BURKETT MET WITH LOCKHART

CBS arranged for a confidential source to talk with Joe Lockhart, a top aide to Democratic presidential candidate John Kerry, after the source provided the network with the now-disputed documents about President Bush's service in the Texas National Guard. Lockhart, the former press secretary to President Clinton, said a female producer talked to him about the 60 Minutes program a few days before it aired on Sept. 8. She gave Lockhart a telephone number and asked him to call Bill Burkett, a former Texas National Guard officer who gave CBS the documents. Lockhart couldn't recall the producer's name. But CBS said Monday night that it would examine the role of producer Mary Mapes in passing the name to Lockhart.

Burkett told USA TODAY that he had agreed to turn over the documents to CBS if the network would help arrange a conversation with the Kerry campaign.

"At Burkett's request, we gave his (telephone) number to the campaign," said Betsy West, senior CBS News vice president.

CBS would not discuss the propriety of the network serving as a conduit between its partisan source, Burkett, and the Kerry campaign. “It was not part of any deal” with Burkett to obtain the documents, West said, declining to elaborate.

But Burkett said Monday that his contact with Lockhart was indeed part of an "understanding" with CBS. Burkett said his interest in contacting the campaign was to offer advice in responding to Republican criticisms about Kerry's Vietnam service. It had nothing to do with the documents, he said.

At the end of the conversation, Lockhart said he thanked Burkett for his interest and there was no further contact with him. Asked why he called Burkett, Lockhart said he talks to "a lot of people."

The White House said CBS' contact with Lockhart was inappropriate. "The fact that CBS News would coordinate with the most senior levels of Sen. Kerry's campaign to attack the President is a stunning and deeply troubling revelation," said Dan Bartlett, White House communications director.

UPDATE: So what's going on here? Okay, according to what's being pieced together, Burkett wanted to play Kerry campaign strategist, and to get the bigwigs at the Kerry campaign to use his memos that he, apparently, thought would be convincing. Mapes (presuming this female producer Lockhart is talking about is Mapes) wanted the memos. Burkett offers to trade the memos for an introduction to the Kerry campaign. Mapes calls the Kerry camp and eventually reaches Lockhart. Lockhart agrees to the favor, since when a "60 Minutes" producer asks you for a favor, you do it. (Building good relations with the press and all that.) Lockhart talks with Burkett...

Let's look on Nexis for the first reference to "Operation Fortunate Son." We find an AP story from September 9, 2004.

Seizing on 30-year-old memos and memories, Sen. John Kerry's operatives are painting an unflattering portrait of President Bush as the "fortunate son" who used family connections to dodge the Vietnam War and then lied about it... "Two things: One, he didn't tell the truth and that's not going to go away," said Howard Wolfson, a strategist dispatched to the DNC by Kerry's campaign to go negative on Bush. "Second, it begins to paint a picture of a very fortunate son who uses connections and pulls strings for special favors. That is a theme running through the man's life."

The DNC has nicknamed its effort "Operation Fortunate Son" after a Creedence Clearwater Revival anti-war anthem from the 1960s. The song speaks of the privileged few, "born silver spoon in hand," who send others to war.

Bush is not the "senator's son" written about in the song, but he's the son of a former president who served in the House during the Vietnam War.

Former Texas House Speaker Ben Barnes, a Kerry supporter, says he helped Bush and the sons of other wealthy families get into the Texas National Guard to avoid serving in Vietnam.

As a young lieutenant, Bush was "talking to someone upstairs" and trying to "get out of coming to drill," according to newly unearthed memos by the late Col. Jerry B. Killian, squadron commander for Bush in Texas.

The CBS story based on the memos the evening of Sept. 8. Are we to believe that the Democratic National Committee put together "Operation Fortunate Son," in which these memos are front and center, entirely in the hours after the CBS report, and yet had their campaign ready so that these memos are referred to in the first words of the AP story Sept. 9?

Are we to believe that the DNC didn't know ahead of time what was in those memos, and how they could be used to attack the president?

Ladies and gentlemen, I am not a lawyer. Would this qualify as circumstantial evidence that CBS and the DNC were collaborating on using the memos before the story ran?

And would this explain why Terry McAuliffe said yesterday that no one at the DNC or Kerry campaign, 'had anything to do with the preparations of the documents,' but said nothing about the distribution or dissemination of the memo?

Oh — and did no one at the DNC look at these documents and say, "Gee, these look like they were written with Microsoft Word"?

Lockhart said he phoned Burkett at the number provided by CBS. Lockhart also said that subject of the documents never came up in his conversation with Burkett. Lockhart said the conversation lasted just a few minutes. "It's possible that the producer said they had documents," before his conversation with Burkett, he said. At the end of the conversation, Lockhart said he thanked Burkett for his interest and there was no further contact with him. Asked why he called Burkett, Lockhart said he talks to "a lot of people."

Lockhart knows his phone records would prove contact with Burkett before the show aired.

This is nothing more than that bug-eyed freak's lame cover story for those calls.

Max Cleland's schedule on August 25 in Texas needs to be fully examined. Cleland tried to deliver a letter to President Bush around 1pm in Crawford, followed immediately by a short press conference. When did he leave Texas, where did he leave from, and what did he do in the time in between?

Only days prior to Cleland's impromptu visit to Texas, he began discussions with Bill Burkett, who is now known to be CBS's source for the forged documents.

Later the same day of Cleland's Texas trip, Burkett announced in a rant to President Bush on the progressive onlinejournal that, "I know from your files that we have now reassembled, the fact that you did not fulfill your oath, taken when you were commissioned to 'obey the orders of the officers appointed over you'."

What time was this rant posted?
Did Cleland help him write it?
Who is the "we" Burkett is referring to concerning the documents being "reassembled"?
Did Cleland help Burkett forge the documents on that day?

Crawford, Texas, where Cleland was at 1pm on August 25, is only 162 miles from Baird, Bill Burkett's home.

Did Cleland make a visit there that day?

Did someone in the Kerry campaign act as a middleman in passing along the information to CBS that Burkett had these documents?

Did someone in the Kerry campaign lobby CBS to use these documents or vouch for their authenticity?

CBS claimed that these documents came from "unimpeachable sources."
Other than Burkett, who are the other sources?
Why did CBS consider Burkett "unimpeachable"?
Was the journalistic fraud perpetrated by CBS so deep and corrupt that they actually relied on the sole testimony of documented crazy person who had already been discredited on kook conspiracy theories involving Bush>
Or is it more reasonable to assume that CBS News would not put their credibility and even their careers on the line unless there was someone like Cleland or Barnes vouching for the documents as well?

CBS must answer the question of how they learned that Burkett now had these memos. Did the discovery of these new documents play a part in Ben Barnes decision that he was now ready to talk to 60 Minutes on air, after Mary Mapes had long been urging him to do so? Is there a connection between this sudden change of heart by Barnes just two days before CBS hit "paydirt" with these forged documents?
Did Ben Barnes see these documents even before CBS did?

Here is some insight into the question:

Rumors about the memos had circulated in the Democratic Party and media circles for weeks; in fact, CBS had used their existence to help persuade Barnes to talk. He told Democratic friends before the "60 Minutes II" broadcast that if documents the network was hunting for were found—and were authentic—"the election is over."

But now we learn that Barnes decided to talk to CBS just a few days before CBS recieved the documents:

During the Republican National Convention in New York, Rather got a call from Ben Barnes, a onetime Texas lieutenant governor and veteran Democrat who has known the anchor, a former Houston TV reporter, for 30 years. Barnes said he was ready to say before the cameras that he had pulled strings to get Bush a coveted slot in the Texas Guard in 1968. Mapes had long been urging Barnes to tell his story.

On Friday, Sept. 3, the day after the convention ended, Mapes hit pay dirt. She told Howard her source had given her the documents.

This would mean that the Kerry campaign -- which Barnes is co-chair of -- got the documents first, then CBS recieved them a few days later.

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