"It dawned on me that I was present at the birth of a political jihad.
The key phrases in Mary Mapes diatribe is her saying after the story broke she was visiting web sites she had never heard of... She admits she did not know of the methods and techniques that could be used to reveal her deception. Had she known of Free Republic and similar sites it seems clear that she and Rather would have tried a different tact to fool the people.
Her statements read like those made by a robber who did not know about fingerprints before he left them at the scene of the crime.
The point that can be easily deduced from Mapes statements is that neither She nor Rather were aware of the capabilities of the media that proved their duplicity.
For many decades the main stream media could attack innocent conservatives with lies and make them stick. Those days are over.
No one with a brain could believe that both Mapes and Rather did not know the documents were fake. What they did not know is that the means to prove they were fake and the means to publish that information existed.
Free Republic members like Buckhead are not super brainy Einsteins with super natural abilities. Buckhead is a very bright man with very good investigative skills. Buckhead had knowledge of what documents looked like before ink jet and laser printers made inexpensive proportional typed documents available to everyone. He also knew what modern computer printed documents looked like.
He knew they were fake just by looking at the internet downloaded documents. Buckhead knew they had to be created on a modern computer using a laser or ink jet printer not available at the time the documents were supposedly created. With that basic knowledge proving the documents fake was a piece of cake.
No one will every make me believe that Mapes and Rather did not know the documents were fake. If they did not know they were fake they would NOT have hired people to only check the parts of the documents that could not be proven fake. Mapes and Rather are not dumb. Before the broadcast they tried to create the illusion that the documents had been checked by experts. But they limited the checks to those parts of the documents that could not be proven fake. That shows they had to have anticipated challenges to the documents authenticity. But they did not know the actual absolute proof that the documents were fake would be available on millions of computer screen within hours.
From the MSM coverage of the story we can deduce that many MSM organizations are still not aware of what the web can do.
Mapes and Rather are just ignorant. They certainly knew that people like Buckhead were out there. But without the technology to get accurate copies of the original documents and with out a way to publish findings, the Buckheads of yesteryear could not reasonably be expected to make such discoveries and could not be expected to find a way to publish them even if they could.
Mapes and Rather had to believe they could get away with it. And they may very well have gotten away with similar deceptions many times before.
The internet changed the rules of the game and Mapes and Rather admit they did not know the new rules. They do now.
Mapes is angry because she was unaware of what the new media can do. It allows ordinary citizens with no ax to grind to rapidly get the information used to make discoveries and to publish their discoveries world wide within hours.
Mapes and Rather now know that their common technique to propagate criminal deceptions and lies can no longer prevail. They are very angry.
The signs of forgery are patently obvious to anyone who bothered to look for them. Trying to pass these documents off as genuine is like trying to pass off clips from Plan Nine From Outer Space as actual UFO photographs.
Not bad, but it was not only Buckhead and "proportional font"...
The key that tipped off others immediately - at first sight - was recognition that those FRAUDulent documents were not even close to having a format that was in use by the ANG at the time. I think that it was TankerKC who made the first observation of that, but I could be incorrect. That in itself would call into question whether the documents were authentic.
After that, Buckhead and others said, "hmmm... yeah... and..."