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« Memogate: WHADDABOUT THE TYPEWRITER?!?!?! | Main | Memogate: Secretary Changes Her Story, Helps CBS » September 16, 2004Memogate: Did Burkett Tip His Hand?Retired Texas National Guard officer Bill Burkett, a long-time Bush-hater who has been named by several news outlets as a possible source for the forged documents in the CBS memogate scandal, wrote the following on August 13, 2004, for Democrats.com, before the memos surfaced... Burkett: I have found no documentation from LTC Killian's hand or staff that indicate that this unit was involved in any complicit way to either cover for the failures of 1LT Bush, or to provide him pay or certification for training not completed.So, if Burkett found no such documentation - did he forge it? And did he then sell CBS a bill of goods, convincing them that the memos were authentic and "accurately reflected" that for which there actually is no authentic documentation? [Hat tip: Mike Hollihan] Here's a story from today's Washington Post reporting that the forged documents were faxed from a Kinko's in Abilene, Texas, which is the closest Kinko's to Burkett's home 21 miles away in Baird, Texas. I'll bring you more links later regarding Burkett. UPDATE: Here are links regarding Mr. Burkett. CNSNews reports on Burkett's long-standing grudge and campaign against George W. Bush. Blogger Kevin McCullough investigated and found out that Burkett indeed does have an account at the Abilene Kinkos. Michael Friedman has a Burkett round-up. Here's an article from the March 12 Abilene Reporter-News about Burkett making an anti-Bush speech to the local Taylor County Democratic Club. It's worth noting that Burkett provides no documentation or evidence for his outlandish claims regarding Bush. (A personal comment: I worked at the Abilene paper briefly in 1987 after graduating from Abilene Christian University with a BA in journalism. The revelation that the CBS forged memo scandal may have ties to Abilene has me wishing I was still there...) Hugh Hewitt says that, if Burkett indeed was the source of the CBS memos, "a huge red flare ought to have gone up because he has long peddled his story, but without docs. Obviously if he had 'em, he'd have used them long ago. " It's as hard to argue with that as it is easy to create documents at Kinko's that fit the pre-determined storyline. Unfortunately, the memos that Burkett or someone else forged don't match actual TANG documents of known authenticity in either format, style or content. Posted in Journalism & Media
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I'm sorry - but a Kinko's in Abiline is a mighty thin argument linking Burkett to it. Granted, the bar of establishing evidence by Dan Rather (D), has been lowered by this entire story, that doesn't mean that we should stoop to thier level. After all, many liberals use emotion over common sense in coming to thier conclusions, but that's what always make them transparent. Posted by: DocB at September 16, 2004 07:40 AMLet me further add one point. Knowing it came from a Kinko's in Abiline, Texas is one thing - knowing where it was faxed TO is quite another. That is the larger question since I highly doubt it was sent to CBS directly. It puts it closer to Burkett than to any other person on the list of most-likely-to-have-been-involved. Whaddya wanna bet someone is already sniffing around the Kinkos to see if there's evidence Burkett was there recently. Er, and are Kinkos equipped with video surveillance cams? Is the shopping center where it was located? Will any Kinkos staffers recall seeing Burnett there? Seeing him use one of the the PCs there? Posted by: Bill at September 16, 2004 09:12 AMI read somewhere, maybe glen reynolds, that our boy has an account with this Kinkos and was recently seen in the story by a store employee. I'm not taking you up on that bet! ;-) I'd be interested in seeing the activity on his account there - though I doubt it will ever make the light of day. Like I said though, I'm not buying the story of it being directly sent to CBS. It would be more plausible of the phone numbers were simply blacked out but the fax header remained on the document provided by Dan Rather (D) - but the fact that they were removed completely from the 'copies' put out by CBS implies there is more to it than isn't being disclosed. Forget "What's the frequency Kenneth?" - what I want to know is "what's the fax id"? Another quick question - ...there is no doubt in my mind that these are indeed forgeries. Yet handwriting experts have authenticated the signature as Killian's. I'm not a handwriting expert, but I think that each time someone signs something, there are usually subtle differences each time, some more noticable than others - but the nuances should appear. So a new question which isn't being asked is where did the signature come from and has anyone cross-matched the CBS (D) version with any other actual public documents of Killian's to find the exact match? Posted by: DocB at September 16, 2004 10:51 AMIf these forged documents were created on Kinkos owned computers, would there be some cached record of that? Since Burkett doesn't own the machines, would it be possible to have a computer forensic expert examine the hard drives of Kinko's Abilene PC's to see if a cached version of the documents still exists? I'm no expert, so I don't know if this could be done. But if cached versions of the documents were found on the Kinko's PC's, it would conclusively prove they were forgeries. Posted by: Scott Harris at September 16, 2004 12:27 PMYet another question: If so, then USA TODAY already knows the answer to who the real source is. I'd be very interested in seeing if they will cannibalize the competition to expose CBS (D-NY) by revealing the source in which they obtained it. That would be one heckva coup for them. Posted by: DocB at September 16, 2004 12:28 PMWe had a scandal in Minnesota in 2000 where the girlfriend of our senator was sending anonymous emails to democrats in order to get them to support the less electable candidate. She used a yahoo account and sent email from kinko's and later her home (pretty stupid) If I recall correctly, kinko's cooperated in the investigation by turning over the credit card info for the person who bought internet time to send the emails. Yahoo cooperated by pin pointing the location the emails were sent from. In that case no crime was commited. It seems to me that Kinko's has an equal obligation to cooperate here. Posted by: rick at September 16, 2004 02:04 PMI have connected some dots today that I find interesting. 1. Burkett's Lawyer is David Van Os. 3. You arrive here> I am a printer, specializing in the management of Digital, Variable Printing. I am a political activist and database consultant, and I enjoy working on local campaigns. I have designed and built the web sites for a few other political activist organizations: I actively support David Van Os for Texas Supreme Court." Posted by: Joem at September 16, 2004 02:14 PMPost a comment
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