Rather/Kerry Connection?

[Annie]

http://www.allahpundit.com/archives/000982.html

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September 18, 2004
Big scoop in today's LA Times, although to find it you'll have to skip down past the stuff about the forgery scandal being all Bush's fault for not doing Dan Rather's homework for him. Bear with me -- it's a long excerpt, but it's important.

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.

Mapes spent the long weekend lining up experts to authenticate the papers and setting up interviews. . . . [Emily] 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." . . .

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. . . .

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


First: This completely reorders the timeline. Up until now, the best sense we've had of when CBS first got the documents was a Washington Post article dated September 10th (and excerpted in this Wizbang post), which said, "CBS officials insisted that the network had done due diligence in checking out the authenticity of the documents with independent experts over six weeks." If the LA Times's info about Mapes getting the memos on September 3rd is correct then the six-week timeline that CBS gave to WaPo is bullshit, likely designed to make it sound as though they had been more scrupulous about having the documents examined than was actually the case. In fact, as Linda James says, it was a rush job. To put it mildly.

Second: The Times says the story became active again in "mid- to late August" when Mapes suddenly claimed to be "on to something". Here again is my post from yesterday morning comparing Bill Burkett's statement on August 13th that he'd found no documentation from Colonel Killian to his cryptic remark on August 25th about having now "reassembled" some of Bush's files. And what about that phone call with Max Cleland? When did that happen? According to today's article in the Post, by Cleland's account it was . . . mid-August. And when did Burkett assert online that he had already given his "information" to the Kerry campaign? According to the article in today's NYT, August 21st.

The point? If the LA Times is right, then Kerry's campaign had Burkett's information before CBS got the memos from its mystery source, a possibility that until now had seemed unlikely given the six-week timeline mentioned in the Post on September 10th. Not only that, but the story seems to have attracted Mary Mapes's renewed attention right around the same time that Kerry's people were getting stuff from Burkett. An interesting coincidence, no? We already know what Steyn thinks.

Third: Why didn't CBS do as it promised and send Emily Will more material to analyze after she raised questions about the documents on September 5th? Might it have something to do with the "authentication shopping" theory first floated in this post? I.e., with Will already expressing doubts about some of the memos, sending her the rest of the material could have led to further questions and derailed the whole investigation. Maybe they decided it was easier to cut Will loose at that point and rely on someone else, like Matley, to authenticate the remaining documents.

So many questions, so little time: The LAT notes that "The network's new reporting will be wrapped up soon, perhaps this weekend or early next week, [60 Minutes executive producer Josh] 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." Should be an interesting week ahead, especially now that Hitler has chimed in.

Wizbang has more on the Times piece, including the excerpt where Bush is blamed for the fact that CBS ran with the story. Read the article and see for yourself how the White House's failure to express an opinion about the documents one way or another transforms magically into "The White House said they were authentic" in the 60 Minutes producer's mind.

UPDATE: Bill points out that in order to believe Kerry's campaign had Burkett's info before CBS had the memos, all the dates mentioned in these articles have to be correct. As we've seen, WaPo already got some bad info about dates from CBS on September 10th. So take it with a grain of salt. For now.

UPDATE: I realized after I posted that I neglected to include in the LAT excerpt the info about the fax from Kinko's: According to Emily Will, the copies of the documents she received from CBS had a fax footer with a time stamp of 6:41 p.m. Sept. 2. Presumably, the fax was sent to Mapes at her home in Dallas, which is why she could phone her boss the next day and say she had the docs. It should be noted, though, that the article doesn't say specifically how she got them.

Posted by Allah at September 18, 2004 06:37 PM