Shock: Forged Documents Came By Way of DNC/Kerry Campaign
CBSNews Had "Doubts" About Provenance and Signatures, But Went Ahead Anyway Without Verification
A producer has just gone shopping for Dan's gold watch:
More than six weeks ago, an opposition research staffer for the Democratic National Committee received documents 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 documents 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 documents would have had access to them. Our person couldn't confirm from what file, from what original source they came from."
...
A CBS producer, who initially tipped off The Prowler about the 60 Minutes story, says that despite seeking professional assurances that the documents 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 documents from Bush's file that had Killian calling Bush 'an exceptionally fine young officer and pilot.' And someone who Killian said 'performed in an outstanding manner.' Then you have these new documents and the tone and content are so different."
The CBS producer said that some alarms bells went off last week when the signatures and initials of Killian on the documents in hand did not match up with other documents 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 documents 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 documents could be forgeries."
There is more at the link, but fair use dictates that I can't excerpt everything. It's ALL good, baby. Read the whole thing.
Dan Rather Retirement Watch Update:
At the tone, the Dan Rather Retirement Watch displays a time of
(bong)
11:42 PM -- eighteen minutes 'till midnight ("spending more time with his family")
Nasty Implication Update: The media knew these documents were fake. All except CBSNews rejected them as likely forgeries.
And yet when CBSNews reported them, no one in the straight media said boo about it.
They waited to see if CBSNews could get away with it-- if CBS could make it stick. Only now that CBS has been outed do they begin reporting on the suspect nature of documents.
And no one in the mainstream media has yet reported what they all know as a fact from their own first-hand witness -- that these forgeries were shopped to them by both the DNC and Kerry camp.
Fuck You and the Horse You Road in On Update: Ilyka reports that Dan Rather thinks he went "several extra miles" to "verify" these laughably crude forgeries.
Yeah, Dan. Your fucking multimillion dollar news organization went "several extra miles" by talking to some guy who knew nothing about the actual document. You did not, however, take the fucking five minutes to call up a document-authentication expert.
I suppose that would have been too difficult for a multimillion dollar world-wide news organization to do. To do something like that, why, you'd have to be amateur blogger with an extra hour on his hands or something!
Well. Now that I understand how enormous and Herculean a task it would have been to make a call to an expert and ask him to look over them for a half hour, you are forgiven.
You incompetent hack. Get your senile ass to Miami already. They've got jai-alai and dog-races. You can spin your obnoxious "homespun Texas wisdom" for your neighbors in your retirement community until they get annoyed enough to strangle you to death with their medical-alert necklaces.