Powerline summarizes Nightline's damage control interview with Chris Lehane: "Koppel and Lehane agreed that the campaign almost certainly was not responsible for the forgery because the consequences of being caught are too high. (Lehane even floated the idea that the Bush campaign might have been responsible)."

I.e., "No, we'd never be this stupid".

I'm waiting now for their last-ditch excuse:

"Uh - uh - APRIL FOOL!!!"

Is Kerry having a Watergate? Are we witnessing 'All the Candidate's Men' playing out in hours and days instead of months and years? Could it possibly be more appropriate that Kerry is hit with a Nixonian scandal?

It's kind of a journalistic ethics dilemma. If a confidential source slips CBS some secret information, and CBS runs with it, and it turns out to be a deliberate fake, is CBS still obligated to protect the source?

Or can CBS now just turn around and say, e.g., "Chris Lehane came into our office six weeks ago with a manila folder and a shit-eating grin and said, 'I have the goods on on the Chimp!' He lied to us, we didn't check it out enough and we apologize."

What if the source claims that he passed the fake information along in good faith, thinking it was real? Is CBS still obligated to defend him?

It would almost seem they would have to out their source as part of clearing their record.

My prediction is that if it's Rove, they'll fess up; anybody else, no way.

(That's my post up top, by the way.)

Is Kerry having a Watergate?

You mean is Kerry having another watergate?

See here, here, here, and here

Kerrys is no slouch at gathering skeletons in his closet.

One more thing and I'm off to bed. It wasn't just the MSM that lost credibility here. It's also the Democratic party leadership.

If this really came from the DNC as the article suggests, they're either 1. venal, because they made it up, or 2. incompetent, because they passed along something as true that they wanted to believe, but didn't take the very basic steps a few bloggers did to verify it.

I'm betting on 2.

What does that say about the Democratic leadership's qualification to manage out national security? Can they really be that gullible?

Let's say, for a second, that Bush was misled on the Niger yellowcake, misled by Chalabi about WMD's, all these things to get him to attack Iraq. Why would anyone now believe the Dems would fare any better? This wasn't North Korean Intelligence we're dealing with here. They got hosed by some incompetent grudgegrinder with Microsoft Word and a xerox machine.

They let themselves be deceived, they gave in to wishful thinking, and in doing so, they lost every right to criticize the Iraq war.

They want to sit down across the table from Kim Jong Il and Pervez Musharraf and Hugo Chavez and bargain for our lives. And they can't even be trusted not to lie to themselves, nor to disbelieve their own lies.

It's the old lawyer's trick, you know, the one where the prosecutor asks the witness something like "So, Mr X., you're just a dirty uncle fucker! Oh, and can you tell me if you actually saw the defendent blah blah blah."

The judge can tell the jury all he wants to ignore the "uncle fucker" remark, but the damage is done. Will the jury trust the word of an uncle fucker?

'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."

Does this sound like groupthink to you? Sounds like groupthink to me.

Characteristics of a groupthink environment:

1. Illusion of Invulnerability.
2. Belief in Inherent Morality of the Group.
3. Collective Rationalization...a mindset of "hear no evil, see no evil, speak no evil."
4. Out-group Stereotypes.
5. Self-Censorship.
6. Illusion of Unanimity.
7. Direct Pressure on Dissenters.
8. Self-Appointed Mindguards. "Mindguards" protect a leader from assault by troublesome ideas.

Describes both CBS and the DNC, I'll wager.

When the media gets burned by a source they usually retalliate. Since the crimocrats have already tried to shift the blame to Rove is CBS going to get suckered twice and go after Bush or will they hang Kerry? Are they smart enough to avoid the second screwing?

This is just too sweet. I've said before that once the media lost faith in Kerry's ability to pull it out, they're wrath would make Howard Dean's public emasculation look like an endorsement. Now even CBS(!) is pointing the finger at Kerry rather (no pun) than hold the bag on this one. The sweetest irony though, is that, despite their nearly succesful joint effort to squelch the Switftvets, the other networks and papers felt that the opportunity to screw CBS was even more important than winning the election for Kerry!

Remember, "The enemy of my enemy, is my friend's enemy's friend." Or something like that.

Maybe, just maybe, Clinton's surgery wasn't the immediate danger they claimed. I know of more than one person that was told to have it done soon, but when it was convienient because there was no imminent danger. It's possible that he chose to go ahead with it to distance himself from Kerry. Bill is now in the postition to say, "I told him to let the Viet Nam thing go and concentrate on the present, and then everyone knows I was in the hospital.", and not leave the opening to connect this act of fraud to him, or his wife.

Unbelievable. If this pans out, it will replace Watergate as the acme of dirty tricks.

I just noticed the source, (which comes up as unavailable for me at the moment) is the Spectator. Let's tread very cautiously. IIRC, their track record is far from perfect.

The forgery indications are pretty strong - I'd hate to see a good gotcha ruined by over-reach.

Ten bucks says Dan's going south for Ivan, and thus "can't be reached for comment."

Dave
Garfield Ridge

Has anyone bothered to see who has PO Box 34567 in Houston? The proper zip code for it is 77234, not 77034 as shown in the document, but that may have changed. Are there any more documents from the Texas ANG that ever used this PO Box address? What was the correct zip code for the PO Box in 1972? If the fact that typewriters at the time weren't capable of producing the document isn't proof enough we need to look at any verifiable parts of the documents. Early on in this everyone questioned box 34567, has anyone ever verified it?