CBS falls for Kerry campaign's fake memo

Sun Times

September 12, 2004

BY MARK STEYN SUN-TIMES COLUMNIST

A few weeks ago, Thomas Oliphant of the Boston Globe was on PBS' ''Newshour'' explaining why the hundreds of swift boat veterans' allegations against John Kerry's conduct in Vietnam was unworthy of his attention. "The standard of clear and convincing evidence," he said, talking to Swiftvet John O'Neill as if he were a backward fourth-grader, ''is what keeps this story in the tabloids -- because it does not meet basic standards.''

Last week, we got a good idea of what Thomas Oliphant's ''basic standards'' are. Dan Rather and the elderly gentlemen at ''60 Minutes'' were all atwitter because they'd come into possession of some hitherto undiscovered memos relating to whether George W. Bush failed to show up for his physical in the War of 1812. The media had been flogging this dead horse all spring, but these newly ''discovered'' memos had jump-started the old nag just enough to get him on his knees long enough for the media to flog him all over again.

Unfortunately for CBS, Dan Rather's hairdresser sucks up so much of the budget that there was nothing left for any fact-checking, so the ''60 Minutes'' crew rushed on air with a damning National Guard memo conveniently called ''CYA'' that Bush's commanding officer had written to himself 32 years ago. ''This was too hot not to push,'' one producer told the American Spectator. Hundreds of living Swiftvets who've signed affidavits and are prepared to testify on camera -- that's way too cold to push; we'd want to fact-check that one thoroughly, till, say, midway through John Kerry's second term. But a handful of memos by one dead guy slipped to us by a Kerry campaign operative -- that meets ''basic standards'' and we gotta get it out there right away.

The only problem was the memo. Amazingly, this guy at the Air National Guard base, Lt. Col. Killian, had the only typewriter in Texas in 1973 using a prototype version of the default letter writing program of Microsoft Word, complete with the tiny little superscript thingy that automatically changes July 4th to July 4th. To do that on most 1973 typewriters, you had to unscrew the keys, grab a hammer and give them a couple of thwacks to make the ''t'' and ''h'' squish up all tiny, and even think it looked a bit wonky. You'd think having such a unique typewriter Killian would have used a less easily traceable model for his devastating ''CYA'' memo. Also, he might have chosen a font other than Times New Roman, designed for the Times of London in the 1930s and not licensed to Microsoft by Rupert Murdoch (the Times' owner) until the 1980s.

Killian is no longer around to confirm his extraordinary Magic Typewriter, but his son denied the stuff was written by his dad, and his widow said her late husband never typed. So, on the one hand, we have hundreds of living veterans with chapter and verse on Kerry's fantasy Christmas in Cambodia, and, on the other hand, we have a guy who's been dead 20 years but is still capable of operating Windows XP. It took the savvy chappies at the Powerline Web site and Charles Johnson of ''Little Green Footballs'' about 20 minutes to spot the eerily 2004 look of the 1972 memo, and various Internet wallahs spent the rest of the day tracking down the country's leading typewriter identification experts.

Bombarded with accusations that CBS had fallen for an obvious hoax, Dan turned to his trusty Smith-Corona and bashed out a few e-mails: ''For the umpteenth time,'' he said angrily, ''this is the kind of sleaze I had to put up with when they scoffed at 'What's the frequency, Kenneth?' "

Are Dan Rather and ''60 Minutes'' a bunch of patsies suckered by the Kerry campaign? Not exactly. According to the American Spectator, ''The CBS producer said that some alarm bells went off last week when the signatures and initials of Killian on the documents in hand did not match up with other documents available on the public record, but producers chose to move ahead with the story.''

Hey, why not? Who's gonna spot it? If CBS says it's so, that's good enough for Thomas Oliphant's Boston Globe, the New York Times and the Washington Post, all of whom rushed the story onto their front pages because it met their ''basic standards.'' On Friday morning, Paul Krugman, the New York Times' excitable economist, filed a column called, ''The Dishonesty Thing,'' and for one moment I thought he was about to upbraid CBS for rushing on air with their laughably fake memos. But no, he was droning on about how the National Guard story demonstrated George W. Bush's ''pattern of lies: his assertions that he fulfilled his obligations when he obviously didn't ..."

The tragedy for Rather, Oliphant, Krugman and Co. is that even if the memos were authentic nobody would care. Their boy Kerry had a crummy August not because he didn't hammer Bush for being AWOL in the Spanish-American War but because the senator's AWOL in the present war. Big Media are trashing their own reputations in service to a man who can never win.

After the 2002 election, I wrote, ''Remind me never to complain about 'liberal media bias' again. Right now, liberal media bias is conspiring to assist the Democrats to sleepwalk over the cliff.''

The media and the Democrats sustain each other's make-believe land. Dan Rather tells his staff, ''Kerry's told me there's nothing to this Swiftvet thing.'' Kerry tells his, ''Rather's assured me this Swiftvet story's going nowhere.''

George W. Bush ought to wake up every morning and thank the Lord the media aren't on his side.

Remember the Hitler Diaries? They turned up in the '80s. Only problem is they weren't by Hitler. But by then various prestige publications had paid a fortune to serialize them. Among them was the Sunday Times of London, owned by Murdoch, who wasn't happy. He called the editor, Frank Giles, into his office, and said, ''Frank, I'm promoting you to editor emeritus.''

''I've always wondered,'' murmured Frank, ''what 'editor emeritus' means.''

''The 'e-' means you've been given the elbow and the '-meritus' means you bloody deserve it,'' said Murdoch.

I have a feeling after November CBS News will be promoting Dan Rather to editor emeritus.

Either that, or next week's ''60 Minutes'' -- ''Exclusive! Handwriting Expert Says Bush Wrote The Hitler Diaries!'' -- will have much better fact-checking.

You obviously haven't been visiting DU enough, if you still hopelessly cling to the possibility that they were fake.

Tag for future read.   Interesting.

Quoted: You obviously haven't been visiting DU enough, if you still hopelessly cling to the possibility that they were fake.

Yes, I have gone to the truest source on the Internet, the authoritative DU, and have seen the light.

I even had to correct my father, who was a paper pusher in the Air Force until 1970 and pointed out many inconsistencies.
I even had to correct my mother, who pushed plenty of paper at Strike Command at MacDill AFB.


I feel better now that I have enlightened them.


Woody

Ah, Dan...we hardly knew ye...

TO LONG can someone sum it up in 1 or 2 words please

Quoted: TO LONG can someone sum it up in 1 or 2 words please

It's fake.

-HS

Cliff notes: The Liberal Media was so happy to get anti-Bush evidence that they didn't check it's veracity.
Plus they don't expect people to call them on it.


I wonder if any of the big three will adopt the Fox right leaning bias? If your news programs keep losing money, why not suppply what 50% of the population wants?

Quoted: TO LONG can someone sum it up in 1 or 2 words please

It's fake.
Dan Rather and CBS are a bunch of idiot tools.
Bush should be grateful about the liberal bias. It's helping him.

Good article!

It was a great article. Thanks to 4get_No1 for posting it.

Quoted: TO LONG can someone sum it up in 1 or 2 words please

Reading comprehension a problem? You know that means you should read more.
Of course if you are physically disabled in some way, I apologize.

Bob

Dan Rather

Hey Dan................your 15 minutes ended a long time ago and it's time for you to just go away..................

"What's the Frequency, Kenneth Dan ?"

It gets better...

seattletimes.nwsource.com/html/nationalpolitics/2002032742_bushguard11.html


Partial quote

AUSTIN, Texas — The man named in a disputed memo as exerting pressure to "sugarcoat" George W. Bush's military record left the Texas Air National Guard a year and a half before the memo supposedly was written, his service record shows. An order obtained by The Dallas Morning News shows that Col. Walter "Buck" Staudt was honorably discharged March 1, 1972. CBS News reported this week that a memo in which Staudt was described as interfering with officers' negative evaluations of the future president's service was dated Aug. 18, 1973.

Quoted: www.illinoisleader.com/content/img/f19392/freep%20(3).gif

Remember the Hitler Diaries? They turned up in the '80s. Only problem is they weren't by Hitler. But by then various prestige publications had paid a fortune to serialize them. Among them was the Sunday Times of London, owned by Murdoch, who wasn't happy. He called the editor, Frank Giles, into his office, and said, ''Frank, I'm promoting you to editor emeritus.'' ''I've always wondered,'' murmured Frank, ''what 'editor emeritus' means.'' ''The 'e-' means you've been given the elbow and the '-meritus' means you bloody deserve it,'' said Murdoch.

That was good.  I wonder if that quote's for real? (Mark Steyn puts a lot of humor into his columns)

http://www.illinoisleader.com/content/img/f19392/freep%20(3).gif

Good shit, man!
LOL!

Sunday, September 12, 2004   Modern Times With the New York Times reporting that a key 60 Minutes source has turned on CBS, their earlier decision to "stand by their story" has doubled a bet on a losing hand. Retired General Bobby Hodges of the Texas Air National Guard repudiated the documents which CBS said he would corroborate. Sept. 11 - A former National Guard commander who CBS News said had helped convince it of the authenticity of documents raising new questions about President Bush's military service said on Saturday that he did not believe they were genuine. The commander, Bobby Hodges, said in a telephone interview that network producers had never showed him the documents but had only read them to him over the phone days before they were featured Wednesday in a "60 Minutes" broadcast. After seeing the documents on Friday, Mr. Hodges said, he concluded that they were falsified. Worse, Hodges virtually accused the network of deceptive journalism. Commenting on the process through which he was interviewed, "Mr. Hodges, 74, who was group commander of Mr. Bush's squadron in the 147th Fighter Group at Ellington Field in Houston in the early 1970's, said that when someone from CBS called him on Monday night and read him documents, 'I thought they were handwritten notes.'" They were not; they were supposedly typewritten notes which may now turn out to be forgeries prepared on Word for Windows. CBS's last hope had been to show that Colonel Killian -- whose wife maintains did not type -- prepared the documents on an IBM Selectric or Composer. Those probabilities took a dive now that experimental attempts to reproduce the document on such equipment have failed. Worse, Computer Science Professor Robert Cartwright of Rice University (hat tip: Hugh Hewitt) shows that the variable letter spacing based on the adjacency of letters found in CBS's documents was computationally impossible on any mechanical device available in 1973. Modern word processing processing programs, like Microsoft Word, contain information in the font definition which, for example, tuck a small "i" under the overhang of a capital "T". No mechanical typewriter then available could do this. ... in 1971, even the most powerful available computer systems were not equipped to produce documents like the Killian documents. In Fall 1971, I entered graduate school in Computer Science at Stanford. I soon gravitated to the Artificial Intelligence Laboratory, which had the most powerful time-sharing system (a PDP-10) on campus. In either 1972 or 1973, Xerox gave the Stanford Artificial Intelligence Laboratory a prototype xerographic printer called a "Xerox Graphics Printer (XGP)". Two similar prototypes were given to the MIT Computer Science Department and the Carnegie-Mellon Computer Science Department. The programming staff at the Stanford AI Laboratory was thrilled with the gift because it was the first opportunity that computer science research community had to develop software to support printer quality type-setting. The three Computer Science Departments cooperated in developing the word processing programs to support the XGP. I wrote my first published research paper and my doctoral disseration using the XGP in Spring 1976. It would take another decade before comparable word processing systems were available to most computer science researchers on minicomputers running Unix. It would take nearly another decade before they were widely used on personal computers. The typed text in the "Killian memos" is kerned (check out letter combinations like "fo" and "fe"), but the (IBM) Composer text is clearly not. Kerning is a computationally complex task beyond the capacity of any mechanical typewriter--even one as expensive and elaborate as the IBM Selectric Composer. The CBS attempt to escape the kill zone and regain the offensive on the Bush National Guard story appears to have failed. By clutching the faked documents closer to the center of their story they may have effectively destroyed their own expose. But the true magnitude of the catastrophe is hinted at by the Los Angeles Times. In an article entitled No Disputing It: Blogs Are Major Players, Peter Wallsten says: These days, CBS News anchor Dan Rather and his colleagues at the network's magazine program "60 Minutes II" are enduring an unusual wave of second-guessing by some of the public and fellow journalists. For that, they can thank "Buckhead." It was a late-night blog posting by this mystery Net-izen that first questioned the validity of documents Rather cited Wednesday as proof that George W. Bush did not fulfill his National Guard duty more than 30 years ago. Although the article half-humorously suggests "Buckhead" is actually Karl Rove, "Buckhead" maintains he acted alone. "But once I posted the comment to Free Republic I was no longer working alone, and that is the real point of the story about the story about the story." The real catastrophe for CBS is that Killian incident is probably not an isolated setback so much as proof that maneuvers which worked in the past can no longer be attempted with impunity. The equivalent of the longbow had arrived on the media scene. When the longbow was first deployed on the European battlefield, it was obviously a formidable weapon. Such was the power of the Longbow, that contemporary accounts claim that at short range, an arrow fired from it could penetrate 4 inches of seasoned oak. The armored knight, considered at one time to be the leviathan of the battlefield, could now be felled at ranges up to 200 yards by a single arrow. One account recalls a knight being pinned to his horse by an arrow that passed through both armored thighs, with the horse and saddle between! But it was long years before it was taken seriously. After all, mounted cavalry was the aristocratic weapon and the longbow that of the despised yeomen, the medieval equivalent of bloggers in their pajamas. It took Crecy, Poitiers and finally Agincourt to bring home the fact that the longbow threat was real. As the Christian Science Monitor remarked: The English longbow plied by yeomen ended the military power and social reign of knights. "Shining" armor fell to a taut string, a cured piece of wood, and a tipped arrow. The military dynamic of the Middle Ages - knight, squire, and armorer - ceased. It did not bring an end to history: a new dynamic replaced the old, but an era had passed. posted by wretchard | Permalink: (Click to access comments)11:39 AM Zulu

Quoted: It was a great article. Thanks to 4get_No1 for posting it. Quoted: TO LONG can someone sum it up in 1 or 2 words please Reading comprehension a problem? You know that means you should read more. Of course if you are physically disabled in some way, I apologize. Bob

Na I'm just being lazy this morning, I was up all night fighting crime, but its sleepy time now

I don't get the What's the Frequency, Kenneth references.
All I know is we used to sing that to a guy named Kenneth.
tony

Quoted: They're just using this to stir the mud in the water. The 60% of the clueless people in this country haven't a clue as to what a swiftboat is but now know that there's a fake memo about Bush - a wash in their minds. They'll know who started for Philly in last week game and how many medals the US took at the olympics but won't have a clue as to Kerry's war record, his senate record, or the platform. They will vote for the "D's" because that's what their union tells them to do, that's what my daddy did ...

Yep.  We have 'em here, too.  Ask them if they like their guns, they say Yes.  Ask them if they like immigration, they say No.  Ask them if they want their taxes raised or lowered, they'll say lowered.  Ask them who they're voting for, and you find out they're yellow-dog democrats because thar daddy who worked at Allison Transmission for fitty years was a democrat, and they're by-God democrats too.

Quoted: I don't get the What's the Frequency, Kenneth references. All I know is we used to sing that to a guy named Kenneth. tony

You're not in your thirties, are you?

Nope almost 26. I just Googled the song though, and figured out the reference. I never knew Dan (or rather his attacker) was the subject of that song.

Quoted: They're just using this to stir the mud in the water. The 60% of the clueless people in this country haven't a clue as to what a swiftboat is but now know that there's a fake memo about Bush - a wash in their minds. They'll know who started for Philly in last week game and how many medals the US took at the olympics but won't have a clue as to Kerry's war record, his senate record, or the platform. They will vote for the "D's" because that's what their union tells them to do, that's what my daddy did ...

Sad but way too true.  Watch any of Jay Leno's street interviews for proof.

Quoted: Quoted: They're just using this to stir the mud in the water. The 60% of the clueless people in this country haven't a clue as to what a swiftboat is but now know that there's a fake memo about Bush - a wash in their minds. They'll know who started for Philly in last week game and how many medals the US took at the olympics but won't have a clue as to Kerry's war record, his senate record, or the platform. They will vote for the "D's" because that's what their union tells them to do, that's what my daddy did ... Sad but way too true.  Watch any of Jay Leno's street interviews for proof.

You somehow think that anything Leno does is not a setup?

Quoted: Quoted: Quoted: They're just using this to stir the mud in the water. The 60% of the clueless people in this country haven't a clue as to what a swiftboat is but now know that there's a fake memo about Bush - a wash in their minds. They'll know who started for Philly in last week game and how many medals the US took at the olympics but won't have a clue as to Kerry's war record, his senate record, or the platform. They will vote for the "D's" because that's what their union tells them to do, that's what my daddy did ... Sad but way too true.  Watch any of Jay Leno's street interviews for proof. You somehow think that anything Leno does is not a setup?

I imagine they screen out the more astute ones but don't believe the ones we see are scripted.

Quoted: Quoted: Sad but way too true.  Watch any of Jay Leno's street interviews for proof. You somehow think that anything Leno does is not a setup?

I imagine they screen out the more astute ones but don't believe the ones we see are scripted.

Yeah I've seen one show where they did kind of an "expose" on the street interviews.  Some people are actually quite smart.  But the dumb ones are definitely not scripted.  They just interview a bunch of people and go with the dumb (i.e. funny) ones.  

I have come to another conclusion.

The passage of the AWB in 1994 was NOT the result of a fickle public opinion being swayed by the scare tactics of the antigunners and Bill Clinton.

There was NEVER public support for the ban, the 4 networks then existing FAKED the information.

This affair with the forged Bush Memmo is strongly suggesting that this sort of activity has been NORMAL OPERATING PROCEDURE for the news agencies for DECADES- perhaps going back to Vietnam.  They may have FAKED much of the public support for the AWB- and we have complained for years how they stonewalled those who wanted access to rebutt them.

This means it should be very easy to repeal other anti gun legislation.

Quoted:

Quoted: I have come to another conclusion. The passage of the AWB in 1994 was NOT the result of a fickle public opinion being swayed by the scare tactics of the antigunners and Bill Clinton. There was NEVER public support for the ban, the 4 networks then existing FAKED the information. This affair with the forged Bush Memmo is strongly suggesting that this sort of activity has been NORMAL OPERATING PROCEDURE for the news agencies for DECADES- perhaps going back to Vietnam.  They may have FAKED much of the public support for the AWB- and we have complained for years how they stonewalled those who wanted access to rebutt them. This means it should be very easy to repeal other anti gun legislation.

You're probably right, the public wasn't all that much interest in the '94 AWB, but the press and the liberals just kept on hounding on it, and since Bill C was the most anti-gun Pres...

In the old days, it would take many months to find faked documents, by that time it would've been too late today anything, but with the miracle of the interent, things can be scrutinzed by many people over a very short, and frauds will be exposed. The liberal news media does not have a monopoly on disseminating the "news" anymore, ie if "we didn't report it, it doesn't exist" BS.

Quoted: Quoted: I have come to another conclusion. The passage of the AWB in 1994 was NOT the result of a fickle public opinion being swayed by the scare tactics of the antigunners and Bill Clinton. There was NEVER public support for the ban, the 4 networks then existing FAKED the information. This affair with the forged Bush Memmo is strongly suggesting that this sort of activity has been NORMAL OPERATING PROCEDURE for the news agencies for DECADES- perhaps going back to Vietnam.  They may have FAKED much of the public support for the AWB- and we have complained for years how they stonewalled those who wanted access to rebutt them. This means it should be very easy to repeal other anti gun legislation. You're probably right, the public wasn't all that much interest in the '94 AWB, but the press and the liberals just kept on hounding on it, and since Bill C was the most anti-gun Pres... In the old days, it would take many months to find faked documents, by that time it would've been too late today anything, but with the miracle of the interent, things can be scrutinzed by many people over a very short, and frauds will be exposed. The liberal news media does not have a monopoly on disseminating the "news" anymore, ie if "we didn't report it, it doesn't exist" BS.

After Pat Purdy shot up that Kali school yard in 89, feinswine found footing after a state ban and took it to the federal level.  Between the mid 80's and 94 they had their day.  All they've done is caused more gunowners to wise up and fight their bullsh*t.
State level legeslation is their only outlet now, but I think there's enough people aware of their efforts to stop it before it gets out of hand.  With the internet and so many gunowners networking their idea's there's a MUCH bigger resistance than in 94.

Quoted: Quoted: Quoted: I have come to another conclusion. The passage of the AWB in 1994 was NOT the result of a fickle public opinion being swayed by the scare tactics of the antigunners and Bill Clinton. There was NEVER public support for the ban, the 4 networks then existing FAKED the information. This affair with the forged Bush Memmo is strongly suggesting that this sort of activity has been NORMAL OPERATING PROCEDURE for the news agencies for DECADES- perhaps going back to Vietnam.  They may have FAKED much of the public support for the AWB- and we have complained for years how they stonewalled those who wanted access to rebutt them. This means it should be very easy to repeal other anti gun legislation. You're probably right, the public wasn't all that much interest in the '94 AWB, but the press and the liberals just kept on hounding on it, and since Bill C was the most anti-gun Pres... In the old days, it would take many months to find faked documents, by that time it would've been too late today anything, but with the miracle of the interent, things can be scrutinzed by many people over a very short, and frauds will be exposed. The liberal news media does not have a monopoly on disseminating the "news" anymore, ie if "we didn't report it, it doesn't exist" BS. After Pat Purdy shot up that Kali school yard in 89, feinswine found footing after a state ban and took it to the federal level.  Between the mid 80's and 94 they had their day.  All they've done is caused more gunowners to wise up and fight their bullsh*t.

Fineswine would never have gotten anywhere if the Internet had existed then.  Her hysterical rants would have been coutnered within hours with scans of the FBI Uniform Crime Reports and Patrick Purdy's wrap sheet from a dozen diffferent sites.

This was one of the toughest things about the late 80's/early 90's in Kali.  I had gone to the library and read the Uniform Crime Reports.  I knew everything was a lie.  I could never convince anyone of it by telling them to go read the documents...  this sticks with me to this day- its why my posts here are so often HUGE because I learned that if you give someone a cite- or a link- they will exercise their ability to not access it and ignore it.  But if you copy the whole quote or image and plaster it on the screen, they CANT ignore it.  Its there as soon as you open the thread.

tagged

Updated for better effect...

good article, thanks....

Quoted: www.illinoisleader.com/content/img/f19392/freep%20(3).gif

Funniest thing I've seen in weeks.  Nice Job.  

Quoted: Quoted: www.illinoisleader.com/content/img/f19392/freep%20(3).gif Funniest thing I've seen in weeks.  Nice Job.

I didn't invent it, I got it off of Tank Net, and I don't know where they got it either.

It didn't have a copyright sign so I snagged it to give it maximum spread.

www.allahpundit.com

Even more interesting is the implied downfall of the Liberal Media Monopoly. Now that anyone can research the facts and post a rebuttal for all the world to see in mere hours, the days of biased news media are over, and there's nothing they can do about it.

All I can say is thank God for the Internet.
Seriously.
Can you imagine if all this would have happened 10 years ago?
kerry=landslide victory.

My take on the importance of this "Memogate":

Sandy WHO???

Quoted: I want to know who put the memo out.

Because of CBSs stubborn, prideful challenge to the internet by refusing to admit they are wrong that is now the goal of the entire blogsphere.  Results should be coming soon.

Quoted: I don't get the What's the Frequency, Kenneth references. All I know is we used to sing that to a guy named Kenneth. tony

Blather got mugged by a schitzo dude awhile back.  The looney guy asked Dan (thinking Dan was this Kenneth guy) "Whats the frequency Kenneth?", referring to the microchip he believed was in this brain.

REM wrote a famous song about it.

Quoted: My take on the importance of this "Memogate": Sandy WHO???

Oh that's good.  Real good.  OUTFU CKINGST ANDING!