CBSNEWS LAUNCHES INTERNAL
INVESTIGATION AFTER SUSPICIOUS BUSH DOCS AIRED
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For more articles on this subject click on the following links from within the article below. In addition click on these links for more articles: Widow to Appear on Nightline Questions Raised About Bush Guard Service Anatomy of a Forgery Media Assault on Bush Collapses in Credibility Meltdown Ben Barnes' 'Daughter': My Dad Lied About Bush
XXXXX DRUDGE REPORT XXXXX THU SEPT 09, 2004
22:45:32 ET XXXXX
**Exclusive**
CBS NEWS executives have launched an internal investigation into
whether its premiere news program 60 MINUTES aired fabricated
documents relating to Bush's National Guard service, the DRUDGE REPORT has learned.
"The reputation and integrity of the entire news division is
at stake, if we are in error, it will be corrected," a top
CBS source explained late Thursday.
The source, who asked not to be named, described CBSNEWS anchor
and 60 MINUTES correspondent Dan Rather as being privately
"shell-shocked" by the increasingly
likelihood that the documents in
question were fraudulent.
Rather, who anchored the
segment presenting new information on the president's military
service, will personally correct the
record on-air, if need be, the source explained from New York.
MORE
-----------------------------------------------------------
Filed By Matt Drudge
Reports are moved when circumstances warrant
http://www.drudgereport.com for updates
(c)DRUDGE REPORT 2004
Some Question Authenticity of Papers on Bush
By Michael Dobbs and Mike Allen
Washington Post Staff Writers
Friday, September 10, 2004; Page A01
Documents unearthed by CBS News that raise doubts about whether President Bush fulfilled his obligations to the Texas Air National Guard include several features suggesting that they were generated by a computer or word processor rather than a Vietnam War-era typewriter, experts said yesterday.
Experts consulted by a range of news organizations pointed out typographical and formatting questions about four documents as they considered the possibility that they were forged. The widow of the National Guard officer whose signature is on the bottom of the documents also disputed their authenticity.
The documents, which were shown Wednesday night on "60 Minutes II," bear dates from 1972 and 1973 and include an order for Bush to report for his annual physical exam and a discussion of how he could get out of "coming to drill."
The dispute over the documents' authenticity came as Democrats stepped up their criticism of Bush's service with the National Guard between 1968 and 1973. The Democratic National Committee sought to fuel the controversy yesterday by holding a news conference at which Sen. Tom Harkin (Iowa) pointed to the documents as a fresh indictment of Bush's credibility.
CBS News released a statement yesterday standing by its reporting, saying that each of the documents "was thoroughly vetted by independent experts and we are convinced of their authenticity." The statement added that CBS reporters had verified the documents by talking to unidentified people who saw them "at the time they were written."
CBS spokeswoman Kelli Edwards declined to respond to questions raised by experts who examined copies of the papers at the request of The Washington Post, or to provide the names of the experts CBS consulted. Experts interviewed by The Post pointed to a series of telltale signs suggesting that the documents were generated by a computer or word processor rather than the typewriters in widespread use by Bush's National Guard unit.
A senior CBS official, who asked not to be named because CBS managers did not want to go beyond their official statement, named one of the network's sources as retired Maj. Gen. Bobby W. Hodges, the immediate superior of the documents' alleged author, Lt. Col. Jerry B. Killian. He said a CBS reporter read the documents to Hodges over the phone and Hodges replied that "these are the things that Killian had expressed to me at the time."
"These documents represent what Killian not only was putting in memoranda, but was telling other people," the CBS News official said. "Journalistically, we've gone several extra miles."
The official said the network regarded Hodges's comments as "the trump card" on the question of authenticity, as he is a Republican who acknowledged that he did not want to hurt Bush. Hodges, who declined to grant an on-camera interview to CBS, did not respond to messages left on his home answering machine in Texas.
In a telephone interview from her Texas home, Killian's widow, Marjorie Connell, described the records as "a farce," saying she was with her husband until the day he died in 1984 and he did not "keep files." She said her husband considered Bush "an excellent pilot."
"I don't think there were any documents. He was not a paper person," she said, adding that she was "livid" at CBS. A CBS reporter contacted her briefly before Wednesday night's broadcasts, she said, but did not ask her to authenticate the records.
If demonstrated to be authentic, the documents would contradict several long-standing claims by the White House about an episode in Bush's National Guard service in 1972, when he abruptly gave up flying and moved from Texas to Alabama to take part in a political campaign. The CBS documents purport to show that Killian, who was Bush's squadron commander, was unhappy with Bush for his performance toward meeting his National Guard commitments and resisted pressure from his superiors to "sugarcoat" the record.
After their initial airing on the "CBS Evening News" and "60 Minutes II" programs Wednesday night, the documents were picked up by other news organizations, including The Post. A front-page story in The Post yesterday noted that CBS declined to provide details about the source of the documents, the authenticity of which could not be independently confirmed.
On Wednesday evening, the White House e-mailed reporters copies of the documents, as supplied by CBS, as well as the transcript of a CBS interview with White House communications director Dan Bartlett rebutting allegations that Bush had shirked his military duties. While Bartlett described the emergence of the documents as "dirty politics," he did not dispute their authenticity.
After doubts about the documents began circulating on the Internet yesterday morning, The Post contacted several independent experts who said they appeared to have been generated by a word processor. An examination of the documents by The Post shows that they are formatted differently from other Texas Air National Guard documents whose authenticity is not questioned.
William Flynn, a forensic document specialist with 35 years of experience in police crime labs and private practice, said the CBS documents raise suspicions because of their use of proportional spacing techniques. Documents generated by the kind of typewriters that were widely used in 1972 space letters evenly across the page, so that an "i" uses as much space as an "m." In the CBS documents, by contrast, each letter uses a different amount of space.
While IBM had introduced an electric typewriter that used proportional spacing by the early 1970s, it was not widely used in government. In addition, Flynn said, the CBS documents appear to use proportional spacing both across and down the page, a relatively recent innovation. Other anomalies in the documents include the use of the superscripted letters "th" in phrases such as 111th Fighter Interceptor Squadron, Bush's unit.
"It would be nearly impossible for all this technology to have existed at that time," said Flynn, who runs a document-authentication company in Phoenix.
Other experts largely concurred. Phil Bouffard, a forensic document examiner from Cleveland, said the font used in the CBS documents appeared to be Times Roman, which is widely used by word-processing programs but was not common on typewriters.
CBS officials insisted that the network had done due diligence in checking out the authenticity of the documents with independent experts over six weeks. The senior CBS official said the network had talked to four typewriting and handwriting experts "who put our concerns to rest" and confirmed the authenticity of Killian's signature.
The doubts about the documents left the White House and the Bush campaign in a state of suspended animation, with Bush aides encouraging doubts about the documents but conceding that the possibility that they were forged seemed too good to be true. White House spokeswoman Claire Buchan said that officials there had not attempted to authenticate the documents but simply released copies "provided to us by CBS in the interests of openness."
The Bush administration's strategy yesterday was to let news organizations raise doubts and conduct forensic examinations, without taking an official position on whether the documents were genuine.
"It's clear in reviewing the documents that they do nothing to change the fact that the president served honorably, and was proud of his service in the Air National Guard," Bush campaign spokesman Steve Schmidt said.
Staff writer Howard Kurtz and researcher Lucy Shackelford contributed to this report.
© 2004 The Washington Post Company
False
Documentation?
Questions Arise About Authenticity of Newly Found Memos on Bush's
Guard Service
Sept. 9, 2004
— Questions are being raised about the authenticity of newly discovered documents relating to George W. Bush's service in the National Guard during the Vietnam War.
Marjorie Connell — widow of the late Lt. Col. Jerry Killian, the reported author of memos suggesting that Bush did not meet the standards for the Texas Air National Guard — questioned whether the documents were real.
"The wording in these documents is very suspect to me," she told ABC News Radio in an exclusive phone interview from her Texas home. She added that she "just can't believe these are his words."
First reported by CBS's 60 Minutes, the memos allegedly were found in Killian's personal files. But his family members say they doubt he ever made such documents, let alone kept them.
Connell said Killian did not type, and though he did take notes, they were usually on scraps of paper. "He was a person who did not take copious notes," she said. "He carried everything in his mind."
Killian's son, Gary Killian, who served in the Guard with his father, also told ABC News Radio that he doubts his father wrote the documents. "It was not the nature of my father to keep private files like this, nor would it have been in his own interest to do so," he said.
"We don't know where the documents come from," he said, adding, "They didn't come from any family member."
Connell said her late husband would be "turning over in his grave to know that a document such as this would be used against a fellow guardsman," and she is "sick" and "angry" that his name is "being battled back and forth on television."
Her late husband was a fan of the young Bush, said Connell, who remarried after her husband died in 1984. "I know for a fact that this young man … was an excellent aviator, an excellent person to be in the Guard, and he was very happy to have him become a member of the 111th."
Experts Question Veracity
Questions are also being raised about the memos
by document experts, who say they appear to have been written on
a computer, not a typewriter.
The memos are dated 1972 and 1973, when computers with word-processing software were not available.
More than half a dozen document experts contacted by ABC News said they had doubts about the memos' authenticity.
"These documents do not appear to have been the result of technology that was available in 1972 and 1973," said Bill Flynn, one of country's top authorities on document authentication. "The cumulative evidence that's available … indicates that these documents were produced on a computer, not a typewriter:"
Among the points Flynn and other experts noted:
The memos were written using a
proportional typeface, where letters take up variable space
according to their size, rather than fixed-pitch typeface used on
typewriters, where each letter is allotted the same space.
Proportional typefaces are available only on computers or on very
high-end typewriters that were unlikely to be used by the
National Guard.
The memos include superscript, i.e. the
"th" in "187th" appears above the line in a
smaller font. Superscript was not available on typewriters.
The memos included "curly"
apostrophes rather than straight apostrophes found on
typewriters.
The font used in the memos is Times
Roman, which was in use for printing but not in typewriters. The
Haas Atlas — the bible of fonts — does not list Times
Roman as an available font for typewriters.
The vertical spacing used in the memos,
measured at 13 points, was not available in typewriters, and only
became possible with the advent of computers.
The White House is declining to comment on the veracity of the documents. Many Democrats are worried that if they are found to be forgeries, it will be a setback for Sen. John Kerry's campaign to defeat Bush in November.
©ABCNEWS.COM
New Questions On Bush Guard Duty
Sept. 8, 2004
The military records of the two men running
for president have become part of the political arsenal in this
campaign – a tool for building up, or blowing up, each
candidate’s credibility as America's next
commander-in-chief.
While Sen. Kerry has been targeted for what he did in Vietnam,
President Bush has been criticized for avoiding
Vietnam
by landing a spot in the Texas Air National Guard - and then
failing to meet some of his obligations.
Did then-Lt. Bush fulfill all of his military obligations? And
just how did he land that spot in the National Guard in the first
place? Correspondent Dan Rather has new information on the
president’s military service – and the first-ever
interview with the man who says he pulled strings to get young
George W. Bush into the Texas Air National Guard.
It was May 1968,
and Vietnam was in flames. In that month, more than 2,000
Americans were killed in combat, and the draft was siphoning
thousands more into the jungle.
George W. Bush had just graduated from Yale, and faced the
prospect of being drafted himself. But former Texas House Speaker
and Lt. Gov. Ben Barnes says he helped keep that from happening.
So what happened with Mr. Bush, the draft and the National Guard?
And why is Barnes finally telling his story?
"First of all, I want to say that I’m not here to bring
any harm to George Bush's reputation or his career. I was
contacted by people from the very beginning of his political
career, when he ran for governor, and then when he ran for
president, and now he's running for re-election," says
Barnes.
"I've had hundreds of phone calls from people wanting to
know the story. And I've been quoted and misquoted. And the
reason I am here today … is that I really want to tell the
story. And I want to tell it one time. And get it behind us. And
again, it is not about George Bush's political career. This is
about what the truth is."
Barnes is a Democrat who is now actively raising money for Sen.
John Kerry. But he was also a Democrat back in 1968, and serving
as Texas speaker of the House. At 29, Barnes was a protégé of
President Lyndon Johnson. But in keeping with the times, he
wielded clout and connections to build a powerful political base.
A few months before Mr. Bush would become eligible for the draft,
Barnes says he had a meeting with the late oilman Sid Adger, a
friend to both Barnes and then-Congressman George Bush.
"It's been a long time ago, but he said basically would I
help young George Bush get in the Air National Guard," says
Barnes, who then contacted his longtime friend Gen. James Rose,
the head of Texas' Air National Guard.
"I was a young, ambitious politician doing what I thought
was acceptable," says Barnes. "It was important to make
friends. And I recommended a lot of people for the National Guard
during the Vietnam era - as speaker of the house and as lt.
governor."
George W. Bush was among those he recommended for the National
Guard. Was this a case of preferential treatment?
"I would describe it as preferential treatment. There were
hundreds of names on the list of people wanting to get into the
Air National Guard or the Army National Guard," says Barnes.
"I think that would have been a preference to anybody that
didn't want to go to Vietnam or didn’t want to leave. We had
a lot of young men that left and went to Canada in the '60s and
fled this country. But those that could get in the Reserves, or
those that could get in the National Guard - chances are they
would not have to go to Vietnam."
This is the first time Barnes has told his story publicly, but
for years, the president has been hounded by questions about how
he got in the National Guard.
"Any allegation that my dad asked for special favors is
simply not true," said Mr. Bush. "And the former
president of the United States has said that he in no way, shape
or form helped me get into the National Guard. I didn't ask
anyone to help me get into the Guard either."
In an interview
today with Senior White House Correspondent John Roberts,
the president's communication director, Dan Bartlett, repeated
that denial.
Bartlett said this was all part of the Kerry campaign. "I
chalk it up to the politics they play down in Texas. I've been
there. I've seen how it works. But the bottom line is that
there's no truth to this," he says.
"The fact that 55 days before an election that partisan
Democrats are recycling the very same charges we hear every
President Bush runs for reelection. It is dirty politics."
Then-Lt. Bush went to Georgia, and completed a difficult pilot
training program. He was assigned to duty in Houston, flying
F-102s out of Ellington Air Force Base.
Today on the airbase, a mothballed F-102 is emblazoned with the
president's name. But even in 1970, then-Lt. Bush was already
something of a celebrity at the airfield. A press release issued
that year by his unit points out that the young lieutenant is the
son of the local congressman.
Mr. Bush had signed a six-year commitment to fly for the Air
Guard, and early on, the young pilot got glowing evaluations from
his squadron commander, Col. Jerry Killian.
Killian called Lt. Bush "an exceptionally fine young officer
and pilot" who "performed in an outstanding
manner." That is part of the public record.
But 60 Minutes has obtained a number of documents
we are told were taken from Col. Killian's personal file. Among
them, a never-before-seen memorandum from May 1972, where Killian
writes that Lt. Bush called him to talk about "how he can
get out of coming to drill from now through November."
Lt. Bush tells his commander "he is working on a campaign in
Alabama…. and may not have time to take his physical."
Killian adds that he thinks Lt. Bush has gone over his head, and
is "talking to someone upstairs."
Col. Killian died in 1984. 60 Minutes consulted a
handwriting analyst and document expert who believes the material
is authentic.
Robert Strong was a friend and colleague of Col. Killian who ran
the Texas Air National Guard administrative office in the Vietnam
era. Strong, now a college professor, believes these documents
are genuine.
"They are compatible with the way business was done at the
time. They are compatible with the man that I remember Jerry
Killian being," says Strong. "I don’t see anything
in the documents that is discordant with what were the times,
what was the situation and what were the people involved."
"He [Killian] was a straight-arrow guy," adds Strong.
"He really was. I was very fond of him, liked him
personally. Very professional man, a career pilot. He took his
responsibilities very, very seriously."
In a memo from Aug. 18, 1973, Col. Killian says Col. Buck Staudt,
the man in charge of the Texas Air National Guard, is putting on
pressure to "sugar coat" the evaluation of Lt. Bush.
Staudt, a longtime supporter of the Bush family, would not do an
interview for this broadcast.
The memo continues, with Killian saying, "I’m having
trouble running interference and doing my job."
"He was trying to deal with a volatile political situation,
in dealing with the son of an ambassador and former
congressman," says Strong. "He was trying to deal with
at least one superior officer, Gen. Staudt, who was closely
connected to the Houston political establishment. And I just see
an impossible situation. I feel very, very sorry, because he was
between a rock and a hard place."
One of the Killian memos is an official order to George W. Bush
to report for a physical. The president never carried out the
order.
On Aug. 1, 1972, Lt. Bush was suspended from flying status, due
to failure to accomplish his annual medical examination. That
document was released years ago. But another document has not
been seen until now. It’s a memo that Col. Jerry Killian put
in his own file that same day. It says "on this date, I
ordered that 1st Lt. Bush be suspended not just for failing to
take a physical….but for failing to perform to U.S. Air
Force/Texas Air National Guard standards."
He goes on: "The officer [then-Lt. Bush] has made no attempt
to meet his training certification or flight physical."
Correspondent
John Roberts talked with the president's communications
director, Dan Bartlett, and asked about Col. Killians' order for
Lt. Bush to take a physical.
"The memorandum in your possession shows that he spoke to
the commander who made that order to talk about his personal
situation and the fact that he is going to Alabama," says
Bartlett. "So at every step of the way, President Bush was
meeting his requirement. Granted permission to meet his
requirement. And that's why President Bush was honorably
discharged."
However, the questions about Vietnam still follow President Bush
and Ben Barnes - and every American who remembers where they
were, and what they did during Vietnam.
"By 1968, casualties in Vietnam were running high,"
Rather says to Barnes. "Did you or did you not think at that
time, 'I'm a little uncomfortable with this,' or did you have
long talks with your conscience? Did you say to yourself, 'I'm a
little uncomfortable with doing this?'"
"It would be very easy for me to sit here and tell you that
I had wrestled with this and lost a lot of sleep at night, but I
wouldn't be telling you the truth," says Barnes. "I
very … not eagerly… but readily was willing to call and
get those young men into the national guard that were friends of
mine and supporters of mine. And I did it. Reflecting back, I'm
very sorry about it. But you know, it happened. And it was
because of my ambition, my youth and my lack of understanding.
But it happened. And it's not something I'm necessarily proud
of."
Didn’t conscience come into play here? Strong says it did.
"But conscience is a very individual thing. This is the way
power works. What you saw is the way power works," says
Strong.
"Power begets power. Power goes to power to get more power.
If you have a little bit of power and someone offers you an
opportunity to gain more power by doing power a favor, then this
is what power does. It trades on itself. It feeds on itself. This
is the way the system worked. This is the way the state
government worked. This is the way the Guard worked."
Thirty years after the fact, Barnes says he is one of many
Americans still trying to make peace with what he did during the
war.
"I've thought about it an awful lot. And you walk through
the Vietnam memorial, particularly at night like I did a few
months ago, and I tell you, you'll think about it a long
time," says Barnes.
"I don’t think I had any right to have the power that I
had, to choose who was going to go to Vietnam and who was not
going to go to Vietnam. That's power. In some instances, when I
looked at those names, I was maybe determining life or death. And
that's not a power that I want to have."
"Too strong or not to say that you are ashamed of it
now," asks Rather.
"Oh, I think that would be somewhat of an appropriate
thing," says Barnes. "I'm very, very sorry."
© MMIV, CBS Broadcasting Inc. All Rights Reserved.
WIDOW TO APPEAR ON 'NIGHTLINE'...
XXXXX DRUDGE REPORT XXXXX THU SEPT 09, 2004
22:45:32 ET XXXXX
Marjorie Connell — widow of the late Lt. Col. Jerry Killian,
the reported author of memos suggesting that Bush did not meet
the standards for the Texas Air National Guard — questions
whether the documents are real on tonight's NIGHTLINE, sources
tell DRUDGE.
Transcript:
I WAS ANGRY, BECAUSE HERE THEY ARE GOING BACK AND PULLING RECORDS
OF A MAN WHO IS DECEASED TWENTY YEARS, WHO IS NOT HERE TO EXPLAIN
WHAT ANY OF THESE DOCUMENTS SAID OR SUPPOSED TO HAVE SAID, AND I
JUST FOUND IT APPALLING. I WAS SICK THAT HERE WITHOUT WARNING HIS
PICTURES ARE UP THERE, HIS NAME IS BEING BATTLED BACK AND FORTH
AND I, LIVID I GUESS IS A BETTER WORD FOR IT."
"I THINK THERE WAS SO MUCH UNTRUTHS BEING SAID THAT THAT
FRUSTRATED ME AND THAT I KNEW THAT IF JERRY WERE ALIVE TODAY THAT
HE WOULD JUST, NUMBER ONE HE WOULD BE TURNING OVER IN HIS GRAVE
TO KNOW THAT A DOCUMENT SUCH AS THIS WOULD BE USED AGAINST A
FELLOW GUARDSMAN."
"THAT IS WHAT AGGRAVATED ME SO MUCH, WAS THAT HE CAN NOT BE
HERE TO SAY AND YET THEY CAN DRAG HIS NAME ONTO TELEVISION,
MAKING BAD ACCUSATIONS ABOUT OUR PRESIDENT AND A MAN THAT HE
RESPECTED AND I KNOW FOR A FACT THAT HE THOUGHT THIS YOUNG MAN AS
A SECOND LIEUTENANT OR FIRST LIEUTENANT WAS AN EXCELLENT AVIATOR,
AN EXCELLENT PERSON TO BE IN THE GUARD AND WAS VERY HAPPY TO HAVE
HIM BECOME A MEMBER OF THE 111TH F-I-S."
"NUMBER ONE, HE WOULD NOT HAVE TYPED BECAUSE HE DID NOT
TYPE. NUMBER TWO, THE WORDING IN THESE DOCUMENTS IS VERY SUSPECT
TO ME. I JUST DON'T BELIEVE THAT, IT LOOKS LIKE SOME THINGS MAY
HAVE BEEN PICKED UP OUT OF A DOCUMENT AND THEN OTHER THINGS JUST
MADE FICTITIOUSLY TO FILL IN THINGS, TO MAKE THEM FLOW. I JUST
CAN'T BELIEVE THAT THIS IS HIS WORDS, MY LATE HUSBAND'S
WORDS."
"NOT A TYPIST, DEFINITELY NOT A TYPIST. WE HAD NO COMPUTERS
AT HOME BUT HE WASN'T A TYPIST, AND WHAT IS REMARKABLE TO ME IS
THAT HE WAS A PERSON WHO DID NOT TAKE OR MAKE COPIOUS NOTES. HE
CARRIED EVERYTHING IN HIS MIND AND HE DIDN'T HAVE TIME TO MAKE
NOTES."
"I AM STILL PRESENTLY LOOKING FOR OTHER DOCUMENTS. I HAVE
FOUND SOME THAT SAY THE 147TH ON THEM AND THEY GO BACK TO 1970. I
CAN NOT FIND ANY AT THIS MOMENT THAT HAVE ANY 1972 INDICATIONS ON
THEM OTHER THAN A, AND I TOLD HER THAT, A FLIGHT SCHEDULE THAT HE
HAD JUST SIGNED HIS NAME TO."
"UNFORTUNATELY WHEN WE MOVED I PUT THINGS IN DIFFERENT
LOCATIONS AND I JUST DON'T KNOW WHERE EVERYTHING IS AT THIS
MOMENT AND I WAS SEARCHING FOR THEM AND I STILL HAVE NOT FOUND
ANY OTHER DOCUMENTS. I DO HAVE ALL OF HIS FLIGHT RECORDS THOUGH
AND THEY ARE IN MY HANDS."
"HE DISCUSSED WITH ME HOW PROUD HE WAS TO BE ABLE TO GO AND
PIN THE WINGS ON YOUNG GEORGE AND TO MEET THEN MR. BUSH, I'VE
FORGOTTEN IF HE WAS WITH THE CIA OR WHAT OFFICE HE HELD AT THAT
TIME AND BARBARA BUSH."
"HE LEFT THE 147TH, FLEW TO WHEREVER GEORGE GOT HIS WINGS
AND JERRY PINNED THEM ON HIM AND HE WAS, CAME HOME JUST, HE TOLD
ME ABOUT THAT AND HOW PROUD HE WAS TO HAVE MET THE FAMILY."
"HE WOULD JUST WRITE LITTLE NOTES ON THE BACK OF ANYTHING.
UNFORTUNATELY OR FORTUNATELY AS THE CASE MAY BE, IF HE NEEDED TO
JOT SOMETHING DOWN HE WOULD JOT IT ON ANY PAPER THAT HE COULD
FIND, ON A CARD, LIKE A CALLING CARD THAT YOU WOULD HAVE, OR JUST
LITTLE BITS OF PAPER. HE ALWAYS KNEW WHERE EVERYTHING WAS, AND IF
HE NEEDED TO PULL IT OUT OF HIS WALLET ON A LITTLE NOTE OR
SOMETHING, BUT HE JUST DIDN'T TAKE MANY NOTES."
-----------------------------------------------------------
Filed By Matt Drudge
Reports are moved when circumstances warrant
http://www.drudgereport.com for updates
(c)DRUDGE REPORT 2004
Questions Raised About Bush Guard Service
Bob's Note: This is the article that started the fraud on GW Bush.
Sep 9, 10:59 PM (ET)
By TERENCE HUNT
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WASHINGTON (AP) - New documents unearthed in the midst of the presidential campaign fill in some blanks but raise other questions about the sometimes mysterious and spotty story of President Bush's military service during Vietnam when he won a coveted spot in the Texas Air National Guard and avoided the war.
Reviving issues that have shadowed his political career, the documents show Bush ignored a direct order from a superior officer and lost his status as a Texas Air National Guard pilot more than three decades ago because he failed to meet military performance standards and undergo a required physical examination.
But the authenticity of the memos was questioned Thursday by the son of the late officer who reportedly wrote them. One of the writer's fellow officers and a document expert also said Thursday the documents appear to be forgeries.
Still, the documents marked the second time in days the White House had to backtrack from assertions that all of Bush's records had been released. They also raised the specter that Bush sought favors from higher-ups and that the commander of the Texas Air National Guard wanted to "sugar coat" Bush's record after he was suspended from flying.
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Less than two months before the election, the documents turned the spotlight on Bush after weeks of political attacks questioning John Kerry's military service in Vietnam. Overshadowing issues such as jobs and the economy, that controversy raised doubts about Kerry and hurt him in the polls.
Kerry, campaigning in Iowa, refused to talk Thursday about the new Bush documents. "That's for the White House to answer," he said in an Associated Press interview. Presidential spokesman Scott McClellan said, "I think you absolutely are seeing a coordinated attack by John Kerry and his surrogates on the president."
Yet, it was the White House - not Kerry's campaign - that distributed four memos from 1972 and 1973 from Lt. Col. Jerry Killian, now deceased, who was the commander of the 111th Fighter Interceptor Squadron in Houston where Bush served. The White House obtained the memos from CBS News, which said it was convinced of their authenticity, and the White House did not question their accuracy. There was no explanation why the Pentagon was unable to find the documents on its own.
The key questions about Bush's service are whether or where he trained in late 1972 and early 1973, why he skipped the required medical exam, and whether he was investigated or punished for skipping the exam and six months' worth of training in 1972.
Bush has adamantly denied that any strings were pulled to get him into the guard. Yet, former Texas House Speaker Ben Barnes, a Democrat who now supports Kerry, has stepped forward to say he helped Bush and the sons of other wealthy families get into the guard so they could avoid serving in Vietnam.
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Bush completed basic training in August 1968, and by early 1970 was assigned as a pilot of F-102 interceptors in the 111th Squadron at Ellington Air Force Base. Killian, the squadron commander, ordered Bush in May 1972 to undergo his annual physical, according to the new memos.
Later in May, Killian said in his memo that he'd had conversations with Bush "of how Bush can get out of coming to drill from now through November" because Bush wanted to go to Alabama to work on a political campaign.
Killian wrote that they talked about Bush getting his flight physical and that Bush said he would do it in Alabama if he remained in flight status. But he said Bush said he "may not have the time." The memo said Bush was "talking to someone upstairs" about the Alabama transfer.
The same memo also made clear that Killian was concerned about the fact that the military had spent a substantial amount of money training Bush to fly.
"I advised him of our investment in him and his commitment," he wrote in the memo.
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On Aug. 1, 1972, Killian ordered that Bush "be suspended from flight status due to failure to perform to (United States Air Force/Texas Air National Guard) standards and failure to meet annual physical examination (flight) as ordered."
Killian said he wanted a formal inquiry into the circumstances surrounding the flight suspension. No records have surfaced that one was ever conducted.
A year later, in August 1973, Killian wrote a memo that said SUBJECT: CYA.
He said that Walter B. Staudt, the Texas Air National Guard commander, was pressuring one of Bush's superiors who two years earlier had rated Bush an outstanding pilot. Killian said, "I'm having trouble running interference and doing my job." Killian said that Staudt "is pushing to sugar coat" Bush's rating. "Bush wasn't here during rating period and I don't have any feedback from 187th in Alabama. I will not rate."
Democratic Party chairman Terry McAuliffe said, "George W. Bush's cover story on his National Guard service is rapidly unraveling. ... George W. Bush needs to answer why he regularly misled the American people about his time in the Guard and who applied political pressure on his behalf to have his performance reviews 'sugarcoated'"
White House communications director Dan Bartlett said Bush did not take the physical because he was not going to be in a flying capacity in Alabama. "Those who are trying to read the mind of a person dead 20 years are stretching at best. The president at every turn did what he was told to do."
Copyright 2004 Associated Press
© 2002-2004 My Way
By The
Prowler
Published 9/10/2004 12:09:06 AM
More than
six weeks ago, an opposition research staffer for the Democratic
National Committee received documents purportedly written by
President George W. Bush's Texas Air National Guard squadron
commander, the late Col. Jerry Killian.
The oppo researcher claimed the source was "a retired
military officer." According to a DNC staffer, the documents
were seen by both senior staff members at the DNC, as well as the
Kerry campaign.
"More than a couple people heard about the papers,"
says the DNC staffer. "I've heard that they ended up with
the Kerry campaign, for them to decide to how to proceed, and
presumably they were handed over to 60 Minutes, which used
them the other night. But I know this much. When there was
discussion here, there were doubts raised about their
authenticity."
The concerns arose from the sourcing. "It wasn't clear that
our source for the documents would have had access to them. Our
person couldn't confirm from what file, from what original source
they came from."
The documents that CBS News used were not documents from any of
Bush's personnel files from his time in the National Guard.
Rather, CBS News stated that they were documents uncovered in the
personnel files of Killian. That would explain why the White
House or the Pentagon had never before released or even seen
them.
According to a Kerry campaign source, there was little gossip
about the supposedly hot documents inside the office of the
campaign on McPherson Square. "Those documents were not
something anyone was talking about or trying to generate buzz
on," says the staffer. "It wasn't like there were small
groups of people talking about this as a bombshell. I think
people here weren't sure what to make of it, because provenance
of these documents was uncertain."
A CBS producer, who initially tipped off The Prowler about the 60
Minutes story, says that despite seeking professional
assurances that the documents were legitimate, there was
uncertainty even among the group of producers and researchers
working on the story.
"The problem was we had one set of documents from Bush's
file that had Killian calling Bush 'an exceptionally fine young
officer and pilot.' And someone who Killian said 'performed in an
outstanding manner.' Then you have these new documents and the
tone and content are so different."
The CBS producer said that some alarms bells went off last week
when the signatures and initials of Killian on the documents in
hand did not match up with other documents available on the
public record, but producers chose to move ahead with the story.
"This was too hot not to push. If there were doubts, those
people didn't show it," says the producer, who works on a
rival CBS News program.
Now, the producer says, there is growing concern inside the
building on 57th Street that they may have been suckered by the
Kerry campaign. "There is a school of thought here that the
Kerry people dumped this in our laps, figuring we'd do the heavy
lifting on the story. That maybe they had doubts about these
documents but hoped we'd get more information," says the
producer. "If that's the case, then we're bigger fools than
we already appear to be judging by all the chatter about how
these documents could be forgeries."
ABC News' political unit held a conference call at 7:00 p.m.
Thursday evening to discuss the memo and its potential
ramifications should the documents turn out to be a forgery. That
meeting took place around the time that the deceased Killian's
son made public statements questioning the documents'
authenticity.
According to one ABC News employee, some reporters believe that
the Kerry campaign as well as the DNC were parties in duping CBS,
but a smaller segment believe that both the DNC and the Kerry
campaign were duped by Karl Rove, who would have
engineered the flap to embarrass the opposition.
Reprinted from NewsMax.com
Friday, Sept. 10, 2004 9:07 a.m. EDT
In a stunning
journalistic fiasco from which the mainstream press may never
recover, a full frontal attack by two out of the three major
broadcast networks on President Bush's reelection bid has
collapsed amidst questions about forged documents and fraudulent
testimony.
CBS anchorman Dan Rather's already shaky journalistic reputation
was in tatters Friday morning, after documents unearthed during
his Wednesday night "60 Minutes II" broadcast
purporting to show a cover-up of Bush's National Guard record
were called probable forgeries by forensic experts. Memos
uncovered and touted by Rather's team appear to have been written
in Microsoft Word, the experts said - a computer program that did
not exist at the time Bush was in the Guard.
The same documents, purportedly authored by Bush Guard commander Jerry Killian, were challenged by Killian's widow and son, who told reporters on Thursday that the deceased National Guard commander would have never written such memos.
A second portion of Rather's "60 Minutes II" broadcast, featuring allegations against Bush from former Texas Lieutenant Gov. Ben Barnes, was also discredited, when his daughter Amy told a Texas radio station that her father was a "liar" who had changed his story to sell a book.
NBC News was also mired in a credibility crisis, as a spokeswoman for the network's "Today Show" insisted it was going forward with its planned rollout of Kitty Kelley's Bush bashing book, "The Family: The Real Story of the Bush Dynasty" - even though Kelley's key witness against Bush has recanted her account that Bush used cocaine and has accused Kelley of fabricating her interview.
"I categorically deny that I ever told Kitty Kelley that George W. Bush used cocaine at Camp David or that I ever saw him use cocaine at Camp David," ex-Bush sister-in-law Sharon Bush said in a statement issued Thursday.
Instead, the one-time Bush family insider insisted, "When Kitty Kelley raised drug use at Camp David, I responded by saying something along the lines of, 'Who would say such a thing?'"
Still, "Today Show" spokeswoman Lauren Kapps insisted that NBC producers had no plan to cancel or even scale back Kelley's three day mega promotion on the program, touted by the network as the crown jewel of morning TV.
"This was a very competitive interview that all the morning shows were after and, as we do with all of our interview subjects, we'll review the material beforehand and ask all the appropriate questions," Kapps said in a statement issued Thursday.
"This is astounding," one longtime media observer told NewsMax. "You have a major TV network promoting a book with a major news story that has already been discredited. At least in 1999, when St. Martin's Press found out their 'Bush used cocaine' book was false, they had the decency to withdraw it from bookstores."
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Ben Barnes' 'Daughter': My Dad Lied About Bush
Reprinted from NewsMax.com
Thursday, Sept. 9, 2004 8:19 p.m. EDT
A woman
purporting to be Amy Barnes, daughter of former Texas Lt. Gov.
Ben Barnes, said Thursday that her father had fabricated claims
that he used his influence to get President Bush into the Texas
Air National Guard 36 years ago.
In a phone call to WBAP's Mark Davis radio show in Dallas, Texas,
Ms. Barnes told guest host Monica Crowley that her father was an
"opportunist" who had lied about Bush's Guard record
during a "60 Minutes II" broadcast Tuesday night.
BARNES: I love my father very much, but he's doing this for
purely political reasons. He is a big Kerry fund-raiser and he is
writing a book also. And [the Bush story] is what he's leading
the book off with. ... He denied this to me in 2000 that he did
get Bush out [of Vietnam service]. Now he's saying he did.
CROWLEY: Did he tell you, Amy and I'm glad I have you on the line with me did your father tell you that he was prepared to do this on behalf of John Kerry go after President Bush like this?
BARNES: He told me he was going to do it. In fact, I talked to him a couple of months ago. He told me he was writing the book. He told me that he was going to be talking about this. And he knows that I we have very diverse political opinions. He knows my opinions and we get into this debate every time I see him. But, you know, he said that he was going to be talking about it.
CROWLEY: Now you're saying, Amy, that he has had two separate stories on President Bush's Guard duty during the Vietnam era?
BARNES: Yes, yes. This came out in 2000 and I asked him then, at the time, if he [helped get Bush into the Guard]. He said: "No, absolutely not. I did not do that." - CROWLEY: So, I hate to put you in this position, but I will ask you, do you think your father, Ben Barnes who was on "60 Minutes II" with Dan Rather last night do you believe that he lied on the air to the American people last night about President Bush?
BARNES; Yes, I do. I absolutely do. And I think he's doing he's doing it for purely political, opportunistic reasons trying to get John Kerry elected and trying to make Bush look like the bad person. ... Like I said, he's going to be trying to promote his book that he's got coming out. [End of Excerpt]
Crowley's colleague, WABC Radio's Mark Levin, aired a tape of the exchange in New York after confirming that Barnes does indeed have a daughter named Amy.
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note:
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you’ll love NewsMax’s "Bush Collection" Check
it out Click here Now
Read more on
this subject in related Hot Topics:
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2004 Elections
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Dan Rather/CBS
