Gore campaign rejected allegations similar to CBS report

[cal04]

Former Vice President Al Gore's presidential campaign heard but did not pursue allegations about George W. Bush's Air National Guard service, similar to the information in discredited documents aired by CBS News this month, a former campaign official said Tuesday.

Tony Coelho, who ran the campaign for several months in 2000, said he did not follow up on the claims because they were not serious enough to demand further attention.

"Of everyone I talked to, no one had anything that rose to the level that we should get ourselves into," Coelho said.

CBS and anchor Dan Rather apologized Monday for a "60 Minutes" segment that quoted documents purported to be from one of Bush's commanders in the Texas Air National Guard. The documents say the commander, Lt. Col. Jerry Killian, ordered Bush to take a medical exam, which he did not, and felt pressured to sugarcoat an evaluation of then-1st Lt. Bush.

http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?file=/news/archive/2004/09/21/politics1854EDT0752.DTL

[yardwork]

1. I heard that last night on Tweety

It sounds like maybe Rove tried this trick on Gore, who failed to bite. Then he tried it on Kerry, who failed to bite. In desperation, he tried it on Rather, who bit.

[cal04]

2. Just found out about Gore's a couple of days ago.

If Burkett is suspect, though, so is Karl Rove. Every campaign he runs seems to have well-timed distractions. In 2000, just before his inarticulate client was to debate Al Gore, a tape of Mr. Bush’s training ended up in the Gore campaign’s mailbox. Reporters wrote about this discovery and overwhelmed issues and debate coverage with the unraveling mystery.

An employee of Mark McKinnon, Bush’s media expert, was later implicated in the scandal but nobody ever proved Rove wasn’t pulling strings. Of course, it was strictly coincidental when Rove’s office was found bugged in 1986, the day of a critical debate between another one of his inarticulate candidates and an incumbent governor. That mystery overwhelmed debate coverage and implicated the democratic opponent. I remember standing with other reporters outside of Rove’s building after his news conference to announce the revelation he was bugged. We all laughed about how amateurish it all appeared.

[Lisa]

6. the other interesting thing about that ...

According to the New Yorker article on the topic, the guy who had been rehearsing the role of Bush for the practice debates had to drop out because he had inadvertently seen some of what was on that tape. Word is that the emergency substitute, Paul Begala, wasn't as good, and the Gore team might have gotten overconfident as a result. (That is, if they'd been able to keep their original sparring partner, they might have anticipated Bush trying to make Gore look like a bully.)

Remember what happened when Reagan got hold of the Carter briefing book? I don't seem to recall the GOP being anywhere near as honorable as the Dems.

[Davis_X_Machina]

3. The are not 'allegations'. They are claims substantiated...

...by documents obtained nearly five years ago by people not connected with any campaign of any party.

Sheesh.

[bloom]

4. IN Tuesday's segment... CBS

was trying to make a big deal out of a CBS person (Mapes) getting Lockhart to talk with Bob Burkett.

:eyes:

[SineOfNothing]

5. What does Gore 2000 have to do with CBS?

The last thing that's needed is to connect the two together or in anyway mention Democrats and CBS in the same paragraph. This thing is not going away soon and there needs to be a major push to try and blame this on the GOP. Perhaps Dan Rather can uncover some memos to implicate the GOP in the forging of these documents (assuming they are forged).