Bush AWOL documents fake?

Parallels Drawn Between CBS Memos, Texan's Postings
washingtonpost.com
Parallels Drawn Between CBS Memos, Texan's Postings
By Michael Dobbs
Washington Post Staff Writer
Saturday, September 18, 2004; Page A02

The former Texas National Guard officer suspected of providing CBS News with possibly forged records on President Bush's military service called on Democratic activists to wage "war" against Republican "dirty tricks" in a series of Internet postings in which he also used phrases similar to several employed in the disputed documents.

Retired Lt. Col. Bill Burkett, who earlier said he overheard Bush aides conspiring with the commander of the Texas National Guard to "sanitize" the president's military records, has refused to comment on reports that he could be CBS's confidential source. In e-mails yesterday to The Washington Post, he said he would speak out "at the appropriate time" but "that time is not now."

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

In another message, dated Sept. 4, Burkett hinted he might have had advance knowledge of some details in an explosive segment that aired Sept. 8 on CBS's "60 Minutes." In addition to airing footage of an interview with former Texas lieutenant governor Ben Barnes saying he helped Bush get into the Guard, the network broadcast documents purporting to show that Bush had disobeyed a direct order to take a physical required to continue flying in the spring of 1972.

"I believe that Bush knows that there is more coming out than Ben Barnes," Burkett wrote. "No proof, just gut instinct."

In another development, the Los Angeles Times reported that an Atlanta lawyer with conservative Republican connections posted the first Web log entry questioning the authenticity of the CBS documents less than four hours after the initial broadcast on "60 Minutes." The paper identified Harry W. MacDougald as the "Buckhead," who became a hero of conservative Web sites after pointing out technical problems with the documents, such as fonts and proportionate spacing.

MacDougald declined to say how he learned about the problems with the documents so early. In addition to being released by CBS, copies of the documents were e-mailed by the White House to reporters as "60 Minutes" went on the air.[/u]

For his part, Burkett said in an Aug. 25 posting to a different Web site, Online Journal, that he and other researchers had "reassembled" files showing that Bush did not fulfill his oath to obey his superior officers. It was not clear from the context of the message, however, whether he was referring to records that have dribbled out of the White House and the Pentagon in response to Freedom of Information Act requests or to previously unpublished documents.

Yesterday, the Pentagon released more records of Bush's service with the Texas National Guard, two days after a Texas Guard official told The Post that no new documents had been discovered. The records showed that Bush's father, who was then a Republican congressman from Houston, thanked his son's commander for taking a personal "interest in a brand new Air Force trainee."

Burkett, who worked at the Austin headquarters of the Texas Guard before his retirement in 1998, has said he saw some of the younger Bush's records in a trash can when Bush was preparing to run for reelection as governor of Texas. Guard officials have called his assertion fictitious.

CBS News has refused to identify the person who provided "60 Minutes" with records purporting to show that Bush received preferential treatment from his commanders when he moved from Texas to Alabama in 1972 to take part in a political campaign and was suspended from flying for failing to take a physical. But in an interview published yesterday in the New York Observer, CBS News anchor Dan Rather gave details about his source that fit with known details about Burkett.

Rather described his source as a man who said he, along with his family, has been harassed and threatened by political operatives. In interviews with journalists over the past few years, Burkett complained about receiving threatening phone calls at home, as well as a bullet with his name on it in his mailbox.

Another retired Guard officer who was interviewed for "60 Minutes," Robert Strong, said earlier this week that Rather showed him copies of new Guard records on Bush that bore markings showing that they had been faxed from a Kinko's copy shop in Abilene, Tex., 21 miles from Burkett's home in Baird.

The CBS documents include several phrases that crop up in Web logs signed by Burkett, including "run interference," and references to a pilot's "billet." Former Air National Guard officers have pointed out that "billet" is an Army expression, not an Air Force one. Burkett has also used the expression "cover your six," a military variant of the vulgar abbreviation "CYA," which appears in one of the CBS documents.

In an Aug. 21 posting, Burkett referred to a conversation with former senator Max Cleland (D-Ga.) about the need to counteract Republican tactics: "I asked if they wanted to counterattack or ride this to ground and outlast it, not spending any money. He said counterattack. So I gave them the information to do it with. But none of them have called me back."

Cleland confirmed that he had a two- or three-minute conversation by cell phone with a Texan named Burkett in mid-August while he was on a car ride. He remembers Burkett saying that he had "valuable" information about Bush, and asking what he should with it. "I told him to contact the [Kerry] campaign," Cleland said. "You get this information tens of times a day, and you don't know if it is legit or not."
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Researcher Alice Crites contributed to this report.

Bush military records 'prove preferential treatment'
18/09/2004 - 2:17:24 PM
Bush military records 'prove preferential treatment'
Irish Examiner

The ongoing row over President George W Bush's military record has taken yet another twist with the release of documents relating to his service in the Texas Air National Guard.

The packet of records showed that the commanding officer of Bush's basic training unit took a special interest in him as a trainee and wrote to his father to praise him.

The 1968 letter and other material released yesterday were the latest in a stream of documents released about Bush's service during the Vietnam War. Democrats say the documents are proof that Bush got preferential treatment as the son of a congressman and UN ambassador.

Critics have also questioned why Bush skipped a required medical examination in 1972 and failed to show up for drills during a six-month period that year.

In the 1968 letter, Bush's father, then a congressman from Texas, said in reply to the commander, "That a major general in the Air Force would take interest in a brand new Air Force trainee made a big impression on me."

Bush went on to say that his son "will be a gung ho member" of the Air Force and that Air Force instructors had "helped awaken the very best instincts in my son."

The Pentagon uncovered the documents during a search in response to a Freedom of Information Act lawsuit by The Associated Press seeking all of Bush's records from the Texas Air National Guard.

A federal judge ordered the Defence Department to hand over all newly discovered Bush records to the AP by next Friday.

The White House has said repeatedly that all of Bush's Guard records have been disclosed, only to be embarrassed when new documents have turned up.

The long-running story took an unusual turn when US TV network CBS uncovered documents purportedly showing that Bush refused orders to take a physical examination in 1972 - but then the authenticity of the documents came under doubt.

In his first public comment on the CBS documents controversy, the president said: "There are a lot of questions about the documents, and they need to be answered."

In a telephone interview, Bush said "I don't know" when asked whether the White House had evidence the campaign of Democratic rival John Kerry or the Democratic Party were involved in releasing the disputed papers.

White House communications director Dan Bartlett said the newly released documents were more proof that Bush fulfilled his military obligations.

"It also demonstrates we are fulfilling the president's request to release all the documents regarding his military service," he said.

But the Democratic National Committee said releasing the documents on a Friday evening indicated Bush had something to hide.

"If the president was truly proud of his service he wouldn't be releasing these documents on a Friday night," DNC chairman Terry McAuliffe said in a statement.

"These documents demonstrate yet again that George Bush was a fortunate son who received special consideration unavailable to the average American."

The latest documents also contain news releases that the Texas Air National Guard sent to Houston newspapers in 1970 about Bush, then a second lieutenant and new pilot.

"George Bush is one member of the younger generation who doesn't get his kicks from pot or hashish or speed," the news release said. "Oh, he gets high, all right, but not from narcotics."

Three decades later, a new book by Kitty Kelley has alleged that Bush used cocaine while he was a student at Yale University and later at the Camp David retreat while his father was president.

The White House has denounced Kelley's book and denied the charges.

I'm gonna guess Bill Burkett, Marybeth Cahill, James Moore, David Van Os, Ben Barnes, Max Clelland, Mary Mapes, Dan and daughter Robin Rather, and John Kerry are gonna be among the folks real sad about the way this develops, if it continues to develop. It looks as though it may continue to develop.



Still rumormill stuff, but it appears now that apart from the Texas Attorney General, the US Attorney for the district which includes Texas has "expressed interest", with, reportedly, the US Department of Justice "examining options". The Federal Election Commission and the FCC both "No Comment" reporters inquiries.

So the person the Washington Post is identifying as the document forger has admitted he called Max Cleland about the info he had. He has also stated he called the Kerry campaign to provide the info.

And the Democratic National Committee coordinated their release of "Operation Fortunate Son" with the CBS/Dan Rather 60 Minutes "story."

Now if only the Washington Post could find Deep Throat II...........

Considering the competence so far displayed by The Democrats in the conduct of their Presidential campaign, I cannot fathom how anyone might seriously consider them capable of administering the affairs of the planet's sole superpower and dominant economic entity.

"I Am Buckhead": Newspaper Exposes Blog Folk Hero

By E & P Staff

Published: September 18, 2004

NEW YORK It was the scoop of the day in the presidential campaign (which tells you something): The Los Angeles Times found Buckhead.

The paper reports that it has solved the mystery of who exactly posted the very first (and in some minds, very suspicious) blog blast at the credibility of the "60 Minutes" Killian memos. But as the Times put it, "it did not come from an expert in typography or typewriter history as some first thought."

Buckhead, as he was known at the Free Republic site, has been unmasked as Harry MacDougald, an Atlanta lawyer with strong ties to conservative Republican causes. He even helped draft the petition urging the Arkansas Supreme Court to disbar President Clinton after the Monica Lewinsky scandal.

His identity, the Times says, "is likely to fuel speculation among Democrats that the efforts to discredit the CBS memos were engineered by Republicans eager to undermine reports that Bush received preferential treatment in the National Guard more than 30 years ago." GOP officials have denied this.

Reached by telephone by the Times on Friday, MacDougald, 46, confirmed that he is Buckhead but declined to answer questions.

MacDougald, a lawyer in Atlanta, is affiliated with two prominent conservative legal groups, the Federalist Society and the Southeastern Legal Foundation, where he serves on the legal advisory board.

Suspicions that MacDougald may have been tipped off have arisen because his quick comments on typography seemed to go far beyond his reputed expertise. He wrote that the memos purportedly written in the early 1970s by the late Lt. Col Jerry B. Killian were "in a proportionally spaced font, probably Palatino or Times New Roman....The use of proportionally spaced fonts did not come into common use for office memos until the introduction of laser printers, word processing software and personal computers," MacDougald wrote. "They were not widespread until the mid to late 90's. Before then, you needed typesetting equipment, and that wasn't used for personal memos to file. Even the Wang systems that were dominant in the mid 80's used monospaced fonts."

http://www.editorandpublisher.com/eandp/news/article_display.jsp?vnu_content_id=1000632714

AHA... I said that this whole information train bore the fingerprints of Rove.

Looks like a drive-by on the information highway.

I'm sure Rather will clear this up on the evening news tomorrow....but then again he might rather not say.

Of course you can't. :wink:

Of course Rove was behind it ... how stupid must one be to fail to understand the only way to defeat the brilliant, virtuous, totally up-front and straight forward Democrats is to employ nefarious deceptions?

It would be absolutely wonderful should Dems latch onto the "It was Rove" meme and run with it ... though I hesitate to hope they might be delusional enough to do so. It really is something too much to hope for.


And suppose, just for a moment suppose, that it WAS a machiavellian Rove plot. What would that say of the overall competence, diligence, perspicacity, and, in the end, fitness-to-command, of the Democrats? Hmmmm ... on further examination, it would say nothing, really, that The Dems themselves, by their behavior and their electoral success since 2000, and the chaotic, directionless, reactive, ineffectual conduct both of their primary season process and of their current campaign, have not already made abundantly clear. In fact, it might explain a lot ... perhaps they really are that delusional.

It would say nothing. What does the reporting of a story by Dan Rather on 60 Minutes have to do with the Dems and their ability to govern? It wasn't Kerry presenting the documents, it was a reporter by the name of Dan Rather.

I don't know that it was the work of Rove. I do know, whether fake or not, the documents were part of a story reported by a news agency, not the DNC or Kerry. What's with the jump to this being a negative on Kerry / Dems?

A cheap rhetorical trick to place blame on an entire party over what appears to be the error of one media personality. If the documents turn out to be forged (and I kind of doubt we are every really going to know), the fact checkers at CBS have a lot of questions to answer. It's been established that there were typewriters that the military could have had that match the documents. It's also up-in-the-air who actually typed up the memos. Not guilty until proven guilty within a reasonable doubt still applies here.

What jump?

Dan is on the highway in a white Ford Bronco...the bloggers and media competition in helicopters flying above haunting him til the bitter admission.

This digression says a lot about the "perspicacity" of the GOP to avoid talking about the real issue.

I'll summarize (again) and ask the board's conservatives (again) to take a stab at it:

Bush joined the Texas Air National Guard on May 27, 1968. The move was well-chosen and well-timed. Only four Air National Guard squadrons were sent to Vietnam, and none was sent after Bush enlisted. All he had to do was fulfill a "statement of understanding" in which he promised to attend 24 days of weekend duty and 15 days of active duty each year.

He failed to do so. Four years into his six-year commitment, Bush "changed his mind" and decided "he preferred to be in politics." That description doesn't come from some allegedly phony memo; it comes from retired Col. Rufus Martin, Bush's then-personnel officer, in an interview with the Washington Post. Bush got permission to go to Alabama to help a family friend run for the Senate. A Boston Globe review of Bush's Guard records confirms that he "performed no service for one six-month period in 1972 and for another period of almost three months in 1973." The Globe's investigative team, echoing investigators from other publications, reports that "no one has come forward with any credible recollection of having witnessed Bush performing guard service in Alabama or after he returned to Houston in 1973."

US News and World Report notes that the "military service obligation" Bush signed in 1968 required him to attend 44 inactive-duty training drills every fiscal year for six years. He did not fulfill that requirement. Furthermore, when Bush took off for Harvard Business School in 1973, he signed a form pledging "to locate and be assigned to another Reserve forces unit or mobilization augmentation position." He never did so.

Any of you have any non-sequiters or silly pictures to post in response?

1. Do you believe that everyone who volunteered for alternate service to avoid the Vietnam War acted unethically? For instance, do you believe that everyone in the National Guard during those years was guilty of unethical conduct?
2. Do you believe that men who left the country to avoid the Vietnam War acted unethically, because that was certainly a more extreme act of avoidance?
3. If the president's actions in the National Guard were illegal, why have the people who despise the president never succeeded in getting any official investigation or trial initiated?
4. Since I do not know, I will ask. Do you believe that it is perfectly alright to challenge the propriety of the president's Guard service, but unethical to challenge Senator Kerry's service?
5. I believe that if one accuses someone of improper behavior based on documents that turn out to be forgeries, then one ought to make some kind of apology at least once, e.g. "I apologize for using forgeries to back my case, however I still believe that.....etc." Do you believe that it is ethical to accuse someone of wrongdoing based on documents that turn out to be forged, and never make any statement at all of contrition, even a well qualified one?

PDiddie, I will submit the surest means to resolve the issues both of The Incumbent's Guard Service and the allegations levelled by the Swiftboat Vets and others regarding The Footnote-to-be's Vietnam and post-Vietnam record would be to bring and to prevail in legal action. In particular, the Swiftboat Vets, many of whom have signed sworn affidavits, apart from the group's publication of a best-selling book and their release of many press releases and several television ads, placing both individuals and the group as a whole unambiguously and irrefutably on record, would be singularly vulnerable were there legitimate grounds for action. No such action has been brought before the bench, let alone successfully prosecuted. Even the Navy Inspector General's response to Judicial Watch's recent inquiry in no way substantiates Kerry's defenders, it merely held that by the available evidence the paperwork behind the citations at question was executed in accordance with then-current regulations.

From Ann Richards through Terry McAuliffe and Dan Rather, Democrats have sought for a decade without success to impune Bush the Younger on the basis of his National Guard record. Maintaining a repeatedly failed course of action in expectation of improved result does not indicate a grasp of reality. Negatavism driven by blind, partisan hatred is not an effective plan. I for one am quite happy The Democrats have embraced it as dogma. It makes the job of defeating them so much simpler.

And The Republicans still have Kerry's legislative record as an all-but-untapped resource.

Regardless the carping from the peanut gallery, service points more than sufficient to satisfy requirements were awarded, reviewed, and approved, upon which basis an Honorable Discharge was granted. Were there in fact evidence to the contrary, the Democrats would not have found it necessary, or even desireable, to concoct and resort to crude forgeries in support of their absurd, otherwise unsustainable allegations. Whether the Democrats like it or not, or even recognize it, the Rathergate blunder has put the lie to the entire "Bush Shirked" meme. The meme is dead.

I would say "Get over it" if I didn't think it futile to do so. I find it telling those who style themselves "progressive" not only lock their attention on the past, but fail to see what is there as opposed to what they would prefer there to have been. Quite simply, there is no there there, and their penchant for returning there ( a snippet from a biblical passage comes immediately to mind ... "Like a dog to its vomit") is one of the chief reasons The Democrats are going nowhere but backwards, and getting there faster and faster. The only "stock" they are gaining is laughing stock.

Please understand, I don't wish to deter or disuade them, really; I truly hope they do keep it up ... its been working just fine. Thanks for all the help.