The LA Times - Good News, Bad News

The LA Times tackles Dan Rather. Their lead:

A CBS News report that suggested President Bush did not fulfill his military commitment 30 years ago fell under a growing cloud of skepticism Friday.

They present both Rather's side, and the growing cloud, highlights of which we excerpt below.

Unfortunately, the LA Times falls asleep when their story moves on to the "Texans for Truth":

On Monday, the newly formed "Texans for Truth," a liberal advocacy group, plans to begin airing an ad in five closely fought states — Oregon, Arizona Ohio, Michigan, Pennsylvania — that features a retired member of the Alabama Air National Guard saying he never saw Bush appear for training in 1972.

...Only one guardsman from that era has said he remembers Bush reporting in Alabama, where he had been allowed to transfer to help run the U.S. Senate campaign of family friend Winton "Red" Blount.

That officer, Lt. Col. John Calhoun, has said he saw Bush several times at Dannelly Field near Montgomery, Ala. But Calhoun said he made the sightings on dates the White House had already conceded that Bush did not serve.

Oh, dear. Has the LA Times missed the Bob Mintz story? Mr. Mintz is the star of the first "Texans for Truth" ad, about whom CBS News said this on Thursday, in their concluding paragraphs:

...Texans for Truth has a credibility problem. While the chief accuser, former Alabama Guard pilot Bob Mintz, says in the ad it would have been impossible for Mr. Bush to have gone unnoticed, in an interview earlier this year with CBS News, Mintz admitted he's not a smoking gun.

"I cannot say he was not there," Mintz said. "Absolutely positively was not there. I cannot say that. I cannot say he didn't do his duty."

Hmm, that is a bit off-script, Bob. Well, depending on what "impossible" means, when you say in the ad, "It would be impossible to be unseen in a unit of that size".

The LA Times also fluffs on the question of who might have seen Bush in Alabama. One officer, Calhoun, has come forward. However, there is also Retired Master Sergeant James Copeland in the mix.

If someone can pry a correction out of the LA Times, that would be great - these "Texans for Truth" should be kept in a chokehold, if Bob Mintz is their main man. Nick Kristof has already run a non-correction for his laughable reporting on Mr. Mintz, who Kristof described as a "compelling witness".

Highlights:

A retired Guard major general — who Rather said in an interview would corroborate the CBS account — instead told The Times that he believed the memos from the late Lt. Col. Jerry B. Killian were not real.

But a CBS news executive insisted that Maj. Gen. Bobby W. Hodges, who was Killian's immediate supervisor, had changed his story.

ABC News had more on Hodges' new story, via Glenn. More from the LA Times:

As another of the corroborating experts for its report, CBS and Rather presented an on-air interview with Marcel B. Matley, a San Francisco document examiner. Rather said Matley had corroborated the four Killian memos.

But in an interview with The Times, the analyst said he had only judged a May 4, 1972, memo — in which Killian ordered Bush to take his physical — to be authentic.

He said he did not form a judgment on the three other disputed memos because they only included Killian's initials and he did not have validated samples of the officer's initials to use for comparison.

For the CBS side we get this:

A CBS official who spoke on condition of anonymity said that the network had two other document experts, who CBS did not identify, examine the documents, which were copies of the originals.

The experts studied the type font or style, spacing and other variables and deemed the memos legitimate, said the official.

...But CBS and outside analysts said the memo's typography fully comported with the state of the art for that era.

And their conclusion:

Howard Rile of Long Beach, former president of the American Board of Forensic Document Examiners, cautioned against feverish vetting of the memos without seeing the originals and other documents produced at the same time and place.

That could be difficult because CBS says it does not have the original memos.

"We shouldn't have to be be doing this over the Internet," Rile said. "This sounds like a case that could be resolved very quickly if you get the evidence and examine it; if you get the original."

Comments

[jdwill]

Bush and I were lieutenants - Letter to Editor

"We had the same flight and squadron commanders (Maj. William Harris and Lt. Col. Jerry Killian, both now deceased). "

Has this story been confirmed?

[Patrick R. Sullivan]

Another pilot, Joe LeFevers, has been widely quoted in newspapers, including the WaPo as remembering seeing Bush in his flight jacket on the base. He associated him with Winton Blount's senate campaign.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn/A42735-2004Feb14?language=printer

And:

http://216.239.39.104/search?q=cache:HA3nZZvbSk4J:www.al.com/news/birminghamnews/index.ssf%3F/base/news/1076497178284961.xml+Joe+LeFevers,+a+member+of+the+187th+in+1972,+said+he+remembers+seeing+Bush+in+unit+offices+and+being+told+that+Bush+was+in+Montgomery+to+work+on+Blount%27s+campaign.&hl=en