60 Minutes source revealed; Kerry seeds attack team

[Demi_Babe]

has this been posted?








The Raw Story 9/12/2004

Source for CBS memos ‘disgruntled officer;’ Kerry camp readies attack team

Filed under: General— site admin @ 8:54 pm

A principal source for the CBS story about President Bush’s National Guard duty was Bill Burkett, a disgruntled former Guard officer, who says he was present at Guard headquarters in Austin in 1997 when a top aide to then Governor Bush ordered records sanitized to protect himself, Newsweek will report Monday. Typed memos from the early ’70s suggesting officers were pressured to give Bush special treatment and “sugarcoat” increasingly negative evaluations were a central part of the CBS 60 Minutes report.

Meanwhile, Sen. John Kerry is preparing to attack President Bush’s failure to complete his term of service in the National Guard, as well as a new relevation that Bush once lied about having served in the Air Force (story on Raw Story front page).

Other Guard officials disputed Burkett’s account and the Bush aide involved, Joe Allbaugh, called it “absolute garbage.” Burkett may have a motive to make trouble for the powers that be. In 1998, he grew gravely ill on a Guard mission to Panama, causing him to be hospitalized, and he suffered two nervous breakdowns. He unsuccessfully sued for medical expenses.

Still, in theory, Burkett may have had access to any Guard records that, in a friend’s words, “didn’t make it to the shredder,” report Chief Political Correspondent Howard Fineman and Investigative Correspondent Michael Isikoff. Fellow officers say Burkett wasn’t a crank, but rather a stickler for proper procedure-a classic whistle-blower type. Burkett was impressive enough to cause CBS producer Mary Mapes to fly to Texas to interview him. “There are only a couple of guys I would trust to be as perfectly honest and upfront as Bill,” said Dennis Adams, a former Guard colleague. The White House, through Communications Director Dan Bartlett, called Burkett a “discredited source.”

Newsweek also reports that a hard-core group within the John Kerry campaign is setting up a new “oppo” squad aimed at countering what they perceive as Republican-backed smears against Kerry. Tentatively called Sealords II-Kerry’s Mekong Delta mission in Vietnam was known as Sealords – the group has a $1 million budget and will be housed at the Democratic National Committee, where, one of its members says, the mission will be “message, debate prep, attack, attack.”

[USA_1]

1. memos

So what's the bottom line = are the memos real or fake?

And has Bush properly accounted for the missing time or was he AWOL???

[AmerDem]

4. The documents are REAL

and shrub is the AWOL coward most of the country has known for many years. Of course this wont sit well with the brainless, fascist freeptards that like to frequent here!

[Bucky]

10. It's still in the air whether the memo is real. But Bush WAS awol

Honestly, the case looks pretty damning for the allegedly forged memo. The font matches up almost perfectly with a MS Word produced copy of it done on the conservative blog "Little Green Footballs." There were typewriters that could do a Times New Roman font with the proportional spacing in the early 70s, but they were pretty uncommon and they didn't do the superscripted th after ordinal numbers the same way the CYA memo did.

On the other had there are some letters in the memo that are slightly raised above the line, which never happens in MS Word--only in typing. The evidence is inconclusive so far. The rest of the story pans out, but the CYA memo was the documentary heart of the story. As with most political disputes today, what you believe after hearing the facts depends entirely on who you supported before hearing the facts.

[emulatorloo]

21. You are wrong about "uncommon" typewriter - See IBM repairman in Time Mag:

http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,1101040920-695873-2,00.html

<snip>

But Bill Glennon, a technology consultant in New York City who worked for IBM repairing typewriters from 1973 to 1985, says those experts "are full of crap. They just don't know." Glennon says there were IBM machines capable of producing the spacing, and a customized key — the likes of which he says were not unusual — could have created the superscript th.

[goodhue]

22. the documents are real, the typewriter not uncommon

stop drinking faux/ccn kool aid

[mccormack98]

24. The Microsoft Word hypothesis has been discredited

Check out PC Magazine. It does an experiment pitting an IBM Selectric against Microsoft Word. The Selectric exactly duplicates the Word document. That prretty well nukes the Microsoft Word hypothesis.

http://www.pcmag.com/article2/0,1759,1644869,00.asp

Also bear in mind that the name of the Fighter Group was the 111th. Given that they were probably typing "111th" on every document, it would seem probable that they had typewriters that could produce superscripts.

Bill

[mccormack98]

25. Woo hoo! My 100th post.

[Name removed]

28. Deleted message

Message removed by moderator. Click here to review the message board rules.

[andym]

27. Actually there is almost no good evidence that they are fake

Look here
http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=132x796370#796594
The Little Green Football site may have distorted their images

and here:
http://www.pcmag.com/article2/0,1759,1644869,00.asp

Two documents created on a selectric composer and MS Word are virtually identical.

[Bucky]

30. I happily stand corrected, but the LGF.com accusation is baseless

I'm glad to hear from others that the memoes are for real. Thanks for the links. I was passing along the latest info that I heard and conclusions from my own personal experience with the IBM Selectric typewriter in the late 70s. Apparently there's a special ball you could have bought back then to superscript the "th" which my family didn't ever get.

Among the ironies in this story is the fact that one of the military service records that the White House has produced to back up Bush's flimsy story also used a superscripted "th" after a military unit's number.

Still, the suggestion that LGF "probably created {the forgery "proof"} through a process of stretching the Word document, then cutting and pasting parts, like the dateline" is just another baseless accusation in a season full of baseless accusations.

The fact is that MS Word allows you to adjust settings a dozen different ways, including the spacing between letters within a word, spacing between words, and the sizes of fonts down the quarter of a point-size. The forgery case has been rebutted satisfactorily to me, but it has not been utterly discredited. The suggestion that LGF did anything as clever and dishonest as the link suggests is not even close to being substantiated.

Given the fact that it really looks like http://www.electoral-vote.com/">we're gonna win this election, is it really asking too much that we try to win by acting like level headed, honest adults instead of acting like Republicans?

[Zhade]

34. Republicans like those at LGF, you mean?

Have you noticed how vile they are over there? It's as bad as FreakRepublic!

Don't waste your time defending that hate site. It's not worth your efforts.

[Zhade]

33. Off-topic: Your profile comment is hilarious!

"The USA is the world's GREATEST Nation because it believes and practices freedom and justice for all"

HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA!

Thanks for the laugh. :)

('practices freedom'...hahaha!)

[Hello_Kitty]

2. Get on it Sealords II.....Woo Hoo!!!!

:nuke:

[Demi_Babe]

6. That's what I say

BRING IT ON!!!

[VOX]

23. Yes! Let's get ready to rumble!

:kick: :nuke: :kick:

[countmyvote4real]

3. Yes. Saw it earlier today. n/t

[Demi_Babe]

7. I had a feeling it might have been posted already

[exJW]

5. Wouldn't it be slander?

If he forged the memos? Strong reason for him NOT to have forged them if so.

[Demi_Babe]

8. You bet!

[shraby]

12. This is twice you asked that

same question. Three strikes and yer out.

[Protected]

9. Is there any proof that Burkett is the source?

I recall the Newsweek article simply bringing up his name and basically saying, "It's him!!" Though with so many inset boxes and other garbage littering the website, I'll admit that reading the article was a rather annoying process and maybe I missed their proof behind it.

Newsweek Article

[loveable liberal]

11. until documentation is provided...

Its true as far as im concerned. Bush has left the holes in his record because he cant account for where he was. Everyone knows he was coked up or drunk, there is no dispute that his daddy got him in the guard, why isnt that a story in itself?! Where is the liberal media here?

face it, the bush family is evil and self serving, not just *.

[NastyRiffraff]

13. Go Sealords II!!!

To me, the part about the "oppo" squad is just as important as the National Guard source. Kerry needs a "war room" that responds immediately to the constant attacks from the wingnuts.

As for Burkett....he'll become another Joe Wilson. Typical for the Bushies to attack the messenger, not the message.

Note that through all this, there's been few denials of the National Guard story itself...that is, the FACTS of the case. Only blabber about ancient typewriters and MS Word.

[wiggs]

14. 1997 Scrubbing of B*sh Records...

...sounds more interesting than whether or not B*sh took his physical.

Perhaps with all the scrutiny AWOL story is getting, this "sanitizing" incident will become more credible. If it is suspected that B*sh sanitized his records, then we can all feel free to hypothecize any scandalous TANG activity we want and let him prove otherwise. And put some people behind bars for falsifying records.

Go Burkett! Another whistle-blower added to the long list....

[grasswire]

15. Fineman and Isikoff are LYING

LYING!

They do this. Concoct stuff out of thin air.

Smoke and mirrors, folks. Wait till you hear from Burkett.

[Name removed]

16. Deleted message

Message removed by moderator. Click here to review the message board rules.

[Dr Fate]

31. No, we just need Bush to set the record straight in his own words.

He needs to look into the camera and tell America which parts are true & which parts he thinks are not true.

Unless he his hiding somthing, that is.

[cheshire]

17. OPMG what will smirky do? Going down, down, down (in) the ring of fire.

[John_H]

18. Isikof and Finemen are disgruntled former journalists. n/t

[stevedeshazer]

19. Link, please

Thank you

[Demi_Babe]

26. here ya go...sorry for forgetting to show link

http://rawstory.bluelemur.com/index.php?p=58

[Spazito]

20. What I find interesting is that the media is focusing less on the...

authenticity of the documents and more on the "source". That tells me that they were unable to substantiate the cry of forgery and are now on the hunt for the "source" in order to try and discredit him/her in some way.

[seabeyond]

29. but the upside to this

focusing so much on this focuses on so much more, lmao. really. this is what bushco and rove have been doing for the longest of time. forget the damn military stuff, lets look at the crookedness in the way they run the campaign first of all. the having a group ready to go after crediblity of whatever comes out on them. they calling whatever a lie. the gotcha game. throw out the rumor and see what sticks. the red truth vs blue truth, the red truth is of lies the blue truth is documented.

i dont think it hurts at all the nation getting the view of this muck. and would like to see cbs go after the group, the same group that got swift boats going, this group be exposed for what they are. will create the lieing bushco forever. nothing they send out will be effective from here on out. and in the future dems will just reference this when the repugs try it again

then..............the questions will be addressed too. rather isnt letting those go by

i am just tickled pink

[DeepModem Mom]

32. kick

[bushwakker]

35. kick

[secular_warrior]

36. I get the feeling there's more where that came from

Still, in theory, Burkett may have had access to any Guard records that, in a friend’s words, “didn’t make it to the shredder,”

Wouldn't it be something if Burkett has a whole file cabinet full of originals ?