DNCBS
By Edward Daley (09/16/04)
The CBS television network, and Dan Rather in particular, are, if you'll pardon my use of the common military vernacular, in a world of s--t. As most everyone is now aware, the program '60 Minutes II' reported last week that President Bush received favoritism in order to get into the Texas Air National Guard (TANG) in May of 1968, and then had his performance reviews "sugarcoated" by a now deceased Colonel for reasons which have been left to our imaginations.
Mr. Rather attempted to substantiate the first of these two charges by introducing the unsupported claim of former Lt. Governor (now the Co-Chairman of John Kerry’s 2004 presidential campaign) Ben Barnes, that he intervened on George W. Bush's behalf in order to get him accepted into the TANG. I "abused my position of power" when I helped Bush join the Guard, Barnes said, yet I for one find that jagged little pill rather hard to swallow.
To begin with, in a recent telephone interview with Monica Crowley, Mr. Barnes' daughter Amy said "He denied this to me in 2000, that he did get Bush out [of Vietnam service]. Now he's saying he did... This came out in 2000 and I asked him then, at the time, if he [helped get Bush into the Guard]. He said no, absolutely not. I did not do that."
Whether Ben Barnes' newest claim is true or not will likely remain unknown to everyone but Mr. Barnes himself for the foreseeable future. Such is the case because it cannot be confirmed by the man he supposedly contacted about getting Bush accepted into that organization, former TANG head, Brigadier General James Rose. You see, General Rose died over a decade ago. Still, one has to consider that Barnes is a life-long Democrat, and it's unlikely that he would have used whatever political pull he may have had, prior to becoming Lt. Governor in 1969, to help the son of a Texas Republican avoid service in Vietnam.
Beyond that, Barnes has stated on more than one occasion that nobody in Bush's family ever asked him to involve himself in the military career of George W., or anyone else for that matter. Apparently it was a Houston businessman known as Sidney Adger who asked Barnes to help get the future president into the Air National Guard, although that claim cannot be corroborated either, since Adger has also expired. How convenient for Mr. Barnes.
All that is truly clear about this aspect of the '60 Minutes II' story is that George W. Bush never asked anyone to help him avoid going to Vietnam. As a matter of fact, according to Bill Campenni, a former Air National Guard Commander who served with Bush in the TANG, Bush actually volunteered for Vietnam combat (Palace Alert) duty in 1971 but was turned down due to his lack of experience (500 hours of flight time were then required). He went on to say that Bush was, at that time, allowed to transfer to the Alabama Guard because the unit he'd been in, had changed from an operational squadron to a training squadron.
The second (and more controversial) allegation made by the CBS/Rather machine was that Bush shirked his duty and was allowed to get away with it, due to the pressure having been brought to bear upon one of his Commanders by a higher-up. This charge was supported by the photocopy of a memorandum which was supposed to have been authored by the late Lt. Colonel Jerry Killian.
The problem is that the higher-up in question, Colonel Walter Staudt, was honorably discharged on March 1, 1972, a year and a half before the memo which regards him was supposedly written. But that's just the beginning of a long list of reasons why so many people are now convinced that the CBS/Rather "evidence" is fraudulent.
To begin with, the memos were created using a proportional font (any font whose different characters have different widths) which was practically unheard of at the time, and certainly not something one would find in the typewritten memos of a 1973 Air National Guard officer. Furthermore, a superscript font was also present within the memoranda, something which was introduced to the world of word processing by the 'Microsoft Word' program in the late 1980s.
Allan Haley, the Director of Words and Letters at Agfa Monotype in Wilmington, Massachusetts said "I'm suspect in that I did work for the U.S. Army as late as the late 1980s and early 1990s and the Army was still using [fixed-pitch typeface] Courier." He also stated, with regard to other irregularities present, that "The 'I'm' is set with an apostrophe... There were no apostrophes on typewriters. There were foot and inch marks that had to do double duty."
Remarkably, when viewed side-by-side with reproductions created using 'Microsoft Word', the CBS/Rather memos of May 19, 1972 and August 18, 1973 match the new documents to a tee.
http://homepage.mac.com/cfj/.Pictures/19may72-cbs.gif
http://homepage.mac.com/cfj/.Pictures/19may72-word.gif
http://homepage.mac.com/cfj/.Pictures/aug1873-pdf-animate.gif
A forensic document expert and editor of the Journal of the American Society of Questioned Document Examiners, Sandra Lines, told the Associated Press that she would feel comfortable with testifying in court that the CBS/Rather memos were created on a modern computer.
Marcel Matley, the primary document expert used by CBS, and upon who's reported findings Dan Rather bases his belief that the memos are bona fide, has come forward to say that he had only examined the signatures on the memos, remarking "There's no way that I, as a document expert, can authenticate them."
http://www.aboutpolitics.net/images/killian.jpg
Several more inconsistencies have been noticed regarding the CBS/Rather memos, among them being the fact that the dates, subjects lines, and certain common military acronyms and abbreviations were not the same in the memos as they are in most every other Armed Services documents of that era.
One of Dan Rather's main sources, Major General Bob Hodges (retired), told Fox News that when he was asked about the memos, he was only responding to questions over the telephone, and that the subject of their authenticity never came up. Now that he has had the opportunity to view them, he has concluded that they're fakes.
Former Director of the Air National Guard, Earl Lively, was quoted as saying "They're forged as hell" when asked what he thought about the memos. "There's no way that Jerry Killian would have written what they've come up with." he added. The unit's personnel chief, Rufus Martin concurred, saying "They looked to me like forgeries... I don't think Killian would do that, and I knew him for 17 years."
As a matter of fact, even Marjorie Killian, the widow of Colonel Killian referred to the memos as "a farce", saying "I don't think there were any documents."
It's no wonder though that Dan Rather and his CBS cronies never mentioned the opinions of these people on air, or anyone else who may have disagreed with their narrow view of the documents in question. Any witness who stepped forward to challenge the memos' validity was immediately disregarded as being too "pro-Bush", or so reports NewsMax magazine.
I believe the folks of that organization, mostly because after all the information which has come to light over the past few days concerning these questionable documents, Mr. Rather still sticks by his assertion that they are authentic, saying "This story is true. The questions we raised about then-Lieutenant Bush's National Guard service are serious and legitimate."
Well, that's just plain nuts in my opinion, but it seems that his chums at CBS are perfectly willing to back his play on the matter. If you go to the CBS News web-site located at http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2004/09/08/60II/main641984.shtml you will see the following words:
"For the record, CBS News stands by the thoroughness and accuracy of the 60 Minutes report this Wednesday on President Bush's service in the Texas Air National Guard. This report was not based solely on recovered documents, but rather on a preponderance of evidence, including documents that were provided by unimpeachable sources"
I don't know about being "unimpeachable", but I do remember reading in the 'American Spectator' an article which claimed that the memos were received by a DNC staffer more than six weeks ago. I also remember that staffer saying that "More than a couple people heard about the papers... I've heard that they ended up with the Kerry campaign, for them to decide how to proceed, and presumably they were handed over to 60 Minutes, which used them the other night. But I know this much. When there was discussion here, there were doubts raised about their authenticity."
Apparently even a CBS producer has remarked that he was uncertain about the legitimacy of the documents, saying "The problem was we had one set of documents from Bush's file that had Killian calling Bush 'an exceptionally fine young officer and pilot.' And someone who Killian said 'performed in an outstanding manner.' Then you have these new documents and the tone and content are so different."
This last quote brings me full circle back to my opening statement regarding the Communi... excuse me... the COLUMBIA Broadcasting System, dandy Dan Rather, and the planet full of feces they are currently trying to survive on.
I stick by my previous characterization of their situation because even the most dimwitted people among us aren't stupid enough to open wide for the forkful of diseased read meat being shoved in their faces by these clearly biased hacks.
Sure, there's bound to be plenty of "useful idiots" and Kerryland talking heads out there, frothing at the mouth over all this, and blaming George Bush for everything from 9/11 to the black plague in response to it, but, by and large, every non-liberal in America is going to look at this comedy of errors and conclude that CBS has been bought, lock, stock and barrel, by the Democratic party.
That, my friends, will not bode well for them or for their candidate of choice in the coming months, and, moreover, I can almost guarantee that Mr. Rather's career is careening irrevocably southward toward a most unpleasant finale as well.
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