Posted on 09/20/2004 8:09:36 PM PDT by conservativecorner
A spit-take scoop from USA Today:
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.
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."
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.
Wow. Michael Graham's dumping-Kerry theory doesn't seem so farfetched anymore.
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...
...and are these two men being honest about what was and what wasn't discussed?
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"?
[Posted 09/20 10:30 PM]
Palast - a Canadian Fisk or Scheer
That would in their mind move the negative media spotlight off Kerry and on to Bush.
Painting Bush as an elitist would be a good move since they don't have any other issues for their candidate to run on.
The dims must be having baby cows that their plans have all gone haywire.
Now everything hinges on the debates for the dims. It must be a living hell.
TOO BAD
We need to Buck these guys.
it's the title of an anti-x43 book by J.H. Hatfield,
I remember the book. Didn't remember Palast's name until you mentioned it, but from a quick search it looks like his anti-Bush coverage has been continuous since the 2000 campaign. I'm seeing he did some stories accusing Bush of stealing the election, etc.
Right here, just in the last day or so, in a laughable attempt to spin Dan Rather as the victim:
This is the 800 pound gorilla in the living room that everyone seems to be overlooking. The entire MSM and DNC begin a campaign that makes the Normandy Invasion look like a family vacation and we're to believe that this is simply a "regrettable oversight" by one man, Dan Blather? Puhhhhhhhleeez. We saw several newspapers and television programs go live the morning after the first shot (the now infamous 60 minutes episode) with their prepared talking points about "potentially damaging evidence", not to mention Terry McAwful and Tom Harkin standing up and loudly denouncing Bush's TANG "record".
This whole thing stinks to high heaven and there's a big giant plum waiting at the end for whichever reporter/ news outlet that has the balls to go get it.
I recommend everyone review post 14:
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/1222027/posts?page=14#14
As you probably know, it happens one brick at a time.
Greg Palast.....
Anti Bush writer etc...... Recently release a book entitle "Best Democracy Money Can Buy"
His web site: http://www.gregpalast.com/
All this makes CBS' "we were duped" apology meaningless.Everyone involved knew the documents were fakes and they went through with the charade because they shared the same goal, the removal of the President. For arrogance, audacity, and criminality Watergate pales before this criminal conspiracy, but no one cares.
What did Creedence Clearwater Revival know and when did they know it?
From Newsmax.com
Monday, Sept. 20, 2004 10:52 p.m. EDT
CBS Steered Forged Doc Source to Kerry Campaign
In what may be the most damaging revelation yet in the Rathergate document scandal, CBS News is admitting that it steered the source of forged military records damaging to President Bush to the Kerry campaign.
In exchange for the meeting with Kerry communications director Joe Lockhart, that source - former National Guard Commander Bill Burkett - agreed to give CBS copies of the Bush records.
Story Continues Below
USA Today is set to report in Tuesday editions:
"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."
"At Burkett's request, we gave his (telephone) number to the campaign," Betsy West, senior CBS News vice president, confessed to USA Today.
Late Monday, CBS said it was investigating the role of "60 Minutes" star producer Mary Mapes in setting up the contact between Burkett and Lockhart.
"The network's effort to place Burkett in contact with a top Democratic official raises ethical questions about CBS' handling of material potentially damaging to the Republican president in the midst of an election," the paper said.
Aly Colón, a news ethicist at the Poynter Institute for Media Studies, said the collusion between CBS and the Kerry campaign to damage President Bush "poses a real danger to the potential credibility of a news organization."
The White House reacted sharply to the Lockhart development, with Communications Director Dan Bartlett complaining, "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."
I think that's the reason RATher still can't give it up. The success of the Kitty Kelley hit book and "Fortunate Son" depended on the base that RATher would lay down. So he's got to maintain that the story is true, even if the evidence is forged.
Danno, you stink. And you failed. Failed, do you hear?
Bumping your post. Excellent. Dead on right.
from your link:
Barnes appears to have made lucrative use of his knowledge of our President’s slithering out of the draft as a lever to protect a multi-billion dollar contract for a client. That's the information in a confidential letter buried deep in the files of the US Justice Department that fell into my hands at BBC television.
Thanks, I saved the link to read tomorrow. Boy is the news breaking fast and furious (love that cliche) tonight!
Ironically, it's said to have been written about Al Gore.
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