Anatomy of a Forgery
More than six weeks ago, an opposition research staffer for the
Democratic National Committee received documents purportedly
written by President George W. Bush's Texas Air National Guard
squadron commander, the late Col. Jerry Killian.
The oppo researcher claimed the source was "a retired military officer."
According to a DNC staffer, the documents were seen by both senior staff
members at the DNC, as well as the Kerry campaign.
"More than a couple people heard about the papers," says the DNC
staffer. "I've heard that they ended up with the Kerry campaign, for
them to decide to how to proceed, and presumably they were handed over
to 60 Minutes, which used them the other night. But I know this much. When
there was discussion here, there were doubts raised about their authenticity."
The concerns arose from the sourcing. "It wasn't clear that our source
for the documents would have had access to them. Our person couldn't
confirm from what file, from what original source they came from."
The documents that CBS News used were not documents from any of Bush's
personnel files from his time in the National Guard. Rather,
CBS News stated that they were documents
uncovered in the personnel files of
Killian. That would explain why the White House or the Pentagon had
never before released or even seen them.
According to a Kerry campaign source, there was little gossip about the
supposedly hot documents inside the office of the campaign on McPherson
Square. "Those documents were not something anyone was talking
about or trying to generate buzz on," says the staffer. "It wasn't like there
were small groups of people talking about this as a bombshell. I think
people here weren't sure what to make of it, because provenance
of these documents was uncertain."
A CBS producer, who initially tipped off The Prowler about the 60
Minutes story, says that despite seeking professional assurances that
the documents were legitimate, there was uncertainty even among the
group of producers and researchers working on the story.
"The problem was we had one set of documents from Bush's file that had
Killian calling Bush 'an exceptionally fine young officer and pilot.'
And someone who Killian said 'performed in an outstanding manner.' Then
you have these new documents and the tone and content are so different."
The CBS producer said that some alarms 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. "This was too hot not to
push. If there were doubts, those people didn't show it," says the
producer, who works on a rival CBS News program.
Now, the producer says, there is growing concern inside the building on
57th Street that they may have been suckered by the Kerry campaign.
"There is a school of thought here that the Kerry people dumped this in
our laps, figuring we'd do the heavy lifting on the story. That maybe
they had doubts about these documents but hoped we'd get more
information," says the producer. "If that's the case, then we're bigger
fools than we already appear to be judging by all the chatter about how
these documents could be forgeries."
ABC News' political unit held a conference call at 7:00 p.m. Thursday
evening to discuss the memo and its potential ramifications should the
documents turn out to be a forgery. That meeting took place around the
time that the deceased Killian's son made public statements questioning
the documents' authenticity.
According to one ABC News employee, some reporters believe that the
Kerry campaign as well as the DNC were parties in duping CBS, but a
smaller segment believe that both the DNC and the Kerry campaign were
duped by Karl Rove, who would have engineered the flap to embarrass the opposition.
