Did CBS intercept a Rove dirty trick aimed at Kerry?

Here is what we know so far ...

Bill Burkett claims someone gave him the memos.

Burkett goes to Max Cleland and tries to give them to him. Cleland says "Contact the campaign"

Burkett tries to contact the Kerry campaign. They don't call him back.

Burkett gives them to CBS. CBS runs with them. Within hours, they are "debunked" by a republican lawyer who led the charge to get Clinton dis-barred. Drudge runs with them. The corporate media picks it up.

Now CBS has a black eye. But what if the DNC and Kerry ran with them first? Then the black eye would be Kerry's and not CBS's. If fact, if Kerry ran with forged documents it could of sunk the Kerry campaign .....

The RNC is now desperately claiming that Kerry is somehow responsible, but that doesn't make any sense. If Burkette got them from Kerry - then why did he try to pass them to the Kerry campaign?

I can't watch the Burkette interview tonight, but I will be expecting a full report here on DU. :-)

I'll wait for the answer too...

No damage to Kerry. Content, not the forgeries, is the issue. I'm hoping that CBS goes after the ultimate source of this forgery. I guarantee it'll end up back in this WH.

CBS has not said they are forgeries. No credible expert has shown them to be forgeries. All computer experts have so far failed to accurately recreate the memo on a computer.

Knox said she didn't type them, which threw CBS for a loop. However, they haven't discounted the possibility that Killian typed these as backups. After all, the signatures were verified.

Discussion here:
http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=show_topic&forum=132&topic_id=841272

I really hate this whole exercise....corporate media is happily chasing nonsense while the record of w's service remain unsubstaniated.

you have a good theory. IF they are forgeries I hope and pray the dots can be connected back to Bush.

but, rather (no pun intended), that he misled cbs as to who gave them to him.
Burkett would not, however, divulge the real source. That was my understanding of what Burkett said.

He said that HE did not forge the documents. He was never asked whether the documents were forged.

saw the interview again, and heard rather ask burkett if the memos were real,
and then heard burkett answer rather with a "yes".
help me out here, please. :crazy:

I could swear that Rather didn't ask him the question. Maybe I missed it. But, what would you expect Burkett to say? If he admits that he knowingly passed documents that were forged, he could have some legal problems.

But who knows what turns this story will take?

Another scenario:

The memos are real, but instead of photocopying them, Burkett scanned them. As another bright DUer suggested, scanned would preserve the signature but subsequent printing would mess with the fonts and the printing that gave so many "experts" problems.

Anybody remember this??

The memos were potentially harmful to Bush, but only mildly so. They didn't establish any radically new information about Bush but primarily confirmed information we already knew from other reliable sources. They established basically 2 things: that Bush received a direct order to report to an annual medical exam and that Col. Killian made vague notes about being asked to sugarcoat evaluations of Bush. We already have the order signed by Major General Greenlief that Bush was ordered permanently suspended from flying for failure to attend his annual medical evaluation. One would assume that he was ordered to attend, a fact which the memos backed up. Wouldn't someone really trying to nail Bush have had more damaging commentaries about Bush in the memos?

The point was to discredit the memos and thereby discredit the message, possibly.

Fox has been non-stop on this and even Wolf Blitzer tried to color the story as Democrat "dirty tricks" until Jack Quinn called him on it, and stated the Republicans could benefit the most from such a ruse.

First it was Brokaw and anthrax, now its "gotcha" Rather with alleged forgeries. Of course we no longer hear the word "alleged" in the mainstream media even though nobody has technically disproved them, and cannot until the originals are found. Let Bush investigate Rathergate after his Sherlocks are finished ferreting out the Valerie Plame perp.

and welcome to DU!

That's how it looks to me. He innoculated Bush on AWOL, he ruined Burkett, and he damn nearly has ruined Rather and CBS. Oh, and he has manipulated the news cycle for a week now.

Remember the tape-gate fuss? Where a video tape of Bush rehearsing for debates was mailed from the Bush campaign to the Gore campaign?

Remember Jim Hatfield's book? He was fed info about Bush and then he was discredited?

Remember the Maine DUI? The story was leaked by a FOX news person and the news pre-empted the AWOL story breaking that day?

The dots are all around us. I'd like to see some of them connected.

...that the Buckhead/MacDougald post was forwarded to powerlineblog by bitter swiftboater Tom Mortensen AND by Liz MacDougald.

wont reveal the source. He's got nothing to lose NOW, after all this. Im probably the only one thinking this, but I just dont get that part.
:shrug:
:kick:

...that it might be Marty Heldt, the Iowa farmer who first got Bush's military papers via FOIA in 2000. However, the only papers Marty has ever had are those he received by FOIA. AND all of those papers have been posted for more than four years.

There's so much smoke being blown here. Labeling Burkett as anti-Bush therefore unreliable is so much crap. People who speak up are generally people who have been done wrong and feel strongly about it.Certainly those who benefit from * and the rest of his seedy family are not gonna spill the beans.

Bottom line - the content of those documents is accurate. I am hoping that Rather (who really has nothing to lose now ) will quietly dig and be able to turn * and co. on it's collective ass.

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