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CBS' experts say they
didn't authenticate Bush memos
BY JAKE EASTON
R A D O K N E W S
Posted: September 22, 2004
The tick, tick, tick you're hearing isn't from 60 Minutes
— It's Dan Rather's career ready to explode at C-BS.
When Dan Rather was dragging out the story on president Bush's National Guard memos for two weeks, he kept saying the memos were from 'unimpeachable' sources. Obviously, it only took a handfull of bloggers a single day to determine that Rather's unimpeachable source was just another Bush-hater with a grudge.
THREE DOCUMENT EXPERTS who were asked by CBS News to examine memos alleging that President Bush received special treatment during his service in the Texas Air National Guard told CNN Tuesday that they did not authenticate the documents - and one said the network "ignored" her reservations about them before a "60 Minutes" broadcast last week.
Emily Will, a document examiner in North Carolina who said she examined two of the documents for CBS News prior to the broadcast, said she "had serious questions" about their authenticity, although she did not reach a definitive conclusion about whether they were fabrications.
Marcel Matley - who appeared Friday on the CBS Evening News during anchor Dan Rather's lengthy defense of his reporting on the memos - told CNN that he could only verify that Lt. Col. Jerry Killian's signatures on the documents in question were from the same source.
Linda James, another document examiner from Texas hired by CBS News, told CNN that she, too, did not authenticate the documents. She described them as being of "very poor quality," which she found surprising given "what they were about ... and who it was concerning."
"I didn't feel I could give an opinion, and I certainly would not authenticate," she told CNN.
While Tabloid Column's own investigation has determined that it was technically possible to customize the typebars and keys on the IBM Executive series (Model C) made in the early 1960s, it's difficult to tell if a non-original document is real or faked, said Berkeley, California, document examiner Gary Herbertson, a former FBI investigator. "I don't think a legitimate document examiner will ever reach a definite conclusion if all he has is some second-generation copy, a photograph or a computer printout, and hasn't seen the original document."
Others are absolutely convinced the CBS claims are false as well. Marjorie Connell — widow of the late Lt. Col. Jerry Killian that allegedly wrote the Bush memo — questioned whether the documents were real.
"The wording in these documents is very suspect to me," she told ABC News Radio in an exclusive phone interview from her Texas home. She added that she "just can't believe these are his words."
To further complicate the issue, the man named in the disputed Bush memo as exerting pressure to "sugar coat" President Bush's military record left the Texas Air National Guard a year and a half before the memo was supposedly written, his own service record shows.
What Does All This Mean? The Arizona Republic took a poll of its readers yesterday, asking "which single campaign issue is most important to you in choosing a president?" Here are the results:
Economy/jobs: 37% War on terrorism: 32% Social Security/Medicare: 14% Health Care: 8% Other: 7% Veterans Issues: 2%It is obvious that people could care less about what happened on a Swift boat - or in Bush memos - dating back 30 or more years. For Bush and Kerry, it's "what have you done [or not done] for us lately." The saga will certainly continue.
