136 Comments

1. Mike:

The reluctance of CBS to reveal the source of the docs is perhaps the most troubling aspect of this. It makes me wonder if either they came from the Kerry camp, or perhaps from the DNC.

I suspect that, had they come from someone tied to the Bush campaign, there’d be no hesitation blaming the eeeeeevil genius Rove.

It’s impossible to look away from this, tho. It’s like a slo-motion train wreck, only the victim(s) deserve their fate here.

Sep 14, 2004 - 7:34 pm 2. Katherine:

I am starting to suspect that in addition to everything there is a vast amount of money involved. Is Soros pulling the strings? Or Teresa herself?

I need to clear my head. I am moving into Conspiracy Central. I think.

Sep 14, 2004 - 7:39 pm 3. BeckyJ:

Mike, I agree with you. Like Roger, I am a recent arrival to the center-right position on the political spectrum. I am deeply disappointed in the actions and responses of the Dems in this election (and over the last few years).

I’m also amazed at the number of people who keep insisting that there has been no clear evidence of forgery. I don’t ever remember such wide-spread stubborn refusal to deal with what is right in front of you; even during the 1980 & ‘84 presidential campaigns. I like the train-wreck analogy.

Sep 14, 2004 - 7:42 pm 4. Terrye:

Roger:

I have to admit I am baffled.

If we look at the facts we must assume that Rather went with the story knowing full well there were problems with it. Now if his source is of such a sandalous nature that he can’t even give vague reference to him/her/it, why use material that might call on the source to be revealed? Unless of course that is the point.

I don’t know. Maybe their arrogance made them sloppy which makes you wonder how many times they have gotten away with this kind of thing. I think 60 Minutes may die a very ignoble death. And they may not be alone.

Sep 14, 2004 - 7:45 pm 5. Tim:

Did you see this?

http://shotsacrossthebow.com/archives/002084.html#002084

I’m not saying it’s credible, but in a novel it would certainly be believable…

>>>>>>>>>>

What if it wasn’t botched, but planned to occur exactly as it has?

Here are the two key bits of information needed to solve this puzzle:

In August, 1974, President Nixon was forced to resign for campaign dirty tricks and the following coverup.

In Oct. 2002, Frank Torricelli, tainted by scandal and losing his bid for the New Jersey Senate, withdrew, and was replaced by Lautenburg at the last minute. Lautenburg went on to win the election, saving a crucial Democratic seat.

The light begins to dawn, doesn’t it my friends.

Sep 14, 2004 - 7:48 pm 6. Terrye:

Maybe the source is from within. Maybe someone at CBS did the memos and so they can’t give a source because they don’t have one.

Hypothetically speaking of course.

Sep 14, 2004 - 7:48 pm 7. Robert Crawford:

I have no doubt they weren’t alone on this. The same week CBS (and the Boston Globe, and Newsweek) ran with this story, Kerry was starting a new campaign theme, “Fortunate Son”, attacking Bush’s service record.

CBS, as we’ve learned tonight, ignored their experts and ran the story. They HAD to: everything was in place for a multimedia assault on Bush. Nothing could be allowed to get in the way. The memos were CRITICAL to the role CBS was to take.

Thankfully, they were caught. Now let’s hope the pay a price for their lies.

Sep 14, 2004 - 7:49 pm 8. RogerA:

Like you, Roger, I keep thinking this thing is going to die–I wrongly predicted it would die over the weekend, and now the MSM is starting to go on a feeding frenzy (and I will credit the WAPO–) Polipundit is reporting the Christopher Cox (r) (CA) is asking for hearings–not likely but keeps the story moving.

I am not given to conspiracy theories and usually ascribe contretemps such as this to sheer stupidity and arrogance of individuals. This affair could not work so well to the Republicans favor if they had scripted it themselves–Bush is surging, Kerry is tanking (and tanking in the battleground states)–he will start campaigning in blue states the way his numbers are going. And the MSM–those pontificating nabobs who complain about the candidates not covering the issues are themselves talking about memo gate and dissecting the events of 35 years ago. Looks to me like this is the end; First of the dems; and second, the MSM. And I still can’t figure out who might have composed the memos (but it was someone young enough never to have used a manual or electric typewriter)

Sep 14, 2004 - 7:53 pm 9. chuck:

Ah, Terrye

You assume that Dan and his cohorts at CBS are acting rationally. I don’t believe it for a second. These guys are nuts. I think the explanation that they floated, that the documents were true in essence, even if not in fact, represents a valid argument to them. Reality *must* be just as they imagine.

Rational folks would have retreated long ago, crazy people can go on forever. This is going to be a terrific mess, and if the NYT and Boston Globe and plenty of others don’t get their act together they are going to get sucked into it too deep to get out.

Sep 14, 2004 - 8:09 pm 10. Solomon:

Heh, Tim, I was up a day earlier on this very blog with that theory. (Though he wrote more words . And I doubt it was original with me. It’s definitely an interesting idea…I don’t know that I really believe it, though.

With the size of the blogosphere and the…commentsphere…there are going to be a million and one theories out there. When the truth comes out, and I believe it will come out, odds are at least decent that someone will be able to step forward and say, “See, I called it!” And others will trumpet, “The blogosphere does it again!” Fact is, everyone’s just guessing.

Personally, I’m just really, really enjoying the ride. This is exactly the opposite of the feeling I had when I first heard there really was a blue dress…with…DNA on it (I was a Clinton supporter then).

Sep 14, 2004 - 8:11 pm 11. David C:

I’m utterly baffled now. After the unbelievable chutzpah of the “however, Laura Bush offered no evidence to back up her claim…” bit, I’m at a loss to come up with any rational explanation for CBS’ behavior.

If they came clean and said “We were duped,” I could understand that.

If they just claimed victory, and let the story fade away after Friday, ignoring both the “larger story” and requests for comment on the forgeries, I could even understand *that*.

But this balls-out full-throated defense of the indefensible? I just can’t figure it out. And if it was just “Dan Rather, loose cannon,” wouldn’t Viacom management be getting antsy about that, and do *something* to stop the bleeding?

And why would any of these players want to take the fall for John F’ing Kerry?

Sep 14, 2004 - 8:12 pm 12. TmjUtah:

I listened to the national ABC radio news, top of the nine p.m. hour local, here. The commentator quoted a female document expert who had been consulted by CBS in the run-up to the SixtyII story as having told them that if they ran that story, hundreds of document experts would be all over them within the week.

Turns out she was optomistic, doesn’t it?

For the life of me, I cannot see what profit there is for CBS or the Globe or Newsweek for standing on this story…nor for the DNC, nor the Kerry campaign, or ANYONE else, for that matter.

Are there other stories back down the line that were built on other forgeries? Did these documents come from the Clinton’s Chappaqua library? Is CBS waiting for word from their security consultants that they have located the producer holding the coordinating documents linking the Kerry campaign/Terry McAullife/Dan Rather/Dan’s daughter…hiding in a Tijuana slum? Does the mental state on parade on DU at any given moment actually represent the thought processes of the establishment Left?

So many questions; so few answers. After listening to the ABC story I cannot see how ViaCom’s stockholders can sit still on this. The best solution (from the market standpoint) would be for the board to get to the bottom of this, and sooner rather (no pun) than later.

I can’t see ViaCom’s board members much interested in fighting the staff of CBS’s news department and Kerry’s campaign crew for a window-cleaning corner in Manhattan. They need to act.

Sep 14, 2004 - 8:12 pm 13. mrp:

It looks like CBS is settling in for a high-stakes poker showdown.

I hope the White House stays as far away from this thing as possible and leaves it to the current players. Does CBS have other, perhaps even ‘authentic’ documents ready for delivery if the Bush campaign enters the fray? The American Spectator’s “Prowler” columns have reported unconfirmed disarray in Black Rock, but Prowler’s informant might be distributing disinformation, too. The stakes now are too high to accept the statements of persons unknown without a high degree of skepticism.

As it stands tonight, CBS News is thoroughly discredited; its ‘experts’ have refused to authenticate the ‘memos’ and several are talking freely with the press.

USA Today also has a photocopied set of Killian’s ‘memos’. So far, USA Today has refused to release the name of their benefactor. Why? The credibility issue concerning the ‘documents’ is near-unanimous: they are forgeries. USA Today would be guaranteed a a record-sale for their paper if they disclosed the culprit on Page One with a mug shot. But to date – nada.

CBS affiliates are the pressure point. From time to time, they must petition the FCC for a license renewal. Can they possibly fulfill their pledge to serve the public interest by disseminating highly-questionable documentary evidence which attacks an incumbent president during an election season – material that has been repudiated by several of CBS’ OWN EXPERTS?

Sep 14, 2004 - 8:12 pm 14. John Moore ( Useful Fools ):

Imagine you are associated with CBS or the Kerry campaign, and your goal is to clobber Bush.

So you make up these fakes, get the to Dan Rather, who was out to hit Bush anyway. You let the Globe know that something is up.

In a world without bloggers, it works. Bush is defending himself against “documentary” evidence that he was aa militaray shirker, just as Kerry plays the war hero trumpet. Classic, notmal late campaign surprise,

Conspiracy theory? Yeah, a little one that depends on the desires of certain MSM outlets to nail Bush.

If this were 1992, this would hae worked.

Sep 14, 2004 - 8:15 pm 15. richard mcenroe:

The culprit will be exposed when someone at CBS who can make it stick says, “Dan, tell us where the memos came from.”

Roger A ó The question is not the memos being composed by someone too young to have used a typewriter; the question is, what grownup who is old enough to know better looked at the forged memos with such arrogance, self-righteousness and contempt for the intelligence of the American public that he decided it didn’t matter?

Sep 14, 2004 - 8:15 pm 16. ambisinistral:

Oh, I don’t think you have to get too elaborate in creating a scenario for this. As bad as the forgeries were, I would imagine somebody produced them to make a little money and sold them to a credulous staffer in the Kerry campaign. The documents were then passed to CBS by somebody in the Kerry campaign.

CBS must have been keeping these documents in a very small circle of people. Those people must not have realized just how badly forged the memoes were. I think CBS is surprised by how quickly the veracity of the documents fell apart, in fact I think CBS probably didn’t believe the forgery stroy when it started to break.

This looks like a scammer sold the documents to a credulous Kerry campaign, and that campaign passed them on to a credulous network that wanted to help. Because of the small number of people involved, and because they wanted to believe the memoes, they were never properly vetted.

They saw what they wanted to see and got burned. Rather’s reputation is already toast. He can’t reveal his source because he’ll take the Kerry campaign down with him. Sooner or later somebody in that small circle that had access to the documents will start pointing fingers to save their hide.

Only way to prevent that is a payoff. A Heinz or Soros payoff is the thing to be looking for methinks.

Sep 14, 2004 - 8:16 pm 17. chuck:

TmjUtah:

Does the mental state on parade on DU at any given moment actually represent the thought processes of the establishment Left?

Yes.

Sep 14, 2004 - 8:17 pm 18. rastajenk:

Did any of you see that guy Reese something-or-other, the founder of CNN, on Hannity & Colmes tonight? What an ill-informed turd he came off being…totally sympathetic to CBS, and bemoaning that it was just a form of he said/she said, experts vs. experts, as if the authenticity proponents still had legs upon which to stand. Not too surprising, coming from Saddam’s personal racotuers, but pretty amazing nonetheless. My hope is that other news agencies or talking heads that side with CBS will pay a high price as well for their poor judgment.

Sep 14, 2004 - 8:18 pm 19. Brooks:

Mr. Simon:

The American “Nomenklatura”–Rather, Couric, the Clintons, and Kerry–has outed itself. What’s really sad is that it’s too bourgeois to be tragic. It’s like the white trash version of hubris.

Sep 14, 2004 - 8:19 pm 20. David Thomson:

Dan Rather and CBS are horrified by the destruction unfolding before their eyes. On top of that, Iím fairly sure that this scandal will also demolish John Kerryís presidential hopes. The odds are overwhelming that a top Democrat provided Sixty Minutes with the fraudulent documents. The perpetrator(s) will be going to jail. Watergate? Yes, we may be able to start comparing this fiasco to that earlier nation shaking event. How much might this help President Bush? He may now win by at least 20 points!

Sep 14, 2004 - 8:19 pm 21. RogerA:

Richard McEnroe: you are right of course–but I thought the answer to your question was obvious

Sep 14, 2004 - 8:22 pm 22. richard mcenroe:

Ambisinistral ó There’s the rub. As long as Rather stonewalls on the provenance of the documents, the question cui bono?, who benefits, is in the air. And until Rather gives a conclusive answer otherwise, the implacable finger of guilt points to John Forbes Kerry…

Sep 14, 2004 - 8:22 pm 23. Assistant Village Idiot:

Internet Skywalker has just blown up the CBStar. The Empire will strike back.

Sep 14, 2004 - 8:22 pm 24. David [.net]:

Did any of you see that guy Reese something-or-other, the founder of CNN, on Hannity & Colmes tonight?

That was Reese Schonfeld, and it was disturbing. The low level of investigation and verifcation he was explicitly stating as the proper standard was stunning.

Sep 14, 2004 - 8:24 pm 25. richard mcenroe:

Roger ó I suspect CBS News is stonewalling for a very simple reason: They wanted to influence the Presidential election and they have: in exactly the opposite direction they intended. If they admit that, they lose their seat at the East Coast elite table…

Sep 14, 2004 - 8:28 pm 26. Sonetka:

My (probably wrong) theory is that is was either someone at CBS or someone with very, very close ties to someone else at CBS. The reasoning for this is based on my two favourite historical cases of forgery (I study them for fun, not because I want to emulate).

William-Henry Ireland: To make a very long story short, he tried to pass off some truly ridiculous items as Shakespeare’s love-letters, “undiscovered” plays and so forth. The grammar was all wrong, the spelling, as Samuel Schoenbaum expressed it “belonged to no period,” and experts quickly debunked the whole thing, even while quite a number of people, including Boswell, stopped their ears and signed a “Certificate of Belief.”

Where did these fantastic letters come from? From “Mr. H.” said Ireland. Apparently Mr. H. was shy, lived in the country, and did not wish to be identified and publicized. Every effort to flush out Mr. H. failed miserably.

John Payne Collier: Acquired a Shakespeare folio from a newly-arrived lot at an antiquarian bookstore – the owner had not yet catalogued everything in the box, but let Collier, an old friend, buy the book anyway. A few years later, Collier published his findings – the folio had been crammed with annotations in a seventeenth-century hand, apparently from the son of one of Shakespeare’s players, amending much of the text and adding performance notes. At that point, an attempt was made to trace the original owner. One possibility was found, but he remembered of his book only that it had “a few” notes and that he had sold it. He doubted that Collier’s massively annotated original was his. All efforts to trace the original owner and establish a chain of custody failed, because the shop owner did not know where the book even came from originally and because some years had passed.

Mr. H. and Collier’s Original Owner both had one thing in common with Dickens’ Mrs. Harris. They were made up. The forgers were Ireland and Collier themselves, and their back-stories were purposely established to obscure the chain of custody so much that nobody could prove that they had *not* belonged to a particular person. Ireland, being a dolt, made a very transparent excuse which it did not take long to make look very suspicious. Collier was more intelligent – first, he picked a book out of an uncatalogued jumble, and then waited several years.

CBS, interestingly, is emulating Ireland much more than Collier. Instead of establishing an at least not-entirely-idiotic backstory (say, this particular person *found* the documents, or this staffer received them by fax, and after much verification we decided to go ahead) they have gone for the Mr. H. defense. “It was someone we trust, and you should just believe it.”

The fact that they have (a) established that this person exists and (b) absolutely cannot name him or her means that to name them would break their case so badly that they would rather look like obfuscating fools in the face of the Washington Post, ABC, and other fairly major news carriers. I mean, wherein it would be obvious to most rabid DU’er that something was…off.

Therefore, I surmise that the source was CBS itself, or an approximate equivalent. And there is no way, ever, that CBS would say, “Yes, we got the documents from a trustworthy source who found them in Killian’s personal files many years ago – US!”

I realize this will probably all be blown out of the water twelve hours from now, but I think the historical parallels are rather neat .

Sep 14, 2004 - 8:28 pm 27. David Thomson:

ìDid any of you see that guy Reese something-or-other, the founder of CNN, on Hannity & Colmes tonight?î

Reese Schonfeld is probably a very decent and honest man. Heís simply in shock—and senses that the world of American journalism will never again be the same. Heads are going to roll and an era has ended. Schonfeld wants to run away from reality until the bitter end. Can you really blame him? The man is surely enduring something of an existential dark night of the soul.

Sep 14, 2004 - 8:29 pm 28. Katherine:

1) There is increasing probability that Kerry campaign was involved in creating and/or disseminating the forge memos – Robert Crawford up on the thread gives detailed reasons for this conclusion and second his analysis (that is how I saw the situation from the very beginning)

2) Kerryís campaign is stuffed to the gills by old Clinton operatives

3) These operatives know how well delay and stonewalling worked for Clinton; in fact it took several months from the time that the Monica story broke out to Clintonís confession.

Conclusion: The same people are hoping that this tactic will work for CBS and Kerry, bloggers or no. All they have to do is to hang on for 49 days. It worked for the Main Man; it should work now. At some point they may be forced to move from the ìletís damage Bush as much as we canî into ìletís protect our own hidesî mode.

It will be interesting to see what the meaning of ìisî is going to assume this time.

Sep 14, 2004 - 8:30 pm 29. Right Brain:

Dan Rather has moved from hapless victim to willing participant by his refusal to refute these obvious forgeries. He has become the new Donald Segretti.

Sep 14, 2004 - 8:30 pm 30. JBR:

Let’s assume for the moment that the forgeries came not from the Kerry campaign but from someone associated with Moveon.org. Obviously that doesn’t hurt Bush, but does it help him anywhere near as much as if the forgeries came from the Kerry campaign?

Sep 14, 2004 - 8:30 pm 31. mrp:

One more thing:

McCain-Feingold exempts newspapers and broadcast TV news programs from the ‘60-day’ rule (which forbids broadcast campaign advertising by non-candidate groups or individuals less than 60 days for an election). Rathergate is just a taste of what is to come as long as M-F remains the law of the land.

Sep 14, 2004 - 8:31 pm 32. Katherine:

I wish that Perview would finally Beocme my Frined. (sigh)

Sep 14, 2004 - 8:44 pm 33. ambisinistral:

richard mcenroe,

That’s true, but what I’m saying is everybody assumed the forgeries were generated by the Karry campaign, I’m guessing you have to take it one step further — somebody sold them to the Kerry campaign. Both Kerry’s campaign and CBS got taken in by what they wanted to see.

To try to explain what I’m thinking — a Nigerian 419 scam works because it is a scam withing a scam. The victims of it believe they are doing something just as illegal as the original scammer. That puts the original con artist who sold the documents in a bit of a position of power. CBS and the Kerry campaign might be able to wiggle out of this, but not if they can’t insure the protection and cooperation of the person who produced the forgeries in the first place. They try to roll him and he is going to be able to roll them in return.

They’re between a rock and a hard place I suspect. That’s what I think is causing the strange actions of CBS.

Sep 14, 2004 - 8:48 pm 34. marek:

This affair defies any logic.

Let’s assume that the perp who prepared the fakes doesn’t know how a document printed on a typewriter looks like. But Rather should have known at least that much. So how could he be so stupid and arrogant to attempt to pass this forgery as a real verified document from 1972?

The worst part for him is that he not claim ignorance anymore either. And the longer it goes the bigger the aftershock will be.

So what’s the explanation? Is he really that stupid and arrogant? Is he now trying to protect somebody close to Kerry and/or DNC?

Sep 14, 2004 - 8:49 pm 35. David Thomson:

ìLet’s assume for the moment that the forgeries came not from the Kerry campaign but from someone associated with Moveon.org.î

Iím not buying this theory. Dan Rather and his comrades would gladly out a Moveon.org person. Nope, this perpetrator is likely a leading ìmainstreamî Democrat. They are someone who canít be disowned by the Kerry campaign. Letís get real. The person(s) had to be well known and established to con Sixty Minutes in such an outrageous manner. A nobody from the sticks would have never got past the front door.

Sep 14, 2004 - 8:52 pm 36. Mike G in San Diego:

Sonetka wrote: “My (probably wrong) theory is that is was either someone at CBS or someone with very, very close ties to someone else at CBS.”

Very close ties, I’ll wager. The one explanation that makes sense to me is that Dan Rather is stonewalling because of the harm that admitting the fraud would cause a close family member. What if the conduit (not necessarily the source) of the fraudulent documents were his daughter, Robin Rather, who is a Democratic Party activist in Austin and is rumored to be eyeing a campaign for mayor in 2006? That could pretty much end her political career … not necessarily by being associated with a scanda — heck, scandal doesn’t hurt your career in Texas politics, look at Ben Barnes! — but by becoming known as “the woman who killed John Kerry’s shot at the presidency.”

Sep 14, 2004 - 8:53 pm 37. Rick Ballard:

Katherine,

Priivew is firend to no oen. A box upin hom!

Sep 14, 2004 - 8:54 pm 38. Godzilla:

Tim

I keep asking myself, can the Clintons really be that slick?

Sep 14, 2004 - 8:54 pm 39. JBR:

David Thomson: Interesting idea that it was a well-established person, but doesn’t it seem likely that it was a person who is under 30 (maybe even under 25) and therefore too young to remember much if anything about typewriters? It would be quite a show if it turned out to be a mainstream Democrat, but I’m trying not to get my hopes up.

Sep 14, 2004 - 8:57 pm 40. Old Dad:

Fascinating! Old media is crumbling before our eyes. It might take months, or even years, but it’s happening in slow motion just like those videos of the Kingdome crumbling into dust.

Watched part of Scarborough Country tonight, and was mostly interested by the various CYA strategies even coming from the Right. When CBS falls, you don’t want to be too close, and it’s falling.

Sep 14, 2004 - 8:59 pm 41. Matteo:

A couple of items today have caused me to form the following picture.

First off, I viewed the new DNC ‘Priveleged Son’ commercial on the DNC website. The commercial has a very strong tie-in with Dan Rather’s 60 Minutes piece (Dan himself plays a big role in the commercial). At this point it’s hard to believe they’d even let such a thing see the light of day. Given all the talking points that the various Democrat pundits and spokesman have been using since the 60 Minutes episode, and their insistence on going ahead with the commercial anyway, it’s obvious that everything, including the revelation of the memos on 60 Minutes, is part of a large coordinated plan that’s been in the works for a long time.

I’ve found it mighty odd that days after it was 99.9% certain the documents were forgeries, the various operatives are still shouting “Bush must answer to the charges in these documents!”

The whole situation reminds me of wide receivers and running backs remaining in motion, as yet unaware that the quarterback has already been sacked.

Secondly, the two most interesting pieces of news today: ABC’s revelation of the experts who tried to tell CBS they were dealing with forgeries and were ignored, and the news that both NBC and CBS are asking the DNC to shelve the ad.

It looks to me like malice has been established, because CBS was warned and went ahead anyway. Due to the obvious coordination mentioned above, it seems quite probable that the DNC was the proximate source of the documents.

I conclude that CBS is stonewalling as lawyers for both the DNC and CBS are in a panic trying to figure out what to do about all this. We have a decent legal case for libel, a case for collusion, a felony consisting of forging documents and/or impersonation, defamation of character against Killian, a political scandal that could easily ruin the Democratic Party, the destruction of the CBS News franchise, and the destruction of Dan Rather’s career. And as far as CBS is concerned, we’re only on the second official workday after this thing became a live scandal (which, for the MSM, was Friday). So despite the fact that it seems like an eternity since last Thursday morning when a lot of us first knew this was going to be huge, it really hasn’t been much time at all in terms of how fast corporations and their lawyers can move.

I believe the reason CBS wants the ad shelved is that they want to minimize the “committed fraud in order to influence a federal election” aspect of the Grand Canyon of troubles they’ve already dug for themselves. And NBC, of course doesn’t want to be associated with this in any way, shape, or form.

Sep 14, 2004 - 9:01 pm 42. Rick Ballard:

What happens if Congress calls hearings as reported by Hewitt? If they supoena Rather, what then? Rather will throw up a “protect the source shield” and defiantly go to jail to cheers all round as “protector” of what he is destroying.

This really needs to go to the appropriate regulatory agency and they need to hit the affiliates as well as CBS. If enough affiliates are hauled up before Congress then they will force CBS to disgorge.

This really does stretch belief beyond its limits. You couldn’t sell this as a fiction premise with a gun in your hand.

Sep 14, 2004 - 9:04 pm 43. Godzilla:

rastajenk

CNN is also the network that admitted to lying about Iraq to get access. Their support of CBS is not surprising, considering.

Sep 14, 2004 - 9:07 pm 44. idi_amin:

someone earlier mentioned the affiliates…

this site lists CBS affiliate mailing addresses with websites/fax/emailaddresses if available:

http://www.pinfever.com/cbs__addresses.htm

Sep 14, 2004 - 9:13 pm 45. Katherine:

Matteo,

Lots of people suggested that there may be legal ramifications for CBS actions, yet Eugene Volokh seems to think that there are no bases for prosecution and concludes ìSo forgery for purposes of a political hoax (rather than to get money) seems safer than one might have at first thought, though, kids, don’t try it at homeî

Do you know otherwise? Can you give specifics? Would love to learn.

Rick.

Thank you for your kind words. One day I will beat this goddamn Perviiew to a jelly.

Sep 14, 2004 - 9:14 pm 46. Roberts:

Another reason that CBS is stonewalling is that they are starting to realize that they have done what has long thought to be nearly impossible.

CBS has created liability for itself for a defamation suit from a politician. Given the high standard of malice to be able to prevail, it has long thought to be nearly impossible – that one would almost have to do it on purpose.

CBS might have accomplished it.

Sep 14, 2004 - 9:15 pm 47. richard mcenroe:

Ambinisinistral ó Yes, but CBS is already rolled. Their only real hope is to prove someone else behaved even worse than they did, and that “they are victims too…”

Rather is done, regardless. His reputation is gone and will not be redeemed. He is no spring chicken, and the week he retires six tell-all books will hit the stands and this will be the climactic chapter. CBS and Viacom need to realize that Rather is an asset with a limited shelf-life, and that any damage to their customer good-will will be more damaging in the long-term than any embarrssment concerning Rather. Defending him makes bad business sense.

Sep 14, 2004 - 9:20 pm 48. Syl:

Matteo

Yes!

and just how stupid do they think the American people are?

It boggles the mind!

The DNC is suicidal. I just don’t get that part. Maybe they think all that matters is placing doubt in people’s minds about Bush when the people don’t give a flying f*ck about what Bush did 30 years ago anyway.

They ‘reason’ that if Bush was bad, then Kerry being bad doesn’t matter. That equivalence thing again. When in truth (as I think it was Occam’s Beard who said) they compare a grapefruit to a grape and consider that balance.

They’re acting desparate. The combination of Bush hatred and being out of power has driven them absolutely mad.

Their coordinated campaign (CBS, print media, DNC, Kerry campaign) has derailed. Nothing like first contact with the enemy foiling all plans.

Kinda like Iraq, huh?

Sep 14, 2004 - 9:22 pm 49. chuck:

Folks,

This ain’t the Clinton wing of the party. Clinton tried to pull the party to the center, but it snapped right back into place like an elastic. Clinton was a democratic outlier. This is the Gore, Kennedy, Kerry, Shrum wing of the party. The Liberal/Massachusetts mafia.

Jeez, you’re beginning to sound like the moonbats vs Bush. Ain’t Kennedy, Gore, Kerry, Shrum, et. al., enough to keep you all up at night without bringing in the Clintons?

Sep 14, 2004 - 9:30 pm 50. richard mcenroe:

Matteo ó Amazingly, has anyone even mentioned the thunderous conflict of interest of a major media journalist (just ask him) appearing in a partisan political ad in the middle of a campaign he is supposedly covering?! I mean, isn’t that why Tim Russert refused to release his old Kerry interview footage?

Or does it matter whose partisan you are?

Sep 14, 2004 - 9:33 pm 51. richard mcenroe:

Chuck ó Don’t forget the House of Windsor and all their heroin money…( ©Lyndon LaRouche…)

Sep 14, 2004 - 9:35 pm 52. Matteo:

Katherine–

I have no legal expertise and would defer to Volokh and other lawyers as far as legal ramifications are concerned. I have, though, read varying opinions on this. Killian’s family may well be able to get damages due to defamation of character (in this particular case, the idea of Killian trying to do a CYA, in effect showing a man who will lie in official documents if pressured to do so). There may be precedent for this. Supposedly the Westmoreland case was along these lines.

As far as the bigger ramifications, well, in many ways we’re through the looking glass here. New precedents are set when unprecedented things occur (as a non-lawyer, that’s just a guess on my part).

I would certainly want the law to come down hard if someone tries to egregiously scam an election through fraud. But I wouldn’t want it to take notice of the usual bias and distortion; that’s what political argument is for.

Sep 14, 2004 - 9:36 pm 53. Rick Ballard:

Richard,

He’s only “appearing” in the sense that he’s in the cuts they pulled from 60II. The problem is the whole “Favored Son” theme that is the brainchild of the braindead DNC campaign for September. It was planned well before the broadcast and it really needed Rathers mendacity to make it work. There is more than the scent of flop sweat in this. This smells a lot more like a smiling toddler with a very droopy diaper. The private polls must be telling a story never heard before in Dem circles.

As I’ve mentioned before, the trajectory is set and the velocity is increasing, this is going to take a really big team to do an adequate BDA. It must be looking to the Dems like ‘32 from the Republican perspective.

Sep 14, 2004 - 9:46 pm 54. blogaddict:

I’m glad you’re a mystery writer, Roger, because maybe if you are creative enough you can come up with a scenario that explains the facts as we know them so far. I have to admit I’m totally stumped.

My own (rather lame) attempt at some sort of rational ordering of this strange set of events is as follows: Many people have an amazingly difficult time admitting wrongdoing, and the higher the stakes, the harder it is. The stakes here are incredibly high: Rather’s reputation, the reputation of 60 Minutes, the reputation of CBS itself, the reputation of the MSM as a whole, and perhaps even the results of the election. They thought they had a winner on all of these counts, and in a couple of days a bunch of no-name no-account pajama-clad bloggers upend their kingdom of power and influence, and make Kerry look even worse than he already did.

Imagine the rage!! All has backfired. It’s almost Shakespearian. So, what are their options? Admitting they are either disastrously incompetent (at best) or are in some sort of collusion with the forger (at worst) seem like options that are sure to undermine everything CBS has worked so hard all these years to build up. So, they take the only other option left: stonewall and hope it somehow blows over. Convinced of the rightness of their cause, they are looking at all the evidence in the best possible light to preserve their own sense of self-esteem and competence. It’s called denial, and it can be very very powerful. After all, their entire life’s work is riding on this, and these are people with enormous egos.

Also, do the facts of this case remind anyone else besides me of the Dreyfus case? With Bush as the (potential) Dreyfus figure, and the bloggers as Emile Zola (J’Accuse)? Some of the similarites are: documents forged to buttress a case whose outcome was predetermined, expert witnesses disagreeing on authenticity of the documents, subject matter the army, stonewalling by authorities even after the documents were shown to be frauds, turning point the intervention of a writer. See the following: http://www.users.bigpond.com/burnside/dreyfus.htm ; also http://www.metropoleparis.com/1998/302/zola302.html

Sep 14, 2004 - 9:46 pm 55. Rick Ballard:

Matteo,

You can’t defame the dead. At least you can’t be sued for defaming the dead.

Sep 14, 2004 - 9:48 pm 56. maryatexitzero:

The Carville/Serpent Head theory is great, but like most conspiracy theories, the characters are usually given above-average intelligence by a creator who finds it hard to imagine someone with the combination of incompetence, pomposity, fear and sense of privilege that makes up a Dan Rather.

When a Rather senses danger, his only response is CYA. Some animals have only one defense mechanism. Like a sea slug that relies on its bright yellow color to chase away predators, that stays yellow even as it’s being eaten, CYA is all that Rather can do. No matter what happens, he’ll just keep doing it.

He might have gotten away with it, if it was still 1992. That’s the thing about the left – most don’t learn from experience and they don’t adapt. (that’s why they’re still the Left)

Because they don’t learn from experience, CBS and their supporters will probably continue to underestimate blogs. But if someone has a good story to tell, this publicity might convince them to contact a blog – or to set up their own site on blogspot.

I guess a deep throat has to be found and money needs to be followed..

Sep 14, 2004 - 9:49 pm 57. Matteo:

Richard–

Rather’s appearance in the ad is only a fair use clip from the 60 Minutes episode (but I’m quite sure he wouldn’t have minded the free advertising for himself; maybe that does constitute conflict of interest. A quid pro quo of sorts? I push your documents, you put me in the ad campaign?).

Also, I forgot to mention previously that NBC’s involvement is simply that the ad shows a short clip of Bush answering a question on Meet the Press. But still, NBC wants to get 1500 yards away from this, like Kerry during the Rassmann incident. It looks like this ad has become radioactive.

In my long post above I referred to the ad campaign as “Privileged Son”. It’s actually called “Fortunate Son”.

Sep 14, 2004 - 9:50 pm 58. Sonetka:

Mike G – Robin Rather, hmmmm? Interesting. How old is she – I mean, I’d assume she’d be middle-aged and would have had to use typewriters for at least part of her life. Does she have any kids? If – IF – she were involved, though, I can’t see it being as just a conduit to somebody from the outside: in that case, what’s to prevent Dan Rather from naming Robin’s outside source and just leaving her out of it altogether?

It appears now that CBS is still sticking to its story, even though things aren’t exactly improving for them. This does make me lean a little more towards the someone’s-family-member theory; they have to realize that the attempt to just deny this story into the ground isn’t working. Ace has some interesting observations about Burkett, who was in the Army, but why would CBS run an outside risk of emulating the Titanic just for him? Unless he’s got some kind of hold on Rather et al that I don’t even want to know about… otherwise he’s perfect: “He did it! And look, he’s crazy! It’s nobody’s fault!”

Geez – I read about forgeries as an amateur interest, but I’ve never come across any case where someone was this suicidally into denial and was NOT either the forger himself or a close friend or relative. Probably someone can correct me on that, though; unlike Bill Glennon, I claim no expertise .

Sep 14, 2004 - 9:52 pm 59. Sonetka:

One more thing: I really hope there isn’t a hearing. Left as things are – or as they naturally evolve – CBS looks ridiculous and vicious. Start a hearing, and they and Kerry can bloviate about how they’re being martyred and attacked, and some people will probably buy it – along the lines of “OK, they screwed the pooch, but why are the meanspirited nasties being so…nitpicky?” I’d guess this is the reason the White House didn’t pronounce on the memos one way or another: one statement of “We think these are wrong/forged” and CBS et al would have been going off the deep about how Bush was trying to censor them and how they would go through hell and risk anything to show you THE DOCUMENTS BUSH DIDN’T WANT YOU TO SEE! Any subsequent controversy would have been tainted by that. All in all, silence was probably by far the best thing.

Sep 14, 2004 - 9:56 pm 60. Matteo:

Rick–

I’m no legal expert. I can’t claim anything other than blogospheric hearsay as foundation for the idea of suing for defamation of the dead. I’m not claiming dogmatic certainty for anything in my post. I just wanted to register the impressions that a particular blog reader has formed, and see what others might have to say about it. I would be surprised and chagrined not at all to find that the idea is without merit.

Sep 14, 2004 - 10:03 pm 61. Rick Ballard:

No sweat, Matteo, many of us here toss stuff out to see if it floats. And I’m no legal expert. I just read that “can’t defame the dead” bit at one of the attorneys blogs. There also was a bit about copyright infringement if the docs were real. We don’t have to think about that anymore.

Sep 14, 2004 - 10:09 pm 62. Matteo:

Sonetka–

I agree with your assessment. This is what I’ve always found refreshing about Bush. He doesn’t feel the need to jump into every little firestorm and to try to control the spin cycle. It seems that he has learned a lot from observing both parties during the 90’s. He acts like a man who knows the truth is on his side, and trusts that the truth will come out without much help from him. And his non-combative nature has got to help him. At some level, most sane people don’t want to see a “nice guy” getting ganged up on. That’s probably worth more votes than any amount of righteous combat could earn him.

The Republicans seem to have learned much from the 90’s. The Democrats nothing whatsoever. Clinton’s endless spinning and direct intervention in the news cycle didn’t prevent his impeachment, nor a loss for Gore, nor in many ways the weakened state the Democratic Party now finds itself in.

If the product is sound, a con job shouldn’t be necessary to sell it.

Sep 14, 2004 - 10:14 pm 63. Mike G in San Diego:

“Mike G – Robin Rather, hmmmm? Interesting. How old is she – I mean, I’d assume she’d be middle-aged and would have had to use typewriters for at least part of her life.”

Good question! I haven’t found her age via Google — does anyone know? Dan was born in 1931, so she can’t be any older than 50. *IF* she’s 35 or younger, then the odds are she’s used word processors instead of typewriters all her life.

Sep 14, 2004 - 10:14 pm 64. Mike G in San Diego:

Re: Robin Rather –

Looks like she’s in her early forties. There’s a bio at http://www.liveablecity.org/board.php …

Having lived or worked in a number of seriously UN-liveable cities such as Washington DC and San Jose, Robin Rather now spends most of her free time looking for ways to enjoy and protect Austin’s quality of life.

As an environmentalist, she was elected three times as Chair of Save our Springs Alliance, is a founding Vice President with the Hill Country Conservancy and serves on the Advisory Board of Environmental Defense.

As a community activist, she serves as an Executive Board Member of the Central Texas Regional Visioning Project, a board member of the United Way and the Austin Idea Network. She lives near Zilker Park with her husband, musician David Murray and their fine son Andy.

Robin also has more than 20 years experience in the high tech field as a senior executive at Mindwave Research, Reality Research, CMP Media (publishers of Information Week and Internet Week) and International Data Corporation.

–

Hmmm … With a background in publishing and IT, you’d think she’d be aware of the clues to forgery that the folks in the blogosphere have spotted.

Sep 14, 2004 - 10:23 pm 65. TmjUtah:

Here’s a bit of the ABC story, via the KerrySpot on NRO Online. Look down the page around timestamp 9:35 pm on the 14th.

Hat tip: Allah

Sep 14, 2004 - 10:24 pm 66. Eric Deamer:

I agree with mary and John Moore above.

It’s likely all quite simple. Rather is 72. He is the epitome of Old Media arrogance and cluelessness. By all accounts he is an egomaniac. He is also a rabid Democratic partisan. Let’s face it: The combination of these factors and the lifetime of fame, money, power, access etc. have probably made him borderline insane.

So we have this not-young, egomaniacal, hyper-partisan, Old Media-to-the-core news anchor. He’s retiring soon. Like all Bush-haters, he feels that this particular election is the most important ever. As his final act, why not do what all left-wing egomaniacs are doing from Michael Moore to Graydon Carter: use his stature to try to influence the election.

The smear campaign was obviously dictated from the very highest levels of the Democratic Party: the “Fortunate Son” ad campaign, the Susan Estrich “by any means necessary” column. The Dems analysis, still, as it always has been for every election as long as I’ve paid atention, is that they always lose because they don’t know how to be as mean as the Republicans. I’m utterly gobsmacked by the fact that they think this, and I have no idea how or where they got this idea, but they really do think this. There was an article about in the NYT just this Sunday.

That is to say, the Democratic leadership and their allies in the MSM actually believe (near as I can understand) in their dark little hearts that forging documents is no worse than what the “Republican attack machine” does on a daily basis. So, someone, most likely someone pretty high in the national Democratic leadership, pitched this story to sympathetic media. Tom Brokaw and Pretty Boy Jennings didn’t bite, maybe because they were smart enough to realize it wouldn’t work, maybe because they didn’t want to put their reputations on the line to this extent, who knows.

But ol’ Dan was the perfect conduit. Nearing the end of his career, and just egomaniacal and daring enough to do it. He really thought it would work. The man doesn’t have a clue. He actually thinks that nothing has changed since the good old days and viewers will just drink in his newsman aura and believe him. He has no idea what “blogs” are. Or, if he does, he’s only read some old media report about it which dismissed them all as right-wing hacks, which, of course has been one of his major “defenses” of himself.

I think he’s acting this way because he’s simply clueless and out-of-touch enough to believe this will work. Simply stand firm, keep restating the charges in your anchorman voice, dismiss all critics as partisan losers, and ride it out. He’s a network anchorman ferrchrisake! A voice of authority!

And it would have worked not only in 1992. I think it might have worked in any election previous to this one.

Sep 14, 2004 - 10:29 pm 67. OldManRick:

I won’t be suprised if the ABC revelations about Emily Will’s and Linda James’ reviews of the documents change the legal basis for libel. The facts are they were warned the document were suspect, they shopped the “experts” to find a quote, and they did not repeat the warnings as part of the broadcast could easily be used convince a jury of malice. It is hard to claim “due diligence” when you throw out expert opinions until you find one you like.

That said, I assume that the Bush administration will game the options (like an intellegent MBA would do) and decide to let Rather twist himself into knots and let talk radio do the damage for them. It has all the markings of a win-win situation for Bush. It fires up the base (I have talked with my fellow traveler GOP and they are mad.), it adds to the distrust of MSM reports, and it gives the right’s media (talk radio) immediate talking points. The Kerry campaign speculation is only icing on the cake. The longer Rather waits to come clean, the more the democrat dirty trick meme will gain steam.

Sep 14, 2004 - 10:30 pm 68. Brian O'Connell:

I also have to go with Robert Crawford’s theory. It fits the story so far and explains a lot of strange behavior.

The Fortunate Son campaign was to be the DNC’s and Kerry campaign’s reponse to the Swift Vets. I don’t have a guess as to whether the forged docs where created to fit the campaign or whether someone at the DNC received them and they happened to be useful. I am reasonbly sure that CBS received them from the party.

I also suspect that CBS coordinated the 60 Minutes debut of the docs with the Boston Globe and the AP. This gave a nice media spread for the initial burst.

That new Texas Guard Veterans for Truth (or whatever) group was set up to handle the grassroots angle, and make the campaign seem a little more populist. Rather’s daughter may have played some role here. She’s local, but I don’t know.

Then the Kerry campaign would begin rolling out the Fortunate Son ads on the net and on TV, precisely addressing the new concerns everyone had all of a sudden, and wrapping the whole thing up into one neat package.

Because CBS was first up at bat, a lot depended on their success. This is why the docs had to go on Wednesday night, despite very light authentication. This is why, after they were exposed, as mentioned, Rather consistently and weirdly pointed to the truth behind the forged docs as being more important than the forged doc issue- it was necessary to establish that for the next steps to succeed.

If CBS gives up on the docs’ authenticity, not only will there be pressure to out the Dems who probably gave them to CBS, but it will take all the wind out of the Fortunate Son campaign.

This is one big unrolling disaster for all involved. It’s still rolling forward, partly out of pure inertia, and partly because no one knows what to do to fix it. And Kerry had nothing else planned for September anyway.

Sep 14, 2004 - 10:32 pm 69. J_Crater:

The CBS side of the plot is easy. They got documents. Dan, who is near the end of his career, thought that he could grab one last slice of fame and prestige. The document folks said not to use them, but Dan kept seeing the fame and prestige. Dan went for it. He got burned. Dan isn’t blameless, but he didn’t produce the documents.

The other side of the plot, with all due respects to Occam, is probably very straight forward. My guess is that they came in an envelope with a Texas postmark, but no name, or it was lost. The documents showed up on the desk somebody who really didn’t know what they were (or supposed to be). Perhaps to the DNC, perhaps to the Kerry campaign, maybe both, or maybe they went directly to CBS. I keep getting the feeling that MoveOn.org is in here somewhere, instead of the Kerry campaign. Anyway they probably got passed around, as noone when how to use them, until they heard CBS was going to have Ben Barnes on at some point. And off to the races, Rather goes for it.

Sep 14, 2004 - 10:44 pm 70. rastajenk:

“yeah, but wait for the debate.” That’s what I keep hearing, as if Kerry will get a personality transplant or a shot of backbone or something.

Sep 14, 2004 - 10:44 pm 71. Eric Deamer:

Another bizarre random speculation I have is that the documents themselves might not have even been central to the operation, which accounts for Rather trying to steer everything to the “substance” of the allegations, the interview with Hodges etc. The plan may merely have been to talk about the memos on the air. A reason the forgeries are so obvious and of such low quality may be that the idea was merely to show them on the air for a couple of seconds. Again, in an old media world, pdfs of the documents wouldn’t have been made available for the world to see. I even wonder if their being put on the internet to begin with was the result of a mistake or a miscommunication. Like maybe they forgot to tell the low-level staffer who’s in charge of uploading these kind of materials not to do it in this particular case.

Hell, maybe the reason they won’t make the originals public is that there aren’t in reality even putative “originals”, just an MS Word file.

Sep 14, 2004 - 10:48 pm 72. Godzilla:

From Drudge, Senator Kennedy to start a seven-week campaign drive for Kerry. What’s next in this circus? Dean and Gore coming in like the demented cavalry?

The Link

Sep 14, 2004 - 10:49 pm 73. Roger:

“Hell, maybe the reason they won’t make the originals public is that there aren’t in reality even putative “originals”, just an MS Word file.”

Eric, you may have hit the nail on the head. We shall see.

Sep 14, 2004 - 10:53 pm 74. Sandy P:

I’m glad I don’t live in PA.

Cabana Boy’s pulling out the booze — I mean big — gun, via Drudge:

Sen. Edward M. Kennedy (news, bio, voting record), often credited with giving a boost to John Kerry (news – web sites)’s presidential campaign, is launching a seven-week election drive for his Massachusetts colleague that will pair fund raising and travel with a barrage of speeches condemning President Bush (news – web sites)’s policies.

Kennedy, D-Mass., will make two campaign stops in Pennsylvania on Friday, in addition to appearances around the country nearly every weekend as a surrogate for Kerry. While the Senate remains in session, Kennedy plans almost daily rebukes of Bush’s policies, ranging from the war in Iraq (news – web sites) to health care and education….

Sep 14, 2004 - 10:53 pm 75. Paul:

I believe Eric Deamer has it right. The Dems truly believe that the only reason they keep losing is because the Republicans out smear them, that’s why they’ve been so hysterically vitriolic since the primaries. The non-koolade drinking public sees this nastiness and it is really starting to blow back on them. It is helping Bush in a way he could never help himself by showing his restraint and dignity in a highly favorable light by comparison.

I have a liberal friend who simply cannot accept that the Swifties are not a Rove creation and I think he exemplifies these people’s thinking, as was made abundantly clear by Ms. Estrich’s unhinged article.

If and when these clowns ever realize that they are by far the more vicious and unscrupulous of the two parties it will be long after they have alienated the vast majority of the American public and relegated themselves to the political fringe.

Ain’t schadenfreude great….

Sep 14, 2004 - 10:57 pm 76. Godzilla:

All this needs is a little more drama, so to make this perfect, Rather will probably go into a hospital for a stress checkup. This is all destiny. Somewhere, sometime, the witch doctor threw down the bones, and BINGO!, Rather bend over. And he doesn’t even know it.

Sep 14, 2004 - 11:01 pm 77. Fresh Air:

Eric–

Re putting PDFs on the website. I think that is reason enough to believe CBS actually was credulous enough to believe they had the real McCoy.

All–

The issue of why CBS won’t quit is simple. If they admit they have been had, the next chapter of the story must unfold: “Who Dunnit?” It is extremely likely that the conduit for the documents was a staffer with either the DNC or Kerry, given how much coordination has been involved over the past month (McCauliffe, Estrich and Stasso all promising, in effect, “dirty tricks” to come).

If hearings are held, it’s likely Congress would subpeona lots of records, fax logs, etc. Pressure to out the leaker/forger would become intense. If the name came out the dam would burst. CBS would be lost beneath the waves and Kerry would lose 45 states. These are the stakes, and why Rather won’t quit…yet.

Some speculation, if I may.

It is my understanding that Rather’s staff is quite large. He is known as a bit of a domineering prick to work for. He is on the verge of retirement, whether it be with a bang or a yelp.

I would not be surprised to see one of his non-entity staffers sell their story to, say, Newsweek, for a million dollars. It would be a poignant, ironic and fitting ending for the two most arrogant institutions in America today.

I don’t have to tell you which those are.

Sep 14, 2004 - 11:22 pm 78. Kevin P:

Roger:

The reason Rather is acting irrationally in the face of a mountain of evidence that shows these docs to be forgeries is as old as the hills. He is a man with massive power who believes his own press clippings who decided that even though he did not have the story nailed with real evidence he would use the forgeries because they were correct in spirit and those journalism ethics are for the rookies, not Sir Dan Rather of CBS NEWS(Insert angelic trumpet music). Someone who has lackeys telling him that he is tbe Barry Bonds of Journalism everyday can never admit that he got taken like a tourist visiting NYC at a three card monty table. The stonewalling and the pathetic defense he is putting up is the sign of massive ego and runaway hubris. Plus he is a liberal who hates the fact that someone he thinks is a country bumpkin moron is the leader of the free world and he wants someone like Kerry who will kiss his feet and treat him like an equal instead of Bush who knows he is full of hot air and treats him as the two bit ink stained hustler that he is.The Dowds, Rathers, Krugmans etc hate the fact that Bush doesn’t want to be liked by them or give them the proper respect that these self appointed Mandarins think they deserve. Thus any cock and bull scandall that came to him he was going to go to press with because the ends justify the means. He can’t confess because that would be admitting that he was both stupid and guilty of the bias that these self deluded MSM titans are so quick to reject.

Sep 14, 2004 - 11:37 pm 79. zeppenwolf:

Matteo: “The whole situation reminds me of wide receivers and running backs remaining in motion, as yet unaware that the quarterback has already been sacked.”

Excellent! Winner, Zeppenwolf’s Best of Thread Award!

Let’s “agree”, insofar as we can, that this debacle was part of a concerted campaign, involving deliberate coordination between Kerry, CBS, MoveOn… In other words, this claim is on the table, it seems compelling to me and some others– does anyone have a good rebuttal?

*

Crater: “My guess is that they came in an envelope with a Texas postmark…”

I dispute that, due to quality forensic science, courtesy of CSI: LGF. Observe the lack of folds: Hot From The LGF Forgery Lab

*

Ambinisinistral: Whatever that is, it ain’t at dictionary.com Hey, throw a computer science major a bone?

*

RLS: Was their[SIC] some train that could not be derailed?”

Oops.

RLS: “Trust, but verify.”

No attribution… Hmmm can I *trust* that y’all know who said this? Hint: somebody who deserves credit whenever possible…

Sep 14, 2004 - 11:40 pm 80. Katherine:

I think that combination of Robert Crawford and Eric Deamer theories bring us closest to the truth.

However, I still do not see any serious consequences for Dan Rather. He will retire a martyr of Bushitler/Ashcroft fascist Amerikkka, after an illustrious carrier as a courageous newsman who stood for the Truth. How is this going to hurt his sales? So, some people may chose not to add his memoirs to their home libraries but their number will be made up by all the determined ABB, who will be spending their money on Dan ìfor the Causeî. Who knows, maybe Soros or one of Teresaís foundations will buy entire editions to be distributed among the Believers.

As to the possibility that the ìoriginal memosî exist only as MS Word files ñ was there ever any doubt? They could have claimed that these are only transcribed copies, but then they would go and attach the fraudulent signaturesÖ. This fraud business is harder than one would think.

Sep 14, 2004 - 11:52 pm 81. blogaddict:

Fresh Air and Kevin P–I think you’re both on the money. Fresh Air presents the strategic, logical reason for the Rather/CBS stonewalling (if CBS admits they are forgeries, CBS must reveal the source). Kevin P presents the deeper psychological reasons (pride, hubris, rage against Bush) that augment the strategic reasons.

But other huge mysteries remain, especially the question of why the forgeries were so inept. Even most twenty- or thirty-somethings are aware that word-processing and typing are different. Old typewriters are not hard to find. Whoever wrote the phony memos had to have studied the real ones by Killian, which were in the public domain in the papers Bush had released. So, why was there no attempt whatsoever to get a typewriter and do a proper forgery? For conspiracy theorists who believe the forgeries were inept because they were meant to be discovered, how could the forger be sure to make them good enough so that Rather and CBS would be deceived, but bad enough so that bloggers would jump on them and reveal them to be fakes? How would the forger know they’d be posted on the CBS website, which was an important link in the chain of events? And how would the forger know CBS would doggedly protect the source’s anonymity at great risk to its own reputation? And to what purpose would it all have been done? And by whom? It would be way too dangerous a dirty trick for either a Republican OR a Democrat operative to risk, and way too likely to go wrong at one point or another. Too many unlikely things had to happen in the chain of events for the conspiracy (whatever the person and purpose behind it) to succeed.

The more I think about it, the more stumped I get.

Sep 14, 2004 - 11:53 pm 82. Fresh Air:

Katherine–

I don’t think the stonewall will hold up. Especially not with the Michael Moore/Juan Williams “essential truths” meme, being trotted out by the NYT tomorrow.

The “transcribed copies” alibi is facially absurd. Wouldn’t a document in the man’s own hand be more persuasive than something typed up?

Sep 14, 2004 - 11:55 pm 83. blogaddict:

And, for those who think Rather knew they were forgeries–why then would he go ahead and publish them after he’d been warned by at least two experts that they were highly suspect, and that document experts by the hundreds would question them? This particular fact is, IMO, the best argument that Rather was unaware that the documents were forgeries, and in denial about the possibility.

Sep 14, 2004 - 11:57 pm 84. Fresh Air:

Blogaddict–

I think the author was young and risibly naive and probably thought running the thing through a Xerox 20 times and crinkling it would make it look authentically old. Also, whoever it was did not study nearly enough of the older memos. Much of the nomenclature is wrong in addition to the style, tone and that “CYA” header thing.

As to the rest of what you say, yep it’s a puzzle.

Sep 14, 2004 - 11:59 pm 85. penwil:

The Kerry Spot has a transcript of tonight’s news report on CBS and it (CBS, not the Kerry Spot) was despicable. CBS is doing more than stonewalling, they are continuing to push the story as if there wasn’t any question at all about the memos’ authenticity. And then, as if they haven’t smeared the president enough, they had to go and get a slimy little dig in at the First Lady:

“ROBERTS: The president has yet to weigh in on new documents about his National Guard record made public last week by 60 minutes. But in a radio interview, First Lady Laura Bush became the first White House insider to publicly doubt their authenticity.

LAURA BUSH (From radio interview): You know, they probably are altered and they probably are forgeries.

ROBERTS: However, Laura Bush offered no evidence to back up her claim… ”

It’s gotten to the point where I can’t read this stuff any more without wanting to go and take a shower afterward. It’s gone beyond dirty politics into a level of vicious cruelty that I would think would be turning off voters in droves, especially in those mid-west swing states where most people still have a moral compass, and know what is right behavior and what is wrong behavior. And this behavior of Rather and the DNC with their Fortunate Son ads, and constant labeling of Bush as a liar by the Dems and the media, and the Kitty Kelly smear book (which got reported on in the NYT, by the way, as if it was something to be taken seriously), and now even going so far as to make a snide crack about the first lady . . . this behavior is flatout wrong.

The only reason I can figure out that they are still doing is that they have become so morally compromised they don’t see what they are doing is wrong. In their world anything that might help get Kerry elected is acceptable. I think the memos came from the Kerry camp or the DNC and I also think Rather knew they were forgeries last Wednesday. In any event he knows they’re forgeries now, and he’s still behaving as if they’re not. This tells me he doesn’t give two figs for the truth. It’s all about electing Kerry, and I guess now protecting Kerry.

What a filthy business . . .

Sep 15, 2004 - 12:10 am 86. Syl:

Holy sheet!!!

Look what I found at LGF! A link to a NYTimes story with the headline:

Memos on Bush Are Fake but Accurate, Typist Says

It’s that greater truth thang.

Sheeesh.

I think CBS is just waiting for the ‘truth to come out’ after which they think the forgery of the memos won’t matter.

Sheeeesh again.

Sep 15, 2004 - 12:40 am 87. Godzilla:

Kerry’s Senatorial staffers should probably be included as possible sources. They had everything to gain as well.

Sep 15, 2004 - 1:06 am 88. Syl:

I really think the Salieri here is (just my HO, of course, but his name has been brought up as being involved by at least Newsweek) Burkett. He’s had it in for Bush forever (along with Barnes).

Note that everything bad that people believe about Bush’s TANG service can be traced back to them.

Again only my HO, but Burkett doesn’t seem to be the brightest of bulbs. I can imagine him loading up Word and typing up the memos, spreading the rumor that there are documents out there, then finally getting the courage to actually give them to someone. I’m sure he considers it vindication for all those years of torment he supposedly suffered at the hands of Bush and his minions.

And the bitch of it is he worked in Texas, not Alabama. Bush was seen at guard drills in Alabama, one guy even remembers Bush missing a campaign meeting for that guy Blount because of his national guard duty.

Bush put in his hours..just barely the last two years…but he put them in. He couldn’t fly in Alabama anyway ’cause they didn’t have his plane so why bother to take the physical.

This crap is just so stupid. It doesn’t make sense.

Of all people to call a liar..Bush? They picked the wrong guy to accuse.

Sep 15, 2004 - 2:43 am 89. M. Simon:

I blame Congress:

http://powerandcontrol.blogspot.com/2004/09/how-did-we-get-into-this-mess.html“>Congress did it

What Rather did was an attempt to get around campaign finance laws.

i.e. screw with free speech and you screw up free speech.

And I hope this has been a lesson to you all.

Sep 15, 2004 - 3:45 am 90. Warthog:

This has the stink of McAullife/Kerry all over it. Look at the sequence of events and the performances of the supporting cast.

1. At the DNC the Kerry Campaign strategy is constructed entirely around Kerry’s Vietnam service record. This strategy enabled the Dems to slogan the favorable comparison between the One who served his country in combat and the One who used family connections to hide from combat in the NG.

2. A Sunday Talk Show news cycle before President Bush is to speak before the National Guard association CBS comes out with “proof” that bolsters the Dem strategy.

3. Unaware that the “proof” has been savaged during the night, Edwards goes on the stump the following morning reinforcing the theme.

4. Moveon.org ads hit national TV imaging the theme and reinforcing it with the “proof” marched out by CBS.

5. Various and sundry talking heads respond to every question with the “who you gonna’ choose, the guy who served or the guy that hid” theme.

There is no question in my mind that the CBS documents came directly from somebody high enough up in the DNC to formulate strategy. That means McAullife and Kerry.

Sep 15, 2004 - 4:15 am 91. ambisinistral:

richard mcenroe,

Good point. To keep with my outside con artist scam within a scam theory… part of the money was paid on receipt of the documents, the rest paid upon CBS (or whoever) airing of them. My venal little scammer now has what appears to be hush money. That changes it from embarassment to a serious crime.

I just think that the genisis of this is for monetary and not political gain.

Sep 15, 2004 - 4:43 am 92. Terrye:

It could also be that the Dems have gotten away with so much already via Moore etc that hey have come to the place where they do not know the difference between truth and fiction.

The secretary who said the memos were fake but the sentiment is accurate is a perfect example of this.

I suggest a new headline:

Old partisan Democrat forced to admit memos are fake but tries to get a dig in and bad mouth a man everybody who knows knows she despises.

Kinda long but far closer to the truth than most of what we see in the NYT.

Sep 15, 2004 - 4:44 am 93. hcq:

I don’t think these were produced by a 20-something (or even 30-something) zealot because of the “lowercase-L-vs.-numeral 1″ issue. (CBS claims that at least some of the “ones” in the memos are actually lowercase “L’s”.)

When folks my age (mid-late 40s) first started typing, it was on typewriters, which generally don’t have a “numeral 1″ key. Now unless you do a LOT of typing, it’s very hard to break that habit and switch to using the “numeral 1″ key, which in word processing programs you have to learn to do if you want e.g. automatic paragraph numbering to work.

I’d say the forger had to be someone who learned to type on a typewriter, but who knows how to use a word processor just enough to produce a document. S/he has to be somebody who did not handle either typed or WP’d docs frequently enough that they’d notice a difference. IOW, somebody whose attention focuses on content, not apperance.

And, as others have noted, someone who uses MSM news reports (e.g. Globe story that wrongly stated Schact retired in 1975) for info, and has only peripheral experience with military administration and terminology. (One of the goofs noted by Killian’s secretary is a term used by the Army but not the USAF or TANG.)

And obviously someone with an axe to grind.

To me, that sounds like Robin Rather (about my age), with help from someone like Burkett (who was in the Army National Guard, IIRC). Who do these two have in common? Ben Barnes, major Kerry fundraiser, who’s already on record contradicting himself about his role getting Bush into TANG.

Sep 15, 2004 - 4:45 am 94. ambisinistral:

Read what Bob Schieffer has to say, “People ask me, ‘Do I think somebody was trying to set up Dan Rather?’ I say, “No that’s completely out of the question,” said Schieffer, who addressed the Siouxland Chamber of Commerce’s annual dinner/meeting Tuesday night. “Would somebody do this in an effort to smear George Bush? That may be so. We’re in the middle of a political campaign, and this would not be the first campaign where somebody on one side slipped something to a reporter because he feels it would hurt the guy on the other side.”

Is CBS getting ready to dump this back on the Kerry campaign?

Sep 15, 2004 - 5:08 am 95. djs:

My theory is that the forgery and the subsequent stonewalling were planned in advance to increase the perceived importance of the story. If legitimate or plausibly legitimate documents had been presented, most people would have just shrugged the story off. We all knew that Bush was a bit of a slacker before cleaning up his act later in life. So if someone wrote an irate memo about his less-than-stellar performance in the early 70s, so what? But now, it’s as though the accuracy of the memos is of paramount importance, and so the contents must be important too, right? Eventually CBS can admit that they were the victim of an unfortunate hoax but, horror of horrors, the vitally important claims in the memos are correct! So please get out and ‘rock the vote’! Expect to see more people like the secretary trotted out. Just a theory. Hope I’m wrong.

Sep 15, 2004 - 5:09 am 96. Emory:

Assume Rather was sincere when he said his source was unimpeachable. He couldn’t possibly believe this about most of the sources talked about – Kerry campaige, DNC, retired Guard officer with a history of mental illness etc. The only one that fits is his daughter.

Sep 15, 2004 - 5:19 am 97. jerry:

All the interesting conversation takes place after I go to bed….

Matteo and others:

With all due respect to Eugene Volokh, I think he is missing the real legal point of the forgeries. This is not a simple case of defamation and libel; it is a case of forging official US Government documents. That in itself is a crime. If the government wishes to investigate this case it should be brought before a Grand Jury by the Justice Department. Politically, the Justice Department would have to say that they have no issues with the broadcast of the material or whether it is true or false. Their concern would be that if the memos are forged then there is criminal case of forgery and misuse of government documents. Rather/CBS could be named as targets of the investigation. Of course they could invoke their 5th amendment rights. However, the Justice Department could grant them immunity and force them to testify. My guess is that things would go badly for CBS if they decided to play this as a 1st amendment case.

Sep 15, 2004 - 5:21 am 98. Matt Evans:

One of the things I haven’t really seen mentioned here is that the far Left and its rabid supporters don’t believe the documents were forgeries. I’ve argued up and down with lefties about this over the past two days and the number one argument I get is “You can’t prove the SUBSTANCE of the memo’s are not genuine”. I’m sure most of you saw that story reported yesterday about Killian’s secretary – she says “well the memo’s are fake but I remember the substance of those memo’s being something Killian thought”. And therein lies the memme- who cares about the reliability of the source, we just KNOW Bush is a bad person – we don’t need any proof.

I’m not surprised. Its not the first time the DNC has been caught in a bold faced slanderous lie during this election- its just the first time they’ve been caught in such a public fashion. But the democrats don’t care if they’re presuppositions are based on unprovables- they understand that Bush is bad and there is no line which shouldn’t be crossed to defeat him. And to me, the unbridled dishonesty of the DNC/moveon campaign is what has incensed me to the far left- I mentioned this is a previous post- the anger I feel toward the democratic party as a result of the last two years will not go away, even if Bush is elected- I find the far left to be a group of unscrupulous lying children who are only concerned with having their own way and throw outrageous tantrums when they don’t get it.

Also, while I wish it weren’t the case, I find it highly unlikely that Rather will “go down” as a result of this scandal. CBS is a democratic echo chamber- Rather’s story on these memo’s is preaching to the choir, so to speak. While I hope and pray at least some swing voters will be caught up in this story and realize how despicable the DNC has become, my gut instinct says that Rather will not be held to account, for the same reason the DNC doesn’t care if the memo’s are phony- the important thing for both CBS, its viewers and the DNC is getting rid of Bush and getting a demo in the White House. The fact that kerry is an incompetant charletan is not lost on the DNC but at the same time, Bush is, you know, bad and stuff.

Sep 15, 2004 - 5:37 am 99. David Thomson:

ìDavid Thomson: Interesting idea that it was a well-established person, but doesn’t it seem likely that it was a person who is under 30 (maybe even under 25) and therefore too young to remember much if anything about typewriters? It would be quite a show if it turned out to be a mainstream Democrat, but I’m trying not to get my hopes up.î

The slime ball who created the fraudulent documents may very well be under 25—but the person who contacted Dan Ratherís people was almost certainly a mature and established adult! No, Rather got scammed because this individual is considered highly credible. A young kid off the street couldnít pull this off by themselves.

Sep 15, 2004 - 5:37 am 100. David Thomson:

ìAlso, while I wish it weren’t the case, I find it highly unlikely that Rather will “go down” as a result of this scandal. CBS is a democratic echo chamber- Rather’s story on these memo’s is preaching to the choir, so to speak.î

CBS will not be able to ignore the damage resulting from Dan Ratherís shoddy work. It is also concerned about the bottom line. CBS cannot acquire the ratings it requires by merely ìpreaching to the choir.î Please also donít forget that this TV network is owned by Viacom, a publicly traded company. There are many financial investors who must be satisfied.

Sep 15, 2004 - 5:53 am 101. chuck:

One of the things I haven’t really seen mentioned here is that the far Left and its rabid supporters don’t believe the documents were forgeries. I’ve argued up and down with lefties about this over the past two days and the number one argument I get is “You can’t prove the SUBSTANCE of the memo’s are not genuine”.

That’s why I haven’t bothered to argue with anyone on the far left since the 60’s. Terminally brain dead every one of them. I’m convinced that one of the reasons that Orwell is celebrated is that he was the exception; the talking dog of the litter. Of course, like Nash returning to sanity, every so often some seem to spontaneously recover.

I also like to be prepared, so back in the 70’s I thought of what I would do if the “revolution” arrived. Came to the conclusion that I would have to pick up a gun and join the other side. Yes, these folks are so bad it is scary.

Sep 15, 2004 - 6:07 am 102. Mikey:

Matteo:

You got it. The threat isn’t the libel suit from Pres. Bush – it is the libel suit from Col. Staudt and Col. Killian’s estate (if an estate can sue for libeling a dead person – I’m not sure about that, but Col. Staudt is still alive).

These are private persons, not public figures and the malice standard doesn’t apply, hence they have an easier time proving their cases.

CBS broadcast this to a nation of 300,000,000. Ooops, that’s a lot of damage there. CBS put the documents on the web to a world of 8,000,000,000+/- people. Ooops that’s a world of damage.

The question that I am curious about is who was in at CBS this weekend who would not normally be there?

Sep 15, 2004 - 6:23 am 103. Knucklehead:

hcq,

I figured the source of the docs for some OCD Moonbat and their creation for at least a couple years ago – some variation of the Heldt Theory.

But something about that has been rattling around in my head. An OCD Moonbat would have paid more attention to detail.

Then you said this:

I’d say the forger had to be someone who learned to type on a typewriter, but who knows how to use a word processor just enough to produce a document. S/he has to be somebody who did not handle either typed or WP’d docs frequently enough that they’d notice a difference. IOW, somebody whose attention focuses on content, not apperance.

And I realized what had been rattling around in my head. The lack of attention to format and the look of it could be an indication that the source was an “executive” type – someone who once upon a time handled a typewriter, but not much and long ago, and once in a great while handles a word processer, but it’s beneath them and they don’t do it often. Somone who typically blathers out their ideas into an email or to a note taker or into a recorder and then magically has them reappear as wonderful looking documents.

But clearly if such a person went so far over the edge that they decided to “create the evidence” of something they “knew to be true” yet could not find the smoking gun for, they wouldn’t rely on the peasantry to actually forge the docs ’cause, well, the peasantry would be available as a witness. Now you have me leaning toward “someone high up” actually created these docs and figured they’d never get this much scrutiny. Now I’m in the Rather Did It camp. I could see how he might actually believe that just flashing them on the TV screen would protect them from scrutiny. He doesn’t know what the web is like and probably didn’t even stop to think that these things might wind up on CBSnews.com for the whole web to look at and ponder.

As for whether or not CBS is institutionally insane enough to actually believe they can pull this off, I doubt that. Big Corporations are often dumb but rarely insane. Somewhere within CBS is are some perfectly sensible financial and legal people who will thump hard on a conference table, if even only to CY their own A’s, that this thing stinks and could cost them a fortune as well as leaving their legal butts in a precarious position.

It may be that the legal and financial minds have looked at this and decided that stonewalling is the only hope they have or that they need time to pull the best of bad defense together.

It is baffling, isn’t it. I tried getting analytical on “who is Rather protecting” and it just might be himself. He doesn’t actually believe he did anything seriously unethical. To him this was just a White Lie to move the story of the Larger Truth forward. After all, the Larger Truth in this case has a “Sell By” date. After the election the Larger Truth would be moot, so it must come out before the election.

Sep 15, 2004 - 6:24 am 104. jerry:

I keep hearing the thread that it must have been a 20-something who didn’t know about typewriters. As I have said in another thread, I bet most of the people here, even if they have extensive IT experience, knew little about “fontology” until last week. Unless someone who lived in the typewriter age was a publishing professional he would be less likely to know the difference between typewriter fonts and MS Word fonts. But the real reason that an “adult” was behind the fraud is that the MSM and CBS in particular has gotten away with this kind fraud many times in the past. Today’s edition of NRO online has this example:

http://www.nationalreview.com/comment/morse200409150552.asp

It is clear from the MSM’s response to the story that they had little understanding of how Internet based fact checking and information flow works. So it is reasonable to assume that whoever is behind the fraud thought business would go as usual.

One of the ironies of ALGORE’s attack on “digital brown shirts” is that if blogging was developed in the late 1990’s as it is today he would now be President. Bloggers would have neutralized the MSM save Clinton spin and he would have had to resign. Gore would have easily been re-elected in 2000.

Sep 15, 2004 - 6:30 am 105. Mikey:

Upon further reflection, I don’t think you can defame the dead (that’s common law – check your state statutes for variations), so Col. Killian’s estate couldn’t sue for defamation. However, there are other torts out there (again, check your local jurisdiction) that Col. Killian’s family may be able to file under such as negligent infliction of emotional distress or possibly intentional infliction of emotional distress. I don’t think I am speculating too much by stating that the CBS lawyers are probably putting in a lot of hours determining the defenses available to CBS at this point (and likely enraged that their clients did something this stupid.)

Bear with me, it has been a long time since I dealt with tort law.

Sep 15, 2004 - 6:38 am 106. Terrye:

I hear that CBS will be releasing an email at noon concerning the memos. And if I hear the report correctly NBC and CBS have ask the DNC not to run the ad with Rather.

Also interesting: I have a friend who was in the Guard for years. He said it was not unusual for people to slow down on the last year if they had accrued extra points before. He went in in 1969 and got out in 1976. He was supposed to stay in longer but his job changed and so he ask for an early discharge and he got it because he had done more than needed the previous year. He said a meeting was missed and some other things as well but he still got an honorable discharge. It seems that many of the president’s critics on this subject just don’t know how the military works and that may include the writer of the memo.

Sep 15, 2004 - 6:41 am 107. Knucklehead:

Oh boy, maybe CBS is institutionally insane. Look at this from the Kerry Spot:

“I think we have to find some way to show our viewers they are not forgeries,” Schieffer, CBS’ chief Washington correspondent and host of the network’s “Face the Nation,” said at a news conference in Sioux City. “I don’t know how we’re going to do that without violating the confidentiality of sources.” …

Though Schieffer discounted suggestions that Rather received fraudulent documents, he acknowledged the source could have been a Bush opponent.

If it isn’t obvious to CBS by now that there is ZERO chance that the docs they showed the world are authentic, then they are just stupid. But his sounds like the “It’s all about the content” meme and they are going to rally around that flag; it doesn’t matter if we forged evidence because it points to the Larger Truth.

Wow. If that defense succeeds for a major outlet of the MSM, where are we headed?

Sep 15, 2004 - 6:48 am 108. David Thomson:

ìIíve argued up and down with lefties about this over the past two days and the number one argument I get is ëYou can’t prove the SUBSTANCE of the memo’s are not genuineí.î

These intellectual mediocrities are engaging in extreme philosophical skepticism. You also canít prove absolutely that one was not born three hundred years ago and tomorrow morning we will not grow to the height of nine feet. Human beings instead rely on philosophical certitude. We observe the world and reach conclusions based on observations and evidence that is 99.99999999999999% reliable.

I am not obligated to prove that a memo is ìnot genuine.î On the contrary, itís the other way around. The person providing the document must prove that they are for real. A lot of philosophical problems we encounter today were caused by people like Ludwig Wittgenstein. Bertrand Russell literally had a discussion with this third rate thinker who was discombobulated because he could not absolutely prove that there wasnít an elephant in the room with them!

Sep 15, 2004 - 6:50 am 109. Matt Evans:

David

I hear what you’re saying about investors but I look at it this way – its not like Rather hasn’t been a democratic schill for years and years and nobody at Viacom has reigned him in. For god’s sake, he’s appearing in a DNC commercial against Bush- lets say I’m Viacom and I actually care about the journalistic integrities of my news service, I’m going to say “Dan, we value you but at the same time, you simply cannot under any circumstances appear in John Kerry’s ads. Not only does it place CBS in an incredibly biased light, it is completely unethical”. And yet, Rather appears in the commercial. Also, if the Viacom board really cared about whats going on, they would have had an emergency meeting with Moonves, Rather et al in attendence and tell them to fix this HUGE error in judgment, even if it requires orally servicing Karl Rove. And yet, all we’ve seen is stonewall tactics and flat denials. Whatever this statement at noon is, I don’t expect it to be an admission.

As a lawyer who’s done a bit of defamation work, I don’t see this as being an actionable case. Sure, its fileable- it might even make it past a Motion to Dismiss- but ultimately, a lawsuit of this nature is a PR campaign only and would not be expected to make it. On the upside, it would certainly provide the opportunity to subpoena CBS about its sources and what it knew/didn’t know about the memos. The thought of getting Dan Rather under oath and in front of a court reporter for a day or two gets my lawyerly blood flowing.

OT, sorry about my grammer and spelling today – my proof reader is apparently on vacation.

Sep 15, 2004 - 6:53 am 110. David Thomson:

“The person providing the document must prove that they are for real.”

Let’s try this again:

The person providing the document must prove that it is for real.

Sep 15, 2004 - 6:54 am 111. Knucklehead:

This one’s for Terrye!

You’ve made this point recently, so you may enjoy the UH, SOMETHING’S FUNNY ABOUT THIS ‘SWEET OLD LADY’ piece at The Kerry Spot. (Minor scrolling down required.)

Sep 15, 2004 - 6:54 am 112. ricpic:

Prediction: After all this, even after it has become blindingly obvious that the MSM/Democratic attack machine is utterly corrupt, there will STILL be an October surprise.

After all, what else do they have? What else can they do but kick up the biggest dust cloud possible just before the election in the hope of scaring as many of the “non-political” types as possible into their tent?

Sep 15, 2004 - 7:01 am 113. David Thomson:

ìI hear what you’re saying about investors but I look at it this way – its not like Rather hasn’t been a democratic schill for years and years and nobody at Viacom has reigned him in.î

You are half right. A few years ago they would have likely been able to ride out the storm. The Internet changes everything. We only need to keep up the pressure a little while longer. Iím betting that by another week, Dan Rather and his cohorts will be compelled to give up the fight.

Sep 15, 2004 - 7:02 am 114. Knucklehead:

Fox is reporting

Sep 15, 2004 - 7:16 am 115. Knucklehead:

Let’s try again…

Fox News is reporting CBS to Release New Statement on Docs Flap.

What are the possible summary lines?

- More stonewalling or

- OK, we can’t even pretend the docs are authentic but we stand behind the Larger Truth

- Dan Rather and several key producers have resigned to pursue other activities

- We have nothing further to say on advice of Counsel and all inquiries should be directed to the offices of Dewey, Cheatem and Howe

Sep 15, 2004 - 7:23 am 116. asher:

Interesting arguments vis-a-vis the 20-something-versus-40-something theory.

As I’ve argued, this is another example of the contempt in which the media holds its audience. It’s also an example of the left confusing the “essential truth” of something (i.e. their beliefs, which they hold to be above question) with its factual veracity.

Sep 15, 2004 - 7:23 am 117. hcq:

It may be that the legal and financial minds have looked at this and decided that stonewalling is the only hope they have or that they need time to pull the best of bad defense together.

Knucklehead, I think you’ve provided a more plausible explanation yourself. The legal and financial minds have nowhere to go, because it’s Rather who’s stonewalling, because HE is the one that obtained the documents and won’t reveal his source. Why would Rather be willing to sacrifice himself in this way, when he could just finger his source? Because the source is very, very close to him?

Apparently the “statement” by CBS is going to be done….by email. Ah, CBS enters the Information Age at last.

Sep 15, 2004 - 7:43 am 118. richard mcenroe:

The funny thing is, you would think a political party and a mass media still wallowing in the quagmire of Vietnam would have known better than to mess with a bunch of guys in pajamas…

Sep 15, 2004 - 7:51 am 119. Brian O'Connell:

Maybe CBS will announce that Dan Rather has decided to spend more time with his family. I doubt it though.

Sep 15, 2004 - 7:58 am 120. Catherine:

DAMN!

I don’t have time to read this thread, and I am desperate to do so!

Rick B I’m certain I’ve read, more than once, that you can’t defame the dead.

JerryI’m not certain of this part, but I have the “sense” that forging government documents is a crime.

Isn’t it a crime to impersonate a police officer?

Is that right?

Whereas it’s not a crime to impersonate, say, a college professor, or a dentist (unless you perform dental work without a license, etc.)

If I’m right about that, I think government documents would fall under the same legal rationale.

Sep 15, 2004 - 8:26 am 121. Eric Deamer:

richard mcenroe:

LOL. Seriously, and I seldom LOL as a result of blog comments.

Speaking of that. I’m sure everyone’s seen it, but if you haven’t please check out Frank J’s parody memo:

http://www.imao.us/img/bush_awol_memo.jpg

It’s hilarious.

Sep 15, 2004 - 9:07 am 122. blogaddict:

I think I get the mindset now. It goes something like this: There is no absolute truth, just different perspectives. We all know that Bush played fast and loose with his Guard service. Everyone knows it. We all know that if Bush is reelected, it will be the triumph of evil. So we are justified in doing whatever we need to do in the service of these larger truths. If we create, or present “created” documents (note the absence of the word “forged”) we are only presenting the truth with the aid of a visual. As long as the documents we create fit the truth as we know it to be, there is no moral violation.

Sep 15, 2004 - 9:18 am 123. Catherine:

everyone

I’ve made it thru half the thread, and I agree with various posters who see Clinton techniques at work here.

I have no idea whether or how the Clinton team was involved in obtaining and/or creating the documents in the first place, but the response is classic Clinton.

The Clinton administration was 8 years of ad hominem attacks on anyone who dared to question their leadership.

They were famous for that; in fact, they were credited with the innovation of keeping the “war room” up and running after they’d won the election. They purposely governed as if they were in the middle of a hard-fought election, not in between elections.

That was one of the things that drove me out of the party.

I would find myself disagreeing with something the Clintons had done, and then I’d find myself (as a member of the group of people who shared my criticism) being publicly called names by the President and his wife.

All of a sudden I’m getting told, by my President, no less, that anyone who thinks like me is a member of the vast right-wing conspiracy. So I’m sitting there thinking, Hey. I voted for you twice. Now you call me names?

I’m serious about this: Clinton’s constant ad hominem responses to attacks and criticism broke my identification with the party.

That’s what we see here in the CBS & DNC response.

So far they’ve attacked their own experts, Bush, bloggers, right wing “political operatives,” the list goes on.

That’s classic Clinton.

Sep 15, 2004 - 9:23 am 124. mudmarine:

richard mcenroe

Wasn’t going to comment. But….

“you would think a political party and a mass media still wallowing in the quagmire of Vietnam would have known better than to mess with a bunch of guys in pajamas…”

funniest thing I’ve read in days.

Sep 15, 2004 - 9:28 am 125. thibaud:

I second the MoveOn.org theory. Note how fiercely the left-wing bloggers have tried to support authenticity claims with all manner of pseudo-claims about the fonts, proportional spacing, pixels etc.

Also, note how these wackos, who are as unsophisticated in the ways of the east-coast elite media types as they are zealous about matching Rove’s “dirty-tricks machine”, fit the profile of the forger:

1) too young to know the low odds of TANG having one of the few expensive typewriters that could even come close to preparing the forged document;

2) too cocky to think that his tracks could not be covered;

3) too ignorant of the MSM to anticipate that one of CBS’s competitors would not turn on CBS rather than follow Rather off the cliff.

Sep 15, 2004 - 10:07 am 126. jerry:

Just finished a meeting and I still see the CBS has not issued their statement yet. So I am going to go out on limb with a WAG. If I am correct then I am a sage. If I am not nobody will notice anyway.

CBS is going to claim that the forgeries were just the work of an over-zealous staffer who wanted to “dramatize” information from good sources and contemporary notes. The information is true and based on Killian’s handwritten notes and the discussions he had with friends in 1973.

The irony is that if this is true nobody will believe them.

Sep 15, 2004 - 10:26 am 127. thibaud:

It can’t be anyone who served in the military or is over the age of 25. What sane and seasoned adult would pretend that a military memo would be headlined, “CYA”?

Sep 15, 2004 - 10:30 am 128. Catherine:

Eric D & Paul

The Dems analysis, still, as it always has been for every election as long as I’ve paid atention, is that they always lose because they don’t know how to be as mean as the Republicans. I’m utterly gobsmacked by the fact that they think this, and I have no idea how or where they got this idea, but they really do think this.

Absolutely, this is a core Democratic belief.

I have heard this exact line from my husband over and over and over again—–and in fact, our “Conversation Breakthrough” happened over this exact issue.

I told him Democrats will get nowhere until they stop seeing themselves as the innocent victims of evil, lying, smearing Republicans; the Democrats will get nowhere until they “own” their own acts of aggression, lying, and smearing, until they stop telling themselves, “The mean Republicans made me do it.”

I think I’ve said this to him before, though maybe not so clearly or directly.

In any case, this time around he suddenly had a look of recognition on his face. He stopped arguing the point, and he hasn’t said a word about evil, lying, smearing Republicans since.

This meme is a huge weakness for the Democrats.

Whenever you consciously define yourself as an innocent victim you’ve given up he game for lost.

The problem goes deeper, though.

A couple of days ago, in response to something Samuel said about how it’s puzzling how often Bush does not jump into the fray and defend himself, I had a moment of recognition.

There is a famous study of dominance, aggression, and serotonin in vervet monkeys, done by Michael Raleigh & others at UCLA. I heard Raleigh talk about it.

He found that the dominant monkey always has the highest levels of serotonin.

AND: the dominant monkey does not have the highest levels of aggression.

The lower-ranking monkeys are more aggressive.

(I don’t know whether this is true of other animals, but I wouldn’t be surprised.)

Also: at this point I’m having to rely on memory, so take this with a grain of salt. But I’m 99% sure I’m remembering correctly.

The dominant monkeys were high in effective, targeted aggression.

If someone threatened the troop they responded rapidly, forcefully, and effectively.

But the rest of the time the dominant monkeys were cheerful and good-natured and peaceable, which is consistent with having high serotonin.

The lower-ranking monkeys showed a lot of impulsive aggression. They lashed out at other monkeys, got in fights, got hurt, hurt others, and so on, all without good reason.

And they never moved up in the ranks.

The Democrats think they have a problem with “aggression.”

What they really have a problem with is “dominance.”

The dominant animal in a group of primates uses aggression sparingly, effectively, and only when he has to.

The subordinate animal flails out wildly and unpredictably.

Last night I heard two men on NPR discussing the Democrats’ meanness deficit.

The interviewer sounded weak and almost foppish (I’m not using “foppish” as code for gay). He used phrasing like, “Kerry supporters do not feel pleasure in Kerry’s campaign. So what can be done to increase the pleasure Kerry supporters feel in Kerry’s campaign, or to decrease the lack of pleasure they feel?” He must have said the word “pleasure” about 10 times.

That’s not guy talk.

The guest’s answer was, and I could have written this out on an index card for him, “When Kerry gets hit he has to hit back hard.”

Democrats are obsessed with that.

“Hitting back hard.”

Well, of course, that’s the exact problem we all had with Kerry’s convention speech: If attacked I will respond agressively, or whatever it was he said.

The point being: I’m giving the bad guys the first swing.

Democrats seem to have almost no concept of staying on the offensive. To them, aggression is defensive.

And they seem to have almost no idea how to use aggression effectively.

Even the Clintonistas don’t have a clue, ultimately.

Look at Susan Estrich’s column.

If she were a male vervet monkey, she’d be at the bottom of the troop. Her column is the ultimate example of impulsive, unpredictable, and ineffective aggression.

She even starts out that way: “My Democratic friends are mad,” she says. “So we’re going to get nasty.”

That’s not a dominant animal talking.

It’s entirely possible that a dominant animal doesn’t really get mad, but instead uses a kind of rational, or cool, aggression. (This isn’t fully established, but there is research showing that “intermale aggression” doesn’t activate the rage circuits in the brain.)

The Democratic notion of aggression is akin to a tantrum. You get furiously angry, you pick up your machine gun, and you just start shooting.

That’s why we keep seeing so much collateral damage in the Democratic campaign.

Smear the bloggers!

Smear the Right Wingers!

Smear the experts!

That’s a whole lot of folks to smear in one story cycle.

CBS is flailing.

Terry McAuliffe is flailing.

Bush is way at the top of the dominance hierarchy, and he’s using aggression the way the dominant animal uses aggression.

Sparingly, and effectively.

I haven’t found a good link for Raleigh’s study, but this discussion isn’t bad.

http://nazaggression.tripod.com/brainfunction.html

Sep 15, 2004 - 10:35 am 129. Catherine:

Matteo

The whole situation reminds me of wide receivers and running backs remaining in motion, as yet unaware that the quarterback has already been sacked.

That’s a keeper!

Also an excellent of pointless, flailing aggression.

Look, Mom!

I’m Hitting Back Hard!

Sep 15, 2004 - 10:37 am 130. jerry:

Thibaud:

Not only is it stupid, its absolutely fatal. Saying you are going CYA in a memo sets you up as the fall guy with IG comes around. Failure to properly assess is derliction of duty.

Sep 15, 2004 - 11:35 am 131. thibaud:

It can’t be someone from the political or media establishment– the contents are too stupid.

It almost certainly is some young punk from a left-wing organization.

Sep 15, 2004 - 12:27 pm 132. Mikey:

Matt Evans:

Okay, since you’ve done defamation work, I’ll bow to your expertise on it. I’ve mostly handled criminal law and utility regulation, not tort.

Yeah I know the combination of criminal and utility sounds wierd, but I’ve had different employers over the years.

Sep 15, 2004 - 12:29 pm 133. WichitaBoy:

Catherine

Thank you! That was brilliant. I’d never heard about the monkey experiment before but I have observed exactly that sort of behavior many times among male humans. The lower status ones become shrill and nasty and angry and it ends up being counterproductive to their cause. For examle, they just sentenced a local man to six years in jail because of exactly such behavior with respect to a judge. He was some sort of survivalist nut, very low-status. The judge was dominant. It seems to me the story of the Iranian girl who was hung that Roger has linked to several times is another grisly example of the same phenomenon from a different culture.

You’ll notice it’s usually low-power males in out of the way spots who become obsessed with guns and survivalism and all that. High power males running Citicorp and Disney and the federal government are calm and cool and collected, spending time at their local health clubs (or their ranches in Texas). When was the last time you saw Spielberg raging about anything? Serendipitously, I just this moment looked out my window and saw my CEO off on his daily bike ride: calm, cool, collected.

David Thomson

I’m afraid I have to disagree with you a bit. I’ve read both Bertrand Russell (nearly everything he ever wrote) and Wittgenstein and I have to say that Wittgenstein was definitely the deeper of the two. Wittgenstein was no mediocrity and the problems that obsessed him are serious problems. The philosophical underpinnings of probability theory are still quite shaky.

Sep 15, 2004 - 1:05 pm 134. ricpic:

I wanna be a dominant monkey.

Kerry is a wannabe dominant monkey.

Someone’s gottabe a dominant monkey.

Might as well be a BUSHy monkey.

Sep 15, 2004 - 1:06 pm 135. Catherine:

WichitaBoy

Interesting.

I was shocked when I heard Raleigh’s lecture, because I guess I’d always confused violence with dominance myself.

But when I thought about it, it made sense.

I’ve been trying to put my finger on why I’ve felt all along that Kerry couldn’t possibly win, and why I felt this way even during the weeks when Kerry was ahead. (I realize I could still be wrong, now; Kerry could win. I have no idea whether to put any credence in my perceptions.)

Anyway, regardless of whether I’m tuning into something real or not, I’ve figured out what has been affecting me, and it’s simple: George Bush “is the man.”

John Kerry is not.

I don’t like talking that way, because it seems unkind. (Uh, no, it doesn’t seem unkind; it is unkind.)

But I do believe that people feel this way, especially during a time of war.

Here’s a paragraph from Dick Morris’s latest column on Kerry:

Underscoring Kerry’s popularity problems, voters rate Bush better on a host of adjectives. Who is the stronger leader? Bush, by 51-37. Who is more honest and trustworthy? Bush, 42-37. Who will make the United States a stronger country? Bush, 46-40. Who takes strong stands and sticks with them? Bush, 56-27.

Kerry only wins “Who understands the average American better?” ÔøΩ and by only 43-36.

“Strength” is perceived to be a masculine quality, “understanding” a feminine quality.

If you’re running for president, and you’ve got a choice between having people think you’re strong versus having people think you’re understanding, you better go for strong.

Because that’s what people are going to be voting for.

Sep 15, 2004 - 2:23 pm 136. TmjUtah:

Catherine -

I’ve been incommunicado all day long, pressing flesh and making contacts at the Utah League of Cities and Towns convention.

I come back, and what do I find?

The best post I’ve ever read on a blog. I know nothing about Vervet monkeys (until now!) but I’ve been searching for SOME reason for the bizarre behaviour of the folks on the other side of the political table, and I think you’ve nailed it.

Shucks – make that shot it, skinned it, and fed the hungry masses. Brava, ma’am.

Sep 15, 2004 - 7:29 pm

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