So much for "ABC and CBS PWN BUSH"

[OzzyKP]

[pchang]

Fakes, but some corroboration

Ex-Guard Typist Recalls Memos Criticizing Bush
But the commander's secretary says she thinks the ones that surfaced last week are fakes.

By James Rainey, Times Staff Writer


George W. Bush's commanding officer in the Texas Air National Guard wrote memos more than 30 years ago objecting to efforts to gloss over the young lieutenant's shortcomings and failure to take a flight physical, the officer's former secretary said Tuesday night.

But Marian Carr Knox of Houston said she thought four memos unveiled by CBS News last week were forgeries — not copies of the ones she typed at the time.

Knox, 86, worked for 23 years at Ellington Air Force Base in Houston and served as a typist for Lt. Col. Jerry B. Killian, then Bush's squadron commander, and several other officers.

In a brief interview Tuesday, she confirmed that Killian had concerns about Bush's failure to take his physical examination in 1972, which prevented him from flying, and about efforts by higher-ups to protect the future president from the fallout.

Knox told several newspapers that Killian kept the personal files on Bush, and on other topics, in a desk drawer as a way of "covering his back" in anticipation of later questions about his actions. She retired in 1979, before Killian's death, and said she did not know what became of the files.

Knox said that the four memos first shown last week on CBS News did not look authentic. After speaking briefly to The Times, Knox said she was tired of talking about the subject and turned the phone over to her son, Patrick M. Carr.

Carr said he had heard his mother describe for other reporters how some of the terminology in the memos, including the use of "billets" and a reference to the "administrative officer" were not in common usage in the 147th Fighter Interceptor Group, for which she worked. She said those terms sounded more like the ones used by the Army National Guard, her son said.

The four memos in question, revealed by CBS Sept. 8, purportedly were written by Killian between May 1972 and August 1973, during a time when Bush was absent from his regular Guard duty. The network called the source of the documents "unimpeachable," but declined to say who it was.

The first memo ordered Bush to take a physical in order to maintain his flying status. The next discussed how he could "get out of coming to drill" so he could go to Alabama to work on a political campaign. The third and fourth memos, respectively, said Bush had been "suspended from flight status" and that Killian was resisting pressure from a former Guard officer to "sugar-coat" Bush's yearly evaluation.

Killian died in 1984, and his views of Bush have been hotly debated by those around him, with Knox joining another former Guard officer who said objections to Bush's service sounded like those the squadron commander would have made.

Killian's son and widow, however, have said adamantly that they do not believe he kept such "personal" records on Bush or other employees and that the officer held his young pilot in high esteem.

Gary D. Killian, 51, of Houston said that Knox was a "dear old lady" but that she was not in the best position to know or recall his father's feelings of 30 years ago.

"I had more time to talk to my father and know what he thought about those things than Ms. Carr, bless her heart," Killian said Tuesday.

"First of all, she was the secretary not just to my dad but to many officers, and her primary job was to do typing for the group commander," Killian said.

"All the documents from Bush's record have been released and these don't exist. That's because they never happened."

CBS spokeswoman Sandy Genelius greeted Knox's statements with mixed emotions. While suggesting that Knox was wrong about the authenticity of the memos, she was pleased that the one-time secretary corroborated their content.

"While we do not believe that she is a documents expert," CBS spokeswoman Sandy Genelius said of Knox, "it is exceptionally noteworthy that she supports the content of our story.""While we do not believe that she is a documents expert," CBS spokeswoman Sandy Genelius said, "it is exceptionally noteworthy that she supports the content of our story."

White House officials could not be reached for comment, but earlier in the day the Bush administration made its strongest statements yet rebutting the memos. Aides said Bush had recently reviewed the documents and told them that the memos did not reflect the nature of his relationship with Killian.

First Lady Laura Bush had said while campaigning Monday that she felt the documents were fakes.

The debate over the memos has raged for a week in a campaign in which both Bush and Democratic nominee John F. Kerry, a decorated Vietnam veteran, have gone to great lengths to bolster their credentials to lead the nation as commander in chief.

Questions about Bush's service began when his father, George H.W. Bush, ran for president in 1988. Since the younger Bush won the presidency four years ago, his backers have said repeatedly that his honorable discharge is the best evidence that he served admirably. But a six-month gap in his service in 1972 has never been completely explained, and most of the men who served at an Alabama base where Bush was supposed to have reported that year said they did not recall ever seeing him.

The controversy began Sept. 8, when the "CBS Evening News" and the network's "60 Minutes" magazine aired extensive reports saying Bush was fast-tracked into the Guard over other candidates and then had his path to an honorable discharge cleared, despite the fact that he didn't fly for his last 18 months in the service.

CBS interviewed former Texas House Speaker Ben Barnes, who said that, at the request of a Bush family friend, he had talked the head of the Air National Guard into giving Bush a coveted position, one that would keep him out of combat. Barnes is a Democrat and a top financial contributor to Kerry's campaign.

To buttress its report, the network displayed four memos it said were written at the time by Bush's by-the-book unit commander.

A tempest erupted almost immediately over the authenticity of the memos, with some experts saying that the typing and spacing were unlike what would have been produced by typewriters of the era.

Knox based her objections to the memos not on the type but on the content, which she said smacked of the Army, not the Air Force.

Like all aspects of the debate, the views of the principals tend to coincide with their feelings on the election.

Knox identified herself as an opponent of Bush, whom she called unfit for office. Killian's son, meanwhile, called himself a Republican who would vote for the president as "the best alternative."

Bush on Tuesday addressed a national conference of thousands of retired and active Guard members in Las Vegas, telling them he was proud of his service.

Kerry is to address the same group Thursday but does not plan to speak about Bush's Guard service, an advisor said.

Instead, the Democrat plans to thanks the Guard members for their "heroic service" and to "hold the president accountable for what he is doing now, not 30 years ago," said Joe Lockhart, a senior advisor to the campaign.

CBS's next move is also unclear. Even as other reporters lined up for interviews with Knox Tuesday, CBS anchor Dan Rather was calling into the elderly woman's home.

[The Mad Monk]

Okay...I am not certain that I heard this correctly, and it's Rush in any event, so take it as you will...

Apparently, Dan Rather accused, or will accuse, the Bush team of planting the memos.

Hang on kiddies, this ride ain't half over...

[DinoDoc]

Originally posted by The Mad Monk
Apparently, Dan Rather accused, or will accuse, the Bush team of planting the memos.

If Karl Rove engineered this then he should be the one running for President.

[Ned]

CBS News is also moderating one of the two approved debates. They are concerned that this scandal will cause the debate organizers to disassociate itself from CBS News.

[Ned]

CBS plans an annoucement on this topic in a few minutes. Yesterday, Bob Schieffer called for CBS News to prove the memo's were authentic and not just say they were based on anonymous sources.

[Giancarlo]

I hope somebody gets indicted for this.. this is a felony.

[Ned]

Congress ought to yank CBS's license.

[notyoueither]

[Drake Tungsten]

Originally posted by The Mad Monk
Okay...I am not certain that I heard this correctly, and it's Rush in any event, so take it as you will...

I actually respect Rush now that I found out he's banging Daryn Kagan. The man is living my dream...

[chequita guevara]

Originally posted by DinoDoc
If Karl Rove engineered this then he should be the one running for President.

What difference does it make if he's arelady running the President?

[chequita guevara]

Originally posted by Drake Tungsten
I actually respect Rush now that I found out he's banging Daryn Kagan. The man is living my dream...

Fat guys can still get the hotties.

[Drake Tungsten]

che > Asher

[The Mad Monk]

CBS Guard Documents Traced to Tex. Kinko's
Records Reportedly Faxed From Abilene

By Michael Dobbs
Washington Post Staff Writer
Thursday, September 16, 2004; Page A06

Documents allegedly written by a deceased officer that raised questions about President Bush's service with the Texas Air National Guard bore markings showing they had been faxed to CBS News from a Kinko's copy shop in Abilene, Tex., according to another former Guard officer who was shown the records by the network.

The markings provide one piece of evidence suggesting a source for the documents, whose authenticity has been hotly disputed since CBS aired them in a "60 Minutes" broadcast Sept. 8. The network has declined to name the person who provided them, saying the source was confidential, or to explain how the documents came to light after more than three decades.

There is only one Kinko's in Abilene, and it is 21 miles from the Baird, Tex., home of retired Texas National Guard officer Bill Burkett, who has been named by several news outlets as a possible source for the documents.

Robert Strong, who was one of three people interviewed by "60 minutes," said he was shown copies of the documents by CBS anchor Dan Rather and producer Mary Mapes on Sept. 5, three days before the broadcast. He said at least one of the documents bore a faxed header indicating it had been sent from a Kinko's in Abilene.

Strong's comments came as CBS News President Andrew Heyward in an interview acknowledged that there were "unresolved issues" that the network wanted "to get to the bottom of." Since the broadcast, critics have pointed to a host of unexplained problems about the memos, which bore dates from 1972 and 1973, including signs that they had been written on a computer rather than a Vietnam-era typewriter.

"I feel that we did a tremendous amount of reporting before the story went on the air or we wouldn't have put it on the air," Heyward said in an interview last night, while acknowledging "a ferocious debate about these documents."

Asked what role Burkett may have played in CBS's reporting of the report, Heyward said: "I'm not going to get into any discussion of who the sources are."

Burkett, who has accused Bush aides of ordering the destruction of some portions of the president's National Guard record because they might have been politically embarrassing, did not return telephone calls to his home. His lawyer, David Van Os, issued a statement on Burkett's behalf saying he "no longer trusts any possible outcome of speaking to the press on any issue regarding George W. Bush and does not choose to dignify recent spurious attacks upon his character with any comment."

In news interviews earlier this year, Burkett said he overheard a telephone conversation in the spring of 1997 in which top Bush aides asked the head of the Texas National Guard to sanitize Bush's files as he was running for a second term as governor of Texas. Several days later, he said, he saw dozens of pages from Bush's military file dumped in a trash can at Camp Mabry, the Guard's headquarters.

The Bush aides Burkett named as participants in the telephone conversation were Chief of Staff Joe M. Allbaugh and spokespersons Karen Hughes and Dan Bartlett. All three Bush aides and former Texas National Guard Maj. Gen. Daniel James have strongly denied the allegations.

Suspicions that Burkett could have been a source for the CBS documents first surfaced earlier this week when Newsweek magazine reported that Mapes flew to Texas to interview him over the summer. Yesterday, the New York Times reported that a CBS staffer, speaking on condition of anonymity, confirmed that Burkett was a source for the "60 Minutes" report but "did not know the exact role he played."

Yesterday reporters from several news organizations were camped near Blair, Tex., outside Burkett's home, which is on a working ranch, with a gate barring access to a one-story farmhouse and a pickup truck outside. At 6 p.m. Central Time, Burkett walked to the gate on his cane with a black dog by his side to collect his mail. He refused to answer questions over whether he provided the documents to CBS.

"Get out my way," he told the reporters. "You need to go home."

Earlier this year, Burkett gave interviews to numerous news outlets, including The Washington Post, alleging corruption and malfeasance at the top of the Texas National Guard, many of which have never been substantiated. He has also been a named source for several reports by USA Today, which reported Monday that it had independently obtained copies of the disputed memos soon after the broadcast.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A24635-2004Sep15.html

[Drake Tungsten]

I'd try to update everyone on the situation, but it's just too damn huge now. Rather is ****ing toast...