Posted on 09/18/2004 8:51:49 AM PDT by AmericanMade1776
Strands of Web
The Houston Chronicle has this about Bill Burkett, the person some believe sent CBS the questionable memos supposedly from the late Texas Air National Guard Lt. Col. Jerry Killian.
“If Burkett is the source of the CBS documents he must have recently obtained them. In earlier interviews, he described years of fruitless searching,” the paper noted. In an August essay posted on a Web site Burkett theorized that Killian would likely have known more about Bush's service but conceded:
“I have found no documentation from LTC Killian's hand or staff that indicates that this unit was involved in any complicit way to … cover for the failures of 1Lt. Bush. … On the contrary, LTC Killian's remarks are rare.”
(Excerpt) Read more at kansascity.com ...
“If Burkett is the source of the CBS documents he must have recently obtained them. In earlier interviews, he described years of fruitless searching,”
...and then, after years of searching, there they were. They had been sitting in his "My Documents" folder all along.
Low and Behold....
It's a registration only paper. No thanks.
Remember, Dan wants to be the first to break this story.
This guy has such a long public record - consistently anti-something or another - there must be some point along the track where he flipped over from attacking his own chain of command (NG) and decided to foam at GWB.
So, apart from how did he get from 'no documentation from LTC Killian's hand or staff' to 'reconstructed files' in one month? What brought about the go-after-Bush fixation?
Like Hillary's billing records................
o b s e s s i o n. Until he finally figured this was the last possible moment that it could possibly matter -- so he flat made up something in the hopes of finally getting his (apparent) nemesis. Sounds like a paper stalker.
> I don't think Burkett is smart enough to pull off the scam.
I don't think Burkett did the typing, or even proofreading,
unless he's more mentally deficient than we suspect. He was
in the NG long enough to know what a memo should look like.
The forgeries were clearly based on Burkett's vendetta,
and he may even have been called in as a consultant. But
my bet is that someone else did the typing and faxing.
It seems unlikely that Bill Burkett would be the primary source of the documents, or that CBS would have relied on Burkett as a primary source for anything. Burkett could hardly be considered an "unimpeachable" source. He has had a grudge with TANG that goes back at least to 1997. Also, he never knew Jerry Killian, and GWB's TANG records that Burkett alleged he witnessed being sanitized in 1997 would not have contained the Killian "CYA" memos.
The observations that copies of the documents bore a FAX header fromn a copyshop near Burkett's home is misleading. The PDF files on CBS WEB site contain no FAX headers. Exporting the JPEG's from the PDF's indicates that they were scanned at 300 DPI - most likely from either carbon copies of documents or from older photocopies of carbon copies. They are clearly not scans of FAX documents (FAX's have much lower resolution than the documents scanned into the PDF files.
More likely, Burkett (like Strong) was used as a corraborating source - It is more likely that it was Mary Mapes who FAX'ed the documents back to CBS in NY. Mapes is a highly regarded CBS producer who lives in Dallas and has been working the Bush TANG story for the last five years. CBs would have trusted a FAX from Mapes, but it is unlikely it would have trusted Burkett.
So that leaves the primary source of the documents still a big question.
Typing a military type document according to the military style book is not rocket science. Whoever did this did not consult the Air Force manual. Those with experience in the clerk-typist fields of the military have commented that the style of these documents is oriented towards the Army way, not the Alr Force way, and even then is not strictly in the proper format. Mary did this dirty deed, I'll bet, with the help of the Ex Army NG guy, Burkett.
this is a very good find!
hope it helps :-)
Part of the Society of Professional Journalists Code of Ethics is that the journalist use 'due diligence.' about facts and sources.
Just facts and objectivity would be wonderful...refreshing in the news industry. AND ONE MORE THING ,....i am sick of in the news industry..THE PETERSON TRIAL.
Note the abbreviation in bold. That was the same format used in the memos and was immediately questioned by military vets here on FR as not standard for the Air Force.
You've got to be kidding! The word processing skills required are rudimentary and basic. It would take only a few minutes on the computer to produce each document. In fact, that's what got the idiot, that made these forgeries, into trouble in the first place.
--Boot Hill
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