Jammies for Dan?
In this morning's Washington Times Jennifer Harper briefly recaps the 60 Minutes forged documents story, prominently crediting Power Line for its role in bringing attention to the issues that have produced the meltdown: "CBS' bomb turns blooper."
And the meltdown continues. Elsewhere in the Washington Times Rowan Scarborough reports: "Question mount on Guard memos' authenticity." To the existing evidence of forgery Scarborough's story adds the opinion of a certified documents examiner that the the signatures on the 60 Minutes memos are not Killian's.
Today's Los Angeles Times story recaps the story to date, barely mentioning the role played by the Internet in the 60 Minutes meltdown. We understand that the Times's Peter Wallsten is working on a separate Internet-related story for tomorrow's edition.
But today's Times story today advances the analysis: "Amid skepticisim, CBS sticks to Bush Guard story." The Times story reports the limited role played by the one expert that Rather has identified and suggests the existence of others who authenticated the documents:
As another of the corroborating experts for its report, CBS and Rather presented an on-air interview with Marcel B. Matley, a San Francisco document examiner. Rather said Matley had corroborated the four Killian memos.The Times story also reports that one of CBS's principal sources for 60 Minutes -- retired Major General Bobby Hodges -- now believes that the memos are fake.But in an interview with The Times, the analyst said he had only judged a May 4, 1972, memo — in which Killian ordered Bush to take his physical — to be authentic.
He said he did not form a judgment on the three other disputed memos because they only included Killian's initials and he did not have validated samples of the officer's initials to use for comparison.
A CBS official who spoke on condition of anonymity said that the network had two other document experts, who CBS did not identify, examine the documents, which were copies of the originals.
The experts studied the type font or style, spacing and other variables and deemed the memos legitimate, said the official.
Thanks to the many readers who directed us to this preview of the Hodges story that ABC provided yesterday:
HODGES SAID HE WAS MISLED BY CBS: Retired Maj. General Hodges, Killian's supervisor at the Grd, tells ABC News that he feels CBS misled him about the documents they uncovered. According to Hodges, CBS told him the documents were "handwritten" and after CBS read him excerpts he said, "well if he wrote them that's what he felt."See also the stories by Deborah Orin and Vincent Morris in this morning's New York Post, "Rather forges ahead" by Jim Rutenberg and Kate Zernike in the New York Times, "CBS defends its report on Bush military record," and by Francie Latour and Michale Rezendes in the Boston Globe (finally), "Authenticity backed on Bush documents."Hodges also said he did not see the documents in the 70's and he cannot authenticate the documents or the contents. His personal belief is that the documents have been "computer generated" and are a "fraud."
The blogosphere continues to provide invaluable information, much of it contrary to the tenor of the New York Times and Globe stories. See "Does the Boston Globe lie about the CBS memo?" (from INDC Journal), "the Swiss cheese strategy: CBS's defense is full of holes" (from RatherBiased), "The IBM Selectric Composer" (from The Shape of Days) and "Typographic problems with the Bush memos."
Would it be premature for those of us in the pajamas brigade to declare that Dan Rather is wearing no clothes?
