("FORGERY")How the Rove machine uses freepers et al. to wage its wars...

[janx]

Here's part of how they operate. This was posted in LBN today.


http://www.salon.com/news/feature/2004/09/10/forgery/pr...

Sept. 10, 2004 | Upset by renewed attention to President Bush's disputed service in the Texas Air National Guard, White House communications director Dan Bartlett insists the new revelations about how strings were pulled to get Bush into the Guard, as well as to get him out, are part of "a coordinated attack by John Kerry and his surrogates on the president." There is no evidence to support that claim. But there is clear evidence confirming that the same conservative operatives who have been busily promoting the Swift Boat Veterans for Truth smears of Kerry are now engaged in pushing the story that CBS's "60 Minutes Weeknight Edition" aired forged documents in its Wednesday night report on Bush and the National Guard.

Creative Response Concepts, the Arlington, Va., Republican public relations firm run by former Pat Buchanan communications director Greg Mueller, with help from former Pat Robertson communications director Mike Russell, sent out a media advisory Thursday to hawk a right-wing news dispatch: "60 Minutes' Documents on Bush Might Be Fake." Creative Response Concepts has played a crucial role in hyping the inaccurate, secondhand Swift Boat allegations, with Russell serving as the group's official spokesman. A company spokesman could not be reached for comment.

Throughout the Swift Boat smear campaign, the veterans involved asserted they had no political agenda and were unaffiliated with any political party. But Creative Response Concepts, which was obviously paid some undisclosed amount for its Swift Boat work, has many links to the Republican Party and the conservative movement. Among its clients are the Republican National Committee, National Republican Congressional Committee and National Republican Senatorial Committee. Its client list also includes the Christian Coalition, National Taxpayers Union, Media Research Council and Regnery Publishing. Regnery is the firm that published "Unfit for Command," the SBVT screed against Kerry's military record.

Now Creative Response is working the case against CBS's "60 Minutes" report on Bush's questionable service in the Texas Air National Guard. The program included the first-ever interview with former Texas Lt. Gov. Ben Barnes on how he secured preferential treatment for the young George Bush in entering the Texas Air National Guard to avoid service in Vietnam. It also featured never-before-seen personal memos written by one of Bush's immediate commanders at the time, Lt. Col. Jerry Killian, who expressed concern and frustration over Bush's refusal to obey a direct order and fulfill his military commitment.

more...

So all these guys have to do, basically, is get the beginnings of what looks like a scandal out onto the 'net--and then they can just sit back and let the freeps run with it, faxing, phoning, emailing, etc., and the freeps begin to believe that they themselves were responsible for some battle waged in the war, or some new discovery that will ultimately win the election.

It almost worked with the Swift Boat Liars and started to work with this latest effort, except that the latest one was even more pathetic. But this PR firm saves a lot of money by getting the online mobs to propagate and repeat ridiculous lies, and the throngs are often too ignorant to know the difference.

Also, has anyone else noticed that the same lawyer for the Swift Boaters for Bush* has now cropped up to speak for the "lack of authenticity" of the recent memos?

NPR had a segment recently about how classically Rove has operated and how he has always preferred to get others to do the smears, leaving absolutely no fingerprints. These last two examples would seem to bear that out, no? The trouble is that this time, those doing the doing, at least before they get the masses involved, are cropping up a little too frequently. It would not be surprising to find, for instance, that the PR firm, "Creative Concepts," has cashed some checks from Texas.

[janx]

1. Here is an example of what I mean:

http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/1212199/posts

[janx]

2. Here is another:

http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/1212218/posts

Edit: Yet another here:
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/1212080/posts

[janx]

3. And here is the post that the freeps believe started the whole

question of "lack of authencicity"...

To: badgerlandjim
To: Howlin
Howlin, every single one of these memos to file is in a proportionally spaced font, probably Palatino or Times New Roman.

In 1972 people used typewriters for this sort of thing, and typewriters used monospaced fonts.

The use of proportionally spaced fonts did not come into common use for office memos until the introduction of laser printers, word processing software, and personal computers. They were not widespread until the mid to late 90's. Before then, you needed typesetting equipment, and that wasn't used for personal memos to file. Even the Wang systems that were dominant in the mid 80's used monospaced fonts.

I am saying these documents are forgeries, run through a copier for 15 generations to make them look old.

This should be pursued aggressively.



47 posted on 09/08/2004 11:59:43 PM EDT by Buckhead
< Post Reply | Private Reply | To 11 | View Replies | Report Abuse >

http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/1212261/posts

[salvorhardin]

4. You know, I am really offended

by what I can only describe as the destruction of the social memory. Do these people not think that we can't recall what technology was like only 30 years ago?

I used Wordstar for word processing with my Z80 based computer running CP/M as an OS and using a daisy wheel printer capable of doing proportional fonts and super and sub scripting all the way back in 1982.

The personal computer for the masses dates back to 1979 with the Apple II. Wordstar dates back to 1976. The personal computer itself dates back to 1974. Word processing dates back to the late 1960s.

And of course, we know that all of this was done by IBM typewriters starting in the mid-1960s.

To say that this stuff only dates back 10 to 15 years is to assume that we are all morons incapable of forming long-term memories.

[janx]

6. I remember Wordstar and used it too, briefly. But look at how

the current administration is using the freeps. One person makes a statement like this (Who knows if the thought, however inaccurate, originated with him? It could well have originated with "Creative Concepts" or in one of many dozens of other places.) After the place goes into a full frenzy of conspiracy theories, frantic phone calls, faxes, and emails...

another crumb is tossed out, just to keep things going...

Hello SEAN HANNITY
FREEPERS | 9/9/04 | JFC


Posted on 09/09/2004 2:59:19 PM MDT by JFC


Sean just mentioned us Freepers.... he said we had the cbs scam before Drudge.. WTG Hannity. He said to tell us all HELLO!!!


http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/1211316/posts

[salvorhardin]

9. Oh I know

If you haven't read it yet, be sure to read Lewis Lapham's Tentacles of Rage in Harper's which does an incredible job of describing how the right-wing meme machine took over the media.

It's just that they do this all the time, not just with technology. One of Limbaugh's favorite things is to talk about how liberals are "rewriting history." Well, they're the ones rewriting history. The hell of it, does no one remember what actually happened only three decades ago? It's like everyone (present company excluded) is practicing intentional amnesia and are content to depend on the right wing for their memories.

[janx]

10. I love Lapham's essays but haven't had time to read that one

yet. Thanks for the reminder.

The right wing's use of ignorance angers me beyond measure.

[girl gone mad]

13. There was a word processor..

on the market in the early 70s which was affordable and used by government agencies.

Right now I am searching for a copy of a document written on this word processor to see if the font type is a match, but I'm not having much luck. I am pretty certain from the information that I've gathered that the default was a Times Roman font.

[salvorhardin]

17. Do you mean

the Wang WPS? I believe that was 1975, a little too late.

You might also be interested in this article on the early history of word processing.
http://www.stanford.edu/~bkunde/fb-press/articles/wdprhist.html

Interesting factoid: IBM coined the term 'word processing' as far back as the late 1950s.

<snip>
In 1964 IBM brought out the MT/ST (Magnetic Tape/Selectric Typewriter), which combined the features of the Selectric with a magnetic tape drive. Magnetic tape was the first reusable storage medium for typed information.14 With this, for the first time, typed material could be edited without having to retype the whole text or chop up a coded copy. On the tape, information could be stored, replayed (that is, retyped automatically from the stored information), corrected, reprinted as many times as needed, and then erased and reused for other projects. This development marked the beginning of word processing as it is known today.15

It also introduced word processing as a definite idea and concept. The term was first used in IBM's marketing of the MT/ST as a "word processing" machine.16. It was a translation of the German word textverabeitung, coined in the late 1950s by Ulrich Steinhilper, an IBM engineer. He used it as a more precise term for what was done by the act of typing.17 IBM redefined it "to describe electronic ways of handling a standard set of office activities -- composing, revising, printing, and filing written documents."18

Since the invention of the MT/ST, advances in technology have made word processing systems less expensive to produce, leading to intensified competition among developers and an increase in the development rate of new packages.19
</snip>

[ConsAreLiars]

5. Tracing the Rovian operatives

through timestamps on board messages might give some interesting information.

We know in rough outline how they are organized from Rove out through the talking heads and such, but if Buckhead is the first poster of this particular Big Lie, then s/he is fairly central to the propaganda operation. Might be interesting to watch what s/he comes out with next, for those with the stomach for it.

[janx]

8. True! But we don't know that Buckhead is the first, and I sort of

doubt it. Some blogs were running with it at about the same time. I'm fairly sure, though, that--like the situation with the Swift Vets for Bush*, there is a reasonably steady contingent of Republican operatives who use places like freeperland to perpetuate the myths. Heck, at least one of the SVFB was posting there himself and freely admitted it.

You're right. It would be interesting to track. But it would be hopelessly difficult.

[ConsAreLiars]

14. A computer script could do this

Keywords into Google, auto grabbing of the relevant pages, auto search of docs for datestamps and sorting according to posting date. Too much work to do manually, and maybe too many complications for a script to handle, but it might be a fun project for someone with appropriate programming skills.

[janx]

18. It would be very revealing; that much is certain.

;-)

[0rganism]

12. It'd be interesting to go back to the first mention of the matter

to see who the instigator is...

[janx]

15. How could we find that though?

?

[grasswire]

19. freepers credit the first questioning..

...to a freeper named Buckhead. You can see his posts here -- the first one on the "forgery" possibility is at the bottom.

http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/user-posts?name=buckhead

[rumguy]

7. That is exactly how they operate

Their trained monkey supporters will endlessly repeart whatever talking point they are given...

And they aggresively try and spread the smear any way they can.

[dumpster_baby]

11. Good! Wars create Drama, and Drama brings viewers, and the more time this

Good! I hope Rove et al fight this Guard Docs scandal with everything they have. Cuz if they do, it will create Drama, and Drama brings viewers, and the more time this controversy stays front and center, the more voters will drift from Bush to Kerry. It will not be much, but at least the voters will be moving in the right direction. If we steal 3% from Bush in OH an PA, even if Bush wins FL, Bush will be evicted.

I hope they fight EVERY document in question. I hope they have GREAT arguments, too. Cuz the more viewers get interested in this story, the more the subtext of those memos soaks into the minds of the viewers. And that subtext is not complimentary to bush at all.

[janx]

16. That is a very good point!

The tactic is becoming more obvious now.