Killian's secretary Knox says she thinks the forger must have been someone who saw Killian's "personal files" and made forgeries from his memory. Who could have done such a fiendish act?

Apparently someone from the Army, she thinks. She's very specific about that.

Very, very specific.

Someone from the Army.

Make sure you spend all your time looking at people from the Army.

Okay, Ms. Knox. We'll take that under advisement.

Posted by: Ace at 03:39 PM | Comments (4)
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The rats are abandoning the ship.

Not that these folks are rats, of course. These folks are doing the right thing (if a little bit later than I might have liked).

So I guess that metaphor doesn't work.

Let's try again:

The human passengers are abandoning the ship, leaving just the rats at CBS and the Boston Globe and the New York Times on the ship, and, shortly, we hope, after a more thorough scrutiny of the ship (actually the story), these rats (actually also human beings with ratlike qualities) will begin abandoning the ship (which, once again, is actually a metaphor for the story).

There.

That reads okay to me. It's "punchy."

UPDATE: This would seem to be a confirmation of the guess I made in the Dan Rather: Expert Shop-A-Holic post.

Assuming these experts were contacted before the story ran.

Posted by: Ace at 03:09 PM | Comments (6)
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She says they're fake, but claims that "similar memos" existed at one time.

On the other hand, she's a political partisan of the sort that I'm sure Dan Rather would never trust:

Mrs. Knox, 86, who spoke with precise recollection about dates, people and events, said she is not a supporter of Mr. Bush, who she deemed “unfit for office” and “selected, not elected.”

We seem to be heading towards that predicted denouement-- an admission that the memos themselves are fake, but that they were "meticulously reconstructed by memory" from real documents that Evil Republican Operatives destroyed.

UPDATE: Confirmation of prediction!

I wasn't able to access the article in question when I wrote the above (in fact, I still haven't, since the site looks down due to too much traffic), but the fine folks at NRO's The Corner have read the whole thing:

"She also said the memos may have been constructed from memory by someone who had seen Lt. Col. Killian's private file but were not transcriptions because the language and terminology did not match what he would have used."

I'm not going to say a word.

Not a word.

All right, two words:

Plan Fucking B.

As predicted:

This ridiculous "Plan B" defense, however, is similar to what I expect we will soon be hearing: Someone really saw these documents, and they said almost exactly what the forgeries say, only the witness in question didn't take the documents or make copies of them.

Therefore, to get out "the truth" which he cannot unfortunately prove with documentary evidence, he typed up what he knew was in the documents (working from a nearly perfect memory).

I don't even think our liberal Spirit Squad media would dare run with such a "forgery-but-nevertheless-accurate" defense, but I was shocked by Dan Rather's blazingly dishonest performance on Friday; before this is over, I expect to be shocked three or four more times.

Does that defense sound too ridiculous?

Is it any more ridiculous than what you've heard so far?

Is it any more ridiculous than trained reporters at CBS beginning to spin tales about real handwritten documents being "typed up" to look pretty for TV?

They are in trouble and they almost know it. When you get to this level of desperation, you begin spinning pleasing but absurd "what-if" scenarios that will get you out of the jam.

But they won't get out of this jam. This will not stand.

Update: NPR's Mara Liason just pitched Plan B on Brit Hume, just to see if it would fly.

I have generally liked Mara, but she just disgusted me. No matter how thoroughly refuted these forgeries are, liberals like herself are still determined to treat the allegations contained in them as true.

Now Drudge:

"I did not type these particular memos. I typed memos like these," Knox told the DRUDGE REPORT from her home in Houston.

"I typed memos that had this information in them, but I did not type these memos. There are terms in these memos that are not Guard terms but that are Army terms. They use the word 'Billets'. I think they were using that to refer to the slot. That would be a non-flying slot the way we would use it. And the style... they are sloppy looking."

But Marion Carr Knox stands by the accusations contained in the allegedly fraudulent documents that Bush skirted a medical and flight exam without suffering institutional repercussions.

"The information in these memos is correct -- like Killian's dealing with the problems."

"It was General Staudt, not then Lt. Colonel Hodges [who succeeded Staudt], that was putting on the pressure to whitewash Bush. For instance he didnt take his flight examination or his physical. And the pilots had to take them by their birthdays. Once in a while there would be a reason why a pilot would miss these things because some of them were commercial pilots. But they had to make arrangements to take their exams."

Knox speculated as to how she thought the forgeries were created saying, "My guess is that someone in the outfit got hold of the real ones and discussed it with a former Army person."

Ahem.

No comment.

Okay, one word:

Plan Fucking B.

It seems very curious that this woman's "recollections" just happened to show up on forged documents.

Posted by: Ace at 01:52 PM | Comments (18)
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From Imagecave.com (perhaps by a guy named "Swordmaker" probably posting on FreeRepublic), via The Perfect World.

Posted by: Ace at 01:22 PM | Comments (7)
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From Imagecave.com (perhaps by a guy named "Swordmaker" probably posting on FreeRepublic), via The Perfect World.

Posted by: Ace at 01:22 PM | Comments (7)
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Crazy, I know, but maybe we ought to be more hopeful that the French change to be more helpful to us than the other way around.

The Washington Times reports that the most likely next President of France is "the most 'American' French politician that this country has seen."

Re-Elect George Bush

Because we need a President who can get along with France.

Thanks to Nick.

PS: I'm blogging as much as I can on this Rather story because

1) it's huge

2) I'm interested in it

3) it's really huge

4) it has major ramifications for the future of politics and the media

5) seriously, I shit you not, it's huge

6) I'm getting crazy-filthy-dirty traffic from it

and

7) honestly, I'm not jerking you around here, this son of a bitch is huge.

I hope no one's getting overly bored at the single-minded nature of this blog at this point. I'm sure some aren't very interested, and I apologize for that; but I think we'll have some sort of first resolution within a week.

Posted by: Ace at 12:59 PM | Comments (26)
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Just got around to Allah, which was too bad, because had I been there earlier he'd have spared me the effort in taking down Keith Olbermann.

Wait, that requires no effort. Let's move on.

Must read post.

Two big points, with extended articles linked there:

1) According to an anonymous source quoted by Jim Geraghty, CBSNews is now investigating they myriad experts who say these documents are forgeries for, get this, Republican political donations.

I am so angry about this I'm about to explode. As is pointed out on Jim Geraghty's KerrySpot, Ben Barnes, the main on-camera witness for Rather's nearly felonious report, has raised a half-million dollars for Kerry, but apparently that wasn't enough to put his credibility into question.

I am so goddamned sick of the media's baseline assumption that liberals are to be treated as presumptively honorable and honest while conservatives are presumptively dishonorable and dishonest. Liberals can present transparent forgeries and get them on 60 Minutes in just a few weeks of cursory fact-checking; conservatives can present piles and piles of expert and witness evidence and still CBS News searches for our "political agenda."

How about your political agenda, Mr. Rather? You, who appeared at Democratic fundraiser.

2) He also links to an email which seems to come from Bill from INDC's expert, Mr. Bouffard (also known by the liberal media as Mr. Broussard-- but hey, they're the diligent fact-checkers, right?), in which he says:

"Unless someone comes forward with some otherhypothesis, it appears that the memos must be computer generated. i.e.,bogus."

Now, the Boston Globe was eager to quote Mr. Bouffard (a.k.a. Broussard) when he said he couldn't yet be sure the documents were forgeries, but wanted additional time to check other possibilities. (A statement they distorted in order to get the headline they wanted, Authenticity backed on Bush documents, in case you've forgotten.)

So, if the Boston Globe found Mr. Bouffard (nee Broussard, also known as "Mickey the Hat" among grifter-circles) to be a credible witness when his statements could be distorted into supporting the authenticity of the documents, I am 100% confident they'll be willing to print his final evaluation.

Any. Minute. Now.

The epitaph of this story will be: Everything was worse than it seemed, even if you thought it was all pretty shoddy to begin with.

If It's Good for the Goose Update: Jim Garaghty at Kerry Spot, I mean Rather Spot, has decided that if CBS is going to scrutinize document-authentication experts for their political donations, it's only fair to scrutinize CBS employees for theirs.

I don't think you'll be precisely shocked by what he's found.

Posted by: Ace at 12:10 PM | Comments (4)
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As you probably know, the liberal media spun a conspiracy theory based on the fact that "Buckhead" wrote his famous "post 47" at a time-stamp of 8:59 on Wednesday -- suspicious, NPR thought, because Dan Rather's broadcast had only ended at 9:00PM.

How on earth could someone already have so thoroughly debunked a report within moments of its broadcast? Perhaps "Buckhead" was really Karl Rove. Maybe he was even Chuck Colson.

Of course, the enlightened geniuses failed to keep in mind that there are, get this, several time zones in America-- four of them, in fact -- and that FR is hosted from the Pacific zone. Dan Rather's report ended at 9:00PM, Eastern; Bukhead posted at 8:59PM, Pacific -- better known as 11:59PM, just before midnight, by New Yorkers and other east-coasters.

Well, Keith Olbermann, who's not only not-funny but also not-bright, picked up on this conspiracy theory, even though the original premise supporting it had already been debunked. The Not-Funny Nitwit decided that, even though Buckhead had had hours to critique the piece, it was all still "suspicious" enough to begin blaming Republicans anyway.

I expect he'll be making a forthright retraction.

Any. Minute. Now.

Allah corrects me; he says that Keith Olbermann said the posting had been made "within two hours" of the broadcast. So he didn't actually make NPR's goof.

But this seems worse to me, actually. First of all, he didn't get the time right-- the post came within three, not two, hours of the end of the broadcast.

Second, he doesn't even have NPR's boneheaded time-stamp error to justify making such a serious charge of political conspiracy. He is claiming that if someone knocks down a transparent media-perpretrated forgery within two (actually three plus) hours, that means that Republican dirty-tricksters are behind the forgeries.

Is this bias?

Have you ever heard Keith Fucking Olbermann making such a serious charge against Democrats with absolutely no evidence whatsoever?

Posted by: Ace at 11:53 AM | Comments (11)
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As others have noted, Dan Rather has utterly inverted the normal rules of evidence to his advantage. He claims that his story is backed up by a "preponderance of the evidence," but demands "definitive" evidence the documents are forgeries before he will recant.

He and CBS News have also taken the position that they need only prove that it is merely possible that some typewriter out there could have produced documents looking something like this, whereas the critics must prove, dispositively, that that's entirely impossible.

That doesn't seem to have been the low evidentiary hurdle the SwiftVets were expected to clear.

MyPetJawa has decided to get in on this crazy "bloggers actually doing original reportage" kick that seems to be all the rage lately, and he's done a little research. I don't think his findings are anywhere near conclusive, but if an amateur one-man blogging operation is able to call up and read military procurement contracts, why isn't CBS News able to do so, and thereby actually prove their allegations?

What the hell is going on? Is the legitimate media now claiming for itself a lesser standard of evidence and fact-checking than they demand for one-man amateur internet bloggers?

If that's the case, they might as well come straight out and admit that bloggers are generally more reliable than they are.

Posted by: Ace at 11:39 AM | Comments (4)
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CrushKerry says it has a source in the DNC, and that they suspect MoveOn.org of being the culprits.

Even if true, that wouldn't mean that MoveOn.org actually created the forgeries. It would only suggest they had a hand in suckering a senile old coot into believing them.

Actually, the suspicions run a little hotter than that in the Kerry camp, according to CrushKerry. But you'll just have to click on the link for that.

Via Kerry Spot, which Jim Geraghty admits has become more of a Rather Spot of late.

A Good Question: Karol, who fresh from covering the RNC, wants to know, assuming CrushKerry's DNC source is on to something, "Wouldn't that also mean that illegal coordination is going on between the DNC and Move On?"

Well, Karol, I'm sure that our hard-nosed investigative media -- which will vigorously pursue any story, no matter which party it might damage, because it's the story that matters, not its political impact -- will answer that question for us any minute now.

Any. Minute. Now.

Posted by: Ace at 10:53 AM | Comments (6)
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