And a personal grudge held over from Bush Sr.
Speculate? No need. Of course the board would’ve reacted differently if this had involved an organization that has shown itself time and time again to be biased, instead of one that hasn’t.
Ah yes. Suddenly, the simplest explanation is no longer applicable. :rolleyes: Did anyone read my cite? Care to rationalise Burkett’s “story”?
-He originally (falsely?) claimed his old friend/former TANG officer George Conn was his source, in order to protect the identity of a total stranger who called him “out of the blue”.
-He burned the originals and the envelope they were in, because he didn’t want traces of forensic evidence that might lead back to his source.
-He “frankly never thought about” the possibility that he might have been duped.
-Claims he had phone conversations with this “Lucy Ramirez”, but has yet to produce phone records.
Hellooo???
I never discounted that Burkett is a troubled individual, which is why I couldn’t believe he was the primary source for this. But now it’s official. “Crazy”? Maybe. But, not stupid. He got what he wanted. He played the media, and through them, got access to the Kerry campaign (he’s on the record complaining that he couldn’t get through to them before CBS intervened).*
Tigers2B1 and Shodan: Your pants are on fire.
I appreciate speculation as much as the next guy, and in the absence of evidence, speculating is all we can do to fill in the blanks. But ignoring or distorting existing evidence is just plain dishonesty.
furt: That Bush/Rather grudge goes both ways, no?
<tinfoil on> It’s McCain!!! He really is The Manchurian Candidate! <tinfoil off>
*Yes, CBS contacting the Kerry campaign is troubling. But so was Fox News outing Richard Clarke as a background source in order to give the Bush admin a heads up prior to his 911 commission testimony. Conspiracy?
Here’s my latest theory (as you say, completely wild speculation, but hey, it’s a fun game)
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Burkett is the sole source. He made the documents himself, and now he’s blaming shadowy figures to keep himself out of legal trouble.
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The Kerry campaign didn’t have anything to do with creating the documents, but they DID get a heads-up about them that was unethical, and they used the time to coordinate an attack ad campaign with CBS’s ‘revelation’.
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CBS is the real guilty party here. Not only were they reckless in not nailing down their source and the documents, but it looks like they intentionally ignored conflicting evidence, which moves their action across the line from incompetence to reckless behaviour.
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CBS is also culpable for agreeing to a quid pro quo with Burkett, putting him in touch with a presidential campaign in exchange for documents. Way, way over the line.
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The Kerry campaign should never have agreed to contact Burkett. They should have kept a long, long distance from this entire story. It was just stupid to put themselves in the middle of this story.
Most of the blame falls on Burkett and CBS, though. At least, that’s the way it looks today. Dan Rather should have been fired ten years ago, simply for being nuttier than a tree full of squirrels. Now it’s time for him to go.
No doubt; but absent any suggestion that the Bushes initiated this contretemps, I don’t see how it’s relevent.
I think Rather’s own assertion that they had spent five years investigating this is the most revealing fact of this whole mess. I mean, CBS looks at the enormity of the events of the past five years, and the administration’s many controversial policies … and in light of that they continue to devote resources into finding out whether or not the Bush disobeyed orders in 1972? That smacks of monomania to me, akin to someone in 1998 investigating whether or not Clinton inhaled.
Dan Rather would get down on his knees and hum your name if you could prove a GOP connection.
Here’s an interview with Joe Lockhart.
I agree it’s the simplest explanation. But some things do bother me about it:
-Burkett was career military. Wouldn’t he have been able to do a better job of forging them? I’m talking about the typography issues.
-Apart from the typography, how did he know about Killian’s private files? Unless you think Knox and Hodges are lying (and I don’t), those docs could only have been made by someone who had seen the files - or knew/heard about them.
-Can you rationalise how these docs are anything but deliberately bad?
-Mentally unstable people can be duped too - or are possibly more likely to be duped. Maybe the “mystery contact” hand-picked Burkett after casing his behaviour in those numerous interviews. Were you familiar with him before this? I think he’d have been an easy mark. Still, unless he gives over the phone records there’s no reason to give him the benefit of the doubt.
I don’t think Cleland had a choice. How could he not have answered his phone? It’s been reported that he’d been getting a lot of calls similar to this re the Swifties attacks. And how could he have known what would happen with Burkett after the fact?
Lockhart may have had a heads up on the memos, but how could he know they’d turn out to be discredited, and therefore potentially scandalous? In a way, this makes a case for the Dem’s innocence in this whole thing. BTW, everyone in DC knew that story was breaking in advance.
I didn’t think that implied it was a full-time front burner project. They initially investigated 5 years ago when Bush was running the first time, and may have re-opened it periodically whenever new leads or docs turned up. Of course it became front burner again this year - as with all the MSM. That’s not obsessive, is it?
Here’s what’s funny - he refused to comment. Why not the standard “This is typical liberal partisan smear and I have nothing to do with it blah blah Dan Rather blah Kerry campaign”…? Isn’t “no comment” politico-speak for pleading the fifth?
Put your caps on for this: Stone’s wife is Cuban. Miami-Cuban-Mafia Cuban. “Lucy Ramirez”?
Burkett was in the Texas Army National Guard. It’s not surprising that he’d get Air Force terminology wrong.
The branches are all quite different from each other.
I don’t see why. He is a nutcase, not a forgery expert. He did his best - typing it up, photocopying it several times, and then faxing it.
It only had to be good enough to get CBS to fall for it. As we have seen, they were willing to disregard the testimony of the experts they consulted. Their standards are pretty damn low when it comes to something they can use to smear Bush.
The forgery only had to be good enough that it could not be widely discredited until after the election. Burkett did the best he could, which wasn’t perfect but good enough for CBS, who were spring-loaded to believe anything they could use against Bush. And the Kerry campaign assumed that it was real, because they took CBS’ word for it. And they were spring-loaded as well.
Nicely phrased - an unfalsifiable assertion.
You are assuming that they were deliberately botched by some agent provacateur. There is, however, no evidence of any such person. You might as well blame it on Schrodinger’s cat.
They are also more likely to make up stories.
He didn’t know. He was willing to take CBS’ word for their authenticity. Unless they were as deliberately bad as you claim. In which case, you mean the memos needed to be good enough to fool a Democrat, but not anybody else. So you must think Democrats tend to be dumber and more gullible than the rest of us. Certainly possible, but only on certain topics, like Bush-bashing.
In the forgery part of it, sure. They had no hand in actually forging or misrepresenting the documents - that was Burkett and CBS. The unethical part for the Democrats was accepting help from a supposedly independent news organization in coordinating their “Fortunate Son” smear campaign .
Sometimes. Sometimes it is politico-speak for “we went thru all this a hundred times in 2000. I’m not giving you a quote to twist up.” Sometimes it is politico-speak for “I don’t remember these memos before. I think I will refrain from comment until I see what 60 Minutes is going to use them for, and if maybe they have some others they will use to contradict anything I say.”
Sometimes it might even be politico-speak for “If you are dumb enough to publish memos dated a year and a half after the supposed author retired from the Texas ANG, have some more rope for your hanging.”
Oh, and by the way -
If this is what passes for rational discourse in your head, next time save it. The grown-ups are talking.
USA Today got a little more out of Mr. Stone:
Sure he does. 
In all likelihood this story will be allowed to die without CBS addressing a few obvious, but unanswered MAJOR questions.
Here’s a start.
**Who or what caused CBS to contact Burkett?
Did Burkett originally indicate to CBS that he would not identify the source of the documents? (No questions asked by CBS?)
If Burkett indicated George Conn as the source, did CBS verify with Conn?
Does anyone know how CBS came to the conclusion that Burkett was an “unimpeachable source?”
Was Lockhart the only Kerry aide contacted by CBS? If not, who else did CBS contact?**
Answers here MIGHT fill some of the gaping hole left by CBS’ “apology” / explaination.
CBS has appointed two investigators to the Memogate story. According to Reuters, it’s former U.S. Attorney General Dick Thornburgh and former Associated Press chief executive Louis Boccardi. Considering how close this investigation is to the election – I have to wonder how long this will take? And whether the results come out as they’re discovered or all at once? Considering all of the questions left unanswered by CBS - this may take some time.
Kerry better hope it doesn’t come out before the election. That’ll shift the news back onto this item, which will likely be a plus for Bush.
Burkett is apparently suing CBS. His claim is that he gave the documents to CBS and warned them that they might be fake. He says that he told CBS that a stranger gave them to him, and he couldn’t vouch for them, and that he told CBS to give them a thorough vetting to try and see if they were legitimate. Burkett also says that he got an iron-clad promise from CBS to honor his anonymity. Then CBS takes these memos, does a perfunctory check, ignoring experts who voice concern. Then when the shit hit the fan, CBS flips Burkett and says he’s the guy who’s responsible.
That’s Burkett’s story. If it’s true, then CBS behaved despicably. On the other hand, if you’re a forger who doesn’t really know what he’s doing, you might cover yourself by giving the documents to a news organization, claiming that you got them from someone else, and telling them to check them thoroughly. That way, if the news agency finds something wrong with them, it goes no further, no one knows about it, and Burkett can slink away. But if they pass muster at a major news organization, then when they go public you can be pretty sure that no one else will spot the forgery. In this scenario, the primary problem is that Burkett didn’t consider the “Rather factor” - the fact that he was giving the documents to someone even nuttier than he is, with just as big an axe to grind against Bush. So instead of CBS becoming his unwitting forgery-checker, CBS hangs itself stupidly and drags him down with it.
I like that scenario, by the way. It explains a lot.
As for ‘anyone being able to spot the forgery’ - bah. There are a lot of people Burkett’s age who are totally computer illiterate. He may not have had a clue that fonts and typesetting were even an issue. He worked hard to try to get the dates, places, and terminology right, but he never had a clue about the other tracks he was leaving.
By the way, the key information that fingers Burkett is the fact that he was Army National Guard, and the terminology that was wrong in the memos was Army Guard terminology, and not Air Guard. For instance, use of the term ‘Billet’. That’s an Army Guard term not used in the Air Guard.
You’d think that someone Burkett’s age would’ve used a typewriter at some point in his life, though, or at least seen a typewritten document long enough to know that the memo couldn’t have come from the average typewriter.
I don’t know… Wouldn’t the same apply to anyone who forged these? What makes Burkett special? Obviously someone missed it.
Indeed. IMO, that lends credibility to the idea that they were intended to be exposed as forgeries.
Now your bow-tie’s crooked and your hair’s all mussed.
Howz it feel to play defense for a change, Shodan*?
Guess you never tangled with a little girl before.
*The missing “Regards, Shodan” sig line is terribly revealing. That sig line has been in common use by poster Shodan since July 2000.
I am saying that reply is a forgery, run through a GOP talking points machine for 15 generations to make it look old. This should be pursued aggressively.