box-sizing: inherit; margin: 0px 0px 20px; padding: 0px; border: 0px; font-variant-numeric: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; line-height: 1.45em; vertical-align: baseline;">But the AP’s efforts ultimately unearthed Bush’s flight logs, which prompted new questions about the abrupt end of his flying career. John Solomon, the editor who headed the AP’s investigation and later became the executive editor of the Washington Times, said, “There was one big question left unanswered. He had been flying in a regular fighter jet for quite some time and scoring well, then this abrupt shift, and suddenly he dropped back to the trainer’s plane, which experts told us was very unusual. That was one of those unresolved questions.”<p style="box-sizing: inherit; margin: 0px 0px 20px; padding: 0px; border: 0px; font-variant-numeric: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; line-height: 1.45em; vertical-align: baseline;">
<p style="box-sizing: inherit; margin: 0px 0px 20px; padding: 0px; border: 0px; font-variant-numeric: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; line-height: 1.45em; vertical-align: baseline;">But before those questions would have their day, another report would blow them off the map.<p style="box-sizing: inherit; margin: 0px 0px 20px; padding: 0px; border: 0px; font-variant-numeric: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; line-height: 1.45em; vertical-align: baseline;">In August 2004 the Guard story suddenly became vitally important to Senator Kerry’s campaign because of the blistering attacks on his Vietnam service by the Swift Boat Veterans for Truth. A related book,Unfit for Command, co-written by John O’Neill and conservative writer Jerome Corsi, questioned whether Kerry’s Purple Hearts and Bronze and Silver Stars were legitimate, calling him “a liar and a fraud.” After two weeks of attacks, Kerry was desperate to strike back. At a campaign meeting on his wife’s farm in Pennsylvania, he tapped a member of his finance committee whom he believed could help him retaliate: Ben Barnes.<p style="box-sizing: inherit; margin: 0px 0px 20px; padding: 0px; border: 0px; font-variant-numeric: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; line-height: 1.45em; vertical-align: baseline;">
<p style="box-sizing: inherit; margin: 0px 0px 20px; padding: 0px; border: 0px; font-variant-numeric: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; line-height: 1.45em; vertical-align: baseline;">Kerry knew that in a private fund-raising speech earlier that year, Barnes had told how he visited the Vietnam Veterans Memorial in Washington one night and grew ashamed at having helped sons of privilege into the Guard while others died in their places. He knew that in the same speech, Barnes had recounted for the first time since the Littwin deposition how he’d personally helped Bush avoid Vietnam at the request of Sid Adger.<p style="box-sizing: inherit; margin: 0px 0px 20px; padding: 0px; border: 0px; font-variant-numeric: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; line-height: 1.45em; vertical-align: baseline;">After the campaign meeting, Kerry grabbed Barnes’s arm. “You’ve got to help me,” he said. “What are we going to do about this?”<p style="box-sizing: inherit; margin: 0px 0px 20px; padding: 0px; border: 0px; font-variant-numeric: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; line-height: 1.45em; vertical-align: baseline;">That’s when Barnes agreed, five years after Mapes began trying to persuade him, to finally tell his story on 60 Minutes. Two weeks later, Mapes finagled a meeting with Bill Burkett to acquire what looked like another bombshell scoop: a set of never-before-seen memos about Bush’s Guard career that seemed to fill in the blanks. They were said to be from the personal files of Bush’s commanding officer, Lieutenant Colonel Jerry Killian, dating from the spring of 1972 to the late summer of 1973. One of them, a typed letter labeled “CYA” (Cover Your Ass), from August 1973, had Killian describing the political pressure he was under from Buck Staudt to “sugarcoat” one of Bush’s performance reviews even though there was no evidence that Bush had fulfilled his duty. “I’m having trouble running interference and doing my job,” the letter said. “Staudt is pushing to sugarcoat it. Bush wasn’t here during rating period, and I don’t have any feedback from the 187th in Alabama. I will not rate. Austin is not happy today either.”<p style="box-sizing: inherit; margin: 0px 0px 20px; padding: 0px; border: 0px; font-variant-numeric: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; line-height: 1.45em; vertical-align: baseline;">Over several days of questioning, Burkett told Mapes he’d gotten the documents from a former Guard colleague named George Conn, who had previously vouched for Burkett’s credibility in press reports. But Mapes never found Conn to corroborate the story. And document analysts hired by CBS were conflicted over the authenticity of the documents, unable to confirm Xerox copies with 100 percent accuracy. There were other niggling issues: Staudt, who allegedly pressured Bush’s commanding officer in 1973, was no longer the head of the Guard at the time (later Mapes would argue that Staudt still wielded influence, even after he retired).<p style="box-sizing: inherit; margin: 0px 0px 20px; padding: 0px; border: 0px; font-variant-numeric: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; line-height: 1.45em; vertical-align: baseline;">Solomon, the AP editor, told Mapes that new documents were about to emerge from the AP’s lawsuit, but CBS was under competitive pressure to air its report as soon as possible. USA Today, after courting Burkett for three years, was on the verge of also obtaining the four controversial memos said to be produced by Killian.<p style="box-sizing: inherit; margin: 0px 0px 20px; padding: 0px; border: 0px; font-variant-numeric: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; line-height: 1.45em; vertical-align: baseline;">The morning before the broadcast was scheduled to air, CBS showed the memos to the White House for a response. Dan Bartlett was the network’s contact. Before Bartlett was interviewed, he emailed copies of the memos to Albert Lloyd, Bush’s longtime National Guard expert. In an interview in 2008, Lloyd told me he immediately recognized them as forgeries: “I looked at them and I said, ‘Don’t do a damned thing with these, because these are fake.’?”<p style="box-sizing: inherit; margin: 0px 0px 20px; padding: 0px; border: 0px; font-variant-numeric: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; line-height: 1.45em; vertical-align: baseline;">Bartlett, however, appears to have ignored Lloyd’s assessment. When asked by CBS whether he doubted the authenticity of the memos, Bartlett replied, “I’m not saying that at all,” adding that he only questioned the timing of their release. His interpretation of the memos, in fact, was that they “reaffirm what we’ve said all along.”<p style="box-sizing: inherit; margin: 0px 0px 20px; padding: 0px; border: 0px; font-variant-numeric: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; line-height: 1.45em; vertical-align: baseline;">And so, on September 8, Rather’s report aired on the Wednesday edition of 60 ?Minutes.<p style="box-sizing: inherit; margin: 0px 0px 20px; padding: 0px; border: 0px; font-variant-numeric: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; line-height: 1.45em; vertical-align: baseline;">The first person to publicly question the memos was an Air Force officer in Montgomery named Paul Boley, who posted on the conservative online forum Free Republic under the handle TankerKC. Boley’s comment popped up while the program was still going on.<p style="box-sizing: inherit; margin: 0px 0px 20px; padding: 0px; border: 0px; font-variant-numeric: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; line-height: 1.45em; vertical-align: baseline;">But the man officially credited with inspiring a fusillade of blog attacks was Harry MacDougald, known on message boards as Buckhead, a GOP lawyer in Atlanta who missed the segment but downloaded the Killian documents from the CBS website later that night. He specifically claimed that the memos used proportional spacing and superscripts that didn’t exist on typewriters of the early seventies.<p style="box-sizing: inherit; margin: 0px 0px 20px; padding: 0px; border: 0px; font-variant-numeric: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; line-height: 1.45em; vertical-align: baseline;">A conspiracy theory has since arisen that Bartlett, knowing in advance that the documents were forgeries—and, in some fevered imaginations, knowing his boss Karl Rove was the source of them—tipped off right-wing surrogates to attack the documents.<p style="box-sizing: inherit; margin: 0px 0px 20px; padding: 0px; border: 0px; font-variant-numeric: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; line-height: 1.45em; vertical-align: baseline;">When I asked Lloyd why Bartlett ignored his assessment, he said, “I guess he was trying to set Rather up for getting mauled.”<p style="box-sizing: inherit; margin: 0px 0px 20px; padding: 0px; border: 0px; font-variant-numeric: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; line-height: 1.45em; vertical-align: baseline;">Bartlett told me that the online attacks began “before I started any outreach” to the press. He added that Bush himself didn’t learn of the Killian memos until after the segment had already aired, because Bartlett felt the documents didn’t show anything revelatory. He initially dismissed them as “old news.”<p style="box-sizing: inherit; margin: 0px 0px 20px; padding: 0px; border: 0px; font-variant-numeric: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; line-height: 1.45em; vertical-align: baseline;">In any case, MacDougald’s arguments about the documents turned out to be inaccurate. He acknowledged as much in an interview with me in 2008. And in a speech given that same year, Mike Missal, a lawyer for the firm that CBS hired to investigate its own report, said, “It’s ironic that the blogs were actually wrong. . . . We actually did find typewriters that did have the superscript, did have proportional spacing. And on the fonts, given that these are copies, it’s really hard to say, but there were some typewriters that looked like they could have some similar fonts there. So the initial concerns didn’t seem as though they would hold up.”<p style="box-sizing: inherit; margin: 0px 0px 20px; padding: 0px; border: 0px; font-variant-numeric: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; line-height: 1.45em; vertical-align: baseline;">Nevertheless, the controversy exploded in the press, catalyzed by a report in the Washington Post that aggregated all the criticism from the blogosphere and laid it at the doorstep of Rather and CBS. Bartlett coordinated with several former Guardsmen, including Killian’s son, to follow suit and attack the CBS report.<p style="box-sizing: inherit; margin: 0px 0px 20px; padding: 0px; border: 0px; font-variant-numeric: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; line-height: 1.45em; vertical-align: baseline;">Rather was forced to respond, giving newspaper interviews defending the report and eventually addressing the controversy directly on the evening news, offering up new interviews and evidence meant to buttress his initial claims (most famously, he interviewed Killian’s former secretary, who said the content of the memos was accurate but the memos themselves were fake).<p style="box-sizing: inherit; margin: 0px 0px 20px; padding: 0px; border: 0px; font-variant-numeric: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; line-height: 1.45em; vertical-align: baseline;">The day after the CBS broadcast, USA Today published the exact same memos in a news report. But instead of going on defense, as CBS did, the newspaper responded to criticisms by getting Burkett to reveal himself and explain how he had come by the documents. The explanation was like something out of a Carl Hiaasen novel: Burkett said he’d received a call from a woman named Lucy Ramirez, who saw him on MSNBC. They arranged a secret handoff of documents at a cattle show in Houston. A man in a cowboy hat gave Burkett a manila envelope. The instructions, claimed Burkett, were to copy the memos inside and burn the originals so there would be no DNA evidence to identify the true source. USA Today scoured the country for a “Lucy Ramirez” fitting Burkett’s description (he said she’d called him from a Holiday Inn), but no such person was ever found.<p style="box-sizing: inherit; margin: 0px 0px 20px; padding: 0px; border: 0px; font-variant-numeric: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; line-height: 1.45em; vertical-align: baseline;">While trying to sort fact from fiction, CBS kept defending its report. After twelve days of intense pummeling by conservatives, the network finally gave up the ghost and forced a frantic and exhausted Rather to apologize. The president of CBS, Les Moonves, promised Rather he’d survive the fallout. A special panel was established to investigate errors in the story, but before the panel report was completed, Bush won reelection. The Swift Boaters had waylaid Kerry, but Democrats were never able to return to the Guard story as a legitimate line of attack against Bush. “After the Rather thing happened, [it was] pretty tough to carry the story politically,” said Jason Miner, who was an opposition researcher for the DNC tasked with bringing Bush’s Guard record to the press’s attention. “Who’s going to stand up there?”<p style="box-sizing: inherit; margin: 0px 0px 20px; padding: 0px; border: 0px; font-variant-numeric: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; line-height: 1.45em; vertical-align: baseline;">Walter V. Robinson, the Boston Globe reporter whose 2000 investigation had triggered much of the subsequent reporting, agreed. “The CBS story, and the furor that caused, buried the story so deeply that you couldn’t possibly disinter it in 2004,” he told me. “Inevitably, the only candidate who ended up with a serious credibility problem about his military service was John Kerry, who had absolutely nothing to hide or be ashamed of. To me, in a close election—and it was a close election—who knows, that could have been the difference.”<p style="box-sizing: inherit; margin: 0px 0px 20px; padding: 0px; border: 0px; font-variant-numeric: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; line-height: 1.45em; vertical-align: baseline;">
<p style="box-sizing: inherit; margin: 0px 0px 20px; padding: 0px; border: 0px; font-variant-numeric: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; line-height: 1.45em; vertical-align: baseline;">THE LEGACY<p style="box-sizing: inherit; margin: 0px 0px 20px; padding: 0px; border: 0px; font-variant-numeric: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; line-height: 1.45em; vertical-align: baseline;">When the panel report finally came out in January 2005, it did not determine whether the documents were real, but it did blame Mapes and three other CBS producers for failing to properly vet them. CBS fired Mapes and asked the three others to resign. All three threatened to sue and were subsequently paid settlements to stay quiet about the story.<p style="box-sizing: inherit; margin: 0px 0px 20px; padding: 0px; border: 0px; font-variant-numeric: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; line-height: 1.45em; vertical-align: baseline;">Rather was spared (a humiliating forensic examination revealed his virtual absence from the reporting process), but he agreed to resign from the CBS Evening News in the spring. Mapes went home to Dallas and began writing her book-length defense.<p style="box-sizing: inherit; margin: 0px 0px 20px; padding: 0px; border: 0px; font-variant-numeric: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; line-height: 1.45em; vertical-align: baseline;">But the CBS episode wasn’t quite the end of the Guard story. There was a bizarre postscript: the failed nomination of Harriet Miers to the U.S. Supreme Court in 2005. One year after the fateful 60 Minutes segment aired, two FBI agents paid a visit to the Manhattan apartment of Larry Littwin, the former Lottery Commission executive director. If he were cleared to testify before the Senate Judiciary Committee, the agents asked, what might he say about Miers’s involvement with GTECH during her time as chair of the commission? According to Jerome Corsi, who had resurfaced, post-Kerry, as one of Miers’s fiercest critics, what Littwin proposed to allege was quite a lot: that more than $160,000 in legal fees Miers collected from Bush in the nineties were a de facto payoff for maintaining the quid pro quo agreement with Ben Barnes and GTECH.<p style="box-sizing: inherit; margin: 0px 0px 20px; padding: 0px; border: 0px; font-variant-numeric: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; line-height: 1.45em; vertical-align: baseline;">Regardless of the legitimacy of these allegations, White House officials were paying attention, in part because they were coming from the right. Miers’s nomination was already in deep trouble by the time Littwin emerged. But Corsi remains convinced to this day that the threat of Littwin’s testimony was the last straw for Miers. According to him, it was the GTECH deal, and not the CBS memos, that could have been the real smoking gun against Bush. “The day after they validated that Littwin was going to be called to the Senate Judiciary Committee, that’s when she pulled her nomination,” Corsi told me.<p style="box-sizing: inherit; margin: 0px 0px 20px; padding: 0px; border: 0px; font-variant-numeric: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; line-height: 1.45em; vertical-align: baseline;">In 2007 Rather filed his own lawsuit, implicating Viacom chairman Sumner Redstone and CBS president Les Moonves in a vast corporate cover-up to make the Guard story go away, placate the Bush White House, and put a troublesome newsman out to pasture. He asked for $70 million. The money, however, was largely symbolic. More than anything, Rather hoped the lawsuit would finally prove that he had been unfairly hung out to dry.<p style="box-sizing: inherit; margin: 0px 0px 20px; padding: 0px; border: 0px; font-variant-numeric: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; line-height: 1.45em; vertical-align: baseline;">When it was dismissed, in 2009, he was devastated. He maintains a smoldering anger for CBS News. But Rather says he remains “optimistic” that somebody, somewhere, will one day come forward and reveal the truth of what happened. “They’re out there,” he says. “Let’s set the record straight.”<p style="box-sizing: inherit; margin: 0px 0px 20px; padding: 0px; border: 0px; font-variant-numeric: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; line-height: 1.45em; vertical-align: baseline;"><p style="box-sizing: inherit; margin: 0px 0px 20px; padding: 0px; border: 0px; font-variant-numeric: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; line-height: 1.45em; vertical-align: baseline;">And what about George W. Bush? It’s unclear how the curators of his presidential library, which is slated to open next year at Southern Methodist University, will treat the ex-president’s life from 1968 to 1973. They’re unlikely to explore the finer details of his flight logs or offer any further information about his “lost year.” But his time flying planes in Texas during the height of the Vietnam War remains a defining part of his political biography nonetheless, a chapter he proudly referenced in 2003, when he landed in a jet plane on the deck of an aircraft carrier to declare the end of major combat operations in Iraq—right before the country sank into a bloody, years-long war that would divide the United States and claim tens of thousands of Iraqi and American lives. Bush has said history will be the judge. And so it will.<p style="box-sizing: inherit; margin: 0px 0px 20px; padding: 0px; border: 0px; font-variant-numeric: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; line-height: 1.45em; vertical-align: baseline;">=<div class="promo-in-body" style="box-sizing: inherit; margin: 0px 0px 0px -458.625px; padding: 0px; border: 0px; font-variant-numeric: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; line-height: inherit; vertical-align: baseline; left: 305.75px; position: relative; width: 917.25px;"><div class="promo-in-body__ad" style="box-sizing: inherit; margin: 0px auto; padding: 0px; border: 0px; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; line-height: inherit; vertical-align: baseline; max-width: 728px;"><p style="box-sizing: inherit; margin: 0px 0px 20px; padding: 0px; border: 0px; font-variant-numeric: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; line-height: 1.45em; vertical-align: baseline;">
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<a href="https://www.alternet.org/news-amp-politics/dan-rather-thoroughly-dismantles-sinclair-broadcastings-orwellian-propaganda">https://www.alternet.org/news-amp-politics/dan-rather-thoroughly-dismantles-sinclair-broadcastings-orwellian-propaganda</a>
 
 <a href="http://www.alternet.org/media/lie-lie-lie-dan-rather-shreds-wsj-editor-reluctance-call-out-trumps-dishonesty">http://www.alternet.org/media/lie-lie-lie-dan-rather-shreds-wsj-editor-reluctance-call-out-trumps-dishonesty</a>Legendary CBS newsman Dan Rather lit into the Wall Street Journal’s editor-in-chief for saying he was reluctant to call out obvious lies by Donald Trump by saying one had to consider the president-elect’s “moral intent.”On Sunday’s Meet The Press, WSJ’s Gerard Baker was asked about Trump’s penchant to blurt or tweet things off the top of his head that have no basis in reality. According to the Baker, calling those things a “lie” would be going too far.“I’d be careful about using the word, ‘lie.’” Baker said. “‘Lie’ implies much more than just saying something that’s false. It implies a deliberate intent to mislead…I think if you start ascribing a moral intent, as it were, to someone by saying that they’ve lied, I think you run the risk that you look like you are, like you’re not being objective.”On <a href="https://www.facebook.com/theDanRather/posts/10157986074875716" target="blank" style="text-decoration-line: none;">Facebook</a>, Rather blasted Baker by opening with “A lie, is a lie, is a lie.”“Journalism, as I was taught it, is a process of getting as close to some valid version of the truth as is humanly possible. And one of my definitions of news is information that the powerful don’t want you to know,” Rather wrote. He continued:<blockquote style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">“It is not the proper role of journalists to meet lies—especially from someone of Mr. Trump’s stature and power—by hiding behind semantics and euphemisms. Our role is to call it as we see it, based on solid reporting. When something is, in fact, a demonstrable lie, it is our responsibility to say so,” he continued. “As I have said before and will say as long as people are willing to listen, this is a gut check moment for the press. We are being confronted by versions of what are claimed to be ‘the truth’ that resemble something spewed out by a fertilizer-spreader in a wind tunnel. And there is every indication that this will only continue in the Tweets and statements of the man who will now hold forth from behind the Great Seal of the President of the United States.”</blockquote>Rather concluded by warning news consumers, “You as the paying, subscribing public, can use your leverage and pocketbooks to keep those who should be honest brokers of information, well, honest."http://www.hollywoodreporter.com/news/cbs-bans-ads-dan-rather-832635redford TruthNEW YORK – The typography expert who played a key role in ending the career of CBS News anchor Dan Rather has told WND he has strong suspicions the Obama birth certificate released by the White House is fraudulent.Joseph M. Newcomer, who exposed the “Killian documents” as fraudulent in 2004, has told WND the Obama birth certificate released by the White House April 27 is a “highly suspicious” document that deserves professional forensic examination. 5/14 analysis:  Rather contributor to legendary 60 minutes news magazine, became famous for ambush interview, but legit investigative journalism.  Presumably for a long time his reputation for toughness and integrity, as well as the rep, popularity and presumably the profitability of show protected him.  CBS had mixed record of stading up to attacks? Tobacco, food lion? Note the formidable array of attackers from the almost respectable Weekly St'd, but what brought him down was bloggers, presumably before he or almost anyone else understood their potential.By the following day, questions about the authenticity of the documents were being publicized by the <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Drudge_Report" title="Drudge Report">Drudge Report</a>, which linked to the analysis at the Powerline blog in the mid-afternoon,<a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Killian_documents_controversy#cite_note-57">[58]</a> and the story was covered on the website of the magazine <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Weekly_Standard" title="The Weekly Standard">The Weekly Standard</a><a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Killian_documents_controversy#cite_note-58">[59]</a><a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Killian_documents_controversy#cite_note-59">[60]</a> and broke into mass media outlets, including the <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Associated_Press" title="Associated Press">Associated Press</a> and the major television news networks. It also was receiving serious attention from conservative writers such as <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/National_Review_Online" title="National Review Online" class="mw-redirect">National Review Online</a>'s <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jim_Geraghty" title="Jim Geraghty">Jim Geraghty</a>.<a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Killian_documents_controversy#cite_note-60">[61]  ESCALATOR</a>In final analysis they got the story right, but relied on recreated documents? Left has a bad habit of doing the honorable thing for the greater good, but right does not ? (eg gore steps aside in 2000)=http://www.mediabistro.com/tvnewser/the-untold-story-behind-dan-rathers-departure-from-cbs_b122529boss Rather prouducer mary mapes had broke abu ghraib (rather had done tough interview of b1 1988 as vp col killian said tough to sugercoat b2 bad actions as nat guard pilot harry macdougal said forgeries b/c font too new (not tried; KR organized blogger attack on dan; protege dan bartlett wrangled ex-guard in defense.<div style="line-height: 16px; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); border-style: none none solid; border-bottom-color: black; border-bottom-width: 1pt; padding: 0in 0in 2pt;"> The initial analysis appeared in posts by "Buckhead," a <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Username" title="Username" class="mw-redirect" style="text-decoration-line: none; font-weight: bold; outline: none; line-height: normal;">username</a> of Harry W. MacDougald, an <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Atlanta" title="Atlanta" style="text-decoration-line: none; font-weight: bold; outline: none;">Atlanta</a> attorney who had worked for conservative groups such as the <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Federalist_Society" title="Federalist Society" style="text-decoration-line: none; font-weight: bold; outline: none;">Federalist Society</a> and the Southeastern Legal Foundation and who had helped draft the petition to the<a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Arkansas" title="Arkansas" style="text-decoration-line: none; font-weight: bold; outline: none;">Arkansas</a> Supreme Court for the <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Disbarment" title="Disbarment" style="text-decoration-line: none; font-weight: bold; outline: none;">disbarment</a> of President <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bill_Clinton" title="Bill Clinton" style="text-decoration-line: none; font-weight: bold; outline: none;">Bill Clinton</a>.<a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Killian_documents_controversy#cite_note-55" style="text-decoration-line: none; font-weight: bold; outline: none;">[56]</a> MacDougald questioned the validity of the documents on the basis of their typography</div>=extensive chronology <a href="http://www.historycommons.org/entity.jsp?entity=dan_rather">http://www.historycommons.org/entity.jsp?entity=dan_rather</a>=<div style="line-height: 14px; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">“It was clear he wanted to use his size to project a strong or menacing sense of himself,” says Wayne Slater, Austin bureau chief for the Dallas Morning News. Indeed, Allbaugh’s propensity to turn bright red when enraged led Bush to give Allbaugh the nickname “Pinky.” But if anyone other than W. dared to call him by that name, Allbaugh would whirl around and growl, “I will pinch your head off,” and make pinching motions with his fingers.</div><div style="line-height: 14px; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">
</div><div style="line-height: 14px; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">His loyalty to Bush, a man who prizes that quality above all others in his subordinates, was unquestioned. “There isn’t anything more important than protecting him and the first lady,” Allbaugh once told the Washington Post from the governor’s office. “I’m the heavy, in the literal sense of the word.”</div><div style="line-height: 14px; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">
</div><div style="line-height: 14px; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">Ironically, the other heavy was a small, refined woman by the name of Harriet Miers, hired, as was Allbaugh, by the tough Dallas lawyer Jim Francis, then Bush’s campaign chairman and a longtime friend of Bush’s father. As general counsel, Miers was in charge of fending off legal problems that threatened Bush with adverse publicity.</div><div style="line-height: 14px; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">
</div><div style="line-height: 14px; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">In 1999, Allbaugh left the governor’s office to take over the daily management of Bush’s presidential campaign. He headed up a staff of 180, controlled spending, and spoke with Bush several times a day.</div><div style="line-height: 14px; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">
</div><div style="line-height: 14px; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">One potential problem facing the campaign was the rumor that Bush’s father had pulled strings to get his candidate son out of Vietnam service and into a safe Texas Air National Guard unit in 1968. There were even reports that Bush went AWOL long before his compulsory flying days were up.</div><div style="line-height: 14px; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">
</div><div style="line-height: 14px; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">The key players in keeping the lid on the National Guard story were Allbaugh and Miers. In 2004, a year before Bush nominated Miers for the Supreme Court, Allbaugh told The New York Times, “She’s the kind of person you want in your corner when all the chips are being played.” Assigned to “investigate” Bush’s Guard service, Miers gave the governor a clean bill of health.</div><div style="line-height: 14px; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">
</div><div style="line-height: 14px; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">As part of his job, Allbaugh communicated directly with Adjutant General Daniel James III, the head of the Texas National Guard (later appointed by President George W. Bush to run the federal Air National Guard). What remains unclear is whether he ordered James to dispose of any old Bush military files that might prove embarrassing, an order former Lieutenant Colonel Bill Burkett, head of a Guard efficiency task force, claims to have heard Allbaugh issue in a conversation on James’s speakerphone. Whatever was or was not done, the unexplained gaps in Bush’s National Guard service never became a central topic in the 2000 election. With his “iron triangle” of Rove on strategy, Hughes on P.R., and Allbaugh as the enforcer (plus an assist from the U.S. Supreme Court), Bush triumphed.</div>
 BIO<a href="http://www.danrather.com/story/">http://www.danrather.com/story/</a>my early teens I came down with rheumatic fever. At the time, the only treatment was protracted bed rest. To guard against permanent and perhaps fatal heart damage, I was literally bedridden for several years. The radio was my constant companion. I listened daily to the "Murrow Boys:" Edward R. Murrow, Eric Sevareid, Charles Collingwood, and the rest of his excellent eyewitness reporters. These journalists brought the battles of World War II vividly to life for a boy who couldn't do anything more strenuous than look out his window. It was my first understanding of "boots on the ground" reporting. You had to go with where the news was made.scrawny kid cut brush, footballThe man who hired me was a guy named Cal Jones, who had come to KHOU from KDKA. Cal had come from one of the best broadcast news outfits in the country, but KDKA was in Pittsburgh. He knew a lot about television, and nothing about hurricanes. When a large storm system started forming in the Gulf of Mexico in September 1961, I had to convince Cal to send me to the National Weather Bureau station in Galveston. As the storm, now named Carla, neared the Gulf Coast, I suggested that we superimpose an area map over the radar image so we could show where it might hit. This is common practice today, but it had never been done before. We all gasped when we first saw it. By now Carla was huge, and the combined image slammed home the enormity of the threat to the Texas coast. As a result, evacuations were ordered for Galveston and the surrounding communities. Many lives were saved. I broadcast from the weather bureau throughout the storm, earning myself the nickname "Hurricane Dan."After that, I was offered a job at CBS News. I started there in February 1962, and continued to March of 2005, covering everything from the Kennedy Assassination, to the space race, to political conventions, to wars in Vietnam, Kuwait, Iraq, and Afghanistan, and the horrific attack on New York City on September 11.After leaving CBS, I signed on with Mark Cuban and HDNet in 2006. Putting on an hour of Dan Rather Reports every week means I am constantly scrambling.= <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Killian_documents_controversy">http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Killian_documents_controversy</a>
<div class="rellink">Further information: <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Killian_documents_authenticity_issues" title="Killian documents authenticity issues">Killian documents authenticity issues</a> and <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/George_W.Bush_military_service_controversy" title="George W. Bush military service controversy">George W. Bush military service controversy</a></div><div class="thumb tright"><div class="thumbinner" style="width: 452px;"><a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Killian_memos_MSWord_animated.gif" class="image"><img alt="" src="file:///C:/DATAleno/BRAINS/webodec3_brain/Files/702CB82C-21FE-BA97-CD94-ADAE9E3336B1/PersonalBrain%20Notes/downloadedimagefile1.gif" class="thumbimage" width="450" height="202" /></a><div class="thumbcaption">
<a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Charles_Foster_Johnson" title="Charles Foster Johnson">Charles Johnson's</a> animated GIF image comparing what CBS claimed to be a 1973-era typewritten memo with a proportional-spaced 2004-era Microsoft Word document made with default settings</div></div></div>The Killian documents controversy (also referred to as Memogate, Rathergate or Rathergate<a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Killian_documents_controversy#cite_note-0">[1]</a>) involved six documents critical of <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/President_of_the_United_States" title="President of the United States">President</a> <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/George_W.Bush" title="George W. Bush">George W. Bush</a>'s service in the <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Air_National_Guard" title="Air National Guard">Air National Guard</a> in 1972–73. Four of these documents<a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Killian_documents_controversy#cite_note-1">[2]</a> were presented as authentic in a <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/60_Minutes_II" title="60 Minutes II">60 Minutes Wednesday</a> broadcast aired by <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/CBS" title="CBS">CBS</a> on September 8, 2004, less than two months before the <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_presidential_election,2004" title="United States presidential election, 2004">2004 Presidential Election</a>, but it was later found that CBS had failed to authenticate the documents.<a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Killian_documents_controversy#cite_note-2">[3]</a><a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Killian_documents_controversy#cite_note-3">[4]</a><a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Killian_documents_controversy#cite_note-4">[5]</a> Subsequently, several <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Typewriter" title="Typewriter">typewriter</a> and <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Typography" title="Typography">typography</a> experts concluded the documents are forgeries,<a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Killian_documents_controversy#cite_note-5">[6]</a><a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Killian_documents_controversy#cite_note-6">[7]</a> as have some media sources. No <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Questioned_document_examination" title="Questioned document examination">forensic document examiners</a> or typography experts have authenticated the documents, and this may not be technically possible without original documents.<a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Killian_documents_controversy#cite_note-7">[8]</a> The provider of the documents, Lt. Col. <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bill_Burkett" title="Bill Burkett">Bill Burkett</a>, claims to have burned the originals after faxing copies to CBS.<a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Killian_documents_controversy#cite_note-8">[9]</a> CBS News producer <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mary_Mapes" title="Mary Mapes">Mary Mapes</a> obtained the copied documents from Burkett, a former officer in the Texas Army National Guard, while pursuing a story about the <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/George_W.Bush_military_service_controversy" title="George W. Bush military service controversy">George W. Bush military service controversy</a>. The papers, purportedly made by Bush's commander, the late Lieutenant Colonel <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jerry_B.Killian" title="Jerry B. Killian" class="mw-redirect">Jerry B. Killian</a>, included criticisms of Bush's service in the Guard during the 1970s. In the 60 Minutes segment, anchor <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dan_Rather" title="Dan Rather">Dan Rather</a> stated: "We are told [the documents] were taken from Lieutenant Colonel Killian’s personal files"<a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Killian_documents_controversy#cite_note-9">[10]</a> and incorrectly asserted that "the material" had been authenticated by experts retained by CBS.<a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Killian_documents_controversy#cite_note-10">[11]</a>The <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Killian_documents_authenticity_issues" title="Killian documents authenticity issues">authenticity of the documents</a> was challenged within hours on <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Internet" title="Internet">Internet</a> forums and <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blog" title="Blog">blogs</a>, with questions initially focused on alleged <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anachronism" title="Anachronism">anachronisms</a> in the documents' <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Typography" title="Typography">typography</a> and content soon spreading to the <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mass_media" title="Mass media">mass media</a>.<a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Killian_documents_controversy#cite_note-memmot-11">[12]</a> Although CBS and Rather defended the authenticity and usage of the documents for a two-week period, continued scrutiny from other news organizations and independent analysis of the documents obtained by <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/USA_Today" title="USA Today">USA Today</a> and CBS raised questions about their validity and led to a public repudiation on September 20, 2004. Rather stated, "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,"<a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Killian_documents_controversy#cite_note-rather_statement-12">[13]</a> and CBS News President <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Andrew_Heyward" title="Andrew Heyward">Andrew Heyward</a> said, "Based on what we now know, CBS News cannot prove that the documents are authentic, which is the only acceptable journalistic standard to justify using them in the report. We should not have used them. That was a mistake, which we deeply regret."<a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Killian_documents_controversy#cite_note-rather_statement-12">[13]</a><a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Killian_documents_controversy#cite_note-CBS_statement_on_panel-13">[14]</a>Several months later, a CBS-appointed panel led by <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dick_Thornburgh" title="Dick Thornburgh">Dick Thornburgh</a> and <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Louis_Boccardi" title="Louis Boccardi">Louis Boccardi</a> criticized both the initial CBS news segment and CBS' "strident defense" during the aftermath.<a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Killian_documents_controversy#cite_note-14">[15]</a> CBS fired producer Mary Mapes, several senior news executives were asked to resign, and CBS apologized to viewers. The panel did not specifically consider whether the documents were forgeries but concluded that the producers had failed to authenticate them and cited "substantial questions regarding the authenticity of the Killian documents." ?
 <table id="toc" class="toc"><tbody><tr><td><div id="toctitle"><h2>Contents</h2> [<a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Killian_documents_controversy#" class="internal" id="togglelink">hide</a>] </div><ul><li class="toclevel-1 tocsection-1"><a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Killian_documents_controversy#Background_and_timeline">1 Background and timeline</a><ul><li class="toclevel-2 tocsection-2"><a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Killian_documents_controversy#Content_of_the_memos">1.1 Content of the memos</a></li><li class="toclevel-2 tocsection-3"><a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Killian_documents_controversy#CBS_investigations_prior_to_airing_the_segment">1.2 CBS investigations prior to airing the segment</a></li><li class="toclevel-2 tocsection-4"><a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Killian_documents_controversy#Response_of_the_document_examiners">1.3 Response of the document examiners</a></li></ul></li><li class="toclevel-1 tocsection-5"><a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Killian_documents_controversy#September_8_segment_and_initial_reactions">2 September 8 segment and initial reactions</a><ul><li class="toclevel-2 tocsection-6"><a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Killian_documents_controversy#Internet_skepticism_spreads">2.1 Internet skepticism spreads</a></li><li class="toclevel-2 tocsection-7"><a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Killian_documents_controversy#CBS.27s_response_and_widening_media_coverage">2.2 CBS's response and widening media coverage</a></li></ul></li><li class="toclevel-1 tocsection-8"><a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Killian_documents_controversy#CBS.27_defense.2C_apology">3 CBS' defense, apology</a><ul><li class="toclevel-2 tocsection-9"><a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Killian_documents_controversy#60_Minutes_Wednesday.2C_one_week_later">3.1 60 Minutes Wednesday, one week later</a></li><li class="toclevel-2 tocsection-10"><a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Killian_documents_controversy#CBS_states_that_use_of_the_documents_was_a_mistake">3.2 CBS states that use of the documents was a mistake</a></li></ul></li><li class="toclevel-1 tocsection-11"><a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Killian_documents_controversy#Review_panel_established">4 Review panel established</a><ul><li class="toclevel-2 tocsection-12"><a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Killian_documents_controversy#Findings">4.1 Findings</a></li><li class="toclevel-2 tocsection-13"><a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Killian_documents_controversy#Panel.27s_view_of_the_documents">4.2 Panel's view of the documents</a></li></ul></li><li class="toclevel-1 tocsection-14"><a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Killian_documents_controversy#Aftermath">5 Aftermath</a><ul><li class="toclevel-2 tocsection-15"><a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Killian_documents_controversy#CBS_personnel_and_programming_changes">5.1 CBS personnel and programming changes</a></li><li class="toclevel-2 tocsection-16"><a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Killian_documents_controversy#Mapes_and_Rather.27s_view_of_the_documents">5.2 Mapes and Rather's view of the documents</a></li><li class="toclevel-2 tocsection-17"><a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Killian_documents_controversy#Dan_Rather.27s_lawsuit_against_CBS.2FViacom">5.3 Dan Rather's lawsuit against CBS/Viacom</a></li></ul></li><li class="toclevel-1 tocsection-18"><a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Killian_documents_controversy#Authentication_issues">6 Authentication issues</a></li><li class="toclevel-1 tocsection-19"><a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Killian_documents_controversy#Accusations_of_bias">7 Accusations of bias</a></li><li class="toclevel-1 tocsection-20"><a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Killian_documents_controversy#See_also">8 See also</a></li><li class="toclevel-1 tocsection-21"><a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Killian_documents_controversy#Footnotes">9 Footnotes</a></li><li class="toclevel-1 tocsection-22"><a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Killian_documents_controversy#External_links">10 External links</a><ul><li class="toclevel-2 tocsection-23"><a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Killian_documents_controversy#Killian_documents_PDF_files">10.1 Killian documents PDF files</a></li><li class="toclevel-2 tocsection-24"><a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Killian_documents_controversy#Bush_documents_from_the_TexANG_archives">10.2 Bush documents from the TexANG archives</a></li><li class="toclevel-2 tocsection-25"><a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Killian_documents_controversy#60_Minutes_II.2C_September_8_transcript">10.3 60 Minutes II, September 8 transcript</a></li><li class="toclevel-2 tocsection-26"><a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Killian_documents_controversy#Statements_of_the_CBS_document_examiners">10.4 Statements of the CBS document examiners</a></li><li class="toclevel-2 tocsection-27"><a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Killian_documents_controversy#The_Thornburgh-Boccardi_Report">10.5 The Thornburgh-Boccardi Report</a></li><li class="toclevel-2 tocsection-28"><a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Killian_documents_controversy#Document_analysis">10.6 Document analysis</a></li><li class="toclevel-2 tocsection-29"><a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Killian_documents_controversy#Overview_Timeline_at_USA_Today">10.7 Overview Timeline at USA Today</a></li><li class="toclevel-2 tocsection-30"><a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Killian_documents_controversy#Further_reading">10.8 Further reading</a></li></ul></li></ul></td></tr></tbody></table><h2>[<a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Killian_documents_controversy&action=edit&section=1" title="Edit section: Background and timeline">edit</a>] Background and timeline</h2>The memos, allegedly written in 1972 and 1973, were obtained by CBS News producer <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mary_Mapes" title="Mary Mapes">Mary Mapes</a> and freelance journalist Michael Smith, from Lt. Col. Bill Burkett, a former US Army National Guard officer.<a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Killian_documents_controversy#cite_note-15">[16]</a> Mapes and Dan Rather, among many other journalists, had been investigating for several years the story of Bush's <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/George_W.Bush_military_service_controversy" title="George W. Bush military service controversy">alleged failure to fulfill his obligations to the National Guard</a>.<a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Killian_documents_controversy#cite_note-16">[17]</a>Burkett had received publicity in 2000, after making and then retracting a claim that he had been transferred to <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Panama" title="Panama">Panama</a> for refusing "to falsify personnel records of [then-]Governor Bush",<a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Killian_documents_controversy#cite_note-17">[18]</a><a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Killian_documents_controversy#cite_note-18">[19]</a> and in February 2004, when he claimed to have knowledge of "scrubbing" of Bush's TexANG records.<a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Killian_documents_controversy#cite_note-19">[20]</a><a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Killian_documents_controversy#cite_note-20">[21]</a> Mapes was "by her own account [aware that] many in the press considered Burkett an 'anti-Bush zealot,' his credibility in question."<a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Killian_documents_controversy#cite_note-21">[22]</a>Mapes and Smith made contact with Burkett in late August, and on August 24 Burkett offered to meet with them to share the documents he possessed, and later told reporters from <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/USA_Today" title="USA Today">USA Today</a> "that he had agreed to turn over the documents to CBS if the network would arrange a conversation with the <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Kerry" title="John Kerry">Kerry</a> campaign,"<a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Killian_documents_controversy#cite_note-22">[23]</a> a claim substantiated by emails between Smith and Mapes detailing Burkett's additional requests for help with negotiating a book deal, security, and financial compensation.<a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Killian_documents_controversy#cite_note-23">[24]</a>During the last week of August, Mapes asked Josh Howard, her immediate superior at CBS, for permission to facilitate contact between Burkett and the Kerry campaign, and Howard and Mapes subsequently disputed whether such permission was obtained.<a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Killian_documents_controversy#cite_note-24">[25]</a>Two documents were provided by Burkett to Mapes on September 2 and four others on September 5, 2004. At that time, Burkett told Mapes that they were copies of originals that had been obtained from Killian's personal files via Chief <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Warrant_Officer" title="Warrant Officer" class="mw-redirect">Warrant Officer</a> George Conn, another former member of the TexANG.<a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Killian_documents_controversy#cite_note-25">[26]</a>Mapes informed Rather of the progress of the story, which was being targeted to air on September 8 along with footage of an interview with former <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lieutenant_Governor_of_Texas" title="Lieutenant Governor of Texas">Lieutenant Governor of Texas</a> <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ben_Barnes%28politician%29" title="Ben Barnes (politician)">Ben Barnes</a>, who would publicly state for the first time his opinion that Bush received preferential treatment to get into the National Guard.<a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Killian_documents_controversy#cite_note-26">[27]</a> Mapes had also been in contact with the Kerry campaign several times between late August and September 6, when she spoke with senior Kerry advisor <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Joe_Lockhart" title="Joe Lockhart">Joe Lockhart</a> regarding the progressing story. Lockhart subsequently stated he was "wary" of contact with Mapes at this stage, because if the story were true, his involvement might undermine its credibility, and if it were false, "he did not want to be associated with it."<a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Killian_documents_controversy#cite_note-27">[28]</a> Lockhart called Burkett on September 6 at the number provided by Mapes, and both men stated they discussed Burkett's view of Kerry's Presidential campaign strategy, not the existence of the documents or the related story.<a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Killian_documents_controversy#cite_note-28">[29]</a><h3>[<a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Killian_documents_controversy&action=edit&section=2" title="Edit section: Content of the memos">edit</a>] Content of the memos</h3>The documents allegedly showed that Bush disobeyed orders while in the Guard, and had undue influence exerted on his behalf to improve his record, and included the following:<ol><li>An order directing Bush to submit to a physical examination.<a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Killian_documents_controversy#cite_note-29">[30]</a></li><li>A note that Killian had grounded Bush from flying due to "failure to perform to USAF/TexANG standards," and for failure to submit to the physical examination as ordered. Killian also requested that a flight inquiry board be convened, as required by regulations, to examine the reasons for Bush's loss of flight status.<a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Killian_documents_controversy#cite_note-30">[31]</a></li><li>A note of a telephone conversation with Bush in which Bush sought to be excused from "drill." The note records that Bush said he did not have the time to attend to his National Guard duties because he had a campaign to do (the Senate campaign of <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Winton_M.Blount" title="Winton M. Blount">Winton M. Blount</a> in Alabama).<a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Killian_documents_controversy#cite_note-31">[32]</a></li><li>A note (labeled "CYA" for "<a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cover_your_ass" title="Cover your ass">cover your ass</a>") claiming that Killian was being pressured from above to give Bush better marks in his yearly evaluation than he had earned. The note attributed to Killian says that he was being asked to "sugarcoat" Bush's performance. "I'm having trouble running interference [for Bush] and doing my job."<a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Killian_documents_controversy#cite_note-32">[33]</a></li></ol><a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/USA_Today" title="USA Today">USA Today</a> also received copies of the four documents used by CBS,<a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Killian_documents_controversy#cite_note-33">[34]</a> reporting this and publishing them the morning after the CBS segment, along with two additional memos.<a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Killian_documents_controversy#cite_note-34">[35]</a> Burkett was assured by USA Today that they would keep the source confidential.<a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Killian_documents_controversy#cite_note-usatoday_cbsbacksoff-35">[36]</a><h3>[<a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Killian_documents_controversy&action=edit&section=3" title="Edit section: CBS investigations prior to airing the segment">edit</a>] CBS investigations prior to airing the segment</h3>Mapes and her colleagues began interviewing people who might be able to corroborate the information in the documents, while also retaining four <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Questioned_document_examination" title="Questioned document examination">forensic document experts</a>, Marcel J. Matley, James J. Pierce, Emily Will, and Linda James, to determine the validity of the memos.On September 5, CBS interviewed Killian's friend Robert Strong, who ran the Texas Air National Guard administrative office. Among other issues covered in his interview with Rather and Mapes, Strong was asked if he thought the documents were genuine. Strong stated, "they are compatible with the way business was done at the time. They are compatible with the man that I remember Jerry Killian being."<a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Killian_documents_controversy#cite_note-36">[37]</a> Strong had first seen the documents twenty minutes earlier and also said he had no personal knowledge of their content;<a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Killian_documents_controversy#cite_note-37">[38]</a> he later claimed he had been told to assume the content of the documents was accurate.<a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Killian_documents_controversy#cite_note-38">[39]</a>On September 6, CBS interviewed General Robert "Bobby" Hodges, a former officer at the Texas Air National Guard and Killian's immediate superior at the time. Hodges declined CBS' request for an on-camera interview, and Mapes read the documents to him over the telephone. According to Mapes, Hodges agreed with CBS's assessment that the documents were real, and CBS reported that Hodges stated that these were "the things that Killian had expressed to me at the time."<a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Killian_documents_controversy#cite_note-39">[40]</a> However, according to Hodges, when Mapes read portions of the memos to him he simply stated, "well if he wrote them, that's what he felt," and he claims he never confirmed the validity of the content of the documents. General Hodges later asserted to the investigatory panel that he told Mapes that Killian had never, to his knowledge, ordered anyone to take a physical and that he had never been pressured regarding Lieutenant Bush, as the documents alleged.<a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Killian_documents_controversy#cite_note-40">[41]</a> Hodges also claims that when CBS interviewed him, he thought the memos were handwritten, not typed,<a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Killian_documents_controversy#cite_note-41">[42]</a> and following the September 8 broadcast, when Hodges had seen the documents and heard of claims of forgery by Killian's wife and son, he was "convinced they were not authentic" and told Rather and Mapes on September 10.<a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Killian_documents_controversy#cite_note-42">[43]</a><h3>[<a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Killian_documents_controversy&action=edit&section=4" title="Edit section: Response of the document examiners">edit</a>] Response of the document examiners</h3>Prior to airing, all four of the examiners responded to Mapes' request for document analysis, though only two to Mapes directly:<a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Killian_documents_controversy#cite_note-43">[44]</a><ul><li>Emily Will noted discrepancies in the signatures on the memos, and had questions about the letterhead, the proportional spacing of the font, the <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Superscript" title="Superscript" class="mw-redirect">superscripted</a> "th" and the improper formatting of the date. Will requested other documents to use for comparison.<a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Killian_documents_controversy#cite_note-rushtoair-44">[45]</a></li><li>Linda James was "unable to reach a conclusion about the signature" and noted that the superscripted "th" was not in common use at the time the memos were allegedly written; she later recalled telling CBS, "the two memos she looked at 'had problems,'"<a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Killian_documents_controversy#cite_note-rushtoair-44">[45]</a></li><li>James Pierce concluded that both of the documents were written by the same person and that the signature matched Killian's from the official Bush records. Only one of the two documents provided to Pierce had a signature. James Pierce wrote, "the balance of the Jerry B. Killian signatures appearing on the photocopied questioned documents are consistent and in basic agreement," and stated that based on what he knew, "the documents in question are authentic."<a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Killian_documents_controversy#cite_note-cbsnews.com-45">[46]</a> However, Pierce also told Mapes he could not be sure if the documents had been altered because he was reviewing copies, not original documents.<a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Killian_documents_controversy#cite_note-46">[47]</a></li><li>Marcel Matley's review was initially limited to Killian's signature on one of the Burkett documents, which he compared to signatures from the official Bush records. Matley "seemed fairly confident" that the signature was Killian's. On September 6, Matley was interviewed by Rather and Mapes and was provided with the other four documents obtained from CBS (he would prove to be the only reviewer to see these documents prior to the segment). Matley told Rather "he could not authenticate the documents due to the fact that they were poor quality copies."<a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Killian_documents_controversy#cite_note-47">[48]</a> In the interview, Matley told Rather that with respect to the signatures, they wererelying on "poor material" and that there were inconsistencies in the signatures, but also replied "Yes," when asked if it would be safe to say the documents were written by the person who signed them.<a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Killian_documents_controversy#cite_note-48">[49]</a></li><li>Both Emily Will and Linda James suggested to Mapes that CBS contact typewriter expert Peter Tytell. Associate producer Yvonne Miller left him a voicemail on September 7; he returned the call at 11 am on September 8 but was told they "did not need him anymore."<a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Killian_documents_controversy#cite_note-49">[50]</a></li></ul><h2>[<a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Killian_documents_controversy&action=edit&section=5" title="Edit section: September 8 segment and initial reactions">edit</a>] September 8 segment and initial reactions</h2>The segment, entitled "For The Record," aired on 60 Minutes Wednesday on September 8.<a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Killian_documents_controversy#cite_note-50">[51]</a> After introducing the documents, Rather said, in reference to Matley, "We consulted a handwriting analyst and document expert who believes the material is authentic."<a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Killian_documents_controversy#cite_note-51">[52]</a>The segment introduced Lieutenant Robert Strong's interview, describing him as a "friend of Killian" (without noting he had not worked in the same location and without mentioning he had left the TexANG prior to the dates on the memos). The segment used the sound bite of Strong saying the documents were compatible with how business was done but did not include a disclaimer that Strong was told to assume the documents were authentic.<a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Killian_documents_controversy#cite_note-52">[53]</a>In Rather's narration about one of the memos, he referred to pressure being applied on Bush's behalf by General Buck Staudt, and described Staudt as "the man in charge of the Texas National Guard." Staudt had retired from the guard a year and a half prior to the dates of the memos.Interview clips with <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ben_Barnes%28politician%29" title="Ben Barnes (politician)">Ben Barnes</a>, former Speaker of the Texas House, created the impression "that there was no question but that President Bush had received Barnes' help to get into the TexANG," because Barnes had made a telephone call on Bush's behalf, when Barnes himself had acknowledged that there was no proof his call was the reason, and that "sometimes a call to General Rose did not work." Barnes' disclaimer was not included in the Segment.<a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Killian_documents_controversy#cite_note-53">[54]</a>??<h3>[<a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Killian_documents_controversy&action=edit&section=6" title="Edit section: Internet skepticism spreads">edit</a>] Internet skepticism spreads</h3>Within hours of the segment, the authenticity of the documents was questioned by posters on <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Free_Republic" title="Free Republic">Free Republic</a>, a conservative Internet forum, and discussion quickly spread to various <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blog" title="Blog">weblogs</a> in the <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blogosphere" title="Blogosphere">blogosphere</a>, principally <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Little_Green_Footballs" title="Little Green Footballs">Little Green Footballs</a> and <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Power_Line" title="Power Line">Power Line</a>.<a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Killian_documents_controversy#cite_note-HK2004.0919-54">[55]</a> The initial analysis appeared in posts by "Buckhead," a <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Username" title="Username" class="mw-redirect">username</a> of Harry W. MacDougald, an <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Atlanta" title="Atlanta">Atlanta</a> attorney who had worked for conservative groups such as the <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Federalist_Society" title="Federalist Society">Federalist Society</a> and the Southeastern Legal Foundation and who had helped draft the petition to the <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Arkansas" title="Arkansas">Arkansas</a> Supreme Court for the <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Disbarment" title="Disbarment">disbarment</a> of President <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bill_Clinton" title="Bill Clinton">Bill Clinton</a>.<a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Killian_documents_controversy#cite_note-55">[56]</a> MacDougald questioned the validity of the documents on the basis of their typography, writing that the memos were "in a proportionally spaced font, probably <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Palatino" title="Palatino">Palatino</a> or <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Times_New_Roman" title="Times New Roman">Times New Roman</a>," and alleging that this was an <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anachronism" title="Anachronism">anachronism</a>: "I am saying these documents are forgeries, run through a copier for 15 generations to make them look old. This should be pursued aggressively."<a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Killian_documents_controversy#cite_note-56">[57] FEDSOC
</a> By the following day, questions about the authenticity of the documents were being publicized by the <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Drudge_Report" title="Drudge Report">Drudge Report</a>, which linked to the analysis at the Powerline blog in the mid-afternoon,<a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Killian_documents_controversy#cite_note-57">[58]</a> and the story was covered on the website of the magazine <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Weekly_Standard" title="The Weekly Standard">The Weekly Standard</a><a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Killian_documents_controversy#cite_note-58">[59]</a><a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Killian_documents_controversy#cite_note-59">[60]</a> and broke into mass media outlets, including the <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Associated_Press" title="Associated Press">Associated Press</a> and the major television news networks. It also was receiving serious attention from conservative writers such as <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/National_Review_Online" title="National Review Online" class="mw-redirect">National Review Online</a>'s <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jim_Geraghty" title="Jim Geraghty">Jim Geraghty</a>.<a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Killian_documents_controversy#cite_note-60">[61] ESCALATOR
</a> By the afternoon of September 9, <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Charles_Foster_Johnson" title="Charles Foster Johnson">Charles Foster Johnson</a> of Little Green Footballs had posted his attempt to recreate one of the documents using <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Microsoft_Word" title="Microsoft Word">Microsoft Word</a> with the default settings.<a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Killian_documents_controversy#cite_note-61">[62]</a> The September 9 edition of <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/American_Broadcasting_Company" title="American Broadcasting Company">ABC</a>'s <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nightline%28US_news_program%29" title="Nightline (US news program)" class="mw-redirect">Nightline</a> made mention of the controversy, along with an article on the <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ABC_News" title="ABC News">ABC News</a> website.<a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Killian_documents_controversy#cite_note-62">[63]</a> Although the CBS story is front-page news in the New York Times and Washington Post on September 9, and on two-thirds of a full page within USA Today's news section (which notes the newspaper has also obtained copies of the documents), "There is no discussion in the major news media about whether the memos are authentic."<a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Killian_documents_controversy#cite_note-memmot-11">[12]</a> CBS published the reaction of Killian's son, Gary, to the documents, reporting that Gary Killian questioned one of the memos but stated that others "appeared legitimate" and characterized the collection as "a mixture of truth and fiction".<a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Killian_documents_controversy#cite_note-63">[64]</a> In an interview with <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fox_News" title="Fox News" class="mw-redirect">Fox News</a>, Gary Killian expressed doubts about the documents' authenticity on the basis of his father's positive view of Bush.<a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Killian_documents_controversy#cite_note-64">[65]</a><h3>[<a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Killian_documents_controversy&action=edit&section=7" title="Edit section: CBS's response and widening media coverage">edit</a>] CBS's response and widening media coverage</h3>At 5PM on Thursday, September 9, CBS News released a statement saying the memos were "thoroughly investigated by independent experts, and we are convinced of their authenticity",<a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Killian_documents_controversy#cite_note-somequestion-65">[66]</a> and stating, "this report was not based solely on recovered documents, but rather on a preponderance of evidence, including documents that were provided by unimpeachable sources,"<a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Killian_documents_controversy#cite_note-cbsstandsby-66">[67]</a> In an interview, CBS News spokesperson Kelli Edwards said, "CBS verified the authenticity of the documents by talking toindividuals who had seen the documents at the time they were written."<a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Killian_documents_controversy#cite_note-67">[68]</a> The statement was replaced later that day with one that omitted this claim.<a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Killian_documents_controversy#cite_note-68">[69]</a>The first newspaper articles questioning the documents appeared on September 10 in <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Washington_Post" title="The Washington Post">The Washington Post</a>,<a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Killian_documents_controversy#cite_note-somequestion-65">[66]</a> The New York Times<a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Killian_documents_controversy#cite_note-69">[70]</a> and in USA Today via the <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Associated_Press" title="Associated Press">Associated Press</a>.<a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Killian_documents_controversy#cite_note-APauthenticity-70">[71]</a> The Associated Press reported, "Document examiner Sandra Ramsey Lines...said she was 'virtually certain' [the documents] were generated by computer. Lines said that meant she could testify in court that, beyond a reasonable doubt, her opinion was that the memos were written on a computer."<a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Killian_documents_controversy#cite_note-APauthenticity-70">[71]</a>Also on September 10, the <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dallas_Morning_News" title="Dallas Morning News" class="mw-redirect">Dallas Morning News</a> reported "that the officer named in one memo as exerting pressure to "sugarcoat" Bush's military record was discharged a year and a half before the memo was written.<a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Killian_documents_controversy#cite_note-71">[72]</a> The paper cited a military record showing that Col. Walter "Buck" Staudt was honorably discharged on March 1, 1972,while the memo cited by CBS as showing that Staudt was interfering with evaluations of Bush was dated August 18, 1973."<a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Killian_documents_controversy#cite_note-72">[73]</a>In response to the media attention, a CBS memo said the documents were "backed up not only by independent handwriting and forensic document experts but by sources familiar with their content" and insisted that no internal investigation would take place.<a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Killian_documents_controversy#cite_note-73">[74]</a> On the CBS Evening News, on September 10, Rather defended the story and noted that its critics included "partisan political operatives."<a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Killian_documents_controversy#cite_note-Report_1D-74">[75]</a><ul><li>In the broadcast, Rather stated Marcel Matley "analyzed the documents for CBS News. He believes they are real," and broadcast additional excerpts from Matley's September 6 interview showing Matley's agreement that the signatures appeared to be from the same source. Rather did not report that Matley had referred to them as "poor material", that he had only opined about the signatures, or that he had specifically not authenticated the documents.</li><li>Rather presented footage of the Strong interview, introducing it by stating Robert Strong "is standing by his judgment that the documents are real," despite Strong's lack of standing to authenticate them and his brief exposure to the documents.<a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Killian_documents_controversy#cite_note-Report_1D-74">[75]</a></li><li>Rather concluded by stating, "If any definitive evidence to the contrary of our story is found, we will report it. So far, there is none."<a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Killian_documents_controversy#cite_note-Report_1D-74">[75]</a><a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Killian_documents_controversy#cite_note-look_back-75">[76]</a></li></ul>In an appearance on <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/CNN" title="CNN">CNN</a> that day, Rather asserted "I know that this story is true. I believe that the witnesses and the documents are authentic. We wouldn't have gone to air if they would not have been."However, within CBS, Josh Howard spoke at length on the telephone with typewriter expert Peter Tytell. Howard later told the Panel that the discussion was, "an 'unsettling event' that shook his belief in the authenticity of the documents." Producer Mapes dismissed Tytell's concerns.<a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Killian_documents_controversy#cite_note-76">[77]</a>A former Vice President of CBS News, Jonathan Klein, dismissed the allegations of bloggers, suggesting that the "checks and balances" of a professional news organization were superior to individuals sitting at their home computers "in their pajamas."<a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Killian_documents_controversy#cite_note-77">[78]</a> In response, some conservative bloggers started to refer to themselves as <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pajamahadeen" title="Pajamahadeen">Pajamahadeen</a>.<h2>[<a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Killian_documents_controversy&action=edit&section=8" title="Edit section: CBS' defense, apology">edit</a>] CBS' defense, apology</h2>As media coverage widened and intensified, CBS at first attempted to produce additional evidence to support its claims. On September 11, a CBS News Segment stated that document expert Phillip Bouffard thought the documents "could have been prepared on an IBM Selectric Composer Typewriter, available at the time."<a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Killian_documents_controversy#cite_note-Report_1E-78">[79]</a><a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Killian_documents_controversy#cite_note-79">[80]</a> (The <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/IBM_Selectric_Composer" title="IBM Selectric Composer" class="mw-redirect">Selectric Composer</a> was introduced in 1966 for <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Typesetting" title="Typesetting">typesetting</a> and generation of <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Camera-ready" title="Camera-ready">camera-ready</a> copy;<a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Killian_documents_controversy#cite_note-80">[81]</a> according to <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/International_Business_Machines" title="International Business Machines" class="mw-redirect">IBM</a> archives describing this specialised equipment "To produce copy which can be reproduced with 'justified', or straight left-and right-hand margins, the operator types the copy once and the composer computes the number of spaces needed to justify the line. As the operator types the copy a second time, the spaces are added automatically.")<a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Killian_documents_controversy#cite_note-81">[82]</a> Bouffard's comments were also cited by the Boston Globe, in an article entitled, "Authenticity backed on Bush documents."<a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Killian_documents_controversy#cite_note-82">[83]</a> However the Globe soon printed a retraction regarding the title.<a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Killian_documents_controversy#cite_note-83">[84]</a> CBS noted that although General Hodges was now stating he thought the documents were inauthentic, "we believed General Hodges the first time we spoke with him." CBS reiterated: "we believe the documents to be genuine."<a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Killian_documents_controversy#cite_note-Report_1E-78">[79]</a>By September 13, CBS' position had shifted slightly, as Rather acknowledged "some of these questions come from people who are not active political partisans," and stated that CBS "talked to handwriting and document analysts and other experts who strongly insist the documents could have been created in the 70s,"(emphasis added)<a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Killian_documents_controversy#cite_note-Report_1F-84">[85]</a> The analysts and experts cited by Rather did not include the original four experts consulted by CBS. Rather instead presented the views of Bill Glennon and Richard Katz. Glennon, a former typewriter repairman with no specific credentials in typesetting beyond that job, was found by CBS after posting several defenses of the memos on blogs including <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Daily_Kos" title="Daily Kos">Daily Kos</a> and <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kevin_Drum" title="Kevin Drum">Kevin Drum</a>'s blog hosted at <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Washington_Monthly" title="Washington Monthly">Washington Monthly</a>.<a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Killian_documents_controversy#cite_note-85">[86]</a> However, in the actual broadcast, neither interviewee asserted that the memos were genuine.As a result, some CBS critics begin to accuse CBS of <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Expert_shopping" title="Expert shopping">expert shopping</a>.<a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Killian_documents_controversy#cite_note-86">[87]</a><h3>[<a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Killian_documents_controversy&action=edit&section=9" title="Edit section: 60 Minutes Wednesday, one week later">edit</a>] 60 Minutes Wednesday, one week later</h3>The original document examiners, however, continued to be part of the story. By September 15, Emily Will was publicly stating that she had told CBS that she had doubts about both the production of the memos and the handwriting prior to the segment, and in interviews, Linda James stated that the memos were of "very poor quality" and that she did not authenticate them,<a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Killian_documents_controversy#cite_note-CNN1-87">[88]</a> telling ABC News, "I did not authenticate anything and I don't want it understood that I did."<a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Killian_documents_controversy#cite_note-cbsnews.com-45">[46]</a>In response, 60 Minutes Wednesday released a statement suggesting that Will and James had "misrepresented" their role in the authentication of the documents and had played only a small part in the process.<a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Killian_documents_controversy#cite_note-60min_statement-88">[89]</a> CBS News concurrently amended their previous claim that Matley had authenticated the documents, saying instead he had only authenticated the signatures.<a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Killian_documents_controversy#cite_note-89">[90]</a> On CNN, Matley stated he had only verified that the signatures were "from the same source," not that they were authentically Killian's: "When I saw the documents, I could not verify the documents were authentic or inauthentic. I could only verify that the signatures came from the same source," Matley said. "I could not authenticate the documents themselves. But at the same time, there was nothing to tell me that they were not authentic."<a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Killian_documents_controversy#cite_note-CNN1-87">[88]</a>CBS interviewed Marian Carr Knox, a secretary at <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ellington_Air_Force_Base" title="Ellington Air Force Base" class="mw-redirect">Ellington Air Force Base</a> from 1956–1979 and Killian's assistant on the dates of the memos. Although Knox felt the memos reflected the truth about Bush's alleged service failures,<a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Killian_documents_controversy#cite_note-60min_statement-88">[89]</a> she also stated she did not type the memos, they were not written by Killian, and that she had no firsthand knowledge of Bush's time in the Guard.<a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Killian_documents_controversy#cite_note-90">[91]</a> Knox said, "The information in here was correct, but it was picked up from the real ones," she said. "I probably typed the information and somebody picked up the information some way or another."<a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Killian_documents_controversy#cite_note-91">[92]</a> The New York Times' headline, including the phrase "Fake but Accurate," became a widely-used derisive comment from right-leaning critics of CBS.<a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Killian_documents_controversy#cite_note-92">[93]</a><a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Killian_documents_controversy#cite_note-93">[94]</a>At this time, Dan Rather first acknowledged there were problems in establishing the validity of the documents used in the report, stating: "If the documents are not what we were led to believe, I'd like to break that story."<a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Killian_documents_controversy#cite_note-94">[95]</a>CBS also hired a private investigator to look into the matter after the story aired and the controversy began.<a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Killian_documents_controversy#cite_note-95">[96]</a>Copies of the documents were first released to the public by the <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/White_House" title="White House">White House</a>. Press Secretary <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scott_McClellan" title="Scott McClellan">Scott McClellan</a> stated that the memos had been provided to them by CBS in the days prior to the report and that, "We had every reason to believe that they were authentic at that time."<a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Killian_documents_controversy#cite_note-96">[97]</a>The Washington Post reported that at least one of the documents obtained by CBS had a fax header indicating it had been faxed from a Kinko's copy center in Abilene, Texas,<a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Killian_documents_controversy#cite_note-97">[98]</a> leading some to trace the documents back to Burkett.<h3>[<a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Killian_documents_controversy&action=edit&section=10" title="Edit section: CBS states that use of the documents was a mistake">edit</a>] CBS states that use of the documents was a mistake</h3>As a growing number of independent document examiners and competing news outlets reported their findings about the documents, CBS News stopped defending the documents and began to report on the problems with their story. On September 20 they reported that their source, Bill Burkett, "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."<a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Killian_documents_controversy#cite_note-98">[99]</a><a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Killian_documents_controversy#cite_note-99">[100]</a> While the network did not state that the memos were forgeries, CBS News President <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Andrew_Heyward" title="Andrew Heyward">Andrew Heyward</a> said,<dl><dd>"Based on what we now know, CBS News cannot prove that the documents are authentic, which is the only acceptable journalistic standard to justify using them in the report. We should not have used them. That was a mistake, which we deeply regret."<a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Killian_documents_controversy#cite_note-rather_statement-12">[13]</a><a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Killian_documents_controversy#cite_note-CBS_statement_on_panel-13">[14]</a></dd></dl>Dan Rather stated, "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."<a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Killian_documents_controversy#cite_note-rather_statement-12">[13]</a>In an interview with Dan Rather, Burkett admitted that he misled CBS about the source of the documents, and then claimed that the documents came to him from "<a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lucy_Ramirez" title="Lucy Ramirez">Lucy Ramirez</a>", whom CBS was unable to contact or identify as an actual person. Burkett said he then made copies at the local <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/FedEx_Kinko%27s" title="FedEx Kinko's" class="mw-redirect">Kinko's</a> and burned the original documents.<a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Killian_documents_controversy#cite_note-usatoday_cbsbacksoff-35">[36]</a><a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Killian_documents_controversy#cite_note-100">[101]</a>On September 21, CBS News addressed the contact with the Kerry campaign in its statement: "It is obviously against CBS News standards and those of every other reputable news organization to be associated with any political agenda."<a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Killian_documents_controversy#cite_note-look_back-75">[76]</a> The next day the network announced it was forming an independent review panel to perform an internal investigation.<h2>[<a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Killian_documents_controversy&action=edit&section=11" title="Edit section: Review panel established">edit</a>] Review panel establishe</h2>Soon after, CBS established a review panel "to help determine what errors occurred in the preparation of the report and what actions need to be taken."<a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Killian_documents_controversy#cite_note-101">[102]</a> <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dick_Thornburgh" title="Dick Thornburgh">Dick Thornburgh</a>, a <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Republican_Party%28United_States%29" title="Republican Party (United States)">Republican</a> former <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Governor_of_Pennsylvania" title="Governor of Pennsylvania" class="mw-redirect">governor of Pennsylvania</a> and <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_Attorney_General" title="United States Attorney General">United States Attorney General</a> under George H.W. Bush, and <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Louis_Boccardi" title="Louis Boccardi">Louis Boccardi</a>, retired president and chief executive officer and former executive editor of the <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Associated_Press" title="Associated Press">Associated Press</a>, made up the two-person review board. CBS also hired a <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Private_investigator" title="Private investigator">private investigator</a>, a former <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/FBI" title="FBI" class="mw-redirect">FBI</a> agent named Erik T. Rigler, to gather further information about the story.<a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Killian_documents_controversy#cite_note-102">[103]</a><h3>[<a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Killian_documents_controversy&action=edit&section=12" title="Edit section: Findings">edit</a>] Findings</h3>On January 5, 2005, the Report of the Independent Review Panel on the September 8, 2004, 60 Minutes Wednesday Segment "For the Record" Concerning President Bush's Air National Guard Service was released.<a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Killian_documents_controversy#cite_note-103">[104]</a> The purpose of the panel was to examine the process by which the September 8 Segment was prepared and broadcast,to examine the circumstances surrounding the subsequent public statements and news reports by CBS News defending the segment, and to make any recommendations it deemed appropriate. Among the Panel's conclusions were the following:<dl><dd>The most serious defects in the reporting and production of the September 8 Segment were:<ol><li>The failure to obtain clear authentication of any of the Killian documents from any document examiner;</li><li>The false statement in the September 8 Segment that an expert had authenticated the Killian documents when all he had done was authenticate one signature from one document used in the Segment;</li><li>The failure of 60 Minutes Wednesday management to scrutinize the publicly available, and at times controversial, background of the source of the documents, retired Texas Army National Guard Lieutenant Colonel Bill Burkett;</li><li>The failure to find and interview the individual who was understood at the outset to be Lieutenant Colonel Burkett’s source of the Killian documents, and thus to establish the chain of custody;</li><li>The failure to establish a basis for the statement in the Segment that the documents "were taken from Colonel Killian’s personal files";</li><li>The failure to develop adequate corroboration to support the statements in the Killian documents and to carefully compare the Killian documents to official TexANG records, which would have identified, at a minimum, notable inconsistencies in content and format;</li><li>The failure to interview a range of former National Guardsmen who served with Lieutenant Colonel Killian and who had different perspectives about the documents;</li><li>The misleading impression conveyed in the Segment that Lieutenant Strong had authenticated the content of the documents when he did not have the personal knowledge to do so;</li><li>The failure to have a vetting process capable of dealing effectively with the production speed, significance and sensitivity of the Segment; and</li><li>The telephone call prior to the Segment’s airing by the producer of the Segment to a senior campaign official of Democratic presidential candidate John Kerry — a clear conflict of interest — that created the appearance of a political bias.</li></ol></dd></dl><dl><dd>Once questions were raised about the September 8 Segment, the reporting thereafter was mishandled and compounded the damage done. Among the more egregious shortcomings during the Aftermath were:<ol><li>The strident defense of the September 8 Segment by CBS News without adequately probing whether any of the questions raised had merit;</li><li>Allowing many of the same individuals who produced and vetted the by-then controversial September 8 Segment to also produce the follow-up news reports defending the Segment;</li><li>The inaccurate press statements issued by CBS News after the broadcast of the Segment that the source of the documents was “unimpeachable” and that experts had vouched for their authenticity;</li><li>The misleading stories defending the Segment that aired on the CBS Evening News after September 8 despite strong and multiple indications of serious flaws;</li><li>The efforts by 60 Minutes Wednesday to find additional document examiners who would vouch for the authenticity of the documents instead of identifying the best examiners available regardless of whether they would support this position; and</li><li>Preparing news stories that sought to support the Segment, instead of providing accurate and balanced coverage of a raging controversy.</li></ol></dd></dl><h3>[<a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Killian_documents_controversy&action=edit&section=13" title="Edit section: Panel's view of the documents">edit</a>] Panel's view of the documents</h3>The Panel did not undertake a thorough examination of the authenticity of the Killian documents, but consulted Peter Tytell, a New York City-based forensic document examiner and typewriter and typography expert. Tytell had been contacted by 60 Minutes producers prior to the broadcast, and had informed associate producer Yvonne Miller and executive producer Josh Howard on September 10 that he believed the documents were forgeries. The Panel report stated, "The Panel met with Peter Tytell, and found his analysis sound in terms of why he thought the documents were not authentic...The Panel reaches no conclusion as to whether Tytell was correct in all respects."<a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Killian_documents_controversy#cite_note-Thornburgh-Boccardi_report.2C_pg.175-104">[105]</a><h2>[<a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Killian_documents_controversy&action=edit&section=14" title="Edit section: Aftermath">edit</a>] Aftermath</h2>The controversy had long-reaching personal, political and legal consequences. In a 2010 issue of <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/TV_Guide" title="TV Guide">TV Guide</a>, Rather's report was ranked #3 on a list of TV's ten biggest "blunders".<a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Killian_documents_controversy#cite_note-105">[106]</a><h3>[<a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Killian_documents_controversy&action=edit&section=15" title="Edit section: CBS personnel and programming changes">edit</a>] CBS personnel and programming changes</h3>CBS terminated Mary Mapes and demanded the resignations of 60 Minutes Wednesday Executive Producer Josh Howard and Howard's top deputy, Senior Broadcast Producer Mary Murphy, as well as Senior Vice President Betsy West, who had been in charge of all prime time newscasts. Murphy and West resigned on February 25, 2005,<a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Killian_documents_controversy#cite_note-106">[107]</a> and after settling a legal dispute regarding his level of responsibility for the segment, Josh Howard resigned on March 25, 2005.<a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Killian_documents_controversy#cite_note-107">[108]</a>Dan Rather also resigned as anchorman in 2005. It is unclear whether or not Rather's retirement was directly caused by this incident, although many believe that he had to step down a year earlier than planned.<a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Killian_documents_controversy#cite_note-108">[109]</a> <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Les_Moonves" title="Les Moonves" class="mw-redirect">Les Moonves</a>, CEO of CBS, stated "Dan Rather has already apologized for the segment and taken responsibility for his part in the broadcast. He voluntarily moved to set a date to step down from the 'CBS Evening News' in March 2005." He added, "We believe any further action would not be appropriate."<a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Killian_documents_controversy#cite_note-109">[110]</a>CBS was originally planning to show a '60 Minutes' report critical of the Bush administration justification for going to war in Iraq. This segment was replaced with the Killian documents segment. CBS further postponed airing the Iraq segment until after the election due to the controversy over the Killian documents. "We now believe it would be inappropriate to air the report so close to the presidential election," [note contrast to Cit United Hillary scam]CBS spokesman Kelli Edwards said in a statement.<a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Killian_documents_controversy#cite_note-110">[111]</a>After the Killian documents controversy, the show was renamed 60 Minutes Wednesday to differentiate it from the original <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/60_Minutes" title="60 Minutes">60 Minutes</a> Sunday edition, and reverted to its original title on July 8, 2005, when it was moved to the 8 p.m. Friday timeslot. It was cancelled in 2005 due to low ratings.<h3>[<a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Killian_documents_controversy&action=edit&section=16" title="Edit section: Mapes and Rather's view of the documents">edit</a>] Mapes and Rather's view of the documents</h3>On November 9, 2005, Mary Mapes gave an interview to ABC News correspondent Brian Ross. Mapes stated that the documents have never been proved to be forgeries.Ross expressed the view that the responsibility is on the reporter to verify their authenticity. Mapes responded with, "I don't think that's the standard." This stands in contrast to the statement of the president of CBS News that proof of authenticity is "the only acceptable journalistic standard." Also in November 2005, Mapes told readers of the Washington Post, "I personally believe the documents are not false," and "I was fired for airing a story that could not definitively be proved false but made CBS's public relations department cringe."<a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Killian_documents_controversy#cite_note-111">[112]</a> As of September 2007, Mapes continues to defend the authenticity of the documents: "the far right blogosphere bully boys...screamed objections that ultimately proved to have no basis in fact."<a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Killian_documents_controversy#cite_note-112">[113]</a> On November 7, 2006, Rather defended the report in a radio interview, and rejected the <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/CBS" title="CBS">CBS</a> investigation's findings. In response, CBS spokesman <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Kevin_Tedesco&action=edit&redlink=1" class="new" title="Kevin Tedesco (page does not exist)">Kevin Tedesco</a> told the<a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Associated_Press" title="Associated Press">Associated Press</a>, "CBS News stands by the report the independent panel issued on this matter and to this day, no one has been able to authenticate the documents in question."<a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Killian_documents_controversy#cite_note-apnov2006-113">[114]</a>Dan Rather continues to stand by the story, and in subsequent interviews has articulated that he believes that the documents have never conclusively been proven to be forgeries — and that even if the documents are false, that the underlying story is true.<a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Killian_documents_controversy#cite_note-114">[115]</a><h3>[<a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Killian_documents_controversy&action=edit&section=17" title="Edit section: Dan Rather's lawsuit against CBS/Viacom">edit</a>] Dan Rather's lawsuit against CBS/Viacom</h3>On September 19, 2007, <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dan_Rather" title="Dan Rather">Dan Rather</a> filed a $70 million lawsuit against <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/CBS" title="CBS">CBS</a> and its former corporate parent, <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Viacom" title="Viacom">Viacom</a>, claiming they had made him a "<a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scapegoat" title="Scapegoat">scapegoat</a>" over the controversy caused by the 2004 "<a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/60_Minutes_Wednesday" title="60 Minutes Wednesday" class="mw-redirect">60 Minutes Wednesday</a>" report that featured the Killian documents.<a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Killian_documents_controversy#cite_note-115">[116]</a> The suit names as defendants: <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/CBS" title="CBS">CBS</a> and its <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/CEO" title="CEO" class="mw-redirect">CEO</a>, <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Leslie_Moonves" title="Leslie Moonves">Leslie Moonves</a>; <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Viacom" title="Viacom">Viacom</a>, <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sumner_Redstone" title="Sumner Redstone">Sumner Redstone</a>, chairman of both Viacom and CBS Corporation; and <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Andrew_Heyward" title="Andrew Heyward">Andrew Heyward</a>, the former president of <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/CBS_News" title="CBS News">CBS News</a>.<a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Killian_documents_controversy#cite_note-116">[117]</a>In January, 2008, the legal teams for Dan Rather and CBS reached an agreement to produce for Rather's attorneys "virtually all of the materials" related to the case, including the findings of Erik T. Rigler's report to CBS about the documents and the story.<a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Killian_documents_controversy#cite_note-117">[118]</a>On September 29, 2009 New York State Appeals Court dismissed Dan Rather's lawsuit and stated that the lower court should have honored CBS's request to throw out the entire lawsuit instead of just throwing out parts.<a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Killian_documents_controversy#cite_note-118">[119]</a><h2>[<a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Killian_documents_controversy&action=edit&section=18" title="Edit section: Authentication issues">edit</a>] Authentication issues</h2><div class="rellink relarticle mainarticle">Main article: <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Killian_documents_authenticity_issues" title="Killian documents authenticity issues">Killian documents authenticity issues</a></div>No generally recognized document experts have positively authenticated the memos. Since CBS used only faxed and photocopied duplicates, authentication to professional standards is impossible, regardless of the provenance of the originals.Document experts have challenged the authenticity of the documents as photocopies of valid originals on a variety of grounds ranging from anachronisms of their typography, their quick reproducibility using modern technology, and to errors in their content and style.<a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Killian_documents_controversy#cite_note-wapoexpert-119">[120]</a>The CBS independent panel report did not specifically take up the question of whether the documents were forgeries, but retained a document expert, Peter Tytell, who concluded the documents used by CBS were most likely produced using modern technology.<a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Killian_documents_controversy#cite_note-120">[121]</a><dl><dd>Tytell concluded ... that (i) the relevant portion of the Superscript Exemplar was produced on an Olympia manual typewriter, (ii) the Killian documents were not produced on an Olympia manual typewriter and (iii) the Killian documents were produced on a computer in Times New Roman typestyle [and that] the Killian documents were not produced on a typewriter in the early 1970s and therefore were not authentic.</dd></dl>Dr. David Hailey, director of the Interactive Media Research Labs in the English Department of <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Utah_State_University" title="Utah State University">Utah State University</a> has argued that the Killian documents were not in Times New Roman, and were produced on an unspecified typewriter, though he does not assert their authenticity.<a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Killian_documents_controversy#cite_note-hailey-121">[122]</a><h2>[<a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Killian_documents_controversy&action=edit&section=19" title="Edit section: Accusations of bias">edit</a>] Accusations of bias</h2>Some critics of CBS and Dan Rather argued that by proceeding with the story when the documents had not been authenticated, CBS was exhibiting <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Liberal_bias" title="Liberal bias" class="mw-redirect">liberal bias</a> and attempting to influence the outcome of the <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2004_U.S.Presidential_Election" title="2004 U.S. Presidential Election" class="mw-redirect">2004 U.S. Presidential Election</a>. Freelance journalist Michael Smith had emailed Mapes, asking, "What if there was a person who might have some information that could possibly change the momentum of an election but we needed to get an ASAP book deal to help get us the information?" Mapes replied, "that looks good, hypothetically speaking of course."<a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Killian_documents_controversy#cite_note-122">[123]</a> The Thornburgh-Boccardi report found that Mapes' contact with Kerry adviser Joe Lockhart was "highly inappropriate", and that it "crossed the line as, at a minimum, it gave the appearance of a political bias and could have been perceived as a news organizations' assisting a campaign as opposed to reporting on a story,"<a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Killian_documents_controversy#cite_note-Thornburgh-Boccardi_report.2C_pg.175-104">[105]</a> however, the Panel did not "find a basis to accuse those who investigated, produced, vetted or aired the Segment of having a political bias."<a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Killian_documents_controversy#cite_note-123">[124]</a> In a later interview with <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Washington_Post" title="The Washington Post">The Washington Post</a>, when asked about the issue of political bias, review panel member Louis Boccardi said "bias is a hard thing to prove."<a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Killian_documents_controversy#cite_note-124">[125]</a> The panel concluded that the problems occurred "primarily because of a rush to air that overwhelmed the proper application of the CBS News Standards".<a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Killian_documents_controversy#cite_note-125">[126]</a> Some Democratic critics of Bush suggested that the memos were produced by the Bush campaign to discredit the media's reporting on Bush's National Guard service. The chairman of the <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Democratic_National_Committee" title="Democratic National Committee">Democratic National Committee</a>, <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Terry_McAuliffe" title="Terry McAuliffe">Terry McAuliffe</a>, suggested that the memos might have originated with long-time Bush strategist <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Karl_Rove" title="Karl Rove">Karl Rove</a>. McAuliffe told reporters on September 10, "I can tell you that nobody at the Democratic National Committee or groups associated with us were involved in any way with these documents," he said. "I'm just saying that I would ask Karl Rove the same question."<a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Killian_documents_controversy#cite_note-126">[127]</a><a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Killian_documents_controversy#cite_note-127">[128]</a> McAuliffe later pointed out that Rove and another Republican operative,<a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ralph_E.Reed,Jr." title="Ralph E. Reed, Jr.">Ralph E. Reed, Jr.</a>, had "a known history of dirty tricks," and he asked whether <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Republican_National_Committee" title="Republican National Committee">Republican National Committee</a> chairman <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ed_Gillespie" title="Ed Gillespie">Ed Gillespie</a> would rule out any involvement by GOP consultant <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Roger_Stone" title="Roger Stone">Roger Stone</a>.<a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Killian_documents_controversy#cite_note-128">[129]</a><a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Killian_documents_controversy#cite_note-129">[130]</a> At a community forum in <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Utica,New_York" title="Utica, New York">Utica, New York</a> in 2005, <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_House_of_Representatives" title="United States House of Representatives">U.S. Representative</a> <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Maurice_Hinchey" title="Maurice Hinchey">Maurice Hinchey</a> (D-NY) pointed out that the controversy served Rove's objectives: "Once they did that, then it undermined everything else about Bush's draft dodging. ... That had the effect of taking the whole issue away."<a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Killian_documents_controversy#cite_note-Brooks-130">[131]</a> After being criticized, Hinchey responded, "I didn't allege I had any facts. I said this is what I believe and take it for what it's worth."<a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Killian_documents_controversy#cite_note-Brooks-130">[131]</a>Rove and Stone have denied any involvement.<a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Killian_documents_controversy#cite_note-131">[132]</a><a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Killian_documents_controversy#cite_note-132">[133]</a> In a 2008 interview in <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_New_Yorker" title="The New Yorker">The New Yorker</a>, Stone said "It was nuts to think I had anything to do with those documents...[t]hose papers were potentially devastating to George Bush. You couldn’t put them out there assuming that they would be discredited. You couldn’t have assumed that this would redound to Bush’s benefit. I believe in bank shots, but that one was too big a risk."<a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Killian_documents_controversy#cite_note-133">[134]</a><h2> See also</h2><div class="noprint tright portal" style="border: 1px solid rgb(170, 170, 170); margin: 0.5em 0px 0.5em 0.5em;"><table style="background: rgb(249, 249, 249); line-height: 17.6px; max-width: 175px;"><tbody><tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Flag_of_the_United_States.svg" class="image"><img alt="Portal icon" src="file:///C:/DATAleno/BRAINS/webodec3_brain/Files/702CB82C-21FE-BA97-CD94-ADAE9E3336B1/PersonalBrain%20Notes/downloadedimagefile2.png" width="32" height="17" /></a></td><td style="padding: 0px 0.2em; vertical-align: middle;"><a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Portal:United_States" title="Portal:United States">United States portal</a></td></tr><tr valign="middle"><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:A_coloured_voting_box.svg" class="image"><img alt="Portal icon" src="file:///C:/DATAleno/BRAINS/webodec3_brain/Files/702CB82C-21FE-BA97-CD94-ADAE9E3336B1/PersonalBrain%20Notes/downloadedimagefile3.png" width="28" height="28" /></a></td><td style="padding: 0px 0.2em; vertical-align: middle;"><a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Portal:Politics" title="Portal:Politics">Politics portal</a></td></tr><tr valign="middle"><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Newspaper_nicu_buculei_01.svg" class="image"><img alt="Portal icon" src="file:///C:/DATAleno/BRAINS/webodec3_brain/Files/702CB82C-21FE-BA97-CD94-ADAE9E3336B1/PersonalBrain%20Notes/downloadedimagefile4.png" width="28" height="28" /></a></td><td style="padding: 0px 0.2em; vertical-align: middle;"><a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Portal:Journalism" title="Portal:Journalism">Journalism portal</a></td></tr></tbody></table></div><ul><li><a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/George_W.Bush_military_service_controversy" title="George W. Bush military service controversy">George W. Bush military service controversy</a></li><li><a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Questioned_document_examination" title="Questioned document examination">Questioned document examination</a></li></ul>  <h2>[<a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Killian_documents_controversy&action=edit&section=21" title="Edit section: Footnotes">edit</a>] Footnotes</h2><div class="reflist references-column-count references-column-count-2" style="column-count: 2; list-style-type: decimal;"><ol class="references"><li id="cite_note-0"><a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Killian_documents_controversy#cite_ref-0">^{</a> }The name "Rathergate" is used by people who believe the superscripted "th" glyphs in the memos show that they were produced on a computer. For <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Killian_documents_authenticity_issues#Superscripted.22th.22" title="Killian documents authenticity issues">more information</a>, see the companion article.</li><li id="cite_note-1"><a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Killian_documents_controversy#cite_ref-1">^{</a> }Two entitled "Memo to File," one "Memorandum," and one "Memorandum for Record," see here <a rel="nofollow" class="external autonumber" href="http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-srv/politics/documents/bush_guard_memos.pdf">[1]</a> for <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pdf" title="Pdf" class="mw-redirect">pdf</a> versions at the <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Washington_Post" title="Washington Post" class="mw-redirect">Washington Post</a> website.</li><li id="cite_note-2"><a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Killian_documents_controversy#cite_ref-2">^{</a> }Dobbs, Michael and Howard Kurtz (September 14, 2004). <a rel="nofollow" class="external text" href="http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn/A18982-2004Sep13?language=printer">"Expert Cited by CBS Says He Didn't Authenticate Papers."</a>. The Washington Post. Retrieved 2008-03-14.</li><li id="cite_note-3"><a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Killian_documents_controversy#cite_ref-3">^{</a> }Ross, Brian and Howard Rosenberg (September 14, 2004). <a rel="nofollow" class="external text" href="http://abcnews.go.com/WNT/Investigation/Story?id=131423&page=1">"Document Analysts: CBS News Ignored Doubts."</a>. ABC News. Retrieved 2008-03-14.</li><li id="cite_note-4"><a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Killian_documents_controversy#cite_ref-4">^{</a> }<a rel="nofollow" class="external text" href="http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/6807825/">"CBS ousts 4 over Bush Guard story."</a>. Associated Press. January 10, 2005. Retrieved 2008-03-14.: "Boccardi and Thornburgh found that Mapes had said the documents were authenticated, when in fact she had found only one expert to vouch for only one signature in the memo."</li><li id="cite_note-5"><a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Killian_documents_controversy#cite_ref-5">^{</a> }Including Peter Tytell and Thomas Phinney, as well as a Joseph Newcomer, a man with 35 years of computer font technology experience. See: Last, Jonathan. <a rel="nofollow" class="external text" href="http://www.weeklystandard.com/Content/Public/Articles/000/000/005/124mrhci.asp?pg=1">"It's Worse Than You Thought"</a>. Retrieved 2008-03-10. The Weekly Standard, January 11, 2005, and Cohen, Sandee. <a rel="nofollow" class="external text" href="http://www.creativepro.com/story/feature/21939.html?cprose=5-39">Making Headlines, Not Setting Them</a>, creativepro.com, September 23, 2004.</li><li id="cite_note-6"><a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Killian_documents_controversy#cite_ref-6">^{</a> }Also, Bill Flynn, "one of country's top authorities on document authentication."<a rel="nofollow" class="external text" href="http://abcnews.go.com/Politics/Vote2004/Story?id=123461&page=2">"Officer's Widow Questions Bush Guard Memos."</a>. ABC News. September 10, 2004. Retrieved 2008-03-18. and document expert Sandra Ramsey Lines: "'I'm virtually certain these were computer generated,'" <a rel="nofollow" class="external text" href="http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2004/09/10/politics/main642729.shtml">"Bush Guard Memos Questioned"</a>. CBS News. September 10, 2004. Retrieved 2008-03-12. CBS News, September 10, 2004</li><li id="cite_note-7"><a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Killian_documents_controversy#cite_ref-7">^{</a> }"Because the memos were copies, Matley said in a recent interview, "there's no way that I, as a document expert, can authenticate them." <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Howard_Kurtz" title="Howard Kurtz">Kurtz, Howard</a>, et al., <a rel="nofollow" class="external text" href="http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A31727-2004Sep18_2.html">"In Rush to Air, CBS Quashed Memo Worries."</a>. The Washington Post. September 19, 2004. Retrieved 2008-03-12. The Washington Post, September 18, 2004. Marcel Matley was one of the four document examiners originally retained by CBS to examine the Killian documents.</li><li id="cite_note-8"><a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Killian_documents_controversy#cite_ref-8">^{</a> }Dave Moniz, Kevin Johnson and Jim Drinkard (September 21, 2004). <a rel="nofollow" class="external text" href="http://www.usatoday.com/news/politicselections/nation/president/2004-09-21-cover-guard_x.htm">"CBS backs off Guard story"</a>. USA Today. Retrieved 2008-03-18.</li><li id="cite_note-9"><a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Killian_documents_controversy#cite_ref-9">^{</a> }TB report, p. 137.</li><li id="cite_note-10"><a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Killian_documents_controversy#cite_ref-10">^{</a> }TB report, p. 137: "This statement was without factual support...It is without question, however, that Matley [the expert referenced] did not authenticate any of the documents in question."</li><li id="cite_note-memmot-11">^ <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Killian_documents_controversy#cite_ref-memmot_11-0">a</a> <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Killian_documents_controversy#cite_ref-memmot_11-1">b</a> Memmot, Mark (September 21, 2004). <a rel="nofollow" class="external text" href="http://www.usatoday.com/news/politicselections/nation/president/2004-09-21-guard-scoops-skepticism_x.htm">"Scoops and skepticism: How the story unfolded."</a>. USA Today. Retrieved 2008-03-21.</li><li id="cite_note-rather_statement-12">^ <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Killian_documents_controversy#cite_ref-rather_statement_12-0">a</a> <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Killian_documents_controversy#cite_ref-rather_statement_12-1">b</a> <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Killian_documents_controversy#cite_ref-rather_statement_12-2">c</a> <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Killian_documents_controversy#cite_ref-rather_statement_12-3">d</a> <a rel="nofollow" class="external text" href="http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2004/09/20/politics/main644546.shtml">"Dan Rather Statement On Memos"</a>. CBS News. September 20, 2005. Retrieved 2006-03-20.</li><li id="cite_note-CBS_statement_on_panel-13">^ <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Killian_documents_controversy#cite_ref-CBS_statement_on_panel_13-0">a</a> <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Killian_documents_controversy#cite_ref-CBS_statement_on_panel_13-1">b</a> <a rel="nofollow" class="external text" href="http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2004/09/06/politics/main641481.shtml">"CBS Names Memo Probe Panel"</a>. CBS News. September 22, 2004. Retrieved 2006-03-20.</li><li id="cite_note-14"><a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Killian_documents_controversy#cite_ref-14">^{</a> }<a rel="nofollow" class="external text" href="http://wwwimage.cbsnews.com/htdocs/pdf/complete_report/CBS_Report.pdf">"Thornburgh-Boccardi report"</a> (PDF). CBS News. Retrieved 2005-12-21.</li><li id="cite_note-15"><a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Killian_documents_controversy#cite_ref-15">^{</a> }Burkett, Bill. <a rel="nofollow" class="external text" href="http://www.onlinejournal.com/bush/031903Burkett/031903burkett.html">"What do you say?"</a>. Retrieved 2008-03-12.onlinejournal.com, March 19, 2003.</li><li id="cite_note-16"><a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Killian_documents_controversy#cite_ref-16">^{</a> }See Ripley, Amanda (September 13, 2004). <a rel="nofollow" class="external text" href="http://www.time.com/time/magazine/printout/0,8816,1101040920-695873,00.html">"The X Files Of Lt. Bush: A flurry of contested memos and memories sheds more heat than light on his record"</a>. Time Magazine. Retrieved 2008-03-25. and Dobbs, Michael (September 12, 2004). <a rel="nofollow" class="external text" href="http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A14627-2004Sep11.html">"Gaps in Service Continue to Dog Bush"</a>. The Washington Post. Retrieved 2008-03-25.</li><li id="cite_note-17"><a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Killian_documents_controversy#cite_ref-17">^{</a> }Thornburgh-Boccardi report, p. 53.</li><li id="cite_note-18"><a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Killian_documents_controversy#cite_ref-18">^{</a> }Moniz, Dave; Drinkard, Jim; and Kevin Johnson (September 21, 2004). <a rel="nofollow" class="external text" href="http://www.usatoday.com/news/politicselections/nation/president/2004-09-21-burkett-side_x.htm">"Texan has made allegations for years"</a>. USA Today. Retrieved 2008-03-13.</li><li id="cite_note-19"><a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Killian_documents_controversy#cite_ref-19">^{</a> }Bill Burkett (March 19, 2003). <a rel="nofollow" class="external text" href="http://onlinejournal.com/bush/031903Burkett/031903burkett.html">"What do you say?"</a>. Online Journal. Retrieved 2006-03-20.</li><li id="cite_note-20"><a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Killian_documents_controversy#cite_ref-20">^{</a> }Michael Rezendes (February 13, 2004). <a rel="nofollow" class="external text" href="http://www.boston.com/news/nation/articles/2004/02/13/doubts_raised_on_bush_accuser?mode=PF">"Doubts raised on Bush accuser"</a>. Boston Globe online. Retrieved 2005-12-20.</li><li id="cite_note-21"><a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Killian_documents_controversy#cite_ref-21">^{</a> }Robinson, Walter V. (December 11, 2005). <a rel="nofollow" class="external text" href="http://www.boston.com/ae/books/articles/2005/12/11/truth_and_duty_a_distorted_lens/?page=2">"Truth and Duty: a distorted lens"</a>. The Boston Globe. Retrieved 2008-03-13.</li><li id="cite_note-22"><a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Killian_documents_controversy#cite_ref-22">^{</a> }Johnson, Kevin; Moniz, Dave; and Jim Drinkard (September 20, 2004). <a rel="nofollow" class="external text" href="http://www.usatoday.com/news/politicselections/nation/president/2004-09-20-cbs-documents_x.htm">"CBS arranged for meeting with Lockhart"</a>. USA Today. Retrieved 2008-03-14.</li><li id="cite_note-23"><a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Killian_documents_controversy#cite_ref-23">^{</a> }Thornburgh-Boccardi report, pp. 60–62</li><li id="cite_note-24"><a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Killian_documents_controversy#cite_ref-24">^{</a> }Thornburgh-Boccardi report, pp. 64–65</li><li id="cite_note-25"><a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Killian_documents_controversy#cite_ref-25">^{</a> }Dave Moniz, Kevin Johnson and Jim Drinkard (September 21, 2004). <a rel="nofollow" class="external text" href="http://www.usatoday.com/news/politicselections/nation/president/2004-09-21-cover-guard_x.htm">"CBS backs off Guard story"</a>. USA Today. Retrieved 2008-03-14.</li><li id="cite_note-26"><a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Killian_documents_controversy#cite_ref-26">^{</a> }<a rel="nofollow" class="external text" href="http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2004/09/08/60II/main641984.shtml">"New Questions on Bush Guard Duty"</a>. CBS News. September 8, 2004. Retrieved 2008-03-14.</li><li id="cite_note-27"><a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Killian_documents_controversy#cite_ref-27">^{</a> }Thornburgh-Boccardi report, pp. 90–91</li><li id="cite_note-28"><a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Killian_documents_controversy#cite_ref-28">^{</a> }Carl Cameron et al. (September 22, 2004). <a rel="nofollow" class="external text" href="http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,132996,00.html">"Kerry Aide Talked to Bush Guard Docs Figure"</a>. FoxNews.com. Retrieved 2008-03-14.</li><li id="cite_note-29"><a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Killian_documents_controversy#cite_ref-29">^{</a> }<a rel="nofollow" class="external text" href="http://www.cbsnews.com/htdocs/pdf/BushGuardmay4.pdf">"Memorandum, May 4, 1972"</a> (PDF). CBS News. Retrieved 2006-03-17.</li><li id="cite_note-30"><a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Killian_documents_controversy#cite_ref-30">^{</a> }<a rel="nofollow" class="external text" href="http://www.cbsnews.com/htdocs/pdf/BushGuardaugust1.pdf">"Memorandum for Record, August 1, 1972"</a> (PDF). CBS News. Retrieved 2006-03-17.</li><li id="cite_note-31"><a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Killian_documents_controversy#cite_ref-31">^{</a> }<a rel="nofollow" class="external text" href="http://www.cbsnews.com/htdocs/pdf/BushGuardmay19.pdf">"Memo to File, May 19, 1972"</a> (PDF). CBS News. Retrieved 2006-03-17.</li><li id="cite_note-32"><a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Killian_documents_controversy#cite_ref-32">^{</a> }<a rel="nofollow" class="external text" href="http://www.cbsnews.com/htdocs/pdf/BushGuardaugust18.pdf">"Memo to File, August 18, 1973"</a> (PDF). CBS News. Retrieved 2006-03-17.</li><li id="cite_note-33"><a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Killian_documents_controversy#cite_ref-33">^{</a> }Moniz, Dave and Drinkard, Jim (2004-09-09). <a rel="nofollow" class="external text" href="http://www.usatoday.com/news/politicselections/nation/president/2004-09-09-bush-guard-memos_x.htm">"Guard commander's memos criticize Bush."</a>. USA Today. Retrieved 2008-03-17.</li><li id="cite_note-34"><a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Killian_documents_controversy#cite_ref-34">^{</a> }<a rel="nofollow" class="external text" href="http://www.usatoday.com/news/nation/2004-09-09bushdocs.pdf">"Bush documents obtained by USA TODAY"</a> (PDF). USA Today. Retrieved 2006-03-17.</li><li id="cite_note-usatoday_cbsbacksoff-35">^ <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Killian_documents_controversy#cite_ref-usatoday_cbsbacksoff_35-0">a</a> <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Killian_documents_controversy#cite_ref-usatoday_cbsbacksoff_35-1">b</a> Dave Moniz, Kevin Johnson and Jim Drinkard (September 21, 2004). <a rel="nofollow" class="external text" href="http://www.usatoday.com/news/politicselections/nation/president/2004-09-21-cover-guard_x.htm">"CBS backs off Guard story"</a>. USA TODAY. Retrieved 2005-12-20.</li><li id="cite_note-36"><a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Killian_documents_controversy#cite_ref-36">^{</a> }<a rel="nofollow" class="external text" href="http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2004/09/10/politics/main642729.shtml">"Bush Guard Memos Questioned."</a>. CBS News, Associated Press. September 10, 2004. Retrieved 2005-12-20.</li><li id="cite_note-37"><a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Killian_documents_controversy#cite_ref-37">^{</a> }Thornburgh-Boccardi report, p.88</li><li id="cite_note-38"><a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Killian_documents_controversy#cite_ref-38">^{</a> }Thornburgh-Boccardi report, p. 129.</li><li id="cite_note-39"><a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Killian_documents_controversy#cite_ref-39">^{</a> }Michael Dobbs and Mike Allen (September 9, 2004). <a rel="nofollow" class="external text" href="http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A9967-2004Sep9.html">"Some Question Authenticity of Papers on Bush"</a>. Washington Post. 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Retrieved 2008-03-25.</li><li id="cite_note-95"><a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Killian_documents_controversy#cite_ref-95">^{</a> }Hagan, Joe (February 27, 2005). <a rel="nofollow" class="external text" href="http://www.observer.com/node/50441">"CBS News' Boss Hired Private Eye To Source Memos"</a>. The New York Observer. Retrieved 2008-03-24.</li><li id="cite_note-96"><a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Killian_documents_controversy#cite_ref-96">^{</a> }<a rel="nofollow" class="external text" href="http://georgewbush-whitehouse.archives.gov/news/releases/2004/09/20040915-3.html">"Scott McClellan briefing, September 15, 2004, at"</a>. Georgewbush-whitehouse.archives.gov. 2004-09-15. Retrieved 2010-05-24.</li><li id="cite_note-97"><a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Killian_documents_controversy#cite_ref-97">^{</a> }Dobbs, Michael (September 15, 2004). <a rel="nofollow" class="external text" href="http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A24635-2004Sep15.html">"CBS Guard Documents Traced to Tex. Kinko's"</a>. The Washington Post. p. A06. Retrieved 2006-03-20.</li><li id="cite_note-98"><a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Killian_documents_controversy#cite_ref-98">^{</a> }Jarrett Murphy (February 11, 2009). <a rel="nofollow" class="external text" href="http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2004/09/20/politics/main644539.shtml">"CBS Statement On Bush Memos"</a>. CBS News. Retrieved 2011-07-27.</li><li id="cite_note-99"><a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Killian_documents_controversy#cite_ref-99">^{</a> }Rutenberg, Jim and Prendergast, Mark J. (September 20, 2004). <a rel="nofollow" class="external text" href="http://www.nytimes.com/2004/09/20/politics/campaign/20CND-GUAR.html?r=1&hp&oref=slogin">"CBS Asserts It Was Misled by Ex-Officer on Bush Documents"</a>. The New York Times. Retrieved 2008-03-25.</li><li id="cite_note-100"><a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Killian_documents_controversy#cite_ref-100">^{</a> }<a rel="nofollow" class="external text" href="http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2004/09/20/politics/main644539.shtml">"CBS Statement On Bush Memos"</a>. CBS News. September 20, 2004. Retrieved 2006-03-20.</li><li id="cite_note-101"><a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Killian_documents_controversy#cite_ref-101">^{</a> }<a rel="nofollow" class="external text" href="http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2004/09/22/politics/main644969.shtml">"CBS News Statement On Panel"</a>. CBS News. September 22, 2004. Retrieved 2006-03-20.</li><li id="cite_note-102"><a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Killian_documents_controversy#cite_ref-102">^{</a> }Hagen, Joe (March 13, 2005). <a rel="nofollow" class="external text" href="http://www.observer.com/node/50507">"Dan Rather's Long Goodbye: Who Done It?"</a>. The New York Observer. Retrieved 2008-03-24.</li><li id="cite_note-103"><a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Killian_documents_controversy#cite_ref-103">^{</a> }Dick Thornburgh and Louis D. Boccardi, <a rel="nofollow" class="external text" href="http://wwwimage.cbsnews.com/htdocs/pdf/complete_report/CBS_Report.pdf">Review of the Independent Review Panel</a>. CBS News: January 5, 2005</li><li id="cite_note-Thornburgh-Boccardi_report.2C_pg.175-104">^ <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Killian_documents_controversy#cite_ref-Thornburgh-Boccardi_report.2C_pg.175_104-0">a</a> <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Killian_documents_controversy#cite_ref-Thornburgh-Boccardi_report.2C_pg.175_104-1">b</a> Thornburgh-Boccardi report, pg. 175</li><li id="cite_note-105"><a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Killian_documents_controversy#cite_ref-105">^{</a> }Battaglio, Stephen. "The Blunder Years", <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/TV_Guide" title="TV Guide">TV Guide</a>, November 1, 2010, Pages 20-21</li><li id="cite_note-106"><a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Killian_documents_controversy#cite_ref-106">^{</a> }Jacques Steinberg (February 26, 2005). "2 Involved in Flawed Report at CBS Resign". The New York Times: p. B18.</li><li id="cite_note-107"><a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Killian_documents_controversy#cite_ref-107">^{</a> }<a rel="nofollow" class="external text" href="http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,151180,00.html">"Final Figure in '60 Minutes' Scandal Resigns"</a>. Fox News. Associated Press. March 25, 2005. Retrieved 2006-03-20.</li><li id="cite_note-108"><a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Killian_documents_controversy#cite_ref-108">^{</a> }<a rel="nofollow" class="external text" href="http://archive.salon.com/opinion/feature/2005/03/09/rather/index.html">"Who killed Dan Rather?"</a>. Salon.com. March 9, 2005. Retrieved 2007-03-23.</li><li id="cite_note-109"><a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Killian_documents_controversy#cite_ref-109">^{</a> }Carter, Bill (January 11, 2005). <a rel="nofollow" class="external text" href="http://www.nytimes.com/2005/01/11/business/media/11network.html?pagewanted=1&ei=5094&en=36f0636021244f73&hp&ex=1105506000&partner=homepage">"Analysis: Post-Mortem of CBS's Flawed Broadcast"</a>. The New York Times. Retrieved 2008-03-24.</li><li id="cite_note-110"><a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Killian_documents_controversy#cite_ref-110">^{</a> }Zernike, Kate (2004-09-25). <a rel="nofollow" class="external text" href="http://www.nytimes.com/2004/09/25/politics/campaign/25cbs.html?ex=1253851200&en=5c69abd689bb79d5&ei=5088&partner=rssnyt">"'60 Minutes' Delays Report Questioning Reasons for Iraq War"</a>. The New York Times. Retrieved 2007-09-20.</li><li id="cite_note-111"><a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Killian_documents_controversy#cite_ref-111">^{</a> }Mapes, Mary (November 11, 2005). <a rel="nofollow" class="external text" href="http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/discussion/2005/11/10/DI2005111001414.html?nav=nsc">""Final Days at "60 Minutes""</a>. The Washington Post. Retrieved 2008-03-25.</li><li id="cite_note-112"><a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Killian_documents_controversy#cite_ref-112">^{</a> }Mapes, Mary (2007-09-20). <a rel="nofollow" class="external text" href="http://www.huffingtonpost.com/mary-mapes/courage-for-dan-rather_b_65257.html">"Courage for Dan Rather"</a>. The Huffington Post. Retrieved 2008-01-22.</li><li id="cite_note-apnov2006-113"><a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Killian_documents_controversy#cite_ref-apnov2006_113-0">^{</a> }Baker, Mike (2006-11-07). <a rel="nofollow" class="external text" href="http://www.heraldsun.com/state/6-785989.html">"Rather defends discredited 60 Minutes segment in radio interview"</a>. Associated Press. Retrieved 2006-11-10.</li><li id="cite_note-114"><a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Killian_documents_controversy#cite_ref-114">^{</a> }<a rel="nofollow" class="external text" href="http://www.newsobserver.com/308/story/507427.html">"Transcript of WPTF interview with Dan Rather"</a>. The News & Observer. Retrieved 2006-11-09.</li><li id="cite_note-115"><a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Killian_documents_controversy#cite_ref-115">^{</a> }<a rel="nofollow" class="external text" href="http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/20874051">"Rather files $70 million lawsuit against CBS Newsman alleges network made him ‘scapegoat’ for discredited story"</a>. Associated Press. September 20, 2007. Retrieved 2008-03-24.</li><li id="cite_note-116"><a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Killian_documents_controversy#cite_ref-116">^{</a> }A PDF copy of the suit can be found on at <a rel="nofollow" class="external autonumber" href="http://www.aolcdn.com/tmz_documents/0919_don_rather_wm_01.pdf">[2]</a>.</li><li id="cite_note-117"><a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Killian_documents_controversy#cite_ref-117">^{</a> }Gilette, Felix (January 23, 2008). <a rel="nofollow" class="external text" href="http://www.observer.com/2008/cbs-agrees-hand-over-rigler-report-rathers-legal-team">"CBS Agrees to Hand Over 'Rigler Report' to Rather's Legal Team"</a>. The New York Observer. Retrieved 2008-03-24.</li><li id="cite_note-118"><a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Killian_documents_controversy#cite_ref-118">^{</a> }<a rel="nofollow" class="external text" href="http://news.yahoo.com/s/nm/20090929/tv_nm/us_rather_cbs_1">Appeals court dismisses Dan Rather's suit vs. CBS</a>[<a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Link_rot" title="Wikipedia:Link rot">dead link</a>]</li><li id="cite_note-wapoexpert-119"><a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Killian_documents_controversy#cite_ref-wapoexpert_119-0">^{</a> }Kurtz, Howard <a rel="nofollow" class="external text" href="http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A21675-2004Sep14.html?nav=hcmodule">Document Experts Say CBS Ignored Memo 'Red Flags'</a>Washington Post'.' Retrieved April 2006.</li><li id="cite_note-120"><a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Killian_documents_controversy#cite_ref-120">^{</a> }<a rel="nofollow" class="external text" href="http://wwwimage.cbsnews.com/htdocs/pdf/complete_report/appendix_4.pdf">"Thornburg-Boccardi Report, Appendix 4"</a> (PDF). CBS News. Retrieved 2005-12-21.</li><li id="cite_note-hailey-121"><a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Killian_documents_controversy#cite_ref-hailey_121-0">^{</a> }David Hailey, PhD. <a rel="nofollow" class="external text" href="http://imrl.usu.edu/bush_memo_study/index.htm">"The Second of Two Examinations of the "Killian Memos""</a>. Retrieved 2006-03-20.</li><li id="cite_note-122"><a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Killian_documents_controversy#cite_ref-122">^{</a> }Thornburgh-Boccardi report, pg. 62</li><li id="cite_note-123"><a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Killian_documents_controversy#cite_ref-123">^{</a> }Thornburgh-Boccardi Report, pg. 211</li><li id="cite_note-124"><a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Killian_documents_controversy#cite_ref-124">^{</a> }<a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Washington_Post" title="The Washington Post">The Washington Post</a>, January 11, 2005; Page A01, <a rel="nofollow" class="external text" href="http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A2148-2005Jan11.html">washingtonpost.com</a></li><li id="cite_note-125"><a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Killian_documents_controversy#cite_ref-125">^{</a> }Thornburgh-Boccardi Report, pg. 221</li><li id="cite_note-126"><a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Killian_documents_controversy#cite_ref-126">^{</a> }Noelle Straub (September 11, 2004). "CBS; Guard memos are authentic; Dems rip Bush's service". The Boston Herald: p. 10.</li><li id="cite_note-127"><a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Killian_documents_controversy#cite_ref-127">^{</a> }Robert Sam Anson (September 20, 2004). "Who Is Buckhead? Kerry Assaulter Seemed Prepped". New York Observer: p. 1. via Lexis/Nexis</li><li id="cite_note-128"><a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Killian_documents_controversy#cite_ref-128">^{</a> }Matthew Continetti (October 4, 2004). "The Case of the Phony Memos". The Weekly Standard. via Lexis/Nexis</li><li id="cite_note-129"><a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Killian_documents_controversy#cite_ref-129">^{</a> }Stephen Dinan and Bill Sammon (September 22, 2004). <a rel="nofollow" class="external text" href="http://washingtontimes.com/national/20040922-122835-2135r.htm">"Kerry camp rejects CBS link"</a>. The Washington Times: p. A01. Retrieved 2006-03-20.</li><li id="cite_note-Brooks-130">^ <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Killian_documents_controversy#cite_ref-Brooks_130-0">a</a> <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Killian_documents_controversy#cite_ref-Brooks_130-1">b</a> Brooks, Paul (February 22, 2005). <a rel="nofollow" class="external text" href="http://archive.recordonline.com/archive/2005/02/22/hinchey2.htm">"Hinchey sees hand of Rove"</a>. <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Times_Herald-Record" title="Times Herald-Record">Times Herald-Record</a>.</li><li id="cite_note-131"><a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Killian_documents_controversy#cite_ref-131">^{</a> }<a rel="nofollow" class="external text" href="http://www.washtimes.com/national/20040922-101433-4296r.htm">"Rove rejects charges he was CBS source"</a>. The Washington Times. September 22, 2004. Retrieved 2005-12-21.</li><li id="cite_note-132"><a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Killian_documents_controversy#cite_ref-132">^{</a> }Kasindorf, Martin; Benedetto, Richard (September 21, 2004). <a rel="nofollow" class="external text" href="http://www.usatoday.com/news/politicselections/nation/president/2004-09-21-cbs-parties_x.htm">"Parties lob accusations over suspect papers"</a>. USA Today. Retrieved 2005-12-21.</li><li id="cite_note-133"><a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Killian_documents_controversy#cite_ref-133">^{</a> }Toobin, Jeffrey (June 2, 2008). <a rel="nofollow" class="external text" href="http://www.newyorker.com/reporting/2008/06/02/080602fa_fact_toobin?currentPage=all">"The Dirty Trickster"</a>. The New Yorker. Retrieved 2008-06-14.</li></ol></div><h2>[<a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Killian_documents_controversy&action=edit&section=22" title="Edit section: External links">edit</a>] External links</h2><h3>[<a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Killian_documents_controversy&action=edit&section=23" title="Edit section: Killian documents PDF files">edit</a>] Killian documents PDF files</h3>These are the Killian documents supplied to CBS Reports by Bill Burkett:<ul><li><a rel="nofollow" class="external text" href="http://www.cbsnews.com/htdocs/pdf/BushGuardmay4.pdf">Memorandum, May 4, 1972</a> (CBS News)</li><li><a rel="nofollow" class="external text" href="http://www.cbsnews.com/htdocs/pdf/BushGuardmay19.pdf">Memo to File, May 19, 1972</a> (CBS News)</li><li><a rel="nofollow" class="external text" href="http://www.cbsnews.com/htdocs/pdf/BushGuardaugust1.pdf">Memorandum For Record, August 1, 1972</a> (CBS News)</li><li><a rel="nofollow" class="external text" href="http://www.cbsnews.com/htdocs/pdf/BushGuardaugust18.pdf">Memo to File, August 18, 1973</a> (CBS News)</li><li><a rel="nofollow" class="external text" href="http://www.usatoday.com/news/nation/2004-09-09bushdocs.pdf">USA Today Killian documents</a> (USA Today, six memos in one.pdf file)</li></ul><h3>[<a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Killian_documents_controversy&action=edit&section=24" title="Edit section: Bush documents from the TexANG archives">edit</a>] Bush documents from the TexANG archives</h3>Page 31 is a 3 November 1970 memo from the office of Lt Col Killian on promotion of Lt Bush:<ul><li><a rel="nofollow" class="external text" href="http://www.usatoday.com/news/bushdocs/11-1_2004_Personnel_File.pdf">Bush enlistment documents</a> (USA Today)</li></ul><h3>[<a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Killian_documents_controversy&action=edit&section=25" title="Edit section: 60 Minutes II, September 8 transcript">edit</a>] 60 Minutes II, September 8 transcript</h3><ul><li><a rel="nofollow" class="external text" href="http://wwwimage.cbsnews.com/htdocs/pdf/complete_report/1B.pdf">Transcript of CBS segment</a></li></ul><h3>[<a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Killian_documents_controversy&action=edit&section=26" title="Edit section: Statements of the CBS document examiners">edit</a>] Statements of the CBS document examiners</h3><ul><li><a rel="nofollow" class="external text" href="http://www.cbsnews.com/htdocs/pdf/matley1.pdf">Marcel B. Matley, September 14, 2004</a></li><li><a rel="nofollow" class="external text" href="http://www.cbsnews.com/htdocs/pdf/pierce1.pdf">James J. Pierce, September 14, 2004</a></li><li><a rel="nofollow" class="external text" href="http://www.cbsnews.com/htdocs/pdf/glennon.pdf">Bill Glennon, September 13, 2004</a></li><li><a rel="nofollow" class="external text" href="http://www.cbsnews.com/htdocs/pdf/katz.pdf">Richard Katz, September 13, 2004</a></li></ul><h3>[<a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Killian_documents_controversy&action=edit&section=27" title="Edit section: The Thornburgh-Boccardi Report">edit</a>] The Thornburgh-Boccardi Report</h3><ul><li><a rel="nofollow" class="external text" href="http://www.cbsnews.com/htdocs/pdf/complete_report/CBS_Report.pdf">"The Complete Independent Panel Report on CBS News"</a> (PDF). Retrieved 2006-03-18.</li><li><a rel="nofollow" class="external text" href="http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2005/01/10/national/main665818.shtml">"Exhibits and Appendices for report"</a>. CBS News. January 10, 2005. Retrieved 2006-03-18.</li></ul><h3>[<a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Killian_documents_controversy&action=edit&section=28" title="Edit section: Document analysis">edit</a>] Document analysis</h3><ul><li><a rel="nofollow" class="external text" href="http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-srv/nation/daily/graphics/guard_091404.html">A Pentagon memo next to one of CBS's Killian memos</a> — The Washington Post, September 14, 2004</li><li><a rel="nofollow" class="external text" href="http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-srv/politics/daily/graphics/cbsdocs_091804.html">The Paper Trail: A Comparison of Documents</a> The Washington Post, September 18, 2004</li><li><a rel="nofollow" class="external text" href="http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-srv/politics/daily/graphics/cbsdocs_091804.html">Graphic comparison of all the CBS memos with officially released Killian memos</a> The Washington Post, September 19, 2004</li><li><a rel="nofollow" class="external text" href="http://cjr.org/issues/2005/1/pein-blog.asp">"Blog-gate"</a> <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Columbia_Journalism_Review" title="Columbia Journalism Review">Columbia Journalism Review</a></li><li><a rel="nofollow" class="external text" href="http://www.flounder.com/bush4.htm">"CJR Fallacies"</a>, response by Joseph Newcomer</li><li><a rel="nofollow" class="external text" href="http://site.xavier.edu/polt/typewriters/bush.html">"Are the Bush Documents Fake?"</a>, analysis by Richard Polt</li></ul><h3>[<a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Killian_documents_controversy&action=edit&section=29" title="Edit section: Overview Timeline at USA Today">edit</a>] Overview Timeline at USA Today</h3><ul><li><a rel="nofollow" class="external text" href="http://www.usatoday.com/news/politicselections/nation/president/2004-09-21-guard-scoops-skepticism_x.htm">"Scoops and skepticism: How the story unfolded"</a> — timeline from USA Today — September 21, 2004</li></ul><h3>[<a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Killian_documents_controversy&action=edit&section=30" title="Edit section: Further reading">edit</a>] Further reading</h3><ul><li>Truth and Duty: The Press, the President, and the Privilege of Power (<a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Special:BookSources/031235195X" class="internal mw-magiclink-isbn">ISBN 0-312-35195-X</a>), by Mary Mapes, November 2005, St. Martin's Press, <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Special:BookSources/031235195X" class="internal mw-magiclink-isbn">ISBN 0-312-35195-X</a></li></ul>victim of blogsphere? <a href="http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/newswar/tags/rathergate.html">http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/newswar/tags/rathergate.html</a>----<a href="http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=389x3052618">http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=389x3052618</a>= JC Big lies on Wright refuses to debate real labor leaders b/c wd blow elite scam p9Quecreek mine GB2 takes a bow, despite just having cut laws to protect miners 1416 seems to say most Am get 1K tax cut, but actually top 1% get 45K, mid get 265,  60% at bot get 95 =The CBS Memo story -- Buckhead and rathergate.com

Blogger Who Faulted CBS Documents Is Conservative Activist (AKA. Freeper) (9/17)
<a href="http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=show_topic&forum=102&topic_id=835262" target="blank">http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.ph...</a>

GOP Activist Made Allegations on CBS Memos (Buckhead) (9/18)
<a href="http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=show_topic&forum=102&topic_id=837236" target="blank">http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.ph...</a>

rathergate.com! (9/22)
<a href="http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=show_topic&forum=104&topic_id=2400623" target="blank">http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.ph...</a>

GOP + rathergate.com = vast wingnut conspiracy (9/24)
<a href="http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=show_topic&forum=104&topic_id=2407402" target="blank">http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.ph...</a>
  <table class="post-subject" width="100%" cellspacing="0" cellpadding="3" border="0"><tbody><tr><td> The College Republican National Committee</td></tr></tbody></table><table class="post-message" width="100%" cellspacing="10" cellpadding="0" border="0"><tbody><tr valign="top"><td width="1%"><img alt="" src="file:///C:/DATAleno/BRAINS/webodec3_brain/Files/702CB82C-21FE-BA97-CD94-ADAE9E3336B1/PersonalBrain%20Notes/downloadedimagefile0.gif" width="48" height="48" border="0" /></td><td width="99%"><div class="editline">Edited on Sun Oct-24-04 12:00 PM by starroute</div><div class="editline">
</div><div class="medtext longop">One group currently using the services of Response Dynamics is the College Republic National Committee, which appears near the top left corner of the chart. In October 2001, the CRNC separated from the Republican Party, became a Section 527 organization, and launched into direct-mail fundraising targeted at elderly donors. (<a href="http://www.publicintegrity.org/527/report.aspx?aid=10" target="_blank">http://www.publicintegrity.org/527/report.aspx?aid=10</a> )

However, the CRNC had a long and not altogether savory history prior to that. In 1965-70, their on-and-off executive director was Morton Blackwell. I confess I'd never heard of Blackwell before his stunt with the purple heart band-aids at the Republican convention, but he is a person of some significance on the right -- a close associate of Paul Weyrich, co-founder (with Weyrich, Richard Viguerie, and Jerry Falwell) of the Moral Majority, and executive director since 1991 of the secretive Council for National Policy.

During the Nixon years, the CRNC became notorious for offering courses in dirty tricks and political sabotage, to the point where George H.W. Bush, then chairman of the Republican National Committee, had to promise to investigage and get to the bottom of the charges. At this time, CRNC executive director was none other than Karl Rove. In 1972, Rove ran for chairman against Terry Dolan in a campaign so dirty that Bush had to step in and declare Rove the winner.

Lee Atwater succeeded Rove as executive director. Eventually, Rove would introduce Atwater to George H.W. Bush and he would become Bush's 1988 campaign manager. Atwater died in 1991, but not before repenting of the many dirty tricks he had pulled along the way.

Morton Blackwell went on to found the Leadership Institute, dedicated to training young Republican activists. Karl Rove is its best-known graduate.

This group of dirty tricksters has two areas of connection to the CBS memos flap. One is through Roger Stone, rumored to be the source of the memos, who was a close friend of Terry Dolan (who died of AIDS in 1986.) The other is through Mike Krempasky, who set up a "rathergate.com" site so quickly after the story broke as to raise suspicions that he had inside knowledge. Krempasky is connected in multiple ways with Roger Stone and was also employed from 1999 to 2002 by Blackwell's Leadership Institute.</div></td></tr></tbody></table>=HMMM January 17, 2004 - Michael Moore "Deserter" charge, Wesley Clark supports Moore's right to say it 5 days later. <a href="http://www.factcheck.org/article131.html">http://www.factcheck.org/article131.html</a> End of January 2004 - Kerry says Bush's TANG records not important. Terry McAuliffe says Bush was AWOL.February 10, 2004 - White House does document dump and says it is the full release of Bush's TANG records--but later on many more real docs show up. February 12, 2004 - Bill Burkett appears on Hardball and with James Moore tells the story of how in 1997 he heard Joe Albaugh from Bush's office talk to Adjutant General David James on speaker phone, to tell him that Dan Bartlett and Karen Hughes will be down to "clean up" then-Governor Bush's TANG files. This trip was ostensibly to write a book but really to prepare for his 1998 and 2000 runs and make sure nothing embarrassing was in the records. Chris Matthews asks Burkett to swear that he is telling the truth, as if he were in court. Burkett does. http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/6055867/After February 12, 2004 - Rove and Bartlett, certainly alarmed at Burkett's appearance on Hardball, presumably hatch phony TANG documents plot and create forgeries with slight mistakes on the wrong typewriter, an electric typewriter. If it was them, they would have used the Olympia Manual memos Mrs. Knox said she originally typed for Killian in 1972 and 1973. They would then have called Stone and asked him to get them to Burkett, the perfect patsy for their scheme.After February 12, 2004 - Bill Burkett says he starts receiving calls from a lady with a Latin accent named "Lucy Ramirez", who could be Nydia Stone, the Cuban wife of GOP dirty trickster Roger Stone. "Lucy" tells Burkett she has previously unknown memos from Col. Killian and that he Burkett should get them and give them to the Kerry campaign. She also convinces him to burn the originals so she can never be identified. Burkett thinks she is trying to keep an old sexual affair with Killian secret. Burkett arranges with "Lucy" to meet her at the huge Houston Livestock Show.March 3, 2004 - According to Burkett's second story, Unknown Man asks for him at Livestock Show, finds him and hands him envelope containing the CBS TANG forgeries without saying a word (source: Bill Burkett USA TODAY) USA TODAY confirms that ANOTHER person, an unnamed woman, said Burkett gave her papers that day which she held for him until the event was over in a box. Burkett and USA Today know who this woman is. So the likelihood is that Burkett is telling the truth when he said he was given the envelope by the Unknown Man. Burkett has never been given a photo of Stone to ID.March to August, 2004 - For whatever reason, Burkett sits on the memos for five months until the Swift Boat ads enrage him and he calls up Max Cleland. Cleland tells him he'll talk to Kerry but no one calls Burkett back on the documents. <a href="http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/6055867/">http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/6055867/</a> August 2004 - Mary Mapes, CBS Producer following up on TANG/AWOL, asks Burkett if there is anything new on the TANG story. He tells her of the Killian memos, thinking them real and that CBS News would have them checked by experts.August 2004 - Roger and Nydia Stone miss first Republican Convention since 1968, taking a vacation in Spain. Stone says "It's pathetic that we are fighting over John Kerry's war record in Vietnam and George W. Bush's service in the National Guard given that there are a bunch of Islamic maniacs who want to wipe us off the face of the earth. I'll be on a beach in Barcelona." http://www.jewsweek.com/bin/en.jsp?enPage=BlankPage&enDisplay=view&enDispWhat=object&enD ispWho=Article%5El1391&enZone=Articles&enVersion=0 Sept. 8, 2004 - First CBS report on Killian memos. To protect a lady's honor, Southern Gentleman Burkett intimates that an officer named Conn gave him the TANG memos but Conn denies it. They report Dan Bartlett told John Roberts in the morning that "I have no reason to doubt their authenticity" so many times in the same way Roberts notes it in his book. Presumably this was the comment decided upon by he and Rove to make that day. Bartlett also says, "The memorandum in your possession shows that he spoke to the commander who made that order to talk about his personal situation and the fact that he is going to Alabama. So at every step of the way, President Bush was meeting his requirement. Granted permission to meet his requirement. And that's why President Bush was honorably discharged." Because Bartlett had used the forged copies to say that Bush fulfilled his TANG requirements, Roberts told his superiors, the memos are authenticated. Had Roberts been "played"? The trap, whoever forged the documents, was ready to close on Rather and destroy the potency of the TANG/AWOL issue. September 8, 2004 - Within 18 minutes of the end of the TANG report, posts from "Buckhead" appear on FreeRepublic.com, saying he thinks something is phony. Within a few hours, Buckhead is putting forth forensic analyses of fonts and proportional spacing, claiming the memos are forged and actually word-processed. http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/user-posts?more=25054500;name=Buckhead http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/user-posts?more=22146919;name=Buckhead <a href="http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/user-posts?more=22029527;name=Buckhead">http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/user-posts?more=22029527;name=Buckhead</a> September 9, 2004 - Media trumpets forgery claim, discrediting Rather and whole TANG issue.September, 10 2004 - Jeff Gannon receives a "scoop" from unknown person that Mapes was the CBS producer responsible. BEFORE writing his own scoop, Gannon tells Sean Hannity about Mapes. Hannity: HANNITY: "Now, Jeff Gannon, who is a terrific Washington bureau chief and White House correspondent for Talon News, actually shot me an e-mail today, and he's about to break a story in an exclusive about these CBS documents." HANNITY: "And apparently they're also, according to Jeff Gannon, the -- Talon News -- this woman, Mary Mapes, this Dallas producer, is under pressure for the [CBS] network, and now there's doubts about their authenticity has taken place." [The Sean Hannity Show, 9/10/04]Sept. 11, 2004 - Rather interviews Mrs. Knox who tells him she typed memos like the docs but those are not them. She had an Olympia manual with only a primitive superscript "th", not an electric typewriter. Total corporatist media uproar over Rather not backing down. Burkett now admits the hint Conn gave him the memos was a ruse, that he was still trying to protect the honor of Lucy Ramirez. Press uses this change in story to discredit him. (help me find transcript link)Sept. 11, 2004 - Dallas Morning News reveals inclusion of Staudt in 1973 Killian is incorrect and proves it to be a forgery. This was one of the main tip-offs inserted presumably by Bartlett and Rove to expose the forgery. http://www.dallasnews.com/sharedcontent/dws/news/washington/elections2004/stories/091104dnpolguard.1 17c8.htmlSept. 15, 2004 - Marian Knox, Killian's secretary, recounts errors in TANG forgeries for the Dallas Morning News, including the inclusion of the Staudt name in the forged "sugar-coat" memo of 1973 and the word "billets" instead of "barracks". http://www.dallasnews.com/sharedcontent/dws/dn/latestnews/stories/091504dnpolnatguard.1185eb4ae.htmlSept. 17, 2004 - Another Gannon story on Mapes with supposed inside source at CBS: "Sooner of (sic) later something like this was going to happen. When you see how hard they've been working this National Guard story, you know they weren't going to come up empty-handed one way or another." Sept. 20, 2004 - Kerry starts attacking Bush heavily on Iraq War, gives 4-point plan for Iraq. Memo coverage dies down, as all pundits echo desire to get to issues of the present rather than dwelling on the past.Sept. 20, 2004 - CBS News retracts claim of authenticity for Killian memos. Burkett admits a fellow Guard officer did not give him documents and tells of Lucy and the Unknown Man giving him the memos. <a href="http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2004/09/15/60II/main643768.shtml">http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2004/09/15/60II/main643768.shtml</a> Sept. 21, 2004 - NY Post reports rumors that Roger Stone got the forgeries to Burkett. He has no comment. MacCauliffe repeats the Stone charge and asks the White House and RNC what they know about Stone and the documents. Stone later denies allegation but never provides an alibi for where he was on March 3, 2004, the day the Unknown Man gave Bill Burkett the envelope with the TANG Forgeries inside. http://www.democrats.org/news/200409210003.html <a href="http://www.democrats.org/news/200409210001.html">http://www.democrats.org/news/200409210001.html</a> Sept. 21, 2004 - USA Today article on both parties accusing the other of forging the memos. http://www.usatoday.com/news/politicselections/nation/president/2004-09-21-cbs-parties_x.htmSept. 22, 2004 - Former New York Times columnist William Safire, quoting "U.S. Criminal Code, Chapter 63, Section 1343," wrote that a federal offense might actually have been committed when Rather and Mapes tried to hide their deception. "Whoever, having devised any scheme or artifice to defraud transmits or causes to be transmitted by means of wire, radio or television communication in interstate or foreign commerce, any writings for the purpose of executing such scheme or artifice, shall be fined under this title or imprisoned not more than 20 years, or both. At the root of what is today treated as an embarrassing blunder by duped CBS journalists," Safire wrote, "may turn out to be a felony by its faithless sources." (This was no doubt written by Safire a few days before the NY Post article on Roger Stone being the rumored source of the forgeries) http://www.newsmax.com/archives/ic/2004/9/22/221524.shtmlSept. 23, 2004 - Gannon also went after Mapes in this 9/23 Talon News story--now scrubbed: <a href="http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/1220416/posts">http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/1220416/posts</a> Sept. 24 2004 - After lawsuit, White House releases 1971 document showing the TANG Killian memos could have had superscript type in 1972. Republicans had been attacking TANG forgeries because they had superscript "th" and by withholding this document they had let Rather twist in the wind. Lost in the whole uproar is the fact that Mrs. Knox verified that there were original memos that she typed (on a manual with only a primitive superscript capability) and someone must have forged the CBS copies. http://www.bluelemur.com/index.php?p=324Sept. 2004 - GOP House members, presumably getting call from White House, or seeing Stone rumor reports, DROP calls for a Wire Fraud investigation, as does the retiring William Safire. (could use a link on original story of GOP calling for Wire Fraud investigation)Sept. 2004 - Media ignores Stone angle and trumpets the Fall of Dan Rather. No further mention of Stone at all.February 2005 - Bill Burkett still stands by his story of Lucy Ramirez and the Unknown Man. ((need help with finding link on this one too)Let's work together and fill in the Missing Links!<a href="http://www.libertypost.org/cgi-bin/readart.cgi?ArtNum=86847">http://www.libertypost.org/cgi-bin/readart.cgi?ArtNum=86847</a>
 = <div id="intro" style="margin: 0px; padding: 0px; line-height: 18.2px; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">What follows is a timeline based on the research of different diaries here at dKOS.  The timeline reveals the pattern of dirty tricks perpetrated by Karl Rove and Roger Stone, and how the TANG Forgeries fit right into their M.O. of forging documents with zingers in them and then tipping off the press to blow apart their political opponents. Some of this has been proved and some is conjecture, and it should be noted that no one has yet shown the picture above to Burkett to see if he can ID Stone. Plus someone else might have seen Stone at the Livestock Show--if it was him--because the Unknown Man supposedly asked around as to where he could find Burkett. So we need to dig in here and find out what else is out there to put into this timeline. It could lead to the truth. </div><div id="body" class="article-body" style="margin: 15px 0px 0px; padding: 0px; line-height: 18.2px; overflow: hidden; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">TANG Forgeries Timeline or "Lucy, You Got A Lot Of 'Splainin To Do!"1972 - 1973 - Col. Killian has Mrs. Knox type numerous memos for his personal file on the problem of George W. Bush and James Bath skipping their medical exam, not showing up for duty and trying to get special favors.  The memos are typed on an old Olympia manual, which had an early "th" superscript--one unlike the forged CBS Killian memos. <a href="http://www.dallasnews.com/sharedcontent/dws/dn/latestnews/stories/091504dnpolnatguard.1185eb4ae.html" style="margin: 0px; padding: 0px; line-height: 1.4; text-decoration-line: none; font-weight: bold;">http://www.dallasnews.com/sharedcontent/dws/dn/latestnews/stories/091504dnpolnatguard.1185eb4ae.html</a>1972 - Roger Stone and Chuck Colson work together in the Dirty Tricks Department of the Nixon White House. "Stone first made news in the Nixon Watergate scandal, when it was revealed that the 19-year-old apprentice McCarthyite had infiltrated George McGovern's 1972 presidential campaign as part of CREEP's sabotage plan."  <a href="http://www.dissidentvoice.org/Feb04/Ireland0221.htm" style="margin: 0px; padding: 0px; line-height: 1.4; text-decoration-line: none; font-weight: bold;">http://www.dissidentvoice.org/Feb04/Ireland0221.htm</a>1986 - Rove allegedly bugs his own office to smear Democrat Mark White in Texas Governor race. FBI Agent Rampton investigates but no charges are ever brought.  The bug's battery use indicated it had operated for ONLY 15 MINUTES before it was discovered.  <a href="http://www.austinchronicle.com/issues/dispatch/2000-09-29/pols_naked3.html" style="margin: 0px; padding: 0px; line-height: 1.4; text-decoration-line: none; font-weight: bold;">http://www.austinchronicle.com/issues/dispatch/2000-09-29/pols_naked3.html</a> <a href="http://www.documentaryfilms.net/Reviews/BushsBrain/" style="margin: 0px; padding: 0px; line-height: 1.4; text-decoration-line: none; font-weight: bold;">http://www.documentaryfilms.net/Reviews/BushsBrain/</a>1990 - Rove destroys Jim Hightower in TX by having FBI Agent Rampton investigate all TX Democrat elected officials. <a href="http://www.documentaryfilms.net/Reviews/BushsBrain/" style="margin: 0px; padding: 0px; line-height: 1.4; text-decoration-line: none; font-weight: bold;">http://www.documentaryfilms.net/Reviews/BushsBrain/</a>1992 - Phony Buchanan baby story hurts Pat in 1992 and in 2000, when he thought about the Reform Party. Mattie Lovlar betrays Stone and says they worked on it together.  Stone denies it with his typical statement: "If there was a flyer, it wasn't from Roger Stone." <a href="http://www.villagevoice.com/news/0420,barrett,53586,6.html" style="margin: 0px; padding: 0px; line-height: 1.4; text-decoration-line: none; font-weight: bold;">http://www.villagevoice.com/news/0420,barrett,53586,6.html</a>1994 - Rove apparently starts whispering campaign about TX Governor Ann Richards being a coke-snorting lesbian.  George W. Bush wins.<a href="http://www.documentaryfilms.net/Reviews/BushsBrain/" style="margin: 0px; padding: 0px; line-height: 1.4; text-decoration-line: none; font-weight: bold;">http://www.documentaryfilms.net/Reviews/BushsBrain/</a>1996 - Stone's sex ad story in Enquirer and Star.  Also reported that the Stones frequented DC sex club called The Capitol Couple.  Stones deny the allegation, blaming a sick and disgruntled individual, but admits reveal that his own credit card paid for the ad.<a href="http://www.southcoasttoday.com/daily/09-96/09-13-96/a04wn026.htm" style="margin: 0px; padding: 0px; line-height: 1.4; text-decoration-line: none; font-weight: bold;">http://www.southcoasttoday.com/daily/09-96/09-13-96/a04wn026.htm</a>1996 - New Republic: Dana Milbank: "There were photos of her in a black negligee and him bare-chested, and there was an enumeration of her personal measurements. Stone said he had been set up, but he was forced to step down as an adviser to the Dole campaign."  Stone goes on Today Show to deny it all. <a href="http://www.tnr.com/010300/milbank010300.html" style="margin: 0px; padding: 0px; line-height: 1.4; text-decoration-line: none; font-weight: bold;">http://www.tnr.com/010300/milbank010300.html</a>1996 - According to someone who worked with him, in 1996 Karl Rove created flyers viciously attacking his own candidate, Harold See, running for Alabama State Supreme Court. The resulting backlash against the Democrat allowed See to win the race.  <a href="http://www.talkingpointsmemo.com/archives/week_2004_10_10.php#003688" style="margin: 0px; padding: 0px; line-height: 1.4; text-decoration-line: none; font-weight: bold;">http://www.talkingpointsmemo.com/archives/week_2004_10_10.php#003688</a>
2000 - According to James Moore, after losing NH primary, Rove apparently resorts to push-polling on McCain in the SC primary, intimating that McCain was mentally unstable, his wife was a drug addict and he had a black love-child from a prostitute.  Bush campaign denies responsibility. <a href="http://www.documentaryfilms.net/Reviews/BushsBrain/" style="margin: 0px; padding: 0px; line-height: 1.4; text-decoration-line: none; font-weight: bold;">http://www.documentaryfilms.net/Reviews/BushsBrain/</a> 
2000 - According to Jeffrey Toobin, Miami riot led by Stone, MacDougald also summoned by Baker.  Nydia and her mother Olga help recruit Cubans for the Courthouse Riot and march advertised on Radio Mambi. From Dec. 4, 2000, Time Magazine: The organizers in the RV outside, who G.O.P. protesters have told Time were led by hardball Washington strategist Roger Stone, had phone banks churning out calls to Miami Republicans, urging them to storm downtown, while Stone directed the action with a walkie-talkie. (Stone could not be reached for comment.)  - Jeffrey Toobin, Too Close to Call <a href="http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0375761071/103-7025856-3836615?%5Fencoding=UTF8" style="margin: 0px; padding: 0px; line-height: 1.4; text-decoration-line: none; font-weight: bold;">http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0375761071/103-7025856-3836615?%5Fencoding=UTF8</a> <a href="http://www.time.com/time/europe/magazine/2000/1204/cover_riot.html" style="margin: 0px; padding: 0px; line-height: 1.4; text-decoration-line: none; font-weight: bold;">http://www.time.com/time/europe/magazine/2000/1204/cover_riot.html</a> <a href="http://www.villagevoice.com/news/0405,barrett,50745,1.html" style="margin: 0px; padding: 0px; line-height: 1.4; text-decoration-line: none; font-weight: bold;">http://www.villagevoice.com/news/0405,barrett,50745,1.html</a> 
Nov. 13, 2000 - Stone starts campaign to recall Democratic FL State Supreme Court Justices hearing the Gore vs. Bush case.  Illegal campaign contributions eventually draw the attention of the FEC. <a href="http://www.buzzflash.com/analysis/03/09/15_recount.html" style="margin: 0px; padding: 0px; line-height: 1.4; text-decoration-line: none; font-weight: bold;">http://www.buzzflash.com/analysis/03/09/15_recount.html</a> 
2001 - According to Toobin, Cheney calls Roger Stone to thank him for Miami Courthouse Riot, asks him what he would like as compensation (Jeffrey Toobin, Too Close to Call). <a href="http://www.villagevoice.com/news/0405,barrett,50745,1.html" style="margin: 0px; padding: 0px; line-height: 1.4; text-decoration-line: none; font-weight: bold;">http://www.villagevoice.com/news/0405,barrett,50745,1.html</a> 
 Feb 13, 2001 - Enquirer article on The Vault sex club in NYC says Roger and Nydia Stone used to be frequent customers. <a href="http://www.geocities.com/Hollywood/4616/enq0213.html" style="margin: 0px; padding: 0px; line-height: 1.4; text-decoration-line: none; font-weight: bold;">http://www.geocities.com/Hollywood/4616/enq0213.html</a> 
2002 - Stone given lucrative Indian casino political consulting contracts.  Stone allegedly does political dirty trick hit on BIA official standing in way of his casino clients.  <a href="http://www.indianz.com/News/archive/001861.asp" style="margin: 0px; padding: 0px; line-height: 1.4; text-decoration-line: none; font-weight: bold;">http://www.indianz.com/News/archive/001861.asp</a> 
2002 - According to James Moore, Rove said to be behind GA Senate race ad associating Max Cleland with Osama Bin Laden and Saddam Hussein.<a href="http://www.documentaryfilms.net/Reviews/BushsBrain/" style="margin: 0px; padding: 0px; line-height: 1.4; text-decoration-line: none; font-weight: bold;">http://www.documentaryfilms.net/Reviews/BushsBrain/</a>2003 - Stone calls up Al Sharpton and offers to manage his campaign and help him fundraise.  <a href="http://www.villagevoice.com/news/0405,barrett,50745,1.html" style="margin: 0px; padding: 0px; line-height: 1.4; text-decoration-line: none; font-weight: bold;">http://www.villagevoice.com/news/0405,barrett,50745,1.html</a>January 17, 2004 - Michael Moore "Deserter" charge, Wesley Clark supports Moore's right to say it 5 days later. <a href="http://www.factcheck.org/article131.html" style="margin: 0px; padding: 0px; line-height: 1.4; text-decoration-line: none; font-weight: bold;">http://www.factcheck.org/article131.html</a>End of January 2004 - Kerry says Bush's TANG records not important.  Terry McAuliffe says Bush was AWOL.February 10, 2004 - White House does document dump and says it is the full release of Bush's TANG records--but later on many more real docs show up. <a href="http://www.foxnews.com/projects/pdf/021004_bushmil.pdf" style="margin: 0px; padding: 0px; line-height: 1.4; text-decoration-line: none; font-weight: bold;">http://www.foxnews.com/projects/pdf/021004_bushmil.pdf</a>February 12, 2004 - Bill Burkett appears on Hardball and with James Moore tells the story of how in 1997 he heard Joe Albaugh from Bush's office talk to Adjutant General David James on speaker phone, to tell him that Dan Bartlett and Karen Hughes will be down to "clean up" then-Governor Bush's TANG files.  This trip was ostensibly to write a book but really to prepare for his 1998 and 2000 runs and make sure nothing embarrassing was in the records.  Chris Matthews asks Burkett to swear that he is telling the truth, as if he were in court.  Burkett does. <a href="http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/6055867/" style="margin: 0px; padding: 0px; line-height: 1.4; text-decoration-line: none; font-weight: bold;">http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/6055867/</a>After February 12, 2004 - [MY SPECULATION:] Rove and Bartlett, certainly alarmed at Burkett's appearance on Hardball, presumably hatch phony TANG documents plot and create forgeries with slight mistakes on the wrong typewriter, an electric typewriter.  If it was them, they would have used the Olympia Manual memos Mrs. Knox said she originally typed for Killian in 1972 and 1973.  They would then have called Stone and asked him to get them to Burkett, the perfect patsy for their scheme.After February 12, 2004 - Bill Burkett says he starts receiving calls from a lady with a Latin accent named "Lucy Ramirez", who could be Nydia Stone, the Cuban wife of GOP dirty trickster Roger Stone [REGEN MAN'S SPECULATION].  "Lucy" tells Burkett she has previously unknown memos from Col. Killian and that he Burkett should get them and give them to the Kerry campaign.  She also convinces him to burn the originals so she can never be identified.  Burkett thinks she is trying to keep an old sexual affair with Killian secret.  Burkett arranges with "Lucy" to meet her at the huge Houston Livestock Show.. <a href="http://edition.cnn.com/2004/ALLPOLITICS/09/23/cbs.documents/" style="margin: 0px; padding: 0px; line-height: 1.4; text-decoration-line: none; font-weight: bold;">http://edition.cnn.com/2004/ALLPOLITICS/09/23/cbs.documents/</a>March 3, 2004 - According to Burkett's second story, the Unknown Man asks for him at Livestock Show, finds him and hands him envelope containing the CBS TANG forgeries without saying a word (source: Bill Burkett USA TODAY)  USA TODAY confirms that ANOTHER person, an unnamed woman, said Burkett gave her papers that day which she held for him until the event was over in a box.  Burkett and USA Today know who this woman is.  So the likelihood is that Burkett is telling the truth when he said he was given the envelope by the Unknown Man.  Burkett has never been given a photo of Stone to ID. <a href="http://edition.cnn.com/2004/ALLPOLITICS/09/23/cbs.documents/" style="margin: 0px; padding: 0px; line-height: 1.4; text-decoration-line: none; font-weight: bold;">http://edition.cnn.com/2004/ALLPOLITICS/09/23/cbs.documents/</a>March to August, 2004 - For whatever reason, Burkett sits on the memos for five months until the Swift Boat ads enrage him and he calls up Max Cleland.  Cleland tells him he'll talk to Kerry but no one calls Burkett back on the documents.<a href="http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/6055867/" style="margin: 0px; padding: 0px; line-height: 1.4; text-decoration-line: none; font-weight: bold;">http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/6055867/</a>August 2004 - Mary Mapes, CBS Producer following up on TANG/AWOL, asks Burkett if there is anything new on the TANG story.  He tells her of the Killian memos, thinking them real and that CBS News would have them checked by experts. <a href="http://www.usatoday.com/news/politicselections/nation/president/2004-09-21-cover-guard_x.htm" style="margin: 0px; padding: 0px; line-height: 1.4; text-decoration-line: none; font-weight: bold;">http://www.usatoday.com/news/politicselections/nation/president/2004-09-21-cover-guard_x.htm</a>August 2004 - Roger and Nydia Stone miss first Republican Convention since 1968, taking a vacation in Spain.  Stone says "It's pathetic that we are fighting over John Kerry's war record in Vietnam and George W. Bush's service in the National Guard given that there are a bunch of Islamic maniacs who want to wipe us off the face of the earth. I'll be on a beach in Barcelona."<a href="http://www.jewsweek.com/bin/en.jsp?enPage=BlankPage&enDisplay=view&enDispWhat=object&enDispWho=Article%5El1391&enZone=Articles&enVersion=0" style="margin: 0px; padding: 0px; line-height: 1.4; text-decoration-line: none; font-weight: bold;">http://www.jewsweek.com/bin/en.jsp?enPage=BlankPage&enDisplay=view&enDispWhat=object&enDispWho=Article%5El1391&enZone=Articles&enVersion=0</a>Sept. 8, 2004 - First CBS report on Killian memos.  To protect a lady's honor, Southern Gentleman Burkett intimates that a fellow National Guard officer gave him the TANG memos.  CBS reports Dan Bartlett told John Roberts in the morning that "I have no reason to doubt their authenticity" so many times in the same way Roberts notes it in his book.  Presumably this was the comment decided upon by he and Rove to make that day.  Bartlett also says, "The memorandum in your possession shows that he spoke to the commander who made that order to talk about his personal situation and the fact that he is going to Alabama. So at every step of the way, President Bush was meeting his requirement. Granted permission to meet his requirement. And that's why President Bush was honorably discharged." Because Bartlett had used the forged copies to say that Bush fulfilled his TANG requirements, Roberts told his superiors, the memos are authenticated.  Had Roberts been "played"?  The trap, whoever forged the documents, was ready to close on Rather and destroy the potency of the TANG/AWOL issue.September 8, 2004 - Within 18 minutes of the end of the TANG report, posts from "Buckhead" appear on FreeRepublic.com, saying he thinks something is phony.  Within a few hours, Buckhead is putting forth forensic analyses of fonts and proportional spacing, claiming the memos are forged and actually word-processed. <a href="http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/user-posts?more=25054500;name=Buckhead" style="margin: 0px; padding: 0px; line-height: 1.4; text-decoration-line: none; font-weight: bold;">http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/user-posts?more=25054500;name=Buckhead</a> <a href="http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/user-posts?more=22146919;name=Buckhead" style="margin: 0px; padding: 0px; line-height: 1.4; text-decoration-line: none; font-weight: bold;">http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/user-posts?more=22146919;name=Buckhead</a> <a href="http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/user-posts?more=22029527;name=Buckheadp" style="margin: 0px; padding: 0px; line-height: 1.4; text-decoration-line: none; font-weight: bold;">http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/user-posts?more=22029527;name=Buckhead</a>September 9, 2004 - Media trumpets forgery claim, discrediting Rather and whole TANG issue.September, 10 2004 - Jeff Gannon receives a "scoop" from unknown person that Mapes was the CBS producer responsible.  BEFORE writing his own scoop, Gannon tells Sean Hannity about Mapes.  Hannity: HANNITY: "Now, Jeff Gannon, who is a terrific Washington bureau chief and White House correspondent for Talon News, actually shot me an e-mail today, and he's about to break a story in an exclusive about these CBS documents." HANNITY: "And apparently they're also, according to Jeff Gannon, the -- Talon News -- this woman, Mary Mapes, this Dallas producer, is under pressure for the [CBS] network, and now there's doubts about their authenticity has taken place."   [The Sean Hannity Show, 9/10/04]  Sept. 11, 2004 - Rather interviews Mrs. Knox who tells him she typed memos like the docs but those are not them.  She had an Olympia manual with only a primitive superscript "th", not an electric typewriter. Total corporatist media uproar over Rather not backing down.  Burkett now admits the hint Conn gave him the memos was a ruse, that he was still trying to protect the honor of Lucy Ramirez.  Press uses this change in story to discredit him. (help me find transcript link)Sept. 11, 2004 - Dallas Morning News reveals inclusion of Staudt in 1973 Killian is incorrect and proves it to be a forgery.  This was one of the main tip-offs inserted presumably by Bartlett and Rove to expose the forgery. <a href="http://www.dallasnews.com/sharedcontent/dws/news/washington/elections2004/stories/091104dnpolguard.117c8.html" style="margin: 0px; padding: 0px; line-height: 1.4; text-decoration-line: none; font-weight: bold;">http://www.dallasnews.com/sharedcontent/dws/news/washington/elections2004/stories/091104dnpolguard.1 17c8.html</a>Sept. 15, 2004 - Marian Knox, Killian's secretary, recounts errors in TANG forgeries for the Dallas Morning News, including the inclusion of the Staudt name in the forged "sugar-coat" memo of 1973 and the word "billets" instead of "barracks".  <a href="http://www.dallasnews.com/sharedcontent/dws/dn/latestnews/stories/091504dnpolnatguard.1185eb4ae.html" style="margin: 0px; padding: 0px; line-height: 1.4; text-decoration-line: none; font-weight: bold;">http://www.dallasnews.com/sharedcontent/dws/dn/latestnews/stories/091504dnpolnatguard.1185eb4ae.html</a>Sept. 17, 2004 - Another Gannon story on Mapes with supposed inside source at CBS: "Sooner of (sic) later something like this was going to happen. When you see how hard they've been working this National Guard story, you know they weren't going to come up empty-handed one way or another."Sept. 20, 2004 - Kerry starts attacking Bush heavily on Iraq War, gives 4-point plan for Iraq.  Memo coverage dies down, as all pundits echo desire to get to issues of the present rather than dwelling on the past.Sept. 20, 2004 - CBS News retracts claim of authenticity for Killian memos.  Burkett admits a fellow Guard officer did not give him documents and tells of Lucy and the Unknown Man giving him the memos.  <a href="http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2004/09/15/60II/main643768.shtml" style="margin: 0px; padding: 0px; line-height: 1.4; text-decoration-line: none; font-weight: bold;">http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2004/09/15/60II/main643768.shtml</a>Sept. 21, 2004 - NY Post reports rumors that Roger Stone got the forgeries to Burkett.  He has no comment.  MacCauliffe repeats the Stone charge and asks the White House and RNC what they know about Stone and the documents. Stone later denies allegation but never provides an alibi for where he was on March 3, 2004, the day the Unknown Man gave Bill Burkett the envelope with the TANG Forgeries inside.<a href="http://www.democrats.org/news/200409210003.html" style="margin: 0px; padding: 0px; line-height: 1.4; text-decoration-line: none; font-weight: bold;">http://www.democrats.org/news/200409210003.html</a> <a href="http://www.democrats.org/news/200409210001.html" style="margin: 0px; padding: 0px; line-height: 1.4; text-decoration-line: none; font-weight: bold;">http://www.democrats.org/news/200409210001.html</a>Sept. 21, 2004 - USA Today article on both parties accusing the other of forging the memos.<a href="http://www.usatoday.com/news/politicselections/nation/president/2004-09-21-cbs-parties_x.htm" style="margin: 0px; padding: 0px; line-height: 1.4; text-decoration-line: none; font-weight: bold;">http://www.usatoday.com/news/politicselections/nation/president/2004-09-21-cbs-parties_x.htm</a>Sept. 22, 2004 - Former New York Times columnist William Safire, quoting "U.S. Criminal Code, Chapter 63, Section 1343," wrote that a federal offense might actually have been committed when Rather and Mapes tried to hide their deception. "Whoever, having devised any scheme or artifice to defraud transmits or causes to be transmitted by means of wire, radio or television communication in interstate or foreign commerce, any writings for the purpose of executing such scheme or artifice, shall be fined under this title or imprisoned not more than 20 years, or both.  At the root of what is today treated as an embarrassing blunder by duped CBS journalists," Safire wrote, "may turn out to be a felony by its faithless sources."  (This was no doubt written by Safire a few days before the NY Post article on Roger Stone being the rumored source of the forgeries)<a href="http://www.newsmax.com/archives/ic/2004/9/22/221524.shtml" style="margin: 0px; padding: 0px; line-height: 1.4; text-decoration-line: none; font-weight: bold;">http://www.newsmax.com/archives/ic/2004/9/22/221524.shtml</a>Sept. 23, 2004 - Gannon also went after Mapes in this 9/23 Talon News story--now scrubbed: <a href="http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/1220416/posts" style="margin: 0px; padding: 0px; line-height: 1.4; text-decoration-line: none; font-weight: bold;">http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/1220416/posts</a>Sept. 24 2004 - After lawsuit, White House releases 1971 document showing the TANG Killian memos could have had superscript type in 1972.  Republicans had been attacking TANG forgeries because they had superscript "th" and by withholding this document they had let Rather twist in the wind.   Lost in the whole uproar is the fact that Mrs. Knox verified that there were original memos that she typed (on a manual with only a primitive superscript capability) and someone must have forged the CBS copies.<a href="http://www.bluelemur.com/index.php?p=324" style="margin: 0px; padding: 0px; line-height: 1.4; text-decoration-line: none; font-weight: bold;">http://www.bluelemur.com/index.php?p=324</a>Sept. 2004 - GOP House members, maybe getting call from White House, or seeing Stone rumor reports, DROP calls for a Wire Fraud investigation, as does the retiring William Safire. (could use a link on original story of GOP calling for Wire Fraud investigation)Sept. 2004 - Media ignores Stone angle and trumpets the Fall of Dan Rather.  No further mention of Stone at all.February 2005 - Bill Burkett still stands by his story of Lucy Ramirez and the Unknown Man. (need help with finding link on this one too)Let's work together and fill in the Missing Links!</div> === </div></div>