Fake memos and the MSM - Round 2

[Drake Tungsten]

Seems like ABC decided it couldn't let CBS corner the market for dishonest bashing of Republicans.

Fake but Accurate Again?
The "GOP talking points memo" on Terri Schiavo has all the signs of a political dirty trick. Where is the mainstream media?
by John Hinderaker

MUCH TIME MAY PASS before we fully understand the political ramifications of the Terri Schiavo case. For now, though, it seems that Republicans are taking a fearful beating. Opinion polls consistently show that a large majority of Americans disapproved of the effort--bipartisan, to be sure, but led by Republicans--to keep Mrs. Schiavo alive. To add insult to injury, most poll respondents hold the seemingly-inconsistent belief that the Republicans are not sincere, but are trying to capitalize on the Schiavo tragedy for political advantage.

One reason for this perception may be the "GOP talking points memo" that was distributed on March 17, when the Senate took up the bill that conferred federal jurisdiction over a last effort to save Mrs. Schiavo. The memo was first reported by ABC's Linda Douglass on Friday, March 18. The next day, on ABC's Good Morning America, Kate Snow confronted House Majority Leader Tom DeLay with "some talking points that Senate Republicans were circulating"; DeLay denied any knowledge of the memo.

On March 20, the Washington Post joined in, reporting:

An unsigned one-page memo, distributed to Republican senators, said the debate over Schiavo would appeal to the party's base, or core, supporters. The memo singled out Sen. Bill Nelson (D-Fla.), who is up for reelection next year and is potentially vulnerable in a state President Bush won last year.

"This is an important moral issue and the pro-life base will be excited that the Senate is debating this important issue," said the memo, which was reported by ABC News and later given to The Washington Post. "This is a great political issue, because Senator Nelson of Florida has already refused to become a cosponsor and this is a tough issue for Democrats."

The full text of the memo was finally reported on March 21, when ABC News posted online "an exact, full copy of the document." ABC headlined the story, "GOP Talking Points on Terri Schiavo." As quoted by ABC, the memo was odd, to say the least. The Senate bill was identified, incorrectly, as "S. 529." (The bill was S. 539.) The memo also included five typographical errors, including misspelling Terri Schiavo's first name as "Teri." ABC obligingly identified four of these errors with a "sic." The memo, as quoted by ABC, contained no hint as to who authored it. Its content, however, immediately raised questions.

MOST OF THE DOCUMENT, in particular paragraphs five through eight, does indeed consist of talking points. These paragraphs are arguments in favor of the Senate bill which would have been appropriate for use on the Senate floor or when talking to reporters. But these were not, of course, the paragraphs the news media were interested in. On top of these actual talking points were grafted the paragraphs that said "the pro-life base will be excited," "This is a great political issue," etc.

But, as was quickly pointed out by bloggers, these political observations are not "talking points" at all. These are comments on political strategy which would be out of place in argument on the Senate floor, or in a media interview. The plot grew thicker when it was pointed out that the bulk of the memo--paragraphs five through eight--was lifted word-for-word from the website of the Traditional Values Coalition. So it is evident that whoever wrote the memo spent no time formulating arguments in favor of the Republican leadership's position; the memo's legitimate talking points were merely cut and pasted off the internet. The anonymous author's contribution was simply to add the explosive (and, in context, inappropriate) political observations.

Questions about the genuineness of the memo intensified when, later the same day, the far-left website Raw Story published, for the first time, a JPEG version of the scanned memo, which it said "[a] source on Capitol Hill has leaked." The print version of the memo, as posted on Raw Story, was identical to ABC's "exact, full copy of the document," except that the four typos that ABC had identified with a "sic" were all corrected. Interestingly, however, the fifth typo--"applicably" instead of "applicable" in the sixth paragraph--which ABC did not so identify, was not corrected in Raw Story's "leaked" version of the document.

THESE MYSTERIOUS CORRECTIONS raised obvious questions. Who created the second, corrected version of the memo? Why would they have taken a Republican-created memo and re-typed it, eliminating typographical errors, before "leaking" it?

More basic features of the memo also raised questions. There is nothing on the face of the memo to indicate who authored it. Contrary to normal congressional practice, not only is it anonymous, but it is on plain white paper, not the letterhead of any congressional or Senatorial office. It could, literally, have been created by anyone.

What, then, was the evidence for the claim that it was created and distributed by Republicans? As far as the public record shows: There is none. On the contrary, the only published report identifying the purveyors of the memo on March 17 states that they were Democrats. The New York Times reported on March 22:

As tensions festered among Republicans, Democratic aides passed out an unsigned one-page memorandum that they said had been distributed to Senate Republicans. [emphasis added]

Faced with growing questions about its story on the memo, ABC News backed off. An ABC spokesman told blogger Josh Claybourn that ABC never intended to suggest that Republicans created or distributed the disputed memo, but only that some Republicans received it on March 17. In Claybourn's words: "ABC tells me they never meant to imply Republicans created the memo." ABC's revised position is, of course, ridiculous. They described the memo as "GOP Talking Points on Terri Schiavo." But the fact that ABC has backed off its original report indicates that they have no idea who created the suspicious memo.

The other reporters involved in the story have gone to ground. Mike Allen of the Washington Post says he has information on the memo's provenance, but he can't reveal it. But his stated reason for believing the memo is not a hoax--"senators had it on the floor"--is laughable. Josh Claybourn reports that the Times reporter who described Democratic aides passing out the memo has declined to identify them.

To sum up, then: (1) The memo itself conveys no information about its source. (2) It is very poorly done, containing a number of typographical errors, failing to get the number of the Senate bill correct, and using points cribbed word-for-word from an advocacy group's website. (3) The politically controversial statements are out of place in a talking points memo, and seem, on the contrary, ideally framed to create talking points for the Democrats. (4) Somewhat bizarrely, after the contents of the memo had been reported, someone corrected those typographical errors--but only those errors that had been pointed out by ABC. (5) No one has reported seeing any Republican distributing the suspect memo; the only people confirmed to have passed out the memo were Democratic staffers.

A REASONABLE CONCLUSION would be that the "talking points memo" might be a fake, created by Democrats to cast aspersions on the motives of the Republican leadership. Every Republican who has been asked about the memo has denied knowing anything about it. Unless someone talks--at a minimum, identifying the Democratic aides who distributed the memo on March 17--we likely will never know who, exactly, created it.

But the fact that the memo is suspect (at best) has not prevented Democrats in the media from relying on it to attack congressional Republicans. For example, conventional-wisdom weather vanes such as Eleanor Clift and Ellen Goodman have seized on the memo to berate Republicans and the "religious right." Clift leads her column in the current Newsweek:

The Republicans might want to rethink that memo of talking points they circulated last weekend about how intervening in the Terri Schiavo case is a "great political issue."

Goodman, who writes for the Washington Post, the paper which won't tell us what evidence it has for the memo's authenticity, says:

And don't forget the infamous "talking points memo" ABC News found, reminding Republican senators that "the pro-life base will be excited" and it's a "great political issue."

There is little danger that anyone will forget the "infamous" memo any time soon; the mainstream media will make sure of that. So far, mainstream news sources have not even acknowledged that the source of the memo is in doubt, let alone set forth the compelling arguments suggesting that, in fact, it might be a political dirty trick. This is a case where the truth, as the old saying goes, is still lacing up its shoes.

John Hinderaker is a contributor to the blog Power Line and a contributing writer to The Daily Standard.

http://www.weeklystandard.com/Content/Public/Articles/000/000/005/416virea.asp?pg=1

The ball's in your court, NBC. How are you going to match this?

[JohnT]

[Agathon]

You mean like Dan Rather's report, which was basically correct, but was buried under a ****storm about one of the pieces of evidence (despite eyewitnesses saying that the information in the letter was accurate).

Why not try an article from a respectable source, unlike the Standard, which is written by two year olds, for two year olds?

The Flawed Report on Dan Rather

By James C. Goodale


Report of the Independent Review Panel on the September 8, 2004 60 Minutes Wednesday Segment "For the Record" Concerning President Bush's Texas Air National Guard Service


by Dick Thornburgh and Louis D. Boccardi


January 5, 2005, 224 pp.


A few weeks ago former Attorney General Richard Thornburgh and Louis Boccardi, former head of the Associated Press, released their report on Dan Rather's use of allegedly forged Texas Air National Guard (ANG) documents covering President George W. Bush's military service. The report, as is well known, excoriated CBS for the use of these documents on its 60 Minutes Wednesday program on September 8, 2004. It is, however, a flawed report. It should not be uncritically accepted, as it has been by the press and by television commentators.


The report concluded that CBS failed to hire appropriate experts to clearly verify its statements and did not establish a "chain of custody" for the documents. CBS, according to the report, rushed to judgment on the basis of inadequate evidence, did not promptly acknowledge flaws in its program, and broadcast a false and misleading report.


CBS did rush to make inadequately verified allegations public and it was slow in responding to criticism. The report's conclusions on the other points are not, however, persuasive. Surprisingly, the panel was unable to conclude whether the documents are forgeries or not. If the documents are not forgeries, what is the reason for the report? The answer is: to criticize the newsgathering practices of CBS, whether the documents are authentic or not. As such, the report is less than fully credible.


Lost in the commotion over the authenticity of the documents is that the underlying facts of Rather's 60 Minutes report are substantially true. Bush did not take the physical exam required of all pilots; his superiors gave him the benefit of any doubt; he did receive special treatment and Lieutenant Colonel Jerry Killian, Bush's commanding officer, was unhappy with the loss of ANG's investment in him when Bush informed Killian he was leaving for Alabama. Before the broadcast, Mary Mapes, the CBS producer of the program, confirmed the facts in the documents with retired Major General Bobby Hodges, who had been Killian's superior in the ANG. Later Hodges told the panel he did not think the documents were authentic, but did not disagree that the facts were substantially correct.


Following the broadcast, Marian Carr Knox, who was Killian's secretary at the time, confirmed the facts of the broadcast, saying, "There's no doubt in my mind that [the] information is correct." When the panel cross-examined Knox she seemed less certain of what she had told Rather but she did not contradict any of the broadcast. Since the broadcast, no one has come forward to say the program was untruthful.



The panel attacks the four experts CBS hired to authenticate th documents. One of the four, James Pierce, concluded that th signatures on the documents were authentic and that there was n reason to believe the documents were not genuine. Suc conclusions are common for document examiners. A second Marcel Matley, also concluded that the signatures were genuine


The other two experts had reser-vations about the documents. One, Emily Will, said that from the documents made available to her, she did not think the signatures matched; the other, Linda James, stated that she could not authenticate the documents without the originals. The report asserts that CBS should not have relied on Matley and Pierce. It should have known, according to the panel, that copies of documents, which these were, can rarely be authenticated. A copied document can only be authenticated when compared to the original. There were no originals. Matley, for his part, continues to disagree with the panel's view and has demanded that it correct the eighteen places in the report where he believes he has been libeled.


Mr. Pierce had said that the signatures were authentic and he has never modified his conclusion. The panel never interviewed him. If the panel never talked to the one expert upon whom CBS principally relied, how could it determine whether he was credible?


Moreover, if lawyers know how to hire appropriate experts even if journalists don't, why didn't the panel, which was backed by a huge law firm, hire its own experts to determine the authenticity of the documents? One suspects that if the panel had done so, it would have ended up with some experts saying the documents were reliable, others not sure. And that would have put the panel back where CBS was.


The report criticizes CBS for not being able to present evidence of a "chain of custody" for the documents. Since the CBS source, Lieutenant Colonel Bill Burkett, only had a copy of the documents, CBS, the panel said, should have known where this copy came from, or, indeed, the source of the originals. Burkett later confessed he had lied about his alleged source, George Conn, whom CBS clearly should have taken more pains to reach. After the program had been broadcast, Burkett said he received the documents from a woman named Lucy Ramirez.


For seized drugs to be introduced into evidence, a lawyer must prove who had the drugs from the time they were seized—that is the "chain of custody." While such proof is relevant in the courtroom, it is often irrelevant for journalists. Few stories based on documents would ever be written if that were the standard.


One of the greatest concerns facing The New York Times in publishing the Pentagon Papers was their authenticity. A major fear was that the papers had been forged by an antiwar group. If a strict standard of "chain of custody" had been applied to the Times's possession of the Pentagon Papers, this standard would have made the story unpublishable. It would have required a call to the Department of Defense or the Rand Corporation, known to have custody of the originals. Such a call would have brought the FBI to the Times's door in a second.



Apart from consulting forensic experts when it is appropriate what journalists do when they receive copies of documents is t make judgments about the source and the contents of what the have. Are they consistent with known facts? Is it logical to assum such documents exist


Dan Rather apparently asked few such questions. According to the panel, he knew little about the background of the charges he broadcast and depended on the reporting and research of the program's producer, Mary Mapes. To determine the documents' authenticity, she made what the panel described as a "meshing" analysis.


Mapes submitted to the panel a forty-page statement setting out this analysis. It showed how the events described in the documents corresponded with known facts about the President's Air National Guard service. The panel said it agreed with some of this meshing analysis but not all. The panel did not attach this meshing analysis to the report. It did, however, attach over seven hundred pages of other exhibits to it.


I have seen Mary Mapes's statement, and it is persuasive within the limits she set. She established a chronology of events drawn from eight official Bush documents she obtained through a Freedom of Information Act request she had made in 1999 and 2000, when she first became interested in the story. She then tried to match the six Killian documents with that chronology and concluded that they "fit like a glove."


Three of the six documents did fit well, the panel conceded. Two of them covered Killian's refusal to rate Bush's performance. The third reflected Killian's conversation with Bush in which he reminded him of the ANG's investment in him. Of the other three, the panel thought one "may not mesh," and another did "not mesh well." Another, not used by Mapes, did not mesh "at all."


The panel's approach to the document in which Killian ordered Bush to take the physical exam illustrates how it dealt with Mapes's submis-sion. Mapes believed this document was authentic for two reasons. First, it "meshed": the dates in it matched the dates of earlier physicals taken by Bush, the addresses on the document were correct, and the Air Force regulations were correctly cited. Second, Matley said the signature on the document was Killian's, and Hodges and Knox confirmed the document's contents.


The panel challenged Mapes's claim on the basis of its talks with three officers who had served in the ANG at the same time as the President. They said it was not customary to "order" an officer to take a physical. For this reason the panel concluded the document "does not mesh well."


The officers' statements, of course, do not disprove the claim that Killian ordered Bush to take a physical; nor do they exclude the possibility that there was a custom of which they had no knowledge. The panel's reasoning on this document is not particularly persuasive, nor is its reasoning persuasive about why the other documents did not perfectly mesh. In the end, even the panel, without saying so explicitly, has to concede the accuracy of Mapes's statement that "there is nothing in the official Bush records that would rule out the authenticity of the Killian documents."



A major weakness of the report is that neither Mapes no Rather was offered a chance to cross-examine the people the pane interviewed. In fact, the panel never even told them whom it wa talking to. The panel did not tell Mapes or Rather, for example, tha it was talking to the three officers I have mentioned; nor did it giv them an opportunity to show that the officers were Bus supporters or even friends of Bush—which Mapes believes to b the case


Nor is the panel convincing when it says that telephone contact between Mapes and a member of the Kerry campaign was "highly inappropriate." Mapes made a call to the Kerry campaign office after Burkett told her that he wanted to speak to the campaign about strategy to counter the "Swift Boat Veterans for Truth." At that point, Mapes had only some of the documents and she needed the rest. She telephoned Kerry campaign headquarters to get the phone number of Joe Lockhart, a senior adviser to the campaign. By the time she talked to Lockhart, she said, she had received all the documents. Lockhart eventually telephoned Burkett but testified to the panel that he had "said very little during the call and the subject of documents never came up." In effect, Mapes traded access to the campaign for access to the documents. She did not turn over the documents to the campaign before the broadcast. Investigative reporters must be wily in getting their stories and what Mapes did does not seem reprehensible.


Perhaps the least credible part of the report is its decision to label parts of Dan Rather's program false and misleading, even though those parts were not directly related to the documents. For example, it concluded that one interview, which implied that "President Bush was in the TexANG to avoid service in Vietnam," was inaccurate and misleading because there were other sources who would say the President wanted to serve in Vietnam.


The panel said a flight instructor had told Mapes that Bush "did want to go to Vietnam but others went first." Mapes may not have believed this statement, and she would have had good grounds for being skeptical about it. It was well known at the time that joining a National Guard unit such as the ANG was one of the best ways to avoid going to Vietnam. And no one has disputed why Bush joined. It is hard to believe he changed his mind afterward. But even if he did, it has no bearing on his initial decision to join the Guard.


The panel also labeled as "misleading" Dan Rather's interview with the then speaker of the Texas House, Ben Barnes, who made a call to get George Bush in the Guard. Why is this misleading? Because, the panel said, CBS has no proof that the person who received the call was influenced by it. Can the panel be serious about this? Should CBS not have reported this call?



The CBS report reads as if it were written by lawyers fo lawyers, notwithstanding the fact that Mr. Boccardi is a journalist The report, it may be noted, is signed not only by Boccardi an Thornburgh but by seven other lawyers in Mr. Thornburgh's la firm. The report might well have been better if it had been writte by journalists for journalists and the public. The repor convincingly points out that CBS moved too quickly in airing th broadcast and too slowly in discovering that its source woul change his story about how and from whom he got the documents Those are fair and telling comments. But they take up little mor than 25 percent of the report


The rest of the report, which is directed to the newsgathering process of CBS, is flawed. The panel was unable to decide whether the documents were authentic or not. It didn't hire its own experts. It didn't interview the principal expert for CBS. It all but ignored an important argument for authenticating the documents—"meshing." It did not allow cross-examination. It introduced a standard for document authentication very difficult for news organizations to meet—"chain of custody"—and, lastly, it characterized parts of the broadcast as false, misleading, or both, in a way that is close to nonsensical. One is tempted to say that the report has as many flaws as the flaws it believes it has found in Dan Rather's CBS broadcast.

[Drake Tungsten]

You mean like Dan Rather's report, which was basically correct, but was buried under a ****storm about one of the pieces of evidence (despite eyewitnesses saying that the information in the letter was accurate).

Your side's "fake but accurate" excuse has already been acknowledged, Aggie. Just look at the title of the piece I posted...

[Agathon]

Your side's "fake but accurate" excuse has already been acknowledged, Aggie. Just look at the title of the piece I posted...

So if it's accurate who cares?

[Drake Tungsten]

How do we know it's accurate if the only evidence shown was fake? Don't ask me to explain that one; I'm not one of the simpletons who actually believes that the 60 Minutes piece was accurate...

[Agathon]

Despite the people concerned saying so (except for those who had an axe to grind).

The Weekly Standard is a magazine for idiots. The people who run it are 24 carat morons. People giggle about it in university circles. Why do you think anyone would take it seriously?

[Drake Tungsten]

Well, if people giggle about it in university circles, that's a good sign.

[Admiral]

You people actually managed to pull off the change of topic back in October, letting Bush off the hook. This time, you'll find the political environment different. You'll also find that you have no easily-identifiable enemy to pin this on, as teh Democrats have wisely chosen not to get involved.
Also, I would be surprised if the document isn't accurate. It is self-evident that the memo is accurate, and given the degree of unity and cohesiveness within the party, it is highly likely that a memo very like the one that has appeared was distributed. Why, then, when a memo does appear, must it be fake?

[Ramo]

"She's never had independent counsel and I think that if Ted Bundy, as a mass murderer gets lawyer and get access to court, Terri Schiavo as a disabled lady should get the same." - Gibbs, Schindler lawyers

http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,148353,00.html

"When it comes to federal legal protection, Terri Schiavo ranks below Ted Bundy, and when it comes to protection from suffering, she ranks below an unwanted pet." - Catholic Culture

http://www.catholicculture.org/docs/doc_view.cfm?RecNum=6381

"If we accord that right to someone like John Wayne Gacy or Ted Bundy, shouldn't we give at least equal protection to someone with a disability, charged with no crime, who is at risk of being starved and dehydrated to death?" - National Right To Life

http://www.priestsforlife.org/euthanasia/05-03-03congresscanact.htm

"Like it or not, convicted murderers Ted Bundy and Danny Rolling received more due-process protections than Terri Schiavo, a person utterly innocent of any wrong-doing." - Ken Conner, former president of the Family Research Council

http://66.195.16.55/bio664.html

"He continues to promote the interests of Michael Schiavo by refusing Terri the right to independent counsel, a right which even serial killers like Ted Bundy received." - Bonnie Chernin Rogoff, GOPUSA.com

http://www.gopusa.com/commentary/brogoff/2005/bcr_02211.shtml

"If the proceedings that led up to the execution of serial-killer Ted Bundy had been handled in the same way, Bundy's conviction would have been overturned." - Florida State Sen. Daniel Webster

http://www.usatoday.com/news/opinion/2005-01-26-schiavo-oppose_x.htm

"If we accord that right to someone like John Wayne Gacy or Ted Bundy, shouldn't we give at least equal protection to someone with a disability, charged with no crime, who is at risk of being starved and dehydrated to death?" - conservativealerts.com

http://xsorbit25.com/users5/forzionssake/index.php?topic=3155.new

And the money shot:

"This legislation ensures that individuals like Terri Schiavo are guaranteed the same legal protections as convicted murderers like Ted Bundy."- Traditional Values Coalition
http://www.traditionalvalues.org/modules.php?sid=2179

http://www.dailykos.com/comments/200...;showrate=1#24 (slightly edited by myself)

From the memo:

* Teri Schiavo is subject to an order that her feeding tubes will be disconnected on March 18, 2005 at 1p.m.

* The Senate needs to act this week before the Budget Act is pending business, or Teri's family will not have a remedy in federal court.

* This is an important moral issue and the pro-life base will be excited that the Senate is debating this important issue.

* This is a great political issue, because Senator Nelson of Florida - has already refused to become a cosponsor and this is a tough issue for Democrats.

* The bill is very limited and defines custody as "those parties authorized or directed by a court order to withdraw or withhold food, fluids, or medical treatment."

* There is an exemption for proceeding "which no party disputes, and the court finds, that the incapacitated person while having capacity, had executed a written advance directive valid under applicably law that clearly authorized the withholding or withdrawal of food or fluids or medical treatment in the applicable circumstances."

* Incapacitated persons are defined as those "presently incapable of making relevant decisions concerning the provision, withholding or withdrawal of food fluids or medical treatment under applicable state law."

* This legislation ensures that individuals like Teri Schiavo are guaranteed the same legal protections as convicted murderers like Ted Bundy.

So are Republicans getting their talking points from a memo forged by those evil Dems?

And I'll pre-empt your "ZOMGGF DailyKos " with a "ZOMGBH Weekly Standard. "

[Sava]

Ramo

drakes self-pwnage is hilarious

[Ogie Oglethorpe]

@ Aggie.

Defending a partisan 'reporting job' of no consequence save in the addled minds of the faithful at CBS. The rest of the country would have had a gigantic case of who gives a F*** except for the fact that its so easy to hate CBS and Rather.

[Dinner]

I love Republicans. "Anything which makes us look bad is obviously fake and is a liberal lie!"

BTW Tom DeLay is a facist. Any man who would rig election districts like Tom DeLay had done in Texas has no right to hold an office of trust in any democratic country. The man wants to win no matter what the desires of the voters are.

[Drake Tungsten]

I love Republicans. "Anything which makes us look bad is obviously fake and is a liberal lie!"

Actually, it's "anything which makes us look bad, cannot be traced back to us, has only been proven to have been distributed by Democrats and has never been proven to be authentic might be fake and a dirty trick." Seems pretty damn reasonable to me...

[Drake Tungsten]

So are Republicans getting their talking points from a memo forged by those evil Dems?

In the article they talked about how one of the suspicious things about the memo is that many of the talking points are taken word for word from the website of the Traditional Values Coalition. Thanks you (and Kos) for providing some supporting evidence.