The Magicians At Powerline!

Robert Strong was one of the supporting witnesses brought out by CBS to support their Killian documents. Recently I wondered who Robert Strong might be, and had little luck; Team Powerline, also curious, has found him, and reports back on a reader chat with him:

Bottom line: Robert Strong is an inoffensive English professor who dislikes, but has never met, President Bush; he has no idea whether the CBS documents are authentic; he never discussed Lt. Bush with Jerry Killian; and he has “no personal knowledge” about President Bush’s National Guard service. The only information Strong actually brings to the table is his confirmation that the CBS documents “turned up” as retribution for the Swift Boat Vets’ attacks on John Kerry.

And this is the best witness CBS News can bring forward in support of its smear of President Bush.

Apparently, USA Today will run an interview with Robert Strong on Monday - stay tuned.

Pretty good, chaps. Now, if you're feeling lucky, maybe you can help pin down Robert Mintz, who appears in the new "Texans for Truth" ad. I have a longshot question about him, alright!

Comments

[mcg]

I hope it's clear that Robert Strong has offered a rather interesting piece of evidence into the public record: that the TANG had IBM Selectric typewriters. Unless he would like to later clarify that those were Selectric Composer typewriters---which, given their price and complexity of usage is unlikely---then he has basically confirmed that the documents could not have been drafted at the TANG offices..

...because, of course, Selectric typewriters could not do proportional spacing.

[Buddy Larsen]

mcg, Robert "Bob" Strong named that typewriter model, alright--but he thought he was talking off-the-record. This has been causing me some pain. Let me thank JustOneMinute for the forum, that I might explain. My son is that Powerline post's interviewer. He'd had info since midweek, and when CBS rope/doped thru Sunday, I prompted him to answer Powerline's public call for information on this CBS witness. My reasoning was that the sensory deprivation wouldn't exist if CBS hadn't gone schitzoid, all Arnoldish on Wednesday then all girlieman as soon as the bad whether font started blowing in on Thursday. "Don't worry about witnesses and documents," implied Dan Rather, "...they're all sooo Wednesday; just shut up now, and watch our maybe-pretty-long-running non-production of Homage to Catatonia."

I mean, how dethpicable! A week almost of CBS-sown disorder in a world bleeding for order, while Dan Rather has the world locked in the barn keeping a fish-eye on the old horse's ass.

Pretend you're me. It's 4 or 5 days in. Disturbance is bubbling. You've gotten several calls from unknowns, aquaintances of siblings who know Bob is your neighbor. They want to discuss him, to get his phone number or email. What is your loyalty? To a friendly, nice guy neighbor who stopped your son from a street-sign repair with the inside tale of a scandal playing all-media 24/7? To your son, who though solid-on-center, is inexperienced with this sort of cross-hatched scrimshaw? To, well, what? The president? The nation? The truth? The future? God? Talk about divided loyalties, sheesh!

Well, what I did was ask him, what's really going on here? Well, we had it from the horse's mouth, the game is tit-for-tat (for the sake of argument, granting the Rathergaters for an uncomfortable moment an equivalency to the Swifties): (1) Bob Strong gave you the story unsolicited. Bob is (2) the CBS "TANG document expert", but doesn't even realize--not being a webster--that his name is held by many as a forgery suspect, but since you (3) talked to him and believe (4) he showed no "tell" when you used the "f" word (son's a computer man, by Thursday, forgery self-satisfied) and you believe he's not part of the direct-action section, but does have (4) all the signs of (sorry, Bob) a patsy being used for his stability, clean CV (the Un-Ben Barnes) and his connection to those TANG times, by (5) Austin's ice-cold rock-hard Lenin-was-too-lenient Demo operatives playing his good nature and absent-minded-professorialness against the nefariousness of the project, and since (6) we're both certain that if we (7) tell Bob we're duty-bound to dispense his tale, one of two bad things will happen, either he'll (8) shame us into silence (or, since we know the docs are bogus, co-conspirators?) or to his own disadvatage he'll (9) lose us as character witnesses when somebody sues somebody over this sooner or later, and furthermore he'll (10) lose the excuse we're handing him (should any of his people jump him for saying too much, he can point to this post right here and ask how on earth he could know that talking about his reasons for wanting to leave the lousy street sign down awhile, to a mid-twenties dairy-farmer tractor-driving neighbor who likes and respects him, would get his opinion that Rathergate is a tit-for-tat for the Swiftboat ads, posted on the world-wide-web?

So, listing facts, we'd be helping as much as hurting him, exoneration of evil doin' for exposure of useful idiothood. So, the open-info upside neutralizing the betrayal downside, Nick (I guess a reader notices I got disgusted and dropped the identity-masking "my son"--what the hell, after all--let me do Kerry: BRINGY TONE! --halfway thru cutting this post into shape...) told the story to the Rathergate desk at Powerline.

Bob (and also Mr. Soros' Rooskie Mafia) don't blame the young feller, I leaned on him to report, shoot me instead. I couldn't sit by and ignore something that might even slightly ameliorate some of the pressure on the nation's war-fighter (a nasty crazy war demanding he waste no strength on DIRTY SH*T LIKE RATHERGATE), who is plenty election-frazzled, over-worked and far-too-shabbily-treated as is (not that you can't handle it, Mr. President!). In your heart, you know I'm right.

[teethgrinder]

http://www.stedwards.edu/it_dept/computer/directories.htm

Hint: search for Strong

Off to the races . . . .