From: "Brooks Gregory" <[email protected]>
Newsgroups: talk.politics.misc,alt.politics.bush,alt.politics.liberalism,alt.fan.rush-limbaugh,alt.rush-limbaugh,alt.politics.gw-bush,alt.politics
References: <[email protected]> <[email protected]> <[email protected]> <[email protected]> <[email protected]> <[email protected]> <[email protected]>
Subject: Re: Did Bush Desert Or Was He Absent Without Leave?
Lines: 82
Organization: Phase10 Political Consultants (Retired)
X-Priority: 3
X-MSMail-Priority: Normal
X-Newsreader: Microsoft Outlook Express 6.00.2800.1158
X-MimeOLE: Produced By Microsoft MimeOLE V6.00.2800.1165
Message-ID: <[email protected]>
X-Complaints-To: [email protected]
X-Complaints-Info: Please be sure to forward a copy of ALL headers otherwise we will be unable to process your complaint properly.
Date: Wed, 28 Jan 2004 16:27:57 GMT
"George" <[email protected]> wrote in message
news:[email protected]...
>
> <Fair and Balanced Hyco-Limbaugh Fart Detector> wrote in message
> news:[email protected]...
> > On Wed, 28 Jan 2004 05:52:11 GMT, "Daniel"
> > <[email protected]> wrote:
> >
> > >
> > >"Postpartisan-Libertarian" <[email protected]> wrote in message
> > >news:[email protected]...
> > >>
> > >> "Daniel" <[email protected]> wrote in message
> > >> news:[email protected]...
> > >> >
> > >> > "Jeremiah" <[email protected]> wrote in message
> > >> > news:[email protected]...
> > >> > > It's funny that he "didn't" fly and then was quietly absent from
duty
just
> > >> > > about the time that the first drug tests were mandated. If
Clinton,
who
I
> > >> > > don't like, was a "draft dodging communist" than Bush was a
"deserter,"
no
> > >> > > matter what the legal definition was at the time.
> > >> >
> > >> >
> > >> > too bad his Honorable Discharge says otherwise.
> > >> The facts of the matter speak for themselves
> > >
> > >i know, his Honorable Discharge DOES speak for itself.
> > >
> > >
> > so do knighthoods that you buy
This is part that these jerks don't seem to understand. Just how many
individual, honest, hardworking true American GIs are involved in signing
off on ones' discharge. It is a disgrace that anyone would slander those
guys just to try to make someone think they got bought off in order to give
some fellow they would only know as a serial number an Honorable Discharge.
These jerks should be ignored for the shameless bastards they are. They are
traitorous, treasonous bastards that have no bearing on what true Americans
believe.
When all of this crap began back in 1999, I was a political consultant for
several Democratic candidates, as well as later being a senior consultant
for Janet Reno in her run for Governor. I bought the document package from
Marty Heldt and we subjected them to the most thorough investigation one
could imagine. Why? Because if there was anything there, we damn sure wanted
to use it. But guess what? Only two of those documents proved to be
authentic and they were not even related to the charge being levelled. Many
of them are so blatant in their alterations it is almost funny. Several
purport to be signed by real live military personnel, yet they don't even
know the proper format for a military date.
These jerks push this kind of crap because they are worthless and know it,
suffering a guilt complex because of their own failures and just plain
ignorant of the ways of military affairs. They hurt us Democrats in the last
cycle because it just made it look like we would lie and cheat and commit
fraud and anything else it took to get our people elected. Voters are
smarter than that.
So, I say, don't worry about it. It failed last time around and it will
again. Slandering those guys that put their lives on the line to do that
which they swear an oath to do, "obey the orders of their Commander in
Chief" has never worked, and never will.
--
In politics, it's a very simple concept.
If you don't vote, you don't count.
Brooks Gregory
Alleged CBS Source May Carry Old Grudge Against Bush
(CNSNews.com) - The suspected source behind the CBS News "60 Minutes 2" segment on President Bush's National Guard service has spent the past six years lobbing accusations at Bush and his aides for allegedly tampering with military records.
Retired Texas National Guard Lt. Col. Bill Burkett has been identified by Newsweek magazine as a "principle source" for the Sept. 8 segment that purportedly showed National Guard records casting a negative light on Bush's performance with the Guard in the early 1970s.
Since the CBS report anchored by Dan Rather aired, many typographical experts have pointed to problems with the documents and the network itself has come under attack for possibly using forgeries as the foundation of its report.
Burkett has a long history with Bush, dating back to Bush's 1998 gubernatorial re-election campaign in Texas. After retiring from the Guard in January 1998 for medical reasons, Burkett accused the governor's aides of improperly inspecting Bush's records for anything embarrassing.
Similar charges surfaced in the days before the 2000 presidential election. At the time, Burkett said Bush's aides had searched military documents to resolve any conflicts between Bush's service and the account of his National Guard service in his biography.
The allegations became the subject of Burkett's 1,800 word article in March 2003, published by Veterans for Peace. It accused Bush of sending Burkett on a military assignment to Panama in retaliation for Burkett's refusal to alter Bush's official military personnel records. Burkett, who became ill after the trip, later said he had "overstated" his accusation.
Then, this February, after Democratic Party Chairman Terry McAuliffe broached the issue of Bush's record, Burkett reappeared with charges that he had overheard Bush's former gubernatorial chief of staff Joe Allbaugh in 1997 request that the Texas National Guard scrub Bush's files.
Newsweek's report this week noted that CBS News sent producer Mary Mapes to Texas to interview Burkett, who lives in Baird, about 25 miles from Abilene. CBS News has refused to reveal the source of the four pages of documents. Burkett didn't return a call or e-mail message from CNSNews.com on Monday.
The "60 Minutes 2" documents paint a picture of Bush as someone who was afforded special treatment during his National Guard service. One document also claims Bush refused an order by failing to report for a medical examination.
Shortly after the "60 Minutes" show ended Wednesday night, questions about the documents' modern typographical features and strange military lingo began circulating on the Internet. CNSNews.com was the first news organization to report the documents might be forgeries.
On Friday's "CBS Evening News," anchor Dan Rather downplayed questions about the documents. He maintained they were authentic, yet wouldn't reveal the source of the records.
Although Newsweek didn't confirm that Burkett supplied the documents to CBS News, the magazine speculated that Burkett "may have had access to any Guard records that, in a friend's words, 'didn't make it to the shredder.'"
If Burkett is in fact the source of the Newsweek article, it would mark his latest volley in a six-year effort to raise questions about Bush's Guard records. Burkett has actively opposed Bush since January 1998, when the former returned from a military assignment in Panama, according to his March 2003 article. While in Panama he said he contracted a deadly case of meningoencephalitis.
"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]," Burkett wrote.
"George W. Bush and his lieutenants were mad," he continued. "They ordered that I not be accessed to emergency medical care services, healthcare benefits I earned by my official duty; and I was withheld from medical care for 154 days before I was withdrawn from Texas responsibility by the Department of the Army, by order of the White House."
In the article, Burkett describes himself as a "pawn" in the middle of a political struggle. He refers to Bush as a man who "would do anything to be 'king' of America."
After seeking the help of state Sen. Gonzalo Barrientos and state Rep. Bob Hunter, Burkett received his medical benefits in July 1998.
It was in his 1998 letter to Barrientos that Burkett raised the issue of Bush's records and also complained of ''severe retaliation'' from Gen. Daniel James III, then-head of the Texas National Guard, according to a New York Times article from February of this year. James now directs the Air National Guard.
Barrientos' spokesman, Ray Perez, told CNSNews.com the state senator was unable to locate Burkett's 1998 letter after receiving a request from the New York Times in February.
Hunter, meanwhile, recalled Burkett as "disgruntled" about the National Guard. He said he was pleased to help him get his medical benefits, but he put no stock in his charges against Bush primarily because they weren't raised until after the re-election campaign was underway.
"If he had felt so strongly about that, if he was so upset about the people who worked there, we all thought he would have certainly brought that matter up," Hunter told CNSNews.com. "That's why we could hardly believe it coming up after [Bush's] campaign started."
Regardless of his motives, Burkett has found sympathizers among liberals and Bush critics. Salon.com has mentioned him four times since February, including a lengthy question-and-answer interview. Burkett was also featured in James Moore's "Bush's War for Re-election."
While none of Burkett's allegations has ever been proven -- Allbaugh, James and other Bush aides have denied the charges -- he also suffered a setback earlier this year when a former ally in the Guard, George Conn, distanced himself from the accusations.
CBS Guard Documents Traced to Tex. Kinko's
Records Reportedly Faxed From Abilene
By Michael Dobbs
Washington Post Staff Writer
Thursday, September 16, 2004; Page A06
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.
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, 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.
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.
Strong's comments came as 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, while acknowledging "a ferocious debate about these documents."
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 Maj. Gen. Daniel James have strongly denied the allegations.
Suspicions that Burkett could have been a source for the CBS documents first surfaced earlier this week when Newsweek magazine reported that Mapes flew to Texas to interview him over the summer. Yesterday, the New York Times reported that a CBS staffer, speaking on condition of anonymity, confirmed that Burkett was a source for the "60 Minutes" report but "did not know the exact role he played."
Yesterday reporters from several news organizations were camped near Blair, Tex., outside Burkett's home, which is on a working ranch, with a gate barring access to a one-story farmhouse and a pickup truck outside. At 6 p.m. Central Time, Burkett walked to the gate on his cane with a black dog by his side to collect his mail. He refused to answer questions over whether he provided the documents to CBS.
"Get out my way," he told the reporters. "You need to go home."
Earlier this year, Burkett gave interviews to numerous news outlets, including The Washington Post, 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.
Like CBS News, USA Today has declined to name the source of its memos on the grounds of confidentiality.
Burkett, who served with the Texas National Guard in an administrative capacity before his 1998 retirement, has been involved in a bitter dispute with the Guard over medical benefits after suffering from a tropical disease following a military assignment to Panama. He has told reporters that he suffered a nervous breakdown and was hospitalized for depression after he left the Guard.
Burkett has provided different accounts of exactly what Bush records he allegedly saw in the trash can at Camp Mabry. At times, he has described them as "payroll-type documents" and performance assessments. But in an Aug. 14 posting to a Web log, www.steveverdon.com, he said he saw "a two-page counseling statement" signed by Lt. Col. Jerry Killian, the officer named by "60 Minutes" as the author of its Bush memos.
Author James Moore, who relied on Burkett as a primary source for a book attacking Bush as having wriggled out of his Guard service, said in an interview yesterday that he did not think Burkett provided the memos to CBS. "His life is complicated enough already, and I don't why he would make further complications for himself," Moore said.
On Capitol Hill, meanwhile, 39 Republican House members, led by Majority Whip Roy Blunt (Mo.), 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, Rep. Christopher Cox (R-Calif.), citing reports in The Post and the Dallas Morning News, 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, Rep. Joe Barton (R-Tex.), rejected the request, saying that the oversight of network news should be left to the viewing public and news media.
In a related development, White House press secretary Scott McClellan hinted that more documents regarding Bush's National Guard service may soon be released. Asked whether officials in the White House have seen unreleased documents, McClellan called that "a very real possibility." Other officials with knowledge of the situation said more documents had indeed been uncovered and would be released in the coming days.
Staff writers Howard Kurtz and Dana Milbank in Washington and Sylvia Moreno in Baird, Tex., contributed to this report.
© 2004 The Washington Post Company
September 16, 2004
Ex-Guardsman Is Said to Be a CBS Source[/url]
By 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.
NEW KERRY MEDAL FLAP
September 15, 2004 -- A newly surfaced document from John Kerry's Navy record says he shot a lone, wounded enemy who was running away in the incident that led to his Silver Star, his highest military decoration.
Members of the anti-Kerry Swift Boat Veterans for Truth say the report vindicates their claim that Kerry didn't show the kind of valor that merits a Silver Star. The after-action report was obtained from the Navy archives by syndicated TV commentator Mark Hyman of "The Point." A Navy official confirmed its authenticity.
John O'Neill, a leader of the Swift Vets running anti-Kerry TV ads, said the document shows Kerry "was pursuing a wounded man and not charging alone into superior numbers and intense fire," as his Silver Star citation claims.
Deborah Orin
Now, another voice - a credible voice - has entered the debate. Killian's secretary, Marian Carr Knox, describes herself as Killian's "right hand" during much of the 1970s. . . .
Knox is 86 years old, and completely comfortable in the eye of a storm. Now, she wants to set the record straight about the memos that CBS News obtained.
Knox says she didn’t type these memos, but she says she did type ones that contained the same information.
“I know that I didn’t type them," says Knox. "However, the information in those is correct.”
"I know that I didn't type them," says Knox. "However, the information in those is correct."
cbs introduces the sources who came forward with the ang and killian documents at the press conference. documents are proven to be legit.
i am not saying that this is what will happen. but, i am curious what the the response of the republican members of our discussion here will be if it does happen.
i don't bring this up in a confrontational tone, btw.
this a reposting. not trying to be a nudge, just thought it may have been missed
How about this? Kerry gets elected, and two years later is impeached for this conspiracy, a la Nixon and Watergate?
Actually, the odds of Kerry being elected are sinking further every day.....
August was rough for Kerry. September ain't shapin' up much better. I damned near feel sorry for the goof. I sorta do feel sorry for the folks who thought he was someone to lead them to victory. The way things are goin' now, The Democrats will get over this year's election in about a generation ... if they don't screw anything else up for themselves.
Nah, Timber. If the moron gets re-elected...the whole country will be screwed for much more than a generation.
... I have found no documentation from LTC Killian's hand or staff that indicate that this unit was involved in any complicit way to either cover for the failures of 1LT Bush, or to provide him pay or certification for training not completed. On the contrary, LTC Killians' remarks are rare, indeed ...
... especially considering that 1LT Bush was known clearly as a congressman's son and had utilized his position as such, to gain a favor of his failure to train while in Alabama. I have to believe that earning that favor was completed by false pretenses also due to LTC Killian's officer evaluation comment.
Documentation of complicitous activity may have surfaced within the flurry of drill training activity following the Alabama period. The exact and irrefutable evidence of such is not convincing, yet to me based upon a review of the same records, though there are serious changes within the methodology employed both at the unit and at State headquarters for 1LT Bush. It could be argued that this could have occurred by a wake up call at all levels sounded by LTC Killians comments and the justifications he would have been required at higher levels of command to make such comments.
The former secretary for the Texas Air National Guard officer who supposedly wrote memos critical of President Bush's Guard service said Tuesday that the documents are fake but that they reflect documents that once existed.
Marian Carr Knox, who worked from 1957 to 1979 at Ellington Air Force Base in Houston, said that she prided herself on meticulous typing and that the memos first disclosed by CBS News last week were not her work.
"These are not real," she told The Dallas Morning News after examining copies of the disputed memos for the first time. "They're not what I typed, and I would have typed them for him."
Mrs. Knox, 86, who spoke with precise recollection about dates, people and events, said, "I remember very vividly when Bush was there and all the yak-yak that was going on about it."
She added that she does not support Mr. Bush as president, deeming him "unfit for office" and "selected, not elected."
* * *
She said that although she did not recall typing the memos reported by CBS News, they accurately reflect the viewpoints of Col. Killian and documents that would have been in the personal file. Also, she said she didn't know whether the CBS documents corresponded memo for memo with that file.
"The information in here was correct, but it was picked up from the real ones," she said. "I probably typed the information and somebody picked up the information some way or another."
Mrs. Knox said that she didn't recall typing a Killian memo alleging that a commander, Col. Walter "Buck" Staudt, was pressuring officers to "sugar coat" Mr. Bush's record. But, she said, such a portrayal of Col. Staudt was consistent with his character and Col. Killian's opinion of his superior officer.
