BIG - CBS Had Six Docs, Buried Two

NOT TO BE MISSED - I have a long post with more details hidden below on what I think is a significant development in the CBS forgery debacle. The soundbite - CBS announced in their statement last night that they had received six documents. Their experts dinged two of them, so viewers only learned about four.

Isn't that a fairly significant disclosure problem? If someone hands you six twenties, and two of them are phony, do you have new feelings about the other four?

And what was the new journalistic standard CBS developed to explain that? Four documents were "Fake but accurate"; were the other two documents "Too fake (but accurate!)"?

Check it out, and bring it on.

UPDATE: While bringing it on, check the Iowa Electronic Market and Tradesports. Bush is pushing 60% at Iowa and 67% at Tradesports.

UPDATE 2: Good job by Rkayn Knowledge - CBS interviewed Killian's son and dinged him too. Since his opinions didn't fit the story, I guess they deemed him to be "authentic but inaccurate".

It's only September.

Comments

[J_Crater]

If you take away the 4 or 6 documents that appear to be forgeries, can CBS put together a program that carries the same theme, based on what is left ?
If there ever was a defense for CBS, it lies in that question. Without the documents, CBS has nothing.

[stevesturm]

did anybody notice what else Rather and CBS did not do in their interview with the secretary?

Give up? answer here

[Patrick R. Sullivan]

It turns out that this woman was a pool typist, not Killian's private secretary, and a virulent anti-Busher of Semi-Daily Journal proportions. Dan--I'm Just an Honest Broker of the News--Rather is toast.

[TM]

If you take away the 4 or 6 documents that appear to be forgeries, can CBS put together a program that carries the same theme, based on what is left ?

If we still trusted them, it might be a good show.

But how many other folks did they talk to that said, "to the best of my knowledge, Young Bush was no more trouble than your typical late-service Guardsman during a period when lots of pilots were coming home from Vietnam".

Since we are pretty sure they buried half the story, who can take the other half seriously?

Second point - does this mean that the Evil Reps would have been right to fake the Gennifer Flowers tapes, as Clinton alleged (I think) - the underlying facts were accurate.

How about a fake diary from Monica - would that have been in bounds? Would Dems have insisted that Clinton answer the questions raised by the diary, even if it was fake?

[Ripper]

Clinton's intial defense was that Monica was a stalker, a fake girlfriend. Even that early her story raised some questions about White House secuirty and sexual harrasment, did they answer?

[Tom]

FWIW: If you go to Tradespots and plug the state races into OpinionJournal's electoral calculator, Bush wins 284 to 254. Bush gets Ohio and Florida and Kerry gets Michigan and Pennsylvania. If either Ohio or Flordia flips to Kerry, Bush loses.

[Tom Bowler]

A fascinating point. Would our lawyer friends in the blogosphere be able to enlighten us as to the consequences of a prosecutor withholding exculpatory evidence from the defense?

[Pete Harrigan]

Interesting point about the electoral calculator, but it seems more likely that Kerry could lose Pennsylvania than Bush losing either Ohio or Florida, given recent polls, voter turnout in primaries, and the results from the 2002 mid-term election.

Meanwhile, Tradesports actually traded up to a 70% chance of a Bush victory this morning. When did it start its big rally from ~63%? Right after CBS made its "clarification" yesterday. So according to the most liquid market, CBS standing by its "news story" increased Bush's chances by 4-7%.

We might see a 400 electoral vote landslide if this keeps up. Go, Dan, go.

[Tom]

It turns out that this woman was a pool typist, not Killian's private secretary, and a virulent anti-Busher of Semi-Daily Journal proportions.

She also talked about how the officers would make jokes about all the sons of privilege who got into the guard. The Corner is reporting her son joined the unit in 1972.

[Lesley]

CBS has been implacably insistent that their story is true yet has been looking for the documentation/witnesses to prove it (supposedly for four years).

Ok, for the sake of argument, let's say GWB was lax in the fulfillment of his TANG service and that he had some drug/alcohol problems. He has been a public figure since he first ran for office in Texas. Does the FBI routinely create files on individuals running for public office? Perhaps you might know.

What ever happened to the 800 or so FBI files the Clinton Administration obtained? Could this possibly be a clue as to why CBS is tenaciously standing by its story, ie. the DNC has fed CBS FBI files?

Just a thought, and a dark one at that.

[Lesley]

CBS has been implacably insistent that their story is true yet has been looking for the documentation/witnesses to prove it (supposedly for four years).

Ok, for the sake of argument, let's say GWB was lax in the fulfillment of his TANG service and that he had some drug/alcohol problems. He has been a public figure since he first ran for office in Texas. Does the FBI routinely create files on individuals running for public office? Perhaps you might know.

What ever happened to the 800 or so FBI files the Clinton Administration obtained? Could this possibly be a clue as to why CBS is tenaciously standing by its story, ie. the DNC has fed CBS FBI files?

Just a thought, and a dark one at that.

[Pat Curley]

Was just reading "Kerry's Brain" over at the New Yorker and it occured to me that we still haven't seen Brinkley's New Yorker article on Kerry's trips to Cambodia. Looks like you were right on the money.

[Forbes]

TM:
In Clinton's bio, My Life, he admits the Gennifer Flowers relationship--so I'm told. Not that the MSM would report that story. (The only question was the duration of the relationship.)

Regarding the secretary's comment about the joking ALL the sons' of privledge in the Guard received suggests it was a common practice. Well, of course it was. CBS wants to report that Bush got special treatment. Well, actually it was normal treatment. In 1968, Bush(41) was a former congressman from Texas. Anyone posting here that was old enough to remember what the status of a former congressman in 1968 was, will remember thinking "loser," not privledge. And Texas, politically, was very much a Democratic (can you say LBJ) state back then. But as always, the political class looks out for themselves. Nobody had to tell anyone who was George W. Bush's namesake. And this is a "story"?

Lots of people wearing rose colored glasses looking back over history, IMO.

[Pouncer]

The unanswered question I keep trying to get out there is -- how normal was Shrub compared to the rest of the TANG officers? I mean, we hear he scored a 25 on his flight school entrance exam, supposedly "barely minimum". Okay. What was the AVERAGE score, and the MAX score? How is John Connally III and Lloyd Bentsen III, (other fortunate sons) score?

How many pilots of Shrub's cohort washed out during training? 2% ? 20% ? Is his minimal entry score offset by making the grade during actual training or was even the minimal score on a sufficiently rigorous test so high as to eliminate unsuitable candidates? (er, that is, PILOT candidates...)

Shrub's evalutions have been released with free-floating numbers about scoring "100 in navigation" and "75 in leadership" or whatever. (I feel like we should ask the dungeon master to reveal the president's hitpoints, charisma, and dexterity scores...) But anyhow, what was the average or typical "navigation" score for the Shrub's cohort.

Context, dammit. If we're going to talk about it at all, that is.

Or, we could talk about nuking Mecca...

[TM]

In Clinton's bio, My Life, he admits the Gennifer Flowers relationship--so I'm told.

IIRC he admitted it during the Starr process under oath, as well.

[Victor]

This is one of the points I made earlier about the CBS memos: CBS's counting problem. The other major "rowback" CBS made was with Staudt's retirement.

60 Minutes is basically correcting itself without having to admit that it was wrong to begin with. Unreal. We need more people calling this sort of thing out.

[Electronic Bubba]

Everbodys talkin bout the TANG thang, but what bout the POON? That's what counts!

[Patrick R. Sullivan]

Pouncer, Bush was in the top half of his flight school. He was the only ANG guy among 50 some AF pilots. Bush's F-102 Instructor Pilot, Maurice Udell, who had flown in Vietnam, says he was impressed with Bush's ability. That he was the smartest pilot he ever trained.

My personal source confirms that Bush was a good pilot.

[Snowy]

I am starting to think RahterGate is a bit of a red herring. Here we are talking about nothing else, meanwhile the Kerryites are proceeding with their slime attack agaisnt the president virtually untouched.

[Jim Glass]

"check the Iowa Electronic Market and Tradesports. Bush is pushing 60%."

At tradesports.com he is 67% pushing 68%.

[J_Crater]

I have been looking about for a reason for Rasmussen to report a 4.6% Bush lead, when it was 0.9 the day before. Some might think it has something to do with Rathergate, but, as Robert Novak points out, Kerry has been journeying into Al Gore's deathtrap, gun control. Al lost West Virginia and Tennessee, his "home" state, to gun control. And with them, he lost the election.

[Jim Thomason]

In addition to hiding the fact that document examiners told them that 2 of the 6 documents were "likely" forgeries (and these examiners weren't given the opportunity to look at the other fraudulent documents, I wonder why?), CBS ALSO ignored the statements of several people they interviewed prior to the story being aired.

These people included Killian's son, wife, and daughter. His son ALSO gave them the names of additional people to contact to corroborate the fact that Killian had a high opinion of GWB, one of whom was the above mentioned Maurice Udell.

I don't know whether CBS violated basic journalistic practices by not interviewing these other people, or if they further violated them by also withholding the results of those interviews (ie. in addition to withholding the Killian family interviews).

I include the transcript of the Fox interview where these revelations were made by Gary Killian on my post here:

http://rkayn.blogspot.com/2004_09_01_rkayn_archive.html#109535834767502896

[Jim Glass]

"CBS executives on both coasts have become concerned in recent days that Dan Rather's EVENING NEWS broadcast has plunged in the ratings since the anchor presented questionable documents about Bush's National Guard service...

"...in the nation's top market, New York, Rather finished not only behind NBC NIGHTLY NEWS and ABC WORLD NEWS TONIGHT -- but also pulled less audience than reruns of the SIMPSONS, WILL & GRACE and KING OF QUEENS. Rather finished dead last in New York during the 6:30 pm timeslot among all broadcast channels tracked by NIELSEN on Tuesday."

http://www.drudgereport.com/cbsd3.htm

And speaking of The Simpsons and true false stories...

http://sandefur.typepad.com/freespace/2004/09/little_isimpson.html

[Greg F]

"Air National Guard Colonel Denies Bush Got Preferential Treatment.
ABC news interviews Retired Col. Walter Staudt.

"When he interviewed for the job, Bush was eager to join the pilot program, which Staudt said often was a hard sell. "I asked him, 'Why do you want to be a fighter pilot?' " Staudt recalled. "He said, 'Because my daddy was one.' He was a well-educated, bright-eyed young man, just the kind of guy we were looking for."