What's the Frequency, Kenneth?
CBS News and the Killian memorandum forgeries

September 22 2004
Counterbias.com
Scott C. Smith

On September 8, the CBS News program Sixty Minutes II featured a Dan Rather interview with former Texas Lt. Gov. Ben Barnes, the man responsible for getting George W. Bush into the Texas Air National Guard. Barnes told Rather that Sid Adger, a Bush family friend, had asked Barnes to help get George W. Bush into the Texas Air National Guard. Barnes complied: “Dan (Rather), I got a lot of young men from prominent families in Texas in the National Guard…I was a young, ambitious politician -- doing what I thought that was acceptable, that was important to make friends. And I recommended a lot of people for the National Guard during the Vietnam era -- as speaker of the house and as lieutenant governor.” It was a decision that did not still well with Barnes: “Reflecting back, I'm very sorry about it. But, you know, it happened. And it was because of my ambition, my youth, my lack of understanding. But it happened. And it's not, as I said, it's not something I'm necessarily proud of.”

And while the fact that a young George W. Bush was given preferential treatment in his being accepted into the Guard is not news – the Boston Globe reported on Bush’s Guard service in 2000 – this was the first time the man responsible for the special treatment had told his story to a national audience.

The Barnes story was only a small part of what CBS considered to be a major journalistic scoop: it had obtained a number of documents from George W. Bush’s former squadron commander, Jerry Killian, that appeared to support an allegation that has followed Bush for many years: during the period of 1972-1973, Bush did not show up for Guard duty.  (Killian died in 1984).

The Killian memorandums were potentially damaging to Bush’s credibility. One memo, dated August 18, 1973, was titled “CYA,” with Killian detailing pressure he had been receiving regarding George W. Bush: “(Walter) Staudt has obviously pressured Hodges more about Bush. I’m having trouble running interference and doing my job. Harris gave me a message today from Grp regarding Bush’s OETR (officer evaluation review) and Staudt is pushing to sugarcoat it. Bush wasn’t here during rating period and I don’t have any feedback from 187^th in Alabama. I will not rate…”  Walter Staudt was the unit’s commanding officer.

A firestorm erupted immediately after CBS released four memorandums to the media: the documents were fake, produced using a computer and Microsoft Word, a word processing program, and not composed on a typewriter. Experts in document analysis offered their opinions while bloggers took crash-courses in the mechanics of typewriters, circa 1972-1973.

During the firestorm, CBS stood by its reporting of the story and the authenticity of the memorandums. In a statement released in the days following the Sixty Minutes II broadcast, the network said it could state with “absolute certainty” that the documents could have been produced on typewriters available in the early 1970s.  CBS also said in the statement, “The documents are backed up not only by independent handwriting and forensic document experts, but sources familiar with their content.”

One small problem with the memorandums: they were not original documents, but copies faxed to CBS. The authenticity of the memorandums was questioned by Killian’s son, Gary, and by Killian’s secretary, Marian Knox, who said she did not draft the documents. Also, the man mentioned in the 1973 memorandum, Walter Staudt, had actually left the Guard in 1972.

By September 20, CBS finally admitted that it could not vouch for the authenticity of the memorandums. In a statement, CBS News president Andrew Heyward said, “Based on what we now know, CBS News cannot prove that the documents are authentic, which is the only acceptable journalistic standard to justify using them in the report. We should not have used them. That was a mistake, which we deeply regret. Nothing is more important to us than our credibility and keeping faith with the millions of people who count on us for fair, accurate, reliable, and independent reporting. We will continue to work tirelessly to be worthy of that trust.”

Ouch.

A question left unanswered is: why did CBS run with this story? I don’t know if this counts as liberal bias or not, but had the documents been proven genuine, they might have tarnished George W. Bush’s credibility. Instead, CBS is eating crow and worse still, conservatives are now blaming the Kerry campaign for creating the documents. Conservatives point to a conversation between Kerry advisor Joe Lockhart and Bill Burkett, the man who allegedly provided the documents to CBS, as proof of a Kerry campaign conspiracy. There is no proof of any involvement by the Kerry campaign in the forgeries. Interestingly, the New York Post (owned by Rupert Murdoch) is reporting today that the documents may actually have come from GOP activist Roger Stone, but at this point the Post is only saying that the report of Stone as the source as just a rumor.

Unwittingly, CBS may cost John Kerry votes in the upcoming presidential election. Conservatives are going to run with the theory that John Kerry’s team was involved somehow in “memogate.” Thanks, CBS. This is the kind of publicity that the Kerry campaign can do without. Apparently the media is still obsessed with what the presidential candidates did over 30 years ago. Isn’t it time to focus on the issues of the day? Perhaps I’m hoping for too much: a media the covers current issues and how the men who are running for president deal with those issues. Focus on the present? What a novel concept.