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« Memogate: September 18, 2004Memogate: CBS Trashes StaudtJust as I predicted yesterday, CBS is dismissing the statements of Col. Walter Staudt rejecting the assertion by CBS - based on those forged memos - that Staudt pressured George W. Bush's CO in the Texas Air National Guard to "sugar coat" Bush's service record. CBS spokeswoman Sandy Genelius said: "In a debate this heated, one can hardly expect Gen. Staudt to endorse the point of view that he exerted undue influence." John Hinderaker at PowerLine has an analysis: So if you slander a man, as CBS did General Staudt, the fact that he has been slandered makes his response so suspect that it can safely be disregarded. And information from a person in a unique position to know the facts, like General Staudt, is immaterial; but Bill Burkett, a long-time Bush hater and Democratic activist who knows nothing about Bush's Guard service, is an "unimpeachable source," while a comment by Robert Strong to the effect that the forged documents sound like something that could have been written in the early 1970's satisfactorily confirms the documents' authenticity, even though, by his own account, Strong has never met President Bush, never spoke to Jerry Killian about President Bush, and has no idea whether the documents are forgeries or not.The CBS story wasn't journalism. It was a partisan smear-job undertaken on behalf of the Kerry campaign in an attempt to influence a presidential election at a time of war. The only question that matters now is, to what level was the Kerry campaign and the Democratic National Committee involved? Meanwhile... here's a quick memogate roundup: The Washington Post finds contact between Bill Burkett, the likely provider of the forged memos to CBS, and former Sen. Max Cleland, who is prominent in the Kerry campaign. Cleland confirmed that he had a two- or three-minute conversation by cell phone with a Texan named Burkett in mid-August while he was on a car ride. He remembers Burkett saying that he had "valuable" information about Bush, and asking what he should with it. "I told him to contact the [Kerry] campaign," Cleland said. "You get this information tens of times a day, and you don't know if it is legit or not."The WaPo story ends without telling if Burkett took Cleland's advice and contacted the Kerry campaign... but you get the sense the WaPo isn't done digging on this story. That's got to be causing a lot of worry inside Kerry campaign HQ. Mark Steyn speculates on why Dan Rather and CBS refuse to reveal the source of the forged memos. Mark Steyn is right about most things. Jonathan V. Last provides a detailed timeline of how the blogs humbled CBS. Hugh Hewitt looks how Dan Rather and the forgeries has made life tougher for John Kerry. Posted in Journalism & Media
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Totally believable is the scariest part. What if Steyn is correct? Then what? A full-fledged DNC-CBS hookup? I'm no black-helicopter guy, but if that's what really did happen, wow isn't strong enough. Posted by: Mark at September 19, 2004 11:11 AMAs I've said before... the Demos Knew that the memo story was going to break. There's NO OTHER REASON for taking the convention in the direction that they did with Kerry emphasising his Vietnam record. They couldn't even be bothered with talking to Gen. Staudt. Arrogant doesn't begin to cover it. Posted by: Noel at September 19, 2004 11:54 PMPost a comment
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