CBS Forgeries: Wednesday 29 Sept 2004

1. IT WAS LATE, KERRY SAID, REFERRING TO NOON
   The good news is John Kerry did an interview on Good Morning America, and he was asked about his "I voted for it before I voted against it" comment.
   Kerry responded, "No, it wasn’t classic at all. It just was a very inarticulate way of saying something, and I had one of those inarticulate moments late in the evening when I was dead tired in the primaries and I didn't say something very clearly."
   Hey, it happens! No big deal. Everybody has made a comment that doesn't make sense late at night... except...
   “‘I actually did vote for his $87 billion, before I voted against it,’ he told a group of veterans at a noontime appearance at Marshall University. He went on to explain that he preliminarily backed the request, so long as it was financed not by deficit spending but with a tax surcharge on the wealthy that Bush opposed.”
   As Bush spokesman Steve Schmidt suggested, maybe his watch was on Paris time.
   (kerryspot, nationalreview)
2. Old dog, old tricks
   Ratherbiased.com (whose site is down now) and Little Green Footballs detail how CBS News last night used discredited documents to attack President Bush:
   In a story that was a textbook example of slipshod reporting, CBS reporter Richard Schlesinger used debunked internet hoax emails and an unlabeled interest group member to scare viewers into believing that the U.S. government is poised to resume the draft. (powerlineblog)
3. TIMESMAN TIPPED OFF TERROR CHARITY: FEDS -- The Justice Department has charged that a veteran New York Times foreign correspondent warned an alleged terror-funding Islamic charity that the FBI was about to raid its office — potentially endangering the lives of federal agents. (ny post)
4. CBS flawed report on draft: And now Dan Rather puts this story on the air -- fake emails, fake "apolitical, Republican mom" -- at the same time Kerry and the DNC are pushing the "Bush wants to reinstate the draft" line. (ace of spades)
5. Network News Flash: Probe By Brooks Boliek
   WASHINGTON (Hollywood Reporter) - CBS may have escaped congressional scrutiny into the controversy over allegedly forged documents detailing President Bush's National Guard service, but only until the election is over. (reuters)
6. Further complicating matters for CBS and Dan Rather, the legacy media has unwittingly opened up another angle on probable malfeasance, when they proudly announced that Rather producer Mary Mapes had been the recipient of sensitive Abu Ghraib investigative documents and photos. Just as we are unsure of the actual source of the Guard memo forgeries, the same can be said for the source of the Abu Ghraib materials.
   However, a partial chain of connection is revealed upon further examination of contemporary media accounts and the Taguba Report (the high level official inquiry) itself . (americanthinker)

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