...to increase the onus on CBS. And of course to play down whatever the 20th version of the attacks about Bush's National Guard service might be.And why the would Bush release a forgery?
Give me half an hour and I could fool the widow and typography experts.
These were rank amateurs. I suspect it will be of the same ilk as the lady that sent Bush's debate prep tape to the Gore Campaign (who, to his credit, returned the tape and called the police instead of turning it over to CBS).
A "well-meaning" partisan.
Warning: the following is from a crazy right wing publication.
www.spectator.org/dsp_art...rt_id=7096
Anatomy of a Forgery
By The Prowler
The American Spectator
Published 9/10/2004 12:09:06 AM
More than six weeks ago, an opposition research staffer for the Democratic National Committee received do ents purportedly written by President George W. Bush's Texas Air National Guard squadron commander, the late Col. Jerry Killian.
The oppo researcher claimed the source was "a retired military officer." According to a DNC staffer, the do ents were seen by both senior staff members at the DNC, as well as the Kerry campaign.
"More than a couple people heard about the papers," says the DNC staffer. "I've heard that they ended up with the Kerry campaign, for them to decide to how to proceed, and presumably they were handed over to 60 Minutes, which used them the other night. But I know this much. When there was discussion here, there were doubts raised about their authenticity."
The concerns arose from the sourcing. "It wasn't clear that our source for the do ents would have had access to them. Our person couldn't confirm from what file, from what original source they came from."
The do ents that CBS News used were not do ents from any of Bush's personnel files from his time in the National Guard. Rather, CBS News stated that they were do ents uncovered in the personnel files of Killian. That would explain why the White House or the Pentagon had never before released or even seen them.
According to a Kerry campaign source, there was little gossip about the supposedly hot do ents inside the office of the campaign on McPherson Square. "Those do ents were not something anyone was talking about or trying to generate buzz on," says the staffer. "It wasn't like there were small groups of people talking about this as a bombs . I think people here weren't sure what to make of it, because provenance of these do ents was uncertain."
A CBS producer, who initially tipped off The Prowler about the 60 Minutes story, says that despite seeking professional assurances that the do ents were legitimate, there was uncertainty even among the group of producers and researchers working on the story.
"The problem was we had one set of do ents from Bush's file that had Killian calling Bush 'an exceptionally fine young officer and pilot.' And someone who Killian said 'performed in an outstanding manner.' Then you have these new do ents and the tone and content are so different."
The CBS producer said that some alarms bells went off last week when the signatures and initials of Killian on the do ents in hand did not match up with other do ents available on the public record, but producers chose to move ahead with the story. "This was too hot not to push. If there were doubts, those people didn't show it," says the producer, who works on a rival CBS News program.
Now, the producer says, there is growing concern inside the building on 57th Street that they may have been suckered by the Kerry campaign. "There is a school of thought here that the Kerry people dumped this in our laps, figuring we'd do the heavy lifting on the story. That maybe they had doubts about these do ents but hoped we'd get more information," says the producer. "If that's the case, then we're bigger fools than we already appear to be judging by all the chatter about how these do ents could be forgeries."
ABC News' political unit held a conference call at 7:00 p.m. Thursday evening to discuss the memo and its potential ramifications should the do ents turn out to be a forgery. That meeting took place around the time that the deceased Killian's son made public statements questioning the do ents' authenticity.
According to one ABC News employee, some reporters believe that the Kerry campaign as well as the DNC were parties in duping CBS, but a smaller segment believe that both the DNC and the Kerry campaign were duped by Karl Rove, who would have engineered the flap to embarrass the opposition.
I haven't had time to look into who may have done anything
wrong but the man's widow say's her Husband didn't type.
Now that's desperate. You do know that he more than likely he had this typed for him, right?I haven't had time to look into who may have done anything
wrong but the man's widow say's her Husband didn't type.
That's desperate?
I'd say trying to carp on Bush's National Guard record for the THIRD time, not having any issues to talk about because you don't have a platform, and expecting some poor forgery to help put a dent in your opponent's momentum IS just the definition of desperate.
I'm talking about all the MFR's (See Drudge Report)
that the LTC has been creditied with
Sorry to confuse you Dan
BTW any idiot with any experience/knowledge is aware ot the fact LtCol's "Commander's" well at least back then didn't type.
Apoligize Cut & past doesn't work at the job.
DAN
I still have some letterhead from the 1881 Comm Sq,
Cam Rahn Bay Vietnam. Want me to type you a letter
thanking you for ......................?
You guys act like this is an issue thats too old to be important, which is a crock. The lie that he made about this issue is only a couple of months old. It is a repeated lie (if this do ent isn't a forgery.) and is an ongoing charade.
This doesn't make any sense as a forgery. As this was not turned up by any democrat this was turned up under an official Pentagon freedom of information act suit. The Bush whitehouse released the do ents immediately following the CBS story. They didn't deny them or claim they were forgeries. They released them after the story ran. To me that validates the story. Plus it fits in with everyother piece of evidence we have about Bush's guards service. It is completely consistent with the timeline of Bush's stint in Alabama.
After weeks of media scrutiny of Democrat John Kerry's record in Vietnam, Bush was broadsided by several challenges to his account of his six-year stint in the air guard in Texas and Alabama, including:
-- A CBS "60 Minutes" interview in which a former Texas speaker of the House said he helped secure a pilot's position for Bush in the Texas Air National Guard to keep him from being drafted.
-- New memos obtained by CBS News suggesting that Bush's squadron commander in Texas was under pressure from his superiors to give Bush a strong performance review, which he refused to do.
-- A Boston Globe investigation that concluded that Bush missed training assignments in Alabama and Massachusetts despite twice signing statements that warned that he could be put on active duty for two years for doing so.
...
The "60 Minutes" report also included newly obtained do ents from Bush's Texas squadron leader, Col. Jerry Killian. Although Killian initially gave Bush stellar evaluations -- calling him an "exceptionally fine young officer and pilot" -- later memos suggested that Bush was failing to meet his requirements.
In a May 1972 memo, Killian said he talked to Bush about "options of how Bush can get out of coming to drill from now through November" because of campaign work Bush wanted to do. Killian said he also believed Bush was "talking to someone upstairs" to avoid some assignments.
When he later decided to suspend Bush's flight status -- after Bush failed to take a physical exam and meet other air guard requirements -- Killian suggested he was under pressure to give a favorable review.
"I'm having trouble running interference and doing my job," he wrote.
Late Wednesday night the White House released copies of the new memos to the Associated Press. Although the controversy over Bush's service has gone on for at least a decade, Pentagon officials said they found the memos only after performing an exhaustive search "out of an abundance of caution" in response to a Freedom of Information Act request by the AP.
SFGate
Red : Original
Blue : Typed in word
Another do ent in which superscript is used for one of the "11th"s note its not all of them, and it came from the same time period.
WPostCBS News released a statement yesterday standing by its reporting, saying that each of the do ents "was thoroughly vetted by independent experts and we are convinced of their authenticity." The statement added that CBS reporters had verified the do ents by talking to unidentified individuals who saw them "at the time they were written."
< snip >
A senior CBS official, who asked not to be named because CBS managers did not want to go beyond their official statement, named one of the network's sources as retired Maj. Gen. Bobby W. Hodges, the immediate superior of the do ents' alleged author, Lt. Col. Jerry B. Killian. He said that a CBS reporter read the do ents to Hodges over the phone, and that Hodges replied that "these are the things that Killian had expressed to me at the time."
"These do ents represent what Killian not only was putting in memoranda, but was telling other people," the CBS News official said. "Journalistically, we've gone several extra miles."
The official said the network regarded Hodges's comments as "the trump card" on the question of authenticity, as he is a Republican who acknowledged that he did not want to hurt Bush. Hodges, who declined to grant an on-camera interview to CBS, did not respond to messages left on his home answering machine in Texas.
Here is a CBS 1972 do ent when compared to a modern Word do ent
Nice work Despurado. Good to see you back. I guess you should mention though that this should put to rest a obviously forged image that came out on Neocons sites on the internet yesterday that are supposed to show that the do ents used by CBS are similar when overlayed onto a modern MS Word do ent. Although your image proves that this is simply not the case.
Here is a obvious fake floating around freeper sites on the internet
Again, at worst the man got into the guard due to his family connections and missed an appointment with a physician after 4 or 5 years of doing what was required of him. Outside of your little left wing cluster most people simply do not care.
And that's assuming the do ents are even genuine, which has been doubted by a variety of experts, all of whom have been named. That's something CBS has yet to do with its "independent experts."
Lest we forget that CBS' support of the claim that Bush got into the guard thanks to political favoritism is based on the words of a Kerry 'adviser' and major fundraiser.
y
Still, it's fun to watch you girls get so excited about something this insignificant.
:wink
This is what happens when you throw Carville and Rather in the same mixing bowl. You might as well add a few roaches and bloodsuckers. The nation should be outraged at this kind of . I think the public is just a little smarter than Rather and Carville think they are. This will backfire on the Democrats and the end is near for them. Four more years for Bush.
If you want to know why these are forgeries you don't even have to point out that someone used Word and ran it through the copier 10 or 20 times or learn the intrincacies of early 1970s typewriter (some of you disturb me) fonts and subscripts.
The memo dated August 18th, 1973 (the "Memo to File") states that "Staudt has obviously pressured Hodges more about Bush."
Small problem.
www.latimes.com/la-na-gua...0422.story
Staudt retired in 1972.Bush's application, as well as his commission, were handled by then-Col. Walter B. "Buck" Staudt, who said, "Nobody did anything for him…. There was no … influence on his behalf. Neither his daddy nor anybody else got him into the Guard." Staudt, who retired in 1972 as a brigadier general, said Bush was enrolled quickly because there was a demand for pilot candidates.
Wow, I feel like a virtual Perry Mason now.
A quick search on Lexis for articles from 1996 containing "bill clinton" and "draft dodger" turned up this beaut:
That was in 1996. Dole made the centerpiece of his campaign his war record and "honor", "integrity", etc...in a clear shot at Clinton. The problem is that if you are going to run a personal campaign then you should at least be more likable than your opponent, for starters. Kerry fails that test. So then you better have something good on your opponent. Well, the GOP had a fairly convincing case that Clinton did seek to dodge the draft and was successful, something which of course came up in the 1992 election. Republicans, blinded by their hate of Clinton, thought that surely voters would respond to if they brought it up again.Copyright 1996 The New York Times Company
The New York Times
June 23, 1996, Sunday, Late Edition - Final
SECTION: Section 4; Page 1; Column 4; Week in Review Desk
LENGTH: 1293 words
HEADLINE: Why So Resilient?;
A President Who Can Absorb Body Blows
BYLINE: By RICHARD L. BERKEBy
-snip-
While the Summer Olympics in Atlanta may dominate news coverage before the August party conventions, ethics issues are not about to disappear: The House and Senate inquiries into the F.B.I. file transfers have only just begun; so has the second Whitewater trial in Little Rock, involving Mr. Lindsey; and the special prosecutor for Whitewater, Kenneth W. Starr, now has the F.B.I. file affair on his plate as well. The Republican Party is sure to keep the questions alive in other ways; already, it is running TV ads reminding voters of the sexual harassment suit against Mr. Clinton and portraying him as a draft dodger.
They didn't.
This election year, it was the DNC, the Kerry campaign, and their friends in the "unbiased" media who hit Bush for being "AWOL" starting back in February and March. Why? Again, just like Dole in '96, the rationale was that the way to beat the in bent was to highlight their personal failings against someone with a more noble life story. What's more noble in American politics than military service?
In the current media cycle this psychadelic repeat trip into Bush's National Guard history is certainly being portrayed as being justified by the Swift Vets campaign against Kerry, but it was the DNC and Kerry who originally introduced the scrutinization of Bush's record into this campaign.
Kerry continued down this fool's gold lined path, highlighted by the orgy of Vietnam nostalgia that was the Democrat convention. He made that part of his life the central theme of his campaign. Why? Again, primarily to compare and contrast himself with Bush.
This didn't work in 1992, 1996, and 2000 and it's not going to work today. The current little tempest is akin to a Dole fundraiser and adviser coming forward with a 'true' story that he in fact helped Clinton join the ROTC or whatever at the Univ. of Arkansas back in the sixties and that recently discovered do ents detail that Clinton missed some ROTC meeting. In short, outside of the media-politico-blog bubble most people could care less. They've made up their minds about the current president's character already and the recent allegations, if true, are simply what has been suggested again and again about Bush.
The Kerry campaign has thusfar in this campaign failed to significantly attack Bush on any matter of substance. Instead we have this muddied swamp of crap about what happened 35 years ago. Welcome to 1996 redux.
Advantage: in bent.
Leave it to the Demoncrats to try to drag Bush's name through the mud on the eve of the worst terrorist attack in our nation's history.
But hey, all's fair in politics.
lol...
Its not possible that Saudt put pressure as a friend of the Bush family after he retired? No?
And nice of you to discount an Eye witness.
Some emoticons for your typewriter expertise...:dog
2
:kiss
Staudt was retired. Gone. The memos clearly make it sound as if he is still a part of the organization. And of course every reputable do ents expert who will actually attach their name to their opinion thinks the memo was not produced in the early 1970s.
What "eyewitness"? Kerry supporter Ben Barnes?
You don't even bother to read do you Major General Hodges, a republican, reported seeing these signed and discussed them with the Lt Col.
I've already shown every claim that the experts say prove that it was forgery is wrong. Superscript was around in US equipment and used on other Bush do ents. Etc.A senior CBS official, who asked not to be named because CBS managers did not want to go beyond their official statement, named one of the network's sources as retired Maj. Gen. Bobby W. Hodges, the immediate superior of the do ents' alleged author, Lt. Col. Jerry B. Killian. He said that a CBS reporter read the do ents to Hodges over the phone, and that Hodges replied that "these are the things that Killian had expressed to me at the time."
"These do ents represent what Killian not only was putting in memoranda, but was telling other people," the CBS News official said. "Journalistically, we've gone several extra miles."
The official said the network regarded Hodges's comments as "the trump card" on the question of authenticity, as he is a Republican who acknowledged that he did not want to hurt Bush. Hodges, who declined to grant an on-camera interview to CBS, did not respond to messages left on his home answering machine in Texas.
John O'Neill was a John Edwards supporter in the primaries. Your point?
Sorry, but those memos are forgeries, as attested to by those who are experts at do ent authentication and willing to put their name on their expert opinion.
Oh great, CBS News is the source for your argument.
Has anyone interviewed this Hodges guy on camera yet?
apnews.myway.com/article/...UGD82.html
Authenticity of Bush Memos Scrutinized
Sep 10, 1:45 PM (ET)
By MATT KELLEY
WASHINGTON (AP) - Questions are being raised about the authenticity of newly unearthed memos which asserted that George W. Bush ignored a direct order from a superior officer in the Texas Air National Guard and lost his status as a pilot because he failed to meet military performance standards and undergo a required physical exam.
CBS, which reported on the memos on its "60 Minutes" program, said its experts who examined the do ents concluded that they were authentic. They ostensibly were written by Lt. Col. Jerry Killian, one of Bush's commanders in 1972 and 1973.
A co-worker of Killian's quoted in the CBS broadcast told The Associated Press Friday he had no reason to doubt the memos, although he can't verify them.
But Killian's son, one of Killian's fellow officers and an independent do ent examiner questioned the memos. Gary Killian, who served in the Guard with his father and retired as a captain in 1991, said he doubted his father would have written an unsigned memo which said there was pressure to "sugar coat" Bush's performance review.
"It just wouldn't happen," he said. "No officer in his right mind would write a memo like that."
Bush spokesman Scott McClellan said Friday the White House, which distributed the memos after obtaining them from CBS, was not trying to verify their authenticity. "We don't know if the do ents are fabricated or authentic," McClellan told reporters traveling with the president to West Virginia.
McClellan suggested the memos surfaced as part of "an orchestrated effort by Democrats and the Kerry campaign to tear down the president."
The personnel chief in Killian's unit at the time said he believes the do ents are fake.
"They looked to me like forgeries," said Rufus Martin. "I don't think Killian would do that, and I knew him for 17 years." Killian died in 1984.
Independent do ent examiner Sandra Ramsey Lines said the memos looked like they had been produced on a computer using Microsoft Word software. Lines, a do ent expert and fellow of the American Academy of Forensic Sciences, pointed to a superscript - a smaller, raised "th" in "111th Fighter Interceptor Squadron" - as evidence indicating forgery.
Microsoft Word automatically inserts superscripts in the same style as the two on the memos obtained by CBS, she said.
"I'm virtually certain these were computer generated," Lines said after reviewing copies of the do ents at her office in Paradise Valley, Ariz. She produced a nearly identical do ent using her computer's Microsoft Word software.
Robert Strong, who worked with Killian at the time the memos are dated, said he did not see anything in the memos that made him think they were forgeries. Strong noted he's not a forensic expert and isn't vouching for the do ents.
"I didn't see anything that was inconsistent with how we did business," Strong said. "It looked like the sort of thing that Jerry Killian would have done or said. He was a very professional guy."
The Defense Department released Bush's pilot logs this week under pressure from a Freedom of Information Act lawsuit by The Associated Press.
Bush's Vietnam-era Air National Guard service became a focus of Democratic criticism this week amid a flurry of new reports about his activities. Democrats say Bush shirked his National Guard duties, a claim Bush denies.
Bush joined the Texas Air National Guard in 1968, serving more than a year on active Air Force duty while being trained to fly F-102A jets. He was honorably discharged from the Guard in October 1973 and left the Air Force Reserves in May 1974.
The first four months of 1972 are at the beginning of a controversial period in Bush's Guard service. After taking his last flight in April 1972, Bush went for six months without showing up for any training drills. In September 1972 he received permission to transfer to an Alabama Guard unit so he could work on a political campaign there.
That May, Bush also skipped a required yearly medical examination. In response, his commanders grounded Bush on Aug. 1, 1972.
---
Associated Press Correspondent Kelley Shannon contributed to this report from Austin, Texas.
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