I am a retired First Sergeant from the USAF. None of those documents are in the correct format.

Official order are published with stamp of Secretary of AF and commander's initials.

But I thought CBS had the documents for six weeks before the report they aired. Is that right? The timeline doesn't seem to fit here.

Daniel Wiener has come up with a possible narrative of how CBS managed to get into this mess, and how the White House played them. Other than one small incongruity (Barnes gettin Bush into TANG), it actually satisify Occam's Razor.

Oh man, I just read Burkett's entire rant. Maniacal hatred. All I can say is: Get the straightjacket.

Are there samples of Burkett's handwriting available that can be compared to the fake Killian signatures?

Anyone know where to find a photo of Bill Burkett on the web? I've used google image search- nothing turns up.

I read that WaPo article and they are sugarcoating a man that has gone over the edge. No mention is made of the many Burkett falsehoods that Factcheck.org revealed. Of course, the obligatory "death threats" were mentioned. I have voted Democratic most of my life and I am embarrassed for my old Party. As a veteran, I was going to vote Bush anyway, but still, this Democratic Party has been hijacked by leftists and nut cases like Burkett.

I checked out a link on ratherbiased saying sponsors are not feeling any sort of hit. Also there are some good cartoons.
http://www.crosswalk.com/news/1285149.html

You might be able to find a photo of Bill Burkett on the wall of the Travis County Post Office soon...

...If Burkett could get his hands on any Bush files (based on his bragging about the trash can caper), is it possible he stole some that support the contention that Bush served honorably and met his committments? They would never want those to see the light of day. Knowing they had been stolen, that might be why they have been pounding the "Bush was AWOL" story, knowing the proof of his service was gone while Bush and his people thought they were still in the files (so they would cheerfully release all of his files).

- I'm betting they retyped the originals at one of the DNC offices and sent them to Burkette...He redlined the copies and Emailed them back to the DNC or directly to Mapes and then they finished up for changes/typo's and "aging"...They intentionally retyped the originals to prevent being caught with illegal military documents. They had no right to use these since they are NOT part of Bush's service record. But since they're fakes the worst they faced if exposed was slander. This approach also allowed them to alter the contents. Unfortunately Burkette tended to follow the Army formating and style. something a number of investigators, even Knox herself noticed. They've been working on this for 5 years and Mary went to texas a short time ago to "interview" Burkett. she wasn't there to take a tour of his home town.

Lastly CBS stood solidly on the "content" as unacceptable as that may be to the rest of the MSM, precisely because no one will ever see the originals. The problem is that when your "source" is proven unrealiable" it is always understood you will burn the source. CBS will probably feed Rather to the sharks to avoid doing that in the end. I'm still not sure that will be enough.

- One more thing...CBS gave them to the White House so later if caught they could claim even the WH found them legitimate since they handed them back. The problem is they expected mild verbal objections and doubts, not the full exposure of the mechanics.

- I'd like to think the Bush camp saw what bad forgeries they were and decided to hand the DNC the rope....

- Here's another read on Burkette at WaPo by Sylvia Moreno -

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A27239-2004Sep16.html

- On theme that comes through is He is incensed at the misshandling of the DNC with Kerry's campaign...

- Many of us have risked everything on this election," Burkett said in a message posted on Aug. 31. "The disappointment is deep and difficult to manage. But we fight on, in spite of incompetence at the top."

- Would'nt it be ironic if his "everything" led to his own candidates downfall....

Here's a video excerpt of an interview with Dan Rather by a local station in New York. http://wcbs.dayport.com/viewer/viewerpage.php?Art_ID=12471&tf=video_player.tpl&Category_ID=48#

He seems to be putting the cart before the horse.

(All these transcripts were created by me from my review of the video piece.)

Quote: "The story is true. That I believe, and still believe, that the documents are authentic."

Because the story is true therefore the documents are authentic seems to be his reasoning.

He gets even more explicit later in the interview:

Interviewer: "What makes you believe at this point that the documents are authentic?"

Rather: "Because the information in them is so on the money about how Killian felt. And what he expressed... to, now we know expressed to, his secretary, and that he wrote down. So the number one thing is the information in them was all... all hold up."

It's just amazing that because the documents said what he wanted to hear (in the sense that that's what he already believed), that makes them true. When he broadcast the story on Wednesday night he hadn't even spoken to the secretary, and I haven't heard any account where Killian wrote something down along those lines except for the bogus memos attributed to him. It's like Rather's using the memos to prove what Killian was thinking and because he knows what Killian was thinking he knows the memos must be authentic because that's what they say.

What would make the memos authentic would be that they were created in the 1970s on a 1970s era typewriter and were demonstrably produced by and signed by Jerry Killian. That would make them authentic. Having content that reinforces your prejudices doesn't make them authentic. Having your source tell you your documents are bogus but then using her comments as support of the fact they are authentic is mind-boggling.

What could possibly be going on in his mind? I think someone needs to send Dan Rather to a class on document examining so he can get a clue and cut his losses. Maybe, as some say, he is surrounded by yes-men and has lost touch with reality. I don't know. But it's certainly a jaw-dropping, train wreck type example of cluelessness in a major public figure who should know better.

Citizen Smash (indepundit.com) recently suggested that the "Bush on coke" story is coming back and will tie into the memo stuff. (sorry, I don't have the link handy) If so, the DNC royally screwed up.

Just sit back and wait until Burkett starts naming names, the DNC and CBS will deny everything he says and start pointing out that he can't be trusted because he's obviously crazy. Unimpeachable source to lunatic in a lot less than 60 minutes.

Does reassembled mean he literally reassembled shredded files.

Note the end of Burkett's rant. He was one of Michael Moore's "sources". Circumstantial evidence solidly proves that Burkett is Rather's source. Surely CBS recognizes propaganda when it sees it. It certainly has no difficulty divining right-wing partisanship in otherwise objective criticisms. What we need is a 60 Minutes style camera-in-your-face confrontation with Burkett. With his mental state, God knows what may spew out.

Is the "we" signigicant? Burkett uses "we" in grandiose fashion repeatedly in his postings...sometimes as a self-serving rapport-building tool,
and generally as an indicator of which team he is on, in the capacity of "a leader."

He might include, in that "we" people on his "team" that were not actually participants in putting the fakes together or dissemminating them with knowlege of their falseness.

That said, based on the Brooks Gregory usenet post, I think the fakes go way back, and involve collaborative effort.

He does it so frequently I took it as a sign of identity pathology.

Hunter - Burkett's Feb Appearance on "Hardball with Chris Matthews" was re-run last night...there might be a screen shot or two floating around today.

The "that said" line should be below "he does it so frequently".

Maybe these were made by the same guy who made Kerry's numerous Silver Star citations. Whoever he is, he's not too good at it and should look for a new line of work. Ha ha ha.