PRESTOPUNDIT -- "It's a team sport, baby!"

THE BIZARRE WORLD OF

DAN RATHER. Needless to say real comedy fans were not watching Jon Stewart last night.

THE MUSICAL STYLINGS

of William Shatner on the new CD Has Been -- currently #48 at Amazon. We've waited 36 years for this one folks. Here's the FoxNews story.

THE CBS NEWS

"DRAFT" HOAX.

A LEFTIST

"reporter" at Wired News attempts to smear the blogosphere and defend a corrupt ethically challenged professor -- but its all for naught. Dan Ra^ther and some fake documents are involved.

UPDATE: More here and here.

THE DAN

RA^THER PROBLEM:

DON HEWITT: .. here's the problem. Do you put him on the air election night with this cloud hanging over him? Or do you ask him --

BILL O'REILLY: Would you?

HEWITT: Boy that's an agonizing -- I'm glad I don't have to make that decision.

-- More.

TEXAS LAWMEN

let CBS News off the hook in fraud case.

NO DECISION YET

on criminal probe of CBS News.

Also this -- CBS News will delay reporting on the outcome of its internal investigation of Ra^thgate until after election day, saying that the network doesn't want to interfer in the outcome of a Presidential election. Quotable:

"Obviously, it should be done probably after the election is over so it doesn't affect what is going on," said CBS head Leslie Moonves.

Make up your own joke.

A GOOGLE SEARCH

for "Dan Rather" & "biased" returns 34,700 hits.

HERE I BLOG,

I Can Do No Other.

When Martin Luther posted his blog on the Wittenberg door, he fact-checked Catholic theology against the text of scripture. He proved to the satisfaction of many that the typeface of the Purgatory doctrine was suspect, and that the kerning of faith vs. works was clearly a product of PopeSoft 1500's default settings ..

During Rathergate .. the CBS definition of fact-checking consisted of 1) the ambiguous assessments of four ludicrously under-qualified "experts;" 2) the assurances of two dishonest partisan nutballs, and 3) the journalistic instincts of one doddering news anchor whose world view is locked in his own private Groundhog Day, circa 1974 ..

If the MSM displayed its opinions and biases as completely as the blogs, it wouldn't affect so superior a tone. Had we seen Mary Mapes wearing a paper hat made of Kerry press releases and clapping her hands over the Rather memos while giggling "Bush lied, people died, memos gonna fly, Bush gonna FRY!" then the snide remarks about pajamas might subside ..

WALTER CRONKITE.

"I cannot understand how broadcast news should have gotten so entirely oblivious to the whole theory of libel and slander," Cronkite said. "How is it possible for these people to get on the air with any allegation they want to make, any statement they want to make, as if it were true, as if they were journalists, which they are clearly not? They are scandalmongers."

Ah, sorry. Correction. Make that read "the Internet" and not "broadcast news". My bad. But we caught it, right? No harm, no foul (or somesuch).

Source.

MICHAEL MOORE

was offered the fake Ra^thergate documents -- but they couldn't make it past Moore's vaunted truth verification procedure.

"He sought to alter the outcome of an election using documents not good enough for Michael Moore." -- someone should carve that on Dan Ra^ther's tombstone -- or on his forehead.

ANDY ROONY --

What we really need is a nightly full hour of deception and partisan spin from Dan Ra^ther. Who's turn to change Andy, anyway?

THE PRODUCER --

Meet Mary Mapes:

Before she left Seattle to become a producer at Mr. Rather's "CBS Evening News," Ms. Mapes produced a sensational report on a killing of a drug suspect by police that rested on the shoulders of an unreliable source whose story collapsed under cross-examination .. Former colleagues of Ms. Mapes agree that she was a passionate practitioner of advocacy journalism. "She went into journalism to change society," says former KIRO anchorwoman Susan Hutchison. "She always was very, very cause-oriented."

And compare this puff piece on Mapes from the leftist WaPo.

UPDATE: "Great minds thinks alike." I posted the above last night. InstaPundit posted this today -- "puff piece" must be the natural and inevitable language anyone would use to describe the WaPo article on Mapes.

MORE UNSUBSTANTIATED

Ra^thergate lies from Democrat Tom Brokaw. And Dan "a bit too tightly wrapped in the flag" Ra^ther plays the victim. Gosh darn those Internet meanies are ganging up on poor little Dan when all he's trying to do is be patriotic. Quotable:

You know that the role of the patriotic journalist is to put your fear aside, stand up, look them in the eye, ask the rough questions. But you also know that when you do that, you're going to get hammered...

And Bill Dyer has a question for Tom Brokaw:

Would you care to show me where in the Society of Professional Journalists' Code of Ethics it says that Mr. Rather and CBS News were entitled to knowingly collaborate in the propagation of forged documents in an attempt to enflame the emotions and prejudices of the populace and thereby defeat a sitting United States President?

Democrat Howard Kurz has more. Quotable:

Dan Ra^ther, vowing to resist any "smear" campaign against him by the Bush administration or other critics.

As they say, you can't make stuff like that up.

UPDATE: More from Jeff Jarvis. Quotable:

Tom has been reading too much Tina Brown and listening too little to America.

INTERVIEWS WITH THE CBS NEWSIES

who gave us Ra^thergate will not opened to the public. CBS must anticipate that much will be said that won't stand up to public scrutiny. Remember this next time CBS get on its high-horse and demands open public hearings on this or that issue.

JUST BACK FROM

the 2004 Society of Professional Journalists National Convention, Staci Kramer files this report at the USC Annenberg site -- "CBS Scandal Highlights Tension Between Bloggers and News Media". Kramer is a member of the SPJ ethics committee. Quotable:

While bloggers and others online pushed back at the CBS story with a lot of clever work, much of the "information" flying around the Net about the documents was inaccurate -- including claims that the font didn't exist in 1972 (Times Roman was first used in 1931; the IBM version was known as Press Roman in the 70s), that proportional spacing wasn't available on typewriters (IBM introduced it in 1941) and that the superscript "th" wasn't possible then (superscript capability could be purchased as an option).

Some of these mistakes where in the early postings by Powerline, and it wasn't until I'd heard an expert on Hewitt's radio show and I'd seen this at LGF's that I said "put a fork in it" and started posting on the faked documents here at PrestoPundit. My first posting was this one, linked that day by The Corner.

"THE OTHER SICK MAN"

Wizbang has the goods on Bush memo "verifier" David Hailey assisant professor at Utah St. U. LGF has a recap, "David Hailey's "Analysis" is a Fraud."

UPDATE: CBS News producer Mary Mapes is involved -- CBS is peddling not only fake documents but fake examinations of fake documents!!

TELL THE TEXAS RANGERS

of your support for the criminal investigation into the fake Air National Guard documents and the role of CBS News in spreading those forgeries.

BILL BURKETT'S

BLOG (!!)

First posting -- "An Important Message from the Family of Bill & Nicki Burkett." Scroll down for additional remarks from Burkett's wife.

The site certainly appears genuine. (I doubt Dan Ra^ther typed this up last night in his PJ's -- the thing is blustering with hostility for the conduct of CBS News.) And the site is taking donations for Burkett.

(via Ace).

UPDATE: Beldar has some blogging advice for Bill Burkett and the Burkett family.

TRANSCRIPT --

"The truth doesn't matter" -- an interview with CBS News. Well, actually no one said exactly that but "news reporter" Richard Schlesinger did say this:

Whether or not there�s any reality to there being a draft, is almost besides the point.

Adn producer Linda Karas said this:

The truth of the e-mails were absolutely irrelevant to the piece.

Sorry, Richard, sorry Linda, when you have a war on and an election in process, it's not beside the point. It's really the thing that matters most -- because the truth always matters -- and you've got fear based on falsehoods spreading like wildfire out there. But the both of you chose to throw gasoline on the fire rather dowse bogus email rumors with a cold bucket of factual news reporting. This isn't journalism, it's an utter disgrace.

Compare how CBS News reported on these bogus fears being spread to influence the outcome of the election -- this time CBS didn't report the fear, they reported the truth. How do the stories differ? In prior case the false rumor target Bush, the later instance the false rumors target Kerry. By coincidence both stories are told -- not in a way to maximize truth -- but in a way as maximze damage to President Bush, the truth be damned.

UPDATE: Another TRANSCRIPT -- "An Interview with Mr. Enobakhare" -- Dan Ra^ther pursues another email lead:

Ra^ther: Mr. Enobakhare, where are you from?

Enobakhare: From Sierra, Leone, which is right next to the Kingdom of Zamunda.

Ra^ther: And your family has fallen on some hard times?

Enobakhare: Yes, Before the death of my father, he deposited the sum of Twelve Million United States Dollars in a Finance and Security Company.

AND YET ANOTHER breaking CBC News story.

But don't expect CBS to cover this "Democrat Moms Worry That John Kerry Will Raise Taxes and Outlaw Christianity."

MORE -- this is simply unbelievable. CBS News is doctoring their own broadcast transcripts.

CBS NEWS AND THE FAKE

Texas Air National Guard documents are now part of a criminal investigation launched by the Attorney General of Texas.

IT IS A CRIME CASE --

CBS News has implicated itself in crimes against the state of Texas:

In Texas, the state in which Burkett concedes the false National Guard memos originated, it is a felony to make or present two or more documents with knowledge of their falsity and with intent that they be taken as a genuine governmental record. Under the U.S. Code, use of an interstate telephone wire, such as the one used to transmit an image of the forged documents from Texas to CBS headquarters, triggers federal jurisdiction .. CBS has cause for concern, too. The documents were not just forged; they were obviously forged to the generation over age 40, which has used both a typewriter and a computer to write; CBS did not have to be misled about the source of the documents to be tipped that the documents were not real. While Burkett might have been willfully blind to things that would indicate that the memos were fake, there is mounting evidence that even CBS' experts told producers of 60 Minutes II that they could not verify that the documents were real. The story was aired � or in the terms of the Texas forgery statute, "presented" � in spite of this.

According to Ace, Britt Hume reports that the Texas AG has referred the matter to the Texas state police (e.g. the Rangers).

NY POST --

Dan Gets Snookered Again. Also this, "RATINGS ARE RA^THER WEAK":

The CBS newscast averaged 6.9 million viewers across the country last week � down 7 percent from the week before and down 8 percent from the same week in 2003.

BREAKING NEWS

from BeldarBlog on the innocent "Republican mom" featured in the CBS News rumor and fear story about the "draft". It turns out this lady is herself is at the center of a group people who are actively propagating the falsehood filled email which is fueling bogus fears about the "draft". Beldar has discovered a letter the woman wrote June 17th, which begins:

Just this week I received an e-mail so upsetting that I forwarded it to all my friends, who then forwarded it to all their friends. We are now a good size group.

Once again, the facts which CBS hid from its audience are more interesting and more important that the half-truths and distortions it chose to broadcast.

"REPUBLICAN MOM FEARS DRAFT"

-- The blogosphere fact checks Dan Ra^ther's ass.

More from Powerline here and Little Green Footballs. UPDATE -- Drudge is now linking. Instantly this is national news. (heh). See also the account of the CBS draft scare from the Media Research Center.

Betsy Newmark was on the false "draft" rumors story a week ago -- CBS News ran with the false rumors, ignored the factual debunking. Who's surprised? Maybe David Broder?

UPDATE: PoliPundit points out that Ra^therBiased.com could use a donation. Their site is down again due to overwhelming traffic. Won't you help?

UPDATE II: If CBS News had a fact-check dept., they might have learned this and this about the bogus draft rumors being spread by Kerry supporters.

"THE BALLAD OF UNCLE DAN"

-- sung to the tune from the Beverly Hillbillies. heh.

JOE BARTON,

Chairman of the House Commerce Committee, will hold Congressional hearings on the accuracy and fairness of the network news broadcasts, beginning sometime after the Nov. election. Quotable:

Barton said it concerned him that news anchors like Ra^ther also are the news directors of their organizations. "Here you have Dan Ra^ther the on-air reporter going to Dan Ra^ther the off-the-air CBS director of news saying: 'Mr. Ra^ther, I have this story in Texas about the presidential campaign. I think it's true, and I want it to be true, and I want to report it as true. What do you think?' Dan Ra^ther says, 'Well, as director of CBS News if you say you think it's true, and you want it to be true, go ahead and do it.' There's no safety valve there."

See also, "News scandal threatens a storied career." Quotable:

In Houston, radio station KPRC reacted by taking Ra^ther's 4 p.m., five-minute newscast off the air .. In its place, KPRC is now airing a five-minute newscast produced by Fox Radio News. Listeners have been "99 percent supportive," Charles said, showering the station with hundreds of congratulatory e-mails.

WHAT DAN

RA^THER DESTROYED. Thomas Lipscomb reviews Bob Edwards' book Edward R. Murrow and the Birth of Broadcast Journalism.

FEARMONGER,

RUMORMONGER -- HE'S DAN RA^THER and his news broadcast is a national embarrassment. Betsy Newmark has commentary and links.

Is it a coincidence that Dan Ra^ther's script takes a phrase directly from this "Rock the Vote" briefer on the draft?

Dan Ra^ther is looking as his last chance to effect the outcome of an election, and this time he's pulling no punches.

GLENN REYNOLDS

has more on David Broder, newsies and bloggers. Including this from Mickey Kaus:

Broder blames bloggers, politicos, good writers--everyone except those who actually did the screwing up. Projection! The obvious possibility he doesn't want to consider is the one Shafer hammers: That the practices of Broder's profession were never that terrific.

Glenn comments:

what worries me [is] the thought that, maybe, it's been this bad all along and we just couldn't tell before. . . .

Well, if you were on the inside anywhere in America when Big Media came to town to report on things, you always knew. When I was younger and living in Richland WA, CBS News or a big city paper would report on the happenings at the Hanford Nuclear Site. My dad was an insider, my neighbors were insiders. CBS News and the big papers always got the story wrong, in ways big and small. Parts of the story might be right, but there was always several loads of extra baggages -- big laughable mistakes, absurd fear mongering, nasty slams at the area and its people, interviews with the oddest outliners imaginable among the citizenry, and almost always complete ignorance of the science behing the industry. It was routine, for example, for big media to suggest that a reactor or a waste storage unit might blow up -- might go mushroom cloud critical. Which wasn't possible But this was only one fantasy -- one lie -- spewed out by the big media types. (And it should be noted that local reporters DIDN'T make mistakes of this kind. Big media had a kind of monopoly on errors of this order of magnitude.) Perhaps the thing that stuck in my mind most firmly was the fact that the major media folks always missed the big story, what was really going on, what was really happening that explained the surface phenomena they would be talking about. And this "real story" was always simply not there in the news report.

What explains the poor performance of the press? Bias played a big part. But the biggest problem was a profound lack of background understanding. Almost always the storyline was pre-written, and this directed reporters away from getting the background understanding which would help them avoid errors and get the story right. In other words, pre-existing assumptions wrote the story in advance, and this pre-defined story prevented big media reporters from doing their job -- investigating and finding out what the real story was. Bias also played another role. Reporters were biased against those involved -- and this prevented reporters from making use of those with expert knowledge or solid local knowledge on the ground. That is, reporters were self-cocooned -- within their pre-written story and hermetically sealed against the penetration of any outside expertise or local knowledge.

ROBERT ZELNICK:

my initial sentiment when a major news organization like CBS botches a big one is both sympathy and empathy .. But I felt a sense of professional betrayal as Dan Rather and colleagues defended their "60 Minutes" report .. Unconscionably, Rather vouched for the documents' authenticity and attacked critics as "partisan." Even after acknowledging he could no longer defend the papers, he offered no retraction of the story .. post-debacle inquires at the New York Times, USA Today and CNN have resulted in personnel changes up to the very top. CBS, a monument to the arrogance of fading network power, might look better with that sort of makeover.

Bob Zelnick is chairman of the Department of Journalism at Boston University. More here.

TOM BROKAW --

"Really, officer, the tree jumped in front of my car."

BIAS IS LIKE BREATHING

AT CBS NEWS says former CBS reporter and Dan Ra^ther colleague David Dick. (And the cartoon at the top of the page is not to be missed.)

AS PRESTOPUNDIT READERS KNOW,

IT DIDN'T START WITH DAN RA^THER. Quotable:

Goldwater's nomination was in part the result of brilliant "grass-roots" organizing among the party's youth wing. As GOP delegates gathered in San Francisco to choose the party's nominee in July 1964, it was clear that the party's Eastern establishment and its candidates could not withstand the energy, enthusiasm, and high spirits of the Goldwater kids and their Arizona standard-bearer. The media didn't see enthusiasm. They saw Hitler youth.

BILL BURKETT

wants a new lawyer who will help him sue Dan Ra^ther for defamation.

And it seems Burkett's former attorney David Van Os has a small conflict of interest.

"DO-IT-YOURSELF JOURNALISTS

are watchdogs on the Web," -- Patrick McIlheran:

Dan Rather's remarkable imitation of Wile E. Coyote gripping dynamite with a burning fuse could be a good thing for our country. I'd be happier if my livelihood weren't in his blast zone ..

By recklessness and its absurd defense - claiming the documents were "fake but true" - CBS squandered credibility banked by all journalists. I make my living at a newspaper that makes money by being credible. I don't expect readers will confuse our news offerings with Rather's storytelling. But it is reasonable to fear that, by some margin, readers' trust in what all journalists say and opine will be reduced.

Rather's credibility .. was based partly on the long preparation and diligence that got him his job, and in part on the fact that most mainstream journalism faces at least one editor, and usually more, before publication. Rather's betrayal tarnishes all of us who gain credibility in these traditional ways ..

It is bad enough when people assume the press routinely errs on trivia; it is fatal when they assume we bear malice in grave matters. They do assume it. It is a near-universal assumption among my non-journalist friends and my relatives that I work in a Jurassic Park of [leftists], surrounded by McGovernosauruses. Not exactly true. A few people are apolitical; there's a surprising number of quiet conservatives. But the profession has long drawn many [leftists] and their perspectives. The cure, I'd tell my ranting relatives, is to recruit conservative journalists.

Well, they've shown up - online. The Washington Post offered splendid coverage of Rather's distress, but the dissection began, famously, on the Internet. And it was through Weblogs' compilations of bits of reporting from this professional source or another - in a newsroom, we call this "news editing" - that the story gained momentum, stoked by Web-available commentary. Take Power Line, for instance. It compiled mainstream media reports as they broke, and it broke a few itself - one of its readers dug up the key anachronism about an officer's retirement date, notes John Hinderaker, one of the men running the site.

There have always been thousands of scattered people, each with bits of truth, as Hinderaker sees it. The Internet lets them bypass the unreliable filters of the old media and connect.

The Rather disaster has revealed the outlines of this new body of newspeople. This attention may draw in more volunteers to dig, to comment, to watchdog the professionals. So, fertilized by CBS' offering, do-it-yourself journalism blooms. If you like free speech, it's good to have more of it.

Some is dubious, purveyed by the unqualified, scantily edited, scandalously written. The mainstream media are not innocent of these faults, however. The Internet, by opening the field to people who don't happen to own a press, at least broadens the choice of voices. That's what propelled Power Line's Hinderaker and his Web partner, Scott Johnson. They're Minneapolis attorneys - though Hinderaker jokes online that he really lives in Milwaukee, thanks to business travel - who had written some punditry for magazines such as National Review. Hinderaker said the Web offered a quicker, easier outlet for their comments on the news.

Behind this gush of news commentary is the assumption that public affairs are important. "We're not doing this for our own amusement," Hinderaker told me on Wednesday. It's that he feels the news is that critical. That attitude, at least, should be a balm to people in the news business. We need it. It's hard enough to see an institution we love lose readers and influence. Now Rather, star journalist, looks like a Democratic Party dupe. It's good, then, to see more people who still think news is something worth doing.

LOCKHART

DIDN'T ASK FOR THE DOCUMENTS. The Burkett story about Lockhart asking for the fake documents turns out to have been the result of a simple mistake by the reporter, quickly corrected. A case not at all like the sorry story of CBS News.

IN THE EYE OF THE STORM --

ROBIN RA^THER.

And don't miss this cartoon.

CBS NEWS

has had a complaint filed against them with the FEC for violations of Federal election laws. Isn't that rich.

ANDREW SULLIVAN ON CRACK:

A blog called Powerline immediately claimed that the documents were hoaxes; within hours, Drudge had picked up the story. CBS defended its story, but as of the end of last week, no proof of a hoax had been provided.

-- More Andrew Sullivan.

A reader suggests that it is only fair to note here that Sullivan's piece is dated Sept. 12, 2004. But it's also fair to note that the blogosphere -- which Sullivan claims to represent -- had the dead-to-rights goods on the fake documents by at least Sept. 10th. Seem my "Fourth Estate" PrestoPundit archive. I was calling the documents "FORGED" on the 10th of September. And I consider myself rather conservative on this issue. Although I was following the Powerline story Friday morning, I didn't think they had enough -- and Drudge posted on this before I did. But it was "stick a fork in it" time if you were following things by at least the end of the day -- and certainly by Sept. 10, the next day. Sorry folks, that's the way I see it -- and Andrew in my judgment being too soft on old media, and doesn't give the blogosphere its justified due. Something which, as I say, was clear by Sept. 10, and certainly by Sept. 11th.

BURKETT SAYS LOCKHART ASKED FOR THE DOCUMENTS:

During a single phone conversation with Lockhart, Burkett said he suggested a "couple of concepts on what I thought (Kerry) had to do" to beat Bush. In return, he said, Lockhart tried to "convince me as to why I should give them the documents."

-- "Controversial Texas rancher defends release of documents to CBS."

Also this from CNN:

Burkett also said "the central part of my agreement with CBS was that they use their massive and superlative abilities to authenticate and verify the documents prior to broadcast in order that I and my source not have to be identified."

SOMEHOW

I missed this summary of the Burkett forged documents story:

The story begins in March, when Mr. Burkett, who had just been on MSNBC's "Hardball" discussing Mr. Bush's Guard service, received a call from a mysterious woman he calls Lucy Ramirez. Previously, Mr. Burkett had identified the source of the memos as one George Conn, another former Texas National Guard officer, conveniently abroad in Europe. In an e-mail to USA Today, Mr. Conn denied any involvement with the Killian memos. Mr. Burkett himself admits that he had lied about his source as a way of protecting her. In their conversation, Lucy Ramirez explained how she had in her custody damaging documents to Mr. Bush and scheduled a meeting with Mr. Burkett to hand them over. That meeting occurred on or around March 3 at a livestock show in Houston. But, according to Mr. Burkett, Lucy Ramirez didn't show up. Instead, as he told USA Today, an unknown "man handed him an envelope and quickly left." After receiving the memos, Mr. Burkett said he stopped off at a Kinko's store in Waco and made copies. In the parking lot outside, Mr. Burkett said he then burned the originals, pursuant to Lucy Ramirez's wishes. Over the next few days, Mr. Burkett said he hid the copies "in cold storage" at an undisclosed location 100 miles from his home in Baird. Then, apparently, five months go by. Five months in which this very vociferous anti-Bush partisan sits on the most damaging documents yet found that all but seal a case he's been making for years. Consider, also, that on Aug. 13, in an online post, Mr. Burkett wrote: "I have found no documentation from Lt. Col. Killian's hand or staff that indicate that this unit was involved in any complicit way to ... cover for the failures of 1Lt. Bush." Then suddenly, on or around Aug. 21, Mr. Burkett contacts former Sen. Max Cleland, indicating that he had potentially damaging information about Mr. Bush's service. Mr. Cleland apparently told Mr. Burkett to contact the Kerry campaign directly. According to Mr. Burkett, he then "gave them the information." In another online post, Mr. Burkett said he contacted the Democratic National Committee, but they were apparently "afraid to do what [he] suggest[ed]."

BILL BURKETT

says he was duped by CBC NEWS. Quotable::

Bill Burkett, a former commander in the Texas Air National Guard and a critic of Bush's past service in the Guard, told the Star-Telegram in an interview that he still believes that memos he gave to CBS are authentic. But he said that he had warned the television network to independently verify the reports before it aired them ..

Burkett said he thinks that CBS and anchor Dan Rather have tried to make him the "fall guy" in the dispute. He said Rather interviewed him for 3 � hours last week but used only portions of the tape that made Burkett look bad. He also said that "CBS duped me" by identifying him as the source of the documents. "Dan Rather ruined me in front of 70 million people," Burkett said.

UPDATE: Evidently there is more to the interview. Drudge has this:

CONTROVERSIAL TEXAS RANCHER SAYS LOCKHART WANTED DOCUMENTS // The source of a disputed CBSNEWS report claimed Thursday that Kerry adviser Joe Lockhart tried to "convince me as to why I should give them the documents." Texas Army National Guard Lt. Col. Bill Burkett tells the FORT WORTH STAR-TELEGRAM that he has suffered four seizures since being identified as CBS' source and dogged by the media... Developing.

THE SMOKING GUN --

>>>> BREAKING -- There is NO smoking gun. Go here for details. And read InstaPundit for commentary. <<<<

Yet more Dan Ra^ther cartoons. (via the terrific PoliPundit).

GLENN REYNOLDS --

CBS, like most broadcast networks .. is staffed by people who lean Left and who don't like Bush. That makes them disposed to find even obviously bogus claims about Bush .. credible, despite the evidence. Worse yet, they tend to talk mostly with people who share their beliefs. The result is an insular culture, rife with the prejudices of the New Class, which believes all sorts of absurdities and peddles them to the public in the sometimes honest, if often unfounded, belief that they are true. Even when they are exposed as false, the response is often to assert, as Rather did for a while, that the story may have been false, but that it was justified because the underlying point .. is nonetheless true. After all, everyone they talk to thinks so.

If there's an analogy to this phenomenon, it's probably the open-source software movement, which tends to produce far more reliable products via the same process of distributed criticism and relative freedom from groupthink. But I'm afraid that the internet's threat to cocooned old-media organisations is far greater than the threat that Microsoft poses to Linux. That's because writing software is hard. Journalism -- particularly journalism practised as it's practised at CBS .. is easy. Those who have lived within the comfortable big-media cocoon have done so not because they possess unusual talents, but because they have had access to the tools for disseminating news and opinion, tools that were until recently so expensive that only a favoured few could use them. They had the megaphone; the rest of us did not. Those days are over. Nowadays everyone has a megaphone and those with something interesting to say often discover that their megaphone can become very large, very fast. Meanwhile, those in the legacy media are discovering that their megaphones are shrinking as the result of journalistic self-abuse. With the tools now available to everyone, the biggest asset is credibility, something they have already squandered in the belief that no one would know the difference.

More here.

ANOTHER PAPER

says Ra^ther should be fired.

ANDY ROONEY --

OUT TO LUNCH. These CBS News geezers are doing real damage to the geritol generation. The new Dan Ra^ther/CBS inspired thought going through everyone's head has got to be:

"Don't trust the competence of anyone over 70."

CBS NEWS

does work with bloggers -- as you might expect partisan Democrat bloggers from the far left. Oh, and this blogger has a secret conflict of interest he's been hiding from his readers.

SWEET ANN --

"Lockhart .. is the apotheosis of the media-DNC complex, moving in and out of Democratic campaigns and jobs with the mainstream media, including at ABC, NBC and CNN." More Coulter.

DAN

RA^THER'S ratings are down by 1/3 to 1/2 in New York City over the last 10 days.

KARL

ROVE:

"[Dan Ra^ther is] probably the only person in America that still thinks there's a possibility these are true and accurate documents."

WNIS-AM in Norfolk

dumps CBS News:

WNIS-AM [is] switching to ABC because of the Guard story. "Our listeners have clamored for a change," said spokesman Dave Morgan, adding that CBS's credibility has been "seriously damaged by the ongoing scandal."

DAN

RA^THER fingers CBS News chief Andrew Heyward as the one with hands-on responsibility in the forged documents story. Quotable:

"This is not verbatim," Mr. Rather recalled. "But I said: 'Andrew, if true, it's breakthrough stuff. But I need to do something unusual. It may even be unique. I have to ask you to oversee, in a hands-on way, the handling of this story, because this is potentially the kind of thing that will cause great controversy.' He got it. He immediately agreed.''

Nice buck-pass Dan!

RATHERBIASED.COM

is back and blogging, having recovered from a fire which took out their server. He has this:

Maarten Schenk, a blogger in Belgium, emails to tell us about a new Movable Type plugin he's written which automatically superscripts the letters "th" in Dan Rather and also puts quotation marks around the word news in CBS News.

Who doesn't love the blogosphere? You'll find the plug in here.

More Ra^thergate cartoons here.

ALLAH PUNDIT's

latest Ra^thergate roundup.

FReepers in pajamas protesting in Washington, D.C.

DAN

RA^THER -- PARTISAN HACK. But you already knew that, didn't you?

THE COWARDLY SILENCE

OF MIKE WALLACE AND DON HEWITT:

they have had 13 days to react to this story, and Hewitt has not said a word. Eighty-six-year-old Wallace is capable of rage against inspectors from the New York City Taxi and Limousine Commission, but he cannot bring himself to call for his colleague to step down for the good of the institution of CBS News.

"SOMETHING WENT SERIOUSLY WRONG"

-- CBS Chairman Chairman Leslie Moonves, in the LA Times, "The News Keeps Getting Worse for Embarrassed CBS":

Burkett's lawyers, David Van Os and Gabe Quintanilla, on Tuesday completed the story of how their client obtained the memos. They gave this account: Burkett received a phone call in March from a former Guard employee named Lucy Ramirez, who said she had heard Burkett's allegations against Bush and had the documents that could help prove them. The two then arranged a document drop at a Houston livestock show, with Burkett actually quickly receiving the copies, in a manila envelope, from a man he did not know. He copied the papers and stored them in a meat locker, burning the originals to prevent anyone from tracing them back to Ramirez. The Times could not locate Ramirez, identify the mysterious man who purportedly passed the memos, or verify any of the other details of that account.

SUMNER REDSTONE,

the drive-in movie mogul who own MTV and CBS News, says he doesn't think the journalistic meltdown at CBS will "negatively impact the brand.'' And like other corporate heads, Redstone says he exercises zero governance over his news company -- it's a completely hands off affair. That's right, there are zero checks and balances at the top of the food chain -- Dan Ra^ther and the rest of the CBS News "Taliban" are free to do what they want, without a supervising adult to be found anywhere. And if truth be told, there is more check and balance -- more adult supervision -- by Sumner Redstone over MTV than there is by any executive over CBS News. Dangerous Dan could broadcast the CBS Evening News in his pajamas for all Sumner Redstone has to say about it.

UPDATE: MTV weighs in on Dan Ra^ther vs. the blogosphere.

"THE FUNDAMENTAL POINT

that needs to be made is that there are so many more checks and balances that operate in the blogosphere if you compare it to, say, CBS News." -- John Hinderaker debating the original CBS News pajamaman, Jon Klein, a man with lots of opinions but -- he says himself -- few facts. Hinderaker also has this on the "multiple layers" of "checks and balances" at CBS News:

those tend to be people who are all peas out of the same pod, people with the same perspective, the same interest, the same ideology.

Or as Bernard Goldberg puts it, "There is more diversity inside the Taliban than there is inside CBS News."

UPDATE: "This must have been what it was like for the Catholic Church when movable type was invented" -- MORE "Bloggers keep eye on the news" (USA Today).

UPDATED II: 55% of Americas report "Not very much" or "None at all" when it comes to confidence in the full, accurate, and fair reporting of the news by newspapers, T.V. and radio. About 1 out of 2 Americans think these news sources are too far to the left.

ALLAH PUNDIT

has great stuff on George Conn and tons more. Go read it.

MARY MAPES

violated network policy when she worked as a go-between for Bush-hater Bill Burkett and the Kerry campaign.

HOWARD KURTZ --

"FIASCO."

MARY MAPES

still has the Ra^thergate assignment at CBS News. Unbelievable. I can smell the stink of this news organization all the way across the continent.

LOTS OF

interesting tidbits at TVNewser, including this from the Chicago Tribune:

"In an interview Monday evening, a repentant Rather conceded it had been a mistake to broadcast the documents. But even though he could not vouch for their authenticity, he said he still did not believe that they were fakes. 'Do I think they're forged? No,' Rather said. 'But it's not good enough to use the documents on the air if we can't vouch for them, and we can't vouch for them.'"

BILL BURKETT

plans to sue CBS. More here. (scroll down to "CBS 2 Video"). UPDATE: Here's a better link -- and Drudge has the story now.

"I FEEL LIKE HELL."

-- Dan Ra^ther sits down for a long interview with Marcia Kramer, WCBS. watch the video here -- right click on the second item on the video list. (via Ace).

Ra^ther will take softballs from Democrat Larry King and his pre-screened callers tonight on CNN.

I'M NO LAWYER

but doesn't Walter Staudt have a lawsuit here? Especially when you consider this:

LINDA JAMES, FORENSIC DOCUMENT EXAMINER: They contacted me on the 3rd, which was a Friday morning, and they brought the documents. They hand-delivered them to me on a Saturday, which was on the 4th. And then I reported my findings to them on the 5th and told them about the problems with the documents and asked them to send me additional documents and information that I needed.

SCARBOROUGH: Now, after you told them they had problems with the documents, did you suggest to them these documents may, in fact, be forgeries?

JAMES: I told them that I could not authenticate the documents, and that the problems were major problems with those documents, and that I needed to have additional documents and information in order to go ahead and analyze and finish my�analyzing the documents.

SCARBOROUGH: What were your biggest problems with the documents?

JAMES: The problem was with the signatures. And I had just two documents that were in question. And there were structural differences between the known documents, what we call�were submitted as known to me for comparisons with the questioned signatures. And if�there was one signature that had an angle at the top, and that was one of the concerns because he always made rounded tops, in other words. And so I needed to find out questions, if he had health problems or if there was something that might cause that, like a broken arm, or whatever. But that was never satisfied to me or supplied to me. And, of course, there was the superscript with the type, and then the body of the handwriting � the typing, rather, did not have the superscript. There was a space that was skipped after the ones and for the .. so that�s always a red flag to us. And the signatures were just not right, or I could not find that within his known signatures. And I asked...

SCARBOROUGH: And when you told them this, did they ever get back to you again after you gave them the bad news?

JAMES: They did not get back to me. I did call and ask them, and they told me that they were going to use the National Guard as�to vouch for the documents, and so I had set it aside thinking that they weren�t going to go forward with us, because�you know, a handwriting expert and document examiner.

SCARBOROUGH: All right, Linda, thanks so much. Let�s bring our panel in to get them to respond, Tony Blankley, Howard Fineman, Pat Buchanan, and Bob Kohn. Howard Fineman, obviously, you are in the news business. Sometimes �Newsweek� has to pull in experts. If these experts tell you not to go with a story, what would push your editors to do what CBS did and say forget these outside experts, full-steam ahead?

FINEMAN: Well, in my experience, nothing. The number of signals that were ignored here is truly remarkable. You just heard one. There are dozens of others, almost literally dozens, family members who said that Jerry Killian wasn�t the kind of guy to keep these kind of notes, factual contradictions in terms of dates, 1972 vs. 1973, etcetera. And keep in mind here, what the key document here says, now almost certainly forged document says, is that George Bush as a soldier contradicted a direct order from his superior, in other words, an offense that was punishable by court-martial. So you are alleging in this document that the now president and commander in chief, when he was a young man, committed a court-martialable offense. That has to have the highest possible standard of proof if you are going to go on the air with it .. And I think the strict accuracy and validity of the memos was almost incidental to them.

Could the problem be the journalism schools?

Alex Jones, director of Harvard University's Shorenstein Center on the Press, Politics and Public Policy, said it appeared to be an honest mistake by CBS.

UPDATE: WaPo reporter Michael Dobbs discusses Ra^thergate in an online chat.

BURKETT

tells USA TODAY his source was "Lucy Ramirez":

Bill Burkett .. was [CBS's] source for the memos that were the basis of a 60 Minutes broadcast Sept. 8. Burkett provided the documents to USA TODAY later that night. Initially, USA TODAY and other news organizations took the CBS report at face value ..

In interviews in recent days with USA TODAY, both in person and on the phone, Burkett said he had merely been a conduit for the records purported to be from the private files of Lt. Col. Jerry Killian.. Burkett admitted lying to USA TODAY about the source of the documents but said he did not fabricate the papers.

In earlier conversations with USA TODAY, Burkett had identified the source of the documents as George Conn, a former Texas National Guard colleague who works for the U.S. Army in Europe. Burkett now says he made up the story about Conn's involvement to divert attention from himself and the woman he now says provided him with the documents ..

Burkett now maintains that the source of the papers was Lucy Ramirez, who he says phoned him from Houston in March to offer the documents. USA TODAY has been unable to locate Ramirez.

When Burkett gave copies of the documents to USA TODAY, it was on the understanding that his identity would not be disclosed. USA TODAY honored that agreement until Burkett waived his confidentiality Monday.

"I didn't forge anything," Burkett said. "I didn't fake any documents. The only thing I've done here is to transfer documents from people I thought were real to people I thought were real. And that has been the limitation of my role. I may have been a patsy." ..

Burkett's own doubts about the authenticity of the memos and his inability to supply evidence to show that Ramirez exists also raise questions about his credibility ..

Burkett's emotions varied widely in the interviews. One session ended when Burkett suffered a violent seizure and collapsed in his chair. Earlier, he said he was coming forward now to explain what he had done and why to try to salvage his reputation .. "It's time," Burkett said. "I'm tired of me being the bad guy. I'm tired of losing everything we've got," a reference to his financial and health struggles since he left the Guard. Turning to his wife, Nicki, he said: "We've lost it all, baby. We've lost everything."

Sitting in a rocking chair in his weathered ranch house south of Baird, Texas, Burkett recounted his continuing efforts .. to clean up what he saw as Guard corruption and mismanagement. He said that activity led to a telephone call in March from Ramirez and her offer to provide documents damaging to President Bush. Burkett said Ramirez told him she had seen him the previous month in an appearance on the MSNBC program Hardball, discussing the controversy over whether Bush fulfilled all his obligations for service in the Texas Air Guard during the early 1970s. "There is something I have that I want to make sure gets out," he quoted her as saying.

He said Ramirez claimed to possess Killian's "correspondence file," which would prove Burkett's allegations that Bush had problems as a Guard fighter pilot. Burkett said he arranged to get the documents during a trip to Houston for a livestock show in March. But instead of being met at the show by Ramirez, he was approached by a man who asked for Burkett, handed him an envelope and quickly left, Burkett recounted.

"I didn't even ask any questions," Burkett said. "Should I have? Yes. Maybe I was duped. I never really even considered that." By Monday, USA TODAY had not been able to locate Ramirez or verify other details of Burkett's account. Three people who worked with Killian in the early 1970s said they don't recognize her name. Burkett promised to provide telephone records that would verify his calls to Ramirez, but he had not done so by Monday night.

Try this -- Google Search: "Lucy Ramirez" Texas

BURKETT

says he gave the forged documents to Kerry campaign staffer Max Cleland, reports Fox News.

UPDATE: The AP has it that Max Cleland claims he knew nothing about the contents of the forged documents.

Still, one has to wonder. CBS News reported yesterday that the news organization first approached Bill Burkett about the documents, and that Burkett did not first approach them. How did CBS know about the documents? If the information didn't come from the Kerry campaign, where did it come from? The suspicion that the information did come from the Kerry campaign was first raised by the fact that the Kerry campaign began its most recent attacks on George Bush's National Guard record about a week before the CBS News fake documents story broke ..

More analysis and a timeline here. (via InstaPundit).

THE JOURNALISTIC INTEGRITY

of CBS News producer Mary Mapes has been challenged by her own father, who characterizes his daughter as a deeply biased lefty:

Mapes' father sees a political agenda behind his daughter's work. Don Mapes, 76, was a recent guest on a radio talk show hosted by John Carlson on KVI in Seattle. He said, "I'm really ashamed of what my daughter has become. She's a typical liberal. She went into journalism with an ax to grind, and that was to promote radical feminism."

He confessed to being disappointed in his daughter's role in the controversy. He said, "When I heard about 60 Minutes, I suspected she would be the producer of the show." In an interview with Talon News, Don Mapes said his suspicion was because that he believed, "Dan Rather and she have been working on this ever since Bush was elected."

In commenting on the Wednesday's 60 Minutes show, he said, "It was a farce, it was fraud. I'm sorry as a father that my daughter was the producer of it."

.. he also chastised his daughter for being intellectually dishonest. He said, "She ought to look closer at George Soros or Michael Moore."

"THIS REPORT

[was based on] a preponderance of evidence, including documents that were provided by unimpeachable sources .. ".

-- CBS News, Sept. 10, 2004.

"The '60 Minutes' report was not based solely on the recovered documents, but on a preponderance of evidence including documents that were provided by what we considered to be solid sources .. ".

-- Dan Ra^ther, Sept. 10, 2004.

"We are confident about the chain of custody; we're confident in how we secured the documents."

-- CBS News, Sept. 14, 2004.

UPDATE: The Wall Street Journal:

before yesterday CBS never gave its viewers even a hint that its entire controversial story hinged on the word of someone who has made it one of his main goals in life to defeat Mr. Bush.

Michael Dobbs has much more on Bill Burkett and his use as a CBS News source.

UPDATE: This from the NY Times is simply stunning:

The Friday before Labor Day, Mr. Rather said yesterday, he heard that Ms. Mapes had the documents. He was in Florida covering Hurricane Frances, and flew to Texas. In the course of their conversations with Mr. Burkett, the team had grown increasingly confident in his story, he said. Mr. Rather said they had called his friends and neighbors to get a sense of his credibility and were satisfied.

"I knew him before by telephone,'' Mr. Rather said, "and otherwise had checked out what his reputation was in the community that he lived, and even people who disliked him and had arguments with him, including Republicans and supporters of Bush. They all said he's a truth teller."

Mr. Rather said that Mr. Burkett had initially refused to say who gave him the documents, and that CBS pressured him to do so. "We made it clear that the chain of possession was very important to us," Mr. Rather said. Mr. Rather recalled that Mr. Burkett had said he had gotten the documents from a former guard member who was now overseas.

Mr. Rather said producers had tried to get in touch with him, but could not. Knowing his identity bolstered the team's confidence just the same. "It was a person who could have had direct access to Killian's files," he said. "That made it believable."

More on Burkett from family members in his original New Mexico home town.

THE CBS NEWS TRADITION

-- lets not forget who these people are. These are the people who reported that Barry Goldwater was a Nazi fellow traveler -- and who falsely claimed that Goldwater said "no comment" when asked his thoughts and feelings about the assassination of John Kennedy. These are dirty dealing, very partisan people -- always have been -- and let's not kid ourselves about it. See here, here and here for the ugly and false "news reporting" of CBS News on Barry Goldwater in the 1960s.

CBS NEWS

informed the Kerry campaign in advance of the Burkett documents, and then hooked Burkett up with Kerry campaign officials, all as part of a deal with Burkett for the fake documents. More here.

TRANSCRIPT --

DAN RA^THER INTERVIEWS BILL BURKETT. Quotable Dan:

The documents were provided to CBS News by a former commander in the Texas Air Guard [sic], Bill Burkett. He did not come to us, we went to him and asked him for the documents ..

More Dan, questioning Burkett:

Now, if you would misled us about that, which is critical, why would I or anyone believe that you wouldn't mislead us about something else?

Also this from Burkett to Dan:

I also insisted when I sat down with your staff in the first face-to-face session, before I gave up any documents, I wanted to know what you were going to do with them, and I insisted that they be authenticated.

NOTE -- Ra^therBiased.com, whose server is down, is currently posting at The Mudville Gazette

DID JOSH MARSHALL

get the story from the DNC -- before Dan Ra^ther?

This looks less like a meticulously-researched "breaking news scoop" and more like the publicity campaign for a long-scheduled theatrical release -- Fahrenheit 9-08 -- with Josh Marshall serving up the teasers, sneak previews and general pre-release hype..

Allah in the House also has some questions about timing and the DNC.

"BILL BURKETT,

in a weekend interview with CBS News Anchor .. Dan Rather, has acknowledged that he provided the now-disputed documents used in the Sept. 8 "60 Minutes Wednesday" report on President Bush�s service in the Texas Air National Guard." -- CBS News. More:

Burkett .. also admits that he deliberately misled the CBS News producer working on the report, giving her a false account of the documents� origins to protect a promise of confidentiality to the actual source. Burkett originally said he obtained the documents from another former Guardsman. Now he says he got them from a different source whose connection to the documents and identity CBS News has been unable to verify to this point ..

CBS News and CBS management are commissioning an independent review of the process by which the report was prepared and broadcast to help determine what actions need to be taken. The names of the people conducting the review will be announced shortly, and their findings will be made public.

Here are a few recommendations for the CBS commission: Powerline, Little Green Footballs, Freepers Buckhead and TankerKC, Ace, Patterico, KerrySpot, Ra^therBiased.com, Beldar, INDCJournal, Howard Kurtz, and Hugh Hewitt.

EXCLUSIVE -- STATEMENT FROM DAN RATHER:

Last week, amid increasing questions about my sanity, CBS News publicly vowed to re-examine the phony documents we at CBS News were using to bring down the Bush Presidency. And we promised to ourselves that we would never let the American public know what this examination turned up, whatever the outcome.

Now, after extensive additional interviews with myself, I no longer have the confidence in my own mental competence, nor the journalistic integrity of CBS News, and so I can no longer continue vouching for the truth of what we put on the air. I find I have been misled on the key question of just how crazily partisan I really am. That, combined with some of the questions that have been raised in public and in the press about my honesty and mental stability, leads me to a point where � if I knew then what I know now � I would not have gone ahead as the anchor of a nightly newscast and I certainly would not have used my audience for blatantly partisan purposes.

But we did use our audience and the American people. We made a mistake in overlooking the power of the blogosphere, and for that I am truly sorry. It was an error that was made, however, in good faith and in the spirit of trying to carry on a CBS News tradition of anti-Republican bias without fear of criticism from my colleagues in the mainstream media.

Please know that nothing remains more important to us than electing Democrats to national office, the people's trust be damned.

DAN

RA^THER WILL FINALLY END THE CHARADE.

HOWARD KURTZ --

The Blogosphere vs. Dangerous Dan.

BILL BURKETT'S

complete collection of emails to two different Yahoo message groups for Texas Democrats.

POST YOUR DAN RATHER SPOOFS AND CARTOONS HERE.

TUESDAY

is nationwide FReep Dan Day.

WHAT'S

^THE FREQUENCY, KENNE^TH? Wacky Dan Ra^ther has interviewed whackjob Bill Burkett on the "suspected" forged documents Burkett gave to Dan Sept. 3. Will the two men play pretend off in the land of Ra^theria? Or will leave the world of the truly insane and deal with the truth of the fraud they have jointly perpetrated on the American electorate? My guess? The two men will be off in the land of the rubber room.

THE

Ra^thergate Organization Chart. (via polipundit)

DAN

RA^THER -- " The Final Days."

MEDIA FRENZY

IN BAIRD, TEXAS:

[S]everal reporters and news photographers parked outside the locked iron gate of the Burkett ranch, hoping to get a long-range camera shot or an interview ..

Meanwhile, news that at least one document central to a high-profile national controversy brought unaccustomed attention to the Abilene Kinko's Copies store .. A clerk working alone at the Kinko's counter Wednesday night was interrupted every few minutes by phone calls from the media inquiring about the article.

''I can't even get my job done,'' said the clerk, putting down the phone as she moved to help a customer ..

One local TV station scrambled to meet the request for satellite feeds and other service to national media. ''It's been chaotic,'' said KTXS-TV (Channel 12, Cox Communications Channel 4) News Director Iain Munro. ''Since we have the only satellite truck west of Fort Worth, everybody wants to use it.'' Munro said television stations from around the country called looking for video to use for their newscasts. ''They're asking for us to feed them video from Kinko's, and also Burkett,'' he said ..

The [Abilene] Reporter-News received calls from The New York Times and The Washington Post looking for photographs of Burkett and the Kinko's store. ''I knew we were going to get these calls,'' said Robert Rogers, Reporter-News photo editor. ''It's like running a psychic hot line. I tell them what we have before they start talking."

50 CARTOONS

ON RA^THERGATE.

WILL THE REAL

Jerry B. Killian TANG document please stand up.

More here with detailed document analysis.

FREEPERS ON THE CBS MEMOS --

"FOR THE RECORD."

In the interest of the historical importance of things that happened on this forum last week and, most importantly, to try to provide and document an accurate record of exactly what happened here on the evening of September 8, 2004, and the following morning, I have compiled a listing of ALL of the postings that occurred on Free Republic concerning CBS and Dan Rather 60 Minutes show from 8:00 PM EDT on Thurdsay, September 8, 2004, up until about 9:00 AM EDT on the morning of Friday, September 9, 2004, when the rest of the internet "caught up."

TEXAS ANG

typewriters "can't produce the dubious documents":

CBS and Rather are standing by the story, saying it's possible the documents were pounded out on a typewriter. But it proved to be Mission Impossible to back up the CBS claims. "There is no doubt this is a forgery," Pittsburgh typeface expert John Newcomer told The Post.

First, The Post tested the IBM Selectric II, which Killian's secretary, Marian Carr Knox, told CBS arrived at the base in the early '70s, when the suspect documents were purportedly produced. The IBM Selectric II was introduced in 1971. In trying to replicate the May 4, 1972, letter, we had a nightmare of a time in just centering the heading � as was done in the CBS document. Without an automatic-centering feature, we relied on the tab key and space bar to line it up.

We were forced to use Prestige font. This is the closest font available on the Selectric II to the Times New Roman used in the CBS documents, according to certified document expert Bill Flynn. And no matter how much we tinkered with spacing, we couldn't fit as many words on a line as CBS's document. That's because the Selectric II gives each letter the same amount of space, whether it's a tiny lowercase "i" or the wider capitalized "W."

Also, in addition to centering, spacing and font differences from the CBS documents, the superscripted "th" in the typing of Bush's "111th Fighter Interceptor Squadron" couldn't be matched. There is no raised "th" key on the standard Selectric II. The pseudo-superscripting we performed required us to type the 111, then roll the page up manually a half-line, then type the "t" and then the "h."

The whole process took us more than two hours � an awfully long time for a half-page memo. And the results never looked anything close to the CBS documents.

ALSO this from the WaPo:

Tests run by Thomas Phinney, fonts program manager for Adobe Systems, show that none of the possible font widths available on any typewriter or any IBM device from 1972 are able to produce an exact replica of the CBS documents. "Can they do something 'similar'? Sure," Phinney said. "Could they produce those exact memos? Impossible."

Of course, the blogosphere had this story 9 days ago.

"IT'S THE LAST STAND

of Gunga Dan. But like other messianic types - George Custer comes to mind - Dan Ra^ther is not going down alone. He seems hellbent on taking CBS News with him and damaging the press everywhere." -- The NY Daily News.

HOW

to put the kabosh on Dan Ra^ther's Nixon Clinton strategy (lie, lie, lie and never resign).

And use this handy guide.

CBS NEWS AFFILIATE

fires on-air critic who called for Dan Ra^ther's resignation.

"I'M CONFIDENT

we worked longer, dug deeper and worked harder than almost anybody in American journalism does." -- CBS newsman Dan Ra^ther.

And that, my friends, is all you need to know about American journalism today.

More Ra^ther:

"I have never been more confident of a story in my life."

BURKETT IS THE SOURCE.

The evidence continues to roll in. This from Newsweek:

A source who worked with CBS on the story said Burkett was identified by a producer as a conduit for the documents. Three days before the broadcast, Burkett e-mailed a friend that there was "a real heavy situation regarding Bush's records" about to break. "He was having a lot of fun with this," said the friend, Dennis Adams. Burkett told a visitor that after the story ran, Rather phoned him and expressed his and the network's "full support."

"WE COMPLETELY ABANDONED

the process of authenticating the documents." -- CBS "60 Minutes" executive Josh Howard, as quoted by Kurtz, Dobbs and Grimaldi:

In the early-morning hours of Sept. 8, Dan Rather was preparing to fly to Washington for a crucial interview in the Old Executive Office Building, but torrential rain kept him in New York. White House communications director Dan Bartlett had agreed to talk to "60 Minutes," but only on condition that the CBS program provide copies of what were being billed as newly unearthed memos indicating that President Bush had received preferential treatment in the National Guard. The papers were hand-delivered at 7:45 a.m. CBS correspondent John Roberts, filling in for Rather, sat down with Bartlett at 11:15.

Half an hour later, Roberts called "60 Minutes" producer Mary Mapes with word that Bartlett was not challenging the authenticity of the documents. Mapes told her bosses, who were so relieved that they cut from Rather's story an interview with a handwriting expert who had examined the memos. At that point, said "60 Minutes" executive Josh Howard, "we completely abandoned the process of authenticating the documents. Obviously, looking back on it, that was a mistake. We stopped questioning ourselves. I suppose you could say we let our guard down." CBS aired the story eight hours later ..

ALSO CBS producer had "compete confidence" in her source:

Asked about a report in The Los Angeles Times yesterday that network officials were questioning the documents' authenticity at a meeting several hours before the start of the "60 Minutes" broadcast, Mr. Howard said: "We were sitting there with the lawyers, asking ourselves a million questions. 'Are we sure we got it right?' And the answers were all, 'We got it right, yes.' '' One mystery among CBS staff members is why network officials remained so confident for so long about the documents as so many questions arose.

During an interview yesterday Mr. Howard said that Ms. Mapes, who broke the news for CBS about the Abu Ghraib prison abuse scandal earlier this year, continually pledged confidence in her sources, who were said to have access to Mr. Killian's personal file. Mr. Howard acknowledged yesterday that he had not, in fact, known who Ms. Mapes's primary source for the documents was before the report was broadcast. But, he said, "Mary Mapes told us her source made her completely confident about where they came from, and that they were authentic, and that made me confident." Ms. Mapes has not returned calls seeking comment.

For now, Mr. Burkett seems to be a focus of the network's efforts to get to the bottom of the documents' validity, which it hopes it can do as early as Monday. One person at the network, who spoke on condition of anonymity, said that Mr. Burkett had been at the very least a go-between for the documents, but that very few people at the network know from whom he might have obtained them, if anyone .. Mr. Bush's campaign officials, meanwhile, do not seem as if they are going to let up on the pressure. "There's a threshold question," Nicolle Devenish, Mr. Bush's campaign communications director, said. "If a media outlet is about to go on the air with a story, there is kind of an assumption that they're going on the air with documents that are authentic when they attack the president of the United States of America 50 days before a national election."

"THIS HAS CLEARLY HURT US"

-- CBS veteran correspondent in Newsweek.

More Newsweek:

One problem is that the network has not explained where the purported Texas National Guard records have been for the last 30 years and why they happened to surface in the closing weeks of a presidential campaign.

When the straight news is funnier than Leno, you've got a problem.

Meanwhile, reporters continue their around the clock stakeout of Burkett's house in Texas.

Overheard by PrestoPundit at the mall yesterday, "Do you think Ra^ther will be fired?" Response, "No, I think he'll be 'retired'."

The truth -- as they say -- is out there.

BELLY LAUGH OF THE DAY.

"[m]any leading newspaper editors and TV directors are generally disdainful of bloggers, who assume the mantle of the free press but operate outside of traditional journalistic rules that aspire to fairness, balance and rigorous editing and fact-checking." ROFL!! Read the full article here. Cass Sunstein, by favorite ridiculously out-to-lunch Carville-fair lefty academic makes an appearance. An Mike of Ra^thergate.com is exposed as card-carrying member of the VRWC. Another shocking ex�po�s� intentionally aimed at fueling "the suspicions of some Democrats that Republicans were behind a scheme to discredit CBS."

Meanwhile, partisan hack Arthur Sulzberger Jr. of the NY Times worries that bloggers might "contribute to the sense that we're in the midst of an opinion-ridden free-for-all." As opposed, I guess, to an opinion-ridden monologue from lefty Democrats as your local monopoly newspaper and the big three networks. More on "pinchy" here and here.

(Thanks to co-conspirator Mike for the email tip on the Tribue article). UPDATE: A Patterico must read:

.. there are quite often little tidbits about reporters that don't get reported. Take, for example, Bill Arkin, who until recently was an L.A. Times reporter on military issues -- and who famously misquoted Gen. Boykin. As I pointed out .. Arkin's e-mail address, listed in his byline, traces to igc.org, the home page for a radical leftist organization called the "Institute for Global Communications."

Or take L.A. Times reporter Ken Silverstein, who I took to task in this post for blatantly misrepresenting quotes in a Sunday talk show. Silverstein's bio describes him as follows:

"Freelance writer, Washington, D.C., contributing editor of Harper's magazine, Washington editor of Mother Jones, contributor to The Nation, Mother Jones, Salon.com, Slate, The American Prospect and Washington Monthly, 1993 -2003."

.. If the mainstream media insists on investigating the backgrounds of the bloggers, what makes reporters immune from such scrutiny?

YOUR MORNING STEYN --

"Earth to the Lost Planet of Ra^theria."

SEPT. 3 --

CBS News producer Mary Mapes has her documents:

Although CBS News notes that Mapes had been chasing the National Guard story for five years, it only came back on the active burner in mid- to late August. That's when executive producer Howard got a call from her, telling him "she was on to something" and wanted to put her other projects aside. Over the next couple of weeks, he said, "she would call from time to time, telling me she was getting closer, not closer, something that she was looking up that was a blind alley � those kinds of things that reporters do when tracking a story. There was nothing definitive" until he got the call from her on Sept. 3, Howard recalled.

As excitement spread through CBS offices on West 57th Street, there was a rush to get the pieces in place. On Sept. 5, Rather hopped a charter flight to Texas from Florida .. to meet Mapes ..

THE RATS

run for dry land as CBS News burns to the water-line.

FOX NEWS

is ripping Dan Ra^ther and CBS News apart limb by limb.

Scroll down and don't miss this:

Friday's New York Times noted that Rather, "addressing the charges of liberal bias," claimed: "Anybody who knows me knows I'm an independent." That matched his proclamation in Thursday's USA Today that "anybody who knows me knows that I am not politically motivated, not politically active for Democrats or Republicans, and that I'm independent." Except when he attends fundraisers for the Democratic Party as he did in Texas in 2001? Rather maintained that conservative ideologues, who "can't deny the message so they have to discredit and destroy the messenger," really "know that I'm fiercely independent and that's what drives them up a wall."

LORI BYRD, ACE REPORTER,

has the story on why there are no pay records for George Bush in Alabama. (via Betsy's Page).

BETSY NEWMARK

nails the national press for it's mind-bending incompetence in its coverage of Bill Burkett and his fantastic charges against George Bush over the last few years. And "incompetence" is being kind.

CBS AFFILIATES

are raising the pressure on CBS.

BURKETT LINKED

to the DEMOCRATIC NATIONAL COMMITTEE.

In e-mail messages to a Yahoo discussion group for Texas Democrats, Burkett laid out a rationale for using what he termed "down and dirty" tactics against Bush. He said that he had passed his ideas to the Democratic National Committee ..

In another message, dated Sept. 4, Burkett hinted he might have had advance knowledge of some details in an explosive segment that aired Sept. 8 on CBS's "60 Minutes." .. "I believe that Bush knows that there is more coming out than Ben Barnes," Burkett wrote.

THE BLOGOSPHERE

MULTIPLIER EFFECT..

BURKETT LINKED

to the Kerry Campaign.

"I spent some time on the phone with the Kerry campaign seniors yesterday," Mr. Burkett wrote on Aug. 21 in an e-mail letter circulated to a list of about 600 Texas Democrats. He complained that he had to "get through seven layers of bureaucratic kids trying to get a job after the election." "I talked with Max Cleland," Mr. Burkett continued, referring to the former senator from Georgia who has been supporting Senator John Kerry's Democratic presidential bid. Alluding to advertisements by a veterans group that deprecates Mr. Kerry's Vietnam service, Mr. Burkett continued, "I asked if they wanted to counterattack or ride this to ground and outlast it, not spending any money. He said counterattack." "So I gave them the information to do it with," Mr. Burkett wrote. "But none of them have called me back."

GEN. WALTER STAUDT --

CBS News has the story wrong, no special treatment was sought for Bush.

A REALTIME

HISTORY OF RA^THERGATE.

UPDATE: See also the indepth report, "Incompetent or Unethical? The Story of CBS News' Response to Criticism Over the Killian Memos" by Ernest Miller of the Information Society Project at Yale Law School (via InstaPundit)

STANLEY KURTZ --

"From Biased to Partisan -- The mainstream media moves left."

"CBS IS WRONG, CBS IS WRONG." --

CBS News documents examiner James Pierce.

HOUSTON CHRONICLE --

"Texan has a history of attacks on Bush."

THE NY TIMES

has nothing on Freeper "PretzeLogic" -- "THE DEMOCRATIC VIRTUAL MACHINE OF TEXAS" FLOWCHART.

REMEMBER,

it was six forged Air National Guard documents, and that should tell you all you need to know about what CBS knew it had -- all along.

BILL BURKETT --

"I needed an attorney for a case of pure retaliatory abuse that denied me medical care that I had both earned and paid for ..". Part of Bill Burkett's endorsment of his past and present attorney David Van Os.

BILL BURKETT --

"Many of us have risked everything on this election." Quotable:

Burkett has frequently posted notes to an Internet message group for Texas Democrats, urging other members to work harder to defeat Bush in the election, but also lambasting Democratic nominee John F. Kerry for "one of the worst run campaigns I've seen in my lifetime." "Many of us have risked everything on this election," Burkett said in a message posted on Aug. 31. "The disappointment is deep and difficult to manage. But we fight on, in spite of incompetence at the top."

BUSTED.

More lies.

UPDATE: The NY Times corrects a few errors.

HAYEK SMILED --

"Why Blogging Works"

If Nobel Prize winning economist F.A. Hayek had been watching last week as bloggers spontaneously responded to fraudulent documents aired by the program "60 Minutes", he would've grinned in humble satisfaction. Hayek's work centered on the effectiveness of spontaneous, decentralized organization, which is precisely what occurred on PowerlineBlog on September 9th. Regardless of the political consequences of the Killian Memo controversy, Hayek's work has been vindicated and his critics undermined.

"IT IS NOT JUST

that CBS should have been more skeptical of Burkett, as a committed political activist who has a long and well-documented record of grievances against George Bush. It�s something far worse. With the addition of Burkett to the picture, we come face to face with the dismaying fact that Dan Rather and his colleagues, who sit at the pinnacle of the American liberal establishment, have been willing to embrace the word, and the world-picture, of a political lunatic .. ". More Winfield Myers of the Democracy Project.

IT LOOKS LIKE

Bill Burkett and other moonbat lefties are the only ones still watching CBS News with Dan Ra^ther.

ANDREW HEYWARD

FISKED!

Dan Ra^ther's Bill Burkett's grudge against George Bush.

THIS IS

Bill Burkett's attorney. And here is his biography.

DAN

RA^THER -- UNFIT TO REPORT.

A RADIO

interview with Bill Burkett discussing George Bush's National Guard records. The wma file is here, subscription required.

FINDLAW

is still presenting the forged CBS documents as if they were genuine documents from Bush's military service record.

FROM BILL BURKETT

to CBS producer Mary Maples to Dan Ra^ther. More here.

"Lt. Col. BILL BURKETT IS

.. one of the sources for information in the Michael Moore's film 'Farenheit 911.'"

More Burkett rants here and here.

Also this from Burkett: "In each call [from a reporter in the fall of 2002 regarding Bush's National Guard records] , I, in essence scolded media representatives for not doing their homework and reviewing this information before the eleventh hour."

BILL BURKETT --

"What's an AWOL Got to Do With Presidential Service?" Quotable:

"The files clearly show a tension had arisen concerning Bush's service with his commander LTC Killian. Killian's comments concerning Bush's Officer Evaluation simply claim that Bush was not observed during this one-year rating period. This is an area that commanders of that day and today all use as their calibration on the issue of Bush's service. We know politics, but we also know that Officer evaluations are critical mass for commanders; especially on political soldiers such as a congressman's son.

* The flurry of activity following Alabama obviously responded to unit pressure, but also indicates a possible violation of trust from Killian toward Bush. This is conjecture, but substantiated by the actions that followed .. "

And this letter from Burkett:

Bush Shits On Guardsman
by Bill Burkett
(No verified email address) 24 Mar 2003

I had been 'loaned' from the senior staff and state planning officer of the Texas National Guard to the Department of the Army for a series of these special projects after angering George W. Bush by refusing to falsify readiness information and reports; confronting a fraudulent funding scheme which kept 'ghost' soldiers on the books for additional funding, and refusing to alter official personnel records [of George W. Bush].

WSJ --

"Dan Ra^ther and the end of the leftist monopoly."

MARTHA STEWART

will get jail time. Will Dan?

"IF THE DOCUMENTS

are not what we were led to believe, I'd like to break that story," (!!!) Dan Ra^ther ther said in an interview last night with the Washington Post. More:

"This is not about me," Rather said ..

Some friends of Rather, whose contract runs until the end of 2006, are discussing whether he might be forced to make an early exit from CBS ..

Bernard Goldberg, a longtime CBS correspondent .. said he believes that Rather was duped [and that] .. "CBS News is acting the way the Nixon administration did during Watergate. I'm really sad to say that Dan Rather is acting like Richard Nixon. It's the coverup, it's the stonewalling."

BURKETT

DID IT. More here, and here, and here, and here.

Quotable WaPo:

Documents allegedly written by a deceased officer that raised questions about President Bush's service with the Texas Air National Guard bore markings showing they had been faxed to CBS News from a Kinko's copy shop in Abilene, Tex., according to another former Guard officer who was shown the records by the network .. There is only one Kinko's in Abilene, and it is 21 miles from the Baird, Tex., home of retired Texas National Guard officer Bill Burkett, who has been named by several news outlets as a possible source for the documents.

Quotable KerrySpot:

Blogger and radio talk show host Kevin McCullough: "JUST GOT OFF THE PHONE WITH ABILENE KINKOS: Bill Burkett has a standing account with the Kinkos in Abilene Texas, and while the lady who answered the phone would not be more specific she did say Burkett was in there last week - she waited on him on last (a week ago) Tuesday.... "

Also from KerrySpot:

I must have the best readers in the world. Kerry Spot reader Roger points out another unusual similarity. "One phrase that struck me on reading the CYA memo that "Killian" wrote referred to him "having trouble running interference and doing my job". "Run interference" struck me as an unusual turn of phrase. So, I google "run interference" and "Burkett" and get two hits: He's used "run interference" in an interview with Kevin Drum (where someone ran interference for him), and described another officer as running interference for Bush, Rove, Albaugh etc. It seems to be a verbal tic with him and it's interesting that it shows up in a memo that "Killian" wrote."

Quotable PoliPundit:

More proof .. that Burkett is the source, and probably the forger. That means Rather's "unimpeachable source" is a nervous-breakdown-suffering, Bush-hating, story-faking, ultra-liberal husk of a man who's been peddling crazy stories about Bush/TANG for several years. Add to that Ben Barnes, of the Kerry campaign, and you've got the forgery-Kerry-Rather link.

UPDATE: Background on Burkett here.

And this isn't the first time Burkett has fabricated lies about Bush's guard records.

MORE: "Who is Bill Burkett?" Quotable:

The issue here is not that Bill Burkett is a liberal. It isn't even that he is left wing. The issue is that he is loony left. We are in "precious bodily fluids" territory.

UPDATE II: Captain Ed writes, "Can you believe that CBS based their entire story on the lunatic ravings of Bill Burkett?" Follow the link for lots of good stuff on Burkett.

SEN. ROBERT BENNETT --

""It's very clear the documents were forged. They were laid on [Dan Ra^ther and .. he bit." Quotable:

Emily Will, a documents examiner from North Carolina hired by CBS, said she told the network before the report aired that she questioned handwriting in the documents she was shown and whether it could have been produced by a typewriter. Her main concern was that she was not provided a known sample of the signature to use for comparison. Will said she e-mailed a CBS producer and urged her the night before the broadcast not to play up that a professional document examiner had authenticated the papers. "I did not feel that they wanted to investigate it very deeply," Will told ABC News. Another expert hired by CBS, Linda James of Plano, Texas, told ABC that "I did not authenticate anything and I don't want it understood that I did." James told AP late Tuesday she raised similar concerns about signature samples. "I really pressed that because I knew that other document examiners looking at the same documents would have a real problem authenticating these," she said.

And this:

"We would not have put the report on the air if we did not believe in every aspect of it," said CBS News President Andrew Heyward. However, Heyward also said the network will try to resolve what he calls the unresolved issues. "Enough questions have been raised that we are going redouble our efforts to answer those questions."

And finally, this:

"I began by telling the president that there was a cancer growing on the News division and that if the cancer was not removed the News division itself would be killed by it," said the former counsel to the President.

Oops. I made that last one up.

HUGH HEWITT --

"Who are the real journalists?"

WHAT'S

^THE FREQUENCY, KENNE^TH? Dan Ra^ther answers some questons about the forged military documents he's been peddling. Quotable:

"I think over the long haul, this will be consistent with our history and our traditions and reputation."

Also, women are from Venus, Dan Ra^ther is from outerspace:

I think the public, even decent people who may be well-disposed toward President Bush, understand that powerful and extremely well-financed forces are concentrating on questions about the documents because they can�t deny the fundamental truth of the story. If you can�t deny the information, then attack and seek to destroy the credibility of the messenger, the bearer of the information. And in this case, it�s change the subject from the truth of the information to the truth of the documents.

"JOURNALISM

has a new dress code. Pajamas."

(via Powerline).

MICHELLE MALKIN

on Dan Ra^ther and the pajama party. Michelle will be on Fox News today at 2:45 (ET) to discuss the Death of CBS News. The big question -- will she be wearing pajamas?

DAN

RA^THER -- CO-CONSPIRATOR.

This thing is become more Nixonian every day.

WHAT CRIMES

were committed? Eugene Volokh has a run-down. And, are there military laws governing the forgery?

But perhaps what we really need are new laws covering this matter.

CBS NEWS

will issue a statement at Noon Eastern Time which will "clarify" the network's position on the use of forged documents to attack a candidate in the middle of a Presidential election.

HOW WILL WE FIGHT? --

Army doctrine vs. Marine doctrine. This one may surprise you. (via InstaPundit -- and I thought Glenn was refering to the war at home!)

WAS IT

BURKETT?

But one person at CBS, who spoke on condition of anonymity, confirmed a report in Newsweek that Bill Burkett, a retired National Guard officer who has charged that senior aides to then-Gov. Bush had ordered Guard officials to remove damaging information from Mr. Bush's military personnel files, had been a source of the report. This person did not know the exact role he played. Mr. Burkett declined to return telephone calls to his home near Abilene, Tex. His lawyer, David Van Os, on Tuesday repeatedly refused to say in a telephone interview whether the officer had played a part in supplying the disputed documents to CBS. Mr. Van Os said "the real story is and should be, where was George Bush?" and that Mr. Burkett "is not the proper object of attention."

CBS AFFILIATES

begin to weigh in.

THE PROWLER --

"It is now open warfare within the halls of CBS News in New York."

HOWARD KURTZ --

"Document Experts Say They Warned CBS of Doubts."

THE LA TIMES --

"CBS News has been had."

REP. CHRISTOPHER COX

formally requests a Congressional investigation, "into the continued use by CBS News of apparently forged documents concerning the service record of President George W. Bush intended to unfairly damage his reputation and influence the outcome of the 2004 presidential election."

"THIS IS

starting to look a hell of a lot like reckless disregard for the truth .. " -- More Patterico.

WHO COULD RESIST

such rich fun? Kevin Murphy is back and blogging.

DAN

RA^THER is now behaving like Richard Nixon says Bernard Goldberg. And he ads, "It's kind of sad."

UPDATE: "What did the President Dan Ra^ther know and when did he know it?" -- question asked in 1974 today in the U.S. House of Representatives.

KILLIAN'S SECRETARY --

the CBS documents are fake.

CBS NEWS

trolls the moonbat ghettos of the Internet for sources. Media Research Center reports:

Last Friday, as caught by CBS's cameras on a Manhattan street, Dan Rather denounced "the Internet" as "filled with all kinds of rumors," but when it came time to find "experts" to claim CBS's Jerry Killian memos are authentic, Rather trolled the Internet. For his CBS Evening News defense on Monday night Rather featured "technical consultant" Bill Glennon and "software designer" Richard Katz.

It turns out that Glennon first made himself known, as someone who would vouch for CBS, in a Friday posting on Kevin Drum's "Political Animal" blog for the Washington Monthly, TimesWatch.org Editor Clay Waters informed me. And the MRC's Tim Graham alerted me to how Tuesday's New York Times reported that Katz called his local CBS affiliate offering up himself for expert analysis.

Monday's CBS Evening News featured this soundbite from Glennon: "Everything that's in that document was, documents that people are saying can't be done, as you said, 32 years ago, is just totally false. Not true. Like I said, proportional spacing was available, superscripts was available as a custom feature. Proportional spacing between lines was available. You could order that any way you'd like."

Blogger Tim Blair today noted Glennon's Washington Monthly blog posting. This blog also noted it.

Glennon's original posting.

Katz ridiculously charged on Monday's CBS Evening News: "There's one document from May of 1972 which contains a normal 'th' at the top. To produce that in Microsoft Word, you would have to go out of your way to type the letters and then turn the 'th' setting off or back over them and type them again." As if a forger wouldn't make such a effort!

Tuesday's New York Times reported: "Richard Katz, a computer software expert in Los Angeles who was featured on the "Evening News" segment, said in an interview that he had called his local affiliate, KCBS, after looking at the memos on the CBS Web site after the initial broadcast, when some experts were saying that the memos looked as if they had been composed using the Times New Roman font in Microsoft Word." For the article in full. The September 14 CyberAlert features pictures of both Glennon and Katz from Monday's CBS Evening News.

TIME TO BRING IN THE FEDS.

CBS News is conspiring with a Federal document forgerers (and perhaps their accomplices) to withhold the identity of persons involved in a criminal conspiracy to disrupt a Federal election. The CBS News document forgery story in now a criminal case. Think about it. These are forged Federal documents and this is a criminal cover-up. It's time to bring in Federal law enforcement.

Dan Ra^ther has indeed become Richard Nixon. And this is Dan Ra^ther's Watergate.

Any lawyers out there who can fill me in on all the laws relevant to the criminal conspiracy Dan Ra^ther and CBS News have become a party to?

UPDATE: Powerline: "In the coverup phase of the story, CBS's stonewalling transforms CBS from the dupe of a con into a participant in the fraud. Is Daniel Schorr available to remind his old friends at CBS that the coverup is worse than the crime?"

UPDATE II: Captain Ed: "This goes far beyond journalistic malpractice and could go as far as libel (or slander). Dan Rather and CBS knowingly broadcast a story they knew to be based on documents that could not be authenticated and were most likely forgeries, advice they received from their own experts."

UPDATE III: "A petition has been placed at Petitions Online to request that United States Attorney General John Ashcroft order an investigation into the authenticity of documents recently used by CBS News anchor Dan Rather .. " -- Tip of the Whip (don't ask me how I found this).

'YOU KNOW,

they probably are altered and they probably are forgeries and I think that's terrible, really."

-- Laura Bush.

JONAH GOLDBERG --

"If this story were hot fudge, I would smear it all over my body and then roll around in nougat.":

The folks at Powerline compare the willingness of Dan Rather to chase a partisan hit job into the land of fiction to the revolution of suicide bombing. The sudden willingness, indeed eagerness, of terrorists to die with their victims changed the whole paradigm of national security. Similarly, Rather was willing to destroy himself in pursuit of a partisan attack. It's an okay analogy, but it misses a crucial point. Dan Rather didn't think he was going to blow himself up. He believed he was invulnerable. He was the equivalent of some powdered-wigged fool who believed that Austria would come out on the other side of a short battle with its reputation enhanced.

CBS's ODDBALL "EXPERT".

"Derborah Orin discovers what Dan Rather's "expert" is an expert in: Marcel Matley is author of Spirituality in Handwriting and Female/Male Traits in Handwriting." -- The Corner, which has more under the header "RA^THER WEIRD".

DAN

RA^THER: "Prove I'm Not Queen of the Space Unicorns"

JOHN PODHORETZ --

"CBS FORGES AHEAD":

If you haven't been follow ing the story, then I'll cut to the chase: Four documents used by CBS News last week in a story about George W. Bush's National Guard service are forgeries. When I first wrote about this on Thursday, in a column that appeared on Friday, it seemed likely but not certain they were phony. We called the column "CBS' Big Blunder?" with a question mark just to be careful. There's no need to pull any punches now. I'm going to be blunt here: Anybody who spends an hour reviewing the evidence and the expert testimony knows they're forgeries.

"RARE IBM 72 SELECTRIC TYPEWRITER 1961 GREAT FOR FORGING"

-- For sale on EBay. (via QandO)

Question -- who needs an vintage IBM Selectric to fool Dan Ra^ther?

THE WASHINGTON POST --

"Expert Cited by CBS Says He Didn't Authenticate Papers, " by Michael Dobbs and Howard Kurtz. Quotable:

The lead expert retained by CBS News to examine disputed memos from President Bush's former squadron commander in the National Guard said yesterday that he examined only the late officer's signature and made no attempt to authenticate the documents themselves ..

A detailed examination of the CBS documents beside authenticated Killian memos and other documents generated by Bush's 147th Fighter Interceptor Group suggests at least three areas of difference that are difficult to reconcile:

� Word-processing techniques. Of more than 100 records made available by the 147th Group and the Texas Air National Guard, none used the proportional spacing techniques characteristic of the CBS documents. Nor did they use a superscripted "th" in expressions such as "147th Group" and or "111th Fighter Intercept Squadron."

In a CBS News broadcast Friday night rebutting allegations that the documents had been forged, Rather displayed an authenticated Bush document from 1968 that included a small "th" next to the numbers "111" as proof that Guard typewriters were capable of producing superscripts. In fact, say Newcomer and other experts, the document aired by CBS News does not contain a superscript, because the top of the "th" character is at the same level as the rest of the type. Superscripts rise above the level of the type.

� Factual problems. A CBS document purportedly from Killian ordering Bush to report for his annual physical, dated May 4, 1972, gives Bush's address as "5000 Longmont #8, Houston." This address was used for many years by Bush's father, George H.W. Bush. National Guard documents suggest that the younger Bush stopped using that address in 1970 when he moved into an apartment, and did not use it again until late 1973 or 1974, when he moved to Cambridge, Mass., to attend Harvard Business School.

One CBS memo cites pressure allegedly being put on Killian by "Staudt," a reference to Col. Walter B. "Buck" Staudt, one of Bush's early commanders. But the memo is dated Aug. 18, 1973, nearly a year and a half after Staudt retired from the Guard. Questioned about the discrepancy over the weekend, CBS officials said that Staudt was a "mythic figure" in the Guard who exercised influence from behind the scenes even after his retirement.

� Stylistic differences. To outsiders, how an officer wrote his name and rank or referred to his military unit may seem arcane and unimportant. Within the military, however, such details are regulated by rules and tradition, and can be of great significance. The CBS memos contain several stylistic examples at odds with standard Guard procedures, as reflected in authenticated documents.

In memos previously released by the Pentagon or the White House, Killian signed his rank "Lt Col" or "Lt Colonel, TexANG," in a single line after his name without periods. In the CBS memos, the "Lt Colonel" is on the next line, sometimes with a period but without the customary reference to TexANG, for Texas Air National Guard.

An ex-Guard commander, retired Col. Bobby W. Hodges, whom CBS originally cited as a key source in authenticating its documents, pointed to discrepancies in military abbreviations as evidence that the CBS memos are forgeries. The Guard, he said, never used the abbreviation "grp" for "group" or "OETR" for an officer evaluation review, as in the CBS documents. The correct terminology, he said, is "gp" and "OER."

AND the NY Times reports deepening concern increasing nervousness inside CBS News, with on "long time correspondent" quoted as saying, "I'm distressed." And Mike Wallace is "confused." And get this:

USA Today, which had presented the documents as legitimate on Thursday, featured an article yesterday with some experts surmising they were forgeries. "We're just busy now trying to determine the authenticity, or not," said the newspaper's executive editor, John Hillkirk.

"just busy now" trying to determine whether the documents they used in their reports on Thursday are authentic -- shouldn't that have been done, say, on Wednesday?

The NY Times also has this:

One of the experts CBS News said initially helped convince it that the documents were genuine, a handwriting expert named Marcel B. Matley, said in an interview yesterday that he believed the signature in the documents to be that of Colonel Killian. Asked if the signature could have been lifted from an official document by Colonel Killian and pasted onto forgeries, Mr. Matley said: "Sure. But we can't draw a conclusion from a possibility."

Ace of Spades HQ comments: "Step One Completed."

KerrySpot:

.. some of CBS� news talent who were campaigning for the anchor desk when Ra^ther retires are more than a little pleased with the recent turn of events. These individuals, who, admittedly, have a great personal stake in getting Ra^ther out the door, are contending in internal discussions that the blame belongs with Ra^ther, not with any lower-ranking producer.

This individual also suggests that Don Hewitt, creator of 60 Minutes and who initially opposed the idea of establishing �60 Minutes II,� is as livid as one would imagine. The pressure within CBS is intense and building steadily, the source said ..

I also spent Monday touching base with various reporters and editors at mainstream newspapers and magazines in Washington, and not one would defend CBS�s action in this case. One editor at a publication that covers Capitol Hill said, �Anytime a major media outlet leaps to a conclusion on what appears to be highly questionable evidence, we all pay a price in terms of lessened credibility. Bad journalism is like bad anything � lawyers, doctors or apples. One bad one can taint the whole group.�

Yet more. The sins of Dan Ra^ther.

BOB KOHN,

author of Journalistic Fraud: How The New York Times Distorts the News and Why It Can No Longer Be Trusted, on Scarborough Country:

I think the real story is, is whether Dan Ra^ther, with his performance [Friday night], has become the Jayson Blair of CBS News. He went on the air tonight and said, I did not have sex with that woman. He�s laid down�he�s made the same political calculation that Bill Clinton did several years ago, and we know how that turned out. He�s taking a huge risk here, because he is declaring � Dan Ra^ther is declaring thermonuclear war on the Internet blogging community without really understanding that community at all.

DAN

RA^THER'S latest stonewall - a fisking and other reactions:

Politicalities: I've seen this "fisking" thing before, and it looked like fun, so herewith ..

Ra^therBias.com: "CBS News has gone into full "CYA" mode." (includes full DR transcript -- scroll down)

Captain Ed: "Rather continues to fiddle while CBS burns."

LORIE BYRD ASKS --

"Am I A Bad Person For Enjoying This So Much?"

HOW DAN

RA^THER and CBS News slandered Vietnam Vets. Call him "Stolen Honor" Dan. See also this and this for much more. Via Dislogue, who has great coverage of the Vietnam Veterans rally against John Kerry in Washington, D.C. yesterday -- with pictures.

DAN

RA^THER FISKED.

IT HAD TO HAPPEN.

Ra^thergate.com.

(via InstaPundit)

READ OF THE DAY --

The Prowler.

And here are the typographical details on the proof of forgery.

WHAT DAN

RA^THER has in common with John Kerry.

DAN

Ra^ther's source -- Bill Burkett? Newsweek:

A principal source for CBS's story was Bill Burkett, a disgruntled former Guard officer who lives in Baird, Texas .. Burkett may have a motive to make trouble for the powers that be. In 1998, he grew gravely ill on a Guard mission to Panama, causing him to be hospitalized, and he suffered two nervous breakdowns. He unsuccessfully sued for medical expenses.

Ace of Spades HQ: "someone calling himself Bill Burkett, with an AOL mail address of BBurkett16@aol.com [wrote this]":

"Did I lie about Geroge W. Bush's records. No. Of the files that I saw within the 15 gallon waste can were numerous documents which detailed why 1LT George Bush was grounded from flying including a two-page counseling statement signed by LTC Jerry Killian."

And an Ace of Spades HQ reader adds this:

Hmm - Googling on that email address, one comes up with this nice little article, where he suggests that Bush and Cheney should be jailed, and that the Mossad knew all about 9/11 beforehand, and told us about it.

So, where exactly did the CBS forged documents story come from? It looks very much like it came from a CBS newsman in pajamas finding his news leads in the fever swap comments sections of the moonbat leftie bloggers ... (I got started with this the links at the end of this post.)

UPDATE: Betsy Newmark: "[I]f CBS got its so-called documents from some guy, say Bob Burkett, who claims that he happened to be sitting in a National Guard office in Austin when the incriminating documents were thrown out in 1997, then they got punk'd."

"REGARDLESS

of who wins the election, the campaign of 2004 has already made history. For the first time, a cable news channel -- Fox -- attracted more viewers than a broadcast network when they were competing head to head, covering the Republican National Convention .. What happened this summer, and particularly last week, is likely to be recalled as the end of the era of network news. At the very least, mark this as the moment when the networks abdicated their authority with the American public .. After this summer, Americans will no longer see network news in quite the same way. The network owners may not fully understand this. Even if they do, there is little evidence that they care." -- More Tom Rosenstiel, Director of the Project for Excellence in Journalism.

"I'D

Ra^ther be blogging -- CBS stonewalls as "guys in pajamas" uncover a fraud." -- John Fund:

A watershed media moment occurred Friday on Fox News Channel, when Jonathan Klein, a former executive vice president of CBS News who oversaw "60 Minutes," debated Stephen Hayes, a writer for The Weekly Standard, on the documents CBS used to raise questions about George W. Bush's Vietnam-era National Guard service. Mr. Klein dismissed the bloggers who are raising questions about the authenticity of the memos: "You couldn't have a starker contrast between the multiple layers of check and balances [at '60 Minutes'] and a guy sitting in his living room in his pajamas writing." He will regret that snide disparagement of the bloggers, many of whom are skilled lawyers or have backgrounds in military intelligence or typeface design. A growing number of design and document experts say they are certain or almost certain the memos on which CBS relied are forgeries.

What Dan will be wearing when he finally gets the story right.

(Thanks to Michael Pollard)

Got a better caption? Email me.

A reader emails this:

RATHER: "I think I shall retire now."

Another:

"Bedtime for Danzo"

-- Ken Summers, who has a satire roundup

UPDATE: "Dan Ra^ther's last stand."

TANKERKC SPEAKS.

Patterico interviews the Freeper who broke the CBS forged documents story. Quotable:

I wasn�t aware of the Washington Post front page story, but I�m glad that a regular citizen can call the big network news outlets on their mistakes.

A tip of the wings to TankerKC.

"CYA"

-- has anyone pointed out that the typed-out acronym "CYA" is an INTERNET EXPRESSION?! used by e-mailers and IM'ers for criminy sake!

For those who weren't there, back in 1973 Al Gore hadn't yet invented the Internet. ("CYA" is the subject line of the forged CBS "Bush Memo" dated 18 August 1973.)

A reader writes:

Just had to speak up and say that CYA is most definitely *not* an "INTERNET EXPRESSION". Yes, it's used in email and IM, but even this thirtysomething remembers hearing it during my youth in the 70's (and laughing like a loon at its mere mention because we also had a local youth sports group called the Chantilly Youth Association that called itself CYA). I would imagine that it dates back to WWII, which also produced that other well-known acronym "FUBAR".

Lets think about actualities and possibilities. Is it more likely that someone would use the acronym as a subject header on a real memo in 1973 or in a forged document in 2004? Well, it's almost a certainty that the later actually happened -- iand t is an incredible long shot that the former ever would have happened on a military document -- most especially in 1973.

UPDATE: The same reader writes again:

Thanks for adding my comments. I should have said up-front that the ONLY nit I was picking was with your description of CYA as an "INTERNET EXPRESSION", by which I thought you meant it's a recent Internet-driven addition to the language and therefore an anachronism that, by itself, shows how bogus these letters are. I definitely agree with the clarification you added about actualities and possibilities, I just don't agree that it's an "INTERNET EXPRESSION". Things like "LOL" and "ROTFLMAO" are better examples of that category. Keep up the great work!

AN UNBELIEVABLY

detailed bit of typographic wonkery on the CBS documents. Bottomline:

The prosecution doesn't rest yet; more evidence is still coming in from all quarters. But I'm 100% convinced. If this is a real 'memo for record' from the U.S. Army National Guard, dated 1973, I'm the Aga Khan.

See also this. (via JustOneMinute)

WOULD

you like help?

DAN

RA^THER IN PAJAMAS.

Where is my photoshop? I'm asking -- PLEASE MAKE ONE and EMAIL ME!!

I'm already laughing myself silly.

What I'm picturing: Dan Ra^ther in pajamas typing up the forged Air National Guard Documents. The Internet MUST have that picture!

UPDATE: Coming soon -- Blogger Jammies.

And this is a must see -- "Dan Ra^ther's Band of Brothers?"

"ON SEPT. 10, 2004

Dan Ra^ther declared war on the internet. He shouldn't have because it's a battle he is destined to lose. Addressing only a small part of the hundreds of criticisms that web-based critics and assorted typewriter, font, and military experts have lodged against his report, Rather and his CBS colleagues seem to have a masochistic desire for punishment .. "

More Ra^therBiased.com

THE FORGED CBS DOCUMENTS.

Ano^ther dead-to-rights smoking gun.

CBS & THE FORGED DOCUMENTS --

WHAT WE KNOW NOW.

I don't know how the forged document scandal will ultimately play out. I don't know whether CBS will be forced to acknowledge that the documents are fakes, or whether Dan Rather will resign in disgrace. But I do know this: everyone who cares already knows that the "Killian memos" are low-quality forgeries.

.. within the news business, and inside the relatively small slice of the American population where sophisticated consumers of the news dwell, everyone knows, already, that Dan Rather and CBS News tried to influence the November election by telling lies and publishing forged documents. CBS has been disgraced among its peers.

The fact that CBS was willing to barter away what remained of its reputation in exchange for an opportunity to help the John Kerry campaign requires us to re-examine our assumptions about the mainstream media, just as the emergence of the suicide bomber required us to re-examine certain assumptions about security. We never thought that a vast, powerful broadcast network would destroy its own reputation for political gain. Now we know that it can happen.

More John Hinderaker.

PLAYING CATCH-UP.

The NY Times has the Hodges story, "An Ex-Officer Now Believes Guard Memo Isn't Genuine."

How are you holding up out there Dan?

DAN

RA^THER'S LUNATIC FRINGE.