Big?? Huge!

Documents allegedly written by a deceased officer that raised questions about President Bush's service with the Texas Air National Guard bore markings showing they had been faxed to CBS News from a Kinko's copy shop in Abilene, Tex., according to another former Guard officer who was shown the records by the network.

WaPo

sah-weeeeeeeeeeet!!!

I'm not up on my losers-- can this clown be directly linked in anyway to the Kerry camp?

Wa Po says this is 21 miles from Burkett's house. (He's the ex-guard guy who had a nervous breakdown after getting ill in Central America, who previously was out with story of Bush docs in trash.)

Good work Dobbs.. Now we know you didn't take yesterday off as a comp day. :)

Kerry Spot is reporting that Burkett has an account at that Kinko's and a woman reports that she waited on him last Tuesday.

The Chewbacca Defense still applies. We must focus our efforts on proving that Chewbacca doesn't live on Endor! It's our only hope.

I know that sounds absurd, but really it isn't any more absurd than stating that forged documents create a true story.

Completely OT:
John Kerry has now lost 7 days of news cycles due to this story. (And perhaps a debate moderator) The Bush spokespeople already have used this as the butt of a joke when asked about Democrat allegations. Maybe Karl Rove's evil mind control ray did get inside Bill Burkett's tinfoil hat. If anyone connected to the DNC, Kerry Campaign, or MoveOn acted as the go between this goes down as the greatest "Hey y'all, watch this!" moment in American political history.

The Abilene Kinko's is, in fact, the closest Kinko's to Baird, TX, where Burkett lives. (Find a FedEx/Kinko's function on the FedEx/Kinko's website)

Unfortunately Brett is right. Its absurb and surreal, but its what they will do. Complete sophistry, complete Clintonesque obfuscation. I believe CBS needs to be financially hammered or completely discredited(better option). Preferrably both.

Even showing the source is cooky means little. The memoes are cooky. They will still say "Fake but True".

As a Kerry supporter, I'm at least glad that this isn't pointing to anyone on Kerry's campaign staff so far. And I'm glad we may be able to get at the truth (even if CBS does finally admit they're wrong, I doubt they'll ever willingly reveal their source).

I agree with Brett that overall this has probably been more damaging for Kerry than for Bush. This can't be where Kerry wants the public's attention to be right about now, and it's only 48 days to the election. Personally, I wish CBS would fess up and take it's lumps so we could go back to debating substantive issues. The longer they stonewall, the worse it will be for them in the end.

--Rick Taylor

I wonder if there is any evidence that the documents were not only faxed from the Kinko's, but were actually created at the Kinko's. Someone oughta to go down there and copy the hard drives.

- Bill....remember the Israeli Pentagon worker.... Yeah that one....The spy guy....The one you never heard anything about 2 days later ...

- Rathers last great "Scoop"...

Keep in mind, though, that the document experts that did not vouch for them were shown the documents by CBS the weekend before last Tuesday, so if he sent them it was not last Tuesday.

Of course, he could have been faxing them off to some other media outlets or DNC or Kerry campaign so they would be ready once the story ran, or shopping them around some more.

- Dave - If you seriously think Burkett/CDS/DNC can't be said in one continous clusterfark you need to check your pulse for recent activity...

- Proving it beyond CBS is going to take a few breaks to get it right. But heres why I'm thinking there must be a paper trail. CBS has done everything but take cyanide to cover this source.

Bet subpeoned back accounts would show a number of large deposites recently from you know who. Phone records from his cell phone have to indicate something.

-Does anyone know Burketts cell number/company....?

- Travel records etc....

FedEx Kinkos

FORGE IT
FAX IT
REPORT IT
DENY IT

all in one location!

Rick Taylor - Why isn't the DNC insisting that CBS and The Dan come clean? This can only make them look bad, even if there isn't any collusion. I don't know about anyone else, but my first gut reaction, right or wrong, was that this was a Kerry Campaign (at la Estrich) dirty trick.

Kinko's? Don't pathological stalkers normally have decent setups at home as far as electronics go? This guys is going to take on the president and is too cheap to cough up the dough for a Lexmark 3-in-1 Fax/Scanner/Copier? So he uses Kinkos. Brilliant.

Bill writes, "how much angrier would I be if I'd had to deal with this guy for 30 years?"

I have had to deal with him for 30 years and honestly up until last week I actually liked him. Not that he wasn't biased--he always has been, frequently ridiculously so--but I've always thought of him as quite a character and very entertaining in his own weird way. And I'm confident enough in the validity of my own political opinions that I can easily accept dissenting views, even every night for decades on the evening news.

Now, though, I'm seriously angry. These amaterishly fake documents and the motivations behind CBS's continued support of them can't be charmed away or dismissed as a wacky anchorman's personal quirk. This is deliberate fraud in an attempt to use the public airwaves to influence a presidential election in a time of war and if CBS thinks it's going to retain even longtime viewers like me they're sorely mistaken.

It took CBS News 50+ years to establish their credibility. It only took Dan Rather, Mary Mapes and their lapdog executive overlords 5 days to utterly destroy it. We viewers aren't nearly as stupid as they seem to think we are. I'll be watching other channels instead from now on.

There is still hope that this story won't go away quitely.

Rather leads the Jay Leno Joke monologue :)

CBS = Can't Believe the Story

Manhattanite,

send that same post to your cbs affiliate

In CBS' long document they name the fourth expert who looked at the documents as "James J. Pierce". I believe I found something referencing Pierce. It is a webpage with a document from a CA lawsuit that lists a handwriting analyst (not document expert) named James Pierce. This is from the site:

TRIAL EXPERTS
Plaintiff: Tracey Charles, anesthesiologist. James Pierce, handwriting analyst.

Defendant: John Cerlanek, document examiner, Anaheim.

The website is located here:

http://www.signascan.com/testimonials.htm

If this is the right guy CBS had two handwriting experts (Marcels and this guy) say the documents were ok and two document experts say they were not, but they went with them anyway. Get the word out, someone will find out if this is the right guy.

Trent Walsh
Austin, Texas

- I just read the transcript of Rather's interview with the elder sect...

- BTW - She was not Killians sect. - she was one of the higher ups sect.... She only did work for Killian from time to time...From Killians son on Hannitty tonight...Yet another self serving lie by CBS to prop up her credibility...

- Staying calm....but after reading how that MF did everything but stick an ice pick in her ear to get her to say Bush deliberatly disobeyed orders if I were sitting there his nose would have been in great physical danger...Damn I want to see that smug Liberal synchophant taken down....

-- Ohhhmmmmmm Ohhhmmmmmmm

I think there's more than probable cause to have a bunch of cops sent over to Burkett's place right now & seize his hard drive. The Word file is probably still there.

Yeah, if he didn't know how to defeat the superscripts consistently, he sure as hell doesn't know how to scrub his hard drive. Of course he does already have a lawyer, maybe someone should check with the Abilene computer store to see if he bought a new hard drive or computer recently.

Check this out before it disappears

http://news.google.com/nwshp?hl=en&gl=us

CBS Says It Will Check Questions on Bush Files
New York Times - 1 hour ago
BS News said for the first time last night that there were legitimate questions about the authenticity of documents it presented in a "60 Minutes" report last week that raised ...

BS news

Get it out there on the net!!!!!!!!!!!

Something was tickling the back of my mind for days and when I saw the "Staudt" example at http://shapeofdays.typepad.com/the_shape_of_days/2004/09/exclusive_ibm_e_1.html it hit me. Why is it that forensic investigations of type written text can ID the typewrtter that wrote it and make the conviction stick in a court of law--provided the investigator gets his hands on the machine? I'm thinking of Unambomber, randsom notes etc. Because of the unique irregularness of the levers.

This brings to mind what I learned in Geometric Dimensioning and Tolerancing back in the late 80s. No matter how good the manufacturing processing, there will always be a certain amount of tolerancing. In WWII, 1/4 inch was acceptable in building bombers--sounds crazy, but designers had to factor that in because Rosie was doing the riveting and the goal was speed over precision. In the 80s, manufacturing/rebuilding turbine engines parts, 0.002" was the rule of thumb unless otherwise specified--sometimes going as low as 0.0005".

Not really my baliwick, but I imagine if the FBI got involved in this forgery, they could probably ID the printer/photocopier that printed/copied the docs, provided they had their hands on the original. However, it would have to be done within a reasonable amount of time--since any machine will gradually shift their internal tolerances over time due to varying wear rates.

- Question - If Burkett saw some Bush records in that trash can in 1999 but didn't grab them ...and...Somone aid "Hey guy...Do you think you could piece together the contents of what you read from memory?"...

What you might end up with is what we've been disecting for 5 days...

This guy is a fringe luney...somewhere left of marx...prolific writer but a real open gland...But he was Army not Ait guard and even the old gal said some of the memo characteristic's looked like they might have been typical of Army form....

Lab Rat wrote:
"Rick Taylor - Why isn't the DNC insisting that CBS and The Dan come clean? This can only make them look bad, even if there isn't any collusion. I don't know about anyone else, but my first gut reaction, right or wrong, was that this was a Kerry Campaign (at la Estrich) dirty trick."

And the first gut reaction of some Democratic partisans is that this is a Rove dirty trick (yes I know that's presposterous).

It's conceivable to me that someone in the Kerry helped pass the documents to CBS not realizing they were a forgery. I don't believe it, and I haven't seen any hard evidence for it. If it turns out to be true, I'll be very angry indeed.

But the notion that the Kerry campaign would consciously plant a forgery as a dirty trick seems to me to be only slightly less preposterous than the idea that Rove would do it. I mean, even apart from the fact that this would assume a level of duplicity and criminality that I just don't see any evidence for, I can't believe they'd do something that risky and that stupid.

The very incompetence of the forgery makes me think it must have been created by an individual out to get Bush who was not entirely stable. I mean, if I were going to create a forgery in an attempt to discredit Bush, I would go and buy a typewriter on ebay. Failing that, I would at least use a monospaced font. I believe that the very incompetence of the forgery makes it extremely unlikely this was some operation of the Kerry campaign. It strikes me as the work of a disturbed individual.

As for the possibility the Kerry campaign was involved unwittingly in pushing a forgery, I would ask that you resist the temptation to conclude Kerry was involved because of your prior negative opinions about him. After all, Dan Rather is now pushing the line that his fast and loose use of evidence is justifiable because the conclusions he was presenting were ones he believed to be true, and we can all see where that leads. Ends do not justify the means. Do unto others as you would have them do unto you. Since this debacle began, I've been making more of an effort not to leap to any conclusions about Bush on the basis of hearsay testimony concerning events from 30 years ago.

--Rick Taylor

P.S. As to the question why Kerry hasn't challenged Rather, I'm honestly not sure he should, at least not in public. He should have an answer ready in case anyone asks him, but for now I think he should stick to explaining what he's going to do if elected. The same goes for Bush. There's still a possibility that the media can work this out, and I'm not sure the candidates should be trying to push things one way or another.

And yes I agree that regardless of the truth this can only hurt the Kerry campaign. I read somewhere that people working within the campaign were very very unhappy with the way it's been eating up the news cycles.

I'm down the road from Abilene and trying to organize a cracked investigative team of bloggers to join in the media frenzy onsite at Kinko's. Should be fun.

Y'Know...the more I think about it, the more angry I get that these memos are attributed to a man who is 20 years dead.

Regardless of what you think about whodunit and why, it impugns(sp?) the character of a man (LTC Killian) who by all accounts served well and cannot defend himself. Now some might question if this attacks the LTC's character, but I contend that these memos paint the LTC as a man who said one thing in his official correspondence and kept another set of private documents that said the opposite. No good officer would do this. Despite what Rather and his people seem to believe words have meaning and consequences. This story slimes LTC Killian by implication. It pisses me off that THESE PEOPLE HAVE NO SHAME in painting a man in that light just to character assassinate President Bush. This is disgusting. NOTHING is worth what Rather has done to these people.

For me it goes back to character. Either you have principles or you don't. I hope Rather and his sources do a slow burn in Hell for bringing this shit-storm down on the heads of the Killian family, then Dr. Bouffard, and now those poor Kinkos employees in Abilene just because they're unprincipled fucks. I hope after Rather is fired he becomes personally legally liable to these people.

/rant

"Rather grows beard and joins Islam Sect"

CBS anchor Dan Rather acknowledged for the first time yesterday that there are serious questions about the authenticity of the documents he used to question President Bush's National Guard record last week on "60 Minutes."

"If the documents are not what we were led to believe, I'd like to break that story," Rather said in an interview last night. "Any time I'm wrong, I want to be right out front and say, 'Folks, this is what went wrong and how it went wrong.' "

- So he's going to investigate himself?

- guess its better than beating yourself with a flog....

- Question - What if Burkett saw some Bush records in that trash can in 1999 and he did grab some of them?

So you have documents that were supposed to have been destroyed. You're afraid to go public with them for various reasons. So you can only make baseless claims.

The secretary says Killian had a secret file though his son denies it. Everyone says Killian hand wrote his notes. Could have gone in the trash.

You want to get out the truth without implicating yourself or what you have so you create "typed" memos to hide the handwriting.

The new memos contain the essence of them thereby hiding the source and you then give them to CBS who will hide you as the source of the memos.

If true, pushed too far over the forgeries you releases all the papers you got from the trash, no longer fearing prosecution, and story goes from forged documents to a Bush cover-up with evidence.

I'm with Brett. It's fucking chickenshit to forge documents in a dead man's name.

Re: sebastian

Lets stipulate for arguments sake that everything sebastian said it true. Or even better that say someone actually had a hadwritten note some nameless person transcribed it into MS word and Burkett recovered from a trashcan.

Even if this were true CBS didn't know that. This would in no way abbrogate the issue. They are still documents that couldn't be authenticated. CBS should be the ones telling us that line of events, but they aren't cause they are crooks.

Maybe after Rather is nailed to the wall the WaPo or something could take up that angle, but I still say nail Rather to the wall.

BTW: Beldar has a post on this and a link from Talking Point memo about just this. With scathing reader reply.

My thought would be to wonder if CBS was the only organization he sent these forgeries to. If I was trying to pull something like this I'd be getting them to several media outlets and definitely to my victims political opponents. While I doubt they passed the documents on to CBS I do wonder if they are guilty of keeping quiet while knowing that these documents are fake.

re: sebastian

I think left of center blogger Josh Marshall has the best reply I've seen to this line of reasoning:

"The word is out and about now that the CBS Bush National Guard memos are not forgeries but rather recreations of actual documents authored by Lt. Col. Killian. . . . There's a word, though, for these sorts of recreations, if that's what they are: forgeries. There's no sense or possibility of getting around that."

The strength of the memos were that they were purported to be hard evidence that Bush disregarded a direct order. If what CBS had was not hard evidence but an individual's testimony, they should have presented it that way.

Put it this way. Suppose an official document turned up in Kerry's record showing unequivically that he had behaved with cowardice in Vietnam. Suppose that it turned out the document had been planted by another Vietnam veteran who disliked Kerry. Would you be ok with that if the veteran later claimed that he knew from first hand experience everything in the forgery he had created was true, and he just wanted to get out the truth?

--Rick Taylor

Here's an amusing quote from Dan Rather in Howard Kurtz's column ( at http://www.startribune.com/stories/587/4983731.html ):
"If the documents are not what we were led to believe, I'd like to break that story," he said. "Any time I'm wrong, I want to be right out front and say, 'Folks, this is what went wrong and how it went wrong.'"

Um....Dan, the story has already been broken...right over your head. Since you're apparently the last one to know that the documents are fakes it's hardly possible for you to "break" the story. And so far, I haven't seen you "right out front" of anything except the perpetuation of your self-serving defense of your obvious mistake.

And here's a quote from Bob Schieffer, CBS' chief Washington correspondent:
"I think this is very, very serious," said Bob Schieffer, CBS's chief Washington correspondent. "When Dan tells me these documents are not forgeries, I believe him. But somehow we've got to find a way to show people these documents are not forgeries."

It'll be pretty difficult to show people these forged documents are not forgeries. Good luck with that. Maybe you could forge some documents to support that position. Just a thought.

I'm not a lawyer, but Burkett could be trying to avoid criminal liability for possession of the Bush files he found in the trash as well as retaliation from the Bush administration. He already believes they are after him and harmed him in the past.

So he creates forgeries to disguise the originals. Yes, they are still forgeries. But CBS has always said it is the content and not the actual documents that matter.

Yes, CBS would have preferred to have the originals and the testimony. But Burkett isn't going to give that as long as it might mean jail or worse in his mind. He has to protect himself, but he also wants to bring down the President.

CBS miscalculates that they'll be able to keep the focus on the content. Burkett miscalculates that he won't be found out.

Just a theory that could explain CBS actions if Burkett is behind it with original documents from the trash, assuming that event actually happened.

"This can't be where Kerry wants the public's attention to be right about now, and it's only 48 days to the election."

Bah! Kerry's numbers go up when he is out of the news, down when he opens his mouth too much. This is probably part of a grand scheme to give him cover to stay out of the limelight until the election...

Oops...tinfoil hat slipped. Sorry.

I'm sticking with my assertion that it was his daughter, not Burkett or Barnes, although they may have fed them to her.

He called his source "unimpeachable." That sounds too defensive to me for it to be one of these good ol' boys, but if it's Daddy's Little Angel....

From what I understand Burkett claims that he witnessed the "sanitizing" of 1LT Bush's personal file and that the discarded documents ended in plain view (for him to have a good look) in a garbage can.
This means that he wants us to believe that the officer (LTC James, I believe) is such a bumbling idiot that he would commit an illegal act in public view and that he would discard the evidence of his crime in a garbage can where it would be easily retrievable.
I do not know, but if I had to discard sensitive information I would shred it, not just throw them in plain view in a garbage can. By 1997, even a TANG LTC would have heard of the Rose Law Firm shredding parties and other similar shredding parties!

I am so SICK of this story, dude. BTW, I included u in my pajama atlas of the blogosphere. I'm sure my info is 100% accurate, as I ran it past my CBS fact checkers.

jeff -

I'm sick of it too, but that's what CBS is stalling for EXACTLY that.

We must see this to a just conclusion.

CBS has reached the heigth of incompetence. Willing to protect their source till the end, but so incompetent they allow Strong to have a copy of the memos with the fax origination data. Can this get any worse for CBS. If CBS is so concerned about journalistic integrity how could they have been so carelss with this fax in the first place.

To me whether or not the CBS documents are fake or not is irrelevant. This just proves the lack of character Dubya showed in the Harken Energy scandal and as owner of the Texas Rangers was apparent at an earlier age. As former military, I did not respect Bill Clinton for his lack of military service/evasion, but at least he did not swear the oath of an officer then break it. The White House did not even dispute the facts: Bush did not fulfill his training duties the last 2 years of his service.
And I would rather have a president in bed with an intern than in bed with corporations, as our current administration has proved itself to be.

Bill,

I posted this on LGF, but think it's worth saying twice and you ARE my local BLOG.
-----------------------------------

I'm making this post here because you have been a leader in technical analysis of the documents, though I hope this post doesn't get lost in the rest of the mass of incoming you are getting.

Obviously we all think these memos are fake, but there are still folks who aren't convinced, I think we need to remind them of 3 additional technical problems that have not surfaced yet.

1. Carbon Paper: The 4 May 72 memo purports to be an order from Killian to Bush in memo form that drects bush to get a physical. Setting aside the fact that an officer would use a letter format rather than a memo to issue an order, the question is: If it is a real memo docuementing an order to Bush, then BUSH WOULD HAVE THE ORIGINAL MEMO, the only thing Killian would have is a copy, and in those days, copies were made by using carbon paper. Beyond the fact that use of carbon paper was something that a rookie typiest would avoid like the plague, a carbon copy of the memo would be recognizable.

2. Strikeovers: This has been touched on, but it's worth saying again. No rookie typist is capable of producing copy (with carbon paper) without creating strike-overs and mistake. The user of MS Word, both forgot that and could not create the errors needed to make a fake more believable.

3. Photocoping. 70's technology did not support plain paper copying. If instead of using carbon paper, the writer of memo had made a photo copy, he would have used a themograph based photocopy paper and placed that in the files. Themopaper copies were not only blurry, they we recognizable and tended to degrade over time. We see none of that in these memos.

If you're holding your breath waiting for an apology out of CBS you can exhale now. Not going to happen.

The bastions of checking credibility will NEVER apologize. Just ask Audi USA.

Remember the 'unintended acceleration' piece those yellow (Golden Shower?) journalists ran on 60 minutes in the '80s? Well, the NHTSA came out and said the dumb bastards put their foot on the gas. 60 minutes never ran a retraction and Audi left the US market for nearly a decade because of it.

This is why every car equipped with an automatic transmission in the USA must have the brake applied before the car can be shifted from Park to Drive or Reverse.

While Burkett couldn't have faxed docs to CBS on tuesday (last time he was in) USA Today got the docs in time to run with story thursday A.M.

MMMMMMMMMMMMMM.

Aragorn561-

Why should Dubya respond to allegations from forged documents?

He responded to this in 1994. The press's reaction? "Prove it ain't so!" 1998? Same thing. 2000? Same thing. This previous Winter? Same thing. In the end, the only answer was "Look, I was honorably discharged. I met my obligations. I'm not a war hero. I never said I was. Why are you asking me to prove I'm not a criminal when you don't have any evidence that I am?"

These forged docs were an attempt to resurrect it one more time.

You know, maybe the phony docs weren't coordinated directly with the DNC. With the SBVTs ripping Kerry a new one for his past military history, every partisan Democrat wanted dreamed of coming up with an equivalent accusation on Bush to change the subject. It might be that Dan/CBSNews were only in harmonic convergence with the DNC.

Now, watch Dan say "Okay!! The docs were fake! You happy now? Now, Mr. President, respond to the allegations! (of these fake documents)"

For Aragorn:

There is not an Oath Clinton would not break. According to the paperwork, he is even too dishonest to be a lawyer (not disrespect to the lawyers here).

With that said, I am curious why a career officer and a "stickler for details" would make the silly mistakes that were made on these docs (like not using military dates)?

These docs do not strike me as being made by a military person.

Secondly, if the originals were shredded, and the info could only be pieced together without complete information being known, it could explain a great deal.

I suspect that guard units would only have the very cheapest shredders and a certain amount of info could be pieced together (like signatures).

My theory: the shredded documents in question were picked up by Burkett. The content of the docs could not be pieced together but the signatures could. They were given to a DNC person or DNC rep who pieced (with invented Word material) and photoshopped the 6 docs and gave them back to Burkett for distribution.

dB

Where is the self-analysis with all these Dems insisting that we 'look at the charges against Bush' and 'not pay attention to a petty little detail about forged documents'? If it's so freaking difficult to come up with proof any proof that Bush was AWOL (to the point of actually having to fabricate said 'proof'), doesn't that lead any of them to suspect that it doesn't exist and therefore the charges were never even true begin with?

Oh, sorry, I forgot; we're talking about liberals here. Occam need not apply.

Here's another self-serving tidbit from Dan, on Wednesday's "60 Minutes II":
"Tonight another voice, a credible voice, has entered the debate. The woman who described herself as Colonel Killian's right hand during much of the 1970's...

As if no other voice previous to that was credible. Dan Rather wouldn't even have been interviewing her if other credible voices hadn't forced him into damage-control mode in the first place.

It also raises the question of why he hadn't spoken to her previously. Killian's family have stated emphatically that he couldn't even type. I've watched enough "Law and Order" to know the very next question should be, "Well, if he didn't type the documents then who did?" Briscoe and Green would have been on to his secretary in a heartbeat. If Dan and company had done their job they would have found her before the story aired and learned before they made fools of themselves that the documents weren't real. Sloppy, sloppy, sloppy.

"To me whether or not the CBS documents are fake or not is irrelevant. This just proves the lack of character Dubya showed in the Harken Energy scandal and as owner of the Texas Rangers was apparent at an earlier age."

I hear this a lot from liberals. You can't say "fake documents are not important 'cause Bush lied." The AWOL theory (which is what this is about, not Harken or Texas Rangers - don't know where you got that one) is called into question because of the fake documents. It's like saying in a court of law, "yes the DNA evidence appears to be done improperly, but that's irrelevant because the suspect is a murderer." If the evidence is suspect, then the accusation that is based on said evidence is also called into question.

Not that this matters, of course. Liberals are so convinced Bush is evil they don't need evidence, do they?

The Abilene Paradox

Organizations frequently take actions contrary to the desires of any of their members and defeat the very purposes they set out to achieve.

Is anyone but me disturbed that Kinko's would just tell anyone who called them, who has an account at their store?