September 12, 2004
HOW LONG BEFORE SOMEONE BLAMES THE JEWS?:
Slime Time Live: In your face: Fueled by shadowy cash, the attacks get uglier and uglier. Why the mud's flying so thick and fast. (Howard Fineman and Michael Isikoff, 9/20/04, Newsweek)
"It's more vicious at this point than I have ever seen it," said George Shipley, a Democratic operative and former professor whose knack for collecting damning information once gave him the nickname "Dr. Dirt." He didn't sound entirely unhappy about it.Stung by airstrikes on his Vietnam years, Kerry and his allies are fighting back. His sidekick on the plane is now John Sasso, a Boston consultant who derailed Joe Biden's campaign in 1988 by circulating evidence that the senator had plagiarized portions of his stump speech. On the ground, a hard-core Kerry group is setting up a new "oppo" squad. 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." [...]
Where did the documents come from? CBS won't say. But the trail pieced together by NEWSWEEK shows that in a sulfurous season like this one, the difference between obscurity and power is small, and anyone can get a hearing. A principal source for CBS's story was Bill Burkett, a disgruntled former Guard officer who lives in Baird, Texas, who says he was present at Guard headquarters in Austin in 1997, when a top aide to the then Governor Bush ordered records sanitized to protect the Boss. 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." Fellow officers say he 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," says Dennis Adams, a former Guard colleague. The White House, through Communications Director Dan Bartlett, called Burkett a "discredited source." Indeed, Bush strategists are convinced—or have convinced themselves—that the issue will backfire on its purveyors.
So we've got Mr. Isikoff on the case, a plumbers unit, and a mentally unstable source--it's like the Lewinsky, Watergate, and Hiss scandals have all merged. Posted by Orrin Judd at September 12, 2004 9:30 AM
So basically CBS News is running with a story first peddled by a guy from outside Abilene during Bush's re-election bid in 1998 which has gone nowhere in the past six years, until these new bombshell memos show up.
Burkett's been around long enough to have developed a number of contacts within the Texas Democratic Party, which since about the time he first started making these charges has been the most inept big-state political party this side of the pre-Schwarzenegger Republican Party of California. That means if he is the source of the new documents, he would have had a number of diffrent conduits to CBS News or even contacts within the organization directly.
But if he is the direct source, that doesn't explain why Dan Rather is willing to put his career on the line by attempting a Nixonian stonewall of any investigation at all into the matter. That makes me think even if Burkett was the originator of the bogus info, there had to be some more important people to Dan involved in Texas Democratic politics in Austin or elsewhere -- possibly including Rather's daughter, Robin -- who may have been the conduit of the information.
Posted by: John at September 12, 2004 11:58 AMAlternatively, Rather is simply protecting a source. Since the guy profiles as a whistle-blower, this is the good kind of protecting a source, as opposed to the Novak way of protecting a source.
Posted by: Avedon at September 12, 2004 12:28 PMIf Rather is protecting a source for now that's fine, if at the same time he or someone at CBS is going back to that souce and asking them to answer the questions about the similarity of the documents to a MS Word layout that have been brought up since Wednesday night.
However, right now it appears that CBS' defense doesn't include any internal investigation, or at least that's what the network told the public on Friday. To stand by you're source and not even ask him/her to explain the contradictions brought up is not good jounalism.
Posted by: John at September 12, 2004 1:01 PM"Hey, Senator, we want to set up a group to move the discussion off Vietnam and take the attack to the President."
"Great. Let's call it Sealords II, so the media will have to explain about my great war record. You know, a surprisingly large number of voters don't know about that, because I've been so reluctant to talk about it."
Posted by: David Cohen at September 12, 2004 1:20 PM"The Late George Shipley"
Wasn't that a novel?
Posted by: Robert Schwartz at September 12, 2004 3:14 PM--Lewinsky, Watergate, and Hiss scandals have all merged--
It's the Bermuda Triangle!
Posted by: Sandy P at September 12, 2004 3:16 PM"Alternatively, Rather is simply protecting a source."
You all are assuming that Dan has a source. Why do you assume that?
Isn't it up to Danno to prove that he has a source. Up to now all we know is that he has a document. A document that anyone, including Dan or one of his kittens, with access to a Kinko's could manufacture.
When Dan steps forward with, a source, a chain of custody, an original typed document (turn it over feel the letter impacts on the back) on 30 year old paper (government issue no rag content i'd guess probably very brittle) and an ink signature, then we can talk. Until then I say bu11sh;t.
Source this Danno^^|^^.
Posted by: Robert Schwartz at September 12, 2004 3:28 PM"Protecting a source" is a valid defense only if the source has given you factual information. Protecting a source after you know their information to be forged is to be complicit in the forgery.
Posted by: PapayaSF at September 12, 2004 4:19 PMYou're thinking of "The Talented Mr Ripley".
Posted by: Robert Duquette at September 12, 2004 10:44 PMRipley Shipley they were all crooks.
Posted by: Robert Schwartz at September 13, 2004 2:51 AMPatricia Highsmith would have had a great deal of fun filleting John Kerry and his care bear, John Edwards.
Posted by: jim hamlen at September 13, 2004 1:49 PM