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#237644 - 09/16/04 06:29 AM
Re: Bush was AWOL? : (The CBS "papers")
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Rick Donaldson
Time Traveler
Senior Investigator
Registered: 05/04/01
Posts: 6985
Loc: Colorado Springs
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Guard files said to be faxed from copy shop
CBS acknowledges increasing doubts about authenticity
By Michael Dobbs, Washington Post | September 16, 2004
WASHINGTON -- 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, Texas, according to another former Guard officer who was shown the records by the network.
The markings provide one piece of evidence suggesting a source for the documents, whose authenticity has been hotly disputed since CBS aired them in a "60 Minutes" broadcast Sept. 8. The network has declined to name the person who provided them, saying the source was confidential, or to explain how the documents came to light after more than three decades.
There is only one Kinko's in Abilene, and it is 21 miles from the Baird, Texas, home of retired Texas National Guard officer Bill Burkett, who has been named by several news outlets as a possible source for the documents.
Robert Strong, who was one of three people interviewed by "60 minutes," said he was shown copies of the documents by CBS anchor Dan Rather and producer Mary Mapes on Sept. 5, three days before the broadcast. He said at least one of the documents bore a faxed header indicating it had been sent from a Kinko's in Abilene.
In an interview last night, CBS anchor Dan Rather acknowledged for the first time that there are serious questions about the authenticity of the documents. "If the documents are not what we were led to believe, I'd like to break that story," Rather said. "Any time I'm wrong, I want to be right out front and say, 'Folks, this is what went wrong and how it went wrong.' "
Rather spoke after interviewing the secretary to Bush's former squadron commander, who told him the memos attributed to her late boss are fake, but that they reflected the commander's belief that Bush was receiving preferential treatment to escape some of his Guard commitments.
The former secretary, Marian Carr Knox, is the latest person to raise questions about the "60 Minutes" story, which Rather and top CBS officials still defend while vowing to investigate the mounting questions about whether the 30-year-old documents used in the story were part of a hoax.
And CBS News President Andrew Heyward in an interview acknowledged that there were "unresolved issues" that the network wanted "to get to the bottom of." Since the broadcast, critics have pointed to a host of unexplained problems about the memos, which bore dates from 1972 and 1973, including signs that they had been written on a computer rather than a Vietnam-era typewriter.
"I feel that we did a tremendous amount of reporting before the story went on the air or we wouldn't have put it on the air," Heyward said in an interview last night.
Guard files said to be faxed from copy shop
September 16, 2004
Page 2 of 2 -- Asked what role Burkett may have played in CBS's reporting of the report, Heyward said: "I'm not going to get into any discussion of who the sources are."
Burkett, who has accused Bush aides of ordering the destruction of some portions of the president's National Guard record because they might have been politically embarrassing, did not return telephone calls to his home. His lawyer, David Van Os, issued a statement on Burkett's behalf saying he "no longer trusts any possible outcome of speaking to the press on any issue regarding George W. Bush and does not choose to dignify recent spurious attacks upon his character with any comment."
In news interviews earlier this year, Burkett said he overheard a telephone conversation in the spring of 1997 in which top Bush aides asked the head of the Texas National Guard to sanitize Bush's files as he was running for a second term as governor of Texas. Several days later, he said, he saw dozens of pages from Bush's military file dumped in a trash can at Camp Mabry, the Guard's headquarters.
The Bush aides Burkett named as participants in the telephone conversation were Chief of Staff Joe M. Allbaugh and spokespersons Karen Hughes and Dan Bartlett. All three Bush aides and former Texas National Guard Major General Daniel James have strongly denied the allegations.
Earlier this year, Burkett gave interviews to numerous news outlets alleging corruption and malfeasance at the top of the Texas National Guard, many of which have never been substantiated. He has also been a named source for several reports by USA Today, which reported Monday that it had independently obtained copies of the disputed memos soon after the broadcast.
On Capitol Hill, meanwhile, 39 Republican House members, led by Majority Whip Roy Blunt, Republican of Missouri, wrote a letter to Heyward demanding that CBS retract its report. Accusing the network of becoming "part of a campaign to deceive the public and to defame the president," the lawmakers said: "CBS reporters would not accept such behavior from public officials like ourselves, and we cannot accept it from them."
Separately, Representative Christopher Cox, Republican of California, asked that a House communications subcommittee investigate what he called "the continued use of CBS News of apparently forged documents" intended to damage Bush's reputation and "influence the outcome of the 2004 presidential election." But the panel's chairman, Representative Joe Barton, Republican of Texas, rejected the request, saying that the oversight of network news should be left to the viewing public and news media.
© Copyright 2004 Globe Newspaper Company.
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#237645 - 09/16/04 06:36 AM
Re: Bush was AWOL? : (The CBS "papers")
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Rick Donaldson
Time Traveler
Senior Investigator
Registered: 05/04/01
Posts: 6985
Loc: Colorado Springs
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Well, well, well... it appears we're onto the "source" of the forged documents, now. Isn't that neat?
Ex-Guardsman Is Said to Be a CBS Source
The New York Times ^ | 9/16/04 | RALPH BLUMENTHAL
HOUSTON, Sept. 15 - Bill Burkett once said his job was to make Gov. George W. Bush a hero.
As a lieutenant colonel working on the readiness of the Texas National Guard, Mr. Burkett, a lay preacher's son from Portales, N.M., was brought in with a high commission in 1996 to work on mobilization plans that would make the Guard shine.
"I was very supportive of Bush," he said in an interview this year.
But it was not long before Mr. Burkett, whom colleagues call a stickler for rules, fell out with senior commanders and ended up in a suit against the Guard and its leaders. He also became disillusioned with Mr. Bush, who he said was not supporting needed reforms in the Guard.
The bitterness, he later said, moved him to go public with what he said he and a fellow officer, George O. Conn, witnessed one night in Austin in 1997. That was when, he said, commanders, in touch with Mr. Bush's political advisers, left documents in the trash while sanitizing the governor's service records. .
Now, Mr. Burkett, whose account last February was derided by the White House, has been drawn into another fray, this one on documents supplied to "60 Minutes II" on CBS. On Tuesday, a person at the network named Mr. Burkett as a source of records critical of Mr. Bush's Vietnam era service that CBS said last week came from the personal files of Lieutenant Bush's squadron commander, Lt. Col. Jerry B. Killian, who died in 1984.
Citing discrepancies in the typeface and wording of the documents, a growing number of experts, as well as Mr. Killian's wife and son and his former secretary, have called them fakes. The secretary, Marian Carr Knox, said they appeared to reflect Colonel Killian's sentiments that someone might have sought to recreate from lost originals.
Mr. Burkett (pronounced BURR-kit), 55, did not respond to numerous messages in recent days and turned away a reporter for The New York Times on Wednesday who called several times from outside the locked gate of his ranch in Baird, Tex., east of Abilene.
His lawyer, David Van Os of San Antonio, repeatedly declined to answer when asked whether Mr. Burkett had a role in obtaining or providing the documents.
"Bill Burkett is tired of being speculated about when the real story is and should be where was George Bush?" Mr. Van Os said. "The possibility that Bill Burkett would falsify documents or falsify any story is zero."
Robert Strong, a former Guard officer interviewed on "60 Minutes,'' said documents that CBS showed to him for authentication bore a facsimile stamp of a Kinko's store in Abilene. Mr. Van Os, asked whether that pointed to Mr. Burkett, said he had no information about that.
Mr. Conn, who vouched for Mr. Burkett in his suit in 2002, has a United States government job in Germany and did not respond to an e-mail message and a telephone message left at his home in Dallas. In an e-mail message in February, Mr. Conn said: "I know LTC Bill Burkett and served with him several years ago in the Texas Army National Guard. I believe him to be honest and forthright. He 'calls things like he sees them.' "
Mr. Conn declined to say whether he had seen any cleansing of Mr. Bush's files with Mr. Burkett.
Harvey Gough, a restaurateur in Dallas who was in the Guard with Mr. Burkett and Mr. Conn, said this week that he had recently spoken with Mr. Conn in Europe and came away convinced that Mr. Conn had no knowledge of the Killian documents.
Mr. Gough said he also had no idea of their origins and had never discussed the matter with Mr. Burkett.
Yet another officer who served with Mr. Burkett, Dennis Adams, a retired lieutenant colonel now working as a security officer at the State Capitol in Austin, said this week, "I don't know of anybody I'd put in a higher category than Bill."
Mr. Adams said that Mr. Burkett had told him afterward of having witnessed the sanitizing of Mr. Bush's Guard file "and that some of the things in the trash were pulled out.''
"He never did say by whom," Mr. Adams added. "I don't have the foggiest idea what documents of any kind he ever had," Mr. Adams said.
In addition to describing what he said was the destruction of documents, Mr. Burkett said in the February interview that also overheard a conversation in mid-1997 between Gen. Daniel James, head of the Texas National Guard, and Joseph M. Allbaugh, a top aide to Governor Bush, that discussed the Guard records.
Contacted in February, Mr. Allbaugh acknowledged the conversation, saying he had talked with General James in an effort to ensure that the records would be helpful to journalists who inquired about Mr. Bush's military experience. He called Mr. Burkett's account about the destruction of documents "pure hogwash.''
Mr. Burkett was at home on Wednesday working on his ranch about six miles south of the tiny town of Baird, far from the swirl of attention around CBS News. His gate, on a dusty and little-traveled dirt road, was padlocked. He briefly answered the phone in his house on the far side of his tidy pasture to decline to comment.
This week, The Abilene Reporter-News identified Mr. Burkett as a suspected source of the CBS documents. At the Callahan County Farmers' Co-op in Baird, a gathering place where Mr. Burkett has been a frequent presence, his role as a public accuser of the president stirred strong emotions. Pete Mendez, a former firefighter who says he is one of the few open Democrats in the county as well as one of Mr. Burkett's few defenders, said the reports had made Mr. Burkett a pariah. Mr. Burkett has recently complained that when he sat down at the co-op table, all his neighbors rose and left, Mr. Mendez said.
"If you buck the system around here you are kind of an outcast or radical," he added. "A lot of people around here seem to think he was just upset because he was turned down for something or other."
Mr. Mendez said he had known Mr. Burkett for a few years and recently lent him a valuable tool.
"In my opinion - which is no more than I have known him - I feel that he is truthful and whatnot,'' the neighbor said. "He has always treated me fair."
In a book published this year, "Bush's War for Re-election" by James Moore, Mr. Burkett is quoted as reporting having received numerous death threats, including telephone messages and a bullet with his name on it that he says he found in his mailbox. More recently, he told people that his son's car had been burned.
In interviews with The Times in February as he was publicizing his tampering charges, Mr. Burkett said he grew up in New Mexico and majored in agribusiness and economics. He said he joined the New Mexico National Guard in 1970 to avoid service in Vietnam.
"I did not believe in what we were doing there," he said.
He became deputy commandant of the New Mexico Military Academy and, Mr. Moore's book said, headed training and planning for troops sent from Fort Hood, Tex., for the gulf war in 1991. Mr. Burkett said he worked on Defense Department projects for Boeing and, because the Texas Guard could not pay his civilian rate of $154 an hour, was commissioned a lieutenant colonel to revamp the Guard in 1996.
He clashed with General James, who, he later said, was the official whom he overheard and saw directing the censoring of the files at the behest of the governor's top advisers. The Guard gave him an assignment in Panama, where he contracted a tropical disease.
In letters to state legislators and a later suit, he said he collapsed at the Abilene airport in 1998 and was "willfully and maliciously" denied military medical care by Guard officials, worsening his condition. Before finally obtaining medical benefits in July 1998, he had a nervous breakdown and was hospitalized for depression, he told The Times.
An appeals court dismissed his suit in August 2002 because commanders enjoy broad legal immunity from their troops.
David D. Kirkpatrick contributed reporting from Baird, Tex., for this article.
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#237646 - 09/16/04 11:08 AM
Re: Bush was AWOL? : (The CBS "papers")
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ExpandedMInd
Member
Registered: 03/22/02
Posts: 1633
Loc: Denver, Colorado
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Rather, in the best tradition of stonewalling and doublespeak, now has changed the term "authentic" to "accurate" regarding the infamous documents. More obfuscation and backpedaling will follow. Meanwhile, CBS news ratings have dropped to last place, behind reruns of "The Simpsons."
Elvis is dead, and Rather doesn't feel so good either.
The most amazing thing about this turn of events is that Rather maintains that an elderly typist's 35 year-old hearsay evidence against Bush is "more interesting" than document forgery used in an attmept to influence a naional election.
This is due to Rather's mistake (along with many on the Left) in thinking that Bush's service or non-service in the National Guard will influence the vote of many Americans, the same Americans who twice elected a draft dodger in the '90s.
This issue had no legs when Bush ran in 2000, and it certainly will not have legs when he is running as an incumbent, with a record as president which can be judged.
Pat Caddell (long-time Democrat advisor) said something important last night. He said that elections are not a referendum on the incumbent, rather (sorry), they are a referendum on the challenger. He also said Rather and the Kerry campaign team are destroying the Democrat party.
EM 
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Question for my Socialist friends: Why are others bound to do for you what you won't do for yourselves?
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#237647 - 09/16/04 11:12 AM
Re: Bush was AWOL? : (The CBS "papers")
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Rick Donaldson
Time Traveler
Senior Investigator
Registered: 05/04/01
Posts: 6985
Loc: Colorado Springs
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The final nail....
The Real Military Record of George W. Bush: Not Heroic, but Not AWOL, Either
George Magazine | Peter Keating and Karthik Thyagarajan | Peter Keating and Karthik Thyagarajan
The Real Military Record of George W. Bush: Not Heroic, but Not AWOL, Either
The Real Military Record of George W. Bush: Not Heroic, but Not AWOL, Either By Peter Keating and Karthik Thyagarajan
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For more than a year, controversy about George W. Bush's Air National Guard record has bubbled through the press. Interest in the topic has spiked in recent days, as at least two websites have launched stories essentially calling Bush AWOL in 1972 and 1973. For example, in "Finally, the Truth about Bush's Military Record" on TomPaine.com, Marty Heldt writes, "Bush's long absence from the records comes to an end one week after he failed to comply with an order to attend 'Annual Active Duty Training' starting at the end of May 1973... Nothing indicates in the records that he ever made up the time he missed." And in Bush's Military Record Reveals Grounding and Absence for Two Full Years" on Democrats.com, Robert A. Rogers states: "Bush never actually reported in person for the last two years of his service - in direct violation of two separate written orders."
Neither is correct.
It's time to set the record straight. The following analysis, which relies on National Guard documents, extensive interviews with military officials and previously unpublished evidence of Bush's whereabouts in the summer and fall of 1972, is the first full chronology of Bush's military record. Its basic conclusions: Bush may have received favorable treatment to get into the Guard, served irregularly after the spring of 1972 and got an expedited discharge, but he did accumulate the days of service required of him for his ultimate honorable discharge.
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
At the Republican convention in Philadelphia, George W. Bush declared: "Our military is low on parts, pay and morale. If called on by the commander-in-chief today, two entire divisions of the Army would have to report, 'Not ready for duty, sir.'" Bush says he is the candidate who can "rebuild our military and prepare our armed forces for the future." On what direct military experience does he make such claims?
George W. Bush applied to join the Texas Air National Guard on May 27, 1968, less than two weeks before he graduated from Yale University. The country was at war in Vietnam, and at that time, just months after the bloody Tet Offensive, an estimated 100,000 Americans were on waiting lists to join Guard units across the country. Bush was sworn in on the day he applied.
Ben Barnes, former speaker of the Texas House of Representatives, stated in September 1999 that in late 1967 or early 1968, he asked a senior official in the Texas Air National Guard to help Bush get into the Guard as a pilot. Barnes said he did so at the behest of Sidney Adger, a Houston businessman and friend of former President George H. W. Bush, then a Texas congressman. Despite Barnes's admission, former President Bush has denied pulling strings for his son, and retired Colonel Walter Staudt, George W. Bush's first commander, insists: "There was no special treatment."
The younger Bush fulfilled two years of active duty and completed pilot training in June 1970. During that time and in the two years that followed, Bush flew the F-102, an interceptor jet equipped with heat-seeking missiles that could shoot down enemy planes. His commanding officers and peers regarded Bush as a competent pilot and enthusiastic Guard member. In March 1970, the Texas Air National Guard issued a press release trumpeting his performance: "Lt. Bush recently became the first Houston pilot to be trained by the 147th [Fighter Group] and to solo in the F-102... Lt. Bush said his father was just as excited and enthusiastic about his solo flight as he was." In Bush's evaluation for the period May 1, 1971 through April 30, 1972, then-Colonel Bobby Hodges, his commanding officer, stated, "I have personally observed his participation, and without exception, his performance has been noteworthy." In the spring of 1972, however, National Guard records show a sudden dropoff in Bush's military activity. Though trained as a pilot at considerable government expense, Bush stopped flying in April 1972 and never flew for the Guard again.
Around that time, Bush decided to go to work for Winton "Red" Blount, a Republican running for the U.S. Senate, in Alabama. Documents from Ellington Air Force Base in Houston state that Bush "cleared this base on 15 May." Shortly afterward, he applied for assignment to the 9921st Air Reserve Squadron in Montgomery, Ala., a unit that required minimal duty and offered no pay. Although that unit's commander was willing to welcome him, on May 31 higher-ups at the Air Reserve Personnel Center in Denver rejected Bush's request to serve at the 9921st, because it did not offer duty equivalent to his service in Texas. "[A]n obligated Reservist [in this case, Bush] can be assigned to a specific Ready Reserve position only," noted the disapproval memo, a copy of which was sent to Bush. "Therefore, he is ineligible for assignment to an Air Reserve Squadron."
Despite the military's decision, Bush moved to Alabama. Records obtained by Georegemag.com show that the Blount Senate campaign paid Bush about $900 a month from mid-May through mid-November to do advance work and organize events. Neither Bush's annual evaluation nor the Air National Guard's overall chronological listing of his service contain any evidence that he performed Guard duties during that summer.
On or around his 27th birthday, July 6, 1972, Bush did not take his required annual medical exam at his Texas unit. As a consequence, he was suspended from flying military jets. Bush spokesperson Dan Bartlett told Georgemag.com: "You take that exam because you are flying, and he was not flying. The paperwork uses the phrase 'suspended from flying,' but he had no intention of flying at that time."
Some media reports have speculated that Bush took and failed his physical, or that he was grounded as a result of substance abuse. Bush's vagueness on the subject of his past drug use has only abetted such rumors. Bush's commanding officer in Texas, however, denies the charges. "His flying status was suspended because he didn't take the exam,not because he couldn't pass," says Hodges. Asked whether Bush was ever disciplined for using alcohol or illicit drugs, Hodges replied: "No."
On September 5, Bush wrote to then-Colonel Jerry Killian at his original unit in Texas, requesting permission to serve with the 187th Tactical Reconnaisance Group, another Alabama-based unit. "This duty would be for the months of September, October, and November," wrote Bush.
This time his request was approved: 10 days later, the Alabama Guard ordered Bush to report to then-Lieutenant Colonel William Turnipseed at Dannelly Air Force Base in Montgomery on October 7th and 8th. The memo noted that "Lieutenant Bush will not be able to satisfy his flight requirements with our group," since the 187th did not fly F-102s.
The question of whether Bush ever actually served in Alabama has become an issue in the 2000 campaign-the Air Force Times recently reported that "the GOP is trying to locate people who served with Bush in late 1972 ... to see if they can confirm that Bush briefly served with the Alabama Air National Guard." Bush's records contain no evidence that he reported to Dannelly in October. And in telephone interviews with Georgemag.com, neither Turnipseed, Bush's commanding officer, nor Kenneth Lott, then chief personnel officer of the 187th, remembered Bush serving with their unit. "I don't think he showed up," Turnipseed said.
Bush maintains he did serve in Alabama. "Governor Bush specifically remembers pulling duty in Montgomery and respectfully disagrees with the Colonel," says Bartlett. "There's no question it wasn't memorable, because he wasn't flying." In July, the Decatur Daily reported that two former Blount campaign workers recall Bush serving in the Alabama Air National Guard in the fall of 1972. "I remember he actually came back to Alabama for about a week to 10 days several weeks after the campaign was over to complete his Guard duty in the state," stated Emily Martin, a former Alabama resident who said she dated Bush during the time he spent in that state.
After the 1972 election, which Blount lost, Bush moved back to Houston and subsequently began working at P.U.L.L., a community service center for disadvantaged youths. This period of time has also become a matter of controversy, because even though Bush's original unit had been placed on alert duty in October 1972, his superiors in Texas lost track of his whereabouts. On May 2, 1973, Bush's squadron leader in the 147th, Lieutenant Colonel William Harris, Jr. wrote: "Lt. Bush has not been observed at this unit" for the past year. Harris incorrectly assumed that Bush had been reporting for duty in Alabama all along. He wrote that Bush "has been performing equivalent training in a non-flying status with the 187 Tac Recon Gp, Dannelly ANG Base, Alabama." Base commander Hodges says of Bush's return to Texas: "All I remember is someone saying he came back and made up his days."
Two documents obtained by Georgemag.com indicate that Bush did make up the time he missed during the summer and autumn of 1972. One is an April 23, 1973 order for Bush to report to annual active duty training the following month; the other is an Air National Guard statement of days served by Bush that is torn and undated but contains entries that correspond to the first. Taken together, they appear to establish that Bush reported for duty on nine occasions between November 29, 1972-when he could have been in Alabama-and May 24, 1973. Bush still wasn't flying, but over this span, he did earn nine points of National Guard service from days of active duty and 32 from inactive duty. When added to the 15 so-called "gratuitous" points that every member of the Guard got per year, Bush accumulated 56 points, more than the 50 that he needed by the end of May 1973 to maintain his standing as a Guardsman.
On May 1, Bush was ordered to report for further active duty training, and documents show that he proceeded to cram in another 10 sessions over the next two months. Ultimately, he racked up 19 active duty points of service and 16 inactive duty points by July 30-which, added to his 15 gratuitous points, achieved the requisite total of 50 for the year ending in May 1974.
On October 1, 1973, First Lieutenant George W. Bush received an early honorable discharge so that he could attend Harvard Business School. He was credited with five years, four months and five days of service toward his six-year service obligation.
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------- TALK ABOUT this story in the CAMPAIGN 2000 FORUM.
April: Bush's last reported flying mission.
May 15: Bush clears Ellington AFB.
May 24: Bush applies to 9921st Reserve Squadron, AL. View documentation
May 27: 9921st approves application, welcomes Bush. View documentation
May 31: Air Reserve Personnel Center denies application. View documentation
August 1: Bush flight suspension due to "failure to accomplish medical exam." View documentation
September 5: Bush applies for 3-month duty at 187th Tac Recon, AL. View documentation
September 15: 187th approves Bush's application. View documentation
November-May (1973): Record of Bush service: 56 points. View documentation
April 23: Texas ANG orders Bush to attend annual active duty training. View documentation
April 30: Ellington AFB unable to evaluate Bush. View documentation
May-July: Record of Bush service: 50 points. View documentation
October 1: Bush granted early honorable discharge. View documentation
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Chronological listing of Bush's service. View documentation
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#237648 - 09/16/04 11:21 AM
Re: Bush was AWOL? : (The CBS "papers")
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Rick Donaldson
Time Traveler
Senior Investigator
Registered: 05/04/01
Posts: 6985
Loc: Colorado Springs
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CBS: GUARDSMAN, NOT DEMS, SOURCE OF FORGED DOCS
Newsmax ^ | 9/16/04
CBS is trying to pin the Rathergate forgery rap on former National Guard officer Bill Burkett - who has no prominent ties to the Kerry campaign or the Democratic Party.
According to the New York Times, as CBS was preparing to admit that documents aired by news star Dan Rather might have been fabricated, "a person at the network named Mr. Burkett as a source of records critical of Mr. Bush's Vietnam era service that CBS said last week came from the personal files of Lieutenant Bush's squadron commander, Lt. Col. Jerry B. Killian."
So far Burkett has not responded. And he rebuffed a Times reporter who showed up at his Baird, Texas ranch yesterday.
But the former Guardsman's San Antonio lawyer, David Van Os, told the Times, "The possibility that Bill Burkett would falsify documents or falsify any story is zero."
The paper inexplicably characterized Os's denial as a refusal to answer.
Burkett, however, has been complaining for years that he saw documents from President Bush's National Guard file being tossed in the trash in 1997, with top Bush aide Joe Albaugh allegedly overseeing the file clean-up.
In the last weeks of the 2000 election, he went public with his story for the first time - but failed to produce any records, forged or otherwise, to back it up.
When Democratic National Committee chairman Terry McAuliffe resurrected the Bush Guard story last February, Burkett was in the spotlight again.
He told the Dallas Morning News that Allbaugh ordered the National Guard chief in Texas to get the Bush file and make certain "there's not anything there that will embarrass the governor."
A few days later, said Burkett, he saw Bush's file and documents from it discarded in a trash can. He said he recognized the documents as retirement point summaries and pay forms.
But he made no mention at the time of any memo from Bush's commander, Lt. Col. Killian, who, in the Rathergate forgery, complained about orders to "sugacoat" Bush records.
Unnoted in today's Times report fingering Burkett was the most telling non-denial to surface so far in the Rathergate imbroglio - a refusal by an unnamed senior CBS executive to deny that Rather got the Killian forgery from the Kerry campaign.
According to Sunday's New York Post, the network exec said he "couldn't answer that question," then hung up.
Also overlooked - an intriguing detail cited repeatedly over the last two days by radio host Sean Hannity from Saturday's Dallas Morning News report on Rathergate.
"Earlier this year," reported the paper, "Kerry aides raised the exact points the memo seemed to address."
The evidence of a Kerry connection may be scant so far - but it's a whole lot more persuasive then efforts by the Times and CBS to turn Bill Burkett into Rathergate's fallguy.
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#237649 - 09/16/04 12:19 PM
Re: Bush was AWOL? : (The CBS "papers")
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Star*Man
Member
Registered: 07/13/01
Posts: 607
Loc: Lexington, KY
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quote:
"I know that I didn't type them," Knox said of the Killian memos. "However, the information in there is correct," she said, adding that Killian and the other officers would "snicker about what [Bush] was getting away with."
Rather said he was "relieved and pleased" by Knox's comments that the disputed memos reflected Killian's view of the favorable treatment that Bush received in the military unit. But he said, "I take very seriously her belief that the documents are not authentic." If Knox is right, Rather said, the public "won't hear about it from a spokesman. They'll learn it from me."
David thanks for posting the story, I was going to, but I think the above seems to be getting lost in the frey. Maybe we should start a separate thread to discuss the truth spoken in the memo and let this thread continue to the authenticity of said memo's.
Jim
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#237651 - 09/16/04 12:51 PM
Re: Bush was AWOL? : (The CBS "papers")
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INVICTUS
Member
Registered: 03/29/04
Posts: 3112
Loc: USA
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quote:
Originally posted by Star*Man:
Maybe we should start a separate thread to discuss the truth spoken in the memo and let this thread continue to the authenticity of said memo's.
Sure, why not. The only reason not to start a new thread is that regardless of this topic George W. Bush is going to be re-elected the the Presidency. Kerry is dead meat, and he cooked his own goose because he has nothng to stand upon but the trumped up negatives of another human being.
He's a despicable bald faced liar unfit for command.
This has just about nothing to do with Kerry's very limited qualifications to lead the country in a time of war.
As a matter of fact why don't ya'll start a thread about how he ditched his "Band of Brothers" in Vietnam, came back Stateside and disgaced their sacrifices by calling them murderers, rapists and general all-purpose war criminals. Then he coerced other vets to lie about their experiences to build upon the Communist myth that he espouses to this day.
I think we could also look at Kerry's service record in detail and find he may have shirked his duty to the country.
Besides all that, John Kerry has admitted that he is a Vietnam war crimminal. And some of you want him for President? How insane is that!
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#237652 - 09/16/04 01:25 PM
Re: Bush was AWOL? : (The CBS "papers")
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Star*Man
Member
Registered: 07/13/01
Posts: 607
Loc: Lexington, KY
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Skptk, I am speaking about the long dead Officers Secretary, who in the article believes they are faked documents, but also states: What is actually written in them about Bush is exactly how he felt about him during his service. In other words she believes they are fake, but they state the truth about how the commander felt about Bush and his service. What a conundrum don't you think.
That Truth.
quote:
Sure, why not. The only reason not to start a new thread is that regardless of this topic George W. Bush is going to be re-elected the the Presidency. Kerry is dead meat, and he cooked his own goose because he has nothng to stand upon but the trumped up negatives of another human being.
Sean, of course I am not going to vote for Bush, however I am a realist. I know that given everything that is going on in this world today when it comes down to the vote on Nov 2nd, Bush will most likely be re-elected by popular as well as electoral this time.
Don't like it but in my heart of hearts I know the one thing he has going for him is the Current War we are in and I don't think things can get bad enough before the election for people to lose faith in him as president.
I dont' want things to get bad either, but they are going to get much worse over there. Not sure if it is going to make much difference who is in office when it comes to what this world is facing. My opinion only
I dont see Kerry's negatives as any worse than Bush's. Remember he was a medocre prez with no mandate, spending 40% of his time on vacation prior to 9/11. He is a one issue President and that is War. He said that not me, Remember. "I am the war president".
Many people are suffering here is this country and many, many things are going to hell in a hand basket as we "mostly alone" sacrific our troops and our treasury in Iraq. We can argue all day if this war was right at this time.
Iraq casuality count
Bush has been given an Intelligence review of an outlook in the continuing war in Iraq, doesn't look good. He made a very big mistake rushing into a war with no strategy to win the peace after and I know you have probably read it already so I won't post it, it is out all over the internet today.
Going back to CBS if they knowingly used faked memo's then they deserve everything they get, however isn't it funny the body of the memo has been backed up as the true sentiment of the Commander who supposedly wrote it by the one person who should know. Soon after the fakery has been proven one way or the other...it will get back to that.
Jim
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#237653 - 09/16/04 01:45 PM
Re: Bush was AWOL? : (The CBS "papers")
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Star*Man
Member
Registered: 07/13/01
Posts: 607
Loc: Lexington, KY
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I did want to back up my pervious post about Bush making hugh mistakes on Iraq that have cost us over 1000 American lives, many more thousands civilians in Iraq and of course 200 billion and counting. This is from the story about the intelligence review Bush was given in July.
Since then he has mentioned many times, we need to stay the course.
quote:
Hagel, Committee Chairman Richard Lugar, R-Ind., and other committee members have long argued - even before the war - that administration plans for rebuilding Iraq were inadequate and based on overly optimistic assumptions that Americans would be greeted as liberators.
But the criticism from the panel's top Republicans had an extra sting coming less than seven weeks before the U.S. presidential election in which Bush's handling of the war is a top issue.
``Our committee heard blindly optimistic people from the administration prior to the war and people outside the administration - what I call the 'dancing in the street crowd' - that we just simply will be greeted with open arms,'' Lugar said. ``The nonsense of all of that is apparent. The lack of planning is apparent.''
He said the need to shift the reconstruction funds was clear in July, but the administration was slow to make the request.
Its worse than we are told.
I think the way it worked was, anyone who questioned the Neo-cons and their plans for Iraq were somehow made irrelevent. Too Bad.
Jim
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