Isn't Ben Barnes a top official within the Kerry campaign?
And why didn't CBS mention this?
SCARBOROUGH COUNTRY (MSNBC) 9/20/04:
FINEMAN: I can imagine a couple of reasons.
First of all, we reported in “Newsweek” last week that one reason why these documents were so important to CBS is because Ben Barnes, the former lieutenant governor of Texas, who has said that he used influence to get people into the National Guard in Texas, was being reluctant to go on “60 Minutes.” He didn‘t want to go on “60 Minutes” alone just to retell his story.
Mike Isikoff, my colleague, dug up the fact that Barnes was telling the people at CBS, I am not going on unless you have another element to this story. So CBS was determined to have another element, and, of course, that‘s what the memos were all about, and I think it‘s possible that the producer here, in order to kind of curry favor with and be pals with this guy Burkett was basically trying to do for him what Burkett was unable to do for himself, which was namely get through Max Cleland to the campaign.
But, again, alarm bells should have gone off at that point. You don‘t steer a source to a campaign for the campaign‘s own use to attack the other side. You just don‘t do that, because then you are not being a journalist. You‘re being a political operative.