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]
interesting stuff here, too.
Good work!
I'm reading his blog--also looks like he's a Chavez supporter.
I love mixed metaphors too!
Don't forget the toothpicks to prop up our eyelids!
Bump
#48 is spot on.
Tony Coelho Admits on Hardball that the DNC Had Forged Memos Before CBS News Saw Them
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/1221990/posts
Isn't their lead singer named John Forgery, er uh, Fogarty?
I'm certain that the White House and/or the BC 04 campaign was well aware of the connections between CBS, Burkett, and the Kerry campaign. I think that's why Bartlett kept stressing today that there were "serious questions" to be answered. He must have used the words "serious questions" a dozen times in a very brief press appearance.
http://www.angelfire.com/tx3/photogsworld/week1.html
halfway down the web page.
Here's some other stuff to consider:
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/1211690/posts
Also, Burkett say he was pressured; maybe Cleland or Lockhart pressured him?
It might be wise for Burkett, Lockhart, and Cleland to not take any rides on private jets paid for by Hillary Clinton.
Burkett should find some new place and hide.
The dems are insane. They did all of this crap....there is not telling how far the will go...
Bob Schieffer of CBS needs to be dropped as a debate moderator. Until Rather, Mapes, Lockart etc are all fired, CBS must be considered a totally compromised and biased actor.
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/1201300/posts
Here we have people during a time of war making up fraudulent documents to undo the POTUS - to try to get Kerry elected. Who are these people, why are they doing this, and what else did they plan to do. This needs to be investigated asap....every call traced, every meeting noted, and the timeline completed.
Author-filmmakers Michael Moore and Greg Palast joined with Representatives Corrine Brown (D-Jacksonville) and Peter Deutsch (D-Ft. Lauderdale) to demand steps, as Palast said, "To prevent Republican hacks in Florida swiping the election of 2004 as they did four years ago."
[SNIP]
For interviews with Palast, contact Ilene Proctor at 301-721-2336 or media@gregpalast.com. For more information, see www.GregPalast.com.
At a press conference Wednesday morning before the Florida delegation to the Democratic Convention in Boston, Moore endorsed a bill introduced by Brown to make it easier for Congress to challenge an election tainted by apparent fraud.
"Don't let them steal Florida again," said Palast, the investigative reporter who in 2000 first uncovered for BBC Television that Katherine Harris and Jeb Bush had wrongly removed tens of thousand of Black citizens from voter rolls. Palast's reports on the theft of the elections are featured in Moore's film "Fahrenheit 9/11."
* I am a trained writer. Do not try these metaphors at home.
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