BeldarBlog

"Et tu, WaPo?" gasps Rather, as the MSM assassins thrust and thrust

Says Dan Rather of the current controversy:

Rather also dismissed the notion that CBS was negligent: "I'm confident we worked longer, dug deeper and worked harder than almost anybody in American journalism does."

That's precisely what we're all afraid of, Dan.

Sunday's front-page WaPo story by Howard Kurtz, Michael Dobbs, and James V. Grimaldi — headlined "In Rush to Air, CBS Quashed Memo Worries" — doesn't add any new blockbusters to what the LAT published on Saturday morning, but has more contextual details — none of which make CBS News look good. 

The tone is definitive, and WaPo drops the polite fiction that there's even a remote possibility remaining that the documents are authentic.  Instead, the bright lights are on the misbehavior of Mapes, Rather, and other CBS News personnel.  More signs point to Burkett as the source.

Still unanswered, and even unasked:  What was CBS News' great hurry?  Who else was the forger peddling the documents to?

And what says USA Today?

Update (Sun Sep 19 @ 3:40pm):  Don't miss WaPo's graphic, entitled "The Paper Trail: A Comparison of Documents."

"Consulting experts" versus "testifying experts," and the differences between the ways lawyers and journalists use experts generally

On his radio show Thursday afternoon, Hugh Hewitt first asked whether I have much experience as a trial lawyer in dealing with expert witnesses, and I confirmed that I do indeed deal with them in my practice on an everyday basis.  Then Hugh asked me a hypothetical question:  If I were defending CBS News in a multimillion dollar trial, would I let the case go to the jury based on the collection of experts CBS News has relied upon in its so-called authentication of the forged Killian memos.  My answer wasn't a particularly good one — perhaps surprisingly, I hadn't thought of the question before in precisely those terms because of the differences in the ways trial lawyers and journalists regularly rely upon experts.

But as so often happens in my blogging, this question is one I've been mulling over for a while, and that has now led me to one of my multipart rambling dissertations as a crusty old trial lawyer.

I. Expert witnesses versus lay witnesses

The Federal Rules of Evidence (and most states' parallel rules for use in the state-court system) distinguish sharply between expert witnesses and so-called "lay witnesses."  Rule 701 of the Federal Rules of Evidence sharply restricts the ability of lay witnesses to offer testimony that consists of the witness' opinions or inferences:

If the witness is not testifying as an expert, the witness' testimony in the form of opinions or inferences is limited to those opinions or inferences which are (a) rationally based on the perception of the witness, and (b) helpful to a clear understanding of the witness' testimony or the determination of a fact in issue, and (c) not based on scientific, technical, or other specialized knowledge within the scope of Rule 702.

Rule 702 in turn provides:

If scientific, technical, or other specialized knowledge will assist the trier of fact to understand the evidence or to determine a fact in issue, a witness qualified as an expert by knowledge, skill, experience, training, or education, may testify thereto in the form of an opinion or otherwise, if (1) the testimony is based upon sufficient facts or data, (2) the testimony is the product of reliable principles and methods, and (3) the witness has applied the principles and methods reliably to the facts of the case.

To give some concrete examples of how this pair of rules actually works in a trial:  Suppose my client Mr. Jones, a ditch-digger by trade, claims to have been permanently disabled by a violent reaction to a prescription drug.  When I put Mr. Jones on the witness stand, he can testify based on first-hand knowledge about a wide range of important factual matters — for instance, his own educational, vocational, and economic history; what prompted him to consult his doctor; when he started taking the drug; and what impairments or symptoms he began to notice thereafter and continues to observe.  He can testify that for the five years immediately before he first took the drug, he'd had a gross yearly job income of, say, $35,000, and that he has had no income at all since he took the drug.  He can testify, too, on some matters that strictly speaking are not objective issues of fact — for example, how his quality of life seems to him to have changed; how his family life has been disrupted; how he feels about no longer being his family's breadwinner; what tasks he no longer finds himself capable of doing; how severe the physical pain is from the multiple daily seizures he has continued to suffer; and so forth.

But there will be important parts of Mr. Jones' overall case that I cannot prove up through his testimony as a layman.  I cannot, for example, ask him to render a medical diagnosis regarding his condition when he sought treatment (although I might, through a hearsay rule exception, be permitted to adduce his testimony as to what he was told by his examining and treating physicians when he did so).  I cannot ask him to render an opinion as to whether in fact the prescription drug (rather than, say, some other event or malady) caused his current disability, or how it did so, or how long his disability is likely to last, or whether it's likely to become curable in the future.  I cannot ask him to render opinions on the likely rate of future inflation or interest-rate returns on a conservatively invested lump sum of money, or what discount rate should fairly be used to discount to present value the stream of earnings he might have expected to receive over his projected working lifetime but for his disability.  (Oddly enough, though, with respect to damages calculations, I can take the basic data he's given me and, during final argument, do some blackboard calculations to suggest to a jury of laymen how they themselves might go about making appropriate "common-sense calculations" to determine the present value, if paid now in cash, of the stream of future earnings that my client has lost the prospect of receiving.)  No, on all these issues, detailed analysis and proof will depend on opinion testimony that in turn is based upon "scientific, technical, or other specialized knowledge," and I can only adduce that testimony from the mouths of "experts" whose qualifications and expertise I've first demonstrated to the court's satisfaction. 

And even once I've met the threshold standard of proving a given expert's qualifications — that a physician, for example, has a medical degree and license — my opponent will be free to attack not only my expert witnesses' opinions, but the depth of their qualifications to render them; and typically my opposing counsel will call his own competing expert witnesses, prove up their qualifications to give opinion testimony, and offer their own competing theories, opinions, and conclusions.  It is left to the "factfinder" — the jury if there is one, or the judge in a nonjury bench trial — to sort through the conflicting opinions; assess the respective experts' credentials, expertise, and credibility;  and determine whose opinions to accept and whose to reject, in whole or in part. 

Thus does the dance of experts play out in any civil trial.

II. Pretrial discovery of experts

The anticipation of how that dance will likely play out in a trial, however, in turn guides the pretrial preparation and discovery phase for both sides in a lawsuit.  By rule and/or pretrial order, some months before the trial, I will have had to have "designated" the experts whom I've proposed to call at trial to my opposing counsel, and to have provided him with not only their names, but their credentials, their written reports of their opinions and conclusions, and all of the data they've reviewed and considered in reaching them. 

My opponent, after reviewing that information, will almost certainly have taken a pretrial oral deposition of all of my significant expert witnesses to probe those subjects.  Every communication I've had with my "testifying experts" will have been subject to his examination — and you may be sure that he'll have asked, for example, how much my expert is being paid; how much of his time is devoted to serving as an expert witness in legal matters versus plying his profession directly; whether I've improperly suggested conclusions or withheld key information from my expert; whether my expert has rendered contrary or inconsistent opinions in other settings; how strong my expert's credentials really are; how carefully he's actually reviewed the data in forming his opinions; and so forth.  And when my opponent has selected and designated his own competing "testifying experts" to refute mine, he'll have had to have made the same disclosures and have given me the same opportunities to probe their opinions.

III. Testifying experts versus consulting experts

But even before the pretrial dance of competing "testifying experts," civil litigation often involves another type of expert altogether — the "consulting expert."  By definition, a consulting expert is one retained in secret — even his identity, and the very fact that he's been retained, is something I dare not and need not disclose.  I may have hired him, in fact, to help me evaluate a prospective case before I've even made a final decision whether to undertake it.  And so long as I keep his identity secret, and his work and opinions carefully segregated from my "testifying experts," my opponent will never learn of his existence.

Some of the expert witnesses upon whom I may be obliged to rely may be ineligible for "consulting expert" status to begin with.  The physicians who've diagnosed and treated my client, for example, are bound to become known to my opposing counsel, and I'm bound to rely upon them as witnesses to testify as to the facts they observed and the actions they performed — which inevitably will draw into question the opinions and conclusions they reached during that process.  And it's also quite common for an "outside expert" — one with no prior factual connection to the case — to be retained initially by counsel as a "consulting expert," and only after counsel has concluded (using his judgment as an advocate) that it would be beneficial to his presentation of the case, disclosed to the other side and thereby converted into a "testifying expert."

Superficially, it may seem as though the practice of allowing the shielding of the identities and opinions of pure "consulting experts" would be antithetical to the process of justice.  But as it has developed, the law has recognized the overall benefits of allowing private and nondiscoverable consultations.  If, for example, I knew that every expert I ever consulted would become known to my opposing counsel — and that I might thereafter be "stuck" with an expert's unfavorable opinion — the natural result would be that I'd only consult with pliable and reliable experts whose opinions I could confidently predict in advance to be favorable to my client. 

Just as I must be able to consult with my client under the shield of attorney-client privilege to learn about unfavorable facts that I need to assess in order to perform my role as his counselor — a role that is and should be distinct from my performance before the outside world as his advocate — so too in that counselor's role I must be able to gather opinions that aren't sycophantic in order to assess the strengths of the likely expert testimony the jury will ultimately hear from both sides. 

Moreover, it promotes efficiency if I'm free to "sound out" various potential experts as pure "consulting experts" without thereby becoming stuck with them as testifying witnesses.  It's not uncommon to approach and even retain an expert with the highest hopes and expectations that he'll make the switch from "consulting" to "testifying expert," but then to find out that he's actually less qualified to render opinions than I'd first expected.  Perhaps I've first consulted a neurosurgeon to review my client Mr. Jones' medical records, and then learned from him that Mr. Jones' maladies really weren't by their nature subject to surgical treatment, and that instead I ought to seek opinions from neurologists and epidemiologists.  Or perhaps I've discovered that someone I retained as a consulting expert — with the expectation of eventually designating and disclosing him as a testifying expert — is well qualified, even brilliant, but he's got a troublesome lapse in his licensure from that license revocation proceeding he didn't think to list on his curriculum vitae, or he's simply an uncharismatic and inarticulate witness.  Why should my client's case be burdened with the embarrassment of calling these inappropriate experts?  That would promote confusion and needless expense, not truth-seeking.

The premise is that through the adversary system — in which my opposing counsel has these same opportunities to rely upon attorney-client privilege and the privilege against disclosing the identities and opinions of pure "consulting experts" — more cases will be likely to settle on a reasonable basis without a trial, and the cases that do go to trial will permit the factfinder to reach the fairest possible resolution of the disputed issues based upon two competing advocates' strongest possible presentations of their respective cases and attacks on each other's presentations.

IV. Journalists' use of experts

My job as a trial lawyer is to promote my client's interests, zealously but within the bounds of the law and legal ethics.  While I need to have a good appreciation of opposing views and the weaknesses of my own client's positions to perform my role as confidential counselor, I have no obligation to score points for my client's opponent — he has his own advocate to do that for him.

At least in theory, however, journalists, in contrast to trial lawyers, are not creatures of an adversary system.  While they have business competitors and perform in a marketplace of competing ideas and opinions, journalists have as their "client" the "public interest" and "the truth."  And that has profound implications for the differences in how journalists and lawyers rely upon and use experts.

Like me, a journalist may have need of an expert witness to analyze technical or scientific issues, render opinions on them, and digest their opinions down into bite-sized chunks that can be followed and assessed by the audience — jurors for me, the public for journalists.  Just as I might hire a forensic document examiner to assist me in determining the authenticity of a document for, say, a will contest case, Dan Rather may have need of a forensic document examiner to assist him in determining the authenticity of a memo produced by a source who claims that the memo bears upon President Bush's military service.

To a limited extent, I have no problem with journalists relying on their own sort of "consulting expert."  Dan Rather should be free to consult with, say, a typewriter repairman to find out what his experience and expertise may offer.  But I have no problem with Dan Rather deciding, after thorough examination, that the typewriter repairman wasn't really the right kind of expert he needed after all, and therefore leaving on the editing room floor all the footage of his interview with the typewriter repairman when he finally airs his broadcast. 

But as I understand journalistic ethics, what a journalist is not entitled to do is to simply "deep six" — to not only ignore, but actively hide or misrepresent — the opinions of experts with whom he's consulted who do have the relevant credentials and expertise, but whose opinions and conclusions don't fit with the premise of the journalist's story.

If Dan Rather and CBS News concluded, for example (as seems to be the case), that Marcel Matley, Linda James, Emily Will, and James J. Pierce were all competent handwriting experts, journalistic ethics do not permit them to simply ignore the objections raised by Ms. Will and Ms. James to the signatures on the Killian documents while only broadcasting, without reservation, the opinions of Mr. Matley and Mr. Pierce that the signatures were genuine.  If Ms. Will told CBS News that she had concerns about the documents' typefaces and format, and that they ought to consult someone with deeper credentials and expertise on those subjects rather than just the handwriting, then journalistic ethics would not permit CBS News to simply ignore that advice and proceed along as if it had actually consulted with experts who have the proper expertise.

Precisely because journalists must make their editorial judgments in a hurry — without the elaborate procedures of civil litigation and the checks and balances built into the adversary system — journalistic ethics placed a burden on Mr. Rather and CBS News that I, as an advocate, don't share:  The burden of being balanced and fair in their presentation.

But it's now quite obvious that CBS News and Mr. Rather violated their ethical obligations as journalists, and instead behaved as if they were advocates for a particular viewpoint, in this case a viewpoint critical of President Bush's service record.  They took it upon themselves to ignore controverting opinions and warnings from the very experts whom they had chosen to consult.  They treated those experts as if they were "consulting experts" whose existence and opinions they were entitled to hide from the public, and indeed at least for a time actively tried to conceal those experts' very existence.  They instructed Mr. Matley not to give interviews; they've in effect called Ms. Will and Ms. James liars; they've even concealed the fact that Mr. Matley and Mr. Pierce have given carefully limited opinions, opining only as to some documents and then only as to their signatures, not their typefaces and other characteristics.  Indeed, my friend and fellow lawyer-blogger AllahPundit has persuasively argued that CBS News appears to have engaged in authentication shopping, selectively revealing different document to different experts in hopes of finding a combination that would fit the theme they were trying to promote.

And in so doing, CBS News and Mr. Rather not only violated their ethical obligations — they also became willing accomplices to a forger.  Whether motivated by a desire to cover up their own unethical and incompetent journalism, or by a more repugnant desire to serve a partisan political goal, their conduct has been shameful and indefensible.   In either event, they clearly long ago ceased being objective journalists and became instead advocates — advocates unbound and unchecked by procedural rules, legal processes, ethical considerations or, apparently, even conscience.

Such behavior should have career-ending consequences.

Fifth SwiftVets ad: "Dazed and Confused"

The fifth SwiftVets ad, "Dazed and Confused," again focuses on John Kerry's/someone's discarded medals/ribbons — but this time with the emphasis on Sen. Kerry's flip-flops on the   subject of what he actually threw away, juxtaposing TV images of him in 2004 and 1972. 

"We threw away the symbols of what our country gave us ... and I'm proud of that."  That's from 2004, friends and neighbors. 

Sen. Kerry, are you also proud of the upside-down American flag, mocking the Marine flag-raising atop Iwo Jima, that was on the cover of your 1971 book, The New Soldier?  If so, why have you surpressed the reprinting of that book with that cover?  Why doesn't Amazon.com have a cover image for your book on its website?

   

What symbol of your country would you not have been proud to mock or throw away in 1971-1972, sir?  And now?

The histories that will be written of the 2004 campaign, if it ends up the way it's headed now, will all agree that John Kerry's bid for the presidency was sunk by ... John Kerry.

Our troops will whip the terrorists in Iraq — if we don't lose our nerve back home

Captain's Quarters has a fabulous letter to America from an American Marine major writing from Baghdad.  Here's a choice bit:

The naysayers will point to the recent battles in Najaf and draw parallels between that and what happened in Fallujah in April. They aren’t even close. The bad guys did us a HUGE favor by gathering together in one place and trying to make a stand. It allowed us to focus on them and defeat them. Make no mistake, Al Sadr’s troops were thoroughly smashed. The estimated enemy killed in action is huge. Before the battles, the residents of the city were afraid to walk the streets. Al Sadr’s enforcers would seize people and bring them to his Islamic court where sentence was passed for religious or other violations. Long before the battles people were looking for their lost loved ones who had been taken to "court" and never seen again. Now Najafians can and do walk their streets in safety. Commerce has returned and the city is being rebuilt. Iraqi security forces and US troops are welcomed and smiled upon. That city was liberated again. It was not like Fallujah – [in Najaf,] the bad guys lost and are in hiding or dead.

But read the whole thing.  And smile along with me when you read the last line — what a global information society we live in now, eh?

Does the White House read BeldarBlog?

From Friday's WaTimes:

Privately, some Bush advisers said Mr. Rather has become part of the story and therefore should recuse himself from further coverage. They suggested a more objective journalist at CBS should begin aggressively pursuing the question of whether the documents were forged.

From Wednesday's BeldarBlog:

And just as as Rule 3.7(a) of the ABA's Model Rules of Professional Conduct is intended to protect public confidence in the integrity of the judicial system, so too does the SPJ's Code of Ethics counsel that a journalist who himself has become the story, not continue to cover the story .... The personal and professional conflicts of interest that Mr. Rather and his team have when they are investigating and reporting on that controversy could not be more obvious or more palpable.

Naw.  If the White House read BeldarBlog, they'd have fed the WaTimes a reference to the SPJ's Code of Ethics.  It seems more likely that someone at the White House — and no one at CBS News — understands some very basic principles of journalistic ethics.

CBS News thought Rathergate docs were real because White House didn't object — even though its own experts already had!

Saturday's Los Angeles Times reports (reg. req'd, but don't bother, I've got the juicy bits) — in an article aptly headlined "In the Rush for a Scoop, CBS Found Trouble Fast" — that CBS News blames the White House for letting it blunder into Ra^thergate:

It was 11 a.m. on Sept. 8 — nine hours before "60 Minutes" was to air. But as news executives debated whether to broadcast a story on newly obtained paperwork offering fresh evidence about President Bush's National Guard service, a big question hung over CBS News' Westside headquarters: Were the photocopied documents real or fake?

Suddenly, the answer seemed to materialize, and from an unlikely source — the White House itself.

John Roberts, the network's White House correspondent, called to report he'd just completed an on-camera interview with Dan Bartlett, the White House communications director. Bartlett, it appeared, had no quarrel with the authenticity of the documents.

That was the turning point.

"If we had gotten back from the White House any kind of red flag, raised eyebrow, anything that said, 'Are you sure about this stuff?' we would have gone back to square one," Josh Howard, the program's executive producer, told the Los Angeles Times in an interview Friday. "The White House said they were authentic, and that carried a lot of weight with us."

The story aired that night, and Dan Rather, the CBS News anchor, seemed to have scored yet another coup in his broadcasting career. Hours later, the roof fell in.

Critics, many of them Internet-based, immediately charged that CBS had relied on phony documents from a shadowy, unnamed source. Rather, 72, long a target for conservative critics, was again fending off allegations of liberal bias. A growing chorus of media observers voiced distress that CBS had hurried a story onto the air without fully checking the facts.

And Friday evening, the White House denied that it ever confirmed the documents as authentic. "For them to suggest that [the interview was] an endorsement or ratification of the documents is a terrible stretch of reality," Bartlett said in an interview.

He also disclosed that he had shown the documents that morning to President Bush. "He had no recollection of these specific documents," Bartlett said, though the president said some of the information seemed accurate. For instance, he did go to Alabama. But he denied having defied orders from his superiors, Bartlett said....

In the crucial interview with the White House communications director, Howard noted that Roberts had specifically asked if the documents were fake. Bartlett's answer was: "I'm not saying that at all. I'm just saying that the fact that documents like this are being raised when, in fact, all they do is reaffirm what we've said all along, is questionable."

Now how stupid is this defense?  "The White House made us do it!"  Or, more charitably, "We can't find out butts with both hands and a roadmap, so we relied on the White House to keep us from making complete fools of ourselves!"

How was Dubya supposed to immediately recognize as a forgeries documents that (1) no one claimed he'd ever seen before, (2) that supposedly came from the "private file" (3) of someone whose been dead for years?

If they'd said, "1st LT George W. Bush was banned from further command of a Navy Swift Boat," then sure — he might have been expected to snap to them being fake.  Just as, perhaps, John Kerry would instantly recognize this document as a forgery — if, in fact, it is one, and it hasn't been proved to be yet, even though the Kerry campaign has now had almost two full days to respond to it!

But the forger went to enough trouble to get some basic dates and facts somewhere in the general ballpark.  Did CBS expect Pres. Bush to drop all his duties and spend a half-day sitting in the Oval Office with a magnifying glass — maybe doing a Charles Johnson-type experiment with Microsoft Word?

CBS News' own experts were already telling them the documents were questionable — did they tell the White House that?  I think we all know the answer to that question.

And yet they expect the White House to make a definitive, on-the-spot decision.  Incredible — the arrogance!  The stupidity!

I'm more convinced than ever that CBS News is getting its strategic pointers — as well as its "experts" — from the moonbats at dKos and DU.

More interesting bits from this LAT article:

The network's new reporting will be wrapped up soon, perhaps this weekend or early next week, Howard said. More sources have come forward in recent days, and CBS is leaning on its original sources to see if they will go on the record, he added.

A behind-the-scenes look at how CBS raced to make a Sept. 8 broadcast deadline offers a cautionary tale of television news in an age of mounting competitive pressures. Although many news organizations were pursuing a definitive breakthrough on the National Guard story, CBS appeared to have the competition beat — until its scoop became a public relations disaster.

Many observers believe Rather and CBS will survive the storm — but only if they make a quick admission of guilt, assuming the documents are fraudulent. The anchor has complained that the furor over the documents has distracted attention from the truth of the story about Bush. Yet critics don't buy that argument.

"The fact is CBS used those documents as the smoking gun," said Alex Jones, head of the Shorenstein Center on the Press, Politics and Public Policy at Harvard University. "I don't believe Dan set out to mislead anybody, but he's got to stand up and take a bullet. His credibility and that of CBS are very much on the line."

And about Ms. Mapes:

The news business is built on trust, and there was no reason for "60 Minutes" not to trust Mary Mapes, 48, who lives in Dallas. She is universally well regarded by her colleagues, with a number of big stories to her credit.

Most notably, she was the producer on Rather's major scoop earlier this year making public pictures of U.S. soldiers degrading and humiliating prisoners in Iraq's Abu Ghraib prison. CBS went through a similar vetting process to make sure that those pictures were authentic, CBS executives said.

Mapes could not be reached for this story.

Although CBS News notes that Mapes had been chasing the National Guard story for five years, it only came back on the active burner in mid- to late August.

That's when executive producer Howard got a call from her, telling him "she was on to something" and wanted to put her other projects aside.

Over the next couple of weeks, he said, "she would call from time to time, telling me she was getting closer, not closer, something that she was looking up that was a blind alley — those kinds of things that reporters do when tracking a story. There was nothing definitive" until he got the call from her on Sept. 3, Howard recalled.

On that Friday, just before the Labor Day weekend, Mapes excitedly phoned her bosses from Texas to report a breakthrough in the document quest. "I've got them," she told Howard.

The only phrase that comes to mind for this is:  "eager, willing, gullible tool."  But wait, there's more, about the early warnings that CBS News willfully ignored:

They had consulted outside experts to help them check the papers, and several confirmed their accuracy.

Marcel B. Matley, a handwriting expert from San Francisco, signed a letter this week saying he found "nothing about the documents that could disprove their authenticity." And James J. Pierce, a forensic examiner from Newport Beach, also signed a letter vouching for the signatures and typeface in the documents.

But others said they had voiced strong warnings to the network.

Emily Will, a professional document examiner in North Carolina consulted by the network to help assess two memos related to Bush's military service, said her copies showed a fax footer with a time stamp that read 6:41 p.m. Sept. 2.

The header of the fax, which presumably showed information about the sender, referred to a Kinko's shop near Abilene, Texas.

Will and another document examiner, Linda James of Plano, Texas, said they were first contacted by CBS News on Sept. 3.

"They said they had some documents, some sensitive documents, and would I mind working over the Labor Day weekend," Will said in an interview. "They wanted to know whether the signatures were genuine and the documents were genuine."

Will said she found "serious problems" with the documents. She isolated five ways in which the Killian signature on a 1973 memo did not match up with the other provided samples of his handwriting. She also wondered whether the memos contained superscripts and proportional spacing that existed in 1972 and '73, although she emphasized that her expertise mainly concerned handwriting and signatures and not the finer points of typography.

On Sept. 5, Will sent notations on the memos to CBS via e-mail and also voiced her concerns to a producer over the phone. The producer said they had more material to send her, but Will said those additional documents never arrived.

Meanwhile, James told producers she was troubled that she was looking at only copies and not originals. "[I] described what I needed in order to go ahead with the examination," James said. CBS promised it would send more paperwork, but according to James it never arrived.

"We knew it was a rush job. They wanted to air [the story] by Wednesday night," James said.

When time passed and Will heard nothing, she called CBS News the night of Sept. 7. She said she told her contact — whom she declined to name — "If you run this story, you'll get all sorts of questions from hundreds of document examiners." Will declined to say what if any reply CBS gave to her warning.

Simply astonishing.  And my hat's off to LAT staff writers Josh Getlin, Elizabeth Jensen and Scott Collins — damned fine reporting, folks!

What Beldar wants to know:  The election's not until November 2nd.  What was the rush?  Who else was the forger stringing along?  Was he threatening to take his goodies somewhere else unless CBS News rushed to judgment and onto the air?

I wonder if anyone at USA Today reads BeldarBlog?  Probably not — but I'll bet they read the LAT.  It's about time for those folks to speak up — past time, actually.

Should Dubya pardon Kerry?

I just read a creative and impassioned legal argument from the Holzer & Holzer team in FrontPageMag.com that effectively pre-empted something I've been intending to research and write about for weeks now.

Given the Navy Department's dismissal on Friday of the Judicial Watch complaint, I think that as a practical matter, there is zero practical chance that Kerry will ever be formally called to account for whatever he may have done, in Paris or elsewhere, as he finished out his Naval Reserve time. 

Still, I'd wager that an overwhelming majority of the public are still entirely unaware of Kerry's meeting(s) with representatives of the North Vietnamese government and Viet Cong in Paris before his famous Fulbright Committee testimony.  And the SwiftVets probably are working on an ad or two about "Tall John in Paris," so the issue's bound to keep coming up.

I therefore have decided to ply my hand at presidential speechwriting:

The President:  I know you're all curious why I've called this press conference.  I will keep this very short, and will take no questions afterwards, and neither will my staff make any comment upon it.

Allegations have been made that my opponent, Sen. John Kerry, may have run afoul of various criminal statutes and/or military regulations in meeting with representatives of the North Vietnamese government and the Viet Cong in Paris prior to Sen. Kerry's 1972 testimony before the Fulbright Committee.  I do not know the details of that meeting or those meetings.  Questions have also been raised about whether his participation as an antiwar activist while still a commissioned officer in the U.S. Naval Reserve may have run afoul of military regulations in one way or another. 

But in my judgment as Chief Executive, and under the power and responsibility granted me in that position by the Constitution, I have determined that it would serve the national interest to put to rest any further consideration of such issues during this critical time in our nation's history.  I have said before, and repeat, that I honor Sen. Kerry's combat service; and I will take on faith, without reservation, that anything he may have done in meeting with the enemies of this country during wartime were well intentioned and undertaken in a sincere belief that they were in the best interests of this country. 

I therefore have signed today a full and unconditional pardon in favor of John Forbes Kerry, absolving him from any potential criminal responsibility for such acts as he may have committed in such meetings, and/or in his capacity as a commissioned officer in the U.S. Naval Reserve. 

I urge all responsible Americans to accept this decision and action on my part as a complete and final closure of the issue, and like Sen. Kerry, I look forward to conducting the remainder of this year's presidential campaign with a forward-looking focus on how we should fight today's war, rather than a backward looking focus on what a presidential candidate may have done during that war more than thirty years ago.  This concludes my statement.  May God continue to bless these United States.

Your reaction, gentle readers?

Fisking Nicholas Kristof's NYT op-ed "A War Hero or a Phony?"

In Saturday's New York Times, columnist Nicholas D. Kristof offers an interesting op-ed entitled "A War Hero or a Phony?"  Since only one presidential candidate has claimed to be a war hero, you'd be correct in inferring that it's about Sen. Kerry. 

If you try to recall the state of public knowledge about Sen. Kerry's war record before the first SwiftVets ad appeared in early August, you'll recognize that at a minimum, the SwiftVets' campaign has had at least some success in knocking some of the burnish off that record.  But if you've been following the controversy closely, you'll see from Mr. Kristof's op-ed that on important points, he — and by fair inference, most of the mainstream media — is still clueless.

Mr. Kristof is obviously trying to write a balanced, if brief, examination of the SwiftVets vs. Kerry controversy.  He begins:

So is John Kerry a war hero or a medal-grabbing phony?

Each time that I've written about President Bush's dalliance with the National Guard, conservative readers have urged me to scrutinize the accusations against Mr. Kerry. After doing so over the last week, here's where I come out:

This is a good start, Mr. Kristof, that I only fault for the loaded term "dalliance" and for your failure to note that only Sen. Kerry has made his military service a cornerstone of his campaign.  You imply an equivalency that is facile, but false, as you've elsewhere acknowledged yourself.  Moving on (boldface in original throughout):

Did Mr. Kerry volunteer for dangerous duty? Not as much as his campaign would like you to believe. The Kerry Web site declares, "As he was graduating from Yale, John Kerry volunteered to serve in Vietnam — because, as he later said, 'It was the right thing to do.'"

In fact, as Mr. Kerry was about to graduate from Yale, he was inquiring about getting an educational deferment to study in Europe. When that got nowhere, he volunteered for the Navy, which was much less likely to involve danger in Vietnam than other services. After a year on a ship in the ocean, Mr. Kerry volunteered for Swift boats, but at that time they were used only in Vietnam's coastal waters. A short time later, the Swift boats were assigned exceptionally dangerous duties up Vietnamese rivers. "When I signed up for the Swift boats, they had very little to do with the war,'' Mr. Kerry wrote in 1986, adding, "I didn't really want to get involved in the war."

Again, the only quibble I have with this is that if one insists on drawing parallels between the candidates, it would only be fair here to also note that at the time Dubya signed up for the TANG, its units were flying F-102s in combat over Southeast Asia, and that Dubya unsuccessfully volunteered to join them there.

Did Mr. Kerry get his first Purple Heart for a self-inflicted wound? That's the accusation of the Swift Boat Veterans for Truth, who say that the injury came (unintentionally) from a grenade that Mr. Kerry himself fired at Viet Cong. In fact, nobody knows where the shrapnel came from, and it's possible that the critics are right. It's not certain that the Viet Cong were returning fire. But the only other American on the boat in a position to see anything, Bill Zaldonis (who says he voted for Mr. Bush in 2000) told me, "He was hurt, and I don't think it was self-inflicted."

GONG!  First major set of errors, Mr. Kristof.  Everyone agrees that there were three men on the skimmer.  There's a major dispute, however, regarding who else was there besides young Lt. Kerry.  How can you possibly have missed Lisa Myers' and Bob Novak's interviews with Adm. Bill Schachte?  And how can you have failed to learn that by regulation, "the key issue that commanders must take into consideration" in deciding whether to award a Purple Heart is "the degree to which the enemy caused the injury"?  How can you have missed the facts that Kerry's commander, Lt. Cmdr. Skip Hibbard, refused to put Kerry in for a Purple Heart after the 02Dec68 mission, but Kerry somehow mysteriously was awarded one anyway in March 1969, and that none of the normal paperwork that, again by regulation, should back up a Purple Heart citation has been produced?

Did Mr. Kerry deserve his second and third Purple Hearts? There's not much dispute that the second was merited. As for the third one, the Swift Boat Veterans' claim that he received it for a minor injury he got while blowing up food supplies to keep them from the enemy. But documents and witness accounts show that he received a shrapnel wound when South Vietnamese troops blew up rice stores, and an injured arm in a mine explosion later that day.

You're right, Mr. Kristof, that the SwiftVets haven't seriously challenged the second Purple Heart, although it was for another trivial bandaid wound.  But it wasn't "South Vietnamese troops" that blew up the rice pile, Mr. Kristof, it was Lt. Kerry and Lt. Rassmann, and they weren't under enemy fire at the time.  As for the "injured arm," that's a bruise, Mr. Kristof — not even a bandaid for that one.  These are important facts, and they're absolutely undisputed.  How can you have missed them?

Did Mr. Kerry deserve his Bronze Star? Yes. The Swift Boat Veterans claim that he was not facing enemy fire when he rescued a Green Beret, Jim Rassmann, but that is contradicted by those were there, like William Rood and Mr. Rassmann (a Republican). In fact, Mr. Rassmann recommended Mr. Kerry for a Silver Star.

GONG!  You're right, Mr. Kristof, that there is a dispute as to whether Kerry was under enemy fire when he plucked Rassmann out of the river.  But Lt. Rood wasn't there that day — and no one has ever claimed he was.  From Rood's ChiTrib article:  "I was part of the operation that led to Kerry's Silver Star. I have no firsthand knowledge of the events that resulted in his winning the Purple Hearts or the Bronze Star."  There are indeed eyewitnesses who say there was enemy fire and other eyewitnesses who say there wasn't.  But none of the eyewitnesses who claim that there was incoming enemy fire have ever been able to explain how no one, and none of the five boats, were hit by it.  Sen. Kerry's own version — that he braved enemy from both banks over a 5000 meter stretch — is almost certainly a gross exaggeration.  Finally, Mr. Rassmann's credentials as a Republican are somewhat questionable — and mostly irrelevant, Mr. Kristof, unless you'd like us to ignore your op-ed based on how you've voted recently.

Did Mr. Kerry deserve his Silver Star? Absolutely. He earned it for responding to two separate ambushes in a courageous and unorthodox way, by heading straight into the gunfire. Then he pursued one armed fighter into the jungle and shot him dead. According to Fred Short, a machine gunner who saw the event, the fighter was an adult (not the half-naked teenager cited by the Swift Boat Veterans) who was preparing to launch a grenade at the boat. "Kerry went into harm's way to save the lives of the guys on the boat," Mr. Short told me. "If he hadn't done that, I am absolutely positive I would not be here today." Mr. Kerry's commander said he had wanted to give him an even higher honor, the Navy Cross, but thought it would take too long to process.

Whether the tactics used that day were courageous or foolhardy is a subject of debate, but what's clear is that Kerry stayed on his boat during the first ambush, and all three boats offloaded a large contingent of South Vietnamese "Ruff-Puffs" to chase the bad guys in the first ambush; Kerry was in no more danger, and behaved no more bravely, than any of the other skippers or crew with respect to that ambush.  With respect to the second spot where Kerry and Rood beached their boats, there were at most one or two enemy soldiers, and the one Kerry chased down was already wounded and fleeing.  The "half-naked" allegation came not originally from the SwiftVets, but from reporting by Boston Globe reporter Mike Kranish, and it's absolutely irrelevant.  And Adm. Zumwalt — who by everyone's version was eager to find some Swiftees to pin medals on — was basing his understanding of what happened on the after-action report written by Kerry that conflated the two ambushes, making it look as though (as the citation reflects) he led a team ashore under overwhelming enemy fire and against numerically superior odds.  Kerry did his duty that day and was brave — but it was ordinary duty and ordinary bravery, not Silver Star-type heroism, and certainly nothing remotely justifying a Navy Cross.

Did Mr. Kerry exaggerate his exploits? Yes. For example, he has often said over the years that he spent Christmas 1968 in Cambodia as part of the secret war there. Others who served with him confirm that on Christmas Eve 1968 (not Christmas Day) he got very close to the border, and possibly even strayed across it. But it doesn't seem to have been, as Mr. Kerry has suggested, a deliberate incursion into Cambodia.

Close, Mr. Kristof!  But there's absolutely no evidence — including from any of Kerry's "Band of Brothers" — to support the claim that Kerry ever set foot in Cambodia at any time.  Yes, some of the canals he patrolled were within yards of the border.  But he was never in Cambodia — and there's no evidence to show that he was except for his own tall tales (which you rightly admit were exaggerations).

What do those who served with him say? Some who served on other boats have called Mr. Kerry a hypochondriac self-promoter. But every enlisted man who was with Mr. Kerry on various boats when he won Purple Hearts and Silver and Bronze Stars says he deserved them. All praise his courage and back his candidacy. "I was there for two of the Purple Hearts and the Bronze and Silver Stars, and he earned every one of them," said Delbert Sandusky, in a typical comment. "He saved our lives."

Mr. Kristof, you've completely ignored the crewman who served the longest under Kerry, SwiftVet Steve Gardner.  Did you somehow miss the third SwiftVets ad, which featured only him?  And you've ignored, too, the fact that the Swift Boats almost never operated alone, but almost always operated in groups in which Kerry's fellow Swift Boat skippers had a better perspective from which to observe his ability to work together, to follow orders, to support the overall operations, than his own crew had.  Those officers overwhelmingly support the SwiftVets' contention that Kerry is "Unfit for Command."

The bottom line? Mr. Kerry has stretched the truth here and there, but earned his decorations. And the Swift Boat Veterans, contradicted by official records and virtually everyone who witnessed the incidents, are engaging in one of the ugliest smears in modern U.S. politics.

What can one do but sigh and shake one's head in bewilderment at this?  "Ugliest smears in modern U.S. politics"?  Mr. Kristof, your own column has just demonstrated — you've just admitted — that the SwiftVets have succeeded in exposing Kerry as an exaggerator.  But for their efforts, neither you nor anyone else would likely have had a second thought about John Kerry's consistent portrayal of himself as a latter-day Audie Murphy or Sgt. York.

Every American voter is entitled to reach his own considered judgment as to whether Sen. Kerry was, as you put it, "A War Hero or a Phony?"  But Mr. Kristof, when you still are so badly deluded as to undisputed facts — such as the identities of major players in the controversy like Bill Rood or Bill Schachte or Steve Gardner — I respectfully submit that your considered judgment, as expressed in this op-ed column, is worse than worthless, it's deceptive and misleading.  You should be ashamed, sir — any junior high school editorialist could do a better job of fact-gathering than this.

Mr. Kristof publishes email exchanges with his readers, and writes in one:

Many conservatives have told me to look at Kerry’s records, and his failure to execute an SF 180. I’ve been looking at the issue, and I’ll address it in a column soon.

Oh, I can hardly wait.  Got that one calendared for November 9th or so, Mr. Kristof?

Update (Sat Sep 18 @ 11:20am): Captain Ed has an independent fisking that, unsurprisingly, notes many of the same fundamental errors I did.

Update (Sun Sep 19 @ 4:40pm):  Tom Maguire and Patterico also found Mr. Kristof to be an irresistible fisking target. 

Patterico's second update notes that Mr. Kristof's statement that "every enlisted man who was with Mr. Kerry on various boats when he won Purple Hearts and Silver and Bronze Stars says he deserved them" may be technically correct.  I did not claim otherwise, but I did (and do) accuse Mr. Kristof of ignoring Gardner, who served longer under Kerry than any other crewman (but not, indeed, on any of Kerry's medal-winning occasions), and the overwhelming number of Kerry's fellow Swiftee skippers who participated in missions with Kerry on a daily basis and who've joined the SwiftVets' assessment of him as "Unfit for Command."   Given the topic Mr. Kristof's paragraph — "What do those who served with him say?" — I think Mr. Kristof's focus only on crewmen who served under Kerry on his medal-winning days is ridiculously narrow.  Instead, as phrased, Mr. Kranish's own question would embrace within its scope the hundreds of Swiftees who've joined the SwiftVets, most of whom claim no personal knowledge of Sen. Kerry's actions, but object to Sen. Kerry's mischaracterizations of their service in his antiwar activism.  They are also in an extremely knowledgeable position to draw conclusions from second-hand information about Sen. Kerry's war service — much of which comes, indeed, directly from Kerry's own admissions and claims, or from his authorized hagiographer Douglas Brinkey, or from the biography written by the Boston Globe's Michael Kranish et al.

Judicial Watch strikes out with demand for Navy Dep't investigation

John Kerry has finally gotten some unequivocally good news in the ongoing controversy about his military service and antiwar activism.

As I wrote on August 19th, by formal request on August 18, 2004, as supplemented on September 8, 2004, Judicial Watch asked the Department of Defense and the Navy Department to investigate Sen. John Kerry's medals and antiwar activities.  On September 5th, I wrote that I thought Judicial Watch and some in the blogosphere were making too much of what I thought, on close examination, to be to be a letter which did nothing more than acknowledge receipt of Judicial Watch's complaint.

On Thursday, September 16th, Judicial Watch issued a press release advising that the

U.S. Navy Personnel Command, in response to a Freedom of Information Act (“FOIA”) request, has refused to release additional documents on the naval service of Senator John Kerry....

[Navy Personnel Command FOIA Officer Dave German] wrote [by email to Judicial Watch that] "We have withheld thirty-one (31) pages of documents from the responsive military personnel service record as we were not provided a release authorization.

According to the Judicial Watch press release, the Navy "referred Judicial Watch to the Kerry campaign Internet site for 'Numerous responsive U.S. Navy service record documents, as well as service record documents not subject to disclosure requirements under the FOIA'" — presumably meaning that the 31 withheld pages were not already disclosed there.

*******

On Friday, September 17th, Judicial Watch received a one-page letter from the Naval Inspector General, Vice Admiral Ronald A. Route, declining to take any action — or even to further pursue a full-blown formal investigation — in response to Judicial Watch's complaint:

In accordance with our established review procedures, we carefully examined the process by which Senator Kerry was awarded the Silver Star, Bronze Star, and three Purple Hearts in 1968 and 1969.  We found that existing documentation regarding his medals indicates the awards approval process was properly followed.  In particular the senior officers who authorized the medals were properly delegated authority to do so.  In addition, we found that they correctly followed the procedures in place at the time for approving these awards.

(Actually, all five medals were awarded in 1969, although the first Purple Heart was based on a trivial injury that Sen. Kerry received on December 2, 1968.  For reasons discussed below, this is not a trivial distinction.)

It's not at all clear what "existing documentation regarding his medals" Adm. Route may have reviewed, and it's extremely disappointing that he doesn't say.  By regulation, for example, Kerry's first Purple Heart should have been supported (see paragraph 2-17i of Army Regulation 600-8-22 on page 23 of the .pdf file) by both an after-action report documenting "the key issue that commanders must take into consideration," which is "the degree to which the enemy caused the injury" (see paragraph 2-8b(3) on page 19 of the .pdf file), and by a casualty report documenting the injury.  No such documentation has been produced by the Kerry campaign (the one-page medical record bearing the signature of Hospitalman J.C. Carreon isn't a "casualty report").  And indeed, Adm. Bill Schachte has repeatedly stated that neither document was created because there was no return enemy fire on that mission. 

Did Adm. Route locate and review a casualty report and an after-action report that someone — Lt. Kerry? — ginned up weeks or months after December 2, 1968, and routed around Lt. Com. Skip Hibbard, who'd refused to authorize a Purple Heart?  Adm. Route's letter leaves us still wondering.  In other words, if indeed the senior officers "correctly followed the procedures in place at the time for approving these awards," they must have done so using documents that are not in the public record — and that Sen. Kerry's continuing refusal to sign a Standard Form 180 will keep out of the public record.

Adm. Route's reference to "senior officers who authorized the medals [being] properly delegated authority to do so" refers to Judicial Watch's argument — which I thought was extremely weak to begin with — that only the Secretary of the Navy had authority to approve Kerry's Silver Star, and that Adm. Zumwalt lacked the authority to do so.

*******

Adm. Route's letter next says:

Conducting any additional review regarding events that took place over thirty years ago would not be productive.  The passage of time would make reconstruction of the facts and circumstances unreliable, and would not allow the information gathered to be considered in the context of the time in which the events took place.

Well, nobody ever said it would be easy, and the same could be said — to one degree or another — of any request for such an investigation.  Whether such an investigation would or wouldn't "be productive" is, of course, a value judgment.  However, I must reluctantly concede that for purposes of the Navy Department's decision whether to pursue a path that might strip Kerry of his medals, the Naval Inspector General, in the person of Adm. Route, is probably the proper military authority — perhaps subject to review upstream, but if so probably under a very deferential standard — to make that value judgment. 

That of course leaves free members of the public — including voters — who've followed the SwiftVets vs. Kerry controversy to make their own value judgments based on the incomplete public record that's available.  But it means they'll do so without the development of a fuller record than what's already available to the public — unless somehow Sen. Kerry can be induced by media and public pressure to end his stonewall, which would add significantly to the documentary evidence that's now available.

*******

Adm. Route's letter concludes with this final substantive paragraph:

Our review also considered the fact that Senator Kerry's post-active duty activities were public and that military and civilian officials were aware of his actions at the time.  For these reasons, I have determined that Senator Kerry's awards were properly approved and will take no further action in this matter.

Again, with due respect to Adm. Route, no one knows the full extent of Sen. Kerry's "post-active duty activities."  From his contemporaneous admissions, we know — as did civilian and military officials at the time — that young Kerry, while still an officer in the Naval Reserve, met with representatives of the North Vietnamese government and the Viet Cong in Paris before his Fulbright Committee testimony.  What we still don't know — and what neither military or civilian officials knew at the time — is what actually transpired in those meetings, or even how many such meetings took place!

Then and now, Kerry has been carefully vague in describing those meetings, characterizing them as "fact-finding" expeditions.  Yet he and his fellows in the Vietnam Veterans Against the War organization endorsed in full the wartime demands of our country's enemies for an immediate cease-fire and unilateral American withdrawal from South Vietnam.  Some of his fellows from those days have suggested that discussions included a partial release of prisoners of war that the North Vietnamese would expressly credit to VVAW's actions to bolster the domestic credibility and clout of Kerry and his fellow protesters.  That they have succeeded in keeping the details of their negotiations, and their agreements (if any), secret for so long is hardly a reason to assert that those details were known long ago.

Here again, however, I must concede that even if not supported by persuasive reasoning, Inspector General Route is probably the authority within the military structure who has the discretionary authority to decide whether this is something the Navy Department wishes to pursue.  And clearly, he has exercised that discretion against any further investigation.

*******

Adm. Route's letter makes no mention whatsoever of the impossible "Combat 'V'" designation for Kerry's Silver Star.  Nor does it address the multiple and varying versions of Kerry's Silver Star citation.  Nor does it indicate whether or not an investigator was appointed within the Navy Department to look into Judicial Watch's allegations — although the strong inference of his letter is that no such formal appointment was made, and that instead he determined to rule on Judicial Watch's complaint on a more peremptory basis.

*******

Judicial Watch's press release today declared:

"Admiral Route’s politicized letter raises more questions than it answers.  Kerry’s fellow and commanding officers have made credible, sworn allegations that call into question the legitimacy of John Kerry’s military service awards.  The Navy IG obviously is afraid of the political ramifications of a thorough investigation into a presidential candidate’s service record.  There is no statute of limitations, as the admiral seems to suggest, for fraudulent medals and questionable conduct.   We will appeal as appropriate this whitewash," stated Judicial Watch President Tom Fitton.

I'd agree that Adm. Route's letter leaves important questions unanswered and that it is puzzling and unsatisfactory in many respects.  I'd also agree that by necessity — given the fact that Sen. Kerry is a presidential candidate — this entire inquiry is necessarily "politicized," including both Judicial Watch's complaint and Adm. Route's response.  The term "whitewash," however, strikes me as over the top, and imputes to Inspector General Route and/or the Navy Department a pro-Kerry motivation that I think is unfair to assume.  I can certainly think of other rational bases for them to have reached this result besides a desire to "whitewash" Sen. Kerry's record.  And just as prosecutors and judges have no obligation to explain in detail every factor they've taken into account in making their decisions, nor to respond to every detail of a citizen complaintant's allegations, I can accept that some purposeful blurring or nonresponsiveness in Adm. Route's letter may be acceptable. 

Although brand new to this position, Adm. Route's  career accomplishments are as impressive as one would expect for the office he holds, and I'm confident that he secured the input of the Inspector General's in-house Legal Office as well.  Both Adm. Route and his decision are entitled to respect even from those who may disagree with it.  Judicial Watch's use of overblown rhetoric like the term "whitewash" diminishes its own credibility with the public, gives the Kerry camp tools to argue that Judicial Watch itself is behaving in a partisan fashion, and can't improve the prospects of whatever appeal Judicial Watch plans to pursue.

*******

Beldar's bottom line opinions on this decision: 

• If this was a ticking time bomb, the fuse on it has been snuffed out at least for now, and the Kerry campaign is certain to garner more political benefit from Adm. Route's decision than it sustained damage originally from Judicial Watch's complaint.  Fairly or not, this decision will be trumpeted, and likely perceived — and is already being treated by the press — as the Navy Department sustaining and even bolstering Kerry's war-hero claims, and rejecting the criticisms of those like Judicial Watch and the SwiftVets who've argued the contrary case.  (Both of these press reports reference a memo from Adm. Route to Navy Secretary Gordon England that appears to track his letter to Judicial Watch essentially word-for-word.)
• The confirmation that the Navy Department has at least 31 pages of Kerry records that aren't on his website, however, is important.  Again, the fact that the Navy Department has punted this hot potato ought not obscure the fact that Sen. Kerry continues to engage in a cover-up and stonewall — not only of his military records, but of his personal diaries and journals, the Medieros journal for PCF 94, and all the other materials that no one but Sen. Kerry and his pet biographer Douglas Brinkley have been allowed to review.

*******

So where does that leave us?  I know where it ought to leave Sen. John Forbes Kerry, anyway:

The Navy is letting you keep the medals you once so contemptuously threw over a Capitol fence, Sen. Kerry.  Be grateful for that, sir — it's an act of military grace.  But genuine questions remain about your service — questions that the Navy Department may be disinclined to pursue, but that substantial segments of the public still want to see answered. 

You and your surrogates have repeatedly chastised President Bush about his responses to questions regarding his military service, and you have demanded complete disclosure from him of all pertinent records.  Surely you've been embarrassed by the spectacle of some as-yet-not-quite-identified opponents of President Bush use of forged military records in an attempt to perpetrate a fraud on the American electorate through Dan Rather and CBS News.  Are you still so incredibly arrogant that you will continue to maintain that you are immune from legitimate public inquiry, even after all this?

Rathergate links roundup

Start with Jim Garraghty's Kerry Spot on NRO, where you'll find that —

• ABC News is reporting that Retired Col. Walter Staudt, who was described in one of the forged Killian memos as having pressured Killian to assist Bush and "sugar-coat" his evaluations, says "I never pressured anybody about George Bush because I had no reason to."  And: "'[Bush] didn't use political influence to get into the Air National Guard,' Staudt said, adding, 'I don't know how they would know that, because I was the one who did it and I was the one who was there and I didn't talk to any of them.'"  The latter quote is old news, made new again simply because Dan Rather is willing to ignore reputable reporting from the Dallas Morning News, among others, who proved years ago that disgraced politician and fat-cat Dem lobbyist and Kerry-insider Ben Barnes was, and is, full of crap when he claims to have gotten Dubya into the TANG.  (The Commissar writes of this ABC News story on Staudt, "It's not a coffin any more. It's a mountain of nails with a coffin at the bottom.")
• The Chicago Tribune narrowly edges its competition for best Ra^thergate headline of the day with "Eye Wide Shut," which observes of CBS News' "forged but accurate defense" that "[t]he fact that Adolf Hitler allegedly had thoughts similar to some in those long discredited 'Hitler's diaries' doesn't make them more than sleazy frauds."  More:  "News organizations that relied in part on CBS' story — the Tribune included — put some faith in CBS News' credibility. Only to learn that the network may have had its trademark eye wide shut."  Gotta love a hard-hitting editorial that leaves you (well, leaves me, anyway) remembering Nicole Kidman stepping out of slinky underthings.
• CBS News' resident curmudgeon, Andy Rooney, is "surprised at [CBS News' top brass'] reluctance to concede they're wrong." According to the New York Daily News, "Rooney and other CBS staffers are still holding out hope that Rather will produce something to authenticate the supposed memos from the early 1970s that criticized Bush's record in the Texas Air National Guard."  And I continue to hold out hope that Nicole Kidman will read my blog, smile that delightful, oh-so-wicked smile, click on the "About Beldar" link and ... oh, never mind.
• CBS affiliates continue to cringe over Rather's and CBS News' stonewall.  Geraghty rightly identifies the affiliates as a key point through which  blogs and blog readers can apply pressure to CBS News.
• CBS News' most recently disclosed expert, James J. Pierce, is very upset that CBS News posted his September 14th opinion — not just because it's prompted reporters to camp out on his home doorstep, but because "he was only 'midway through his analysis' of all the documents — speaking as though there were many docs. CBS gave you other documents besides the four that 60 Minutes used in the story? 'Lots more documents' were his exact words."  I believe this trims the number of "experts" of any stripe or credential who continue to stand foresquare and unequivocally behind the Tiffany Network down to two — Mr. Glennon, the typewriter repairman CBS News found on dKos, and Mr. Katz, the "software designer" who's noticed that "you'd have to go out of your way" to avoid Microsoft Word's automatic supercripting feature.  How pathetic is that?  Any trial lawyer who tried to take a case to trial with this kind of expert witnesses lineup would be sued for, and guilty of, gross malpractice.

Elsewhere, Hugh Hewitt seeks and receives help in fashioning an appropriate Ra^thergate/Lord of the Rings analogy.  My favorite so far:  "Grima Rathertongue."

Compare and contrast stories about forgery suspect Bill Burkett in the Houston Chronicle (been there, done that, already figured out this guy was a nutcase months and months ago) and WaPo (Burkett is a "Well-Regarded Texan" — maybe true, if sort of in the same sense that Charles Whitman was a well-regarded former Marine before he toted some sniper rifles to the top of the UT Tower in 1964).  Sheesh, even the Boston Globe had figured out that Burkett was an untrustworthy flake by last February.

RatherBiased discovers that Rather, CBS News,  and producer Mary Mapes were relying on Burkett back in February (about the same time the Houston Chronicle and other media outlets were concluding that he's a nutcase).

Former CBS News correspondent Bernard Goldberg has an op-ed in the Wall Street Journal recounting from bitter personal experience just how calmly Rather reacts to criticism.  As for why he's stonewalling:  "Because Dan Rather may be protecting not just his source, but himself; because, if the source turns out to be a partisan, then Dan wasn't just taken for a ride, but may have been a willing passenger.  And then Dan, and CBS News, can kiss their reputations goodbye."  (Note: "willing passenger" is not the same as "fellow traveler," even if they're both sitting on the left side of the car.)  NRO's Byron York also has a WSJ op-ed which points out that "[t]here is an army of well-informed fact-checkers out there, all connected on the Internet. There are people who know about things like computer fonts, or IBM typewriters circa 1972, or the arcane terminology of the Air National Guard. Pick a completely different subject, and there will be people who know about that, too."

Finally, from yesterday (I know, ancient history in this news cycle), don't miss Jed Babbin's posts (here and here) on NRO's The Corner, from which we learn that Mrs. Knox, the elderly-but-feisty Bush-basher who typed Col. Killian's real memos, was a pool typist, "out of the mainstream of the squadron, in an office that the pilots only visited occasionally," and in nowhere near as good a position to assess either young Lt. Bush or Col. Killian as were Col. Killian's son and other pilots who flew with them both.  Her own son, though, was also a member of this "Champagne Squadron."