Expert opinions
Howard Kurtz interviews the two document examiners who warned CBS of possible problems concerning the authenticity of the 60 Minutes documents: "Document experts say CBS ignored memo 'red flags.'" Yesterday the Post carried Kurtz's devastating Hurricane Dan article (coauthored with Michael Dobbs) on page A8; today's story is on page A10.
Over at the Kerry Spot Jim Geraghty draws attention to the news judgment evident in the Post today. On page A1 the Post reports on the successful return of Marion Barry to DC politics and on the new Kerry campaign theme (President Bush has misled voters). The distance of a Post story from page A1 seems to be inversely proportional to its intrinisic interest.
In the New York Post Deborah Orin and Ian Bishop add to Hurricane Dan's entertainment value. They report the expert opinion of master forger Frank Abagnale, of Catch Me If You Can fame: "If my forgeries looked as bad as the CBS documents, it would have been, 'Catch Me In Two Days.'" We're awarding the Post the palm for best quote of the day as well as best headline: "Catch this if you can, Dan: Forger cries hoax." Taking second place in our quote of the day competition is the story's concluding item:
CBS has refused to discuss its source. When The Post asked if CBS could rule out a Democrat with Kerry ties as its source, a senior network official replied: "I can't answer that" — and hung up.Elsewhere in the Post Ralph Peters compares CBS with the Arab propaganda mills: "Terror pals in the press." Peters writes:
CBS won't name its source for those "incriminating" documents about President Bush's National Guard service. That would violate its high journalistic principles (although lying about our president does not).Michelle Malkin hears "The death cry of snob journalism" and Kathleen Parker exclaims "Bloggers knew!"Instead, we get poor old Dan Rather, the crazy uncle of network news, insisting that those documents could have been typed on an early-1970s super typewriter, that there might have been just the right outrageously expensive machine in that fly-specked National Guard office — and that an officer who had never used it before would use it for note-taking.
Let me share some reality with Uncle Dan. I served in our active-duty military five years after those documents purportedly were written. I was in Army intelligence. And only the big boss's secretary had an electric typewriter — one too primitive to create those documents.
I worked on a manual machine made in East Germany (swear to God). In 1977. In a front-line division. The National Guard got the junk we didn't want. CBS lied. The sad thing is that they just might be able to stonewall America.
That's network news, folks. Defend forgeries. Defend "journalists" who support terror. Let our soldiers die. Let the American people rot. And trash our president in wartime.
No wonder al-Jazeera and al-Arabiya get away, literally, with murder.
