Hmmm.......There is a great deal of coroborating evidence for the claims that the Swiftboat Vets are making, and from people in a position to know. I guess CBS will now be tripping over itself to rectify the absence of the swiftboat vets on CBSnews.

:)

Notice the weasel "were accurate".
They believed in the accuracy of their allegations so much they were willing to use fake documents and to lie about the documents to back those allegations up.

NO dice, CBS. You are your sources and your evidence and your methods are dishonest, and if there were anything of substance to the story, you not only obscured it with your phony tricks, you confirmed everyone's worst ideas about bias at CBS news.

"...memos were accurate..."
Like, as they said, they reflected some attitudes at the time. CBS didn't say they weren't forgeries.

"...redouble our efforts..."

When I was in school, two times zero was still zero.
But if course, that was before CBS TV news...

This is playing for time. These guys are rooting for Deus Ex Machina in the form of Hurricane Ivan.

It's too bad. My local CBS Affiliate manager here in Tallahassee has turned out to be a good natured guy who has been most polite and fair. The very picture of a good local business owner. I was hoping to be able to send him and email saying I was turning CBS back on for local news and football.

Well, the only thing to do is keep whipping this thing 'till it's deader'n a dillo on the highway.

Exactly, Brett. Momentum is key.

Little Danny Rather is now saying that since president Bush is not making huge public denials that the charges must be true. I find that so funny. Little Danny just cannot imagine that he might be so irrelevant that his musings might not be worth speaking to.

Translation: Who cares if they were forged, the point is - they are accurate.

Will the blogosphere let this fly?

Bring on the hearings.

www.stones-cry-out.blogspot.com

I was talking to some friends last night when the idea that sometimes the best thing to do is not to tie yourself to a trainwreck. Notice that the only statement from the Bush camp has been Laura Bush's response to a direct question.

OT thought: Is some of the difference between the Republican and Democrat campaigns about knowing when to shut up?

Apparently any sentence over 8 words is too long for me to complete.

Let's run that first sentence again:
I was talking to some friends last night when the idea that sometimes the best thing to do is not to tie yourself to a trainwreck came up.

I guess preview only works if you read what you wrote.

I, too, think that CBS is stalling, desperately hoping for a person or a document to surface that might corroborate the lie. IMO, if a news source possesses credible facts, there would be no reason not to deluge the public with the information ad naueseum. The silence, the lack of new information, the doublespeak and empty rhetoric speak volumes.
And why wouldn't Kerry distract the public with some new ideas, some positive spin, a new direction? Because, aside from "hate Bush" fuel, his campaign is also empty.

The CBS suit says "accurate" but does not say "authentic." And what he means is that CBS is going to seek to prove that the statements in the memos are accurate. This is a sleight-of-hand move to distract attention from the forgery and CBS's role in it, implicitly admitting it but hoping nobody notices.
For what, 5 years, the merits of the charges have been insufficiently substantiated to satisfy the criteria for airing them in the MSM. So now they can just make up fake substantiating evidence, and then announce the story, and then when the fake evidence is exposed, they can still push the story as if it had been substantiated well enough in the first place? No way. If the substantiating evidence falls away, they have to drop the story back to where it would have been had there never been any such evidence. Otherwise they have debased the standards they claim to uphold for deciding when a story can go on the air, and this turns into a scam so that CBS can justify airing a story based on nothing but 30-year-old recollections of Bush political opponents and an 86-year old secretary who is also a Bush opponent.
Didn't the MSM just tell us that the reason the Swift Boat Vets shouldn't be heard in the MSM was that all they had to go on was 30-year-old recollections?
The Blogosphere has to keep on this one: CBS is trying to lower the standards of substantiating evidence necessary to decide to announce something as a fact to tens of millions of people -- but only when the lowering helps one political party. That is not right.

This is a statement of desperation. Nothing more, nothing less.

My response here:

Where is the Transparency? Crisis of Integrity Continues at CBS
http://www.corante.com/importance/archives/006197.php

*That's* what took an extra 5 hours? I thought they were prying Dan's fingers loose from his desk and hustling him out of the building, and that's what the announcement was about. Instead they labored mightily and produced this lameness. Puhleeze.

They probably had to get approval from the lawyers that they could get away with "accurate". I hope that five hour delay cost 'em a coupla grand an hour.

Why not reveal the source?

Probably because to do that would be absolutely devestating.

Why has the White House remained mute on the subject? Because the whole thing is going up in flames just fine without them lifting a finger. A statement by the White House would be a gift from God to CBS at this point. The silence must be maddening.

I think what took an extra 5 hours to respond was an attempt to create "authentic" forgeries that look accurate.

Dan just announced that more information about the President's time in the National Guard will be presented on 60 minutes tonight. Stay tuned.

I have a picture of little Danny Rather having a hissy fit screaming "Why won't they answer, why won't they answer. Don't they know who I am?"

I wonder if he got his Memos from Kitty Kelley?

They can't reveal the source because, Dan implies, the source's life is being threatened. The Texas Chapter of the American Association of Half-Competent Forgers (AAHCF) plays rough when a free-lancer makes them all look like idiots.

The weasel word is "accurate"...
neither original, nor genuine, nor authenticated, nor historic, nor archival... just "accurate" in sentiment and therefore useful to our purpose, the end justifying the means (aka "for the greater good").

CBS isn't backing off because they know this is a Watergate sized total moron moment that they saddled themselves with. Twenty years from now this will be talked about by history teachers just as Watergate is now.

SUBJECT: CYA

[Insert statement here.]

DAN RATHER

Print, copy, copy, copy, copy, fax, copy, copy, copy, crumple.

As the NY Times headline said "Fake but Accurate". That's going to be the CBS defense.

From reading the Observer interview and previous statements,
Rather&Co have been looking into this for years. Until recently what they had was some people who where there at the Texas National Guard back in the 70s who might be willing to say bad things about Bush, and many rumors about "documents" that could prove Bush was a bad person. Document rumors from multiple different people.

After talking to a source for 5(!!) years, they finally got them to pony up with the memos and used them to leverage the ex-Texas official and current Kerry fundraiser to say he got Bush in the Guard as a favor to his dad.

It turns out the memos are fake. Might represent memos that actually existed 30 years ago, but these are fakes. The new interview with the little old lady secretary fits this perfectly. Yes, memos about this sort of thing that said this sort of thing did exist 30 years ago, but these are not them

CBS will focus on the idea of "it's the content, stupid!" because the delivery method is bankrupt. Reading Rather's interview, that's what the plan seems to be. It will be interesting to see how much they get away with that idea.

- Ray

"Accurate" vs authentic. Beautiful! So now they're playing Clintonesque word games. CBS News and the DNC have become one in the same. Are we sure it wasn't CBS and not the Kerry campaign that Carville and Begala just signed up with?

Kerry Spot says Rather's talking to Killian's 86 year-old Bush-hating secretary, doubtlessly to report that "the woman who would have typed up the memos confirms that their contents is accurate."

Not that I'd even believe it were her if he put her on camera. Does Bouffard do DNA tests, too?

making so sure that the statement didn't say a thing of substance they overlooked spelling. incompetence must be a hiring prerequisite at cbs.

i thought the '72 selectric had spell check, too.

- At this point I don't think there's anything that cab save CBS from being skewered. I think they know that.

Looks like the plan is to micro-step away from this over time and then hope it will die. Each new statement id doing that a pixel at a time. This time is was the shift from "authentic" which requires expert support, to "accurate" which can just be based on the frail memory of an elder woman.

You have to give them "X" for xffert.

Bottom line. Protect the source at all costs. And that means its the DNC or Kerry's campaign people. I suspect the redoubling will consist of hand waving and redoubling double talk until they say .... well in the last analysis, like most things based on 30+ year old events, is largely a matter of opinion.

Then CBS picks up its papers and quietly walks...Even if they pull that off it will be interesting to see if anyone is ever willing to take Rather serious again...

This doesn't even begin to excuse the conduct of CBS News. They had been told the documents were suspect by their own examiners and ran with them anyway without mentioning the questions over their authenticity.

I slam the 60 Minutes II team hard in an op/ed titled "60 Minutes in September".

Here's the first paragraph as a tease :-)

"In John Frankenheimer's film Seven Days in May, a cabal of military leaders plots to overthrow the U.S. government because they oppose the president’s foreign policy. The scandal over last week’s 60 Minutes II episode increasingly resembles a remake of that film — with bumbling media mavens standing in for seditious servicemen, and with a band of Internet bloggers acting as the hero who thwarts them. [...]"

We should use little Danny Rather's own words against him. He has said that since the whitehouse isnt answering him (self important arent you Danny) that the charges must be true. Since little Danny wont prove his allegations with a verifiable source it MUST be the DNC.

It's becoming increasingly obvious that CBS is desperately trying to hide/protect something much more important (to them) than the truth about these documents.

Hmmmm...what could it be???

I look forward to hearing the truth. It does always manage to come out eventually.

Here’s my take on 60 Minutes. Dan has been trying to take down a Republican president for as long as I remember, and believe me I remember. He wants to take down a President before he retires. He wants a President’s scalp to hang on his belt or in his trophy room. He sees himself as the great crusader for truth, justice and the American way. He wanted Nixon but someone beat him to it. He tried to take down Ronald R. during the Iran-Conta hearings and when he finally realized that he wasn’t going to be able to do it, I thought he was going to break down and cry on air. He went after GWB and now W.

I think this is just the beginning of the takedown. If CBS has been working on this for 4 years as I read somewhere, you ain’t seen nothing yet. In the upcoming weeks expect 60 Minutes to continue hacking away. They have had plenty of time to accumulate evidence and now it’s going to come out.

"They have had plenty of time to accumulate evidence and now it’s going to come out."

True. God knows how many Word documents you can create in 4 years.

It’s the Old Media blind leading the blind right now at Chris Matthews. First former ABC Correspondent Bob Zelnick suggests that the only way to get to the bottom of this is to get hold of Killian’s old files and compare what’s in them with the alleged forgeries. Then the Chicago Tribune’s James Warren also suggests that science is completely irrelevant and we can’t know until we get the guy who gave them to Rather:

“The reality also is that you had other supposedly respected document analysts now engaged in this rather arcane, somewhat obscure conversation on fonts and type size and other things, IBM Selectrics, you name it, and I will, Chris Matthews, I will bet you, say, steak dinner at the Palm that CBS will surface, say, tonight, or tomorrow, with one of these folks recanting a previous recantation of the first statement, and we will proceed no further until, and nobody will be content until they essentially out their original source. I think it’s more complicated than is delving into those old files as Bob said.”

Have any of these guys seen Joseph Newcomer’s analysis? And do they really think that a recantation by the clowns that CBS put out as its best experts yesterday, Bill Glennon and Richard Katz, would mean anything more than their original opinions?

So, CBS has established to their satisfaction that the memos are accurate. But why did CBS waited for Rush Limbaugh and the Sean Hannity show to finish just to make their long awaited, fantasy of a statement?...Maybe because CBS is CBS? and if Dan "The Blaber Mouth" Rather says the memos are accurate then by God boys and girls, uncle Rather must be right!

P.S. Is it okay to mention God uncle Dan?

CBS President Heywood is finally telling the truth. He says:
"...we should redouble our efforts to answer those questions, so that's what we are doing".

Okay math wizards, what is two times zero?

I wonder if Enron would have just come out and said........we established to our satisfaction that our accounting practices were accurate or we would not have used them. There was a great deal of coroborating with our accounting firm.........well we all know how that one turned out

To quote Bush 41, "This will not stand."

What matters at this point is who has legal standing to nail CBS and Viacom. I am mildly surprised that our legal brethren like Beldar and Powerline haven't applied the same kind of creativity to this aspect as they have to printing/typing technology involvingfonts, superscript, and kerning.

Only a duly empowered entity - whether it be in the courts or Congress - has the subpeona powers to unmask the forger.

It will happen ultimately, but probably in lagtime after the election. Even if it is moot by then, it must be pursued. No news organization renting the American public's airwaves should get away with outright fraud.

In the longer statement on Drudge, who is Pierce? Does he stand by the dox?

Also, CBS says the two women examiners have "misrepresented" themselves. Those are serious legal words for "lied."

I see a defamation claim being filed very soon.

Like I said yesterday, "the secretary is gonna be a problem"... Dan used the little old lady to pivot and try to change the story, specificly:

1. the memo's are fake
2. LTC Killian expressed the thoughts in the memo's to me
3. perhaps somebody took other memos on the subject and re-typed them
4. George Bush got special treatment.

I don't BELIEVE they still stalled. And Susan Esterich played the VRWC card on Linda Vesters' noon show saying the Bloggers were on it before 60 minutes was over-even tho' the fact that the question was addressed to Powerline from Pacific time-not EDST. I wrote Brit Hume and FINALLY he addressed the wrongness of everything AF in those documents-not in letter form, no 'Reply by Endorsement'(both required in chain of evidence under AF regs and the Uniform Code of Military Justice), wrong Military abbreviations, Letterhead, signature block (not signature), signature block on the wrong side, etc., etc....and all this by a Career AF/ANG Officer-B-B-BEEEEEPPP, Wrong Answer...And right now I want to trash the TV 'cuz Juan Williams is Preaching ALL the DNC talking points on Bill O'Reilly to obscure the FACTS-these are forgeries and CBS has IMPUGNED the Reputation of a deceased AF Officer...very much like the VVAW did to all 'Nam vets.....Retired AF and a Texan...

Drudge reports that CBS is standing behind the expertise of its clowns, Bill Glennon and Richard Katz: "They strongly refuted the claim made by some critics that there were no typewriters in existence in the early 1970s that could have produced such documents." Otherwise, CBS says, "the disagreements among 'dueling experts' have not been resolved." I guess despite all appearances, my keyboard lacks a key for the numeral "1'.

My take on the CBS Statement after the long delay is very different than any I have heard.

I think the delay occured because there is real angst at Viacom and strong, maybe even majority, executive sentiment to make Rather walk the plank, but Rather pleaded for more time to shore up the story enough to survive.

My guess is that this went all the way up to Sumner Redstone who makes the ultimate decisions and Redstone made the call. And, given that he's a businessman, I think what he did was tell Rather they'd stick with him for some defined time period (say 48-72 hours), but that if he didn't have the story authenticated properly by then, it was hasts la vista baby for Danny Boy.

A lot turns on this new name Pierce. Did he really authenticate stuff? Did they go back to him in light of Newcomer and the rest?

Does CBS have emails that show that Will and James indeed lied? (Watch for a defamation suit and civil discovery on that issue.)

Interesting spot on O'reilly with liz trotta ( both them were at CBS together ).

She thinks ( among other points ):
a) they can't toss out Rather, he's their brand so they are financially stuck with him.

b) That CBS will never do an independent investigation. They did it in 1982 and got reamed so they will never do it again.

Andrew Sullivan's canned outrage on CNN was a bit much considering his initial reaction to the story. Why was CNN interviewing him in the first place? The Daily Dish had nothing to do with breaking the news and should take no credit for doing so now.

The name of the person (or people) peddling the documents is the key, now -- but CBS is not the only MSM outlet that knows who had the documents! USA Today had the documents -- it can tell who delivered them.

And the person peddling the documents (a bagman if not the forger himself, and in either case definitely not a "source" in any credible journalistic usage) may have delivered them to other MSM outlets that decided not to use them.

Just look at the outlets that went so easy on the forgery evidence -- Boston Globe, NY Times, NBC News. If they received the documents, they couldn't very well issue a hard-hitting report, because it would mean that they would have to include in the story that they also received the documents. (Just imagine if the Washington Post wrote the hard-hitting story it did, yet kept secret that it had received the documents -- its credibilty would go down the drain).

And once they admitted that, they too would be under just as much pressure to explain why they didn't report how they got the documents, and to reveal the name of the bagman/forger as CBS is today.

The blogosphere needs to insist, again and again, that every other outlet in the MSM must report whether it got the documents before the CBS report -- and if they did, who gave them the documents?

Drill SGT,

I'm not sure folks are going to buy "fake but accurate." Even the liberal in my office rolled his eyes at that one. He gives no credence to an 86 year-old lady saying she remembers this specific topic.

I think that "fake but accurate" leads directly to: Who is the source?

And then: How was the Kerry campaign involved?

That's why CBS is holding out. They don't want to face those two questions.

So, I think they'll hint at "fake but accurate" for a day or so, without coming out and saying it, and hope that Hurricane Ivan blows this off folks' radar.

BTW, I almost died laughing at Blather's comment that "if the memos are fake," he wants to be the one to break the story.

Uh, Dan? It's a little late. That story was broken. About two hours after your initial report. Take your Thorazine, Dan.

Oh, and they ADMIT the only expert they really relied on BEFORE doing the story was Marcel Matley, the "spiritual handwriting" expert who examined only the signatures and couldn't confirm them. And they never went BACK to the original experts who expressed serious doubts, instead finding the CLOWNS who agreed with what they wanted to prove.

Gotta keep hammering, Bill. The process, unfortunately, is in a repetative phase. We've got to do what the MSM do with stories like Abu Grahib (sp?), and just keep hammering and hammering.

I... I... I can't answer the charges so I'll continue by Rather blather...

david,

I agree with almost everything you said.

1. it's lame
2. any liberal with an open mind could see they are fake
3. they are stalling for hurricane Ivan

However, 80 percent of the country get their news from the MSM exclusively and have a very low attention span.... They are stalling hoping to change the subject...

david,

I agree with almost everything you said.

1. it's lame
2. any liberal with an open mind could see they are fake
3. they are stalling for hurricane Ivan

However, 80 percent of the country get their news from the MSM exclusively and have a very low attention span.... They are stalling hoping to change the subject...

Bill, don't despair. This is such a rotten fish in Denmark that it will come out. Watergate was exposed and so will this.

Drill SGT,

I think a lot more folks get information from the blogosphere, either directly or indirectly, than you credit.

I know that in my office, my exec asst would rather just tune this all out. But she can't because I'm such a big mouth. ;-)

My sense is that this isn't going to go away. Other parts of the lamestream media sense an opportunity to rip ol' Dan a new one, and he has too many enemies to hope that they'll all pass up the chance.

And the Internet keeps rolling on, as well.

I've fisked CBS's longer statement here:
http://www.corante.com/importance/archives/006199.php

Bill,
Have you already started a search for James J Pierce. He seems to be the only CBS document expert (other than the typewriter repairman) that hasn't backtracked ... YET

I'll comment more on this later, but right now I'm simply unable to process where we should go from this point.

Couldn't agree more. I'm so angry I'm shaking. We're deep into doublespeak territory with CBS.

EVERYONE should be calling for Rather's scalp. Anyone who doesn't either isn't paying attention or is too deluded to be reasonable.

I think the time has come to ask the question we've all been wondering, but were afraid to speak:

Is there a Pulitzer Prize for insanity?

I sent out an email to my CBS affiliate hoping that would put some pressure on CBS to come clean. I have been trying to believe they were simply misled and Rather is full of himself(or s**t, same thing). I didn't do any boycott stuff or anything, personally I find activisits annoying.

But this is just plain insulting. Do they think we are stupid? They must. This tears it for me. Its ON! These b***ches need to be humbled.

Apparently CBS plans to make Dan Rather the Howard Stern of Journalism. His report was the equivalent of fart noises on the radio. He's supposed to get them high ratings by being increasingly outrageous and nonsensical. Clearly CBS News longer cares about credibility. They intend to get rich by turning the news division in the Jerry Springer show.

CBS put out a phony notice that they were going to make a statement at noon. They never intended to do that. They intend for the statement to be promo-ed all day, then they would get a big audience for the bupkis report at then end of the Evening News. Then they could promo 60M-II at the end of that.

The answer is to stop watching. Blogs like Ratherbiased and Rathergate can continue posting the transcripts and we can fisk them from there.

I'm going to post this same comment elsewhere when people ask "What is CBS News thinking" and "What do we do next?"

Viacom/CBS's stock dropped 2% today. According to the KerrySpot, the CBS affiliate stations are angry at CBS News. Keep contacting these folks with your outrage and give your support to those are helping to get out the truth.

See this link for the Top 50 Viacom/CBS shareholders:

http://www.chrismarshall.us/cbs_top_50_shareholders.txt

List of CBS Affliates:

http://www.fraterslibertas.com/Media/CBSstationcontacts.htm

This little satire/parody at least follows Proper AF documentation procedure, tho it does put periods in ranks (Lt. or Col)-so maybe you non AF types will understand how a career AF/ANG Officer would have written these letters (not memo's)...http://www.nationalreview.com/dkonig/konig200409140915.asp......Retired AF and a Texan

I just called my CBS affilate. I told them I would never again watch a CBS News program (Evening News, 60 Minutes, local news programming, etc.). As for the reason I gave for why, seem my post above. I pretty much read from that.

Word has gotten out. CBS is just trying to use defense lawyer's tactics in hoping to stonewall this story and hope it goes away...and certainly hoping they don't have to admit anything before the election.

At the worst, CBS has taken a severe hit to its credibility. Now anything negative they report on Bush will be taken less seriously.

At best, we will be able to force this issue to a head and CBS will have to admit the truth, and this will happen before the election. But it will take an enormous amount of financial pressure. I hope with the new season's shows rolling out during this time, that CBS takes a real hit in the ratings...and they have to ask themselves why shows like CSI and Survivor are not performing as they expected.

well the Viacom stock looks like its headed down and volume might be up.. there might be hope...
http://www.nyse.com/p1021232175378.html?displayPage=http%3A%2F%2Fgoogle.nyse.com%2Fsearch%3Fsite%3Dnyse%26output%3Dxml_no_dtd%26client%3Dnyse%26proxystylesheet%3Dnyse%26filter%3D0%26restrict%3D%26getfields%3Ddescription&q=viacom

One point: I think boycotting CBS News will not be enough...especially since CBS News probably figures alot of their critics don't watch their news shows anyway...

We need to boycott all of CBS...that'll hit 'em where it hurts most...

Thanks Sam.

I will not watch your station again until Dan Rather is fired.

His behavior has been simply unconscionable. To televise fraudulent memos about the President in an election year despite being warned the memos were fraudulent is bad enough. But to continue to claim that they are genuine after every document verification expert on the record (and with all due respect to Mr. Glennon, a typewriter repairman is NOT a document verification expert) has declared them obvious and crude forgeries is simply unbelievable.

I am deeply offended by CBS’ lack of integrity, and total lack of commitment to journalistic principles such as truth and objectivity. I will miss some of your shows such as CSI, but frankly every time I see the CBS logo I get too angry to continue watching anything.

Turning CBS off until further notice,

Wow. Wow. All I can say is wow, did you see Bernstein on Hanbity and Colmes. He basically said its no big deal and completely prevaricated. I'm stunned and a little frightened of the willingness to justify this by many reporters.

Well, that's that. It's over. No legal pressure. And, since CBS has no morals, there is no moral pressure.

ctob,

I don't think Carl Bernstein is representative of many reporters. Here in DC, he's known as a washed-up reporter with a lot of very serious personal problems. He probably stands outside news network offices with a sign, "Will whore liberal lies for food."

Or perhaps for other substances.

To Killian's son: I assert they'd dig your Dad up and steal his dentures if they thought it would serve a political purpose.

See: http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2004/09/06/politics/main641481.shtml

and links there to "statement" pdf and to letters from "document
examiners". Also pdfs of Katz and Glennon interviews.

http://www.cbsnews.com/htdocs/pdf/cbsstatement.pdf
http://www.cbsnews.com/htdocs/pdf/matley1.pdf
http://www.cbsnews.com/htdocs/pdf/pierce1.pdf
http://www.cbsnews.com/htdocs/pdf/katz.pdf
http://www.cbsnews.com/htdocs/pdf/glennon.pdf

It is scary to think that CBS and their defenders are actually arguing that the spirit of the documents matters more than their authenticity.

This is ridiculous...how can anyone comment on the accuracy of forged documents?

We cannot allow CBS to get away with this...they are basically seeking to turn our concepts of truth and evidence on their head.

According to them, if you are convinced of your opinion, it is OK to use fraudulent materials to prove that point. Unbelievable.

Yeah Bernstein is a bit loopy but he's by far not the only one. I mean look at Juan williams on O'reilly tonight he was grasping at any straw he could find.

But Pat Caddell rules.

ctob,

I understand that even Jrong Juan had to admit, under the steady-handed tutelage of the Great One, Brit Hume, that if the docs are fake, the message doesn't count.

david:

Yes and then an hour and half later basically went off on the but bush really is bad so we should cover that instead of the forgeries line. Its sorta Orwellian. Its scary.

It's finished. Now the norm for American journalism? Why not. A precedent. Stonewall, naysay, and you can get away with lying. In fact, CBS's behavior passes for acceptable journalism in this country. Therefore, other lies will seep in and pass, too. Standard practice. It will become the case that everybody knows about it, no one gets too upset about it, and no one has the will to fight the battle that precedent shows will be lost. The public is already jaded and cynical. (They know CBS lied; they're not rioting about it.) Those who have faught the good fight against CBS will have to choose whether to join them in jaded cynicism or fall into depression. It doesn't matter which they will choose.

Irony of ironies: Far from a turning point in the right direction, the blogosphere's indictment of CBS marks a turn for the worse. Now the snakes know what they can do with impunity.

And without an independent, ethically upright press, well, you know what happens to this country.

God love you, Bill. You're the best.

Bill - we should protest our local affiliates - this weekend. The LLL's use this method for attention with great success.

I say it's time we do the same. I've contacted the Atlanta area CBS affiliate (for the second time in as many days) and have gathered a scattered few to go with me to proest Saturday from noon till 2 P.M.

I'll contact the other Atl news outlets Friday.

We should mobilize and act now...these are our airwaves that have been hi-jacked.

I read the Pierce statement, and tried to Google him with no luck. His statement is odd. He says, "that the balance of the Jerry B. Killian signatures appearing on the photocopied questioned documents are consistent and in basic agreement."

OK, but that's weasel wording. Are they consistent with all the other Jerry B. Killian documents in the President's file, or the unit at large? Don't think so.

He goes on to say, "In regard to the balance of the typed-written photocopied questioned documents, the same typed-face designs are strongly similar to corresponding samples that indicate the same typed-face existed prior to the date in question on the photocopied documents."

The use of "typed-face" instead of typeface and "typed-written" instead of typewritten seems odd, and not something that I've seen used before. How old is this guy? Also, what samples? Not the documents we've seen from the President's file?

Produce the record that shows that the TexANG had a super typewriter on the date in question. Get dotty Mrs. Knox to type on it. Better still, show us the originals on 30 year old paper with 30 year old ink on them. Or just show Dan the door.

Caddell went nuts on the democrats on Monday, and again tonight. It does give one hope. But what was he saying about behind the scenes bloodletting between the Kennedy and Clinton camps? I would love to be a fly on that wall!

I ... I ... I'm speechless. I've held out hope that there is some vague sense of justice left in this society, but this sorely shakes my faith.

Bill: I make your words mine.

There is nothing else I can say.
But just the though of them getting away with this makes my blood boil!

Since I´m here on Portugal, there's not much I can do.
But I'll do what I can. Donate. And if you can: call sponsors, cbs, e-mail, and if possible help these fantastic bloggers.
I wil not sit here while they spit on democracy!

They're going down!

THIS JUST IN: CBS anchorman Dan Rather reports that for several days he has been pursued by hordes dressed only in pyjamas and hounding him incessantly with the question, "What's the forgery, Kenneth?"

(Please feel free to poach this.)

They stick with the on-air comments by Katz and Glennon that have been thoroughly Fisked. Mrs. Knox said she had an Olivetti, not an IBM. Either prove that the unit had an IBM of the model Glennon mentions, or send him to Jenny Craig. Katz's comments are funny and insulting to any of the millions of Word users who have learned backspace, Ctrl-Z or simply pausing a few seconds to defeat Word's AutoFormat feature. The lowercase "l" vs. "1" issue has been dealt with as well. He doesn't deal with the curly quote issue at all.

Poor Matley weasel words his statement as well. He answers the question, are the Killian signatures by the same person in the affirmative--but not by saying they are Killian's. He does mention that one signature was consistent with an imitated or traced writing, but explains it away by the signature fit the protocol of a signature done under "stress".

What a bunch of maroons they are at CBS. They kept two crap experts, and brought in one who has no credentials on his letterhead. At least Matley had written some published works on the topic.

Bill,

Please, for the sake of all of us Texans, it is not the TANG, but the TxANG. One sounds too much like a fruit concoction from the 60's.

First Janet Jackson, now Dan Rather...
Seems CBS can't avoid revealing big boobs on TV.

I'm astonished. I thought for sure they would have come clean by now. Perhaps the other networks will continue to apply more pressure; this sort of thing hurts all journalists.

Does anyone have a link to what Pat Caddell has said?

--Rick Taylor

The first time Sean Hannity interviewed Lt Col Killians son, the son said he once was talking with his father at lunch-it seems GWBush twice volunteered for 'Nam, But Killian refused him both times 'cuz they only sent pilots with more than 500 flight hours in the 102-Lt Bush only got a little over 300, from what I've read. How come this is never MENTIONED again?????? He also signed up as he finished College-not waiting until he was due to be Drafted, and then trying to follow the REAL JFK...Retired AF and a Texan...and to TheBlur, lighten up-at least no one used FANG...

Given that someone in any position of responsibility could even think to utter a phrase such as "fake but accurate," I have to conclude the word "accurate" is no longer accurate.

I hate long, droning posts as much as anybody but this situation requires an exception.

Here is what I sent my local CBS affiliate. I did not *bother* sending anything to CBS itself.

I have been following with interest the continuing controversy surrounding last week's 60 Minutes II report on what are purported to be newly discovered documents regarding President Bush's National Guard service. I have noted several things during this controversy:

1. Dan Rather chose not to respond to the numerous challenges to the authenticity of the documents supporting the story. Instead, he attacked the challengers in a personal way, calling them "partisans".

2. After continued criticism, Mr. Rather announced during an interview that there would be no internal investigation of the story.

3. Several sources used to authenticate the documents in the story have since either claimed the Mr. Rather misrepresented their views, inflated their role in validating the documents, or disregarded their reservations about the documents' authenticity.

4. A statement released by CBS last night states in its conclusion: "The editorial content of the report was not based solely on the physical documents, but also on numerous credible sources who supported what the documents said." Yet, Mr. Rather has refused to air credible sources who strenuously disagree with his conclusions as to the documents's authenticity, including Col. Killian's wife and stepson, the latter having served in the Texas Air National Guard with him.

5. The CBS statement further concludes: "Through all of the frenzied debate of the past week, the basic content of the 60 MINUTES Wednesday report - that President Bush received preferential treatment to gain entrance to the Texas Air National Guard and that he may not have fulfilled all of the requirements — has not been substantially challenged." If I read this correctly, CBS and Mr. Rather are shifting the burden of proof in this case from themselves onto their challengers.

Mr. Rather, and by extension CBS, have executed a strategy of obfuscation and denial, including personal attacks on critics, hiding potentially exculpatory evidence, and shifting the burden of proof. Quite obviously, this strategy tramples on the most basic journalistic practice.

Until Mr. Rather and CBS abandon this strategy, address valid criticisms head-on, and present potentially exculpatory evidence which they have either withheld or tried to suppress, I will not be able to obtain any news information from a CBS News source with any degree of confidence. I will have to obtain my news information from other sources.

There is an additional point as well. As noted above, Mr. Rather has raised the issue of partisanship in relation to this story. It's funny, then, that Mr. Rather very obliquely referred to his main witness, Ben Barnes, as a Kerry supporter and fundraiser without mentioning the fact the Mr. Barnes is one of Sen. Kerry's *biggest* fundraisers, nor that Mr. Barnes is now contradicting prior sworn testimony. Nor did Mr. Rather disclose that he has participated in at least one fundraiser for the Travis County (Texas) Democrats *with* Mr. Barnes and that his own daughter has donated thousands of dollars to the Travis County Democrats. This is beginning to lead me to believe that the main problem with this report is not the rush to put something on the air, but to score partisan political points. If this proves to be the case, I will no longer be able to watch *any* CBS programming, period.

I trust you as an affiliate CBS station will take whatever actions you can to correct this situation and retain your viewership. Thank you for your consideration.

FWIW.

These guys are supposed to be seasoned professionals. The mistakes they've made are probably taught in Beginners Journalism for Dummies. The bloggers obviously are more professional, they are more efficient and the quality of their research and reporting is more factually correct than anything CBS or the rest of the MSM is capable of doing. Congratulations bloggers and thank you.