I'd Ra^ther Not

It's deja vu all over again. Last year a star reporter makes blockbuster accusation; when his story is questioned, his company backs him to the hilt saying that his source was reliable; an inquiry is launched which discovers that the reporter distorted the information of the source and that his company didn't provide adequate oversight and then blindly backed the reporter; the chairman of the board, the CEO, and the reporter then resigned. In that case it was Andrew Gilligan and the BBC; today's case is Dan Rather and CBS.

The big difference (aside from the sexier accents across the pond) is that what the blogosphere did in a day took a government agency months. OK, that and we haven't gotten to the punishment of the guilty yet. Here's hoping that doesn't take too long either - a matter of days rather than weeks.

The first thing that strikes me about the whole thing is how bad a forgery the documents are. The forger don't even bother to spend a couple of bucks and buy an old typewriter to type them up. They then used the most common word processing software in the world, Word, and they just left all the standard defaults on. They didn't even change the font to Courier, which looks like a typewriter. They didn't even bother to proofread and so you have a "th" superscripted next to a number, and you have "th" not superscripted one space away from a number? Can you make it any more obvious that this was done on Word on a computer?

It's more understandable that the forgeries didn't get the military details correct. But I don't understand why LTC Killian would have written these in the first place. They seem to dovetail nicely with what some Democrats are saying today, but they make no sense in the context of LTC Killian writing them in 1973. For instance, why would an officer ever write a memo that says he caved to pressure from a superior, and title it CYA? Who's A is he trying to cover here? Not his, because he was admitting he lied in an evaluation. That wouldn't be covering his A, that would be uncovering his A, and waving a big red flag while doing so.

So I convinced that these are forgeries, and amazingly lousy ones at that.

Only blinding partisanship would let Dan Rather be deceived by such lousy forgeries, and put at risk both the reputation of CBS news and John Kerry. Those reputations were put at risk for claims that George Bush's superior really didn't think he was that good a pilot, that George Bush refused a written order to get a physical, and that George Bush didn't get permission to go to Alabama. Really, who cares? We've been throught this a dozen times already. At least Gilligan provided a blockbuster accusation of "tarted-up" dossiers (you got to love the brits, especially when they talk French). Rather provided a snooze fest of accusations, and did so with both skill, aplomb, and nothing but liars. The documents - fake. Ben Barnes - a liar. This is what passes for journalism these days?

But there is a certain deja vu with previous Bush scandals. Joe Wilson - liar. Richard Clark - liar. Michael Moore - liar. This latest non-scandal has the familiar ending: the accuser turns out to be a liar and the accusations baseless.

CBS has claimed they did a thorough investigation before they went to air. If CBS really did a thorough investigation of the documents, why aren't they able to release the results immediately? Why can't they simply provide their expert typologists report where they tracked down which typewriters in use by the TANG were able to use a proportional font and a superscripted th? Where is their comparison of other documents that have nothing to do with Bush also written by the LTC around the same time? They haven't even provided a name. Why can't they provide the chain of possession of the documents in question? Since they haven't, I'm forced to conclude that there was no thorough examination of the documents. Instead, they relied on people believing on CBS's say so. We don't live in 1973 anymore where just because Cronkite said it, we believe.

Dan Rather has responded and sadly provides no new information or a shred of support, just more of the same 'trust me':

"I know that this story is true. I believe that the witnesses and the documents are authentic. We wouldn't have gone to air if they would not have been. There isn't going to be -- there's no -- what you're saying apology?."

I think there's a lot of credit to go around: the guys at Powerline, Charles Johnson, INDC journal and Pacetown just to name a few. Hayek would be proud of the display of distributed intellegence in the internet -- how no one source has all the answers, but the flood of information coming from all directions arrived at a conclusion. The forgery wouldn't have been detected before the rise of the internet. Not just because of bloggers or skeptics, but because the documents wouldn't have been released to the public before. Now you have everything input into the network and the distributed intellegence standing by. But back then the documents might have been flashed up on the TV briefly, and then never seen again. And if the White House did dispute the authenticity, well, that would be just what you would expect, and by the time it was resolved, the election would be long over.

And of course, the blogosphere as befits a super intellegent being has a sense of humor.