I caught most of Rather's interview with Killian's secretary today. It proves that even little old ladies are prey to the temptations everyone else faces: Marion Knox just couldn't resist the chance to help Kerry and get her 15 minutes of fame at the same time.

Rather still wants this whole story to be "Did Bush Bend the Rules To Get Into TANG, And Then Miss His Physical?" When in fact it's "Did Dan Know the Documents Were Fake, Or Not?" I guess we can forgive him for not being able to sniff out the story people actually care about in all this.

I know they've been laying the groundwork for this "forged, but accurate" defense, but it was still startling to see it. I'm going to assume that if Rather got charged with a crime, and there was gossip/innuendo to the effect that he was guilty, it would be okay with him for a cop to plant evidence. After all, the "evidence" so manufactured would be "faked, but accurate." The language is Orwellian, and the logic is circular: "the documents authenticated the rumors; the rumors authenticate the documents. We can all go home early."

But I do have a favorite moment. It was the point when Mrs. Knox asserted to Rather that the young Lt. Bush "didn't seem to think he had to go by the rules that others did."

I'm sure Rather found something to relate to there.

A few little blogger-picky things: Why is Dan Rather asking a TANG secretary questions outside her real area of expertise, pertaining to military procedure and so forth? Memos and files are things she's qualified to discuss, but chain-of-command issues, and the seriousness of not taking a physical, are matters that I would expect pilots and their actual superiors to speak to—not support staff. Why does this matter? Because every pilot from the time who's weighed in on this on the sites I've visited has said that missing a physical wasn't a matter one's commanding officer would normally get involved in. You did it within the month your birthday fell, or you stopped getting paychecks if you were required to maintain your flight status. Or, in Lt. Bush's case, the understanding was, IIRC, that it was more practical for him to let his flying status lapse since he wasn't going to be flying anyway. As I understand it, it was considered wasteful for him to maintain it if he wasn't going to need it.

If Bush really was supposed to have a physical exam, why can't CBS find someone in his chain of command to assert this? Other than a dead guy into whose mouth they are putting words?

And Mrs. Knox admits that medical exams normally took place around one's birthday! She said that in the interview! So why would Killian be leaning on him to get it done earlier in the year, rather than in July?

And then there's the vaguely unpleasant insinuation that a man's secretary is going to have a more accurate memory about his state of mind regarding any given individual than his own wife would. (But then, that's why CBS used Killian's son as the gentle challenge to Mrs. Knox's recollections, rather than his widow.)

If Bush really was resented by his fellow officers for his "attitude" (and that may well be; he's only recently mastered that smirk thing), why can't CBS find one of them?

And there's this weird two step wherein some unknown party saw a file full of Killian's notes (which must have been hand-written, and therefore material Knox didn't necessarily see) pertaining to Bush, and transcribed them. But Mrs. Knox says things were changed so Killian wouldn't get into trouble. Why would a dead man need plausible deniability, anyway? And also: from the news organization's point of view, if you have hand-written notes, you've struck the mother lode. Who in their right mind would transcribe them to make them look more "official"?

If this is the way they want to go, then they need to find those original notes. This may be a problem, since the family maintains they never existed.

And if I were Killian's family, I'd be thinking about slander suits.

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Jim Treacher updates us on last night's CBS newscast:

Rather Alters Stance on Space-Unicorn Royalty

NEW YORK -- In a stunning reversal yesterday, embattled CBS Evening News anchor Dan Rather renounced his claim to the throne of the Space Unicorns, instead declaring himself to be the Bonnukarr, culmination of human evolution, sent back in time from the 857th Century by the warrior-god Kobaltine IV to prepare mankind for the coming Insect Wars.

Via Ilyka.

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Jim Geraghty, reporting in yesterday's NRO:
60 MINUTES TO INVESTIGATE 60 MINUTES II

NEW YORK — In a stunning development, the flagship news program of CBS, 60 Minutes, has decided to investigate its Wednesday night counterpart, ‘60 Minutes II.’

60 Minutes producer Don Hewitt came out of retirement in order to investigate the spinoff program, which, he pointed out, was an idea he had always hated and opposed anyway.

“This story has all the classic ingredients of a archetypal 60 Minutes story,” Hewitt said. “Forgeries and lies. A brazen attempt to influence a presidential election. Shadowy political operatives. A powerful institution that is hiding behind short, defiant statements. The whole situation just screamed a need for a hard-hitting reporter to hold the powerful guys in suits accountable. It just happens that in this case, we’re interviewing the powerful guys in suits down the hall.”

The media world is abuzz with excitement about the shocking interview of CBS Evening News host Dan Rather by Mike Wallace. CBS has released one particularly tense exchange:

(Wallace and Rather sit opposite each other, eye to eye, almost mirror images.)

Wallace: ExpertÂ… after expertÂ… after expert has declared these documents (dramatically holding up four sheets of paper) to be forgeries. What is your response to them?

Rather: We have solid sources.

Wallace: Who are they?

Rather: IÂ’m not going to say.

Wallace: Why should people trust you?

Rather: Do you know who I am? IÂ’ve been in the news business for 42 years!

Wallace: Do you know who I am? IÂ’ve been in the news business for 53 years! And Christopher Plummer played me in the movie!

Rather: I am 100 percent certain that the chances of this document being real are almost 51 percent.

Wallace: YouÂ’re being evasive.

Rather: IÂ’m not being evasive, IÂ’m just being more nimble than a one-legged Texas bullfrog before a prairie thunderstorm!

Wallace: That doesnÂ’t even make sense.

Rather: IÂ’m tired of this criticism coming up with regular frequency, Kenneth.

Wallace: What frequency? And whoÂ’s Kenneth?

60 Minutes will present its report, “The Great CBS News Civil War of 2004” on Sunday.

WARNING: The above statement is a parody. So far.

My favorite line? "It just happens that in this case, we’re interviewing the powerful guys in suits down the hall.”

Scroll around the "Kerry corner" while you're in the neighborhood: Geraghty has some interesting insights on what's going on inside CBS right now, and how all these events affect the rest of us.

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1 Wow! I love the new look! Love the parody too, but I already found it at NRO.

Posted by: Pixy Misa at September 14, 2004 07:57 AM (+S1Ft)

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. . . though I know there will still be Memogate dramas, like When Danny resigns. Some say that's going to be very soon. And our entire information-gathering system has definitely been transformed. ("A terrible beauty is born.")

But it's cargo cults that are on my mind. Remember those?—tribal island societies that enjoyed a surplus of exotic/luxury goods when Western pilots landed in their midst (particularly during WWII, though also at other times), and came to associate abundance with planes and pilots. The pilots and other military personnel became connected, in their minds, with godlike ancesters, and when the Westerners stopped using the bases and landing strips the people constructed replica planes out of indigenous materials such as bamboo. They wore faux headsets, made of wood. They lit up the landing strips, now empty. They acted like the Westerners had acted, but without understanding.

And so the Democrats, including the ones at CBS, saw the Swift Boat Veterans for Truth succeed in "smearing" John Kerry's military record, and saw Kerry's lead against Bush melt away. Like islanders constructing wooden headsets, they emulated the form, not understanding the function. They found/manufactured evidence that George W. Bush wasn't such hot stuff in his military career, either. They didn't understand that the potency of the Swifties' claims was not so much in the mechanics of how Kerry got any of his particular medals, but in the startling realization of the common voter that a group of American vets was hurt that badly by John Kerry's actions when he got home—the perception that he got out early on a pretext, and then proceeded to slander them to their families and their countries—that they could never forgive him. Even those whose religious faiths demanded that they at least try.

That's what was important about the Swift Boat ads: America got to see just how much many military men and women—but particularly men from this one war—despised Kerry. And they began to wonder if there might be a reason for that.

And so the decision was made by some Democrat (either inside or outside the DNC, and that little detail does matter) to create scandal about George W. Bush's record during Vietnam. To close the deal that Gore had pitched, and Ann Richards before him: that George W. Bush was AWOL during Vietnam.

In a country that elected Bill Clinton as commander-in-chief twice. Including the time he ran against Bob Dole. It should be obvious that we don't place a huge value on military service— or John McCain would be President of the United States right now.

Clearly, the Dems didn't think it through: they confused the circumstances of a bounce with the true reason for a bounce.

The fact is, Americans don't really vote for their Presidents based on events of 30 years ago. But when the nation is under attack they like having a guy around whom the military establishment feels it can get a thing or two done with. And one whom the soldiers, sailors, airmen and Marines actually like.

Dan Rather helped his pals in the DNC to build wooden planes without engines. I wonder if he realizes this in the middle of the night when he's trying to figure out how long he can survive.

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Dean Esmay points out that we need to be circumspect while attempting the next phase of the Memogate investigation, and attempting to determine the exact provenance of these documents. It's a much more delicate matter to name names when you're discussing individuals who are not public figures—the more so if they might be mentally disturbed.

Can some of this information be shared via e-mail while more of the facts are being nailed down?

Also, please keep in mind that the person who constructed these documents may well have done it as a joke (that would explain why they are so sloppy—they may not have been intended to deceive).

The focus should be on why Dan Rather accepted these memos at face value without more than a fig-leaf type of fact-checking job. It doesn't matter a whole lot where they actually came from, because they are just that bad: no one Dan Rather's age should have been taken in by them. After all, I'm sure he's seen a typed document or two in his day.

Let's be careful out there.

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about this is my confidence that there have been other frauds just as egregious as Rathergate by broadcast news organizations, but people either haven't had the resources to check on them, or if they saw the problems they didn't have a way of speaking out. You could have written a letter to the editor, and maybe gotten it printed—but probably not. If it were printed, only a handful of people would read it.

In the 80s and 90s you could make your own video about media bias and typefaces, and hawk it at gun shows to 5-10 people a day. And if mainstream media types even saw this material, it was easy to write you off as a crank.

I'm having that same feeling now that I did when I was ten years old and Walter Cronkite (whom we trusted in those days) came on the CBS Evening News to talk about all the insect parts that had been found by labs in commercially available hot dogs. To this day I'm a Hebrew National Beef Franks kind of girl—partly for the garlic they're laced with, but also for the rabbinical supervision over their production.

When I was ten, the question in my mind was, "how many insects have I eaten in hot dogs over the course of my life?" And now it's "how many flagrant lies have I swallowed because I've assumed that—despite the way the truth is shaded in the MSM—the bare-bones facts had been verified and could be trusted?" Beyond the spin, there were the facts. And they were reliable, or so I thought.

Now I've got less of a feeling that I can really count on any mainstream news organization at all. CBS, the Boston Globe, AP, and NPR have proven completely unreliable with respect to their fact-checking in areas related to the TANG issue (which no one cares about in the first place, BTW—it's not the crime, as they say . . . ).

The Los Angeles Times is trying to report the story, but bury it at the same time. It has, however, stopped short of lying, so we have to place it on the side of the truth-tellers here. Barely. (As Patterico points out, they place the meat of the allegations in the jump, and never use the word "forgery.")

ABC, Fox, the Dallas Morning News, the Chicago Sun-Times, and the Washington Post are interested in preserving their reputations. They are at the top of the cliff, watching the other lemmings fall through the air, and deciding that they aren't interested in that particuar leap.

There are some journalists who realize what's happening, and want to preserve their reputations.

So the glass, going forward, is half-full. If only it weren't for all those metaphorical insect parts I've eaten over the past three or four decades.

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The following document just fell into my hands. It came from a source I can't disclose, but that's okay because it was authenticated by experts whose names I can't disclose. Except for the ones whose names I announced who now say I've been lying all along, but I can't be lying because what I say is always the truth, Q.E.D.

It's a page from Dan Rather's diary! I have a special, special source. Whom I can't disclose.

I'll never give in. They can't prove it, they can't. They can't, they can't, they can't. I'm the great Dan Rather, and they are trying to take my strawberries. I won't admit it, and they can't fire me because I'm the Great. Dan. Rather. Just because I manufactured evidence for something doesn't mean I'm not the greatest journalist who ever lived. When you're a Great Journalist, you're allowed to make the stories up as you go along.

I wish it weren't Kerry; he's a poopy-head. A real poopy-head. But better than Bush. I'm a Great Journalist, and Kerry is a poopy-head.

They say I don't look like I used to, but the boys still pay for my services. They know I'm the Great Dan Rather. A Great Journalist. Worth paying for the privilege.

I've been turning tricks in the Village. And Kerry is a poopy-head. And I will always be the Great Dan Rather.

Oh, and it's typewritten. Or maybe it's in Crayola or something. I have second-generation copies, but I'm only going to let you see my transcription onto this blog. But my Sooper Secret Experts say that's all you need to see.

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If you were watching the football games yesterday—or spending the day in sober reflection—make sure to stop by Bill at INDC Journal's place as well as Rather Biased, and Patterico. Also, check out this wonderful essay by Hindrocket at Power Line, who compares the new media paradigm to that we have had to go through with respect to security issues as a nation in the wake of 9/11.

Also: Protein Wisdom has several link-rich updates on this issue, one of which is both a linkfest and a hilarious faux-interview. With Dan Rather's ego, no less.

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blogging outfit is a T-shirt and cutoffs. But I suspect that's close enough.

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My prediction: if this thing goes legal, Dan Rather is gone before the end of this year. If not, CBS will wait. Then he'll resign in January or February of '05. Personal projects, time with his family, athlete's foot—something.

This document flap is turning into the Watergate of the Fourth Estate.

This difference is, the media is the message this time.

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found the Microsoft Soft Word feature involved in the Rather Hoax.

And Politicalities has the more advanced option.

(Via James.)

And yet one more: Jay Reding sends his version of Clippy to Rather Biased, where it displays next to the post on Bernard Goldberg's take on the scandal.

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scoops us all on a series of e-mails from the early 70s that prove Bush was AWOL from the National Guard.

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. . . And CBS should fire anyone else who actually looked at the documents it presented on its 60 Minutes segment. Forget all the subtleties that are apparent to anyone with even a light background in typography. There are two things that should have leaped to the attention of anyone, even a 20-year-old who's never seen a typewriter in his/her life:

1. The signatures on the real documents don't match the ones on the fakes. That should have raised some questions.

2. The person who created the forged documents didn't even use Courier. The shocker isn't that these were forged, but rather the fact that they were done in such a sloppy fashion.

At this moment I believe this is a story about the failure of the mainstream media (MSM), rather than a story about the election this November. That will change if it appears that somene in the Kerry campaign supplied these fake memos—that's Watergate-level stuff.

Your main links are here: the Weekly Standard, which has a concise summary of the major issues with the problem documents. Powerline, which broke the story, and Drudge, who is also providing regular updates. But don't just go to the main Powerline link; scroll the entire main page while you're there, because Deacon, Rocket, and Trunk are constantly updating on the forgery issue. There were 334 trackbacks to that main post when I was last there; amazing.

Here's my question for the rest of the class: 3.If these memos have been in Jerry Killian's personal files (that his family says he never kept) for three decades, and have only recently been spirited out without the knowledge of his family members (who say they know nothing of their origins), how come they've clearly been copied many times? If they were authentic, the paper itself might be yellowed, but where would all those specks have come from? After all, they've just been sitting there in Killian's personal file for three decades . . .?

Here's a summary of the problems that are being reported with the forged memos. It's meant to be a study guide only, as the story is still developing and the blogosphere is still doing its research. In this case there are far too many issues for any one blogger to cover, so I'm giving you an overview. This is what is being said at present (I'll vouch for the first three items):

4. The suspect memos are kerned. Not just proportionally spaced, as an IBM Selectric "golf ball" would have done, but actually kerned. (Type "To" in your word processor, and look at how the two characters get all cozy. A typewriter can't do that.)

5. There is a single "curly quote" used as an apostrophe, rather than the "tick mark" one sees on typed documents from the 1970s.

6. There is a superscript "th" that comes and goes. Micrsoft Word supplies these automatically, but in those days we were supposed to shift the paper in the typewriter to move the letters in ordinals around, and they didn't end up being smaller: just higher in relation to the numerals.

7. The term "memo to file" can be superimposed on the two separate documents that bear it. Very fishy, in two documents supposedly produced four months apart.

8. The paper in use by the military around that time was not 8 1/2 x 11; it was 8 x 10. Yet the suspicious documents have no lines around the edges to show they've been photocopied in a larger-format machine (yet clearly these are supposed to be copied of copies, given the degradation in quality).

9. Some have detected a pattern in the dots that are apparently supposed to signify age in the document.

10. Jerry Killian apparently referred to his unit using different abbreviations at different times, if we are to believe the suspect documents.

11. The phrase "medical examination" was apparently not used. It should be "flight exam," or "flight physical," or "flying physical."

12. The date 04 May 1972 is incorrect; it should be 4 MAY 1972.

13. One of the suspect memos appears to have been written on a Saturday.

14. Medical exams were supposed to occur by the end of the month in which the pilot was born, so there would be no reason for Bush to be examined at any other time than during the month of July (by the end of the month).

15. Exams were never ordered. It was simply understood that if the physical didn't take place, the pilot wouldn't get paid. It was something individuals were responsible for; their superiors didn't get involved in it.

16. There's not SSCI code at the top of the page, and that is critical for all U.S. Military correspondence. (Aha! Maybe Killian just typed it up at the end of a long day, like we do in corporate America when we sense a political shitstorm brewing 'round us that may get us in trouble 30 years later, after we've died. But Killian didn't type.)

17. The protocol for Killian to refer to his own rank was not "Lt. Colonel." It should have been "LC," or "LTCOL," or "Lieutenant Colonel, [branch of service]."

18. "Commander" is incorrect usage for that time. It should have been "Commanding."

19. Killian's widow, Marjorie Connell, says a) Killian didn't keep his own files; b) the suspicious memos don't sound like they use language he'd actually employ; and c) when he needed records, he wrote things down. But mostly he kept things in his head. Morever, d) he liked G.W. Bush.

20. Killian's son maintains some of the documents were forged.

21. The term "MEMORANDUM FOR" is incorrect for that time frame.

22. There should be no periods after the rank, according to the Air Force style manual of the times.

23. Ditto the abbreviation for Fighter Interceptor Squadron (FIS). Ixnay on the periods.

24. The phrase "not later than" would never have been spelled out. Only the abbreviation (NLT) would have been used.

25. Lt Col Killian's signature block is incorrect for letters from the 1970's. This document employs a three-line signature element; these were only used by colonels and generals in organizations well above the squadron level.

26. The signature element is placed far to the right, instead of being left justified. The signature element was not supposed to be placed to the right of the document until almost 20 years after the date of this letter, per Air Force standards.

UPDATE: Donald Sensing has more on the military irregularities in the problem memos.

See below for the rest of the linkfest.

more...

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Patterico continues his fine work as a one-man fact-checking team for the Old Media. Today he shifts his focus from the L.A. Times and onto the AP, which has been Dowdifying Cheney's speech from the convention.

I don't think Cheney was saying, "if you elect Kerry, we'll be hit again." Because I think he—and everyone in the Administration—thinks we will be. Sooner or later, AQ is going to get past our defenses. The danger Cheney was speaking of was of using the old, failed "law enforcement" model when that does happen, which only perpetuates more terrorism.

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I missed this last week, since I was working my job job, but Baldilocks saved the day with a link.

Remember that incident wherein a Chinese newspaper used The Onion as a source for a story about American legislators insisting that a new Capitol building be built—or they were going to leave Washington, D.C.? Funny, that. But who expects the Chinese to "get" American humor, right? It's a different culture, and we must make allowances.

Salon just did the same thing. In a story Mark Follman wrote about credentialed bloggers covering the RNC, he cherry-picked a few "frivolous"-sounding quotes from a handful of RNC bloggers, and discussed Protein Wisdom's tidbits about the party surrounding the convention. The problem, of course, is that Jeff Goldstein of Protein Wisdom was home in Colorado, and his articles about such things as literal pissing contests, dwarf-tossing competitions, getting drunk with Ann Coulter, and Michael Moore eating an entire elk were actually, um, a joke. In other words, the Bush twins weren't really taking part in a dwarf-tossing event. Fancy that. And Coulter didn't really write "Joos for Bush" on Jeff's forehead with a lipstick.

The beautiful part is this: after Jeff blogged about Follman's colossal stupidity (my words, not his), Follman actually showed up in the Protein Wisdom comments section to claim that he was in on the joke all along, and was just "playing along" in order to make an obscure point about other bloggers at the RNC. Uh-huh.

The Captain has a nice takedown of Follman's article in which the Goldstein gaffe is mentioned in passing; it's clear that mainstream journalists (besides being sloppy and literal-minded) can't understand that blogging is a different medium entirely than what they're used to.

One of the Captain's commenters, Kris, offers this small glossary:

A 'Lapham' is time-travel journalism, so it doesn't really fit. Perhaps 'Follman' could be coined to mean something else.

Reporting on something without being there? No, wait, that's a 'Blair.'

Falling for a farce or hoax, and then when called on it, pretending you were 'in on the joke' the whole time?

Bingo!

And, of course, there's the original Alex Beam hatchet piece to consider. It's a scary time for Old Media. They are losing readers and viewers by the minute.

And I wonder why.

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One Eric M. Johnson, a reservist writing in the New York Post, shows us the smoking gun on the Washington Post coverage in Iraq.

Via Dean Esmay.

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Patterico drives one more nail into the coffin of The Los Angeles Times' lost credibility.

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